Everyone in the house was asleep. I'd taken the batteries out of the wall clock in my room to get rid of the ticking. Now there was complete silence, and I could try again to do something I'd already managed to do successfully.

A week ago, I'd turned over a piece of paper lying on my desk, with a poem I'd written in primary school on it. It was my first success after years of practice. Six days ago, I'd unscrewed the cap of a juice bottle that hadn't been closed all the way. Five days ago, I'd moved one of the cigarettes in an open pack slightly outward, out of the pack. Three days ago, I'd peeled off one of the pieces of tape holding up poster on my wall.

And tonight, my target was a much larger object. I was confident in my abilities now, and after this final attempt, I would be able to reveal my talent to my family and those around me. I had made exactly four attempts in the past week, and I'd succeeded every single time. I had complete faith in myself.

For years, I'd tried countless times and gone through a lot along the way; I'd lost hope, taken a long break from my attempts, then started believing I could do it again and after trying over and over, I'd come to think telekinesis was nothing but a lie and taken another break but then one day, I happened to see a pack of wet wipes fall to the floor all by itself, which rekindled my interest and got me started on my attempts again, and so on.

And now, finally, in the middle of the night, when complete silence had been achieved, I went to the kitchen. I took a steak knife from the drawer where we kept the cutlery and returned to my room.

I gently pulled my desk chair back and sat down. I didn't want to lose my focus, so I was being quiet. The faint sound of the knife touching the desk as I set it down, the soft sounds of my footsteps as I walked, the barely audible scraping of the chair as I pulled it back had an ASMR effect on me. These little sounds, too quiet to disturb the silence, made me feel thoroughly prepared.

Without wasting any time, I focused on the knife. I positioned my hands around it and gathered all my concentration. I slowed my breathing. The only thing in my mind was a knife slowly and calmly spinning around its own axis. I focused, and focused... I concentrated as if someone were hypnotizing me, as though I were following a pocket watch swinging from side to side without ever taking my eyes off it.

Minutes passed. Seconds, minutes, maybe an hour... There wasn't the slightest movement. The knife couldn't care less about me; it was ignoring my efforts, stubbornly refusing to budge.

Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore and gave up. I was getting more and more bored, and as time went by, I lost my focus. I had to go to work at noon the next day, and earlier that day, before I left work, my boss had pointed out that I'd left my fly undone. I'd started thinking about that. Who says something like that in front of everyone? You pull someone aside and tell them in private. Anyway, I took the knife back to the kitchen.

After I lay down in bed, I thought about the knife until I fell asleep. I'd lost my confidence in my abilities. If I told someone I could move objects through telekinesis, they might ask me to prove it, and I might fail and make a fool of myself.

I couldn't get the knife out of my mind. I felt as though it were a person who had shattered all my trust in them, betrayed me by revealing a secret I'd shared with it to anyone who would listen. I was angry. The image of the knife standing perfectly still in that spot, like a tree that had sunk its roots deep into the ground, wouldn't leave my mind. I fell asleep in a fit of anger.

I woke up to the sound of my phone alarm. I turned it off, tossed the duvet to my left, and rolled onto my right side to get up. Just as I was about to stretch, I saw it and jolted in place: the knife was suspended in midair beside my bed, standing upright.

I clapped a hand over my mouth. I was about to scream; every instinct in my body was telling me to. I bit my tongue to suppress it.

I took a deep breath. I tried to calm myself down. Then I took another deep breath. My heart was racing.

I reached out toward the knife, but immediately changed my mind. I didn't know what to do. I'd never experienced my thoughts speeding up and getting tangled together so intensely in a moment of panic. Within a few seconds, I'd made and abandoned a dozen decisions, gone back and forth between asking for help and not asking for help, imagined the knife stabbing itself into my body, then dismissed the thought as irrational. My thoughts were racing back and forth at lightning speed. I needed to calm down.

I got out of bed, poured half a glass of water from the pitcher on my desk, and drank it.

I turned around to check if the knife was still there. It was closer to me now. I no longer cared about staying quiet. I yanked the door open and rushed out of the room.

I started walking briskly toward the kitchen. I wanted to grab any drink I could find and gulp it down. I needed to interact with something somehow, to calm myself down. I opened the fridge, took out the milk, and chugged it. I put the milk back, closed the fridge, and turned around to go back to my room.

And the knife was right behind me.

It was a meter away from me, just standing there. It was as if it were staring at me, judging me. It didn't move at all. It always maintained the same position and stayed at the same height above the floor, level with my bed, right around the height of my shinbones.

I started walking backward toward the kitchen doorway, wanting to see how it was following me, how it was coming after me. Without changing its position, it glided toward me as if it were moving across a perfectly smooth surface. It always maintained the same distance. When I stopped, it stopped a metre away from me. When I walked, it followed.

I cautiously made my way back to my room, walking backward. I sat on my bed. The knife and I were facing each other. I tried to think of what I could do. I was afraid to touch it. I was worried things might get out of hand. I'd done this. That much was obvious. Now that I'd calmed down a little, my panic had shifted in a different direction. Someone might see us. I had to sever my connection with the knife before I got caught. I might be able to accept this as normal, but I didn't think my mother and father would be able to handle a knife following me around.

Yes, it was probably because I'd concentrated so intensely on the knife all this time that the bond between us had grown stronger. I'd probably never concentrated on a knife so intensely in my entire life. I needed to reverse the process. I relaxed a little. I tried to think about other things, to take my mind off the knife.

I thought about the wristwatch my father had bought me for my birthday last year. It was a terrible watch, but I hadn't let on because I didn't want to hurt his feelings. Then one day, while wearing it, I'd deliberately gone swimming in a pool. The watch had stopped working, and that was how I'd gotten rid of it.

The knife was still in the same place.

I thought about the eggplant soup my mother had made yesterday. It was my favorite soup. I'd tipped the bowl back and gulped down the last few mouthfuls, and my father had given me a stern look.

The knife hadn't moved at all. It was standing there, a meter away.

My mother knocked on the door and called out.

"Breakfast is ready, Albert."

I had no other choice. I didn't know what was going to happen, but I reached out toward the knife. My arm couldn't reach it, though. I walked toward it. As I moved closer, it moved farther away, until it had backed all the way up against the wall. It had nowhere left to go. It was pressed against the wall, stuck there. I approached it and grabbed the handle.

My heart was pounding at full speed. I closed my eyes. As a final attempt, I thought about the baseball bat I'd lost before I became interested in telekinesis. I'd searched everywhere for it. Such a large object, yet it was nowhere to be found. I'd checked the baseball field, my grandmother's house, the streets I'd walked along, and I'd even contacted the lost property office in case I'd somehow left it on a bus. It was gone.

Yes, good. I could feel a long chain of thoughts forming and my focus weakening considerably.

The knife was loosening, letting go. I could feel it. But I still didn't have complete control over it.

I needed to think about something else. But I couldn't think of anything. I heard my mother's footsteps approaching my room. She was getting closer to the door.

"Come on, son. Are we supposed to wait for you?" she said from outside, then opened the door and walked in.

I pulled the knife with all my might, and just like when you yank something hard that's stuck somewhere and it suddenly comes loose, I went flying toward my bed.

With the knife still in my hand, I hit my head against the bed frame. And passed out.

When I opened my eyes, I was lying in a hospital bed with an IV drip in my arm. My father was sitting beside me. I felt exhausted. I'd received three stitches in my head, and it ached a little.

"Son, why were you holding a knife? What were you doing with it?"

"What knife, Dad?"

"You were clutching a knife in your hand. What do you mean, what knife? What are you up to?"

I couldn't remember anything. That was good. I hoped it wasn't temporary memory loss, because I didn't want to attempt telekinesis again.

With the sun's final rays, the quiet of dusk began to fall over the desert. Fire crackled in the center of a disheveled group. Made up of five men, the outfit brought unkempt chaos through the country. But that night, under the blanket of stars, they made no such commotion. Each making their cot with little sound but a cough or a sigh for their long awaited rest. 

They laid their heads on sacks of clothes, blankets or nothing at all. Feeling the full embrace of the still warm, dusted, earth beneath their backs. Their horses shuffled their feet and found their eyes grow tired alongside their men. Snorting and exhaling through labored lungs.

One horse stood, its back swaying with sleep. Speckled with white on dark chestnut. It swayed close to its master, a leader, a chief. With a shake of its long neck, it slowly lowered itself to the ground, legs tired from weeks of walking. The beasts found rest here. Still ready, even in sleep, for anything going bump in the unholy night.

Ashes, popping wood and the slow rotation of stars brought the posse into a deep, well needed slumber. In the morning, they would make their final stretch into Mardell. Cloaked in darkness, an owl bid its goodnights to the boys, and soft dreams welcomed their wearied minds.

-

The chirping of birds woke the group. The fire had long since gone out and was replaced with the soft light of early morning. Cold earth took in the first licks of sunlight, sand turning golden under the sun's sleepy rays. 

Before the others could stir. Wyatt found his way to standing. He was a rusted, handle-bar mustached man. His fingers glided through his overgrown locks, the dark strands flitting between his scarred fingers were salted with age. His back popped as he brought movement back into his body. After a stretch and a yawn, he moved comfortably, making the fire glow once again. He grabbed coffee and a pot from his mare’s saddle bag, clearing his throat as he worked. Bringing the others' awareness to the morning air. 

“Time to move, ya’ll know it.” Wyatt’s voice was deep and hoarse. He spoke through years of smoke and dust. Squinting, he looked around at his dwindling outlaws and his voice raised.

“You boys better make quick to living.”

With this, the other four men sat up and began shuffling drowsily, putting their sleeping pads back to storage and retrieving their cups. Wyatt sat down now, resting on the edge of his bedding. Watching his squad slowly come back together.

Wyatt cleared his throat, spat and began, “We know why we’re here: get the girl and get out. None of us traveled these weeks to leave with nothing. We all know what she’s worth.”

The group slowly nodded and took sips of black from their tattered mugs.

“Today we make it to Mardell, stock up what we need and the like.” He nodded at Earl, the oldest of the group, who dipped his weathered forehead in approval.

“Then we’ll make up our camp. Prep for the woman, sharpen knives and reload what you can until we come back with more ammo.” He spat again as he finished, triggering obligatory grumblings from the men.

“Now boys, we best get to riding, before the sun starts to scorch this hellish desert.” Wyatt stood, queuing the rest to do the same. The group shuffled to their horses quickly packing their gear as they went. They then saddled up. Their sighs and coughs accompanied by a chorus of hooves scuffing dirt, leather stretching and spurs rattling.

With all of their gear packed up, all that was left of their camp was a slightly embering fire surrounded by boot and hoof marks. Their final passage stopped in time on this windless morning.

“Yeawh!” Wyatt exclaimed, spurs met rippling flesh, his horse lurched forward and took off into the rusty hued horizon. The rest of the group followed. Earl closest behind, the rest making pace sluggishly, talking amongst themselves.

-

They rode for nearly 8 hours before making it to Mardell, and when they arrived it stood in great contrast to the oasis they had been picturing. Wyatt had told his posse that the girl was hiding out in a large coal-mining town. They were warned it would be full of witnesses, should they make too much of a mess.

Hopping off their saddles, they approached the edge of the valley. Overlooking the town, the group peered grimly at their destination. 

It looked nearly abandoned.

“We got the right place?” Davie spoke, his brown eyes flitting over the two streets that made up the town. Dirt streaked his face and he reached to wipe his brow, turning to Wyatt. Davie’s doe eyes shone true of his emotion. He was wary of this place.

His gaze was met by Wyatt’s sharp eyes, curtained by his messy furrowed brow. Wyatt turned away from the group, retrieving his map and confirming the towns whereabouts. Mardell was written roughly on his map, next to it was the quarry and you could see the tracks running from its station. He looked up now, each relative location exactly as depicted.

“Of course it’s right.” Wyatt said, spitting.

“Must have misremembered what Doc had said back in Freeport. Should be easier this way. It’s no matter.”

“Looks pretty dead to me,” Pip turned as he spoke, addressing Wyatt directly.

His strong arms crossed in front of his chest, “I haven’t seen a soul since layin my eyes on it.” He shook his head, dark curls swaying under his hat.

“Doesn’t feel right.” Davie mumbled.

“Well Doc’ll be payin you enough, make it feel right.” Wyatt turned, stomping back to his horse. “We won’t need bother with the damn town anyways,” His dark boots kicked up dirt as he walked. The group followed after him, leaving their lookout.

Earl stole one last look at the town. No one even working the quarry, he thought and he wondered if they would hear the train that night. But sand flowing over the tracks told him that they hadn’t been used in years.

Wyatt signaled for everyone to mount up and make way to where they would be setting up their camp. Mumbles of distaste echoed around them as they hopped back to their saddles, but none hesitated in the pursuit of their leader. Wyatt had held his own in outlaw groups for decades, his reputation resulted in nothing but respect in those that followed him. 

The group knew better than to doubt him now.

As Wyatt slowed, the group found their positions at his flank. Wyatt had an eye for a reliable posting. He scanned the landscape for shade, and even ground. Making sure to consider their proximity to the eventual expedition. On this day he found a suitable location. Something about it called to him. Adorned with a large cliff-faced boulder, casting comforting shade and plenty of room for his men and their steeds.

They made camp quickly. With their supplies dwindling, there was much less unpacking to do than in the first few stretches of this journey. They all relieved their horses of their saddle bags, untacking them and letting them graze. Wyatt felt comfortable not going into town, they could make it another few days on what they had. Though his men would be less than pleased.

For the girl, Davie was tasked with assembling her restraints.

Near the boulder’s cliff-like face, he set down two large pieces of wood and weathered rope. He worked, threading and securing the two pieces together. Why do we need all of this for one girl. He shook his head, what could possibly need restraining about a woman.

He smiled to himself, laughing as he finished the knots.

“Fucking Davie,” Pip mumbled to Herb, tipping his hat toward the fool. His brow was pinched in frustration. “Should he really be the one doing that?”

“Clearly it ain’t that dire,” Herb replied, “but it just a girl anywaysh.” His voice whistled where his front teeth used to be.

He reveled a gappy smile and walked over to Davie, leaving Pip shaking his head. Davie rose to standing, looking down at the gurney he had made whole. He had never used anything like this before but felt confident his knots would hold. 

He worked on a fishing boat in Freeport before taking to the west. Wyatt trusted him for rope related duties, though the other men would test his knots when he wasn’t around. 

The two boards came together as a gurney. Long enough for anyone shorter than 6 feet to be carried. He knew they wouldn’t be carrying her on it, but the picture stuck in his mind. He felt guilty already, even putting the thing together. He hoped this would be a simple mission; no bloodshed.

Loops through the middle allowed it to bend, and more loops would secure her arms and legs at her sides. She would certainly be restrained, he thought. His stomach turned at the thought of Pip finding his way to her in the night, and he was grateful his cot would rest closest to her.

“How goesh it Davie boy?” Herb sung, clapping his thick hand down on Davies' shoulder. Startling him. Davie turned quickly and looked up, he was much shorter than Herb. “In need of any help here?”

“No, no, just finishing up. Who even comes up with a thing like this?” Davie shook his head, laughing uncomfortably to himself. “I mean we are picking up a girl aren’t we?”

Herb leaned in, “I am not sho shure about that. You know. Wyatt has been making shome shtrange dealsh lately.” His droopy, blue eyes flicked from Davie to where Wyatt and Earl were working. “Member what job he had ush at in Donroe? Looney shhit.”

Davie leaned in as well, meeting in the middle and lowering his hat from his head, shielding their faces. “Lucky for us, a woman ’ll keep better company than some dirty pigs!” They both erupted in wobbly laughter, throwing their heads back.

Pip rolled his eyes, though he couldn't hear the joke. Davie always had some weird shit to say. 

-

After everything was unpacked, each man assumed his duty. Sharpening knives, reloading or whatever other task Wyatt had placed upon them. The gurney sat just outside the ring of the camp, still propped against the rocky cliff-face. 

Wyatt walked over to inspect it. This really is some odd shit, he thought*. Last job I am doing for Doc. Can’t be that hard to find something normal.* He shook his head. He needed the cash. He needed it to get out of this business. He knew this journey would cost him more than one man. The reward would grow as the group dwindled and he found his mind wandering to the money he'd come home to. As he walked back to his speckled horse and Earl, he chewed on his future decision. Where would he go with all that cash? Maybe he’d get out of this thieving business for good.

Before they knew it, dusk had begun to fall on their outfit. The sun made its descent toward the sandy horizon, not yet casting a wash of orange over the land. Earl moved to make a fire. Bits of dried shrubbery made quick flames as he held his lighter to them, like he had done many nights before. 

The group was grateful to stay posted in one place for more than one night. A month of travel was hard on all of them. Pip had been eagerly awaiting their trip into town. Hoping for Wyatt’s go ahead. He wanted him to send him to check it out, find information or what have you. These commands never came, and Pip was becoming restless. They were losing daylight and he wanted to make sure they had coffee for the morning. He was certain the shops would be closing soon.

Guess I’ll have to go myself, he thought.

While the other men continued to set up their cots, prep their dinners or tend to their horses. Pip slowly slipped out of the camp. Leaving his horse.  He scoffed to himself. He was irritable, each growl of his stomach reminding him of their already rationed supply. His lips parted around a gnarled toothpick and his dark eyes peered over the dimming desert before him.

He was making his way to Mardell.

Pip had come from a gold panning town a few hundred miles from the West coast. He was nearing his 30’s when Doc picked him up. He had only recently joined Wyatt’s squad and this would be his third journey with the group. He had always struggled making nice with the people he traveled with, but Wyatt had always made him feel welcomed and useful.

He liked feeling useful.

Slowly, he began to see Mardell in all its weathered beauty. It had been a while since Pip had enjoyed the pleasures modern civilization. He wanted to make it count. He made the final trek down the slope of the valley, his boots sliding in waves of untouched sand and rock. 

He approached the first street of the town, the one closest to their camp. As he walked he noticed there was no one but him perusing the street. His ears pricked with soft sounds of creaking shop signs and tumbleweeds, but the air was absent of life. His eyes locked on a tattered general store, the paint of its sign barely legible, and made his way inside.

The store was perfectly standard. Rows of goods lined the shelves, restocked but not recently. He began collecting goods in his arms. Canned food, dried food, cigarettes, coffee and even a small bottle of whiskey that he planned on keeping for himself. After collecting his items he wobbled up to the counter.

The desk was empty, unmanned and untouched. Long enough for a layer of dust to collect on the splintering wood. He let the items fall from his arms onto the counter, looking around the store. 

“Anyone here? Hello?” He yelled rudely.

He scoffed and spat on the wood floor at his feet. Raising his eyebrows, amazed at the carelessness of the shop owners. Without missing a beat he reached over the counter, grabbed a bag and hastily shoved the items into it. The heavy loot in his arms, he rocked himself out the front door. What idiots. I would have paid had someone been around to take my money. This had never happened to Pip before but he had surely imagined it. Hoping one day he could play the justified thief.

He walked down the rest of the street, feeling confident as his eyes wandered over shops. He made one more stop, grabbing ammo and received the same empty counter. He felt pleasure in leaving, his pockets as heavy as they had entered the town. He smiled. His coffee stained teeth showed and his tongue played at his toothpick. 

Rounding the corner to the second street, he continued his leisure. The sun was beginning to darken the sky now, deepening the warm tones of the horizon. His pace did not falter for the coming night. 

The shops on this street were intermingled with houses, all appearing abandoned. No lights flicked on at the sight of the sunset. At the end of the street he saw the familiar silhouette of a saloon. He walked toward it now, hoping for a drink before he left the desolate town. Even if he had to pour it himself, he thought. They were not joking about this place being abandoned. A silent darkness laid behind each door he he passed.

As he got closer to the saloon, the orange sky faded into darkness. The lights behind its foggy windows remained at rest. Unlit and unbothered. Pip was prepared to enter the building unwanted until he noticed what was lining its bowed porch. 

The smell hit him before his eyes could adjust. 

Taught reigns still held their rotted skulls pinned to the fence. 

A dozen decaying horses bustled with flies. Pip stopped in his tracks and gagged dropping his toothpick from his lip. He clapped his hand over his mouth, but was useless to block the scent of dissolving flesh and fly larvae. He walked faster now, along the far side of the street. His eyes frantically looked over the gore, curiosity calling him to inspect further. Getting closer, he began to see in better detail the nature of the beasts.

Each horse lay dead. Fully tacked up, their saddles sagged into their rotted torsos, stirrups drowned in puddles of exhausted fluid. Thousands of flies swarmed over the corpses. Ripping through the quiet night air, and pecking at soft flesh. Pip continued so sidestep his way down the road, his pace growing frantic. He had no desire to stay in this place any longer. Gagging again he turned and held his bag of goods close to his chest. He ran toward the edge of the valley, away from the damned town.

-

When Pip finally made it back to camp, his movements were loud and desperate. They hadn't noticed him leave but surely knew he had returned. He dropped the goods by the fire. Wyatt stood impulsively, recognizing immediately that Pip had gone to town. 

“You sonofabitch!” Wyatt yelled. The boys around him jumped at the sound. Wyatt was infuriated that Pip would make a move like this without his permission. Earl took heed and stood at Wyatt’s side.

“Fuck me,” Pip gasped, “I got the shit but–," He was out of breath now and couldn’t find the words.

“What happened?” Earl questioned. His face, what was lit by the fire, was terse and pinched. Dark liked carved into his brow.

“The saloon,” Pip rested his hands on his knees, “Fucking 20 dead horses,” he gasped again, “Damn it. You didn’t warn us. Damn near scared the life out my chest.”

The men stared at him, confused looks plastered to their grimy faces.

“Dead horses?” Davie chimed in, frowning, still seated. Herb stood beside him, just getting back from a piss. His eyes were wide.

“Fuckin loads of em. Could have been 30 for what I saw.”

“Are you certain?” Earl spoke, taking the initiative over red-faced Wyatt. 

“Town's abandoned as all hell, people left their horses tied up to rot.”

Davie looked at his own horse, grazing peacefully near the boulder. His mind intrusively thought of her large head, eyes rotted out, tied up and dead. He shook the image from his head and his eyes drifted to his dirty hands.

“I told you there was nothing down there for us,” Wyatt scolded.

“Well take a look in that bag there,” Pip prodded it with the tip of his boot, causing a can of food to roll out. 

“A fuckin ghost town. No shit! Shops were loaded but no one runnin em. You bastards were too chicken shit to even go down there. If I didn’t know any better I’d think I was the leader of this outfit.” As the words came out of his mouth he regretted it.

Wyatt flew over the fire faster than Pip could register, flames licking his jeans. His calloused palm found the soft skin of Pip’s cheek. The force drove him down to his knees.

“Speak to me like that again and you won’t be getting an empty palm boy,” Wyatt growled through clamped teeth, his mess of a mustache barely swaying with each word.
“No one believes your callous lies, do NOT put me down for your fantasies.”

Pip kept his head down but nodded. “Sorry– I– I told you what I saw.” His eyes found Wyatt again, looking up under weakened brows. He slowly raised his head.
“You don’t believe me? Go see for yourself.” 

Wyatt spat and turned on his heel. He wouldn’t dignify Pip with a response.

Davie and Herb watched everything, eyes wide with shock but quickly looked away when Wyatt returned to where he had been sitting. Earl sat down on his cot beside him.

Silence fell over the group. No one spoke for fear of another lashing from their leader. Each man made their beds and lied in them, horses slowly made their way toward sleep. 

All was quiet. 

The only thing left blessing their tired ears was the crackles of the dimming fire at the heart of their group. Davie finally closed his eyes. Soothed by the chorus of the night, awaiting the soft melody of desert owls that never came.

-

In the morning, the boys were woken with a start. Davie’s horse reared and jumped back, nearly crushing him under its clipped hooves. It howled and dramatically rushed away from beside his cot.

The other horses scattered, hooves trampling over belongings and kicking up dust. They collected, now some distance from the circle of men. The group snapped into action, jumping to their feet and finding their firearms. Each still in underclothes, walking in dirty socks to find what had caused the commotion. 
The five men approached the cliff-face where the horse had run from, and at first nothing seemed off. The rock was nearly twice as tall as any of them. Davie remembered the gurney and his eyes snapped down while the rest looked for any sign of movement.

Nearly concealed by the gurney’s strangely ajar position, a large mass of feathers collected. Davie walked cautiously toward it, the others eyes finding what he tracking. As he got closer he began to pick out details, shifting the wood out of the way with a socked toe. There were beaks, large taloned feet and– eyes?

Davie could swear he saw it looking at him. 

He jumped back. Wyatt took his place at the front of the group. He leaned in close. The mass was alarmingly large.

Jesus, Wyatt thought as he took in what made up this mass of feathers and feet. The amalgamation was three spotted owls. Twisted and contorted. He thought it must have been the unlucky result of a death spiral, did owls do that? He wasn’t sure. 

The bodies of the owls wrapped around each other, bending and breaking in parts, becoming one mound of flesh. Earl, who took the time to put his boots on, walked up next to Wyatt. He stuck one foot out, hesitating for only a second, and shifted the mass with his steeled toe. 

One of the owls seized up, clenching its talons and lifting its head to the sky. It moved, its beak falling open loosely. The sound that left his mouth was not that of an owl. It exhaled a crippling, gurgling screech. Blood drizzled out as its head relaxed to the earth, its eyes going glassy. 

The group stood, staring in horror. Tears welled into Davie’s eyes, and he quickly hid his face, lowering his head as if praying. He could feel the poor animal's pain.

After a moment the group's silence was broken by Wyatt, still crouching over the mass and clearing his throat.

“I’ll take care of this. Best get to prep’n boys.” His voice had a waiver of uncertainty. The fuck do I do with this thing? His eyes looked around the birds, debating if he should touch it or use a prod.
He turned, speaking over one shoulder, “And for christ sake someone grab those horses!”

Everyone made haste to their tasks, throwing their clothes, boots and hats on. Herb and Davie ran to the horses, soothing and corralling them back to camp. Before leaving, Earl had patted Wyatt on the shoulder, exchanging a woeful glance. Then began making coffee for the group. He was grateful that Pip had gotten more in the town. We won’t be killing each other quite yet.

Wyatt moved back to his cot, yanking up his worn black boots and throwing his shirt over his undershirt. He didn’t care to button it. Grabbing a cattle prod he kept strapped to his saddle, he returned to the birds. Pip sent him a sideways glance over his cup of coffee. I’m no liar, he thought. This place is damned. 

He knew he would have to get them into that town.

Wyatt had seen a lot of things in his days roaming the desert, but nothing like this. Staring again at their crippled forms turned his stomach into a fevered knot. He squinted his eyes and grimaced, reaching out with the prod and tucking it between the small bodies of the owls. The light of life had left them now, and he felt strangely grateful. He lifted and they stuck, twisted and locked together around the prod. He carried them off, placing them crudely behind the boulder. Out of sight from his men.

He didn’t care to bury the mass but something inside him felt guilty as he walked back toward the group. He laid the prod down in the dusty earth, kicking and rolling it in the sand. Cleaning any memory of those birds from its wooden edges. The minute we get that girl we're gone. Of this he was certain.

Once preparations were complete, the boys sat around the fire, chatting about their dreams from the night before. None dared to speak of the owls or of Mardell. Davie sat silent while his companions spoke. He felt a dark cloud of grief over his head for the owls and the horses. I hope Wyatt gave them birds a proper burial. Flashing images of the owls, their gnarled limbs, and the sound of their final song still rang in his ears. He shook his head, snapping himself back and took a sip of black coffee. Doesn’t get any better does it? He hated the coffee they traveled with.

“ –like I shaid, I wash in a boat. The shtorm wash really rocking ush. But now I washh alone. I shtarted hearing thish beautiful shong,” Herb spoke about his dreams from the past night. Continuing on, he recalled the seiren’s song.

Herb was always capable of lighting the dark moods fostered by his companions. He had good memories of the sea. Sailing, fishing, the stillness at night. When he started working the same boat as Davie, he knew it was only a matter of time before he took the kid with him. After he told Davie the kind of money he was making working for Doc, they felt their minds drifting away from the sea and toward the harsh desert.

Across the fire Pip squirmed in his seat, tapping his fingers on his cup. Debating if he should bring the group's attention back to the town. 

He did not.

Finishing their coffees and their stories, the boys stood. Making their way to their horses and tacking up. Each man threw a saddle over their horses back, pulling straps and adjusting stirrups. Some of the horses fussed, snorting or shaking their heads, but they stood loyally at their master's hands. The posse then made an effort to conceal their belongings, tucking them under dried shrubs or digging holes. All that shit would just slow them down. They needed to be quick on their feet were they to find this girl.

Once done, they turned to Wyatt, who had his nose buried in the map. The girl was marked as a small red dot, it appeared she was housed just past the coal mine, on the ridge that made the top of the valley. From their position it should only be about a twenty minute ride, ten if they were fast. Wyatt debated using the gurney for her return, but decided it would be easier to just tie her up and throw her over the back of a horse.

“Pip, bring extra rope. We are gonna bind her on our way back to camp.” Wyatt tipped his hat toward Pip who replied with a sly smile then spoke.

“Should we not head for town first? What if those horses was a warning?” Pip questioned, raising one tight brow. 

“Fuck Pip, would you let the damn town go? Wyatt’s blue eyes shot daggers at Pip, his hand rubbed his damp forehead.

Pip shook his head and scoffed.

The group mumbled in agreement and saddled up. Pip crudely grabbed extra rope from one of his poorly concealed saddle bags. He weighed the rope in his hands and pinned it to his belt. He jumped on his horse. The stallion chewed hard at its bit and wriggled under his tight grip of the reins.

“Yeuhhh” Wyatt yelped, cuing the group to motion in a dramatic cloud of dust and rock.

Maja took the roast out of the oven and set the baking pan down on a wooden board in the middle of the table. The aroma of roasted meat instantly filled the dining room. She picked up a large carving fork and began slicing the meat, while Dino watched her hands intently from the other side of the table.

"It looks amazing, Maja," Dino said, reaching for the bottle on the sideboard behind him. "I brought this red. I think it’ll pair well."

"Thanks, Dino. You always remember to bring something nice," she replied, keeping her eyes fixed on the meat.

She placed the first slice onto Dino’s plate, then a second onto Antonio’s, who was sitting at the head of the table. Antonio remained silent. His hands were resting in his lap, beneath the edge of the table, as he stared motionlessly at the plate in front of him.

"Antonio?" Maja called out to him. "Are you okay? You’ve been so distant all day."

Antonio slowly raised his eyes. First, he looked at her—at her clean face and her hair pulled back into a ponytail—and then he shifted his gaze to his brother sitting opposite her.

"I’m fine," he said, his voice completely flat, without a single inflection. "Just tired from work. It’s nothing."

"See, that’s your problem," Dino cut in, already chewing on his first bite. "My friend, you need to slow down. Life is passing you by, and you’re buried in those papers. Look at yourself, you’re too pale. You need to get out more, be among people."

"I will get out," Antonio replied, picking up his knife and fork. "Soon."

Maja sat down in her place, facing Dino. She poured herself some water, then reached for the wine bottle. She filled Dino’s glass halfway, then her own.

"Would you like some, Antonio?" she asked, holding the bottle over his glass.

"No, thank you. I’m sticking to water tonight."

"Your loss, you don’t know what you’re missing," Dino said, raising his glass toward his brother. "To that, man. Cheers to our health."

Antonio raised his glass of water. Glass clinked against glass, the sound echoing brief and sharp in the quiet room. He took a small sip of the cold water and set the glass back on the table, exactly where it had been before, making sure it aligned perfectly to the millimeter with the edge of his plate.

The dinner went on slowly, filled with Dino’s story about his car trouble and a mechanic who tried to rip him off for parts. Maja listened to him intently, nodding occasionally and smiling at him. Antonio chewed the tough meat in silence, watching how Maja followed Dino’s every hand gesture.

When she reached toward the middle of the table for the salad bowl, she extended her arm straight out. The space between Dino’s plate and his glass was narrow, and as she pulled the bowl back, her index finger lingered against his forearm for a second. Dino didn’t pull his arm away. Instead, he kept talking, though the rhythm of his sentence slowed down for just a brief moment—just enough to catch her touch before he finished his thought and laughed.

Antonio watched it all without blinking. He knew about them. He knew about her made-up nights out with friends, and about all those evenings when she would come home late with cheap excuses. Everything was as clear as day.

"Maja, pass me some more bread, please," Dino said.

Maja picked up the bread basket and handed it to him across the table, their fingers brushing once again. This time, they didn’t even bother to hide it from him. Dino took a slice of bread and began wiping the sauce off his plate.

"This is honestly superb," he said, leaning back in his chair with satisfaction. "Maja, you’re a wonder."

Maja blushed slightly, then stood up and carried the empty salad bowl into the kitchen. She returned, sat back down, and gently tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, while Dino raised his glass toward Antonio once more.

"Man, compliments to the chef for this dinner. We should do this more often."

Antonio slowly placed both hands on the table, palms down and fingers spread wide across the white tablecloth. The smile completely vanished from his face as he shifted his gaze from Dino to Maja.

"We should, but this is your last one," Antonio said.

Dino lowered his glass, the red wine swirling slightly inside it, and looked at his brother in confusion, then at Maja.

"What do you mean, last one?" he asked.

Maja stared at Antonio; her hand froze in her lap as she held the napkin. "Antonio, what are you talking about?" she asked.

Antonio didn't answer right away. He slowly reached into the pocket of his blazer, which was hanging on the back of his chair, pulled out a small black pistol, and laid it on the table, right next to his glass of water.

Maja caught her breath sharply through her teeth, while Dino went completely rigid.

"Because tonight, you are both going to die," he said. His voice was entirely calm, without any rise in tone. "You are getting exactly what you deserve."

"Antonio, please..." Maja whispered, as a first tear rolled down her cheek, but she was too paralyzed by fear to wipe it away.

"You will expose yourself as an unfaithful wife, killed by her lover because she wanted to leave him," he said coldly, then turned to Dino. "And you... You, brother, will look like a piece of trash to the whole world—the man who stole his own brother's wife, and a monster who ended up killing her. And me? I had to kill you because you attacked me right after her. I’ll be the victim who acted in self-defense."

Dino's breathing was shallow and rapid, his hands clenched into fists on the table. He looked at the gun, then into Antonio’s cold eyes.

"Antonio, you’re crazy, I..." He gathered his strength, pressed his hands against the table, and tried to lunge to his feet.

He remained half-crouched, his palms pressed hard against the edge of the table. His eyes were wide, locked onto the barrel of the gun, which was now raised to the level of his chest. Antonio’s elbow rested on the table, his hand steady and still.

"Sit back down, Dino," Antonio said.

Dino lowered himself back into his chair, slowly, inch by inch. He didn’t take his eyes off Antonio’s finger, which was resting along the trigger.

"Antonio, calm down," Dino hissed through his teeth. His voice was deep and strained. "Put that away. I’m your brother. Let’s talk."

Antonio tilted his head slightly.

"We are talking, Dino. Tonight we talk about your car, about your mechanic, about your wine. Now it’s my turn."

Maja covered her mouth with both hands. A short, muffled sound, like a sob, escaped her throat, and she tried to swallow it down. She looked at Dino, then back at the gun.

"Antonio, please..." she spoke from behind her palms. "You’ve got it wrong... it’s not what you think. Do you really believe that..."

"Don't, Maja," Antonio cut her off, without turning his head toward her. He kept his eyes on his brother. "Don’t waste words on lies that you can’t even finish. I know everything. I told you."

Dino slowly spread his hands flat on the tablecloth.

"Alright," he said, trying to keep his voice as calm as possible. "You caught us. We messed up, we're idiots, do whatever you want to me. Hit me, break me, but put the gun away, please. We can handle this like civilized men."

"Like civilized men?" Antonio repeated, a barely noticeable, cold smile appearing on his face for a split second. "You want us to handle this like civilized men? You’re sitting at my table, Dino. You’re eating my food, raising a toast to me. And what are you doing behind my back the whole time? Sleeping with my wife. Is that your idea of 'civilized'?"

Maja dropped her hands from her face. The skin around her eyes was red, and her lips were trembling. She stared at Antonio, trying to catch his eye, but his gaze remained fixed on Dino.

"Antonio, please," she said, gasping for air. "If I have to, I’ll leave. I’ll pack up tonight, I’ll go, you’ll never have to deal with me again. Just... please, put the gun down."

"You’re not going anywhere, Maja," he said in a flat voice. "I told you how things stand. Tonight, you both die."

"You can’t kill your own brother, are you insane?!" Dino suddenly raised his voice, anger briefly overtaking his fear. His shoulders tensed. "The same mother gave birth to us, we grew up together, Antonio! We're blood!"

"You're the one who forgot that," Antonio replied. "Now it's too late."

Silence fell over the dining room. Dino’s breathing was heavy and shallow. Maja stared at the gun, then at her husband, gripping the edge of the table as if she were about to collapse from her chair.

Antonio slowly shifted the barrel of the gun, pointing toward the large carving knife that lay next to the empty baking pan in the middle of the table.

"Actually... You know what, Dino..." he spoke, his voice sounding almost relaxed. "Maybe it isn't entirely too late. Maybe there is a way out for you. It all depends on how badly you truly want to live."

Dino looked toward the knife. The blade caught the reflection of the light.

"What does that mean?" he managed to say.

"Take the knife, Dino," Antonio said. He didn’t raise his voice. "Take it and cut her arm. Make a gash. Prove to me that your life matters more to you than hers, and maybe I’ll let you walk out that door alive."

Maja’s breath caught. She flinched backward, pressing her back against the spine of her chair.

"Antonio, no! Dino, don't, please!" she cried out, clutching her hands to her chest as tears streamed down her face. "Antonio, don’t do this..."

Dino didn’t look at her. His forehead was completely drenched in sweat. His fingers slowly began to move toward the middle of the table. Toward the wooden handle of the knife.

"Dino..." she pleaded, her voice a mix of a scream and disbelief. She watched his fingers close around the handle. "Dino, please, don't. You love me... you said you loved me..."

"I'm sorry, Maja," he spoke, his voice completely twisted by terror. "I have to. I want to live."

He leaned over the table. The blade passed right next to the water pitcher. Maja tried to pull her arm back, but it was useless. She had nowhere to go.

The tip of the knife touched her forearm. Dino pressed down. His hand was shaking, but he dragged a cut several centimeters long. The skin tore open, and thick, red blood instantly began to drip onto the tablecloth.

Maja let out a sharp, guttural cry. She clamped her left hand over the wound.

"It’s done," Dino gasped, breathing loudly through his nose. He dropped the knife onto the table. "I did what you asked, Antonio, now let me go."

Antonio didn’t move. He lowered his eyes to the bloodstain, then shifted his gaze back to his brother.

"That was just a scratch, Dino. That isn’t proof that you want to live. That’s proof that you are a coward."

Maja breathed rapidly, keeping her fingers pressed tight over her forearm. Blood seeped between her fingers. Through her tears, she shot Dino a look full of pure rage.

"You piece of trash!" she screamed, her voice trembling. "You sold me out in a second. You talked me into all of this, and now you’re carving me up just to save your own skin. You coward!"

"Shut up, Maja!" Dino shouted, his lower lip trembling. His face was red with fury and panic. "You came to me on your own, I didn’t force you into anything! You were the one constantly talking about how bored you were with him! Antonio, she’s lying! I just..."

"Enough," Antonio cut them off. He didn’t raise his voice, but they both went silent instantly. "I don’t care. Dino, the knife is still on the table."

Dino looked down at the wooden handle.

"Antonio, please..." he whispered, his hand now visibly shaking. "Don't. I did what you asked. Let me go."

"I told you how things stand, Dino," Antonio continued. He slowly raised the gun and aimed the barrel straight at his forehead. "Stab her again. Properly this time. In the stomach."

"Antonio, no!" Maja shrieked. She tried to get up from her chair, but her hand slipped, knocking over her wine glass. The liquid spilled across the table. "Dino, don't!"

"Dino, the clock is ticking," Antonio said, his finger on the trigger tightening slightly. "Choose. Her stomach or your head. Now."

Dino closed his eyes for a second. He let out a short, broken sob, and then pure, primal fear for his own skin completely overrode everything else. He grabbed the knife from the table once more. He stepped out from behind his chair, bypassed the corner of the table, and leaned over Maja.

"I’m sorry..." he muttered through his teeth, his voice no longer sounding human.

He lunged and drove the blade deep into her abdomen.

The knife remained buried in her blouse. Slowly, he pulled his fingers away from the handle. He took one step back. His shoes squeaked quietly on the hardwood floor.

Maja didn’t scream. She only let out a long, shallow gasp, as if she had run out of air. She slid off the chair and collapsed onto the floor.

Dino stared at his sticky palms, his body shaking uncontrollably.

"Antonio..." he managed to say. His voice was raspy, barely audible. "It’s over. Let me out."

"Brother, please..." he took another step back. "Let me go. Please."

"You’re not going anywhere, Dino," Antonio replied.

On the floor, Maja let out a low, wheezing sound. The fingers of her right hand twitched once, scratching against the hardwood floor, and then went limp. Her breathing was growing shallower.

"You’re crazy..." Dino whispered. "You’re a psychopath."

"I am," Antonio said. He slowly lowered the gun by a few centimeters, aiming straight at the center of Dino’s chest. "From the moment I found out about the two of you, I’ve been fantasizing about this night."

"What more do you want from me, Antonio?" Dino managed to bring out, his voice cracked with terror.

"Slow down, Dino, what’s the rush? Haste makes waste, and tonight, I can’t afford even the slightest mistake."

"Stop it..." Dino shouted, unable to take the pressure any longer. "I’ve had enough of your sick games."

Antonio just watched him coldly.

"Come over here and hit me."

Dino stared frantically at his brother's face, then at the barrel of the gun.

"What?" he stammered.

"Hit me," Antonio repeated. "With your fist. In the face. I want you to hit me. I know you want to."

"Antonio, are you out of your mind... I’m not going to hit you..." Dino started shaking his head side to side, looking for an exit.

Antonio raised the gun a bit higher.

"Dino, if you don’t hit me, I will shoot you in the head this very second. Choose. Hit me or die right now."

Dino’s breathing was fast and ragged. Pure fear for his life forced his fingers to curl into a tight fist. He stepped forward, swung, and struck Antonio right on the left side of his face.

The sound of the impact was sharp. Antonio’s head jerked to the right, and blood instantly began to flow from his split lip. He slowly turned his head back, straightened up, and looked at his brother again.

"That was weak, Dino," he said, wiping the blood from his lip. "Again. In the right eye. Hit me again. Now."

Dino was sobbing. He swung again, harder this time, and caught him in the right eye. The skin above Antonio’s eyebrow split open immediately.

In that instant, Antonio clenched his fist and struck back. The blow landed flush on Dino’s jaw, and then he swung once more, hitting his nose. There was a dull crunch of cartilage. Dino stumbled backward, a thick stream of blood spurting from his nose.

Antonio slowly raised the gun and aimed straight at his chest.

"Stand right there," he said, his voice flat and muffled.

Clutching his broken nose, Dino stared in terror at the barrel of the gun. He took two steps back, right into the open space between the table and the wall.

"Antonio, don't, please..." he gasped, his voice breaking.

Antonio pulled the trigger. He fired two quick shots. The first bullet missed Dino and embedded itself in the wall behind him, leaving a deep hole. The second bullet went straight through his chest.

He hit the wall with his back and slowly slid down onto the hardwood floor. His head slumped to the side, his eyes remaining wide open, staring at the leg of the table. He didn’t move again.

A dead silence fell over the dining room, and the smell of gunpowder began to spread through the space. Antonio lowered his hand, the gun hanging by his side. He looked at Dino, then at Maja.

He pulled his phone from his pants pocket and dialed emergency services.

"Help..." he spoke into the receiver, sounding distraught. "My wife... He attacked me too... I’m bleeding... Quickly, please..."

He cut the call and set the phone down on the table.

He walked over to Maja’s body and carefully removed the knife, using a napkin to avoid leaving fingerprints. To alter the scene and simulate an attack, he inflicted several wounds upon himself through his clothing, enduring the sharp pain before dropping the weapon. He then dragged himself a short distance away and knocked over a chair to complete the appearance of a violent struggle.

From outside, sirens began to wail. Blue lights started flashing across the walls and the ceiling of the room.

He stretched out on the floor and closed his eyes.

The front door burst open under the impact, and several police officers rushed into the dining room.

Antonio remained motionless as the authorities entered. The show was ready to begin.

The fire blazed as cold wind swept through the encampment, whipping the flames and sending embers into the dark sky. The surrounding trees swayed in the wind, their leaves rustling alongside the sharp cracks of burning timber.

“You know, there’s one I haven’t told anyone else yet,” Soren said calmly, his voice rising just above the sounds of the camp.

A gust of wind caught the pages of Venn's weathered notebook, revealing rows of crude markings that recorded the days spent at the encampment. It was the only means they possessed of keeping track of the ever-elusive passage of days.

Every three months, the camp had to move. Dwindling food supplies and exhausted resources made remaining in one place impossible.

But there was another reason.

The fear of what had happened to the others.

“You’ve told us the same stories hundreds of times and you’re just sharing this now?” Faeya inquired.

Only four of them remained after the most recent losses. Faeya sat perched on a tree stump carved into a stool, her silhouette outlined by the firelight. They had found her wandering alone years earlier. Since then, she'd become family.

“This isn’t another one of those made-up stories now, is it?” Ashen, the oldest of the group, asked.

“No...” Soren trailed off, fighting the memories tied to the explanation.

“This one came from my grandfather.”

The shadows continued their restless dance around the gathering, indifferent to the somber silence that had settled over the camp. The corner of Faeya’s usually upturned lips fell as an unfamiliar apprehension settled across her face.

“My grandfather’s grandfather told this originally, before the world went dark,” Soren added, tossing an electronic scrap into the fire, causing the flames to briefly turn blue.

Venn, the fourth member of the group, had remained silent. He winced as the electronic board disappeared into the flames. Beside his pack lay a collection of old components, each carefully wrapped in soiled linen.

"Some stories are better left in the past..." Venn muttered, turning a small, smooth coin between his fingers.

"As though there's any truth to these old stories," Ashen scoffed.

His gaze shifted toward the collection beside Venn's pack.

"And you're wasting valuable space hauling that junk around."

Venn carefully wrapped the coin in a scrap of linen and tucked it away, shooting Ashen a look of annoyance.

"Well... get on with it!" Faeya chirped, shifting her weight forward.

Soren watched the flames curl around the remains of the electronic board, the unnatural blue glow slowly fading into the familiar orange.

For a moment, only the crackling of the fire disturbed the silence.

"My grandfather told me this as it was told to him," Soren finally said.

"He always insisted I tell it the same way. As though I were the one who lived it."

Soren leaned forward, casting shadows across his face.

"So that's how I'll tell it to you."

 

 

 

It was a day like any other. My parents had given me a little money and sent me to the market, with strict instructions to return directly home. Except, on this particular afternoon, I decided to take a shortcut through the park on my way home. At the center of the park stood an enormous oak, its branches stretching so far in every direction that they seemed intent on swallowing the field around it. I wasn’t supposed to stop here alone, but I figured a quick cut through would be okay. Then I saw it. A man. A man I knew. I wanted to run because I had been caught. It was the uncle I had always been closest to. He would visit us a lot. I knew he would go straight to my parents, however, and let them know I broke the rules I was meant to follow.

I walked right up to him at the base of the tree and didn’t quite get the response I was expecting. He remained motionless, seated back against the base of the tree with his hands in his lap. He appeared okay other than the very blank expression that projected from his eyes. There was no injury, no blood, just nothing. I knelt down so that our faces were level and his gaze appeared to pass through me as if I wasn’t even there. His eyes were fixed on something that wasn’t there to see. I called his name softly. My stomach tightened. I truly didn’t care if he had caught me anymore. Our faces were roughly six inches apart, and his face slowly scrunched as if he was just learning how to use his muscles.

One corner of his mouth began to rise.

The other followed a moment later.

It was a smile, but nothing about it suggested happiness.

It looked like something he had long forgotten how to do.

I stumbled backward away from him. I dropped the bags and ran all the way home.

That was the last time I saw my uncle.

Once I reached the end of my street, memories of the games my uncle and I had played together flashed through my mind. I threw open the front door so quickly that it struck the rocking bench beside it with a loud clang. This alerted the entire home that there was urgency of some kind brewing in the front room. My parents promptly greeted me.

“Where are the groceries?” Mom asked with concern.

“I... uh... I... dropped them on my way in,” I stammered. “I saw Uncle Binker at the park. I think something is wrong.”

“Why did you go there?” my parents questioned in unison.

Mom pulled the door open and glanced down the street. She slammed it shut, threw the deadbolt, and hurried to close the blinds. She continued to whirl around the house, unable to find a still moment or a chance to catch her breath, almost as if she’d been holding it this entire time.

My dad took a seat at the dining room table, staring off into the kitchen. The chair groaned on the floor as he sat, which he usually carefully avoided. Dad just gripped the edge of the table with his hands like he was trying to fold the solid wood in half.

It felt like a year before either of them said anything else.

“What did he say to you?” Dad finally asked.

He hadn't even mentioned the food I'd abandoned. We'd lost nearly a week's worth of groceries, and he didn't seem to care. A tightness spread through my chest. Until that moment, I hadn't realized just how frightened my parents were.

“He didn’t say anything... He just stared at me and then had this really creepy smile on his face.” The words quietly spilled out of my mouth.

Mom stopped moving for the first time since I had entered the house. She became entirely frozen in place.

"It wasn't just Sharon."

Her lips had barely moved.

“NOT NOW!” Dad boomed across the kitchen.

His voice seemed to rattle inside my skull. Dad almost never raised his voice, especially not at Mom.

I fled down the hallway and shut myself in my bedroom. Through the wall, I could hear my parents arguing, their words too muffled to understand. I curled into the corner of my bed and pulled the blanket tightly around me.

Sharon lived next door. She was always bringing over something she'd cooked or stopping by to spend the afternoon with Mom. But a couple of weeks earlier, she'd stopped coming around. I hadn't thought much of it until Mom mentioned her name.

I couldn't get the image of my uncle's smile out of my head. Even as I drifted off to sleep, I could still see it.

When I woke, the house was empty.

 

 

 

“Empty!” Faeya exclaimed. “So they just left him there?”

Soren glanced toward her, pulled from the trance of his storytelling. The crackling fire and rushing wind seemed to return all at once.

"I suppose that's what the boy thought."

“Convenient. Everyone always ends up disappearing in these stories,” Ashen muttered.

A shudder passed through Venn as the wind swept across the camp. He pulled his cloak tighter, his eyes never leaving the flames.

Soren followed Venn's gaze into the fire.

I ran into the kitchen, where the smell of breakfast normally filled the room and Mom would cheerfully ask how I'd slept. The kitchen was dark and cold, and something smelled off. It appeared dinner from the night before had never made it into the cooler. Then I checked their bedroom. The bed looked untouched, as if it were part of a model home. They either got up really early or hadn’t slept in it last night.

There was no note. There was no message. Mom and Dad were just gone. Mom was almost always home, and Dad had been spending more time around the house lately because things weren't going well at work.

My heart sank. I grabbed a bagel from the kitchen and hurried outside.

Stepping out of the dark house, I was caught off guard by the blinding sunlight. Its warmth spread across my skin. I didn't know where my parents had gone, but I couldn't stop thinking about what Mom had said about Sharon. I walked down the sidewalk until I made it to the front of Sharon’s house. Sharon had always kept the bushes along her walkway neatly trimmed. Now their branches had begun to spill over the path leading to her front door.

I took a deep breath and crept up the walkway to the front door of the house. There was a faint glow coming from the little stained glass windows beside the door. Nervously, I rapped on the door, but no one answered. I looked down the side of the house and noticed one of the windows was partially open. I rounded the corner and glanced around to make sure nobody was watching. Then I dragged a bin beneath the window, climbed onto it, and cupped my hands around my eyes to block the reflection on the glass.

It was very dark, and I couldn’t make anything out right away. Across the room, a television flickered in the darkness. A cheerful voice drifted through the window, repeating the same words over and over. It sounded like one of those advertisements that always seemed to be playing on television. I could now make out a little foldable table sitting in front of the couch facing the TV. It had a plate of food on it. The food was half-eaten, with flies buzzing around the plate.

There had to be someone here for there to be food! Maybe they just couldn’t hear the door over the TV.

"Looking for a brighter future? Join the Pedanza team today! Opportunities are waiting for you." The TV seemed to be getting louder.

I thought of Dad. He'd been having trouble finding work lately. Maybe this was something I could tell him about when he got home.

My eyes strained hard to try and pick up any more details in the room. It was so dark and everything appeared to be fuzzy and slightly out of focus. I decided the next logical move would be to call out through the window.

“Hey! Is there anyone inside?” My voice came out louder than I'd intended, drowning out the television for a moment.

Something shifted on the couch.

At first, I couldn't tell what I was looking at. Then, against the darkness, I made out a row of yellowish teeth.

Someone was smiling at me.

I froze. It reminded me of the time I'd stepped into a fire-ant hill and looked down to find hundreds of them crawling up my legs. That awful moment before the first sting, when I knew what was coming but hadn't moved yet.

The television flickered, catching a little blue badge hanging from the edge of the table. A name was printed across it in large letters. It looked like the kind Dad used to wear to work.

I looked back toward the couch.

The yellowish teeth were higher now. Much higher.

Whoever was smiling had stood up.

I jerked backward, lost my footing, and fell off the bin, landing flat on my back.

The fall knocked the wind out of me. I gasped for air as I scrambled through the bushes and trees separating our houses and burst through the front door. Without even thinking, I locked the door and rushed from window to window, shutting the blinds tightly. I was doing exactly what Mom had done the night before.

 

 

 

"The blue thing," Venn said, breaking the silence. "The one with the name on it. What does it signify?"

"The blue thing?" Faeya exclaimed. "What about the teeth in the dark?"

"Oh, come on. The yellow glint could've come from anything." Ashen shifted closer to the fire.

"A mark of belonging," Soren finally replied to Venn.

He stirred the embers with a stick, sending a handful of sparks into the night. For a moment, his eyes followed them upward.

Then he continued.

It took a while before I felt safe moving around the house again. I was truly scared, and there was no sign of my parents returning. I couldn't stop thinking about what I'd seen. That smile, of course. First Uncle Binker, then Sharon, and now Mom and Dad. And then I remembered the badge. It looked just like the one my dad wore. I needed to find my dad. He would know what to do.

I found one of Dad's work papers lying around the house. The name Pedanza was printed at the top, just like in the advertisement I'd heard playing at Sharon's house. Beneath it was an address, so I entered it into my GPS. Dad's office was only a ten-minute walk away. I'd never been there before, and it wasn't a part of town I knew. By the time I was ready to leave, the bright morning sky had turned gray. Rain began falling as I stepped outside. The black umbrella from the closet kept me mostly dry as I followed the directions on the device.

Strangely, there were hardly any cars on the road or people on the sidewalks. It was very quiet. Even beside the highway, all I could hear was the rain tapping against my umbrella.

As I continued walking, the sky grew darker. I was beginning to worry about the approaching storm when I noticed a glow up ahead.

It was the building I was looking for.

Tall glass walls stretched across its front, spilling bright artificial light onto the darkened sidewalk.

Through the glass doors, I spotted the first person I'd seen since leaving home. A woman sitting behind the front desk. She looked perfectly normal.

"Hello, sweetie!" the receptionist greeted me, her face lighting up as I entered.

"Hello, miss," I replied. It felt strange to speak. I'd only said a handful of words aloud all day.

"What can I help you with today?" she continued cheerfully.

"I'm looking for my dad," I said. "I think he's working today. His name is Daniel Mercer."

"Just one second! I'll look him up right now!" she said, her fingers tapping quickly across the keyboard.

She clicked and typed for a moment before her cheerful smile faded into a look of concern.

"Oh, sweetheart." She looked back at the screen. "Your father hasn't worked here for a few weeks. I'm afraid he was laid off."

"Do you know where he might be?" I asked, desperate for an answer.

"I'm afraid I don't know where he might be. Is your mother home?" she asked gently.

I hesitated. I wasn't sure how much I should tell her.

“Well... my mom isn’t home either, actually. They were both gone this morning when I woke up, and I went to the neighbors, and there was someone in the dark just smiling in there...” The words came faster than I could think, and eventually I trailed off.

The receptionist stopped smiling. She glanced toward the front doors before looking back at me.

“Sweetie, please come with me. I am going to try to find you some help!” She stood and began walking to an elevator.

The elevator doors opened before she even reached the button. It was almost as though it knew we were coming. I followed her inside. She pressed the button for the fourth floor, and the doors slid shut. The click of the button was the last sound I heard before the elevator began to rise.

She led me to a small room with a few tables, chairs, and vending machines. She handed me a couple of dollars and gestured toward them.

"Go ahead and get yourself a treat, sweetheart. I'll be back in a few minutes," she said.

I hurried over and bought myself a chocolate bar and a soda. For the first time all day, I felt like things might be getting better.

I tore open the wrapper on the chocolate bar and took a large bite. The sweet crunchy goodness filled my mouth. I sat at the table and looked around. There were motivational posters featuring cats hanging around the room. I was just about to take another bite when I heard the faint murmur of someone talking through a vent on the far wall.

I stopped chewing.

Was that the receptionist?

I set the chocolate bar down and walked closer, hoping I might hear something about my parents.

"Yes, I'm sure it's Daniel Mercer's boy. I checked the records."

The receptionist's voice came through the vent, muffled but recognizable.

"No, I haven't contacted anyone else."

A pause.

"Okay. I'll keep him here until we hear back."

Another pause.

"I doubt the boy would know that."

Her voice faded, and I couldn't make out anything else.

I heard just enough for the comfort to wash away and the fear to set back in. I had to get out of this room, and out of this building. I quickly opened the door and slipped down the hallway.

I knew the lady said Dad didn't work here anymore, but maybe she'd made a mistake. I didn't know where else to look.

There were a lot of cube-shaped offices, but not a lot of people around. I wandered into the center aisle to look and see if maybe my dad was there. I heard a strange noise coming from one of the offices on the far wall.

It sounded like screaming. I ran over and put my ear to the door. This was a trick I used when my parents were talking about a surprise.

A man belted, “I don’t want that! Get away from me!”

The door pushed open slightly as I leaned on it. Without making a noise, I was now able to see what was happening inside. In the room, a man was strapped to a wooden chair. Behind him stood something tall and black. It was almost like a shadow, but thicker, and I couldn't tell where its body ended. Its arms were long. Too long, I thought. One was stretched around the man's head, and the other seemed to be moving near his ear.

"Please," the man whimpered. "I don't want it."

The thing bent closer. The man suddenly jerked against the straps. His shoes scraped across the floor, and the chair rattled beneath him.

"NO! PLEASE! STOP!"

His back arched, and his head twisted to one side. I thought his neck might break. The thing didn't seem bothered by his struggle. It just stood there, its long fingers moving slowly around his head.

Then the man began making a sound I had never heard before. It wasn't quite a scream. It was a long, terrible moan that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside him. He drew in a shaking breath, and the sound came again, louder this time.

I wanted to cover my ears, but I was afraid to move.

The man's whole body was trembling. Tears ran down his cheeks, and his mouth hung open as he struggled to breathe. He tried to say something, but all that came out was another awful moan. The thing leaned closer.

For a moment, I thought I saw something stretching between the man's ear and the creature's hand. It was thin and pale, almost like a strand of spiderweb, except it seemed to glow in the darkness.

The man let out another scream. The pale strand grew longer. I couldn't understand what I was looking at. Whatever it was, the man wanted it to stay inside him. I could tell that much. His legs kicked against the chair one last time. Then they stopped, but the moaning didn't.

He sat there with his head hanging to one side, making these little sounds through his open mouth. Each one was quieter than the last. The thing kept pulling. I watched the man's eyes move toward the door. For just a moment, I thought he was looking right at me.

His lips moved.

"Help..."

It was barely louder than a whisper. Then his eyes stopped following anything. The last little moan escaped his mouth, and the pale strand disappeared into the darkness. The creature straightened out. The man sat perfectly still. I thought he was dead, but then his head slowly lifted.

His mouth began to move. First one corner, then the other, until his lips stretched into a wide, crooked smile. It was the same smile I'd seen on Uncle Binker's face. And the same as the one I'd seen in Sharon's house. I knew what the thing had done to him.

I didn't know how, but somehow, it had taken him away without taking his body.

 

 

 

A log cracked sharply in the fire. Faeya flinched, and for a moment, nobody spoke.

"Well, that's ridiculous," Ashen said, his voice barely above a whisper before growing louder. "A shadow pulling something out of a man!"

Nobody answered.

"That's impossible," Ashen insisted.

"Yeah? Then why are you sitting so close to the fire?" Faeya retorted.

The wind howled through the trees.

Soren continued.

I was still standing outside the office door. I didn't know what to do. The man sat staring at me with that big, crooked smile. Behind him, the shadowy figure remained perfectly still. Then, without warning, the door swung open. It slammed against the wall with a terrible bang.

I jumped backward.

There was no way the thing hadn't noticed me now. I thought I saw it turn toward me, but I couldn't be sure. Whatever it was, it didn't seem interested. Instead, it turned back toward the man in the chair, moving its long fingers around his head.

It appeared to be placing that long strand into a small, decorative box. Whatever it had taken from the man, it was putting it away for safekeeping.

I stumbled backward into the main aisle between the cubicles. The office had been nearly empty when I'd first walked through it.

It wasn't anymore.

People were standing at their desks. Some had risen from their chairs, while others leaned out from behind the cubicle walls. There must have been fifty of them. Every single one was looking at me. And every single one was smiling.

I stumbled down the center aisle, away from the open office and toward the other end of the room. With each step, their smiles seemed to grow wider. Every face remained turned toward me.

Nobody spoke.

Nobody moved.

I wanted to run, but I was afraid that if I did, they would start running too.

With each step, my brain was screaming at me to get out. But the closer I got to the hallway, the more I realized there was no way around them. I was going to have to squeeze between the smiling people.

I turned sideways and carefully stepped between two of them. Their bodies were cold. I could feel it even through my clothes. Up close, their smiles were worse. Their eyes seemed to look right through me, even though their faces were turned directly toward mine.

The elevator dinged. I rounded the corner and came face-to-face with the receptionist. She grabbed my arm, pulled me through the open elevator door, and held the close-door button. I took a good look at her, and she wasn’t smiling.

“Why did you run off?” she asked. She sounded angry, but her hands were shaking.

“I… I was worried about my dad, and the people… What is wrong with the people here?” I stammered.

"I don't fully know," she said, glancing nervously toward the hallway. "But it's gotten worse. We need to get out of here."

“Listen, honey, your dad… He saw something he wasn't supposed to see. That's why he doesn't work here anymore.”

“What did he see?” I asked.

“I don't know.” She glanced at the elevator doors. “But I wasn't supposed to be on that floor. Neither of us were. Most of the fourth floor was supposed to be closed for renovations.”

“Then why did you take me up there?” I asked.

"They told me the break room was still safe. I thought you'd be okay there."

She looked down at me, then quickly away.

"When I came back and you weren't in the break room, I got worried. I called your dad. He's on his way to get you."

My body wanted to melt into the wall. He was okay, and he was coming to get me. The elevator hummed as it brought us to the bottom entry level. It seemed like she was also trying to figure out the next steps for herself. The elevator opened to the same bright lobby. She brought me to the desk and sat me down on her chair. She looked around to make sure it was just us in the lobby. I felt something in my pocket that I hadn’t noticed until now. A coin. One of the smiling ones must have placed it in there while I was squeezing through the crowd. I kept turning it over between my fingers, wondering how it had gotten there. Outside, the darkness had grown thick. I kept watching the windows, desperately waiting for headlights to appear.

The car I had been waiting for finally arrived.

The receptionist wished me good luck as I hurried toward the doors. I recognized our old red station wagon immediately. I ran outside and pulled open the back door before the car had even come to a complete stop.

"Mom! Dad! You're here!" I shouted.

"Yeah, buddy. I'm here, I'm here," Dad said, reaching back to make sure I was okay.

“Where were you?” Tears welled in my eyes. “I looked everywhere.”

"I know, buddy, I know." Dad had tears in his eyes. "We thought we could stop it before it got to you... but we were wrong." He looked over at Mom.

Mom hadn’t said one word since I got in the car.

“Mom?” My voice started shaking.

Slowly she turned to face me.

Her eyes were empty.

And she was smiling.

"What's happened to her, Dad?" I asked.

Dad looked at Mom, then back at me.

"I don't know, buddy."

"Is she going to be okay?"

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

"I don't know," he said again.

Dad pulled away from the building, driving faster than he normally would. I looked back at the bright windows of Pedanza until they disappeared behind us.

"I saw something upstairs. Something I don't understand," I said.

Dad's hands tightened around the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. Dad didn’t say anything.

“There was a big shadowy figure pulling some strand out of a man,” I quietly added, hoping for an answer.

“Did it see you?” He sounded defeated.

“Yes... I think so,” I stammered. “There were a lot of people like Mom in there.”

Dad opened his mouth to answer.

“DAD!” I screamed.

He slammed on the brakes, and they squealed as the car came to a halt.

A tall, shadowy figure stood beneath a streetlight, no more than five feet in front of our car. It slowly began approaching us. I looked out the side window and saw another one. Then another appeared behind the car. They were coming from everywhere.

Before long, there must have been fifteen of them surrounding us. I pressed myself against the seat as they approached the windows. Then, all at once, they stopped.

Not one of them came any closer.

It was almost as though something was keeping them away.

Dad had squeezed his eyes shut, but nothing happened. He opened them again and stared at the tall figures surrounding us.

Slowly, he took his foot off the brake. The car began creeping forward.

The figure directly in front of us stepped aside. Then another moved.

One by one, they separated, leaving just enough room for our car to pass.

Dad didn't say a word.

Neither did I.

As we passed between them, I looked out my window. One of the figures was standing so close that I could see its long fingers rubbing against the door, causing a faint scraping sound. Its head slowly turned, following me as we drove past. I ducked below the window until I couldn't see it anymore.

I stayed below the window until the scraping stopped.

When I finally looked up, the figures were standing in the road behind us, watching our car disappear into the darkness.

I looked toward the front seat.

Dad was crying quietly.

Mom was still smiling.

Soren stopped speaking.

 

 

 

The wind had quieted, and the trees stood still around the encampment.

For a moment, nobody spoke.

It was almost as though the world had been listening too.

"That's it?" Ashen asked.

Soren looked over at him.

"What do you mean?"

"What happened to the boy? The father? The mother?"

"I thought you didn't believe in these silly stories," Faeya cut in.

"I don't," Ashen replied. "But you can't just end a story like that!"

Faeya smiled.

"Sounds like you're getting a little scared, Ashen."

"I'm not scared," Ashen retorted.

"Oh yeah? Then why do you keep looking over your shoulder?" she teased.

Ashen quickly looked back toward the fire, and Soren quietly chuckled to himself.

"I told you guys what I know," Soren said. "I know the boy survived. What happened to his parents after that, I couldn't tell you."

"What about that coin?" Venn asked.

The other three looked toward Venn, who had been silent for quite some time.

"What about it?" Soren asked.

"You said someone put it in the boy's pocket," Venn answered.

Soren nodded.

"That's right."

"Did he ever find out why?"

Soren shook his head.

"Not that I know of."

Venn looked down at the small bundle resting in his lap.

Venn unwrapped the bundle and held the coin out to Soren.

“Do you remember what the coin looked like?”

“Not really,” Soren admitted. “But my grandfather always said there was something strange about it.”

“What do you mean?” Venn asked.

“Well, those things had the boy surrounded, didn't they? But they let him go. Maybe the coin had something to do with it.”

Venn turned the coin over between his fingers.

“You think it had something to do with this?”

Venn flipped the coin into the air. Its worn edges caught the firelight before it fell back into his palm.

“It’s just an old coin, Venn,” Ashen said, trying to convince himself it couldn’t possibly be related.

“Where did you get that coin?” Faeya asked.

The group turned to Venn, curious about the answer.

“I got it scavenging through one of the settlements years back. To be honest, it’s been my lucky coin ever since.”

Venn grinned. He wasn't used to everyone taking such an interest in the things he collected.

"I've got some more interesting things in here besides my lucky coin," Venn said, pulling out several other linen-wrapped relics.

"Oh, we're so glad you're showing us all your junk, Venn," Ashen said, finally lightening up.

Venn tucked the coin into his pocket as he began unwrapping the rest of his treasures to find the next best thing to show the group.

“This!” Soren chimed in. “This is a real treasure.” He held up one of Venn’s dirty linens that did not contain any artefacts.

Faeya giggled.

“No, no, no. You must not have seen this,” Venn said, holding up one of his more precious items.

"Now this one," he said, holding up a small object with a cracked glass face.

"What is it?" Faeya asked.

"No idea. But look at these little numbers."

Venn passed it to Soren.

"There's two little metal sticks inside. I think they used to move."

Ashen leaned forward.

"So you found a broken thing that doesn't do anything?"

"Well, I think it used to do something," Venn replied.

"Wonderful. Another treasure."

Ashen’s smile faded into a frown.

He rubbed his eyes, thinking that he must be getting tired, but as they cleared again, he was sure that there was something there, standing at the edge of the campground.

At first, he thought it could have been a shadow projected by the firelight, but as the flame flickered, the figure did not move.

Whatever it was, it was enormous. Taller than any animal they'd encountered. Much taller than a man.

"That smile didn't last long, did it, Ashen?" Soren teased, giving his leg a playful pat.

Ashen did not reply.

“Is something wrong?” Faeya asked.

All Ashen could do was slowly raise his hand and point towards the edge of the camp.

"Oh, come on, Ashen. I knew you were sca—"

Faeya stopped.

She had followed his finger toward the trees.

The figure stood motionless as the others turned toward it. Its long arms hung at its sides.

Nobody spoke.

Venn opened his mouth, but no words came out. His hand moved toward his pocket. He glanced at Soren, then back at the figure. Slowly, he pulled out the coin and held it in front of himself.

The figure began walking toward the fire.

Venn held the coin higher.

It kept coming.

"It’s coming for me," Venn whispered.

The figure passed between two of the tents.

Venn took a step backward.

"Why isn't it stopping?"

The figure reached Venn.

One of its long hands extended toward him. Its fingers slowly wrapped around his wrist.

Venn tried to pull away.

The fingers tightened.

The others scrambled to their feet, but the creature paid them no attention.

With its free hand, it pried the coin from Venn's fingers and dropped it into a small bag.

Then, without warning, the creature pulled. Venn was dragged across the campground with impossible speed. His pack tore open, scattering his treasures across the dirt. Before anyone could reach him, Venn and the figure disappeared between the trees.

Venn's screams echoed through the darkness, growing fainter until only the crackling fire and gentle wind remained.

Venn’s trinkets and his notebook lay strewn about the dirt of the camp.

Nobody spoke.

Soren stared into the trees.

The boy had escaped all those years ago. Venn hadn't.

And somewhere in the darkness, the Collector had finally come to collect.

Part V

 

I left everything on the island and snatched the scarf before
heading for the door. Thoughts ran rampant through my mind as I drove.

My phone rang before I’d left my subdivision. I glanced at the
number and knew this was no good. It was a Colorado area code. Where my
company’s headquarters was. We didn’t have a local HR.

It could have been the executive leadership team but I rarely got
called by any of them. My mind returned to yesterday’s meeting and my lack of
being there. For a moment, I felt like I was in free fall. My personal and
professional lives intertwining in disaster. In moments, I could have nothing.
My wife could already be halfway out the door and this was it slamming behind
her.

I didn’t answer. 

It rang until it went to voicemail. I just couldn’t handle
whatever it was they were about to say.

I was still going the same way, but my final destination had
changed. If my life was going down the drain, there was a scarf that needed to
be wrapped around a certain neck that I wanted to grab on my way.

I parked in the lot and headed away from my building. I glanced at
my watch. Had I just surrendered to my fate and gone in, I would have been ten
minutes early.

I entered his building and headed for the elevator. I had no real
plan, just a ball of self-destruction waiting to explode in someone else’s
direction.

I’d been manipulated, molded into this insecure thing and I meant
to share my pain. I shouted down the rational part of me that pondered what I’d
do if my wife were on the business end of my ire. Rationality would have
required examining what I was doing. 

I didn’t want to think. Thinking wasn’t revenge. Thinking wasn’t
balancing the scales. Thinking was what had gotten me to this moment.

The elevator dinged and I stepped off. There was still plenty of
construction going on. A high-pitched drill zipped somewhere around
the corner. I could hear voices that sounded like they were coming out of the
floor but not close enough to understand them.

This was my first time being here during business hours and all
the construction noise was unsettling. I felt like the floor was going to break
underneath me and I’d plummet all the way to the first floor.

Constant hammer strikes echoed from somewhere near. A man hollered
like he was calling out to someone. A machine I didn’t recognize buzzed and I
felt it all the way up into my shins.

I rounded the corner and spotted his door at the end of the hall.
The construction noises coalesced into a sonic hand, shoving me down the hall.
I stopped in front of the door. It looked properly seated in the frame, the
threshold painted a classy-looking black and gold. The knob had been replaced
with an antique-looking one.

I grasped it and turned. The door swung open easily and I stepped
in a completely finished space. The walls had been painted a shade of mint with
cream crown moulding at the top and a darker shade of wainscoting at the
bottom. To my left was a dark couch so fluffy I don’t think I would have had
the will to get out of it if I sat down. There was a small glass end table with
gold legs with a small stack of magazines on it.

The reception desk had been here the last time I’d come and it
looked more completed now, but I couldn’t tell what had been changed. There was
a large square sheet of white paper on the front of it that I at first thought
was blank, but when I took a couple steps closer, saw a hand drawing of what
looked like a logo.

It looked classy in here. Save for the sheet of paper, it seemed
pretty much done. A wall had been erected near the back where the tape had been
mapping out the space. He was planning to stick around.

My shock from how good it looked in here faded and my rage
resurfaced. I had his scarf clutched in hand and I dug in my pocket for my
wallet and fished out three twenties.

“I’ve got my payment right here,” I said. “And your scarf!” I
shook it in the air.

In my rage very little thought had come into mind. I had no real
expectation he was actually here even though I wanted to lay my hands on him.
The part of actually meeting him wasn’t a real concept. I hadn't thought about
that.

So when he answered, “Come on back?” it chilled me.

I realized how much of a doe I was. How much this space was like a
cave. I’d naively walked in here and hadn’t bothered telling anyone where I was
going. There was an expression for this, but it wasn’t coming to my panicked
brain, shifted into a gear meant only for survival.

I took a step back. Into
him.

“Oh,” I said. He poked me in the neck. I slapped a hand in that
spot like a mosquito had bitten me, turning and backing away from him. I fell
to my knees, not understanding what my body was doing.

I tried to speak but whatever was coming out of my mouth was
muffled, like someone had put their hands over my ears. Saying something seemed
like a good idea in those last seconds, but I had no idea what it should have
been.

 

Part VI

 

The procedure room was a lot more intricately finished than the
waiting room had been. There was silver equipment everywhere, things attached
to the wall that looked like they could fold out for some practical use. There
was a lightbox or monitor that was as tall as a man and stretched across most
of the wall it was on. A nest of lights and metal hung over me that looked like
it had traveled across the galaxy just to watch me.

“You’re awake?” he said, looking over his shoulder. I was upside
down and naked. I looked around as best I could, my head was strapped in place.
He had me trussed up like the Vitruvian Man to a metal and glass circular table.

“Whuh-whuh?” I said, my mouth cotton thick. 

“That’s good. That’s good.” He stepped over and put a finger to my
neck and measured against his watch. “Keep talking. Stimulating the brain helps
to expunge the effects of the sedative.”

Tears leaked from my eyes, retreating into my hair. My arms and
legs were slowly returning to my control but returned me to a state of
helplessness as the straps didn’t budge.

“You muhfugg. Lumme go!” My voice was an octave too deep. He
nodded and twirled an index for me to keep going. I hated not being able to
make words, so I just screamed as loud as I could. He smiled and retreated to a
wall and slapped it a couple times with his big palm.

“Soundproof. Can’t have my patients disturbing other tenants.”

I kept screaming even though I absolutely believed him, the rage
bleeding out of me and despair transfusing into the hollow inside me. He folded
his arms and watched me, waiting for me to be done. I continued helplessly, my
despair waning until there was nothing but wild animal clawing to the surface,
until my eyes were boiling and my throat had constricted around a bindle of
knives.

He waited until I was a quaking sack held together loosely in the
shape of a man, my scream the hollow whistle of an empty kettle, the steam all
burnt out of me.

“Ready?” he said.

 

Part VII

 

He stripped to his underwear. There was something wrong down there
but I only had bandwidth to deal with my problems in that moment.

“Please don’t do this.” My throat felt like I’d swallowed a cheese
grater. I was useless but still grasped a desperate strand of hope that I could
appeal to him man-to-man.

“This is for you,” he said. “I’m not some madman in a secret
laboratory. We’re in midtown and I’m going to extend my services to the
public.” He finished doing something with the tray in front of him and took a
step back over to me. I was eye-level with his bare thighs and he kneeled so we
were face-to-face.

“Don’t you love your wife?”

“Wha?” I felt like I’d been slapped by a thousand-pound feather. “Of
course, I do.” My head cannon was that this was going to be an intricate
murder. That the two of them had conspired to “do away” with me. But by
actually applying thought, I realized if murder was the goal, there was a much
simpler way for them to have done it.

“Wait, the surgery is real?” I asked.

His face screwed up in annoyance. “Of course, it is.” He gestured
all around him. “What are you thinking all this is for?”

“I dunno. I guess... I guess you’re some sort of scammer?”

He blinked several times. He reacted as though he’d never been
confronted by such an idea. “What would be the scam?”

I shrugged to the best of my ability and he shook his head. He
returned to the tray and picked up a long needle and inserted it into a vial,
withdrew from it, and placed both back. He looked at me again and saw my eyes
had grown twice as wide.

“Oh, that’s for me. For later. I’ve been ready, I was just waiting
for you to wake up?”

He picked up a scalpel that was tiny in his big hand. Now he
really did look like a cartoon villain. There was a lack of fullness in his
underwear. Like he’d been drawn sexless.

“Wait-wait. Uh, what were you doing in my house?” I was stalling,
still holding out hope that someone would wander in and put a stop to this.

“Oh, that.” His eyes turned upward as if he were watching a replay
of last night on the ceiling. “I watched you for a minute or two, yes. But I
truly needed to take a measurement after.”

“A... measurement?” My loins tingled in an unpleasant manner. He
waved a hand.

“It’s not what you think. I had to take a measurement of your
wife’s vaginal cavity after the two of you had finished. It was all very
clinical. Like a pap smear.”

Anger bubbled up inside me again. I tugged at my binds but I
wasn’t able to move anything more significant than my fingers and toes. He’d examined
my wife. It burned that he’d had access to her as much as her allowing him to
touch her. I squirmed like my skin was about to crawl off my body.

He looked at me, blank faced, and took another step. Once again, I
noted an emptiness to the area around his crotch.  The heat flooding to
the surface of my skin vanished like a big dog confronted by an even bigger dog.

“Suh-so you didn’t sleep with my wife?” I had to swallow hard to
keep my tone rational.

Now he really did look offended. “Sir, I am a professional? And
moreso, I am a married man. I believe I told you that. This picture you have in
mind of me as some sort of ghoul...” He clawed at the air with both hands, the
scalpel coming as close to his throat as it was going to. “You...” he twirled
the fingers of his free hand, searching for the words. “You score my heart. I
would like to think that once you’ve experienced the results, you will buy me
some sort of beer?”

He took another small step. His leg was about a foot away from my
forehead. He could have reached from where he was and began cutting away at any
part of my body he wanted.

“Could I... could I get a drink of water? My mouth is really dry.”

“Sure.” He reached from where he was and pressed a button on the
wall. The machinery beneath me was whisper silent as I was righted and the
excess blood flooded out of my head.

There was a water dispenser next to the tray where he’d been
working. He slipped a cone paper cup from the sleeve, filled it, then brought
it to me.

Cool water soothed my throat in microscopic sips. He must have
realized my delay tactic and upturned the rest of the water into my mouth. 

I swallowed hard and it felt like a bucket of water tossed on
smoldering embers.

“Will there be a scar?”

“Of course there will be a scar,” he said. “That is the point of
the surgery?”

He picked up something from the tray and reached toward my face
with it in his hand. I pinched my lips closed as he moved toward me, holding it
up like a prize. With the other hand he pressed hard at the back of my jaw,
forcing it open against my will. He slid the thing he held into my mouth,
sliding it over my back teeth until he had reached the last few molars, and
seated it there.

I tried biting through it despite knowing better. I was more
likely to dislocate my jaw. 

“That is okay? Not too uncomfortable? Believe it or not, it
actually helps to blunt the screams.” He seemed genuinely interested in my
answer and I grunted at him in anger. There was something wrong in his mouth I
should’ve seen the first time I talked to him, but I hadn’t noticed it until
just then, and it took a moment to process it. My panic leapt as every muscle
in me tensed, pulling with one last meaningless struggle. He waited me out,
stroking my shoulder until I quieted. He broke me like a wild horse. I was very
aware that he could put whatever in my mouth he wanted.

I felt myself surrendering. A calm settling into my bones that
made me want to rage all over again. But I was a car with no gas, my will being
swallowed up in the acceptance of pointlessness. It wasn’t a fight I could even
begin.

He moved his hand away and the table swiveled. In seconds I was
face down, staring at the floor. My tears tapped to the floor as I stepped out
of the cage of my head, my mind perching and spreading its wings as I imagined
my wife at her desk, inclining her head as she thought of me, too.

“H-how did you become an expert? What makes you so good?” My voice
was dreamy and broken, a thousand and one miles away, my words unclear from the
foreign object keeping my mouth open. 

If I’d asked a minute ago, the question would have been a last
effort to delay him from cutting me. But I was honestly curious. 

“I know I told you before. I practiced on me,” he said
quietly, his tone reverential. I imagined a beatific smile on his face as he
looked someplace else entirely.

“It took months. A little cut here, a partial penectomy there.
Each time I ask her, ‘Is it good? Is it better now?’ And each time, she tells
me, ‘Closer. Closer. Closer.’ You understand.”

He had a note of adoration for his wife in his voice that told me
he was standing on a bedrock of absolute sanity.

I felt the heat of him as he millimetered closer to my junk, no
doubt with that scalpel in his hand. I could feel his bare breath on my scrotum
and realized there must have been some sort of divide in the table between my
legs.

“I thought you said your wife’s satisfied. How do you do that
without... y’know?” My jaw ached when I talked.

He laughed. It was a really joyous note, not like he was just
trying to unsettle me. It wasn’t ironic or evil, rather a true, hearty guffaw.
I imagined seeing all the way to his back teeth as he pitched his head back.

He finally got himself back under control and he might have taken
a moment to dab a tear from his eye.

I’d gotten one last look at him before he turned me over. How he’d
looked down there and what he’d told me... I realized he must’ve whittled
himself down to nothing in his undies. That he truly had crafted himself into
what his wife had requested. That the nothing he seemed to have in his drawers
had been the exact mutilation that she’d wanted.

“It’s okay now?” he said suddenly next to me with a pair of blackout
goggles in his hand. He slipped the strap over my head as I moved as much as I
could but with a few deft movements, he had secured them in place. I could feel
my body surrendering against my will and I no longer had the ability to rally. 

“That wasn’t what she desired from me,” he said after he’d
retreated. I flashed on what I’d seen in his mouth again when his face had been
inches from mine. The thing I couldn’t make sense of before but had heard of. A
surgery of another kind.

He’d split his own tongue in half.

“Not a bit of it,” he said. “You understand?”

“But wait!” I was crying again. “If you need to cut me down there…
why do you have me turned around like this?”

“It’s mostly a single cut. Mostly. But your case is a more
particular situation. It will have to be more… intricate.”

Fuck Chelsea. Seriously, fuck her.

It’s almost as if she had been trying to project some feigned millennial shadow against the drywall like a bad improve show tonight.

Her mannerisms displayed an unsettling awkwardness and a naturally robotic aura.

What a weird way to try and provoke jealousy during a break up sesh if that’s what she thought that was.

I don’t think the diner is going to ever let us back now even if individually.

No matter how many times you break up with someone, the outcome is always slightly different just with the same brand of salt around the glass.

But tonight the salt was… off. More bitter than usual.

I wasn’t surprised in the slightest to look down on my way home crying, recalibrating my life in my head for the 37,000th time to see 16 text messages.

Instead of “fuck you” this time it was “help”.

Ridiculously surprised I don’t have actual whiplash by now, I rolled my eyes and turned around.

Every time we do this she has to make me “ponder things.”

Makes me think she’s gonna burst into flames because I’m not there to hold shit together.

I can’t do that anymore. I can’t even hold myself together.

But the last couple days she’s started conversations with herself.

And yeah, we might not be the cleanest people on the planet so it’s not insane for her to sound like the teacher from Charlie Brown occasionally.

The first day I thought nothing of it. I figured it’s been a solid 5 days or so since she’s had any sleep. It was a calculation I could trust because I was on day 6 now.

I can’t sleep unless she sleeps. Now we hold a bond of mutual unrest that’s ironically decimated our romantic one.

Also, she’s been with me since I picked her up from her mom’s.

She’s not supposed to use there but she does so anyways.

I remember one time she told me that she started smoking haroine instead of weed because her mom couldn’t recognize the smell.

Then she said started smoking meth because I guess it was easier to stay up all night than to “panic unconsciously”.

The more I tried to help with trauma, the more her trauma seemed to shape shift into different addictions.

It’s like picking up one side of a tarp just for the egg in the middle to roll off the other.

At some point things started to require emergency structural support that I lacked the tools to even brandish.

Bringing us back to break up 37,001.

Help is the only four letter word I’ve never heard Chelsea say. She know’s I’d try to justify coming back if I saw that.

Never fails to find another way to pin me down. The strongest person I know doesn’t ask for help.

On my way back to the diner I started forming defensive walls again in my brain. Repeat sentences just getting yeeted over the side. Pin squeezed between my teeth like a weary soldier.

I was readying for battle but it’s hard to eagerly prepare when defeat is 37,001 / 0.

I still feel like the salt was slightly off this time though. And for once in a very long time I felt a pang of deep concern that she might actually be in trouble.

I called her phone. Got voicemail. Got mad. Threw my phone.

Of course she decides to call back when I can’t reach the fucking thing and I’m nearing 85 in the fast lane.

My phone was taunting me with a tonal melody and strobe lights from under the passenger seat.

She keeps calling.

You can’t pay for this kind of trill ride. It felt like I was in the middle of a heavy action scene.

I was about 10 minutes away from the diner when I tried to reach over and feel around for it.

I don’t know why humans do things like this. Self sabotage seems to have a great economy.

I was so distracted and caught up in my seething state I didn’t even notice her climb onto the hood of my car.

After multiple failed attempts fishing for my phone I looked up to see Chelsea just grinning at me through the front of my windshield.

Long arms with matted fur extended outward griping both sides of my hood like she was bear hugging a tree.

Deep red eyes sunk into her face pinned open above a long snout. She kept her jaws open wide displaying her lovely teeth and clung there to the hood of my speeding fucking car.

As severe panic and distress usually goes I’ve officially reached the motherlode. My heart nearly stopped and my brain told my body to stop moving too.

We were coming up on the end of the freeway and I could see stoplights a couple hundred yards in front of us.

I was in complete shock. Me and my “soulmate” locked in a contactless embrace as my car barreled toward stopped traffic.

Just clinging there. Stoically perched like a terrifyingly furry hood ornament.

There was no way I could regain control of my body in time to make any sort of logical reaction.

I don’t remember the impact initially, but I do remember her leaping off right before I collided with the small blue sedan in front of me.

When I woke up I was met with buzzing fluorescent lights and a nurse pulling a needle from my forearm.

The first thing I asked was if they found my phone.

Nope.

The next thing I asked is if I can call Chelsea.

They seemed to realize this was more of a demand than a question. So in a hysteric state I panic dialed her number.

After a couple of fumbling tries I finally got a ringtone.

Chelsea never answered.

And again the next day, multiple attempts of contact to no avail.

I called her mom. She said she hasn’t seen her daughter since I picked her up from the house a few days back.

After about a month people started loosing hope. It’s like I was the only one still concerned enough to try.

I’m not exactly sure what I saw that night. I haven’t told anyone about it.

I’m to terrified to let myself believe what I saw as real. In my sleep deprived state it could have been my subconscious transforming my girlfriend into a distorted lanky creature demon thing.

I feel like I missed a call that could have been the difference for something important.

The only thing certain is that I lost my girlfriend the same night I almost lost myself.

I have a rental car now. And a new phone. It took about 3 months to heal from my injuries.

As soon as I was released I found myself relentlessly calling her, driving back and forth on the same stretch of freeway hoping to see any sign. Any speck of a trace.

But something deep down tells me it might not even be her anymore.

Hopefully soon I can finally get some sleep.

Topic 2: Welcome to Dr. Places

Newman stood beside the desk, staring at the computer. The green letters remained perfectly still against the dark screen. PLEASE WAIT HERE. The small smiley beneath them looked as if it had been drawn by someone who had never seen a real smile.

A low hum came from somewhere behind the walls.

Then the static changed.

It became quieter, settling into a thin, continuous hiss. Beneath it, Newman heard a soft mechanical click, followed by another. Something inside the ceiling speaker seemed to struggle to wake up. He tilted his head toward it, waiting for a voice, an alarm, or at least an explanation of where he was.

Instead, music began to play.

It was a short, gentle melody, carried by an old recording. A few bright notes rose and fell over a simple accompaniment, slightly out of tune. The sound had a distant, hollow quality, as though it had travelled through several generations of tape recorders before reaching him. Every few seconds, a faint crackle interrupted the music. Somewhere beneath the melody, a steady hiss remained.

It was not frightening music. That was what made it strange.

It sounded like the introduction to a safety video, the sort that might be played in a school assembly or a public waiting room. It belonged to a world where people sat in orderly rows, listened to announcements, and expected to return home at the end of the day.

Newman glanced around the room again. There were no chairs, no windows, no doors, and no other people. The desk and computer were the only objects that suggested the room had been prepared for human use.

The melody reached its final few notes. A soft pop sounded through the speaker, followed by a brief silence.

Then a man began to speak.

"Good day."

The voice was deep and unmistakably human, but it sounded old in a way that had nothing to do with the age of the speaker. The man's words were rounded and heavy, as if his mouth were close to the microphone. His voice carried a low, hollow resonance, with a rough edge that made certain syllables rasp against one another. The recording crackled around his consonants, occasionally swallowing the beginning or end of a word.

"Good day, and welcome."

Newman moved closer to the speaker.

"Welcome to Dr. Places."

The man paused. A faint click sounded in the background, followed by a burst of static that faded almost immediately.

"My name is Dr. Places. If you are hearing this announcement, you have arrived at a location where the usual rules of travel, navigation, and personal safety may no longer apply."

Newman frowned.

"Dr. Places?"

He looked toward the computer as if the screen might clarify the statement. The message had not changed. PLEASE WAIT HERE.

The voice continued in the same measured tone, neither hurried nor particularly concerned. It sounded like someone reading from a prepared script, perhaps one he had read many times before.

"First, please remain calm. You may be confused, disoriented, or uncertain about your present circumstances. These reactions are normal. Please do not attempt to leave your current shelter until you have received further instructions."

Newman looked behind him.

There was still no door.

He turned slowly, examining the blank walls. The light above him flickered once, then returned to its steady glow. He pressed his palm against the nearest wall. It was solid, cool, and slightly rough beneath his fingertips.

"Your current shelter has been provided for your temporary safety. It is important that you understand the instructions contained in this recording before proceeding any further."

A thin line of static passed through the speaker. The man's voice wavered, growing briefly lower before returning to its previous pitch.

"Please listen carefully. The following precautions are mandatory."

The music returned, quieter this time. It played a few notes beneath the announcement, giving the words the peculiar solemnity of an official broadcast.

"Precaution number one. Do not leave your shelter after two o'clock in the morning."

Newman stared at the speaker.

The man continued without hesitation.

"After two a.m, the surrounding environment may become unsafe for reasons that are not immediately apparent. If you are still outside your shelter when this time approaches, find the nearest suitable place of refuge. Do not continue your journey merely because your destination appears to be close."

A small click interrupted the recording.

"Please do not assume that a familiar-looking location is necessarily safe. Follow your assigned directions, and seek shelter before the stated time."

Newman swallowed.

Two in the morning.

He had no idea what time it was. He had no phone in his hands, and he could not remember whether he had been wearing a watch before the fall. Even if he had one, he was no longer certain it would tell him anything useful.

He looked at the computer again. Its green screen cast a faint reflection on the desk.

PLEASE WAIT HERE.

"Precaution number two. Do not initiate conversation with any creature encountered after seven o'clock in the evening."

The word creature sounded especially unpleasant in the man's rough, bass-heavy voice. It emerged through the speaker with a brief burst of distortion, making the final syllables sound almost doubled.

"Should you encounter a creature after seven p.m., do not approach it. Do not answer questions, respond to greetings, or attempt to establish communication, regardless of its apparent condition or behaviour."

Newman felt the skin along his arms tighten.

The recording did not describe what these creatures looked like. It did not explain where they came from or why talking to them might be dangerous. The man simply continued reading, as though he were reminding passengers to keep their hands inside a moving vehicle.

"Some encounters may appear harmless. You may hear your name. You may be addressed in a familiar voice. You may be offered assistance or asked for directions. These circumstances do not constitute a reason to disregard this precaution."

Newman stopped breathing for a moment.

His name.

He glanced at the empty corners of the room, then at the ceiling. Nothing moved. Nothing answered him. Only the old speaker continued to hiss softly between sentences.

The man cleared his throat. The sound was faint but unmistakably human, preserved by the recording with an uncomfortable intimacy.

"Please remember: a familiar voice does not necessarily indicate a familiar person."

The melody continued beneath the words.

Newman took a step away from the speaker.

"Precaution number three. Do not deviate from your assigned directions."

The announcement became slightly louder, perhaps because the music had faded. The recording's rough texture remained constant, but the man's voice seemed more deliberate now, each word delivered with careful emphasis.

"You may be provided with a route, a destination, and a series of navigational instructions. Follow them in the order given. Do not take shortcuts. Do not enter an unlisted passage simply because it appears to lead in the correct direction. Do not substitute personal judgement for the instructions provided by the designated navigation system."

A brief, dry crackle sounded through the speaker.

"Should your route appear unusual, continue to follow the assigned directions unless you are explicitly instructed otherwise."

Newman looked toward the floor.

For one terrible second, he remembered the moment he had fallen from the roller coaster. The ground rushing toward him. The impact that should have broken his body. The impossible instant when the surface had stopped being a surface, and he had passed through it as if the world had forgotten that he was supposed to remain above it.

He pressed his fingers against his forehead.

This was a recording. It was only a recording. Someone had placed a computer in a room and recorded a man reading a set of instructions. There had to be a rational explanation for at least part of what he was hearing.

He tried to hold on to that thought.

"Precaution number four. A navigation system will be made available to you."

A soft electronic tone sounded. Newman turned toward the desk just as the computer screen blinked.

For a fraction of a second, the green message disappeared.

The screen went black.

Then the words returned.

PLEASE WAIT HERE.

The speaker continued.

"The navigation system is intended to assist you in identifying your current position and following your assigned route. Please consult it whenever you are uncertain about your location."

The man's voice crackled. For a moment, it sounded as if the recording were slowing down, dragging the vowels into longer, heavier shapes. Then it stabilised.

"However, electronic navigation may occasionally become unavailable, display incorrect information, or fail to update your position accurately."

Newman leaned toward the computer.

"Should such a malfunction occur, do not continue to rely on the electronic display. Instead, consult the physical map provided for this purpose. Use the map to verify your position and determine the correct route before proceeding."

There was a short pause.

"Please ensure that you understand how to read the physical map before beginning your journey. It is intended as a backup navigation method and should remain available even when electronic assistance is not functioning correctly."

The announcement ended that section with a small, almost cheerful click.

Newman stared at the computer.

A navigation system. A physical map. An assigned route.

Someone had prepared a procedure for people who arrived here. Not just a procedure, either. The instructions seemed to assume that he would leave this room, travel somewhere, encounter things he should not speak to, and find shelter before two in the morning.

The recording had not once suggested that he might be able to return the way he came.

He looked back at the blank wall where he had expected to find the place he fell through. He could still remember the amusement park, the metal tracks, the sudden release of the harness. He could almost hear the distant screams of the other passengers.

But there was nothing behind the wall.

Only the faint electrical hum.

"Thank you for your attention."

The man's voice softened slightly, taking on the polite warmth of someone concluding a routine presentation.

"We understand that your arrival may have been unexpected. Please be assured that the procedures outlined in this recording are intended to help you remain safe while you familiarise yourself with your surroundings."

The music rose a little in volume. Its melody was gentle and strangely old-fashioned, almost pleasant when heard in isolation.

"You are encouraged to remain patient, follow the instructions provided, and avoid unnecessary risks. Further guidance will be made available when appropriate."

Another click.

"Once again, welcome to Dr. Places."

The man paused.

"Please remain where you are."

The music played on for a few seconds, repeating its simple melody. Then it stopped abruptly, leaving behind a long, thin hiss.

Newman waited.

He expected another announcement. Perhaps a final instruction, or a signal that would tell him what to do next. He waited for the voice to return, for the computer to display a new message, for a door to appear in one of the walls.

Nothing happened.

The silence lasted long enough for him to become aware of his own breathing.

Then the speaker clicked again.

"Your orientation is now complete."

The man's voice sounded exactly as it had before. Deep, rough, and human. There was no threat in it, no anger, no hint that he was aware of Newman's fear.

"Please wait for further instructions."

A soft pop followed.

The recording ended.

Newman remained motionless beside the desk.

The computer's green letters glowed in front of him.

PLEASE WAIT HERE.

He read them once. Then again.

The message was simple. The instructions had been simple, too. Do not leave after two in the morning. Do not speak to creatures after seven in the evening. Follow the assigned route. Use a physical map if the navigation system fails.

They sounded like rules written by someone who knew exactly what could happen if they were ignored.

And that was what frightened him most.

The voice had not sounded like a monster. It had not sounded like a machine pretending to be human. It had sounded like a tired man recording a routine announcement in a small studio, speaking into an old microphone while the tape rolled.

A man who had known what to warn people about.

Newman slowly backed away from the desk. His eyes moved from the screen to the walls, searching for any sign that the room had changed while he was listening.

It had not.

The fluorescent light still hummed overhead. The walls remained bare. The computer continued to display the same message, its green letters flickering almost imperceptibly against the black screen.

He wanted to leave.

He wanted to find a door, run through it, and keep running until he reached the amusement park, the road, or any place that belonged to the world he remembered.

But the recording had told him to wait.

And for the first time since the fall, Newman had no idea whether disobeying an instruction was more dangerous than following it.

He looked at the computer one last time.

Then he sat down beside the desk and waited.

Topic 1: The Ride

The afternoon sun hung over the amusement park, casting long shadows across the walkways and illuminating the colorful rides that filled the horizon. Music played from hidden speakers, mingling with the excited screams of visitors and the constant mechanical rumble of attractions operating throughout the park. The smell of fried food, sweet cotton candy, and freshly cut grass drifted through the warm air. Everywhere Newman looked, people were laughing, talking, and moving from one attraction to another. It was an ordinary day, the kind he would probably forget within a week.

Except for the roller coaster.

Its enormous steel track twisted high above the surrounding buildings, climbing toward a towering peak before plunging into a series of steep drops and sharp turns. Trains of seats raced along the rails, disappearing behind structural supports and reappearing moments later amid a chorus of screams. Newman had been waiting in line for nearly forty minutes, watching each train complete its circuit. Now, finally, he was sitting in one of the front rows, his hands resting on the safety harness across his chest.

"All right, this is going to be insane." he muttered, glancing at the track ahead.

The teenager sitting beside him laughed nervously. "You say that now. Wait until we're upside down."

Newman grinned. "That's the whole point, isn't it?"

A park employee walked along the rows, checking the restraints before the ride began. He pressed down on each harness, tugged at a few of them, and exchanged brief words with the passengers. When he reached Newman, he pushed firmly against the padded bar across his chest. The restraint clicked into place, and Newman felt it tighten against his shoulders.

"Keep your hands and arms inside the train at all times," the employee announced. "Please remain seated until the ride has come to a complete stop. Enjoy your ride."

The employee stepped away. A moment later, a warning buzzer sounded, and the metal gates beside the platform slid open. The train shuddered as its brakes released. Newman leaned back against his seat, feeling the first faint vibration travel through the frame beneath him.

Then the train began to move.

At first, it rolled forward slowly, passing through the station and approaching the lift hill. A chain mechanism caught the underside of the train with a heavy metallic clank. The cars began their ascent, climbing the steep track one section at a time. Each link of the chain produced a rhythmic clattering sound that grew louder as the train rose above the platform. Newman could feel the vibrations through his seat, while the wind brushed against his face and lifted the edges of his hair.

Click. Clack. Click. Clack.

The higher they climbed, the more of the park came into view. The crowded walkways became narrow ribbons between colorful buildings. Beyond the perimeter fence, roads stretched between distant neighborhoods, and sunlight reflected from the windows of office towers on the horizon. Newman turned his head to take in the view, momentarily forgetting about the drop waiting ahead.

"Look at that!" he shouted over the machinery.

His companion barely glanced sideways. Both hands were gripping the restraint. "I'd rather not look!"

Newman laughed. "You're missing the best part!"

The train continued climbing until the chain finally released it near the top. For a brief moment, everything seemed to pause. The wind brushed across Newman's face. Somewhere below, a crowd cheered as another train returned to the station. Ahead, the rails curved downward at an angle so steep that he could barely see where they ended.

His smile widened.

Then the train tipped over the edge.

Gravity pulled him into his seat as the train plunged down the first drop. The wind roared past his ears, swallowing his laughter and the screams erupting from the rows behind him. The track rushed toward them, then swept upward at the bottom of the descent, forcing his body against the restraint. Before he could catch his breath, the train climbed into a banked turn, tilting the horizon until the sky and the ground seemed to exchange places.

"OH, MY GOD!" Newman yelled, laughing as the train raced through the curve.

The cars rattled over the rails. The wind tore at his clothes, and his stomach seemed to float somewhere behind him as the train crested another smaller hill. For a few seconds, he felt almost weightless. Then the track dropped again, sending the train hurtling through a dark tunnel beneath an artificial rock formation.

The light vanished.

Inside the tunnel, the sound changed. The rushing wind became a deafening roar, amplified by the enclosed space. Metal wheels hammered against the rails, and the screams of the passengers bounced off the walls. Newman could barely see the faint lights lining the tunnel. He gripped the sides of his seat, still exhilarated, waiting for the train to emerge into daylight.

It happened almost immediately.

The train burst out of the tunnel and entered another sharp turn. Sunlight flashed across Newman's vision. The track ahead twisted through a dense framework of steel supports, and the train began to climb a short incline before banking hard to the left.

That was when he heard something strange.

A sharp metallic snap came from somewhere near his chest.

Newman glanced down.

For a fraction of a second, he did not understand what he was seeing. The safety harness that had been pressed firmly against his shoulders was no longer holding him in place. One side had shifted upward, leaving an unexpected gap between the restraint and his body. He felt the remaining pressure disappear.

His smile vanished.

"Wait—what?"

The train was still moving at tremendous speed. The track curved ahead, and the centrifugal force pushed him sideways against the seat. He grabbed the restraint with both hands, trying to pull it back into position, but it moved freely beneath his grip. A second metallic snap cut through the noise.

The harness came loose. The brutal centrifugal force instantly hijacked his momentum, wrenching his body sideways. By pure survival instinct, Newman slammed both hands onto the cold metal frame of the car, his knuckles turning white as he fought the violent drag of the wind that threatened to fling him into the void. For one suspended instant, he hung on desperately, staring at the broken restraint floating in front of him as though his mind could somehow reject what had just happened. The wind struck his face. His heart seemed to stop, and the exhilaration that had filled him only moments earlier was replaced by a sudden, overwhelming certainty that something was terribly wrong.

"HELP! SOMEBODY—!"

The train entered another descending curve.

Newman's body lifted from the seat.

He threw both arms toward the frame in front of him, his fingers scraping against the hard surface, but there was nothing he could hold. The train tilted, the world rotated around him, and his remaining contact with the seat disappeared. He was thrown sideways out of the car, beyond the protective framework of the track.

For an instant, he saw everything at once: the steel rails racing overhead, the bright blue sky, the amusement park spreading beneath him, and the distant faces of people who had turned toward the sudden commotion.

Then the train was gone from his field of vision.

Newman fell.

The ground rushed toward him. He could no longer hear the music from the park or distinguish the screams around him. All he could hear was the violent pounding of his own heartbeat and the air tearing past his ears. He twisted helplessly in midair, reaching for something—anything—that might stop his fall.

There was nothing.

"No, no, no! PLEASE!"

The ground was only seconds away.

He shut his eyes.

He waited for the impact.

It never came.

Instead, Newman felt a strange, jarring sensation pass through his entire body, as though he had just plummeted through a thin, freezing membrane. A sudden shift in atmospheric pressure slammed against his eardrums. The roaring wind and the distant screams from the world above were instantly cut off—snapped out of existence so abruptly that the absolute silence struck him harder than the fall itself.

He opened his eyes.

He was still falling.

Beneath him was not soil, concrete, or grass. It was darkness, interrupted by faint, indistinct shapes that seemed to slide past him. He looked upward, expecting to see the sky, the roller coaster, or at least the surface he had fallen through. Instead, there was nothing he could recognize. The world above him had vanished.

"What... what is this?"

His voice sounded unnaturally small.

He tried to move his arms and legs. They responded, but the sensation of falling felt wrong. There was no wind against his skin now, no clear sense of direction, and no visible surface approaching below. It was as if he had passed through the ground and entered a space that had been hidden beneath the world all along.

He reached out instinctively, expecting his hands to touch a wall. They met nothing.

Then, far below, a pale rectangle appeared in the darkness.

At first, Newman mistook it for a distant window. As he continued falling, it grew larger, revealing straight edges and a faint, yellowish light. He could make out a ceiling, then walls, and finally the outline of a room.

He was falling toward a room.

The realization came too late.

Newman passed through an unseen boundary and dropped into the space below. His body struck a hard floor with a heavy thud. The impact drove the air from his lungs, and he rolled onto his side, clutching his chest as pain spread through his arms and back. For several seconds, he could do nothing but gasp, trying to draw enough air into his lungs to breathe properly.

He was alive.

Somehow, impossibly, he was alive.

He remained on the floor, afraid to move, waiting for the pain to become unbearable or for the room to dissolve around him. Neither happened. The floor felt solid beneath his palms. The air was cool and stale, carrying a faint smell of dust and old plastic.

Finally, Newman forced himself to sit up.

The room was small and almost completely bare. Its walls were a dull, faded beige, with no windows and no visible decorations. A single fluorescent light hung from the ceiling, emitting a weak, uneven glow that gave everything beneath it a sickly tint. There was no furniture except for a simple desk standing against the far wall.

And on that desk sat an old computer. Its bulky, yellowed plastic casing looked decades out of place, with a thick monitor, a narrow disk drive, and a yellowed keyboard positioned directly in front of it.

Newman stared at it.

The screen displayed three words in blocky, pixelated letters.

PLEASE WAIT HERE

Beneath the words was a simple smiling face.

Newman slowly got to his feet, wincing as he tested his weight. Nothing about the room made sense. He had fallen from a moving roller coaster, passed through what should have been solid ground, and landed in a windowless room with an ancient computer. There was no entrance that he could see, no staircase, no door, and no explanation for how the machine had received power.

"Where the hell am I?" he whispered.

The computer offered no answer.

He took a cautious step toward the desk. The green letters remained unchanged. He waited for them to flicker, for a cursor to appear, or for the smiling face to be replaced by something else. Nothing happened.

Then he heard a faint crackling sound.

Newman froze.

The noise seemed to come from somewhere above him. He tilted his head and looked toward the ceiling, searching for a speaker, but the weak fluorescent light revealed nothing except a small, dark grille embedded near one corner.

The crackling grew louder.

Static hissed through the room, breaking into irregular pops and bursts of distortion. Newman stepped away from the desk, his eyes moving between the ceiling and the computer screen. The sound reminded him of an old radio struggling to find a signal, except that there was no music, no recognizable broadcast, and no voices hidden beneath the interference.

For a few seconds, the speaker produced nothing but noise.

Then the static paused.

A faint electronic click came from the grille.

Newman held his breath.

The speaker crackled again, and a voice began to emerge through the interference.

Wait for Topic 2!

Or watch full Chapter 1 on No Exit

I’ve done just about everything to please my wife. Y’know, in the bedroom. I've bought every toy, learned a hundred techniques from books and videos…

I don’t know if I can do this, though. I mean, it’s my junk, man. One screw up and it’s over.

But my wife... she asked.

My knee-jerk reaction was to tell her hell no. She gave me that look of hers, though, and I turned to ice cream on hot asphalt.

The asking started just before the wedding. We’d been doing bedroom stuff since the night we met. She’s... wild. The first time she said she hinted at it, but I don’t remember hearing her. She reminded me later on. Honestly, it was right after we did… stuff, and I would’ve said yes to just about everything.

One of her girlfriends has seemed happier than ever. The two of them have been friends since kindergarten and they’re practically twins, the biggest difference between them is my wife’s not a blonde-haired white woman. But otherwise, their style and even manner of speaking is exactly the same.

McKenzie’s husband had already had it done, apparently. Before they got married.

He’d been more than happy to tell me about it at a bar after I asked him. “Brother, the difference is like sand and water. McKenzie was probably gonna dump my ass before I got it done. It’s mostly a single cut, but now she says she’ll kill me if I don’t give it to her every single night.”

I’m sure I lifted my eyebrows in appreciation. I leaned in.

“So, what is it, though?” I asked, working on an Old Fashioned. “What does the doctor do?”

“Oh, he’s not a doctor. At least not anymore. Or in the U.S.” He shrugged. “I forget which. And it’s a little different for everybody.” He sipped at a brandy mule. I had to try one of those sometime.

I didn’t know what to say to that. His shrug wasn’t easing my mind, but that was all he had for me. I locked eyes with him for a long moment, trying to milk something more out of him.

“Here, take this.” He took a pen out of his jacket pocket and jotted something down on a napkin. He slid it over to me and I read the email he’d written. It was a Hotmail address.

I’d explained it to my wife later that night while we were working on ripping out kitchen cabinets, but it was as if the decision had already been made. But c’mon, this was my downstairs area. This wasn’t the kind of decision I could rush.

“Isn’t there anyone else I could go to?” I asked her, holding a hand out for a Phillip’s Head. “I mean, why not see if there’s somebody in-network? Get a couple consultations?”

“God, you sound like my mother.” She slapped the screwdriver in my hand. “Would it be painful to just send an email?” I shook my head, conceding her point.

I’d sent it one night after having a couple at a bar. The scrap Lindell, McKenzie’s husband, had written the email on, had stuck to my wallet inside my pocket, forgotten until the moment I’d dug it out to pay my tab.

I was fueled on something with an umbrella I didn't exactly remember ordering and tapped out a message while the bartender ran my card.

Looking to Please My Wife Better, I typed in the subject. I poked at the body on my screen and began sloppily tacking out the meat of my message. I wS recommended by a fried on a freed. He said you safety his relationship but Im not sure.

I didn’t have the capacity to correct my grammar. I was half-thinking this guy was a kook, but being a drunken email wasn’t a commitment, so I pressed SEND.

I had a reply after the bartender had brought my copy of the receipt.

What the fuck kind of businessperson answered email at 11:16 PM?

I wanted to run to my wife like this was evidence, to wave my phone around like a flag but I knew how the conversation would go. She’d already heard the evidence she needed from McKenzie. The only thing she wanted to hear from me was when the appointment was and if I needed her to take me.

The email was simple and presumptive. A date and time for the consult and a date and time for the “surgery.”

I was drunk. I replied, “I’ll be there.”

I didn’t think about it after that until he sent me an email the morning of the consult at 2 AM. Again, this was not confidence-boosting. I was on a runaway train and had to figure out a way to jump off.

His office was surprisingly close to my job. The building was right next to my building.

He’d just set up in this space recently. Maybe my wife had told him where I worked. I wasn’t chalking anything up anything to coincidence.

The office was on the fourth floor of a building still under construction. I found the suite after meandering the halls once I came off the elevator.

The door to the space didn’t look secure. I wondered if it might fall on me if I pulled it open. The drywall in the hallway had just been taped and mudded and the air smelled chalky.

I didn’t bother knocking, my eyes on the hinges as I pushed the door open and quietly entered the space.

“My friend, you found the place okay?” He looked away from some point high up on one wall and smiled wide at me. I crossed the plywood floors and offered my hand. He took it and pulled me in for a hug. As awkward as it was from an alleged professional, it was made that much worse from how long he held me there.

“It is so good to see you,” he said, grasping my shoulders and holding me at arm’s length. 

“Uh, yeah,” I said.

“Let us not delay,” he said. He turned away and waved for me to follow. “Step into my office.”

We passed two long folding tables and he stopped. He smiled at me again and clapped his hands together.

“So, you are needing the cut?”

“I’m... exploring some options.”

Unnaturally large teeth sprouted from the broad smile returning to his face. It reminded me of a shark in combination of his dead eyes and pencil-thin mustache and goatee trimmed too far from his mouth. He leaned in so fast and we were suddenly a finger’s width from being nose-to-nose. I thought he’d been about to kiss me.

“You wouldn’t be here if you had satisfied her with your... options.” He rounded his Rs in a way that sounded practiced.

I figured cutting to the chase was the best way to get what I wanted.

“How much does this cost?”

He was at least a half a head taller than me, but he had a way of fixing me with his powder-blue eyes like we were even with each other.  He scratched a head of curly black hair and fumbled with the red and white checkered summer scarf didn’t really match the all-grey outfit, but I wasn’t into fashion and didn’t care.

“Candy?” He pulled a hand out of his pocket and offered a palmful of oblong, dark candies wrapped in clear cellophane. It didn’t make sense, but they didn’t look American. I took one out of curiosity but didn’t open it. “Marcus referred you, if I’m not mistaken?” I had never mentioned McKenzie’s husband in our email exchange. I guess he must have reached out after we spoke. I nodded.

He slapped my shoulder. “I deal in volume. It’s nowhere near what you’re thinking.” I’d been pitched to by salesmen of every skin. I doubted he was going to convince me it was a good idea to cash out my 401k to finance this thing.

“Fifty-seven eighty-five.” 

That smile widened again but now I was thinking the reverse. How good could he be if the procedure was so cheap? I was having sudden visions of concrete ass injections and bootleg Botox.

“Okay, but it’s gotta be time consuming. How can you do it for so che—little?”

“I thought I told you. Volume. And it really doesn’t take that long. Minutes at most. It’s mostly a single cut.”

“A cut?” Marcus had explained that much to me but coming from the person who performed the procedure made it real in a way I wasn’t prepared for. “Do you make it... longer?”

He shook his head.

“I don’t come anywhere near the suspensory ligament. It’s a very minimally invasive surgery. You understand? In most cases you can make love tonight!”

“You wanna do this now?” I asked, panic giving me a squeeze. 

“No-no,” he said. He held his hands up. I noticed for the first time the tip of his pinky finger was gone.

He rolled his eyes up as if searching for the right words somewhere on the unfinished ceiling behind me. “I mean on the same night. You and the missus.” He turned his palms up, quasi-placating.

I looked at the four-and-a-half fingered hand.

“You a lefty?”

“Yes.” A corner of his smile lifted. “I am am-bi-dex-trous.” He said that last word carefully. Like it had taken a lot of practice to finally get right.

“For now, take off your pants. Pull it out so I can see?”

Cold prickled up my back. I had no real objection I could make. Sure, he wasn’t a real medical professional, but I suspected my wife already knew that. 

I dropped trou right there before I could think too long about it, but I think I felt it fold inside itself. He was replacing his glasses with a pair with fishbowl lenses, making his eyes cartoonishly large.

I wasn’t packing major heat by any means, but this was over the top. I didn’t fuss because it got me done that much sooner.

Him touching my manhood wouldn’t have been that big of a deal had he been an actual doctor. But it was that much worse with him not even washing his hands. That was more of a him problem than mine, though.

“I will do the rest sometime this week,” he said, standing back and stroking his chin. I pulled up my pants, not knowing what that meant but I didn’t inquire for fear of extending this encounter. I didn’t feel like I’d passed the point of no return, and I hoped I had enough steam to convince my wife this was a bad idea.

Node 1: Stupid

The bell hadn’t even finished ringing before everyone began spilling out of their classrooms, boiling across the blacktop like sugar‑drunk ants defending their hive. To the uninitiated, lunchtime at Willow Creek Elementary looked like pure bedlam; a shrieking, dust‑kicked riot of small bodies and questionable behavior.

But anyone who’d survived more than a week here knew the truth: chaos has patterns. Even children, feral as we were, fell into habits.

Brad and his crew held the basketball court as if it were sovereign territory. Jocelyn and Britney practically lived on the monkey bars, moving across them with the confident precision of people who’d all but abandoned solid ground. Then there was this weird kid, he was always hanging around the bathrooms. I never figured out why, but it must’ve been something important to keep him there in that steady drift of sour, urine-tinged air.

My best friend Devin and I had our own spot, our own habits. We always hung around this old sun‑bleached bench near the kickball field. It was a sort of blind spot where our attempts to out‑stupid each other tended to go unseen.

“What cha wanna do?” Devin asks, still chewing the handful of Gushers I had given him.

“Why you always asking me what we should do?” My words come out with more edge than the moment deserved.

“I dunno.” Devin’s eyes drop as he works the toe of his sneaker into the dirt.

It’s obvious, something's tugging at him.

I don't ask. I already know what it is. Instead, I punch his arm. He smiles, and drags his nose across a sleeve already crusted with dried snot.

Then, with the abrupt authority of a 4am reveille, Devin unleashed a full‑bodied KHHHRRRK‑GLK from somewhere deep behind his ribs. He turns his head and spits the resulting monstrosity onto the nearest tree where it hit the bark with a wet, triumphant tchk. Highlighter‑yellow with a streak of blood, it oozes downward, picking up flecks of dirt during its slow, rolling descent.

“Betcha I can hit that one” I say, pointing to a tree a good four, maybe five feet past the one he had so generously christened. 

Devin glares at me.

“Bullshit.”

Undeterred, I step forward with all the bravado of a bullfighter taking center-ring. My head tips forward as I plant my hands firmly on my knees. Then I draw in a long, steady -

KHHH KHHHHHRRRK HHHWWK

PHT-tchk

A thick wad of phlegm escapes my lips; a biological bullet propelled by the sort of blind faith known only to children and fools. For a moment, it actually seems to hang there, catching the sun, wobbling in the air. Devin’s eyes track the gelatinous mass as fervent anticipation threatens to overtake him.

PLAP

It lands with a moist slap. 

Devin blinks once, then again, his mouth hanging open.

“No fucking way.” 

“OH! What now son!” 

Devin's eyes narrow. A cold, metallic focus settles behind them. Somewhere deep in his chest, I could already hear the machinery of a truly wretched hock beginning to spool up. A low, guttural KHHHH begins to vibrate the air around us. His shoulders roll back. His neck stiffens. His whole body committed to this one singular act. 

KHHHHHRRRRRK GRRRRK HHHHRRRK

PHT-tchk!

“MS. CHRIS!!!!” 

For a moment nobody moves, nobody breathes, the air itself goes still. Whenever momentum outruns judgment, there's a moment of reckoning and ours stood before us: four feet, three inches of severe peanut allergy wrapped in a faded Red Ranger tee. Andrew Barges, of course it had to be him. Ms. Christner's favorite little charity case. 

“Get it off, GET IT OFF!” 

He furiously paws at his face, as the rancid glob crawled down it in a slow, humiliating slide.

“You’re gonna be in so much trouble, you-you stupid penis face!”

“Andrew!” 

Ms. Christner's voice cracks the air like the sharp pop of a leather belt. He jerks upright, hands still half-raised, face blotchy and wet. 

“What did I just hear you say.” 

She wasn't asking a question. She was issuing a dare. 

His mouth opens, closes, then opens again. “He-he-he spit on me Ms. Chris. He spit on my fff-face!” Andrew jabs a trembling finger at Devin.

Devin points at his own chest with a puzzled look. 

Ms. Christner crosses her arms, and takes a slow, measured breath.

“Devin… did you spit on Andrew?” 

Devin blinks.

“Huh? Did I slip on dog poo?”

“Spit! Spit! You ssss-ssstupid!”

“Andrew, please.” 

Ms. Christner shoots him a fatigued look, the sort that's more about restraint than exertion. 

Then she turns back to Devin. 

“I'm going to ask again, and this time I want the truth. Devin, did you spit on Andrew?”

“Yes, Ms. Christner, but it was an accident. Honest.”

“Devin,” she says, already turning her body toward the far edge of the playground, 

“go to the tree.”

He doesn't argue, he doesn't even sigh. He just shrugs: a loose, almost bored little roll of the shoulders. Devin had always been too proud to give anyone the satisfaction of some mewling little protest.

“Big surpris.”

He doesn't wait for a reply, already moving, already slipping back into familiar exile.

There, at the outer limits of our shared reality, the great oak waits quietly, patient, inevitable. As Devin approaches the solemn giant, I could swear its branches ease towards him. The motion is so slight I almost dismiss it, but a small part of me can't shake the feeling it wasn't the wind. 

Node 2: Lucky

Without Devin, time drags: thick and heavy. I find myself wandering from one end of the playground to the other. I'm not really doing anything, just trying to make the clock move faster. 

Somewhere in the drift, I begin to sing. The words come out slow and wistful. It's the kind of bored, half-asleep singing you do when no one's around. 

“fuck fuck fuck a duck

screw a kangaroo

fingerbang an orangutan

at your local zoo…”

I swallow, suddenly aware of how empty the playground feels. The swings hang loose and still. The hopscotch court is vacant. Even Britney and Jocelyn have abandoned their monkey bars. For a moment I wonder if I had somehow missed the bell.

“Hey, no fair!”  

“Lucky!”

“I want some too!”

I turn toward the noise. There, across the blacktop, I see a cluster of kids huddled around the time‑out tree. Their bodies packed tight as they shout over one another in a frantic, high‑pitched mess. Arms waving, dust kicking up, someone hopping in place like they can’t believe what they’re seeing.

My feet pound across the blacktop, breath catching in my throat. Seems any time a crowd’s losing it, Devin’s either dead‑center or the spark that lit the fuse. Either way, that's my guy and I’m not missing the show. 

“Move it!”

I push through the outer ring of bodies, squeezing between backpacks and elbows until I finally break through to the front. 

There, I see Devin crouched at the base of the old oak. He's got one hand buried deep in a narrow opening between its roots, the other clutched tight against his chest. Then I see what's got everyone losing their minds. All around him, coins clink and spin while sticky little hands dart in from every direction to snatch them up. 

“What the—?”  

Devin whips his head up when he hears my voice, eyes wide and face pulled tight. I can’t tell if he’s scared or furious or what. Then he drops his gaze back to the hollow and drives his arm in deeper causing more coins to spill out.

“Dude! Help!”

I assert myself between Devin and the pilfering horde of juice-box goblins, my arms spread wide as they'd go.

“Back off, he found them! Seriously, BACK OFF!”

Suddenly Ms. Christner charges in, a waft of cigarette smoke trailing close behind her.

“What's going on!?”

Kids scatter, peeling off in all directions. Ms. Christner lunges after them, grabbing at whoever, and whatever she can. 

She manages to snag a fourth grader by the back of his shirt. I hear him choke as he's almost taken off his feet. He twists hard, “Let go you stupid fat cunt!”

Ms. Christner yanks hard like she's tugging a leash, the pull forcing his collar to bite deep into his throat. 

“You're coming with me to the office RIGHT NOW!”

He kicks his feet in protest as she drags him off, their voices dissolving into the sprawl. I let out a long breath and turn my attention back to Devin. 

He’s resting now, no longer digging, dark muck smeared across his face.

“Look.” he says. Clumps of wet, sour-smelling earth fall from his fingers as they unfurl. He's holding coins, but not the sort I’d ever seen before. 

Devin sets one down in the dirt with deliberate care. “Japanese 50 yen.” he says, tapping the hole‑punched silver disc.

He places another beside it. “Athenian tetradrachm.” The owl stamped on the front catches the light.

Next comes a darker, heavier piece. “Roman aureus.” he murmurs, almost reverently.

Then a gleaming yellow coin. “British gold sovereign.”

He reaches for the next one, but stops dead. The color drains from his face. His eyes drift past the coins, staring through them in a blank, unblinking haze.

“I’ve seen these before.”

The bell rings.

Node 3: Nothing

Back in class, Devin seems different. He's quiet. Devin doesn't do quiet. He doesn't do small. Not like this, not when he has an audience. It's like someone had swapped him out for a cheaper, defective version of himself.

I kick the back of his chair.

Nothing.

I try again, harder this time.  

Still nothing.

“Dude!” 

Mr. Hanley peers up from the scattered mess of papers on his desk. His eyes are tired, almost pleading. I play along and turn my attention to the handout.

A

B

B

A

C

There he goes, back to his own pantomime of productivity. Meanwhile, Devin’s still doing his best impression of a bicycle with no chain.

I'm about to make another attempt to jolt him back into existence when a loud pop snaps over the intercom.

“Brrkmm-nng-hmm... Plsss rr-pohh t'thh ah-ffss.” A few kids Ooooh as if Jerry Springer had just called me onstage. I can feel their eyes. They're all whispering, trying to guess what I did this time. I'm just as curious.

The waiting room smells like wet carpet and Pine‑Sol. I take a seat on the sagging upholstered bench. The abrasive fabric forces me to perch on its edge. Fluorescent lights buzz overhead with a steady, electric pressure that doesn’t feel accidental. Nothing here is accidental. It's all meant to break someone before the interrogation even begins.

The office door swings open and Mr. Lock waves me in. 

“Take a seat sport”

Sport: condescension masquerading as sobriquet.

He leans forward, a faint rasp catching at the end of each breath. 

“Tell me about what happened at lunch today.”

“It was pizza day in the cafeteria, and some girl found a bandaid under the cheese. You should have heard her scream. I'm pretty sure she was crying when she-”

“Not that.” He clears his throat. “I wanna know about the coins slugger. You can trust me. Where did your friend find them?”

“I mean… sure, but a bandaid baked into the pizza feels like a bigger deal than some kid’s lunch money. If the pizzas come from a distributor, that’s one thing. But if they’re made in-house, someone in the kitchen probably cut their hand. Isn't that something you should look into?”

He pauses, sinking back into his chair.  

Then his eyes flick up and to the right, then drag left. Each breath punctuated with a slight wheeze.

When he speaks again, the pretense has evaporated, all that cultivated affability sloughed off in favor of something blunt and graceless.

“I didn't call you in here to talk about how I run my school!”

He stops and pulls in a slow, controlled breath.

“We already confiscated some of the coins from several students. We both know it's not ordinary pocket change. Now tell me where Devin got them, or I'll be forced to call your mother.”

“Alright,” I say. “She should be home around dinner. I'll give her a heads-up.”

He clenches his jaw and swallows hard.

“You're dismissed, go back to class.”

As I'm walking back to class, Devin’s headed in the opposite direction. He's moving slowly, eyes down. I give him a wave, but he's somewhere else entirely. After he passes, I pause. He knows something, an impossible truth. Whatever it is, I'm certain it's not what Lock thinks it is. 

I don't see him for the rest of the day. I'll call him once I'm home. 

Node 4: Stop

As usual, the bus ride is canned chaos, a mobile maelstrom careening down County Road 12.

Donna hunched over the wheel. Kids crammed into vinyl seats. A cacophony of shrieks and squeals. The smell of warm vinyl, old gum, and crushed fruit snacks. The cling of humid air. It was a symphony of sensory overload, the perfect place to disappear completely.

I rest my head against the window and allow the thrum of the road to rattle through me. The world outside smears into yellow streaks. 

Inside, a few kids start to sing. It's low at first, then rising, a messy little chorus threading through the noise.

“Riding on the highway, on bus forty‑four-”

More kids join in, half of them pounding the seatbacks with open palms. Someone tries to beatbox. Someone else just screams.

“Donna ripped a big one and blew us out the door-”

The engine sinks into a lower register. A long, low groan rolls through the frame. Then the bus lurches, and the whole machine gathers, tightens, and pushes itself back into motion.

“The moon couldn’t take it, the sun couldn’t shine-”

A kid two rows up stands on his seat to conduct the choir, his arms flailing wildly. Another kid launches a paper airplane at him, but it sails past and sticks itself in Donna’s hair like a sad little flag.

“All because of Donna's big fat behind”

The last line of the chant collapses into laughter, and the performance gives way to a thin, delicate lull. 

That’s when I hear it.

Tchk

The stiff plasticky slap of a nine-pocket sheet being flipped.

“Come on, dude,” 

I welcome the distraction and allow myself a small shift in posture, just enough to glance back.

At the rear of the bus, a boy holds open his binder like a display case. There it is: a nine‑pocket sheet filled with all five ’92 Marvel Masterpieces Battle Spectra cards with Wolverine vs. Sabertooth dead-center. The crown jewel. The holy relic. The kind of thing you only brought to school if you were either brave or just plain stupid.

Everyone’s pressing their faces in for a closer look. One of the boys can’t contain himself, hand clamped over his mouth like he’s trying to hold in the words. They spill out anyway.

“I’ll give you my whole X‑Force team.”

“No.”

“My Venom holo.”

“No.”

“My Venom and my Carnage.”

“No.”

The kid swallows hard. His voice cracks.  

“Okay, okay, my Sega Genesis.”

The other boy snorts.  

“You don’t even have a Sega Genesis.”

“My cousin does!”

“That’s not the same thing, dipshit.”

“It is the same thing!” he snaps. “The only reason they even got to come to Disneyland with us is because my dad paid for it!”  

He lunges for the binder,

the other boy snaps it shut on his hands.

“Back. The Fuck. Off!”

The floor jumps. 

Backpacks shoot past me, skidding down the aisle. Someone slams into the seat behind mine. Kids are shouting, grabbing for anything they can, trying to compensate for the sudden arrest of momentum.

Donna rises like something yanked upright by invisible strings, her whole body rigid and trembling. Her face is fire‑engine red, eyes bulging, and the paper airplane’s still lodged in her hair. Its wings flutter under the strain of her vibrating form, twitching like it's trying to escape. 

“Stop! Everyone just Stop! Shut up, Sit down and just Stop!”

The bus goes dead still. No more shrieks, no more giggles, no more desperate negotiations. Donna’s eyes sweep the aisle, searching for a target. Everyone slowly shrinks into their seats. Then her hand jerks up, finds the airplane without ever searching, and throws it to the floor in one violent, yet precise motion.

Donna doesn’t say another word. She returns to her seat and eases the bus back onto the road.

In two stops I’ll be home.

Node 5: Base

“Hey Mom, Lock’s gonna to give you a call,”

“Who?”

“David”

“Oh, him”

As I pass the kitchen, I notice she's making spaghetti for the third time this week.

The house is quiet. It's always quiet. Everything in its place. No lights burning. No doors left open. A few pictures are hung along the hall: my first grade picture, second grade, third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, and at the end our family portrait. It doesn’t fit the frame the way it used to. My mom, my sister and me. The right side's folded under the glass. 

I push open my door and flick on the light. Before I can call Devin, the SW205 on my side table is already glowing Nakamura-blue.

chk-chk-BRRRIING!

I quietly lower myself onto the edge of the bed. 

chk-chk-BRRRIING!

When the third ring doesn't come I know it's safe. I pick up the handset, and cup the receiver. 

“-llo Denise, it's David”

“David who?”

I choke back a snicker.

“Lock. David Lock. Look, I'm calling about your son.”

There's a pause. She's waiting for him to get to the point.

“Okay...”

He clears his throat.

“Well… there was an incident at school today. Some, uh… coins. Foreign coins. Valuable ones.”

“And?”

“Your son's friend had them. His friend Devin. I thought maybe you could help me find out where they came from.”

“Why?”

The irritation in her voice is painfully apparent, but there's something under it. A warning.

“I have reason to believe they're stolen.”

“David, you know I’m not at work right now. I’m not available for… whatever this is. Please. Don’t call me at my home again. Not unless it’s actually about my son.”

“But I, I”

CLK

Lock's still on the line, his thin, shaky breaths leaking through. I ease my hand away from the mouth piece.

“You can hang up now David.”  

There’s a tiny hitch on the other end: Lock inhaling like he’s about to speak. He doesn't. Instead he lets out a long, controlled exhale.

Clk

The line goes dead.

I tap the switchhook and dial Devin's number.

pt-pt-trrr

Japanese 50 yen. Devin knew it instantly.

pt-pt-trrr

Athenian tetradrachm. The owl catching the light.

pt-pt-trrr

Roman aureus. He said it quietly.

pt-pt-trrr

British gold sovereign. Too clean for the dirt.

pt-pt-trrr

What does it mean?

pt-pt-trrr

How did they get there?

pt-pt-trrr

Where has Devin seen them before?

pt-pt-trrr

Someone should have answered by now.

"hello."

The voice on the other end of the line isn't Devin's. It's soft. feminine. ashamed.

“Is Devin home?” I ask.

“he's… he's with Father right now.”

“Oh, okay then. Well, good night Mrs. Mercer.”

“Rudd, ahhh, yes… good night”

clk

I place the phone back into its cradle.

“Father…”

I lean back onto my bed. 

“Tonight works. Spaghetti always means mom's working a double shift.”

It's my fault she has to work so hard. Before the accident things were different. Before the accident she didn’t have to work for tips. Before the accident she didn’t have to wear those tight, awful, orange shorts. 

I know I’m about to make things hard for him. Hard like they got for me and my mom. But it’s still better than letting things stay the way they are.

I sit back up and make my way to the desk. It's cluttered with various parts, various mechanisms. The reed switch I got from RadioShack last month. The little 2N2222 transistor. A 100µF capacitor and some resistors still soldered to the scrap of perfboard. The solenoid valve from a busted sprinkler head. Some clear aquarium tubing. A magnet I pried from one of my speakers, and last, the Gatorade bottle.

I pick up the reed switch, roll it between my fingers, and listen to the tiny click inside. Then I get to work. 

The little coil inside my soldering iron starts its soft hiss, and thin wisps of smoke curl upward, dissolving into the air. I lean in, the reed switch balanced between my fingers as I tack a lead into place. The smell of hot flux mixes with something faint and warm drifting down the hallway; tomato sauce, garlic, and the slow tired stirring of a wooden spoon against a pot.

The solder flows like warm mercury, and the rest of the world narrows to the tip of my iron. 

Perfboard, wires, and tubing. 

Time folds in on itself when I’m working; minutes stack, melt, disappear.

When my mother’s voice finally breaks the spell, the light outside my windows has gone soft. 

“Dinner time sweety.”

Inside the dining room, the table is already set. Everything on it has been placed with deliberate care, the kind of care she saves for nights like this. Her plate and mine share a corner of the table, the same corner as always. I take my seat, and she takes hers. 

“Smells good mom.”

She’s smiling as she spoons sauce onto my noodles. I love her smile. The little crease at the corners of her eyes. The way her nose lifts ever so slightly. The quiet warmth that settles in her face.

But the smile fades. 

“I got that call.”

I nod, spaghetti squashing between my teeth. 

“He said something about coins?”

I swallow.

“Yeah, Devin found them in a tree.”

She turns her head to the side. I can hear the pace of her jaw increase. 

“A tree?”

I'm still chewing when I answer. 

“The time-out tree.”

I can see she's still confused.

“He was digging in the ground next to it, and found a hollowed out part between the roots.”

She doesn't finish lifting the next fork full to her mouth.

“That's where he found the coins?”

I nod again.

We exchange a look, and a small laugh slips from both of us. There's that smile again. I love her smile. 

And it fades again. 

“I have to go back to work after dinner. I just came home to-”

Before she can finish, I finish for her.

“Touch Base”

“Yeah, touch base… I'm sorry, but we really need the money.”

“I know mom.”

When I walked into my father’s bookstore, he was combing his wig. He had placed the black wig over his clenched left fist and was pulling thick sections through it with a wide-toothed comb. Every now and then, he would dip the comb into the half-full glass of water he’d placed on the counter, give it a little shake to get rid of the excess water, and continue styling the wig.

“Welcome, son,” he said without making eye contact with me.

“Dad, why aren’t you combing the wig on your head? And why are you even combing the wig? Isn’t the point to make it look like it’s not a wig? Wouldn’t it look more like your real hair if you left it a little messy?”

My father shot me a very brief glance. He dipped the comb into the water again and flicked the excess water on it toward my face. At the same time, someone walked in.

I was annoyed, but I didn't react. Customers rarely came into the shop anyway, and I didn't want this one to witness a tense moment.

The man who walked in didn't say hello. He looked at me, then at my father, then at the wig. After that, he glanced around the shop.

“Do you have Swann’s Way?”

It was my father’s favorite book. I hadn’t read it yet, but my father couldn’t praise Marcel Proust enough. Whenever the subject of books came up, he would talk at length about the way Proust used language, and mention how he wanted to learn French just so he could read him in the original.

“Of course. How could we not?” he said, his eyes lighting up.

“Good. How much is the wig?”

“What?”

“I’m asking how much the wig is.”

There was something strange about the man’s voice, though it was hard to describe. It was an extremely deep voice that seemed to come from a congested throat. It sounded as if it were coming from a broken radio, as if he would sound clearer if he just cleared his throat.

My father, who had been excited at the mention of Proust, had now noticed the strangeness in the man’s voice.

“Are you all right?”

“How much is the wig?”

“The wig isn’t for sale. You can have a glass of water if you’d like,” my father said, holding out the water he had been dipping his comb into.

“No. Is the wig free?”

“How can something that isn’t for sale be free, sir?”

“How much is it, then?”

“This is my wig. You don’t look well. Please have a glass of water.”

The man fell silent. He was staring intently at my father. My father was a little frightened. The wig was still resting on his clenched fist.

“Are you sure?” he asked after nearly a minute of silence.

“Yes. Look at my head.”

“Are you sure?”

“What beautiful hair you have. What are you going to do with the wig?”

My father, having automatically felt a connection with the man because he had asked about Proust, hadn’t paid much attention to his voice or appearance. To be honest, there was something strange about his appearance too. I gave the man a once-over. His hair really was thick and healthy-looking. He was wearing a black shirt. His chin was a little long, and his mouth and nose were small in proportion to his face. A large head, a long chin, a small mouth and nose, and ordinary eyes. Black trousers, sharply pressed. And a pair of bare feet.

“Tonight, I’m coming to take your son. Don’t be afraid. Stay calm. Convince your son to come with me tonight, or I’ll take him by force.”

“Fix that voice of yours first, man. Hrrr, hrrr, hrrr. I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Drink this water and pull yourself together.”

The man took the water and downed it in one go. He coughed and cleared his throat.

“Better? Now tell me, how much is the wig?”

His voice was now perfectly clear. He ran a hand back through his hair and sat down in the chair in front of the counter.

“He’s still very young…”

I was starting to get scared. I kept going back and forth over whether to call the police. The strange quality in the man’s voice was gone now, and so was the uneasy look about him. He looked at me and smiled.

“I’m not going to hurt you. Don’t be afraid. I’m just going to take the wig and leave. That’s all.”

“Why do you want the wig, sir?”

“You’re too young. You wouldn’t understand.”

I looked at my father. He had placed the wig on the counter. Right beside it, I saw a knife. My father looked from the knife to the man.

Another customer had walked in, just in time. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I knew my father wasn’t a very brave man, but when it came to me, maybe he could rise to the occasion and defend me.

“Jason, who are you talking to?” the man who had just walked in asked him. So his name was Jason.

“They won’t give me the wig, Dad.”

“Son, didn’t I tell you not to leave the shop unattended and wander off? The neighbors called. They said Jason had left the shop again and gone off. When did you come to the shop?”

“About ten minutes ago.”

I didn’t understand what was happening. The man who was speaking seemed unable to see us.

“Did you take your medication today, son?”

“No, Dad.”

“The wig thing again. Hmm.”

“I want the wig.”

“Son, there’s no wig. Where are your shoes?”

“I didn’t wear them today.”

“There’s no wig, son. Look, you’d been doing so well lately. Honestly, I thought you were getting better. Please, don’t skip your medication. I’m leaving the shop to you. Don’t make me worry about you while I’m gone.”

Yes. When I thought about it, it really was bizarre. I thought about it a lot afterward. If we’re people living inside Jason’s imagination, why do we have consciousness of our own? I mean, while Jason and his father were talking, I was listening to them, trying to figure out what was going on, getting surprised and everything. Isn’t that ridiculous? And isn’t it unfair to us, too? For example, I want to study film and television. But everything depends on Jason. If he gets better one day, my dreams will be shattered.

My father loves this shop very much. He doesn’t want to leave it, but if Jason gets better one day, he’ll never see this shop again.

Thinking about it that way, I was suddenly overcome with fear. I picked up the wig and held it out to Jason.

“Here. The wig is yours now. And hey, it’d actually look pretty good on you.”

My father had supported me too, and when I looked at him for approval, he nodded.

Detective Harrison had just gotten off his last case. Twelve women in one year. Whenever Harrison thought about those cases, an uneasy feeling settled in his stomach. He couldn’t get away from the feeling that these women were perfectly normal. They hadn’t revealed the truth he was actually craving. What had driven them to this point? He sat by his desk sipping on cold coffee, trying to finish the last report which was due at midnight. The governor had been on him since the very beginning calling it an epidemic of twelwe murderous women, with no connection between them.

He had been sleepless most nights the past year trying to figure out that very answer. One of the women told him something he is very hesitant to pass along. It’s finally over, he muttered. He revealed the truth in his report. Sheila, his partner, called from the other side of the room with one hand on the light switch.

“It’s enough work for today Harrison. Come on, let’s go.”

Harrison smiled as Sheila turned off the light. She had been invaluable in these twelve cases.

The women had always spoken more freely around Sheila. Harrison had never understood why. They looked at her differently, as if they knew something he didn’t.

The chair creaked as he stood up, his back aching from sitting so long. The coffee mug flipped over and spilled over the table. Harrison hurryingly picked up some tissue from the kitchen counter at the left side of the office. He was drying his desk with sloppy moves, only pushing around the coffee even more. Sheila was getting impatient and called out

“I should go now. Got plans this friday night.”

She stepped into the elevator before Harrison even got the chance to reply. A couple minutes later when the desk was somewhat clean, Harrison heard the elevator open up again behind him. He turned around from the trashcan and saw nothing but the dark office.

“Sheila?” he called out, but got no answer except the buzzing sound of the ventilator.

He went back to his computer to print out his report so he could hand it in tomorrow to the governor, when he suddenly saw a shadow on his screen. Someone was standing behind him, and they had done a good effort to go unnoticed. His hand slowly reached for his gun, his breathing becoming more shallow. Something hard pressed against his back.

“There is no need for that. Give me the report, and I’ll be out of here.”

“What report? What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about. Give. Me. The. Report. Now.”

“It’s too late. I’ve already sent it.”

The silence hung like a heavy drape, making the air too thick to breathe. A sharp violent pain spread in the back of his head shooting electrical signals down his back. Something warm was running down his body as he made a final attempt in seeing the person behind him. His knees gave out halfway.

“Who..”

“Why..”

“What..”

The words were coming out slower and slower. As if his mouth didn’t follow his brain's commands. All he could see was a masked person taking the printouts and leaving the room. He could see the pool of blood forming around him. His fingers made a final attempt in writing the truth, smudged and sticky dragging weakly through the blood.

One letter...

then another..

His vision blurred.

Angelica was born into a house filled with laughter. She was the only child of her parents, and to them she was not just a daughter, but a living piece of joy. Her father, a hardworking man with a kind soul, would often lift her high into the air and say, “You are my sky, Angelica. Even if the world falls apart, I will always hold you.” Her mother would watch with a smile, believing that their family was complete and untouchable by sorrow.

But fate has a cruel

One ordinary day, when Angelica was only thirteen, her father left for work as usual. His company building was tall, noisy, and alive with the sound of machines. But by evening, smoke rose against the sky. A fire had broken out—wild and merciless.

Inside, people scrambled for their lives. Angelica’s father could have escaped, but he turned back. His closest friend was trapped in the flames, and loyalty pulled harder than fear. He fought the smoke, the heat, the collapse of steel above him, trying to save the man who had shared his life’s burdens.

He never came back.

Angelica remembered her mother’s scream when the news reached their home. She remembered the silence that followed, heavier than any noise. And from that day on, the bright world she once lived in dimmed into shadows.

After the funeral, the world felt empty for Angelica. The house that once carried her father’s laughter now carried only echoes. No one make her laugh or make her fell special anymore.Her mother tried to be strong, but grief wore her down like waves grinding stone. And in those fragile days, her father’s best friend, Fitsum, stepped forward.

He had been there at the fire. He had been the last to see her father alive. People whispered that it was loyalty that bound him to the family, but others said it was guilt. Whatever the reason, Fitsum began to visit more often. He helped with bills, with food, with the silence that pressed too heavily on their home.

At first, Angelica felt safe around him—he was a piece of her father’s world, a reminder of the past. He told her stories about her dad, how he worked, how he dreamed, and she would listen with wide, wet eyes.

But slowly, a shift came. Fitsum was no longer just her father’s friend; he became the one her mother leaned on, the one who made decisions, the one who stayed when everyone else had gone.

Angelica turned seventeen

Time passed, but grief did not leave Angelica the way it left her mother.

Her mother learned how to smile again, though the smile was smaller, quieter. She began to cook the meals her husband used to love, but she served them without breaking. She began to laugh at Fitsum’s jokes, sometimes even placing her hand lightly on his arm. The world was teaching her how to heal, little by little.

But for Angelica, the wound refused to close. Every time her mother smiled at Fitsum, she saw it as betrayal. Every time her mother dressed carefully before he came to visit, Angelica’s chest burned with anger. How could she? she thought. How could she heal while I’m still bleeding?

At night, Angelica cried into her pillow, whispering to the dark that her father would never be replaced. Yet, in the mornings, she watched her mother and Fitsum stand side by side, as if life could simply move on.

The more her mother healed, the more Angelica hated her for it. And Fitsum—who had been her father’s closest friend—slowly became the shadow that haunted her every waking thought.

By the time Angelica turned seventeen, she was no longer the girl she once had been. The brightness in her eyes had dulled, her laughter had vanished, and her words came rarely—like drops of water in a desert. She lived in silence, carrying her grief like a second skin.

It was then that Fitsum made an announcement: his children, who had lived abroad with his former wife, would be coming to stay.

The day they arrived, Angelica stood by the doorway, her arms crossed, her face a mask of stone. The eldest, twenty-four, carried himself with a confidence that filled the room. The younger one, only eighteen, smiled kindly, trying to bridge the distance. But Angelica did not smile back.

She hated them before they even spoke a word. To her, they were intruders—living proof that Fitsum had another life, another family, while hers had been destroyed. Their laughter scraped against her ears like broken glass. Their presence filled the house with noise, and Angelica, who had grown used to silence, felt like she was drowning.

She kept her distance. She answered their questions with nods or shrugs, never with warmth. Her mother scolded her, telling her to be polite, but Angelica’s heart was already hard.

Every night, she dreamed of her father. Every morning, she woke up to a home that no longer felt like hers. And with each passing day, her hatred for Fitsum and everyone connected to him grew deeper.

To be continued

Read Parts II & III here

She was gone again by the time I got up and despite my best efforts, I was still five minutes late getting to work.

I avoided the circle of jerks when I saw them crowding the same hallway and I went to a restroom on another floor. I didn’t want to be around people if I could avoid it.

I went to the half-finished building as soon as five o’clock came, intent on getting answers. I stepped off the elevator and weaved my way to his office. I kept expecting to not see it the closer I got but there it was, the door that didn’t fit right in the threshold. 

It turned easy and I went inside, expecting it to be empty and abandoned but he had begun furnishing the space. A couch, a reception desk, and taped off sections near the back that I guessed were the layout for his office and a treatment room.

I shuddered, thinking how I’d be here tomorrow if my wife had her way. 

The only thing absent was the good doctor himself. I thought about trashing the place, but it was petty in a way that made me feel like I was giving him even more power over me. 

Instead, I took all the pens out of the holder and a stack of Post-It Notes. It was still petty, but it scratched an itch and I felt a little empowered doing it.

I didn’t head home immediately after. I needed time to sort my thoughts. I couldn’t believe I was really considering letting somebody cut my dick. I mean, was pleasing my wife reason enough? What if we divorced or she died or something like that? Would I be compatible with somebody else?

I needed a drink. Cappy’s was on the far end of town and the distance from home would be good to clear my head. I ordered a brandy mule and chugged it before the bartender could lay down a coaster.

“You look like you could use another,” she said.

I nodded and a moment later I was working on my second. 

“I love my wife so much,” I said as she was cleaning some glasses beneath the bar.

“That’s a good thing, right?”

“Sometimes. I dunno.” My stomach hadn’t been right since the eight coneys I’d had yesterday, and I hadn’t eaten at all today. I was already soused after a drink-and-a-half.

“How’s the pizza?” I asked.

“Good, not great.” She wiggled a hand.

“Let me get a... medium with beef, onion, and mushroom.”

She looked at me like she’d never heard of those toppings.

“How ‘bout pepperoni?”

I had one more brandy mule before food came. It looked like it had been sitting under a heat lamp well before I’d ordered it and the pepperoni slices were limp, but it was still pizza. 

The bartender parked in front of me and leaned onto the bar after I’d had my second slice. 

“You mind?” she asked, pointing at the pie. I nodded. She took a slice and finger-combed hair out of her face as she took a bite.

She paid me back with a shot and she did one with me before returning to silence as we ate.

“Look, I dunno what it is. Just give her what she wants,” she said with a mouthful, giving me deep eye contact. “You can’t go wrong with that, right?”

I barely was able to finish what I had in my mouth. I settled up and made it outside without stumbling but I was drunk. The bartender got the hint she’d said something wrong but I wasn’t going to fill in the blank. I hadn’t wanted the rest of the pizza, yet somehow I had the box in my hand. 

I shouldn’t have been behind the wheel but there I was with half a pizza as my copilot. It wasn’t long before flashing lights lit up behind me and my spirits rose—this was the reprieve I’d been longing for. A decision being taken out of my hands. I couldn’t be held responsible if I weren’t in my own custody.

Or something like that. It had made a lot more sense back when I’d had a belly full of brandy and cheese.

I pulled over and maybe bumped up on the curb with one wheel.

The cop sauntered up to my window cautiously. He was short and the angle of the car made him look ridiculous somehow. He made it worse by getting his feet twisted together and catching himself on the side of my car to keep from falling completely.

“What’s your...”

I waited a full ten seconds for him to finish his sentence while he held a fist to his mouth like he was gripping a tiny microphone. He belched then waved the air in front of his face.

Shit, was he drunk, too?

“What’s your problem tonight?” He asked and fumbled with the general right side of his body with his hand. I noticed the gun and maybe because we were both bitten by the same snake, I wasn’t sensing danger like I should’ve.

“I shouldn’t be on the road,” I said, sounding stone sober to my ears. “My wife wants me to do something I don’t wanna do tomorrow and I was just in there, drinking my worries away. I have leftover pizza.” I thumbed toward the seat next to me like it was proof of where I’d been.

“Slow down, son. I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think.” I thought he was about to give me marital advice but then I realized he was talking about my sobriety. “I bet you could walk a straight line, heel- to-toe.” He plucked open his holster, but it didn’t seem like he was aware of what that hand was doing. He stuck his pinky in his ear and wrenched it around in there. 

“Sofficer. Sofficer.” I added the S but I still sounded too sober. “Please. I think I’m a danger. To public safety.” I thought if I could convince the drunk cop I was drunk he’d arrest me.

“Are you about to rob a bank?” He pointed at me, somehow adding to his overall look of ridiculousness.

“Well… no.”

“There’s nobody out here.” He waved a hand toward the black landscape far ahead of us. “Just stay between the lines.”

I couldn’t think. It shouldn’t have been this hard to get pulled out of my car for driving under the influence.

“What if… what if I was about to rob a bank?” It was the most smart-assy thing I could think to say.

He smiled and waggled a finger. “Joke’s on you. It’s after hours.”

He hooked his thumbs into his belt. Something about his body language had changed and he’d gone from humorous to being done with our interaction.

“Just. Stay. Between. The. Lines,” he said, swaying. I wanted to conjure the words for help, but even if I’d had the ability to ask, there wasn’t anything about him that answered helpful.

I opened my mouth, but didn’t speak. I sat back in my seat and covered my face in my hands, giving up. I listened to him walk away, closer his patrol car door, and drive away. He gave me a chirp of his sirens as passed me.

The drive home should have felt longer but I caught every light. It was like a dark fate had carved a path for me. I momentarily played with the idea of letting it have me completely. To take my hands off the wheel and let it take me wherever it wanted me to go. 

I hadn’t descended far enough into self-pity for that and in ten minutes, I was home. To my surprise, my wife was still in her paint clothes and was washing her hands at the kitchen sink.

“Oh, you have pizza?” she said. I’d forgotten about the pizza and subconsciously picked it up. I looked at the box in my hand and did a second, struggled to remember what was in it. 

I joined her on the couch, and she grabbed it from me and took a slice. Usually, we asked about each other’s day, but I didn’t feel like it, tomorrow anchoring my brain.

“Do you love me?” she said during a commercial break. I had no idea what we were watching.

The question agitated me and opened a trapdoor underneath my stomach.

“Of course I do.” I did, but my feelings about this whole “surgery” thing was making me feel resentful. I was definitely still buzzed, and the alcohol was sharpening my emotions like a file working away inside me. 

“Then why are you fighting so hard against this? Don’t you want us both to be satisfied?”

“That’s not fair. Of course I want to satisfy you. Don’t you know how this is making me feel? I don’t want to do this,” I said. “I mean, there has to be something else we could try. I’m willing to do just about anything to please you.”

“I want you to do this,” she said, placing her greasy hand on my thigh. She shook her head, tears in her eyes. I took it to be a manipulation at first. Not that she did that sort of thing normally, it was just me in a bag of my feelings. My defenses were up and everything was an attack in that moment. I chewed the insides of my cheeks to keep in what was trying to climb out of my mouth.

Then I started to cry. I sounded like a little teapot. It caught me by surprise.

“I just love you so much.” I had a ball of razors in my throat I couldn’t swallow. “I don’t want anything to happen to us, but I don’t know if I can do this.”

She lassoed an arm around my neck and yanked me into an upper body hug.

“I just want you. I want to feel connected with you. I don’t want anything plastic between us. I’m tired of all that stuff. I wanna feel you.”

She kissed me before I could speak and rock turned into water. My walls melted as we flowed into one another and by the time I returned to my senses I was on the newspaper covered kitchen floor.

My wife was already gone but she had brought a comforter downstairs and covered me.

Normally, I toss in my sleep, but I was still covered up to my chest. I was stiff as I turned the world vertical and turned my back into a percussion instrument as I stretched.

A few minutes later I had scrambled eggs and a cup of coffee going. I don’t normally eat breakfast so early, but I had an appetite for whatever reason. It was an hour before I normally would get up, so I took my time eating and scrolling my phone.

I wasn’t sure how much sleep I’d gotten but I was refreshed. The way my day had started, I half expected to catch all the green lights and get the closest spot in the parking lot.

But when I looked up from where I was seated at the kitchen island, something caught my eye that I should’ve seen as soon as I woke up.

A red and white checkered scarf draped over the back of the couch.

Had he been in my house?

 

As we proceeded down the dark road I got this eerie feeling that I shouldn't have come along. The speed was worrying, but he must have driven this road many times. He barely even looked at it. He kept talking the entire way, insisting that I would definitely get extra points for joining him and taking it this far.

When we finally arrived his eyes widened. He looked around in shock. I followed the path of his eyes and saw the shadow of what must've been a huge animal. "But that's not possible," I said to him. He stayed silent. He kept on driving as we passed other animals going ballistic, humans tearing each other apart. The scene was horrific. We finally stopped by a building and he hurried inside. I quietly followed, regretting I didn't listen to my gut feeling earlier.

The building was silent. A bit too silent to make it safe. The teacher went up the stairs, and I didn't know what else to do but follow him. I wasn't sure where he was leading us. "Maybe I should just go back," I said with uncertainty creeping into my voice. I didn't know the way back, and I most surely didn't want to get caught in the chaos outside. He didn’t reply but kept on going until we reached a door.

He pushed the door open and several children proceeded forward. Most of them were covered in blood. "What happened?" the teacher asked. A fair-skinned girl with big brown eyes came forward and calmly said "She went mad." The teacher started looking around the long corridor. The floors were sticky with streaks of blood. He was not only worried, but scared for the first time since we arrived.

He gathered some tools from the children's playroom and handed me a wooden stick. "Guard this door," he said, showing me the door at the very beginning of the corridor and then vanished. I stood there not knowing what to do if someone came along.

Suddenly I heard steps outside. I looked through the peephole and could see a woman and two men approaching. None of them spoke. The woman stopped. She looked straight at me and grinned. I couldn't risk it. I ran through the long corridor trying every door to find a place to hide. First door was locked. Second one as well. Sweat was trickling down my back as I panicked and reached for the third door. It opened. I quickly entered and shut the door quietly. When I looked around I could barely breathe. It looked like a sterile butcher's shop. Severed bodies lay on the table, but they were not bleeding anymore. There was no place to hide. I tried squeezing under the sink but I would've been spotted immediately. What if she comes inside, deciding to continue her work? I looked around and the only place that she wouldn't see right away was behind the door. My breathing was shallow, my heart pounding in my throat. I tried not to look at the bodies and realised I couldn't hear any footsteps outside. I could barely hear anything besides my heavy breathing. Had I missed them? My eyes searched the room and landed on an open window directly across from me. Do I run and jump out? But what about all the wild animals and mad humans outside? I surely wouldn't survive.

So I stood there. Silent. Didn't dare to move. The building went silent as well, as if someone or something was listening. Nothing happened. It felt like I stood there for days. Darkness swallowed the sky like an omen. I shouldn't be here, I kept repeating to myself. Why wasn't the teacher looking for me? I didn't dare to step outside to look for him either. But I can't stay here forever. Eventually I would have to leave. My eyes drifted towards the cold metal door. Whatever was waiting outside already knew where I was.

The sound of churning waters could be heard from inside the sprawling castle ruins, even though the group trudging through the grounds was a few miles from the coast. A pasty-skinned, lanky man with dirty, thick blonde dreadlocks lit himself a White Maple cigarette as he roamed through what was left of the main floor. His thick, rubbery combat boots clashed violently with his Attack Attack t-shirt and skin-tight black jeans. Behind him, a swarm of nasty-looking men and women, all of them carrying British Army standard assault rifles–purchased on the black market–and dressed head to toe in black. What made the sight that much more unsettling amongst the medieval ruins was that all of them, save Zack, were wearing frightening, twisted Halloween masks of different animals

Zack, the only name he gave to bottom-ranking members of the communion like the ones with him, spotted the staircase he was looking for according to the directions he’d been given. He turned to the group following him and jerked his head towards the stairs, a shifty, twisted grin spreading across his face. He swung his head forward, the silver chain with a lone matching silver ring swinging around his neck with the motion. He marched up the stairs confidently, not a care in the world except claiming what he’d trekked across country after country for. He feared nothing; he knew his friends had paid the government contacts here a hefty sum to keep any authorities away from Castle Rising while he searched.

He moved through the upstairs corridor, briefly looking out one of the broken windows. The dark waters rushed in the not-too-far distance. Zack couldn’t help but admire the beauty of the moon as it hit the Wash. It was the perfect night for him to obtain another piece that would bring the communion one step closer to the world they were building. He stopped in the middle of the hallway, holding up a fist to halt his group in position behind him. They halted in perfect unison, well-trained as they were.

 Zack studied the knight’s armor, still erected in the ruins. To the untrained eye, it was just another part of this beloved tourist site in the English countryside. But Zack knew its true purpose. He reached towards the knight’s arm, shifting it downward until it was straight at its side. He stepped back as the wall behind the knight shifted aside, revealing a passage that had been hidden previously. Zack’s heart raced with excitement as he turned to his group.

“Wait here.”

The heavily armed group at his command did as instructed. Each took up a strategic position in the hallway, giving them a tactical advantage in securing the area. Zack paid them little attention as his focus was held rapt on the door at the other end of the hidden passage. The communion had spent years cross-referencing rumors that a research team had recovered a piece of King John’s lost treasure. As he reached the dated door with a wrought-iron handle, Zack licked his lips in anticipation. Just the thought of the power they would be closer to once they obtained the artifact on the other side made him nearly lustful.

The door opened with a loud creak as he pulled on its handle. Inside, two freshly lit torches burned on opposite walls. A chest sat in the center of the room, but as Zack approached it, the lascivious smile was wiped from his face and was replaced by an ugly scowl. He knelt in front of the chest, inspecting the open lock hanging on it. The heavy steel bolt lock hadn’t been cut and showed no sign of aggressive force applied to it. This had been picked open, and by someone with prodigious skill in the method, he reasoned.

Zack tossed the chest lid open, hoping the assumption creeping into his gut was terribly wrong. As he reached inside for the yellow sticky note, the only thing in the chest, he realized that, unfortunately, his assumption was spot on. He held the note in front of him as a fury built up inside his chest.

DOWN LOW, YOU KNOW THE REST

-Professor E. Drake

Zack bellowed in pure anger as he realized the persistent thorn in his side had struck once more. He stormed out of the passage and back into the hallway, his family of soldiers swarming to his side at the sight of his fury. 

“He’s still in the castle. Find him!”

The armed acolytes scurried away to follow his orders. Zack tried to calm himself down with a few quick breaths. He refused to be beaten by that bastard, not when he had come this far.

Unbeknownst to Zack and his crew, the man he was searching for pulled his University of Michigan National Champions letterman jacket tighter over his shoulders, and his old English ‘D’ Detroit Tigers hat lower over his eyes. Tucked inside his jacket was the pure, golden cross with beautiful sapphires encrusted down the middle that Zack sought so dearly. Professor Ezekiel Drake peeked down the corridor of the third-floor room he’d been biding his time in. Realizing it was momentarily clear, he stepped out and hurried down it towards the stone bridge connecting to the eastern portion of the bailey.

Once Ezekiel reached the bridge, he could see a pair of armed men in wolf and pig masks, respectively, marching around the keep below. He took a deep breath and, slowly and carefully, tiptoed his way across the bridge, hoping they would be too focused on clearing the lower floor to look in his direction. He was halfway to the other side when a slow, methodical clap echoed through the walls of the keep. Professor Drake turned around slowly as a grimace formed on his face. He saw Zack enter the room below, a handful more animal-masked soldiers flanking him, their beady eyes turning toward him, along with their leader. 

“I should have known you’d be here already, slinking around like a common rat,” Zack told him.

Ezekiel smiled and shrugged dismissively. “I like to consider myself more of a worker ant. I figured the circles you walk in were more partial to rodents.”

Zack smirked at Ezekiel’s wisecrack, though he was far from pleased to see the doctor walking through the remains of the castle. He could see that Ezekiel was favoring his left side, as if he was protecting something, and his smile became that much more sinister. 

“Why don’t you toss down the relic, and I’ll tell them where to find your body. Instead of desecrating it and throwing it into the Wash as you rightly deserve.”

“Gee, that sounds like a swell idea and all, but I think this piece is going to look wonderful in the museum collection I’m putting together. But feel free to stop by and see it when we’re open. We’ll do half-off entry fees for sociopathic cult members.”

Professor Drake's clever reply wiped the smile off Zack’s face for the second time that night. In its place was a furious glare of pure loathing. He turned to his animal family, no longer interested in any sort of dialogue with the man who had taken what was rightfully the communion’s. 

“End him, then bring his carcass down here so I can piss on it.” 

Ezekiel’s eyes went wide as he heard each of the Sig Sauers the dead-eyed acolytes were carrying aim at him. He didn’t wait for what came next as a flurry of gunfire erupted in his direction, tearing up the stone ruins and bridge. Ezekiel crossed into the eastern bailey as he could hear Zack’s orders for them to get after him echoing through the castle. He ducked through an empty window chasm and slid downward into a lower courtyard. Unfortunately, he landed right between two acolytes who were guarding the room. Each of them, one wearing a raccoon mask and the other what seemed to be a fox, Ezekiel couldn’t quite tell in the darkness, turned slowly towards him. They stared at Ezekiel, confused as to how he could have gotten so unlucky.

“You guys wouldn’t happen to have the fastest route out of here, would you?” 

He gave them a friendly smile, holding his hands up as if he were surrendering. They hesitated over whether to shoot him or simply grab him, a gamble Ezekiel was taking to get him out of this particular jam. 

Once he saw the sliver of an opening his impromptu appearance had created, Ezekiel dropped his hands quickly and rocked each of the dumbfounded acolytes with a left and right cross. As the one in the raccoon mask tried to get back to his feet, Professor Drake snatched up his dropped Sig MCX and smacked him silly across the face with it. He stepped over both their bodies and looked around the courtyard to see which way he should go. There were a myriad of options for him, but he gritted his teeth as he knew almost all of them would only lead him to further danger. He yanked a two-way radio out of his back pocket. Drake waited rather impatiently for the static to clear before yelling into it, finally deciding as he sprinted through an open doorway to his immediate left. “Adela, how far out are you?”

“I’ll be at the docks in less than two minutes. How are you faring?” She chortled back over the air.

Ezekiel sprinted through another stone-arched corridor, spotting the entrance hall from above. A sense of relief briefly washed over him. That was, until a trio of communion acolytes turned down the very same hall he was standing in at the opposite end. 

“Oh, you know, could be worse.” He replied dryly.

TO BE CONTINUED

I tossed my keys on the corner table. It was the nicest thing I had. I asked for one made of bright red ironwood. The thrift store guy called it red-heart. I still had butterflies slam dancing all over my gut fresh from the fiasco. All I wanted was to gloat alone in the dark over every little mess that attempted to trip up the event.

I figured it would be a healthier exercise to just puke my entire fucking day into Dr. Winter’s ear. She was my therapist the third assigned to me at the free clinic.

The suit presented my needs he took me pretty seriously. I had my psychiatrist on emergency call for a whole month.

When people think you’re about to off yourself you get nice perks. So I went ahead and gave my shrink a shot.

“The conference?” My environment had changed and my natural reaction was to find the source. “Bizarre as shit!,” I shouted over my left shoulder at my shrink. We weren’t five minutes into our session and there it was along the wall a trail of black tic-tacs.

It’s ten sixteen, on a foggy Friday night I’m on all fours on an emergency call with my therapist.

I crawled down the hall hot on the heels of my one point nine calorie conundrum. I had my therapist in my left cheek pocket. The oddly colored breath mints led me straight to evidence box twenty three. Beneath the window that was blocked off by a brick wall a few feet away from it.

The little fuckers had chewed a crude entrance through a corner. They had made their own fuck pad. In my files, evidence, so many moments lost, wasting what I’ll never be able to get back and not only in box twenty three. All the evidence, every piece of the case of Jacob lived with me.

Corners of my shabby apartment that were already drab became even more depressing. While that bunch of furry sex freaks made it ground zero for their marathon inside so much wasted time.

“Time. It was always an untouchable concept at times and I barely understood the speed of life. The sight of the cardboard shavings spilt out on the floor. I knew that too much of my own time was sucked in to my quest.

There was a sighs worth of morale left inside old Percival. It was all crumbling down after so long brick by brick crashing loud on the way down. With a wrinkled forehead I growled “I’ve already been through that one enough times y’all conniving little cunts.”

“I can’t hear you!” She was on speakerphone.

I snatched her from the back pocket to swiftly perform a dead man’s fall into my filthy chair. Garbage fill or not I got it for free. It was mine, all its strange stains and its plethora of rancid odors.

I laid the doctor on my stomach and took a deep whiff of baby puke with a phantom of mouse urine. I was hugged by their slogan, “Living Life Comfortably.”

“Let me tell you. I was just fucking uncomfortable the whole time. I was a stranger in their midst. I kept my shit together for two hours of people’s mischievous fuckery!”

“Oh, yeah! I shit you not! Half the team, turned out to be a bunch of sick-puppies. Then the uncommitted bums.”

I rolled my eyes.

“The pattern became evident. Half of the volunteers were straight out of some hive where the wretched hide. Heartless human beings. To tell you the truth. Just shit people walking amongst us and no one is the wiser.

“Many didn’t make it to senior officers in that department. Some were walking along the edge of the blade. Two licks away from the center of a tootsie pop.

“One good day he happens to make it to the center. Then what? He snaps.

“No shortage of fresh novices one will appear. Oblivious to the nuances of the world he had stepping into. Some dumb rookie chock-full of pep.

“They’ll hand him the fat binder and the putts will be giddy with excitement.

“See the irony.

“He will be assigned a case of a psychopath who twenty years of bull-shit earlier was just another cop exactly like our hypothetical rookie.

“Those were the ones that got up one good morning! Bent in a middle-aged hang over, a three day event. Then simply decided to give themselves permission to just stopped caring.

“Basically they were nihilists completely oblivious to what they had become. They hated everyone, everything, their families, the system and especially themselves. Not a stinking clue.

“What did I do? Well I just went ahead and cut them.

“I mean, you could see in their eyes some of them without the slightest intention in coming back next week. The ones who did were just perverted freaks I didn’t need to deal with. The ambiguous on the other hand made no sense in having anyone that didn’t have his heart in the case.

“It almost ended up being a total shit-fest.” I undid my belt and my 501 button fly. “I swear.”

“Conference room 5-D, though spacious, it was also clear that it was neglected, an unused basement. Forgotten. Just the place for us to hold our case revival.

Out of sight.

A faint, though stubborn bouquet it was the stench of mold. I took note that only random light bulbs were working. It was dank, dark, and all the while a poignant smell of cat piss danced under everyone's nose. Maintenance obnoxiously gave up, and they all agreed to ignore it was there.

I claimed a nice cozy corner, closer to the door. After the concerto of metallic foldable chairs that made my gut cringe. I have to admit I was feeling proud. The place was packed! Every one was there because of me. The sarge gave me the green light once the papers and the news stations were making a big deal about the tenth year of Jacob being missing.

I got a good look at the graduates in the lights sent over by the sound company. They looked like mimes expressing the “concept” of being lost. I grab my forehead, “What a shitty crew! A raggedy little mob of sore-faced pimpled rejects!

“Apparently a small group of bold mothers dared to demand that they’re eighteen year olds get a job. A way to get the pimpled pricks out into the world kind of deal.

“Fed up having a manatee beached in the middle of their living room. Exactly where she wanted to pound vodka or their lovers.

“Once the lights were out. I saw two crew faces bathed in monitor glare. Fully accentuating their painful angry-acne every five minutes. I found that strange. Promptly falling into their posts. The crew was at their stations pacing their zones the conference, all dumbfounded until the next social media notification. Just sad band of babbling screen zombies. That was the lights and camera crew.

“Yes, I barely kept the chaos at bay.” I said to her with my arms outstretched and open hands.

“Listen to this.” I lit a smoke, “I had set it all up in such a way that the debriefing would not need me at all. I was organized and made it easy to follow.

“You know I was able to manage my stage fright this way. I had it all concealed in a meticulous, time stamped, box of videos neatly in sequence, three speakers from the original investigation with their respective pictures and charts sitting in the wings.

“I was free to prowl the fringes of the conference, hidden by shadows.

“Then just like I said would happen, it started happening. Right off the freaking bat the mindless brute in charge of the projector randomly grabbed the first video he was able to paw out of my box.

“Fuckers played the five films in the wrong way. It made no bloody sense!

“The Doc let me know the session would end in thirty minutes. “Yeah sure. Then I saw two more fucked-up mugs appear and the phone glare. Then, again two more at the restrooms. I got another eyeful of chewed up skin and rampant pimples. That should be in a fucking pair.

“Desperate I glanced over at the caseworkers. Then at the whole conference. The crowd of nit-wits were taking frantic notes. None of them was wearing a screwed up face.

“Was I the only one who noticed? Then again, even if they didn’t understand a thing about the mess and no one wanted to look less committed than the next person.

“Then again in the far east corner! I could only make one of the snot-faces out his leather like face tense but red with yellowing horns that never sprout. A damn pair. Those little shits were supposed to be at their posts.

“I pulled it off! In the end. All thanks to a brand new pack of extra fuses!”

“Those miserable undead almost made my whole team look like a crowd of sweaty perverts. A pathetic club of backward freaks! All bent on a shared fixation with a twenty something, presumably lost, male.

“Adult?

“Well it looks like somehow I apparently was all over their sensibilities. These kids might be weird but they do have gusto.

“A peculiarity about these new kids, they aren’t afraid of authority. It’s as we’re two different kinds of people almost. I definitely stepped on their toes. Plus the fact that they don’t give a flying fuck about employment.

“I prevented my team from being debased, reduced to another one of the millions of common pedestrians without an honorable quest.

“I could almost see everyone wide eyed, with one hell of a dumb expression melting their faces. I had the image of those doorbell cams! You know the ones with the night camera, came straight to my head. Have you seen when they film moose?

“The confused fucking moose all in black and green. I realized my teammates were a loyal copy of those beasts! Both with the same absent look.

“A good amount of slack jawed expressions were in the blank of making sense of the lights going out. Giving it their best effort to reboot their heads. Figure out what the next safe move would be.

“A high percentage of my investigation experts were a year or more away from retirement. Stiff men avoiding the risk of broken bones in the dark. They played it safe during the short lived “Lighting/Video Fiasco”.

“Without my obsessiveness!

All those that reacted by finally closing their whispering face-holes. The place fell into a silence that absolutely no one dared to pass gas. Even in the dark.

A freak convention hidden and totally blind in a piss scented basement.

At least for ten minutes.

The fucking light hitting its cue at the wrong time. It felt like a rough nerve-fucking in a dentist’s chair. With tendon etched fingers clawing into armrests.

All the while their feet are twisting and contorting. As if they were having the fucking orgasm of their life. When in reality they were facing the intimate kind of pain.

Everybody has been there. A place, a person, custom, a moment to be dealt with between you and you.

Obviously to everyone’s surprise the projectionist decided unilaterally that the time had came to pull the fucking lever, or what ever, that brought the machine to life. He was so damn random and early.

A colorful ray shot out of the projector. So bright for sure I would have be one more poor bastard with eye stabbing pain. So many with a hanky out.

Tears make it hard to see. My amber shades were on my face imperceptibly fast.

Ridiculous. A blaring light just bloomed across the room out of the black of the ceiling. Half the damn conference went blind and shuffled away to their seats.
 
“The queue to fall into order.” Was what I learned that day. Their behavior was so fucking foreign. The vision of everyone’s stone-faced disciplined mentality frantically seeking where they were supposed to go.

A tiny cackle escaped under my fucking phlegm gargle as I fake coughed. I wondered, “And these are the people that actually lived by the rules?”.

An intrusive thought, just like a maggot on meth, it bore into the wet crevices of my over stimulated brain. I couldn’t avoid watching how all that formal behavior, what they called discipline that in a symbolical way played out in front of me.

The fucking image of everyone being reflected off the sheen of my eyes was crowding my mind. “It was the sheepish mind in movement!” A mental slip almost pushed my ass into a panic attack!

The crowd that cared! All assembled in the name of little Jacob, united to unravel, once and for all, what in the world happened to that boy.

The movie beam had finished leading our flock into the previously designated gray gym chairs assigned to everyone. We were in a room the government had effortlessly attempted to convert into a conference space. A head quarters, our personal command center, perhaps.

I thought now that was exactly what the case called for! A fucking 'War Room'! A point were all the information to be focused in. Apparently we had the twelve-year case of Jacob beat.

Though I began to change my mind. I entertained my impression that the film projected was chosen randomly. Every eye on the huge bright rectangle on the back wall.

Why were the kids meeting up I pondered. “Those fucking kids. No they’re just young.” I said to myself.

This, was the summoning of the deeply concerned experts, the ones humanitarian enough to help. A real lot of quality human beings.

Reporters with the body language of a coked out squirrel. Still in a hurry in spite of the fact they had already made it to the conference. Restless legs and frantic fidgeting with their damn dossiers.

Why was a twelve year old boy processed by the 'U.S. Department of Agriculture' and ended up in a zoo?

Then the most important question. Where is Jacob?

The elite, stern officers, seasoned detectives, the real lab-bodies that catch serial killers, vigilante pedophile-hunter collectives, journalists; these individuals have been able to close twenty-five year cold cases, as if by some foreign magic...

Obviously they accepted anyone with a skill—no matter how remotely or randomly related. I was such a bizarre case I was considered an asset too.

I was supposed to be surrounded by real selfless saints! To tell you the truth. Our body stenches also were mixing and mingling. We were even sucking in each other's late shift shit-breath like a team.

The self-crowned champions of children. Definitely a hand full of sick creeps definitely were present, just a question of probabilities.

They must have been the only ones who truly cared for little Jacob. Bless their bleeding-hearts.

Finally all the incessant banter died down. The improvised screen was on the wall I was leaning on. It was right above where I was attempting to hide. Obviously they ended up ruining my spot.

“Not soon enough the damn thing was over. The lights were on the room was filled with the conversations of the groups of attendees. I interviewed everyone in groups of five at a time.

“I had just finished with my last group. It was time for doughnuts and coffee! That was when the freaking stink bombs went off.”

“A few of the overweight fellows puked down the front of their shirts. The car wreck of metal chairs began to roar, the coffee table was toppled over. Pastries everywhere.

“A party favor was all it took: For all the heroes, the stern officers, the elite and the coked-out squirrels to turn into beasts that trampled over each other to reach the exit.” I wondered if the exit ruined my finale.

“Did they take me seriously? I saw glasses slide across the floor. Others in a fight with their ties, the urge to vomit and shortness of breath. That was when I raised my sight and the only ones left besides myself, those pubescent shits.”

“Oh, the smug little fuckers! They were looking straight at me from the opposite side of the trashed room. Leaning on each other, a couple with crossed arms.

“Oi! Dumb shits! You’re in charge of cleaning the venue! Remember!” I jumped down off my perch in the rafters and made my way home.
   
M.D. ACOSTA
SKÖL!

I came home and changed and joined her to paint the living room walls base white. The couch my wife had had since college was the only piece of furniture we had downstairs and it was covered in plastic. We had dinner while we worked. She’d “cooked” one of her liquid meals that I hated but “ate” anyway. My wife was actually almost as good of a cook as me but I needed to lose at least fifteen pounds, and she intended to help regardless of how unhappy it made me. 

“How was your day?” she asked in her autopilot voice.

“It was good except for the inspector I had to fire.”

“Oh, no. Matt?” She dipped her roller in the pan.

I grimaced. I probably was going to have to let him go, too. We’d had dinner with him and his wife a few times. He’d even invited me to his son’s high school graduation. I rolled up the wall. This color looked even better than it had in the store.

“No. I forgot about him.”

She rubbed my back with her free hand. “That’s probably because you don’t want to do it.”

I nodded.

“You care about people and that’s never a bad thing.”

She thought so highly of me, and it warmed something inside.

“Yeah,” I said, this whole “surgery” thing slipping into the front of my mind. I was suddenly agitated and my full stomach felt like it was squeezing up into my chest.

“Did your appointment go okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. I turned to her. “Did you know he’s not a doctor?”

“Yes.” She scooped up her bottle and took a sip.

I hoped informing her of his lack of a medical degree would do more work than this.

“I don’t want to do this,” I wanted to say, but held my tongue. Instead, I said, “Is there anything else we could try?”

“Why are you pushing back on this? Don’t you want us both to be satisfied?”

I dropped my head. “You know I do.”

“I want you to do this,” she said and placed a hand over mine. I still felt a ‘no’ at the back of my throat and swallowed. It hurt going down. I chased it with a swallow from my cup.

She was being logical and detached in a way that wasn’t common for her. I didn’t want to fight and just kept restraining myself from speaking. I hoped there was still time to convince her, but that was going to be hard to do if she shut me down every time I tried.

“You have something on your face,” I said, pointing just below my nose. She swiped it just like I thought she would, smearing base paint that had been on the back of her hand just below her nose and on her upper lip. She immediately knew what I’d done and glared at me. I smiled.

Then she rollered me from chest to crotch. I stood there while she went up and down the front of me, my mouth hung open. Then I batted the roller to the newspaper-covered floor and she scream-laughed as she ran from me. I caught her on the other side of the kitchen island and picked her up in a reverse hug, pressing my fresh coat of paint onto her back.

We fell to the floor, laughing and wound up making out like teenagers for a few minutes. The heaviness of the conversation we’d just been having lifted off of us. I didn’t want anything outside of this moment and just looked her in the eyes.

“What?” she asked.

“I have no idea.” The feeling cresting in me didn’t have words to follow along. We finished painting the living room walls, passing eye-glances at one another. The moment passed for intimacy, a detached feeling gradually replacing it a few hours later by the time we were ready for bed. It was like we’d built a temporary bridge over a chasm between us, but it had collapsed just in time for us to go to sleep.

I kept wanting to reach behind me to touch her as we lay in the same bed. But she just felt too far away.

I’d forgotten to pack a lunch for the next day and breakfast consisted of a slice of bread that hadn’t toasted enough and coffee out of the Keurig with grinds in it. I left the house in a foul mood ten minutes later than I should have and was five minutes late getting to the office. I’d blazed past a police cruiser and had anxiety for the next mile or so convinced I was about to be pulled over. All the way I felt like I'd been cheated out of an argument, and I continued stewing in that sour even after I got out my car.

Work was uneventful but I'd had to keep my tongue in check. I felt myself being short with my co-workers. But it finally came to a head when a group of men clogging the hallway didn’t move when I was trying to pass them.

“Whoa. Excuse yourself?” one man said.

“For what? A circle of jerks?” I said.

“Hey. Ow.”

I was prepared for a confrontation. I was management and I could make a nightmare for them. I wanted this. But the second person who’d spoken sounded genuinely hurt and I tripped over my hubris.

I retreated from the men and had forgotten about it until one of them confronted me in the restroom an hour later. 

“What’s going on with you, man?” a man said to me while we were standing at the urinals. Conversation was usually verboten while two men were taking a leak but my antenna were up.

“Excuse me?” I said. 

“I mean, we were standing around talking and you just took a tiny shit on all of us.”

“You guys were blocking the hallway.”

“We were outside for hours in the hot sun and we were gathered around the water fountain. I wasn’t thinking about us blocking anybody. I mean, I would have apologized but the way you came off...”

“Look, I’m sorry.” My guilt bloomed again. “I didn’t have the best sleep last night and you guys didn’t deserve me taking it out on you.” I'd actually slept over eight hours but felt like I'd only gotten a third of that. I didn't offer it as an excuse.

He nodded and flushed. I zipped up a second later and joined him at the sinks.

“Seriously. I’m sorry,” I said. This was already more of an emotional exchange than I’d had with another male in the last decade. “I’m just... going through a thing with my wife.”

He looked at me.

“She wants me to get this procedure done.” I could feel myself relaxing. There was something about opening up to a complete stranger. Someone who wouldn't judge because they didn't understand.

“The honeycut?” he said, trying his hands on a strip of paper towel.

“What?”

“Oh. My bad. I thought you were talking about something else?”

“I've heard of it.”

He smiled broadly and nodded. “I got mine done six months ago. Wanna see the scar? I'm Sam Eisen, by the way.” He smiled as he hooked his thumbs in his pants.

“No, I... uhhh... that's okay. I'm having a completely different procedure. I'm having it... lengthened.”

“Be careful with that,” he said as I walked toward the door. “Swivelcock.”

I was sweating, gripped with terror the same as if he'd peeled his face off and frisbee-tossed it to me. I pushed through the door and fled back to my desk.

He called out to me as I did my best not to run.

“You should think about it, though!” he yelled through the closing doorway. “He changed my life!”

 

Part III

 

The next twenty-four hours were a haze. I worked. I came home. I ate. I slept. I didn’t like where things were with my wife even though we were still sleeping in the same bed, so the next day I texted her about having lunch together. Her job was about a fifteen-minute walk away from mine, I could pick up something for us and we could eat for about a half hour before I had to be back.

She hadn’t responded but she had a lot of meetings typically. Chili dogs were technically off the menu, but it was a fave of both of ours and she was a happy eater when it was good food. When I got there with a carry-out bag, I was shocked to see who she was outside with.

Him. 

They were sitting together, smiling and laughing like they’d known one another for years. He was dressed differently, but that was definitely that same red and white summer scarf he'd had on when I met him.

I hung back and watched them and began speed-feeding coneys into my mouth like an assembly line. I had no idea what he was doing with my wife, but I was immediately conspiracy-brained. I'd convicted him of a crime I couldn't name and wanted to strangle him in front of her.

I continued eating the coneys instead. They were leaning into one another and laughing even. They acted like they knew each other. They had chemistry.

I never understood the expression being hot under the collar but at that moment my neck was burning. I barely resisted the urge to go over there and... and... I didn't know what. 

There had to be more to what I was seeing. There had to be something I could do rather than confronting them and showing a side of myself that might've repulsed my wife. I knew where to go to get answers.

I went to his office after work, but I wasn't able to enter. I wasn’t desperate enough to break in, although I was sure the door wouldn’t have held if I’d put my shoulder into it. Despite how upsetting lunch had been, nothing had happened today to justify breaking and entering.

But what if something were about to happen and I could avoid it now? Head it off at the pass? I had a duty to protect my wife, and this guy had crossed a line. I could probably take this door off its hinges. I had some tools in my car.

My phone chimed. I’d programmed that specific tone for her.

I’m sick, she’d texted. Bring me coneys?

It was like a spell had been broken. Why was I about to potentially risk my job and my freedom—hell, maybe even my marriage—all for some nut?

She needed me now and home was exactly where I wanted to be.

But I was denied. I brought her the coneys, but she was already asleep. Things still felt off and I wound up falling asleep on the couch. After I’d eaten four more coneys.

I consoled myself that she was sick and I didn’t want to catch whatever she may have had.

Wicked dreams met me in the night. But they lifted like clouds after a storm by the time I woke up, no doubt fueled by a combo of seeing my wife with him and eating like I was half my actual age.

As if to turn the dial up on my grief even more, I had a two-hour meeting the next day and Leslie Paul sat right next to me. A bubble of gas was growing inside me and there was no way I was going to be able to contain it for a hundred twenty minutes. It would be a miracle if I made it twenty.

My part in the presentation was coming up soon and I had to excuse myself. Cal Cebulski stopped talking long enough to watch me step out and I hustled toward the men’s room.

Where he was.

“What are you doing at my work?” I asked, whispering like we were in a conspiracy.

“Due diligence,” he said. “Would you mind?” He gestured toward the handicap stall. “I need to see how you sit. Do you mind?”

My stomach queezed with the thought of him watching me... sit. Or maybe it was more than that. I unclenched and let go. It was mostly silent but whistled at the end. He sniffed the air curiously but didn’t comment. The wind had been taken out of my sails and for a moment, I did consider having a seat.

I piled up my broken resolve. “I’m not... doing that.”

He shrugged.

“And what were you doing with my wife yesterday?” I let implication seep into my voice and he put his hands up as if warding me off.

“It is all part of the process. Information gathering only. I have no interest in anyone other than my own Sara.”

“You’re married?”

He nodded. “For twenty-seven years. Happily, for twenty-five.”

That got an eyebrow raise from me. He’d seemed weirdly asexual up until I saw him with my wife. It was something about his pants, I wasn't sure. I hadn’t thought he was capable of human companionship.

“If you’re wondering about our longevity I’ll give you a hint. I perfected the surgery first on myself.”

He could have been lying, of course. But the idea of sex being so improved that it could aid in preserving my marriage gave me at least a moment’s second thought. I mean, what if what he was saying were true?

I couldn’t help but think that I was being obstinate because she’d insisted. If I’d found this guy on my own would I have been so resistant against doing this?

“Oh shit,” I said. “I gotta get back to my meeting!”

I fled the restroom, headed back to the conference room, tooting most of the way. When I was around the corner, I slid on something and scraped my knee, tearing my pants in the process.

I recovered pretty quickly but it hurt. I could see my leg pretty clearly and red beads of blood began trickling down my shin. I wrapped my fingers around the lip of the hole, keeping the pant leg away from the blood as if I were going to be able to salvage my pants.

The meeting was over by the time I stepped back into the conference room.

“Where’d everybody go?” I asked Rob Smales, one of the administrative assistants who took meeting minutes.

“Oh, they called it pretty much as soon as you left,” he said. “You were up next.” He shuffled a stack of papers into a Manila folder and added it to a stack of more Manila folders.

“Well, I had a little emergency.” I stepped back so he could see my leg. Rob looked without his dispassionate expression changing. I wanted to flick the tip of his nose just to get him to make a face. The guy never smiled. “You think we could get everybody back? We still have a half hour plus.”

Rob shook his head slowly. “Nah.” He tucked the folders under an arm—tried to, at least—then put his laptop bag’s strap over his shoulder and held the folders in his open hands.

I hobbled out of the conference room, intent on pleading my case with Melissa White, the director of my department. I stood outside of her office and wrapped on the open door. 

She turned halfway in her chair, a desk phone cradled between her face and shoulder. I wasn’t sure if she shook her head or if it was just the motion when she turned around.

The door swung closed and I had to move my hand to keep my thumb from being crushed in the jamb. Somebody was in there with her. My heart raced because I had no idea who.

 

“That’s really not pertinent to this discussion, I’m afraid,” She replied after shaking her head, a smile breaking out on her face. She was enjoying having the upper hand in this exchange, Drake reasoned. He knew that she had prepared herself well for this particular interaction. “What is pertinent is how you managed to discover the only piece of treasure recovered from King John’s baggage train?”

“I was helping out at St. Vincent’s emergency room last weekend in Toledo,” Ezekiel lied plainly. “I didn’t feel like making the drive back up 275, so I decided to crash at my cousin’s place. If you’re wondering how the museum I’m opening up a few blocks from here managed to snag such a coveted piece of history for our opening exhibits, I have a curator by the name of Adela whom I can provide you with contact information.”

“How about we cut the slogging of bullshit in my direction and be frank with each other, professor?” Ms. Light cut across him abruptly. She had had enough of the pleasantries and dancing around the reason for her visit to the Midwest.

“I agree. I do have a shift I have to get to across town here in the next twenty minutes,” Drake replied blankly, continuing his charade of ignorance. 

Ms. Light straightened her posture in the stiff-backed chair and narrowed her eyes across the room at the tenured community college professor.

“Then you can cut the long-winded humble scholar routine and tell me how a man such as yourself not only came about your information on the artifact but managed to track it down halfway across the world before other interested parties?” 

There was an air of demand in the question that Ms. Light shot back. Each of them stared at one another for a rather heated moment, letting her question linger in the air. Finally, Professor Drake cleared his throat and pushed his chair away from his desk before getting up. He straightened his bowtie once more and gave her a faux, sorrowful look.

 “I truly regret I couldn’t be of much help with what you were here to inquire about. If you’d like Adela’s number, you can grab it from the young man out there,” he said, giving her a warm smile that she didn’t return before walking from behind the desk and swiftly back out of his office, closing the door behind him.

Corey looked up from the comic book he had been knee-deep in as the professor passed his desk. He looked back at the closed office door, realizing that his guest was still inside. “What was that about?”

Professor Drake snatched his suitcoat back off the rack and threw it over his shoulders. “I need you to start vetting who you let in here,” he told him, shaking his head. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” The professor slipped out the door without another word, leaving his assistant quite dumbfounded.

Zack turned his radio down, which had been blaring Title Fight’s last album, as he sped his Ram 2500 truck into the golf course parking lot. It was the last place he wanted to be, and he was only there to give news he knew wouldn’t be well received. Still, he ignored the looks he got from some snobs dressed in Ralph Lauren and Prada as they rode by in their golf carts. The pair of men he was there to see were standing at the edge of the driving range, whacking their way through two buckets full of balls. The shorter of the pair, wearing khaki jeans and a white polo, spotted Zack first. He gave his golfing partner a nod, and the partner stopped mid-swing and looked over as Zack approached them. 

“Please tell me you managed to track it down again.” The shorter man pleaded with an exasperated look in Zack’s direction.

“I know where the bastard who took it is; he’s nothing special,” Zack explained, bitterness in his tone. “But I know he’s not keeping it on him.”

“So long story short, you still got nothing.” The taller, blonde-haired man holding a Miller High Life shot back angrily.

“What I got is a pivot, one that should satisfy the Black Bride’s needs for the ritual, Billy,” Zack replied just as tersely.

Billy looked at his golfing partner for a moment, then back at Zack while taking a swig of his beer. “What kind of pivot are you talking about?”

“Sabrina and I will handle it. We’ve already brought in a freelance group to do the heavy lifting.” Zack explained to them. 

He had to fight to hold back the devious smirk threatening to spread across his face as he thought of the treacherous black ops group his soon-to-be father-in-law had suggested he hire. This time, he wasn’t going to leave anything to chance.

“Yeah, you mean like you handled shit in England?” The shorter man spoke up again. “I don’t buy it. I get it, Zack, you’re one of the Gilded Hand. But you’re a class-A fuck-up. If you weren’t fucking Sabrina, at this point I’m not sure–”

“Watch your tongue, Tucker, you know I’ll cut it out.” Zack hissed the threat, silencing Tucker on the spot. His eyes cut between both of them as he allowed his anger to boil down before he said something else that may cross a line. “I’ve already informed Jade of my plans. And I’ll return with a sacrifice as well. If you have an issue with any of this, take it up with her.”

“We don’t have any more time to waste, Zack. You should understand this,” Billy chimed in again. “The Black Bride’s hour is close at hand. Missteps like these are not affordable.”

“I’ll be in contact once I’ve landed where we’re having our little field trip. Put your worries aside for now and know I am rectifying the issue. Quickly,” Zack promised them.

Professor Drake, now Dr. Drake, while under the roof of Washtenaw West Emergency Hospital, assessed the severity of the bleeding in the patient lying on the table in front of him and his staff. He assessed the situation rapidly and decided on the best course of action. 

“Alright, we need to stabilize her neck until we confirm there are no spinal fractures.”

“I’ve got it,” Dr. Awad, his fellow attending doctor on duty, swooped in like the healthcare savior she was with foam blocks and restraints. She placed the blocks around the unconscious young woman’s skull before carefully and gently strapping them into place. “Any bleeding around the brain?”

“Heavy. Intubate, and let’s handle this right away so she can be prepped for upstairs. Someone page Dr. Garrison in surgery for me, please?” Ezekiel directed the second half of his instructions to a young Filipino nurse in the room.

“Dr. Garrison is on her way down, boss.” The nurse replied promptly while cleaning her hands with sanitizer.

“Okay, she’s intubated, but the left pupil is blown. We need to get the bleeding around the brain under control, now.” Dr. Awad made the stern suggestion while looking up across the table at Ezekiel. He nodded quickly in sound agreement with her assessment.

“Let’s couple that with a CT for her head and spine. And get me a running ETA on Garrison; we don’t have time to waste, or this woman loses her life.” Ezekiel instructed one of the medical aides as Nurse Lincoln assisted Dr. Awad with an IV.

“I figured we could start with about forty grams of mannitol. We can increase if needed based on the progress of the swelling going down.” Dr. Awad told him as she prepped the IV bag.

“Alright, I’ll monitor her pupils, Janay; keep an eye on her blood pressure. We don’t want it dropping too low,” He warned the Filipino nurse as she did as instructed once the IV drip was in place.

“Looks like the swelling is coming down steadily.” Dr. Awad informed the team surrounding the patient, just as an African-American doctor with long, greying braids entered the room.

“I’m always surprised you folks have the skills to keep these poor souls pumping till they can get on my table.” Dr. Garrison shook her head as she looked over the patient.

“Zeke, pressure’s dropping!” Janay warned him, causing him to snap his attention away from the verbal sparring match he was about to have with the head surgeon on duty.

“Damn, alright, let’s adjust her CO2 down a notch,” He instructed the nurse carefully. “Talk me through it.”

“O2 is holding, heart rate is one-thirty, blood pressure is on the rise.” Janay breathed a small sigh of relief after giving him the update. She glanced quickly at the mannitol IV bag. “ Bag’s halfway gone; what’s the move there, doc?”

“Finish the bag. And let’s get her to CT; we’re going to move her on one, as a team. Try to keep her as steady as possible.” He told them as each of the nurses and doctors in the room gathered around the patient.

“I’ve got the head,” Dr. Awad told him, moving him down next to the patient’s shoulder. She looked up at the team, meeting each of their eyes as she spoke. “Everyone ready?” She waited till she saw everyone nod or heard a confirmation before turning to Ezekiel. “On your call, doctor.”

“Alright, everyone. Ready, and lift.” 

They moved her on the stretcher, and Janay led a pair of nurses in rolling her to the CT room. Dr. Awad and Ezekiel went to follow when Dr. Garrison stepped briskly into their path.

“From what I’ve gathered, it’ll more than likely be an intracranial bleed shift. CT’s just a confirmation at this point. I’ve got it from here.” Garrison looked back at the busy ER for a moment before facing the doctors again. “I’m sure you two have got your hands full down here as always.”

She turned on a dime and marched out of the room, following in the direction the car crash victim had been taken. Ezekiel pulled off his gloves and tossed them into the trash. “I could use some air. How about you?”

The two of them found themselves out under the ambulance bay tarmac, the stiff August heat finally easing up at two a.m. Dr. Awad leaned against a pillar and pulled a pack of White Maples from the back pocket of her scrubs. Ezekiel watched her light up, staunchly ignoring the no-smoking sign painted on the pillar behind her. 

“How is it I’ve worked with you this long and didn’t realize you smoked?”

“You just weren’t paying close enough attention,” Dr. Awad replied with a smug smirk as she blew smoke out of the side of her mouth. “I don’t blame you; when we’re not knee-deep in some shit here, your mind always seems to be elsewhere.”

Ezekiel nodded, conceding her point. “I wonder what else I’ve missed around here when my head’s in the clouds?”

“Well, Dr. Garrison has always been a bit of a jerk. But she’s brilliant, so she gets away with it. But I’m pretty sure you were aware of that. And I think Janay is ready to get some charge nurse experience.”

“You don’t have to sell me on how great Nurse Lincoln is at her job,” Ezekiel assured her. “But as for being night shift charge, I’m going to suggest you take that suggestion up with Krista when she gets here in the morning.”

“I’d hate to subject Janay to her scrutiny; I’m not entirely sure whatever analysis she puts her through for the position would be exactly fair.” Dr. Awad’s admission drew a wry smirk from Ezekiel.

“Your concern is…sweet, Zayna. But Janay is a tough cookie; She can handle whatever Krista throws at her if she’s ready to be a charge nurse.” Ezekiel decided to shift the conversation to something Zayna usually avoided. “And how have you been?”

Awad raised both her eyebrows while dragging on her cigarette. She was taken aback by the question, mostly because she wasn’t used to anyone wondering how she was doing. “My mom’s been staying with me the last couple of weeks while they work on her house. It’s been going better than I expected, at least.”

Ezekiel chuckled at the expression on her face. “This place keeps you out of the house plenty, so that’s got to help. No wonder you’ve been working so many twelves.”

“Helps to be around people when you don’t have much of a social life outside of these walls,” she remarked, blowing another cloud of smoke into the night air. “Maybe that’s why my mom hasn’t been driving me insane. I needed the company and didn’t realize it.”

“I understand completely,” Ezekiel replied while nodding. “Hard to have much of a life for yourself when you work this job.”

“You seem to manage alright. Going from the college to here all week, I swear you must be part machine.”

Ezekiel shrugged off her compliment bashfully. “If your hypothesis is correct, then tonight sure is running my batteries down low.”

She sighed, then nodded in agreement with him. “It has been a night to remember. Or forget, depending on your perspective. Are you ever gonna tell me how your little trip to Europe went? What were you doing over there, anyway?”

November 15 1934, New York.

I can’t deal with this rotten rain anymore, it gets everywhere: your coat, your hat, your shirt…your fuckin’ underwear. It has rained non-stop for a week now, I forgot what the sun looks like and I can’t wait to see it again.

However, I got an interesting new client today, the glamorous…

“Miss Petra, how do you do?”

“Pleased to meet you Miss Petra…how can I help?”

“I heard you’re the best at what you do…is that true?”

Miss Petra was quite the broad, she had a piercing blue set of eyes, if you looked at them too long your hairs would stand on guard, as if someone had dropped a bucket of ice on ya.

“Well, I’m not sure about that…”

Her plump red lips were hypnotizing, you just couldn’t help yourself but listen.

“…But I assure you, Miss…”

“Petra.”

“Right, Miss Petra, I assure you that I can get the job done fair and square.”

Her short hair with a fringe was as black as the cloud covered skies, the cigarette smoke around her painted her in some kind of glowing aura.

“Yes, I heard that too. You’re not a disgraced or corrupt police officer turned PI as all the others, correct?”

“That’s right ma’am. I served my country proudly, did some years in the force and ended up here.”

She was a walking hourglass wearing a tight dress that cost more than my rent. Her general appearance was a punch to the face compared to my rundown, dusty and neglected office she was sitting in.

“Well then, just what I’m looking for.”

She put a cigarette in her mouth, making me wish I was the butt of it.

I kindly leaned over my desk and offered a light.

Drag. Puff. Eye contact.

“My husband is missing.”

The entire world just about crumbled over me in that moment.

“He’s a particular guy, he doesn’t really talk or go out much. I do that for the both of us.”

“So it’s unusual for him to disappear.”

“That’s right.”

 “Well, Miss Petra, I don’t think it’ll be too difficult to find your husband. A guy that doesn’t talk or go out much gets noticed, even in a big town like New York.”

“So you’ll take my case?”

She could have asked me anything and I would have said yes without even thinking.

“Sure, why not?”

“Oh that’s just swell Mr. Marlowe! I’ll be sure to pay double your rates, I need my husband back as soon as possible.”

“Oh ma’am that’s not necessary, really, I do this to hel-“

“Nonsense.” She shut me up.

“I insist, you must take this money, it’s part of our deal.”

Who was I kiddin’. A smoking hot broad making eyes at me AND a hefty bag of change? Who knew heaven would show up on a rainy November day.

I accepted the case and after getting some more information from Petra, along with a healthy first check, I immediately set to work.

First stop, Grand Central. Nobody in New York comes or goes without passing through there.

The rain was still pounding, obviously, but I must admit, it didn’t bother me that much. Every time I blinked I saw those beautiful blue eyes staring at me. Made me feel funny and made the rain feel less like a burden.

I made my way over to Giorgio’s, if this guy came through here, he’d know.

“Hello Giorgio, how’s it going?” I could barely hear myself through the rush-hour.

“Mr. Marlowe how do you do?” He greeted me with a big smile on his face.

“Say, pal. Did you by any chance see a tall pale guy move through? Quiet, jumpy, shy?”

“Wow Mr. Marlowe, getting straight down to business eh? New case?”

“I find it hard to believe it myself pal, this gorgeous blue eyed, black hair, hourglass bird lost her hubby.”

“Really?...wow…what was her name again Mr. Marlowe?”

“Uh…Miss Petra, that’s right.”

A surprise look took over Giorgio’s face. His mouth dropping open and his eyes as wide as the Grand Canyon.

“Oh maronn, Mr. Marlowe.” His hand reaching his forehead.

“What’s wrong?”

“You don’t know Miss Petra? The Black Widow? The famous singer?”

“No, jeez, you know I don’t drink Giorgio, what’s the matter with you?”

Apparently I wasn’t the only one that was captured by her beauty, I never thought I was, but hearing from Giorgio that every city club would go sold out when she sang was like a knife to the heart.

“That’s okay Giorgio…thanks for telling me pal.”

“Hey Mr. Marlowe don’t beat yourself up, she’s paying good money! In this economy?”

I sighed.

I realized in that moment that I didn’t really care about the money, not as much as seeing her again.

“But Mr. Marlowe, I did see the guy you were talking about, maybe a week ago he stopped here. He looked like a walking corpse, sat down and ordered a Bloody Mary, it was only 5 and something in the morning, really stuck with me, who drinks at that time?”

“I hear ya, seen a few walking corpses myself – only they were wearing a uniform.” I said as I took out my notepad and started taking notes.

“I make him the drink and tried to say something, you know? Where you going? Where you from?...nothing, guy doesn’t say a word or even look at me.”

“What else? Where did he go?”

“I don’t know Mr. Marlowe, as soon as the sun came up, he was gone, didn’t even see him leave. Even left half his drink.”

“Alright Giorgio, thank you pal, this is very helpful.”

“No problem Mr. Marlowe but I must tell you…this Miss Petra…she is not good news, you must be careful around her.”

Giorgio’s tone took a more serious pitch.

“How do you mean?” I asked, confused.

“There are rumors about her Mr. Marlowe, she is a maneater and a manipulator, you must not fall for her tricks!”

“Giorgio, the gal has a husband, what are you talking about?”

“Yes Mr. Marlowe, she does. But there must also be a reason why he left.”

I left Grand Central with a heavy heart, Giorgio’s words really did a number on me. He’s a good friend, always tells me straight up, no dancing around but I didn’t believe him this time. I didn’t want to believe him.

I went home, the rain not letting up for even a second, felt like being back in France, couldn’t even light a cigarette in the open that in a matter of seconds it would get soggy.

I need some sleep.

November 16, 1934, New York.

I had some weird dreams last night, the wind was howling and the rain kept on tapping on the windows, I couldn’t get much sleep.

I had nightmares about a dark forest on a full moon, weird looking owls were all around me, their eyes as blue as ice. I was walking through it when all of a sudden I fell into a deep pit in the ground.

I kept on falling and falling and falling. Then I heard a voice

“Come for me.”

I recognized the voice.

It was Petra.

I woke up in a cold sweat and couldn’t get back to bed. It was 5 AM but it didn’t matter, the rain was still there and the sun was nowhere to be seen.

I got to work, not like I had much else to do.

After Giorgio, if you wanted to find someone the church is where you’d go. People who vanish are usually desperate and if there’s one thing I learned in my life is that there ain’t no atheists in the trenches.

The Catholics is where I went to, asking for clues.

“I’m sorry son, I haven’t seen this poor soul.” Replied Father Andrews quickly moving away from me and looking busy, too quickly.

“Hey wait up Father, I didn’t even tell you everything about him.”

“I’m afraid I can’t help you detective, right now I have more urgent things to do.”

“What’s more urgent than helping a fellow man in need?”

“Just because someone’s missing, it doesn’t mean they want to be found, son.”

“…what’s that supposed to mean?”

The Father was on the other side of the church by now.

“The good Lord will look after him, I’ll be praying very hard.” Shouted from afar, quickly disappearing behind the scenes.
Weird.
It wasn’t the first time I had enlisted God’s people, they always were very caring and altruistic as their teachings say, this was different.

Sometimes I believe that everything happens for a reason, that taking the wrong turn by accident will eventually lead you to where you belong…or where you deserve to be.

Tonight, destiny took me somewhere in between.

The Maltese.

I know right? Who am I anymore? Old man Marlowe at a bar? I know about a dozen people who would burst out laughing if they heard such a thing. The reality was different however, I wasn’t there for the booze, I was there for something far worse.
Petra.

She was the main attraction of the night, singing some sweet tune with her golden voice and icy eyes. Everyone looked as stupid as I did once she got up on the stage. But the one thing that was different from the others was that we instantly locked eyes. I didn’t have the courage to blink.

She came over after the gig, sat next to me and my tonic water. She had to fight a human wave of excitement, it felt like Greta Garbo had just walked in.

“Detective, didn’t take you for a nighthawk.”

“You learn something new every day.”

“Do you have any news on my husband?”

“I have some leads but…work in progress.”

“I believe in you Marlowe, you can do this.” No word in my life was more angelic than those she had just spoken.

“Waiter! I’ll take a Bloody Mary and for the Detective…”

“Oh I’m good Miss Pet—“

“Just Petra.”

“…Petra, I’m good with wat—“

“Come on, Dete—“

“Marlowe.”

“…he’ll have the same as me.”

I had about 4 Bloody Marys that night. One after the other. I didn’t know who I was anymore. All I knew is that I went back home with Petra and we made love all night.

November 17.

I can’t stop thinking about last night.
I can’t stop thinking about her lips on mine, our bodies entwined , her fingers in my hair and my eyes on hers.

We fell asleep together, cuddled by each other’s warmth and by the sweet sound of rain on the roof and thunder in the night.

I had another weird dream. I was back at the church, Father Andrews was nowhere to be seen but I moved like a weasel through tall grass.

My .45 was in my hand and I was going down some steps, it was dark but I could smell blood in the air and its metal taste in my mouth.

Eventually I get to a large cave, barely lit by a bunch of candles on the wall. My body tensed up as I put one in the chamber.

“SHOW YOURSELF.” I shouted.

That’s when what I could only describe as a rotten corpse came rushing out of the shadows, mouth wide open.

I woke up in a cold sweat, again. This time however, Petra’s perfect lips were next to me, ready to make it all go away.

After breakfast we quietly went our separate ways, I was back in the unrelenting rain, she stayed in her room.

I had sex with a married woman and my job was to find her missing husband. What the fuck happened to me?

“Keep looking for my husband sweetie, I still need to find him.” She told me before leaving.

I had a feeling this wasn’t her first rodeo. I didn’t care. I wanted her and she wanted me.

I decided I would head back to Father Andrews, something felt off about him. The dream certainly didn’t help.

It was already dark when I got there, the rain kept on pounding. Darkness came early in the day.

“Father Andrews? I have some questions for you, Father.” My voice echoing in the big space of the strangely empty church.

“Hello? Is anyone there?” No answer.

I made my way over to the altar, it was very quiet.

As I went to the other side I almost tripped. A small set of dark stairs leading down in the ground were hiding just behind the altar.

“What the fuck…”

I felt a Déjà vu creeping up on me in that moment.

Before I even realized it, my .45 was in my hand, my cigarette was lit and the safety was off.

I went down those stairs, exactly like the dream, a long dark corridor with some small torches lit up.

“Father Andrews? Halloween is long gone Father.” I shouted in the dark.

After that, it somehow got even quieter.

I kept going, hoping for an opening sooner or later.

“Marlowe.” I heard in front of me.

“Who’s there?” I warned, scared.

“You shouldn’t be down here, Detective.”

“Is that you Andrews?” Silence.

My foolish question was answered with a big bang that took off my hat.

Whoever was in front of me had just shot at me and nearly turned off the lights.

Training and experience kicked in and I hit the dirt immediately, without hesitation I fired four or five shots into the dark ahead of me.

Silence once more.

I got out my zippo and tried to make as much light as possible while moving forward.

I almost fell on him.

Some feet away from where I fired rested Father Andrews, eyes wide open, lead in his chest. In his hand a small .38.

I couldn’t even begin to process what had just happened that a faint sobbing broke the eerie silence.

It was coming from further down the tunnel.

I stepped away from the body and into the unknown, eager to see what more it had to offer.

After 30 seconds or so the tunnel opened up into a big wine cellar, I suppose that’s where Christ’s blood was kept.

Sitting on the ground, back to the wall, was a tall figure in a trench coat. His head was on his knees and his arms around them.

He was crying.

“Hey, pal…are you okay?” I sort of asked, stumbling on my words.

“Please…don’t hurt me.” He replied with an accent.

“I won’t…what’s your name buddy?” I said getting closer to him.

No answer.

“Are you hurt?”

Nothing.

“Pal?...you there?”

That’s when he finally got his face away from his arms and looked at me.

I’ll never forget that face. White as a ghost, no facial hair and eyes as gray as the cloud covered sky in the morning.

I took  a step back.

“I can smell her on you.”

I raised my .45 and emptied the mag on him.

Case closed.

I need some sleep.

November.

Today is the day, I need to tell Petra and skip town, I hope she’ll come with me. The police found everything and is quietly looking into it, it won’t be long before they come asking for questions.

The sun is still nowhere to be seen, the rain feels so heavy that I might drown in it. I can’t stand it anymore.

“Marlowe, my love, you have good news don’t you?”

My knees were shaky and my heart was just about to explode but, as soon as she invited me in, a strange sort of calm washed over me.

“Petra, I found him, your husb—“

“Shh, don’t speak.”

She got close and started kissing me, I melted like a popsicle in the sun.

“Petra, seriously, I’m in trouble.” I said pushing her away.

She didn’t lose the way she was looking at me, it was as if she didn’t care in the slightest about what I had to say.

“You’re right where you’re supposed to be.” She moved in closer again.

“I killed your husband Petra.”

She finally stopped. There was a long moment of silence, my mind went blank.

“I know you did.”

 “What?” I asked confused.

“You did well Marlowe, my instincts were right about you...”

 I didn’t know what to think anymore.

“…I knew he was there, in the Church…I just couldn’t get to him…”

My eyes were watering, the cigarette in my hand burning my fingers, my brain going haywire.

“…but you could, and you did…you were such a good boy for me.”

I killed for her and I was ready to do it all over again if she asked me.

“My husband…after 200 years he just wasn’t the same anymore…he started having hope, a very dangerous thing.”

“200 years?”

“Yes darling, but don’t worry…I’m very happy to spend the next 200 with you.”

Two long and dark wings sprouted from her perfect back, spanning several feet.

She got closer, her pristine red lips open.

Her white long teeth revealing.

She kissed me on the lips.

Then on the cheek.

Then on my neck.

I hope it never stops raining.

He tossed the last of the logs into the fireplace, the flames greedily munching down the offering. He reclined back, sighing. The chair creaked under him, one of the few things in the cabin still his. A few weeks ago, he wouldn't have gotten so low on supplies. He'd have ridden out and stocked up. It was the preparation that had kept him alive so far. But things had changed; he would have no more use for further supplies.

The radio had been silent since the initial warning. He had made peace with it, if anything, he enjoyed it. His mind still drifted to the others, though. How were they doing? Had they made it far, if at all? He lit a cigarette, the match the last in the box. Wondering, stuck in thought, had been the end of many men out here. Through a bullet, their own, someone else's, or just madness.

This land no longer lent itself to idle thought. It devoured such things. This was a raw land, and it demanded creation as tribute. He felt that there was a primalness about it, something that went beyond the civility they once shared. Part of it, he enjoyed, but that fact was unknowable to everybody; it had to remain that way. The desperation in these years had sharpened his body and mind, but forced him to lean into a deeper animal instinct. There had been nights he wondered: what if the land had gone back to what it was; could he, too? Could a man become a monster, and find his way back? But these thoughts, as all idle ones are, were meaningless.

The chirp of the proximity alarm stirred him. He had rigged it himself, months back, from the wreck of a truck. His cigarette had gone out with barely a puff. He relit it, picked up his gear, and headed out the stable door.

It wouldn't be long now, he thought. He tapped the last ash from his cigarette, taking a last, long final puff before outing it on the trampled barley at his feet.

Beyond the field, across columns of gas flares and smoke, he saw the riders approach, their horses kicking up clouds of dust. The ground out there was cracked, had been for a long time now. He raised his binoculars to get a better look. Seven hooded riders, whipping their mounts onward. Rifles hung across their backs, pistols hung from their sides. The fading sun caught in their goggles, giving them a hellish appearance from back here.

Demons indeed, he thought, just as the old reports said. They were coming to take what wasn't theirs; a terrible stampede across once-pristine fields. The air wasn't as easy to breathe as it had been before. He spat on the ground, snatching his rifle out from its carry-satchel on his back. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out some rounds and loaded up. Not enough, too much, just right. He hoisted the rifle up onto his shoulder and took aim.

It wouldn't be long now.

The moment they trained their weapons on him, Professor Drake knew he had only one option left, which he exercised as he leaped over the railing and out of the line of fire. He rolled with his landing to reduce the impact on his usually aching knees and joints. He popped to his feet faster than he’d expected to, just as Zack's followers swung their rifles towards the hall and let loose. Professor Drake scrambled for cover as bullets rained down around him. Somehow, he narrowly avoided being torn apart and dove into a spiraling staircase. He grimaced, realizing he had been nicked across the arm by a bullet, but he was thankful that it seemed to be a flesh wound. He’d tend to it once he got on the boat; the adrenaline pumping through his veins was substantial enough that the pain was a dull afterthought at the moment. 

Bullets sprayed into the staircase as he heard footsteps pounding down the stone as they continued their chase. He dashed up the staircase, finding himself back in what once served as the guest waiting area of the castle, but was now an observatory for tourists and civilians to enjoy the view. What seemed to be a dead end was, for him, the way he’d planned to exit. He snatched up his cane, its base made of rare Acajou wood that helped when his knee pain was flaring up more than usual. It was practically on fire now, giving him more trouble than the wound on his arm, in fact. He was thankful to have the relief of pressure the cane gave him as he hurried towards the window he’d smashed open an hour ago.

He almost didn’t see the figure shifting in the shadows until it swung its broad sword directly at Ezekiel’s head. He ducked out of the way just in time as he saw the glint of steel in the moonlight hitting the room. The one-handed, double-edged blade clinked off the stone wall, sending sparks flying. Its wielder, who was dressed in lightweight armor that made him resemble a modern-day knight, swung the sword with a grace and skill that Professor Ezekiel would have marveled at if the man wasn’t trying to murder him. Drake jumped backward just in time as the angry knight assassin swung the sword in a wide arc, attempting to disembowel him.

Ezekiel realized that his ride must have been waiting for him, and he didn’t have any further essential time to waste. More importantly, this wasn’t exactly a fight he was sure he could win, and it was certainly one he couldn’t give the rest of Zack’s men the precious moments to pin him down here. As the angry, bloodlust-driven knight, whom Ezekiel recognized as a notable assassin for hire across Europe, stalked towards him, he made a rash decision he hoped would pay off. But first, he needed to keep his attacker off balance. He yanked the blade out of the wooden sheath, revealing the weapon he had hidden inside his cane. He knew it was no match for the templar sword that his opponent was wielding with such deft skill, but along with the Acajou-crafted cane, he would be able to fend off the heavier weapon. At least, that and the second half of his plan were what he was wagering his life on.

“You’ve got quite the reputation. I wouldn’t have expected you to fall in line with a man like that.”

Ezekiel tossed the backhanded compliment as the swordsmen tried to close the gap between them. He was bigger than Ezekiel by an inch or two and had at least fifteen pounds on him. That was saying quite a bit, considering Professor Drake’s extensive athletic background. Given that he had the size advantage and a stronger blade, he was trying to get in closer to press his advantage. Ezekiel could hear voices and footsteps approaching. Zack’s acolytes would be in the entrance courtyard soon enough.

“He was able to pay my fee, plus a bonus if I take your head,” The swordsmen replied with a menacing rumble. “The only thing I fall in line behind is the balance in my account.”

Professor Drake sighed, almost condescendingly. “And that’s the problem with you, and the rest of the world, I’m afraid. But unfortunately, not one I can solve today. One step at a time, I suppose.”

The swordsman sneered. Sick of Professor Drake’s snide preening, he lunged from his stance, striking with the intent to cleave him in two. Drake stepped aside just in time, then rolled away to create distance between himself and the hired assassin, who was merely extra muscle on Zack's expedition. That drew an inner sigh of relief from Ezekiel as he popped to one knee and glanced behind him, listening to the swordsman curse in frustration at his missed strike.

Footsteps thundered through the entrance corridor, and Ezekiel knew it was time to make himself scarce. He was only thankful that the terrifying knight cosplayer who had attacked him was not a devout member of Zack’s cult. They wielded enough power, and Drake didn’t want to see them add to their ranks. 

“You fight like a coward!” The swordsman snarled.

“I’m a doctor, sir. Not a warrior,” Professor Drake replied matter-of-factly as he sprinted across the room and dove through the broken window while sheathing his blade inside his cane.

As he fell towards the ground, he pressed a button on the cane’s shaft, firing a hook from the handle. The hook cinched onto the window pane, allowing Ezekiel to lower himself without harm. He retracted the hook and immediately hauled it across the grounds. By the time he made it to the ATV he had hidden behind some shrubbery just twenty feet from the castle, he could already hear the sounds of engines gunning to life. He hopped on the four-wheeler and tore off across the damp grass. By the time he could see the waters of the Wash as he flew over a hill, Zack and his so-called family were hot on his trail inside a trio of farm trucks. Bullets ripped through the air and across the grass near him. He thrust the handlebars as far back as they would go, stretching the ATV's engine to its absolute limit.

TO BE CONTINUED

ROOM 410

A Play in Four Scenes

---

SCENE ONE

Sunday — Morning — Winter

University Courtyard, Outside the Main Entrance

Cold winter air. Students enter the university through the main entrance. The sounds of footsteps, movement, and fragments of conversation fill the courtyard.

RAYAN and his MOTHER enter. His mother is carrying Rayan's bag. Rayan keeps looking around—at the other students, at the entrance, anywhere but at her.

RAYAN:

Mom... I'm not a kid anymore. Why did you come all the way here?

MOTHER:

Just go inside, son.

RAYAN:

No, seriously. Why did you come?

MOTHER:

Because I wanted to. Is that a crime?

RAYAN:

Mom, at least walk a little farther away from me.

MOTHER:

Farther away?

RAYAN:

Yeah.

MOTHER:

Why?

RAYAN:

This is a university. Nobody comes here with their mom.

His mother looks around. A few students pass by. No one is looking at them.

MOTHER:

Okay. I came. So what?

RAYAN:

Everyone's looking.

MOTHER:

Who's looking?

RAYAN:

I don't know... but they are.

MOTHER:

You're so picky.

Rayan sighs.

MOTHER:

I wish you cared as much about doing the right thing as you do about what people think.

RAYAN:

Here we go again.

MOTHER:

I started it?

RAYAN:

Yeah, Mom. You've been telling me what to do since this morning.

MOTHER:

Because if I don't tell you, you won't do anything yourself.

RAYAN:

I told you from the beginning. I'm not interested in English literature.

MOTHER:

Oh, really? Great!

She smiles sarcastically.

MOTHER:

My son isn't interested in literature! You should've told me sooner.

RAYAN:

Are you making fun of me?

MOTHER:

No, not at all...

A beat.

MOTHER:

Of course I am.

RAYAN:

You're hilarious.

MOTHER:

You studied science in high school. For three years, I enrolled you in every institute you could think of.

RAYAN:

Mom...

MOTHER:

No. Let me finish. Three years! Every time you said you needed a class, we paid for it. Every time you said you needed a test-prep course, you went. Every time you said you needed a certain book, we bought it.

RAYAN:

I never said—

MOTHER:

And you didn't get accepted anywhere.

Rayan falls silent.

MOTHER:

In the end, we brought you here because this university would accept you as a tuition-paying student.

RAYAN:

Here we go again...

MOTHER:

What? I'm telling you the truth.

RAYAN:

I bet you're going to say my cousin got into medical school.

MOTHER:

Did I mention your cousin?

RAYAN’:

You don't have to. I know what you're going to say.

MOTHER:

You didn't get into medical school. Fine.

RAYAN:

So?

MOTHER:

At least this lousy university wouldn't even let you enroll in law without an entrance exam because your grades were too low.

RAYAN’:

I don't want law.

MOTHER:

Then what do you want?

RAYAN:

I told you. I don't want any of this.

MOTHER:

Then what do you want?

Rayan pauses.

RAYAN:

Art.

His mother looks at him in surprise.

MOTHER:

Art?

RAYAN:

Yeah. Art.

MOTHER:

Here we go again.

RAYAN:

Why is everything I like a joke to you?

MOTHER:

I never said it was a joke.

RAYAN:

Then why are you looking at me like that?

MOTHER:

Because I'm thinking about your future.

RAYAN:

I'm thinking about my future too.

Rayan takes out his phone.

RAYAN:

Look. I have tons of great drawings on my phone.

MOTHER:

Rayan, this isn't the time.

RAYAN:

A guy from Turkey even called me.

MOTHER:

So?

RAYAN:

He said he wanted to buy one of my paintings.

MOTHER:

For how much?

RAYAN:

Fifty dollars.

His mother remains silent for a few moments.

MOTHER:

Fifty dollars?

RAYAN:

Yeah.

MOTHER:

Rayan, after I've spent enough money on your entrance exams and your English literature enrollment to buy several houses, you're telling me about fifty dollars?

RAYAN’:

I have to start somewhere.

MOTHER:

With fifty dollars?

RAYAN:

Yeah. With fifty dollars.

MOTHER:

Do you even know how expensive life is?

RAYAN:

I know.

MOTHER:

You don't.

RAYAN:

You never let me find out.

His mother falls silent for a moment.

MOTHER:

I just want you to have a good future.

RAYAN’:

But I don't want this future.

MOTHER:

Then what do you want?

RAYAN’:

I want to choose for myself. Like that bird in the sky. It goes wherever it wants.

MOTHER:

You still don't know what you want.

RAYAN:

I know what I don't want.

MOTHER:

What?

RAYAN:

This.

He points toward the university building.

RAYAN:

This major. These classes. This university. I don't want any of it.

MOTHER :

Then why did you come?

Rayan doesn't answer.

MOTHER:

Why did you come, Rayan?

RAYAN’:

Because you wanted me to.

MOTHER:

I wanted it for you.

RAYAN’:

But I didn't want it.

A beat.

RAYAN:

Mom, I hate English literature. I hate the professors. I hate the whole class. Do you understand?

His mother says nothing.

RAYAN:

I hate it.

MOTHER:

So what do you want me to do?

RAYAN:

Nothing.

MOTHER:

Then what do you want from me?

RAYAN:

Just listen to me. Just once.

His mother looks at him.

Several seconds of silence.

MOTHER:

Go inside.

RAYAN:

Mom...

MOTHER:

I said go inside.

RAYAN:

I really don't want this major.

MOTHER:

Shut up and go inside. I'm done with you.

Rayan stares at his mother for a few moments.

Then he walks toward the university building.

After a few steps, he turns around.

His mother is still standing there.

Rayan says nothing.

Then he enters the building.

His mother looks at the entrance.

Then she walks over to one of the benches and sits down.

She takes out his phone.

A few moments later, she looks toward the entrance again.

MOTHER:

(quietly, to herself)

It'll work out eventually...

A beat.

MOTHER:

He's just a kid... He doesn't understand.

The lights fade.

END OF SCENE ONE

---

SCENE TWO

Room 410 — Morning

The sound of the classroom door opening and closing. Several students are talking.

Rayan enters the classroom and puts his bag on a chair.

RAYAN’:

Hey.

ARMAN:

Well, well! Look who it is! Rayan!

RAYAN:

I really don't feel like talking. Move over.

ARMAN:

Heh... How does it feel knowing we're in the same class again this semester?

Rayan doesn't answer.

ARMAN:

Forget that. I wanted to see that painting you were working on.

RAYAN:

Which one?

ARMAN:

The painter... Van Gogh. What was that painting called? The one with the screaming guy?

RAYAN:

The Scream isn't by Van Gogh.

ARMAN:

Whatever. The one you were drawing in class yesterday.

RAYAN:

It's in my book.

ARMAN:

I saw the photo you took. Let me see it.

RAYAN:

My phone isn't here right now.

Arman looks at him, laughing.

ARMAN:

Ohhh! Did your mom take your phone again, Mr. Rayan?

Rayan lowers his head.

RAYAN:

Enough.

SARA:

Seriously? Can a mother really take away a twenty-one-year-old university student's phone?

ARMAN:

Sara, see? He's your friend, after all.

SARA:

No. Rayan is not my boyfriend.

A brief pause.

SARA:

I'd rather ride around in a Mercedes than walk around with Rayan.

Arman laughs.

Rayan gives a brief smile.

RAYAN:

But Sara, I love you.

Sara says nothing.

RAYAN:

Arman doesn't love you. He has several other girlfriends. You know that.

ARMAN:

Oh, come on. Why am I in the middle of this?

SARA:

Shut up, Rayan.

Then, to Arman:

SARA:

Arman, come sit next to me. Third row.

She points to the chair beside her.

SARA:

Rayan is sitting by the window. It's cold there. Come sit here. You'll catch a cold.

ARMAN:

Okay, honey.

Arman moves to the seat beside Sara.

Rayan is left alone by the window.

He stares outside for a few moments.

The sound of the classroom gradually fades into the background.

RAYAN:

I wish I had listened to my mom...

A beat.

RAYAN:

I wish I'd gotten into medical school.

He continues looking outside.

RAYAN:

Or at least studied harder.

A beat.

RAYAN:

At least I could've become a lawyer.

The sound of the students continues faintly in the background.

Rayan sees a bird in the sky.

RAYAN:

Or at least... I wish I were that bird.

A beat.

RAYAN:

I wish I could just fly like that.

The classroom door opens.

The PROFESSOR enters.

PROFESSOR:

Good morning, everyone.

The chatter dies down.

PROFESSOR:

I'm your professor for this course, and as you know, the first book we're going to study is Shakespearean literature.

Several students open their notebooks.

PROFESSOR:

You're probably familiar with works like Hamlet, Macbeth, and The Merchant of Venice.

The professor places the book on the desk.

PROFESSOR:

We'll be reading more of these works. For each one, you'll prepare a summary in English and present it to the class.

The professor notices Rayan.

PROFESSOR:

The young man sitting by the window...

A pause.

PROFESSOR:

What's his name?

ARMIN:

Rayan, sir.

PROFESSOR:

Mr. Rayan?

Rayan doesn't react.

PROFESSOR:

Mr. Rayan, are you paying attention?

A beat.

PROFESSOR:

I'm talking to you.

Rayan slowly turns around.

RAYAN:

Yes, sir.

PROFESSOR:

Then please pay attention to the class.

Rayan turns back toward the window.

RAYAN:

I wish I were a bird...

The professor pauses.

RAYAN:

I wish I were a king like Macbeth.

The classroom falls quiet.

RAYAN:

I'd give orders.

A beat.

RAYAN:

I wish I were Hamlet... the prince. I'd be the king's son.

His eyes fall on the professor's book.

RAYAN:

Or I wish I were the Merchant of Venice...

A beat.

RAYAN:

Someone who always had a choice.

The professor looks at him with frustration.

RAYAN:

But I'm a failure.

Silence fills the classroom.

RAYAN:

My lover didn't stay with me...

He looks at Sara.

RAYAN:

My mother was never proud of me.

A beat.

RAYAN:

I couldn't even become a painter.

Sara looks at him in surprise.

PROFESSOR:

Mr. Rayan, this is a class.

A beat.

PROFESSOR :

If you want to disrupt the class, please leave.

Rayan slowly stands up.

The classroom falls completely silent.

RAYAN:

I'm sorry, Professor...

A beat.

RAYAN:

For not being a good student.

He looks at Sara.

RAYAN:

I'm sorry, Sara...

A beat.

RAYAN:

For not being a good lover.

He looks toward the window.

RAYAN:

I'm sorry, Mom...

A long pause.

RAYAN:

For not being a good son.

Silence.

Rayan takes a deep breath.

RAYAN:

I'm sorry... to myself.

A beat.

RAYAN:

For not becoming a famous painter like Van Gogh.

The sound of wind comes from outside.

Rayan looks toward the window.

RAYAN:

But...

A beat.

RAYAN:

I can be a bird.

A beat.

RAYAN:

Free and unrestrained.

Suddenly, a tremendous sound comes from outside.

All the students jump.

The professor instinctively turns toward the window.

Sara freezes.

Arman stands up.

ARMAN:

What happened?!

The lights go out.

BLACKOUT.

END OF SCENE TWO

---

SCENE THREE

University Grounds — A Few Minutes Later

A commotion has spread across the university courtyard.

Several students stand at a distance from the scene. Some watch anxiously. Others hold their phones.

The body has been covered. A UNIVERSITY OFFICIAL stands nearby, speaking quietly into a phone.

ELINA stands apart from the others, arms wrapped around herself. She is a psychology student. She was crossing the courtyard when it happened. She saw everything.

ARMAN and SARA are nearby. The PROFESSOR arrives, slightly out of breath. He stops when he sees the covered body.

He doesn't move closer.

PROFESSOR :

(quietly)

Was it...?

ARMAN:

(without looking at him)

Yes.

A long pause. The professor closes his eyes for a moment.

PROFESSOR:

Did anyone call his family?

OFFICIAL :

(lowering his phone)

We're trying. No answer yet.

PROFESSOR :

Keep trying.

The official nods and steps away.

Silence. The wind moves through the courtyard.

SARA:

(suddenly, to no one)

I was going to take a picture.

Everyone looks at her.

SARA:

(voice cracking)

I had my phone out. I was going to post it. I don't know why.

ARMAN:

Sara—

SARA:

No. Don't.

A beat.

SARA:

He sat by the window because of me. I told him to. I said he'd catch a cold.

ARMAN:

That's not—

SARA:

Then what is it, Arman? Tell me what it is.

Arman doesn't answer.

ELINA turns away from them. She looks toward the bench where Rayan's mother had been sitting. It's empty now.

ELINA:

Where is she?

ARMAN:

Who?

ELINA:

His mother. She was here. I saw her.

The professor looks toward the bench.

PROFESSOR:

She was here?

ELINA:

She was sitting there. Before. When we came out.

A pause.

ELINA:

She must have seen.

No one speaks.

The OFFICIAL returns, phone still in hand.

OFFICIAL:

Still no answer.

PROFESSOR:

Try again.

OFFICIAL :

Doctor, I've called four times.

PROFESSOR :

(sharply)

Then call a fifth time. She needs to know.

The official hesitates, then dials again.

The phone rings. Once. Twice.

From somewhere nearby, a phone rings.

Everyone freezes.

The ringtone is faint but unmistakable. It's coming from the direction of the bench.

Elina takes a step toward it.

ELINA:

Wait...

She stops.

On the ground, a few meters from the bench, lies a woman's handbag. A phone screen glows inside it.

The official lowers his phone. The ringing stops.

OFFICIAL:

(barely audible)

Oh God.

Elina walks slowly toward the handbag. She doesn't touch it. She just looks.

Then she turns.

A few meters farther, behind a low hedge, RAYAN'S MOTHER is sitting on the ground. Her back against the wall. Her eyes open but seeing nothing. She isn't crying. She isn't moving.

She is holding something in her hands. A piece of paper. A drawing.

Elina stops.

ELINA:

(quietly)

Ma'am...?

The mother doesn't respond.

The professor approaches slowly. He sees the drawing in her hands.

PROFESSOR :

(softly)

Mrs...?

The mother looks up. Her face is empty.

MOTHER:

He said he wanted to be a bird.

A beat.

MOTHER:

I told him to go inside.

She looks down at the drawing.

MOTHER:

I told him to shut up.

Silence.

The professor kneels beside her. He doesn't touch her. He just stays there.

Arman turns away. He walks a few steps, then stops. He doesn't know where to go.

Sara is still holding her phone. She looks at it, then slowly puts it in her pocket.

The OFFICIAL stands frozen, phone still in his hand.

Elina looks at the mother. Then at the professor. Then at the empty bench.

ELINA:

(to herself)

He was just... here.

A beat.

ELINA:

This morning. He was just here.

The mother speaks again. Quietly. To no one.

MOTHER:

I bought him that phone.

A beat.

MOTHER:

He wanted to show me his drawings. I didn't look.

She folds the paper carefully. Then unfolds it. Then folds it again.

MOTHER:

I didn't look.

The professor finally speaks.

PROFESSOR:

(gently)

Mrs... we should get you inside.

The mother doesn't respond.

PROFESSOR :

Can you stand?

She looks at him. For a moment, something flickers in her eyes. Then it's gone.

MOTHER:

He hated English literature.

A beat.

MOTHER:

I knew that. I knew.

She looks toward the building.

MOTHER:

I just didn't want to hear it.

The lights begin to fade. But before they go out completely, the mother's voice is heard one last time.

MOTHER:

(whisper)

He was my son.

A beat.

MOTHER:

What else was I supposed to do?

BLACKOUT.

END OF SCENE THREE

---

SCENE FOUR

Room 410 — The Next Day — Morning

Psychology Class

The same room. The same windows. The same chairs.

But everything is different.

The psychology classroom is almost full. The atmosphere is heavy. Several students speak quietly to one another.

The chair by the window—Rayan's chair—is empty.

No one sits there. No one even looks at it directly.

ELINA sits in the second row. She was not in Rayan's class. She only saw what happened in the courtyard yesterday. But she cannot forget.

The window is closed. Someone has placed a small piece of tape over a crack in the glass. It looks recent.

The classroom door opens.

The PSYCHOLOGY PROFESSOR enters.

He puts his bag on the desk.

A few moments of silence.

PROFESSOR :

Before we start...

He looks around the room. His eyes stop at the empty chair by the window.

PROFESSOR :

Does anyone want to say anything?

Silence.

PROFESSOR :

About yesterday.

No one speaks. A few students look down.

PROFESSOR:

Okay.

A beat.

PROFESSOR :

Then let me ask you something.

He walks to the board.

PROFESSOR:

Why do you think someone reaches a point where life becomes unbearable?

A student shrugs.

STUDENT:

I don't know.

PROFESSOR :

That's an honest answer.

He writes on the board:

ONE CAUSE = ?

PROFESSOR:

When something like this happens, we want one answer. One person to blame.

PROFESSOR:

"His mother pushed him too hard."

A beat.

PROFESSOR :

"His classmate humiliated him."

A beat.

PROFESSOR :

"The university didn't care."

He puts the marker down.

PROFESSOR:

But life is rarely that simple. Is it?

Elina looks up.

ELINA:

So what is it then?

PROFESSOR :

Usually? A combination.

He writes on the board:

HOPELESSNESS

PROFESSOR :

Hopelessness. Not just sadness.

A student frowns.

STUDENT:

What's the difference?

PROFESSOR:

Sadness is... a feeling. You can be sad and still think tomorrow might be better.

He writes:

FUTURE = CLOSED

PROFESSOR :

Hopelessness is when the future closes. When you can't see a way out.

PROFESSOR :

"Nothing will change."

PROFESSOR:

"Whatever I do, it won't matter."

Another student speaks.

STUDENT:

But there is a way out. Most of the time.

PROFESSOR:

Yes. But in that moment, the person can't see it.

He writes on the board:

PERCEIVED BURDENSOMENESS

PROFESSOR :

And sometimes... a person starts to believe they're a burden.

PROFESSOR:

"I'm a problem for my family."

PROFESSOR:

"Everyone would be better off without me."

STUDENT:

But that's not true.

PROFESSOR :

Maybe not. But it feels true.

A beat.

PROFESSOR :

The key word is "perceived."

He writes:

THWARTED BELONGINGNESS

PROFESSOR :

And then there's this. Loneliness. Rejection. Feeling like you don't belong anywhere.

STUDENT:

That's from Thomas Joiner, right?

PROFESSOR:

Yes. But remember—

He taps the board.

PROFESSOR :

No theory can explain a person in a few words.

He looks at the empty chair by the window.

PROFESSOR:

So. What do we actually know about Rayan?

STUDENT:

He hated his major.

ANOTHER STUDENT:

He fought with his mother.

STUDENT:

A girl in his class embarrassed him.

PROFESSOR:

Those are things we saw. Facts.

He writes:

FACTS ≠ INTERPRETATION

PROFESSOR:

But if we say "He was depressed"—

PROFESSOR :

That's an interpretation.

PROFESSOR :

If we say "His mother caused it"—

PROFESSOR:

That's a conclusion.

PROFESSOR :

We don't have enough information.

Elina speaks again. Quietly.

ELINA:

Then how would we ever know?

PROFESSOR:

Through assessment.

He writes on the board:

ASSESSMENT

PROFESSOR :

We'd need to look at everything. Family. Relationships. Mental state. Stressors. Belonging. Hopelessness.

A beat.

PROFESSOR:

And if we were worried? We'd ask directly.

STUDENT:

Directly?

PROFESSOR:

"Have you had thoughts of suicide?"

The room goes silent.

PROFESSOR:

Asking doesn't cause it. Not asking might miss it.

He walks slowly around the classroom.

PROFESSOR :

And one more thing.

PROFESSOR : After something like this... it doesn't end.

 

PROFESSOR:

Friends. Family. Professors. Classmates. Everyone is affected.

 

PROFESSOR :

Don't share images. Don't share details.

 

PROFESSOR :

Don't make it look like a solution. Or something heroic.

 

Silence.

 

Elina looks at the empty chair by the window.

 

ELINA:

Professor...

 

PROFESSOR:

Yes?

 

ELINA:

I think... we missed a lot.

 

The professor looks at her.

 

PROFESSOR:

Maybe.

 

A beat.

 

PROFESSOR :

But we don't know what would have changed anything.

 

He turns back to the board.

 

PROFESSOR :

What we can ask is this.

 

A pause.

 

PROFESSOR :

Where were the chances? To notice. To help. To intervene.

 

He puts the marker down.

 

He looks at the empty chair for a long moment.

 

Then he writes on the board:

 

WHO WAS RAYAN BEFORE ROOM 410?

 

The classroom is completely silent.

 

Elina stares at the words.

 

PROFESSOR :

If we want to understand someone... we can't just look at their last day.

 

A beat.

 

PROFESSOR :

We have to see who they were before.

 

The lights slowly fade.

 

The empty chair by the window. The closed window. The tape on the glass.

 

And on the board, the sentence remains:

 

"WHO WAS RAYAN BEFORE ROOM 410?"

 

BLACKOUT.

 

END OF SCENE FOUR

 

END OF PLAY

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elaheh Shiralizadeh is a writer and student with an academic background in theatre, psychology, and computer science. She studied theatre for three years, developing a strong interest in storytelling, character development, and human behavior. She is currently pursuing her studies in Psychology while also studying Computer Science.

Her work explores human behavior, psychological complexity, identity, and the relationship between people and the world around them.

ROOM 410 reflects her interest in combining storytelling with psychological themes and questions about human behavi

Act 2 in the link https://www.reddit.com/r/libraryofshadows/s/azYEsfAvq9

Node 11: Phantasm

Burning sky, amber light, well past noon but not yet night  

Swings hang loose in faded sight, a vacant court devoid of flight

No one running, no one leaping, a place of play with secrets sleeping

Darkness crawls like ink that's seeping, echoes caught in circles keeping  

Joy is fleeting, pain repeating, cycles hold until the reaping

Who draws these lines that no one's needing, then bends them back to name the cost

When all is gone, who pays that cost  

What lingers here, and what is lost

A figure knelt beneath the tree, her shape is blurred, too soft to see  

Flowers placed in memory, tears that fall in misery 

The air grows thick, a breath half‑caught

No footsteps here, just someone weeping, branches bowed and sadness creeping

Shadows stretch, the light receding, echoes buried, safe and sleeping

Above, a laugh begins its leaping; coins fall to earth, the world forgot

They strike the ground in clattering thought  

Then twist to chains the moment caught

The tree leans in with quiet might, its hollow pulsing faint with light  

Its bark expands, then folds in tight, a breathing shape that isn’t right

A hush descends, world overwrought

Pale fingers curl from darkness creeping, soft as moth wings faint and fleeting

Their touch is cold, their motion sweeping, reaching out as if for keeping

Something slides from umbra shrieking, wrapped in warmth the world forgot

A bundled weight my mother wrought

Its heartbeat faded into not

I lift the form, it burns with light, a fragile glow in failing sight  

Its warmth grows thin, its edges slight, its outline trembles into flight

The world tilts once, a wound distraught

The blanket stirs with life so fleeting, shifting hues through fabric bleeding

A pulse beneath the stitching leaping, then folding inward, sinking, sleeping

It swallows what my arms were keeping, leaving cloth and nothing caught

The hollow weight of life's that's not

Blood that's spilled but not forgot

Node 12: Inferno 

“Out of bed, you sleepy head.”

“Mom?”

“No, it’s Pamela Anderson and I’m heeeere toooo saaaave yooooooooou,” she says, breaking into a dramatic, slow-motion jog from the doorway to my bed.

“Come on, I made Eggos and scrambled eggs for breakfast.” Her voice is light and joyful.

“I’m awake, I’m awake.” Something’s up. I haven’t seen her this cheery in ages.

After she leaves, I roll out of bed to get dressed.

When I meet her in the dining room, she’s already pouring me a tall glass of Sunny‑D. There’s a plate waiting for me: a leaning stack of waffles surrounded by a wreath of bright yellow eggs.

“Thanks, Mom!” Her energy is infectious. It’s that smile, a shimmering crescent of weightless light.

I sit down and begin eating immediately. Melted butter and maple syrup pooled to the brim of every square divot. The eggs, fluffy and warm. Each bite floods my brain with a piercing rush of tender dopamine.

“I have a surprise for you.” Her smile glows brighter still.

I nod, my mouth stuffed, a small dribble of syrup escaping my lips to rest on my chin.

“Mini‑golf! Go‑karts! And a huge arcade! We got it all here at-”

“We’re going to Castle Cascade!” A soft yellow curd of egg escapes with my words.

She laughs: a chorus of bells and angels.

“Finish eating first,” she says, wiping my chin with her thumb like I’m younger than I am.  

I don’t mind. Not today.

I shovel the last few bites down, food turning sticky at the corners of my mouth. The final mouthful almost catches in my throat. I swallow hard and polish off my O‑Jay with a triumphant gulp. 

By the time I stand, she’s grabbing her keys.

“Let’s get going,” she says.

“What about the dishes?”

“We’ll wash them when we get home. Now let’s go!”

Outside, the air is cool and sharp.  

She rolls the window down as soon as we’re on the interstate.

The wind rushes in, loud and clean. It smells like wet grass and morning sun. I stick my hand out and let the air carve around it, lifting and dipping, lifting and dipping.

Meanwhile, mom's tapping the steering wheel and humming to the rhythm of the radio. Her smile keeps flickering in the corner of my vision, gentle and bright.

We crest the last hill, a sign comes into view: colorful paint, flags fluttering, a cartoon dragon frozen mid‑wink.

CASTLE CASCADE — NEXT EXIT

My stomach flips, sharp and electric as we turn into the parking lot. The whole place looks like something straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon. A faux-stone facade, the plywood turrets, and its mural of brave knights celebrating with a jovial dragon all culminating in dream-like wonder. 

She finds a spot near the front. We get out. The air's warmer here, a faint hum leaking through the walls. Mom smooths her hair in the window’s reflection. She’s still smiling, that bright, weightless smile that carried us all the way here.

We start toward the entrance.

And then I see him.

Lock's standing just outside the double doors smoking a cigarette. The morning light reflecting on his glasses, turning them into two blank coins. He lifts a hand in a small, casual wave.

Mom stops.  

Just a half‑step, but I feel it.  

A tiny stutter in her joy.

“Morning,” Lock calls out, like this is normal. Like this is fine.

My stomach drops, the electric flip turning cold.

Mom forces her smile back into place.

“Hey handsome.”

“Denise, you're looking beautiful as always.”

I look up at her. She doesn't look back, she can't. 

Lock continues, “Are you two ready to cut loose and have some fun?”

khff-mm

He stifles a cough. 

“We sure are.” Her smile now curdled, sweet on the surface but sour beneath. 

Lock throws his cigarette to the ground and grinds it into the dirt with the toe of his shoe.

“Let's have at it then, my treat.”

His treat.

The whole morning rearranges itself in my head: the playfulness, the Eggos, the rush to leave, the humming. All of it tilts, revealing the truth. 

This wasn’t her idea.

It was his.

And now we’re here.

At Castle Cascade.

With him.

“Hi ya sport.” he says, tussling my hair as I make my way through the entrance. 

The doors hiss open and the arcade hits me like a punch; a wall of sound and blinking light that swallows the air whole.

Beeping.  

Chiming.  

Explosions.  

Digital jingles looping over each other in a frantic, tangled mess. Lights strobing across the carpet in violent bursts of reds, greens, and blues. 

The smell is its own chaos: buttered popcorn, warm plastic, sickly sweet cleaning solution, and the everlasting tinge of stale vomit.

My chest tightens.  

My vision fuzzes at the edges.  

Everything is too close, too loud, too bright.

Lock steps in behind us, and the noise somehow gets louder.

I scan the room for exits, blind spots, choke points, anything I can use. The machines blur into a single pulsing organism.

Claw machines.  

Skee‑ball lanes.   

Air hockey tables.

Prize counter.

A maintenance door propped open with a paint can.  

A tangle of cords behind a broken racing game.  

A janitor’s cart abandoned near the restrooms.

Nothing clean.  

Nothing simple.  

Nothing I can use without drawing attention.

Lock’s hand lands on my shoulder: heavy, possessive.

“Quite the place, huh?” he says, leaning down close enough for me to smell his putrid breath. Then he hands me a paper cup half filled with arcade tokens. “Here ya go champ, this should keep you busy for a while.”

The lights flare again, a stuttering neon Inferno causing my eyes water.

I swallow hard.  

My brain buzzing, overloaded, sparking in every direction. If only I had the eye drops.

I need a plan..  

I need space.  

I need him to stop touching me.

But the arcade keeps screaming, drowning out every thought except one:

I'm going to kill Lock.

Focus

Focus

Focus

As I walk by the snack bar, I take note of the menu, then make my way to the restroom. 

WORLD DRYER

PUSH BUTTON

RUB HANDS LIGHTLY UNDER WARM AIR

DRY HANDS THOROUGHLY

Tkk-VRRRRRRRRRRRRR

One-thirty, maybe one-forty degrees. Might take a couple blasts. That's fine. 

I have a plan now. Sixty-two tickets, that's what I need. That's step one. 

Skee-Ball is gonna be my best bet. I choose a lane, and insert one of my tokens. The balls clatter into the chute with a clumsy click-clack. I lift the first one and judge its heft. This lane leans a hair to the left; I’ll have to aim just right of center. The forty‑point ring is the sweet spot. It's no larger than the other high value rings, but still within the large ten point ring. If I can land three in a row, I’ll trigger the bonus. It's gonna take a few games to hit sixty‑two tickets. Good thing Lock made sure to give me enough tokens to keep me “busy” while he tries to dig his nicotine stained claws into my mother. 

Thm, shhhhh-tok

Ten points. Adjust. Try again.

Thm, shhhhh-tok

Twenty this time, just a little harder on the next throw.

Thm, shhhh-tok

It bounces off the rim of the forty, and rolls into the ten point hole. Six balls to go.

Thm, shhh-tok

Forty points. I take note of the action, and do my best to commit it to muscle memory. 

I end my first game with only one hundred and sixty points. The machine dispenses a single ticket. 

My second game isn't much better. I end up with two hundred and twenty points: one ticket again.

It's not until my fifth game that I start to hit my stride. The drift makes sense now. The forty‑point shot lands more often than it doesn’t.

Game five: 310 points. Three tickets.  

Game six: 340 points. Four tickets.  

Game seven: A near‑jackpot: 390. but still four tickets.  

As my total climbs, I stop counting the points and start counting the tickets.

Game eight: Jackpot! Ten tickets.  

Game nine: Another solid run. Four more.

The pile grows in my hand, warm and papery.

Fifty‑seven tickets.

One more game.

I feed in the token.  

Roll.  

Adjust.  

Roll again.

thm‑shhh‑tok  

thm‑shhh‑tok  

thm‑shhh‑TOK

Three clean forties in a row. Bonus triggered.

The machine spits out five tickets, curling into my palm like they’ve been waiting for me.

Sixty‑two.

Enough.

I make my way to the prize counter and claim what I'm here for: one cheap plastic green squirt-gun and a handful of pixie sticks. Step two complete.

When I find my mom again, Lock’s got his arm draped over her shoulder.

“Hey, Mom. I’m getting hungry.”  

She steps forward, quick enough that Lock’s arm drops back to his side.

“Sure thing, sweetheart. Let’s get some food.”  

We head toward the food court. Lock follows.

“What do ya want, champ?” Lock asks.

“I’ll take a corndog and a basket of fries.”

“Oh, fries sound good. I’ll take some too,” Mom says. She never passes up a chance at fries.

We get our food and take it to the outdoor seating area. Step three complete. From here we can see the mini‑golf course and the go‑karts. The smell of exhaust and cigarette smoke drifts through the air. Smokers are predictable. Lock’s going to spark up the second we’re done eating.

When we sit, Lock pulls his chair closer than he needs to.

“These fries are pretty good,” he says, reaching into Mom’s basket without asking.  

She laughs, more of a curiosity than a real laugh: the kind I imagine she uses at work. 

Lock talks with his mouth full. Mom nods along. I'm not really listening, I can't.

After what seems like an eternity, we finish. I quickly stand and volunteer to take everyone’s trash. I’m not even through the door before Lock’s already smoking. Inside, I pocket the greasy fry‑basket liners and the corndog stick, then head to the restroom.

Time for step four.  

I fill my squirt gun at the sink and add the pixie‑stick dust. A quick shake dissolves the sugar. I listen, someone’s in a stall. I wait it out in an empty one. Before long, they leave without even washing their hands.

I step out and use the corndog stick to shove the wadded‑up fry liners into the hand‑dryer exhaust vent.

When I return, Lock’s still smoking. Time for the final step. I draw my weapon and fire.

“What the fuck you little shit!” Lock jerks back as the sugary water splashes across his cigarette and soaks into his cheap polyester dress shirt. Mom shoots me a look, sharp enough to sting.

“Sorry, heh-heh” Lock says, forcing a laugh. “It’s fine. Boys will be boys, right? I probably would’ve done the same thing at his age. Not too many chances to take a shot at your principle, am I right” He stands, brushing at his shirt. “I’m gonna take care of this real quick. Don’t you two have too much fun without me.”

He heads toward the restroom.

After a long pause, my mother finally speaks.

“You’ve been awfully quiet,” she says.

I don’t answer.

“It’s David, isn’t it? I know you two don’t get along, but he told me about the trouble you’ve been having in school and he’s just trying to help.”

“How?” I ask.

“It’s not your grades. David says you’re having some trouble socially.”

“Since when are we calling him David?”

“He’s trying. In his own way he’s-”

“OH MY GOD!”  

“FIRE!”  

“SOMEONE HELP HIM!”

The shouts explode from inside.

We rush in. Lock's sprawled just outside the restroom door, his body twitching, smoke rising. His polyester shirt has fused to the skin of his chest: a glossy, blackened shell. Face swollen, eyebrows missing, skin blistered and split. Soot coating his nose and mouth.

He fights for every breath: short, wet, desperate gasps.

huh-huh-huh-huh

Each one weaker, wetter. You can hear the fluid building in his lungs, a thick, drowning rattle. Pulmonary edema. His eyes are wide, bloodshot, rolling with animalistic panic.

Mom drops to her knees beside him, hands hovering uselessly. 

“David? David, stay with me.” Her voice cracks.

He drags in another breath.

huuuuh

Then it turns into a deep, gurgling choke. Pinkish foam bubbles at the corners of his mouth. His fingers claw weakly at his chest exposing patches of raw glistening flesh.

Mom is sobbing, stroking his charred hair, begging him not to leave her. 

“Please, God, not him too-”

I stand there frozen in the hallway, my heart pounding out of my chest. I want to smile so badly it hurts. But that's not who I am right now. I’m a scared boy, eyes wide, mouth trembling.

One last wet, rattling exhale tears out of him 

khrrrr-lllghhh

Long and bubbling.

Then nothing.

It’s done.

He’s done.

Node 13: Requiem

I wake to an unusual quiet. The house feels more still, more hollow than usual. The only sound as I make my way down the hall is my own footsteps. 

I find mom sitting alone at the table. She's trying to hide it, but she's crying. A low mournful sobbing. I pull up my usual chair, and for a time we share the silence.

“Why are you crying?” I finally ask.

She doesn't answer. 

“Mom?”

No response; instead, she gets up and walks to the kitchen. I hear the sink, the water rushing. A long, steady shhhhhhh telling me words are not welcome. Not here, not now. 

I get up and peek in. She's washing yesterday’s dishes. Her movement’s slow, automatic.

shhhhhh-plnk

shhhhhh-plnk

shhhhhh-plnk

Then,

shhhhhhh-plnk-KRAK.

shhhhh- KSHHHT!

shhh… CRACK.

KRAK-KSHHHT-KRISH-SKRAAASH-TCH‑KRAK‑KSHH-KLINK‑CRACK-SHKRAAASH-KRISH-KRAK.

“HRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! haa-ghh-haa-AAAH-ghk-haa, why, why-WHY! God Why?”

Shattered fragments of ceramic scatter across the floor like confetti. Blood dripping from her fingertips. Her back rising and falling with labored breath. I start to make my way towards her. I want to comfort her.

Before I can, she begins to speak. 

“Why can't you just let me be happy?” tears falling into the running sink.

“Mom?”

“You know what I mean.”

“He wasn't who you thoug-”

“No.”

“Mom, he was-”

“I SAID NO!”

I don't understand, she didn’t even like him. She knew he was using me to try to get to her. She had to know. 

“You're my son… I will always love you. But I'm afraid of you, he wasn’t. He wanted to help you. He wanted to help us.” 

“By labeling me special needs!?” I protest.

She turns off the sink, and looks into my eyes. 

“No one thinks you're stupid… Emotionally Disturbed. That's what the tests were for. You don't feel things the way people feel things, you just pretend, you copy.” her eyes are pleading.

There's a long pause. I don't know what I'm supposed to say. 

“When your sister died, all you cared about was that blanket. That's when I knew. I didn't want to believe. Your sister, MY BABY was gone, your father went to prison, and all you cared about was that stupid blanket! That's why I buried it with her. Because I knew.”

What did she know? 

“I… it was an accident.” The words fall out of my mouth. Why did I say that? 

She turns away from me.

“Mom, mom you have to believe me!” I'm pleading now.

“You're the accident.” Her words cut me.

I reach down and pick up a jagged shard from the floor. 

shff-klk

Her shoulders tense at the sound, but she doesn't move, doesn't turn, doesn't run.

I place the shard into the trash, and grab the broom. For the next hour or so we clean the kitchen together in silence. Time drags: thick and heavy.

…

“Tell me what happened.” She's asking for the truth. I'll tell her. 

“Dad was asleep with her-”

“Hannah…” Her voice cracks, eyes glossy.

“Yes. Hannah. Dad was asleep on the chair with Hannah. It was late, you were working. She was wrapped up in my blanket-my Muzzy. That’s what you called it, remember?”

I look at her, waiting for some small gesture of confirmation: a nod, a look, anything. It was my special blanket. She gave it to me. She told me it would keep me safe. Dad had no right to take it. 

Nothing.

“I wanted it back. I wanted it back, so I came into the living room to get it. It was stuck. When I pulled, Hannah fell onto the ground and started crying. I didn't even get it. Dad woke up and she wasn’t on him so… when he put the footrest down… Mom, you know what happened.”

“Why didn’t you say anything. Where were you.” It doesn’t sound like she's asking questions, but I answer just the same.

“You would’ve been mad at me, I went back into the hall so I could pretend I was coming from my room.”

“My husband’s in prison for negligent homicide. He blamed himself. I blamed him.”

“He took my Muzzy.” She had to understand. It was mine.

She turns away and walks down the hall. I follow. At the end hangs our family portrait. I watch as she lifts it from the wall. Her fingers tremble as she works the backing loose. The photo slides out, one edge sharply creased. She eases it open, slowly, carefully, smoothing the line with her thumb. She stares at the face she buried, the one she pretended wasn’t there. A soft, broken sound escapes her. She presses the picture to her chest, and takes a deep breath. Then kisses the man she once loved.

She carries the photo with her into the bathroom. I hear the medicine cabinet creak open. Bottles shift and rattle. She doesn’t know what she's looking for.

"Take eight of the small white round ones first," I say. "Then take six of the oval yellow ones with the line down the middle. After that, take four of the blue capsules. Then drink what's left of the cough syrup. There should be about half a bottle still after my last cold.”

“Will it hurt?” She asks.

"It will start slow. You’ll feel warm. Heavy. Like sinking into a deep bath. Your thoughts will get soft and sort of, far away. There won’t be any pain, but you're gonna feel really tired. Don't fight it. Everything will fade, softer and softer, until... You won’t feel afraid. You won’t feel anything bad at all.”

She emerges from the bathroom, bottles in hand, photo tucked in her blouse. We stand there motionless, looking at each other in the dim light. She smiles: not her bright smile, not the smile I love. Something smaller. Softer. Tired.

She gathers the bottles into one hand and reaches out with the other, running her fingers through my hair. Her hand is shaking. She leans down and kisses my forehead. Her lips are soft, but cold.

Then she walks past me to the nursery, Hannah's room. Her hand rests on the doorframe for a moment, maybe two. She steps inside, and closes the door behind her. 

I stand there for a while, listening. The house is quiet again. Still. Hollow. I think about knocking, but I don’t. I think about calling someone, but I don’t. Eventually I go to my room. I have school tomorrow.

Lacrimosa dies illa

Qua resurget ex favilla

Judicandus homo reus.

Huic ergo parce, Deus,

Pie Jesu Domine,

Dona eis requiem.

Amen.

Node 14: Communion 

“Riding down the highway, on bus forty four!”  

The chorus begins to swell, spreading like a bad cold.  

“Donna ripped a big one, and blew us out the door!” I join in.  

“The moon couldn’t take it. The sun couldn’t shine.” Time for the big finish.  

“All because of Donna’s big fat behind!”

How long will it take? How long until someone checks in on her?

Vrrrrrt - a backpack zipper.  

She’s scheduled at four.

Kifff - a sneeze.

They’ll call, no one will answer, but no one will worry. Not yet.

Tchk - the stiff plasticky slap of a nine‑pocket sheet being flipped.

It’ll get busy, the rush will hit, and whatever concern they had will sour into irritation, then resentment.

Keh‑HAA - exaggerated laughter. Maybe sarcasm.

I can get it back. Today, I’ll get it back.  

The tree will give it to me.  

My Muzzy.

Skeeee thmp - the squeal of worn breaks as we come to a stop.

“Everyone off!” Donna says, still hunched over the wheel. 

Devin seemed somewhat more himself today. When Mr. Hanley called out his name during roll-call, Devin responded with an armpit fart. Snickers spread through the classroom like ripples in a pond. It's good to have the old Devin back. 

The lesson today was something about the first Thanksgiving. Mr. Hanley droned on: Pilgrims, Wampanoag, gratitude, unity, peace, war. I hear him, but I’m not listening, not really. I’m thinking about the tree.  

When the bell finally does ring, it catches me off guard, stirring me from my thoughts. Everyone’s rushing out the door. Even Devin’s gone before I can stand.

When I step out onto the walkway, I'm already bracing myself. Any time Devin beats me outside he's hiding just around the corner waiting to jump out, or trip me. It’s our routine, his routine really.

I pause, glance left, then right.

He's not there. No “BOO!” No grin. No shove. No “Got you again!”

I find him leaning against the volleyball pole, chatting it up with Andrew. Andrew? Why is he hanging out with peanut boy? 

“Hey Devin.” I say with a painted grin.

“Hey.” His reply feels as forced as my smile. 

“What are you guys doing?” I ask. 

“We're just talking.”

“Bout what?”

They share a quick confirmatory glance: a silent calibration on whatever half-truth they’re about to give me. It doesn’t matter. 

“We uh, we were just talking ab-” I cut in before Andrew can finish his bullshit.

“What was up with your mom taking you out of class Thursday?” I ask Devin.

“Dan got into a crash. He died.” His face twist. “Why are you pretending you don't know? Everybody knows.” 

Shit.

“I know what everyone's been saying, but… Look, I'm sorry man. It just didn't feel right to ask if he was really dead.”

Andrew's still standing there, hovering; watching with the look of someone waiting for a stop sign to turn green. 

I'm just gonna ask.

“Sooooo, when did you two start hanging out?”

“He's my new brother!” Andrew says, beaming with exuberant pride. 

“Yeah, my mom, she's not doing so well. She had to go to the hospital so I'm staying with Ms. Chris now.” 

“Ms. Christner?” What's going on?

“She's our foster mom.” again, Andrew interjects. 

Before I can tell him to go fuck himself, there's a sound, something rhythmic, something tribal drifting across the blacktop.

“Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!”

All three of us rush over, hungry for whatever spectacle awaits. Two boys are squared off near the time‑out tree. I don’t know their names, but I recognize them from the bus. 

“I didn’t steal it,” the smaller boy says. He’s clutching a nine‑pocket sheet smeared with dark muck. “the tree, it was in the tree.”

The taller boy swings hard, driving his fist straight into the other’s gut.

UF- 

The smaller boy folds, air punched out of him in a single ugly sound. “Stop, please stop.” No pride, just raw fear. “Here, take it.” He holds out the sheet, hand shaking, body trembling, still trying to catch his breath.

The taller boy snatches it away, and shoves the smaller boy against the tree.

THOK!

His head hits the trunk with an odd sort of hollow sound, like kicking a traffic cone. For a moment he just stands there, stunned. Then the blood comes, an impossible amount of blood. It pours down his forehead, over his nose, soaking his shirt, dripping off his shoes and into the earth below. His body goes limp, and he falls to the ground.

“Oh fuck…”

The taller boy says.

“Dude get up, come on get up.”

The blood keeps coming.  

So much blood.  

The dirt around the boy’s head turns black and wet, soaking it up like a sponge.

Devin whispers, “Is he dead?”  

Andrew’s eyes are huge, his mouth hanging open.

Ms. Christner finally charges in with a cigarette still hanging from her lips. 

“Oh God.” She says as it drops from her mouth, hitting the blood and muck with a tiny hiss.

“dude… dude get up, get up, get up, get up.” The taller boy's muttering to himself.

The bell rings, a few kids run toward the office, yelling for help. Others bolt for classrooms, desperate just to get away.

Ms. Christner's pressing her hand against the boy’s head, trying to stop the bleeding. It doesn’t work. The blood keeps sliding between her fingers, dripping down her wrist, soaking the earth, feeding the roots.

“Stay with me,” she says, voice cracking. 

Everyone’s watching the boy, waiting for some sign of life, but I'm watching the tree.

The blood that hit the trunk is gone now, not smeared, not dripping, gone. Even the ground has gone from a crimson mud back to dried earth. 

Ms. Christner lifts the boy, cradling him against her chest. His arms hang like empty sleeves.

One of the other teachers yells at us.

“Everyone, back to class now!” 

What's left of the crowd breaks completely. Kids scatter in every direction, buzzing with panic, gossip already foaming in their mouths. Devin pulls Andrew away with the quiet care of an older brother.  

I stay.

Just for a moment.

The hollow is darker now. Deeper. Alive.

I feel something, a tug in my chest. 

My Muzzy.  

Closer now, yet further than ever. After this, they'll be watching the tree. The coins, the doll, now the cards, they'll be watching. 

Node 15: Abyss 

It's lunch now. As anticipated, Ms. Christner is guarding the tree. 

From what I understand some of the other teachers tried to find out if there was anything else hiding in it. There was nothing. Maybe what they wanted wasn't something the tree could get. Maybe it didn't fit. Maybe it just doesn't work for adults. 

I head to the bench to meet up with Devin. He's there, waiting. Andrew's there too, spooning out pudding from a snack pack with his fingers. I keep walking.

“Brett!?” Devin calls my name.

I don't answer. Things are different now. I thought I could fix things: fix things for Devin, fix things for my mom, but most of all fix them for me. 

I just didn't want to be replaced…

The tree. The tree will give it back. Somehow I need to get to the tree. I can't now, not while under surveillance. I'll have to wait.

I watch from a distance. Typically Ms. Christner can't make it through a fifteen minute recess without feeding her nicotine addiction let alone lunch. 

She’s jittery, forehead dappled in sweat, hands fidgeting. Her eyes dart from the tree to the rest of the playground and back again. 

She wants a cigarette so bad she’s practically vibrating.

But she stays.

For now.

Eventually the bell rings, and lunch is over.

Back in Mr. Hanley’s class Devin keeps looking back at me over his shoulder. I don't return his gaze, not once. I keep my head down and focus on the handout. 

A

B

B

A

C

Not much longer. 

Ay

Bee

Bee

Ay

See

After school.

Ay

Bi

Bi

Ay

Cis

My Muzzy.

Abyss

Abyss

Abyss

BRRNNG!

Backpacks zip.  

Chairs scrape.  

Everyone rushes for the door.

Outside, Devin stops me. 

“Dude, what's up with you?” he asks.

“Don't worry about it.” I say.

“You wanna hang out? I can let Ms. Chris know I'm gonna head to your place. Just you and me.”

“Not going home.”

“Okay, where we going?” He's already decided to include himself. I know Devin. There isn't anything I can say to shake him now. 

“I'm staying here. I need something from the tree.”

“What?”

“You know what I mean. The time-out tree.”

Devin squints at me. “The time‑out tree? Brett… what are you talking about?”

“I need something from it.”

“What do you need?”

I shake my head. “Doesn’t matter.”

He steps closer, lowering his voice like he’s afraid someone might hear. “Dude, that tree’s messed up. Ms. Chris has been guarding it all day.”

“I know.”

Devin stares at me, trying to read my face. He wants to believe I'm joking, but he knows I'm not. 

“I’m coming with you.” he says.

“I know.”

Andrew jogs up behind him, backpack bouncing. “Hey, wait up big brother!”

Devin turns. Andrew looks at me, then back at him with his wide, gormless eyes.

“Hey Andrew, could you tell Ms. Chris that I'm going with Brett to the library? We got paired up for an assignment, and we wanna get a head start on it.” Devin doesn't usually lie. He jokes, he exaggerates, but he doesn't lie.

“Can I help?” Andrew asks.

“No,” I say before Devin can answer.

Andrew's face falls, and Devin steps in to soften it. “Just tell mom. I'll meet you back home when we're done, okay little brother.” 

Andrew nods, eager to be useful. “Okay big brother.” He runs off, arms flailing like he's attempting to take flight.

“What now?” Devin asks.

“Now we wait.”

We stand there, just off the blacktop, close enough to see the tree but far enough that no one will notice us. The playground is thinning fast, kids peeling off toward buses, parents, bikes.

Devin shifts from foot to foot. He keeps glancing at me, then at the tree, then back at me again. 

As we wait, hundreds of birds start to populate the tree. Their voices fused into one long, liquid rush. Not chirping, a kind of wet, shimmering static. The whole tree humming under their strain. 

By the time everyone has gone, the sky has turned from vivid blue to deep amber. The swings hang loose and still. The hopscotch cort is vacant. All that remains is the sound of the birds. 

Devin hugs his arms to his chest. “Why are there so many?”

“Don't know.”

We approach the solemn giant. The sound of the birds intensifies. What sounded like rushing water now sounds like a cacophony of screams. The oak is speaking with the only voice it has. It knows.

I kneel at its base as if at an altar. Devin stands behind me. As I push my arm into the hollow the birds explode from its branches, flying off in all directions.

“What the fuck!” There’s panic in Devin’s voice. 

I reach deeper, pushing past the slick, wet muck. It feels warm, pulsing. I feel it! A soft bundle. My finger grip at it. The tree tightens around my arm. It doesn’t want to let go, but I can feel it slipping free.

Devin steps closer. “Stop! Dude, stop! This isn't right.” 

I don’t.

The hollow contracts, squeezing hard enough to make my knuckles grind together. The muck climbs my wrist, thick and clinging, like it’s trying to pull me deeper.

But the bundle is right there.  

Right there.

I yank.

The tree shudders. A low, wooden groan that vibrates through the roots and into my knees. The birds surge back, a shrieking cloud.

That's when the bundle comes loose, and the tree releases me all at once in reluctant surrender. 

I fall back onto the dirt, clutching my prize against my chest. It smells of rot, decay, death.

Devin stares at me, breathing hard. “What is that? Brett… what is that?”

I don’t answer.

There in my arms I have it, My Muzzy. It's wrapped around something, something delicate, something small.

The fabric is damp and heavy. Devin take a step back.  

He knows.  

He doesn’t want to know, but he knows.

It's my sister. 

It's Hannah. 

What's left of her after nearly a year of grave rot.

The stench rolls up from the bundle, thick and sweet. Impossible to ignore.  

Devin covers his mouth.  

His eyes go wide.  

He shakes his head like he’s trying to wake up from a dream.

I start to unravel the blanket.

“Brett-” Devin’s voice cracks. “Don’t. Don’t do that.”

I ignore him.

The fabric peels back slowly, sticking to itself, sticking to what’s beneath.  

The smell hits harder.  

Devin staggers away, gagging.  

He can’t look.  

He can’t not look.

I pull the last fold aside.

Devin makes a sound I’ve never heard from him before: a choked, broken noise that isn’t a word.

I drop the corpse to the ground, and push it back into the hollow with my foot. The tree swallows it whole.

“My Muzzy,” I whisper, holding the soiled blanket close, breathing in its essence. 

The tree stands behind us, hollow open, the birds gone, world silent.

Waiting.

I know what I have to do now. You were a good friend Devin. I'm going to miss you.

He startled awake and immediately recognized the same daze he thought sleep would disappear. I’ll just sit for a second, he thought, shake it off. The remaining sun left just a glow above the distant hills. Sleeping in the truck was never easy, especially when the cracked leather bench seat was occupied by a second body. Now that there was no circadian rhythm to speak of, any REM cycle was a minor miracle. 

That second body. A look in all directions netted no sight of Dee. Axles creaked under shifting body weight, the creep of isolation now seated alongside him. Dee isn’t one to wander off. A quick peak into the sole canvas bag on board revealed he hadn’t made off with what little cash they had, so precious as to feel like the last paper currency on Earth as far as they were concerned. 

Maybe he’s squatting behind a bush, he thought, although we have nothing to wipe with.

After a few long minutes he swung open the driver side door and fully stretched his body across the seat, everything below the knees extending out of the truck in a rigor-like pose. He rocked forward with a spring off the elbows and his feet splashed the dirt below, the puff of ochre then dispersed by the breeze. Wind was the only sound there was, even though wind has no sound at all. He stood motionless as if to get his bearings, but he knew deep down he was waiting for another noise, anything at all, to prove he was really standing there in the dry expanse of American desert.

An unseen bird finally echoed in the distance and he shut the door. Just in case, he thought with a smirk. Stepping around the chipped and dented hood of the truck he wondered if the engine would even start. This was a routine question, not only due to its age but its long experience in the elements. The metal was too hot to touch, even with the sun no longer bathing it. 

Guess I’ll let it sit to cool, I can’t leave without Dee anyway.

He had already stopped caring about the condition of the snakeskin that adorned his feet. In the duo’s effort to keep a mild detachment from civilization, aesthetics had lost its charter. And in this moment, with their existence seemingly halved, he planted his heels more firmly than ever, vainly searching for a pulse in the barren terrain. The stillness was unsettling for the uninitiated, and for the first time in his young life a yearning washed over and across his being, even the lowest murmur would suffice. A short shake of his head recovered him from this reverie, his desire for disquiet overtaken by Dee’s absence. 

Usually the first step to looking for someone is to go the way you’d go in their situation. Only problem is, this wasn’t the usual. They had only been on the run for a couple days, but being on the run starts in the first mile. At this point he didn’t even know which direction he was facing. You don’t want to be seen from the highway, so the goal is to go far enough into the wilderness to where you can’t see the highway yourself. One hundred paces in front of the truck he stopped to make sure he could see their tire tracks, the only earthen guide back to asphalt. The sleeping sun wasn’t much help. 

He called out for his companion at a volume designed to catch Dee’s ear but not attract attention. Attention of who, the reptiles and birds? He recognized his irrationality, patting himself of on the back for being self-aware. But to the predators above and their prey below, a sound is either good or bad and Dee’s name wasn’t going to endear him to them or the dynamics of their survival.

After a while each shout became more urgent, heaving breaths into the vast nothing. He stood motionless in the growing dark, looking for any sign of humanity. Returning to the truck, he took inventory of everything they had as if he didn’t already know. A couple bats of the Maglite upon his palm yielded no results. 

Wouldn’t that be a bitch, a lack of batteries being the death me. I’d make kin with this flashlight in the afterlife.

Last resort, a Coleman lantern. A lantern’s no good in a one-man search party because you can’t see what’s coming until it’s too late. Are there wolves out here? Or just coyotes. Do coyotes go after people? At least there are no carrion birds circling. Although I guess that doesn’t matter, he thought. Carrion is a well-defined word, and it doesn’t include schmucks with a twenty-dollar lantern.

With a compass on his watch, miniscule and even more so in the dark, he set out straight in the direction the truck was facing. No reason to go that way, but his mind always favored congruence. Veering off to the side could bring bad news, why else would the truck look away from it? Another pat on the back as he made his way across the blanket of hot earth.

Calling out seemed silly now, and only served to scare one’s self by breaking the silence. The light of the lantern should be guide enough, maybe too much. How big are coyotes anyway? But the dearth of life soon impressed itself upon him as if the mammalia and reptilia he was walking among were waiting for the stranger in their land to move on. Even the crickets went silent as he rustled through creosote and brittlebush and the crunch of loose caliche. The lengthening shadows had fully dissolved and a thin slice of moon was the only counter against the thickening pall of night.

Checking the compass at regular intervals to maintain a straight line, he admired the landscape in between downward glances. The sky seemed stuck in a radiant violet, as if the hills were the only thing standing between day and night. Unmistakable shapes of saguaro pierced the velvet vault draped endlessly over the distance. He had never seen sky so big, only thought of its existence in lands just out of the reach of his station in life, his mundane caste that journalists loved to call “salt of the earth.” The thought of it caused him to spit off to the side, as if they were typing their pieces right next to him in mocking tone as he ambled awkwardly over stones and clay and sunbaked thistle.

All the compass checks made him realize he had never checked the time. He could have been walking for thirty or five minutes. His thoughts had masked time’s passage and he didn’t even know if he had been looking at the compass correctly, as the checks became habit and the intent increasingly diffuse and lost in the ether. A look behind revealed the truck was out of sight. But was it long gone or just beyond the dark? Various gradients of blue-black shielded his view back towards the only evidence of him left on Earth, a villainous camouflage leaving a watch compass as his only testament. That is, unless the scaly boots remained from an ultimate fate, a pluck of Rapture leaving only a symmetrical pair of size 9s among the Sonoran flora.

I couldn’t have gone that far, he reasoned, although his boot prints seemed to have vanished. He looked at the compass again, this time with disdain and uncertainty of what his own plan was. Unsatisfied with his work thus far, he lowered the lantern and let his eyes adjust to the distance before him. With a sigh he started again. Only a few paces in, the heels of his boots chimed a clank of metal.

He froze, countless fears surfacing. One more look around, one more vision of empty dark. He slowly made his way to one knee and began tapping the opposite foot, the front of his boot clapping the steel surrounding him. With deliberate precision he began sliding his hand through the thin layer of dirt until he caught what felt like clasp of some sort. The lantern revealed a small hook latched to a perimeter of matching material, and with a flick of his thumb it popped out of its sheath and the sheet of metal still under his feet felt less firm to the ground. Putting his finger tips to the edge, the lifting of it took some effort, but putting your hand underneath a hidden hatch in the desert didn’t seem advisable. 

Dropping into the hatch feet first probably isn’t either, as the sound of boots hitting the deck below echoed into the eternity of a corridor in front of him. He cursed his arms only being arm-length as he cast the lantern as far in front him as his body would allow. Each step inched him closer to removing his footwear, he could barely accept the knocking of his heels announcing his entry, his drawing nearer. Before he could commit to socks being his only barrier to being barefoot under the desert floor, he reached a door. A door without a handle or knob, just a blank slate of steel. He gave it a push, and with a single squeak of the hinges it gave way.

He hadn’t even noticed the Coleman had been dimming, the only indicator of its battery life coming to an unceremonious end. Batteries again. In the pale light of the lantern he could finally make out a new substance, brick. The advantages of being far off the highway were mounting. You could hide in your truck long enough to sleep, and you could build a room at the end of a long hall underground, with only a hatch door to give it away, and no one would walk by and ask what you’re doing.

The walls were further apart than those of the corridor, more like a room, and uneven. The one to the right was closer than the one to the left. He followed the wall, keeping close to the safety of knowing nothing could get at him from that direction, his fingertips grazing the dusty brick that refused to reflect the light for his benefit.

At last his eye caught something, an amorphous shape breaking up the monotony of nothingness to his left. A slow turn, pivoting on his heels so as to avoid unnecessary noise. He raised the lantern back to eye level, and as it reached its apex, as if seized by the unseen, slammed his back flush against the wall. The something had revealed a corporeal form in the waning light. He could almost feel his pupils widen and the only sound was his stilted breathing as his heart outpaced his lungs. The form didn’t move. 

When his eyes had no more adjusting to do, he managed a whispered “Dee?” Nothing.

A tap of the lantern served no purpose, so he accepted its pitiful output and leaned forward, heels still against the wall, almost straight at the hips. He leaned until he saw it. Dee had a single patch on his denim jacket: Motorhead’s logo. Against the black fabric he could make out the horns and the fangs and even the umlaut gracing the second O in their name. He stopped himself from reaching out, from grabbing an arm, from moving too fast. Slower than he had yet, he moved in a circular direction away from the wall, to get in front of what looked to be his getaway partner, his friend. Standing face to face at arm’s length, he steadied the Coleman and looked into Dee’s eyes. They were open but lifeless, encased in a face that was an unhealthy pale. He didn’t even look to be breathing. 

He took a half-step forward and repeated Dee’s name. Nothing.

The silence was undone by a single squeak of hinges. 

Panicked, he flicked the light off and crouched down before the remnants of his friend. The only sound offending his ears was his own breathing, now unmistakable in the emptiness of the room. This time there was no controlling it. He patted at his pockets. Did I bring anything else, he thought. Nothing but the truck key. He looked in all directions, a useless exercise in the never-ending black. Then a whisper of his name and a soft touch upon his shoulder. He clicked the light back to life, what little it had left, to see the hand resting on him, extending from the old denim that had been riding shotgun with him through the West.

What the hell, man, was the only thing he could think to mutter as he stood back up. He had to pull the lantern up to their faces to see anything. He held the light across the distance between them to reveal a face that wasn’t Dee’s. The lantern went out.