Deadlines
Author: Cheryl Mullenax
Date: 2020-08-09 05:00:00+00:00
Description: Deadlines is a nightmarish excursion into fear featuring stories from 20 up-and-coming authors of horror and dark fiction. From serial killers to zombies, from sinister dolls to malicious cats, this collection is a veritable a-z of evil and a deadly trip down the darkside of human nature. Sonar4 Publications Review: Deadlines has some of the scariest stories wrapped together in one convenient package. Stories that grab a hold of your breath refusing to give it back until you turn the next page. Authors such as Michael A. Kechula, Shaun Ryan are just two of the twenty that appear with their gru
Publisher: Comet Press

DEADLINES: ANTHOLOGY OF HORROR AND DARK FICTION

A RED ROOM PRESS BOOK

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

The stories in this anthology are works of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to an actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

Deadlines: An Anthology of Horror and Dark Fiction copyright © Red Room Press, 2008
“Brutal Assault” copyright © Garry Bushell, 2008
“The Cowbird’s Nest” copyright © Clinton A. Harris, 2007
“Madonna of the Black Mountain” copyright © Tessa Johnstone, 2007
“Striptease on Mount Rushmore” copyright © Ed Lynskey, 2006
“Mysterio and Galatea” copyright © Michael A. Kechula, 2006
“Harry” copyright © Doug Murano, 2008
“In Your Warm and Darkened Grave” copyright © Frank Scalise, 2007
“Girl in the Tub” copyright © Cameron L. Mitchell, 2008
“Frazzled” copyright © J.R., 2007
“The Gift of the Boneflower” copyright © D. Alexander Ward, 2006
“As Close as it Gets” copyright © Karina Berg Johansson, 2008
"Good Boys" copyright © Shaun Ryan, 2007
“Silence” copyright © Christopher Allan Death, 2008
“Visiting Hour” copyright © Michael Pelc, 2008
“The Death of Lester Williams” copyright © Ty Johnston, 2008
“La Nuit du la Chat Noir” copyright © Nora B. Peevy, 2008
“White” copyright © David Richards, 2008
“Street Walking” copyright © Jason Jeffery, 2008
“Will’s Little Black Flower” copyright © Brent Meske, 2006
“Malrats” copyright © Walter Payne, 2008

“Mysterio and Galatea” first appeared in Smoke and Mirrors, May 2006
“Frazzled” first appeared in The Harrow, January 2007

First Red Room Press ebook Edition, January, 2010
Red Room Press is an imprint of Comet Press

Visit us on the web at redroompress.com
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CONTENTS

- BRUTAL ASSAULT Garry Bushell

- THE COWBIRD’S NEST Clinton A. Harris

- MADONNA OF THE BLACK MOUNTAIN Tessa Johnstone

- STRIPTEASE ON MOUNT RUSHMORE Ed Lynskey
- MYSTERIO AND GALATEA Michael A. Kechula
- HARRY Doug Murano

- IN YOUR WARM AND DARKENED GRAVE Frank Zafiro

- GIRL IN THE TUB Cameron L. Mitchell

- FRAZZLED J.R.

- THE GIFT OF THE BONEFLOWER D. Alexander Ward

- AS CLOSE AS IT GETS Karina Berg Johansson
- GOOD BOYS Shaun Ryan
- SILENCE Christopher Allan Death
- VISITING HOUR Michael Pelc
- THE DEATH OF LESTER WILLIAMS Ty Johnston
- LA NUIT DU LA CHAT NOIR Nora B. Peevy
- WHITE David Richards
- STREET WALKING Jason Jeffery
- WILL’S LITTLE BLACK FLOWER Brent Meske
- MALRATS Walter Payne
- ABOUT THE AUTHORS

BRUTAL ASSAULT

Garry Bushell

It was a day much like his ex-wife, thought Mick Neale, cold and over-cast; but now he was in the pub he felt a lot happier. He always did. Mick settled on his favourite bar stall, sipped his London Pride, winked at Thelma, and started assembling a roll-up.

“DAD!” A young boy’s voice disturbed the peace.

“Is that your Mark?” asked Thelma.

“Yeah,” Mick grunted. “It’ll wait.”

He picked up a discarded tabloid and flicked through the gossip disguised as news; another kiss and tell girl doing the dirty on an obscure TV soap star … tedious shit.

“DAD!” The boy again; more urgent now. His shout was followed by a girl’s scream. Mick threw down the paper and ran out of the Toad Rock Retreat. He could see the back of his son’s head up on the rocks.

“What is it?” Mick shouted. “This better be good, Marky.”

“It’s a body.”

“What?”

Mick clambered up the damp, slippery rock to where his ten-year-old son was perched, and eased the younger, crying girl to one side. Other kids and a few parents were drawn towards the commotion.

Mick looked to where Mark was pointing and sucked in his breath. It was a body all right. Face down, male, mixed race, young, slim, black hair, cheap clothes, old trainers.

Slowly he lowered himself down between the rocks. He started to take the man’s pulse and recoiled.

“What … who?” The girl’s mother had arrived, scarcely more collected than her daughter. “Has he slipped?” she said. “Here, pass him up, I’ll help.”

“No point, he’s dead.”

“How can you tell?”

Mick looked up at her.

“The bloody great bite mark in his neck’s a bit of a clue. His windpipe’s been bitten clean out.”

A couple of teenagers in Burberry caps leaned forward and started taking pictures with their mobile phones.

“For God’s sake,” Mick snapped. “Give the man some dignity. Make yourself useful with them things, call the cops.”

He stood up and studied the surrounding area. There were an awful lot of boot marks in the mud. DMs. He spotted something in the grass; a button. Mick flicked it over with his foot. It said Brutal Assault, the Ss were runic. Coincidence or sick joke?

“OK, everybody, steer clear of this area until the police arrive,” he shouted. He grabbed Mark by the arm and marched him back to the pub. A crowd had started to congregate at the foot of the rocks.

“Man wha’ happen?” said a pasty white teenager in an NWA t-shirt.

“It’s a body, like on Prime Suspect,” shouted Mark.

“Cool,” the boy replied.

When Tonbridge C.I.D. arrived the corpse had gone.

“It can’t have vanished in the thin air,” DI McCourt was saying.

“I’ve been here all the time, Charlie,” said Mick. “Noone’s been up there.”

“And the bite?”

“It was like a puma had got at him.”

“Half-chat you say?”

“He was mixed race, Chas. Don’t they do sensitivity training in Kent no more?”

McCourt frowned. Mick picked up on his unease.

“This isn’t the first is it mate?”

“Two black men, three pikies and a Paki … stani. All apparently killed by bite wounds. And all of the bodies were gone by the time we got there. Nothing left but blood and slime.” Charlie looked at his old colleague. “We’ve kept it out the press, Mick, but …”

“There are a lot of witnesses.”

“Yeah. It’ll get out soon and I’m fucking baffled.”

It was 9 pm by the time Mick had got back from dropping Mark off with “the enemy”, his ex-wife Clarissa. He poured himself a single malt, fired up his lap-top and googled Brutal Assault. No surprise. They were an obscure neo-Nazi band from South West London. Scum. Mick wasn’t particularly political, but he hated Nazis, especially Nazi skinheads. Morons. They knew nothing about their own heritage. Mick had been a Mod in ’79 but bluebeat had pride of place in his vinyl and CD collections along with Motown and Stax. (No surrender to the iPod in the Neale household.)

He’d quit the Force in 2005, the day after his Lottery win, and did freelance P.I. work to keep the boredom at bay. Only Mark kept him in the country. As soon as the boy was 15, Mick was uprooting to the Costa Blanca.

He lit up a roll-up. If there was a gang of racist boneheads at large he wanted to be the man who stuck them inside. There was nothing else for it; he’d have to ring Ginny.

Virginia Slattery was a freelance rock photographer and a skinhead herself, a sensible one with a Ska collection that rivalled his own. She was also Mick’s ex. He dialled her number gingerly.

“Ginny …”

“Fuck off Mick. What is it this time, pissed again and flicking through yer little black book?”

That voice! Like honey oozing on cream. Even when she was frosty, just hearing it made him hard.

“I wish. Listen, babe, this isn’t a social call.”

“Don’t call me babe.”

He filled her in about the attacks, not mentioning the murders. “So I wondered if you’d heard of any neo-Nazi activity in the area?”

“I’ve heard talk of a little mob of arseholes who get down the George in Paddock Wood. Some C18 splinter group, mostly Poles and kids. The new pub-owner is in on it, older bloke in his forties called Kol with a K. Koli’s his name, I think he’s Scandinavian. He’s got a few bob. He’s been putting on Blood and Honour gigs. Some of the lads have been talking about paying them a visit with the baseball bats.”

“Yeah? Well tell ’em not to. Do these creeps know you?”

“No.”

“Good. Tomorrow night, you and me are going down there.”

“Is this a date?”

“No. It’s a recce. Don’t wear any SHARP badges. Tomorrow we’re BNP, OK? I’m shaving me head.”

“Is it worth it, Kojak?”

“Ha ha. Pick you up at 8.”

“Sounds like a date to me.”

“Bye.”

The pub was every bit as grim and time-locked as he’d imagined it. An old man’s public bar with a dull and dusty function room on the side where the Kameraden partied. There were two dozen of them, unshaven and heavily tattooed; the usual shifty losers. And the males were just as bad. An aging three piece band played tuneless heavy metal with hollered terrace choruses. By the time the evening had finished Mick had befriended Den, a weasel-faced dustman with ‘cut here’ tattooed on his neck, and learnt who was who. Turned out two of the skins were public schoolboys slumming it, “egg’eads” according to Den. But the only one of interest was Kol, a charismatic six footer. He had an aristocratic bearing and eyes of piercing blue; eyes that made the Med look murky. He’d made a short speech before the gig in an accent Mick couldn’t place, and then he left.

Back at home, Mick poured Ginny a glass of Fleurie. The air-con was out and the flat was hot, far too hot, but on the plus side, she’d unbuttoned her blouse. Mark had been going through Mick’s photos and left one of his Mum by the PC. Ginny studied it with disdain. “Can you smell mint sauce?” she said.

“Eh?”

“To go with this mutton …”

Mick ignored her and checked his phone messages. McCourt had called. There had been another attack, and another missing corpse.

“But we were with them all night,” said Ginny. “So you must be barking up the wrong tree.”

“Maybe. Except, Kol went AWOL for most of the night.”

“So what do we do?”

“Surveillance. Wherever he goes, we follow.”

“So we’re a team?”

“We are.”

“Am I staying the night, partner?”

He kissed her on the nose. “It’d be a shame not to.”

They moved through to the bedroom. He set the alarm for 3am.

“Not still the night time fag break? You need help for that addiction, mister.”

“You know how cranky I get if I go the night without a ciggy, Gin.” He smiled. “But I have got another addiction you can help me with …”

For the next three nights they staked out the George. Kol never left the pub, and there were no more murders. On the fourth night they got lucky. Kol and a young skin, one of the posh boys, left at nightfall. Mick trailed them to the Toad Rock caves and followed on foot as they walked to a clearing in the woods. Ten hooded men were waiting for them. Two stepped forward and led the skinhead to a stone table. They laid him on it and strapped him down.

“It’s like something out of a crap Frat House initiation ceremony,” muttered Mick, lighting up.

Koli addressed the kid. “You are the bravest of the brave,” he said grandly. “You are one of the chosen few. Today, this night, you will become unique, beyond human.”

He produced something from his jacket pocket.

“Hypodermic,” said Ginny, watching the scene through her telephoto lens. The men stood forward and removed their masks.

“What the fu …?”

“They’re like … zombies.”

“Zombie fuckin’ Skinheads.”

“Shit.”

“OK, where are the cameras, this has to be Punk’d, right?”

The skinhead screamed. “Die like a man!” snapped Kol. “Die so you can be reborn.”

He injected the terrified kid. His body began to writhe and twist on the table, the straps eating in to his wrists, before he shuddered to an abrupt stop.

“Dead?” whispered Ginny.

“Not quite.”

The young skinhead was changing. His flesh was rotting but it grew back, the skin coarser, the eyes vacant, and the body larger, stronger … until he snapped his restraints and stood erect. The process took about five minutes.

Kol hugged him. “My son, I am proud of you. You are hungry, yes?”

The zombie-skin grunted.

“Release the sub-human,” Kol commanded. “He must be blooded.”

A tall zombie marched stiffly into a near-by opening in the rocks and emerged with a terrified black woman on a leash. He tore off the collar with one hand and she started running, straight towards Mick and Ginny, with the zombie-skin lurching after her.

Mick Neale didn’t hesitate. Sticking out his boot, he tripped her pursuer and jabbed his cigarette hard into his face.

They managed to reach the car ahead of the mob, picking up the shaken woman on the road, and dropping her off outside Maidstone hospital accident and emergency unit.

She was incapable of speech and remembered nothing.

Back home, Mick poured two large measures of raspberry vodka and lit a joint.

“So do we tell Charlie McCourt?” asked Ginny.

“Tell him what? That we saw zombies? He’ll think we’ve been tripping.”

“We should …”

“Yeah, but let’s go back in daylight and have a nose around first.”

“But …”

He gripped her arm. “Give me one day, Gin.”

“K.”

“I’ll bring my Beretta just in case.”

“And put another call in to the air con guy.”

“Yeah.”

That night, they went to bed together but they didn’t make love and neither of them slept.

It was 8 pm when they returned to Toad Rock. Still light. The rain had driven away the urchins. Mick led the way through the woods to the clearing. There was no sound except the rain and their footsteps, and no sign of last night’s blood-chilling ritual. Even the stone table had gone, and there was no way that had been washed away. Whoever these pricks were, they were organised, he thought.

Ginny took pictures of the rock face. Mick studied the graffiti. Amidst the usual pledges of devotion to girls, football teams and oi-oi punk rock, there was a small area covered in runes. He brushed away the water, but he could make no sense of it. Mick turned away, but then something, maybe some old cop instinct, made him turn back. That stone table was too heavy to have gone far without a crane. Perhaps the rocks weren’t all they seemed. He took out his gun and started tapping around the runes with the handle. On the seventh tap, the rock started to vibrate. A narrow hidden entrance opened slowly.

Motioning for Ginny to keep quiet, Mick advanced into the crevice.

It was cold and dank and reeked like a fisherman’s nets. Everywhere was bathed in dim electric light. The man-made passage led deep into the rocks. He inched his way along, with Ginny behind him. The passage turned and opened up. Mick gasped. Around the corner was a cell full of people: two Asian girls, a Chinese man, a Turk, and an Arab couple.

“Help us,” pleaded the Turk. The girls started screaming.

“Shhh,” snapped Mick. “Keep it down, for Chrissakes.”

The cell had a solid padlock.

“Stand well back, I’m gonna shoot this off.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, do you Michael?”

Mick span round to find Kol with Ginny. He had her in a headlock with his left arm. His right hand held a needle. Two skinheads loomed behind him.

“Put the gun down Mr. Neale or your pretty friend will be going on a one-way trip.”

Mick did as he was told.

“Now put your hands on your head and back off.” Again Mick complied.

The skins opened the cell and pushed Ginny in. Kol produced what looked like a fancy TV remote and aimed it at the section of wall behind Mick. It opened up.

“My office, Michael, now,” he commanded.

Mick stumbled in, glancing around for a makeshift weapon. There were some odd Viking-style figures on the wall but other than that all he could see was a wooden desk, two chairs, a mess of paperwork over the floor and a shed-load of complex machinery. The back wall was another cell housing the hoard of Zombie-Skins who swayed blankly to hypnotic electro-synth music, their dilated pupils gleaming in the dark like rats’ eyes.

“My babies, aren’t they glorious?” said Koli.

“What the fuck is this?”

“A new world order, my friend. Aren’t you going to ask how I knew who you were?”

“You took my picture off the pub’s CCTV cameras, it wouldn’t take Lex Luthor to ID me.”

“Mr. Neale, I’m disappointed you think me so mundane … I could make you as immortal as I am, you know. One little squirt of this”—he held the needle aloft —“and you will become beyond human.”

“What, like those poor saps?”

“Those ‘saps’ are the spearhead of a new model army who will liberate Gaia by wiping the human virus off the face of the planet.”

“Sorry, you’ll have to speak English, pal.”

“Your species has become an infection, Mr Neale, a planetary malady. Earth is threatened by a plague of people.”

“And you …”

“We are going to eradicate the plague. Replace selfish humanity with a new kind of being answerable to me.”

“So if we’re all to blame, why the racist shit?”

“Racist? My troops are merely the same stock as those who believed in us. But even they have had to change, because humanity is vile. Man destroys everything he touches. You’ve hunted other species to extinction, Michael. Now we are going to hunt you, and there’s nothing you can do to stop us because even the other gods have given up on you.”

“Other gods …?”

“Come now, Michael, I thought you were sharp. I know you’ve seen the runes, you’ll have noticed the Norse statuettes in here; surely a small anagram isn’t beyond you.”

Mick looked at his tormentor for a beat. Kol, Koli … “Loki?” he said, hesitantly. “Norse god of Mischief?”

“Mischief, trickster, fraudster, I have a bad reputation; but when I solve the human problem, I’m pretty sure my status will improve, Odin willing.”

“Humans ain’t all bad.”

“Oh but you are; you can’t help yourself. The only way for the Earth to live is for you to die. But you have a choice Michael. You can remain part of the problem, or you can join us. You’re fit, you’re strong. You can be as one with my children feeding off the lesser breeds and serving true gods.”

“Never.”

“Hahaha. Did I make that sound like you had a choice? Sorry!”

Loki stabbed the hypodermic into Mick Neale’s hand and chuckled. “I do have my reputation for deceit to keep up.”

A cold sweat broke out on Mick’s temples. He felt hot, baffled, scared. He wanted to move, but his legs wouldn’t respond. His stomach went into a spasm, his balls tightened. His entire body started to tingle. Mick tried to shout but no words came out. He felt a strange pressure on the top of his skull followed by intense pain. His hands shot to his head. He could feel it physically stretching. It was agonising, as if someone was bombarding his skull, inside and outside, with innumerable red-hot needles; and this burning, searing, scorching sensation was gnawing through him, seeping through his brain and down his spinal column. Mick had never experienced pain like it. Every part of his head ached, his ears, his nose, his mouth, his teeth, his tongue. It was torment. Excruciating. He felt like his brain was going up in flames, until … BLAM! His body had been hit by an external force. A huge stinging blast. He was physically jolted. It was as if he’d been struck by a bolt of lightning: powerful, elemental, purifying.

The agony stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Dazed, Mick opened his right eye a fraction. His hand still looked normal. He rolled over, face down. Loki was in the cell, feeding raw meat to his troops. The serum had failed.

Mick’s hand shot down to his pocket. He didn’t have his gun but he still had his lighter. And the bin full of paper would start a fine blaze. Quickly but quietly he positioned it under the desk and set it alight. Taking the remote, he closed the office behind him and jogged back to where he had dropped the Beretta. It was still there. One of the two skinheads emerged from the shadows and punched Mick hard in his temple. He rolled onto the floor, grabbing the gun, his thumb going immediately for the trigger. Crack! The first bastard went straight down. His pal turned and ran. Mick aimed quickly and clipped his left leg. The skin hit the deck with a yelp.

Behind him he could hear inhuman screams as the electrical equipment exploded and solved the Zombie-Skinhead problem permanently. Mick’s third shot took the padlock off the primitive cell. Ginny led the way. The captives made for the opening with Mick bringing up the rear, half-carrying the injured skin with him. Charlie McCourt and a squad of cops were at the scene in ten minutes, just in time to see the last survivor, a solitary bat, leave the cave.

No-one but Mick and Ginny knew the true nature of Koli’s gang, and he had no intention of letting that change.

Back at the flat, the air-con had finally been fixed. He explained about Loki, adding: “But that’s between us, right? Why complicate Charlie’s world? Let them think it was a Nazi murder gang, that way everyone’s happy and no-one thinks we’re nuts.”

Mick opened his laptop and started typing.

“Why didn’t his serum work on you?”

“Maybe I’m too sexually charged,” he laughed. “Or maybe the unusually high levels of nicotine in my blood system counter-acted it. That’s the only thing I can think of that makes me different from the boneheads. Other than my IQ, I mean.”

“Loki,” said Ginny, shaking her head. “That’s insane, Mick. At least he’s gone now.”

“Maybe not,” he said. “According to Google, Loki was a shape-changer, which means the bat I saw …”

“Coulda been him.”

“Yeah. Coulda. But might have just been a bat. Either way we whipped his no-dick Nordic arse good and proper. We won’t hear anything of Mr. Koli again.”

He looked at her and added softly: “But we do know the human race is screwing up, and if we don’t out our house in order someone, or something will do it for us.”

“Thank you, Al Gore.”

He half-smiled.

“You’re right, Mick, but we’ve done our bit for today. So what do you say we celebrate?”

“In bed?”

“Where else?”

“Well I quite fancied it doggy style on the kitchen floor.”

“Your wish is my command.”

The next morning the flat was strewn with the detritus of their love making. Clothes, oils and condoms, used and unused, were everywhere. Mick lit up, made coffee and took it back to bed. If he’d bothered to glance at Sky News, he would have seen a report about a savage fatal attack on a prominent gay clergyman on Hampstead Heath made by hirsute males with cropped hair wearing Ben Sherman shirts, Levi red-tag jeans and DM boots.

Headline: ‘Curse Of The Were-Skins?’

It would be a few hours yet before Mick found the tradesman’s card left on the table. All it said was: ‘John Thor, Asgard Plumbing. 24-hour, 7-day-a-week emergency call-out.’

THE COWBIRD’S NEST

Clinton A. Harris

“I thought I would find you here, Jim Russell,” the stranger said. “I didn’t believe it at first, but here you are.”

Jim stopped where he was, his keys in hand, ready to unlock the door to his apartment. His first thought was that a bill collector had found him. His second was that he was about to be murdered.

“Do we know each other?” Jim asked. For a moment, the man looked oddly familiar to Jim, but he couldn’t place it. The hair, the eyes, his build, all of it reminded him of someone else. Somebody from high school? A guy from work? The man smiled and Jim felt chills down to his bones. After seeing that toothy grin, one side of the mouth higher than the other, a glint of mischief in those eyes, there was no mistaking it. It was Jim himself, or what could pass as his exact copy, standing right in front of him. Not quite like looking in a mirror, but rather a photograph of himself blown up to life size. It was an odd thing to experience, much like hearing his own voice on tape.

“What the hell is this?” Jim demanded. “Who are you?”

“Well, Jim—if I can call you that—I’m you!” the other man said. “We are the same person. I know this might sound odd, but I am from a parallel universe. I’ve come to help you.”

“This is a joke, right? Somebody put you up to this.” There could be no other explanation, Jim thought.

“I wish that were true,” the other Jim said. “I know it might sound weird, but I’ve got nowhere else to go.

Somehow I wound up here, and I don’t know how to get back. At first, I thought I was just hallucinating, I mean things here are similar yet different, you know? Anyway, after awhile, it all started to add up, and I realized I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.”

“You’re from Kansas?” Jim asked.

“Listen, Jim,” the man continued. “I can help you.”

“Supposing you aren’t some sort of con man, how can you help me?” Jim asked.

“You live in this place, so you’re obviously broke. I wouldn’t be much of a con man if I was here to fleece you. The truth is I need a place to stay, just until I can find a job and a place of my own, of course.”

“So how’s crashing on my couch supposed to help me?” Jim asked.

“Well, first of all, I wouldn’t be any trouble. I promise. Plus, I could go to work for you. Maybe let you work on that novel you’ve been trying to finish. If you’ve got a girlfriend, you could use the extra time to take her out more. It would be like making a copy of yourself, really. At least until I can get back on my feet.”

“How did you know about my book?” Jim asked.

“Like I said, our worlds aren’t much different. I’ve been working on a novel, so I took a shot in the dark, and guessed you were too.”

“There’s this girl, Claire, that I met at the bookstore,” Jim said. “I wouldn’t mind having more time to take her out. But come on, your story is insane. How am I supposed to believe you?”

“I guess you really shouldn’t,” the other Jim said. “But unless you help me, I’m gonna be living on the streets. I promise you, I’m not some kind of wacko.”

After a long moment of silent consideration, Jim asked, “Have you ever worked as a file clerk?”

“I can alphabetize in my sleep,” the other replied. He reached out a hand and Jim shook it. The man’s palm was ice cold. He didn’t shake it any longer than he had to.

“What do I call you?” Jim asked.

“Well, Jim, of course,” the man said with a grin.

It took some time for Jim to get used to writing full-time. He spent the majority of the day inside, typing away at the story that had been dormant for so long. “The Wastes Beyond,” was the working title. It had been weeks since he had worked on it longer than an hour or more. He wrote all morning. At lunch, he scrounged through the fridge for something to eat. In the afternoon, he paced around the room. Then he sorted through his CD collection to find the most suitable writing music to fit his mood. He watched some television. He took a nap. The hours passed and there was still no call from work. The police didn’t come knocking on his door with a Jim Russell impostor in custody. He drank a beer on his balcony, watching the ebb and flow of the passersby on the street. Joggers. Women pushing strollers. A bum with a shopping cart full of aluminum pop cans. This was what he was missing. This was what freedom felt like—time to just pay attention to the details.

His double was due back in a few hours, and was dreading his arrival. Hearing him walk around the apartment all night had been strange enough. It didn’t seem like the man ever slept. Jim tried not to spend too much time around him. He was a nice enough guy, sure, but it didn’t feel right. He decided if he ever sold his novel, he would pitch the guy out on his ear the same day.

When the call came, Jim snatched the phone off the hook. It wasn’t work, or the police, but Claire.

“What are you doing home?” she asked.

“Me? Oh, uh, they changed our shifts around a little bit,” he said. “I got home early.” Keeping track of all the lies was going to be tricky, he thought.

“Well, I was just calling to leave a message,” she said. “But since I got the real deal, I’ll ask. There’s a concert in the park tonight. I thought you might want to come?”

“I’d like that,” Jim said.

“Really? Meet you at Washington Park around seven?”

Seven meant an hour of staring at the other Jim before he could leave.

“Better make that six,” Jim suggested. “We can go out for some coffee first.”

Claire agreed and Jim felt relieved to have an excuse to be out of the house for much of the evening. By the time he returned, the other Jim would already be vegetating in front of the TV. Hopefully he would be tired enough to fall asleep by then and not be troubled by the sound of his double in the next room. Jim finished a revision on a chapter before getting ready.

When the phone call came, just before six, Jim waited for the machine to take the message. The voice he heard sounded odd, nasal. “Jim, I’m still at work. I offered to work some overtime tonight. I hope you don’t mind. I’ll see you later.”

Jim rushed to pick up the receiver, “Jim?” he said. The name caught in his throat.

“Oh, hey Jim. I thought you were out.”

“I was just about to leave. Got a date with that girl Claire. How are things?”

“Great,” the other said.

“No problems at work? Nobody asked you any weird questions?” Jim asked.

“Nope. Hey buddy, I’ve got to go. Have fun on that date.”

The line clicked and the other Jim was gone. Jim hoped he still had a job by the end of the week, not to mention furniture in his apartment. He felt better about the situation as the days passed, and then the weeks. The other Jim brought home the paychecks which had gotten bigger since he started taking on more hours and more work. Jim finished chapter after chapter until his book was nearly finished. He began the revisions, worked straight through the days, met Claire every night of the week, and slept like he had been drugged every night. His life felt balanced, complete.

One of the differences between the Jims was that the new Jim truly enjoyed his job. Jim had hated it. Ineffectual bureaucrats at the top, illiterate drones at the bottom, and Jim in the middle, wishing he had a chance to write all day and enjoy life instead of slaving away over lists of names, ledger balances, spreadsheets and the incessant hum of incoming calls throughout the maze of cubicles. The other Jim thrived at this line of work. He worked sixty hours a week and never complained. The subject of things going back to the way they were before never came up.

When he did run into the other Jim, the exchanges were mercifully short. A passing glance of recognition or a brief “how’s it going?” usually sufficed. The other Jim lived in the peripheral of his life, filling in the spots where he needed to be, but where Jim hated being. The other man got very good at feeling out Jim’s mood and tended to leave him alone, as if he knew his presence made him uncomfortable. It was possible that he felt no more at ease with the situation, but Jim never heard him complain.

Their biggest exchange of words, other than the first time they met, was the time Jim came home late one night from a date with Claire. His double sat on the couch, drinking a beer. Black Label generic. The other Jim said he preferred it to name brands. It was empty calories and let him live cheaply. The man could hold his liquor better than Jim could. Like tonight, he drank brew after brew and never seemed drunk, other than becoming sullen while he stared at hours of television. Jim considered having a talk with him about this habit, but it didn’t seem to be affecting his ability to hold down a job. In fact, there was already talk of Jim getting a raise.

“Wanna order a pizza?” Jim asked as he took off his coat. Except for the light of the TV, the room was dark. The shades were drawn.

“No thanks,” the other said. “I haven’t had much of an appetite for food lately.”

Jim asked him what he was watching.

“A nature program,” he replied. His face was illuminated by the fluctuating images of the TV screen. Eye-tearing greens and blues, yellows and stark white, all contrasted painfully with the gloom of the rest of the apartment.

Jim sat down on the couch, surrounded by empty cans of Black Label. He tried his best not to let any of the cans touch him as they sat in the dark living room, watching television.

“Like the cuckoo,” the narrator said, “the brown-headed cowbird builds no nest. The female lays her eggs in another bird’s nest and lets it raise the young.”

The other Jim chuckled to himself and changed the channel. A panel of toothless rednecks and a dwarf were on a talk show panel. A large woman whose clothes were eleven sizes too small was in tears.

“Jerry, he’s changed so much since he knocked me up. I don’t even know him no more! It’s like he’s a different person!”

“Why do they always talk in clichés?” Jim asked.

“Shhh. This is good stuff,” the other warned.

“That baby ain’t his!” the dwarf insisted. The caption said she was the man’s ex-wife. “It don’t look nothin’ like ‘im.”

“That baby’s mine, bitch!” the man bellowed. The other Jim changed the channel just before the rednecks could start throwing chairs.

“That’s not his baby,” Jim said.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” the other said. “You can see it in the eyes.”

Jim left his roommate to his shadows, transfixed to the flickering television screen. A pair of robins were feeding a trio of chicks. One was twice the size of the other two, and black. The narrator continued his lulling drone about the tragedies of survival and the importance of the food chain. It made Jim sleepy just to hear it. He felt like he was in biology class again, where he got most of his best naps in college.

He closed his bedroom door and locked it on nights like these, especially when the other Jim had been drinking. He never acted drunk, though it might have been a relief. Instead, he became sullen. Volatile.

Things between Jim and Claire got more serious, which only helped the situation. Jim was spending more nights at Claire’s. She had a key made for him. They joked about getting engaged, but Jim knew it was more than a joke for Claire. He was beginning to feel the same way. Each morning, he kissed her goodbye as they parted ways for work. Claire walked one way to the University, and Jim went to the apartment. She called him on his cell phone during the day, so she never realized he wasn’t stuffed in his cubicle, but rather sending copies of his novel to agents and publishers.

After months of this Jim had decided to give up, until the night an agent called to tell him she was interested in drawing up a contract. She said there were already a few publishers interested in buying his book. One editor had called his book the best thing he had read in months. After getting off the phone with the agent, Jim was stoked to tell someone else the good news. Anybody.

“You were right,” he told the other Jim. “All I needed was the time to do this. I knew I had it in me!”

“That’s great, Jim,” the other Jim said. “I was hoping you could help me out with something.”

“Sure,” Jim said. “What’s going on?”

“I got promoted to Assistant Director the other day,” he said.

“Wow! That’s great news. You don’t sound very excited.”

“Oh no,” the other Jim replied. “It's just that I went out with some friends from work the other night, and well, one thing led to another, you know? To make a long story short, I need you to come in tomorrow to give a urine sample.”

“What?”

“I need you to pee in the cup. And probably work my shift. It’s just one day, and you’ve been working there for a few years already.”

“Sure, why not?” Jim answered. “But there’s no way in hell I’m working twelve hours like you do. That’s where I draw the line.”

The next morning, Jim arrived at work fifteen minutes late. He trudged through the front lobby and past the pretty blonde receptionist.

“Hi, Jim,” she said.

“Uh, hi, Cindy,” he said. In two years of employment, Cindy had never looked up from her nails long enough to notice him walking into the building. Now she was stopping him.

“You feeling alright? I heard you have a pee test today.”

“I’ve got it covered,” Jim said. “How are you?”

“My knees are still shaking from the other night.”

“Oh. Hey! I’ll see you later.”

“You’re goddamned right you will,” Cindy said. She dipped her finger into her coffee and then put it into her mouth. Her freshly glossed lips encircled her finger as she drew it out slowly, deliberately.

Jim met with the HR doctor and took the test. He handed the warm cup of pee over to the doctor and went back to his desk. People he never talked to before waved and said hello. The young, hip crowd, as he always had known them. The kind that bragged with each other around the break room table about who they had met in a club, and joked about bad decisions they had escaped from early in the morning before they woke up.

Jim sat at his desk, and stared at the monitor. He read some email. Unlike the days when he came here every morning, his inbox was packed full of personal messages. One from Cindy the receptionist made his cheeks red. Some of hers had pictures, which he began to delete without opening. What she had sent him was enough to get them both fired, and probably arrested.

“What the hell has he been doing?” Jim asked out loud.

“Jim,” someone called from behind. It was Darlene Mauser, his supervisor.

“Ms. Mauser,” he said as he quickly closed out of his email program. “What can I do for you?”

“Your promotion has come through, so I’m here to help you move your things. We’re going to miss you around here. We all chipped in and bought you something.” Darlene Mauser, a woman known mostly for her hatred of everyone tossed a flat box into Jim’s lap. He pulled at a loop of the bow and slipped the ribbon off the box. Inside the box was a box of cigars.

“Don’t tell anyone, but I smuggled them out of Canada on that last business trip. They’re Cuban.”

Darlene helped Jim box up the assorted odds and ends that had occupied what he had known as his workspace. It belonged to someone else now. A version of himself that had kinky sex with hot receptionists, partied with the cool employees and got gifts of contraband cigars from his boss. He began to realize that someone else was living his life better than he could have done it himself.

After Darlene left he waited alone in his empty cubicle while his new office was being prepared. Most of the boxes were already on their way up the elevator. He swiveled in his chair, cycling through the list of recent calls on his phone. The usual numbers appeared, and then a few that he saw only on other people’s phones. The company president, a CEO. There was also another number he recognized: Claire Robbins. He looked again. It was her home number as well as a few from her cell phone.

Jim grabbed his phone and dialed the number for his apartment. The line was ringing at the other end. One ring, two rings, three rings. “Damn it, the machine is going to get it,” he snarled.

“Hi, you’ve reached Jim Russell,” the voice began. He had no way of telling if it was he that had made the outgoing message. “Leave a message after the beep.”

“Jim!” he shouted. “Pick up the phone!”

The line broke for a moment, “What?” Jim heard the man say.

“When did Claire call you here?”

“What? Man, I don’t know. The other day I guess. What the hell is wrong?”

“I don’t know, Jim,” Jim said. “I’m just getting pictures of the receptionist wearing a lot of leather in my inbox.”

“Oh man, that girl is a freak! I think I need somebody a little more wholesome, don’t you think? Somebody that wants to settle down and have a family.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of! I see you’ve been talking to my girlfriend without my permission.”

“I know what you’re thinking, but it’s cool, Jim,” the man said.

“How the hell could you possibly know what I’m thinking?” Jim shouted.

“She called work a couple of times when you had your cell phone off. I handled it, so don’t worry. Okay?”

“That’s it?” Jim asked.

“I swear,” the other Jim replied. “You have nothing to worry about.”

“It’s just weird, you know? It’s like I’m a stranger to my own life.”

“Does seem that way,” the other Jim said. “I’m sorry you’re there for the urinalysis, but that was really the last time I do anything stupid like that again.”

“I understand. Thanks, Jim,” Jim said. He hung up the phone.

The test results came in while Jim was finishing setting up the new office. He didn’t know if the other Jim would approve of how he had arranged the place, but it was all he could do. The other Jim’s new job was out of his league. He left at five o’clock and rode the bus home. On the kitchen table, the other Jim had left a note saying he wouldn’t be home for the rest of the night. He checked the mail and found a letter of acceptance from a publisher for his book along with a check for a sizable advance. His life had forked off in two directions and now he was succeeding in both of them. He called Claire’s cell phone, but got only her voice mail. He remembered her saying something about presentations all throughout the week. He took himself out to Chinese food, and then decided to stay in the rest of the night and drink some wine to celebrate. He fell asleep in his clothes in front of the TV.

The next morning, he woke to the sound of the door buzzer. He shuffled off to the door and peeked through the keyhole. It was Claire.

He opened the door, and immediately, she rushed in. “I know you don’t like me to visit you here,” she said, “but after you called in sick yesterday, and we spent the whole day locked in your bedroom, I couldn’t stay away.”

“What did you say?” Jim asked.

“Oh, you are a devil,” she purred. “I can’t get it out of my mind. I need you again.” Claire was already peeling out of her clothes.

He wanted to yell, and kick the wall and slap her for being so blind, so damned trusting, so sure about everything (like which Jim she was sleeping with, even though it should have been obvious), and for betraying him, but he held it in.

“Claire,” he said, “I’m afraid I have to ask you to leave.”

“What? You aren’t serious, are you?” she asked. “Please no. You said this would happen if I talked about yesterday again. I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were serious!”

“I am. Please go now.”

She was confused, but did what Jim asked. He tried to say something as she left the apartment sobbing, but no words would come. He went to the desk drawer where he kept his manuscript and found his .38 revolver. He waited on the couch for the other Jim to come home. This was the first time he ever imagined using it on himself, especially in this way. It was nearly midnight when the other Jim finally showed up, reeking of booze and cigarettes.

“Jim,” he said, “I didn’t expect you here so late.”

“Claire was here,” Jim said. “She seems to think I called in sick from work yesterday for an entire day of sex.”

“You didn’t?” the other Jim joked. “Oh, that’s right. I get us confused sometimes.”

“I sold my book,” Jim said.

“Cool,” the other Jim replied dismissively.

“That means I don’t need you to work at my job anymore. I want you out.”

The other Jim sat down in the chair across from Jim. He eyed the pistol Jim cradled in his hand like a newborn kitten. “Are you going to plug me with the little pop-gun of yours?”

“You don’t exist in this world. You won’t be missed,” Jim countered.

“Claire might miss me, now that she knows what a real man is capable of.”

Jim raised the gun and tried his best to get the other Jim in his sights despite how hard his hands were shaking. He scrubbed a sleeve across his dripping nose. “Get out! You’ve ruined everything,” he said.

The other Jim calmly replied, “There wasn’t anything to ruin before I got here, Jimmy boy. You wasted most of your life doing things the safe way. That’s why I don’t think you have the brass to shoot me either. The neighbors will hear. Of course, they might think it’s just time that you finally killed yourself. I take every chance I get to tell them how depressed I am.”

“What?”

“Yeah, between your reclusiveness and what I whisper to those old nosey women at the mail box, they figure I’m long overdue for a coffin ride. But if you kill me, they will hear, and they will come. Then you’ll have some splainin’ to do.

“By the way, Jim. Thanks for taking that urine test for me. Gave me a whole day to myself to spend with Claire. In a couple of weeks, she’ll be taking a test of her own.”

Jim didn’t know what to do. He lowered the hammer on the pistol. He had never seen someone move so fast. He watched the other Jim grab the baseball bat from behind the door. The man glided up to him and swung the bat hard. He felt the wood crack against his temple. Then the impact of the floor. Then nothing else.

Jim took a picture of his wife holding their newborn baby. Claire was proud, but still worn out from the eighteen hours of labor she had suffered. The baby slept in his mother’s arms, wrapped up tightly in soft blankets.

“We can call him Jim, Jr.,” Claire said.

“He doesn’t look like a Jim, Jr.,” he said. “How about Edward?”

“He does look like an Edward,” Claire agreed. The truth was that he didn’t look like either of his parents. The baby was unique to both of them, just as Jim knew he would be. Somewhere in the world, there was another person that this baby resembled most. A dead ringer. It was this other person’s thoughts that would call out to young Edward until the day they stood face to face. Edward would know the exact way to gain the other’s trust, through a deadly telepathic bond shared by predator and prey. There were all sorts of stories that could be told. Twins separated at birth, cousins, even some cockamamie story about a parallel universe. Whatever it was, it would be obvious to the young doppelganger.

He would gain the trust of his victim by telling him whatever he needed to hear to believe his story, gradually assume his identity, reproduce, and ultimately overpower and eat what evidence remained. After gorging himself and sleeping for nearly a week, he would absorb all the remaining mental characteristics that his limited telepathy could not glean. It was instinct. It was how it had been with their kind for thousands of years. Now, after nearly thirty years of living from stage to stage of this cycle, Jim finally knew what it was all about.

Looking down at his child, he felt whole for the first time in his life—including the day he ate the last of his gracious host.

“What do you think he’ll be when he grows up?” Claire asked.

“With any luck, he’ll become the man he was born to be,” Jim replied.

MADONNA OF
THE BLACK MOUNTAIN

Tessa Johnstone

The trip seemed to take days, although Emily knew they’d flown out of Cleveland only yesterday on a commuter jet and transferred in New York to a Boeing 777. Over the Atlantic she’d slept fitfully and woke screaming. The flight attendants calmed her with extra blankets and tea, while her husband pretended he didn’t know her. Once they’d landed in Frankfurt, it sunk in that they were among foreigners. Emily almost burst into tears, but Frank gruffly forged onward and she allowed herself to be pulled in his wake.

They flew from Belgrade to Tivat on a prop-plane. A flight attendant took her carryon bags just before boarding and seated her near a window with a view of whirling propellers. The cramped cabin reeked of sweat and stale cigarette smoke. Emily’s stomach lurched as the engines thrust upward, the entire plane shivering until they reached cruising altitude. They flew precariously close to the mountains, the pilot dipping a wing in greeting at each peak. Floating over the shimmering Adriatic, the plane made a sharp u-turn and landed on a short airstrip near the coast, pulling itself to a stop by sheer will power before a grove of olive and cypress trees.

“So this is Montenegro,” Emily said.

“Why do you have to be so negative about everything?” snarled Frank. “Can’t you just open up to new experiences?

If only we had a child, Emily thought, and then Frank would adore me again.

They climbed down the creaking ladder while their luggage was being off-loaded to the tarmac. Emily followed the other passengers’ lead and collected their suitcases. The new bags stood out among the piles of tattered luggage held together with duct tape and straps. She almost felt ashamed to claim hers because it felt like flaunting their wealth.

“What are you doing?” said Frank. “Someone will get that, I’m sure.”

“It’s no trouble, that’s why suitcases have wheels.” Attaching the piggy-back straps to hers and Frank’s, she let them clatter on the pavement all the way through customs and immigration.

As they came out of the main terminal, a green-tiled room with all the charm of a parking garage, a tall, burly man waved them over.

“Welcome! Frank, how are you?” They shook hands vigorously while the dark-haired man studied Frank, before turning intense green eyes on her. “This must be Emily.”

“And you must be Dragan.”

“I regret that I will not be able to spend much time with you,” Dragan jammed the bags into the trunk of his rusted BMW. “You are only staying two weeks?” She wasn’t sure whether the tone of his voice was a query or amazement at the weight of their luggage.

“We don’t get as much vacation time as you do,” Frank explained. “I have to check in with the office daily, in case something comes up.”

“I’m sure another partner can handle your cases,” Emily murmured. “Corporate law isn’t that cut-throat.”

Frank scowled. “Will I have Internet access at your parents’ katun?”

“Sorry, no. A bigger problem, my parents do not speak English. My son translates. I trust that will be adequate.”

She stretched her legs sideways in the backseat while Frank hunted for the seat belt in the front. The small car jounced over potholes on the narrow, twisting road up the mountains. The men talked business while she stared out the window at rocky soil and scrub brush, her stomach clenching at every switchback. Emily admired Dragan’s skill with the stick shift. Frank couldn’t drive this smoothly on Lakeshore Boulevard with an automatic.

“We are finding ancient ruins on our mountain,” Dragan intoned. “Soon archeologists will come see the relics. A tourist attraction will help my small enterprise.”

“What kind of relics?” Emily leaned forward and rested her chin on Frank’s shoulder.

“Long ago there was church, from days of Illyrians. We built at extreme peaks in those times. Once, sheep were sacrificed and rocks drank their blood as proof of acceptance. Then St. Cyril came from Rome as missionary, he devised our alphabet so that holy gospel was written in our language half a millennium before your Martin Luther translated it into the German.”

“So you think this is a pagan settlement?” Frank brushed Emily off.

“Maybe pagan, maybe very old Christian, someone must come study the stones from University.”

They pulled up in front of a cluster of rough shacks. Set on cement blocks, the weathered gray huts resembled garden sheds.

“These are your summer houses?” Frank asked.

“My family inherits this mountain. Until I get all permits from government, I cannot build the tourist premises I planned. The shepherds’ katuns in summer are perfectly comfortable. I stay tonight and tomorrow go to Podgorica on business. It takes long time to arrange all that I need to build my resort.”

“The scenery is breathtaking,” Emily sighed.

Dragan smiled at her wistfully.

“I hope everyone can overlook the crappy roads and primitive accommodations,” snarled Frank. “What about plumbing?”

“Frank, I’m sure there’s water, it’s just rustic.”

“Water, yes,” Dragan confirmed. “We have natural spring with the best water.” A child of seven came running down the slope. “Aha, this is my son Zlatko. He translates while I am away.” The boy grabbed his father’s knees and the two exchanged words in Serbian.

Frank pulled their suitcases out of the trunk and dragged them to the hut Dragan indicated as theirs. An old woman came to help, lifting the bags easily over the high threshold.

Stretching, Emily took a deep breath as her gaze wandered to the dark rocks above. “What is your country called in your language?”

“Tserna Gora, black mountains. We have everything here, volcanic rock, fjords, deep lakes, high peaks and rich valleys. In the north, there exist primeval forests with trees thousand years old.”

“It’s all so beautiful.”

“You like it here?” said the boy.

“Yes, I do very much.”

“Then you will never leave.” His crooked smile sent a shiver through her. Dragan ruffled his son’s hair as they walked to the largest of the katuns. Emily was just about to go in when Frank grabbed her elbow.

“I need to talk to you, now.”

She let him lead her off a ways. “What’s wrong?”

“That crazy bitch stole half our clothes. I thought she was going to hang them up, but she made two piles on the bed and walked off with an armful.”

“Dragan is your school friend, you talk to him.”

“I can’t tell him his mother is a thief.”

“We did over-pack. Maybe she thinks it’s a gift. Please don’t make a scene.”

“She stole our clothes!”

“Well, next time do your own unpacking.”

As they entered the main katun, Dragan said, “Thank you for the clothes. Now I see why you brought so much.”

“You’re welcome,” she smiled wanly.

Dragan showed them all five austere cabins before he let them settle into theirs. Frank picked through the jumble of clothes muttering to himself as soon as the door swung shut.

“My polo shirts, my khakis! Your cashmere sweaters!”

“I really didn’t care for those. She’s welcome to them.” Emily pulled her trusty Shetland cardigan from the mess and tied it over her shoulders. “Let’s go for a walk. I want to see what’s up there.”

“Are you nuts? Climb on those rocks?”

“Why not?” She pulled his hiking shoes out of a side pocket and tossed them over.

“Oh, all right.”

They walked straight up the slope, following a faint path that snaked through yew and beech trees, until they came out on top of a large flat rock.

“Look at this view,” she said, spreading her arms and spinning around.

“You look like Julie Andrews in that movie.”

She scowled. “No need to be insulting.”

“I wasn’t. I’ve always wanted to jump her bones, ever since I was a kid.” Frank pulled her to him and nuzzled her neck, tugging at the zipper of her jeans.

“Shouldn’t we go back now?” she pushed at him.

“Oh Emily, you’re such a prude! Let’s fool around.”

“What if someone sees us?”

“Who, the sheep? C’mon.” He peeled back her blouse and unhooked her bra. Relenting, she let him push her against the mossy rock, into a pile of leaves and pine
needles. As he entered her, she gasped in pain.

“Frank, stop, something stabbed me.”

“We’ll shift over a bit.”

“I’m bleeding.”

He pulled back. “Didn’t you have your period last week?”

“Yes, but it’s starting again.” Blood stained his jeans as she reached for her purse, pulling out a paper napkin from the last flight. She feared something was wrong, but pushed the thought away. They’d planned this vacation for months, coordinating work schedules and flights. Getting sick just wouldn’t fit their itinerary.

Frank turned away. She thought he was using leaves to clean off, and then realized he was jacking off the hard-on. His sexuality was a mystery to her. When they were dating, he’d been solicitous of her pleasure. A year after the ceremony she felt used, like a magazine he pulled out from under the mattress at his leisure. When he zipped up, she sighed and pulled on her own jeans.

The next morning Emily sat alone at the breakfast table. Vjera pushed bread and cheese at her until she thought she’d burst. Zlatko giggled at everything she said and when she asked him why, he laughed all the harder.

Vjera asked a question which Zlatko translated, “how did you sleep last night?”

“Thank you, I slept fine.”

“I saw you come out of the woods.”

Emily blushed, thinking they’d meant last night. “Frank and I climbed the rock to see the view.”

“This morning. Sun come up, you come down mountain.”

“Sorry, I don’t understand.”

“In dirty nightgown, I see you.”

“I wasn’t in the woods, I woke up in bed.” She squirmed, uncomfortable in her improvised sanitary pad. Vague images from a dream nagged at her, something about climbing to be closer to God. Except that God was a sinister presence who drained her strength. Even her trembling hands looked ashen as she reached for her tea.

“Be careful in woods. In those days, men made sacrifices to Skyfather. Hungry rock is dangerous to climb. No blood for years and years.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said as she pushed her chair back. “I think Frank needs me.” She heard their laughter following her outside as she sought out Frank on his cell phone.

“I can’t get through to the London office. Damn thing keeps giving me a message in Serbian. Dragan said we might get irregular service.”

“Frank, did you sleep all right?”

“With you thrashing around? Not until you left around three. Thanks, by the way. At least I got some sleep.”

“Vjera saw me come down from the rocks in a bloody nightgown.” Emily struggled to keep her voice steady. She wanted to cry from frustration.

“Oh, that’s ruined. I burned it in the stove this morning.”

“Why’d you do that?”

“I did you a favor. It was really stained.”

“So don’t you think I’m sleepwalking?”

“Quiet, I’m getting through.” He became his congenial, lawyerly self. “Hey, Frank here. How’s everything going with the Machen case?” He nodded and made noncommittal noises as she wandered back to their katun.

On her pillow was a single brown leaf that crumbled in her hand.

That evening she felt contented as a cat. They had gone to the coast for the day. After swimming in the ocean and lounging on the white sand beach, they’d had an early dinner at a fish restaurant. She’d eaten so much that the weakness and vague pain in her abdomen abated a bit. Luckily she’d found a box of sanitary pads at the apothecary shop in town. Her periods were always irregular, but the doctors assured her it wouldn’t affect her fertility. Emily settled into bed and fell asleep before Frank turned off the light.

Then she was climbing a steep path through the woods. She saw the stain growing on her nightshirt, heard the pine needles crunch as she walked, but her body felt numb. Last night the rock called to her and tonight she came to feed it again. Blood and semen awakened it, blood would satiate it. Approaching the black rock she leaned into it like a lover. She slid into its mossy depths, letting the red fog overwhelm her. Giving of herself, she fed the black hunger, filled the icy vacuum with her love. This is like a husband, she thought, only this I can satisfy. I have enough love for both of us. Not like Frank and his endless demands.

“Get up.” Frank pushed at her. “Get up, you’re filthy. Go get cleaned up.” He threw back the sheets. Her nightshirt was stained with blood and moss, and her feet were dark with mud. The sun streaming in showed a trail of muddy footprints from the door.

At lunch, she picked at the vegetables and ate the prosciutto. “Good appetite,” Zlatko laughed. The weather turned dark and they decided to stay in. By mid-afternoon thunder rumbled ominously in the distance.

“What are we supposed to do with these people,” grumbled Frank, “play Parcheesi?” Emily hushed him.

“Cheese,” said Vjera. “You want Kajmak?” She brought out a dish of soft cheese and another loaf of bread.

Over dinner, Frank asked when Dragan was expected back. Zlatko took a lot of words to translate and his grandmother gave a long explanation. “Soon,” Zlatko said.

At bedtime, they borrowed Vjera’s umbrella to run the short distance to their katun and still they were soaked. Lightning struck just overhead and the answering clap of thunder made Emily shriek.

“Filthy primitive country,” muttered Frank.

Emily dropped her clothes on the floor and slid into bed as Frank turned the lock on the door. He changed into pajamas and lay on the edge of the bed, turning away from her. She stared at his back, feeling lost and alone as she drifted off to sleep.

Rain pelted her from all angles, pounding on her skull, blurring her vision. Her hair was heavy with water as she pushed through the brush that scratched at her bare skin, climbing upward. Flashes of light revealed her path. Pulling on a branch, she lifted herself up to the black rock in answer to its summons. Tonight felt different. The air crackled and a long stream of lightning flowed across the sky. She hesitated in fear at the sight of a skeletal child, white bones and hard black eyes. Suddenly she understood her stone child, born of blood and rock. Emily accepted it, rocking it, soothing its hunger. They sank into the black rock just as thunder shook its foundation, sent rubble flying. Her wedding ring slipped from her finger and jangled on the stones.

Emily drifted and slept with the child pulling at her breast. The sun warmed her as she lazed. She felt roots stretching to the center of the earth, sensed time stretching to eternity as she drifted back to consciousness at the sound of a familiar voice.

“Here’s her ring,” said Frank. “Maybe she’s lost somewhere up here.”

“Impossible,” said Dragan. “I know every centimeter of this mountain, I played here as boy.”

“Well something happened last night during the storm. Looks like that rock got hit by lightning.”

Dragan said something in Serbian, and she felt his lips on her stone feet. “It is Holy Mother, she who bore a god,” he gasped in English. “Miraculous. This is great shrine, pilgrims will come.”

Of course that’s it, she thought. She was a woman who gave birth to a god. She cradled her child, secure in adoration.

STRIPTEASE ON
MOUNT RUSHMORE

Ed Lynskey

A simple coin toss decided it. Sue’s striptease was to be on top of Mount Rushmore. Sipping an icy pale ale at the base of the presidential promontory, Nick ogled her. Once she’d shucked down to bare-butt naked, he’d scale it and ravish her. With relish, Nick described his tableau in lurid detail. They sat at the gateleg table in their cozy kitchen.

“That’s your idea for a sex fantasy?” Sue asked him, incredulous. “I won’t even ask what you had in mind for us at the HOLLYWOOD sign in California.”

“Just consider: electric toothbrushes, Crisco, and—dig this!—a cell phone-camera,” said Nick, his grin smarmy as a satyr’s.

“Whoa, horse. Stop right there.” Sue heeled up a hand. “Enough already.” Manicured nails on her fluttery fingers were painted demolition red, Nick’s favorite shade.

Nick’s thumbnail flicked a corner to an envelope. An official-looking letter unfolded in thirds lay beside it. They’d both read the news. Nick groaned. Sue cried. The grim probability became a reality. Called up, Nick had to report to his Army National Guard Armory in seventy-two hours. Scowling, he spoke.

“Look babe, if you can’t dig this scene, why did you make the offer?”

Shrugging, Sue lit a cigarette. After exhaling a lungful of bluish smoke as twin vents through her nose, she said, “All I wanted was to do something together before you left.

You dreamed up the cockeyed Mount Rushmore and HOLLYWOOD sign capers.”

“Naturally, it should be memorable,” said Nick. “But also patriotic. You grasp why, right babe?”

Sue, sighing, squinted through her smoke. “Yes Nick, I know why. Don’t tell me again. Please.”

Ignoring her plea, Nick continued. “If one of those maniac insurgents lays my ass low, I’ll ship home in a body bag with a pocketful of desert sand. This trip might be our final fling.”

“It could be,” said Sue, in wooden dejection.

“What’s say we throw together a bag,” said Nick. “Put ourselves in the dark wind, make like the proverbial goosed gazelle.”

Remaining seated, Sue gazed after her husband’s whiplike, tall frame disappearing into the hallway’s patchy recesses. Without a doubt getting Nick’s notice had rocked their little world. Shit, she upbraided herself. It wasn’t unexpected. Seeing Iraq splashed all over the news didn’t leave any reservists feeling too warm and fuzzy. Worrying about it, she’d taken up smoking again.

Her sore eyes cut over to fix on a stack of used books by the salt-and-pepper shakers. Hemingway had been among the assigned readings this semester in her American Lit class. This spur-of-the-moment excursion caused her to miss the Final Exam. On one level, she resented taking that hit just to go dance on Mount Rushmore, of all the dumb places.

Not much of a reader, Sue had taken a shine to Hemingway. Death seemed to play a big hand in his life and times. Suicide only embroidered his mystique. Her professor—a nitwit sporting a waxy goatee with discolored rodent teeth—had quipped what a true marksman “Papa” had been right down to that final, fatal shot. The classroom that first day fell silent. Nobody laughed. Intrigued, Sue afterward did some checking up on her own. She discovered Hemingway drove ambulances during the First World War. It transformed the future young author into a war hero. Again, mystique.

Sue butted her half-smoked cigarette in the tuna can for an ashtray. Her next wry thought mused if Hemingway would have the now guts to jockey a supply truck in lame duck convoys through the Sunni Triangle …

Nick hollered from their bedroom down the hallway. “Yo, Sue! Where are our suitcases?”

She replied, “Underneath the bed, love. When do we leave?”

“Like yesterday,” he said. “I popped a few Dexedrine to speed my ass off.”

“Marvelous,” said Sue. “So, I’d better drive first.”

“Nope,” said Nick. “Uncle Sam owns me lock, stock, and barrel. No cop can touch me. Right?”

“Right, Nick. You’re an untouchable. A regular Eliot Ness even.”

“Fucking-A I am,” he replied. “Better get it in gear, babe.”

After firing up her Zippo, Sue lit a second cigarette. “Why? Mount Rushmore isn’t going off anywhere. Unless a terrorist blows it up before we get there.”

Nick making crashing noises in the bedroom ignored her sarcasm. “Who knows?” he said. “In years to come, my face just might be carved in the mountain as Numeral Five.”

Sue’s immediate reaction to that grandiose idea: Shit.

Inside the hour, they rocketed west in their used minivan. Nick’s arms draped around the steering wheel like a kudzu vine. His rapt eyes never left the broken white lines rushing up. The air between them had grown frosty and tense.

“Can’t you make up the final?” Nick asked. “Sweet talk the professor. Tell him there’s a war on. Women and men leave to fight in it every day. Tell him your husband was one.”

“Just skip it,” said Sue. “You’ve got bigger things on your mind. Forget it, okay?”

Nick wagged his stubborn, shaggy head. “Huh-huh. Tell me now what’s this damn exam on?”

“Nothing.”

“Damn it, Sue. I wanna know.”

“All right. Hemingway’s short stories.”

“No shit. Hemingway. Like, which ones?”

“Like ‘The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber,’” replied Sue, rolling her eyes. Lord, give me strength she thought but asked, “Ever read it?”

“Uh yeah, I believe I did once. In Easy Rider magazine, wasn’t it? Fire me up a cig, babe. My eyeballs are twirling in their sockets.”

“I know. I can hear them rattling.”

“Huh? Oh. Hey babe, don’t say stuff that might freak me out. I’m wound tight.”

“Tight.” Head downcast, Sue shifted in her seat. “Where’s the Zippo? I lost mine.”

“Should be one in the glovebox,” Nick replied. “Man, this is great, ain’t it?”

“Great, yeah.” Sue undid the glovebox latch. Her hand frisked inside the semi-dark space. Her fingers walked until tripping over a lump of cold, dark steel. Lowering her face, Sue squinted to see what she held. It was a handgun. She flinched as if burned.

“Find the Zippo okay, babe? I’m only dying over here for a cigarette.”

“It’s, you know, sort of dark over here.”

“Meow. Want me to flip on the map light?”

“No-no, I’m fine.” Sue felt her heart pump a little fiercer. “Nick, do you know what else is in here?”

“Some road flares, a flashlight, and a tire gauge,” said Nick. “Should be a Zippo, too. Find it?”

“Yep. I’m on it. Nick, what all crap did you bring?” Hurrying, Sue stuffed the handgun into her shoulder bag and tightened its drawstring top. With a crisp slam the glovebox lid shut. “Anything weird, I mean?”

Dealing her a sheepish half-grin, Nick replied, “I did rummage through your underwear drawer. Just to pick out your outfit to entertain me on Mount Rushmore.”

“Did you now? Whatever caught your fancy, party boy?”

“A lacy red bra, fishnet stockings, and thong panties,” said Nick. “Hot diggity, I’m steamed just picturing you dance on a dead president’s face.”

A strain hardening her laugh, Sue’s voice grew grave and gruff. “Nicky, are you upset about leaving me here alone?”

Thoughtful, Nick didn’t respond for a couple of beats. Snow tires droned under them, monotonous but not hypnotic. Dashed white lines sailed by nonstop. “I know you’re a big girl who can take care of herself,” he said. “Just the same, I’ll cap any SOB sampling my honeypot. Rule of the jungle. It’s as simple as that.”

Flat hands smacked down on the dashboard. “Good God, Nick. Have I ever cheated on you?” Sue asked, her heated words building to a near scream. “Have I? Answer me. Have I ever been nothing but nice to you?”

Suspicious and fearful something else spurred her outburst, Nick shot his wife a sidewise glance. “Hey, where did that come from, babe?” he asked her.

“Never damn mind. Just cut the conversation. Drive.”

“All right, all right. I’m sorry for whatever I did,” Nick replied. “Simmer down. Better yet, go to sleep. You’ll take over at the helm in a few short hours.”

Squirming around, Sue fidgeted in her seat to put her back to Nick and the road. Sleep did overhaul her but not before she remembered about the handgun stowed a few inches away in her shoulder bag. Was it loaded? Was the trigger hard to pull? Could she fire it?

“Sweet dreams, my little slut,” Sue thought she heard Nick whisper.

Receding to a velvety black swirl, she reemerged somehow in the Italian Alps. She heard engines whine in the raw, foggy night. Headlamps burnished little brighter than votive candles. As they lurched ahead, Sue rode shotgun in the ambulance’s cab. Behind the wheel she saw a slim, sinewy man with a jet mustache under marbly eyes. They carried a cargo. Doughboys shredded in combat lay in back of them moaning. She glanced over a shoulder.

“It ain’t pretty,” said the driver. “Is it?”

Sighing, Sue shrugged a little. “Is it ever?” she responded even more laconic.

“Pack of butts in the glovebox,” the driver said. “Light one up for you and me.” Sue complied. “Thanks … how far are you going with this thing, Sue?”

“All the bitter way,” she had to reply.

Shivering in the penetrative cold, Sue heard her cell phone’s goofy ring tone. Confused, she listened sharp. It shrilled from inside her shoulder bag always kept under their bed table. Reaching below, she groped but found nothing. The confusion cleared. Right. She wasn’t near the bed table. Nick and she were on a trip. Clawing lower, she managed to snag the loopy straps to her shoulder bag.

“Can’t you answer that goddamn thing?” asked Nick as a harsh, guttural command.

“Sorry,” said Sue. “I must’ve left it activated.”

Nick made an exasperation noise. “But why?”

“It’s only Mom,” said Sue. “Just chill while I take her call.”

“Get rid of her,” Nick said in a nastier temper. “Fast, too.”

Sue’s “hello” prompted an older lady on the other end to ask, “Where are you, Sue? I rang at the house but only got the answering machine.”

“Nick and I decided to hit the road.”

“What? Why? Didn’t you have exams Saturday?”

“It’s a long story, Mom. Basically, Nick’s unit got the ‘go’ sign. We split for a little fun before he ships out.”

“To Iraq?”

Sue: “Isn’t that where they’re all headed?”

“I see. What does Nick need for a little fun?” asked her mother. “Isn’t that his whole life now? To take whatever whore his wandering eye fancies?”

“Mom, let’s not go there right now,” said Sue. “Nick says hello.”

“Liar, liar,” said her mother. “Keep in touch. I love you, dear.”

“Right back at you.” Sue cut their connection before repressing a soft sob.

In the interim, Nick’s mood hadn’t lightened up. “What the hell did she want?” he asked.

“What all mothers want, Nick. To say hi.”

“No more calls. I don’t want to gum this up. Hear me?”

Sure, Sue thought. We can do that all by ourselves. “I’ll switch off my cell phone,” she said. “You ready for me to take over driving?”

“No. I’m in a sweet groove here. But the damn Dex is starting to slack off. I need to pop a few pills.”

“You really shouldn’t,” said Sue.

“I can wait a bit yet. Fill me in about this Macomber dude.”

“Who?”

“That story you were going on about earlier. Gimme the A through Z on it?”

“It’s just a stupid, little revenge tale,” Sue replied.

Her husband persisted. “No, damn it, what happens? I’m serious.”

“All right, Nick. It takes place in Africa. This super rich couple is on a safari. The hubby, Francis, hasn’t got the balls to shoot big game. Then a super pissed rhino charges them. Francis freezes. So, his bitch for a wife, Margot, aims and kills him instead. The end.”

“No shit. Margot whacks Francis? But don’t get any bright ideas, babe.”

“Why? Do you keep a firearm handy?”

“Hardly,” said Nick. “Where I’m headed, I’ll see more than my fair share.”

“I saw a sign back there for a rest stop.”

“Thank God, too. I gotta piss like a racehorse. Keep it brief, eh? I’ll have to drive faster to make up for any lost time. Anything over ninety and this old crate bucks.”

Sue pointed. An exit ramp eased them off the main artery. They nosed into an empty slot in front of a small, rectangular brick building. A sharp-finned, scorpion red coupe parked next to them sported a 1960s swank. By this meager light, Nick made it for a Ford or Chevy. They split up to use the restrooms. Sue exited first. She didn’t see Nick. Busy swallowing his pills with water, she figured. A door slammed. Pivoting on her toes, she expected Nick. It wasn’t him.

The stocky man of medium height strode into the island of light illuminating the wall map of Virginia. He wore, Sue noted, a safari jacket and a cropped beard eggshell white. The resemblance was almost too eerie. A bit awestruck, she went up to meet him.

“You aren’t by chance an author, are you?” Sue asked him.

Putting on a surprised expression, the man responded in a whiskey mellow voice. “Me? Heck no, lady. Retired plumber. Why do you ask?”

Sue waved as if to deflect his curiosity. “I thought you were somebody else.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” said the man. “Where are you gypsies bound?”

“To see Mount Rushmore,” Sue replied. “And you?”

Even more nonchalant, the man shrugged. “I’m like the albatross,” he said. “I circle the globe. I can only guess it’s from an aimless rambling I didn’t burn out of my system as a young man.”

Smiling, Sue said, “Sowing your wild oats a bit later in life.”

“Yeah but it’s better to it while still young,” said the man.

An anxious scowl striated Sue’s forehead. “By chance, you don’t own any shotguns, do you?”

“Nary a one,” the man replied. “I’m a lover, not a killer. Well, I gotta blow. Good luck to you both.”

“Bye.” Gaping at his disappearing red tail lights, Sue swore they not so much faded into the dark distance as ascended into the starless night.

Again the door behind her slammed. Whistling through his teeth, Nick ambled through the same island of light. His eyes cast a glassy wildness. “Who was that old fucker, babe?” he asked. “I saw him in the can. Said he fixed toilets once for a living. Said he’s now an albatross or some shit.”

“You know what I know,” Sue said as they climbed into the minivan and resumed their long journey. “He told me the exact same story.”

“Weird, man, weird.”

Nick asked Sue now at the steering wheel, “You remember how to make a striptease look real sexy? Gyrating hips, that bump and grind stuff?”

“It’s been a while,” Sue replied. “A little rusty maybe but I’ve still got the basic moves down pat. Don’t get your balls in a bunch, soldier boy. You’ll get an eyeful. Just like that first night we met.”

“Smartest money I ever spent,” said Nick.

“Nick?”

“Yeah, babe?”

“I just thought of something. What if the park is too well guarded?” Sue asked. “What if we can’t get inside it? What if there’s no striptease on Mount Rushmore?”

“Uh, yeah … good point.”

They then rode in sullen, downbeat silence. Sue stole a stole a glance over at Nick. His head in silhouette never swayed from staring at the road up ahead. “Guess I’ll have nothing to carry overseas with me,” he said.

Sue said, “But you’ll carry memories of me. Of us.”

“Those aren’t the ones I need, babe,” said Nick. “I need something to stand out as fresh and original in my mind.”

Frowning, Sue looked over at him under her knitted brows. “I don’t follow,” she said. “All of our memories stay fresh and original to me.”

In a softer, more reflective voice, Nick asked, “What will happen to us?”

“You’ll go overseas to serve out your tour,” said Sue. “Meantime, I’ll continue to work and go to school. Nothing changes.”

“But what will happen to you if I get killed?”

“I expect I’ll do a lot of crying but life will pretty much go on as it always has,” replied Sue in a soothing tone.

“It’s all too predictable, babe,” said Nick. “Now take that married couple, the Macombers. They were hip. Rich. Had a lust for life.”

Sue disagreed. “The Macombers were shallow, egocentric, and selfish jerks. That was Hemingway’s reason for telling their story like he did. That was its message, if you like.”

Nick grunted. “Well, I’d go for the rich part of their life.”

“Who wouldn’t?” said Sue, then, “Mount Rushmore is pretty much cancelled, I’m afraid.”

“Yeah, I’m of the same mind. Plus which, I’m coming down fast.”

“Go to sleep then,” said Sue. “I’ll drive the minivan.”

“Okay, where are you taking us, driver?”

“What if when you wake up, I surprise you?” said Sue. “Then it’ll stand out in your mind as fresh and original.”

“Lordy me. You’re the devil in disguise,” Nick said, shifting to get more comfortable in his seat.

Nick’s ponderous breathing clued in Sue that he’d finally fallen asleep. All the while waiting, she’d fingered the handgun inside her shoulder bag, thinking. Good Time Nick had a lust for life, all right. Always up for a striptease. Always out for fun. Always about Nick.

She knew Nick had been cheating on her for a few months. She also knew Life imitated Art sometimes at watershed moments. The handgun slipped out of its hiding. Squinting like Margot Macomber did in her glory days, Sue took careful aim. Nick slept on.

A second crawled by. Sue reconsidered. Shaking her head as if to help dispel some of the confusion, she rolled down the window and tossed out the handgun into the cold darkness. It struck the slab and bounced a hop before landing. There were other ways besides Margot’s to handle a difficult husband. As she stretched to pat the wire-wool hair on his head, Nicky cooed.

“Sweet dreams, my new little pet,” she whispered.

MYSTERIO AND GALATEA

Michael A. Kechula

“I just got the results of the chemical analysis,” Rolf said to the doll lying on the bed in silk, custom-made pajamas. “It says the composition of the scrapings I took from your heel consist of unknown elements. They want to know the source of the scrapings. Naturally, I’m not gonna tell them. So, my Dear, who the hell are you? Where do you come from? Why are you here? How come you just happened to show up that day when I was walking in the woods?”

The doll’s eyes were fixed on the ceiling.

“Dammit, Galatea, why don’t you answer?” Then he caught himself. Here I go again. Talking to her as if she were real.

After a stiff drink, he carried the doll to the living room, and sat it on top of his grand piano.

Damn she’s gorgeous. I’m glad I had the tailor make the pajamas a size too small. Makes her nipples strain against the material. They remind me so much of my ex-wife’s.

Running his palm down the doll’s cheek, he said, “By the way, the card and box of candy on the piano are for you. Happy Valentine’s Day.”

He waited for a response. Then caught himself. “I keep forgetting you’re not real. But that may not be forever. Meanwhile, let’s get down to business. Let’s do the Judy Garland medley one more time. I want our performance tonight at the Cosmos Club absolutely perfect. This being Valentine’s Day, the audience should be in a very sentimental mood. Let’s use it to our best advantage. When you do You Made Me Love You, I want women weeping, and men squirming in their seats. And when you do Over the Rainbow, I want you to tear their hearts out.”

The doll stared straight ahead.

“By the way, Margaret Carter, who owns the town’s biggest bank, will be at tonight’s show. She has an authentic pair of the ruby slippers Judy Garland wore in The Wizard of Oz. She wants to come to our dressing room and try the slippers on you. If they fit, she wants you to wear them during the medley. I figure it’ll be a showstopper. Plus she’ll get a big charge out of it, and who knows where that might lead.”

When he played the introduction to You Made Me Love You, his mind drifted back to the day in the woods when he spotted a hand jutting from the soil.

At first, he thought the hand was attached to a dead body. His digging revealed a life-size doll, lying in a fetal position. It looked so extraordinary, Rolf took it home for closer scrutiny.

He decided to clean the doll and wash its tattered clothes. If it turned out to be in good enough shape, maybe he’d offer it to his eight-year-old niece.

When he laid it on the bathroom floor and slipped off its ragged sweater, he was stunned to discover perfectly shaped, nippled breasts. Even more amazing was the thick patch of pubic hair beneath the doll’s shorts. A quick touch proved the texture was authentic. He spread its legs. Somebody had manufactured the doll with an anatomically correct vulva. He suppressed an urge to probe more deeply.

Filling the bathtub, he immersed the doll in warm, soapy water. It was a chore scrubbing the gunk caked on its face, but when he finished he let out a whistle. The doll had the most exquisite face he’d ever seen.

As he continued scrubbing, he found himself slowing down when reaching its breasts. This is stupid. I’m acting as if she were a real woman.

Rolf chuckled at his ridiculous feelings of modesty and washed her breasts vigorously.

He scrubbed its stomach and abdomen, using lots of elbow grease. But he found himself pausing again when he was about to reach lower. Throwing soap and the cloth into the tub, he said, “Wash down there yourself.”

He turned away and waited.

After a few moments, he chuckled over his stupidity. What the hell’s wrong with me? I’m acting like I’m invading a woman’s private parts. She’s nothing but a damn, unfeeling, inanimate doll. I shouldn’t hafta think twice about touching her anywhere.

That’s when he realized he’d used the word her. He was attributing to the doll that which it could never be: a fleshand-blood woman with life, emotions, soul. Nevertheless, from that moment forward, he said her whenever thinking and referring to his doll.

Grabbing a bottle of vodka, he tossed down a double, went back to the bathroom, spread the doll’s legs, and scoured every nook and cranny.

As he dried her soft, flexible body, he scrutinized her fabulously constructed legs, tight butt, six-pack abs. Everything about her was perfect. He figured if she were a real woman, men would kill for her favors.

Draping a sheet around her, he carried the doll to the living room, and set her in an armchair.

His dog seemed to approach her with reverence. When the dog’s mouth reached up to her hand, he seemed to give it a gentle kiss, instead of a sloppy lathering.

“You’re amazing,” Rolf said. “Now you’re charming the hell outta my dog.”

He made a fire, went to the piano and played Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. Looking at the freshly scrubbed, scrumptious-looking doll made him play sweeter.

They looked like an ordinary family, spending a quiet evening by the fireplace. Rolf played the piano softly and with infinite tenderness. His dog rested on the floor next to an easy chair. And in that chair, wrapped in a sheet, looking like a Greek goddess, was the most exquisite representation of a woman he’d ever seen.

Half way through the sonata, he heard a faint, ethereal voice drifting in and out with the evening breezes. As the song progressed, the voice accompanying him slowly increased in volume. Whoever was humming must’ve heard his passionate rendition of Beethoven, and felt moved to join in. Curious, Rolf went to a window and peered outside to see who owned the remarkable voice. Nobody was there.

He repeated the sonata and waited until the humming grew loud enough to pinpoint the source. He nearly jumped out of his skin when he realized the sound came from the doll’s direction.

Rolf went to the doll and put his ear against her lips. Nothing. He hummed to see if she’d follow along. Still nothing.

He thought about calling his psychiatrist to make an appointment sooner than the one already scheduled. He’d learned enough about himself through a year’s worth of therapy to recognize when his behavior was becoming irrational. It wasn’t normal to hesitate when washing a doll’s body, and treating it as if she were real. Nor was it rational to hear a voice coming from her when playing Beethoven. That was wild fantasy, the very thing that’d abetted his nervous breakdown a year ago.

Then he decided he was merely overtired and overstimulated by the day’s strange events. Chuckling at his stupidity, Rolf put the dog out and headed for bed.

Lying in bed, he thought of his breakdown, and the terrible emotional suffering it’d caused. But he was well past the worst, and he’d made good progress. His doctor had succeeded in pulling him out of deeply entrenched depression that overwhelmed when his wife left him for a younger man.

After intense therapy, his doctor had assured he’d soon feel vital enough to compose music once again. Though classically trained, through some unusual twists and turns, Rolf had become a successful composer of country songs. A string of hits brought affluence. But the music world doesn’t stand still for long, and if he were to retain his edge and earning power, he’d soon have to write new songs.

Everything seemed better after a good night’s sleep. Following a hearty breakfast, Rolf checked the dog and the doll. The dog was chasing birds in the yard. The doll was in the same place he’d left her. Everything was normal.

He headed for the piano to do finger exercises. The moment he played, the humming voice started up again. When he stopped, the voice stopped. When he resumed, so did the humming. What surprised him most was its ability to keep up with every note, while his fingers raced on the keyboard.

This time, he decided to continue without interruption to see just how loud the voice would get. Soon, the house was filled with glorious, enthralling humming that seemed to come from the doll’s direction.

It can’t possibly be the doll. How could she know what note comes next? What the hell’s going on here? Do I have a poltergeist? Is the doll possessed? Am I hearing things? Am I having a relapse of my nervous breakdown? Oh God, not that. Anything but that.

Rolf put the doll in a spare bedroom at the other end of the house, then resumed his finger exercises. It wasn’t long before he heard loud humming coming from the bedroom. That’s it! I’m taking her back where I found her. My nerves can’t take this.

When a tranquilizer soothed his jitters, Rolf was struck with an idea. If she can hum my finger exercises, I wonder if she can hum a song?

As he played, I Could Have Danced All Night, the doll’s humming made the song sound even more lively and delightful.

This can’t be something evil. It sounds so vibrant, so cheerful. Something possessed wouldn’t hum so beautifully. If anything, she’d hum off-key and make me pound the keyboard. Maybe I’m thinking about this the wrong way. Maybe she’s a gift. Something sent from God for my being a good husband, and for suffering the injustice of my wife’s desertion. Maybe there’s a way to capitalize on the doll’s wonderful voice.

Rolf decided to create a theatrical act. He would dress the doll in beautiful gowns, sit her on top of a grand piano, and let her hum to her heart’s content. As a cover for what was actually happening, he could call it a magic act. Instead of making rabbits appear from nowhere, he’d make a lifeless doll appear to hum with no human assistance. Audiences would think he was a master magician. Perhaps he and Galatea would become the most unique man-doll act ever to appear on stage.

Sitting her on top of the piano he tested his idea. He played a bit of everything from Chopin’s classics to Willie Nelson’s country tunes. She hummed everything flawlessly.

“Well, my beauty, if you were real, I’d kiss your hand. You’ve just become my ticket to a brand new career. I’m going to dress you like a princess. I’ll buy you dazzling faux jewels to grace your lovely fingers, wrists, and pretty neck. I’m going to make you a star!”

After her custom made gowns and jewels arrived, they had their first dress rehearsal. Slipping a black gown over
her shoulders, Rolf paused a few moments to gently touch them. They seemed so soft, pliable, and real, he almost kissed them. Damn! I’m spending too much time with a doll instead of real women. But real women can be dangerous. They have wants and needs. They might leave me at the drop of a hat. I don’t think I could stand to have a woman walk out on me ever again.

He slipped her jewelry on. Next, he lowered the lid on his grand piano, put her on top, and adjusted her posture so that she’d look even more alluring. He raised the bottom of her gown to display just enough of her legs to make men fidget.

After some fine adjustments, he stepped back to gaze at his starlet. Her coiffed red hair, green eyes, creamy skin were so beautiful, Rolf found himself running to her and kissing her cheek.

He noticed the more he doted on the doll, the more thoughts about his ex wife and how she’d devastated him slid away. The doll was damn good medicine. Far better than his psychiatrist’s prescriptions.

“You need a name,” he said, gazing into her large, enchanting eyes. He mentioned a few that popped into his head, but none seemed satisfactory. “C’mon, let’s do some brainstorming.”

Instantly, Galatea came to mind. “Good going! It’s perfect.”

Rolf set her back on the piano and went to the keyboard. “OK. Let’s start with something simple: Some Enchanted Evening. Then we’ll do I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.

The moment she began to hum, he knew they were going to be a big hit. He phoned an acquaintance who was a theatrical agent.

“Fred, this is Rolf. I developed a new magic act you really must see.”

“Everybody likes magic acts,” the agent said. “But to sell seats these days, you gotta have something really different.”

“My act’s dynamite. It’s part magic, ventriloquism, and music. I use a beautiful, life-sized doll to accompany me by humming while I play a wide range of musical works. We can do Broadway tunes, light classics, opera, ethnic pieces, country and western, and jazz.

Rolf explained how nobody would ever discover how he managed to make the doll hum so loudly and beautifully. Both his hands would be occupied on the keyboard at all times, so he wouldn’t be manipulating the doll like other ventriloquists. Plus he’d throw his voice to make it sound like a real women. In fact, as the song progressed, he could make the doll sound as if a dozen women were singing simultaneously.

“How do you make the doll hum?” Fred asked.

“Magic. How else?”

Rolf and Galatea auditioned the next day. The agent loved the act. Before long, they were booked into small clubs. Billed as Mysterio and Galatea, they were a huge hit. As they quickly moved up to bigger showrooms, many said they’d end up in New York City’s Carnegie Hall in no time.

Rolf’s mind snapped back to the present when Galatea finished humming Over the Rainbow.

“That’s wonderful, Galatea. Do it like that tonight at the Cosmos Club and you’ll tear their hearts out. With your voice, the ruby slippers, and that song, they’ll remember your performance forever. We’re heading for the top! I feel it in my bones.”

Rolf checked his watch. “We have seven hours before show time. I’m gonna take a nap. I suggest you do the same. This way, we can both be at our best for tonight’s show.”

He carried Galatea to her bedroom, removed all her clothes and laid her on the bed. He found himself drawing little circles on her stomach with his fingertips. “Do you like that?” he asked. Then he moved his lips toward her stomach.

Something stopped him at the last moment. Realizing what he’d almost done, he hurried from the room, shaking. He grabbed the phone to make an appointment with his psychiatrist. While tapping the numbers, he wondered how he’d work up enough nerve to explain his powerful attraction to a doll.

On the second ring, he hung up. There was an easier way to drive her from his mind. All he had to do was hire a professional woman. Someone made of real flesh who’d wring every drop of desire from his tortured psyche. But the idea gave him a tinge of guilt. Galatea would never approve.

Falling asleep, he dreamed of Galatea. Her beauty. Her softness. Suddenly, she was upon him, tender, then like an insane, wild beast. His release was so powerful, he found himself sitting straight up in bed, panting and sweating.

After showering, he went to her room and peeked inside. She looked different, somehow. The word afterglow popped into his mind.

While driving to the Cosmos Club, he said, “I’m not sure what’s happening. You know I have certain feelings for you. It isn’t right. But I had this wonderful dream about you. And I can’t help wanting more. Come back tonight while I’m sleeping. I want to feel that again.”

He slammed his fist against the steering wheel. “Dammit! I gotta get hold of myself. You’re nothing but a doll.”

Rolf was slipping a designer gown over Galatea in the Cosmos dressing room when Margaret Carter showed up with the ruby slippers.

“Oh, she’s even more magnificent up close.” Carter said. “How tall is she?”

“Exactly five feet four inches,” Rolf said.

“Where did you acquire her?”

“Switzerland.” That was a huge lie, but he wasn’t about to tell how he found Galatea buried in the woods.

“You must call and give me the name of the doll maker in Switzerland. Do you suppose they have anymore like this?”

“They said Galatea was one-of-a-kind.”

“If you ever want to sell her, let me know. She’d make a wonderful addition to my collection of unusual creations. I’d make it well worth your while. You’d be able to retire immediately with a smile that’d last for the rest of your days.”

“I’ll keep it in mind. Go ahead and try the slippers. It’s almost show time.”

The moment Carter touched Galatea’s feet, she shuddered. In a voice not her own, Carter said, “This doll is infused with an ancient spirit. I can feel it. Listen. She’s calling to us. Can you hear?”

“Mrs. Carter, beside you, the only thing I can hear is my radio. Please try the slippers. It’s almost show time.”

“But she’s calling to us.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Carter, but I’m in such a hurry. The audience is waiting. Perhaps you can return after the show and spend some time with Galatea.”

“I’d prefer you bring her to my home. I have a room that’s most auspicious for conducting séances. I’d like you both to attend tonight at midnight as my guests.”

Rolf wondered about Carter’s sanity, especially when she said to Galatea, “We’ll talk later, my Dear.” Seconds later, she exclaimed, “The shoes fit perfectly! Oh how wonderful!”

Rolf told Carter he’d dedicate the Garland medley to her, and that he’d tell the audience she’d provided the ruby slippers.

She left calling to Galatea, “We’ll hold a séance tonight. Then you can speak to us. I know you want that.”

The audience applauded as Rolf carried Galatea onstage, and sat her on top of the piano. When the spotlight struck the ruby slippers, the audience gasped with delight. Rolf told them the slippers had been graciously provided by Margaret Carter, and gave a few plugs for her bank and wonderful generosity.

Carter rose to acknowledge the warm applause.

The room fell silent as the lights lowered. Galatea was in the center of the spotlight. Rolf began to play, You Made Me Love You, a song Judy Garland sang to Clark Gable on his birthday, back in the 1930s.

The ruby slippers sparkled so brilliantly, the walls and ceiling were filled with flecks of red light.

The audience was so moved by Galatea’s humming, that halfway through the song they applauded thunderously. Shouts of “Bravo,” filled the room. A shower of roses rained onto the stage. Rolf could have sworn Galatea smiled.

While the audience gave them a standing ovation, the club owner motioned to Rolf to join him offstage in the wings.

“People are saying your doll’s moving,” the owner said. “A few are frightened.”

“It’s just an illusion,” Rolf said. “It comes from staring at her too long.”

“That’s not all. Some said they see Munchkins with distorted faces skipping around the piano.”

“Good grief! What’ll they see next? A wicked witch?”

“When you deal with the public anything can happen. Especially in a place like this where we serve drinks. Look, I don’t want anybody getting too scared. This is supposed to be nice, uplifting entertainment, not a show from the Twilight Zone. The last thing I need is bad press. On the other hand, a touch of mystique may be good for business. The stagehands said word is spreading about the doll’s performance. Hundreds are gathering outside, hoping to hear your doll. We might end up doing an extra show. If so, I’ll make it worth your while.”

As the applause died down, Rolf patted Galatea’s head, saying, “Ladies and Gentlemen … the true star of tonight’s performance. Isn’t she magnificent?”

More applause and cheers.

Leaning toward Galatea, as if to make a small adjustment to her gown, he said, “This is the big one—the one that’ll make our future. Give it all you have. Make it exquisite. I want you to tear their hearts out. Do it for me. I swear on my mother’s grave, I’ll go to the ends of the Earth to find somebody who can bring you to life.”

A soft, ethereal voice seemed to whisper, “I will, my Love.”

My imagination’s acting up again, he thought. Facing the audience he said, “And now we’ll perform one of the most fabulous songs ever written for the movies … Over The Rainbow.”

As Galatea hummed the melody softly, Rolf imagined eyes misting over the nostalgia of lost youth, and better and simpler days.

Those who witnessed the performance still talk about it as one of the high points of their theatre-going lives. Some swear they saw Toto racing around the stage. Others saw tin men, ersatz lions, dancing scarecrows.

Galatea was in perfect form. Women wept, men sniffled.

Rolf was ecstatic. There’s no stopping us now.

The tumult following the song was beyond description. The crowd yelled Galatea’s name and “Encore.” Some moved toward the stage with flowers.

A drunk jumped onto the stage and with outstretched arms raced toward Galatea. He grabbed the doll and hugged her before Rolf could stop him.

Galatea’s hands flew out and slammed the offender’s chest. He fell to the floor. In a flash, Galatea was on top of him, tearing at his chest. The man screamed horribly as the doll tore his heart out. Smiling, the doll offered it to Rolf, as if presenting a precious gift. Rolf fainted.

Seconds later Galatea attacked the club owner. Though Rolf was lying on the floor unconscious, Galatea gently laid both hearts near his body. Then she flung herself from the stage into the panicked audience.

By the time a SWAT team arrived, many were dead.

The police found blood-soaked Galatea on the stage floor snuggled against Rolf’s unconscious body. Both were surrounded by the outline of a Valentine heart that Galatea had formed from dozens of human hearts.

Nobody was crazy enough to try to prosecute a doll. That didn’t stop a grand jury from seeking ways to indict Rolf, especially when they discovered one of the hearts belonged to Mrs. Carter. Somebody had to pay for murdering a pillar of the community. However, nobody could figure out what laws Rolf had violated by playing a piano.

Several hurricanes, a disastrous earthquake, a tsunami, pandemic flu, and three horrendous terrorist attacks caused so much global havoc, Mysterio and Galatea were quickly forgotten. But relatives of Galatea’s victims didn’t forget. Taking the law into their own hands, they burned down Rolf’s house when they heard rumors that Galatea was kept in a crate in the basement. Rumors spread that the burning doll had screamed horrible curses at her tormentors.

Five years later, a short piece about the MysterioGalatea-heart-gouging incident appeared on TV’s Bizarre Mysteries. Rolf was shown whiling away the time tapping out nursery rhymes on a toy keyboard. A TV commentator said in a grave voice, “A once, highly talented and vital man now wastes away in this institution. But what put him here?”

The camera panned to Galatea. Wearing a tattered gown, she lay on Rolf’s bed, staring at the ceiling. She wasn’t beautiful anymore. Dozens of scars crisscrossed her body. Her face was filled with gaping holes.

“Who was Galatea?” asked the commentator. “And where did she really come from?”

Film clips flashed across the TV giving brief glimpses of the Egyptian Pyramids, Area 51, and Bermuda Triangle.

Next came a clip showing a Mysterio and Galatea performance.

“What was the true relationship between this flesh-andblood, virile, human male and his stunning, life-size doll with a magnificent female body?” asked the commentator.

“Look, Rolf,” said a psychiatric nurse. “You’re on TV.”

Rolf didn’t look. He was too busy playing hopscotch with horribly disfigured Munchkins.

Glancing at Galatea, he winked. What a Sweetie. I told her to tear their hearts out. She did. Lots of them. On Valentine’s Day. Just for me.

She winked back. “My Love,” she said in a voice that only he could hear. “Do you think they’d separate us if they discovered what we do every night after lights out?”

HARRY

Doug Murano

My only consolation was this: if the whackos on the Discovery Channel turned out to be right, and infinite parallel dimensions exist, wherein infinite possibilities for each instant in time can occur and do occur simultaneously, then in at least one of those parallel dimensions, the shoe that I threw would have punched right through Harry's fucking head. Or maybe it would have taken a magic bullet U-turn and buried itself straight up his dirty little poop chute. Or how about this one just for fun? It could have contacted his skin, absorbed into his body and created some sort of terrible wingtip/ mammal hybrid. Remember: this is a theory that excludes no possibilities.

Instead, it tumbled just over his right ear and thumped on the wall behind him. He didn't yowl and dash under the nearest piece of furniture, didn't spin around in confused circles, terrified. No, he wouldn't give me that little morsel of satisfaction. Not Harry. He only momentarily transferred his attention from the lump of vomit in my slipper at which he had been staring since God knows how long before I finally stopped filing team progress reports, negotiated five traffic jams, and then after an hour and a half on the icy February road inched my 1999 Taurus into the garage just until the front bumper tapped the ping pong ball suspended from the rafter.

The tabby reached his back foot up, flicked his sleek little ear twice, mewled nonchalantly and trotted back through my legs on up the stairs.

Shithead Harry. Harry that relieves himself in my bathtub. Harry that shreds up my New York Times. Harry that, if I forget to shut my bedroom door sneaks in during the middle of the night, purring (I know he purrs when he does this since last time I purposely left the door open and pretended to be asleep) and hops up onto my bed. He rolls around on my comforter, making sure to create a lustrous layer of fur. After that he'll slink up beside me, bury his claws into my thigh and then run like hell out through the door and back downstairs. I, of course, am always too tired and disoriented to do anything about it.

Who would name a cat Harry anyway? What about Puffs, or Snowflake, or Ginger or any of the normal names that people give to cats?

Kirsten.

I can remember the day that she picked him out. June humidity mixed with August heat as we walked downtown towards the pet shop hand in hand. The sun reflected off of car windows and her radiant summer blonde hair in brilliant bursts of white light that left green afterimages on my retina that danced through the shimmering lines rising from the pavement. Fat people in spandex shorts—the whole works.

Kirsten loved days like that. I never really fell in love with the kind of weather that sticks your balls to the insides of your legs, but it was her birthday. Her day.

The creature we brought home with us that day was little more than a ball of fuzz with eyes, and God help me, I couldn't help but to fall in love with it a little. Not all the way. Thank goodness for that. It didn't hurt the way that Kirsten talked baby talk to the little thing. Even though she'd never tried that with me, it sort of turned my crank.

Kirsten started calling him Harry a few days later, but wouldn't tell me why. I must have badgered her about it for half an hour but I never did get it out of her. A little secret between her, the cat and God I guess. Naturally, I assumed that Harry was one of her old flames from college.

I decided not to bother with my slipper and plodded up the staircase to my bedroom, loosening my tie and unbuttoning my trousers as had always been my habit. Kirsten always told me that someday Publishers Clearing House was going to show up at my door with one of their jumbo checks for ten million dollars with my name on it and ring the doorbell while I was in this compromising position. I was going to fall down the stairs with my pants around my ankles, and hang myself with my tie on the banister. (Here's where my imagination always kicked in.) They'd get it all with their cameras of course, and my poor mom would see me on live television—my purple face and bulging eyes juxtaposed against the balloons and television host grins, and in her shock she would mutter something about auto erotic asphyxiation that she had seen on 48 Hours or Law and Order. And Harry would be on the stairs with me, jumping and batting away at the dangling end of my necktie.

Such would be my luck, she said. She was always giving me a bad time about something, or laughing at some silly thing. Kirsten always said I should laugh more.

Kirsten's laugh. For some reason it always reminded me of the tinkling sound icicles make as they fall during the first thaw of a cold hard winter. How she'd laugh at the things he did. She'd giggle every time Harry figureeighted his way between her feet, tickling her ankles with his tail, and when Harry played tag with nothing in particular; just leap into the air as if something had startled him and then tear off across the floor to the other end of the house, then skid to a halt, bat the air once or twice and then turn around and run in the other direction. She'd laugh when she noticed that he'd been staring at the same spot on the wall late in the afternoon as when she left for work. He'd gaze with his baby blue eyes, the intense stare that only cats can achieve. Kirsten told me once that she was sure that he could see ghosts, the way that he acted sometimes.

The harassment started during the second month of Harry's occupation. I came home from work one Friday afternoon to find Kirsten in a panic. Harry was gone. Did she check the hampers upstairs where he loved to hide out sometimes like a soldier in a pill box? Yes. Did she check underneath all of the furniture? Twice, she said. I told her that I would walk around the neighborhood until I found him. So, I started walking circles around our block, then the surrounding blocks, and finally a four-block region. No Harry, and Kirsten was crushed. I hugged her and told her that Harry knows who feeds him and where his cat bed was, and that sometimes cats need to prowl.

At eleven at night, we decided to stop Harry Watch 2002 until the sun came up. The second we turned around to go inside—no—the instant I realized how great it would feel to melt into my brand new no-flip mattress and make love to my beautiful wife for the first time that week, a pathetic squall cut through the night air from the top of the old silver maple tree in our front yard.

Harry. Somehow he had left the house, and decided to climb up the tree. From the sound of things, the problem wasn't up. I didn't need a flashlight to know that he had ascended to altitudes where not even the smaller songbirds would build their nests in the tiny branches. Down was the difficulty. Cats climb down trees headfirst, and I guessed he never learned how to do that on a smaller tree, a training wheel tree, if you will. Another yowl as if he was being drawn and quartered alive.

A pleading look from Kirsten.

I could go into agonizing detail concerning the rest of that ordeal, but I won't. I've said enough about Harry already so that you won't be surprised when I tell you that I got suckered into (when I say "suckered into" I mean by Harry, not Kirsten) spending that night outside and that he didn't come down from the tree the next day. Or the next. I spent the majority of that weekend staring up into the maple, trying to coax Harry down into at least the lower branches so that I could prop a ladder up against the thick trunk of the tree and climb up to retrieve him. On Monday morning, I fully expected men in white coats carrying clipboards to circle my house, pounce on me and inject "that crazy man who stares at his tree for days" full of some powerful sedative.

Up until the end, he never moved at all, and then it was all at once. He just let go, and fell down spread eagle like some half-assed flying squirrel towards my open arms. From that moment on, I became convinced that animals have emotions, because as Harry fell I was sure that I could see triumphant, brazen, wide-eyed glee in his eyes. My stitches were removed about a week later.

I went over to my bed and lay down. I glanced at the clock. It was only seven, but I felt exhausted and ready for sleep. But I knew sleep was more of a dream than those I hoped to welcome. I told myself (still have to tell myself) that it's been a year, but every time I close my eyes I can remember the way she left me. How I yelled at her on her way out the door.

Of course Harry was there. He was always there.

It was February, and time for another round of shots for Harry at the veterinarian. The weatherman had said for drivers to beware the slippery ice that covered the road following the last bout of sleet. I tried to talk her out of keeping her appointment. She wanted to go anyway. Did I remember to tell you that she was as stubborn as she was lovely? When that didn't work I gave her all kinds of grief about how stupid I thought it was to care so much about a cat. She told me I didn't understand. She was right. I made her cry. I asked her to wait. She left.

Later that evening I answered a knock on my door. The sheriff stood in front of me holding Harry, who was soaked with melted ice, looking as pathetic as only a wet cat can. His orange fur was matted in several places with what I have ever since wished was his blood.

I lay staring at Harry, and he sat across the room looking back at me and occasionally licked his paw in a smug way. Some people might say that it's impossible for a cat to look smug, but then again they don't live with Harry, do they? Smug is his preferred modus operandi.

"Oh, fuck off," I said.

Harry rose to a standing position and began to approach the foot of my bed, all the while twitching his tail.

"Alright, you just come on over here, and do that trick you love to do. That's gutsy."

He continued his route to the bed, and most of him momentarily disappeared as he reached the section of floor that I could not see from where I was on the bed. I could see the top of his twitching little shithead tail, though. I sat up and leaned on my headboard, fists clenched. I watched him reappear as he jumped up onto the mattress and continued his slow, deliberate journey. Harry was purring. Instead of digging in his claws, he arched his back and began to nuzzle up underneath my hand. He looked at me with expectant eyes.

"I don't like you," I whispered. But despite the swelling of anger I felt, his soft fur against the palm of my hand started to take the edge off of it. Harry moved into my hand more insistently and the rumble in his throat grew to a sound not unlike an idling Harley-Davidson. I smiled and stroked his back from neck to tail.

Then Harry sat up, hissed and sprang his claws out at me. They found purchase in my thigh about an inch below my manhood. I swung out at him with both arms, but again he was out the door before I could do much. I slid off the bed and ran out of the bedroom door after him.

When I reached the staircase, Harry was almost all the way down and I stormed down after him. I tripped and plummeted headfirst down the carpeted stairs, rug burning my chin and chest, and couldn't help but imagine the good people from Publishers Clearing House standing there with their gleaming game show smiles and holding an immense cardboard check with my name on it. Thank God I'm not wearing a tie, I thought.

I skidded to a halt at the bottom of the stairs on the tile floor of the kitchen. I was afraid to open my eyes because my body ached in a hundred places, and my face burned. Then I remembered I was furious and my eyelids snapped up. I wanted to grab him by the tail and throw him out into the snow by it. I wanted to raise a set of uprights in my front yard just so that I could kick him through it.

Harry stopped me. I saw him there a few feet in front of me. Eyes closed in an expression of divine pleasure, he walked tight little figure eights around nothing at all. Somewhere, I know I heard the tinkling sound of falling icicles.

IN YOUR WARM
AND DARKENED GRAVE

Frank Zafiro

Darkness was full when she returned. I didn’t hear her enter, but her sudden presence didn’t startle me. I was used to her nature.

“How is the night?” I asked.

“Clear,” she replied. “Is the CD in?”

I nodded. We rarely spoke of her needs.

“Wonderful. I’ll start it, if you light the fire.”

The opera began as I lit the newspaper below the kindling. I watched the flames hungrily devour the paper.

“Wine?” she asked. “Beloved, thank you.”

We sat in silence for a while; she absorbed in the music, I absorbed in her. I sipped my wine. The taste was crisp, the music thunderous, the fire comforting.

“Such brilliance,” she breathed quietly.

She caught my eye as I watched her. Smiling, she rose and kissed me on the mouth. I tasted the slightest coppery tang on her lips. I held her cool hands and looked into her green eyes.

“I want to be with you, Sara.”

“But you are.”

“No, not like this.” I shook my head. “I want to be with you forever.”

She frowned and disengaged herself from me. “No, Beloved,” she said, sitting down. “I won’t do that. It is not eternal life, as you think. It is a long death, and it is evil.”

She glanced away. After a quiet moment, she whispered,

“It is a curse.”

“Then let me share it with you!”

She didn’t reply.

“I want to be your groom,” I told her, my voice ardent and pleading.

“Beloved, we have discussed this before.”

I stared intently at her. “Please,” I begged. “I love you.”

There was a silence as the CD ended. The crackle of the fire seemed a roar. I didn’t move, but only watched her.

Finally, she spoke. “If I were to do this, you would not love me any longer. You would soon wish for the return of your mortality and for death.”

“No.”

She nodded. “Yes, you would. The minute you were born into my world, you would recall every aspect of the mortal world and every moment of your past. Everything would appear so vivid, so tantalizing, and you would hate me. You would hate me for the mortal time that I had stolen from you and for the mortal death that I denied you.”

“I don’t believe any of this. Why would I care about some small past when I had forever to spend with you?”

She leaned forward and touched my hands. A cool shiver ran through my arms. “You are sweet, Beloved. But, please … accept my answer, and simply love me.”

“I will always love you,” I whispered.

I rose and started the CD over again and we lost ourselves in Mozart’s thunder.

The next night, he came.

I didn’t hear him enter, but felt his presence immediately. I turned from the cabinet I was repairing and saw him standing in the hallway. He struck an impressive figure, his slender limbs set off by a barreled chest and a shock of black hair. For the single second that I could bear to look into his eyes, I recognized the danger that lurked there.

“Your mistress?” He asked me, his voice a silky growl.

“Who are you?”

I saw a blur, felt a powerful jolt and slammed into the wall.

“Sara!” I croaked weakly.

A moment later, a piercing scream rose from her chamber, filled with fear and a fierce anger.

I stood and staggered toward her cries. The chamber door was bolted tight. I pounded on it uselessly with my fists before I picked up a chair from the hallway and blasted the door open.

Her large window was flung open wide. The curtains swayed with the night breeze. Her overturned casket lay on the floor, the lid askew.

“Beloved …” she whispered from beneath the open window. Her body was slack and she held her head up with effort. I went to her.

“My wounds?” she asked me.

I examined her quickly. Huge gashes on her leg and mid-section bled profusely. Her mouth and cheeks were spotted with blood. Her breath came in shallow pants.

Blood … but not hers.

“I think my ribs are broken,” she grunted with pain, poking her fingers at her side. “Two of them, at least.”

I bound her wounds and taped her ribs. When I had replaced her coffin on the altar and laid her gently into it, she gave me a soft smile. “You are a true love, my beloved.”

I wiped a smear of blood from her face. “I wish for a day when I will share your coffin, and your sleep.”

She closed her eyes and whispered, “Pray that you do not.”

I held the tavern door open for my newfound companion. He staggared outside, clasping onto my shoulder to keep from falling.

He laughed at his own drunken clumsiness. “Booze and women, you said?”

“Yes,” I told him. “More than you can imagine.”

When she finished with him, I wrapped him in a sheet. She watched me work. “I am deeply ashamed.”

“Why?”

“That you must provide such things for me. That you would view such evil.”

“Necessity is not evil,” I assured her. “How long will it take you to heal?”

She shrugged. “Another day or two. I do not have the restorative powers that your legends attribute to me.”

“And the other? Will he come back?”

“Not if I leave.”

“Why did he attack you?”

She smiled, but it was not beautiful. “We are very territorial creatures, Beloved. It is … well, it is as you say —necessity. This attack was a warning. If he had wanted to kill me, he would have risen as early as the dying sun would permit and he would have set fire to this house.”

“Could he have risen earlier than you?”

“Perhaps. He is an old vampire, this one, and very powerful.”

The thought of her destruction burned in my chest. “I would protect you, even if it cost me my life,” I told her.

Her smile shifted and the beauty returned to it. “It already has.”

I threaded a rope through barbell weights and wrapped it around the shrouded body. I worked quickly, finally pushing the body off the small dock and into the deep waters of the still lake. It sank in a flare of white, disappearing.

When I turned, a man stood at the shore end of the dock, watching me.

I slid a knife from my boot and strode toward him. His face was weathered and deeply lined. Though his shoulders were stooped, his stance remained firm and unwavering. When I neared him, he held up his hand. “Stop. Go home to your mistress. I have no dealings with the police.”

I slowed and considered him.

He smiled knowingly, but sadness rimmed his eyes. “I have too many secrets of my own to bother with yours, friend.”

I didn’t like the knowing stare he held, but I sheathed my knife. “If you tell a soul, death will visit you.”

His smile turned bitter. “I wish she would.”

He turned and walked away.

When she felt strong again, I told her what had happened at the dock.

“He was old?” she asked, her eyes alight with curiosity.

I nodded.

She described his features to me. Her description was better than my own memory. I nodded emphatically. “Yes, yes. That’s him.”

She leaned back in her chair, looking up at the ceiling. “I should have known.”

“Sara, who is this man? How do you know him?”

She stirred, turning her eyes on me. “He is a former retainer, Beloved. He served me for twenty-eight years before he left.”

“Why did he leave?”

“We fought. He left in anger.”

I paused. Thoughts pounded in my head. My heart raced with adrenaline, with jealousy, with realization. “Was he … a lover?”

“As much as I take a lover,” she answered without hesitation. “As much as you are a lover.”

I couldn’t reply.

She went on. “He must have betrayed my place to Vaclav.”

“Vaclav?”

“The one who attacked me.”

I waited, watching her.

Her voice became hard. “If he would betray me to Vaclav, he will betray me to mortals. And if they find me out, they would destroy me, even today. I saw it happen before.” She gave me an accusing look, as if I bore the sins of my race. “They burned Ishka alive in Klastav. That was six hundred years ago. She was careless, too trusting.” She pressed her lips together in cold anger. “And they burned her.”

“Sara …”

But she was gone.

I didn’t sleep, only waited for her. When she returned, dawn threatened in the east, but she showed no fear.

“Did you find him?” I asked softly.

“I hunted him, Beloved. And I killed him.” She stared at me, forcing me to look away. “Do you find that evil?”

“No,” I whispered. “Necessity.”

“It was,” she agreed. “I cannot allow myself to be discovered. I cannot die now.” Her voice lowered slightly. “I have lost my soul.”

I looked up and she cast me a softer, teary glance.

“Don’t you see, Beloved? This dark immortality has cost me my soul. Death would be nothingness to me now. No reward, no punishment. No consciousness. Just … nothing.”

“There are men who believe that is the fate of all who die.”

She scoffed. “Those men are fools.”

I didn’t reply. A vision of the old man’s deep, sad eyes flashed before me.

“Would you still ask me to give you this long, soulless death, Beloved?”

I shook my head.

She sighed gratefully. “I am glad. That is what Phillip and I fought over and why he left me. I would not want us to come to that same end.” She leaned forward to kiss me, and I felt the hardness of her sharp teeth as she pushed her mouth against my cheek.

“Goodnight, Beloved.”

When dawn broke, I struck the match. The flame licked at the thick curtain, burning the material greedily. I tossed the half-burned match onto a chair soaked in gasoline. With a deep puff, it caught flame. Fire rushed along the liquid paths I’d laid, then began to stray, hungrily devouring the furniture, the carpet and climbing the walls. I stood in the center of the room. Smoke burned my eyes.

Sara …

I staggered to the front door and flung it open. Memories besieged me, thoughts of a life that had been imprisoned inside of me. I had a wife once, and a daughter. They died in a plane crash, years ago. I savored the knowledge and the grief.

Ten years ago … she was right. I would have hated her.

I made my way to the street and into the morning, alone save for the memories of blood and love.

GIRL IN THE TUB

Cameron L. Mitchell

So there’s this girl in the tub. And there’s me out here in the living room with the television on. The Saturday morning cartoons flash across the screen, but I absolutely detest them—the bright colors, the supposed educational value, and all the things going on that I just don’t get. Whatever happened to the fun cartoons? Am I too old to understand what kids are into these days? I remember little blue creatures with white pants that matched their white hats. Except for the papa of the bunch—he had a red hat and red pants. There might have been other small, insignificant variations among the Smurfs, but, for the most part, they were simple and much easier to understand than the shit I see now. I’ve got to change the station. Better yet, I’ll cut it off. There’s never anything good on Saturday mornings.

She’s resting in the tub, which might not sound comfortable, but I’ve paid attention to the details that matter. A thick, white towel, folded up neatly as a makeshift pillow, lies soaked between her head and the cold ceramic tub. I used bleach to clean the tub yesterday morning, even though it makes me wheeze and choke and panic just a little. I opened my living room window and the bedroom window and the smaller window in the kitchen to help disperse the overwhelming odor. I cut the air off while I did this, despite the ninety degree weather outside. I can’t stand the thought of running the air with the windows open. The wastefulness leaves me feeling guilty, and I already contribute to the ruin of my surroundings. I know cutting the air off while I let the breeze in won’t save the earth. But we should all do what we can. I believe the small things we attempt to better both ourselves and the world around us are important.

When I’m finished with her, I’ll douse the tub in bleach again. I’m not sure when we’ll be done this time, but I’ll have to cut the air off again and open each and every window. I must be able to breathe. Sometimes, I just can’t breathe, and the bleach makes it a million times worse.

The last girl I brought home came from two towns over. Getting her was the easy part, but I didn’t yet understand what I was looking for. I still don’t exactly know, but with the girl in the tub this very moment, I feel closer. For once, I feel as if everything is falling into place. I’m getting there, and this time it’ll be different. She’s already so different from the others.

I’m not a greedy bastard, in case you’re wondering. There have only been two others. In my whole life. Doesn’t that mean something—that I can show restraint? Or, maybe it just shows that I wasn’t yet ready. Lots of people aren’t ready for what they know is coming. Yet, whatever it is will come anyway. You can try preparing. Or you can just wait, peacefully letting go to see which way the wind blows your fate. You could worry about every second of every minute of every hour of every single godforsaken day; or, you might wait until it happens and see how you react. It doesn’t matter, really. When you know it’s coming, the only thing you can control is how you react— and even that can get tricky. If you live on a beach tortured by hurricanes, there are things you can do to prepare. But, no matter what, it might be your house that’s blown to smithereens. Will you be inside when it comes? Or will you have run away, prolonging the point of impact for just a little while longer?

I’m gonna get it this time. She’ll show me what I’m looking for. She’s gonna give it over, and I’m open wide to take it in. I can feel each of my pores expanding to absorb her essence. For a week before meeting her, I sat here in my apartment chatting online. There are so many interesting people out there. I spend a lot of time online. I sit with my legs crossed in front of my laptop, which rests on the coffee table. I lean against the couch for support. I have a desk, but my plastic chair isn’t comfortable; also, I like being able to watch television while I play online. Recently, I noticed very rough patches of skin on my feet. My first thought? I’ve never had dry skin or random flakiness, so perhaps this is a sign that I’m getting older and my body has begun changing. Then, I figured it out. On my right foot, the dry area of skin corresponded with the part of my foot that rests against the carpet. The round part of my left ankle—you know, the part that juts out from the rest—is also dry. It took me a while, but I finally figured out that both dry patches are a result of sitting on the carpet too much. I’m still getting older, but at least the changes in my skin aren’t necessarily indicative of that. Perhaps when I masturbate to internet porn, I’m rubbing my feet against the carpet without realizing it, making the dry skin worse. I masturbate a lot to net porn. You wouldn’t believe what’s out there. Or, maybe you would. Maybe we’ve even chatted

You can say anything online, but who can say for sure where fantasy ends and reality begins for these strangers I happen upon? Who knows what they can offer in real life. When it comes down to getting what I need, relying on such an informal means of communication pales in comparison to the touch of flesh on flesh. How can you really get to know anyone until you’ve felt the heat of their breath against your skin? No, the wiry electronics buried deep inside my computer can’t transmit the tickle of soft words against my ear, whispering, Take me, take me now.

“Sit tight in there,” I yell to the girl in the tub. I feel like I should be having a martini with an olive. I’ve never actually had one of those. I don’t drink. Ever. The smell of alcohol, like bleach, sends my head spinning.

“Want a glass of wine?” I yell. “Perhaps a flute of champagne?”

She doesn’t answer. “Just as well,” I chuckle. “I don’t have either.”

My chuckle fills the tepid air between us, growing into an all out roar before I realize my joke’s not funny. “Oh, just as well.”

After eyeing the CDs lined up on one of the entertainment center shelves, I mosey over to the bathroom door. “You want some music while you’re finishing up in there?” I ask. She’s sitting pretty, just staring up at the ceiling, almost as if she expects something other than an apartment, identical to this one, lies beyond the mildew-speckled surface. Yes, there’re spots of mold above my girl in the tub. If you assumed I was a clean freak because of all that bleach talk, you were wrong. Not by any means am I a pig, however. Neglecting to dust or tidy up regularly seems like a fairly normal trait to me. As far as taking care of mold in the bathroom, well, I wouldn’t know where to begin. Maybe you can tell me? I could paint over it, I suppose. But I haven’t felt like it, even though I kept telling myself I’d get the job done once spring rolls around. It’s mid-summer now. And that was spring of last year.

I can’t call my mother to ask about mold. She was never much of a housecleaner herself. Enough of that, though. I think both me and the girl in the tub could use some music. I slip in the Carly Simon disc with all her greatest hits. Speaking of my mother, she’s the one who introduced me to Carly Simon. On Sunday afternoons, while Dad was away, Mom played her Carly Simon tapes. I hope the girl in the tub appreciates Carly. I’m not sure how anyone couldn’t, really.

I don’t think my father cared for Carly Simon, but I can’t say for sure. My mother only played the tapes when he was gone, so that’s the impression I got. It’s possible Mom just didn’t want to share her Carly with Dad.

Sitting alone in the dark with a cigarette is something Dad would have done. It’s something he did do. He wasn’t naturally creepy, if that makes sense. But he liked to put on a show sometimes, making us think he was even worse than what we imagined.

And I’m still here. Good lord, this song really gets to me, you know? Of course you don’t know. No one knows— not even the girl in the tub. She doesn’t know the gift lying inside, waiting for me to explore. She doesn’t know a damned thing about it. Nobody does.

Last night, before you went into the tub, we had our fun. It wasn’t enough. My last girl wasn’t fully satisfying either, but I knew you’d be different. I had to clear my head and think outside the box with you. Maybe that other girl was just wrong. Perhaps I wasn’t yet ready.

Am I ready this time? Is the girl in the tub ready?

“Are you ready?” I ask her. I ask no one.

My mother and father have visited throughout the night. They are visiting now, hidden between Carly’s sweet notes. But I swear to you, this isn’t about them. I mean, it’s about them, but not coming from them or anything they ever did to me. It’s about them only in the sense that it’s about me and you and the girl in the tub and everyone you know. My parents are no more special in these circumstances than any other parents. I just want you to understand that. Try to understand that.

The fun part is over. It wasn’t so very fun to me this time anyway. I slapped your jowl with my half-erect cock. Jowl is probably the wrong word. It makes you, girl in the tub, seem fat. You are far from fat. In fact, I wonder if your mother feeds you enough.

I slapped your face harder with my cock, watching it grow fully erect as I entered your tiny mouth. While taking me inside, you just stared up without ever meeting my gaze. You were already gone, probably to find whatever lies beyond my moldy ceiling. But not everything is gone my sweet girl

I couldn’t even come in your mouth. I needed more than your soft lips could give. That’s when the bruises around your neck transfixed me. That’s when I knew this would be it. This would be what I’m looking for.

I carefully helped you into the tub. Once you were settled, I took the knife and opened your flesh. And Carly sang.

Your blood spilled across my thighs, still warm. I shoved my cock as far inside the wound as I could get it, coming almost instantly. My orgasmic seed mixed with your blood was almost more than I could handle. It was like seeing into the very gates of Heaven. I licked the magic sustenance, unable to ingest the taste of you and I brought together fast enough. That sweet mixture of me and my girl in the tub was almost enough. I withdrew, shivering with the joy of knowing what comes next.

Looking in the mirror, I was most certainly a sight for sore eyes. Splatters of blood covered my groin. My cock was drenched. And my face—what a bloody mess my face was.

To taste you in this new, profound way was a tease of more to come. Today, the towel holding your sweet little head is soaked. The blood that once sustained you has floated away, drip by drip, down the drain. And now I’m ready.

I have laid out barbeque skewers to grill you, even though I probably won’t need them. I’ve never eaten someone before. I haven’t even thought about it. But that’s the only way I can get what I need from you. Everything has led up to this point. I didn’t know it, but I have been waiting for this last supper of sorts all my life. My sweet, sweet girl in the tub, give me what I need.

I don’t even know how to do this, really. I started removing your head with a hacksaw, figuring that was a good start. But it was harder than I thought, so I just left you there, your head almost severed from your body. Without propping it up against the towel, it might have fallen off.

You’re even more beautiful now than you were before my hands touched the smoothness of your skin. Your body, in this motion-free position, is fully open and calling out, singing a sweet and seductive song. It’s so beautiful— the ease and willingness of your flesh to reveal.

And I know others might not understand. I’m not so far gone that I can’t see that. But I think others want what I want. They want something we all seemed to have lost.

The grill is fired up, and the smoke billows out into the crisp blue of this glorious day. I take my knife out. I’m sure I’ll figure out what I need to know along the way. It’s happening. There’s no way I can stop it. There’s no way I could go back to the way things were before.

I carve a piece of flesh from your thigh, starting out small. I’ll smoke this piece of you. I’ll eat this one little bit and come back for more. I’ll take your flesh down. I’ll cut deeper inside you, removing each organ. I think your heart will be the real treat. That just seems to make the most sense, right?

A part of my girl in the tub now sizzles on the grill. Carly calls out from the living room. I have cut the air off so as not to be wasteful. I like listening to music while I grill.

“Anticipation, anticiiii—paaaaa—tion,” I sing. “Is making me late. Is keeping me wai—aaaaii—ting.” God, I love this song. Unable to wait any longer, I remove the first part of you from the grill, knowing it’s not thoroughly cooked yet. I cut it into smaller pieces, picking one up with my fork and lightly blowing on it before I take it inside. The taste is too much. It’s too much to describe. I am nothing compared to your taste.

I go back inside and put my favorite Carly song on repeat. I could listen to Carly sing her sweet melodies all day and all night. I might just do that.

I cut a larger portion from your leg and take it outside. After easing it down on the grill, I sit in my lawn chair with the plate of you resting on my knees.

There are men coming now. I knew they’d disturb us eventually. I really thought I’d have more time with you. But, I’ve learned to value and appreciate what the Lord has given. He sent you my way. He sent me your way. He brought us together. He gave me you, my tiny beam of light. He made you perfect. Even when I found you, playing outside in the dirt, you remained clean and unblemished. There was so much you didn’t know yet. There’s so much you’ll never have to know, now.

They ask me questions. I eat one last bite. I tell them to listen.

They ask me about a missing eight-year-old girl. They probably won’t let me finish my meal.

“You mean the girl in the tub?” I ask. “Yes, she’s inside.”

I don’t expect them to understand. I don’t expect you to understand either. The girl in the tub knows. Because of her, I am free.

As they put me in the back of their car with the bright lights, my spirit soars. I go back to you, my sweet girl in the tub, and jump inside with you. And on top of you. I jump and I scream and I land hard feet against your bones. I break you. I pummel your flesh. I stomp your severed head and I destroy you and I lick you. I chew on your organs—mmm, yummy—and gnaw on your bones. I feed on you and I am new. I am full and I am fresh. I am back where I’m protected, closer to a womb existence, safe and unscathed from the screaming of you and everyone you know and don’t know.

I reap the divine mess, and I scream. I scream and scream so loud that angels above are surely disturbed.

FRAZZLED

J.R.

Keith has a face that gets him noticed, I’ll say that much. Not freak show noticed. Just, well, noticed, I don’t know; his face just looks too defined. Too stereotypically Eastern European, with a broad neck, strong nose, and hard knots of cheek bone that, for some reason, remind me of little islands in the South Pacific. Maybe because I used to enjoy island hopping all over them with my lips. God, I know, nothing more sexual than esoteric World War II military strategy. No wonder he loved me.

Well, still loves me.

I don’t need to talk about myself, you’ll get sick of me soon enough. More about him.

First thing you’d notice about him: His hair is like a choreographed fight scene.

And need it be said that his hair is black?

And what black it is. Rich and luxurious, you put your nose in his hair, close your eyes and inhale, and—I kid you not—you’re on top of something quadrepal and wild, something that’s bucking and roaring and gnashing, and you’re riding this beast aside a lake in translucent nighttime, the full moon making a lambent mirror out of dark waters. Hot Topic kids think they’re so special because, unlike their bourgeoisie peers, they realize dark, somber hues can be beautiful. Grand epiphany, I know. But Keith’s hair affirms their conceit to the nth degree and makes black the baseline standard all things of beauty must be judged against.

So yeah, his hair is nice.

If he was around, and I was describing his hair in front of him, I’d say his hair makes “black the new black.”

He’d like that.

He is a pretty fun guy.

Well, maybe not. He could just be playing “the part.”

You know, “the part” of the bad boy. It was “the part” that first attracted me.

He had that whole rebel-who’s-his-own cause bravado, that cavalier, toothy grin, with that melee of hair as his radio antennas to beam his confidence to anyone within range. A coquettish, pliable, bright but misunderstood waitress like myself is a half-filled glass, and some ego-beaming, interesting stranger is that last pitcher of fluid needed to finally fill her up.

But it wore on me. Goddamn, the whole shtick: the renegade, supposedly outside the norms and constrains of polite society. God, just thinking about him, in public with his leather jacket and his omnipresent sunglasses makes me uncomfortable. A million such pictures line his MySpace account: teeth bared, hair in disarray, dark apparel in full effect (need to spot me in these pictures? I’m the person looking askance and ashamed for being with the tool wearing sunglasses in the mall or the deli or wherever the picture was taken).

But, it must be said, the more and more time I spent with him, the more I began to suspect it might not be an act. It might be a side effect of his affliction.

And I know the affliction is real—boy is it ever.

I found out about it the hard way. When I first found out about his … shall we say, “situation,” we had only been dating about two months, and even that was on-andoff, so I didn’t know much about his personal habits. One night (forever known to me as THAT NIGHT), I remember dreaming of Marshmallow (“Marsha!”), my childhood bichon frise. In my dream, I distinctly remembered the “tap-tap-tap” of Marsha’s uncut toenails against the unvarnished, smooth wood living room of my youth. “Taptap-tap”; even though Marsha was a little overweight (as all bichons should be) I loved how regal and dignified the tapping made Marsha sound.

Then I woke up, and saw some man-sized thing above me, tap-tap-tapping his hands and feet as he scurried, upside down, across my bedroom ceiling and out of my vision.

To be honest, I don’t remember exactly what happened next. Maybe I screamed. More likely I gasped and sucked in so much air I had an oxygen overdose.

Whenever it was that he decided to notice my conniption fit—and, you know, the attendant galactic panic resulting from having one’s entire sense of the world obliterated—he awoke from his instinctual bedtime crawling, lost his balance, and fell back to earth. Alarmingly, he started to panic. Feeling as I had just a teensy little bit more justifiable panic-induced leverage over him, I disregarded his worries and just started screaming.

He immediately tackled me, but even then, feeling his weight bulldozing over me, I could feel the softness in his embrace, in the way he wrapped his arms around me. I fell to the bed, decisively but comfortably.

Pushing his face to mine, I could see an inchoate misting in his eyes, an amorphous but fulgent cloud, a bizarre sort of cataracts—I later learned that this was his version of crying.

“I can explain … You will never … in a million years. I know, I know you’re scared and you’re frightened, and, and you think this is a dream or something, but—”

So he tried to explain.

To this day I still don’t know what he is. A ghoul? The word’s connotations are too malevolent to be accurate.

But he was bitten by something, a long time ago, by something small and wicked. He told me that he remembers, as a little boy, waking up with something bipedal and impish on his nightstand, darting from spot to spot like “one of those laser pens.”

When he saw its face, he said it was “a shoal of fish.”

I don’t even want to know what that means, but I pray it’s a metaphor.

His parents knew, he explained: They had arranged for it. All they told him was that it was his birthright. He was the last of a line that had something significant stirring within them. Everybody has a yearning for something greater than themselves. His parents (who, to this day, I’ve never met) promised him not to worry, that one day he would find his purpose, that one day it would all make sense.

That’s what he told me, anyways, and I do believe him. Crazy, I know, but I do.

“And most important,” he exclaimed, knowing our relationship hinged upon my acceptance of this fact: “It’s not communicable.”

“Bullshit.” Even though he seemed outwardly healthy, I pictured myself as a leprous, deforming rot, my body separating and suppurating as his “gift” spread within me.

“I promise. You just need to trust me.”

I smacked him, just for withholding this from me. At the time, I didn’t care about his excuses—“you would never believe me,” “you would leave me,” “it’d be impossible to understand”— he should have just spared me the hassle and never talked to me that day in the restaurant. I figured that self-inflicted loneliness should be part of his “gift’s” package deal.

But I came around. To be honest, to this day, there has been no physical change within me. Doctor’s physicals: all A-OK. As far as I know, he was telling the truth.

What was I to do? Leave him then? For something he had no control over, for being unique and beyond me? Sure, crawling on walls was, of course, aesthetically repugnant, but that was just peripheral. His uniqueness had other advantages. It gave him a healthy dose of life, of experience, of something beyond the modern superficial trappings of our blighted, bored twenty-something generation.

Our relationship continued.

It was more than crawling on walls. Knowing his secret, he showed me all he could do. He had strength. It’s par for the course to say “as strong as fifty men,” but he was as strong as X amount of men: strong enough to handle his sloppy words in a bar, my sloppy words, and all his friends’ sloppy words. He could smell and hear and sense things I couldn’t. I could breathe in his intense pheromones—concentrated at the base of his skull, it seemed—and see into this fantastic world (his world, perhaps), and become a tiny little bug in an alabaster orchid, where I could find succor in the nectar of elephantine, iridescent flowers. It was a free, all-access pass to a twilight world of bucolic serenity and unfathomable possibilities.

He opened up to me. He guaranteed me that everything he had told me about himself—where he had been born, his life before the “incident,” etcetera—was all one hundred-percent-true. I became aware of the benefits of his strength, the totality of his capabilities to fulfill my burgeoning sexual rapaciousness. I had always been a little bit prudish (we bookworm types sometimes are; or are at least enjoined to be by society) but he broke down that barrier.

Initially.

Everything was fine initially.

Everything is always initially.

The lusting infatuation never fully evolved into the calm, cool depths of tender association. As his ego grew, so did his shame and fear. He played up his bad boy image to his friends (who, of course, were none-the-wiser), all the while wink-winking at me, as if to say “if they only knew the half of it.”

I admit, I vacillated between delight at his physical dexterity and irritation at his outward shtick, his devil-may-care fakery.

Something quick about his diet. Immense power requires, shall we say, an unusual diet, and while he could make do with everyday prole food, it was meat—the rawer and bloodier the better—that supplied him with the fuel he needed. He didn’t drink blood directly or anything, but he told me meat provided all the liquids he needed (“I’m just like a koala bear with his eucalyptus leaves,” he would chirp). And as he devoured meat and his strength increased, so did his desire to perform, both sexually and otherwise. My initial pleasure with his sexual capacities soon pained me emotionally, because I began to see the strain he put himself under to attain this performance. Suffice to say, since his sustenance depends on blood— both for food and as a prerequisite for an instrumental part of his anatomy—when blood is in short supply his performance anxiety becomes palpable. As does his inevitable disappointment. I told him it was alright, that I understood, that his body was dealing with something alien and incomprehensible, but it was no use. The visual paradox of seeing this physically bestial specimen trying to hold back tears (or his variant of them) over something his strength was powerless against will always be on the cusp of my visual memory, something bobbing above the surface no matter how hard I try to submerge it.

But you would never know this with him out in public. Bravado this, bravado that, and it wore down on me. There was definitely an inverse relationship between his private worries and his public showmanship. Call me an emotional vampire, but I began to appreciate the sadness and sensitivity his syndrome evoked in him—it was at least genuine.

My fondest memories with him are still the plaintive, existential noodling-sessions brought about by our late-night musings, where we would ping-pong our worries, insecurities, thoughts and fears off each other. What caused his condition? What is his purpose? How will he know when his purpose is shown to him? Will he recognize it? Does everyone have a purpose? Is he a higher power? Is he godly? Are ancient stories of vampires or ghouls or werewolves based off people like him? How many people like him are there?

One night, sitting over a black pier, I remember him wishing—wishing above all else—to see something monstrous make its way out the black depths of the stolid lake. I don’t know why, but seeing this transcendental specimen wishing for evidence of something greater than himself really affected me.

But I know what you’re thinking. I’m a bad person.

Because he still loves me. And although part of me still loves him, I’m not with him right now.

I’m supposed to be, but I’m not.

He knows I’m not at home. Earlier tonight, I left his food on the table (a particularly detestable collection of cow and pig innards) and left. I didn’t leave a note; maybe he deserves one, but realistically, he can track me down. He can sense things. A note would be patronizing to the both of us.

Here I am, sitting across from Vinny, an old high school friend of mine I ran into at the mall awhile ago and promised I’d catch up with. He knows nothing about my life, about my love, about my situation, but I can see the benign sexual intent in his eyes, in the way he makes and fetches me coffee, in the way he fluffs his couch’s pillows for me, in his wide-eyed pantomime of interest in all our shared high school nostalgia. I don’t know if I will sleep with him, but an emotional affair is a distinct possibility.

I envy Vinny’s everyman humbleness. Poor Vinny (or maybe lucky Vinny) has no idea what I’m thinking now; he’s probably thinking that, with my decorous smile, I might be interested in him. I can tell by the quickening pace of his speech, he’s just trying to get to the good stuff: his machine of good will powered by a core of sexual desire.

I know this, yet still I remain. People aren’t easily categorizable lab specimens. We have depth, complexities, and hopelessly contradictory impulses. I don’t know why I’m here, but what I’m doing doesn’t feel wrong. It doesn’t feel wrong at all.

I hear a door slam in the driveway outside.

I want to say “expecting someone?” but there’s no point. I know who it is.

I am planning this out in my head, planning out how this would sound to Vinny.

I wish I could twist my brain into believing that what I’m really seeking from Vinny is solace, that I really planned on coming here to spill my guts to him about everything in the hopes of attaining a better understanding of my love for Keith.

But I know that’s not the case.

I know in the conveniently bifurcated world of good and bad that sustains and informs the modern world what I am doing is “bad,” but while I recognize it in the abstract, I don’t feel it now. This is something I need.

Vinny looks out the window and turns to me, not looking particularly stunned, just blankly stumped, his lip dumbly unfurled, awaiting the next step, in the process of segueing between the familiar and the unknown.

I rise to the window, and, in the process, brush next to Vinny.

I wonder if Keith saw that.

Through the window, I see the melancholic, winter gaze in Keith’s eyes, fresh, fuzzy and wet like dripping television static. His closed, terse lips are bulging around his gums as if he was chewing on a bear trap. A distinct internal pressure is being exerted on his lips. I picture opening his mouth and seeing the teeth of an anglerfish.

I wonder what world I’d be transported to if I smelled his hair now.

I know this isn’t the change his parents told him about, but I’d love to think that it is, that I could be his trigger.

I wonder how long he’ll wait outside.

His side car door is open.

The passenger seat is ripped to shreds.

THE GIFT OF
THE BONEFLOWER

D. Alexander Ward

1

Levi stood before the full-length mirror leaned against the corner in the shadowed confines of the stranger’s bedroom. The old shag carpet was in surprisingly good shape, considering how many years it had lain there and been trod upon. It felt tingly between his toes as he rubbed them against each other. He chuckled.

“What’s that?” a voice escaped from the bathroom, its door cracked open, pouring steam and the roaring sound of the shower.

“Nothing,” Levi replied, looking back at himself in the mirror. He was tall and gangly, arms and legs seemingly cut from ash white limbs of a puny tree. All over his body, bone protruded from beneath the flesh, making his skin awkward and much too topographical. His body hair was unlike that of most, being pale in color and giving the illusion that he was indeed completely hairless. What lay among the nest of hair between his legs was of particular contention to Levi, and as his gaze dropped there, he crossed one leg over the other, hiding what couldn’t even be seen, hiding what he knew was there. Levi’s secret, Levi’s truth. Sometimes he was Levi and sometimes she was Levi, and never the twain should meet in nature except at the intersection of Levi’s pale inner thighs, obscured from obvious view by coiled hair as pale as the peach fuzz on a newborn baby’s arms.

After a few moments of staring, Levi heard the shower shut off. The door swung wide and steam spilled into the room one last time. The stranger stepped out, a green towel wrapped around his waist. He fumbled on the night table for his black, horn-rimmed glasses and put them on as he slid up behind Levi.

“One more time for the road, Mr. Missus?” he propositioned, an awkward and enthusiastic grin sweeping across his face as his hand slipped down Levi’s side and over his hips, down still, this time passing by the pudgy man-thing that dangled there and slipping into the warm folds of a woman that lay tucked behind it.

Levi sighed and turned to the stranger, vaguely attractive in his own way. He gave him a smile. “I don’t think so. I’ve somewhere to be.”

“I’ll take you,” the stranger replied tersely. His name was Shawn, though Levi preferred not to think of their names, these strangers he knew. “Like I promised. Up to the diner,” he clarified. “From there you’re on your own,” he said, withdrawing his fingers and turning to dress.

“Thank you,” Levi replied.

Shoving his pants on a leg at a time, the stranger stood and buckled his belt. Levi watched him in the mirror.

“I suppose you’ll be needing some money?”

“That would be nice,” he replied, forcing a smile.

2

A half hour later they sat in the parked car in front of the diner. Levi looked at the dark spine of mountains around them, the way its barren and tree-spiked back rose above and dove into the snow covered rock and black earth that was all around them, broken only by the buildings and roads, smokestacks spewing soot into the air, power lines strapped across the landscape; shallow footprints of the fledging mankind.

“Where are we?” Levi asked.

The cigarette lighter popped out and Shawn set his Morley ablaze with it, the smoke filling the warm car. “Bristol.”

Levi looked at him questioningly, though such emotion would have been tough to make out underneath the black hood that covered Levi’s head and the large dark glasses that hid his eyes.

“What?” he asked, puzzled, “Bristol, Tennessee or Virginia?”

“Depends on which side of State Street you’re on,” Shawn scoffed, then added, “But as it happens, we’re on the Tennessee side.”

“Thank you,” Levi said as he grabbed his bag and opened the heavy door of the old Chevy Nova. It opened with a rusted, metallic groan and the freezing cold of the mountain air swept in as Levi stepped out. He slammed the door shut behind him and pulled the hood down further to shade his face from the high winter sun that ruled a cloudless blue sky above. He briskly strode into the diner and took a seat at the counter, his back turned to the light spilling in from the wide front windows.

The waitress approached from the other end of the counter. She was short in stature with hair like the bright red turning leaves of autumn.

“What can I get you, hon?”

“Coffee, please.”

She turned and grabbed a cup from an ivory stack of them, poured the steaming hot black into the cup.

“You take sugar?”

Levi smiled. “Lots of sugar, lots of cream.”

She slid a container of sugar down to him and set a small cup of cream down. He set about pouring the enhancements into the coffee and stirring it, watching the black turn to a pale brown.

“Take your hat off and stay awhile.”

Levi looked up at her. “Oh, yeah … sorry,” he said, and slipped the hood of his sweatjacket off, revealing his strange, pale complexion and the black, short-shaven hair that crowned his head. He did not remove his sunglasses.

Levi took a long drink of the warm coffee and set the cup down. The woman, who Levi noted was wearing a nametag that read Jackie, was still perched on the counter, looking at him.

“Rough night?” she asked.

“Do what?”

“Rough night,” she reiterated. “You know … hungover.”

Levi smiled and sipped of his coffee. “No, no … nothing like that. I’m photosensitive.”

The wrinkle that crept across her brow and the curl of her lip made plain her confusion.

“It means the light hurts me.”

“Oh,” she said awkwardly as she turned and grabbed the coffee pot, refilling his cup.

“How far away am I from Big Stone Gap, Virginia?”

“Not but so far. Bus’ll get you there by this afternoon if you catch it.”

He nodded.

She glanced up at him, at the wide sunglasses that sat perched upon his narrow face. The frames glinted shiny gold in the morning light, though their lenses were black as the diner’s coffee and betrayed not even a glimpse of the eyes behind them.

“I like your glasses,” she said.

“Thanks,” he smiled and nodded.

“They remind me of—”

“Elvis?” he interrupted.

“Yeah!” her face lit up. “You like Elvis?”

“Oh yeah,” he replied, “big fan of the King.”

3

His head lying against the winter-cold glass of the window, the bus snaking through the mountains, Levi softly hummed the tune of Mr. Sandman by the Chordettes. He watched the landscape slip by through the curves and hills and gaps. He would soon be in Big Stone Gap, where he would visit with Mr. Gannon, whom he first saw in a dream some time ago. As was his way, Levi waited for more visions and dreams to explain to him the details of what was to be done. Weeks went by, as dream by dream the thread of action to be followed revealed itself to him. Then the day came when he knew it was time to set upon this new journey. He’d been sleeping in a homeless shelter in Memphis, when he awoke one morning and found laid aside his pillow the tender stem and bud of a Boneflower. The messenger who had delivered it by then long-gone, he rose, left the shelter that morning and began working his way by leg and by thumb northward across Tennessee. He’d met Shawn in a “gentleman’s club” just outside of Chattanooga and upon the condition that Levi spent the night with the man, allowing him to satisfy some of the perversions he had entertained only in his mind up until that afternoon, Shawn had agreed to take him to the Virginia line. He’d kept his bargain, and had even given Levi some money. Levi was no stranger to this way of traveling about the country, as he had no other means and nothing to offer besides what pleasures might be culled from the sexual oddity nature had made him. Such was the burden he bore for his purpose in life; being a seer and a messenger. This way of living meant that Levi was often in the company of the perverse, which suited Levi just fine, for the nature of his business was most often unpleasant to say the least and was best kept from the untainted eyes of the wholesome. Steering clear of those folks had never been a problem either, owing perhaps to his milky and odd appearance or simply by some instinct of self-preservation they possessed. He was always shunned by those who walked in the world of normality.

Normal. Wholesome. Levi reflected on these concepts.

He drew a small velvet sack from his coat and untied the string, reached inside and removed the Boneflower. He stared long at it. It was reaching full bloom, so beautiful. He smiled, and behind his golden sunglasses his eyes closed, picturing the mountains outside covered in the flower’s bloodbone hues.

4

Caleb sat in silence, reading scripture as he did every night after dinner. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the remnants of dinner. A solitary plate bearing the bones of good fried chicken, swimming in a sea of red juice left over from the stewed tomatoes, with bits of corn scattered about the plate. Seeing this, he cared not to think of the pans he had yet to wash. Such work, although necessary, was tedious, and he would much rather immerse himself in the Word than scrub plates and iron. He drew his eyes away from the kitchen area of the trailer and back to Book of Job. He’d read this book of the Bible perhaps a hundred times or more as a child. As a man, he had read it a thousand, finding particular relevance to his own life, especially after the loss of his wife and children in a terrible storm that toppled their cabin home one August night so many years ago.

And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

Thrice he read the verse, searching for meaning and comfort as he always did. As always none came to him. His eyes welled with tears, and he looked over to the kitchen, the unwashed pans now seeming like sweet relief. He grumbled the lump out of his throat as he slipped the bookmark between the pages and set it down on the coffee table. Gathering his dish and utensils, he stood at the kitchen sink and ran the warm water over his hands, feeling the ache of coldness that dwelt within them disappear. He washed the dishes carefully, placing them in the drying rack beside the sink. Looking up at the den, he noticed his boots sitting at the edge of the rug, dust and chunky mud as black as night spilled around them onto the simple green rug.

“Lands sakes,” he muttered, chiding himself. “Evelyn would be shamed.”

Caleb finished the dishes and dried his hands with the dishcloth. In sockfeet, he strode into the den and removed his coal-blackened work boots to the corner by the door. He started back toward the couch to sit and resume his reading.

Then there came a knock at the door.

His brow wrinkled in confusion and he glanced at the clock above the kitchen window. 9:17 it read. Caleb rarely received any company at all, especially not this late at night. Thinking on it, perhaps it was the widow Bensley searching for her dog, a noisy hound named Rocky, who was prone to escaping. He snorted. Hell of a night to be tramping about, he thought to himself as he switched on the porch light and opened the door.

The dim light illuminated the shape that stood in drab, dark clothes with the heavy white snow swirling around him like thousands of falling stars. As the door opened, the figure looked up from its stare at the threshold and from beneath the shade of his hood, Caleb saw a face so pale as to be outdone only by the layer of winter that lay thick on the porch. The man’s steel blue eyes were wide against the long narrow canvas of his face, his pupils as black as the mountain night. He was weirdly tall and thin, standing more like a scarecrow than a man. A half smile crept across his cheeks as his pale lips parted.

“Caleb Gannon?”

“Yes?” he replied, taken aback by the familiarity.

“We have business to tend to, you and I,” spoke the pale man in a slow and sultry southern drawl.

“Well, I …” Caleb hesitated for a moment, but staring into the dark pools of the pale man’s gaze melted all fear, all apprehension, and contrary will. Strangely, he was happy to welcome the stranger.

“Come on in, then,” he muttered and stepped out of the way as the pale stranger ducked his head and slipped through the doorway like a shadow of snow and night.

The very second the door closed shut, Caleb’s wholesale trust in this stranger began to dissipate and he turned to watch the pale man shake the snow from his coat, removing it and laying it on the floor along with his shoes, which Caleb had not even realized the man had removed.

“You have a pleasant home, Mr. Gannon,” the man uttered, turning to face his host, who stood awkward, the doorknob still in his grasp.

“Yes, well thank you …” Caleb stammered, suddenly aware of his awkward way. The stranger said nothing, made no motion whatsoever.

Caleb composed himself. “What can I do for you?”

The man smiled. “Indeed, Mr. Gannon, it’s what you can do for us all.”

Caleb looked at him, questioning.

“But then I’m getting ahead of myself,” the man said, offering his hand. “I am Levi.”

Caleb took his hand and shook it, the chill of the night spilling from one palm to the other. He found something about the tall man repellant, and not solely because of his odd look, though there was a certain warmth to him, an unlikely likeability. Still he was a stranger and Caleb felt unsure as to why he’d so readily allowed him entry. Caleb glanced to the shotgun leaning up against the TV.

“You a union rep or something?” Caleb asked in his short, stunted accent. “Eh … no, no I’m not,” the man replied. “But I am here about the mine.” Caleb motioned for the stranger to have a seat on the couch.

Caleb leaned against the wall. “Oh? How’s that?”

“Well, the fact is I need you to stop that mine. Shaft 43 anyway.”

“What the hell are you talking—” Caleb began, but paused as he again found himself locked in the stranger’s deep black stare. It was not that Caleb felt threatened, not at all, but more that there was no resisting the man’s firm resolve in being here and being heard. Underneath that was the innate knowledge that the pale stranger could snap Caleb’s mind like a twig if he so wished.

“You like coffee, Mr. Levi?”

The man nodded and bowed his head, “Please, just Levi. And yes, I would love some coffee.”

“Will do,” Caleb replied, turning his back and pulling a couple of cups from the cupboard. He poured the hot coffee into the cups.

“Take milk or sugar?” he asked, his back still to the stranger.

“Lots of both,” Levi replied. Caleb set the pint of milk, sugar bowl and two spoons on a TV tray along with the cups of coffee and brought it into the den. He set it down on the coffee table and came around, taking a seat next to the man on the couch.

“So you say we need to shut down Shaft 43 …”

Levi nodded.

“And how would that help anybody?” he asked, tending to the milk and sugar, pouring both generously into the stranger’s cup. He handed it over and took a sip of his own lightly sweetened coffee.

“Anybody …” the pale man uttered after his first sip, then turned his head to stare at Caleb with his great, blue-black eyes. “It would help everybody, Mr. Gannon.”

Caleb scoffed. “Like who?” he retorted.

“Everybody. Everybody in the world.”

A snort escaped Caleb as he heard these words. The coal mine was the lifeblood of this community, what little there was left of it.

“Beg your pardon, Mr. Levi, but us who live here don’t see it that way. Hell, that shaft’s one of our oldest and deepest, yielded a lot of good coal over the years.”

The stranger set down his cup and sighed. He then fixed Caleb with his stare. “And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? and still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause.”

Caleb sat in silence, his arm frozen in the midst of setting down his cup, which now trembled in his faltering grip.

Levi reached up and pried the cup from the man’s fingers, set it upon the table.

“You know the scripture of Job, Caleb Gannon?”

Caleb nodded, struck and mystified at how the pale man could have plucked from his mind the very lines of scripture that haunted him always.

“Then know this, and heed what I tell you,” Levi claimed.

Digging into his coat, the man produced a small sack and drew from it a flower the likes of which Caleb had never seen. Its bloom was in its infancy, the petals just beginning to draw away from their center, but it was stunning nonetheless; its staunch, ivory petals rimmed on their edges by the deepest red, its center a dark color that was nearly incomprehensible to Caleb, not green nor black, not red nor flesh, it was all and it was none.

“You have been chosen as Job was, to be a messenger. And like Job, further sacrifice will be demanded of you to carry out what must be done. From one of the chosen to another, I bring to you the Boneflower.”

Fascinated with its beauty, Caleb felt the silken touch of the flower as his fingers clasped its stem.

5

Caleb was roused from a dark sleep, the tendrils of dream slipping away reluctantly as he opened his eyes and shifted, sitting upright. Levi sat next to him, staring into the shadows of the den. He reached out and drank of his coffee, now cold.

“You dream?” Levi inquired, speaking to him but never breaking his empty gaze.

“I … I don’t know,” Caleb replied. Dream? He didn’t even remember falling asleep. How strange.

Levi turned to look at him. “You will.”

“I’ve felt like Job for a long time now … but thinking of it that way, seems blasphemous.”

The pale man snickered. “I suppose it could be, if it didn’t ring true,” Levi retorted.

They sat in silence for a long while, Caleb turning over and over in his head the night’s events, the dreams which he did not remember, but that seemed so familiar.

Caleb reached to the table and cradled the bloom of the Boneflower in his cupped hand as he studied it. It was entrancing, much like the stranger himself.

“What is it, this Boneflower?”

Levi smiled and leaned in. “It is a gift from the Elder Ones. Some say it’s the flower that grows at the foot of the tree of life, some say it is made by the Elders themselves, and grows by divine will. It is given to all those who are chosen to be messengers of the light, to serve the cause.”

“There are others?” the old miner asked, his voice trembling.

“Oh, yes,” the pale man smiled. “Yes, indeed. Many others, not all like us, though. Some play their part willingly, knowingly. Others do not. But from the sacrifice to the Seraphim, all play their part in the cause.”

“What cause?” Caleb turned his hollow eyed gaze to the pale man.

Levi rose quickly from the couch, giving Caleb a bit of a start. He strode quietly to the window and drew back the curtains. There was naught to be seen but his own ghostly reflection and the sprawling mountain darkness.

“The cause … to drive back the relentless march of the horde, terrible things that don’t belong in the world as it is; things that would dwarf the atrocities that man has witnessed and has yet to dream of. To keep at bay the agents of these things, its foul servants. And in the matter of Shaft 43, to deny a vile thing entry to this surface world.”

“Something evil?”

Levi turned and looked at the fragile man, whose suffering and loss were burned forever on his countenance, etched into the wrinkles of tired skin stretched over failing bones. He could feel his pain, as was part of Levi’s talent. He felt a heart gray and weak with despair, now waking to the miracle of being given the chance to become the tip of a righteous sword.

“Evil? Perhaps,” Levi replied, then returned his gaze to the window. “For certain, that which lies at the unplumbed depths of Shaft 43 would ravage this world if given the chance. And today, Caleb Gannon … that is the only cause you need be concerned with. To keep locked away in the earth things that have learned to walk, which ought to crawl.”

Levi returned to the couch where he sat and read silently the Book of Numbers. Caleb shook his head and blinked his eyes, trying to understand but finding himself to be suddenly overcome with weariness. The music of the pale stranger’s words seemed as a lullaby and he leaned his head back on the couch and rested his eyes.

6

Caleb saw. He saw what was for the first time in his life. All the moments of his pious life, all his prayers, all his guarding against evil … nothing had ever so embedded itself as this. It was as if the great evil had pulled back a bit of its curtain and allowed him a look. In that glimpse, he saw many things. Puzzle pieces of sin that grew to make sense. He saw his own sins from childhood, he saw the sins of his wife and his sons, though some were hard to bear witness to. Ultimately he was afforded a look at the dark and sinister evil that lay at the foot of mankind, its many tentacles winding their way through every aspect of human life. Black, writhing, grasping, sucking the life that God had given. It froze his limbs and he stared at the floor as the visions receded. His eyes, wide in astonishment, drifted up to the guise of Levi. The pale messenger looked stricken and his eyes followed Caleb’s.

“Your eye is open, Caleb Gannon,” he uttered, reached out and took Caleb’s hand in his own, squeezing hard.

His mind was filled with vision once again. He was suspended in the air, looking down at a majestic mountain range full of tall, craggy peaks covered in tall pines and virgin green growth. Slowly the mountains shrunk, crumbling through the seasons of centuries upon centuries until it became the smooth, weathered humps of earth and rock that are the Appalachians. Then he saw the mine, the mountainside full of machinery and bound with structures of steel and iron, watched it wax and wane from spring to winter and back again … over and over. Then there was Shaft 43, that pinhole in the rock through which mankind sought their wares. He flew down deep into the darkness, deep down beyond the extent of their excavation. The deep earth revealed to him a darkness which man could not know. Then slithering, grasping. A stinking-ill world enveloped him. Pure God damned evil, demonic in the way it chilled the heart and squeezed the breath, a venomous thing driven by the lust for consumption and to sing inhumanly to the cold stars. It was caged, contained, imprisoned. Realizing this, there was a moment of free breath. In the darkness, he heard his own heartbeat, though terrible, slithery things played about it, waiting to constrict life.

Then there was an explosion. Far above. And for a moment the black things around him were equally stunned. For there was utter silence in the black. Then scrambling and slithering the likes of which he could never have imagined. The sensation of the black wings stinging his cheeks as they flew upward and outward. Toward the shaft. Toward the surface. Hunger unchained.

Then out of the deep came a familiar face. The pale stranger, though this sight gave him no comfort. The look on his face was aghast and full of sorrow.

“Look around, Caleb.”

The old miner did so and his face morphed into the guise of his predecessor as he saw the ravaged world, bleak skies full of dark, winged shapes swooping about the still, thick air. The mountain was full of grotesquely moving things with limbs like trees, but were not trees at all. Squirming tentacles like roots slashing through the black earth full of beetles and worms. Then he heard their carrion song. In awful tones and cadence that Caleb had never known, they chanted alien words certainly borne of Hell. He heard, though he did not understand. ia, ia, ia, kuthooloo, ia ia shub, ia ia … and on and on it droned. It seemed Caleb could feel the stars tremble inside his heart and the earth quake with fear in his bones.

“What once had burrowed will walk and slither. They will choke the world and sky.”

Caleb heard himself gasp, “Dear, sweet Jesus.”

In the darkened sky he saw the face of the pale stranger and looked long on it with pleading. His lips parted and the words came … “You know what you must do.”

“Yes,” Caleb replied, his trembling voice full of stunted breath and endless echo.

“Or what has long slumbered will awaken.”

He awoke in his trailer. He was all alone. His right leg was propped against the couch, while he found the rest of himself to be lying face-down on the rug, his hand outstretched on the cold linoleum of the kitchen floor. He lay there for a few moments, unmoving. His mind raced with all that he had seen, the pale man, the dream. For a moment his fingers scratched at the surface of reason and normality, his life as he had always known it. They grasped for a hold there. For a moment, he almost believed it had all been a nightmare. He rose up on his elbows, trying to clear his head of the strange thing he had seen. It was then that he saw the message scrawled in the cheap tile of the kitchen floor, and knew it had not been simply a dream. He rose and sat on the couch. Through the window, he could see the brilliant orange-pink hues of dawn begin to creep into the retreating black of the night, painting an earthblue veil between.

“Morning,” he remarked aloud to no one at all.

Caleb drank deep of cold coffee. He wanted so badly to sleep, but the sun continued to rise, glowing over the horizon like the tip of a fiery sword.

7

The mine’s security cameras caught nothing of suspicion. One man, Caleb Gannon, early for his shift slipped into the throngs of men coming out of the mine. Later, some who passed him that morning would say that he returned no salutation, that he looked at none of them, that his empty stare seemed to penetrate the very rock of the mountain a thousand feet deep.

All agree that he walked past them and descended into the shaft.

The cameras reveal a simple truth; that about thirty minutes after Caleb’s descent into Shaft 43 there was a massive explosion that rocked the entire mine and claimed the lives of thirteen men, including Caleb. They were forever entombed in that shaft, which itself was no longer viable. In the following days, fingers were pointed. Supervisors and workers alike lost their jobs in an effort to save face. Among them was the worker who had, that morning, signed over several pounds of explosives to Caleb, but could offer no explanation as to why other than it seemed he had no choice. As far as Caleb Gannon was concerned they could find nothing that would lead to a grudge with the mine or its parent company. No quarrels with the union. No reason for what he had chosen to do. Indeed the only thing that was found to be out of order at all was a phrase inexplicably burned into the floor of the kitchen in Caleb’s trailer home.

They cannot be released.

At the town bus station, a pale stranger with familiar gold rimmed sunglasses boarded a bus out of Big Stone Gap, bound for his next destination.

AS CLOSE AS IT GETS

Karina Berg Johansson

I can’t wait.

I’ve been yearning to go for quite some time now. The atrocious feeling I had about seeing him has vanished; in its place there’s a deep longing to be close. For him to hold me close. Glancing out the window, I catch my reflection in the rain-stained glass. A distorted smile filled with trust.

Only one more night to get through. The cab will be here to pick me up at 8 am sharp.

As I start packing, I’m not sure what to bring. I open the drawers, the closet, pick some random items, fold them and then put them in the avocado green bag that rests on the rosy pink quilt covering my bed. The colors clash wildly enough to make me nauseous. The instant the bag is full I pour it all out and start over. It’s a never-ending process.

Hours later the bed is covered with every piece of clothing I own, and even some I don’t but that I have chosen not to take back to my sister’s. The pink bedspread is no longer visible. If for nothing else, for this I should be grateful.

The mirror jeers at me from the bedroom wall, making fun of the pudgy arms and flabby stomach reflected there. I refuse to even look at the stocky legs, the dimpled cheeks. The scales showed 100 pounds this morning. By tomorrow it will be down to two figures. Walking up to the mirror, I jerk it loose and place it face down on the floor. The glass scrunches under my boots as I crush the contempt and accusations, causing myself another seven years of misery. It is all worth it.

“Why the hell am I going through with this?” The loud whining startles me. I didn’t know I had that in me. Nice, well-behaved miss Goody Two-Shoes never complains, does she? Maybe pre-travel stress, pre-touching anxiety has caused a change.

As long as I breathe deeply I can ignore the cold sweat that covers me like a veil.

I fold each item; build neat stacks of jeans, sweaters, t-shirts and underwear, dresses, skirts and socks, placing it all in color-matched rows. I go on to place everything according to possible events when each item might be worn; dinner with prospective parents-in-law, date night for two, movie and pizza, shopping with a friend. Then I line it all according to match-ability; pink shirt and red skirt, greenish sweater and blue jeans, striped socks and a polka dot bra. The list goes on.

Two hours later I give up. The bed is still covered with clothes, the empty bag silently accusing me from the hard wood floor beneath. The green looks a lot better away from the pink bedspread, resting against shattered pieces of glass.

Who am I kidding anyway? No matter what I bring, what I wear, he will look at me once, then turn away in disgust as he sees my chunky cheeks, the flabby tummy. A groan starts deep within, makes my limbs tremble as a wave of hunger rattles me. Pinching my eyes shut, I will the stupidity away.

I need something else to think about. I head for the bathroom to draw a hot bath, wanting to wash away that pungent smell of ammonia trailing me like a shadow. Maybe sweating it out is what I need to lose another pound or two before I leave, I think, not acknowledging the fact that I will be leaving first thing in the morning. I sprinkle the water with bath salts, light scented candles and sticks of incense, and make sure the bathrobe is close to the tub. Then I undress quickly, folding everything instead of leaving it in the intended heap on the floor.

I just lower myself into the scalding water when the doorbell rings.

Water drips all over the place as I tiptoe into the hall, careful not to slip. Passing the sideboard by the bedroom door I bump into it, hurting my hip and causing a stack of books to crash before my feet. I swear quietly, one loud outburst is enough, and rub my sore flesh as I lean in to look through the peephole, wiping away a drop of hot water-induced sweat running down my face.

A guy is standing outside; dark and handsome. I have never seen him before. I am absolutely certain. My skin prickles, from cold or fear I can’t say. What am I to do? Ignore him? Not open the door? I blush at the mere thought. Besides, he must have heard the stack of books falling, so he is sure to know that someone is in here. Still, I don’t want to open the door to a complete stranger. I’m all wet, dressed in nothing but the threadbare robe I took from my father’s hanger after the funeral.

Again I lean in to the peephole. I see him reach out, assume that he is putting his finger to the doorbell although I really can’t see if this is what he is doing. Then the buzz echoes through the tiny space of my life once more.

“Who is it?” I ask, putting my mouth to the mail slit in the door, pried open by fingers slippery with scented salts. For the second time tonight the sound of my own voice startles me. Crouching on the floor, I see legs and feet, faded jeans and brown leather shoes that look worn, but expensive. He is slightly turned to the left, but as I speak he moves, and I imagine him facing the door.

“Hey, there. I thought no one was home. I was just about to leave.”

His voice is as handsome as his face; dark, velvety honey penetrating my mind.

“Okay,” I say slowly, wanting to stall whatever is happening. I tilt my head, trying to see more of him through the slit. “Who are you?”

“Your next door neighbor.” The honey has given way to something else. “I just wanted to ask you something.” Concern, insecurity? “Thing is, I’m going away for the weekend and have no one to take care of my cat.” Weariness. “I wondered if you might be able to feed her once or twice while I’m gone.” Incredulity. “I’m Pete by the way.” Now the voice has turned into an apology.

I get up from the floor, reach for the lock, and open the door. A narrow crack, allowing me to see him, not for him to see me. The robe falls open and I don’t bother closing it.

“Hi,” I say. He is very tall, tall enough to touch the ceiling of my apartment if he wanted to. If I would let him. “I was just about to take a bath. Can I came over when I’m done? To discuss details.”

His tense face breaks into a smile.

“Sure,” he says. “So you’ll think about it then?”

“Of course.”

I am about to close the door when I change my mind, flinging it open, letting him in on who he is talking to. A flash of interest glitters in his eyes, before I pull the robe tighter, covering up the milky white of my exposed chest.

“See you later then.” A wide smile and then the door is closed.

When I ring his bell, it only takes him seconds to open. I can’t help thinking that he must have been pacing the hall, waiting for me to get there. The rug lies in a heap beneath his feet, the evidence of an hour of trudging.

“Hi! Welcome!” Too cheery, too happy, every word followed by an exclamation mark that makes me uneasy. “Please, come in!”

I almost back off, deterred by an overwhelming smell of loneliness and overcooked cabbage.

He walks ahead of me, leading the way into a kitchen even tinier than mine. I didn’t know such a thing was possible. I look around to see traces of the cat I am to take care of, but there is none to be found. No bowl for food. No scratch marks. Not even a stray hair.

“Can I get you anything? Coffee, tea?”

He is so anxious to please, so adamant about doing the right thing. A scolded child eager to make amends. I make my smile encouraging and sit down on the high stool he offers me.

“Tea would be nice. If you’re having.” I haven’t forgotten all my manners.

“Yeah, sure.”

Turning the tap, water splatters all over the front of his sweater, but if he notices, it doesn’t show. He merely fills the kettle, and then busies himself with the tea, bustling with cups, saucers and spoons to conceal the awkward silence that fills the narrow space.

When he sits down opposite me, a board not wide enough to be called a table separating us, the wet stains have already faded, leaving a vague pattern that in another place, another time could have been a Rorschach. His voice is honey all over again, and I relax, enjoying myself as I listen to him talk about nothing in particular. Now and then I glance at the clock hanging above the door behind him, watching the seconds expand into minutes. Still, no tingling urge to leave.

Then something shifts.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while …” His voice trails off, and he clears his throat. A gurgling sound, revealing way too much phlegm. “I mean, I’ve seen you around …”

The remains of my tea are cold, its depth murked by dissolved sugar. I stir it to pass time, hoping beyond hope that his words will dissolve too.

“Would you like to go out some time?” he blurts out, taking me by surprise. The spoon stops mid-movement. Using the cat was a dirty trick. I don’t even try to hide my resentment.

“I really do need someone to take care of the cat,” he hurries to say as if he can read my thoughts.

I get up, imagining throwing the cold tea in his face, watching it trickle down like tears, mixing with the now dry stains of water on his sweater. I trusted you, I want to scream. I let down my guard because I thought you were different. That you weren’t like the rest.

The room is dead quiet, and my cup rests undisturbed. “I’d better go.” I get up and just stand there, waiting for him to grab my arms, to squeeze them until his fingernails draw blood.

“Did I say something wrong?” He looks at me, the child turned bewildered now, but he can’t fool me anymore. “I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

His words release me, and I start walking towards the hall, the door.

Still no sign of the alleged cat.

Stopping by the door, one hand on the handle, I turn, holding out the other to get his key. I swallow, struggling to play the part for just a little while longer.

“It’s okay,” I say. “Going out, I mean. Not just right now. I have things to see to first. Let’s talk about it when you get back.” Perfectly normal. The tremble in my hand grows worse. “But I’ll take care of the cat. For the weekend. Promise.”

He plays along, dropping the key in my open palm, making sure not to touch as if he is suddenly afraid of catching something.

Then, just when I thought he was safe, he touches the back of my hand in a silent goodbye.

I turn the key, carefully opening the door and silently closing it behind me. The flat is pitch dark, not even the lights from the street reaching in to make a difference. His rug still lays crumpled beneath my feet. Standing in the hall I wait, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. Pain throbs in the back of my hand, the bandage wet with blood, his touch still there although my skin is no longer.

When I move forward, the floorboards creak beneath my feet, betraying me. Outside the bedroom door I stop and wait until I hear him get out of bed, heading my way, disturbed, I assume, by this nightly visit.

As I push the knife into his soft, white stomach—as white as the skin I offered him before—I expect him to cry out, to put up a fight, to ask me why. Instead he merely lets out a puffing sound as he looks at me, huge eyes filled with dark surprise. Stumbling backwards he is floating through air, taking the lead in our first and final dance.

For a moment he holds on, his hand touching mine still grasping the handle of the knife, and then he falls, sprawling across the bed.

I lean over him, my face close to his, my eyes wide enough to take it all in. My breath caresses him, our hearts beat in perfect rhythm, but I don’t allow my fingers to touch. Not yet.

Silently, I watch him die.

I resist the impulse to put the knife in my mouth, to let his blood mix with mine, sealing this unity between us. I don’t need to—I can taste the metallic bitterness without it. The heavy smell fills the room. He doesn’t take long. Small red bubbles burst out of his nose and mouth with every breath. The cat comes into the room at one point, its furry body rubbing against my bare leg to get attention.

Then he is gone.

I stay with him until dawn. Stretching out beside him, as close as I will ever get, I let his chilled body warm my naked skin. I caress the back of his head and hum a since-long-forgotten lullaby that I think he would have liked. When the early morning light finds its way through the blinds, he looks so peaceful, almost sleeping.

The zipper of the bag gets stuck as I try to pull it shut with trembling hands. Clothes fall out, strewn across the floor in disarray, as the cab pulls up outside my window. The bandage will take some explanation at first, but things like that no longer matter. This sudden ability to be close makes my skin tingle with anticipation.

I can’t wait.

GOOD BOYS

Shaun Ryan

There’s something about crows that I’ve distrusted ever since I was a boy. They’ve always seemed so ghoulish to me, calling to mind visions of bodies lying broken and bloated upon a battlefield. Or iron cages hanging from seaside cliffs, skeletal occupants swooning in puddles of filth, their screams of horror and madness carried out to sea on the salty wind.

Believed to foretell death by medieval peasants, rumored to pay a tribute of their midnight feathers to the devil himself, they represent our most primitive fears, feathered demons forever lurking at the fringes of human suffering, waiting eagerly to fatten themselves upon our woe.

It was a crow that took my grandfather’s eye as he lay wounded and delirious between the hedgerows of Normandy. It was a crow that killed my hamster, Mr. Peebles, when he escaped from the play area I had constructed for him on my bedroom window sill. And, inevitably it seems, it was a crow that made me think of Glenna. Fat and black and iridescent, it sat perched upon a dead branch, swaddled in bad omens. It regarded me with a gimlet eye, boring into my psyche, knowing me somehow. Drawn helplessly back through dusky curtains of time, I stood mesmerized, staring through that tiny, feather framed window into my own soul. The memory bubbled up from the dark depths to which it had sunk, bringing with it the coppery odor of blood, the dusty-wet tang of rain, and the cawing of crows.

The day dimmed, obscured at the edges by the fluttering of dark wings and I saw her there as we had left her, frail body bruised and contorted, her brown eyes staring up at the summer sky, clouded by death. The crows, interrupted from feasting upon some dead thing and circling aimlessly overhead, swam in those eyes.

We stood speechless for a long time, a fraternity of the unpopular, three casualties of the eternal war waged upon those who are different, fresh from the front and still bleeding from our latest wounds. We stared down at Glenna in shock and horror and the realization of what we had done. The merciless July sun pressed down upon us with a weight that was tangible while the raucous cries of the crows mocked us.

She looked so innocent in death, her bland features transformed somehow into those of a fallen angel, despite the blood and grime. I can’t decide whether it was disbelief or denial that made me step back, a hand over my mouth lest a scream burst forth and alert the world to our sin.

The others looked to me then, eyes imploring. What was it they sought? Guidance? Comfort? Absolution? I had none to offer, only confusion and regret, horror and shame. And pity—for myself or for Glenna I don’t know. This was outside my experience. Murder—Was it murder, or something even uglier?—wasn’t a concept my quivering mind could grasp. We were good kids. The worst thing any of us had done was pull a harmless Halloween prank or two.

I shivered there in the sun, staring at a dead girl. Dead by our hands and lying in the dust and gravel at the bottom of an abandoned quarry, she was oblivious now to the injustices meted out by an uncaring world. Wisps of her blonde hair, matted with blood over her right ear, fluttered in the breeze.

The filthy doll, a decades-old Raggedy Ann that she carried everywhere she went, lay a few feet from her outstretched hand, a sad parody of her fallen mistress.

What had she been doing out here? Why had she come? I would never know.

She had appeared like a wraith, stepping from the woods behind us in silence. Steven was the first to notice her, timid little Steven, so shy and introverted. He peered at her in confusion from behind the cascade of silky black hair that was always falling over his eyes. His elbow dug into my ribs, drawing my attention from a knot of crows surrounding the corpse of a dog and directing it at the girl regarding us from the edge of the trees. I knew her at once of course. Everyone did. The sight of her shambling along the sidewalk, mumbling to herself and cooing to the decrepit doll cradled in her arms, was a familiar one.

She just stood there looking at us. Her lips moved slightly, but no sound was audible. The wind stirred her hair and ruffled the fabric of her yellow sun dress, from beneath which her scabbed knees occasionally peeked.

I was angry. This was our place, our refuge, the place we went to escape harassment by the popular kids, the jocks and such, who took pleasure in tormenting us. It was a place we could relax our guard for a while, debate whether R2-D2 was cooler than Chewbacca, develop plots for our role playing adventure, just be ourselves without fearing attack. The quarry was our sanctuary and Glenna had violated it.

We stood, the crows we had been lobbing rocks at forgotten.

Steven was intrigued—everything intrigued Steven— wanting to open a dialogue with the crazy girl, offering his hand in tentative friendship, naive as always.

Freddy, eternally hiding his insecurity behind a mask of defiant bravado, was outraged by her intrusion. His freckled features contorted with anger, flushing a scarlet brighter than his flaming hair, setting things in motion. He stepped forward, challenging her, demanding an explanation of her presence. She cowered away from him, which only made him bolder.

Steven implored him to stop, to leave her alone, earning himself a glare of contempt from Freddie.

I just stood there at the top of the steep embankment that dropped down into the quarry, immobilized by Freddie’s display of rage and my own irritation. We were all on the ragged edge of hysteria. The fresh bruises and scrapes from our latest encounter with Tony Blanton and his goon squad still stung and throbbed, feeding our resentment.

Freddy ripped the doll from her grasp, mocking her. She was a few years older than us and taller than Freddy, who was the tallest, by an inch. Though her face was plain featured, her body was lithe, full breasts filling out her dress in an unmistakable display of blossoming womanhood. They jiggled and bounced as she stumbled among us, grasping vainly at the doll as it sailed through the air above her head. Freddy tossed it to me, I to him. Steven joined the game, giggling as he caught the doll and taunted her with it. Back and forth it flew, its blank features hidden by a mask of grime.

I stared at those bouncing breasts all the while, mesmerized as only a pimple-faced thirteen year old can be by such a sight. I had never realized that Glenna had such great tits, never noticed her in that way at all. But now that I had, I couldn’t stop wondering how they would look exposed, how they would feel in my hands.

She stumbled and fell to her hands and knees—I could see those wonderful breasts dangling enticingly through the top of her dress—in the center of the triangle formed by the three of us. Freddy stepped forward and whacked her in the back of the head with the doll. She lurched to her feet then, fear and anger contorting bland features into a twisted mask. She stumbled again, her body falling full length against Freddy’s. He caught her, held her at arm’s length for a moment, and then shoved her towards me.

I arrested her momentum by grabbing a double handful of her quivering flesh and squeezed. It was the first time I had ever touched a breast and I marveled at the firm suppleness, the feel of her nipples against my palms. I was immediately aroused, pants tightening around me almost painfully. I squeezed some more, then spun her around and grabbed her from behind while I pumped my crotch against her ass in a parody of sex. Freddy and Steven giggled. I stepped back and spanked her firm buttocks hard, once, twice, again. Then I shoved her back at Freddy, who repeated my performance almost exactly, the only variation a hard tweaking of her nipples in lieu of the spanking.

She was crying now, great sobs and blubbers issuing from her like grunts from a pregnant sow. She tripped toward Steven, who grabbed her waist and planted a noisy kiss on her quivering lips. He too sampled her chest, grasping at it like a drowning man for a life preserver, giggling all the while. She jerked back violently, tripping on a stone as she did, and the front of her dress, still firmly gripped in Steven’s feverish hands, tore away from her with a soft ripping sound. She landed on her backside, her pale flesh exposed to the merciless sun, jiggling invitingly.

Glenna wailed and made a vain attempt to cover her nakedness. We laughed, mocking the sounds of her terror and shame. Freddy stepped forward and ripped the dress from her with a few savage tugs, something ugly in his eyes. She didn’t resist, only flopped and jerked loosely, like seaweed tossing in the waves. The dress was flung aside and Freddy stood over her, panting hard. He bent and took a breast in each hand, savoring the feel of her naked flesh, an evil grin on his face.

I knew what was coming then, the throbbing in my loins belying my horror. But it never came. Glenna suddenly shrieked and lurched to her feet, the doll she had somehow managed to retrieve clutched in one hand. She pushed Freddy violently away and turned to flee. She took two long strides before he seized her wrist and spun her back like an Olympic athlete executing a hammer throw. She stumbled between Steven and me, toward the drop off. I reached for her, seeing what was about to happen and unable to prevent it. Her delicate, tiny-fingered hand—I had never noticed that she had such beautiful hands—reached out for mine and fell short. Her doe eyes met mine as she went over the edge, filled not with accusation or fear, but pity and a profound calm, as if she were relieved somehow. Then she was gone.

The three of us stood frozen by shock for an instant and then we were crowding each other in a mad rush to the edge. We gazed down at her sprawled form when we reached it. Glenna lay in the dirt and gravel at the bottom of the almost vertical slope. The only movement was the cloud of dust raised by her passage as it drifted away on the breeze.

I vaguely recall scrambling down the dusty trail, falling and scraping my hands and knees in the process, to where she lay broken at the bottom of the steep bank. The others nearly collided with me as I skidded to a halt ten feet from Glenna’s nearly naked form. I realized that she wore yellow panties, cut high on her hips. They were sexy in an innocent way. Too sexy for a crazy girl, I thought. My quivering mind seized upon those panties. They seemed such a flimsy barrier to be guarding that most precious of secrets. I could see the dark outline of her pubic hair beneath the filmy cotton. That angered me for some reason, I’m still not sure why. Perhaps my adolescent sensibilities were horrified by the indignity of that beautiful mound of flesh—which I had longed for most of my life to see—lying exposed to the baking sun at the bottom of a ragged hole gouged out of the woods, shielded only by thin yellow cotton. It defied logic.

Then I saw the doll, face down in the dust as if it were crawling away from Glenna’s outstretched hand. shuddered with fear and disgust. Her beautiful hand seemed to reach for it, imploring.

The silence was broken only by the crows, which seemed to be laughing.

I didn’t know what to do. Glenna’s pale skin shone in the bright sunlight, demanding my attention. She lay on her back, one arm stretched out shoulder high, towards the doll. The other rested at her side, palm to the sky. Her long legs were splayed, one knee bent slightly, as if in invitation. Her smooth white skin was flawless, except for the scrapes and scratches caused by her fall. Those gorgeous breasts pointed at the heavens, firm and full, barely flattening from the pull of gravity. She could have been asleep there in the sun, just another naughty teenage girl tanning herself, like the cheerleaders often did on the rocks at the edge of the lake when they thought themselves unobserved. It was the odd angle of her head that belied the illusion, resting on her shoulder as if its mooring lines had been cut. That and the stillness of her bosom, which showed no rise and fall of respiration. She was dead and we knew it.

Steven began to cry, little snuffling sobs that caught in his throat. I barely heard him. Somewhere to the west, thunder rumbled threateningly. The breeze stiffened, becoming a wind. Then, to my utter amazement, Glenna’s flower printed dress came fluttering down like a deflated angel falling from heaven to settle over her face, an impromptu shroud.

The thunder rumbled again, closer now, and the sun was suddenly blotted out by a wall of dark clouds that loomed above the trees. The wind stiffened, raising dust and grit from the quarry floor to sting our faces. I squinted at Steven and Freddy, unable to answer the questions in their eyes.

The full import of what had happened hit me then like a freight train. I staggered from the blow, the realization that we had become like those we despised, mean spirited tormentors taking comfort and satisfaction from the fear of another. In our anger and frustration, we had turned upon one weaker than ourselves, driving her to her death. Worse, we would have gone farther if she hadn’t fallen. I had seen it in Freddy’s fevered eyes, felt it in my own swollen flesh. I shuddered again.

The first fat drops of rain plopped among us, raising little puffs of dust like miniature explosions, splatting onto our heads and shoulders with increasing frequency.

We fled then, rushing blindly up the trail and through the woods as the rain intensified. Behind us, the cawing of the crows announced our guilt to the world.

The storm lashed the earth for three days while I shunned human company, sulking in my own world, doing battle with my own conscience. In the end, self preservation won out and I remained silent, as did the others, as did Glenna.

All those years later, drawn by unconscious guilt or the restless spirit of a crazy dead girl, I’m not sure which, I found myself wandering through the hills near my home. As I walked, the decades seemed to fall away like shed skin until I regarded the world around me through the eyes of a frightened thirteen-year-old boy once more. I had no particular destination in mind, but wandered aimlessly through the woods until the trees thinned and I found myself staring across a pasture at a huge, lightning-killed oak. There, perched upon the uppermost branch, was the crow. I don’t know how long I stood there, the past crashing down upon me. When I again became aware of my surroundings, tears were streaming from my eyes—for myself or for Glenna I’m not sure. Perhaps they were for both of us. For all of us.

As the light began to wane, I turned and retraced my steps, Glenna’s ghost haunting me. I can still see her hands, reaching for mine as she fell. Those lovely, delicate hands. I pray that the memory and the guilt will sink slowly back to the depths from which they have risen, to lie half buried in the silt of my subconscious mind once more. But it’s harder to forget these days, as my own mortality settles upon my shoulders with an ever increasing weight, harder to hide the truth from myself.

I keep seeing those hands.

And hearing the crows.

SILENCE

Christopher Allan Death

He was drunk again. Alcohol spilled from his lips, dripped down his neck, and stained his shirtfront yellow. The scent of cheap Gray Goose vodka saturated his person like some heavy cologne. Only tonight he would not fill another shot glass and pass out on the couch. He would not snore loudly and heave opaque stomach bile into the lavatory tomorrow morning.

Tonight young Alan Sanford would hide from him. Hide, and hope that the intoxicated monster would fall asleep before the beatings began. But tonight Alan would not be that lucky. His life did not resemble some suburban fairytale, and lady luck had forgotten his street address long ago.

Tonight Alan would be silent.

Silent as a graveyard.

He had learned from experience to keep his mouth shut when the Man was intoxicated. Nothing stirred up the embers of wrath faster than a careless word. Sometimes little Alan wanted to blurt out every single angry remark and fearful sentiment that he had caged inside. But sometimes even silence could not avert the torrent of alcohol-induced rage.

Tonight the Man would haul Alan through the house. He would squeeze Alan between two strong hands and carry him. Alan would struggle until he could keep silent no longer. Then the beatings would begin.

“Why don’t you ever shut up?”

“Please just leave me alone.”

“Your mother taught you to squeal. She’s the real problem.”

“Put me down.”

“Not until you stop screaming.”

“You’re hurting me!”

“Shut up already, you little urchin.”

“Let me go.”

“Just shut up!”

Alan would begin to cry, releasing rivers of red hot tears. The scent of sweat and alcohol and misery would collide to create a new fragrance: a fragrance that would always beckon memories of the Man. Never father or dad … just the Man.

Twelve years later when the Man was long dead and gone, his legacy would still thrive inside Alan. Like some inert poison that infected the very nucleus of his soul, the Man had planted his seed inside his namesake. And no matter how hard Alan tried, he could not shed the horrible memory of his childhood … or the latent persona that was beginning to bud.

Each night Alan would awake drenched in a cold sweat, terrified by the memories of his late father. Each night he would try unsuccessfully to purge his mind from the childhood nightmares. But that would only provoke the beast, and create new walls of fury that leapt inside his mind.

Shut up you stupid little vermin.

Don’t make me hit you again.

When I was young, children were seen and not heard.

Scream and I’ll make sure you never talk again.

Even after the child welfare people came and took Alan away from the Man, Alan could feel the splinter of anger embedded inside his mind. That had been the gift father passed down to son—the only gift Alan had ever received. Unfortunately, there are some scars that the healing winds of time cannot fully wipe away.

The anger bred into young Alan Sanford would not diminish. The Man’s lifelong foe had become Alan’s most hated adversary. Even the loving support of a beautiful wife could not change that fact, and merely threw gasoline onto the fire.

Her name was Margaret Anderson. Alan had met her over one summer vacation in Florida, and the rest was ancient history. The two married one bright January morning at St. John’s Cathedral, before the careful eye of Alan’s supportive stepfamily. Champagne was popped, and cake was cut.

Altogether, Alan enjoyed a beautiful ceremony with his new wife, and for the next six months, he thought the nightmares had finally followed his father into the grave. But he was wrong.

Alan lay quietly inside the dark room, his body pressed close against the satin sheets beneath him. Silence drifted through the hollow chamber, mingling with webs of darkness. His wife lay asleep beside him, and he could hear her gentle breath rattle into the stillness. Despite several recent insomnia attacks, Alan felt intact and aware. The darkness buzzed around him with renewed vigor.

“Margaret, wake up.”

The listless figure opposite him didn’t move.

“Honey, I can’t sleep again.”

Finally, Alan tired of waiting for his wife to respond, and he touched her shoulder softly. The blanket covering her person slipped onto the floor. Margaret fell sidelong into Alan’s arms with cold indifference, her legs folded beneath her in a rigid postmortem fetal pose. Two sightless glossy eyes stared into the dark void above her.

Alan screamed, and tried to untangle himself from the frigid figure. Moonlight streamed into the bedroom and fell across Margaret’s crumpled form, revealing the glossy black pool that had settled into the mattress around her. Alan screamed once more out of pure misery. He reached helplessly toward his late wife, but stopped short suddenly. A long, crooked razor extended from his fingertips.

Creamy crimson fluid dripped from the razor blade, seeping onto the carpet and bedspread. Alan flung the device away from him in horror, but found that the blood had already stained his forearm. The crimson fluid began to liquefy and spread across his sultry white flesh.

Without warning, the darkness parted like a fine veil, and a shaft of light crept into the room. Alan coughed up blood, and watched with complete terror as Margaret extended her rigid arms. Rigor mortis had begun its repelling work, and Alan could see her muscles labor to move the stiffened joints. The entire process took several painstaking moments to complete, during which Alan watched, unable to move or even breathe.

Bathed beneath tapestries of ethereal September moonlight, Margaret stepped out from the shadows. Blood pooled at her ankles, creating a waxy purple hue that stood in sharp contrast to her feeble white arms. And through the darkness Alan heard a voice whisper.

Why did you kill me, Alan?

Why did you kill your loving wife?

Why did you kill the person that meant the most to you?

Alan tried to exhale but the sultry crimson fluid had already infested his lungs. Colors began to explode before his eyes. Wild blue, angry red and livid green began to flood his colorless world. Just before Alan slipped into unconsciousness, he managed to release one last futile statement.

“I didn’t kill my wife!”

“Alan, wake up.”

“I didn’t kill her! I swear!”

“Wake up Alan!”

“Please don’t hurt me again!”

“Wake up, damn it!”

Alan shot awake, startled by the sharp pain that struck his forearm. Margaret sat beside him, and fresh sunlight drifted through the large bedroom window. The bedspread lay crumpled on the floor. Alan must have thrashed about during the nightmare and woken his wife.

Meanwhile Margaret glared at him through her beautiful brown eyes. Except this morning they were not filled with love or sympathy; her eyes flashed with confusion and miscomprehension. Something like fear registered over her strong German-American features, but disappeared a moment later.

“Are the nightmares happening again?”

Her voice was full of compassion. Alan didn’t want to tell her the truth. He didn’t want her to worry about him. She had more important things to think about than her poor psychologically tormented husband … namely the little unborn angel that grew inside her womb. Unfortunately, the cold sweat that broke across Alan’s forehead revealed the truth.

“The nightmares are coming back, aren’t they?”

“Only once or twice a week, I promise. They aren’t nearly as bad as the last time, either. With a little medication I can control them. It’s not a big deal honey.”

“Maybe you should go see Dr. Lancaster …”

“I’m not going back to that head job. The last time I visited him, I had to spend six months in the nuthouse. This time, I won’t let a few stupid nightmares stand between me and my family. Besides, the baby is due soon, and I wouldn’t miss that for the world.”

“Dr. Lancaster is a professional psychiatrist, not a head job. I think you should go talk to him. Just for a day. Please?”

“My answer is no, and that’s final. I don’t need a shrink.”

“But he could help you …”

“No psychiatrists. No doctors. I’ve made up my mind.”

Margaret shrunk back from her enraged husband. A strange, feral flame flickered across Alan’s eyes. The anger emitting from his person became an almost palpable presence in the room. And for the next few minutes, the man called Alan Sanford disappeared completely. Instead, a hollow shell of rage sat before Margaret.

“Alan, maybe you should take a cold shower.”

“Shut up! Stop telling me what I should do!”

“You’re acting like a child.”

“Just be quiet! Can’t you ever shut the hell up?”

Alan leaned forward like some wild predator.

Margaret slapped him across the face.

Hard.

Reeling back with confusion, Alan tasted blood in his mouth. With the blood came a rush of reality, as well. He sat perfectly still for the following five minutes, trying to piece together what happened. He felt as though all his pent childhood rage had come spilling out during those few fleeting seconds. A red haze was the only thing that remained after his violent outburst. Then the tears began to well beneath his eyes.

Margaret leaned forward and touched his cheek, lending a small smile. “Tomorrow I’ll make an appointment with Dr. Lancaster. He can tell us what’s happening,” she said. After kissing him reassuringly, she retreated toward the kitchen.

Alan watched his pregnant wife shuffle away, and decided to take her advice about the cold shower. The frigid morning water was exactly what he needed to clear his head, but deep down inside he knew that Dr. Lancaster could not help. His stepfamily had brought him to several psychiatrists through the years, and they all diagnosed him with the same problem. They said he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, because of his abusive biological father.

Despite the concurring diagnosis, every consequent medication had failed miserably. Alan’s dreams continued to reoccur several times each week. Only now, the dreams had become more grisly and vivid than before. And Alan suspected that it was somehow connected with his unborn son.

Be quiet you little street slime.

Go ahead and run away, just like your mother.

Quit sniveling you ungrateful whelp.

Toweling his hair dry, Alan stepped out of the cold shower. Margaret was already seated at the dinner table, and a frying pan filled with eggs and bacon simmered over the stove. The scent of toasted bread and fresh orange juice filled the happy little cottage. Alan drank in the atmosphere like a fine wine.

“Feeling better now?”

Margaret barely looked over the rim of her coffee mug.

“Two hundred percent thank you very much.”

“Are you going to eat breakfast before you leave?”

“I would love to, but duty calls.”

“I made your favorite.”

“That’s wonderful, but I’m late for work already.”

Margaret rolled her hazel eyes with irritation. Although that meant she was angry at him, Alan could not help but admire the subtle beauty of her nature. He had fallen in love with every little facet of her personality, including all the annoying habits. He convinced himself that was the key to a successful relationship.

So far the cards had fallen in his favor.

Snagging his favorite sport coat from the living room, Alan skipped out the door. A stiff wind met him outside and conveyed him across the yard toward his little Honda Civic. Even though his particular choice of automobile was heavily criticized at the office, Alan would not rather drive any other car.

Dropping into the spacious leather interior, he felt the little blue car rumble to life beneath him. With a cursory tug on the rearview mirror, Alan eased onto the vacant suburban street. He was forced to adjust the mirrors now and then, because ever since Margaret’s Saturn broke down, she shared driving privileges.

Ah, the unfortunate little quirks of married life.

Alan looped into the office parking lot and threw the Civic into park. He was so preoccupied with thoughts about Margaret and the baby that he never noticed the grungy little street peddler until he smelled the alcohol on his breath.

“Have a spare dollar, mister?”

The dingy old man pulled up about two feet before Alan and ran his eyes across the glossy Honda Civic. Alan imagined the dirty old pigeon molesting his precious treasure, running his broken fingers across the metallic finish and smearing the expensive leather upholstery with his muddy clothes. The very thought sent a rabid chill down his spine.

“Nice car.”

“It was a present from Santa Clause.”

Alan shut the door quickly and made sure it was locked.

The hobo let his bulging white eyes linger across the car. He stood so close that Alan could see the enlarged pores on his nose, and the sharp vertical scar that rent his mouth in two. Long brown hairs lurched out from beneath his tattered black derby, and extended in several eccentric directions.

“You got a light?”

“No, I don’t smoke.”

“That’s a pity.”

Alan grinned superficially and began to walk away.

“I s’pose ya have t’be some important corp’rate executive to drive one o’ them cars, eh?”

“Not at all—you just have to be a good boy all year.”

The hobo grinned, revealing two rows of degenerated yellow canines. He pressed an unlit Marlboro between his lips.

“That’s real funny mister, but I don’t believe in no Santa.”

“Your loss,” Alan shrugged.

A moment later he was safely within the confines of the Paterson & Sedgwick Law Office. His secretary, Miss Debora Brinkley escorted him into the elevator. Judging by the tone of her voice, she was not very happy. Alan released a withered sigh as the elevator doors slid shut.

It was going to be another long day.

Unfortunately, Alan was correct. When the grandfather clock registered 6:30 across the crested golden face, he found himself immersed in a veritable ocean of paperwork. His office now resembled some mid-Atlantic war zone instead of the typical metropolitan law firm. No matter how fast Alan signed the monotonous documents, salty ocean waves of paperwork continued to flood his little skipper.

Alan didn’t think this much paperwork could surface after just one week of sick leave. Had everyone living in Chicago died and sued each other simultaneously during his short absence? He decided that was extremely unlikely.

Alan buried his head into the unorganized files that decorated his desk. He was beginning to severely regret his week-long vacation. But the nightmares were getting worse. He had two choices: take a week long retreat or suffer through six long days filled with excruciating mental torment. Fortunately, Alan had accrued just enough sick time to cover his brief sabbatical.

What’s the problem you filthy little mutt?

Are you afraid that the dreams will come back?

Do the voices in your head scare you?

You’re weak just like your mother.

“Mr. Sanford, you have a call waiting.”

“Thank you, Miss Brinkley.”

“I think your wife might be going into labor.”

“The doctor said she wasn’t due for two more weeks.”

“Tell that to your wife. She’s on line four.”

Alan cursed. One day after his weeklong vacation, the baby had decided to come out. Now he had backlogged paperwork to finish, a family to provide for, and a host of psychotic voices inside his head screaming for blood. How could life become more complicated?

Five minutes later, Alan waltzed back into the dingy parking lot. A brace of streetlights cast a golden haze into the ensuing darkness, and created an ethereal, otherworldly atmosphere that spread into the busy Chicago streets. But when he approached his little blue Honda Civic, the threads of magical sentiment snapped into a thousand broken fibers.

Alan’s precious automobile had been thoroughly trashed. Every window was splintered, and a spider-like fissure had spread jagged tentacles across the windshield. Even the tail lights had been carefully worked over.

Alan felt his blood boil. The initial shock had passed and now ribbons of infectious rage pulsed through his veins. The voices that had become part of his daily nightmares whispered viciously in his ears. Tendrils of anger seeped through the saturated nightfall, wrapping him inside a blanket of pure rage. Then he saw movement inside the damaged car.

The street hobo Alan had befriended earlier appeared in the passenger seat. His bony fingers collected several small items that glinted in the streetlight—CD’s, DVD’s, and jewelry—anything that could fetch a fair price at the pawn shop. Only this time, Alan had the element of surprise.

The hobo barely had enough time to flinch before Alan was standing over him, fingers wrapped tightly around his neck. The only thing that registered in Alan’s mind was unadulterated fury as he clamped down on the vandal’s trachea. Spittle erupted from the man’s mouth. Alan’s fingers constricted slowly, rendering his lips an asphyxiated purple ring among his pallid blue complexion.

“Mister … let me go mister … I can’t breathe.”

“Shut up you miserable maggot!”

“Please mister … I … I … I’m sorry.”

“If you speak one more time, I’ll rip your tongue out!”

Struggling for air, the hobo pawed helplessly at Alan’s face. He gasped and swatted, and dug his fingernails into Alan’s forearms, but to no avail. Within moments, his eyes had become vacant white orbs.

Alan watched indifferently as the life escaped from the old man’s body … a handful of jewelry still clutched in his icy fingers. But Alan knew that he could not leave the dead vagrant on the street. The police were sure to find him, and they would suspect foul play. He had to do something with the body.

Alan tried to clear his thoughts but adrenaline still rushed through his bloodstream. The anger that overtook him felt like a cold embrace. Deep down inside, Alan hated the surge of madness, but he could not resist its call any longer. A thousand voices echoed shrilly through his head, adding gasoline to the fire that consumed him. No psychiatrist could ban the voices forever, because the voices were a part of his nature. The Man was still controlling Alan through anger, years after his death.

That’s right … let the anger control you.

Can you feel the power that is burning inside?

Embrace the rage.

Soon Alan would have to make a terrible decision. But first he had a body to dispose of.

The house located on 317 Bluebird Lane was brightly lit when Alan arrived home. Even though the curtains were drawn, he knew Margaret was inside. She had never been very fond of hospitals. When Margaret first discovered she was pregnant, they had talked about having a home birth. Fortunately, Alan was able to talk her into a traditional hospital delivery.

Back then, he argued that the baby would be safer within the hospital setting. He said if anything went wrong, the doctors could respond quickly with help. Unfortunately, there were no doctors present at the house to protect the newborn infant and his mother from the real terror.

Parking his battered Civic safely in the garage, Alan slipped inside the small two-bedroom house. He could hear the television murmur in the living room. Margaret had probably fallen asleep while watching the nightly news broadcast. She would be fast asleep, spread across the couch cushions with her newborn child snuggled fondly against her bosom.

The flames of internal rage scorched Alan’s conscience, rendering him into the heartless beast that he had come to hate during his childhood. His blood became hot and burned inside his veins. The man whom had once been called Alan Sanford was no more. He’d been consumed by the same disease that destroyed his father.

Demolish everyone that you hold dear!

Your companions will only betray you.

You have no friends. Only hate.

Margaret entered the living room, her eyes sunken and tired. Even though the delivery had been quick and successful, she still appeared physically drained. When Alan saw his wife step into the living room, whatever shred of sanity that he had left screamed out in opposition to his violent intentions.

“Alan, thank God you’re back. The baby needs to see his father. I was beginning to think something terrible had happened to you.”

Suddenly Margaret’s smile of relief turned into a worried frown. She saw the wicked razorblade that dangled in Alan’s fingertips, and the psychotic fury that twisted across his face. She had married Alan knowing perfectly well that he struggled with his inner demons … but she never suspected he would become one of them.

“Alan, what are you doing?”

“Be quiet dear. You’re interrupting the beautiful silence.”

“Put the razor down, Alan.”

“Please don’t speak. You’re making me angry.”

“Just calm down and talk to me.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“You’re going to regret this.”

“You sound just like my father.”

Alan crept forward with slow, lithe movements. The arm that carried the razorblade felt numb from the elbow down. He could no longer feel joy or pain. The only thing that drove him forward was rage.

Leaping forward, Alan managed to snag Margaret’s sleeve. She screamed, and stumbled toward the garage. Fortunately, Alan lost his footing during the scuffle. He cursed, stumbling head first over the coffee table. Margaret took advantage of the brief opening and bolted toward the doorway.

Alan struggled to his feet a moment later. Blood ran freely from his nose, painting the carpet crimson. He wiped the bloody saliva from his face and tasted its coppery tang in his mouth. Currents of pain washed down his spine, blurring his vision. Most likely he had broken his nose during the fall. But that was not enough to end his reign of terror.

Grasping the wicked razorblade, Alan prepared to follow Margaret. That was when he heard a sound issue from the bedroom.

Meanwhile, Margaret huddled inside the garage, praying that Alan would regain his sanity long enough for the police to arrive. She could not escape because the garage door was locked, and Alan’s battered car would not start. Aside from the fact that a dead body sat in the corner, she was completely alone.

At least she had found temporary refuge.

Breathing deeply, Margaret backed away from the garage door. The house had become strangely silent. She could not hear any approaching footsteps or enraged cries from the living room. The only sound that interrupted the hollow silence was the sound of Margaret’s heart beating.

Perhaps Alan had realized that he lost her and fled. Perhaps his tumble over the sofa had rendered him unconscious. Perhaps he was still outside waiting for her to reappear. Whatever the case, Margaret didn’t want to find out.

Then, not one minute later, something unspeakable happened—she heard a noise that made her hair stand on end. A blood-curdling scream resonated through the silence, and awakened a renewed sense of heroism Margaret never thought she possessed. Because that very moment she realized her infant child was still trapped inside the house.

Alan stood over the blue baby crib, watching the infantile human wriggle within. His bloodshot eyes flickered across the room. Children’s picture books and toys were scattered throughout the brightly-colored nursery. The sight revitalized memories from his childhood, and merely encouraged him even more.

He could not allow the baby to live in such a cruel world. He would not permit his infant child to endure such a horrible childhood. So that left Alan with only one option.

Shut up you stupid urchin.

You are weak just like your mother.

I always knew you would turn soft.

The voices that tumbled inside Alan’s head became unbearable. Anger rushed into his mind like morphine, dulling his senses and creating a barrier around his emotions. The time had come to end the madness.

Alan raised the razorblade.

The second Margaret reentered the living room, she heard an infantile shriek. The sound almost made her knees buckle on the spot, but Margaret was compelled forward. Her motherly instinct took over, and whisked her into the nursery. That’s when a horrifying sight met her eyes.

Alan was sprawled across the floor, blood bubbling from a jagged cut on his neck. Saliva frothed over his lips. His bloodshot eyes, which had once been alight with psychotic rage, now became dull and peaceful.

Inside the crib, their infant son sobbed uncontrollably. A fine haze had painted his clothes red, but otherwise he was unharmed. Margaret’s eyes danced with misunderstanding.

“I had to do it,” Alan choked. “I had to protect our son. You have to understand … I didn’t want him exposed to a childhood of fear like I was. I didn’t want him to wake up every morning wondering if he would survive the day. I didn’t want him to be afraid of his father. I couldn’t let that happen.”

Tears welled in Margaret’s eyes.

“You would have been a good father.”

Alan tried to speak but his vocal chords would not respond. He had lost too much blood already. Soon the life would flow out of him, along with the tortured memories and bitter regrets. Then he would slowly slip into the dark abyss and let the shadows surround him.

When the cold embrace of unconsciousness began to enfold him, Alan realized that the voices had left his head. He could finally slip into eternity without splinters of his father poisoning his mind. All the anger pent-up from an abusive childhood began to dissipate into the darkness.

The last thing Alan remembered was Margaret holding him in her arms … and the happiness he felt with the knowledge that his son would not become a cold and indifferent monster. Alan had finally purged himself from the memory of his father. And that filled his heart will overwhelming joy.

VISITING HOUR

Michael Pelc

Owing to the nature of my crime, the authorities, in the rightful exercise of their wisdom and their vindictiveness, determined that I should live out the remainder of my natural days without ever again being allowed contact with another human being. Accordingly, my cell has no windows, and neither does it have a door, though once there used to be one, but that was before they filled it in with stones and mortar. Thus, there is no way for me to know if it is day or night, winter or summer, today or yesterday. It is a world without time. The past is forever, and there is no future except never.

A single bulb, suspended on a chain far above my head, provides the only illumination. The light is always on. It is my sun. It is my moon. It is my night. It is my day.

It used to be my god.

In keeping with the dictates of the state, my meals are delivered in a most mechanical and impersonal manner. They arrive through a narrow slit in the wall where the door used to be, the slit having been left there for the sole purpose of feeding me. My food, which is quite ample though rather tasteless, comes to me pushed along the floor by a wooden plow. It arrives without benefit of either plate or tray. It is the way one might feed an animal.

The arrival of food attracts the other residents of my cell, the cockroaches. It is the aroma, I suspect, that causes them to emerge from the corners and from behind the commode, all a-twitter with excitement. I take delight in watching their shiny brown bodies crawl over my food, sampling this and tasting that. Then, as they scurry back to the nooks and crannies from whence they came, their little tummies full and their appetites satiated, I step on them. I crush them beneath my foot and grind their powdery remains into the floor. It remains of my personality that, to this day, I have yet to find a greater joy than listening to the sweet, delicious crunch of death.

Thus it is that I have adjusted to my circumstances, praying to a light bulb and crushing cockroaches. Every undefined moment of my existence, be it an hour or a day or a year, is exactly like the one that preceded it, and it gives me peace of mind to know that each moment in which I live will also, in turn, be exactly like every moment that follows. If I want not more than what I have been given, I can not be disappointed.

Or so I thought until the devil slipped a note into my cell.

It was not a note in the usual sense that one thinks of such a thing. No billet-doux, elegantly penned on fine parchment, its most personal contents kept safe from prying eyes by a discreet application of sealing wax. Nor was it a supplication for a favor, the type a merchant might employ in the course of his business affairs, seeking perhaps a meeting on Tuesday next, should such time be agreeable to all concerned. No, the note was nothing like that, for a note like that would never be allowed the likes of me. My evil, it seems, is such that it is thought to be capable of contaminating the sender of even the most innocent of missives.

No, this note, this note from the devil, arrives, not by the usual post, but rather by the most clandestine and peculiar of means. It is contained within the gristle of my stew, its characters so minuscule and difficult to decipher that, were I not so attentive to even the most minute details of my own existence, I might have missed them entirely.

Upon discovering the note thusly hidden within my food, I cradle the gristle in my hands, tilting it first one way and then the other so that the light may best illuminate the writing. My eyes, having grown weak during the time I have been incarcerated here, strain to read the message. But I persist, going over the script again and again until I am sure that I have it right, that I have read it correctly.

The devil, it seems, would like to meet me, to visit.

I am elated at the prospect of contact with another being. Tears fill my eyes and blur my vision. I wipe them aside so that I may continue reading. But first, the devil writes, before he will consent to a visit, I must get rid of my god.

I have never thought of such a thing before and find myself hesitant to act on even so simple a request. It would be easy enough, I suppose, to remove a shoe and hurl it toward the heavens above, striking a mortal blow against my incandescent god as easily as I might crush a cockroach. And yet, I do not.

But the devil does not leave me alone. He persists in taunting me, in challenging me. He writes to ask if I am scared of the dark. He must think me a child, this devil, tethered to my mother's apron strings no doubt, and afraid to cross the street on my own.

I remove my shoe and heft it in my hand a time or two so that I might gauge its weight and thereby reckon the amount of strength one would need to cast it toward the light. Yet still I equivocate.

The devil senses my weakness. Lose the god, he writes. Lose the god and I will reveal unto you the secrets of the universe and unfold before your eyes the mystery of time so that you alone may come to comprehend the enigma that is life itself.

Like all mortals, I wish to know these things, these quandaries that have long bedeviled even the greatest of minds. I rise to my feet, my shoe held firmly in hand. Like no other man before me, I stand on the precipice of knowing the unknowable, and all I need do is destroy the light. A simple task, as meaningless as killing a cockroach. For what need hath any man of a god were he to know the things the devil has offered to disclose?

The excitement of the moment courses through my body, and I fling the shoe above my head. It is unerring in its trajectory. There is a brief, explosive burst of light. Reflexively, I close my eyes. Electrical sparks crackle above me, and I drop to the floor and cover my head. A shower of glass rains down upon me. When it is done, I grope the floor, seeking out the gristle. It does not take long for my fingers to find it. I lift it gently from the floor and bring it to my face, my hands cupped together as if in prayer. Slowly, I open my eyes so that I might read the note.

To my dismay, there is but darkness. No longer is there any god of the filament. No longer glows there a light by which I might read what the devil has written. I hold in my hands the secrets of time and life and death and all that is both betwixt and beyond … and I can not read them. I slump to the floor and sit hunch-shouldered and motionless. In a moment I sense the cockroaches returning. I feel them crawling over my body, seeking out their meal. I extend my hands and offer unto them the gristle. Let them taste of the devil if they wish. I have had my fill of him.

THE DEATH OF
LESTER WILLIAMS

Ty Johnston

There are some things folks up here in the mountains just don’t talk of. The only reason I’m tellin’ you this is because I’m on my deathbed and my soul is heavy. Whether the good Lord gets me or not, I don’t know, but I want this off me before I have to face him.

I’m going to tell you about Lester Williams and how he came to die. You’ve probably heard bits’n’pieces of it over the years, but you’ve never heard the truth. Oh, there’s folks that thinks they know the truth, but they don’t. Only me, Lester and maybe Doctor Hundley knew what really happened. And the good doctor has been dead forty years or more now.

It was the late ’30s. I was just a pup then, little more than a boy. I’d only been outta school a few years and back in them days up here a boy usually didn’t last longer than seventh or eighth grade at most because he needed to work. And the only work up here in them days was in the coal mines.

I first met Lester down in a mine. It was down a holler near Sand Gap. We were both workin’ hole nine for the Champion Coal Company but I’d only been with the comp’ny a few weeks, as Lester had been with ’em three or four years at that point.

Lester Williams was a big man, stood near six and a half feet tall, but he didn’t have lots of muscle. Kind of a lanky fellah. He had this big mess of dark hair that all the womens loved. He weren’t much older than me at the time, maybe in his early twenties, and the girls in town would point at him and giggle because they thought he was handsome. Lester didn’t mind it none. He liked being the center of attention for them girls.

I wouldn’t ’xactly say Lester and I was ever buddies. We hung out a few times at the Gas’n’Sip, but that was about as far as it went. That is until he started datin’ my younger sister, Cora, back in … oh, I guess it would’ve been the summer of ’36 or thereabouts.

Cora was a sweet young thing, and a looker too for just bein’ sixteen years. She’d had plenty of young suitors comin’ by mom and pop’s old place since she’d been twelve.

But Lester Williams apparently won her heart over like no other fellah ever had. I think she fell in love with him the very first time he came by the house to see her. They sat out in front of the house next to that rusty well pump that had never worked right. Nobody up at the house could see what they was up to, since Mom had planted a bunch of roses there. Sometimes me and a buddy or two of mine would sneak down there to catch ’em kissin’. You know how young men are; we’d make fun of ’em and sing little stupid songs about ’em and so on.

Now they went on datin’ for at least five or six months before it suddenly came to a quits. That caught everybody by surprise. There’d even been talk of marriage by some folks. I tried to get Cora to tell me what happened, but she wouldn’t say anythin’. She’d just close her mouth and give you a dark look as if to say “Mind your own business.” I didn’t think much of it at first, but then one night I found her cryin’ on her bedsheets. I tried and tried to get her to tell me what was wrong, but she just kept cryin’ and tellin’ me that I wouldn’t understand.

Bein’ a boy, I let it stand at that. Men aren’t ones to talk about their feelings, and though it was a little odd and scary, I could at least understand my sister’s wanting to be left alone.

She’d been broken up with Lester three months when father found her hangin’ by a hemp rope from the second story of the barn, her wrists split open with a crooked, rusty nail found at her feet.

No other woman was ever able to break my heart after that.

Doctor Hundley came around with the funeral home man to pick up Cora’s body. There weren’t much he could do at that point. She’d been dead for several hours by the time dad found her, he said.

There was all kinds of cryin’ and carryin’ on from the women folk when they took Cora away. I was plum mad, but I didn’t know who to be mad at. I was sure all this had somethin’ to do with Lester, but I didn’t know what to do.

Father did. After Cora was gone, he sat in a corner with a jug of moonshine until late into the night. He was quiet, never saying a word or lookin’ at anyone. He just sat in his corner and stared into another corner. Finally, sometime after midnight, he put down his jug and stood. The fire from the wood stove glowed in his red eyes and I’ve never seen such anger in my life since. He crossed the room and took down the old double-barrel shotgun he kept above the front door.

The other children were asleep but momma was still up. She’d spent the night softly cryin’ on her and dad’s bed in the front room. When she saw dad reach for that gun she started screamin’ somethin’ fierce. I’d never seen my olders argue until that night and it was more than frightening, especially with dad holdin’ that old shotgun.

He kept yellin’ that he was goin’ to go over and teach Lester Williams a thing or two and momma kept a cryin’ and screamin’ that she didn’t want to lose another member of the family, this time to either a bullet or jail.

Finally, after a good long while of me bein’ scared and tryin’ to hide in a corner, dad settled down. I think he just got worn out with all the drinkin’ and stayin’ up late and mom yellin’ at him and all. He put away the shotgun and hugged momma and started cryin’ himself. It was the only time I’d ever seen my father shed a tear; even when momma died seven years later he didn’t bawl and carry on.

The next day was the funeral. Mom and dad had wanted it that way. I think they wanted to get all the pain over with as soon as possible.

Hundreds of folks showed up, and like any good Baptist funeral it was quiet and somber. The only drinkin’ done was by a few of the old timers out in the woods behind the funeral home.

At the cemetery the quiet came to a halt as mom and my other brothers and sisters started cryin’ again. Through my own tears I watched dad bite his bottom lip until blood was pouring down his chin. He put an arm around momma and tried to hug her, but it was no good. She nearly fainted and it took me and dad to hold her up when the casket was lowered into the ground.

When it was over and we were walkin’ back to the truck, Doctor Hundley came over to my father and asked to speak with him. Dad and I got the others put in the truck and I was goin’ to go with him, but the doctor asked to speak with dad alone. I was a little sore about that, but dad told me to wait in the truck so I did.

When dad came back to the truck he looked more tired than a man who’d spent a whole day down in the mines. His eyes didn’t seem to focus and his hands shook somewhat. I offered to drive the way home. Usually he’d put up a fuss, but this time he just sort of nodded his head and I climbed behind the driver’s wheel.

It was a few days before I found out what the doctor had told father. I wasn’t supposed to hear about it, but late one night when they thought all of us kids had gone to sleep I heard father tell mother. The doctor’d said Cora had been four months pregnant when she died.

I cried myself to sleep that night, but they weren’t tears of sadness. They were tears of anger.

I swore vengeance on Lester’s head a few times, but it never amounted to much. It weren’t that I was scared of Lester, it was … I don’t know, I just felt it really didn’t matter one way or another. I could kill Lester or I could not kill Lester and the world would keep right on turnin’, whether I was dead or in jail or not. I never spoke to the man again and me and the rest of the family would cross the road to be away from him when we went to town once a month in McKee.

Time passed. It was summer again. I was still workin’ for the Champion Coal Company but they’d moved me further south to hole number six near Tyner. As my luck would have it, Lester Williams was also moved over to hole six.

I tried to stay away from Lester, especially when we were down in the holes. I was scared I wouldn’t be able to control myself if he said something to me while I had my pick or shovel in hand.

Me and Lester worked with twenty or so other boys in that mine for a month before the accident happened.

There was one main shaft that broke into three at hole six. We were working the center shaft that day and it was about ten in the morning when I was sent up to fetch the water pail so the workers could have something to drink. We hadn’t been doing any heavy digging yet that morning, mostly placing dynamite charges at the far end of the shaft. I was just outside the cave and headed to the foreman’s shack when the explosion knocked me off my feet.

For a second I was stunned. I couldn’t do anything put lay there. But finally I came to my senses and ran back to the mine. I don’t rightly know what happened, but I guess a stick of the dynamite must have gone off, which must have set off the rest we’d planted. The main shaft was intact but littered with dirt and rock from the ceiling. The center shaft and the one on the right were completely closed off. The shaft on the left seemed clear.

I tried yellin’ to see if anybody was still alive and for a few seconds I thought I heard someone yell out. It sounded as if they were far off, like at the bottom of a well. I yelled a few more times and clanged some of the rock with my pick, but I never heard nothin’ again.

I tried to dig a little but saw quickly that it weren’t no use. There was nobody above ground to help me. Even the comp’ny foreman had been down below.

I ran out to the foreman’s shack and found the keys to his old Ford truck hangin’ on the wall next to his desk. I drove as fast I could into town for help.

By lunchtime half the county must have been at the mine. There were the sheriff and his deputy and the two firemen with their beat-up, red truck. Doctor Hundley was there. A bunch of other miners had heard what’d happened and had come over to help. People were comin’ from all over.

At one point the sheriff was beginning to put together crews to dig the men out of the mine. Once he had some men together, he walked up to me and asked “Which shaft are they down?”

It must have taken me only a second or two to answer, but it seemed like a thousand years passed in that time. I made the hardest decision in my life and I said “They’re down the right shaft.”

The sheriff nodded and he and his men went down the mine to start digging while I sat alone next to the foreman’s shack.

When darkness came that night, they were still digging. Not so much as a miner’s head lamp had been found. But that was how I knew it would be.

I took some time digging in the mine, but around midnight I finally went home. I couldn’t sleep that night.

The next day the sheriff told me they’d dug as much as they would. After digging all night they still hadn’t found anything and hadn’t heard anyone yelling or digging. The mine was to be closed off and wouldn’t be worked anymore.

There were funerals for weeks after that and I attended every single one of them. I figured I owed it to the rest of the boys that had been down there.

I’ve had sixty years to think about all this. Most of those boys were probably killed when the dynamite blew, or for my soul I hope they were. But I was sure I’d heard someone yell out when I had gone down after the blast. There must have been at least one or two still alive down in that blackness and cryin’ for help. I had heard them. And I’d let them all die just so as I could have my vengeance upon Lester Williams.

May the Lord have mercy on me.

LA NUIT DU LA CHAT NOIR

Nora B. Peevy

“That is the most ghastly picture.” After almost one year of marriage, Trevor knew this would not be an argument he would win, and the famous poster for Le Chat Noir mocked him, the black cat sitting smug with its slit yellow eyes like two rotten grape halves, an impervious fixture in the red and yellow bathroom. Trevor suspected Ginny decorated the bathroom with the precise intention of buying this hideous piece of iconic art. He winced even before she opened her mouth to speak with a mouthful of toothpaste, a habit he abhorred.

“You don’t like it?”

“I like it about as much as I like dog shit on my shoe.”

“Well, I think black cats are very fashionable. Did you know Poe’s black cat, Catarina, inspired the story, The Black Cat?”

Trevor turned away, queasy, not wanting to watch the toothpaste dribbling over her chin as she spoke. “So what, now you’re a budding horror savant? Since when did you become Tom Savini? I’ll meet you in the bedroom.” He stomped off to bed. And what does Poe have to do with anything? Since when did Ginny read Edgar Allan Poe? She’d preemptively googled black cats, storing that annoying nugget of information away in her obsessive-compulsive brain to fire off later when he complained. He yanked back the covers and flung himself into bed like a six-year old.

Ginny padded to bed in her purple slipper socks. It was apparent to her now she’d been possessed by bridal envy, for what woman in her right mind would marry Trevor with his sagging piggy paunch and the doughy flesh slipping beneath his raisin eyes. Why, he looked fifty, though barely forty-one. “Until death do us part,” looked grimmer than a never-ending root canal with no analgesics accompanied by Kenny G.

“Are you going to wear those things to bed?”

“Yes. My feet are cold.”

Resigned to another sexless evening, Trevor turned off his bedside lamp and rolled away from her.

With a small huff, she pounded her pillow with a closed fist, imagining Trevor’s face, and when she elbowed him, trying to get comfortable, she grinned like a smug cat. Serves him right, she thought.

Trevor lay listening to his wife’s snoring freight train symphony, every snark and snork fueling his boiling frustration. Restless, he tossed and turned, checking the alarm clock every five minutes. And to think, he’d married this woman “until death do us part.” God certainly had a wry sense of humor. The snaky bastard. Groaning, he threw back the covers and headed downstairs in the dark, stubbing his toe on the antique table in the hallway. “For the love of Mephistopheles,” he roared. Not like Ginny heard him. She was sawing logs with a thousand lumberjacks at this point.

He padded downstairs to the refrigerator, and like a cranky badger comfortable in his environment, reached with a blind paw for the milk, squinting at the diagonal swatch of light falling across his toes. He drank from the gallon jug, asserting his manhood and reminiscing about his bachelor days as he felt something furry brush against the plaid pant leg of his pajamas, but upon inspection, found nothing there. However, the hair standing up on the back of his knuckles alerted Trevor to something watching him in the murky darkness with a hunter’s prowess. And on the way up the stairs, a slight breeze floated past his ankles.

Attributing the breeze to a draft coming from the floor to ceiling windows in the hallway, Trevor settled back into bed beside his snarkaleptic wife and prayed God would come and take her away. He kicked at the blankets. He hated how she always tucked the sheets in at the bottom of the bed like an obsessive nursemaid, trapping his feet. He liked his feet free to move while he slept. She knew that. But she didn’t care. Ginny only cared about her stupid cat collection. She couldn’t have a hundred real cats because he was deathly allergic, but their likenesses gawked at him from every unoccupied inch of space in every friggin’ room. She was the Pied Piper of cat bric-abrac. Ugly cats. Calico cats. Black cats. Striped cats. Cats ubiquitous. Cats omnipresent. Cats everywhere. Trevor fell into a restless sleep, dreaming of cats. He couldn’t even escape them in the private sanctum of his own mind.

Ginny woke late in the morning, Trevorless, a smile on her lips as she lay in bed thinking not of her husband, but her lover, Rosalia. Her smile faded as the musky scent of Trevor’s cologne attacked her nose. Once, it made her tingle with anticipation, but now she’d prefer the stink of goats rutting to that horrid stench. Why, even an outhouse used by a hundred greasy, slick-haired truckers would smell sweeter. She’d never been in love with a woman before. She didn’t know what this meant, except she didn’t want to be married to Trevor. His name sat like a raised welt on her tongue, heavy, bruised, and blackened as she reached for the phone to call Rosalia.

“Good morning, love.”

“Good morning, Rosalia.”

“Did you sleep well?”

“Not as well as I would have, if you were beside me.”

“I know.” Rosalia’s soft Spanish lilt reminded Ginny of rain dripping off green leaves in the summer. “Did you put up the picture mama gave you?”

“Yes, and nothing happened.”

“Patience, dear. Just remember what mama always says.”

“And what’s that?”

“Con paciencia y con mana, un elefante se comio una arana.” The words rolled off Rosalia’s tongue like liquid drops of sunlight. “Little strokes fell great oaks.”

“Fine.”

“Can I see you today?”

“No. I don’t have time. Trevor expects this big dinner to celebrate his latest advertising pitch. And I have a zillion and one things to do.” Ginny’s voice lulled lazily as she thought of Rosalia’s skin. She smelled like lemon chiffon and tasted like oranges and ginger. Her tongue burned with the memory.

“Okay, I understand.”

“Are you mad at me?” Without waiting for Rosalia to answer, Ginny told her, “I have to go. I’ll call you later tonight, if I can,” and hung up. Ginny hated to disappoint Rosalia, but she still had commitments to Trevor and she didn’t have the strength to end the relationship herself. Rosalia’s mother offered to intervene. Her mother, a bruja, a witch, wanted to bring them together, though, what the woman could do to help, Ginny didn’t know, but for the first time since late last year, Ginny could almost breathe and taste the food she ate. She shivered and wrinkled her nose; jerked back to reality by her marital chains and Trevor’s yellowing boxers crumpled on the floor beside the bed. She hated that.

In between loads of laundry, Ginny googled brujería and learned from Wikipedia about Spanish witchcraft, which some non-traditionalists combine with voodoo, while others do not. The art originated from Mayan culture and ancient paganism. Ginny found the idea of ancient Mayan roots very exotic and mysterious. A bruja, a female witch, was capable of shape shifting and glamours, and spell casting, charms, and herbal remedies just like European witches. She wondered what all of this meant for Trevor as she prepared a spinach, apple, and sweet onion salad to go with dinner.

Ginny winced as Trevor came in the door and left his Trafalgar briefcase on the kitchen table, sweeping past her without any sign of affection. Five minutes later his bossy bullhorn voice boomed from the top of the stairs, “Ginny!”

If he didn’t have the decency to come talk to her like a civil human being, she wasn’t going to answer. She continued finely chopping sweet onion, fantasizing about carving up his precious briefcase and serving it to him with gravy for dinner. The type of reaction that would get made her giggle and her shoulders shook as tears ran down her face from the onions.

Trevor came stomping into the kitchen holding something almost invisible. “Do you know what this is?”

“No. I can’t even see what you’re holding. I’ve got tears in my eyes from the onions.” She bit back a snicker.

“It’s a cat whisker. You know I’m allergic to cats, Ginny,” he scolded her like a puppy who’d piddled on the floor in front of him.

“And what do you want me to do with it?”

“I don’t want you to do anything with it. I want to know where it came from.”

“Well, obviously it came from a cat.” She stifled another snicker.

“Well, thank you Sherlock Holmes for that wonderful deduction. If I wanted an answer to the obvious, I’d ask for it.” He looked even less becoming in the shade of radish his face turned. “Where is the cat it belongs to?”

She slammed the knife on the granite counter. “Trevor, this is ridiculous. There’s no cat.” She wiped her hands on her apron.

“Well, then where did this come from?”

“I haven’t the foggiest idea where it came from.”

“Well, it must have come from somewhere.”

“Maybe, it blew in from outside. It was quite windy today and I had the upstairs windows open.”

That answer seemed to satisfy him and he left the room, thankfully. She didn’t bother to tell him he trailed a piece of toilet paper stuck to his left loafer; rather, she tossed the salad for dinner in apple vinaigrette, sniggering to herself.

Dinner passed with the clink of glasses and the scraping of forks between them, and after Ginny cleared the table, which Trevor never offered to do, she made a phone call while he settled down to watch Antiques Roadshow, a real snore fest.

Ginny hid in the walk-in pantry, thankful the phone cord stretched that far. Trevor proved stodgier than a pair of old English biddies at tea time. He refused to even think of getting a cordless phone until this one broke and that would happen about as soon as the Republican Party had to hold a bake sale. The phone rang at least five times before anyone picked up.

Rosalia’s mother answered. “Hello?”

“Hi, Mrs. Adega, it’s Ginny. Is Rosalia there, please?”

“No, she’s out. I tell her you called,” she offered in broken English. With a faint cough, she hung up the phone before Ginny could say anything else.

Disappointed, Ginny curled up with Jane Austen in bed with a mug of hot chamomile tea.

A low growl pierced the darkness. Trevor woke and Ginny, predictably, did not. A nuclear holocaust could happen and she’d still be snoring away with the best of them. He didn’t bother to wake her, just shoved his feet into his worn blue corduroy slippers and trudged to the top of the stairs, holding his breath and listening to the night around him. There it was. Another low rumbling growl.

“Achoo! Damnit, Ginny! When I find that oversized fleabitten fur rug I’m going to pitch it right out in the backyard where it came from!” Trevor broke into a sneezing fit as he rushed downstairs, slippers flapping on the linoleum in the kitchen where he thought he heard the growls. He flipped on the light and found an empty room. No cat. Cursing his bum knee from that skiing accident a few years ago, he checked under the kitchen table. No cat. Huh. Where did it go? He knew he’d heard a cat. He was sure of it. For the next half hour, Trevor led a fruitless search, checking under all the furniture, even behind the washer and dryer in the laundry room, and finding no cat. His sneezes gradually subsided, and he grabbed a Claritin from the cupboard above the sink before returning to bed. It was then he saw a tiny ball of black fluff against the mopboard, so small, he’d almost missed it. But he’d found the evidence he lacked. And Ginny would answer for it. With a triumphant grin, he grabbed a Ziploc bag and picked up the furry evidence with a white tissue, not exposing his skin to any stray cat dander, and sealed the bag shut, stowing it away in the kitchen cupboard with the coffee grinder. Satisfied, he returned to bed and stubbed his toe again on the antique table in the hallway. “Mother-f,” he yelped, limping to bed.

The next morning Trevor stood before Ginny in his white business executive shirt and red striped tie, drinking a cup of coffee, frowning. Not that she gave a fig, but for harmony’s sake, she asked, “Sleep alright?” She sipped of her coffee from her cat mug.

Just the sight of her standing there in her pink cat pajamas sipping coffee from her frickin’ cat mug caused Trevor’s blood pressure to rise. He could feel his face flush as he answered in a cold professional tone, “No. As a matter of fact, I didn’t.”

Then he stood there blinking like a stupid sheep, expecting her to read his mind. Well, she wasn’t in the mood today. She turned her back on him, switching on the garbage disposal.

Trevor shouted above the noise, “And you know why I didn’t?”

“I’m sorry, Trevor, I can’t hear you. The garbage disposal’s on,” Ginny yelled, biting her lip to stifle a giggle, hoping he didn’t see the girlish glee in her eyes.

Trevor switched off the garbage disposal with a glare that could split iron. He spoke each word slowly. “I didn’t sleep well because there was a cat in the house.” He picked at a hang nail on his left thumb, a bad habit when frustrated, something that happened quite frequently around Ginny. Soon he’d have no skin and his nails would drop off and he’d be dead. And things would be much better. He bit his lip and forced himself to use the even, non-threatening tone he did at the office when disciplining an employee, “It was making me sneeze. And it was growling. And I went downstairs to find it and I found this, instead.” Trevor threw open the cupboard with the same over-dramatic flair he used for everything and looked quite stunned, something that didn’t happen very often. He stammered, “Wh-where is it?”

“Oh, you mean the bag of fur?” Ginny smiled, goading him on and knowing full well he wanted that bag of fur.

“Yes, that bag of fur.”

“I threw it away. It didn’t belong in the cupboard.”

His eyes bulged like a goldfish, lips moving silently. “Well then,” he said after a long, awkward pause, trying to recover his dignity and realizing he’d lost yet another battle with his hellish wife, “I guess I’ll be off to work.”

“Have a good day then. If I see a pussy, I’ll let you know.” Ginny winked and raised her cat mug to her lips, grinning as the door slammed. The entire day stretched before her, husband-free.

Rosalia called just as Trevor pulled out of the driveway. Her lover’s voice slipped over Ginny’s shoulders like cashmere. “How are you, Ginny?”

“Fine, if you consider marriage to be better than nuclear holocaust.”

“That bad?” A peal of laughter erupted from the phone.

“What is your mother up to? And when am I going to be free of him?”

“Patience, my little chickadee. All things in good time.”

“Well, you’re not living with Archie Bunker.”

“No, and if I were, I’d take care of the problem myself.”

“I can’t.” Ginny lowered her voice. “I told you before I can’t do something like that and I can’t divorce him. It’s against my religion.”

“But it’s not against your religion to get help from an outside source, to sleep with someone other than your husband, or to have a lesbian relationship?”

“Yes, it is, but I can live with those sins, but not murder by my own hands.” Ginny bit her lip and sipped her coffee.

“Well, you won’t have much longer to wait. Mother will finish things tonight, if everything goes as planned.”

“Fine. I have to go now, but I’ll see you at the book club meeting later.” Ginny hung up the phone, feeling better. Somehow she made it through her normal Wednesday routine, even though her thoughts were preoccupied with Trevor and Rosalia.

Trevor arrived home late, much to her relief, heated up dinner, and ate by himself in the kitchen. By the time he finished, Ginny laid passed out to the world upstairs, another mug of chamomile tea beside her bed in another annoying cat mug. He got ready for bed and fell between the sheets, grateful. It’d been an exhausting day.

He woke to a loud rumbling purr and something furry nuzzling his chin. In a sleepy fog, he shoved it away. “Go away, Ginny,” he mumbled with a fuzzy, cotton mouth.

The purring became feverish and more determined, as sharp claws began to tread on his chest. Trevor felt a slight tickle under his nose, possibly a tail trailing across his face. Wait. A tail? He shot up in bed, confident he’d finally caught his wife’s cat in the house, but found only Ginny. Then he heard the faint click of cat claws on the wooden floorboards and the tell-tale creak on the topmost step as something shifted its weight.

Trevor crept barefoot from his bed. A chill tightened around his throat like a garrote as he entered the hallway, and paused to check the thermostat. It was unusually cold for an August night. From the gauzy shadows of darkness, a claw swiped his ankle, slicing a razor-fine line across his Achilles’ tendon.

“Yowch!” Trevor hopped on one foot, flipping on the lights, blinding himself. Something rustled. Trevor turned towards the landing. Empty. He flipped off the lights to remain invisible, forgetting cats have excellent night vision, and tiptoed, holding his breath, trailing his hand along the cool, smooth banister he’d sanded and finished himself. A low growl rippled through the curtain of darkness and he paused before placing his foot on the next step, his mouth dryer than a rattlesnake’s. He heard and saw nothing. He snuck downstairs as a streak of midnight darted under his foot, pitching him headfirst down the stairs.

Upstairs, Ginny heard what sounded like a herd of elephants on roller skates tumbling downstairs, something finally louder than her own snoring, and she leapt out of bed without her flashlight or robe, tearing into the hall, her eyes wild with panic, her chest heaving, flipping on the lights as she ran to the second landing before the last set of stairs. Trevor was sprawled at the bottom of the stairs with one leg bent beneath him at an unnatural angle, his head turned away in an inky pool of crimson on the white carpet.

A scream curdled in her throat and she staggered downstairs with jittering hands, as a warm, lithe body pushed her from behind. She careened downstairs, crashing on top of Trevor with a sick, squishy, thump. Ginny felt cool and warm at the same time. She shivered, going into shock and her bladder let go. Her wet nightgown stuck to her crotch and buttocks. Paralyzed, she lay like Raggedy Ann, with her head turned towards the stairs, watching as a misty outline of a cat metamorphosed into Rosalia. A black viscous sludge of fear bubbled tarry in her throat as Rosalia slunk down the few remaining stairs to stoop beside her.

Ginny gurgled, her tongue clumsy in her mouth. What was she doing here? She smelled cinnamon. Or was it lemon chiffon? She wasn’t sure. Her senses betrayed her. She saw dark, when it was clearly light in the room, and smelled something sweet, but pungent at the same time.

Rosalia read Ginny’s question in her eyes, as she bent to whisper in Ginny’s ear, “Yes, lover. It’s me.” She kissed her and Ginny tasted oranges and ginger and felt light caresses, like cat whiskers rubbing her neck. She would have cringed, but paralyzed, her muscles didn’t respond. She lay still while Rosalia’s napalm touch burned her flesh, fire and ice at the same time.

Ginny’s lips quivered as she attempted to speak, and Rosalia’s mouth curled in a mocking sneer, revealing a gleaming mouthful of needle sharp cat’s teeth. “What’s the matter, darling? Cat got your tongue?” Rosalia cackled and rose, stirring the clammy air around Ginny’s legs, her filmy flower print sundress swirling in a cloud around her well-formed legs as she traced her slender fingers over the frame of an original Norman Rockwell, a family heirloom from Ginny’s grandmother in great need of dusting. She admired the painting, knowing it would bring a pretty penny or two.

Rosalia knelt again beside her, and Ginny smelled cinnamon musky and sweet.

“You are in love with a cat burglar, my chickadee.” She grinned and placed a cool palm over Ginny’s fluttering eyelids.

The fog comes on little cat feet, Ginny thought, a line from her favorite Carl Sandburg poem. She tasted ginger and spice for the last time as Rosalia pressed her warm lips to hers and sliced her carotid artery with a glinting blade, admiring the pretty red river running down Ginny’s pale equine neck.

Rosalia’s tongue flicked out with a serpentine grace, tasting the salty copper tang of Ginny’s blood as she murmured, “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought her back.” She rose and pulled a cell phone from the pocket of her sundress, dialing a number. “It’s done,” she said to her mother. “We can start moving the items in the house.” And she went into the kitchen to put a kettle on for tea, while she waited for her mother to join her.

WHITE

David Richards

The absence of colour never looked as good as it did underneath a full moon. Tombstones shimmered as a raging wind, wrought with bitterness, surged across the land.

Zachariah waited behind a silver birch tree rooted inside the cemetery just off the main road leading in. He clung to its frozen trunk while its branches above shivered with ice. He breathed slowly, sometimes distracted by the plumes of his own breath exploding in front of his face. The cold seeped into his eyes but he refused to close them for longer than a second.

A night creature hooted. Yet another squawked. The wind was cruel tonight, and it did everything to tear through his thick black ski jacket to get to the vulnerable skin beneath. Despite three pairs of socks he couldn’t feel the tips of this toes. Not even the thermal underwear and pair of Levi jeans held back the wind chill.

Zachariah shifted on his feet. From where he stood he watched the entrance of the cemetery. Its galvanized steel gates were slightly ajar as if a temptation to the living. It seemed to capture the essence of what lay beyond with its heavy fleur-de-lis pattern and large steel rosette now split in two. The wall surrounding the graveyard was low and grey from age. Summer ivy had been reduced to a thin network of brown vines meandering through cracks and gaps. A few meters away on a circular island, a fine bronze statue stood on its marble base. It greeted mourners with a few simple words: "Eternal life awaits us all." Its wings were unfolded and its sightless eyes were cast heavenwards.

How many times had he read those few words and wondered if they were true. What did he care anyway? They only paid him to tend the grounds and not to think. He’d been doing the job for ten years. His house was provided for, which became a frequent target on Halloween night. The salary was modest. It was the perfect job for a man who’d abandoned the living to spend the rest of his days treading upon the dead, until he saw her.

Throughout the decade he’d witnessed hundreds of funerals. Maybe it was a project for later; count the funerals using local church records to get an exact figure. Who would he tell anyway once he got the answer?

But the funeral request he’d received three days ago was surely amongst the strangest. The email arrived early in the morning. Its instructions were clear; the grave was to be dug so that the head of the corpse faced north, no other funerals were to take place at the same time, no cemetery staff were to be present, and perhaps the weirdest request of them all, the funeral was to take place at night. The pastor of the local church added a footnote:

“P.S. I tried to explain the cemetery hours but the relatives were quite adamant. It would be a great favour to me if everything could be ready. The family are overcome with grief and couldn’t explain their unusual requests. Unless they are vampire’s! LOL!”

With his curiosity spiked, he had watched the funeral from behind the tombstone of Martha Mary Jones. Her photograph, moulded in clear Perspex and set into the centre of the headstone, watched him with a sense of weariness.

Only a small group of mourners had arrived. He counted seven moving shadows. Each figure was dressed in black and they seemed to be part of the night itself: shadows that had dislodged themselves from the fabric of night to wander the grounds of the dead. Too far away to hear any specific words, he heard faint mumblings and on occasion he thought he heard soft singing. The seven mourners picked up the dark coffin and using no winch or ropes of any kind, dumped the coffin into the pit he’d dug out earlier. He heard the unmistakable fracture and snap of wood. Two men, he presumed they were men, picked up shovels and covered the coffin until a small mound of dirt had formed. They obviously had no respect for the dead. For a fleeting moment he thought they would break out into song or lash at each other’s throat for blood, or turn into bats and flitter away. At the end of it all, the mourners simply left. They left no trace except for the clearly identifiable smell of perspiration and sweet perfume.

The next day two strange things happened. In the morning the headstone arrived. It was carved from rose granite and placed at the head of the grave with no help from him.

And in the evening she arrived. Zachariah had just finished trimming the roses in the memorial garden. An evening chill had already drained the heat from the day. His hands ached from gripping branches with vicious thorns. He was making his way to the compost heap, which happened to pass by the new grave, when he heard crying. No, sobbing.

Pausing, Zachariah watched a young woman bury her face in her hands. She fell to her knees in front of the marble headstone. Her shoulders heaved in sadness. After several minutes of heavy crying, she gripped the headstone with her bare hands and began to violently shake it. It seemed she wanted to dislodge it, to deface the monument.

Zachariah dropped his garbage and was about to tell her off when she stood up, wiped the tears from her cheeks, and ran—ran—towards the gate.

She came back the same night and had been doing so for three consecutive nights.

Except now she was late, or simply not coming. Maybe he’d missed her already. Maybe she’d finished grieving and no longer felt the need to come. He’d seen it many times. Graves aren’t a place to be taken care of by loved ones. They are soon forgotten along with the bones at their feet.

Zachariah resigned to the fact she wasn’t coming. It was stupid of him to get excited in the first place. How would a woman like her even notice a guy like him?

Using the light of the moon, he pulled back the sleeve of his jacket and angled his watch to see the time. One o’clock. And he was standing outside in the freezing cold, like an idiot.

“You do some stupid things,” he muttered to himself. He pulled the beanie down over his burning ears and turned to head back to his cottage.

The steel gate screeched in agony when it swung open. Zachariah stopped. Dare he hope, or pray, that she’d come tonight. Dare he think that tonight would be the night …?

Slowly, he turned around. His heart picked up pace. Opening his eyes against the racing wind, he saw … an angel running towards him.

Night had a strange way of slowing down time. It forced him to sustain his gaze upon the advancing figure. Moonlight bathed her in an aura of silver. Light bled into the darkness. Her hands clawed at the night as if pushing it aside, as if desperate to find the light hidden between the dead and the stars. Her dress breathed in and out like a living organism, protecting her, feeding off her. It appeared to be a separate entity with its own desires.

As she advanced towards him, past the statue with the upturned bronze eyes, the dress gained more momentum. Its fluidic movements brushed aside dead leaves and collected dirt on the hem. It offered flashes of her bare feet: dark and stained with cold mud.

Suddenly fearful of where she might’ve come from, Zachariah noticed that the dress she wore was not an ordinary garment. The woman whom he had seen— watched—for three days mourning her lost love came towards him in a wedding dress.

She ran past him.

He held his breath.

Her dress crackled as if alive with the bones of the dead.

He glimpsed the tears on her face. Silver jewels that sparkled, followed by dark streaks.

He reached out and tried to grab her arm. He had to make sure she was real. He was too late, and she was gone.

Ethereal events happened often in cemeteries. He’d be a coward if denied the things he’d seen in the ten years of scraping up leaves and scrubbing algae off headstones. Angels. Demons. Strange lights. Will ‘o wisps. Poltergeists. Imps. Trolls. He’d seen them all.

But this angel didn’t fade. The dark simply absorbed her.

Zachariah felt dizzy. A subtle confusion wrapped his brain in warm fuzziness, which he kind of enjoyed. It became difficult for him to move, to think, to speak.

She’d returned. Why in her wedding dress? He gripped the silver birch for support and controlled his rapid breathing. Feeling slowly returned to his limbs. This wasn’t the time to stand still. He had to pursue. He had to find out what had made her mad enough to enter a cemetery at night, barefoot and crying.

Regaining the full use of his legs, he moved off into the darkness. A faint smell of something sweet replaced the usual rotting mulch that sailed in the night air. He inhaled it as he crept between the tombstones, keeping off the main road, and found his way to the fresh grave.

And there she was.

He knelt down behind a heavy marble headstone, and watched. Her back was towards him. Both of her hands, unprotected from the cold like her feet, were placed on the headstone. She was crying; heavy and long sobs that pronounced her sorrow.

He had to fight the urge to go up to her and comfort her. It wasn’t his job to comfort those who couldn’t handle death. But he could make an exception in this case.

Slowly and trying not to alert her, he stood up. Suddenly he became aware of how she might react if she suddenly turned around to find a stranger behind her. He didn’t want to become a member of his cemetery. No thank-you. It was cremation for him.

But what would he say? A simple greeting would do. Maybe. Yes. No. Cough to get her attention. That’s stupid. She’d think he was an imbecile. How about just saying his name. Yes. Perfect.

He took a tentative step towards her. He spoke in a voice just louder than the blustering wind but gentle enough not to frighten her. But what he said was not what he’d agreed with himself moments before.

“It’s not a good night for a bride to be out.” He regretted saying it and suddenly wanted to blurt out his name to correct himself, but she turned and all words froze on his tongue.

For whatever reason—natural or supernatural—light found its way to her face. It was a narrow face with a small perfect nose and cheeks bitten red from the cold. Her bottom lip quivered slightly. Even in the dim light, he saw the crimson colour of her lips. Her black hair seemed part of night’s veil and occasionally did it allow the light to reflect off of it. But it was her eyes where the light accumulated most. Tears diluted a fine concentration of green in her eyes, but they glimmered with a hidden passion. Her tears masked her sorrow.

“A bride can go anywhere she pleases,” she said, as she straightened out the creases of her dress. Her bare hands worked nimbly despite the cold.

“Even cemeteries,” he said.

“Even cemeteries,” a sly grin came over her face.

Zachariah watched her as she sat down on the headstone and folded her arms. He felt afraid, no, concerned for her. He wanted to help. But he had the feeling she didn’t want any help, and if she did then it would be on her terms.

“What’s your name?” she asked. Wind pasted dead leaves to her dress. She ignored it.

“Zachariah.”

“A Hebrew name. It means ‘remembered by the Lord.’”

He shrugged, indifferent. “What’s yours?”

“Rebecca.”

“I don’t know the meaning of your name, sorry.”

“Don’t be. It means ‘servant of God.’”

“Is that what you are?”

The grin became a wide smile. “Not exactly.”

In the ten years of being caretaker he’d never felt wary. So what if the wind sounded different when a storm blew in. So what if the night seemed just that little bit darker. So what if the ravens pecked at the grass as if trying to get to the bones beneath. None of it bothered him. But it bothered him now. More to the truth, why did she bother him so much?

Remembering the pastor’s email, he said, “Are you a vampire then? Or think you are one?”

“Would a vampire, real or otherwise, be wearing a wedding dress?”

“Who knows? Anything’s possible considering where we are. So why don’t you tell me why you’ve been coming here for three days and now show up tonight in your wedding dress?”

A slight change came over her. She became stiffer and folded her arms tighter across her chest. The wind lifted up the hem of the dress and exposed her bare feet.

“I lost him,” she said, looking down at the patch of ground upon which she pressed her toes into. “You’ve probably heard the same story a thousand times. We were,” she looked up at the sky, “star-crossed lovers.”

“Like Romeo and Juliet,” Zachariah said. “They ended up … oh.” He didn’t finish the sentence. He got the meaning.

“No! We weren’t meant to end up like this. He wasn’t supposed to die.” It wasn’t remorse that he heard in her voice, but anger. Raw anger. “Two days before we were supposed to get married he drove into a tree. Drunk from a bachelor party I asked him not to have. Stupid idiot.” Rebecca stood up and kicked the headstone. It remained unmoved.

“It’s not good to desecrate the dead.”

She looked at him with indignity. “Why do you do it? Why do you look after the dead? It’s the living that need you most.”

“Not always,” he replied.

“You take care of the graves as if each person—each skeleton—deserves the same respect. Would you tend the grave of a murderer the same as that of his victim?”

“Death makes us equal.”

“Bullshit!”

Quick to change the subject, he asked, “Why did you insist on the funeral at night?”

“I didn’t want him to see daylight again. He broke my heart. Ruined what was supposed to be the perfect day of my life. He doesn’t deserve to rest in peace.”

“It’s over. Let me take care of him.”

She laughed. “You can have him.”

“Then why come here at night in your wedding dress?”

“I came to get married.”

Zachariah almost laughed. “Married? Your fiancé is dead.”

“That’s not going to stop me.”

She moved quickly. Before he had time to think of anything rational, Rebecca held a knife in her hand. Its blade looked hungry.

“Come over here,” she flicked the knife towards the headstone. He had no choice but to obey. A cemetery offers very little in terms of potential weapons and people willing to help out. He walked slowly past her.

“Kneel down and put your left arm on the tombstone.”

“This is crazy,” he said, trying not to let the fear creep into his voice. This had to be a joke, a sick joke. Maybe someone he knew was behind it all. Yes. They were hiding behind the trees waiting for him to start crying before they came out yelling surprise! Or it was a bad dream. A very bad dream …

Nothing but cold fear reminded him of the reality he was drowning in.

She gripped his wrist and pressed it into the cold marble. Almost immediately he felt pins and needles at the edges of his fingers.

“What you are doing?”

“Getting married.” Rebecca hoisted up her right leg and threw it over his arm so his arm was positioned neatly between her legs. She brought her full weight down and clamped his arm tight between her thighs.

The knife sliced through the sleeve of the jacket and bit into his skin. Zachariah jerked backwards but found himself immobile. The white wedding dress flew up in his face. Mud bled onto his face.

And then the pain took over. He screamed as metal hacked its way through skin, thick muscle and chewed into strong bone. Tears streamed down his cheeks. Stars burst into burning supernovas. The three-day fantasy that he’d clung to came crashing down. Imagination and hope made for a lethal combination when it came to romance and a lonely heart. No matter how beautiful she was, draped in white, it didn’t disguise the ugliness in her voice. It didn’t hide the cruelty in her heart.

Rebecca grunted with determination, ignoring his screams and the discomfort it caused to her ears. A liquid glove of warm blood bathed her hands. It made work slippery. Several times she tried to break the wrist by pulling back on the hand. In conjunction with her tireless slashing, she made short work of the bone and soon the blade hit frozen marble.

“Got it!” she said. She released his arm, holding the severed hand to the sky.

Zachariah fell backwards, his body entering a state of shock. The stump at the end of his arm leaked blood onto the frozen ground. He twitched and tried to speak, but his tongue was unable to form the words his mind thought of.

Rebecca took the hand and held it up to her cheek. Its blue toned fingers left streaks of darkness behind. She closed her eyes and kissed each fingertip. Blood had dyed her dress a vicious scarlet.

The warmth left the cut hand in seconds. It didn’t matter. If she couldn’t have her fiancé’s hand in marriage then any hand would have to do. She knelt beside Zachariah, his loose hand still pressed to her cheek. Was it the guilt or just sheer happiness that made her cry?

Zachariah’s vision faded. He no longer saw the stars. The surrounding darkness encroached upon his body. And in all of it he saw nothing but fragments of white floating, twirling, and speaking to him.

“I now pronounce you man and wife.” From a small pocket in her wedding dress, Rebecca removed a sliver of a gold ring and placed it on the finger of the dead hand.

She laughed. “You may now kiss … the groom.”

Before the darkness became permanent, Zachariah felt warmth on his lips and heard his last words. “We’re married.”

He would’ve smiled if he could have but death had an ironic sense of humour.

Two hours after midnight, a white figure left the cemetery. She walked, as if drunk, laughing and holding hands. She walked past the statue with the sightless eyes turned heavenwards. She paid no heed to the steel gate when it moaned as she pushed it open.

A married woman only had to think of her future now. What was it that her mother had told her? Oh yes, “Married women are the pillars of society.”

She liked that. She liked being a pillar.

Outside the gate, white changed into black and soon faded.

As all colours eventually do.

STREET WALKING

Jason Jeffery

This was the street I’d always heard about, the one mother relentlessly warned about, her words like sharpened knives spewing hate coated comments about it. In books they described it as evil, a place of death and dying. Terrifying stories I read as a child while hiding beneath my protective blanket, mother in her room believing I was sound asleep. There I sat late at night, a flashlight the only source of illumination in the room. My eyes traveling across the page, cultivating the fear from the seeds mother had so diligently planted.

Through the years I avoided these streets, walking the long way home instead of taking the short cut. Never looking down these side roads that were everywhere, their shadowy tendrils stretching out to me. They followed me, stalked me, never giving me a moment’s rest, never stopping their constant invitations, never ceasing their siren’s call. When I looked down them they spoke to me, their dread and decay floating past me into the night air. The goblins and trolls hiding amongst the dumpsters. The murderers and rapists casually leaning against the brick walls. The hookers and drug addicts swinging playfully amongst the fire escapes. I could not see them, but their taunts and chides fluttered past my ears, their threats stung my eyes, and their temptations watered my mouth.

Each day I laboriously passed the street, trying to ignore its enticing song, putting lulling thoughts of mother into my head to help squelch the rhythmic tones permeating out of the concrete walls. Making my way home after a long day at work, footsteps echoing along the pavement, thoughts of mother in my mind, her life lessons echoing back and forth. Tonight its call enraptured me, my mind seeing it not as the dark entrance to hell, but as a haven shining white lights and pulsating feelings of safety, serenity. Mother’s voice screamed in rage at the thoughts passing through my head. Do I risk it? Do I take the chance that mother was wrong, overreacting as she was known to do?

I reminded myself of the time she made me break up with Susie, the sweet girl from down the road. My very first girlfriend when I was the ripe young age of fifteen. Susie’s golden hair shined in the sunlight, her blue eyes pierced my soul, a beauty that could only be captured in a song. Yet mother was in my ear warning me Susie was no good, that she was a slut, her vixen ways used only to destroy a man‘s heart. Like the good son that I was I broke it off with Susie, the spite and disgust I had for her, placed skillfully within my mind by mother, showing itself in the words I used to end our blossoming romance. Little did I know then Susie was a slut, mother had been right. That did not make me any happier with the decision, a decision based on the rants and raves of an overbearing mother. I could have lost my virginity, became a man that summer, instead of standing on the edge of darkness, thirty-four years old and still a virgin. Mother took care of that for me, making sure none of them were good enough, preventing any of them from plunging their talons deep into her little boy‘s heart or their hands on her little man’s loins.

Mother would go into cardiac arrest if she were standing here watching me take my patent leather foot off the safety of the sidewalk and placing it onto the street. As I breached the barrier between sidewalk and street, my shoe's color shifted from a light brown to a slick black that was shined so perfect the stars above reflected across its mirrored surface. My left leg broke the invisible barrier separating good and evil, my pants transforming from khaki brown, that safe earth tone color mother always said I needed to wear, to a velvet purple. The color painted my leg, moving up past the knee, casually stopping at my waist. My shirt shifted from a bland white with brown tie, colors mother said made the world see I was business only, to a black silk shirt, pearlescent, shimmering in the moonlight, the tie transforming to match the pants, a luscious purple. If only mom could see me now, walking where I shouldn’t and wearing those clothes she vilely stated only pimps wore.

The clothes brought out another personality, the real me, the one that lie hidden for years. Mother’s voice, her constant screeching pushing that side down into the dark recesses of my mind. Be that, don’t be this, be here, don’t go there, always making sure I walked the straight and narrow, never setting foot off the beaten path. Tonight I am me, the man I should be, the man that was murdered years ago by mother, her personality suffocating him with a pillow of love. Tonight I was finally free of the grip she had over me. The true me strutted past the lowlifes, their eyes staring as I passed, my confidence showing them I was the man. The women looked at me longingly, desire floating from their eyes. The men stared in envy, the greenest of green envy there ever was.

Their whispers floated past my ears, their words talking about me, cursing me for being so handsome, cursing me for being so unattainable. Yet they did not approach; fear of not living up to unintentional standards kept them at bay, a force field of self loathing. Never in their wildest dreams had these lowlifes ever imagined someone would grace them with a presence like mine. They were nothing to me, I was here for one reason, and one reason alone. To find her, the one that would pop my cherry, make me a man, to show me the womanly ways I had read so much about in those dirty magazines I hid from mother under my bed, yet never had the chance to experience.

My eyes scanned their faces, their toothless, scabbed, sore infected lips, none of them good enough, none of them the type that would make mother proud, make her happy for her boy. A woman I could bring home that mother would see and fall in love with, knowing the girl would take care of her son as she herself had. No. That girl would not be here, in the darkness, trapped between the drug dealers and rapists, what good woman would be here? She would be at church, teaching school children, or at home taking care of her mother as I should be. She was not what I was looking for, no, I was wrong, bringing home the beauty queen would make mother happy. I did not want that, and mother did not deserve any happiness wrung from my tormented heart.

Then an image emerged like a beacon of hope. She sat on a curb, my angel of the night, a cigarette dangling from her herpes covered lips, her make-up worn off from hours of sexual encounters. She smiled and I could see she had teeth missing, some black, others brown with decay. She was perfect; if I brought her home to mother, mother would run into the back bedroom and hide in her mothball scented closet, scared of the diseases I brought into the home, scared of the illnesses I contracted by consorting with such a woman. Yes she was perfect, she would make everything okay. I approached her, my suave demeanor overtaking her, my slicked back hair glistening in the moonlight; she could not resist me.

I reached toward her, my extended arm an invitation of pleasure, an invitation to a new world, taking her from this place of disgust, this place of sin. I would save her, bring her a new life, one that did not answer to the pimps, did not depend on the drug dealers, one not infected by the rapists. She would live again. She looked at me, awestruck, amazed that one such as myself would approach her, would look at her at all, her head turning around to see if I meant the girl behind her, but I did not and she realized this. She was the target of my seduction. She walked toward me shyly, her eyes giving away her true nature, the face said “I never have,” her eyes screaming “for the right price.” Yes she was perfect.

We walked down the street surrounded by faces shining in the streetlights, their eyes glaring at us, their greed wanting us, their cowardice keeping them at bay. She was on my arm, an elegant stance for an elegant lady, she needed to feel this way, needed to be shown she was something more than a cheap, disease infested whore. It was my goal to make her see I could give her the world. Give her everything her life never allowed her to have, giving her misery-coated heart a new way of life, a new vision of her decrepit future.

We found a secluded corner, not exactly a bedroom with white satin sheets, but our passion overcame our animalistic senses. The shadows hid our bodies from the moonlight, hiding our presence from the rest of the lowlifes. Her warmth washed over me as I held her close, the scent of other men permeating past her dollar perfume. This was her past I reminded myself, those men helped bring her here to this point in our life, never allowed us to intersect until fate felt it was necessary. My nose rubbed against her throat, smelling her soft skin, ignoring the manly beast smell inside her pores, absorbing the vanilla scent her perfume tried unsuccessfully to protrude. I locked her eyes with mine, showing my compassion for her, showing her she meant the world to me. She smiled, her black teeth showing behind her rose petal colored lips.

The knife flashed through the night air, its blade glinting in the moonlight, the handle hidden in stealth by my hand in the midnight darkness. Her blood flew across the wall beside us, her throat gouged open, her head falling backwards, held on by a few tendons too ignorant to let go. Another swipe of the knife and the head unceremoniously dropped to the ground, rolling amongst the water and dirt, a discarded cigarette butt sticking to her eyelid. The body shivered and shook in my arms, convulsing as it slowly realized it was now headless, the warmth still pouring out of her, the smell of other men replaced by the sweet sickening smell of blood.

I let the decapitated body fall to the ground, no longer needing to feel its presence, and reached down to pick up the discarded head, my trophy, my one prize mother would approve of. She would see I did not lay with such filth, that I did not allow my body, my temple, to be infected by such a lowly life form. I walked down the street, heading back toward the exit toward the sidewalk and life, the other whores staring in disbelief, envious of this wonderful girl who was lucky enough to leave the cracks of life, filled with dregs and degenerates, to be lifted higher than any other. My Eve, my Juliet, she took my virginity from me. Her gift of life feeding mine, allowing me to quicken myself.

WILL’S LITTLE BLACK FLOWER

Brent Meske

Right Now

“Aww what the—” he starts, and never finishes that thought. His entire body jerks to one side as he tries not to vomit over his financed shoes and suit. He succeeds, pitching his expensive lunch all over the faded green/ yellow wallpaper in the hallway. Some lands on the floor as well, and he dances a pretty nimble number away from his own puke.

His name is William, and he likes it that way. It’s a respectable name, but something you could morph out of if you wanted. He can be Willy if he’s in a specially stupid, drunk, or high mood, or Will if things need to get studious. There’s Bill, for the less sophisticated crowd, and Billy for the least amount of sophistication. Billy is his favorite for Country Western clubs. Will he uses around some campuses, Willy on others. William gets its circulation around the office buildings, driver’s license, paperwork, and on his résumé.

Not only that, but his middle name is Joseph, which gives him just about as many nickname configurations as color combos on a Rubik’s Cube.

He usually goes by Will.

At this moment, Billy/Bill/Will/Willy/William/Joseph/ Joe/Joey/Billy Joe/BJ curses the name of several gods he knows, from Aphrodite to Vishnu and back. He even includes a solemn promise to Jesus that he will never, ever drive three states to meet an online girl ever again.

Why, for the sake of whatever name of whatever god you could choose, would he spend eight hours in the car, just to find himself in a completely alien city, at some freak chick’s rancid smelling apartment?

Two Minutes Earlier

“Hello?” Will called, and knocked again. There were definitely noises coming from inside. He thought it might be the TV, maybe, or the girl’s (Judy, this one’s name was Judy) voice telling him to come in. And so he’d turned the handle and come in.

He’d come because she was gorgeous, and she was fresh into college, and she was desperate, that’s why. On the other side of that door should have been a ravenous, sex-starved female ready to claw grooves into his back in her desperation to have him. He was almost harder than he could ever remember being, harder than the first pubescent mornings, where he’d been unable to pee for ten minutes of his twelve year old life. When he’d tried the door though, it almost felt like she’d pushed something in front of it. It was hard to get the damn door open, so he shouldered it. He got it about two feet open when the smell hit him like a liquid punch to the face.

It was dizzying in its weight. It seemed to press into him like a solid. His eyes watered, and he gasped a sharp breath inward, from the accumulation of three weeks’ worth of decay. He blinked, and his stomach folded itself in thirds.

The rest was now history, once in the eating and once in the revisiting.

A Week Ago

“Oh ho, what’s this?” he said in semi-surprise. Very little had surprised him in a long time.

William, the man of many names, spotted the e-mail right away. He flipped over to his IM to find her already there. Still, he opened up the e-mail. He was nothing if not cautious.

It was long, and he scanned it quickly with a trained eye. Overall, to a guy like William, it said this: I want to talk, I’m really sorry about what I said. I’ve been looking at your pictures all day, and listening to your voice, and I do want to meet you after all.

So he double-clicked her name, and the little window came up. He started typing almost before the little box even appeared on the screen.

Hey, he typed. He always stayed invisible, in case multiple ladies were online. Nobody would see him, and that was just how he liked it most times. With the number of girls on Will’s list, he couldn’t afford to be swamped every time he sat down to work on a girl.

Hi!

Before he could reply with anything further, she came back at him again.

Look, Will, I know what I said before …

I’m really sorry, he told her. I was really upset. It’s just, after six months … SIX months! It feels like forever, Flower. She loved to be called Flower, whether she was a hardcore goth girl or not.

I know, she typed, and I thought about it a lot. People have their moments of weakness. I understand that. Just tell me you’ll never talk to her again.

William smiled with his fingers over the keys, and his face bathed in artificial light. It was the smile of a predator, the determined stare of a hawk with the grim smile of a crocodile.

I’ll do better than tell you, Flower. I’ll promise you. How’s that sound?

And this was the girl who threatened to kill herself just a week and a half ago. He’d let her stew in her juices, and she came back. He knew she would. Girls like her always did.

Of course, it was worth mentioning that our William broke that promise that very day, not three hours later, with the very girl who was the source of the argument. When she’d signed on, he pounced like a waiting predator. It didn’t take long. He got poetic with her, which was the source of his Flower’s problem. The other girl, who called herself Mona, started posting Will’s erotic chat poetry all over the Internet. She started with her blogs, and circulated from there.

Thank you, she told him. Thank you so much. I love you, Will.

He gave her the smiley face with the big teeth. I love you too, baby.

Do you have time to play? She asked him, with the little winking smiley.

I wish I could, he typed. I’m totally swamped with work right now. But when can I head out your way? he asked. When she told him, he hit up a website and printed out driving directions to her place. Then it was just a matter of waiting for the next week.

He and Mona had a nice two-hour session together after his Flower finally gave up her address. It was one of those chats that started off with him salivating, like looking at industrial strength fireworks before the big show. It also didn’t let up until he got her to take a few new pictures with her phone, describing in gorgeous natural detail some of his most vivid poetic imagery. Couple those with the anticipation of meeting his Flower, and it was easy to get off that day.

Seventeen Days Ago

“How could you? You told me you loved me,” she hissed, almost as though the words could somehow erode her skin. He could hear the tears over the phone, like they might wet his ear or drip down onto his hand.

“Flower, listen to me—” but he didn’t get any further. There was a mad shriek over the phone, followed by something that didn’t sound like laughing, but didn’t sound like crying. He stared at the wall of his apartment and wondered if he had himself a real live loony on his hands.

“Don’t call me that,” she croaked. “Don’t try to play with me anymore, Will. God, I loved you. I can’t believe—”

“I still love you baby, please, listen to me,” he said in his gentlest tone.

“I’m a toy for you, aren’t I?”

“No,” he said rapid fire. “Nonononono, you’re not a toy. Listen, it was stupid. Completely retarded. I was drunk, and you weren’t online, okay? People were already going at it when I came into the chat room, six of them at least. You have to believe me.”

“I can’t believe I fell for you,” she said in a pathetic croak. “God, I should go and kill myself.”

“Baby,” he said in a tiny voice. “It’s been so long. I’ve been thinking that you never wanted to meet me face to face.”

“I don’t—” she said, and he was overcome by the sound of her crying. They were huge, body wracking sobs by the sound. “I don’t have anybody out here. I can’t—I can’t believe, oh my god.”

“I love you,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.” Later he would give his ‘I love you’ to a girl named Jessica, a cheerleader chick in some tiny Nebraska town. The night after that it would be another incredible poetic night with Mona. There were six girls in total beside Flower, and he kept meticulous notes on their interactions, so he wouldn’t confuse them.

“I can’t talk right now,” came the throaty groan.

“Baby no—” he started to say, but the line was dead.

Now

Will staggers away from the partially open door, coughing and spitting out the last of his lunch. It’s nastier than nasty. He gets about two steps away from the door when the sound hits him.

It’s the three-note twinkle, the familiar Instant Messenger sound. He hears that muffled sound and can bolt from sleep as though death is on his heels.

He freezes and turns back toward her door, wiping his chin on his sleeve.

A computer inside her apartment twinkles again. Will pulls his t-shirt up from beneath the dress shirt and covers his nose with it. He’s sure that it won’t do much good, but does it anyway. He stalks into her apartment, expecting the smell to jump out at him at any point. His eyes, wide and frightened, scan the place as he breaches the door. Behind the door is a pile of mail, newspapers and magazines almost a foot high. Will never sees this; his eyes are fixed on the computer.

Amazingly enough, the smell has diminished a lot. He can barely detect it now. It hardly matters anyway, since he’s allowing himself to be drawn in, like a moth, toward the familiar blue glow.

It has a nice, big flat screen monitor to start. The desk is also massive, taking up a full third of the tiny apartment’s living room and dining room area. He does a cursory sweep of the apartment, trying to look for what could produce such a stench, but the computer has already done what it always does: mesmerized him. He nearly sways like a cobra before the snake charmer, and a moan comes from deep, deep within him as he peers at the screen.

There’s a familiar message box, only at the top it’s got his screen name on it. Inside the box is a message.

Hi Will. The next message reads: Come in, make yourself at home.

“What?” he breathes.

Another window pops up, and he recognizes this one immediately. It is the little amateur movie screen generated by the web camera perched on top of his computer. The image materializes out of a warm, digital black and resolves into a picture of his Flower, the little goth girl named Judy.

She’s in his apartment, almost five hundred miles away.

It’s pretty amazing, considering he’s never told her his address, nor his last name.

She looks just like she did in her photos, which is to say very anxious, very pale, with platinum blonde hair. The black lipstick and choker only serve to make her seem more like a living corpse. It’s not his scene, but he’s been around the block, he’s seen the clubs. Judy isn’t anywhere near as bad as it gets.

Go on, the message comes through, sit down. We need to talk. Strange how you never told me you had a webcam.

He isn’t aware that he’s sat down until his fingers are punching the keys, rapid fire. The look of perpetual confusion on his face doesn’t lift while he types.

How did you get in my apartment?

Don’t you worry about that, she replies. We need to talk about how many girls are here on your list, and what your notes have to say about them.

That’s none of your business, he types. And there’s a funny little prickle of fear, making him sweat in some very uncomfortable places. His hard-on has completely vanished, and it's been replaced by adrenaline. He's trembling now.

Sure it isn’t, she types, but you promised me. You broke that promise.

Where I’m from, we don’t just say things we don’t mean.

Will picks up his phone and dials the police, then presses the green button. For a second, he holds his breath, and shakes, and tells himself that this girl has to be some freak computer genius. He stares at the webcam, and realizes she’s staring right into it.

“That’s not going to do you any good,” her voice comes into the phone. “You’re not in Kansas now, are you?”

“What in the—” he starts, but like earlier, doesn’t finish that thought either.

Judy, the too-pale goth girl, reaches up and grabs the webcam. Only, that’s not right. Her fingers reach the edge of the window and curl over it. The other hand does the same, and now she begins to pull, and now Will realizes that he really has to take a leak, and now he realizes that if he doesn’t he might just piss himself. The web camera window expands until it’s the size of most of the screen. Then her sneering face, complete with blood-red gums, is facing him larger than life.

The phone falls from his hand to thump on the rug.

Will doesn’t know why it’s the gums that strike him, or the rims of her eyes. They’re both redder than red. She opens her mouth, and the sound that comes from the computer speakers is almost a whisper, but nearly deafening.

“Will,” comes the hiss, “you crushed me. You crushed me and threw me away. You thought you could just lie to me, and lie to me, just like you lied to the other girls.”

The hands dart from the computer screen in a flash of pixilated bluish white light, seizing Will’s terrified face. Her grasp is hot and full of static, and sears his nerves in a blinding bolt that heads straight for his brain.

He sees her, sobbing on the floor here, curled into a tight ball.

He sees her standing in front of a mirror, with mascara and eye shadow streaking her face like great black waterfalls.

He can’t look away while she takes half a dozen sleeping pills, then drags a chair to the center of the room, where she ties a thin nylon rope around the ceiling fan. She tests its strength, (it holds, she’s all of five feet and eighty-nine pounds) and makes a careful measurement.

She ties a noose, now working in slow, deliberate movements. Her tears have slowed. She’s mumbling to herself.

Will watches while she holds herself on the chair, and starts to nod off. When it happens, she’s sitting balanced on the high chair back. It’s not long; she tumbles backward, catching herself on the rope, on her neck. There are a few moments of furious struggle. The chair goes over. Her feet whip back and forth, scissoring through the air only about five inches from the floor.

Now the view is strange, and he realizes he’s looking at her dead body from the computer screen. He continues to watch, how can he not? Sometime later, her struggles cease. Has it been five minutes, or five years? Another time later, the door opens to see a woman’s terrified face. There’s a scream, picked up in a hollow way by Judy’s headset microphone, attached to the computer. Days have passed, maybe more than a week. Will understands this. She’s begun to decompose, and the smell drew a neighbor.

Later the cops appear, but this is all unimportant. She fast-forwards it for him. They remove her body, do a light investigation, and place yellow tape over the doorway. Somehow none of them work much with the large desk, with the expensive computer setup in the center of everything. They leave the tape and close the door.

Then, since he’s still watching from the computer, it gets even stranger. Gentle whispers, little breezes not resembling anything, they appear. The door opens for them.

These invisible little streamers of coincidence and otherworldliness move over the yellow police tape, pulling it down in fluttering ribbons. Then those little streamers reel it all into the apartment and wash the tape out of sight.

Will screams and jerks himself back. The chair slows, hits a knot of rug, topples, and spills him out onto the ground. He looks up at the ceiling fixture, and back toward the computer.

There is a burning sensation on his face, and he touches it to find raw skin and fresh blisters. He screams through the pain, and realizes that he can’t see very well. He gets to his knees and begins to shuffle toward the door.

“No,” he groans. “No, no no.”

“Yes,” the speakers wheeze. “Yes yes yes.”

The door slides closed, and he watches while her deadbolt engages itself.

“I swear,” he says. “I’ll never—”

“Too late for that,” she says. Her voice is pure void. He looks back, and finds her climbing up out of the huge monitor. Her head turns to face him, or maybe her whole body reverses itself, Will can’t be sure. He thinks he might be going blind. She’s made of light now, and staring at him with impossible eyes. Her eyes are covered with black, all black.

“I’ve seen what’s ahead,” she said. “I asked them, before they obliterated my soul to make a new one, if I could have this one thing.”

One leg pulls up and out of the monitor, perching on the desk. Then the other. She doesn’t jump, she doesn’t float, but somehow she makes it to the floor.

“If there’s any justice, I told them, any justice at all, you’ll let me bring this one with me.”

His mouth works open and closed, and a remote part of him realizes he’s pissed himself. She’s crawling now, between his splayed legs.

“I don’t think they believe in justice, William. But I talked them into it.”

Her hand reaches through his clothes, seizing his most prized possessions. He cries out through the blinding, blistering pain. His pants, a synthetic blend, begin to melt and stick to his body, burning him further. All Will can do is scream.

So he does. He screams and screams and screams.

The police find the body ten minutes later. There isn’t much to make of it, just charring. Any identification on the man with many names has been melted into a puddle on the slightly smoking rug. He’ll never be identified. His relatives will never be informed of the mouse, webcam, headset, and part of the keyboard that need to be removed from his abdomen and throat.

“Hey,” one of the policemen says to one of the others, “you remember seeing the computer here when we got that girl out of here a couple of weeks ago?”

A few of the policemen look up. One of them says, “Huh.”

MALRATS

Walter Payne

Janet peered through the parking garage under the Galleria Mall, lit only by hazy gray light filtering down the cement stairs. The stench of rotting, putrid flesh struck her and she covered her mouth, fighting back the urge to retch. At the moment the Malrats were nowhere in sight, but she knew the respite would not last. It never did. Jumping over a pile of broken cinderblocks she ran towards a familiar voice crying out for help. It was her uncle Russell, tied to a cement pillar that barely held up the crumbling floor of the parking level above. His wrists, held up over his head by a heavy link chain, were chafed and raw. His bare chest was bloodied and covered with welts from the relentless whips of the Malrats. He watched her approach with wide, desperate eyes, bringing back Janet’s own fears.

“Janet,” he gasped through a thick, swollen tongue. “Thank god you’re here. Hurry, they’ll be back soon.”

“Where’s Aunt Sylvia?”

“I don’t know. I think they got her. She must be here somewhere. You have to find her.”

“Yes, yes. Don’t worry. I’ll find her.”

Heaving the machine gun up over her shoulder, Janet blasted away the chains, wincing at the deafening roar that echoed through the cavernous expanse. The Malrats would be here any minute now. She grabbed Russell’s arm and pushed him towards the stairs.

“Run! Just get out of here. I’ll look for Sylvia, okay?”

Russell gave her a quick, uncertain glance, as if knowing he would never see her again and limped away towards the stairs.

The moans and screams of the prisoners chained throughout the lot, begging her to help them, filled her with frustration. So many of them. But she couldn’t help them all. They would have to wait. Walking slowly through the ruins, Janet searched their faces, calling quietly with a trembling voice. “Sylvia? Are you here?”

She stopped short and swerved at the sound of heavy footsteps. Her faced paled and she fought back the wave of faintness. Two Malrats had spotted her and were fast approaching, their slate metal-armored uniforms and masks melding into the blackness. They didn’t carry weapons. They didn’t need them.

Waiting until they were almost upon her, she hit the ground, rolled onto her back, emptying a clip into their masks. They flew backwards, their heads exploded, the metal shattered, sending shrapnel flying into the flesh of the hapless prisoners.

Janet half stumbled, half crawled over their massive, twitching bodies to the stairs and dragged her exhausted limbs up the steps. They would not stay dead for long, she knew, and she had to get out of there quickly.

Emerging onto the ground level, she squinted through the black haze and ran across the cracked cement parking lot, glancing back furtively at the sprawling shopping center barely visible in the murk. She had shopped there once, and now it was the Malrats headquarters. For the moment she was safe, but the Malrats were probably gearing up for another assault soon. She stared in dismay at the crippled, injured people crawling blindly over the bomb ravaged, smoldering ground. Plumes of black smoke hung overhead obscuring the sun, the scorched rubble on the ground burned her bare feet.

She stopped short at the border of the parking lot to catch her breath. Wiping soot from her eyes, she tensed and lifted the gun at the figure running towards her, then let out a sigh of relief. It was Susan, her best friend. Her long, curly brown hair was matted and filthy, her arms covered with scabs and fresh cuts. The hot pink Prada suit she wore was mangled and stained with blackened blood and dirt. Janet looked down at her own tattered black Versace cocktail dress. Her once magnificent blonde hair now hung in clumps around her face, her split fingernails still showed chipped remnants of Lancome fire engine red polish.

“Susan, where have you been? I thought they’d gotten you. I went down to look for you but …”

Susan cut her off. “My parents were taken by the Malrats two days ago.”

“Oh god, Susan. Did you find them?”

“No. I don’t know where they are. They’re probably dead by now. I was almost killed myself.”

“Yeah, me too. But I managed to take out two of them.”

They fell silent. It was the same conversation they had had for the past two weeks, and the futility struck Janet with full force.

“Susan, what’s happening to us? When is this going to end? I’m so tired of running and hiding. There’s just no getting away from them.”

She could not remember the last time she had slept. She had spent the past two weeks rescuing various relatives from the deep depths of the parking garage, the dungeon of the Malrats. Just two weeks ago she had attended a birthday dance for the Mayor’s twenty-year-old son in the Weslyn Hotel that adjoined the multi-leveled mall.

Susan was staring out beyond the perimeter of the lot to the unknown territories. The maze of scorched trees with their tangled canopies of thorny vines shrouded the horizon. “I wish we could just leave here. It looks so simple, doesn’t it?”

Janet followed her gaze. “Yeah. But we can’t. It would find us, no matter where we went.” She didn’t know what it was exactly. She had never seen it, but she felt its presence always. Something so terrible and inhuman, constantly lurking in the back of her mind. She glanced over at the ruins of the hotel and shuddered. There. It was there, emanating in waves, caressing her mind and heart with its overwhelming terror. In the air itself, even, a heavy weight on the soul. No, they would never leave here.

Janet broke down finally, for the first time since she’d come here, and the tears flowed through the soot on her face. Susan laid a comforting hand on her arm but said nothing. Her face, a mask of dread, needed no words.

“Do you want to know?”

Janet jerked her head up at the soft, soothing voice. A man, short, compact and elegant stood just beyond the border. His face, somber and reposed, looked a lot like Anthony Hopkins. It was a face she could trust.

Janet choked on a sob. “Yes. Please. Please tell us.”

Susan nodded slowly in agreement.

“Come. Be silent. You must not be seen nor heard.” He beckoned them to the edge.

Janet took a step forward warily then stopped short. “Where are we going?”

“Out there.” He waved his arm across the forbidden territory.

Susan finally found her voice. “But how? We can’t leave here.”

“Just for a while. It will not see.” He came forward and lifted his arms over their heads, drawing them over like wings, shrouding them in invisibility.

And they ran alongside him, out of the war zone, into the unknown. They picked up speed, the ground whizzed by under them, the barbwire and thorns overhead blurred.

After a while, the trees thinned, clearing finally, and a river came into view.

Slowing down to a walk, Janet looked down the muddy ravine. The river was wide, at least a half mile across, its still waters the color of milk chocolate. But it was the most beautiful sight she had beheld in a long time and she gazed longingly into the dense, thick brown liquid.

She looked ahead in the dim, gray light. All she could see was the river, nothing else, and it seemed to flow forever into the distance. The silky clay ground was damp, and closing her eyes, she dug her toes deep within its coolness, soothing her scorched soles.

She opened her eyes to remark on how wonderful it felt, but Anthony and Susan were gone. Unable to resist, she slid down the embankment to the edge of the lapping shore. It seemed ages since she had seen water, and she waded out until she was knee deep.

Squatting down, she ran her hands through the murk, then submerged completely, letting the water lift away the sticky black film that covered her body. And she saw it, and it came back to her. The deep, indented scarred hole in her chest. She remembered that night after the dance, the gunshots in the parking lot, then the explosion, and knew now why she was here. Her stomach lurched at the knowledge, she shut her eyes tight against the revelation, then ecstasy consumed her and her heart lifted.

Reluctant to leave the soothing moisture, she waded out of the water and climbed up to the bank. There was something she had to do, and she knew she could do it now. A grin split her face, and she walked along the rising embankment until the river dropped away far below.

Shutting her eyes, she lifted her arms up over her head, fingers pointed to the sky, and leapt from the cliff in a perfect swan dive. Her body arced and as the river rushed up to meet her, the air lifted her and stopped her fall. She was floating, the laughter escaped her, the tears fell once again, but they were tears of joy.

She felt a touch on her hand and opened her eyes. Susan, her arms outstretched, her face beaming, beside her. Janet smiled at her, then turned her head towards the black pall in the distance. “We have to go back now, Susan.”

“Yes, I know.”

But the ecstasy remained. They flew towards the dark city, knowing now what it was that kept them there.

Hell. Yes, this was their hell, they were dead, and would spend an eternity hiding, running in fear, in constant warfare against the Malrats, all the while watched over by the unseen terror.

But it doesn’t matter anymore, she thought. She was immortal, she would live forever, would never, ever die, and she could fly. And that’s pretty cool.

About Red Room Press

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Table of Contents

- BRUTAL ASSAULT

- Garry Bushell

- THE COWBIRD’S NEST

- Clinton A. Harris

- MADONNA OF THE BLACK MOUNTAIN

- Tessa Johnstone

- STRIPTEASE ON MOUNT RUSHMORE

- Ed Lynskey

- MYSTERIO AND GALATEA

- Michael A. Kechula

- HARRY

- Doug Murano

- IN YOUR WARM AND DARKENED GRAVE

- Frank Zafiro

- GIRL IN THE TUB

- Cameron L. Mitchell

- FRAZZLED

- J.R.

- THE GIFT OF THE BONEFLOWER

- D. Alexander Ward

- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7

- AS CLOSE AS IT GETS

- Karina Berg Johansson

- GOOD BOYS

- Shaun Ryan

- SILENCE

- Christopher Allan Death

- VISITING HOUR

- Michael Pelc

- THE DEATH OF LESTER WILLIAMS

- Ty Johnston

- LA NUIT DU LA CHAT NOIR

- Nora B. Peevy

- WHITE

- David Richards

- STREET WALKING

- Jason Jeffery

- WILL’S LITTLE BLACK FLOWER

- Brent Meske

- Right Now
- Two Minutes Earlier
- A Week Ago
- Seventeen Days Ago
- Now

- MALRATS

- Walter Payne

- About Red Room Press