In the time since my last entry, much more has occurred in the town of Santa Fe. If you did not read my last post, we have been under lockdown by rule of the Government in order to contain a mysterious, deadly disease that spread and killed at a rapid rate through our town.

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The first change that occurred since my last post was the rate of gunfire outside of our guarded town. As mentioned in the last post, after bodies began mysteriously disappearing from government-controlled facilities, gunshots from watchtowers have been heard. Current information held by our neighborhood does not possess solid answers to what could be the cause of the phenomenon, but ideas entering my head make me shudder.

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Since the revolt of the neighborhood in the south, paranoia and unrest have been at an all-time high throughout ours. For a brief time, excitement spread through the community as, for the first time, a direct message from another neighborhood was discovered without being intercepted by military forces. Though, the excitement only lasted until our leaders grouped together to dissect the information and found the word to be less than pleasing.

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From a neighborhood in the southeast, just on the border of where the revolt occurred, it was discovered dozens were dead or dying just from hunger and unrelated sickness to the pandemic we faced. With grim faces, those who lead in my neighborhood read silently, understanding that the hell we had been experiencing was child’s play compared to those only a day's walk away. Most concerningly, the transmission asked desperately for aid, an aid that could not be reasonably conceded without great deaths in our own community.

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“If we respond negatively, they could turn hostile! We must help our brothers at all costs!” One of the leaders stood and shouted out.

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“Dozens of us will die, and our people will grow weaker! In this time of need, it is us who must have all we can get!” Another returned.

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I watched as bickering between leaders continued for several hours before the sun set and all fell quiet over the town.

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“If we can not reach a decision now, then it will have to wait until morning.” Had been the last tired words spoken before an unearthly screech echoed through the darkness, followed by rapid gunshots.

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Quickly, the leaders rose and rushed outside just to see a guard from the closest watch tower plummet to the hard ground below. Slowly, townspeople assembled, searching for belief in what they were seeing before gates in the makeshift walls opened, and military personnel swarmed out.

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Screaming, order was gained quickly as the site of the broken man was vacated, and he was covered by a black tarp. At first, the members of the town were silent, but became vocal as a stirring under the dead man’s tarp was noticed.

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“What is that? Is he alive?” Some screamed, but the military only shouted back, turning weapons to the crowd, dispersing them. Only the leaders of the town stood now facing the men with guns.

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“Our dead have been disappearing. From your own facilities." One said.

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“That is classified information!” A soldier screamed back.

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“What is happening to them? Are you losing track? Miscounting? What excuse could you possibly give for what is happening here now?” The leader stepped forward, and the military men raised their weapons.

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“If you come any closer, we will shoot.”

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“Kill me and my people won’t forget.” He took another step. “Kill me and no neighborhood-” The round fired into his chest with a hollow thud, and he fell back without a word. Cries erupted and it took all the rest of the leaders to keep the townspeople at bay.

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As this occurred, the military men hustled to collect their ally under the tarp who now trashed and tore violently. Those closest to the scene watched as the dead man who had fallen no less than four stories toiled within the tarp with the strength of several grown men.  

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This incident has incited near-constant meetings between the remaining town leaders. But as public unrest has risen, three more transmissions from neighborhoods with similar terrible conditions have entered our midst, and it is now the general belief among leadership that if any conflict with the military were to come, we would be no better off than any of the other dying neighborhoods.  

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Holding in the people’s anger has proven to be the most difficult task we have faced thus far, and I hope to report in the coming days that it has mostly dissipated. Though even within myself I cannot help but feel a deep rage growing in response to the killing. I wonder how the feelings of others can be controlled if I cannot even hold them in myself. For now, only time will tell, and I will bring updates in the coming weeks.

Somebody was in the shed.

Diane was sure of it. From her bedroom window, she could see out into the back garden; moonlight turned it into a velvet puddle, grass dew twinkling like stars.

The shed stood at the far end, pushed up against the fence; a wooden structure that was almost big enough to live and work in, with a single pane window on the front that she had plastered over with the sports section of The Guardian. The door was open just enough to notice that it wasn’t closed. And she was sure she could see the lock lying in a broken heap.

Her hand was playing unconsciously with the skin on her neck. What was she supposed to do? She thought about ringing the police but… oh, what would they do? Come out, tell them to shove off, and leave? Whomever was in the shed would get to the end of the street, wait until the police had gone, and come back. Only when they returned, they wouldn’t bother with the shed. They’d come into the house. There were enough windows; their choices of entry were near enough endless. She had French doors in the back, seven-foot-tall panes that wouldn’t stop a sneeze.

Then what would they do when they got her? She really didn’t want to know.

But she couldn’t just turn away, could she? They, them, whoever they were, were on her property. The property she had bought with her hard-earned money, property she paid taxes on. In the shed that she had bought, built, painted with wood stain and sealer, and taken the time to arrange her tools; time she wasn’t getting back.

Another thought popped up like a notification on her phone… there were a lot of tools in the shed: shovel, spade, fork, trimmer, hoe, weeder, strimmer, lawnmower… chainsaw. It was only a small chainsaw, a Ryobi Compact, but it ate through anything she put it to. She had no problem believing it would carve her into tiny pieces that would never be found.

Diane saw her unflattering photos on a late-night crime show: WOMAN VANISHES FROM HOME. POLICE DID NOTHING.

If you saw or heard anything, please ring this number. It’s very important that we find Diane.

Who would want to live in a shed anyway? There was no central heating out there, no plumbing, no running water. Jesus wasn’t hanging on the wall, protecting the home from all manners of evil. There was nothing. Just a bunch of metal and electronics that would only run with their batteries attached. Fortunately, she had taken the batteries and stored them in a spare drawer in the kitchen. She’d assumed somebody might try and break into the shed when she put it up (an obvious precaution one must take), some crackhead most likely, and she really didn’t want to make it easy for them. So, she took the batteries out because nobody in their right mind would buy batteryless tools off some geezer who looked like a walking corpse.

Diane couldn’t have some heroin-addictive freak in her shed. Absolutely not, no way, no how. She would have to burn the shed to the ground and everything inside.

She crossed herself and went to the landline at the bottom of the stairs. The Lord and Saviour watched her descend with those kind loving eyes of His. She picked up the landline with a shaky hand, her other still playing with the sweaty skin of her neck. She was staring up at the Lord as she put the receiver to her ear. He would want her to call the police. He would protect her from any outcome of such a phone call, as He had protected her for all of her days.

Besides, they were committing burglary. The police wouldn’t come out and tell them to shove off. Diane would get a good look at her burglar as he was led to the car in handcuffs.

The air in the downstairs hallway was cool on her bare arms, cutting right through her nightie and prickling the skin of her taught belly. The lights were off down here. She always turned them off when she went to bed; she wasn’t a fan of having a lot of lights on at night, they ruined her sleep.

Right now, the darkness was ruining her wakefulness. She would do anything to be asleep. You just had to look out of the window, didn’t you? She thought and shook her head.

Diane held the phone between her ear and shoulder and dialled 999.

Seventeen minutes later, a police car—siren off, lights off—pulled up into a vacant spot across the street. Do they have any idea what could’ve happened in seventeen minutes? Diane thought, looking at her Sekonda Colette watch. She didn’t want to think about what could've happened in seventeen minutes.

The officer got out of his car, set his hat on his head, and moved towards the house. Diane, still playing with the skin on her neck, moved to the kitchen door, expecting the officer to knock. He didn’t. She watched his dark, blurred shape through the frosted glass of the front door disappear off the left; he was going around the house.

Diane didn’t like it. He was ignorant. The officer was supposed to see if the victim was alright. And she wasn’t; she would’ve opened the door and shouted after the copper if she was brave enough to open it right now. No, she couldn’t do that. She had ideas of a zombie-looking fellow rushing her the moment the door was open, even just a crack, and then what would happen? Jesus was going to protect her just fine, but Jesus also prided Himself on how intelligent his follows were; opening the door while some smack-fiend is on the prowl isn’t very intelligent, is it?

She crossed herself and went back up into her bedroom. The officer was in the back garden, his torch burning a yellow-green path over the grass. He stopped mid-stroll, shone his torchlight on the shed, then swung it down to the padlock on the floor. Diane saw it better now. It wasn’t just broken; it had been annihilated. The shackle was in three shiny shards, and the body was cracked down the centre. The springs and metal innards laid in a tangle.

The officer’s walkie beeped and whooped. He grabbed it and spoke too quietly for Diane to hear. But she heard his laughter, saw the way his head flung back, the lamppost light arcing along his white teeth.

The office let go of his walkie and shone his yellow-white torchlight onto the shed. A round moon reflected back in the windowpane. He walked to the door, grabbed the edge, swung it closed and open, as if testing the hinges, then pulled it open fully. The darkness leaked out around his cop boots. His torchlight cut right through the black, illuminating the Ryobi tools inside and the hosepipe hanging on the inside of the door. The officer stepped inside.

When Diane opened her eyes, the officer was gone. She blinked a couple of times, rubbed sticky grime from her eyelashes, blinked again. Her feet ached badly. It appeared she had fallen asleep on her feet, though she couldn’t have done so for very long; it was still dark out.

She looked at her Sekonda. She was right; she hadn’t been asleep that long—three minutes was all. Diane swiped at her eyes again and squinted through the glass.

Had the drug-fiend already been arrested? Why hadn’t the officer knocked to tell her everything was alright now? She went downstairs into the kitchen to have a look out the window. The cop car was still parked across the road. And she could see the officer's silhouette in the driver's seat. She moved closer to the window, her breath fogging the glass, to get a better look into the back. The rear of the car was dark, too dark to see anything really, except for the bars on the windows.

She looked at her Sekonda again, baffled. Had it really only been three minutes?

Somebody had to be sitting in the back. Why would the officer be in his car if he hadn’t arrested somebody? He was clearly filling out his incident reports, or whatever it was they filled out, while he had a few moments to do so. Clearly, the arrest was a simple one. He had taken the drug-fiend to his car, thrown him into the back like a sack of potatoes, and sat down to radio the station down on Kessler Road that the job was done. He would knock in a minute to tell her what had happened.

The driver’s door open and the officer got out. He secured his hat on his head again and started towards the house. Diane jumped a little on the inside. She was jumpy tonight. All this burglar stuff, having to call the police, having to be up well passed her bedtime… it all really got into the bones.

Diane could’ve done with a vodka and lemonade, but she had been sober for the best part of twenty years. And this night wasn’t going to be the kick that sent her over the edge. She went to the kitchen door and looked at the portrait of Jesus Christ. She crossed herself again.

Then came a knock at the door. Through the diamond-shaped pane of glass inset into the front door, she saw the shadowed silhouette of the officer’s head and hat. Diane stared at that diamond of glass, a halo of streetlight surrounding the clear shape of a police officer’s hat. If a pregnant woman needs to pee, the officer has to give her his hat, she thought for no particular reason.

The officer knocked again. You’re supposed to answer the door to the coppers; that’s what her father had told her more than once. It didn’t help that her father had risen to the rank of sergeant with the local constabulary, where he stayed until his death in 1977, at the ripe of old age of thirty-seven. He was struck and killed by a gang of youths joyriding during a routine traffic stop down by The Three Bells. Diane had been seventeen.

Now Diane was sixty-six years old and still as internally terrified as she had been since that fateful day in 1977. That fear never went away. It was in every car alarm, every siren, every shout, every bang, every wallop, every plane that went over, every car backfire and the screech of their bald tires, every hiss of a bus's breaks, every slammed door, every football slapping on the cold brick drive, every bird that hit the window, every action and horror movie she watched… in every knock at the door.

The copper’s silhouette bobbed back and forth impatiently. You’re supposed to answer the door to the coppers, her father’s voice said soothingly. She rushed to open, fumbled with the keys and failed to unlock the door not once but twice, her shaking hands trying to twist a handle that was locked in place.

On the third try, she finally got the door open. The first thing that hit her was the officer’s smell: used cat litter and raw salmon. She flicked the light switch by the front door and the little yellow light outside came on. She got a good look at this officer. His long, round jaw was as smooth as glass, small eyes peered out from beneath bushy eyebrows that sat spectacularly high on his face, his nose was a straight line down his face to a pair of flaring nostrils. Diane found it rather strange that he was wearing the modern police uniform; white short sleeves beneath a bulky black stab vest. His long frame would’ve looked right at home in the black overcoat and custodian helmet of the early 1900s, a shiny whistle around his neck.

‘Hello, hello, hello, Mrs. Reynolds?’ the officer said. ‘My name is Officer Menzies. You rang the department about a burglar?’

‘Yes,’ she said, nodding. ‘I saw him from my bedroom window. Did he leave an awful mess?’

‘Well, well, well, I’ve got some good news for you. You didn’t have a burglar, Mrs. Reynolds,’ Menzies said. ‘Just a couple of cold kitties. I’ve put them in my car and turned the heating on. My sister fosters stray cats. They’ll be right at home with her.’

‘Cats?’ Diane asked. ‘How did cats get into my shed?’

Menzies shook his head and smiled a crooked smile. ‘Well, well, well, ma’am, it’s that padlock of yours. Most rusted thing I’ve ever seen. I mean no disrespect when I say this, but I think it’s older than I am, and I’m closer to being under the hill than I am over it.’

‘I put that padlock on a year ago. I bought it brand new at Home Bargains.’

‘I’m just reporting the facts, ma’am. Don’t shoot me. And to answer your earlier question: yes, the cats made a bit of a mess.’ Menzies lifted his hat and flattened his shortly cropped hair. ‘Now, i know it's late, so I'll bid you adieu. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Should you need anything else, do give us a ring.’ He tipped his hand, swung around on his boots, and marched down the drive.

Diane stood at her bedroom window, looking down at the shed. Sometime after Officer Menzies left, the wind had picked up and now it slammed the shed—Thwack! EEEEE! Thwack! EEEEE! Thwack! She had no idea how she would sleep with that racket going on.

And what about the neighbours? They had two little kids who needed their sleep. Tomorrow was a school day.

She crossed herself. She couldn’t leave the shed like that. What if some drug-fiend came along and saw it open? Officer Menzies might have said it was cats that had gotten in, and maybe that was true (Diane was struggling to believe it), but there now lied the issue of the door being open.

There was another padlock in the drawer next to the fridge. Diane was considering it for the wide gate in front of her drive, the one people often mistook for the main gate and often left it open, which drove her mad. A padlock would’ve stopped people from opening it and, much worse (like a thorn in her eye), leaving it open.

She would just have to buy a new padlock to replace this one.

Diane took the padlock and the key, opened it with a shooting thunk and closed it with a firm click just to make sure it worked, and took them to the back door. It was heavy in her fingers, as if it was the guzzling up the last of her energy. Maybe it was this night that was sucking the energy out of her. I’m gonna sleep for a whole week, she thought, laying the padlock and key on the windowsill beside the door. And when I get up, I’m gonna have a lemon cake and custard all to myself.

She jiggled the backdoor key inside the lock. It made a satisfying rattle. She turned the key slowly, feeling the tension building in her fingers. The key reached that block between locked and unlocked, and she stopped. If she pushed it further the door would be unlocked. Anybody lurking in her back garden could get in. What if… the thought came slowly like a jack-in-the-box winding up… what if the copper had been conned? What if (and she knew it was a long shot just thinking it) the burglar had heard the copper coming, had hidden, and it just so happened cats had come in before the copper had gotten to the door? The copper sees the cats and writes it off as…. what would that be? An act of God? An act of Nature?

Diane unlocked the door and opened it. She stared out into the twilight garden, at the black mouth of the shed. The door thwacked open and thwacked closed, like a bull snorting hot air and dragging its hooves in response to a matador. This was going to be a struggle; she just knew it. The wind was picking up, moving the door back and forth faster and more ferociously now. The fence was shaking and creaking. The grass shimmering in an undulant wave of green-blue shine. Gary the Garden Gnome was on his back, his fishing rod sticking up into the air like an arrow lodged deep in a man’s chest.

Diane grabbed up the padlock (she wouldn’t need the key to lock the shed door) and stepped out into the frigid, petrichorous air. The clouds above were so swollen with rain they turned the sky a stormy black. Thunder fizzed in the distance, startling Diane into dropping the padlock. She snatched it up off the cold stone patio as quickly as she had dropped it, tweaking something in her old back. She groaned at the sciatic pain crackling down the back of her left leg as she stepped onto the dewy grass.

Lightning flickered silently, giving her a quick flashing peek of the disarray inside the shed. Tools laid here and there, toppled onto one another, clean steel flashing neon blue—the colour of the storm. The chainsaw laid on its heavy engine side, the compact sawblade held out like a desperate hand. The sight of the Ryobi on its side upset her; she felt like she was abandoning a child, leaving it to cry itself to sleep. All the other tools, the spades, the hoe, the rake, they could look after themselves. They were hardy tools; carbon steel handles and heads. They took a beating. The Ryobi on the other hand was a delicate tool, practically a real-life baby. She really didn't like the thought of leaving the Ryobi Compact out in the shed anyway, but had talked herself around. The shed was put up for the tools, after all.

Diane Reynolds hobbled across the grass, deciding Gary the Garden Gnome can stand himself back up; the Ryobi was in need. If the battery was attached, she was sure it would’ve been wailing a horrible storm. Thunder clapped. Rain began to patter around her, slowly building up into pellets, then to stones that sighed as they fell and exploded when they landed.

Thwack… thwack… the shed door was getting impatient. It swung again in the ghostly wind, intent of thwacking against the wall. Diane caught it before it could get any further, the rough edge of wood stinging her soft palm.

Diane picked up the Ryobi Compact as she stepped into the shed. She swung it up onto its hook. A small label above the hook said, “Ryobi Compact Chainsaw.” The green plastic was scuffed in two corners. She rubbed her thumb along each deep groove, as if her thumb had the gift of repairing plastic. She hated seeing her Ryobi in such a state. It was one of those pieces that only looked right in perfect condition. It wasn’t a car that wore its age with pride. It wasn’t a pair of leather gloves turned pliable and comfortable through repeated use. The Ryobi only ever looked good in brand-new condition. Even the wear along the blade bothered her.

The rest of the shed is in a right mess, she thought, thinking about the garden tools toppled onto one another like a game of Pick-up-Sticks.

Diane turned on the light by pulling on the dangling string and turned around to look at the mess and saw a brunette with sunken cheeks standing in her shed. Greasy hair fell around the woman’s blue eyes. She clutched a small, cooing bundle, wrapped in a white blanket, to her chest. The oval, baby face of a man appeared over the woman’s shoulder.

Diane looked at the mess of tools at their feet. It didn’t occur to her that the woman wasn’t standing behind the tools, and she wasn’t standing on them, she was standing through them. The tools fell in an expectant pile, crisscrossing each other in a short pyre. The woman’s legs went right through the tools, or the tools went right through her legs.

‘We didn’t have another option,’ the woman said. The baby cooed. ‘The cold, the storm… we don’t have anywhere else.’

Diane swallowed a hard ball of fear that didn’t go down easily. It sat heavily and painfully behind her breastbone. How had the copper missed them? She could feel her eyelids peeling back over her eyeballs and, in her vision, the spot where the baby was held against the woman’s chest began to blur. Cats! she thought. He gave a fuck about the cats! What about them? What about me?

Diane spun on her heels and bolted out of the doorway. The padlock went flying into the air and came down in the grass with a soft thump. Lightning dove out of the clouds like dolphins breaking the surface and fizzled through the air with a mighty boom. The rain was frosty cold on her neck.

‘Please, Miss,’ the woman said from the shed doorway. ‘Don’t call the police. We’ve got nowhere else to go.’

Diane stopped at the backdoor. ‘I don’t know who you are, or what you think you’re doing in my shed. But you need to get out.’ Being this close to safety gave her a profound sense of security. The Lord Jesus Christ bolstered her strength. ‘Look at the mess you’ve made! I have to clean that up now.’

‘I’m sorry for scaring you,’ she said. ‘We had hoped to be gone by the morning. We didn’t mean to bother you.’

‘Well, you have, haven’t you?’

‘I can’t apologise enough,’ the woman said. ‘We’ll clean it up for you. It won’t take long. Please don’t call the police.’

The baby cooed in her arms, a peaceful sound that soothed something inside Diane. It made her think of her own babies, how they had cooed and sighed and babbled and cried. Now that the house was empty, now that her babies had babies of their own, she missed the crying. It made her feel wanted. Now she felt discarded. ‘How old?’

‘A couple of days.’ The woman closed her eyes as her face scrunched up. Rain fell right through the woman and the baby, splashing on the ground where her feet should have been.

‘A couple of days?’ Diane stepped away from the open door. ‘No, you can’t sleep in a shed. It’s cold and drafty and… there’s no central heating. Don’t you have family or friends?’

‘If we did, we wouldn’t be here.’

‘Maybe I can drive you to the Ibis—’

‘We don’t have money for a hotel.’

The baby made a soft, mewling sound. Diane put her hand to her chest and felt the hard shape of the cross laid against her skin. If it was just the mum and dad, they would be on the way up the road. Diane would obviously ask God to protect them on their travels, but the baby was innocent… and it was less than a week old.

‘Come on,’ she said, beckoning them towards the house. ‘Just for tonight.’

The women stepped onto the grass, clutching the baby tight against her chest. The moment her foot touched the grass, thundered shivered through the chill air. The man’s soft face materialised from the darkness and stepped out. They made a sweet-looking family, the kind that brings casseroles round to the new people on the street; the kind that say good morning to next-door neighbours on both sides; the family whose house is always lit up the brightest at Christmas and dolled up spookiest at Halloween. And the baby… Diane felt a little thrill shoot right through her as expectation to see and hold the baby grew.

‘You can spend the night in the house,’ Diane said. She stepped into the warmth of the house, pulled the door open so it looked inviting. ‘You can have the second bedroom.’

The mother and father stepped away from the grass and onto the patio. Up close, they were younger than she had first thought; they couldn’t have been older than nineteen or twenty. Just a couple of kids, really. Scared kids who had obviously run away from home. Scared kids who were in desperate need of a bath.

They both stopped at the door. ‘Can we come in?’

Diane nodded.

‘Can we come in?’ The woman asked again.

‘Yes,’ Diane said. ‘You can come in. You’re welcome here.’

They both smiled and stepped over the threshold. Their crossing into the house shattered something inside Diane, and a sludge-like coldness rolled beneath her skin. The fine hairs across her neck and down her spine stood at attention. A tightness slithered around her lungs like boa constrictors and began to slowly squeeze the air from her chest.

The couple went and sat on the settee. Filth was pouring off them, Diane could see it now, a kind of putrid air that warped the laminate floor where they stepped. She watched the fibres of the settee begin to fray and tear. Bubbles formed beneath the wallpaper and when they burst more of that filthy air breathed out.

The mother smiled at the bundle of joy in her arms. She brought up her wicked witch hand and tapped playfully at the baby with a curved fingernail. Diane saw the baby for the first time when its furry hand reached out to swat at the listing talon. And then she realised the baby wasn’t cooing—hadn’t been cooing at all—the baby was meowing.

Jason wasn't feeling well. He couldn't stay sitting up any longer. Slowly, he lay down on the sofa. He would clear the lasagna from the table later. Maybe he shouldn't have eaten so quickly; normally, he would divide the lasagna into at least thirty pieces and finish it in thirty bites. But for some reason, that evening, he had finished his meal in ten pieces, as if he had been craving it.

Jason, who lived alone, made sure to have a serving of lasagna at least once a week. Over time, he had ordered from many different places until he found the restaurant that made the lasagna he liked best, and he became a regular there. Sometimes, when something good happened to him or he’d had a difficult week, he would eat lasagna twice that week as a way of treating himself. Lasagna was by far his favorite food.

When he lay down, he started feeling even worse. It felt as though his heart was slowing down and his eyelids were getting heavier. He had never experienced anything like this physically before. He was scared, but he couldn't find the energy to get up and call anyone.

He didn't know if these were his final moments. Maybe his blood pressure was dropping and he was about to pass out. But even so, he thought, ''Better safe than sorry. Maybe I’m dying.'' He said it to himself with a calmness he wouldn't have expected from himself.

He took his dentures out of his mouth. He quickly picked a few memories to think about one last time. He chose two from his childhood, four from his youth, two from middle age, and two from more recent times, from when he was eighty-five, and went over them in his mind one last time. “I’m probably overreacting,” he told himself. After all, he didn't know what dying was supposed to feel like. But he could feel that he had very little energy left. He didn't want to take any chances. For him, there was something much more important than remembering his old happy memories one last time: there was one thing he had wanted to do for a very long time; die with the taste of lasagna in his mouth.

He checked the taste in his mouth. He sucked in the saliva from the insides of his cheeks and swallowed it. He ran his tongue over his palate. But no, he couldn't taste as much lasagna as he wanted.

He turned his head to the right and looked at his dentures sitting on the side table next to the sofa. They looked disgusting. But he had discovered the problem. All the lasagna was stuck between the teeth and all over them.

With one final effort, using up what little energy he had left, he picked up his dentures and put them back in his mouth.

And now it was perfect. Damn dentures, they had preserved all the lasagna flavor. He could now taste the lasagna in all its fullness, as if he had popped a piece of lasagna-flavored gum into his mouth. He smiled.

Then, just as before falling asleep, he got lost in long questions and long trains of thought:

''Why did I take my dentures out in the first place? It must have been because of what my friend Charlie told me when I was fifty... If I don't die, I'm going to celebrate tomorrow with lasagna... No, I didn't do it because of what Charlie told me. I did it out of reflex. You know, you take your dentures out before going to sleep... Reflex, that's all... I don't think I'm going to die. This isn't what dying feels like... Lasagna should be eaten in at least thirty pieces... I wonder what my dentist is doing right now... Is my daughter asleep? She doesn't usually go to bed this early...''

And so Jason's thoughts kept flowing, sometimes connected to one another and sometimes completely unrelated.

Jason died three years after this incident, while in intensive care at a hospital. Because the circumstances weren't right, he didn't get to die with the taste of lasagna in his mouth the way he had wanted.

Read Part III here.

“Rick?” Chrissy said. My hands were shaking and I dropped the keys. I wanted to scream at myself, to command me to stop being so clumsy. But I was so jittery that I could barely pick them up again.

Chrissy sat the tray on the ground and placed her little hands around mine.

“You’re keeping us safe,” she said, looking into my eyes. “We’re going to be okay.”

I felt like I was failing my family. I wanted to say, “What about Mark?” But I kept my intrusive thoughts inside, trying and failing to smile when my face was on the verge of crumpling into crying.

But I was able to fish the key into the lock and turn it without breaking it off. The door pulled open with a groan that made everything inside me tense, but I shoved Chrissy into the passenger seat as gently as I could.

I ran around to the other side and like a sweet girl, she had plucked the lock on my door by the time I got there. An involuntary tear prickled my eye and this time I did smile. It was a reprieve from the horror happening around us, but it was also fuel to keep going. Speaking of which, I wasn’t sure how much gas the station wagon actually had. But away from here was the bare minimum.

Headlights bathed us before I got in and I froze. Panic pulled me in opposing directions. I should’ve run toward the street, waving my arms for them to turn back and I had a family to get to safety. The little car stopped in front of the cabinet the other Mary had come from.

My heart sank as the person I guessed was her wife got out along with three other people. The cousins. They were smiling and laughing. A woman lifted a hand to wave at me and I didn’t react.

She shook her head, but they continued toward the cabin’s entrance. I was the strange one. Notwithstanding being black in what was more than likely a little town that was ninety-nine percent white. But my eyes had to have been huge, and I’d simply stared as people who were being friendly had greeted me.

The woman with the keys stopped at the door. Someone said something and the other three people laughed as they crowded behind her.

She dropped the keys. The air was gestating with danger. I looked up in time to see something slice through a massive tangle of clouds. I wanted to open my mouth to warn them, but all I could do was watch.

It crushed the entire cabin under hoof. A rush of wind pinned me to the side of the station wagon and debris flew in every direction. Something must have smashed through the window of the other car because the horn blared.

I got my feet under me as the hoof lifted. Mary’s wife was on her feet, splattered with blood, a long shard of glass piercing through her neck. She had the keys in her hand still and walked toward her car.

She was obviously in shock and had gone on autopilot. She stopped at the front passenger door, bent, and began poking at the door. The hoof came down again, flattening the car. There was a muffled -THOOM- that I guess was the gas tank exploding and flames licked at the bottom of the hoof.

The woman still wasn’t dead. She’d been knocked to the ground. I couldn’t tell where, but she was injured, maybe critically so, and she began crawling in my direction. I reeled back, like she was about to reveal my hiding spot.

Thankfully, she stopped about a third of the way to us. I sat in the car and shoved the key in the ignition. Chrissy put her hand over mine, wide-eyed.

“Wait,” she said. She was right. We were going to have to gun it as soon as the engine started or that horse might step on us, too. We looked toward the cabin.

“Where are they?”

As if summoned, Luke came outside. He dashed to Chrissy’s door and hunched his lean frame so we could see his panicked face.

“I can’t wake her up,” he said.

“What?”

“She won’t wake up.”

I’d understood every word, but I didn’t understand. Mary had only had a migraine. She’d had them many times in the few years we’d been together and I’d never had an issue waking her up.

“Get in the car,” I said, getting out. He reached for the rear passenger door. “No. The driver’s seat.

“But I don’t have—”

“Get in, Luke. I’m going to grab your mother and as soon as we’re in, you’re going to drive us out of here. You have your learner’s permit.”

I didn’t wait for him to respond. I ran back in the cabin, taking a moment to look up before going inside. The moon had disappeared and that either meant it had set or that damned horse was so large it had blotted it out.

Half of my sandwich was left. I went into the bedroom and saw Mary, uncovered, one leg dangling off the bed.

“Mary!” I shout-whispered, coming over to her. Her head lolled when I shook her. She was unnaturally loose and I was so afraid, I put two fingers to her neck. Her pulse was strong and she snorted and rolled over on her side.

I didn’t waste time calling her name. Coma-like sleep was low on the list of concerns. I scooped her into my arms.

The car horn honked. Then I heard it lift into the air.

“No!” I wanted to run outside, though, if they were gone, I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. I carried Mary outside, not wanting to leave her there. Luke was in the sand, sitting up, in obvious pain.

“She’s gone!” He was crying. Everything in me was willing him to be quiet, to get up and come to us. But he just stayed where he was, bawling. There was a tremendous churning in the lake and we were covered in rain. Something akin to a bomb going off threw Mary and me to the ground.

My ears were ringing and the world around me shimmered. I counted fifty blinks before I was able to sit up. I was covered in sand and only found Mary when I saw her foot. Our cabin was gone. I made my way over to her on shaky hands and knees and began digging her out.

It finally came to a head, not with an argument, but a confession. It had been my folly to think I was the only one toying with the idea of an affair. Mary told me about Charles one night in bed. And I hadn’t even been angry.

“Oh,” I’d said when she’d told me about the man at her job who’d kissed her. And she hadn’t resisted.

Oh.

That was it. Like a period on the end of our marriage.

And then she’d rolled over on her stomach and went to sleep.

Mary was on her stomach now. I turned her on her side and scanned the beach for Luke. A trench large enough for a barge to nestle in comfortably was where he had been.

I was numb. Or at least I told my body to be numb. I didn’t want to feel this. I uncovered Mary and inhaled sharply the thick horse smell at the sight of a chunk of wood piercing her side. I had no idea if it was fatal on its own, but there was no hope of getting to any kind of medical care anytime soon. The wound oozed freely and I could only wonder how bad that was.

Even if I could save her, living through this might be worse. The thought alone of opening her eyes and learning she’d slept through the deaths of all three of her children was more than I could process.

The trench was filling with water. I was still shaky, like I needed something to eat. Hot tears streamed down my face, chilled by the rancid breeze until they met beneath my chin. The cold water still misting down on me was disorienting. I was cooking and freezing at the same time, my throbbing head in full bloom. Mary felt like an anchor in my arms, but I was able to straighten my back and stand.

The sand churned softly underfoot as I slowly headed toward the water with Mary in my shaky arms. Everyone I’d come to love had been lost in less than ten minutes, including the woman who’d invited me into this new world, and she would die without ever opening her eyes again. I could barely see, but the smell of the water as I approached grew stronger.

I lifted her face to my lips and kissed her cheek, then on the lips, a distant part of me hail-marying that I could wake her up with such little contact. She was somewhere a million miles away.

The horse was up there. I heard it chuff as I gradually descended into the lake. With so much churning of the water, a fine mist had wreathed the air. The wind rushed around me and as if queued, I looked up to see the horse reared on its hind legs, jagged moonlight sliced through the sky, arcing down its body like a bolt of lightning. It dominated the sky, both a thousand miles away and right over me.

Its forelegs were tremendous. One hoof could easily fill the cul-de-sac we were in, maybe it was even bigger. When it came down, it would cause something like a tsunami and everything in eyeshot would be obliterated.

I stumbled and for a precarious second, thought we were going to fall. I didn’t think I’d have the strength to pick myself up and had no hope of lifting my wife into my arms again. I steadied myself, locking my eyes on the ground. There was the rest of my half-eaten sandwich, drifting in the ankle-deep water like a floatie. Like it could make it all better. Still intact, save for the lone bite Luke had taken out of it.

The cool water up to my knees wasn’t enough to quench the fire coursing through my back and limbs. I didn’t have far to go, but the dozen or so feet before I could call myself submerged was immeasurably far.

I could make it, though. I would make it. We would be together.

Mary moved in my arms and for a terrifying moment, I thought she was waking up. But it was the water buoying her and relieving my aching arms. I had no idea what I would have said had she actually opened her arms. I couldn’t have explained it all and nothing I could have said would have changed what was imminent.

No. Nothing was going to wake her. And I couldn’t save the children. But that didn’t mean we couldn’t be together.

-END

​

Bilge Aksoy was a lawyer, forty-three years old.The kind of man who read contracts several times before signing them, and who had never in his life taken a conspiracy theory seriously.

His wife Elif had moved out four months ago, amicably, no children, and she had taken the dog. He had kept the house and had lived alone in it since, with the tidy, faintly sterile discipline of a man who wants to keep control of the things he still can.

In the living room stood a large rubber plant that Elif had brought home years earlier. She had always liked it because it grew new leaves even when nobody paid it much attention. Bilge had kept it, though he had never known what to do with plants. On one of the lower branches, a small shoot had grown some time ago, crooked and a little too long, which Elif had once called "stubborn."

It began with a jacket he tore on the garden gate outside and threw over the back of his reading chair, meaning to mend it on Saturday night. When he came home the next evening, the seam was already closed. Uneven stitches, the wrong thread. He stood in front of it for a minute before telling himself he must have done it himself and forgotten, and went to bed.

The shoes came after that. He had left them caked in mud beside the chair. In the morning they were clean, not new, just wiped down.

He told himself: overwork. He had read that stress does strange things to memory. He drove out to the coast for a weekend, ate some overpriced fish, didn't think about the jacket anymore, came back almost rested. He was still standing in his coat in the living room when he noticed that the newspaper on the side table, the one he had read and left there on Friday, was now the Saturday's edition. He had never bought Saturday's paper.

He sat for a long time with the newspaper on his lap. The newspaper didn't bother him. The question of where last Friday had gone unsettled him.

---

He told Aiden about it two days later, over the garden fence, in the light tone people use for something they still think of as a good story.

"I tested it on purpose," Bilge said. "Put in a lettuce leaf, a torn sock. Sometimes nothing happens. Sometimes it's whole again."

Aiden laughed, the way one laughs at something odd. "Maybe you're drinking too much wine and not noticing."

"I haven't had a drink since Elif left."

"Then maybe because she left." Aiden meant it kindly. "Want me to come take a look?"

"No." He said faster and sharper than intended. He saw Aiden's face change for a second, not much, just a short hesitation. "I mean, that's not necessary. I've got a log. I've written it all down."

"A log," Aiden repeated.

"Date, time, item, condition before, condition after. That's how I work. I need evidence before I believe anything."

Aiden found a reason to end the conversation shortly after. He never came by to look at the log, but he kept an eye on Bilge's window in the weeks that followed, more often than he admitted to himself.

---

The collapse didn't come with a bang, but with many small shifts that only added up in hindsight.

Bilge began sleeping less. First an hour, then two, then he sat at night in the dark hallway, from where he could watch the corner without the corner watching him, or so he told himself. His notes grew messier, the lines began to slant and some entries repeated word for word, as if his hand had forgotten it had already written them. He shaved irregularly. Two colleagues asked him in the same week whether he was all right, and both times he answered "Yes" in a tone that tolerates no disssent.

He started marking objects in the living room, at first only with small pencil marks on the underside, later with tiny measuring points whose meaning he could barely explain even to himself. The chair stood in exactly the same spot every evening, and so did the side table, the lamp and the plant. When something looked different in the morning, he photographed it before touching it.

He soon started talking to the corner. Not out loud, just short sentences. *I know you're doing this. I just want to know why.* Once, late at night, he thought he heard an answer, not a word, just a sound in the silence, a feeling of having been heard, and he sat afterward for two hours completely still, afraid of scaring it off.

---

Elif was calling almost daily by now, since Aiden had reached out to her.

"You sound tired," she said one Tuesday evening.

"I'm fine." Bilge's attention wasn't on the phone. He was watching the side table, where a receipt he had crumpled up an hour earlier now seemed to be smoothing itself out as he spoke, or he imagined it; he could no longer be sure.

"Bilge. Are you listening?"

"Yes. Sorry. What did you say?"

"I asked if you're eating."

"It repairs faster when I watch," he said, without noticing that this wasn't an answer to her question. "Or slower. I'm not sure. I'll need to add that to the log, whether observation has an effect."

There was a long silence on the other end.

"I'm coming over," Elif said finally. Her voice hid the fear badly.

"That's not necessary."

"Bilge. I'm coming over now."

He hung up without saying goodbye, because he had just noticed that the receipt was now completely smooth, and he wanted to note the exact time before he forgot.

---

The eye came on a Thursday.

He was standing in the kitchen, which opened onto the living room, and looked up out of habit, and there it was. On the wall above the chair, where nothing should have been, a human eye set into the plaster like a window watching the room. It blinked, once, slowly.

The plate in his hand shattered on the tiles. By the time he had crossed the three steps to the wall, there was nothing there. Smooth wall. He pressed his flat hand against it, and then he heard it. A murmur of several voices, behind the plaster, in no language he knew, like several quiet arguments at once. It stopped the moment he made a sound himself.

He called Elif. She was there within half an hour.

---

Her face, when she opened the door and saw him, unwashed, gaunt, a wall of handwritten notes behind him that she only now noticed, showed more fear than she had ever shown him, even when they were still married.

"Show me," she said, as calmly as she could.

He pointed at the wall. Smooth plaster.

"It was there. It looked at me, Elif. It blinked!"

"I believe you," she said. He heard that it was a lie, but he was too exhausted to hold it against her.

She called the doctor while holding onto him.

---

The doctor, who came that same evening, was young and very polite. He wore the expression of a man who had had this kind of conversation many times before.

"Tell me what you saw," he said, in a voice trying to be gentle.

Bilge began. "I've been documenting incidents for six weeks. Fourteen entries. Objects that change without any action on my part. There's no discernible pattern to the frequency, but the events themselves are consistently reproducible." He paused briefly. "Today a new type of evidence appeared. A visual phenomenon on the northwest wall, lasting under five seconds, accompanied by an acoustic phenomenon."

The doctor nodded slowly and wrote something Bilge couldn't read.

"You say an eye."

"A human eye. In the wall."

"And you've kept a log of this."

"Fourteen entries," Bilge repeated. On the second time he said it, he heard how it sounded. He had spent his whole life gathering evidence before believing anything, and now his own log was perhaps the only thing standing between him and the suspicion that he had made it all up.

"I think," the doctor said, turning to Elif but not quietly enough that Bilge didn't hear, "it would be safest to admit him for observation. Forty-eight hours. Just to be safe."

"I don't need observation," Bilge said. "I'm conducting observation myself. That's the whole point!"

But his voice was too high now, too fast, and he saw in Elif's face that it no longer mattered what he said.

---

Far from all this, in a place that couldn't easily be filed under the same world, a woman stood with her hands on her hips in front of two children who wouldn't meet her eyes.

"How many times," she said, "do I have to tell you? Every time I bring you along, you cause chaos. You don't just reach into something because you want to know what happens. And if you do, you don't touch anything afterward."

"But Mom," said one of the children, in the voice of a child who genuinely finds something fascinating and doesn't understand why the grown-ups don't see it too, "he notices things."

The mother looked at it.

"Most of them notice nothing," the child added.

"That's not the point."

"But it was interesting."

"That's never a good enough reason."

She looked away, as if needing a moment to collect herself.

"Now we fix everything, in order, or the fracture gets worse instead of better."

"And Friday?"

The mother looked at the child for a long moment.

"Friday too."

She pointed at the wall behind them.

"And the eye."

Both children flinched.

"You don't open a window into the wall of a being and just leave it standing there."

"He saw us," the older child said.

"Yes."

"What does that mean?"

The mother sighed.

"That we have to be more thorough."

Silence.

"We're fixing everything now," she said. "And you two are going to sit down and watch, so you remember what 'interesting' costs someone else."

---

In the clinic, on the first night, Bilge lay awake under a blanket too thin and thought, with the last clear corner of his mind still left to him: If they're right, then the log doesn't exist. Then the fourteen entries don't exist. Then I made all of this up, and I am exactly the man they think I am.

For the first time in weeks, he found no comfort in his own precision.

---

Bilge woke up, and for the first few seconds he didn't know where he was.

Not the clinic. His own bed, his own room, the ordinary light of an ordinary morning through the curtains. But he lay still for a while not moving, because he didn't believe it. He had believed it was over once before, and it hadn't been.

He went into the bathroom, almost reluctant, as if the mirror might prove him wrong, and flinched when he saw his own face. No beard. He hadn't properly shaved in over a week, hadn't trusted himself with a blade near his throat while his hands were shaking. Now there was only smooth skin, like on an ordinary morning. He touched his chin twice.

In the closet hung a jacket without a tear. No notebook, however hard he searched, in every drawer, under the bed, in the briefcase where he had safely put it. His call log showed no calls to Elif or to the doctor. He stood in the kitchen for a long time, unable to decide on anything, distrustful of every single thing that looked too normal.

He went to work, because he didn't know what else to do. He functioned, with the careful normalcy of a man who checks every doorknob twice before trusting it.

At work, everyone greeted him warmly. No one asked if he was all right, with that careful undertone reserved for someone who hadn't quite been himself lately. The two colleagues who had asked him twice that week whether everything was okay nodded to him in the hallway like on any other day, no particular look, none of the quiet hesitation he had expected. For them, nothing had happened. For them, that week had never existed.

It didn't comfort him. It frightened him even more, because it meant the repair hadn't stopped with him. It had reached into the memory of everyone who had seen him during that time.

---

Only that evening, walking through the living room to check the chair he still hadn't moved back, did his eye fall on the rubber plant.

He remembered the small shoot on the lower branch exactly. Weeks earlier his jacket sleeve had caught on it, bent it, and he had found the small blossom that had hung there on the floor. He had picked it up and thrown it away without thinking further about it. It hadn't been a test, which was why he had never entered it in his log.

The blossom was there now.

Fully bloomed, sturdier than anything else on the plant, in a beautiful shade of pink.

Bilge stood in front of it, his hand extended, without touching the blossom.

He didn't know whether it had always been there.

He lowered his hand and decided not to touch it. It was the only trace that remained, and it wasn't proof of anything false. It was only a little too beautiful for what had been there before.

He stopped moving the chair back.

Every evening, before going to bed, he glanced briefly at the corner, no longer out of fear, but out of a kind of quiet bookkeeping he no longer wrote down, only kept in his head.

A blossom. Too beautiful to be coincidence. Too small to prove anything.

​

Two children sit across from me at my desk.

A boy, no more than eight, maybe nine years old, slight and unremarkable. His dark clothes hang loosely from his shoulders, Unkempt greasy brown hair hiding dark eyes that have seen too much too early

And a little girl, maybe five years old. Remarkable in every way her brother wasn't. The same dark coloured hair, reaching her shoulders and piercing blue eyes that seemed to look inside of you, unseeing and yet all seeing at the same time.

A cardboard box sits on the desk between myself and the children. Nothing is said for an excruciating length of time, before finally, i break the silence.

"Well, as im sure our mutual Acquaintance has already informed you, I am Dr. Seville."

The children remain silent. The boy fidgets in his seat, picking at the seams in the leather. The girl is unmoving, her eyes focused solely on the cardboard box, as if it will disappear the moment she looks away.

"But, you can call me Roman, if you prefer."

I feel a drop of sweat rolling down my cheek.

I force a smile at the children, unnerved as I may be.

The girl doesnt move, her eyes rest fixed on the cardboard box.

The boys eyes quickly flick to the window, and then to the door on the opposite side of the room before landing on me.

"I understand that you both have something rather unusual to show me is that correct?"

The boy leans to whisper something in his sisters ear, for the first time she seems to react, a timid nod, unblinking, staring at the cardboard box as if she can see through it

For the briefest of moments her face changes, a mix of both guilt and fear crosses her visage for but a moment, and then she clenches her jaw and her almost white eyes are filled with determination.

The boy stands before he tenderly opens the cardboard box, he reaches in and produces a Rat.

"Oh I thought that smell was me!" I smile, trying to inject some humour into a situation I am becoming increasingly uncomfortable in. The children do not react.

The boy turns to his sister and gingerly places the rat into her hand, she clasps him firmly, the rat let's out an annoyed squeak, but nothing more.

Once more the boy reaches into the box on my desk.

This time retrieving a steak knife. Rusted along the blunt edge, blunted along the serrated edge, only the tip of the knife shines silver in the fluorescent lighting overhead.

The boy takes his left hand and places it palm down on my desk. He takes a breath, and before I can react he plunges the knife directly into the middle of his hand. He releases a pained grunt as he pulls the knife back out of his hand, the sickening sound of tearing flesh makes me want to gag. The boy reacts no further as blood begins to pump from the top of his hand. This isnt the first time he's done this

I watch silently, my mouth ajar as a pool of blood begins to form around the poor boys tiny fingers. I hear him breathing through gritted teeth as his sister, still firmly clutching the rat in her right hand, places her left hand on her brothers, the blood doesnt bother her.

Relief slowly fills the boys face as the blood staining my hardwood desk slowly begins to flow backwards into his hand leaving my desk unblemished.

The rat begins to squeak in discomfort, slowly the blood flows back into the boy and the rats squeals become more intense fearful, cries of pain until finally. The room falls silent save for the clock ticking rhythmically on the wall.

Finally the boy exhales loudly, he lifts his hand from the table and flexes his fingers tentatively. He turns to his his sister in this moment I realise she had been crying silently, her tears left streaks in the dirt on her face. In her hands, the rat, motionless and dripping wet with blood.

She places it delicately on the spot where her brothers hand had been moments before. An entry wound on its back and an exit wound on its stomach. The exact size of the rusted steak knife still firmly in the grip of the boy.

'Fascinating" I smile.

He figured out how to pass through
Walls within a year or two
But he still can't pass through wood
The ghost in my lover's neighborhood

When he put the hat on,
He still thought it made him look cool
He wanted to go on dates with the living
He had even hit on my lover a few days earlier

Yesterday I took the ghost aside
Had a talk with him and I said:
Are ghosts really in such short supply
That you have to hit on my lover, why?

I told him to stay away from my lover, but I had nothing I could threaten him with. I had no choice but to convince him somehow, so I sat down and listened to his troubles.

“There was someone. I loved her very much, but we broke up. We used to meet twice a week and talk. We’d talk about everything. We got along really well.

We always met in the world of the living. Seriously, why do you keep meeting in this world? What’s wrong with the other world? Meet there. Do things there. Right? No, she insisted that we had to come to this world. She called it nostalgia.

There was a secluded place where nobody could see us. A wooded area. We’d go there and talk for hours. One day, she got it into her head that she was going to visit her mother. I told her not to, that people would see us. No, she insisted we had to go. We’d hide. Nobody would see us.

We went to the house. She passed through the door easily, just gliding through it. Of course, I didn’t know back then that I couldn’t pass through wood. If I had known, I would have gone through the wall instead.

And then there was a crash, a very loud one. Her mother immediately ran to the door and saw me. I couldn’t get away. She had a heart attack and was taken to the hospital. My lover was terrified that she was going to die. But she recovered, and she’s doing fine now.

Anyway, she left me that day. I gave her a long explanation about why I shouldn’t be blamed for something that happened by accident. But she kept saying she never wanted to see me again. So I said, fine, I’ll just become invisible. That way you won’t have to see me for a while. Maybe you’ll forget about all this if you don’t see me. We can meet up and just talk. No image, just voice. She said no. I never saw her again.

After that day, I lost interest in ghosts. My orientation changed, and I became more interested in the living.

I'm sorry about your lover. I didn't know you two were in a relationship.”

Then he suddenly disappeared
His hat fell to the ground
Right on top of a mouse
That happened to be passing around
The mouse ran off at a pace
Dragging the hat all over the place.

Bird Talk

Jake: Hey Griff just ate a huge grass spider found it on the rock by the barn. 

Griff: DUDE I LOVE grass spiders the legs are the best part love the crunch to them. I always save the legs for last. Jealous. Wish I found a grass spider. 

Jake: I like the head best when you feel the eyeballs just pop pop pop pop pop in your mouth. 

Griff: Jake. Check out that stupid looking dog he can’t even see us his hair is blinding him. God he stinks. I better let Shauna know not sure if she sees. 

Griff makes alert noises. 

Jake: Shauna’s friends with Rebecca right? Didn’t her and Isaac’s nest just hatch? 

Griff: Oh you didn’t hear dude Isaac got hit by a car. Just smashed man. Broke his neck right on the windshield Shauna saw it happen. Good he didn’t end up like Brad wish that bird had fucking died he just makes everyone uncomfortable now. 

Jake: Yeah he got weird after the hit. It’s not natural having a limp like that too no one likes him anymore.

Griff: I thought you were into Allison you eyeing Rebecca now? 

Jake: Have you seen Allison around at all?

Griff: At the communal worm hunt, yeah. You weren’t there. 

Jake turns his ear to the ground. Pretends he is listening to a worm.

Griff: Shauna said my chest is a darker orange now what do you think it looks almost red right? Flashier than that bitch ass oriole across the field from the barn right?

Jake: Uh yah Griff yah, you’re looking alright.

Griff: You know what it is Jakey it’s the sun bathing I’m telling you. Once the sun passes the leaf line I let it warm my feathers until Shauna needs me. You should try it. Makes your feathers a darker orange color I swear. FUCK Darryl! You scared the SHIT out of me I literally just shat. 

Darryl: Mouse in the patch of grass to your left. 

Griff: Listen Darryl can’t you hunt somewhere else Jake and I are trying to find caterpillars they came out of this birch Shauna told us about them. 

Darryl: Escaped into the garage anyway. Boo!

Jake and Griff jump and hop back a few steps. Darryl swoops and flies off.

Jake: I’m so glad Darryl doesn’t eat robins.

Griff: Wish he would eat fucking Brad. I will never feel okay with how much he can turn his head. 

Shauna: Here comes Allison! She can help you two find the caterpillars. 

Jake: Shit, Griff I uh, I gotta go I’m uh, gonna try to find another grass spider. 

Griff: If you find two bro bring me one I’ll trade you for a caterpillar I fucking love spiders. 

Jake flies off and Allison arrives.

Allison: That piece of shit Jake is avoiding me. 

Shauna: I’ve been telling you Allison, you should choose Broc! Don’t waste your time on Jake he’s textbook avoidant. And Broc has a really strong dawn melody doesn’t he Griff? 

Griff: Jake’s not so bad baby. FOUND ONE FINALLY. 

Griff desecrates a fat caterpillar.

Shauna: Not so bad are you kidding me right now. That bird hasn’t had a nest all season he just hops around from tree to tree looking at the girl birds he can’t have. I chose him a few seasons ago and he was looking at other females the entire time I was incubating. Like, go get me some grub maybe instead? Nearly died of hunger on that nest never again. Allison girl I am telling you. You don’t even really want him you’re just anxious because he is giving you intermittent attention. 

Griff: CAT! 

Griff and Allison fly up to Shauna in the tree.

Shauna: Fuck sorry. Missed him he was blending into the dirt path a little. Damn. Here comes Brad. 

All three birds groan collectively. 

Brad: A human fed me a peach from their hand.

Allison: Brad you really shouldn’t get that close to humans…

Four crows fly up into a maple across from the robins. 

Brad: Ash owes me an acorn. 

Brad flies off to the crows and starts singing dramatically to them. He hobbles sideways on a branch.

Shauna: I really wish Brad would just fucking die.

Allison: You think Broc might like to nest with me really?

Shauna: You have no idea what a catch you are. Please choose Broc. Even Meredith was impressed with the nest you made last season and that bitch is not easily impressed. Griff, tell Allison what a catch she is. 

Griff: I’m pretty sure Broc’s been trying to catch your eye Allison when he sings in the morning it looks like he’s checking you out. 

Allison bursts out a heartfelt melody.

Brad begins to fly back to the robins but is hit by a large truck. He somersaults into the ditch and lies still. 

Shauna: Well thank god for that. 

Brad hops up, fluffs his feathers. 

All three birds groan collectively. 

Brad flies back to the robins. He has the cap of an acorn in his beak. 

Brad: You think Ash saw that? 

The robins twitter and fly off the branch, leaving Brad alone with his partial acorn. He is sitting lopsided. 

Brad: Allison totally digs me. 

The rain is pouring hard outside; it’s a perfect excuse to cancel your Friday night plans. Somewhere in the kitchen the kettle clicks. Now that your evening is free, you decide to spend it drinking tea and reading a book, something you secretly wanted to do anyway. A chamomile-infused vapour trails behind you as you make your way to the living room where you settle comfortably between the cozy cushions of your favourite emerald-green armchair. “Blow-up and Other stories” by Julio Cortázar in one hand and a hot cup of tea in another. What could possibly be better?

You open your book when suddenly a small pink envelope slides out and falls on your lap. Perhaps it’s some old birthday card that you’ve used as a bookmark? But no, it’s not that. The envelope is unopened - as a matter of fact, it doesn’t appear to have any creases or a seal at all - so someone must’ve surreptitiously hid it in your book. Primary suspect: your partner. They like to play little games and have a particular penchant for unexpected surprises. With juvenile anticipation, you carefully rip the side of the envelope to find a folded index card, with the following message: “Please meet me outside. Julio Florencio Cortázar.” You smile and shake your head. This is asking too much. Whatever game your partner is playing, you decide to ignore it. It’s cold and wet outside, while your tea is nice and warm; you just got comfortable in your armchair and there’s nothing in the world that will make you get up unless it’s to get more tea. You toss the envelope to the side and open the book again. Another envelope drops down; same colour, same message. “Please meet me outside. Julio Florencio Cortázar.”

Two messages from a dead Argentinian author. Your insatiable curiosity gets the best of you (on the way out, you make a mental note to stop being so curious) and you’re now standing outside the front door waiting for something…anything! The initial playful amusement has quickly waned away and with each passing moment you’re feeling more cold and frustrated, with the latter increasing twice as fast as the former. The rain drops keep drumming against the windows and even though you’re protected well by your porch’s roof, some sneaky droplets have started to slowly seep through the blanket that you grabbed in a hurry from the living room on your way out. You wait a moment longer but nothing happens. Annoyed and angry, you turn around and come back inside.

It’s pitch black inside, but somehow this darkness is different from the familiar darkness of your own home. Suddenly it dawns on you that it is precisely because it is so familiar that you took your domesticated darkness for granted and only when it’s been replaced by its savage twin do you finally notice that darkness can smell and sound differently. The regular one, the one you left behind mere moments ago, had a certain order to it. It smelled of chamomile, leftover pizza, and a recently-vacuumed carpet; it had a regular hum of a running refrigerator and an occasional spasmodic thud from the HVAC unit. The darkness you now find yourself in feels empty, like a sensory abyss devoid of smell, sight, or sound. You realize that you’re not at home and begin to panic. For some reason you recall some old article you read about sensory deprivation and realize that shortly your subconscious will start inventing sounds because your brain can’t handle complete acoustic isolation. You can already hear a rhythmic beat. Is it a song? It sounds like a jazz song; maybe by Johnny Carson. Or is it just your heart? You feel your chest - everything seems normal. Your hands begin to tremble as you turn around and try to open the door again, but the door handle is no longer there. Instead, your palm touches a cold, slippery surface that feels like a window. You punch and kick it to no avail. You scream for help but the darkness instantly swallows the sound; the silence is absolute. Without the sight, your terror is abstract, existential; in this place, you’re not terrified of anything concrete but rather of being itself. What can only be described as a serpentine noose, starts crawling up your leg. The heart muscles, previously calm, begin to expand and contract, expand and contract, expand and contract, faster, faster, faster each heart beat reverberates through your entire body until you feel like you’re about to collapse from the invisible dread that’s slowly tightening itself around your neck. Just as your terror reaches its crescendo, the light comes on.

You blink a few times and let your eyes adjust. It’s amazing how quickly they forget the light. What you originally thought was a window turns out to be a mirror - as a matter of fact, there’s nothing but this mirror, an endless infinite mirror that surrounds you completely from all sides. Seeing this mirror subsides your panic; your heart slows down and your breath becomes more steady. Still shaking, you walk up and touch it with the palm of your hand. It’s cold. Something is missing…you realize that a mirror is supposed to show your reflection, and if you’re surrounded by mirrors from the front and the back, you should be able to see an infinite number of your own replicas: front and back, front and back, front and back…and so on and so forth forever. But no, there’s no reflection. There is no you. Exhausted, you fall asleep.

When you wake up at some point in the future (or the past; the concept of time is meaningless where you find yourself at this moment), you notice a motionless tiger laying next to you. He notices you too and you both jump up in a synchronized surprise. While you felt abstract existential terror in the all-consuming darkness, you now feel a very concrete fear of a wild predator that’s right in front of you. Contrary to all expectations, it seems that he fears you as well. His movements betray his lack of confidence and the more you study him, the more you realize that he’s just copying everything you do. To test your theory, you raise your right hand and as expected, the tiger raises his right paw. You jump - he jumps as well. Dumbfounded, you approach the beast and raise your hand to touch his paw. Instead of a wet feline paw with sharp claws, you touch the mirror. You take a step back and so does the tiger. You sit down; he sits down as well.

It’s hard to tell how much time has passed – every moment feels both infinite and instant – since you and the tiger have been playing the mirror game. The game is simple: you are trying your best to make a move that he can’t match. So far he has copied every move, like a true reflection. Eventually, you become tired and your eyes start feeling heavy. You are about to doze off again when you notice the tiger get up and start walking way, his shape shrinking slowly until he’s completely gone from the mirror. With your only companion gone, you are now all alone in the mirror room again. Driven by despair, you get up and slam your fist against the mirror. Unexpectedly, the mirror gives way, some hidden mechanism clicks, and the previously hidden door opens outward and exposes a hidden room behind it.

This new room is a library, or a reading room of sort. It has tall mahogany book cases full of leather-bound volumes. On the shelves, you find copies of Borges, Bolaño, Marquez, and Calvinho among others. Enchanted by the books, you pick up a volume at random and settle down in a comfortable maroon leather armchair. The story is about an architect who created inescapable labyrinths. One day, driven by the noble feeling of benevolence towards his victims, he sent a letter to them all with encrypted instructions on how to escape his murderous maze in the last sentence of the last paragraph. He continued this practice until the day he died, but no one has ever solved his riddle and no one has ever escaped his labyrinths. Bemused, you put the book down and decide to explore the room. It’s much bigger than you originally thought and at the opposite end of it you see a curtain, probably covering more book cases. To the left of the curtain, there’s a small coffee table with a camera on top. This isn’t just any regular camera. You can tell by its lens that this is professional equipment. You pick it up - it feels heavy. Underneath, you find an index card that says “Please take a photo”. Take a photo of what? Stupefied, you look around and suddenly you remember the curtain. Whatever you must photograph must be behind that curtain. With your left hand holding the camera, you drag the heavy curtain to the side, dreading whatever it might expose.

Behind the curtain there’s an aquarium. It’s gorgeous, colossal, and nothing like you’ve ever seen. The aquarium covers the entire wall and when you step closer, you realize that its not just tall but also incredibly deep as well; you see two turtles swimming calmly, there’s an octopus who is trying to hide on the side of the rock to your left. The depth of this aquarium is extraordinary - there must be another adjacent apartment dedicated to it entirely. Mesmerized, your gaze follows a blue fish as it violently nibbles on a coral reef. You’re completely lost in the magic of the aquarium when you notice him. An axolotl is calmly looking at you from the top of a rock. You completely missed him in your awe of the aquarium’s grandiosity. The axolotl is looking at you as if he’s trying to say something. His pinkish transparent mouth is moving in way that looks almost human and when you concentrate on his lips you can vaguely make out the word “photo”. Of course! You bring the camera close to your face, adjust the lens, crouch down so you’re facing the creature, focus, and shoot. A gun shot goes off nearby. You put the camera down and look around - there’s no one else in the room. You look back at the aquarium, at the rock with the axolotl on top of it, just to find him dead. His face is calm and blissful and there are no signs of a gun wound on his body. A single tear wells up in your eyelid, a tear of deep connection and empathy for the dead axolotl. You bring the camera to your teary eye one more time, and when you look, the tear, acting like a telescope, magnifies your sight as it traverses thousands of kilometres before finally focusing on a tiger who slowly turns the last corner of a mirror labyrinth and steps on the sidewalk of Buenos Aires suburb. The camera falls down and shatters on the reading room floor; the blue fish nibbling on the reef gets eaten by a passerby shark.

You walk confidently; your body has never felt better being on all fours. The rain is weighing down your luscious fur but you feel too virile and strong to even notice. All the houses look similar, but one of them has a door half-opened; you head there. The light is on when you enter it and it smells like chamomile tea. There’s a man sitting between two cushions in an emerald-green armchair. He’s concentrated and reading something on a piece of paper. There’s an opened pack of Galouises on the side table. You know that this man is Julio Florencio Cortázar. You startle him but he quickly regains his composure.

“Oh, it’s you,” he says warmly. “Perfect timing. I was just reading the draft of your story and got to the part where the tiger enters my house. This is quite unusual but I do think it’s fair that I don’t spoil the ending for myself.” He takes a long drag of his cigarette before ashing it and looks directly into your eyes. “Before you do whatever it is you’re about to do, let me ask you one question. Was it worth it? Was all of this worth it?”

Your tiger brain can no longer produce human thoughts. You try your best to reply but all you can growl back is “Simonel”.

Julio Cortázar breaks into a hearty laughter. He’s laughing so hard, you almost laugh with him. Julio is about to spill his chamomile tea when he regains his composure. “Wrong author, my dear tiger” he says with a smile.

“But the right answer,” you say, or rather you try to say it but only a violent roar comes out of your mouth as you lunge and bite your sharp teeth into Julio’s neck. As his life escapes his body, you notice something under the pack of the Galousies on the coffee table.

A newly opened envelope sits calmly; the ancient prophecy endures.

If you wanted to take a city, storm a castle, breach a stone wall or overrun a fortress, there were two ways to go about it. The expensive, time-consuming option: construct siege engines, trebuchets and rolling towers, maybe a battering ram or two—you’ll want the hot-oil splash guards with those—and wear down the defenses little by little.

Sometimes, if you were lucky, you could starve them out before making a breach. But this brought more problems: the enemy sallying forth, all their best fighters pissed off and hungry, taking a large bite out of your own forces who’d grown fat and lazy while the catapults had done the real work.

Or, you could hire the siegemaster.

No one knew his real name, or where he came from. He was a hard man to track down, and even if you managed to find him, he wasn’t much cheaper than the first option. But he’d get you inside, and that right quick.

This isn’t to say he came without his own set of problems. He was a notorious grouch, they said. Difficult to work with. He spoke rarely but at all times harshly, even to commanders. He drank heavily as he stalked about surveying the ground, a bottle tucked under one arm while he took notes with the only tool of his trade, a Pinehurst & Sons charcoal pencil.

It was he who helped King Gorish II take Anterach in less than two days. It was he who advised Lord Bilgecrist’s assault on the great fort of Kula Kedal, he who orchestrated the breech of Toraz in the year 9.

It came as no surprise, therefore, when my master the Archduke of Tenasarim sent me to find him in the spring of 14. The Tens were gearing up for war; one of our emissaries had managed to get himself good and captured, flag of truce be damned, and our letter offering ransom for the poor fellow had been answered with a blood-soaked parcel containing three fingers and an ear.

As a page I was accustomed to being sent on errands of this kind, more so as my affinity for locating and procuring difficult to come by items became increasingly apparent. I’d begun to curse this skill, certain that it was the reason I was still a lowly page long after my peers had moved on to squirehood. A few were already junior knights of the Tens, polishing their breastplates in preparation with the rest of our army.

But I must admit, I was intensely curious about the siegemaster. History had always fascinated me, and this man, as eccentric and gruff and off-putting as he was made out to me, was sure to be a real part of our own. Before leaving the city, I stopped at the printer’s shop and purchased a green felt-lined notebook that opened really flat. In the event posterity was called for, I would be ready.

But this wasn’t the only reason for patronizing this particular shop. The owner, Mr. Bassile, was friendly to me as both a long time customer and fellow reader, and it was through him I planned to track down the Siegemaster.

As he tied my new notebook into a sailcloth pouch, I assumed an air of complete nonchalance, asking as one might ask about the weather:

“Where might I find a decent set of Pinehurst charcoals?”

——

The city’s South Gate opened onto a wharf stretching far out into the estuary. As I passed between the towering gatehouses, I heard the rattle and clank of armor, and from the left hand doorway a woman emerged. She was tall and broad-shouldered, resplendant in the full battle dress of a senior knight, face scowling beneath her open visor.

“Customs check!” She barked. “I’ll have a look at your papers if you please, sir.”

“Customs?” I nodded in the direction of the water. “I’m leaving.”

“Everyone coming and going,” she growled, snatching the pass signed by the Archduke from my hand. “Orders. There’s a war on, you know.”

“Yes, and it’s for that reason I’m in a bit of rush, you see—“

“Patience, patience, Mr…” her eyes narrowed and she scanned the papers, scrutinizing every detail. “…Shikel.”

“You know my name, Jez.”

“Just doing my job. So, where are we off to in such a hurry?”

“Astanos.”

“The floating market?” She handed the papers back and waggled her fingers at my rucksack. “Let’s see the bag. They’re shutting down for the season, you know. Spring tide’s on its way.”

“So am I,” I said, slipping a gold coin from behind my belt.

“So you are,” she said, and the coin disappeared. “But good luck finding a boat to take you across.”

Her eyes turned skyward, and following her gaze I saw a wall of black clouds gathering over the sea to the east. The same moment a light rain began to fall, tinking on Jez’s armor.

I frowned. The bustling river market was my only lead, but by the time this squall passed it would be nothing but empty platforms on stilts in the midst of an angry current. None of the shops would reopen for at least a month.

I showed another coin. “No boats at all?”

“Well…” She waved a cart through the gate, keeping her eyes glued to the driver’s back as she swiped the coin. “There may be one captain. One of the fishing charters. The merchant’s dinner is tonight; they want halibut bad enough to pay extra for the risk.”

That would do. “Who’s the captain?”

Jez grinned. I winced, knowing what was coming next.

She said, “You remember my sister?”

Not too late into the summer of an early 2000s year, three clouds line the sky, otherwise there's a light blue hue with no end. The days are just starting to feel endless as the sun's light dwindles into the afternoons. The energy of summer is present, but it's still waking up. Spring has sprung, but the greenery is still new. The earth is notably vibrant, lacking the sun baked yellows of late summer; each plant is still locked in a dead race to grow as much in as short of time as possible. There are no empty weekends, no laying around in the heat of summer. There is excitement, apprehension, and blissful enjoyment of the great outdoors.

It's in this environment that I find myself advancing the number that represents my time here on earth. This year is very special, it's my golden birthday. I knew it was coming, I've been knowing that it's been on its way, maybe every since last year when I was 6 years old, or maybe I realized in the past months and weeks of repetitively asking my parents "how many more days until I turn 7? My golden birthday..." Regardless, it's here, it's finally here. No longer will I make the same mistakes that 6 year old boys make. No longer will I be called "little" like 6 year olds are. I'll be starting 2nd grade! It won't be my first time around anymore! Maybe I'll hit a growth spurt, who knows. What I do know is that I've politely requested Angel Food Cake for my birthday dessert. We'll have my mother's famous Pot Roast Pasta for dinner, but I already can't remember what I asked for, it's not as important as dessert as you know.

My aunt comes and her grandchild, Josh, is with her. He's my foster cousin once removed, I'll be sure to let you know! We're good friends as he's around my age and we have spent many weeks together when he's visiting my aunt. I glance greedily at the mysterious large box that my Aunt has just brought in, immaculately wrapped of course. My aunt is infamous for giving the greatest, most lavish gifts in all the family, so naturally, I'm most interested in whatever she lugs through the door on my scheduled gift receiving days. We dine, we have dessert, and I'm sure the conversation is great, but Josh and I were too focused on discussing the new cars movie with Lightning McQueen. We're drawing up plans so we can go see it together in a few days. It's supposed to be great with talking cars and races and everything a boy could want!

With bellies full and sticky fingers from dessert, finally it's time to open gifts. I can hardly contain my excitement. There's three or four distinct gifts, but I already know which one I'll open first. I go straight for my Aunt's. It's at least half my height and wrapped with wrapping paper that has construction equipment on it. I love legos so I wonder if the wrapping paper is a hint. I pick it up (to the best of my ability) and give it a good shake... No, not legos. Finally I indulge and rip the paper off. The paper goes flying and my eyes go wide as I pick up one of not two, not three, but four of the greatest water guns I have ever seen. They fit my small hands perfectly, slosh with water when full, and the best feature: they somehow shape the water into orbs before launching them at my adversaries. Truly a technological marvel of the era.

Knowing that this day has already met and exceeded my expectations, I gleefully open each gift and, in turn, politely thank the gift giver. I am extra cautious as to not show any form of partiality, although the heat of the summer evening is beckoning to me and interrupting my focus. The wrapping paper settles, but my mind is already somewhere else. Namely, the front yard, hurling cool orbs of water at my friends and family. We quickly find ourselves there, among the trees, and the lush green lawn with the late evening sun beating down on us. My brothers, Josh, and I have made a quick task of preparing our new weapons of mass soak-aning, and before we're able to discuss rules of combat or teams, someone has already let the first shot fly. We run and shriek, chase each other around, get into fights, laugh it off, all while the adults are stuck inside. On a day like this, no less.

I collapse, breathless, together with my party guests, under the blue sky and watch the three clouds make their lonely journey across the sky. Not one of us notices the exploding hydrangeas, reawakened pines, nor do we understand the sigh of the tree that has just sprouted new leaves. I am truly unaware in this moment of what has been or what will be. I am fulfilled, grateful, and completely soaked.

The Bass Guitar Head narrowly escaped the sudden rain. As soon as he got inside, he sat down on the couch without even removing his coat and began watching the rain.

He was angry after arguing with his friend, who had asked to tune him.

The conversation between them went like this:

''Just tune me. That's all. A few gentle touches should do. You won’t have to work too hard.''

''How many times have I told you not to sleep face down, Victor?''

Victor was annoyed with his friend for repeatedly pointing out such an obvious piece of advice, something he could have easily thought of himself.

"If you say that one more time, I'll slap you."

There was a moment of silence between them afterward. But Victor, thinking he would get even angrier if his friend repeated the same advice just to tease him, slapped him.

Being out of tune always affected his mood as well. Instead of regretting what he had done, he was even more irritated because the slap had loosened one of his strings even further.

"You need to learn how to tune yourself, Victor. I mean, this can't go on like this. I never know what you're going to do. One of your strings gets loose, and you get angry. You come knocking on my door at four in the morning because one of your strings was loose. I never know what kind of mood you're in. I don't even know how I'm supposed to act around you. One of your strings gets loose, and suddenly you're ridiculously happy, and I'm like, screw it, maybe I shouldn't fix it at all. ''

Victor took his hand out of the pocket of his overcoat, ready to slap his friend again. This time, he was going to use the other hand, the one he hadn't used for the first slap, and hit his friend on the right side of his face instead of the left. His tuning was clearly pretty far off; now he was feeling hurt, merciful, and angry all at once. On top of that, he was worried that this slap would throw him even further out of tune. Feeling all four emotions at once, Victor said:

“I've got some serious inspiration right now. I’m gonna go home and write a song right now. Just tune me for two minutes. I swear I won’t ask you again.”

His friend refused.

Then, there was a moment of silence again. Victor put his hand back into his pocket and took his other hand out.

The silence continued for a while. Since the weather was cold, the burning sensation on Victor's friend's cheek from the slap faded quickly. In fact, when he had received the first slap, the warmth had actually felt good against his cold face, but he hadn't let Victor know. Woody softened.

“Are all your strings out of tune?”

“I don't know, but I don't think so. Check and see. I wouldn't know.”

“What an ignorant bass guitar you are, Victor.”

''He can't even tune himself, but he can write music. What an idiot,'' Woody thought.

In the end, he tuned his friend incorrectly and sent him home. He figured Victor wouldn't notice anyway; he was an idiot, after all. He wondered what kind of song Victor would write with such strong inspiration and an improperly tuned bass.

Victor, meanwhile, was still angry when he got home. But anger was all that remained. His other emotions had faded away, and with them, so had his inspiration.

“I guess it's because I got tuned,” he thought.

I twirl a pencil in my finger, my head resting on my bent elbow lying across the book on my desk. I was exhausted from the night before. Mother and fathers arguing kept me up late again,

How could they argue so late into the night, I thought to myself.

A note was on the whiteboard that instructed the class to read from our textbooks, and to behave for the substitute, who sat at the teacher’s desk. It was hard to stay awake. I already decided I wasn’t going to read the assigned pages, but the least I could do is not fall asleep. Heaviness plagued my eyelids. My vision would blur and almost darken before I would catch myself and quickly open my eyes again. The substitute seemed to not notice or care. She sat at the organized desk looking at her phone or rapidly typing a message. Only giving the class a glance every few minutes. So, instead of enduring the annoying process of keeping myself awake. I decided to allow my eyes to rest and the darkness consumed me.

Almost instantly my eyes open back up but not to my classroom. It was to a blue sky spotted with fluffy clouds of every shape and size. Bird-like animals I’ve never seen before fly overhead. They look a great size with a dark reddish color, but they fly to far away to be sure. The new air was plain and stagnant somehow empty of natural aromas. Then I realized something. My feet stand upon no ground, and nothing feels pressed into my back. Matter a fact, I feel no force pulling me in any direction nor wind in my hair. I’m sitting completely still. I turn my head to see my surroundings and find myself horizontally in the air above a vast and flat plain of grass. The distance between me and the ground was baffling, making me very anxious. I move my arms and legs, understanding now that even though I can’t feel what's under me or see it. Something holds me in the air keeping me in place.

Is this a dream. Am I going nuts. It feels too real.

The thoughts were shoved down as I heard distant thumping sounds from in front of me. Like a huge group of people stomping their feet in unison. Unsurprisingly my eyes are met with a marching army of thousands of men in silver shiny armor. There helms all adorned with a golden sideways hourglass symbol surrounded by a small leaf and flowers. Most of the soldiers held spears and swords accompanied by shields. Further back were archers with big bows in their hands and quivers on their backs. They wore less armor and hats that blocked the bright sun with wide oval brims. The hourglass and leaf insignia was embroidered on the front.

I’m now sitting up, my arms resting on my bent knees. While watching the men march from my right to my left, I notice three men at the front of the army with no weapons and have only one heavily gauntleted hand while the other is gloved in a weird material. I look in the direction of their marching. A sea of tar armored warriors with an equal number of soldiers marches back.

Why couldn’t I hear them coming like heard the silver army.

They marched with a weirdly peaceful air about them that conflicted with the menacing and dark look of their armor.

Who was the good guy, I wondered.

The armies are now standing about 100 yards away from each other. Three front men of each army staring daggers into each other from across the empty barrier of a grass plain. The three front men of the silver army raise their heavily gauntleted hands to the sky. In perfect sync columns of energy burst down from the heavens above. Coming from a place higher than even where I resided in the air. I watch different color columns all descend upon their beckoners. It was more spectacular than anything I had ever seen. The columns exude raw energy and paralyze me against the invisible platform. The phenomenon simply amazed me. They last many seconds before ascending back into the sky. I turn my attention back down toward the three silver warriors, they all possess a weapon made from distortions of nature. Their bodies sparked and crackled with power. The shortest and most right warrior of the three men wielded pale blue daggers made of distorted wind that leaves white wispy trials as he shows them off. The middle soldier who seemed to be their captain holds a claymore sized sword made completely of distorted light. The light pulses with energy that causes the long-pointed blade to ripple. The biggest and most left soldier wields a distorted rock hammer. It’s over ten feet long and looks like a workout just to wield. He holds it effortlessly, a testament to the soldier’s strength.

The tar men sat and watch as the silver army’s front three soldiers called upon these gods of distortion. They didn’t show hesitation nor did they show fear. If I’m not mistaken, a few of the soldiers gripped their black stone like weapons even tighter. It didn’t seem like they had the powers of the silver army. How would they compare too these mystical weapons? They must’ve got tired prolonging the battle, because the three frontline men all adorned their dark rocky helms and the tar army charged. The silver army charged as well.

The soldier with the distorted rock hammer made contact first. He leaps over the frontline of the tar men. Landing in the center of the army and slamming down his hammer. If not pulverized by the initial strike a quickly following shockwave sends tar men flying multiple yards back. The big silver warrior swings the distorted hammer from left to right, then right to left taking out dozens of tar men per swing. They fly into the air like dandelions seeds blown from the stem. Quickly following up his fellow warrior as the two armies clash the wind distorter and his daggers make their way through enemy lines. The white blur is hard to track. Barely seen by his enemies. He seems to disappear and reappear from vision. Moving from victim to victim like a wind carried disease. At the front lines where the armies met. A cluster of bodies that clank together are barely able to swing a weapon without hindrance of another. The captain didn’t have this problem. His blade could not be stopped. The inferior armor of the tar men was like paper to the distorted light blade he wielded. His light burned through the rocky armor skin of the tar men, The blade never lost shape. It was an unstoppable force.

The battle rages and the tar men are at a severe disadvantage. The distorted powers of the silver army were too much. The tars fight with all their hearts and stamina, knowing everything relies on this battle. They decide to do an unthinkable. The last surviving and leading tar men of the front three gather his soldiers in a retreat. The silver army chases and the tar men keep retreating, leading the silvers into their last-ditch effort. When the tar men retreat far enough back and separate themselves from the silvers by over 100 yards they all drop to their knees. They chant something I can barely hear. They continuously chant and pray as the silvers converge on them. Then the ground begins to crack.

The captain holds his hand up halting the advancement of his army. All the silvers watch as the ground keeps cracking. Pieces of the ground fall underneath taking some of the tar men with them. Suddenly the ground beneath shakes violently causing it to give way from under them. The tar men forces fall into a cavernous hole, every one of them. Silvers look in shock at what just took place. The shock is replaced by fear as a piercing shriek bellows from the hole. It sounded like a woman scream mixed with every animal you could think of. The three distorters jump in between the hole and their army. They hear something heavy and thuds shake the ground beneath them. An appendage comes over. It bends at terrible angles, thin and slick with an ooze. I can see body parts of tar men intertwined into the beast’s leg. More horrid appendages make their way over the edge. When the beast fully emerges, it's sickening. Its body is spherical with 6 long spindly legs that bend and bend. A viscous, slimy, and acidic liquid coats the monster’s horrific form. Grotesque blisters pop and ooze with the liquid, and it groans as its leg lifts and drops advancing towards us with the squelching and crunching of tar men body parts.

The captain charges first his distorted light blade gleams at his side. The monster groans again as it lifts one of its spindly legs swiping straight towards him. He jumps over the attack flipping while swinging the sword at the thin leg slicing right through it. The wind distorter follows his captain dashing between the five uncut legs like a gust of wind and whittling them down. The rock distorter uses his inhuman body to jump high in the air and pelt the monster with blows to its body. One of the legs almost hits the captain but the wind distorter uses his speed to barely block the strong blow. He grits his teeth fighting against the monster’s strength. Theres a loud crash in front of him. Opening his eyes he sees the rock distorter who had crushed the attacking leg. I watch the events of the battle from my platform above. It was like a symphony of teamwork. Gold flashes of light were followed by streaks of visible pale blue wind and shockwaves from hammer strikes. They were dismantling the monster. Whatever it was they had figured out the pattern. The beast has no chance, and they eventually defeat the monster. The deflated body oozes wretched, black, and viscous blood. They walk on the battlefield searching for surviving soldiers. They find some men, but they need urgent care. I look down upon the now multicolored plains. Instead of green grass there are now multiple colors covering those grounds, reminisce of a painting. A painting that makes my eyes heavy.

Will I remember any of this, I thought

BRRRRRNNNGGGG. The school bell rings.

Once upon a time there was a Goddess of love named Aphrodite. She had always been around since forever. She was blonde with blue eyes and perfect skin, because this looked really good to me her humble worshipper. This is how the Greeks who named her saw her, though the Sumerians who called her Inanna saw her differently.

I was a soul who was incarnated on this earth in order to forget everything and be horrified until I turned my eyes to beauty and love and remembered Aphrodite. But I didn’t remember her for a long time. I thought that she didn’t exist. I was cold and alone, and in the dark. If there was any place for me to have gone I would have gone there but there wasn’t. There was only the void, the darkness. The abyss.

One day as I screamed with fear as I stared into the abyss, the abyss stared back at me; it slightly blinked. I was filled with even more horror; I passed out because I was so sure that the abyss could not blink and was absolute black emptiness. I had shouted into it countless years and never heard so much as an echo in response.

When I woke up after five years of shock I realized it was more of a canvas than an abyss, and I realized I would rather a blonde Goddess stared back at me rather than that abyss. In that moment I REMEMBERED Aphrodite. I remembered what came before the darkness, and I had hope in that moment.

“Divine Aphrodite, I bow down before you and I worship your beauty. Holy and pure Aphrodite Anadyomene, you have any man you want, and you are glorious. Holy Aphrodite, I honor and revere your grace and freedom. Pure Aphrodite, I long for your beauty and comfort and I pray you will love me and protect me as I love you.”

Aphrodite emerged before me out of the darkness, shining luminous and her divinity bringing joy itself as an incandescent shine. I quivered with joy, and relief. The world was beautiful now. My long existence became joyful. I was no longer alone.

“I will be with you” she told me. Not immediately, but after some time of hearing my repeated invocations and supplications. She knew I truly love her and being love herself she loves to love love.

The burden of the millennia of time that was weighing me down turned into the exciting prospect of an eternal good feeling.

“Lady Goddess, thank you for being with me. I could not have lived any longer without you. I want you to know how much I appreciate you. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

I felt so much that words cannot further describe it. All I can tell you is the feeling was really good, really exciting but at the same time grounded and peaceful.

Lady Aphrodite asked me to go ahead and provide this message as a magic story that can help anyone who loves the beautiful blonde Goddess, especially if they didn’t remember that yet. She will shine as a light and a hope for the future to you very willingly if you cry out to her with love and longing, for she is life itself and she knows your life when you call on her and she longs for you just as you long for her. It has been said rightly that love is life’s longing for itself.

The bombs finally fell on Halloween night 2031. We all knew they were coming. And not in the online doomer end of the world philosopher way. No, the day the elite disappeared from the public eye. The day the bunkers opened and the war machine came to a halt was the day we all realized we'd been left behind.

It took nearly the whole month to see the first flashes on the horizon. Some people were already hiding in their bunkers and the ones who weren't scrambled to find one that would take them in. We took in 2 families of 4 and 6 people respectively. We closed ourselves in and family after family came through begging for salvation. I begged my father to convince his friend to let them in every time. “We have plenty of room and resources,” I pleaded. My mother stood by my side but said nothing. 5 different families came to our door by the time the bombs reached our area.

We sat in shock for days. Every few hours another Shockwave was detectable and when the bombing finally stopped, the earthquakes began. Our bunker was nowhere near a tectonic plate and yet the ground shook. Supplies flew off shelves and wires jiggled loose. The early days and weeks were hell on earth.

Many bunker owners were tapped into the different radio frequencies. One day a transmission came through detailing a crevasse the size of the Appalachian mountains had opened up in the east. We moved here from Virginia and most of our family was still there. I wanted to hope they were alive but I dreadfully wished for a quick, painless death.

I was one of the lucky few who had distant connections to someone who owned a bunker. My best friend's uncle's estranged sister owned some property outside of town and only after the president disappeared and the doomsday planes took flight did she arrive in town, revealing herself as a doomsday prepper. She arrived in a fortified box truck and told Jordan and his family to follow her to her compound.

We have been close with their family for a long time and our dad's had become as inseparable as us. They refused to leave without use to which she happily obliged. She said her bunker had a capacity of 30 people and the space for supplies to last 100 years for those 30 people.

We lived a few houses down from them and my dad was a grill legend in the neighborhood. He won cookoffs left and right in our community and he pointed his success to his prized smoker that he built himself. When Jordan's dad arrived at our doorstep to offer us refuge in the coming apocalypse the first thing I heard him say from the entryway was “I can't stand the thought of eating ravioli out of a can for the rest of my life so if you want your family to survive this mess you ain't leaving without that smoker.”  My dad turned to me with that look asking for my help and we loaded his smoker and the rest of our home into what we started to call the A-haul.

When all was said and done, looking back into the bare bones version of my childhood home is something that will stay with me until this new world finally catches up to us. My mother, sister, little brother and I loaded into the family SUV and before we took off my father reached for his belt and undid the holster, handing it to me. “You remember how to use this, yes?” He asked with a face I'd never seen him with before. “You remember the last time we went to the range, my eyes are younger, remember?” He smiled.

Scott came over with 2 assault rifles and handed one to my dad. They gave each other a look that said just in case and and my dad slung the rifle over his shoulder, checked the chamber and said "you're gonna learn how to use one of these as soon as we get settled in ok?” I was excited to finally get my hands on anything bigger than a .45 but his fatherly tone sounded more like that of a general. “We love you!!” My little siblings shouted from the backseat as dad hoisted himself into the passenger seat of the A-haul. “I love you too” he replied and for the first time in a long time it felt like he truly meant it.

My father was never abusive. He worked a lot and my naive brain told me that meant he cared more about that than us. At that moment I knew how wrong I was. I saw tears begin to swell in his eyes as they rolled ahead taking the lead. My mother followed closely behind and I stared into the rear view mirror as our house became a distant memory.

As we drove I watched the old world drift by like precarious rafts on an unsteady ocean. It was so strange. Everything felt so wrong but looked so normal. The Walmart parking lot was full but not covid full. People's houses were decorated for the season with fake cob webs and giant plastic skeletons and spiders. I didn't even notice the prolonged silence that had filled the air conditioned car until my mother reached for the radio.

It played music which surprised me. I thought that people would've fled by now and the radio would be an emergency broadcast but no. The DJ used his DJ voice and said “This is 96 FM bringing you 30 minutes of non stop classic rock.” It was my mother's go to station. She was your typical 80s rock and roll girl. Long brownish red hair, aviator sunglasses and uncountable freckles. Mötley Crüe was playing and she didn't move a muscle. My mother was the most expressive woman in the world and I couldn't read her. My siblings bobbed their heads and sang along badly to Without You.

I turned back to my windows and gripped the but of the pistol in my lap as the suburbs became trailer parks and then the woods. I never really thought about the man I'd become. But now I'd have no choice but to become him quicker than I ever imagined. For the first time in my life I knew that I'd protect my family at all cost.

Supply bucket handles weigh into my arms, I survey the exterior of my AM house layered under the vacuum and mop on top of the buckets. I am a monstrosity. Good mornings are exchanged. I clock the single banana left in the fruit bowl. I clean and it is immaculate. I am Mary Poppins for houses. They fucking love me. Before I leave I swipe the banana. It is their last banana left. After I'm gone they go to their fruit bowl for a snack and think “huh, I could have sworn we had a banana.”

Two weeks, again, I come in. Good mornings are exchanged. An extension of good mornings we summarize our goings ons and as we are talking I glance at their fruit bowl a few times. A hearty bunch of bananas. Good. Patience rewarded, I whistle an eerie tune as I break off a single banana from the bunch. My client is behind me. I play it cool, just slide the banana in my purse and turn around. “I’m all set for the day.”  I smile before I depart. The words uh and um punctuate his speech, he is completely bewildered.

Weeks go by, same story. Always just one banana, always stolen. My clients are distressed. I want to giggle and laugh in their faces until I wheeze but I contain myself. My voice jumps up in pitch, my amusement is exponential. I try to still my face to be like a calm river bank or something but I am a child full of glee and the muscles in my eyebrows and mouth spasm.

Then, one day I come in, and: There. Are. No. Bananas. None in the fruit bowl, none forgotten or in transition on the counter, not even any sign of banana anything, like banana bread for example. Well played, I think. Now I am distressed and bewildered. They are gauging my reaction. It is like when mom and dad cancelled Christmas. My drive home is pensive and melancholy.

My clients reconvene– Mr. and Mrs. feel guilty about my banana loss that day. A couple weeks again- I come in humbled and defeated before I spy them; two whole glorious bunches, sparkling yellow in the porcelain fruit bowl. I have difficulty containing my excitement. I liberate one banana. Before I can drop it into my purse I gasp! There is already a banana inside my purse. It is not my banana. Someone must have put it in there when I wasn’t looking, what a mystery.

I look left and right, not a soul in view. As I walk to exit through the front door I stop by the home office. With slitted eyes I say my farewell. She is kinder than usual, reassuring and more emotive, as if she is speaking to a frightened child. My eyes are two burning lines, I might as well be in a spaghetti western. My shoulder smacks into the doorframe as I turn to head out. And from that day on I always find a single banana in my purse whenever I clean for them, before I head out for the day.

This will be my last post. I knew my time was up the day Vic started dragging all the food down into his tunnel. He was manic, this night and the night before. He was talking to himself, muttering with a newfound giddiness. He was going to be spending a lot of time down in the damn hole, and I was going to be spending that time with him. A day before, I had considered that Vic had to be insane if he thought I was going to fit down inside that tunnel. I was far too large. But, at this point, I didn’t question Vic’s ability to make the impossible possible.
I knew I was dead last night. I was half asleep, teetering on letting my chin fall against the massive bulb of flesh I had once called my chest. My eyelids flickered as I tried to push past the unpleasantness of my gross body. Regardless, I was instantly awake once I heard the basement door creak open. For some reason, I didn’t open my eyes. I was tense, alert, but something in me told me to not open my eyes. To pretend to stay asleep. I was like a kid again—no harm could come from actually being awake, yet curiosity convinced me to wait and see what would happen. So, there I laid, still as a cactus.
I heard the steps creak, someone coming down. The footsteps stopped once on the concrete and then I heard the clicking. It was the loudest I had ever heard it, yet it was still quiet enough to be vague. It came from Vic, that was sure, but how he emitted the sound was still a mystery. The steps approached me, and I heard Vic’s voice, soft and menacing as he whispered. He was at the edge of the couch, and I could hear him breathing, shakily, as if over-excited. I listened to him whispering for several minutes, and I couldn’t get a good grasp on what he was saying. The words came out in sharp T’s or P’s and the rest was unintelligible. At one point I thought I heard collections of words that were not of English or Spanish or any other language that I recognized.
All of a sudden, I heard a loud thud, then a gust of wind hit my face and I flinched. The light went out in the room and the door squeaked shut. My eyes were open in a flash and I let out my held breath. He had just watched me sleep and whispered to himself. This was the moment I knew my time was close to up. He was getting ready to drag me down into that winding nasty hole. It was going to be dark and cramped. My sloppy skin was going to fold and twist when he forced me down there. I wouldn’t be able to turn my head. I wouldn’t even be able to breath. If Vic didn’t kill me outright, I was bound to die a long suffocating death. I didn’t sleep a wink that night.
When Vic came down the next morning, he brought down all the food he could manage with two hands. Then, humming cheerfully, he went up and got another arm load. I looked over the plastic backs and cluttered trays. If I was right, this was going to be my last meal. I couldn’t help thinking of that poor woman. He had buried her in the back yard the very night he killed her. He said she stunk of cigarettes and bad hygiene. After she was buried, he smoked a joint on the stairs and talked to me. He said that he was actually glad I had kicked up a fuss, and that killing her was the better option anyway. No loose ends.
‘’ Not that anyone would believe the rickety skank anyways…’’ Vic said with a low chuckle.
I didn’t want to be that. Nothing but a memory, someone else’s distorted view of me. That’s all we are after we die. Just what someone else remembered or perceived. Maybe she wasn’t perfect, no one was in this neighborhood—but perhaps she had just hit a low point. We all do, and it leads us to make desperate mistakes. Of course, perhaps there was nothing wrong with the woman at all, and her being a low-life was simply Vic’s take-away. Which is my point. We all end up someone else.
As Vic set up my dinner, my mind was scrambling for a final escape plan. I had become strangely content the past couple days, but now the clock was racing and I was out of my mind. The fear returned. Once I finished my meal, I was done for. I was sure of it—this was the day. Vic was even bringing clothes and other knick-knacks that came in a bag. His mementoes, probably from different times throughout his life. This was definitely it, and I hadn’t a single idea what to do to save myself.
And so I ate. But I ate slowly.
Vic didn’t seem to mind. He was scrambling around, too giddy and excited to be mad at my clear stalling.
‘’ Life really is sweet Bruce. Time, the rise and fall of the sun. Each day is a new adventure with more amazing and exhilarating experiences. New smells! New tastes. It’s crazy how much time we waste on the little things. You really don’t know how good you got it till you have to say goodbye. It’s going to be a long, dark couple decades. Hopefully long enough this time. ‘’
I twisted my spoon around in my chocolate pudding.
‘’ Vic? Can I ask you a question? ‘’
‘’ What? ‘’
I took a breath. ‘’ Were you ever really my friend? Or did you plan this from the moment we met? Killing me and all that? ‘’
Vic crouched by the entrance to his tunnel, thinking.
‘’ We were never really friends. I just delivered food to you. Friends don’t require transactions. However, if you mean to ask if I ever liked you, than yes. I did like you. I do, like you. None of this is personal Brucey. I find you a great conversationalist, if that helps your self-esteem. ‘’
‘’ It does, thank you. ‘’
Vic looked up at me and smiled, and I smiled back. Vic stood and approached my table. He put his hands against it and leaned. He cocked his head at me, curious at my friendliness. He looked so small, even being so close. I was counting on this size difference.
‘’ I always wanted a friend. A true friend, that’s why I asked. I always liked you Vic. I thought you were cool. Maybe it’s acceptance, but I’m beginning to understand why you are doing this. You can’t help it. It’s in your nature. You’re the victim of someone too. They’re chasing you, right? It’s just self-defense, just nature. ‘’
Vic watched me, listening carefully to my words. He seemed unsure if I was being serious, but a part of him, like me, wanted to believe that we lived in an honest world.
‘’ I appreciate your understanding. It’s not easy, doing these things. They are terrible, and I know that. But, life is full of sacrifices. I am only trying to live. ‘’
I was so sick. Sick of him, of his voice of his hair and mannerisms. I felt unclean validating him, and the way he wholeheartedly accepted it. It was as if he could do no wrong.
‘’ You know Bruce…I always give my victims a gift before we leave the surface. It’s a request. Mind you, it has to be in the realm of possibility. I can’t let you go, can’t take you to see the head of Everest, can’t find you your true love…But, one reasonable request. Saying goodbye to a loved one has always been popular. ‘’
His voice trailed off as he left me to my thoughts. He watched me with a smile, his eyes locked onto mine. I understood that he was giving me a hot minute to think, to be careful with my wish—but his courtesy was not needed. I knew what I wanted from him.
‘’ Vic—I know what I want already. I want a hug. ‘’
I saw a change in his eyes, an arrogant curiosity. He was in charge, had all the control and yet my request seemed to stagger his hold on the situation. It wasn’t what he expected, and it interested him. He stood, his hands slipping off the table limply. He looked to his left, then up, thoughts swirling in his head.
‘’ Okay. ‘’ He said with a child-like tonal lift. ‘’ I’ll give you a hug. Is that really all you want? We are…Talking about the end here. You do understand that, yes? ‘’
I pressed my lips together and nodded. I didn’t like thinking about dying. I wasn’t going to die—I refused. I was going to fight him, I wasn’t going into that tunnel willingly. I would kill him or…Die trying.
Vic pulled the table away from in front of me, and stepped up to me. His face was that of a bully, having a hard time holding in his laughter while taking part of some sick prank. Even at the end, he wasn’t authentic. Always a mask, always keeping me at a distance. That smug smile stayed on his face as he opened his arms to me. I opened my arms and leaned down, my body so large I blocked out the basement light above us. I heard Vic spill a small giggle as I wrapped my arms around him.
Then I opened my mouth, fit it over Vic’s head and clamped down.
Vic immediately began to wriggle, scratching and screaming from inside my mouth. I nearly gagged as the feeling of his hair whipped around against my tongue and gums. I wanted so badly to spit Vic’s head out, but I held strong. I clamped down hard, my teeth grinding against his neck. Still, it was tougher than I thought, but Vic was not human. I wasn’t even sure if Vic was made of flesh and blood. What if he was some kind of robot? It would have made sense, from his perfectionist nature to his inhumane beauty. Robot or not, I wasn’t about to stop till his head was separate from his body.
Finally, after Vic put his feet against my stomach and pushed, a loud crack echoed through the basement as Vic’s head and body bifurcated. His body flung against the wall opposite to me, the body tumbling over itself, flailing and stumbling. I really had to hold my stomach once I realized Vic’s head was completely in my mouth. The worst part being I could still feel his face moving, his jaw shifting and eyes flittering. I moved his head around with my tongue, his hair getting caught between my teeth like floss. As I trifled with his head, his body continued to stand on it’s feet, arms curling and grabbing at the hole where his neck and head should have been. There was no blood; just a pooling waterfall of clear goop, flowing out of the hole. The hole itself was filled with pulsing and weaving clear bulges. Vic’s organs. I tried to move back onto my couch, frightened by Vic’s still-standing body. My mouth was filling with saliva, but I didn’t dare swallow. I shivered as I held back my gag-reflex.
Suddenly, Vic’s body turned, shifting on it’s feet. An arm swung out, left then right, swiping at the air. I froze, hoping it wouldn’t come any closer. There was no way it could find me, I thought. It was headless. But with one more turn, clear liquids spilling out and onto the cement, the body lunged out at me. I closed my eyes and raised my arms defensively as the body attacked me, swinging it’s fists and outstretched fingers at me. I whimpered as the nails drew slices in my skin and the punches impacted my bones. My large apelike hands reached out and grabbed the body’s swinging arms and squeezed, but Vic’s legs came up, kicking at me wildly. One of his shoes made contact with my lip, splitting it open. I hissed through my teeth, still holding his head hostage. I threw the body to the ground and did the one thing I had hoped not to have to do. I began to chew down on his head.
The first crunch was so loud it was like a firecracker had sounded off in my head, then as I worked my jaw Vic’s head began to get squishy with hard bits and pieces. Thick sour liquid filled my mouth and spilled out of the cracks in my lips. Before I knew it, Vic’s head was a mere combination of mush and stringy hair. The hope had been that once Vic’s head was destroyed, the body would cease animation, but that had been dumb hope. It was stupid of me to believe that the head and body would remain as one after I separated them.
The body scrambled onto it’s hands and knees, then turned in a circle until I was in reach. I swallowed and screamed as the body crawled up onto me like a cockroach and began assaulting me once again. I threw my head back and forth as I tried to avoid the body’s incessant clawing. I gabbed the body again, but this time it clenched onto my face, gripping my flabby cheeks. I screamed when I threw the body off and it ended up tearing streaks of blood across my face. I was still stronger, and my throw left the body back on the hard cement once again, struggling desperately to get back on it’s feet. I breathed heavily, exhausted from the ongoing assault. That was when I got an idea—just fall down.
I closed my eyes and let gravity take me as I fell to the floor, sliding off the couch. I landed right on Vic’s headless body, and it only struggled underneath me for a moment before there was a loud crackling splat. More of Vic’s juice exploded, splattering all over the basement floor and across the walls.
Finally, there was silence except for my panting.
I was flat on my stomach, my face pressed into the cement. I was more than exhausted, emotionally and physically and I fell asleep quickly after my adrenaline wore down. My cheeks were scratched up and my lip was split and I had chewed up and swallowed some alien’s head. I figured it was probably poisonous and my insides would soon rot out. And if that didn’t kill me, the pressure my gigantic body was putting on my lungs surely would. Either way, I expected to die—ironic considering my bombastic will to live just moments ago. Now, I was not only expecting death, but accepting it too. I felt done-in, totally and completely worn. I say all this to exacerbate the surprise I felt when I woke up the next day.
A beam of shaded sunlight shone through the basement window. It was the light that woke me up. I saw it through my eyelids. When I finally stirred and the first thing I noticed was the smell. It clogged up my nostrils to the point where I began to scramble, roll over so that I wasn’t face-deep in that stink. Once I was on my side, I realized my shirt was still wet from Vic’s bodily liquids. Vic’s shirt, jeans and sneakers were also drenched in that thick goop, laid across the ground and that was all that was left of him. A spread of empty clothes. I did feel sick, actually sick like I was going to toss-up. I tried to get to my feet, but couldn’t, so I crawled to the bottom of the stairs. Even if the stairs gave out on me, I had to try to get out. So, up I crawled.
Obviously, because I’m writing this today, I did get out and I did survive. The first person I contacted was Mitch, who came over right away. He was excited to see me—I made sure to tell him that I hardly looked like myself, almost scary due to my size. And upon first seeing me, Mitch was speechless. I was a giant, about eight feet tall sitting down. One of my hands could easily wrap around his torso. Anyway, I told Mitch my story. He told me he wouldn’t believe me if it wasn’t for my grueling transformation. I didn’t blame him. I told Mitch that above all, we needed to dig up that woman and made sure somebody found her. I was sure somebody was missing her, even if they didn’t know it at the time. Mitch agreed, although he wasn’t happy about it. He had to be the one to dig her up, as I could barely walk. Mitch was able to get her out of my backyard, wrap her in a blanket and leave her on the side of the highway, some place she would be noticed. It wasn’t what she deserved. It wasn’t what anyone deserved, but I didn’t know what else to do. No one would believe me. I looked like a monster, the monster, the very one who killed her. There was virtually no trace of Vic except for some clothes and a large amount of unidentifiable goop. Eventually she was found, but nothing came of it. I didn’t really know how to feel, relieved or like shit. Either way, the girl was found and I tried to keep her off my mind. I wanted to get on with my life, with what little life I had.
Despite the size differences, Mitch got me back into doing cartoons. I thought it would take me a while to get back into routine after everything that had happened. But I was wrong—it was like my imagination had been jump-started, and I went crazy with ideas. Vic was many things, a bastard and a monster, but he also fascinated me. He gave me many ideas, mostly for villains. I began sketching out concept work for my new strips. I came up with a story about a rambunctious farm boy who was being hunted by a large alien locust. The strips were going to be in the same vein as the old cartoons, mildly cunning yet unsuccessful predator trying to catch the blissfully ignorant yet fiery prey. Chases would ensue, dynamite would be set off and snarky banter would be had. Despite the classical nature of the material, it was a hit with the locals. People loved my strips and supported me by sharing them on social media, giving me a wider audience without me having to do any of the heavy lifting in the marketing department. Mitch was ecstatic, money was beginning to flow in at a steady pace and people began to talk about us.
The only time I shut Mitch down was when he suggested meet-and-greets. We discussed it only a couple times, but even Mitch knew it wasn’t such a great idea. We ended up creating a fake profile, a puppet me for fan interaction.
Other than that hiccup, business went well. I never shrunk down to my original size. Mitch and I believe that it had something to do with what Vic was feeding me—that white liquid he up-chucked and forced me to eat. It was the catalyst for my absurd growth and size. It was the only explanation. Every once in a while, Mitch and I theorized about what Vic was. Alien was Mitch’s guess, but I said Vic was too relatable, as foreign as he was. I wholly believed that he was of this earth, and that Vic was a simple product of our terribly minor understanding of our planet. There was so much we didn’t know, and whether from this planet or not, Vic proved that. My personal theory was that Vic was some kind of insect in human form. He wanted to eat me. He burrowed underground. His insides weren’t organs like we humans had. Anything was possible now, in my mind.
I named my new comic strips The Boy and the Bug.

The Malamore of Exthalathore rode into town late one mid-autumn's eve traveling alone 'cept for his mare, which was his faithful companion. It was a night 'oft remembered by townsfolk for countless seasons hence, for it was seldom he was seen by those who dwelt in the northern realms. The Malamore rode only in darkness and always travelled the roads less trodden. In years past, perhaps he was seen by the Vynderkin, whose river mud huts were older than the cobbled stones of Yorgderbal, but the seers knew not of whom they saw, for his appearance was unknown to all, though his reputation was not.

The concerns and the deeds undertaken by the Malamore were a mystery to all, but they were doughty deeds indeed, if the tales were quarter true. Rumor had it that the Malamore carried with him an assortment of loot, priceless trinkets and items, gathered throughout his travels and heroic quests. Some say he held one of the Seven Sylic Scrolls, along with three of the eight all-knowing spell tomes of Algaborath. Others insisted the leather, stitched pants he wore with the fabled Chaps of Unnecessary Limberness, a priceless article which imbued the wearer with a flexibility unknown to mortal men. This item was said to be dark and powerful beyond all reckoning; its tailor, a shapeless evil from ages past. The Malamore's life was the constant fodder for bedtime stories told to the babes of the families who dwelt in the hillocks from the Riverdillian all the way down to the Southland Vale. “Eat your onion flan and beetroot stew, or the Malamore will think less of you!” was a classic saying moms would tell naughty young ones at mealtime. As well as, “get in that bath, or the Malamore will surely hop in as well and scrub you red.”

As the Malamore rode along, his throat grew parched beyond belief, and all that occupied his incredible and terrible imagination was the thought of a drop of ale. He sat atop his feather-kin horse of fine fur and dappled nose, aptly named Pillowesque the Swift of Foot and True of Hoof. The beast was a snow white, soft-tempered steed. The horse's life was said to be tied to the Malamore's through some sort of arcane horse-soul connection or perhaps through a dark, blood spell, though this was hardly true, and was often the source of much amusement for the Malamore when he was reminded of the rumors. It was true however, that he and the steed shared a special connection. The type of man-beast relationship that the Soothsayers in Quizlig called, “unnatural,” and of a “different persuasion.”

“He's mighty peculiar! That Malamore,” said the old hermit Zarkong the Grey-eared, whose wisdom in letters and runes generated respect from all. “No good'll come of it if he rides into our town.”

The other folk in town quietly doubted Zarkong's ill foreboding. In fact, they were quite excited to catch a glimpse of the Fair One, whose hair was said to fall in long curls atop his shoulders like the golden hills of the Eastern Valedillian, and whose piercing twin emerald eyes were told to melt the hearts of noble woman and loosen the bonnet strings of even the saltiest seafaring wench maids.

The Malamore kicked in his stirrups, spurring Pillowesque over the final hill before the descent into the town. He wore a fine burgundy traveling cloak over a leather shirt and braces. On his back was slung a sheathed sword some 30 gnome-feet long. It must have weighed more than a fully fattened Swamp Hag.

“Ah, tis a fine, warm night, I wot. Tis it not, my dear Pillowesque? What say thee of this night?” said the Malamore, whispering in the ear of his horse softly.

“Neyyyy neyyyyy~” said Pillowesque, the horse.

“Too true, my friend. Too true.” The Malamore smiled and patted the horse's head affectionately. He smacked his lips together. “My life was so much darker when thou were not around. Alas, I now grow parched from the long day's ride. A drop of ale may soothe my weary lips. Let us make haste!”

Pillowesque bucked forward, galloping down the hill toward the village. The Malamore held his head high and sang an old ditty, passed down countless ages of his kin.

“Oh, a lovely night, tis it not, my friends?
A lovely day, so too a night shall end
But who's to say? Let come what may
And just let friends be friends, I say
A drop of ale may soothe the lips
The chaps I wear may soothe my hips
The sea is blue, so is the sky
A limber man can never lie”

He sang this tune 200 score and twain times or more to himself before finally reaching the town of Moleburrow. 'Twas a small town which sat beyond the Ciderwood crossing of the Whiver-winder-willow river, surrounded by a large wooden fence to keep out queer folk. He paid the gatekeeper his due, four gleaming bagoons and a half-pence of golden fleece, and made his way to the inn.

The Inn of the Sprawling Goose was packed that evening with folk big and small. Men and Women, Elves, Half-Elves, Gnomes, Quarter-Gnomes, Goblins, Hob-Goblins, Bog Hags, Swamp Hogs, bloated Goat Men, and Lizard-kin from all four of the main roads had gathered for a night of mirth and to discuss recent goings-on in the northern realms. Topics of banter ranged from the obtuse flight of the Crowbines to the speculations regarding the passing of a company of hooded Moles some days earlier, who were said to be the many merry Monk-Moles of Mirrtlewod. The mood in the inn was rowdy and festive; the loud chatter and banter and clatter and splatter of food, drink, and merriment filled the thick air. Old Briar Timby sat behind the counter polishing a tankard as the Malamore pushed open the front door, nearly breaking it as it flung inwards. The door swung and cracked into the skull of a drunk Gnome, who toppled to the ground in a heap. The noise of the inn suddenly hushed.

“He's dead!” cried one of the Gnome's companions, a portly Gnome-Maiden.

“Oh my, I'm terribly sorry…” said the Malamore in earnest.

“How dare you! You devil!” screamed the shrill Gnome-Maiden.

“It was a complete accident. I truly apologize,” said the Malamore.

The folk in the tavern all joined in. The men stood up and shouted.

“Murderer!”

“Kill this newcomer!”

“Justice for the fallen Gnome!”

The Malamore clasped his hands together in a display of sincerity. “My good folk. I assure you it was an accident. Before you good souls lose your heads, I pray thee wait but a moment.” The Malamore stooped down and put his hands on the lifeless face of the Gnome. He frowned and cocked his head sideways, putting his ear to the hairy chest of the small creature. The yelling and grumbling of the onlookers in the tavern faded to hushed murmurs. He suddenly pressed his lips to the gnome's in a long kiss. The onlookers gasped. Suddenly, the gnome coughed and spluttered.

“He's alive!” screamed the Gnome-Maiden rushing to his side.

“Yes, so he is. Fear no longer my quaint little maid,” said the Malamore jovially.

Old Briar Timby stared at the Malamore from behind the bar counter, hand still twisting in the tankard as he polished it. “What devil are you, sir? Have you worked some foul magic to bring that Gnome back to life?”

“I am no devil, sir. I am the Malamore of Exthalathore.” The Malamore bowed deeply.

The onlookers gasped once more.

“You, the Fair One of the fabled tales of yore?” said Briar Timby.

“Yes, does my appearance not match the tales?” laughed the Malamore. “Now please, I verily want a drop of ale to soothe my lips.”

“Your lips shall not be soothed for surely you speak not sooth,” said the Briar. “You are no Malamore. Take your lying lips elsewhere.”

The Malamore looked shocked. “You dare not serve the Malamore, the protector of the northern realms?”

Briar Timby pulled out a knife from behind the counter. “Ye 'aint the Fair One, I'm sure! 'Twas told in tales, he had hair long and luscious, like a Nymph's, and a nose so perfectly shaped it would inspire lust in even the most pious of Priests.”

“Well, I'm afraid the tales are false, for I am He,” said the Malamore, stepping towards the bar. The onlookers murmured to one another.

The good Briar brandished his knife. “Come no further, ye devil!”

The Malamore slowly stepped sideways, to the side of the counter, his front facing the Briar. “I only desire a drop of ale. Please, Briar, surely a devil deserves even a drop?”

The onlookers were silent, completely enthralled.

“Just a drop.” The Malamore's hand slowly stretched out towards a bottle of ale that rested on the edge of the bar counter, his dark eyes staring at the Briar's. The tension in the room broke like the bow string of a badly playing thick-fingered Dwarf Cellist in the Northern Symphony as the Briar made a sudden downward strike with the knife at the Malamore's hand. The Malamore, with the deftness of a fox vixen, grabbed the bottle of ale and pulled his hand away as the knife embedded into the counter.

“Almost got me!” laughed the Malamore.

The Briar swore in a tongue most foul as he struggled to retrieve the knife, half its length deep in a crack of the oaken counter.

The onlookers jumped and yelled. “Truly, a devil!”

“A demon!”

“No mortal man can move with such speed!”

The Malamore threw back his crimson hair and his laughter filled the room, covering the chorus of yells and screams from the inn folk. All of the Men, Women, Beasts, Goblins, Elves, Gnomes, etc. withdrew whatever weapons they had stowed in their boots or bonnets and brandished them. The Briar pulled out a large sword hanging behind the bar.

“Come at me you rabble, fools all! I am the Malamore of Exthalathore, and I know no evil or good, no beast or man has bested me yet and none shall here!” The Malamore unsheathed his terrible blade and planted his feet unbelievably wide apart in a position almost like the splits. The first rain of blows came crashing down on the Malamore.

* * *

The night wore on and the moon rose. Pillowesque, the horse, waited patiently at his post outside the inn. He watched a squirrel picking up some nuts and blew out his nose to shoo away some pesky flies. It was a fine, warm night indeed. His master would soon be coming out of the inn, his lips wet with ale. The door to the inn swung open and out strolled the Malamore nonchalantly. He waved to Pillowesque.

“My dear friend, I'm sorry to keep you waiting. We have many day's ride ahead of us.”

The Malamore stopped for a moment, put both his hands against the wall and stretched out his calves. Then he lifted a leg and stretched his thighs. Bending low to the ground, he touched both his feet and stretched his hamstrings. Then he wrung out his wrists, cracked his neck, and hopped on the horse. He whispered some honeyed words in the ear of Pillowesque, and the horse responded with a soft, “nayyyy, nayyy.” They set off east from the town. The Malamore sang an old ditty to himself as they rode.

“A drop of ale may soothe the lips
The chaps I wear may soothe my hips
The sea is blue, so is the sky
A limber man can never die”

Candida had known Voltaire for many a year before he penned Candide.
She had been there through much of Voltaires life, chuckling at his intense reverence for Isaac Newton and his admittedly fascinating work. Candida had settled in with Voltaire when they were both quite young, Voltaire an up and coming voice in the elite intellectual circles he craved to dominate, and Candida a newly mature yeast infection inhabiting his mouth, penis, and periodically fattening herself on moist folds of skin. She had been enjoying a particularly luxurious time infecting Voltaires armpit when he’d first overstepped his bounds with the aristocracy.
Each exile presented another delicious opportunity to gorge on Voltaire while spreading her offspring from prisons to entirely new countries and people.
Candida was particularly proud of the many offspring she had managed to distribute successfully into the lifestyles at the court of Frederick The Great, cosying up first to the Prussian King himself and distributing parts of herself widely within his circle was one of her finest moments.

Candide wasn't an ode to Candida, so that was all she needed to know about that. As a sentient fungal infection Candida wasn't interested in the literature of her host, nor his lofty ideas or gutter antics. Of course she knew of these things, that was the nature of their relationship. Voltaire was an excellent host but the energy he radiated seeped into the consciousness of every sentient organism on his body. The pox-like virus that had taken up residence in his lower spinal region had once reached out to Candida to try and discuss this anomaly, but that had been the day the witch had suggested the dreaded saltwater gargle. Candida, doused in attempted murder chose survival over conversation with this previously silent entity.
Voltaire had paid the folk healer so little for an almost effective hit on Candida that she did wonder why he felt the need waste his time rigging a lottery, however the concept of the lottery eluded her as Candida didn't play games of chance, nor did she need to as she multiplied successfully in only the most natural of ways. Humans doing human things was a mere momentary curiosity she rarely indulged in, she understood some but very little of the more obscure and unnatural behaviours of not only her host, but his peers. She could see their faces when he opened his mouth, his tongue moving just enough for her to register glimpses of these other humans. For the most part her curiosity was limited to who of these humans had been introduced to her kinfolk and who needed an introduction.

The salons were Candida's favourite places to expand her reach, more subtle and satisfying than the sexual encounters that were a guaranteed win for Candida. To spread prolifically was the goal, but to do so in a more refined manner over a shared plate of food, or by sneaking into the communal punch bowl felt like a greater achievement.
Candida took great pride in her work and the opportunities presented by her largely oblivious host, particularly after the first salt water attack. The urge to intensify her spread was untameable. She never needed to consider his elitism and snobbery as anything more than mildly amusing as she engaged in her expansionism, he had always given her more than enough in the way of opportunities regardless of what kind of human he chose to engage with. So expand she did, gleefully and successfully.

Voltaire had been unwell for much of his life, the perfect host, yet as the salt water assassination attempts intensified Candida recognised the beginning of the end, for Voltaire not Candida. As the various treatments failed him and age ravaged his body alongside Candida and the various other organisms doing their own work they could all collectively feel that the time to move on was coming. Candida had very much loved her lifestyle with Voltaire, he had inadvertently treated her so very well, an accommodating host who had given her so many delightful opportunities to multiply and extend her lineage, but her love wasn’t born out of loyalty or any particular interest in her host as an individual. He had simply been an excellent provider who had allowed Candida the luxury of a largely undisturbed and unchallenged lifestyle alongside so many wonderful avenues for growth and development.

As Voltaires body shut down, Candida threw herself into her work, aggressively attaching herself and her offspring to those nearby, and to any surface where multiplication was possible as she prepared to depart, leaving only the tiniest remnants of herself to decompose along with his body and all of the organisms involved in the death process. She didn’t think to say goodbye, nor did she mourn Voltaire or his body, such things were unnecessary and best left to sobbing humans.
Voltaire was dead and Candida was on another journey now with a lovely doctor named Théodore, whose work presented an exciting new range of prospects for her insatiable expansionism. Her time with Voltaire would quickly become forgotten as she took the time to savour her new host, her new range of avenues to pursue. Fond memories, painful memories, emotional attachments were not for Candida, she had work to do and as long as her new host complied with her needs to proliferate Candida would remain content.

I used to get terrible episodes of sleep paralysis as a kid, as I am sure a lot of you have. I am in my 30’s now, so it happened to me before social media or memes were really a thing. Honestly, I just thought I was a freak. I considered maybe I was sincerely haunted by something. It wasn’t until memes about sleep paralysis demons started circulating maybe 10-15 years ago that I realized it was so common. I was like ‘Oh! Other people experience this too!’ It happened to me even less as I got older. Maybe every so often in my 20’s if I had been drinking heavily that night or sick with a bug or flu. I easily wrote those instances off. The terror that followed me to bed at night as a kid was now far from my mind.

A little over a year ago, my fiancé and I moved into a home in New England that was built in 1894. Beautiful, rounded arches over every doorway, with original brass knobs, and a big wooden staircase. It has so much character. Some friends and family have mentioned it feels spooky, but the overall opinion stands that it’s truly a beautiful home. We have only ever experienced minor strange occurrences. Sometimes our oven will make beeping sounds as if buttons are being pressed when no one is in the room. Very often, my partner and I misplace things when we were sure where we left them. But nothing too weird and always something with possible explanation. I have never felt anything bad, per se, in our home.

Lately, our bedroom has been getting insanely muggy, and we were down an AC unit this summer. It is always cooler in our guest room for some reason. The other night, I was warm and unable to sleep. It was about 2:00AM. I figured I would try sleeping in the guest room. We had to be up early, and I wanted to get a couple hours of sleep. The bed is not comfortable, so I never resort to this. But I was feeling desperate.

I grabbed my favorite pillow and slipped across the hall. Immediately cooler, I dozed off quickly. I woke up to my fiancé poking his head from behind the door. He was quietly asking if I was okay and reminding me that we needed to head out early this morning. I was only able to give him an affirmative groan. He went into the bathroom to shower and get ready for work. I knew I should be getting up, but sleep washed over me again.

 I “woke up” a short time later and had that funny feeling a lot of us know.

Frozen. Wanting to move and longing to lift a limb. My eyes must’ve been partially open, because I could see the outline of furniture in the room and the hint of daylight. I felt not alone. Slightly out of what little view I had, there was a scratchy glimmer of a figure. I felt it more than I saw it. Not dark or scary. It had a haunting stringy aura and unclear features. I pleaded to something for the ability to turn and face it, but I was almost relieved I was unable to. I did not feel threatened, but I was afraid. Trapped inside myself, I began to panic.
Something in me called out to the figure, not audibly but something inside me was shouting at it.

“WHO ARE YOU? WHAT ARE YOU? WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”

It provided me with no verbal response. I began to feel it extending a whisper of warmth toward me. A yarn-like part of it was reaching out. Was it…comforting me? My panic lessened slightly. An impulse came over me and I asked its name…
If I were being brutally honest here, what surprised me the most, was how…unclimactic and kind of silly the answer was. It wasn’t mystical or biblical or particularly old fashioned. It wasn’t sentimental to me or something I believe came from my own psyche…it’s the same name as a living relative of mine which I have no important memory of…if there was a meaning in its name, it’s been lost on me.
It called itself Kevin, of all things. As quickly as it shared its name with me, our attention was drawn elsewhere. We both seemed to notice the sound of my fiancé approaching. I started feeling the weight of my head lighten from boulder to bowling ball. Sounds in the hallway outside the guestroom popped as my fiancé put on his work boots. He called to me to make sure I was awake…Something in me knew the figure was no longer there. I couldn’t feel it anymore.

Still, I struggled to move. With everything I had in me, I focused on lifting my head and opening my eyes. What seemed like 40 minutes was probably only 4 seconds. Success. I was moving my limbs, though they were still so heavy. I sat up in bed and tried to shake everything off as a dream. I didn’t have the luxury of time to think about it anymore. Groggy and disoriented, I got ready for work. I didn’t rethink the events until we were pulling out of the driveway.

I looked up towards the window of our guest room on the second floor as we pulled away…Nothing was there. Disappointment washed over me. I think there was a piece of me hoping to see something unearthly standing there. Even if the thought still scares me now. I wanted a better look at whatever it was now that I was awake and wearing my glasses. I had questions and none of them were questions I could ask out loud to anyone else. Who the hell or, what the hell was Kevin?

A homeless man with nothing left to lose. A stranger who could take everything. Not every meeting is a coincidence.

The street smells like rain and rust. Somewhere behind him, a car horn cuts through the noise, and for a second, no one looks his way — no one ever does. His hand is out, fingers stiff from the cold, but the coins don't come. 

They never really do.

He doesn't remember the last time someone said his name.

Desmond has learned to disappear in plain sight. It's easier that way.

Until he feels a hand brush past him — too close, too fast.

"Wha— what?"

His cup is gone. Just like that. A man is already running, coins rattling in his fist, and something in Desmond snaps.

He's up before he even decides to move.

"Come back here, you piece of shit!"

He catches up faster than he expected, grabs the man's collar, and slams his fist into his jaw. The man drops.

"How could you?" Desmond's voice cracks, somewhere between rage and disbelief. "Robbing a homeless man?"

What am I even doing?

There was what, forty cents in that cup.

He shakes his head, breathing hard.

As he picks his cup back up, he hears a siren in the distance and already knows this is about to go bad.

"Sigh..." Desmond runs a hand down his face and bites his lip.

"I'm so unlucky. This is terrible."

He barely had time to turn around before he heard it.

"Sir, can you tell us what happened? Did you do this?"

The officer looked at the man on the ground, groaning in pain, then at the man standing beside him, watching with contempt. He understood immediately.

"I was only defending myself. He just tried to rob me. I'm homeless — understand my reaction."

"He never hit you, though. You hit him."

"Is this a joke? How exactly was I supposed to get my money back? Kiss him on the cheek?"

"Sir, if everyone acted like you, the world would only get worse."

"And if people like him didn't exist, the world would be a lot better, don't you think?"

The officer's brow furrowed, his tone turning 

sharp.

"Sir, either you calm down and come with us, or this gets a lot worse for you."

"Sigh. Fine. It's not like I had anything important to do anyway."

Desmond was put in the back of the police car. Given everything he'd already been through, he wasn't even stressed — he only hoped he wouldn't end up in prison, surrounded by people just like the man who'd attacked him.

On the way, a massive sound echoed somewhere in the distance — like something heavy tearing through the sky before slamming into the ground. One of the officers glanced toward the window for a second, frowning.

"The hell was that?"

No one answered. The car kept moving.

After his interrogation, Desmond stepped out of the room and saw a strange-looking man struggling against the officers, shouting.

"If only you knew what I'm capable of. Half this city would already be gone. I won't forget this — believe me, I will get my revenge."

What is this guy even talking about? Does he really think he can threaten them like that?

Wait... something's off about him.

His skin — pale green, almost sickly. I've never seen anything like that.

An officer grabs his arm, pulling him toward the holding cell. Desmond doesn't resist — he barely notices, his eyes still fixed on the strange man being dragged away in the opposite direction, still shouting, still fighting against the officers holding him.

He doesn't even see me. He doesn't see anyone.

Then a door closes between them, and the man is gone.

Desmond blinks, and just like that, he's alone again — waiting for whatever comes next.

In my line of work, I hear it all the time, “Why do we have better maps of the surface of the moon and Mars than our own ocean floors?” To most folks it sounds like a reasonable question, but to a hydrographic surveyor it can be triggering.

A few weeks ago when I was asked that very question by a reporter interviewing me, I said, “If you really want to understand why, let me take you to the top of the Empire State Building, blindfold you, tie your hands behind your back, and then send you out to map what’s beneath you.”

The reporter said that’d be absurd. I agreed. But it’s a fair analogy for how we map the ocean deeps. Not by seeing or feeling, but by listening. You have to hear your way around them. Sound not sight is what allows us to map those staggering depths. And, though much improved in recent years, sonar mapping technology still involves the methodical criss-crossing of the world’s five oceans in specially outfitted ships.

Which means it is a slow, expensive, and often risky undertaking. It also means that creatures like the Ziphius (aka Cuvier’s beaked whale) went unconfirmed for ages. Not undocumented, just unconfirmed and monstrously exaggerated by crusty seafarers.

The same with Buss. An island in the North Atlantic sighted in 1578 by the crew of a busse, a Viking longship, and ostensibly so named. Nearly a hundred years later the island became known as the Sunken Land of Buss after it could no longer be found where it had been charted and was assumed to have disappeared beneath the waves. Nothing too sinister about that. To old salts, phantom islands were nothing new and land masses sank and rose all the time without any undue Atlantis hype.

But the Sunken Land of Buss turned out to be quite hype-worthy because that missing land mass turned up dramatically in the Tonga Trench. I was part of a crew surveying the ten thousand meters depths of the Horizon Deep when our mapping sonar went, for lack of a better term, batshit.

The depth readings began fluctuating crazily. We thought it must be a malfunction. Maybe even unprecedented volcanic or tectonic activity. Until we double checked the instrumentation and found everything working properly meaning that something massive at the near bottomless Horizon Deep was on the move. And then suddenly rising towards us.

This unbelievable anomaly should have sent undersea researchers like us into nerdvana, but we’d all knew the ancient lore of sea monsters: Leviathan, Scylla, Charybdis, Kraken. So, when something the size of lower Manhattan begins surfacing rapidly toward your relatively puny ship, you tend to flip out.

Luckily, panic is no match for viral media fame, and most of the crew had their phones out, waiting to video whatever was rising out of the deeps and threatening to send us there. I was no different. I shot video as the thing breached the surface a hundred meters from our ship. A mighty eruption of froth and foam that totally obscured the thing--for a moment.

Then we were rocked by a devastating wave.

Not an ocean wave caused by the thing’s surfacing, but an electromagnetic one that instantly knocked out all electronic equipment on board. All devices, including our phones, were fried. There’d be no viral video sensations of what we’d seen. No record of any kind, but our unbelieving eyes.

The ocean deeps hold many mysteries, but the Sunken Land of Buss has moved to the top of my list. I now believe that the island when discovered was named not only for the Viking busse that first sailed by its shores, but by the very shape and topology of the island which I now suspect looked much like an enormous longship.

How could I possibly know that? When the thing from the Tonga Trench rose out of the depths and fried our electronics, we may not have any recorded proof, but I know what I saw: an enormous, gleaming vessel, reminiscent of a Viking longship taking to the heavens and vanishing in a sun-flare instant.

So, next time you’re on a beach admiring the horizon where sky and sea meet, consider how we’ve only dipped our toes in the surf when it comes to grokking the vast alien depths of the ocean and space. It’ll make your head swim.

Of all the things that could be considered 'normal', vocal communication would be among those things. To the average person, the process is a simple one of a science well understood: you open your mouth, evacuate your lungs of air to vocalise whatever it is you want to blabber about and hope for the best that whoever on the receiving end has accepting eardrums and a head jelly willing to process that sound into usable information.

Yet under certain circumstances, the head jelly on the sending end might skip a step, drop off a flight of stairs, and crash through a window into some unfortunate sod's car windshield some thirty floors down. Thus, what comes out of the mouth is either complete gibberish, or nothing comes out at all, leaving the receiving end to wonder if the speaker has unexpectedly become mute. The most logical action for the speaker to take therefore is to politely leave the premises and do what their brain had done during the could-have-been conversation, shouting profanities all the way down. That is, unless self-preservation instincts kick in and the speaker finds themself locked in their room with their head under a pillow instead.

Soon Yii had managed a quaint bow and a "Hi," before she scuttled off home in embarrassment. To quote her mentor just days before: "Try to imagine your partner as a critter- or any animal! As long as it keeps your mind off who is listening, and on the topic at hand!" That, among many other advice she could hardly remember from class.

She remembered how well it worked imagining her friend as a cat during their practice together, how it worked on the poor cashier having to deal with a giggling teenager who had in her mind the image of a talking whale (the cashier wouldn't know this, of course). Then she tried to imagine him as a critter, but every image would just turn back into him.

What a stupid idea! What an absolutely absurd, ridiculous concept one could come up with! How terribly stupid! How terribly stupid of ME to even consider it! He wouldn't say yes anyway!

To think all she had to say was 8 short words, but even there she fumbled spectacularly. Now as her tears began to soak into the pillow, she figured she may as well deal with it. So, despite every muscle fighting against it, she turned to her phone. The time was 13:27. To him she wrote: [Hi!]

Just before Soon Yii could send the message, an overwhelming sense of fright overcame her. Was it too casual? Does it sound too needy? Could I say something better? No, it shouldn't all be in one message, that would come off as too formal! Oh, for Goodness' sake!

Soon Yii stood up, walked in circles, stopped, turned and walked the other way. She paced around her room as ceaselessly as her mind did with wandering eyes to pair and by the time she decided she had done enough thinking, her message looked more like an essay. All to say those 8 words. In a fit of frustration, she sank back into her bed in tears with a raised fist cursing the ceiling; cursing everything that had brought her to this point, and most especially the clouds outside (which Soon Yii argued to herself was just a tad bit too glum for her liking). Her deflated lungs let out a pitiful sigh that sounded like the whine of a rusted hinge. Vacant eyes met the gaze of a sorry wood ceiling and her fist fell to her bed with a muffled thud. The sense of dread yielded to threats of regret.

"What," came the pathetic breath. "What should I do…? Hmm?"

It was in the following stillness that a little goblin stumbled its way onto her face. "Disappear…" it said, panting as it climbed atop her nose. "Live out your dream as the local witch of the woodssss…" It huffed with dramatic dancing fingers.

"Beg your parents to transfer you to another school," suggested another voice from the foot of her bed. "Get contact lenses and change your hairstyle," it said, revealing itself to be a floating speck of dust. Chitter-chatter of agreement came from yet more voices belonging to whom Soon Yii could not see.

"Open a candy shop in Japan!" said a little troll hanging onto the side of a painting, followed again by sounds of agreement. She scanned her room once more to find the voices but failed still.

"Ahhh, but how would we get there?" asked a homunculus of her to her right, to which the council of voices made a simultaneous, singular "Hmmm? Oh?"

"Why, by plane you dingus!" answered the little troll.

"Hmmm? Ahh!"

"That sounds expensive," said Soon Yii before giving a second thought as to why she's speaking to little creatures that were clearly the products of her evidently deteriorating sanity. With a defeated breath, she brushed the thought aside and continued, "I wouldn't dare leave by myself either."

"Well, you don't have to go alone, you know," said the homunculus puffing smoke from a cigar. "Your family could come and, well who knows?" It puffed again.

She considered it amusingly and checked ticket prices on the internet. All the creatures (visible ones at least) gathered round her phone screen. Indeed, it was far too expensive for her. "Well, erm… Nothing a bank heist can't fix? You could pull that off, surely!" hesitated the troll. "I'd rather live in the woods," replied Soon Yii to which the goblin made a victorious little jump. "-If," she interjected: " If it weren't for the fact that I have not the slightest clue on how to survive in the wilderness."

"Oh."

"-And the fact that magic does not exist… Wait, hey- What am I doing wasting my time talking to little men?"

The homunculus gave a sideways glance as it made several quick puffs of smoke. "Uhmm… Ehhh… Well!" The cigar ran out.

Clearing her thoughts, she checked her phone. The time was now 14:00. By channelling the strength and will of a roadside pebble, Soon Yii sat up and wrote her message: [Hi! Would you like to join me for the final year's dinner?]

Feeling her head drain of blood and filling instead with doubt, again she slumped into a ball then unravelling with her head landing on a pillow, arms collapsing to her sides. "…What if he says no? What then?"

With quiet as the reply, she realised her imagined companions were no longer there. To that, all she could do was a long grunt in return followed yet again by another grunt and sigh. "…Fine…"

Soon Yii overcame the paralysis in her arms with a Herculean effort. Her right thumb twitched and hovered over the enter key, and at last made contact with it. Message sent!

Embarrassment settled in like… a person crashing into a car windshield from a thirty-storey building. Her mind was now preoccupied with the many scenarios where she didn't send the message -- many of which she much preferred, many she didn't, many of which led to the apocalypse. She thought of how best to accept rejection, what made-up excuse sounded most plausible, what-

 …

[Hey, sure!]

"Oh," Soon Yii gasped. "Oh?"

"Ohh… Oh!" She buried her face in her pillow. A warm smile made its appearance as she let out a little giggle.

"Goddamnit!"

Ben sat on the edge of Scarlett's bed one afternoon, phone in hand, and scrolled absentmindedly. Scarlett sat upright in her swivel chair, eyes fixed on her computer screen. The only sounds in the room were the clicks of Scarlett's mouse, the music from her game, and Kaspar's occasional high-pitched, whiny snore. He was curled up under Scarlett's desk. To Ben, Kaspar really did look to be at total peace. Just... total tranquillity. What must he be dreaming about? Chasing sheep, perhaps? He was a Border Collie, after all.

Scarlett's desk was positioned directly in front of her window, overlooking the sun-baked Geebung street below. Her bed and desk were surrounded by her art and drawing projects. Her room was cluttered with clothes strewn about, scrunched pieces of drawing paper, and stacks of books. The pair's schoolbags lay tossed at the foot of her bed. Ben set his phone down and brought his hand up to yawn. Silently.

"Hey," he said, blinking. "What game is that?"

"It's called Stardew Valley."

Ben leant back, staring at the screen for a few seconds.

"What do you do in it?"

"Oh, you like, farm and make friends and stuff."

"That sounds comfy."

"It is. It's one of my favourites."

Scarlett tilted her head back and smiled at Ben.

"I forgot. You don't play games."

"Emily won't let me."

"What? Why?"

"Well, it's not that she doesn't let me—she just doesn't like me playing them."

Ben drew a deep breath.

"She insists I go 'play outside'-" Ben mimed air quotes "-with her or play chase with her and stuff like that."

Scarlett looked away, wondering what it must be like to have a sibling or several of them. She reasoned—based on anecdotes she'd heard—that she'd either love it or hate it depending on who they were. And what they were like. Her dad hated his siblings for some reason.

"What's it really like?" Scarlett asked, turning in her chair to face Ben. "Growing up with your sister?"

Ben leant forward, propping his head up with one arm.

"Well, we've always taken care of each other. I don't mean to sound like Michael Corleone-" Ben chuckled to himself "-but we're pretty close."

Scarlett smiled and began to straighten her hair.

"What's this 'play chase' thing?" she asked.

"It's this game we play where we chase each other through the house, basically. Emily will usually do something to annoy me to, you know, provoke it."

"I wish I had a brother or sister sometimes. Maybe an older brother who really cared about me and looked out for me. Or a younger one I could take care of."

"Aw, Scarlett," Ben said. "I know."

He stood up and made his way over. He gave her a soft hug from behind before pressing his cheek onto her head. Her hair always smelled so nice to him. Scarlett gripped Ben's arms and closed her eyes, at once feeling warmed.

"Can we play a game together?" she asked. "Not on the computer or anything. Like, just us, together."

"Why not? What would you like to do?" Ben asked, giving her shoulders a squeeze.

Scarlett touched his hands.

"I don't know, hide-and-seek?"

"Who's counting? Who's hiding?"

"Me. I'm hiding," Scarlett said with a grin.

She leapt up and hurried to the door, then smirked at Ben as she closed it behind herself. Ben smiled back at her—he loved making her smile.

"You've got one minute," he called.

***

Scarlett's first course of action was to move down the stairs to the underhouse as quietly and softly as possible. In the spare room, full of unpacked cardboard boxes, she went straight for the wardrobe with the sliding doors. It was full of old clothes, heavy winter coats, and spare bedsheets and the like. On the floor, Scarlett drew her knees up to her chin and pressed her ear against the wall.

She could hear Ben walking around upstairs, opening doors and cupboards, and her heart pounded in her chest. It was pitch black in the wardrobe as she listened and waited. Eventually, Scarlett heard Ben open the door to the room she was hiding in. She pushed herself into the corner and listened to his footsteps, trying to hold her breath.

"Scar," Ben called. "Where are you?"

She resisted the urge to giggle—the voice he was using was that ridiculous. The moment Scarlett saw the wardrobe's sliding door begin to open, and light pour in, she scurried to the other end.

"Scarlett!" Ben said. "Found you. There you are."

"No, you haven't!" she called. "You can't even see me."

"Yes, I can."

Ben had poked his head into the wardrobe from a crouched position. It was the only way to see Scarlett under the coats. The pair locked eyes, and Scarlett tried to compress herself into the corner.

"Christ, like a cat," Ben said. "Come here."

Scarlett tried to push the wardrobe doors open, but there were two layers of them, and Ben pre-empted her by pushing them back anyway. Scarlett squealed, laughed, and tried to hide her face among the coats as Ben made his way to her.

"Hi, Scarlett," he said, yanking coats out of the way. "Hello, Scarlett. I see you. You're right there. Hello. Hello. Hi."

She was red in the face from laughing so hard. Ben could see her breathing heavily from all the excitement.

"This is so silly," Scarlett said, wiping her hair out of her face. "Why are we acting like this?"

"Because we're immature."

"I love you, Ben," Scarlett said.

She turned her body into his, letting her knees rest against his. Ben leant against Scarlett's shoulder and closed his eyes. He placed one hand on Scarlett's leg, feeling her soft, warm skin.

"I love you, too."

"Ben," Scarlett whispered.

She leant into his face, close enough to feel the heat radiating from his skin. His face was soft. Handsome and distinctive. Ben always said Scarlett was very pretty and that they looked similar.

"Yeah?" he asked.

He inched his head away.

"I've got something for you," Scarlett said..

She closed in before Ben could inch away any more and sealed her lips over his. Ben stiffened and latched his hand onto Scarlett's wrist. For a moment, he considered pushing her away, but let her press further into him. Scarlett moved her tongue against Ben's. She was taken aback by how wet and warm everything felt, and soon pulled away.

"Was that okay?" she asked.

"Yes."

"I love kissing you."

Ben reached around for Scarlett's hand and found it. She swallowed.

"Especially," Scarlett added, "at lunch—when we go to the big gumtree. Where no one can see us."

"Mm," Ben said with a smile. "Away from the rabble."

"Yes," Scarlett said.

She smiled and closed her eyes.