PULP Issue 5 Part 2

PULP ISSUE 005

TABLE OF CONTENTS

REFLECTIONS, MIRRORS, THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS - BEN MACNAIR

STRAY CAT, OUR BIG DAY, PROUD PERVS- JIM BEST

LAWN CARE - SAM LOGAN

POP ROCKS, IN THE FREEZING COLD - EM BELL

BIO-OPS - AARON RENAUD / ARÓN REINHOLD

CREME BRULEE - DAVID BLITCH

CEREAL - LAURA SHELL

THE PADDED ROOM - CHRISTIAN W

ENDLESS VACATION - BRADFORD MIDDLETON

THE BARBARIANS - MICHAEL TYLER

ID NUMBER 15 - RAEGYN OLIVER

THE SPARROW’S GAMBIT - MICHAEL J. SMITH

LEGACY - BILLY RAMONE

SECRET DATE - K.R. MOORE

GHOST SCHOOL - SIMON COLLINSON

NUCLEAR WASTE, PAIN, ONE PERCENTER - JOHN TAVARES

THE END - THOMAS MALINOVSKY

THEY ALL FALL THE SAME - HUGH BLANTON

CRACKS AND CHISELS, SETTING GHOSTS TO REST - DANIEL LENOIS

PEOPLE YOU’VE BEEN BEFORE THAT YOU DON’T WANT AROUND ANYMORE, BARTERING - ANGELA PATERA

THE SWORD - PAUL CESARINI

SF-3 - E.S ALLEN

THE BOARD OF INTERGALACTIC RELATIONS - L. R. MCGARY

SEXY SLUT PUBLISHING - WOLFGANG WRIGHT

BLACK MAGICK 101 - G. W. MCCLARY

THE MIRROR - SUNNY MERTENS

BETWEEN WORLDS - JACK SULLIVAN

21 YEARS LOST - ALEX FOSTER

THE SPARK LIT THE FLAME - EOLAS PELLOR

ADONIS - RACHEL TURNEY

CHULLO, MANNEQUIN, SEXWORLD, SEXWORLD 2, WALLFLOWER - ALEX STOLIS

PICTURE COLLAGES - IRINA TALL

CONTRIBUTOR BIOS

Ben Macnair (he/him) is an award-winning poet and playwright from Staffordshire in the United Kingdom. Follow him on Twitter @ benmacnair

Jim Best (he/him) is a life long writer of everything from literary fiction to hardcore smut. He’s a college drop out living in rural flyover country with his wife and kids. Besides writing he is into radical politics and history.

Sam Logan (he/him) emerged in 1984 from the depths of the Chesapeake Bay off the Maryland shore. He made it to Oregon where he is a university professor in kinesiology and teaches courses about punk and body horror. Sam lives with his partner, kiddo, and Dune the dog. He has stories in Mouthfeel Fiction, Punk Noir Magazine, Divinations Magazine, Major 7th Magazine, Underbelly Press, and Wallstrait. Find him at samloganwrites.com

Em Bell (they/he/she) admires sex and intimacy in their short fiction works. You can find him living her best lesbian life in the Pacific Northwest-- probably drinking espresso on the couch, tapping out their little stories, with a cat on either side of him.

Arón Reinhold (he/him) is a Texan who reads and writes. He studied English Literature at the University of North Texas until graduating in 2014, working subsequently as a grassroots organizer to effect a just and sustainable society. Recently, he returned to fiction out of a love for the craft and its inherent promise to envision a different world. Reinhold has been published by Wicked Shadow Press, Frontier Tales, Bewildering Stories, The Raving Press, Black Petals, Teleport Magazine, Schlock! Webzine, SavagePlanets, Piker Press, and CultureCult Press. He will soon be seeking publication for his debut novel.

David Blitch (he/him) is a 65 year old disabled pastor from Fleetwood Pa. He has published several stories. He lives with his best friend, one dog, and two cats. He doesn’t like eggs!

Zack Moss (he/him) is a weird writer and no-till farmer living in the city of subdued excitement. His fiction has previously appeared in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, The Crambo, and Zymbol among others. He has an MFA from Western Washington University.

Laura Shell (she/her) has been published in NUNUM, Typishly, Maudlin House, Citron Review, and many others. Her first anthology of paranormal stories, The Canine Collection, was released this year. She's currently a prolific writer and submitter of flash fiction. You can find more about her work at https://laurashellhorror.wordpress.com.

Christian W, (he/him), BA in English and AA in Technical Writing from Kent State University. Growing up in North Canton, Ohio Christian wanted to always write creatively. Working as the Head Editor for City Lifestyle Magazine, he always has time to write what comes to mind and explores new styles and genres to write about. You can find him on instagram @Christianw.pdf.

Bradford Middleton (he/him) lives in Brighton on England’s south-coast. Recent stories have been, or will be shortly, published by Verbal magazine, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Rye Whiskey Review, Commuter Lit, Yellow Mama and Locust. He’s just begun work on the follow-up to ‘All the Way to the End of the Line’ his most recent, and still unpublished, novel.

Michael (he/him) writes from a shack overlooking the ocean just south of the edge of the world. He has been published in several literary magazines and plans a short story collection sometime before the Andromeda Galaxy collides with ours and …

Raegyn Oliver (she/her) is an undergraduate student at Lipscomb University. She’s pursuing a BA in psychology with a double minor in English and studio art. Her research project, “Sincerely Yours: A Therapeutic Writing Approach to Grief,” will be presented at the Students Scholars Symposium in Spring 2025. Raegyn works as a bookseller at Parnassus Books and a Writing Consultant at Lipscomb’s Writing Studio. Focusing on fantasy and sci-fi, she crafts stories about vampires, debutants, and all things villainous.

Michael J. Smith (he/him) was born in 1988 in the picturesque mountain state of Utah. From a young age, he was captivated by the power of storytelling and the rich tapestry of lore accompanying it. Today, he resides in Utah with his beautiful wife and two sons, where he continues to explore his passion for writing and storytelling.

Billy Ramone (he/him) is a pulp fiction writer living and working in Columbus, Ohio. He writes horror, crime, and speculative fiction. He has published dozens of stories over the last 25 years and is currently the creator/editor of Pulp Asylum, which can be found online at pulpasylum.com

K.R. Moore (he/him) is an author that likes to bring joy and look at the positives of life. Channeling them within his writing into the craziest, most bizarre ways possible with fun at every turn. When you pick up a book from Moore, you can expect to go on a journey with unforgettable casts of characters with comedy and oddity always close by. In addition to selfpublished works, he currently has 6 short story pieces published in magazines such in Nat 1, Bookzine, BarBar and many more. One of said shorts was also showcased at the Art Museum of South Texas. When he’s not writing about saving the world before game time, he’s usually deep in his study researching the best and most inspirational media out there to come up with outlandishly incredible magic systems in hopes of impressing future readers. Reach him on Instagram and TikTok as @Penname.exe.

Simon (he/him) is a writer from England. He seeks solitude and shadow.

Born and raised in Sioux Lookout, Ontario, John Tavares (he/him) is the son of Portuguese immigrants from Sao Miguel, Azores. Having graduated from arts and science at Humber College and journalism at Centennial College, he more recently earned a Specialized Honors BA in English Literature from York University. His short fiction has been featured in community newspapers and radio and published in a variety of print and online journals, magazines, and anthologies, in the US, Canada, and internationally. His many passions include journalism, literature, economics, photography, writing, and coffee, and he enjoys hiking and cycling.

Thomas Malinovsky (he/him) is a Russian-American writer currently residing in Northern Virginia. His work is scheduled to be published in Anarchist Fictions Journal and has been in George Mason University's Volition and The Forge. He is currently pursuing a bachelor's degree in Government and English at GMU, where he works as a consultant at the Writing Center.

Hugh Blanton's (he/him) latest book is Kentucky Outlaw. He can be reached on X @HughBlanton5.

G. W. McClary is a native of Ohio, with a B.A. in literature. His stories have appeared under rocks and bridges, and are forthcoming in Timada's Diary, The Fear of Monkeys, Mystic Mind, Mobius Blvd, and Schlock! webzine.

Daniel Lenois, (he/him) a lifelong resident of Connecticut, began his literary career in Spring 2023 at the age of 29. He is known for his diverse exploration of different literary genres and formats. Daniel graduated Central Connecticut State University in December 2023, and is currently enrolled at the University of Connecticut, where he intends to pursue a teaching career. Prior publications include, but are not limited to: Shacklebound Books, SavagePlanets, MX Publishing, and Unleash Lit.

Angela Patera (she/her) was born in 1986 in Athens, Greece. She is an ESL teacher and a mother. She studied English Language and literature at the National University of Athens and pursued a Master's Degree in Cultural Administration and Communication. Her main interest is the representations of womanhood, race, and disease in Culture (especially literature). Her stories and poems have appeared in Across the Margin, The Bookends Review, Oxford Magazine, the Barnstorm Journal, Route 7 Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Tint Journal, Midnight Chem, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and other literary journals.

Originally from the Boston area, Paul Cesarini (he/him) is a Professor & Dean at Loyola University New Orleans. His fiction is published in 365 Tomorrows, Antipodean SF, the Creepy Podcast, Aphelion, Sci-Fi Shorts, Apocalypse Confidential, Tall Tale TV, Black Sheep, Intangience, Savage Planets, Andromeda, Freedom Fiction Journal, Bewildering Stories, and InterNova, with additional stories in-press. He is a big fan of science fiction from the 1930s1950s. He is not a fan of wax beans. Beans are supposed to be green, not yellow.

E.S Allen (he/him) is an aspiring fiction writer and avid history nerd currently cursed to dwell in humid Florida.

Wolfgang Wright (he/him) is the author of the comic novel Me and Gepe and the forthcoming science fiction novel Being. His short work has appeared in over forty literary magazines, including Dark Yonder, Oyster River Pages, and Paris Lit Up. He doesn’t tolerate gluten so well, quite enjoys watching British panel shows, and devotes a little time each day to contemplating the Tao. He lives in North Dakota.

Sunny Mertens (she/her) appreciates the strange and extraordinary minutiae of everyday life. Her work has appeared in Atomic Form and Artistic Archives Magazine. Her Twitter is Sunny Mertens.

Russell Epp-Leppel (he/him) is always exploring his love of SFFH and detective fiction. With a background in engineering, he enjoys taking systems apart to see how they work and reassembling them in new ways. He lives with his partner and their small menagerie in the Philadelphia area, where he can be found haunting the local woods, and on Bluesky @leppeppel.

Jack (he/him) is a queer writer and visual artist living in Brooklyn, NY. His prose and poetry can be found in YES POETRY, GHOST CITY REVIEW, OROBOROS, STREETCAKE, and BODEGA MAGAZINE. He is a lapsed Catholic, pretentious cinephile, and lover of frozen cocktails. Presently he needs to work on buying a new pair of jeans.

Alex Foster (he/him) is a young Australian mixed-race writer, 21 years old. He graduated from Deakin Uni class of 2024 in journalism.

Eolas Pellor's (he/him) short stories have been published in "Grim & Gilded" [issue 18, February, 2024], “The Word's Faire” [as Peter McGuinness, May 7, 2024], one was adapted for "Creepy Podcast” [July 17, 2024], and a 10,000 word story is appearing in a forthcoming anthology. He is an autistic, and a retired teacher of Latin, Philosophy and World Religions in inner-city schools.

Alex Stolis (he/him) lives in Minneapolis; he has had poems published in numerous journals. Two full length collections Pop. 1280, and John Berryman Died Here were released by Cyberwit and available on Amazon. His work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Piker’s Press, Jasper's Folly Poetry Journal, Beatnik Cowboy, One Art Poetry, Black Moon Magazine, and Star 82 Review. His chapbook, Postcards from the Knife-Thrower's Wife, was released by Louisiana Literature Press in 2024, RIP Winston Smith from Alien Buddha Press 2024, and The Hum of Geometry; The Music of Spheres, 2024 by Bottlecap Press. He can also be found at https://alexstolis.myportfolio.com/

Rachel Turney (she/her) is an educator and teacher trainer. Her photography appears (or is in press) in By the Beach, San Antonio Review, The Salt, Noom, San Antonio Review, Umbrella Factory Magazine, and Ink in Thirds Magazine. Blog: turneytalks.wordpress.com Instagram: @turneytalks

Irina Tall (Novikova) (she/her) is an artist, graphic artist, illustrator. She graduated from the State Academy of Slavic Cultures with a degree in art, and also has a bachelor's degree in design. The first personal exhibition "My soul is like a wild hawk" (2002) was held in the museum of Maxim Bagdanovich. In her works, she raises themes of ecology, in 2005 she devoted a series of works to the Chernobyl disaster, draws on anti-war topics. The first big series she drew was The Red Book, dedicated to rare and endangered species of animals and birds. Writes fairy tales and poems, illustrates short stories. She draws various fantastic creatures: unicorns, animals with human faces, she especially likes the image of a man - a bird - Siren. In 2020, she took part in Poznań Art Week. Her work has been published in magazines: Gupsophila, Harpy Hybrid Review, Little Literary Living Room and others. In 2022, her short story was included in the collection "The 50 Best Short Stories", and her poem was published in the collection of poetry "The wonders of winter".

PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED/

T.W.

Paul Cesarini’s “The Sword” was previously published in 365 Tomorrows and Sci-Fi Shorts in 2022 - 2023.

Michael Tyler’s “The Barbarians” was previously published in Adelaide Magazine.

Stray Cat contains strong language, domestic violence and substance abuse. Our Big Day is NSFW with a lot of sex.

Lawn Care includes body horror.

The Padded Room has Breakups, Mental Health, Mental Isolation, Depression, Denial

Endless Vacation has drug addiction and death.

The Barbarians has Drugs/Rampant Misogyny/Sex/Violence

Bartering has substance abuse

The Board of Intergalactic Relations has War/violence/invasion (nothing graphic)

Black Magick 101 has graphic sex, animal abuse, zoophilia

The Spark Lit the Flame has Prejudice and Racism

REFLECTIONS

As the clock struck midnight, Mark found himself alone in his dimly lit apartment, the silence of the night wrapping around him like a heavy blanket.

He had just returned home after an exhausting day at work, his mind clouded with thoughts of deadlines and meetings. Seeking a brief escape, he wandered into the bathroom to splash some water on his face. As he approached the mirror, he noticed a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye. He paused, wiping his wet hands on a towel, and leaned closer.

The reflection stared back at him, ordinary and unremarkable just Mark, looking tired and worn. But as he turned to leave, he felt a chill sweep through the room, and a pull of curiosity compelled him to look back once more. This time, the reflection wasn’t quite right. There was a shadow behind him, a dark figure that seemed to loom larger than life, its features obscured but undeniably menacing.

Heart racing, he spun around to confront whatever was there, but the room remained empty. Confused and a little frightened, he turned back to the mirror, and that’s when he noticed it the figure was still there, staring directly at him, its mouth twisting into a grotesque smile.

“Who are you?”

Mark gasped, but the figure merely mirrored his shocked expression, as though mocking him. Panic surged through him as he reached for the light switch, but the bulb flickered and died, plunging him into darkness.

The air grew thick with an unnerving silence, and he could feel the figure inch closer, its presence suffocating. In a fit of desperation, Mark splashed water on his face again, hoping to shake off the creeping dread. But when he looked back at the mirror, the figure was gone. Relieved, he took a step back, only to feel a cold breath on his neck. He froze, heart hammering in his chest, and slowly turned to face the darkness behind him. The room was empty. Or so he thought. As he turned back to the mirror, he saw his own reflection, but it was twisted, eyes hollow and filled with a dark void.

The smile returned, stretching unnaturally across his face.

“You can’t escape me, ” it whispered, the voice echoing in his mind.

“You invited me in.”

The reflection lunged forward, and Mark stumbled back in horror, the glass shattering around him as he fell. But as he crashed to the floor, he realized it wasn’t just the mirror that had shattered; it was his grasp on reality. The figure from the mirror had seeped into his life, and as Mark looked up, trembling, he saw it standing beside him—no longer trapped behind the glass, but free to roam the shadows of his home. With a chilling laugh, the figure reached out, and Mark understood too late that some reflections are better left unexamined. The last thing he heard was the sound of shattered glass and a voice, echoing through the darkness:

“You’re mine now. ”

MIRRORS

In the heart of a bustling city, David lived a seemingly ordinary life.

He worked a nine-to-five job, had a small circle of friends, and enjoyed the comfort of his modest apartment. However, everything changed one fateful evening when he decided to explore an obscure antique shop that had recently opened nearby.

Intrigued by a vintage mirror nestled in the corner, he felt inexplicably drawn to it. The ornate frame was stunning, and the glass held a depth that seemed to beckon him closer. After negotiating a price with the shopkeeper, David brought the mirror home, placing it in his living room where it immediately became a focal point.

That night, as shadows danced across the walls, David caught a glimpse of something peculiar. In the reflection, he saw not just his own image but a dark figure standing just behind him a shadowy silhouette that sent a chill down his spine. He spun around, heart pounding, but the room was empty. Convinced it was just his imagination playing tricks, he shook off the unease and went to bed.

Days passed, and the mirror soon became a source of dread. Each time David glanced into it, the figure grew clearer, more defined its eyes hollow, its mouth curling into a sinister grin. It felt as if the entity was watching him, waiting for something.

Sleep-deprived and paranoid, he researched the mirror‘s history, uncovering tales of its previous owners each had met tragic ends, their lives consumed by madness and despair. One stormy night, as lightning illuminated his apartment, David could no longer deny the truth; the figure in the mirror was real.

Gripped by a mix of fear and fascination, he leaned closer, entranced by its presence. The reflection shifted, and to his horror, he realized the dark figure was no longer just a spectator it was mimicking his movements, stepping out of the shadows and closer to the glass. Desperate to escape the nightmare, David covered the mirror with a blanket, hoping to banish the thing that haunted him.

But the moment he did, a cold gust of wind swept through the room, and the blanket flew off as if pulled by invisible hands.

The figure emerged, stepping into the room with an unnatural grace, its grin widening as David backed away in terror.

“You can’t hide from me, ” it hissed, its voice a chilling echo of his own.

“I’ve been waiting for you to see. ”

In a panic, David raced to the door, but the room warped around him, the walls closing in. The figure lunged forward, its icy fingers grazing his skin, and in that moment, David understood the horrifying truth: the mirror was a portal, and he was destined to take its place. As darkness enveloped him, David’s screams echoed in the empty apartment, swallowed by the silence. The next day, a new tenant moved in, blissfully unaware of the antique mirror standing proudly in the living room, reflecting a life that once was. And in the glass, a familiar figure watched, waiting patiently for the next soul to claim.

Ethan had always been a skeptic. He dismissed ghost stories and urban legends as mere fabrications of fear and imagination. But one stormy evening, as he returned home from work, he stumbled upon an antique shop tucked away in a narrow alley.

Drawn by an inexplicable urge, he stepped inside, where the air was thick with the scent of dust and nostalgia

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

His eyes landed on an ornate mirror with a tarnished frame, its glass shimmering with an otherworldly glow. The shopkeeper, an elderly woman with piercing eyes, warned him, “Be careful what you seek in the reflection.”

Ignoring her cryptic warning, Ethan bought the mirror and hung it in his dimly lit hallway. That night, as lightning flashed outside, he found himself drawn to it. The reflection showed his usual surroundings, but something felt off; the mirror seemed to pulse with a life of its own. Suddenly, a flicker in the glass caught his attention. He leaned in closer, and his heart raced as he noticed a figure standing behind him dark, shadowy, and distorted.

He spun around, but the hallway was empty. Dismissing it as a trick of the light, he returned to his evening routine, but unease gnawed at him. Days turned into nights, and the figure in the mirror became more pronounced.

It shifted, mimicking his movements, yet its expression was twisted and malevolent. He could feel its eyes boring into his back, and soon, he couldn’t shake the sensation of being watched. Dread settled in like a fog, clouding his mind. One stormy night, as the wind howled and rain lashed against the windows, Ethan stood before the mirror, compelled to confront the sinister presence.

“What do you want?”

he challenged, his voice trembling. To his horror, the figure grinned a grotesque smile that sent chills down his spine. It raised a hand, and Ethan felt a sudden, searing pain in his chest. Panicked, he staggered back, but the figure advanced, reaching through the glass with skeletal fingers.

“You should have listened,” it hissed, its voice echoing in Ethan’s mind.

“Now you belong to me. ”

With a desperate surge of adrenaline, Ethan grabbed the heavy mirror and hurled it to the floor. Shards of glass sprayed across the room, and as the mirror shattered, the figure let out a bone- chilling scream, its form dissipating into the air like smoke. Breathing heavily, Ethan surveyed the wreckage, relief washing over him. But as he turned to leave, a cold breeze swept through the hallway. In the broken pieces of the mirror, he caught a glimpse of the figure once more this time standing behind him, eyes filled with fury, a warning etched in its twisted smile.

Ethan realized, with dawning horror, that the reflection was not just a reflection; it was a portal to something far darker than he had ever imagined. He had shattered the mirror, but the entity was not gone it had only begun to seek its revenge. The line between his world and the mirror’s was forever blurred, and now, it would stop at nothing to claim him as its own.

STRAY CAT

Brakes scream.

Metal strikes wood.

The crunch of chrome and the jangle of breaking glass.

“Damnit! Now I’ve gone and done it!” The voice is light. Playful. Slurred.

Upstairs Margo is awake. She sits up and glances at the clock. 3 AM. Witching hour as old nan used to say. She balls a fist. Her head is starting to hurt. She hears car doors opening. More voices. Laughter. Shoes on asphalt.

“Nah! Nothing to it, old sport! Just a little paint she’ll be right as rain! No fear!”

”You drive like the devil!”

“The devil drives like me, my pretty!” Monty. Monty with his friends. Was that a woman? Sure it was. She balls her fists until her palms begin to sting.

“Fuck ‘ em, ” she whispers to herself and lays back down, trying to outrun the pulse in her head. She closes her eyes and unclenches her jaw.

Downstairs the front door opens and the voices roll in, louder now. Not one woman, it’s two by the sound of it. The door slams closed and there’s a clatter of more breaking glass.

“Whoops! More work for the insurance agent!” Says Monty.

This gets more laughter than it deserves. “Let’s have some music! I’ll get the good stuff!”

Leave it. She thinks. Let it be. They’ll pass out soon. Then she can walk past them all in the morning and let the maid find them draped over the pool table and the piano. She can sleep through some ruckus.

As she is thinking this however she opens her eyes and examines the ceiling. Downstairs there is the sound of heavy footfalls. Doors opening and closing.

Music starts up on the piano. Halting, filled with mistakes. Every time the player makes an error it causes an eruption of girlish giggles.

Margo gets up. No scenes. No fireworks. Just remind him you have an early shoot in the morning. She tells herself this as she slips her robe over her nightgown. As she is tightening the belt she grips the fabric firmly enough for it to bite her skin and she realizes her jaw is clenched again.

She opens the master bedroom door and sees the lights coming from down the stairs. The music is louder and people are trying to sing. The player keeps messing it up and this leads to more laughter. She walks to the staircase, goes halfway down and examines the scene in the parlor. The usual faces.

The English Drunk is laying half passed out on the sofa, an honest-to-god lampshade is placed jauntily on his head. His feet are propped up on the antique coffee table. Desmond is sitting on the overstuffed armchair. On his lap is a blonde in a silk kimono, her arm draped over him, his hand halfway up her thigh. Both are looking at the piano, where The Young Blood is making his best effort at “Hail, Hail, The Gang’s All Here”. He is glassy-eyed and reeling, not as seasoned as the others, despite his best efforts to keep up with them. Sitting at the piano, a cigarette dangling from a ruby red lip, there’s a Brunette Nymph, bob haired and dressed in a long black number that reveals a perfectly pale leg beneath. Margo’s heart hammers harder and she feels it in her temples. She closes her eyes and takes a breath. Then she walks in.

The room is ripe with booze and sweat and smoke. They’ve turned the parlor into a speakeasy. She stands there and watches, saying nothing. Her entire body is aching like a single flexed muscle. No one sees her at first. Then The Nymph on the piano looks up and her eyes go round. Margo realizes she’s not a woman at all, just a girl. Eighteen or nineteen at most. Her anger is enormous now.

”Gee! It’s you! You’re her!”

“It’s me, ” Margo agrees.

The Young Blood looks up and smiles. He can barely see her.

“Say hey, Margo! Come on in! The Gangs’ All Here, as they say!” He chortles at his own joke.

Desmond and the Blonde look over as well. The English Drunk just stares at the tips of his shoes from under the rim of the lampshade.

The levity vanishes as they all see her face. Drunk as they are, it leaves no room for confusion.

“Say, did we wake you?” asks Desmond. His hand is still on the Blonde’s thigh.

”That’s really her! She looks just like she does in the pictures!” The Nymph whispers to The Young Blood.

“Wake me? At three o ’clock in the morning? What gave you that idea?”

“Oh, gee, Margo, sorry about that, guess, heh, we ’ ve made a ruckus. We can go. ”

“Nonsense!” Monty says from behind her. He pops into the room like a champagne cork, bearing a bottle of gin. “Night’s young! Besides, the car ’ s a mess!” He gives his wife a passing smile, and she sees flecks of food in that oh so iconic little mustache of his. Fresh revulsion bubbles up. At the sound of the gin bottle opening, The English Drunks’s eyelids roll all the way up. He looks from the bottle to Monty to Margo.

“You?!” He asks in a disgusted voice. He goes to stand up but can’t quite make his legs agree. He tries again, then he decides to simply slide downwards until he reaches the floor on his hands and knees. He begins to crawl.

“Monty.” She musters all the self control she can. “I don’t want a scene. I really don’t.”

“Then don’t be a damn prig!” Monty says. He is smiling. It has all the intonation of a joke. But when his bloodshot eyes fall on her they are far from jovial. The Aussie twang he’s worked so hard to pretend is English is especially strong. “Come and join us! Instead of sulking in your damn room like a princess!”

She feels a flash of fear overcome the anger. Then the anger wins out again. She is actually angrier for being made to feel afraid.

Behind her the English Drunk pushes himself to the Ming vase by the fireplace. Wrapping his hands around its neck, like a Juliette in one of his long ago plays, he looks down at its opening and empties his gorge.

“Say… it is late, Monty,” The Young Blood says.

“If you want to live this life, sport, you have to go all in, no straddling the line!” Monty says, spilling gin over the piano as he pours it.

She decides to take a shot. It’s tearing her up inside. She needs to extract some venom. “I have a shoot in the morning, Monty my love. The Dowager Empress. Remember what it’s like to have work?” She feels excitement as it leaves her lips. Then regret. The room is no quieter than it was before, but it feels heavier.

Monty turns to her, still smiling as he fumbles to light a cigarette. Ice water washes over Margo. She starts to tremble. She holds her ground though. Monty’s grin is that of a wolf with his eyes on a wounded deer. He strides across the room, ambling in his affected, carefree gait. As blotto as he is he can still pull it off. He might not ever be at risk of getting any awards for his pictures, but he is one hell of an actor.

The English Drunk is getting to his feet now and walking to the window.

“Don’t take any guff off that bitch, Monty, old boy!” He mutters, as he opens the window, unzips his fly and begins to piss.

Monty’s smile widens and he grabs hold of Margo’s wrist. She tries to pull it away but she is locked in place by his stare. Instantly pain shoots up her arm as her bones grind beneath his grip. “Sweet pea, that tongue of yours will get you trouble someday.”

She tries to speak. The fingers in her hand go numb. Needles dart up her forearm. She is shaking harder and feels the impossibly strong urge to pee. “I….I… Monty….Please…” It’s all she can get out.

”Now, you can go be a stick in the mud, or have a drink. Whatcha say, dear heart?”

Tears well up in Margo’s eyes. I’ll leave. I’ll sleep in the guest house. It’s all right. It’s all right. He can have as many people over as he wants as late as he wants. She opens her mouth to say all this but can’t get it out. Pain and fear have stolen her voice.

“Hey now!” Says a small little voice from over Monty’s shoulder. It’s The Nymph. She suddenly appears beside him and lays a hand on his arm. “Monty, can you light me up? Come on. ”

She asks, holding up a cigarette. He blinks. Seeming to come back to the world. It’s really astonishing to see. He turns to look at her and Margo Sees him again. The character he plays. The vessel of pure charm. He loosens his grip.

“Sure.” He says, seeming to test the word out in his mouth. “Sure!” He repeats. He is looking The Nymph straight in the eye and she is smiling at him. Gods on Olympus should be so lucky to get looks like that. He produces a lighter and holds it up for her. As he does, he brushes a lock of her bobbed hair from her face. The Nymph’s cheeks burn scarlet.

At that sight, all thoughts leave Margo’s mind. The world takes on a reddish hue and there is a pronounced humming in her head. “Pour me one. ”

“What’s that?” Monty asks, looking back at her as if he’d forgotten she was standing there.

“I said pour me a drink.”

He smiles brilliantly. “There’s a good sport!” He says, raising an eyebrow as he begins to splash more gin over ice. The room seems to let out a collective breath. The song begins again and it finally seems as though The Young Blood has found the music. Monty offers her the glass and she accepts.

She raises it to her mouth. Then splashes the contents in his face. The floral notes of juniper berries fill the room, mingling with the vomit in the vase.

Monty’s mouth makes a perfect “O” of surprise. Without a word Margo brings the glass crashing into the side of his head. It shatters into a million shards cutting his scalp and her hand. She doesn’t feel a thing.

The others in the room began to speak to the lord almighty.

“Jesus!”

”Oh God!”

”Holy hell!”

Monty staggers like a dazed prize fighter. His eyes glaze over and he wavers back and forth. Blood begins to gush over his face. He grabs his head and roars in pain. Then pain gives way to hilarity.

He starts laughing, then cackling and finally guffawing as he looks at his hand, smeared with blood and he doubles over. Then he pulls it back and shoots out a right hook that smashes into Margo’s face. There’s a scream. She thinks it’s hers, but she can’t be sure over the laughter.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

HOLLYWOOD’S GOLDEN COUPLE MONTY JONES AND MARGO SULLIVAN INVOLVED IN MINOR AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENT.

LOS ANGELES, CA - AUGUST 15TH 1935

WENDELL PICTURES IS RELIEVED TO ANNOUNCE THAT TWO OF HOLLYWOOD'S MOST BELOVED, HUSBAND AND WIFE MONTGOMERY “MONTY” JONES AND MARGARET, “MARGO”, SULLIVAN SUSTAINED ONLY MINOR INJURIES IN A ONE CAR ACCIDENT ON SUNSET BOULEVARD THURSDAY NIGHT. THE INCIDENT OCCURED WHEN MR JONES, WHO WAS DRIVING, SWERVED TO AVOID A STRAY CAT IN THE ROAD. THE PAIR RECEIVED SUPERFICIAL INJURIES TO THE FACE AND HEAD. THEY ARE CURRENTLY RECUPERATING IN THEIR HOME IN BEVERLY HILLS. PRODUCTION ON MISS SULLIVAN’S NEW PICTURE, “THE DOWAGER EMPRESS” IS EXPECTED TO PROCEED AS SCHEDULED.

OUR BIG DAY

The tinkle of spoons on glasses gradually evaporated, and the newlyweds parted their lips, giggling merrily. Everyone agreed it was a lovely ceremony. The vows were heartfelt, the toasts were sweet and sentimental, and the dinner was tasty. The DJ was just about to announce Hannah and Kevin’s first dance when the door at the back of the reception hall flew open. Silence descended over the guests as heads swiveled to see the silhouetted figure. It was broken by the sound of boots walking across the floor, followed by the murmur of hushed voices. Peering out over the crowd, Hannah spotted the new arrival winding his way toward her and her new husband. He was tall, with dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail that fell just above his broad shoulders, dressed in a stylish black T-shirt, a leather jacket, and faded blue jeans. A motorcycle helmet was tucked under one arm. He walked confidently, weaving between the tables, a self-assured smile on his tanned face. As he reached the dance floor, bemused recognition dawned on her, and she smirked slightly despite herself.

“Who is that?” Kevin asked from her side, squinting at the stranger.

“Bruce? Is that you?” she said, her smile widening as he walked up to the long table that hosted the bridal party.

“The one and only!” Bruce said. He set the helmet down on the table with a clatter, and the groom just had time to retrieve his champagne flute before it spilled. “How you doin’, darlin’?”

“B-Bruce? Your… your college boyfriend?” Kevin asked.

“Mmmhmm, yeah. Honey, this is Bruce. What are you doing here? I thought you were out of town,” Hannah asked, sounding puzzled but not unhappy.

“I just got back. I read about this shindig online. Do you think I’d miss the wedding of Hannah the Whore-ible?” Bruce asked, leaning in close and resting on his elbows. Hannah giggled girlishly and blushed a deeper shade of red. Kevin looked from Bruce to her and then back.

“Ahem, hi, I’m Kevin, Hannah’s husband ”

“Yeah, hiya chief, so you ’ re really settling down, huh? One guy is really gonna be enough for the blowjob queen of KU?”

Hannah laughed and brushed a lock of her light brown hair out of her face. She smiled at him, her green eyes sparkling. “People change…” she said noncommittally.

“We’re both glad that you could make it ”

“Say, Kev, hope it’s not a problem me showing up unannounced like this,” Bruce asked, not looking away from Hannah.

“Well, uh ”

“Of course not!” Hannah said. “We don’t mind at all, do we, honey?” She gave Kevin a brief smile, then looked back at her ex. “You look fantastic!” she said, once again playing with her hair and batting her eyes.

Bruce flashed his perfectly white teeth. “Thanks! Traveling’s been good to me. You look great as well! Still the hottest piece of ass on two legs.”

Kevin frowned and began to defend his new wife’s honor, “Hey! That’s, um ”

But before he could finish, Hannah laughed, “Or on all fours, hehe.”

Kevin blinked as he took in what she had said and looked at her, mouth agape. He was about to say something else when Bruce asked, “You wanna dance, hot stuff?”

“Actually,” Kevin said, clearing his throat, “ we haven’t had our first dance yet, so ”

“I’d love to!” Hannah interrupted.

“Great!” Bruce said, sliding out of his leather jacket.

Hannah started getting to her feet, revealing her small but curvy body, elegantly displayed in a stylish wedding dress. “Uh, Hannah, are you sure?” Kevin asked, watching as she hopped up onto the table, deftly threw her legs over the other side, and stood back up. “I mean, ordinarily the first dance of the wedding would be with, you know, me. ”

“It’s fine, sweetheart,” Hannah said, taking Bruce’s hand and letting him lead her toward the dance floor. “It’s a special occasion. I haven’t seen Bruce in ages! Just one song, real quick!”

As she spoke, over the rising murmur of voices, Bruce leaned over the DJ’s table and whispered something in the young man ’ s ear. The DJ seemed to consider it, then shrugged and nodded.

“We, uh… we have a special request from the bride’s… friend…” he said into his mic. “So… uh, yeah, here you go. ”

Hannah placed her hands on Bruce’s shoulders and rested her head on his chest. Her body pressed against his, and he slipped his hands around her waist, resting them just above the curve of her buttocks. Their hips pushed together, and Hannah giggled as she felt the familiar bulge on her thigh. The track dropped, and the sultry sound of Marvin Gaye singing “Sexual Healing” began to play.

Kevin’s brow furrowed as he watched. Hannah and Bruce rocked back and forth, as his hands crept down and planted themselves on her butt. Bruce smirked. “When did you start wearing underwear, Miss Commando?”

Hannah laughed, “I didn’t really, just a thong for today. It’s my something blue.” Those close enough to hear this gasped. A few people laughed nervously. She giggled and sighed contentedly, closing her eyes.

“Mmm, hot. Hard for me to imagine you with panties on though.”

“Ha! I’ll bet! Though you probably have a hard time imagining me with any clothes on at all!” Bruce laughed heartily and grabbed her ass more firmly. In response, Hannah gyrated harder against him, rubbing the sweet spot of his jeans.

Seeing this, Kevin finally stood up. He headed toward the pair, not going over the table as his wife had, though, instead opting to head the long way around. All the faces he passed were turned to watch as his new bride dry-humped her ex on the dance floor a few yards away. Taking a few steps forward, he cleared his throat. “Ahem.”

The dancing couple ignored this. He took another step forward and leaned in a bit, looking directly at Hannah. “Ahem!”

She opened her eyes and smiled at him. “Oh, hi, hon, what’s up?”

“Well…I think it’s great you and your friend are catching up, but, um…maybe we could keep going with our wedding reception now?”

“Aw, honey,” Hannah said in a pouty voice. “Really? I—whoa!” As she spoke, Bruce dipped her all the way to the floor, then swept her back up. “Hehehe, hmmm, you know I love dancing.”

“Well, we could maybe have our dance….”

The music faded to a stop. “One sec, ” Bruce said and started back toward the DJ. As he did, his hand collided with Hannah’s ass with an audible smack. She squealed in surprised delight and watched him go.

A flummoxed Kevin watched him, then looked back to Hannah. She smiled after him. “Hannah…what are you doing?”

She looked at him quizzically. “What do you mean?”

“Just, you…he…all the touching and the grinding and the sex talk, it’s all just a little strange, honey!”

She just smiled and rolled her eyes. “Oh Kev, really, it’s just his way. He’s a touchy-feely guy. It’s nothing! I swear! Just one more song, and then back to our big day, okay?” She gave his nose a playful kiss.

Before he got another word out, the booming sound of music filled the room.

“THERE’S SOME WHORES IN THIS HOUSE! THERE’S SOME WHORES IN THIS HOUSE…!”

Hannah’s face broke into a delighted grin, oblivious to the shocked gasps that accompanied Cardi B. “Ooooh, this is my JAM!”

“It always makes me think of you, ” Bruce said, starting to shuffle his way back across the dance floor. Behind him, the DJ was slipping a 50-dollar bill into his wallet. He grabbed Hannah by the waist, and she began to grind against him. She turned and pressed her ass against his crotch. He held one hand against her hip, while the other slipped up and grabbed hold of her breast.

“Mmm!” She grunted, moving herself on him. Her cheeks were bright red, and sweat beaded on her brow. Her eyes closed as she breathed deeper, smiling. A few scandalized guests began to get up to leave in a huff. Others stared in lurid fascination. Kevin swallowed hard and bit his lip.

“OK!” Kevin exclaimed, laughing nervously and clapping his hands together. “That’s enough dancing, I think!”

“Hmmm oh, hon, just, hehe, a little more? Huh, huh, mmm, you know how much I love dancing, and I never get a chance to anymore! And I haven’t seen, mmmm, Bruce in ages!” she said, panting. She managed to press even closer into Bruce as she wrapped a hand around his neck. Kevin could see her nipples poking against the fabric of her dress.

“I really think—”

“C’mon, chief, be a good sport!” Bruce said with distracted good cheer before burying his face in Hannah’s neck. “Hmmm, this nasty little slut has been good too long. You need this, don’t you, baby?” He gave her ass a slap. “Mmm! Fuck yeah, I do!” she said blissfully.

“HANNAH?!” Kevin said, his mouth open in shock.

She opened her eyes and smiled at him. “Mmm?”

“Your ex just called you a slut and slapped your ass! Now are you gonna knock it off?!”

Hannah just giggled and rolled her eyes. “I know! Hehe! Sweetie, it’s just his way! Really, he doesn’t mean anything by it!”

“Besides, she is a nasty little slut, aren’t you, baby?” Bruce said into Hannah’s ear, before grabbing a fistful of her pixie-cut hair and pulling firmly.

She inhaled sharply, “Yes, sir!”

Kevin threw up his hands in disgust. He watched, sulking, as more and more guests filed past him, muttering things like “Congrats” and “Beautiful ceremony ” as they went. Those still sitting were all craning their necks to watch as Bruce whipped Hannah around and started kissing the nape of her neck. She held him tight, her nails dragging against the cloth of his shirt.

“Hey! HEY! HELLO!” Kevin leaned in close enough to smell the sweat of the pair as he shouted at them.

“Mmmm, honey, shhh! Don’t embarrass me in front of Bruce and, mmm, our guests!” Hannah said, though she didn’t sound too concerned. “Not on, mmm, our big…day! Oh!” She started pulling his shirt out of his jeans and sliding her hands underneath it. The song ended, and now the sounds of wet kisses and heavy breathing were loud enough to be heard over the handful of remaining guests.

“This is ridiculous! Hannah, can you please ju ?!”

“Hey, bud, can you hold this for me?” Bruce asked, shoving his shirt into Kevin’s chest. Kevin blinked as he reflexively took it into his hands, rocking back on his feet. He stared at the wellmuscled, shirtless man whose back and arms were adorned with tattoos, seemingly trying to merge into his new wife’s body as she dry-humped against him.

“Honey, why don’t you mingle while Bruce and I catch up?” Hannah asked, her voice catching as her hands explored her ex ’ s bare chest. Finally, she slipped her hand behind Bruce’s head and pulled him toward her. Their lips collided, and she sprung up, wrapping her legs around his waist. He held her tight and started walking, carrying her with ease as she squealed with delight.

Kevin’s eyes bulged as the hulking, shirtless man carried his wife across the floor and sat her on the edge of the table where his and her families had been seated. Dishes, glasses and silverware clattered as she landed, still covering Bruce’s lips and neck with kisses as she did. The astonished relatives pushed back abruptly, their chairs scraping on the floor. He slid his hands into the cleavage of her wedding dress and pulled.

You are one sexy bitch!” He muttered between kisses. There was a sound of fabric ripping as her dress tore, exposing her bare, pale tits, heaving with her breaths, perfectly pink nipples standing at full attention. She writhed and wiggled, letting the dress pull apart down to her navel.

“Mmm! Huh! Huh!” She coo’d as it fell off her shoulders.

“Okay!” Kevin exclaimed. “I really think it’s time for Bruce to go now!” His voice had a giddy quality of desperation and incredulity as he began frantically tapping Bruce’s shoulder. Naturally, this was ignored. Instead Bruce wrapped his lips around Hannah’s areola as she began to unbuckle his belt. He started kissing her neck. Hannah looked at Kevin over Bruce's shoulder and smiled evenly.

“Hmmm, hehehe! Mmm, don’t be rude! Bruce is my guest Kevin!” As she spoke, Bruce’s pants fell down around his ankles, revealing plain black boxer briefs. Hannah gripped his butt cheeks over the fabric and rubbed the bare heels of her feet on his thighs.

“R-rude?! Hannah, you ’ re about to have sex with your ex at our wedding reception!”

Hannah giggle and rolled her eyes, batting this away with a gesture. “He’s a touchy-feely person hon, it’s really not a big deal!”

“The slut needs what she needs my man, I’m sure you get it.” Bruce said over her his shoulder at Kevin then looked back toward Hannah and smiled. “And I think she needs a lickin’.”

Hannah’s eyes got wide. “Ooooh fuck yes! Mmm, please sir, no one eats me like you!”

“Hannah?! What the actual fuck!?” Kevin shouted indignantly as Bruce descended to his knees.

“It’s ok honey, you ’ ve got other talents! You give great foot rubs! Bruce is just reeeeeally good with his tongue! I promise it won’t take long, I never do with him…unless he teases me, hehe.” As she spoke Bruce was grabbing the hem of her dress. There was the sound of more tearing, as he ripped it up the length to her waist and it fell to the sides of her legs, revealing the frilly blue underwear she was wearing, already soaking wet. She lifted her legs and butt off the table as he slid them off her and then rested the balls of her feet on the edge. Her neatly shaven pussy lips glistened.

Without hesitation Bruce chucked the thong over his shoulder. It sailed, end over end, landing directly atop the miniature groom on the three teared wedding cake. Everyone still present was now straining to watch, some mortified, others laughing nervously, a few even beginning to cheer. Bruce wasted no time. His mouth licked, flicked and kissed its way around her lips and she signed happily. Her eyes opened briefly, and she looked over at her sister-inlaw who was looking on with more than a little interest.

“His tongue is AMAZING Jess! You gotta try it! Uh! Oh!” Her eyes closed again. Her head rolled back, and her fingers slipped behind Bruce’s head. His hands rested on her thighs. His entire face seemed to disappear into her. “Mmm! Mm! Yeah! Yeah! Fuck I’ve missed this!”

“Mmmm, doesn’t hubby munch the carpet baby?”

“Mmmmmmmsssssshhit not like this! Oh god! Now don’t stop! Mmmmm, pleeeeeease don’t stop!”

“Hannah! For fuck sake!”

“Mmmm” Bruce muttered.

“This is completely insane!” Shouted Kevin. “It’s our wedding!”

“Mmmm! Oh honey! Just , B-be….patient! Just…l-let me, get off….f-for old time’s sssssake! Ah!”

As she said this Bruce slid two fingers into her. Her hips bucked. “Oh god!” She inhaled deeply and as her body tensed.

“Still a squirter?” He asked between licks.

“Only if I…do it…mmmmyself…mmmmm!” She sounded almost in pain.

“Lame, hehe, Hubby needs lessons.”

“Yeah, mmmm huh, huh, Kev sweety, be sure and p-pay, attention….oh fuck…I…I!”

Bruce continued his tongue’s assault on Hannah’s clit as his middle and ring finger beckoned rapidly in and out of her. She held onto the back of his head and ground herself into his face, her cheeks flush and breath getting heavy. She started to tremble, her eyes half opened and she gaped deliriously at Kevin as her toes started to curl and point at Bruce’s back. “Aw! I’m cumming! Oh, fuck yeah, I’m cumming! Feels so fucking food Oh yeah, he treats that pussy right!”

Bruce’s attention never wavered. His pace and intensity stayed even. He held her firmly as she tried to buck and a rush of wetness gushed out of her, coating his face and hand. The Kevin’s jaw dropped and eyes widened in shock as he locked eyes with Hannah. She moaned and whimpered.

“She panted for air as Bruce gradually slowed to a stop. “Oh my GOD! I can’t remember last time I came that hard!” She grabbed hold of his hand and started pulling him to his feet. “Mmm, gimme baby! You know I like to taste it!” Bruce’s lips and chin were gleaming with pussy juice as he rose up and shoved his two dripping fingers into Hannah’s open, eager mouth. She suckled hungrily. She grasped his belt and frantically began opening it.

“Well that was fun!” Said Kevin, pulling fruitlessly on Bruce’s shoulder. “Time to go now!”

Hannnah shook her head “mmmmn!” She opened her mouth. “He has to fuck me!” She looked up at Bruce with something approaching awe. “You’ll fuck me right?! Pleeeeease?! I need your cock in me!”

“Fuck yeah I will, you ’ ve always been my favorite cumdumpster baby!” Bruce said, gently petting Hannah’s cheek. She looked absurdly proud.

“It’s ok if he fucks me quick, right hon?” She asked as he was pushing down his undies. Kevin watched as Bruce’s throbbing eight inch member, slick with precum, popped into view. “Eeep!” Tittered Hannah gleefully. “Hi there! Missed you, hehe!”

“Hannah NO! This is too far!” He said putting his hands on his hips. “You can’t fuck you ex boyfriend at our wedding reception!”

Bruce favored him with a small, sardonic smile, then looked to Hannah. She pouted back at Kevin. “Oh, Kevin, sweety, just a little? Please?!”

“Hannah, you can’t be serious!”

“Kevin! Don’t be so jealous!” As she spoke she was stroking Bruce’s shaft with one hand and petting herself with the other. “Don’t worry about him,” She told him, “he’s just being a groomzilla, wanna get it wet baby?”

“What do you think?” He asked, taking her by the hands and pulling her off the table. Hannah giggled happily as she turned around and bent over. Her tits dangled over the place setting. Her bare ass stuck out from the tattered remnants of her wedding dress. The shimmering lips of her pussy winked out between her legs. She wiggled it eagerly.

“I think, er, I think we’ll be leaving son. ” Said Kevin’s father as he and the mother of the groom walked past him. As they went Kevin noticed his mother’s eyes being drawn in disbelief to Bruce’s erect cock.

“Wait, dad…”

“Congrats son ” His father said, before grabbing his mother by the wrist and walking out of the ballroom at a clip. They weren’t the only ones to be leaving. Less then half of the original guests remained. Those that did stood in a loose circle around the table howling approval.

“Woohoo!”

“Give it to her!”

“Do it! Do it!”

Kevin’s shoulders slumped and he sighed heavily.

“You’re really gonna do this?”

In answer Hannah smiled at him from over her shoulder. “Just from behind honey! That barely counts!” As she said this Bruce grabbed her by the hips and rubbed his swollen member against her lips.

“You want it bitch? You want that cock? Beg for it!”

“Yes Baby! YES! PLEEEEASE! I NEED IT!”

He pushed forward and Kevin saw the tip disappear into his wife. As it slipped in it seemed to go in slow motion, every inch making her moan louder. “Fffffffuckyeah! Huh! Oh God! This is better than I remember! Uh! Mmm I wanna feel like fucking whore! Fuck me! I want you balls deep!”

Bruce threw his foot up onto a nearby chair for leverage as he thrust harder Grunting, his face stoic. He held her firmly by the waist, raised one hand and gave her butttcheek a smack. She squealed as it thwapped against. “Huh! Mmmmhehehe mmm. ”

Kevin’s shoulder’s slumped even more as he stood by watching. The catcalls and cheers continued around him unabated, though Bruce and Hannah seemed completely oblivious. He folded his arms over his chest and pouted. Bruce’s hand shot out, grabbed Hannah’s hair and pulled. Her head flew back and as it did her eyes opened and met his. She smiled.

“Cheer up honey! Huh! Huh! Mmm, it’s our big day! No need to be so glum!”

“Yeah, right. Are you just about finished?”

“Mmm yeah! Yeah, close….so…fucking…close….! Oh! Oh God I’m gonna cum! I’m gonna cum!”

“Yeah! Yeah cum on that cock slut! Oh fuck yes you ’ re so fucking wet! You love it!” Bruce growled and slapped her ass once more. The steady, wet thud, thud, thud of skin on skin increased in speed and intensity. Her tits bounced. Her eyes rolled back and her mouth hung open.

“Ah…!” She screamed silently as her entire body tensed then shook as her orgasm crashed over her. Then she let out a loud groan. “Uuuuuuuh! Holy shhhhit! I’ve never cum that hard!” Bruce panted. “Mmm…mmmm…fuck, yeah squeeze it! Mmm…gonna shoot my load baby!”

“WAIT!” Hannah cried, loud enough and forcefully enough to stop Bruce mid thrust, a puzzled look on his face. She look up at him over her shoulder. Her cheeks flushed and breath ragged, sweat plastering her hair to her brow. “You…huh, huh…you can’t cum in me!”

“Wha-?”

“I’m a married woman!” Hannah said, crawling forward and shuddering as she pulled herself off of the shaft. She took a deep breath, pushed herself up and spun around, falling to her knees as she did. “Cum in my mouth!”

“Mmm, ok!”

“Oh for fuck’s sake!”

She slipped the throbbing tip between her lips. Bruce gasped as she rolled her tongue and took him in. He closed his eyes and grapped her cheeks. “Mmmmm, the blowjob queens reigns!” She bobbed forward, cheeks bulging eyes wide and eager, sparkling with delight. One hand wrapped around his member the other went between her legs. She pushed down slowly, taking in each inch until she stopped, gagged and pulled off.

“Hehe, gag reflex out of practice?” Bruce muttered.

“Mmhmm, not used to one this big anymore. ” She said before taking his ballsack into her lips as sh slid her hand up his saliva slickend cock.

“Jesus Christ!” Kevin exclaimed, over a murmer of laughter from the spectators. “How is this not finished yet?!”

Hannah looked over at him. “You can’t rush a good blowjob sweetheart! It won’t be long, I promise! I always get my reward!” She wiped drool from her chin and returned her attention to the penis and testicles, picking up her natural rythm. Bobbing, swirling, pumping.

As she did Bruce groaned and swore and begged. “Huh, huh, mmm yeah, yeah, suck it! Oooh you slut you love it! Yeaaaaah suck it, fuck yes!”

Reading his expression perfectly she went to finish him off. The tip of her tongue pressed against the tip of his cock. Her hand gripped him firmly and glided back and forth. His mouth opened in a perfect “O” . “F-F-Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhh!”

Warm, white ropes of jizz sprayed out of him and into Hannah’s open, hungry mouth. “Mmmmmmmm!” She moaned as she took it in. It splattered on her cheeks and chin, spilled on her tits and dribbled onto the floor. She arched her head back and looked up at Bruce expectantly. He nodded his head slightly and she swallowed. After that she smacked her lips and smiled over at her husband. “Mmm, all done! Thanks hon, you ’ re the best!”

The gaggle of remaining attendees broke into applause. Hannah glanced around as if realizing for the first time she was being watched and gave a little wave. Bruce sighed contentedly and patted the kneeling bride on her cheek then turned to the stunned groom and smiled. Still nude, his diminishing cock dangling between his legs and dripping the remnants of cum onto the ballroom floor, he walk over and set one hand on Kevin’s shoulder. With the other he shook Kevin’s hand. “You’re a lucky man. ”

“Fuck, yeah! Harder!” Lisa Perv moans, over the rhythmic thud, thud, thud, of her headboard against the wall and the squeal of her over-taxed mattress springs.

“Huh, huh, huh, mmm!” The young man behind her grunts, as he thrusts himself into her, over and over again. Every thrust causes her ample body to shudder and she throws her head back, eyes closed in ecstacy.

PROUD PERV’S

Her partner grabs a fist full of her short reddish hair and pulls back. Lisa coos with satisfaction. Her perfectly pale-white tits, topped with bubblegum pink nipples bounce and swing. There is a steady thwap, thwap, thwap of skin on skin.

From the door behind them comes the rough sound of heavy breathing. Standing in the doorway, his hand wrapped around an engorged cock, and his bespectacled face pressed crack to the crack is the tall and slender figure of Lisa’s brother Devon. His boxers are pushed down over his skinny thighs and buttocks as he pumps his fist back and forth, watching the tattooed stranger jackhammers his kneeling sibling.

“Ah, AH, MMM!” Lisa moans louder. The sound drifts across the room, out the door and down the hallway. It penetrates the closed master bedroom door with ease and lands on the ears of Claudia and Frank Perv. They lay pressed together in between under the sheets, Claudia holding her husband’s well-toned, bare chest, her leg wrapped around thigh. They stare silently into the dark, listening.

Thud, thud, thud!

“Uh-huh! uh-uh! Oh that’s it, yeah fuck me hard!”

thwap,thwap,thwap!

“Mmmm, mmmm oooh yeah baby you so fucking hot!”

There is the meaty SLAP of an open palm hitting a prodigious buttcheek.

Finally, Claudia speaks. “Listen to it darling.”

“Mmmm, I know my love” Frank says, his tone wistful.

“Fuck! yes yes yes! I’m gonna cum on your cock!”

”Yeah you love it you slut!”

THWAP THWAP THWAP!

“Just imagine it” Claudia says as she gently runs her finger tenderly over Frank’s peck, “Our little girl. On her knees like a bitch in heat. Moaning like whore while a strange member penetrates her wet flesh. Used. Debased. Violated.”

”Oh! Claudia, It’s just…” He holds her closer and runs his hands through her long chestnut brown hair, trailing off.

“Mmmm gonna cum baby!”

“Mmm, huh, huh, stop! Stop… cum in my mouth!”

“I know dear. I’m so proud.”

“What is this, the fourth this week?”

”The fifth, don’t forget wednesday.”

“That was a girl though.”

“Girls count mister!”

”Haha fair enough. Mmm, we ’ re so lucky, Claud.”

“Mmmm god you suck it so good!”

Wet slurps and the creak

“She’s not the only one we have to be proud of” Claudia says as she props herself onto her elbow. Her motherly breasts, full and slightly sagging, against the fabric of her sheer purple nightie. Frank sits up and looks at her excitedly, the swelling in his pajama bottoms jutting up from his lap like a monument to sex.

“Devon? Has he finally lost his virginity?”

Claudia frowns, “I told you dear, virginity is a construct, there’s no such thing as ‘losing it.’”

Frank raises a placating hand “Ok, ok, you ’ re right, I’m sorry, I’m old fashioned. Has he…had sex with-” he stops, catching himself before Claudia can launch into ‘ sex ’ being an arbitrary concept, “has he…been intimate with another person?”

Claudia nods approvingly at language. “Well, not yet, but he is turning quite the peeping tom.”

“Oh?”

“Uh huh. I’ve gotten three phone calls from school about him lurking around the girls locker room. I’ve noticed him spying on me in the shower at least as many times. Lisa noticed it as well. She keeps finding cumstains in her underwear.”

“Haha! That rascal!”

Down the hall, Devon sprays jizz into the palm of his hand, stifling a moan as he does. A roping white droplet falls off his hand splat on the floor. As he does this the tall stranger paints the back of his sister’s throat with his own semen, before collapsing in a heap onto the bed. Lisa gleefully licks her lips and swallows.

“Our daughter is a slut and our son is a freak” Claudia says into the dark.

”What more could a parent want?” Asks Frank.

LAWN CARE

Bentley had a modest but otherwise pleasant and uneventful life until he found an old Walkman in the dusty attic. The muggy space was dimly lit from a single lightbulb caked in grime that hung from a dirty orange extension cord. Bentley explored the piles of junk when he first moved in. The property manager had apologized for overlooking the attic when she cleaned out the belongings of the previous owner who ghosted them.

Bentley replaced the Walkman’s corroded AA batteries with a fresh pair and looped the thin wire frame of the headphones around his head. The foam pads felt familiar on his ears. His mind flooded with memories of spending his allowance on sending in mail orders to Nuts & Volts magazine in return for DIY plans to build some sort of radio or amateur spy gear. There were numerous weekend trips with his moms to RadioShack to browse the endless bins of electronic parts to find all the right pieces.

Bentley flipped the Walkman’s switch to “ON” and the tinny headphone speakers crackled to life. It was already tuned into an AM radio station that seemed to come from the distant past.

“This is Mad Max and you ’ re listening to Trust Nothing, Question Everything. I’m glad you ’ re here because there are some important issues we need to talk about today. Now, I’ve gotta ask, what has happened to the traditional American family?” Mad Max asked with a deep and gravelly voice and an air of confidence. Bentley imagined the talk show host sitting alone in the basement of his home with a junky recording set-up based on the poor audio quality.

“Marriage used to be between a man and a woman. I’ll tell you what, the deterioration of the family unit is the single greatest failure of our society. No doubt about it. Until we get back to that ol’ revolutionary spirit that led to our independence and the family values that came along with it, we are in big trouble. The kind of trouble that doesn’t go away. ”

The radioman’s voice droned on in the background. Bentley felt a flutter deep within his stomach. He became self-conscious of the rainbow flag he placed on the front porch when he moved in. He had always flown it as an homage to both of his moms who sacrificed so much for him. Bentley wiped his clammy hands on his denim shorts.

He felt in his bones the radioman’s disapproval of his upbringing. Bentley rapidly blinked his eyes and shook his head. He had broken the radioman’s stranglehold on his thoughts, at least for a moment.

Bentley mustered a little strength and turned the dial to change the station, but the booming voice continued. He flipped the power switch to “OFF”. The signal remained crisp and clear. The color drained from his face. Despite the continued crackle of the radio and another check to make sure he’d hit the correct button, he knew what he was hearing was impossible. His arm pits leaked a body odor of manure and fresh cut grass. Bentley paced back and forth racking his brain for an explanation he knew would not come. Taking a few deep breaths and rolling his shoulders to release the tension, he decided to get some fresh air.

Something shifted in the radioman’s voice though, and Bentley felt a pull on an invisible string that kept him tethered to it. Before he managed to take the headphones off, a high-pitched and wraithlike shriek pierced his eardrums. He threw the Walkman across the living room where it landed on the couch. The radioman’s speech returned and spewed out from the headphone speakers. Bentley sprinted out of the house and the screen door snapped shut behind him. He didn’t stop until he was a few blocks away. His pace slowed to a walk, and he inhaled the humid air. But with each step he took away from the Walkman, the invisible string pulled tighter to bring him back to it. With greater speed than before, he raced back home and threw the headphones over his ears. He had to listen and lacked the fortitude to smash the Walkman like he should have.

“A MAN REAPS WHAT HE SOWS!” Bentley could almost feel the spit spray from the radioman’s screams.

“I’m talking to you, yes you. I know you can hear me. You have control of your life, but it starts with your own backyard. Get it in order, TODAY!”

The tendrils of hate-seeds made roots and lodged themselves in the gray matter folds of Bentley’s cerebrum.

Bentley took the radioman’s advice literally and spent every spare moment for the next few months taking care of the yard. The Walkman fastened to his hip with the plastic clip and headphones on full volume, so he didn’t miss a single word of the broadcast. He planted perennial ryegrass for its lush appearance and ability to thrive in its pacific northwest climate. He mowed the lawn every day. Twice a day as the dog days of summer dragged on and the vibrant green grass grew at a faster clip. The twenty feet by twenty feet perfect square wasn’t much, but he treated it like a kingdom he presided over. Each blade of grass was a loyal subject to be protected against outside forces. This provided him with a sense of control in an otherwise chaotic world that he didn’t seem to understand anymore. Some days he used a pair of shears and carefully snipped and shaped the narrow leaves to an equal measure. Bentley’s lawn care routine made a fashion model’s skin care regimen look easy as pie.

Water. Fertilizer. Cut. Trim. Edge. Water. Weed control. Thatch. Fertilizer. Water. And on and on and on.

He concocted experimental nutrient mixtures in his garage and dialed in cultivation of a strong lawn.

Luxuriant growth. Vivid color. Zero weeds. Robust roots. Minimal pests. And on and on and on.

“Who the fuck do you think you are looking through my phone?” Kelly shouted at Bentley over the blaring music at the neighborhood bar. They had only been together for a month or so. She had noticed a change in him lately that she couldn’t quite figure out. Bentley had a lot of pink flags rather than red flags, but this had crossed a line. She caught him scrolling through her phone when she left her handbag draped on the barstool when she used the bathroom.

“Who the hell is Kevin?! I saw his name in your text messages, ” Bentley yelled. “I want to know now!”

“He’s my pet sitter you asshole. I have a work trip next month. I’ll chalk this up to you having a few beers, but we will talk more about this tomorrow. Goodnight,” Kelly replied. She paid her tab and stormed out without looking back.

Bentley’s walk home was slow and silent as shame spread throughout his chest, but it dissipated immediately when he got home and tuned into radioman.

It wasn’t much longer after the fight that his (ex)girlfriend refused to speak to Bentley. He couldn’t quite understand how it all happened. He was never jealous before and they hadn’t fought before but everything started to change quickly after that night. He couldn’t help himself from saying comments he knew he shouldn’t, old-fashioned ideas that he didn’t fully believe, at least not yet. Maybe those feelings were always there, and he had needed nudging to embrace them. Or maybe he was easily manipulated. It didn’t really matter why. He became more and more isolated from family and friends.

His life fell apart. He quit his job. He stopped doing laundry. Dirty dishes were piled high on the counters. Flies buzzed all around and scavenged for food bits caked onto plates. Mushy chunks of microwaved lasagna clogged the sink drain and caused it to fill with cloudy water. The stench almost made Bentley wretch each time he passed through the kitchen. He abandoned daily life in favor of a cult-like dedication to lawn maintenance as he continued to consume his favorite radio show.

Bentley watered the grass as the sun glowed red-orange just above the horizon. He noticed a quarter-sized bald dirt patch in the center of the yard. It struck him as odd since there were no blemishes just a few hours ago. His pulse quickened, and he felt a twinge of irritation at the lack of perfection. He decided to increase his monitoring schedule. He tilled the bare earth, planted seed, applied fertilizer, and watered it.

The remediation steps to repair the dirt patch took the rest of the evening. It took longer than it should have because Bentley was often distracted by Mad Max’s blaring voice in his ears. He caught himself standing still with vacant eyes and swirling thoughts. He questioned everything he thought he knew. The radioman made a compelling case that perhaps the Earth was flat. Bentley wasn’t sure anymore. He mostly slept through a geography elective in college so how could he be sure about the Earth’s shape?

The show’s content became darker and darker, but he was sucked in and listened nearly every waking hour. All fire and brimstone about society’s plunge into debauchery and blasphemy.

The Decline of Man. Bentley’s mind became riddled with gaps of logic like the Billbug infestation that ate holes in his ryegrass. Except, unlike the Billbug infestation, he was not going to regain control. ***

The alarm clock on Bentley’s nightstand shone 3:07 a.m. in bright red. His mind was in a fog, and he felt like a meat puppet under someone else’s control.

Reap what you sow. Reap what you sow. Reap what you sow. Reap what you sow.

His mind fogged with a worldview that he did not choose but was forced upon him through tricks and ruses of language. A series of ploys that exploited his innermost fears and spun them up to nightmare realities on his doorstep ready to bang down the door.

Bentley tilled his flesh with a sewing needle he found in the closet. He methodically opened as many tiny holes as possible, wiped blood droplets away, and planted seeds in his own skin. He soaked in a warm bath. He left his skin moist and applied his custom nutrient mixture all over his body and climbed naked into bed.

***

He slept for almost sixteen hours. After he awoke, he stepped in front of a full-length mirror and opened the blinds to allow the natural light to shine through the large bedroom window. His shaved head had germinated hundreds of stick-straight sprouts of perennial ryegrass. His eyebrows were replaced with gray-green and spiny lichen leaves. A few curly cues of clover twisted out of his ears like unwanted hairs. A moist and mossy beard dripped with dew. The whites of his eyes were yellow-green like a grass stain on freshly washed white linen bed sheets. His tubular veins were culms that pulsated and connected the flora ecosystem contained inside his hull. Most of his skin was brown like soil and dirt bits crumbled to the ground at the slightest touch. His body had bloomed with hundreds of sprouts that poked out from its many pores. Fingers and toes were stem stalks as thick as bamboo. The tangles of his soft, blonde body hair were covered with mature chinch bugs scuttling about on their six legs, antenna like dowsing rods searching for nutrients.

Bentley absently walked out of the backdoor and to the lawn. The bald dirt patch had swelled to the size of a child’s plastic swimming pool. His body gained what the lawn had lost. He no longer needed the Walkman’s headphones to hear the radioman’s broadcast. The gritty voice was piped directly into his brain or so he thought. The voice in his head got louder as he approached the outer rim of the barren splotch. He placed his ear to the ground and followed the vibrations to its center and dug the earth as best he could with his stem-stalks for hands. After several minutes he uncovered a 1958 Zenith Royal 500 AM transistor radio with a builtin transmitter. He noticed the initials “MM” etched on the black case.

The source of the radio broadcast had come from his own backyard.

The yard shook and rumbled. The Walkman tumbled to the ground. A microquake grew in strength until a narrow chasm cracked open across the length of the dirt patch. Bentley was knocked off balance and he grasped the edge of the gaping crater, a tenuous grip. His legs dangled beneath him and felt the emptiness below. Adrenaline pumped through Bentley’s plant-flesh body.

A calm washed over him, and the turmoil of tangled hate-vines that were twisted in the pit of his stomach slowly unknotted as he felt the warmth of his mothers’ love. He remembered how happy they were when they adopted him and when he was the ring bearer at their wedding all those years ago. In the stillness of the reveries, his mind was preoccupied, and the radio signal was disrupted for just a moment. The flash of quiet revealed to his heart that the radioman was full of shit. Bentley had been hoodwinked and fell prey to a charlatan, but it was too late. He succumbed to the pull that had tugged at him since he found the Walkman. He let go of the rim, and the chasm swallowed him and closed. The bald dirt patch was sowed and lush with green by the next morning’s light.

The Walkman lied in the grass, and the distant sound of radioman’s voice trickled out of the headphones.

POP ROCKS

It’s a cool August Saturday night when my neighbor calls to me over the fence. I’m in my backyard smoking a joint. It’s been a long week: work, my ex, my parents, all demanding my attention at various times. But, I have nothing else to do, so I go meet her on her patio. It’s likely to be one of the last good nights for it all year.

I’ve been here before, for their housewarming a few months ago. They’re a nice couple. He’s a lawyer and she’s a teacher. He’s a lot older than me, she’s just a little. She’s just my type: shorter than me, slight, with long black hair that I’ve never seen pulled back.

“I don’t really smoke,” she says, taking a hit of the joint I brought over. She exhales elegantly, lips pursing, head tilting up. “Not usually.” She takes another hit, coughs, and passes it back to me.

“I do,” I say, smiling at her. I look up. I’m always surprised by how many stars I can see at night in this city. She coughs again beside me. “Water?” I ask, and give her my Nalgene when she holds her hand out. I think she’s gonna lose a lung, but eventually she calms down and wipes a couple tears from her eyes.

“Sorry,” she says sheepishly.

“Don’t be.” It’s actually kind of cute. She motions for the joint again. I give her a look that says you sure? And she is, but takes a sip of water before. The second time goes down smooth.

“Oh my God, I can’t believe I didn’t offer you anything,” she says, starting to get up out of her chair. “Do you want some wine? a White Claw?” I admire her legs as she stands, but motion for her to sit down before she goes anywhere.

“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m good. I don’t need anything” She sits back down and runs a hand through her hair. “My boyfriend makes fun of me, ” she says. “I’m so forgetful.” She laughs self-deprecatingly.

“So am I,” I say, like I’m letting her in on a secret. I motion to the joint and she takes it from me. Her eyes are already red, a little glassy. When she hands it back, I put it out and back in its little metal holder.

“Not like me, ” she says, shaking her head. I’ll just have to take her word for it. “He’s in New York.”

“Doing what?” I ask. I really don’t care what her boyfriend’s doing.

“Interviewing,” she says, which surprises me.

“I see, ” I say. “How is he?” I continue when she doesn’t say anything. Straight girls love talking about their boyfriends.

“I don’t know,” she says quietly. “He’s been really distant.” She looks into her hands.

“Well,” I say, “I hope he doesn’t get the job. I’d hate to see you go all the way across the country.” She smiles at me, a dangerous smile that could get me into trouble. I like the way the corners of her eyes crinkle. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Why don’t we hang out more?” She asks me quietly. “You’re very, ” she pauses, looking for the words, “charming.” She’s blushing a little when I look over, slurring her words a bit. She giggles. “Sorry,” she says, but doesn’t follow that up.

“For what?” I ask. I am genuinely curious. Or I’m flirting, a little. I can’t help it. She looks so cute with her cheeks pink. Her hair is a little messy, like she’s been playing with it all night. She pulls a vape out of her pocket and takes a hit. She motions to me, but I decline.

“I don’t do nicotine,” I say.

“It’s cherry-pineapple-coconut,” she says. “But you shouldn’t. my boyfriend hates it.”

“Oh yeah?” I don’t have much to say about that, except to tell her to tell him to fuck off, which doesn’t seem like what she wants. She cocks her head to the side a little.

“I don’t really give a fuck,” she says. I’m sure my face betrays my surprise, because she laughs a little. “Is that terrible of me?”

“I don’t think so, ” I say. Good for her.

“He thinks he gets to have an opinion about everything I do,” she says. “I’m too loud, I drink too much,” as she says this, she hiccups-- it occurs to me she’s a little tipsy-- “He doesn’t even like my handwriting.”

“I see, ” I say.

“Sorry,” she says, “I shouldn’t complain. I mean, I love him, you know?”

“Sure,” I say. I’m transported back to high school, the last time I really had straight girl friends. “I don’t mind.” She nods.

“You’re lucky you don’t have to deal with guys, ” she says. I laugh out loud at this.

“Girls are just as crazy, ” I say, “maybe worse. ”

“No way, ” she says. I bite my lip before continuing.

“Imagine your worst fight with your best friend, but you ’ re also having sex with her. It’s like that.” It isn’t quite, but I should give her the best shot at getting it I can.

“I would have sex with my best friend,” she says, and that is not what I was expecting. I don’t reply, I figure I should let her have the air to fill. “I’m sorry, ” she says, burying her head in her hands, “I didn’t mean to say that, I mean, I wouldn’t really. I mean, not that she’s not beautiful, just, I don’t really, I’m not--”

“Relax,” I say, my voice deep and a little playful. I’ve decided she’s very cute. “I won’t tell anybody.” She coughs again after taking what I imagine to be a very soothing hit of her vape. I am suddenly curious as to what cherry-pineapple-coconut tastes like.

“Thanks,” she says, and is quiet for a while. “Are you sure you don’t want something to drink?”

“Would you fill this up?” I say, gesturing to my empty water bottle.

“Yeah,” she says, “yeah.” She gets up from her chair and heads inside. I hear the faucet go on and off, then her footsteps back to the patio. When she gets back, I start to stand to get up. She should honestly probably go to bed, sleep off some of the confusion. “Where are you going?” She says, and sounds so sweet I sit back down.

“I was just going to head to bed,” I say. She shakes her head.

“What are you talking about, it’s 10:30 on a Saturday.”

“That’s true,” I say.

“I mean, ” she says, seemingly realizing her insistence, “of course you can go home if you want, I won’t keep you. ”

“No, no, ” I say, “I’ll stay.” It’s quiet for a while, but the kind of quiet where I can tell she wants to say something.

“What’s it like?” She asks, and when I don’t reply, elaborates, “With a girl?” There it is. Straight girls love to ask that question. Especially straight girls who are about to ask you to show them. I’m not about to let her get it that easy, though. I don’t really care that she has a boyfriend. He’s not my problem, as far as I’m concerned. I’m not even concerned that she’s straight. I do want her to be sure, though, and I figure if she’s insistent enough I’ll be able to tell.

“What’s what like?” I ask, mock-curious. I take a sip of my water and watch her fidget. She twirls a strand of hair and looks away from me, fiddles with her hands. “Come on, what’s what like?” I can’t sleep with someone who can’t even say it.

“Sex,” she almost whispers.

“Oh that!” I say, matching her tone only loudly, a whisper that could be heard two doors down. She blushes again. “Lesbian sex. ” I lengthen ‘Lesbian,’ enjoying the contours of my favorite word in my mouth. I don’t make her say anything to confirm. “It’s great, I mean, I have nothing to compare it to, but it’s really, really fun.”

“You’ve never been with a guy?” She asks, like it’s unfathomable. She takes a long pull from her vape.

“Well, you ’ ve never been with a woman, have you?”

“I haven’t,” she says. “I--” she begins, but doesn’t finish the thought. “I better,” she starts again. She starts to get out of her chair, but I place a hand on hers. She doesn’t snatch it away, like I thought she might.

“This is your house,” I say.

“So it is,” she says.

“Do you want me to go?” I ask, giving her one last out. I look in her eyes and, through the mist of weed and alcohol, see desire, plain, simple, and irresistible.

“No,” she says, and takes my hand in hers decisively.

“Okay,” I say, “I won’t.” I almost say something more, but her lips on mine cut me off. It’s awkward in our lawn chairs, she’s half-standing to reach me, and, surprised for a moment, I don’t know where to put my hands. She pulls back.

“God, I’m,” she says, shaking her head, “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t’ve.” She rakes a hand through her hair. I just smile at her.

“It’s okay,” I say. She pulls out her vape again and hits it. “Don’t be sorry. Do you want me to go?”

“No,” she says, “please don’t.” She turns her back to me and I can tell she’s hyperventilating.

“Okay,” I say. I stand and place my hand on her back. I really do want to comfort her. That’s one reason for doing it. She throws her head back and takes a deep breath.

“Fuck it,” she murmurs. Before I can respond, she turns around. Her eyes flutter shut and she kisses me again. Pop rocks. The vape makes her taste like pop rocks.

I react quickly enough, this time. I grab her waist with my left hand and her cheek with my right, pulling her close and keeping her there. She melts into the touch and stifles a moan, then places her hands over mine. I can feel her heart beating in her fingertips. I flick my tongue out between my lips, and, to my surprise, she opens her mouth eagerly, taking me in. She pulls me closer than I’m holding her and rolls her hips into mine. It always goes one of two ways with the straight ones: they either try to consume you whole or you have to draw them out. It’s evident she’ll be the former. I lace my hand into her hair and grip lightly, not pulling, but letting her know I’m there. She really moans this time, and I enjoy the vibrations of it in the kiss. One of her feet actually pops up behind her. She pulls back for a second but her body stays pressed to mine. She clears her throat. Her voice is about three octaves deeper when she speaks.

“Would you, um. Like to come inside?” I give her a second to think about what she just said before I respond.

“Are you sure?” I ask.

“Certain,” she says, nodding as if to confirm the truth to herself. “Yeah.”

“Then yes, ” I say. At my agreement, she turns around fast and pulls me along with her. From there, everything feels like a blur. I swear one of us knocks over a lamp in the dining room, and we don’t make it to her bed. She pulls me down onto the couch by the drawstring on my shorts and kisses me just as enthusiastically. I let her have her fill of the kiss for as long as I can stand it before I lower my head to her neck. I test the waters, ghosting over her pulse point first, and when that gets me a gasp, I lightly nibble there. When that gets me a moan, I go harder, before I remember.

“Fuck,” I say when I see my damage, “I’m so sorry. ”

“No,” she says, “whatever, please, keep going,” she whines. Who would I be to refuse such a request? When I give it to her she whimpers and throws her head back. I’m glad she’s so responsive. I wonder when the last time was that her boyfriend did anything like this for her. Eventually, she starts to pant and squirm. I know what she wants, but I’m going to make her tell me. The angle is awkward, as well-- we ’ ve slumped so I’m basically on my knees on the floor. I motion for her to lay her head on the side of the couch. I give her one more out.

What do you want?” I ask as innocently as I can, knowing the words are dripping with want. I look at her laying there: the nipples on her small breasts are hard and peeking through her pajama shirt, and I can see her hip bones too. The spot on her neck is purple-- oops.

“I,” she says. I can tell her urge is to hide her face, but she stills her hands. She takes a deep breath.

“Go on, ” I say. I’m trying to encourage gently, “tell me. ”

“Fuck me, ” she says, in that same whisper from earlier. I’ll let her get away with omitting the please this time. The words alone make her shiver visibly, her hips rise and they fall ever so slightly.

I kiss her lips again and say simply “Good.” my hand dips to her chest, but I linger there only shortly, I better not delay this for her. I push the fabric of her shorts, underwear, out of my way, and am met with glorious wet heat. Later, when I feel her coming in my mouth, I think, as I often do, there is no better feeling than this. After I let her catch her breath, she asks if there’s anything she can do for me, which surprises me a little.

“No,” I say, “I mostly top.” She looks confused, and I don’t feel like explaining, so I wave my hand and say “I’m good. Are you good?” I ask, shifting the focus back to her.

“My boyfriend is gonna kill me, ” she says.

“Fuck him,” I say, and she laughs sweetly.

“Yeah,” she says. “Fuck him.”

IN THE FREEZING COLD

Alexa lingers in front of a print on the South wall of the gallery. It seems to April that Alexa knows everything about art. To the mathematician, a lithograph may as well be a Xerox. Most of it is pretty: that’s about as far as April’s analysis of it all goes. Alexa doesn’t try to explain things anymore. It’s one of Alexa’s studiomates’ show, so they had no choice but to go. Who can complain, though, about the free Chardonnay in the little plastic cups?

“Pedestrian,” Alexa says so quietly, April barely hears it when she comes up behind her.

“Hm,” says April, and leaves it at that. Alexa puts her head against her chest for a moment before moving on.

“Bert’s a smart guy, I don’t really get why...” says Alexa, trailing off. She turns around to face April for a moment. “I mean, we have the same education, he should, I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry?” April guesses at what response is warranted. Sometimes she wonders if Alexa likes her coming along to these things. She doesn’t usually ask Alexa to come with her to grad student stuff, but maybe she should.

“It’s fine,” says Alexa. The apology worked to snap her out of her little tirade. She drops her hands by her side. “But there’s no reason to be here anymore. ”

“Free wine?” April suggests, just in case.

“I’ve probably had enough, actually.” April notices that quite a lot of hair is falling out of her girlfriend’s bun. Definitely time to get home. The train doesn’t run down here hardly at all, so they begin the long journey home with the walk down the block to the bus stop. It’s starts to get dark and cold in the city this time of year, windows are frosting around them. Alexa huffs out a visible breath and kicks a rock.

“You’ll ruin those shoes,” says April, only because she knows how much Alexa loves the red pumps she has on.

“Yeah,” says Alexa.

“I’m sorry the show made you mad.” April regrets the words as soon as they come out of her mouth.

“It didn’t make me mad. I’m not mad,” Alexa says quietly, which is worse than if she had yelled.

“Sad, then?”

“April, I’m fine,” Alexa spits. The bus arrives then, and they don’t speak. April watches the city go by out of the window, all the unblinking lights, the distinctive skyline as they go over the bridge. Alexa watches April watch. It starts snowing calmly three stops before their transfer. April gets off the bus first and hands Alexa her hand to make the treacherous step down. They tap their cards and ascend the stairs at the train stop right as their train starts to click away. Oh well, at this time of night they’re still running every ten minutes. It’s gotten colder, and Alexa is shivering in her mini dress. April removes her coat and drapes it around her. She loves the way Alexa looks in her clothes. Alexa smiles as her body relaxes.

“You’ll freeze,” she says, knowing April will insist she keep it on.

“I’m sweating under that thing.” Alexa laughs. It’s one of April’s favorite sounds.

“You aren’t,” she says.

“Well,” April replies, “ can’t let my lady freeze.” Alexa loves it when she calls her that. April does too-- it makes her feel gallant.

“Come here.” Alexa puts her arms into the sleeves of the coat and grabs April’s lapels in her hands, pulling her in to kiss her. Their noses are cold, but it doesn’t bother April too much as she wraps her arms around Alexa. Sometimes, she thinks about the little town they moved from and she’s so glad she lives in this city now. When the kiss finishes, Alexa rests her head on April’s shoulder gently.

They hear the train coming (April loves the sounds of the trains, the comforting click-clacks and even the screeches). They watch the snow begin to pick up out the windows. Alexa still looks out of them even when the train goes underground.

April wakes up late the next morning to an empty bed. She checks her phone for texts, and finding none, rises and heads to the kitchen. Alexa is there, sitting on the counter in her polka-dot cotton pajama set (April wears old summer camp shirts to bed).

“I wanted to let you sleep,” Alexa says before April can ask why she didn’t wake her up.

“There’s coffee.” She gestures to the Chemex full of the light roast April gets for free from work. She has to close today. The sigh she lets out when she remembers makes Alexa ask, “What?”

“I have to close.”

“I’m sorry, ” Alexa says. April hums. She pours herself a cup of coffee.

“Do you want eggs and toast?” April asks. Alexa almost cuts her off with this:

“I think about leaving you, sometimes.”

April is surprised she doesn’t drop her coffee cup, but then again, it’s not the first time she’s said something like this. She downs the whole mug in a few sips before the words even fully register. She leans against the counter for a moment when they do. When she turns around, Alexa’s eyes are red and puffy. Her arms are crossed, and she exhales shakily.

“You’re crying?” April says.

“I’m sorry. ” Alexa stares at the patterns in the linoleum. April brings her hand to her temples.

“Were you up all night?” She asks.

“April,” Alexa whispers. She sniffles. April begins to wash the dishes in the sink. She rinses out the Chemex first, then moves on to the pot that had been lentil soup. “I don’t want to,” Alexa says quietly, tearfully. April sighs. She scrubs the stains out of her coffee mug.

“What happens, when you leave me?” She tries to keep the dull anger she feels out of her voice. Alexa doesn’t answer. April turns the tap off. “Do you want eggs and toast?”

“Yes,” says Alexa. April opens the breadbox for the loaf of sourdough that Alexa made the other day. Her hands move without her mind. She cuts two slices, Alexa’s thinner than her own, and pops them in the toaster. She cracks two eggs into a bowl and whisks them with some milk, salt, and pepper. She pours them into a pre-heating pan with a pat of butter melting in it. The toast pops up and April removes Alexa’s slice before turning the timer down and toasting hers for another thirty seconds. The eggs are softly scrambled. April likes them a little bit harder, but Alexa won’t touch them that way. The toaster dings and April butters both slices of bread. She puts jam on hers, and leaves Alexa’s plain. She sets the plates on the table and they sit down to eat them. After breakfast is gone, April gets dressed for work, and leaves.

When she gets home, Alexa is nowhere to be found, but all of her things are still in the apartment. April thinks about texting her. The day had been busy enough to keep her mind off the morning, but it catches up to her now. She can’t imagine her life without Alexa. She confuses her like this, every once in a while. She turns on a baseball game and tries to focus on it. After the first ad break, she hears Alexa’s key in the door, and her heart jumps.

“Hi,” she says when she enters. She shucks her snow gear and hangs her keys on the hook.

“Hi,” says April, and mutes the TV. The sudden quiet in the room startles her.

“I got takeout,” Alexa says.

“Thanks.” It would have been her night to cook, April remembers. “What did you get?”

“General Tso’s Tofu.” Alexa places the bag on the counter and takes out the container.

She makes two plates, fills two glasses with red wine and brings them to the coffee table.

“Do you want to watch something?” April asks.

“This is fine.” Alexa never agrees to watch sports. April doesn’t question it and unmutes the TV. Alexa looks at it, but understands nothing. Dinner passes without a word. When they’re done, April washes the plates. Alexa comes up behind her at the sink and places a kiss between her shoulder blades and over her t-shirt. April shivers. Alexa knows what she likes. Her hands come to April’s hips, gripping then stroking. She hooks a finger into one of her belt loops and brings her close, then kisses her neck. April breathes deeply, then turns off the tap and flicks water off of her hands. She dries them on a dish towel hanging from one of the cabinets, and turns around. Before she kisses her, she switches their positions, gripping the counter, pressing Alexa into it firmly with her own hips. Then she kisses her, and has her moaning fast. April is fond of Alexa’s mouth, the familiar outline of her lips and the softness of her tongue, ever-yielding and open for her. An mmph noise comes out of Alexa when April pulls back and kisses her neck. April adores the light smell of her perfume under her earlobe, but loves the smell of her more, and breathes it in deeply, wondering if this will be the last time she does. When Alexa starts to wobble, April lifts her up onto the countertop, and looks at her: pink lips slightly swollen, dark eyes, flushed cheeks, and a red mark on her neck that makes April want to put more there. Alexa reaches for her but April grabs her hands and puts them beside her knees. It rocks her forward, and she loses balance for a second. When she stops moving, April returns, and takes Alexa’s lips in her own again. Alexa starts to shake, but April wants to make her wait as long as possible, draw it out, make her dizzy, give her a reason to stay.

When Alexa whispers out a desperate “Please,” though, April acquiesces. She’s far from immune to that. She undoes the buttons on the front of Alexa’s dress and leaves it open. She isn’t wearing a bra underneath, only a red lace thong that April knows Alexa knows she likes on her. Alexa shakes the sleeves off her arms. To April, nothing is more beautiful than Alexa, naked. She wants to devour her whole, but settles for her chest. She kisses her collarbone from shoulder to shoulder, sucks and bites and relishes the moans and hisses she gets back. She leaves marks as she goes, an effort to linger on her body and mind for a little while at least. April looks Alexa in the eye when she wraps her mouth around a nipple, watches as her eyes flutter closed, as she opens them again. Alexa ruffles April’s grown-out buzzcut. Her pleased sounds fill April’s eager ears.

“April, God,” Alexa sighs.

“What?” April says faux-innocently, teasingly.

“I need you, ” she says.

“Do you want me?” April asks. Alexa bites her lip and nods. April knows that’s all she can muster. A part of her doubts her response.

“Please, please, please,” Alexa repeats, and doesn’t stop when April’s fingertips hook under the straps on her panties. She can’t refuse her. She can't give up this opportunity to show her what she’d miss. In one movement, April pulls off the scant fabric and pulls Alexa to the edge of the counter, then she drops to her knees.

Alexa’s cunt is the best taste in the world to April. She moans when her tongue finds Alexa’s clit like a magnet. It feels like she knows her girlfriend’s body better than her own at this point. She gasps and groans and twitches in April’s hands where they rest on her thighs. A few expert movements and Alexa is whimpering. Pride starts to fill April, knowing she’s the one making Alexa unravel like this, that it’s her skill, her passion fueling the uncontrolled sounds. April knows how to get Alexa over the edge, and knows how to withhold it. She slows her pace to agonizing, lightens up her touches. Alexa pushes herself forward, trying to get more pressure, but April pushes her back.

“Stay put,” she says forcefully.

“I,” says Alexa, but doesn’t get out more: two of April’s fingertips graze her clit before she starts to fuck her indelicately. She gives her time to adjust, but quickly begins to set a fast tempo, a far cry from moments ago. If there’s anything April likes more than eating her out, it’s watching Alexa’s face when she fucks her, her open mouth, hooded eyes, her red cheeks. April’s ears burn. Alexa’s breathing quickens for a moment before she throws her head back and lets out a high pitched sound April has only heard a couple times. Her cunt flutters around April’s fingers as she comes. When she takes her hand away, April sees Alexa shudder again. Her fingers nearly drip. Alexa wipes a few her eyes, then, and April notices she’s crying. Her body moves in time with the sobs. April gets her a glass of water, and leaves her in the kitchen.

Alexa is still crying when she crawls into bed. April doesn’t know what else she wants, or why, or when things got this way. She can’t resist comforting her though, and Alexa sinks into her embrace even tighter than she usually would.

“I go back to Homer,” Alexa says, and sniffles. “I go back to Homer and I marry Matt Pfeiffer and have a bunch of little blonde babies and take them to church every Sunday.” April thinks she’s done, but she keeps talking. “Or sometimes, I join a band and head out on tour. We play basements and dive bars and I hook up with a different girl in every city. Or I move to Barcelona and rent sailboats to tourists, when I leave you. ” April lets the words hang in the air.

“Do I stifle you?” She asks.

“You don’t try to,” says Alexa. April kisses her shoulder.

“Go to sleep,” she says, and waits for Alexa’s breathing to slow. She slips out of bed and makes a cup of tea. She doesn’t quite mean to fall asleep on the couch.

In the morning, April is up first. She gets dressed for work and brushes her teeth and washes her face. She makes a pot of coffee and drinks a cup before Alexa comes out of the bedroom. She looks like a wreck, with red eyes and messy hair.

“I forgot to wear my mouth guard,” Alexa says.

“Do your teeth hurt?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry, ” says April flatly. “Coffee?” She barely waits for a response before pouring Alexa a cup how she likes it with stevia and oat milk.

“Yeah,” says Alexa. She pauses. “I’m sorry. ”

“Okay,” says April. “You’re unhappy.”

“I, I’m not unhappy.” Alexa looks at the floor.

“Don’t insult me, ” April says with a bitter laugh. In that moment, she’s sure: terrified, despairing, but sure. She simply says, “Go.” Alexa looks like she’s going to try to argue, but closes her mouth again. “Go have Matt’s babies. Go join a band, go to Barcelona.”

“I love you, ” says Alexa. “I love you, April.” April closes her eyes for a moment as she thinks. “Don’t do this,” Alexa pleads.

“I don’t have a choice,” April says. Alexa touches her cheek and tries to kiss her, but April doesn’t kiss back. Alexa puts her forehead against April’s for a moment, and, for once, holds back the tears. “I’m going to work. Find somewhere to stay.” April’s tone is firm and final.

“I love you, ” says Alexa. April taps her fingers on the counter. She leaves quietly, locking the door behind her. It’s even colder now.

What is desire? Where does it come from, that unseen force which moves not only apes but whole generations? Sitting here in the dull light of this office, I can’t fathom desire. Each day is the same, I clock in and don company-issued VR goggles, I plug into an ethereal tapestry of lies which does wonders at fooling my senses. Afterwards, I go home, or I stay out and buy things. In any case, I can only stare at what I have and contemplate what I’d do if I had more time. I can’t help but sigh day in, day out. My time is money, my currency is my life. I sacrifice me for the Company, for the mission, for the good of Steev.

I exhale again. Might as well as get this prolonged funeral started. I go to obscure my sight, but my face already rebels at the texture of the padding, my eyes watering from the intensity of the light. If only I could desire again.

Here we go, into a virtual representation of cellular space, an esophageal ecosystem, Steev’s temple.

Blam! Got ‘ em. Yeah, this sector’s about cleared.

Scans are complete and there’s no more bits of plastic mucking about, no more foul emissions clogging up this vibrant microbiome. Just in time, too, low on propellant. Better check in…

“How’s y ’alls sector sweeps? Report!” I can see their progress on my display, but I’ve got to ask, They could always read my transcripts later.

“All good here, boss.”

“No problems.”

“Okay, clean up and get back to base.”

They’re good kids, though paid a lot less than I would like. I press a virtual button and my drone starts floating back. Let’s get off this visor. Vari’s ghost! How long were these lights turned off? Or…Is it my eyes? I push my fingers into my lids. It’s been a whole shift after all…

“Ra, can I see you in my office for a second?” Intrudes a huckster voice, all corn oil, immediately setting off alarms in my head. That’s Geen, my new supervisor.

“Um, yeah.” I rub my face and can see the carpet again, held together by decades-old tape, though it’s unclear if my eyes adjusted or Geen flipped on the fluorescents. There he is. Why the fuck is he dragging a chair to his office? Guess I’ll follow him.

“Just go ahead and have a seat here.” I go to sit in the time-faded chair, but his monitor, an absurd insistence in the face of AR, acts as a black wall between us. “Or, wait. Scoot to that corner, so we can see. ” His barely believable grin peeks over the edges of that useless rectangle and I can only see half of his salmon button-up, with one arm visibly rolled to cuffs.

I look around his tight, crowded office, more like a bathroom stall, not unusual for the Company. “Did you not have chairs before, or…?”

“Nope, don’t believe in them.” What the hell? “People shouldn’t spend a lot of time in here.” I squirm in the chair Geen had transported from the break room, a room which was either misnamed or not ever used as such.

“Here, let me shut the door.” He gets up.

I gulp. “So, what’s this about?”

“Well, I called you in here to discuss the recent role changes at Bio-Ops. You were recently made a manager”

“No, that’s not right, I have been a manager this whole time, it’s just my title was aligned with my actual work.”

He settles down into his own chair, which groans louder than a dead-tired gravedigger.

“Right, right. So there’s this change recently, which means a lot more managerial responsibility, and I just want to make sure that you ’ re prepared to put in the time.”

“Um, yeah. I mean, I have already been putting in the time. Again, I’ve been managing. And it’s been good. We’ve seen a growth of at least 20% microplastics destroyed each quarter, we ’ re beating the enemy. ”

“Right, right. No one ’ s disputing the record, I’m just saying that as your new supervisor, I have certain expectations.” He flapped his lower lip over his mouth, almost up to his nose, then narrowed his eyes in dramatic concentration.

“What expectations?”

“Well, for starters, I’ve noticed an 18% uptick in picoplastics in your operation space… ”

“What? Yeah, I mean, that’s roughly correlated to the 20%-”

“It’s just the optics of it, I mean, imagine if…” Geen flips open a dingy green folder and squints to read. I shake my head, he’s using printouts? There are still printers? “Imagine if our customer Steev were to see the state of his gut right after one of your operations.”

“I’m sorry, what? Picoplastics are just the result of recycled microplastics, just as microplastics are the result of-”

Geen waves his hand and cuts me off. “I know all that, I’m saying how do you think he would feel seeing all that trash?”

“Um, well, if he saw it before the Scrape Bots he might not appreciate-”

“Exactly. It’s ugly, it looks bad. It’s the wrong optics.”

“But sir, he’s not going to see the state of his gut, not until we send him the ‘before and after’ videos…”

“Okay, fine, what about your men?”

I raise my eyebrow. “My team?”

“You know what I mean. Fine, what about our enemies?”

“So Bio-Ops cares about the enemy ’ s perception of our cleanup process for their destroyed weapons?”

“Absolutely. We wouldn’t want to embolden them, right now we ’ ve achieved parity in Steev’s stomach, we couldn’t afford them pumping out a higher rate of plastics or bacterias, not before our big offensive next quarter.”

“Okay, well, still, isn’t that Sanitation Department’s role? Why don’t you talk to them about their negligent bots?”

Geen’s eyes widen, the bags under his eyes swing from the motion. “Negligence is a big word there, partner.” My lips set. “Now, look, if you ’ re out there messing around, playing soldier, a perk I allow you, by the way, well, then take a gander and see if there’s any picoplastics. If you see some floating by, scoop it up. That’s all I’m asking.”

“I honestly don’t have time for that. All these reports for the team-”

“Make time. This goes to the top of your list.”

“Are you kidding me? Trash duties are more important than managing BZ squadron?”

“Look, I’m not saying don’t manage your squadron, obviously that’s essential. I just mean to say that you establish what I call ‘in-built processes ’…Just consider the cleaning as part of the operation.”

“I can perceive it anyway you want, but that still adds work.”

“Not if you clean up as you go. ”

“Geen, that’s bullshit. What is Sanitation even doing?”

Geen puts both of his hands into the air to physically repel my words. “We’re not having that conversation. I know you ’ ve had your eye on the probiotics role, but that’s not going to happen with this kind of attitude.”

“Wow, you ’ re threatening something promised to me by your predecessor and the ED-”

“That’s right. Comply, or leave.” My teeth are steel wheels on train tracks, sparks flying. I nod my head. “So, here’s what we ’ re going to do. You’re going to sign this…”

He slides over a fucking piece of paper. I look it over and groan. He’s writing me up, though what a lovely bow he’s tied on, this title of a Performance Improvement Plan. What the fuck? Seriously? Half of these allegations are completely cooked, and the other half are less significant than picoplastics…

“Geen, what the hell man?”

“Now, look, this is a good thing. It’s better we identify how to improve early rather than later, I mean, your review is coming up, after all.”

“You know that I’m game to learn and better myself, but this isn’t right, this won’t-”

“Just because you sign it doesn’t mean you ’ re agreeing to everything as it’s written here.”

“Then what’s the point of signing?”

“Well, we need to keep a record of the conversations we have-”

“Oh, so that’s why you never respond to any DMs?”

“I do, I-”

“You’ve not responded to a single one, none of upper management has since I started here! What are you afraid of?”

“Calm down!”

“No, fuck calming down. What do you think this is? A game? This is my life we ’ re talking about! You say we ’ re all a family, that work is as meaningful as off-time, so then why do you treat this like it’s the Simmies when it’s my life at stake?”

“I’m not-”

“No, no, fuck this! I’m out of here.”

Geen slaps his hand down on his desk. “It sounds like you don’t care about the mission! Think about Steev, Ra.”

“What mission? You mean cleaning his colons of some cold war fought without his knowledge? Or do you mean the war itself? Yeah, the gut is what wins the hearts and minds, but why would I want you to win, your kind?”

“Hey, now”

“No, fuck you, Geen.”

I ball the PIP into oblivion and toss it against the cheap walls, where it bounces off several objects and lands dead center in the recycle basket. I’m surprised I’m still that eagle eye, that my excellence hasn’t faded. I throw open the door and jog out past the ‘break room ’ to my hallway and gather my stuff, what meager possessions I could afford here.

I think of my team. Departure would only open space for another Geen to govern their lives. I know the feeling of these damn Geens! I don’t want that for them, but what can I do? I’ve got to go, I can’t stand it. These goddamn lights, that annoying-ass headset, all of the pressure, these half-measured perks, worst of all those pricks! I don’t deserve this, no one does, and no one should. I’ll let them know what’s happening. Once my team understands, they’ll do what’s best for themselves, which certainly isn’t in Bio-Op’s interest. To hell with Them!

I push open the door with a small box and a smile, light floods over me, it’s been ages. Hello, Sun!

I begin to walk the few steps from Bio-Ops Auxiliary Station No. 851966 to the parking garage when I realize I’m not quite used to the Sun’s overly intimate greeting. Sweat rolls down my face and obscures my vision, which I can’t easily clear with this dumb box of ‘personal’ items.

I decide to hit up the corner store next door for a cool beverage and to wipe my forehead, before the sting hits my eyes. As I enter the fuel center grounds, a motorcycle takes off and I notice a nervous-looking fellow throw a sack of charcoal into his trunk besides what I hope is a mannequin. I ignore any implications and drop my box by the entrance before entering. I feel the immediate relief of glorious AC- thank Atuem’s low-hanging pearls!

I dodge the flirtatious smiles of the clerk and make my way to the beverage section where there is an ungodly amount of choices. I somehow manage to narrow it down to two, one my favorite childhood drink, Cool Diesel, and the other a recent health gimmick that’s stormed the market, which I haven’t tried yet, Red Colon. I scrutinize the nutrition chart on the back. It’s mostly written in some foreign script, though I recognize the city of its manufacture, Karevneem. I look at the Cool Diesel in my left hand and the old jingle “ ...your tongue will slap your brain out” comes to mind. I then glance to my right at Red Colon’s label, which promises in my language “GURANTEED twenty alive probiotics.” My stomach gurgles like it hasn’t ever before and suddenly I’m struck with a tremendous thirst for this new fermented soda.

I shrug and unscrew the top, then take a refreshing sip.

“Oh, gosh durnit, for Vari’s sake!” I exclaim, tossing down my bleating AR headset, though my real eyes can’t see with the lights still out, a genuinely nice cost-saving measure the company adopted recently.

The enemy has won this battle, if not the entire war. I just know my boss Krannie will be livid, and I’m already shaking at the thought of her piercing stare, specifically from that one glassy eye of hers. I just don’t understand where my team failed, Cool Diesel should’ve been a shoein, we even got authorization from upstairs to fire off a couple neurons for the sake of that classic jingle. I guess, the enemy must’ve just edged out over our antibiotics battalion, which means...It’ll be my fault. No, it is my fault.

“Aireeeeeee!” Krannie yells, my name piercing through the walls on the laser that is her voice.

I get right up and head towards Krannie’s office; in the past, she’s just repeatedly screamed my name without leaving her seat. As I move, the motion sensor flips on the lights, temporarily blinding me, and I trip over a vacant chair. I lay there bruised by the circumstances of life, wondering how it all came to this.

My stomach lets out a premonitory rumble, as though my innards battled. Of all the luck, of all the sodas, how could Ra have picked Red Colon? Now our national security is under threat, Cool Diesel stocks will decline, and worse, I’ll soon be without a job!

CREME BRULEE

My fondest memory? Probably jumping up on stage in Madison Square Garden and singing “Down By the River,” with Neil Young. I grabbed that guy in his band, was the band Crazy Horse?- don’t know, his guitar and tried to play along.

“Down by the River, I Shot my Baby...dead, shot her dead.” It’s such a strange lyric, “ you be on my side. I’ll be on your side.” Now I shot you, dead. Damn.

And that guitar solo. So raw. The Godfather of Grunge.

After my grand performance, I pissed in the saxophone. Right in the bell. The guy spent the rest of the concert blowing out piss like nothing happened.

But then again, that became kind of my trademark. Pissing in the bells of various brass instruments, from the London Philharmonic, to this crappy Ska garage band in Tupelo. With them it was an improvement.

I actually have a notebook next to my bed. I wrote down a bunch of my highlights. I appeared in, let’s see, 27 Hollywood movies, six of them Marvel Universe epics. Over 30 TV shows. Kimmel and Fallon many times. Stayed away from The View. Them bitches scare me.

I got to kiss Emma Watson!! It might have been more than a kiss...but if you saw the movie, you ain’t telling, but you know.

I was in every episode of Grey’s anatomy for one full season. My scariest was, I think episode is five that year, when I shoved the heart patient dummy off the table in the OR and jumped up on it naked as a jay bird. I wanted to see if they’d do the operation on me, an actual, living breathing human being. Found out those prop scalpels really are sharp.

I got out of there, grabbed a car, and drove to a CVS a few blocks away. The cut on my chest was not that deep, I think the script had the doctor giving me a heart transplant. Luckily I got away in time. Grabbed a whole lot of medical shit off the shelf. Of course no one gave a damn or moved a muscle.

I had an unlimited supply of bandages and antibiotics, so I healed pretty quickly. But, it just goes to show I had to be careful. I mean no one ’ s gonna slow up in their car when I’m crossing the street. I’d be road pizza, you know.

I stayed away from political figures until recently. To be honest with everything else it was a simple, been there, done that. So, I was bored. I stood right next to the President during the last State of the Union. Gave him a raspberry every time he said something stupid. Toward the end he started going off on this ridiculous gun control thing. I couldn’t stand it. So I just shouted over him LALALALALALALALA. It was funny to see the clip of that on CNN. Didn’t think I’d ever become a political commentator. Washington is so dirty. Didn’t see any brass instruments, so I had to improvise. Pissed on the Vice President. She’s kinda worthless anyway.

Do you think that AOC is hot? I know she is... wink, wink.

You may wonder why I’m recording this manifesto of sorts. Well first of all I want this all on record, as they say for posterity, in case someone else finds themselves in my predicament. I think I figured out how to stream this on a couple dozen web sites. It should stay around for a while. TikTok watch out!

And of course I wonder why. I ponder why. And I get no answers. Oh, and I’m dying. We’ll get to that later. I...

So what does it feel like to be able to jump on a plane anytime you want and go anywhere you want? Priceless! I’ve been everywhere, man.

This has been going on for twenty years. I’m really tired of it, and in more than a little bit I’m glad it will soon be over.

There’s some great Ocean liners out there. If you got kids Disney cruises tops them all. I was on one of those Disney cruises and I wanted to see how far it would go. So I picked up this 3 year old girl and we trudged up to the wheel house and I got on this big mic and said, “this is, Salyou know who I am. I have in my clutches a very nice three year old blonde girl in jean shorts and a pink Minnie Mouse t-shirt. And in about three minutes I’m gonna throw her overboard if you don’t stop me. ”

So we ran back down the stairs, of course she didn’t scream or squirm a bit, and I dangled her over the side. Then I counted down from 100 and at least that many people just stood around or walked past doing their own thing. I put her back down on the deck. It wasn’t worth it.

You may wonder why I didn’t become a mass murderer, or find a nuke and blow up New York City or something. What would be the point? I could take an AR and mow down the entire UN. But, I’m a really nice guy. A sweetheart, and nothing would change if I did. So I became annoying, maybe. Mostly out of boredom. Hoping that somehow, someone, somewhere would show a glimpse of recognition. Someone would slip up and smile at me, or frown at me, or yell stop.

And besides, the Creme Brulee at Sardis is divine. I wouldn’t want to deprive the world of that. One day I got a big tray of Creme Brulee and took it outside and tried to just hand it out to passers by. Of course no one took any. I eventually just put the tray down on the sidewalk and people just walked right on it. Glass dishes shattered and shoes were covered with sticky goodness. Even this homeless guy who looked as skinny as a rail passed it by.

How could they get everyone in the world on the same page with this?

I came back the next day, and the next, and the next. The tray and broken glass was still there. It took weeks before everything was gone, only after a few really bad rain storms had washed it all away.

All I remember on that day 20 years ago was waking up in a motel near where I grew up in North Jersey. A motel right off 287. I don’t know how I got there because I hadn’t lived in Jersey for 5 years, I had moved to Florida because the company I worked for had just opened a new casino in Miami Beach and they needed my expertise. Actually, I had just got fired because some cash had gone missing, and the bosses daughter seemed to have disappeared, and somehow they blamed me. So the last thing I remember, some muscles from the casinos picked me up, threw me in a car, and took me on a trip to the everglades. I was blindfolded, with my hands tied behind my back, but I remember the car stopping quickly and a really bright light.

So what should I think? I’m dead? Aliens? Some science experiment? A new government program? But why pick me? I was no terrorist or serial killer. I wasn’t notorious.

I just screwed up a bit at a casino and got caught. No big deal. There’s a million guys who did the same thing or something like it and as far as I know they ain’t invisible.

Just lucky I guess.

I’ve lived invisible. Will I be dead invisible? I won’t know that of course but any time now my question will be answered.

You’d think I’d fall off a building or get run over by a train? Nope. It was a silly accident, and my own damn fault

I invaded the kitchen at Sardis to catch a late lunch. The Cobb Salad looked good, and I was a bit parched so I jumped over the bar, and got myself a couple of bottles of cabernet, one for my left hand and one for my right. So I’m juggling two bottles of wine, and the salad, and that’s harder than I thought. I get on the subway to go uptown to “The Plaza” where I had procured a real nice suite with a real comfy king sized bed, and a great view of Central Park, and this balancing act was unbearable. So I opened the left hand bottle and chugged it down. Suddenly, my whole world was leaning sideways.

So I’m off the subway, crossing the platform, and climbing the stairs up to 57th street, where I get to the top and, bam! I slip on some spilled soda or something, and I’m falling backwards down the stairs. Concrete all the way.

My head was bleeding. At the bottom of the stairs I fell hard, full frontal into a trash can right above the groin. I also managed to waste a perfectly fine bottle of vino, that in retaliation gifted me with a huge bloody gash most of the way down my left leg. Leg broke too. I saw the bone. A huge bloody stain that probably will be lying there for years to come.

My legacy. What shit I got myself into?

So then the fun part. I hobbled back up to 57th, and limped towards Central Park, where the Plaza Hotel and my stash of medical crap was located. I made it the couple blocks, and instead of taking the left right away, decided to cross 59th into the park to sit a bit on a bench. I was feeling really woozy from the head injury and loss of blood. As I was crossing the street, I really fuzzed out, and stumbled right down on my ass.

That’s when I saw the horse and buggy bee lining towards me. The world famous Central Park Carriage Ride was 50 feet away. The horse missed my head by a hair, but my stomach wasn’t so lucky. Two steel wheels ran over my left leg.

I lay here crushed and bloody. Right away, the rain started pouring down pretty hard and the carriages took a break. So I recorded this, and the rain is stopping, and I’m sure a horse will be by anytime soon.

But I don’t think I’ll be around for anything else. It’s getting real dark. But look over there at that little kid in the blue raincoat. He’s pointing right at me and smiling.

CEREAL

There sits a bowl of cereal. The cornflakes languish in the lukewarm milk. All I can think about is the oozing blood. The blood on my arms, the way it slowly drips onto the dingy kitchen floor, and the one-inch segmented bugs that skitter through the blood, lapping it up like a stray dog at a water bowl. Where did they come from? How do I get rid of them? Fortunately, they’re not biting me. I pick up the bowl of saturated cereal, and those red bugs race from my arms into the soggy cereal, turning the white milk pink.

THE PADDED ROOM

People ask why I still tend to this padded room, they’d ask “Why are you still holding onto this junk? Let it go ” . Normally, I’d agree with them and lock it away, maybe even rent it out. However, I can’t, there’s too much here that I value. Too much to hold onto to truly let go. Counter pointing them never goes my way either, “Oh, but look at this! This was when we took all those trips to the zoo!”.

But no one ever stays around to hear the joyful tales this padded room holds. Eventually, I’ve just ignored their remarks and continue to clean and polish each pad daily. Helping myself remember the joys it holds.

Sometimes, I don’t leave right away and sit and reminisce on the good times spent here. I’ll go and look through how we would talk about nonsense and laugh for hours as our inner children took control once more. One of my favorites is when we had one of our first encounters. We only spoke briefly, but to me it was pleasantly infectious. I couldn’t speak a word and could only hear as you rambled on about your interests as I was focused on you alone. I would lay myself onto the cushion and stay for hours on end in blissful nostalgia.

No matter how I try to keep this wonderful, padded room clean and free, there would always be a dark corner. No matter how sparkling or bright, it would always seem to get dark. Maybe I forgot to change a bulb, or the light of the sun manages to leave its radiance and night falls. There have even been times where I believed a pipe had burst and I would be drenched in water, but when I ask the plumbers, they say there was nothing to be found.

Recently, I’ve noticed someone has been putting eviction papers on the door to my padded room. Obviously, I take them down. They have no right to, I own the room! There are too many important things in here to be thrown out. Some would say the days where we would do nothing but enjoy each other’s company and would say “ ”? The same routine happens where they leave before I protest.

No matter what happens to me, or this padded room, I will always find ways to keep my treasures intact.

They are very important to me when it comes to my being and who I am. This padded room, which holds many treasures, has been a bed when I am too tired to climb in my own, a feeling of security when I am most scared, and a warmth when everything seems cold. Most of all, it holds that core treasure of what makes this padded room mine alone that no one can take from me.

That core treasure of when we would talk about our interests until the sun set and I felt your warmth for the first time and now where it still warms me to this day. That is the importance of MY padded room.

ENDLESS VACATION

Laszlo flings himself from the stage and into the arms of the adoring masses who crowd around him holding him higher than he’s ever felt in his entire life. His entire life which, right now, feels like it has all been leading up to this precise moment, this moment of truth, this moment when all his dreams seem not just possible but almost, somehow, inevitable. After tonight they are ready for anything, ready to take on the world he thinks as back on stage he spies Pete’s humongous grin looming over the top of his drum-kit. Pete knows too that tonight has changed everything and as the final song of the night comes to its inevitable climax of wailing guitar noise the crescendo of appreciation pouring forth from the crowd comes as almost no surprise at all. Laszlo is soon coming down to earth in a heaven of thunderous starlight and he knows that, somehow, from here on out it’s just going to get a hell of a lot weirder and a whole lot crazier.

It had only been three-and-a-half short months since Laszlo had met Pete in amongst the Gibson guitars and Gretsch drum-kits on that most deranged of nights, that night when all the lights went out everywhere and Lazlo saw all hell break loose. He had been innocently minding his own business under the red-light of Times Square when it had all kicked-off and just like so many others that night from out of the chaos he saw an opportunity. An opportunity that could be a turning point in helping him to get that band together, that damn band he’d been dreaming of since seeing that bunch of freaks down at that bar nearly three years earlier. That night he was certain he saw his future after convincing himself that any idiot could do exactly what that bunch of freaks had done to him that night. Hell, he remembers thinking that if they could get away with that then he knew, somehow, he could do just as good if not better, but that had been almost three long years ago and the dream was beginning to fade until, from out of the chaos of that night of black-out, he had met Pete and his van and the rest, as the saying goes, was history.

“Where do you need to get that to my friend?” Pete had asked Lazlo who was in the process of wheeling a giant Marshall stack right out onto the street and from that moment on they had become inseparable.

That first night they had gunned the van down the mid-town streets towards their downtown and all Lazlo heard from Pete’s mouth was talk of forming a band.

“You see my friend,” Pete explained, “I was only uptown that far because I knew what was going down… I knew that as soon as the lights went out it would be carnage out there and, well, there’s been a prick of a salesman at that store who knows I could never afford the kinda kit I deserve for years so I figured…”

And so, just like that, Death Failure began right there and then as that night, fearing the worst for their newly acquired gear, they had holed-up in Lazlo’s tiny apartment as the city outside burned with a seething hatred of injustice. The next morning, as those early morning rays of light came to illuminate the chaos of the night before, Pete and Lazlo shared a breakfast of a joint and coffee and were soon into it with Pete hammering out a few songs he had on drums and vocals as Lazlo worked his nascent talent at the guitar and soon, at least to their ears, they started to sound good, almost like a proper band. Soon after they met Chris who tells them he can play the bass and has a penchant for being called C.J. as he hates the parents who named him and the letter J is all he can utter of their name. He soon moves his gear into Laszlo’s apartment and the three of them get to it as regular as clock-work. Every day they meet at 12 and play until dark when they hit the street in the hunt for their next rock’n’roll adventure and sooner than even Laszlo thought they were being asked to play and when they played it seemed the crowds loved them. They began playing the venues Laszlo had been trapsing around these last three years in search of kicks and now it was them providing those kicks until one day, completely out of the blue, Tommy and Joe had turned up to some show they were doing. From that moment on it had all gone mad as Laszlo’s favourite band promised them a support slot for what many thought would be their last ever show at the legendary institution they had helped build and suddenly all eyes were on them. They were going to be the next big thing, they were going to be even bigger than their heroes, their favourite band and The Beatles combined! Laszlo had heard that a few times and as much as he shrugged it off he knew that in the grand schemes of the universe it wasn’t completely out of the question. But as the nights became weeks the crowds continued to grow and grow and recently it had become common-place for Laszlo to look out into the audience and see faces looking back at him who he’d seen on the very stage he is now preparing to step foot on.

But tonight, the night when all his dreams could come true, is somehow on a whole other level again and as Laszlo, Pete and C.J. begin to set-up they spy in the throng faces they would never have expected to see at one of their shows, even in recent times, but tonight, well tonight, it isn’t their show. Tonight they are merely the warm-up but it is to the greatest band on the planet and with as many movers and shakers in the crowd Laszlo knows it is destined to be a night of some consequence.

“So what we going to play tonight then?” Pete asks Laszlo as he begins to prepare one last smoke before they step foot out there.

“Well we got to start with ‘Good Times’ and end with ‘I’m Going to Die’ but the five or six in between I don’t really mind…” Laszlo responds.

“Can we play that new one, ‘Bowery Bums’ we been working on this week?” C.J. asks.

“Sure we can, we’ll bury it third just in case we fuck it up!” Laszlo responds.

“Well how about ‘I Feel Insane’, ‘Everybody’s Doing Something’, ‘The Night The Lights Went Out’ and ‘Fuck Me Up’ as the rest?” Pete asks and after recognising a couple of nods from his band-mates he writes them down in exactly that order as Laszlo sparks the monster to life.

“We ready guys?” Laszlo asks after passing the joint to Pete.

“Sure am but how about a beer each on stage?” he responds before taking a deep long toke on the still nearly fresh joint which prompts Laszlo to walk over to a pack of beers left by the promoter for them. He yanks a can free and pulls the cap off and takes a slug before turning back to Pete and C.J. and throwing a couple of cans in their direction. C.J. is toking at the decreasingly monstrous joint but manages to catch the can easily enough and as they walk down the narrow corridor they are suddenly there and with no hesitation they are straight into it.

‘Good Times’ galvanises the crowd into an enthusiastic mass of applause, cheers, screams and, for the first time ever, a couple of loose joints thrown onstage from some souls who’d clearly been paying attention to the lyrics and by the time they reach the end of a chaotically beautiful take of ‘Bowery Boys’ Laszlo knows.

The audience are his to play with now, he has them exactly where he wants them, and as he play-acts his way through ‘Fuck Me Up’ he spies Johnny, yes that thunderous mother-fucker, dancing right next to the bar as if the lighting guy knows just where to shine his ray. Immediately launching into their set- closer ‘I’m Going to Die’ Laszlo loses control of his guitar and the wild screaming from his amp is responded to by the crowd who seem even more appreciative as the chaos of the sound seems to sweep through everyone in the building. Laszlo throws his guitar at his amp before launching himself head-long into the crowd as C.J. throws his bass at Pete’s bass-drum as suddenly the stage empties in all different directions.

Laszlo is finally delivered earth-bound right by the bar and the first face he sees, right in front of him, is thunderous Johnny and the beaming smile is clear for him to see the second he realises just what the hell is going on.

“Wow man that was some gig!” he enthuses as the beautiful and exotic Sable simpers quietly at his shoulder.

“Ah thanks,” Laszlo responds, “from you that is the highest praise I can ever ask!”

“Well how about a drink my friend?” Johnny responds.

“Well sure, ” Laszlo says still trying to deal with the idea one of his heroes has just called him ‘friend’, “ a beer would be good!”

“Sure thing my man, ” Johnny responds before getting the barman’s attention.

“So what you doing now?” he asks turning his attention back to Laszlo.

“Well stay here and watch the next guys… I’ve seen most of their other gigs here so it’d seem a bit stupid to miss their last one here especially as my band all got in free cos we, well…”

“Yeah, you’ll be headlining here next time,” Johnny responds before handing Laszlo his beer.

“Well that’ll be great but I don’t think we’ll have any other night like this one!”

“Yeah these boys have been at it years I’ll tell you but finally it seems some of us are getting somewhere!”

“Look I should go see how my mates are doing, you fancy coming back with me?” Laszlo asks.

“No, I’m gonna hang here with Sable and watch these nutjobs but listen come find me at the end and come join us if you want…”

“Oh sure that’d be great!” Laszlo responds.

“Yeah the record label have us a suite at the Chelsea so tonight a few of us are going to use it for a little soiree, a little party…”

“Cool, I’ll see you soon my… friend” Laszlo responds as if he can’t really believe who he is talking to.

“You certainly will my friend” Johnny responds before turning his attention back to the gorgeous Sable.

Laszlo negotiates his path back through the crowd towards backstage, the crowd now growing restless for the arrival of their real heroes, but as he makes it into the inner sanctum all he can hear is remorse. Remorse from the one Laszlo knows only as the guitarist John who, it seems, is irate at Tommy’s choice of opening act.

“Fuck sake Tommy!” Laszlo hears as he arrives at the door to the smaller changing room, “Why the hell did you have to get that lot to be on right before us!”

“I just heard they were good and that guy Laszlo, well…” he hears the familiar voice of Tommy responding, “he’s been here since the very start. You remember him? He was here that first time we came over to the island and well…”

“Yeah I get it but you could have had a word with the soundman, fuck I’m not sure we ’ re going to be able to follow that!”

“Ah don’t you worry about that, I got a little bit more juice we can pile into the mix and I reckon tonight well, how does all twenty songs in half-hour sound?”

“Shit you think we can?”

“Sure I do and it’s me whose got to motor the damn thing and I know we can do it and after that, well fuck I think we better try at the very least!” Tommy confirms as the four leatherjacketed punks walk down the short corridor and onto the stage.

“Ah don’t you worry about that, I got a little bit more juice we can pile into the mix and I reckon tonight well, how does all twenty songs in half-hour sound?”

“Shit you think we can?”

“Sure I do and it’s me whose got to motor the damn thing and I know we can do it and after that, well fuck I think we better try at the very least!” Tommy confirms as the four leatherjacketed punks walk down the short corridor and onto the stage.

The second Laszlo is through the door Pete and C.J. climb to their feet and the three embrace tightly before Laszlo decides there is only one thing for right now and that is the construction of the most calming, most soothing joint he’s ever smoked. A joint so cooling, so relaxing, that it’d help calm him from this highest of highs, the kind of high you can only get when playing your rock’n’roll to a crowd as grateful as that. A crowd in the most important small venue in the city, hell the entire country if not the god-damn world, who had just loved you more than you ever thought possible.

“Well my friends,” Laszlo says before sparking the monster of a joint to life, “who’d have thought it’d be this easy… ” and letting out a monstrous laugh.

“Shall we go watch them?” C.J. asks as the real heroes of the night launch, almost unnoticeably, into their second song of the night.

“Hell yeah,” Laszlo responds knowing that tonight may yet unearth even more treasures.

As they walk out into the crowd a few of the dancing, screaming masses are distracted as their potential new local heroes walk on by all the way to the bar where Laszlo immediately strikes up talk with Johnny and Sable. The next twenty-five minutes pass in a whirl of maddening noise, one song after another with no pause in between, and Laszlo knows his band still have some way to go but tonight he can forget all about that. Johnny had told him it had been a ‘triumphant set’ and that was good enough for him and, right now, with the night crawling to its sad demise plans were afoot.

Stepping out into the cold, pre-Halloween New York City night Laszlo spies a row of taxis, something he’d never seen before outside CB’s, and almost immediately he sees Johnny leaning in one of the windows.

“Hey gang, ” he calls out to no one in particular, “ we got a ride to the Chelsea right here…”

A few rather dazed looking vagabonds appear from within the crowd and soon there are six of them piled in to the back-seat of the taxi and it is somehow moving uptown through the midnight traffic and it is clear everyone, well everyone apart from Laszlo, is on some kind of mission tonight. Some kind of mission that will see them get higher than high with one of their heroes in one of the swankiest suites in the whole god-damn city. As the taxi manoeuvres its way through the night-time crawl all the talk is of what awaits them and Johnny can barely contain his excitement at getting, as he calls it, ‘fixed good and proper ’ and as the taxi pulls up Johnny pushes a ten through the wire grill and almost immediately they are all out on the pavement.

“So you ’ ve done this before?” Johnny asks Laszlo as they make their way through the famed reception area towards the escalator. They are soon heading higher but Laszlo knows that if he goes through with what the rest of his adopted gang have in store he still has a lot higher to get even as the lift stops at the third floor. Johnny leads his gang down the hall and as soon as he pushes the door to the suite open it is clear all is not as he expected.

“Fuck Billy what the hell are you doing here tonight?” he asks upon seeing his drummer relaxing on one of the many couches sprawled around the room.

“Just making use of the facilities Johnny, you know… hanging out with my new woman, ” he says as a rather beautiful but really dazed blonde teenager staggers from the bathroom in just a pair of panties and a t-shirt.

“OK no matter, we ’ re gonna get fixed in here,” Johnny announces as he slams the biggest bag of badness Laszlo has ever seen down on a coffee table besides one of the couches. He merely sits down next to it and begins preparations for a blast to his central nervous system and as he begins to cook up enough to make everyone, and Laszlo is sure he means everyone, forget the pains that maybe afflicting their lives no matter how imaginary or irrelevant, the smile on show is nothing but a junkie knowing soon he’ll be fixed.

“So who wants to go next?” Johnny asks after dosing himself good and proper, holding the newly filled syringe up for everyone to see.

“Well go on then but make sure it ain’t that strong…” Laszlo says and suddenly he knows there is no way out of this and all he can do is embrace the impending doom and hope but as he slides the needle into his virgin skin there is a wild commotion at the door. Suddenly Dee Dee is in the room just as Laszlo plunges the needle in and as the hit kicks him hard in his head Laszlo suddenly understands what it means when people talk of the junkie nod. Dee Dee is lining himself up to be next, much to the displeasure of the rest of Johnny’s gang, and as he slams the needle home the party suddenly quietens to a dull roar of addiction and no one notices that Laszlo has been quiet for some time. No one that is until Dee Dee spies his oldest of fans.

“Shit Johnny is that Laszlo out of Death Failure?” he asks.

“Sure yeah, what a show they did earlier…”

“Well Johnny looks like he’s not a failure any more… ”

“What the fuck do you mean Dee Dee?”

“It’s a god-damn endless vacation for him you fuck…” he responds causing Johnny to simply grow even more confused.

“He’s OD’d you fuck… come here and feel his wrist will you!” Dee Dee continues as Johnny climbs to his feet and walks across to where Laszlo sits by himself.

“Shit he told me he’d had it before…” is all Johnny can say before realising that something needs to be done and it needs to be done right now.

“You stupid fuck Johnny, those guys… fuck man, what kind of shitty vacation have you sent him on you stupid fuck?” Dee Dee seethes as Johnny does what he always does in moments of crisis. He is on the phone to his manager and, as is so often the case, it is more bad news from his number one client.

THE BARBARIANS

At midnight I approach the club with a somewhat vague desire to do harm to every second person in line, fortunately the bouncer waves me past all the young men with tattoos that reek of drunken nights, the young women with boyfriends discovered pillow side that morning and with a ‘Good Evening Sir’ bids me welcome.

Drum and bass rise as I slowly descend the stairwell, welcoming the darkness, the shade that hides imperfection, that separates the good from the great. The left side of my face is a faded yellow from a beating one week past and I wonder as I slide between bodies how to best present this.

I approach the bar and squeezed between mini skirted muse and pool hall tottie I struggle to make myself heard. The suspiciously young bartender denies himself eyeball orgy barely long enough to take my order and with eyes returned to the cleavage delight either side he blindly yet expertly pours the drinks. His hand reaches in my direction, palm up, begging …

“No,” I shake my head, “I’ll be over there,” pointing to a booth in the far corner, away from the grope fest but close enough to observe.

“Wha?” He cups his hand to his ear, as if this simple courtesy is too much for a man who tends bar. His eyes are now firmly locked with mine.

A moment passes.

I turn and make way toward the booth. Within a few steps I hear him shuffling behind, I slow my pace, he overtakes and serves the drinks just as I arrive.

I pay, I sit, I stare.

Within seconds I am drawn to a Lolita in white shoulder-less blouse, her eyes are fixed on a vision for her and her alone and though her dimples intimate innocence her demeanor tells quite another tale … ‘smile at me, buy me a drink, fuck me sideways, memories are for saps ’ .

Weighed down with offers from all directions she nonchalantly follows each sip of a cocktail with suggestive lick of her lips.

“She’s so damn cute you can’t help but want to grab her and bend her over a kitchen table.” With this James slides into the booth.

James drifts from hour to passing hour.

James believes social niceties to be an affront.

“I’ll grab you and hold you still, and once you ’ re caught I’ll enjoy you my girl.” Eyes fixed on Lolita he continues, “and this big thing, large and stiff as a lyre, I’ll bury up to your seventh rib, or higher.”

“Beautiful, though hardly subtle.” I reply.

“That is a classical composition on the Greek God Priapus my good man, he of the enormous member … so who are we to argue?”

James pictures himself a scholar.

“With her make-up dripping off her cheeks, she is rutting openly, she breaks the mattress, and with it the whole four poster bed … ” James is interrupted by a vocal scuffle a few feet behind.

“What do you think I am? Just a cheap fuck?”

I turn to spy Dylan waving away the accusation as if clearing smoke. “I never claimed you were cheap,” he responds “and I’m not sure if all that … ” a pause, “ … qualifies as fucking.”

With this he turns his back and James and I alone observe the girls retreat. Dylan sits without word or greeting.

Dylan is tall and blonde and lean and generally disagreeable. There is a magnetism about the sly bastard however, something I appreciate when he negotiates his way into some forbidden den.

“Who was that?”

“Susie or Susan … Karen I think … ” With this he rubs the back of his neck, pauses, reaches for a drink, “ ... I can’t rightly recall. All I remember … her apartment was pink, all pink. Pink walls, pink shades, pink bed, pink fucken everything. Also … her first words once we got in the door were, ‘ you know, you can do me in any hole you want’ … after that it’s all a horrid pink blur.”

Lolita slides her hips, silent grind with all who gaze in her direction.

“Good Lord,” I hear myself mutter.

No one says anything for a moment delicately drawn out.

“Put it aside man, ” from James.

“I wouldn’t concern myself,” I add, and with this Lolita steps back into shadow and the evening can now begin.

And it’s nights like this I feel the slight strain of guilt that accompanies the realization that my father is paying for this, all of this. This year of tits and ass and smoke and snort and apparent epiphany and to him it’s money well spent and so the checks keep coming, classes are attended and further and further I glide toward respectability, toward the life of the educated man.

My mother and I sat before my father on the night of my college graduation and, in desperate measure to fill the gaps in stilted conversation, I found myself prattling on about the sanctity of the written word and so with undue haste was enrolled at Chesterton. In two years time I am scheduled to emerge a man of letters.

My father couldn’t be happier, and so I proceed, although to be honest a passing grade is all I desire, enough to keep the checks coming, the life flowing, enough to turn today into tomorrow. All I desire is time to proceed.

And so I arrive where I am expected and take notes when notes need to be taken and nod when required and so far have managed to shuffle through the first year of classes and tutorials and exams and essays with fair results.

Acceptable.

And so here I sit, Saturday night, buzzed but not drunk, tweaked but not high, James and Dylan either side.

James is a Classics major, big, solid, handsome despite post pubescent acne – though this could be the steroids – the kind of guy who’ll tip his hat to an old lady before laying into a drunk on the sidewalk.

Dylan lies at the other end of the physical spectrum. Lean in a way that makes girls wet, Dylan’s morning workout consists of rolling off or over someone or other and reaching for a morning cigarette. Dylan is the consummate Lothario, effortlessly fucking each and every beautiful body he encounters without so much as a nod or wave of the hand. Dylan is a poet at large and has no time for flirtation and so draws all who come near.

Dylan is handsome, Dylan is disinterested, and therefore Dylan is irresistible to woman and as such Dylan is destined to be hated by men, but for now James and I put up with Dylan as Dylan is entertaining and Dylan always has weed and Dylan is Dylan.

“Fuck, if only I were gay, ” sighs Dylan.

“Strike that,” he continues while thumbing a cigarette into an ashtray before instantly lighting another. “If only I were capable of celibacy, sweet, sweet celibacy. Fuck these balls, they hold me captive.”

“Little less of the melodrama,” I urge.

“Life is melodrama my friend,” offers Dylan. “Life is melodrama and angst and despair and pussy, and it’s the latter that’s always getting in the way. ”

“You might have something there,” contributes James. “Last semester I came across a letter to Aristotle from an elderly friend.

The old man writes to Aristotle to decry the loss of his libido now that he’s aged … and yet his final line is ‘Thank the Gods, finally I can begin my work.’ And it hit me, here’s this guy, he’s lived his whole life with this … this pussy-fog clouding his every thought, and when it clears what does he think?”

James pauses, takes a giant swig of beer and pointing in exclamation to no-one in particular continues, “He thinks, ‘Thank the Gods! Finally I can begin my work!’ So I say to you Dylan, you may be onto something. Maybe a quick castration is all you need to focus the mind.”

“So what’s your point?” I ask, bored of the conversation, already aware of its destination, eager to simply progress.

“My point, my point … my point is that … ” James pauses, burps, pauses, burps once more, “ my point is … perhaps women are indeed the enemy. Maybe for all their agreed upon loveliness, for all their bangs and whistles and barely hidden delights, maybe they’re simply the devil that distracts from a higher purpose. ”

“Take Dylan here,” James continues in upswing, his voice taking on the tone of a Southern preacher in full revival tent glory, “this man, this young man, this talented young man, ” with this he waves a hand in Dylan’s direction, “who desires nothing less than a life of dedication to the written word. A life of study, a life of contemplation, a yearning to contribute to times within which he is blessed to be a part,” eyes alight, a hint of slight Southern drawl, “and yet my friend, what is his sentence? What is his charge? To daily battle the urge to fuck whomever takes his fancy. Each day he rises with fresh dreams of literary glory, and each day he is faced with tits and ass and ass and tits and smiles and waves and signs and signals and temptation, distraction, degradation and by nightfall what has his mind accomplished? Little else but ‘What would she like?’, ‘How does she this?’ ‘Why does she that?’ Nothing more than the mindless drivel of a cum-driven maniac. If only his balls were disconnected from his brain … ” James’ voice rises as if awaiting response from an audience unseen, “only then would he be able to proceed down the path of righteousness!”

“Yes friends,” the voice now a whisper, “ pussy is the enemy, an enemy we must face anew each day. I see the Devil and Clitoris be her name. ”

Throughout the performance, no-one, save Dylan and I, has paid any attention whatsoever. To all others James is simply another wild man in a corner booth, but to Dylan and I a mood is definitely awash. James has accomplished something with this little diatribe, of what I am unsure, but something indeed.

James takes a breath and the night proceeds.

“Fuck this place, how about the Twister?” Suggests Dylan.

“The Twister?” I repeat with eyebrows raised.

The very idea is dismissed immediately. The Twister is hip, happening, a place to be and as such will never do. The trick is to find somewhere on the edge, on the verge of hip and arrive at the tipping point. Grindhouse is decided upon and as one we step onward and outward and make way toward.

And as we exit there is observed a definite tension in the air, time has passed, those waiting behind the velvet rope have grown more resolute as to their place in the larger scheme of things.

The natives are getting restless.

And as we amble toward Grindhouse a chalk pavement statement catches the eye, ‘Please forgive me Georgie’ in bright yellow script.

I stop and stare and light a cigarette, peruse the area for a ‘Georgie’. There are many viable suspects.

Dylan admires the craftsmanship of the pavement artist. James leans against a lamppost and nonchalantly removes an eyedropper from his pocket, lolls his head back and drops a couple of beads onto his tongue. His face wretches, his eyes water, blinking wildly he aims the dropper in my direction.

“Strychnine” he offers, “great for kick-starting the metabolism. You feel a little like you ’ re on a Ferris Wheel, but otherwise she’s all good.”

‘Why not?’ I think, and with this I tease a couple of droplets onto my tongue, grimace and gurn and relax into the night ... Dylan nods in admiration of the pavement artist’s intent, James mutter’s a few words regarding original sin and as we stroll we observe city as circus as buskers, drunks, bouncers, stragglers, late night strollers and the odd homeless perform a onenight-only-step-right-up production of epic proportion, a singing, dancing, shouting, screaming extravaganza and all is well as we all move this way and that in perfect formation and Dylan is weaving and I am sliding and James is swerving and bustling and edging and bumping and now staring and cussing and eyes are narrow slits and face is red and oh God what the fuck and with this I stand and simply observe as James grabs a stranger by the throat while others stare and mouth ‘oh my God’ and James looks, simply measures the guy, simply shares a moment, as if to say ‘ you and I know what’s going on and you and I know that I am champion and King of all and if you want you can leave and walk away and all is done and forgiven and resolved’ and the guy simply looks at James for a moment before seceding and James releases his grip and they part ways and all is calm once more but not really as we make way toward our destination.

And as we waltz along I spy another message, another call to ‘Georgie’, this time ‘Please, please, pretty please’ and the mind wonders as to what has been done toGeorgie to warrant such lament.

And now James is staggering slightly and this draws attention to the almost effortless glide that Dylan displays as we parade, a simple slide through the night as we zig and zag and weave and wave at passersby. The air is sweet, the evening offers embrace, there is shimmer to every surface and I realize of course that the Ferris Wheel has arrived and swept me along but I relax and release and surrender all the while …

On the pavement outside Grindhouse lies one final plea – ‘You’re my one and only Georgie Girl’ – and atop this scrawled appeal lie the feet of the many and the desperate, the lost and the loaded defer to a red velvet rope.

James is in no mood to wait, fortunately the girl at the door recognizes Dylan, actually waves him forward and we three stumble past the throng of pissed off punters in narrow line. Dylan raises an eyebrow at the girl as we pass, a look of recognition perhaps, and we are inside.

Music blares, bass blasts, lights strobe left, right, and centre and all is cacophony and mass

confusion. As James makes way to the bar, “Absinthe, absinthe, absinthe,” he echoes, I zero in on a brown leather booth in distant corner.

Settled in my seat I accept that Dylan is nowhere to be seen, lost in the multitude he is no doubt deep in a corner somewhere, notebook out, scribbling, lost to us all. James arrives sooner than expected, the crowd has parted as he makes way to the booth – there is an almost inexplicable air about James at this point, a whiff of atavism perhaps and so he proceeds unaccosted while others scrape shoulder to shoulder – three shot glasses in one hand, full green bottle in the other.

“Dylan’s off and about?” he asks, although we both know the answer. Dylan will be gone for now and will most likely return at some point, or not. It is to be expected.

James places the glasses, tips the bottle and fills with a grin, “Night is here but the barbarians have not come, and now what shall become of us without any barbarians? Those people were some kind of solution.”

And before I respond the moment has passed and I drink and he drinks and the hours pass and the music turns to melody and girls drift to shape and fleeting fancy and as I stumble into the morning’s light I recall that I am but an educated man and that I am yet waiting for the barbarians.

ID NUMBER 15

The Blood Moon bathed the city of Brovos in shades of red and gold. It was nearly curfew. No one roamed the streets except Tyranni Forb.

Got me thinkin’, roses are blue, lilacs are red. You’ll love me again. And the water’s dry, the fire’s cold. Loving you is possi

That doesn’t rhyme, she giggled.

Tyranni staggered along the sidewalk, singing to herself. She had lost one of her heels at some point, either when she left the club or a few minutes ago. She didn’t remember. Or care. That was a future Tyranni problem.

Roses are blue, lilacs are red. You’ll love me again. And the water’s dry, the fire’s cold. Loving you

Another shuttle pulled to the curb to give her a lift. She rolled her eyes and flicked it off just as she did to the others. Why did they have to bother her? It had been years since the accident, yet she couldn’t bear the hum of the hydro engine or its smoke.

Tyranni tripped and nearly fell. The sidewalk was playing games on her now, moving when it wasn’t supposed to. She gave it a good kick. Her wristwatch buzzed. She tapped the screen and cast out her arm. A hologram emerged, floating beside her.

Her favorite Holovision show, Late Nights with Elvis, was playing. ….

“Good evening! Tonight, our guest is someone I’ve been trying to book on the show for a while now. He’s a professor at Faber University, researching the structures of personality. Everyone, please give it up for Dr. Karev McCoy!”

“Happy to be here, Elvis.”

“Now, Karev, you recently published your book ‘Notes on the Psyche,’ and well, did you see it getting this much attention?”

“Absolutely not. When I first began my research, the idea was to get my thoughts on paper, and maybe someone would read it. But never in my wildest dreams did I see it being widely received.”

“So, your book is written from an Id’s perspective, right?”

“Yes.”

“What drove you to write about Ids?”

“Well, in light of the recent attacks, I think we are too quick to judge Ids, hate them. But we could learn from them.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Id is a remarkable being, deserving of our study. Freud said it’s primitive but powerful, obsessed with immediate gratification. Even self-preservation. The Ego must be strong enough to contain it, or else we’ll succumb.”

“Yes, but...?”

“I mean, all our motivations come from Ids. They are our deepest desires. They are a part of us. And if we were to lose grip with reality, our Id could take over. ”

“You can’t seriously be suggesting that Ids come from ”

We interrupt your program to bring you this important message: it is now a quarter past ten. Please vacate all public areas and return to your homes. There have been five Id attacks this week. Investigators are still trying to discover what triggers the Id transformation. If anyone is caught out past curfew, they will be charged

Tyranni rolled her eyes, turning from the screen. The hologram shrunk down into her watch.

Roses are blue, lilacs are red. You’ll love me again. And the water’s dry, the fire’s cold. Loving you…loving you…

“Jules? What is loving you like?” she asked herself.

An hour passed, and still, the alcohol clung to her tongue. That tracked. Loving you ’ s a bottle of Titos.

Splaying her fingers across her chest, she thought of Jules, her mother, and wondered if tonight would be any different. Would Jules show concern for Tyranni returning late? Would she greet Tyranni with open arms?

Tyranni smiled. Of course, mothers always cared for their children; it was in their DNA. A mother can only be mad at her child for so long.

Something hard knocked Tyranni onto the concrete. She licked her dry lips and turned on her back to regain the air that had been knocked out of her lungs. A few breaths away, there was the sound of ruffled clothes and hushed murmurs. Suddenly, a woman ’ s face hovered over Tyranni.

“I am so sorry! I wasn’t looking! I’m in a rush! Here. Let me help you up. ” She bent down to steady Tyranni, wrapping her in a warm embrace.

Tyranni took in the woman ’ s leotard, crumpled tutu, and bumblebee scarf. This is what I get for minding my own damn business. I get run down by peasants.

“Again, I am so sorry!” The woman dusted off Tyranni’s dress. “I didn’t realize how late it was, and my daughter’s all by herself. She hates being home alone.”

“It’s fine.” There was something irritating about this woman, this mother.

Her thoughts were cut short by a loud Brring! of a phone. The woman shyly patted her pockets.

“Hi, honey. Yes, Mommy’s on her way. I know you ’ re scared.” She gave Tyranni an apologetic smile. “I’ll be with you soon. Why don’t you stay on the phone with Mommy? Would that make you feel better?”

When was the last time Jules had bothered to call Tyranni?

The woman pulled away from the phone, covering it with her hand. She looked at Tyranni, muttering a quick “Sorry for bumping into you! Get home safe!” before running down the street.

Tyranni couldn’t help staring after her. Her bumblebee scarf flapped in the wind. Tyranni scoffed as the woman ’ s “Family > Everything” metal pin glistened from her book bag. The woman was irritatingly maternal. Yet, how nice would it be to have a parent like that? For a moment, Tyranni was rendered a child once again. She followed the woman into a nearby alleyway.

The woman dashed around bulky solar-powered waste processors, still on the phone with her daughter. In the shadows, Tyranni could hear the woman humming a lullaby before saying, “I’m coming up the smart escape now, baby. Okay?”

The woman climbed the rickety stairs, LED lights casting her back and scarf in a warm honey glow. At the top, she pressed her thumb against a fingerprint sensor next to a door. When the door beeped green, it popped open, and a small figure jumped onto the woman.

“Shhh,” said the woman as she picked up her daughter, carrying her inside the tiny apartment. “Mommy’s home now. ”

Tyranni crept closer, tripping over her own feet on the stairs. She peered into the window next to the door. Inside, the woman wiped her daughter’s tears with her palm and kissed her tiny forehead. As Tyranni watched the little girl snuggle into the crook of the woman ’ s neck, she dared to dream. Pressing her hand against the windowpane, Tyranni imagined Jules and her in that apartment. In her head, Jules brushed her curls back and apologized for all those nights she left Tyranni to grieve alone.

A gutter cat hopped onto the railing and hissed at Tyranni, startling her from her daydream. Time slowed as she tried too late to stop her body from lurching backward. With a loud thud, she tumbled down the stairs and hit the pavement. A sharp pain shot through her ankle as it rolled awkwardly under her weight. The snap of bone was loud against the quiet of the night. Pissed, Tyranni sought the pest that caused her fall and hissed at it.

The walk home was sobering as she put her weight on her good leg. When her eyes graced that familiar glass railing of her front porch, she thought of Jules. How would she react? Would she say anything?

Opening the door wasn’t as hard as she thought it would be. It was hobbling inside and dragging her fractured ankle across the newly mopped floor.

When she turned to lock the door, she almost slipped on the wet floor. For God’s sake, Molly, she thought. Or was it Michelle? It was hard to remember the help these days.

She needed to find her brother, Ty. His medical degree could finally serve her purpose.

A light flickered to her left.

She turned to see who was in the kitchen but lost her footing. Tyranni’s knee cracked against the floor. Another burst of white, hot pain shot through her ankle. She moaned. Footsteps approached.

Tyranni raised her head.

It was her mother, Jules.

Tyranni watched as cold eyes took in her swollen ankle, the bruises, the tears in her Chanel dress everything but her. And she watched her mother leave to turn on the TV behind her.

“I could be bleeding to death, and she would still remain glued to that TV,” Tyranni whispered. It would never be enough. I would never be enough.

Her mother scooted closer to the TV.

Look at me, dammit.

Tyranni rose from the floor.

Look, look, look …

She reached for the shelves nearby.

“Look at me, you miserable old woman!” she screamed.

Glass shattered.

She grabbed a picture frame, and another, and another.

“What about me?”

“I’m still here!”

“I still need you!”

Before she thought of it, a chair thwacked against the shelves. The coffee table was next. Then, the records.

Arms seized her shoulders: Ty.

“Rinny! What happened? Shh. It’s okay, Rinny! It’s okay!”

Tyranni elbowed her brother in the nose and knocked him onto the floor.

She saw the smoke and crumpled car hood all over again. She heard the crunch of glass and metal. Jules screamed, dissipating the image.

Tyranni rounded on her.

Ty rushed to block her path. “Rinny, please. Calm down.”

“You’re not Dad! You can’t keep telling me what to do!” she yelled.

His face crumpled. “I know. I know. And I could never replace him. You know that ”

“It’s her fault!” Jules shouted. “It’s her fault he didn’t see that car swerve into the lane. She took him from us!”

It was the first time that Jules had acknowledged her in years. Yet, Tyranni balled her fists. “I was eight!”

Jules snarled. “It doesn’t change anything! Your dad is never coming back because of you!”

“Enough!” Ty yelled.

“You can’t play victim forever.”

“If only God did me the kindness of killing me, too, so I could be with him now!”

Tears pricked Tyranni’s eyes. “I know you miss him. But we all miss him! We lost him, too!”

Jules shook her head. “George was an excellent driver. Never ran a light. Never cut anyone off. But that night, he couldn’t ignore your damn screaming!”

“That’s enough!” Ty reeled on their mother.

“Oh, yes. Protect her like a savior,” she chuckled. “No amount of help is going to change anything. George should be here. Not your sister.”

“What do you think Dad would say if he were here? If he saw how you ignored your own dau ”

“I buried my daughter the day I buried my husband.”

Something in Tyranni died. Time slowed as she watched all the memories of her and Jules crumble before her eyes. Every kiss, every embrace, every word of comfort whispered to her as a child fractured into jagged pieces. Every “I love you ” warped into “she’s no daughter of mine” until the mother she knew was gone.

Tyranni’s Ego urged her to hold on to the shards of her memories, but they cut too deep. Her Ego screamed to take a deep breath, to restrain herself, but the Id underneath was much louder.

Her rage became palpable and coursed through her veins. Rage transformed her into a vessel of wrath. She stopped caring about consequences. She only cared about this new instinct as it tore through her, demanding to be fed.

Slowly, the Id Tyranni approached Jules in the darkness.

We begin this morning with devasting news: Authorities have confirmed that Jules Forb was found dead late last night. The body was discovered early this morning at her family’s apartment in Brovos, and police are actively investigating. As of now, no suspects have been named. Police are asking for anyone with information on the whereabouts of Tyranni or Tiberius Forb to come forward.

THE SPARROW’S GAMBIT

Getting to the enemy base undetected was the easy part. The stolen clearance codes ensured they weren’t shot down before the heist began. If all went well, they’d be off-planet with the goods by the time anyone knew they were there.

Onboard the Sparrow, Zara’s leg bounced with anxiety. Her first mission for the Vanguard Freedom Fighters was to keep the ship’s engines hot. While her sister, Elise, led a team to steal weapon crates from the Dominion Army. The stolen gray jumpsuit of the Dominion itched, a reminder of the enemies who were responsible for her parents’ deaths two years ago.

A sliver of light shone across the rainy platform when the base’s doors opened. Two large containers moved on hover carts. Her four fellow crew members ran alongside them. The cargo door of the Sparrow opened as she hit the release. Half a dozen enemy soldiers chased after them, firing their rifles as Zara ran to the back to help onboard the crates. She began pulling one towards their ship.

“Get back to the cockpit!” Elise yelled, taking cover behind a nearby wall. She drew her pistol and fired off a few rounds toward those chasing them. Her gun blazed with red laser blasts, casting an eerie glow in the darkness. But Zara ignored her and helped secure the first weapons crate to the deck. She wanted to prove to her sister that she could be as good as her.

Laser fire filled the air as the team’s marksman, Thane, joined the fray, firing at the soldiers. A few of the soldiers’ bodies crumpled to the ground as Darius provided cover fire from behind the second crate. Zara and Caleb worked together to lock the first crate down as the firefight ensued. The rain made their task more difficult as they moved to load the second crate.

Thane fired a few rounds, running to the nearby cover provided by the platform’s walls. Right before he reached the protection of the wall, another rifle shot split the air. Hitting Thane in the chest, his legs faltered beneath him, and he fell to the ground, motionless. “No!!” Zara screamed, moving towards her friend’s body, lying still on the wet platform. Tears filled her eyes.

“Zara,” Elise grabbed her arm. “Thane is gone. Get back to the ship!” Zara raced to her seat and prepped for takeoff, lightning off in the distance catching her eye. They were running short on time. Her sister pulled back from her cover and retreated towards the ship’s hatch. The woman shouted, “Caleb?” She fired again, and another enemy went down.

“We’re all set!” Caleb responded. Elise almost made it inside the hatch when a red beam caught her in the side of her stomach, and she fell back. Caleb grabbed her and dragged her inside the hatch. “Go!” he barked. Zara shook and took one last look at Thane’s lifeless body. She pressed the button to close the door, pushed the throttle forward, and the Sparrow took off.

The stinging tears burned her eyes as she took the craft higher. She wiped the rain out of her face, risked looking back at her sister, and saw her wincing in pain. Blood darkened her gray jumpsuit around the side of her midsection.

“Is she going to be okay?” Zara asked. Darius removed a stim-shot out of his medical kit and plunged the small metal cylinder into Elise’s arm, and a small hiss came from the device. While Zara worried about her sister, she found it distracting to pilot the ship.

“She’ll be okay; the stim will help numb her pain for now, ” Darrius said, wiping the sweat off his bald head with his sleeve. Her sister’s voice came from behind her through gritted teeth.

“I’m fine. Darius, help me strap in.” The man lifted her with her arm draped over his shoulders, her other hand gripping the side of her wound. Zara focused her attention back on flying the Sparrow. Her console in front of her pinged a warning. “Strap yourselves in. We’ve got company, ” she said. The rest of the crew listened as they took their seats parallel to the ship’s wall. The rain picked up and came down harder now.

The vessel lurched to the side, which made her stomach queasy. Two red laser bolts lanced past the viewport, right where they had been a moment before. Zara had many hours of training, though she had never been in combat before. The Sparrow was a defenseless cargo ship. This wasn’t supposed to be a combat operation. The crates they stole were full of rifles and handguns the Vanguard needed.

The pitch-black sky was unhelpful, forcing her to rely on their systems to navigate their escape through the rain.

“How many of them are there?” Elise asked.

“Five!” Zara yelled as she pushed the stick forward, and the Sparrow dove, then pulled back to dodge another shot. The craft jolted forward as the ship took a hit.

The fighters gained on them and would soon overwhelm them. They couldn’t escape.

“Can we lose them?” Darius asked. A lightning flash in the distance to Zara’s right caught her attention.

“Maybe?” she said, jerking the yoke to the right. The speed caused everyone to fall as far as their restraints would allow them.

“Are you insane?” Darius asked from his seat beside Elise. “We can’t survive the storm!”

“Well, then neither can they!” Zara snapped.

The thunderstorm appeared to grow as they got closer. The ships were still in pursuit, and the Sparrow took another hit. They made it inside the storm, sheets of rain cascading over the vessel. Only some metal and her piloting were keeping them alive. The gales caught hold of the craft and shook the ship as she struggled to steady the yoke.

“Did they follow us?” Darius asked. It was hard to hear him over the roar outside.

“Only a few of them,” Zara said, double-checking her instruments.

“We still have three on our tail.” She maneuvered the ship, dodging side to side, when a bright flash and loud crack filled the sky. The storm hammered the vessel on all sides. Another flash. Another boom of the thunder’s roar.

Zara tightened her grip around the yoke; her knuckles were now white. Her jumpsuit was now soaked from both rain and sweat. She looked at their radar.

“Shit! They’re getting closer.” The ship shook as an enemy shot found its mark on the hull. The beeping of the computer systems told her they couldn’t take another hit like that. Then it dawned on her. They can still see us on their radars.

“Hold on back there! I’m going to try something.” Zara ignored any protests after that. She flipped a few switches, the cabin went dark, and the sound of the engines died. The planet’s gravity took over and pulled them back toward the surface.

“What are you doing?!” Caleb said. Two of the remaining fighters streaked past the plunging ship.

“Trying to lose them! If you could all be quiet for a moment!” she snapped back. They all stopped talking. The enemies rotated to get a shot at them. A bright blue-white flash of lightning penetrated through one of the fighter’s wings, and the surrounding metal erupted in flame. It crashed into the ship next to it, creating one large plume of fire dropping from the sky.

With a few flicks of switches, the ship’s engines came to life. She pushed the throttle forward and pulled the craft into a climb. Bits of scrap metal scraped against the hull as the Sparrow raced past the fallen fighters. “The last fighter turned back!” Zara shouted. They only had one thing left to do: survive the storm. The ship shuddered as the rain and gales drummed on the hull.

Another bolt of lightning was far too close for comfort, and she thought they would get struck at any second. The thunderstorm continued to rage around them stronger than before, shaking the Sparrow. Zara closed her eyes. Please let us survive this. She opened her eyes. Another flash of light, and... BOOM! She gritted her teeth as she fought against the storm’s might.

After enduring the unrelenting torrent, the Sparrow finally broke through the final wave of dark clouds. Silence filled the ship for a moment. The light of the sunrise broke through the atmosphere in pinks and oranges. She exhaled. They made it. Now they could get the weapons back to the Vanguard and turn the tide of the war against the Dominion Army.

“I don’t know about you, ” Zara said as she turned back to her sister and her team. “But I’m asking for a raise when we get back.” The others laughed at this. Relief filled their voices as they complimented her on her piloting.

“Zara,” Elise said, “ you are one crazy pilot.” Her face broke out into a smile. “Welcome to the team.”

Zara’s heart leaped at the rare compliment from her sister. She had been eager to make her proud, and now she’d finally done so. Elation filled her as she returned the smile. “Let’s go home,” Zara said, pulling back on the yoke as they soared into the morning sky. The Sparrow climbed higher until the blackness of space was in front of them. At that moment, Zara knew she could be like her sister and brave any storm.

LEGACY

Griffith said nothing had been touched. There were things to go over and papers to sign but, yes, he understood she’d been driving for two days and needed to rest and, as he put it, “gather herself” first. They could meet tomorrow, or even Friday, whatever was best for her.

Marie had no idea what was best for her, but she didn’t say that. She didn’t care at this point. Really, all she wanted was to feel. The numbness which had engulfed her since mom had called and told her about Gram, the suffocating sense of being encased in cotton, was still very much with her. She thanked Griffith and took the keys and walked out into the bright, lateafternoon sun. She paused a second, forgetting momentarily in the glare where she had parked, then circled the big brick Victorian that served as his office and climbed into her old Civic. The seat felt a little too deep and familiar after the road trip, but she did not have far to go now. The car started on the second try.

Marie drove past the house twice. The third time, she caught sight the rocking chair on the porch, peeking out from behind the untrimmed taxus along the front, and that brought her to a stop. She parked and looked again, and then once more, to assure herself that this house— grimier certainly and, impossibly, so much smaller than it used to be was indeed the one. Only then did she slide out of the car, stretch, and climb the off-kilter stairway to the front porch. The chair was there, like a signpost on memory ’ s highway. Most of the scene was falling into a familiar-enough pattern now that the chair had pointed the way, and the chair itself was proof enough that she’d arrived. Eight years had passed, but it looked exactly how she remembered: the long curved slats, the coat of white paint decorated with red and pink roses that was polished to a shine in the seat and worn through to the wood at the ends of the arms, where Gram’s thin hands had rested as she rocked slowly back and forth. Marie could almost see her there now. It was, she realized suddenly, the only time she could recall when those hands had been still. Gram was a doer, and Marie’s memories of her a constant blur of motion: gardening, cooking, canning, cleaning. As if she were bursting with excess energy, Gram had sung while she worked wordless melodies that hung in Marie’s mind in broken, half-formed bunches and jangled like windchimes—or, when she did not sing, muttered to herself under her breath.

It occurred to Marie just then that all that motion, the pouring forth and bottling up of days of her grandmother’s days, had come to a halt. The suddenness of it was so sharp her knees shuddered, and she nearly took a seat. She remembered, however, that no one else ever sat in Gram’s chair. As a child, she’d sat instead on the weathered, whitewashed porch floor, next to Gram’s feet, and toyed with the laces of Gram’s old white gardening sneakers while she listened to her stories. Gram told the most wonderful tales, full of talking rabbits and thoughtful snails and young foxes who were always late for dinner. The stories had rolled forth slowly Gram’s lips, with a shuttling rhythm borrowed from the chair swinging beneath her. Marie, had, of course, hung on every word and, as each story ended, howled for another. She was Gram’s darling; everyone, even mom, had acknowledged that she was Gram’s little girl.

At least, that was, until eight years ago. Mom had decided to move to San Antonio, a decision that made as little sense to Marie now as it had it had to her at age ten. Mom had traded a house that was paid for in a city full of friends for a rundown apartment in a town where she had no one and the same underpaid job in a different branch office of the same idiotic corporation. The whole thing had felt odd to Marie then, and it had only felt odder as the years spooled by. The most singular thing about the whole transition was how Gram simply ceased to exist afterwards. For years now Marie had assumed, without articulating it to herself, that Gram had simply been too hurt by the departure to maintain a relationship with her daughter and granddaughter. Standing there now, flat-footed and alone before Gram’s rocker, Marie came to a horrified realization: the purpose of moving to San Antonio had been to get away for Gram.

The thought slugged her in the gut. Her vision wobbled and she allowed gravity to deposit her, after all, into the chair. It tilted back lazily under her weight, then forward again with an easy motion. It was like the gentle sway of a branch in the breeze, and the naturalness of it soothed her even while her thoughts continued to rocket. In the wake of her realization, things she’d not understood came sharply into focus: her mother’s vagaries when asked about the reason for the move; her inability to find the time and means to return, not once, to visit Gram in Ohio; her apparent (although always vehemently denied) hostility to the occasional letters that Marie and Gram had exchanged. The only thing that did not seem clear was why all this had happened, what had driven her mother away? Neither woman had spoken at least not to Marie about it. Despite their silence, though, she found that she was certain about it: her mother had left Ohio in order to get away from Gram. More specifically, to get Marie away.

Marie gripped the arms of the chair and let their solidity still her rocking soul. She had no proof, of course, that any of this was true, but she didn’t need proof. She felt the full, hard, rounded mass of the truth in her gut. A second realization hit her then, and it made her feet slap the floor with a force that stopped all movement, both within and without: none of it made any difference. She was here now, and that was all that mattered. Neither her mother’s flight nor the separation had driven her from Gram’s heart, or Gram from hers. She thought back to mom ’ s call, how she immediately knew she was going and was just a confident that mom would find an excuse not to. She’d brushed away the obstacles mom threw in her path would she be able to get off work? Didn’t she have class on Tuesday morning? and listened while the voice at the other end of the line wound down to a taciturn mumble. The sound of a woman realizing that her sacrifices had come to nothing, that she was, all at once and quite unexpectedly, going to lose that battle for her daughter’s heart.

Marie snorted. Listen to yourself, the battle for your heart. You obviously need to get some sleep. She rose from the rocking chair and fumbled in her purse for the keys Griffith had provided. As her fingers closed around the hard metal jumble, the brutal truth bore down upon her. No matter how much she wished this was a reunion, Gram was gone. She was here as her heir, not her guest.

Still, when she unbolted the front door and pushed it open, the air that greeted her had smelled, felt, unmistakably of Gram. There was a whiff of yeast and of flour. A fragment of interrupted song hung in the gloom of the front room. Marie hurried forward and caught at the thick drapes. She drew them back and allowed the afternoon sunlight to flood the room, highlighting the billowing sparks of drapery-dust as it rushed in. The fit of sneezing that erupted from her then . . . four. . . five . . . six? she lost count . . . reminded her of the great strings of sneezes that would overtake Gram every night when she had finished dinner. It all brought a quick prickle to the back of her neck. It felt, oddly, like a homecoming or, perhaps, as if something were being bestowed up on her.

She needed to go out and fetch her suitcase; she was, of course, exhausted after the drive and needed a shower and dinner. She needed to drop into a long night’s sleep, and she needed to call mom and let her know she’d arrived in one piece. But instead of all this she found herself again taking a seat, dropping this time into the deep welcome of Gram’s old mission armchair and sitting, a bit stiffly this time, with an air of expectancy.

Expecting what she couldn’t have said, but the very air had a sense of being full of unopened envelopes and packages, things stored and waiting, her name scribbled on their fronts in Gram’s thin, tight script. It was implicit in the will that had left her everything. There had to be something in the way of explanation for a gift she had neither sought nor expected. And more than that: she needed something, too, that provided a more complete portrait of Gram herself. She had only a child’s memories of Gram, hazy bits of remembered fun and games, childish confidences and conferences, sun-drenched afternoons in the bread-suffused warmth of the kitchen or the flower-drenched garden. Certainly they were good memories, and certainly Gram had loved her, but Gram had five children and here she counted quickly to herself eleven, no, twelve, twelve, grandchildren. How did Marie rate as the sole heir? She was neither the oldest grandchild nor youngest nor prettiest nor most charming nor, after the move to San Antonio, the nearest, either. She was, all things considered, nothing much at all. If, as she reminded herself, the inheritance also amounted to nothing much, consisted indeed almost exclusively so far as she knew of the little house where she now stood and the old Chevy Cavalier in the driveway, it was still more than enough to make her pause and ask why. She felt a thin smile cross her lips, and she imagined Gram standing before her in the middle of the parlor rug, hands on her hips and shaking her head. Marie knew sitting there with her hands folded in her lap wasn’t going provide answers or get anything else done, for that matter. He pushed herself up out of the chair, hurried out to the car, and carried in her suitcase, which she left for the moment just inside the door. She could carry it up when it was time for bed. Then she wandered into the kitchen to see what, if anything, she might put together for dinner. There wasn’t much, but there was bread, slightly stale but good for toasting. Gram’s bread, the last of it, with a heavy crust dappled with oats. She cut two thick slices and grilled a cheese sandwich; the scent of it while it heated made her memory ache and her mouth water. She found a can of tomato soup in the pantry and ate the sandwich standing in the middle of the kitchen’s scarred linoleum floor, chasing crusty mouthfuls with sips of soup from an old chipped mug she took out of the dish drainer.

There was a pile of papers and mail on the corner of the old Formica-topped kitchen table. Marie almost dropped into a chair again, but she resisted the temptation; she was tired enough that getting up might be a problem. Instead, she sat her plate and cup on the table and leaned over the stack, shuffling through the sheath of junk mail and advertising circulars. As she flipped through the papers, something else came into view a small, brown leather-bound book.

Marie blinked, then reached for it slowly. It was Gram’s notebook my memory, Gram called it. So far as she recalled, Gram’s memory had never been out of her reach. Marie could picture her now, shuffling the pages, lips mumbling over her notes, mouthing recalcitrant facts back into her reality. Marie flipped it open and fanned the pages. A faint odor of petals rose from the leaves. Images of Gram kaleidoscoped through her head. The old leather felt like a soft hand in her palm. She flipped to the front and saw that date at the beginning: May 15th 1963. She did the math quickly: Gram’s 18 th birthday. She was surprised, because she’d always assumed Gram’s book had been a product of her later years, a tool she’d developed as her memory started to slip. She flipped the onionskin pages and watched the years pass. The notes were arrayed neatly within, all in Gram’s crisp script. There were hundreds of them. She flipped to the end and saw that the entries continued until the bottom the very last page. The last note simply said: Leave book for Marie.

Marie’s breath caught in her throat. She looked up. The sunlight was streaming in the kitchen window and reflecting from the table’s chrome edge into her eyes. Something was close. The day, the summer . . . no, more than that time, a twist of the universe itself seemed to hang there in the brightness, pregnant, bursting. Her throat filled with wonder and fear. She had only, it seemed, to reach out and clutch it to her, if only she knew how. She tried to gather it, and, as she moved, the glare receded. As her vision cleared, she saw, on the table, another brown-covered book, just like the one she held in her hands. The world trembled then, for she knew it had not been there a moment before. Her fingers grazed its cover, felt the warm leather, confirmed that it was real. She picked it up and turned to the first page.

There, in her own scratchy handwriting, was her name and today’s date. Something clattered to the floor and, looking down, she saw an old, yellow stub of pencil. She picked it up, but discovered that she had no idea what to write. There was a roaring in her head from which she could not extract words.

Marie sat her book and pencil down and flipped instead through the pages of Gram’s book.

In the later pages, most of the entries were only a few words long, the longest just a sentence or, perhaps, two. Sary’s birthday renewal first of Feb and Maxton again or Jackie says Paul has new secretary needs fixed ASAP. Mysterious notes, but not cryptic just personal fragments wanting context. It was like reading the answers on a fill-in-the-blank test with the rest of the text removed. Deadhead the peonies before the last petals brown, rice paper.

Then remember the trimmings and then get lock from Susan. She flipped further back in the book, further into the past, and saw some of the older notes were longer.

As she read, Marie it was as though she could hear Gram’s voice speaking the words to her. Gather and dry Mayapple roots in October sun after the last leaves have withered. Store in paper wrapper. Will last a year or two. Steep two in boiling water for a strong tea. Drink the whole cup while hot in the first light of morning. Two or three days until the work is done. None of this information surprised her. She knew she was reading this for the first time, but somehow it was still familiar, comfortable. Pulp fresh Goldenseal leaves, strain. Take two to three tablespoonsful at moonrise and chase with honey & lemon in water. For seizures, she thought, although she did not know where the thought came from. She folded the book closed over her finger. She scoured her mind for memories of Gram reading to her from the old book, but nothing came. She could remember hours spent with Gram out back in the garden, and Gram chatting idly about her herbs and flowers while she prepped beds and pulled weeds. She recalled nothing like this, however. She flipped the pages. Crush a sprig of basil and dust and article of your beloved’s clothing. Something worn next to the skin work better, near the heart best. That, she knew, was to encourage fidelity.

Her head drifted lazily as she sat the book back on the table next to its twin, the one that bore her name, and tried to salvage the unravelling edge of her consciousness. Marie felt no fear or panic, only deep confusion and a growing sense that something was wrong no, not wrong, just deeply and unspeakably different. She needed air. Leaning across the table, one flat palm pressed to its warm top, she flipped the window latches and lifted the sash. The gentle breeze that surged in, fluttering the white café curtains, was welcome but insufficient. She found herself instead sliding the chain off the door and, with a twist of the old glass knob, stepping onto the back stoop. Here, the air was fresher and cooler and better. However, the strangeness pulsing through her did not abate. Indeed, the otherness in the afternoon light seemed more distinct as the air worked to clear her mind. The world around her seemed ripe to bursting with something, although she hesitated to give that ineffable quality a name. The only name that seemed to fit, that filled her mind and throat, was as impossible as it was simple: Gram.

Marie was half-way across back yard before she’d thought, particularly, about moving. Her feet fell naturally into the path Gram’s had worn from the old cement stairs to the garden gate. The leaves of the oak overhead whispered in the breeze; she could almost make out their words. She paused at the white picket gate and looked in.

Gram’s garden was exactly as she remembered it: tidy rows of herbs and a few vegetables on the left, the bright arrays of roses and wildflowers to the right. In the middle, centered among a spiral of stepping stones that led from the gate, was a big Adirondack chair.

She fumbled momentarily with the latch. Then she had it, the gate swung inward, and she stepped through. In that moment, the quiet of the garden exploded around her. The world pulsed and jumped into her, filling her with new angles of vision, layers of force, stories she’d never dreamt. She felt the dryness of the soil seep into her bones and the bright shafts of pain created by the invasions of stray grass into the edges of the herb bed. Dandelions snarled and howled like wolves, while the aching need of the bumblebees that droned among the blossoms filled her gut with a strange pity. All this, and much more, hit her in a frantic rush; it was a monsoon of sensation rather than thoughts, a raw opening to the world that arrived with a kind of haphazard empathy and left in its wake for it did recede, mercifully, as quickly as it had arose—a kind of weak terror at the inarticulate strife of the world.

Marie nearly turned back then. Part of her wanted to run, to escape that garden and return to the house, the car, perhaps even San Antonio. She grasped now in some ageless, nameless hollow in the bottom of her abdomen the fear that had driven her mother away. But she did not run. Despite her fear she was convinced, even as the flood of strange sensations faded, that she now possessed new access to the things around her, that she had annexed another language and experience. Most of all, she still sensed a warmth, a familiar presence despite the strangeness. It was, after all, Gram who had brought her to the gate, and Gram’s benediction was still felt. Indeed, it was the dominant pulse. It tore away that muffled numbness that had been choking her and allowed the tears of loss she’d known were there to spring, finally, to her eyes. She wiped her cheeks and looked about her. What did her fears matter? This was where she belonged.

The air hummed in anticipation of her next step, and when she took it, she set her foot gently upon the turf, half expecting the world to burst forth with another stanza. That it did not was, she felt, only the extension of a rest, the lengthened space between the movements of a vast and uproarious symphony. Compelled by the world’s silence, her hands fluttered forward, sought and found a cluster of small, yellow flowers and cupped them. In that moment, as she leaned to them and let their bright fragrance fill her nose, she found she knew everything about them how the soil should not be too moist when they spouted, how they would reseed themselves easily in the garden and that more could be gathered, if needed, from the meadow

at the east end of Blackberry Pond Park, how Pat Murphy needed them for rheumatism and gout, how Marie should dry another root-batch for tea so Helen Bancroft would not have to go back on that water pill. The knowledge did not come in a flood, or even a stream. It was simply there, as if it always had been. Startled, she released the mass of blossoms, but the new knowledge remained a part of her. Slowly, she stepped forward again and caught a stem of Queen Anne’s Lace in her left hand, and doing so she learned that she needed to lay some root aside in case Jerry Cronin got another kidney stone.

Slowly, she toured the garden, touching each plant and learning, she knew, all the things Gram would have told her over the last eight years if she had been allowed to stay in Ohio. With each new leaf she turned, the garden revealed more of itself. It was like a vast tome of natural and family history: the secrets and powers of the plants, the mysteries and miracles of Gram’s life, the doubts and fears of her mother all unfolded before her. Each of these understandings would become a part of her, form part of the foundation for her new life in the house Gram had given her.

As wonderful as it all was, and despite the strength that it made surge within her, it was huge, too. Marie shuffled to the chair in the center of the garden and sat. Surely, she could not remember everything the garden wanted to teach her. Her thoughts turned then the book inside on the table, to the notes that he had to write. Still, now would she manage to capture it all? The question hung there in the forefront of her mind, and she paused. She knew so little, her need was so complete. She felt the heavy hands of the clock circling, circling and, dizzied, she was overtaken by a whirl of something that felt, almost, like panic. How much time did she have before all this faded, before things went mute and left her alone? Then the answer came to her, and it came in an unspoken voice so strong and clear she knew it was Gram’s: time enough.

SECRET DATE

What a moron. ” Jacob Kumar, co-captain of the 10th grade dance team stared down his rival as he interrupted his routine.

“What a pansy. ” Chester Jefferson, quarterback of the football team said as he stared the boy right back.

The two were famous rivals throughout the school. The Dancer vs the Baller was a source for gossip every week for sophomores and freshmen nonstop.

Not again…” Jacob turned to find his partner captain, Lindsey coming back to get the last of her things following the end of Dance club. “Do you guys literally have nothing better to do but fight?”

“She’s not wrong, Chester did you literally walk all the way over here from the football field just to fight him?” Another friend of Jacob’s named Liam added.

Chester scoffed. “I was just on my way to my locker to get something when I walked by and saw this loser twirling around in his tights.”

The Indian teen snapped back. “At least I look better in these tights than your puffy excuse for a football suit.”

“Uniform dummy!” The jock corrected.

The two went back and forth in front of their captive audience before Liam checked the time. “Guys! We gotta go!” He warned, already rushing for the door.

Lindsey raised her eyebrow and checked the time too. “Come on Jacob, we have to go now if we want to make Rob’s volleyball game in time.” She scurried off with Liam. “Try not to kill each other.”

Both ignored her and continued spouting insults for another minute until they were sure the two were gone. Once it seemed certain, their glares softened. “How was that Chess?” Jacob warned, his scowl now replaced with a faint smirk. He was happy to use his nickname again.

Chester smiled warmly. “Pretty good. Nobody suspected a thing.”

Jacob crossed his arms with a prying look. “So you don’t actually hate my dance suit?”

“Nah.” The jock said as he walked behind the dancer and let his eyes wander downwards. “It’s tight in the back so it’s perfect.”

It took Jacob a second to catch the remark before he blushed at his devious smirk and spun around.

“Here dummy.” Chester said, handing him a note.

“Really? You know I snuck you my number for texts last week for a reason right?”

“I am not risking my texts getting hacked. You ever see the movie Red, White & Royal Blue?”

He shook the page. “Come on, I’m actually a little late for getting home so just take it.”

Jacob rolled his eyes and took the note as his secret partner bid him a farewell and left. Cracking open the note and surprised to see the notion scribbled inside.

A secret date. Tomorrow at 7.

You and me. ***

The following day came faster than Jacob could prepare for mentally. Though he had come up with ideas on what to do and suited up in his typical hoodie and headphones, he just couldn’t believe they were actually going to start officially dating. His phone rang, showing the jock on the caller ID.

Jacob looked at the sleazy picture of Chaz and rolled his eyes. “What a poser. ” He chuckled. From that stupid overboard letterman jacket and the flashy hair. Not to mention his ripped muscles and… cologne. His racing thoughts spiraled. Oh who am I kidding? He’s a snack! Jacob cleared his throat and set the picture down. “How did I ever end up falling for such a punk? And better yet, how did he catch feelings for me?” Just three months ago, they actually despised each other for real and the insults they traded weekly were genuine.

Then one day while leading his dance team, he left to go get his water in the locker room he forgot and found Chester asleep after running multiple laps and muttering his name and a confession of affection like a lovesick child. He tried to snatch his stuff and sneak out but the jock snapped awake and realized what he was muttering. After an awkward taunt session, Jacob started to feel a little something after seeing him in a vulnerable state for the first time.

Jacob just sighed thinking about how things got this far and answered the phone. Shortly after, he stepped down the porch to find Chester in his typical letterman fit just as in the picture.

“Yo, you ready Kumar?” Chester asked

“As ready as I’ll ever be for this nightmare of a night.” Needless to say, neither had yet accepted the reality of their circumstances. First up on the night they never thought would happen was a little dinner. Jacob waved Chester up as they stood in front of a fancy dinner that specialized in the utmost unique seafood culinary, imported from overseas. It was near impossible to get in without wearing a fancy suit.

“Chess, see that restaurant over there?”

“The place with all the stuck up buzzkills?”

“What? No screw that place. We’ll be going to the one next to it,” Chester snapped his gaze to the left to find a cluttered and greasy fast food joint where nobody had any qualms with how they looked going inside.

Chess just smirked, with a bit of relief. “At least you got good taste Kumar.”

A while later, both boys chewed down on their burger and fries. A pristine dinner. “Not bad, but this place always gives a little too much ketchup.”

“What’s wrong Kumar? Can’t hold your condiments?” Chester snickered.

Jacob rolled his eyes while chewing. “Do you always have to refer to me by my last name?”

The jock had another remark ready when a familiar voice had both of them dropping their burgers. “Hold on, Jacob, Chester is that you?”

“Crap…” Jacob snapped back to find a couple of his friends, Rob and Liam peeking over the seat behind them.

“Knew I heard your voice.” Liam said.

Rob was much more suspicious. “I thought ya’ll hated each other. What are you doing here together?”

Both boys were stuck for an answer. “Uh, that’s just it! He challenged me to see who could eat the most burgers here and I’m slamming him!” Jacob announced, jumping up to a defense.

Chess grimaced, and leaped up. “No way, I’d never lose to a skinny punk like you!” You can’t be serious. Jacob thought before snatching Chester close by the collar. “Just follow my lead and they won’t suspect anything else dummy.”

“Well you must’ve just gotten started considering there’s only one burger. Here, my internship is making me bank so I’ll chip in.” Liam offered, pulling out his wallet.

“N-No bud, you don’t really have to-” But it was too late.

“Hey, let’s get 16 double bacon burgers over here, on me!”

Both boys went pale on the face and uttered the same thing to each other. “Crap…”

Jacob and Chester groaned as they stumbled out down the road once more, barely able to hold themselves together after scarfing down a mountain of food.

“Told you… I wouldn’t lose…” The jock taunted through his pain.

Jacob just whacked him on the shoulder. “I can’t believe you actually tried to turn it into a competition. I said just follow my lead but no!”

“Should we just call it a night?”

Jacob shook his head and whipped out his phone, opening an email. “Nah, I already paid for these movie tickets. We’re going to go see K.I. Moe Vengeance.”

“Really? I heard that movie was sick. You’re two for two Kumar.”

Settled and seated in the theater, the two were happy to finally take a load off. “Good thing we didn’t have to wait in any concession lines. Let’s digest our food here.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice.” Chester looked into Jacob’s eyes, secretly a little keen on the idea of having some alone time with him. “Anyways… what was it that made you want to do this?”

Jacob blinked in bewilderment. “Oh… well to be honest I-”

“Oh hey, aren’t you Chester McKick from the football team?” An obnoxiously loud girl’s voice shouted from behind them.

“You can’t be serious…” Jacob knew there was only one person who would shout in a theater like that.

Chester looked back with him, quietly cursing at the sight of two students holding stacks of pens and papers. “Chelsea? Percy? What are you guys doing here?”

“Well why wouldn’t we be here? As members of the newspaper it’s important for us to deliver the juiciest scoops and the movie club partnered with us to share their review in our papers. However, we just wanted to see it ourselves to verify.”

Jacob just rolled his eyes at her. With how seriously she took things, it was clear she wanted to break into the actual news industry like yesterday.

“But enough about us, tell us why you ’ re here.” She asked.

Percy leaned close. “Yeah, I heard from Anna who heard from Luke, who heard from Clarissa that you two hated each other’s guts.” Jacob glared at the gossipy pair. He knew they couldn’t risk loud mouths like them finding even the slightest thing out.

Chelsea then started turning the gears in her head. “Wait… at the movies sitting next to each other- are you two hooking up”

Jacob rushed to his feet. “I had the wrong seat!”

Chess raised an eyebrow, watching as he backed off. “Kumar?”

“I… I had the wrong seat, I thought it was this one but I was wrong. I’ll get going now. ”

Chester just laid back in his seat as he watched Jacob tread away to the other side of the theater as the lights dimmed and the movie started. As he walked off, Jacob looked back, sharing the same feeling his attempted date felt. Was it disappointment, frustration, sadness or all three at once.

Chelsea just sighed in disappointment. “Too bad. That would’ve been the story of the year. ”

Two isolated hours later, the two were walking together on their way to Jacob’s home.

“Sorry I couldn’t sit with you at the movies man… ” He apologized, wincing at the awkwardness.

Chester ran his hand through his head. “It’s cool dude, I get it. One wrong move at Chelsea would’ve had a whole article on the school blog by tonight followed by the school papers filled with manga art of us drawn by Percy.”

Jacob let out a stifled laugh. “No doubt about that. At least we can enjoy this park on the way back.” The two took to a bench, taking in the garden park and the starry night to accompany it.

“Not a bad place. Anyway now that we ’ re here, can we talk about that out of nowhere power up Saber Eyes got at the end of the movie?”

Jacob nodded, kicking back. “Yeah no kidding, I thought-”

“Clear out you two!” Yet another intrusive voice yelled out from behind them.

“Son of a- who is it this time?” Jacob whipped around to find a group of teens dressed in green wearing hats with deer antlers on the top.

“Why hello there, I see you two are having a very touching moment but we need you guys to clear the park.” Their leader warned as she looked around, checking the area for something.

“Emma?” Those hats of theirs could not be missed. “The Environment club…” He and Chester sighed together.

“What are you guys even doing here? Seriously I know it’s Friday night but is EVERYONE out?” Chester grimaced.

“Oh please, we environmentalists crave the outdoors.” Emma scoffed.” We don’t need a reason to ever leave our homes.” Her eyes darted back and forth through her speech. “Also, we volunteered to help return an animal that escaped the zoo. ”

One of the other club members chimed in. “I think it was a bobcat cub.”

Jacob nearly slipped off the bench. “A what?”

Don’t worry, lend us a hand and we’ll have it together in no time. Jeremy over there is already working on a tracking device if you can believe it or not.”

Chester took one look at the kid tooling away. “Yeah I don’t believe it.”

“Don’t be so iffy. Join us and your faces will be all over TV together for helping!”

“On TV? Together…” Chester winced at the idea and Jacob was right behind them. The former waved her off and tried to leave with his date but froze at the sight of a little cub gnawing on one of the park lights on the ground.

“Crap!” He stumbled back.

“Is that the bobcat?” Jacob asked.

“What a stroke of luck, don’t move!”

While Emma rallied her team, Jacob couldn’t help but start to sweat as the bobcat turned his attention towards him. “Is it supposed to be looking at me like that?”

“Don’t panic, I mean it’s just a cub. Although it hasn’t eaten in hours, you should be fine as long as you don’t have a meaty smell on you or anything.”

Emma chuckled while the two boys just exchanged a look of fear, remembering their first outing. ***

Jacob dragged himself up the steps of his home as Chester helped him up, both covered in claw marks dealt by a very hungry bobcat cub. Thankfully, they convinced Emma’s team to take all the credit for eventually catching it. Though even if they weren’t dating, Jacob had a feeling nobody would look good with footage of them getting mauled by little thing like that.

“Well this night was… ”

“A bust, just say it.” Chester was low on patience and energy. “Maybe it’s a sign you know? That maybe we really shouldn’t be trying to make this a thing?”

“Oh…” Jacob despite his default stoic look failed to hide the disappointment in his eyes. Chester at the sight.

“I didn’t mean that exactly, I just- man what a night.”

“For real, does nobody stay inside these days?” Jacob sighed. “I’m sure they won’t be stuck alone like me for the night.”

“I’ll say. ” Chester stepped down from the porch. “Maybe we could try again next time?”

“Maybe, assuming a blackout doesn’t happen while we ’ re in the middle of town or something?”

Chester sighed, with a laugh and walked back as Jacob got ready to lock the door when he realized something and stomped right back up the stairs. “Wait, you said your parents are out?”

“Yeah, they flew out this morning for a business conference in Arizona and my sister is in trouble so they brought her along to keep watch. They’ll be back late tomorrow night.”

“As in… a while night and day without any interruptions here?” The jock smirked.

Jacob raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, why-” Finally, it clicked.

Half an hour and some washing up later, Jacob and Chester found themselves chilling on the former’s couch with some light popcorn and a light playlist of movies similar to K.I. Moe going all night long.

Jacob sneakily snuggled closer to Chester who was still pondering something. “Who ever knew that the best date night could be held in your own home?” He chuckled.

“For real, finally some peace and quiet.” Jacob praised. “Glad your parents believed the study excuse. ”

“Hey they’ll let me do anything as long as my grades stay high enough to remain on the team.” He slid closer, making the gap between them even smaller. “So I’ve been meaning to ask, what exactly made you want to do this?”

“That question again?” Jacob smirked. “Well I just had to get to know a buffoon like you up close.”

“Oh yeah? Well, you ’ re still acting a bit of a fool yourself.”

“Pansy.”

“Moron.”

Both snickered again and before they knew it, their lips were getting close. Just before sealing the deal however, Jacob’s eyes wandered and he reached over to close the curtains, blocking anyone from seeing them.

“Think we’ll ever tell anyone this?”

“I’m in no rush. Besides, we come first.” They went back to just a moment ago, letting their lips clash in that ever so sought after privacy.

GHOST SCHOOL

They said I was an odd child who’d never amount to much. Maybe they were right.

Most of my school days were spent in remedial units and I left with no qualifications or any skills.

I had no job and couldn’t find one. My dad used to joke “the only job you’ll get is a lollipop man when you ’ re 65!”

Well, I proved him wrong.

I died of a fever when I was 38 and that’s when things started going right. Ironically after I died things got better and I turned things around.

I knew I’d made a mess of my life and had to make changes. So I enrolled at Scooby Doo ghost school to learn how to be a ghost. I worked hard at ghost school.

Ironically for someone who was a flop at Maths, English and French, I excelled at the subjects we studied at Scooby Doo ghost school.

I had to learn how to appear and disappear inappropriately, how to moan and groan hauntingly, shiver and shake spectacularly and put on a good “forlorn and abject misery” face.

I passed my “WOOOOOOOOOOOOH” levels with flying colours. I got a distinction for my skills as a sinister shadow.

I was now a ghost. I was number 6739. And given a new name, “Spooky Wonders”.

I then got a job with the National Trust haunting a stately home four days a week. There is a team of us, “The ghost squad”. It’s a right scream.

I specialise in scaring people in the library. Make them shiver and shake. The visitors love it. I’ve got tons of people who come back just to be frightened by me. I’ve got a steady ghoulfriend now. We’re both looking forward to Halloween. It’s like Christmas for ghosts.

I get plenty of time off so I regularly return home and do odd jobs scaring the people who were mean to me when I was alive.

If my dad could see me now I am sure he’d be proud.

Mind you the rate at which he’s stuffing them sausage rolls, cakes, pies and Danish pastries, I reckon it won’t be long before we ’ re working together.

NUCLEAR WASTE

A mile outside of Ignace, Rossi parked his transport truck outside The Sasquatch, a diner, convenience store, and gas bar. He brushed the dust from the cuffs of his denim pants and cowboy boots, wondering how he managed to accumulate so much dirt on his workwear and footwear during walks he took during breaks from driving his eighteen-wheeler along the TransCanada highway. Then he remembered he strolled along a beach at a highway rest stop on a lakeside park, where he met two bikers, Kim and Jess, as they sat at a picnic table writing and drawing anti-nuclear waste protests signs, including No Nuclear Waste in Ignace, before they posted them to highway signposts. Feeling stiff, he walked through The Sasquatch convenience store until he reached the adjacent café and diner. He needed fresh coffee, a wedge of blueberry pie, and a few scoops of ice cream after he drove nonstop from Winnipeg, enroute with industrial machinery and heavy equipment for the pulp and paper mill in Thunder Bay. He ordered blueberry pie, vanilla ice cream, and coffee from the server, with her red hair done up in a French braid. Knowing he loved to read the Globe and Mail newspaper, Julia handed him the weekend edition, the sections jumbled together roughly.

After he chatted about weather and traffic, Julia mentioned a group of tourists, in motorhomes, arrived in town to visit the White Otter Castle, after they heard the folk song about the legend of the King of White Otter Lake. Once they arrived, though, they enthusiastically joined the protestors demonstrating the proposal to store nuclear waste, expended uranium from atomic reactors powering a utility plant in Southern Ontario, deep in the ground of the Canadian Shield near Ignace.

As he sat eating blueberry pie and drinking coffee, and reading yesterday’s Globe and Mail, the two motorcyclists he passed on the highway and encountered at the park rest stop paused at his table. Sitting on the wooden chairs at a large table, the pair of bikers noticed him, drinking coffee, and eating The Sasquatch’s local delicacy and favorite, blueberry pie.

Kim again recognized him, her former high school teacher from over two decades ago. She wanted to shout out loud it was Kim Commando, a nickname she didn’t feel she deserved because she only went commando during the first and last weeks of the school year, the warmest days in the school calendar, but she believed he hated her, or at the very least he mistreated her.

Kim thought he intentionally embarrassed her in his classroom two decades ago. She had even written a note to him after she caught him staring at her breasts in his classroom. She figured he felt some affection and attraction for her after he tried to defend her Rolling Stones tshirt, her choice of spring outerwear, to the principal. Rossi protested with exasperation when the principal twice sent her home after she showed up in class wearing tight, low cut and cropped Rolling Stones and AC/DC rock concert T-shirts, from weekend trips to Winnipeg, which revealed her cleavage and navel.

(She gave the note to Jess to deliver to Rossi. After Kim did not hear any word whatsoever from him, she became bitchy and hissy in the class. She sarcastically asked him why he did not ask real questions in class, like a real teacher, instead of questions with obvious answers. Well, at least he had feelings. Rossi promptly returned the anonymous message to Jess in the hallway, telling her to return the note to its original sender, and he named Kim specifically. Jess refused to reveal the rest of what he told her, but she believed he knew the identity of the sender because he recognized her handwriting and word choice.)

“Mr. Truckdriver,” Kim blurted.

She realized Rossi did not recognize her in return. How could he remember when he taught so many pupils over the years? Kim figured with her weightlifting and body building and her gym cardio routine she had become unrecognizable to Rossi. She also cropped and spiked her hair. She had bright colorful tattoos on her arms and the sides of her head were shaved. She even had a wolverine tattooed on the shaved side of her head, after she accidentally caught not one, but two, of the rare fur bearing species on her father’s trapline. After another trapper warned her, she showed her wolverines to the species at risk biologist at the Ministry of Natural Resources.

Kim had matured and aged, though, and her style and looks were different from the time she was Rossi’s history student. Meanwhile, Rossi nodded, and these many years later Kim again caught him staring at her breasts, covered by her AC/DC Highway to Hell concert t-shirt, which she had chopped and cut into a crop top. Still, she remained confident he did not recognize her. He removed his cowboy hat in what he hoped would be construed as a gesture of respect.

“Why did you pass us at almost a hundred miles per hour on the highway?” Kim demanded.

“Oh. That was you. Because you were driving too slowly, well below the speed limit. I got the impression you were deliberately going too slow to impede my progress. ”

Kim gave him a mischievous smile; he still did not recognize her. She remembered with anger how instead of asking the girls in their class for their opinions, comments, and answers, he usually only solicited feedback from boys. He even held up a paperback edition of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, asking if anyone knew what happened to the thick book on his desk. The thick, worn pocketbook he held up, he indicated, was from the high school library. Someone had taken his own edition, part of his own personal library, from his desk, and he hoped that someone would return the thick pocketbook. Rossi did not discover Kim filched the war history, which made for fascinating and compelling reading, from his desk. She left a large green apple on his desk in compensation, after Jess said he liked Granny Smith apples. She believed Rossi would have been amazed a teenage girl would be interested in reading the history of World War Two.

(After that plea for the return of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, she borrowed several war history books, including The Rising Sun, from the high school library. She mischievously forged his signature on the library cards, when she borrowed the books on days when the regular librarian was absent and a substitute teacher, reading the newspaper instead, worked on the desk. She never returned the books borrowed in his name; she eagerly read them and made them part of her personal collection.)

Rossi admitted he admired her biker jacket, which she carelessly dropped on the floor, but she sneered and said she liked his cowboy boots better. Then she remembered he wore a leather jacket like hers on his days off from teaching when he picked up his mother, after she finished shopping in the supermarket where she worked as a part-time cashier.

“I think that supposition was confirmed when I saw you turn around and give me the finger,” Rossi said.

“That was just Kim’s way of saying hello,” said Jess.

“We just wanted to check you out,” Kim said.

“Sounds like you ’ re suffering from a little bit of road rage. ”

“Not road rage, just quick reflexes,” Mr. Rossi said.

As they ate a dinner of walleye fillets, wild rice, poutine, and then blueberry pie for dessert, Rossi again admired her physical appearance: he thought she looked fit and athletic, with chiseled looks and plenty of lean muscle. He figured Kim was a bodybuilder, lifted weights for exercise, and regularly visited a gym.

“We noticed you dropped that girl off in Vermilion Bay,” Kim said.

Rossi forced a chuckle and half-hearted laughter. “You are following me, spying on me. I noticed, but kind of dismissed it, thinking, you know, busybodies, nosey neighbors.”

“We were a bit concerned,” Kim said.

Rossi dug into his serving of blueberry pie and a hard scoop of ice cream. The scoop of melting ice cream slid off the dessert dish and landed on a brochure about nuclear waste and expended uranium he distractedly read.

“What’s there to be concerned about?” Rossi asked.

“Human trafficking,” Kim retorted. “Sexual exploitation.”

“Wow,” Rossi said. “You are members of a vigilante squad? Don’t Guardian Angels wear berets and red?”

“Is she a relative of yours?” Kim demanded.

“I am not certain why you should be concerned about what sort of relationship I have with that young woman, and she is a woman, ” Rossi quickly added. “Are you two police officers working undercover?”

“No, we ’ re just sisters and friends,” Jess said, annoying Kim with her reassuring tone.

Jess said they both worked for nonprofit organizations and social service agencies, but they were visiting Ignace for Kim’s father. Kim glared at Jess in return for being so friendly and oversharing since she believed she took the wrong tact.

“We know how young girls travelling are vulnerable to predators, and I noticed she’s Indigenous as well, isn’t she?”

“She’s Oji-Cree - from Lac Seul,” Rossi said.

“How can she be Oji-Cree if she’s from that reserve? Lac Seul is an Ojibway community.”

“But her father is Oji-Cree from a reserve further north, North Spirit Lake.”

“Well, we ’ re certainly not interested in anyone with an Indigenous background being exploited or abused.”

“First off, she’s not a girl,” Rossi said, “she’s a young woman. ”

“How old is she?” Kim asked.

“Well, officer, she’s twenty-three.”

“So, she’s still a girl,” Kim retorted.

“You mean like I’m an old man. ”

“Yeah,” Kim said. “What? Is she about a third your age?”

“Not quite. She is a graduate student at the University of Manitoba. I offer her a ride home every weekend or at least the weekends when I am working, driving my tractor trailer rig through Winnipeg.”

“Did you have sex with her?” Kim demanded.

“If I did, what business would it be to you?”

Kim glared at Rossi. Restlessly striking the table with her leather gloves, she looked for a moment as if she might throw her helmet at him or slap him with her gloves. She did not expect to encounter her former high school history teacher, upon whom she briefly nurtured a foolish teen crush, or to cross examine him about any of his relationships; even as a teenager, she thought he was a mama ’ s boy, a virgin forever. Anyway, her naïve affection turned into an enduring hate, so she could never forget her history teacher, even when he turned up on the highway, unexpectedly driving a tractor trailer rig. Her animus revealed she still nurtured a grudge towards him for the way he treated her and the other young women in her high school class.

“You’re not following me, are you?” Mr. Rossi asked.

“Naw,” Kim said. She abruptly turned the ketchup upside down over her poutine, as if administering a spanking, and impatiently stomped and stamped the bottom of the bottle, and then glared at him.

“We’re just taking the same route,” Jess added.

“We saw you last night in a fast-food restaurant, where you brought your young friend for fine dining. We spotted you together at the fast-food joint where Jess likes to have her chocolate Frosty. It’s her favorite local Winnipeg delicacy.” With an accusatory voice, Kim added, “Then, this morning, we saw you both checkout of the same motel where we were staying last night,”

Kim paused and gazed directly into his eyes to see if her voice registered with him, if there was the faintest sign of any recognition, if he remembered her from Queen Elizabeth. Should she remind him she attended his high school until she graduated? Then her single parent father moved her to Ignace, where he worked as a logger, although he also moonlighted as a trapper and a commercial angler. After high school Kim went to work on the green chain and as a filer at the sawmill outside of Ignace.

“From the way you ’ re making it sound, it’s more than a coincidence,” Rossi said.

“We were just visiting Winnipeg,” Jess reassured.

“Kim works at a woman ’ s shelter, and I work as a personal support worker at a group home for clients with intellectual disabilities. We’re just visiting Ignace where Kim lived when she was a badass teenager.”

Then, as Kim glared at her partner, Jess told him the main reason they returned to Ignace. Kim wondered if he remembered her hard drinking, chain smoking father from parent-teacher interviews. Her father, an avid biker, drove several motorcycles, including a classic chopper. Currently, he was recuperating at his Ignace home from surgery and chemotherapy for prostate cancer at the regional hospital in Thunder Bay. Kim decided to visit him and lend a helping hand around the house and yard. Rossi expressed his concern, but Jess reassured him her father was in remission and expected to recover from his cancer.

“We still have friends in the area, ” Kim said. “We’d like to show our support for the community and join our friends and neighbors in protesting the disposal of nuclear waste in the area. ”

“I didn’t see any protestors, or any demonstration against the disposal of nuclear waste,” Rossi said. “In fact, I hear many locals support the project. The power company will pay a huge amount to store nuclear waste. That money will create jobs in Ignace and trickle down to local businesses.”

Kim went on a rant about the risks of atomic energy and the disposal of nuclear waste. She complained southern Ontario yuppies and hipsters fobbing off their problems and toxic waste from the nuclear generating station located in Southern Ontario, a thousand kilometers away, on the traditional way of life of the natives of Northern Ontario.

“How long have you been a trucker?” Jess asked.

“Since I retired as a schoolteacher,” Rossi said.

Jess glanced at Kim and frowned. Impelled to ask if he recognized her, Kim glared at Rossi and asked, “Since when do schoolteachers sleep with students?”

“Since they’re retired,” Rossi replied.

“So, were you always a sexual predator?” Kim asked.

Rossi realized he needed to keep his cool, as if he were back teaching history at Queen Elizabeth District High School. Still, he wondered why he was having this discussion with two bikers whose road rage he triggered on the Northwestern Ontario highway. He wondered if he should tell them: Alanis, who was indeed Indigenous, with an Ojibway mother from Lac Seul and an Oji-Cree father from a First Nations community further north, spent weekends, with her divorced mother, in Vermilion Bay, a small community located on the TransCanada highway, a stop-over on his trucking route. Alanis was his high school student in Sioux Lookout and played a role in his slightly premature retirement. After her parents separated and then divorced, Alanis moved to Vermilion Bay. She lived with her mother, and helped operate a gas station, convenience store, and motel on the TransCanada highway during summer, when she was not attending the University of Manitoba. Alanis and Rossi shared a motel room, with double beds, as he drove her home, after his truck required routine and then emergency maintenance.

In Ignace, the server looked at Rossi and then the biker with an expression of concern and dismay. After writing, with a sad face and heart emoji, “Do you want me to ask them to leave?” She slipped around the tables and chairs towards Rossi and showed him his bill. The embarrassment he felt now that the server became involved in the testy encounter left him self-conscious and his face suffused with redness, even though he underwent similar situations countless times before in the classroom, when students challenged his authority as teacher. Rossi thought the best approach was to keep his mouth shut, but Kim provoked his ire, as if he were asked to teach a remedial class full of students with previous classroom runins with teachers. He felt so irate he decided to call Alanis on his old-fashioned flip phone, which he was prepared to put on speakerphone, so he could explain his relationship to Alanis to the women, whom he suspected were up to social worker shenanigans. When Alanis answered the call, she sounded irritable and snapped, demanding what he wanted; she was in the middle of compiling a bibliography for the research paper she needed to present to her graduate school seminar. She could not afford mistakes, not even typographical errors. Rossi left her distracted, diverting her attention and her scrutiny of research papers. He intuited calling her at that moment was a bad idea, but—

“But that doesn’t excuse you, ” she snapped, over the speakerphone, which he abruptly muted. Rossi ended the cellphone call apologetically.

“Why aren’t you teaching?” Kim demanded. “Why are you driving truck?”

“I retired with a full pension,” Rossi said.

Staring into his dark eyes, Kim hoped he felt uneasy as she scrutinized him. He did not look like a classic retiree. “That doesn’t make sense because you don’t look old enough to be on a pension,” Kim insisted. “A teacher with a full pension doesn’t need to work, unless they have a gambling or lottery addiction.”

“I guess you don’t know many retired teachers,” Rossi said.

“I know they have good pensions,” Kim replied.

“The Ontario school teacher’s pension,” Rossi guffawed, “the stuff of Canadian myth and legend.”

“So how did you end up a truckdriver?” Jess asked.

“I hardly ever drove by the time I retired, and I certainly never owed a car, ” Rossi replied. “But I was up to the challenge of driving. My adult ambition, when I was daydreaming, trying to escape the humdrum reality of teacher: I would be a truckdriver and travel across Canada, and visit some of those places I taught about in class.”

“Why didn’t you drive?”

“Realistically? Probably because my father was an immigrant, who could not read or write in English, and never drove. Probably because I was always happy to walk, and I hiked to work every day for over thirty years. ”

Indeed, Kim remembered, during her adolescent and teenage years in Sioux Lookout, she observed Rossi on many school day mornings, through frost, fog, sunshine, rain, snow, blistering cold, wind, walking as regularly as an atomic clock, taking the same route to the high school each morning.

After Rossi retired, he bought a few driving manuals, which he read cover to cover a dozen times and taught himself to drive. Then he bought a four-wheel drive rally car.

He taught himself automotive mechanics and engine repair and started to race his vehicle along his hometown highways, virtually abandoned in the nighttime. He embraced his newfound freedom and would drive to the neighboring town of Dryden on the TransCanada highway to watch the exotic dancers perform at a local night club favored by truckers and construction workers. Soon he met professional truck drivers during his summer evening drives to Dryden. Eventually, he obtained a commercial truck driver’s license to drive eighteen-wheel transport trucks. Now he wondered why he was telling these two women, strangers, a bit hostile, both of whom look vaguely familiar, intimate details of his past life.

“How long have you been driving an eighteen-wheeler?” Jess asked.

“A few years, ” Rossi said.

“And you still haven’t learned the rules of the road,” Kim asserted.

Rossi gave a pained, distracted look out the window of the diner, checking the traffic on Highway 17. The server crept to his table and handed him two pieces of homemade wild blueberry pie in a neat white takeout box with paper napkins and plastic knives and forks for him to eat on the road. The server knew how much he loved his coffee, ice cream, and blueberry pie, but, once the two motorcyclists engaged him, she started to learn only now intimate details about his life of which she had no previous knowledge. She suggested Rossi leave immediately, before tensions overheated, and a violent verbal argument arose or physical fight erupted an outcome she feared most in the café and diner where she worked as server and manager.

The server worried Kim was keen on an old-fashioned fight or knockdown argument. The server whispered to Rossi she did not want to be forced to call provincial law enforcement; police were bad for business. He apologized; somehow the bikers provoked him and he, in turn, incited them. He realized he needed to leave the restaurant, attached to the convenience store and gas bar and even a small motel.

Outside the diner, Kim and Jess left their motorcycle parked, so he was boxed in by their motorcycles, to which they stuck anti-nuclear energy decals to the chassis and fuel tank, the bottom of the windshield, the seat rest, the toolbox, even the fenders.

The luxurious nature of the motorcycles left him impressed, so he could not understand why they would mar their appearance with stickers and decals bearing anti-nuclear energy and anti-nuclear waste slogans. More importantly, Rossi was unable to maneuver and drive his transport truck out of his parking slot for the filling station and gas bar, alongside the motel room, until they moved their motorcycles. Kim, whose bike he recognized, left her motorcycle parked directly in front of his truck. Considering she was the most belligerent, he felt tempted to drive his eighteen-wheel transport truck over Kim’s motorcycle. Then he started his truck and, growing impatient, restless, loudly idled and gunned the engine in warning. Rossi stepped out of his parked rig and explained to the server he needed her to ask the bikers to move their motorcycles. Thirty minutes ticked by on his retirement wristwatch, which was too glittery and showy and heavy for him by far, but a while ago he had the watch repair shop engrave on the watch back Memento Mori.

Rossi quietly seethed when the bikers emerged from the diner and café. They dismissively glanced across the parking lot at him with their arms crossed and returned inside. He climbed inside his truck, revved the engine, and drove over Kim’s motorcycle, bulldozing over the rear of her motorcycle, crushing the tire, wheel, and rim.

Kim raced from the diner and chased after him. She ran so fast she caught up with his transport truck as it pulled out of the parking lot lane onto the highway. Charging, she pounded the driver’s door of his truck, which he locked after she briefly climbed on the running board and opened the driver’s door. She shook her clenched fist at him, pounded the window, and threw a rock at the bolted rear doors as he drove his transport truck onto Highway 17.

He drove along the TransCanada highway outside of Upsala when Kim and Jess caught up to him on their speeding, weaving motorcycles. Kim rode her father’s Harley Davidson, which looked less futuristic and more traditional than the sleek racing motorcycle Rossi crushed as he drove over the rear, and she quickly caught up to him.

Then, suddenly, the two women sped their motorcycles directly behind him. Kim, aggressive in her interrogation, pulled her Harley Davidson chopper in front of him. Again, Kim gave him the impudent finger, and slowed her truck down and impeded his progress on the highway, which had lighter traffic.

Still, he worried about getting rear ended by other motor vehicles and transport trucks, as he slowed down to avoid striking her, and he even turned on his emergency lights.

Each time he tried to pass her, she raced him and blocked his progress, once again almost causing him to collide with incoming traffic on the two-lane highway. When he thought his truck safely passed Kim’s zooming motorcycle, she accelerated and sped ahead and resumed driving alongside him on the constantly twisting and turning highway, which cut and carved its way through the Canadian Sheild’s rock and forest. At a rocky curve, Kim drove in the opposite lane, the westbound lane, to pass him again.

As she accelerated her motorcycle, she did not see the incoming traffic speeding directly at her, another transport truck, with a huge, enlarged photograph of a massive pepperoni and cheese pizza emblazoned on the side of the rig trailer. The speeding truck struck Kim head-on and sent her and her motorcycle flying.

Rossi observed the accident through his windshield and then in his rearview mirror. He observed her chopper colliding at high velocity before the bike was sent careening. Her motorcycle broke like a toy, tires bouncing. The collision broke and battered her body. Her tinted futuristic visor and space age helmet masked her screams and agonized expression. Kim flew and cartwheeled in her leather jacket and chaps. Alongside her wrecked motorcycle, she skidded and slid for dozens of meters along the highway. Kim lay on the highway, barely conscious, barely breathing.

A motorist, with Manitoba license plates, driving westbound to Winnipeg, cruised slowly past the accident scene and carnage. He stopped at the roadside to try to help, but he feared getting struck, driven over, by motorists driving past while he called for emergency assistance. The dispatcher sent police and an ambulance.

Constable Brett responded to the first call in The Sasquatch diner, gulping down the coffee he sipped and savored.

In the few years Rossi was a long-distance truck driver, having driven through snowstorms, blizzards, and along icy highways, through the Canadian wilderness, he observed many traffic accidents, pileups, collisions, roadkill; but this was the most spectacular accident he ever witnessed on the TransCanada highway.

Still, he continued driving, and dozens of kilometers later, the motorcycle Jess skillfully drove and maneuvered at high speed to cut him off. She sped ahead and Jess drove directly behind him, ahead of a motorcycle, as she repeatedly attempted to make him stop, pulling in front of him. Unaware he was trailed by heavy commercial traffic, he braked abruptly. Jess’ motorcycle skidded on the pavement, as she veered quickly to avoid getting sandwiched between the two large transport trucks.

Jess barely escaped getting stuck between the two vehicles as his truck was rear ended by the large propane truck, which exploded in a flash of light. The intense fire engulfed him and the pursuing motorcyclist before the flames receded and settled into steady fire. With his transport truck on fire, he tumbled out of the driver’s door.

Trembling, shaking, he scrambled forward, away from the heat and flames, away from his truck and quickly surveyed the carnage on the road, including Kim’s motorcycle companion engulfed in flames. He retrieved his fire extinguisher from his smoldering cab, engulfed in smoke, raced at Jess, brandishing the fire extinguisher like a firearm, and blew out some flames on her motorcycle with the foam.

Rossi slapped and patted down the remaining flames ravishing her body with his denim jacket. Jess, her breathing shallow and labored, lay on the asphalt, bloodied, smoldering, covered with carbon and foam chemicals, amid the carnage that had been wrought on a day he figured would be his last as a professional truck driver. Troubled by his own culpability, he felt overwhelmed by the carnage and chaos, as he stepped backwards from the accident scene.

Her mind groggy, her body injured, Jess crawled to safety and shelter on the opposing roadside, the gravel shoulder beyond the asphalt and white border, as smoke arose from her leather and denim. He strayed backwards into the westbound traffic lane, beyond the yellow stripes of the median.

Rossi turned around at the sound of approaching traffic and observed the large four-wheel drive monster truck speeding down the highway, bearing down on him, the youthful driver, wearing an ornate embroidered, braided auto supply store baseball cap, with expensive polarized sunglasses, listening to heavy metal music, oblivious to the wreckage. The instant froze in time as Rossi believed he recognized a former student, nicknamed Racer, speeding directly towards him.

Constable Brett became a police officer, even though he struck a few straitlaced classmates as lazy, an irresponsible rascal. Ignace was Brett’s first deployment as a provincial police officer. Born and raised in Lac Seul, Brett always wanted to work in law enforcement, having grown up with classmates who were offspring of the provincial police. He fulfilled his adolescent dream, after Rossi, his high school teacher, vouched for him, supported him, agreed to provide him with a letter of recommendation and a character reference, which none of his high school teachers, or the vice principal, or the principal would provide after he became involved in an incident involving drinking and a young woman at a party the year he graduated from high school. Rossi reminded Brett was Indigenous, that the Indigenous people deserved their own police, and Brett deserved a second chance. Everybody deserves a second, third, fourth, and even a fifth chance, Rossi said, as he handed Brett the recommendation letter and reference. Rossi’s last words to Brett: “Remember what I said about second chances.”

Brett drank coffee and ate blueberry pie in The Sasquatch café and diner on the highway. As he brushed the crumbs from his uniform and body armor, he received a radio call about a head-on collision between a transport truck and a motorcycle and then another transport truck on the TransCanada. Then multiple reports of motor vehicles and motorcycle collisions on Highway 17 cackled over the radio. When Brett arrived, he encountered Rossi, after he was struck by a pickup truck, driven by a driver whom he recognized from Queen Elizabeth High School, being loaded by paramedics into the air ambulance helicopter, which landed on the highway.

There were more casualties, including two other motorcyclists. The cool early summer day and chilly evening became endless and interminable with the details of these accident investigations.

PAIN

The pain beneath Lee’s breastbone and in his back and arm twisted like a hot coil in soft tissue, so he grimaced and clutched his chest. When Bruin noticed the principal gritting his teeth, looking pained, he grew concerned. Bruin, listening to Lee describe the symptoms, said what ailed him did not sound like heartburn or indigestion, and advised him to see a doctor.

Meanwhile, Bruin said that reminded him: the school needed to invite a flight paramedic from the air ambulance service to speak at the career day open house. He got the idea after he assigned a theme on a life changing event to his class. He read Amy’s essay indicating she wanted to become a flight paramedic, and her composition left him impressed with its passion and conviction.

Lee massaged his chest and arm with a pained expression and told Bruin he did not want to be like his predecessor. In the morning, at the start of classes, he did not want to stand in the main doors to the high school before the opening bell, holding his wristwatch in his hand, watching the secondhand tick, seeking students and teachers wandering the hallways a minute or two after the opening bell rang. He did not want to spend the school days locked away in the principal’s office, fretting over classroom schedules, avoiding telephone calls from parents, obsessing over office supplies, organizing his desk, worrying about missing pens and markers, rearranging supplies of paper and toner in the photocopy room. He did not want to lecture the student body in the gymnasium during their orientation, preaching about everything they should not do, emphasizing they were not to exhibit overt signs of affection anywhere in high school. He did not want to hand out detentions and suspensions; he wanted to give encouragement and inspiration. He wanted to have a positive impact on the careers and educations of his students. Lee wanted his students to succeed throughout high school and contribute to the betterment of their lives and society and, yes, the community, which continued to see tough times after the radar base had been decommissioned and the sawmill shuttered forever.

Lee hired Bruin believing he was one of the more unlikely, successful students to have graduated from their high school. Bruin had certainly taken a rocky route in life recently, and his path towards becoming a teacher had been unusual.

But Lee ignored the advice of another teacher and the hiring committee, which was merely a school board trustee and the vice-principal. Lee went ahead and hired his former geography and history student.

Amy told Bruin that she had a reading and public speaking phobia. That was the reason that she could not perform the dramatic recital. Amy told him quietly at his desk after he walked the aisles of the classroom of grade nine students, asking them which Shakespearean speech or monologue they wanted to read and recite. He went around the English classroom wearing his suit and tie, stained with coffee, his scuffed shoes, and his cologne. This was the first course in Shakespeare that he taught; this was the first year that he worked as a schoolteacher. Likewise, this was only Lee’s second year as principal; previously, he taught history and geography.

Bruin had been a financial advisor, a stockbroker, and a derivatives trader, but then his firm was caught in a massive insider trading scandal. He was also personally fined tens of thousands of dollars as a result, which also wiped out any equity and savings he had built over the years. He also discovered that he was tainted, damaged goods in the securities industry, and he could not get hired by any other firms afterwards.

So, he decided to pursue his original goal of becoming a high school teacher, even though he now believed that aspiration was something of a cop out. He admitted during his job interview with Lee that if you were not of a certain personality and character, high school teaching could be personally demanding work. Now in his first year of teaching, he faced a student with a problem similar to his own when he struggled in high school.

Bruin asked to see Amy after school, a time more suitable to discuss the issue. He sat at his desk grading papers, drinking coffee, which he should have avoided, because the caffeine caused him jitters and anxiety. He thought about what he would say to her, the best way to approach this problem.

Amy arrived for the appointment with a frosty can of cola from the vending machine in the cafeteria. She sat in the bare minimalist student’s desk at the front row across from Bruin at his large wooden desk, with the hardwood podium dividing them. Amy arrived in her jean jacket, baseball cap, coveralls, and with her backpack, filled with books and school assignments. Her backpack emanated the smell of fish.

Bruin guessed the reason for that bit of fish odor was because she worked, filleting and gutting fish, for her father, who owned and operated a commercial fishing operation. Amy filleted and gutted walleye, whitefish, and red sucker in her father’s fish processing plant on the shores of the long mysterious lake and reservoir of Lac Seul near Sioux Lookout. Amy also occasionally worked on the fishing boat, handling gill nets, piloting the trawler.

Bruin mentioned offhand he and her father, high school classmates years ago, had briefly discussed the issue at their last parent-teacher interview. They had merely touched upon the issue; but her father wanted him, or them, to try to first work through the issue personally and individually, or with the help of her teachers only. Her father did not want to seek professional help because he had lost faith and confidence in the medical and social work professions; he believed that the professionals, psychologists, and psychiatrists had only made Amy’s mother’s condition worse. He believed the doctors and psychiatrists had gotten her addicted to prescription drugs until she met her untimely demise. He refused to accept the doctor and coroner ’ s conclusion she committed suicide.

Now Bruin wondered, having never known the circumstances surrounding her death. Bruin wondered if Amy’s phobia had some origin in her mother’s demise. But Bruin also realized that speculation about causation was of no help to him currently. And her father merely wanted them to deal with the issue themselves.

Amy told him that she could not do the reading.

“Ok. So, you ’ ve chosen Mark Antony’s eulogy, his funeral oration, for Julius Caesar. How did you know this is one of my favorite passages from Shakespeare?”

“I didn’t know.”

“Are you sure your father did not choose it? It just seems like a passage your father might like.”

“No. I chose it because I like the speech. My father never does my homework.”

“That is wonderful. So why don’t you just read the passage now. ”

Amy read the passage perfectly, resonantly, with the enunciation and diction of a Shakespearean actor, albeit one her age. Bruin felt most impressed, and he applauded. He told Amy she was a skilled performer, who possessed talent. “And, you see, that was not a problem. You did not seem self-conscious, or self-aware. You just did it. So why don’t you just try it on Monday, like the rest of the students.”

“Because I can’t face the class and read it. I’ll choke, I’ll stumble, I’ll stutter and stammer. I might even get physically sick.”

Bruin confessed, when he was her age, he had the same problem. The phobia plagued him all through high school, so that he skipped class and missed classroom discussions, lectures, and assignments. His grades suffered, but he never disclosed the true reasons to his teachers, so they thought he had become a truant and a juvenile delinquent. He even dropped out of high school, and later went to community college, where he eventually overcame the problem, possibly because the atmosphere in the college seminars was usually relaxed, informal, collegial. Bruin explained he did not want her to face similar challenges.

“Do you understand?”

Amy nodded.

Did she want to know how he thought it started for him personally?

Amy shrugged and averted her face as she rolled her eyes backwards. She felt distracted and glanced through the open door into the hallway, where lockers crashed shut amidst loud laughter and chatter. Bruin said when he was a student in Catholic grade school, the spring before graduation, the students had undergone intensive personal and religious training to receive the Catholic sacrament of confirmation. The event dominated the spring schedule for the confirmands proved as big as the graduation from Catholic school itself. The grade seven and eight students preparing for the sacrament and ceremony were feted by their parents, guardians, and the sponsors, and parishioners at a Saturday night mass. A parent active in the church who volunteered in helping behind the scenes made a last-minute request to the adolescent Bruin to thank the selfless priest for helping them prepare for confirmation.

When he went up to deliver that speech, he realized he was unprepared. Then he noticed the hundreds of people in the church. He stumbled and stammered over his words, which he perceived as virtually incoherent and nonsensical. He thought he made a complete fool and ass out of himself, especially after the priest joked, saying he thought Bruin was going to ask for permission to go to the washroom. The entire church, suddenly in a mood of hilarity, broke into laughter. Bruin never felt so humiliated and embarrassed in his life.

“Does that make sense to you?” Bruin asked.

“Yes.”

“Can we just give it a try Monday? Can’t we just take the bull by the horns, as your father would say, and try to work through the problem ourselves? As I mentioned, I spoke with your father.”

Amy became upset Bruin said he had spoken with her father, and she winced and looked taken aback.

“I think he agreed we should give it a try.”

“Can I go now?” Amy asked. “I need to be at work.”

“Can we give this a try on Monday?”

“I don’t see what choice I have.”

On Monday when Bruin arrived for class, with his mug of fresh coffee, he realized she was the most photogenic student in his class. He never noticed previously because he usually paid no attention to her or any other student’s looks. Now it was difficult for him not to notice her grooming and dress. The steel buttons of her perfectly fitting denim shirt were unbuttoned low down her chest. She wore cowboy boots, a cropped denim jacket, a short denim skirt, and a tight shirt, which fit perfectly and which she left open. He had never seen her wear a dress before. She allowed her long brushed hair to flow over her shoulders, and she wore makeup and lipstick. He thought she looked as handsome as any Hollywood teen celebrity.

Bruin had scheduled three students for this Monday, and her reading was scheduled to be the last. Towards the end of class, he called upon Amy to make her dramatic recital. Bruin asked her if she would be more comfortable if she sat down at her desk, but she might perform better if she stood. He could barely hear her say, yes. With adrenaline pumping throughout her system, she felt warm and flushed. As soon as she stood everyone saw her limbs trembling. Her face turned crimson, and she broke into a profuse sweat, yet the room was cool, after Mr. Bruin cleared his throat and opened the windows at the rear. Amy was breathless, and her voice broke and cracked.

Amy stammered and her voice continued to pause and quaver. She read three lines, and Bruin was ready to thank her for her spirited performance and say she could sit down, after he realized his error. But she threw down her English textbook, property of Queen Elizabeth District High School, the complete volume of Shakespeare, the plays, comedies, tragedies, histories, and the sonnets, on her desk and her loose note paper and pens and pencils scattered.

“I hate you!” Amy shouted in a very loud, clear, and resonant voice. “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! You’re a horrible man, just terrible. I told you I couldn’t do it, but you made me, and I couldn’t, and now look. I just fucking hate you.

”

Amy burst from the front door of the classroom sobbing and crying. Later, Bruin thought if she was one of the more popular students in the class or one of the school princesses, some of the girls would have chased after her for moral support. Instead, the whole class sat in stunned silence, as half the students stared at him, and the other half glanced at her, fleeing the classroom through the back door, into the empty corridor. Through the row of classroom windows, her classmates could see her fleeing from the school outside the doors and across the lawn to the walkway. Then they stared and glared at Bruin, who froze where he stood in front of the classroom of expectant students. Then Bruin realized he could not face the class. Bruin feared he had irreparably traumatized her. Grade eight confirmation at Sacred Heart School decades ago recurred all over again for them both.

Now again Bruin was full of humility, embarrassment, and fear, and he could not face the class. The students looked at him with such deadly serious expressions, seeking leadership and guidance through the crisis, and he could not step up and provide. He felt frozen, afraid to face his classroom of students, and he feared he could not face them again.

This, this classroom, in his hometown high school, was not the place for him. Feeling defeated, he grabbed his mug, as if he needed a refill of coffee, slipped out of the classroom. Then, outside, after rushing through the foyer and the bank of doors, he tossed his favorite coffee mug in the wastebasket. He strode with a sense of defeat to his car in the parking lot beside the football field and the athletic track.

Bruin drove home, even though he lived only a short distance away, in the house he had inherited in his hometown from his mother; he had been planning to go walleye fishing at Frog Rapids bridge after school. He drove home from the high school he had walked to each day when he himself was a high school student. He drove away from the only high school that would hire him after he returned to university, for his degree in education, as a mature student.

After an insider trading scandal overwhelmed Bruin’s career, he departed the securities industry, and Lee hired him. Now Bruin sent his resignation, formal, brief, curt, business-like, like President Nixon’s resignation letter, the student of history mused. Then Bruin blocked his former employer’s telephone number, email, and social media. Bruin decided he was finished with whatever career he may have had in education. Yes, he decided he had finished his tenure as a high school educator. He did not want to hear from his hometown high school anymore; it was enough for one lifetime.

Later, Bruin told Lee had just enough money, savings, to last for a few years if that turned out to be how long he needed to figure out what to do with the remainder of his life. The school sent Lee to visit him, after the teachers lobbied him in the staff room during another teacher’s birthday party. During that celebration he suffered more chest pains and shortness of breath, which caused some teachers to be concerned, including one who kept feeding him brand name antacids from a roll wrapped in foil.

Lee spoke to Bruin briefly at the screen door since Lee was not invited inside his house. Bruin thanked Lee for believing in him, for hiring him to the position of teacher and apologized his hire did not work out. Motivated more by curiosity than suspicion, Lee asked if Bruin had been drinking. Saying he usually did not consume alcoholic beverages, Bruin wondered aloud if Lee had noticed the recycle bin outside, in the backyard, filled with empty coffee containers and sugar free soft drink cans. He did not invite the principal who had hired him inside for a coffee.

Bruin expressed concern for his former student, saying he hoped Amy was well, not suffering any adverse consequences. Having learned his life lesson, Bruin said he did not expect to teach any longer; his work as an educator was complete. Bruin said he now felt more concerned with the fate of his former pupil. Lee advised him there should be no worries; Bruin was officially on paid leave, until the issue was resolved, and they had a substitute teacher to cover for him.

The school had a psychologist, who visited from Kenora, where the head office of the school board was located, and a guidance counsellor, and a social worker who might be able to help, Lee reminded Bruin. In fact, a counsellor later came to Bruin’s door to talk to him, but Bruin assured him he was fine, even though he lost weight, remained unshaven, grew a beard, and gave off a strong body odor. Bruin looked haunted and shell shocked, with a thousand-yard stare. Bruin felt inclined to inquire about his former student and how she fared, but he did not think it was appropriate, since she was a former pupil, and he was no longer in a position of authority.

After a few months, the school board sent police for a wellness check on him. The pair of police officers shouted through the door they needed to talk. Bruin reassured them he was fine; they did not need to break down the door. He had plenty of food, electricity, water, groceries, flush toilets. They could go away, and he would feel better. After he found his housecoat, he opened the door for the police officers, but by the time he answered they were gone. The officers left their business cards and the business cards of a social worker on the steps of the concrete stairwell.

Amy arrived at his door with a gift of fresh fish, walleye, she herself had filleted. Bruin told her she could leave the wrapped fresh fish, packaged in translucent plastic freezer bags, in the garden shed. Through the screen door he said he loved fish, but he didn’t mention he preferred canned fish, because cooking left him annoyed and flustered. To neighbors he even gave the fish he caught in the lakes and rivers that surrounded and divided the town.

Amy’s father also visited him at his house. Bruin drank the beer and whiskey her father brought along, even though he normally did not consume alcoholic beverages, but he felt he owed it to the man. They talked about their own high school years and shared interests, hunting, fishing, although Bruin had to admit he had not been hunting or fishing for decades, since he was a teenager.

It would work out, Amy’s father said, as he drank his fourth can of beer. Bruin tried to reassure him everything would work out all right and well in the end, especially for Amy and her future. Amy’s father promised him he and his daughter both would take him hunting and fishing someday soon.

A few weeks later, Lee received the letter from the director of education and superintendent indicating the school board reviewed his contract, which was temporary, a short-term agreement for the year that followed his probationary period. Lee originally expected the school board to renew his contract for the principal’s position and for them to offer him the office on a permanent basis. With this letter from the top executives and officials, he nurtured fresh doubts and fears. After he made a phone call to a few school trustees and the superintendent, he realized the school board was unlikely to keep him as a hire and a new candidate would assume his position as principal. The superintendent, with whom he was friends, said a few trustees questioned Lee’s judgement in hiring Bruin, whose qualifications for the position, they felt, were weak and questionable. That seemed like the worst of excuses, Lee thought.

The chest pains had been aggravating Lee even before he received the letter. When he received the foreboding news, the aggravation started to worsen and overpower him, so he could not move from his comfortable swiveling, reclining chair in the principal’s office. By the end of the lunch hour and the start of afternoon classes, Lee was struggling to breathe, his face contorted in pain, as he experienced a crushing pain beneath his breastbone that radiated to his arm and the center of his back. He buzzed for the secretary and, when she did not respond, he shouted for the vice-principal.

The vice-principal called the emergency telephone number and summoned an ambulance. The paramedics gave Bruin oxygen and nitroglycerin tablets for him to place beneath his tongue and diagnosed him as likely undergoing a myocardial infarction. Within an hour, doctors and nurses examined him, assessed him, and treated him in the emergency department of the rural hospital. The healthcare team agreed he needed specialized treatment and a cardiologist. The head doctor made the telephone calls to medivac him to the hospital in Thunder Bay for emergency treatment and cardiac surgery.

As Amy walked to school for her afternoon class, she saw the air ambulance take off from the airport nearby, ascending into the clear skies beyond the high school football field. Amy wondered who might be aboard the air ambulance. She remembered the air ambulance flight she took to Thunder Bay, after the family physician asked her to function as patient escort for her mother, who lay comatose after an overdose. The air ambulance impressed her with its sense of urgency and professionalism, and its life support equipment, a critical care unit in a light aircraft.

During the air ambulance flight of the Pilatus aircraft, the sunset she saw settle beneath the horizon of the rugged rock formations and vast waterways and forests of the Canadian Shield landscape was the most beautiful and moving she saw in her life. She crouched alongside her mother on the gurney and clutched her limp hand. Her mother lay in critical condition, her kidneys failing, her vital organs shutting down, a few days away from her ultimate end. Oddly enough, she looked more tranquil and serene than Amy had ever seen her in her life.

Aboard that air ambulance flight with her ailing unconscious mother, as she struggled to find hope, Amy first nurtured her aspiration of becoming a flight paramedic. She decided she would continue to pursue that dream. The career, she hoped, would take her far from her hometown, surrounded by epic, endless rocks, forests, and lakes, and all its unhappy and bittersweet memories.

THE ONE PERCENTER

Toyko was tall, over six feet, but she was slender and athletic. Because of her pedigree and the fact she was usually the tallest woman, or man, wherever she went, she believed much, too much, was expected of her. Toyko argued with her parents for hours, and the argument was intense, passionate, and heated. Still, by the end of the presentation and the subsequent argument, her father was unmoved, solid as a rock, and refused to advance her the funding for her fitness center and gym. Her father thought she should allow her fitness business to fold and fail. She had already lost enough of his money trying to make her fitness center for women earn a profit. The failing enterprise was consuming too much of Toyko’s time and effort, to say nothing of their money. But Toyko was adamant she could make her struggling small business work; these endeavors invariably took time before they earned a profit. Her father insisted that she was not a people person. In her position at her own business, she could not attract and build a customer and client base. She shouted at her father he did not understand women, especially young women, and their fitness needs. He commanded her to talk to the human resources manager at his wealth management firm, where he and Toyko’s mother were leading partners. He insisted Toyko ask his human resources manager to find a position in the firm, any position, which suited her personality and disposition.

Toyko could barely stifle her fury and anger with her father. He refused to advance her the money she needed to support her struggling small business, yet he had so much money truckloads of cash sitting in bank and investment accounts. He did not know what to do with the surplus and did not share his wealth, did not engage in any philanthropic endeavors. Toyko trembled, shook, and the flesh and cords in her neck and face twitched and quivered, as her anger was uncontrollable. She was furious; she had carefully staged a presentation for her dad, which she had rehearsed for weeks, and he had shut her down, before she could finish.

Toyko left her parents’ Rosedale mansion without saying thanks or goodbye; she abandoned all her good graces and manners because she could never remember being so angry in her life. She hopped into her BMW and drove recklessly along Bridle Path Road. She could never remember driving at such a high rate of speed through her parents’ neighborhood.

When she arrived at her condominium on Bloor Street, she decided to rob her own credit union. She even thought she had plenty of time to rob the Metro Loyalist credit union that afternoon. Her father was a morning person, and she staged the presentation for seven am, before he went for his flying lessons. Her father was seriously considering purchasing a light aircraft for himself and her mother, as a gift to meet the disgustingly affluent couple’s travel needs, as a rich man ’ s retirement project.

Toyko had face masks, ski masks, weapons, legacies of the gun nut boyfriend she had dated for several months. Every night they went to the shooting range and lost themselves in target practice. They tried to outgun each other with accurate shooting at the shooting range, as they fired loaded handguns at target practice, firing bullets at imaginary armed robbers, muggers, burglars, rapists. Now Toyko decided she would rob her branch of Metro Loyalist credit union; she knew the layout, the configuration, the personnel. She had visited Metro Loyalist credit union so many times, as she dealt with operational issues and corporate finance problems surrounding her own small business, her women ’ s fitness center.

Now she needed an outfit, dark, including a black shirt and black cargo pants, and these were all part of her wardrobe. Even her black balaclava, for downhill and cross-country skiing and winter hiking was a natural part of her wardrobe. Toyko took the brand-new backpack and decided that she would walk to her credit union branch because if she drove she was confident that any getaway vehicle would be readily traceable back to her. Toyko strode purposefully to Metro Loyalist credit union, passing the park where she used to jog and sunbathe, and showed them the holdup note and her handgun.

When Toyko showed them the handgun, she could see the terror and fear in the eyes of the credit union tellers, some of whom appeared fresh out of high school. She felt a certain sympathy, but at the same time, she realized she had a certain job to do, to save her struggling business through a desperately needed cash infusion. She felt relieved she did not need to fire her loaded weapon, but she continued to shout commands at the tellers, until her backpack was filled with twenty, fifty, and one-hundred-dollar bills.

Toyko took the backpack and strode confidently through the back alley of the street until she reached a side entrance to the park on the lakeshore and beach. She went to the washroom of the park, undressed in a locked stall, and left the clothes she had worn during the heist in the wastebasket, stuffing them deep inside the garbage bag.

In the washroom stall, Toyko took off her shorts and crop top and adjusted her bikini top and bottom, which she wore underneath the black outfit. As she exited the changeroom, she slipped on the sandals she kept in a separate compartment of her backpack. She thought she would look suspicious without a blanket or towel, but even there someone had left a cruise ship beach towel in the change room. She lay on the beach blanket reading the pocketbook left behind in her gym to read – Roots. She heard the police sirens approaching from the distance but ignored them.

Toyko continued to read Roots in the park until there was no natural light. As soon as the sun disappeared beneath the horizon, Toyko saw Miguel in a black t-shirt and black trousers and steel toe boots collect the discarded cans from the recycle bins and wastebaskets. Toyko could not help noticing Miguel, since he seemed fit, strong, and he wore a baseball cap for the Brazil World Cup soccer team.

Toyko felt chilly in the shorts and bikini and crop top she had worn beneath the black outfit she wore to the credit union. When she arrived at her condominium unit downtown on Bloor Street, she put the backpack with the cash in her bedroom closet. Immediately she started to regret her actions as she acknowledged the enormity of what she had just done. She felt so depressed she decided to take an excursion to the one place that made her feel better when she felt glum and sullen: The Toronto Islands.

She brought the handgun in her extra-large Coach handbag, which had enough room for a beach blanket and towel. On second thought, she decided to stuff the cash into the Coach handbag. Early in the evening, she took a ride in the antiquated ferry across Toronto harbor.

Then she walked around the island with the oversized leather handbag with the gun and cash. Toyko strolled on the boardwalk and pathway around the island to the Centre Island Beach pier. By the time she walked to that stretch of shoreline it was late in the evening. She walked to the end of the pier. She thought that it was the most romantic place that she knew in the world, with the moonlight shimmering, the waves lapping against the beautiful beach of smooth sand, the vastness of Lake Ontario stretching across the horizon like an inland sea, the serenity, the quiet in the midst of the metropolis with lights and noise and countless residents.

After Toyko first visited the Toronto Islands and Centre Island beach, the summer after she graduated from university, she had a romantic fantasy: this was the very spot where she wanted a man to propose to her. Now as she stood at the end of the pier, she removed the handgun from her handbag. She threw the Gloch over the end of the pier into Lake Ontario, where the pistol made a splash in the chilly fresh water. Earlier, she thought she might use the sidearm to relieve her misery.

Toyko climbed the guard railing and considered throwing herself off the banister into Lake Ontario. Surely she would perish from the cold and drown in the deep water if she jumped. She stepped down and took the backpack and looked at the cash inside the backpack. Why had she robbed her Metro Loyalist? Her father thought she was of an unsound mind, an imprudent businessperson, to bank at the credit union. He wanted her to bank at a big Canadian chartered bank, the biggest bank, in case there was a liquidity crisis or economic turmoil, another global financial crisis. Toyko’s father thought bigger was better in business. He believed in unbridled capitalism, while she believed in the cooperative philosophy and principles of the nonprofit cooperative financial institution. They were community oriented and put people before profits. The staff and management at the credit union was always warm and friendly towards her and accommodating. They treated her with respect, even though she thought the manager eyed the cleavage of her breasts too closely, even though they could see her fitness business was failing and impacting her personal finances, and she was on the verge of bankruptcy. How had she reacted, in turn? With violence.

Toyko felt horrible, filled with regret and remorse. She climbed back up the railing of the pier. She believed she was ready to hurtle herself off the end of the Centre Island pier, but then that strong looking athletic man, wearing the same baseball cap for the Brazilian World Cup soccer team, approached her. Miguel was again wearing black, wearing torn jeans, scuffed shoes, a dirty T-shirt, and a weathered, torn baseball cap for the Brazilian World Cup soccer team.

Miguel urged her not to jump, telling her that he had been there himself, that he had considered jumping from the pier into Lake Ontario. Toyko said she was not thinking of jumping; she was merely walking, as if on a balance beam, enjoying the view. Miguel was dragging along a wagon full of recyclables. He kindled the campfire that had nearly extinguished and smoldered with smoke and glowing chars and embers. He built up the fire with scattered pieces of wood, until the flames burned strong and leapt and danced.

Miguel said he was a dishwasher at a luxury boutique hotel. His wages barely covered the rent for his basement room; he was paid under the table because he overstayed his visit from Rio de Janeiro after his visa had expired. Sometimes his pay was not enough to last for food until the end of the month. He couldn’t even afford to eat at the high-end restaurant where he worked.

Miguel asked her if she wanted some sushi. She thanked him and said she did not want sushi.

“This is very good sushi,” Miguel insisted, as he handed her a paper plate. “I know this because I made the sushi myself in the restaurant kitchen. The chef loves my sushi and wants me to apprentice.” Miguel continued to eat sushi with his bare calloused hands and fingers, nicked, scarred, as he stood before the campfire, contemplating, viewing Centre Island beach, the full moon, the moonlight on the calm Lake Ontario, from the large pier, which jutted from the shoreline near the changerooms, washrooms, restaurants, patios, and lifeguard stands and rowboats. He continued to stoke and feed the campfire, which he had rekindled.

Toyko gingerly ate a piece of sushi, out of a sense of courtesy; he had persuaded her not to hurtle herself into Lake Ontario, where she would have drowned. She realized it was the best tasting sushi she could remember eating, Toyko thanked him for sharing his story and sushi with her.

She told him about how she first became phobic of swimming in the lake. While she had set several high school swim team records, she had a dreadful phobia of swimming in the lake, which first afflicted her after she failed to rescue a man, intoxicated, who drowned during her first week of work as a city parks and recreation lifeguard. She joked she should have followed the advice of her father, who was always right, and right wing. Dad wanted her to work as an intern at his wealth management firm that summer. Afterwards, whenever she swam in the lake, she flailed helplessly, in a panic, and even needed rescuing herself.

Miguel gave her a hug, and then she noticed how lean and strong he was he did not seem to have an ounce of body fat he was all muscle and sinew. She also noticed he appeared grimy and grungy, with an earthy smell emanating from him. Still, she was so grateful for his grip and hold and could not release him. She gave him a few hundred dollars from her oversized Coach handbag, stuffed with the money from the spur-of-moment heist. She told him not to worry, that she was a trust fund kid, a one per center.

“A one percenter?” Miguel asked. He remembered restaurant customers talking about One Percenters during the Occupy Toronto demonstrations. He had even cooked hot dogs for those demonstrators and delivered them to their encampments in the park near the cathedral down the street from where he lived in his studio apartment.

“The wealthiest one percent. I’m a one percenter by virtue of my parents.”

“A one percenter by virtue of your parents,” Miguel mused. He refused to accept her fifty- and twenty-dollars bills, saying it was her money, and he had done nothing in return.

“You saved my life,” Toyko insisted.

Miguel grunted, shrugged, and prepared to head back to the ferry docks, so he had time to spare before the last ferry of the night departed Centre Island. He shuffled off with his wagon, filled with black garbage bags full of recyclables, through the darkness off the pier, heading through the moonlit night past the change rooms and the outdoor restaurants, patios, and takeout stands, checking the bins for more beer cans.

Toyko took the cash from the handbag and tossed the currency into the fire. She scrapped out the loose bills from the bottom of the handbag and picked up the bills that drifted in the sand around the campfire and hastily added this currency into the blazing fire. She nervously glanced around the dark beach to see if anyone was watching but the shoreline, boardwalk, the restaurant storefronts and structures were empty.

Miguel turned back at the sight of the fire growing the smell of money burning in the distance aroused his senses and attention. But he resumed his trip along the pathway through the Centre Islands gardens, serenaded by the hissing water sprinklers.

Toyko watched the money burn as she stood over the campfire, thinking of the vanity of her efforts, the disappointment and fruitlessness of her endeavors. After she poured water from a sand bucket on the fire, she finally followed far behind him through the garden pathways, rained upon by the spraying water from the garden sprinklers, until she reached the ferry docks. They both boarded the last ferry to the mainland. Having sat across from him on the ferry, she looked at him longingly. She could see that she was making him uncomfortable.

Miguel stood up and walked to the gate on the ferry where he waited alongside his wagon full of refundable cans. The ferry docked, and Miguel hastily disembarked. Toyko followed him from the ferry terminal to Bay Street. Just before he carried his wagon with its recyclables in huge black garbage bags down the cement staircase into the subway station, she asked him if he would come home with her that night. She could cook him a meal; they could relax in the hot tub or watch a movie on her wide screen television with a hi-fi stereo receiver and speakers with Surround Sound.

Miguel shook his head constantly, and then headed downstairs, easily managing to haul his gear and wagon down the dirty concrete stairwell, which reeked of urine, into the underground streetcar station. She admired his stoic personality and strength and his physicality, his raw chiseled looks. Still, she figured his refusal was for the best, as she realized she had practical matters, which she could no longer ignore or postpone, to address.

In the morning, Toyko called her manager to tell her employees at his gym and fitness center that her business was closing effective immediately. Today was their last day of work at Flex Fitness. If there were any problems or issues, she advised, they should contact her father’s lawyer and accountant. Her father’s hired guns would troubleshoot and manage whatever problems and issues arose. Her father, she realized, would be delighted she was following his advice; after all, he had offered the services of his own hired guns, lawyers, accountants, human resource personnel, even bankruptcy trustees, to shut down her business so she could move on with her life on a course, down a path, of which he approved.

Then, after she cleaned up the gym, and sold the exercise equipment and office equipment at fire sale prices, Toyko retreated into her own world, not leaving her condominium for days at a time. She stopped responding and answering her telephone, her voicemail, her email, and text messages. As she pondered the moments, meditated upon the present, contemplated her future, and reviewed the past, she had difficulty comprehending the fact she had resorted to armed robbery to attain such a dubious resolution, an enormous complication to her life.

Toyko feared arrest, but every time she saw a police officer upfront and personal, they smiled at her, fawned over her, held the door open for her, waited for her to cross the street, said hello, and admired her photogenic features, her statuesque body. The police seemed clueless as to the identity of the perpetrators of the armed robbery. Even that did not seem a safe supposition, because there was no reporting in the media about the robbery.

The tellers and manager at Toyko’s branch insisted she keep her accounts at the credit union. Toyko said the memory of her business failure was too strong and vivid. She appreciated their help in navigating through that financial storm, but she thought it was time to return to the financial institution where her parents banked. After all, she thought, she only opened her accounts with the credit union, which her father considered socialistic, as an act of rebellion against her parents, hadn’t she?

Then Toyko totally withdrew from social life, public life, Toronto society. During the summer, she spent her day at the beach, strolling along the shore, swimming, reading. During the winter, Toyko went to cafes and the library and read. Several times her parents sent the police to her condominium unit for a wellness check. She grew dreads and wore jeans and denim shirts she did not wash for weeks. The only time she frequented any stores or shops was when she got her nose, tongue and lips pierced, at her favorite tattoo parlor on Queen Street West. She stopped visiting bars and nightclubs; stopped dating men, stopped working out at the gym, although she did plenty of walking through the city parks during the winter and cycling during the summer.

Her parents both wanted her to consult a psychiatrist or psychologist, but she refused.

Then one day when Toyko returned from Woodbine Beach, she learned through a call and then a visit from the police her parents had died in a plane crash when the aircraft her father was piloting crashed in the thick forest near a lake in a remote part of Northern Ontario during a cross country flying tour. Her father’s lawyer and accountant expressed anger towards her; they had been trying to contact her since they heard about the fatal accident.

Overnight she went from being a reclusive hipster trust fund kid, a one percenter, as she had joked to her trusted employees, to a reclusive hipster millionaire.

Her parents’ friends called to offer their condolences. Her parents in their relentless and ambitious pursuits became estranged from their families. When Toyko tried to call her father’s cousin with the news, he hung up the phone on her, and Toyko realized she was alone in the world.

When fundraisers for homeless shelters, women ’ s shelters, food banks, public libraries, hospital foundations, universities, colleges, war relief funds, disease of the month

organizations, and public broadcasters called her for donations, she gave and donated funds from her inheritance generously. Toyko left no plea for money from any nonprofit and charitable organization unanswered. This continued after she sold her parents’ mansion and liquidated their investments and retirement funds.

Her father’s lawyers and accountants strongly advised against most donations. Several times they pleaded with her and advised her to stop recklessly giving away money, carelessly donating. They even took measures to block payments, which she overrode to their disdain and dismay. The accountant, lawyer, and financial advisor took their separate turns visiting her in her condominium and advised her to seek mental health counselling, but she ignored their exhortations. When they visited in a pair, and departed, disappointed, she could hear them lowering their voices, as they commented on her body odor and decrepit, tattered clothes and the mess in her living room. They whispered she needed intervention, a social worker, some kind of professional help. They sent the police occasionally to her condominium to check on her. They eventually agreed to write her off as a client.

In a few years, the financial advisor from the trio informed Toyko her account balance was below one hundred thousand dollars, the minimum balance they required in their firm’s investment accounts. They said they were shutting down her account.

Tokyo decided to return to her credit union of choice from years ago: she chose the branch of Metro Loyalist she robbed near her own condominium, for which she still received countless offers from pushy realtors.

The accountant visited her personally with the check. They met at a café in the neighborhood near her credit union.

“Your father told me he thought you should return to college and pursue your passion, as a mature student. That was a promising idea then and I think it’s a good idea now. ” He raised his coffee cup in a toast.

“This money, ” the accountant said, motioning to the check, “should tide you over through that period.” He handed her the receipts for the money transferred to her credit union account. He said that he had not been charging her any executor fees for the past few years.

Then they argued over fees, which she insisted on paying, but he refused to accept them, concluding his visit, saying, “Read my lips” before he slowly mouthed the words, “Go. To. College.”

That summer evening she returned to the islands, the Centre Island pier. This time she sat on the beach. Indeed, Miguel, with the baseball cap for the Brazilian World Cup soccer team, was still a regular there at night, binning, scavenging, with his head lamp, checking the bins.

When he saw her he offered her a slice of homemade pizza from his insulated lunch bag. She remembered the delicious sushi and ate the leftover pizza in the dark of the humid summer night at an abandoned picnic table.

Toyko explained to him what she perceived as her dilemma. She wondered if she should return to college as a mature student. Miguel told her she should; he had thought of doing so himself, but now he could not afford it.

“What if I helped pay for it?” Toyko asked.

“You go and after you graduate, maybe I’ll think about it.”

Toyko asked him if he would take her home that night. But he stared at her incredulously. He asked her if she was trying to get him into trouble. He ended up dragging along his wagon and recyclables ahead of her, as she followed behind him from a respectful distance, so they could catch the last ferry to the mainland.

In the autumn, Toyko enrolled in a four-year program in education and kinesiology at York University. When she finished her degree, a few years later, she went to a teacher’s college for a year. Toyko became a gym teacher on a reserve, a First Nation community in Northwestern Ontario. She even learned to play ice hockey and coached their hockey, basketball, and volleyball teams.

The first breath is always the worst.

THE END

Soil and dust and occasionally beetles flooding down her throat. No matter how often she does this, her lungs always try to expel the foreign matter, never remembering that there’s nowhere for it to go. There’s no air down here. If she wants air, she has to climb out.

She knows this, but her body forgets every time. She has to force her hands up through the topsoil, feeling for free space. It’s a shallow grave, but it still feels like forever until she can scrape the dust off of her face, lean onto her side, and vomit out the dirt. She tries not to notice it wriggling as she heaves. It scrapes the inside of her throat and scratches against the back of her gums. She’ll need to brush her teeth after this.

It takes her another few minutes of just breathing, eyes still covered by dirt, until she can sit up. Her body always forgets that, every time. It’s still alive. She’s still alive.

She wipes the dirt out of her eyes.

He’s there, sitting in his folding chair a few feet away. His hiking boots are caked in the same dirt as her scalp. Jeans tucked into them. Flannel. Sleeves rolled up. She scans his body, familiar as it is, from the bottom to the top of his head. Scant facial hair that comes from not shaving often enough rather than being a deliberate choice. She finally meets his eyes. Brown. They crinkle at the corners as he meets her gaze.

“Hey, kiddo,” he says, almost a whisper.

“Hey, Dad,” she rasps out.

It sounds more like a screech than a voice, but he smiles anyway.

Charlie’s been with her dad for a while now. He says it’s been just over five years. She doesn’t think about the time before, so she might as well have known him forever. He tells her she’s about thirteen now.

He likes talking and she likes listening to him talk, usually as he lifts her out of the grave and carries her out to the truck. He tells her she’s thirteen and her name ’ s Charlie and he’s sorry. He likes repeating that he’s sorry as he gets the water jug out. She shuts her eyes as the water runs in dirty streams down her face and touches one thumb to her chest in the sign of ‘it’s okay’.

“I’m sorry. ”

I’m okay.

“I’m so sorry, babe.”

I’m okay.

“There you go, you ’ re gorgeous again.” He swipes a rag over her face, leaving a blank halo of ‘clean’ while her shaved scalp and neck are still grimy.

She grins.

He grins back. “Let’s get you out of those clothes.”

An hour later, she has his flannel against her bare skin. She’s bundled herself into a ball leaning against the passenger ’s-side door. Her temple’s pressed against the cool glass. If she closes one eye, she can watch the countryside pass by. It’s the hour before dawn and everything is grey.

They just passed the border into California. There’s no trees out. It’s all dusty. Dad says it’s always been dusty like that, even before everything ended. He gets sad in some of the other places. When they were North, in Washington, he left the truck and stood for a while staring at the mud. “There used to be trees there,” he said. “So many trees, Charlie. You can’t even imagine.”

She couldn’t, but she tried, to make him happy.

She tries to imagine it now. That dust cloud is a tree. That cloud is a big, tall tree. The dust turns into leaves. The yellow becomes green and brown.

Dad puts one of their last remaining cassettes into the slot. The Doors start playing. She hums along.

“We’re stopping soon, ” he says. “Meeting Sam and the others.”

She doesn’t stop humming as she drops her head into a nod.

“He said they’d bring some food. How long’s it been since we had barbecue, huh?”

It’s been a while. He knows it has. But he’s not really expecting a reply. This is how most of their conversations go. He talks and she doesn’t really need to respond. It’s comforting. She lets his words cover her along with the flannel and watches the trees while The Doors sing about the end (my only friend, the end).

It’s dusk (slightly darker grey sky) by the time they arrive at the agreed upon campsite. The others are already there. Charlie sees Sam, Dad’s oldest friend. Black skin and cowboy hat pulled down over his eyes as he leans back in his seat. There’s Jacob. Dusty hair, blue eyes. And there’s a new guy that Charlie doesn’t recognize. He looks lanky, like his joints haven’t finished forming all the way. And young. He’s maybe a few years older than her.

She lets Dad climb out of the truck first. Sam and Jacob yell greetings to him, so she can slip out of her side’s door relatively unnoticed. That’s how they prefer it, she’s learned. No matter how many times Dad says she’s gorgeous, strangers get scared when they look at her.

She knows why. Dark circles under her eyes. Pallid skin. Scars all over. Stubble of hair along her head. Teeth that are perpetually dirty. And she’s tiny for her age, and her teeth are too sharp, and the way she walks around barefoot is creepy, and, and, and.

It’s easier to sulk in the shadows.

Dad goes to greet the men. Hands clasp, shoulders are thumped. He sits down by the fire. It’s already got something frying over it. Despite herself, Charlie steps closer. It smells like meat.

She’s starved for meat.

As soon as the firelight hits her face, though, she remembers why she stays in the shadows because the new kid gasps and goes for his gun.

Sam and Dad both yell, twin “No”s ringing out across the dark, but they’re drowned out by the gunshot. Charlie gets thrown backwards. Shotgun, she registers. Buckshot. It hit her in the chest, with enough sprayed out to cover most of her top half. There’s a hole in the middle of her body. That’s not supposed to be there. She’s in shock, laying with her face pressed against the dirt and, instead of pain that she knows she should be feeling, she just feels a deep sense of wrongness. There’s a hole in her that isn’t supposed to be there.

Big, calloused hands flip her over and she’s staring up into Dad’s face. “Baby?” he asks, cupping her face. “Baby, you with me?”

She opens her mouth and comes out with a wet gurgle.

“Goddamnit,” he whispers, turning over his shoulder to yell at the fire. “Goddamnit, I just dug her up!”

She can feel blood running down her chin. This isn’t bad. It feels like it’ll be quick.

Sam’s gravelly voice says, “I’m sorry, Jim. He didn’t know better.”

“Yeah, well, you should’ve told him!”

“I did. He’s a trigger-happy dumbass.”

“Tell him he can dig the goddamn grave. Shovel his own shit.”

Then, there’s a younger voice, breaking, “What the fuck is that thing!?”

“That’s my daughter, so you shut your goddamn mouth! You’ve done enough.”

The last thing Charlie hears before the sky goes black is the boy crying, “That’s a fucking monster, man. ”

Dirt. Beetles. Air. Dad waiting for her in a folding chair. Routines are comforting.

He washes her off, for the second time in as many days. Behind him, Sam and the others are gathered around the remains of the fire. It’s morning. She missed the barbecue. Once she’s washed and changed, Dad walks her over to the others.

“Okay,” he says. His jaw is set. He looks straight at the kid. “This is Charlie. She’s my kid.”

She waves, awkwardly.

“Danny,” the kid mutters. She almost doesn’t hear him. He’s staring at his feet. She notices his shotgun is now firmly strapped over Sam’s shoulder.

“Didn’t catch that,” Dad says.

“Danny,” he repeats, louder. His eyes flicker up, meet Charlie’s, and then flicker back down.

She forgets just how scared people can get. Most of the ones who make a big fuss about it don’t get a chance to do it for very long before she kills them. She hasn’t met a person she’s just supposed to talk to in a while.

When she met Sam, he gripped his beer until his knuckles turned white and his voice got a bit strained, but otherwise he was fine. Jacob started muttering some words of a prayer. Nothing like this, though. Maybe it’s because Danny’s so young.

“He’s too young, ” Dad mutters, echoing her thoughts. “Shouldn’t be doing this.”

She pulls on his sleeve and holds a finger to her chin, signing.

“I know you ’ re thirteen, baby. You’re just so much more mature than this dipshit.”

“Enough,” Sam says. His voice is soft, but it gets Dad to stop talking. Danny, who had his mouth open to retort, closes it. Sam nods, in approval. “Now then. We’re all here and mostly in one piece. Let’s go over the plan.”

The plan is always more or less the same. They find a settlement that’s doing as well as anyone can, in these times. (This settlement is in the area Dad says San Francisco used to be. It’s mostly swamp, but they have access to some water they’ve been boiling for salt, Danny says. Apparently he used to live there before they kicked him out. Charlie doesn’t ask why.)

One of them, usually Sam, gets their T-shirt on a stick that functions as a white flag and approaches the settlement. Sometimes they’ll send someone out to talk. If they do and they agree to let Sam and the others come in and share their resources for a bit, the plan ends there.

If they don’t agree or they don’t send anyone out at all or, occasionally, if they try to shoot Sam (white flag or not, Sam stands out of rifle range for these negotiations. He’s shown Charlie the bullet scars on his shoulders and let her run her fingers over them, gently. He’s learned that lesson the hard way, he said. She likes Sam), that’s where Charlie comes in.

The San Francisco settlement doesn’t send anybody out. Sam waits for an hour before he heads back to the rest of them. He shrugs, but there’s a faint smile on his face. Charlie grins and runs to the truck to get her Hi Vis.

The vest is torn up and battered from her five years using it, but it works for its intended purpose. The remaining neon yellow draws the light, making her extremely visible to anyone with a flashlight. (This is why they wait until dark for this part of the plan. Dad says that makes it more effective.) The vest comes down to about her knees, hanging on her like a dress. Dad says she looks gorgeous. Danny looks anywhere but at her. Jacob prays. And then dark comes.

Dad kisses her on her forehead, once, and gestures towards the settlement. They’ve built up a brick wall on the outskirts of where Danny says Golden Gate Park should be. Charlie walks through the remains of the city.

Big buildings collapsed into the street like animal carcasses. Graffiti drawings on brick walls; women in colorful headscarves that have gotten faded over time, strange green aliens with big heads, A’s in circles. Someone’s written “this is the end” over and over in red.

Charlie starts to hum The Doors song again as she approaches the brick wall. There’s a gate, and barbed wire on top.

“Halt!” someone on a makeshift guard tower yells. “Stop right there!” And then a flashlight hits the Hi Vis and the guard starts screaming.

Charlie used to be really bad at this part. When Dad first took her on a job, a few weeks after he got her, she stood where he put her, in front of settlement walls, and she cried. She sobbed for Dad to come get her out of there as the settlement’s guards shot her full of holes.

She’s older now.

The guard starts screaming and she breaks into a run. Bare feet slapping the surface of the asphalt. She gets a running start and makes her way up the wall. It’s about ten feet tall. Amateur hour, Sam would say.

The barbed wire barely gives her pause. She launches herself off the edge of the wall and onto the guard, sending both of them flying off the tower to the ground below. He’s shot her maybe eight times by now. They land hard enough she hears his spine break below her. She bites his jugular anyway. Dad says that’s part of the effect.

She looks up, letting the blood drip down her chin. Floodlights hit her face. There’s more screaming.

She knows Dad and the others are right behind her. While she’s drawing the fire, Danny will get his rifle and Jacob will get his semi-automatic and Sam will get the army sawed-off and they’ll get their “siege towers” (metal fold-out ladders) up to the wall. And from there, it’s ducks in a barrel, Dad says. (Dad will stay back and wait to scoop her up once the fire’s burned out.)

It’s a pretty big settlement. Maybe a hundred people. (She counts the bodies, after.) She gets shot a couple dozen times and kills a couple dozen.

Once the others have mounted their siege towers and gotten it over with, she just lays on the floor, breathing while she still can. She can’t quite see the stars because of all the smoke, but she looks at the sky anyway.

And then the sky gets replaced by Dad’s face as he leans down to scoop her up in his arms. “You still with me, kiddo?”

She wheezes out something that’s supposed to be a ‘ yes ’ .

“You’re a tank, baby. Wish half the army guys had been as good as you. ”

She smiles. She can feel the dried blood on her chin crack as she does.

“Sam’s setting up a campfire. Does that sound nice, baby? We’re just gonna sit and wait now. I know it hurts, but it’s gonna be over in a sec, okay?”

Yeah. She knows. Her top half feels like it’s been torn open. Maybe because it has been. She tries to focus on just being there, on just being alive. She’s dead weight as Dad sits down in his chair with her in his lap, tucks her head into the crook of his neck, and rocks her back and forth.

She curls a fist into his flannel shirt and waits. She doesn’t pay attention to the voices of the others (the screaming in her chest’s too loud for that), but she hears Sam say, “God bless Charlie.”

Danny mutters, “You shouldn’t have named it. It’s not a person. ”

Dad hums. “Charlie’s a good name for a good girl.”

“Didn’t you used to have a dog named Charlie?” Jacob asks.

“She was a good girl too.”

Charlie keeps wheezing in and out for another hour before she finally dies.

This time, when she wakes up, her pinky finger’s gone blue.

She doesn’t think much of it, at first. She doesn’t even notice it until Sam asks her about it, halfway through the morning, with a frown. She shrugs. He forces a smile, but there’s something behind his eyes that she can’t really name.

Maybe that’s why she doesn’t tell Dad.

The settlement had started growing its own crops. It had some sort of water purifying system, too. They’d even gotten some of the toilets working again, a rare luxury. So, of course, Dad decides they’ll stay there for a while.

Which means that, for the first time in a while, Charlie’s alone to do whatever she wants. The first few day, she climbs up to the top of the wall and runs down the length of it. She spends a solid hour in the makeshift garden, staring at the little trees and trying to imagine what they’d be like all grown up. She helps Jacob pile all the bodies into a pit and dances around while he lights them on fire.

The next morning, her other pinky’s blue, too. Following some half-formed suspicion, she pulls the blanket off of her feet. Her toes are blue.

She runs out to where the men are preparing breakfast and sticks her hands out to Dad.

He takes them, turning them over. His frown deepens when she shows him her feet. He looks over at Sam with an unspoken question.

Sam sighs. “We knew something like this could happen, Jim. You shouldn’t have taken her in the first place. We don’t know what they did to her back at that lab–”

Charlie hears the word ‘lab’ and then she doesn’t hear anything at all for a while as her brain starts playing gentle TV static.

When she comes to, it’s evening and the fire’s out.

It only gets worse as the weeks go on. Pretty soon, all ten of her fingers are blue and turning purple. Her stomach gets hard, like there’s a lump where her guts should be. She starts vomiting up food. Her teeth feel loose. So do her fingernails. She’s always been skinny but now, she starts bloating.

And then, a month in, her skin starts coming off.

Charlie’s no stranger to pain, but this hurts. She stuffs her shirt into her mouth and spends days in bed trying not to hear the animal moans that come out of her own mouth as the skin of her hands turns black and comes off completely. Like a glove. Flies have been following her around for a while now and she doesn’t have the strength to scare them off anymore.

Where’s Dad? she thinks, through the haze of pain. Where is he?

It’s Jacob, not Dad, who comes to visit her. He gets a rag to wipe her face. She’s barely aware of him until he starts talking. It’s hard to hear him over her wailing, but she’s powerless to stop it.

“You know what the Torah is?” he asks. She screams. “No, I’d guess not…it’s basically a really old story. You like stories, Charlie?”

Charlie tries to nod. She wills herself to stop screaming, but her throat keeps making the noises anyway.

She always thought Jacob merely tolerated her presence, but now, he sits with his back against her bed (she claimed one of the settlement’s abandoned twin beds) and he talks.

He tells her that once upon a time, there was a man named Abraham. He really wanted a son and one day, God gave him one. Abraham named him Isaac. (Charlie’s not clear on who God is, but Jacob says he’s the person who made everything, so she takes his word for it. She imagines the whole story, over her pain. Abraham has an unshaved face and wears a flannel.

Isaac has sunken eyes and pallid skin.)

Abraham loved his son and was happier than anything until one day, when Isaac was a teenager, God spoke to Abraham and told him to bring Isaac to the top of a mountain and slit his throat as a sacrifice to God. Abraham cried and asked God not to tell him to do this, but God insisted.

Jacob pauses, here. Then he sighs and keeps going.

Abraham took his son and told him they’d be going to make a sacrifice. Isaac was a good Jewish boy and didn’t question his father, so he followed him up to the top of the mountain, where Abraham tackled him, tied him up, and got ready to kill him.

Charlie can see this part. The yellow hill, the knife glinting in the sun, and Isaac. Poor Isaac, who can’t understand what he did wrong because he didn’t do anything to deserve this and his dad’s supposed to love him.

An angel flew down and grabbed Abraham’s arm to stop him and said he passed God’s test of his faith.

The moral is supposed to be that the Lord can give and take away.

Abraham untied his son and they lived happily ever after.

Charlie wishes she had the words to ask how Isaac could ever have trusted his dad after that. Did he flinch every time Abraham took up a knife to cook? Did he avoid higher ground? Did he hate God, after that, even if he wouldn’t have admitted it even to himself?

Jacob rubs a hand over her shaved scalp and leaves, but Charlie keeps thinking about the story.

Because sacrificing your child is wrong, no matter how good the cause.

(But that’s not what Dad’s doing, because she can’t die.)

Except she’s dying now, isn’t she?

(But he didn’t know that would happen. She’s always come back.)

That doesn’t mean she didn’t feel pain.

(Does pain matter when there’s no permanent damage done?)

Yes. Pain matters. Her pain matters. On some level, she knows this. Her pain is still pain. (“But–”)

He named her after his dog.

Her screaming doesn’t have anything to do with her hands decomposing, then.

The pain abates when her whole hands have gone black. It’s still there, but it’s like getting shot. She can handle the pain of getting shot any day.

She walks outside the house and finds the settlement empty.

The sky is grey. The sun is up. There’s no trace of Dad and the others except the remains of the fire.

For a second, she thinks she must have missed something. She stumbles around, looking for them everywhere. It doesn’t take her long to cover the whole perimeter. Their trucks are gone.

They left her there to die.

She vaults over the wall and starts walking through the city until she reaches the highway headed South. There’s no question in her mind of coming after them. There’s no anger, either. Just static.

After an hour of walking, a raccoon starts walking parallel to her. She stops and stares at it. It stares back. She crouches down and holds out her hand to it.

It comes closer, sniffs, and licks at it. She smiles.

Then, it bites down on her fingers with a crunch.

She’s about to pull her hand away and scream when she realizes it doesn’t hurt. The flesh is dead.

She sits on the dusty highway and lets the raccoon eat her hand, petting it with her other one.

The static in her head is getting steadily louder.

It takes her two days to reach them. She walks into their camp at dusk. Sam’s the first one to see her. He mutters a curse and goes for his rifle.

She stops just within the range of the firelight and opens her mouth to scream. It comes out more like a wheezing roar.

Dad gets up, hands out. “Hey now, ” he says. “Don’t be like that, baby.”

“You left me, ” she rasps.

“We didn’t know if you’d make it. I love you, you know I would have– Jesus, Charlie, what happened to your hand?” His brows furrow, like he’s worried. He is worried. He’s worried about her.

She takes a step closer to him, more from instinct than anything else. She barely has time to see his eyes flicker behind her to focus on something else before Danny hits the back of her head with a shovel.

The asphalt tastes familiar. She tries to move her arms and legs, but can’t get anything other than a twitch out of them.

“Did you have to do that?” Jacob asks. His voice is toneless.

“What, going soft in your old age?” Dad says. “She was useful and she was a sweet kid, but look at her. Something’s been eating her, for fuck’s sake.”

“Told ya we should have used a coffin.” Danny.

“Yeah, yeah.” Dad sighs. He sounds like he’s standing directly over her now. “Let’s give her a proper grave one last time. I doubt she’ll be able to crawl out at all, in this state.”

Charlie tries to tilt her head to look at Jacob. She tries to tell him that she understands now. She understands how Isaac felt as Dad lifts her up and puts her in a wooden box and nails the lid shut.

If she still had fingernails, she would have scraped them raw on the coffin lid. As it is, she smashes the stumps of her hands into it until she can hear bones snapping and then she smashes them some more until the lid splinters out and soil comes flooding in.

And then she climbs.

There’s beetles and dirt and air and she’s still alive.

She’s alive and she’s pissed.

It should be harder to track them. They should be better at this (amateur hour). Part of Charlie’s brain says that they’ve always been this incompetent. They’re no better than other gangs of half-baked raiders kicked out of their settlements. The only thing setting them apart from the less fortunate was her. They needed her more than she needs them.

And even now, even rotten enough for them to cast her out like an expired can of food, she can still give them hell.

She finds their camp, following tire tracks. It’s the usual shit: three trucks in a rough circle around a fire. She crawls under Dad’s. It used to be hers, too. (It still is. Maybe they’ll take her back after–) That doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters is anger. Isaac grabbing his father’s wrist because an angel isn’t coming to save him.

There’s a noise, far in the distance. Charlie cocks her head to listen a second before the men around the fire notice it. It sounds like engines. Sam’s on his feet first, waving a hand for Dad and Jacob to join him. Danny starts to stand, but Dad shoves him back down. “Stay here,” he says, short. “Watch our shit. We’ll be back.”

“I can come with you–”

Dad smacks him, once, across the face. How many times has he done that to Charlie? Backhand. The way you smack a dog that’s misbehaving. Not even a person. From where she’s sitting, she can see the hurt, betrayal, and finally horror in Danny’s eyes. Realization that he’s the bottom of the pecking order now that he’s gotten rid of her.

Dad points a finger in his face. “Do as you ’ re told.”

She watches, intent. Maybe Danny will say no. Maybe he’s too brash and angry to fall for this kind of shit the way she had. So, so easily. And then he nods, once. And the moment’s over. The tension’s released. He’s accepted his place.

Dad nods back and they head out. Rifle. Semi-automatic. Sawed-off. Off to hunt. Danny waits until they’re out of sight before he gets up and yells, once, pure frustration. He kicks the rusted bucket he was sitting on. It flies across the campsite, pointless like his anger.

He sits back down, head in his hands. What’s he thinking about? The fact that he abandoned his settlement for a bunch of assholes who treat him like shit? That he let these same people light up everyone he knew back home? How many people are dead because of him? How many of those fifty were his family? A girlfriend? Boyfriend? Who did he kill over some old grudge? Were all those bridges really ready to be burned?

Charlie waits for his breathing to grow steady before she crawls out from under the truck. He looks up. His eyes are red. The look she sees there is more resignation than anything.

That’s kinda funny. The first time he saw her, he was scared shitless and she wasn’t even gonna hurt him back then. He should definitely be scared now and yet, all she sees is nothing. They both know how this is gonna go.

The stillness only lasts a second before he lunges for his rifle and she pushes off the ground, launching herself at him.

He screams. They roll. He tries to get his forearm in between them and she bites it. The screaming gets louder.

She’s calm. She’s never been calmer. This is what she was made for. This is what they trained her to do. The price of her father’s love was being a weapon and she’s earned that love over and over in the past five years. She earns it now.

Danny thrashes like a frightened animal, screaming out curse after curse, but words won’t stop her as she gets her teeth in his jugular. Blood is warm across her face and tastes like iron. It’s comforting in its familiarity.

She draws back to look at his face. Danny’s opening his mouth, again and again, but nothing comes out but a wet gurgle. She knows how that feels. That’s how she felt when he killed her, the first time. “It’s okay,” she whispers. “You’ll get used to it.” He doesn’t deserve her kindness, selfish, cruel bastard that he is (but maybe he had a Dad who taught him how to kill and held him in his arms when he was hurt and he’s really not that much older than her and maybe now, now, he’ll understand what pain is really like, maybe–)

It doesn’t take her long to dig a grave.

“Charlie?”

She looks up from where she’s sitting in front of a fresh mound of earth. Sam hisses out a curse and gets his gun trained on her. Jacob meets her gaze. There’s something not unlike Danny’s resignation there. He knew how this was gonna go, too. He set all this in motion. She wonders if he’s proud of himself.

And then Dad. She looks up his body, like she always does, like she always has. Boots. Khakis. Flannel. Unshaved face. And his eyes.

There’s nothing but fear in those eyes.

For the first time in what she knows of her life, Dad’s scared of her. He’s watched her tear out hundreds of throats, get shot hundreds of times and keep going. He’s held her as she died at other people’s hands and told her that he loved her. This is the first time he’s been forced to see exactly what she is. If she’s a dog, she’s just gone feral. If she’s a little kid (and isn’t she?), she’s simply had enough.

He’s watched her violence, but he’s always pointed the business end of it towards other people. Now, he sees her as she is. He’s staring down the barrel of something he made and he realizes there’s nothing stopping her from killing him like she’s killed Danny.

And part of her wants to apologize. She wants to cry and beg and be a little kid, like she did the first time he put her in front of a rifle (the first time he let her die). If she starts crying, maybe he’ll still forgive her. Maybe everything can still be normal. She can wash the blood off and put on a shirt that’s too big and listen to a song about the end as she pretends her world’s not ending.

Except she can see him as he is now. And he looks like a coward.

How long has she been stronger than him? Was there ever a time when she wasn’t?

The thing that was stopping her from hurting him before was a thin film of love. So the real question is, does she love him now? This man who’s gotten her killed often enough that pain stopped having meaning, that let someone bury her so she’d crawl her way out through solid wood, that tossed her aside as soon as she showed signs of not being useful anymore?

“Charlie,” he repeats. His voice is shaky. “What are you doing?”

He’s so very scared.

She smiles and feels the dried blood on her chin crack. She rasps, “I’m waiting for him to wake up.

Wes Browne's Hillbilly Hustle (2020) was one of the most exciting debuts in recent memory, a page turner about about poker playing and dope dealing in Jackson County, Kentucky. One of its main characters, Burl Spoon, returns in Browne's latest novel, They All Fall the Same. Burl's wild and uncontrollable daughter, DeeDee, has gone missing. DeeDee's daughter, five-year-old Chelsea, is being taken care of by Burl and his wife Colleen. Burl dotes on his granddaughter like he used to spoil his own daughter when she was little, but "unfortunately spoiled things tend to rot." Burl finally finds his daughter in the hospital dead of a fentanyl overdose. He knows where she got the fentanyl—from a heroin dealing low life named Clovis Begley in Madison County. And he's going to get revenge.

THEY ALL FALL THE SAME

As readers of Hillbilly Hustle will remember, Burl ain't exactly unblemished himself. He's a prolific pot grower and dealer and he's got local law enforcement in his pocket, both police and sheriff. He's got a loyal and competent crew to provide muscle, including ex-Army Ranger Kyle "Greek" Staley, a combat veteran. Burl gathers his men, and along with Greek they put together a plan to raid the Begley farm so thorough it would make Delta Force jealous. Night vision goggles, flash bangs, tear gas, everything. But as Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke once said, no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy, and things go bad. Real bad. Burl Spoon is forced to go on the run.

Author Wes Browne has practiced criminal law in Kentucky for the better part of two decades. (He's also the founder of the Pages and Pints Reading Series in Richmond.) His knowledge of law, his taut prose, his larger than life characters keep us turning the page and astonished at each new scene. At one point Burl goes to confront the man that's been fucking his wife. The man comes out with a gun pointed at Burl's head and tells Burl he ain't afraid of him:

Burl said, "That so?" He darted right as he drew the gun from his waistband, dropped to one knee, and fired a snake round at the man's right leg near his groin, shredding his chinos. The man's gun went off twice as he bleated something that wasn't words, the shots both going high and left Burl laid on his right side and fired again, this time spraying the man's left shin with shot The man cried something pitiful and splayed gracelessly to the floor, where he whimpered the Lord's name and writhed.

Burl replaced his gun at his waist as he got up He approached the man who lay on his back wriggling, both his hands on his upper leg, smearing the tile with his blood like it was finger paint. Burl noted his bloodied wedding band. He kicked the man's gun away then stood over him.

Usually Greek takes care of Burl's dirty work, Burl had to make an exception here.

The second half of the book after Burl is on the run and in hiding is merciless. Anybody familiar with Kentucky feuds knows that revenge will be had no matter how long it takes. Burl plots and plans for months on end and patiently waits for an opportunity to present itself. And as always, opportunities do present themselves, but von Moltke's quote still stands. Wes Browne has thoroughly established himself as a master of Rural Noir with They All Fall the Same.

They All Fall the Same by Wes Browne, 261 pages

Crooked Lane Books, due in January 2025

CRACKS AND CHISELS

I chisel away at the letters on the page, Etching them with clearest detail; Drawing forth and shaping meaning. Hammering out horizontal lines Like a smith plying his trade; Conveying thought, from one mind to another.

Of all the insoluble questions mankind has asked of itself, That of legacy springs most readily to mind.

Death is obligatory, but life is voluntary. With every beginning comes an end.

A final chapter, in a book that is ours to write. To be shaped by others, but to be defined by ourselves alone.

In each character, I see an element, a reflection, of myself. Sometimes the comparison is favorable, shining like a gem. Other times, it shines light on those darker shades of which I am not proud.

It is in this duality, I ponder and reflect, learning and evolving. In discovering my characters, I discover myself.

In producing each shard, uneven and unwieldy, I craft a broader portrait. One of those stained glass windows whose name and origin are lost to memory.

I see the sharp edges, that flurry of vivid and dull colors. The cracks and ripples no less in evidence. I am who I am.

SETTING GHOSTS TO REST

I sit at one end of the rustic picnic table; My fingers careful not to brush along its surface. The unseen threat one must always guard against.

I look into the faces of those around me; My survey too fleeting to register in the minds behind their eyes. Seven years had passed since we had last gathered in the same room.

The celebratory banners and streamers rippled in the summer breeze; As light and fleeting as a chaste lover’s kiss.

People who I had grown up with since childhood; all now adults. As was I.

Community brought us together; duty tore us apart.

We were all hybrid creatures. Sphinxes in our own individual mythologies. Here we all stood, years later; reconciling those conflicting primal forces.

The fabric of time and space wavers before my eyes. Overlaying each face; that of the child or young adult I knew them best as. I recognize these lingering wisps of memory. Their contemporaries are as alien to me as if of another species entirely.

Neither love nor hate stir my soul. I cannot tell if this is good or bad; To have had over fifteen years of history with those present, And at the end of all, at the culmination of all the ups and downs, Nothing is what I feel.

Those moments of most joyous celebration echo clearly in my mind, As vividly as do those memories of pain, betrayal, and separation.

Both aspects are a part of me. They will forever mark a chapter in my life. But it is I that writes the book. It is time to turn the page.

PEOPLE YOU’VE BEEN BEFORE THAT YOU DON’T WANT AROUND ANYMORE

If I were ever to distill my maiden voyage into adulthood into a single phrase, “cognitive dissonance” would capture the essence. However, to confine it solely to the realm of cognition would be a gross understatement. Oh no, it was a sad spectacle akin to a grand opera of the absurd where my lofty aspirations, steadfast principles, and lackluster realities engaged in a fierce battle royal, the only victor being the crushing weight of existential dread sprinkled with a dash of regret.

This general dissonance played across my life’s landscape in countless ways: Despite my bold proclamation as a straight-edge punk, disdainful of alcohol and drugs, I found myself nursing weekend-long hangovers, as if partying were an Olympic sport I unwittingly excelled in. Despite my noble pursuit of a vegan, cruelty-free ethos, there I was, in the aftermath of a bender, seeking solace in the greasy embrace of a fast food burger made from a poor animal that had certainly died for my sins; Despite my meticulous planning and anal-retentive tendencies, I’d always find a way to sabotage myself and veer way off course, letting chaos reign supreme until my carefully laid plans met a glorious demise. Despite my fervent advocacy of radical feminism, I constantly found myself entangled in complicated relationships with inherently problematic individuals. Such was the saga of my journey from mid-adolescence until my early twenties. It wasn’t mere inconsistency; it was a full-blown civil war raging between who I aspired to be and the person my actions revealed.

Growing up white and middle-class in a sheltered and educated urban environment, my life’s biggest hurdles weren’t accommodation or sustenance, but the paralyzing tyranny of choice overload; whenever presented with a sprawling array of options, my normally articulate inner voice turned into radio static. The sheer weight of possibilities, each fraught with unforeseen consequences, would leave me overwhelmed and paralyzed. Every decision, no matter how trivial, triggered a deluge of “what ifs” in my head. It was a first-world problem of epic proportions.

One intriguing aspect of studying English Language and Literature at the National University of Athens is that during the sophomore year of our undergraduate studies, beyond our core curriculum, a vast menu of elective courses from all Humanities departments awaited us. The list we could choose from was long enough to trigger a panic attack, and it naturally became the subject of my obsessive scholarly scrutiny weeks before registration. Needless to say, this choice overload led me down a fascinating –if not slightly unhinged- mental rabbit hole.

Drowning in a sea of elective options, I sought the guidance of the university’s study advisor. Unfortunately, he inadvertently made things worse for me as quite early on in our sessions, he emphasized the earth-shattering importance of my choices using the worn analogy of the butterfly effect where the flight of a butterfly in France could trigger an earthquake in China. Every elective course, he warned, held the key to my future career, income, and mental wellbeing.

The pressure was on and, despite the siren song of a quick fix -a joint or maybe a single, harmless Xanax- I knew a clear head was vital for making the right choices. Armed with a meticulously plotted constellation map of obligatory and elective courses – obligatory courses forming the core, electives orbiting around them like distant stars- I envisioned myself as the architect of my intellectual cosmos. Oh, the intoxicating blend of youthful hubris and scholarly smugness- I wore it like a shining badge of honour, blissfully unaware that the universe was laughing at my expense.

Little did I know that my meticulously crafted list of elective courses, a testament to weeks of agonizing deliberation, wouldn’t survive the onslaught of a hangover. The day registration opened for our third and fourth semesters, I found myself battling a formidable hangover and a monumental headache, courtesy of the previous night’s festivities.

It all started, as those descents into chaos usually do, with the purest of intentions. After catching Jim Jarmusch’s “Broken Flowers” at a downtown cinema, I met my best friend, Judith, for what we naively believed would be an innocent glass of sangria. Fast forward a few hours later, we found ourselves thrashing around at a hardcore punk concert. My usual fastidiousness flickered now and then, reminding me that I had to secure a few hours of quality sleep so that I could wake up early to go to the university registry. However, my inner rebel, fueled by a ferocious punk spirit and a complete disregard for future consequences, drowned out those pleas with yet another round of drinks until my responsible self whimpered into submission. I got back home at the crack of dawn, dazed and confused, in a cab with the windows rolled down.

A couple of hours later, running on a small pharmacy’s worth of Ibuprofen and hiding behind oversized sunglasses, I shuffled into the registration line while searching frantically through my pockets for my list of elective courses. My meticulously crafted list was nowhere to be found. I started sweating profusely. Presented with the official forms and their endless rows of ominous tick-boxes, my brain staged a full-blown mutiny. The words swam before my eyes, morphing into an indecipherable alphabet soup. In a desperate attempt at control, I embarked on a ticking spree, selecting courses with reckless abandon; “Introduction to Islamic Studies”? Sure, why not? “Depictions of Greece in Anglophone Literature and Poetry”? Bring it on! “Politics, Literature, Identity, and the Americas”? Definitely! These courses sounded totally unfamiliar, holding an almost exotic allure. Unbeknownst to me, some inexplicable cosmic thread was already weaving me into my future.

As it turned out, my registrar-induced amnesia landed me in a semester of delightful misery. “Introduction to Islamic Studies” demanded extensive background knowledge of Islamic history and some Arabic fluency, a skillset I sadly lacked so managing to get a C+ in the final exams felt like a herculean task. “Depictions of Greece in Anglophone Literature and Poetry” was, admittedly, interesting. Nevertheless, bi-monthly field trips to the places mentioned in the poems were mandatory so every two weeks, I wrestled with my dwindling bank account and endured five-hour coach journeys to visit Missolonghi, a seaside town, where I was expected to marvel at the meadows where Lord Byron allegedly shed his blood.

However, “Politics, Literature, Identity, and the Americas” emerged as a glorious exception. It unveiled a whole world steeped in a history both glorious and tragic, a world forever wounded by colonialism and US intervention.

This course held the potential to be the most impactful of my entire academic career and yet, I managed to squander it.

One Sunday evening, in a moment of misguided camaraderie with Judith, we decided to drop acid together. Fuelled by a rebellious spirit, I yearned to traverse the cosmic hinterlands and eport back on the unexplored alleyways of the psyche. However, the ever-present control freak within, ever vigilant against potential chaos, attempted some damage control by safeguarding and insulating this experience.

The trip, I decided, would take place in her dorm room where the windows were barred and there was no kitchenette. This eliminated any access to sharp objects, poison, or flames- the holy trinity of bad trip catalysts according to my hazard assessment plan. I programmed emergency services on speed dial and gave a friendly heads-up to the neighboring rooms about our impending descent into the psychedelic abyss to ensure a watchful eye in case things went sideways. Judith, a senior psychology student with a keen interest in the manifestations of my Cluster C personality –anxiety, OCD, phobias- took it all in stride. I often alluded to William Blake to describe my control-freak attitude as my “mind-forg’d manacles” to sugar- coat my situation. Judith knew that my desperate attempt to micromanage even a psychedelic experience was merely the latest testament to my analretentive tendencies. In fact, she had already sweet-talked me into being her first official patient once she graduated.

After all, this wasn’t our first rodeo with mind-altering substances. After ingesting speed at an Iggy Pop concert the previous year, we had embarked on a horrifying joyride on a lawnmower across a stranger’s yard, culminating in an unceremonious dip in his empty pool. The owner, a surprisingly gentle man in his eighties, fished us out from his pool, thanked us for the impromptu lawn service and kindly but firmly kicked us out of his property. The next morning, a sense of profound guilt gnawed at me for our irresponsible antics. I even penned an eloquent letter of apology, outlining the mitigating factors that had led us to this nocturnal gardening rampage. I made sure to emphasize that, in our normal state, both Judith and I were responsible and hard-working students with impeccable academic records.

Judith started tripping almost immediately. I, however, remained stubbornly earthbound. As she enthusiastically foraged her tiny room for imaginary mushrooms like a determined truffle dog, I sat cross-legged on her bed, fixated on a poster of Yves Klein’s Blue Venus.

After a while, driven by a burgeoning ennui, I attempted to start an essay on Shakespeare’s “Venus and Adonis” for my “Depictions of Greece in Anglophone Literature and Poetry” class:

“Venus and Adonis” (1593), probably Shakespeare’s first publication, is an exploration of the intricate nature of love and lust. The poem chronicles the plights of Venus, whose unrequited love for Adonis, an extremely handsome man… ”

I was clearly out of ideas, devoid of any inspiration. Everything I produced reeked of the uninspired drudgery of a high schooler toiling under the burden of a mandatory assignment. Hours melted into each other, reminding of my mental inertia. Finally, feeling forsaken by the Muses, frustrated by my own sealed doors of perception, and weary of Judith’s mycological rumblings, I admitted defeat. Trudging home, I collapsed into bed and immediately fell asleep. The next day dawned with a welcome normalcy; no voices in my head, no kaleidoscopic vision, no Technicolor hallucinations. In fact, I was feeling composed enough to resume my day and even attend my “Americas” class.

That day, our professor embarked on an exploration of El Salvador. I was well-versed in the history of El Salvador, having spent the previous weekend devouring Joan Didion’s “Salvador”. Coups d’état tumbled forth, followed by a dizzying succession of revolts and authoritarian regimes, each more oppressive than the last. I was already forty minutes into class when I realized that my mind had taken a detour into bat country. Though undeniably still housed within my own skull, I was inexplicably convinced that I had somehow morphed into Joan Didion and that I had just had a series of scathing essays on El Salvador published in the New York Review of Books.

Initially, I struggled to grapple gracefully with this realization but the professor’s lecture on El Salvador’s recent history triggered a near-Pavlovian urge to snag a front- row seat, lest I miss a single detail. Notes were furiously scribbled, a waterfall of bright blue ink on a blank sheet that, in my altered state of consciousness, morphed into the Salvadoran flag. Half-closing my eyes, I witnessed the flag of El Salvador with its horizontal triband of cobalt blue-white-cobalt blue and its coat of arms in the center, unfold triumphantly. Glancing outside the window, I noticed that the afternoon sky had taken an impossibly vibrant shade of cyan. Emily Dickinson’s “A Slash of Blue” popped into my head, the first domino in a cascade of literary blues. Blue was everywhere around me.

I strived to recall other instances of the symbolic use of blue in literature: the blue eyes in Alice Walker’s “The Bluest Eye” as a symbol of privilege and whiteness; T.S Eliot’s use of blue in “The Waste Land” to evoke a sense of melancholy and sadness; Robert Frost’s amazement at all the blue things around us giving us a taste of heaven in “Fragmentary Blue”; the replacement of “pleurosis” with “blue roses ” in Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie”. The list was infinite. The professor started showing us pictures of El Salvador by Mike Goldwater. A profound sense of sadness engulfed me, and my gaze drifted to the professor’s face. His eyes were a hypnotic shade of baby blue. I started humming The Velvet Underground’s “Pale Blue Eyes” under my breath:

Thought of you as my mountaintop

Thought of you as my peak

Thought of you as everything I’ve had, but couldn’t keep I’ve had, but couldn’t keep

Linger on your pale blue eyes

Linger on your pale blue eyes

A jolt of self-awareness snapped me back. A few heads had turned in my direction, their disapproving glances cutting through my blue haze.

“Celeste, is there anything you would like to add?” the professor probed kindly. The sound of my name reverberated through the cavernous halls of my overstimulated mind. Celeste, I mused, my own name, a celestial whisper hinting at a connection to the entire cosmos- a swirling nebula of all things blue. “Celestina”, the jewel of Picasso’s Blue Period, shimmered before my inner eye. Feeling at a loss for words, I simply shook my head, my gaze falling to my trembling hands and legs, nervously fidgeting under the desk. I was wearing indigo jeans, azure Adidas sneakers, and my mother’s silver ring that was adorned with a shard of raw lapis lazuli stone.

Blue Songs are like tattoos

You know I’ve been to sea before

Crown and anchor me

Or let me sail away

Hey Blue

And there is a song for you

A Joni Mitchell song welled in my head, threatening to burst the banks of my skull. I clamped a hand over my mouth, stifling the urge to let the song erupt.

Blue

Here is a shell for you

Inside you’ll hear a sigh

A foggy lullaby

There is your song from me.

Suddenly, the cerulean storm within me abated, only to be replaced by a rising tide of a different sort. Joni Mitchell. The name “Joni” echoed “Joan” and in that instant, the lines blurred. Celeste, the unremarkable nineteen-year-old dissolved. I was Joan Didion. I knew everything about El Salvador. I had lived there.

A primal urge surged through me and I confidently shot my hand upward. Granted the chance to speak, I launched into a detailed account of the 1982 Salvador earthquake. My words flowed with an unsettling fluency, my descriptions so vivid that anyone could be convinced I had witnessed the earthquake and its aftermath firsthand. Of course, the year was 2005 and I had just turned nineteen and that was a physical impossibility I conveniently ignored.

My elaborate narration left the professor speechless. With a diplomatic cough, he steered the conversation towards the Salvadoran Civil War that took place between 1979 and 1992. But the dam had burst. Once again, my hand shot up, a reflex I could no longer control. For the next twenty excruciating minutes, I held the class hostage with a feverish analysis of US interference in the conflict. When I finally paused, gasping for breath, a heavy silence hung in the air. Before the professor could react, I launched a blistering critique of US support for the El Salvadoran government that was stained with human rights violations, including the murder, torture, and kidnappings of many members of left-wing guerrilla groups. By the time I ended my soliloquy, my t-shirt was damp with sweat, and tears were streaking my face.

My classmates, alongside our flustered professor, gaped at me in a perplexed blend of horror and sheer bewilderment. Taking a cue from their expressions that resembled figures in a Goya painting, I sank back on my chair, wiping my glistening face with my scarf. A horrifying truth dawned on me: I wasn’t Joan Didion. I was Celeste, a sophomore English major. The closest I had ever come to 1980s El Salvador were a dog-eared copy of “Salvador” and a spicy burrito. Apart from my fervent contributions to the university feminist zine, I had never made any publications. Here I was, just a silly college student, grappling with the aftermath of a disturbing and untimely LSD trip.

Following that incident, I chose to observe a vow of monastic silence for the rest of the semester, a desperate attempt to salvage what remained of my academic reputation. The subsequent lectures were incredibly fascinating as we explored the cultural richness and the intricate political history of Chile, Venezuela, Brazil, Nicaragua, and Mexico. These lectures were a treasure trove of knowledge-knowledge I absorbed with the quiet desperation of a starving child. I never raised a hand again in class, content to be a silent observer, a ghost haunting the back row. Thankfully, hard work ultimately prevailed and I aced the exams, my A+ a testament to my original studiousness. However, a couple of years later, when I approached the professor for a recommendation letter, his polite refusal stung. He acknowledged my strong grades and potential but confessed to a lack of connection with me as a person. In retrospect, and with the benefit of hindsight, I wouldn’t hold it against him.

Though this mortifying incident nearly threatened to crater my academic standing, it ultimately proved to be a bitter blessing in disguise and a harsh wake-up call. Unless I wanted to start Syd Baretting my way towards insanity, the path towards silencing the dissonance raging within my head wouldn’t be achieved through mind-altering substances. It demanded a commitment to adulting-clean living, self-care, and finding a way to reconcile the warring factions inside of me. A few days after my public breakdown, I woke up with an Elliott Smith song swirling in my troubled mind:

People you ’ ve been before That you don’t want around anymore

That push and shove and won’t bend to your will I’ll keep them still

Staring into the mirror that day, my reflection ashen and wilted, like William Blake’s sick rose, it occurred to me that there were so many past versions of myself -people I had been before- I simply could no longer tolerate. My mind felt like a warzone. All I had to do was focus on the Sisyphean task of forging a self that would be worthy of respect. It wasn’t an easy process and it took me years to make some noticeable progress but I had a solid foundation to build on: a clear head that would allow both my mind and heart to inform each and every decision. This new Celeste was taking the wheel, even if the road ahead remained fraught with challenges.

The student advisor’s words, once scoffed at, now resonated deeply. Choosing my elective courses truly set off a butterfly effect. Had I not decided to stay out late partying the day before choosing the electives, I would never have chosen “Politics, Identity, Literature, and the Americas”, a course that opened my eyes to a new world. Had I not studied Joan Didion’s “Salvador” so intently, I wouldn’t have gained insight into the intricate history of El Salvador. Had I not fried my brain on acid right before such an important class, I would never have faced the shame of public humiliation in a place –my cherished university- I held sacred. Had I not encountered this humbling experience, I wouldn’t have confronted a truth I’d been avoiding and I would probably have continued down a path paved with late nights and questionable decisions, the warring factions within me ever–escalating. Without this series of seemingly nonsensical events serving as a catalyst for self-reflection, I wouldn’t have arrived at this critical juncture.

BARTERING

While most of my peers fretted over their looks and romantic escapades, my adolescence was defined by a different kind of drama: the thrill of the academic black market. While some effortlessly excelled in calculus or displayed incomparable athletic prowess, I mastered the art of trading academic essays for whatever caught my eye.

The epic saga of my free dive into the academic underworld began amidst the chaos of our local, dilapidated skate park where my twin brother, Paul, and I used to hang out. Surrounded by the rebellion in full swing- punk tunes blaring, handsome teenagers gliding past me, the harsh grind of skateboards crashing against the concrete, and the tantalizing smell of stale beer and weed wafting through the air- I found myself mesmerized by this decadent allure. I yearned to be part of this enclave but, alas, everyone ignored me. I was a bespectacled, 15year-old Goth, clad in a taffeta dress, torn tights, woollen socks, and hefty Doc Martens amidst a sea of naked torsos glistening under the scorching May sun. My brother, once a skater extraordinaire until a gruesome accident, held some sway over this motley crew. His embarrassment was palpable, especially with me trailing behind him like a shadow, constantly reminding him of his uncool familial ties.

Feeling unmistakably out of place, my gaze settled on George, the epitome of effortless cool, hunched over a weathered copy of “The Grapes of Wrath”. He seemed to be struggling. I found myself drawn to him like a moth to a flame. Mustering what little mystique I could, I exhaled a cloud of cigarette smoke in his direction and crooned in my deepest register:

“Struggling, huh? Need a hand with that?”

George’s green eyes shot up, his expression a mix of confusion and amusement. “From you?” he queried, his tone dripping with skepticism.

Undeterred by his dismissive demeanour, I maintained my composure and purred in my most intellectually assertive, yet seductive voice:

“Yeah, of course, I’ve read ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ a hundred times. I guess I could help you with that.”

George’s skepticism lingered as he explained his dire situation.

“I‘m doomed” he lamented. “I’ve got an essay due for my Literature Class in three days. I can’t fail this class again. But this book… it’s so difficult! I haven’t made it past page 13.”

I plopped down next to him, legs fidgeting in excitement as I recounted the saga of Tom Joad’s odyssey:

“There’s this guy, Tom Joad, fresh out of the slammer, heading home to Oklahoma. Early on, he buddies up with Jim Casy, a renegade preacher turned hedonist philosopher. Anyway, the Joads along with Jim Casy, hit the road to California, hoping for sunshine and oranges but find nothing but trouble, bigotry, persecution, and prejudice. As farmers travel massively towards the west and camp alongside the road, new communities begin to spring up, creating their own rules and laws of conduct. When a riot breaks out in one of these camps, Tom and Casy knock out a police deputy and Casy takes the fall to save Tom. Later on, Tom learns about Casy’s noble plan to organize the farmers against the fat-cat landlords. But before they can get anywhere, the police spot them, label Casy a communist, and bash his brains out. Tom kills the murderer of Casy and goes into hiding. Eventually, his secret is revealed and he decides to carry Casy’s crusade for social justice, becoming a tiny cog in a big wheel of social change. The whole book is like a road trip towards enlightenment, equality, and social justice. Classic stuff, really”.

George looked dumbfounded as if I had just recited Joyce’s Ulysses by heart.

“Goddamn, are you smart”, he marveled.

Not one to shy away from a challenge, I decided to take my chances. I responded with a cocky grin:

“Obviously. I could even whip up that essay for you, for a price of course. ”

Venturing into the dark arts of bartering and ghostwriting was uncharted territory for me. My only previous relevant experience was limited to watering Mrs. Smith’s hydrangeas in exchange for access to her swimming pool, her air-conditioned living room, her Apocalypseready fridge, and her drinks cabinet.

Not exactly a thriving black market, but hey, everyone starts somewhere.

George’s emerald eyes sparkled with excitement:

“It’s a deal. Nail this essay and I’ll hook you up with tickets to the Pixies next month”.

And just like that, the essay empire was born. With George sailing smoothly to an A+ thanks to my essay wizardry, I found myself in high demand across all subjects and grade levels. From Modern Literature to Poetry, and from History to Sociology, I became the go-to guy for everything. By sophomore year, I had become a chameleon of the essay world. Whether I was channeling Virginia Woolf’s “The Lighthouse” for a skater dopefiend or dissecting “Das Kapital” for a high school jock, I meticulously tailored each essay to match my respective “client’s” writing style, general attitude, and academic level so that no teacher would ever suspect a thing.

In the convoluted maze of my adolescent mind, the notion of peddling essays for cold, hard cash struck me as immoral, akin to mental prostitution. From my rebellious, anarchist viewpoint, bartering essays sounded like a symbolic act of defiance, a subtle rebellion against the rigid constraints and hierarchical norms of the academic establishment. Thus, revelling in the thought that my acts aligned with my vision of a world founded on voluntary cooperation, I gleefully accepted whatever bounty came my way: a skateboard, a stack of books, CDs, vinyl records, band merchandise, a Tiffany table lamp (because why not?), concert tickets, a denim jacket, a jar of gourmet mustard, and yes, even a bottle of Knob Creek or the occasional bag of weed to fuel my creative insurrection. From the sublime to the utterly absurd, my room had transformed into a renegade garage sale.

As my grotesque collection grew, my poor mother struggled to wrap her head around my newfound hustle. Each day, she’d wander into my room, eyes widening at the ever-expanding array of oddities. Despite her pleas for me to loosen up and enjoy my youth like my brother extensively did, I was shackled to my deadlines. Balancing my reputation as the essay kingpin with the escalating demands of my own schoolwork was like juggling flaming torches while riding a unicycle blindfolded. One misstep and it’d all go up in flames.

Like a grittier, post-punk version of Alice in Wonderland, I found myself tumbling down the rabbit hole of endless studying, researching, and writing, wondering all the while what curious

force propelled me onward. Was it acceptance I sought? Sure, I had earned the tolerance, and perhaps even a smidgen of fondness, from the eclectic mishmash of local misfits- skaters, metalheads, stoners, punks, and goths. However, I remained the odd one out. Even my dalliances with various members of these groups left me feeling unsatisfied, craving something more substantial than fleeting camaraderie. Was it a selfless sense of altruism, a noble desire to offer my intellectual services to those in need? Ha! Not quite. Although my moral compass prohibited charging those poor fellows for my essay wizardry, I certainly wasn’t doing charity work for the greater good. Or perhaps it was the allure of material goods that drove me? While I surely appreciated the concert tickets and the rare books generously bestowed upon me, I wasn’t exactly holding out for anything extravagant. I was more than content to take whatever came my way, like a literary scavenger in the urban jungle. As for the legality of my endeavors- did I really care? Not in the slightest. I simply ignored the laws and rules of academic institutions. “I wannabe anarchy” was my motto, a lyric I had borrowed from the Sex Pistols, a band whose demise was as tumultuous as their brief existence.

As a university freshman, I plunged headfirst into the lucrative trade of essay crafting for my peers. With each assignment, the word count soared, the complexity deepened, and so did the rewards. Yet, it wasn’t the allure of material gain that drove me, but the odd adrenaline rush of tackling even more intricate challenges. It was like playing a high-stakes game of intellectual poker.

Gone were the days of trading high-school essays for mere trinkets. My new clientele offered prizes befitting the challenges I undertook: a bike for a ten thousand word opus on the representations of masculinity in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”; an intricate tattoo in exchange for an essay on “Hannah Höch’s Deconstruction of the New Woman Dichotomy”; a rock festival pass in exchange for a post-colonial analysis of Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant”. Yet, despite my bartered treasures, my true lifeline was a full scholarship that made it possible for me to finance my tuition and my tiny attic apartment. In a way, my scholarship was the ultimate barter-exceptionally high grades for a roof over my head and my tuition fees covered. Sure, to the casual observer, all this would have seemed like a desperate plea for help but to my paranoid, drug-fuelled, anxiety-ridden, hyperventilating mind, it was the zenith of utopian socialism-a grand experiment in trading enlightenment for sustenance.

In my twisted version of academia, my essays weren’t just words on paper; they were my form of currency, the golden tickets to keeping me fed and alive.

One dreaded Monday, I was summoned to my English Renaissance professor’s office. A profound sense of panic consumed me. Had my essay on William Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice” somehow missed the mark? How would it affect my scholarship? As I nervously twiddled my hair in the waiting room, I found myself joined by a much older, impeccably dressed, but visibly stressed woman.

“Do you think he’s onto us?” she whispered, her gaze darting sideways.

Us? My mind struggled to connect the dots. The woman looked like a total stranger to me but as I pondered, a chilling realization dawned- I had recently written another essay on the “Merchant of Venice”. Had I inadvertently penned the same essay twice, once for me and once for her? What had I traded it for? My poor, overworked brain, battered by sleepless nights, deadline stress, and a cocktail of substances, felt like it had been tossed in the Bard’s blender. As the professor ushered us into his office, he explained in a stern voice that he was planning on examining us separately since our suspiciously similar essays had raised some eyebrows. Apparently, my essay had focused on the chain of hatred in The Merchant of Venice while the woman ’ s explored the spectre of prejudice- a hair’s breadth apart. As the woman left the office in tears while I emerged unscathed from this ordeal, I couldn’t help but feel a profound sense of remorse and a bitter feeling of disappointment with myself. I had let this woman down “for a pound of flesh”.

With the determination of a zealous barterer, I pledged to never let mishaps derail my academic quest ever again. Armed with an intricate Excel spreadsheet, I meticulously logged every exchange, deadline, and essay detail, building a fortress of organization to fend off chaos. I ceremoniously bid farewell to my stash of weed, speed, and Quaaludes, watching them swirl and vanish into the abyss of a university toilet bowl. My new system would be foolproofor so I deluded myself into thinking.

For a while it seemed to be going well; as the exam season loomed closer, my essay enterprise thrived.

I decided to amplify my performance by revamping my dietary habits; When a dietetics student came knocking for an essay on “The Historical Origins of Mediterranean Cuisine”, I decided to trade my mental labour for a brain- boosting dietary program that would bolster my focus and improve my mental capacities. I grazed on leafy greens and broccoli, cooked up legume feasts, and savoured nightly doses of dark chocolate. Sure, I couldn’t afford fancy fare like salmon or nuts, or any other source of protein as a matter of fact, but I remained unfazed by this minor detail, thinking that at least, I was on a crusade towards sober, cruelty-free, vegan enlightenment. The future dietician also tossed around fancy terms like “supplements” and “protein shakes”, but my wallet scoffed at the idea. But hey, why bother with supplements when you ’ re committed to a straight-edge lifestyle, right?

What my paranoid mind initially interpreted as my apogee was an invitation by a university senior and aspiring actor, Thomas, to craft a dissertation on the concept of solidarity in John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath”. Given that “The Grapes of Wrath” had served as my initiation into the realm of literary banter, this invitation felt like a cosmic intervention, a wink from the literary deities, and a celestial nudge towards some elusive affirmation of purpose. However, the time had come to confront some mundane practical realities – looming electricity bills and the dreaded prospect of a root canal. These were expenses not to be settled in the ethereal currency of existential enlightenment but in the universally acknowledged medium of cold, hard cash. Moreover, I found myself facing the logistical nightmare of storage constraints as my one-bedroom apartment was bursting at the seams with a cornucopia of odds and ends: towering stacks of books, a vintage teal Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter similar to the one favoured by Cormac McCarthy, piles of vinyl records, a Fender P-Bass guitar and its amp, a second-hand detuned piano, and a colossal samovar that probably outweighed both myself and myexistential crisis combined.

Occasional visitors marvelled at my bohemian oasis, enchanted by the hodgepodge of items that adorned every nook and cranny. However, whenever my mum paid a visit, she looked mortified by the chaos and clutter, and invariably offered to “help me tidy up ” , slipping me a psychiatrist’s professional card as she departed-her silent plea for me to seek professional help hanging heavy in the air. But me being the grandmaster of evading my inner turmoil and a virtuoso of turning trials into tales, I always dismissed her concerns with a hearty laugh.

Crafting Thomas’s dissertation proved to be a Herculean task. Despite persistent attempts to elicit his feedback, Thomas seemed more interested in honing his theatrical and vocal talents than in reviewing draft after draft or communicating with his supervising professor. It felt as though I were a conductor without an orchestra, left to orchestrate the symphony of his dissertation entirely on my own. Simultaneously, I found myself struggling to maintain my GPA and safeguard my scholarly pursuits from neglect. I realized I couldn’t jeopardize my pristine academic records –along with my scholarship- over a stranger who seldom responded to my phone calls, preoccupied as he was with rehearsing his role as Billy Flynn in an avantgarde rendition of Chicago.

One evening, my twin brother Paul barged in, disrupting my marathon session of dissecting the plights of “farmer migrants” in the “Grapes of Wrath”. Perched atop a precarious stack of books, he casually lit up a blunt, and balancing his beer between his knees, took in my dishevelled appearance with an eyebrow raised.

“You look horrible! What the hell is wrong with you?” he exclaimed.

I had traded an essay on Dario Argento’s cinematography for what was supposed to be a pixie haircut but somewhere along the way, things had gone awfully awry, leaving me with a buzz cut. Combined with my newfound svelte physique, I deluded myself into thinking I exuded an Edie Sedgwick allure. However, as I gazed at the mirror for the first time after quite a while, I realized with horror that I looked like a misplaced extra from Trainspotting. My sorry reflection unleashed a torrent of tears that left Paul momentarily speechless.

Here I was, not yet twenty, only seldom venturing outside except for classes or library runs. I lived vicariously through my books, experiencing indeed a thousand lives but barely truly living one. I had experienced countless tumultuous affairs through my books but I had never really been in love. I had traversed more miles high out of my mind on ayahuasca than on an airplane. My social circle had evaporated faster than my dreams of normalcy. Surrounded by towering piles of books in this tiny, claustrophobic home resembling a pawn shop, I longed for the mundane simplicity of a real job, the messy bliss of falling in love like an actual human being, and the tangible rhythms of life beyond the pages. Lost and adrift in oceans of fantasies, I simply yearned to trade the ethereal cosmos of academia for the grounded realities of existence.

Paul, ever the bearer of unfiltered truths, suggested with his characteristic deadpan delivery, that perhaps I had woven this academic cocoon around myself because I was too scared to expose myself to the real world. Oh, how I loathed him for being so painfully accurate.

“And what the fuck should I do about it, Paul?” I retorted, my voice teetering on the edge of hysteria.

“I dunno. Get a job. Find a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend. Put that damn book down. Go to a concert,” he replied nonchalantly.

Thus, in a fit of spontaneity, I dashed off to a Bauhaus concert, hoping to infuse some muchneeded endorphins into my system and maybe, just maybe, reconnect with my abandoned past. As I left my apartment, I battled the temptation to drown my sorrows in a bottle of Knob Creek or resurrect some ancient, fossilized pot from the depths of my chaotic cabinets. But, in a rare display of self-preservation, I opted for sobriety and locked the door behind me, bidding farewell to the chaos within the confines of my apartment.

As Bauhaus took the stage, their music washed over me like a soothing balm, momentarily drowning out the echoes of my self-imposed exile, my “mind-forg’d manacles” as cleverly noted by William Blake. Yet, beneath this transient respite, panic had started gnawing at the edges of my consciousness, a hot, swirling vortex threatening to suffocate me. Desperate for salvation amidst this maelstrom of thoughts, I squeezed my eyes shut, struggling to connect with the music, silently mouthing the lyrics:

“White on white translucent black capes

Back on the rack

Bela Lugosi’s dead

The bats have left the bell tower

The victims have been bled

Red velvet lines the black box”

Bela Lugosi’s dead”

Away from the familial but suppressing embrace of my stacks of books and sense of duty towards my imaginary clients, I felt like I was stepping on a tightrope without a safety net.

I struggled to savour the moment so I kept singing with my eyes closed:

“Undead undead undead”

When I finally opened my eyes, the world greeted me with an unexpected shroud of darkness. Gasping for air, I plummeted ungracefully to the ground, my descent abrupt and painful. In the midst of this bewildering haze, I continued to drift, a haunting chant of “undead, undead, undead” echoing relentlessly in my mind.

As my eyes fluttered open, hours later, on a cold hospital gurney, I was greeted not by the light at the end of the tunnel, but by the blinding beam of a doctor’s torch being flashed into my eyes.

“Well, well, look who decided to join the land of the living” he quipped charmingly.

I promptly burst into tears. Attempting to sit up, I was met with the horrifying realization that my beloved jeans and Velvet Underground t-shirt had been replaced by a rather uninspiring hospital gown. Feeling exposed, I scrambled to cover myself.

“Where are my clothes?” I wailed, my voice ricocheting off the sterile walls of the hospital room.

With a sympathetic sigh, the doctor explained the unfortunate circumstances that led to my current state:

“I am sorry. We had to cut you out of your jeans. We got a call about a potential overdose at Fuzz Club. The paramedics gave you Naloxone but you remained unresponsive. When we got you here, we ran some tests; your drug tests came up clean, your ECG was normal and your brain scan was fine so we ’ re still trying to find out what’s wrong with you ” .

Three days later, there I was, still marooned in the dreary confines of the hospital, looking as forlorn as William Blake’s poor sick rose. The doctors attributed my sorry state to a perfect storm of malnutrition, severe vitamin deficiencies, anaemia, dehydration, and exhaustion. As if being prodded and poked by medical professionals wasn’t enough, I was promptly handed over to a psychiatrist for a full mental evaluation before my grand discharge.

Though I politely declined the offer to meet with the psychiatrist, it became painfully clear that my ticket out of this sterile purgatory relied on convincing a suspicious stranger that I wasn’t a walking psychiatric case study. In a bizarre twist of fate, it seemed I was back in the business of bartering my mental stability for my freedom.

The psychiatrist swept into my room like a storm cloud as I was watching a game of poker on the tiny hospital TV, her stern, unsmiling demeanour and clipboard in hand signalling that she meant business. As she fired off questions at me, I couldn’t help but feel like a contestant in the world’s most awkward game show.

“Are you suicidal?” she inquired immediately.

“Uh, nope ” I replied politely.

Her eyebrows rose in skepticism, but she pressed on undeterred:

“Have you ever thought about inflicting harm on others?”

I shook my head, suppressing the urge to crack a joke about my pesky twin brother.

“And when did your eating disorder begin?” she inquired, her gaze burning holes through me like a laser beam.

“I don’t have an eating disorder!” I protested.

“Then why did you faint? Why are you so skinny?” she demanded, her tone sharp enough to slice through my feeble attempts at evasion.

I hesitated for a moment, contemplating whether to spin a tale worthy of Dickens or stick to the mundane truth. Exhaustion won out, so I opted for brutal honesty.

“Well, I pretty much like to eat healthy.” I began, feeling the weight of her scrutiny like a heavy cloak. “Sometimes I can’t afford fancy food so I resort to whatever’s affordable at the time”.

“How can you not afford food? It says here you are on a full scholarship covering everything, from your accommodation to your tuition”, she countered.

I squirmed uncomfortably, grappling with the harsh reality of my financial constraints.

“Well, let’s say it’s not enough” I admitted, the bitterness of truth lingering on my tongue.

The psychiatrist’s scrutiny seemed to intensify, her skepticism palpable as she peered at me over the rim of her glasses like a hawk sizing up its prey.

“Any substance abuse?” she queried, her tone sharp and probing.

“No, no, I’m clean. As pure as the driven snow, ” I affirmed, feeling like a reformed sinner trying to convince the town preacher of my newfound righteousness. It wasn’t a lie: my days of alternating between speed, tranquillizers, and pot were in the rearview mirror. As I uttered these words, a strange flashback flooded my mind- a blurry recollection of me watching poker on the TV in the early hours of the morning, waiting for the amphetamines to wear off and the Valium to kick in after a marathon study session of Milton’s “Samson Agonistes”. That was before I vowed to stay sober, realizing I needed a clear head to tackle life’s challenges, like figuring out how to pay my electricity bill without trading it for my left kidney.

“Your toxicology came up clean, but there’s something about you I don’t like,” she mused, her brow furrowing in suspicion.

Unable to resist the urge to inject a bit of self-deprecating humor, I quipped: “Well, I can’t really blame you. I’ve been told my face has that effect on people”

Her expression remained unchanged, however, as she pressed on with her interrogation.

“Any other addictions? Gambling? Betting? Sex?”

Ah, the trifecta of vices. I resisted the temptation to respond with a cheeky remark. Instead, I simply shook my head and offered a sheepish smile until she stormed out of the room looking positively incensed.

Feeling sad, I reached for my book. I had tasked Paul with scavenging my childhood bedroom for any bookish escape he could find. And what did he unearth? William Burroughs “Junky”. Not exactly the most uplifting choice for a mentally beleaguered twenty-year-old trapped in the bleak confines of a hospital’s neurology department, but hey, it could have been worse. He could have unearthed Solzhenichyn’s “Cancer Ward” or Thomas Mann’s “The Magic Mountain”. So, amidst the opium-laden haze of Burroughs’ seedy underbelly of addiction and despair, I sought refuge from my harsh reality.

As I replayed the crosstalk between the psychiatrist and myself in my head, I couldn’t help but wonder whether bartering could be akin to an addiction, a peculiar craving for the thrill of exchange. When I swore off all those drugs that either knocked me down or kept up awake for days on end, I immersed myself in addiction literature at the university library, absorbing insights like a sponge. Back then, I could understand getting hooked on heroin or crack or painkillers but I dismissed behavioural addictions such as gambling or sex addiction as quirks reserved for eccentric souls. But as I delved deeper, I stumbled upon a revelation: the allure of those behaviours actually resonated with my own struggle. My brain was a dopamine-fueled ship navigating treacherous seas. With each essay I embarked upon, I felt as though I were venturing into uncharted territory without a compass. It was a rush of exhilaration unlike any other- a validation of my abilities, and a testament to my obsessive compulsion to break rules and question the establishments of academia. No one could really see beyond the surface to understand the depth of my passion for bartering. For me, it wasn’t merely a hobby; it had become my way of life.

As a seed of doubt took root in my mind, I entertained a radical notion: what if I stopped? What if I let go of this essay bartering escapade and hit the reset button? Channel my energy into academics, pursue a conventional job, find a partner, and explore the real world? I had turned into a recluse, a hermit of academia, afraid of real life, unable to connect with a single soul in the universe. It was time to break free from the ivory tower, and embrace the messy, rich and unpredictable beauty of life beyond the pages of books.

As I let that revelation marinate, I realized there were a few matters requiring my immediate attention. First, I rang up Mum and asked her to stay with me for the first couple of months following my discharge from the hospital. I then dialled Thomas, the hapless recipient of the scholarly handiwork that landed me in that hospital. I gracefully bowed out of our arrangement, citing a sudden onset of “ grave health concerns ” .

As I hung up the phone, a wave of sheer pleasure engulfed me. Recalling William Burroughs’ quip, “Perhaps all pleasure is only relief”, I couldn’t help but smile. What I was experiencing was a profound sense of relief. I was finally free to pen a new narrative.

THE SWORD

1

Lee tapped twice, zipped his fly, picked up his rifle, then went back to work. He could’ve used one of his three remaining disinfectant wipes in his med kit to wash his hands, but decided not to. Med supplies were way too low and way too valuable to waste on personal hygiene. Besides, he knew he had a rare treat waiting for later that day: a shower. A real, actual shower, complete with a bar of soap he “borrowed” from the makeshift supply depot they created. He found the shower in a mostly intact house about two blocks away, next to what might’ve been a barber shop at one point. The house must’ve had well water or something. Even the toilet worked, though toilet paper had become a commodity so scarce it was rationed by the square now. The shower had quite a view, too, since part of the bathroom had been blown apart. It was now a walk-in shower by default. There was no hot water, of course, but it didn’t matter. A shower was a shower.

The sink worked, too, but he wasn’t sure the water was potable. It started off kind of brown but cleared up when you let it run for a few minutes. Tablets should take care of lingering impurities, he thought. He was determined to bring some with him tonight, to try it out, but knew those were also scarce.

All this of course assumed he would still be alive by tonight. Somehow, he had gotten used to the uncertainty of it all. The fear, the waiting. The long stretches of boredom, interrupted by quick blasts of fire and insanity. The cycle of mundanity and violence wasn’t something you should be able to get used to, but somehow he did. He missed his parents, his cats, even his neighbors. He wasn’t sure if any of them were still alive. If he dwelled on that, it was a bottomless pit and out of his control. Instead, he focused on the small things – the things he could control. Tonight, it was a shower. He could control that.

They can see how worried I am, Den thought, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He paused, studying the lines on his face while wiping away some of the grit from his reflection. When I go out there, they’ll know. They already know. What good am I? I don’t deserve to lead them. Every damn one of them has sacrificed more than I’ll ever have.

He straightened the mirror, took one last look, and walked down the dirty, poorly lit hallway to his office. It was temporary, this command center. Used to be some sort of school administration building, he remembered hearing. Definitely no learning going on here now. They’d moved in barely a cycle ago, after a long, messy battle for this sector. Too many were lost to hold this position. What was that called?, he thought, Pyrrhic or something? He remembered reading about that back at the academy. Didn’t seem important then. A lot of things didn’t. He got it now.

It had been nearly four cycles since he was put in charge of this division, after the last commander got fried in a high voltage accident near Chicago. His field promotion wasn’t anything he wanted. He had been happy, relatively so, just keeping to himself and leading his old unit. The problem was that they had been successful, both in Chicago and later in Indianapolis, and this got noticed.

He got noticed.

The new division, under his command, really made progress. He trusted his direct reports and his non-coms. He stepped back and let them show their expertise, their experience. All he did was nudge them now and then, point them in the right direction, let them know when he felt they were on the wrong track. He insisted they do the same with him. He didn’t want or need a chorus of sycophants.

Yet now they were here. They were here in this absolute cluster that they didn’t create, bogged down between Indiana and Ohio of all places – and he was somehow in charge. Cluster-in-Chief.

He knew no orders were coming to pull back. Their situation was known up and down the Chain. He’d reached out more than once, practically begging. He had some direct contacts there – not many, but ones he thought he could trust. They couldn’t tell him anything. Or, maybe they wouldn’t tell him anything? It didn’t really matter, he thought. He knew they were

nearly out of fuel and precision munitions. If they didn’t get support soon they wouldn’t be able to pull back.

“Commander Den!”, said a voice from back down the hallway. He could hear the footsteps coming closer, the pace picking up with each step. “Commander Den?”, asked the soldier, before entering.

“Come in, Lee. Close the door behind you. ”

Lt. Commander Lee, leader of the 1st Reconnaissance Unit, supply chain genius, and sometimes purveyor of grey market electronics, served as the right-hand of Commander Den for the past seven cycles now. Lee, tall and lanky for his age, strode in assertively. He was reliable and creative, if a bit too earnest at times, and took great care of his appearance. He had seen Den at his best and at his worst.

“At ease, Lee”, said Den, switching off a monitor behind him and picking up an aluminum cup of coffee.

“We tried infiltrating their compound again. We got real close this time – right through the main gate, if you can believe it. We had Sal, Rev, and two others all decked out to look like more refugees. Had ‘ em all armored-up, too, under all the rags, y’know, just to be safe.”

“And…?”

“And we got made before they even closed the gate! They have some sort of new detection equipment, something better than their old TD-40 mobile units. We can work around those, y’know?”

Den nodded.

“Sal and the other two got cut to pieces in the crossfire. Rev barely made it out before they closed the gates. She’s pretty bad. Said she got at least seven of them, maybe eight, before she was out.”

“Seven or eight? Really?”, Den asked.

“I think. She maybe exaggerates. I’d probably put it closer to four. Still, that’s pretty good given that she and the others got made.”

Den put his palm up to his face, thinking about anything he’d rather be doing than this, here. “Lee, this is not ‘pretty good’ – this is the opposite! We lost three. Their covers were blown. We totally screwed the mission. We’ve got zero intel aside from knowing they have a new way of detecting us. How is any of that ‘pretty good’?”

Lee looked down, not knowing what to say. Den knew Lee had always tried to stay upbeat, to look on the bright side whenever possible, and he appreciated that about him. Lee had a knack for staying focused, staying positive. But this was tough. Aside from that one win last cycle, they’d had failure after failure, after even more failure. If you don’t have the resources you don’t have a clear path to victory aside from wishful thinking.

Den missed Arch and knew Lee did, too. He didn’t think Rev would make it. He didn’t know the other two, not really, but Lee vouched for them. One of them was from Pittsburgh, he thought, or maybe Philly.

“I just meant…” Lee stammered.

“I know, I know.” Den walked around the desk and stood in front of his friend. Neither of them spoke. Both knew the situation was grave. Both knew they had to leave, but couldn’t.

“Coffee?” Den asked, handing him a dusty cup and motioning toward a cooktop. They could hear yet another mortar barrage launching outside, this time from the West.

“It’s bad, but the water’s still hot.”

“Thanks.”

They both raised their cups. “To Arch, and all of our fallen brethren”, Den said. Lee nodded and they both drank, trying to ignore the bitterness.

“I hate them. I hate them so much,” Adams said, looking through her rangefinder. She had been there on the roof of the house – or what was left of it – for most of the night. She was tired, hungry, and grubby, but this was no different than any other night. She reached into her pack, pulled out a small object wrapped in a rag, unwrapped it, and snapped off a piece from a hard, rectangular bar. She turned to the woman next to her, also crouched down on the roof, wearing the same tactical uniform as she did, and motioned for her to take it. The woman paused, looked at it, and nodded negatively.

“I’m not eating that crap. ”

“Why the hell not? It’s all we got and all we ’ re likely to get for the next two days.” She motioned for her to take it again.

“It’s like eating bark.”

“Would you rather eat bark or not eat at all?”

“Fine,” she said, taking the piece and reluctantly popping it into her mouth. She had always been a picky eater growing up. That was a whole different world, she thought, chewing on the dense, chalky ration. Back then, she turned up her nose at the slightest perceived issue with whatever meal was in front of her. It didn’t matter if it was made by her Dad (who was, admittedly, a pretty good cook) or Nana or at a restaurant. She would inspect it skeptically first, using her fork or whatever utensil was available to probe parts of it, looking for anything unfamiliar or yucky.

She remembered how Nana would always try hiding healthy things in every meal she made. She’d make lasagna that had ground up mushrooms, carrots, onions and other vegetables in it. She’d grind them all up real small, almost a puree, hoping Kelly and her little brother Mikey would notice or taste the difference. Kelly always could, then she’d promptly notify Mikey, pointing out the offending vegetables in various areas on his plate.

Pizza was the worst. Her dad would sometimes have huge chunks of tomatoes on it. He said they were diced but they clearly weren’t. Sometimes he would even put pineapple and ham on it. What kid would eat that? What kid would eat those burgers he would make – the ones with all the garlic and onions in them?

Nana would tell them there were starving kids halfway across the world somewhere who would love to have a meal as good as this.

Each time, she would just push her plate away, fold her arms, and stare off across the room at the big clock her Dad made. Each time, she would refuse to eat meals, good meals, made by people who loved her. Now, she’d trample someone without a thought if it meant she could have another piece of Nana’s lasagna. A whole different world.

She motioned with her hand to have another piece of the ration. “Hand me the binos, too.” she said.

“Oh, so now you ’ re ok with eating these?”

“No. Definitely not ok with it. But…” she motioned again.

Captain Tomaz handed her another chunk of the brittle, tasteless ration, along with the binoculars. Adams had only recently joined her unit but seemed reliable enough, she thought. Most of her unit was new, formed out of remnants of other ones decimated by the initial wave. Adams, and others like her, were barely trained for this. They came from Logistics, from Analytics, from the supply depots. Hell, at least two came directly from a mess hall. They came from anywhere and everywhere – particularly once the coasts fell and we were pushed with our backs up against the Rockies on one side and the Appalachians on the other. They all stood up when it looked like we were screwed. We still might be screwed. That fight in Lansing definitely did not go our way.

The last eight months had been different, she thought. We tricked them into thinking they were worse off than they really were, got into their command codes (somehow!) then started working round the edges when they got complacent. A chunk of them were dead or deactivated now, including almost all of that goddamn Nightmare Scythe airborne wing. That thing was terrifying. Watching it finally drop out of the sky was nothing less than exhilarating.

Who would’ve thought the big battles – the decisive ones – would be in the Midwest? All those comics she read as a kid had aliens invading New York, zombies attacking LA, stuff like that. Nothing ever happened here in the comics.

No one ever attacked Aurora, Illinois, or Bowling Green, Ohio. Or any of the other Bowling Greens, she thought. The Midwest was one of the only places to go after they hit both coasts and wiped out our Navy. Even then, it wasn’t ever really safe. Some of the most horrible shit she’d ever seen was in Columbus, in Fort Wayne. In Hersey. That fight in Chillicothe – against that gruesome Mobile Garroting Unit or whatever the hell it was – was just plain evil. It was her and two other units down there, helping get a bunch of Amish families to safety. (Or, was it Mennonite, she thought? She never could remember the difference.) They were on schedule, mostly, until what seemed like the whole world exploded. Fire and ash were everywhere. We could barely breathe or see, then they were on us. These were once manufacturing robots, like for auto parts and stuff, repurposed and rebuilt. They were retrofitted with armor, giant batteries, and solar panels harvested from the former factories they worked in. They waded through us like we weren’t even there.

Den leaned back in his chair, wishing he were someplace else. The sole lightbulb in his “office” flickered defiantly, daring him to try to fix it. He looked up at the bulb but didn’t budge. He’d much rather be home with his wife and his son. Their dog. Those were simpler times, he thought. Back then, my biggest problem was trying to figure out why the sprinkler system wasn’t working, he thought. My big To-Do list – that somehow occupied my weekends – was maybe going to the lumber store, maybe mowing the lawn. Grilling. Real first-world problems, he thought, shaking his head.

He remembered actually getting upset with his son about him forgetting to wipe his shoes before he entered the house. Seriously. Admittedly, most of that was a show for his wife. If it was important to her, it was important to him by default. Still, he actually made a big deal out of something as utterly trivial as that. We were complacent as hell back then, he thought.

Entitled. Pampered, even.

Now, his wife was gone. Almost certainly dead, like nearly everyone he knew. Their house was gone, as was most of their town. That lumber store? Gone. His son – like all other able-bodied males 13 and older – was enlisted and doing his part to help save the Homeland. He wondered if he was still stationed in New Mexico, or if that had fallen, too. He hadn’t heard any chatter from there in weeks, but that wasn’t necessarily atypical for regions that far apart.

Each remaining division was almost an island now, cut off from all but the most local communications.

No Internet anymore. No cell towers. No satellite phones. No functioning GPS that he was aware of. Strictly shortwave now, and maybe forever. But how much longer is “forever” now? A year or two? Months? Weeks?

And I got mad. Because he forgot to wipe. His shoes… 5

“They’re drinking coffee; can you believe it?!” Adams said, nudging Tomaz and pointing toward the building they were surveilling.

“They’re not drinking it. They can’t drink anything.”

“Then they’re miming it pretty good.”

“They are definitely miming it. Trust me, those cups are empty,” she said. “See, look closely at the one on the left. It’s broken and has a big hole in the bottom.” Adams nodded.

“Why? What’s the point in pretending to drink nonexistent coffee?? I mean, they don’t even need to eat or drink. Aren’t they mostly solar-powered?”

Tomaz put down the rangefinders and looked at her. “They think they’re us. They think they’re human. That’s the whole point.”

“But they’re not. They’re murderers – nothing but machines.”

“This is no different than that time last month, when we caught some of them burying their ‘dead’ – like they were ever alive in the first place.”

“I heard about that! Wasn’t one of them even pretending to read out of a Bible or something?”

“It was a phone book, and they were holding it upside down. They dug graves and everything.”

“But why pretend a phone book is a Bible?”

“Again, they think they’re us. They weren’t pretending, as far as they knew.” Tomaz winced as she reached over to Adams for the rangefinders. She still had two small pieces of shrapnel in her side from last year, from the Battle of Scranton. Their field medic, a former veterinary technician, couldn’t find and remove every single piece. He was never trained for that. He said she would heal just fine even if he missed a few. He was right, but it still hurt her at times.

Scranton was right before the Big Trick, she thought, taking the rangefinders and smiling slightly. The last of our IT group got into their code, somehow. She didn’t understand any of it, really. She was still stunned it actually worked.

Instead of this assault with all of them working like some sort of bad sci-fi hive mind, we got them confused, she thought. We got them to doubt themselves, to think they were fighting some menace that outgunned them a 1000-to-1. They pulled back everywhere over the course of maybe 6 weeks and stood in this weird defensive crouch ever since. Each of these isolated pockets still had enough firepower to slaughter us by the thousands if they wanted, but they didn’t. Maybe they couldn’t? We’d been picking off their precision munition hubs left and right, taking as many of those creeps with them as we did. Yet, they still didn’t fire back, she thought.

“They said our IT crew pulled in writers – like authors and stuff, right?”

Tomaz remembered hearing some talk about how it worked. “Right. And producers. Poets. Comms folks. They had them write this script. They said it was easier, more predictable to loop. It was all patriarchal, manifest destiny, melodramatic crap, ” she said, taking another bite of the ration. “Guys with different ranks fighting aliens while protecting helpless women and stuff. They wrote backstories for hundreds of them: lonely ensigns from the Midwest yearning for home cooked meals from their mothers; scrappy raw recruits barely old enough to enlist, trying to do their part to drive back some otherworldly menace; reluctant officers filled with doubt as they lead their men to almost certain death.”

“Seriously?”

“There was even one about a young officer pining over a picture of some guy ’ s sister – white picket fences and everything – so he could presumably ‘protect her virtue’ and eventually marry her or something.”

“‘Protect her virtue’? Is that even a thing?!”

“Apparently so. Or, at least, we got them to think it is.” It was all perfectly ridiculous, Tomaz thought, yet perfectly brilliant. “The IT group cycled all the backstories on an endless loop. Each of these creeps would reset every few days, as the ensign, the commander, the sergeant, the pervert teenager drooling over some non-existent kid sister, etc. How any of this actually worked is waaaay beyond me, ” she said, shaking her head in disbelief. “Yet, here we are. It’s working. We haven’t had an attack since that raid at the checkpoint the other night, when three of them tried to get in the gate by dressing like civilians. They were covered in rags and old, bloody clothes they must’ve pulled off the dead, maybe from that town they blew apart last month – that one near Toledo?”

“Perrysburg?”

“Yup. They came staggering in like a bunch of survivors, then our scanners went off, alarms started blazing, and they pulled out their incendiaries and started blasting away at us. It took all we had just to bring two of them down. The third was pretty torn up but got away. ”

“Go figure.”

The two stayed there, motionless. Tomaz marveled at the thought of their secret weapon –their death ray – being a bunch of Hollywood wannabes that probably never even held a rifle. These are the same people she would’ve laughed at years ago – a bunch of Humanities majors that were barely employable as baristas before all this went down. Now, they were saving all of us.

If or when all this was over and we ’ re still alive, she thought, I owe them a beer. None of that crappy stuff you used to see in commercials, back when there were commercials. Good beer. Serious beer. This of course assumed that any breweries still existed by then, and that beer was something that could still even be obtained. She knew how to drink it, not make it. That was not in her wheelhouse.

Heck, I might just need to lay one of them. Maybe that writer I met last month. Ju-seong, was it? Yes. Ju-seong. That, thought Tomaz, adjusting her rangefinder and aiming her pulse rifle, was definitely in her wheelhouse.

They flipped-off their safeties and got to work.

SF-3

Sarah jerked awake, a cold chill running down her spine as she glanced towards the clock. Red numbers indicated that it was just now 3:39 AM. Cold sweat pooled in her lower back and down her legs, causing her to shiver. The sheets stuck to her skin as she crawled back under her blankets.

But not shutting her eyes. Definitely not.

Her dream had been a feverish, strange nightmare that seized her in a death grip, unable to open her eyes, unable to get herself to wake up, unable to move. Forced to lay in her own bed and watch the inky, oily blackness creep out of a crack in the wall.

It was just a tiny dent. Almost imperceptible. In her dream, she’d noticed it immediately. Noticed the black cut as it grew long. Filling the crack then bursting out of it, like a hole in a boat.

Overwhelming the wall and the floor. Then the bed. Sinking the world around into an empty abyss.

Sarah’s body her real body squirmed and strained to move or wake. But her dream body was trapped. Stuck wide-eyed and transfixed as the black ink of the abyss pooled around her, creeping over her husband, Ryan, and creeping closer and closer towards her.

It had absorbed Ryan as she watched, unable to call out or warn him. Just watching it ooze over his skin, whisking it all away and leaving nothing.

Just...nothing.

It was more like a haze than anything. A shimmer that moved. You could see it like you could see the wind moving yet feel it like the slither of snake across your body.

Sarah shuddered again. She blinked bloodshot eyes at Ryan as he slept calmly next to her. She slid in closer to him, using the warmth from his body to comfort her.

The red numbers ticked by slowly. One by one the minutes passed. Occasionally, Sarah would close her eyes.

The logical portion of her brain was telling her she needed the rest. It was only Wednesday, and her boss had already told her she had to work this Saturday as well. An upcoming work event that had kept her stressed all week.

But when she closed her eyes, it was like she could feel the blackness in her eyelids. Choking out her dreams and her own thoughts. Leaving her lost in a vast empty space.

So, she’d open her eyes and look at the clock. Tracking the slow progress of time as it edged closer and closer towards 6:30 AM and the blessed relief of ‘morning’.

Perhaps she did manage to fall asleep after enough time or perhaps she merely laid there with her eyes shut for hours. Still, when the alarm went off, she flinched and slammed her hand down to turn it off.

Sarah rose slowly and stretched. She felt comforted by the soft glow of morning coming in from the window. Ryan stirred gently next to her. His alarms not set for some hours, his twelve hour shift at the hospital not starting until 2:00.

It was a miserable shift. They barely saw each other these days except in passing. But what could they do? Student loans didn’t repay themselves and residency didn’t pay nearly as well as it needed to.

It was a short walk to the bathroom and Sarah shuffled softly in billowy white slippers, yawning as she made the mirror. She stared deep into her brown eyes as if looking for the darkness there. She felt foreign to her own eyes. Her mind felt detached from her body, alien to it. She flinched.

The faucet screeched a protest as the cold water burst out and she brushed her teeth, ignoring the mirror entirely. Disrobing, she turned to the walk-in shower and slid the clear sliding glass door open.

Then she froze, transfixed at the pale blue shower handle.

There was nothing extraordinary about the shower handle. It was a standard single lever handle.That part was normal.

The fact that it was pale blue was not. She had used the shower just yesterday. It had certainly been silver.

Had her husband broken it and gotten a new one yesterday when she was at work?

It seemed unlikely. She remained staring, oblivious to the chill that was creeping over her body. Oblivious to the hair rising on the back of her neck or the goosebumps rising across her flesh.

She flinched again.

She turned the pale blue shower handle cautiously. The water came out cold, then slowly came the hot water.

She stepped into it and shut the sliding door behind her. She kept her back to to the handle, reaching behind her blindly for the soap and the conditioner. The steam billowed and she cranked the heat higher and higher nothing seemed to kill the chill in her spine, the urge to turn around.

She would ask Ryan about it at lunch. They always met for lunch, usually at the little market deli across the street from the metro stop and just two blocks from her office and three from Ryan’s hospital. The perfect middle ground.

With speed, Sarah shut the water off without a second look. Wrapping herself in her light brown towel, she stepped gingerly out from the shower. She found herself back at the mirror again. Staring at surprisingly pale features despite the heat.

Tired, brown eyes stared back at dirty blonde hair and skin that was used to being a couple shades of tan darker. Her heartbeat faster, but her skin remained lifeless.

The red numbers of the clock indicated it was just past 7:25 when Sarah kissed Ryan good morning, grabbed an instant coffee and a chocolate granola bar, and left for the metro.

It was about three blocks to walk to the metro station. From there it was another seven stops to her work metro station. Then it was a short walk to the 18-story office building that was her own.

The air was crisp and cool. Not cold, but it was slowly getting there. Sarah wrapped her scarf around her neck as she stepped out of the lobby of her apartment building and out onto the street.

Her tired eyes took in the regular motion of the world in a blur. Early morning commuters stumbled out of high-rises and skyscrapers, merging with the car-dependent suburban commuters that crowded the main avenues that led into the heart of the city.

Yellow school buses picked up groups of children who waited impatiently on the sides of the roads. Others, usually younger ones, were escorted by parents, primarily the mothers, who clung tightly to their child’s hand as they dragged them across streets and down sidewalks.

The metro station was packed as usual. Grey walls and dirty floors merged with sparkling advertisements and decrepit safety signs. Electric lights danced on Sarah’s brown eyes as she waited in a crowd of forty to board the orange line heading into the downtown core.

Through the sounds of 80‘s electronic pop coming from her earbuds, Sarah thought about the pale blue shower handle. Pale blue was such an interesting color. It matched nothing in the bathroom. So why would Ryan have picked it?

She blinked.

She was in her ugly little cubicle.

Four gray walls that were hardly improved by her attempts at ‘beautifying’ her space. It was her space. Her little sanctuary. Her little prison for eight hours a day, plus weekends on occasion.

The whirr of the air conditioning turning on made her jump. She had been daydreaming again. Or was it reminiscing?

The dream had had an effect on her, but it was the pale blue shower handle that had caused her to drift away. Dreams could be explained pale blue shower handles could not.

Sarah continued to tap away mindlessly, barely noticing the little boxes on her Excel sheet populate as she clicked and typed.

“Sarah, you got a moment?”

The sharp cutting high-pitched drone of Lindsay the office whip broke the mindless tapping and thought-fixation of Sarah. She jumped, blinked, and looked up.

Lindsay was standing at the entrance of her little cubicle, her soft green eyes staring in that perpetual smile down at Sarah.

“You were lost, huh?” Lindsay chuckled. Sarah could only breathe out sharply and form a semblance of a smile. “Well, just wanted to get your name in for the raffle.”

“Raffle?”

“Yeah, for Saturday. The event?”

“Oh,” Sarah blinked again, trying to refocus her brain on the here and now. Silently she swore at the thought of the Saturday and the mandatory work events that corporate thought up. “Yeah, right. How much is it again?”

“ a dollar for one ticket, three for five, or five for ten.”

“Alright.” She searched around in her purse for a moment, trying not to breathe in too deeply the rich perfume that Lindsay had caked on. She pulled out her wallet and a $5 bill. “Here, I’ll be in for ten.” “Thanks,” Lindsay said.

She looked her up and down and, with that obnoxious midwestern overly familiar voice that Sarah hated, continued, “by the way, are you feeling alright? You look, I don’t know, a bit under the weather?”

“I’m fine. I didn’t sleep well. It’s just…it’s been a busy week.”

“Tough times with the husband?”

Lindsay shot a look up at Lindsay. The incessant need to ‘talk’ about things in office had always annoyed her, but the pressing, nagging Lindsay always took the cake with forwardness.

“No.”

“Well, good,” Lindsay smiled placatively. “You always have an ear to talk to, if you need it.”

“Thanks.”

Lindsay seemed to sense her presence was no longer wanted so she drifted down the long corridor of endless cubicles, picking up with the next depraved office laborer where she had left off with Sarah.

“Hey, Jake! Oh, don’t mean to startle ya! I was just getting your name in for the raffle on Saturday? For the event?”

Sarah checked her watch. Lunchtime.

The blessed relief from the doldrums of the office workspace and back to the fresh reality of the world outside. More importantly, it would be her chance to find out what exactly was up with that pale blue shower handle.

She could think of nothing else as she left the office building and walked the two blocks to the market deli. Ryan was already there, sitting at one of the tables in the back, his eyes fixated on his phone, not noticing her when she entered. Two rich looking sandwiches sat on the table in front of him, with two bags of potato chips and two foam cups next to it.

“Hey,” Sarah said. Dropping her bag on the floor.

Ryan looked up, startled.

“Hey.”

That was it.

Sarah sat down and Ryan started eating. Sarah, only now realizing how hungry she was, followed suit. There they sat for several minutes with only the most casual and basic of words crossing their mouths.

Sarah felt that deep black blankness growing deep within her eyes clouding them. She could still see perfectly, but something was there, blocking her from fully seeing Ryan. As if he was slipping away from her.

So, she ate and stared silently at Ryan as he stared silently down at his phone.

“Hey, so I was wondering,” at last Sarah began. Ryan looked up from his phone. His dark brown eyes linking with hers with dull, obligatory attention.

“What?”

“What’s up with the shower handle? I noticed it this morning.”

Ryan stared at her blankly. “What about it?”

“Didn’t you replace it?”

“No, why would I?”

That sharp stabbing defensiveness. Sarah felt that fight-or-flight instinct rising within her, uncalled for.

“I’m just asking,” she said. “I noticed it this morning when I took a shower. It was blue.”

“So what?”

“So what?” Sarah felt her voice rising, she could almost feel the eyes of the deli turning towards her. “So what it was silver. It’s always been silver.”

“I thought you said it was blue?”

“It’s blue now! That’s what I’m saying!”

Ryan simply blinked at her. Sarah gritted her teeth. He shrugged. “Maybe you ’ re colorblind?”

Sarah curled her lip at him. “Of course I’m not colorblind.” She sighed. “Did you shower today?”

“Of course. ” Sharp, almost bitter, words. Sarah forced herself to take a breath.

“So, you ’ re telling me that the shower handle looked perfectly normal to you when you took your shower?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. I don’t know what you ’ re accusing me of-“

“I’m not-“ Sarah broke for a moment, her face into her hands. Her back was up, so easily now, all because of a simple question? Ryan could trigger her so easily, so quickly back into a state of aggression and dominance a constant duel of wits and power that Sarah tried to cool off this one time, “I’m not accusing you of anything. It was just something I noticed today. I saw that it was blue and I thought, well, the only person who could replace it was you. So, I thought it could have been you. ”

“Well, it wasn’t,” Ryan replied, his own claws slowly retracting. He himself wondered why they seemed to come out so easily these days. “Sorry, I really don’t know what you ’ re talking about. I didn’t notice anything. I thought it looked the same when I took my shower ” a sudden look of sympathy rushes across his face “but I wasn’t really paying attention. I’ll look when I get home tonight.”

Tonight was such a long time. It was only lunch.

Four more hours of mindless slogging at her little grey cubicle, followed by forty minutes of commute time, left about an hour of meal-prep and cooking.

She would eat in about thirty minutes and clean-up was about the same. Altogether, that only placed her at 7:30 PM. The large numbers from the display of her cable box let her know each passing minute as she waited for ‘tonight’ to arrive.

She had, of course, gone to the bathroom immediately to inspect the shower handle when she had gotten home. Validating her own sanity and assuring herself that, no, she wasn’t crazy. So, now, she curled up on the long sofa in the living room and stared up at the 60-inch TV that had been a wedding gift.

How long ago that seemed and yet it was only a year and seven months since the special date. Her mind barely comprehended the mindless drama that spilled out in front of her, breaking to inundate her with even more mindless ads with monotonous regularity, forcing her to retreat into her own mind something she desperately wished not to do.

Her phone sat blank on the sofa. Scrolling for so long built up its own anxiety. So, instead, she stared with eyes fixated forward, partially on the TV and partially on the green numbers of the cable box clock that slowly ticked towards 2:00 AM.

Sarah could feel her own heartbeat within her chest. Carefully measuring the beat silently within her own mind calculating just how fast her heart was going.

Too fast.

It was almost 2:35 by the time Ryan finally arrived. Long after anything good was playing on the television and long after scrolling had given any serotonin. Sarah was already pacing the floor by the time she heard the key go into the lock outside the door.

She quickly flung herself onto the couch, trying her best to catch her breath and look calm.

Ryan looked at her in surprise as he entered, a brown bag clutched in his hand indicated he’d stopped for late night pick-up.

“Hey,” he said, walking over to the soft blue and pastel themed living room that Sarah had painstakingly put together with her meager funds over the past year and a half. “What are you doing up? You got work, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I was waiting for you to check the shower.”

Ryan looked at her with even more surprise, then in almost frustration. He sighed. “Oh yeah, alright. I’ll check it right now. ”

He plopped his food down on the coffee table in front of Sarah. Ryan shrugged and looked over at the bag without blinking before stomping off to the bathroom.

“So?”

Ryan didn’t reply. Not for a moment. Sarah looked back expectantly.

Then, Ryan appeared. Their eyes locked.

Was it concern in his eyes?

“It’s the same old shower handle. The one I used this morning. The one I used yesterday.”

Sarah simply stared back at him. For some reason, she had expected that response. “Alright, well. I don’t know, I must be going crazy. ”

Ryan jumped quickly. “No, just forgetting what the shower handle looked like isn’t grounds for ‘being crazy ’ . ”

“Is that what you think? I forgot what the shower handle looked like?”

Ryan looked back at her with big eyes as he shrugged. “I dunno. Didn’t you check when you got home?”

Yes, I did. It looks different.”

“Different than last time?”

“No, same as last time. Its blue.”

“So?” Ryan looked at her with a painfully dull look on his face. Sarah glared at him.

“So...obviously it’s different? It used to be silver.”

“When?”

Sarah clenched her teeth and felt her energy zapped from her. Her jaw relaxed and she blinked away from Ryan’s green eyes. “I don’t know. I’m not having this conversation again. Not right now. ”

Ryan scratched his head. “Maybe you are going crazy, ” he mumbled so low that Sarah didn’t reply since she wasn’t quite sure what he had said.

Still, that was all there was to be said. Ryan grabbed his hamburger and fries and crunched them down with little regard for the grease that dripped down onto the silver-grey sofa. Sarah only watched and didn’t say anything.

After a few moments Sarah excused herself to bed while Ryan ate and stared up at the big TV, watching recaps from the day’s college basketball slate.

It was ages before Sarah fell asleep.

For hours she lay there, too afraid to close her eyes. What if the...dreams returned? What if things got worse in the morning? She shut her eyes tight.

I just need sleep.

I just need sleep.

It was almost 11:00 when Ryan finally rose, rubbing his eyes against the sun beaming through the cracks of the blinds.

Today was his day off. Blessed to have one in the middle of the week and one on Sunday plenty of time to actually get some rest and maybe do something fun. It’d been too long since they’d gotten out. Maybe that’s what was bugging Sarah.

Yesterday had been a strange day and he couldn’t help but take a second glance at the shower as he got in. He shrugged; it was the same old shower head. Not that he’d ever given it much attention before.

It would be a relaxed day. He’d pop by the deli around lunchtime, hit the gym on the way home, and perhaps finally get a chance to start reading again. He’d promised himself he’d get back into reading once he’d finished med school. That promise had become ‘until residency is over ’ . Now he was nearly out of excuses. As he passed by a bookstore on the way into the city, he made a mental note to stop in on the way home.

He checked his watch. It was just past 12:30 PM. Sarah was running late again.

He sighed and picked up another singular chip and snacked slowly as he waited, his head buried into his phone and the endless appeal of scrolling on whatever random social media app happened across him at the time.

When it was past 12:45 PM he was no longer looking at his phone except to double check the time against his watch every thirty seconds.

No Sarah, no text, no call, and no answer.

He’d messaged four times and called twice even leaving a message. Sarah had been too unusual since yesterday for his liking. He was beginning to get nervous. Then, even, a little bit angry. She was probably eating with work friends and forgot her phone.

By 1 PM, his sandwich was finished along with the bag of chips.

After two more messages and one final call. With a sigh he tossed the garbage away and started to leave.

Then, he stopped. Frozen, staring at the door.

Sarah had arrived.

Her face was pale, and she looked cold as she dripped with sweat. Ryan rushed over to her. “Sarah!”

Sarah smiled weakly up at him.

“Hey,” she said.

“What the hell What’s going on, are you ok?”

“Yes. Sorry about lunch-” she trailed off as she looked around, almost dazed.

“Forget about that, here,” He pulled her over towards an open table. An elderly couple next to them gaped unsympathetically at Sarah. “What’s going on, do we need to go to the hospital?”

Sarah shook her head and chuckled. “No, I was at the hospital. Sorry. I had a panic attack.”

Ryan blinked. “A panic attack?”

Sarah laughed. “I know right? Guess I am crazy after all.”

Ryan shook his head. “A panic attack?” was all he could say.

Sarah smiled weakly. “Yeah, I freaked out at work. They had to call an ambulance, they thought I was having a heart attack or something. No, just a panic attack.” She gave a hysterical sounding laugh. “They gave me some things to calm me down at the hospital – and an appointment with a shrink.” A sudden look of concern came over her. “Did you call? I didn’t grab my phone- shit! It’s probably still at the office.”

“I’ll pick it up. What caused the attack?”

Sarah’s brown eyes met Ryan’s concerned green eyes.

“The cubicles,” she said. Tears began to well. “Were fucking brown.”

Ryan blinked. “Brown?”

Sarah laughed and wiped away tears. “Right? A stupid thing to panic about.”

“Is this like the shower handle thing?”

Sarah nodded, her head drooping in embarrassment.

Ryan sighed. “Alright, let’s go home.”

Sarah nodded then suddenly straightened. “It’s been a long few weeks,” she said with forced calmness. “I’m stressed and...”

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “I know.”

Alright, you had your meltdown, that’s enough, Sarah repeated in her head over and over as she laid on the couch, eyes fixed on the TV.

Ryan had kept his word. He’d picked up her phone and then taken her back home and played doctor from there. He’d been most magnanimous, too, hardly mentioning that he’d had made plans that day.

Despite the relaxation, the short nap, the shower of snacks provided by Ryan, the ibuprofen, and even a hit from the special stash of marijuana they reserved for special occasions, nothing seemed to quell the feeling of total doom that draped over her. It hung like dark cold humidity in the very air almost thick enough for her to see as she stared fixedly up at the TV screen.

How blessed the mindless release of pointless television was.

“How are you feeling?”

“Ok.”

Sarah didn’t flinch or look to meet Ryan’s worried and somewhat annoyed eyes. “You going to work in the morning?”

Her heart jumped. “Yes.”

“You should get some sleep then. It‘s getting late.”

Her heart jumped again even harder. Sleep how terrible and lonely sleep sounded. “Alright, just a second. Lemme finish this episode.”

Ryan sighed. He didn’t like his domain of the couch being occupied at this hour. This was his time and his period of meditation. It felt as though she was encroaching on it and for what? Because a few things changed colors?

Sleep, when it came, embraced Sarah in the same old black hug it had in previous nights. Suffocating the dreams and the rest out of her. The mist hanging over the room, covering the beige colored walls in its black aura.

She woke to the sound of her alarm blaring.

She smashed her hand down instinctively.

There was, for that brief moment of wakefulness, before total consciousness, that Sarah felt relaxed. A moment where she had no worries except to stretch and feel the comfort of the blankets.

Then she thought about taking a shower and the idea of that pale blue shower handle triggered her back into full clarity. She felt her heart rate jump, watching the beat pump through her chest, even through her blankets.

The doctor had given her little pills to help calm her. She took two.

Ryan stirred only barely as Sarah shuffled through her morning routine, deciding not to take a shower today.

What was one missed day for all the times she’d taken two in one?

Familiar smells of trash, stale urine, and cigarettes met her as she made her way to her commute comforted her as unfamiliar sights of children boarding turquoise school buses filled her sunken eyes. She tried to block it out with her music—her comfort electronic pop—but there was only so high the setting could go. Even passersby gave looks as they heard the music blaring from her ears. There was one bonus, though; no one sat next to her on the metro.

Her brown eyes twitched.

Little brown boxes trapped Sarah and her coworkers for 8 hours a day plus weekends on occasion. This weekend was going to be that occasion and the dread of facing one more day of the brown boxes somehow worse then grey prevented Sarah from being able to focus on anything. Her little homemaking efforts looked even worse against the brown backdrop taunting her as she attempted to bury herself into her computer and her coffee.

She’d never been one to use the office coffee and today by 10:00 she’d already had three cups.

“Sarah, how are you doing, sweetie?”

There it was, that soft faux midwestern sweetness. Lindsay, leaning against the side of the cubicle, seemingly unaware that they were no longer the grey cubicles they had been two days ago.

“I’m alright, thank you. ” Sarah said, barely even looking up from her computer and the safety of her little screen. There the colors changed at her command.

“Well, good I’m glad. Gave us quite a scare. ” She chuckled. “You’re gonna be good for Saturday, yeah?”

Will I be good this Saturday?

That’s a good question, would she be alright this Saturday? She laughed to herself. Then stopped, suddenly realized how crazy she must sound. She looked up into the concerned and bewildered green eyes of Lindsay. Green eyes.

Sarah stared, her breath catching in her through and tumbling out in a high brittle laugh. They took her fucking eyes.

“I hope so. ” Sarah said at last, swallowing hard as she felt the laughter begin to suddenly harden in her throat, choking into tears.

A single drop oozed out of her left eye. She wiped it away quickly.

“I mean, yes, I’ll be fine. I’m fine. Thank you. ”

Lindsay, a frozen smile on her face, nodded and mumbled something about taking care of herself as she ambled away to the next cubicle. Sarah could feel the eyes of her coworkers on her. She could feel their concern and almost hear their hushed conversations about her. It sent a chill down her spine.

Am I crazy?

Sarah checked the time. Only 2 PM. Still three more terrifying hours of work and then...what? More terrifying hours at home?

Sarah continued to stare numb at her screen until a news story on the frontpage of her browser jumped at her.

Woman says things are changing in front of her eyes.

Sarah’s heart quickened, for the first time for a good reason. She quickly clicked the article. It was a puff piece with 80% ads but still, the story was good enough. A woman, in the same city no less, had reported that she had suddenly noticed that ‘everything seemed to change’.

She read the whole thing then searched for any other articles. There were none, still, one was enough. She wasn’t alone after all.

There was comfort in not being alone. She quickly copied the link and sent it to Ryan. It was ten minutes before Ryan read it.

He didn’t reply.

In fact, he didn’t reply all day.

Sarah had returned home and went through her evening routine like a zombie. Make dinner. Eat dinner. Clean up then sit in front of the TV. This time however, she barely paid attention to the sitcom, too engrossed in searching for more articles on her ‘phenomena’.

When the cable box clock read midnight, Sarah went to bed. Crawling under her covers and closing her eyes, trying to stave away the darkness from her filling her mind. Trying to think of dreams and happy thoughts and trying to keep that slithering, smothering darkness away so she could get her much needed sleep.

She could feel it like a weighted blanket closing down on her eyes. Shutting them in and locking them down into the darkness.

She could feel her heartrate rise. When Ryan came back and stumbled into bed around 3 AM, Sarah didn’t move. She laid there and listened to the pattern of his breath from across the bed.

The alarm sounded.

Both Ryan and Sarah stirred, and Sarah shot out her arm instinctively then stopped, frozen. Blue numbers indicated that it was 6:30 AM.

Sarah blinked and blinked again. Unspeakable terror filled her mind as heart heard pounded in her ears. She tried to catch her breath as she stared at the blue numbers.

Ryan grumbled next to her.

“Can you get that?” he hissed through his pillow.

“I’m not going in today,” Sarah muttered as she shut the alarm off.

Ryan turned. He stared at the back of her neck and her rustled dirty blonde hair with concerned, tired eyes.

He sighed and muttered something about calling off work.

The call was fielded by Lucy in HR who handled it with youthful master’s degree professionalism and the courtesy of someone having to dealing with someone calling out sick on a mandatory work Saturday. Still, she hadn’t used up any of her sick days all year, so there was nothing they could do.

Sarah had crawled back into bed after her brief call with HR. She couldn’t help but wonder how the raffle had gone. She almost laughed at the thought her winning whatever stupid prize corporate had decided was appropriate.

How ironic would it be if she’d won it?

Ryan had continued to grumble, of course, as he crawled back into bed.

“If you ’ re not going into work you should probably go to a doctor. Get your eyes or brain checked out. It could be something totally natural or normal. Or could be all those microplastics...you do eat a lot of fish...”

Sarah had simply stared at the little blue numbers on the clock and laughed.

Saturday had rolled into Sunday in a single continuous blur. They both had Sunday off and Sarah had barely budged from position on the bed.

Ryan had been obligatory, providing breakfast in the morning.

“I’ll be out in the afternoon. You sure you’ll be alright?” he asked as he cleared the half-eaten eggs and potatoes.

“Yeah. I just need to sleep.”

“Alright.” The concern in his voice was almost entirely obscured by the annoyance. “Let me know if you need anything.” “Thanks.”

There was a time, Sarah thought, that Ryan would have believed her no matter what. No matter his doctorate, no matter his own feelings. That had been their commitment. Their agreement at marriage.

How long a year and a half could be. Now Sarah could only wonder what Ryan even thought of her. Some deranged lunatic, cowering in her bed at the mere thought of colors.

Still, she was frozen.

The blue numbers had transfixed her. It was too close. Too close to her little haven of ‘bed’ that she simply couldn’t comprehend. Was it targeting her? Creeping closer? Had it failed to capture her in her dreams and now it was following her, trying to catch her when she least expected? Well, she wouldn’t let it. Her whole body tensed as she staed at the blue numbers. She wouldn’t let it get her like it got Ryan. She took a deep breath to sigh. It caught in her throat and a soft welp came out.

“Maybe I am insane,” she muttered to herself as she wrapped herself tightly under her blankets. She clenched her eyes and dreamed of red numbers on the clock and yellow school buses.

“Could you tell me how you ’ ve been sleeping lately?”

Sarah stared up at the soft yellow lights that played across her eyes. She could hear the psychiatrist’s pen flow across his pad with the ease of years of experience.

The office was cool, but not cold. The art was soft and majestic uplifting sayings covered the walls such as “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”

“Not too good. I’m too scared to sleep.”

“Too scared to sleep,” the doctor repeated. “When you say scared, could you explain what that means? Anxious, nervous, frightened?”

Sarah couldn’t help but laugh.

“It’s...It’s, I don’t know, it’s dread. It’s the feeling like I’m slipping away. Losing myself.”

“Slipping away. Right, that’s good. When you said you noticed things were different the shower handle, the cubicles, school buses you said that terrified you. ”

“Yes. It caused my panic attack.”

“Because they were different than you ’ re used to?”

Sarah gave a bitter, hoarse laugh. “Aren’t they different?”

The psychiatrists didn’t reply, but continued writing.

“What about in this room?”

Sarah stared around the room.

“I don’t know. Everything’s new to me in this room. It’s things changing, not just random colors that I see. Like the shower handle being suddenly blue. It wasn’t blue. It was silver when we moved in.”

“Right, a silver shower handle.” He continued to write with amazing rapidity. “You said that was the first thing you noticed?

“Yes.”

“It turned blue?”

“Yes.”

“Then the clock?”

“No, the cubicles. That’s when they took me to the hospital.”

“And at the hospital, the doctor prescribed a sedative?”

“Yes.”

“Has it helped?”

Sarah shrugged. “It helps me fall asleep but then I’m trapped. I can’t wake up because of the drugs. So, I don’t take them.”

It took the psychiatrist a long moment of writing before responding. “Alright, and when did you start experiencing these hallucinations?”

Hallucinations?

Sarah rolled the word over with her tongue.

“Hallucination?” she asked. “I-I, well, I noticed it on Wednesday. I’d had a dream...” she trailed off.

“Yes?”

“I don’t know, it was just a dream.”

“Could you describe it, please?”

Sarah shook her head.

“No, not really. I was laying there, in bed in my dream and across the room, I suddenly saw no, I felt something. Like a presence. It was drifting into the room. ” Sarah shut her eyes as she remembered. “It was a crack in the wall. It started spreading and spilling out, like the other room was full of black paint. But paint that seemed...to move on its own. It enveloped Ryan. It took him. Then it started to take me. It was at my feet, then up my legs and-and I couldn’t move. ”

“That’s alright,” soothed the psychiatrist. Sarah could feel her heartbeat rising again. The doctor smiled at her. “Thank you. I can see that it still causes a lot of anxiety for you. ”

“It felt real. Like, when I woke up I felt like I was still dreaming.”

“Do you still feel like you ’ re dreaming?”

Sarah swallowed hard. “Yes.”

The pen continued to flow as the doctor continued to ask question after question. Sarah answered each one. Staring upwards at the soft yellow light that played on her face.

Her face.

Her face was pale and pock marked. She stared into her bathroom mirror deep into her own soul.

“I am still myself,” she said to no one. Her soft brown eyes, her dirty blonde hair, her soft pale skin. It was hers.

She had not been replaced. The darkness hadn’t taken her.

It had taken Lindsay from work. Changed her, just like that. She shuddered and wondered what would happen to Lindsay. Or what had happened to Lindsay. She thought of Ryan, the abyss swallowing him.

Sarah heard a muffled ‘what’ come from the bed.

“Nothing,” Sarah called back. “Talking to myself.”

There was a pause, then a sudden thump and shuffle as Ryan ambled over.

“Talking to yourself?” he said, concern written all over his face and dripping from his words. Sarah looked at him through the mirror with sullen, sunken eyes. Their eyes locked.

“I’m not crazy. I was just talking. People do that. You even do that sometimes.”

“Yeah, but I’m not the one seeing things and taking anti-psychotics.”

“Fuck off.”

It was true though.

The psychiatrist had eventually finished writing and had given her another prescription. Something to help with the “hallucinations”.

“This should help,” he had said with a smile. “Take this for the next week and let’s meet next Monday, then?”

Sarah had nodded dumbly. She’d clutched her little pills all the way from the pharmacist back to her apartment. She read and reread the bottle and then taken them diligently from Monday through Thursday, today.

The days had blurred into one another. No sleep will do that.

The pills had made her mind even fuzzier, zapping her every now and again like a little electrical shock. Zapping the darkness out, she hoped after each tiny little zap.

Yet the days had dragged on and on and yet, here she was, staring dumbly into the mirror, watching herself carefully. Watching Ryan carefully.

He’d caught her several times, staring into his eyes, looking for any change.

She’d gone into work on Monday.Then on Tuesday. On Wednesday, she’d called out. The drugs weren’t working.

She sat trapped in her living room, surrounded by gawdy orange and amber-reds of her living room, eyes fixed on the TV screen, eyes fixed on her phone screen. Anywhere but the color of the world around her.

Mindless scrolling gave way to mindless TV dramas which gave way to pathetic attempts to try and read a book. Her brown eyes too weak, too bloodshot, to make sense of the jumble of letters.

Ryan would rise and go about his day around Sarah and her couch. He’d leave for work and return late at night, when Sarah was already in bed, eyes locked on the blue numbers of her clock. Thursday rolled into Friday and the days continued to fly by in a blur of motion and constant anxiety.

“You gotta get out. I’m serious,” a frustrated Ryan eventually told her as he paced about the room like a trapped animal. His whole life and its rhythm had been thrown out of sync by this sudden outburst of... what, exactly? Paranoia? “Its been days and you ’ ve barely left that couch and barely eaten anything. You need fresh air.”

“Right.” Sarah gulped. She knew he was right. Her life was a cycle of boxes and color. First the clock, then her phone, then the television, and then the clock again. Haunting her to dream every night. At least she didn’t have to deal with the brown boxes of work for now.

Ryan had gone ahead to work, leaving Sarah to get ready and go out on a walk herself. She shoved her earbuds into her ears and with a pale face and dirty blonde hair a complete mess, she left the apartment for the first time in days.

She took in a deep breath of fresh cool air. The air was getting colder, winter was slowly approaching. Her music blared in her head, blocking out thought as she began her walk. Her eyes instinctively avoided the orange school buses, the turquoise-yellow-red traffic lights, and the gaudy advertisements and street signs. Shooting pain through her head forced her head down mostly, away from the light and away from color.

She hated color.

She hated everything, really. She hated her life, she hated Ryan, she hated everyone. She stopped. Did she hate Ryan?

No, of course not. How could she? Her husband was her rock through thick and thin and she was to him. Yet...was he these days?

She would have shut her eyes, but she couldn’t walk with her eyes close, so they remained fixed on the ground below. Thankfully, the grass hadn’t changed. It was still green, though these days it was slowly decaying into a yellowish-brown.

She took slow measured steps, careful not to step on any cracks on the sidewalk. It occupied her mind, kept her focused on the little details and pushed the rest right out of her brain.

Then she felt a shiver run through her feet.

It ran up her legs, up her spine, tingling its way up to her brain like an electric shock. She stopped and gasped. Gawking down at the sidewalk. It shimmered.

Shaking ever so slightly to be almost imperceptible except to Sarah’s focused eye. She paled, guttural, raspy breaths heaving from her chest as the sidewalk beneath her feet seemed to tremble. Slowly, at first, then building into a shake. Faster and faster, it shook, yet Sarah remained motionless, stuck in place.

She felt sick to her stomach, the anxiety like a rock in her stomach as the grey slate sidewalk rattled underneath her. It was like the color, the grey slate, was being shaken off, like a dog shaking off water. Bit by bit, grain by grain, the grey slate of the sidewalk was disconnected, floating away to disappear in the wind.

Tears of fear and pain welled, but didn’t drop. Her whole body was frozen in time. Alone in the fear and panic.

Or, perhaps, not so alone.

Across the sidewalk, pressed deep into the brick facade of a bank building and equally avoiding the formerly grey sidewalk was a woman. She was pale, her short black hair a tumbled mess and she clutched her leather purse into her chest as she gasped for air.

The pair of them looked at each other. Silent communication passed between them, both recognizing in the other a kindred spirit. Neither one smiled, neither one moved.

They just locked eyes in mutual comfort, only breaking when yet another woman a flashy dressed businesswoman in a black pantsuit stormed by, walking confidently across the fresh blue facade of the sidewalk. She took a curious glance at the pair of women, rolled her eyes behind her large sunglasses, and hustled past. Drugs, she thought.

The two remaining women moved at last without stepping foot on the pavement, they met in the middle.

“Wh-what the hell?” gasped the dark haired woman. Sarah shook her head in disbelief.

“I have no idea. It’s been happening all over”

“I know! I’ve seen it! Everyone says I’m losing my mind.”

Sarah’s hand shot out, reaching for the woman ’ s who grabbed it tightly. “I know,” she said.

“We’re not crazy. It’s been taking over people. I think it took over Ryan my husband.”

The woman ’ s eyes widened. “H-how?”

“I don’t know. But he’s changed. He doesn’t even look the same anymore. He doesn’t look at me the same anymore. He’s just blank and empty...” Sarah trailed, her voice catching.

The woman gulped. “Well, you look fine.”

Sarah smiled. “Thanks,” she said, straightening her jacket and brushing the hair off of her face.

The smile froze on her face as several locks of black hair detached themselves on her hand. Her eye quivered.

The nausea in her stomach jumped and she swallowed a burning mess of liquid and stared at the dark haired woman. She started to back away slowly.

The two dark-haired women stared at each other in horror. The other woman gulped and took a few carefuly steps towards Sarah.

“What is it?” she squeaked.

“It’s taking me!” Sarah choked, her words swallowed by fear and tears.

She turned on her heel and started to sprint, not caring if she stepped on the sidewalk, not caring about the neon blue walk sign or the pink lane markers.

She could feel the air itself thickening, feel something just behind it creeping up to her.

Stalking her.

But it wouldn’t get her. Not today. She burst into the apartment like a tornado. It was empty. Ryan was at work. She was alone in the orange and amber living room.

She panted like a trapped animal, glaring at the color around her. Teeth bared; hair raised. She tumbled past the living room and into the bathroom. Fear built in her chest as she made the mirror.

Familiar brown eyes stared at long black hair, made in the same style she normally kept. The nausea grew and there was no stopping it this time. She vomited into the washbasin, hunched over retching out her soul. Tears mixing with the vomit.

It had taken her. Or it was trying to take her.

She called Ryan. There was no answer. So she called again. Then again.

He answered on the fourteenth try. She could barely speak, only an incoherent jumble of words and moans. Ryan was back in thirty minutes.

He burst into the room and stopped dead as he saw Sarah rocking back and forth on the couch, her cheeks wet with tears, the TV blaring. And the furniture torn and ripped like a dog had been through.

“What...” Ryan began but Sarah had leap to her feet, her hands wrapped around her black hair. “Look!” Sarah said. “Look!”

Ryan looked. “What?”

Sarah laughed. Then her brown eyes met his blue eyes and the laugh died in her throat. Replaced by a gurgling cry.

“You wouldn’t know would you? You don’t really know me do?”

Ryan held up his hands, eyes wide with innocence. “Woah! What are you talking about?”

“Look! My fucking hair is black! I’m a blonde! I’ve always been blonde, I always will be blonde until I grow old and it turns white. It’s not black and it never will be black!”

She pulled open a drawer, her hand searching for the scissors. She found them.

Ryan leaped instinctively, grabbing the scissors from her hand.

“Whoa, ok calm down! What do you think you ’ re going to do?”

“I’m cutting it all off. I’m a blonde. I want it to grow back naturally!”

“That’s insane, stop!”

Sarah’s smile was fixed on her face, stuck in a permanent smirk as her eyes flooded tears.

“Exactly! I’m insane! I’ve lost my mind, I’ve lost my hair, I’ve lost all color, I’ve lost everything!”

But Ryan was stronger. He wrestled the scissors away and she collapsed onto the sofa. She looked deep into his foreign eyes, her heart failing. She wavered, seemed to waste away amid the burnt orange.

“We need to go to a doctor right away, ” Ryan said at last, swallowing hard.

Sarah laughed. “Yes, let’s go the doctor so you can laugh with all your doctor friends at how crazy I am. I know the truth, though. I’ve meet other people who see the same things. I’m not crazy it’s you. Look at your eyes. I don’t even know you. ” A sudden high pitched giggle escaped her mouth as she bared her teeth at the humor of her own words, “You’re not the man I fell in love with.”

That was it.

Ryan said nothing, just stared. It was over and he knew it. Sarah was lost.

“Alright,” he said, his blue eyes hard and firm. “ we ’ re going.”

Sarah giggled.

She sat perched on her chair in her room at the very end of the long white corridor, her legs crossed beneath her and her eyes fixed on the world outside.

Her bright blue eyes beamed and her mouth was curled into a wide grin. She wasn’t scared anymore. The screens in her room were blank, her phone long confiscated. So she simply sat and watched the real world through her window.

The world was in chaos.

Outside, people ran. People screamed. Cars crashed into one another. Abandoned police cars twinkled their green and yellow lights.

It was panic. They could see it now. They could see all of it now.

Sarah wished she could see Ryan’s face. She wished she could see him running for his life as the abyss had entered from the dreamworld and into the real world. Sucking up the life of the world as it floated through the air.

She could see it clearly now, as clear as in her dreams, now in front of her blue piercing eyes. One by one, the buildings were swallowed up like a vacuum, leaving in their place a shadow of its former self. Spitting out the residuals like black tar from chewing tabacco, regurgitated in an assortment of colors.

The roads were likewise gobbled. The street signs, the cars, the fences, everything that was nailed down was uprooted. People, whole people, were sucked away. Disappearing forever into the abyss.

The hospital was the perfect vantage point. It rolled through the streets alongside the hospital, slowly creeping up to it.

Still, she laughed. She couldn’t help it. Couldn’t stop the tears of mirth from flowing. Now they would believe.

Now everyone would believe.

She wasn’t crazy. They were.

She reached for her cup, felt the cold against her hand.

“Nurse! May I have more coffee?” she said to any empty corridor, filled only with laughter.

Silence greeted her, but she accepted the response with a smile and nod.

Sarah imagined the cool relief of nothing and gave a contented sigh. Soon, peace would be here and she would be alone, lost to the abyss.

She took a sip of cold coffee, ignoring the flavor. She looked down at the cup, her blue eyes gleaming at the black liquid.

It bubbled, oozing over the lid. Cold black liquid covered her hand, then spread. She smiled.

Peace, at last.

THE BOARD OF INTERGALACTIC RELATIONS

The government-installed alarm blared in Aega’s bedroom ceiling, startling her awake. Three short blasts, a pause, three short blasts. Aliens were visiting!

Without pausing to mute the alarm, Aega rushed through her dressing routine with practiced speed: hair in a neat braid, practical but elegant pantsuit, earrings and bracelet she could part with if gifts were required. It had been ten years since the stylish Muso had landed and, upon being greeted by a party of humans in practical but inelegant jumpsuits, turned up their noses and shunned the whole planet.

Today, it would be different. Humanity would finally befriend their first alien race.

Aega dashed to her hovercycle and flew off. The air near the surface was empty due to the early hour, but the sky was beginning to cloud with spacecraft. That was good: when Earth had sent only one ship to Lepa, it had been taken as a spy and the crew summarily executed.

Within minutes, Aega was docking at the Board of Intergalactic Relations’ port, and hurrying into the conference room. She was still one of the first to arrive.

“What do we know so far?” she asked.

“They’re refusing all communications,” said Kral, her fellow board member. “We’re cycling through the known methods.”

It was a gamble. They had learned the hard way that some species expected to be greeted, and some took offense at not being given the first word.

“Standing by, but no communications there either,” said Kral.

There were two welcoming teams: Landside and Spaceside, so the aliens could choose the environment most comfortable to them. Spaceside would work strictly in freefall, now. Seven years ago, a human ship had initiated artificial gravity after boarding a delegation of Hauchi, and promptly crushed them all to death, inciting a war between Earth and Hauch.

“There’s something coming down!” called Glup from the radar. Hundreds of little specks rained from the cloud of ships. Transports?

Everyone crowded to the windows to watch. The first speck hit, and detonated, and then all was thunder as bombs rained around them.

The Board of Intergalactic Relations ran for the basement bunker.

“Hurt messages transmitting!” called Pik. They had practice at this, too, because of the Incendi. The board had been successful for weeks, until the fateful day when one member, since fired, had invited them to make themselves at home, and the Incendi had promptly set fire to as much of the planet as they could reach. It was only after the ensuing counter-slaughter that the Incendi had been made to understand that fire hurt humans, and the humans had realized the Incendia home planet was fire ridden. With so many humans and Incendi dead, the best course had been deemed to cease all relations for at least a generation.

“They aren’t understanding,” said Pik, once everyone was safely inside the bunker.

“I’ll send in Spaceside,” said Kral resolutely. It was dangerous without an invitation, but they had to stop the destruction.

Landside watched through the conference screen as Spaceside approached an alien ship, and a port opened for them. Each Spaceside member was thoroughly sterilized before and after donning their spacesuit, as was the boarding capsule. This measure had been adopted after humans visited Inops and unwittingly brought with them an Earth bacteria that ate through Inops’ stone and lead to the collapse of Inops’ civilization within the year.

Aega got her first glimpse of the aliens and excitement swelled. They were indeed new: seven longs limbs and a central head. This could be the one! The aliens they finally befriended.

The five members of Spaceside had boarded, and cautiously approached the aliens. Behind the camera the president of the board wore on her spacesuit, the other members would be offering gifts of jewels, bowing, gesturing that the bombs were killing humans.

The alien at the controls turned, leveled a sharp rod at the humans, and speared the president in the gut just below the camera.

In the bunker where the aliens couldn’t see, Landside wailed. On board, Spaceside continued their communication efforts.

“We live!” someone was shouting. “We understand!”

When humans had visited Dvojity, they had established friendship with the Velky who lived there. All had been going well until a party of humans had slaughtered and eaten the planet’s second sentient race, the Malicky.

The alien withdrew the spear, and gutted the next board member, then the next.

When it had mortally injured the entire Spaceside team, it leaned close to the camera.

“We have your leaders,” it said. “Surrender, or we will kill you all.”

Landside was shocked to silence. This was an attack!

In a moment, Pik was on the radio to the military. “Attack!” she called. “Attack!”

Landside looked at each other in bewilderment. After a decade of misunderstandings, they were actually being attacked. They would have to hope enough weapons survived the bombing to destroy the alien threat.

SEXY SLUT PUBLISHING

Dear Mr. Porter,

I’ve been a big fan of the books you publish over there at Sexy Slut Publishing for a long time now and must have purchased over twenty of them. I like reading them when I’m out on the road (I’m a long-haul trucker) because I can skim what I like to call the “in-between parts” while I’m sitting at some diner waiting for my bacon and eggs and root beer, and then when I get to the good parts I can head off to the bathroom and take care of business, if you know what I mean. And nobody knows what I’m up to either, because I always put a paper bag cover over the real one just like I learned back in middle school. If a waitress asks what I’m reading, I just say it’s Shakespeare. That usually shuts them up, except in L.A., on account of all the waitresses there want to be actresses. My favorite of your books must be Lick Her More by A. Minx, which I still crack open every once in a while when I’m feeling nostalgic. That chapter where the two co-eds go at it in their dorm room while their male classmate watches them, and then they get on their hands and knees and beg him to join in, well, it almost makes me wish I’d gone to college.

Anyway, I’m writing to you today because I have some concerns about this new author of yours, John Handicock. Now don’t get me wrong, his sex scenes are extremely hot, maybe some of the hottest you ’ ve ever published. I especially like the part in She Knows How to Use Them where the race car driver and his supermodel girlfriend do it while going two hundred mph on the Autobahn. After reading that it only took me about a minute to bust a nut again, if you know what I mean. No, the problem I have with his books has to do with the “inbetween parts.” Again, I’m only a poor trucker and I never went to college, but I think this Handicock fellow is making fun of erotic literature.

Just look at his book The Sensual Reader. Now in this one, the main character, Tom Bones, is a reader of exactly the kind of books you ’ re publishing, and what happens is, a woman in one of the books he’s reading comes to life, and while at first she’s just like the character she was in the book, all hot and sexy and horny as a rabbit, and her and Bones get it on all over the place, over time Miss Chesty starts to change. She starts making all these demands on Bones, telling him he has to clean up his act and get a better job and whatnot, and always bitching and moaning at him, just like a real woman, which really turned me off. Reminded me of my exwife. And that’s another thing, why is Bones portrayed as such a loser in the first place? Is that what Mr. Handicock thinks of his readers, that we ’ re all just failures who can’t get decent jobs and still live with our mothers? Well, let me tell you, that’s not me, that’s not me at all. I’m a pillar of my community, and I’m betting most of your other readers are as well.

Now, I don’t want to get anyone fired. I know how hard the job market is out there. I just think that maybe it would be a good idea to have a talk with this guy, tell him that your readers just want the “in-between parts” to build up the sexual tension so that the good parts will feel that much hotter. We’re not interested in his politics. And he sure as heck shouldn’t be offending your readers by portraying them as such losers.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know what’s going on. I’m sure you have a very big operation and don’t have time to read every word of every book you publish, which is why this sort of thing must have slipped by you. But I’m also sure that you’ll want to do something about it, now that I’ve brought it to your attention. Based on the quality of the books you ’ ve published in the past, I’m sure you’ll do the right thing and fix the problem, for the sake of your business and your readers.

Sincerely,

Tugg Johnson

P.S.: Have you ever considered making audio versions of your books? As I mentioned, I’m a trucker, and it would be nice to be able to listen to them while I’m driving. Although on second thought, maybe that wouldn’t be such a good idea, as it might make it difficult for me to keep both my hands on the wheel, if you know what I mean.

BLACK MAGICK 101

Anapæst Dactyl, the infamous black magician, became my hero as soon as I discovered him. The route through which I found him was most strange.

I was a connoisseur of obscure music. I would scour the internet for hours, looking for lesserknown gems. Eventually, I chanced upon a cheaply shot music video, on tape, anachronistically. It follows a bleach-blonde man as he leaves his New York City apartment and walks the streets. He pulls a twenty from the ATM, carries leftovers home while he considers buying flowers, takes a drag from a hand-rolled cigarette as he chats up a stranger, all to the haunting, carnivalesque music, which saturated the footage with a slow-burning menace. The lyrics revel in urban debauchery, “I wanna be / I wanna meet / A tongue-splitter,” as we ’ re shown street freaks with body modifications, creatures of the night. At one point, the man (also the singer) puts the “okay” hand signal over his left eye and raises the other hand up in a peace sign. The camera lingers on that pose, panning slowly out. The image struck me, so I googled it. That’s what sent me down the rabbit-hole, straight to the man himself.

Anapæst Dactyl was born in 1875 to a fabulously well-to-do English family. Some say his devout Christian upbringing distorted his moral compass. He blasphemed at an early age, eventually rejecting the church altogether. He studied esotericism at Oxford and published scandalous poetry in the university newspaper. He joined an occult society, The Order of the Eastern Temple, where he quickly rose through the ranks, until he was one of its heads. His behavior became erratic, at least to some of his peers, and the seedier elements of his newly implemented and experimental practices became too much for their puritanical minds to bear. He eloped to Italy, with his second wife, and founded the Varra Villa, where he could pursue his insane rituals in secret.

I was working in a grocery store deli, but I liked to think of it as an old-fashioned butcher shop, since we basically cut up meat all day anyway. It was dull work, but it allowed me to maintain a tiny apartment in the heart of downtown.

One night, as I was walking home, I saw this beautiful young woman walking in pace with me across the street. I snuck glances at her through the passing cars.

“Hey,” I said to her, shouting so I could be heard over the traffic. “What’s your name?”

Her pace quickened and she clutched her purse. “No, hey, it’s not like that,” I shouted after her. She stopped and turned to face me.

“What the actual fuck?” she said.

“I’m sorry, I just… thought you were cute.”

“It’s late. I’m a woman. By myself. What part of this doesn’t scream murder in an alley?”

“Look, I just ”

“Nice apron, ” she yelled, before resuming her walk home. I untied the apron, suddenly embarrassed, and bundled it up in my hands as I walked the rest of the way to my apartment.

I didn’t have a television, but I did have a projector. I would watch old films on a reel-to-reel, and feel transported to a simpler time, full of euphemisms and fade-outs. The stark German ones were my favorites, but I had a lesser inkling for American romances, with their jawdroppingly gorgeous starlets and plotlines so simple they faded into the background.

I had this weird hook-up for old film reels. My handyman’s wife worked at the library, so she had access to old movies that they didn’t let the public borrow. Employees weren’t allowed to take them home either, but she snuck them, and my handyman would then pass them off to me. I’d been saving them up for a marathon. He handed the final film to me, wrapped in a paper bag, like a hand-off in a heist movie.

“Thanks,” I said, “But I’m tired. I’m gonna turn in.” He knew that meant I didn’t want company.

No problem, Vin,” he said, and shuffled off to his unit.

I laid out all the films for my planned marathon, in the order I wished to watch them. Tomorrow was my day off, and it was going to be glorious.

Have you ever fallen in love with an actress of the past?

It’s bittersweet, since you know in the back of your mind that they’re either very old or dead, but still, they enrapture us. For me, it was Audrey Hepburn. She was the star of my marathon.

About midway through, and one hastily prepared breakfast and Chinese takeout later, I received a visitation, or perhaps just a hallucination. Just to the left of my projector screen, I saw a green-skinned creature with a bulging, distended belly and sharp yellowed teeth, tilting its head back and bringing its fangs together with a sickening clacking noise. It glared at me like a warning, then crawled out the window. I chalked it up to tired eyes and switched over to the next reel.

At the end, I fell into a deep daydream, a reverie. Audrey and I danced, ballroom style, around my apartment, sashaying past the microwave, and dipping her over the coffee table. I held her aloft and stared into her stunning starlet face. I leaned in for the kiss. There was a knock at the door, and with it, the evaporation of my beloved. It was my handyman.

“How was the marathon?” he asked me.

“Jesus, I just finished it, how did you know?”

“I was listening outside the door, sorry. ” He must have been nervous to get the reels back to the library. Maybe they’d started to get suspicious.

“No worries,” I told him, handing him the stack of films.

“I’m gonna put these up. You want to burn one when I get back?”

“Sure,” I said.

We smoked a joint on the back porch of my building, both staring wistfully up at the stars as our mutual buzz set in, since it is technically illegal for two men in close proximity to one another to make eye contact, as you all know.

“I don’t know, I guess I just feel unnoticed,” I said.

“Well, my friend, I suppose you must do something to get noticed.” He exhaled a translucent zephyr of smoke into the moonlit night. He was my only friend.

That morning, I went and bought a megaphone from a nearby superstore. I had a plan. I set up on the street like a doomsday preacher, standing on a milk crate I found along the way, and shouting at the people walking by, using a speech I had prepared for just such an occasion.

“Don’t you want to burn it down? Don’t you want to? Let’s freak out and hit the streets. We’ve got nothing to fight for, not anymore. All these manic pauses, too many false causes. Amerikay, the doomed and damned, fallen into foreign hands. But what do we care? What do they care? Blood feasts! Hell in the east! We’ll make our home in the dumps, hijack the water pumps. We’ll speak new words, live off the birds, as they capitalize on the children’s crimes. Don’t you want to burn it down? I’m done with dreaming, let’s start scheming.” I thought for sure that last line would grow into a chant, but alas, all the people passing by ignored me but one. A young woman stared at me from across the street, seemingly transfixed. As I was packing up to leave, she made her way over to me.

“When do we get started?” she said.

“Oh, well, it might be tough with just the two of us. ”

“Maybe it’ll catch on. ”

“Haha, maybe.”

“There’s this carnival tonight, it’s Victorian themed, you should come. ”

“Where?”

“At the plaza downtown. It starts at six.”

I didn’t have anything vaguely Victorian in my wardrobe, so I just went as I was. She had changed into a simple dress. She held out two tabs of acid on her palm, one for each of us.

“Come on, it’ll be like that scene in Villette, where the narrator takes opium and goes to that carnival.”

“Villette?”

“The Charlotte Bronte novel. Come on, I took you as the well-read type.”

“No, I’m more of a film guy. ”

“Hm, fascinating.”

“I know, I’m a thrill a minute.”

We ate the acid and made our way into the crowd. A line of dancers came rollicking toward us, hand in hand.

“Let’s go, ” she said, pulling me along. We latched on and bounded, now linked with the dancers.

Hours later, the striped tents breathed and the men on stilts became liquid giants. The night flipped and hollered within my mind. Emily seemed experienced. She would grin at me every once in a while like a child who knows a secret.

She agreed to come to my apartment, so she didn’t have to drive. We undressed and stayed awake, talking at the ceiling as our trips slowly subsided. I bid her goodbye in the haze of the morning, knowing I had to be at work in a couple hours.

She moved in a short time later, both of our possessions packed into that tiny space. We achieved some sort of equilibrium, coming home exhausted and leaning on one another for strength. Her hobbies and proclivities loitered with mine on the walls and shelves.

We were residentially melded, yet still we managed to grow apart.

Varra Villa was a repurposed abbey, one that used to house monks. In the basement of the villa, Dactyl painted demons on the walls, as well as barbarous words, diabolical graffiti. It was there, in the basement, that he conducted one of his most well-known and despised rituals.

A large male goat had its throat slit while it was penetrating a woman, right at the moment of orgasm. The purpose of the ritual was unclear, but all those present recalled a feeling of a great transference of energy, but to whom and how much, none were fully aware.

There were also rumors of human sacrifices at the villa, but some scholars considered it a crude joke on the part of Dactyl, with “human sacrifice” being a morbid stand-in for masturbation, which said little about his credibility as a new-age prophet.

It was during this time that I discovered him, the infectious song through which I had found him playing in my head as I purchased some artifacts online, after doing a little research: The Lesser Key of Solomon (with an introduction by Dactyl himself), several sigil pendants (for compelling the spirits to be controlled), a large tapestry of a magick circle, a black mirror for viewing the spirits (which incidentally got cracked during shipment), and a deep red velvet cloak. The last was not a requirement, but merely an aesthetic choice on my part, since I thought it would look ravishing in the light of the candles. Those, and the incense, I got from this hippie store. I would wait until Emily fell asleep and set up in the second bedroom.

For the naysayers, Dactyl concocted a ‘scientific’ rationalization of the sensations that resulted from a proper invocation. He claimed that by preparing the materials and speaking the words, the sights, sounds, and smells of the ritual, you were thereby accessing a heretofore untapped portion of the brain, thus awakening ancestral DNA, i.e. instantaneous knowledge. I witnessed this firsthand.

I laid down the tapestry, in conjunction with the cardinal directions, smoothing it out so all of its details were visible, the magick circle, with the 72 names of God inscribed around its border, and laid the cracked black mirror within the movable triangle that pointed in a particular direction, which contained the spirits. I placed a candle at each quadrant and lit them, as well as the incense (“dragon blood” scented). I donned the appropriate sigil pendant and took my place in the center.

I decided to start small. One of the spirits, number eight, a duke of hell called Barbatos (pronounced bar-bay-toes), “giveth understanding of the singing of Birds.” Note that the words below in italics are chanted in a single pitch, rather than spoken.

“Thee I invoke, the Bornless one. Thee, that didst create the Earth and the Heavens: Thee, that didst create the Night and the Day. Thee, that didst create the Darkness and the Light. Thou art Osorronophris: Whom no man has seen at any time. Thou art Jäbas. Thou art Jäpos: Thou hast distinguished between the Just and the Unjust. Thou didst make the Female and the Male. Thou didst produce the Seed and the Fruit. Thou didst form Men to love one another, and to hate one another.”

“I am Mosheh Thy Prophet, unto Whom Thou didst commit Thy Mysteries, the Ceremonies of Ishrael: Thou didst produce the moist and the dry, and that which nourisheth all created Life. Hear Thou Me, for I am the Angel of Paphro Osorronophris: this is Thy True Name, handed down to the Prophets of Ishrael.”

“Hear Me, Barbatos.”

“Ar: Thiao: Rheibet: Atheleberseth: A: Blatha: Abeu: Ebeu: Phi: Thitasoe: Ib: Thiao.”

“Hear Me, and make all Spirits subject unto Me: so that every Spirit of the Firmament and of the Ether; upon the Earth and under the Earth: on dry Land and in the Water: of Whirling Air, and of rushing Fire: and every Spell and Scourge of God may be obedient unto Me.”

“I invoke Thee, the Terrible and Invisible God: Who dwellest in the Void Place of the Spirit.”

“Arogogorobrao: Sothou: Modorio: Phalarthao: Doo: Ape, The Bornless One: Barbatos.”

“Hear Me: Barbatos.”

“Hear me: Barbatos.”

“Roubriao: Mariodam: Balbnabaoth: Assalonai: Aphniao: I: Thoteth: Abrasar: Aeoou: Ischure, Mighty and Bornless One! Hear me: Barbatos.”

“I invoke thee: Barbatos.”

“Ma: Barraio: Joel: Kotha: Athoribalo: Abraoth: Hear Me: Barbatos.”

“Hear me! Aoth: Abaoth: Basum: Isak: Sabaoth: Iao: Barbatos”

“This is the Lord of the Gods: This is the Lord of the Universe: This is He Whom the Winds fear. This is He, Who having made Voice by His Commandment, is Lord of All Things; King, Ruler and Helper. Hear Me, Barbatos.”

“Hear Me.”

“Ieou: Pur: Iou: Pur: Iaot: Iaeo: Ioou: Abrasar: Sabriam: Do: Uu: Adonaie: Ede: Edu: Angelos ton Theon: Aniaia Lai: Gaia: Ape: Diathanna Thorun.”

“I am He! the Bornless Spirit! having sight in the feet: Strong, and the Immortal Fire! I am He! the Truth! I am He! Who hates that evil should be wrought in the World! I am He, that lighteneth and thundereth. I am He, from Whom is the Shower of the Life of Earth: I am He, Whose mouth ever flameth: I am He, the Begetter and Manifester unto the Light: I am He; the Grace of the World: ‘The Heart Girt with a Serpent’ is My Name. Come Thou forth, and follow Me: and make all Spirits subject unto Me so that every Spirit of the Firmament, and of the Ether: upon the Earth and under the Earth: on dry Land, or in the Water: of whirling Air or of rushing Fire: and every Spell and Scourge of God, may be obedient unto Me!”

“Iao: Sabao: Barbatos.”

“Such are the Words!” ended the invocation in the text.

Once I invoked the spirit, I found that I could in fact recognize and imitate various forms of birdsong. I could match the quality and pitch of the mourning dove’s deep and sorrowful whistle, not unlike an owl: hoo-oot, hoot hoot hoot. The song of the American robin became clearer to me as well. The younglings would emit a higher-pitched glissando, which I could imitate and draw the older ones closer to me. When I let out a deeper call, they backed away. There was a final bird, which I was unable to identify, but which had a distinct call I could mimic precisely: chir-ree, tweedle-dee tweedle-dee, chir-ree, chir-ree.

I found that by matching their calls, I could summon masses of birds to me, wherever I happened to be.

After I had performed several invocations, the light in our hallway refused to work. A maintenance order was put in for it, yet no matter how many times they changed the bulb, it would fizzle out as soon as you hit the switch. They finally took the bulb out, leaving that naked spiral cavity hanging over our door. I wondered which of the handful of possible spirits it could have been.

One night, Emily awoke for one reason or another and spied on me through a crack in the door. Did she see the spirit lurking in the shadows of the candles as I did, could she hear our conversation?

Before we proceed, I feel a proper definition is required. Though it has gone by many names, the concept of black magick (spelled with a K, to differentiate it from stage magic, hocus pocus) is addressed in the seminal text, Transcendental Magick: Its Doctrine and Ritual, by Eliphas Levi, the man whom Dactyl claimed to be the reincarnation of. It was published in two volumes, the doctrine in 1854, and the ritual in 1856. The following is an excerpt from the text, if the reader would be so kind as to humor me for a moment. Note that any peculiar spellings or syntax are a product of the time during which it was written.

“We approach the mystery of black magick. We are about to confront, even in his own sanctuary, the black god of the Sabbath, the formidable goat of Mendes. At this point those who are subject to fear should close the book; even persons who are a prey to nervous impressions will do well to divert themselves or to abstain. We have set ourselves a task, and we must complete it. Let us first of all address ourselves frankly and boldly to the question: Is there a devil? What is the devil? As to the first point, science is silent, philosophy denies it on chance, religion only answers in the affirmative. As to the second point, religion states that the devil is the fallen angel; occult philosophy accepts and explains this definition. It will be unnecessary to repeat what we have already said on the subject; we will add here a further revelation: ”

“IN BLACK MAGICK, THE DEVIL IS THE GREAT MAGICKAL AGENT EMPLOYED FOR EVIL PURPOSES BY A PERVERSE WILL.”

“The old serpent of the legend is nothing else than the universal agent, the eternal fire of terrestrial life, the soul of the earth, and living fount of hell. We have said that the astral light is the receptacle of forms, and these when evoked by reason are produced harmoniously, but when evoked by madness they appear disorderly and monstrous: so originated the nightmares of St. Anthony and the phantoms of the Sabbath. Do, therefore, the evocations of goëtie and demonomania possess a practical result? Yes, certainly one which cannot be contested, one more terrible than one that could be recounted by legends! When any one invokes the devil with intentional ceremonies, the devil comes, and is seen. To escape dying from horror at the sight, to escape catalepsy or idiocy, one must be already mad… In the fifteenth chapter of our Ritual we shall give all the diabolical evocations and practices of black magick, not that they may be used, but that they may be known and judged, and that such insanities may be put aside for ever. ”

“We return once more to that terrible number fifteen, symbolished in the Tarot by a monster throned upon an altar, mitred and horned, having a woman ’ s breasts and the generative organs of a man a chimera, a malformed sphinx, a synthesis of monstrosities; below this figure we read a frank and simple inscription THE DEVIL. Yes, we confront here the phantom of all terrors, the dragon of all theogonies, the Ariman of the Persians, the Typhon of the Egyptians, the Python of the Greeks, the old serpent of the Hebrews, the fantastic monster, the nightmare, the Croquemitaine, the gargoyle, the great beast of the middle ages, and, worse than all this, the Baphomet of the Templars, the bearded idol of the alchemists, the obscene deity of Mendes, the goat of the Sabbath. The frontispiece to this Ritual reproduces the exact figure of the terrible emperor of night, with all his attributes and all his characters.”

You might be asking yourself, if this being is so abominable, why was it chosen as the cover of the text? But I digress.

“I’ve seen someone do that before,” she told me the next morning. “We had all taken acid, and the guy whose house we were at lit these black candles and recited the same strange poetry you did, though he called a different name. I can’t remember which one. My boyfriend at the time and I went upstairs and had sex in one of the bedrooms. While he was on top of me, I saw a tall horned figure in the corner, then I blacked out. I had eaten a bunch of Xanax too. While I was unconscious, I dreamed I saw the Baphomet, pointing at me and laughing, saying I would never leave that place. There were man-like figures all around it, but their faces were hollow and devoid of light. I felt a hand pulling me up, and I woke up on the guy ’ s lawn, covered in sweat, I had OD’d.”

One day, on a whim, I decided to google “Anapæst Dactyl” backwards, since I knew from my studies that inversion was a direct path to the infernal. On the third page of results (oh, the irony) I found a link to a PDF entitled ‘Mr. Gold’s Sigil Formula.’ It detailed, as the title suggests, a method for making a sigil.

First, you write down a desire, something like “I want an ice cream cone, ” but of course, the desire should be one not so easily fulfilled. Then, you remove all the vowels and any repeating consonants. “I WANT AN ICE CREAM CONE” becomes “WNT C RM.” Finally, you take that witchy string of symbols and combine them into a single image. Here’s the one I made for “I want an ice cream cone. ”

(See if you can spot all the letters.)

Then comes the ‘launching’ of the sigil. In my experience, masturbation is the easiest way, but sitting naked in a cemetery at night will do. While you conduct your chosen method, you must fixate on the sigil you ’ ve made, until it is imprinted on your irises, until you can recall it exactly when you close your eyes. Then (for me, at the moment of orgasm) you ‘send’ the sigil off into the universe, will it out into the ether, where it will hopefully manifest the desire. The document said you would “feel the sigil leave your consciousness” as it was jettisoned out and away.

The results will always reveal themselves in threes. Three days, three months, three hours, but always in threes. The author of the PDF, Mr. Gold, claimed a 100% success rate if the formula was followed exactly, but the treatise ended on a final warning: “Madness, paranoia, and death are constant dangers, so tread lightly, and happy casting.”

In 1921, Anapæst Dactyl conducted an elaborate ritual in New York City with one of his male apprentices, where he called forth a being called Lam (Tibetan for ‘the way’). He sketched the creature, with its sizable head, tiny features, and wise eyes. Some have said that this sketch was the origin of the ‘little grey men ’ of UFO folklore. Coincidentally, the Roswell crash occurred the same year as Dactyl’s death, in 1947, which, if you believe the theories, introduced digital technology and Kevlar, among other advancements, which the government then slowly trickled out to its people over the decades. Perhaps, with his death, the seal to the land of the Lam was broken, and they poured into our world. Perhaps there’s one watching you read this right now.

I opened Dactyl’s sketch of Lam on my phone and stared at it for way too long, the swirl of wrinkles on the vast cranium, the pinpoint eyes. I was treating it like a sigil, trying to memorize it, but when I pulled my phone away, the image remained, bobbing around in a figure- eight pattern. It repeated this motion a few times, and then darted out of sight. It was late, so I snuck back into bed. I felt a lonely but curious presence in the closet. It spoke to me telepathically.

“I am Lam. Lam am I. Am I Lam?” It kept repeating the words in different variations, until they sped up continually, eventually becoming an undulating tremolo, then a perpetual hum.

As I drifted off to sleep, I had the distinct feeling of astral projection, as if my spirit was moving at a great speed, over the ocean.

I saw a desert landscape stretching out below me, somewhere in the middle east, great explosions, people dying, the sand turning to glass.

“My laptop moved last night,” Emily said the next morning.

“What do you mean?” I asked her, rubbing my eyes as the sun leaked through the curtains.

“It was somewhere different than where I put it last night. You didn’t move it, did you?”

“No,” I said, truthfully. I hadn’t touched it.

“Don’t you find that strange?”

“Not particularly,” I said, “Not with all the other stuff that’s been going on. ”

That spring, Emily and I took a road trip. Whatever the opposite of a honeymoon was, that’s what we were on. We rented a car, drove across the country, staying in cheap hotels along the way. We made it as far as Arizona, hiked through the dusty railroad tunnels of Nevada, saw the Grand Canyon, and spent a few nights in Las Vegas, touristy things. I think we only had sex a few times the whole trip. We hardly said a word to each other as we stared out over incredible landscapes.

Sometime later, she asked me if I wanted to take a trip with her family. Before I could collect myself and give a proper response, I uttered a sarcastic, “Oh boy,” and knew I’d blown it. As you could imagine, she didn’t take it well. If the road trip was the beginning of the end, that was the final curtain.

I ended up kicking her out. I figured I would leave her before she did the same to me. She went to stay with her brother, who coincidentally lived just a few blocks away. She left most of her things, either as collateral or some psychological ploy to make me think of her.

The time between Emily leaving and going to jail was a blur. In her absence, I was visited by an old friend from high school. He was attending a university a few states away, studying botany, and made the drive to come see me. He was jumpy and nervous. He didn’t stay long.

“Are there ghosts here?” he asked me, as we stepped through the doorway. He was shivering. We sat in the kitchen and caught up over a pipe he produced from his day bag. Before the effects could sink in, he excused himself and left in a hurry. He forgot to grab the pipe, which lay docile and smoking on my fold-out table. It was months later, via email, that he revealed to me the pipe’s contents: a rich and pungent combination of opium, meth, and weed, all coagulated and compounded into an odious and ominous dark brown paste, almost an identical shade of the wood that housed it. Ignorant of what it contained, I puffed on the pipe for days, falling into fevers and visions. My cat, my familiar, whom Emily and I had found on one of our rare afternoon walks, when we still had the energy, leapt at invisible targets on the walls. I was bedridden and mad. I swore I could control the weather, as the wind whipped the trees outside in a seductively frantic dance, my dance, the dance of my mind.

I thought I’d try a ritual coined by Dactyl, what I thought of as the Mirror Trick. You sat before a reflective surface, one large enough to contain the entirety of your image and fixated on the left eye (stage right) of your aberration, your other. After several minutes, my reflection began to vibrate, then slowly faded from view, dimming in time to my heartbeat. I blinked, and it reappeared. I continued this process for hours, meditating in silence, until my reflection disappeared completely. It was then that I was visited by the winking eye in the cloud.

It led me through the alphabet, with one simple association for each letter (A, alpha; B, barnacle; C, croquet, etc.), then the numbers zero through nine. The rest was a swirl of language and concepts, with the one discernible phrase being, “Why must you betray me?” In the flurry of voices, I couldn’t make out the speaker. It could have been me, God, or the Devil, or maybe we were all saying it to each other.

A few days later, I was visited by a county sheriff. He handed me a protection order, filled out by none other than my old pal Emily. She told the cops that I was “practicing occult rituals,” which I was, and becoming “irrational,” which I also was. When I asked the sheriff why she would do this, he laughed in my face.

“Some people are just irrational,” he said.

My plan was simple: curse her belongings and then carry them over to her brother’s apartment by the armload, where I would then pile them up on her little blue Honda.

It took several trips. I still had a few more to go when she came outside.

“Call the cops, ” I said.

“I already did.”

Jail was a trip. They flagged me down and cuffed me on my walk home and took me downtown, where I was booked and fingerprinted. For some reason, when they asked me my religion, I said Jewish. I guessed technically I had been studying the Kabbalah, so it was close enough. The next question was, “Are you involved in any hate groups?”

“No, they hate him, ” an inmate I couldn’t see said.

I had to spend two nights in a holding cell (“Never get locked up on a weekend,” one of my cellmates warned me), then they shipped me to the county jail. They moved me in the middle of the night, to pod B, which I later found out was considered the “junkie ward.” They must have assumed I was some kind of drug addict. It was a spacious dormitory that held fifty bunks, toilets, showers, sinks, and a desk where the CO’s sat. All but a few of the men in the pod were sleeping. I saw one raising and lowering his arm, slowly, as if he was flagging a ship or an airplane, some kind of signal. I managed to sleep and woke up to a not unsatisfying breakfast.

One of the inmates in the pod was a self-described martial arts master, part-time bouncer, part-time video game store clerk.

“They call me AZ,” he said when he introduced himself.

“Azrael, the archangel of death,” I said. My research had served me well.

“I’m glad you recognize it,” he said.

We developed a sort of bond. We walked and talked around the pod. I let it slip that I had meditated in front of a mirror.

“You know you ’ ve got hunger ghosts, right?” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“You meditate in front of a mirror, it draws hunger ghosts to you, Preta, creatures with swollen stomachs that were gluttonous during their time alive. That’s why you ’ re so damn skinny.”

I thought of the hallucination I’d had during my Audrey Hepburn marathon, but that fell quite some time before I attempted the Mirror Trick. He avoided me after that and told the other inmates that I wasn’t to be trusted. I spent two weeks in relative silence. That was until one of the guards informed me that my attorney was there to meet with me.

I had no attorney, but I went with them anyway. An older man in a suit with salt and pepper hair greeted me. He said he was sent by Æreum Sidus, the very same magickal society founded by my hero, Anapæst Dactyl. He informed me that my $10,000 bond had been posted, and that they had rented a nearby hotel room for me for one week. In that time, I was to contact and arrange a meeting with a known witch, who lived some 130 miles to the south.

Since I was bailed out before my trial, they gave me a court date. I pled guilty, and the judge granted me “time served” for my two weeks in jail and sentenced me to two years of “community control,” essentially parole for non-felons. I was to meet my PO once a month, and be subjected to random drug and alcohol screenings, so I had to stay straight, or risk further imprisonment.

Dactyl founded Æreum Sidus later in life. He served as its head, until it was taken over by two of his protégé, a rocket engineer and a man who invented his own pay-to-play religion. To this day, the organization has a functioning website, and one can become a member by paying the yearly dues of around two hundred dollars. Some larger cities even had temples, where various rituals would be conducted.

In 1904, Dactyl went with his first wife to Egypt, where they somehow gained access to the interior of a pyramid. There, he conducted an unknown ritual, which caused the apparent demonic possession of his wife, who became manic, and insisted he accompany her to a nearby museum. She led him to an exhibit of the child-god Horus, number 666 in the collection.

I contacted the witch, using the phone number I was given. I had to hit nine to ‘dial out’ from the hotel phone.

“Hello, you ’ ve reached Farah Moon, where your darkest fantasies are my desire, how will you be paying me today?”

“Um, yes, I was told to contact, uh, call you. Æreum Sidus sent me. ” Her voice changed from demure and silky to professional and clipped.

“Of course, yes, I have your location. I’ll be there in about ninety minutes.” She hung up, and I waited in my room for a while, flipping through the endless channels on the television, until it was almost time, then I waited in the lobby. She pulled up right on cue.

Her hair was waist-length and dyed purple, her clothes all skin-tight fabric, like yoga pants material, which hugged her tall, narrow frame. She certainly looked like a witch. I peeked into her car, and sure enough, there was a straw broom with a red handle laid across her backseat.

“Take me to your room, ” she said, “We don’t have much time.”

When we entered my room, she began to undress. She turned to me, bony and naked, her Quaker-length hair covering her most sensitive of parts, so she was nude, but not nude.

“Drop ‘ em, ” she said.

We had sex. She was on her period, and blood was everywhere, all over the white sheets. At one point, she scooped up a handful and smeared it across my chest. The smell awakened the beast within. I was rabid. I’d been in jail for two weeks, with no jerking off (because how could I? I wasn’t going anywhere near the “jack shack,” the crudely named shower that was reserved for nighttime releases). It was so much build-up, I nearly passed out.

“Was that sex magick?” I asked her, as I panted, splayed across her.

“Yes,” she said, “Now get dressed. We’re to leave for my house to the south at once. ”

The cleaners must have thought they walked in on a murder scene, but I never received word from the patrons. Whatever madness we were wrapped up in, they wanted no more to do with. She drove us the whole way.

“According to legend, the year of the awakening, the arrival of the antichrist, is 1990,” she said, once we reached the highway.

“But I was born in 1991.”

“Yes, but you were conceived in 1990. It’s you, you ’ re the antichrist. Pull out your phone,” she said.

“Okay.”

“Now look up ‘Hebrew gematria calculator.’”

“Got it, now what?”

“Enter Farah Darlene Atalie Thomas.”

“What’s that?”

“My full given name. ”

I entered the name into the calculator. The result in Hebrew gematria was exactly 666.

“Of course you know of Anapæst Dactyl?” she said.

“Yes.”

“My mother told me he was present at my birth, and that she was visited by an angel, who delivered my name to her.”

“You were born in what year?” “1988.”

“Dactyl would have been over a hundred years old.”

She stared ahead as she drove, letting the silence be an answer.

The house was a simple one-story affair in a sketchy neighborhood, with a patch of dirt in the yard that was either a garden or a crude gravesite. Pinned to her front door was a sign, offering Tarot and psychic readings for a modest fee. Save for us, the house was empty. She led me in and headed to the kitchen, where she began to cook eggs, six to be exact. Anyone acquainted with the triplicate nature of embryonic development will recognize the significance.

“I’m to sell this house, and we are to secure an apartment,” she said, over the steaming eggs and vegetables in the pan. We ate our fill and went apartment hunting.

The first, and the cheapest, apartment we looked at was a studio on the second floor of a rundown building. The landlord had enormous, heaving breasts that swayed as she rounded the stairs. They were incredibly distracting.

“You’ll have to keep the lobby door locked,” she said, “Otherwise, junkies will come in and use the stairwell to shoot up. We can’t have any more deaths on the property.”

The water pressure was pitiful, and there was no built-in heating or cooling, but it was dirt cheap. The busty landlord accepted cash for the first month’s rent, no deposit, no lease to sign, strictly “under the table.” I wondered if she too was a part of Æreum Sidus, but I declined to ask her.

The handyman of our new apartment was a sleazy drunk, who lived in a unit just below us. He had to do some minor repairs to our bathtub, using a caulking gun.

He joked with Farah that he was “really good at caulking,” which I let slide, since it was so pedestrian. He also made a comment about her being flat-chested, but I didn’t want to start a confrontation and potentially blow our new residence. Some days later, I found his wallet on the stairs leading to our door. I never asked Farah why, and I gave it to her so she could return it, wanting nothing more to do with the matter. One night, we heard him arguing with a prostitute.

“Give me back my purse, ” she said, “I can’t stay up all night talking to you. ” We heard them scuffling on the street below, then we heard the sound of big, slow steps, a deep voice, indistinguishable from the second floor, that could only be her pimp. The argument quickly fizzled out, and the whore made away with her purse.

Needless to say, he wasn’t anywhere near as amiable as my old handyman. I wondered how he and his wife were holding up. Maybe I’ll send them a letter sometime, I thought.

The neighborhood was alive with underground activity. Thugs hung out in packs around doorways, light-skinned whores flagged white Johns, bums picked through the leavings. My first time out of the apartment, on the way to a nearby bodega, I was stopped by a prostitute I would see many times after.

“You want this TV for $25?” she asked me.

“Nah, I’m good, thanks,” I said.

“Okay honey, you have a good one. ”

None of the streetwalkers ever tried to flag me down. Maybe because I was on foot and they assumed I was broke? I wasn’t ever sure.

Further down the block, a group of tough-looking guys were huddled around smoking a blunt.

“Ayy, I saw you move in down the street. That’s a fine-ass bitch you got,” the biggest guy said. The others chuckled. “Nah, I’m just fuckin’ with you, white boy. I ain’t gonna fuck your bitch.” He dapped me up and I continued on my way. They merely nodded at me when I passed them on the way back.

“We have a date,” Farah told me when I returned. “With a client. You are to say nothing. We will have dinner, then spend the night in a hotel, one far nicer than that hole they had you staying in.”

The dinner was with a frumpy middle-aged man, who was already seated when we came into the restaurant, a nicer Japanese place. She handed him a grocery bag full of various items. We dined in relative silence, though I did correct her usage of chopsticks, since I thought it fell in line with our roles.

“He’s a teacher,” she explained to her mark, with a brilliant glimmer of improvisation.

We followed the man in his car to a fancy hotel, where he watched us have sex. He laid five hundred dollars on the dresser and left, never to return.

We awoke to a lavish spread brought to us by room service: delicate slices of bread, fresh fruit, various cheeses. Farah told me later that the bag she gave the man contained a sweater she’d worn for three days without showering (not surprising, since to take a bath, we had to haul hot water from the kitchen sink by the vase-load, since there was no showerhead), a hairbrush she had used for months without cleaning it, and one of my used condoms, which she had fished out of the trash.

“Sorry about that one, ” she said, “But the money was too good to pass up. Think of it as an offering.”

We lived in relative luxury for a time, going on other similar ‘dates,’ always with the same handful of sad older men. Farah considered herself a dominatrix, specifically a findom, financial domination, where no physical contact with the client was made. To her, it was easy money, but I shuddered to think where my “offering” ended up, and to what purpose, magickal or otherwise.

Farah managed to sell her house quickly. Someone paid for it in cash, $9,000, without so much as a proper showing. She had scrawled strange signs on the walls, some of which resembled breasts, and I could only imagine she used it as a place to conduct rituals until the very end.

“We have a date,” Farah told me when I returned. “With a client. You are to say nothing. We will have dinner, then spend the night in a hotel, one far nicer than that hole they had you staying in.”

The dinner was with a frumpy middle-aged man, who was already seated when we came into the restaurant, a nicer Japanese place. She handed him a grocery bag full of various items. We dined in relative silence, though I did correct her usage of chopsticks, since I thought it fell in line with our roles.

“He’s a teacher,” she explained to her mark, with a brilliant glimmer of improvisation.

We followed the man in his car to a fancy hotel, where he watched us have sex. He laid five hundred dollars on the dresser and left, never to return.

We awoke to a lavish spread brought to us by room service: delicate slices of bread, fresh fruit, various cheeses. Farah told me later that the bag she gave the man contained a sweater she’d worn for three days without showering (not surprising, since to take a bath, we had to haul hot water from the kitchen sink by the vase-load, since there was no showerhead), a hairbrush she had used for months without cleaning it, and one of my used condoms, which she had fished out of the trash.

“Sorry about that one, ” she said, “But the money was too good to pass up. Think of it as an offering.”

We lived in relative luxury for a time, going on other similar ‘dates,’ always with the same handful of sad older men. Farah considered herself a dominatrix, specifically a findom, financial domination, where no physical contact with the client was made. To her, it was easy money, but I shuddered to think where my “offering” ended up, and to what purpose, magickal or otherwise.

Farah managed to sell her house quickly. Someone paid for it in cash, $9,000, without so much as a proper showing. She had scrawled strange signs on the walls, some of which resembled breasts, and I could only imagine she used it as a place to conduct rituals until the very end.

It turned out Farah had a nice chunk of money saved up (thanks in part to her recent sell), and after years of living cheaply, I did as well. We decided to go in on a country house, a cabin with no electricity, no plumbing. It was perfect. We paid for the property in cash and moved in a short time later.

Occasionally, we would take trips into the city for more findom dates, making enough to keep us afloat, as well as the monthly visits with my PO. Farah began to take more and more solo trips, which left me plenty of time to complete the Abramelin working, my real reason for purchasing the land. I needed a place where I could invoke undisturbed.

Dactyl purchased a property near lake Loch Ness in Scotland, with the purpose of completing the greatest ritual of them all, the Abramelin working. It required one to invoke and banish all 72 spirits of the Goëtia. Doing so would allow one to come into conversation with their guardian angel. Dactyl covered the balcony of the house with sand, so that he could see the footprints of the demons he called there. It was then that he made many of the sketches which have since become obligatory, not unlike the sketch of Lam.

However, the ritual was interrupted before he could fully complete it. Dactyl was summoned back to England, as he was enlisted to plant counterintelligence within the German propaganda machine and infect their people with a keen sense of superstition. It’s been rumored that Dactyl was responsible for Winston Churchill’s use of the peace symbol in photos, the V for victory, also an ancient sign of excommunication from the church, which spooked the now superstitious Germans, the very same hand sign that led me here. The cyclical nature of magick was not unfamiliar to me. His political ties didn’t end there. It was rumored that one of his children was Barbara Bush (born in 1925, so the dates added up), which only added to all the conspiracy theories surrounding those esteemed oil and political barons.

The house became a place of legend. It was said that one of its caretakers committed suicide, and that a floating head could be seen floating over the grounds at 3am, the witching hour. It was eventually purchased by a rock star, and traded hands every ten years or so.

It was said his failure to complete the working was not only responsible for the fabled Loch Ness monster, but also the string of bad luck that followed him for the rest of his days.

My humiliations had been building up, and Farah became quite nasty toward the end.

“Fine, you want to suffer? Here’s some suffering for you. If I ever got pregnant with your child, I would abort it,” she said. She told me a few months later over text that she had indeed become pregnant, but she terminated it with a non-lethal dose of mugwort, like some ancient shamaness.

I was almost there. I was about to perform a ritual that even the great Anapæst Dactyl had failed to complete. I was nearing the final stretch of the last invocation, of Ba’al, the king of hell, for I had saved the most powerful for last, when Farah burst in, wielding an ancientlooking scroll and a wand.

She touched her forehead and said, “Ateh. ”

Placing a hand to her breast, she said, “Malkuth. ”

Touching her right shoulder, “Ve-Gedurah. ”

Her left shoulder, “Ve-Gedulah.”

Clasping both hands to her chest, “Le-Olahm, Amen. ”

She turned to the east and drew a pentagram in the air with the wand, “Yah-Weh. ”

Turning to the south, she signed a five-pointed star again, “Adonai. ”

She turned to the west, “Eh-Hei-Eh. ”

To the north, “Ag-La. ”

She extended her arms in the form of a cross.

“Before me, Raphael. Behind me, Gabriel. On my right hand, Michael. On my left hand, Auriel. For about me flames the Pentagram, and in the Column stands the six-rayed Star,” she said, thus performing the lesser banishing ritual of the Pentagram, and with it, the departure of the

final spirit. At the last second, she robbed me of my magickal glory. In the end, I had failed, just as Dactyl had done before me.

I left Farah and moved back in with my parents. My mother remarked that for some weeks, my eyes were black, several shades darker than my usual light brown, tinged with gold and hazel. I went to therapy, where they told me that Farah was “grooming” me for her BDSM lifestyle. I thought they might have been right. For years, I lived on edge, waiting for some portent of my antichristdom to reveal itself. But if I was the antichrist, it was a mostly dull existence. Surely the apocalypse was a slow burn.

Farah’s body was found in the trunk of a car in the warehouse district, not far from our old apartment. The car had been stolen, and she was found while the jackers were stripping it. The news report said her death may have been gang- or drug-related, but it was later revealed that her killer had been the man with whom we went on our first findom date all that time ago, the man who had made off with my “offering.” I mourned her as anyone would.

Anapæst Dactyl died a penniless heroin addict at the age of 72. His only known possessions were a dog-eared copy of The Lesser Key of Solomon, an edition that predated his introduction, and a small chest full of coins of various metals which were inscribed with strange symbols. By now, you surely know, they were the sigils of the 72, the spirits of the Goetia, the third of the host of heaven that followed Lucifer after his fall. Forget thee not Mr. Gold’s warning. The reader is advised, no, implored, no, required, to flip back to it at once. Fixate upon it. Commit it to memory. Emblazon it on your irises, until you can recall it exactly when you close your eyes, and send it off, to any poor, doomed, and damned soul who wishes to practice the darkest of arts, the embodiment of entropy and chaos itself, black magick. If you ’ ve read this far, consider yourself an initiate.

Dactyl’s last words were rumored to have been, “I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

ABRACADABRA

ABRACADABR

ABRACADAB

ABRACADA

ABRACAD

ABRACA

ABRAC

ABRA

ABR

AB A

THE MIRROR

I inspected the installation. The mirror was the exact size and shape as my mattress where I slept. It was queen sized, and reflective of the folds and warm, off-white color of the comforter below it. It was held firmly against the ceiling by a faded brass frame with intricate geometric ornamentation. I crawled onto the bed to test the stability; for some reason, I felt that any movement in the reflection would lead to movement of the mirror itself, and maybe even reflect and accelerate into my real surroundings.

I confronted the fear by being below it, and moving below it. I moved my wrists like a flamenco dancer, slow and strange and graceful. She danced with me. I looked up into my eyes, and my face started to seem different. When you stare at your own face, it loses its character and it starts to look like all sorts of people. Are those people all me? The shadows and lines seemed more prevalent than the features themselves, and shifted unpredictably into different patterns, like cubism paintings.

Later that evening, I attempted to sleep in my bed, underneath its twin. I tried not to look up, even just in orientation, so, even though I usually slept on my back, that night I lay on my side. However, I felt watched. I remembered a myth I had heard from someone long ago, who had one above their own bed: that mirrors contain ghosts, not just of people passed on, but of fears forgotten. They would take optical form and sometimes seek vengeance for their abandonment. At the time, I had laughed at this attempt to scare me, but looking at the wall and the blue light of the moon casting itself on my bed, and by contrast casting darkness everywhere else in the room behind me, my pulse increased. I lay illuminated in the blue light as still as I could, trying to ignore the memory.

Eventually, curiosity brutally turned me over, so that I saw myself. I appeared to look down on my body from above, and from my own view, I looked into my eyes for a moment, but couldn’t go on with such a gaze the way I had earlier in the daylight. The reflection lightened the room a bit, made it hard to sleep.

Our bodies and minds need sleep. People who stay awake, in a land absent of dreams, for too long, inevitably hallucinate. I have answered the call of the real world with a trade in dreams

for upwards of thirty six hours at a time. There are things we can only do when we ’ re awake, and things we can only do when we ’ re asleep. There is some crossover, including basic functions like breathing and orgasm, and more advanced cognitive performances such as mathematics and writing. Hallucinations are members of the crossover set, and are, interestingly, the media of all advanced cognitive performances during sleep, and in a way, during wakefulness as well. So I lay, minding my body--in the reflection moreso than the one I dwelled in physically, minding the experience of wakefulness in the witching hour. At a certain point it became appropriate to start the collection.

I put a pastel green satin nightgown over myself and left my third story apartment for six flights ofstairs with sidelit landings. During the day, the old wood floor usually creaked from the steps. Now was not daytime. I crept out to the street, which was sandwiched between buildings meant for this and that: other apartments, banks, stores, restaurants; all were closed. A few cars passed me, and a siren sang a few blocks over. The only people out on the street at this hour were those with nowhere else to go, plus me, and James. Many people bundled themselves into alcoves, while others stayed awake and shuffled around with layers of coats and shopping carts. James was waiting.

Most of the lamps had burnt out around the edge of the park where I entered, serried by oak trees. James slouched on a bench facing an all-purpose grassy field, near one of the few working lamps.

During the day, it was verdant and peopled. In the night, only James occupied the area. He sat completely still. I approached him, the sheen of my nightgown reflecting in his eyes, which approached the threshold of hope without quite reaching it. He sat up a little straighter, looking at me with a fearful yet uncaring expression, and for a long moment, I stood there staring at myself in his eyes. The light from the single working lamp caused my attire to cast a glow; that seemed to be what he was reacting to.

I reached one arm out and glided toward him, slowly, with my other arm relaxed at my side. My fingertips slid through his sparse, thin hair from front to back, and seeped into his head, searching for the remains of his soul, while he looked up at me, fingers limply curled on the cold bench’s planks. His scalp seemed to dig itself under my fingernails like a film of filth. His face contorted in agony with his mouth agape past its hinge. The last sound he made was exasperated, guttural, and almost silent--an utterance of pain and relief.

Done. His eyes were still open. I put his soul in my pocket and took it with me, wading through the green light of approaching dawn in the flora of the park, then pattering over asphalt and cement to my apartment. To my mirror.

I removed my gown and laid in bed clutching it while I stared up at myself. The early sun shone through the diaphanous curtains onto the pocket where my refurbished soul dwelt. I removed it from its casing, and held it in my hand, and watched the girl in the mirror hold it; and then I released it, and as all souls do, it tended upward as far as it could go, through twinkling dust motes. It went up, and it entered through the looking glass.

A PERFECT PLAY

I keep a piece of jade beside my blotter. To anyone else, it’s just another piece of desk tchotchke, but to me, it’s a memory my personal reminder that nothing is perfect in this world, especially not around here. Wyrd City, Maryland is your typical 21st-century American city, a proverbial melting pot of modern technology and ancient magic. It’s also home to elves, trolls, mermaids, and dozens of other species, including humans like me: Steve Knight, Private Eye.

A year ago, two letters sat where the jade sits now. The first was a not-so-gentle reminder from my landlord about overdue rent, which made me glad for the second. It told me in perfect copperplate handwriting that I could cure my money woes by recovering some lost property for one “Madame Chloris Silbermann née Green.” That’s how she signed it, and that’s how I knew she was ongeshtopt. Cha-ching! Her letter didn’t tell me much else, just that a car would pick me up at nine AM sharp. The clock on the wall said it was already five of, so I tapped my knuckles twice on the edge of my desk for luck and headed down to the sidewalk.

The car in question was a town car the color of old money and decorated with so much chrome you could see your reflection from last week in it. The hood ornament was a couched sphinx with her wings lifted on the breeze.

A chauffeur jumped out wearing a smaragdine jacket and matching cap that failed to cover his red hair. As he ran around the back of the car to open the suicide door to the rear compartment for me, I opened the passenger door and slid into the front seat. He ran back around again and sat down beside me.

“You’re not one for decorum, are you?” he asked cautiously.

“No,” I said bluntly. “And the last time I jumped in the backseat of a town car, it ended with a troll threatening to break my arm. ”

“Sounds like a whopper of a yarn. Care to share?”

“No,” I said again, and just as bluntly. The chauffeur looked more than a little put out, so I offered him my hand. “Steve Knight, P.I.”

“George Doyle, P.A.” He took it, and the tendons in his hand went as taut as steel bridge cables in dreadful anticipation. It was a handshake that told me George wasn’t a rich man, but he’d met plenty who were. Rich old machers can never give a proper handshake; they just crush your knuckles in a beartrap grip.

“So you ’ re a personal assistant, eh? What can you tell me about your employer, Mrs. Silbermann? I like to know a bit about my clients before I meet them, whenever I can. ”

“She’s a classy broad,” he said as the motor purred to life. “Definitely one for decorum.”

As we took the B-W south out of the city, George told me all about the Silbermanns. The missus was a wood nymph socialite, and her husband Max was an elf prefect with only slightly less money than God and just a few years younger. If I had any doubts about this, I left them at the off-ramp as we rolled into the Silbermanns’ neighborhood. It was the sort of upper class shtot where if the houses got any bigger, they’d need their own individual zip codes and the residents couldn’t see their neighbors without a telescope. The Silbermann property was no exception. Its front lawn was a huge, sprawling carpet of green which must have taken an entire regiment of groundskeepers armed with calipers and manicure scissors to keep so wellmaintained. Between the scenery and the straight dope from George, I could tell that the Silbermanns were aged like a fine wine, and they had attitudes more befitting a time when wives were treated like the fancy china you only brought out for guests on special occasions. It made me wonder what this wife wanted with a dime-a-dozen shamus like me.

George eased the car up the driveway and slipped it into the porte cochère as neatly as a crisp hundred dollar bill slides into my wallet, then he led me inside. We spent another brief eternity walking through two hundred feet of serpentine marble-paved corridors and eventually reached the drawing room. As George left to fetch Mrs. Silbermann, I took in my new surroundings. Like the hallways leading up to it, the room was a grandiose affair, not quite as big as Wyverns’ Stadium, with a vaulted ceiling somewhere in only the low stratosphere. Some of the furniture looked old but kept like-new, while other features were clearly newer but made in older styles. The sideboard, for example, had a glass-front wine fridge with silver trim built right in, and a sixty inch flatscreen television filled the

overmantle above the gas fireplace. The place had all the trappings of the nineteenth century, and all the appurtenances of modern living. A guy could get used to a shtotty life like that.

I decided to give it a try and made myself comfortable on a tufted velvet settee as I waited for George to return with the lady of the house, and I had just enough time to wonder once again what the hell I was doing in a place like this before he re-entered. A mature wood nymph followed him in a green silk cheongsam with silver brocade and matching slippers, and she was followed in turn by a sleek shorthair cat with green eyes and silver whiskers.

“Madame Silbermann, Private Investigator Knight. Mr. Knight, Madame Silbermann.”

“Glad to meet you, Mrs. Silbermann.” I stood up, then doffed my lucky fedora and bowed slightly to the emerald-skinned brunette. It was an unfamiliar greeting for me, but a firm handshake didn’t seem appropriate for the situation.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, too,” she spoke in a nearly flawless transatlantic accent, with r ’ s like melted butter and t’s like flint knives. “George, fetch refreshments for Detective Knight and I.”

Detective Knight and me, I thought, but I kept that thought to myself. I’m not generally in the habit of correcting people offering me a free drink. Besides, money talks, and a lot of money can talk however it pleases.

As George dutifully made his way to the sideboard, Mrs. Silbermann glided across the room and reclined on the overstuffed davenport across from me. No sooner was she sitting down than her cat jumped into her lap, and she stroked it with a smooth, unhurried hand. Mrs. Silbermann had a dignified aloofness to her, the sort that only came with practice, and lots of it.

“You called me here to find some lost property of yours, but your letter didn’t go into specifics. I’d like to know what I’m looking for before I agree to anything.”

“It is an instrument, but first tell me, Detective, what do you know about jade?”

“The stone?” I held up my thumb and forefinger roughly a quarter inch apart.

“And you can just call me Knight.”

“Very well. You may call me Madame.”

“Oh-kay.” I glanced at George, but he was too busy setting out glasses on a silver tray to catch my gaze, so I returned my gaze to Mrs. Silbermann. “To be honest, everything I know about jade, Madame, would fit on a postcard. Actually, it would fit on a postage stamp.”

She gave me a withering look of disapproval.

“Well, it’s… it’s green. ” The look only intensified. “Ain’t it?”

“Yes, it is green. ” She removed the tag from her cat’s collar and passed it across the coffee table to me. It was a thin slice of stone in the shape of a heart and the color of new leaves, with the name Miss Minx engraved on one side. “In addition to its obvious natural beauty and magical powers, it also possesses a particular acoustic property due to its unique geological composition. When struck, it makes a clear ringing sound, and it is for exactly this property that the material was selected for the construction of a lithophone.”

“A lithophone?”

“Have you ever heard one before?”

“I’ve never even heard of a lithophone before.”

“I’m not surprised; few people have.” She shared a haughty little chuckle with herself before continuing. “No matter. I suspected as much and had preparations made for the eventuality. George.”

“At once, Madame,” answered the man, retrieving a remote from the coffee table and replacing it with a salver of gimlets in half-empty champagne flutes. I took one and raised it to my hostess.

“L’chaim!” I cheered, then swirled the pale green drink a little just to make it look slightly taller before taking the first sip.

She returned the gesture, or at least a passing approximation, while George fiddled with the remote, and an instant later there was second Chloris Silbermann in the room, only slightly smaller than life-size on her massive TV screen. This one was seated on the stage of a concert hall somewhere, clutching a wooden mallet in each hand and sitting up ramrod straight. I’ve seen scarecrows with worse posture. Immediately in front of her was a rack of large green rocks, like a xylophone but with stone instead of wooden blocks, and it didn’t take a detective to figure out that this was the lithophone in question.

Once all of the lights had gone out, save for a single spotlight on her, and she began banging out a classical piece. Her performance was perfectly textbook, and what she’d told me about the jade was true. When you hit an ordinary rock with a hammer, it only makes a dull thud or a flat smack, but the lumps of jade arranged in front of her rang out like bright geological bells.

I glanced aside from the Chloris Silbermann on the screen to the one seated next to me, and saw that she was staring at herself with a cold dispassion. Her face only betrayed a hint of emotion once, roughly halfway through the piece when she double-struck a note.

Apart from that, her performance was flawless, but that did nothing to raise the corners of her thin mouth. After the video had finished, I took a stab at the task myself.

“I’m not the world’s biggest fan of classic rock, but your performance was really quite striking.” She didn’t laugh at my joke, but that didn’t surprise me.

“I’ll thank you to take this matter seriously, Detective,” she said in clipped tones.

“I’m always serious, Madame. I just look funny.” Again, no laugh.

“You had better, because that lithophone is invaluable.” She switched from glaring at me to gazing at the instrument on the screen with an almost wistful expression. “Jade is a precious stone which only forms under highly specific geological circumstances, and as such, it is located in a mere handful of locations scattered throughout the world. Wherever the rare stone is found, however, it is appropriately revered by the local population: the Maya of Mesoamerica, the Maori of Polynesia, the Han Dynasty of Ancient China.

My instrument consists of forty-four matched pieces of it: nephrite jade imported from the distant orient, each one carefully cut and polished to produce a specific note, and all in perfect tune. It is wholly unique and absolutely irreplaceable, and thus it is commensurately priceless.”

“I can see why you want it back,” I said, nodding. “But how did you lose it in the first place?”

“I did not lose it,” she bristled. “Not per se. I put it up as collateral with a pawnbroker not quite a month ago, and it has since been resold.”

“Hold up, you took your priceless lithophone to a hock shop?” I nearly choked on my half of a gimlet. “Why?”

“I needed the money. ” She didn’t use much of her voice, but it wasn’t much of an answer.

I just looked at her, finished my drink, and took another look around at our palatial surroundings, and she had no trouble following my gaze.

“I know what you must be thinking, but the matter was somewhat complicated by my husband.”

With an easy wave of her wrist, she directed my attention to an oil portrait hanging on the wall behind me. Its subject was a tall, severe-looking man with an iron jaw and grey hair that lay flattened against his head like coils of silver wire. Overall, he seemed the sort of mossback who looked like he was never young.

“Let me guess: he didn’t want to give you an advance on your allowance.”

“He might have, had he known,” she replied with a slight sneer. “He has sole access to our accounts, but his job took him to the Fae Realm on the first of last month. Until his return on the fifteenth, he shall be quite incommunicado. That means unreachable.”

“I’m bakant with the term,” I told her, then rose and approached the sideboard to fix my own drink this time. I wasn’t in the mood for another fractional cocktail.

I poured the gin and didn’t stop until the meniscus met the silver band on the rim. “Let’s go back to the part where you needed the money in cash. Any reputable business would be happy to extend a line of credit to a woman of your standing, and that leaves me with one conclusion.”

Mrs. Silbermann said nothing. Her only response was a silent stare of contempt. “So I’m right then. You’re tangled up in something… shande. Blackmail?”

She made a face like it pained her to admit I was right, but she nodded. It was a tiny, almost imperceptible kind of nod. Another nod dismissed George, and once he had disappeared from the room, I asked:

“What with?”

More silence.

“I didn’t come here to play twenty questions with a mute, Madame, so spill it. What were you being blackmailed with?”

Rather than answer my question directly, she glanced back up at the painting of her husband, so I did too. He didn’t look any friendlier on a second viewing, and this time I paid more attention to the distinctive scar on his left cheek which ran from just below the corner of his mouth back to his earlobe. In German, they call it der Schmiss. There’s no word for it in English. I’ve seen people try to translate it as the strike, the smite, or the smear. Whatever you call it, it was a dueling scar, the masculine version of a beauty mark: a little imperfection to add some asymmetry to the face and build mystique. It made me think again about his title: prefect almost perfect, but not quite. At the turn of the last century, the Schmiss was all the rage in the Germanic kingdoms, but these days it just made him look like a pantomime villain.

“You were being blackmailed with something about your husband?” I asked, eyeing her closely. “Or your blackmailer was threatening to tell your husband? An affair?”

“The matter of that ‘shande’ business has already been resolved, and as I am hiring you only to recover my lithophone, the details of the blackmail are none of your concern. ”

“The hell they aren’t!”

I slammed my palm down on the sideboard for emphasis. One of its legs must have been a bit shorter than the others, because the force made the whole thing lurch and it spilled my drink across the marble floor in a thousand glittering pieces. I bit my lower lip, Mrs. Silbermann jumped in her seat, and Miss Minx leapt out of her lap, puffed up like a bottle brush. She had to prance off into a corner to lick herself back to dignity. Cats are grace and composure personified, but more than that, they’re arrogant. They’re too proud to let us think that they’re anything short of perfect.

“I’m not one to hold a person ’ s past mistakes against them,” I said, pointing a finger at her and curling the other three back at myself. “The gods know I’ve got enough of my own to buttress a church, but the way I see it, you want me to find something you sold to cover up some past transgression. I may not be a cop anymore, but I’m not on the other side of the law just yet, either. There are lots of shande things I don’t want to get tangled up in, so if you won’t say what you were being blackmailed with, you’ll have to find yourself another private eye. Fershteyn?”

Mrs. Silbermann practically writhed in her seat as her desperation battled against her dignity, but finally she coughed up an answer. “It is a tintype, a photograph from the 1860s, of me posed in a… a prurient manner. ”

Before I could say anything clever, George reappeared with a dustpan, having emerged from behind a door which looked more like a pool table someone had mistakenly hung on the wall. I began to wonder what else might occur behind the green door as he swept up the broken glass, but I turned my attention back to Mrs. Silbermann.

“Oh, I only ever agreed to that photoshoot because I needed the money this was decades before I met my husband but if it ever got out, I’d never again be able to show my face at the Banneker Historical Society!”

I was beginning to sense a trend to her stories. Did I believe her though? I’ve spent my entire career combing truths from anecdotes, and when I looked into her dark green eyes, I didn’t see a lie.

“Alright, Madame, it’s comforting to hear that the dirt your blackmailer had on you was merely embarrassing and not incriminating, but if that’s true, why did you go to the pawn shop and not the police station?”

“A woman of my social standing does not involve the police, public servants, in her private affairs. ” The corners of her mouth curled down at the very thought. “It isn’t proper. ”

I wanted to point out that it also wasn’t proper for a woman of her standing to pawn her valuables and purchase dirty pictures of herself, but I kept that remark behind my teeth.

“You said the pawnshop has already resold the lithophone. Those places don’t sell things people pawn unless the person fails to pay back the loan.”

“I would hope that you understand that I am not the kind of person who often needs to ‘ pawn ’ items.” Her frown stayed pinned as it was.

“Ah, I see. ” I nodded and grinned knowingly. “You didn’t realize there was a difference and sold it by mistake.”

She didn’t say anything in response to this, but she didn’t have to. She just cleared her throat and avoided eye contact for a moment. She was more comfortable with that than admitting a mistake.

“Well, Madame, if you sold your lithophone to a pawn shop and they sold it to its new owner, there’s not much I can do to get it back for you, legally speaking.”

“Yes, legally speaking,” she repeated. “But if you could at least find out who has it now, I am prepared to offer a not inconsiderable sum for its return.”

It’s funny, the ways fancy folk say ‘ every man has his price.’

“How much are we talking? What’d you get for it?”

She told me, and my eyebrows made a break for my hairline. It took three big gulps of gin just to coax them back down.

“If you just want it found, there’s always scrying magic. That’d be the simplest way, but divination is outside my wheelhouse.”

“Do you think I haven’t tried that already!?” she snapped. “Whoever is currently in possession of my lithophone must have it shielded against magic somehow.”

“Alright, no need to get so verklempt. I have other, non-magical ways of finding things out, too.” I rubbed my thumb and forefinger together, but Mrs. Silbermann chose to ignore the hint.

“You’ll take my case then?”

“Maybe, once I have all the details.” I swirled my glass and let her wait for a moment. “Start with where you sold it.”

“I can’t tell you that.” She drew her mouth into a thin, straight line. “Once I learned that they had sold my lithophone, I threw away the receipt.”

I placed my glass down on the edge of the sideboard so that I could rub my eyes with both hands. Oy gevalt. “You want me to do a job for you, but you ’ re not making it easy, ” I muttered into my cupped palms. Then I placed them on the edge of the sideboard and gripped it tightly. “What about copies?”

“No, I didn’t make a copy of the receipt.”

“But what if your blackmailer made copies of the photograph? Where is the negative?”

“Copies would be quite impossible,” she told me, her haughty tone returning in an instant. “Every tintype is unique, made in situ without negatives.”

“Well, I guess that’s something.” I nodded slowly and nibbled at her gin some more as I organized my thoughts. “That is quite something.”

“I judge by your countenance, Detective, that you have some interest in the matter. Does that mean you will take my case?”

I refreshed my drink and settled back into the overstuffed chair while I thought things over. On its face, the case seemed perfectly straightforward: a woman was being blackmailed, and temporarily cut off from her provider, she hocked a valuable possession for hush money. Now she wanted it back. The more I thought about it though, the more questions began to arise. The photo must have existed for more than a century by this point, so why did the blackmailer wait to wet their beak until Mr. Silbermann was out of town? The obvious answer was that the blackmailer wanted Mrs. Silbermann separated from her money to force her to pawn something, but there was no guarantee it’d be her lithophone. It could have just as easily been some old jewelry. Of course, it could have all been coincidence; I believe in coincidence, but I don’t put much faith in it. Assuming that it wasn’t coincidence though, the details just didn’t add up. That meant someone knew something I didn’t, and I wanted to know what it was.

“Yeah, I’ll take it.”

Mrs. Silbermann looked about as elated as a woman of her kind will allow herself to appear.

I spent the rest of that morning and most of the afternoon in my office condensing the phonebook down to a notepad. It was slow drudgery, but it was the best plan I had. Unless Mrs. Silbermann’s pawnbroker was looking to eat a substantial loss, he must have sold the lithophone for more than he paid for it. I guessed at least a thirty percent mark-up, and while jade is a precious stone, it’s not that precious. Whoever had it now didn’t buy it as raw material; they must have been aware of its true value as a musical instrument, so I reasoned that I should start my search by looking for someone who deals in rare and exotic instruments. By half past three, the top page of my notepad was filled with names. It was time to pick up the phone.

I looked at the first name on my list, dialed the number, and after a few rings, the person at the other end picked up.

“Hello, is this Carmichael’s Antiques?” I asked, knowing full-well that it was. “Marvelous. I represent a very esteemed collector of objet d’art looking to make a new acquisition.”

I twiddled with my pen as I listened to Carmichael’s reply.

“Oh, my name, since you ask, and please forgive me for not properly introducing myself sooner, is Rosenberg, and my client is a very wealthy individual, one who values their privacy.” I took my time delivering the first half of that response to buy myself a few more moments to invent the end of it. In our discussion of my rates, Mrs. Silbermann had specifically asked me to leave her name out of conversation. She couldn’t bear the thought of further damage to her reputation. “They want a musical instrument, to be specific, and ideally the piece would be ‘rustic yet beautiful,’ something which captures the primal charms of nature.”

I wiped my brow, then picked up my pen from where I’d dropped it and twiddled with it some more.

“No, nothing like that? Oh, it’s quite alright. Sorry to waste your time. Thanks, you too.” I set the phone back on its cradle and struck the first name from the top of the page.

I gave the same speech a dozen more times, getting it smoother with practice, but each time I got the same result. I was halfway down the page before I got a different answer.

This time, I spoke with a man by the name of Fats Dollar who owned a music shop on Calico Street, and he told me that he’d acquired a very fine new piece made entirely of jade just under a month ago. It was a good thing he couldn’t see me through the phone lines, because I silently pumped my fist in the air, then told him in the most composed voice I could manage that I’d be by that afternoon to check it out. After we exchanged our goodbyes, I returned the phone to its cradle and went back to punching the sky.

Forty minutes later, I was standing on the patchwork sidewalk of Calico Street, looking at the facade of a music shop. The plate glass window wasn’t much wider than the door, and the name flaking off of it in bold red letters was Dollar Notes. How Clever.

The bell hanging from the lintel jangled tunelessly as I walked in and immediately got the sense that I was interrupting something. Of the other people in the store, one was the owner, or so I presumed because he was on the far side of the counter. He was a halfling, but there was enough of him for a five-eighths or even a three-quarterling. He was baby fat, all grown up. The other man was standing on my side of the counter and wearing two thirds of a three

piece suit and a matching bowler hat. Vertical stripes are supposed to make a person look taller and thinner, but the wire-thin pinstripes on his vest just made him look wider by comparison. His sleeves were cuffed at the elbow, showing off a pair of forearms like diesel pistons. I guessed he was somewhere between three and five quarters orc, but fractions were never my strong suit. He was also in the middle of trying to twist off the halfling’s ear. I didn’t know the orc from Adam, nor what business he might have had with Fats, but the phrase ‘lawabiding citizen’ didn’t exactly spring to mind, either.

“The Boss is tired of waiting, Fats,” he growled into the ear that wasn’t buried in his palm. “He wants what he’s owed.”

“And people in Hell want ice water,” I called from the door as I let it slam behind me with another jangle.

The orc turned his head slowly and leered at me, then released Fats’ ear. The halfling fell to the floor behind the counter, and I took the opportunity to open my coat and give the orc a quick peek at the revolver in my concealed shoulder holster.

“I’m here to have a conversation with that man, intact and in private, so take a hike.”

He gave me a look like he was ready to twist my head off next, but he didn’t give me any static. He just turned and walked out of the store, but not without shoulder-checking me on his way past.

Once another tuneless jangle announced that the big guy had left, the little guy poked his head up from behind the counter.

“Good afternoon. Welcome to Dollar Notes,” he said, smoothing his curly black hair back down as much as it would tolerate, which wasn’t much.

“I’m guessing you ’ re Fats Dollar,” I said as I approached the counter.

“Good guess. ” He nodded. “I’m hoping you ’ re Mr. Rosenberg.”

“Who else would I be?” In all honesty, I’ve always been better at spotting lies than telling them.

That’s why I use my mother’s maiden name as a pseudonym, and why I talk around the truth when I can, rather than against it.

“I don’t know who you are. I know Mr. Rosenberg works for rich folk, but you sure don’t talk like it.” He reached out to shake my hand, and I squeezed like I was trying to break a bone. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Rosenberg. How can I help you?”

“I’m sure it’s none of my business, but I do wonder why you didn’t tell that putz where to stick it. Does he pack a rod?”

“Maybe, maybe not, but I’ve got fingers to worry about.”

“Oh, does Fingers pack a rod?”

His eyes met mine, then rolled around in their sockets for a bit.

“Fingers isn’t the criminal alias of some henchman. I’m talking about these fingers.”

He held out his own digits like a man presenting his paramour with a heart-shaped box of boutique chocolates. It would be cliched to say that he had the hands of a concert pianist. It would also be wrong. He had the hands of a jazz pianist, at best. His fingers were just as short and fat as the rest of him, ten stubby little breakfast sausages.

“If I want to keep them all intact,” he said, “I’ve got to play nice, because ‘that putz’ is Nic ‘Big Money’ Monteverde, a capo with the Diamond Syndicate.”

“What does the Diamond Syndicate want with you?”

Fats opened his mouth, then closed it again. Then he asked me, “have you ever heard of a lithophone?”

“Maybe once, in passing,” I answered, unsure if this question was in answer to my own.

“Then it might be easier for me to show you. ” He waggled a pudgy brown finger at me, bidding me to follow as he led me behind the counter and through his tiny office to the back room.

When he flipped the lightswitch, a line of fluorescent tubes fluttered to life, and I got my first good look at the thing in person.

Forty-four pieces of perfectly cut jade lay neatly ordered by size on a teak rack, with a matching pair of wooden mallets dangling from their holder. I’d say it was beautiful, but that would make me a liar. As far as I could tell, the priceless treasure was nothing more than a few dozen green rocks and some custom furniture, but to each his own, I suppose.

“She’s an absolute beauty, ain’t she?” asked Fats, not much looking for an answer.

“You must be proud to own her,” I said, trying to be diplomatic.

“It goes beyond proud,” he beamed. “I got bragging rights.”

“Oh, nu?”

“How many people do you know who can say they’ve played an instrument like this?” He ran his small brown hands lovingly over the polished jade.

“I’m guessing you have.”

“If I may?” He lifted up the mallets and didn’t need my permission to continue.

His performance was nothing like Silbermann’s. It was full of mistakes, plenty of blue notes and double hits, but he made it work. He turned each mistake into its own little musical flourish, steering the performance wherever the music took him. There was no structure to it, no formula against which it could be measured to its detriment. It was pure, unadulterated jazz.

“That was a beautiful piece,” I said once he’d finished. “On a beautiful piece. What’ll it take to part you from it?”

He told me, but this time my eyebrows stayed right where they were, because I’d already calculated the answer.

“It’s a lot, I know, but I can’t go much lower,” he said almost sheepishly. “Not if I want to pay back my creditors. This may surprise you, but there’s not a whole lot of dough in the secondhand piano business. Still, when I got an anonymous tip that the beauty was up for sale, I had to make her mine, no matter the cost.”

“As they say, you get what you pay for, and I can’t question the piece’s quality.” I stroked my chin to better give the impression that I had to consider the offer. “I’m nearly certain that my employer will find the price agreeable, but all the same, I do need to run it by them first. Just don’t sell it before you hear back from me; I’m sure you must already have a dozen offers on the table.”

We shared a grim little chuckle, and Fats began leading me back to the front room. I froze in my tracks though when I saw a picture taped to the wall of his office. It was a photocopy of an old black-and-white picture. Due to its age and the method by which it was copied, the subject was a bit blurry, but I could still tell that it was a nymph. She was reclining on an overstuffed chaise lounge, wearing a necklace of polished jet, matching earrings, and nothing else but an expression that was somehow both wanton and vacuous. Her left index finger was curled into the corner of her open mouth; the fingers of her right hand were curled elsewhere.

I reached up and closed my jaw with my hand. Then I stroked it thoughtfully, for real this time, because the woman in the picture was Chloris Green, or at least she could have been, a hundred and thirty years ago. Any doubts I might have had were erased from my mind, however, when I saw the name written at the bottom of the page. It was a stage name, a pseudonym to preserve the model’s anonymity, but I recognized it all the same: Miss Minx.

Fats stopped and turned around to look at me, then followed my gaze.

“You like her? She’s my angel of providence.” He looked at the picture with smitten eyes. “I found the original photo in the bottom of an old box of sheet music and I thought I recognized the model, but I couldn’t put a name with the face until I picked up the local paper a week later. Bam, right there on the front page: the Silbermanns at the opening of a new performing arts center.”

“And you saw the perfect opportunity for a little exploitation. ” I finished his sentence for him, but he just stared back up at me with big brown eyes full of confusion.

I was expecting more of an argument, but I didn’t get much lip from Lipids.

“What? I was planning on putting the photo up at a public art auction, but I decided to reach out to Silbermann and give her first dibs on it as the model. Right of first refusal, you know?”

He continued to stare at me, and I stared back at him. I’m pretty good at finding the lies in every story, but I didn’t see any in Fats’ big brown eyes. The man meant every word he said.

“She bought it, too, and I used that money to open this store.”

“Oh, so this business is fairly new then?” I asked. Its appearance had me fooled.

“No, not at all. I first set up shop, oh, nearly thirty years ago at this point.”

“I see, ” I lied. “Happy anniversary.”

In a few more words, I thanked Fats for his time, told him I’d reach out again with an answer within a day, and departed with another handshake that left him massaging his metacarpals back into place. As we left the office, I saw Fats kiss his fingers and touch them to the photo as he passed, like a pornographic mezuzah.

It felt like I had barely blinked before I was back in my office again, but this time I had my friends Gin and Tonic to keep me company as I tried to make sense of the situation. It seemed like every time that I learned more about it, it only raised more questions. I looked for answers in the bottom of my glass and didn’t find any. It was quite a mystery that Mrs. Silbermann presented and another mystery that she was. And then there was Fats Dollar: a jazz musician turned shopkeep and apparently a blackmailer with a heart of gold. The details were piling up on top of each other, but they weren’t fitting together. How did a wellintentioned extortionist end up in hot water with thugs after squeezing a rich woman who was somehow short on cash? Then, like a bolt from the blue, I realized something: The whole screwy affair made more sense if I looked at it backward. What if Fats wasn’t the mastermind, but the victim? I decided to test out a theory with a phone call to Mrs. Silbermann.

“Hello? Oh, hey George. It’s Knight. Yeah, if you would, thanks.”

I shuffled my notes around on the blotter as I waited for Mrs. Silbermann’s voice from the other end.

“Hello, Mr. Knight. I hope this call brings good news. ”

“It does. I found the lithophone, and it’s for sale in a music shop on Calico Street. The bad news is that the asking price is about seventy percent more than what you sold it for.”

“I am prepared to offer you half that sum for the return of my lithophone,” she told me.

“There may have been some wiggle room in the offer, but I can already assure you that the current owner won’t go down to fifty percent.”

“I am offering you, Mr. Knight, that money to re-acquire the lithophone for me. So long as you are able to return it to my possession, I will not ask you how it was acquired.”

Just like that, I realized what she was getting at. It’s funny, the ways fancy folk have to say that every man has his price, but it’s less funny when I’m that man. I was starting to remember why I shy away from the ongeshtopt cases: being rich wrongly teaches people that they can have whatever they want, even complete perfection, but poor schmucks like Fats and me learn to get by with “good enough.”

“I’m sure you can find a good use for such a handsome sum, ” she purred across the phone lines. I didn’t want to admit it, but she was right. The Silbermanns had what my mother would refer to as “feh to you money, ” but strong language was never my mother’s strong suit. Turning down a handsome paycheck wasn’t mine.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Scarcely were these words out of my mouth before an abrupt dial tone told me that she’d just hung up on me.

“I’ll talk to you later,” I told the deaf receiver, then swiveled in my chair and stared out the window.

By now, the red dot of the sun was sitting lazily on the horizon like the period at the end of a sentence concluding a very strange day. I tried to make some sense of it as I drank in the scenery with a G&T chaser. It was good, but my booze wasn’t half as nice as Mrs. Silbermann’s. She drank the gin of a woman who was wealthy and well-bred, but I was just your run-of-themill half-breed: half-poor and half-cheap.

The woman had hired me to find her lithophone, but I was beginning to suspect that she already knew Fats Dollar had it, and he’d borrowed money from the Diamond Syndicate to buy it. Now he owed an awful lot of money to a lot of awful people, and Mrs. Silbermann was offering me a king’s ransom to steal it back for her. That kind of money is hard to say no to. Very hard.

I turned around and looked back at my desk. It was an old piece with the usual scratches and dents that go with that, and a few more bullet holes than is usual, too. It suited the room. The walls could have used a fresh coat of paint, and the rug spread over the splintery floorboards wasn’t new a decade ago. Even the filing cabinets had seen better days. Overall, my office was nothing like Mrs. Silbermann’s drawing room, and the more I thought about that fact, the more I thought that a guy could get used to a more comfortable life. I had plans that evening with my two liquid friends, but I decided to cancel them. There was more work to be done on Calico Street.

The following morning, I drank my breakfast black with extra sugar, then drove directly to the Silbermann estate. George met me at the door to let me in, but I told him I knew the way to the drawing room from there. He was just another working stiff like me and Fats, and he didn’t deserve to be dragged into our mess.

“Good morning, Madame. I trust your night was more restful than mine?” I greeted her as I walked into that marble chamber for a second and final time. She was right on the couch where I’d left her, stroking her cat like a proper supervillain.

“And I trust that you have carried out your task?”

I nodded.

“Well, where is it?”

“Here.” I pulled a lump of jade out of my pocket and presented it to her. She didn’t look impressed.

“Is that meant to be a joke? I have already told you to take this employment seriously.”

“And I’ve already told you I take everything seriously, more seriously than you expected me to.” I drifted over to the sideboard, set down the lump of jade, and placed three glasses next to it. “As a matter of fact, it was quite an intriguing little riddle you presented me with: simple enough on its face, but so many details were just subtly… shande. ”

“Mr. Knight, I’m sure I haven’t a clue what you ’ re talking about, but my time is valuable. I would thank you to reach a conclusion to your maundering with greater alacrity.”

“The rest of the lithophone, Madame, is currently in the custody of a halfling music store owner named Fats Dollar,” I spoke as I finished pouring the gin, then turned and stared at her. “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

“What?” The ‘ a ’ was as flat as a pancake, but she hit that ‘t’ so hard it knocked Miss Minx clear off her lap.

“Looking backwards, it’s obvious you knew who had it the whole time. You just wanted to hire me to steal it back for you. You implied as much yesterday morning, and then you implied it again far less subtly last night.” I sipped my gimlet with one hand and patted the jade with the other. “So I did, at least in part. The front of his store was buttoned up tight, but I could’ve picked the lock on the back door with a bendy straw. Getting back out was the hard part. All that jade weighs a solid ton so I couldn’t just slip it out in my jacket pocket. Of course, he obviously wants to sell the lithophone as a complete instrument, and he can’t do that if it’s missing a piece.”

“I see. ” She nodded slowly. “This is just a measure to ensure that he does not sell it before you can re-acquire the rest of it for me. ”

“No, it’s more than that. It’s bait.”

Mrs. Silbermann stared at me blankly until I continued.

“When I pinched it, I left behind my business card with a note on the back saying where I was taking the missing piece. I expect someone will be stopping by any moment now to collect.”

“Fats Dollar is coming here?” She was so aghast that I could just about hear her r ’ s poking out from behind her accent, but they weren’t nearly as loud as the heavy footsteps which were just that moment echoing up the marble hallway.

“That doesn’t sound like Fats to me, ” I told her.

Mrs. Silbermann bit her dark green lower lip and I set my glass down and we both turned to see who would walk through the door. It was Big Money Monteverde, with a gun in his hand. It was a shiny, nickel-plated forty-four with a five inch barrel, but in his enormous mitt it looked like a toy. So he did pack a rod.

“Ah, if it isn’t the Big Green Monster himself,” I remarked.

“Green Mountain,” he corrected me.

I rolled my eyes, but not as well as Fats Dollar could.

“Pass over the gat, Shamus.”

I drew my own revolver from its holster, slowly, and placed it in his outstretched hand. It practically disappeared inside his fist, which he then slammed into the side of my head. That diesel piston fist of his sent my head spinning at 500 RPM, or maybe it was the room spinning. I brought it to a halt by dropping my chin on the floor like an anchor. The polished marble felt cool and smooth on my neck, a whole lot smoother than the sole of Big Money’s big boot.

“Stay out of Syndicate business if you know what’s good for ya, ” he growled, then lifted his foot off my neck and waited for me to choke out some response. To be honest, I was struggling to recall my own name in the wake of that punch; what was or wasn’t good for me would have to wait its turn. Then I remembered the lithophone, and why I’d invited him there in the first place.

“The jade is over there on the sideboard, next to some gimlets,” I said, sitting up and rubbing my throat. “Won’t you join us for a drink though? I think you’ll find it well worth your time.”

With slow, heavy steps, Big Money crossed the room to where I had indicated, then stood there in a silence for a moment staring at the green rock and the green drinks, like he was deciding which one to take first. He went with neither. More heavy steps eventually echoed off the distant ceiling as he made his way to the fireplace next, and Mrs. Silbermann and I followed his every motion with anxious eyes. He pulled a cigar out of his vest pocket. It was tapered at both ends and dented a little in the middle where he’d bent over to stand on my neck an imperfect perfecto.

After building up a cherry to his satisfaction on the fireplace’s pilot light, he strode back to the center of the room and settled into a clawfoot morris chair, resting the brace of wheelguns in his lap. Then Miss Minx jumped on top of it and made herself comfortable. He wouldn’t be able to shoot me until she decided to move, so I had at least a few minutes to blow the gaff.

I returned to addressing Mrs. Silbermann. “Where were we? Oh, yes, Fats Dollar. When you not-so-subtly tried to hire me to steal the lithophone back for you, I remembered something he told me in passing, even though I didn’t pay it much attention at the time.” “Alacrity, Detective,” she repeated through clenched teeth.

“Fats told me that he learned the lithophone was up for sale from an anonymous tipster. This means that someone wanted him to buy that lithophone, someone who he would otherwise be able to recognize: you, Madame. Because he was also your blackmailer, but of course you already knew that.”

“Are you implying that I sold my lithophone, then told Fats where to buy it, just so that I would have the money he was blackmailing me for in the first place?” She let out a

contemptuous little snort. “Why wouldn’t I just trade the lithophone directly to him for the tintype?”

“I’m glad you asked. The short answer is because you already had the photo when you sold the lithophone. True, you did buy back that risqué tintype to preserve your reputation, as you said, but you didn’t sell your lithophone to do it, because the blackmail happened thirty years ago. Everything which happened in the past two months has simply been your attempt at revenge. ”

“Oh that’s rich!” She crossed her arms and rolled her eyes, but I could tell it was only because she didn’t want to look me in my own. She didn’t want to admit I was right.

“So is your husband,” I replied. “Unlike Miss Chloris Green. Or should I say Miss Minx?”

In the blink of an eye, her complexion went from a rich, verdant green to a pale, sickly shade. She managed to keep her jaw from flapping open, but her hands clenched into little anxious balls in her lap.

“You’ve got a very pretty face, but you never had a penny to your name. That’s why you posed for that photo, and it’s why you married a rich man. When the former came back to threaten the latter, something had to be done about it. Now, I don’t know if you convinced your husband that any damage to your reputation would reflect poorly on him too, or if you just put on your bedroom eyes and said ‘pretty please,’ but either way you got the money you needed from him there and then.”

“So why did she pawn the lithophone?” asked Big Money, ashing his cigar on the marble floor with one hand as he continued stroking Miss Minx with the other.

“Simple: she wanted to ruin Fats Dollar,” I spoke. “His business, his life, everything about him, and she realized she had a golden opportunity when her husband left for the Otherworld at the start of last month.”

Mrs. Silbermann glared at me with poisonous green eyes and opened her mouth to say something indignant, but I held it at bay with a raised palm and continued. I was in too deep to be talked out now.

“And you didn’t pawn it. You didn’t even intend to. You knowingly sold it, and you only used the pawn shop as a middleman because if you sold it to Fats directly, you’d be the first person he pointed the finger at after it was stolen. Once it was on the market, you gave Fats an anonymous phone call to make sure he didn’t miss it, knowing full well that he couldn’t afford what he couldn’t resist. You also must have surely realized that no reputable institution would lend that kind of money to a struggling music store owner, and he’d be forced to borrow it from someone the likes of Mr. Monteverde.” I nodded at Big Money, and he nodded back, bobbing his cigar up and down.

“Then you just had to hire a cash-strapped shamus ” I jerked my thumb at myself this time. “ to ‘find’ it for you, then throw crocodile tears and dollar signs at him until he decided to try moonlighting as a common yegg. I’ll even admit I was tempted for a moment, but I learned to get by on ‘good enough’ a long time ago. ”

“Well bully for you, ” she sneered, “but you still haven’t explained how any of this would ruin Fats.”

“Isn’t it obvious by now? Without the lithophone, Fats would have no way of paying back his creditors, which would doubtless lead to him getting rubbed out, and the business he built with your money all those years ago would collapse. It was quite the coup de maître that means master stroke or perhaps I should say maîtresse. The hardened criminals would do the dirty work for you, and the only person who would know even half of what happened would be your hired dick, who’d be in no hurry to confess to a burglary, especially one that would tie him to a murder. It was a perfect play, or near perfect in actuality. It just relied on me not putting together any more of the picture than you were paying me to.” I continued to stare her down, but I felt one corner of my mouth curl up involuntarily. “Very clever, but no one bats a thousand.”

“I’m glad you liked it,” she said with so much acid in her voice.

“On the contrary, I don’t care a lick for your cunning stunt.” I paused and took a drink. I wanted to give my words a moment to sink in, and I also wanted to enjoy my gimlet. I had a hunch that I wouldn’t get another chance to drink her very fine gin any time soon.

“You’re a player, Madame, and a cunning one at that. You played your husband and you played Fats like you play your lithophone, and you tried to play me, but I don’t play around with cunning women. It’s a mug ’ s game. ”

“In that case, Mr. Knight, you are more than welcome to leave. I believe you know the way to the door.”

“That I do, but our business isn’t concluded just yet. If you want to keep this affair hushed up, Madame, cut our mountainous acquaintance over there a check.” I re-aimed my gaze at the orc pinned under her cat. “I’ll even let you name your price, Mont Capitaine, but leave Fats Dollar alone from here on out.”

He bobbed his cigar at me again, then told Mrs. Silbermann what the lithophone and his silence on the matter would cost. Her eyebrows didn’t move either, at least not much. She just scratched furiously at a check with a fountain pen, and I got the sense that if any sort of lesson was going to be gained from the experience, now was the time to find it.

“Someone once told me that Perfect is the enemy of Good. I’ve got my own opinions on that matter, as I’m sure you do too, but if you’d left well enough alone, you could have avoided all of this trouble and kept what you had. And you had so much, Madame. You had the cuffs on a rich man and a comfortable life in a more-than-comfortable house, and a worthy hobby with a priceless instrument, and you had all known evidence of your past indiscretions safety under lock and key. For most people, that’d be good enough, but ‘good enough’ isn’t good enough for you, is it? You’ve got to have got to be perfect.” I went back to the sideboard and refreshed my drink. “Of course, there’s nothing wrong with trying to improve yourself, getting closer to perfect, but you ’ ve also got to realize that true perfection is an unattainable goal. Now, I’m guessing you don’t leave this ivory tower much, but just past the front door is the Real World, where no one has a perfect record.” I thrust my forefinger at the doors for emphasis. I was off by about thirty degrees, but it didn’t matter. “And furthermore, it’s the twenty-first century out there. I can’t speak for your history-loving society friends, but most people with modern attitudes don’t give a damn about the past, especially yours. The carnal peccadilloes of your salad days stopped being buzzworthy a century ago. If you ask me ”

“Enough!” she shrieked and tore the check from the book with such vigor it sent Miss Minx bolting from Big Money’s lap, where she’d been happily purring into cold steel.

“Very well. My piece, if you’d be so kind,” I said to him.

With one final nod, Big Money rose to his feet, then took his check from Mrs. Silbermann and returned my gun to me. He passed it over without emotion or ceremony, simply shoving it against my chest. Then he shoulder-checked me once more on his way past.

Now, I’m no schlemiel, but I’m no immovable object either, and an orc as big as Big Money is about as close to an unstoppable force as they come. That’s why the shove sent me stumbling into the sideboard. I caught myself, but the rear leg was still just a little too short. The entire thing lurched abruptly down to one side, launching everything that was currently resting on top of it. The piece of jade fell to the floor and struck the marble with a perfect high A. Or at least it would have been a high A, had a flake no bigger than half of one of my business cards chipped off.

Mrs. Silbermann’s jaw hit her chest, and for a moment she just stared like an angel had dropped dead in front of her. I stared at the pieces too as the enormity of what had just happened took its sweet time sinking in, then I stooped to one knee and picked up the smaller piece, like I could do anything with it.

“Oh, shit. Look, I ”

“Get out.” Her voice was little more than a hoarse croak.

“What?”

“You heard me. Gedoudda here, now!” she barked at me. Her r ’ s rolled out hard and heavy like a growling tiger.

I saw nothing to gain in hanging around arguing, so I cut my losses and hit the bricks, or in this case, the marble. It wasn’t until I reached my car and moved to fish the keys out of my pocket that I realized I was still holding the broken-off flake of jade.

It didn’t look like much in my old, calloused palm, just a small piece of green rock. I decided to keep it though, for personal reasons. After all, I’d started the case searching for jade, and sure enough by the end of it I was a little more jaded. I’d been punched, pushed around, and played for a schmuck, and I saw firsthand how the uncompromising pursuit of perfection led to failure and ruin. The piece would go well on my desk as a nice little reminder that nothing in this world is faultless; anyone who says “I’m perfect” is correct, save for one apostrophe Imperfect.

BETWEEN WORLDS

Sometimes riding the Train Between Worlds in the morning, I come upon someone I used to know. When I say ‘used to know’ it does not mean that I am dead, or they are dead, or that either of us are different people. I just mean that I knew them before I began my work at the Archive, and before they began whatever journey they were currently on.

On the day I ran into George the car was mostly empty. A few Leguins on their way to start the morning harvest; Aslop teenagers stumbling home from a decades-long rave. I found a nice seat at the end of the car, right next to a window where I could daydream.

The Passageway was beautiful in the morning. The particular route we took included planets whose Time-Scales were for the most part similar; though they revolved around their Suns at different rates, you could sometimes see day-breaks across the expanse of planets.

It was startling: when I first started making the commute, I was terrified by the sight of so many planets seeming to burst into flame. Before sunrise each galaxy was a nebulous violet wisp, like smoke plumes from a cigarette. They spiraled around without much direction, the distant planets flickering through the haze. Then a small ball of light steadily grew from the center of the vortex. If you glanced at it, you would have thought it was another planet at first, but soon the light grew larger until it consumed everything in its orbit.

The other beings in the train car laughed that first morning as I cowered in fear against the door, grasping for the emergency break. Humans, as I was later told, have difficulty adjusting to interplanetary travel. Not because other species were physiologically superior (though I suppose most are) but because we haven’t evolved mentally.

But by the time I ran into George, I had gotten to the point where I welcomed the sight. On that particular day the sunrise was especially bright. The car, which had been bathed in inky shadow moments before, suddenly became white-washed.

As I shielded my eyes from the glare, I heard footsteps, then felt someone looming over me. Possibly a Helian, I thought; their tribes were known to be especially aggressive to human beings.

I slipped a hand into my pocket, ready for trouble.

“Easy, partner.” I looked up to find a handsome, burly young man of about thirty standing over me. He had the same thick black hair as when we were teens, styled so that a boy-bandish cowlick swooped across his brow. His eyes twinkled in the settling light, though that may have just been the reflection from his horn-rimmed glasses. Dressed in the forest-green dungarees of the Space Technicians Coalition (STC for short), George cut an imposing figure.

“Georgie boy,” I said, taking my hand out of my pocket.

George made a face. “Someone giving you trouble?”

“Someone, some thing, you name it.” I tapped the seat next to me. “Sit.”

We sat in silence for a few moments, watching different solar systems pass. I tried to think how long it had been since we last saw each other. I knew he had gotten off of Earth after the Change – I had seen his name on a ship’s manifest. And there was the Sorting, where each human was assigned a job position across the Universe. He must have been at that. But I had not physically seen him since Earth; the last time we saw each other was only a distant memory.

One by one the other passengers left the Train: first the Leguins, who nodded their manyantennaed heads in our direction as they left; then the Aslops, stumbling off, the strain of a concreted decade’s worth of dancing in a single night making it hard to stay upright.

“I don’t know how they do it,” said George. “One hour of dancing used to kill me. ”

“I remember.” I had an image of him, or the George I used to know: drenched in sweat, eyes ringed with sleep. Standing in the middle of a packed warehouse, fists bunched, trying and failing to keep time with the music. “You never were much for going out.”

“I liked going out,” George said, “but you were pretty intense.”

“No more intense than anyone else in our circle.”

“Hmm…” He turned away for a second. I wondered if I had said the wrong thing. It had been a while since I had thought about Earth, or before I started working for the Archive. After The Great Change, most people we knew were dead, and if they weren’t dead, they had decamped to the colonies, living in cookie-cutter settlements, drifting back and forth between dead-end administrative jobs.

What had George been doing in the years since I’d last seen him? When had he started working for the STC? And where was he going that day?

As we approached the end of the line, there were fewer planets, moons, or colonies where he could disembark. Usually by this time I was the only passenger. I used these quiet moments to go through my itinerary for the day. Upon entering the Archive I was usually immediately overwhelmed with emergencies and requests. There had been major disruptions in several galaxies the past few weeks: a black hole in the Uunup system led to a refugee crisis; the Hennunup tribe had declared war on the Helions again, despite nearly being erased out of existence each of the past five hundred seventy-nine wars between them over the previous ten centuries.

And there were rumors that the Pale King had returned – though no one wanted to think too much about that.

Finally we pulled into the station outside the Archive. Through the windows I could see my co-workers hurriedly departing their trains and heard the Overseers announcing assignments for the day. But I couldn’t move, not yet. My encounters with other humans were few and far in between. A few months before I ran into a woman who used to babysit me, on her way to the Varsi region to work as a schoolteacher. And a few weeks before that I saw an old boyfriend. He was only on the Train for a few stops. We never spoke; just stared and giggled at each other. Yet I never ran into another person going to the Archive.

“Well,” said George, standing. “This is us. ” He stood and walked toward the sliding doors. “You coming?”

He sounded annoyed. It took me a second to realize that he was probably late for work as well; waiting for me was just a courtesy. In a daze, I gathered my belongings, holding them to my chest like some schoolgirl.

The next morning, I sat away from the window, so I wouldn’t miss George when he arrived. The Train was packed; the work week was now in full swing. One couldn’t breathe without upsetting the creature sitting next to him. Fights on the Train were rare, though they did happen. Across from me a fish-person from one of the biospheres off Mars was spilling the contents of their wet-helmet on a Witch-Matron from Agarak. The old woman, seven feet tall, caked in alabaster dust, was about to cast a spell when a voice came from next to me.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. ”

I turned to find George had taken the seat to me. He smiled in his friendly, Midwestern way at the Witch-Matron. “You know the kind of things your words can do to this Train.”

The Witch-Matron muttered something in her tongue, and the water spilled on her bejeweled robe was suctioned back into the fish-person’s wet-helmet.

George leaned close and whispered, “Perks of being STC, people will believe any of the technical bullshit you tell them.”

The Train hurtled into the stop at Auroum, home planet of the Interplanetary Council. Through the windows the glistening chrome towers of the Council Headquarters shot up toward the sky, disappearing into rainbow-colored borealis formations that made up the planet’s atmosphere.

“I worked on those,” said George, as the Witch-Matron and the fish-person got off the train, already having forgotten each other.

“Really – the lights?”

“Yeah. The Council would like you to think they’re natural to the Planet, but they’re really atomic projections from each of the planet’s poles.”

I must have made a face, because George said, “They’re not radioactive, though. We control the explosion at the poles, and then project the diffused explosion.”

“Who mans the projections at the poles, then?”

“Androids, of course, ” said George. “Who else?”

The Train hurtled out of Auroum Station, back into the dark blankness of space. While George studied an advertisement for spacesuit itch cream – “Relax – you should feel weightless!” – I couldn’t help but think, How do you know all this?

“You know,” George said. “I’ve been thinking about you. ” He kept his eyes trained on the window as he said this.

“Really?” I said, trying not to betray interest. “What about?”

“About a lot…” then, with an embarrassed chuckle. “I don’t know.”

“Did you miss me?” Now George risked a glance out of the corner of his eye.

“I was thinking about you working at the Archive.”

“Why?”

“Just strange, is all.” Which it was, to be fair. Humans had only recently been granted membership to both the Archive, mostly out of pity. The Great Change had been more than catastrophic; it was an epochal change that affected the make-up of our solar system, and thus, had affected the make-up of other solar systems surrounding it. Billions of refugees fleeing their tiny planet for parts unknown, with only the faintest knowledge of what awaited.

The Overseers at the Archive thought it might be good to have a representative who experienced this, personally. Someone who might be able to provide a subjective experience on the Change, rather than an academic one. Hundreds who survived applied for the position: diplomats, scientists, professors. I was just a lowly graduate student when I left Earth, a Bstudent whose career, had the world not ended, would have never amounted to more than a lowly adjunct.

Why they chose me over those more qualified, I’ll never know. Perhaps it was my ordinariness that appealed to them. A prominent human wouldn’t have been able to give them information about daily life on Earth. The fact I had survived, and shown enough intelligence and will to make myself stand out, must have been attractive.

I’m sure that other species throughout the universe expected our species to die out when confronted by the universe’s incomprehensible, mellificious vastness. And yet we didn’t –though not for the expected reasons. The twist was that our own preconceptions about other species’ viciousness were wrong, yet also saved us. The dark forest hypothesis – the pernicious, old-fashioned belief that we couldn’t find extraterrestrial life because all were afraid of annihilation upon first contact – was just a rationalization to justify our own inherent viciousness and disinterest at discovering and co-existing with other forms of life.

How else to explain why our governments, what was left of them after the Change, had decided to attack the Council after leaving our solar system, even after receiving several olive branches? Or how our citizens cheered from the cramped mess halls and auditoriums of our broken-down ships, oblong prisons that stank of BO and fecal matter? I was there: I remember my horror as the rockets trailed like claws against the inky black, those around me waiting with anticipation for the Council’s sleek, jellyfish shaped ships to explode. Then the horrified screams when they didn’t, the jellyfish drifting to safety, as though carried by a pleasant breeze.

In an instant, my faith in my species, the security I felt with them, gone, replaced not just by rage, but a deep, unbearable yearning.

For what? George would have said, if I had the courage to tell him this.

For learning, I suppose.

“It was always good enough!” Which was a lie. Truth be told, I couldn’t remember Earth anymore, the cities I had lived in, or most of the people I had known. If and when I saw them, especially on the Train, it was as though a character had stepped out of some old movie.

Yet George was real. George drenched in sweat; eyes closed. Struggling to keep time with the rave ’ s hypnotic beat.

“Do you ever miss it?”

He did a double take and looked at me funny. “Miss what?”

“Miss any of it? Earth? Your parents, our friends? How life used to be?”

George stood and leaned his head to look out the window. The Train was approaching Omega48, one of the asteroid-mining colonies run exclusively by humans. It was named ‘48’ since it was run by the former government of Arizona, though if you really pressed me, I wouldn’t be able to tell you what Arizona looked like, or why its government was stationed here.

“I don’t know,” George said, getting ready to depart. “I guess I never really think about it… do you?”

I told him I remembered the rave, us dancing, and the scene on the ships. Everything else was lost, like some ancient book in the upper reaches of the Archive.

George smiled. “Then it’s best to keep moving.”

I didn’t, though. It was several weeks before I rode the Train again. When I arrived at the Archive that day, I discovered George’s work had been faulty. Upon entering the outermost building, I was struck by a wave of vertigo unlike anything I had ever felt. As though a hand had slipped through my skin and was twisting my insides like a knob. My vision began to turn and turn, until my legs left the floor, or maybe it was the floor that came toward my body. Either way I was paralyzed, my eyes throbbing, my ears tickled by a faint whisper.

Thankfully one of the Overseers spotted me from an upper balcony. Right away I was rushed to the infirmary, where I was held for several weeks. Though the psionic blast itself was not visible, it was in fact a physical invasion of the body. I could feel the Pale King sliding through me, smoky tentacles, expanding and contracting my organs until they felt like I was going to explode. Supposedly I writhed in pain for hours on end, screaming half-formed phrases, calling out names then swallowing them, crying tears of blood.

The Pale King was an ancient, almost indescribable being. Few had seen his physical form and lived; those who had could only provide vague details. A tall man, taller than any human should be, with gray hair that tumbled down his body in elaborate knots. Some said it wasn’t hair at all; some said that maybe it was strands of skin taken from his enemies. His voice was a lilting, wheezy sing-song, his language a cacophonous blur of vowels and guttural sounds. There was little information in the Archive about him, other than a brief description in one of the earliest almanacs:

Chao beings roam the outer recesses of the known universe. In some cultures they are referred to as Gods, demons, etc.

One such is referred to as Rex Pallidus, the Pale or Ghost King. Rex Pallidus feeds off of being’s emotional energy, utilizing psionic violence to incapacitate its prey. Its purpose or pursuits are unknown. One may think of Rex Pallidus as a black star, whose insatiable hunger portends the universe’s end…

I didn’t remember any of what happened in the infirmary. The pain was so great I receded inside myself, losing connection with my body. I floated in the recesses of some space beyond the space we knew, not so much matter as pure being.

Images and memories flickered before me in this other space: frantically boarding an escape ship during the Change; the endless rounds of interviews with the Overseers before acceptance into the Archive. All the major moments in my life, siphoned like water through a straw.

But again and again I saw George: George dancing, eyes closed, trying and failing to keep time with the music. Why did I keep seeing George? I hadn’t thought about him, or anyone from that time of my life, in years. George, eyes closed. Trying and failing to keep time with the music. Yet also empty streets, the city’s skyline in the distance. The sound of the subway, that other train that had so defined our lives, rumbling beneath us.

What does this mean to you? I heard the Pale King whisper.

I thought about George on the train, studying the advertisement for itch cream. “Relax! You should feel weightless!” I meant to ask him how he learned those things, like the Android’s operating the borealis beams, or the Witch-Matron believing his lie.

Ah, said the Pale King. You’re curious. You want to know what others are like.

For so long I thought myself exalted, not just a protector of knowledge, but its sole keeper. I took pride in my position at the Archive. Even though the thought disgusted me, I was proud to be considered better than other humans, held in high esteem by others in the Universe.

Yet there were things George knew that I didn’t.

And I realized I wanted to know more – I had to.

I can show. I can show you all that you want to know.

Submit to me, and I will help you know… everything.

Did George want anything from me? Had he tried to imagine what my life was like since we had last seen each other? Or did he just accept that we were different now, that we weren’t not the same people as when we’d last known each other?

“Relax – you should feel weightless!”

It doesn’t matter. I will take it from you. I will take everything from you.

Save he couldn’t. It was gone. All those memories were vapor, like the galaxies I saw through the Train window in the morning. It was only when I looked back on them that they were illuminated; if I didn’t, would they even exist?

Suddenly my training kicked in. My mind cleared itself of thoughts one by one, these images and scenes from that past life evaporating. At some point I could feel myself being pulled back into my body, regaining its shape and definition. And then he was gone, the Pale King, expelled and sent fleeing from the Archive. When I woke up in the infirmary, I was alone.

The Train shot through space with a low, pleasant hum. I had taken my usual seat away from the window, the better to spot George. The car was half-full, though everyone who got on chose to sit on the opposite end. News of the Pale King’s appearance, as well as his attack, had spread throughout the Universe. Though no one at the Archive nor the Council had any reason to suspect my loyalties, I was forced to travel in a protective suit, lest there remained any vestiges of his presence within me.

I had no problem with this. My recovery had been piecemeal, my faith in reality shaken. What I needed now was routine: morning commute, job, commute home. Only then, I thought, could I reaccumulate myself to the details of my life.

Still, I wanted to see George, if only to let him know what had happened. I didn’t blame him for the incident (again, the Pale King was an ancient demi-God), but I wanted to know what he thought about what I saw in the other-space. Maybe I was wrong to distance myself from others. That past may be gone, yet that didn’t mean we couldn’t be friends in the future.

Stop after stop passed. No sign of George. Eventually the train filled, and I lost sight of the door. I lost hope I would see, and let my mind wander. All that time in the infirmary had put me behind at work. There was the Uunup refugee crisis I was asked to consult on, and the witch-matrons of Agaronok had requested a dossier on the negative ramifications of human child sacrifice…

As we entered Auroum station I leaned over to look at the borealis formations, undulating in waves across the sky.

“Excuse me?” Someone in the forest-green colors of the STC stood before me. “Is the seat next to you taken?”

But it wasn’t him.

As I made room for the young woman I wondered if it was worth it to ask her about George. There were probably hundreds, if not thousands of engineers in the STC. George was probably on assignment somewhere deep on the far-side of the universe, tinkering with electromagnetic whatchamacallits.

In the end though I couldn’t help it.

“George,” said the young woman, repeating the name again, as though tasting it. “Strong looking fella, with thick black hair?” She made a motion to demonstrate his cowlick.

“That’s the one. ”

The young woman pursed her lips. Through my protective helmet I caught a glimpse of myself, anxiety flooding my face. I had an idea what had happened before she even said it. “Mech failure on Omega-48. An electrical surge made a mining drill go haywire. George was below, fiddling with an extractor. The drill detached from its catch and knocked him straight off the face of the thing, along with a bunch of others.”

“And they couldn’t retrieve the body?”

The young woman sighed. “You know them suits were more interested in making sure their machines were okay. Besides that part of space, there’s only the Archive and the Deep Yonder. So unless one of your people happened to see him floating by, he’s gone. ” Cautiously, she reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. “How long you gotta be in this thing?”

“Another few days, I suppose. ”

“You could always go find him. Must get pretty boring, locked up in that library with all them books.” The train glided into a stop outside another mining station. The young woman stood.

“This is me… ” She took several steps toward the door, before quickly turning. “That was rude of me to say, about your library.”

“It’s okay.”

“That’s where you are now. George, he’s STC. He wanted to be in space. He knew the risks.” An alarm sounded; the Train door would be closing soon. “Take care of yourself.”

Then she was gone, and the train was gliding out again. I tried not to think about George, alone, in the cold dark empty, but couldn’t. In my mind’s eye I saw his body, tiny against the great expanse, revolving over and over, like the hands of a clock.

What had he thought in those moments, as he realized his life was over?

Did he wish for Earth?

Me?

Our friends?

Or did he stare in wonder at the vastness, the other solar systems flickering like candles, a dim reminder of how much distance we travel, all of us, across our lives, before we finally reach our stop?

21 YEARS LOST

University is a camp story, small talk between old timers reminiscing over better days before the world ended.

My only university experience came today while standing in RMITS’ overgrown lobby. The sun peeked through brown shattered glass, dirty rigged teeth, letting light scrape across anguished skeletons.

Arms stretched, legs spread, jaws wide permanently screaming as moss sprouted from their empty eye sockets. 25/10 victims, sixteen of them, permanently stuck in time. Science Fiction movies scavenged from search parties detailed such a world. In Terminator the apocalypse was brought by nuclear warfare from rogue machines.

That occurred in 1998.

What really ended the world happened on October 25th 2003. And it wasn’t machines. Scientists never figured it out before being slaughtered by their insane colleagues. All we know is one day the world was one big teenage movie with cars, glittery pink outfits, and people. By the 26th Melbourne was burning, twisted flames capturing silhouettes of Crackheads torturing, pillaging, and murdering everyone.

It’s 2024 now.

More specifically, It’s late 2024, twenty-one years after 25/10.

The infection left its marks, but they are covered in an ocean of greeny, burying the past so we can focus on our future.

We say at camp mankind briefly went extinct. Either lost to the infection or by people who swallowed their humanity doing anything to survive. Twenty-one years forward, we are scraping together the mentality lost after 25/10. Putting broken humanity together, building a new world based on values like having fun, parties, charities, drinking, kindness, not killing someone for tinned food.

What humans should be doing, like in the movies (minus Terminator).

My journey started two weeks ago when we ventured from our fortified settlement at Yea, Victoria through bush-turned-suburbs towards the NGV. The NGV is where eight settlements, stretched around Victoria, are gonna hold a party, in an art gallery secured deep in what was the “red zone ” , long before Crackheads started dying off. My parent’s generation survived 25/10. Now it’s my generation rebuilding Earth in the image of a pre-outbreak world. Putting together the lost puzzle with little parties and fun activities uniting what’s left of humanity.

‘Stop Bush, stop the war. ’ McKenzie said, reading out loud a faded poster peeling from the wall. Mackenzie is 18, young, handsome, energetic.

I’m the only kid born in 2003 left in Melbourne, if not Victoria. We had one other kid my age, but he died back in 2017 from smallpox.

‘Didn’t Iraq have illegal nukes or something?’ Alannah said, peering down a dark, dank elevator shaft. ‘We probably would’ve been nuked anyway if 25/10 didn’t happen.’

‘Thankfully the world ended before Saddam could destroy it.’ I said, moving towards the door. A mountain built of mossy debris and twisted, rusting metal beams blocked the wooden door with “exit” written in faded pond green.

‘Oi McKenzie, help me move this bitch.’

We attack the debris for an hour before a sly smile crept across Mackenzie’s face.

‘Didn’t want Alannah helping you?’

‘You’re never gonna let me off for that, aren’t you?’

‘Oh, after you nearly fucked my only friend group by being a sleazy cunt? Yea nah. Couldn’t you have tried, I don’t know, going for someone who wasn’t a close friend?

Like that Eliza chick? She was pretty fly wasn’t she?’

‘She’s

After liberating the door we shoved it open, accompanied by a loud crack and plaster flakes fluttering down. Sunlight blasted our eyes, illuminating crashed cars, crumbling vine-covered skyscrapers, and skeletons spread every inch of the sidewalk. Everything was blanketed with sprouting greenery, a mask hiding 25/10 devastation.

‘Regardless it’s over now. Isn’t that right Alannah?’

‘Huh?’ She yells, head snapping out of the elevator hole.

‘We’re just friends, aren’t we?’

‘Yep.’ She says opening a crumpled, browning map dated June 2001. ‘Lost friends. Know where we are? There’s too many fucking stains on my map. ’

‘We’re on a fucked up street, in a fucked up world, Alanna.’ I say. It’s an old proverb our parents whispered to each other hiding from crackheads prowling the streets, driving cars, shooting guns, screaming, howling, hunting survivors. Now the roads are empty mass graves, they’re street signs covered in overgrown moss.

We passed the Victorian Libary, a crumbling Classical Greek-styled building stranded above an ocean of grass when I heard them. Feet crunching on moss-covered bones, the quick taps swerving past rusted cars clogging down Swanston Street, getting louder.

At first, we thought they were naked humans. Pale faces slightly puffy, looking sick with the flu rather than what ended civilisation.

Dad almost made that mistake during the first days post 25/10. My family (including a fourmonth-old me) was returning from a camping trip in the Grampians when the car radio burst with news of infections, Melbourne burning, John Howard allegedly dead.

When the radio died, Dad stopped at a farmhouse hoping someone knew what happened. He ventured forward with us behind in the car, keys ready to go. Through filtered wire windows, Dad saw a man in the kitchen. Singlet slumped over his big belly, shorts tightly wrapped

around fat legs, smiling, cooking smoke rich with porkchop fumes.

Dad’s friendly, greeting smile was short-lived when he saw two teenagers and a woman lying dead, heads smashed in, skulls leaking rivers of blood down tiled floors just beyond the kitchen.

The man turned and smiled at Dad. He was cooking slices of them.

We left quickly after that.

Crackheads are unpredictable. Some facts are universal, like freshly turned Crackheads are most violent, killing anyone on sight. Hormones mingled with the virus sending waves of anger and hatred bursting through their veins.

That’s one solid fact in an ocean of blur.

After the initial infection period, some Crackheads will leave you alone, screaming, crying, shuffling down the ravaged streets, throwing bottles against shattered windows. Others might slash you, attacking with knives before bolting away. Worst is when they hunt, the virus feeding off an urge to torture, rape, kill us, and when our numbers plummeted too hard, each other.

These Crackheads bolt past us, they’re hideous screams woven with odd words like “emcoming” “ampid!”.

We blink, ballooned eyes staring at each other.

25/10 came as a bushfire. The Crackheads swept across Earth, destroying everything in their path. Mankind hid in the shadows while infected hordes played in burning cities and scavenged bushlands looking for us.

But all fires burn themselves out. With shopping malls worldwide picked clean, and Crackheads more interested in murdering than farming, their population rapidly plummeted. By the mid-noughties, only small pockets of crackheads existed, those smart enough to shelter and repopulate, but most perished.

I remember Crackheads as a blur in a kaleidoscope of childhood memories. Dad hugging me as we hid from an approaching horde is one of my earliest. But growing up, we noughties babies rarely saw Crackheads, let alone talk about them. Those dark apocalyptic days post-25/10 were taboo, bringing thousand-yard stares from survivors, or nasty glares. Memories of ‘03 are too fresh. Everyone is now focused on justifying the horror humanity went through by building a new, fair world.

‘Where they… they…. They?’ Mackenzie stumbled before I responded with one simple word.

‘Crackheads’.

‘This is wrong ’ Alannah said with a hint of fear. ‘They shouldn’t be out here. Gill said there weren’t any nests left till South Australia.’

‘Yeah, well, fuck Gill, I’m more scared of what they were running from.’ I say. ‘Did you hear they were screaming something?’

‘Yea that’s what fucking Crackheads do man, they scream random shit.’ Said McKenzie.

‘No, I mean they were screaming something like “ampid” or some shit like that, I don’t know.’ I say. ‘Just sounded like they were trying to get away from something.’ ‘Get away from what? Melbourne hasn’t been a red zone for, like, over a decade now?’ ’Mackenzie said ‘There’s nothing left here.’

Like the infected, we hear it before seeing it. The ground started rumbling, noises drowned by dozens of chirping birds flying out from abandoned rusted cars. Paper ads swirled in the air, calling for the Livid Festival in October 2003, an anti-Iraq War rally, Steve Irwin sponsoring a new Honda, all dancing with the pounding ground. It was a stampede of massive grey elephants, their feet squishing squealing cars, crushing moss-covered bones. Trunks swinging like grandfather clocks, wrecking trees and trams in one swoop. Escapees from the Zoo, where most of the exotic wildlife is from. Probably Werribee.

‘Run, fucking run!” I scream- and my legs bolt across the road towards Melbourne Central.

I don’t even check behind me as I feel the elephants charge down the streets.

Melbourne Central is a construction site permanently stuck in time. An old bullet tower covered in dangling vines is drowned in tanned light from the giant, dirt- covered glass rooftop above. Built around the tower are three empty floors filled with slouching scaffolding, cones and tools glued into the ground by moss.

‘No, wait, fucking hold on. ’ Alanna said patting herself down. ‘The map, I think I fucking dropped it.’

‘You’re shitting me?’ I say

‘Nah I’m not, man. I fucking dropped it.’

‘Shit… shit!’ Mackenzie’s hands lay on his head like a prisoner of war, wandering back and forth. ‘We should go back and look for it.’

‘Nah man if we dropped it in the grass we’ll never find it. You saw how long that shit was. And I don’t want to be out there with the Crackheads loose.’

‘Fuck man, fuck!’

I look around, wondering what Melbourne Central would look if they completed construction.

Maybe it would be a movie theatre. Three stories of seats with popcorn, hotdogs, 3D glasses: watching a projector play Kill Bill Vol 2 on the bullet tower. Sitting between girls, noses stuffed with smells of fried food as the speakers boom across filled seats. A world with more than 4 girls from my generation! Just pick and choose your future wife from the seats around you!

So many potential girlfriends got smothered in 2003.

It’s not like I never watched films before. On Fridays after a week of farming against the blazing Australian sun, our settlement held movie nights. Nothing spectacular, just Gill’s projector playing Disney movies in a barnhouse with mosquitoes casting black shadows across the dimly lit screen light. It always felt fake, artificial a poor mimic of the blaring, flashy movie theatres buried with the old world.

Ah, ain’t the end of the world.’ Alannah said, ironically. ‘There’s probably, like, another map around here somewhere. We just gotta keep on looking.’ So we headed deeper into the building.

The sky tunnel “connecting” Melbourne Central to Myer shopping mall collapsed halfway, metal poles and rigged, teeth-like, concrete patterns curving down into the open, chill air. Moss bulked along the single strip of rusted metal uniting both buildings left after two decades of exposure.

I crossed over it first, extending my hand out to Alanna who crawled across the metal beam like a kola.

Below, a main road clogged with cars made for a hard landing.

25/10, according to everyone alive back then, happened at prime “traffic hour”. Roads clogged with vehicles became massacre grounds as crackheads dragged people out of their cars and slaughtered them. I’ve seen shakey VHS footage of one highway strip blazing minutes after the outbreak. A snaking line of flames danced on burning cars and people who became torches with legs, screaming.

That’s why McKenzie dipped. If falling on rusted cars didn’t kill you, the tetanus would. He tried finding an alternative route to Myers that didn’t involve going outside for long periods. The elephants, the Crackheads, although brief, scared us shitless enough to stay indoors.

A small creek peeped from the beam before transforming into a symphony of cranking metal. Alanna’s face drained of colour leaving a white canvas dotted with terrified eyes and trembling teeth. ‘Jump.’

‘I can’t!’

‘You got to. I’ll catch you, promise!’

‘Oh fuck, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!’

The metal spasmed, little concrete flakes burst from the tinting beam.

‘Just jump!’

My hand wrapped around a rusted metal pole twisted out from the concrete. The other hand stretched out, fingers grasping at Alanna as she stood up.

‘Come on! Come on!’ I scream. ‘Fucking JUMP!’

Alanna sent the metal beam crashing down as she leapt. A thick metallic clank echoed down empty streets, then thicker thuds as it rolled down the pavement. Alanna lay next to me as stars flew above my pounding head. She must’ve hit my forehead while jumping.

‘Fuck, you alright?’ Alanna said resting her head on the ripped flares she wore.

‘Yeah… I’m fucking great.’ I say, but my attention is drawn to her face. Ambur hair curled with the grit that smeared her light, tanned skin. Round brown eyes, light pink lips creeping open revealing slightly yellowing teeth. In that second everything dialled down, leaving me, her face, and this moment alone in a warm, happy void.

‘Here, let me get you up. ’

‘Yeah, sure. ’

We push through the turned tables, broken chairs and anguished skeletons of what was a cafeteria. Colourless signs coated in a layer of light moss told of souvlakis, curries, sushis, foods reduced to only pictures and our imagination. My food experience is one grey slump of vegetables and fish, maybe game if we were lucky. I always wanted to try exotic dishes like pasta and kebabs.

Maybe when we drag humanity out of this apocalyptic hell, I’ll sit old eating the sweet, corny taste of Pizza alongside Kebabs wrapped in rye bread filled with thick, chewy slices of meat.

The food court opened up to another shopping centre. Flapping pigeon wings echoed down

three stories of abandoned shops, bouncing off tipped mannequins dressed in fading flared jeans held up with glittery belts.

‘Woah look’, Alanna said, one hand shaking me, the other pointing at a pile of skeletons bunched up around an escalator. A small hill built of anguished bones decorated with faded clothes and metal spikes sprouting out from their backs. The skeleton’s collective tanned brown shade was brought out by an ocean of dried blood splattered underneath this mountain of death.

‘I’ve never seen anything like this.’ Alanna said.

‘Yeah, that’s fucking grizzly.’ I said. ‘Poor fucks. Probably were trying to escape the initial outbreak and clogged up the escalator.’

‘ ... Making the perfect massacre ground.’ Alanna continued, bending over to free a pink sparkly purse from the clutches of a tight bone hand.

‘Airs dry. Could be stuff still intact here.’

Scavenging through the purse, she tossed out a greying driver’s license and I picked it up.

A blond chick stared back at me as I read her ID.

Lia Slauder. Born 13th May 1983.

20 years old when she died. Nearly my age.

‘Oh, that’s fucking awesome, look at this shit.’ Alanna grabbed a bright pink flip phone dotted with silver sparkles from the bag. She flipped it open, pressing the phone against her ear while twirling thick clumps of brown hair.

‘Hey, is this KFC? Yeah, I’d like to make a reservation for two. Yeah, that’s right, me and my friend over here,’ Alanna pointed one of her slim, weathered fingers at me grinning.

‘Oh, you ’ re taking me out?’ I said through sly, flirty teeth ‘Like a little date?’

‘Aye don’t count your lucky stars. It’s a friend date.’ But her face suggested otherwise.

‘Okay, well you can get me a big-mac, sugar mummy. ’

‘Double cheese?’

‘Tripple it.’

We stared smiling at each other. Her soft brown eyes were inviting, complemented by radiating warm pink lips as she made motions similar to brushing a cobweb out of the way.

She didn’t look it, but behind Alanna’s lily-pale features was the most exotic girl I’d ever met.

In another world, Alanna grew up far away in Sydney’s outer suburbs. A smart girl like her probably would’ve made it to Sydney University, Slim figure strolling across campus blasting Christina Agurila from an iPod.

But 2003 had other plans.

Her Dad worked the weekend shift in downtown Sydney on 25/10, his flip phone never picking up as Alanna’s (then) unknowingly pregnant Mum crouched through blood-soaked streets to escape into the countryside.

Barely anyone survived the city or inner suburbs that day.

Months later Alanna was born in a rat-infested basement deep in the outback. The nine survivors with Alanna’s Mum raised worried eyebrows at her newborn, seeing just another mouth to feed against waning supplies.

Most secretly left that night – sneaking out with all the food, fearing a crying baby might draw attention to roaming Crackhead packs hunting down survivors. Yet sixteen years later when we first met, only Alanna would still be alive from that group.

By then she was a scrawny refugee, young face creased with fine lines of soot and eyes bulging from withered sockets.

She barely had escaped the vicious 2019-2020 wildfires raging across Australia that killed her mother, rapid flames pushing Alanna’s settlement of thirty from rural New South Wales into Victoria.

With no family left, me and McKenzie absorbed her into our duo. My generation are orphans of the noughties. All our parents perished leaving us to swiftly form siblings out of friends. Otherwise, we’d have no family.

It was the three of us until a bug knocked McKenzie sick in his bed for vomit-filled months.

Then it was just the two of us.

On one humid summer night filled with frog croaks and the sound of Dido‘s White Flag blasting from my boombox, we laid side by side in a field just outside Yea’s fortified walls. Our eyes were locked, smiles filtered in sleek silver from the full moon, and hands moist in each other’s palms.

‘I like you. ’ Alanna finally said.

‘I too, have warm feelings for you. ’

‘No I’m serious, I actually really like you. Everyone I ever loved died. But since I’ve arrived you ’ ve always been there for me and… you ’ re really like the only other person I feel something with.’

‘Not McKenzie?’

‘I mean McKenzie too, but, you know, differently.’

‘What you mean differently?’

‘Let me show you. ’

My hand tightened around her as our lips met.

Our love thrived alone. But in the tight-knit settlement of two hundred people thirsty for cheap gossip decades after reality TV last aired, we always came under the spotlight. Each step we took became town talk, before being bombarded with complaints about McKenzie looking alone as we two trotted hand in hand. It flamed roaring arguments between us. Alanna wanted to wind down our relationship to avoid public eye and integrate McKenzie back into our lives, but I wanted to keep the status quo.

‘Fuck ‘ em all. Why the fuck should we care what they think of us?’

‘It’s not about what they think.’ She yelled back in the stuffy renovated house we lived in behind the settlement’s wooden walls. ‘It’s about being a good fucking friend. McKenzie was always there for us, and we ’ ve been ditching him for what? Some cheap teenage romance? Fucking listen to yourself.’

Not only didn’t I listen, but I failed to find a compromise.

Between my parents’ death and meeting Alanna, I grew up not feeling loved as part of a greater generational trauma. Campfire talks between Gen Zers always revolved around craving human touch. Finding a partner became romanticised in the hope it’d fill the lack of parental affection.

That’s how I got greedy. The love irradiating off Alanna after years spent dry made me want to fully embrace her.

But she wanted space, and space is what she got.

We broke up soon after friends once again.

‘Guys!’ McKenzie’s voice echoed from the first floor, bouncing off musty windows and into our ears. “You’ve got to come see this.”

McKenzie stood hands on waist staring down a giant black hole when we saw him. The ground must’ve given in, rubble sloping into the black depth that smelt dank and wet.

‘Fuck.’ Alanna said.

‘Fuck indeed.’ Said McKenzie. ‘I think this must’ve been part of the subway system.’

‘Like the food chain?’ I say.

‘No like… you remember that story Gill told us?’

‘Which one?’

‘Where she was on 25/10.’

‘With the trains, right?’

‘Yeah well, back before 25/10 trains used to run underneath the city. People back then called them subway systems or the Metro. Or at least that’s what Gill called it.’ When I said no one survived the cities on 25/10, only Gill is an expectation. Gill, a sweet, plump white-haired woman who runs our settlement isn’t the image of an only survivor, but on outbreak day she had been waiting at Melbourne‘s underground station. Seeing hordes of people screaming down the escalator, some covered in blood, she squeezed underneath a parked train thinking it was a terrorist attack.

‘But I knew it wasn’t a terrorist attack when the Crackheads came. ’ She told me once while setting up the projector for movie night. ‘Course I didn’t know what crackheads were back then, but they didn’t sound like terrorists. I didn’t hear any gunfire over the screaming and crying. Just crunching noises and ripping noises, like someone stepping on bones over and over and over again.’

A sea of blood covering splattered organs, torn limbs and dead bodies greeted her as she crawled out three days later. Crimson red-soaked walls and ceilings were filtered grey with smoke pouring from the outside, making it unbreathable. ‘I remember staring at a pair of eyeballs. Just eyeballs, floating in a puddle of blood.’ She said. ‘It was a scene out of hell. Hate underground spaces now. ’

‘Oh hell nah I ain’t going down there.’ McKenzie backed away from the hole. He threw his hands up as if to surrender, revealing wrapped cotton creased with thick dirt covering both palms. ‘That’s fucking wack.’

‘Oh come the fuck on McKenzie.’ I said. ‘It’ll be something new for all of us. ’

‘Yea, that’s the fucking problem. It’s new. We’ve never been underground. None of us have. How the hell are we gonna navigate down there?’

‘I don’t know maybe call Gill, she’ll know.’ Alanna said slipping the pink phone out of her pocket and chucking it to McKenzie. He caught it, sparkly flakes flittering down like silver snowflakes.

‘Thanks.’ McKenzie said sarcastically.

‘No problem. You guys got your torches, right?’ Kneeling, Alanna swung her backpack to the ground and shuffled through the compartments.

‘Yea.’ I say doing the same.

‘You guys aren’t serious.’ McKenzie’s eyebrows open wide, trembling creased lips revealing teeth bitting down nervously. ‘After everything Gill told us. ’

‘Gill told us each station had a sign telling what suburb you are in.” Alaana pulled out a thick, handled torch. ‘The railways are a straight shot. We follow them till we get to Flinder Station. Then it’s like a 5-minute walk to the NGV.’

‘You guys are fucking nuts.’ McKenzie said. ‘Why don’t we just… I don’t know, find another fucking map?’

‘You wanna go outside again? Really? With the elephants and the crackheads? A paper map wouldn’t survive 21 years outside, McKenzie. We’ll just get lost searching for nothing. The tunnels at least will take us directly from one station to another.’ With one hand wrapped around a thick metal pole, Alaana supported herself as she descended into the darkness. I listened to water dripping from the black hole, the occasional whirr of wind echoing down there.

‘You’ll be fine. Promise.’

‘Fuck.’ McKenzie’s face screwed, watching me follow Alaana down into the hole.

My torch ripped through the pitch blackness revealing snippets of grey, rusting railway and junk mushed by water exposure. It was the darkest place I have ever explored, which I guess is what we were looking for. Something new.

The coolest buildings we saw growing up were squat town halls or two-storied shops.

The city wasn’t like that. Colossal skyscrapers surrounding us lived up to the stories we heard growing up of the red zones, cities filled with Crackheads. But the Crackheads died out, leaving us an alien world to explore.

The elephants and the Crackhead family only justified a reason to spend time exploring these massive structures. It fulfilled our curiosity about experiencing an urban world rather than aiding our safety. We could’ve used the street signs to navigate outside – but adolescent curiosity and arrogance towards the dangers underground made us want to explore new environments. We walked until we reached a platform.

“Hear that?” McKenzie said, his torch jumping to a small rustle hidden between knocked rubbish bins and bones across the platform.

“My parents used to take the metro for work back in Sydney.” Alanna said. She climbed over the gap and onto the station. “Mum told me you could see rats running across the railways. Beedy little fucks. They’re probably everywhere now. ”

The platform floor was covered in mud. A layer of scummy film covered dotted pieces of junk and…

My eyebrows raised as my torchlight screwed itself onto the glittery silver fur of a dead possum. A swirling trail of intestines lay floating in a thick blood stew from its torn guts.

This was fresh, its black marbly eyes fixated on the skewed expression creeping across my face.

Something really didn’t feel right.

‘What the fuck is that?’ Alanna said.

‘A possum. A very fucking dead possum. Something ripped its stomach open. A… dingo maybe?’

‘We don’t have dingos this far south.’ Alanna said.

‘Oh fuck me cunt!’ McKenzie’s trembling torch light illuminated one dead possum after another. All were ripped apart, bloody bits swirling in the damp mud. Butterfly wings began to flutter in my stomach.

‘There must be… over a fucking dozen possums here. Fuck!’ I say feeling tremor in each word.

‘This is ‘03. This is fucking ‘03 as fucking shit, man. ’ McKenzie said through jittery teeth. ‘We shouldn’t be down here. Fuck! What the fuck is this shit?!’

Cockroaches scuttled blindly through the mud, pouring into our torch light and charging past us. It looked like they were running from something, living on rotted leaves and residue from the street before getting scared off.

The crackle of bones quickly drew our light to the escalators suited behind large algae-covered columns decorated with fading street maps. We stayed dead silent. My ears hurt from listening so hard to the cold quietness and my breath began rapidly accelerating. I felt my body shaking violently and my heart leaping from my chest.

After watching horror movies we ransacked from abounded Video Stores in my youth – I’m pretty damn sure what happened next could be considered a jumpscare. My beam snapped onto a white pale face peaking from behind the escalator. His white hair grew widely from a slim, withered face leaving drooping eyelids and colourless hollow cheeks. Drolling spit morphed with possum blood around his mouth, trailing from pink weathered lips and

dripping onto the man ’ s malnourished body. He was extremely skinny – reminding me of the refugees in our camp who fled the post-Crackhead famines that came with Y2Ks closing.

There probably were more visual descriptions, but I didn’t look long enough before bolting.

That’s something I noticed was missing from the pre-03 horror movies. After the main jumpscare, there was no flight or fight response. The main character just stood like a deer caught in headlights as the monster sprung towards them.

To give slack, no one pre-03 probably knew what it was like surviving in flight or fight mode for your entire life. Humans weren’t hunted back then – which made their survival movies feel corny 21 years later.

A naked family slithered from behind the escalator and into our torchlight. Five beady wideeyed children clutched human bones in their skinny hands, nails overgrown toned down to a light brown from years of uncleanliness. Both parents had pale faces sunk around the bones, lines creasing under black eyebags, cracked blue lips and foreheads covered in sprouting wild white hair.

They’re Tassies – crackhead inbred nests, the last danger left from Y2K’s devastation.

Crackheads often kill and eat their newborns, a nod to their already plummeting population encouraged by disregard towards self-preservation and lust for murder. The second win for humanity is Crackheads can’t infect. Only 25/10 victims and their descendants are Crackheads. Which makes most of them either old – or young and feeble today.

Sometimes though – very rarely – Crackheads form isolated nests, sexing each other repeatedly to create inbred hives.

We call them Tassies. I’ve never encountered them personally – but travelling merchants bring stories of nests attacking lone wanders, stalking prey for days before ripping them apart.

I used to think Tassies were boggymen, stories to keep kids from exploring outside our settlement’s walls after dark. But today I learnt they are, in fact, very much real.

The Crackheads charged, spiralling towards us like feral white ghosts waving human femurs. The parents, noughties veterans, screamed raspy insults:

“Cunthole!! Stab ya!!! Piss shit cunnttt!!! Come here and fuck good!” And the children howled unintelligible sounds.

We bolted like frightened gazelles, our boots letting off thick metallic taps echoing down the tunnels, softening as I followed Alanna’s light (and fanatic yelling) into the train’s ripped-open door with McKenzie close behind.

Slashing torch beams madly lit up bones suffocating the train’s walkway, its angle slightly tilted towards us from the crash.

Pure adrenaline tinted everything – while thoughts became crystal clear my body movements were erratically primal. I remember thinking “damn, I’d never move this fast, I must be having an adrenaline rush,” while on all fours, my arms worked independently grappling chairs, swinging myself up against gravity.

Another robotic-sounding thought was “I’m gonna get a disease from touching shit” as my fingers, sparked by someone ’ s small hand wrapping around my foot, automatically reached for the closest bone.

A Crackhead – a 12-year-old male maybe – growled just below the torchlight, insane quivering eyes locked onto me as its fingers hardened around my boot. Its brown hair rested in wild clumps stuck together with the same grime that simultaneously creased his face with dirt.

One ear was missing, a little pinkish stub – and its gums had gaps intertwined between crooked yellow teeth. Droll drizzled down onto the crackhead’s chest, vertebrae bones lining thin pale skin – likely from decades of malnourishment. I thrusted a skull onto its forehead, making the Crackhead flinch but not much else. My hands slipped as the skull bounced off its forehead after the third strike, tumbling down the train. Adult voices echoed below me. Raspy swearwords bouncing madly off broken windows swerving between McKenzie screaming and mingling with my rapid breaths.

Rigged nails pierced into my pants. The Crackhead was crawling up my leg, dragging me down across sharp spiking bones that ripped into my shirt like a cheese grater. A burning sensation like acid exploded across my gullet. My hands clutched back its forehead as wild snarling teeth bit towards me.

If the adults and other children hadn’t been occupied by something underneath me, I’d be dead.

Instead, I shoved the Crackhead beside me, dust exploding underneath its impact from crackling skeletons.

I flailed onto a femur still attached to a shoe and shoved its pointy end into the Crackhead’s neck. A waterfall of blood burst out draining the Crackhead skin pale, ballooned eyes accompanying insane grinding teeth as I pushed harder down. It was my first kill – and I felt nothing.

Like clockwork, my adrenaline-gripped body threw me crawling crazily up the carriage. Hatred filled the vortex left when my adrenaline withered out. Decades of running, cowering in the dark and surviving off quick decisions made killing it feel like a long time coming.

In the hours before dusk, running out from Parliament Station east of Melbourne Central, we realised McKenzie wasn’t with us.

“He wasn’t behind you?”

“It was fucking dark and… fuck!” I said.

I felt guilt sinking in my stomach. Or maybe it wasn’t guilt, but shame. Disappointed faces from our settlement flickered through my mind like a zoopraxiscope. Blurred features morphed into one, giant judging monster nodding their heads disapproving at us. Things like this weren’t meant to happen any more. We were the new generation. Our parents sacrificed themselves – and others – to swipe away the ripples of Y2K: starvation, selfishness and survivalism for civilization. Mateship.

Me and Alanna acted in the Metro like it was still 2003. Every man for himself. Abandoning our friend for self-preservation.

‘I still remember what my Mum told me. How it felt like when everyone abandoned her when she had me. ’ Alanna said as orange light scrapped across the horizon. Black silhouettes of buildings stood like jagged teeth, silent, minus birds echoing through the ruins.

‘She felt betrayed, but unsurprised. Her group had done worse. A few weeks before I was born a Crackhead horde was trailing them. Food was low and everyone was tired. Then they caught someone in the group stealing from the rations. You know what they did to him?’

She looked at me. Dried tears rested on hollow, black eyebags drooping her sockets to look permanently sad. ‘They cut his Achilles tendinitis so he couldn’t walk. The logic was… it’d be one less person to feed, but also that the Crackheads would find him first and that’d give the group some extra time to run while they tortured him for shit and giggles.’

Alanna looked down, staring at the ground as I took hold of her hand. I could feel the seconds flying, turning into the minutes we should’ve been using to run further from the Crackheads. But I could also feel the spirit in her pulse under my fingers. And I could also see her eyes. It wasn’t panic. But resilience hidden behind a veil of sadness.

‘I feel like we did that to McKenzie. We left him behind for them. So we could fucking run. It feels like something our parents would’ve done. Not us. Fuck. 2003 never really ended, did it?’

Silence filled the air.

‘My family hid to survive.’ I said. ‘After 25/10, locals from around the farms formed protective groups. We had to run and hide when all the Crackheads in the city spilled into the countryside. And you know what’s fucking ironic? It wasn’t even them that killed my Dad. But other humans.

It was over Dad’s backpack, during the Y2K famines. Me and Mum watched as a group of survivors literally beat the shit out of him right in front of us. We couldn’t even bury him, we were so weak from hunger. Mum died later in 2017 from an outbreak in the settlement. And as fucked as it sounds – I’m glad she died when she died.

The world wasn’t as fucked up like when Dad died. Mum died when we lived in settlements, and we could afford to bury our dead.’

I looked into Alanna’s eyes.

‘We shouldn’t leave McKenzie behind.’

‘What if he’s dead?’

I paused. We couldn’t bury him. Hauling McKenzie’s body from the Metro with Crackheads breathing down our necks would be impossible. Another pang of guilt hit me. McKenzie shouldn’t be left rotting outside – or become Crackhead food. He should be buried underneath a tree with a gravestone. Even if it’s just a small belonging of him –

‘We bury one of his belongings back home.’ I said.

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. But it’s better than nothing.’

The pitch-black Parliament station entrance stared back at me. The staircase leading into the underground was buried under a grassy hill with little marble steps peeking out occasionally.

A skeleton lay flat just outside the staircase. The skull’s jaw was locked wide-open with a kitchen knife lodged into its back spine.

‘Well, if we ’ re going down there,’ I said walking over and pulling the knife out. ‘We should get prepared.’

We clamoured down the unmoving escalators trying to avoid echoing our footsteps. My torchlight bounced wildly off torn musty posters for Craig Davids Melbourne tour, The coming Matrix Revolution movie (which was going to be released two days after 25/10. Bugger), a new rotating flip phone held by a chick in white flares, and other throwback ads of an extinct world.

It was a mess at the bottom. Fallen bricks, yellow wires dangling in puddles of water and skeletons littered every corner. Our feet softly crunching on bone let off a chain reaction of squeaks, as small black shapes darted zig-zagging across the ruins.

‘Well, no going back now. ’ I said – my words slicing through the tense, quiet atmosphere.

‘We might never get back full stop. ’ Alanna said coldly. “Let’s just be careful. I don’t want to be here any longer than we need to.”

A whirlpool of tense emotions tugged down on my stomach. The only thing to ease it would be seeing McKenzie alive again. This is one reason out of many I went into the Metro again. Going underground was scary — but it’d be even worse living with the what if of McKenzie’s current circumstance.

I needed confirmation whatever the truth.

We reached the train, still wedged into the curving tunnel when I saw a faint light. Little shimmers of warm orange fixed itself onto the train’s glass windows, illuminating them a withered brown colour.

Fire?

We turned off our torches. It was flickering all right.

‘They must’ve made a campfire,’ I whispered.

‘You think they saw our torches?’

I don’t know. They could be waiting to jump us. ’

‘Fuck!’

The thought of an ambush sent shivers bolting down my legs, an invisible force tugging them the other way. My throat clogged up with fear.

‘Fuck this shit, cunt.’ I grunted, swallowing my anxiety and forcing each step forward. I figured staying squeezed against the slim space wegied in between the train and tunnel wall would be our best bet. Bone-filled carriages acted as a natural alarm system, each crack ringing like a dinner bell. I was right.

Tinted a tanned brown through shattered windows the Tassies, sitting cross-legged on withered grey passenger seats, gnawed juicy chunks of possum meat. Orange light danced from a distant burning fire, splashing warm colour on feeble-looking children, little more than stick people. No wonder they looked half-dead. If they kept breathing in fumes and eating possums it’d kill them.

How did they even survive this long? I thought.

I felt a finger jabbing into me.

‘Platform, look.’

Alanna’s whisper was full of tremble, holding back tears, and my stomach dropped a thousand flights when I understood why.

Just by where passengers got off to get on the platform a pile of rubbish was burning. Next to it, the Crackhead’s mother cut into McKenzie’s dead arm with a sharpened bone. A red, smouldering blob dotted with cracked white bone stood for half his head. The other half had one eye dangling from its red socket and a semi- torn mouth permanently locked in fear. The Crackheads had ripped off his clothes – revealing what they done to him. Violent red lines streaked across his paling dead body, legs torn brutally open revealing savage bone rising from crimson mess. Nesusa hit me rock hard, sending my vision spiralling madly. My throat swelled up and stomach dragged against the floor. Vomiet etched at the back of my throat when a singular thought flew through my head.

“It reminds me of what the Crackheads did on 25/10.”

The first hellish hours after 25/10 when Crackheads killed everything on sight before their rage-fulled hormones crashed in. Stuff ‘03 survivors told me. Seeing entire streets coated crimson red with bodies splattered across the ground. Howling Crackheads who minutes before had been normal upstanding citizens, beating people to death with their fists.

How quickly it all happened. This must’ve been what 25/10 felt like. One moment humanity was king of the world, strolling through Melbourne acting like everything belonged to us. Next, our friend lay dead and we were hiding in the shadows.

This shouldn’t be happening anymore. Not in 2024.

I forced a gush of vomit back down, stomach acid biting into my swelled throat.

‘Hey, hey!’ A hand shook me back to reality.

‘Huh?’

‘Shhhh not so loudly.’ The black silhouette of Alanna’s finger rested on her mouth. ‘Take out your knife.’

I felt my fingers shaking violently against the knife’s plastic handle, trying not to drop it. I could only fear how loud dropping it would make.

‘You know how I survived the fires?’ Alanna whispered.

I shook my head.

‘I could run. Really fucking fast. You had to. The fire was on our ass. ’ She stared at me. Tears rolled down her eyes.

“I’m gonna run back to Parliament Station screaming” Alanna continued. “They will chase after me, but they are weak. I’ll be faster than them. Hopefully, it’ll give you time to crawl underneath the train and grab something of McKenzies.”

Nooo’ the “ ooos ” wobbling between my stumbling terrified lips.

‘‘No… we shouldn’t do this… it’s stupid.’

‘No. No, it’s not.’ I felt Alanna’s hand gripping my bicep. ‘It’s like you said. This isn’t for us, it’s for everyone back home, for our parents who died. The 2000s are over. We’ve already taken back this world from them. Now we need to take back what makes us human. Humanity can’t be animals anymore. We need to start burying our dead… we need to start acting like humans again!’

Her words blurred in my ears, juggled up with fear before forming in my head as unconnected sounds.

Then her lips were on mine. Quivering lip muscles rubbed against mine, and I felt Alanna’s tears dropping down her cheeks as I grabbed her tightly.

‘When you get McKenzie’s shit run straight up the escalator.’ She said, pulling back, both hands holding my biceps.

‘I saw some street maps of Melbourne on the columns when we looked around before. Make sure you find the NGV on the map and run towards it. We will meet there.’ Alanna said. ‘If the map ’ s correct the NGV is not too far away. Just across the Yarra River.’

‘I love you ’ I blurted out.

‘I love you too,’ Alanna said, her hand guiding my back as I crawled underneath the train. The damp smell intensified below the carriages, and gushes of cold air mingled with my tears as I slowly clawed forward.

The platform was reachable when I heard Alanna’s voice boom around me: ‘HEY FUCKERS! OVER HERE!’

A choir of insane shrieking drowned her voice. Rapid footsteps clunked down the train, and I watched as dirty feet jumped on the ground, chasing after Alanna’s dwindling voice.

Thick heartbeats exploded across my tensed body – not just for me but now for Alanna.

What if they catch her?

I physically controlled each breath, as my skin crawled red with stress. For a while, I lay fidgeting with rocks between the tracks crying. Tears strolled down my cheeks while everything became numb.

Curiosity killed the cat. Curiosity killed my friend. We didn’t need to be here. Tracking longabandoned tunnels hoping each station leads directly towards Flinders Station was stupid. But that wasn’t the reason we were here. We were here because we felt humanity retook the world.

No dangers were left after Y2K’s destructive wake – everything was our playground to explore.

Ripe for taking.

Boy, where we wrong.

I hated everyone when I rose later from below the train and climbed onto the platform. I hated our settlement for letting us venture into an unknown environment, I hated Alanna for convincing us to be down here, I hated the party for being hosted in a city under the pretext it’d be safe, and I hated our parents for dying before telling us the dangers beyond the settlement’s walls.

I hated everyone but myself. Now thinking – I was avoiding taking the blame. If I knew I even partially bore blame for McKenzie’s death, I’d gone crazy with guilt. Tightness gripped my throat and a wave of numbness flooded my brain when I stood above McKenzie. Vomit etched in my throat while everything became blurry. Next to McKenzie’s mangled corpse laid his clothes. A scattered gallery of bloodied cloth torn and drenched across the damp ground. Mud mingled blood stains homogenised McKenzie’s clothes as an amber-brown clump of fabric.

Until a silver twinkle caught my eyes.

The bright pink phone dotted with sparkles shimmered among McKenzie’s ruins. It lay on the tiled ground wedged between two thick brown leather boots, laces floating in a puddle.

I picked it up. Something poetic rang about this like the phone saw two time periods plagued with death – one during 25/10 and another in its recovery. But my brain flooded any further thoughts about this in a sea of anxiety and stress.

I barely stuffed it in my pocket when I heard a low growl rumble behind me.

A tingle ran down my spine like Chinese firecrackers as I swirled around. Dread gripped my chest as the Crackhead mother lurked behind me. I tightened my grip on the knife.

The mother stood there, withered arms and legs standing wide apart, skinny stick fingers clawing rhythmically to its twitching pink lips as spit flickered out. The mother was naked and aged.

Its skin, ghastly pale and malnourished, acted like a canvas showing 21 years of brown scars running across its tormented body as if the creature were some twisted modern art piece.

‘Awww, Awww, fawrk! Yoor the one zhat kilt lil’ Shittosser! Cunt fuwker dick nah!’ Its voice croaked, thick raspy accent tuning each word almost unintelligible. ‘Rekkun ammha jack on shawur dwead bwody arn weiner farg yoor mouth ashter I kil’ ya like yoor farkface fweind!’

With a speed that matched its frantic twitching, the mother lashed out, clutched the knife’s blade and snatched it from my hands.

Blood streamed from its palms as I backed away stunned by the thing’s strength. The mother examined the knife grinning, then swung it around slashing in my direction.

‘Lil’ fwakcunt!! Ooon zhe dai iss’ oll append twinny’-sowmting yars ’ argo, I kilt mmiii two kiddies arnd hussby witz ar fawrking ‘nife!’ The mother made stabbing motions in the air, deranged eyes still locked on me.

‘It fwelt sho gooooood!!! Mi Shildrawn wos ’ so smorl, but ‘ sere wheres milles’ of zere guts yinside ‘em!’

The mother pointed the knife at me and smiled an evil smile.

‘‘I woon-der ‘ ow mooch guts ‘ ar yinside ya, dickface!’

It advanced towards me, waving the knife madly.

The anxiety flushed out, and filling its vortex was a burst of adrenaline enhancing my senses. I dashed behind the column, feet bouncing in rhythm to the mother who was preparing to pounce.

‘Fuck you! Let me outta here!’ I remembered screaming.

The mother hissed again, bubbly spit flickering like raindrops.

A singular thought shot through the pounding primal adrenaline. Rehearsing the whole moment in my head, it probably was a bad idea. Anxiety clogged up any counterargument and threw the idea into action. Flight or fight mode.

The pink phone crashed into its eyes with a thick, heavy thud that sent the mother stumbling back. One weak hand covered its eye as the mother snarled, sagging body hunched over.

Anxiety tried tugging me back as I hurled myself at it, screaming war cries. I grabbed the creature’s knife-bearing hand tightly as we grappled each other. Weakened by old age and fear, its arms quivered.

Ancestral anger mingled with the adrenaline ignited into a bizarre superiority complex over the Crackhead. After cowardly surprising us on 25/10 and tearing humanity’s achievements into smouldering ruins, physically overwhelming the mother felt like showing it a human renaissance was coming. The mother – Tassies – were echoes of a near-extinct pestilence, a bump in humanity’s domination over Earth.

They once killed us, stalked us, and forced us into hiding, but in the end, humanity would bury Crackheads alongside the sabre-tooth tiger and other long-gone hunters of mankind.

It was mankind’s turn to shine again.

‘GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY CITY!’ I screamed.

An arrow drilled through its neck. The crackhead’s head slapped against the wet concrete with a sickening crunch.

Two young men wearing outdoor gear decorated with utility belts stood mouth-wide open, eyes locked on the dead mother. One stood with his feet divided between the train door and platform, knees bent, face creased with dirt that ran like little crumbs through his thin brown moustache. His gut-soaked army knife shimmered against the flames, orange reflection mingling with fresh crimson blood drolling down.

The other man — a lanky, wide-eyed Indian, shocked face toned by shadows cast from his wide-brim military bucket – held a crude crossbow pointed straight where the creature stood.

The Indian man ’ s face twisted up suddenly, bearing white teeth as his eyes drew to mine.

‘Woah,’ He said. ‘You alright?’

‘YOU’RE ALIVE!’ Alanna rocketed down the carriage, swinging herself through the train door and into my arms.

‘What the fuck happened?’ I sputtered out confused.

‘I got lucky.” Alanna spoke in a weary, relieved voice as if the worst had already passed. Head buried in my chest, her words mingled with the hyper-intense booming of my heart trying to break outta my chest.

‘I ran out of the station… and these guys were on patrol from the NGV.’

Heard her screaming.’ The Indian said slowly. He swung his crossbow over his shoulder and trudged towards me. ‘Like she said. We had night shift. City is dead quiet around now, so she gave us quite the jump when her voice bounced off the fucking buildings.’

The other man stood bent motionlessly, heavy dirt-etched hands resting on his knee. He looked like a marathon runner after the big race.

‘Tassies, man. ’ The other guy eventually said. ‘Gave me a PTSD attack. Haven’t seen Crackheads in fucking years… and then all of a sudden there were like 10 of them chasing your girl over here. She basically ran right into us. ’

‘Yeah, not the first time I had to run for my life,’ Alanna said pulling out of my arms. McKenzie’s mangled body drained our brief excitement as Alanna stared glumly at his remains.

‘Oh hell, I’m sorry. ’ The Indian said softly. ‘I don’t even fucking know if we can even bury him here. He’s too…’

‘Ripped apart.’ The other man said before the Indians gave him a nasty look.

‘No… no it’s okay.’ A pulse began to throb in Alanna’s voice as she stared into my eyes sadly. ‘You… you got something of McKenzies, right? Something to take home and bury?’

I stepped over the dead mother, its marble eyes staring blankly at the ceiling underneath a pool of blood where the phone sat. Its silvery sparkles either had fallen off on impact or were coated in red gore when I picked it up. Long, crimson blood streaks ran down my shirt when I wiped it clean.

‘This, this will be buried.’ The phone rested on my trembling hands. ‘This was the last thing we gave McKenzie.’

Both patrolmen guided us to the NGV that stood like a lighthouse – campfires inside illuminating its boxed silhouette against towering skyscrapers turned obsidian black from midnight darkness.

Smoke lazily danced from pit fires in iron bins, scrapping against the gallery’s high ceilings as we walked in. People zig-zagged like tightroppers around tent stalls fuming with spits rotating brown crispy game. Slint-eyed guards wearing mismatched military and civilian gear toned a homogeneous dirt colour from grime, nodded at our patrol men as they filtered back into the crowd. Alcohol bottles littered the ground alongside nibbled animal bones, crunching underneath heavy booted feet from people swarming us with questions.

‘Where you from?’

‘You guys walk or drive here.’

‘You’re from Yea, right? Think our blokes traded with your blokes for wool last year. ’

‘You should come to the coastline. We got so much fish, and some of our cooks were chiefs before 25/10. The food is really good back home.’

When our newbie card expired and everyone ’ s interests turned back to partying, me and Alanna sat watching the event above from an indoor balcony. Drunk teenagers or armed guards passed us, venturing into long snaking exhibit rooms, but other than them it was just us.

I felt worse than being in the sewers.

In the sewers, we shoved remorse deep in the back of our heads, focusing purely on survival. The second we were safe, the floodgates opened and rage, grief, loss exploded through our heads, clouding us with guilt for McKenzie’s death. Hugging each other tight, we sat drowning in thoughts, replaying what happened over and over again in our tormented heads.

‘It’s wired.’ I finally said breaking the silence. ‘I don’t remember mourning my Dad like this.’

‘Yea, same. ’ Alanna said softly. ‘When Mum died we just kept running.’

I pulled out the flip phone from my pocket, fingers tracing its hard cold metal exterior.

‘You think we ’ re gonna get any closure from this?’ I said.

I have no idea how grief works. I don’t even really think I’ve ever mourned before. Everyone just dies… and I guess at one point I just got used to it.’

‘Huh. Guess this is some sort of fucked up luxury.’ Hands cushioning my head I laid down, eyes locked on the creaking grey roof. ‘To be safe enough to grieve.’

‘To be safe enough to be human again.’ Alanna’s arms and feet wrapped around me, head buried in my chest sore with stress. Her wet tears soaked my shirt, creating moist spots tingling my skin.

We lay there for a long time.

THE SPARK LIT THE FLAME

“That brother of yours, ” the Boss said, “He’s talking about going to the cops. ”

“About what?” I asked, though I had a pretty good idea.

“That guy that got killed. The one the hoist fell on, down at the new steel mill.” Vinnie Rizzo was a good Boss to work for. I ran the numbers for him down in the North End.

The money was good and the Boss was happy, even if Johnny Palumbo complained I wasn’t pushing enough marks his way; I never liked his loan-sharking on my turf. The people there worked hard and a little gamble is one thing, misery is another. The Boss understood and you owe somebody for that kind of support.

“My boys talking to the cops… it makes me nervous, you know?” Vinnie Rizzo added, but it was hardly necessary. I knew; Joey should have known it too, but the case bothered the Hell out of him. Nobody knew the guy ’ s name, or anything about him; nobody cared but Joey, of course. I told the Boss I’d talk to him and get him to back down.

“Make sure you do,” Don Rizzo said, looking me straight in the eye. “Be terrible if something happened to your brother, you know?” They say the mob is like a family – you can’t just walk away from it. But you can’t walk away from your blood family either. The Boss didn’t say it, but there it was – a test of loyalty.

I knew Joey would be where he always was at that time of day; in the offices of the Mutuale. It was only a few blocks away, near the edges of the Dogan. Decent people avoided the streets that made up the Dogan like they’d avoid an open sewer, or the muck-heap behind a slaughterhouse. It was a bleak, dilapidated, slum, full of buildings thrown up on the cheap, when the railways first came to Durrand. The people with money had bought up all the buildings there, divided the rooms in half and called each section an apartment. Even worse were the dirty boarding houses, where 5 or 6 men crowded into an 8’ by 10’ room.

They tore the Dogan down for factories during the war, but then it was still crowded.

The lodgings were cheap, compared to anywhere decent, but dear enough when you were paid half or less of what a Canadian guy earned. At first, the landlords rented them out to the Irish. When the micks got two bits to rub together, and started to move South to Little Limerick, they rented the dumps to the Italians; but the name for the neighbourhood stuck.

The Boss did business in the back of a grocery store, at the corner of Rahab Street and Railway Avenue; Joey’s office was a couple of blocks away. The Mutuale was right over Spitale’s tailor shop. There was a line of old, grey, men waiting on the narrow stairs, pretty typical for a Wednesday. I squeezed past, repeating ‘Scusi, signor’ each time I trod on a foot.

As I reached the top, the door opened and one of the old guys came out. I cut in, quickly, with a ‘Mi perdoni’ and locked the door behind me.

I tried to reason with him, but Joey was in no mood to be reasonable.

“Frank,” he said, “You see those old guys out there? You know how it was, right?

“Every year the Padrone brought guys over to work on the roads, to work on the railways, to do all the carrying and lifting and digging in the country. For getting them work they paid him back half what they earned.”

“Yeah, I know Joey. The old-timers got royally screwed,” I answered.

“Damn right they did!” said Joey. “And part of that money was supposed to go into a pension, so if they got hurt, if they got too old, they’d have a little something. Am I right?”

“Yeah, I heard that, too. You’re right, Joey.”

“But DeSantis, Cadrone, all those Padroni, what did they do? They pocketed the money, Frank. Then, when the papers decided there were too many Italians in Canada, what happened?”

“The government closed it down,” I answered.

“They closed it down. Poof! There was nobody for them to turn to. Ok, most of those guys were still young enough and healthy enough to work, then, but that’s 15 years ago, Frankie! Now they’re old men, worn out men. Nobody wants to hire a 60 year old guy who can’t even speak the language!!”

“Right, right,” I said, hoping he’d calm down.

“So they come here once a week. It’s the same thing, every Wednesday. ‘Can you help me find work, Padrone?’ ‘I need a job, Padrone. Just a little job to pay the rent.’ What can I tell them guys, Frankie?”

I knew he was upset. Joey’s smarter than me; he speaks better than me. When he gets upset, he starts making those grammar mistakes that got his knuckles rapped by Sister Adrian’s ruler, back at St Leonard’s.

“What am I gonna tell them? Nothing. There’s nothing to tell them; they know the score, but they need their dignity. They can’t ask for a handout, so they ask for a job.” It was true, but I hoped that the men waiting on the stairs couldn’t hear Joey’s voice; he was nearly shouting, now.

“So, I give them a dollar. Enough to pay the rent for another week, on a shit-hole in the Dogan. I tell them, ‘Your kids have all grown up. Find a smaller place for you and the Mugghiere.’ What else can I do?” Joey asked. I knew, if it wasn’t for the money that the Mutuale collected and handed out, most of those old men and their wives couldn’t even afford a place in the Dogan.

“What are you gonna do, Joey? Join the anarchici? Throw some bombs?” I asked.

“Dammit, Frankie! I might as well,” said Joey. “At least they do something.” He was breathing heavily and I went and got some water from the cooler for him.

“Somebody gotta put some pressure on the police, Frankie,” he said. “That poor guy came here and somebody gave him a number, timed him by a number, paid him by a number; he was nothing more to them than one of the numbered pieces of machinery. He wasn’t a person to any of them. And now, they’ll drop him in a grave with a number, not even a priest to say a

Mass for him.” He was right, and I knew it, but him being right was just making this harder for me.

“Joey, Joey. Listen, all right?” I said. “Don Rizzo puts a lot of money into the Mutuale, don’t he? Not just from his grocery, neither; you know where the money comes from. We’re both men of the World, Joey.”

“Nothing comes without strings,” Joey said. He sounded tired.

“You ever heard of anything that comes without strings?” I replied. “Look, the Don is asking –asking, not telling – for you to leave it alone. It makes him nervous if you talk to the cops. It makes our friends nervous. ” Joey sighed and looked out of the window. You could see over the mills and factories toward Lake Macassa, and the bigger lake beyond it. I could tell he was screwing himself up to say no.

“You know what?” I said, suddenly getting an idea. “Send Ma. Nobody will get upset if Ma asks the cops to do a proper investigation. We could even get a petition going, get everybody to sign it.” Joey looked over at me; he hesitated.

“Ma thinks it’s terrible too,” Joey said. I could see him turning my idea over in his head. “Maybe that could work.”

“Sure it could,” I told him. “You get on that. Get the petition printed up, and I’ll make sure the copies get put around. The boys will get the signatures.” I headed for the door, picking up my hat. I pulled a roll of bills out of my pocket and tossed it on his desk, tilting my head toward the line of old guys outside.

“Give the old-timers a little bonus.”

“You tell Vinnie Rizzo I won’t talk to no one, ” Joey said. I nodded and went back out, down the crowded stairs, assuring each of them that the Padrone would have a little something extra for them, this week. As I walked down Nelson Street I hoped the problem would blow over. Who knew, maybe the police would do a proper job, for once.

The Boss was happy enough with the compromise. He never liked permanent solutions. He’d

deal with problems, if he had to, but his organisation wasn’t like the Carravaggios across the border in Amsterdam. They didn’t call Don Benito Carravaggio ‘The Undertaker’ for nothing, and it had nothing to do with his legit business. It was a rare week the police down at the Falls didn’t fish a body out of the river, another ‘tragic accident’; it was purely a coincidence that the ‘tragic accidents’ all happened to Italians.

“He’s a good man, your brother, but stubborn,” the Boss told me. Vesha Tovin, his wife, nodded. It was never discussed, but everybody knew she made all the decisions; the Boss had the connections, the contacts, and remembered the details, but she was the real brains. She had eyes like a rattlesnake, they gave away nothing. You never knew exactly what Vesha was thinking. I hoped she’d be as pleased as her husband.

Joe got the petitions printed up, and I had the runners take them to every boardinghouse, store and gathering spot in the Dogan and Little Racalmuto. There must have been about 1,000 people who signed it, pretty much every Italian adult in Durrand. Ma took the petitions off to see Chief Whitley, and I expected he’d at least make the proper noises about doing a thorough search; I thought the whole thing was behind us. I was unprepared when Joey turned up at Sardo’s Pool-Hall, where I did business.

“The son-of-a-bitch showed her the door!” Joey said. “He didn’t even give her the time of day. He just said the police were very busy, and they didn’t have the time to track down every dead Dago’s family.”

“What a bastard,” I said.

“Mom’s gone down to Madonna del Monte Church,” Joey continued. “She wants to ask the priest to do something.”

“Well, that might…” I started to say.

“No it won’t, Frankie. It damn-well won’t do anything. And you know it too,” Joey said. I nodded and kept my mouth shut; he was right. If the law was going to ignore a petition which everyone in the community had signed, it was almost certainly because someone – the rich guys who ran everything, the factory owners, or the politicians they had by the short hairs –didn’t want the matter looked into.

“So, what good will it do if you get involved, Joey?” I asked him. I had to stop him from sticking his neck out too far. “If they won’t listen to the public, and they won’t listen to the Church, then they’re going to listen to you?” That slowed him down a little. He sat down at the counter.

I watched him play with the cigar lighter; he kept pushing down on the handle, watching the spark fly across the gap to light the fuel.

“I’ve got to do something, Frankie,” he said after a couple of minutes. “If we don’t do something, then the bastards win again.” I went over and sat beside him. I moved the cigar lighter away from him.

“The bastards always win, Joey. Always,” I said. “Why do you think people come to the Mutuale for help? Why do you think they turn to Don Rizzo for help? The system don’t work for guys like us. ” He didn’t say anything for a moment.

“They don’t like us, here. They’re never gonna like us, until someone comes along they like even less. Just like they hated the Irish until us Italians got here, and they hated the Germans until the Irish got here,” I told him. “That’s how this country works, Joey. They didn’t shut down immigration from Italia because they like us. They don’t want us around.”

I couldn’t decide if his silence was brooding, or if I was getting through to him. After a while, Joey got up and walked out. Johnny Palumbo was behind the counter; he’d been listening. He pulled a beer out of the icebox for himself and one for me, sliding it down the counter, then sauntering after it.

“He’s gonna go to the cops, ” he said. It wasn’t a condemnation, just a fact. He’d heard what Joey said, too. He knew Joey was right, but Johnny Palumbo and Vesha Tovin and the others took a really dim view of talking to the cops for any reason.

“Johnny,” I said, even though I doubted that stubborn hood would listen, “It’s one thing he’s upset about; just one thing he’s gonna talk about.” Johnny leaned across the counter; his mouth was thinner than normal.

“Once a guy starts talking to the cops, who knows where it ends up, ” Johnny said. “One thing leads to another, and pretty soon he’s running his mouth.”

“Not Joey,” I said. “Besides, how much does he know? He’s not really part of the organisation.”

“Frankie, c ’ mon, ” said Johnny. “He knows names. He knows I got loans, he knows you got numbers, he knows Riccaso runs the hookers. Don’t try to tell me he don’t know about the Don’s business; half the old coots that line up at the Mutuale on Wednesdays cooked alky for the Don, back in the day.” It must have shown on my face that he was right.

“He knows too much, Frankie. He’s your brother and all, but he knows too much.”

Palumbo downed his beer and went over to shoot another game of pool. The kid working the counter looked at me nervously as he picked up the empty bottle; he’d heard a bunch of things it would be better he hadn’t, and he knew it.

I reached over and pushed the lever down on the cigar lighter; the spark lit the flame, just like it always does. I left, got drunk, and thought about which family I owed more.

About a week later I saw Johnny Palumbo again. He was wearing a black silk suit, with a black fedora; with that nose of his, he reminded me of nothing so much as a crow. He landed in the seat opposite me and picked up a pile of slips from the table, idly flipping through them.

“You didn’t hear it from me, you know?” It took me a second to guess what he meant.

“When?” I asked, but he just dropped the slips, spread his hands wide and shrugged. I got up and walked to the door, as fast as I could. “Don’t touch nothing,” I told the kid behind the counter, though I knew he wouldn’t.

“It won’t do no good, Frankie,” Johnny said, behind me. “Some things can’t be changed.”

“What if it was your brother?” I shot back, but I didn’t wait to hear his answer. Johnny Palumbo would have sold his own mother, and bragged about it. I hurried over to see the Boss.

But Don Rizzo wasn’t there. He was out of town on business; when I went in the back, I found

Vesha Tovin there, talking to Tony Rosa and Carmine Pugliesse. I asked when the Boss would be back.

“He won’t change his mind, Frankie,” Tovin told me. “Sometimes, in business, people got to make hard decisions. That one ’ s been made.” I looked into her hard eyes and knew that there was no point saying any more.

“Some guys come down from Amsterdam to take care of things,” Rosa added. “The Don didn’t want you holding no grudge against nobody . ” If it was one of Carravaggio’s goons, they’d make it look like an accident. At least I wouldn’t have to explain to my nieces and nephews why Joey was shot.

I went over to the Mutuale. It was getting late, but it was another Wednesday, and I knew Joey would still be there. The last couple of old guys were just leaving as I climbed up the stairs. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do, or say; what do you say when you know someone is going to die, but they don’t?

So we talked about Ma, about Despie and the kids, about how the Tigers were going to do now Jesse Spring replaced Forbes in goal; just the sort of stuff brothers talk about when they get together. It was getting late when Joey stood up.

“Look at the time! I got to get home; Despinoza will be mad,” he said. He picked up his crutches and I watched him move to the door.

“I don’t know why you got a second floor office, Joey,” I said. “You’d think a guy that had polio wouldn’t want to climb stairs two, three times a day.” He laughed and said something, but for the life of me, I can’t remember his last words; I was too busy looking out the window. Down Nelson street, to the left, I could see a car parked under the streetlight about a block away, a big McLaughlin, a Master Six, or something like it. There were two guys leaning against it.

“You going straight home?” I asked. “I’ll lock up, and come round later.” Joey went down the stairs; I listened to his right foot dragging on each step. I heard the door open, and I watched his hat turn right as he went down the street. The two goons jumped into the McLaughlin.

“Don’t look behind you, Joey,” I whispered. “Don’t make it worse. ” I heard the car accelerating; there was no sound of brakes as it went round the corner onto Mary Street, just a dull sound of something hitting the metal, and the thump as the tires bounced over it.

I locked the door and hurried after him, but the spark was already out when I got there. For some reason, all I could think about was that poor guy from the mills that got crushed by the hoist.

ADONIS

CHULLO

MANNEQUIN

SEXWORLD

SEXWORLD 2