Low Flying Objects

I'm writing a book! I'll tell you all about it here. If I ever get published, this page might get famous! By the way, my personal blog is at http://hunter-s-kittenn.tumblr.com if you're interested.

[hunterskittennwrites]

Orientation

I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t even know where I am. It’s dark, an almost charcoal gray, and I’m floating. In the distance – if there even is one – it looks like clouds, but they’re roiling and moving fast. Not like clouds back home.

Back home.

I don’t feel pain at all. Back home, my every moment was pain. It defined who I was, how I was, it informed every word out of my mouth, every breath. I was pain personified, it felt like.

I had been lying in a bed, with tubes going into one part of me and other tubes coming out of another part. It was not quite a hospital bed. I’d been moved from my room, the room I’d occupied for the past several weeks, to this room. My hospital room had white walls and was very utilitarian. My bed was a glorified gurney, on wheels, with retractable rails on either side of me to keep me from rolling over and falling out. But even in the new room, with dark wood and comforting colors, a hospice room, I had tubes in me. When I was awake, which toward the end wasn’t all that often, I’d watch whatever was on television. It was a private room, so the television in front of me was constantly playing westerns and cop movies, all day and night. I would have complained, had I cared.

I wasn’t caring about much around then.

I had vague memories of visitors: friends, family. I could barely see them. My eyes were failing me, just like everything else was. I could barely hear what they said. Some were cheerful, but I could tell it was forced. Those rare moments when I could see anyone clearly, I could see despair and defeat in their eyes. They knew, as I did, where this was going to end, but they kept themselves in denial.

The living love to deny and fight death. To keep it at bay for as long as they can. They know, intellectually, that everything and everyone dies, but emotionally and spiritually, they can’t face the concept. Death is too big. Too final. The be-all and literal end-all of existence, and they’re alive and in denial of the fact that one day, they won’t be. They try to reassure themselves that there is something else – a life after death – and tell themselves that if they are good people, they’ll meet Jesus in Heaven; or reincarnate into another life, or something equally comforting to try to deal with the concept of no longer being there, among the living, among friends and family. In their heart of hearts, they cannot believe that death is the end of all they are, all they would be, all they have been. They try to establish legacies, things to keep them alive in the memories of others, whether they be loved ones or, more ambitiously, history itself.

But it’s denial all the same. And the worst form of denial is trying to keep alive someone who should die. I was dying, but instead of going in peace, with as little pain as possible, they kept prolonging my life, in the vain hope that I’d “come out of it”, or that some sort of miracle would happen, and all the cancer would just disappear, like a collective bad dream gone away when they woke up.

If it were that simple, cancer would be like a bad case of the flu, and not the debilitating, degrading journey of pain and desiccation it is now. It’s not. It’s most definitely not.

Cancer is pain, and withering and losing everything you are, bit by bit, as your body shuts down little by little to conserve energy to keep the rest of it going. Your fingers and toes, then your forearms and legs, your extremities just stop working, the deadening moving inward until all that’s left to function is the core and the brain. Your body becomes smaller in that all the parts you ever used to write or walk, will no longer be of use. And one day, the core ceases to function. The heart is finally worked harder than it can manage, and the line on the screen goes flat.

And there is nothing anyone can do about it, then, but deal with it. Cry, stand strong for others, feel numb, whatever. And then readings of last wills and testaments, distribution of accumulated money and possessions, and platitudes about keeping you alive in memory.

And you realize, when it’s all said and done, that it’s all rather petty and small, and doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things, if there is one. That, once you’re gone, possessions and any kind of wealth mean nothing. All you have is yourself.

All you have is yourself, floating amidst a charcoal gray eye of some otherworldly storm, not knowing where the hell you are. But no longer feeling pain, no longer unable to move your limbs. As if you are alive again, but knowing in the deep pit of your heart that—in this place—you  are definitely not alive in the way you’ve always known and experienced.

Jesus isn’t around. Mohammed isn’t here. Neither is Satan. Or a representative of any other religion that promised some kind of afterlife or some other reward for dying. No golden kingdom, about 72 virgins less than what was promised.

Nothing. Nothing but me and this cloud.

So when the voice speaks up behind me, I’m caught completely by surprise.

“Hey,” she says – because the voice is female. “Don’t worry. Everyone goes through it. You die, then you end up here, and you’re confused and all those thoughts go through your head. Happened to me, too. It’s normal.”

“Normal,” I say, looking out into the 360 degree cloudscape around us, then at my new companion. She’s young, about in her twenties. She has short blonde hair and a pale complexion, the kind that is more akin to staying indoors than any kind of genetic trait. She has blue eyes in a kind, smiling face. For some reason, she’s wearing a sundress under a motorcycle jacket – the kind with the zippers on the sleeves and epaulets, that all the punks and tough kids wear – and a pair of combat boots. A rather odd combination for an angel, if that’s who I’m dealing with.

I finally say: “This isn’t normal by any stretch of the imagination, um…”

“Nikki,” she says, helpfully, still smiling.

“Nikki. I know I’m dead, because my previous state of being was pretty damn painful, and now I feel fine, if a little disoriented. And I’m floating in… well, some place.”

“And you’re waiting, um…”

“Doug.”

“Doug. You’re waiting for what’s next.”

I’m still a little confused. Should I be doing something, or saying something? Some kind of code phrase or secret handshake?

“So what’s next?” I finally ask.

She smiles. “That’s the hard part. What’s next is up to you.”

“Is this Purgatory?”

The look on her sweet earth-angel face knits a brow in confusion. “Purga… oh, no. Where we are isn’t… well…” She’s a bit flustered now, caught off guard. “Unless you’re Catholic. Or were. Then you can have Purgatory if that’s what you need to help you sort things out.” She smiles again, in relief that she was able to push out an understandable answer.

“So we’re not in Purgatory?”

“Not unless you want to be.” She looks into my eyes, her smile momentarily gone, replaced by a look of curiosity. “Where do you want to be, if you don’t mind my asking?”

I think for a moment, but come up blank. Despite my upbringing and Bible studies at church, I never really believed in Heaven, Hell, Purgatory or any other place. It was a concept too abstract for me. I was told to have faith it was there and would be waiting for me if I did nothing but good for my fellow man, didn’t think sinful thoughts and didn’t break any of the Commandments. But where others could just make themselves believe, through faith, that it was there, where they could imagine how it would look and who would be there, some of them almost down to the cubic cubit, my mind was too pedestrian or too literal to picture it the way they always did. It’s now that I realize that I have no idea what Heaven is supposed to look like.

And I sincerely don’t want to think about Hell right now. What if that is a place I would end up? Not for me. I don’t think I sinned enough to be sent there, despite fire-and-brimstone sermons to the contrary. And I don’t want that popping into my head as someplace I would want to go.

The afterlives of the other major religions aren’t helpful to me, either. I know even less about them than I do the one I grew up in. I have no idea what they’re supposed to look like. And, like I said, there are no 72 virgins waiting for me here.

“I am dead, right? This isn’t some last gasp fever dream before I really do die?”

“Like a doornail,” she says, her smile returning. “And yeah, being dead is nothing like you expected it to be. Nobody is prepared for it. It’s like being in a womb, spending nine months – your whole life! – getting to know your world and surroundings, and then you’re yanked out, your cord – the last link to the world you knew – is cut, and you’re in a big, brand-new place that you can’t make any sense of. Ever. There are certified geniuses up here that slap their heads in disgust when they realize just how much of the world escaped their understanding while they were in it. They feel as dumb as a kid caught misspelling a word. We try to assure them that nobody truly knows the world, but they aren’t comforted by that, at least for a while they’re not. But they come around.

“But this new world… you’re pulled into a blinding light, someone slaps your ass to make sure you’re alive, and you spend your whole life getting to know your world and surroundings and try to figure out your place in it, and then you’re yanked out again. And you’re in a bigger, stranger place than you could imagine, that you can’t make any sense of.

“Trust me when I say that everybody goes through it. Even those smug bastards who think they know the Mind of God or whatever. They get taken down a couple of pegs when they realize that Heaven isn’t just waiting for them with open arms. They have to go through this, like you. I call it ‘orientation’.” She gives me another sly smile. “And I think it’s a very apt word for this.”

“You’re right. I do feel disoriented. And I could use some” and here I smile myself, “orientation. So what do we do? And why are you here? I don’t think I ever met you in real… um… before.”

“We’ve met. Sort of. You were then when I died. You were one of the bystanders. It was completely random. He was lashing out.” She stops, looking down at her feet with the combat boots that aren’t touching anything resembling ground. “He’s okay, now. He thought he had a handle on things before he died, too. Another head-slapper. I wouldn’t be surprised if he approaches you to ask for forgiveness, like he did with me and a friend of mine. And like I told my friend, you’re under no obligation to forgive. Just let your head and heart tell you what you should do, and do it. Whatever it is.

“Sorry,” she says. “I can get kinda blabbermouthy sometimes.”

I shrug. “It helps. I’m starting to have an understanding of what this all is,” I say, gesturing around us. “So do I just float here, or what?”

“If you want. Personally, I’d prefer some solid ground to walk on. I like walking. I never realized how much I liked walking until I got here. Would you mind?”

“No, not at all,” I reply. “Maybe it’ll help with my orientation.”

She gives me another sly smile. “No flies on you.”

And without asking permission, the thought flies into my head about whether people here—wherever here is—hook up, or date, or whatever. Because she’s pretty, and something I suddenly feel is a need for companionship. The kind of love I used to know, before…

Before.

Before I wasn’t capable of feeling anything but blinding, senses-blocking pain. I knew all sorts of love: romantic, platonic, brotherly, carnal. I surprise myself by realizing that I had quite a run of lovers throughout my life. Some of them didn’t turn out to be what I wanted; some did, but none of them resulted in any kind of lasting relationship. Seeing it now, though, the good and the bad of it balance each other out. You could ignore the bad and concentrate on the good, because here, the memory is as fresh as the moment it happened.

“Getting introspective on me, Doug?”

“A little. I was thinking about love. I feel like those scientists that slap their heads when they figure out they never had anything figured out. I thought I knew love. Turns out, I was just skimming the surface of it.”

“Yeah,” she answered. “They shouldn’t call it ‘falling in love’, they should call it ‘falling on love’. That seems shallow, but it’s closer to the truth than what everybody believes.

“And if you want to hook up, just say so. Don’t let your face do the talking for you.”

This startles me. I’ve never liked having my emotions or thoughts so nakedly displayed on my face.

I decide to just ask. “Would you be interested, then?”

“Believe it or not, that’s a bigger question than you realize,” she responds, looking me squarely in the eye, making me feel, for the first time since I arrived here, a bit confused and uncomfortable. “I mean, sure, simple sex is pretty straightforward. But does it, will it satisfy your soul? Or would it be a diversion from what you want or need to do? Or what I want or need to do? And if we did, would either one of us want to stay together? It can complicate things, especially if it interferes with our final decisions and journeys. What if you wanted to move on, like my friend did, and I was happy here? What if it was the other way around? We don’t come here to hurt people. Whatever damage was inflicted on our souls before, being here is meant to heal us. Heartbreak doesn’t have a place here. I’m not trying to discourage you, just telling you there’s more to it than what you think. Just like everything else here.”

“Your friend,” I say, forcing myself to get the words out. She’s right. It’s a more sensitive topic than I thought. I speak as carefully as I can. “Did you…?”

“We kissed. I knew he was going away, and we were close, so it was appropriate and I wanted to and I wanted one last thing to remember him by.” Her hand moves to her lips, and she touches them with her fingers before she realizes I’m watching.

I feel the need to apologize, and I do.

She then does something I don’t expect: she takes my hand, smiles and we begin walking. “No big. There aren’t any secrets here. It’s just still a rather intense feeling, you know?”

I don’t, but I pretend I do. She probably sees that on my face, too. But I’m beginning to care less about that. Maybe I’m starting to get used to this place.

“I love this place,” she says. And somehow, now we’re on a path in a forest, walking among fallen yellow, orange and red leaves, a cool breeze blowing up from the hillside next to us and the sun shining through the leaves that are clinging to the branches. “I took him—my friend—here, just before he left. Then he took me to his favorite spot. That’s where we said goodbye. And I was the one who asked him to kiss me, if that’s important. I loved him and he was a good friend. And I knew, even here, I’d never see him again.”

“I didn’t mean to intrude on a personal moment, Nikki.” I realize this is the first time I’ve said her name. It fits. She looks and dresses and acts like a Nikki.

“It is personal. But I wouldn’t have shared it with you if it was private. Big difference.”

She’s still holding my hand, the way you would a friend. We walk slowly through the forest. Why not? It’s not like we’re in a hurry here.

“This is where Dave showed up. The guy you saw kill me. He had already asked my forgiveness, and when Cal—my friend—showed up, this is where they met.”

I look around, half expecting to see him appear from behind a stand of trees. As my eyes scan over Nikki’s shoulder, I see her grab a falling leaf in midair and put it in her hair behind her ear. It seems like a practiced motion. “He’s not coming right now. He’s got a full plate, but he’ll get to you.”

“So… why are you here?” I ask. “Do you have plans? Someplace you want to go?”

“Good question. I was thinking of reincarnating. Did you know you could do that from here? You could be anyone, at any time. I told my friend kind of offhandedly that I might go back as his ex-girlfriend, but he didn’t catch it. He probably had a lot to take in, so it was a wasted joke. You wanna hear something weird? His ex-girlfriend is dating my boyfriend now. Cal put them together before he went on a little walkabout. I thought it was really nice of him.”

“So now?”

“Not so sure at this point, but I’ve got all the time in the multiverse to figure it out.”

”I suppose you do.”

We walk a little further, still holding hands. I don’t know why she took my hand. She said we met on the day she was killed, but we didn’t really meet. I was just there. Wrong place, wrong time. Doubly wrong for her. I got to go the long way, dying from cancer a few years later, during all the craziness the world was going through. If anyone were to greet me here, I could think of one of dozens of people who’d be more “qualified”, in that they’re dead and I actually knew them by name. I wonder if I’ll meet any of them.

“So…” I begin, feeling a little more confident in my surroundings. “Why you? Why are you my heavenly Walmart greeter?” I can’t help it, the joke comes out before I can censor myself, and I can’t stop the smile.

She shrugs. “Dunno. It felt right. You were pretty badly damaged, psychically. Maybe I was drawn to that. I seem to meet a lot of people who need a little extra help getting on an even keel once they’re here. Maybe it’s my job for awhile.”

“Is it something you can quit? You seem to me to be destined for something else.”

“Like what?” It doesn’t come out as a challenge; it’s a genuine question, borne of curiosity.

“Dunno,” I say, echoing her sentiment. “It just feels that way to me. There’s something about you that makes me think that there’s a bigger thing you’re meant to do. No idea what it could be, but it’s different than being a welcome committee.”

She stops and stares blindly at the ground ahead of us. Her hand squeezes mine for a second, like an impulse. I’m willing to bet she doesn’t even realize she’s done it. We stand there for a few moments, and I look around. My eyes suddenly become riveted by a couple having a picnic right in front of us. But they look strange. Translucent. Like they’re almost not there.

Nikki looks up, sees them and smiles. They don’t react at all. They don’t see us at all. They sit and enjoy their picnic, and as we watch, they start getting intimate. I pull Nikki away and we change direction in our walk.

“What are you–?”

“You didn’t see that?” I ask a little more harshly than intended. “Those people were about to… um… hook up. I’m not being a prude, Nikki. I just didn’t want to disturb their privacy.”

For the first time, she actually laughs. She bends down for a second, and as her head bows past me, I smell the scent of lavender. She puts her hand on my arm and composes herself, but the mischievous smile never leaves her face. She lets go of my hand and runs straight toward them.

And stands right over them—or should I say in them, like she waded in and is stuck there—sticks her thumbs in her ears, waves her fingers and gives me a raspberry.

The naked lovers pay no mind. They’re still translucent, even up close. I had thought it was a trick of the light, but it’s not. Especially with Nikki standing with her feet and legs inside and through their thrusting bodies.

“I don’t get it. Who are these people? What are they doing—I mean, I know what they’re doing. Why are they see-through? What’s going on?”

Nikki steps through them, as if they’re air, looks down appreciatively for a moment. “Nice package, dude!” Then she continues on until we stand together again.

“Those are the living. These folks are having a good time, so it seems a bad idea to manifest in any way and distract them. Most times they’re solid. Well, opaque, anyway. And we can walk among them without being seen. One of the reasons I like this park is that it was one of my favorite places when I was alive.” She sighs, gives the place a good look around, pointedly ignoring the young lovers, who are now lying sweaty on their blanket, looking sated and gazing into each other’s eyes. “Lotta good memories here, Doug. You hang around our little corner of eternity long enough, you might get an urge to visit a spot you like every now and then. And unless you’re intent on making a nuisance of yourself, they won’t see you.

“But please don’t try to communicate with them. That Ouija shit won’t fly. I only got special dispensation with Cal because… well, he was a special case. But don’t rock the boat, is what I’m saying.”

I nod, my mind filing this away. “Got it. But you never answered my question.”

“You mean ‘what are you going to do with the rest of your death’?”

“Yeah,” I say. I notice that this time, I’ve taken her hand, and she is letting me lead our walk now. For my part, I’m just wandering, taking whatever direction feels right.

Which, in a way, I guess is the point.

“I dunno,” she says again. “You say I’m meant for something bigger, by which you seem to mean more important. What if this—what I’m doing now—is the most important thing to be done? Maybe being the Walmart greeter to eternity is the highest calling.”

I stop now. A leaf falls, a beautiful red maple. I snatch it out of midair and place it in her hair, on the opposite side of the leaf she has already. She doesn’t shy away or seem to mind. She actually smiles at me. A sweet smile. One that could melt a guy’s heart.

I wish I’d known her in life. I don’t know how we would have met, but I wish we had. I’m glad we have now, but in life, with our blunted senses and limited knowledge of the world, it might have been a fun challenge, getting to know her.

And that is when I realize that she’s right. She’s the escort. The companion to guide you to your eternal destiny, whether it be reincarnation, oblivion, or something else. The term “Walmart greeter” sounds condescending now, although she doesn’t seem to mind it.

There may be thousands of her, doing the same thing she’s doing with me: walking in an autumn forest, pulling leaves from the air and sticking them in their hair. Talking, holding hands, waiting, helping to decide.

There may be millions. All holding hands, snatching leaves, reassuring fresh souls that death isn’t the end, unless it’s the end of pain and suffering. That death is only the beginning of a journey that has more in common with one of those choose-your-own-adventure books than just random chance and any effort to avoid it or work around it.

If there’s a god, I might be standing next to her, holding her hand, right now.

“No,” she says. “I appreciate the compliment. But I’m not a god. I’m just Nikki. I’m just a dead girl with exquisite taste in clothes and companions. God doesn’t get shot in the head and die in front of her friends. God doesn’t drive a friend to murderous rage from grief, at least, not a loving god. God doesn’t… fuck… Doug, a god doesn’t visit the guy to try to soothe his soul and help him toward his destiny. God doesn’t act like a giggly schoolgirl with a crush on a guy she didn’t realize she had a crush on.

“I’m not a god. I’m just me. I hope that’s enough for you.” She faces me, puts her free hand on my cheek. I feel the contact of flesh, but neither warmth nor cold. “I do thank you for thinking so highly of me, though.”

We’re standing so close. She doesn’t remove her hand from my cheek. She strokes it softly with her thumb, almost absently.

“So what now?” I ask. “Do you have any idea where I go from here? Do I stay with you, or do I just walk off into the sunset and whatever happens, happens?”

“Not for me to say, Doug. I kinda walk people through the first stage of being dead. Some need more time than others, and I help them through it. Like now.”

“Yeah,” I reply. “I see now. That’s actually a damned important job. I don’t envy you. I couldn’t do it.”

She removes her hand, clutches the sides of her dress and curtsies. “Again, you flatter me, sir. But I have a feeling it’s time for us to part now. I don’t know where you’re going to end up, but I can tell you that there’s nothing to fear and nothing to worry about. That’s all in the past. That’s what living folks do. Unfortunately.”

I’m beginning to get the same feeling. She’s a sweet girl, with a glow all her own that shines through her eyes and hair and skin. She has a kind, friendly face. She has just that little bit of irreverence and fun that puts people at ease. Again, I find myself wishing I’d met her in life, if only to see if that was how she was when among the living.

On impulse, if there is such a thing here, I ask: “May I kiss you? I have a feeling I won’t be seeing you again, and I enjoyed being here with you.”

She smiles, stands up on her tiptoes and braces herself with her hands on my chest. “Sure thing. No tongue, though.”

I find myself laughing for the first time since I got here. For the first time since I heard I had stage 4, inoperable cancer. “No tongue, I promise.”

She raises up, I lean down. Our lips meet in a small peck. It’s enough. It’s perfect.

“I’ll be seeing you, Doug,” she says as we part ways.

“No, you won’t,” I say back. “You said this was pretty much it.”

“Oh, did I?’

She gives me another mischievous smile, turns and skips away like a little girl. She takes the forest with her.

For a few moments, I stand in that gray, cloudy expanse I arrived in. The only difference now is that I’m standing, not floating. I feel more in control of myself and my understanding of eternity. I imagine the tree-lined, aged, broken sidewalk of my home. The way the sun dapples between the late spring leaves. The scent of roses from the next door neighbor’s bush. The sound of traffic a block away from this idyllic street. I walk to the ice cream shop I’d always loved as long as I’d lived there. Before I got sick and bought my ticket here.

There is the brief scent of lavender, and the hint of a smile in my mind.

I remake the world in my image.

[hunterskittennwrites]

3 AM – BLACKSTAR FALLING

Dad had been up watching the news, like he usually did, and I was lying in bed, listening, because I couldn’t sleep, because it was Friday. Just as the news show was about to wrap up, they got interrupted by a Special Report. Those always sounded serious, and if Dina were around when someone said “this is a Special Report”, she’d start crying, because she knew something bad was probably going to happen. She got that way after the tornadoes from a couple of years ago.

But Dad watched the Special Report, which was saying something about things dropping out of the sky and something else about injuries and deaths. And the first thing I thought of, of course, was meteors, like in that movie with those guys who worked on an oil rig but went into space to save everybody.

It wasn’t meteors. The news was saying that whatever was dropping out of the sky wasn’t coming from space.

From what I could hear, it sounded like whatever they were, they were dropping out of holes in the sky. People were saying that the holes would open up, blocking the stars –or the sun, in the places where it was still daytime – and something would drop out that looked like some kind of animal, and it would start running toward people.

What Dad and I heard next made him get up and go to his gun safe. He kept the key on his keychain, along with the house keys and his car keys, mainly because even though he trained both me and Dina on guns, he didn’t want us getting into them when he was out of the house. So he kept them locked up. But now he was opening it up, and after a few seconds, it sounded like he was loading one of them.

After that, my door opened and he could tell I was already awake, and he told me to go wake up Dina and go to the basement and stay there. He said to go to the furthest corner and make sure all the lights were off down there. I reminded him that Dina was scared of the dark and would start crying.

He told me to do whatever I had to do to make her not cry. He said we had to be absolutely silent.

That was when I got scared. Before I went to get Dina, I grabbed my little radio and earbuds and stuck them in my pocket. For some reason, I grabbed my pillow and blanket, too, then went to Dina’s room to wake her up. She whined and complained and then got mad that it was me waking her up, and I told her she had to be really quiet, and that we had to go downstairs. I didn’t know how to tell her this, so I said it flat out that Dad told me to make sure all of the lights were out down there.

“But it’ll be dark!” she whispered. “I don’t like the dark!”

“Dad said,” I replied. And then I said something to her that I almost never did, because big brothers never say this to little sisters: “Please.”

That stopped her in her tracks. She saw that I had my pillow and blanket with me, even though I had no idea why I grabbed them, and pulled hers off the bed.

Dad had turned off the TV and all of the lights except the switch at the top of the basement stairs, so we had a little to see where we were going.

“Kids, be as quiet as you can,” came his voice from the front door. “Go downstairs, turn off all the lights and… okay, you got your blankets. Put your blankets over you. Go.”

I held my pillow and blanket under my right arm, and took Dina’s hand in my left, and led her to the top of the basement stairs. The switch at the top was the only one for the basement lights, but we could pull on the chains for the individual bulbs to turn them off. I told Dina to go to the back corner and gave her my pillow and blanket. “Set my blanket on the floor and you can sit on my pillow. Pull your blanket up over your head.”

“What about my pillow?” she asked. She was too scared to whine.

“I don’t know. Think of something. No, wait. Cover your face with it so you can’t see, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, and did what I told her.

Starting from the steps, I went to each light and pulled on the chain to turn it off. The last one was above the corner area where Dina was sitting, covered up and blinded by her pillow. I turned off the light and felt my way to the wall, then felt my blanket under my feet and sat down.

Dina began to cry. It wasn’t her usual Grand Opera wailing that we were all used to, but something quiet, and I almost couldn’t hear it. I pulled her to me and wrapped my arms around her, rocking her a little bit. I didn’t know what to say to her. I didn’t think things were all right, and I didn’t think she would buy it if I said that to her, so I stayed quiet. After a couple of minutes, she stopped crying and we sat in the dark, listening.

I kept hearing a weird sound, like >pum!<, every few minutes, and then I’d hear a commotion somewhere outside. Sometimes I’d hear a scream. Dina started her quiet crying again, and I told her to put her pillow over her face until she felt like not crying. I told her I wasn’t being mean, just trying to make sure we were quiet, and kept my arm around her to let her know I wasn’t being a jerk about it.

I remembered my radio. Maybe there was something on the radio I could hear that would explain what was going on. Dad had made us come down here without telling us anything. Whatever it was, it scared him. It scared him so bad he didn’t want to tell us what it was.

“I’m going to take my arm back and turn on the radio, okay?” I whispered. “I’ll listen to one earbud and you can listen to the other one, if you want.”

She shook her head. “No. I don’t want to listen.”

I put the cord in the headphone jack, put in one earbud and turned on the radio. One of the things I would do in bed, if I couldn’t sleep sometimes, was put on my radio to one of the music stations, and let it play until I fell asleep. I bought it with my allowance, along with batteries. It was probably one of the best things I’d used that money for, besides comic books.

All I could hear was static. I’d turned to all the stations on the dial, both AM and FM, and aside from some stuff that sounded like somebody talking, but too far away to make out, except something that sounded like “faces like black stars”, and some beeping like a telegraph, there wasn’t anything on.

And that’s when I got really scared.

I turned off the radio and took out my earbud and set it all down on the floor next to me, as quietly as I could.

As soon as I did, we heard a noise upstairs that sounded like someone was trying to open the front door with one of those battering rams the cops use on TV. I didn’t hear Dad say anything. He was probably staying quiet, too. But then I heard his shotgun go off, and then something that sounded like >zassh!<, and then it got real quiet again.

Dina pulled her pillow over her face again and whined. “I’ve gotta go to the bathroom!” she whispered to me. “I’ve gotta pee.”

As quietly as I could, I got right up to her ear and said, “you’re gonna have to pee right here. Just pee. I won’t laugh.”

“No, I gotta pee!” she said, her whisper a little louder. I looked up, suddenly. I don’t know why. But at the same time I did, I heard what sounded like footsteps moving around upstairs. They sounded like dog claws clicking around up there. 

“I’ll just go to the other corner, where the hole is, and pee over there. I’ll be real quiet!” She meant the place where the sump pump was, on the opposite end of the basement.

“No!” I said, as decisively yet quietly as I could. “It’s dark! You’re scared of the dark, remember?”

“I can see a little,” she said.

She started to get up. For a second, I debated whether to grab her and pull her back down or just let her go and trust that she wouldn’t make any noise, or bump into anything. I decided to let her go, because she might not be so quiet if I pulled her back down.

“All right, just be really, really quiet, okay?”

“I will,” she whispered.

I was surprised to hear her not make a sound, until I heard her peeing in the hole across the basement. I was still listening hard, because the clicking sounds upstairs hadn’t gone away.

I turned on the radio and turned the volume all the way down, and held it up so that the dial would tell her where to walk to get back to me. I could hear her bare feet scooting forward, one then the other, until her toe hit something hard.

“Ow!” she said, angry and painfully. But then her breath seized up in her throat. “Oh, no…” she said.

The clicking sounds came faster, toward the basement door. I pulled my blanket up off the floor and all the way up to my face. “Hurry!” I whispered as loudly as I thought I could. “Get over here!”

“I can’t see! Where’s your radio?” she whined, about an inch from crying again.

“Just come to where you can hear me! Hurry!”

There was the sound of a battering ram against the basement door. It filled the room.

“Get over here now!”

“I can’t!” she said. “I can’t…”

The door broke and fell down the steps. I could see a little light from upstairs and saw that the door had been broken in two. Dina froze in place. The clicking sounds came down the steps quietly, as if who or whatever it was was listening as well. It came down to the floor, and the clicking sounds changed the way footsteps change from when walking on wood to walking on concrete.

I could hear Dina breathing fast and heavy. There was nothing I could do except pray that whatever it was that came downstairs – the blackstar thing, maybe, that the radio said – wouldn’t hear her and decide that maybe this room was empty, and would leave.

I heard the sound of something brushing against something, and then Dina’s ear-piercing scream echoed against the bare walls of the basement. And then the clicking jumped a few feet away, and there was a bright light, and that >zassh!< sound, and I saw two things.

One was the blackstar. And I could see why someone had called them that. It had a body kind of like a velociraptor, with smooth, hard reptile skin, and it carried in its claws some kind of thing that was still glowing an orange color on the front end, where the bright flash had come from. Its face wasn’t a face at all. Not like I’ve ever seen. It had five stalks, and each stalk had a blue circle, like a lens, that was a deep blue, and the stalks would move independently of each other, or all focus together on one point. And when the thing it held flashed, I could see that in the center of its face was what looked like a big, leathery black star.

The other thing I saw was a glowing pool of something that used to be my sister, slowly darkening, until I couldn’t see anything anymore.

I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe.

It killed her. It killed Dina.

I wanted to shrink into the wall and die. I didn’t do anything to stop it. I could have been a hero and make it shoot me, but I didn’t.

I sat completely still, in the dark, imagining more than actually seeing the eye stalks moving around, looking for another sign of life. I didn’t breathe. I was starting to get light headed.

But then the clicking moved away, toward the stairs, then up, and then above me, in the house. After a minute or two, I couldn’t hear them at all.

Then I let my breath out, and started crying. “I’m sorry, Dina!” I whispered. “I’m sorry!”

I listened again, stretching my ears to hear the smallest sound I could, but it was dead silent. I slowly got up, and walked, very slowly, on tiptoe, toward the basement steps, trying to go wide of what was left of Dina.

I said a word that I heard Dad say a few times, before he’d cover his mouth and tell us not to say that word. I said it twice.

“Fuckers. You fuckers.”

I stepped up as quietly as I could to the door to the kitchen, still listening, still hearing nothing. I scooted my feet along the floor instead of stepping, because if I did it really, really slowly, it made almost no noise at all. There was more light from outside coming in through the kitchen window, so I could see a little better. The blackstars had left everything alone, except, I found, the front door. They had broken it down just like they broke down the door to the basement.

And there was a small pile of ash next to the door way, with Dad’s shotgun lying next to it.

I said the word again.

I went to the gun safe, which Dad had forgotten to lock, and grabbed his box of shotgun shells. I pulled them all out, one by one, and shoved them into my pockets, all of them, until every pocket in my pants was full of them. I went back to where Dad’s ashes were and picked up his gun.

I took out some of the shells and loaded them. I was glad that Dad had taught me to do this right.

After I was done, I looked down at his ashes and told him I was sorry, but not to worry.

I went outside, and it was quiet, except for screams and sometimes gunshots from far away that were cut off with the >zassh!< sound, and some more of the >pum!< sounds even further off. But near me, I could hear the sounds that all the bugs and frogs make at night when there’s nothing to bother them.

I looked around my neighborhood from my front yard. There were cars on the road at weird angles, and doors opened or broken down, broken windows in houses, some of which still had their porch lights on.

Out of nowhere, I could feel something electric, which made all of my hair stand on end, even on my head. I heard a combination of sparks going off and something like a wind from far away. It was coming from above me. I looked up, and saw something round, blocking the stars and part of the moon.

It was right above me.

I ran to the bushes in front of the house, that Dad was so proud of keeping in perfect condition. He would spend an hour on them sometimes during the weekends. They were tall, and the lower branches reached almost all the way down to the ground. I used to hide in them whenever I found one of Dad’s dirty magazines and wanted to look through it to see the naked women.

I dived behind the bush and pressed my back against the wall, with my shotgun in my hands, just as a very loud >PUM!< sounded above my head, and one of the blackstars dropped down in my yard.

Fucker.

It walked around, and there was not clicking sound this time, because it was on the grass of my yard.

My yard!

I gripped the gun tight as it moved toward the house and went inside. I could hear the clicking of its feet for a minute before it faded off.

I very slowly got up from behind the bush and sneaked to the front porch. I should have been running. I should have been running for my life. But everyone else had done that. And they were all gone.

I could be all gone in a few minutes. But I had Dad’s shotgun and pockets full of shells. I wanted to let them know something. I wanted those blackstars to know that there was nothing for me to be scared of anymore. There was nothing.

Nothing but one thing.

I got to the porch, and could hear the clicking inside getting closer again. I stood up with my back to the wall, next to the front door, the gun barrel straight up, like I saw them do in the movies.

The clicking got louder, and then the blackstar stepped out on the porch and stopped. I held my breath. Not yet. Not until I’m ready for you.

Its eye stalks began to move around, and I did not move at all. I stared into the eyestalk that looked at me and saw the darkest blue I’d ever seen. I blinked then.

And it turned to face me, raising the gun, or whatever it was, to turn me into ash.

I didn’t even know how fast I moved, but I had the shotgun at my shoulder, staring down the sight, straight into the center of the black star in the middle of its face. I didn’t even think as I squeezed the trigger.

The sound was deafening.

The blackstar stood there for a minute, frozen, still holding its weapon to shoot me. But its head was gone.

It rocked back and forth in the strong breeze, then fell sideways on the porch. I covered it with the gun, certain it was some kind of trick, or that the head would grow back, or some other thing I’d seen in a million alien movies.

It didn’t move.

“That was for Dina, you son of a bitch.”

I lowered the gun and went inside and got my backpack. I threw in a couple of pairs of underwear, took out all the shotgun shells from my pockets, then went to Dad’s gun safe and got the rest of the shells. I grabbed a couple of other guns and the rounds for them also, and put them in my pack. I zipped it up and threw it on my back. With the guns and shells and rounds, it was very heavy.

I’d have to get used to it. And I’d have to get used to moving very quietly.

There were a lot of things I’d have to get used to now.

[hunterskittennwrites]

11:59 PM – THE LAST MINUTE

It is one minute before midnight, everywhere…

A would-be witch brings salt into her guest bedroom, shoos out her cats, and gets ready for a lonely ritual which will end surprisingly.

A man gets ready to leave work for the night and go to a quiet, eerily strange 24-hour laundromat to wash his clothes. He reminds himself to get money from the ATM before he gets there.

Big Steve gathers his books for his nightly trek to Dainty’s Donuts. He has, after some persistence from Dainty Dan, accepted Dan’s offer to show him how donuts are made. It is the last time he will ever visit, although he doesn’t know it yet.

A father sits and watches with apprehension as reports come in on television of strange phenomena appearing in the sky. He nervously eyes the safe where he keeps his guns, holding the key in his hand, just in case.

Denny, an embittered, tired man, fresh from work, sits down at a bar and orders a can of Sterling beer, the first of many. He’ll never finish the last one. Maybe.

Someone is tossing and turning in bed, dreaming of his father. His dream is fearful and sad. And true.

A woman and her husband sleep soundly, but will wake in four hours to open their diner for one last day’s work. He dreams of what he will do with his free time. She doesn’t dream at all.

A pair of Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut suit up for their trip into space. They are all in good spirits. The cosmonauts vow to teach the American the Russian language so well that he’ll be able to pass for a native when they get home.

A man, who used to be someone else, who used to be married to someone else, and who used to live somewhere else entirely, falls onto a strange bed, in a strange house, exhausted. He has spent the day trying to learn more about the new, weird world he has been thrust into. He has plugged up his nose with cotton, unable to process all the new scents and odors.

A woman curls up next to her husband in bed. He snores. Rather than being an irritant, it’s a reassuring sound that helps her sleep. The children are sound asleep in their rooms. The apartment is quiet. Tomorrow night, it will be quiet again, save for the sounds of weeping, and sirens in the distance.

To afford to pay off the balance on the birthday gift she got for her brother, a young woman stays up all night online, selling her memories. She forgets that there is a Threshold, and that she is rushing heedlessly into it.

In bed, a boy dreams of a unique form of revenge against those who have continually bullied and wronged him. He has prepared for the following day for months, almost like a fighter training for a bout, or a runner for a marathon. It will be a marathon of sorts. The boy giggles in his sleep.

A woman sits at her dining room table with several notebooks, stickers and labels spread out before her in what she calls an organized mess, preparing for the yard sale she and her husband will be conducting in a few hours. She is especially keen on getting rid of an old, beaten up coffee table.

A man gets a phone call from a friend who makes no-budget videos. His friend tells him that he has a script that the man will be perfect for. The man says he will pick up the script in the morning and do a read-through over coffee that afternoon. His friend sounds more pleased than he should, for some reason.

A man, with a rather boring, run of the mill life, lies in bed asleep, dreaming of places beneath and behind the world he lives in during his waking life. For a brief moment, he has an intense sense of excitement, as if something extraordinary will happen, then falls deeper into slumber.

A woman, in another country on the other side of the ocean, sleeps fitfully. A small voice in her subconscious is screaming that something is terribly wrong. She dreams of babies…

A man sleeps fitfully. He is anxious about an impending first, blind date with someone. He is also anxious because his lifespan is now measured in hours, instead of years. He will not consciously know this until it is too late.

A boy lies in bed, dreaming of steak and corndogs and good food of all sorts. His stomach growls fiercely.

While the world waits breathlessly for word of war between the superpowers, a group of friends make their own preparations. They will have a feast, then gather around a fire in the back yard. Whatever happens, they intend to enjoy themselves.

In another time, almost beyond a conceivable future, a man steps into a portal leading to his dwelling. He is excited about his new job, archiving television programming from American networks at the dawn of that particular age in communication. He intends to get a good night’s sleep before his shift.

A young woman holds a glass of champagne and smiles graciously at her many admirers at a fashion show afterparty. All of them know her beginnings. No one cares. She is, at last, happy in herself.

A driver in Ontario may never see 11:59 again. He tries his hardest, and he might make it. Or he might not.

If you hear the sound of small, leathery wings and squeaking overhead, those are just friends. Pay them no mind. Unless you like keeping your blood inside you.

A man sits before his keyboard, finished with his run of stories. He is relieved, satisfied and happy. From nowhere, a blue-tinged, punkish woman with blue hair and dragonfly wings appears in front of him with a smile, her first for him ever, and chides him for writing about himself in the third person. He shrugs and smiles back with a relaxed feeling of finality. She holds a book up in front of her, the last page blank. She beckons him to it, and in he goes.

No one is around to hear the clock strike the hour. The circle closes.

And that is all there is to tell.

[hunterskittennwrites]

11 PM – SEE THESE EYES SO GREEN

She walked into the bar, passing men who, even with their backs turned, would notice her passing and turn to watch as she walked by. Tonight, she had gotten made-up especially nice. She didn’t know why until she saw him, sitting alone in a booth at the back or the room. Without a word, she went straight to the booth and sat down opposite him.

Jamie looked up from his drink and into her eyes. He’d had a few already tonight, but not enough to impair him to the point of having to think before knowing who sat across from him.

“Diana!” he exclaimed happily, smiling broadly. It was the first smile he’d managed in over a month. “I haven’t seen you in forever! How’ve you been?”

Years ago, they had first met, in their younger days, when the world and time was still ahead of them, when nothing could beat them, nothing could stop them. He was sitting in another booth, in this same bar, with his friends, when she strolled up and said hello to them.

He was overwhelmed by her appearance: tall, with black hair, pale complexion and dark makeup. She wore a black leather biker jacket over a black leather corset and a purple velvet miniskirt, with black fishnets and tall, black boots. Everything, except for the skirt, was black. Even her makeup. She wore black lipstick, and black nail polish.

She was his first goth chick. She towered above the table in her high heels, saying hello to their mutual friends, and when he was introduced, she smiled and said hello, and he stammered like a lovestruck schoolboy. Or just said “hello”. He couldn’t really remember his reaction.

But they both were regulars at the bar, going every Friday night and running into each other. They would occasionally close out the bar and spend hours talking, and eventually became good friends. He found her warm, engaging, thoughtful and sweet. His crush was replaced by another feeling of affection. Not love, in the romantic sense, but in another way. He loved her as a sister, as a friend.

And then, she stopped coming to the bar. No explanation, and no one could tell him where she’d gone to. There were rumors that she had gotten married, or moved out of state, or won the lottery. But no one could substantiate any of those. She had just disappeared.

For awhile, he was sad, and missed her. But eventually he moved on with his life and hoped that hers was being lived well. That was twenty years back.

Then, about a year ago, she started to show up again. Still pale, still beautiful, still wearing goth gear. Practically unchanged. She’d show up at the bar every now and then, not as often as before, and so would he, and their paths would occasionally cross, like tonight.

He was delighted to see her, because now, he really could use a friend.

“Hey, yourself,” she said. “I’ve been great. Sorry I haven’t gotten with you more, but I’m pretty busy these nights, lately.”

“Yeah,” he replied. “Pretty much the same here.” He had been spending a lot of nights awake lately.

In the past few months, he had been feeling a little off: shooting pains for no reason, dizziness and disorientation, forgetting where he was for a moment. It was embarrassing when he dealt with a customer, to just zone out and stare off into space for a few seconds before he got his bearings back.

He went to the doctor to get checked out, and, to his surprise, they told him that he was dying. They couldn’t say how long he had; it could be a year, it could be as little as a month, but within that timeframe, he’d be dead.

They gave him some prescriptions to ease the symptoms and sent him home. That day, he went to his office, sat at his desk, and began to make lists. Things to sell, things to give away to friends, things to donate. Making a will. He had to get hold of an attorney to help settle his affairs.

He spent two hours that first day, typing spreadsheet after spreadsheet of items to go here, go there. He spent the next few weeks furiously going through his lists, barely acknowledging the grief-in-advance from his family and friends, intent on his mission to clear out the evidence of his life before it was over. He was on the clock, and he didn’t know when the bell would ring.

And, even though the prescriptions specifically recommended against it, he decided he would go to his old bar tonight, one last time, and get wasted. It didn’t matter, in the long run, because there really wasn’t a long run to worry about anymore.

He hadn’t called anyone to invite them to join him. He wanted to sit and drink alone, and just watch the people drinking and laughing and trying to hook up and basically living as though the world and time were ahead of them.

And now, Diana sat across from him. Cool water for his burning mind.

“It’s been so long!” she said effusively, resting her hand on his arm and smiling brightly. But she saw something in his eyes and unconsciously gripped his arm a little harder.

He looked at her and smiled wanly. “Well, you wouldn’t believe what I’ve been through.”

She looked at him with luminescent green eyes, brighter than he remembered, and he was filled with a sudden compulsion to tell her everything. The illness, the diagnosis, his plans, the fact that when he went home from work – and that was the one thing he couldn’t give up, not until he absolutely had to – all he had was his laptop and a futon mattress. He had given away his furniture, his DVD collection, all of his dishes and all but a couple weeks’ worth of clothes. He ate off paper plates and drank from Solo cups. Everything was gone. All but him, and that would come in time.

Her grip loosened then, but her hand rested on his bare arm. Her hand was cold. Her nails were an exquisite black, her pale fingers slim and perfect. But cold.

Her smile was warm, though. “I’m glad you told me this. I hadn’t seen you in awhile, and I’m glad I found you here tonight.” Quickly, faster than it registered on him, she switched sides and sat next to him, and held his hand in hers.

And for the first time since that day the doctor told him the news, he began to cry. She pulled him to her with her free hand and let him cry on her shoulder, stroking his hair and saying reassuring words. He couldn’t hear the words, only the sounds, but in a few minutes, they did their work and calmed him.

He looked at her with a smile as he used his cocktail napkin to wipe the last of his tears. “Thanks. I haven’t cried that hard since the last episode of Battlestar Galactica.”

The comment had the desired effect: she laughed and slapped his arm. “You…!” she said. “Hey, next round’s on me. I’ll be right back.” Before he could object, she was up and at the bar. The bartender did his work, and she came back with drinks.

“If I remember right, you like bourbon and coke, so here you go.” She set down a Pilsner glass of fizzy brown liquid and ice. For herself she had gotten a dark red wine. She raised her glass, and after a second of disorientation, he did the same. “Still this pulsing night,” she said, much more seriously, and clinked his glass.

They took long pulls off their drinks and set them down. She stared ahead for a few moments, as if gathering thoughts, or making a decision, then turned to him. “I think I know how to help.”

“Help?” he asked. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but how? I’m dying, Diana. I don’t think there’s anything that can help with that.”

“Just trust me. I shouldn’t do this, but we’re friends, so I’m going to anyway. Come on.” She got up from the table, leaving the rest of her wine untouched. He rose and followed her, noticing how the men turned to look at her, with a low level desire in their eyes, tempered with something else he couldn’t put a name to.

The stepped outside into the warm night air. “Where’s your car?” she asked.

“Just a little ways that way,” he said, pointing up the street. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.” She took his arm and they walked slowly to his car, as though the world and time were ahead of them. He was caught between confusion, happiness in being with her, and the stirrings of something else he wasn’t about to say.

They ended up at her apartment. She unlocked the door and flicked on a light switch. The place was dark, like an early 20th century study, with panels of wood and shelves of books absorbing enough light from the low-wattage bulbs to make the place feel cozy and comfortable. Every chair and the couch looked inviting, as if they would enfold him like a mother’s arms. She led him to the couch, a large and inviting piece with cushions that looked like black velvet, and set him down next to her. She took both of his hands in hers and looked into his eyes.

“Are we...?” he began.

“Shhh,” she said, leaning in. “Close your eyes.” He closed his eyes.

Her hands moved up his arms, gripping his shoulders, and he could feel her breath closing in on him. By instinct, he put his arms around her. His heart began to beat furiously in his chest, his blood coursing more strongly than any time in the last month.

“Good, good,” she said, in a whisper. “I can feel that. It’s perfect!”

He felt a shooting pain in his neck and shuddered involuntarily. She gripped his shoulders more firmly. “Just be still with me,” she whispered into his ear.

He felt her breath on him, between his ear and shoulder, respiring faster and faster, as though she was also being overcome with excitement. He felt a wetness there…

“Don’t cry, Diana,” he said, his voice becoming dreamy and fuzzy. He was losing himself again, like he had done many times in the last few months; but this time, the dreaminess was stronger.

“I’m not crying. I can’t cry,” she said, lowering him down to the couch. He hadn’t opened his eyes the whole time. And eventually, when blackness – real blackness – took him, he didn’t need to.

He didn’t know when he awoke, but the room was as it was when they came in. She sat on the couch next to him as he lay there, waiting for him to revive. Awareness came as quick, onrushing waves.

He felt strong. Stronger than he’d felt in months. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had sex, but it had never left him feeling this way. Like he could fly. Like he could take on ten men and crush them.

“How are you feeling?” Diana asked. There was a look of concern on her face.

He sat up. “I don’t know. Great, I guess. Yeah. I feel great!” His face fell, then, with confusion. “What happened? Did we…?”

She shook her head and smiled at him again, and took his hand. And she kissed it, leaving a dark lip print on his skin. “No,” she said. “Something better.”

She stood up, and brought him up with her, still holding his hand. “Come on,” she said, heading to the window and pulling up the sash. “I’ve got some people I’d like you to meet.”

She let go of his hand and leapt out of the window, but did not fall.

After a moment, he grinned with sharp teeth, and did the same.

[hunterskittennwrites]

10 PM – THE 401

It’s ten-fifteen. I’m on the road to Toronto to visit a friend. We spent the last few weeks finalizing plans for when I was going, what we’d do when I got there, and where I’d sleep. Zee told me she could put me up at her place, which was above a bar she owns. I insisted we see the CN Tower while I was there, and that at some point we absolutely had to go to a Tim Horton’s for a jelly.

Everything was going to plan up to today. I’d cleaned the house, made arrangements for the cats to be looked after, packed my bag and put it in the car, filled the tank, and made sure I knew where my passport was, and not to forget it. The whole trip, half of which would be through the States, would be worthless and stupid if I forgot the most important bit that would get me all the way there.

Everything was going to plan. And then I overslept by a factor of about eight hours. The original plan was to get up at six in the morning, jump in the car and just start driving. I figured I’d beat the morning rush at home, just miss the rush in Cincy, and then the rest would be more or less smooth sailing until the border. Then I’d see if I looked dangerous enough to keep out of Canada. From there, I hoped I’d get to Zee’s bar before it got dark up in Toronto.

Instead, I woke up to the afternoon sun shining in my window, nearly in a panic. I looked at the clock on my phone and realized two things – one, I’d forgotten to set the alarm for the right five o’clock… it would go off in four hours; two, because of this, not only would I arrive after dark, but probably pretty late at night. Zee kept bar owner’s hours, but I’d probably be pushing the envelope on my arrival. I messaged her the bad news, and she responded that it was okay, as long as I didn’t get there too late.

 On the good side, though, I managed to miss every rush hour on the way to the border. I crossed the Ambassador Bridge, had a nice conversation with the lady in the booth about guns and drugs and whether I had any, where I was going and who I was going to visit, and then passed through into Windsor. I immediately realized that the very first thing I’d have to get used to is that Canada measures everything in metric, including highway speeds. I had to take a close look at the speedometer to figure out how 100 KPH translated to MPH so I wouldn’t get pulled over. I was already running late enough.

 The sun was already starting to go down when passed through Toledo, and by the time I crossed to Windsor, it had been down an hour or so. I had to rely on Navigator and clearly marked highway signs (in English, then another a little ways down the road in French) to get me safely to Toronto. I’d be on the 401 all the way there, so it was pretty straightforward.

I had filled up on gas just outside of Detroit because, along with everything else, Canadian gas stations sell by the liter, and I really didn’t want to fool with figuring that conversion out, too.

But I was starting to get a little road-weary. The 401 does have some gradual curves, but it more or less is a straight stretch from the border to Toronto. At least that’s the way it looked on the map, and for as far as I’d travelled it up to now. Not to put too fine a point on it, but my ass was starting to get sore.

So now, it’s ten-fifteen, and I’m coming up on the Canadian version of a rest stop, some place called ONroute. Unlike most of the rest stops in the States, these places – a couple of which I’d passed just coming out of Windsor - seemed to be full-service, with gas stations and mini food courts with two or three restaurants (including a Timmy’s, of course). But I’m not hungry yet, and basically I just need to get off my ass and walk around, mostly toward the men’s room. I go in, notice that everything looks ultramodern and clean as a whistle. I found the men’s room and saw, to my surprise, that the hand dryers were made by Dyson, and essentially you activate them by sticking your hands in them. This place almost feels futuristic.

So now, bladder empty, face freshly washed and properly refreshed, I stride briskly back out to my car, passing and nodding to another traveler as I walk through the door. I get in, start her up and start back out on the road.

Canada is weird. At least it is to me. It’s like a foreign country occupied by Americans with slightly funny accents. Or like a European’s effort to recreate the American highway system from hearsay and just ever so slightly failing. Aside from the conversion from miles to kilometers and from gallons to liters, and from the comparatively less well-kept rest stops on my side of the border, there’s the way the cities and towns are named.

And that’s also probably because I’m so used to America’s own unique names for places. For instance, on the way to Cincy alone, I passed exits for Sulphur, Sparta, Glencoe and Florence. Back home, it seems that most of the small towns are named after various big cities both in the States and around the world. We have a Glasgow. We have a Boston. We’ve even got a Versailles, but we pronounce it in a way that would drive a French person to drink. We’re not all that original.

But as soon as I cross the border, I’m in a city called Windsor, which sounds like the name brand of an expensive brandy, real hoity-toity, especially since it’s across from Detroit, which sounds harsh in comparison. And the farther I travel, I see interchange signs for places like Essex, North Buxton, Charing Cross. It all sounds very British, especially when I remember that the halfway point from Windsor to Toronto is London. The ONroute I stopped at was at a place called Tilbury. And in a few miles – excuse me, kilometers – I’ll be passing through the Chatham-Kent interchanges.

As I’m driving, concentrating on looking at the speedometer just often enough to maintain a steady 100 KPH, but not enough to cause me to weave all over the road, suddenly my phone beeps to tell me it’s almost out of power. Stupid. I should have charged it up when I stopped. I glance down at it, next to me on the seat, and watch it shut itself down. And I never got around to replacing the fuse that would let me charge it through the dashboard charger.

Shit.

Well, at least I can charge it up at the next rest stop.

I pass Chatham-Kent and continue on. The sign on the side of the road helpfully tells me how many kilometers away the next towns are. Which might as well be in French – no wait, there’s one in French right now, with the same distances.

I’m seized again, surprisingly, with the urge to hit the restroom. Luckily, I come up on another ONroute and gratefully pull off, thanking the powers that be for the timing. I use the men’s room, with the futuristic hand dryers, and head back to the car. As I’m about to get to it, the guy I’d nodded to at the last stop sees me and smiles, saying hey, we met at the last one. I smile back agreeably. Probably at the next one, too, I say, and we laugh about it before going our separate ways.

I get back in, pull out and realize that I forgot to get my phone and charger out and bring them with me. It would have added some time to my trip, but would have been well worth it to keep from getting lost once I hit Toronto, and keep Zee informed of my progress.

 Once again, shit.

 Oh well, the next one then.

The next sign I pass looks like either a high wind knocked it down or maybe a car hit it. In any event, there are the posts sticking up from the ground and the sign lying several feet – excuse me, meters – further down.

I pass the next sign, the one in French, and it looks like someone used it like a scratch-off lottery ticket. I can’t make out any of the names of the towns or the numbers. Oh, well, it can’t be far to London, and maybe there I can stop somewhere, charge up the phone and hit Toronto sometime before midnight, if I’m lucky and traffic’s good.

I turn on the radio, curious about whether Canadian radio stations are different than the ones back home, but just get static. I hit the search button, and the digital display cycles all the way through the dial twice. Nothing. Probably broken, probably another fuse blew. And I can’t listen to the songs on my phone. So it’s going to be a quiet ride to London. I crack the window open so that the rush of wind keeps me from zoning out.

I start to fade a bit and find another ONroute to pull off and rest for a bit. Aside from a couple of stops in the States, I’d pretty much driven straight through until I stopped in Detroit, and it’s starting to catch up now. This time I grab the phone and the charger as I get out.

However, once I walk into the place, I can’t find a power outlet anywhere. I ask the attendants at the little food court restaurants if I can use theirs, but they politely tell me they can’t let customers into their stores. I ask if they could just take my phone back to an outlet and charge it for me. They politely decline that, too. Probably a rule about it, and I’m not going to be an ugly American and push the matter.

Shit.

Well, I’ll just have to navigate the way they did back in the pioneer days, using road signs and dead reckoning and my rusty sense of direction. As long as I keep heading east, I’ll hit London, then eventually Toronto, and the rest I’ll just figure out myself or just be the foolish, lost American and ask directions.

I again meet my fellow traveler as I walk back out to the car. We’ve got to stop meeting like this, I say, and we laugh, and again go our separate ways.

I pull out and start paying more attention to road signs than my speed now. I figure if I get pulled over by a Canadian Mountie or whatever their highway patrol is the worst that would happen is I’d get a ticket and a very polite warning to keep it down to 100 kilometers. I decide it’s worth the risk, because I’m in a whole different country, and it shouldn’t be all that weird and confusing, but it’s starting to be, and that’s starting to worry me.

I should have hit London by now.

The next road sign says that I’ll be passing by Manchester and Bowling Green soon. I don’t remember seeing those on the Navigator before my phone went tits up, but whatever. I drive on, the sound of the wind rushing through the little space I’ve opened in the window the only sound I hear now. No radio, no phone. Just darkness and the occasional road sign and maybe a semi passing by me from the other direction.

Switchtown. Gloucester. Boon’s Lake. I pass them and keep going. My ass is getting road-sore again and I’m starting to feel the fatigue of several hours of driving. I don’t know what kinds of amenities these places have, or even if they have stuff open this late. I’m going to rely on the next ONroute stop, if there is one, to rescue me. I’m starting to feel a need to pee again, and I hope one comes up soon.

Marseilles. Grimsby Station. Blixton. Now I think I may have to pull over to the side of the road and risk a cop’s scolding and a ticket just so I can relieve myself. 

Cardiff. Brighton. Michaelson. I should have hit London by now. It feels like I’ve been in Canada for half the night. I go from hope that Zee will forgive my lateness to the unsettling thought that I may be on the right road, but going the wrong way.

Which is stupid, I realize. I’ve been heading in the same direction since Windsor.

But London. I should have hit London by now.

I stifle a yawn and finally come to another ONroute and pull off. I try not to run to the men’s room before I piss myself. On the way in, I nearly knock over a guy who says something like hello again, but I’m too intent on getting to a urinal before I embarrass myself. I make it just in time and let out a sigh of relief along with the other thing. I wash my hands and splash cold water on my face, and use the futuristic dryers. I walk out to the main concourse and look for a map. I didn’t notice at the other stops whether they had maps posted, but at every rest stop in the States, no matter how small or utilitarian or Spartan, they always have a map posted with a mark or a pin telling you where you are.

I can’t find a map anywhere. I turn to go ask the attendants at the food court, but no one is here. All of the lights are on, as if they’re open, but no one is out front. I approach the Tim Horton’s stand and call out a hello, is anyone back there a couple of times and listen, but there’s no answer.

Again, risking a scolding, I decide to take matters into my own hands and just go back there and find where they’re taking their break and just tell them I’m lost and need some directions and maybe a charge for my phone and they couldn’t hear me calling and I’m very sorry but here I am.

No one is there. I go to the other two places – a Burger King and a Starbucks – not a soul. Everything is lit up and open, but there’s no one here.

I have no idea what the fuck is going on. Maybe this is some weird way that Canadians take a break. Maybe they all go out back at the same time and smoke a cigarette, and as soon as I think this, I realize that, Canadian or not, that’s just the stupidest idea ever.

But where are they, if they’re not here? I go outside and circle the building. No one. Not a damn soul.

I walk to the car and notice that it’s the only one in the lot. There is no one at the gas station, and I’m willing to bet there aren’t any attendants there, either.

I get in and wait. I’m going to wait until someone else has to make a bathroom stop, and I’m going to find out just what the fuck is going on. No map, nobody waiting on people. It’s getting a little too surreal for me now. I wait for what seems a long time.

I realize that I’ve been asleep. For the second time in a day, I startle myself awake.

Shit! Someone could have come and left already. I have no idea how long I’ve been out, and I have a fleeting thought about how pissed Zee is going to be when I finally arrive when I look at the dashboard clock.

It’s ten-fifteen.

A cold feeling washes over me as I turn the key in the ignition. I don’t think my clock is malfunctioning. I don’t know how I know this, but I do. I pull out of the rest stop and decide that, fuck it, I’m not going to keep it down to 100 KPH. I’m going to drive as fast and as far as I can, for as long as my car and my gas and I hold out. I’m no longer worried about what Zee will think of me.

It’s ten-fifteen and I may never see her, or Toronto.

I drive all night on the 401, and all the way, all night long, it’s still ten-fifteen.

[hunterskittennwrites]

9 PM – PETRICHOR

It was years ago and far away

She was not then who she is now

Someone different

Someone wrong

Small and skinny, pale and blond

There are pictures of him, in his swimming trunks

Jumping through the sprinkler

Laughing

Pretending

There are not pictures of him in his mother’s shoes

Her makeup smeared and smudged

Dark and overdone and messy

And all over her favorite dress

He had never been spanked before

The pain felt like a betrayal

He was three

 Years later,

The teasing, the bullying, the shaming,

The beatings 

He had asked his best friend Julie to paint his nails

They were two peas in a pod

She taught him how to put on makeup

She let herself be his canvas

And then, trembling, he asked if he could do himself

She laughed and clapped her hands

And said yes

He would wear her makeup

But carefully clean it off before going home

Because Mom and Dad didn’t know

And didn’t understand

But one day, he forgot

That Julie had painted his nails

They were bright, neon pink

He had somehow managed not to be noticed at home

Or they pretended not to

The next day, at school

They ganged up on him, wrenching his hands up

Showing each other the hot pink nails

They called him names

After school they beat him

And broke his fingers

They hated him

He was ten

 A little later, seasons changed

He changed

Julie changed

For her, it wasn’t fun anymore

He wanted to spend time with her

And put on makeup and

Just feel good and right with her

But she began to withdraw

And one day, she told him he couldn’t come over

Ever again

His heart broke

He grew his hair

He was eleven

 Standing in front of Mom and Dad

Voice tremulous

She told them who she was

And who she wanted to be

And then waited for the coming storm

The silence was deafening

Until they took her hands

And held her close

They loved her

She was twelve

 It was expensive, and insurance would not cover it

Mom and Dad fought them every inch of the way

But they vowed to find a way to make it work

 Mom would take her shopping

To take her own mind off of what they were doing

And the war they were waging

Their tastes were so similar

And she marveled at the beautiful young woman

Her son was becoming

If only

If only

If only they could understand her own child’s mind and heart

Like she had begun to

 It wasn’t physically painful, except the injections

What hurt was everything else

The questions from psychologists

The kids at school who knew her when she was a boy

Her hands still ached, even now

From the broken fingers

 She was young, her bones still plastic, still growing

Perfect for transformation, the doctors said

Her body went through changes:

Her hips widened and rounded

Her breasts began to form

Her legs became long and lean, as did her arms

Her hands, soft and slim and straight

Her face, elfin and beautiful

She was fourteen

 Her hair was in a paper hat

She lay on the gurney, tubes running into and out of her

Mom held her hand,

Her long, graceful hand

And admired the girl she saw before her

So brave and determined

To see it through, without questions, without doubt

They had woken her before dawn

And brought her to the hospital

And helped her get settled and ready

Dad did something strange:

He kissed her forehead

Before she was wheeled into surgery

And told her that he loved her

His eyes were wet

Mom held her hand as she slowly went down

Into the warm bosom of sleep

When she woke

She would be herself

She was sixteen

 It was raining when they brought her in

It rained throughout her journey across the gulf

As the surgeons turned her into the woman

She was always meant to be

The rain was steady and cool

After such a warm, dry spell

When she woke, a window was open

And the breeze brought in such a new scent

She had smelled it before

But it wasn’t this powerful then

It smelled so sweet and new and wonderful

She asked Mom what it was

 Mom Googled it on her phone and smiled

Petrichor, Mom said

 And she knew who she was, finally

 She is being made up, sitting back in the chair

Unmoving, letting the artist do her work

Exaggerating her cheeks and brows and lips and eyes for the audience

Strangely, the woman’s name is Julie

Her fingernails, ragged from work

Are pink

 The tissues protecting her dress from concealer

And blush and all that, are removed

As she stands up from the chair

She is tall and graceful

Her dress is an iridescent material,

With beads and feathers expertly and painstakingly placed

It is wild and beautiful

It is tailored for her and her alone

Cut to show her long legs

No one else will wear it, ever

She smiles at the thought

For her and her alone

 She follows the other girls to the stage curtain

They file out, one by one, with a beat in between

Walking in lockstep down the runway and back

Staring forward, eyes locked on the back of the room

They step forward, stop, turn, hands on hips

Glaring at the audience in mock anger and disinterest

It is part of the game

The last girl before her moves out, squeezing her hand

And giving her a secret smile

Before walking out, one foot literally in front of the other

Like they’re taught to do

Her smile replaced by a practiced, indifferent, baleful stare

 It is her turn

She is not nervous

She steps out into the light, and the cheering

They love her

And she feels like the cool breeze and the beautiful scent

After a long, cleansing rain

She is twenty-one

[hunterskittennwrites]

8 PM - THE ARCHIVIST’S TALE

It wasn’t be a bad life, Archivist Jones thought to himself as he appeared on the roof of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel on an unseasonably warm February night. Jones wore a smart suit of rather rough wool, with a crisp, starched, ironed white shirt (like they had in the old times), nondescript tie, and large-brimmed fedora hat. Over his forearm was an overcoat, also rather nondescript.

In his left pants pocket, he carried two things: a key to room 723, and an Archive Box. In his right, cash of the period. It was counterfeit, but of such advanced design that even the United States Mint in this era would have passed it as genuine. This money was for room service food, tips and other sundries he might need during his shift.

He had spent two years training for the newly vacant Archivist’s position. Advancement in the ranks was rapid, but one had to get in, first. Which meant years of study to even qualify for consideration for training; one had to know, with as much exactitude and accuracy as possible, the era in which one would work. One slip could bring more trouble than the Archives Bureau would be willing to bear, and the person who made that slip would be recalled by the Bureau and placed in a much lower-security position.

So, several years of study at the Archivist’s College, then selection, based on extensive testing of knowledge of the years and eras studied, followed by two years of intense training.

The training consisted mainly – not to put too fine a point on it – of keeping budding young Archivists from fucking things up in the field.

Because the field was the Past. All eras of it, from the dawn of history to the present. And where Archivist Jones stood, temporally, the “present” he had just left was a long way from the “present” he was in now.

Being a new Archivist, he was given a rather simple task: record and monitor television broadcasts from the four major networks, using his own observation skills and the Archive Box. His job was to, when the Prime Time programming began, set the Archive Box on top of the television set, and let the programming run until each of the individual networks and stations signed off for the night. He would do this, shifting in forward in time from the end of one night to the beginning of the next, until the Box was full of data. After that, he would take the Archive Box to the roof, where he would step through the portal to the actual present, and download the mint-condition programming to the Library of Congress Database. While recording, he could switch to any channel and watch whatever programs suited his fancy. In fact, this was encouraged in order to give both the Archivists and the LOCD a more well-rounded insight that would add to the overall record. Once downloaded, Jones would step right back through the portal to the Waldorf for another round. He could do an entire week’s worth of prime time programming in one day.

He was not the only Archivist assigned to this particular era. There were others, used for safety’s sake, in other hotels in Manhattan. And still others, who recorded programming from other times of the day. Nothing was missed. And at this time in television history, this was the place to be. Almost all programming from here was done live from network studios. Watching these shows was like watching history being made before one’s eyes. It was marvelous and fascinating. Seeing the stars of the day, in crisp, clear black-and-white, looking almost as if they would leap from the screen. It was an exciting time, and Jones got to know these stars almost as well as his family and friends, and in a way, the stars became an extension of them.

However, of all the programming that he watched and recorded each shift, there was a particular show in the Monday night block of programming that he paid the most attention to.

Although the show was in black-and-white (and, unusually, recorded on film rather than broadcast live), he knew from his history studies that the star of this show had a beautiful head of flaming red hair. She was a genius at physical comedy, and – as he also knew from his studies – a shrewd businesswoman, who would later parlay ownership of this show into an entertainment powerhouse that was unheard of for this era, especially for a woman.

And Jones was hopelessly smitten with her.

He loved Lucy.

He knew everything there was to know about her, from the beginning of her career through to the end of her life. He knew of her marriages, her stewardship of Desilu Productions, her string of successful series, her children… everything. He had studied her as part of his pretraining education and, as impressed with her as he was then, he was not prepared for the shock of finding that, in a hotel in 1950’s New York, he would develop such a crush on her.

He told no one, of course. It was stupid, falling in love with a television star that he could never, due to his oath of noninterference, ever meet in person. And if he even managed to successfully skirt the rules to do so, the mere act of it might create an alternate time stream, which were a headache for the LOCD heads to straighten out. And which got people fired. It was the only real terminable offense.

He was beginning to suspect, however, that they may already know about his feelings. In this day and age (of course, referring to our own, not the bygone era Jones was working in), people were more transparent. It was one of the reasons that they were encouraged to watch what they recorded, in order for the LOCD to glean insights into the emotional state of the viewer, to at least roughly recreate what it would feel like for denizens of that time period. Thoughts, impressions, emotional responses, all of this was downloaded along with the programming, to give fuller historical documentation.

Jones did his best to hide how he felt. He knew it could jeopardize his standing as an Archivist. He would drive the feeling deep down, as far as he could, when reporting and downloading his recordings.

But they had to know. There was no way they couldn’t. Could they?

Jones picked up the phone – a genuinely antique device that didn’t even have a rotary dial; you picked it up, a switchboard operator downstairs would answer and would either connect you to one of the hotel’s departments or an outside number, which you had to give them verbally – and ordered a Beef Wellington with mashed potatoes and Brussels sprouts, and a bottle of Kentucky bourbon with a bucket of ice. Perhaps he could distract himself with food, since he hadn’t eaten for awhile, and ancient spirits.

He absently watched the shows parading on the screen ahead of him – live productions from the city and kinescopes from the west coast – and was startled when a knock came at the door. He quickly remembered the food he had ordered and rose to answer.

He opened the door and turned back to the television momentarily, making sure the Box was out of sight, and a metal cart was pushed into the room. It was covered with a fine linen cloth, and on that cloth was a large plate, covered completely by a slightly larger dome. Next to it was the bottle of bourbon and a small bucket of ice. A small hand reached up and lifted the dome from the plate.

“Your Beef Wellington, sir,” said a distinctly high, familiar, female voice. “And bourbon whisky, just as you ordered.”

At the sound of the voice, Jones’ head whipped around. It was usually bellboys who brought up the food, or night porters, and they were always male. This was a strange era he was visiting, in which gender roles were very strictly enforced. Women did not bring food for room service. Part of him thought that perhaps the kitchen was busy tonight, and they were in an all-hands-on-deck situation, where everyone was being pressed for service, even the cigarette girls and coat check girls.

But as soon as he caught sight of her, he saw that this could not be the case at all.

He stared, wide-eyed and mouth agape, into the beautiful blue eyes of Lucille Ball.

“Uh…” she began. “Does everything look all right, sir? Is this the correct brand of bourbon?” She pointed to the bottle of Kentucky Tavern on the cart. She looked at his slack and almost vacant face. “Are you all right, sir? Should I call the hotel doctor?”

“You’re…” his mouth went dry. He closed it, took a gulp, and tried again. “You’re her! You’re Lucy! How…?” His heart was suddenly pounding so much that he was afraid he might pass out.

She giggled, exactly the same way Lucy did on television. “Oh, I get that all the time! People tell me I’m her long-lost twin. My friends even joke around and tell me they’re going to set me up with a Cuban bandleader.” She rolled her eyes comically. “Oh, my friends are a riot, I’ll tell you.”

Having regained his senses somewhat at the revelation that he was not, actually, in the presence of his crush, he approached the cart and got a look at the food. One thing that they didn’t tell people before they went back in time was that in the early to mid-twentieth century, food portions were much smaller than later on toward the end of the century. But, this being a luxury hotel, the portions were much larger, enough to feed two people, or have the remainder as lunch later.

“It does look good,” he finally stated. Then, in a burst of chivalry, he hastily asked, carefully, in the cadence and phrasing of the time period, “Would you care to join me?”

He fully expected her to politely refuse, for a number of reasons, the least of which was likely his completely transparent and schoolboyish effort to keep her here in his room. Or she was too busy and had to get back down to take someone another meal. Or go back to her coat check booth. Or jump back into the television where she came from…

“You mean, for dinner? For this?” He couldn’t read her reaction. But he was distracted, looking at her orange-gold hair, pulled up and pinned at the top of her head, and her earrings – the old kind that clamped on one’s ears rather than the kind that pushed through, her fire-engine red lipstick. “I’ve never had Beef Wellington before, mister. If you’re sure it’s okay, I’ve got a little bit of time before they need me back.”

He quickly set about dividing the food into two smaller portions, and poured two glasses of bourbon over two ice cubes each. There was a small table in the room that worked as a writing desk or a dining table. She wheeled the cart over and set all the food on the table.

They sat opposite each other. He would absently cut into his Beef Wellington, bring the forkful of food to his mouth, miss once or twice, then manage to get it in, and chewed. All while staring at her.

She then did a very Lucy-like thing: she set her elbow on the table, balled her hand into a fist and leaned her head into it, with a comically weary and resigned expression. “It’s a curse, sometimes.”

“Huh?” He stopped his automatic feeding and perked up. “I mean, what is a curse?”

“Looking like her. The whole deal with my friends making jokes is one thing, but then I sometimes can’t walk down the street without people asking for autographs, and if I’m in a hurry for work, they think I’m stuck up and conceited if I say no and that I’m not really her. And people always asking me to go ‘Ohhhhh, Rickyyyyyy!’ like she does, or that ‘waaaaaaaaah’ she does when she’s crying.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and meant it. It was then that the spell broke. He wasn’t talking to Lucy, or a strange doppelganger of her, no matter how much she looked and sounded like her. He was conversing with a real human being.

He had to be careful, now that his wits were back. He stole a glance back at the television, playing in the background with the volume down, checking again to make sure the Box was out of sight behind the flower pot on top.

“You do look like her, though,” he said, and before she could start to frown, he added, “I mean, she’s beautiful! Have you ever seen pictures of her? I mean, from before she was on television? She could give—“ Oh, what was the name of that movie star he’d seen on Milton Berle a few weeks back? “She could give Ava Gardner a run for her money. You should try to download some pictures of her from before. Really stunning.”

“Aww,” she replied, brightening up. “That’s sweet of you! Say, you’re a really nice fella! I’m glad I met you. But—“ She glanced at her slim watch on a surprisingly cheap-looking leather wristband. “I’ve got to get going now. If you’re done with the food, I can take the cart with me.”

Jones removed the bourbon, ice and his glass from the cart and stood, as men did in this era, when she did. He resisted the urge to help her. No matter how pretty she was, no matter who she looked like, she was staff, and might shoo him off for trying. He did follow her to the door, so he could do the customary thing. He reached into his pocket and pulled out two quarter-dollar coins. He reached with his other hand and pulled her hand up to take them. “For you. Thank you for the delivery and the conversation.”

She blushed and turned slightly away. “Aw, thanks.”

“By the way, what’s your name?” he asked, brazenly placing the coins in her hand in a way that was just a little more personal than one would do for a bellhop.

“Me? My name is Lily. Lily Spheeris.” She took the coins, but left her hand in place. She smiled. A strange, rather sad smile. “And I’m really sorry about this…”

Jones felt a shock of electricity shoot up his arm, into his body, paralyzing him. He stared at her in utter shock and surprise. He could not move, and felt himself falling backward to the floor. Before he hit, before he lost consciousness, she added:

“But I’m your replacement, Jones.”

[hunterskittennwrites]

7 PM – THE FIRE PIT

On September 1, 1983, Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot down by a Soviet interceptor aircraft over the Sea of Japan. All 269 passengers and crew were killed. This incident brought the United States and the Soviet Union to a level of tension higher than any in recent history. The Soviets at first denied, then admitted to the shootdown, but accused the United States of deliberately sending the aircraft into Soviet airspace to provoke a war.

The United States denied the claim and in turn accused the Soviets of knowingly shooting down a civilian aircraft as a provocation.

Tensions escalated. Other nations, both through the United Nations and on their own behalves, rushed in to try to calm the escalating war of words between the two superpowers.

To no avail.

On September 2, the ambassadors from both powers were recalled to their respective home countries. NATO was put on its highest alert level. The Warsaw Pact did the same.

It was never determined which side fired first, nor, in the long run, did it matter. 

On September 3, the missiles flew…

 Reggie and Kim had a beautiful fire pit in their backyard. It was dug a foot deep into the ground, and ringed with blanched stones bought from a quarry on the other side of town. It was about five feet wide, and could accommodate a large amount of wood or other combustible items. Once Kim had Reggie and their neighbor haul an old, ugly couch that they replaced to the pit. Reggie doused it with lighter fluid, then lit it. They all watched as the couch, in less time than they first thought, burned down to smoldering sticks and ashes.

Tonight, they would use their pit for the last time. They invited their friends to come for this final party. They were invited to bring whatever food and drinks they wanted. They were also invited to bring anything – literally anything – they wanted to burn.

The invitation went out to everyone in their personal phone list, about sixty people. Six showed up. Kim and Reggie accepted this as an adequate number, given the circumstances. They would have had the fire anyway, even if no one showed up. But they now had enough for a party.

Their friends began to arrive before six. Food was brought, a potluck dinner, of the best dishes each of the partygoers had in their repertoire. They ate on the patio deck, with the good china. They were loud and boisterous and laughing. They did not want to face the end with tears. It was too late for tears, and anyway, the tears had already been shed earlier, when the sudden realization hit everyone what was going to happen.

After they finished, they threw the china as hard as they could at the walls of the house, and smashed them on the deck railing, screaming and howling in destructive delight as they did so.

At seven, Reggie lit the fire, a huge pile of wood, paper, cardboard and other easily combustible pieces and objects that he had spent all day collecting and piling on. The pile was taller than any of them. Their friends tossed items into the fire. Some of them, not really meant to be burned, flamed brightly, in strange colors, and smelled horrible.

Of their friends, there was a married couple – Dan and Lily – and four singles. Of these, two had relationships but weren’t able to find their mates before coming. It was understandable, because this was, by necessity, a party planned at almost literally the last minute.

Of the four singles, there was Jack, who was a musician when he and his band could find a gig or a time to practice, and a mechanic during the day. There was Missy, who giggled a lot, before the news came, and was their usual source of weed. There was also Alan, who worked in a convenience store, for a dollar more than minimum wage, and would regale people with hilarious horror stories about his roommate, “the stinkiest man alive”, with whom he would have as little to do as possible.

And there was Jess. Jess was very pleasantly girl-shaped, had a heart-shaped face with small but full lips, soft brown eyes, and a mane of the most luxurious curly blonde hair cascading down her back like a light, golden waterfall. It moved as she moved. She was proud of her hair, and used the best shampoos and conditioners on it, and was very particular which stylists would even touch it. Tonight she looked resplendent in her jeans, t-shirt and flip flops. Jess could make any clothing look good.

Jess was, before things outside in the world came to a head, currently between boyfriends, having just broken up with her latest.

Alan harbored a crush on Jess that everybody knew about but Alan himself. But she was oblivious to his feelings the same way one overlooks mundane things in the quest for the new and exciting. Alan was, to her, a fixture of the crowd she ran with. A funny guy who, when he wasn’t making them laugh, faded into the background of her circle. She usually had bigger fish to fry.

But tonight, things changed. 

They gathered around the fire, beers in coolers at their feet, sitting in folding chairs they had brought from home. (Alan had, because he didn’t have a folding chair, brought his beanbag chair. He had amused everyone by rolling it down the hill from his car to the pit.) After the dinner and the “plate orgy”, as they called it, they had somewhat run out of steam, and sat lazily around the fire, reminiscing about the past. Because it was all the past now.

Alan was telling Missy, sitting next to him and smoking a joint, another story about his horrible roommate, when he sensed someone standing beside him. “Be with you in a sec,” he said, waving at the presence without looking.

“Okay,” said Jess.

“Um, Alan,” Missy said, looking past him with eyes wide in surprise, “you may want to turn around and see this.”

“Aw, shit,” he complained. “Are they coming already? I’d love to finish this—“

“Turn around, stupid!” Missy commanded. Alan, startled, did as he was told. As he did so, he heard audible gasps and one wolf whistle.

Jess was standing next to him, smiling down at him, without a stitch of clothing on, other than the flip flops. “Hi,” she said.

“Holy God!” Alan said in a voice only just above a whisper. “I mean, hi back.”

Jess leaned down to him, her face only a couple of inches away. He could feel her breath on him. It was sweet, with a hint of the wine she was drinking tonight.

“A little bird told me you have a crush on me,” she said.

“I… bird? What?”

“Look,” she said. “I’ll make it easy. I think it’s sweet you’ve never said anything all this time. And you’ve always treated me nice. It’s the end of the world. Let’s fuck.”

For a brief moment, there was nothing but the sound of the burning pile. As quietly as Jess had spoken, her voice had carried enough – or the fact that she was nude in the last hour of daylight, where everyone and their mother could see – that everyone stopped whatever conversations they had.

It dawned on them, though, that this was, in the context of what was happening and what was to come, a fully human, logical thing to want to do. A couple of them looked at each other with the idea that they should have thought of this themselves.

Before he was fully aware of it, Jess had Alan on his feet, pulling his t-shirt over his head, undoing the belt and the button and zipper on his pants. In less than a minute, aside from the pants at his ankles, he was as naked as she was.

“All right,” he said, stepping out of his pants. He leaned in to start by kissing, but Jess stopped him with a finger to his lips.

“I feel you down there,” she said, smiling. “Make it good.”

She removed her finger and their lips met. Alan had kissed enough girls to know not to jam his tongue into her mouth, like he used to do in high school. He had been taught better over the years. He took his time, cupping her face with one hand while running the fingers of his other hand lightly up and down her back. She shivered, pushing herself involuntarily closer to him. He could feel her skin against his, the warmth of it, different than the warmth of the fire.

They continued to kiss, exploring and learning more of each other with each passing second. And with each passing second, the kiss grew more intimate and more passionate. There would never be another kiss like this again.

Alan sat down on his beanbag chair, pulling her with him, setting her on top of him, surrounding him. Her hair draped over both of his shoulders like light rain, both tickling and exciting him. She pulled back from kissing him and looked him in the eye. Her face, smiling before, was serious now.

No. Not serious.

Pleading.

“Make it good, Alan. Please make it good.” She looked on the verge of tears. I’m so scared, her face seemed to say.

He knew that fear. It was in all of them. The fear of the inevitable end. The fear of leaving things undone, lives unlived. People unloved.

Alan didn’t know Jess’ history with her boyfriends. He knew that she had, in her time, had a lot of them. Her reputation, depending on who was asked, was that she was either flighty or a slut.

Maybe she left them, or they left her, because there was no love. Jess was easily the most lustable woman he had ever known. Part of his unrequited crush had been precisely that. And she seemed to thrive on that kind of attention. He didn’t know her past, her childhood. Her personality. Her needs. He realized right now that he knew almost nothing about her. And yet, here he was, having the last sex he’d ever have in his life. With her.

It was both a dream come true and a mystery. Who are you, Jess? Who are you really?

Another thought: Does it really matter now?

And he decided that yes, yes it did. He would never know her fully; her life, what her favorite flavor of ice cream was, or why she went through boyfriends so quickly, or what she liked most for breakfast, or whether she had a good life growing up or not.

But he would know her as she was now, in this moment. He would know every inch of her body. He would delve into her emotions and spirit and show her that he could learn, in this last hour, some of who she really was.

They breathed into each other, in ragged gasps, grunts and moans, pushing themselves and each other to the limit, to the climax. To the end. She grabbed him by the throat and looked intensely into his eyes with a wild animal stare that no human had ever had for millennia. “Love me! Love me, goddammit!”

Not “fuck me”. Love me.

All of her love and all of her hate, and all of her pain and happiness and everything else, welled up inside her, then compressed and distilled into a tiny singularity of every emotion she ever felt. Her anger and fear (father those boys those men) a tiny, almost insignificant part of it. It compressed and solidified until she could not hold it any longer. The second she felt that particular shudder from him inside her, she came with a force she had never felt before.

Her scream echoed into the slowly gathering night.

They fell against each other then, trembling and inseparable, lying in his silly beanbag chair. She laid her head on his chest, but he had to hold his up. He had no head rest to lean on. They lay there, arms tightly around each other, staring into the fire. The others, who could not turn away then, did so now, speaking quietly amongst themselves. Kim was in Reggie’s chair, on his lap, kissing him and crying. Dan and Lily had disappeared somewhere. Jack, who had never so much as had a puff of a cigarette in his life, was sucking back on another enormous joint that Missy had rolled for him. They didn’t share, as she had enough for another for herself. They smoked and snickered at nothing and everything.

Alan realized then, with a laugh, that he was lying in his beanbag chair that he brought from home, with the girl he had spent most of his adult life wanting to be with, and they were both stark naked in the middle of a suburban backyard after fucking each other’s brains out in front of their friends and whoever else could see.

“I’m naked,” he said, to no one in particular, with a big smile.

“Well, now you are,” Jess replied, kissing his cheek. She made no move to leave.

He let his head roll back, relaxing neck muscles that were starting to cramp. Upside down, coming from the northwest, he saw it. A contrail following a bright point of light. He could tell, without moving, that they all saw it, too. He could hear someone whimpering here it comes here it comes oh god. He couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman. In a couple of minutes it wouldn’t make any difference.

On impulse, he rolled himself and Jess off his chair, and the lay with each other on the ground, grass and dirt against their skin. He had to feel the earth under him now, in their last moments. Jess’ eyes began to take on a fearful expression as she saw the missile getting closer.

“No,” Alan said. “Look at me. Look at me. I love you. I want those to be the last words you hear: I love you.”

She reached around his neck, her hair again cascading all over him like a wave, and kissed him hard. He could feel tears on his cheek. His or hers… it didn’t matter.

The flash behind them was bright and far away and silent.

But only for a moment.

[hunterskittennwrites]

6:00 PM – THE LIVER WAR

MONDAY

Joey hated liver. Hated it. And as far as he knew, no red-blooded American kid in the history of kids ever, to his knowledge, admitted to liking it. He even wondered why they sold it at the grocery store. Steak, he could understand. Pork chops, or bacon, or chicken, or ham. He even saw lamb for sale once.

But liver? Really? Liver was awful. It had an awful smell when it was raw. It smelled even worse when it was cooked in the skillet Mom always cooked it in. It had a weird, slimy quality when it was in the packaging that translated into some weird liver-sauce when it oozed out onto their plates. Sometimes Mom would cook it with onions, which Joey also hated. (In fact, it would take years, later on, before he even became tolerant of onions, eating them in other foods, before actually starting to like them.)

There was nothing about liver that Joey could find redeeming. Not even that “it’s full of iron and vitamins” crap that Mom and Dad kept trying to pass off on him and Beth. So were Flintstones vitamins, and they didn’t taste like the bottom of a shoe.

The usual ritual was followed: at dinner time, Mom would – like all the other moms did – go out to the front porch and call loudly for them to come home for dinner. He and Beth would file in from their respective friends’ houses, grudgingly wash hands, and sit at the table.

Every now and then, Mom would make something good, like Swedish meatballs, or hot dogs. But not tonight. Tonight she was intent on making them eat the liver she had bought at the store. They and Dad were seated at the table, waiting for their food to be served. (Mom had been raised to serve food to whoever sat at the table for dinner. It was too ingrained a habit to break.)

Mom moved around the table, griping about how she slaved over dinner – pre-emptively, Joey assumed, to keep him and Beth from whining about it – and dished out their food: Liver, cooked in what appeared to be some kind of sauce with black spots that he prayed were just pepper; Brussels sprouts; and mashed potatoes of the kind that come from a box and require water to formulate.

Joey didn’t like Brussels sprouts (although that would change in adulthood as well), but loved mashed potatoes. Well, most mashed potatoes. Mom’s mashed potatoes were made with the flakes, some water, a little salt and that was it. She followed the instructions on the package almost to a T. They were the blandest tasting mashed potatoes ever conceived by man. She would, with a grumble, get out butter, salt and pepper so that Joey could at least pretend they had flavor.

But tonight, he balked at the Brussels sprouts. And the liver.

Something in him had had enough. He was going on strike. He would not eat the liver or the sprouts. He told Mom as much, and folded his arms across his chest decisively, ending with a defiant “hmmmph!” Beth, seeing this, did the same, except without the speech.

Mom and Dad stared at them for a moment, a bit dumbstruck at the rebellion. Then Dad started to say something before Mom cut him off with a literal cutting motion of her hand, like a sideways karate chop.

“You will eat that liver, or you won’t leave the table. And if you stay there until bedtime, you will have the same plate waiting for you every dinner until you do eat it. Understand? Same for the Brussels sprouts.” And then she went on to the “slaving over dinner” speech again, with a little more vehemence than usual, before ending with “Eat!” and pointing at his plate.

“No!” he said back. He then immediately regretted it, because Mom was a smacker. And she would be sneaky about it. She’d either smack them right then, or get them later, when their guard was down (“You know what you did!” being the answer, just in case they’d forgot). He had learned to keep his guard up until she finally did it. So he braced for impact… which never came. At least, not yet. He would have to watch his back, he knew, for probably the next few days.

But for now, he sat, arms folded, and regarded the liver he fully wished would suddenly disappear from his plate.

He ended up being sent to bed three hours later, butt sore from sitting at the kitchen chair for all that time. The next day, he counted himself lucky she hadn’t packed it for him to eat for lunch at school.

TUESDAY

Mom fixed spaghetti and meatballs. It smelled delicious. He could smell it as soon as he came into the house from playing outside. He and Beth washed their hands, fighting over the water and the soap in the sink, and could barely keep it to a walk on the way to the kitchen. They sat down at the table, with Dad already there, reading the afternoon paper, and waited to be served. Mom set a plate down in front of Dad, piled it with spaghetti, and did the same for Beth. Then she brought the pan of sauce with meatballs and doled out generous portions for both of them. She then did the same for her own plate.

Then she went to the fridge, reached in and pulled out the plate from yesterday, still with the liver and Brussels sprouts on it (he had finally eaten the potatoes the night before). She didn’t even offer to warm it up for him. In fact, she barely said a word to him.

She did, however, go on at length about how delicious the spaghetti and meatballs were. Beth, getting caught up in her enthusiasm, did the same, before casting a guilty look at Joey. Dad said nothing. He tucked into his like a ravenous wolf, but kept his eye on the sports page of the paper, staying out of this battle of wills.

Joey again went to bed with a sore butt from the chair, three hours later.

He heard an argument in low voices, when he crawled under the covers to sleep, between Mom and Dad. Mom apparently won, because Dad said “fine!” and stomped down the hall to the living room.

WEDNESDAY

Tonight, it was fried chicken. Mom had breaded them by hand and carefully slid them into the skillet to cook in the grease. And there was corn, and macaroni and cheese. It all smelled delicious. Mom again cooed and smacked her lips and made other noises that were getting under Joey’s skin. She looked at Beth, whom she was treating as an ally in this war of wills, asking her if her chicken tasted good, with a real enthusiastic lilt to her voice.

Beth again looked guiltily at Joey as she ate her dinner, before she told Mom she thought so. But she didn’t sound very excited about it.

Joey again was served the fridge liver. He ate a couple of Brussels sprouts, which caused Mom to raise an eyebrow at him, but then he pushed his plate away and folded his arms again, staring at the clock on the wall above Beth.

Dad had taken his food out to the dining room table. He set it carefully on a placemat and ate slowly, not looking like he was enjoying it at all. But he finished it, and brought his plate back to the kitchen, and pointedly put it in the sink to wash later, then left the kitchen for his easy chair. He would not ask for seconds. Neither would Beth, although she clearly wanted some. Mom piled her own plate high with a second portion of everything, watching Joey stare at the clock while she ate.

Joey noted to himself later that he must be getting used to sitting on the kitchen chair for long periods now. His butt didn’t hurt as much tonight.

Mom, for her part, worked on the noncombatants: she had another quiet but heated argument with Dad, and this time, it was she who said “fine!” and stomped out of their bedroom , crossing the hall to Beth’s room to speak quietly with her. Joey could hear them through the wall. Nothing clearly, but the timbre and pitch of voices. He could tell that Mom was trying her best to enlist Beth against him. He couldn’t tell what Beth was saying. He fell asleep before anything seemed resolved.

THURSDAY

Steak. Baked potatoes with butter and sour cream. Green bean casserole that would melt in Joey’s mouth.

If it weren’t for the fact that he had again been served a cold plate of liver and Brussels sprouts. He couldn’t tell exactly, but he thought the liver was beginning to smell. He had been served seven Brussels sprouts on Monday, and he had so far eaten four of them. He ate two more, but Mom didn’t raise a hopeful eyebrow like the last couple of times.

Dad took the smallest of the steaks, the puniest of the potatoes, and just a small serving spoonful of casserole. Without a word, he went into the dining room and ate quickly, then went outside to sit on the porch and smoke. Beth didn’t seem as interested in her food anymore. She didn’t outright refuse to eat it, but she pushed everything around on her plate, and took over an hour to finish. She looked on the verge of tears, but whenever Mom looked at her, she would stiffen up and her pained look would go carefully blank. She didn’t want to get smacked, either.

Three hours later, Joey put the plate of now almost-rancid liver and single surviving Brussels sprout in the fridge after covering it carefully with the aluminum foil to keep it from stinking up everything else in there, then he went to bed. He dreamed of steaks, dancing around him, jumping out of reach when he tried to catch one.

FRIDAY

Mom went all out this time. She was intent on winning this war, even if it meant pulling out all the stops. Tonight, she fixed everything that Joey had ever said was his favorite: country fried steak, corn, actual mashed potatoes made from real potatoes and hand-mashed, with butter, salt, pepper and a little garlic powder for a kick. She announced that for dessert, they were going to have lemon cake. Almost all of them were going to have lemon cake, unless…

Joey stared at his cold plate, with the now noticeably rancid liver sitting in congealed liver-slime and curling upward at the ends, and the single Brussels sprout sitting forlornly as far away as possible on the plate. Joey had placed it there, but it looked like the vegetable was trying to leap off the plate to whatever fate may meet it rather than share that space another minute with the liver. With a feeling of pity for it, Joey stabbed it with his fork and put it in his mouth and chewed. And that was it.

He was out of reserves. He knew that every dinner, until he gave up, Mom would set out that increasingly hazardous, toxic lump of rotting meat until he ate it. He might get sick and have a burning, stabbing belly ache that night – which Mom would take care of, speaking to him in quietly triumphant tones, saying “now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” – but he knew that his gambit had failed.

He should have seen it coming. You can’t win against an adult. Especially if it’s your parent. Most especially if it’s the parent who cooks for you.

Dad didn’t even join them at the table this time. He had gotten White Castles on the way home from work and wolfed them down on the drive to the house. He sat in his easy chair, smoking cigarettes and reading the paper. Beth barely touched her food. She ate approximately a mouthful of each item before she asked to be excused to the bathroom, where she made horrible retching sounds, like she was throwing up. Joey wondered if she was even more affected by the horrible smell of the liver-thing that was on his plate than he was. For her part, Mom crammed as much food into her mouth as she could, talking about how delicious everything was between bites, looking at no one in particular. Her enthusiasm seemed forced now that she didn’t have an audience to play to. Her attempts to get Beth to ally herself against her own brother may have, at some point, worked, but that plan backfired quickly and was punctuated by Beth’s trip to the bathroom.

But, collateral damage aside, Joey knew that he had lost this war.

Slowly, with great hesitance and deliberation, he picked up his knife and fork. Mom stopped shoving food into her mouth and looked at him out of the corner of her eye. Joey stabbed the liver with his fork and cut off a large sliver from the curly end, regarded it with a resigned look of defeat, and put it in his mouth. Mom watched him carefully, still out of the corner of her eye, as he chewed quickly and swallowed, grimacing the whole time.

It took him the better part of a half hour to finish it, gagging a couple of times. He’d cut off a piece, wolf it down, make terrible faces and gagging sounds, and wait a few minutes before cutting off another. It tasted worse than any liver had ever tasted in his life. It had evolved, somehow, into a whole new, horrible flavor entirely. He managed to finish it, with tears brimming from his eyes at the end. Mom thought they were the tears of a defeated child, and did her best not to smile over winning this little war, and mostly she succeeded.

And to some extent, they were. But mostly, they were the tears of a kid who had eaten the worst food possible, and was doing his best to contain the roiling, burbling suffering that was taking place in his stomach.

And then, something else began to go on down there. He knew this feeling. It had only happened to him a few times before – the last time was when he was sick with chicken pox and couldn’t eat anything.

His stomach was churning, making frighteningly audible warning noises.

He looked at his mother, tears still in his eyes. Now there was a third reason for them. He knew what was going to happen next. He hoped it wasn’t too late.

“Mom?” he said, his voice quavering.

“Yes, son?” she answered, voice all honey and love.

“I’m s—“

He never finished his sentence. Instead, the liver, chewed and partially digested and touched by stomach acid and bile, flew out of his mouth in a convulsive stream, straight at her. He couldn’t help it. He was trying to warn her, to ask for help, a garbage can, or to be led to the sink, but there had been no time. He was sorrier now than just a moment before.

At the end, her blouse was covered with regurgitated liver. They sat, staring at each other for what seemed like a long time. Both were dumbstruck as to what to say.

Without meaning to, Joey had employed the nuclear option. He had lost the battle, but had, against all odds, won the war.

Mom, slowly rising from her chair and pulling the front part of her blouse up partially to keep anything from sliding off and making a mess on the floor, said, quietly and with a slight tremble in her voice. “You’re excused from the table. Put your plate in the sink.”

She never made liver again.

For his part, though, he never complained about anything else she ever served.

SATURDAY

The family piled into the car and drove down to the Burger Queen for Imperial Burgers, fries and Big Red and ice cream. Mom paid for everything.

War reparations.

[hunterskittennwrites]

5:00 PM - EVEN THE RIVER JORDAN STARTED OUT AS A STREAM

Jerry sat on a hard concrete bench on a walking path in the park, watching pigeons and squirrels vainly approaching him for food. A few minutes after arriving, he had spread his hands wide and told them he didn’t have anything. No nuts, no bread, no popcorn.

They continued to hover around him like expectant children, apparently not believing what he told them. One enterprising pigeon fluttered up to the back of the park bench and approached him, eyeing him suspiciously.

He turned to face its weird, wide, dead, bird-eye and said, “I don’t know how to convince you, but I really don’t have anything. Seriously. Now will you leave me alone? I’m waiting for someone.”

The someone he was waiting for was a blind date. All he knew of her was that they had mutual friends, she had just moved into town, had red hair and was ‘very nice”.

Jerry had experienced a wide variety of “very nice” girls, and, he discovered, that they ran the gamut from actually very nice (but not his type) to not very nice at all (definitely not his type).

Also, they had told him, she liked pink.

And so, as an identifier, he had bought a single pink rose and a cheap (he preferred the word “inexpensive”) glass vase at the local supermarket, and was waiting for her with the flower and vase sitting on his lap. He jealously guarded it from the fauna that were still looking for food. “Not for you,” he told them. They didn’t listen.

But then, suddenly, the pigeons fluttered away, the squirrels ran off as if their tails were on fire, and he felt a presence sitting next to him. His heart leapt suddenly to his throat. It had been awhile since he’d gone out on a date of any kind, and this one was going to be simple – a walk around the park, followed by dinner in a nearby nice restaurant (meaning: just a little on the expensive side), and after that, they’d decide where and whether their relationship would continue. The mutual friends had told her that he had been hurt in relationships and was skittish about getting into a new one. For her part, so was she. This would be what he called the Eggshell Dance for both of them.

But, as he turned to greet her, he noticed that the person sitting next to him did not have red hair, was not a female, and something told him that whoever this was, he probably had no opinion about pink.

The flower in Jerry’s vase suddenly drooped downward, and a few petals began to fall off of it. That’s weird, he thought.

“I’m sorry,” he said politely to the man who had sat down next to him, “I’m waiting on someone. We’re…” His brain went into the whole run of whether to tell this person about his plans, through “what business is it of his, anyway”, then back around. “We’re going on a date.”

The gentleman who had sat next to him smiled. It was a sad, wistful smile, like someone who was about to impart bad news. Jerry noticed that he was dressed strangely. He was wearing a Trilby hat, for one. That in itself wouldn’t have been strange, but he looked like his outfit had been directly lifted fromsome movie from the early Sixties. He wore an immaculately pressed suit, with a crisp coat and vest. He wore an almost radiant white shirt and a thin black tie. His pants were creased to the point of being able to cut butter, and rode halfway to his knees when he sat down. He had on thin black socks, held up with garters, and shiny black shoes. Jerry fully expected the man to reach into an interior coat pocket, produce a silver cigarette case and pop an unfiltered Camel into his mouth.

“No,” the man said to him, “you’re not.”

Shit! was the first thought that went through Jerry’s head. She’s stood me up and sent her father to break the news. But then he realized that, despite the way he was dressed, the man couldn’t have been much older than Jerry was.

Confused, Jerry asked: “What? Why not? How do you know? Are you her brother or something?”

The sad, wistful smile appeared again. This time, the man did pop out a silver cigarette case, opened it and pulled one out from the bar that held them in place. It was filtered, however. “Want one?” he offered, holding it out for Jerry.

“I quit smoking,” Jerry replied. “Why are you saying that I’m not going on a date? Is she standing me up? And who the hell are you, anyway?”

The man held the cigarette he had offered between his first two fingers, not lighting it at all. He put it in front of Jerry again. “Seriously, you may want this, whether you quit or not. In a minute, you probably will want it. Here. Take it.”

Jerry didn’t take the cigarette. He just stared at this stranger.

“Will you please tell me—“ he began.

“It’s time, Jerry,” the man said flatly. Jerry’s mouth, which had been forming the word “what”, snapped shut. Something told him that this was exactly what he needed to do just now.

“Time?” he finally asked. “For what?”

It was half-past five. He was going to meet Laura – that was her name - here in the park, walk for a bit, then have dinner. She could show up any second. He had to get rid of this guy, mainly because it was awkward enough to be going on a blind date as it was. Introducing a person he’d just met to another person he’d just met was really asking too much of him just now. He didn’t have the time for it.

“It’s time for you to die, Jerry. You didn’t quit smoking soon enough. The Book says you’re going to become really anxious and panicky, it’ll trigger a weakness in your heart that your doctor has so far failed to detect, and that will trigger a fatal heart attack. You’ll fall down where you’re standing now, with that rose in your hand. Your date will come upon you, see that you’re not moving or breathing, scream her head off, and call 911. But by then it’ll be too late. You’ll already be dead.”

Of all the things that Jerry had just heard, the swirl of words that had basically assaulted him like a platoon of soap bubbles shot at him by a jet engine, the only word that had registered was:

“Book? What ‘book’ are you talking about?”

“The Book of Life.” the stranger replied. “The Book of All Things. It tells me when to collect people, and I come for them. You’re one of the lucky ones. You get a few minutes warning.”

Jerry didn’t know where it came from, but anger suddenly welled up in him. He stood up and faced the stranger. “You… are so… full of shit! Get out of here! I don’t need this! I just came out here to go on this stupid blind date, because my friends think I’m too lonely. I’m already nervous as hell about that, and the last thing I need is some extra from Breakfast at Tiffany’s telling me crazy shit like this! Go away!”

By the time he’d finished, he was actually out of breath. He sat back down, wiping the sweat from his face with the sleeve of his coat.

“Can’t, Jerry. I’m here for you. I’ve got to take you.” The man then snapped his fingers and looked like a light bulb had lit up over his head. “Would it help if I looked like this?”

Jerry used to have, when he was a kid, Play-Doh. He would mold it into shapes, then wad those shapes into a ball, and mold it into other shapes. What the man was doing to himself was disconcertingly like that, except with a person instead of brightly colored, allegedly non-toxic molding clay.

The person who sat next to him now was a petite, very pale, black haired girl wearing a leotard top with spaghetti straps, black jeans with a gigantic punk belt, goth midcalf boots, an ankh on a chain around her neck, and, strangely, an umbrella. Her blanched white face was made up with black lipstick and eyeliner, with an odd curlicue spiraling downward from one eye. She smiled a kind and knowing smile at him.

Jerry sat, gaping and gobsmacked. “I’ll…” he began, mouth dry. “I’ll have that cigarette now.”

The man, who had changed back so fast that Jerry didn’t even have time to register it, handed it to him, already lit. “Thanks,” Jerry said, holding it in trembling hands.

“Don’t mention it. Doesn’t matter if you have it now anyway, right?” He smiled, as if this was supposed to be a joke, or in some other way humorous. Jerry was not in a humorous mood, though.

“Look,” Jerry said, finally understanding the complete and total importance of this meeting, “all I wanted was to be happy. Be with someone and just have a happy life, you know? I’ve made some mistakes, had a lot of false starts, but this date I’ve got could be the one. This woman could be the one who makes me happy and makes me feel like a whole person.

“In fact,” he said, warming up to the idea, “we could get married, maybe have a kid. That kid might grow up to become a famous scientist, or, or, a doctor. Yeah! A doctor. And he - or maybe she, I don’t have a preference - might discover a cure for cancer, and then we won’t be seeing you around so much, huh?”

He finished this up with a satisfied and very ill-advised smirk on his face.

The man, Death, reached into his coat again, while Jerry puffed away at his cigarette – a menthol, he discovered – and smiled to himself. Death pulled out a small, beaten-up leather book with the letters BOAT on the cover, opened it, thumbed through a few pages, then stopped, ran his finger down until he found what he was looking for. He tapped it in confirmation, put the book away in his coat, and turned to Jerry, who was almost finished with his cigarette.

“You’re right, Jerry. I don’t know how you figured that all out, but bra-vo! Because that’s exactly what would have happened. And, I’m sorry to say, never going to happen at all, now. Are you all done with that cigarette?”

Jerry nodded before he realized he had done so. He looked at Death with sudden dread in his eyes. “No… aw, no, man. Really?”

Two things happened, then:

Jerry’s body, its heart triggered by the promised fatal coronary event that itself was triggered by Jerry’s anxiety (and smoking of the last, fatal cigarette), slumped to the ground, the pink rose still in his hand. Ten minutes later, a rather pretty redhead in a nice dress happened upon him, tried to wake him, realized that he wasn’t waking up ever again, screamed her head off and called 911.

Of course, this put her off of dating anyone again for a long time.

Jerry found himself somewhere else. Whatever kind of afterlife scenario you believe in, that’s where he ended up, until the end of time.

Death, this time wearing a tennis outfit, carrying a racquet jauntily over his shoulder, walked to the tennis courts. He had one more appointment in the park, and then he could call it a day.

For their part, the pigeons and squirrels gave him a wide berth. They’d meet him soon enough.

[hunterskittennwrites]

4 PM – ANTI-MATER

The tumor in her belly caused no pain at all.

Janelle had researched this and had found that in some certain cases, tumors would not be painful. At most, they might be uncomfortable. Pain would come if it pressed against her spine or a vital organ. But none of that had happened yet. So far, all she felt was a heaviness, the same that she felt when she was carrying Claudette and later Jean-Paul to term. And, at first, she thought that Lukas had managed to sneak another baby into her. But when she had it checked, the doctors told her that it wasn’t a new baby, that it was, indeed a tumor.

After the diagnosis, she had taken time off from the laboratory and went to her home in Geneva to rest and await word from the doctors as to when to come back in. It was lonely there. The children were both off at school, and Lukas was still at the lab, deep underground, colliding atoms with the rest of the team. Television didn’t interest her and, after a while, the internet lost her interest as well. She would spend her days reading the old books that had been passed down from both sides of their families. She studiously avoided anything related to atomic science. She didn’t want to be reminded of what she was missing.

She had wanted to get up, go outside in the spring weather and take a walk, but the last time she tried, the weight of the tumor exhausted her, and it felt like trying to run a marathon while pregnant. It was her only excursion.

She would fix lunch for one, then dinner for one. Lukas would only be there on the weekends, like she used to do when she was working. Working with him and their team.

The appointment had been made for today, and she had called Lukas to tell him she was on the way to hospital for the surgery to remove the tumor. He told her that he managed to convince the project manager for the Collider to let him have time off to join her, and that he was rushing to the hospital as they spoke, and would meet her there.

She had called for a taxi and advised them about her condition, and the cab arrived promptly at the time arranged. The driver even helped her to the car and took care of her overnight bag. He drove very slowly and carefully to the hospital, and, while not speaking much, gave her a very friendly smile to indicate that he appreciated what she was going through. She had smiled back, but shortly began staring out the window.

She had become worried when her hair started to fall out. She had on one of her mother’s long, patterned silk scarves now. She had beaten the hair loss to the punch and just shaved the rest of the hair from her head, and wore the scarf more for warmth than modesty. Her belly swelled as though she were pregnant, and that worried her, too, as it had only been a month since the diagnosis, and her belly had been nearly flat then. It had grown so much, so quickly.

She would touch it, run her hands gently over it, remembering when Claudette and Jean-Paul both occupied that space, and smile wistfully at the memory. She knew now that, no matter what, there would be no more children. Even if there was a clean excision of the tumor, they had told her that they would need to perform a radical hysterectomy as a precautionary measure. If she was lucky, the tumor, even as quickly as it was growing, would prove benign and no other organs would need to be treated or removed.

She prayed that this would be the case. She was a scientist, but she still prayed. And she prayed silently to herself in the taxi on the way to hospital, while they set her in a wheelchair and went over admittance forms with her, and while they prepped her for surgery. She only stopped praying when she saw Lukas, true to his word, waving at her through the surgery door’s window, before he was gently escorted away by a nurse to the waiting room.

The surgeon told her that, to remove the tumor, they would perform a modified Caesarian section, which secretly amused her, as it would be, after having two children through the traditional means, her first. She would be under a general anesthetic, and the operation should only take three hours or so, barring complications. They had told her that preliminary x-rays and CT scans indicated that once the large, round dark lump was removed -- along with her uterus -- she should recover fully. Blood tests gave them every reason to believe that it was benign. A week in hospital, a few more resting at home, and she should be back to work.

She was encouraged by that. She missed the work. She missed her colleagues at the Collider. She missed the hum of the computers and, even more so, the powerful, subtle vibration of the accelerator. She could feel it beneath her feet, no matter where she was in the facility. And she missed being side- by-side with Lukas.

When the Collider had first gone online, there had been wild, baseless concerns, when they had announced that one project would be to search for the Higgs boson, that they would inadvertently create a singularity, right there in the facility! How little the press and the public understood! They were dealing with particles, pieces so tiny as to not even be seen by human eyes, even aided with the most powerful of electron microscopes! The idea of creating a black hole and sucking half of Europe into it was so ludicrous that at the beginning of the project, their work was punctuated by sudden cases of the giggles whenever someone thought about it.

She began to drift, thinking of the Collider, and the atoms, and the particles, and how they all fit together, and how, through crashing them into each other and tearing them to pieces like a subatomic demolition derby, humanity would learn a little more each day about what made up the universe they lived in. And soon she was unconscious.

…and then, suddenly, she was not.

It was as if she had been woken rudely from a dream by a sudden, fearful thought. Her eyes flew open, but the paralytics in the anesthesia were still working in her system, keeping her from moving and pulling out the intravenous drips stuck into her. She looked at the ceiling, and felt a strange sensation.

Cold. Like someone was blowing cool air into her insides. It was a very disquieting sensation. No pain, just… cold.

Her head was slightly elevated, and although she could not move it, she could move her eyes, and she looked down as far and as hard as she could.

Sounds filtered in, almost suddenly: warning beeps and electronic klaxons, the sound of several people all talking at once, giving and receiving orders in rapid succession. A subtly rising panic in the sound of them. Someone noting that the patient had somehow regained consciousness, and saying so again, more loudly, because it seemed like everyone was ignoring this news. She realized that “the patient” was her.

She was able to move her head a little now, and was able to see that her incision was still open, and that the doctor was doing his best to be thorough, but something was wrong. Beads of sweat were all over his forehead, gathering and dripping onto her torso. He was cutting quickly, almost sloppily, as if to excise the tumor as fast as he could. The assisting physician was nowhere to be seen, but she could hear a man vomiting in the corner. The nurses had wide, frightened looks on their faces, but stood firm with the surgeon.

She was still calm, no doubt because not all of the anesthetic had worn off. She felt no pain, even though her insides were still exposed to the air. It was almost blissfully surreal, except for the panic exhibited by everyone else in the room.

… and then the doctor removed the tumor…

It was still inside the amniotic sac, an umbilical cord winding from it to the incision in her torso. The shape inside the sac moved, slowly at first, but when the doctor cut the cord, its movements became faster, as it fought to tear out of the sac. And when it did, an arm bursting through, it was…

Even in her drugged state, she could still conjure the word “indescribable”. Or maybe, better, “horrific”. For when the arm burst through, it appeared to be an arm like one belonging to a human baby, but it was as black as the darkest reaches of space, and covered with pale, flesh-colored veins, which still pulsed madly.

The baby-creature quickly tore and pulled itself out of the sac, still being held by the petrified doctor, who stared at it with incredulous fear. The baby-creature turned its gaze to him, already fully in control of the neck muscles that a human baby would take weeks to master, and bellowed a cold, dark, low scream that sounded like it came from the far reaches of the universe itself.

The doctor’s glasses, held in place to his head and surgical cap by a liberal application of surgical tape, began, strangely, to move away from his face, as if being pulled by something. Janelle watched in detached interest and noted that the glasses were being pulled in the direction of the baby-creature.

 At the same time, the quickly disintegrating amniotic sac, no longer needed by this abomination, completely dissolved.

The doctor was holding the creature up the way someone who had never held a baby would hold one: hands around the torso, supporting under the shoulders, but far away from the holder’s body. Janelle noticed that the doctor’s latex gloves dissolved where his hands touched it. Then the doctor suddenly screamed in pain and dropped the creature, right on her stomach, she could see what looked like torn flesh, as if the doctor’s hands had been ripped from the ends of his arms.

The noise in the room had increased: screams; instruments and devices and machines crashing into things. Scalpels and other small pieces flying through the air and straight toward the baby-creature, embedding themselves into it and, strangely, sinking in, as if they never existed. The baby-creature did not even seem to notice. There was a terrible sound of rushing air, as if it were being sucked into a vacuum. She could feel the rush of it against her exposed skin and her still-open incision.

The baby-creature, now seemingly noticing Janelle for the first time, turned to look at her, its dark maw wide in a parody of a baby’s cry, its eyes…

Its eyes, red as fire, like suns in the center of a distant galaxy.

Its skin, as black and vast as space.

The air swirled around the baby-creature as it fell against her still open belly, then raised itself and pulled itself forward.

A gigantic, horrifying noise bellowed and echoed from its mouth: “AAAAAAAAMMMMMM!!! AAAAAAMMMMM!!!” It looked right at her with its red, flaming eyes, moving upward.

She should have been afraid, but she wasn’t. She was calm, almost serene, as items from the room flew about, then embedded themselves into the black, black skin of this thing, sinking in until they were swallowed up. She watched it slowly move up, closer.

She saw, where it had laid a hand, or a knee, that her body was puckering and being drawn in, as if the baby-creature’s own skin was sucking her into itself. She felt the pulling, and knew that, were it not for the powerful drugs coursing through her to keep her sedated and unmoving, she would be screaming with pain and terror.

The baby-creature was only a foot from her face now, hovering over her breast, looking for something to nourish itself upon.

She smiled at it. She knew it. She knew what it needed.

“Come to mama,” she said, softly, smiling still.

[hunterskittennwrites]

I AM THE NIGHT

(This story was written for a friend of mine for her birthday. It was published as a single-copy-only limited edition... by Staples [hey, they were reasonably priced, and it looked damn good!], and there are no plans to make any other physical copies.

Today, the recipient gave me permission to publish her story here for your [I hope] enjoyment. 

All characters and their likenesses are copyright DC Comics Inc. and are used here with no expectation of monetary gain for this work.)

My name is Bruce Wayne. When I was a young child, my parents were murdered in front of me. While that was traumatic enough, what was worse was that the murderer did not finish the job. He left me alive.

My life has been a torturous road to justice ever since. After the funeral, our family butler, Alfred, arranged to adopt me, as a ward, through the family law retainers, and set aside a trust for my inheritance when I reached legal majority. Until then, all of my needs would be met. I could live in our mansion, attend the finest schools, grow up in the manner into which I’d become accustomed.

But, if not for the presence of Alfred, I would be totally alone my entire life.

I found it fitting. I was left alone to live. So I would live, alone. As I grew up, I had to learn how to speak to people in social situations. Alfred would throw birthday parties for me, and kids would show up – or rather, their parents would make sure they were seen bringing their kids to my party – and we’d have a rather strained time of it, as all of these kids, even the ones I went to school with, were strangers to me. They always would be. There was nothing in me that could relate to them.

Because their parents brought them to my parties.

To his credit, Alfred managed to shave down and wear off the worst of my self-imposed isolation, so by the time I hit college, I was something close to a normal human being. Or at least I could fake it.

I had been, since junior high school, doubling up on my studies. I would even audit classes, or borrow books from higher grades, from the school library, and from my father’s personal library at the mansion, and study them. Books on law, martial arts, police procedure, chemistry, biology, psychiatry, auto mechanics, aviation, electronics, forensics, computer miniaturization, oceanography, clothing and fashion, theatre and film – with an emphasis on makeup and special effects, sports, and every encyclopedia I could lay my hands on. I wanted to know everything about everything.

Alfred worried over me. I told him not to. He did anyway.

In high school and in college, I took as many extracurricular activities as I could manage. Keeping up grades was never a problem. I had learned to compartmentalize my life. Studies took up one portion, strictly scheduled and controlled, the extracurricular stuff – drama and theatre, martial arts, fencing, track and field, wrestling, many others – took up more time, and was more fluid in scheduling, but for the years I spent perfecting my discipline, the easier it got.

I had a purpose behind this. I was never going to let another child watch his parents be taken away from him. I would become a force for justice.

I had found, in my studies, that the criminal element is essentially a superstitious, cowardly lot, using the cover of the night to commit their crimes. I had to find a way to strike terror into their hearts, to use the night and the darkness against them. I had to become a black, terrible creature of the night… something memorable and terrifying…

I could think of nothing that could be so terrible to the human mind that would strike such fear, until the day I went walking the estate and fell down a forgotten well. I must have hit my head, because I woke up with a bloody gash. I lay on the wet rock of a dark cave that I had remembered, from my childhood, exploring when I could get away with it. I’d remembered that the cave seemed to go for miles, but I could never get far.

Something always held me back from going too far into the caves. A sound unlike any other I’d ever heard. Like a million tiny beings, hidden, breathing… waiting…

My fall down into the well had awakened them. Something black, and terrible. Creatures of the night.

Bats.

Attending Psychiatrist: Dr. Carr

Assisting Psychologist: Dr. Quinzell

Report Date: May 19

Synopsis (full report on following pages): Patient exhibits symptoms of rampant schizophrenia, violent tendencies, dissociation complex and MPD. Patient is highly intelligent, scoring in the 100th percentile on all intelligence testing (when sedated and relatively cooperative). Patient was admitted to this facility after an incident in which he attacked two citizens. Police report (attached) states that patient had intervened, or believed he had intervened, in the commission of a crime, and had begun violently attacking these citizens. Police are still gathering evidence and witness statements, but from what information we have now, it is believed that patient attacked without warning by either rappelling down or swinging down from a rope secured to a building façade. Patient was wearing an odd, form-fitting costume apparently based on either a flying-fox or bat motif. The costume was of a very sophisticated design, using some of the latest in police and military body protection materials. The costume also came with a belt containing various items (see list, attached). Arresting officer Sergeant James Gordon reported that GCPD officers had to subdue patient with tasers and place him in restraints for the protection of patient and those around him. Patient was brought to Arkham for evaluation by the above attending physicians. Currently, patient is sedated and resting comfortably.

It took a long time for me to find my way out of the caves. I didn’t have a flashlight, but further down, there were bioluminescent lichens that bathed the caves in a faint blue tint. I walked, climbed, and sometimes slipped and almost fell, through miles and miles of caves.

There was one area that looked like it had been actually cleared out by human hands, however. I headed toward it, through what now looked like well-worn paths between the bat-droppings.

The area had a relatively flat floor, and extended up into the darkness to an unknown height. Exploring around, I was surprised to find what looked like a set of steps, carved out of the rock, leading upward into a recess in the cave wall. Instinctively, I went to them and climbed up. The walls were wide enough for two people to walk the steps abreast. At last, my hand extended in front of me, I met the end of the rock stairwell. But the material I felt on the palm of my hand did not feel like rock. It felt like wood.

I pushed against it and found that whatever it was, it was on a heavy hinge, which shrieked in protest at being moved. It had obviously not been used in decades, whatever it was. And as it opened, the light behind it was relatively very bright.

What I saw next amazed me: It was my father’s study. His books, his cigar stands, his overstuffed leather chairs, the gigantic painting of him and my mother above the mantel of the fireplace.

The fire there, being tended by Alfred, who, hearing the rusty scream of the hinges, had turned, startled, pointing a hot poker in my direction. When he saw it was me, he lowered the poker back to the fireplace with a sigh of relief.

“Master Bruce,” he asked, “where on earth have you been? And why are you bleeding?” He rushed to me, pulling the immaculately folded handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbing at my head gash, which I had forgotten in my curious exploring. He led me to the nearest bathroom, applying alcohol and a gauze dressing, and checking to make sure I was not dizzy or suffering any other concussion effects. I assured him I was fine.

But...

“That cave, Alfred…. What is the story about that cave? Why are there steps leading up from it to…”

“The grandfather clock in your study?” he prompted, finishing the dressing.

“Exactly.”

“Slaves, Master Bruce. Your great-great-grandfather was a smuggler of slaves to the North both before and during the Civil War. He would ‘employ’ them in the capacity that was expected of them by day, and by night they and their families would utilize the caves to escape to the North. The large area was a place where several dozens of them could camp and rest at one time, while keeping up the façade of a slave-owner’s chattel.”

“It’s perfect,” I told him.

Attending Physicians: Dr. Carr, Dr. Quinzell, Dr. Tetch, Dr. Crane

Orderlies: Waylon Jones, Harvey Dent

Guest in Attendance: Sgt. James Gordon, GCPD

Report Date: May 20

Synopsis (full report and testing results on following pages): Patient is not responding well to treatment. He is prone to erratic and spontaneous bursts of violence, as well as equally spontaneous moments of a strange kind of catatonia. It is as if he is two different persons: one who wants desperately to escape from here, and one who may already have done so, after a fashion. Along with my current assisting psychologist, Dr. Quinzell, I have requested the assistance of Drs. Jervis Tetch, the pharmacologist, and Jonathan Crane, specialist in criminal psychopathology. A call to Dr. Edward Nigma was not returned in time for this session, but his office responded that he would attempt to make himself available if there is another session needed. Due to the possibility of sudden, violent behavior from patient, I have asked Mr. Jones and Mr. Dent to attend as well. Sergeant Gordon has also requested to be present, and we have allowed this as a courtesy to the GCPD. However, aside from being an “interested party”, as he described himself, we are not sure about his reasons for wanting to have further exposure to our patient.

“Green hair,” Wayne said. Which Dr. Carr found a strange thing for someone to first say when coming out of heavy sedation. Wayne was looking right at him, his eyes becoming more piercing, more accusatory, as he lifted out of the sedation in waves. “I’ll stop you,” he said. “Stop you all.”

Quinzell leaned forward to hear better. The patient, Wayne, was speaking quietly, which all patients do when awakening from the drugs. “Did he say ‘green hair’?” she asked. “I need to make sure I get that down right.”

“Not too, close, Harley… Doctor Quinzell,” Dr. Carr responded. “He’s restrained but still dangerous.”

Quinzell gave him a curious look. “Your hair does look a little green in this light,” she said.

Carr had blond hair, which he favored to use a gel to keep in place, and was very pale complected, almost albino, with thin but prominent red lips. He had a long, sharp nose, and when he smiled, which was not often, it could be a bit disquieting. Someone once told him about the movie The Man Who Laughs, and said that he resembled the main character when he smiled. Carr sought out and watched the movie once. Afterward, he resolved never to smile as much, or as widely, around people when he could help it. No sense disturbing patients – or anyone else – with something so strange.

Tetch stood by with his bag of pharmacopoeia, in case sedation was needed again, his unruly blond hair (not green in this light, Carr noted) held in place by a paper surgical hat. Crane stood further back, taking notes. He did not speak much. By the end of this session, Carr estimated he may have said ten words, most of those when the doctors were introducing themselves to each other.

The orderlies stood to one side, far enough away not to interfere, but close enough to jump in just in case the patient decided to throw another fit. Dent was an obsequious sort who seemed to be doing his best to curry favor with the medical staff – although Carr had heard disturbing rumors of his treatment of patients when alone with them, which he had not found time to investigate. Jones was a large, quiet man with a congenital skin condition that made him itch and caused his skin to become rather scaly. Carr knew that he was seeing a dermatologist, Dr. Matthew Hagen, who had prescribed a rather powerful skin cream for Jones’ condition. It seemed to barely keep the itching and scaling at bay. Still, Jones was a friendly sort, who genuinely seemed to care about the patients under his watch, unlike what Carr heard about Dent.

Gordon stood at the back, observing and only asking questions occasionally, like the detective he was – incisive, to the point and always directly relevant to what he was seeing. Still, he did his best not to interfere. Carr found it strange that a police sergeant would find himself so interested in a patient like Wayne, but here he was. Carr could hardly say no to him, unless he made a nuisance of himself.

“Rogues gallery,” Wayne suddenly said, in a low, husky, rumbling voice. “Think you got me. Escape, take you all in.” He glanced at Gordon, leaning against the wall. “Rescue you, Gordon. Good cop.”

Gordon almost said something until Carr raised his hand cautiously.

“Why do you call us that? Rogues gallery?” he asked Wayne. “What does that mean to you?”

“Questions,” Wayne answered, in that disquieting growl. “Drugged me. Won’t get away with it.”

“You haven’t answered his question,” Quinzell interjected, impatiently.

“Dr. Quinzell,” Dr. Carr cautioned, a bit more sternly than usual. “Please. I need him to focus.”

“But, he’s puttin’—“ she started.

“Dr. Quinzell, thank you. That is all.”

She quickly stalked out, the sound of her high heels echoing closely in the room, then more hollowly in the hallway.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Wayne,” Carr said soothingly. “Please excuse that outburst. Our younger colleague still has something to learn about self-restraint.” Tetch and the orderlies barely suppressed laughter.

“Still, she’s right. You haven’t answered the question. Why ‘rogues gallery’?”

The patient closed his eyes and went silent. He did not look as though he was falling asleep, or even succumbing to possible aftereffects of sedation. This looked like a deliberate preparation for something. Gordon, leaning against the wall, stood up straight and Carr saw that his hand was straying close to where he assumed Gordon’s police-issued firearm would be holstered. He tried to gesture Gordon to calm, but Gordon’s attention was on Wayne.

“He did this before, Doctor,” Gordon explained. “Playing possum. When we were arresting him, he went limp, closed his eyes. We thought he had a condition, like epilepsy, and that he was having some kind of a petit mal seizure. Then he went nuts and, well, let’s just say there are a couple of officers taking up space in Gotham General right now. So now you know why I’m here.”

“Very well, Sergeant,” Carr conceded. “Thank you for that, but I think between Dr. Tetch, our strong young men here and the restraints, we have things well in h—“

Wayne moved swiftly, almost faster than the eye could follow. Somehow… somehow he had managed to pick the locking mechanism in one of the restraint cuffs, and his right arm was now loose. He was already reaching for the other cuff when Jones and Dent were on him; Jones using his size and weight to hold the patient down, Dent grabbing Wayne’s suddenly free hand and savagely bringing it down to his side, next to the cuff he’d just escaped. There was a sickening crack, and all was still.

“Doctor, I think I might have broken his wrist,” Dent finally confessed. “In all the commotion.”

It took a lot of effort, and a lot of money, all of it my own – not from the businesses, stocks or the foundation my father set up for the poor and sick of the city. And I had to be very careful about getting even that. When one withdraws a large amount of money from one’s bank account, it tends to make waves, especially if one is the richest man in Gotham. I had to put up several fronts to divert funds around until they got to my own pocket, to deflect questions. For what I was going to spend it on, I didn’t need the FDIC or Gotham Banking Commission coming by the manor, making uncomfortable inquiries.

Most of the money was spent turning the cave into a state-of-the art headquarters. The latest in computers and computer security measures – some stuff not even heard of outside of the secret Tapestry Avenue webservers, some not even that public, and some I wrote and built myself. Plus material for the suit I would need to wear when I went to work. It would be a special suit, of my own design, with rather grudging help from Alfred, designed for maximum flexibility as well as maximum protection. Through dummy fronts, I purchased the computer components and pieces of the suit, and slowly put everything together.

Also, as good as the camp – as I found out my father called it – was for my purposes, it needed work. Levelling the floor, rigging lighting, safety nets for the drop-offs. And none of it to be done by contractors. I would have to rely on only Alfred and myself to get it accomplished. By the time we put the finishing touches on it, I felt a wry sense of irony that my crusade against those who would flout the law would begin with me in an apron, sweeping the floor of my new…

It had to have a name. Headquarters sounded far too formal, like the Quonset hut a general would occupy when directing forces at war. I, too, would be at war, but it was a one-man, guerrilla war against those who would victimize the innocent. I couldn’t be so formal.

It was Alfred who, inadvertently, gave it the name that stuck.

“Honestly, Master Bruce,” he said, also wielding a broom and apron that day along with me. “I fail to see how you will manage to accomplish your goal, so far from the city, in this… bat cave.”

And now my new home had a name.

Attending Physicians: Dr. Carr, Dr. Nigma, Dr. Thompkins

Orderly: Waylon Jones

Report Date: May 20

Synopsis: Dent has been sent home and my recommendation to Dr. Arkham for his suspension hearing has been filed. There was no reason for him to use such force against the patient. Staff general physician Dr. Thompkins has been placed in charge of patient’s physical recovery, including personally applying the splint and wrist cuff to set the broken ulna. Fortunately, the carpus was undamaged, and even the ulna suffered only an incomplete fracture. Patient should recover fully, physically. Mentally, however, it is sadly another story. Patient is still under a delusion that he is someone else. Someone called Bat Man. I am grateful to Dr. Nigma for finding time in his schedule to assist with trying to find out more of how this patient came to believe in this particular fantasy persona. However, the questions asked are either not answered, or patient pretends to have a hard time comprehending them. I’ve asked Dr. Nigma if he can spare more time, and, fortunately, he has offered to free up more of his schedule to help treat the patient. Dr. Nigma seems to act as though the patient’s refusal to cooperate is a challenge, as if he is a riddle needing to be solved.

I would need a car, at some point, I realized, once I realized just exactly how large a city like Gotham was. Not a regular car, but one with many of the same features as the systems at the… Batcave. It still amused me to say it.

Batcave.

And possibly a boat. Maybe even a plane.

But these would have to wait. The expenditures already made were just under the threshold I’d predicted would raise suspicion and questions I didn’t want raised. I would have to make do with what I’d already put together so far.

Gotham is, by all accounts, one of the four largest cities in America, right beside New York, Metropolis and Los Angeles. It is crowded and the streets and buildings are crammed together, almost without plan, but it is immense in both height – we have, per capita, more skyscrapers than even Metropolis – and breadth. Not to mention that it is divided among several islands and a mainland district. In order to carry on my crusade, I would have to have maximum mobility.

Over the course of several months, I began setting up caches and safe places in various parts of the city – smaller, more compact versions of the Batcave. No one short of a criminal genius would be able to crack the codes and traps I set for all of them. It was the next to last thing needed before I could begin.

Among all the disciplines I studied – martial arts, boxing, long distance running, meditation, clean mind/body training – one of the most useful ones was something called Parkour. It is the art of movement, a way to be able to utilize one’s surroundings to move, run, roll, jump and land freely without breaking the flow of forward motion. One is always moving, always one step ahead of one’s feet, hands and body, looking for the next handhold, ledge, fence, pipe, stairwell… I spent a year studying, under an assumed name and slightly in disguise, with the acknowledged world’s master of the art. It was the last piece of the puzzle that would best enable me to navigate the spires and canyons of my city. One of the most important lessons he taught me, though, which is only known to masters on the highest levels of the discipline, is the use of rope to move from lower levels to higher ones in the fastest way possible. In their way, they would carry a length of rope with a small, retractable grappling hook that they would throw with fantastic strength to a ledge or a rooftop façade, and climb it so quickly as to appear to crawl up the wall.

I invented something even more efficient. I created a gun that would shoot the hook at tremendous speed and force wherever I aimed it, and it would pull a thin rope made of a special military-grade polymer along behind it. The rope had to be thin, because I would never know how long it would need it to be at any given time. My invention would be able to store nearly a thousand feet of rope, and testing had shown me that the gun would be able to fire the entire length of it exactly where I aimed it, if the need arose. It was strong enough to support nearly half a ton, even at the full thousand feet. It would be more than enough for me.

I needed a place to store it, however, when not in use. I couldn’t run around carrying it in one hand all the time. And that is when I discovered that there were more tools and weapons I would need for my battles – smoke bombs, miniature forensic tools like a fingerprint kit and sample collectors, lock picks, even my cell phone in case I needed to contact Alfred for homefront assistance.

I needed something to hold all of these items, so I fashioned a belt in which to carry them. My first attempt at one was a bit bulky in spots, but after trial and error, I managed to come up with a design that was more compact, and had a place to hold the grappling gun. With this last item added to the suit, I was finally ready.

Alfred, bless him, called it my utility belt.

Attending Physicians: Dr. Carr, Dr. Nigma, Dr. Quinzell

Report Date: May 23

Synopsis: Patient is now in a locked and, for his protection, padded room. We have foregone placing him in a straitjacket, as he manages to escape them every time, and it began to be more trouble than the effort was worth for the orderlies – kind and patient Orderly Jones and Orderly Dent, who was less patient, but was taking great care, now, not to abuse or harm the patient. Also, fitting the jacket over patient’s splint and cast took a great deal more effort above that. Patient did not seem to be impeded by his broken wrist when he would escape. An orderly or a guard would check on him, and find the jacket neatly set in the back corner each time. After some discussions with Administrator Arkham, it was decided that, since the patient is in a locked and padded room with extremely limited outside access, leaving the jacket off would not present any additional risk to either his or the staff’s safety. Aside from that, the patient sits quietly, never looking up at any sound or disturbance that occurs outside his room. It’s as though he is deep in meditation, or possibly planning an escape. According to the tests, which have been included in a previous report, his intelligence scores are very nearly off the chart. He is almost superhumanly clever. We must constantly keep watch on him – there are cameras in each of the four upper corners of the room, and the ceiling is high enough that they are in no danger of being disabled by patient – and when visiting, we have our orderlies sedate and take the patient to a glassed-in room. The visiting sessions are unproductive. Dr. Nigma is starting to show signs of frustration. Patient will answer some questions, but not all, and the answers he does provide seem to indicate not only a schizoid personality, but an almost sociopathic tendency to believe that he and he alone would be able to “save” the city. From what, he will not elaborate upon. I am beginning to also feel Dr. Nigma’s sense of frustration. As for Dr. Quinzell – she observes, takes notes, but says little. Perhaps her approach is best, but we do have to ask the questions. It is our job and our duty. I will not rest until I have cracked the psychopathy that is within Bruce Wayne.

“Mr. Wayne,” Nigma began. “Do you know why you’re here?”

Wayne looked at him, a piercing gaze that softened only a little, after a moment, to a more-or-less blank stare, right past him. “Because I was tricked.”

“Who tricked you, Mr. Wayne?”

“You,” Wayne said, his voice going back into that low, husky growl. “All of you. I thought it was a simple robbery. How you fooled Gordon, I don’t know. But I’ll find out. I always find out.”

“Mr. Wayne,” Nigma said softly, betraying none of his building frustration. “What do you think is happening here?”

“It was a robbery. I was stopping it. And your goons rushed me. There were too many of them. One of them stunned me. Brought me here, to Arkham. Unmasked me. Now the mission is compromised.”

“What mission?” Carr interjected.

Nigma’s irritation showed, just a tiny bit. “Dr. Carr, please! But he does have a point, Mr. Wayne. What mission is compromised? What is it that compelled you to put on that suit and attack those people like you did? Was that part of the mission?”

Wayne looked at him in stony silence for a moment. “Crime, Nigma. My mission is to stop crime. To keep some other young kid from seeing—“ Wayne stopped short suddenly, and stared off into the middle distance.

“Seeing what, Mr. Wayne? What are you so afraid of a child seeing that you would do what you did?”

But Wayne went silent again, and refused to speak further.

Reporting Psychiatrist: Dr. Joseph Carr

May 24

It is a matter of public record that Bruce Wayne grew up an orphan after the deaths of his parents, Thomas and Martha Wayne, at the hands of a petty thief in what is now called Crime Alley. Wayne was adopted and raised by the family butler from the age of eight until he reached his majority. Wayne has repeatedly demonstrated an extremely high intellect, along with what seems an intense personal exercise regime that has put him at the peak of physical health. He is, in many ways, in better shape than some of the world’s best Olympic athletes. He has, according to recently received records, studied not only several subjects in college – going so far as to be Harvard’s first and only quadruple major – but afterward seemed to disappear for long stretches of time, during which he was studying martial arts and other disciplines under the greatest masters in the world.

In an interview with the butler, Alfred Pennyworth, it was disclosed that Wayne was a solitary, brooding, sometimes intense child. Even then he demonstrated schizoid tendencies that Pennyworth failed to report due either to a lack of knowledge about the symptoms, or knowing them and ignoring them altogether. Not to disparage, but one must remain aware of the fact that he was in a delicate position: the richest boy in Gotham was under his charge. Large sums of money were at stake, not only for the boy when he came into his majority, but also for the family business and charities. And the butler as well, possibly. It has not been looked into, but Pennyworth may have a sizable number of shares of Wayne Enterprises stock. Were it to come out that young Bruce Wayne was, in any way, unstable, the carefully built personal empire that would be his when legally an adult would be torn apart by minority stockholders in the company, as well as possible – but so far undocumented – distant relatives, like ravening hyenas after a fallen lion. It is possible that Pennyworth acted with blinders on, both to protect himself and, in his mind, the young boy in his charge.

As it stands, based on school tests throughout his life, Bruce Wayne grew up as normally as an orphaned billionaire’s son could do. He was friendly enough with others, but kept his distance, and this was a pattern followed throughout the rest of his life.

There are reports of all kinds of rich eccentrics in this country. There have been books written about them, and one cannot surf the internet or watch television without one or another rich person or family displaying that money does not, indeed, buy good sense nor judgment.

It was also disclosed during one of the interviews with Pennyworth that Wayne had fallen through a disused well and suffered a cut and concussion. Pennyworth himself treated the wound at the mansion. No call was made to medical services or Wayne’s doctor to report the concussion. While it is impossible to conclude that this was a contributing factor in Wayne’s mental descent, it still cannot be left unmentioned.

But Wayne is different. He took his own personal fortune and spent it toward one goal. GCPD has discovered what could only be called a war room situated in a cave below the Wayne Mansion, accessed by way of a trick grandfather clock in the family study. I have been told that the computers there were so difficult to crack that some of them self-destructed before hackers could even get past the first few firewalls. Those systems that have survived have been taken by the FBI for further investigation. Also, no report about Wayne and the incident that brought him here can possibly be complete without mentioning the outfit he was wearing when arrested by Sergeant Gordon:

It has been described variously as a costume, a uniform, action gear, and, most commonly, as the Batsuit. I am not sure who coined that particular phrase, but it stuck, and, strangely, it fits.

Wayne, apparently, had been wearing this strange outfit – made from scratch from some of the most sophisticated materials and polymers available – when he descended on the citizens (see attached dossiers: Cobblepot, Oswald and Kyle, Selina) whom he said were committing a crime.

From his hospital bed, Cobblepot, when conscious, contended that he was committing no crime, least of all the coordinated robbery of the bank he was accused of by Wayne. Unfortunately, further questioning of Cobblepot is not currently possible, as he has slipped into a coma. The doctors under whose care he is in have stated that Cobblepot is very near to falling into a permanent vegetative state. Only time will tell. But according to police files and eyewitness testimony, Cobblepot did not appear to be committing any crime worse than jaywalking. Kyle, apparently because she is female, fared better. She was unconscious and tied up when found by police, but otherwise unharmed.

Which means, essentially, that Bruce Wayne, in this weird and unsettling guise of this Bat Man character he has made up, literally, from the whole cloth, savagely attacked an innocent person without any motive whatsoever.

Which places Wayne in an untenable position. If he is found sane enough to stand trial – which is what Dr. Quinzell has been enlisted to determine – he will go to prison for possibly twenty years or more. If he is not, he will most likely spend the rest of his life here at Arkham. Neither option will mean freedom for him any time soon.

And so far, with the analysis of Doctors Quinzell, Nigma, Crane and myself, it is almost impossible to conclude that Wayne is actually sane enough for a trial. He is certainly not in a state in which I would want him in an environment where he would be interacting with other criminals in Blackgate, given his propensity for hatred of the criminal element.

The choice is unfortunately clear, to retain Bruce Wayne here at Arkham Asylum indefinitely, under the care of myself and the other doctors mentioned in this and previous reports.

The rope held me perfectly. Probably, in its relatively small way, the best of all the monetary investments I’ve made for this crusade. I shot the grappler into the air, and it impacted and held to the side of the Gotham Life building. The spring-loaded reel engaged, and I shot up into the air like a rocket. At the exact, right time, I touched against the building, using my upward momentum to flip and roll, while at the same time yanking the grappler from the building face, to execute a perfect two-point landing on the roof.

Quickly, I rushed to the other side of it and pulled a pair of small but powerful binoculars from my utility belt. I crouched on the lip of the façade, placed the glasses to my eyes and scanned the area below. The mask did not in the least impede my vision. I did give up a small bit of peripheral vision, but using my other senses in the ways I’d been trained would more than make up for the small deficit in vision.

And there it was:

The short, fat man in the formal wear and top hat was standing next to a woman in black, whose clothing – or costume – looked like it was modeled on cats. I’d have laughed, but for what I was wearing myself.

So… this penguin and this cat woman would believe that they could openly rob the First Bank of Gotham under my watch.

We’d see about that.

I placed the binoculars back into my belt and leapt from the roof, toward my prey.

Reporting Psychiatrist: Dr. Joseph Carr

May 25

We have lost him.

In the middle of the night, the patient reported intense pain and pressure in the area of his head which suffered a concussion during his fall in the cave below his residence (see earlier report). Drs. Thompkins and Quinzell, along with orderlies Jones and Dent, rushed to the patient’s room to administer aid.

They soon found out that this was a ruse. Wayne, pretending to be suffering from intense pain, rendered both Thompkins and Quinzell unconscious with what Orderly Jones crudely but rather accurately described as a Vulcan neck pinch. After some research, I was able to determine that, under certain circumstances and with the correct application of pressure on certain nerve clusters of the body, a subject can be rendered unconscious. This is a very obscure, arcane practice that, I found after some research, is practiced by a small sect of priests in the deep jungle of western Cambodia, usually as a form of subduction. That the patient would know of this exact way of rendering someone unconscious without harming the subject is a marvelous discovery, demonstrating just how well-read, knowledgeable and resourceful the patient actually is.

Jones and Dent did not fare so well. The patient, obviously remembering the results of his previous encounter with Dent, broke the exact same bone in Dent’s wrist, rendering him unable to perform his duty. Jones, due to his size, tried to overpower the patient, but was overpowered himself in a rather violent manner. I am told both of the men will recover fully, however.

But Bruce Wayne, a patient under my care, has escaped Arkham Asylum. While I was not present at the time of the escape, I must accept full responsibility for this incident, and will work with both Administrator Arkham and Gordon of the GCPD to assist in apprehending the patient before he can do further harm to anyone.

This is a very serious matter. Bruce Wayne is dangerous to anyone around him, unless severely restrained, sedated or locked in an escape-proof room. I do not treat this as a joke in the least. I will do all I can to make sure he is found, apprehended and returned to our care here at Arkham. He desperately needs help to undo decades of psychological damage, and I pledge to give my utmost to make that happen.

All it took was a ruse. It was almost disappointing.

I escaped Arkham, fighting off Killer Croc and Two-Face when escaping my cell. I kept to the shadows and managed to leave the grounds using the clichéd method of hanging from the suspension frame of a garbage truck and rolling away once far enough from the asylum.

My name is known now. Joker has released it to the public. Everyone knows that Bruce Wayne is the Batman. I will have to start again, with another identity, somewhere else. Possibly Chicago or even Metropolis.

But no matter what my private identity will be, there is one thing that will never change:

Criminals are a superstitious, cowardly lot, and my presence will always strike terror into their hearts.

For I am vengeance. I am the night.

I am Batman.

[hunterskittennwrites]

3 PM – THE BETTER PLACE

I did not have children. I did not have a wife. I lived alone. I had pets, but there was only so much companionship they could offer. I tried to fill my home with sound and vision from movies and radio and the internet, but again, it could only go so far.

I had few friends. I didn’t know why. I didn’t believe I was an unpleasant person. I tended to remain by myself at parties or company functions, but - to my knowledge - I didn’t think I was a creepy person. I was just shy and alone. Solitary.

When I was a child, I used to have fantasies of a different world, a world beneath and around the dull, mundane world I lived in. A world outside the existence in which I had to go to school every day, and everything was the same, only gradually changing as I grew up, grew older, and grew more aware of the world around me. Gradually, my fantasies of this outside plane of existence faded, until they were just wish-fulfillment daydreams I would have at slow moments.

But I never really forgot them.

The idea that in the embankments of freeway overpasses there were secret doors, big enough for a car to drive through, into subterranean caverns where the Important People would park their cars and do the Important Business of running the world. The thought that certain floors of skyscrapers had people and machines and other things that would never see the light of day, but were the engines that truly ran the world. And again, Important People tended these.

The Important People were many, and although they never mentioned it, it was a secret society populated by almost all the adults I’d ever know when I was a child, along with certain gifted children - The Important Children -  who had secret super powers, which was their inroad to being with the Important People. And all of these people, when they went to their jobs and were otherwise away from home where I could see them, made the Important Decisions that kept the world going, and moved us to a better place.

A cleaner place, with cars that would never age or break down and always looked brand new. Where women would love you no matter what your age, and wouldn’t mind dating a ten-year-old boy because he was flush in love with her. A world where the future was just on the cusp, on the horizon, and it would arrive at any time, like a tidal wave of new technology and paradise. And you would drive your car down the secret entrance in the embankment to the vast, interconnected cities in the caves to live lives of love and perfect technology and advancements in science and philosophy and social life. It would be a different world.

A better world.

Even now, as I drove to work, I would glance over at an overpass embankment, or what looked like a conspicuously unused door in the side of a building, wondering where the entrance to The Better Place was, and who was privileged enough to know it and use it. Idle fantasies that were quickly forgotten about when pulling into the parking lot at work, or going home to clean house and feed the cats and try to work up the courage to be a social animal.

My cats were somewhat affectionate, but would spend most of their time away from me. They would lounge in the windowsills when I opened the windows in the spring. They would play by themselves, with each other, while I was online. Aside from the odd cuddle, feeding and request to be petted, they pretty much were indifferent to me.

They, and everyone else.

No one – to my knowledge – outright hated me. I had friends, few as they were. But they were always off doing things I could only dream of doing, because of a lack of time, or lack of money, or lack of athleticism, or some other thing I lacked that kept me from joining them. My friends would have adventures. They were the Important People that I looked up to and envied now. TheY did not – to my knowledge – have keys to secret passages and permission to enter the secret doors in freeway overpass embankments. But they always seemed to be off doing things far less mundane than I did.

Until one day, there was a knock on my front door.

I rose from my computer, putting the documentary I was watching on pause, and went to answer. I opened the door, but no one was there.

I looked down, and in front of the door was a box, wrapped in smooth mailing paper, with no markings whatsoever. Nothing to indicate who it was for, where it had come from, or even that it had been mailed, or delivered by UPS or FedEx, at all. A small box, about the size of something that might hold a volleyball. On my porch, with no markings and for no reason.

I looked around. There were no indications that anyone was walking or driving away from my house. Everything – the neighbors mowing their lawns, the cars driving past my house, the birds and cicadas in the trees – were normal. Nothing amiss, nothing changed.

Except a mysterious small box on my porch.

I picked it up, and, like one would expect to do, I placed it next to my ear. I don’t know why, but it seems to be an instinct with people – to check for mysterious ticking. It was a thing we learned from old movies and televisions shows, and passed down the generations until even kids, who had never known the possible necessity for doing something like this, did it as well.

But there was no ticking. If anything, I detected a low, faint but steady hum. I should have been concerned about that, but something told me that I had nothing to worry about, that the hum, whatever it was, was not malign. It was almost a reassuring sound.

I resisted the urge to do the other thing people who receive packages do, and did not shake it. That was a habit it took me one bad experience, with a rare and valuable glassware set my grandmother once sent me, to get rid of. I did not shake this box.

I brought it inside and took it to the kitchen table and set it down. Sitting on the wood of the table, vibrating somewhat, the hum was amplified a little. I could hear it now without planting my ear on the box.

The cats both jumped up on the table – just try to keep a cat from doing this if they’re inclined to – gave the box a sniff, then wandered over for pettings before going off to do what cats do on a lazy spring cat-day.

I grabbed a glass from the cabinet, a pitcher of sweet tea I had made earlier today, and poured myself a glassful, then sat down to consider this humming box.

I had an idea what was inside. Or, more to the point, I had an idea where it came from.

My heart began to beat a little harder and faster. I raised my glass of tea to my lips with a trembling hand, which I had to fight hard to steady.

I was both excited and a little afraid.

If this was what I thought it was, it would explain a lot. And it would change everything.

Deliberately, I waited until I finished my glass of tea before reaching for the box. I got out my penknife and sliced open the paper, which had been applied in such a way as there were no seems or folds or corners that I could grasp and just tear it off. It was as if the box had been dipped in some sort of liquid version of wrapping paper, like a caramel covered with chocolate.

Inside was a white box. It was a gleaming, seamless, plastic thing. Much like the boxes that Apple products come in. Very showy, and yet at the same time mysterious. One would get this cachet of mystery and technological progress when opening something like an iPod box, even when you knew what was inside.

I had an idea what was inside this one, but could not guess exactly what.

There was a red button on the top, flush with the rest of the box. In fact, it was so seamlessly flush with the top of the box that it looked painted on. But when I ran my finger over it, there was a little bit of rubbery give, as opposed to the plastic rigidity of the rest of the box. I absently ran my finger around the perimeter of this button, considering what to do.

The box hummed softly to itself, patiently, seemingly unconcerned about my thoughts on its presence and what to do about it. It would wait, without complaint, for my decision.

My decision actually moved me to pour another glass of tea. I sat down with it, took a sip, then considered the box, my chin resting on my steepled index fingers, my elbows on the table.

Without even thinking about it, I reached up, placed my finger on the red button, and pressed.

The humming grew a little bit louder.

Both cats were almost suddenly in my lap, maneuvering themselves and almost fighting each other for the best spot on my legs to cuddle.

The sky outside my window looked a little bluer. A little purer.

I took another sip of my tea.

It was the best tasting thing I had ever tried.

It was as if all of my senses, dulled and eroded by years of use, were suddenly made new and fresh, all visceral experiences as unique now as they had been in childhood. My eyes, which had required glasses for the better part of three decades, suddenly could see much more clearly.

The sun outside grew brighter and brighter, I could feel the wood of the table beneath my fingers – every seam, every whorl, even below the varnish. I could feel every inch of my skin in contact with the clothes I was wearing, every hair bent below where fabric covered it. All of my senses, dulled by years, unleashed, released, to an overwhelming degree, until it became too much, and the brightness suddenly went to black.

I had knocked the glass of tea off the table, where it had shattered on the floor, when I fell unconscious. My head rested in my arms. The cats were gone, probably frightened away when the glass fell and shattered. I hoped that they hadn’t stepped on any of the glass and resolved to check for bloody paw prints.

Until I saw the black suit hanging on the pantry door.

It was brand-new, perfectly pressed, with a crisp white shirt, a bright red tie, new belt and even a new pair of underwear folded neatly over the cross bar of the hanger. On the floor beneath it was a new pair of black shoes.

The box was gone.

As I regained my senses – still more acute than they were before I pressed the button – I resolved that I needed to clean my mess before investigating this new development. I picked up the larger pieces of glass, wrapped them carefully in paper towels, and threw them in the garbage. I took some more towels and draped them over the spilled tea, letting them soak it up before very carefully wiping the floor to gather the rest of the tea along with the smaller shards of glass, until there was nothing to indicate that a mess had been made.

Now to consider the suit.

I took it down from the pantry door, and it was surprisingly light. It looked like a wool blend, or something resembling one, but not quite. Something new. Something different. Inside the collar was the sizing tag. It was exactly my size. I had no doubt that the shirt, pants, shoes, even the underwear, were exactly my size as well. While checking the suit, I also found a pair of black socks that were almost sheer in their appearance, but felt thick and comfortable-seeming between my fingers.

I knew what was next expected. I didn’t know if I was being watched, but one does not pass out with a box on the table and wake up with the box missing, to be replaced by a suit with exact sizing, and not expect that one is not being observed in some way.

I began to remove my clothes, right there in the kitchen. When I was naked, I stood, considering the feeling of the cool tile beneath my feet, and how I could again feel every inch of it. I closed my eyes for a moment, then began to dress myself in the suit.

As expected, it fit perfectly.

But now what?

After a moment’s consideration, I knew.

I added food to the cat feeder, made sure they had enough water, grabbed the keys and went out to the car. I would be back for them later, but I didn’t know exactly when.

The day was almost impossibly bright and beautiful. My car looked as though someone had washed it and de-aged it ten years. By instinct, I reached into the inner pocket of the jacket, found a pair of sunglasses, and put them on.

I got in and turned the key in the ignition. The slightly rough start before the engine caught was gone. The car ran as if it just came off the showroom floor.

I began to drive around. I didn’t know where I’d find what I was looking for, but something told me that when the moment came, I would know then, and I would be in the right place.

I was driving down the freeway when I saw it.

On the inside of the embankment, on the flat area facing the freeway, was a seam that, on all my other journeys past this particular underpass, I know I had never seen before.

I drove toward it.

The door to the inside opened.

I drove down into the darkness, knowing what I would find.

I had always known.

© Mission Europa LTD.

[hunterskittennwrites]

2 PM – THE READ-THROUGH

It was a sunny and warm day, and I had in front of me a large cup of coffee without all the Starbucks crap in it, an ashtray, my cigarettes, and the final draft of the script for a video short subject.

My friend Brian wrote the script, set up funding through a Kickstarter, and amassed just enough to throw the video together. Still, he was doing it cheaply, and relied on my sense of charity to allow him not to pay me for my work, unless it became a hit of some kind, then he’d give me backend. We even actually signed a contract on that. I wasn’t sure where this video was going to be shown – YouTube, Vimeo, the 48-Hour project, or maybe something else. Anyway, he seemed to be really stoked about it, and I couldn’t help but be enthused – and flattered -- a little, too, when he told me I’d be perfect for the main character.

It was a short piece, only a few pages, including direction, he told me. I was sitting here to read it through and get a feel for my character. I hadn’t even looked at it yet, but was getting ready to.

Out of nowhere, this big guy with a shock of brown hair and a look on his face somewhere between merriment and mania sat down at the table across from me.

Before I could say anything about needing the space to myself so I could read the script, he reached over and grabbed my cup of coffee. “Ya mind, friend,” he said in what was almost a cartoonishly Irish accent, “if I whet me whistle? It’s been a long day for me and I need to have a sit.” He then proceeded to gulp down the entire cup. It must have cooled sufficiently, or he had the internal fortitude to withstand hot liquid, because it took him two seconds to drain the cup.

Either way, I was just robbed of my coffee. “What the hell,” I started, with shock and anger, “do you think you’re doing? That was my coffee you just drank!”

He reached over and grabbed my pack of smokes and lighter, again without asking, and lit up. He motioned his hand in a way that both waved me off and cleared a cloud of smoke from his face. “Oh, don’t ya worry about that, Sonny Jim. I’m good for it.”

I just stared at him. I was so pissed off now that I was suddenly dumbstruck as to what to say. And I’m not a violent person, so it hadn’t occurred to me yet to punch this jerk in the face. Not yet, anyway, but he was a pushy bastard.

“I t’ank ya, friend,” he said, indicating my cigarette that he stole. “It’s been awhile since I’ve had a decent smoke.”

While his face was being engulfed again by smoke, I came out of my own fog. “What the hell are you doing? I’m just sitting here, trying to read through this script, and you come out of the blue, drink all my coffee, steal a cigarette, and expect me to just sit here and let you? Who do you think you are?”

He looked a little dumbstruck himself for a second, but recovered quickly and stuck out his hand.

“My apologies, friend. Sean MacGregor, at your service.” I didn’t reach over to shake his hand. He held it out awkwardly for another couple of seconds before catching on.

“Again, my apologies, friend. I’ve been rude. Would it square things a tad if I bought you another cup of coffee and gave ya some coin for the fag?”

“For the what?” I asked, getting close to actually becoming violent. I haven’t marched in Pride parades for the sunburn.

“Beggin’ pardon,” he said, realizing, apparently, which country he was in. “The cigarette, friend. No offense intended.”

My anger abated, if only just a little. Bad enough this guy was stealing my stuff right in front of me; adding insult literally to injury would have been a little more than I would stand for.

“GARCON!” he suddenly yelled, signaling to the server who was taking care of outdoor customers. The poor guy nearly jumped out of his skin, dropping his tray, which, thankfully, didn’t have anything on it. The server, I could tell, was not all that impressed with Sean MacGregor, either, and was doing his professional best to hide his sudden dislike with a professional smile and professionally pleasant manner.

“How may I help you today, sir?” he asked, doing a good job of being friendly. I’d have to remember to tip him again.

“Two coffees! Black as the pit and sweet as a ginger’s--” and this is when he noticed my red hair, “—sweet as a redhead’s kiss!” He thought a minute. “And two croissants!”

“I’m sorry, we ran out of the croissants about a half hour ago,” the server said, and I could swear he was trying to hide a sense of satisfaction about this.

“Ah, ‘tis a shame,” Sean said, his Irish brogue, I swear, getting more pronounced the more he spoke. “Well, just the two coffees, then. Black as--“

“Black as the pit and sweet as a redhead’s kiss. How many sugars is that, sir?”

“Just bring a passel of them and we’ll figure it out on our own. Now, off wi’ yeh!” And he made a scooting motion toward the door. I’d have to remember to tip the poor guy a lot.

Sean turned back to me. “So, now, friend, what was so important that I was an interruption to it?” He tapped the script.

“I was getting ready to do a read-through on this script for a project a friend of mine is working on,” I said. I wasn’t quite as angry now. But that could change if Sean decided I would pay for the next round of coffee. “Just when you showed up.”

“Oh, me stars and garters!” he exclaimed. “Please accept my apologies! I didn’t realize…”

At that point, the server showed up with our coffee, a pile of sugar packets and one croissant. “We had one left,” he said. “Thought I’d go ahead and bring it out.” And watch you two fight over it, I could imagine him thinking.

I thanked the server in the nicest voice in my repertoire and told him that was all we’d need, hoping that would be all we’d need. After I paid the server for the goods (adding about a 50% tip, because, well..) and he went back inside, Sean tore open four packets of sugar at once and poured them all into his coffee—which was still steaming—stirred three times, then gulped it down as fast as the last one. “Ah, my, that’s good stuff!” he exclaimed. “And you can have the croissant. Least I could do in trade for the fa—for the smoke.”

And with that, he got up and left, just as suddenly as he arrived. And I realized that I had just paid for three cups of coffee and a croissant. Ah, well…

Now that he was gone, I looked down at the script I was originally here to read through.

And, oddly enough, it was called “The Read-Through”.

I looked up again, just to make sure Sean MacGregor, with his ludicrous Irish accent, wasn’t sneaking up on me again. But he was nowhere to be found. I looked around, but as fast as he had appeared, he’d disappeared just as quickly. I gave him a minute to sneak up on me again, then opened the script to the first page…

SCENE: A coffee shop. Specifically, the patio outdoors. A sunny, warm day.

Our PROTAGONIST is sitting at a table, alone. A large cup of as-yet undrunk coffee, a pack of cigarettes, an ashtray, and a script for a video short subject sit on the table before him. As he is about to crack open the first page, a large, disheveled IRISHMAN appears suddenly before him…

I think, I thought to myself, munching on the croissant that Sean left me, and seeing that, on the last page, the protagonist did the same, and had the same thought, that I’m going to have to have a talk with Brian about this script.

© Mission Europa LTD.

[hunterskittennwrites]

1 PM – SCARS

Harry sits on his camp chair, legs resting on the old, scarred, scratched and ring-stained coffee table with a price tag of “$2.00 OBO”, and tries not to doze in the shade of the tree which covers the yard sale Jodie has talked him into having.

The first customers arrived nearly before they had even finished bringing anything out to set up. He had heard about this phenomenon – people that would appear out of nowhere just as someone was setting up, there to snatch up all the good stuff before anyone else got there. And, of course, where there’s one, there are many, so as he and Jodie were, as the sun was peeking over the horizon, just finishing putting stuff on tables and hanging clothes on a rope strung between the two trees in the front yard, they were descended upon by a virtual army of elderly bargain hunters. He and Jodie thought that if they got everything out and ready before the time listed on their posters, they could be ready before people showed up. But they showed up early anyway, an hour before the listed time to open, descending on them like ravenous crows, waving cash and demanding to haggle over absolutely everything. He tried not to laugh when two old ladies almost got into a shoving match over a salad spinner.

But that was hours ago. While there have been more customers and potential customers who left without buying anything (more of those than the former, to be honest), things have slowed down considerably since then. Jodie, trusting him to be able to count small bills and change, goes inside to fix them a late lunch. And Harry tries not to fall asleep in his camp chair.

A family with small kids shows up and, as the mother and father look over old baby clothes for the infant being held against her shoulder, the other child rushes around. “Whereza toys?” he asks.

“Over there,” Harry says, pointing to a box that’s only partially full. Most of the good stuff had gone when the “crows” left, and that included the toys. The kid runs to the box and rummages around, making noises like someone rooting through a treasure chest.

Harry’s fully awake now that there are customers. He thinks about how, in an hour or so, he and Jodie with dismantle all the fold-out tables, take down the makeshift clothes rack strung between the trees, fold closed the boxes with miscellaneous items, and cart them to the Goodwill a couple of miles away. He thinks about how Jodie had convinced him that they needed to remove clutter now that the kids are away, that they needed some new furniture and knick-knacks anyway, hence the yard sale.

The kids have grown, one in the Marines and the other in college. The toys aren’t needed. Neither are baby clothes two decades old. Jodie was thorough and savage in her assessment of what could stay and what could go. Harry was surprised at the list of things she had him drag out to the front yard. By the time he was done, it felt like he had gutted the house. But, strangely, things didn’t look very different. It was as if they had pulled all these things out of the walls themselves.

The kid, who can’t be more than three, maybe four, years old, rushes to his parents with a scratched up race car that rolls forward when you set it on a surface and pull it backward. That was one of Mikey’s favorite toys, when he was the same age. The kid is clamoring for his parents’ attention, waving the car at them, trying desperately to impart upon them the overwhelming importance of his discovery, and that not taking it home with them for the mere price of twenty-five cents would be the mistake of the century.

The mother grabs enough of the baby clothes that Harry throws the toy car in for free, which thrills the kid even more. He now owns a toy car that has cost nothing. Harry takes ten dollars for the lot of clothes the woman has purchased and gently puts them in plastic grocery sacks he and Jodie have saved up for recycling, but never quite remember to take to the store’s recycle bin.

The family leaves, and Harry sits back down and contemplates the coffee table. Two dollars, or best offer. It’s a wonder no one has picked this up. It’s scratched up from the dogs and cats that have come and gone in their household, there are drink-ring stains where the kids kept forgetting to put coasters under their Kool-aids and bowls of cereal when watching cartoons. But it’s still solidly constructed.

Harry looks over at his pickup truck. She’s dark blue, six years old and fully paid off (except for annual taxes, damn The Man!). There’s a six-inch scratch just under the driver-side door handle that he never could figure out where it came from. There are rust stains along the top of the right rear fender, from where salted snows shot up into the fender and pretty much everywhere else during the last few winters. The bed, which he kept telling himself he was going to get lined with plastic, but never did, is dented here and there, and some of the paint has scraped off in places, exposing bare steel. Part of that was when his neighbor Phil, with promises of beer, pizza and twenty buck over and above any gas money Harry would want, convinced him to go grab a ton of gravel and haul it back. Part of it was moving furniture. Part of it was getting rid of junk. Part of it was throwing every fallen tree branch from the yard into the bed to take to the dump after a storm that had scared Jodie and the cat half to death.

But she still runs good. The air conditioning and heater still work like a charm. The guys down at the oil change place remark on how well taken care of she is. He’s only had to change tires once, and that was because he’d been stupid and ran over stuff that he thought wouldn’t puncture them. She’s not horribly deformed, but she’s not pristine, either. But if he sold her now, he’s sure the depreciation would be a lot less than some trucks the same age.

He looks at his house. The bushes are a bit overgrown. Mikey has promised to work on them and the rest of the yard when he gets home from school in a few weeks. (Lisette is on deployment in Iraq; she won’t share in the pleasure of indentured servitude landscaping.) The shutters could stand some paint. The flagpole holder screwed into the brick wall could stand some shoring up. But it’s comfortable and – yard sale items notwithstanding – has just enough room for them and the kids when they’re home. It may be that at some point in time, they may have to consider moving to something smaller, when Mikey starts on his career and Lisette finishes her enlistment and does much the same. But for now, this house is just right. It bears scratches and dents and scars, but they’ve grown to become part of the house itself now. Just like the scratches and dents and scraped-off paint on his truck.

Just like the long scar across Jodie’s belly, from where Lisette forgot which way was the exit during her birth, and the doctor decided to go in and get her rather than wait for her to decide which end she wanted to poke out first.

Just like the mark on Lisette’s chin, where she had been running when she was not much older than the kid who was just here, and fell on a piece of glass that had cut close to the bone, but scared her more than anything else, because she had never seen her own blood before then. Now she jokes that she and Harrison Ford are twins, and tells him and Jodie that the other troops call her Indiana Jones, or Han Solo, depending.

He looks at the table again. The legs are solidly still in place. Not a wobble to be found. The surface is scratched and stained; nothing a little sanding, stain and varnish wouldn’t fix… if he wanted to.

Truth to tell, he kind of likes it the way it is. It holds his feet comfortably. It held two kids, either standing, sitting or lying down on it, as they were growing up. And now, as Jodie comes out with a plate and a glass of Kool-Aid for him, and sets herself down on the table herself, it holds the weight of a full-grown adult without a complaint.

“My big, strong haggler,” she says, laughing and handing him his plate. Braunschweiger with horseradish mustard and swiss cheese, on rye. Sounds gross. He loves it. Some kettle-cooked chips on the side. “I’ll be right back,” she says, getting up to go in and grab her own plate. “We’ll start packing up after we eat, okay?” she yells back through the screen door.

“Okay,” he yells back. He reaches down and removes the “$2.00 OBO” sticker from the table.

Someone once posted something online that he copied, saved and printed, then put in a frame and hung it in the computer room: “Every scar makes me who I am. Every scar has its own story.”

As he sits in the shade, eating his gross, delicious sandwich, he thinks to himself that there has got to be some place in the computer room he could put that table.

Because the best things have the most interesting scars.

© Mission Europa LTD.

[hunterskittennwrites]

12 PM – THE UNFORTUNATE TALENT OF CARTER FARTER

Back when you were in school, there was always this one kid who, for whatever reason, nobody liked. If you were lucky, you weren’t that kid. But fate or kismet would lay its finger down on the head of one poor, unfortunate soul, and dictate that henceforth, this person would be universally reviled by all in his class. If you asked the other kids for a reason, it would be either “I don’t know”, or “because all the other kids hate him”. But they either wouldn’t or even couldn’t give you a clear answer.

The kid in my class, starting in fourth grade, was James Collier Carter Jr. He tried to get us to call him Jimmy – and this was before we had a president by that name – but we all ended up calling him Carter Farter.

You can guess why, but I really have to relate details. Trust me on this.

Carter Farter would have the most persistent, the most copious, and sometimes the most foul-smelling gas to ever escape someone’s anus. I never thought about it at the time, but looking back, I often wonder just what it was that he ate that produced such pollution.

One sunny day at school, Carter Farter did what he did best, and the rest of the class tittered while he turned red, yet again, with embarrassment. The teacher, Mrs. Nethery, suddenly looked up from her lesson plan, wrinkled her nose and made a sour face, then got up and opened every window in the room.

It was all we could do to keep from breaking up entirely.

I don’t really know if it was his problems with flatulence that made us kids – yeah, me, too, I shamefully admit – despise Carter Farter, or something that I wasn’t aware of that had happened prior to my jumping on the “hate Carter Farter” bandwagon, or his rather snooty demeanor, which was, given his status, usually inappropriate to pretty much every situation he got into.

All I know for sure is that all the kids hated him. It got so bad that he couldn’t even sit in the rows with the rest of us. Guys would poke him relentlessly with pencils. His complaining about it didn’t do much, because everyone could hide their pencils and plausibly deny – with angelic faces – that they were doing anything wrong. So the teacher placed a desk away from all the others, next to her own, as much to keep an eye on him – because I thought maybe she was starting to get wise to the fact that he was the source of those noxious emissions and wanted him close to the windows – as to keep him safe from the rest of us.

And even then, he wasn’t always safe.

One day, Mrs. Nethery called in sick, and we had a substitute teacher come in. She was young, inexperienced, and a bit perplexed as to why one kid was segregated from all the others. She must have thought he was a “special needs child” (as they politely called them back then). At one point, the intercom crackled to life and she was summoned to the principal’s office. She told us to continue studying quietly and left the room.

Not one minute later, a barrage of paperwads flew so thickly as to be a giant, lightweight hail storm, and landed on, under and around Carter Farter and his desk. He was pelted from all sides, and, although no one ever counted them, there were probably a hundred of them by the end of it. When the sub came back, she saw Carter Farter’s desk and the area around it covered with little wads of loose leaf paper, and Carter Farter himself looking like a deer in the headlights.

We couldn’t help but laugh, especially when the sub got flustered, then got angry, then blamed Carter Farter for the whole thing and forced him to pick up all of the paperwads himself and dispose of them.

Carter Farter was picked last, if at all, for kickball teams. He was always the slowest one of us to finish when we ran around the school grounds for exercise (even slower than some of the really overweight kids). He usually had an entire table, off in a remote corner, to himself for lunch. Sometimes a new kid would sit with him, but would soon be set straight by the rest of us.

Bus rides to and from school were hell for him. And it was all only made worse by the fact that he farted all the time.

I tried to keep my personal interaction with Carter Farter to a minimum. Although I joined in with the institutionalized hatred of the guy by all the other kids, there may have been something inside of me that held me back from being as abusive as the others. I never pushed or hit him, for example, or engaged in verbal abuse as much as the other kids. I did my share, I’ll admit, but something always held me back from going fully into giving him the hell the other kids did.

That may have been what saved me, in the end.

I never really delved, in my elementary-school way, into the psychology of what made Carter Farter tick. I never truly understood what had actually caused us kids to hate him, why he was so weird… why he farted all the time. But his utter loneliness was something I discovered quite by accident one day.

I was riding my bike through the neighborhood. We had about four or five interconnected subdivisions around this time, including one that was still being built – which we would steal keys from and go exploring in the half-built houses when the construction crews were gone – so I could ride my bike on residential streets without worrying too much about traffic. I was riding along, the sun on its downward arc for the day, when I rode past a house where a kid was whacking the shit out of the car in his driveway with a plastic sword. I stopped and watched this weird spectacle, and when he came back around to the side where I had a clear view of him, I realized that it was Carter Farter. He was alone, still wearing the clothes he had on in school that day, whaling on this car, which I assumed belonged to his dad – it looked like a “dad” kind of car, if you know what I mean – without anyone else nearby. He didn’t see me, and I took off before he could notice I was there watching. But that weird tableau gave me the tiniest bit of insight into the mind of that kid. I felt a small swell of pity for a few minutes, before I moved on to another part of the neighborhood and forgot almost entirely about it.

I used to have this really cool lunchbox. I’d had it since I was eight. It was one of those metal ones that were so popular for years before some smartass fussbudget parents decided metal lunchboxes were unsafe for kids and forced companies to stop making them and transition to plastic. Everyone had themed lunchboxes. One kid had Marvel superheroes, another had the Six Million Dollar Man, another had Walt Disney World. I had Hee Haw, that goofy country music and comedy show with Roy Clark and Buck Owens. I’d always liked that show, and when I found a lunchbox for it, it was the only one I ever wanted.

The problem was, the metal Thermos bottles that held whatever drink you brought along were lined on the inside with glass. If you dropped it, that was it. The lunchbox could still be used, but the Thermos was toast.

One day at school, just as we were lining up to go to lunch, someone jostled me and I dropped my Hee Haw lunchbox. I got a little pissed to see that there was a sizeable dent in the corner, but I knew I could fix that with my dad’s help. But the worst part was hearing the glass inside the Thermos – which had a picture of Buck and Roy laughing at something funny – breaking. My grape Kool-Aid was no longer an option, and I didn’t have any money in my pocket to get a chocolate milk. I did, however, have some in my desk for an emergency, and this certainly seemed to qualify. So I told the teacher what happened and asked if I could go back to my desk and retrieve my change for a milk. She said yes, but that I would have to go to the back of the line.

Carter Farter was at the back of the line, like he always was. I was about to protest, but thought better of it. Mrs. Nethery wouldn’t understand the complex hierarchical scheme that placed me and just about every other living creature above Carter Farter on the food chain. So I sucked it up, went back into the classroom, got my change and, without a word to him, took my place in the back of the line behind Carter Farter, praying fervently to God that he wouldn’t let loose with a peppering barrage of machine gun farts while we were walking to the lunchroom (which is the main reason he was always in the back of the line; no one wanted to be behind that toxic ass of his).

But Carter Farter’s face had a funny look that day. Like he was desperately trying to hold one in. Usually he would just let loose when he knew one was coming. His reputation was already pretty well busted by this point, so there was no reason for him to be polite about his farts anymore. But today, he was straining to keep it held in, for some reason. I didn’t ask, because I didn’t really want to talk to him. But he turned to me and, through his straining face, smiled a little smile at me.

In a voice that sounded like a balloon about to burst, he said, “I saw you that day”. I knew that he meant the day I stopped and watched him beating the shit out of his dad’s car. I froze. I didn’t know what to do or say to that. I ultimately said nothing, which he apparently felt some relief about. He probably was expecting me to make fun of him, and my silence may have meant more to him than even saying something nice.

“Don’t leave the kitchen,” he added cryptically, his voice straining mightily.

When we went into the lunchroom, we had to go in one door to the kitchen, where those of us who bought lunch or even just milk would have to go down the line, then pay for our stuff, then go out the other door to find a place to sit at one of the tables, where the horse trading of lunch items, bullshitting about who was cooler, what happened on Six Million Dollar Man last night, why Tammy’s shirts were developing lumps in the chest, all that stuff, would occur.

Our class filed through the lunchroom door, then down along the wall to the door into the kitchen, with Carter Farter and me bringing up the rear. Carter Farter’s face was turning a deep shade of red, his breathing becoming ragged and labored. Whatever horror he was holding in, he wouldn’t be able to contain much longer, I knew.

Don’t leave the kitchen, he told me.

I hung back a few feet. Not enough to arouse the suspicion of Mrs. Nethery or any of the other teachers monitoring students in the main room. Just enough to…

To what? I didn’t even know. But my spider-sense was tingling, as the saying went, and I knew something was going to happen.

As I walked into the kitchen, I “accidentally” kicked away the rubber doorstop, causing the entry door to close slowly on its hydraulic mechanism. Carter Farter bought a lunch, looking like he was about to literally explode. Sweat was forming at his hairline and starting to roll down his face. Whatever it was that was going on with him, it wouldn’t be long.

I got scared, then.

I grabbed a chocolate milk, and I don’t know if it was nervousness or some kind of unconscious sabotage to keep me in the kitchen, but I dropped it, which broke the carton, spilling chocolate milk everywhere. The lunch lady at the register ordered me to stop as she went to get the mop to clean the area. I reached over when everyone wasn’t looking and closed the exit door.

As soon as I did, the screams began. I heard kids at first yelling “ewwwww”, but then they started falling over into their food, off the benches, straight down from where they were standing. There was a trail of them, kids falling down, falling over, keening and shrieking, then falling silent, that emanated from behind Carter Farter, who was whistling to himself and carrying his lunch tray like nothing was going on at all.

He looked happy, cropdusting whatever horrible, toxic mustard gas gut-mixture he had brewed inside of him along the rows of lunch tables, going up and down the rows, making sure not to miss anyone. Mrs. Nethery clutched her heart like Fred Sanford, but unlike Fred, she didn’t stagger and call out that it was the big one. She just grabbed her chest and keeled over like a toppled statue.

“Get out of the way!” the lunch lady demanded. She had returned with the mop to clean up my mess, but, because she heard screaming, forced me away from the glass window in the door to get a look. “Oh, my god,” she said quite a bit more softly, dropping the mop and forgetting the pool of chocolate milk in which I was standing.

I took advantage of this to grab two cartons and shove them into my lunchbox.

The screams were slowing down, and, within less time than I would have thought possible, ceased entirely. The lunch lady moved away from the door and, nearly tripping on the mop handle, skittered for the phone in the back of the kitchen to call the police, ambulances, maybe the National Guard, and whoever else she thought might help. The window was now unblocked, and through it I saw Carter Farter, sitting at his accustomed spot at the very back end of the room, eating his lunch as if nothing were wrong, with a beatific smile on his face.

He turned then, surveying his handiwork. Or buttiwork, I guess, in this case. He smiled wider. I wondered just how he could sit in the same room as whatever it was that came out of his ass and just killed a couple hundred kids, breathing and acting normally, like nothing was wrong…

He looked happy.

© Mission Europa LTD.

[hunterskittennwrites]

11 AM – WE ARE NOT AMUSED

(Truer than you’d believe.)

I’d been spending the past two weeks trying to think of a story. I’d tried eating the foods I knew would give me weird dreams, I’d wracked my brain trying to come up with an angle, a snippet, anything, to get something down and written and out of my system.

I love to write. I live to write. If I’m not writing, I feel aimless and useless. I can function, but my mind wanders to the page, the words, the punctuation. The pure, cocaine-like rush of making a story come out of my head and onto paper, or an electronic document.

It is almost as bad a habit as drugs. I have to write.

And when I can’t, when I run dry, like now, it drives me crazy.

My muse had either deserted me or was taking a break. I couldn’t tell which, but the urge to write and the absence of something to write about had me distracted. I couldn’t sleep (well, I could, but not very well), I haven’t been hungry and my friends have been keeping their distance because I’d become a bear to deal with. I haven’t seen my cats in days. The food dish and water fountain have been depleting, so they were still around. They were just making themselves scarce.

“Hey!” said a female voice next to me. I, of course, was startled. I lived alone, and I was pretty sure the door was locked.

“I don’t need a door, dork. I’m your muse.”

I turned, my startlement dying down and being replaced by a strange, low-level dread. She was nothing like what I imagined my muse – whom I never outright saw, but imagined – looking like. My muse had long, flowing red hair, wore a diaphanous garment and had sparkles all around her. She had a kind face, and although she never spoke, she would lay her hand on my shoulder, and I would start churning out a story. She and I had a great relationship—

“Look, I know this tripe already, pal. She’s on break. You’ve worked her too hard, and she asked me to fill in. I owed her a favour, so here I am. Now, what kind of story do you want to write? Be quick, man. I don’t have all day.”

I had been writing a lot of short stories lately. I guess I’d been working her hard. Not on purpose, of course. I would never do that to her on purpose. It just kind of happened.

“Yeah, yeah, and glitter comes out of my ass,” this annoying woman who suddenly appeared next to me said. She was the opposite, almost completely, of my muse. She had blue hair, a bluish hue to her skin, wide, angry eyes—

“Hey!”

Shut up. Wide, angry eyes, and she had wings, like a dragonfly.

“Quit that! I do not!”

Actually, she did. And she was floating a foot above the floor, her wings buzzing like the sound of a large electric fan. She was wearing torn, rainbow coloured leggings, what looked like custom made Doc Martens, very short jean shorts and a loose t-shirt from Ted Nugent’s 1980 world tour, with the sleeves and collar torn out, so that it fell off of one shoulder. She had gauges in her ears, and diamond studs in her eyebrows, nose and lips. More diamonds on her face than I’ve ever seen in one place. And tons of bracelets. Every time she moved her hands, she made a horrible racket.

“You done now? Because yeah, just because I’m a muse doesn’t mean I can’t wear what I want. I’ve got some high-profile rock stars sitting and plucking guitars in frustration while I’m here with you, so you really need to step up your game. And quit using the letter U in words like ‘colored’. You’re not Canadian or British, and you’re certainly not Neil Gaiman.”

That last bit hurt. I knew for a fact that Gaiman’s U.S. editor has him de-anglicize his stories before they’re published over here. He said so online once.

“I could go on and on with you about this, but we’re wasting time,” she said, irritably. “What do you want to write about? I’ve got St. Vincent practically tearing her hair out right now and rolling around on the floor, trying to think of a hook for her next song. Ever hear her play guitar? Man, can she lay down some licks. Anyway, I don’t have all day.”

I finally spoke, in my external voice, to her. “I don’t know. You’re the muse. Muses inspire. You’ve done nothing so far but come in and give me a hard time and try to guilt-trip me about St. Vincent. I have no idea what to write, and you’re not helping.” I put my head in my hands, less out of despair than disgust with this situation. I’ve never had to fight a muse to get her to do her j—

“Not another word, writer-boy,” she interjected, rudely. “I am doing my job. Have you noticed how you’ve been typing all this stuff up? Huh? Didn’t think of that, did you? You’re actually writing a story, right now, about us. Huh. Not doing my job, my blue-tinted ass…

“And I’m only rude to people who waste my time.” That said with her arms crossed and a barely audible hmmph.

“I did not say hmmph,” she said. But she did. I was there and I heard it. “You keep this up, and I will fill you with such idiotic ideas that—“

But it was too late for that, I thought. This was the most ridiculous story, the most ridiculous situation, I’d ever found myself in when trying to write a story. Arguing in prose with someone who was arguing back in dialogue. It wouldn’t fly. Who’d believe this—

“And why are you writing in past tense, for Zeus’ sake? I’m right here, right now. It’s not like you haven’t already overdone present-tense storytelling. You wrote a whole novel that way. You’ve more than abused the privilege. And by the way, just when do you think you’ll ever get to the second draft on that? You’ve spent six years working on it and there’s maybe a dozen people who’ve actually read it. This is one of the things that Calliope is taking a break about. Do you know how hard it is to walk a guy through writing six hundred pages in the first person? Huh? Do you? And that’s after she replaced both Thalia and Melpomene, because you couldn’t find a way to finish your story and had to write the friggin’ Odyssey all over again…”

She’s crying. I hand her a tissue.

“S-stop it. I am not crying,” she sobs into the tissue, the blows her nose. “And you’re writing in present tense again, b-by the w-way.”

I am, I notice. Old habits die hard, I suppose. But now that we’ve gotten to this point – me writing several pages about an irritable muse, with an abrupt switch from past tense to present – where do we go from here?

I had enough difficulty coming up with a story, before she—

“Euterpe,” she says, with grudging helpfulness. She’s over her crying now. And do I detect a softening of that hard tone of voice?

“Don’t push it, Gaiman-wannabe,” she says, a little of the iron coming back.

But back to this story… how to end it? There are so many ways, I see now. I could go tragic, but I really don’t want to, because that would be an abrupt turn from the tone so far. I could go for a big joke, which might please Thalia, but I can’t think of any right now but the one about the tray of muffins in the oven, and that wouldn’t even be relevant to the story.

“I love that one!” Euterpe says, laughing. “It’s so stupid, but it’s hilarious. First time Thalia told me that, I peed myself.”

Muses pee themselves? I never even thought they—

“We’re Muses, not characters on a mural in Santa Monica. Sheesh. Anyway, I think we’re done here. St. Vincent’s calling for Chinese food, and she’ll binge on it and make herself sick unless I get over there. And Amanda Palmer has a new Dresden Dolls song due in about an hour, but she doesn’t know that yet. Also, you never heard that about the Dresden Dolls, got it? So I’ve got a lot to do.”

I’d like to say she leans down and kisses me on the cheek before she disappears, but she gives me a hard look and shakes her head. I don’t push my luck.

In spite of myself, and my experience today, I find myself grateful. This is the weirdest story – at least for me – that I’ve ever written. But somehow, it all seems to work. I’m not sure how, but it does. And I have Euterpe to thank for it. I look her up later on Wikipedia, and she is, indeed, the muse for musicians. So I’m inclined to believe her when she talks about St. Vincent and Amanda Palmer. I don’t have any reason not to.

I mean, how many blue-tinged, punk-rock dressed, dragonfly-winged girls have appeared suddenly in your house lately?

© Mission Europa LTD.