Unspeakable Horror 2 Abominations of Desire
Date: 2017-10-04 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror
Description: Desire- the feeling that accompanies an unsatisfied state. What happens when human desire twists...bends...warps...mutates? What happens when that desire is fed...or even starved? In this sequel to the Bram Stoker Award®-winning anthology, Editor Vince Liaguno assembles a literary pantheon from the LGBT and horror communities to explore the dark underbelly of desire. From unrequited love and repressed lust to consuming grief and the unquenchable thirst of addiction...from unfathomable sexual undergrounds to unspeakable perversions creeping into everyday suburbia, these abominations of desire w
Publisher: CreateSpace Publishing

Unspeakable Horror 2:

Abominations of desire

Edited by

Vince A. Liaguno

UNSPEAKABLE HORROR 2: Abominations of Desire

Compilation copyright © 2017 by Vince A. Liaguno

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

This book contains works of fiction. All characters depicted in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons—living or dead—is purely coincidental.

Cover Design copyright © 2017 by Deena Warner Design LLC

Formatted by Jeffrey Kosh

Printed in the United States of America

First Evil Jester Press printing, October 2017

ISBN-13: 978-1973793960

ISBN-10: 1973793962

Permissions

“Introduction: Deconstructing Desire” copyright © 2017 by Vince A. Liaguno

“Unspeakable Desire” copyright © 2017 by Chad Helder

“Fugitive Colours” copyright © 2017 by Erastes

“Underground” copyright © 2017 by Marshall Moore

“Ofrenda” copyright © 2017 by Lisa Morton

“Clearing Clutter” copyright © 2017 by Michael Hacker

“The Grief Season” copyright © 2017 by Lee Thomas

“Investment Opportunity” copyright © 2017 by Evan J. Peterson

“A Soldier’s Mercy” copyright © 2017 by Martel Sardina

“Twilighter” copyright © 2017 by Martin Rose

“Tabula Rasa” copyright © 2017 by Brad C. Hodson

“Caldera” copyright © 2017 by Helen Marshall

“Bent on Midnight Frolic” copyright © 2017 by Tom Cardamone

“Murder on the Prurient Express” copyright © 2017 by David Nickle

“Rougarou” copyright © 2017 by Greg Herren

“Bargain Books” copyright © 2010 by Vince A. Liaguno and Chad Helder. First published in Icarus: The Magazine of Gay Speculative Fiction (Lethe Press, Issue 7/Winter 2010). Reprinted with permission of the authors.

“The Sisterhood” copyright © 2017 by Richard Payne

“Kissyface” copyright © 2017 by Stephen Graham Jones

“The Shell” copyright © 2013 by Norman Prentiss. First published in Four Zombies (Cemetery Dance Publications, 2013). Reprinted with permission of the author.

“Lagan” copyright © 2017 by Gemma Files

“a strange form of life” copyright © 2012 by Laird Barron. First published in Dark Faith: Invocations (APEX Publications, 2012) and subsequently in Wilde Stories 2013: The Year's Best Gay Speculative Fiction (Lethe Press, 2013). Reprinted with permission of the author.

For Reesa Brown,
whose unspeakable talent was taken from us far too early.

Rest in peace, dark scribe.

Unspeakable Contents

INTRODUCTION

DECONSTRUCTING DESIRE

VINCE A. LIAGUNO

UNSPEAKABLE DESIRE

CHAD HELDER

FUGITIVE COLOURS

ERASTES

UNDERGROUND

MARSHALL MOORE

OFRENDA

LISA MORTON

CLEARING CLUTTER

MICHAEL HACKER

THE GRIEF SEASON

LEE THOMAS

INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY

EVAN J. PETERSON

A SOLDIER’S MERCY

MARTEL SARDINA

TWILIGHTER

MARTIN ROSE

TABULA RASA

BRAD C. HODSON

CALDERA

HELEN MARSHALL

BENT ON MIDNIGHT FROLIC

TOM CARDAMONE

MURDER ON THE PRURIENT EXPRESS

DAVID NICKLE

ROUGAROU

GREG HERREN

BARGAIN BOOKS

VINCE A. LIAGUNO AND CHAD HELDER

THE SISTERHOOD

R.B. PAYNE

KISSYFACE

STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES

THE SHELL

NORMAN PRENTISS

LAGAN

GEMMA FILES

A STRANGE FORM OF LIFE

LAIRD BARRON

CONTRIBUTORS

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Introduction

Deconstructing Desire

Vince A. Liaguno

In conceptualizing the theme for this second volume of unspeakable horrors, I knew that I wanted a collection of speculative fiction centered on the abstract of desire gone awry. After all, our desires, in all their myriad forms, have been getting us into trouble since the dawn of time.

For those of us who grew up with any semblance of institutional religion attached to our upbringing, desire was always the villain in the proverbial good book—whatever version of it your denomination subscribed to. Inappropriate forms of desire are a source of all manner of moral wrongdoing in various religions, from the irresistible craving to eat from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Israel's creation story of Judaism and Christianity, to the pathway of Siddhartha Gautama, who became the Buddha in his discovery that desire is the cause of life's suffering. Desire dominates five of the seven deadliest sins—the excessive desire of food (gluttony); the rapacious desire and pursuit of material possessions (greed); the coveting of another’s traits, status, abilities, or rewards (envy); the desire to compete with God himself (pride); and the intense desire for money, fame, power, or sex (under the all-encompassing umbrella of lust).

But for those of us who shouldered the added burden of a theologically incompatible sexual orientation, there was one passage—courtesy of the Old Testament’s notorious Book of Leviticus, 20:13—that always seemed to nip at our heels like a hound from hell itself:

“If a man also lies with a man, as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”

That single biblical passage has stalked those living outside heteronormative boundaries with the ferocity of a preternaturally resilient psychopath from a slasher film. Over the years, its grossly manipulated message of seeming damnation and condemnation for those of an LGBT orientation has crossed church thresholds into cultural and political arenas as easily as Michael Myers once crossed the leaf-strewn streets of Haddonfield from one ill-fated babysitter’s house to another.

And, before you raise a finger to interject, put aside any scholarly deconstruction of the infamous Leviticus quote, for the deity-charged operate on their own special brand of spiritual fuel, not thoughtful and methodical analysis. Alas, reasoned reader, you must also cast aside any logical enquiry as to the army of other abominations listed in the same Old Testament tome, for although the eating of shellfish and pork, the trimming of hair and beards, the wearing of blended fabrics, inking one’s body with tattoos, and garden-variety adultery are all expressly prohibited and deemed abominations, the pious are also selectively so, it would seem.

With desire well established as the catalyst for so much evilness, it seemed only logical to explore the effects of abomination upon desire, while reclaiming and subverting a word that’s been used to justify so much hatred and homophobia in the name of religion in the process. Desire, when distorted to the level of atrocity, can be a thing of horror indeed. Which brings us to the book you now hold in your hands.

In the first installment of Unspeakable Horror, subtitled From the Shadows of the Closet, the idea of psychological closets and the repression of self was central to the stories that populated it. Here, in this belated follow-up to that collection, the exploration of desire—from the contained and constricted to the unrestrained and unrestricted—will take center stage.

Three of the twenty-three contributors to From the Shadows of the Closet are back for return engagements, including Lee Thomas, Lisa Morton, and Michael Hacker. Mr. Thomas, whose distinct literary voice and uncanny ability to knock a reader on their metaphorical ass with a mere turn of phrase, graces Abominations of Desire with “The Grief Season”, in which the grief of a young widower conjures aberrant sexual desires and a monstrous manifestation of his dearly departed. Ms. Morton, a six-time Bram Stoker Award-winner who’s well established herself as a mainstay in both modern horror anthologies and the non-fiction realm, contributes “Ofrenda”, in which a ghostly encounter in a cemetery on Dia de los Muertos has a transformative effect on a young meth addict. Mr. Hacker, who made his professional writing debut in Shadows of the Closet, returns with the story of a therapist who finds more than she bargained for when she comes to the aid of an ex-girlfriend to help her clean out her cluttered brownstone in “Clearing Clutter”.

Chad Helder, my co-editor on the first installment, also makes a return appearance with the collection’s sole poetry contribution, which again opens the anthology. He joins me later in the anthology on “Bargain Books”, which first appeared in the (lamentably) now-defunct Icarus, a magazine of gay speculative fiction spearheaded by the venerable Steve Berman of Lethe Press.

A well-respected figure from the gay-themed historical and romantic fiction arena, Erastes proves that small horrors sometimes deliver the biggest chills with an exquisite fusion of body horror and erotica in her flash-fiction piece, “Fugitive Colours”

Setting plays an integral part in several of the contributions to Abominations of Desire, in which readers will experience various monstrous physical manifestations of desire. Tom Cardamone frames his sexually-charged tale “Bent on Midnight Frolic” against the Ramble, the historic 36-acre densely-wooded section of New York City’s Central Park that’s as notorious as an underground gay cruising spot as it is for its flora and fauna. Key West folklore and an attic-bound houseguest figure prominently in Brad C. Hodson’s “Tabula Rasa”, a cautionary tale in which infidelity, jealousy, and revenge converge with horrifying results. Similarly, noted mystery writer Greg Herren crafts a Cajun-flavored tale of a legendary creature that prowls the swamps of southern Louisiana in “Rougarou”. Marshall Moore, himself an American expatriate living in Hong Kong—whose contribution here was what editors might call a “happy accident”—brings a strong international feel to “Underground”, where subterranean desires and mythology merge with bloody abandon.

Helen Marshall’s “Caldera”, an atmospheric tale immersed in Icelandic mythology, was the second to last story I bought for the collection. Having been impressed with Ms. Marshall’s superb poetry collection The Sex Lives of Monsters and captivated by her short story collection Gifts for the One Who Comes After, I knew her highly-stylized writing would complement the evolving tone of Abominations of Desire.

In my submission guidelines for the anthology, I cautioned prospective contributors that classic monster tropes—namely, zombies, werewolves, and vampires—would be a hard sell unless they had something singular to offer. Bram Stoker Award-winner Norman Prentiss and Martin Rose did just that with their respective contributions, “The Shell” and “Twilighter”. It should be noted that I wanted primarily original stories for this second collection—as seventeen of the twenty tales here are—but Mr. Prentiss’s had such a sense of emotional resonance that I made the allowance to include it here as a reprint. I think readers will be happy that I did.

Another of the limited reprints found within these pages is the collection’s closer, “a strange form of life” by Laird Barron. Mr. Barron was one of a small handful of invited authors way back when the anthology was first conceived (2010, to be exact). He graciously agreed and sent in the story you’ll find here, then titled “The Hard and the Soft Kiss, in the Dark Room”. During the ensuing five years, as the delays stockpiled, the story subsequently landed in the capable hands of editors Maurice Broaddus and Jerry Gordon and first appeared in their Dark Faith: Invocations anthology (APEX Publications, 2012) and then the following year in editor Steve Berman’s annual year’s-best compilation Wilde Stories 2013: The Year's Best Gay Speculative Fiction (Lethe Press, 2013). I’d always intended for “a strange form of life” to close this second installment, and saw no reason why its well-deserved previous publications should alter that plan. Mr. Barron—a two-time winner of the Shirley Jackson Award and frequent nominee for almost everything else—is one of those singular authors whose work transcends genre and should be published and re-published far and wide. It’s just that good. Savvy Barron readers will note that the story is presented here with alternate punctuation—quotes to set off dialogue instead of dashes—to give its appearance within these pages its own unique flavoring.

I had the good fortune of working with Stephen Graham Jones on a previous non-fiction anthology project, Butcher Knives and Body Counts: Essays on the Formula, Frights, and Fun of the Slasher Film (Dark Scribe Press, 2011). Jones is, as Laird Barron adeptly characterized a few years back, “his own genre at this point.” No one unfamiliar with Mr. Jones’s work will disagree with that representation after reading “Kissyface”; those us already familiar with his work know that Mr. Barron nails the characterization to the proverbial wall.

Arguably, Gemma Files and David Nickle both fit that same description. Ms. Files, the award-winning author of The Hexslinger Series (which includes A Book of Tongues, A Rope of Thorns, and A Tree of Bones) and Experimental Film, was another of the writers hand-selected to contribute to this collection. When she first sent me “Lagan”, a nautical nod to desire, I read and re-read it three times to absorb every word and nuance with which she imbues the story. She’s that kind of writer, and “Lagan” is that kind of story. The fact that she generously allowed me to hold the story in a perpetual state of waiting all these years is one for which I’m eternally grateful. Mr. Nickle, another fine writer from among the immensely talented crop of Canadians making their mark on the genre (along with Ms. Marshall, Michael Rowe, and Craig Davidson/Nick Cutter), brings his distinct voice to the collection with “Murder on the Prurient Express”. The title alone is worth the price of a ticket on this hellbound literary train; luckily, the ride is even better.

Rounding out the collection are Martel Sardina’s “A Soldier’s Mercy”, in which an intergenerational act of compassion has dire consequences when a young hustler offers a Vietnam veteran temporary relief from the ghosts that haunt him; Evan J. Peterson’s “Investment Opportunity”, in which a young acolyte of the metaphysical, blinded by his own carnal desires as he tours a research lab to ascertain its suitability as an investment opportunity for his employer, soon realizes the real cost of the buy-in; and R.B. Payne’s “The Sisterhood”, the tale of cloistered nuns guarding an ancient relic—and a forbidden love—behind the walls of a convent in the French countryside. Finally, included here—think of it as an added bonus tale—is a reprint of “Bargain Books”, a tale co-authored with Chad Helder that was first published in the aforementioned Icarus. This story of a teenage boy’s newfound invisibility—summoned using a spell found in an old book—and how it helps him attain the object of his very adult secret desire was just too perfect a fit with the anthology’s theme not to include.

With that, I bring the requisite opening remarks to a close. The stage is set, introductions have been made. All that’s left to do is turn the page and begin.

If you so desire…

Unspeakable Desire

Chad Helder

Dear Reader,

Don't look now, but
there's a monster
in the corner of your eye,
bigger than a virus,
but smaller than a speck.

It pulls your eye
toward tight denim,
pulls your eye
away from the bloody spectacle of Jesus,
pulls your eye
toward the coin-operated slot.

We know what makes monsters:

the pressure of repression.

The abominations of desire
must crack their shells to molt,
must wriggle free,
must peel off smothering bible pages
like mummy bandages
to run beneath the weight of a swollen moon,
just another egg about to crack.

Dear Reader,

It’s time to insert your coins.

The peep show is about to begin.

Peer through the slot
and behold the
denizens of unspeakable desire.

These ambitious abominations,
ladies and gentleman,
have split the skin of constricting cauls,
have thrown off their crucifying yokes,
have been practicing their dance moves.

Yes, they are giddy to entertain you.

Fugitive Colours

Erastes

Most things lessen with time. Time itself for one. There’s something slavishly liberating about being unable to tell time or even notice the change from day to night. The moments merely punctuated by the Chinese water torture of the dripping of a tap I cannot see from here.

Funny how laughter is hush-muffled by stones that have never heard it before. It’s like they’re on my side. There’s a thought. Perhaps there is only so much horror that can be absorbed—even by granite, and they hunger for more cheerful noises, take them in, swallow them whole.

I'll show you, listen: You see? The laugh is absorbed as if it never were. Watercolour and pastel tones disappearing into nothing onto damp paper.

The stones themselves seem to shrink into their mortar, timid graduate witnesses of the art of pain. They don’t want him to come back down today. Me? I’m undecided, but that’s a secret the stones can’t be told.

The water knows. The water sounds too much like yes for coincidence.

Time. Yes, I do remember time. Don't think I've forgotten the before, because I haven't. I never will. It's just that it no longer holds any interest for me, that bright, brilliant life, full of ticks and tocks, and shares and stocks. Rushing from shower to office to wine bar to office to wine bar—and all for what? Chasing the money, chasing the deal. Time was never on my side, then.

On my side. Left side, right side, upside downside. Doesn’t matter. All the same. All the same when he chooses his pallet with the care of a maestro. All the same when he leaves purple fingerprints on flesh where only freckles remember the sun. There. And there. Those are older, or...I think so. It’s getting hard to tell. They bloom slowly, small round photographs of possession and I count down their arrival. They take about two hundred slow measured drips to show fully, but he’s always gone by then. You’d think, with the pleasure I give him as he creates his finger-painting, that he’d stay around to watch it blossom.

I understand though. He leaves a torch which burns for the length of time it takes for his art to show itself. His art is not for him. It's for me.

It’s not the fruition of his work that inspires him. It’s his canvas. I’m his canvas. His inspiration. He calls me that. He’s never called me by my name. But he doesn’t think of me as a name, and now, neither do I.

The skin is the truest canvas, he says. Unappreciated in this day of blobs and cartoons and people who throw paint onto mere paper with little understanding of what they create. Art takes a lifetime, he says. Art cannot be ripped early from a womb and thrown to the voyeurs, too new for appreciation.

In fact, he says, people have forgotten about art. The last true artists were the Inquisition.

He says.

I rejected all this at first, rejected his creativity, as a body rejects an alien object. I screamed, I damaged myself, attempting to rip the bonds from my wrists, cried out every time I heard someone crossing the floor above my head. On those days, he didn't paint, but left me in my fire and fury, and like a wounded fox I would have tried to gnaw my hands from my arms to escape the trap I had landed myself in.

He was angry at the welts I made to my skin. And he punished me with such gentle violence that I cried blood-soaked tears of humiliation. Even his anger holds such imagination, a mind that can make marvels from the darkest implements. But he—unlike my ungrateful self—he has never scarred me; he is too careful in his preparations, and oh, the reparations. Sometimes he spends hours preparing me for a session with his steel palette, rubbing my skin with the finest oils. Praising me for my erection, rewarding my emissions with the subtlest of delights. Nimble fingers that can prolong a pain or a pleasure indefinitely; depending on his style of the day.

I am treasured now; I am acquiescent. The jewel of his collection. The calmer I am, the gentler he is, and he prepares me, treats me like the masterpiece I will become.

Skin, he says, is the only canvas that recovers, that can be sketched upon with whatever tools the artist desires. Skin is the only canvas which can take a lifetime in the execution of a work of art.

So now he explains to me about the techniques, and now, now all hope—all care—of rescue is gone, I listen to him. And he's grateful for that. As my blood drains onto the floor, he teaches. As he scores my flesh, crosshatching, with such exquisite care for me that he now uses a knife so razor-sharp I can barely feel it. Chroma: how the purity of the red is intensified when compared to the greyness of my skin as I near death. Chiaroscuro: the effect of light and shade, especially where strong tonal contrasts are used. He sorrows that he cannot show me the perfection I am to become, and I kiss him, with lips blue with lack of pigment, and tell him how little it matters.

Now I know that it must take time for a canvas to truly appreciate what art is being wrought upon it. A canvas is not born ready for the painting. It must be prepared. It must be primed. It must learn to accept what the artist creates.

And in the end, I think, skin is the only canvas that forgives.

Underground

Marshall Moore

Had the businessman who tagged Joseph K on an early-morning inbound metro train been capable of conscious thought, he’d have found Joseph a pretty, naïve blank, like supporting-cast murder fodder in a slasher flick. Not a young man likely to survive his first encounter with a minotaur, and certainly not his second, should there be one. Just nineteen and a little too handsome, Joseph looked like an appetizer: blond hair falling into his eyes and flopping over his collar, big green eyes that tended to go unfocused when he was lost in thought, high cheekbones that looked post-surgical but weren’t. He had no idea that his future had just been set on a course as irrevocable as the stations on the Red Line: subterranean greatness, or mutilation and death. The suit and tie seated next to him leaned over just slightly and stroked his thigh—just once, but it was enough. Joseph, who’d been dozing, snapped fully awake and semi-erect. No one else in the yawning commuter sprawl took notice. Before Joseph could recover from the jolt of shock, the train arrived in Bethesda and came to a screeching stop; the stranger stood up and stepped out of the carriage.

Twenty minutes later, when Joseph walked into his physics classroom, on time but just by a hair, his professor paled. Joseph knew that look: Dr. Drummond must have been up most of the night working his lonesome way through a bottle of the expensive French wine that he, Joseph, had once seen him buying. Joseph took a step back. Having your physics professor throw up on your shoes is not an ideal start to the day, especially not if you’re wearing them when it happens.

“Joseph, stay a minute after class. There’s something I need to discuss with you.”

Throughout the class, Joseph couldn’t focus. He racked his brain, trying to recall what he might have done, or what he could possibly be accused of. Plagiarism? Cheating? Nonspecific slackness? Nothing came to mind. He’d turned in all his assignments. All his work was authentic, not copied. He didn’t buy papers from the online essay factories in India. He made it to class on time, most of the time, and he answered questions often enough to stay in the safety zone between the ass-kissers up front and the living dead in the back.

Drummond’s explanation at the end of class (“I’d like you to meet with the head of the Urban Planning program tomorrow afternoon around five, if you’re free”) didn’t do much to clear things up, either. Joseph had considered urban planning but wouldn’t have to declare a major until the end of next semester. He’d been focusing on getting his required courses out of the way.

“Why me?” he asked.

“Something you mentioned in passing,” Drummond said. He looked less nauseated now. Joseph thought the risk he’d end up wearing the professor’s breakfast had lessened somewhat, but safety is a relative thing. “You take the metro every day, but it doesn’t go where it ought to? The designers got the lines all wrong?”

Joseph had absolutely no recollection of saying this, ever. He said “Oh yeah, that’s right!” and tried to sound sincere.

“It’s almost time for members of your class to declare majors. If that’s the way you think about transportation, you might be interested in having a talk with Dr. Song.”

“Sure,” Joseph said. “Why not? I’m free then.”

Drummond knew the other students couldn’t have known what had happened on the inbound train. Nor could they see the tag blazing in Joseph’s aura. The average student’s aura was a sparkly, thunder-shot nimbus of electric blues and incandescent golds, the nameless colors one sees but can’t name in lightning, sunsets, and fire. Hormones, excitement, possibility, uncertainty, sex: each had its own hue, and the net effect could be blinding, muted only by the booze they all seemed to drink rivers of. Most days, Drummond (who himself had been tagged in his twenties, and lived) saw more than he wanted to. Before today, he’d had no reason to notice Joseph. In these morning survey courses with forty or fifty yawning students, only a few stood out, auras or no auras. But today, red surrounded Joseph, portending disasters and emergencies, carnage and death.

After class, after the last of the students had gone, Drummond used the prefabricated excuse he’d been given for occasions such as this: The Department of Urban Planning had set up a new scholarship for prospective majors. Joseph hadn’t given any thought at all to urban studies (he’d been leaning toward economics or political science), but the potential offer of money grabbed his attention like balls in a fist.

“Come to Dr. Song’s office tomorrow afternoon at five,” Drummond said, his guts in a roil, both relieved and dismayed by Joseph’s gullibility. One of his own students this time… he’d known this day could come, but he’d spent a long time telling himself it would never involve anybody he knew. “There’ll be one or two other students, too. If you’ve got a class then, don’t worry. We’ll give you a note.”

“Sounds good,” Joseph said. On his way out, he stopped, half-turned, and asked, “But why me?”

Drummond thought of all the things he wished he could say. He settled on a safe, anodyne half-lie: “Consider this your lucky day.”

*

Underground, Joseph found that the metro network comprised much more than just featureless tunnels. The tracks also passed through spaces he’d have described as caverns, if not for their shadowed right angles and black festoons of utility cables. Their flashlight beams cut the dark; it re-formed an instant later, stronger and harder to see through. Now and then someone put a foot wrong and swore. Debris shifted underfoot; there were obstacles.

“Is this a test?” asked Phil, the other student the Drs. Drummond and Song—the department head—had led underground.

Joseph had seen Phil around campus, and his first thought on seeing him in Song’s office was This is some kind of sex thing. Phil was gay too: he was dating a closeted frat boy rumored to drink too much and beat him up from time to time. And Phil stuck around for it. Not bad-looking at all—dark hair, light brown eyes—he had the rangy build of a boy who’d grown up on a farm and knew how to drive tractors and combines, or maybe one of those guys from the Northwest who worked on Alaskan fishing boats to pay their way through college. Yet he gave off a vague air of submission. Maybe he’d been punched in the mouth one time too many. Joseph couldn’t tell. Was this some kind of test? Of course it was. More than that, he wanted to know why the only two students chosen were both gay guys, but he didn’t actually want to bring this up.

“Our benefactors impose very strict scrutiny on the award process. So, we take applicants on tours like this to see how it resonates with you,” Dr. Song said.

“So, like, I’m supposed to be on the lookout for resonation?”

“Resonance,” Dr. Song said. “But yes. We have one of the best urban planning programs in America. Maybe the world. If we’re going to pay your way, all the way through the PhD, then yes, we do have a vested interest. If you don’t click with it—”

“No harm, no foul,” said Drummond, perhaps trying for cool but only sounding as if a dose of cold medicine had just kicked in.

Through the dark, Drummond squinted and watched Song pretend to discover a stairway leading down.

A life of requirement, Drummond randomly thought, following Song and the three students deeper into the recesses of the metro. The subtle heroin of irony coursed through him: he and his colleagues enjoyed a freedom and power that everyday people could not even conceive of, yet the price they paid for it was a form of enslavement. Perhaps the same could be said for anyone in a position of leadership—politicians, royalty, judges, entertainers—but the underground stood above them all.

It happened fast: the beast rushed up and out of the black, silent except for its breath. Song, who knew what was coming, flattened himself against the gritty stone wall to avoid being gored or hurled out of the way. He’d been through this more times than he could remember. Not wanting to see, he shut off his flashlight. The minotaur didn’t need light: it could see in the dark better than humans could in full sun. Drummond was slower. The beast knocked him aside, having made a split-second decision not to break any bones: Drummond deserved a lesson for being stupid and unprepared, not to mention clumsy and hung over, but Song didn’t need to be burdened with the task of helping him limp back to the surface. And the meat, the meat… they’d brought two this time, marked by taggers who would remember nothing.

The quality of the offering also helped save Drummond’s bones. Two: one for now, and one… for much later.

*

Drummond had seen a minotaur feed and wished he hadn’t. The creatures preferred to keep their human offerings alive and aware because the struggle was its own spice: victims tasted better screaming, or so he’d been told. He’d been allowed to retain certain memories from a hellish night in deep-subterranean Boston two decades before—the bull’s head burrowing into a belly, tearing hunks out of a well-muscled upper arm, gnawing the flesh away from a lower back before moving down to gorge on the buttocks and the nest of meat in between. The plea in the young victim’s eyes, as horrifying as the bloody spectacle below his neck, tinctured his nightmares.

Please, the boy had mouthed. Tears shone in streaks on his face. Please.

I can’t, Drummond remembered replying.

The feeding went on for hours, the minotaur only releasing Drummond and the other novitiates when the first victim passed out from blood loss and the next was brought in. To a one, and regardless of what city they ruled, minotaurs loved an audience when they fed yet became almost prissy when the time came for sexual release. Young men were offered up for feeding and fucking, and either one could take place first. Drummond sometimes thought, given the older minotaurs’ bullish endowments, that their willingness to mate with a boy whose face they’d just eaten was the more merciful option. If the obvious holes weren’t big enough, new ones could be excavated, after all, and usually were. That part of the ritual, Drummond had never actually witnessed, nor had anyone he knew; and for this, he was thankful. Rumor was more than enough.

When the minotaur seized Phil and dragged him down into the black, Drummond and Song grabbed Joseph and held onto him, keeping him from chasing after.

“WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED?” Joseph shouted.

“You can’t go after him,” Song said.

Joseph struggled, but the two men—Song in particular—were much stronger than they looked.

“It’s done,” Song said. “If he was your friend, we’re sorry, but this is how it has to be. This has gone on for years. Centuries. You can’t stand in its way, and there are good reasons why you shouldn’t try.”

Joseph allowed himself to be led back to the surface. In Drummond’s office once again, now sipping red wine from his professor’s apparently limitless supply, he persisted: “What the fuck just happened?”

Song refilled his glass because Drummond’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Song had known him long enough that asking wasn’t necessary. The man would gore himself with the corkscrew, fountaining blood and Rhône varietals all over the office before the wound sealed itself shut. Although Drummond had his talents, Song wished someone sturdier had been chosen for the night’s activities.

“You won the scholarship,” he told Joseph. “The department will cover the costs of your studies, up to and including your doctorate. Surviving tonight just created your future. Urban planning it is.” He paused to let all this sink in. “You’re incredibly lucky.”

“What about Phil?” Joseph asked.

“He was less fortunate,” Dr. Song said. “Look at it this way. At least now he doesn’t have to worry about student loans.”

*

For his dissertation, Joseph spent months riding subway trains in one city after another. Dr. Song, now his supervisor, suggested this might be the most expensive dissertation in history, but he supported Joseph’s work. New York, Taipei, Caracas, Santo Domingo, Vienna, Lausanne, Lyon, Moscow, Shanghai—large or small, if the city had a subway, Joseph had either visited or put it on his list, not just zooming along on the trains underground, but spelunking in the tunnels, guided by one or two senior members of the engineering staff. Officially, he was interested not just in the subway systems themselves, but in how crowds of people moved through them: fluid dynamics, as manifested in stairways, on escalators, and inside the train compartments. More specifically, he wanted to know how things moved in the dark.

At times, he wished he could forget that first trip underground, but more often than not he felt grateful for it. No one knows everything, Song had told him. Not even us, and certainly not… (here, he had made a gesture out the window of his office), not the outside world. The normal people. Behind the scenes, we run almost everything. But I couldn’t tell you how it all works. Only the minotaurs have the big picture; the rest of us… we’re like terrorist cells, but in a necessary way. Without us, cities would descend into an even worse level of chaos. We’re the guardians against the worst sort of entropy.

“Entropy,” Joseph repeated.

“It’s all more benign than you’d think,” Drummond slurred.

“It seemed benign,” Joseph said, and Drummond by now was too drunk to catch the irony.

That night made me, Joseph thought, looking back. Whatever horrors he’d been spared, he also counted himself lucky in a way that many students were not: he had direction. Too many people his own age had no idea what to do with themselves, either drifting into their major on a whim or being implanted there at the command of their parents. Having a definite pathway before him and no impossible-to-repay student loans now seemed like an exotic luxury, something it had never occurred to him to want until he had it.

*

Joseph went to Japan with Song for a conference. The real lessons were often in what Song did not say, in what he let Joseph figure out for himself. Trudging from one session to another, fighting the mire of jet lag every step of the way, Joseph struggled to keep his focus amid the mucky bombardment of papers and findings. Despite all the excitement that Tokyo offered, there was little chance to enjoy it. Joseph had an impression of tidiness and right angles, amazing food and more good coffee shops than he’d have expected. Despite an endless supply of decent caffeine, he struggled to stay upright and coherent.

“Let’s go back to the hotel,” Song finally said. He looked more robust than anyone his age, who had come off a long-haul flight two days before, had a right to.

“You don’t have to come with me,” Joseph said. “I know the way.”

“There’s nothing left on today’s program that I want to attend,” said Song.

When he insisted on boarding the third carriage from the front of the subway train, Joseph recognized the signs of a divergent agenda. They weren’t just there to experience the spaghetti-tangle of train lines that formed a dense network through Tokyo’s urban grid.

“We’re not really going back to the hotel, are we?”

“We are,” Song said. “But not right now.”

The doors slid shut; the train pulled away from the platform.

“Isn’t it amazing how crowded these trains can be during rush hour?” Song asked.

Unable to tell for sure whether the question was rhetorical, Joseph agreed. “I’m glad it’s not rush hour now. I don’t know how people stand it.”

“They just do,” Song said.

He pointed at a sleepy-looking college-aged boy seated opposite them: artfully disheveled orange hair, Burberry plaid trousers, tight white shirt, dark nipples showing through the fabric. Joseph watched as a generic salaryman—black suit, white shirt, charcoal necktie—put his hand on his knee, squeezed, and caressed the inside of his thigh, just once. The boy’s eyes widened, but something seemed to prevent him from shouting or crying out. None of the other passengers reacted. When Joseph moved to stand up, Song blocked him with an arm. A second later, Joseph made the connection.

“No one else can see,” Song cautioned. “Just let it happen. The tagger won’t remember this later, and even the boy won’t be sure.”

“I remembered,” Joseph said.

“Which might be why you’re here now and Phil isn’t,” Song said.

Then it was over: the hand withdrew, the boy’s face relaxed, and the crowd shifted around them, blocking the view.

“That’s what it’ll be like, when it happens to me?” Joseph asked. A second thought struck him, and he asked before Song could answer the first question, “And in places like Tokyo, not all the gropers are really perverts? Sometimes they’re tagging?”

From the corner of his eye, he could see Song nodding. “He’ll be taken tonight or tomorrow,” he said.

*

Joseph only learned of his first time as a tagger after the fact. He’d survived this long, so the next act had become inevitable, a question of time: a conference in Baku, because there was always a conference. Cities evolved like living creatures: some stagnated, others thrived, and this process of change must be studied, highlighted, dissected, and discussed. Now it was Baku’s moment to enjoy the warmth of the world’s spotlights. Azerbaijan’s sudden torrent of oil wealth meant great things for the ancient capital, which had been spared the fossil-fueled vulgarity of Abu Dhabi, Doha, and Dubai. Joseph, having filled up two passports, rarely grew excited about visiting new places. He’d already seen most of the cities worth seeing. Not Baku, though. It promised to be something different.

Song, having retired, declined his invitation. Joseph had other friends: Pierre from Montpellier, Hans from Cologne, Bryan from Bristol. All had PhDs and lectured at prominent universities. All had met underground. All had survived their introductions to minotaurs, although by tacit agreement they only brought up that topic when they had to. And all had evolved past the point of being curious about the connection between universities, underground, and the true order of things. There was money in their bank accounts, they owned their homes, and their articles regularly appeared in the best peer-reviewed journals.

They met for drinks the second night of the conference, at one of Baku’s Time-Out-approved new bars. All around them, international bright young things networked, sparkled, and tossed back expensive vintages and elaborate cocktails. Outside, recessed lights cast a golden glow over centuries-old stone walls that were already the color of pale honey. Bryan was saying something about Bordeaux, although Joseph couldn’t hear over the background noise. Bordeaux: the city, the AOC, or the wine? Bryan had a fascination with trams; probably the city, then. Hans was nodding as he always did when he wanted to give the appearance of caring. Joseph looked outside again. Warmth suffused everything. The noise seemed to recede.

Christ, I’m tired, he thought.

And then it was night, pitch-black night, and he was lying fully clothed on his hotel-room bed, atop sheets that smelled faintly of bleach. Joseph sat up in the dark and looked around, waiting for his eyes to adjust.

“What the fuck just happened?” he asked the empty room. Far from panicked, he felt profoundly relaxed.

In the back of his mind, he knew the answer: I must have tagged somebody. Unless someone had drugged his gin and tonic, this was the only other explanation. People didn’t slip into velvety fugue states and lose hours for no reason. Taggers were activated most often in crowded places: bars and clubs, subway trains, city buses, shopping malls. Nothing about them suggested possession; there was no frightening blankness in the eyes. Only the small cabal of acolytes to the minotaurs and the ones elevated to the rank Joseph and his friends now enjoyed would be able to tell. With that in mind, he left the room and walked down the hall to knock on Hans’s door.

“I wondered how long you’d be out,” Hans said. Still in his underwear and a T-shirt, he rubbed sleep from his eyes and stepped aside to let Joseph in. Yawning, he continued: “You seemed a little different after your first drink. Distracted. Then you said you had to go.”

Joseph nodded. “Did any of you follow me?”

“No. We all knew where you were going.” Hans sat on the edge of his bed. “But you walked in the direction of the metro station. That’s probably… where it happened. Local people will take care of the rest. I have no idea how things work here. This country, it’s so…”

“It’s so not Germany.”

Hans nodded. “Baku is nice but it’s not Cologne. I would never want to live here. Do you remember anything at all?”

“Nothing,” Joseph said. “Just… a sense of warmth. It was like waking up after a massage. I’m relaxed.”

“Don’t tell him I said this, but I think Bryan was envious. He’s never experienced it. Not yet, anyway. Do you want something to drink?”

“No, I should be getting back to bed. Thanks for confirming.”

Hans didn’t reply right away: “Or you could stay here.”

So Joseph did, and the rest of the conference was simply that: another conference. Papers and workshops. The results of a design competition. Announcements of another conference, this time in Portland, Oregon, followed by one on the reconstruction of Sendai, and a green energy symposium in Singapore. Joseph slept with Hans every remaining night of the conference, both knowing that they might pair up differently next time, both quite comfortable with that arrangement. As usual, the proceedings came to a close about the same time the jet lag had begun to wear off. With a collective groan, the attendees checked out of their rooms and queued up for taxis back to the airport. Half the conference seemed to be on Joseph’s Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul; en route, he overheard urban-planning shop talk in four languages. At Atatürk Airport, layover goodbyes were said. On the flight back to Washington Dulles, he gave up on the paper he needed to finish editing, shut off his laptop, and watched stupid action movies until he drifted into an awkward upright jet nap.

*

Urban mobility, Joseph proclaimed at the end of his address in Singapore, was the lubricant humankind needed to ease its way into the future. In much of the world, the migration—unprecedented in history—from the hinterlands into the cities had more or less ended. Even sprawl had begun to contract. Places like Detroit, once written off as past saving, now led the way. With nothing of value left in their suburbs and no resources with which to police or maintain them, a constructive form of demolition had ensued. Much was recycled; the rest had been scrapped. The tract mansions of twenty years ago had given way to acreages of trees. Urban gardens now grew in disused city parks. As the density of cities increased, the demand for appropriate transit grew.

“Detroit pulled down its suburbs and became a pretty nice place to live,” Joseph said, an impromptu afterword. “Well, that’s what my friends there tell me, anyway. Cold winters, but the city’s finding its way after decades of decline. They’ve put in trains and decent landscaping. Solar streetlights. A dozen things we all know about, and it’s worked. People want to be in the city because they can move around in the city. This is the way forward for all of us, and this is a message we need to take home and to share—with community leaders, with thought leaders, with the people whose voices will be heard. Thank you.”

After that, there had been applause, handshakes, and one glass of wine after another. A restaurant in Holland Village: expats, smoked salmon, champagne. A mad swirl of languages; an air of festivity. Then, the dark.

*

Joseph awoke strapped to a table. How much time had passed?

You have brought dozens of people down into our tunnels over the years. The voice spoke as clearly in Joseph’s head as if he’d heard it on the loudspeaker: You have served us, and served us well. What’s more, your ideas have shown leadership. You have intelligence, and you have nerve. And you’ve survived. This is what we require.

Again, blackness came. Although Joseph couldn’t see what followed, he could feel it. The pain took him places he’d have never imagined it was possible to go. Apparently minotaurs eschewed anesthetics, preferring the rough magic of tools with blades and teeth. He’d have screamed but for the ball gag. Somewhere in the depths of this torture, his reason tore free of its moorings. When his head itself was torn free of its own moorings, his screaming mind was a vortex rampaging through a dark network of tunnels, somewhere amid the structures and conduits under some unspecified city. It could have been anywhere that had ever been blasted by a grim, relentless onslaught: Baghdad, Homs, Sarajevo, Benghazi. Craters in bloodstained walls, dust in the air, buildings pounded down to their foundations. Joseph lost himself in a hundred cities until the pain-war ended and his body began its process of urban renewal.

When he awoke, straps and gag now gone, he didn’t need to look in the mirror he’d been given to know what they’d done. And were the minotaurs standing around him... smiling? He ran his hands over the bristles of his new head, pressed fingertips against the points of his horns. At least they hadn’t put a ring through his septum.

Joseph could feel the rumble of another subway train leaving the station, far above. Knowledge cascaded in when he listened: Singapore, the Northeast Line. Familiarity echoed in the walls. They were far beneath Doby Ghaut Station in a warren few people on the island knew existed. Joseph could hear every train on the line, every commuter shuffling through every station, every car on every street.

Welcome to your city, said one of his horned colleagues.

This is your life now.

Welcome home.

Ofrenda

Lisa Morton

Ben looked up from Nicky’s grave when he heard music.

It came from the other side of the cemetery; mariachi music. Ben stood and gazed over headstones and past trees and parked cars to spot the musicians, five men in sombreros and somber black suits, melancholy notes flowing from their guitars and trumpets.

The band had gathered a small group of listeners, swaying in skirts and dress shirts, and Ben was surprised to see that the cemetery had filled with visitors since he’d arrived two hours ago. Everywhere he looked there were families carrying bags and baskets and bouquets of bright yellow-gold flowers. Some crouched before stones, polishing the marble surfaces and trimming away grass; others set food and drink out.

Checking his watch, Ben saw that it was just after three. He wondered why they were here; he’d visited Nicky every Sunday for the past three months, but he’d never seen anything like this. If Nicky had been here, he would have taken Ben by the hand and said, “Let’s find out.” They would have walked up to the nearest family, and Nicky would have asked them what was happening, and they would have been seduced by his smile, that smile that had won Ben over the first time they’d met.

But Nicky wasn’t here, or at least he wasn’t here alive. He was gone, charismatic Nicky, and Ben didn’t possess an ounce of his dead lover’s confidence or charm.

Especially not now, when he was at the end of a two-day meth binge and desperately wishing he had more. He was jittery, anxious, wanted that first hour of euphoria when the drug kicked in; most of all, he wanted anything that would make him accept that Nicky was dead and not coming back.

The dream, goddamn that dream, he’d had it again three nights ago, the last time he’d slept: He’d been visiting a friend when Nicky had walked in from the back yard, and Ben realized he hadn’t died at all, there’d been no ridiculous sudden fatal car accident, no “we’re very sorry, but…” call. No, Nicky was fine, but Ben was furious at him, for damning him to the worst three months of his life, three unimaginable months when Ben had tried to lose his grief in a replacement addiction.

Just remembering the dream again now brought fresh waves of anguish, his face lighting with heat and forcing tears.

“Goddamn it, Nicky,” he whispered, and dropped to his knees before the grave again.

It wasn’t possible.

That was the simplest answer, and the least true. It was possible: Possible that Nicky’s life had been taken by one terrible collision, that their five years together were ended in five seconds of screeching, buckling metal. Five years they’d built together, leading up to the house last February, the three-bedroom they’d bought together, with the citrus trees and rose garden in the backyard.

That first night in the new house, when they hadn’t even unpacked sheets yet, and they’d tasted each other on a bare mattress, and somehow they never tired of the taste, and Ben had been sure it would last forever.

And then Nicky wasn’t there, and Ben realized how much of their shared life Nicky had overseen. Ben’s job at the software firm had actually brought in more money than Nicky’s public relations, but money slipped through Ben’s fingers like water. Nicky had kept their books, their accounts; he’d even done the cooking. With Nicky gone, Ben was forced to deal not just with his bludgeoning sorrow, but with bills, appointments, food, condolences, and relatives. When it was too much, he’d called Jason – the stringy-haired, bearded connection Nicky bought his occasional pot from – and told him he needed something stronger. At first the rush from the meth had given him the space he needed – blissful moments when he almost forgot that fate had crushed him; but then the high faded, and he needed more. And more. And soon there wasn’t enough money, and he borrowed, and his company forced him to take “an indefinite leave” (unpaid, of course). When he had no more credit, he borrowed from the same people he bought the drugs from; and when the deadline (today) had arrived for repayment, he’d fled the house and come here, buying himself a few hours.

Hours with Nicky.

He imagined Nicky pulling him to his feet, turning those gleaming brown eyes on him, saying, “Benno, you can’t keep doing this. You need to pay these guys and then you need to get off the glass, because one or the other is going to kill you.”

That sounded fine to Ben right now. Maybe he should just go home, be there when they came…but he was afraid of the pain. They might not kill him, they might just fuck him up and leave, and then he’d have no Nicky, no drugs, no money, no comfort, no hope.

Ben looked up and was shocked to realize the sun was halved by the horizon. It was after 4 p.m., and the activity around the graveyard had increased – now there were vendors set up near the main entrance, food trucks and booths and carts.

Realizing he hadn’t eaten since yesterday, Ben checked his wallet and saw he had twenty-four dollars left. His head whirled with figures and possibilities: Twenty-four dollars is what percent of what I owe? Less than one, one fucking percent. It’s not even enough to get me somewhere, and besides – where would I go? Family, friends, they’ve all cut me off. “Clean yourself up, Ben,” they say, and now I’m fucked, and there’s no one left who cares. He couldn’t stay here all night, but he was certain that Jason would be watching his house, waiting, probably with a couple of friends who had biceps bigger than Ben’s neck. No, Ben’s few dollars wouldn’t buy an escape, but maybe he could think more clearly with a full stomach.

A last meal.

He forced himself to his feet and staggered past graves now decorated with photos and fruit and bottles of beer and fat rolls of bread; some of the displays were incredibly complex, with wooden arches and cluttered, tiered layers. Petals from the yellow flowers outlined coffin shapes, and families chatted amiably, mostly in Spanish. The mariachi band was playing a lilting, more upbeat tune now, and the lines were long at the food stands. Ben was torn between a stall advertising homemade tamales and one displaying banners for a tequila brand, but when he shivered in the first chill of approaching night, he decided to go for the warming liquor. He took his place in the queue.

At first he paid little attention to the man in front of him, but when the stranger began to clutch his cell phone more tightly and his voice rose in volume, Ben couldn’t help but listen.

“…you walked out on me, and now you think this is okay?!”

The young man turned his profile towards Ben, and even though his head was bent in conversation, Ben saw he was good-looking, even beautiful. His skin was the dark brown hue of purest cacao, hair glossy black, eyes golden and almost Asian, although he was clearly of native Latin American heritage. He had a slight Spanish accent and his wiry frame was bent in tension.

The man listened for a beat, then said, too loudly, “Just get the fuck out and take your shit, but you can’t have Plata!” He snapped the phone shut and stood, breathing heavily.

After a few seconds he glanced up, saw Ben, and smiled apologetically. “Hey, sorry, man. Didn’t mean to entertain the whole line, but…just broke up with my boyfriend.”

Ben was wound too tightly in his own agony to offer much comfort, but he answered by rote, “Sorry to hear that.”

The young man nodded. “Asshole wanted to take my cat, can you fuckin’ believe that? I’ve had Plata for two years, he moves in for six months, falls as much in love with her as with me, then wants to dump me and keep her. No fuckin’ way. Pendejo.” He shook his head, and Ben mirrored the movement.

“Jesus.”

Then, out of almost nowhere, the young man turned a grin on him, and his teeth were so lustrous in the dark skin of his face that Ben almost flinched. It was the same kind of easy rapport that Nicky had offered –

Nicky, the first time he’d smiled, and Ben’s knees had nearly buckled from how much he wanted this man he’d just met, wanted him just on the strength of a single smile.

“Hey, you okay?”

Ben realized the young man was looking at him, offering him companionship when his own had just been taken from him, and he forced himself to nod.    “Yeah, just…a bad day.” Then he gestured around them. “Do you know what’s going on here?”

The man laughed. “You don’t know? Dia de los Muertos.”

Ben had heard the term, of course, but thought it was basically a Mexican version of Halloween. “I’m just here…visiting a loved one.” He waved a hand back towards Nicky’s grave.

“Today’s November 2nd – Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead. All these people here, they’re all visiting their loved ones, too. But see, they believe that tonight’s the night the dead come back to visit, so they make sure the graves are nice and clean, and there’s food for them. The little altars set up at the graves are called ofrendas, and they honor the dead. And the flowers? Zempaschuitl – goes all the way back to my people – the Aztecs.”

“LUIS!”

A voice called through the crowd, and the young man’s gaze shot up until he spotted a man twenty feet away, waving at him in irritation and then pointing at a watch. “Aw shit, I gotta run…”

“You’re leaving?” Ben was surprised by the disappointment in his own voice.

Luis clapped a hand on his shoulder and offered Ben that illuminated smile again. “No, just gotta run – we’re doing a performance.”

“A performance?”

“Just follow the drums.”

“Okay. Hey – I’m Ben.”

Luis waved, although Ben wasn’t sure he’d been heard. Then the young man was gone, swallowed up in the lines for the food.

A few moments later Ben staggered away from the mob, juggling two margaritas in plastic cups and foil-wrapped packages of tamales. He had thirteen dollars left, and as he walked past the flower seller, he spent another five on the last bundle of zempaschuitl.

At Nicky’s grave, he put the food and flowers down, then reached for his wallet. He removed his favorite portrait of Nicky, the one he’d taken with their digital camera a year ago at a New Year’s party. Nicky was lifting a glass, and his grin looked a little drunken, happy…a man in love.

Ben placed the portrait carefully at the foot of the headstone, beneath the etched words DOMINIC CRISCONE and the dates 1976-2010.

Thirty-four. Too fucking young.

He set one of the margaritas next to the picture, with a tamale on the other side. He thought about a night they’d gone to a Mexican restaurant, with three friends, and they’d shared margaritas and green corn tamales until the restaurant had closed. At the time it had been a pleasant outing; now it held such meaning that Ben thought the power of it might destroy him.

Fingers trembling, he laid some of the golden petals along the sides of the grave, as he’d seen all the families do (what did he call it? Ofrenda), then he placed the last of the bouquet next to the food, gulped down the remaining drink…

And wept.

*

Drums.

The sun had set as the air began to throb with them. He’d stopped crying, but it still took Ben a few minutes to realize the new sound was drums, and to connect that to the handsome young man named Luis.

He rose, left the grave, and made his way towards the sound and a ring of rapt onlookers. The drums – huge, standing instruments that looked old and well-used – were played by half-a-dozen men, and even from a hundred feet away Ben felt their thunder vibrate in his chest. He circled the audience until he found an opening, and then gaped:

Nearly twenty dancers whirled and leapt in the center space. They all wore elaborate costumes of gold, feathers, and bones, with legs and chests bare and faces painted in skull white. Bells jingled from ankles and wrists, and they all bore a look of distant concentration, nearly trance-like. Ben understood the expressions: There was something in this ritual that went beyond mere exoticism; it was frenzied and wild, and Ben let it take him over, making his body – already energized and raw from the meth – jump and twitch to its own rhythms.

He watched the dancers, a blur of flash and motion, until one face coalesced near him, pale skull features peering out from under a square headdress of metal and long brown feathers.

Luis.

He didn’t grin at Ben – that would have intruded on the dance – but he saw Ben, and the recognition left Ben warmed. Luis was magnificent, his lithe body twisting and stomping and gyrating, naked torso impossibly smooth and perfect, and Ben abruptly realized that he was hard; for the first time since Nicky had died, he wanted something other than a drug, or a dream. The audience had grown in size now, and Ben felt as if they were all linked in some ancient, universal desire, driven by drumbeats and flesh –

On the far side of the circle, past Luis and the other dancers, stood Jason. He spotted Ben when Ben saw him.

Jason’s eyes widened and then he bared his teeth and pointed at Ben, accusatory. Ben saw two men, burly men with tattoos and dirty clothes, pushing through the crowd.

He turned and fled, Luis forgotten.

He ran, heading nowhere. He thought back: Fuck, I’m an idiot – I had him meet me here two months ago. Except then he was here to make a drop-off; doubt if he’ll leave much behind this time.

Ben leapt over tombstones and swerved around startled families, heading away from the main entrance. Ahead, he saw a procession of some kind; he heard more music, a cacophony played by dozens of tinny horns and drums. Huge papier-mâché heads bobbed over the crowd, held up on sticks by those who led the parade. The heads, each at least four feet tall, showed a mustachioed man, a woman with limpid eyes…and a bony image of Death, with black eye sockets and carefully outlined teeth.

Without stopping to consider, Ben pushed his way into the dancing, writhing celebrants, trying to lose himself in the crowd. Faces and shoulders bobbed around him, obscuring his vision. He saw nothing but the backs of heads in front of him; he dared to hope he’d lost them, that this procession would be his shield until he reached an exit out of the cemetery.  He looked around frantically – did that tattooed arm belong to one of his pursuers? He tried to nudge forward, but the procession moved at its own, strange pace. He bounced on his feet, eyes darting. There – thirty feet to the right, ugly man with a denim jacket, squinting -

Ben’s side exploded in pain. He looked down just in time to see the short knife blade slide out of his mid-section, covered in his blood. He never even saw the man who’d wielded the knife. He knew only that there were a few seconds of blinding agony, he clutched his side and felt the hot blood gushing through his fingers, spreading over his shirt, and the crowd around him was buffeting him, elbowing him, he knew if he fell they’d trample him and never notice, and he pushed against them, ignoring curses and angry looks. Overhead, the huge white skull twisted and seemed to stare down at him, uncaring, mocking…

He broke free from the parade and fell against a desolate headstone, gasping. The procession was heading away from him, the music fading. There was no sign of Jason, or his two men; they must have been satisfied with their night’s work.

The pain abruptly vanished, replaced by cold and leaden inertia. Ben’s mind was still active enough to tell him his body had gone into shock. He knew he had to find help, quickly, but this area of the cemetery was dark, deserted. He tried to reach for his cell phone, but remembered – it’d been turned off for non-payment weeks ago.

Fuck. Dying in a graveyard, on Day of the Dead.

But he wasn’t going to die here, like this. He willed his legs to move, and whether it was determination or the meth, he found they would, albeit stiffly. He started staggering, hoping he could find it in this dim light, with his vision clouding, and everything so cold –

There. Nicky’s grave.

Ben let himself collapse, trying not to knock over the ofrenda he’d created.  He landed resting with his back against the side of Nicky’s tombstone, both hands pressing now against his oozing wound. He laid his head back, felt the marble under a cheek, and thought:

This is where I’ll die. With Nicky.

He waited to bleed out.

*

Some time later, Ben opened his eyes. He had no memory of having closed them, and wasn’t sure if he’d passed out, fallen asleep, or simply rested. He was vaguely surprised to find he was still alive, and he could even move…slightly.

He turned his head, and saw that the graveyard had emptied out. The moon had risen, time had passed. He thought he heard a few voices in the far distance, maybe the last visitors or vendors packing up to leave. Otherwise it was quiet, dark, cold. At least there was no pain. The worst part was the terrible loneliness.

Then he saw them.

At first it was a single slight glimmer, like the reflection of headlights, against a tree trunk. Then the wan light moved, and Ben could still see it – even though there was nothing behind it, nothing to reflect any distant light source. His breath caught as he watched it materialize into the shape of a man, walking with translucent feet that never quite touched earth. When it reached a particular grave, it stopped and knelt down, reaching for the offerings left there.

More light caught his eyes, and he turned left, then right…

God, they’re everywhere.

Ghosts. He could only call them that. Their faint forms were scattered throughout the cemetery; Ben could make out the broader forms of men, the skirted, slender forms of women, even small children. They moved without movement, drifting towards graves. They paused before ofrendas, their insubstantial hands reaching for food and drink left by those who loved them.

Ben knew he should be frightened, even terrified, but instead he felt a strange sense of peace. These visitors intended no harm; they had no chains to rattle, no grudges to settle. He found no dread at the thought that he’d be joining them soon. He welcomed the idea.

Then he saw one ten yards away that seemed different from the others; it was vague, featureless, searching. After a few seconds it vanished, and Ben knew that it had been forgotten, that no one had come this year to clean its grave and lead the way with zempaschuitl.

Suddenly Ben didn’t want to die. No one would remember him on Dia de los Muertos, there would be no gifts of love, remembrances, shared memories. He didn’t want to spend eternity neglected, little more than a flickering shadow searching for something he could no longer name. He only wanted to die if he could be sure it would give him…

Nicky.

Ben felt an adrenaline rush then and twisted his useless body as the air around him changed, the temperature dropping, the slight scent of cologne – Nicky’s cologne – wafting. And he was there, suddenly, his form shading up from nothing to luminescence. His side was to Ben, but he was easily recognizable; he was more defined than the others, and Ben thought it had less to do with his death having been more recent than simply the undeniable force of Nicky.

“Nicky…” Ben’s voice was hoarse, and when he heard how weak it was, he tried to reach out one shaking hand.

But Nicky paid no attention. He walked the short length of his grave, then reached down for the drink. He wrapped his fingers around the cup, and when he lifted his hand, he carried a glowing imitation, while the real drink remained untouched on the grass. Moving slowly, as if not quite used to controlling his limbs, Nicky raised the cup and tilted it up. He seemed to drain it, then the cup vanished from his hand.

He turned.

Ben’s heart was nearly pounding out of his chest as Nicky’s eyes lowered, searching. “Nicky, I’m here -!”

He gestured again, and the spectre’s eyes settled on him at last…but they didn’t connect. Ben stared into them for interminable seconds, and almost felt himself spinning, falling into a vast nothingness, with no end.

“Nicky…” he cried out again, but there was no answer.

The ghost vanished.

Ben was panting, heart still hammering, as he fell back on the grass, exhausted, stunned.

It wasn’t Nicky. It didn’t even see me.

Then he understood, and he laughed.

Of course it didn’t see me. Because Nicky’s dead. He’s really dead.

Ben laughed again, sprawled in the cemetery grass, and he felt life beginning to seep back into him. He wanted to sit up, but he didn’t have the strength; still, it didn’t matter, because he knew what he would see:

They’d be gone, all of them. All the dead ones, the spirits. They’d come, on this one night, only because someone remembered them; they were nothing without the memory, just reflections, with no mind or soul. They’d come not because they wanted to, but because the living desired it.

The living. Like Ben.

Even as he began to doubt what he’d seen (a hallucination, brought on by blood loss, by stress, by riding the end of a meth binge), he felt a burden fall away; weightless, free of gravity. He’d die here, he’d be one of the forgotten ones, but at least he’d die with a clear mind and heart. His only regret was that no one would remember Nicky next November. Beautiful, beloved Nicky, resting in peace…

“Ben?”

A voice, a human voice. Ben turned his head, and saw a figure heading towards him. It was too dark to make out features, but he knew that voice, that slight accent: Luis.

“Are you…?”

Ben cleared his throat, didn’t try to rise. “Hey, Luis, do you think you could call 911? I’ve been stabbed.”

“Oh fuck…”

Luis didn’t hesitate; he reached into a pocket, pulled out the phone, and punched in the emergency number.

Ten minutes later, the EMTs had Ben on a stretcher and were lifting it into the back of an ambulance. Luis had stayed with him, leaving only long enough to guide the EMTs. During that time, Luis had taken his hand and kept it warm, and had talked to him: Of his life, his family, his heritage. His ghosts.

“Luis,” Ben asked once, “how did you find me?”

“I saw my grandfather – I mean, my grandfather’s spirit. I followed him. He vanished about the time I heard you.”

Ben smiled, realizing without bitterness how wrong he’d been. “I guess Nicky knows your granddad.”

“What?” Luis asked, squeezing Ben’s hand.

“Nothing.”

Luis told the ambulance he’d follow them to the hospital. As the ambulance doors closed and the EMTs bustled around him, taking instrument readings and calling out findings, Ben wondered if he’d make it. He wanted to see Luis again; he wanted to be remembered.

He wanted to be clean. He wanted to finally say goodbye to Nicky.

In the distance, beyond the cemetery walls, Ben heard music spilling from a moving car; it was all brass and rhythm and lilting vocal. He listened for a few seconds, then the car passed and the music faded.

But Ben wanted to live.

Clearing Clutter

Michael Hacker

As she washed her hands in the shared restroom on the sixth floor of Seattle’s historic Pioneer Building, Lauren Keene’s muscles spasmed and a moment later she lost all sensation in her legs. Her knees buckled and she collapsed. The impact knocked her glasses off her face and Lauren’s world became a cloud of blurry light.

“Goddamn! Not again!”

Dazed, she struggled to sit. She touched the back of her scalp to make sure there was no blood. Wincing, she cried out, “Is anyone there? Can anyone hear me? Hello?” The pathetic weakness in her voice infuriated her. An involuntary urge to laugh gurgled in her throat. Lauren banged the back of her head hard against the floor to banish the impulse.

No one came. It was late. Most of the other therapists who kept offices near Lauren’s didn’t see clients past 6:00 when the front doors to the Victorian-era building were locked, and it was almost 7:00 now – and Friday. No matter. She’d wait for the fit to pass. She remembered with some relief the cell phone in her front pocket. She could call 911 if she absolutely had to. But not just yet.

Lauren rose on her elbows and leaned back against the wall of the restroom to sit on the chlorine-scented marble floor between the sink and the wastebasket. The stink of urine from around the bowl of the unisex toilet was revolting. After running her palms across the floor and finding the frames with her fingertips, she put her glasses back on and attempted to concentrate and calm her breathing.

A long howl of laughter burst from her as paresthesias, like the tiny stings of innumerable bees, swarmed over her legs. Her legs were waking up. Painful, but good. Her laughter abated. Thank god. Of all the symptoms of her disease, this was the absolute worst.

Then her cell phone made a low buzzing vibration like a trapped horsefly. Lauren fumbled the phone out of her front pocket and gazed at the display, trying to make sense of the caller ID: “V STONE.”

“What in the hell?” The phone growled three more times as she struggled with her shock at Valerie’s first call after six years of silence.

“Goddess, help me.” She pressed answer and raised the device to her ear. “Hello?”

Out of the receiver came a gasp—tight breath drawn over bare teeth.

“Hello, Lauren? This is Valerie. Val Stone. Please, don’t hang up… Do you have a moment to talk? Please?” Her words, harsh, brittle smacks, sounded like pebbles on glass.

Ice flurries swept through Lauren’s body. She forced her flaccid tongue to obey. “Hi Val, this is a complete surprise, what’s up?” she swallowed and then gave up all pretense of nonchalance. “It’s actually really good to hear from you.” She struggled to speak distinctly, distracted by the reverb in the bathroom’s 12-foot-tall ceilings and her thumping heart.

“Are you all right?” Val asked.

Lauren assumed she knew exactly what Val meant, but she played dumb. “What do you mean?”

“Your voice, you sound a little—well, drunk…” Val almost whispered the last word, as though ashamed to say it.

Lauren sighed, suppressing irritation. “Yeah. I know. But I’m not, as a matter of fact. Drunk, that is. I was diagnosed a couple of years back with M.S. – multiple sclerosis.”

“Oh my God, Lauren—I’m so sorry…” Val’s voice trailed off. “I didn’t mean…”

“Never mind, it’s okay. Right now it’s mostly in remission. And I get that reaction a lot. Sometimes my voice slurs and I get dizzy, and my muscles refuse to obey. Sometimes I laugh compulsively when nothing’s funny. It’s like being drunk, only no euphoria. So… what were you calling about, Val?” Lauren wanted to get off this filthy floor; she tested the muscles in her legs by raising her feet a few inches. Good.

“Listen Lauren, the last thing I want to do is cause you any more pain. But I’m in trouble…”

“Trouble? What kind of trouble?”

Val remained silent for a moment, as though struggling for words. “I don’t want to burden you Lauren. You have your own problems, obviously. And I feel so terrible about the way I behaved when we were together…” Lauren sensed the anxiety underneath and didn’t interrupt.

“I’m so ashamed, Lauren, it’s difficult to find the words. But, I’m about to lose the apartment.”

Lauren immediately recalled how she felt six years ago when she walked out of their shared apartment for the last time, to escape the creature that Valerie kept locked inside her psyche. Lauren had just glimpsed it once before Val socked her in the face and her eyelids swelled shut.

But all of the lousy bitching over failed promises and petty blunders was counterbalanced by an emotional bond so strong that Lauren couldn’t help herself.

Her instinct screamed at her not to say it, but a ligature of desire intent on recapturing the tenderness she’d experienced with this beautiful woman rose to strangle that voice. “Why don’t we get together and talk about it face to face?” With that, a sort of peace becalmed Lauren’s soul. Surrender never felt better.

“Oh my God Lauren, I prayed you would say that…”

*

The next morning after a brief exchange over the scratchy intercom, Val buzzed Lauren in. Lauren’s apprehension mounted as she climbed the carpeted risers of the graceful brownstone. Then she reached the third floor and looked down the hall, where Valerie stood in her open doorway dressed in a red robe and white satin nightgown. Her curly blonde hair, cut to her shoulders, framed her puffed, sad face. Lauren walked down the hallway, and as she neared Val, her ex-girlfriend put out her arms.

Lauren took her hands, and leaned forward to embrace Valerie. “It’s so good to see you,” she murmured in Valerie’s ear. In response, Valerie burst into tears.

“Thank you so much for coming…I didn’t know who else to call. There was no one else I could call.”

Valerie explained that her landlady had invoked a law that permitted eviction for a tenant’s failure to keep the premises clean and sanitary. While Val made tea in the kitchen, Lauren surveyed the crammed living room, shocked by the compulsivity on display. The commodious apartment, one of those grand old flats that took up half a floor and featured three bedrooms and a den, looked like St. Vincent De Paul on donation day.

Lauren gasped at how far down the drain Val’s life had gone. When they had lived together, Val’s drawers and closet had been untidy, but since then Val’s cyclonic impulses had spilled out and into every spare inch of living space. Bookshelves lined one wall; books were stuffed into the shelves, piled atop each other, but also loose papers, magazines, folders, brochures, maps, bowls, pens, a calculator, a thermometer, silk flowers, a collection of Hummel children. The wall opposite preserved no bare space either, home to a variety of objects—the largest of which was the massive walnut cabinet Val had inherited from her grandfather. Gothic trefoils and ogive arches decorated its obsidian surface. A spinet piano stood next to the cabinet. Lauren pressed a dusty piano key and a tinny note issued.

Several framed photographs sat atop the piano. Lauren remembered them from her time living with Val. There was Val’s grandfather, Roland “Rolly” Stone, a Seattle legend who had made a fortune in lumber, land, and construction, smoking one of his signature cigars, his eyes twinkling. He sat in a wicker chair on the porch of the family’s Madison Park house, which Val had inherited—and sold—after his death. In the photograph next to him was a weak chinned balding man: Val’s father Grady, who had suffered complete liver failure trying to fill Roland Stone’s exceptional shoes. A third frame presented pudgy Howard at his graduation from the University of Puget Sound, standing between Val and their grandfather.

All the men in Val’s family were divorced, and so Val was the only woman in any of the pictures. In one photo, she crouched in a starting block, her ass voluptuously high, competing in track and field. In another, she balanced on skis as she waited to try out for the 1994 Olympic team.

Lauren squeezed between the piano and an overstuffed armchair covered with an ersatz slipcover made of an old blanket. As she did so, Lauren caught a flicker of motion from the walnut cabinet. In the decorative hutch, which rested atop the hip-high bureau (the cabinet was in two weighty pieces), hung a mirror, age-spotted and filmed with dust. A fuzzy image of her pale, wan face stared back at her.

In the mirror, feral sparks lit the green eyes behind the coke-bottle glasses. An almost overwhelming desire to flee the room caused the flesh on her upper arms to prickle. The muscles in her hips, legs, and lower back contracted, coiling for a leap. The cabinet seemed to loom above her, stretching out, drawing her in. Something deep in her lower abdomen twisted and compressed. Two weeks early flitted moth-like through her mind. She pulled her gaze away from her reflection as though pulling her feet out of ankle-deep muck, and, with a gasp, she turned toward the light.

The living room’s bay window looked out on 18th Avenue over the roofs of the houses across the street toward the far vista of the Cascade Mountains. In front of the window, on a low console table, stood row upon row of spider plant, aloe, heliotrope, jade plant, philodendron, and pothos.

Lauren went to the plants, grateful for the distance between her and the cabinet. She touched a stem, and focusing on its life, brought her breath under control. Her shoulders relaxed and lowered.

According to the Feng Shui bagua, the cabinet stood in Val’s relationship corner. It was as obvious as the vortex of a maelstrom disappearing into the depths of a cold, dark sea—this was the black hole at the center of Val’s life. How could Lauren have missed it? Roland Stone had passed away while Lauren was living here, and this cabinet had come into their lives shortly thereafter. However, Lauren had been preoccupied with Val’s drinking, which had taken a big turn for the worse. She had chalked that up to grief at the time.

Val entered from the kitchen carrying a tray with a shell-white porcelain teapot flanked by cups and saucers from four different sets.

“I love your plants,” said Lauren, smiling. “They can stay. Let’s get started right after tea.”

“Today?” said Val, “But, I’ve got two weeks…”

“There’s no better time to start,” said Lauren, putting milk in her tea cup. “Clearing clutter is more than just throwing away junk. It’s a process of removing obstacles from your environment, yes, but also from your inner life. To allow harmonious energies to flow through you, and to let wonderful new opportunities emerge.”

Val surveyed the living room. “Ugh,” she said, and shivered.

“It will make a tremendous difference. ‘Clutter’ is derived from the same root word as ‘clot:’ something coagulated. Unblock, make room, let your energy flow.”

“Okay, okay.”

“It won’t be easy,” said Lauren.

“Nothing is ever easy. Sure, let’s do it.” Val smiled, and in response, Lauren felt her own energy flow.

*

Throughout the balance of the morning, Lauren and Val conducted essentially a spring cleaning. Into the recycling bin went the old newspapers, magazines, catalogs, flyers, unopened junk mail: offers for credit cards, coupons, pleas for money from local charities, alumni magazines from several different institutions of higher learning. “I don’t know why I receive them,” said Val, “I never went there.” At lunch time, Val was giggling and giddy with laughter. Bone weary, Lauren was convinced her menses were imminent.

After lunch, which consisted of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches – a child’s meal, Lauren thought, comfort food – they began on the banker’s boxes. Lauren made two piles—one for immediate recycling and one for papers that deserved a second look. Most of the items went into the immediate pile: old statements, doctor bills from ten years ago, bank statements and cancelled checks from the early eighties, from accounts that no longer existed at banks that had long since merged with other conglomerates, various kinds of stationery, receipts. Lauren ruthlessly disposed of everything that was more than seven years old. They finished the banker’s boxes by five o’clock, kept enough to fill two boxes, threw the other ten into the recycling bin, and Lauren staggered to her car after promising Val that she would return at nine o’clock next morning.

*

When Lauren started in on the bookshelves, Val at last burst into tears.

“I don’t know why I have to get rid of my books,” she protested, “What if I need them—you know—for reference?”

“Here’s a manual for DOS 2.11—what value does it have? None. Out it goes.”

Val’s face flushed with resentment. “Well, you don’t have to be such a bitch about it.”

Lauren softened. Her chin lowered. “Look, Val, most of your reference books are old and out of date—especially the computer books. These were all written in the early 90’s. Here’s a manual for WordStar. Technology has come a long way since then. And your novels—they’re all best sellers and most of them are still in print. If you ever want to re-read one, you can just pick it up used.”

“You’re not touching my poetry!” said Val, moving to block a bookshelf with her body like Scarlett O’Hara protecting Tara from the Yankees.

“No, that stays,” said Lauren, tossing books into plastic bags. The books that went: all titles by Stephen King, Belva Plain, Barbara Taylor Bradford, and Jeffrey Archer, as well as one entire bookshelf of young adult and children’s books. The books that stayed: Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, Leaves of Grass, Origin of Consciousness, The Road Less Traveled, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Man’s Search for Meaning, the Bible. Lauren felt a stab of recognition and sympathy; Val knew, if only subconsciously, that she wanted release from the imprisonment of the past, and she’d looked for it in these books.

Lauren piled the stuff to be removed from the apartment in the dining room, then went to the bookshelves in the bedroom. Val paced from the living room to the bedroom to the bathroom and back again. Once in a while, she’d bring something, an item of clothing, an old toothbrush, a crusted, ancient canister of mousse, and put it into a plastic bag. She moved with all of the animation of a zombie. A little while later, the overture to The Flying Dutchman blared out of the living room from Val’s ancient stereo. Lauren couldn’t help herself. She had to laugh.

That evening Lauren did some bodywork with Val, first massage; then she used a kind of hybrid Reiki energy release technique. The effect was dramatic. Val fell into a sleep so deep it was indistinguishable from unconsciousness. Lauren let herself out after turning out the lights and leaving a message for Val that she would return in the morning.

*

The next morning, they began on the closets. Out went every article of clothing Val hadn’t worn in the last two years. Garbage bags quickly filled and were stacked in the dining area next to the piles of books that were going to Goodwill. Old paper items were put into the recycling bin. Val kept the Christmas cards, but tossed the envelopes they came in, keeping only the envelopes with return addresses.

After the closets, they commenced on the drawers in the bedroom. Out went any article of clothing that showed wear, frayed elastic, discoloration, or age. Lauren found a drawer containing nothing but orphan socks. Out they went. By the time they were finished with the bedroom, two of the three dressers were empty, and the clothes that remained in the closet hung on only one side of the rod, and four pairs of shoes had been winnowed down from thirty. The wardrobe contained two sets of bed linen down from sixteen, a comforter and an extra blanket.

In the master bath, Val tossed everything that she hadn’t used in recent memory. Lauren let her have the bathroom to herself. She was pleased that Val was starting to get into the spirit of clearing clutter. Her newfound ruthlessness with throwing away stuff she didn’t use, hadn’t used, would never use again, was good to see. Her pinched expression had softened overnight. Maybe it was the bodywork they’d done the day before—but maybe Val’s blocks were crumbling. A while later, Bach began to play in the living room, one of the Brandenburg Concerti, a cheerful, prancing melody that made Lauren feel light as cottonwood fluff.

“When did you quit Heart and start listening to classical music?” asked Lauren.

“Oh, those are grandpa’s old albums. My brother Howard didn’t want them and told me to take them. They’re all Deutsche Gramophone. Grandpa liked German music—Wagner, Bruckner, Bach and Beethoven. But I still love the Wilson sisters.”

Val made tuna salad niçoise for lunch. Lauren ate heartily. Then they turned to the living room. The filing cabinets were next. Val had kept receipts from the phone company, Seattle City Light, her life insurance policy through Fraternal Lutheran, her health insurance through King County Medical, brochures from every community college and four year institution in western Washington, travel brochures, maps, instruction manuals for electronic equipment she no longer owned, leases from apartments she lived in ten years ago. Out it went. She kept personal correspondence from family and friends. By the time they finished, one entire cabinet was empty and the other had files in only one drawer.

“The dining room’s getting full—maybe we should make a run to Goodwill,” said Lauren.

“It will take several trips in the car,” said Val. “Do you know someone who has a truck?”

“Val, I’m a lesbian. Of course I know someone who has a truck.” Lauren washed her hands and pressed Marge Burns’ contact on her cell. “Hey Marge,” she said when the call connected, “It’s Lauren. I need a favor…”

While they waited for Marge and her Ford F-250 to arrive, they started on the kitchen. The Belgique stainless steel cookware stayed. Out went practically everything else—faux Tupperware so old and discolored it couldn’t be cleaned, stacks of empty margarine containers, mismatched plates, glasses, bowls, saucers. If a mug or a cup had a chip, out it went. Everything past date in the cupboards and the refrigerator went to the dumpster.

After Marge arrived, Val, Lauren and Marge filled the truck with items for Goodwill. Two dressers went as well as one of the filing cabinets, all the books, the bed linens, the old clothes, the shoes. Marge drove off after promising to call once she delivered the load to see if there was anything more.

Val looked exhausted and happy. They returned to her apartment which now had a buoyant energy.

“Well, we’re done!” said Val.

“Not quite,” said Lauren. “There’s one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

Lauren led her into the living room and pointed to the cabinet. “That.”

Val shook her head, held out her hands in front of her.   “No,” she said, “I’m not... I can’t...”

Her hands flew to her face and she burst into pathetic, wracking sobs, so intense that she sank to the floor.

“Whatever is blocking you is in here.” Lauren opened the first of the drawers that lined the top of the bureau portion of the cabinet. Inside lay a beautiful wooden cigar box, polished with lacquer, stamped with the imprint Joya de Havana. She removed it from the drawer and set it on top of the bureau. Beside it in the drawer rested another. She opened the remaining drawers, removing five additional cigar boxes, all made of wood, all glowing as if covered with honey. Each had small brass clasps on the front and brass hinges.  Out of the corner of Lauren’s eye, she caught sight of the face of Val’s grandfather gazing out of his portrait atop the piano, his eyes twinkling mischievously as he sucked on his fat stogie.

Val stopped sobbing and curled into a fetal position on the floor, gently rocking and murmuring to herself.

Lauren opened one of the cigar boxes. Tissue lined the interior, the kind of tissue gift stores wrap around fine porcelain, stark white, soft and elegant. She moved the layers of tissue aside and saw what she first thought was a dirty, ill-used doll—about four inches long, curved and mummified; its tiny fingers no thicker than pencil leads.

Lauren’s head swam and she felt as though someone had knocked all the breath out of her. She must have gasped because Val said, “Those were all miscarriages. The ones that lived were given away for adoption.”

Lauren opened another cigar box, and another. They all contained the same thing but in different shapes and sizes.

She heard movement behind her. Val stumbling to the bathroom. The sound of vomiting. Lauren followed, shocked, numb inside, unsure of how to respond. She wiped Val’s mouth with a warm wet washcloth. “It wasn’t only grandpa,” Val said, eyes downcast, “but my brother Howard, too. Dad never touched me. But he never lifted a finger to protect me, either.”

Lauren stroked Val’s matted hair, and pulled the strands that stuck to her sweaty face away from her forehead. “My god Val. I’m so goddamn sorry. I never even suspected. How could I have known?”

Val gave Lauren’s shoulder a forgiving caress. “How was I supposed to tell you? Saving those dead misbirths makes me a sicko, a fiend. Do you think I ever wanted you to know that?”

Lauren chuffed, made a noise that sounded halfway between a bark and scream. Not now! She prayed. Please! Not now! “But when they died—how were you able to keep them? Why would a doctor have allowed that?”

Val’s eyes blazed with fury. “If you think for one second they ever took me to a doctor, much more a hospital, then think again. No Lauren, they let me labor at home, in my own bed, and when a little critter was born prematurely dead, Grandpa let me sleep in my bloodied sheets for days before stripping the bed and burning them.”

Lauren swallowed hard, the urge to laugh was growing stronger.  This was M.S.’s most perverse betrayal. She must kill the impulse. Val would think her a monster.

Valerie’s voice took on an odd lilt that was acidly sardonic, her words came out like miniature explosions. “Do you want to know why so many of them died? It’s a good story, scout’s honor. As soon as I would begin to show, Grandpa and Howard would gut punch me, repeatedly, several times a day. Howard loved that game. Pop-pop-pop!” Val’s eyes gleamed like a snake’s eyes—luminous, flat, and predatory.

Lauren giggled. She slapped her hands over her mouth and bit into the heel of her palm. She shook her head in agony. Blood welled in the bite marks. She couldn’t alarm Val with this inappropriate response. She just couldn’t.

Val must have noticed something because she turned away and hid her head. Lauren tried to draw Val into an embrace. Val stiffened and did not warm to the contact. Then Val shoved Lauren away and turned to the commode to vomit again, though this time only bile was expelled. Lauren reached for a towel and wrapped it around her hand.

Lauren held onto Val’s back. “It’s all right now. It’s over. You can let it go. It doesn’t have to rule you any longer. You are your own person. You can live with and accept the past. You are strong.”

A vacant, haunted lassitude replaced Val’s earlier savage fury. Flat affect meant dissociation: Val was trying to protect herself psychologically. She permitted Lauren to undress her while bath water ran. Lauren eased Val into the tub and sponged her body. Her tall, lanky frame filled the tub, her knees up to her chin. Lauren took her out clean, and toweled her dry.

Then she led Val back to her bed and lay down next to her, holding her. Lauren accepted her own past, and their shared past, and so found a level of compassion she could survive. People weren’t objects to be discarded when they stopped meeting your expectations. Val could not be other than who she was—neither could Lauren, and that was better than good, that was bliss.

*

Lauren woke with the dawn, having slept a dozen hours. Leaving Val in bed, she went out to the kitchen. Lauren noticed black specks on the kitchen counter, like spilled coffee. She ran her index finger through it, and brought it to her nose. Potting soil. Valerie had arisen in the night and tended her plants.

Lauren smiled.

She put water on to boil and then noticed the light on in the master bath. She went in to the tidy, clean room. An open bottle of vodka sat on the edge of the sink. Lauren’s heart sank. Oh, well, Val could be forgiven. She’d been through hell yesterday. Then Lauren spied the empty bottle of pills next to the vodka, and fear impaled her. “Valerie!” she cried and rushed back to the bedroom. The shriek of the boiling tea kettle competed with Lauren’s howl of dismay.

Everything that happened next passed in a blur. First came paramedics, then the police, and finally the coroner. After answering questions from six different officers from the city and county, she finally called Howard in Washington, D.C. and was relieved when she got voicemail. She didn’t have the energy to confront him with his vile secret. On the voicemail she told him, “Valerie told me everything about you and your grandfather before she died. I know everything, Howard.”

Howard did not attend Valerie’s funeral. Weeks passed as Valerie’s estate was probated and disbursed. Lauren and Howard were co-beneficiaries of Val’s will. Howard the attorney preferred communication by email, which Lauren considered a blessing.

“Lauren,” he wrote, “I want nothing that belonged to my sister. I’ll just take my half of the intangible assets (bank account/insurance policy proceeds, etc.) according to the will. You can do what you wish with all the stuff. Thx. -H.”

So, Lauren sold Val’s furniture and household goods at auction, except for a certain walnut cabinet of gothic design. Lauren didn’t care how much it was worth—she determined it would never survive her.

Marge and Lauren hauled it out to Marge’s cabin in the Cascade foothills. They pushed the cabinet out of the truck bed onto stony ground away from any nearby trees. Lauren doused it with paint thinner and struck a match. The cabinet hissed and spat as flames licked its surface. Lauren threw the pictures of Roland, Grady, and Howard Stone into the flames. The smoke that boiled out of the charring wood was pitch black and rank.

“That’s awful,” said Marge. “What is it?”

“The past,” said Lauren.

Then the mirror in the cabinet shattered. Marge and Lauren ducked, but even so, a piece of the flying glass grazed Lauren’s cheek. And with that, it was over.

From time to time, Lauren was bothered by nagging feelings of guilt that she’d failed Valerie by mixing her professional and personal lives. That ethical breach would require future soul searching.

And so, one day while she was watering Val’s plants two months after Valerie’s passing, she noticed something like a weed growing out of the potting soil near the stem of a heliotrope. She grasped the object and attempted to pull it free. But it was attached to something larger. She pulled harder expecting to see roots, but a doll’s arm came free in her hand.

Stunned, Lauren gazed at the thing as realization dawned. Her legs turned to rubber and she dropped to her knees on the carpeted floor. She loosed the planter and it fell and smashed, spewing soil across the rug. The heliotrope spilled from the clay pot, roots exposed. Tangled among the roots, dirt clinging to the dry substance that once had been soft flesh, reposed the fetal figure of a dirty toy, a tiny mummified proto-human.

Val hadn’t let her past go at all. She’d simply reburied it.

Lauren experienced a rising, uncontrollable impulse to laugh. It was her MS, sensory signals rebounding off scars in her nervous system. She felt no amusement, no lightness of heart or spirit, simply repugnance; but still she laughed, great whooping guffaws of laughter. Tears sprang from her eyes, as the sensation of pins and needles pricked the skin of her slack legs.

She didn’t look down at her legs. She didn’t want to see confirmation of the terrible image that rose in her mind’s eye: the desiccated husk of a fetus, moving with marionette-like jerks, fastening its mouth upon on her calf, licking, nibbling, biting, sucking…

The Grief Season

Lee Thomas

Late morning and the offices of the advertising agency felt stagnant. The only sound, a persistent droning, came from the air conditioning vents. Matt Abbott couldn’t concentrate. His thoughts, as sad and tragic as any other widower’s, nattered in morose echoes. He closed the laptop, tucked it under his arm, and told the co-workers he encountered on the way to the elevator he would be back after lunch.

At the coffee shop, he sat in the middle of the room, where sun spilled through the windows to touch the edge of the polished table. The place was neat and clean, and the natural light was welcome. Unlike other cafés, which were often eclectically furnished, new tables and chairs with cherry wood veneers decorated the space. Six tech geeks rearranged the room to create a conference area beside the window. Respectable in their blue button-down shirts, they were unremarkable in appearance. Their body shapes ran the spectrum, from scrawny to average, then right on through to roundly obese. One guy wore a navy sweater with an argyle lattice across the chest. The sky blue collar of his dress shirt clutched his neck. His face was forgettable, but he had a nice ass.

Behind the counter, two women steamed milk, toasted Panini sandwiches, and cackled mockingly. Cruelly. They weren’t truly sinister, Matt knew. They meant no harm. Even so, their expressions of joy burrowed like vermin, determined to nest in his skull. Through the speakers hidden in the ceiling, a bastard mutt of reggae and creeping folk music entered the room like a nerve agent under low pressure. He shoved nugget-sized speakers into his ears, found his playlist, and turned up the volume. Soulful blues smothered the invasive sounds, so he could focus on his work. He could have used the headphones in the office, but that wouldn’t have eliminated the feeling of desolation surrounding him there.

Matt’s laptop was a window, overlooking familiar but arid terrain. He told himself to concentrate. Concentrate. But when he did, the image on which he focused was bleached of color and the words read as torpid. Though the copywriters assured him the phrases for the ad sparked and popped and read fresh, he couldn’t feel it. The sentences were nothing but strings of words, paths of desiccated carcasses. These days, they always were. But because he had to work, because he was paid good money to pull the images and words into a pleasing whole, he tinkered, changing fonts, trying new positions for the product name and the ad copy. New positions. Again he looked at the techie in the argyle sweater, the man whose ass he had admired and whose face he found lacking. He imagined stripping away the layers of clothing from him, using his imagination to alter the image the way he used manipulation apps to reduce photos to their important elements, and he could imagine this man wholly raw, down to the musculature and the skeleton. There was nothing there – at least nothing that interested Matt – so his attention crept to the window.

Then he saw Kit. Except, he didn’t.

Kit had been his partner, and Kit was dead. He’d been dead seven weeks.

What he saw through the window was a pillar of color hovering in the parking lot beside a white Toyota convertible. The pillar was a misty, dusty plum color, so much a spirit Matt could barely see it, a shadow with no source. When he first set eyes on this trick of light, this impossibility, he saw Kit–still smiling, still desirable, still alive. Even now, a moment later, he detected the handsome contours of the face high on the cloudy surface, and something told Matt there was a connection between this vaporous yet substantial anomaly and the love he'd lost.

Residue.

He didn’t believe in ghosts. Death was the end. There was no place to go after life: no crowd of loved ones; no party, no busy kitchen, no strolls through twilight, no sweet fields of cloud to cushion wanderings in the hereafter. Anything that was left unresolved would remain unresolved.

Matt told himself there were no ghosts. That is not Kit.

Still, the illusion frustrated him. He tried to ignore it. His attention returned to the laptop’s screen and to the faces of the models–an elderly couple, holding hands with adoring smiles affixed to their airbrushed faces. Their affection was fabricated. They were paid models. The old man and the old woman had met an hour before the picture was taken, and yet they gazed at one another as if they were the greatest of loves, each constituting the other’s joy and salvation. Matt’s gaze flicked toward the window and to Kit and the white car.

He closed his laptop and stood, keeping his eyes on the residue of his dead companion. He crossed the coffee shop, imagining the form would reveal itself to be nothing more than a smudge on the glass once he got close enough to the door, but when the door opened nothing occupied the space between Matt and him… It… except air. He remained on the threshold, fixed to the spot.

Not exactly afraid, Matt’s hesitation was more than anything a moment to figure out what purpose moving forward might serve. Did he expect this residual presence to bestow a message? Wisdom? Condemnation? Or an embrace? Checking over his shoulder to the side of the room, away from the techies, he noticed two of the patrons eyeing his reticence, and what Matt hoped to find in their eyes was some indication that they, like he, could see the presence occupying the parking lot. They showed no signs of it. One of them, an attractive young Asian woman with a phone pressed to her ear, simply looked annoyed, and the other, a bearded man with thick forearms and a pleasant, round face, looked, not at Kit, but at Matt. His lips twitched into a smile. The expression and what it suggested startled Matt, though it was familiar and under different circumstances might have been flattering.

After turning away, Matt stepped outside. The vague shape remained, though he could no longer find any indications of the face on its surface. He walked to the hood of the convertible. With each step the residue of Kit faded, until it had vanished completely. Continuing along the length of the car Matt stepped into the driving lane of the parking lot to survey the concrete and the vehicles and the precisely spaced shrubs and grasses of the landscaping.

Nothing.

Feeling ridiculous and unnerved by the hoax his mind had played on him, he turned back toward the coffee shop, only to discover the bearded man who had smiled at him was now standing beside the white convertible.

He said, “Hello,” and Matt said, “Hey,” and he asked, "How's it going?"

In the living room of the man’s house, Matt allowed himself to be undressed and guided onto the couch. A halo of color, dusty purple, ringed the bearded face, and Matt wanted to believe that Kit was there, not only observing but participating, perhaps even inhabiting the man with the round face and the kind, blue eyes, guiding his actions. His positions. Perhaps Kit’s spirit would feel what this man’s body felt.

Of course, Matt knew the thoughts were absurd–a sign of emotional instability, insanity–so he pushed them away as the man dipped his face to resume the firm pressing of lips, the hard darting of tongue.

And as he relaxed into the act, he confirmed to himself that this was not a union orchestrated by a divine other. The bearded man was a fuck. A good time neither shared nor condemned by Kit or his memory. The round-faced man was an attractive stranger. He tasted like coffee and licorice, and his flavor helped Matt forget.

*

At home he avoided the computer–too many emails with messages he couldn’t face: invitations from friends who wanted to provide distraction. They meant well but they didn’t understand how much genuine discomfort accompanied Matt’s every attempt to conciliate their need to comfort.

He fixed a pork chop and green beans for dinner and ate half the food on his plate while watching a syndicated sitcom that he’d never found funny. But it was familiar and in its own way, pleasant enough. The characters were attractive and upbeat and their problems, though invariably exaggerated to the level of crisis, were small and manageable and would not follow them past the end credits. It was a simplicity he’d never believed in but had always wished for. Covered with foil, the remainder of the meal went into the refrigerator, and Matt wondered how he would spend the rest of his evening.

No housework. The apartment was scrubbed and swept and polished. He’d vacuumed the rug three times in as many days. To do it again would be pointless. Crazy even. Similarly, the only clothes that needed cleaning were the garments he wore. No errands to run.

The man he’d met that morning returned to his thoughts, but the memory was arid, sapped of vitality. He’d given Matt a business card and said, "Seriously, call me."

It’s too soon to call: a statement true in too many ways. He’d just met the man. Even under normal circumstances Matt would have given a relationship time to breathe. But these were not normal circumstances, so timing was irrelevant.

He threw the card away. Matt hadn’t sufficiently grieved for Kit. It had only been seven weeks, not even two months. Too soon. He considered watching another television program, surfing the web, reading, but these were distractions, inactive activities, to a person who, like Matt, needed to be moving.

There must be something I forgot to do.

He hated sitting in the room alone. Even to himself it was hard to explain the reason, but it felt as if the ceiling and walls were watching him, expecting Matt to be doing. For every moment in which he wasn’t in motion, the unease grew until what he endured felt near panic.

There were pills in the cabinet above the bathroom sink. Anti-anxiety. The doctor had told him to take them as needed to get through the worst of the mourning process. Twenty-three of the thirty-pill prescription remained in the bottle, because Matt wasn’t sure he’d know when the worst was over or if he’d even encountered it yet. Could it get worse? If so, would any number of pills help?

In reality, Matt avoided the pills because he didn’t like the numbness they imposed. It felt like cheating. Enduring the hurt was better. Yes, better.

Few mementoes of Kit were still in the apartment. Of all of the photographs that used to decorate its rooms, only one remained. It sat in a silver frame on top of the chest of drawers in the bedroom. In it, Matt and Kit were squeezed into the same side of a booth in a Palm Springs steakhouse. They wore the silly, matching Panama hats that Kit had insisted Matt buy – the ones Matt had thrown away a week after Kit’s funeral – and both toasted the camera.

The picture held his attention briefly. He passed it on his way to retrieve a jacket from the stool in the corner. He needed air and motion.

*

After an hour of aimless driving, he exited the freeway and headed downtown, though he hadn’t planned to. At home, the walls and floor and ceiling spied on his every move. He wasn’t ready to return to the apartment’s espionage.

Downtown he found a bar. Unlike the trendier establishments he'd visited with Kit, this place was darker than the diffusely lit rooms Matt associated with effective and flattering lighting, it was gloom-ridden. Drunks leaned against one another at the bar, sharing secrets and lies, neither party particularly concerned as their expressions were placeholders, something to wear while they waited to share their own stories, so they could believe themselves relevant to the conversation. Connected. The thumping house music had been popular two decades before and had long since passed into cliché. Matt considered the place sad, but he found what he was looking for between the filthy walls. He found Kit or what was left of him.

The residue…Kit… seemed more solid now, the features more sharply defined. The plum color had deepened giving the apparition a sad quality. It stood behind a young, unattractive kid who peered at Matt from the corners of his unappealing eyes. Matt couldn’t imagine wanting such a guy, but Kit was at his back, and it had to mean something, so Matt took his drink across the bar, and he sat beside the ugly kid.

And the kid said, ““Hello,” and Matt said, “Hey,” and he asked, "How's it going?"

Late that night he returned to his apartment and dropped his keys in the bowl beside the door. In the bedroom, he sat on the end of the bed and gazed at the picture in the silver frame. Beside it rested Matt’s most valued keepsake of Kit: his phone.

The service had long since been disconnected, but Matt kept it charged. Many of his memories of Kit included the device. It was as much a part of his partner as were his eyes, nose, and feet. Whenever Matt had been driving to dinner or to a party or just motored around the lakes to the north of town enjoying the scenery, Kit would sit in the passenger seat, talking to friends, texting with friends, posting updates on his social media pages, or simply following their route on a map application.

Connecting. Connected. Every day.

He lifted Kit’s phone to look at the blank screen, and then he stopped because it hurt. He set the phone down.

In the days after the wasp, he’d scrolled through every app and every message. He’d spent hours with the phone. With it he’d been able to follow and relive the last days, the final seconds of Kit’s life. Matt knew where Kit had eaten lunch that day, and when he’d left the gym–two hours before checking in at the park. He knew the name of the song that had been playing when the stinger pierced Kit’s neck.

His last tweet read: chilly but beautiful day in the park. Wish M (He always called him M) were here. Kit’s every undertaking, and so many of his thoughts, were catalogued, and were now archived on the phone. Texts to friends revealed his joys and frustrations, expressing emotions he’d never voiced to Matt.

He imagined that if Kit were capable of sending messages from the other side of life, they would come through such a device. But there had been no cryptic communications, only the odd, misty residue, and it told him nothing.

*

A week later, Matt experienced a moment of dread after waking in a strange room. The place wasn’t squalid nor in any obvious way threatening, but the quaint décor, all pastels and floral prints like the bedroom of a well-off grandmother, was unfamiliar, and his hangover migraine interfered with his attempts to piece together the series of events that had brought him there. He’d never blacked out from drinking before and a needle of suspicion – Someone drugged me – stirred the stew of misery in his skull.

A diminutive man, easily two decades his senior, entered the room holding a tray. He smiled and whispered, “Good morning,” and set the tray – coffee and toast, a glass bowl of strawberry preserves that looked like congealed blood – on the table beside the bed. He asked how Matt was feeling, and he made a joke about road kill. The old guy patted his chest with a tiny hand and laughed. As Matt sipped his coffee, the man described the events of the previous night.

They were humiliating.

Matt had been stumbling around a club, searching every corner and niche, even crawling on the floor as if he’d lost something precious. His face grew hot as the older gentleman hit the highlights of Matt’s embarrassing performance.

He went on to explain the coin he and his friends had tossed to decide which one of them would take responsibility for Matt’s safety.

“I lost,” the guy said in a friendly manner that made it impossible for Matt to take offense. “And for the record,” he said, “my name is Philip, not Kit.”

He apologized to Philip and then thanked him and then apologized again, and when Philip laughed off his shamed mumblings, Matt thought the little old man might have the kindest face he’d ever seen. Philip patted his chest again and told him, “Eat up and after that grab a shower. I’ll drive you back to the club for your car.”

“Don’t bother. Really. I’ll call a cab.”

“No trouble. I insist.”

During the drive, Philip packed away his good humor and became earnest. He told Matt that he’d been clean and sober for eighteen years, recalling the frequency with which he’d once found himself waking in strange beds, and cars, and in the alleys behind clubs. After giving Matt a card with his phone number on it, Philip insisted Matt call him when he was ready to face his addiction.

The old guy was being presumptuous, and Matt thought to explain his situation, but it was easier to nod and thank him than it was to explain.

Besides Philip wasn’t wholly mistaken. In the days since first seeing the specter in the parking lot of the coffee shop, Matt had fucked a dozen men, and though he’d never been prudish in his sexual views, this was a level of promiscuity he found unconscionable. He couldn’t deny some level of compulsion in his actions, but it wasn’t a disease

He promised himself that it would end now, right here in the passenger seat of Philip’s Buick. Whether the apparition was genuinely a part of Kit or some mental flotsam that declined either to vaporize or coalesce, Matt committed himself to refusing its influence. He promised himself to turn away the next time he saw it.

And he broke that promise eight hours later.

*

Matt sat across the table from a man he wished he hadn't called. The restaurant was a sleek, culinary clone job, no different than fifty other mid-scale hipster troughs. The menu featured kale and quinoa and truffle oil, and the earthy tone of the menu copy assured diners their meals were locally sourced, free range, organic, and hand crafted. Matt turned the menu over, cursorily examining the design elements. Dull. Uninspired.

The man across the table was named Gavin, and though Gavin was a good guy, perhaps a bit too nice to be even the least bit interesting, Matt wanted to be elsewhere. He felt an emptiness about the evening and it made him nervous, put him on edge.

Kit hadn't appeared on the night Matt had met Gavin, and he hadn’t appeared tonight, and Matt wondered what that might mean.

Nothing, he told himself. It meant nothing.

This was his first real date since Kit had died. Gavin’s eyes were chocolate brown. His narrow features managed to come off as refined, rather than severe, and Matt found him extremely handsome, but he didn’t find Gavin exciting, though he accepted this as a failing in himself not his date. I should have stayed home. Gavin wore a snug gray shirt that suggested the good body beneath. Black slacks. Comfortable but expensive shoes. Nice but not overdone. Not like he was trying to  impress. He was quick with conversation, spoke easily, casually. No arrogance.

Matt acknowledged he was stripping away the surface looking for Gavin’s raw image, hoping to find problems, but no obvious flaw was revealed. It’s too soon.

Gavin talked about his wife, and how her death two years before had shocked him out of the closet, and while the event was devastating, and while he could never claim to be grateful for such a horrible incident, he had, in its aftermath discovered a more comfortable self. He’d turned his passions toward men, and he hadn’t been with a woman since.

It was in the immediate aftermath of this story that Gavin became interesting to Matt. The man's face now carried a new dimension, a fresh and unexpected layer. Heroism. Like Matt, he’d experienced intimate tragedy. He would have answers. He would tell Matt that it was perfectly normal for the residue of a loved one, a specter that became more horrible with each viewing, to lead him from man to man, encounter to encounter. Anonymous. Emotionless. Simple.

Gavin continued, filling in the years since his wife’s death with quick hints at brief and disappointing relationships, then he asked about Matt’s romantic history and the story of Kit emerged. So Matt told him about the nine-month relationship, the best he’d had, with all of the promise of forever and all of the heat of brand fucking new, and how it had ended on a park bench in early spring. A wasp had taken offense at Kit’s presence. One sting and Kit lay on the grass struggling to catch so much as a whisper of breath through a windpipe that had swollen closed so quickly the young man hadn’t had a chance to understand what was happening to him. Unconsciousness settled in, and a woman jogged around a corner to see the crumpled man at the foot of the bench. She called the paramedics. Too late.

Gavin appeared concerned in between sips of wine and nods of his head, but Matt found the reactions suspicious. Matt suddenly felt self-conscious. Had he made too much of the incident, positioning himself as a martyr to create the kind of drama no one wanted to take on? Nine months wasn’t a significant period of time. Hardly any time at all by rational standards. The lifespan of a male wasp. The gestation of a child. Stillborn.

Though they commiserated during the entrée, the conversation turned away from melancholia and morbidity before Matt’s coffee arrived. Gavin showed a sly sense of humor and it turned out they both loved Meryl Streep and the plays of Martin McDonagh and neither of them had ever sat through an entire televised football game. Further, Gavin admitted to a fondness (okay, a flat-out love) for 1950s giant-insect-on-the-rampage films. This led to a discussion of the decaying state of the media. Gavin said it had become a Punch and Judy show.

“They want to keep us distracted,” he said, leaning back in his chair and gazing into the glass of wine in his hand. “If we’re distracted by the bright and shining nonsense, we won’t notice how deep the shit has gotten.”

This set off an extended discussion about media and politics, during which Matt genuinely agreed with his date on nearly every point. It was an enjoyable chat, but he realized, and maybe Gavin did as well, that such conversations were no less distractions than the media’s Punch and Judy show. They could discuss an issue all night and generate a hundred solutions for it, making themselves feel accomplished, but no meaningful action would come from the talk. It was a simple diversion cloaked in the illusion of achievement. In the end, it was like death: emptiness granted weightier attributes.

Following dinner, they strolled along the lakeside. Lights from the businesses on the far shore reflected imperfectly on the water’s surface, smearing and elongating with the ripples cast by the evening wind. The conversation never waned, never sounded forced. Matt enjoyed speaking with Gavin even though the guy had a habit of connecting his sentences with a mumbled “but…uh” and punctuating his speech with snorting chuckles. There was nothing about Gavin that reminded Matt of Kit, except for the way he made Matt feel. He was relaxed with him. He was not someone Matt felt the need to escape. Even when Gavin talked about his job–corporate accounting–Matt remained attuned to the sound of his voice, though he understood little of what was said.

Later, parked in the car at the curb in front of his house, Gavin asked if Matt wanted to come in.

“I’m not that easy,” Matt said. He smiled.

“So, how easy are you?” Gavin asked. “You know, for future reference?”

Matt felt certain that taking things slow with Gavin was the right move, but he almost changed his mind when they kissed. There was something powerful and intimate in the embrace, a sensation missing from his encounters with the round-faced man from the coffee shop and the man with the kind face and the ugly-faced men and the men with faces he didn’t remember. When Gavin pulled away, Matt leaned forward and twisted awkwardly in the car seat because he didn’t want his lips away from Gavin’s. He wanted to keep this heroic face close to him.

When the kiss finally ended, Matt said goodnight, though he didn’t want to go. Gavin promised to call in the morning, and he climbed out of the car. Matt watched him until he was inside the house and then saw the lights come on through the windows. The shades came down.

Driving home, Matt noted the excitement that buzzed in his chest, and he entertained fanciful thoughts of his next date with the man, and he knew that investing so much imagination in an improbable future was ridiculous. Gavin may never call. Still Matt welcomed the mixed emotions of trepidation and hope.

Without forethought, he exited the freeway and turned toward downtown. The traffic was still heavy for so late on a weeknight. Several times as he drove toward the bar, he struggled with the decision to go there. Go home. At the next corner, turn right and head back to the freeway. But he turned left and traveled two blocks to the dismal bar, and as if this detour had been sanctioned by fate, he found a parking space next to the building. Inside, he waited to see the residue of Kit before he ordered his first drink. He didn’t wait long.

The place wasn’t busy. Most of the patrons mingled at the back of the room. Kit appeared and vanished with the movements of the meager crowd.

No longer a pillar of pale plum light, the residue had grown more solid, more ghastly. Its color had changed to a deep gray with only striations of the vital plum that had once comprised it. The face was more pronounced now, more clearly Kit, but not the youthful, handsome face Matt had always admired. Now, the face was haggard, with pronounced pockets of swollen flesh beneath the eyes, and the mouth he’d always associated with smiling, drooped at the corners in a monstrous frown.

He briefly considered Gavin, but the man hardly seemed real. Right now, he was more of a ghost than Kit. Kit was present. He’s right there.

He barked his drink order to the bartender and anxiously waited for the man to fix his scotch. The tip he left was exorbitant, because Matt was too impatient to wait for his change. He needed to keep the apparition in his sights no matter how ugly it had become.

Matt found him again near the back of the bar. Kit slumped against the wall, unmoving, a statue carved of hoary slate. Matt searched the area around him and wondered which of the men Kit intended for him to meet, but the patrons were broken into twos and threes, and no one was looking his way. Like before, the closer Matt got to Kit the vaguer he became until nothing was left.

Matt took over the space the residue had occupied, pressed his body to the wall, and sipped his scotch.

A man emerged from the dark corridor on his right, wiping his hands on the thighs of his cheap slacks. Longish black hair hung to his eyes in a poorly cropped mess. He looked to be about thirty years old, but walked with stooped shoulders and the slow, uncertain gait of the elderly. His jaw worked up and down, punishing a piece of gum. Matt found him repugnant, with his loud, print shirt and dull eyes, which when they took Matt in, sent back a gaze of blatant annoyance. Relief filled Matt when the man continued past and sidestepped a group of middle-aged men while making his way to the bar.

Again Matt checked his immediate area, wondering who Kit had in mind for him, but the private conversations continued, and though there were a couple of appreciative looks, none of the men seemed eager to break from their companions. So he waited and sipped his scotch, because he didn’t know what else he should be doing. Kit was here. He wanted Matt here. He knew this. The certainty scurried through his chest like a thousand thread-thin legs.

After he finished the scotch, he gazed into the empty glass, and felt ridiculous.

Matt told himself he’d had enough.

Enough.

He remembered the night he couldn’t remember and the following morning, waking up in the decorous guest bedroom of a man named Philip. And now, when he thought of Gavin–because he’d surfaced in Matt’s thoughts, all of a sudden and unbidden–he was more than a memory, more than a ghost. He was real, substantial, and he might be part of Matt’s future, and if not him, then someone like him, a man who could offer him more than spit and skin and friction–a man who could offer more than a face, a set of eyes, a body that provided a pleasing blink of amnesia.

Matt didn’t want to be in the bar, and he was only there because he believed it was what Kit wanted, but what did Kit want? Really? What was he trying to tell him? When Kit was alive, when the two of them were together, there had been no other men. None he knew about. The relationship had been easy, exciting. Committed. They hadn’t had an “arrangement.” Their bedroom door hadn’t been open to strangers. They’d never needed a third or a fourth or fifth to keep the passion between them alive. So what was Kit’s message? Was all of this his misguided way of assuaging Matt’s loneliness? Was he telling Matt that his life hadn’t ended at the base of a park bench with the sting of a wasp, a wasp now dead and replaced already by a new generation? Was Kit telling Matt it was all right to move on?

No. It couldn’t be. That interpretation was flawed.

I’m not moving on. I’m hanging on by my fingertips.

Then the residue, fully formed, dark and sickly, stood at the bar behind the hunched man with the awful clothes and the black hair. Matt’s chest tightened, causing nausea to roll in his stomach. This was who Kit wanted for him? No. This time, Matt was determined to walk across the lounge, put down his glass, and continue out the door.

Tell yourself you have to leave. But... Say it!

He tried not to look at Kit and the man, but his eyes were compelled by the man’s offensive face. By the time Matt reached the bar, Kit was gone. He set down his glass. The bartender called to him, asked if he’d like another. The question stalled Matt’s resolve. He considered the glass, casting a glance at the hunched man. A bruised light hovered over him.

And Matt said, ““Hello,” and the guy said, “Hey,” and he asked, "How's it going?"

His name was Carl, and he was as unpleasant to speak with as he was to look at. His cynicism was bitter without an ounce of humor to balance it, and after a few perfunctory questions Matt didn’t know what else to say to the man. Carl’s manner was disgusting, and his face was disgusting and Matt was disgusted with himself for pursuing this assignation, particularly at the whim of a horrifying and inexplicable phantom, but the light still hovered, and Matt had to believe there was a reason for it, even it wasn’t his reason.

Carl’s apartment was a dirty, disheveled set of rooms on the east side of town, rooms smelling of mold and taco meat and the hoppy stench of old beer. Once inside, Carl’s demeanor changed. Instead of surly and complaining, he now played the role of supplicant, apologizing for the mess and the pile of dirty clothes on the sofa. He seemed eager for Matt’s approval, but all he would get was pity.

Carl’s body was soft, spongy to the touch though he was relatively slender. Matt hated the way it felt against him. In the poor light, the man’s skin took on a greenish cast. Matt dropped onto the bed with him and felt breadcrumbs against his back when Carl rolled him over to start sucking Matt’s cock, and Matt closed his eyes and tried to pretend he was somewhere else with someone else. He attempted to conjure memories of Kit, his taut, tanned skin and lightly muscled frame, but what scenes he managed to bring forth were thin and transparent, they appeared for a moment only to be puffed away like wisps of smoke.

The weight on the bed changed, and he opened his eyes to see Carl straddling his waist. The man was impatient, but Matt didn’t mind because that meant it would all be over soon. He asked if Carl had a condom and the man shook his head and said he liked it raw. Concern flashed only to vanish a second later, humming loudly then gone like an insect investigating his ear. The gray-plum light remained around Carl’s unpleasant face. He sat back, taking Matt inside of him.

Matt closed his eyes and endured the experience.

*

He woke to the sound of breathing–harsh and grating exhalations like a dog trying to clear bad meat from its throat. Disoriented and with a thick film of sleep veiling his eyes, Matt sat up. He blinked. A shape, carved of shadow stood at the end of his bed, and Matt tried to remember whom he’d picked up and what might be wrong with the guy.

Except, he hadn’t brought anyone to the apartment. He’d fled the rooms that had reeked of mold and taco meat and had come home to shower under scalding hot water.

The heaving breaths continued, hitting his ears and then dispersing through his body like shards of ice. Matt reached for the bedside lamp. He grasped the ridged plastic knob and turned it.

The light surged. The breathing stopped. The room was empty, except for Matt. He exhaled loudly and fell back on the pillow to wait for the adrenaline to dissipate and for his heart to slow to a safer rhythm.

*

Gavin called in the morning as he’d promised, and Matt found the conversation instantly soothing, extinguishing the nightmare of the night before. Unlike the vision, Gavin was real. His voice sounded rich and solid.

They agreed to meet for coffee after work, but before lunchtime arrived, Matt’s boss called an emergency meeting in the conference room. A client needed marketing collateral – fliers, posters, a three-fold brochure – and the deadline was impossibly tight, so Matt called Gavin to cancel and asked for a rain check.

Gavin suggested they have dinner the following evening.

“Perfect,” Matt said.

All day, he found himself immersed in work, but not wholly distracted. Moments with Carl returned to him, bringing stings of shame and anxiety. Matt had behaved recklessly, stupidly. Why hadn’t he demanded protection? Why had he been with such an obscenity in the first place? Though he had no answers, he told himself everything would be okay. In those moments of disturbed recollection, it became his mantra. It will be okay. It will be okay.

Late in the evening, his eyes were dry and sticky and the new images, which finally arrived from the client, appeared blurred and sapped of color, as wan and lifeless as exsanguinated corpses lying flat on a steel table. He finished a comp of the brochure and another for the poster, and then he called it a night.

The compulsion to visit the bar before leaving downtown hit him hard, blindsided him as he pulled out of the building’s garage, making him remember kind-faced Phillip and his assertion that Matt was an addict. He couldn't argue the point any longer. A compulsion accompanied his visions of Kit. Reason and control eluded him whenever he was in the thing's presence.

Tonight the addiction was easier to fight, though. The buzz in his chest persisted, but he could resist it. Recent, ugly memories had armed his resolve, and though his system thrummed with the desire to find Kit and whatever companion he had chosen, Matt made it to the freeway and then he made it home. But all the while, his desire to stay in town, to find a trick tore through his torso.

He was shaking so badly by the time he closed the apartment door it took three attempts to turn the deadbolt. He raced to the bathroom and swallowed two of the anti-anxiety pills, washing them down with water from his cupped palms. Breathing deeply, He refused to look at his reflection in the mirror. He closed his eyes. Come on. Whispering into the sink, he urged the pills to take effect. Come on. Come on.

When Gavin called ten minutes later, Matt still clutched the rim of the sink. His eyes remain closed. He nearly missed the call, because he dreaded what movement might mean.

“No, it was a good day,” Gavin said, “but…uh…You know, busy.”

“Same,” Matt told him, and he liked that he could say that. Same. As if noting the busyness of a day was a rare and intimate circumstance, somehow denied to billions of others.

Gavin’s voice erased Matt’s irrational need. His humor and intelligence soothed the burn, and they spoke until the pills took full hold, and Matt was forced to sleep.

*

In the early morning hours, Matt again woke to the rasping pant he'd heard the night before. This time when he opened his eyes and was able to bring coherence to the shadows, he spotted Kit in the corner of the room. A band of gray light played through the narrow gap between the curtain and the window frame, drawing a line down the center of the dismal thing.

Kit's hand worked furiously on a lump of tissue that protruded from between its legs. Bulbous and misshapen the thing's cock appeared more like a rotting fungus than genitalia, and emaciated, knobby fingers rubbed it frantically, causing the tissue to warp and gather before being again pulled smooth.

"You can't be here," Matt whispered.

The residue of his partner, now seeming wholly solid and in its own way real, ignored the pathetic scratch of words. It continued its grotesque masturbation, punctuating its strokes with the horrible grating breaths. Occupied by its self-pleasure, it showed no notice when Matt turned on the light.

Unable to fathom either the absurdity or the repulsiveness of the act being performed across the room, Matt stared slack jawed at Kit.

The grating breath grew louder until the sounds resolved into grunts. A thick, dark fluid, like crude oil gushed from the end of the fungal appendage, splashing the curtain, the wall and the carpet. The respiration became a harsh staccato, like a carpenter's rasp chewing across a length of maple. The thing dropped to its knees and lurched forward, dragging its tongue through the foul discharge, lapping it up noisily. It swept the floor, tongue sliding over the carpet nap, ingesting the fluid that had been expelled from its body. Matt's throat tightened, locking closed against the sickness pushing its way up from his belly.

Kit righted himself and crawled to the curtain, grasping a handful of drape in his twig-like fingers. A glistening blob of ejaculate drooled along the cloth, and Kit shoved the fabric in his mouth, suckled at it hungrily, before turning his attention to the walls, which he attacked with the same repulsive determination. When he'd finished, his posture straightened. Then as if finally realizing he was not alone in the room, Kit turned his head and looked at Matt, who pressed himself as far back against the headboard as he could manage.

Then Kit smiled, a broad, predatory smile. His eyes widened as if in response to a pleasant surprise, and Matt screamed, bellowed his dread at the grinning, fluid-smeared face. And he continued to shriek until the apparition vanished, which happened only moments later.

Matt scurried from the bed and slowed his pace as he crossed the room. He took a series of deep breaths, attempting to control his pulse. Another vision? Another myth of his grieving mind like the night before? Certainly. Yeah, that has to be it.

But the logic failed him. Kit had to be real. Or else why would Matt follow the residue's bidding into so many beds, into so many fucked up and miserable unions? If he accepted that Kit was real, why couldn't he believe the perverted spirit had made a visit to his home? Our home.

The possibility was awful and he refused it, preferring to believe himself deluded or even losing his senses. Regardless of what he would allow himself to believe, he relaxed noticeably when he saw the curtain and walls carried no stains. Even the carpet at his feet appeared clean. It would have been impossible for Kit to reclaim every drop and spot of his discharge.

To prove the point, Matt knelt. He held his hand out flat and pressed it into the carpet, where his palm sank into a damp nest of fibers. Matt recoiled in disgust, crab-walking backward until he was on the other side of the bed. Then he gained his footing and fled the room.

*

The next morning he woke on the sofa. With a slow turn of his head, he checked the corners of the living room and eventually poked his head into the bedroom. He refused to cross the room to the corner. Seeing it vacant was enough for now.

By three that afternoon the project was completed. His bosses were pleased and the client was satisfied, and Matt spent the rest of his time at the office making progress on the projects that had been delayed. His mother called to remind him about dinner on Sunday, and he told her he was looking forward to seeing her and his father. He struggled to keep from blurting out his belief that Kit had returned in a monstrous form, as a being that thrived on sex or misery or some disgusting hybrid of the two.

He finished at the office with an hour to spare before his dinner date. Instead of driving around town, he left his car in the garage and walked. Time was not an issue. The restaurant was less than a mile from his office. Besides, it was a beautiful day, with a slight breeze to offset the unseasonably warm temperature.

As Matt walked, his head down, hands shoved in the pockets of his slacks, he felt relieved, as if he’d survived a devastating accident or an attack.

Approaching the next intersection, he looked up to make sure he was at the correct street. He was. As soon as he turned the corner, he would see the restaurant at which he was meeting Gavin halfway down the block.

Kit waited on the sidewalk, blocking Matt’s path. He crouched like a gargoyle, carved by a shattered mind. Sunlight cast long shadows down the glistening face, making it appear even harsher and exaggerating the frown and the droop of the brow. His chest and belly were lumpy and engorged, but his legs and arms, appeared as near-black sticks, jutting from the swollen torso. The tip of his fungal cock grazed the sidewalk. The residue’s grating breath devoured all other sound.

“What do you want?” Matt asked.

Matt needed to know. He’d never known, and yet he’d sought Kit out, followed what Matt believed were his wishes, degraded himself with one awful fucking man after another. Why?

Kit didn’t reply. Except, this wasn’t Kit.

Whatever this figment was – a product of Matt’s inconsolable mind, a projection of his gnawing grief – it contained nothing of the man he’d lost. It couldn’t.

In the presence of the grotesquerie, Matt let himself understand. The knowledge was always there, somewhere low beneath the denial: this fabricated being had manifested from his own needs. He'd been depressed and lonely, and the momentary distractions of promiscuity had given him sparks of amnesia, rushes of bio-chemical pleasure. He'd been self-medicating against depression, but guilt and his moral calibration had refused the solace of multiple random fucks, so he’d created an illusion with Kit's face, imbuing it with power and giving himself over to that power. The thing crouching on the sidewalk was a lie he’d told himself to get what he needed and to punish himself for needing it.

Pedestrians passed. Concerned with their own joys and tragedies, they paid no attention to Matt and took no notice of the being, crouching on the sidewalk.

Bursts of static electricity stung Matt’s heart, his lungs, and they crackled, and they hummed. He told himself that he would walk past this thing and meet Gavin for dinner in exactly the way he’d planned. If the being was symbolic, as he believed it to be, then he would defeat it with a symbolic gesture. Matt would ignore it. Take away its power.

He stepped forward. The being let loose a growl, like a garbage disposal grinding through ice. Then it sprang.

The thing slammed into Matt’s chest, hitting him with a spongy, damp weight, like a giant slug latching itself to a twig. Matt stumbled back, shocked to find the being had genuine substance. He drove his palms into its sides trying to remove it from him, but his palm sank into the pliant, viscous form. Before him, the face lit with surprise. Wide eyes and open mouth regarded him from only a few inches away. Its head dipped forward and the terrible mouth locked on Matt’s.

He tried to breathe, but the elastic material of the face engulfed Matt’s nostrils and the whole of his mouth. Its grating breath filled him and resonated through his mind. The being had no scent, and no taste, producing instead a sensory void, an empty, unfathomable nothing. It moved its lips in the mockery of a kiss, and the flat tongue, like a tapeworm, worked into Matt’s mouth and began tickling the back of his throat until he gagged. Matt couldn’t breathe. He continued to struggle, but he could not separate himself from the being. He punched at its sides, and spun in tight circles, hoping to break its grip, but it held tight as if melded to his skin.

His head became light, and he retched repeatedly, bile filling his mouth and throat, coating the invading tongue and his own. With his knees weakening, Matt sank to the sidewalk, and finally, the creature pulled its face away.

The eyes were softer, more like those of the young man they had been designed to mimic. The edges of the frown lifted until the mouth presented a neutral line. Matt spat and gasped, trying to clear his throat of the foulness that had risen from his stomach. He closed his eyes, squeezing them tightly, to push away the tears coating them.

When he opened his eyes, the expression on the monstrosity was placid, perhaps even kind. It uttered a single word. Garbled and poorly formed, ejected over a tongue that was not trained to fabricate language, it said:

“Love.

And as soon as he had control of his body, and without consideration for what that word might mean to such a being, Matt said, “No.”

The arms released him, and the being that had once reminded him of Kit backed away, gained its footing and turned away. Instead of vanishing as it had done so many times in the past, it slouched down the sidewalk, sunlight drawing shadows beneath protruding shoulder blades.

Voices crept in to replace the being’s harsh breathing. At his back, a gathering of concerned pedestrians muttered. They offered words like, “seizure,” and “epilepsy,” amid soft obscenities denoting their confusion and concern. A woman carried on a one-sided conversation, describing a sick man on a city sidewalk and noting on what corner the emergency personnel could find him. During this exchange, which Matt reasoned was between the woman and a 911 operator, the soft click-hiss he associated with phone cameras sounded half a dozen times.

A hand slid under Matt’s arm, and helped him to his feet. He looked to see who was providing this assistance and saw that it was Gavin. The man appeared worried with a veil of dread covering his features.

“What…?” he asked.

Matt didn’t respond. Once on his feet, he stood next to Gavin, as close as he could manage without taking the man in an embrace, and then he watched the being, the residue, the thing that was not Kit, grow smaller and less defined as it found a future of its own.

Investment Opportunity

Evan J. Peterson

Circles drawn in salt upon tile floors. The gleam of steel instruments as they explore life forms rarely glimpsed by human eyes, or forms not quite living, as humans understand the term. Bodies changing shape, changing substance: crystalline bodies. Gaseous bodies.

A trio of men, barely touching, though the places of contact usually demand attention. A greater circle of bodies surrounding them, watching. Observation as a form of participation, as a form of complicity. The three men each lift their left hand, bind the ring finger in razor-thin wire, tighten the garrote until the finger separates. The crowd is pleased.

*

To Paul Pinder, the building appeared to be a perfect cube. He entered the lobby through one of two sleek glass doors, handles side by side, that met at the front right corner of the building. He assumed it to be the front, though no words or text of any kind appeared on the façade. No logo or motto necessary. These would in fact be a liability to a group that keeps itself as indefinable as possible. He knew enough about Temple Laboratories to wonder if even the plumbing had been crafted and installed according to some arcane system.

Or maybe they piss and shit in glass jars and turn it into gold, he thought, chuckling to himself. He'd seen rarer things.

The company owned several properties in North and South America, Europe, and Africa. Connecting these points on a map would not yield any gauche or predictable shapes or symbols, but branch locations followed a precise geometry, as did the buildings themselves. Building codes were irrelevant to those who design and own the structures. Some were pyramidal, others lacking any right angle, inside or out.

No receptionist or desk was present in the lobby. No bell to ring to let them know he had arrived. The only interior door, solid looking and crafted from dark wood, stood about thirty feet away from the entrance, but the width of the room could only be about ten feet. Paul felt simultaneously drawn forward along the length of the room and repelled. He scribbled his first impressions into a small notebook.

The lobby's sole comforts, its few chairs and tables, appeared expensive but not lavish. A few paintings, all landscapes, hung on the walls. They impressed Paul as much as such things could. He removed his sunglasses and tucked them into the breast pocket of his bleached linen jacket. Tall, slim, pale, and blond, he enjoyed wearing white. It made him look angelic, at least in the mirror, a look that became increasingly difficult to pull off as he tumbled through his mid-thirties. In his world of black tie parties and shadowy suits, he also liked to play up the role of trickster by being the only man in white at any gathering. People often mistook him for a servant, which in some ways he was. For now.

He sat in a leather armchair and stared at a painting on the opposite wall, rolling hills with a sunset and moonrise in the distance. Apprehensive minutes went by as he scrutinized the image, its balance of muted to vibrant colors. His excitement to be inside a branch of Temple Laboratories, actually there and about to tour, collected in his chest and beat the bars of his ribs.

"Hello, Mr. Pinder."

The wood door stood open, framing a woman of about Paul's age. He had neither heard her come in nor seen it in his peripheral vision. He rose from his chair.

"Sophia Martinetti, director of funds. Thank you for waiting and for making yourself comfortable."

She had a cruel and gorgeous figure. Of course her business suit was black. Everything else about her was also richly dark — her Mediterranean complexion, her long, glossy hair, her stockings and executive pumps, even her lipstick. She looked like Theda Bara with nothing to fake, a woman that Paul, in a previous life, might've seduced if no men were available. Just for the challenge of it.

She scrutinized him. "You do like to stand out. Ms. Bamford said you'd be amusing." She did not extend her hand to shake his.

What a bitch, he thought, concentrating on not showing this in his face or body language. If she perceived his thoughts, she didn't indicate it. Or perhaps she was used to this reaction. "I do my best," he said.

"Follow me, then."

They entered a bright and sterile hallway lined with offices. Judging by the length of the corridor, it ran from the corner lobby along the entire length of the building to the next corner, where it presumably turned right and continued. Martinetti led and spoke without glancing back at him.

"I'm very pleased that Ms. Bamford shows such interest in our research. I would've preferred to meet her in person today, but I accept her request to send you alone. Her philanthropy is legendary, and she manages to keep her financial and intellectual business quite private. We only accept investors who demonstrate the utmost discretion."

"She's a modest woman," Paul said of his teacher. "All her work with children requires her to maintain that privacy. Her little antagonists have accused her of being a Satanist, Illuminati, a cult leader, even a closet Scientologist. The only shallow associations they're capable of making. And they don't even know about all of..." he gestured broadly, even though Martinetti wasn't looking at him, "...this. Those accusations are based solely on her books. The ones she wrote, I mean. Few people know about her private collection. She keeps a low profile to prevent a scandal." He sensed that he told Martinetti things she already knew, kicked himself for being such a neophyte still.

He passed doors of wood similar to that of the lobby, with titles that included varied disciplines: tenebration, genesis, hagio-linguistics. Names of researchers showed a polyglot of origins: Ghavami, Xian, Fairclough, Goldberg, Cortez. Paul wondered if Temple Laboratories intentionally employed a diverse staff. From what he'd heard and read, their investigation into metaphysics was frenzied, no particular focus on any field of study. There were even questions as to the goals. Pure research? Marketable knowledge and products? Perhaps something else entirely. Even so, the members of Charlotte Bamford's circle regarded Temple Laboratories as marvelous and intimidating. Paul himself burned with the desire to find out more about them.

Martinetti huffed. "Ten novels about the so-called occult, children brandishing wands and turning into dragons and such trash, and she won't even admit to her intellectual interests. Must be toasty there, tied to the stake. We do have investors who are quite open about their interests, though no one can trace them back to us."

"Openness is an excellent distraction from the truth," Paul quipped.

He nearly walked into her as she stopped walking and turned to peer at him. "Is that a Wilde quote, or Houdini?" Her eyes held such darkness that it was difficult to discern pupil from iris.

Was she mocking his attempts at conversation? Paul shrugged and tried not to react. She continued. "Is that why you wear white? To distract?"

Paul paused to consider his answer. She was testing him, as he knew she would.

"Do not fuck with Sophia Martinetti," Bamford had told him. "She's all business. An absolute shaman when it comes to financial relations. She's probably a sensitive, so don't even attempt to lie to her. Try anything funny and we'll be permanently on their blacklist."

"What would I try?" Paul said, playfully feigning obliviousness.

Bamford gave him that look she reserved for situations of the greatest gravity. "Stop it, Paul. This is profoundly serious, more so than anything I've allowed you to do. More serious than your sacrifice."

Paul immediately rubbed the place where his left ring finger had been, a wedding vow to his first and greatest love: the pursuit of secrets, a lover who demanded full devotion.

Bamford continued, "It's your greatest challenge, and greatest opportunity. Transmute your impulsiveness into control. I can't be there. You know I would if I could. Go there, observe, find out what you can, and answer the pertinent questions. Do not try to charm Martinetti, do not leave anything behind you, do not accept gifts, and for God's sake, do not try to deceive her."

Paul promised to restrain himself. He'd sacrificed so much to get to this point, not just the finger he'd severed ecstatically at the beginning of his apprenticeship. He let go of the banal comforts of a typical life in return for the knowledge he'd thirsted for since childhood.

No career — Charlotte Bamford took care of him now, requiring a different kind of work. Little contact with family and former friends, and no more boyfriends. They took his mind away from his studies. Not even casual sex. The time and energy to pursue encounters had to be devoted to the pursuit of knowledge. He'd never expected the occult to be so sexually repressive.

Even masturbation was often limited outside of ceremonies. "Spend your energy wisely," Bamford was fond of telling him.

His life wasn't entirely without release. Orgasms were now planned, refined, ritualized. Bamford chose the men, occasional women, and others with whom he now mingled his body. Sex rites required the same effort and intention as all other disciplines. Spilling energy carelessly weakened the power. Paul, a man who'd dreamed of knowing these secrets since he could read, gave up anything Charlotte Bamford asked. He would've given his sex organs entirely if that had been the price. One finger? Yes, mistress. Right away, mistress.

As a child, he'd tried casting spells on the schoolmates who taunted him. In high school he read tarot and looked up Santa Ria on a nascent internet. He immersed slips of paper bearing the names of his crushes into jars of honey. Now, such past times felt like voyeurism; he sought visceral participation, and his pursuit tormented him.

Alchemy, manifestation, necromancy, prophecy, polymorphism, mediumship: there existed more to know than anyone could ever learn. Paul could temper his mind and body to the point of virtual immortality and still never map the breadth behind the Veil. It was an infinite library, each book in a unique language that took years to learn. The endless labyrinth had walls of gingerbread, delicious and sickening and daunting. And yet here he was, in Temple Laboratories, itching to prove himself worthy of a larger morsel.

"I admit my clothes are a mode of distraction," Paul told Martinetti. He watched her eyes as their focus point darted around his face. He met the challenges of Martinetti's, and ultimately Bamford's, current test with eagerness.

"And I do love Houdini," he went on, deciding that openness was the best route with Martinetti, even after his quip. "I like the glamour that causes others to underestimate me. I like dazzling flashes of light and what I can accomplish while everyone's blinking."

Nothing changed in Martinetti's face. "Are you a faerie? I mean an actual faerie—your sexual interests mean nothing to me."

So those do exist, he thought. More of his myriad suspicions of the World Beyond the Veil seemed confirmed every day. He went on quickly, "Um, not that I'm aware. My mother had some gifts, but not for glamour. Not that I know of. And I've been warned severely about deceiving you. Ms. Bamford's exact words were, 'do not fuck with Sophia Martinetti.'"

She smiled for the first time. "Houdini pissed publicly on metaphysics and claimed to be a mere artist of illusion," Martinetti said, her smile falling. "We know better. He's not a bad role model for a trickster."

They resumed walking. Martinetti said, "Ms. Bamford's warning is intended to protect us from you as much as you from us. As we continue the tour, do nothing to change the energy of the building. It's perfectly balanced. If I find you using disruptive instruments or intentions, I have permission from Ms. Bramford to take whatever measures are necessary to resolve the situation."

She would, he thought. She'd cut my throat in an instant. Paralyze me. Or worse. No, he certainly would not try anything with Sophia Martinetti.

They reached the end of the hallway, turned right, and began down another long corridor, slowing their pace significantly. Paul noticed that subtly but surely the hallway sloped upward. The acoustics of it had been altered – perhaps by physical design, perhaps by other means – so that the merciless tock of Martinetti's heels on the tile did not reverberate from the walls. Sounds from behind doors only became audible when Paul was directly in line with them.

"We're entering the hagio-linguistic wing," she said. The real tour had begun, and Martinetti brought out her most impressive guns immediately. "These studies are proving quite fruitful. We're very close to finding an undiscovered name for the Enochian god."

Paul heard numerous voices as they made their way down the hallway, mostly vowel sounds, some singing, some monotone. These doors had no names or titles, only numbers. Unlike the rich wood of the office doors, these appeared to be solid metal.

"It's a matter of trial and error. Time, diligence, intention, and pronunciation. Even the acoustics of the rooms. The hagio-linguists we have here are some of the best, and they're perfectly willing to go barking mad in return for this opportunity. You may observe some of them if you wish, but I'm afraid it's a rather tedious process. And you don't want to be within earshot when one of them finds the right sequence."

As the hallway ended and turned right again, it continued its almost imperceptible slope. For the first time, he noticed fist-sized cameras mounted periodically along the tops of walls.

He tried to ask questions without obvious answers. "I noticed the slope of the floor. Do the corridors get shorter, laid out in a spiral?"

"Indeed. But I don't expect we'll travel all the way to the apex."

He decided to use a little humor. "Oh? I don't even get to see the gift shop?" Paul said with his best boyish smile.

Martinetti clucked a short laugh and looked at him. "No plush Cthulhu dolls, I'm afraid." Was she warming to him? They continued walking. Bamford's words came to him again — do not try to charm her.

Here, on the north side of the building, rooms featured generous observation windows beside the doors.

"This wing is for show, as is the next. Investors and other guests may observe the experiments with little risk of contamination."

They slowed their pace again. They passed a window, behind which a man shook something in his cupped hands. As they walked, Paul watched the man cast his lot — teeth, possibly human, and quite yellowed. The man looked them over quickly but seemed disappointed by their configuration. They didn't pause to see what the man did next.

Martinetti kept speaking. "The glass is opaque on the inside, not mirrored. It lets light out but not in. There's a parallel glass on the opposite wall inside. Behind it, members of the research staff observe the experiments. We can't see them, they can't see us, and the subjects can't see anyone."

Through the next window, before which they did pause, Paul watched a naked woman of about fifty, in profile, performing something akin to tai chi. Lit only from the back, her shadow on the wall seemed wrong, somehow darker than it should be.

"Is there something unusual about her shadow?"

"Some shadows are thicker than others. They linger a bit longer than they should when the casting body is moving. The goal is to isolate a shadow from its casting body."

Why? he thought.

"Why not?" Martinetti replied, staring into the observation room.

The nude woman moved more quickly now, her dance maintaining its fluidity.

"If she moves subtly enough, we suspect she can trick the shadow into losing synchronicity. Confuse it, so to speak."

"Confuse it? Is it conscious?"

"Oh no. It's only a shadow. But it has attractions and patterns, like all things. Those can be shaped or deranged. When you're an initiated disciple, you'll know more about such things."

Of course she knew him to be a mere apprentice. Bamford surely told her. If Martinetti found it tedious to explain the desires of shadows to the uninitiated, she no longer showed disdain.

"Your curiosity and naivety are preferable to the opposite," she told him. "There are some insufferably insecure know-it-alls who pass through here." She granted him a slight relaxation of her posture.

They passed other windows. Through one, Paul watched a calico cat revolving end over end in mid-air, neither rising nor falling. Through another, he saw a plump blond fellow using a bamboo cane to whip the footsoles of a man bound supine to a table. Each time the instrument whacked him, the skin of his entire body changed color, flesh tones at first, then vivid shades of blue, green, and violet.

"How many of the experiments are blind or double-blind?" Paul asked.

"Few, unless elements of ignorance and surprise are necessary," Martinetti replied.

"Where do you find your subjects? And how do you ensure discretion?"

"Our own researchers are required to participate in the experiments. Everyone you see is a scientist working for Temple Laboratories. Most we recruit. The occasional aspiring psychic shows up looking for a job, but they find nothing here. Discretion is ensured through a combination of threats and screening. We screen efficiently."

Martinetti went on without need or questions, suddenly and suspiciously forthcoming. "Most of them want merely to feel as though they're complicit in the discovery of something rare and powerful. You can relate to that. I feel your desire burning a hole in your chest. You're even hungrier for it than most of the members of Bamford's little club."

Paul felt himself blush, something he still couldn't control. "You're reading me deeply."

"No, Mister Pinder. You're not so deep."

They rounded the corner to the East corridor. This hallway had to end before the lobby, and indeed it appeared to be a shorter walk. Again in the distance, the passage turned to the right.

"This," said Martinetti, lingering on the first word, "is the hallway dedicated to sexuality."

They stopped at the first window. Paul watched as two young men, very young, engaged in foreplay on a cushioned examination table. One was a slim and milky redhead, the other a muscular South Asian. Both showed clear arousal through their white briefs, the only clothing they wore. Wireless electrode patches clung to them along several meridian points.

"And what is going on in this room?" He knew Martinetti monitored his every reaction, so he didn't bother to hide the arousal in his voice or any other aspect of his body. He watched avidly as the young men touched their tongues together lightly but didn't quite kiss. Fingers manipulated nipples. Paul wished he could hear the little noises of their pleasure. He wished that he could join them.

"This study measures male sexual energy. Soon, we'll begin harnessing it. Did you know that two men together have a higher energy output than three or more? Groups have yielded other noteworthy results. We've tried many combinations. It works best to keep female subjects and researchers as far away as possible. I shouldn't linger, but you can." She took a few steps back from the window. "Does Bamford keep you celibate between rituals?"

Paul wasn't even trying to be poised anymore. "You know she does." He felt his impulses sizzling through him. He wasn't prepared for this, hadn't meditated as he would've before being confronted by ritual sex. Was this the culmination of his test then?

Martinetti continued backing away from the window. "If I stay, I'll risk contaminating the experiment. I'll be back to get you in a moment." She walked around the previous corner and the clicking of her pumps became inaudible almost immediately. As she disappeared, Paul saw the small video recorder keeping its eye on him from the corner. God only knew what other sort of instruments they had trained on him at this very moment.

In the observation room, the darker, muscular one straddled the chest of the other, who used his mouth to caress his lover through the thin barrier of the cotton briefs.

What did Martinetti suspect he might do? Break the window and join in? Cut his knuckles on the glass and stain his flawless white jacket? Of course not. It had to be something deceptively simple.

Distraction.

Paul became fully alert and looked around him. All was as still and quiet as it had been. No sound of Martinetti. No one else in the hall. He felt panic, then breathed into it and gathered his focus. He looked into the camera that recorded him. Paul re-established evenness. Then he turned back to the observation window.

They both stared at him – directly at him. The men's faces were hungry, almost malicious. Could they see him? Martinetti had clearly stated otherwise. She could've been lying. Paul looked at the video camera, then back into the room. The subjects disengaged from one another. They both approached the glass, stalking him.

Had he contaminated the experiment? He stood unmoving, fully aroused now, as the pale one pressed his body against the glass, arms up, palms near his shoulders. The window was large enough to frame him from the crown of his head to mid-thigh.

The darker man, who had been maintaining eye contact with Paul, now broke his gaze as he knelt and slid off the pale one's briefs. The darker man removed his own and now embraced his lover from behind, tucking his face into the white neck. The pale man's mouth moaned as he shut his eyes but Paul heard nothing.

He backed away from them carefully. He walked quickly around the corner to look for Martinetti. She wasn't in the previous corridor. Should he call for her?

He reversed and rounded the corner again, back to the men at the window. The muscular one pressed his lover firmly into the glass. The slim man snapped his eyes open and made unblinking and unnerving eye contact with Paul.

They're distractions, he assured himself. Something else is happening. What?

For a long moment, nothing changed. Then all at once, a crack opened in the glass, the two men climaxed, and the outpouring of their energy bombarded Paul. All three collapsed backward, the crack in the glass branched and branched again, and Paul realized that he'd also emptied his libido into his own briefs.

Martinetti emerged from around the corner. She took in the scene. The two men behind the glass were now embracing on the cushioned table. The glass held together.

"You said they couldn't see me," Paul said.

"Yes. But they knew you were there. Interesting." Martinetti sounded eerily detached.

"They made eye contact with me. Both of them. Did they feel me?"

"Hmmm." Martinetti lingered at the opposite wall, as far from the glass as she could stand. The equipment was still measuring the experiment, or else she wouldn't stand so far away. She asked Paul, "Did you touch the glass? I'll know if you lie."

"I didn't." Paul's heart raced.

He thought he could smell his own fluid through his pants. Could she smell him as well? He looked down to his crotch before he could catch himself. No visual evidence there. He looked back to Martinetti. "Did I contaminate the experiment?"

"No, Paul. You did exactly what was expected." Her words did nothing to soothe him. "There's a restroom halfway down this hall, on your right."

He didn't need any other prompting. He stood up and walked quickly. He passed several more observation rooms: one that contained a sleeping man suspended by his feet, with what appeared to be a taproot growing from his shaved skull; another that had no portal to the hallway but was filled with water, an aquarium in which a man appeared to make love to something with more than four limbs; and one in which only a large amethyst cube rested on another cushioned table in the center of the room.

He finally found the door to the single-occupant washroom. The inside was utterly ordinary. A blessing. Paul took down his pants and washed and dried himself thoroughly. Still being tested, he thought, it's still happening. Looking into the mirror, he took a moment to congratulate himself on the coolness with which he was handling the situation.

He opened the door to see Martinetti, flanked by the two naked men. The men stared at him, while Martinetti gazed stoically at the cell phone in her hand.

"We've accepted Ms. Bamford's generous offer of investment," she said.

The two men caught hold of Paul and locked his arms behind him, pulling him out into the corridor.

"She has decided to invest you." Martinetti approached him and placed her index finger on the spot between his eyebrows. Paul scoured his knowledge frantically for the right trick, the best distraction that would buy him time to get out of there. Her finger felt like a brick balanced on one of its corners, the weight of it pushing into his head instead of downward. A rivulet of blood slid from the point of contact and down the length of his arrogant nose. He struggled to maintain consciousness.

"Welcome to what you've always wanted. Welcome, seeker," she said. The men repeated, Welcome, seeker.

As he faded, he had the futile thought that Martinetti must've gone through this same ordeal. Perhaps even Charlotte...and then he was out.

He regained consciousness on a cushioned platform in a small observation room. Two men, different from the two who had grabbed him, stood naked, one to each side of him. Paul was naked as well.

"Let's begin," said the man to his left. He ran his hands along the length of Paul's body, while the other knelt to the floor. Paul surrendered and allowed himself to be stroked, to be studied. He breathed into his panic. He knew he couldn't escape. He didn't want to.

When the man on his right stood again, he held an object the size of a hatbox. Paul recognized it immediately, though he'd only seen it for a moment. It was the amethyst cube he'd glimpsed just before finding the washroom, and it glistened as all dazzling things do. The man set it onto Paul's groin. It weighed less heavily than he'd expected.

Something living stirred inside the cube, seemed to shudder—or was that Paul's own body, trembling on the table, making it appear to move? No. Something spindly and sharp, arachnid, arthropod, Heaven only knew, scratched its little limbs against the inside of the violet prism.

"What's in there?" Paul asked, his curiosity and arousal outweighing his fear.

Both men grinned down at him in horrible serenity. "You'll know soon enough. Telling you now would ruin the experiment."

A Soldier’s Mercy

Martel Sardina

No one had to tell me that I am sitting where the johns look for action. I’m not looking for business. Just waiting on the 204. This shelter has seen better days. A pool of foul smelling liquid puddles up underneath the bench’s firebombed seat.

It’s 3:00 a.m. and hotter than hell. That’s not unusual for Vegas. But the wind is. A gust kicks up and blows sand from the vacant lot across Sahara into my eyes.

Fuck.

It hurts as I rub the grit away. I almost forget how hungry I am. Then my stomach growls and I start to think the bus might never come.

A guy rides up on a ten-speed bike. He’s shirtless. He’s thin, but his chest is muscular and strong. His long hair reminds me of a lyric from an old Beatles song.

Come together, right now, over me.

A fucking hippie if I ever saw one. And the grey tells me he might legitimately know what that damn song actually means.

I watch him as he jumps off the bike and leans it up against the side of the shelter. It doesn’t have a kick stand. Looks like it’s been patched up a bit over the years. The paint is chipped and the tires are nearly bald.

He walks out into the street, looks left, and then right.

“You been waiting long?”

“About twenty minutes,” I say. “Haven’t seen a bus yet. Either way.”

He grunts and swears under his breath, “Fucking figures.”

I can smell him now and it isn’t remotely attractive. Sweat turns me on, but this is something far worse. I think this guy might have been sleeping in a garbage can.

He returns to pacing. Mumbles to himself but I can’t really make out what he’s saying. Seems to be getting upset though.

Why doesn’t he just jump back on the bike if he’s in such a goddamn hurry?

As soon as the thought forms, he gives me a wicked glare.

Oh, shit. Did I say that out loud?

“It’s too fucking windy,” he says. “Took me an hour to ride less than a mile.”

“No worries, man,” I say. “Ride the damn bus. Who am I to judge?”

He laughs. Pushes his hair back and tucks it behind his ears. Finally get a good look at his face. It’s long and thin. Rugged with sharp features. High cheekbones and deep-set grey-green eyes. His teeth are a little crooked. While he is handsome, his face bears evidence of hard living. I wish I knew if it was from drinking and drugging or the far more dangerous kind. After another ten minutes, he finally stops pacing.

“Bus is coming,” he says, pointing east.

I can hear the steady rumble now.

The bus sputters to a halt. A bell chimes as the driver opens the doors. The hippie pushes his bike by me and says to the driver, “Will you take me to up to Decatur for ninety cents?”

The driver says, “Yes. But you’ve got to put a shirt on.”

The hippie returns to the bike, unzips the small pack behind the seat and pulls out a shirt. He shakes it out, and I realize that the shirt is long sleeved. I don’t know why the driver is making him put the damn thing on considering the heat, unless there’s some kind of “no shirt, no shoes, no service” policy at the RTC.

I board the bus and stick my temporary fare card into the machine.

As the hippie loads his bike on the rack, the driver whines, “It’s too hot. It’s too cold. It’s too windy. Where will you take me for ninety cents? Lazy bum.” The other passengers laugh. It’s apparent the hippie has pulled this trick before.

There are plenty of empty seats, but I sit down in one of the ones reserved for the disabled. I don’t feel like walking to the back.

The hippie boards the bus, fumbling to find ninety cents in his pocket. He pulls something out and I hear a clinking sound. He’s got a handful of dog tags dangling from a cheap metal chain. I want to know how he got them. Soldiers don’t just give up their tags. That takes more than a one-night investment. I’m impressed. Maybe there is something this old hippie can teach me.

I take another look at him. He’s in pretty good shape for a guy his age. He’s old enough to be my father. But what I’m thinking right now is how I’d like him to be my Daddy. I haven’t had a Daddy in a long, long time.

I usually don’t pay this much attention to the people around me. Most of the time, I’m in my own little world. I’ve been told more than once that I don’t have street smarts or maybe it’s common sense or both. This guy seems like he might be a little crazy. Maybe even dangerous. But I’m not scared. Not yet anyway.

The driver gets disgusted when all he comes up with is a handful of pennies and a ball of lint.

“I’ll get you tomorrow,” Daddy says.

“Forget it,” the driver says.

Daddy walks toward me.

“You mind?”

I shake my head “no.”

Daddy leaves an empty seat between us and sits down. Despite the smell, I have this strange urge to tell him to ditch the shirt and let me go back to enjoying the view.

“Where are you headed?”

“Back to the hotel.”

“Which one?”

“Palace Station,” I say and as soon as the words push past my lips, I regret it.

Then he asks where I’m from and before I can stop myself, I say, “Chicago.”

I know I shouldn’t be telling him anything personal but I can’t help it. My heart is working overtime to bypass my brain.

“Nice town. Been there once. After I got back from Vietnam.”

“Were you in the Army?”

I’m not asking to be polite. I truly want to know. I have this thing about soldiers. Whenever I meet one, I always thank them for their service. My uncle died in Korea. My brother died in Kuwait. I could have gone to Afghanistan, but my father wouldn’t let me enlist. Said I could never pass, “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” He doesn’t try to hide his shame from me.

“No. Marines.”

“Semper Fi.”

“Shut the fuck up, kid. You even know what that means?”

“I…uh...I’ve got family in the service. Sorry…didn’t mean to offend.”

He glares at me, doubting my sincerity, and then turns away.

A bell chimes and the bus sputters to a halt at the next stop.

Daddy stares straight ahead, looking out the window. Across the street, there is a yellow ribbon tied around a tree in front of an office building.

“Support Our Troops,” Daddy reads the sign pegged in the lawn. He snorts.

“Too bad it wasn’t like that when you came home.”

Daddy doesn’t respond.

“I know I’m not old enough to remember Vietnam,” I said. “But I am sorry. Nobody deserved to be treated the way you guys were.”

The bus starts moving again. I get up. Palace Station is next.

When the doors open, I step off. I head for the crosswalk and hit the button to get the light to change. The walk signal flashes and I start to cross Sahara. When I hit Palace Station’s parking lot, Daddy pedals up behind me.

“Hey, kid.”

I turn to face him. “What?”

“Nobody ever said anything like that to me before.”

“I wanted to join the service once. Didn’t make the cut. But that doesn’t mean I’m not thankful for those who could.”

“You hungry?” Daddy says. “Great oyster bar here. Folks who work here take care of me sometimes. My friends, too.”

I’m not sure if this is a genuine attempt to be nice or some kind of a con to get me to pay for his meal. I decide that if it’s the latter, it won’t break the bank.

I find myself incredibly drawn to this man. And I can’t really explain why. Words like duty and honor and service are floating around in my mind.

I keep imagining myself serving him.

I shake the thought off.

“Hungry?” I say. “Yeah, sure.”

*

We take the two stools at the far end of the bar.

We’re there for less than a minute before the manager comes over and says, “Oh, no. I told you last time. You can’t come in here like this.”

Daddy says, “Like what?”

“Stinking to high heaven,” the manager replies.

“You said not to come in like that when it was busy. It’s dead now. It’s not like I’m scaring anyone away.”

“That’s not the point.”

“I can’t hit the showers at the shelter until tomorrow.”

“That’s not my problem.”

Daddy motions to me. “I told my friend that you’ve got the best gumbo in town.”

“I’m not kicking him out.”

Daddy’s starting to get angry. The skin on his neck is turning a deep brownish red, like he got a tan on top of sunburn. “Have a heart. You’re embarrassing me.”

“Am I going to have to call security?”

“Let’s go,” I say to Daddy. To the manager, “You do room service?”

“Sure.”

“Send two bowls of gumbo up to 724. Charge it to my room.”

“No. Fuck that,” Daddy says. “I ain’t leaving.”

Daddy’s eyes have gone cold.

This scene’s about to get ugly.

Daddy rubs his temples. “You can’t treat me like I’m a piece of shit. Not after what I gave up. Not after what I took. And I did all that for people like you.”

“What is he talking about?”

I want to tell the manager the Daddy isn’t just some homeless bum. That he might have been a normal kid like us once. I don’t know if he’d believe me or care. A lot people think that soldiers are a little fucked up to begin with. That anyone who’d voluntarily sign up to go to foreign countries, meet interesting people and kill them, deserves whatever happens to them in the process. They don’t think freedom is something worth fighting for. They take it for granted. People my age don’t always remember that there was a time when young men didn’t have a choice about getting sent off to war.

“Come on,” I say. I get up and grab Daddy’s arm. He recoils. I grab him again. “Why don’t you come up to my room? You can take a shower. And then we’ll come back down and you can order whatever you want.”

“That going to be a problem?” I say to the manager.

“No.”

Daddy grunts as I pull him away from the counter. We walk through the casino. The cacophony of active slot machines makes it difficult for me to hear anything else.

When we reach the hotel lobby, I realize what Daddy is saying.

“I’m shorter than a mosquito’s pecker. Two weeks left in the crotch. Two weeks ‘til I get out of this shithole.”

He says it again, louder this time. The bellhop looks over at us. I make a quick dash for the open elevator and pull Daddy inside.

I say the only thing I can think of that might make sense in his scrambled brain, “Semper Fi.”

This time, Daddy doesn’t tell me to shut up. He squeezes my hand.

The elevator lets us off on the seventh floor.

It’s a short walk to my room. I fumble with the keycard and swipe it too fast. On the third attempt, the lock disengages and I open the door.

I’m almost embarrassed to let Daddy in. The room isn’t extravagant but it’s nice. Probably nicer than any place he’s slept lately. I feel pangs of guilt about being the one who can afford to stay here. It doesn’t feel right. I’ve worked hard for everything I have, but I know I’ve had it easy in comparison. The benefit of being young and cute is that my services are always in demand. So far, skipping a meal has always been a choice, not a necessity. I never really had to risk anything that I couldn’t get back. I haven’t been around long enough, never had to put my life on the line.

I lead Daddy to the bathroom. I turn the shower on. I grab some towels off the rack and set them on toilet’s lid.

“There you go,” I say.

“I can’t go in there,” Daddy says, shaking his head. “Not by myself.”

“Why not?”

“It sounds like rain.”

Daddy’s shaking.

God, I just want to hold him. But I am afraid to touch him anymore than I already have. As much as I want to, I just can’t. To do so now would be wrong. He’s in some kind of dissociative mental state. And if something happened between us, I’d always wonder if it was what he really wanted.

“You want to take a bath instead?”

He nods.

I push the diverter down and the water begins to flow from the tub spout. I flip the switch up to close the drain. I grab one of the tiny shampoo bottles, open it, and pour it into the water. Bubbles multiply at an exponential rate as the tubs fills up.

“If you need anything, just holler,” I say. I close the door to give him some privacy.

The water sloshes as he settles in. He shuts the faucet off. I walk back to the bed and sit down on the edge. Now that I have a few minutes to think, the fear sets in.

I’m having sexual fantasies about a complete stranger who is disturbed, at best, and possibly dangerous.

I’ve invited said stranger into my hotel room.

He’s naked and in my tub.

What am I going to do with him when he gets out? Hope that I can take him back down for a bowl of gumbo and send him on his way?

What am I going to do if he doesn’t want to leave?

I should leave, but I can’t. I don’t want to believe that Daddy would actually hurt me; I want to believe that everything’s going to be ok.

I grab some clothes out of my suitcase. Daddy’s taller and thinner than me but I think the t-shirt and shorts will work.

I knock on the door and push it open a couple of inches. “These should fit.” I set the clothes down on the tile floor.

I hear sobs.

“You ok in there?”

Daddy takes a deep breath. The water sloshes around.

“Are you ok?”

A minute passes and my heart beats faster.

He says nothing.

I push the door the rest of the way open.

I pull the curtain back.

Daddy is submerged.

I kneel down. The water is grey. I reach in and pull him back up. The water ripples. A ring of grit clings to the side of the tub.

“Let me go,” Daddy says.

“I can’t.”

“I should’ve died on the banks of the Perfume River. If you give a good goddamn about honor, then push me back under and let me pretend I’m there now.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want you to die.”

I kiss Daddy and I know that I shouldn’t. There’s a good chance that he’s going to reach up and grab me by the throat. His hair is wet and stringy and it falls on to his face and then mine. His lips are chapped and rough. But he doesn’t break away. I taste whiskey and cigarettes.

A moment passes and I stop. But I don’t apologize.

“I want to help you,” I say.

“I’ve got ghosts in my pockets,” Daddy says. “I’m beyond help.”

“Let me do what I can.”

He closes his eyes and leans back, keeping his head just above the water.

“I’m going to help you get cleaned up.”

I grab the tiny bottle and squeeze what’s left of the shampoo into my palm. I rub my hands together. I can feel the dirt and sand as I work the lather into his hair. I know there’s probably not enough soap in here to truly get Daddy clean. But I do the best I can with what I’ve got.

When I’m done, I say, “I’m going to turn the shower on, so you can rinse off.”

I flip the switch down and the tub starts to drain.

“I don’t want a shower,” Daddy says. He stands up.

I catch a quick glance before looking elsewhere.

I turn the water on and pull the diverter up. The shower sputters before a steady stream of water juts out.

When the water hits Daddy’s flesh, he ducks down to take cover and screams.

I step into the tub behind him, fully clothed. I get down next to him and say, “You’re ok. I’m right here.”

I coax him up; try to get Daddy to rinse his hair. But it becomes apparent that shutting the water off is going to be the only thing that will appease him.

I step out of the tub and drip water all over the floor. I rescue the t-shirt and shorts before they get soaked and throw them on the toilet tank. I hand Daddy the towels and leave him to get dressed in peace.

I strip out of my wet clothes and wrap up in the towel that I’d left on the counter. Goosebumps cover my arms and legs as the cool air-conditioned breeze hits my skin.

Daddy comes out of the bathroom with the towel wrapped around his waist. He’s smiling.

“I feel much better now,” he says.

“I’m glad.”

My suitcase is open on the luggage rack next to the bed. I walk over to it, and start rifling through to see what I have left to wear that’s clean. Daddy comes up behind me, and wraps his arms around my waist. He kisses my neck and my shoulder.

“Thank you,” he says.

“I haven’t done anything, really.”

“Not yet.”

I turn to face him. “What do you want me to do?”

“Take the ghosts away.”

I think I know what he means. “I can do that. Okay?”

I guide Daddy to the edge of the bed. “Sit down.”

He complies.

I unwrap his towel and push his knees apart. I kneel down before him. His cock is limp. But I am ready to take those ghosts away. I am ready to thank him for what others couldn’t –for giving up the boy he was in the name of God, country and Corps, for giving me the chance to live free.

I reach up and stroke his inner thighs. He shudders and gasps for breath. I’d like to believe that no one has touched him like this, but the truth is written on his face.

Daddy’s a survivor.

His legs shake and he bucks his hips as I swallow his ghosts. When I am done, I back up a few inches, and then I feel the dresser’s knobs poking into my skin. I recover for a moment until it becomes uncomfortable. Then I crawl up next to Daddy on the bed.

He’s lying on his side now, eyes closed. The covers of his mouth are turned up just enough to be considered a smile. Perhaps he’s found a moment of peace.

I watch him. After a few minutes, he opens his eyes. Then he says, “There’s something I want to give you.”

“That’s not necessary.”

He gets up, goes back to the bathroom and returns with the ratty pair of blue jeans he’d been wearing. He reaches into the left pocket and something jingles as he pulls it out. He lets the object unfurl and I see the shells of spent bullets and dog tags dangling from a cheap metal ball chain.

“Take it.” He drops the chain into my hand.

“I can’t accept something like this.”

Tears well up in Daddy’s eyes.

“But I know what these tags mean. It’s too…personal.”

“You said that you’d take my ghosts!”

“I misunderstood,” I say.

He sobs violently. “You’d better take them. Before they make me do something I don’t want to do.”

I’m not sure why he’s getting so upset. Better to calm him down than let this escalate. I’ll take the chain now and give it back to him in the morning.

“The tags are your ghosts?”

He nods.

“If that’s what this represents to you, then I will take them.”

“Put it on,” he says.

I slip the chain over my head. It weighs more than I expected it to. There are five shell casings and five tags. I look at the tags.

Foley, S.R.

Cizek, M.G.

Christensen, B.A.

Hanson, K.E.

Wilson, T.G.

“Which one’s yours?”

Daddy is eerily calm. “If I told you, that would be getting too personal. You’ll know soon enough.”

Daddy yawns. “I need to sleep now. We’ll talk more later. Okay?”

He pulls the blanket back and slips under the covers.

I’m tired all of the sudden.

I curl up next to him.

*

I wake up soaked in sweat. My heart races and the nightmare is fading fast. I’m trying to piece it back together when I realize Daddy’s not in bed with me anymore.

I call out, “You still here?”

No one answers.

The lights on the hotel’s marquee flash. I catch a glimpse of something reflected in the window. A man? More than one?

“This isn’t funny.

I sit up, reach over to the nightstand, and turn the lamp on.

It takes a second for my eyes to adjust. No one’s by the window. But the sheets on the bed aren’t soaked in sweat. They’re soaked in blood.

My stomach ties itself up in a knot. I become aware of the weight of Daddy’s chain. The tags and bullets clink together as I scurry off the bed. The carpeting chafes my ass as I scoot around the edge. All I can see are toes poking out from under the comforter that’s piled up on the floor.

There’s a metal wastebasket under the desk. The room is spinning. I grab the can and puke.  Nothing makes sense right now.

How could this have happened? Why didn’t I hear anything?

Somehow I manage to pull myself together enough to crawl to the other side of the bed. I pull the blanket back. Daddy slashed his throat and wrists and bled out supine. The words “MA DOI” are crudely carved into his chest. A bloody dog tag is near his right hand.

I pick it up. It says, “Edwards, R. C.”

*

I often dream of Vietnam; I see things I shouldn’t be able to see.

R.C. Edwards, a younger version of Daddy, in a firefight, picking off gooks with his M-40. Five men are with him on the line. They just want to cross the bridge and know that the Perfume River got its name from the scent of the flower orchards to the north instead of what they smell…napalm, burnt flesh, and blood.

I now know why the rain made him scream.

But it doesn’t matter because I’m in a heap of trouble.

Edwards didn’t kill himself; the cops think I did it.

I don’t blame them. I’d probably think the same thing if I were in their shoes. My fingerprints are on his tag. They think I killed him because he couldn’t pay me. I know it sounds less crazy than what I believe to be true: The necklace is a talisman.

“Ma Doi” means “hungry ghosts” in Vietnamese.

Edwards killed a lot of men in Vietnam. Men who never got a proper burial. Until those men are laid to rest with the proper rituals, their spirits seek vengeance.

Carrying the tags of those who died in his unit – men who gave their lives to save his – brought protection that lasted beyond the grave for the same reasons. Edwards was safe until he gave that chain to me.

*

I’ve had other dreams.

I remember riding the 204, the oyster bar, and the feeling that I was being conned.

I know I was meant to be a sacrifice to keep the “Ma Doi” at bay.

I know he gave them other boys.

I loved Daddy in a way that no one else would.

He spared my life, but left me to feed those hungry ghosts.

Their whispers are getting louder.

They’re ravenous.

But I can’t give them what they want. I can’t do that to some other fresh-faced boy toy.

I’d rather be with Daddy again.

I’m praying for that reunion.

When I unfasten the clasp on this chain, I hope his ghosts will take mercy on me.

Twilighter

Martin Rose

Eli woke up in a motel room, like a private detective in a bad pulp novel.

He shivered and shook. Bones made of glass, fiberglass blood, eyeballs rolled in sand and then popped back into the sockets. The last thing he remembered was sucking ramped-up blood at a funeral home with the rake-thin Russian junkie.

He looked rumpled, worn; his suit in wrinkles, his tie undone. His hair stuck up at odd angles, somewhere between too long to be corporate and too short to be rock star.

Wire around his wrists, his hands bound behind a hard-backed chair. The stained wood was unforgiving beneath his bony ass. Twilighters were the new heroin chic; ridiculously thin. A human on heroin could only be so thin before the body gave out. As a vampire, the only limit to weight loss stops at bare bones.

Eli had been well on his way before Grant showed up.

*

High school.

Even if you didn't graduate, you remember it. Everybody tells the same story. Loner kid, popular kid, in-between kid. Hearts broken or set on fire, everyone leaves a piece of themselves half-finished in high school, and Grant was another face from the locker-filled hallways.

Back then, Grant been a quiet, bookish straight-A student, while Eli chose the art student route – until he realized there was no money and less talent. Then, he became a vampire, and worse yet, a corporate faker. The vampirism he could live with. The 9 to 5 presented different problems; problems twilight blood mitigated to pleasurable effect.

Back when Eli had been alive, with a heartbeat and a pulse, a college degree and a nice, white, genteel background, drugs had been his thing then, too. A dirty bong filled with resin, pipes and the whole hippie paraphernalia. Black lights and empty candy wrappers. He spent half his adolescence stoned. Until he took his first job with the medical insurance company.

Vampirism came with the job. Water coolers with a half-blood spring water mix, paper cups stained pink like snow cones. They forced him to the water cooler in their crisp, ironed shirts and suits and bowed his head beneath the faucet, like a fraternity party hazing the new members. After that, it was easy to deny insurance claims with blood lining your gums and a wolf smile on the other end of the line.

First, it was drinking blood from a wine glass, as though he were a high-level exec instead of a pig on the lower rungs, with blood on his lips and double digit zeros in his bank balance. He sank his life savings into it.

He disappeared and stayed up all through the sunlight hours, hidden behind black-out curtains in dirty motel rooms. Questionable people with ulterior motives drifted in and drifted out. Some sold blood from tweakers or meth heads looking to make extra money by the pint; tweaker blood was big, but twilight blood was better.

He started to inject, tapping cold veins with a hot needle. Plunging the syringe took on erotic overtones, and most nights he could not remember what he had done to get the drugs he needed. All he had were dirty sheets and dirtier guesses.

He rode the downward spiral. He wore the same clothes, night after night. He stole from his sister, pawning her wedding ring and buying more twilight blood from a dealer missing his front teeth. A few calls, a few friends of convenience to stave off the emptiness inside, to close the gap he filled with the needle.

Then Grant showed up.

*

He wished he could say the reason he awoke from his twilight daze was on account of being well-rested, but far from it. His head pounded with thin, malnourished blood, hemoglobin fractured like shattered glass. Blood scraped through his veins.

He needed a hit.

A hit would make the pain go away.

Blood from patients under ether: Twilight blood. Sweet red juice from twilight babies. Rumors circulated of people who went in for operations – a kidney transplant, a boob job – and instead slept in twilight time forever. The providers for the twilight drug trade were "Sandmen," doctors looking to supplement their income since the days the medical establishment had   lost funding. Instead of waking up their patients and sending them on their way, they milk them for days, even months, before bringing them out from "twilight anesthesia" and sending them packing.

From time to time, Eli heard stories of twilight babies who never woke up. They stayed asleep, forever. Urban myths.

His addiction, however, was not mythological; he needed a hit.

*

Which brought him back to this nightmarish setting, this ugly motel room.

He worked his hands, slow at first, then in frustrated clenching, until blood dripped from the lacerated flesh. The wire held. His tongue worked loose from his mouth and ran the length of his lower lip like a snake scenting the wind. He tasted sweat, his nerve endings ajangle. His body become a flame that ate and ate until all that remained was ash and cinder.

A hit. Twilight blood.

Whoever put him in the chair knew better than to use rope. He could have snapped rope like thread and been out the door and back to the rake-thin Russian junkie. She always had some twilight blood on her; she smuggled bags in through the funeral home with the corpses, and sometimes she let him have his way, when he wanted it. An extra benefit.

Eli groaned, and then the door opened.

Grant strode through.

He looked taller now than he had in high school, in a long trench coat that whirled past his legs in the cold wind from the door. More menacing. Angry. Grant wasn't a scruffy boy anymore. He'd filled out, grown up.

Eli studied him, pushing his discomfort to the background. Last night, he'd been too high and too drunk to see it in Grant, but the skinny boy from high school was gone. Someone else replaced him. Someone harder, with long hollows beneath his eyes. The straight-A had vanished like a wisp of smoke, replaced with a thin, haunted man.

Eli's words died on his lips, but the nervous tics returned full force. His foot tapped frenetic beats, and as he watched, Grant arranged items on the motel room kitchenette: wire, bottled water, garlic, syringes.

Grant pulled out a blood bag.

Eli sucked in a breath.

"Is that – "

Grant stared at him, bag filled with dark red fluid in hand, one eyebrow arched in questioning.

"What?"

Eli swallowed. His throat clicked.

"Blood?"

"You know it's blood. But you wanted to know if it was more than blood."

Grant's tone simmered, repressed. Eli assessed him from a different light. Maybe this wasn't the way to pierce his façade, to coerce him to open up and give him what he wanted, Eli decided. He changed tactics. The skin on his back felt like it sprouted lizard legs and was climbing up and down his spine.

"It's been a long time since algebra class, man."

"Trig. It was trig. Glad you paid as much attention to me as you did to your studies."

Eli forced a smile to his face. Inside, he wanted to vomit onto his shirt front.

"Of course I remember you, buddy. You did really well. Read a lot of books."

Wheedling. Eli cringed to hear his own ingratiating voice, worming his way into Grant's good graces like a used car salesman. Please buy it. Please buy this lemon with unknown mileage and dirty stains. Hybrid model, gallon of twilight blood per mile.

Grant didn't buy it. He didn't look interested in leasing, either. Instead, he let the blood bag fall onto the counter with an accusatory plop!

Eli struggled to hold onto the shredded fragments of his dignity and failed.

"Please, old pal, I just need – "

"First," he hissed, crossing the distance in seconds,     "it's Grant to you, not old pal, not buddy, not hey, do you remember the high school years and wasn't it great. Second, kiss twilight blood goodbye. You had your last hit last night, while your buddies were trolling for fresh blood to fill their fridge and found me instead."

Eli thrashed in the chair, baring his teeth in the buzzing florescent light, a muzzled dog. He hurled curses, dredging up every bitter, school-yard insult he could summon from the depths.

"Good," Grant snapped, returning to the counter. He separated a piece of garlic from the main bulb and took out a garlic press.

The hairs in Eli's nostrils tingled with the smell. His belly churned with adrenaline.

His eyes widened as Grant took out a syringe.

"Hey, uh, Grant, I know we weren't besties, but don't you think this is a little drastic?"

"The high school years," he ignored him, contemplating.

His eyes glazed over as memories resurfaced in pieces, and then went about the business of peeling clove after clove, snapping open the press and clenching his fist. Tendons and muscles stood out in his arms, and after a moment, he took off his trench coat. Time had torn the softness out of the bookish boy. Experience had rendered him lean and muscular.

Eli tapped his foot, struggling to keep his thoughts in single file, straight lines. Even a drink would have helped, taken the edge off until he could get the real stuff. Much more of this, and he wouldn't hesitate to take Grant as a snack, high school alumnus or not.

"You were one helluva guy. The kind of guy I wished I could have been, do you know that, Eli? People liked you. All-American, apple pie. Church every Sunday, nice clothes, your own car. I can't think of a guy who didn't want to be you, Eli."

"That was a long time ago."

"What's this, now? So eager to bring up the past when you wanted something a moment ago. Now, you can't wait to bury it."

Grant poured the garlic juice into a glass, and with a syringe, plunged it into the garlic syrup. He withdrew it when it was full, and with a flick of his fingers, he held a lighter flame against the needle. The smell made Eli want to gag, but he watched, transfixed. Grant pushed a tear drop of garlic from the tip.

"What are you doing, Grant?"

Grant's silence was more unnerving than listening to him talk about high school, but he'd been right. Eli hadn't been prom king, but damn close. He'd been, well, popular. Grant had been the background, a wallflower.

Eli frowned. Through the shuffling of his feet, the nervous lick of his tongue on his lips,  the insistent pulse of his hungry blood – a memory like a shredded ribbon wound through his consciousness, and then was gone.

"Weren't we at a party one night?"

Grant stopped in his tracks, syringe in his hand, held aloft.

"Do you remember the party?" Grant whispered.

"Graduation. Nineteen ninety-eight."

"Oscar's house."

The memory came back like a sledgehammer blow, and Eli paled.

Grant smiled.

"You do, now. Cynthia broke up with you and you tried to kill yourself with a bottle of Jack and your dad's revolver. I stopped you, and you were so thankful, you said you'd give me anything I wanted. Do you remember what I asked for, Eli?”

"A kiss." Eli's voice came out in a hoarse whisper.

He'd forgotten.

"You said you'd rather die," Grant filled in. "Love hurts, doesn't it?"

With that, he leaned forward and jabbed him with the syringe.

*

Like fire. Like being on fire.

Eli woke up a few hours later. A few hours that could have been a few days. Garlic didn't kill vampires. That was just a myth. You only wished you were dead after touching, eating, or being anywhere near garlic.

He woke up in time to hear the garlic press, to hear the papery sound of Grant's fingers peeling back layers of garlic clove, rolling it back into the press. The room smelled like a pizzeria, it felt like hell.

Grant leaned in close to tap the vein in Eli’s arm, his skin warm against the inside of his wrist. Eli played dead, waiting until he was close enough, and then lunged for him.

His face brushed Grant's like sandpaper against his cheek, warm flesh against his cold, monster skin. A second too late, he missed, his coordination and balance thrown off from the detox. Grant plunged the syringe and liquid glass flooded his veins, rolling his eyes back into his head.

He felt like he could tap dance across the ceiling, his feet were on fire and moved even in his sleep. He woke up with his fingers in claws, teeth gnashing at the air.

Through it all, Grant was there, restraining him, tightening the wires, always out of reach.

In the darkness, he collected snatches of images, Grant on the edge of the bed across from Eli and the damned chair he was tied to. Grant watching him from a corner of the room with his arms crossed, his eyes like coal. Time became elastic, expanding and contracting until he passed out once more.

*

When he woke up again, five days later, he had the strength to do something more coherent than fling obscenities.

For an hour, he pretended to be asleep, hoping to stave off the moment when Grant would start the ritual anew, injecting liquid fire into his veins.

Instead, he worked at the wire around his wrists. A loop had come undone, a loop Grant had failed to notice. If he could work it over his thumb, he'd be seconds from home-free. He could be out the door, hit the streets, and find twilight blood before sunrise. He'd sip a Bloody Mary made with his own, special ingredients. Maybe find the Russian junkie he liked so much to keep him warm on the lonely nights.

Grant closed his book with force, a noise designed to wake him up. Unable to keep up the pretense, he continued to work at the loose loop, and decided the best course of action would be to distract him while he worked himself free.

"What happened to you since high school? You're different."

Grant moved back to the counter. His hands moved in relentless rhythm, clove to press, clove to press. Eli's hands worked the wire loop like a guitar string.

"I went into surgery in 2005 to fix a faulty heart valve."

A long silence followed. In that silence, Eli worked the loop over his hand. The wires slackened, a sensation of victory, excitement flowed through him. He swallowed and forced himself to remain still, not to give himself away.

"Then what?"

"When I woke up, it was 2015."

Clove to press, clove to press. The syringe appeared, and then the lighter flame, licking the end of the needle.

He worked the rest of the wires from his wrist. They came off like cheap bracelets, and he maintained his pose as if still cuffed, curious enough to remain seated and listening.

"They milked me," Grant continued, "for twilight blood. A decade hanging in an endless limbo between worlds. Not sure if I was dreaming or if the nightmare was the reality. Keeping me under the chemical veil. Breathing in ether until I forgot what oxygen tasted like. I had time then, you know that? Time to be philosophical. Time to think about what it all means. Love and loss and the whole existential bit. And most of all? I had time to think about you. I lost ten years of my life. To feed you, people like you, Eli. Imagine that. You'd rather die than kiss me, but my blood? My twilight blood? You'd drink that by the truck load. You'd drown in me, if you could."

He stood before him, syringe in hand, and Eli felt small, reduced in size and sorrowful. The nervous tic was gone. No foot shuffling. His nerve endings uncoiled and laid flat, at rest. He felt . . .

Better. He was getting better.

The garlic shots weren't killing him – they were purifying the blood, pulling out the twilight poison shot by shot.

"What happens after this?" Eli asked, watching as Grant knelt, pulling up his sleeve and teasing out the vein. He felt it with a cold fingertip, and then poised the needle.

"We part ways. You stay clean."

This was the moment – the time he'd fantasized about, knocking the hated syringe from Grant's hand, knocking him back and closing in like a hunter, long enough to taste him, share a fraction of the pain he'd put him through. Maybe even let him live, turn him and then show him what a garlic shot felt like. Tie him to the chair, just like he was now and –

Spend more time with him.

It was an excuse, like every excuse he'd ever poured out about twilight blood – a reason to ensure these motel room days and nights didn't end. To keep Grant   close, to watch him across the room when he was pretending to sleep, or the press of his fingers on the sensitive inner flesh of his arm as he tapped a vein. The problem had never been escape, but how to remain Grant's captive.

Escape; and his opportunity slipped away with every second he continued to sit there, unmoving.

Grant's fingertips made him shiver, lingering on his arm longer than they should have. His touch made Eli shudder, with a pain that bordered on pleasure. His pupils dilated and blew wide with the rush of the contact, the endorphins intoxicating.

Eli's mouth parted as he looped the wire back into place over his wrists. He closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of garlic rising from Grant's hands as they pressed and pinched, waiting for the blood to rise and show him the vein.

Stoned and wrecked and high, and chasing a dragon named Grant.

Tabula Rasa

Brad C. Hodson

The attic floor creaked above him. Gabe sat on their bed and stared out the window, twirling the ring on his finger round and round. Outside, a young couple walked by holding hands and laughing.

Inside, a moan drifted through the house.

The rhythm of the creaking floorboards above grew faster, almost frenzied. Gabe couldn’t listen anymore. He clutched his cane and struggled down to the first floor. He turned the television on, letting an infomercial for eHarmony drown everything else out.

It had started early today. He had rolled over before the alarm went off to find the bed empty, the sheets still warm from where Tomas had been sleeping. Gabe put a pot of coffee on and remembered how they used to take each other in the mornings, how their skin had crashed and flowed together in the breaking light.

Footsteps pounded down the stairs and the television clicked off. Tomas entered the kitchen wearing only his boxers. His golden skin glistened with sweat.

“Good morning,” he said and moved to kiss Gabe on the cheek.

Gabe placed a hand on his chest. “Not before you shower. Please.”

Tomas nodded. “Yeah. Sorry.” The red light blinked on the coffee machine and he poured them both a cup. “I’ll take a quick one,” he said, sipping from his cup as he left the kitchen.

Gabe normally loved the way his husband smelled, how the thick musk of him lingered under accents of lavender. But after he had been in the attic, the scent was wrong. It was sour. He was filthy and ruined and Gabe didn’t want that touching him.

The phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Dad.”

“Jeremiah. Early morning for you, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. New site going up. Trying to get a head start on the scaffolding.” Engines rumbled in the background, muffled voices muttering incoherently around them. “How you doing?”

“Great,” he lied. “Fantastic.”

“Good.”  A pause.

“Jeremiah?”

“I better go, Dad. I just wanted to wish you ‘happy birthday.’”

“You and Ashley should bring the kids down. Nothing like summer in the Keys.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“I miss you guys.”

“We’ll see. Mom hasn’t been feeling well so we’re probably not going anywhere anytime soon.”

“What’s wrong?”

His son sighed. Gabe expected him to say, what do you care. He wouldn’t have blamed Jeremiah if he did. Instead he was silent and that was even worse.

“Is she okay?”

“She’s fine, Dad. Just tired. She’s breaking her back working.”

Gabe didn’t know what to say. She’d only worked part time when they were married. Between that and the alimony, he had never thought she’d be hurting for cash. He wanted to dig deeper, but he knew his son wouldn’t open up. It had taken Jeremiah two years to get past the anger and resentment enough to contact him, and that call might never have come if not for Gabe’s accident. He knew his son still wasn’t at a place where he was comfortable with the circumstances of the divorce, or with his father’s coming to terms with his sexual orientation at midlife.

“I gotta go, Dad.”

“Love you.”

“Yeah.”

The line went dead.

“Who was that?” Tomas wore a flannel bathrobe, his dark hair wet and messed. He kissed Gabe on the cheek and hugged him from behind. The smell of soap and lavender hovered around them and Gabe could almost forget what Tomas had been doing all morning.

“Jeremiah.” Gabe sat the phone down.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“Wanna walk and grab some breakfast?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll get dressed.” Tomas kissed his cheek again and rushed upstairs.

It wasn’t until he was gone that Gabe realized his husband never mentioned his birthday.

*

Mornings in Key West were slow affairs. The entire island took hours to stretch and yawn and pull itself awake. Before noon most of the people encountered were tourists, couples on their honeymoon or the elderly trying to remember younger days. All of them shot wary glances at Gabe and Tomas as they walked arm in arm down the street.

When they had first begun seeing each other, Gabe had assumed the glances were because they were gay. These days his paranoia ran a different route and he imagined that every couple they passed whispered to one another as to why such a young, beautiful man as Tomas would be walking around with someone twenty years older and crippled.

They stopped at the tiny outdoor café where they had spent their first evening together. Gabe waited for Tomas to mention it, to tell him this was the start of a romantic birthday, but he never did. They ate their food and chatted about inane subjects like politics and celebrity arrests while some of the island's numerous stray roosters begged for scraps at their feet.

That first night together over three years ago, sitting in almost this exact spot and listening to reggae music sprinkle from tiny speakers on c-stands, Gabe had scattered breadcrumbs on the ground and a fluttering of tiny wings surrounded their table.

“You’re a sweet man, Gabriel.” Tomas’ crystal eyes swallowed him and, for the first time in his life, Gabe had wanted to kiss another man.

Now his husband treated him with almost the same detachment as he regarded the roosters. The passion they used to share, once a palpable thing that hovered between them, had thinned to a few gossamer strands that still wound around Gabe but seemed to barely tickle his husband.

Tomas talked about a news story he had seen about the economy as he watched camera-toting tourists gather around the tacky signpost announcing the southernmost tip of the United States. Gabe had the feeling that Tomas wasn’t talking to him; he was simply talking.

“Do you love me?”

Tomas looked his way and blinked. “What?”

“Do you love me?”

“Of course I love you.” He grinned. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

After breakfast they made their way down the street, the humidity sticking Gabe’s shirt collar to his neck. This was the route they had taken that first night, drunk, leaning against one another to keep from stumbling. They had met at one of the myriad bars claiming to be Hemingway’s original hangout. Gabe had been in the Keys for a real estate seminar. He counted the dollar bills covering the walls of the bar when one of his fellow seminar-goers entered into a tequila-drinking contest with four young men. The two groups slammed shots around the trunk of a giant tree growing through the building’s center. Eventually everyone trickled off except for Gabe and Tomas, who suggested grabbing a bite before calling it a night.

After leaving the café they had walked through the ancient streets of Key West, shrouded by thick tropical growth and buffeted with the sounds of a never ending party that seemed to stay two blocks from them at all times. Tomas had told him the island’s stories while showing him the sights; an old pirate well rumored to still hold treasure at the ocean’s bottom, the antebellum house where James Audubon painted his birds, and the home that once held Robert the Haunted Doll.

He explained that the name Key West was a corruption of Cayo Hueso, the Isle of Bones. “When the Spanish landed, all they found were bones. Bones everywhere. In the trees, scattered across the ground, stacked against rocks. One tribe of natives had slaughtered another here and left them to rot.”

“Why?”

Tomas had shrugged. “Who knows? The Spanish spread rumors of curses and something they called 'clay demons.'” A laugh. “Silly stuff, I know. I used to be a tour guide. We always talked about how the clay was a metaphor for the way myths and legends could be shaped to fit each new culture but at night here, after all us drunks pass out, it's easy to mistake the wind rushing through the alleys for whispering.”

“You must have been one hell of a tour guide.”

They shared an electric smile.

Gabe had fought the temptation to put his arm around the young man. He'd known Tomas was gay after hearing him mention an ex-boyfriend, but Gabe was straight. He had been married for twenty-three years and had two grown children. He had thought about men at times, but not until Tomas had the urge gripped him so strongly.

They passed the funeral home where Dr. Karl Von Costle had kept the body of Elena del Hoyos for seven years. He remembered how Tomas had grabbed his hand for the first time that night while standing in front of it, telling how the doctor had loved her so much that he had stolen her body from its tomb and brought it home, coating it in wax and replacing pieces with the softest velvet. She hadn't loved him in life, but in death he molded her into the Elena that he dreamed of, an Elena that would never leave him. It was a disturbing tale, but Tomas had found the beauty in it.

Now they walked by without a word.

At home, Gabe poured a glass of juice and sat on the back porch. A breeze blew in, heavy with the smell of the sea, and caressed his face. He leaned back, the rough wicker chair groaning under him, and examined chipping paint overhead. The porch's ceiling, like most in Key West, was painted sky blue, an old sailor's tradition to keep evil spirits away. He wished it worked.

“Are you going to sit here for a while?”

“Yeah,” Gabe said. “I’ll probably read some.”

“Okay.”

Tomas went inside and pounded up the stairs. The attic door opened and closed.

Gabe cried.

*

The accident had changed everything.

They had been married for less than six months. It wasn’t official as far as the State of Florida was concerned at the time, but Tomas attended a Unitarian church that had been thrilled to perform the ceremony. Gabe had moved into the bed and breakfast Tomas managed a few weeks before the ceremony. It was supposed to have been the start of a new life.

Then Margot’s breakdown came. He loved his now ex-wife and hated what his midlife coming-out had done to her. But how could he live a lie? It wasn’t fair to her or him. He had driven north to Orlando, desperate to visit her in the hospital. His children refused to let him into the room. The things they said that day still kept him up at night.

Distraught, he had sped home, down interstate 595 through the Everglades, a storm battering the SUV. Vicious winds threatened to blow it from the road and Gabe’s knuckles had gone white from gripping the wheel. As the storm intensified, he crept along and planned to take the next exit to wait out the rain.

That's when the little blue hatchback pulled out in front of him.

The brake hit the floor but the SUV kept barreling on. Gabe cut the wheel to the right, tires grasping at the ground and slipping, the world spinning around him, white streaks of rain swirling into the windows. He tipped, wet concrete rushing up to his window, the bag in the passenger seat crashing into his shoulder.

Black.

Tomas was with him when he awoke in the hospital. A dozen broken bones wrapped him in pain. His hip had been shattered and, though it was eventually rebuilt, the nerve damage kept him from being able to live life to its fullest. He had to reinvent himself, learning how to walk again and how to define a relationship without physical intimacy. He was told that as he adjusted to the pain medication he may one day regain sexual function, but every month spent unable to make love to his husband sapped whatever hope he had in that regard.

It was determined the brakes had been faulty, a factory defect that had gone unnoticed. The settlement was enough to buy the bed and breakfast, closing it off to the public and converting it into their home. Those renovations were some of Gabe's happiest memories, the newlyweds joined together in painting and decorating their new home with gorgeous antique furniture. The settlement ensured neither of them would ever worry about money again.

But they soon had bigger things to worry about.

*

Gabe woke to a scream.

Covered in sweat and shadow, he struggled to remember where he was. He glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It was after three in the morning.

The screaming echoed through the house, high pitched and watery.

It was that goddamned thing in the attic. Tomas had sneaked out of bed and gone up there. Whatever they were doing, it was enjoying itself. Another scream shot through the place and the windows rattled with ecstasy.

He fought his way from bed and hobbled over to the bathroom, not even bothering to grab his cane. Splashing his face with cold water, he caught sight of the ruined lines of surgery after surgery peeking above the waistband of his pajamas. A bottle of prescription sleeping pills sat on a shelf in the medicine cabinet and he shook one out. He downed it with a palm of water and paused, examining the bottle. How easy it would be to swallow them all, to lie down and never get up again.

Tomas stepped into the bedroom a few minutes later, a streetlight cutting through the window and igniting red scratches on his chest. They locked eyes.

“I… I’m sorry we woke you,” Tomas said and crawled into bed.

“Are you?”

A sigh. In the dark, the blankets rustled.

“Tomas?”

“What?”

“Listen. I was thinking we should take a trip. Maybe go to New Orleans. There's a blues festival.”

“I don't like blues.”

“You used to.”

More rustling. “No. You like blues. I only tolerated it.”

He was asleep again in moments, the sweat sprinkling his flesh carrying that sour scent. Gabe watched him drift off, grabbing his cane and gripping it until his hand went numb.

The ceiling creaked.

He stepped into the hall. The shadows were thick on the staircase, rinsing it in black. The door at the top was a yawning mouth and he was afraid Tomas had left it open. As his eyes adjusted, he could make out the shape of the deadbolts fastened along its height.

Curiosity nagged at him and he struggled up the steps. At the top he pressed his hand to the wood of the door, imagining he could almost feel his husband’s lust threaded into the grain.

There was a shuffling on the other side.

How many times had he stood here, fantasizing about murder? But he was afraid of going into the attic, afraid of facing his sins and finding out what the repercussions might be for stopping what he had set in motion.

A pathetic moan leaked into the hall. It reminded him of the sound Margot used to make when he had worked her up enough to almost beg for him.

Gabe’s hand went to the locks. For a moment he thought he felt warmth blossom in his groin, a stirring he hadn’t felt since the accident. He shrugged it off as a trick of the sleeping pill taking hold and made his way down the stairs.

There was a scratching at the door behind him.

*

Tomas began cheating on him mere months after the accident. He had turned a blind eye to it at first, knowing his husband had a need that Gabe could no longer fill. When Tomas came to him one day and told him he was in love with another man, Gabe’s heart broke.

“It’s not that I don’t love you,” Tomas had said, tears in his eyes. “I’m just confused, you know?”

“Are you leaving me?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to leave you, but…”

He had trailed off, eyes fixed on his lap. Gabe had wanted to punch him, to feel his jaw shatter. But, more than that, he wanted to grab him, to pull him close and make love to him.

And he couldn’t.

He knew who Tomas had been seeing. He was a sculptor who made his living as a tour guide, a young man with sandy hair and piercing eyes named Kyle. Kyle ran ghost tours in the evening, ending in an alley behind one of the bars on Duval Street after midnight. The tour always finished with a ridiculous story about how the land behind the alley was cursed, how when the Spanish came and found bones stacked three feet high that the ones found in that small area were too gnarled and deformed to be considered human.

Gabe found him there a few nights later. They argued, Kyle telling him he was an inadequate old man who needed to let go and get on with his life. The cane had connected with the tour guide’s skull so hard that the sound was like thunder echoing from the walls. Frightened and horrified, Gabe knelt over him and checked his pulse.

“Please, God,” he’d whispered, searching for the rhythm of Kyle’s heartbeat on his throat, “let him be    okay.”

Tears streaked Gabe’s face.

“I didn’t want to hurt him.”

Kyle’s blood dripped onto the cobblestone.

“I just want Tomas to be happy at home again. Please.”

*

The setting sun shot streaks of purple through the sky. Gabe watched it sink, remembering how he and his husband used to be awed by escape artists and fire-breathers during the evening celebrations at Mallory Square. He wondered if they could make it to the coast before everything ended while he stirred the alfredo sauce. Gabe had made carbonara for his husband on the first night of their honeymoon and hoped that the recipe held some kind of magic to rekindle their fire for one another.

Tomas had been in the attic most of the day. More and more of his time was spent behind that locked door and Gabe worried what went on in there. The sounds of sex filled the hallway several times a day but other times, times like now, there was only silence.

He took a pan from the stove and removed the bacon. He poured the grease carefully into an empty peanut butter jar and crumbled the red strips into the sauce.

“Tomas!”

No answer.

“Tomas! Dinner’s ready!”

Silence.

He grabbed his cane and fought his way to the attic door. He raised his hand to knock, but stopped.

The soft rustle of whispering leaked through the cracks.

Ear to the door, he recognized his husband’s voice. The speech wasn’t discernible. But the hushed tones, the lilt in his words, told Gabe what he needed to know.

Downstairs, he ate dinner by himself, not bothering to wipe the tears from his face.

*

The night was quiet. Gabe sat in the dark kitchen, shadows draping him, and watched the acorn shape of a cotton seed bug climb the outside of the window screen.

A creak. The attic door opened. Stairs groaned as Tomas shuffled down. He passed through the kitchen as quiet as a ghost and opened the fridge. White light spilled across the linoleum.

“I made carbonara.”

Tomas jumped. “Gabe? What are you doing sitting in the dark?”

“You’ve been up there all day. I figured you had to eat some time.”

“Sorry. Time slips away from me in there.” He pulled a Tupperware dish from the fridge and walked it to the microwave. As he passed the table, Gabe caught a whiff of the thing’s musk. It made his stomach convulse.

“What have you been doing in there all day, Tomas?”

He shut the microwave door and pressed a series of buttons. It hummed to life. “You know what I do in there.” He walked back to the fridge and grabbed a bottle of water.

“You haven’t been doing that all day.”

Tomas shrugged. He unscrewed the cap on the bottle. Took a large drink. Wiped his mouth with his forearm. “We just…”

“Just what?”

“Just held each other.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“What? This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

Gabe stood. “What are you talking about?”

“Never mind.”

He wanted to go to his husband, to hold him, but the four feet across the kitchen might as well have been miles. “Tomas, let's leave here.”

The hum of the microwave filled the kitchen.

“Get out of Key West,” Gabe went on. “Go someplace where we don't have to deal with hurricane warnings and hundred-degree heat. We can sell this place.”

“This is our home.”

“Yeah, but we could buy a house anywhere. Or maybe we don't. Maybe we just travel. See the world. You always wanted to travel.”

“Stop doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“Making up what I want. You always do that. I never wanted to travel, I never liked the music you think I do. I don't even like Italian food, for crissakes. You have never known who the hell I am.”

“Don't say that. I love you.”

“No. You don't, Gabe. You love this... this idea of me that you came up with. You created the man you wanted way before your accident. The only problem is that I'm not him.”

A headache threatened to split Gabe's skull open. He took a deep breath and tried to stay calm.

Tomas chuckled and wiped a tear away. “He told me, Gabriel. He told me what you asked for.”

The microwave dinged.

“What?”

“He came here for a reason,” Tomas said, thrusting his finger toward the ceiling. “And you damn well know it.”

Gabe shook his head. “It can’t talk,” he said, refusing to personify the thing in their attic the way Tomas had.

“He can.”

“It never has before.” Aside from that first night in the alley, it had never done more than moan and shriek.

“Maybe not. Maybe he was waiting, I don’t know. But he told me what happened in that alley.” He pulled the Tupperware from the microwave.

Gabe’s blood went cold. “Nothing happened.”

Tomas hurled the dish across the room. It slammed into the wall, white sauce splattering, Tupperware bouncing from the floor. “Stop lying to me!”

His stomach felt empty, hollow, like his life had been ripped away through his abdomen and was never coming back.

“He’s changed, Gabe.”

“Changed how?”

“Go. See for yourself.”

They held each other’s gaze. Tomas’ eyes, so beautiful in the wan light leaking through the window, were cold and unforgiving.

Gabe nodded. Grabbed his cane. Hobbled up the stairs.

At the top, he fumbled with the deadbolts. The knob was hot and sweaty in his palm. He twisted it and opened the door.

The smell of the thing hit him in the face. He wondered why it was the dominant smell, why the thing never seemed to eat or piss or shit. The boards creaked under him as he stepped into the room and the stale scent of old sex drifted up from the floor.

A candle burned in the corner. A mattress sat beside it, soiled yellow and speckled with dark stains. The thing lay with its back to the door, its shadow twitching, distended ribs rising and falling with each breath. Across its misshapen back a dozen orifices glistened and pulsed, a body formed solely for sex.

Its head twisted around to peek over one shoulder. Warmth flooded Gabe and he was shocked to feel an erection straining against his pajamas for the first time since the accident. The thing smiled and he wanted to go to it, to feel it pressed against him, to taste each of those throbbing slits.

He took a step closer and gasped at piercing eyes and sandy hair.

It stretched onto its back, gnarled joints creaking as fingers too long to be human rubbed over pale flesh. Eyelids draped down, head straining back on an impossibly thin neck, a moan bubbling up its throat.

Gabe stumbled to the door. Slammed it. Slid the locks into place.

Its face, the hair, the eyes... There was no mistaking it. It didn't just look like Kyle anymore.

It had become him.

*

“Please, God. Please.”

He couldn’t find a pulse on Kyle’s throat.

Something shuffled through the alley behind him. He yelped, spun, fell hard on his ass.

“Please,” someone mimicked from the dark. “God. Please.” Cold fingers gripped him as he recognized his own voice. Had someone recorded the entire incident?

“I just want Tomas to be happy at home again. Please.” The recording grew louder, pounding in his ears as shadows dripped along the walls. The dark pressed closer, pulling tight around Kyle’s body.

“I just want Tomas to be happy at home again. Please.

“Stop it,” he said.

Kyle’s blood pooled under him, filling the cracks between stones and vanishing into the earth.

“I just want Tomas to be happy at home again. Please.”

“Stop it!” He clutched his cane to his chest.

The shadows wrapped around Kyle’s body.

Something moaned.

It scratched across the cobblestones on all fours. Pale skin ripped away from the shadows gripping the corpse, clambering on top of the body like a palsied crab. Its face was featureless, its flesh a sickly blank white. Malformed bones popped and cracked. It sat on Kyle's chest, the empty face cocked to one side as though it examined Gabe with eyes that did not exist.

Gabe's heart threatened to erupt from his chest.

Pale hands raised into the air on crooked arms, the head tipping forward. The gesture was surprisingly human. Well?

He understood. It was insane, he knew, but God help him he understood.

“Do it,” he said.

A long finger covered with skin like old paper tapped against Kyle's forehead. A ripple rolled over the flesh on its skull. Features pressed into the skin from behind, the vague features of a face.

“Tomas,” the shadows mimicked.

The white flesh scurried back into the dark, a wave of shadow crashing over Kyle's body.

Gabe fought to his feet and hurried from the rear of the alley. He rushed home and waited for the police to come and drag him off to an asylum, where they would hold him for murder and talk of clay demons.

They never did.

When Tomas made inquiries the authorities told him that Kyle had been emailing with an ex-boyfriend in Miami and probably drove there to see him.

Devastated, he found comfort in Gabe’s arms.

“I’m sorry, Gabriel. I should have never let myself get attached to someone else.”

Gabe held him and kissed his cheeks and wondered if his prayers had been answered.

Weeks later, after dreaming of the blank flesh in the alley every night, Gabe heard the scratching in the attic. He knew it had come for him.

He rolled over to warn Tomas to stay in bed, but his husband was already gone.

Knife in hand, Gabe had gone looking for him. He found him holding the thing around the waist, thrusting into it, its head buried in the pillow, Tomas’ face pure bliss. His husband explained later that it drew him in without reason, like it gave off a pheromone that was impossible to ignore.

“This will work,” he had told Gabe after calming him. “I’ll never have to go looking for someone again. We can stay together and no one will get between us.”

“We’ll stay together,” Gabe had said and pressed his head against Tomas’ chest. “Forever.”

His husband’s arms wrapped around him and he knew what had happened in that alley, knew deep in his gut what transaction had occurred. He had made a sacrifice to the clay demons and they had come to answer his prayers.

*

“It’s not Kyle.”

“Not yet,” Tomas said. He ran a hand through his dark hair and leaned against the sink. “But it doesn’t matter.”

“What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?”

“I love him.”

The words were a punch to the stomach. Gabe dropped into a chair. “What…?”

“I love him.” He wiped a hand down his face and sighed. “It sounds crazy, I know, but I can’t help it. He doesn't just look like Kyle, he feels like him, the way he touches me, the way he looks at me.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t blame you for what you did to him. I drove you to it and… well, without it I would never have what I do now. But you and I, we can’t go on.” He sniffed and wiped a tear away. “I can’t live a lie.”

The hollowness in Gabe’s stomach spread, threading through his veins and dissolving him from within. He flexed and unflexed his fingers. Fought for breath.

“I’m sorry, Gabe. I really am.” Tomas walked by him and back up the stairs.

The attic door closed.

The world ripped apart at the seams and fell to shreds around him. Oceans boiled and the sky turned the color of ash. Nothing could ever be beautiful again, he knew it sitting in that chair in an empty kitchen and staring at his wedding band. He had recreated himself for Tomas, had ruined Margot and ensured he would never have a good relationship with his children ever again. He had bought this place for his husband, had given himself completely to him, and now he was being tossed aside.

He had lost Tomas for good this time, felt the finality of it in his bones. Even now, he knew his husband cuddled against the thing. He easily imagined Tomas whispering to “Kyle,” brushing sandy hair from its face and kissing it the way they had once kissed, telling it he loved it in the same sweet voice he had told Gabriel the same thing on their wedding night. Hot flesh pressing together, taking it inside of him.

Gabe shot to his feet. Fire flooded him, clouded his thoughts. Tears streamed down his cheeks, dripping from his jaw and crashing to the floor. He wanted the fire to burst free from his skin and consume the house, to climb the walls and reach into the attic and burn the lovers to ash on their filthy mattress.

He grabbed a butcher knife from the drawer and climbed the stairs.

“Kyle” saw him. Gripping Tomas’ back as he thrust, it looked over his husband’s shoulder and locked eyes with Gabriel. It was the same look the real Kyle had given him in the alley that night.

He brought the knife down over and over, the smell of blood in the air covering the musk in the room.

*

Rolling the bodies into a tarp and dragging them down to the Land Rover had been an ordeal. Hefting them into the back dug deep fingers of agony into his hip and he had ground his teeth together and kept telling himself it would all be worth it.

In the alley, the dark came. It reached up at the scent of blood and seemed to sniff the air like a thousand serpents. He gave his offerings and made his prayers, leaving after a quivering lump of featureless flesh pulled them into the dark.

That had been three weeks ago. He had slept on the blood soaked mattress every night since, waiting. Sleep never came easy, Tomas’ bloody face waiting for him every time he slipped into the dark. He woke crying almost every morning, afraid he had been wrong, afraid he had killed sweet Tomas for nothing. The story of the Isle of Bones came back to him and he knew that those creatures with flesh as malleable as clay were the reason the natives had been slaughtered in the first place.

The agony in his hip was almost unbearable. His prescription for pain medication had run out three days earlier and he never bothered to renew it, hoping the side effects might vanish. He ground his teeth together and thought of the first night he had ever spent with Tomas.

As he leaned back into the pillow he could almost detect the lavender scent of his husband crashing over him, could almost feel his warm skin and pouty lips, could almost smell the sour musk that had been absent since the thing was disposed of.

Fingers ran down his torso and his pants grew tight. He strained against them, anticipating the lips that suddenly met his ribs. Opening his eyes, he grabbed Tomas' head and held it close, tangling his fingers in dry hair.

His husband's face was mangled, skin saggy along the cheeks and missing ears. His eyes were two deep, empty holes of red pulp, bloody meat that glistened in the candlelight like the pulsing slits covering his twisted body.

Gabe closed his eyes and moaned as Tomas took him into what might have been a mouth. He wondered how long he would have to wait to see his husband’s crystal eyes once again.

Caldera

Helen Marshall

By this point the three years of writing had taken on the quality of a dream for the girl. The girl—this was not how she thought of herself but the nomenclature of her advisor, so often repeated it had become ingrained, instinctual for them both. “How’s my girl doing?” he might ask her at the start of the session. Later on, it became a form of praise: “That’s my girl,”—all with a jovial smile, white teeth tucked under the brim of a thick, umbrella moustache—“yes, I think we can safely say you have it.” By then, such suggestions had already come to govern the pattern of her thoughts, and so under his tutelage she had become, for all intents and purposes, the girl: when she wrote, she thought to herself, “The girl is working hard. He will be pleased.”

After three years, she was finished, and they called her before them: four old men in tweed jackets. Her advisor sat among them like a king. His belly, covered in a clean white shirt, had partially unfolded itself over his belt. She saw how pressed it was against the table. She had thanked him with three pages of praise. He now held a pen carefully between his crooked fingers. It clattered against the desk. Once. Twice. They came to attention like the sleepers under the hill woken by the call of a trumpet. They brushed the dust from their sleeves, straightened their collars, and prepared themselves for what was coming. A third time her advisor tapped the pen, and it was only in the stillness following that she saw the glittering malice in his eyes. He touched the tip of his tongue to his upper lip. In that gesture, rote, reptilian, she knew: they were going to massacre her.

“Let us begin with the fifth paragraph.”

She felt something break apart inside of her. Her fists were red where her nails split the skin.

*

After it was finished they granted her a leave of six months to begin again, but that night she burned every page she had written. The light of the bonfire stained her face red. Greasy flakes of ash stung her eyes. She howled.

The girl left her apartment and did not expect to return to it. The idea that she would kill herself had not formed wholly yet, but even at this early stage she felt the pressure like a hard lump growing under her skin. She did not know it, but this governed much of her thinking. She would leave because it was what was expected of her. She booked a ticket to England. It seemed logical enough, London or Oxford, it was all the same to her, any of those damp, bookish places peopled by old university chums. But there was a layover in Iceland. Mechanical difficulties. More delays. She drank coffee. She took a bus into Reykjavik, gazed out the window at flat lava fields, the sky bleak, the earth a solid shelf of black, volcanic rock.

There was a natural order to what was happening. She felt it intuitively. No one would know her here. The place was barren, remote and violent. In other words, it was perfect.

She canceled the final leg of the flight.

*

Reykjavik was beautifully grim: stubborn, congealed, clouds vaporous as steam over the blank expanse of the ocean. The buildings were made of corrugated tin sheets painted red and blue and pink and green, somehow festive and destitute. The girl did nothing for the first month in the city. There was no need to rush. She felt weightless. Gravity had loosened its hold upon her.

She learned some words: “takk” for “thank you” and “bless bless” for “goodbye”.  She was unfailingly polite when addressed. She spent her days by the old harbour watching terns circle and dive, bodies perfectly engineered for flight. She admired their effortless movements, their murderous instincts. The sky was grey. The sea was grey. The world reflected itself, and the birds stitched the two gleaming surfaces together, rising, falling, rising, falling.

At night she roamed the streets like an insomniac. It was summer, and so the sun never truly set. It skimmed the black mountains and washed the city in the blue light of an endless dusk. She went to bars sometimes. Reykjavik had a shifting, tumultuous night life. Everyone in the city knew one another, most were related in some way or another, and they moved from dive to dive with tribal instinct. A place hopping one week would be deserted the next. The rhythm of it was impossible for an outsider to master. They communicated along channels largely invisible to her, and so she wandered along her own solitary circuit. Some nights she intersected their path, and then she would find herself amidst a crowd of strangers, pushed to the edges of blasting music and thinner conversation.

She watched them gather in tight clusters, blonde hair floating, soaked to a darker amber with drizzle. Their eyelashes fascinated her. They were nearly invisible until they caught the light, at which point they would appear to thicken and glimmer like the antennae of a moth. When she saw them together, she would feel a tremor in the pit of her stomach, that echo of something stirring, but the mechanism by which she might deliver it had been irrevocable destroyed. “Takk,” she would say as she took the cool glass of her lager in hand. “Bless bless.”

*

She met Ragga by chance, or rather, through the gradual recognition of her presence, an accumulation of encounters. A glance through the stooped passage of a doorway. Once the girl saw Ragga jogging along the shoreline, thin as an aleph, red faced and grinning, her body trembling with sweat, the length of her hair drilled to slick points. The girl came to recognize the shape of her shoulders like a prow, the shocking blue of her eyes, before any words were spoken between them. The others made way around her. She was set apart from them, special, the girl could sense it immediately. Once she imagined she felt the light brush of Ragga’s fingers as she pushed past at a café. It may not have happened: the subtle transubstantiation of desire into touch. But she had smiled. Ragga had smiled. It was enough.

Ragga’s house was made of dark, polished timber. She kept a cat she had found on the street whom she named Kolbitur. Its fur was a soft cloud of white, its eyes sulfurous.

“She’s malformed,” Ragga explained, taking it up in her arms. She nuzzled her chin between the creature’s two pointed ears. “Polydactic, you see?” The girl could see its fourth toe had grown in on each foot as a tiny second paw.

“They used to think ones like her were good luck. Sailors loved them. They were good at hunting. But, you know sailors. Bad winds, bad luck. They would skin the cats. Cut them open right here. And here. The men would stuff the bodies full of salt, tie them to the riggings.  Perhaps a warning. Perhaps a gift. They would leave them hanging there until the salt burnt through the gut. It is said they used it to season their catch.”

This cat lacked all grace. It walked flat-footed and awkward, clacking because it could not retract its claws. When it ate it could grasp its food, its tiny errant paws cupping the kibble in a fist.

“Do you like her?” Ragga asked, touching the girl’s hand now, tugging gently, playfully, at her thumb.

“I don’t know,” the girl replied. She was alarmed by its humanity, its glancing resemblance.

“I think she’s beautiful,” Ragga said.

When she and Ragga went to bed together the first time, the girl could only think of the cat and its awkward way of walking. She had forgotten how to touch another person. Her fingers were timid. She was already half in retreat. That night as she lay next to Ragga, remembering the tangle of white-blonde hair between her legs, she dreamed the cat had crept into the bedroom and placed delicately its strange, doubled paws upon her breast, the larger one soft and padded like leather and the runt with its tiny, needling claws drawing pinpricks of blood.

The next morning, however, she did not run.

*

The thoughts of self-destruction did not abate with Ragga’s entrance into her life. Sometimes as the girl sat by the harbour, lungs scoured by the salt wind, she would imagine walking out into the water. She imagined the shape her own dark hair would make as the water lifted it from her shoulders. The cold would numb her skin. Her body would become a flaccid sack leaking heat. There was neither longing nor sadness in these visions. They struck the girl as premonitions of an event that would unfold in its own way at its own time. She felt like one of the seabirds, moving effortlessly from one place to another. There was no need to fear her eventual arrival.

She saw Ragga often, began to think of her sparse, darkly paneled house with a sense of comfort and familiarity. She fed the cat by hand, lining her pockets with dried fish from the farmer’s market. Some nights she dreamed of the cat curled up next to her, her face buried in its white fur, the smooth, velvety pearl of its toes, the rough drag of its tongue between her legs, edging open the crevasse with the slowness of continental drift. The girl knew that Ragga and the cat were not the same but they began to take on a singular identity.

In the north, Ragga told her, they had a legend of a white bear with the hands and face of a human. It ravished a woman, they said, or perhaps she went with it willingly. In old stories choice was irrelevant, only aftermath. She eventually gave birth to sons, heroes perhaps, but plagued with a reputation for bad manners. They feuded easily and ate without caution. Several were poisoned. The line had died out. Or perhaps they had not died out. Perhaps they had simply diminished. Their humanity had withered.

The white bear was a holdover from Danish lore, Ragga said. There were no polar bears in Iceland except one which had made the journey on an ice float fifty years ago. They could not let it live. It massacred whatever it saw, it was so afraid.

“Everyone in the country,” she said, “is like that. We are in the wrong place. No one was ever meant to live here. It’s amazing what we do to survive.”

*

Ragga had a fondness for coffee. She crowded both their cups with sugar, but even then the acrid taste of it in the kitchen brought back memories, nearly hallucinatory, of the days the girl had spent surrounded by books.

The girl hated the ritual of it. She would go for a run when Ragga began to heat the water, and would come back with crowberries or red currants. They would eat them at the table together, their fingers discolored, the juice running down their chins. Then Ragga would head into the city where she worked at a secondhand record store on the main strip. She did not need the money, but she liked the customers.

The girl could stay or go as she liked. Mostly she stayed, tidied up the dishes. This took up so little time that she found herself searching through Ragga’s drawers and cupboards, not to find anything particular, but rather out of boredom. She suspected Ragga of holding a secret. There seemed to be a part of her always removed, independent. Something she would not give over. The girl opened every drawer in the house, but she never discovered what it was.

Some days she would sit with the cat and try to teach it tricks. “Here puss, puss,” she would say. The cat was a disdainful student. It was content with as much of its own nature as it had already discovered.

One day Ragga grabbed her by the hand as she went to take the plates to the sink. “Are you going to stay?” Ragga had never asked her anything like that before. If the girl was not there when Ragga came home from work, she was never asked about where she had been. If she was coming back.

“No,” the girl said, and Ragga did not press her for details. She took a beer from the fridge and popped the cap. She stretched out her body on the couch, rubbed a thumb against the throat of the cat until it began to thrum. It wrapped its own deformed hands around Ragga’s fingers. It depended on her. It could not hunt for itself.

It was only watching this exchange that the girl realized she was lying.

*

In August, they went to Ragga’s summerhouse, a squat cottage tucked away at the foot of Katla—a vast volcano that towered above them like a giant. The ground was black. Dark columns of rock thrust out of the earth with edges sharp enough to cut. There were sleek, glassed walls and hidden tunnels that crawled into the earth where the lava had once forced its way to the surface.

The girl learned that the house had been occupied for most of the season by one or another of Ragga’s family. There were many rooms. There were many locked doors. Ragga’s brother had been there before them, and they discovered discarded bottles of wine in a box by the porch, a wet slug of underwear curled up in the drain of the sink. Ragga laughed about what a slob he was, how he was always leaving his things behind.

“We could send it to him,” Ragga said. “Wherever he is, he’ll need it.”

“You touch it then,” the girl laughed. The underwear had been discolored by the sulfur in the water. Ragga wrinkled her nose and sighed: “We’ll have to clean the dishes with a hose.”

They made love outside that night. Ragga brought out a blanket which she stretched out over the soft grass. The mountain hung above them, the upper peaks hiding in a thick cloth of white clouds. The clouds were seamless. They divided the world in half, obscured the upper parts, as if the sky itself was being unmade.

“Are you ever afraid of what will happen?” the girl asked her.

“Afraid of what?” Ragga laughed, touching the smooth white skin above her navel with a careless hand.

“That Katla will explode,” she said.

Ragga shrugged. “It has before. It will again. The earth is grinding away beneath the island. It makes me happy to be here.”

“Happy?”

“This is a good place, my family’s home. And the mountain too, it is good. Good there is a white-hot glow at the centre of the earth. Something moving toward us, slow maybe, awful maybe, but, who knows? Every year they say something will happen. It is overdue. Tomorrow perhaps we will have a new island. There was a time when none of this was here. It has to come from somewhere.”

“But what if it goes off while we’re here?”

“There will be signs,” she said. “We will know something is coming.”

“But what if we don’t?”

“Then we don’t,” Ragga said, kissing her gently on the ear, the chin. “Stop worrying so much! No one put the mountain here for you. The mountain is here for itself.” Her fingers crept lower. The girl began to shake uncontrollably, but Ragga whispered to her over and over again, “Shh, now, there is nothing to fear.”

*

Sometimes the girl feared being with Ragga. The girl feared that when Ragga ran her fingers over her belly, she would feel inside the cool rot of death, as if death had taken hold within her like a canker, a disease, as if it had begun to function as its own kind of organ within her. The girl’s skin, she dreamed, was fragile, transparent, like the grey membrane of a snake’s egg which revealed the tiny foetus, fully formed, within.

The girl wondered if beneath the rind of the earth, there might simply be another earth, and if that could be peeled away, another, raw and ready to be birthed.

In the night, she woke in a panic. The bed was shaking. The walls were shaking. There was a dull thudding feeling moving through her bones as if a train were passing very close to them.

“Ragga,” she said, “Ragga!” More loudly.

But Ragga did not stir. Sleep had claimed her completely. Her hands were heavy, her body sunken into the crevices of the bed. Nothing would move her.

The girl touched her feet to the floor and felt the tiny tremors vibrate up through her spine. In the sitting room the cat was like a thing gone mad. Its fur stuck up in all directions. When it saw the girl, it hissed, back hunched as if someone had hoisted it up by the neck, each vertebrae locking as it began to walk toward the girl on its hind legs.

“Poor puss,” she said, “come with me—” and tried to grab hold of it. The thing clawed her angrily. It left a patchwork of deep red lines along her arm, and shallower ones where the tiny second paw clutched at her.

“Get out then,” she cried. “We must get out!”

The two of them ran out into the yard. The night was pure black. There were no stars. She could not find the moon. The clouds were pushing lower and lower, vanishing the sky. She could not see the top of Katla. She could not see if it was beginning to burst. Something thick and heavy touched her cheek. A moth, she thought, but it was not a moth. Her fingers came away powdery and grey. Ash. It had begun to cloak the grass. It clung to her feet, climbed her ankles, her shins. She could see her own footprints behind her, leading back into the cottage. There was nowhere to go. The world had become a blank place, directionless, and static. There was loudness so terrible it became like silence, she could not hear if she was breathing, she could not hear if her heart was beating.

Her fingers bit into her palm.

“The girl will die today,” she thought, “and he will be happy.”

She thought about Pompeii, the figures curled together. How they had been preserved forever. She lay down in the ash. It was soft against her skin. The feathers of a white bird. She imagined the earth was hot, and her own body was cool, cracking open. She imagined her body breaking apart. She imagined the red sedimentation of her veins and that awful blue stone at the centre of her.

Then Ragga was in the doorway. Her figure was black, a silhouette. Light streamed from the cottage in a broad arc.

“Come back,” she cried, and miraculously, she was laughing. “What are you doing, making a snow angel?”

And then she was running out of the door too, slipping off her nightgown. They were rolling together in the ash, and Ragga’s voice was high and breathy, her eyes alive. The earth shook, and they shook together.

“It’s not so bad,” Ragga said, “see? This isn’t going to kill you.” Her arms were around the girl. She pressed the full length of her body against her. Voice low, intense. “I think I—”

“Please. Not that.” The girl stopped her. She could feel the hard edges of the volcanic sand beneath her, the grit, the earth shivering against her, her shivering too, the girl was crying and she could not stop.

*

The next day Ragga cleaned the floor where they had tracked ash across the dark wood. They had come back late, exhausted and dirty, and now the girl would not look at her. There were tremors still. The aftershock. The girl could not tell if they were getting stronger or weaker. If it was over. If something else was coming.

“You didn’t tell me it might be like this,” she said, her stare hard now, accusing.

Ragga shrugged. “My family always lived in the shadow of the mountain. It is what it is. What could I have told you about it? That it’s dangerous? Of course it’s dangerous.”

“But I thought—”

“You thought what?” She pulled herself up from the floor to face the girl, exasperated. “You thought you might die? So what. What would be so terrible about that? You’re just a little thing, you think it matters so much if you die?”

The girl’s mouth was stubbornly set. “The volcano is going to go off,” she said. “Don’t you understand that? We have a warning this time. I can’t stay here. I’m going back to the city.”

“You can’t stay here, you can’t stay here,” Ragga rolled her eyes, lean frame in the doorway. “You can stay here. Decide you want to stay and then stay.”

“It’s not as simple as that. I want—”

“You do not want! Touching you is like touching snow. I could hold you in my hand, but what? You melt away into nothing.” Ragga shook her head, turned from the bedroom.

“That’s cruel.”

“So what? I am cruel,” she said over her shoulder. She began to wring out the cloth she had been using, twisting and twisting it.

“Stop being this way,” the girl pleaded. “Just let me go, will you? Or come with me. I don’t want you to stay here. You don’t have to hurt me.”

“Why can’t I hurt you?” Ragga threw down the cloth angrily. “I move, you hurt. You move, I hurt. This is what happens.”

“I don’t want to live like that.”

“Live how?”

“With all this between us.”

“There is nothing between us. Don’t you understand? There is no space between us. I want to hold you against me, I want to feel the shape of you, every inch, yes, every inch of you,” Ragga said. “I want to bury myself in you.”

“That’s not what I mean. I don’t…know you. Not really.”

“No,” Ragga said. She grabbed the girl around the wrist “You mean you don’t trust me.”

“No, please—”

“Come,” she said, “I’ll tell you who I am. Come. Let me show you. Let me show you everything.” And she dragged her down the hallways toward one of the locked doors. She drew out a key from her pocket. The girl was wiping at tears. Her fingers were delicate and stained black at the tips. She did not want to go into the room. When Ragga opened the door, she could see inside it was bare and empty, except for a large wooden chest, old, with thick metal bands running its length. Something about it upset her.

“Look, here,” Ragga said, but she did not want to look. “My family is old. I know my brothers and my sisters, my cousins. A long time ago the men used to steal women from places richer than they were, places that were green, places where the fruit hung upon the vine. There were too few of us. The winters were hard and they ate up our children, but my mother survived. And her mother survived. And her mother survived. Generation after generation. Each was a forneskjumađur. A sorcerer. Each found her luck where she could.”

She knelt on the floor and hefted up the massive lid of the chest. Dust burst into the air, and a strange smell with it, must and rot. It was sweet to smell, and it made the girl feel sick to her stomach.

“This belonged to my great-grandfather,” Ragga said. “I…wanted you to see it. I wanted you to see who I am. What lies within me. What we have done. Sit. Please. For a moment only.” The girl sat. Her legs were weak. She stared at Ragga’s back, the glossy amber of her hair. Ragga drew out a package, wrapped in a slick piece of tanned leather. She placed it on the floor between them and carefully, hesitantly, began to unwrap it.

The girl did not know what she was seeing. The light was too dim. She saw only the slick sheen of whatever it was, a softness. The shape became clearer. She could make out a fine down upon it, tufts of wiry white hair. A divot that the girl came to recognize as an ankle. The contour of a foot. Ragga began to unroll her prize, and the girl was struck by the strange shock of recognition: of seeing a human figure, but emptied and flat. Like half a man’s shadow. Skin sewn cloth. Legs, then nestled between them the deflated sac of two withered testicles. They clinked as they touched the floor, heavy with the weight of something foreign.

Ragga tucked her fingers inside and drew out two ancient coins.

“We pay for everything we want in this life,” she said.

The girl could not breathe. Her throat felt as if it had been stuffed with something acrid and bitter. She felt as if she might vomit, and yet she didn’t. She reached out. She tried to will her hand to stop moving, but it was impossible. She touched a finger to it. That strange, recognizable suppleness. Skin. Human skin. A dead man’s skin. It felt soft and smooth, slippery almost, except for the curling hairs.

“My great-grandmother cut this from my grandfather’s corpse when he died. Magic. She knew how it was done. The word to write on the parchment so we would prosper. Then she drew this skin up against her own body, and she wore it for many years. No space, yes? Not an inch of space. She loved him that much,” Ragga stared at the remains of her great-grandfather. “My family thrived. Before she died, she asked that my grandmother take them, but she would not. She said we must not live like this any longer. So we have tried to change. We have…diminished. So my brother says.”

“Why are you showing me this?” the girl asked. As she spoke, her breath moved the thick tangle of white hairs that ran the length of the garment. A breeze rippling a field of grain.

“I am ashamed. That my great-grandmother could do this. It is barbaric, yes? Inhuman. It makes me sick. But it was done in love.” Ragga looked away. The girl could see real a profound sadness on her face. She had not seen such depth of emotion there before. “I do not have the heart for this work. I think, maybe, I am weak. I see you, and I know that someone has cut something out of you. They have filled you up with salt.” Her voice was pleading, quiet. Pain was etched into the lines of her mouth, and in that moment she looked raw and vulnerable.

The girl said nothing. She was repulsed. Her flesh crawled with a terrible sense of wrongness, just looking at what had been done. The wrinkled, greasy flesh, the flaccid penis.

At last: “We have to go. Put that away. I can’t drive by myself.”

Ragga began to gently roll up the skin again. The girl did not know how she could bear to touch the thing. She did not know how she had let those same hands touch her.

“I’m sorry,” Ragga said. She looked embarrassed now. There was a brusqueness to her manner. “This was foolish of me. But,” she hesitated, “I thought—I love my great-grandfather for this. For giving the gift of nábrók. I love my great-grandmother, too, for taking this upon herself. I would sacrifice myself for you, you know, if I could. But I do not know how. I do not know what those who came before me did now.” She gave a small laugh. “But perhaps there was never anything to it anyway. Only disfigurement. Perhaps it would be better if she had let the rot set in—but I do not think so. So tell me, what must I do? How can I make you whole?”

Ragga looked up then, and something dangerous was in her face. Love. A kind of glow emanated from her chest, but her smile was brittle. Painful. The girl had never seen Ragga like that before. It made her beautiful. Her hair was soft and luscious and the girl remembered how it had felt intertwined between her fingers, the thick ropiness of it. Her skin was blemished with dark freckles, and the girl remembered what it had been like to count them, innumerable, and trace the constellations on her shoulders.

*

They drove in silence through the countryside. The landscape was wintry with ash now. There were great curls of it drifting up into a sky that had begun to glow red and sullen. Everything vanished: the dusky boulders, the fragile stalks of grass, the infrequent houses they passed. Only the water, in the distance, remained. The waves washed against the shore and scoured the beach. But even out there dark shapes would be rising, hissing and hardening from the fissures in the ocean floor. A new landscape tomorrow.

Kolbitur mewed plaintively in the backseat, but the girl did not feed her dried fish. She was tense, frightened. The soft hairs on her arms lifted, sparked with electricity. Beside her Ragga seemed almost boneless.

Something was coming. The air was charged with expectation.

Then.

In the distance, a deafening boom. The earth began to shake. The car skittered sideways but Ragga kept it on the road. She was used to driving in difficult conditions.

The girl looked over her shoulder. Behind them, she was dazzled by the sight of a great column of fire rushing into the air. There would be lightning soon. Ragga had told her that. Static electricity built up from all the dust in the air. It could strike up to a hundred kilometers away.

The foundations of the earth were gnashing against one another. What rose to the surface rose to the surface. The world was spilling its guts. It was coming. This was only the first of it. A birthing pang.

The girl thought back upon her last sight of the cabin: the underwear still floating in a pool in the sink, yellowish and almost fleshy. They had taken nothing with them. “Let it all go,” Ragga had said as they had hurried past their footprints from the night before, the hollow space in the ash where they had lain together.

She was the girl no longer. She had shed that name behind in the cabin, left it with the rest of the debris, the trappings of the past. Those things could be swallowed up for all she cared. They didn’t mean anything. History was like snakeskin.

Now she took Ragga’s hand. She clenched it fiercely within her own. Their faces were lit up red by the monumental flames reflecting in the mirror, the glass of the windshield. Then they were smiling. Then they were laughing. Her first, the sound torn from deep within, thick and hysterical. And Ragga too, whooping and hollering, slamming her foot down on the accelerator. Together they howled across the black, smoking earth.

Bent on Midnight Frolic

Tom Cardamone

1971. T-Bone, 23, Hispanic, 5’4, 180 lbs., 7.5 inches, uncircumcised.

T-Bone stood on the cusp of the dark wooded path and reflexively cracked his knuckles and rolled his head back and forth, his thick neck corded and strong (like a steak, hence the nickname). He was buzzed, having chugged several beers in a row and didn’t know how he knew about the Ramble, probably guys joking in the halls at Saint Barnabas High School. Since he’d started working in Manhattan as a bouncer, queers certainly checked him out a lot. He mostly ignored them, even the one who had an ass like a woman’s –and he was definitely an ass man, but lately, when the two fags who worked coat check looked him up and down, his cock twitched and, in the deeper waters of his mind, memories of summers at his cousin’s house – Fruit of the Loom underwear off and flashlights on – flickered like the silver tails of an ancient Coelacanth, primeval but very much alive and moving through the darkest of currents.

The quiet unnerved him as he rocked back and forth on his heels and, sensing that someone was coming up slowly behind him, he took the plunge.

The woods were wild. Men in groups or solo, the stench of weed, half-hearted whispering and the occasional “O’ baby, please” –a shocking echo to his pleas to Carmen, one that made him feel that he’d stepped through the looking glass and all these other men were mere reflections of his lust. It was perfectly okay and natural to reach through the mirror and touch an extension of yourself. A group of Boricuas stood close together talking low, arms heavy across one another’s shoulders, distended wife beater shirts showing muscled backs and juvenile tattoos –he spun away in the other direction. What if they were from the barrio? The tumescence in his jeans demanded attention. He kept cupping his package and looking about, unsure of how to engage but knowing that it was only moments away –a doe-like golden haired boy stepped into the path and froze. His beauty was luminal. A throat so thin, even in the weak moonlight, Steak noticed a slow swallow of anticipation. Steak walked up fast and close and the young man extended his neck downward in surrender. Lips parted, lithe arms out, he wore nothing but lose cutoff jean shorts. Steak put his thick fingers on the boy’s slender neck and pushed him down.

“Ay, Dios mìo.”

If he hadn’t been drunk – drunk on need, not beer – he might have noticed that, even though his eyes were closed, he could see a nimbus of golden light around the head bobbing between his thighs.

*

1947. Marcus Seymour Marigold, 27, Caucasian, 5’6, 125 lbs., 9 inches, circumcised.

Marcus slipped into Central Park on his way to work in the Brill Building. His short commute from a cold water flat on East 53rd made mornings a leisurely treat: a stroll, then breakfast at one of the automats in Times Square. Friends (tricks where the sex petered out but they still caught up in bars –guys were always shocked, once they’d drifted into acquaintances, that Marcus always gave his real name) were impressed that he worked in the Brill Building. Though he wasn’t in the music industry, he brushed shoulders with stars nearly every week and told stories out of turn about who had pulled out the longest member at the urinals. He had read that morning in the Times that the Dutch had donated a swath of tulips, gratitude for the United States war efforts, to be planted in Central Park.

It was a chilly April morning, the kind of day where the temperature rose rapidly –the frost on the marble statues turned from silvery verdigris into runny dew before noon. Secretaries stalked into the subway with their coats tucked between their arms, scarves stuffed in purses. Men forgot their hats on their desks. He knew from the newspaper article that the tulips were to be planted in a neat square near that portion of the park called the Ramble. He’d been there, of course, but had always struck out. Fearful that the man approaching was a policeman, he’d resorted to picking up obvious trade in Bryant Park. However, after wandering the park for half an hour, he was on the verge of disappointment when the trail twisted into a square of dark, tilled soil: no green shoots, just subterranean hard bulbs of colorful flower about to burst into living fireworks, announcing, with Stravinsky-like fanfare, the arrival of spring. Standing still, he breathed in the crisp air and observed a twittering squirrel scuttle down the long branch of a winter-hardened Ginkgo tree. Marcus decided that he would alter his morning stroll and mark this spot every morning, to observe the birth of the tulips, to watch a season unfold. More than once he’d wished he owned a camera, knew how to take good pictures. But he was also secretly pleased that some moments go forever unrecorded, that the private discourses of dawn were his alone.

*

For the duration of spring, Marcus revisited this little field to observe their progress and growth. Year after year the tulips were replanted, once more in Central Park before being moved to the long median that divided Park Avenue. He always made an appreciative effort to pause and note the progress of the blooms. Yet those mornings of the initial planting within the park were somehow significant to him. He could be forgiven for not noticing in the morning light that one flower, the last bulb to bloom, pulsed with a golden hue.

*

1983. James Garamond, 27, Caucasian, 5’8, 145 lbs., 5.5 inches, circumcised.

James had heard rumors about the “Golden Boy of the Ramble,” had indeed thought he’d caught a glimpse of his gossamer form once, slipping off a large rock to follow a rather rough-looking gentleman. He’d seen a hot blond at the Continental Baths last summer that had a certain air about him, having dispensed with the prerequisite towel and seemingly floated through the halls. James was on Quaaludes that particular night and assumed the guy was just European, but now, having heard more than one ribald tale in the bars, stories swapped down by the trucks at midnight near the piers, he couldn’t help but wonder if this boy was some sexual fantasy writ large: a cipher on which the community’s collective lust was projected. Christopher Street Magazine had recently accepted some of his articles, had asked for more –the New York Times had rejected a book review of the new Edmund White novel, but encouragingly so. Tonight, he felt like he was on the trail of a real story, something different that would help prove his chops and get him noticed.

The night air had cooled. The dampness of the soil intermingling with spilt beer and semen generated a primal stench interrupted by stale cigarette smoke and the quiet exhalations of enraptured men. A shirtless black youth in bright red jogging shorts whisked pass and, from out of the darkness, a pale white arm reached to stroke the moving quarry but failed to connect. The pale limb went slack and James caught his breath–he’d had no idea someone else was so close. He instinctively patted his wallet. It was a dummy, stuffed with a few singles and crumpled receipts so any mugger would think it was legit –he’d been mugged a few times crossing the park at night so now keep his license and a folded twenty tucked into his tight tube socks, though he regretted wearing his new Reeboks as the trampled ground was muddy and trash-strewn. Another man in cut-offs sauntered past, a handkerchief in his back pocket.  So seventies, James silently sniggered, but he pursued, not out of any sexual interest, but to keep moving.

Winding his way down one of the dim paths, he spied two men talking close, sharing a joint, one with his cock out, long, limp and damp as if recently sucked, now cooling off in the night air. In the city two years, he still reeled, still marveled, at how different life was here than in his hometown of Indianapolis. There cruising was circumspect, hesitant, fearful. In New York it was flagrant sport, feral and above all else, constant. Not too far from the weak light and mosquito whirl of the rare working street lamp, the silhouette of men encircling each other, the quiet grunts and rhythmic sawing of elbows pulled at him. Forgetting his research, James pulled off his shirt, fingered his hairy chest and looked for a break in the action so he could join. At the other end of the sexual circus he heard a wizened cough as a man was roughly pushed out. He was wild-eyed, high or drunk or both, he held his wrinkled shirt to his mouth to stifle his coughing –still, such ostracism was rare. James had been amused that though only hot guys approached other hot guys at the bars, anything went in the Ramble. Here he’d witnessed couplings so out of proportion in terms of expectations and assumptions that they ran from the humorous to the touching. But this guy seemed beyond deranged, on drugs and forcing himself on the group. Trying to use his exit as a point of entry, James ducked between a pair of naked, grappling men and noticed that, as they passed, the coughing man’s back was riddled with dark crusty spots. James froze. Just a few days ago, he was at the gym and caught sight of a young man he’d tricked with a few months ago changing in the locker room. He rather self-consciously pulled his collar up to conceal a purplish bruise, what James had thought was the thumbprint of a rather severe hickey at the time. Now he wasn’t so sure. His sexual appetite dissipated. James disengaged from the group and left the park and headed to Cat’s Bar for a drink. Gossip about the Golden Boy of the Ramble all but ceased after an article about a new “gay cancer” appeared later that month in the Times.

James would have plenty else to write about.

*

1988. Golden Boy. Age unknown, fluctuating height, between 5’4 and 6’2, depending on the length of the summer, same with his weight and cock size, uncircumcised (naturally).

Golden Boy. He’d heard that he was called that for several seasons and then no more. Curious that a name had been assigned to him, unconcerned that it was forgotten, he felt the absence of the men from before. It was as if they had been folded up and put away further into the darkness of the park, the black spaces of the city, the cold forgetful lake between the stars. Their lights had gone out and he missed them, whimpered even, when one that he had known so closely, had tasted deeply, just snapped out of existence. No matter how far away, how quickly that light had extinguished or painfully lingered, he knew when they were gone. Others stepped in to feed him, to take him and take from him, but differently, with a more abrasive economy than before, with condoms, with whiskey and fear on their breath. Everything had changed but the longing.

He learned bits of the language of men, enough to say to himself “I am not gold. I am green. I am not a boy, I am hungry.” And though he drank from an endless fountain of semen most nights (except when it rained, except when it snowed), and as men bent him over and pushed his face down until he ate the blackest dirt and the insects secreted within, he was still ravenous. Some men pushed him to his knees and fucked his mouth until his bruised lips bled. Others laughed ruefully while urinating on his hair. Some fucked him slowly, lovingly, with all the deliberation of a secret dance, so that he was as still for them as a firm oak, their hands clasping his perfect waist as they unburdened themselves within his hot cavity. They whispered to him in every language, thick tongues in his ear. Some smelled like hard work, some like cheap wine and tooth decay, others a hint of their wives’ perfume or too many nights sleeping rough on benches. He took from them all and still hungered.

*

1988. Jonathan C. Raleigh, 45, Caucasian, 6.1, 185, 6 inches, uncircumcised.

Raleigh (all his friends, even his wife, called him Raleigh) loved his business trips to New York City. He hated the Javitz Center, loudly, repeatedly disclaiming to anyone in earshot, “It’s like an airport without a city, for Christ sakes,” as if that joke never got old. As a buyer for a major chain of department stores across the South, he carried a lot of weight and was deservedly wined and dined during his quarterly visits to the Big Apple. He told stories that were too long, referencing his wife so often that more than one designer had rolled their eyes, mouthing “Methinks he doth protest too much.” Raleigh eschewed the baths and bars during the spring and summer months and made sure he always booked the Marriot in Times Square. He would tell his wife he’d call her in the morning –that he’d be with sellers all night, no matter how often she insisted that he call her when he got in, that there were Puerto Ricans everywhere. (She’d latched onto that particular group as the cause of all malfeasance in New York City for no other reason than that they’d recently befriended a black couple at church, so for her it was like moving to a different city and having to root for a new team.)

Raleigh lit a Benson and Hedges, dropped the match and stepped into the Ramble. It was a warm night and men in shorts sauntered past. Men and boys – young swishy things, cadet cocksuckers, he thought – new arrivals to the woods: their nascent sexual energy was as prominent as the humidity, as constant as the buzz of invisible crickets punctuated by the grunts of rutting men. He pawed his impatient erection, heavy in his linen trousers. He kept his suit and tie on when entering the Ramble –as he’d aged, he had observed that certain men were attracted to business attire and willing to enter into some pretty hot scenes. A naked man with long hair stepped from behind a black tree and straddled the trunk, one hand ridiculously caressing the bark. Raleigh moved on. Now freely perspiring, he took a handkerchief from his pocket and patted his brow. As he crammed it back into his pocket he realized that he’d forgotten to take off his wedding ring. He had heard horror stories about muggings in Central Park and had always left it in the hotel safe before venturing out, but tonight he had come directly from the bar, fueled by too many Chivas on the rocks. His cheeks reddened with annoyance. He didn’t dare take the ring off and slip it into his pocket –it was too dark, the action too suspicious. A gaggle of ghetto youth burst laughing from the bushes and his hand instinctively dropped to his rear, as if to protect his precious wallet, but their peals of laughter bloomed into effeminate whispers so he relaxed. But it was time to get on with it.

*

Golden Boy arched his back and opened his mouth wide –his extended tongue pulling moisture from the air. He was wearing a pair of torn, soiled madras shorts he’d found the other morning draped across the back of a park bench. And nothing else. Broken glass didn’t puncture his bare feet; the rough boulders that dotted the Ramble never scraped his backside. He’d been entered by several men already tonight, and had been on his knees pleasing a group at the edge of the Central Park Lake for quite some time, the stoic twin cameo of the Dakota apartment building peering over the park’s edge like disapproving neighbors. He didn’t mark time as the men who frequented the park did. He tasted seasons. Hibernating winters within the trunk of the largest tree he could secret himself within, he would stretch himself into a long line of golden sap and wait until the first birdsong of spring, then at dusk he pulled his thin, naked body from out of the tree and thank his host with a deep, reverent bow before making his way through the paths of the Ramble, returning at dawn to sleep away the day. As spring turned to summer, he grew stronger and taller, repeating the hot whispers men dripped into his ear until the words became something he could use –though he wasn’t aware that different languages existed, so when he did speak it was an odd mixture of Spanish and English. (He had heard dozens of languages but those two were the most frequently spoken as cocks slipped in and out of him.) He retained these words while he slept through the winter. As he logged more and more winters, he thought more about his hunger and the men who came to him in the park. He fed from their beings, enjoying their fluids and heat, but was this what he was meant to do? And the confines of existence, the stone walls he never crossed, what kept him contained –was he rooted here like the trees? Questions like these arose if he went too long without touching a man and before the answers could come a man always did.

He heard the promise of an unzipped fly and blinked as a broad shouldered man stood before him, legs wide apart. Golden Boy slinked down onto his knees and fed.

When he was done, as always, he wanted more.

*

Raleigh pulled his cock out of his pants while watching a nearly naked young man service a construction worker. Once again he was in awe of the secret fraternity to which he had been inducted. When he first read that Life Magazine article on San Francisco as a teen, he’d felt repulsed. He had never had a desire to be “gay” or leave his wife –he loved her, he loved their Atlanta, two-car garage home together. But what he had done with one of the other guys on the wrestling team remained: it was something that had brightened in his mind where he had always been led to believe that it would fade.  So year after year he came here to enact that same desire, but for him these were still only moments, a vice, not a “life style.”

As the construction worker stepped away, Raleigh eagerly stepped up, ready to unload, to be done with it and back in his hotel room in time to watch Carson. Young lips brushed his cock and he shuddered and thought of the slender Pan Am attendant who’d refreshed his drink on the flight over, paid him just enough extra attention that he knew, they both knew, and as he engorged across nimble tongue he wondered what it would be like to take someone in his hotel room bed instead –the thought of the unanswered phone ringing, tanned legs spread on clean sheets. He was about to cum and jammed his fingers into the hot mouth beneath him to take total control and Golden Boy turned his head as if he had been in a desert for years, since his floral birth, and had never taken a drink before. Golden Boy lit up like a new sun and fear gripped Raleigh’s spine as he thought this new light emanated from the beam of a policeman’s flashlight, that he was about to be arrested. His boss would be woken up by the phone call, still in bed, listening in silence as gleeful Yankees explained that his employee had been caught with his penis inserted in another man’s mouth and would he like to arrange bail via Western Union?

Golden Boy’s eyes were open wide and he sucked harder than he’d ever sucked before as his true need churned within the pit of his stomach: he tasted gold for the first time, sumptuous ore, something that he innately knew he was meant to burrow through the earth and find and covet but somehow his path had been diverted by this sticky river of salt. He glowed even brighter and Raleigh, seized by panic, tried to extract himself from this teething, fiery starling by planting one foot on the boy’s shoulder while yanking his hand free. Golden Boy couldn’t let this prize go so he bit down hard and blood filled his mouth –another new taste, not bad but nowhere near as nutritious as the wedding band that rolled across his tongue. His teeth sharpened and worked the finger quickly away from the screaming man’s hand. Golden Boy had nightly lapped up semen, occasionally drank urine – once a disappointed man shoved a stick roughly up his ass (disappointed because Golden Boy didn’t scream but widened his slippery hole to be more accommodating) – and now tasted blood. None of which had prepared him for the flavors of gold. His skin practically burned. For the first time his wavering erection was sincere and not mere mimicry of those around him. Golden Boy swallowed the metallic morsel and dropped to the ground, purring in ecstasy.

*

Raleigh ran through the woods silently, holding his bleeding hand up as if it were something disgusting that he’d like to throw away but was nevertheless responsible for. He stifled a whimper, fearful that sounding like a wounded animal would attract other humanoid carnivores to take his wallet, strip him naked, and beat him to death. He tried not to hyperventilate as he reached 5th Avenue and hailed a cab.

*

In his hotel room, injured hand deep in a silvery ice bucket as the water turned pink, desperation ran its course and Raleigh called the concierge and requested an ambulance. There was no way he could explain away this one. (Honey, he’s a Jehovah’s Witness who was just so dehydrated I had to invite him in for a glass of water. I’m not sure how his jock strap ended up on the bathroom floor. They have mighty strange rites, like Mormons, you know?)  He took yet another aspirin and chased it with one of those little plastic bottles of Captain Morgan’s rum the airline steward and flirtatiously dropped in his lap. He wasn’t going to call his wife tonight or tomorrow. Or his boss. He wasn’t going home. There was terse knocking at the hotel room door but he was too woozy to answer. Raleigh needed a long nap. Maybe he could get a job at Macy’s. Keys rattled and someone let themselves into the room saying, “Sir, sir? Are you alright?” He didn’t bother to answer. The throbbing pain coursing up his arm felt permanent. And if winters were too hard here, he thought drily, he could always move to San Francisco.

*

1992. Marcus Seymour Marigold, 72, Caucasian, 5’6, 142 lbs., 9 inches, circumcised.

Snickles Two’s tail twitched as she sensed an unseen squirrel. Marcus was patient and let the Pomeranian work her excitement out before giving the leash a gentle tug. Retired for the better part of a decade, he was still surprised at how his routine was similar to his former work day, albeit with more naps, neighbors were now friends instead of strangers, and the wine bottle was opened earlier and earlier. Same apartment as when he moved to the city, the five floor walk-up kept him lean. People often thought he was at least ten years younger than his actual age. Snickles Two whined and pulled him in a new direction and he let himself be led deeper into the park.

*

Though the sun had not yet set, Golden Boy slipped out from within the folds of an oak tree and sat on the water’s edge. He wore a tight black t-shirt and a pair of faded gym shorts that he’s salvaged from the trash. Fingers lazing in the water, a small dog nuzzled him from behind. He turned to see an apologetic older man tugging at the leash and Golden Boy laughed.

“It’s okay. I am here to make new friends.”

Marcus puzzled at the stilted accent and let Snickles Two off her leash. She bound and twirled over her new found freedom and the youth who so attracted her rolled in the dirt, matching the dog’s enthusiasm with an almost alarming alacrity. He was dumbstruck by how attractive the young man was –a halo of sexual energy emanated from around his sinewy body like a barely perceptible fog.

Now squatting and petting the dog, Golden Boy felt Marcus staring at him, his mouth literally open in wonderment, so he stretched and stood and took off his shirt. Marcus looked around to see if this was really happening and ran through the mental list of possibilities:

This kid is crazy.

He’s a weird foreigner.

He’s a scam artist.

He’s homeless.

Maybe he’s into older guys.

This kid is crazy.

He’s on drugs.

If he wants a Daddy, my Social Security check wasn’t made for two.

This kid is a homeless, crazy, weird foreign scam artist on drugs.

Maybe he just likes me?

…

A tourist family briskly wheeled a stroller between them.

Golden Boy mouthed “What do you want?”

Marcus swallowed and whispered “For you to come home with me.”

Golden Boy had shaped himself to every fantasy placed before him, had ever and always acquiesced, so he simply nodded in agreement. Snickles Two sensed the new bond and approved in a frenzy of slobber and tail wagging. Marcus smiled weakly, alternate strings of hope and fear laced his heart so tightly that he couldn’t speak, so instead he offered his arm and Golden Boy took it. Snickles Two launched them homeward and shortly Golden Boy stepped out of the park for the first time.

*

Locking the door behind them, Marcus was shocked when they made it inside his apartment –he hadn’t entertained male company since Clifford, already wasting away from AIDS, had died of pneumonia in the early eighties. He was shocked that he was making tea for two, that Snickles Two so obviously approved, that the boy lounging on his couch seemed so preternaturally peaceful and at ease in his home. That he had walked barefoot in the streets of Manhattan, that alternately crossing his long legs revealed the soles of his feet to be perfectly clean was another matter altogether. There was much to ponder and ask and yet he just wanted to sit with this boy and bask in his youthful radiance. Still, there were enough red flags that he also thought to alert one of his closer friends in the building that he had a guest, to check up on him in a little while but then Golden Boy stood and slipped out of his shorts and opened his arms and Marcus went to him. The tea pot whistled and they pulled apart long enough to turn off the stove, put Snickles Two in the kitchen with some hastily poured dog food and then they stumbled and tugged at one another into the bed room. Marcus whispered into his ear and Golden Boy smiled –happy to hear some nearly-forgotten words from seasons past.

*

Because Marcus never asked Golden Boy to leave, he stayed. He would sleep most of the day, which initially vexed the older man. Whenever he would walk the dog or run his errands, he was suspicious upon his return the boy would be gone, that his apartment would be robbed. But he got used to the strange youth in his bed always being there. Strange because if Marcus came home late, or was out during the evenings, whenever he returned he often found the boy naked in bed, legs spread with a vibrant oozing erection while he teethed on one of the pewter candle sticks his mother had left him. Strange because he never asked for anything, never called friends, never made requests, demands, trouble, never argued, preferred to be as nearly naked as possible indoors or out, and though he occasionally used a Spanish word or two, never gave a hint to his background.

Some of his friends were bemused, some outraged, some pitied him until they met Golden Boy, whom he introduced as “Goldie,” and then quite a few were jealous. His downstairs neighbor, Marcie, who, like Marcus was retired but thought leaving New York was not only ridiculous but paramount to a death sentence, threatened to call the police and took every opportunity to question Goldie. Marcie had gone to meet Marcus at the hospital the night Clifford had passed. She sat with him quietly in the cab home as it was stuck in traffic. She passed a twenty dollar bill to the driver and touched Marcus on the knee and said, “Come.” He followed and they walked the rest of the way home together. He wept openly as they made their way down Lexington and she said nothing. Marcie understood grief as a bodily force, a series of breath-driven upheavals –the violent spin of a dropped compass. She knew this was coming and had a bottle of whiskey ready, standing guard under the sink with the Lysol. They’ve been friends now for twenty-five years. Her reservations about Goldie were never completely laid to rest but she liked that he would run errands for the older residents of the building. His inability to learn how to play bridge confirmed her suspicion that he was probably “simple” –her word, to the point where she worried over who would look after Goldie once Marcus was gone.

*

One afternoon Marcus was clearing out his dresser to take some old clothes to a charity re-sale shop when he noticed that his gold cufflinks were missing. A sigh of relief passed his lips. He’d fretted for the better part of the year that this perfect body on his couch was too good to be true. He relished the fight they were going to have, when Goldie came home from walking Snickles Two, the admonishments, the confession (and that the boy would finally drop that weird accent), the intense make-up sex –he needed them to finally get to a place of truth. He heard the keys at the lock and the jangle of Snickles Two’s collar and as the door opened Marcus was positioned dramatically, square in the middle of the living room, mouth drawn –the empty velvet box that had held cufflinks in his palm open wide like the maw of a tattling child.

Golden Boy smiled as Snickles Two danced between Marcus’ legs and then made for the water bowl. Marcus stood still as the boy followed the dog into the kitchen. He resolved to stand there until he received an honest response, tears welling in his eyes, tears of regret as he was terrified of losing him, that the price of his accusation would be an empty bed. His Goldie quickly returned, now shirtless (he was forever shedding clothes the minute he came home) and holding a spoon. Marcus recognized it as a piece of the good silver he hadn’t taken out in probably a decade. He wearily committed to counting them after whatever fight they were about to have blew over, but the thought dissipated as the boy solemnly nodded toward his upraised palm in acknowledgement over the missing cufflinks and placed the spoon in his mouth and closed his eyes. His body seemed to vibrate like a tuning fork and he fell to his knees. Marcus dropped the empty velvet box and rushed to his side. The boy sighed and opened his mouth and the melting end of the spoon dropped and sizzled into the carpet. The boy twitched in ecstasy, one finger on his erect pink nipple, a wild erection straining against his shorts. Marcus wept. He cried knowing that, having craved an answer, all he could afford was more mystery, and that now he would have to pay for it with silver and gold.

*

After the incident on the carpet, far from counting the silverware, Marcus put what remained of his family heirloom under the bed. After a few weeks, when the cypress box was depleted, Marcus would buy cufflinks and metal trinkets at the neighborhood thrift shops, feeding his ravenous boy on the couch or in bed, sometimes on the floor. The feedings were always carnal affairs. When Marcus first inserted a tacky serving spoon into his ass, Golden Boy’s moans of ecstasy drove the older man wild. Upon closer inspection he found the expansive, needy nature of the boy’s hypnotic hole an addictive necessity. Marcus masturbated daily with his face between raised legs –slipping objects inside and watching them dissolve as Golden Boy shook back and forth. Ignored, Snickles Two would whine and shit on the kitchen floor. Marcie, tired of knocking, would slip snide notes under his door, and questioned the other neighbors about Marcus’ increasingly bizarre, aloof behavior, and if anyone else had lent him unreturned kitchen utensils.

*

When social services arrived, the apartment was a fetid mess, the air thick with the stench of dog shit, semen, and moldering Chinese food. Marcus, looking pale and wane wouldn’t let them in. One day, as Goldie took Snickles Two for a rare walk, Marcie slipped into the apartment before Marcus had time to close the door. She was appalled at the stench and disarray.

“Oh Marcus, Clifford would be so ashamed.”

She played her strongest card and was shocked when he blinked –he in was in his boxers, a dirty blanket across his shoulders, his eyes unfocused and hollow –he looked unsure of just who she was talking about.

“Let’s go to my place, I’ll make some coffee and we can talk about this.” She gestured at the trash-strewn floor, barely able to hide the contempt in her voice.

“Okay, Marcie, I’d like that.” He sounded so defeated, so weak. She was taken aback, so sure of his refusal that she hadn’t actually planned how to talk some sense into him. He wavered, looking confused, so she grabbed him by the elbow and silently prayed that the new couple across the hall from her was home –one of them was a nurse and might able to help. As they took the steps one by one, Snickles Two came bounding up the stairwell, his loose leash flogging the steps behind him. Marcus rubbed his eyes and called out “Goldie, Goldie!” and then collapsed weeping as Marcie ran down to the next floor and started banging on the nearest apartment door.

*

1999, Daniel Elon, 33, Jewish, 5’6, 146 lbs., 7 inches, circumcised.

A native New Yorker, Daniel was annoyed that he was lost in the park. His wife and their friends were close by, lounging on the picnic blanket enjoying the last of the summer’s symphonies while he had gotten turned around after excusing himself to take a leak. Occasionally he could hear snippets of music as he turned a corner. There were men everywhere, hushed men cruising –he was surprised that this activity still went on in the age of AIDS. But as a doctor, and specifically an internist, he knew better than to discriminate –after all, his cousin Gage had died of the disease. Still, he shuddered that gay men still took such unnecessary risks.

Humidity permeated the August heat –it hung off the trees like thick moss. Parched and inebriated, Daniel just wanted out, yet he had drunk more than his share of wine and the urge to urinate again was overwhelming. (This always happened when he was under stress.) He secreted himself between two dusty boulders and undid his fly. He could feel unseen eyes and let his chinos drop a bit more to reveal the hairy cleave of his ass. Sweat pearled at his ear as he let loose a torrent of piss against the nearest tree trunk. He’d always been particularly proud of his penis; in college and now at the gym, he liked to be naked and seen by other men. He felt as if he were single-handedly dispelling the myth that Jewish men had small pricks, and relished the fact that his thick cock was as long soft as it was hard.  He arched his back and stretched out his arms as his dick lengthened, a droplet of urine that had caught in his now retracted foreskin glistened in the moonlight. He moved his hips back and forth; ostensibly to shake out any remaining drops of piss, but also anyone around would better see the silhouette of his cock coming alive. His pants dropped to his ankles as he began to stroke himself. Another pair of hands joined in, one on his cock, the other clutched his furry abdomen. Daniel gasped and relaxed as the quickening grip brought him closer to orgasm; hot breath on his ear –nimble tongue swabbed the sweat across the nape of his neck like a darting humming bird. The hands gathering his flesh were young, practically incandescent. He turned his head to get a better look at who was jacking him off when lips met his. Oh, he thought I was turning around to kiss him–well HIV doesn’t transmit easily through saliva, so there isn’t much of a risk –I need to get back to Sheila –Oh God that feels good–

Daniel groped and turned, a web of pre-cum from both their hard cocks further linking their bodies. The youth kissed him deeply and Daniel gasped as the kiss turned more urgent, probing, the tongue in his mouth fraught, expansive. Sharp pain gripped his skull. He struggled, caught between the tree trunk and the constricting grip around his waist. He gagged as the muscle pushing through his mouth rhythmically worked out one gold filling after another. He hit his attacker, who just held him tighter. They were now face to face: he was a mere boy(!), his eyes off in the distance as Daniel’s erection flagged and blood pooled in his mouth to such a degree that he gulped it down or risked choking and no one came to his aid as no one could hear him for the boy also ate his screams.

*

1947. Bjorn, 19, Caucasian, 5’5, 135 lbs., 4.5 inches, uncircumcised.

The shed stank of moist, wormy compost. Still, he welcomed the bit of warmth trapped beneath the corrugated tin roof arching over row after row of tulip bulbs. He and his boss, Sem, had arrived at the same time –the crack of dawn, and both drank coffee from their oddly matching thermoses in silence. Bjorn had recently graduated from Agriculture College and looked after the plants as if he were running an orphanage: his delicate charges unlikely to live through the night without his solemn care. The much older Sem was gruff and quiet. He’d been imprisoned for black marketeering during the war, and whatever had happened to him at the camp had left scars that ran deep. As a supervisor, he was cautious and calm, though he could crack a grin after a few pints of lager. Whenever Bjorn finished his cigarette and flicked the butt, he always felt Sem greedily tracking its progress, as if later, if another war broke out and rations ran thin, he’d know where to go to salvage a few remaining wisps of tobacco.

A farmer drove up in a flatbed heavy with grim soil. The driver didn’t get out so Sem jogged over, whispered harshly through the barely rolled down window, and shoved some money into the crack. He motioned for Bjorn who nodded and grabbed a shovel. He knew from the first shovelful that the consistency of the dirt was too fine, that it was leavened with ash. They shoveled in silence and when they were done the farmer drove off. The sky brightened but Bjorn could smell a burnt, powdery stench. Times were hard. There were still so little livestock in the Netherlands that fertilizer was expensive; they had to make do. During moonless nights, poor farmers would dig up the black sooty earth surrounding the dismantled concentration camp. He knew the valley where it had been, was told by his parents in hushed tones that the camp there was much worse than the simple way station everyone had been led to believe. It was rumored that all of the inverts and transvestites of Rotterdam were brought there and, unlike Sem, never left. Better was when he was a child and his grandparents told him ancient bedtime stories about the fey folk of the valley, stories of elves and sprites hungry for hidden treasure. These were wonderful tales of mischievous creatures bent on midnight frolic. He wondered if such fables were meant to die with their generation, for the valley was now poisoned by unspoken cruelty and torture. No matter how quickly they pulled down the barbed wire, the very dirt, the essence from which all else was meant to grow, was tainted.

*

Sem went to check on the water pump as Bjorn pushed a wheelbarrow of black earth into the shed. He scooped up the soil and patted it gingerly around each bulb. He shook out clumps of old root –the farmers must have been digging deeper, he thought as he carefully molded the dirt around the nascent bulbs. A primeval bit of seed, of something hard, dropped into the planter and Bjorn absently patted it into the soil surrounding a rather sturdy bulb. It was older then the tales Bjorn’s grandparents told him, from before the Netherlands had their kings, certainly well before men gained the sophisticated skills with which to engineer ovens hot enough to turn other men into ash.

Bjorn was proud that the current crop of tulips was destined for New York City. The Netherlands were gifting thousands of bulbs to the U.S. in gratitude for their monumental help during and after the war. The gesture was wonderful but, really, the government was buying up the tulips to spur the economy. He hoped the New World had an early spring, to give the flowers their fullest bloom.

*

2017. Call him whatever the fuck you want just don’t call him Golden Boy. Eternal, A color you can’t see, 6’, 125, lbs., 10.5 inches, uncircumcised (Naturally).

He’s not golden. He is the root and the leaf and the yearning sap that links and loops between the men who nightly come to the park, fellow vessels waiting to fill or be filled. How they shudder and gasp as he works them open. Many grunt and push off him and stumble out of the brush, buckle knocking knuckle. Few, a sacrosanct few, his whimpering choir of the chosen few –they stay and surrender and nestle down into the dirt, one cheek flat in a puddle, eyes reaching back like desperate hands trying to grab the steering wheel of a car going over a cliff and he pushes so far into them that they stop wanting. And he’s learned to take so much more from them, and so much more slowly, more completely, to take in ways so that they think they are giving what they didn’t even know was theirs. No, he’s not golden. Not brown. Something wild and green and growing and his hair rustles in the wind like new leaves whenever he enters the Ramble, resilient, the personification of spring in the truest sense of the word, how his being had been poured into this shape, not willed but cultivated by demented dimensions, poured and pouring, pouring into the mouths of sheepish accountants and retail clerks and mad garbage men and German tourists and drunk college boys following a rumor and memories of summers in the boat house, of older brothers showing them the ropes and the ropes are wet and thick with celestial seeds hanging off the chins of old men with monogrammed handkerchiefs and the presence of mind (and experience, forget the songs of experience, they crave the sighs) to put down a sheet of newspaper before kneeling so their wives won’t question again the grass stains on their trousers.

From his apartment in the Time Warner Center overlooking the park, Golden Boy pulls an iPhone 6 Plus out of his Bathing Ape camouflage sweat pants pocket. He licks a finger to wipe away a smudge from his Nike SB X Diamond Dunks while looking at his phone –and wills his other hand to grow multiple spidery appendages so he can type and swipe faster; he has every app and multiple accounts and he knows how to be demure, to come on hard, to please, to tease, to entice. And once you’re hooked he always types the same thing.

LOL let’s meet in the park.

Murder on the Prurient Express

David Nickle

1

A light shone at the station... just one, but one was enough to assist young Martin as he made good his escape. It glared a beacon across the midnight-black meadow, the weed-choked tracks over which Martin loped and stumbled and, when he forgot himself and tried to sprint, limped.

One, singular bulb. Housed in a conical metal shade dangled by a chain from the awning, that focused illumination in a bright circle on the platform—encompassing an old bench with a missing slat, and crucially for Martin, a window looking in to the station master’s office. He could see himself in that glass. Martin sidled closer and squinted.

Once he had checked his hands, and found that yes, they were bloody, he rubbed some of the dirt off that window and looked at his face. It was not that good but better than it could have been. His left eye was dark and swollen: the tender spot on his jaw was dark too, but not as bad as the eye. His whole face was freckled with blood. He tried to wipe it off with his hand but it just smeared everywhere.  Not, he remarked silently, ideal.

He found his way inside, the way one does when locks are involved.

The little station house was dark and Martin had to feel his way around, past the bench and across some garbage and into a little restroom. The light didn't work, and the water wasn't on, but he felt around, pulled the top of the toilet tank off and found it was full, or full enough. He slopped some of that into his mouth—not too much, it tasted awful, and he figured he'd puke if he had more than a sip—and then splashed more of it on his face, scrubbed away with his bare hands. He needed to get that blood off. It didn't look good. It made him look like a maniac, a killer, that's what it did. That look wouldn't get him far.

Face dripping, Martin came back out of the restroom and looked through the station. If it weren't for that light outside, Martin would say the whole place was a ruin. The floor was scattered with newspapers, magazines and old paper files, which spilled out from the office. Broken glass crunched under Martin's shoe as he made his way into the office. There was an old black rotary phone on the sheet-metal desk.

Martin lifted the receiver and put it to his ear, almost perfunctorily, and nearly set it back in its cradle.  There was no dial tone, but as he pulled it away from his ear he heard a faint crackle.

“Leave a message at the tone.”

It was a man's voice. It sounded American. Low, and gravelly.

There came a tone.

“Um,” said Martin, and thought again about his circumstances. “Is anyone actually there? No? Okay. Fu--” he stopped himself from cursing. Who knew who was on the other end of the line? “Sorry. Look, there's been trouble. My name's... never mind that. But I got... kidnapped. He kept me for days... I think eight days... in his place. I don't know where it was, I just got out of there fast as I could when I could. I fu--” a breath “--I need help. I'm here at this train station. Don't know where it is. Everything's dark, it's near a farm I think. Maybe you do. Know where it is. Maybe you can call the cops. Or call back here. Fu-- fuck, I don't know.”

The line disconnected.

Martin wanted to say more. He hung up and picked the phone up again, rattled the cradle. He wanted to say a few more details: the name of the town where he lived, the name of the bar in that town, a description of the man, how big he was... how long Martin thought he'd been in the back of the van...

But the time for that was past. The phone line was dead now—even when he pulled it from his ear and waited...

He set the phone back in place and thought about what to do next. He had not really been thinking about 'next,' when he made his escape. He knew he had to get away—and get away he did. But he was starving, and injured, and dehydrated, and he had no sense of where he would be escaping to. He had assumed that once outside of the house, there would be a town, a highway—help.

He thought about walking along the rails—at some point, even in the dark, that would lead him to those things. He thought about letting his ankle rest—waiting for whoever had received that phone message to pick it up and piece together his location. He peered out the window, into the shadows beyond the lamp—shadows where anything could be waiting. Or approaching. Those shadows seemed to be moving.

Martin blinked and looked again and understood the shadows weren't moving. Shadows don't move. Light moves. The light on the platform was going side-to-side as though a gust of wind had arisen, or someone had whacked it.

Martin slid out of the chair and to his knees, so he peered over the desk. The square of light from the window was scanning the office like a search lamp. Through his knees, Martin felt a low vibration—something coming from the earth—and he crouched lower, and as the vibration turned into an encompassing rattle, of paper and furniture and bones—and then into a hellish screaming sound of hot metal on rail—he pushed lower still, and his breath quickened, and his eyes squeezed, as the great, ancient locomotive pulled into the station in a black cloud of smoke and steam.

The quality of light changed and shifted, as the air cleared and the lights from the passenger car windows leaked a soft gold. There was a dull clattering sound as steps dropped, and then the duller sound of footfalls. With abundant caution, Martin peered out. He counted three figures who had stepped off the train: a woman and two men. They embraced, the three of them in turn, and two of them stepped out of view. The one who remained—a man, very tall, wearing a cap that might have indicated status as a porter—stood and examined his wristwatch. Then he stepped close to the window, and reached up to touch the light. He twisted twice, and it went dark. He tossed the hot bulb from hand to hand before setting down on the bench. Then his shadow loomed in the window frame, as he rapped on the glass with a thick-knuckled hand.

“All aboard,” he said.

2

The tea-drinking man had made a room in his cellar for Martin. It was windowless, and there was no light. There was a chemical toilet bolted to the floor near one wall. No bed. No other way to clean himself. That space was small—but Martin thought it might have been a little bigger than this sleeper compartment.

“You may wash here.” The porter indicated a small sliding door to the lavatory. “The bed is up here.” He touched a lever and pulley system, and a narrow bed lowered from a bulkhead near the ceiling. Having demonstrated, he pushed it up again until it clicked shut. “Do you need a glass of water? No? I will bring one in any event. And I daresay a sandwich.” He stepped into the hall and slid the door shut.

Martin eyed the bulkhead and thought about pulling the bed down again. It was a dubious prospect; he didn't fancy climbing that high with his bad ankle. So instead he slid open the lavatory door. It was a tiny room, with a wee sink not much bigger than a soup bowl and a small mirror over top.

There was graffiti on the wall next to the toilet, about eye level if one were sitting. It looked to Martin like a drawing of a long, uncut penis, with ARTURO scrawled upper case on the length of its shaft; and below, what looked like a poem: one, two... fourteen lines, Martin counted... but not in English.  Italian? Martin thought so.

The train shuddered as the engine engaged and it left the station. Martin turned on the spigot in the sink—and as water dribbled from the tap, he cupped it in his hand and dipped his face into it. It was ice-cold, and before it touched his face Martin thought he detected a whiff of perfume.  This time he scrubbed, and then wet his hair down and pushed it to a part. He looked at himself again—his thin fluff of beard, his smooth pale cheeks, the blond hair now at least parted—and he wondered if he might frame his story properly this time.

As the porter had brought him from the platform and onto the train, Martin had scarcely been able to begin. “I'm in trouble,” he'd said, “I escaped from a crazy motherfucker and I had to—“ and the porter scarcely listened. “All aboard,” he said, and when Martin said “Listen, really—“ he just said “Hush,” and lifted the steps, shut the door to the platform, and pointed to the fourth compartment down the car.

He was a tall man, olive-skinned with a dark hair in need of clipping and heavy brows, a mouth cricked in a permanent, lazy smile. His voice had a meandering purr to it that seemed a good match. It was nothing like the tea-drinking man's voice—which had struck Martin as unnaturally high, and almost had an astringent quality to it, if one could say that of a voice: Oh, you are older than your photograph. Probably just as well, heigh ho?

When the porter came back with his water and sandwich, it wouldn't be laced—not like the steaming cup of poison that the tea-drinking man had handed him before carrying him away...

There was a sharp knock at the door, and before Martin could reach it, the porter slid it open. He had a small tray balanced in one hand at shoulder-height, with a frosted glass of water and a triangular sandwich wrapped in waxed paper. His nostrils flared as he ducked and stepped inside, and set the tray down on the small table that extended from beneath the window. As he did so, he revealed a slim red cloth-bound volume. He handed it directly to Martin.

“Should sleep elude you,” he said, “later. Would you care to clean up before you eat?”

Martin thought he had, but as the porter looked him up and down he understood what a poor job he'd done. His nails were filthy; grime and blood mingled on his knuckles. His shirt was torn and likewise encrusted. The floral scent of the water barely masked the stink of sweat and urine that he carried with him.

The porter nodded to show he apprehended the difficulty. “The lavatory is not sufficient,” he said. “Of course.”

He stepped around and unwrapped the sandwich. Martin could catch a whiff of barbecue from the cold chicken crushed between the thick white bread slices. The porter held it as though offering it to Martin, but pulled it away when Martin reached for it.

“You're hungry,” said the porter, “but your hands are dirty. Take a bite. I'll hold it.”

Martin hesitated, and reached for the glass of water. This time the porter didn't interfere, as Martin drank deep and set the now half-full glass back on the table. The porter took a step forward, and held the corner of the sandwich underneath Martin's nose.

Martin opened his mouth and took the corner in his teeth. The porter withdrew just enough that Martin was able to tear a small mouthful. Martin shut his eyes and chewed the cold chicken, the bread, the pat of hard butter that was there too. “Good,” said the porter when Martin chewed and swallowed. “And again.”

They repeated this until the porter popped the final morsel of sandwich into Martin's mouth, and then watching Martin chew delicately licked the fat from his own fingertips. He lifted the tray and excused himself, head crooked so as to avoid Martin's eye, and slipped into the corridor again. Martin made certain the door was closed, then stripped his shirt off and his trousers, pulling off his shoes in the meantime and favoring his damaged ankle. He wondered again how he would manage with the high bed and that rotten ankle. But he was naked and cold and a warm bed was impossible to resist, and once he pulled it down and hoisted himself with his arms and good leg, it wasn't nearly as bad as he feared. As he settled in between the crisp warm sheets, he noticed the book the porter had given him, and opened it to the beginning.

3

The book, or what Martin read of it, likely informed his dreams that night. It had neither title nor author, and in the first few pages had a narrative that seemed to be leading toward a coming-of-age tale. It was the story of a young aristocrat born of an earlier age, attending the home of a wealthy tutor from whom he hoped to learn the discipline of natural philosophy. The aristocrat, Phillipe, soon lost interest in his lessons, and within a chapter had taken up with the tutor's black-haired daughter Hermia, who Phillipe (and also Martin) was surprised and delighted to learn was in possession of a fully-functioning penis.

Martin dreamed of the house, or a place like the house where the tea-drinking man lived. It was not a precise copy of it. The cellar of his dreams was much larger, and cluttered with things that he might have recalled from other times of his life: a tool bench that his uncle kept at his house at Riverside—the small television set that was always on on the breakfast bar in his mother's kitchen—the old computer tower that he shared with his roommates at the Detroit house, propped on a glass-covered coffee table with silver pillars for legs, next to a crooked line of cocaine...

It was not pitch black, but illuminated by the flickering of unseen flames—the same way as Hermia's own secret dungeon was described.

Did something else occur in that dream? He thought it might have, that there might have been a flurry of motion, a man who mumbled prayers, an animal of some sort—a great, ferocious animal—but the narrative of dream is gossamer and so often ungraspable even an instant after waking.

“Oh,” said the porter, “I've disturbed you.”

He had evidently slipped in quietly while Martin slept, and was nearly finished unfolding what transpired to be a portable bathtub. He snapped the last pair of braces into place, and stood tall, gesturing voila! toward it with two open palms.

“When you're ready,” he said, “I will hook up a hose to your sink and use that to fill the tub, and you'll be able to clean yourself before breakfast.”

Martin stretched and sat up on his bunk, feet dangling and back of his head brushing the ceiling.

“I've taken the liberty of removing your garments for laundering,” continued the porter, “and left you a robe and pajamas that will be suitable in the meantime.”

The porter disappeared into the lavatory for a moment, trailing the hose and presently re-emerged. He pushed the end of the hose over the edge of the bath, then stood and made another voila! gesture with his hands, and smiled as his gaze flickered up and down.

“If you like, I can leave you alone for a moment,” said the porter, and when Martin asked why, the porter indicated Martin's cock, which in recollection perhaps of certain details of the dream, was standing to.

“You can bathe when you're finished,” said the porter, and nodded to himself, and turned. “Yes, I think I will leave you alone.”

He paused only to turn the faucet in the lavatory before letting himself out and leaving Martin to himself.

4

A bloody dawn stained vast fields of wheat as Martin stepped out of his cabin. He stood by the window and regarded the fiery vista a moment. The sun was rising on the other side of the train, so its shadow darkened the field closest. Beyond, it extended a great distance, although not to the horizon: at the edge of sight, Martin could make out tufts of trees. No buildings, though. No roads.

Martin decided then that if he saw the porter again, he would not try to report the situation with the tea-drinking man. He had weighed the matter quite seriously during his long, deliciously hot bath. There were strong reasons to do so, which Martin needed not enumerate, but in the end, what decided it for him was the man's steadfast refusal to hear his story at the station house.

This—combined with the realization that at no point had the porter or anyone else demanded a ticket—caused Martin a degree of worry. The unquestioning, indeed, disinterested charity of one railroad employee might carry Martin so far, but at a point, the police would arrive...perhaps some time after the... the situation at the tea-drinking man's home had been discovered. Would the porter be willing to deliver honest testimony, on the state of the bloody young man that he brought onto the train, established in a costly berth, fed by hand, offered pornography, and then saw dressed in these silky pajamas, this plush, pleated robe?

Martin had found himself betrayed by men such as that in the past. It had not yet gone well for him.

It was difficult to judge how quickly the train was moving. Martin wondered if it were travelling slowly enough that sore ankle or no, he might simply leap off it. He had seen this done in films. The wheat was still and tall and thick, and looked something like a mattress, and it was tempting to think it might just catch him. But of course it was only grass, growing from unyielding earth.

And beyond those grasses—there was nothing.

“Beautiful.”

Martin started and turned. The small man had sidled beside him. He was wearing a robe identical to Martin's in design, but cut for a stockier build and colored a deep cobalt blue to Martin's red. His hair was red, and curly, and he had a thin beard that dusted his plumpened jaw-line. Martin guessed him to be forty but what did Martin know? He was exceptionally small.

“Where are we?” asked Martin, and the little man shrugged.

“Kansas?” He smiled and patted Martin's arm. “Let's say Kansas.” He extended a hand, and when Martin took it they shook. “I am Adelaide.”

Martin tried to say his name was Luis, but Adelaide wasn't having any of it so finally Martin relented and said his real name. Adelaide laughed—or more properly, giggled, in a high and unselfconscious way that made Martin smile. He thought about some things and made a decision.

“I, um, don't have a ticket,” said Martin. He let his fingers touch the blue fabric of Adelaide’s sleeve, and then fall away again. This is what he had done with the tea-drinking man before things had gone so badly. It was a little signal that he gave—as much to himself as the other—that doors were opening to possibilities. He didn't understand it himself; it was like a magic sign.

“I was thinking about jumping off the train,” he said, and bent his head. “Trying my luck.”

Adelaide's smile faded. “A stowaway? Not on trains. They don't have stowaways on trains.” And like that, it was back, a broad big-toothed grin. “Hobo! Are you a hobo?” And he frowned and looked more closely and with evident concern—at Martin's face, where he'd been clipped with the broom-handle no doubt. “You've taken a fall, Martin. Doesn't speak well for your train-jumping skills. I wouldn't chance it.”

“Okay,” said Martin. “Well I still don't have a ticket.”

“But you have a robe.” Adelaide reached out to touch Martin's sleeve. “Crimson.”

The morning light abruptly shifted, as the train punched through the boundary of a forest. The bush had been inadequately cleared at the track, and it tapped along the metal like drumming fingertips.

“I think we can pull this off,” said Adelaide. “The ruse, I mean of course. Walk with me.”

5

Adelaide could not begin his day without a walk, and there was no better time for that than sunrise.

“Younger people sleep late,” he said as they stepped between cars, and were briefly beset with the loamy scent of the woods before what appeared to be another sleeper car. “This early, I find most are as groggy and slow as you.”

“Bad ankle,” said Martin, and Adelaide delivered a small and sympathetic smile.

“But you are up,” he said. “Bad dreams?”

“I needed a bath.”

“Ha!”

They crossed the second car, and stepped between again, and this time Adelaide put a finger to his lips as he opened the door to the next car, and peeked through, and then beckoned Martin to follow.

This car was open wide. It was darker than the others, for the windows had been covered with thick red curtains. What light there was came from small creamy domes running down the middle of the ceiling. It looked like a dining car, but without proper tables; just thick, leather-covered chairs and sofas, brass ashtrays on sleek black columns scattered between them. At the far end was a small bar. The ashtrays weren't for show: the place was redolent with the stale stink of last night's smoke.

Adelaide had them half-way across when the floor seemed to shift under their feet. Martin put his hand on the wing of a chair, but there was no need to really because it wasn't a serious thing.

The train was simply coming to a stop.

Martin sat down in the chair and lifted the curtain next to it. Trees and branches continued to pass by but less frequently. Martin could see into a deep green forest, its floor striated by long shadows of trees and yellow dappling of sun. Some great bird flapped away through the branches as the brakes of the train squealed. The trees parted for a stream, and in the clear sky Martin could see more birds—a huge flock of them, flying so close that together they took the form of a giant scarf, caught in the wind. The trees grew nearer soon enough, but not as near as before. There was a platform—just a long rectangle of concrete here—with a rusted metal railing on the far side.

In the middle, or near to it, the railing split for a stairway that seemed to just lead down into the woods.

At the top of that stairway waited a lone passenger.

He was a big man, dressed in green-brown camouflage. His whiskers were neatly clipped, but his hair was long, and at first seemed blonde but as the train pulled to a stop and Martin's window drew nearer was revealed as mostly white. He had a rifle-shaped case over one shoulder. Two bags—one an elaborate backpack that Martin expected cost a few hundred dollars at an outfitter store, and another one that looked more antique: made of rawhide, that slung over the shoulder and looked big enough to hold a laptop. A little bigger. It was lashed shut with what looked like shoelaces.

The train engine exhaled then, and the platform was obscured with a dark cloud.

“You thinking about getting off here?” Adelaide had set down in the chair across from Martin.  “Train's stopped.”

“There's nothing here,” said Martin, as he let the curtain fall. “Where would I go--”

“--dressed like that?” finished Adelaide. “Quite right. Are we finished resting yet?”

They continued across the car, and through another passage—and this time, Adelaide paused a moment and fished in the pocket of the robe. He pulled out a silver key and inserted it into the door of the next car. Martin followed him through.

“Now we can rest a little longer.” Adelaide stepped aside so that Martin could see to full effect. It was very impressive—a single room that went half the length of the car, maybe a little further, hung with thick red fabrics along its ceiling. There was a long red leather sofa, a shade darker than that, and further toward the end, a large bed, beside a bookshelf that covered the entire wall. It had its own bar, alongside a small kitchen that was itself adjacent to a deep claw-footed bathtub. There were no windows, and the only light came from electric wall-sconces.

Adelaide shut the door behind Martin.

“This yours?” asked Martin, and Adelaide seemed to redden.

“Oh no,” he said.  “I'm in the same car as you. Just two rooms down.”

Martin let himself smile. “So we're stowing away in here?”

Adelaide didn't smile back this time.

“We're guests,” he said, and his hands strayed down to the belt of his robe.

6

Martin actually liked the fucking. Even involving such as the tea-drinking man, even before he met the fellow, when it was just dirty talk on a twink board, Martin fulfilling the role of a man-child, the tea-drinking man playing his part as a doting, long-lost uncle, Martin was quite excited at the prospect a hook-up.

The tea-drinking man had chosen a room at a motor hotel off the interstate, as he ran through town... a family-run business that when Martin arrived after dusk turned out to be shut up for the season. If Martin hadn't been distracted by his own re-orienting schemes and growing erotic anticipation, he might have thought to flee then.

This rail car was a much more suitable place for fucking. The bed was a king-sized affair, with a good mattress and crisp, fresh-laundered sheets, slick with thread-count. The air carried a gentle scent of pipe smoke and aftershave lotion. The vibrations of the engine, the occasional shift as the train rounded a bend, provided a sensual agitation during even the most languorous moments. There were tissues at hand, and they were soft.

And little Adelaide proved himself an attentive lover. He was soft, and proportionate, and quite a bit older. But he was not presumptuous. Or perhaps he was presumptuous, just one of those fellows whose own arousal rose only to the extent that he himself could cause it in another. But motive was secondary to effect. Martin liked the fucking, and said so.

“Glad you agree,” said Adelaide. “And I'm happy to oblige. You looked like you could use it.”

He rolled out of bed and padded to the kitchen area, opened up the little refrigerator and pulled out eggs, and a slab of bacon. Still naked, he turned on the range and set a fry pan there. Soon the car was filled with the sweet scent of cookery.

“What is this place?” said Martin finally.

“I wondered why you waited so long to ask.”

“I asked earlier. You gave me a bullshit answer.”

“Kansas. Yes. Ha! No fooling you, I see.”

“So what is it? Where are we? What is this place? This train...”

Adelaide found a spatula and moved the bacon around the pan.

“Well,” said Adelaide, “it's not Amtrak.”

Martin clambered out of bed, brought with him another tissue to wipe away the cooling seed down his flank.  He tested his ankle with his weight. It seemed to be doing better.

“It's a club,” said Adelaide. “Or rather a club-house. On wheels. I thought I'd scramble the eggs with perhaps some shredded cheese mixed in. Does that suit?”

Martin preferred over-easy but didn't say. Adelaide continued.

“The train is rather an antique, and I suppose so are we all. But it harks back to an older time, yes? Just as these tracks, which haven't seen proper use in—well, who knows how long?” He cracked the eggs one after another into a mixing bowl, then took a brick of cheddar from the refrigerator and found a cheese-grader in a drawer.

“So I had to stifle a laugh,” he continued, “when you told me that you hadn't a ticket. Because of course there aren't tickets on this train. You're either in--” he started in on the cheese “--or you're out.”

“And I'm in?”

“You're in.”

“So all these tracks,” said Martin, “are abandoned.”

“Well no. Obviously. I mean really, here we are.”

“It must cost something to keep them going.”

Adelaide sighed. “Oh everything costs.”

“How far do they go?”

“Far,” said Adelaide, “and deep. I don't know how far. Like you, I am a guest.”

With his spatula, Adelaide pulled out the bacon and set it on a plate, then poured the eggs and the cheese into the fry pan. It sizzled and popped, and Adelaide flinched as tiny spatters of grease fell on his belly.

“Now you tell me,” he said, indicating Martin's face with his spatula, “what happened to cause that?”

Martin drew a breath. “Well,” he said, “I got kidnapped.”

“My gosh! Kidnapped?”

“That's right,” said Martin. “I was hitchhiking. Late night, couple weeks ago. Fellow in a van pulled up, offered me a ride. It was a cold night with some rain. I was grateful I guess. He had a thermos of tea. Good strong stuff. Offered me a drink of it and I took it.”

“Mm. Because it was cold and wet.”

“I was soaked through.  I shouldn't have taken it. But he'd drugged it. Roofies maybe I don't know. I woke up in a little room. Like a little jail cell. He had the whole thing set up. Like he'd done it before. ”

Adelaide nodded as he poured the eggs into the pan, and scrambled them with the spatula as they cooked.

“What did he do to you?”

Martin looked away, to the bookshelf. “He r-raped me,” he said. “He'd come in with a broom handle... make me lie face down... yank down my trousers and make...”

Martin stopped, hoping that Adelaide would consider that enough talk. But no.

“Make what?” said Adelaide.

“Jesus,” said Martin, letting a quavering enter his voice, “he'd fuck me in the ass, you want to know? He'd take his cock and ram it up my ass while he held my head down onto the dirt. Sometimes he'd use that broom-handle.”

Adelaide scraped the eggs onto plates, then divvied the bacon between the two.

“Interesting,” he said.

“That's a word for it,” said Martin.

“That's not what I mean,” said Adelaide. He came around Martin's side with a plate and a fork. “The act as you've described it is not actually very interesting at all. I'm more interested in the things you've not told me.”

Adelaide brushed close to his flank. Damned if older man wasn't hardening again.

“You weren't hitchhiking,” continued Adelaide. “You were cultivating the fellow for weeks, weren't you? In notes, in emails, some pictures of you when--” Adelaide frowned and looked at Martin with a critical eye “--when you were considerably younger, I'd guess. He'd offered you gifts, isn't that right?”

Martin tried to step away, but Adelaide followed and put the plate in Martin's hands. He kept the fork to himself, though.

“What was it—an iPod? An expensive gift for a little boy. And you played right along.” Adelaide flashed that big toothy grin of his again. “You thought you had another mark, didn't you?”

“What the fuck are you talking about? I said I got kidnapped.”

“Oh sure you did,” said Adelaide. “That was always his plan, wasn't it? The kidnapping. That's what he liked to do with boys...”

Martin stumbled against the edge of the bed but kept himself upright. Adelaide was pressed hard against him.

“Did knowing that make you feel better about what your plan was?” demanded Adelaide, and he spat: “Thief. Thief and liar.”

7

Martin was fairly certain he'd killed the tea-drinking man on his way out. One can never be completely sure of these things, but Martin thought he had been fairly thorough in the time allotted. It wasn't particularly graceful work—he had simply taken an opportunity when his captor's guard was momentarily down, and then improvised with materials at hand: the broom-handle, the edge of the door before it shut... a claw-backed hammer, applied repeatedly. It made a great deal of noise and quite a mess.

Because of this, Martin didn't tarry long to search the tea-drinking man's residence before he set off. He'd arrived at the motel hoping to see what the man had and abscond with it quietly—assured that he wouldn't contact the police or any other authorities, for fear of exposing himself to prosecution. Given how matters had transpired, Martin thought his own chances of escaping free would be hampered if his pockets were found stuffed with cash and jewelry and other valuables belonging to the dead man. The evidence would undermine the narrative.

Adelaide was a different matter. For one thing, the aftermath wasn't nearly so messy: really just a plate's worth scrambled eggs and bacon to scrape off the carpet, and the pillow to re-fluff. Adelaide was small and chubby and stronger than one might think but not strong enough.

So Martin felt confident taking Adelaide's wrist-watch, a porcelain-banded affair made by Rado, a small fold of large bills in his housecoat pocket, and from there also took the key to the car. Adelaide had already undermined Martin's narrative. Martin settled him into the bed and drew the blankets up to just beneath his pale blue lips, and considered the truer narrative.

Of course this was a club. Of course the tea-drinking man had been a member... that was how Adelaide had known, had called him out on his fabrication. There had been no van, no car, not so much as a motorcycle at the tea-drinking man's house, at least not such that Martin could see. When he left, who was to say the tea-drinking man wasn't set to leave on this train?

Martin dressed himself in the pajamas and robe, the slippers. He wasn't looking forward to the next thing he had to do, but it was obviously necessary: he would have to leave the train himself. He would have to flee.

Martin let himself out the door they'd come in through, slid it shut and turned the silver key in the lock. Then between cars, he turned to the side and opened the door to the outside.

It was ill-timed: outside was nothing but air, for hundreds of feet. Martin held to the handle and looked down—past a long wooden trestle, to the rusted mud and rock of what might have been a mine tailing, with tiny black streams moving along it.

He leaned his head out and tried to peer ahead, see where this trestle ended, but it was difficult to tell through the plume of smoke. He surprised himself then,  as he considered chancing a jump in any case—perhaps catching on to the trestle itself—perhaps simply missing, and catching himself on the wind. It was a mad notion—the sort of thing that might be borne of remorse, of despair...  Or simply raw perversity, as when a child touches a stove it knows to be hot, or an otherwise contented husband slips between sheets with a stranger, or on a dare a drunkard tosses his keys in the river.

Martin had no wish to die and never had. He leaned back inside, slid the door shut, and waited there until the porter arrived to help him to his feet, and led him back inside.

8

“There is a mess, quite a mess I am afraid,” said the porter. “Had you something to do with it?”

Martin didn't know how to answer, but the Porter didn't wait. He asked for the key, and the watch. Martin simply obeyed.

“You thought to leave us?”

“I did,” said Martin.

The porter blinked and turned his head to one side.

“Why?”

Martin hesitated again, but it seemed as though the porter didn't expect an answer. He inserted the silver key back into the lock and turned it.  He leaned close to Martin's ear.

“It's all right,” whispered the porter, “I don't need to know. Come and help me clean up, and then we'll find a place for you.”

He put a hand on Martin's shoulder.

“You're hardly a guest. Not any longer.”

9

The club car began to fill up in the middle afternoon. Two young women who looked nearly enough alike to be twins had been idling there since the noon-hour, sipping at whiskey sodas. Then others came in: the Italians, soon joined by the gentleman the porter identified as Mr. Rakes, and his entourage, and the Texan, who sat by himself smoking an antique ceramic pipe and making the rear-ward portion of the car all but uninhabitable. Finally, the man of the hour arrived.

Gone were the camouflage trousers. In their place, silk pajamas and a robe, colored with a fabric that shone like burnished gold. His long hair had been combed and washed and pulled back in a ponytail. His beard was freshly-waxed and shone in the afternoon light.

The porter led the room in light applause. The two women, well into their cups, let out war-whoops before realizing it was too much, and the gentleman took his seat at the bar.

“Good to see y'all,” he said, smiling, and the porter put a hand on Martin's shoulder.

Martin drew the satchel from where it sat in the refrigerator behind the bar, and handed it over.

“Thank you son,” said the gentleman, as he undid the leather laces that held it shut, and took hold of the first trophy he'd brought to show, by one tiny finger.

“Let me tell y' how it went,” he said.

There was another round of applause, and Martin joined perfunctorily, but his attention was just then drawn elsewhere—out the window, where at the edge of vision, squatted the darkened towers of a great city, still and bright and empty in the hot afternoon sun.

Rougarou

Greg Herren

The old woman was babbling excitedly, her toothless gums moving up and down as she gesticulated wildly with her arms. Spittle flew from her wrinkled lips, wisps of her thin gray hair floating around her head as it moved back and forth and side to side. Old is an understatement, Special Agent Tom Washburn thought, unable to understand a word she was saying. She looked ancient, like one of those unwrapped Egyptian mummies on that show he watched last night.

It was a struggle to keep his revulsion from showing on his face.

Despite the oppressive heat, she had a white shawl wrapped around her bony shoulders as she rocked in her worn, wooden rocking chair. Her feet were bare and dirty, her toenails long and yellowed. Blue veins spider-webbed over the tops of her feet, making them look like complicated road maps. She was wearing a shapeless white cotton dress with yellow stains in the armpits. The brown, wrinkled flesh hung from her bony arms. Her fingernails were long, grown out so far they’d started curving back in on themselves. They were painted a bright red, contrasting with the brown skin and the dark liver spots on her hands. Her face was more wrinkled than he’d thought it possible for any human to be—her entire face seemed to be nothing more than folds of hanging, sun-browned skin. An enormous mole on her pointed chin had a few white hairs sprouting out of it. Her eyes were a startling blue, but seemed filmy and unfocused. A wooden cane with a brass alligator head leaned against her rocking chair, and on the table next to her a glass ashtray was overflowing with gray ash and cigarette butts.

She’s like something out of a really bad nightmare, he thought.

Tom couldn’t understand a word she was saying—she might as well have been speaking a foreign language as far as he was concerned. Every once in a while he caught an identifiable English word in her sing-song Cajun dialect that almost sounded like chanting. He closed his eyes and wished again he was anywhere but this rotting houseboat on the edge of a swamp. This is, he thought angrily, without a doubt the stupidest call I’ve ever gone out on. If I’d known how this day was going to turn out I’d have called in sick this morning.

He wiped sweat from his forehead with his already damp sleeve. It was stiflingly hot in the houseboat, which stank of collard greens, stale sweat and cigarette smoke. The ceiling fan was turning but all it seemed to do was push the heavy damp air around. The living room—if you could call the tiny space that—was crammed full of strange objects arranged with no apparent rhyme or reason. He picked up a snow globe with the Empire State Building inside and shook it. He set it back down where it had been—next to a shellacked baby alligator head, some polished sea shells, a small rusting Matchbox car, and what appeared to be a copper head of John F. Kennedy. There was a thin coat of dust on everything. Cobwebs danced from the ceiling. He slapped at a mosquito and stepped closer to one of the windows, hoping for a breeze. He glanced back over at his partner.

Rafe Fontenot was from this part of Louisiana, born and raised in this little podunk town. Sitting on a footstool, he was giving the old woman his full attention. He occasionally responded to her gibberish with nonsensical sounds of his own. His gaze never left the old woman’s face, not even to look down at his notepad. There were beads of sweat along his hairline and circles of damp at his armpits. He was good-looking, with that olive skin, thick bluish-black hair, and bright blue eyes peculiar to the descendants of the French who’d been thrown out of Acadia centuries earlier. His broad shoulders strained the white button-down shirt he was wearing, and there was a big wet spot on it between his shoulder blades. He wasn’t wearing a T-shirt underneath. He’d rolled up his sleeves all the way up to his thick biceps, exposing the damp hairs on his muscular forearms. As he leaned forward, Tom could see Rafe had tucked his shirt into the waistband of his white Hanes underwear.

He’s really sexy, Tom thought, looking at the curve of Rafe’s hard ass, I wonder if he’s gay? He shook his head regretfully. Even if he is, you don’t shit where you eat.

Rafe was maybe five or six years younger than Tom—still eager, still devoted to the job, still thinking he might have a career-path of raises and promotions ahead of him. He hadn’t made a mistake yet, the kind of mistake that killed one’s future, the kind that convinced the higher-ups to move your file from “up-and-comer’ to the ‘dead-career-going-nowhere-slowly’ pile.

An alligator silently swam by in the murky water of the bayou, and Tom watched its unblinking yellow eyes through the rusty screen. Something rustled in the long marsh grass on the other side of the water. Probably a snake, he thought bitterly. Hurry the fuck up, Rafe, so we can get the hell off this fucking boat.

He turned back around, leaning against the wall, looking around again with distaste. Why would anyone want to live on a boat? he wondered. The bayou stank, for one thing. Rotting fish was the strongest smell, with mold and mildew mixed in for good measure. Unable to stand it anymore, he walked over to the warped screen door leading out to the back porch of the floating house and pushed it open. He stepped out onto the covered porch. The air was just as thick on the outside as it was on the inside, but he didn’t feel quite as claustrophobic out there. He rubbed his eyes, wishing for the thousandth time he hadn’t quit smoking. He could hear them still talking as he looked out over the stagnant water of the bayou. The alligator was just drifting now, not moving, his unblinking yellow eye fixed on the side of the houseboat.

Are you the gator that killed a man? Tom gave it a sour smile. Are you why we’re here, wasting our time with this crazy old bitch?

He was starting to get a massive headache behind his right eye.

I can’t believe they actually sent us out here to look into this stupidity, he thought, momentarily resisting the urge to put his service revolver to his head and pull the trigger. This was the kind of stupid case that killed careers in the bureau and made the investigating agents laughing-stocks. His career was already on life-support, but for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to pull the plug and get the hell out. There was a part of him still holding out hope that something would happen to change his Washington superiors’ minds about him, something that would bring his career back out of the coma it had slipped into since the big fuck-up three years ago.

And being sent out here to swamp country to look into—he couldn’t even bring himself to say it, even to himself. This is even more evidence no one takes you seriously, he thought, gripping the wooden railing until his knuckles turned white.

If you had half a brain, you’d turn in your resignation when you get back to the city.

The assignment to the New Orleans office was as close to a death sentence as a career could get without being terminated. New Orleans was a backwater, where pretty much every investigation was into local corruption—the police department, City Hall, the state legislature, the Governor’s mansion, the levee boards, the school board—pretty much anyone in Louisiana who drew a paycheck from the state was probably corrupt. Finding corruption in Louisiana was about as hard as breathing—it was so ingrained in the culture that most of the time they couldn’t even be bothered to cover their tracks.

Sending him to the Louisiana field office was his superiors’ passive-aggressive way of saying, “Sorry, Tom, you had potential and we thought you’d go far—but we’re sending you down there where you can’t fuck up any more big operations, where you can’t do the Bureau any harm. If you keep your head down and your ducks in a row, we just might give you another chance in about five years or so. Maybe. But don’t hold your breath, okay?”

The sun was sinking in the western sky. He sighed. It was at least a three-hour drive back to New Orleans, and the way things were going it looked like they were going to have to spend the night out here in the middle of nowhere. He closed his eyes. The pain behind his right eye was going from a dull ache to a pulsing throb. His stomach growled—he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and that had just been a couple of doughnuts he’d picked up at a gas station on his way into the office.  He’d been sitting in his cubicle, trying to trace some suspected credit card fraud back to the primary suspect when he’d gotten called in by his superior, paired up with Rafe Fontenot, and sent out into the middle of fucking nowhere on a stupid dead-end case that was just going to bury his career even deeper.

The sheriff of the little town of Bayou Shadows, Dante Lincoln, had requested the Bureau’s help on an unusual murder case. Murders weren’t completely uncommon in the little town on the edge of a swamp out of the middle of nowhere—but the murders Sheriff Lincoln was used to handling usually happened on the spur of the moment and involved too much alcohol, raw tempers, and firearms.

Finding a torso with no limbs or head floating in the bayou in the center of town was just not the kind of thing Sheriff Lincoln was comfortable handling on his own. A tall rangy black man in his mid-forties, Tom’s first thought when he saw him was how the hell did a black man get elected sheriff out here in Klan country?

But as the sheriff talked to them, Tom began to understand. He was competent and smart. “Ordinarily, I’d rule this as the work of a gator,” he said, leaning across his desk. “But it just doesn’t feel right to me. Arms, legs and head gone?” He shook his head. “Doesn’t sit right.”

“You don’t seriously think this was a—what did you call it? A rougarou?” Tom replied, glancing at Rafe out of the corners of his eyes.

Sheriff Lincoln leaned back in his chair. “You go on out and talk to Maman Couchon,” he replied. “And then tell me what you think.”

“He’s a good man.” Rafe remarked as they got back into the car. “He’s gotten elected sheriff a couple of times, and everyone respects him—and it wasn’t easy for him to earn people’s respect, if you know what I mean.”

“He doesn’t really believe this old woman’s story.” Tom replied, watching the little town pass by his car window. It really wasn’t much more than a one-horse town. Bayou Shadows wasn’t even mentioned on the exit sign on the off-ramp they’d taken from I-10 West. The courthouse was on one corner of the only intersection with a traffic light—and it hung from wires over the center of the intersection, blinking red in all four directions. Another corner was a combination grocery store and gas station with rusty old-fashioned pumps and a big old Coke machine next to the screen door. The post office sat on another corner, and the other corner was a park. The bayou ran alongside the road. “Must have been quite a shock this morning.”

“People respect Dante because he treats everyone with respect,” Rafe had replied a little sharply. “He wouldn’t last long around here if he didn’t. And Maman Couchon—if he disrespected her, he might as well just pack his bags and get out of town.”

And this old woman is some kind of big deal out here in Bumfuck, he thought angrily. Hurry up, Rafe—I don’t want to spend the night out here in the middle of nowhere.

He wondered if he should just walk up the road to the little service station/bait shop they’d passed and buy a goddamned pack of cigarettes when he heard Rafe’s footsteps heading toward the door.

The sinking sun was turning the sky into brilliant shades of violet and blue and orange and red and purple.

The screen door squeaked as it opened. Rafe stepped out, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. His navy blue suit jacket was draped over his arm. “She’s pretty certain what she saw was a rougarou,” Rafe said, slipping his notepad into his shirt pocket.

“Thanks, Agent Mulder.” Tom replied, resisting the urge to roll his eyes.

“Just because you don’t believe—“

Tom cut him off. “You’re telling me you believe there’s a man out there who turns into an alligator when the moon is full, and he ate another man?”

Rafe flushed. “She believes it.” He gave Tom a sidelong glance. “Just because you don’t believe doesn’t make it impossible, you know.”

“We go back to New Orleans and tell people this kind of shit and we’re done with the Bureau,” Tom went on, struggling to keep his temper under control. The pounding behind his eye was getting worse. “You want to be known as Mulder and Scully around the office? Is that what you want, Rafe? You want to get assigned to every crazy dumbass case that comes along? Because that’s what’s going to happen if we don’t figure out what really happened to that man, bub.” He walked over to the gangplank. “And I don’t know about you, coon-ass, but I’m not taking another hit in the fucking career.”

Tom counted to ten before  continuing. He blew out his breath. Rafe wasn’t a bad guy—he was young and eager, determined to get somewhere in the Bureau, smart and ambitious and not afraid of hard work. He was also hot-headed and stubborn—two qualities Tom knew from personal experience the Bureau frowned on. “Rafe,” he said softly, “I know you’re from around here. I get it, really I do. But we need evidence—hard evidence.” He jerked his head back towards the cabin. “She’s an old woman. And her story is—well, it’s not exactly the kind of thing we can just take her word for, you know what I mean? I’m not saying she didn’t see what she says she did—“ although she couldn’t possibly have seen such a thing “—but it sounds crazy.”

“Just don’t dismiss her story out of hand,” Rafe replied. “I’ve known her my whole life, and people around here got a pretty high opinion of her. They respect her and they listen to her. If Maman Couchon says it was a rougarou—that’s what everyone around here is going to believe.”

“A rougarou.” Tom closed his eyes. “A man who can turn himself into an alligator…take me now, Lord.”

Rafe walked down the gangplank to shore, waiting for Tom to cross over and join him. “Not a man who turns into an alligator,” he corrected Tom as they walked back to the car, “a man who can take on some of the features of an alligator. It’s not the same thing.”

Tom tossed the car keys to Rafe. I might as well just do it now, put my gun to the right temple and pull the fucking trigger. “You drive,” he instructed as he walked to the passenger side of the car. Fortunately, there was a bottle of aspirin in the glove compartment. He chewed two tablets as Rafe started the car and turned it around on the dirt road, heading back into the little town. “So, he takes on the features of a gator,” he said aloud, thinking, I can’t believe I am having this fucking conversation. “Ok. Which ones?”

Rafe glanced at the him out of the corner of his eye. “People around here believe in rougarous, Tom, and if you’re going to act like they’re all idiots, we aren’t going to get anywhere.” He sighed. “We’re going to have to play along. Can you do that?”

Tom took another deep breath and leaned his aching head against the car window. “I can’t promise, but I’ll try, okay?”

Rafe turned right when they reached the paved county road. “The scales—a rougarou has alligator skin. And the head becomes like a gator’s. But they still walk upright on two legs, still have the two arms—just scaly.”

“I’m trying to picture it.” Tom closed his eyes and tried picturing Rafe as a rougarou. “I can’t.” he said finally. “It’s the stupidest damned thing I’ve ever heard of.”

“You hungry? Let’s get some food, start asking around.” Rafe swung into the other lane and passed a rusty old pick-up truck. “And maybe you should just let me do all the talking.” He replied. “I know these people—they don’t trust outsiders.”

“Great, you do that.” Tom replied sourly. The aspirin wasn’t working yet. “Maybe I’ll just stay in the car and take a nap.”

Rafe turned the car into a Shell parking lot just inside the city limits sign. The building was little more than a shack, weathered wood with a slanted, rusted tin roof. There was a big white locker with ICE $1.99 written on the side in big blue letters to the left of the glass front door. A big neon sign over the tin roof  announced CATFISH BAR AND GRILL in glowing red letters. There were several battered old cars in the parking lot, and Rafe turned off the engine. “This is my folks’ place,” he said as he opened his door. “The food’s good, the beer’s cold, and it’s as good a place as any to start.”

Tom didn’t say anything—he just got out of the car. The smell of grease hanging in the thick damp air made his stomach growl. The oyster shells crunched under his shoes as he crossed the parking lot. Rafe held the door open, and the cool inside was a welcome, refreshing change from the oppressive humidity. There was an old style bubble jukebox in a corner, a long bar with tired-looking stools perched in front of it, and a series of battle-scarred formica tables with cigarette burns set up in rows. The floor was bare cement, with a drain in the center of the room.

Rafe straddled a bar stool, and Tom sat down next to him. A tired-looking woman with long gray hair pulled back into a pony-tail came through a swinging door behind the bar. She was wearing a purple TIGER NATION T-shirt that clung tightly to her sagging breasts, and a worn pair of jeans. Her wrinkled face broke into a smile when she saw Rafe.

“Rafe!” She leaned over the bar and kissed his cheek. “You could have called, let me know you were coming.” She spoke in the same sing-song way the old woman on the boat had, but Tom could understand her perfectly. Her delight faded a bit. “You’re here because of the rougarou, aren’t you? I heard Dante was calling in the FBI.” She shook her head. “I kind of hoped he’d change his mind.”

Rafe nodded. “Mama, this is my partner, Tom Washburn. Tom, this is my mama, Camille Fontenot.”

Tom shook the veiny hand she offered him. “Pleasure, ma’am.”

“You can call me Cammie like everyone else does,” she answered. “You boys hungry? You look hungry.” She gave Tom a wink.

“I’ll have a catfish plate,” Rafe replied. “Tom?”

“The same, and a beer.” Tom answered. Rafe gave him a funny look, but Tom didn’t care. I’ve been on duty since eight this morning and it’s almost eight fucking pm. I can have a goddamned beer if I want one. If they want to fucking fire me it’s fine with me.

“I’ll have a beer, too,” Rafe said, and after his mother had gone back through the swinging door to put their orders in, whispered out of the side of his mouth, “No one needs to know about the beers, right?”

Tom rolled his eyes. “As long as we don’t get drunk, it don’t matter.” But getting drunk does sound awful damned good. He pushed that thought right out of his mind. Getting drunk meant waking up with a hangover and not remembering the night before. He’d had enough of those nights after getting to New Orleans—and he hadn’t had a drink in almost a year. But one beer wouldn’t hurt anything.

Just one.

“What do you know, Mama?” Rafe asked as she placed two bottles of Abita Amber in front of them. “What have you heard?”

She leaned on her elbows. “Everyone around town’s going nuts. Clete over at the hardware store sold out of ammunition today before lunch time, ‘swhat he said when he stopped in this afternoon—which is just stupid, you know. No bullet ain’t ever killed a rougarou before, you know, the damned fools.”

It took all of Tom’s self-control not to laugh out loud.

“You need silver.” She shook her head. She reached underneath the bar and placed a worn cigar box on top. She flipped it open, and Tom blinked a couple of times, not believing what he was seeing.

“Are those—“ his voice trailed off. He couldn’t bring himself to say the words.

“Silver bullets, yup.” She closed the top and put the box back where she’d gotten it from. “Haven’t had call to use them in a few years. My daddy made them when I was a girl.”

“You’ve used them before?” Tom took a swig from his beer. He couldn’t have heard that right.

“Of course I’ve used them before.” She made a face at him, and looked at her son. “Where’d you find this one?”

Her tone was so contemptuous and condescending he felt his face beginning to flush with anger. He took another drink of his beer rather than saying something he’d undoubtedly regret.

In fact, I may just finish this beer and have another one, he thought.

“Mama.” Rafe warned, giving his partner a conciliatory smile. “Like I told you before, Tom, around here we take rougarous seriously.”

“You don’t and you wind up dead.” Cammie said grimly. “So you go right ahead and make fun, Agent Tom.” She folded her arms. “You won’t be making fun when the rougarou’s taking your leg off you for a midnight snack.”

“So, just how exactly does someone become a rougarou, anyway?” Tom tried to sound as serious as he could, but didn’t think he succeeded.

Cammie looked at him long and hard before she answered. “You can get infected—if you’re attacked by one and it doesn’t kill you, next full moon—BAM. You turn. Or if one has a child—that child has about a fifty percent chance of being normal.” She shrugged. “Me, I say kill the kid. Why take the chance?”

She can’t be serious, she’s gotta be yanking my chain, Tom thought, finishing off the beer and putting the bottle back down. Without asking, Cammie put another down in front of him and smiled. “Let me go check on your food,” she said before disappearing through the swinging door.

When the door stopped swinging, Tom turned to his partner. “You seriously believe all this bullshit. That old woman on the houseboat, your mother—all of this you really believe.”

“You’re not from here, Tom.” Rafe replied. “I’ve seen things—things there’s no real explanation for.” He shook his head. “What do you want me to say, man?”

“Is that why you brought me to this place?” He burped into his hand. The headache was gone, and he was feeling a little on the tipsy side—which didn’t make any sense. Sure, it’s been over a year but one beer shouldn’t be getting me drunk. “So your mom can convince me this ‘gator man’ thing is real? And why’d the sheriff call us in anyway, if everyone in this place knows about this shit?”

“Dante’s not from around here—I’m betting no one had a chance to talk to him before he called our office.” Rafe shrugged. “He’s only had the job a couple of years. He wasn’t here the last time—“

“The last time someone turned into an alligator and started eating people?”

“Was five years ago.” Cammie said as she slid two oversized plates overflowing with fried catfish, French fries, hush puppies, and cole slaw in front of them. She smiled. “Killed Frannie Thibodeaux and her baby boy first—wasn’t much left of them when they were found—and got Jack Tyson, too.” She pointed her index finger at him, and cocked her thumb, making a clicking sound. “I got the bastard myself, didn’t I, Rafe?”

Tom put a piece of catfish in his mouth and inwardly moaned with pleasure. He wasn’t a fan of Southern food as a rule—he didn’t understand the need to batter and deep fry everything, including pickles—but this was without question the best fried catfish he’d ever tasted. It didn’t taste greasy in the least. “This is good,” he said, washing it down with some more beer. Cammie was still looking at him. “So, you killed the rougarou?” He asked, keeping his face blank.

She nodded. “The strain runs in a branch of the Robideau family. That one was Ricky.” She shook her head. “Ricky was the last of that branch, though. I don’t know who this one could be.”

Tom popped another piece of catfish in his mouth. This one tasted even better than the last one, which he hadn’t thought possible. He was famished, and started shoveling the food in his mouth. He took another swallow of beer. “What do you mean, the last one?”

“The last Robideau rougarou.” She took his empty bottle and opened another one, setting it down in front of him. “His branch of the family had the strain. He was the last of them. And he’s dead. And he didn’t have no kids.”

“Didn’t have much of a chance,” Rafe shrugged. “He was only seventeen.”

“Seventeen?” Tom was about to pop a hush puppy into his mouth but stopped.

Seventeen.

He pushed the memories down as they threatened to come out again, threatened to push their way into his consciousness. He’d put that behind him, for all the good it had done. His career was already ruined.

“We don’t care what you do in your private life, Tom,” he could hear his supervisor saying again, “really, we don’t. It’s not the Bureau’s concern who you fuck. But this time? This time you really screwed up.”

He’d known his career was over when he’d seen the pictures that corrupt murdering son of a bitch had emailed him. Him in bed with the boy, his face as clear as it was in his badge photo. The boy’s driver’s license, showing a date of birth that clearly marked him as underage, under the age of consent, which made it statutory rape at the very least.

He’d been set-up, and he’d fallen for it. The boy—Lance was what he’d called himself, although his driver’s license clearly showed his name to be Joseph Ripley—had said he was twenty-one, and who checks ID on a potential sex partner?

And the case had been blown—for a while, anyway—and his career was over, which was why he was stuck in this backwater burb eating catfish and listening to insane rednecks talking about a man who could turn himself into some kind of strange alligator-man hybrid.

He took another swig from his beer.

“It’s better to get them when they’re young,” Cammie opened a beer for herself. “Before they get a chance to breed and spread the contagion to another generation.” She winked at him. “Ricky Robideau was one good looking boy—he had to beat girls away from him with a baseball bat. Even being what he was, girls would have spread their legs for him, gotten themselves knocked up and had his babies.” She sighed. “His daddy was the same way—probably where this one came from—who knows who all his daddy knocked up?”

“You don’t know they carry the infection till they turn seventeen,” Rafe added. “So, some boy who just turned seventeen must be the one. This is his first full moon as a rougarou.”

Tom put his last hush puppy in his mouth. Everyone in this town is crazy, he thought, including my partner. He glanced at his watch. It was almost nine. “So, what do we do?” He managed to keep his voice professional. “How long does the full moon last?”

“Tonight and tomorrow.” Cammie’s voice was grim. She glanced at her own watch. “Too late for you boys to head back to New Orleans anyway. You just spend the night on the houseboat.” She shrugged. “There are some folks out in the swamp looking for him.” She took another slug of her beer and winked. “I don’t imagine the FBI wants to be involved in this, do you, Rafe?”

Rafe laughed, giving Tom a meaningful glance. “No, probably best not to.”

“We can drive back to New Orleans— “

Rafe cut him off. “We wouldn’t get back until midnight at the earliest anyway. If the hunters catch and kill the rougarou tonight, we can file a report in the morning when we get back. Besides, the houseboat’s pretty comfortable.”

Tom started to protest but yawned instead.

“Looks like he’s asleep on his feet,” Cammie said with a laugh. “It’s okay, Tom. Nothing like a good meal and a couple of beers to put a man to sleep.”

It was starting to sprinkle as they got back into the car. “You okay, man?” Rafe asked as he put the car into gear.

“Just sleepy,” Tom muttered as the car pulled back out onto the road. He could barely keep his eyes open as the car moved through the small town. His eyes closed and his head fell against the window—but his eyes opened when the car came to a stop.

“Here we are,” Rafe said, killing the ignition.

Tom opened the car door and got out, stifling yet another yawn. Rafe had pulled the car into a covered carport, and the rain was pouring down on the tin roof. A yellow light mounted on the back of the carport shone down across a sloping lawn, showing a tired-looking houseboat floating on the black waters of the bayou. Tom struggled to keep his eyes open as he followed Rafe down the sloping lawn and climbed up on the back deck of the houseboat. Rafe unlocked the door and turned on the lights.

The interior of the houseboat lit up, and the cold air inside made Tom almost cry with relief. He sank down into a chair and mopped the wet off his forehead.

Rafe opened a door on the other side of the living room. “This is where you can sleep,” he said. “This is the bathroom,” he rapped his knuckles on another door. He walked back over to the door to the back deck. “I’m going to go out and keep an eye on the hunters, make sure the damned fools don’t shoot each other.” He shook his head.

Tom didn’t argue with him, didn’t raise a question. Once he heard Rafe’s footsteps recede along the dock, he walked back over to the bedroom door and glanced in. It was simple: a single bed, a table, a small dresser.

A pack of Marlboros and a lighter sat on the table.

He swallowed. Surely one cigarette wouldn’t hurt anything?

He stepped back out onto the back deck, and lit the cigarette. The rain was coming down even harder now than it had been, drumming on the roof of the houseboat. He sat down in one of the deck chairs and stared across the bayou. The rain was limiting the visibility the yellow light was throwing—and he saw, or rather sensed, something on the opposite shore move.

He turned his head as a young man moved into the cone of light.

He couldn’t make out his face clearly, but he had dark hair, and was wearing a pair of jeans and a red-and-black flannel shirt. Tom opened his mouth to call out to him, but no sound came out of his throat as the young man kicked off his shoes and started unbuttoning his shirt. He watched as the young man shrugged his shoulders and the shirt fell. His skin—his body—looked carved from marble. The shoulders were broad and muscular, the chest muscles thick and strong, the stomach ridged and planed, the stunning torso was hairless, the skin of the arms darker until it reached the whiteness of the biceps.

In spite of himself, Tom felt himself growing aroused.

He watched as the young man undid his jeans, sliding them off effortlessly. He was wearing nothing underneath. His legs were also muscular and white.

And he was aroused.

His hard cock was long and thick, framed by a thick bush of pubic hair. The young man’s right hand grasped it, began sliding up and down its enormous length.

Tom’s own hand went down to the crotch of his pants, involuntarily. How long has it been, he asked himself, swallowing, unable to take his eyes away from the thing of beauty on the opposite shore of the bayou, trying to remember.

He couldn’t.

The young man tilted his head back, raising his arms and his chest as though worshipping the cleansing rains washing over his naked body.

And he began to change.

As if on cue, the deck light went out.

Despite the gloom, Tom could still see the young man, and wasn’t sure what was happening on the opposite shore. The skin over the young man’s stomach muscles began rippling slowly, like waves washing ashore. The ripples began spreading over the rest of his body after a few moments, the skin on his muscular chest, shoulders, arms and legs moving up and down. A cry, barely audible over the raindrops beating down on the roof of the houseboat, escaped his lips as his skin began to darken and thicken.

This can’t be happening, Tom thought, I’m drunk or I’m dreaming or both.

The young man’s head bent forward, and he looked across through the darkness at Tom, who took a step backward. The young man’s eyes, which he hadn’t been able to see before, began glowing,  radiating a bright yellowish color. The yellow shone through the darkness like a flare.

He can see me, Tom thought madly, taking another step backwards, reaching behind him for the doorknob.

Yet despite his terror, he was still aroused.

Even as his hand finally found the doorknob, grasping it with his sweaty palm, he somehow couldn’t bring himself to turn it and escape inside.

And he couldn’t take his eyes off the young man as he continued changing.

His darkening skin became scaly, his legs and arms thicker and stronger and even more muscular than they had been. His smooth stomach now rippled with sharply defined muscle. A tail began to grow from behind him, thick and strong and scaled. And his face—

That was the worst part of it all.

It began to elongate from the center, the chin and the forehead spreading backwards as the nose lengthened into a snout. The teeth grew longer and into sharp points. The eyes continued glowing. Another cry tore from his mouth as lightning forked through the sky, lighting up the area around the bayou.

His erection had also gotten impossibly long and thick.

Despite the terror pulsing through his veins with every thundering beat of his heart, Tom felt desire.

As the thunder roared, so close the houseboat shook, an image flashed through his mind, of the—the thing holding him down, pressing his legs apart as he climbed on top, the thick cock probing for entry.

Tom couldn’t take his eyes away from those glowing yellow eyes.

He started unbuttoning his own shirt with his free hand, the right still grasping the doorknob behind him. The wind picked up,  spraying his bare chest with the warm rain. The wetness felt good on his hot skin.

Across the bayou, the creature reached down and grasped his erection with his left hand. With his right hand, he pointed at Tom.

Tom licked his lips, and took a deep breath. Get inside, his mind screamed, get your cell phone and get Rafe and the rest of those crazy coon-asses over here with their silver fucking bullets, before it’s too late…

He didn’t move.

The young man stepped into the bayou water, and submerged until all that was visible was his long head, the glowing yellow eyes, and the ears.

He began to glide through the water.

Towards the houseboat.

The glowing yellow light of its eyes reflected on the water.

The spell broken, Tom managed to get the door open and slammed it shut behind him, turning the deadbolt while trying to catch his breath.

Seconds later, the houseboat shifted in the water, as though something of great weight had climbed onto the back deck.

Tom backed up through the living area, and grabbed his gun. His hands shook as he aimed at the door.

The knob slowly turned.

He could hear his heart beating as the door started to rattle.

He swallowed.

The deadbolt burst off the wall as the door slammed open.

“No,” he somehow managed to say as he stared at the—thing that stood in the doorway. The greenish-gray scales glistened wetly in the light from the overhead lamp. But it was man-shaped—and naked.

And aroused.

But the head—

It started walking towards him.

He fired the gun, but the bullets didn’t stop the thing.

All he could hear was the pounding of his heart as the creature drew nearer. The glowing yellow eyes met his, and he felt its scaly hands grab onto his shirt.

He closed his eyes and prayed to a deity he no longer believed in.

He could feel hot breath on his face that stank of stagnant water and rotted flesh.

Please God….

He felt like weeping.

His gun dropped as the thing lifted him up in the air.

A cold wet hand grasped his cock through his pants.

It carried him across the cabin, and through the doorway into the bedroom. It placed him gently on the bed, unsnapping his pants, running the zipper down. He kept his eyes closed as he felt his underwear and pants being tugged down his legs.

His legs were pushed apart, lifted.

And something was pressing against his asshole, pressing hard, anxiously.

He bit his lower lip as the enormous cock entered him.

He screamed.

Pain turned into pleasure.

And everything faded to black.

*

“Tom?”

He opened his eyes.

“Man, you were dead to the world.” Rafe’s face hovered into his view. He sat down on the edge of the bed and yawned. “Man, what a night.”

Tom sat up in the bed, his mind slowly adjusting to where he was. The wind-up clock on the nightstand read 3:35. His pants, shirt, and underwear were neatly folded in the far corner of the room.  It was still raining—he could hear it pattering on the roof of the houseboat. He rubbed his eyes. “What—was—“ he couldn’t find the words. “What happened?”

“It was a rougarou, all right.” Rafe shook his head.    “Mom took him out with one shot. It was one of the Robideaus—Davey. He was only sixteen.” Rafe sighed, and lit a cigarette with a shaking hand. He inhaled, blowing out smoke at the ceiling. He smelled of sour alcohol. “Mom thought we should stake out the Robideau place…and sure enough, Davey came out into the storm and changed…he almost got Billy Breaux, but Mom shot him.” He gave Tom a sad smile. “We went back to Mom’s and had some drinks.” He held out his shaking hand and barked out a harsh laugh. “Seeing someone turn—that’s something I don’t think I’ll ever get used to.”

Tom closed his eyes, and could see the beautiful young man changing again in front of him on the other bank of the bayou. “You,” he managed to get out after a moment, “saw him change, you said?”

Rafe nodded, flicking ash into his hand. “Be glad you didn’t see it.”

Tom bit his lip. Did I dream the whole thing?

“We need to figure out what to write in our report.” Rafe sighed. “The Robideaus aren’t going to contradict anything we say. And the sheriff— “

“Does he know now?” Tom asked, reaching for the pack of cigarettes on the bedside table.

Rafe nodded. “I think it’s best to give the sheriff credit, don’t you think?”

Tom lit the cigarette. The smoke felt great, and he could feel himself calming somewhat. He sighed. Just a dream—that’s all it was. But it seemed so real… “I think that’s probably the best idea, don’t you?”

Rafe got up and walked over to the door. “Yeah.” He paused in the doorway and smiled back at his partner. “Get some sleep, buddy. We got to drive back to New Orleans early in the morning.”

He shut the door behind him. Tom took another hit from the cigarette and put it out in the ashtray. He scooted across the bed and winced.

He was sore.

That was some vivid dream, he thought as he glanced out the porthole window. There was the big live oak the boy had appeared under in the dream.

When we get back to New Orleans, I’m turning in my resignation, he decided as he watched the rain spatter and run down the window. Enough of this shit.

He glanced at the neat pile of his clothes in the corner, which he didn’t remember folding. He sat back down on the edge of the bed.

There were two angry red scratches on his inner thighs.

You can be infected, he heard Cammie’s voice in his head again.

“It was just a dream,” he said out loud. “There couldn’t have been two of them, could there?”

No, that was crazy.

I must have scratched myself in my dream, he thought as he got back into the bed, pulling the blanket up to his chin.

He turned off the light and closed his eyes.

But it was a long time before Tom was finally able to fall asleep.

Bargain Books

Vince A. Liaguno and Chad Helder

Sometimes the best reads can be found in the bins of bargain bookstores, those treasure troves of literary outcasts whose dusty shelves are swollen with gems of manhandled prose and glossy bundles of publisher’s overstocks. Lucas Ridgeway found just such a treasure on the first day of summer vacation while perusing the seemingly endless systematic rows of books at Canterbury Tales, the small town’s only bookstore whose name both belied its minimalism and stood defiant in a conspicuous absence of bestsellers and mocha lattes.

The tome had been nestled in the corner of the tallest shelf, its cracked spine and barely legible title bespeaking the antiquity of the book. Curious, Lucas had hoisted himself up on one of the lower shelves, confident in the sturdiness of the massive oaken bookshelf. His fingers grazed the book, flecks of aged bookbinding coming loose at his touch. It had taken a few moments of concentrated struggle to dislodge the book from its mooring, as if the book itself resisted his pull. Finally, the book came free amidst a puff of antediluvian dust, and Lucas hopped off the bookshelf and landed with a heavy thud on the wooden floor. He gazed down at the cover of his hard-won prize, marveled at the scholarly-looking artifact as if it were a rare archeological find.

The Art of Invisibility.

Lucas opened the book in the middle. Before his eyes recorded the strange words on the yellowing page, his nose detected something vaguely unpleasant beneath the normal musty pungency of an old book – something unpleasant, but familiar. Unable to place the familiar odor, Lucas’s eyes settled upon the page and discovered the instructions for the beginning of a ritual. The more he read the bizarre instructions, the more a distinct voice slowly materialized on the periphery of his mind, a voice that recited the book along with Lucas. Wanting to know how long the passage would continue before something interesting happened, he turned the page. The next page was identical to the one he had just been reading. This was a very rare find indeed, not only was the book old, but a defective printing. Lucas kept turning the pages. All of them the same – all depicting the strange ritual.

Lucas closed the book excitedly and hurried to the cash register to pay for his newfound prize. The shopkeeper, an elderly woman dressed in billowy layers of caftan with enough beads and bangles around her neck and wrists to single-handedly keep Mardi Gras afloat, glanced down at the book skeptically, furrowed her eyebrows at Lucas, and then shrugged, dismissing the strange subject matter as the innocuous follies of an adolescent mind.

As Lucas left the bookshop, he was vaguely cognizant of the new voice in his head continuing to read the passage. The voice was neither male nor female, but rather a gender ambiguous intonation of almost mechanically precise elocution. The narrator’s voice, mellifluous and resonant, continued to describe the ritual. When the voice passed the point in the text where Lucas had closed the cover, a growing sense of unease escalated with the volume of the voice. Once the voice finished the bizarre passage, it started over again.

Lucas headed for his house, crossing the old railroad bridge over the irrigation ditch; first, Lucas would need to dig a hole, the voice told him. It was strange idea that kept repeating over and over in his mind, as if the words were stuck in a looping reel. Although the entire passage continued to be recited, the words dig a hole seemed to grow in emphasis. Lucas could almost see the words now, a glowing triumvirate of tangible vocabulary visualized against a scrolling, fuzzy backdrop of handwritten text. It was as if the strange font of the page he had merely scanned in the bookstore was now imprinted upon the canvas of his mind.

He turned right onto Sycamore Drive, the block that served as destination to the modest home of the Ridgeway clan. Halfway up the block, the insistent intonation still repeating its mysterious instructions, Lucas stopped and stared ahead at the Shaughnessy house. He felt a familiar stirring in his midsection. In the driveway, amidst a spray of garden hose and soapsuds, was the Shaughnessy’s eldest son, Drew.

Nineteen and freshly returned from his first year at college, Drew Shaughnessy was a spectacle of collegiate athleticism and bookish charm. He stood in the center of the driveway hosing the cab of his father’s steel-gray Dodge Ram, his shirtless torso of porcelain and freckles defiant in the scorching sun. With a short crop of fiery red hair and deep set eyes the color of emerald, Drew had been the conflicting object of Lucas’ interest since the eighth grade when he first spied the then-sophomore on the bus to school. Lucas remembered scooting down in his seat, knees braced against the back of seat in front of him, head down as Drew got on the bus each morning. He could still see the image of Drew’s lean musculature from the waist down as he passed, the alluring worn spots on his jeans, the rip of denim on his right thigh revealing a fleeting hint of alabaster skin, the precarious shortage of fabric between t-shirt and waistband that some days gave him an titillating glimpse of belly button and the faintest hint of orange peach fuzz if Drew hoisted his heavy satchel of textbooks at just the right moment.

It was shortly after his confusing preoccupation with Drew Shaughnessy began that Lucas embarked on his own journey of self-discovery. In what Lucas regarded as an eternity on the timeline of adolescence, he could recall those tenuous first touches in the darkness of his bedroom, not understanding where they would lead him and slightly afraid of the strong compulsion to follow them through to their unspecified conclusion. He remembered that images of Drew accompanied him throughout the journey, were ever-present in multiple incarnations – a veritable Abercrombie & Fitch photo shoot. Drew at softball practice, long legs ensconced in tight white and black-striped fabric…Drew at swim practice, a vision of sinewy tendons and ripples of lean muscle punctuated by the navy-blue spandex of his Speedo…Drew holding Angie Amato up against the brick wall of their high school with fevered kisses, one hand firmly holding her dainty wrists above her head while the weight of his powerful body pressed urgently into her as his lips sucked hungrily at hers. The images morphed over time, some replayed over and over again, others a one-shot deal. Images lengthened into movie scenes played out behind closed eyes, a game of connect-the-dots between images and actions played out over languid nights surrounded by Batman posters and the watery glow of his fish tank. And as Lucas realized his own abilities and took himself as his first lover, Drew was with him every step of the way.

As Lucas resumed his step and neared closer to the Shaughnessy’s driveway, the voice inside his head grew stronger, more powerful with each footfall. Lucas began to swoon in the harsh midday heat, and his head throbbed from the persistence of the monotonous articulation. As he passed perpendicular to Drew, who now labored with his back to Lucas with long circular motions with a large sponge on the hood of the Dodge Ram that made the muscles on his back jump and pop like snaps from a cap gun, the voice reached deafening crescendo.

DIG A HOLE. DIG A HOLE. DIG A HOLE.

Hands flying to his ears to shelter them from the vociferous sound and nearly falling to his knees directly into the retreating water of Drew’s car wash, Lucas suddenly found himself standing directly in front of the object of his obsession.

“I said are you OK?” Drew asked, still holding the wet sponge that dribbled on the sidewalk.

“Oh yeah, I mean...this is a killer migraine. The only thing to do is hide under the covers in a dark bedroom.”

Drew looked at Lucas a little less like he thought Lucas was a total mental case. “Yeah my mom gets those too. If you want, I could find out the name of the pills she takes.”

“Oh, no...you don’t have to do that. I mean, I really appreciate that, but it’s totally cool. I just need to sleep it off.”

“Suit yourself,” Drew said, immediately turning his back on Lucas and returning to the task of washing the car.

Lucas loitered for a moment in mid-thought as he attempted to think of something to prolong the conversation, but his mind fired a series of blanks. And just as Drew started to notice that Lucas still lingered, the horrible voice resumed.

DIG A HOLE. DIG A HOLE. DIG A HOLE.

Lucas broke into a run for his house. He sprinted up the empty driveway and bolted for the backyard. Only when he needed to unlatch the bolt to his mother’s gardening shed did he remove his hands from his ears, realizing that they had done nothing to ebb the pounding words that were being recited like an otherworldly broken record in his head. He dove into the eight foot by ten-foot enclosure and made great haste in locating the shovel. Panting, desperate to silence the voice, Lucas scanned the yard with frenzied sweeps of his eyes. Locating a neglected patch of grass behind a behemoth maple tree in the southwest corner of the yard, Lucas set to work digging the infernal hole that the equally infernal voice now seemed to command. Within minutes, Lucas shoved the ancient book, regarded only a short time ago with the unmitigated pride of discovery, into its shallow grave and frantically raked dirt across the hole with his fingers.

The voice stopped abruptly, replaced by the suddenly tranquil sounds of birds chirping and a lawnmower humming somewhere in the distance. Lucas heaved a sigh of relief and leaned back against the maple tree, his head settling and mind clearing. The voice was silent, the dirt acting as a hand clamping tightly across the mouth of the book.

*

Lucas picked at his mother’s meatloaf later that evening, his fork absently swirling kernels of school bus yellow corn into a heavy cloud of white mashed potatoes on his plate.

“Luke, you ok, son?” his father asked with characteristic paternal concern.

“Fine, Dad,” he answered. “Just tired. May I be excused?” His mother, whose maternal worry matched his father’s paternalism chin chuck-to-chin chuck, answered by placing the back of her hand against his forehead.

“Cool,” she said to his father, as if communicating a secret weather report. His father shrugged before returning to his own plate, and his mother kissed his forehead.

“Good night, dear,” she said sweetly, and Lucas left the table.

Later that night, somewhere between checking his Facebook page and searching for Internet porn, Lucas’ eyes grew heavy with the unprocessed disorder of the day. His head nodded in front of the glowing computer screen, and when he awoke with a start, he found himself outside in the backyard.

Lucas was drawn to a shadow behind the maple tree. The bulbous moon presided over the hot summer night, and Lucas crossed the yard wearing only the Donald Duck boxer shorts his Aunt Martha had given him last Christmas. The grass felt cool under his feet as he took another step toward the shallow grave of the book, shielded from the bright moonlight by the maple tree. A low, constant noise like a lawnmower attempting to start sounded at once like monstrous weeping and desperate laughter.

When Lucas stepped into the shadow of the maple, he could see the bloated ground above the book’s grave, and he could perceive movement, like a belly squirming with an overripe brood or a blanket thrown over a nest of rats. Lucas knew that the noise did not emanate from the grave, but actually ripped loose from his own throat in deep, exhausting screams as he watched a naked young man emerge from the moist earth of the shallow grave – a young man with Lucas’ face, Lucas’ body.

It was just a dream. His screams might have been real, and Lucas hoped he hadn’t awoken his parents, hesitant to share with them the strange events of yesterday. Fortunately, their bedroom was across the house. The moon was real too, and he suddenly felt as if the moon vultured above the window like a pervert. Lucas arose from the tangle of sweaty bed sheets in his Donald Duck boxers. As he grabbed the cord to lower the blinds, he looked below at the back yard in the moonlight, the corner behind the maple concealed in shadow. About to lower the blind, an instinct pricked his brain, and he whipped around, seeing himself in the full-length mirror on the back of his door. As if mesmerized by his own appearance in the mirror, he left the window and walked closer. Then he saw it in the mirror; it stood behind him, next to the window – the naked boy from the grave, all covered with mud. Paralyzed, Lucas watched the double watching him. Lucas turned to face it; there was nothing by the window. Suddenly, the window opened all the way and the screen leapt from its frame as if punched out by invisible fingers. Lucas looked in the mirror again. He could see his muddy double perched on the windowsill like a gargoyle. It seemed to smile at him before jumping from the window ledge.

Lucas went to the window. He could perceive nothing beneath him the yard. Lucas went back to the mirror, gingerly pulling it off the door and positioning it by the open window so he could see the back yard in the reflection. In the reflection, he could see it – the doppelganger danced in a circle around the yard beneath the mirror. Already out-of-breath and in shock, lost in the confusion of waking and sleeping, Lucas felt a new thrill of terror when he recognized that the doppelganger performed the ritual he had read about in the buried book.

Lucas swooned, falling back and hitting his head hard as the mirror crashed against the floor. There were moments of bright flashes of light, random bursts of luminosity that had neither shape nor form. There were voices, too, murmuring faintly, just out of earshot.

When Lucas came to, he was sitting in the backyard. He looked above at the moon and then below at his now naked body. He was covered in the same mud as the boy from the grave. His brows furrowed in confusion.

As if in answer to the question that began to formulate somewhere in the recesses of his mind, a light suddenly sprang to life from somewhere up above.

His bedroom window.

He heard his mother’s startled scream followed by his father barking for her to call 911. Aware of his nudity yet anxious to understand the rising calamity in his bedroom, Lucas bolted across the yard and tried the back door. It was predictably locked. Undeterred, he crept around the side of the house, inching along neutral colored aluminum siding that felt cool against his bare bottom.

As he reached the corner and was about to peer around toward the front door, a sudden burst of blue and red swirling lights bathed the neighborhood, the piercing scream of emergency response vehicles shattering the still night air as they tore around the block. Lucas froze, an amalgamation of terror and confusion riveting him to the spot. Somehow, he knew that the squad cars and ambulances and first responder units would stop in front of his house. The neighborhood seemed to instantaneously spring to life, interior lamps and front porch lights simultaneously going on across the cul de sac. Within seconds there were people everywhere – police and paramedics charging toward his front door, curious neighbors in robes and slippers shuffling up the sidewalk like zombies out of Romero film.

Despite the balmy early summer night, Lucas shivered from the fear and anxiety that gripped him like a vice, his mind racing to find an undetected way into the house. There were too many neighbors now gathered on their front lawn, necks craning and voices murmuring in concern, for him to make a dash for the open front door. As he tried desperately to figure out the how’s and why’s of his situation, there was a sudden commotion at the front door. The zombie neighbors suddenly moved back in unison on either side of the front walkway, and an image of the red sea parting for Moses in some biblical movie his parents forced him to watch at Easter flashed across his mind. He stood, incredulous, as the paramedics navigated a long stretcher down the front steps, stopping after clearing the bottom step and releasing an invisible lever that brought the stretcher upward dramatically. Lucas leaned into the juniper bush at the corner of the house, parting the foliage carefully and straining to see. He gasped.

He was on the stretcher.

In the shadow of the bushes, Lucas blinked once, then twice, trying to clear the surreal image playing out before him. He looked again at the figure on the gurney, took in the chestnut brown hair and familiar bangs, the similarly proportioned body lying prone and motionless. Even as his rational mind verified the impossibility of the scene, another newer part understood immediately.

He was now the boy from the grave. The invisible creature, unleashed from the book, had switched them in some weird Freaky Friday kind of way. Now the doppelganger, playing possum on the stretcher, was being wheeled away while he stood here naked and invisible. And strangely free.

As if to test his hypothesis, Lucas swallowed hard and stepped out from behind the bushes. Nothing…no reaction from the zombie crowd or emergency personnel still talking to his parents on the doorstep. Fueled on by his incredulity and an empowering sense of surrealism, Lucas took a few tentative steps toward the crowd.

Nothing.

Then a few more cautious steps, almost to the walkway. Nothing.

Lucas stepped out onto the walkway proper, now mere inches from his neighbors, abandoning all hesitancy. He held his breath dare someone might hear him breathe. But no one registered awareness of his presence.

He was invisible.

The ambulance raced from the scene with sirens blaring, which Lucas didn’t know whether to interpret as a good or a bad sign. As his frantic parents pulled out of the garage to follow behind, the neighbors began to disperse. Lucas watched the scene in dumbfounded amazement, snapping out of his reverie in time to run underneath the garage door before it closed.

Cold and trembling less from the night air and more from the bizarre trauma unfolding around him, Lucas turned on the garage light and began rummaging through boxes of camping supplies. He found a camouflage rain poncho, which he quickly pulled over his head. He suddenly laughed aloud at the irony – he was last person on the earth who needed camouflage in his new state. He opened the garage door again and jumped on his bicycle, pedaling off down the street in the direction of the hospital and avoiding the main thoroughfares as much as possible. In the darkness, the poncho provided enough of a human figure so passing motorists didn’t mistake him for the phantom bicyclist he’d become. Despite being naked beneath the poncho, he started to sweat in the hot summer night.

Drawing near the hospital, Lucas ditched the bike behind some bushes and tucked the poncho under a tire. Now came the real test. Was he really invisible or just insane? Swallowing hard, Lucas approached the entrance to the emergency room. He looked down at himself and could see his own naked body; yet as he approached a pair of policemen chatting with an ambulance driver, they made no notice of the muddy, naked boy.

One of the policemen gave a second look when the automatic doors opened without anyone visibly present. In the brilliant light of the crowded emergency room lobby, he became more certain that he was truly invisible. In growing desperation, he thought for a moment he might speak to the nurse at the reception desk, to explain – maybe they could help him. Maybe this wasn’t completely unprecedented in the world of medicine. What was he saying? His condition was unprecedented in every realm except those reserved for science-fiction matinees.

Lucas was just beginning to wonder what to do next when he caught sight of his mother going into the ladies’ room. Lucas paused outside the door. He would wait until she emerged, and then follow her to the hospital bed where he would find the imposter. He stood by the door, growing impatient. When another woman exited, Lucas realized there was no reason not to go inside, except perhaps the idea of walking barefoot across an unsanitary floor. Once inside the bathroom, he could hear his mother weeping behind one of the stalls. He was instantly sorry that he had chosen to venture into the restroom. The thought suddenly crossed his mind that if he was caught, they would think he snuck in for cheap thrills. Little did even those closest to him know that watching women go to the bathroom was the last item on his list. And then it dawned on him – he was invisible; he could spy on anyone he wanted to. Thoughts came to him in furious fragments of endless possibility, snippets of dubious promise in his newfound capability.

Another burst of weeping snapped Lucas out of his voyeuristic reverie, and he noticed something else. It was vague and shapeless at first, a mere sensation – or, more accurately, a lack of feeling. The sound of his mother’s weeping, which would normally strike at the core of Lucas’ heart with an immediate and merciless pang of guilt, had a strangely dulled effect on him. It was as if emotion had been stripped away from the experience and replaced by a tangible numbness. Lucas realized with a shudder that he didn’t care that his mother was weeping on the other side of the bathroom stall.

Before he could fully wrap his mind around this peculiar emotional detachment, his mother emerged from the stall. He followed behind her to where his father sat in a crowded roomful of people, bleeding and waiting like travelers stranded in some kind of grisly airport terminal.

“Have you heard anything else,” she asked him.

“Yes,” his father replied. “They had to give him a blood transfusion. The doctor told me it was an unusually large amount of blood, but it looks like Lucas is out of the woods.”

It was for blood – that was why the doppelganger wanted to be taken to the hospital.

Lucas felt sick, and he felt something else – fury. The anger was unlike anything Lucas had ever felt before. It bubbled up inside of him with unfamiliar intensity, unlike any childhood anger he had ever known. Lucas wandered around sterile corridors until he overheard someone talking about his - the doppelganger’s - condition. Eventually, he found the bed where they observed him in the intensive care unit.

The doppelganger opened his eyes immediately upon Lucas entering the room.

“Delicious,” was all the doppelganger said licking his lips seductively. He choked back a peal of laughter, gesturing toward the half-empty bag of blood hanging above him.

“You motherfucker,” Lucas whispered. “What have you done to me?”

“Don’t get so excited, missy,” the doppelganger said. “You don’t have to pretend with me. You know what you’re going to do.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’ve always been the world’s biggest pussy, Lucas. I know all about you – know all about what you’re hiding. The rage is just a veil, you know. Don’t you want to find out what’s underneath it?”

Lucas blinked. “What are you doing to me?” he whispered through clenched teeth.

A wicked grin spread across the doppelganger’s face. “I’m not doing anything, Lucas, my boy. This was all your doing.”

“Me? I didn’t ask for any of this…for you.”

“Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong, Lucas,” the doppelganger continued. “You brought me here, first through your thoughts and then through your actions.”

Fury throbbed in Lucas’ temples. “Start making some fucking sense, you miserable son of a bitch, or I’m going to start flinging shit around here like some tweaked out poltergeist.”

“Poor little Lucas. Sad little queer boy, so afraid that someone will find out your secret that you spend your life pretending to be something you’re not.” Lucas looked at his likeness on the bed, stunned, his eyes swelling.

“Oh, yes,” the doppelganger continued, its strength growing with each drip of plasma, “I know all about you, Lucas. I know what you really want. But you’re too scared to take it in your human form. That’s why you came for me.”

“Came for you?”

“Yesterday. In the bargain bookstore. I drew you to me, Lucas. And you came.” Images of the dusty book flashed across Lucas’ mind.

“The book on invisibility?” he choked, breathless at the realization that he could have summoned this creature. He felt all the air being sucked from his lungs.

“That would be the one,” the doppelganger said. “And now, you’ve got yourself one first-class supernatural body swap at a bargain basement price.” He chuckled deviously.

Lucas grabbed the doppelganger’s IV-infused arm. It was ice cold to the touch. He flinched, backing away and knocking into an IV pole. A nurse looked up from across the room where she tended to the dressings on a burn victim, saw nothing amiss, and resumed her meticulous wrapping of gauze around charred flesh.

“A little more of this yummy plasma, and I’ll be all toasty again,” the doppelganger said mockingly. Even as Lucas watched, color seemed to slowly slither into the doppelganger’s gaunt cheeks.

“What do you want from me? How can we make this stop?” Panic crept into Lucas’ voice even as he fought to retain control.

The doppelganger turned its head sideways, eyes black and bottomless with malevolence. “It doesn’t stop, Lucas. It’s too late for that now. I’m going to take your human body, a body that will enable me to carry out my own plans.”

“What about me?” Lucas’ voice was small, suddenly childlike.

The doppelganger smiled salaciously. “You get the best part of the bargain. You get to walk amongst the mortal, invisible in your comings and goings. Your invisibility will empower you to take what you want…from whomever you want.”

Lucas looked up at the creature, his eyes suddenly alert to the temptation being offered.

“Yes, Lucas.  Anything you want, from whomever you want. You can satisfy your deepest desires for the taking…no more dances of diplomacy or kissing up to get what you want. Your invisibility will make you a powerful creature, one to be feared.” The doppelganger’s voice was soothing, melodious in its offerings.

“Anything?”

The creature smiled knowingly. “Anything at all, my dear boy. Think about it, think about the possibilities to bypass every conventional nicety and simply take what you want. You’ll be known and feared as a great and malevolent being, one who those you touch will never whisper a word about for fear of their own sanity.”

Lucas understood the tradeoff now. He was being offered the chance to wander the earth, unseen to the mortal eye, to do as he pleased. No rules, no boundaries, no restraint. He felt a peculiar sensation in his midsection, a powerful churning of desire and heat. He looked down and saw he had an erection, a stiff and painful gesture of his acceptance. The doppelganger saw it, too, and smiled.

“All the pleasures of the world await you, Lucas,” it said, easing its eyelids shut as the last drops of blood dripped from the IV bag and coursed through the plastic tube toward its arm.

Without another word, Lucas turned to walk away in submission to the dark forces now inside of him.

“Oh, Lucas…” the thing on the bed called to him. Lucas turned to face the doppelganger for the last time.

“Say hello to Drew for me,” it said seductively, winking in a gesture of omniscience.

*

It was shortly after 4:00 am when the door to Drew Shaughnessy’s bedroom over the garage opened and closed, undetected in the stillness of the reposing household. The open bedroom window slowly lowered, the latch silently locking into place. The closet door swung open on silent hinges followed by the gentle rustling of clothes. Two neckties seemingly danced out of the closet, serpentine lengths of paisley fabric that undulated toward the bed like magic carpets.

Slowly, with the precision of a surgical procedure, one necktie slithered under Drew’s right wrist, looping in such a way that tightening would come with the first jerk of the young man’s arm. The opposite end of the necktie coiled itself around one of the bedposts, knotting itself tightly. The second necktie slipped undetected under the opposite wrist until it, too, was fastened to the bedpost.

There was a pause in the room, as if the palpable sense of growing urgency and desire saturating the oppressive humidity in the unventilated room was at conflict with a waning sense of right and wrong. Then Drew stirred slightly in his sleep, his legs sliding in a motion of unintentional sensuousness beneath the thin fabric of the sheet that covered his sleeping form.

Slowly, as if in answer to the unspoken moral conundrum, the sheet began to slide down Drew’s body. Inch by inch, the retreating sheet revealed more of the prize beneath – the broad, freckled back that narrowed at the waist in a symmetrical V-shape, the fleshy mound encased in taut white cotton, the long muscular legs covered in delicate wisps of red hair.

As the mattress depressed on either side of Drew’s slumbering form and a salty tear dropped out of nothingness onto the small of his back, Lucas Ridgeway surrendered to the art of invisibility and understood with sudden clarity that even bargain books came at a price.

The Sisterhood

R.B. Payne

The path meandered through a stand of oak trees. Beneath the canopy of autumn leaves, Sister Aveline walked. Above her, the gnarled tree limbs intertwined like fingers of praying hands to create a forest cathedral and, here and there, shafts of dusty sunlight created godlike columns of yellow luminescence. The musty scent of decay was incense. She followed the ancient path even though it wasn’t visible.

She knew the way by heart.

Unleavened bread, fruit, and cured pork filled a woven basket slung beneath her shoulder. Spying a cluster of mushrooms poking among the leaves, she added them to the bounty.

The slope steepened. Her legs were heavy and she paused for rest.

Perhaps it was time for a younger nun.

Surely not yet.

Sister Aveline pressed on.

At the forest’s edge, she ascended an escarpment where winter storms tumbled granite boulders down a cliff. Here, the rising trail was hidden among the rocky debris, and if she had not memorized the twists and turns, the way would have been lost on the hard ground.

Her sandals scraped a steady rhythm and her woolen habit flapped in the breeze as she climbed higher. Her hip complained with a dull ache, but she paid it no heed. Feeling the familiar stones beneath her feet and the morning cool against her face, peace flooded into her. She recited a prayer as she walked.

Clearing a low ridge, she emerged from the shadow of the mountain. Here, the sunlight warmed her. Pausing at a craggy overlook, she viewed the valley and the village cradled in it. Resting the heavy basket on the ground, she waited to catch her breath.

Smoke curled from a few chimneys of the stone houses of St-Gilles-du-Gard. In the orchards, the farmers were harvesting the last of the summer apples and pears. Towering over the town stood the monastery where the Holy Bones of St. Giles were buried. Outside its gates, pilgrims were waiting to view the relics of the hermit saint and to seek forgiveness or perhaps a miracle.

A dirt road cleaved the village and in the distance she could see the dust of a caravan or perhaps a horse troop of crusaders heading toward Toulouse and eventually to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. In the other direction, towards Arles, the road was dotted with a few lone travelers – too poor to be robbed, or simply too tired to care.

She, too, had once traveled the Way of St. James and he, in his wisdom, had answered her prayers.

Tucked below the cliffs of St-Gilles-du-Gard was the Abbey of St. Sebastian. This morning someone also waited at its gates. Sister Aveline knew it was a woman even though no detail could be seen from such a distance. No doubt the woman had traveled far and was exhausted from her journey.

Hungry.

And frightened like a rabbit.

Just like Sister Aveline had been the day she... well, that had been a long time ago.

Hefting the basket of food, she stepped quickly. A mewling cry carried on the wind and she knew les déformés were expecting her.

Arriving at an enclave hidden in a crevasse, Sister Aveline paused at the opening to sing a hymn to Mary, the Mother of the Christ. Although she knew the inhabitants of the stony rooms carved into the cliffs couldn’t hear her song, she sang glorious praise anyway.

The deformed ones scurried for the protection of their caves. She assumed they sensed her footsteps. At one time, she might have known a few of them, but as the years passed, she no longer recognized any of them.

“It is Sister Aveline,” she announced, knowing it didn’t matter if she spoke aloud. She lowered the basket to the ground, and laid the food on a flat rock chiseled for that purpose.

And though the creatures cowered in the shadows, she could make out the half-faces formed onto leathery skin stretching tightly across their skulls. Dead eyes searched for anything to see, and wisps of thin hair flicked on the morning breeze. Fingerless hands rose to shield their faces as if they could remember who they had once been. Blind. Deaf. Dumb. They scrambled on toe-less feet. And, even though they were cloaked in heavy woolen habits, she knew their limbs and bodies were rotted and misshapen.

She made the Sign of the Cross. At least les déformés were safe here, waiting for Judgement Day. And who knew what thoughts went through their minds? Perhaps, as she often prayed, redemption and salvation still awaited them.

Sister Aveline turned and walked down the trail. Even when she could hear them groping and fighting to take the food, she didn’t turn to gape at the horror of their pain.

She loved them too much for that.

*

In the cloister of the Abbey of St. Sebastian was a garden filled with orange and olive trees and planted with rosemary and basil. The fragrance of herbs filled the enclosed space. In the center of the garden was a bench for contemplation, and upon this bench sat a woman clothed in a filthy velvet and lace dress. The woman’s face was hidden in her cupped palms and her body heaved as she wept.

Leaning to rub a sore ankle, Sister Aveline paused to observe the stranger and rested the empty basket on the mosaic floor of the processional hallway. Having been the daughter of an indentured farmer, she had few occasions to glimpse wealth from such closeness.

A moment later, the Abbess strode into the garden and knelt by the visitor. Although Sister Aveline could not hear the two women speaking, she knew the Abbess spoke comforting words.

A ripple of surprise came with the light touch of a hand on her shoulder. Turning, she smiled at Sister Gregory. Even after all these years, her heart beat faster and her cheeks flushed.

“Your journey was uneventful?” asked Sister Gregory.

“As always, praise God.”

In the garden, the velvet-clothed woman rose unsteadily to her feet and the Abbess stepped to support her. Lit by sunlight, the woman’s face was swollen and bruised. A strip of cloth stained with dark blood lay matted against her cheek. The skin around her eyes was mottled purple, yellow, and black.

“I dressed her wounds this morning,” whispered Sister Gregory.

“Who is she?”

“Isabelot du Maurier, a dressmaker from Paris. The Abbess says she was the lover of the Countess de Moreau of Toulouse. Apparently the Count himself discovered the two women in an indiscreet situation.”

“Surely, such behavior is not unusual amongst Royals,” Sister Aveline observed. “I have heard lovemaking in all forms is well tolerated amongst the rich.”

“By most,” agreed Sister Gregory. “But the Count is apparently a zealot filled with papal ambition. According to Isabelot, the Countess was hung naked for three days in the cells of the Chateau D’Moreau. She was tortured with a poire d'angoisser and Isabelot only escaped a similar fate by bribing a night guard and fleeing Toulouse.”

Sister Aveline reached for the comfort of her lover’s hand. The Pear of Anguish was a wicked device with a handle that, when turned, expanded its “pear” wider and wider. Capable of being inserted into any bodily opening, it would stretch, tear, and rip flesh until the victim confessed. And then died.

“Do you think the Countess kept our secret?” asked Sister Aveline.

“That’s what the Abbess is trying to learn.”

Sister Aveline understood. Isabelot du Maurier had come to claim sanctuary. And strangers needing protection always brought danger to the Sisters of St. Sebastian. Still, none had ever been turned away.

Later, as pale moonlight filled the abbey with a milky glow, and unable to find comfort in sleep, Sister Aveline meditated as she walked to the north transept of the chapel. In an alcove, a handful of candles flickered. Hands quivering, Sister Aveline lit a fresh candle to the memory of Queen Marguerite de Provence, the long deceased benefactor of the Abbey of St. Sebastian.

Falling to her knees, Sister Aveline prayed their secret would remain safe.

*

As each day of the next three weeks passed, the Sisters of St. Sebastian relied upon duty, habit, and ritual to offset the fear that filled them. There were forty-three nuns in the enclave, and Isabelot du Maurier had become the thirteenth initiate, and for all of them, each day was planned much like another.

Upon rising, the nuns attended the service of divine office: Lauds followed by morning prayers. Throughout the day, there were Terce, Sext, and Nones, the three Little Hours of the Divine. Between these services, the nuns washed and cooked for the abbey, provided medical care for the poor, educated the novices, illuminated manuscripts with fine drawings, and made embroidery to sell in the village to pilgrims and crusaders. Before the evening meal was Vespers, followed by an hour of conversation. At the end of the day was Compline, the last service before sleep.

On the twenty-second morning, a cold and dreary fog drifted into the valley, and a heavy pounding at the abbey’s gates shattered the hope that danger had passed. Two initiates ran flat-footed to open the heavy oaken panels, and three men, regally attired, clopped into the courtyard on horseback.

“Abbess!” the lead man shouted at no one in particular. “You!” he pointed to the cowering initiates. “Bring my horse a bucket of water.” His horse snorted in agreement as the initiates ran to comply.

Sister Aveline watched from the chapel doors as the Abbess went without haste to meet the men. Impatiently, the man dismounted his horse. He was more rotund than he seemed in the saddle, and the dampness of fog had combined with dirt from the road to coat his face with grime. He wiped his visage clean with a handkerchief pulled from a sleeve, and discarded the soiled cloth to the ground. No doubt he was a man of wealth and authority. Dressed in fine buckled knee-boots, leather pants, and a heavy fur coat of red fox, his black hair was topped by a stylish hat. A neatly trimmed goatee and thick eyebrows accented his dark stare.

The other two men were also well dressed, but their weaponry and posture meant they were adventurers or soldiers for hire. Watchful, they remained mounted and whispered to each other as if nuns were to be feared.

“The Count de Moreau of Toulouse,” the man announced, placing a hand on the hilt of his sword. He neither bowed nor removed his hat.

“I am the Abbesse de St. Sebastian,” said the Abbess, placing her hand gently on the wooden cross she wore as a necklace. “Are you lost?” she queried. “The monastery you likely seek is in the village.”

“I know where I am. I have my wife’s confession that this cursed place is a nest of bestial practices and cursed harlots. You would do well to give me what I want before I lose patience.”

The Abbess hesitated but a single breath. “If you seek Isabelot du Maurier, she has taken her initiate vows. I have granted her sanctuary. You have no dispensation within these walls.”

“I care nothing about the whore from Paris.” The Count signaled to his men and they dismounted. “I demand The Holy Relic kept within these walls.”

“The Bones of St. Giles are in the village. You must take your request to the monks.”

“I seek not the bones of St. Giles. You know of what I speak, for the Countess told me all before she died.”

A moment of silence passed. The Abbess straightened her back. “The relic belongs to the Sisterhood,” she said. “It may not be relinquished to any man.”

“I come as an advocate of the Holy Roman Empire. If you do not relent, I shall strike you down with the authority of God and the Pope.”

“You may not plunder in my abbey, and if you step past me, you will not prevail. For your own sake, I advise you to leave.”

Behind the Count, the two mercenaries unsheathed their swords.

Sister Aveline hurried to the nave of the church. Her footsteps echoed as she approached nuns praying on benches near the altar. Sister Gregory was among them.

“Take refuge,” said Sister Aveline.

The nuns hurried from the chapel but Sister Gregory remained. The two nuns clasped hands.

“They know,” said Sister Aveline.

“I will make ready.”

“Be safe,” said Sister Aveline, and kissing Sister Gregory she hurried to the chapel entrance. Perhaps the men had departed and all would be well.

The men remained.

Blood pooled around the Abbess’ body. Her eyes stared lifelessly at the sky. She was with the Heavenly Father.

The Count wiped his sword blade on the wool of her habit and stepped over the dead bodies of the two initiates and past the spilled bucket of horse water.

He motioned to Sister Aveline.

“Take me to the relic.”

*

Inside the chapel, Sister Aveline removed a key from the leather strand encircling her neck and turned it in a locking mechanism near the altar. Unseen gears whirred and clanked. Finally, she pressed her weight against an oaken panel and it opened like a door.

The Count de Moreau and his mercenaries thrust her aside as they pushed into the dim light of the secret chapel. The sanctum was narrow and the ancient walls were carved of chalky yellow stone.

A mosaic floor dominated by azure blues and deep blacks depicted a night scene in Bethlehem. A yellow star announced the arrival of the Magi on the night of Christ’s birth.

Their swords raised against danger, the Count and his men halted to absorb the beauty.

Sister Aveline stepped into the chapel.

Perhaps it was time for a younger nun.

Surely not yet.

On the farthest wall was a massive crucifix, carved of wood. There, his head slumped; the man-Christ hung lifeless, forever trapped in his moment of surrender to human death.

Beneath his nailed feet was an unpainted wooden table upon which sat a leaden box, encrusted with red and green and amber jewels. Dim light trickled from high windows to poorly illuminate the room but the box glimmered nonetheless.

Spying the leaden box, the men edged forward.

“Wait,” said Sister Aveline, closing the massive door behind her. “I am compelled to issue you warning,” she said, making the Sign of the Cross.

“Do not interfere,” said the Count over his shoulder as his men approached the simple altar. “If we are feeling generous after seeing the Relic of the Abbey of St. Sebastian, we may permit you to live.”

Sister Aveline spoke quietly, yet her voice echoed in the narrow chamber. “You will be unable to open the box or remove the relic until you hear what I have to say for I hold the key.”

With those words, the three men paused to listen.

*

“The Holy Relic came to this abbey from Queen Marguerite de Provence when she returned from her crusade in Egypt over a hundred years ago,” began Sister Aveline. “Her husband, Louis IX, was captured and held for ransom by foreign fighters, during which time she commanded the Crusader Army. The Holy Relic came into her possession from warring knights returning from Jerusalem. It is the first and most important of all relics. It led the Magi to the birthplace of the Christ. It is the Star of Bethlehem. After it fulfilled its heavenly duties, it fell to Earth and was found.”

“So the legends are true,“ said the Count. He pounded his chest with his fist and said to his men. “Many have sought it, but I have found it.” “I tell you of its provenance because I offer warning. If you are not pure in your faith, it will be revealed for all to see.”

The Count laughed. “Surely you seek to make me a fool.”

“No. I offer you a chance to leave and seek redemption for your sins elsewhere. This is a true Holy Relic and it judges men for the light or darkness in their hearts.”

The Count laughed. “Why should I listen to foul beasts that sleep with their own kind? Be quiet or I shall rip your tongue from your head.”

“I will pray for your souls,” she said, tossing the key to the Count who snatched it with a gloved hand.

“You should pray for your own damned soul.”

“I am filled with love,” said Sister Aveline. “I have nothing to fear.” She bowed her head in prayer.

Deus, in adiutorium meum intende. Domine, ad adiuvandum me festina.

The Count reached the sealed box, and inserting the key, raised the lid. The sides of the box opened automatically like a morning flower, revealing a stone of seared metal interlaced with gleaming crystals.

Fully exposed, the stone grew brighter. A flash of light flared from it and knocked the men to the ground. The stone grew brighter until the chapel was filled with the light of a dozen suns.

Black and crimson welts opened on the faces of the men. Straining to rise and escape, they crawled but a few footsteps from the burning star before collapsing.

Sister Aveline wept and prayed, her heart aching because of their pain. O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me.

The men were still. Tendrils of steam appeared from rupturing blood vessels as their clothing leapt into flame. The three men were purified in holy fire. Fingers and toes and ears and lips and faces and genitals and hair were seared to nothingness as the star cleansed them.

Light receded as the star went dark.

Sister Aveline knocked three times on the oak panels of the door. A clicking of the locks from another key, and Sister Gregory entered, a wooden pole in her hand. Prodding carefully, she closed the box, and retrieving the key, locked it.

A few other Sisters of the Abbey of St. Sebastian entered the chapel with gauze and balm, herbs and prayers. Sister Aveline and Sister Gregory carefully placed the Count du Moreau and his mercenaries on stretchers. Nuns spent the balance of the day dousing the charred flesh with blessed sheep’s milk.

*

As spring of the following year approached, the trail through the desolate oak grove was still covered in snow. Sister Aveline carried a basket of bread and cured pork. In her other hand, she gripped a rope that led three creatures clothed in heavy woolen habits.

Les déformés.

Moving through the trees to the escarpment ahead, she didn’t need to see the trail.

She knew the way.

God is love.

Kissyface

Stephen Graham Jones

“I hate that I was hiding in the closet,” Mark says.

Chrissy Carlton looks over to him then straight ahead again, to blow a stream of smoke out.

“Kind of fits, doesn’t it?” she says.

“That’s what I mean,” Mark says, and holds his hand out for the cigarette. She takes one more deep drag and passes it across to him.

What they’re sitting on, in the rec room of the church Chrissy’s probably still a member of, is a great inflatable log.

The reason Mark was hiding in the closet was that he doesn’t know the way out of this place—that’s the immediate reason he was hiding in the closet. The bigger, more pressing reason is that there’s a killer out there in the sanctuary. Or up in the balcony. Or rising up from the baptismal. Skulking behind a pew. Maybe even standing at the altar right now, staring out at the absent congregation with his all-white eyes that Mark assumes are contacts. Because even mad-dog killers at least need pupils to see, right?

You should have paid more attention in biology, Mark tells himself.

And: a self-defense course might not have hurt either.

What they’re calling this killer is Kissyface. It’s because of his cheeks. Because of what happened to them—to him—on the playground one recess. According to school legend, Chrissy’s big brother had talked him into a prank that was supposed to have been played on a cheerleader, but kind of, according to Chrissy’s big brother, hit a patch of bad luck.

Kissyface would probably have a different word. Or, he wouldn’t even bother with words, probably. Which is kind of exactly what he’s been doing these last two hours, Mark’s pretty sure: not bothering with words. Just letting his hands do his talking.

But, that recess.

It wasn’t just bad luck, it was the worst luck. After school a few days before, Chrissy’s brother had shaken and rocked the new machine at the bowling alley until it spit out what everybody at first thought was a rubber spider on an elastic string, but then started looking more like a plastic spider with a ring-part for a finger to slide through. Either way: big deal. If you knew where to plug a water hose into the ground, you could flood out real tarantulas, ones too big and hairy and hissy to even think about cramming into a plastic bubble.

But then it hadn’t been a spider. It wasn’t anything anybody’d ever seen the machine spit-up before. Because Chrissy’s big brother had stolen it? Did the machine know who paid their quarter and who didn’t, and dole out its gifts accordingly? What was in the bubble this time, it was a gag fish hook, a big black honking treble made of rubber. And it looked for all the world like it had real barbs. It was big enough for the crusty mouths of deep sea fish. You could tell just by looking at it.

Still, until Chrissy’s big brother was fooling around in his uncle’s garage, it was just a big stupid treble that wouldn’t catch anything, right?

He’d kept it in his pocket with the vague notion of finding some perfect place to hang it, but he was almost already forgetting about it when, looking for the leaf-rake so he could drag the frisbee off the roof—he was under orders not be stomping around on the roof while his and Chrissy’s aunt was sleeping—he stumbled onto his uncle’s dusty fishing rig way back in the corner, from three or four years ago.

The pole was fiberglass, as thick as the handle of a baseball bat, tapering to a sensitive point nine feet from the butt. Hooked into that butt, though—Chrissy’s brother had to have smiled here, just from the wash of serendipity.

Hooked into the cork butt of that pole, just enough tension in the line to keep the tip of the pole nodding over the slightest little bit, was a big black treble hook. A real treble hook.

Chrissy’s brother unhooked it with all due reverence, compared it to the one in his pocket.

With a little touch-up spray paint, the two would be twins.

Fast-forward to two or three days later. That fated recess. The class loser is playing with his little cars in the sand behind the monkey bars, making the motor sounds with his lips. Only the little kids play there anymore. And him. Until a cluster of shadows falls over the berms and straightaways he’s dragged out with the pads of his first two fingers. He looks up, and up, and Chrissy’s brother makes the appeal: they’re going to pull a prank on one of the girls. A cheerleader. It’s going to involve this obviously fake treble hook. He crushes it in his hand to show off how soft it is, and how it springs right back into shape. Then he tosses it across and the boy who’s about to become Kissyface, he fumbles it to his chest, sure that, never mind what he just saw, this hook is about to pierce a finger, or snag into his shirt. But it’s just floppy rubber.

A slow smile warms his face.

He’s finally being invited in, isn’t he?

Because part of selling the prank is making this fake hook look real—this cheerleader, she’s going to scream—Chrissy’s brother takes it back, to tie a real leader on it.

The boy who’s not Kissyface yet’s part here, it’s to open his mouth wide enough to accommodate this hook—because they’re playing the Dolphins this week in football, he’s pretending to be a human fish here—and then to bite down hard on the hook right when Chrissy’s brother winks, so the rubber barbs don’t slip through his teeth, show the joke before they’re ready.

It’s going to be beautiful.

And, Mark supposes, it probably was.

Just, not for the fish. Not for the boy who would be Kissyface.

The cheerleader is there waiting, wearing her uniform because it’s Friday, her red spirit ribbon safety-pinned to her poofy sleeve—while all the other students use stick-pins, cheerleaders are more active, need safety pins—and, to really sell it, the boy who’s about to be Kissyface (he’s always been eager to please), he even drops down to his knees, sticks his tongue out like for the wafer.

The hook Chrissy’s brother places on the flat part of the back of his tongue, it’s colder than it was before, and heavier. But that’s probably because everybody’s watching now, right? When the spotlight’s warming your skin, everything inside, it probably always feels cold.

For a moment his future in elementary branches out before him like capillaries flushing with blood, starting with this exact prank: a different table in the cafeteria, a locker without gum smeared on the lock every day. Standing at the urinal without boys at the sink wadding up wet paper towels to throw, the bullseye always the naked skin at the back of his neck. The cheerleaders always screaming and running away when he does his mouth just like this prank, to remind them.

It’s going to be beautiful.

Except, “Don’t—” this cheerleader says, reaching out, something maternal to the cast of her face at this last second, a new kind of suspicion or foreboding to her voice. But Chrissy’s brother is already setting his feet and turning half around to yank back on that leader all at once, a moment that splashes into school legend in the slowest of motion.

The top barb rips a ragged furrow into the corrugated roof of this boy’s mouth, and then pushes through, into the rootspace above the top two teeth. X-rays later in the day will show that it neatly snips the base of each of those top two teeth’s roots, insuring the lisp Kissyface is going to wear like stigmata all through high school.

It doesn’t stop there, though.

The barb pushes all the way through the front of the gums and out through the skin above the lip.

The way they have to remove it is the way they remove arrows in the cowboy movies: snipping the head off the barb then steadily pulling the shaft back the way it came in. Except, in the cowboy movies, the cowboy always just bites his belt. In this version, this boy who’s almost Kissyface now, he’s screaming the whole time. He’s screaming like the end of the world.

And there are still two hooks to go.

While the damage they do is negligible compared to the loss of the two most prominent teeth, the rupturing of a palate, the reconstructive surgery and the permanent diamond-shaped scar above the top lip, their effect is larger.

Each side hook—the base the treble was resting on—snags on the webby inside of a cheek, neatly piercing out then back in like a fast stitch, like a dolphin coursing up and down through the surface of the water. The metal goes right through what had been Kissyface’s dimples.

This means that, when Chrissy’s brother keeps pulling, it sucks those cheeks in, and, because his mouth is already open to accommodate this deep-sea hook, not to mention all this sudden pain, those cheeks pull in and slide up the hooks’ shafts, to the thick junction where all three hooks start. The cheeks pull in close enough so as to be almost touching.

Snap a picture right there.

It’s the birth of Kissyface.

Nobody ever bothered to tell Mark what that kid’s name might have been.

Not that it matters overmuch. Find some white contact lenses, apply your mother’s red lipstick a little too liberally, and now that grown-up kid, he's a killer who doesn’t even need a mask, a killer with a score to settle, a killer with scales to balance. A killer with a prank to answer in kind, with interest.

This is the way things happen.

It makes Mark kind of sick, actually. Not just because of all the dead seniors sprawled throughout the church—though, yes, there is that—but because he should have seen it coming. He should have read between the lines of the yellow flyer on the bulletin board on the other side of the hall from Calculus: this was never going to be a church lock-in. It was always going to have been a massacre.

If he’d paid attention in Calc, he might have done the math, graphed a sine curve, figured out that tonight is the obvious-to-everybody-else anniversary of the Day of the Triple Hook, as it came to be called. Tonight, this night he’s trying and trying to live through, it’s Kissyface’s birthday. And this lock-in, it’s his bloody, bloody cake. All that’s left is for him to walk from room to room, extinguish the screaming, begging candles.

Never mind that Chrissy Carlton had to have known this. It’s Kissyface’s birthday, sure, but it’s also the day her brother’s troubles all began: juvenile detention, drugs, more drugs, county jail, the trial that was going to lead to real jail, all capped by the grand suicide the whole town had lowered their heads for, even though they’d all been breathing a sigh of relief.

Never mind that, with her big brother dead and gone, Kissyface should be satisfied. He’s not. Not even close. And, if you squint just right, Mark figures—or, if you’ve got white contacts clouding your vision—any high schooler will do. Any of those graduating might have been standing on the playground that day. That they didn’t stop this from happening, that’s more than enough.

Never mind that the reason Mark even came here, sleeping bag in tow, it had nothing to do with Kissyface or fishing hooks or playgrounds or any of that. He hadn’t even been here for elementary. No, the reason he finally went into the garage to dig up a sleeping bag, it was that, standing by that yellow flyer in the hall, standing by it and jotting the dates and times down, had been Leo Barnes, Westview High’s underwear-model-in-training if they’d ever had one, complete with the smoldering eyes, the lecherous scruff on his cheek every other day, those piercing blue eyes that were always looking away, across some Mediterranean only he could see. The complete package—emphasis on package, Mark was fairly certain.

He wasn’t exactly sure which church Leo went to, if it was the same one Mark went to, but it was worth a night in a sleeping bag to find out, he figured.

As it was turning out, though, the only intimacy the two of them were going to get to share, it was the one they'd already shared, while Leo’s throat-blood was bubbling up from that sharpened gaff Kissyface was scything through the graduating class with. Mark had cradled Leo’s head on his left thigh, looked down into his eyes, lied to him that it wasn’t that bad, that—was that sirens he was hearing?

But he hadn’t held his cheek down to press against Leo’s in farewell, to all the things that could have been. He hadn’t even done that movie thing where he slid his hand down Leo’s face, to make his eyelids close over his dead eyes.

What he had done was run, hell for leather, damn the torpedoes, whatever meant fast and blind and crying and sliding around the corners, forgetting to breathe until his lungs insisted. Finally finding a closet that only became a metaphorical closet after he’d been standing in it for longer than he meant to.

So he’d opened it, startling Chrissy Carlton back over the inflatable log they were sitting on now.

As far as either of them knew, they were the only survivors. The last survivors.

“And then there were two,” Chrissy had said to Mark, by way of hello.

“Three,” Mark corrected, cringing from the sound coming through the speakers.

The third was Kissyface’s steady, amused breathing.

He’d evidently found the mic the preacher wears for his sermons. In the time it had taken for two high school seniors to smoke a cigarette halfway down, Mark had decided that, because Kissyface needs the hands-free action—any mad-dog killer would, right? —the mic must be a clip-on, the wire threaded inside his shiny black athletic undershirt, maybe electric-taped to his ribs, even. Otherwise it would come loose every time he swings that gaff.

And his cheeks . . . his cheeks are the real spectacle. Instead of letting those holes heal like would make sense, like you do if you want to get past a bad day on the playground, this boy who had become Kissyface, he’d picked at them all through his recovery, until they had to strap his hands to the side of his institutional bed. But even still, he’d been able to punch the tip of his tongue through the scab that kept trying to form. So they loaded a dental syringe up, deadened his tongue, sure to sit him up so he wouldn’t choke.

It was like this was what he’d been waiting for: using just suction, he pulled his cheeks in until they were touching, and then he bit down, ground around, his face wet with tears.

Never forget, never surrender, all that.

By the time he showed up at school again for junior high, he’d had all the skin grafts everybody’d been lectured and lectured not to notice.

Like that was remotely possible.

For a couple of years there, because of where the skin was rumored to have come from, he’d been ‘Buttface,’ not Kissy-

Still, for those two years, and the few after, he wasn’t pulling at the skin anymore.

As it turned out, he was waiting.

For tonight.

Mark hadn’t stuck around to be sure—the prayer nook he’d been momentarily cornered in was pretty much just a blur—but he was pretty sure that Kissyface had threaded a large safety pin in through his open mouth, through one cheek and then pushing the spring-coil through, stitching through the other side as well, pulling his cheeks together in dimples so deep everybody would know who he was when he was killing them. As for the choice of a safety pin instead of stapler or thread or all the other options, even just suction—was it because safety pins were what the cheerleaders still wore to keep their ribbons on for Fridays, when they were going to be more active than the rest of the class? Was this still that same prank?

Maybe. Probably.

This anniversary had fallen on a Friday, anyway, and Kissyface was definitely being more active than a safety pin could help with.

And his cheeks, now, they were a reminder to the whole town: this had happened, and on their watch.

With just a slightly different roll of the dice, Mark figures, that could be him out there with that gaff, voices whispering in his head for years, blood everywhere he looks, a hollow space inside him for the life he’d never gotten to live. A plan to fill that hole with whatever blood he can find, whatever blood he can let.

It’s not beyond understanding.

Maybe everybody who’s already dead, too—what if they were the kids who had kept the legend alive? Who had whispered the story of the Day of the Triple Hook at sleepovers and in the back of buses?

These were all sleepovers Mark had never been invited to either. Buses Mark knew better than to walk all the way to the back of.

Which is where this night starts to feel particularly unfair.

“I can understand that he wants you,” he says to Chrissy at last, passing the cigarette back. “Your brother . . . you know.”

“I hated my brother.”

“But you’re related,” Mark says, breathing his smoke out through his nose like his first boyfriend taught him was a secret code. “The blood that was in him, it’s sort of still in you. That’s probably good enough, the way he’s figuring it.”

“He?”“Kissyface.”

“That’s not his name. It’s just Derek. He was always a dweeb.”

“That you even know his name gets you in the victim pool, though. But me—right?”

“What do you mean?”“You don’t have to pretend,” Mark says, flinching around to a sound in the corner. It’s just the quarterback’s corpse, relaxing into a slightly lower position, like even in death he’s trying to avoid getting sacked.

“You think I’m pretending?” Chrissy says, a lilt to her voice that Mark knows is both a challenge of sorts and a reminder of who’s actually who, here.

She doesn’t look over to see if her tone lands like she means it, though. She’s occupied watching the open doorway directly across from her, that opens onto the sanctuary. Like it’s her duty. Like if she even looks away for an instant, Kissyface will come gibbering through.

Directly in front of Mark, beside the doorway Chrissy’s watching, is what he guesses his duty must be: a framed poster of long fingers on piano keys, in some orchestral dark. There’s scrawly, surely homiletic white words at the bottom, but with the glare on the plastic protecting the poster, he can’t quite make them out.

All he can see is his own silhouette. And, when he ducks down to his hand for a drag, Chrissy’s.

“You’re pretending not to know that he’s not saving you for last,” Mark says to her.

“Double negative,” Chrissy tells him, like identifying a species of bird nobody really cares about.

Mark tracks back, fixes it: “You’re pretending he’s not saving you for last.”

Chrissy squints, probably trying to make sense of just removing one negative and getting the same meaning—Mark can’t figure it out either, quite—and finally she looks over to him, her lips screwed up in question.

“He could have killed you in the preacher’s office back there, easy,” Mark explains. “Under the desk is the first place you look. It’s the first place anybody would look.”

“You were watching?”

“I was hiding.”

“And you didn’t do anything?”“I don’t even know you,” Mark says. “Not really.”

“Still,” Chrissy says.

“You’re you, you mean?” Mark says.

She doesn’t say no.

“Do you even know my name?” Mark asks.

That she doesn’t answer is answer enough.

“What I’m saying is, it’s not fair,” he goes on. “I’m not even in this . . . whatever this is, this cycle of justice bullshit. This balancing the scales of childhood. I’m an innocent bystander here. But I’m going to die all the same.”

“Because you’re with me?”

“Partly,” Mark says. “Party because the black guy always gets it, as some sort of twisted object lesson.”

“But you’re not black.”

“Is anybody black at our school?”

“There’s—” Chrissy says, but can’t follow it through, no matter how far into her mental yearbook she squints.

“Exactly,” Mark tells her. “But I’m the next best thing.”

“Because you’re . . . not attracted to me?” Chrissy says, finally looking over to him.

“Like that would make sense, right?” Mark says, tonguing at his lower lip so his grin won’t be so obvious. “Me having the equipment I have, you having the kind of equipment you like to flash around?”

Chrissy laughs through her nose, her dimples showing.

“Thought you weren’t supposed to notice,” she says.

“I was taking notes,” Mark says. “Got to watch the competition, right?” She nods, can appreciate this.

“One thing I’ve never understood, though,” Mark goes on. “Since you bring it up.”

“‘It,’ watcher-boy?”“You wish,” he says. “But—youth group and all that. Like, abstinence is the good thing, right? The message, the sales drive, the big push?”

Chrissy shrugs sure, adds, “But there’s not like a chart for what exactly counts, what doesn’t.”

“There’s always workarounds,” Mark says, already bored with that part of it, “reacharounds, as it were. But, still, if abstinence is the desired state, then what’s it matter then if you’re into guys or you’re into girls? I mean, if everybody’s not doing what they want to be doing anyway, does it even matter what they want to be doing?”

“You should have asked Pastor Rob all this,” Chrissy says, stubbing the cigarette out on the carpet, which, as much as anything, chills Mark through and through: if even she’s not taking care of this place anymore, then it is all coming down tonight, isn’t it?

“Pastor Rob . . . ” Mark says, squinting to remember. “He’s the one hanging by the extension cord from the—”

“That’s not what killed him,” Chrissy says, batting the sudden mistiness from her eyes in a way that makes Mark want to cast around for a camera.

“Yeah . . . ” Mark says, trying to figure how to phrase this. “Celibate or not, you need the lower half of your body, I figure.”

“He wasn’t that celibate,” Chrissy says, and for an instant Mark looks over to her, like she’s a code he can crack. Like she might actually be a code worth cracking. But he lets it go.

“Either way,” he says. “I’m dead, I figure. You’re talking to a dead man. If anything I’m the quirky sidekick here. Non-threatening to you sexually, always good for a laugh and a wise word, and, once I’m dead, I can even be an object lesson, right? An instant regret? A final reminder? You can pick up a candelabra or something, avenge my skinny ass.”

“Any last words?” Chrissy says, still watching the dark doorway across from them as if she remembers Kissyface from elementary, knows something about how he might make an entrance.

Mark looks around, says, “Last words, last words . . . Yeah. What the hell are we sitting on?”

The inflatable log.

Chrissy smiles about this.

“It’s part of a play we were supposed to do next week,” she says. “It’s not really meant to be a—a tree trunk. It’s a, I don’t know what they’re called, one of those runners or pontoons that go on a boat. Except kind of . . . it’s for a pool, I think? I painted it myself.”

She strikes another cigarette up.

“What’s the play?” Mark asks.

“You said ‘ass,’” she says, smiling around her first drag.

“Probably something about a mote and a log,” Mark says.

“Or a phallic object.”

Mark bites his lower lip, stares at his shadowy outline in the shiny plastic of the piano poster.

“We could make out,” he says.

Chrissy has to cough her smoke out, then fan the air in front of her mouth for breathing room.

“This how you tell him exactly where we are?” Mark says. “Some secret signal the two of you worked out after school?”

“Make out?” she says.

“Desperate times,” Mark says. “I mean, the way Kissyface sees it—would it look like I was cured, you think? We are in a church, right? ‘Cured’ is the right word, isn’t it? Or would it be more like an exorcism? Does your denomination think I have demons, or just a temporary cold?”

Chrissy passes him the cigarette like they’ve known each other their whole lives, not just these last few minutes.

“So you’d be less . . . quirky if it looked like you were into girls?”

“Guess it would also compromise you, though,” Mark adds, thinking it through from all the angles. “You wouldn’t be as pure anymore, just making out with some random guy, and in a church, of all places. With dead quarterbacks watching.”

She looks over to him again.

“I think you know my answer, then,” she says.

Mark lowers the cigarette in a way he’s practiced in the mirror ten thousand times.

“Probably for the best,” he says, exhaling through his nose again, staring into that romantic middle distance.

For maybe thirty seconds they sit. Contemplating, it feels like.

“My real life,” Mark finally says. “It was going to start at graduation. No more of these high school games.”

“High school never ends,” Chrissy says back, like reciting a lecture. “You just start wearing ties in the halls.”

“Still,” Mark says. “It wouldn’t have been these halls.”

“You’ve never been here before.”

“This town, I mean.”

“That bad?”“Could have been better, yeah.”

“You were after Leo, weren’t you?” Chrissy says.

Mark looks over to see the cast of her face.

“It’s all right,” she says. “Doesn’t matter now, does it?”

“Then he wouldn’t have been . . . into me? That what you’re saying with your past tense?”

“He might have been,” Chrissy says, shrugging, taking the cigarette. “But he might have been both, too. I mean, maybe he was a . . . what’s the word?”“Switch hitter?”

“That, yeah.”

It figures, Mark says inside.

Now when Kissyface is standing over him, digging the gaff around for some prime liver meat, Mark won’t even be able to tell himself it was all for love, that it had all almost been worth it.

“But I—” Chrissy starts, picking her words carefully: “I have it on good authority he spends some quality time in our dugout as well.”

“‘Dugout,’” Mark says, not able to keep his smile down this time.

Chrissy smiles too. She really is beautiful, in a classical, wispy kind of way.

“That gaff he’s got,” Mark says. “It’s from your uncle’s garage, isn’t it?”

“Why?” Chrissy says.

“Just—I bet the ritual of all this, it’s important for him. Getting a weapon from the same set of tackle that originally hurt him, it would have to feel righteous, wouldn’t it? Like a circle, closing.”

Chrissy doesn’t answer.

“Do you know what ever happened to that fish hook?” Mark says. “From the playground that day? The real one, I mean.”

“You’re sick,” Chrissy says.

“I’m telling you to be careful,” Mark says. “If this is a ritual for him, then the re-enactment part’s probably pretty important.”

Chrissy sucks her cheeks in to her teeth with realization of what’s Mark’s saying.

“He wouldn’t,” she says.

“I think he has to try,” Mark says. “It’s not quite the sins of the father. But I bet a big brother counts.”

“I won’t let him. I won’t open my mouth.”

“That’s the spirit.”

Still, she hands the cigarette back, says, “You’re pretty grim, you know that, right?”

“Do you know what the boy’s locker room is like for me?” Mark asks back.

She narrows her eyes at him.

“Not a peep show,” he says, before she can suggest it.

“You’re saying it’s—”

“I’m saying it’s grim.”

She nods, can accept this. Just as a fact of life, not anything she feels compelled to address, or apologize for in the general sense.

“Were you serious, about making out?” she says.

“No atheists in a fox hole . . . ” Mark says.

“‘Fox hole,’” Chrissy says, liking it.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Mark says, breathing the smoke in deep enough that his eyes water. “More like cavern of mysteries. Tunnel of horror. The shiny mollusk nightmares are made of. Passage to—”

“Okay, okay, you don’t have to be gross about it.”

She reaches for the cigarette but Mark takes another long drag instead, like trying to cash it.

“You shouldn’t even be smoking these,” he says, holding the cigarette out sideways to study it. To showcase it. “If you want to live, you’ve got to be pure. Keep those lungs pink.”

“Think it’s a little late for that,” Chrissy says, snatching for the cigarette.

Mark palms it, smiles at her slowness.

“Cigarettes don’t count,” she says.

“Like the . . . other things that don’t count? I should talk to Pastor Rob, shouldn’t I? Think he’s got office hours next week? I bet he does. He can be in two places at once, now.”

Mark can’t help chuckling.

Chrissy doesn’t even come close.

“It’s no surprise you had to go gay,” she says. “You’re not exactly . . . unabrasive.”

Mark breathes in, breathes out, his exhale synching up with Kissyface’s breath coming through the speakers.

“That’s not really how it works,” Mark says. “You don’t go one way or the other. You’re just on the same road the whole time, no forks, no branches, no choice—no regrets. But thanks for giving it some real thought.”

Chrissy watches him for maybe five seconds, here. Mark can feel it. It makes him pay attention to the doorway she’s supposed to be watching.

It’s empty. For now.

“We shouldn’t fight,” she says.

“You’re right,” Mark says, in his best fake voice. “It’s not like we’re going to be a couple, right? Bickering’s hardly worth the investment.”

“You’re just mad because Leo didn’t swing your way. Or did you think you could, what? Flip him?”

“Common misperception number . . . what are we on by now? It’s a choice to be who you are out loud, yes. In the halls. But it’s not a choice to be who you are.”

“More like ‘what,’ right?”

“I’m seriously losing count here. But no, Leo’s not what I’m pissed off about. If I’m pissed off, it’s because there’s a killer out there who wants to push a fish pike into the back of my head, so that it comes out my mouth.”

“Gross.”

“Like that isn’t?”

He flings his hand casually over to the quarterback. Because a fast death would be too kind for his kind, Kissyface had shaved off the quarterback’s nose and lips and eyebrows and eyelids and ears, then sawed the crown off the scalp as well. On his—Kissyface’s—way out the door, Kissyface had evidently slapped the scalp into the wall, leading with the sticky side.

It wasn’t sliding down, either. The adhesive properties of bodily fluids. Who knew.

Chrissy squeaks out a little chirp of sympathy pain about the quarterback. Or something. It’s not exactly a sound Mark’s ever heard before.

Guys are so much easier. Because this is, after all, a church, he says a silent little prayer of thanks that he’s only ever had to navigate guys.

On cue, Chrissy scoots over on the log. A few inches closer to him.

“Mind?” she says.

“At your service,” Mark says.

Instead of reaching for the stub of a cigarette Mark’s considering pulling one more black lungful from, she gets another new one going.

It keeps the smell of all-star guts at bay, some. If not the sight.

“Think they’ll build a new church, after this?” she says, gesturing around with her cigarette so that the cherry drags sparks across the whole place.

“Not fast enough for the funerals, anyway,” Mark says. “You never told me what that play was going to be. Something about a giant penis, I take it?”

Chrissy laughs, leans into him, says, “I wish.”

Mark casually places his hand on the smooth plastic of the log left between them. It’s right where one of the internal ridges comes up—some sort of bulkhead or safety thing, so that if the log or pontoon or floatie or whatever pops a hole, then just one chamber empties, not all of them.

His hand isn’t there for support, though. It’s to keep Chrissy Carlton from coming any closer.

If he’s going to die, then it’s going to be on his terms. As himself.

At least give me that, he says inside, and checks the doorway again, the one he’s been counting on Chrissy to be watching.

When it’s empty again—how many times can it be empty?—he drags his eyes back to his silhouette of a reflection on the poster. It’s like looking into the mystery of himself: why are you not hiding? why are you not running? why are you not gathering hymnals to use as grenades, candles to use as torches? couldn’t you survive by stepping under the now-red water of the baptismal, and breathing through a straw? or what if you dressed in the preacher’s robes? would Kissyface back away from a figure like that? can’t you use the strength of the breathing through the speakers as a measure of distance from the base unit, and then hide in the most opposite direction?

Answer: none of that has any hope. All it does is delay.

Mark figures he’s had something like two hours to plan his resistance, his survival. An intense two hours, no doubt, a desperate hundred and twenty minutes lubricated with blood and lubricated well, but Kissyface, he’s been working on this since elementary school.

Case closed.

“What are you thinking?” Chrissy says up to him, and Mark flicks his eyes away from his own shadowed outline in the piano poster. He flicks his eyes to the space maybe three inches above his head, over in Chrissy’s direction.

There’s a tiny green light. It’s floating between them like a firefly.

And then it blinks once, weakly. Not like a firefly.

Mark stops breathing, and Kissyface’s steady breathing continues, all around the room.

“What am I thinking . . . ” he says, trying to figure that out himself.

That green light in the reflection, that green light behind them, it’s an indicator, isn’t it? That the power, some power, it’s on. And ever since the breaker box went down in a shower of sparks from the fire axe, the only power left anymore in the church, it’s battery power. And the only thing Mark knows for sure is running right now on battery power, it’s the little black box that hooks to your belt or the change pocket of your jeans, the little black box that a late mic plugs into, to transmit.

Kissyface has been in here all along, hidden back in the choir robes.

His breath through the speakers was to throw them off. To make them think he was far away.

He’s been here the whole time. Listening.

“Keep it to yourself if what you’re thinking's gross again,” Chrissy says, still watching ahead of them, the glare and angle of the plastic probably hiding the green light in the poster’s reflection from her.

“Do you remember him?” Mark says, leading her into this. “This . . . Derek, was it?”

“Derek,” Chrissy says, holding onto Mark’s upper arm with both her hands now, like she’s about to lay her head on his shoulder. Like this is a postcard they’re in, not a horror movie. “You know that’s like three of the four letters of ‘dork,’ right? In the hall we used to always call out to him, to buy a vowel already. That we all knew. That he wasn’t fooling anybody.”

She laughs from the guilty-sweet terribleness of this secret.

Mark only has eyes for that green light behind them.

It’s closer in the reflection now. Brighter.

He pulls the cigarette butt to his lips again and drags deep, around the lump in his throat. He’s not reaching for the smoke this time, though. He’s heating that cherry up as hot as it’ll go, and then one breath hotter.

Then, moving slow and deliberate, trying to keep his right hand from trembling, he guides that butt down to the span of stretched-tight plastic between him and Chrissy Carlton.

“What?” she says, tracking his hand down like he might burn her, or smudge her pants.

“I think this is for you,” Mark says, and flips the cigarette over expertly to grind the cherry down all at once, his chamber of the log or whatever it is popping all at once, dropping his seat a foot and a half all at once.

It’s just in time.

In the space his head was, a gaff whistles through, swinging for the bleachers. Because Kissyface, he was playing by the rules. The best killers always do, right till the end. Chrissy was still going to be the last to die, but only by half a second. The gaff was going to slice through Mark’s head, then t-ball it over into hers like a croquet ball, knocking her over hard but not hard enough that she wouldn’t be able to get up, run, keep things interesting for a few more minutes.

Only, now, that swing, Chrissy gets every last bit of it.

The gaff catches her left eye socket and her head pulls around as far it will, and then, with the force of Kissyface’s swing, farther, the vertebrae in her neck cracking over to accommodate. She doesn’t even have time to chirp or squeak or whatever her signature sound is.

Pastor Rob would probably know.

Mark smiles, thinking this, and, operating purely on instinct, reaches across to two-finger the new cigarette from her hand before she can slough down to the floor.

He stands then, his heart in his throat, his throat in his mouth, his life balanced on the sharpened edge of a pilfered gaff.

He’s the same height as Kissyface.

It’s not something he expected. Killers like this, they’re giant, they’re epic, they’re monumental.

But they’re also human, aren’t they?

They were once, anyway.

Chrissy Carlton slumps over into Mark and he raises the cigarette just in time to keep from losing it, pushes her away with his knee as politely as possible.

“And then there were really two,” he says, completely surprised to find that his voice actually works. “The killer and the . . . the final—me.”

Kissyface can’t smile appreciation for this.

One of his contacts—this is from the fight the quarterback put up, drilling offering plate after offering plate across the sanctuary—it’s slipped, has to be leaving him blind in one eye, messing with his depth perception. Meaning that gaff, swinging, it had been swinging with more than a little bit of luck.

But Kissyface, he was due some luck, Mark figures.

He wants to fix that contact for him, but doesn’t know where to start.

“I’m sorry,” he says instead.

Kissyface doesn’t limber the gaff up from Chrissy’s head in response. But he doesn’t let the handle go, either.

“I’m sorry for what they did to you, I mean,” Mark says.

Kissyface breathes in through his hourglassed lips. The lipstick’s smeared all over his mouth. Mark cold trace it with his fingertip, clean those edges up.

But then he registers what it is Kissyface is doing, here: he’s breathing in, yes. But not just the air. It’s the exact same gasping mannerism Mark’s seen in his dad’s koi fish, when the pump fouls, stops oxygenating their pond. The koi belly up onto the bank, try to breath that air, their lips opening and closing.

What Kissyface is trying to breathe in, it’s the smoke curling up along Mark’s leg, scrimming up between them.

All those months in rehab, and then all the years locked up for psych eval after psych eval. You pick up a few things. You pick up bad habits.

Mark looks down to this cigarette he’s saved. This cigarette he plucked from death’s fingers.

“I feel like we’re in some kind of a play here,” he says, pulling the cigarette to his lips, dragging in as much as his lungs will hold, and then a little bit more.

And then he steps up into Kissyface’s space, the toes of Mark’s sneakers nudged right up against Kissyface’s theatric combat boots.

Kissyface doesn’t flinch back—of the two of them, he’s the mad-dog killer here—but he does free the gaff from Chrissy’s head.

Mark reaches over with the spare fingers of his cigarette hand, touches Kissyface’s wrist to keep that gaff there. To show him that’s not what this is about.

What it is about is leaning in, leading with the mouth.

His trembling lips just brush Kissyface’s mangled ones.

The way those cheeks are safety-pinned together, there’s no way for the mouth to close enough for the suction a proper cigarette drag needs.

There are ways, though. There are always ways.

Mark breathes out gently, passing the smoke from mouth to mouth, and it’s the single most intimate act he’s ever engaged in.

Kissyface takes all that he can, and holds it inside, savors it.

When he breathes it back out, it’s twin streams from his nostrils.

Mark reaches up with the back of his index finger to dab a smudge of Chrissy’s blood from Kissyface’s cheek.

“When you first showed up,” he says, “when you stood up from that pulpit, started preaching down fire and brimstone on the graduating class, man. I thought you were a ghost.”

Something glimmers alive in Kissyface’s eyes, behind the contacts.

“I’m glad you weren’t,” Mark adds, and then, faint but definitely happening, there really are sirens screeching up.

They don’t unlock Kissyface’s eyes from Mark’s.

He reaches out, dabs at a spot on Mark’s cheek that’s probably Chrissy’s blood too, and it tickles enough that Mark has to rub it in deeper.

“Think they’re playing your song,” he says, nodding out front, at the sanctuary doors already creaking from a shoulder, or a wall of shoulders, or a battering ram.

Kissyface faces that direction, his fingers whitening on the shaft of that gaff, and when Chrissy’s left foot spasms, they both look down to it.

It stops a breath or two later.

Kissyface’s one clear eye darts up for Mark.

“Ha ha ha,” Kissyface says, and it’s such a slowed-down, creaky-sick parody of a laugh that Mark knows instantly that Kissyface is distinctly not laughing about what happened on the playground all those years ago.

But he still remembers. Every detail. Every slice of an instant.

Instead of extracting an oversized black treble hook from some pocket or bag or case—a hook like that would still be too hot to touch, for him—he presses his right boot down on the side of Chrissy’s face, working her mouth open. Using just the grabby part of the gaff, he reaches in, snags her tongue way at the back, and gives the gaff a good hard twist, her teeth cracking at first to accommodate, and then the hinge her jaw.

The tongue pops right out, trailing a white tendon and bright red blood. It’s longer than Mark would have figured. And still writhing, the gaff probably pinching something in the muscle.

Kissyface and Mark give Chrissy’s tongue the solemn spotlight moment it deserves, and then Kissyface does unlimber something from a cargo pocket.

At first Mark thinks it’s an Easter Egg, the kind that open in the middle to reveal their prize inside.

That’s not far off.

It’s a plastic bubble, clear on its round top, with a black base. It looks like a 1950s cartoon UFO. Just, without any aliens slavering behind the glass.

Not until Kissyface thumbs the tongue into that space, clicks the bubble shut decisively.

“Well then,” Mark says.

Kissyface nods, has to look away to the front door, splintering, but he doesn’t look away fast enough that Mark misses the new sheen on his eyes. Collecting at the bottom of his eyes.

He wipes at it as if embarrassed to still be that much human, and manages to dislodge the slipped contact, and—that eye, both his eyes, surely, they’re ice blue, were engineered to look across endless expanses of tundra, always with dustings of snow skirling up.

Mark can almost see it himself.

And then, hours too soon, Kissyface steps forward, into that sanctuary doorway that’s no sanctuary at all, his gaff-hand to the doorframe like to pull himself through into this next act.

But partway through this final gesture, he stops, looks back for one more moment as if considering whether a thing can work or not. Evidently it can, because he tosses that clear bubble of tongue meat across to Mark.

Mark catches it soft like you would an egg.

The tongue’s not just longer than he thought it would be, but it’s heavier too. With a lifetime of words Chrissy’s never going to get to speak, now.

“Where does it go?” he says, and when Kissyface just stares, Mark nods, knows: into the throat of whatever quarter machine he finds next. So it can salmon its way up the tube, back into the rattle of plastic bubbles.

Because it never stops, this kind of cycle.

Waiting days or months or years in that machine, Chrissy Carlton’s tongue will desiccate and contract, then, with a single quarter, bloom into something perfect, something fun, something that doesn’t know how to die.

Mark holds the plastic bubble up, waggles it, then drops it into his chest pocket, to show how close to his heart he’s going to keep it.

“Go already,” he says to Kissyface, and Kissyface—Derek—ducks through the doorway just as some assault team flunky out in the sanctuary leans down on the keys at the low end of the organ, giving the night its sombre theme music, the reverb dialed all the way up.

Mark nods about this, raises the cigarette to his lips, then closes his eyes, pulls in deep, waits for the rest his life to start happening.

The Shell

Norman Prentiss

My first year after college, my best friend Maddie headed out of state for two weeks and needed someone to watch her cat. I couldn’t do it because of my allergies, but recommended that place your sister used a couple times for Nisha: a nice family, so the cat would be in a home instead of a cage at the local “Pet Hotel,” and they were easy on the budget, too. When Maddie got back in town there was a message on her home phone. The woman said something along the lines of, don’t be alarmed when you get here, your cat’s lost a little weight, and Maddie just freaked out. Two weeks? How could Tab lose weight in two weeks? Why didn’t they call sooner? —that kind of thing, and I had to go with Maddie to pick him up because she was in no state to drive. The whole way, she worried me with questions: I’d given them the number for my vet, so why didn’t they call him? What could have happened to Tab, bad enough for a stranger to notice? What if I don’t recognize him, Jay?

“You will,” I assured her then. “Look in his eyes.”

We parked at the curb, and Maddie got the plastic cat carrier from the back seat of my Escort. The carrier had been too big to set in her lap as we drove, because Tab was a sweet, fat thing and needed an oversized case: it actually had a Labrador’s picture on the product sticker, but that’s the best fit she could find in those days when people our age bought most everything at Target.

The house was pleasant enough, split level with lots of shade trees on the property, and a fenced-in back yard. Dogs barked from that area as we approached, different breeds from the sound of it, and I wondered how many animals the family boarded on a given day.

The empty carrier bounced against Maddie’s right hip as she walked out of balance up the stone pathway. I stepped ahead of her to the porch, opened the screen door and rang the bell. Another variety of barks responded, then the cautious opening of the main door—not for fear of a strange visitor, but from worry that some animal might hurry out. A teenage boy stared past me at Maddie, saw the carrier at her side, and shouted Mom! without turning his head. He had a leash looped in each hand and he stepped between us, dragging his charges outside to fertilize the lawn. The smaller dog could barely keep up: the boy looped more of that leash over his palm, nearly pulling the well-groomed Yorkie off the ground after him.

I didn’t really want to go inside the house, but we couldn’t stand there with the door open. The smell of Glade stick and spray fresheners hit me immediately, not strong enough to cover the musk and litter box odors. The skin along my exposed arms started to itch, and I imagined I could see pet dander floating with dust motes, ready to tickle my breath into a fit of sneezing. Not yet, though. I held it back, for my friend’s sake.

Maddie set the cat case on the braided rug circle—multi-colored tubes of cloth stitched together, worn down by sneakers and padded feet, soon to be cut in strips and knotted for a dog’s growling tug-o’-war.

The empty case. I feared she might not have something alive to put in it.

Some doors opened and closed upstairs. “You must be Madeline,” a voice said above us. Her shoes echoed like wooden clogs along the uncarpeted stairs. She cradled a bundle in the crook of her right arm. A towel was wrapped around what would have seemed a human baby, if it weren’t for the orange ringed tail that hung limp out one end.

“I left you the message.” The woman spoke as she descended, the voice of a mother from a distant room warning her son to wash up before supper. “Your guy hasn’t been feeling too well. Came on all of a sudden.”

I sniffled a little, the dander starting to agitate me, and Maddie sniffled too. She was holding back tears, of course, and I thought for sure that woman was delivering Tab’s corpse in a rag-scrap blanket.

More clog steps, and that booming voice didn’t get quieter. “He’ll get better, sweetie. Get him home.”

She wouldn’t say such things if Tab had died. The tail twitched slightly.

“Too small,” Maddie said between sniffles. “Too small.”

There it was. Now, I hadn’t spent much time around Tab. Maddie usually came to my apartment, and for my brief visits to her place she’d vacuum the hell out of the living areas and shut the cat in her bedroom for the duration. Still, I saw him now and then from a distance, galumphing behind a door or, more likely, a furry orange and white smear sprawled atop the down comforter on Maddie’s bed. Tab was a heavy cat, even with the diet kibble Maddie got from her vet: he just ate more of it. An animal that big, and this woman—with, well, a cat-lady’s physique, short and a little flabby, none too strong—she clomped down the stairs with him cradled in one arm, effortless.

She reached the landing, held the bundle out for Maddie to accept. “You can keep the blanket, dear.”

The cat was all covered up, including a flap of cloth over his head. “Look in his eyes,” I whispered to Maddie.

She took the bundle. Surprised at how light it was, she burst into tears.

Maddie reached to lift the flap.

“Look in his eyes,” I repeated. “You’ll recognize him.”

I kept saying that, even as Maddie kept crying, as she stared daggers at the woman—who had the nerve to mention the balance due after the deposit, and I wouldn’t let Maddie pay, practically threw two twenties at the woman to keep her from asking again—as Maddie lifted the flap of cloth, saw her beloved pet’s frail thin head, the animal weak but still alive; as she opened the carrier and placed Tab inside, along with that woman’s stupid blanket, and the cat so small in his big container, sending Maddie into a fresh burst of tears.

Look into his eyes.

Later, after she’d taken him to the vet’s office, and Tab died there the same night, Maddie spoke to me about her first look beneath that blanket.

“I did what you said. I looked in his eyes. He wasn’t there.”

*

I had that same thought when you came back to me.

*

At some point or another, everybody has a sampling of what it’s like to be in a long-distance relationship. A college girlfriend spends a semester in Italy; a spouse attends a week-long training conference or visits an ill relative for a fortnight. Go ahead. I’ll be fine. Maybe playing up the sympathy a bit, a ploy for better treatment when the other half returns home.  All the while secretly thinking: This might be fun. I’ll have the apartment to myself, won’t need to clean or follow his schedule, can indulge in fast food dinners without her disapproving glances. I’ll catch up on my Newsweeks or finish that shelving project in the garage. And here is what actually happens: you begin in optimism, the temporary bachelor days planned full of activities, but the first day you do nothing, and because it’s strange sleeping alone, you read in bed until 3am. You’re exhausted the next day, practically sleepwalking at work, and accomplish nothing of note that evening. That night, sleep will again be difficult. You simply miss him or her too much.

At least, that’s how it always was for me.

So, when SureTech needed you in India to supervise the IT installations for their new branch office, I began with my usual optimism.

“I’ll fix up the home office, like I’ve been meaning to do.”

“Good idea,” you said, clearing our plates from the table. I hadn’t finished my asparagus, but you chose not to comment.

“Keep myself busy.”

“Oh, don’t pout Jay.”

Was I pouting? I wasn’t aware of it. “The news is a little sudden, is all.”

“Jennifer was supposed to go,” you said, heading into the kitchen. “But then her— “

“Her son.” Easy enough to predict, since the same thing had happened before, on a smaller scale—emergency pick-ups from daycare, sudden doctor visits, custody issues with her ex. I’d have been more sympathetic if you weren’t constantly making excuses for your lax co-worker.

“Kid’s got an infection.” You put the dishes in the sink and ran the faucet over them briefly, speaking over the running water. “The doctor prescribed a course of antibiotics that might produce side effects. She can’t leave the country right now.”

“Of course not.”

I stared at the table where my plate had been, while you turned off the faucet then walked back into the dining room.

“I’m sorry, Jay. But this is a good leadership opportunity. I was lucky they were able to change the plane tickets into my name.”

So, it had already been decided. “I guess you couldn’t ask them to change it back.”

“It’s a month. Tops.”

“Melanie could take the kid with her. Don’t kids fly for free?”

“Now, stop.” You stood behind me, grabbed the back of my chair and gave it a gentle shake. I stretched my arms up toward your shoulders, ran my fingers along the creased fabric of your work shirt.

“I guess it won’t be so bad,” I said. “It’s not like you’d be going off to war. I know you’ll come back.”

I stood up and hugged you—tight but quick, like one of those movie hugs at a train platform.

There were other consolations, you assured me then. It wouldn’t be like low-tech separations in the previous decade, when we’d had to schedule brief, expensive calls from the hotel room. There were cell phones now, and plus, part of your job in India was to set up video-conferencing software: no reason you couldn’t use that same system to connect with our home laptop, and then we’d be able to see each other.

“Great,” I said, recovering some of my initial optimism. When you said the four weeks would be over before I realized it, I didn’t contradict you.

The cell phones and emails would help, and the video feeds as well. I hugged you again, felt my arms around your torso then stepped back to run a hand along one side of your neck. For a moment, my palm would smell like the spice and sandalwood residue of your aftershave lotion. But it wouldn’t last.

*

Well, we spent a nice week together before you had to head out. Two meals at neighborhood restaurants, a movie on the weekend, and a lot of quiet evenings at home. I won’t do it here, but I really could write pages and pages of minute details—that’s how carefully I memorized those days, so I could summon them later during your absence.

I went a bit too far in that respect, I’ll be the first to admit.

*

The video conferencing wasn’t as easy to set up as you expected, so it was about a week before you got it running. There was a slight lag in the Internet connection, so a couple times we interrupted each other, said sorry, then did it again. I wanted to chime “over” after each sentence, like truckers did in CB radio days.

“It’s really you, isn’t it,” I said.

“In the flesh.” Your face blurred when you moved, and there was a slight fishbowl distortion, but it was amazing to see you as we talked—so animated and responding to my comments. You wore a suitcoat and tie, more formal than your usual work attire to indicate your management status. The wall behind you was a clean white, with no paintings or other decorations.

“Show me the rest of your workspace.”

Some loud clicks and the muffle of a hand over a microphone as your image jerked out of my view, then a blurry pan across the office floor.

“Were those cubicles?”

“Tell you the truth, I’m not really sure.” You clipped the camera back into place, framing yourself and the bland wall behind. “Some of those might be markers for actual walls.” A stage whisper: “They can’t seem to make up their minds.”

I took this as code to mean: you might be there longer than anticipated.

“Hey, is that me in there?”

At first I didn’t realize what you were saying. The technology was still new to me, so I didn’t quite register how much you could see. It was tomorrow morning for you, from the time difference, but eleven at night for me.

I’d set up the laptop in our room, giving you view of the bed, my legs over the kicked-down covers, my back slumped against the headboard. I hadn’t been thinking, or I would have hidden the pillow that I held against me when I tried to sleep.

“Just one of your shirts,” I said, embarrassed and pushing the shirt and pillow out of camera range. It might have looked like I shoved you out of bed. “I’m kind of a slob today, but I promise the place will be clean when you get back.”

“No worries,” you said. Then you told me more about the mess things were in at the new site, basically three bosses with different ideas of what should go where, and language barriers, too, and the culture so different from that of an American office. You whispered as if afraid to be overheard, and instead of a normal eavesdropper paused around a corner, or with ear to a cup held against the opposite wall, I imagined a security tech in headphones, huddled beneath a bank of computer monitors, typing commands to isolate the frequency of your voice.

“Hey, the cab drivers here are crazy.”

“Really?”

“Maybe worse than New York. It’s like I’m taking my life in my hands to get to work.” A blip froze the image for a moment and your face became completely still. You stopped talking, but there was other audio: the grind of equipment, a metal door sliding open, a sledgehammer swung into a piece of drywall.

You coughed, and it seemed to jar the image back into motion. “Sell any new policies today?”

“I worked from home.” Fidelity Life is good about that: no need for me to go into the office every day, as long as I call in and keep my accounts updated. “Went out for a quick lunch at Panera’s, to escape the apartment for a bit.” Burger King, actually, but you wouldn’t have approved.

“That sounds pretty good right now. There’s an odd spice to things here, whatever I try. Maybe it’s the water.” You raise a clear plastic glass to your mouth and take a long drink. The glass is smudged on the outside, or there’s something in it, or it’s some stupid pixilation from the compressed video. “Miss you.”

I smile as big as I can in response—to make sure you can see it. “That’s what I like to hear.”

[A whistle of wind.]

“Love you,” I said, and from your image it looked like you said the same thing, and our words cancelled each other out. You told me you’d check in later from your hotel room.

I closed the laptop, putting the computer into sleep mode.

If only I could put myself in that mode so easily. I kicked the loose covers towards the foot of the bed then swung my legs over the edge and stood.

When I walked to rescue “you” from the floor at the other side of the bed, it struck me how the half-dressed pillow had landed, the shirt sleeves twisted at odd angles as if the arms flailed in the air during the fall. If there had been a head on this improvised body, its neck would have broken.

*

We talked usually twice a day, once via video chat and once over the cell phones, with countless emails between. It was a good pattern, keeping us connected—but in isolated doses. I felt like my words and manner were somewhat forced: saying I missed you, and meaning that of course, but with a false cheer to the rest of it. As I think about it, a relationship isn’t built on scheduled bursts of conversation but on little gestures or meaningless breaths—things you wouldn’t bother to share in an email or repeat with some special emphasis, but you don’t have to, because you’re both in the same room. It seems to me, the real intimacy lies in those throwaway moments. Half-registered as they happen, but missed terribly when they’re gone.

When you’re gone.

So maybe I shouldn’t have been so embarrassed about the pillow. I’m guessing a lot of people do this, when they’re used to someone else in the bed: cuddle instead with a blanket or pillow, maybe even an article of clothing that reminds them of the person who’s missing.

Would it be so strange to talk to these bits of cloth as well? Small observations: a comment about work or the day’s weather; a reminder about the rent check or an overdue library book. People talk to themselves all the time, so how is this different? It’s a comfort.

*

One of those nights—a rare night, when I fell soundly asleep—I dreamed that you were dead. It wasn’t exactly a nightmare, though all the trappings were there: a fogged cemetery, a tombstone carved with your name, a hand clawing up through grave dirt. Instead of being frightened, I step forward and clasp the hand, not bothered by the cold gray fingers, dirt and blood beneath the chipped nails, and I brace my feet and pull, helping you out of the grave the same as I’d help you off the couch after a weekend nap. A flash of lightning highlights your figure, and there’s smudges on your clothing, and clumps of dirt in your tangled hair. I brush soil off your shoulders, pat at wrinkles in the dress shirt and try to smooth a rip in the pants leg. I comb my fingers through your hair to push out the dirt.

“They did a good job on you,” I say. “You’ve held up pretty well.”

Your head has fallen to the side, like you’re listening to me. I lift it upright, but it tilts back over.

“The striped shirt was a good choice,” I say. “Goes well with your gray skin tones. It makes you look thin, too.”

I reach to hug you, and you let me. A few of your joints crack, so I don’t squeeze too tight. I nuzzle into your neck for a moment. There’s an earthy smell, like fresh fertilizer, along with some chemical undertones. “That’s a different aftershave, isn’t it?”

I step back, tell you how good it is to see you again. I’m so glad you could pull yourself away from those other obligations to make time for me.

And then I start blathering away about myself, the self-help book I’ve been reading, a local news story about a missing puppy, and a joke email Dean at work forwarded to me.

When I woke, my face was buried in the collar of your shirt, and I breathed in faint traces of spice and sandalwood.

*

If I tell you.

If I tell you how you passed...

Those details, the cold facts of them. An official phone call, an impossible formal explanation, then cruel logistics: your body in a box on a plane, the usual ceremonies of funeral and grieving.

I can’t illustrate such moments for you. They’d teach you too much about what happened, maybe make your death real again.

It would undo everything.

*

Here is how I did it:

Prayer is a kind of wish that hopes to influence the world. Through repetition, it sometimes gains traction.

In theory. I’ve never quite believed in prayer—in the proper, religious sense. At the same time, I’ve never let go of the idea that a person’s imagination could make things happen. Self-help books about positive thinking, or the idea of a “guided visualization” leading people to see their life goals, and then tease them into reality—to me, such concepts have always seemed reasonable and right.

There’s a power to negative thinking, too: the classic idea of self-fulfilling prophesy. My brain waves are naturally wired to worry—to ask, continually, What’s the worst that could happen? I’ve got a gift for passing similar worries to others—which is why I’m good at my job.

So, whenever we were separated for a time, I wondered if I’d never see you again. What different scenarios would prevent your return: the temptation of newfound love in a foreign land; a bout of food poisoning that slips from dehydration into dysentery; a slight cough that later hacks blood into a Kleenex, or pops a blood vessel in your brain; an auto crash, or some stray cinderblock dropped from the roof of a high-rise or out the trash chute of an orbiting satellite.

If something were to happen to you during our lengthy separation, odds were good I’d have imagined it in advance.

And then I’d blame myself for it.

If my worried thoughts could anticipate your death, my grief could bring you back. Is that too huge a leap in logic?

There’s power in grief, in the sincerity of tears. After your passing, I continued to hug a shirt-covered pillow at night, weeping over the stiff-ironed fabric and softening it. Your cologne continued to fade from the cloth, but some slight residue of your presence stayed with me. I added more articles of clothing: undershirt, pants, socks, arranged on your side of the bed as if ready for you to fill them. In my happier night-time moods, I could stretch out my hand and pretend to touch you.

In darker moods, my hand in the dark felt an abandoned pile of clothing, and it was like the swell of a grave mound.

Each night, I would lie beside your grave, one arm forlorn over the pile of dirt. I listened for the sound of your fingertips against coffin fabric, the tearing of puffed silk, the scratch of nails against wood. Beneath the bed as I slept, your stiff hands would cup and dig through packed soil. You scratched at coffin and bedframe, earth and mattress alike.

The mound of clothing rose like a filled stomach. A gasp of rotten breath clouded the air where you used to sleep.

*

A terrible wish, certainly, but not without its share of beauty. Who could blame a wish born of love and grief?

There’s a similar theme in some favorite tale from your childhood: a prince’s kiss breathing life back into a glass-coffined beauty; a clay golem roused by loving touch or ritualistic words of cabbala; a parent’s wish over a magical fragment of taxidermy, summoning a lost child’s return.  Such tales are common across different time periods and cultures.

I don’t know which of these tales, specifically, caught your fancy as a child. I didn’t know you then, obviously.

Mostly I know about our five years together—from my perspective, and what I assume about yours.

I hoped that would be enough.

*

Now I’d like to tell the story of my own death, if it were to happen before my work with you has finished:

Outside the apartment door, my supervisor from Fidelity Life says, “No, Jay hasn’t checked in for at least a week. Some of his accounts need updating. He’s never let things slide before.”

Knocking on the door.

“See? No answer. His Saturn’s out front, so he should be home.”

More banging on the door. Hello. Hello?

“I’m not authorized to—” Mrs. McKenzie from across the hall. He cuts her off.

“Well who is? Get the landlord here. Or the police.”

Numbers punched into a cell phone.

“And that awful smell—like a dead animal. How could you not notice?”

“Been like that for a while,” she says. “Jay told me not to worry about it.”

The doorknob rattles. Pick one of these: A credit card slips into the door frame. A shoulder slams into wood. A flying kick. The landlord arrives without ceremony. Mrs. McKenzie remembers she has a spare key. The door is already unlocked.

They step inside and immediately know something is wrong. The smell of death overpowers them. Mrs. McKenzie covers her mouth and kneels, says “I think I’m going to be sick.”

In the living room, light filters through squinted slats of the mini-blinds. I’m stretched out on the sofa, eyes shut and dried spittle at the corners of my mouth. My pallor is deadly gray. I’ve soiled myself. An empty prescription bottle lies overturned on the coffee table.

They can’t know, but the guilt has finally overwhelmed me. I wished for something I hadn’t a right to, invented my own prayers and rituals until they worked a kind of magic. The result wasn’t what I expected.

They step past me into the kitchen. Hello? And suddenly my supervisor, who I never thought liked me, yells my name and rushes forward to where I’m curled up on the floor. My face is contorted in agony, hand clawing over a stilled heart. “Oh, how sad,” Mrs. McKenzie says. “How terribly sad. You know, his partner died not too long ago, when— “

“Nothing here,” my supervisor says. He heads into the hallway. My feet dangle a few inches above an overturned chair. A thin rope is tied around an exposed support beam in the ceiling. My face is purple, and my tongue has swollen to the size of a grapefruit. Mrs. McKenzie insists this time she is really going to be sick. My boss pushes me in the chest, making me swing back and forth. When I’m at my furthest arc, he ducks under me and continues down the hall.

He steps into the open bathroom. The shower curtain is pulled aside revealing my nude body in the tub. Most of the water and blood has dripped past the imperfect rubber stopper, but a long rust-colored spray falls from my wrist down the outside of the tub to the stained bathmat.

“Don’t come in here,” my supervisor warns, but Mrs. McKenzie is already peering over his shoulder, preparing a scream.

Whichever of these scenarios, they all end the same. My former supervisor points out that “The smell isn’t the worst here” (meaning in the living room, the kitchen, the hallway or bathroom). “The worst is coming from behind that door.”

The closed door to our bedroom.

He lays his palm flat against it, as if the inanimate piece of wood could have a heartbeat at its center. He takes a steadying breath, twists the knob then throws the door open.

You are quicker. Many things I’d taught you—about our casual calm moments, the thoughtless patterns of our life together. This is what it means to be human, I said. This is what it means to be in love. So much was missing, still: the years before we’d met, countless hours you spent without me at work, with your own family, on an evening walk alone. Any thought you had and didn’t voice, or I misunderstood—I had no way to fill these in. I could only share my idea of you: wonderful and loved, yes, but incomplete.

Some things I was afraid to share. That awful month last year that almost broke us up. Trivial arguments over money or household chores, my list of tics or habits that annoyed you.

Anything about death: what it means, how it happens, why it’s designed to be permanent.

So, you’re angry about these gaps in your knowledge. You’re bored and frustrated at having been brought back to an incomplete life. And I’ve abandoned you.

You know nothing about the desires of the revived dead, those shambling hungry creatures from books and movies. But some instinct kicks in: a hatred of these fresh bodies of blood and breath and consciousness.

Your fingernails have continued to grow, and your teeth haven’t rotted as much as the rest of you. My former supervisor from Fidelity Life doesn’t have a chance to react: you lash out, palming each side of his face, and one thumbnail presses into his left eye socket. He wriggles and turns his head away, exposing his neck, and although you can’t see the blood that thumps and rushes beneath his jugular you find it anyway, your teeth gnashing and twisting at healthy skin that makes you jealous even as you shred and chew it.

He fights back, but you are strong and I never taught you to feel pain. He grows weak from loss of blood, and slumps to the ground.

You have finally learned about death.

Mrs. McKenzie is sick and half-frozen with surprise, but she finally breaks her stupor and turns to run. Perhaps she bumps into my hanging body, or trips over the chair in the hallway. You go after her.

I also hadn’t told you that the revived dead are supposed to walk slowly. You might be quick enough to catch her.

*

You understand my dilemma?

I’m so happy you’re here. It’s what I prayed for. But when you first dug your way back to me, I’m sorry I wasn’t as grateful as I should have been. I mentioned that long ago situation with Maddie and her sick cat—when I insisted that recognition would begin with the eyes. I looked into yours, and couldn’t find you.

Well, I guess it was like bringing a trauma victim home from the hospital. There would be a lot of work before you’d be back to your old self. I led you by the hand around the apartment, re-introducing you to the world.

—This is a couch. We can sit on it together.

—Here is a glass of water. Hold it to your mouth, like this, then pour it over your lips. Oh, hold on. Let me get a towel.

—Another shirt, much nicer than the one you’ve been wearing. Your arms go in the sleeves. No, take the old one off first. I’ll help you.

—This photograph shows the two of us together. Yes, that one’s you. I know you don’t quite look the same anymore.

You were definitely listening to me. I saw a kind of inquisitiveness there, and some frustration, too. I sensed that you trusted me.

But, forgive me, you still seemed like an empty shell. How could I fill you with enough memories? I told you about us, put our lives into words to help you remember yourself. I wasn’t sure it was possible, but I was determined to keep trying.

*

You sense it, don’t you? That it’s not working fast enough.

Time passes. I have responsibilities at work, even with my flexible hours at Fidelity Life. I’ve got to find new clients: train them all to worry about horrible, unforeseen calamities.

I can’t spend every waking minute with you—though each minute is a gift. It really is.

I’ll admit you’re not the same. Your skin is rough and dry and gray. Your neck has bruised and rotted on one side, and I can see through to the collarbone. I don’t nuzzle so close against you anymore, because I’m afraid I’ll hurt you. It’s not the smell—even though it’s gotten worse, I’ve grown used to it. Mrs. McKenzie has started to complain, but I don’t mind. Who cares about her, anyway?

Sit with me again on the couch. What shall I tell you about? How about this. Last year on my birthday, I thought the steakhouse dinner would count as my present. I certainly didn’t expect anything more. As it turned out, that small envelope wasn’t just for a card, but also contained plane tickets to New York for both of us. You’d made hotel reservations, too, and planned what tours and shows we would see. I’ve got pictures from the trip. I’ll get them in a minute.

They’ll help you see what we had together. What we could have again.

Yeah, I guess I am crying a bit. But I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. It doesn’t mean anything. I’m happy you’re here.

It’s just that…

I don’t know what to do.

*

Your hand reaches out to pat my knee. You’ve made the gesture before, the way I’ve taught you. It’s how you used to show affection while we sat and read the newspaper or watched television. These days, you mostly reach out like this at random moments, not quite in response to anything I’ve said or done—but now, it feels like a real effort at offering consolation.

The fingers are thin on that gray hand. There is dirt crusted on them and the nails are long and split in places. I’m afraid if I wash your hands, skin and muscle tissue will slough off with the dirt.

You make a kind of hacking sound. A grunt or growl. I look up to your face and see your cracked lips parting, a kind of straining at your neck—which makes the exposed collarbone even more visible.

The voice scratches through your vocal cords, but it sounds more like me—I guess because you’ve learned to speak again by listening to my voice. The sound doesn’t matter. It’s the beauty of what you say. The generosity of it.

I don’t have to look into your eyes for recognition. I know it’s you, finally.

“Tell me,” you say. “Tell me how I died.”

Lagan

Gemma Files

The sea is so much deeper than the grave.

– Robyn Hitchcock.

In maritime law, the terms flotsam, jetsam and lagan describe specific and distinct kinds of wreckage.  Jetsam describes goods voluntarily cast into the sea (jettisoned) by the crew of a ship, usually to lighten it in an emergency. Flotsam describes goods left floating on the water by accident, often after a shipwreck.   Both may generally be salvaged, reverting to the original owner only if explicitly claimed. Lagan, on the other hand, is the term for goods that have been marked, most often by a buoy, so the previous owner can retrieve it later. Lagan therefore remains that owner’s property, and cannot be salvaged unless it can be legally proven that the owner is either dead, or abandoned it under circumstances which assured they could not possibly have ever held out any real hope of recovering it.

*

“You look like shit,” Sean said. “Seriously, mate. Like you haven’t slept in yonks.”

Draped across the rail, Ric didn’t bother to shake his head. “That’s ‘cause I haven’t.”

Barely gone noon, the air even below-decks was so hot everybody felt mildly feverish. Not that Sean’d be able to tell, really, barring recourse to the ‘Net; though he’d bluffed his way on board (with Ric’s connivance) by misrepresenting his summer job at Auntie Di’s veterinary clinic as some sort of pre-med internship, all he’d had to do thus far was dole out Dramamine, ibuprofen, Polysporin and Band-aids. Oh, and stitch up a few shallow wounds here and there, but that’s where a strong stomach and Mum’s sewing lessons came in handy.

“Best go down, then,” Sean suggested. “Knock a few back, have a bit of a zizz...”

“Can’t do that, mate.” Ric looked at him full on, then—face haggard under its tan, eyes bruise-set, like they’d been boiled. “I do that, I’ll have the dream. And then...yeah, better not.”

Which dream’s this, again? Sean thought of saying, but didn’t.

But Ric was already deep into monologue-mode: “...like I’m drowning, or...remember the one about cats sitting on babies’ faces, stealing their breath? Like I’m being pressed down by something, so hard I’m paralyzed, and it covers my face so I can’t breathe, all warm and moist but not furry at all, it’s skin, flat as a bag, and wrinkled, and naked. Like...somebody else’s bloody scrotum.”

“Ah, Jesus, now I know you’re not serious.”

“You’re the one fuckin’ asked, you prat.”

To which Sean simply shrugged and leant back against the rail, arms crossed to ward off a vague, creeping discomfort. “That’s just a night-hag, Ric; bloody sleep apnea, dressed up like the Late-Night Fright Show. Sure you’re not speeding again?”

“Been out going on a week, so no.” But even total exhaustion couldn’t completely root out the essential Ric-ness, same eyebrow-waggling comic charm which’d originally fished Sean in, at least halfway. “S’pose a quick blowie’s out the question, then.”

“And that’d pay back for me how, exactly?”

“Fresh protein?”

Without wanting to, Sean found himself hovering on the verge of laughter before biting it back, hard. “Thanks, but no thanks. How’s about a few Aspirins and a massage, and we call it even?”

“Prick-tease.”

“Well, you know me.”

Ric shot him a dark look from under equally dark lashes, genuinely too knackered to take further offense. Just as well: Six-two of enraged Melbourne Greek was nothing to sneeze at, the best of times, and Sean really didn’t feel up to doing yet another piss-off-out-of-my-personal-space Macarena with the fucker, below-decks or above-.  He one-eightied to look out over the water instead.

Sometimes the ocean seemed a bright-burnt skin they could crawl upon blindly, persuading themselves it was impenetrable, but this wasn’t one of those days. The usual salt-haze had boiled off, discovering all too clearly the near-endless soup of part-degraded garbage and haphazard death they floated in: The Great Pacific Garbage Knot’s outermost gyre, folding all manner of entropized crap in towards the centre, where it could hit, stick, grow by incredibly slow degrees into the loose trash-conglomerate “island” that rumours now reckoned at roughly half the size of Texas.

Around them, “Captain” Shaftoe’s folly let out a chorus of groans, like small animals were being pinched between its joints.  Dougray Shaftoe himself having only the barest interest in boats for their own sake, it was nameless except for its maritime registry code; between themselves, Ric and Sean had taken to calling it the Bad Idea, persisting long after the joke stopped being funny. A full-displacement hull outrigger shrimp trawler from New Guinea, Shaftoe had had it converted to salvage-hauler by removing the refrigeration equipment, freeing up storage space for that legendary cargo harvest he was sure would drift into their laps if they only camped out by the Knot long enough. Chief amongst many things he hadn’t really reckoned on, though, was the lingering stench of a million hauls past, which made sleeping on the Idea a fairly disgusting exercise in itself, nightmares notwithstanding.

Neither the actual smell nor the general stench of idiocy hovering ‘round this venture had seemed quite so obvious back in Port Moresby, where Sean had been stupidly content to stand by as a blind-drunk Ric threw both their oars in with Shaftoe’s crew. Still, ridiculous as this all seemed in hindsight—especially from his current perspective, bobbing like a tin-can in the middle of arse-end nowhere with a bunch of similarly delusional losers—at least he hadn’t compounded the mistake by giving it up to Ric later on, considering what a birk he’d since turned out to be. And it was the rancid aftertaste of that not-quite-relationship, in fact—liberally cut with five weeks of too-close quarters, and Ric’s increasing craziness throughout—which now kept Sean securely at arm’s length, unwilling to dole out even a perfunctory clap on the shoulder (Cheer up, mate! Could be worse...somehow), lest it be misconstrued as a come-on.

“We’re all in the same boat, though, aren’t we?” Ric demanded, breaking Sean’s train of thought. “Like, literally.”

“You’re right there,” Sean agreed. But felt his gaze drawn further down, towards the hatch, where that all-important first piece of flotsam they’d picked up still lay discarded—a dark green, plastic-blend hull-chip marked with the centre-set yellow letters EEN and PHOE.

Green Phoenix.

Experimental craft, whole thing’s made out of recyclables, Sean had told Shaftoe, running three searches at once, while the rest of the tiny crew loomed angrily ‘round them. They launched, uh...two years back, off of California; big idea was to surf currents all the way here, tracing the gyre’s path and taking samples of all the garbage that went along with ‘em. Been out of contact for...nine months, looks like.

Private venture?

Corporate—ReVive, a subset of Grummacher Pan-Oceanic. WikiLeaks says they set it up as a P.R. dodge, to shift attention off those dumping scandals.

So...they’d pay to find out what happened to it, yeah?

Yeah, sure. Probably.

Which gave them a plan, at long last. That little piece of drift was the best “catch” they’d had since pushing off, one way or the other—and it’d certainly stopped that potential mutiny in its tracks, for which Shaftoe’d privately declared himself grateful. As he bloody well should be.

Trouble had started a fortnight back, when Arjit and Sam-I-Am went poking ‘round in the hold, only to discover half the crates down there were empty rather than supply-packed—meant for that endless flood of three-year-old jetsam Shaftoe’d been shit-sure would flock their way, they only made it to the Knot and camped out in its orbit. So far—as one might only expect, given the original plan’s intensely unresearched laziness—it hadn’t exactly panned out; the stuff they did rake from the water tended to be either damaged or worthless, with an occasional side-order of resale-unfriendly randomness. (An entire crate of little party balloons that blew up into funny animal shapes, for example, seemed virtually designed not to attract big eBay bidders, unless one of them turned out to be a nostalgic Nicolas Cage.)

What are we gonna do for food, then? Arjit’d demanded, understandably.

Fish? was Shaftoe’s grand suggestion. Ship’s already set up for it, right?

Yeah. Except that the area was contaminated, as befit a fucking two hundred and fifty thousand square mile dump, a rummage-bin toxin-patch culled from here to China; every catch they brought up was half corpses, scales dull and lifting, gills deformed, their bloated stomachs stuffed with degrading plastic leaching fluorocarbons. Sam-I-Am took to sharpening his clasp-knife, while Arjit spoke darkly of how easy it would be to signal pirates, if not simply give Shaftoe (who’d holed himself up in his cabin, where he kept at least two guns) the stealthy heave some night, and become them.

Then Sean found the Green Phoenix adrift while flushing out the bilges, done some satellite uplink-grade asking ‘round, and made his pitch. Radar and hard work did the rest—hadn’t taken much past forty-eight hours, in the end: A media event, just waiting to happen. The whole of the wreck, or what was left, plus an arse-load of lagan clearly marked with ReVive’s eco-friendly tramp stamp. Plus, inside one of them, something even Sean could’ve never foreseen..

...a survivor.

*

Above water-level, the garbage piles together in shoals, mortared with its own melt; pollution becomes cement, suture, cobbling a crazy-quilt that daily grows more dense. Beneath, the underside spirals down in tails like kelp, great interlocking daisy-chains of  current like inverted tornadoes: Turning and turning, an endless fishline loop, to scrape at the sea-bottom.

Under the water, down in the dark; where light fades as it diffuses, where things become slimy and inappropriate, unreadable as some alien alphabet. The mimic-octopus on the off-reef floor, masquerading as either what it eats or fears—burying itself until only two or three limbs are visible, a coiled knot of mock sea-snakes, poison-banded. The sponge angler, further down and dimmer, rooting itself amidst anemone-forests and great shell-shelves—flicking one long spine out and back, out and back into the oncoming current, to reel in unwary prey. The glass-headed barrel-eyes, prowling restless at Immeasurable Depths—swiveling its nostrils in two different directions at once, negotiating by its nude brain’s light, mouth wide for whatever it chances to blunder against.

None of us are what we seem below a certain depth, where narcosis’ inevitable prospect transmutes to one immense, all-over kiss, suffocation a blissful blessing. Caught up in this joyful sub-tide, we forget our original forms, grow fluid and slippery, like drowned men’s flesh. We degrade by degrees, scatter our bones at random in a broken necklace, and watch them turn to coral.

Even further down, bones are a luxury, far too easily crushed. Here we become elastic, infinitely supple; we drift, exerting no unnecessary effort, reshaping ourselves to whatever comes along. Gelid, we spin ourselves out like ropes, chains of stomachs inside stomachs. We digest, and are digested, in turn.

Thus hunger in itself becomes a form of selflessness, a form of worship. A form of love.

*

Sean still couldn’t figure if it’d been blind luck, seat-of-the-pants cunning, or maybe a fortuitous combo of the two. When they’d first dredged it up, the rig looked like half a car-wreck fused with found-object sculpture—mucky scribble of knotted-up lead line cross-knit with weed, an American flag reduced to sodden ribbons lashing half a trimaran pontoon to one side of a rickety, semi-compacted shipping crate, whole thing stoppered by a massive, partially-cracked rainwater cycling tank they only later realized had been haphazardly patched with sail tape, from the inside. Just a random conglomeration of garbage, or so they’d thought, ‘til they tried to lift it: Impossibly heavy, shadowed internally, sloshing with who knew what. When Shaftoe gave the order, the crate’s sodden remnants prised up and away on three, like husking a coconut.

And there he’d been, inside: Curled fetal, skin a too-soft mess of salt and burn—like he’d been steeping in his own filth for weeks, poached egg-style under that relentless sun. Try to pull him out now, and Sean could already see his hide ruck, bones ground like marbles in a sock from bobbing through twenty-foot waves, meat beneath just a rancid stew. That bright thatch of hair slipping off beneath prying fingers, an ill-glued skullcap.

Sean caught his breath at the very idea, deep. Then gasped, almost retching, as he seemed to feel the whole cobbled-together escape pod’s funk come in at his eyeballs, ream him from stem to stern; not so bad, really, once you got used to it. Not so very bad, at all.

Which was when the man in question had opened his eyes, green-guileless as the sea itself, and looked at him.

They got him down to “sickbay” (i.e. Sean’s storage-closet of a bunk), sent Sam-I-Am and Ric back up for a gallon jug of fresh water, and started the process—cut away what was left of his clothes, sluiced him down, sponged away the shed. What emerged was sallow yet weirdly fresh-looking, free of scars and hair alike, cool and firm to the touch. No detectable pulse at neck or wrist, so Sean was forced to search further afield: brush his torpid tackle aside, snoozing oyster-slack in the shadow of his equally blond groin’s half-shell, and feel for the femoral. Which did indeed respond, albeit sluggishly, as though still underwater.

Then: Aussie, his patient’d suddenly observed, mouth not even sounding dry after what had to be days of drifting, and not seeming concerned at all about a stranger’s hand in his crotch; it was a soothing voice with vowels worn flat, classic SoCal drawl up-climbing towards the sentence’s end, familiar from any one of a hundred TV commercials. ‘M I...near there, now?

Closer to Papua the one side, Indonesia the other.

So...still in th’ Knot, then.

Still, yeah. Don’t try to talk.

Then Sean scooped two fingertips’ worth of water, let the guy suck it back, and felt his tongue’s unexpected heat lave the prints: immediately, his cheekbones burnt hectic, saliva-scoured nerves firing raw, nape sweat-damp. To fend off a blush, he contradicted himself, asking: You’re Grinnage, right? Simon? Navigator, did all the IT work...I saw your Photostream on Flickr.

...’f you say so.

Look, you either are or you aren’t, mate. It’s not multiple bloody choice.

The guy made a sketchy attempt at a shrug, which worked out more like a ripple. He seemed limp, leached, like all his minerals were gone.

Could be, he allowed, finally.

A cough. Sean looked up to find Shaftoe in the doorway, arms crossed, frowning. Demanding: What’s that even mean, son?

Means...I could be this...whoever you said. Or not. Could be you, or him...

(nodding here at Sean, who coloured again, obliquely embarrassed)

...or anybody.

Nemo, Sean’d thought, at the time, same as Cyclops Polyphemus in his cave: curse of a Classical education, though it did make reading MedicalWiki entries a fair bit easier. No Man. I will eat No Man last, as my guest-gift. Come quickly and help me, brothers, for No Man has put my eye out!

Shaftoe shrugged once more, like he was throwing off flies. Well. Whoever you are, you should be grateful, eh? ‘Specially to this one. He’s the bloke found you—your ship, anyhow. Man saved your bloody life.

Sean gave a dismissive headshake, mumbled something down into his neck, but those mild eyes—washed clean, tide-abraded, like sea-glass—has already turned back his way. They caught him up without prejudice, neat as a flounder’s sand-plus-prey suction, and swallowed him whole.

Thank you, the man from the sea told him. To which Sean could only reply—

...you’re welcome.

*

And now Sean finds himself once more sunk deep in his own dreams—no Freudian rape-fantasies here, no flesh-bag settling over him, sliding a proboscis down his throat and digesting him from the inside. These visions are all numbing cold and softness, dark on dark, the gloom he floats in only further obscured by a silken mesh of movement: Narcosis, shipwreck-hypnotism, the endless waves, amniotic. The lure of the drift. The lure of letting go.

Because: What do I have to keep me here, after all? What did I ever have?

This stinking boat, Shaftoe’s folly. These awful people, him very much included. Just crap and garbage, a tainted, tainting mess of air-breathers’ detritus. Trash in a soup of trash, under which something else lurks, unrecognized—something tempted slowly upwards by the scent of change, of possibility. Unrealized hungers revealed, made suddenly attainable, the same way bodies fruit, decay sliding fast  from waste to potential.

In his marrow, Sean simply knows these aimless loops of sleep-thought are nothing to fear; quite the opposite, really. Weirdly pleasurable, in a purely perverse way: Circuitous skull-spirals, itch-scratchingly slow, which clear him out so completely he often looks forward to returning to them in progress, even while awake...sometimes feels he’d gladly sleep all fuckin’ day to do so, he only could...

(but don’t tell Ric that, mate)

Like back when he was twelve, traveling the Great Barrier Reef with his Mum and Dad, and he side-stroked without looking first right into the middle of a Lion’s Mane jellyfish bloom: That clench of recognition, filaments already wrapping ‘round him from every side in streamers, pale poison-full vermicelli, just beginning to sting him with their multitudinous fine hairs. A caress on its way to becoming a wound.

There at the edge of the shelf, the last clump of brain and cup and stone before the drop-off: Clear shading to blue shading to black, going down and down and down into nothing. He’d hung above an abyss, spun sugar-caged by luminous mucus, watching the jellies’ stomachs pulse like hearts through their sides, and contemplated—in one skipped beat, one breathless no-scream—the utter end of the world.

What’s down there, Dad?

Things you’ve never seen, son. Things you never will see.

(Things you never want to.)

But separate, always, kept down by pressure, gravity versus its lack. No place in our world for their eddying, porous likes, and barely any room in theirs for us: Fragile in a different way, clumsy, blundering in our bathyspheres and our pressurized suits, subject to the bends. Go down too fast, we rupture; come up too fast, we burst. Never the twain shall meet, for long...

But we do strew our leavings everywhere we go, and each bit of garbage left behind is a seed, a potential grit-pearl. The ocean adapts to our corrupting influences, shaping itself to what it assumes is a new system of prey-or-be-preyed-upon.

Look, Sean, Mum said, pointing, her mask-voice a tinny buzz in his ear. Here’s a stonefish, looks like a rock. A skate, trying to look like an old shoe. A sponge grown into the shape of a slipped carburetor—is that rust, or protective colour?

And there, where the bombies meet, a jumble of far more intimate human litter...is that somebody’s femur, somebody’s splintered tibia? Or just a thousand-generation anemone colony bleached white sand-on-calcium grey, trying to fit itself into the hole where somebody’s trapped and weighted corpse once used to lie?

All this, or none of it, or something else entirely—something new, unknown, unseen. For there is far more sea to pore through, waiting unexplored, than there ever will be land.

*

Sean came back up gasping, sweat-wet, in darkness. Felt his dreams shrug aside to let him free, silky-smooth and sandpaper by turns, an affectionate quilt of flocking rays—their cartilaginous wings sliding away quick down every limb, a peeled cocoon. An extra pulse seemed to hammer at his breast-bone, where the female’s pectoral disc would lie; when he checked himself in the cabin mirror, sure it was purely psychosomatic, he thought he saw a bruise just beginning to raise, a wine-dark birthmark kiss. As though something trawling sleep’s deepest levels had bit down on him, hard, before trying to slide its fertilizing claspers in.

Up on deck, the moon hung low and huge in a star-crammed sky, its outline sketched in burnt-retina heat-haze orange. The planks still held most of the day’s heat, beating up right through his flip-flops’ rubber soles; sweat had already stuck pits to sleeves before he’d even climbed the ladder, warm as blood and glue-heavy, ‘til he could barely tell ass-crack from shirt-tail.

When he sucked down a long gulp, straining in search of relief, all he got was more of the same, but salt-flavoured, mildly decayed. Like he was breathing air from his own corpse’s lungs.

“Hey,” the man from the sea said, from behind him.

Sean turned, blinked stupidly, blood pounding in his face and pelvis—instinctively made to back up, and rocked against the railing. Might’ve fallen, even, if somebody hadn’t laid their big American hand (dusted with gold hair on the back, palm still rough with broken blisters) on his, and pulled.

“Should watch out; it’s pretty dark. You fell, sharks’d find you a damn sight faster’n we would.”

“Too right. Smell bring you up?”

“Nah, that’s about the same—just stop noticing it, eventually, I guess. I thought...” He gave a cursory look ‘round: a bit too quick, barely a headshake. “Thought I might check the rig out again, that thing you found me in. See if anything pops.”

“And?”

“Nope.”

“That’s normal, mate. Given the circumstances.”

Another eye-flick, tracing the same static path.  “I’m not even trying to remember, so much, now—just to, you know, figure it out. How it all must’ve happened.”

“The wreck...”

“Sure, and after. Like when your captain asked me: That how it went?” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just—woke up, inside that thing. I mean, I think I woke up...”

“Yeah, well. What else would you’ve done?”

“...I don’t know.”

Sean didn’t, either. So he looked away again, studied what he could see of the waves instead, until his head began to hurt. Thinking, all the while, how immature his long-expired crush on Ric now seemed in the face of this yearning—an all-encompassing draw, deepwater pull, stronger than any undertow.

Desire as a devouring force, as loss of self, as death-wish. The crazy urge to somehow submerge himself inside this ghost of a man he “knew” only from Google, apparently better than the guy knew himself; to dive in head-first, let all that sun-kissed Yank-ness wrap ‘round him and sink ‘til he either came out the other side, or smothered.

“Crazy” is right, Jesus.

“Smart to get yourself in there, though, in the first place,” he heard himself say, numbly. “Shows presence of mind, and all that. I mean...you couldn’t’ve known anybody’d be coming for you, not really.”

The guy nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense, what you’re saying. But I think...I must’ve hoped they’d come for the ship, anyhow. Cost a lot of money. Not the kind of thing you’d just...throw away.”

“No,” Sean agreed.

“It’s yours now, though, I guess. Me, too.”

All at once, that pulse was back, hammering twice as hard.

He can’t mean what you think.

But: “What do you mean?” Sean found himself incapable of stopping himself from asking, shamefaced. To which the guy simply smiled, gently.

“Well...you found me. So, I guess—”

(you get to keep me)

Speech? Thought? Those five small words seemed to stone-skip through him like a bullet-fragment ricochet, cascading from ear to brain and straight back out again. Exiting through the lips, already opened wide, as they collided with the guy’s own and stuck fast: Passing the same lust-flavoured breath back and forth, back and forth, like sharing an air-bubble.

Oh God, let go. Oh God, don’t.

Don’t let me go.

Oh God.

They were the same height, give or take; pretty much the same build, ‘specially after all that time on Shaftoe’s cargo-before-crew starvation diet versus all that time—how long, exactly?—adrift. Even their hand-span a near-exact match, just wide enough for each to clasp the other’s wrists without strain. Yet the contact alone was enough to sap Sean’s reserves, dip the empty he’d apparently already been running on low enough he could feel himself vibrate; he clutched at the guy for dear life, tongues twining, holding on. Holding tight.

Because: If you let me go, I’ll fall. And...if I fall...

...I’ll drown, Sean thought, feeling his eyes roll back, his temples throb and sing. Practically Goddamn swooning.

And time must’ve passed, without either even noticing. For a moment later he glanced back up to find Ric, looming large—already halfway lunged forward into their all-too-closely-shared personal space, raw eyes bugged ‘til his lids started to slant the wrong way.

Uh oh.

A warning seemed in order, but his mouth was otherwise engaged. Besides, the juggernaut was well on its way; all they could do was make room. So Sean side-stepped, tried his best to swing the guy along with him, but only succeeded in turning him so he and Ric could lock gazes: Glazed and crazed to amiably mild, almost stoner-calm, swimming in endorphins. Should’ve gone over like a bong-hit, defusing the situation, and yet—

Ric simply froze, rigid, riveted. Neither angry nor jealous, anymore, but terrified.

What is he seeing? Not what...who...I am.

A rush and a push and the deck was cleared: Ric went past at high speed, Demeter first mate style, and folded over the rail as if he’d been stomach-punched. Sean grabbed for Ric’s shoulder but felt it slip by, sweat-greased; felt the guy reaching down as well, yet saw Ric twist mid-plunge to avoid that grasping, offered hand. A strange cunning lit both irises, made them flash in recognition. Like:

I know you, now—don’t see how I couldn’t see it, before.

But you won’t bloody get me, too.

Letting go, perfectly deliberate, Ric fell into darkness, hit the unseen water below with barely a splash. Sean made to follow, hollering:

“Ric, fuck, swim, you idiot! Grab for the Knot! Grab hold, you bloody fool!”

No reply, save the lapping waves. And a whisper that might’ve come from the guy whose strong arms were even now holding him back, making sure he wasn’t going after poor, sleep-deprived idiot Ric...Ric, whose misfiring synapses had sent him off and running so hard he’d thrown his entire life away like trash, all to escape a damn dream...

Nothing out here to grab hold of, Sean. Just garbage soup, and plenty of it.

“Sharks’ll get him,” Sam-I-Am said from the wheelhouse door, with peculiar satisfaction. Like he’d just been waiting, all this time, for the pleasure of eventually getting to make that call.

Behind him, further down the staircase, Sean glimpsed both Arjit (pausing to spit, derisively, while perhaps wondering if he should join this impromptu all-hands-on-deck funeral) and Shaftoe (knuckling sleep from his eyes, dazed and confused, having apparently left his six-guns behind in his cabin), both staring upwards. Then everyone cringed at once, top-lit by the glare, as a flare split the night to illuminate a pair of small, sleek craft coming in dark off either bow, armed to the teeth.

Didn’t have to be sporting the Jolly Roger to know what their game was, either, way the hell out here, where there was nothing worth stealing but the trawler out from under them.

Sean did a double-take Shaftoe’s way, wondering if he looked a bit like Ric had, before blurting: “No way in hell even you’d’ve been stupid enough to email reVive already, you stunned fucking cunt.”

Shaftoe gulped. “I...just asked ‘em if they wanted their property back,” he managed. “Before the media got hold of it, and him....”

“Oh yeah. ‘Cause there’s absolutely nothing dicey-looking ‘bout an eco-boat that bloody sinks, is there? Nothing that reeks of corner-cutting, nothing that says: I don’t really give a toss so long’s they stop telling me where not to dump, so please just make sure to drift off-radar when your rig falls apart, and stay there—”

The guy nodded, slightly, like this was happening to somebody else entirely. “Does kinda seem that way, doesn’t it? Man, Sean, you should be in GPA-Marine, or something.”

Two steps saw Arjit up on deck next to Sam-I-Am, Shaftoe left wibbling in the gloom behind; he gave Sam a friendly cuff to the shoulder: You ‘n’ me, eh? Only two brown boys on a ship of crazy whites!

Sam-I-Am just shifted stance to ask out one side of his mouth: “You in on this, man?”

Arjit shrugged. “They get the ship, we’re home in a month, find a real damn job. Told ya it’d be better, this way.”

“Oh, you think? Can’t trust pirates, fool! We ain’t worth the chain to sink us, to them scalawags.”

“Chill, mate. Everything be fine. Just gotta... take care of a few things, first—”

Shaftoe, three steps behind as usual, seemed at last on the ragged brink of reacting to Arjit’s confession when his former second-in-command pivoted to empty the Bad Idea’s own flare-gun—conveniently holstered nearby, for easy distress access—into his face.  Though the flare’s velocity was far too slow to penetrate anything, the effects were nonetheless startling: A bright red nitrate-magnesium flash, all hiss and burst, bouncing off-centre to crush in Shaftoe’s beak with a satisfying, gluey crack before ricocheting further, skipping down the hallway like a lit phosphorus-brick.

The “Captain” fell back, hair a-smoke, and out of sight—possibly dead, but Sean supposed that didn’t much matter either way, now the rocket-exhaust trail had below-decks safely caught on fire. And at this answering signal, a volley of shots rang up from the starboard boat, along with a spatter of cheers.

Sam-I-Am clapped both hands over his mouth, and heaved. “Fuck me, up, down and sideways—”

Sean contemplated cutting and running, just for a second, but there weren’t a whole lot of places left to go. Besides which, the guy—Grinnage, goddamnit—

(Simon?)

—seemed spot-rooted, studying Arjit as though he were less threat than vaguely interesting problem,  simply one more oddity in a days-long string.

“Got one of those handy for us, buddy?” he inquired, mildly.

Arjit shook his head and pulled a Glock from his waistband, advancing. “Nothing personal, man,” he replied. “I mean, you already had the short end, what with that wreck ‘n’ all. But, see...those out there, they only got berth enough for two.”

*

And here it’s as though the dream drops back over him, a wall of water slopping down to place five fathoms’ worth of highly-welcome waver between himself and what happens next: How the guy, glancing back at him, raises a faint gold brow...

...and Christ-well sheds himself somehow, flips inside-out, opens wide as a bifurcated cloak of lip, unwrapping a slimy heap of bones and muck that clatters to the boards and lies there steaming, an awful surprise gift. What’s left launches itself at Arjit, tumbling from axis to axis, like it can’t tell which way is up. As though it’s used to dealing with a different grade of gravity, entirely.

(but that can’t happen)

(can’t happen, not like that, not like)

(any of it, impossible, no, no goddamn no)

And: Are there eyes in those sockets, that same hypnotic green gone shucked and nude, unblinking? What the hell can it have left to see its way with now, if so?

Arjit’s a bastard, not dumb—pumps his whole clip into it, but nothing slows it down. Sam-I-Am, on the other hand, takes one look, and slams the wheelhouse door on ‘em both. After’s a second’s hammering and cursing, Arjit turns right back into the thing, which hits him like a pizza-dough facial: submerges him completely, quick-digesting him from the outside in. Sean can hear him, muffled, through wads of flesh and cartilage, a kitten swung in a bag against unforgiving walls.

Drowning would be a fucking mercy, by comparison.

Eventually, the sounds stop. Sean looks up again, just in time to see whatever-it-is detach from—never mind, some grotesque hybrid of corpse and turd, like what you get when you peel a snake. Then tumble-splat, tumble-SPLAT as it heads for the wheelhouse, targeting that thread-sized crack under the door and squishing itself flat, flatter, so thin its molecular bonds almost separate. The privileges of bonelessness, caught in action.

From inside, Sean hears Sam-I-Am start to scream. But that doesn’t last too fucking long, at all.

(oh god, I think it’s coming back out)

Re-emerging, the creature flows back over its original sticky core-dump mess and reassembles itself, wetly; everything moves back into place with a series of clicks and pops, “the guy” re-emerging whole from an unrecognizable lump of goo—skin reversed and mainly blood-free, pinky-blond hair only slightly out of place. Those naked eyes pop back into their orbits, open, crinkle slightly.

“Hey,” he—it—says.

*

Sean coughed, rackingly, mouth gone drier than he’d been in a month. “Are you...gonna kill me?”

“Don’t think so, no. You want me to?”

“...not like that.”

A fresh rush of yells from the pirate peanut gallery—might be they saw what happened to Arjit; might be they didn’t like it—proved weirdly easy to ignore, ‘specially as Sean’s brain raced to fill in the spaces, ever newer and dumber questions just rolling straight off his tongue with gumball-machine precision. “You’re not...him, then. Simon Grinnage. Never were.”

“No. I thought I was, but....” A shrug. “Guess it doesn’t much matter now, really, what I thought. Or didn’t.”

“So—you just attached yourself to his corpse, that what happened? Grew into the shape of the hole he left, somehow?” Without waiting for a reply: “Is there anything of him still in there at all, in you?”

“Shit, Sean, I don’t know. You saw, when I—back there—” Sean nods. “—well, much as I’d like to think I’m at least some sort of composite, what came out...it felt like bones, to me.”

“Looked like ‘em, too.”

“There you go, then.”

Fresh flares went up, spotlighting this odd little triptych: Sean, Arjit’s leavings. The thing, unnecessary clothes discarded—Sean couldn’t remember where they’d gone—and now clad only in its own smeared blood-tracery, a pattern of red tattoos. More yells from the pirates followed, urgent-fearful, as though they somehow recognized it.

“Don’t s’pose you could take ‘em all,” Sean suggested, only half-joking.

“Unlikely. But...” It glanced over at the Green Phoenix rig. “Could just get back inside that, and hit the water. Did okay, last time.”

“You could, mate. Simon didn’t come off quite so well, though, did he?”

*

Swapping banter in the face of death, or worse...much worse. Yet Sean still can’t find it in him to fear, not completely; every breath he draws seems to say it means no harm to him, if no one else. Something chemical, probably, borne on the hot and stinking wind—something it probably doesn’t even need, underwater. Pheromones, designed to attract landbound prey by making the thing seem lovable? Or spores drifting up his nose to root in his cortex, then bloom and puppet him consumption-wards, the way Brazilian zombie fungi turn ants into living seeders?

“I still want to touch you,” he tells it, helplessly. “Even now.”

“Me too.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, Sean—how do I know anything? I just do. Everything Simon knew, most of what you know...what Arjit knew, and Sam-I-Am. And Ric.”

“So that was you, then? The dream?”

It shapes that easy, white-toothed SoCal smile. “Who else?”

On the port boat, someone raises an Armalite’s massive barrel, bracing it against their shoulder: The Bad Idea’s off-limits now, apparently, not worth salvaging. Infected, possibly infectious. And they’ll get the contract fee either way, Sean can only think, so long as what’s left of the Phoenix goes down with the rest.

“Too late,” the thing confirms, stepping closer. “But...I really do want you to come with me, Sean. I want you. I think...I kinda want to be you...”

(oh)

(oh God, me too)

...is what Sean replies, in that last second before the rocket ignites. Or maybe he only thinks he does.

The explosion cracks the deck in half; the prow goes up, stern down, Titanic in reverse. And as they fall together Sean grabs his long-drowned demon lover by both elbows—its arms come up like a toddler, like a trap. It latches on.

Together, they step down, holding fast, joined at the lips. Until the trash-strewn waters close, kiss-warm and -soft, over both their heads.

*

Falling and falling and falling, forever, with nothing left to break against. With no hope of an impact, an ending.

Sean and the thing—heavier than it looked, by far—rode cold currents torn from the ocean’s floor, winding upwards to capture the Knot’s turnover, its increasingly brisk gyre. They nudged past confused sharks, kicked aside scraps of Ric, barely escaped being grazed or brained by various pressure-driven trawler-bits. They sank through fathoms, sharing air, light and air narrowing together in one last spasm—then winking out, the same way each synapse inside Sean’s brain had already begun to flare and crisp and die, like bone-jarred fireflies.

Thinking: I’ll be him, I guess, or he’ll be me; close enough. Too close for even him to tell. So it’ll be as though one of us survives, anyhow...

...as his grip kept on steadily tightening, pulling it ever-closer, bruising it ‘til the skin-suit folded back and all he held were Simon Grinnage’s bones, before heaving to enwrap him once more...smothering him in a heat that was fever and spice and slime alike, pulsing organs fluttering like mouths against every part of him as its spiny heart suckered fast to his breastbone, eating its way inside...the mere unfiltered scent of it enough to make his own blood boil in his hemorrhaging eyes, his gouting ears screech like dolphins before they popped and his trouser-caught cock to finally explode, perhaps even literally...

Praying, all the while: Don’t let me go, please. Never let me go. Don’t let me drown.

(I don’t want to drown, not now)

(not like this)

(not)

(without you)

Down there, in the deep and dark, where everything blended with everything else. Down where trash became treasure, and vice versa. Where flesh was eaten, over and over again, in endless communion; where prey and predator alike became bone, fossil, sand. Where currents bore him away in every direction at once, hoping against hope that nothing was ever lost, only changed. That the ocean, though a cornucopia of miracles and horrors—like death, like love—

(for all that it had a floor, one which he might never reach)

—might yet prove to have no real bottom.

a strange form of life

Laird Barron

Wind screamed along the rooftops of the prison, scattering night birds and bats.

Station 3 lay near the edge of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. The prison was huge and decrepit. Built in the 1930s, allegedly atop Indian burial grounds, there’d been murders and fires, rapes and riots, and haunting aplenty, so much so that even the diocese loathed sending in clergy to take confessions or spread the faith. The aura of corruption emanating from the prison’s very walls was too much and the word from Rome was fuck it, more or less.

Now, despite the state’s perennial problem with overcrowding at correctional facilities, the vast rusting blight sat mostly uninhabited, a high plains Alcatraz. Two hundred inmates and a skeleton crew of guards and support staff called a wing of the prison and the surrounding miles of prairie home. Scuttlebutt had it that come next year’s election the complex would be bulldozed and the land sectioned into commercial office space, staff and occupants displaced to the Devil knew where. The Devil. Everyone at Station 3 thought about Old Poger quite often, for one reason or another.

The guard and the convict went into a remote section, long shut down and abandoned, and fucked, exactly as they had done twice a week for the past three months since the convict transferred in from Walla Walla. Usually they rendezvoused in the library after hours, or the machine shop. Tonight, the convict had insisted on more privacy, claimed he had something important to share. The guard humored the lad; he didn’t have much else to do.

Here the darkness was almost complete except for the distant glow of a lamp at the intersection. Water dripped from corroded pipes that carried the moans of the wind. Rats scuttled among fallen masonry. A heavy odor of dankness and rot clung to concrete and stone and the impression was that the lovers had strayed from the workings of man into a deep cavern of the earth.

The convict gripped the bars of the defunct block gate, his stance wide. The old guard thrust so forcefully the convict’s forehead bounced against the steel. The convict always chatted while the guard worked, though his nervousness seemed acute. The kid was in the middle of narrating the story of his life, the chapter about how he almost got away.

“We took down the bank at the end of the shift, y’know. Coulda made a clean getaway, except for some cops who ran along the sidewalk after us. Russ crashed the car in a field. I think one of the pigs shot our tire. We booked outta the car, every man for himself. I stuffed money into my pockets and down my pants and beat feet.”

The guard rolled his eyes and snorted. His breathing was heavy as a horse that’d been flogged down the home stretch; sparks whirled as his brain began to ignite. He gripped the convict’s hips and made a final, agonized lunge and had a vision of the con’s head getting wedged between the bars. That would be tricky to explain to the other screws, although Whitey and Reggie would just laugh. The guard wiped himself and zipped his fly. He slumped against the arch of the tunnel and lighted a cigarette. The sharp flame spun shadows across the walls, momentarily revealing blocks of satanic graffiti and water stains curdled with mold. Then he flipped the lighter shut and brought back the dark. He smoked, free hand resting on his gut that sagged over his belt like a cannonball. Twenty-seven years on the job had given him a drinking problem, a bad back, flat feet, flattened nose, three missing teeth, and contempt for humanity, himself included. Nonetheless, as he gasped for air to smoke his cigarette, another vice picked up in the line of duty, a sense of grudging affection for the convict mellowed his habitual resentment toward the universe.

The kid became quiet, sort of hanging with his arms stuck through the bars, pants around his ankles. He wasn’t really a kid, probably in his late twenties, the bloom off the rose and all that, but still taut and smooth and irrepressible. His skin gleamed in the darkness. The silence didn’t last. Without glancing backward, he said,   “I hauled ass through the field and come to a bumpy old road. Getting set to cross it when a car rolls by. Real slow. Cruisin’ like a shark. Dunno why, but something was off about it. Spooked me bad. I had a premonition. An omen. Whatever you wanna call it. Goose run over my grave.”

“Fix your britches and I’ll give you a smoke,” the guard said.

The convict pulled up his pants. He accepted a cigarette and let it dangle from the corner of his mouth, striking a pose like a tough from Westside Story. He smirked and winked until the guard’s composure cracked and he chuckled. The convict said, “Then the dude riding shotgun looked back at me. I was so freaked, man. I ran into the tall grass and hid for like six hours. Damned dogs found me. I got a scar from the hole the fucker tore in my belly.”

“A guy spots you in the ditch and that scares you?”

“I was already scared. That made it worse. That was the icing, chief.”

“You lost me.”

“It was dark as a well digger’s asshole. No way he could see me hidin’ in the Tooley weeds.”

“But he did. Looked right at you.”

“Like he could see in the dark. Stared into my soul.”

Wind moaned somewhere deeper in the tunnel. The guard was surprised to feel the hairs on his arm prickle. He imagined the kid crouched in that country ditch, body hidden, face camouflaged in dirt and grease, behind a lattice of grass and leaves. Then the car, long and sleek, dome light on so the driver and passenger were illuminated like figures in a shadowbox. The figures were wrong, though. Too large for the compartment, oversized and vaguely monstrous as caricatures in a fairytale book, or misshapen puppets in some horror show. He took another drag and expelled the bad spirits to float among their fellows in the gallery beyond the wall of bars.

“That’s not all, neither. There’s more,” the convict said.

Of course there was more. The guard frowned. Instinct warned him to make the kid shut his trap. Some things weren’t meant to be spoken aloud and the pucker of his balls suggested that this was such a one. Any inclination to heed this primal instinct had been burned out by his recent exertions and he simply glanced into the metaphorical abyss and took another long drag on the cigarette. “Tell, it punk.”

The convict pouted. “Hey. I’m no punk. I ain’t no bitch.”

“Sorry,” the guard said. And he was sorry; a little. It felt like the first crack in the back of a shelf of Antarctic ice.

“Be nice to me. Be nice to me, man.”

“See, there’s your problem. Appealing to the Man. He’s not nice. Shut up or I’ll beat you with my Billy club.”

“What, again? But, fine. I’m not gonna tell you why I was scared shitless. You blew it. Blew your chance.”

“Blew my chance? Like you can stop your gob for five seconds. I hang around long enough, I’ll hear all about your tale of woe from the cradle onward, want to or not.”

“No, you blew it and it was a good story, too.”

“Come on, kid. I’ve been on the job since Hoover was trying on his mama’s heels. I heard every story there is.” The guard was conflicted. Part of him really wanted to hear that story the way one is compelled peel the scab from an itchy wound. The other part of him knew better. “Want another cig? Don’t be mad. I brought you some coffee, too. Two baggies of Colombian dark.” Coffee was the gold standard in prison. He took the younger man’s hand in his own scarred paw. He kissed the convict’s fingers and sighed. “Go ahead. What else happened? You figure out who those guys in the car were?”

The convict sulked for several moments. He relented and let the guard give him another cigarette. He smoked, and in the black and blue haze he seemed far too young and fragile for this prison. “They were demons. The Great Dark’s bootlickin’ servants on the loose in the world. My uncle was a minister. He showed us how to recognize ‘em when we were kids. Ain’t hard if you got the knack. The flesh of humanity don’t fit quite right.”

“You bring the hellfire and the brimstone, huh, boy? Doesn’t seem Christian, knocking off banks, blasting women and children and folks.” The guard smiled bitterly. Oh, how they all gave it up for the Lord once that steel gate clanged shut. Practicing their choirboy arpeggios for the day they’d sing before a parole board.

“My uncle was a minister. Mom and Pop weren’t anything special. Went to church on Easter for the potluck. And I never shot anybody. That was Russ smoked the girl in the bank. He’s a stone-cold motherfucker.”

“You find Jesus here in the pen? Get right with the Sky Warden?”

“I don’t believe in God.”

“Don’t believe in God. Don’t. Believe. In. God. Demons, though. Demons you can get behind as a concept.”

“Every culture’s got its demons,” the convict said. “Monsters don’t need no brand of religion to do what they do. Christians believe in possession. Indians got skin walkers. People from other places call ‘em whatever, but I expect they’re all the same.”

“Well, hell, that makes sense,” the guard said. “Good for you, sonny. You’ve got depth. A country philosopher. Too bad you never blasted anybody, though. Kinda turned me on when I thought you was dangerous. A young Charlie Bronson. Mm, mm, mm.” He extended his hand through the gloom and pinched the convict’s baby-smooth cheek. “Enjoy it while it lasts. I was a lean mean screwing machine in my heyday. The spitting image of Lee Van Cleef is what all the girlies said.”

“You look mean enough.”

“I am mean enough.”

“And you got his beady eyes.”

“But not the fame, money, or cars to go along with them, more is the pity.”

“You got the big ol’ ring of keys, though. Man with the keys got everything.”

The guard didn’t answer. He squinted and cocked his head, sure he’d heard something down the ruined tunnel; a noise, distinct from the wind, that lasted only a moment, then subsided, and mutated in his consciousness, echoed there just as an aftershock of brilliance imprints upon the inner eyelid. He unholstered the heavy Maglite and clicked the rubber toggle. The bulb brightened and died. Click, click, click.

There were rats in the walls; armies of them. Legions of cockroaches, too. The guard didn’t think rats accounted for the new sound. Gone now, lost in the regular creaks and groans and whistles. He should’ve been gone by now too; gone from the prison, retired, sipping rum and coke on a beach while the steel drums played. He’d come to the profession late and now he had a sneaking hunch it was too late. That thought usually visited him for an instant upon waking prior to his morning shift, weighing upon his chest, a succubus straight from images of hell in a medieval tapestry. But it was here now, wasn’t it? He glanced toward the intersection where the far off light dimmed slightly.

“Lemme ask you something,” the convict said.

“All right.”

“I can’t stay here.”

“That a question?” The guard tried smacking the Maglite with his cupped palm. Nothing and more nothing. He whistled through his teeth just as his father had done when nervous. Whistling past the graveyard, the old-timers called it.

“No, man. What I mean is, I can’t stay here at the Station no more. I ain’t safe.”

“Who is?”

“I been thinking of making a run at the wall.” The convict wiggled two fingers, pantomiming legs on the move.

Me too, the guard thought, and chuckled to mask a sob. He said, “Dawson’s boys will cut you down before you get ten yards. They enjoy snuffing cons. A few years ago, some of them, the real twisted fellers, ran a game. A con on the cons, you’d say. They’d pretend to be on the take, conspire with the desperate cons about breaking out for a little payoff. Agreed to look the other way when the cons snuck by with their knotted bed sheets, or what-have-you. Then, when the poor suckers made a move…Pow! A thirty-ought-six hollow point through the back of the skull and the Dobermans ripping apart the carcass. Bastards would sit around and laugh their asses off. Word got around, so there haven’t been any turkey shoots lately. Don’t think about it. I like you, boy.”

“You got it right; nobody’s safe in the Station. Bad juju, chief. Peeps are getting’ weird. Fucked in the brain. They was actin’ the same way in Walla Walla. The shit is spreading. Now it’s here. It’s among us.”

The guard nodded, one eye still focused on the shadows. It wasn’t the entire staff…nonetheless, some of the screws were behaving oddly. Odder than usual, at least. Secret conversations held in whispers and knowing smirks, the humming of off-key ditties, the cracking of knuckles. He’d seen Big Dan twitching like a headless chicken in the locker room that very afternoon. Three or four seconds of Grand Mal action. Big Dan snapped out of it and smiled a creepy, evil smile and went down to the yard and beat the Harris brothers to a pulp over a trifle. And yesterday, Harley Koschek had walked right into the cafeteria wall, full speed, and busted his nose. The crazy sonofabitch had tilted his head back and gulped all the gushing blood. Nobody said anything, not a fucking thing, and so the guard had concentrated upon his ham on rye and chewed and thought dark thoughts.

The convict kept talking, naturally. “Maybe something in the water. Man, I read about a radioactive cloud movin’ underground from Hanford toward the Columbia. One teaspoon of that shit will light up the river and kill a half million whitebread assholes in the ‘burbs.”

“We’re upstream. Snug as bugs in a rug.”

“I know. What I’m sayin’ is, people are off their feed. Last few nights, those Mexicans in the next cell been whisperin’. Don’t make no kinda sense, neither. Sergeant Sheckley come down and visited them. Psss, psss, psss! Just whisperin’. Afterward, he stood by my door for ten minutes. Didn’t say nothin’. Stared at me and smiled. Man, last time I saw a grin like that it was cut into a pumpkin.”

“Maybe he’s one of those demons your uncle told you about.”

“Somethin’ was livin’ in Sheckley’s eyes. Not him, though. He was long gone.”

“This was the second part of your story, huh? You bring me here to make a dire prediction? The Aztec Calendar roll over a year early? Tonight is the last night on Earth? Mankind going out with a whimper?”

“There’s a whatchamacallit…an eclipse…”

“A lunar eclipse. I forgot, yeah. What time is that happening? Three quarter moon. We wouldn’t see anything even if we could go outside in the yard. Too much cloud cover.”

“Can I bum another smoke?”

The guard lighted his last two cigarettes, briefly extending the lighter between the bars, a Dark Ages explorer trying to survey the depths of a strange cave, in vain. The darkness shrank a few inches, but that was all. The metal at the lighter’s crown heated and blackened and the flame doubled and licked his thumbnail. The yellow core transfixed him.

He lived three miles down the road in a doublewide in a shabby court. The court was owned by his aunt on his mother’s side and she cut him a deal. He ate microwave dinners, except for Friday nights down at the Rattler Saloon. Those nights he bought a T-bone steak and a pitcher of draft and watched the game on the plasma hanging over the bar and pretended to give a shit. He usually slept on an antique La-Z-Boy by the dying light of a box television. His dog, a Boerboel named Zilla, had passed away the week before Christmas last year, so now he talked to himself while watching Masterpiece Theater presentations of Agatha Christie mysteries, muttered his hypotheses regarding whodunit into empty air. None of the guys knew he watched MPT and Nova, and he was careful not to let on. Crassness and insensitivity were armor and shield at the Station. More importantly, these traits were camouflage. They thought he brutalized the inmates he took a shine to, that he coerced his lovers. Romance, sentimentality; those were traits his colleagues would sneer at. Contempt was dangerous at the Station.

The guard blinked and snapped the lighter shut. He said, “I watched a special about ants on Nova the other night. Well, I saw two things, related though. One on the ants, these mega-colonies that are spreading all over the planet. Trillions upon trillions of them. Foreign tribes don’t make war when they meet. Scientists brought a few over from a colony in Japan and exposed them to a colony that’s taking over California. The ants shook pincers, made love, assimilated. The white-coats didn’t say it in so many words, but the bugs are planning something. Probably a coup d’état.”

“Saw the movie,” the convict said, taking a disaffected drag on his cigarette. “When I was a kid. Goddamn gigantic ants taking over the Earth. In black and white. I hear lotsa bad shit about ants on the news. A lady at an old folks home in Arizona got eaten alive by a bunch a red fire ants. She had dementia and some other stuff and couldn’t move. Ants came tricklin’ through a hole in the wall. Started with her eyes and nose, I guess. True story.”

“Jesus H,” the guard said. He imagined the old lady as a husk wrapped in flannel, and the black train of ants traveling through the wall and across the shiny floor of a night desert. The moon clouded and blackened as the metal of his lighter had clouded and blackened. The music of the stars was a faint shriek. “The other story on Nova was about zombie ants.”

“What the fuck? Zombie ants. That’s some crazy shit.”

“There’s a prehistoric fungus that was recently discovered in the jungle. Very rare. It releases spores that infect ants. Consumes them from the inside and controls their behavior. Tries to send them back to the main colony to spread the joy. When the victims die, tendrils sprout from their corpses and eject more spores. The pictures are gruesome. Sure, it’s just ants, but holy shit.”

The convict chuckled and his voice changed, became softer, androgynous. “Oh, I saw that episode too. Frightfully macabre, how the fungus causes its prey species to fruit. That’s what it’s called, the horror of the ants bursting apart with fungal blooms. Fruiting. Cue the jokes. Or not.” The convict tossed his cigarette butt away in a trail of tiny sparks. He straightened and drew himself to intimidating height with a prolonged crackle of his spine.  “It’s called Cordyceps and it doesn’t devour ants exclusively. There are thousands of variations on the progenitor, each adapting to a diet of a specific species. I’m here to tell you that Cordyceps is a relatively new organism, an adolescent scion. The mother genus is much older. Much older and, as of these past months, much more aggressive.”

The guard smiled reflexively and turned his head slightly away before lurching forward and smashing the convict across the jaw with the Maglite. The flashlight made an odd, hollow clink, and its plastic bits flew apart as its metal crumpled and the guard’s arm went dead as if he’d struck a cement pillar. The convict slapped the broken weapon away and pushed him onto the damp floor as one might flatten a toddler. The guard lay in an inverted crucifix position, and he saw the light at the intersection go out. Then he saw nothing but the blackness that encased the world.

The convict said, “There, there, lover. You’re all right. You’re with me. I won’t let the bogeymen get you.”

“You are the bogeyman,” the guard said.

“I’m a pet. We’re all pets, servitors of the gods. I was infected that night in the field. That’s why the powers-that-be transferred me and a few of my fellow initiates here. As you said, to spread the joy to the entire colony. The insane part of this? You aren’t even talking to me. I retrograded nine nights ago. You’ve been copulating with a fruiting corpse these past several trysts. This conversation is stimulated by pheromones that render prey compliant through hallucination. The geography cone squirts something similar at fish. The fish enters quasi-paralysis, swims in place, confused and disoriented. Then the cone slides over and does its dirty business.”

“I’m talking to myself. I’m talking to myself. I’m talking to myself.”

“No, you’re speaking to the gloriously transmogrified hulk of a former human being who will soon add your quiescent flesh and screaming brain to the mother of all mushroom beds. Like any man who has ever spoken to his god, you’re also answering your own questions. Those spores attack the mind, cause it to compartmentalize, to create a multiplicity of simulated consciousnesses.”

The guard traced the wall of memory in search of a crack, a flaw, a blackout, that might signal the demarcation of dream and reality, the place he’d swerved from the road. He found, with a feeble pang, that everything prior to this terrifying moment in the dark, was rapidly crumbling and sliding into an abyss. What he’d eaten for breakfast, listened to on the radio while commuting to work, his home phone number, his mother’s maiden name, gone. All of it siphoned away. He caught a glimpse of himself driving across a landscape crawling with white cotton candy, the dark bulk of the prison enmeshed in it like a tumor eating its way through a lung. He glimpsed bloated half-corpses of men in cells, quietly rupturing, birthing pallid tendrils and tubers. He said, “Please, no. Let me go.”

“Go where? It’s all over but the crying out there. The Rapture you all waited for, hath come at last. Be at ease. I’m going to kiss you.” The convict’s breath was ripe and cool and very close. “Welcome to the garden of our lords.” And his tepid mouth closed over the guard’s. It tasted of sweet, black earth, raw with ferment. The guard struggled, imagining a billion spores shooting down his throat, crocheting a murderous skein through his internal organs. He felt his blood reversing up the esophageal passage, engorging the parasite mounted atop him. Everything brightened, became white incandescence. He screamed into the mouth suctioning his own.

The guard shuddered and opened his eyes and nearly fell as vertigo assailed him. He was still leaning against the wall; the cigarette still smoldered in his hand; the convict watched him, features obscured in shadow. The light at the intersection dimmed and flickered, then was steady. “My god. My god.”

“You okay?” the convict said. He sounded concerned, sounded himself again.

“What were we talking about?”

“How I almost got away, but ended up in this shithole? Gonna be a movie of my life story. Starring you and me.”

“Before that. Before that.”

“There’s nothin’ before that, man. Nothin’ important, anyhow.”

“We’ve been away too long. Better get back to the block, see you to your bunk.” The guard said this without conviction, his thoughts turned inward, a snow flurry accelerating away from his grasping fingers.

“I got an idea,” the convict said. “Nobody’s missin’ us. C’mere. Let’s rest a while, here in the dark.” He opened his arms.

The guard smoked his cigarette to the filter, vaguely troubled. The vertigo dissipated, replaced by  contentment, a diluted sensation of euphoria he hadn’t experienced in an age and almost didn’t recognize. He crushed the butt under his shoe. He slouched over to the convict and pressed into the circle of his arm and closed his eyes. His heart began to speed. “Ah, I know what this is,” he said.

“Yeah, what?”

“Love,” the guard said. “This is what falling in love feels like.”

The convict laughed and kissed him softly, first on the neck, then the mouth. It went on forever.

Contributors

Laird Barron

Laird Barron spent his early years in Alaska, where he raced the Iditarod three times during the early 1990s and worked in the fishing and construction industries. He is the author of several books, including The Imago Sequence, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, and Swift to Chase. His work has also appeared in many magazines and anthologies. Barron currently resides in the Hudson Valley writing stories about the evil that men do.

Tom Cardamone

Tom Cardamone is the author of the Lambda Literary Award-winning speculative novella Green Thumb and the erotic fantasy novel The Werewolves of Central Park as well as the novella Pacific Rimming. His short story collection, Pumpkin Teeth, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and Black Quill Award.

Additionally, he has edited The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered and the anthology Lavender Menace: Tales of Queer Villainy! which was nominated for the Over the Rainbow List by the LGBT Round Table of the American Library Association.

Lambda Literary described his 2016 collection, Night Sweats: Tales of Homosexual Wonder and Woe, as “a heady mix of subtle, understated wonder, unmitigated horror, and powerful eroticism, with each story working its individual magic on the reader.”

His short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, some of which have been collected on his website www.pumpkinteeth.net.

Erastes

Born in Essex, England in 1959, Erastes attended Southend High School for Girls.Erastes is the penname of a female author who lives in Norfolk, UK. She drew her inspiration to write historical fiction from works such as Gaywyck by Vincent Virga and the novels of Mary Renault. Erastes was the Director of the Erotic Authors Association for two years and is an active member of the Historical Novel Society. She is the moderator of Speak Its Name, an influential blog dedicated to gay historical fiction.Erastes has been writing since 2003, and details of all her books and short stories can be found on her website, www.erastes.com.

Gemma Files

Former film critic and teacher turned award-winning horror author Gemma Files is probably best known for her QUILTBAG-friendly Weird Western Hexslinger Series (A Book of Tongues, A Rope of Thorns and A Tree of Bones, all from ChiZine Publications). She has also written two collections of short fiction (Kissing Carrion and The Worm in Every Heart) and a story cycle (We Will All Go Down Together: Stories of the Five-Family Coven), published by CZP as well, plus two chapbooks of speculative poetry. Her most recent novel, Experimental Film, was released in 2015. Naturally, it’s from CZP.

Michael Hacker

Michael Hacker lives in Los Angeles where he works for an international law firm that litigated in favor of marriage equality before the U.S. Supreme Court. His story “Vourdalak” appeared in the Bram Stoker Award winning anthology, Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet, published by Dark Scribe Press. Currently Michael is building a career as an audio book narrator and recently collaborated with Lisa Morton on the audio book production of Malediction, her Bram Stoker nominated second novel. You can view other titles he has narrated on his website: www.michael-hacker.com.

Chad Helder

Chad Helder is the author of The Pop-Up Book of Death, The Vampire Bridegroom, and Bartholomew of the Scissors. With Vince Liaguno, Helder co-edited Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet, which won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in an Anthology.

Greg Herren

Greg Herren is an award winning author/editor who lives in New Orleans. He has won the Lambda Literary Award twice (nominated 14 times), has been a Shirley Jackson Award finalist, and has won two medals from the Independent Press Moonbeam awards for young adult mystery/horror. His most recent book is Garden District Gothic, from Bold Strokes Books.

Brad C. Hodson

Originally from Tennessee, Brad C. Hodson currently hangs his hat in sunny Southern California. He's done rewriting and script-doctoring work for a dozen movies you've never heard of and a feature adaptation of his first novel Darling is currently in pre-production. For information on where to find more of his fiction, please visit brad-hodson.com/bibliography

Stephen Graham Jones

Stephen Graham Jones is the author of sixteen novels and six story collections. Most recent is the novella Mapping the Interior, from Tor.com, and the comic book My Hero, from Hex Publishers.

Stephen lives and teaches in Boulder, Colorado.

Helen Marshall

Helen Marshall is a Lecturer of Creative Writing and Publishing at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England. Her first collection of fiction Hair Side, Flesh Side won the Sydney J Bounds Award in 2013, and Gifts for the One Who Comes After, her second collection, won the World Fantasy Award and the Shirley Jackson Award in 2015. She is currently editing The Year’s Best Weird Fiction to be released in 2017, and her debut novel Everything that is Born will be published by Random House Canada in 2018.

Marshall Moore

Marshall Moore is the author of three novels (Bitter Orange, An Ideal for Living, and The Concrete Sky) and three short-fiction collections (A Garden Fed by Lightning, The Infernal Republic, and Black Shapes in a Darkened Room). Sagome Nere, an Italy-only collection of Moore's short fiction in translation, was published by 96, Rue de-la-Fontaine Edizioni in 2017. With Xu Xi, he is the co-editor of the anthology The Queen of Statue Square: New Short Fiction from Hong Kong. He holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Aberystwyth University in Wales. For more information, please visit: www.marshallmoore.com.

Lisa Morton

Lisa Morton is a screenwriter, author of non-fiction books, Bram Stoker Award-winning prose writer, and Halloween expert whose work was described by the American Library Association’s Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror as “consistently dark, unsettling, and frightening.”  Her most recent books include Ghosts: A Haunted History and the short story collection CD Select: Lisa Morton. Forthcoming from Doubleday/Blumhouse is Haunted Nights, an anthology co-edited with Ellen Datlow. She lives in North Hills, California, and can be found online at www.lisamorton.com.

David Nickle

David Nickle is the author of numerous short stories and several novels. His short fiction has appeared at Tor.com, Cemetery Dance, and most recently in anthologies such as Aickman's Heirs, Children of Lovecraft, and The Madness of Dr. Caligari, as well as The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and Best Horror of the Year. His stories have been collected in Monstrous Affections, and Knife Fight and Other Struggles, and his most recent novel is Volk: A Novel of Radiant Abomination, all from Chizine Publications. He lives and works in Toronto as a journalist.

R.B. Payne

Assembled from body parts stolen from the Los Angeles Coroner’s dumpster, and stitched together with razor wire, R.B. Payne lives in hope of becoming human. Meanwhile, he writes.

His work can be found in anthologies such as All American Horror of the 21st Century: The First Decade and Times of Trouble, and he’s very proud of his analysis of three 1930′s black-and-white slasher films in Butcher Knives and Body Counts. Recent work is featured in Expiration Date, Madhouse, Hell Comes to Hollywood II, Dark Discoveries, and 18 Wheels of Horror which is available in truck stops everywhere.

More short stories are in the publishing pipeline and a novel is on the near horizon. Up-to-date information can be found at www.rbpayne.com.

Evan J. Peterson

Evan J. Peterson's latest book, The PrEP Diaries: A Safe(r) Sex Memoir, will be released in May 2017 by Lethe Press. He is a Clarion West alum and author of the horror poetry chapbooks Skin Job and The Midnight Channel as well as editor of the Lambda Literary finalist Ghosts in Gaslight, Monsters in Steam: Gay City 5. His writing has also appeared in Weird Tales, Queers Destroy Horror, The Book of Three Gates, Nightmare Magazine, Boing Boing, and Best Gay Stories 2015. Evanjpeterson.com can tell you more.

Norman Prentiss

Norman Prentiss is the author of the queer road-trip fantasy, Odd Adventures with Your Other Father, and the forthcoming Life in a Haunted House. He won a 2010 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Long Fiction for his first book, Invisible Fences. Previously he won a Stoker in the Short Fiction category for “In the Porches of My Ears,” which originally appeared in Postscripts 18. Other publications include the novella The Fleshless Man, a mini-collection Four Legs in the Morning, a chapter in the round-robin novella The Crane House: A Halloween Story, The Narrator (with Michael McBride), The Halloween Children (with Brian James Freeman) and anthology appearances in Dark Screams Volume Two, Four Zombies, Four Halloweens, Dark Fusions, All-American Horror of the 21st Century, Blood Lite 3, Zombies vs. Robots: This Means War, Horror Drive-In: An All-Night Short Story Marathon, Black Static, Commutability, Damned Nation, Tales from the Gorezone, Best Horror of the Year, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, and four editions of the Shivers anthology series. His poetry has appeared in Writer Online, Southern Poetry Review, Baltimore's City Paper, and A Sea of Alone: Poems for Alfred Hitchcock.

Visit him online at www.normanprentiss.com.

Martin Rose

Martin Rose writes a range of fiction from the fantastic to the macabre. His early stories found homes in Necrotic Tissue and Murky Depths, and numerous venues and anthologies since, such as Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Handsome Devil, Dread, and Baker Street Irregulars. The debut novel, Bring Me Flesh, I'll Bring Hell is a noir, dark novel of a zombie private investigator, and is recognized as one of "Notable Novels of 2014" in Best Horror of the Year, Vol. 7. He resides in the pine barrens of New Jersey, but believes the Jersey Devil was burned out long ago in the region's numerous wildfires. More details available at martinrose.org

Martel Sardina

Martel Sardina lives near Chicago, Illinois. The only thing she loves more than writing fiction is reading it. Her passion for stories and storytellers have taken her on journeys to places she never dreamed she’d go. "A Soldier's Mercy" was born on a bus ride taken in Vegas, and Martel hopes you enjoy her interpretation of the dark side of desire.

Lee Thomas

Lee Thomas is the Bram Stoker Award- and two-time Lambda Literary Award-winning author of The Dust of Wonderland, In the Closet, Under the Bed, The German, Torn, Like Light for Flies, Butcher’s Road, and Down On Your Knees, among others. His work has been translated into multiple languages and has been optioned for film. Lee lives in Austin, Texas with his husband John, and their family of animals. You can find him online at www.leethomasauthor.com.

About the Editor

Vince Liaguno

Vince Liaguno is the Bram Stoker Award-winning editor of Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet (Dark Scribe Press 2008), an anthology of queer horror fiction, which he co-edited with Chad Helder. His debut novel, 2006’s The Literary Six, was a tribute to the slasher films of the 80s and won an Independent Publisher Award (IPPY) for Horror and was named a finalist in ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Awards in the Gay/Lesbian Fiction category. He also edited Butcher Knives & Body Counts, a collection of essays on the formula, frights, and fun of the slasher film, and is currently at work finishing his second novel and his first short story collection.

He currently resides on the eastern end of Long Island, New York, where he is a licensed nursing home administrator by day and a writer, anthologist, and pop culture enthusiast by night. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) and the Horror Writers Association (HWA), for which he also served as Secretary and as a longtime member of the organization’s Board of Trustees.

Author Website: www.VinceLiaguno.com

Table of Contents

- Unspeakable Horror 2:
- DECONSTRUCTING DESIRE
- Introduction
- Unspeakable Desire
- Fugitive Colours
- Underground
- Ofrenda
- Clearing Clutter
- The Grief Season
- Investment Opportunity
- A Soldier’s Mercy
- Twilighter
- Tabula Rasa
- Caldera
- Bent on Midnight Frolic
- Murder on the Prurient Express
- Rougarou
- Bargain Books
- The Sisterhood
- Kissyface
- The Shell
- Lagan
- a strange form of life
- Contributors
- Tom Cardamone
- Erastes
- Gemma Files
- Michael Hacker
- Chad Helder
- Greg Herren
- Brad C. Hodson
- Stephen Graham Jones
- Helen Marshall
- Marshall Moore
- Lisa Morton
- David Nickle
- R.B. Payne
- Evan J. Peterson
- Norman Prentiss
- Martin Rose
- Martel Sardina
- Lee Thomas
- About the Editor