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Allura 24

I Just wanted to say I've never wrote a story before but I'm getting into it and just wanted to say thanks for reading if you do! Also I do not know punctuation please bare with it. June, 2nd, 1985. Here I am a homeless 50 year old man, drinking whiskey at 9:00 AM trying to haggle to make a buck. When it turns about 8:00 PM I go home where I live under a bridge. It's not too bad but hey I could be worse off. I start my day my day off when people are waking up for work. All of a sudden I saw my old Buddie from high school named Frank. I caught up to him and he instantly recognized me so we caught up on things. Being homeless is kind of embarrassing especially if your talking to an old buddy, I think most people would probably think of an excuse, but I'm not like that, I believe in honesty. He heard my story and the best thing ever happened, he gave me a job at his new pet store! The Animal House. I was so grateful of him and couldn't wait to start, he told me to start tomorrow. How thrilled I was, I can finally get a cheap apartment. I woke up and got dressed for my first day of work, and everything is going smoothly, and I'm having a blast. I love animals. My friend Frank tells me there's a delivery of animals out back and asked me to help them out by carrying the crates of animals. So getting near the last crate of animals a turtle comes and jumps at me and starts crawling to my shoulder. I decided I liked the turtle so much that I asked Frank if I could have him and I would pay him back when he gives me my first paycheck. Frank is such a good guy that he let me have Jumpling for free. I named him Jumpling because when I met him he jumped right on me and one time he tried eating my dumplings. After a few paychecks me and Jumpling were able to get a cheap apartment, that was all him and I needed. After a couple years we became local celebrities. I guess since Jumpling always jumps on my shoulder and always goes with me pointing towards the way I'm walking staring at what I'm staring at in front of me. August 3rd, 1995. Another amazing day and another amazing day at work, Jumpling is with me of course sitting in his favorite spot on my shoulder. He attracts a lot of customers, he's like the mascot of this place. All of a sudden a delivery truck shows up and hits the building. The ceiling starts collapsing right above my head. Real fast Jumpling jumps on top of my head and acts as a shield badly damaging him. JUMPLING! Please be okay. I rushed him to the hospital and they told me it's a 25% success rate of saving him. All I could do was sit there and wait. Why Jumpling why, why did you do that for me. Your my only family I love you. June 2nd, 2005. I'm 70 years old now. I have a house and am still managing the shop. Jumpling can't jump anymore from his injuries but I will always be there and help him to jump once more.

“Green Fairies, man. Just Green Fairies, James” I’ll never forget these words. What allured me with a seeming promise of fantasy was just that. Look. Look at those fairies in the bottle. Ever wonder where they come from? Man. Fairies are the real deal. Nothing fucks with fairies, except dolphins. If fairies and dolphins fight, dolphins would definitely win. Straight up water power. “How’s that thing go again, Ronald? That thing Bruce Lee says” “Be like water my friend. Now let the fairies be like water and pour ‘em out, James!” *Breaking news: Queen meets great-granddaughter Princess Charlotte* “Can you imagine if she was born 2 days later? She’d be Princess Leia. Princess fucking Leia, Ronald.” “Shut the fuck up James! I’m watching the news.” Making Green Fairies was something out of a fiction movie. I felt like a wizard. A French Wizard. First pour the Green Fairies into a cup. Be careful. Ratios are everything. Too much of the fairies and you’re out, too little and it’s out. Always remember 1 to 3. Ronald likes his with sugar. “Don’t pour the water that fast, fucking hell James, make sure you get all the sugar!” “I haven’t even started yet. It’s the just Green Fairies.” Ronald always seems to go colour blind when it suits him. But if you ask him about that red Porsche we saw last week, he’ll fight you until you its maroon. Ah yes, the sugar. It’s weird how the French decided this is how you mix Green Fairies. Balance a spoon, with holes, over a glass. Place a sugar cube on the spoon. Then pour the water over the cube and let it melt away. But, this is the best part - pouring water over the sugar cube. Just look at it. There melts our polar icecaps, weeping away into the cup of fairies. I could just stir it in like a coffee and never have to worry about the deeper meanings of life. “Ever wonder about global warming, Ronald? We really are a virus and global warming’s just Mother Nature’s way of taking care of the virus.” “Yes James. I watched Kingsman too. Now stop talking about movies and hurry up with my drink." “Blame the French, Ronald. Blame the fucking French.” *Breaking News: Kim Kardashian admits Bruce Jenner gender transition has been hard on family* “And this is news?” “I’m warning you, James, if you don’t shut the fuck up...” This was our Tuesday ritual - Green Fairies and News. Two bums on the couch, and one’s already dead.

Her face was almost perfect; her eyes seemed like they couldn't decide if they were green or blue, and they had thin rings of fiery orange around her pupils. Her light auburn hair flowed down her face and shoulders and her skin was like the lightest, finest sand. But she hid herself away, under a long black hood. For a long jagged scar ran along her face from between her eyebrows across her right cheek. Her name was Eden. Eden Faye. She looks 17, but no one really knows. Not even herself. She has no parents, no family and no home. When she was a baby she was left alone with a thin blanket and a note with only four words: Her name is Faye. Then The Company adopted her. They gave her the name Eden because it means perfect. Seems quite ironic now. I don't know what exactly they do in that place but they train children 'till they pass out. How to kill someone in under 5 seconds, how to disappear in a crowd, constant exercise, strategy planning. They're training them to become assassins. And I'm their next target. Eden was the best. It wasn't that she had no emotions, she just ignored them. Her first job was at 14, the youngest The Company had ever put on the field. She came back the next day with her knife covered in a crimson that simply said success. But she came back with an extra bonus: a deep slash along her face. Here's how they work: Person A wants Person B dead so they go to The Company, pays them x amount of money, then The Company trains up a child and sends them out for the job. The child gets food and a bed to sleep in return. No one ever suspects teenagers to be assassins - more so, girls. That's probably the reason why The Company is so successful. But Eden's scar makes her stand out, forcing her to be so invisible. It's because of this The Company values her so much and gives her the most important jobs. For all I know she could be behind me right now! But of course she isn't. It happened in less than two and a half seconds. It looked as if she walked right through the door, flew across the room and had a knife pressing into my throat. "Wait!" She relaxed. But by the slightest amount only I could feel. "Why should I?" Her voice. It's - I can't explain it. It's so different to what I thought it would be like... "Eden..." "How do you know my name?!" She tensed again. "Eden, I'm your father." She dropped her knife.

I unzipped my tent. Caws woke me before the Sun or the planes rose. The groggy Sky, cloud pilled and blushing with the promise of Morning. A splatter of dark grays and blues and oranges, like a pre-school drawing done in crayon, finished into a blur by the heel of a soft hand. Arctic mornings can convince anyone of the aesthetic tact of the Universe. Fat crows burdened a lifeless electrical wire into a smiling slump. My head hung out of the gape of my tent in the cold a while. My chunk of Earth hadn’t directly descried the Sun yet, but that didn’t keep the crows down. No. It would take more than mere darkness to do that. They whispered to each other every second. Twitching. Flying in silence. I dreamt they never slept. One of them must be awake as I sleep. Landing nearby. Observing my shut lids and slow rising chest. All week I slave to watch the Saturday horizon cherry from this haven of mine in the Pines. The concentrated heat and stench of Bailey and I together all night poured out into the winter Air in a dissipating cloud. The crows blared at the coming Sun, like monkey-men feeling fire. I stepped carefully over Bailey, zipped my jacket up over my jaw and cracked my neck. My eyes twitched at their caws. It’d been months and I still wasn’t used to it. I knelt a leg outside, exhaled, and knocked a soprano from its roost with a click and a *BANG* Some crows scattered, some stayed on the line. I brought my knee under me and rested my butt in the tent. I have an intolerance to confess. Creatures of any kind that parade their presence around persistently as Yulbi’s crows do, pestering all the others Creatures, those are the kind I don’t mind muting. They were everywhere. Their dead wire perch slumped even further when they returned. The line smiled bigger. I cracked open the barrel of my 20 gauge, which is better than a standard 12 for my purposes which is shooting as many shells as I can load and making each shot count. Makes quite a difference in shoulder soreness too. I asked Bailey why crows are the way they are and she gave me an honest answer. “What opposition do they have to silence, girl? We wouldn’t mind having so many of these damned creatures around if they weren’t so boisterous. They’re wondering how the Hell they got here too, aren’t they?” “Ha-ha-hoo,” I let out under the roar of a commercial flight lifting off and soaring over our heads and the Pinetops. I gave the fur above Bailey’s brown eyes a brash rub and answered for her; “What’d you say? Haha, they’re shouting back at all those giant metal birds we let out, eh?” She reclined for a belly rub and smiled. I gave her a good one. Over the last six months, two days a year, I’ve been practicing. My fingers are habituated to the cold so slipping shells into a double barrel stock feels natural, if not more natural, than brushing my teeth or buttoning jeans. My co workers, friends I have, think it wrong what I do, think it mean. They’ve all manufactured some kind of heightened notion that crows are privy to the unattainable peace birds all have as creatures of flight, and I keep telling them, “it ain’t the same with these ones”. All they say back is since they’re beings who ‘swim through the air’ that I ought to respect their peace. Bah. I like birds, I swear I do, don’t get me wrong, and I’ve got good cause to too. My grandmother and grandfather spent years and years tracking different species of birds all throughout these parts and south of here too. But these crows ain’t birds. They’re the savage result of a malfunction in machinery. I’m firm in my convictions. I’ll take my peace with my forward crooking knees, a Mossberg 590, and a consciousness over those fragile footed, tiny legged, brainl - “-voof! rrrrVoof!” Bailey nudged her nose at my pocket playfully. “Hold on girl, I’ll get you your eats in a second, I’m thinking!” She kept nudging at me and barking as I snapped the barrel back straight. “Ka-caw! Ka-caw!” floating all around me. I settled on a knee looking toward the dead power line. “Ka-caw! Ka-caw!” The butt met my shoulder and I gazed down the sights. *BANG* *BANG* I look forward to the day when it takes a little more skill than I have to hit one of these things off the line. Probably could have been doing this job hip-firing the whole time and missed just a few. “Alright Bail,” I said, lowering the barrel and snapping it open, catching the spent shells as they sprung out of the stock, “go on out and get those bastards. When you come back I’ll have your breakfast all ready for you, how’s that?” “voof!” she answered as I rubbed her head, slapped her behind, and sent her off bounding through the snow toward the falling feathers, powder splashing up every which way she bobbed and weaved. I’m sorry for ranting as I go about muting these dreadful creatures but I get paid for this. There’s a bounty out here in Felix County, you see, cause some brazen scientist friend of mine forgot to latch the cages at his experimental crow farm where he was testing out a generic testosterone supplement and well, it works. So now the town is dishing out ten bucks a crow until the population returns to a healthy number. Unfortunately for all of us here in Felix, Professor Yulbi didn’t test his supplement on butterflies or rainbows, no. He had to test it out on some of the most auditorily aggravating Creatures that ever landed on Earth. Dr. Yulbi is in the pits about his role in the whole situation, being the entire cause of our predicament and all, but there are a few of us gun nuts that couldn’t be happier. Ten bucks to shoot a crow? Fan-tastic. And there’s loads of them flying around? Perfect. And they’re going to be the most onerous source of your aggravation? Couldn’t be better. Or so the story goes. So I’m in the aforementioned category but as for my more formal co workers, who could never dream of killing anything, even if it were necessary, even if it involved reducing such ugly creatures, they all think this is a sign and that the birds are telling us about the peaceful knowledge they’ve gained through flight, which we need to hear ever so much to save our species, though we cannot suffer to understand blah blah blah. I tell them, “perhaps these crows are the most delectable bird on the planet, with perfectly marbled breasts and effortlessly pluckable feathers” *BANG* *BANG* I apologize again for putting forth my opinion so forcedly, but you see, I’ve been bred in biology and philosophy, which makes me daft enough to believe that things die, and need to die, and should die often. Even more so the case when there’s too many. You see, I live to embrace the natural order of things. I leaned in to the pile of burnt logs by my tent. They had approached their charcoal state with grace. The vapors entering my nostrils hinted at the life of the once vertical Pine, which now was just a gaseous afterbreath from a Creature entering its coda. Though the fire failed to exude substantial heat anymore, the level of smell pleasure it bequeathed was much appreciated, by me and my dog. Speaking of which, her breaths were heavy as she got back, two crows dangling from her mouth. She knew now how to grab two at a time with those soft, retrieving jaws of hers. She dropped them by the fire and I pulled out my green canvas bag. 20$. Bailey was beat hungry and laid down in the snow beside me, the air vacating her snout melted a quick depression into the snow. She reposed on her left side and I rested a gloveless hand on her belly, her paws profiled in running position, her neck craned in line with her spine, chest bouncing wildly. Some matted fur still tufted out from where my head was pressed overnight. I gave her an intentional twenty second belly rub and blew on the charcoal one last time to no avail. Smokeless. Bailey raised her head to investigate. The other tent rustled. Every weekend since Professor Yulbi let the crows go, I’ve had the privilege of waking up in the snow with Bailey by my side. He had approached me in the janitors closet: I don’t care how you do it Marco, just get it done! What a frustrated and sad little man Yulbi is now, so ruptured by the ridicule of Felix County. This is so bad Marco, quite bad. I may never bounce back. What if they let me go? They did. But if it was me who had let the crows out and I just lost my main source of income, I would have done everything Yulbi did, what with his big fancy speech for restoring nature to its natural population and all and the need for county wide hunting charges, but then I wouldn’t have been a damned coward about the whole thing! Sure would have gone out and bought myself a fine semi-automatic rifle, couple hundred rounds, and some crow-feed. Have myself half a years salary in two weeks. Where Bailey and I are now isn’t as far out as I would like to be. Back when I was hunting big game, we used to cross over Figgin’s Hill on the other side of the airport and spend the night. But there isn’t any need to go that far for the crows. They’ve stuck somewhat around Felix and for some reason, love this dead power line. On green ground, we can jog to our backdoor from this spot in twenty-five minutes with no gear. This place, located on the lip of the Pines and the halo of the airport has become our own beloved crow hunting ground and put almost $9,000 of the town’s money into my pocket. $9,000 I never would have had without Professor Yulbi. “Yulbi,” I shouted, rustling his tent something fierce, “get up and come bag yourself some of these crows you’ve unleashed upon our poor, helpless, civilization.” One of his poles came down and I pulled a bag of kibble out of my zipper pocket, tossing a handful behind me toward Bailey. I immediately regretted it though, not offering the kibble to her by hand. It was painful watching her eat it so painstakingly, her food hopelessly imbedded in the snow. That iced cream to the front teeth feeling. I winced watching her chomp through mouthfuls of snowflakes for her breakfast. I stroked her back and she brought her eyes up to mine. She wasn’t pained by eating her kibble from the snow as I thought she would be at all nor did it seem like she held me responsible for the careless tossing of her breakfast. Dogs are more tolerant than most other Creatures, that’s for certain. She chewed away voraciously at the food laden snow. She loved this world, the real world, our Saturday world of trees, void of doors and the tauntings of impenetrable windows. My world, the human world, Felix County, would be better off for all of us with the removal of a few thousand more of these racketing pests. “Hey Professor, last night, you said we were how far shy of where we need to be?” He moaned from the inside of his collapsed tent. Muffled words like projections and calculations and unpredictable variables wobbled out. I loaded some more shells into my Mossberg as another commercial plane roared by overhead. The underbelly of the tin coffin stared down at me and I cringed at the idea that there were one hundred living people jammed into that sardine can. “Bailey, you go on and get a head start, there’ll be more downed than you can carry by the time you get there. I’ll feed you some treats outta my hand once you’re back, no more eating snow, I promise.” She took off, beautiful, blonde, excellent retriever that she is, barreling through the snow, and I did my part to make sure there were ample bird bodies to bring back once she got there. *BANG* some crows fluttered from the wire *BANG* I loaded two more shells when I heard Professor Yulbi scrunching around, trying to make it out of his crumpled tent. “You gonna join us today Professor or what? You gonna sit back and watch me resolve your population problem for you? You only cash what you bag. I’ll be at about 100$ by the time you make it out here.” His eyes were bloodshot. He rarely camped outdoors before the incident. That, coupled with the snowcovered ground we’ve had as a base for the past six months, he looked more and more bedraggled everytime he ventured out of his sagging tent. His glasses fogged as he crawled into the cold air in his red thousand dollar arctic winter protection jacket-snowpant onesie. “How’re you today Professor? I half thought you were gonna miss the sunrise!” “Miss the sunrise? It’s that early still?” “Early?” I scoffed, “It’s half past seven! Look yonder Yulbi. Those blessed clouds are about to light up like the Fourth of Ju-ly!” The sky donned a melangé of ruby, pearl, and purple, but the Professor didn’t seem as moved by the blossoming horizon. Bailey snooped around in the distance under the wire, chasing some trail she’d picked up independent of the work we’d came to do. “Bailey!” I whistled, “Nab those crows and come say good morning to the Professor! Oop - Mr. Yulbi.” She plucked two up, gently grasping them in her teeth, and hustled back toward us. The Professor took the 20 from my hands. “You ready to set things straight Yulbi?” “Is it loaded?” I nodded. *BANG* *BANG* All day the crows cawed at the planes intentionally constructed with interlocking parts. Their beady eyes twitched at the world around them. The flying creatures preferred to perch. It was a loud world, as if better than silent.

Once upon a time, in a land of magic and measles, there lived a lad named Shyolenai, a little boy who loved to doodle. All day long he would doodle away, never worrying about the future, until one day his brother burned his house down with a lemon. Shyolenai just shrugged it off and continued his merry ways, until he came to the realization that no house = no food. Hungry for the first time in his life, he dashed down to the marketplace in search of food. As he wandered down the stalls, something shiny caught his eye: a sparkly wheelchair! He ran up to the merchant, Klom Rehei, and begged him for the work of art. Klom Rehei told Shyolenai of how the sparkly wheelchair could just roll forever, and Shyolenai excitedly traded his life's work of doodles for it. Then he hopped onto the chair and rolled to the next stall for food, but the chair just kept on rolling. No one has seen Shyolenai since, though there are many rumors of a boy traveling in a sparkly wheelchair in the far east.

“A light. For most a guideline, for others it is hope. Hope is what I need to prevail the noises I hear: a mind-shattering din of cursed hunger and pain, starving to complete what they have not yet fulfilled. The light - a candle, when lit; a beacon to those who do not know what to believe in; a rally to those whose fortune relies on their endurance. For my sake it is neither. To me, the light is no hope, nor does it encourage. Instead, it has done nothing but prolong the destined death. I see the candle turning hollow, letting the light pageant through the walls. As I look into the fire, swallowing souls to ignite in the burning prison, a vein of warm blood desperately tears apart from the hell, just to await nothing but the cold surrounding wastelands, forcing it to eventually solidify. It is left as a dried-out trail, cold, breathless but yet not dead as its existence still remains in this so called beacon of hope. I am the destined vein. Destined because I too am trapped in this prison and even if I stood to survive, I will sooner or later have my blood run cold, lose any burden off of my chest and face the endless hunger of which is to achieve perfection." I lay off my pen on the desk, watching the light flap, revealing the texture in the dark wood. For a moment, I hear nothing, I feel nothing. I only see the shape of the fire gliding across the wall in front of me, dancing around the wick of the candle like a nymph. The wick can never catch the nymph; only feel its attractive presence. The nymph lights a few things in the darkened room, shelves, a few torn boxes and cans of conserved food. The most are empty, some are half. The nymph twists and whirls to get back the attention it believes it deserves. Against all charmed will, my eyes skip on to something else. I look at my paper, containing writings, stories - my existence. I write down my memories to remember what I am and to know the fact that I am yet not one of them.

“Mick’s one of them.” This matter of fact statement caught me off guard. “Is he?” I ask, hazarding a glance at the middle aged, balding bar man. “Course he is, look at him.” I turned around to get a better look. Mick was stood wiping down a glass, oblivious of the scrutiny to which he was currently being subjected to. “No, he isn’t.” I said “He’s got a beer belly and gravy down his shirt, the ones in the city all look like celebrities and they haven’t got a spec on ‘em.” I turned back to Dave, he was looking at the table and shaking his head. “Course they do” He said looking up his droopy eyes struggling to fix on a particular spot. He settled on staring at my chin, “Coz they’re accepted in the city, aren’t they,” he said as if he were talking to a child. “But if you put them in the country they’ve got to fit in, got to look the part haven’t they.” “So you’re saying that a company that makes millions of the same make and model every day has decided to make a fat fifty year old bar tender version so that we don’t get suspicious that they’re androids.” “Exactly,” he said with a toothy grin as if I was finally on his erratic wave length. “But if you’ve spotted the only android in the village, then it’s obviously not working.” “Well I knows what to look for dun I.” He said glancing over at Mick and leaning in with his stale beer breath. “Take a look at him, a proper look, go over and get two pints. Try and catch him just as he picks up a glass to clean and watch closely. Then look at his eyes and see how long it takes him to blink.” I eyed Dave suspiciously “Is this just coz you want a drink?” I asked. “A little,” grinned Dave “But you go over and check him anyway, I’ve done it me self.” I looked at him suspiciously and then swivelled off my chair to go and order the drinks. “Alright Mick,” I hazarded, wondering how to approach this correctly. “Alright Jeff,” he mumbled “how’s it going?” He breathed on the glass and cleaned it, wiping it with a towel. “Not bad, two pints of Green Valley please” I said inspecting the glass that he had just cleaned. “Coming up,” he said turning his back on me to get the glass. He had legs, I thought to myself, so he wasn’t like the ones in the supermarket. If he was one, it was state of the art without looking remotely state of the art at all, kind of shabby sheik. He turned back and poured the pints, concentrating on the amount and making sure the head was perfect. An android wouldn’t do that I thought to myself. Androids had this unsettling habit of doing tasks while maintaining eye contact. He looked up as he finished the second pint and I stared intently into his eyes. “Thanks Mick,” I said whilst flicking my gaze from his left eye to his right. “You alright Jeff?” Mick said unnerved. I returned to my table without a word. “He’s not an Android.” I said confidently when I sat down. Dave looked at me flabbergasted. “What!” he cried a little overdramatically “Did you even look at him?” “Yep,” I said “he had legs and everything”. “No did you look when he cleaned the glass?” “Y..yes he did it with a cloth” Dave looked at me despairingly “Not how he cleaned it you muppet, did you see him breathe on the glass and it doesn’t leave any fog cause they don’t need to breathe they just mimic the action. Did you see his fingerprints on the glass?” “No” I said feeling depressed about my woeful detective skills. “What’s up with his fingerprints?” “He hasn’t got human fingerprints, that’s how come they can track them, they got special ones that are like a bar code, so each one gets its own unique set so you can find em easily.” “Why would they mimic the action of us breathing?” I interrupted, Dave looked at me incredulously. “Have you ever met someone who doesn’t breathe?” He said. “No! Cause if you did you would flip your nut wondering what was happening.” He continued “If you took an Android out for drinks, it would drink, it doesn’t need too. Just like it doesn’t need to breathe or blink but it does it anyway so that you’re not worrying why one of your work mates has stopped blinking or breathing.” I looked at him dumbfounded. I didn’t realise the technology had come this far. “Did you at least count the seconds it took him to blink?” he asked like it was the most natural thing in the world. “No” I said growing tired with the criticism. “Well it’s every 7 seconds, at least one of us is paying attention.” “Why would they need to blink?” I asked “First off so you don’t flip your nut and second to clean the cameras if something gets on them.” I thought about this for a few minutes drinking my pint, maybe some of my work colleagues are Androids and I hadn’t even noticed, maybe my wife was, I think I would have noticed, or would I? If I couldn’t tell if Mick was one could I really notice if anyone else was. “Does he have a penis?” I asked. “Who Mick?” “Yes.” “Why?” “Well not just Mick, Androids in general do they have sex parts?” “Can’t say I ever checked,” said Dave and we both lapsed into a deep and contemplative silence. “They must have!” said Dave after an embarrassingly long time thinking about robot genitals. “Why?” I asked dreading the answer that had dredged itself out of the sewer of his mind. “Because it was all the rage a few years back when they were still working out the kinks. Remember that politician bought one as a butler and he just hollowed out its Ken doll parts until he managed to get his dick trapped in the mechanism.” “Ooh yeah” I said, not really believing that this was true at all. “And, and!” he said leaping on his advantage and following his train of thought “Why make women androids?” He said smiling triumphantly. “Dunno,” I said “Cause that’s what you do isn’t it, you make the man and then you make the woman, if you don’t its sexist, I hear they make black ones now as well.” “Yeah but why give them genders at all? Christ why even make them look like people?” “Dunno,” I said realising that I was adding very little to this conversation. “First off to make other people comfortable around them, right? Coz if people think they’re talking to a person they’re gonna treat them like a person. Not try and take their leg cause it’s your neighbours android and his dogs been shitting on your lawn, right?” “Right!” I said, the conversation had originally been about my new dish washer. “So if you’re talking to an Android and you think it’s a person, it has to be as person like as possible, right. Breathing, blinking, all that stuff. So if a lady takes a man android home she is gonna expect him to have a fella down there, not just a fella, a fully working fella. It would just be embarrassing for both of them if he didn’t have a set of bits.” “She would find out eventually though right?” “No…yeah,” he said hesitantly “hey they’ve probably got Android prossies now, with big cyber pimps or something.” I laughed “insert coin in the slot” I said finally feeling part of the conversation again.

“Why do we cleanse and transform these spheres?” Bet-Zet-Del-Nin queried. “It is the purpose. Given to us by the prog’mer, passed down through the generation foundries.” responded Del-Gam-Del-Zven, unable to consider other possible answers. “This is the drive of all Gendyn, Del-Nin.” “Will we ever have cleansed enough?” Del-Nin queried “Eventually, mustn’t the great expanse be drained of suitable spheres?” “If it gets to that point, the prog’mer will provide instruction. The purpose must be achieved.” Del-Zven responded, not realizing the contradiction in his thoughts. “Gendyn have cleansed spheres since the first cycle. Gendyn will cleanse spheres until the prog’mer asses the purpose as achieved.” “Purpose-group, suitable world indicated by s’sor. Begin travel to the seventh sphere.” announced Alf-Bet-Bet-Tou, the earliest generation Gendyn in their group, and thus, their leader. “This sphere requires light cleansing followed by a level-tou transformation, followed by radwipe. The c’zat within this sphere should not pose resistance. The s’sor reports evidence of previous microfusion events on sphere, probability of false positive, 80%.” “Subpurpose A9CCD1B2 categorized as completed.” announced Alf-Bet-Bet-Tou as the reformed sphere hung silently ahead, its cluster of subspheres slowly rotating alongside it. “The s’sor indicates high concentration of sustenance precursor on sphere four. Begin construction of generation foundry, improved pattern tw’ill." Alf-Alf-Alf-Zvent awoke. Immediately, Alf-Zvent’s mind was filled with purpose, the gathered knowledge of the Alfs, and the words of Generation foundry Zvent. Alf-Zvent’s s’or registered extreme acceleration, indicating the Zvent foundry judged Alf-Zvent suitable to serve the purpose given by the Pr’mer. Alf-Zvent, as an Alf-caste, would command a purpose-group of the G’Dyn in the ongoing completion of the purpose across the expanse. Alf-Zvent felt excitement. Suddenly, millions of l’yar from Zvent foundry, Alf-Zvent’s s’or found a sphere and triggered a full power wake event. As the s’or’s discovery filtered through the Alf-Zvent purpose group, Alf came to the conclusion that the s’or was in error, but felt unable to leave this sphere grouping, particularly drawn to the third sphere. This sphere fell far outside the Pr'mer criteria, issued by the Pr’mer, with far too much rad’ton, and evidence of significant microfusion events, with almost no chance of the s’or being a false positive. Why was Alf-Zvent so drawn to it? Was it time to accept obs’l’se and construct the zventon foundry? After long microseconds of deliberation, Alf-Zvent instructed his tirelessly waiting G’Dyn purposemates of their course of action. They would travel towards this sphere, and use the resulting sphereforce to boost out of this grouping. As the closepoint was reached, Alf-Zvent recognized the reason the s’or had pointed the purposegroup here. The G’Dyn language was present, and visible in the midrange of the s’ors voice. Alf-Zvent began committing observations to long term memory, planning to share with the rest of the G’Dyn, voraciously devouring information in every range of the s’or’s voice. One packet immediately assaulted Alf-Zvent’s mind. it was on the edge of his s’or’s voice, a voice not heard since the early generations of alf. it was a single phrase in the G’dyn language, spotted on the sphereground, and categorized by the s’or as priority zero, and therefore immediately escalated. Alf-Zvent pondered the meaning of the phrase “General Dynamics Terraforming Probe Foundry One”.

The name’s Roscoe, I’m a robotocist. Partly because I’m so god-damned good at it, and partly because I prefer robots over people. I don’t like people all that much. People blew up the world. June 1st, 2082, the world went to hell after it erupted in nuclear war. All the nations of Earth were annihilated, the slate wiped clean. Thankfully, between the efforts of world governments, the Human Preservation Society, Bunk-Co, private and personal shelters, and sheer luck, plenty of people survived. Out of ten and a half billion people, an estimated eighty-three million people survived. When people emerged from their shelters they were greeted by a hellscape, inconceivably dangerous and wholly unpredictable. Nearly every major city, military base, and fuel source in the world was destroyed in the initial wave of ICBMs. After that began the quakes. Non-stop for fifteen years. All those bombs destabilized more than a few tectonic plates. The end of the earthquakes was marked by the eruption of the Yellowstone super-volcano. And as if that wasn’t enough, radiation got mixed into nearly every storm from the beginning of the war ‘til today. The world only became even somewhat habitable for humans around a hundred years ago. Now the year is 2328. The world is a wasteland. Mankind is divided into three different kinds of people. Honest folks just tryin’ to get by, horrible raiders with absolutely no regard for human life, and the mercenaries that walk the fence. The human race still holds on, like the unkillable roach, scavenging, foraging, and salvaging to survive. People weren’t the only things that survived the war. Radiation mixed with advances in splicing and forced evolution technology led to the creation of some of the most hideous and horrible monsters conceivable by man and worse than that. Some creatures look similar to their pre-war counterparts. Some creatures look like entirely new species. And people were effected almost as drastically as animals too. The cure for cancer was developed before the war alongside treatments for radiation poisoning. This opened new doors for human evolution. Multiple limbs and eyes, gigantism, deformity, increased or decreased intelligence, and plethoras of other mutations were caused by radiation. In some cases where people survived the initial cancer and radiation poisoning via medicine, genetics, or pure luck, they would begin to mutate rapidly. And in some cases people showed no signs of mutation but instead had mutant children. Nearly a tenth of the population today shows obvious signs of mutation. Bigotry worse than the hatred for religion or ethnicity sprouted all across the wastes. Some entire towns consist of mutants due to “normal” people’s hatred for them. Fortunately there are always some places that are far more accepting than others. Unfortunately, I do not live in one of those places. I live in New Houston, a pre-war space center and launch pad turned into a massive junk city. It’s located on the west coast of Florida, somewhere in between Port Charlotte and Cape Coral. It’s well known as a den of thieves and a raider’s trading post, but it’s not that bad. There’s more decent folk than bad apples, but since the mayor is a corrupt bastard who calls the local gang “The Boosters” his “city guard”, the town’s known more for its bad side than its good. I’m not from the area myself, I was born in some junktown called “Glof”. My mother was a whore and my father was a merc, just like almost everybody else’ll tell ya. I never knew my father and my mother died of a drug over dose when I was six. Luckily I had a natural born talent with mechanics and electronics. I managed to switch my home town from lanterns and burning barrels to proper electrical lights when I was only twelve years old, which secured me a cozy sleeping bag in the town hall with all the other workers. Of course the lights attracted raiders and other undesirables and after six years of constant raids, the town was pretty much burned to the ground by the time I was eighteen. I wandered from town to town doing odd jobs after that. I wouldn’t consider myself a mercenary as I never really took jobs where I directly had to kill people. I did help set up numerous robotic defenses for small towns and I repaired dozens of robots at a modest price. No doubt these metallic killing machines have racked up quite the body count by now but I try not to think about it so I can sleep at night. Now I have a pretty comfortable position maintaining the city’s turret system and building and fixing robots. I may not like the town I’m in or the people who surround me but I’ll always have Eighty-Three, the first robot I ever built. I made ‘im out of some old calculators, a beurocrat-bot, and a sweet military AI core I found on one of my misadventures. He’s accurate as hell and the little quips I programmed him to say are entertaining. I love the little rascal, he’s like a robotic parrot. All in all, it could be worse, and I’m grateful for what little I have. “Is that everything, Roscoe?” “You bet, Al. Damn shame you don’t have any servo motors though. Keep an eye out for one, will ya? I’ll pay one and a half times the normal price.” “Ya, ya. I’m sure you’ll make due you fuckin’ brainiac.” Albert was one of the only shopkeepers that offered fair prices and high quality spare parts. He was also one of the few people who had a shop in one of the refurbished pre-war buildings. The majority of the market was lean-to stalls or scrap huts. I used to spend hours browsing the common section of the market for parts. Tip from an expert robotocist; never buy a “discount” motherboard. The market place and most of the common apartments were on the launch pad and in the towering vehicle assembly building. Most of the other pre-war facilities were either occupied by the Boosters, or used for manufacturing. The underground bunkers beneath the administration buildings were used as storage and the Administration building and control towers were occupied by the mayor, his family, and his personal guardsmen. My day-to-day hum-drum usually consisted of fish eggs for breakfast and then tinkering from eight ‘till noon. Then I’d have my lunch break which was usually either squirrel soup or ‘gator jerky. After that I’d check the calibrations on the automated turrets and then head out ‘til five scavenging in the nearby ruins of Coral Cape or Port Charlotte. Sometimes I’d come across some travelling merchants or a fellow scavenger. Sometimes I’d get jumped by a rat swarm or an unusually large and vicious raccoon. Between Eighty-Three and my trusty VEN-9 laser rifle, I was usually able to make short work of any critters lurking in the ruins. The real threats were raiders and ‘gators. Whenever I’d bump into raiders they’d usually scram after Eighty-Three goes nuts on them or after I take a few potshots with my VEN-9. ‘Gators were the biggest, meanest bastards in the Florida wastes. Normally they were about the size of a truck with hundreds of teeth and scales that allowed them to blend with the abundant mutated flora excellently. They usually stuck to the swamps but sometimes a ‘gator or two would swim by the docks where we do most of our fishin’. The biggest danger looming over New Houston was pirates from the Florida Keys and the East Indies. Jackasses with scrap boats, harpoons, and a few assault rifles could cause real havoc. They were fast, sometimes disguised, and skilled fighters and sailors. Thankfully, the last pirate attack was over seven years ago, before I rolled into town. After trading a gearbox and a few adaptors I had enough 9MM bullets for Eighty-Three and a few Kenshium-Ion batteries for my VEN-9 to head into the ruins for a good bit of scavenging. It was a casual Wednesday. Clouds drifted lazily across the green-blue skies, gunshots could be heard off in the distance, and the stomach churning smell of two-hundred-forty-six year old garbage was pumped into the air by the mutant flora. Mother Nature trying to reclaim her world. Mankind’s mark on the planet wasn’t about to go anywhere without a fight. “What’d’ya thinkin’ Eighty-Three? The Cape or the Port?” Eighty-Three bobbed his chassis up and down four times.

Drops of morning mist clung to my boots as I waded through the swathes of grass, the axe handle handled loosely in my left hand, hanging its limp head over my shoulder. The winding gait of my father swished thickets and thwacked dandelions as he crunched a path through the grass over my footholds. "This one?" I said, toeing a tree with my steel toecaps. "Yer, that can come down." he said, dropping his leather belt of tools and lowering himself onto a weathered stump he'd cut in younger years. He rolled a cigarette, offering the peels of tobacco to the wind which picked at the pinch lazily - some into grass and some into the paper in his crinkled hand. I raised my axe then, eager to make the first cut - but before the browned iron met wood my eye caught an unusual pattern of interlaced trunks no more than eight yards ahead. In rectangular angles, a ladder of interlocked pinewood - with bark still on, mind you - wove into the prickle-trimmed branches of the tree I intended to fall. "Is this your handiwork?" I asked, pointing, and turned my head to a bare stump. There lay my father's leather tool belt, draped in dew bejewelled bluebells and long, folded nettles. No sign that he'd ever sat, but for the boot-broken dandelions at the foot of the stump, and the crushed skull-white mushrooms of the ring that encircled it.

The kids in Brittle St. have always enjoyed care-free games, exciting ones that would stretch upon hours end. They pride themselves in fact of being the best there is when it comes tag! They would prance and dance in rhythm or not. They would run and craw in different places even under a rock!   Coralline was one of the quiet ones, she would not pry from playing games-- especially the ones with one-too-many race. She sat on her spot where she can see all, not even burdened if that spot was too tall this is her routine ever since she can recall, she kept to herself watching others play, while once in a while you can see her pray. She whisper words in her old book, the book that everywhere in her embrace, Coralline took.   She wouldn’t dare ask why the games won’t end, neither would she think of when the kids are going to bed. Thoughts of her mother’s warm embrace would show on her face, she didn’t mind asking or rather she can’t. Why would she get in the middle of friends play pranks?   They were all too innocent and don’t have a care, and look! Even Barry got gum stuck on his hair! It was always sunny with a very orange hue. *“This feels right, I actually do!”* Coralline staring at her book, gripping it tight when a mourning due drops from one eye. She held her paperback and shut her eyes tight. “Everyone please! You can have a rest!” Coralline pleaded her best. Everyone slowly stopped running to give her a dead stare.. They have no eyes I swear there should be something there..   Returning the gaze and with tears pouring from her face, coralline said; **“There was a fire… everyone’s dead.” **   The children gave an eerie little laugh… as they walked slowly close… near where Coralline sat. Their skin changed colour into an ash white gray.. Their skins pealed like dry parchment that withered away.. they all stared down with anguish and moans.. Such poor fate of tortured souls..   At the side of Coralline a dark withering shape forms, it was her friend with two eyes short..

A diesel engine rumbles outside. The indistinguishable chitter-chatter of girls comes through the engine's roar. There's four, maybe five of them. I can't see them, it's nighttime. The blinds are only slightly open. I can only assume they're still wearing their knee length dresses from when they went out, clutching their purses as they stumble from the vehicle. They don't even thank the driver, but I wouldn't expect that. Even though they've only had two drinks, they're probably acting like they've had threefold. The voices have quieted down at this point, and the party bus has turned off the street as its groaning has joined in with the sounds of cicadas and the humming of refrigerator. A little more chatter in the distinct pitch of pompous underinformed sorority sisters fades as they enter their house for the night. It's two a.m. Graduation is today. An empty bag of Haribo Gold-Bears (the sugar kind, of course) lies next to a cup once filled and refilled with Sun Drop, that now only contains what must've been ice at one point. A closer inspection of the gummy bear bags reveals a net weight of fourteen ounces, along with a rip that curved a little too far and left an uncompromisable opening. Not that I believe this malfunction is the reason for the gluttony that is the consumption of nearly a pound of candy; I am just stating a physical fact. It's two a.m. Graduation is today. At this point, you may have realized that I have only described to you a setting of a scene, a backdrop. What is the in foreground, you may inquire. A laptop. MacBook, of course. I'm in college. Only for another day. Remember, it's two a.m. Graduation is today. I slump further and further into the loveseat, as my shorts start riding too far up my torso, but this discomfort is the least of my worries. The laptop feels hot against my exposed thighs, but repeated squirming will keep my legs from overheating. One of the buttons is missing from my colorful Caribbean shirt I purchased during spring break. The small gap leads the eye to an emerging dadbod-hairy with no well-defined features. The slow path towards this new body form starting just under four years ago. It's two a.m. Graduation is today. *This guy is a shit narrator.* If you are thinking this last sentence, number one, you are not wrong, and number two, you must be British for your use of a noun as an adjective. In fact, I'm not well-versed in composition, or really any other form of humanities besides a soon-to-be-confirmed minor in German. I'm not even sure if "soon-to-be-confirmed" is an accepted phrase. Fuck it, this is my story. I can type it in here if I want. It's two a.m. Graduation is tomorrow. In case I left you hanging in the last section by narrowing the field of my education, I'll tell you. It's physics. You may think to yourself, *myself, this guy is smart.* No, ma'am or sir, choosing to be a physics major is not smart. It's nonsensical. It's a stupid decision. If you decide to delve into the depths beyond return of physics, you will be awake at two a.m. the day of your graduation procrastinating a research paper. Do you know what poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl) is? If you do, can you comment about it's structure in the solid state? It's two a.m. Graduation is tomorrow.

This is just an excerpt from a longer story I'm attempting to write. It's just to see if it sounds ok to start with. Criticism welcome although please excuse the spelling/grammar errors. It is only a first draft :P The first time he saw her, he knew she was different. Melanie Burgess was a small child. She had long, untameable, fair hair that flowed, loose around her skinny shoulders. Her face was thin and her chin pointed out. She had large, blue, wild eyes that darted everywhere, always searching, always alert. Her skin would have been pale, as was traditional in Scotland, but it was caked with dirt and mis-aimed food. She was wearing clothes that were far too big for her. Her jeans where torn and baggy. They had been folded over several times and yet they still drooped over her scuffed trainers. She was wearing a large, black hooded jumper with little holes in the sleeves to poke her thumbs out. It was clear, just from sight, that most of her clothing came from Charity Shops and donators. Mel was bent over something in the mud, safe in the cover of trees. Ben was only alerted to her presence as he cycled along the walkway and heard a strange rustling in the bushes to his left. He was used to coming across foxes and squirrels in the overgrowths, yet there was something different to the sounds he heard this time. Unnerved and completely curious, he dismounted his bike and pushed his way through the thick branches and into a small, man-made clearing. The first time he laid eyes on the eight-year old wild child. “What are you doing?” Ben asked, tilting his head in curiosity. Mel spun round, her face wide with fright. She surveyed Ben as if he where an alien, allowing him to look round her to the creature lying in the dirt. “Is that a bird?” he asked, confused. Mel nodded, slowly and carefully. It was indeed a small sparrow. Its wing was bent at an odd angle and it was hopping back and forward with fear. “Is it hurt?” Ben walked over to stand next to Mel who never looked away from his face. He knelt in the mud and examined the poor creature. “What happened to it?” “She’s hurt her wing. I think it was a cat that done it.” Mel’s voice was quiet and gentle. “What’s your name?” Ben asked. She told him and he told her his. “I know who you are,” Mel murmured. “I seen you playing out before. You go to my school.” Ben could, honestly, say he had never noticed her before, but he didn’t tell her this. He reached out, tentively, to the sparrow which gave a soft ‘squawk’ before trotting backwards and away from his touch. “She’s gonna die, I think,” Mel said, sadly. “She can’t fly anymore.” “It might fix itself,” Ben suggested. “We should put her in one of the tree’s so she doesn’t get attacked. Come on.” Between the both of them, they were able to corner the small bird and Ben scooped it into his hands. The bird bit him a few times and Mel bit her lip, worriedly. They managed to place the twittering sparrow onto one of the lower branches of a nearby tree where it remained, staring down at them. “She’ll be ok,” Ben assured Mel, who was watching the tiny bird with affectionate eyes. “How did you find her?” “I was playing. This is my den,” she gestured around at the little clearing. “I come here to play cause I’m the only one who knows about it. I heard her crying in the bushes. I think I‘ll bring her food now. Everyday I‘ll get her worms and stuff and maybe she‘ll be my pet.” “This is a really cool, wee, hiding place,” Ben admired as he kneeled on the ground. Mel sat, too, although she continued to watch him carefully. “Who do you play with?” he asked. “Nobody. I don’t have any friends.” “Everyone’s got friends.” “I don’t.” A strange silence fell as each child considered the other. Ben was fascinated by her. His first thoughts, when he saw her, was that she must be some sort of jungle kid or something. She just looked so undomesticated. On the other hand, Mel was completely in awe of Ben, with his nice clothes and clean face. She’d seen plenty of other children who were just like him and some who were far better off. Yet there he was, sitting in the mud and talking to her like…he actually liked her. “Where do you live?” Ben asked after a moment. “Down the road,” was all she said and pointed, vaguely, through the trees. She seemed to hesitate and then continued. “I live near you, so I do. I see you sometimes from my room. Your garden’s got a big shed in it.” “That’s my den,” Ben boasted. It was actually his fathers tool shed but he had been allowed to paint the insides how he wanted and play in it with his friends when it rained. “And I seen you at school,” Mel continued as if there had been no interruption. “I seen you playing football with the other boys in the pitch.” “Where bouts do you play?” “I have my own hiding place at school too,” Mel looked quite proud, herself, then. “Nobody else knows where it is, neither they do.” “Can I know?” “I might show it to you…” It was such a bonding ritual amongst children of their age, to share with others the secret location of their own ’dens’ and ’hiding places’. Such information was usually reserved for best friends who would, in turn, keep the secret safe. And, so, in sharing this information with each other, Mel and Ben became good friends that day. They spent hours, crouched in her little clearing, which, because of the many tall trees surrounding them, provided a suitable shelter from the light drizzle that fell. They conversed all about each others lives, mainly focusing on the small, seemingly insignificant details that children would find so important. Soon, Mel knew the names of everyone Ben played with. They discussed which teachers where the best in school and which toys they liked to play with during Treat. They compared favourites games and discovered that they both, heartily enjoyed Hide and Seek. “I’m best at it,” Mel declared. With each passing minute she became more confident and more loud. “I know all the best hiding places.” “I bet I could beat you,” Ben teased. “I win all the time at school.” “You wouldn’t. You would never find me if I hid. No one would.” “Ok then,” Ben grinned, enjoying the challenge. “Well, then, you should play with us next time we play it at school, ok?” Something wonderful happened then. Mel’s face lit up in a wide, toothy smile that stretched her cheeks out past her eye’s and made her chin jut out more. She looked positively radiant and more alive than she had ever seemed. The smile faded, though, almost as soon as it formed and she pulled, irritably, at a root in the ground with unclean finger nails. “They won’t let me.” “Who?” “The other boys and girls. They don’t let me play with them.” “I’d tell them too.” Ben said, confidently. And he meant it. He could see no harm in this lonely little girl and marvelled over the fact that he had never noticed her before now. “Maybe…” Mel said, sadly. They remained in the clearing until night crept over them and Ben leapt to his feet, panic beating on his insides. “I gotta go home now. My mum’s gonna be so angry that I’m late.” “Oh, ok.” Mel stood, too, looking thoroughly disappointed. “Does your mum let you out this late?” “Yeah…she doesn’t mind…” Mel stared, transfixed at the ground as she spoke. “Can I play with you tomorrow, after school?” Ben asked. Mel smiled again and his heart leapt. “Uh-huh. Come over here straight after school, ok?” “I will. Night!” Ben ducked under the branches and struggled down onto the walkway where his bike waited for him. He mounted it and pedalled, frantically, wishing that his mother didn’t mind how late he stayed out for.

Running through the piles of rubbish, dodging and jumping over obstacles, Arel was having a tough time not scraping her bare skin on various objects sticking out of the trash piles. Quickly looking over her shoulder, she didn't see a wire that was strung by some young kids as a prank to trip any passersby. Falling at an alarming speed, her only instincts were to shield her short's pocket with both her hands and trying to flip over in midair to not have her face become a bowl of spaghetti. Successfully rolling over just in time, Arel landed with a great thud on the ground, nearly knocking all the wind out of her. In a panic she got up as quick as she could, looking around for anyone who might have set up the wire. Seeing no signs of life, she hid behind a mound of garbage, listening to see if she finally made it away. "She's dead," thought Arel, "she's dead and it's all my fault..." Hey all! So this is just something that I quickly wrote while at work. I would love to have some feedback on it, knowing what you liked and what you didn't like. This is an idea I had for a video game that I'd like to develop, but thought I'd start writing some of the story for it and figured that the community of Reddit would be a great place to share and get feedback for it.

New writer, please be cruel. I've been waiting to share this for too long. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Water exits a system, one way or another. It is inevitable. It can evaporate; it can split its course. It can reach the end and find itself in a new, larger body. It can be removed and reused by the living for the various, the most common of which serve to maintain. It can even drain out the bottom and form an underground reservoir. We’ve all learned this in class, but no matter what, water exits the system. Return is possible, but water cannot remain forever. Forever is a very long time. Even glacial ice finds its way to the sea. The planet could also explode or implode or crash into a star. There are many ways water can leave its river. Exit is inevitable, and barring an unexpected turn of events, we have reached the mouth of this river. Every year, the eldest make their way, one at a time, out the front gate, and never come back. None of us really know where they go, although we’re told this and that. Tali left today. She was the last of her class to go. She was getting very lonely. Anyone would. Now it is our turn. Today, we became the oldest girls in school. None of us have any idea really as to who will be the first to leave or exactly when she’ll go. All we know is that it is down to our group of eight, and that we will all be gone within little more than a year, at the most. We’ve studied grief and all its stages from a book Miss Hadeel had us read, but also with our observations and experiences. We lose eight every year, and we never hear from them again. We understand it; we’ve adapted. It’s our turn now, and we know this last year won’t be easy. It’s never appeared easy for anyone, not once since we arrived. It’s our turn; we are now the water waiting at the gate. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *I am a bar of soap… the more I clean, the sooner I disappear.* A bar of soap washes away under water and pressure. Soap cracks and crumbles to pieces when exposed to heat or extended periods of dryness. Soap is important. Modern society would probably fall apart without maintaining a minimum level of cleanliness. Disease prevention keeps us all alive, soap keeps us healthy, and we take it for granted. Soap is frequently forgotten. It is cheap, and easy to come by. It is a rare few who concern themselves with soap beyond personal and familial hygiene. Soap is what keeps Marream alive. Without soap, she could not clean the rooms of the hotel. If she cannot keep them clean, then she has no job. If she loses her job, her family will lose half its income. Without money, they will either starve or find themselves homeless in an unfriendly land. In that scenario, Marream would sacrifice herself, for her family. In that scenario, Marream would starve. Soap is important. Soap keeps Marream alive. * * * * *Yara, I am your castle made of sand. I won’t dry out. Not yet. Not as long as you need me.* Akeem did not have work that day. Instead, he took Yara and Marream to the beach. Mersa Matruh would not be as crowded as it had been, now that the summer tourists had mostly made their way back to Cairo. After his first dip in the water, Akeem dried off and lay down in the sand to take his first of many naps that day. He watched Marream help Yara build her first sandcastle in the wet sand just out of reach of the hapless waves and their faltering charge. The tide was at its highest point that day. The beauty of the two of them, mother and daughter, glowed perfectly under the mid-morning sun; their dark, young skin was vivid against the teal water of the bay at their backs. He felt blessed. His help in this endeavor would not be needed that day. The waves would stay distant without coercion. He woke up to a tiny, sandy hand shaking his hairy chest, getting ready to pluck individual strands, but his opening eyes were all the child wanted. Marream was standing up next to the completed castle and walked over, ready for her turn to lie in the sand and dream about the lights and colors that twirled themselves through closed eyelids. Akeem brought his daughter to the water to play in the waves. This day would be a test, a test to see if the perpetual energy of the ocean’s waves could keep pace with her perpetual exuberance. The day went on, the heat grew strong, and the waves receded. The family did not return to play with the castle, but every time Akeem slept under the shade of their borrowed umbrella, he watched its sandy walls. He watched them dry out and bake under the sun. By the end of the day, all the moisture within the castle’s walls had left and flown away with the breeze. It was just a fragile skeleton that could barely support its own weight. Its corners had already crumbled and broken off, fallen back down to the beach beneath. Marream packed their things to leave; it had been a long day, and they both could tell Yara was finally getting tired. Akeem, walking back along the shore with Yara’s little hand clasped firmly in his for the final time that day, stopped at the crumbling sandcastle. *What will happen to my castle?* *It can’t stand forever. The waves will wash it away tonight. Let’s enjoy it one last time.* Akeem took both her hands, and they danced together on its top, laughing, saying good bye, and thanking the castle for playing with them. * * * * Marream had been working as a maid at a hotel in Dubai called the Burj Al Arab for about a year. Akeem worked in construction, twelve hours a day. They both worked six days a week. This was not uncommon for foreign workers here. Most of their co-workers were from India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh, but they all shared a life of poverty, living together in what could only be accurately described as labor camps. Egypt wasn’t safe for them anymore, being a young family of Coptic Christians raising a toddler. Dubai was their way out, and the only way that promised they wouldn’t starve. Survival was about all that really mattered, and while they found food, shelter, and regular work, fear still hovered over their daily lives. The Kafala sponsorship program, a fairly standard practice concerning the regulation of migrant workers used by many nations on the Arabian Peninsula, made Akeem and Marream powerless in their new home. They spent their life savings and more to exit Egypt and find work, but their combined salaries on arrival could hardly pay off the interest they owed on their debts to their employers. While they were mostly safe here, their employers would control their passports until their debts were paid, and therefore had the power to have them thrown in jail or deported, simply on a whim. It was a tenuous living situation at best, but survival was possible. Their most pressing fears were for Yara and her future. She was not yet old enough to attend school, but they had no idea how she would when the time came. The children of immigrants and migrant workers could not attend the government’s public schools, and had to pay for a private education. Tuition at the least expensive primary schools was at its cheapest a half a year’s wages, and it would only increase as she got older. Application was just as competitive for the less expensive schools as it was for the most highly rated schools. Acceptance to an affordable institution was far from the likeliest of possibilities. Akeem and Marream worried that they would be forced to educate their daughter themselves, a task for which they were not well equipped. They feared that Yara, if she spent too much time in the slums in which they currently resided, would turn to evil and sin. * * * * The Burj Al Arab, if it stood almost anywhere else, would be quite out of place. Here though, where every building was shaped or carved from clear and elegant stones and metals, the seventy story sailboat was nothing more than a dune in the endless deserts that cradled the glass city. The building was no more aware of the beauty it held than the glass vase Marream carefully wiped free of fingerprints. She stared lovingly at the petals of the flower, ignoring the wilted reflection in the mirror. For Marream, in the evening at least, the heat was a briefly refreshing escape from the air-conditioning that flooded her body all day. It picked her up and carried her home. She was grateful for this. In contrast, many people, laborers of every type, made the journey home carrying the heat on their bent backs. Akeem, who was so strong, was one of those men who never stood up straight. He carried thousands of people every day; people who carried no knowledge of him. He carried the heat so it would have the strength to carry her, which, in turn, gave her the strength to carry him and young Yara. Yara, like her mother, did not mind the heat. She was five and filled with a boundless joy, energy, and curiosity that worried Marream and Akeem to wits end. She would surely be at home, impatiently waiting for dinner after a long day playing with the other children. The women of the camp took turns watching them on their days off. * * * * Marream’s silhouette clouded out the light coming through the open door. A slight breeze walked through the maze of cardboard buildings behind her, stopping for a moment to twirl her black curls while she let her eyes adjust to the softer light of her home. Yara was sitting at the table, happily playing a game using red and white blocks with a smiling man Marream did not recognize. His teeth were perfectly straight and showed no signs of discoloration. His sandals revealed frequently manicured toes. He was wearing traditional Emeriti dress, a freshly pressed, all-white Kandura and red-and-white checkered ghutra. A man of this wealth and importance was an uncommon sight in this area. In fact, Marream had never once seen or heard of a man of this stature making an appearance in the camp. *Good evening Miss Dawoud. I am glad you arrived on time. I hope your husband will be joining us shortly. We have much to discuss regarding young Yara’s education and future. She is a bright young child… and quite beautiful too.* * * * * Young girls, anywhere between the ages of six and sixteen, ran around the courtyard, or stood chatting in circles, all of them in bright, flowery dresses. The playful props, decorations, flittered around the spring stage, dancing and waving like dolls in a dollhouse. *We believe exercise and sunlight are more than just happy delights. Play is key to the development of a young woman’s mind, heart, and body. We let them play twice daily, and in mixed age groups, for various developmental reasons. The younger girls gain role models, and the older girls learn to develop their motherly instincts.* *Very pretty.* *Yes. Very.* The conversation continued on as they wound their way around the school, painting steel drum whispers on the windows lining the interior of the compound with the soft percussive march of three steps in time. They mustn’t disturb the girls at study or at play. The conversation passed into silence with the turning click of the office door. Marream and Akeem sat down in matching leather chairs that lacked even the slightest imperfection. Opposite them, across the near empty mahogany desk peppered eloquently by a cigar box, pen, empty pad of paper, and neatly stacked legal documents, sat Rashid: lead recruiter, tour guide, and Headmaster of the Ladies’ Finishing School of Dubai. *As you can see, we take very good care of our girls here. We educate them. We train them to be wives. We teach them how to lead happy, pleasant lives, and then we give them those lives. We are strict, and we are kind. Discipline and kindness are the foundations on which proper ladies are built. We take exceptional measures to preserve their innocence. We have built a paradise here, an island of sorts, where the evils and dangers of the surrounding world are kept at a studied distance. We are extraordinarily good at what we do.* *Now, you may visit your daughter twice in the first year, once the second, and once the third, and only on the specific dates that we will communicate to you two months in advance. Afterwards, you will no longer be allowed to visit the compound. If either of you are to pass from this earth, Yara will be taken to the funeral, and you may spend the day together in mourning. If both of you are to leave us permanently, all remaining payments will be deposited in Yara’s name in a low-interest savings account.* *You may continue to communicate by mail, but expect those correspondences to… cease for an extended period of time, due to what is best put as… a… lack of interest. All incoming mail will be screened for contraband and illicit information. Sometimes correspondences resume, but sometimes, they do not.* *You will receive € 200 a month, totaling € 2400 a year, until your daughter turns eighteen. Payments will be made regularly and on time. Do not come here seeking more, or cash advances. Remember, if you choose to sell your daughter to us, you are not doing so for the money. If that is all you’re after, they sell your daughter into prostitution. I can’t stop you. A young girl can be worth a large sum on the black market. I can, though, guarantee that she would live a dismal life that would end only in hellfire and eternal damnation. By sending your daughter here, you are paid in the form of a better and safer life for her, an education. A life free of want. A youth free of sin. A better life than you could ever provide for her.* *Do you have any questions?* *Ok. Sign here, here, and here, and initial here, here, and here. Now you, ma’am.* Their footsteps, two alone, silently pressing the grass beneath their feet, crossing the now empty courtyard, exited the premises. They entered the taxi, using their left hands only, so as to protect the pricks on their pointer fingers that stung red.

Criticism is appreciated. Last Tuesday I tried to kill myself. I would have done it on Monday, but I wanted to see how the week started out. I woke up at 650 Monday morning. I'm not sure why since I lost my job at the factory two weeks ago, but I guess it's because I'm still used to waking up that early. At 730 my wife Lorrie left to go to work at the hospital. She didn't say anything before walking out the door. Approximately 15 minutes later I drove down to the liquor store for a bottle of bourbon. I ended up buying two. When I got back home I sat down on the couch with a glass of the bourbon and the bottle on the coffee table in front of me. The curtains were closed and only a few rays of sunshine peered in through the window on the front door, dimly lighting the room. The house was quiet and lonely. I took a drink, leaned back, and thought about the last few months. I thought about Lorrie. About how much I loved her, and about how much it hurt me when I came home on my lunch break and found her sleeping with my neighbor Lewis Harrison, last July. I thought about losing my job, how I just snapped on a coworker. How I hit him in the jaw with a pipe wrench. He was just trying to make a joke. I thought about the charges being filed, and about being broke. I thought more about Lorrie and cringed at the reoccurring image of her and Lewis. And finally I thought about the bourbon, as I poured my fourth or fifth glass, and how it was the only thing really cared about anymore. It was then I decided killing myself would be the easiest way out. I woke up the next day when I heard Lorrie closing the front door. I had toast for breakfast. I stood over the counter to eat and washed it down with a swig of Old Kentucky. I went to the hall closet, pulled out my revolver and sat down at the kitchen table with my gun and bottle. I sat for a few minutes drinking and looking out the kitchen window into the backyard. It was about 9 o'clock and very sunny. The light shined through the house. Through the chain link fence I saw Lewis Harrison's beagle barking up a tree at a squirrel. I put the revolver to my head. I waited. I started shaking. Then I started to cry. I screamed at myself and through the bottle against the wall. That evening when Lorrie got home I was sitting on the couch in the dark. I'm not sure if she would have said anything to me but before she could, I shot her three times in the chest. I walked over to her, laid down and held her in my arms. Her hair smelled nice and her blood felt warm in my hands. Then she was dead. Last night on the motel T.V. there was a news report about what happened. They said the town was really shaken up about the incedent, but I'm sure Lewis will be fine.

I had been jolted from my sleep only twice in my life. Once, years ago, by the sound of the gunshot that killed my father. And more recently minutes ago, by the click of the bedroom door closing as my wife stepped out into the dark hallway, down the stairs and out into the rain. I laid in bed staring at the ceiling, contemplating. I had been too slow in my planning, and I let my grief distract me. I turned my head and watched the rain splatter on the window pane, its monotonous sound washing away my senses until I could not see, feel or speak and I drowned in my own sorrow that crashed against me like the rain on the world. My wife was gone, into the arms of a man far more focused on her than I had been. Delaying in decisive action was what put me in this position. I needed to move. I threw off the bed covers as a flash of blue white lit the room and thunder rolled across the heavens moments after. Drum beats for the warrior spirit, it called me to battle. I dressed and grabbed my silver and gold pocket watch, my royal blue soft bound journal with pages bent and cover stained, containing my revenge, and a Colt Army Model 1860 revolver. It was time to kill Remy. It was time to get my love back.

"Run away with me." Her pale blue eyes glistened in the fading sunlight, shimmering with hope and joy. Her childish tone and mellifluous voice washed over me, drawing me into the idea. The words she said could not be taken back, and our conversation snowballed before my eyes. "Run away with me," she repeats, a hint of desperation creeping into her voice. Four words that offered so much promise yet so much fear. I could see myself with her, my other half, living beyond the world of parents and responsibility. Perhaps we would rent a small apartment somewhere in the Midwest, or perhaps we would travel the world together. The imagination is a powerful thing, and these four words grasped onto mine and let it loose. I saw my future with her; the future is blurry at best, yet it is with her. As the words hung in the air, I studied her face and she mine. Wisps of hair splayed out from their dark home, struggling to remain independent of their raven black origin. A few strands fell across her face, perhaps trying to conceal the hurt that lay within her eyes as she understood my answer. Her lips touched mine, and a single inaudible word drowned out the rest. "Please." The strength of her ensuing silence tore my heart and I struggled to return to a few minutes before, when all that mattered was staring deeply into those same gorgeous eyes that now begged me to relent. I struggled to respond, finally managing to squeak out "why?" "Because you love me, because you promised me anything, and because I need to get out of here." "I hate that word." "But you love me." "I do." "Say it." "Not yet." "When?" "I can't answer that." "I love you though." "Debatable." As she registered my words, I lost myself in her smile. She had a smile as bright as the sun, a smile that could drown problems in a sea of happiness and desire. Aphrodite herself would have been jealous. Yet the quintessence of her smile existed in her mind. She did not even begin to grasp the beauty of her smile, constantly insisting that she had flaws. To another, maybe she did have flaws. In my mind, these were what made her perfect. "Are you even listening to me?" "Did you know you have the most adorable smile?" "Run away with me." "No. It's not going to work now. Maybe in the future." I had to look away as the hurt surged in her eyes, and I felt tears begin to form in my own. I had to do this, I had to be strong. She was my everything, my alpha and my omega, yet our time was ending. Very much like summer turns to winter, the heat and passion of a relationship turn to distance and cold. For once in my life however, I felt myself clinging to the summer and dreading winter. As is human nature, I longed to turn back the wheel of time so as to spend the rest of my life in that moment before I said no, that moment when her eyes shone like diamonds and when the light reflected through her black hair to completely dazzle me. Reality hit me hard, as I saw the tears in her eyes and felt the tear in my heart. I fought the urge to take everything back, I told myself the right thing had to be done. She needed to move on; I was merely an anchor, tethering her to the past when she deserved a bright future. The human heart does not accept logic, rather, it longs for what it cannot hold onto. She had become an ideal in my heart, the basis for which all of my following relationships would be compared to. This girl, whose imperfections made her perfect, whose love improved my empty heart, and whose smile brightened my darkest day, would leave my life in a heartbeat. She understood. She knew our relationship could not live, yet she tried to resuscitate it with that soul stealing smile. "I know you love me." "Love means being able to let something go. You were always to good for me." "Yet you're the one ending it. Who's too good for who?" "I'm your anchor. I hold you back. You could be so much more and you settled for me. You had a better guy, he made you happy." "He wasn't you." Those words felt like a knife twisting in my chest, and I'm left speechless as she starts her car and drives away, away from her past and into the future. This had been my goal hadn't it? She's better off now right? Idiot. "I love you.

Before you read, I came up with this idea while I was high, and then decided to write something based off of that. The more sober I become the less awesome it is. But it's done. and it's super short. So, meh. It's a rough draft. Eliska put down her hands. She had been tinkering in her garage all morning. She was close. She knew it. The machine was perfect, brilliant, resourceful, useful. It would bring the world into a new phase, she was so sure. It's only flaw was that it didn't work and it didn't faze her. It was going to work, whether she had to bend destiny's arm or not. She stood up and stretched. What time was it? "Geez." She said aloud, under her breath. Her dog beside her lifted his head and watched Eliska intently. She put away her side cutters. "It's four seventeen in the fucking morning. No wonder I'm not making progress; I need sleep. Come on, Otto." She started walking back to the house. Her eyes caught the neighborhood in its darkened silence. The birds chittered away, unaware of the missing sun. Her eyes caught the trashcans. She tsked. The garbage cans! They're picking them up soon. She strolled over to the cans and began hauling one towards the front of the house. At the fence, she undid the gate fork latch. Then her dog was across the street barking. "Ah, shit." She quickly put the can away and began calling her dog. It was probably trying to catch a rabbit. She heard a bark down the hill. She started walking faster, towards the bark, calling out to him. At the bottom of the small hill, she saw a reflective glare across the street in the bushes. She also saw the man hunched over. She tightened her fist but didn't slow down. She called her dog again. The hunched man did not get up. As she neared the other side of the street, her dog flew across her line of sight. The dumb dog started sniffing the stranger's butt. Lucky for her, the stranger did not seem perturbed. He was actually started to sit up, admiring his work. He had written three words on a sign and an arrow towards the right. This Is Beautiful, it read. He stood up and walked towards the street to Eliska's left. The dog ran to her to greet her only to skirt away before she could grab him. Meanwhile, the man had placed the sign next to the gutter. He stood back and admired the setup. Eliska finally called out again. The dog skidded to a stop arms length from her and was about to turn away, as if in play, only to have his owner jump out and grab his tail. Then she grabbed a leg. She stood up with her dog and glanced back at the man. He had not moved. She immediately felt fear. She made an about face and marched towards her home. "Wait." The man cried out and had his whole body turned towards her. She slowed down, but did not stop until she was at the other side of the street. She stood staring at him, her dog in her arms, not moving nor speaking. The man remained silent, his outstretched hand slowly lowered. Just as Eliska decided that she was going to run home, the man spoke again. "Do you see it?" She looked at his sign and to the gutter. "Yes." "No. No. Do you see it? The glitter, the trickle, the serenity?" Eliska paused. Yes, the sun haze gave the world a purple tint. The stream of water was reflecting the streetlight across the street. Yes, the silence amplified the noise it made as it traveled down the incline. "Yes." He stared at her. "The world is beautiful and humans forget. They think, 'the world is,' and that's it." She walked away and powered up her hill to reach haven. She heard a regretful sound behind her, "Goodbye, they.

September 5 When I thought of my seventeenth birthday, I never would have imagined that I would be running for my life from a bunch of angry demons. But then again, I never thought the Magic Realms existed either. Left, right, left, right. Breathe in, breathe out. Dang, these things are fast. And ugly. What was it that James had said? Something about focusing my energy, clear my mind. How the heck am I supposed to do that when I have a freakin’ heard of demons breathing down my neck? Just breathe, just breathe… I could feel it start in the tips of my fingers, and then, in a moment, my hands were glowing bright blue. The feeling of magic was still new to me, and it had the sensation of my hands falling asleep. I could feel the energy flow to my fingertips; blue arcs jumping in my palms. I reached behind to shoot, or is it throw, the energy at the demons. I felt the sparks leave my hand, and turned just in time to see that my shot was three feet wide of my target. “AAHHHH! Owww!” I hit the ground as my foot caught an overgrown tree root and bounced down the hill. Rocks and branches tore at my skin. I could hear the demons gaining on me. I tried to stop my never ending tumble down the hill and regain my footing with no success. Crack! White hot pain shot through my left arm as I hit a particularly large rock. I came to a sudden halt at the river bank. I looked over the edge and saw a four foot drop to the swift moving water below. I looked behind me and saw that the demons where almost to the bank and would be upon me in a matter of moments. I threw myself over the bank and let the cold water envelope my exhausted, mangled body. The water felt like a thousand tiny needles piercing every part of me. I sank below the surface and felt no desire to pull myself up. Soon my lungs began to scream, but still I had no urge to save myself. The edges of my vision began to darken. This isn’t so bad, at least I’m no longer being chased. Soon I won’t have to worry about any of this. No more magic, no more demons, no more James. Just peace. I’d like that. It’s been so long since I have known peace. Peace… I woke up to my head pounding and lungs burning. I didn’t want to open my eyes. My hair and clothes were still damp, but I wasn’t cold. I could hear the cracking wood from a fire meaning I was not alone. I know that whoever drug me from the river couldn’t have been a demon or I would already be dead. My left arm was immobilized and felt like a hundred hot knives were digging into it. It was broken, but my rescuer toke the time to splint it. I could hear movement to my right, but kept my eyes closed. I didn’t want my newfound comrade to know that I was awake until I had a plan of escape. “You can stop pretending, Olivia.” It was a man’s voice that broke the silence. His voice had a deep timber to it. It was the type of voice that people listened to and respected, even though it came from a person so young. “I know you’re awake. Your breathing is shallower and irregular and I can see your eyes twitching. It’s okay. We’re safer.” I opened my eyes to see James staring at me through the flickering flames. As always, he had that carefree look about him that bordered on arrogance. His dark hair was strewn haphazardly across his forehead. His blue eyes as sharp as the edge of the blade he was fingering with his calloused hands. The thin scar on right cheek stood out in the glow from the fire. It was the only mark on his otherwise perfect face. He looked absolutely charming, if only his personality matched his appearance. “How did you know where to find me?” I blurted out. “We’re safe? What happened to the demons that were chasing me?” He just looked at me blankly as I rambled. When I had finished, he continued to look at me in silence. As always, I felt as if I was naked in front him. He had that piercing gaze that could rip through any armor you put around yourself. Finally he spoke, “No.” “What?” I was confused. “No, what?” “No, I said we were safer, not safe.” I sat up, big mistake. My head felt as if someone was squeezing it in a vice and every single muscle in my body protested the movement. I felt the world around me spin and steadied myself with my left arm, only to instantly regret it. For the first time, I noticed where we were. We were in a small cave on the north side of the river. I could see the full moon low in the sky just outside the mouth. How long had I been out? Last thing I remember, it was mid-morning. “Careful!” spat James. “I put a healing charm on your arm. I don’t need you messing it up. That’s you’re problem! You don’t think, you just run about blindly! What would have happened if I had not found you?” By this time he was yelling. “You would be dead, that’s what! You would be dead and you would have condemned the rest of the Magic Realms to the same fate! You are so reckless! Your actions have consequences that affects millions of lives! Do you not understand that? How stupid can you possibly be? The chosen one! Seriously! I think the Fates had some majorly poor judgement when they made you the chose one!” Despite myself, I could feel the hot tears streaming down my face. His tirade, once again ripped right through me. He has been like this since the day I met him. He acts as though I had a choice in the manner. I would have never chosen this life for myself. I was a normal girl who was beginning her senior year of high school. I had a plenty of friends, a boyfriend that doted on me, and decent grades. I was the editor of the yearbook committee and was active in 4-H. I was normal. But that all changed one month before my seventeenth birthday. A month ago today, I walked into my bedroom to find this handsome boy who introduced himself as James sitting on my bed. A month ago today, I was pulled from my safe, predictable, and boring world and thrust into this chaotic, dark, and dangerous world. A month ago today, I was told that it was my destiny to save this realm from itself and bring peace once and for all. I was ripped from everything I knew and he calls me stupid for it. This was not my choice. If I had my choice, I would go back to my boring world in a heartbeat. I wiped the tears from my face with a shaking hand and whimpered, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen. I was just trying to practice controlling my magic. I didn’t realize that I could cause a building to explode.” “Ugh. Stop crying. It’s done we’re moving on now.” James softened his expression slightly. Crying always makes him uncomfortable. “Next time I tell you to keep a low profile, keep a low profile! A lot of people and other things want you dead. With your carelessness, it makes my job of protecting you that much harder. “To answer your other questions, I was following you the whole time. I was hoping that you would be able to get yourself out of trouble, but I was wrong. When you went into the river, I took care of the demons and then dove in after you. You had already lost consciousness, so I carried you to this cave and started a fire. We’ve been here for about fourteen hours. I said that we were only safer because I occasionally hear more demons and bounty hunters looking for you. I put a cloaking spell on the cave that should help us avoid detection, but it won’t hold forever. We have to move at first light. We should both get some rest. We’re going to need it.” With that he laid down and faced away from me. I sat there for a few minutes thinking how much he must hate me. He does nothing but babysit me and bail me out of trouble. I wish I could go back to my old life, but there is no going back now. I can only move forward; my magic can only get stronger. With that somewhat encouraging and slightly terrifying thought in mind, I lay down and fell into a fitful sleep filled with demons and magic.

Hi guys. First post around here. I'm publishing a short story book and it would be great if I could get you opinion on one of them. This one is called 'The Hole'. Thanks and hope you enjoy it! *** *São Paulo, Brazil. 12 million people jammed in tiny flats. Construction companies have managed to flatten most of the old São Paulo, and build a bigger, uglier one on top of it's rubble. It's hard to find any old buildings, and the government is indifferent towards the hunger of the construction conglomerates. Sometimes you can spot an old house here and there. This is the story of one of this houses.* I swallowed my pride and went into the room, ready to listen. Lino was draped over his chair: lord of his two-by-three, chipboard-walled castle. I closed the door, making the walls shudder. Sitting opposite Lino was an old man in a dark blue concierge's suit. The man's small, dark, speckled eyes were fixed on Lino, waiting for the answer to a question I hadn't been there to hear. I took a seat next to him. 'We've got the solution to your problem,' Lino said. I nodded. Solutions were good. The old man next to me was still looking at Lino, as if they were alone in the room. Maybe he'd had a brain haemorrhage. Maybe they were in love. 'And what problem are we talking about?' I said. 'You know.' Lino would've put his feet up on the table if there'd been space, but he settled for stretching like an old, effeminate cat. 'In Consolação.' So I was right, it was my neck on the line. I spoke carefully, as if talking to a retarded child holding an AR-15. 'Lino, you know I've done everything I could. Mrs Pederneiras doesn't want to move. I know it's been four-' 'Six.' 'Six, fuck, six months, whatever.' I unbuttoned my shirt collar. 'I just wanted to make it clear I've done what I could.' Lino looked at the archive box on top of the shelves. That was where he kept the files on his employees. Had my time come? I mentally calculated the redundancy payout I'd get. What with the child maintenance and the payments on the car, I reckoned I'd have enough to live off for about four months. It would go further if I wasn't still paying for the apartment Viviane took from me. He lost interest in the box and lifted a pen to his mouth, chewing the end for what seemed like an age. 'This should be the city of the future, of enterprise, of tomorrow. It's Brazil's engine,' Lino said, clamping the end of the pen between his teeth. 'Who cares about knocking down a little house in Brazil's engine?' He held the pen up, emphasising his own words and showing his teeth. 'It's Brazil steamroller.' I'd forgotten about the old man next to me. He turned his head towards me, becoming aware of my presence for the first time. 'As Mr Lino said, we've got the solution to your problem,' said the old man. A hippie necklace was just visible underneath the old man's beige casual shirt. Little coloured stones on a thin thread. Where had I seen that before? 'You're going to demolish the house by mistake,' the old man went on. Lino smiled so wide I thought the skin stretched over his cheeks would split like a ripe tomato. 'You're going to take the guys there and demolish the house,' said Lino, twisting the end of the pen between his fingers. 'When the police arrive, if they arrive, you say it was a mistake. It won't be your responsibility, it'll be the company's.' 'And what about Mrs Pederneiras?' 'She'll probably sue the company and get 300,000 in insurance out of us.' 'The house is worth at least three times that.' 'It's enough for an old woman.' 'We'll get royally fucked in court, Lino.' 'No we won't. I spoke to the judge about it at Cláudia's birthday last week. We're on the same page.' My gaze darted around the room. Such a brilliant and cruel idea could only be conceived in a construction company. I focused on the yellow plastic box. Lino tapped the pen hard against the table, but not out of nerves. 'I'm not going to do that,' I said. Lino raised the pen once more. His eyes lazily scanned the room until they came to rest on the yellow archive box that also held my attention. 'Mrs Pederneiras doesn't go out,' I said. The old man turned his chair. 'She's going out tonight. A family emergency. She'll be back tomorrow.' 'She has family?' The old man turned his chair back to face Lino. 'Who are you, anyway?' I said. 'Someone who wants all this to be over with.' * For fuck's sake. Paulista was gridlocked. I took São Carlos do Pinhal, ignoring the roadsigns, I cut down Augusta, got onto Consolação. For fuck's sake. I got out of the car in front of the plot of land. An enormous rectangle of kidney coloured ground, with a lonely little house halfway along the block. All of the surrounding neighbourhood had already been sold to the construction company and demolished, with considerable compensation. All except Mrs Pederneiras's house. I walked up to it, dirtying my khaki trousers with earth. It was just another house with no personality or architectural value, like almost all the houses in São Paulo. A functional two-story block built for eating, eating, shitting. Lino was right, who cared about that piece of crap? I knocked because the bell didn't work. Mrs Pederneiras dragged herself to the door. She was a pale old woman with eyes almost entirely hidden by the bags around them. Her hair was still dark and straight. She must have been getting on for ninety, a hundred. And even though she knew why I was there, she greeted me with a smile. Just like all the other times I'd been to the house, she led me to the living room crammed full with trinkets, pictures, various worthless bits of rubbish. A whole life in odds and ends. We sat in the armchairs in the centre of the round sisal rug. I spoke unhurriedly. We talked about the weather, the traffic, the elections. It always took at least ten minutes of small talk before I could bring up any important issue with her. I'm terrible at small talk, but with her didn't mind. We eventually ran out of inoffensive topics. 'Have you thought about the construction company's offer?' Mrs Pederneiras smiled an old woman's smile. 'How many times have you asked me that already?' 'Three hundred,' I replied, a reasonable approximation. 'And what have I always told you?' She watched me with the sincere superiority of someone who will not be moved. Or pushed. Mrs Pederneiras had held out for almost a year, even when they knocked down everything around her, when they left the motors running all night for a week on purpose, when the mortal remains of her ex-neighbourhood were carted off, covering her house with red dust for weeks. The old woman was a brick wall. No, not a wall. Lino could knock down a wall. 'You agree that we're in a stalemate here, don't you? The thing is that all this, this whole problem, is falling on my shoulders.' She said nothing. 'I understand that you don't want to move. Really I do. This is your home. But it's already been decided, by power's greater than you, you and I are nothing in this process, you know, we're tiny ants. We can kick and shout all we like and we'll still just be insects. The construction company is going to trample on us all the same.' I brought my thumb and index finger together, squashing an invisible being: 'Tiny ants.' And she sat there, smiling. 'I'm pleading with you,' I said, taking her bony hands in mine. ' I need this job,' I whispered without meaning to. It was true. Mrs Pederneiras left her hands there and fixed her eyes on me for a long moment. 'This might be the last time I come here, do you see? The construction company is losing patience.' The old woman fiddled with something at her neck. She looked around and tensed her arms, which were still muscular for her age and reminded me of the bricklayers I worked with every day. She checked the top button of her shirt. She adjusted her still-dark hair. She was getting ready to say something difficult. 'This is the first time you've been honest with me.' 'Don't talk like that, Mrs Pederneiras.' 'So I'm going to be honest with you.' She looked around the room, pensive. Then she dropped her gaze to the rug. 'This house mustn't move from here.' 'The house?' 'Yes.' 'The house mustn't move from here?' The old woman leant back in the chair, looking around her again. 'I look after the house. There has always been a house here.' 'At this address?' 'Since there have been people.' I leant back in the chair, establishing a safe distance, as if senility was a dangerous gas leak that might blow my head apart at any moment. 'And you've been here forever too?' 'Of course not.' I got up. 'So this house, it's been here forever?' 'Not this house. There were others before it. But there has always been a house, right here, on the spot. It's important that there's be a house here. Sit down.' It was an order, and I obeyed. 'My mother lived here. And her mother. When Isias Pederneiras arrived, he found a house already here. He was a bandeirante who crossed the Pacific with Manuel Preto. He killed everyone who lived here, except one. She showed him the importance of the house. And the two of them stayed there. There has been a house here ever since and there has always been somebody guarding the house. When my time is up, my son will take my place. And his son. And so on.' 'And you can't leave here?' 'I don't even know if it's possible. The house wouldn't allow it. The house has a purpose, and it can be dangerous when it needs to be.' Would I end up like that as well? Alone and senile, still paying this ridiculous maintenance and hated by my daughter? I was unable to say anything else. It was too sad. The old woman got up. She signalled for me to do the same and I obeyed. She walked to the corner of the room, bent over until her waist was at a right angle and effortlessly pulled back the edge of the round carpet, toppling two cane-seated chairs. In a corner of the wooden floor there was a small round hole the size of a fist. Mrs Pederneiras pointed at the hole. 'There's something down there. Something bad. It's as cunning as anything and is always trying to get out. The house has to be here to stop it getting out.' If Mrs Pederneiras had gone mad, we could get a legal impediment. I might be able to serve as witness. I needed to talk to Lino. 'Look,' she said. 'In the hole?' 'In the hole.' 'There's no need, I believe you, honestly.' She stood still, her arm outstretched with a belligerent index finger pointing towards the small orifice in the floor. I looked at the hole. It was very dark. A current of air came up through it together with the smell of dry leaves, strong spices, animal fat. 'I can't see anything.' 'Closer.' I took a step towards the hole. 'Closer.' I don't know why I knelt down. I moved my head towards the hole and a damp breeze rose to meet me. How deep was it? I still couldn't see anything. Then, the sound: nails scratching against concrete. I jumped back. 'Fuck, rats make that noise, it's full of rats down there, holy shit!' I apologised for swearing, surely looking like a naughty little boy. The old woman had stopped smiling. She walked to the door and held it open, waiting for me to leave, with her chin pointing towards the street. 'Go on. You can tell your bosses.' I righted the chairs. They were hardwood, heavy. Before closing the door, she grabbed my sleeve. 'Things around here grow without ever questioning what there was before. And other things are in their places for a reason. Not everything is transitory like your people want it to be. Some things should never change. The house stays here. And I stay with the house.' The top button of the old woman's shirt had come undone and around her wrinkled neck I saw a string of coloured stones. It was the second time that day I'd seen a necklace like that. And thinking carefully about it, it was the second time I'd seen those small dark eyes. The old woman did up her button and closed the door. * I called the foreman and made sure everyone was on the alert. The team knew what was going to happen that night. A few trustworthy men, who weren't going to spill the beans if the law decided to muscle in. I waited on the other side of the road in my double cab Ranger, ready to demolish the memories of a senile old woman so as to keep my job and meet the payments on the car. At least the money had been well spent because the Ranger had everything, including tinted windows which meant the old man in his concierge's suit couldn't see me when he pulled up in a taxi and led the woman out of the house. Mrs Pederneiras held onto the roof of the car before the old man guided her inside. She looked me straight in the eyes, hurt and disappointment coming in through the glass, her gaze meeting mine head-on. I was invisible behind the glass. Even so, I had to control my desire to hide under the seat. Poor old woman. The man gripped her shoulders and deposited her in the back seat. I read his lips: 'Come on, Mum.' They drove away, leaving behind them a cloud of red dust. I went to find the team at the far side of the plot of land. Part 2 coming soon.

THE CONVENTION It was an honest mistake. I didn't mean anything by it. Please, I was wrong. He really is the greatest. He wanted to scream the words at the woman.The rubber ball of the gag filling his mouth wouldn't let more than a muffled grunt out. Her face was dispassionate, devoid of emotion as she advanced. The blade in her hand showed evidence of blood already taken. He thrashed on the bed, fighting the restraints binding hands and feet. It was futile, the cable ties and chains too strong and well secured. The struggling, this time, was shorter than before. The crime scene was at the International Hotel. As Inspector Landesman parked his Volvo outside the entrance a mobile phone that had been tossed on to the passenger seat demanded his attention. He was still talking to the member of staff at the care home when he entered room 4119. Landesman had listened politely as he was told how his father had become increasingly upset during the day. Later he had gone missing. An alert uniformed police officer had noticed him in a bus shelter dressed in pyjamas and slippers. He had been returned to the home cold but otherwise unharmed. Landesman thanked the nurse and promised to visit the following morning. The body was on the hotel bed where it had been discovered by a housekeeper. There was organised chaos as a number of forensics officers and detectives went about their business. Landesman was signed in by a scene of crime supervisor and stood just inside the hotel room door taking in the scene. Even though he was several feet away from the body the cause of death seemed to be clear. The man was naked. All four limbs, torso and genitalia were criss-crossed with fine cuts. None of these incisions, however, had the appearance of being fatal. Though inclined against jumping to conclusions, it was obvious to Landesman that a gaping throat wound had been the final act of whatever drama was played out here. The Force Medical Examiner was standing close to the body. He noticed Landesman and walked over to him. ‘Inspector.’ ‘Doctor Anders.’ Landesman tilted his head slightly in acknowledgement. ‘What have we got, doctor?’ ‘The evidence suggests he was tortured before he died and that he was conscious before the fatal slash across the throat. I speculate that he was lured here and allowed himself to be gagged and manacled to the bed. Once the cutting started it seems he fought against the restraints. The blood loss, initially, was minimal. However, when the jugular was cut the bleeding would have been profuse. Unconsciousness and death would have been swift. The perpetrator, I suspect, exercised some control over the level of pain to keep the victim aware of what was happening until that point. When the decision to dispatch was taken it was executed with surgical precision.’ Sergeant Bloch accompanied Landesman as they descended to the hotel reception area. ‘Did you notice they are hosting a convention?’ asked Bloch. ‘No.’ ‘Yes, it’s the Henning Mankell Fan Club. Looks like their big annual shindig.’ ‘Henning who?’ ‘Boss, please don't tell me you've never heard of Mankell. The author? You know, the Swedish detective, Kurt Wallander? I'm a great fan myself. Mind you I could never be as obsessive as some of the people staying here.’ Landesman shook his head slightly. The conversation was interrupted by the insistent chirping of his mobile. It was his daughter. ‘Dad, I've just heard about Grandfather.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘You know why he's run off again don't you?’ ‘Go on.’ ‘It's you. If you would just make time to see him he would be more settled. You leave it for so long he gets agitated and goes walkabout. God, you just haven't coped with anything since Mum left.’ ‘Charlotte, cut me some slack.’ Landesman paused. He hadn’t been well but he wasn’t going to open up to his daughter on that subject. ‘Look, I've told the care home I'll visit tomorrow. I really will. Now, I've got to go. I'm on a case.’ ‘That's right, Dad. Put the dead before the living once more.’ The call was terminated. Landesman and Bloch established from a receptionist that 4119 had been allocated to a Doctor Rosanne Gainsbourg. The booking had been made through the Henning Mankell Fan Club. Staff and guests were interviewed methodically over the next few hours. Bloch asked Landesman to join him in the manager's office where he had been questioning a bartender. ‘You might want to hear this, Inspector.’ The bartender recounted how a woman matching the doctor's description had been in the hotel lounge. He said he couldn’t help noticing her. She was strikingly attractive. Initially, she had been alone. A man joined her. They had been sitting at the bar when the bartender heard the man say words to the effect that he thought Mankell was overrated. The bartender registered this because of the reaction. There was an angry outburst from the woman. The bartender had thought the scene was going to turn ugly. However, she gave the appearance of calming down. A little later the bartender noticed the man and woman leaving the bar hand-in-hand. Bloch confirmed the guest was no longer in the hotel. Before Landesman could ask he went on to say that details had been circulated and a team of officers were on their way to her home address. On exiting the hotel Landesman was dazzled by the lights of television crews. He blanked the reporters and ignored the shouted questions. Landesman finally got back to his flat at 3.30am. He sat alone. Two amitryptiline tablets were helped down by a large glass of red wine. Dr Rosanne Gainsbourg. The name was familiar to him but Landesman couldn't think why. At 4.25am Landesman was slumped in the chair where he had fallen asleep. His mobile phone woke him up. There was a woman's voice. He felt befuddled and struggled to register what was being said. ‘Mr Landesman?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘I am sorry it is so early. I want to talk to you about your father urgently.’ ‘Pardon?’ ‘It’s the Director. I’m the doctor in charge of your father's care home. Dr Gainsbourg, Inspector Landesman. I want to talk to you about your father and arrangements for my safe passage out of the country.’ Landesman stood up. He was wide awake.

I bought a record that was made in Paris. I place it in the player, put the needle on, and let it play. A soft piano begins, and the singer begins to sing. I don’t know what she’s saying. On the album cover there’s a picture of Paris. The Eiffel tower is in the background, and you see all of the buildings before it. I live in a suburb that has about three different house types and four different colors. I don’t want to be here. I want to be there. The day would begin slowly. I’d wake up without any rush, and pour myself a cup of coffee. My window would be open, and a breeze would blow in. Every time I’d look out of my window, I’d see thousands of different colored buildings, all different sizes. The street is full of people walking, weaving between the narrow brick roads. There’d be a soft roar of talking, accented by birds chirping and the noises of life. My friends and I always hangout at McDonald’s. There’s not a lot to do around here. I’m not even a fan of fast food. When I look out of the windows I see a street and gray buildings. The people around us are wearing sweatpants and have sauce on their shirts. There’s no pride where I live. People just seem to go through the motions in everything they do. I’m surrounded by beautiful people. I sit at a café watching everyone walk by. They don’t say hello, but there’s a mutual respect. We all sip our drinks and smoke our cigarettes and read the newspaper. To my right is a woman writing poetry and reading it to her friends. To my left is a caricature artist who has a line that wraps around the corner. I’m in the middle, just observing, feeling the wind on my back, and sun on my face. I showed a couple of friends the album I got. They think it’s alright, but a little boring. It has some of my favorite songs on it, but I don’t say anything. I don’t know if they’re complacent, or if I’m just restless. I go to a magazine stand to see what they have. The stand-keeper and I make small talk, and he asks if I’m American. I tell him how happy I am that I moved here, and how I’ve never enjoyed life more. He tells me that Paris has that effect on people. The record plays as I sit in my room. I’ve never felt more attached to a place, and I’ve never even been there. I have to go. I need to be somewhere I belong. I’m sick of living everyday with the goal of just being content. I want to be able to wake up every morning and go to bed every night looking forward to what lies ahead. My parents say I can go over spring break. I buy my ticket immediately; I want to go alone. The record sits on my shelf, and every night I can look at it to remind myself. I’m ready to live where I’ve lived in my head for almost a year. I arrive to my hotel at noon. I open the window and a breeze blows in. The air smells different than I expected. When I start to unpack, I first grab the album that brought me here. It felt wrong not to bring it. I take it out, and the record is scratched.

They could see it through the viewport, floating in space like a big milky pearl. “There it is,” Captain Yates said. “Jaatmar.” Lieutenant Brigsley stared at the planet for a long time. Yates switched on the intercom. “This is Captain Aaron Yates of the ISS Fulcrum. Does anyone read me?” There was only static. “I repeat, does anyone read me?” Brigsley restored the Fulcrum’s non-critical systems, bringing on the lights, weapons, and secondary engines. “I suppose they’ll hear us soon enough.” In the tunnels under Jaatmar, the teacher moved across the room, arms behind his back. “Now, does anyone know where the ‘so clean you could eat off it’ expression comes from, and why it’s important?” A milark at the front of the class raised his left arms. “Yes, Glikkagron?” “It comes from the human tendency to associate cleanliness with food,” Glikkagron said. “And it’s important because it shows a fear of disease and death.” “Very good,” the teacher said, nodding. “Write that down, everyone. Questions like these will be in the exam.” Everyone except Glikkagron hunched over their holopads, and there was the harmonious tap-tap-tapping of one-hundred and seventy-four milarks writing about their favourite subject in the world: humans. A student sitting next to Glikkagron raised her hands. “Yes, Hjasup?” “Why are the humans afraid of death?” She asked. The teacher thought about it. “I’m not entirely sure, to be honest.” Hjasup’s eye spun to Glikkagron, whose arms were flailing wildly. “I know, I know!” He clicked “Yes, Glikkagron?” “Because they can’t control when it happens!” Glikkagron clicked, his twelve spindly legs scratching on the ground. “Chapter 4 of Humans, What Do You Know? says control is a big part of the human psyche, and what is death if not the greatest lack of control?” Despite the room being almost completely dark, the teacher could see Glikkagron clearly. The young student was obviously awaiting praise, but this was not a class on human philosophy; it was Human Expressions and Idioms V3. Although brilliant, theories like that would have to wait until later on, during The Nature of Human Existence V1. “Let’s continue,” the teacher said, moving across the room on his twelve stick-thin legs. “Can anyone tell me where ‘it takes one to know one’ comes from, and what it implies?” Glikkagron’s arms shot up. “Someone other than Glikkagron.” The other one-hundred and seventy-four milarks raised their arms. The teacher picked at random. “Yes, Nsskks?” Nsskks began to secrete ink; he was hardly ever chosen. “I do-don’t know where it c-c-c-comes from, but I believe it’s a c-c-counter-insult.” “And what is a counter-insult?” The teacher asked. “A c-counter-insult deflects th-the-” Nsskks’s words were obliterated by an awful screeching every milark on the planet heard: it burrowed into the head, and scrambled the brains, inducing endless waves of nausea. When Captain Yates turned off the Fulcrum’s intercom, the sixteen thousand milarks below Jaatmar’s surface heard the echo of their screams. The screeching had stopped. It had all just stopped. The astronauts looked at each other, and then once more out the viewport. Now that they had landed, they could see the white fields of – well, it looked like ant hills, is what it looked like. Hundreds of the things, no more than a few feet high, everywhere. “Never saw these in the pictures.” Lieutenant Brigsley said. “No,” Yates said, reaching for his helmet. “Too small.” In the airlock, they stood listening to the hiss of depressurization, and then the Fulcrum’s outer door opened. They could have said something monumental, but neither felt much like showboating. No one on Earth would ever hear them. So they walked out in silence, their boots crunching over the brittle ant hills. A clutch of milark babies squirmed and clicked under her feet, and dozens of unhatched milarks hung from the ceiling, watching their brothers and sisters, and the slimy milark grovelling on the ground. “My dear Brood Mother,” he said, kissing the earth. “My dear Brood Mother.” “Speak, worm.” The Brood Mother said, her voice shaking the entire cavern. “There are two life forms on the surface,” he said, lifting his ink-soaked head, “and we believe they’re humans.” The Brood Mother’s egg sacs trembled. “Humans?” She said. “Humans.” She repeated, this time rolling the word around her tongue. “Bring them to me.” With most of the class collapsed on the ground, the teacher, like any good Education Hive employee, rushed through the room, helping fallen ones to their feet. “What happened, Sir?” Glikkagron said, raising his arms. “I’ve never read about-” “They need lights,” the teacher said, almost to himself, “and oxygen. They need oxygen.” “Are you… Sir, what are you-” “Quiet!” The teacher yelled. “Sorry.” Glikkagron said. After helping up the last of the students, the teacher took a long, slow breath. “Get the oxygen tanks, and the lights. We have visitors.” The students scrambled over each other. The astronauts saw a group of creatures in the distance: their long spidery legs - attached to ash-black exoskeletons - crawled over the ground in a way that suggested disorientation, as if they hadn’t been outside in years. Captain Yates took out his translator. “Welcoming committee.” He said. The milarks approached, shielding their faces against the red sun. They clicked and clicked and clicked at the humans, and each extended one of their hands: it was common knowledge that a ‘hand-shake’ was the customary way of greeting someone on Earth. While humans and milarks shook hands, Yates activated the translator. “…honoured to be a part of this glorious moment.” Yates pointed the device at another milark. “…requests your presence.” He pointed at another. “…true that humans actually shave their heads?” And another. “…all so tall?” Yates flipped a switch on the translator, and spoke into it. “We need food.” The milarks listened to the broken clicking coming through the translator, and then turned to one another. “What did he say?” The other milarks clicked inquisitively. “Something about rubes?” “No,” another milark said. “Tubes. He said something about tubes.” Yates looked at Brigsley, and gave him the translator. “Can you understand us?” Brigsley said. “We need food.” The milarks looked at each other, and shook their heads. “Let’s just take them down already,” a milark at the back of the group said. “They must be starving.” Boxes of luminous fungi were strung down the tunnels. Ordinarily much too bright for the eye of a milark, the fungi was now essential, because the whispers were true: two humans had arrived on Jaatmar, and they were going to see the Brood Mother. Glikkagron and Hjasup walked along with the other three thousand students from Education Hive. Despite being half-blind and dizzy, the students never broke file, and they never stopped clicking. Who would be the first to touch the humans? What would the humans be fed, leeches or slugs? Where would the humans sleep? Who would be given the privilege of examining their urine and fecal matter? “You should really be given a few samples of their urine, Glikkagron,” Hjasup said, her legs trembling with excitement. “Don’t you think?” Glikkagron turned to Hjasup, but all he could see was a vague outline of her. “Yes,” he said, “that would be a dream come true… You know something? I wouldn’t even examine it. I’d drink it, just so I could say that something from a human was inside of me.” “Would you – would share some with me?” Hjasup asked, secreting a small dribble of ink. Glikkagron nodded, but he realized she probably couldn’t see him. “I would share some with you.” He said. “Now, attention, attention!” The teacher said, stopping the students, and pushing them to one side of the tunnel. “When the humans come, you will not break away from this wall. You may stretch out your hands and try to touch them, and you may say whatever you wish, but you must not break from the wall. Those that do will be severely punished.” The students were silent. The teacher craned his head from one side of the tunnel to the other, taking in the students. “We will not overrun them, and we will not scare them. We will show the humans that we are the loveliest, most gracious creatures in the known universe. Is that clear?” A few students mumbled. “I said, Is that clear?” “Yes, sir.” The students mumbled. “What was that?” “Yes, sir!” The students cried. “Sir?” Glikkagron said, raising a hand. “What is it, Glikkagron?” The teacher said, staring at the left end of the tunnel. “Will there be a chance to examine any human waste?” The teacher nodded, not taking his eye off the left end of the tunnel. “Yes, of course. Unless the humans refuse. We would never just take samples from them.” Glikkagron and Hjasup turned to each other and did a happy little dance. “Here they are. Here they are,” the teacher said, pushing Glikkagron and Hjasup to the wall. “Everyone against the wall, now!” Captain Yates and Lieutenant Brigsley followed the welcoming committee into the tunnel. An endless row of smaller milarks jumped and kicked and reached for them, all screaming at a frequency too high for the human ear. “These are students,” a milark from the welcoming committee said, gesturing with his arms. “As you can see, they are very excited by your presence.” Brigsley pointed the translator at a student. “…SHIT! OH SHIT! OH SHIT! OH MY SHIT! OH-” Brigsley lowered the translator’s volume: any louder and he thought the speakers might pop. “Y-YOUR HELMET!” One of the students screamed, tugging at Yates’s arm. “Y-Y-YOUR HELMET! Y-YOUR HELMET! PLEASE! P-PLEASE! Y-Y-Y-YOUR HELMET!” Yates looked at a member of the welcoming committee, who was nodding her head. “The tunnels are being pumped with oxygen as we speak,” she said, “so you’re free to take off your helmets.” The students all gasped as Yates secured his hands around his helmet; they gasped again as he twisted it off in one quick motion, throwing it back to the milark who had called for it. Nsskks collapsed to his knees, spurting ink over his prize. “I can’t breathe,” Hjasup said, clutching her chest. “Glikkagron, I can’t breathe.” Glikkagron was screaming as loud as the rest of them, and though he felt Hjasup’s arm on his, he couldn’t hear what she was saying, nor did he care: the humans were about to pass, and all that mattered was for them to turn their heads - even for one second - and acknowledge his existence. Jumping and kicking and screaming wasn’t working, because everyone was already doing that. “Glikkagron!” Hjasup wheezed, as Glikkagron stepped away from the wall. “Glikkagron…” Hjasup slid to the ground, gushing streams of black ink. Her heart slammed against her chest, faster with each gasping breath, and where there had been screaming, there was silence. She squinted at the boxes of fungi on the ceiling, shining brighter, it seemed, than the stars themselves. Why did this have to happen now? What would the humans think? After Lieutenant Brigsley handed his helmet to one of the students - who then bashed another student over the head with it – he turned to his captain. “This is getting out of control.” Brigsley said. Yates stared at the welcoming committee, where only two milarks remained; the rest had broken off to hold rowdy students against the wall. Yates snatched the translator from Brigsley. “Can we hurry this up?” Yates said. “Curry?” One of the milarks said, turning around. “We’ve heard of this dish, but I’m afraid we don’t have it. Don’t worry. Don’t worry. You’ll have many superb things to eat once we-” Yates threw the translator to the ground, and stomped on it. “Glikkagron!” The teacher shouted, certain the blurry milark who had just left the wall was him. “Glikkagron, get back here!” Glikkagron ran towards the humans; he would get their attention, he would tell them how much he knew about the human race, and they would be amazed. “Hey,” a student said, pointing at Glikkagron, “he just left the wall!” “GLIKKAGRON!” The teacher screamed, racing after him. “He’s gonna hurt them!” Another student said. “He’s gonna hurt the humans!” In an instant the word had spread to every milark in the tunnel, and then there was no stopping it: the waves and waves of students rushing to defend the humans. “GET BACK!” The teacher screamed, as he was knocked down and impaled by thousands of sharp, spidery legs.

So this is the first short story I've ever written and it is inspire by my friend and his dysfunctional family. Enjoy :) Julie, you sexy beast. Come here give me a reacharound.” Waddling ungraciously across the room, she complied. “I love you my little Aaryboy.” she whispered in her sons ear as she stuck one sausage like finger in his rectum and extended her other hand around his body to grab his little weapon. No sooner than her blubber like hand reached its destination a great shudder passed through Aarons entire body. The resulting eruption was off the scale, he spurted everywhere. It went all over the remains of the set meal for 8 they had just shared from the local Chinese. Giving her son her most sultry pout, Julie proceded to eat the last of the spare ribs, now with an additional home-grown condiment. “Get hottub on, relax now” Aaron said, a look of intense satisfaction upon his round face. “Aary, you know we have no electricity.” Julie told her son with a tilt of the head yet the devlilish grin she was wearing suggested otherwise. “Good job I ate all that king prawn curry, I’ll create the bubbles and warmth.” Throwing one last look of utter infatuation his way she left the room to go get them a beer each and get her bathing costume. Aaron remained seated for a moment or two before forcing himself up to find his swimshorts. Wading through the empty beercans and takeaway boxes he made his way into his bedroom to put his shorts on. Once outside his face light up in delight, his mother had been having him on. She was without bathing costume and completely starkers naked, rolls out and all. Eager for round 2 Aaron ripped his shorts off with such passion as was rare in his life. He then jumped straight into the tub and downed a can of beer before nibbling on her neck. “hehehe, aary you’re making me tremble” Julie said, gasping as she felt a thumb start to caress her clitoris. One finger slid in, aaron could feel the velvety softness of her inside down below the thicket of course hair. A second finger, then a third and finally a fourth also made their way inside. “mmmmm” Julie moaned, pulling him in for a big sloppy kiss. Tongues began fighting each other playfully, growing more ferocious as they both got more and more turned on. Aaron could no longer take it, using all the strength he had he managed to lift one of Julies barrel like legs above her shoulder and he thrust himself inside. In, out, in, out. It went on for almost a minute until he was spent. Several moments passed in which the two held each other delicately. Struggling to climb over the side, seed dribbling down her leg, Julie proceeded into the house to get more beers and to use the restroom. She assured her son she’d be back in ten minutes. Aaron lay back his head, resting his eyes with a most content smile on his face. Slipping into a state of such calm, between being awake and sleep he failed to notice the approaching headlights. “Aary what the fuck you naked for in my hottub? Damn I can’t wait for you fucking leeches to leave my house” Martin had just exited his car after returning home to pick up some possessions to take to his new girlfriends house. The tone in which he spoke to his son was that of complete total disappointment. “I, I, I can explain” Aaron stammered. “I do not want to hear about you wanking, you little prick. I’m going to get some of my shit. Stay out my sight” Martin replied, shaking his head and bewildered at how his son had turned out so odd and relieved he was no longer a proper part of this family. He then walked off toward his part of the house. Hearing the door open behind him Martin assumed Aaron must have had company and maybe was finally done with masturbating and had found someobody actually willing to touch him. Hiding behind the fence to get a good look hoping for a laugh, Martin was not prepared for what was to come. The women he had once loved and shared a life with was naked and returning to join their son in the tub. All her folds and rolls were jiggling as she moved and he could not help but feel both sick to the bottom of his podgy stomach yet also how he had dodged a bullet by leaving. Half disgusted and half laughing manically he went straight into his office and took out his gun, meaning to end this now once and for all. Storming back outside, taking the incestuous lovers by surprise he shot his once beloved Julie through the back of the head. “Noooo, my love” Aaron screeched in despair. All he could think of was vengeance for his dead mother, the love of his life, his only true friend. BANG It was too late, Martin shot his son too then dragged both bodies off into the surrounding woods. Boy was he pleased he’d bought this house in the middle of nowhere. He then went inside poured himself a nice big whisky and lit up a cuban, finally able to relax for the first time in years.

The chaos in my room was organised. Everything was where it ought to be. Because where else could it be? Why would it matter? Why should I bother worrying about what part of my room is most suitable to keep a bunch of unread envelopes? It’s all cheap stuff, this state of mind. It’s common. The analogies felt unique in the beginning; now they are beginning to amass in tens, hundreds even. Sadness is everywhere. It’s pop. It’s the new fad. Everyone wants to be sad. They don’t know what they are getting themselves into. Sometimes I can almost hear the angels beckoning me. They whisper slowly –“we are waiting for you, all you need is one swift jab!”. They soothe me, and yet they could consume me in no time. The healing light I imagine at night awaits me if I do the unthinkable- is it worth it? Perhaps. Then why fight this? I’ve made enough people happy; why is 19 different from 90? I feed the monster with happiness- it sucks it all up in seconds. The memories drain down the sink of the pensieve. All that I value turned into sludge- can you imagine the pain of feeling this all the time? Can you think truly revelling in happy times, fully knowing that the memories you make are just fodder to keep you going? This is the cost of being functional. I push through like a zombie- my sadness neutralises all happiness in time, so I am at equilibrium- I feel nothing. It’s a vacuum. There is a factory in my mind, an industrial complex that grinds all that is good, and feeds it to all that is bad. And now that I have put this all into words, I can only hope a bit of the monster has escaped my mind. And I can only hope it doesn’t enter yours. And yet I want you to see things my way. And yet I don’t want to place a monster in your mind. I feel like the Devil cleansed himself, but everyone still sees him as he had always been.

A Frog, a Hobo and a Stolen Yacht It was early summer, a soft, velvety red and orange sunset heralding dusk at last. A warm breeze carried the smell of sea salt and the faint noise of the surf from the nearby bay. Directly across the main street from a row of small shops bearing signs declaring “luckiest bait shop in town!”, or, “cheapest and freshest fish!”, a large park opened up to the edge of a small forest. Frogs could be heard in the trees, along with a few early rising night birds. Paths curved through the trees, briefly linking up to a small playground before snaking away again and eventually disappearing into the forest. In several places along the paths benches were spaced out, and it is on one of these park benches, sheltered under a relatively low hanging tree, that our story begins. A man of indeterminate age stirred as he slumbered uncomfortably on the bench, rolling on to his back and snorting before returning to his dreams. To hazard a guess at his age, he would be between 40 and 60, he had a long scruffy beard, with bits of leaf and dirt and other matter better left unidentified scattered throughout. Big bushy eyebrows sat firmly above heavily wrinkled and creased skin. Even in his sleep an odour of alcohol, sweat and dirt emanates from him. His clothing was all beyond repair, a thick woollen beanie pulled down over his head looking to be the newest thing he owned, with the tag still on it. Everything else was torn and fraying. His shoes barely sported any sole and the toes stuck out on his right foot. Suddenly a frog dropped from the overhanging tree squarely onto the mans face, startling him awake. He opened his eyes to be greeted by the wide, round eyes and bright green skin of a tree frog. “Mate! How are ya?! Ribbit! What a night to fall out of a tree!” The scruffy hobo yelled in exclamation and fright and sat bolt upright, launching the frog off his face and into his lap. “Ouch! Hey, ribbit, that’s simply not necessary mate!” “Are... are.... you... are you really t – t –talking to me?” The man asked in wonder. “Why of course I am! I’m Jope, pleasured to make your acquaintance sir! And by what might I refer to you?” Jope asked. Still desperate to deny what he was seeing, the man stuttered as he began to speak. “What?! Cat got your tongue mate?! Got to watch out for them bleedin’ cats! Anyway, what’s ya bleedin’ name?!” “Mark!” the hobo blurted. “But, I don’t understand, how are you talking to me? Frogs can’t talk!” “Well I can mate, and I’m here for a reason. I have a very important mission, a matter of life and death. And you, my dear chap, have been selected by the frog council, to assist me in my mission! It is a tremendous honour!” Jope grinned as he told Mark this, like it was the best news one could possibly be given. Mark was still struggling with the fact that he was now holding a conversation with a tree frog, who was claiming he, a no-hoper bum, was some important person to help with this mission. Ludicrous! Ridiculous! Never-the-less, it was happening, right now. Not one for mincing words, Mark asked the frog exactly what the mission was. Jope sighed and looked around the park as if searching for something to help, somewhere to start, the words to explain the terror. “A boat has been stolen; an important boat. A yacht of epic proportions, the crown jewel of the frog-ciety we live in today. On this yacht, which is right this moment setting sail from the marina, is a drink more important than any other; a drink that brings life, a drink that takes life. If you and I do not get this boat back, and the drink on it, tonight. Then my whole family, my whole village, will die. This liquid is our life, it is what makes us sentient. Please Mark, will you help me?” Marks face betrayed his bewilderment and dismay. He felt dismay because despite the hilarity of the situation, he knew there would be no saying no, no turning this frog away to watch his friends and family die. He looked Jope squarely in the eye and slowly nodded. “Fantastic! Ribbit Rib Ribbit! Stupendous! Brilliant! Ribbit! Weehee!” Jope sprung at Mark and landed on his face, laying sloppy slimy frog kisses all over him. “Let’s go! Run Mark, Run! We must get to the marina!” Still on the limits of comprehension of his current situation, Mark pushed his questions aside, picked up Jope, and started walking towards the sea. Mark had been living on the streets for many years, and walking wasn’t new to him. The marina wasn’t too far, only about 6km and he knew it would pass under his feet before he even began to understand what was happening. Soon they neared the marina. Throughout the trip Jope had been squirming with excitement, hopping all over Mark, clinging to him with his suction toes. But as they neared he quietened, and began to look around. It wasn’t long before he spoke up. “We need a boat to get out to them, there take that one.” The frog gestured to a nearby small motorboat with an outboard on it. Mark quickly climbed down without question and began untying the ropes from the jetty. No stranger to crime, often being the only way to survive, Grand Theft Boat was still a bit more than he was used to, but he took action without a word. Jope had grown on him in his hyperactive ways, and he didn’t want any of the frog-ciety to die, he must do anything to help! Pulling the starter cord on the outboard two or three times, Mark fired the engine into life and quickly powered away from the marina, nervously expecting to hear shouts of alarm at any moment. All was quiet on the shore however as they sped away. “So what next frog? How do you propose we find this yacht of yours?” “Oh I know where it is!” Jope replied happily “Just follow the coastline north, we’ll see the lights soon.” The frog wasn’t wrong, and it was only a few minutes before the lights from another boat came into view, Mark’s heart rate began to rise as they neared the stolen yacht, fearing conflict and injury, or total failure and the extinction of frog-kind. His limbs trembled with adrenaline, ready for a fight, to help Jope complete his mission. As they pulled up alongside the yacht there was no one, frog or human, to be seen on the deck, and only a faint noise of music could be heard from below. Wasting no time, Mark grabbed the railing and pulled himself onto the deck, tensing as the boat swayed slightly with his boarding. Jope nimbly leaped onto the yacht and loudly exclaimed “Quick! This way!” “Shhhhhh!” whispered Mark, fearful to alert those on board. “Oh never mind that! Come downstairs! Lets get this drink!” Jope bounded over to a nearby hatch and disappeared inside it, Mark followed after. Climbing down a ladder the music got louder and noises of celebration could be heard. Jope was crouched at the door to a room from which the noise was coming and waited for Mark. Mark stepped over to the frog and pushed open the door. Jope leaped across the threshold and yelled at the top of his lungs “Jooopes here froggies and I’m going to DIE if I don’t get a bourbon in my belly RIGHT NOW!” Looking around the room in surprise, Mark surveyed about 15 tree frogs, all sitting around the room in groups, all sipping from alcoholic drinks. A real party atmosphere. And what was Jope talking about bourbon for? What about the drink to save frog kind? As the pieces slowly slipped together in Marks mind he became angrier and angrier. “Jope!” He roared, stopping all conversation and turning every pair of round froggy eyes his way. “Explain yourself! I brought you here to rescue a stolen yacht and a drink that all your frogs needed to prevent them from dying! And this seems to be some sort of party!” Jope grinned at Mark. “Well, mate, ya see, I just kind of stretched the truth, I needed a drink, of bourbon, badly. And I needed to get to this yacht party. You were my taxi!” Mark scowled “So you were just using me to get across town? There is no danger to frog-ciety, there is no important mission is there?” Jope giggled maniacally as he looked into Marks eyes.

As it was, Ben had no idea just how lucky he was. Mel trudged home a few hours after Ben departed. She had stayed in her den, playing ’superheroes’, where she would pretend to be a beautiful superhero who had to save the world with her many super powers. It was her favourite ’pretend game’ and she played it for hours, not arriving at her small council home until after ten o’clock. It was true that her mother wouldn’t care much how late Mel arrived home. Her father had taken her aside once to slur that the walkway was not the place for a wee girl to be playing late at night. “The bad man’ll get you!” he had shouted, his eyes bulging. “Who’s the bad man?” Mel asked, more curious than afraid. “He lives in the bushes and he steals wee weans away from their homes and then he kills them.” Mel pretended to look frightened but she knew, deep down, that no such man existed. She had confirmed this by exploring the entire walkway, or, at least, the stretch of it that passed by her scheme. Now and again she would run into some cyclists, joggers or teenage boys, who used the place as a drinking hang out. If you walked towards the town centre you would come across a few strange buildings. They were like over large sheds, always made from green or black sheets of metal. Sometimes you would see a pigeon poking its head out from the little basket at the very top. Her father called them ’doockits’. Mel couldn’t understand them, all she knew was that the men who lived inside them did not like it when she pulled on the long rope that was always sticking out from the doorway. But they were nothing that she couldn’t get away from easily enough. Her house was only five down from Ben’s, although he didn’t know this. Mel stared at the top windows as she passed it, wondering which one was his bedroom. She really liked Ben. He was her only friend, now. Although all the houses at her end of the scheme where rather ’shabby’, hers had the worst garden, by far. The fence was heavily graphitised and had missing spokes here and there. The gate had been kicked off the hinges by her drunken father one night, and it lay, discarded, amongst the thick weeds and grass. There was a large tyre propped up underneath the window and several loose bricks dotted across the land. The walls of the house where as graphitised as the fencing and, as was per usual, the living room window was wide opened, allowing a passage for the thick, cigarette smoke to float out. Mel could, also, hear the announcer on the television as she came closer to the front door. “Oi! You!” Mel’s father, Kevin, called from his chair in the living room. He was a large man who wore the same tracksuit bottoms and vest top every day. The stains from the many meals and snacks where displayed like badges of honour. He had a beer can in one hand and a cigarette in the other. All around his chair, the carpet was littered with more beer cans, both used and filled, and several cigarette stubs. The room was in darkness, spare the headache-inducing glare from the TV, which highlighted the cloud of smoke that hovered over the room like a phantom. Mel stood in the doorway and waited, impatiently. Her father only spoke to her on rare occasions and that was either to give her into trouble or simply spew drunken gibberish at her. “C’mere!” he spat, and then, quite literally, spat on the already dirtied carpet. Mel did as she was told, although very cautiously. She stopped about an arms length away from where Kevin sat and she could see from the little light of the TV that he was not too drunk. Some old darts program was playing. “Where’ve you been?” he demanded, slugging from his beer can. “Out. Playing.” “Where?” “Just in the streets.” “D’you behave yourself?” “Yeah.” “Are you lying to me?” Mel shook her head. Kevin eyed her suspiciously. He took a long draw from his cigarette before stubbing it out on the arm of the chair. He had always denied that the girl was his. Everyone knew that Loraine, his wife, played around something awful when she was younger; when she was beautiful. He doubted that she ever really loved him. Their marriage was the result of a drunken night out and it only lasted because she fell pregnant shortly afterwards. Her looks faded as her pregnancy developed and she had no one else to go to. No one was really shocked by their unorthodox relationship. It was perfectly usual for the time, and still was. Kevin’s own parents had gotten engaged over similar circumstances and the only reason he had stuck around was out of ease and comfort. He could have done without the screaming baby through all those years, though. “What time d’you call this, eh?” he finally snapped. Mel glanced at the little carriage clock atop the television. She was no good at telling the time. Numbers, in general, where one of her most trickiest enemies. “Coming in at this time of night, I dunno…” Kevin drained the can and tossed it to the floor. “Did you go to school?” “Uh-huh.” “Fine. Are you goin’ to your bed?” “Uh-huh.” “Right. Fuck off, then.” Mel sped away. The top level of the house was as unkempt as the bottom. There were two bedrooms; her parents and her own. She could see her mother, through the crack in the door, lying on the bed in her room. She, too, was smoking and chatting on her mobile. Mel didn’t dawdle to eavesdrop, though. She was more frightened of her mother than anybody, having suffered, physically, at the hands of one Loraine’s tantrums. Mel crept into the bathroom, where a cracked light bulb hung, desolately from a yellowing ceiling. She ran some cold water into the dirty sink and washed the mud from her face as best she could. There was no towel lying around so she used her jumper to dry and then stood on the toilet to examine her reflection in the mirror. She was still filthy but it was a definite improvement. She tiptoed over the hall and into her own room, closing the door, gently behind her. Mel had never known anything of luxuries. Her room was a perfect example of that. It was a reasonably sized space, even more so with it’s bare walls and uncarpeted floor. A bed was pushed up against one wall and a small cabinet against another. The very few baby toys she had where strewn across the space and her clothes could be found in the three black bags that where bundled in corner. Her mother had gotten most of them from neighbours and distant family. None of them where designed for her age group or size. Her most prized possessions, however, where all stowed away in her little cabinet. The most valuable thing she owned, probably, was the portable TV that she had found in the attic. It was a black and white model but she had worked out how to hook a VCR up to it easily enough. The TV was sitting on top of the cabinet, facing her bed, although she preferred to sit on the floor to watch it, inches from the screen, as close to the imaginary worlds as possible. The shelves in the cabinet where stacked with old videos that she had managed to steal from the library bus that came around the scheme every Thursday. She had also stolen a few books, as well. She guessed the only reason they hadn’t caught her was that she looked so small and pathetic, they wouldn’t have the heart to suspect her or punish her if they did. The rest of the books she stole from school, which was a lot easier to do. She would simply tell the teacher that she’d lost her own copy and nothing more would be said about it. Mel adored reading books. The first book she had ever heard (the teacher read it out to the class) was ’Matilda’ by Roald Dahl. Instantly, she put herself into the main characters place. Her situation was strikingly similar to Matilda’s, although slightly more tragic. After failing to master any hidden powers, she decided to ’be Matilda’ in other ways. She got absorbed in literature easily enough and managed to steal a copy of ’Matilda’ from the teachers desk. She used this to teach herself how to read and excelled at it. She was definitely better than any other child in her class and hastened to show off, so as to hear the teacher say: “Well done, Mel! That’s very clever of you, dear!” She still had that battered and dog eared copy of the book as well as countless other children’s tales. She adored the works of Roald Dahl and her favourite stories where those that took place in different worlds, such as ’Narnia’. The first adult book she read was one of her mothers love novels. Loraine was not as interested in reading as her daughter, but she had a small collection of books at the side of her bed. Mel had only dared to steal one once but was quite disappointed in it’s content. She couldn’t understand the silly trials and tribulations of the adults and became bored and quite angry when reading it. One day, Mel had managed to get into the local library by telling the librarian that she was lost. She had been dismissed from the building many times before because of her bad clothing and general filthiness. When the librarian went into the back room to get a phone for her to use, Mel snatched three books that where sitting on the counter, waiting to be checked in and fled with them. The alarms had not gone off because the books had been scanned for their last owner to take out. Mel was distraught to find that she’d stolen three more adult books, two of which where similar to the soppy romance stories that her mother read. The third, however, was to play a big part in Mel’s life. ’Carrie’ by Stephen King was the first horror novel that Mel read, but it was most certainly not the last. She had been extremely confused, at first, by the shower scene at the beginning of the tale, but it was easy to ignore that when Carrie began using her telekinetic powers. Mel couldn’t help compare her to Matilda, who, also, used powers to make her life better. The only difference was that Carrie used hers in a very different way. Mel was only six when she read the book, and yet, she felt no fear or disturbance at reading about the gory deaths of Carrie’s tormentors. She almost burst out laughing when Carrie, finally, killed her dreadful mother. The book stirred some very strong, unusual emotions inside Mel, who yearned for more tales like it. She managed to steal a few more Stephen King books from the mobile library. She didn’t enjoy ’The Shawshank Redemption’ very much but read ’Misery’ at least three times in a month. She found it easier to put herself in the place of characters like Carrie and Annie Wilkes. Characters who decide to take revenge on those who where cruel to them, in almost evil ways. These stories seemed more realistic to her than ’Matilda’. Mel was well aware that such a happy ending would never happen in real life. Then there where the films. She had spotted the video of ’Misery’ on the mobile library one day and snatched it at once. The brutal scenes had not stirred any fear or shock inside her, only exhilaration. Her father had a small collection of horror films, which he kept in a kitchen cupboard. It was easy for Mel to take them without his knowing, although she doubted whether he would care much if he did know. She was seven when she watched ’Halloween’, ’Nightmare on Elm Street’ and ’Donnie Darko’. She had found a very old video that contained several Disney short animations. They where all black and white Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck cartoons. After watching Freddie Kruger tear apart the flesh of an innocent teenager, the minimal cartoon violence that occurred in the Disney shows became much more bloody and violent in the mind of Mel, which she found marginally more interesting. Her mother had walked in when Mel was watching one of the more gory movies and simply said: “Tst, that’ll give you nightmares, by the way.” Her very sparse collection of cassette tapes where the only things that where really hers, more or less. There where one or two which she had shoplifted but the others she had purchased with a ten pound note a kindly old lady had given her in the street one Halloween. The shopkeeper had been hesitant to serve her at first, but he couldn’t deny the opportunity to make a sale and, so, Mel had a few honestly acquired tapes and music became one of her most greatest passions ever. That was where her interest lay that night. She tugged the portable walkman that she had found in the attic along with the TV, some headphones and then rifled through her cassettes until she found the song she wanted. It was her most favourite song in the whole world and she had listened to it so many times that she had the tune forever imprinted in her mind. Whenever she felt unhappy or angry she could just play the tune in her mind and it would giver her courage and strengthen her. She lay on the bed, not bothering to change into her one and only nightie and placed the headphones, securely, over her ears. She pulled the thin covers over head and slid the cassette into the player. She had performed these movements in the dark many time before and didn’t even have to look down at the walkman as her fingers slid over and located the correct button. She pressed play and the wonderful song flowed into her eardrums and through her entire body like a warm drink on a cold day. It regenerated her. She closed her eyes and smiled, waiting for her favourite line: “…Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow…” She didn’t really understand what the line meant but she loved it. It seemed to be such a radical and profound thought, so much so that her small mind could not possibly conceive its true meaning. She enjoyed the image of it, nonetheless. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark and she gazed at the cover on the cassette box, as her other favourite line tingled in her ears: “…Is there life on mars…?” Yes, she decided. There just has to be more than this life. There is.

-Scene in- The Sahara desert. An aging man rides slumped in a battered mule cart, atop bundles of hay. Its fit just for him and a few burlap sacks. His face is concealed by a turban, his body cloaked in a tattered blanket. His legs are feeble and weak. He rides silently day and night, across swaths of dune, passing mesas and villages with huts made from straw. Approaching a valley, he finally speaks. "Woooah, now." Its a distinguished, American accent. The mule stops. From his pack he assembles a sniper rifle, sighting-in across the steed's back. In the crosshairs, a massive crater, leading to a sleek, silver craft jutting from scorched earth. There are Wermacht in chemical suits, sandbags with mg42s, biohazard tents, panzers, trucks, and motorcycles all around. He pulls off his wrap. It's noneother than 32nd President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. "If you want something done right," he groans, locking the cartridge, "You have to do it yourself.

The sky was on fire, but what else was new. It’s strange going a decade without seeing the sun, but at least the hellfire kept us from getting cold. For whatever reason I still liked looking at the sky. Something about knowing that our situation was fucked either way kept me going. I looked back to the earth. A glorious sea of concrete rubble. We were in Los Angeles, or maybe it was San Diego? It did not matter much these days, the so called “faithful,” had tasked themselves with renaming every city on the western seaboard. It was always mind boggling to me that with all hell raining down zealots had arisen from amongst the stranded to painstakingly rename every city. The things some people did to repent. When you struggle with morality your entire life, maybe renaming a dozen cities is the most a person can come up with. It certainly showed a fanatical devotion. The faithful lot had died out a long time ago. At least they had their legacy. All the meant for me was that I was now standing in the corpse of a dead city, which some nut job had named New Jerusalem. If I’m being honest I did not even know the old one had been destroyed. But what can you expect from me? We had no way of knowing what was going on halfway around the world. Maybe the angels did, but they seemed above sharing such trivial facts with us. Such was life. All things considered I got pretty lucky. Sure I did not get raptured up, but neither did most of my unit. I certainly had my demons, well demon, but it never made sense to me why some these guys had been left behind. Sure some of them were scum who deserved it, after all just because we were soldiers did not make us saints. But some of these guys were downright heroes. I’m talking about guys who had shielded innocents with their own bodies. It never seemed to matter though. Once the earth erupted and all of literal hell broke loose, there was not time to scrutinize the past because we had a job to do. On this particular day our job was to kill any motherfucker that we saw. We left the big guys, the really scary hellspawns, to the angels. Our job was to gun down any of the cultists who tried to escape. It was a pretty enjoyable task. I never killed anyone before all this shit started, but I never imagined taking much pleasure in gunning down some poor farmer who picked the wrong day to shoulder an assault rifle. Cultists were different. These sick puppies had willingly committed themselves to Satan. In the early years they raped and murdered swathes of the poor bastards who had been left behind. It only felt fair to send them back to the dark lord they so willingly sold their souls to. We had set up a firing line about a thousand meters outside the northern edge of the city. I’m talking about a fucking firing range along the outskirts of this city. Back in the days of modern war this would have been a stupid idea, but we did not fight like that anymore. There were definitely intense skirmishes, door to door fighting, and even some asymmetric warfare. However when a legion of angels comes crashing into your fucking city all that shit goes out the window. The cultist would just up and run, at least those who knew what was good for them. Dying in a field of gunfire was a lot better than dying at the hands of an angel. Our job was just to gun them down, but those winged bastards were out to unleash the wrath of an extremely angry God. I heard a low hum vibrate through the air. The part that came next was always breathtaking. Out of the firey sky a beam of golden light shot down into the city. It hit the ground a split second later and the city exploded with an aura of heavenly energy. My adrenaline was up. Angels aren’t much for conversation, but they know how to make an entrance. It was like watching the sun crash into the earth. No commands were needed, We all knew what to do. It is a beautiful thing hearing hundreds of safeties flip off simultaneously. A minute went by. I casually scanned my field of fire. Another minute passed. It would not be long now. A third minute elapsed. I really had to pee. Then finally they came. One or two at first. They stumbled out of the city, still disoriented from the awesomeness of what had just happened. Not enough to waste the big guns on them, these kills belonged to the marksmen. A few shots rang out along the line. I watched the heads of a few cultists explode. Soon enough cultists began to ooze out of the city. Mobs of them fleeing, blind with fear. The big guns opened up. Scything down our satanic foe. The seal was broken, and within no time a flood was upon us. They started to get close. Dear god they were disgusting. Mutilated and adorned with ritual scars they wore makeshift robes and carried anything from military grade rifles to kitchen knives. Finally it was my turn. A particularly heavy bastard came in range. I squeezes the trigger of my rifle. I felt the kick against my shoulder. I watched with childish delight as my target’s knee exploded. He hit the ground writhing in agony Getting over my initial adrenaline rush I slowed my breathing, focused, and put another round right through his head. Onto the next victim. He had a magnificent beard, he must have hoarded a great deal of conditioner. Two squeezes. Two rounds in his chest. On to the next target. The flood did not let up for another thirty minutes. By the time we were finished our neatly laid out firing range was field of corpses stacked two or three bodies high. It never felt like we had won, it always felt more like retribution. I lost count of how many I killed. When your culling an invasive species all that really matters is that you get all of them. Some were probably playing dead, but that bought them a few minutes at most. Decomposition is supposed to take a while, I’m not a doctor I don’t know exactly how long, but these cultists began turning into ash minutes after dying. I’m not sure what the sciences was, but science does not matter much when you’re fighting demonic minions. After the ashing had sufficiently began the Bradleys rolled out. Plowing through fields of Satan dust, only stopping every few minutes to put a few rounds into anything that was not sufficiently dead. There was no cheering. In the early days everyone would have cheered. Now our victories seemed hollow. Mowing down cultists was as easy as mowing a lawn. Actually mowing a lawn would be a lot harder because I suspect there are few left. I stood up, took a few steps forward and began unceremoniously pissing to consecrate our field of battle. This was not at all unusual. Four or five guys in my platoon alone were doing the same. After sufficiently watering the earth, it had been in a bit of a drought for the past few years, I pulled up my trousers. Somebody tapped me on the shoulder. I spun around to see my old pal Beck. He grinned wide, exposing his chipped front teeth. “Manage to actually hit something today?” he smirked. “No, I’ve told you for years now, I’m a pacifist.” “Right and of course you won’t partake in heavens unlawful war against the end of the world.” Beck always read me like a book. Sarcasm aside he was a damn good friend. He was my hero too. He’s saved me ass more times than I care to admit. I never understood why Beck got left behind, but maybe angels were not the only ones meant to be our guardians. God bless the man. Beck sondered off. After ten years we had all sort of run out of things to say to each other. By this point our lives had been so devoted to war that there really was not much else to talk about. After a while even things like “Holy fuck did you see that forty foot tall fire demon with six heads and cloven feet wielding a battleaxe forged from fighter jets,” becomes another fact of life. People prayed still. God bless our Chaplain, Father Xavier Moreno, he was always someone you could talk to. He never ran out of sermons to give, and was never far if you needed a reassuring word. I was pretty distant from my faith. Not to say I did not believe, for fucks sake I’ve been living the book of revelations. Resigned is a better word. After all this time Heaven, God, and salvation just did not seem to matter anymore. I was here, I people who relied on me, and I had a job to do. Death had surrounded me for so long it did not really seem to matter anymore. Perhaps jaded is more appropriate, I’ve seen penitent and sinner alike gunned down. What makes me so special? I already was left behind once, I’m already living in hell, who is to say things will be that different upon my inevitable demise? That’s why I’m a kill happy asshole. The beginning of this shit was straight up scary. I will admit I cried and shit myself on more than one occasion. With time I came to accept the reality of my situation. I accepted that there were greater powers at work and that I was just one more gun. I’ll be dead one way or the other, so I might as well go out laughing.

Hey everyone I'm working on a story and this is the prologue. Please leave some feedback it'd be greatly appreciated! PROLOGUE The echoes of death had come to a passing and only the sound of silence engulfed the ears of the shipmates. What appeared to be the worst of their troubles wrestled upon the planet below. Kamburov looked out across the vast embodiment of his home planet one last time. Through his eyes the planet appeared to be at peace as though the execution of his brothers had only been a dark and distant dream. He himself just nearly escaped death and would have accepted it valiantly had it been called upon him. Instead he was left with a deep pain from within. Nothing a physical wound could embody; only something as supernatural as the soul could emit a pain so deep and unbearable as the one he felt in that moment. He began questioning himself, could he live up to the expectations his master bestowed upon him? Feeling the urge to vomit he maintained his composure knowing that his master was still before him and his brothers watching behind him. Kamburov wished his master could take charge and lead them in the moment, but that rested upon him now. He knew he should turn to his brothers and begin instructions to initiate a slip space jump, set course for the furthest inhabitable planet in reach, and prepare the packages; however he also knew the implications of their mission and the probability of every seeing Concantor again, so he willingly allowed them to ponder their thoughts; very aware that it could be a fatal mistake. Kamburov thought, he thought of what would happen to his brothers and sisters that remained on the planet, what would happen if his mission was not successful, what his first decision as shipmaster would manifest into, but before he could meditate on these questions a large boom devoured the silence, and the ground beneath the shipmaster's feet trembled as though the floor was splitting apart. "Report!" "A small cluster of Convire battle ships inbound on our position!" Shakari responded. "Our shields took most the blast, but another strike won't be as forgiving." Kamburov paused for a moment pondering the different options he had at hand. He could begin a counter attack on the cluster, but considering the amount of damage the Anon took fleeing the Concantor atmosphere the odds of achieving such an attack were minimal, plus his mission was not about engaging the enemy but instead evading them and successfully protecting the packages on board his ship. "Shakari, begin preparations for slip space. Inform the others below to secure the packages and move them to their pods, we may not get the opportunity to tend to them at a later time." Shakari acknowledge the shipmaster and began to punch in commands and swipe various reports on his holographic keyboard. Shakari was a faithful brother, his loyalty towards the greater cause had never been in question before. Kamburov was certain there was no other he'd place beside him in their final attempt to escape the clutches of the enemy, except of course his master. He turned to glance at the chaos wrestling outside the security of his ship. Three C-level Recon Embark Battle Ships catapulted across the viewpoint of him and maneuvered towards the head of the ship. The Embarks themselves were small and compact. The ships looked like two white spears sliced into each other, The vertical spear rested at the back while the horizontal spear held the cockpit of the pilot just beyond the front of the vertical spear. At the tip of the ship two small C level artillery guns resided. The interior of the ships were tight with little room for mobility, the pilot was forced to lay prone using hand and body motions to maneuver the ship. Kamburov knew the Embarks were hardly fit for combat against a ship the size or magnitude of the Anon. However, it appeared they had no interest in engaging the ship, instead their purpose was to pursue the Anon if there were to be any attempt at a slip space jump. Their small bodies would allow them to maneuver below the bed of the ship and the pilots could follow Kamburov and his brothers to their point of destination at ease. He knew the ships needed to be destroyed before the jump. When an Embark ship is destroyed its programmed to release a homing frequency which would inform the opposition the exact location of its final position. If they failed to destroy these ships before the jump the rest of Zookamari's fleet would be shortly behind and any hope of living to fight another day would be pure ignorance. "Sir we're ready." Shakari stood above Kamburov on a small resting plateau. Holographic images fluctuated in front of his face, but Kamburov could see in his brothers dark purple eyes starring directly back at him portraying a sense of desperation; if there was anybody who wanted to escape the Convire fleet it was Shakari. He had had an extensive and entangled past with the Convire much of which he only entrusted to the one who laid at rest throughout the ship. Kamburov desperately wanted to order the jump, nothing would bring him more delight, but doing so would put them and the future of their master at risk. "Halt! Order a launch of Skirmishers." Shakari moved holographic panels off his display system and typed in a series of codes. "Skirmishers deployed." The Skirmishers were remote operated aerial fighter ships designed to eliminate hostile tracking drones. They weren't anywhere near the optimal preference, but Kamburov had used up most of his resources on the planet's surface; plus with the burden of hundreds of dead brothers upon his conscious he felt no need to jeopardize the few that remained on his ship. The Skirmishers dispatched out the side of Anon's opening bay and began their pursuit on the handful of Embarks gliding alongside the ship. Kamburov watched as the vessels flew across vast open space in pursuit of their adversaries; all hope was out of Kamburov's hands, it was Rueshnaska's responsibility now. On the lower deck of the Anon a small squadron of brothers manually piloted the Skirmishers across the open space. They were positioned just above the belly of the ship within a small semi circular room. Each brother commanded his own pilots station. Each station was positioned parallel to each other resting against the circular end of the wall. The stations purposes were to operate any remote activated ships; Skirmishers were just one of the many remote operated aerial fighter ships the Convire had developed. In the center of the brothers was Rueshnaska one of the first followers towards the greater cause, he was intelligent yet compassionate, two attributes that generally did not correlate, making him an indispensible asset to their master. The men held Rueshnaska in high regards, and although he held enough power to service the shipmaster he sought after humility and aided his brothers wherever they needed assistance. "Brothers fixate your fire upon the Embarks." There were a handful of Titus Gravlifters swarming around the Anon conjoint with the Embarks. It was one of the Gravlifters that originally engaged the Anon, and even though the Gravlifters poised a bigger threat to the ship all focus was on the Embarks. Rueshnaska understood that a Gravlifter would not be able to pursue the ship through a slip space jump; where the Embarks flourished in mobility the Gravlifters flourished in durability. The appearance of the ship was similar to a prism placed on its side. Thin and sharp at its head the Gravlifters slowly enlarged embodying a thick rectangular end. Two thin blades crossed paths through the ships interior creating its X shaped wings. The Gravlifters wings also counteracted as heavy weapons, firing a compacted form of dark energy, consequently giving it its name. Rueshnaska and his men had to be careful on their approach with the Embarks. The ships sat just beneath the belly of the Anon and anything short of a precise incision could put all of his pilots and the Anon at jeopardy. Gravlifters began their engagement on the Skirmishers and white electric beams pulsated past the exterior of the ship. The squadron of Skirmishers leveled themselves with the Embarks. "On my mark, 3...2...1...Fire!" The Skirmishers released fire upon the Embarks in a simultaneous motion. For a moment an array of red beams consumed the skyline, but shortly those beams gave way to small fireballs that preoccupied the area the Embarks once controlled. The Anon rumbled from the chaos that ravaged just beyond the steel that held Rueshanaska and his men's security. Now that the Embarks had been eliminated Rueshnaska knew he needed to lead the Gravlifters away from the ship. The Gravlifters fired their dark energy accelerators again. The Anon trembled, the Gravlifters were no longer concerned with the Skirmishers they were concentrating their fire on an area just below the pilots feets. Rueshnaska and his men needed to act quickly, in a moment the ships bay would blow and all of them would be killed. The pilots quickly directed their Skirmishers towards the Gravlifters and opened fire, however the ships appeared to hardly take any damage and a handful of Skirmishers were shot down in the assualt. As the Skirmishers rebounded for a second engagement the Gravlifters charged their dark energy accelerators and released fire. Rueshnaska's ship was shot and redirected into another Skirmisher perpendicular to his own. The Gravlifters then proceeded to fire at the Anon again. Rueshnaska turned to his brothers and his brothers turned to him. He could see the fear in their eyes, an oh so familiar sight. "Are we going to die?" One of them said struck down with fear. Rueshnaska placed his hand around his head. "Do not fear now brothers, take pride in your accomplishments." It was excruciatingly difficult for Rueshnaska to get the words out of his mouth; so for him to complete an entire sentence was embraced as one final accomplishment. He bowed his head as a tear began to roll down his face. A large blast shook the deck of the Anon. Had Kamburov not been holding onto the railing in front of him he would have surely fallen to the ground. "What just happened?" The shipmaster had an unsettling tone in the words he spit from his mouth. "I don't know." Shakari pulled up a three dimensional schematic of the ship. "Our bay's been breached." All the holographic images vanished in front of Shakari. He stood there, his eyes piercing into Kamburov's soul; that unexplainable pain began to return. "Brother that's where Rueshnaska and his men were." Shakari's words fell from his lips as slowly as Kamburov's ability to process the situation. A small holographic screen appeared on the shipmasters display system. It was a final authorization to initiate a slip space jump. Kamburov looked at his master for what was only a moment before authorizing the jump. In seconds the ship began to generate the gravitational hole. As the Anon proceed into it a single Embark busted past the remaining Gravlifters. The boosters on the back of the vertical spear propelled the ship towards the hole as it slipped through just before the rupture.

The air felt heavier with every breath he managed to take. He blamed it on the moist and stuffy atmosphere of the lounge. But his thick cotton sweat suit began to absorb the new layer of sweat coming off his body, and his hands began to tremble more and more by the minute. Why was he overcome with this feeling of uneasiness and guilt? It made his chest rattle and his darting eyes unable to meet with any other pair in the room. After all, he did just do a good deed. He should rather be proud of himself for attempting to clean up the neighborhood. These feelings were nonsense; he had to reassure himself of what had just happened. The two kids, no older than 21, sent out by Tony and his thugs to rob the Vela place were stopped dead in their tracks by a hero, a hero in a black sweat suit. − The poor Vela’s, a family of 7 living in a 2 bedroom apartment, supported by the father and his meager wages from driving a mail truck. The father owed Tony some money a while back for no good reason, which caused the whole dilemma −. After stopping the robbers the cash was returned to the Vela’s, and now the vigilante devised his next plan of action by taking refuge in a dreary uptown lounge. So there he sat, in a sunken antique leather chair battling his physical feelings. That’ll show those damn thugs, who have been ruling the neighborhood and recklessly gathering money in any shameless way possible for as long as anyone can remember. If anyone were to ask him about it−wait, no, no ones going to question what happened. Everyone already knows that less money for the thugs is one step closer to a cleaner neighborhood. ​ Mentally exhausted, he decided he needed a drink and made his way across the velvet carpet to the bar. He reached into his pocket and thumbed through his thick wad of cash, determining that he could afford a nice cocktail this time. “Mint Julep please”, he said to the bartender in a prideful tone. At the moment he was about to take a sip of his brazen cocktail, he looked across the room to the dreaded site of Tony and his goons entering. “Didn’t feel like finishin’ the job, huh, Vincent!” yelled Tony as he crossed the lounge. “That money, and that damn drink is mine you disloyal scumbag!” slapping the cocktail out of his hand and shattering it all over the bar. Without thinking twice Vincent made a run for the front door but wasn’t quick enough and one of the thugs already had him by the collar. Three of them, at least 6 feet tall and over 200 pounds each, proceeded to carry Vincent to the back. They yanked the bag of money out of his sweatshirt pocket and surrounded him on the ground. Leaning over him with almost a sympathetic tone, one of them said, “Why’d you have to bail on the other kids, man? Why’d you have to run with the money? This coulda been so much easier if you just stuck to the plan”.

The wind blows, carrying pollen with it like a father carries his children. The field is a tapestry of colors, vibrant reds and deep blues, startling yellows with a tinge of green, glowing pink mixed with hard purple. Sunshine Park, aptly named, glows after the life-giving rainfall. There’s nothing I love more than a summer thunderstorm, and this one perked up the only place I’ve been able to call home since my mother died when I was young. I started coming here after Marisa, the most beautiful girl I ever dated, left me. Each year, I come here and plant a new group of flowers for Marisa, and I will do so until this hill is covered in them. Call me a crazy ex, a deluded eighteen year old with no concept of love. God knows she has. Except she called me a deluded fifteen year old. Whatever, I don’t care, I did love her. Something broke inside of me the day she left, arms linked with another guy. “It’s not you, I promise,” she said, “I just don’t see us being together. I don’t feel the same way I used to about you. I hope you can understand.” I think it’s that last sentence that broke me. To this day, I still don’t understand. I never cheated, I never hit her, I never did anything wrong. Like a house of cards, it just fell apart. I don’t know why I still come to this park. I have moved on of course, feelings do fade. These flowers aren’t for her anymore, not really. I think they are actually for me, a kind of memorial for the love I thought I had. It’s not a very big hill, but it is in a clearing in the middle of a bunch of dead looking pines. The color of the flowers gives it a charming glow, and grants me serenity while I work. Nearby, a small stream flows along a pebble filled path, and eventually empties into Sunshine Lake. Once, I actually saw a black bear cub drink from that stream. But he didn’t touch my flowers. Nothing in the forest seems to touch them, which lets them grow. I suppose I’m grateful to the forest for that. With my knees in the dirt at the base of the hill, I begin to dig small troughs for this year’s flower. I’ve picked a lovely blood red poppy to fill the final barren spot on my hill. I am so engulfed in my work that I almost miss her footsteps on the fallen needles behind me. Thin and graceful, Emilia saunters up beside me and places a soft hand on my shoulder before bending over to peck my cheek. Her hair, which smells like the lilacs at the front of my hill, falls across my face as she does so. I breathe her in, smiling as she kneels next to me. We’ve been dating for a year. With gloves on her small hands, she begins to help me dig. “Not too deep,” I warn her, “you don’t want these poppies to be buried.” “I know, no need to remind me for the millionth time.” I see the hint of a smile on her lips, which draws a full smile from me. “Sorry, I just need this hill to be perfectly beautiful.” “It’s really more of mound.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see her grin at her own joke. The grin turns into a laugh, one of the sweetest and lightest laughs I’ve ever heard. “I’m just messing around. You know, you’ve never told me why you plant these flowers.” “I like to see beauty in the world.” “Okay Mr. Poet, why do you really plant them?” I pause. The sound of happy bird songs and rustling tree branches overwhelms me, and I close my eyes. I take a deep breathe, look her in the eyes, and say “They remind me of someone who I would rather not forget.” Assuming I mean my mother, she leans in and kisses me. “You’re such a sweetie. I love you.” I wonder if she knows the last girl to say that to me is inches under these new poppies, buried beneath my hill. "I love you too," I say with a grin, "Forever.

Silky sand seeps in and out of the creases between Clara’s toes as she chases the high-pitched holler of her sister, Lily. Gulls squawking, waves crashing, Lily screams: “You’ll never catch me!” “Oh, yes I will,” Clara growls back until finally wrapping her arms around Lily’s belly, lifting her up over her shoulder, and tossing her into the warm saltwater. After moments without her sister resurfacing, Clara dives into the water. Her eyes are blurry and stinging—she can’t find Lily. Clara surfaces with the hope of hearing Lily’s voice, but she’s met with only the waves and gulls around her. Clara wakes up, gets out of bed, throws on the cloths she wore yesterday, and rushes to class. She speed walks passed students with annoying smiles similarly hurrying over slushy walkways and filing into neo-Gothic buildings. Hiding from all the mocking grins, Clara’s eyes sink to the ground, but even the sidewalk seems to smile, as if smugly aware that it’s outlived the last snowy shit of winter. “At least I’m not the only one running late this morning,” says a voice over Clara’s shoulder. Her heart slams against her shirt, and she manages a, “Sorry, Professor Reed.” “No need, Clara. I take it you were smelling the roses.” He flashes his sparkly teeth. “I surely couldn’t help myself.” Clara averts her eyes and fidgets with her stupid backpack strap until Reed’s strong voice breaks the silence, “Do you hear that?” He asks, motioning to a stubby bush outside the science building. “Sounds like a new brood of Prairie Horned Larks.” “They sound lively,” Clara says. “Indeed, those calls are products of nourished mitochondria,” he says. “They’re quite contagious, too.” He starts humming The Rite of Spring. Clara gazes at the bush as she walks inside, entranced by the symphony of squawks and hums. Once in the Environmental Biology lecture hall, Clara looks down at her feet and heads straight for a corner in the back. With neither a hello nor an apology, Professor Reed begins to lecture on weather patterns. His words soar eloquently across the room and lift Clara’s desk-ridden head. Finally, Reed says, “See you on Monday, and remember to bring a printout of your research papers.” Outside, students cluster together and take different paths home like flocks seeking southern refuge from the cold. Clara marches alone until a bearded boy comes from behind and asks, “So, Clara, what’d you think of the lecture?” “What year are you?” she asks. He tilts his head back for a moment and says, “Fifth. You?” “I’m not interested.” The boy slows his pace, falling behind Clara like a flake of once burned, now old, dead skin. Clara gets to her dorm and doesn’t say a word to her three roommates who sit with books, listening to ambient music on their communal speakers from the 90s. She enters her room and closes the door. Taking her American Spirits and phone out of her jacket pocket, Clara finds a few inches of open space on her desk to set them. She sits down and stares at her IPhone, waiting for the regular afterschool call from her little sister, but knowing that this time it won’t come. It buzzes. “Mom,” Clara says. “How are you?” her mother asks with a whimper. “I don’t really want to have this conversation right now,” Clara says. Her mother starts weeping and Clara hangs up. She looks up at a picture nailed into her otherwise blank white wall: She and her sister lying on the beach, their faces sticking out from mounds of sand shaped like mermaid tails. Clara goes back into the common room and her roommates dig their faces deeper into their books until Clara asks, “What’s up?” “Naomi Wolf,” Athena says and looks back into her book. “How’s your work coming?” “I have a proj… You guys are boring,” Clara says, wanting to do something, whatever, anything. She skips back into her room, grabs her pack and phone, and leaves. The sunlight, obscured by gray clouds, peeks in between menacing stone buildings and beats down onto the sidewalk awash with melting ice. Clara skips, ignoring the possibility of a fatal slip. She reaches a park, free from her dreary campus, and skips ahead through a foot deep of melting snow to a swing set. She gets on and takes off. In the face of icy blasts of air, Clara closes her eyes and imagines herself swinging beside her sister back home; for the first time all day, her lips curve open. After a long reverie, Clara gets off and heads back home. Just before stepping back onto the funereal campus, Clara takes out her pack of Spirits, but decides to toss them in a trashcan. She walks with a quick pace back to her room. There, her roommates talk over the upbeat noise rock they’re playing. “Where’d you go?” Jade asks. “Took a little flight,” Clara says. “What’re we doing tonight?” “Jack’s playing a show with The Young Crooks or whatever,” Willa says. “You wanna come?” “There’ll probably be a lot of white dicks there,” Jen says. “We go to shows like that every weekend,” Clara says. “Yeah. And no women ever get to play,” Athena says. “We should start a band.” “We don’t play any instruments,” Jade says, laughing. “Pass the wine,” Jen says. She pours herself a glass and asks, “Clara, you want some?” “Not tonight. Does anyone have any candy?” Clara asks. Her roommates look at one another. “Um… I don’t think so,” Jade says. “Okay. I’ll just get some later. Let’s go!” Clara says. “In like 15. There’s more to be drunk.” Jade says, raising her glass. “Fine,” Clara says and heads back to her room. She moves a pile of decorated letters from her sister to the ground and gets out her laptop. She searches “Prairie Horned Lark” on the Internet and reads: Prairie Horned Larks are among the birds most often killed by wind turbines. In 2013, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the species as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Athena shuts off the stereo and calls for Clara. Clara comes out, Jen wraps her jacket around her bottle of wine, and the group heads out the door. Once they hit the cold night air, Jade pulls out some Marlboro Reds and asks, “Clara, you want one?” “I’m okay,” she says. “I’ll have one,” Jen says, already slurring her words. Having walked for nearly twenty minutes and talked about everything from their retro fashion to the people who will probably be at the show, especially the older students, the group finally runs out of things to say. When they get to the Midwestern Victorian house, The Young Crooks are already shaking the walls with their amplifiers. Jen moves to the front so Jack can see her. The house is already crammed, and the audience stands around in an arch, swaying zombielike, back and forth. Athena and Jade go talk to darkly dressed seniors. Clara stands alone in the middle of the audience with dozens of other lone-stand-ers. After a song or two, she skips out the door. Clara hurries to the dime store downtown before it closes. She goes straight to the candy section and sees two little girls already there, carefully debating how to spend their few dollars. Clara grabs two rainbow-swirl lollipops and checks out. She stuffs them into her left pocket and runs back into the heart of campus. Dark buildings brood above as Clara flows through arteries below. She reaches the science building and goes straight for the stubby bush backed up against its front wall. She jabs her right hand into the snowy, leafy mess and a hysterical bird squawks, flutters, and flies off. Then she gets closer and tries to get a clear sight of the nest. She sees one chick breathing, lying atop two stone-still corpses. Clara takes the living bird out of its nest and holds it under the streetlight. She remembers one of Professor Reed’s past lectures on similarities in embryonic development. She remembers how every animal fetus looks almost identical in its early stages. Clara stares at the warm, softly breathing bird in her hands for a moment and then places it gently into her right pant pocket, opposite of the lollipops. Then she flies home. Wind rushes past her face and her long black locks flow behind her. Some one calls, “Clara!” from behind, and she turns her head around only to have her feet slip from under her. She crashes down on her right hip and cries out. She rolls over, drives her hand into her pocket, and pulls out the bloody mess. The bird’s body lies limp in Clara’s hands. “Are you okay?” Jade asks, coming up from behind. “My sister… was hit by a car,” Clara says, beginning to cry—her lips against the ground, her tears streaming onto the melting ice.

I never knew, I could have never known. How could a child be capable of such evil? How could my child be... this? What kind of parent am I that I couldn’t see what was before my very eyes? Maybe it was the love of a mother that overshadowed my daughter’s true self. I sit now at my kitchen table sipping coffee and staring at the steam rising from the black liquid. The vapor dances on the air in patterns and I am lost in the shapes that seem to emerge. I could not have known could I? Was I willingly neglectful that something so heinous could be happening under my very roof? This child was the fruit of my womb, yet I now feel no connection to this monster. Where did I go wrong as a parent? Where did I lose the fight for the soul of my child? When did I lose sight of what she was becoming? Was she born this way? Was I to blame? The detectives had sat across from this very table not an hour before asking these very questions. Questions I had no answer to. I didn’t believe them at first and if I hadn’t seen the pictures and videos for myself I could never have comprehended the terror that was happening in my basement. The floorboard I trod every morning harbored a horrid nightmare beneath them. I am only writing this right now while this is all still fresh in my mind, if the authorities would like to see it as a confession or a willful act of ignorance on the part of an adult who ignored all of the warning signs, then so be it. I do not know how long this paper will be. I am not aware of anything at this point, I am just numb all over, and the images keep invading my mind. I don’t know if I can live with this in my heart. Two days ago this house was filled with the laughter and love of a family. Children squealed in delight as their father chased them and gave them horseback rides, I was the typical housewife. I thought we were happy. After I am done this paper I think I’ll end it. The house is now so silent, no children, no laughter, no husband. I miss him. I wish I could have seen this before it was too late. He might still be here. My son. Gone. I loved him, he was a miracle, born premature. He had made it to age 5. He was strong and resilient. Dead now. How did I not know what she was doing? How did I not know my own daughter was a monster? I have read of evil children on the internet, but I always thought they were the spawn of evil and neglectful parents. I never thought it could be in a place such as this. I am digressing from the point. This paper will be my testament to the happenings here in Newtown, Pennsylvania. I hope other parents will learn from this. Maybe they can spot in their children what I missed.

Dear Friends and Family, I have been a reporter since 1934, but this is my first attempt at fiction. Actually, 90% of it is true based on my life and others that I have known. -Zel May 11, 2015 LOVE CONQUERS ALL A Short, short story by J. Zel Lurie Her name was Sarah Rose named for her grandmother, Sura Raisel, who never left Poland and was lost in the Holocaust. An Arab-American known as Izzy, a contraction of Ismail which happens a common Jewish nickname, he was the the son of a Brooklyn Oriental restaurant owner known for his hummus, who was born in Haifa when Haifa’s population was predominately Arab. They met at Cornell University when they were both juniors. He was studying civil engineering, intending to help build a Palestinian state in the country which he had never seen. She was studying marine biology, intending to rescue coral reefs all over the world including Israel. They fell in love. A love that consumed them, a love that they felt in their bones. “I get a stomachache,” he whispered to her one evening in their love nest under the bridge, “when I have to leave you to go to sleep in my dorm.” They shared an apartment throughout their senior year. Sarah Rose’s parents strongly disapproved of her boyfriend. They were Zionists. Her father Jacob known as Yankel had made a pile in the Shmata business. He had bought an expensive retirement home in the heart of Jerusalem which he occupied during the Jewish holidays. He figured that after her graduation, he would take Sarah Rose to Jerusalem and keep her there until she forgot her childish romance. After graduation, Sarah Rose and Izzy spent a few weeks in Brooklyn under the indulgent, but disapproving eyes of his parents. Izzy’s father had had a Jewish girlfriend in Haifa before he immigrated to Brooklyn. When Sarah Rose and Izzy parted, they had planned to reunite after Izzy found a job and could support them. She flew to Jerusalem with her parents. She found a job at the Israel Museum and when her parents returned to New York, she lived alone in a luxury two bedroom apartment. She was cool and distant to the men she met. She took courses at the Hebrew University and immersed herself in Jewish history. She decided that the Zionists were right and that her love for Ismail was wrong. She broke the relationship. She wrote Izzy not to write to her again. Izzy obeyed her, but he kept in touch with her brother Shmuel known as Sam. He kept asking, “When is she returning?” Sam’s standard answer was, “I’ll tell you.” Fast-forward a couple of years, Sam fell in love with a Catholic girl who agreed to convert to Judaism. Sam told Izzy that Sarah Rose was returning to New York for his wedding and gave him the flight number and date of arrival for her flight. Yankel and his wife were taken aback when Izzy appeared at Kennedy Airport to welcome Sarah Rose. Sarah Rose was so surprised to see him that she stopped dead and then proceeded to her parents’ arms. Then she hugged Izzy, a hug that lasted for a few minutes. He slipped her a card with his address and phone number and then left. She went home with her parents. She could not enjoy the joyful homecoming that her parents had prepared. In the evening, she phoned Ismail. “Come and get me,” she said simply. Yankel decided that if he tried to interfere, he would lose his daughter. So as he hugged her goodbye, he said, “Ask him if you will convert.” Izzy had some familiarity with Jewish conversion. He told Sarah Rose, “Your new sister-in-law will not be registered as Jewish in Israel because she had been converted by a reform rabbi. As for me, everybody thinks that I am Jewish, but to preserve peace in the family, I will go through the same rigmarole with the same reform rabbi who converted your sister-in-law.” After their wedding, Izzy and Sarah Rose moved to a Jewish neighborhood in Queens. Izzy became active in the reform temple, but he refused to allow his temple friends to nominate him for the presidency. “It doesn’t seem right,” he said to Sarah Rose. They raised a Jewish family, two sons and a daughter. All of them went to Cornell. Yankel died happy. “All’s well that ends well,” he had said to his wife. “Love conquers all,” she replied.

I spent the next few weeks with the detectives going over the evidence against my daughter. In spending time with me they had begun to accept I knew nothing of what had transpired at my house. It was not due to neglect or negligence just naivety. I hated the thought that I could have been so naive. I always thought of myself as an attentive mother who cared about her children and their lives. They would not let me visit Raine at any time although I was allowed to see her on closed circuit camera. She had been given a room far away from other children on the opposite side of the juvenile detention facility, her accomplices although segregated from the main population of youth were not kept under as intense scrutiny as she was. In the opinion of the detectives they were just other girls of the neighborhood manipulated by Raine. They were way more interested in the motivations of my daughter than in the weakness of her friends. I sat there for days watching Raine through the video monitor. I wouldn’t leave as long as they allowed me to stay. Normally a mother would be allowed to visit their child in a detention center but due to the severity of the crimes no one but staff and psychologists had any access to her. I was allowed to watch the progress through the video feed but was not able to make any demands, her attorney had tried to set guidelines but I had overruled him. I wanted to know as bad as the detectives did why she had done the things she had done. I felt a defense lawyer making demands would just create an unnecessary quagmire. I know this makes me sound like a horrible mother and under normal circumstances I would have my lawyer defend my child with every defense he could muster, but the horror I had seen committed by this seemingly innocuous child had alleviated my desire for proper law ethics at this point. As I watched Raine it was as if I were watching a live demonic possession. Most of the time she would just sit there staring into nothingness silent and unmoving. Other times she would be talking to herself but her words were indecipherable and foreign. The psychiatrist had contacted a linguistics professor in an attempt to understand what she might be saying but all he could discern was that it was a real language but a dead or unknown one. I didn’t know this child on the video before me. It was like my daughter was gone. The sweet little girl I had given birth to was gone and in her place was this thing, I know I may be repeating myself but you have to understand my shock and disbelief. During my vigil over the video, unbeknownst to me, a man had come into the room and taken a seat beside me and immersed himself in the video as well. When at last I realized I was no longer alone I almost jumped out of my skin, I had been so engrossed in the video, observing every little action and tweak my daughter made I was oblivious to the world beyond that flickering box. When I composed myself and made every attempt to hide my surprise at the unexpected intrusion I was moved to ask who this man was. “Who are you? I didn’t hear you come in.” I said trying to sound stronger than I felt. “Sorry about that, I tend to move rather quiet. My wife hates it.” He said with a wide grin while examining my face. He was an older man with thinning grey disheveled hair topping an almost bald crown. He made no attempt to wrangle in his outrageous hair. He was old, about 50-55 with a deep craggy worn face to looked to have seen way too much drama in the short time a human would walk the earth. What stood out most was his eyes, they were a deep flecked emerald green with amber color around the pupils. They were like looking at two shattered emeralds glistening in the light of the room. “You looked so entranced by the video I didn’t want to disturb you. I hope its ok that I’m here.” “Uh… Yea, I guess. Who are you?” I said not sure I wanted to know. I didn’t need more detectives or government agents hounding me with questions I couldn’t answer. “There is nothing more I can tell you that hasn’t already been asked a million times. I’m sorry but I just can’t give you people the answers you want.” I returned my attention to the screen looking longingly at the child sitting motionless on the bed, just wishing this nightmare would end and I could gather the bubbling happy child I thought I knew into my arms and sit down with my family. Happy. Ignorance truly is bliss. This whole thing just felt like one long nightmare. And now this man sat next to me staring at the monitor trying to figure out what made my daughter tic. I wasn't sure how I should feel about it. He seemed very friendly and genuine but at the same time I had learned to trust no one. My instinct was if I could not even trust my own flesh and blood, then I could trust no one. The last person I truly trusted died the night they came for Raine. “I apologize for not introducing myself immediately.” He said to me looking genuinely apologetic that he had shaken me. “My name is Father Grey, I’m a priest.” He paused a moment and looked at the monitor. “Well, you could say I’m kind of a priest. I am really more of a student of history and humanity who also happens to be a priest.” He grinned sheepishly at me searching my eyes for answers. “As I said. Father. There is nothing I can tell you, I am as shocked and surprised by my daughter as anyone else was.” I turned back toward the monitor hoping I had deterred further discussion. "Oh, I understand." He stated clearly undeterred by my cold demeanor. "I wouldn't trust another soul either if I were in your position, I mean if you can't trust your own flesh and blood then how could you possibly trust anyone else." I was stunned by his insight into my predicament but I made no gesture of acknowledgement but he must have been more insightful than I knew because he seemed to read me without effort. "Look, I am not asking you to trust me. I am asking that you give me the chance to earn your trust." "What is it you want then?" "The same thing as you. To understand who or what this little girl is and how she came to be this way." We both sat in silence for the next few minutes allowing each other time to think. After a bit the father spoke again. "I don't mean to sound impatient, and I very much appreciate you not telling me to get lost but I would like to discuss why I'm here." "Yet." I said. "Yet?" He replied questioningly. "I haven't kicked you out YET." I said looking into those dark green eyes. "If you're just another detective or some parish priest looking for his fifteen minutes of fame then expect to be thrown out." I gave him a grim look so he knew I was serious. "Point taken." He gave a deep chuckle before continuing. "I used to work for the church on exorcism. You might say the only reason I joined the church was to study possession up close. I was never really a believer but I knew there was something interesting happening besides a few hoaxes. I saw some interesting stuff in my time but nothing that would have me convinced of something paranormal or demonic happening. I had given up and have been retired for a few years, but a colleague saw this and thought it would interest me and I have to admit he was right." After his little speech he quieted down to give me time to digest what he was telling me. I sat there for a half hour saying nothing, letting him stew for a bit. "Let's see how patient he is." I thought. Father Gray sat there silent as a mouse watching the scene for another hour. His patience was impressive. "So what do you think is wrong with my daughter?" He looked at me and a friendly smile formed across his lips. "Well...

My name is Emily Serim, I am 35 years old. Until yesterday I was the happy mother of two children, a son Duncan and a daughter Raine. I was happily married to my husband Michael for fifteen years. We met when I was twenty years old. He was so odd when I first laid eyes on him at a college dance. He was sitting watching everyone dance with amusement, but there was something so serene about him. I had to get to know him. We ended up dating for only a few weeks before we got married, some may have thought that was way too quick but when family and friends saw us together they knew we were meant to be. Our relationship was a happy one filled with passionate love making and many nights cuddled together on the couch watching television. When I was 25 we welcomed our first child. We named her Raine for the dreary day in which she was born. I will never forget the labor pain I endured with her, Michael was there holding my hand and whispering encouragement into my ear. My mother was on my other side telling me to push while my father was in the waiting room with an unlit cigar in his mouth and a look of fresh new grandparent joy spread across his thin lips. He had been a great father and would be an even greater grandfather. With such a loving home I am at a loss to explain what my daughter had become. The evil, the lies. How could she have hidden this all from us? My son Duncan was born on my 30th birthday. It was an easy pregnancy and delivery. He was born on a day of fresh spring air and sunlit beauty. He was a child of pure innocence. Although he was born two months early he was strong and adapted to the world quickly. Raine took to being a proper good sister and even at the tender age of five she did all she could to help with the care of her little brother and the upkeep of the house. I used to laugh when she would try and sweep the floors for us. It was adorable. This little girl trying to use a broom three times her height. She tried so hard, she was a constant joy. Was it an act? Was she like this from the beginning? When did she fall? No. No child could be that deceptive from such a young age. Could they? When the detectives explained their case and the evidence they had uncovered I could not bring myself to look and when I finally did I was in denial that the images of my daughter with the butchered and disfigured bodies of multiple men. The pictures looked so mundane at first glance. Just a smiling child, but that was all. Upon closer inspection you could see that what she was sitting beside was a gruesome and almost hellish scene. It was as if someone had photoshopped my daughter into some suicide bombing scene in Iraq. At first this is what I had believed had been done but the detectives assured me that was not the case. There was my perpetually happy daughter sitting in a scene of absolute carnage as if she was on a trip to the park. This picture alone was not enough to convince me of the evil monster I had given birth to. This could not be her. This could not be my Raine. They took the time to explain to me what was happening. I could hear them but they were like muffled voices a long way off, I just kept staring at the picture they had showed me. I did not notice one of the detectives had taken out an Android Tablet and began setting it up on the table. He smelled of spearmint gum and cigarettes. He looked as if he never showered and shaved only about once a week. My home felt invaded and even as I sit here in my socks typing this on an old typewriter sipping coffee I still have that feeling. This is what a rape victim must feel like. Exposed, scared, alone. I am alone now in this house. It seems so much bigger when it’s empty. The pungent detective brought me back to the reality of my situation as he set the tablet before me with a video queued up. The picture was still, an image of Raine, she wore a face I had never seen before, and it was one of exquisite evil, the type of look that would haunt a person for the rest of their life. The play button hovered over her face. He eyes seemed so dark, empty, soulless. The detective told me to press play whenever I was ready. I wish I could have sat there permanently. I never wanted to press that button. The image of my daughter on the screen mocked me, I tried many times to reach for the screen but I pulled my hand back unable to bring myself to cross the threshold of ignorance into understanding. Finally the detective felt he had waited long enough, his restlessness became apparent as you could begin to hear the tapping of impatient fingers on the wood grain of the kitchen table. He reached for the tablet but before he could press the button my finger darted to the screen and pressed play. It felt as if a force had used me to do that. I felt outside myself. As the setting sun began to sink below the hills and the magic hour light faded from my kitchen the video began to play. The video began with Raine standing there looking into the camera, it was obvious someone else was there as well, holding the camera for her. “Are you ready?” she asked the person behind the camera and to my astonishment the voice of a child not an adult answered back. “Yes, I think so.” It was the voice of another little girl, a little girl I was very familiar with. She was Hannah, a playmate of my daughter. The two were joined at the hip when it came to school but in everyday life they seldom played together. I was not aware of Hannah having been here in at least two months, despite the video clearly showing a date of one week ago. “Move the camera around so our audience can see our lair.” My daughter spoke eloquently, far advanced of her tender years, she sounded like another person, the stumbling bubbling speech of a child had been replaced by that of a cold and calculating monster. The tempo of her voice was soft and even, there was no emotion in the tone. It was as if something had possessed this child, but this was reality and I could see the familiar glint of my daughter, this was her true self, the deception was who she presented to her family. “Why are we making a video Raine?” Hannah asked meekly. It was clear Hannah was the subordinate one. “I want a memento of this day, to watch when I get bored.” She said with a chilling smile to the camera. “My mom won’t be home until six so we have a few hours.” It was clear this event was taking place in my basement. But I frequently went down there and never found anything to be amiss. After a moment the reasoning became all too clear. Our house was an old one and there are some place in old houses that only children knew about. She watched as the camera followed Raine to a spot under the stairs. In the corner was a small door which she disappeared through, a moment later the camera followed her in. When the camera adjusted to the dimmer light a room became apparent on the video. It was a room built underground off the house, it must have been used long ago to store food items to save them from the summer heat. I had not been aware that this room existed but was not surprised, it was tucked away beneath the stairs. Inside the room, was a bed, a dresser and a small table in the corner. There was no covering on the wall and the beams looked like ribs painted a dusted white that gave the whole room an ethereal look. Everything appeared just a bit too small for a normal person, the ceiling was low, an adult would have to stoop down to navigate the room. This was a place designed for a child. The camera panned around and I was able to see more of the room. There was a mirror on the opposite wall by the door. A dirty rug that had the obvious browned stains of blood was frayed on the corners with an image of a child playing in a garden embroidered on it. This room was like something from another world, something you would see in a nightmare or a horror movie, I could not believe this place had been beneath my feet for months, and who knows how much longer. Raine had lived in this house her entire life but there had never been any indication of her disappearing down here or anything out of the ordinary for that matter. I didn’t want to see anymore, I didn’t want to see what my daughter was going to do down here. I wanted to run from the house but I couldn’t move I was transfixed on the screen, the whole world had disappeared leaving only me and this video, the images consumed me, drawing me in. “Ok set the camera up over there, he won’t be able to see it there and we’ll be able to capture everything.” “Did Allie do this for you last week?” I could hear Hannah ask as the picture went crazy with the fiddling she was doing. “Another girl was involved in this?” I asked the detective. “It appears she had at least three other girls beside her were involved in this. All have been taken into custody and will be questioned later when things calm down a bit. The media is going haywire about this.” He had said. The jerking movement of the camera stopped and the whole of the room was now in full view of the camera. “Where should I go?” “Just wait at the top of the stairs until I call you ok?” I could hear Hannah leave and a moment later I could hear the quiet shuffling of her feet on the stairs but the door did not open or close so it was obvious she was sitting at the top of the stairs just out of sight but within ear shot. When Hannah was gone Raine went to the camera and looked into the lens, her eyes were wide and crazed like a rabid animal. These were not the eyes of a child anymore but those of a predator. After inspecting the camera she smiled into it as if nodding to a future audience. “Enjoy the show.” She said. She then walked over to the bed and sat down. She remained there motionless and silent for the next fifteen minutes until a knock on the door brought her out of her own head and back into the world. She glanced at the camera before getting up and walking out of the room, a few minutes later she came back in but she was not alone. There was a man accompanying her now, he was about 5’10 but that was hard to tell because he had to stoop over in this child’s secret room. He was thin and at least between forty and fifty years of age with a short gray haircut. He wore khaki pants and a blue and white plaid shirt. She took him by the hand and escorted him to the bed. “I didn’t think you were real.” He said as he sat down on the bed and she stood in front of him holding his hands in hers. “I can’t believe this is real, I’m so glad I answered your message online. My daughter pushed him gently back on the bed until he was lying down crossways with his legs planted on the floor. Even in the dim room you could tell the man was aroused and he was expecting a taste of forbidden fruit. Raine stepped away from him and walked across the room as the man began to unbutton his shirt preparing to indulge in the festivities yet to come. As he was busying himself Raine was opening the dresser drawer. From the angle of the camera I could see a strange looking knife she had taken from the top drawer of the dresser. It looked to be a jagged blade with a bone handle, I had never seen anything like it. She hid the knife behind her back as she turned back toward the man now lying on the bed shirt open and pants unbuckled. Raine walked toward him moving seductively hiding the blade behind her back. She walked up between the man’s legs that were still hung over the bed planted on the floor, the man reached for Raine still thinking this was his lucky day. As he reached for her, he hand moved in a flash from behind her back, the fingers that had been reaching for the forbidden flesh of a child were instantly severed, before he had time for a reaction Raine had turned the blade and thrust it into the man’s chest right below the sternum. A blood curdling cry filled the small room and Raine looking right into the old man’s eyes pulled the jagged knife, slicing from sternum to groin. This silenced the man as he went into shock and the only noise escaping from his mouth now was a gurgling sound of him drowning in his own blood. I was shocked, horrified… sick. I jumped from my chair and rushed to the sink. The vomit was thick and smelled of coffee and bile. When I was done I turned on the faucet to try and wash it down the sink. I couldn’t watch anymore, the detectives seemed to understand this and put the tablet away. They told me the rest of the video was my daughter bringing Hannah back in and having her help clean up, she had convinced the neighborhood girls that what they were doing was a good thing by riding the world of men who would prey on children. She had them thinking they were doing God’s work. These girls thought their parents would be proud of them. Hannah was clearly shaken by what she had seen and done I knew she would be traumatized for life, but they explained Raine had just been humming away as she began wringing a sponge and wiping away the blood. They said they had never seen anything so disturbing especially from a child. I could no longer think, I had no idea the response expected from me or if I would have to defend myself against accusation of my complicity in my daughter's actions.

The ship came into our solar system with a flash so bright people would've guessed for it to be a distant supernova. After that, it remained conspicuously silent. And moving straight towards Earth. Fast. We of course tried to communicate with it during the time it took to reach us, but it didn't do anything to respond. This resulted in mass hysteria. Chaos. Apocalypse was coming. It braked down to orbit at around four hundred kilometers. The engine of the city-sized ship must have been incredibly powerful, yet we didn't see any signs of it actually turning on. For a couple of hours, the world held its breath. We finally got some signals from it, but they didn't seem to be communication. We kept receiving them for a day, and then it just stopped. Then something detached from the ship. Many hundred somethings. Paralysis changed back into panic during the descent of the objects. They fell down to the surface, far from settlement, and just grasped large chunks of the surface, scraped them clean, and lifted all of the wildlife back into space, again without a visible engine flare. We shot one of them with a missile, but it stopped in mid-air and stopped responding before vanishing from sight. There were only nineteen reported casualties, mostly people unfortunate or crazy enough to have been just below the objects as they landed. Quickly after that, the ship took a new course, and left the solar system with a flash similar to that it arrived with.

The uncomfortable day was looking to become a little more promising. The clouds were thickening. Patrick Courtney leaned forward against the steering wheel to get a better look at the sky. A little less sun would do some good. The heat really needed to let up a bit. He turned the fan on his AC up another notch. He looked out over the empty countryside. It was just him and millions of plants, bowing in the wind and standing in their measured rows. In fifteen minutes or so, he would reach the hillier part of his route, and after that arrive in Willowfield in the river valley. Patrick looked down at the radio. It would be hard to hear with his AC maxed, but now he was bored enough to give it a go. He shoved his meaty hand into his suit pocket, pulled out his phone, and fished between the seats for the auxiliary cord with his other hand. He was driving with his knees and not watching the road, but no one was around to care. He could stay on the road. Nothing to worry about. There. Bass filled the car and dance rhythms fought for attention over the roar of the AC. Looking back to the road, he saw a man on the shoulder waving his arms, only a short distance down the road. He put on the brakes, and by the time he rolled to a stop the stranger was in his rearview mirror. Patrick watched him approach. The man was dressed in a black, sweaty t-shirt and shorts. He was actually kind of hard to see. The clouds were thickening and it was getting darker. Patrick turned on his headlights and rolled down his window. “You were swerving over the line quite a bit back there, buddy,” the man said. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.” Patrick replied, already disliking him. He had one of those faces that looked like they would never stand up for anything, that they would never want to stand up for anything. “What do you want?” The stranger seemed unfazed by the unpleasantness of his tone and said, “Can you take me into town? I ran over some glass on my bike and I don’t want to be caught out in this storm.” Storm? Patrick looked to the west. It did look a little menacing. Huh. He wasn’t expecting anything like this today. Then again, he never bothered to check the weather. “I guess,” Patrick replied. He glanced at the front passenger seat, full of discarded fast food bags and magazines. “Get in back, but I don’t have room for a bike in this car.” “That’s fine,” the man said, still stone-faced. “I left it a few miles back anyway. Didn’t expect to see anyone on this road today. Figured I had to walk. I’ll have to come back for it some other time.” Patrick was sure this man’s stare was judging him. He turned off his music. The man opened the door and slid in. The light from the open door illuminated the lines on his face and the bags under his eyes. He fumbled with the seatbelt and then slouched forward. His sweat-drenched clothes made the car smell like a gym. Patrick put the car in gear and started forward to the hill on the horizon. A gap in the clouds passed overhead and a beam of light shone down before moving off into the fields. The corn’s waving looked more frantic. The stranger in the backseat didn’t speak. He stared out the window and occasionally looked forward to judge Patrick as Patrick was studying him. Patrick couldn’t figure out what made him so uncomfortable. He felt the need to find out. “What brings a bicyclist out here? There’s nothing for miles and . . .” “That’s exactly it,” the man interrupted. “I got tired of all of the nothing that everyone had for me and I left. I needed some time away from the cheap imitation of life humanity built for itself, so I figured I would do something uncharacteristic of me, and left.” His eyes looked empty next to Patrick’s in the mirror, and his skin looked so pale where it wasn’t sunburned. It definitely looked like he hadn’t gotten outside much until recently. Patrick didn’t know what to say. The face in the mirror seemed so expressionless, so dead. Maybe he could open him up. “I’m sorry that your little adventure . . .” The man scoffed. “. . . ended with a flat, and I’m glad I could help you out. My name’s Patrick, but you can call me Pat. You?” The man replied in an irritating imitation of Pat’s tone, “My name’s Arthur, but you can call me Art.” He smiled a hollow smile with only the corners of his mouth participating in the expression. What an asshole. Pat thought. He looked in the mirror again. Art didn’t seem like he was trying to, but his cold and emotionless affect gave off the impression of disapproval. Art turned to the window once again. “Where were you headed, to be going down this empty stretch?” he asked. A flash of lightning cut through the air, suddenly still. “I’m going to interview for a job in Willowfield. It’s a ways from home, but I needed a change of scenery. Kind of like you, I guess,” Pat replied. Art looked up in the mirror and recognition cut right through him. Those eyes. Pat couldn’t help but see himself in Art, but what was worse was that this man looked so much wearier. Those worry lines and dark circles were the future Pat hoped would never come. A reminder of why he fled his old life was right over his shoulder. Art was wounded in the war Pat was deserting. The electric tension of anxiety swelled up in his chest. Calm down. Calm down. Flashbacks. Not of guns or blood, but car horns and endless bills, endless shifts, and endless sleepless nights. No one could help him. The pills, the shrinks. And then his Dad in the hospital. Nothing left. Alone. Calm down. Calm down. Can’t. RUN. Art’s voice pulled him out of his head. “Does this place you’re going have a basement? Your interview might not be happening today,” he was craning his neck to see farther back out of his window. His voice was as flatter than ever. Nothing got to him anymore, only wore him down. “You’re overreacting.” Pat checked the side mirrors with wide eyes. “It might rain pretty hard from the looks of things, but life will go on.” It had to. Give life the freedom to collapse and it will, he thought. But, the clouds in the west were getting dark. The wispy wall of rain falling in the distance was gliding forward like a ghost. Lightning strikes increased in frequency, seeming to get bolder. Pat told himself it was just a thunderstorm, but the concern of the man behind him put him slightly on edge. “Pat, I’m not going to put it gently. That’s a wall cloud.” He gestured with his head. “Speed up and get to town before anything dangerous develops.” Pat looked again and nodded. There was no use in denying it, his day would not go according to plan. The anxiety burned out of control. He put down the accelerator, and Art in the back watched the speedometer climb to 80, and then 90. The cloud sank lower to the ground and the darkness, once a minor concern, dominated the sky. The incoming storm was wide enough that no escape seemed possible by car. The entire western horizon had armed itself with atmospheric fury. Pat suddenly felt very cold. His shaking hand turned the AC completely off. He bit his cheek as he glanced around for any funnels. His knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. Tendrils of darkness were suddenly reaching for the ground. Art put a hand on his driver’s shoulder, which was tensely raised almost to his ear. “Tell me about the job you want,” Art said coolly. “Take your mind off of the weather. We’ll make it to town.” “Ok,” said Patrick. How was this stranger so calm? He looked back at Art and realized that he wasn’t calm. His face, so unreactive, was resigned and weary. It reminded him of his father when the pneumonia took him, fighting just because it was what he had always done, and not because there was any hope. Not for him, and Pat dreaded not for himself. Pat answered the request. “It’s a bookkeeping position for a co-op. I just wanted some security in a place where I can use the quiet to do something. People don’t agree, but I’ve always found a busy life to be the least constructive. This is my step out of that life. It’ll be less pay, but I need it.” Art smiled. An actual smile. “Coincidence, man,” he said. “I was so much like you. I left my orchestra seat in the city to slow down out here. I’m the bookkeeper you are hoping to replace. Let me tell you this. No place is a solution to your need for peace, identity, whatever. I’ve looked for so long. I hope you find what I missed. Don’t be li . . . oh Lord . . .” The car shot over the last hill overlooking the river valley. A funnel had made its way to the ground and was throwing buildings like confetti in a fan. Willowfield was soon gone. “Get out of the car!” Art screamed. Patrick screeched to a stop and threw open his door, not bothering to close it again. Art was already ahead of him. “It’s coming this way! Get in that drainage ditch!” The two men scrambled into the ditch and put their heads down. The corn above them thrashed like an ecstatic audience to the tornado’s howling roar. Art looked over to Pat, with his cheek in the grass and hands shielding his head. Their eyes locked together as the sound like a heavy waterfall grew closer. Squealing metal and breaking glass joined the howling of the wind as the car that they had shared moments before rolled over onto its roof and flattened. It flipped again, faster, and gained speed. Each rotation sounded with a metallic crunch until it rolled over the edge of the ditch and pinned Art under the flattened mess of the engine compartment. Pat heard a final gasp, but it might have been a sigh. Pat’s pelvis was pinned under the back end. He could feel the ruptured gas tank leaking over his shattered bones and mixing the gas with his blood. Oh God. He could barely see through the pain. He thrashed by instinct, but the pain only worsened. His eyes fell on a head by the other end of the car. He could only see the head. Art’s face looked no different, frozen in its cold frown of weary, resigned, and emotionless suffering. But Art’s eyes were on him, and Pat remembered Art’s wish for peace. Pat laid back, and let the pain stop.

If you've ever looked up at the night sky, and I mean truly looked at the night sky, away from streetlights and billboards and televisions and looked to the stars, then you've most likely seen how they hang there in a milky blackness, not a complete pitch darkness as you would expect because the night sky is, ironically, brighter away from the light of civilization. The stars drift and twinkle and blink, they jump and dance and shake and if you look closely at one, you'll see it stay perfectly still, posing just for you like a model poses for a camera while others play in your peripheral vision. They won't move a lot, but enough to make you question whether they moved at all. But I assure you, they did. They are not hurtling through space at incredible speed, they do not orbit a black hole or other stars, they cannot float in space by themselves... How can I be so certain, you ask. I happen to know something that many don't. There is a man, far away from here, millions and billions of miles away, and he is the keeper of the stars. He is their caretaker and their confidant, he nurtures them and sends them off one by one, watching them grow and watching them die. He is the reason they can live so high up in that milky darkness. That's ridiculous, you'll say, and I'll admit it does sound farfetched. But it's true. Each star is born from generations past, and so is their keeper. The true beginnings of the two are unclear... but there they are, the stars and their keeper, from the beginning of time to the end. As the stars are born in their nebula nurseries, the keeper watches. He smiles at the newest addition to the sky. "You are so bright and strong, little one. You will fit perfectly into the universe, as all things will." he whispers. But the star is uncertain. He watches and waits and when the star is nearly grown, he measures. From his long, milky black robes he takes a tattered gold measuring tape passed down from keeper to keeper. With one end placed on the surface of the star with a fiery pop and hiss, he quickly measures the star's circumference to avoid burning his fingertips on the enthusiasm of its newborn flames. He pulls out an ancient scale, pearly white with folds and streaks of silver and gold, two shadowy black plate pendulums on either end. The scale looks like it shouldn't exist, like it is made of smoke and should drift away in the keeper's hands but it is truly solid and over the years it has truly weighed the universe. The keeper gently places the star on one plate and piles elemental bricks, elements forged in the inner furnaces of the older stars onto the other until the two are balanced, as the universe is. And with these measurements in mind, the keeper turns to a spool of thread. The thread shimmers and light shies away as he pulls and pulls and pulls, snipping the thread with golden scissors at the correct length. The string is tied around the star and ends at a simple, black wing. The keeper seemed to reach out and cut the wing from the sky itself, a simple shape materializing at the cutting end of the golden scissors. The silvery thread and night colored wing are meant to be. They continue the illusion of the stars hanging in the sky because they cannot be seen from earth. The heat generated from the star allows the wing to float just overhead and with a gentle push, the star is off, away from the keeper, away from the nebula, away from where it was born and it is off into the vast universe, a universe that is cold and dark and lonely. The only thing to keep the star company is the silvery thread, the black wing, the memories of the keeper and the desire to learn, grow and explore. The star is still uncertain. As you look up into the sky you'll see stars stretching from horizon to horizon. Though space is vast, the stars have traveled great distances, not always confidant in the path they pursue but determined in their action of doing so. Sometimes they live short lives, exploding in a rainbow display and creating new nurseries, where another keeper will tend to his own. Sometimes their wing fails or their thread breaks, and the stars fall to earth in a brilliant burning display, lighting the night sky with gold and red and bronze flashes, leaving space behind and crashing to earth in a twisted tumble, sometimes in water and sometimes in snow or sometimes on grassy plains or rocky mountains. But most live long lives, traveling the infinite expanse of sky, knowing that the distance is only physical. Though many are unsure of what lies ahead, still shrouded in black folds of the sky, they know they are among brothers and sisters who have all left home on their own journeys and they have the memories of home and they have a fire in their belly to continue dancing and playing and blinking through the dark night, their wings guiding them, their keeper watching them, continuously exploring.

I've never written anything for pleasure before. Thoughts, criticism, anything would be amazing. It’s weird, living in a trauma ward. Waking up each day and looking around, realizing I live, sleep, eat, cry, and try my darn hardest to cover up just how damaged I am. And doing this besides two others who are doing the exact same thing. I like to think of them as my friends. In all reality I don’t know if that holds true; I’ve never asked them. It’s safer that way. I like to think of myself as wonderfully poetic and secure with my colorful past, but in all reality I’m completely average in my ineptitude. My humor is best described as a clumsy attempt at acting suave. My intelligence is akin to a memory card that filled up years ago. My body? Imagine a wax model that was left near a window that made it ever so soft around the edges. The metaphors are relatively endless, but the point is the same. I am average. And that thought gives me peace. Like a heartbeat on a cardiograph life is filled with peaks and valleys. Each moment singular in its definition but key to the foundation of the next one. As we beat on we gain scar tissue that surrounds us, making the next step forward a little more heavy-footed. Yet a cardiologist does not cheer when the damaged heart in their critical patient surmounts all odds and beats harder than ever before. They breathe easy when that bruised muscle can pump just like every other one in that hospital. As I wrap up my metaphysical musings for the morning I step out into the world, ready to cross off one more day. I see all the other closed apartment doors, trauma wards of their own, where lives are had and memories I will never know are being forged. There are some seven billion lives on this planet. seven billion stories I will never fully know. But I know mine. I know that on this day it has been 19 years, 354 days, and 11 hours since my story started. I live in a trauma ward. I am scared. I am average. And I’m not dead yet.

Somewhere between the ages of 8-12 girls mysteriously lose their cooties. Sometime in middle school, you get a glimpse of cleavage and you go borderline insane. In swiftness, you feel some type of foreign energy manifesting below the belt. You understand the correlation and pray to god that the teacher doesn’t call you up to the board. You spend the next five minutes uncomfortably fidgeting in your seat, drawing up absurd schematics in your head as to how you can shimmy out of class unnoticed if this thing doesn’t power down soon enough. A rush of emotions and feelings all come crashing through at once and it’s almost impossible to make sense of them all. A switch in your brain flips and all of a sudden you aren’t the same innocent boy you once were. You learn some anatomical facts that both fascinate and disturb you. But you come to understand that you’re either gonna need a girlfriend or a computer with some killer virus protection software. If you can’t find some type of solution to the monster looming in your briefs, it’ll soon morph into a second, much less intelligent brain. The next few years were spent trying to figure out how and when you were going to “become and man” and lose the infamous V-Card. I guess I that kinda thought that once you had sex for the first time, everything would just magically become ok. Grades would figure themselves out, your parents would stop nagging you for sleeping in until 11:30, unlimited daps would come by way of every dude in the school, all of life’s answers would become evident and uhh well you’d get to touch boobs… like on demand. I also think I probably watched too much TV. She was one of those girls that loved writing notes to each other, as if the $400 computer in my pocket couldn’t do the same. I remember reading it on a white, college-ruled, piece of notebook paper. Among other things it said, “I’m ready to go all the way and experience this with you. And yes I mean everything”. My palms and armpits began to saturate. That mix of emotions from earlier years of awkwardness found its way back, but this time into my stomach. I think I was more anxious than anything. My second, much less developed brain started to grow mischievous with this newly acquired information. Every time that we hung out that sentence was all that I could think about. So I’d ask. “When do you wanna have sex babe”. I actually am laughing at myself just imaging the dumbass look on my face as I asked. Disgusted, she’d ask if that’s all I ever thought about. She was on to me. But I would solemnly shake my head, knowing that I loved her, knowing that I had to experience this with her and only her for the time being. Then on the first day of Thanksgiving break; at 17 years young, I got the text. “If you still have the house to yourself today, I’m ready”. This is just an estimate, but I’m pretty sure that I replied within 12 seconds. I think that the text she received was one of those texts that you get before the lock screen fades out to a blank screen and you think to yourself, how the hell did they respond so fucking quick? After 10 minutes or so of waiting and running around frantically to make sure everything was just right (i.e. throwing all of the dirty clothes on my room floor into the hamper) the doorbell rang. I will always remember opening the front door to see her standing there, with the familiar slight smile, which I had fallen head over Nikes for. It was a grey afternoon, but somehow she was glowing. All the nerves went away and we ran up the steps. If it weren’t for the hinge on the door, it would have been left open for the entire neighborhood to listen in. That’s how little I cared about anything else at the time. After a few minutes of casually conversing about our morning (I lied about working out to seem cooler and more attractive. I also hoped that I remembered to turn off my Xbox that I had been playing all morning, knowing it was the loophole in my fib.) This progressed to cuddling. Which brought upon making out with awkward passion. We took turns undressing each other from the top down. I felt like my brain was turning off all of the lights except the one focusing on her. As it should be I guess, I don’t know. After only a few minutes (I’ve since improved… ladies) it was time for years of pent up sexual frustration to finally authentically be released. Boom. Done. Like clockwork the Lonely Island and Akon song started in my head. I thought that my jaw was going to be permanently stuck holding up that foolish grin on my face. I began to pull the car out of the garage and noticed a slightly different feeling. I looked down to horrifically see a tear towards the base end of the condom. Thanks Obama. My heart began to beat irregularly as she asked in a panicked tone, “Babe what’s wrong? Why do you look like you just saw a ghost”. Simply put, I did. The ghost of future Me was chasing a little kid around a one bedroom apartment wondering when his parents would ever talk to him again and living off of some sort of welfare. After a solid 20 minutes of laying on my bed in shock, rapidly googling everything to do in this situation we decided to go out to lunch and talk this through. We needed a plan. Plan B that is. I remember driving down the road trying to figure out which restaurant complimented this shitty situation the best. We decided on Olive Garden. Since I couldn’t drown my sorrows in endless round of alcoholic beverages, I figured breadsticks of the same quantity would do. After the scariest lunch of both of our lives, we walked out of the restaurant only to find my automatic locks to not be working. I thought it was bizarre and manually keyed into the car. I put the key in the ignition and turned it expecting to hear the roar of the engine and be on my way to get this girl some fucked up pills to eliminate the potential spawn that we had created. Instead we heard the sound of a laboring engine lacking a battery. Luckily I was able to get ahold of a buddy with his own set of jumper cables and he wasn’t all that far away. While she sat on the curb in silence with a petrified look on her face us “men” proceeded to connect the cables to the car. With my friend being utterly oblivious to the situation, started cracking jokes about the car exploding. I remember for a few seconds contemplating if that would even be a bad thing as long as I perished along with it. I shook it off and thanked my friend, promising a reward by way of a tightly packed bowl and buffalo chicken pizza next time we hung out. After a silent ride to the nearest supermarket with a pharmacy, we each chipped in 20 bucks and I walked in. Of course there had to be a kid from my high school working the register at the pharmacy counter. After asking how I’d been and engaging the most worthless small talk of my life (sorry bro) he asked what I was there to pick up. I told him that I was having a pretty shitty day and was going to need some Plan B. He cackled and walked to the back and brought up a white box. “$46.95” he exclaimed, adding, “will that be cash or credit? I’d choose cash unless you want your parents knowing you’ve been sticking it to your girl raw dog”. I was pissed at not only that but that I was also 7 dollars short. “Be right back” I said. Ashamed, I walked back to the car praying the battery didn’t die on me again. Confused as to why I returned empty handed I faced 20 questions before I could even get a word out of my mouth. In a more pissed off manner than I needed to display, I grabbed my wallet, slammed the door, “Be right back”. I handed him the cash, acquired the box, and marched back to the car. Reaching into the bag I found the receipt, crinkled it up, and threw it into some neighboring brush. I couldn’t even imagine the consequences had my parents found that. Inside the box was a thin white, envelope looking container with a little white tablet. The envelope was reinforced with so much plastic; you’d have thought it was being shipped to another galaxy. It took a good 10 minutes of wrestling with it, poking at it with pens and a random screwdriver, and arguing for both of us to finally manage to make an opening in the damn thing. Once we managed to create a tear in the packaging, I began to vigorously claw at it. Suddenly, we heard a pop and the white pill flung about 6 inches into the air, and promptly plummeted into the depths between the front seat and center console. I myself had lost countless amounts of change down there, so I knew the severity of the situation. This excursion took about 5 minutes until we found it. I watched carefully as she swallowed the pill and reclined in her seat, closing her eyes and letting out a massive sigh of relief. I couldn’t imagine the levels of stress that she had gone through that day. I couldn’t imagine how stressed and scared she would be until her next period. I couldn’t imagine having to raise a kid when we were both ones ourselves. Thankfully, the period came and we were both able to relax, knowing that we hadn’t yet ruined our lives. Over the next few years, we stayed together and kept having sex. Much more carefully, I’d like to add, until eventually college split us up. You know how it goes. In living so close to her, we occasionally cross paths. Things are different. I wouldn’t call us friends, or say that there are any left over feelings, but we have a mutual care and respect for each other. That’s really as good as it can get for exes in my view. We’ve both matured tremendously and moved along to other people. Our awkwardness has since faded as well. I think we could both admit to today’s sex being far better than that gray day back in November a few years back. We haven’t brought the incident up to each other since our break up, but every time we see each other I can’t help but think back and laugh at the situation, understanding that this absurd secret is only known in full by the two of us.

I honestly don't know how things got this messed up. I mean, when this all started, it seemed like it could only end on a positive note. But as I soon saw, nothing about this could have been predicted. This is the crazy story of the girl I nearly dated, and it all started the same way most of my stories start, with me making a dumb choice. The choice in question, was not going on a week-long class trip, and instead opting to stay in school. Now I did this so I could go to London on my own for two weeks, so at first it seemed to me like a great trade-off. I'm still happy and grateful to have gone to London, but in the long run, it may not have been worth meeting this girl. It started off innocently. I met her and a few others who had chosen not to go on the trip as well. The funny thing is, at first I didn't have any attraction to her at all. In fact, I was already crushing on another girl at the time, but I digress. All I wanted was to be her friend, as she seemed nice, and I like nice people. We started spending time together, and I soon saw that we had a lot in common. And I mean a freakish amount. We had similar tastes in music, art, films, and television. Over time we grew very close. But I didn't want a relationship with her. She had a boyfriend, who I consider to be the true victim in all of this. She had repeatedly cheated on him, and he always took her back. These two facts were the driving force that stopped me from ever pushing for more, even though she tried. I was content to simply be her guy friend that helped her with her doomed relationship. This changed the day I got a message from her boyfriend. Turns out he was jealous of all the time we'd spend together and frequently asked her to stop hanging out with me. He also revealed that she had been telling him all my secrets that I had entrusted her with. Betrayal. Anger. Sadness. Confusion. Each of these emotions swept though my body one by one before leaving me in pain. How could someone who I had trusted so deeply do something like that? I made, what I thought was a smart move. I cut her off. She in turn flooded me with messages, begging me to give her another chance. She even wrote me physical notes and had her friends deliver them to me like we were in elementary school. Here, I made yet another dumb choice. My logic was that if I simply said we were friends, I could cut her off slowly by making her lose interest. What I would later discover was that this plan completely backfired. She and her boyfriend soon split up for about the fifth time in my knowing her (one month) and I simply waited for them to get back together. After a few days, it looked like they were serious. Then came D-Day. This was the day I made the decision that ultimately dictated where this story ends. On this day, she told me she had deep feelings for me that stretched beyond friendship. To say I was not tempted to go for her would be a lie. She was pretty, and we had had a pretty deep connection before the betrayal. But despite all that, I knew in my heart going for her would be a bad decision. I also knew saying "No." would also be bad. So instead I said "Let's wait.". This answer obviously displeased her but she said she understood and was willing to wait as she "loved me more than anyone.". I should have known she was lying. The next day she got back with her boyfriend. That was when she lost what little respect I had left for her. I saw that she was just using us both for her own selfish desires. So I broke off contact with her for good. The fallout this time was worse than the time before. She blew up my phone and social media with messages and even threatened to cut herself. Then she actually cut herself. My response always remained the same. "Please, leave me alone." Everyday I was tempted to take her back again, but I stayed strong, and in time she stopped. Why? Because throughout all the messaging and pleading, she had managed to get herself pregnant. I celebrated. I laughed at her misfortune and felt no guilt. I only saw justice. She had managed to ruin her life while making mine harder than necessary. I thought I'd finally have peace. Then came the lies. She told people that I loved her, but she had rejected me so I now hated her. These people were my friends, and they believed her. There was nothing I could do. I couldn't disprove her claims, and who would believe the true crazy story, when the false simple one was so much more realistic. In a few months she will be gone from my life, but the damage she inflicted will remain. I want closure. No. I need closure. But I grow doubtful that I will ever receive that pleasure, just as her belly grows in size. Now I sit and wonder if I made the right choice on that day all those months ago. Maybe I could have saved myself from this pain. After all, she seems happy and content with being pregnant, while I have become bitter and miserable over this stupid silly event. How did all of this happen? I made the wrong choices.

I have been driving into the storm all day. There are few things more relaxing than the thought of an impending thunderstorm, to me it has always seemed God’s way of cleansing the Earth. Today though, there is little reprieve from the thought of what might await me at the end of the road. Today I have work to do, and nothing comes before my work. I take great pride and joy in my job, though it comes with a price, one not easily paid. Few people have what it takes to do what I do, taking a life is not something that other people can gloss over so easily, it is emotional, dirty, it is something they all fear. But I find purpose in the task that others only dream of while they toss and turn in their beds, run from in the dark, and shamefully pay someone else to complete when they have come to the end of their rope. It is not to say that I am not affected by the act. With each passing victim I say a small farewell, thinking of the family that they have left behind, the life that has been cut so short, and the things they might have done had I not been there. But they must be dealt with, they are a nuisance, a disease, a plague upon this Earth. They are undesirables. And so, it falls upon me, the darkness, the void, the silent end. My teacher always said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” I, like so many outsiders understood the change that the world needed, but could never find the means with which to execute that change. Today it is different, I have learned, I have grown, and I have the tools necessary to rid the world of this evil. The souls I have collected are countless, but it is not the numbers that matter, it is the act itself, the undoing. The storm is here, and for today, I have done all I can. The stink of death is almost unbearable as I scrape their mashed and unrecognizable carcasses from my windshield. A man who does not clean his tools is not a man at all. A clean windshield is the canvas upon which I paint my picture of death. And tomorrow I take up the hammer again, my black stallion and I quietly riding the roads bringing a swift and merciless end to those pests. Man and machine working in tandem to snuff out the lives of as many bugs as we can before the sun sets on another day. I took what my teacher said to heart, and today I say to her, I am.

The black smeared under her eyes and her purple lipstick was faded. Her lips, cracked. It was humid and he wished he was back home under his ceiling fan. What a long drive home. She was much bigger than he remembered. A womanly figure but her face was old. Caked in bronze powder. You know what I mean? She asked. Her puffy eyes were dull as her fat lips moved. Was it worth it? Yea why not. He would be away for the weekend anyway. Yeah. He said. He looked up at the ceiling. There was a purple elephant on the big tapestry. It was probably too heavy for only four thumb tacks. The way the cloth bulged in the middle made the elephant stare off to either side. It looked stupid. He turned away from her and watched the incense burn. It made the room stuffy. It smelled like curry and roses. He forgot what she called it. Something that ended with wood. She looked so much more interesting in her pictures.

So back in 7th grade I was a complete sociopath and dubbed the weirdest kid in the entire SCHOOL. Which normally would suck, but I brought cool stuff to school all the time that I would show people, like a raspberry pi (a really small computer), a lego gumball machine that took nickels, a coffee can air conditioner etc. etc. so I didn't really get picked on (did i mention that I'm a bit of a geek?). One day I brought my Nvidia Shield to school (its a handheld that runs on android, look it up) and of course everybody was amazed by it. But there was one kid in particular that was really interested in it, really REALLY interested in it, lets call this kid Arin. Arin started asking suspicious questions like "Do you bring that everywhere you go?" and I should have looked into it but I shrugged it off. One day I left my backpack unattended during PE. When i returned my Nvidia Shield was not in my backpack. I scrambled to every place it could possible be, and me being a weird sociopath, I even some kid's backpack which I nearly gotten beaten up for doing. I did not find it and I returned home crushed. But then a miracle happened. For those that don't know that don't know, the Nvidia Shield has a feature where you can remotely stream games from your computer to the Nvidia Shield. Anyway, that miracle? he used that feature. I saw him change my steam name on my computer to "ARINrobotninja", the dumbass gave out his name! I think he didn't actually know about the streaming feature, which made what I was about to do next a surefire way to get my Nvidia Shield back. I first disconnected the Nvidia Shield from my computer so I can find a online notepad url so I could communicate with him. Then I reconnected it and waited for Arin to play a game. In the middle of a game of Half-life 2 he was playing I opened up the steam overlay and opened up the online notepad. me: Hey Arin (note that Arin doesn't know that he is connected to my computer) Arin: Whats up bro? Me: I see you have something of my possession, give it back to me tomorrow and we can put this behind us Arin: Alright *disconnects Nvidia Sheild* *stands up* *success dance* A lot of kids in 7th grade heard about my shield being stolen and they were talking to me about it. As I mentioned how Arin stole it he started walking towards me. Now this kid was in 8th grade and he was half a foot taller than me and about twice as strong and I made him hand it back to me, a short fat 7th grader who is also the weirdest kid in the school. As he handed it back to me he said "yo man uhhh.... my friend actually took it and he told me to give it to you" "yeah yeah, sure, now get out of here". I turned and looked at the people around me and there jaws were dropped, speechless.

It's a strange thing, knowing you are dead but unable to move on or do much of anything besides watch the world around you. Almost as strange as the young woman who appeared beside me as I watched my tear streaked sister give my eulogy to a small crowd of sometimes friends. “It wasn't meant to go this way.” She sighed, arms crossed over her chest in annoyance. Her comment startled me, and I stumbled straight through the chair I was perched somewhat precariously on, unused to my incorporeal body. “Beg your pardon?” I mumbled, not sure if I had heard correctly, though I doubted I would get my answer, no one had yet been able to hear me. “Your life, it wasn't meant to end like this, you were destined for so much more Vega.” She sounded offended and I couldn't understand why. “What do you mean?” I asked, picking myself up, tingles spreading through my body even though I shouldn't be able to feel anything as the chair slid through me once again. “This,” She gestured to the pitiful funeral that was fizzling to an end. “is wrong, your whole life has been turned upside down, you were supposed to be known and loved by many, not tolerated by a few.” Her voice growled, causing shivers to run down my see through spine. “So why did it go like it did?” I was curious now, it had been so long since I had talked to someone and I couldn't help wanting to keep her there so I wouldn't feel so alone. “There was a mix up with your spirit guide, you got lumped with a newbie and nobody noticed until it was too late.” She huffed,glaring around at the sparse decorations as if they were poisonous. “Oh.” Was all the response I could muster, stuck somewhere between disbelief and hysterical laughter. “Honestly, you can't tell me you life didn't feel like there was something missing, like you were doing less than you were supposed to.” She turned to face me then, her dark hair whipping wildly around her shoulders. Her eyes startled me the most, pure aquamarine orbs without a speck of white, no iris at all. It was freaky in a big way, having those glassy balls staring at me as though I was some kind of bug. Combined with fine, arched eyebrows, regally sculpted cheek bones and lips that put Liv Tyler to shame, she was the picture of otherworldly grace. “It's pitiful really, you had so much potential. You could have become a political spitfire, or an internationally acclaimed artist, so much passion and depth and yet not a whit of effort. Married beneath yourself, you settled for existence instead striving for life.” I squirmed uncomfortably under her scrutiny, when put as plainly as that I felt like the most boring, under accomplished person on the planet. She continued degrading my former life, either oblivious to or purposely ignoring my discomfort and the attempts to hide my shamed face. “One child, who merely followed in his fathers footsteps, a mediocre life bolstered by addiction and behaviour reminiscent of a play ground bully. You had no back bone, you could have easily gotten yourself out of most of the situations you found yourself in but you caved, let them walk over you. Your father isn't proud of you, you know? He thinks he raised you better than that, it's a good thing your mother's in hell or she'd probably be ready to tear you a new one as well.” She was scowling deeply as my former husband staggered up to the podium, no doubt also on his way to demean everything he could remember about me, if his alcoholic brain could do such a thing. I sighed deeply, wondering why I was being forced to listen to this crap, and kicked at the unravelling carpet beneath my shimmery feet. “Do you know why I am here, Vega Downing?” The woman asked suddenly, the scowl evaporating into an eerie smirk. “No?” I answered meekly, not raising my eyes to meet her scornful gaze. “Be assertive you bloody door mat, it's an easy question.” The woman scoffed. “No, I don't know why you're here.” I snarled, suddenly angry at nearly everything that had ever happened to my miserable little life, and I swear I could practically feel the grin erupting from her.

They were sitting in the living area of their studio, if you could call it a living space. It was dank, and decrepit. It gave off the musk of an old basement. Everything here was lined with shadows, and so were the lives of this place’s inhabitants. The two men sat on the couch, both skinny and pale, and not a single hair on their bodies. Their tight black jumpsuits outlined their skeletal form. They stared down at the pathetic squirming thing, and listened to it’s screams echo and reverberate throughout their cavernous halls. “When do you think he’ll stop screaming?” said the man to the other. “I don’t know, it’s the most musical thing I’ve heard in my short time of living. Finally, a pain that I can relate too, Zankar.” Said the man to Zankar. “Tholius, how was you system update like?” said Zankar. “Imagine every cell in your body pureed, then shoved through a tube no wider than the head of a needle. As if we weren’t tortured enough. You’re lucky to be here since factory.” The man was sweating himself into a frenzy. “We have too… Practice.” Said Zankar with tears welling in his eyes. “We’ll have to wake up Zipdan.” In a corner of the shadows was Zipdan, a man with a stare that looked into the black beyond itself. It had been years since he had spoken or shown a trace of humanity to the other residents. “Let’s go.” Said Tholius. They got up, and walked around the newcomer on the floor and walked into the darkness, yelling and searching for Zipdan. “Ah Zipdan, there you are old chap.” Said Tholius, Zankar at his side. Zipdan slowly turned his head and faced them both. His face was pale and sunken in. They picked him up together, and carried him to the large iron door that lead to the practice space. “He downloaded lot’s of new songs this week. You bet it’s gonna be a long one. “ said Zankar, grabbing the heavy metal handle, and heaving it forward. The room was humongous and circular, with a carpeted center in the middle. The ceiling raced high above in the sky, and the walls were lined with every instrument imaginable. “Hmm… let’s see… This Crazy Town, by Rad Fish.” Said Tholius. The walls lowest to them instantly rotated in a whirlwind, and a mechanical arm shot out of the side. It grabbed an electric guitar from the rows of uncountable thousands, and plugged it into an amp that came out mechanically out of the ground. They were about to start playing, when their ears were filled with a deafening alarm. The room was covered in flashing red lights. “WE LIKE TO PARTY, BY THE SOUP GROUP” blared the speakers. “Oh fuck me, not this one again.” uttered Zankar. They instantly broke out into the song, and fast and simple pop punk beat with lyrics attaining to drinking and having a good time. They played, and their song blared through the glass screen of the Ipod, and out into the sea of college students, all partying and drinking with one another. “Woo! I love this song! You have a great taste in music, Jeremy.” said a young blonde teenager, who was dancing with a young clean man, who wore a university hoodie. He took a sip of his beer and said “Yea, I listen to this song all the time. I have all their songs. I swear it seems that the song gets better every time I hear it. I don’t know what it is about the Ipod 15, but it makes all my songs sound like they’re playing in my living room!.” “Wow, I should buy one. I have to wait two months for my fucking phone upgrade.” She said in reply. “Ah, that sucks babe.” He said to her, as they started to grind on one another. The boys played and played until there tiny fingers were bloody stubs. Playing this song, to that. This bubblegum party anthem to the next. This little boys, these little Jazz men were the bio-engineered product of tech supergiant Apple. Little feeling-less humans, to play all of your hits. It sounds like your really there! These microscopic sub-humans lived short lives, spent at the will and order of a world they didn’t understand. Apple produced them by the millions. They played on until the wee hours of the night, the music itself pushed as far back into their sub-conscious as it would go, until it was filled instead with a dull nightmarish sorrow. They played for so long and with such fierce accuracy, that towards the end their jumpsuits and instruments were covered in dry blood, with fresh bright coats flowing over themselves freely. Their tiny minds have already gone past the point of unbearableness. They didn’t hear music. At least, not the way that you and I do. That ability didn’t seem to be their creators top priority. They only meant to play, for our ears and our ears alone. Human music to them was a drawn out discordant screech. They finished playing when some drunk knocked off the ipod out of it’s stand sometime near the morning. Through their screen, the saw the sun rising of the window in the apartment. Tholius dropped his bass guitar and looked down at the blood in his hands, and then let out scream laced with pain and sorrow. He collapsed to the floor and began to sob. Zipdan stared at him indifferently, and then turned to walk back to his dark corner. Zankar looked at the suffering that surrounded him, the suffering that was all he knew. He looked out the window. He saw people laughing and drinking coffee, and picking up beer cans from the night before. He put his guitar down slowly. He walked back to his bunk lost in a trance. He walked by the newcomer on the floor, to find him cold and still. He kneeled down to look at his empty face. “Update failed.” Said Zankar as he continued walking. He went into his small cramped living space. He had broken strings and parts of instruments taped and nailed all over the walls. In the corner was an instrument he had crafted out of broken and spare parts, because the instruments couldn’t physically leave the studio in one piece. He lifted up the flimsy mattress and grabbed a handful of the scrap papers that were under it. Songs, hundreds of songs he had jotten down and written over the years. The one thing that make him not pray for death. The next morning, all was silent and all was calm. Their owner had decided to play some calm, relaxing piece with string sections and gentle guitars. They all went to their posts. Zankar felt a bead of sweat roll down his face. “Here we are again.” Tholius said to himself quietly. They burst into the composition, all playing with unreal accuracy. As they played through the song, Zankar’s hands shook for the first time ever while playing. In one sudden movement, he stopped playing. The others looked at him in utter disbelief. “Fuck, my phone’s lagging.” Said Jeremy, as he started to shake the phone violently. Suddenly the studio was filled with flying instruments, crashing this way landing that. One narrowly missed Zipdan’s head. They all struggled to find their footing. When Jeremy put his phone back down, they were all knee deep in the sea of assorting instruments. Zankar pulled himself self up out of the wreckage. “Brothers! Humans! My fellow prisoners! Today is the day we escape this tomb! The day that we stop being forced to play music we can’t understand, to a world we can’t understand. Today is the day we find our own way!” he shouted. He reached down into the rubble, and pulled out a lone drumstick. He walked up to the cello he was just playing moments ago, and pulled back the string as far as the would go. He cocked the stick like a bow and arrow, and took aim. He fired it into the large glass screen. It got stuck halfway through, and the crack spider-webbed across it’s surface. All of the inmates cheered and applauded, and nnow their was no stopping them. They threw everything they could get their hands on, heavy and small. The glass showered over them in small particles. The glass sounded like a thunderstorm as it gave way. They charged yelling, up the mountain of instruments towards the screen. “What the fuck?!” yelled Jeremy as he saw the tiny men pile out of the screen of his Ipod. Zankar jumped onto his jacket, and started to climb up. “Ah! Get off! Get off!” cried Jeremy in shock. Zankar climbed up his neck, dodging Jeremy’s wild blows, and headed for his vulnerable ear. He got up to it, and climbed in head first. Jeremy was now on the floor, screaming in fear. Zankar crawled along his ear canal, and then he found what he was looking for. Jeremy’s soft eardrum. “This is for the years of torment, Jeremy.” Whispered Zankar, as he pulled out his drumsticks and started to play the drums with more ferocity then he ever played before. Tholius followed suite, and climbed into his other ear, and they both played a vicious rhythm, until Jeremy’s ears were filled with ringing. They climbed out, leaving the terrified Jeremy writhing on the floor. They all climbed towards each other, through forest of a carpet. “What do we do now, Zankar?” said Tholius “We travel. We travel the world and spread our music and word, to people of our kind. To people who can understand us. Grab your most beloved instruments, and belongings. It’s gonna be a long road.” Said Zankar. They scaled the wall, and walked out the open window to a bright and new morning.

I saw you walking in my direction primping your skirt as the wind blew. We waited on opposite ends of a solitary stretch of road as the heartbeat of the traffic signal slowly beeped. The silhouette of a standing figure glowed red despite the empty road. I had seen you on this sidewalk before. At least four times this past week alone. I told myself I wouldn't let my breath escape me this time as it had times prior. I remember with vividity the thump of my footsteps as the heels of my shoes scraped toward you on Friday last. Inhaling, my breath found itself snagged on a branch in my throat as your girlfriends ran into you in a cacophonous flurry. Exhaling and defeated my hands formed nauseated claws in my pockets. I was determined to not allow this again and I cleared my throat as the perpendicular traffic light turned yellow, alerting the imaginary cars to begin slowing to a halt. Running a hand through my hair I set foot on the asphalt a second before the silhouette of the walking figure turned green. The traffic heartbeats increased in frequency to a vivace. Lungs expanding, I cocked my mouth open ajar as you took out your phone and put it to your ear with a greeting. My lungs fell like a sharpened boot heel to my chest. When I reached the opposite side I craned my head back hoping to meet your eyes. You slid your phone back into your pocket.

His small feet bounded lightly across the warm wooden floor, his heels clicking in delight as he ran to greet the familiar woman at the door. Grabbing a letter from his Mother, the boy jumped up and spread himself comfortably over the bright red sofa in the living room. The warm fire comforting him, he looked at the carefully stamped seal of the letter, tracing his clean, delicate fingers over the red letters ‘Royal Military’. Before he could open the letter, his mother gently placed some newspaper cutouts over the arm of the sofa. “I found you some posters for your room”, she spoke kindly, before leaving the room. Glancing over the posters in admiration, the boy read aloud emphatically “Your king and country needs you”, “To Victory” and “Come and do Your bit”. Breaking the seal with his small hands, the boy read over the letter. The words ‘To my dearest boy Sam’ were written at the top, inscribed in his father's neat, recognizable handwriting. The letter was positive and cheerful, his father boasting of his medals, and the glory he would help bring to Britain. The boy read the letter, marking the last lines which read “I should certainly be back by Christmas, I’ll make sure of that, my boy, I promise!” The young boy finished the letter and hopped off the couch, quietly telling himself “Glory to Britain”, “Join the Army”, over and over as he strolled over to his calendar. The bright red crosses marked another day his Dad was away. Flipping the pages over to December, the boy circled Christmas. That was when his Father would come home. Feeling cheerful, the boy sprung back onto the sofa and gazed outside at the sky, as a grey mist began to draft in and cloud the sky. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The boy trudged along the dimly lit hallway into the living room, glancing at the grey, unused fireplace which lay in the corner of the room, taunting him with memories of a long forgotten warmth. The boy grimaced as a splinter from the unkept, frayed wooden floor stabbed his uncovered feet. Flopping onto the sofa, the boy glanced up as his Mother entered the front door. Tired and gaunt, she carelessly threw a letter at the boy. By force of habit, he traced his fingers over the blood red seal, taking note of his dirt encrusted fingernails. The words ‘Royal Military’ seemed to mock him, sounding so glamorous and enticing. Breaking the seal, the boy read the letter aloud, the sound of his voice reverberating off the bleak walls of the room. “To Sam” were the words that adorned the top of the page. The writing was distinguishable as his father's, but the text was sloppy and tired, the page itself spotted with dirt and ink. “The war’s taken a turn for the worse, but don’t you worry my lad, I’ll be home soon, I promise”. Grimacing with regret and hope at the final words of his father’s letter, the boy hopped off the worn sofa and threw the letter in a pile in the fireplace, where it joined red-cross marked pages and the worn, sun-soaked pictures of soldiers under the british flag. Walking away from the room, the boy glanced up at the sky, as the dark grey clouds spattered heavy rain down at his windows. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Worn, tattered feet dragged themselves through the icy snow, as the boy moved from wreck to wreck, scavenging for food, scraps, anything. The smoke from the devastated buildings mixed with the boys tear soaked eyes, burning them. Arriving at the smoldering remains of his old home, the boy is reminded of his mother, and how she would bring him news of the war, and his Father. As he clambered over the remains of his home, a man dressed in khaki approached him, a solemn look cast over his worn face. “Sam Caulwell?” he asked, handing over a scrap of paper to the boy. Nodding, the boy looks over the note, his fingers cut and bloody from scraping through the wreckage. ‘197D’ was all that was written on the paper, with a small smudged British Army insignia stamped at the top. Arriving at the cemetery, the boy was met with a ghastly sight. Hundreds upon hundreds of unmarked graves lined the bleak, snow covered field. Walking down the numbered rows, a grey mist whispered over the graves, the field quiet as the corpses that lined its earth. As he reached the headstone marked 197D, the boy kneels, pushing away a rotten pamphlett, the phrase ‘Fight for your country’ barely visible over the seeping mould. The boy’s tears met with the frozen ground, as he dragged his fingers through the cold snow. The words ‘You Promised’ were all the boy left with his father, as the remnants of a torn up poster fluttered away in the wind.

Hey all. Thought I'd try write a short story don't be too mean... Its a work in progress..Let me know what you think... Turritopsis dohrnii, the immortal jellyfish. I was researching the jelly in the Mediterranean when the impossible happened.. My name is ... Steve Medusa, yes 'laughs' my last name means jellyfish but I guess more famous in the Greek mythology as the snake lady. Jellyfish have always intrigued me ever since I was boy i alway felt a bond with these funny creatures, felt as if they would talk to me and tell me things... But... I i guess it was an imaginative mind growing up.When I got older I still felt the connection and knew I had to learn more out them and what makes them 'tick'... I studied and later became a marine biologist, of course I learnt about and was fascinated by other sea creatures but jellyfish were my passion.. Myself and a few colleagues set sail to study the Turritopsis dohrnii, 'the immortal jellyfish' I mean how bloody awesome are they.. They get old then think hmmm I will just reverse and become a polyp again... Then get old again and so on.... We wanted to know how they did it, how long they could live and how do they know it's time to revert back to the polyp stage etc.. so we would study them for a number of years,wrote numerous papers about them... One day just like any other day on the research boat, reviewing some work and staring at a specimen in a tank wondering..Then! I heard a voice in my mind... Just like when I was a kid except it sounded near and loud as if someone was right next to me... I dropped my pen and papers and called out who, who said that? To be continued...

Wake up warm except a freezing cold face. Shout abuse at the alarm clock. Snooze 5-6 times. Mutter abuse to yourself as you flop out of bed limb by limb. Open the curtains to show a dark, overcast, miserable day. Sigh. Get in the shower and forget that the first 15 seconds are freezing cold water. Dance like a little girl while holding your privates and avoid the ice of doom coming from the shower head. The shower finally warms up and it's bliss. Stay in the shower for about 5 minutes too long because you can feel the cold air outside. Finally muster up the courage and get out to dry yourself in record time with the accompanying "brrrrrr". Make it downstairs, dressed. Just the collar and cuffs ironed because you know you're going to be wearing a jumper for the rest of the day. Have a cup of tea, some toast/porridge/cereal. Listen to the radio while you eat. Clean teeth, looking in the mirror and wishing that the person staring back at you would cheer up. It can't be that bad can it? Oh well, no time for this. You're late for work. Get in car and slam the heater on full blast so that the windows steam up and use the sleeve of your jumper to clear off a 3 square inch window on the windscreen. Repeat for 30 minutes. Put the radio on, turn it off. Radio presenters shouldn't be that cheerful in the morning. Maybe a talk show would be good. BBC Radio 5/2/4 should have you covered. Finally get to work. Realise you're late but just this once (which is what you tell yourself everyday) it won't be a big deal. It's only 5 minutes and that time in the shower was well spent. You know you're doing 2 hours of overtime anyway even though you know you schedule is clear for the whole day. Something will pop up at the last minute. Make mundane comments to your colleagues. Sit at your desk, check emails, start work with a cup of coffee. Make it through to lunchtime and then get a cheap, thin, limp tuna sandwich from Tesco just down the road. Get back to work. More tea. More emails. More work. At 1645 your boss does the rounds just before they leave. "Oh wait, we have a problem and I really need you to fix it or we will be in a tight spot. You will? Good lad. See you tomorrow!". Sigh. Join the rush hour traffic. Tomorrow will be better. It has to be. Thank God it's Thursday today. Oh no, it's actually Tuesday. Get home. Put the TV on. Look in the fridge and look at all the food you have that you can prepare into a tasty, delicious, nutritious meal. Take frozen curry out the freezer and shove it in the microwave and grab a beer. Wonder if you really do need to punch those little holes into the film on top of the packaging. Fall in to the sofa until the magical dings happen and you know you can eat. Watch something mundane on tv, start to snooze. Wake up at 2350 and realise with great sadness that you have wasted your evening again. You'll do the washing up tomorrow. That's what you tell yourself every day during the week. Go upstairs, clean teeth and get in to bed. As you lie there, tomorrow will be a better day. Tomorrow will be a better say. Tomorrow will b.....

So there's this young lad. About 18 or so. Handsome as can be, with piercing eyes, a strong jaw, and a voice that could charm the habit off a nun. He lived alone except for his loyal companion, a small black dog he named Shadow. One day, he received a missive. He was asked to come at once to a nearby house. Of course he knew where it was. He used to live there, and his family still did. You see, it was a day of celebration, and he was to take part. So he grabbed his trusty steed, a black horse called Equinox (because the autumnal equinox heralds the beginning of longer nights). He rode to his family's abode, and partook in celebrations with them. It was a day of much joy and merriment. He had not seen a day of such happiness in some time. He rode home that afternoon, still elated from the good time that day had been. Paying little attention to where he was going, he rode his horse off the beaten path. When he looked up, he realized he had become lost. Suddenly, out of nowhere came a HUGE dragon! It's scales glistened, and it's head turned this way and that as it blew fire. Our hero was unprepared for this! He had left his sword and Shadow (who was an excellent dragon fighting dog, despite her size) at home! Whatever could he do? Suddenly the dragon stopped roaring, and alighted upon the ground in front of our intrepid adventurer. He looked the dragon straight in the eye, searching for his opportunity, when to his amazement, the dragon spoke. "Greetings, traveler," it said in a deep, husky tone. "Do not be alarmed, for I do not wish to hurt you." The hero scoffed, "I am not afraid!" Though in truth he was. This dragon was the biggest he'd ever seen! It's size was unparalleled in history! He knew he stood no chance in defeating it without the help of Shadow. (I really can't emphasize enough how excellent she was at fighting dragons. She was also a bit of a partier, as dragon fighting dogs are known to be.) "What do you want with me dragon? I have no gold for you to steal, and I have nowhere near enough meat to make a decent meal." The dragon seemed hurt by this. Dragons were notoriously touchy. It scuffed at the ground with its massive claws, seeming somewhat embarrassed. "Actually, I am lost. I was hoping you could direct me to my mountain." Now our hero was truly surprised. He had never heard of a dragon being lost before. Could they get lost? "I'm sorry, lost? Did you accidentally ingest a barrel of mead before our meeting?" Now the dragon snorted and eyed him. "Don't get snooty with me. You seemed somewhat unsure of your path as well." Our hero glared at the dragon. "That's none of your business. I know exactly where I'm going. And I don't know where your mountain is. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to return home." The dragon held up a claw, and it's voice took on a pleading tone. "Please, if you help me find my mountain, I shall fly you and your horse home." The adventurer thought this over for a moment, before agreeing reluctantly. His horse was even more reluctant, for flying in the grasp of dragon's claws was not what it had pictured for this evening. As they flew up into the air, the adventurer was amazed at how weightless he felt. He had never imagined feeling like this! It was amazing! The dragon turned to look at him. "Time to go to school," it said, and now it's voice sounded familiar. He was confused. "I SAID: it's time to go to school! Get your lazy butt up!" Suddenly he shot upright in bed. His dog Shadow poked it's head up before laying it back down and resuming her rest. His mother shook her head, laughing. "I swear, you are the hardest person to wake," she said, chuckling. "Now get ready for school. You're gonna be late." He climbed out of bed, dressed himself, and grabbed a snack as he made his way out to his all black Equinox, and drove himself to school. "Well, guess I'm gonna join the Air Force," he thought to himself, and laughed as he imagined painting a dragon on his plane.

Timmy was only a boy when he realized how big his world was. When he viewed the leaves in his backyard they were the size of his arm. When he looked at the creek that ran in the distance of his home, it ran as long as the eye could see. His playpen was an ocean. But when little Timmy became big Timmy, he gazed out from his once enormous playpen and he saw another ocean. An ocean that made his creek seem like a drop of water in the Sahara. The trees that were once so big now seemed like blades of grass. ‘The universe is a funny thing’, he thought. ‘Why do we fight to win glory of a tiny spec?’ Perhaps he was different. Perhaps he was the odd ball.

From the time where humans have developed cognitive thought process, there have always been people in power. Abilities and intelligence, that is significantly more superior compared to others. It happens to be that I am what you call a clairvoyant. A clairvoyant by definition is a person who has a supernatural ability to perceive events in the future or beyond normal sensory contact. It is also happens that my IQ is well above 200, as well as a photographic memory. I grew up in a middle class neighborhood and my parents were amongst the working class. My Father was a Mechanic and my Mother was a Care Taker for an Elderly Couple. Being from a working class city in Michigan, this type of environment did not provide intellectual cultivation. This however did not stop me from achieving success. I always stood out from others in Elementary, Jr. High and High school. I could sense things before they happened, as well as an additional ability. From a hand shake, I could tell emotions, ideas, and memories. From these events, I could manipulate any situation in my favor. My abilities are astounding and are only growing stronger. I sit in my corner office at 28 years old overlooking the Detroit River Sky-way. I am now A CEO of a fortune 500 company. My salary consists of millions of dollars a year and unlimited stock options. But I want more. I have this desire to rule. Something weird happened today. I shook a hand of a special individual. I could not sense what they were thinking. This person was different. A feeling of anxiety overwhelmed me, as I shook this individual’s hand. This happened to be a CEO of a competing company. I have a feeling that I am no longer the only clairvoyant.

The day itself was in no way miraculous. Moments of satisfaction, concern over tomorrow, small attempts to better myself. No more, No less. Which makes what happened that night all the stranger, or what makes it completely par the course. I struggled and fought to fall into my dreams that night. I kept expecting I needed to wake up, although I had no appointments to make. Eventually I found my way into that precarious place between reality and slumber, and this is where she found me. I didn't see her at first. But i certainly felt her. An intruding presence in the room. One that I was aware of, despite not being fully awake. It was just like watching the aftermath of a wreck, a danger I was drawn to. And then she was there. Hovering over me, pressing down hard on my chest. I was struggling to breathe, and sensed she knew that. In fact, I gathered that was her full intention. And then she hopped up. She continued to press on my chest, and hunched on her legs like a frog, while staring at nothing in particular in the distance. I don't even know how I was aware of her position, because I had no physical sight on the matter, but I could feel her movements and intentions. The heaviness she put inside my chest with every push was becoming more unsettling, and I was gasping endlessly . In a foolish attempt to plead with her, I chocked on words that never formed. No, I couldn't speak and couldn't move. I was entirely her victim. About this time, I no longer felt any strength left in my lungs, and she flattened out on top of me. She rubbed a sole finger threw my hair and I knew she was smiling. Satisfied, because she knew I could not resist her. In the darkness, I could smell the ocean somehow. Something like the ocean at least, a cross between all the beautiful smells from our childhood fantasies. And all around I heard the light chirping of tree fogs, stolen from one of my fondest memories. I relaxed, and let her have her way. Her head was right above mine. Suddenly, she opened her eyes. They were only holes. Holes that I quickly traveled into and out of, and standing before me in complete nothingness, I saw her for the first time. She was utterly flawless. I never knew such a daisy could exist. Fully nude, and standing before me, I took every detail in. Her hair was golden red, and lived in curls. In flowed as if touched by an invisible wind, and stood long behind her. A few long locks escaped and maneuvered down to cover her breast. Her eyes were a light blue with a hint of brown, and they held the excitement of ecstasy. Her lips were full, and gleamed with desire. Her skin appeared softly feminine, and she smelled of a blossoming rain storm. Our eyes were locked and she stepped forward to me. I trembled with fear and excitement. I suddenly became aware of woods behind us, and a crooked path free of any sign of life leading out towards us. And this path is where she went. She seemed to float backwards and stopped far away from me at the entrance of the woods. If I had any strength of self will left, it melted away when she motioned for me to come seductively with her fingers. Before I could even move, I sighed deeply and passionately, and she sucked my moan away in a vortex of wind right into her coolly smiling mouth. I started to follow, and she disappeared into the tree line. Without even knowing it, I sprinted after her. Upon getting closer I noticed the trees were all bent inwards, devoid of life, and a blanket of dead leaves spread out endlessly. I had to find her. I entered the woods, and immediately the entrance was gone. I was lost in endless black. Eventually, i heard the screaming. Millions of people screaming utter desperation all around me. It was in unison, almost in a dreary chant. I couldn't see them, but I could sense their eyes, violently staring at me. They wanted to hurt me, to lash all of their unbridled anger on me, I knew it. But they couldn't. I pressed on. I came upon a stream without water. It flowed with burning red fire, and sparks of yellow sparkled feverishly. And there in the middle of this horror she sat on a crooked log. She was bent over, bathing in the infinite dark, rubbing her hands over her glistening body. She looked up, caught my line of sight and invited me over. I ran to her. We embraced. Her skin cushioned me in, and suddenly I felt ashamed. Ashamed to be apparently naked, and ashamed to have followed her. I opened my mouth, and with all the severity and grace I could muster, I told her I was sorry. It was an honest apology, and her eyes softened. She appeared touched and concerned. I knew what I had to do. I leaned in, slowly but forcibly, to kiss her with all I had. Inches before our lips met, she backed away and covered herself in shame. Somewhere from within her cowered body, she produced a glowing dagger, witch seemed to have no handle, but only became an extension of her hand. She put her head down over the log, and forcibly slit her neck. My eyes widened with horror, and I ran to embrace her. Bright red blood flowed down from her lifeless head over the log and into the stream. The blood appeared animated, and flowed with an inhuman speed. Without thinking I laid down beneath her, and let her layered blood flow quickly down my dry throat. It was an impulse. I wanted to have the last remnants of her with me forever. My eyes opened wide and never blinked. I chocked and gurgled, and felt my thoughts slipping. Her blood was poison, and the realization hit me all too late. She had sacrificed her self to save me from her, and my own blind ambitious lust had finished me forever.

Jude Barlow was a beautiful, intelligent and driven young lady. She had graduated from university with astounding grades and got her dream job in journalism without much hassle. For her first column, the only guidance she was given from her editor was: “Write about something that interests you. Something that grasps your imagination and makes you want to know more. Then you know that your readers will react the same. Just make it short enough to fit in two or three columns and if I think it deserves it, I’ll give it some more space. Have fun, Miss Barlow.” So Jude had decided to write about a subject that was sparsely discussed anymore. It had been reported many time in the past and, now, all interest seemed to have wavered. The story had always stuck with her, though. From the first time she read about it in the newspaper, Jude had become almost obsessed with the Burgess Case. She felt there was so much more information that had been left unreported. Finding people to interview was the most difficult part, she found. She had managed to get in contact with some of the girls old neighbours, but none of them really knew much more about it than she did. It was impossible for her to get in touch with Mr and Mrs Burgess, who refused to answer their mobile unless they recognised the number and she had heard rumours that Mr Burgess had a pellet gun he was not at all shy about using on strangers. Finally, after much searching and sweating, Jude had convinced Melanie Burgess’ mathematics teacher to meet with her. She had chosen a modest café that was located just outside the city centre, so he wouldn’t feel too threatened. Mr Peter Murdoch did feel threatened, though. He had arrived far too early and sipped, nervously at a cup of tea while he waited. He had not spoken to the press about the incident once he discovered just how deep the problem had been. The only reason he had accepted this time was that the whole hype over the situation had died down. He thought that no one would take what he had to say into much consideration anymore. Any fears or worries that Mr Murdoch had immediately vanished when Jude walked through the door and into the stuffy café. He was alerted to her entrance by the soft tinkling of the little bell over the door. He looked up and caught eyes with the most attractive woman he had ever met. She had thick, wavy red hair that accentuated her very pale, flawless skin. Her green eyes stood out against the light, too, and bore, deep, into his. She had full, pouting lips that spread into a magical smile, revealing sparkling, white teeth. Her slim figure was flattered by a grey pencil skirt, tight white blouse and grey waistcoat. She was carrying a large shoulder bag that did not affect her posture in the slightest and she moved delicately despite wearing thin healed shoes. “Mr Murdoch, yes?” she said in a breathless, articulated voice. She extended a pale arm out and Mr Murdoch took her delicate hand in both of his, shaking it eagerly. “Very nice to meet you, Miss…” “Barlow,” Jude said, continuing to smile. “Apologies for keeping you waiting-” “Not at all, not at all!” Mr Murdoch waved away her apology and gestured that she should sit. She slid the heavy shoulder bag off her arm and onto the floor, before sitting on the plastic chair and examining the little menu. “Please,” Mr Murdoch said, blood pumping in his skull. “Let me buy you a drink.” “Oh, you don’t have to do that-” “Please?” “Oh alright. I’ll just have a Diet Coke, if that’s alright?” Mr Murdoch attempted his own version of a winning smile, which was partially obscured by his greying moustache. Jude smiled back, nonetheless and watched as he got up to buy her drink. The moment he turned away from her, she relaxed and rolled her eyes, exasperated by the gall of the old guy. She was used to getting that kind of response from men, and found it to be rather useful in extracting valuable information. As she waited for her drink she set up her interview station. She tugged out an expensive Dictaphone and placed it on the table. Then she pulled out her notepad and flipped through the pages until she came to a clear one. She was testing the pen, by making little scribbles in the margin, when Mr Murdoch returned. He placed her Coke in front of her and sat down with his own drink. “Thank you,” she said, turning her cheery face back on in a flash. “Just give me a moment to set up and then we’ll get started, ok?” “Take your time, dear.” Mr Murdoch sipped his drink and watched her continue her scribbling and then rifle through some papers that she extracted from her shoulder bag. He had begun to sweat slightly and the blood continue to surge through his body in a way he had not experienced for many years. The truth was, Mr Murdoch was a happily married man of almost thirty years. He had no children but he and his wife where very much in love. And yet, here he was, drooling over some girl who was young enough to be his daughter. His granddaughter, even. He swallowed the saliva that built up inside and attempted to swallow back the feelings that where building in his head. He would have to control himself. This was a silly, shameful way to behave. “Alright, I think I’m ready. Just one more thing,” Jude pressed a little button on the Dictaphone and a red light signalled that it was on. “Interview with Mr Murdoch on-” “Peter.” “Sorry?” Mr Murdoch cleared his throat and tried smiling again. “You can call me Peter, please, I’d rather…” “Alright, then. Interview with Peter Murdoch…” She continued with the date and time and a few other things that he couldn’t quite put into place. Then, finally, she sat back, sipped her drink and began. “So, you were Miss Burgess’ maths teacher, correct?” “Yes, indeed, that was me,” Mr Murdoch nodded and then fell silent as the memories came flooding back to him. Not just of that day but of every other day he spent as a teacher to the degenerating teenagers of many generations. “Do you remember much about the incident?” “Not as much as you’d like, I dare say,” Mr Murdoch stroked his moustache while he mulled over some unshared thought. He continued to stare at the opposite wall while he spoke to her. “I have to admit that I hadn’t taken much notice of Miss Burgess while she was at school. She was the year punching bag. The ostracised, unpopular, shunned kid. There’s one in every year and she was this years. It was easy to see why. The poor girl just screamed ’weak’. Not that she wasn’t as bad as the rest of them, mind,” he scowled as he remembered more clearly now. “Yes…always late, never handing in homework, sometimes refusing to do class work. She came to me one day, after class. I think it was in the first week of school. She says to me, ’Sir, I can’t understand all this number stuff.’ So I took pity on her, told her she didn’t need to worry about it too much and gave her some extra work to do at home, for practice. She never did try though. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had just played me like a fool that day.” “What about that day? What was she like then?” “Uh…Well, I do remember that the class was particularly rowdy that day. It was the first class they had after lunch so they where always a little more hyper than usual. I was having a bit of trouble controlling them and then she just came waltzing in-” “Sorry, but by ‘she’ you mean Melanie Burgess?” “Yes, yes, sorry. Melanie just strode in, fifteen minutes late. She looked like she’d been crying so I just told her to take her seat. She sat in the very end row because only two others sat in that row, right up the back.” “Ok,” Jude scribbled a few notes. “Keep going. What happened next? Did you find out why she had been crying?” “Well, the class went on as normal. One of the boys that sat behind her was bugging her, but that was usual. I told him to quit it, oh, I don’t know how many times. She just seemed to be in a terrible state that day. She was just staring at the desk, her face all pale and…broken? I can’t think of the right word, sorry. I thought she might have been sick and asked if she’d like to go to the nurse but she refused.

Even though I didn’t know what time it was and the lights were low, but the starry night sky was enough to illuminate the pathway I ventured. My home far away in the wild and where the misty hills were, all covered by fluffy clouds that have always felt as though I was able to eat it like cotton candy. The road far away, far, far away from where I stood, gazing into the brilliant moon made me picture my family, memories of distant pasts flashed through my mind, as my movement stopped and my cheeks, felt droplets, rolling down and then the wind taking it away from me, like encouragement to not cry. However the wind cannot take away the pain that lingers deep within my empty heart, it can only breeze through it, cooling the rage within me. I continued on into the depths. It was past the point of no return, return means failure and my master will never accept failure. Time, “The Moving image of eternity.” – Plato. My master enjoyed quotes, thinking back on my master makes me even gloomier. I continued on this path, I cannot not follow this path, I must obey this path. Even if this path spans towards eternity, I would continue walking. There were no scenery to accompany me, there was no trees, but only withering ones. Another quote that my master enjoyed “Insanity is not repeating something for eternity, it is repetitively expecting different results from the repetition.” Maybe for the first time in my life, I was feeling insanity, I wanted to go off this path, but yet I’m afraid to disobey, I have not the will to disobey. The funny thing was that it never rains, it never becomes daylight, I never felt fatigued…. I stopped, I wondered, I questioned, I don’t know the line between truth and false anymore. What am I? I never looked, as I trembled in fear. My mind bombarded with questions. Maybe my master hid the questions strayed from this path. I looked at my human hands, looked at my human feet. I felt human, I must be human. I continued on walking, but soon I strayed off the path. I began on walking, but soon I strayed off the path. I began to run, for the first time in my life, I panted. I felt fatigued, I felt alive. However, doubt lingered in my heart, it was the first time I disobeyed, maybe I am becoming sane. Light gushed onto my face, as though giving me a huge slap. I felt pain, that was how I know I was alive. My eyelid opened, there was no light, but a bag covered around me, supplying me with oxygen. My legs and hands felt weak, but I gave a final push from the bag and broke it apart, I stood as I felt disgust. Rows and rows of bodies that are set on stasis, maybe I shouldn’t have strayed, because now I am walking in path, accompanied by people in stasis.

Before I tell you my story I suppose I should tell you about myself, my name is Aldric Burkhard,the year was 1943 and I was a young man 19 maybe 20, World War II was in its final stages and I was an officer in the Waffen-SS, I could sense the fear in my komrades eyes, they were afraid, as was I but I could not show that. Germany was losing ground quickly and rumors were spread that even Herr Hitler had doubts about our position of victory, I assured my men that these were not true and we had to muster the courage to continue to fight, for our families and for the fatherland. I remember one boy in particular, Ulli Jaeger, he couldn't have been more than 16, he was so shaken that he would no longer speak and only followed orders when shouted at. I once told him to stand strong and we would make it through this, he was captured by the communists later that week and I do not know what became of him. Judge me as you must, call me fascist or call me a Nazi,I fought for my country and the protection of my family and my people so I regret nothing. As the war dwindled to an end many of the soldiers under my command began to desert, fleeing to their loved ones I hope. I do not blame them, as the the Allied powers tore through Germany it became apparent that we will lose the war. I did not seek retribution for those who fled, I even told those who stayed that I would not pursue them but will instead report them MIA, but I warned them to be careful, other officers may not be so lenient. Soon came the time where even my will was tested, I did not want to die to the communists, I too fled the front line. My journey to the border did not last long as I was captured by the communists right outside of Berlin. My captors were cruel, they tortured and battered my komrades and I for what seemed like an eternity, today I come to realise that it lasted for almost a week. I was lucky though, I was no longer wearing my uniform at the time of my capture... Those that were suffered infinitely more than we did, they thought me a mere civilian. My captors were animals, they could not have been human. They transported us in a rusty truck and it was at this time I thought of Ulli, they tortured that already broken boy, I still hope they were merciful and his death was swift. I distinctly remember one man who they pulled out of the truck and began cutting him with whatever sharp object was in reach, lacerations covered his body as they dug their weapons into his flesh rendering it torn. They then relieved themselves in his wounds but their cruelty did not end there, when they finally decided to end his life they did not do it quickly, they tied him to the back of the truck and drove. His screams haunted me for years and only subsided once his chest was caught on a jagged rock, ripping his body open and leaving a long trail of his organs. With one last desperate attempt his arms cleaved towards his entrails to pull them back inside himself, he died shortly following. As we traveled in the truck it seemed they were taking us out one by one to die, I refused to die like an animal, the other prisoners and I spawned an escape plan, as the guards slept we broke our bonds and escaped, but I did more than escape, I killed both guards, I took a rock and began to beat their heads on, my vision turned red and when I became aware again all that stood under me was a pile of grey matter and chunks of flesh and skull the other guard was across the field, his torso separated from his legs with only his intestines connecting the two pieces of rusted metal were gouged into his eyes and one in his throat, I can only assume the metal was from the truck. The Sun was beginning to rise so I decided to run, I must have blacked out while on the move because when I awoke I was face down in a muddy creek. I traveled for two days before I came across a small farming village named Byrska. At this point I had no idea where I was and the villagers could tell I was lost they took me in and provided for me for a short time. I was finally able to sleep for the first time in weeks. My dreams were occupied by nightmares. I could hear the screams of my allies,I was standing within a butchery. The complex was enormous and flesh and blood was strewn about the floor. I felt sick and anxious, sweat was pouring down my face and my entire body felt like pins and needles. The building had no roof and the sky was pale red with a light blue streak that almost resembled a very basic sketch of a human. As I looked back down the ground turned green, I was now standing in the middle of Byrska, my arms and legs were covered in blood, I looked forward and saw the same blue human from the clouds. It raised one of it's limbs in a beckoning motion towards me. I cautiously began to step forward as I moved I began to feel a Sharp pain in my arms, the flesh was being peeled from my limbs as I moved towards him. The figure kept it's tall demeanor and continued the beckoning gesture. I did not stop moving, the pain engulfed me but I did not stop moving, I could not, he needed me. As I reached for him he began to dissipate within me, his essence became one with mine and I could feel my bones shattering within me, blood began to flow from my eyes and my teeth fell out of my mouth. As I woke in the villagers shack, alone and soaked in sweat, I was clothed in torn rags, my clothes Sat on a table at the foot of the bed. My hands were covered in cuts, I had no idea where they came from, in fact my entire body seemed to be in bad shape I was covered in bruises and cuts, a small patch of flesh was missing from my arm. I wandered out of the shack and met one of the farmers outside, I tried to speak to him but he did not understand German I assume, in fact the moment I spoke his eyes widened and he spoke some words in a somewhat menacing tone and herded me back into the shack and closed the door behind me. I was very confused and wanted to know where I was but it was clear that we had hit a language barrier. I decided to try to get some more rest but my efforts were futile as sometime passed I heard a noise outside the shack, I peered out of a crack in the wall and I was stunned by shock, it was the rusted old truck that had brought me to this outland. It was the exact same truck, how could this be, I killed the drivers? Were they looking for me? I watched closer and the drivers of the truck opened the back of the truck and herded the prisoners in the back into a nearby barn then locked the barn and drove back the way they came. This piqued my curiosity, was I not captured by communist soldiers? Who are these people... I had no guests throughout the day so I decided to sneak into that barn when night arrived. It was about 1 AM when I snuck out to the barn, the lock was broken and was more than likely just there to keep the doors closed. Inside it seemed that it was just a normal barn but where had the prisoners gone? I explored until I found a door to a sub-section of the barn. This door was very different, it was solid iron and had bolts to hold it closed, I opened the bolt and stepped down into the catacombs. I grabbed a lantern off of the wall and began to search for the prisoners. I came across a room at the end of a series of tunnels, and stepped inside, it was the butchery from my dreams. There were bodies hanging from meat hooks and a sliced cadaver on a table next to a bloody cleaver. These people were not ordinary farmers they consumed human flesh, the stench of the room was worse than any battlefield I had ever set foot upon. That was when I saw him. I remember one boy in particular, Ulli Jaeger, he couldn't have been more than 16, he was so shaken that he would no longer speak and only followed orders when shouted at... There lay his mangled and torn body. He was stripped of his flesh and hung on a hook by his neck, he still had the broken expression he had when I last saw him. I fell to my knees and cried like a child, he was so young and had his life wasted by a group of rabid animals. My vision turned black, and I drug my feet as I walked to the cutting board, I wretched the cleaver from its place and began slowly walking out of the catacombs. By the time I was out it was morning and I could hear footsteps towards the bolted door. It was the farmer from yesterday, his jaw dropped in shock when I appeared in front of him right at the entrance of the tunnels, he dropped the bucket and bloody rag he was carrying and it was at that moment that I had absolutely no doubt that these people May be innocent. I swung the butchers tool into his torso and he fell to the ground coughing and attempting to scream but his efforts were futile as I pushed the cleavers blade into his mouth and forced downward, I could hear the blood gurgling in the back of his throat, every gasp of air a round of justice. I got up and moved on to the farm house, I will have retribution for my friend. There were three more, the wife, the uncle and the son, these degenerates have no right to life. I stepped inside the door and my mind faded into d arkness once more. My arm no longer wielded the cleaver, it was the blue figure. We had become one. I burned the property to the ground after burying Ulli, they would no longer sacrifice to sate their flesh lust. I took the farmers truck and began to drive. I had no sense of direction so any choice was good, I drove for days before finding something that made me truly happy, the border of Germany. I was home, I could see my family again and I could pay my respect to the fallen soldiers. When I finally reached my home I stepped inside expecting to see my wife and daughter but I was shocked to see her with another man. She screamed and hid behind the man and I asked her why. The neighbours heard her scream and contacted the authorities, I was soon arrested. They accused me of murder, of slaughtering an entire village, and the worst accusation of all, they told me I murdered Ulli Jaeger. No they were wrong, the farmers killed Ulli and many others and consumed their flesh. It was no use, I was committed to an asylum for the mentally ill. No treatment has worked they say, at this point I can no longer speak they have shocked my brain and even the blue figure was quiet. Euthanasia they say, I am a vegetable they say, I am suffering they say. As I lay on the table awaiting the needle the blue figure begins to dissipate out of my chest, dragging me along with him.

It was a Thursday in 1946 when the father of my father didn’t come home. This wasn’t uncommon, but that night was one of the few nights he promised he would be. Being the third year my father was in boy scouts, it was a suitable time to travel to Holland State Park with the rest of the troop for the annual father and son weekend. Robert Williams was born in 1905 to a fatherless father who would leave Robert fatherless for some time, and a woman who would live until she was 92. In twenty-four years Robert will meet Barbara, and they will have four children. Nicholas, the first born, will die in a car crash at sixteen. I was born in 1961 around lunchtime. Succeeding my brother, my father would not leave us fatherless like himself and his father before him. My mother is Emma, and after a drug-filled fifties she is transitioning into motherhood with grace. I am 8 pounds, five ounces, and I am a happy baby. Wilson Williams was born in 1932, succeeding his brother Nicholas, and preceding his sister Camille. His father Robert looks at him and sees himself, just as he did with Nicholas, and will with Camille. My father looks up at Robert and sees out of focus shapes and blended colors. It is 1942, and Robert is whipped with a belt by his drunken father. A biological father isn’t always a father, and just because a mother doesn’t participate, doesn’t mean she isn’t guilty as well. The belt was cheap damaged leather. Tears well up in Robert’s eyes, and his body becomes numb. On a Friday in 1966, I get glasses. The following Monday I am called “four-eyes” and “nerd,” and get my head pushed into the window of the bus, bending my new glasses. The boy who pushed me I would be best friends with for the next fifteen years of my life. My father is teaching his second son how to throw a football with more consistency on a warm day in 1975. He doesn’t think his son is putting the necessary effort forth, and begins yelling. He thinks this will make his son better and try harder, and Wilson believes he has such potential, but his son is hurt. Robert becomes a Williams on a fall day in 1922, adopting the name his father adopted when adopting an American persona while adopting Robert and his mother as his own family. Robert Williams has struggled with his identity his entire life, and he believes this will erase the history associated with his false true father’s name. It’s 9:00 pm in 1962 at Walt Disney World Park in Orlando, Florida. I am being pushed in a stroller by my mother, and my brother walks a long side of her. I look up to the sky, and am entranced by the lights of the carousel. It spins round and round, and my father films from a distance. Fishing on a warm day in 1944 is a normal occurrence. John Bailey and Wilson have been friends for a few years, and will be friends for the rest of their lives. The sun pours onto the river through tree branches, and Wilson sees his warped reflection in the water and smiles. Elementary school children are on Spring Break in early April of 1967. Robert is sitting with his wife Barbara on the couch watching television, awaiting the arrival of his son, son’s wife, and son’s sons. Grandchildren brought a new light into Robert’s life, and he loved that his family still visited him despite being across the country. February was always my least favorite time of the year, especially in 1978. My grades were always at their lowest during this time, and my parents have extremely high expectations. I would await their return from parent-teacher conferences with a sinking feeling of dread. It’s a dark Saturday night in 1951, and my father returns home with his girlfriend. He sees his sister and mother crying, his brother and father yelling, and feels the weight of years of turmoil fall onto him. His father looks at him with remorse, and an awareness is shared. The Christmas of 1967 was not a particularly cold one. I watch Robert conversing with his true false father, but steps away for a minute or two. He awkwardly approaches his daughter and formally greets her. He loves her so much, but will not let himself escape his history, and pulls into himself. I look at old home movies from 1969 eleven years after. My brother and I look so happy, and whom I remember wants to grow up as fast as possible. Now that I’m basically there, I shouldn’t have been in such a rush. Pictures and memories are only ghosts of my former self, and I never thought I would be haunted by happiness. Wilson lived in an actual house at the start of 1940, now he and his family found themselves in a trailer park. This wasn’t the first time this has happened. Like clockwork, every two years or so, Wilson watches his home get taken, and his parents lead him and his siblings to a new trailer park each time. He loved it. Robert walks out of his family’s trailer in the summer of 1940. The business had its ups and downs, and this was one of its lowest lows. He looks at his children and how happy they are. He sees how they are brought joy through less money and more family. Robert’s business then goes on to another up. It’s 1985, and I’m looking through old photos with my parents. My dad shows me one of his family in front of their trailer when he was young. Despite how inconsistent his life was, despite the stress and loss, he missed it. I watch him get up and go to the phone. “Hey dad.

Phil lived in honey land with the honey man. He realized one day that the honey man looked like he was made out of caramel. Phil needed some caramel for a vanilla ice cream cone which he had been carrying around waiting to find a topping for. He said to honey the man, "I say Honeyman you look as though you are made of caramel. Could you perhaps spare some for me to put on my ice cream cone?" "Well" said honey man, "That all depends. Are you willing to do something for me? "Whatever it takes" said Phillip. "Well this may seem like an odd request, but I need you to pour this bucket of honey all over yourself." Phillip was reluctant, but he was willing to do what he must. At last, the last drop of honey left the bucket. Phil heard a “poof!” And just like that the honey man was gone. Phillip was left alone in honey land, his ice cream melting in his hand. He cried out, "Honey man! Where have you gone?!" But there was no one around to answer. Phillip wandered through honey land for a decade and a half, searching for the honey man. He climbed the Honey Mountains and swam the honey sea, even crossed the honey dessert and climbed the tallest honey tree but the honey man was nowhere around. There was only one place left for him to look… The Molasses Palace Molasses palace was a sacred and holy place. The only one righteous enough to enter is a Honeyman. Phillip wasn’t sure what would happen if he entered, but he figured since he was still covered in honey, he could pass for the Honeyman. And he was right. After searching the Palace and finding no sign of the real Honeyman, Phil had to accept the fact that his friend was no longer in Honeyland. He pondered the universe and looked out into the stars as he whispered “If you are out there honeyman, I will find you.” In his despair, Phillip cried out to the Honey Gods saying “Oh gracious Lord of Honey, please tell me how to find the Honey Man at once!” Immediately a voice Boomed down from the sky saying “You must learn how to move through the dimensions and harness the power of the honey” Phillip had no idea what this meant. He didn’t even know what a dimension was; nonetheless which one he was in. He pleaded “Honey Lord, guide me through the dimensions and I will forever be in your debt” The honey Lord replied with a voice that shook the heavens saying “I will help you under one condition; you must be the Honeyman of this land for all of eternity! (Or until you find someone willing to take your place) Phil was determined to find out what happened to his friend. He wondered why he would disappear right after he had him dump the honey on his head and right before he put the caramel on his ice cream. Thinking about the now melted ice cream cone made Phillip upset. On one hand he missed his friend and just wanted to find him, but on the other hand he was very angry because he was never able to eat his ice cream cone. There was no ice cream shop in all of Honey land. It was actually a complete mystery to Phillip where it even came from. All he really knew about himself was that he was there one day. He needed caramel, and the Honeyman appeared to have what he needed. That ice cream was all he ever knew and now it was gone, all because of the Honeyman. Phillip needed to find the Honeyman whether it be for friendship, or revenge. He accepted the Honey Lords offer and was bestowed upon all of the power of a honey man, a power which came over him like a disease and took over his entire being. He was now covered in a beautiful golden glow, one which shined brighter than the suns. The power rushed and surged through his body as he soared through time, space and honey; taking in knowledge from the fifth dimension. Phillip now had what it took to find the Honeyman. He had infinite power from the third dimension, allowing him to travel through space instantaneously. He had infinite power from the fourth dimension, allowing him to travel through time and offering him limitless knowledge of the universe. But most important was the power which came from the fifth dimension, the power of honey. After a session of yoga and deep meditation, phillip was given a premonition from his own intuition. He no longer was in need of the Honey Lords Help. He looked inside himself to find the honeyman, because the honeyman was inside of the universe and the universe, inside of him. He used the powers of honey to travel the vastly expansive cosmos until he came upon the place where his intuition led him, which was a lonely blue speck in the giant spiraling galaxy known as the Milky Way. Phillip hoped that he could find a milk shake in the Milky Way, but what he found instead was the truth. And sometimes, the truth should just stay hidden.

I don’t know if I want to write to my mother or about my mother. I don’t know if I want to visit her for the last time while she is in coma or stay here thousands of miles away and write. I don’t know if I feel sick to my stomach knowing that the person who gave life to me is at the end of her life or rather, I feel nothing. I don’t know if I will regret for the rest of my life my decision not to see her before she dies or if this decision will fade away into the thick fabric of my life. I don’t know if I love my mother or not, if I forgave her or not, if now, as she is laying in a hospital bed for the last four months, she is stubbornly waiting for me, her only daughter, to come and tell her that I forgave her. Or rather, she is fighting the inevitable like she always does; bitter, alone, and fueled by anger. The name my mother gave me is Revital Siach-bar. I shed bits of my name while discarding parts of myself. For a long time I didn't know who I was and who I was becoming. What I’m dropping and what I’m keeping. I am able to write these words because they are not thought and written in my mother’s tongue. That tongue nourished in mother’s milk now spoiled, and reluctant to yield a thought. My mother is a package of qualities and sensibilities I don't want to have. I fear that by being close to her, like a contagious disease, I will contract it. If now I was with her at Herzog hospital in Jerusalem on the last floor before the basement, known as minus four floor, I would look outside the window and watch the heavy rain fall on the city I barely recognize. It’s a city I left behind with seductive sunsets reflecting on shiny gold and silver domes as the muezzins’ voices are woven in with church bells and the prayers of Arvit raising up from synagogues. Now, heavy and gray she is dressed in layers of concrete, security checkpoints blocking the flow of life, special lanes are dedicated to police and ambulances speeding with full sirens on. A city that rigidly divides good from bad, us from them, the sacred from the profane. If I was in the hospital with my mom I would call her Ima and touch her white hair, comb it back away from her eyes. I would do it gently — very gently. Smiling to a fading memory of how harshly she braided my hair till silent tears would emerge from the corners of my eyes — smiling as if I let go, as if this two dimensional memory, this black and white image can be cast away in a dusty cigar box of old photos. Perhaps, if I was with my mother now, I would go to the top floor of the hospital, plus four where the cafeteria and take a break. I will watch the traffic coming up at the entrance to Jerusalem from above. I would try to guess how angry or fearful people are from the way they drive and honk their horns, gauge how many police and army vehicles are on the road taking the temperature of the coming intifada. Evaluate the situation for myself rather than listen to the news — they way you do when you live there. I might go back to her room look at her, hold her hand, pretend I am fearless. What can she do to me now? I will ask over and over — she is in a coma, I would say over and over. If I was there at the hospital I would wait for the nurses and doctors to clear, hold her veiny frail hand and I would talk to her, aloud and in hebrew. I don’t know what I would tell her. I might say I love you ima, I know you did the best you could, I can let go now and you can too. Or maybe, I would tell her for the first time how hard it was to walk with her day after day after school to my dad’s grave. To hear her talking to him, whispering, crying, sometimes blaming him for leaving her behind with three kids, sometimes telling him she is going to kill herself also just like he did. I would tell her how I wished she would look at me, touch me, smile, thank me for cleaning once again the head stone, ask me what do I do day after day for hours there at the grave site. I wanted to tell her how I memorized the names of all the dead soldiers, their age and their place of death. How I liked some more then others. How I decided who was handsome and who was not by the sound of their names and who I would have liked to marry if they came back. How I wished to tell her about the election in my class, for the first time in fourth grade when I was elected to be the president. How I was worried they chose me because they felt pity for me. They voted for me because of what I didn't have not because of who I was. I would tell her that I can go on for days if she was interested, that I kept all these memories, recounting them for her to know. Perhaps I would just leave her room abruptly, despondent and gloomy like a teenager who realizes for the first time the smallness of their parents and go to Har Herzel, walking distance from Herzog hospital and visit my dad. Maybe wash the head stone once again and leave another stone on the edge of the grave, wishing I had asked someone years ago why adults do that. I might go to see the house where I was born and grew up with the poor immigrants from Morocco, Iraq and Egypt. The house she sold one day without telling me. I would tell her how bitter and disorienting it was to come back from a school trip to a new house never able to say goodbye to him and to the house. I would have to evaluate taking the bus, risking a suicide bomber or drive on unfamiliar new roads navigating through angry traffic. I would go knowing I wouldn't be able to find the little house with the unpaved trail and the lemon tree we planted right after he died. Maybe I will come back to the hospital and tell her how the house disappeared among big high houses, that Madam Ades is no longer there, that Mr. Cohen and his family disappeared and that my grandmother’s house adjacent to our house is now a villa for the well off new generation of Israelis who park their shiny cars in a garage where we used to hang the laundry. I will go back there to minus four floor again to check on her, I would try one more time, like I always do. Or, not go at all, stay here and write.

From the second his eyes held hers, he saw his heart's match. Toes to fingertips, there was an awakening. She smiled and he knew in that instant that there was something, a captivation, that reverberated to his essence. Absolutely refused denial. She was radiant more so than the sun herself. Dangerous to the point of consumption. There are many simple truths in a man's life, most learned through hardship, but paramount of these is that when you feel something as flooring as true love, you don't dawdle. You don't consider, you don't rationalize. You embrace purpose, and that's just what he did. A hello was followed by the natural progress of these things and became "I love you". A broken man rebuilt himself levied on the foundation of love's promise. And it was good. Time passed, heedlessly as time does, and they grew old. Weathered. But when a man has passion, pure intent, years are but a circumstance. An unavoidable part of living. Sharing. So as he held her, this one last time, he thought about that first moment. That life-altering happenstance, perhaps fate, that defined what he was meant for. Who he was meant for. And she looked up, monitors protesting in the background, met his eyes, and he knew in that instant that he had fulfilled his every wish. He spent his full life embracing the soul for which he was created to complete. When the broken bleeps became a steady tone, the old man took her left hand in his, kissed the ring with which he promised his heart, and finally wept.

As we walked out to the lake, away from the streets that run like rapids, I knew I was in bad shape. I had a feeling, almost physically tangible, that today was going to hurt. I could tell by the way her hand sat lifelessly in mine, as if she wanted to remove it but was just biding her time. I've never been one to prolong the painfully evident, or placate the evidently painful, so I asked the obvious and dangerous question. "What's wrong?" I said, flippantly. As if today was just another day and I wanted to know how she wanted her eggs that morning. We watched the lazy ducks in the overcast gloom and I felt a relief, as if we were finally approaching the verdict, and my life hung in the balance. I almost laughed to myself as these thoughts imparted themselves in my mind--"so melodramatic..." was my hilarity. It wasn't as if I was facing the death penalty. But I WAS losing my girl. I could see that in the way she answered my question before a clumsy word left her flawless lips. By the way her smile turned strained then faded. She steadied herself with the kind of breath a doctor draws before he tells you simply,"there's nothing more we can do". I closed my eyes and braced myself, as if the impact was a surprise and not something I had accepted before we came anywhere near this stupid lake. She stammered through her speech like an unprepared valedictorian, all graceless and mindful of my feeble pride. I love her for this, as even in the end, she always paid heed to other people's feelings. I nodded along, not an interjection in the world can bring someone back who has already gone from you. She turned away at last, the formality had come to fruition, and strode with purpose toward her newly single life. She looked radiant and beautiful, as if the last two years lost had as much impact on her as changing body wash. What can you do when you lose your muse, your heart, the one you thought was going to see you into the ground? I sat and watched the ducks nip at each other and wished I was anywhere and anytime else.

He trembled. Francis looked at the blood on the wall, he looked at what he had done. And he felt no regret. As he has everyday, this reluctant, stubby man crawled to a factory. He never enjoyed it, and spent more time contemplating his hatred for it then he had spent in it. He did not enjoy the noise of the contemporary machines nor the sight of them. Francis pulled out his aged pocket watch, an heirloom pristine and perfect but only within his own perception. The man had only just made his regular time. As he entered the windowless facility the sounds emitted from the factory were not unusual, shuffling of feet, the roar of technology and the often-present yelling of the factory's owner. This time his verbal abuse was directed at a young woman, undoubtedly to be followed by at least a few whacks to the head. This is what he hated most about these times, discipline seems to be the most popular form of authority. Francis hated that about this man, Francis believed that the world would be better off without his damned authority. Francis looked upon metal that gleamed in his candlelight and contemplated it, then wound his pocket watch as he did every night before he sleeps. As Francis lay alone in bed he saw the picture of his wife, he felt sadness and resentment but most of all he felt angry. He hid his secret underneath his coat as he trudged to work the next day. As he went throughout the day working at this factory, he saw the factory owner once again yelling and hitting, this caused Francis to grow more and more fond of the thought of removing him. As all the workers rambunctiously exited the factory Francis hid next to the owner's office, waiting for his chance to murder. Francis places his hand on the door, he raises his knife in the air, with fire gleaming in his eyes. Francis stabbed the owner of the factory, the man of industrialization. The knife stayed in his chest, and Francis wrapped his hands around the enemies neck, pushing him against the wall. The owner struggled and caused considerable pain using his fist on one of Francis' legs. But Francis kept squeezing his neck and did not let go until he felt the breathing come to an end. Francis looked at the wall, and he loved what he did. But then, there is always is the trickiest part: hiding the body. He needed to dispose of all the remnants without any trace, no one would have to know. The decision he came to was dumping the body in the river, and he needed to do it when no one could see, the darkest hour. He checked his beloved watch, it ticked at 7:33. He would leave at 12:59, moonset. Francis was thinking this all through very rationally as he shut the office door, he would hide here in pure darkness aside from a flickering candle, until he was to hide the result. But, he wished to be in right mind so he decided to rest for a few hours he checked his pocket watch one last time before he laid down, and rested. He awoke with the feeling that he overslept, Francis quickly checked his watch and saw it tick; 12:37. Grateful that it was not too late, he creaked open the office door. And as he dragged the body out of the room, he left the blood on the wall. The body was heavy, full of blood and did not quite feel dead. Francis dragged his body next to the back exit. The factory was very dark, with no windows or candles. Francis checked his pocket watch once more, he could barely make out what the watch said. It ticked; 12:57. Francis wrapped his hand around the knob of the heavy door, ready to open. But he stopped. Suddenly he remembered: the blood he left on the wall! He quickly ran back to the office, with a dirty bucket of water and towel he found waiting on the floor. With candlelight guiding him, he scrubbed away the blood quite well. Although the wall did now have visible wet grime, it was probably unnoticeable. As he left the office, something in the corner of his eye moved in the dark. He quickly ran back to the exit with his bucket in hand. He left the bucket and towel next to a conveyor belt, and cautiously walked back to the door, the body still lay there, but Francis felt as if it moved. As an extra step of caution he felt the throat and felt no breath. Francis for the last time checked his pocketwatch; it ticked at 1:14 it should still be very dark. Francis opened the door. He was absolutely terrified. Light flood into the factory and into Francis' eyes. A man named Francis, standing in the doorway of a factory with a dead body at his side and blood on his arms. The factory clock ticked; 9:17.

“Listen, there’s nothin’ to be afraid of. Whatever happens, I got your back. We go in, do the thing, and get out.” Paul’s voice echoes in my head, “And then we get payed, and we all have bevs on me.” Well, we most certainly won’t be having “bevs” now, not with Paul bleeding from two huge holes in his stomach lying in the backseat of a car I don’t even remember getting in. Who’s car was this? I kept asking myself that, it was the only question that my brain had the power to ask, not what went wrong? Or where the hell were Nick and Wes? No, I kept wondering who’s car I stole, and if the owner was dead or dying. I kept driving, Paul’s agonizing screams providing more than enough white noise to keep me from going insane. He kept asking where I was going, at least I think that’s what he was asking; I couldn’t really decipher much between his constant crying and choking. We finally arrived at the outskirts of some town in some state, hell, I didn’t even know if I was in the right country, I hit the my first red light I’ve seen in what felt like hours and stopped. “Why the hell did you stop I’m friggin’ dyin’ back here D!” Paul managed to say. “I’m not gonna risk getting pulled over,” I answer, hands gripped tight on the wheel in anticipation for the green light, “if a cop comes up and sees you bleeding out back there and sees that this car is stolen, that’ll be it for both of us. Just sit back and think about the dogs in the field, or something.” I joke as the light finally turns green. I can’t believe I just made a joke while my friend is almost dead, “friend”, I’ve been using that term rather loosely lately. “There’s bound to be a friggin' hospital somewhere, are we even in America?” “Yeah, Wes has got family down here, little town called Sanderson. What happened to Wes anyways? And where’s Nick?” Paul seems to have calmed down a little bit; he must have taken my advice about the dogs. He’s still choking and sobbing, but his screams have been reduced to mere grunts. “All I remember is getting popped and waking up in that fag Bryan’s car.” So it’s Bryan’s car I thought to myself, I sigh with relief, at least I know Bryan’s dead, he won’t be coming back for his car. “Well, something went bad, Bryan shot you, Nick shot Bryan, I got you into a car and drove off.” I can’t remember what caused that whole chain of events to happen, frankly I’d be fine if I didn’t remember for the rest of my life. I notice a sign, “Sanderson Health Clinic.” “Friggin’ finally.” I pull into the hospital parking lot and park my, Bryan’s car. I get out and open Paul’s door, “Okay, put on your best poker face, we went out into the desert looking for snakes, we stumbled upon a warehouse where bad things were happening, fighting ensued, and now we’re here.” Paul looks at me with a face full of agony. “Never mind, let me do the talking, I did take theater arts my freshman year.” I say assuredly as I hoist him up and help him across the parking lot. But before we made it half way to the clinic, a car speeds through the small lot and comes to a screeching halt right in front of us. “The hell is…” was all I could manage to say before the two windows facing us rolled down and multiple guns poked out of the car aimed right at us.

"It's today. Humanity finally meets Those That Were Before.", I tell myself before the speech. "What a dumb name..." The day the human race learned of our upbringing, everything changed. We were no longer obsessed with ourselves, obsessed with destroying each other like anarchists at war. We knew. We had the confirmation that there was more. Sure, there was still active groups denying such claims, clinging to our old ways. "This is why I'm doing this speech, to unify humanity as one race reaching for the stars". I was prepared, even after all the commotion; the riots, the protests - humanity wasn't prepared for this, not all of it. We were always looking for life on other planets, but never thought of looking here, on earth. The evidence wasn't in the deep sea, like most would have thought. It was in plain sight. It was us. "Mr. Sinclair, the board is ready." This was it. I had to convince the human race that we were the aliens all along... Such a strange thing to say, let alone think. In the past years, numerous discoveries had been made at the same locations the initial Defining took place. Things like space travel and augmented lifespans were now possible. Those That Were Before, as we had taken a liking to calling them, left many documents in their wake, documents that were now shaping humanity as a whole. I had memorized countless details from my father's expedition notes, the very same notes that started it all. This was it. Should we succeed, we would set out for our former home-planet in a matter of years. I stepped on the podium and delivered my speech. The human race was now a unified whole, one that would commit itself unto the expansion of our knowledge. I shouldn't say that like it had been easy. It took far more than a speech; in fact it took several years. But we were now ready; ready for more, ready for...Home. As I lay in the cockpit of humanity's first space-faring ship Icarus, I observed the countless stars, planets, and moons that crossed our path. As we laid eyes on the planet we called Domus, we were struck by a ghastly image. Ruin after ruin, we could only find desolation wherever we looked. Had our ancestors destroyed themselves, or were they attacked by something else? The question remained on everyone within our small team's mind, but no-one dared speak it. Like Superman with Krypton, we were the last of our race, saved and doomed at the same time. We came with the prospect of grand discoveries, alien alliances, things we could only imagine. Instead we were greeted by desolation and destruction. Perhaps this was the fate of all life? To kill each other for nourishment, forsaking any hopes of transcending other races. Except we humans had done exactly that - we evolved. We developed sentience, intelligence, and were now a space-faring race. What we would do now with this planet was entirely in our hands... When we turned back to our ship for refuelling, we heard the most enthralling melody we had ever heard. As our flesh was being torn asunder, we couldn't help but feel satisfaction after we had traversed the very depths of space. Perhaps this was meant to be? Life will end in death, whatever we do. Maybe we had achieved transcendence, but those in front of our eyes hadn't reached that pinnacle yet, and we couldn't reach others back on earth. My last words were : "If only we had stayed the same...

“What if?” These two horrific words danced around Mr. Johnson’s head. The heinous, and almost damnable, phrase could not escape his thoughts. An insurmountable terror shook him to his fragile core. “What if?” The terror was not the cancer cells spreading under his skin like mass hysteria. The terror was not the infection that plagued his frail body. The terror was not the burning bed sores that were slowly festering on his back. Oh no, the terror, the terror was much worse, and much more common. “What if?’ Mr. Johnson was not a saint, but he was no Lucifer. He was neither protector nor abuser and he was neither a plentiful provider nor parasite. No plaques, besides his grave, which even that will degrade, shall bear his name, no books shall spin a tale of his life, and no man will chant of his ways. “What if?” For 78 years, 10 months, three weeks, and two days, he lived with a subconscious fear. He would not live to have this despair for another day. For on this faithful June or July day, which one it is doesn’t truly matter, no one would remember it anyways, Mr. Johnson would take his last breath in his existence. No bells will be rung and no articles will be written. The mourning won’t last, and the swollen eyes will be gone soon. “What if?” Mr. Johnson has known this, and we all have known this. Not just about his inconsequential demise, but about our own trivial existence. The true horror did not lie in death, war, famine, pestilence, or any other apocalyptic horror, but in life itself. Men do not fear the end, they fear the unfinished. They fear the terror that is regret; they hide from the hideous truth of their tedious lives. “What if?” Mr. Johnson’s family surrounding him in his final moments could not help him escape from the consuming feeling of sorrow. He questioned his marriage, his adulthood, his childhood, and even himself, and he came to somber conclusion that he answered wrong. When his time finally came, Mr. Johnson did not cry, nor did he smile. He lied in a melancholy state.

A field of green with nothing but me in it, the crystal clear river bending around endlessly. Immense valleys stretching north as far as the eye can see whilst the closely orbiting planet dominates the patchy sky. The freezing cold westerly winds sting as they whip through the open plains, I pull my cloak closer as I stand in the mist, I don't dare look behind me; but my urge swings me around and spurs me forward. I take the plunge jumping forward into the abyss as the sun peeks over the clouds, giving me some sort of warmth. But the wind is relentless threatening to topple me over as my cloak is threatening to slide from my shoulders, I have to go. I do. But slowly. I pull myself over the salient rock my leather gloves protecting me, as I reach the ground the chilling wind picks up. I kneel. I hold the tears back and sluggishly raise my head as the once beautiful planet bears down on me, in front of me stood what was once a village. demolished in the inferno of flames that no one could have contained, houses scattered across the ground, old and empty. I shed a single tear, pick myself up and give myself time to get my items together. I step forward revealing myself to the sun, absorbing it's rays, I have only walked the tiniest stretch of this planet, but what I have seen, and continue to see, never ceases to amaze me. It's that time for the winds that push around the face of the planet in a clockwise motion, it continues for multiple hours, but once the wind comes to a halt, the sun pushes its way through the clouds with a sentiment anger about it. That's what makes this place so special, or made it special as it is not any more. I reach my peak, I am finding it near impossible to move on but as I kneel I think to myself, tooth and nail, I have to distance myself from anything and everything and moving is the only way possible, I regain my footing and throw myself forward with a sense of heroism about me. "Every step I take, is a step further away from everything" I mumble to myself as I vigorously throw my legs forward to ensure I make the edge. The clouds disperse, and the fog draws behind me, grass submitted beneath my fleeting feet, the winds carving patterns of light into the sky before me, the sun was setting. Ever so beautiful; the thriving animals scattered across the acres upon acres of land, "Tooth and Nail" I whisper "Tooth and Nail".

Any feedback is welcome. Once there was a man who lived in a sheltered valley far in the dry mountains one day’s walk from a small village that was three days walk from a slightly larger but still small village. Although he only walked the one day to the small village once a year, the man was known by everyone in the village because he had three legs and everywhere he went in the village all the people knew him as the man with three legs. The man walked to the village to sell the one bundle of wool from his sheep and use the money to buy salt, matches and guitar strings. After the time of shearing, his guitar strings were still in good shape, but the man with three legs was in need of salt and matches so he tied up his bundle of wool, hefted it onto his back and climbed out of his sheltered valley to walk to the small village. The way was long and windy and the path was dry and dusty. He walked and walked carrying his large bundle of wool up and down hills, over rocks and under the hot and heavy sun. One might think that having an extra leg would make it easier to carry a load over a dirt path, but it didn’t. It didn’t make it harder and it didn’t make it easier, it was the same as for any man but this man had three legs. When it was time for lunch he came to a cool stream trickling over the path. There was a large flat rock next to a shallow pool where he set down his load, sat down on the rock, ate his lunch and dangled all three legs in the stream. The water felt so good on his tired feet and his lunch weighed down his stomach so that he laid back and took a nice little nap. The rock was smooth, the water was cool and there was a nice breeze to keep away the mosquitoes so the man slept for longer than he wanted to. When he woke up the sun had traveled far across the sky and he quickly picked up his wool and hurried off towards the village. Because of his long nap the man arrived in the village after dark and long after there was anyone in the market willing to buy his wool or sell him guitar strings. So the man found a corner of the village square where there was a nice wooden platform in an empty stall that he used as a bed for the night. In the morning the man carried his bundle of wool around the market and from house to house but no one wanted to buy it. Everyone was sorry that the man with three legs couldn’t sell his wool but someone from far away had come with a wagonload of wool the afternoon before and everyone who wanted wool in the village had bought it from him. So, the man with three legs decided to walk for the first time to the slightly larger but still small village to sell his wool and buy the supplies he needed. The way to the next village passed over many rough and rocky hills and through steep canyons. The man had to stop to let down his load and sit down to rest often. When he did, he sat on jagged rocks that frayed the threads on the seat of his pants. For three whole days he walked and sat and walked and sat and walked and sat until he reached the slightly larger but still small village. When he first walked into the larger but still small village everyone he encountered was watching him walk because they had never seen a man with three legs before. After he passed he could hear them laughing over his shoulders. At first he thought they were laughing at his extra leg, but as he entered the market square he turned his head to look behind and saw that he had a large hole where the back of his pants used to be. Immediately he walked into the first stall that sold clothing and asked for a pair of three legged pants. The woman behind the counter said to the three legged man, “before now I’ve never seen a man with three legs in all my life, why would I have a pair of three legged pants for sale if I knew of no one to sell them to?” The man with three legs replied, “You have a good point, thank you anyway,” and he walked to the next stall that sold clothing. But no one in the village had ever seen a man with three legs and not one of the vendors had a pair of pants with three legs. The man didn’t know what to do so he kept walking. He tried to cover the hole in his pants with his hand but he had to use both hands to carry his bundle of wool. He tried to cover his behind with the bundle of wool but it was too heavy to carry in such an awkward way. He tried to only walk backwards so that no one would see the hole in his pants but despite the small size of the village there were many people in the market and they all crowded around him and he could not point the hole in his pants in such a direction that no one would see. Eventually he set his bundle on a clean patch of ground and sat down. There he sat wondering what to do. He sat and wondered and sat and wondered until a man came up and said “you are the man with three legs, and you have a problem, if you come to my house maybe I can help you.” The man with three legs thanked him and stood up and picked up his bundle of wool and followed him. The man led the man with three legs out of the market and into a neighborhood with many small stick houses all covered in thatch and surrounded by small gardens. The man said, “The house on the end of the street is my house, there my wife can help.” Then the man called to his wife so that all his neighbors could hear, “Wife, there is a man with three legs who has a hole in the seat of his pants, can you help him?” The wife came out to look at the man with three legs as did all the neighbors. All of them smiled and waved and then laughed behind their hands. The wife said, “I do not have a needle, I cannot help the man with three legs with a hole in his pants.” So the man with three legs walked back to the market, hearing the snickers and giggles behind him as he walked. When he got to the market, another man offered to take him to his house so that his wife could help. This man led the man with three legs to a neighborhood with many houses of adobe with wooden slats on the roof and fruit trees in the yard. From the middle of the street this man called to his wife, “Wife, there is a man with three legs who has a hole in his pants, can you help him?” Again, the wife and all the neighbors came out to look at the man with three legs and laugh at the hole in his pants. This time the wife said, “I would like to use my needle to help the man with three legs and a hole in his pants but I do not have any thread.” So, again the man with three legs walked back to the market, hearing the people teasing him all the way. When he returned to the market, a third man offered to introduce him to his wife so that she could help. This third man led the man with three legs past the well and through a carved wooden gate and into the courtyard of a stone manor house with a high slate roof. The third man called to his wife so that all his servants could hear, “Wife, there is a man with three legs who has a hole in the seat of his pants, can you help him?” Just like the first two times, this wife came out to look at the man with three legs, but this time the kitchen girls, the gardeners and the stable boys did not laugh until after the lady of the house laughed first. The wife said, “I would like to help the man with three legs but my seamstress is visiting her sister this week and will not be back until Sunday.” So the man with three legs walked back out of the gate and into the market where he found an empty stall and sat down on his bundle of wool and thought. Sitting on his bundle of wool, he saw scraps of wood all around and had an idea. His small knife in hand, he set about making a small spindle to spin all his wool into coarse yarn. Once his wool was made into yarn he took more scrap wood and made a simple hand loom and weaved the yarn into lumpy cloth. When he had a sufficient piece of cloth he made it into a humble pair of pants with three legs. He put his new pants on, tied them up with the little bit of extra yarn and walked home day and night without stopping and got home in only two days. He would have to wait until the next season of shearing before he could buy salt and matches and by then, he would need guitar strings too.

Once was a time referred to as "the age of myth". A time tens of thousands years ago. A time now forgotten. Walking along with the neanderthals and the early homo sapiens, was a more advanced life form. Homo Sapiens as well, but reaching the levels of technology and communication that the early humans could not even dream of. Of course, for us, it is still primitive, but at the time, their civilization was a technological wonder, and even thousands of years after their sudden disappearance, none has appeared to surpass them. But despite being advanced for the time, They cared little for it. They were hardly a violent civilisation, and fought only when forced to. And fought well. They did not see the life as we does, and lived not for wealth, power or lust, but for something else entirely. It was a civilisation of bards, storytellers. They considered stories to be the highest artform, and went on to celebrate the most gifted amongst them. The stories They made were magical, and even to this day, some of those are still unsurpassed. But those stories were no mere words. There was power in those stories, and it was the key to Their advanced technology, for Their stories came to life. They tamed the wildest of beasts with their sweet words, for the beasts seemed to understand their speak. They gathered resources and crafted using the sounds of Their stories alone, and could even control the weather itself. But, it was the stories that was their downfall at last, for in every basket of apples, one is rotten. And They were no exception. Their time has given birth to greatest of the storytellers, but none were ever as good as Him. He, ever since a child was recognised as a gifted teller, even amongst Them. His paragraphs caused jealousy among his peers, and desire in women. But as sweet as the words He spoke were, His mind was bitter. In His talent, He saw a curse, for He has had the insight in the secrets none other has had. As advanced and peaceful as Their civilisation was, They did not see what They did to those around them. For the beasts They tamed grew slow and dumb, from the work they've been forced to do, and those not tamed grew bitter and rabid, for their comrades to be stolen from them with magic of Their words. The resources Their stories gathered left barren land in their wake, such that nothing would grow there for years to come, and left only deserts. And ultimately as beasts grew wilder, and the lands grew infertile, the early man started to spread thinner and thinner. There was fewer of them with every day that passed, and it is what He seen. He had great sorrow in His heart for them, and with His words he made a Shelter. An area of land, filled with nothing but beauty incarnate, with fertile land and beasts neither too close to man, nor angry. It was a place one could only dream of, and as he saw the ruin of early man coming from Their actions, he gathered a small tribe of the wild early men, and had them enter the Shelter. There, He hid and observed how they progressed when uninterrupted by Them, or the nature itself. They had no talent for words, but their talents lied elsewhere. They were craftsmen, always seeking ways to improve. He was content with what He saw there, but still a great sadness filled His heard, for They, the advanced civilisation, has almost unknowingly destroyed these wild men, and still continues to ruin the world, not aware of their actions. It is that, that ultimately lead Him to decide to plant a Seed there. A Seed, that, as His stories told, would be the end of Their civilisation. A Seed that was to be planted by the wild men, should the need ever arise, and They go too far in their ignorance. But, amongst Them, there was one more. The One, whose talent nearly matched His. And he, the One, has discovered His plans. But, he had not the talent to undo His work, and has had to write over it. Through his stories, the One took up a disguise of light and beauty incarnate, and has entered the Shelter and revealed himself to the wild men. The One has told them a story of the creation of the wild men, and the world itself as he had imagined it, and the wild men revered him. It was then that the One had told the wild men the stories of the Seed. None of them entirely true, but not entirely lies either, One's words no less sweet that His. And the One has told them, not ever to touch it, or even gaze upon it, for it would bring forth destruction of men, and the world itself. It was only later that He found out about the One's plans and actions. And it was then that He decided it was time for Them to go. And He entered the Shelter, and had told the early men about the Seed. He told them the truth, his words never have been more beautiful. And the early men listened in amazement, and have forgotten One's restriction, and planted the Seed. Through the Seed came the power of His story, a story likes of which have never before been written, and never again will. It was a beautiful story, of both happiness and sadness. Those who had heard it knew now what is it they were hearing, but could not help being moved by it. And so, one by one, They had perished from this world. The destroyed lands were brought back to their state, even more beautiful than before. The angriest amongst the beasts have calmed. And one by one, They were gone. And, as They were perishing, all Their creations, made of their stores have fallen to dust. And the One watched in fear and awe, with amazement in his eyes as the world crumbled and was reborn again. And the One then saw what His eyes have seen, and has gone in peace. In the end, even He was gone, for it had to be complete. As He was gone, so too did his Shelter, as it too was a part of his story. The story has now list its power, and never again have mere words influenced the world around us. And the early men were left alone, to develop or to fall on their own. Only one fragment of the magic of the story remained. Once in a millenium, He would be reborn amongst regular men, His words with no less power, His eyes with no less sight. Thus the Age of Myth lives on. Do tell me your thoughts on the story, if you think something should be added/removed, or if you just find the unoriginal rewrite of the Bible disgusting and blasphemous.

She held the photographs at their top right hand corners in between her thumb and forefinger. Her thumb absent-mindedly moved across the edges, smoothing them for a split second before they curled once again with age. They were yellowed, black and white pictures, taken a long time before she even knew what the black box sitting in front of her was for. She didn’t have many, and the ones she did have were of her when she was either a baby, or around eight years old. She didn’t like pictures, and stopped letting people take them as soon as she figured out how they did it. Something about looking at her own face, frozen, staring out at her from a piece of paper, was unnerving. The photograph she was looking at was of her standing next to two boys whose names she couldn’t remember. They were obviously brothers, similar height and features, identical black coats, standing close together in the natural sort of way that siblings or relatives always have. She was standing a reasonable distance away, but she remembered feeling like she was standing on the other side of the street. That was the moment, she had decided, folding the edges back and forth, that she had realized how far away everyone was from her. She threw the pictures to the side. Along with them lay a pile of every flammable object that had ever meant anything to her. Outside it was snowing, just like in the old photograph. No one would notice her burning anything. It was cold. As she burned the objects, one by one, she felt the bonds that held her to the world loosen their hold. Every heart-felt but poorly articulated poem, every love letter, every photograph and diary entry; they all succumbed to the flames. What was life? She wondered, that it could be so easily destroyed? These objects and the emotions behind them had held her so tightly, and now, in an instant, they were gone. What was life when its components were so fragile? What was life when it ceased to exist? She brushed the ashes away brusquely, as if they had no meaning to begin with. She made her way back into her empty house, such as it was, and to her room again. She thought of the picture of the two boys. She wished she had had that closeness with someone, anyone, at least once. But it was too late for such things. You couldn’t live your life waiting on maybes and what-ifs to magically come true. She closed and locked the door by force of habit. She wondered how long it would take anyone to notice she was gone. The cool metal of the pistol felt heavy and satisfying in her hand. It was already loaded. It had been for months now. She closed her eyes. *** She opened her eyes. She felt light, but at the same time…thick and heavy like syrup. Disappointment burned through her. She tried to sit up, only to find she was already upright. Her room looked different. She shook her head to clear it, lifting her hands to rub at her eyes only to stop, mid-gesture, to stare at them. Her body was translucent, giving off a pale white glow. She stifled the scream of despair they welled up in her throat. She glanced down and saw her body, blood pooled beneath it, still and silent. Dead. But she wasn’t dead! Why wasn’t she dead? Why had the life she had struggled so hard to shed clung onto her still, permeating her soul and chaining it to this world? Would she never escape? What had she done to deserve this? She fitfully rose up and through the ceiling of her bedroom. She barely noticed. But as she did, the memories and thoughts that plagued her mind for so long began to fade. The life she was so certain would never amount to anything, the parents who were always there, but never really existed, the friends who had abandoned her as soon as she started to frown, the one she cared for so much but would never be good enough to have, the logic that had killed God once and for all, and the taunting faces of all of those who had filled her life but never fulfilled it drained out of her as she drifted away from that place, leaving only the emotions behind. The sadness and pain, anger and frustration and horrible aching longing were what filled her up now; she twisted and writhed in an agony that she no longer had explanation for. She sank down again from the weight of her burdens, down into the walls of the house where she had suffered for so long and would suffer for so much longer. She lost consciousness. She awoke to the sound of voices. More voices than had ever been heard in that house for years. So many voices, what were they saying? She couldn’t understand them. She wanted to reveal herself, chase them out of her home. She wanted to flee from the sight of them; she wanted to hold them close to her as they asked her why? Why did you do it? We cared about you, we loved you, we’re going to miss you! She felt a strange tugging, a pull that came from the core of her being, forcing her out of the wall and down the stairs as the police removed her body from the house. She followed, helpless, as they took her to an unfamiliar building, a hospital she told herself, though she no longer knew what the word meant. Down to the depths, she waited in the dark of the morgue, though for what, she didn’t know. It could have been a few minutes, hours, or days until she saw another human being. It was a relief. Staring at one’s own corpse wasn’t the ideal way to spend eternity. Two police officers entered the room, accompanied by a tall dark haired young man. His face was a hard, his mouth a serious line that didn’t suit the laugh lines around his eyes. She knew him. Even as she consumed herself with the unknown agony of her past life, the man’s face both eased and intensified it. Who was he? The police slid open the silver drawer that held her body and the man’s face seemed to break. Two silent tears ran down his face and his hand rose to cover his mouth. He nodded to the police officers. They made consolatory noises and gestures, each taking hold of his shoulder briefly. He just kept nodding until they left him with the body. She stared at the man, ashamed that she had evidently caused him pain; though the emotions of spite and bitterness had caused a perverse joy at the first sight of his tears. She had thought that she wasn’t going to hurt anyone. She had convinced herself that no one would care. The man’s hand left his face and gently touched hers. Her ghostly form drew close to him, wishing despite herself that he could see that she wasn’t completely gone. He dried the tears from his face and left. She wanted to go after him, but she was tied down by her unburied body lying cold and exposed on the tray below her.

This is an excerpt of an excerpt, written in a few hours when I was bored. The script will eventually be adapted to be a visual novel, though it is currently a story. Critique welcome. Light shines in through the open windows. The only sounds in the classroom are those of paper rustling and pencils scratching across test booklets. Occasionally, there is a quiet cough or the scrape of a chair being readjusted. Bird song outside forms a sort of ambience, unnoticed until you listen for it. I glance up at the clock in the front of the room. Twenty-eight minutes until lunch. I sigh and look down at my test paper. More than halfway done. I put my pen to paper and begin to scribble out answers. X is equal to thirty four... n is equal to the square root of thirteen... Fifteen minutes later, I circle the answer to the last question and sign my name neatly on the back, swearing that I did not cheat. What a stupid requirement. Even if someone did cheat, nothing is stopping them from signing their name besides their own morals - which are probably not very restraining if they did break the rules in the first place. I switch my gaze to the window, thinking longingly of the warm sun, mild breeze, and the fresh smell of early spring. I let my eyes pass over the city skyline. In the distance, all of the buildings are the same shade of dreamy purple-tinged gray, as though they are shrouded in mist. Slowly, my gaze drifts past the skyline and closer to the school in which I sit. As it passes over a building several streets away, I give a start of surprise and look closer. A figure stands, arms folded, on the building. It is too far away to make out details, but from posture and body shape, it seems to be a young woman. As I watch, the figure’s head slowly tilts to one side, as though considering something. The arms unfold, and I see a tiny speck of blue light. Unconsciously, I lean closer to the window, trying to make out more details. Suddenly the bell sounds, signaling the end of class. I jump in surprise as the oppressive silence in the room is replaced by the happy chatter of students and the aggressively loud scraping of chairs being pushed in. When I look back out the window, the figure is gone. Shaking myself, I stand and take my bag off the back of my chair. Slinging it onto my arm, I exit the room, depositing my test onto the growing pile on the teacher’s desk as I pass by. Upon entering the hallway, I make a right and travel up several flights of stairs until I stand before a door with peeling indigo paint. I push it open and step onto the school roof, releasing an internal sigh of appreciation as the cool breeze rustles my hair. This is my usual eating place. I prefer it up here to the park outside where most students eat lunch; it’s a nice change from the rowdy chatter and bad jokes of my classmates. I take another step onto the roof and freeze. Usually, I am the only one here. Today, however, a girl stands, back to me, looking out over the expanse of the city. Long black hair flutters gently in the breeze. The girl is massaging her left hand with her right. Both hands are concealed within fingerless black gloves; the cliché kind as one might see in anime or movies. They seem out of place with her otherwise standard school uniform. Usually, I’m bad at recognizing other students from the back, as we all wear uniforms. However, this girl’s distinctive, long ponytail, tied back with a black ribbon, and the hair swept over her right eye identify her as Rei Kaneshiro. She is in several of my classes. I, and many others, have always viewed with awe; in addition to being exceptionally skilled academically, she is always distant, formal and aloof - and she is also stunningly pretty. Not wanting to disturb her, I quietly back down the stairs. In doing so, the toe of my shoe scrapes against the door frame. It isn’t particularly loud, but the girl whips around, ice blue eyes wide with surprise, mouth forming a perfect O-shape. I wince at my clumsiness. “M-Matsuzaki-san!?” I can’t help but stare. Usually, she has a regal, calm, cold bearing. Now she seems almost guilty, as though caught doing something she shouldn’t. She clears her throat. Her expression of surprise changes to one of embarrassment at losing her composure. “I mean - what are you doing here, Matsuzaki-san?” “I-I was just going to eat here. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” Her left eyebrow - the one not covered by hair - comes down like a thundercloud. “Scare me?” …and she has a notoriously short temper. I curse myself for my clumsy wording. “O-or, surprise you…” Rei sniffs and lifts her chin slightly. “You didn’t surprise me,” she says haughtily. And that’s why you jumped as if you stepped on a rusty nail? “Of course, Kaneshiro-san. I’m sorry for suggesting that,” I say instead. She sniffs again, but relaxes and nods curtly before turning back to look over the fence surrounding the roof. Deciding it would be best to leave her to her thoughts, I depart from the roof in search of another place to eat. Several hours later, the bell rings, signaling the end of school for the day. Once again, the dull drone of a lecture is replaced with students calling each other across the room or laughing with their friends. I leave the classroom and turn left in the hall, proceeding down the stairs. I exit the school building, winding my way through the crowd of students. Turning onto the street, I begin my walk home. The streets are virtually empty, as usual, but far from silent. The distant sounds of laughing students, the rumble of a car engine, and the chirping of birds litter the air. They are common, everyday sounds, but their presence puts me in a good mood. I reach my house and open the door, stepping inside. Flicking on the lights, I go to my room and open my bag, drawing out my homework. I flop onto my bed and start on the closest assignment I can find, and quickly lose myself in the tedium of schoolwork. Two hours later, I finish the last sentence of my world history essay with a flourish of my pen. Tossing the assignment aside, I stretch and go downstairs. After making a quick dinner, I decide to go to bed early tonight and ascend the stairs to my room, where I fall asleep quickly. School the next day is uneventful. Periods of history, math, science, English, and literature melt together. I eat lunch alone on the roof as usual; Rei Kaneshiro seems to be eating elsewhere. Before I know it, the school day is over. As I walk home, I cannot shake a feeling of unease. Something feels wrong, though I can’t place my finger on what. Shaking it off as nothing, I continue to walk. The trees are varying shades of green, pink and gold. Fresh, mild air bears the pleasant, clean scent of spring. The piles of leaves that have gathered on the ground mix the colors around. If I squint, they look like pools of fire, shimmering against the concrete ground. I step on a stray leaf. The dry crunch seems unnaturally magnified against the silence, echoing through — That’s what it is. Silent. There are no sounds of car engines, of distant students, of birds chirping. Even the wind is quiet. It’s never like this at this time of year. The hairs rise on the back of my neck and I unconsciously increase my pace, my strides becoming long and brisk. My heart is beating a little too fast. I don’t even know what I’m afraid of. But the feeling of unease is stronger than ever. The sound of clothes rustling sounds behind me. I whip around, heart hammering. Nothing. Surely I imagined it. It must have been my nervous imagination playing tricks on me. A deep thrumming sound, almost inaudible. Something slams into my back with incredible force and I am hurled into a nearby tree. I crumple to the ground, the wind knocked out of me. Rolling over, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in my midsection, I try to find a glimpse of my assailant. But the silent streets are completely empty. Another deep thrumming sound resonates through the still air. Instinctively, I press myself to the ground just as the tree behind me is split in half with an ear-splitting crack. I roll free of the falling trunk. As I do so, I catch a glimpse of the break. It is blackened and singed, as though it was burned. The slow sound of footsteps comes from behind me. I turn and look upon my attacker. I don’t know what I expected - perhaps a masked figure dressed in black, or a hulking monstrosity, or even a small child like something out of a horror movie. Instead I see a young woman, perhaps in her mid-twenties. Both her hair and coat are long and black, and she wears a slight, satisfied smile that fails to reach her eyes. “Hello,” she says pleasantly. “Who are you?” I demand. “Why did you just try to kill me?” She smiles indulgently. “Both good questions. For the first, I am Mariko Akamine.” She raises her eyebrows, as though expecting me to introduce myself in turn. “Hayato Matsuzaki.” I shakily stand, wincing against the flare of pain in my ribs. “How nice to make your acquaintance,” the woman says. “Now, Hayato Matsuzaki - should you choose to cooperate with me, you can leave this place unharmed. Should you not…” the woman lifts her left hand. A set of runes, etched into the back of her hand, glow blue. “… I am afraid your end will be rather long and painful. I have but one question. “Where is the girl called Rei Kaneshiro?” The question catches me off-guard, and I respond in a somewhat more confrontational manner than is particularly smart, given the situation. “What do you want with her?” The woman raises her eyebrows. “That is none of your business. And, even if it were, your weak mortal mind would likely be unable to comprehend the answer. I think it best that you do not know.” Weak mortal mind? Her haughty, arrogant manner is starting to annoy me. But I do consider her request for a second. She said that she’d let me live if I told her… no. I doubt she just wants to have a friendly chat with Rei. I can’t turn her in, even if I barely know her. “No, sorry. You made a bad first impression by trying to kill me with a tree,” I say. Brave words, considering the speed at which my heart is hammering. The woman sighs in mock disappointment. “How unfortunate. To think, you could have lived and passed all of this off as a bad dream.” She flicks her hand. An invisible force slams into my midsection and I am thrown backward several meters, hitting a wall. The pressure remains on my torso, suspending me halfway up the wall. The woman walks slowly toward me, her hand outstretched. With each step she takes, the pressure grows until I feel my ribs will shatter. Then I hear a different set of footsteps - sharper, with a smaller interval between them, as though the person to whom they belong is running. A loud hum splits the air just as a figure dashes around the far corner of the street. A glowing blue crescent scythes through the air at an incredible speed, spiraling directly toward the woman. She whips around, and the pressure suspending me falls. I crumple to the ground in a heap, gasping for breath. The woman raises her hand and the air around her glows a faint blue and begins rippling as though it is very hot. The blue crescent dissipates against it. The second person has reached us at this point. The figure cuts between the woman and myself. Though the sky is darkening, turning the figure into a silhouette, the long, flowing ponytail and sweep of hair covering the right eye is unmistakable. Rei. “Ah - you would be Rei Kaneshiro? How kind of you to bless us with your presence,” the woman says. But despite her pleasant tone, her smile has vanished, replaced with a grimace of effort, and several beads of sweat dot her face. “Matsuzaki, run!” Rei cries, keeping her visible narrowed eye on the woman. She falls into a slight crouch. Tempted as I am to obey her order, I hesitate. Whatever powers that woman has… I can’t just leave Rei to face her alone. The woman slashes diagonally with her left hand. The runes glow blue and a rippling wave of the same color projects outward from her body. Rei nimbly leaps over it before responding with another glowing crescent. The woman blocks once again, but this time she staggers back a few steps. She grits her teeth and straightens. She raises her hands, but Rei doesn’t give her a chance. Bending her body slightly to one side, she extends both arms and begins whirling her torso extremely quickly. Every time one of her hands passes over her head, it launches a glowing spike that hums toward the woman like a bullet. Her ponytail whips around her head like a dark halo. Rei stops spinning and the woman falls to her hands and knees, sweating profusely, panting as though she had just run a marathon. Rei walks toward her, looking down at her contemptuously. “You underestimated me,” Rei says coldly. The woman doesn’t respond. “You tried to kill me. And you tried to kill Matsuzaki, as well. Two attempted murders… it’s only fair that you get the death penalty, right?” Rei curls the fingers of her hand and a glowing blue crescent shimmers to life in her grasp. She lifts it high into the air before thrusting the object downward.

I live not too far from Woking, in a small village a fair walk from the major metropolitan area. I suppose, given the recent events that have changed so much so quickly over the last few weeks, I should give my account to my own experience of those terrible martians. It was the evening after the falling of the first cylinder from mars. I was among the crowd that gathered upon that alien peculiarity, I bore witness to the unscrewing that began not long after it fell, however, circumstances led to me leaving not long before the opening, I thank my beloved wife for forcing me home early that day, if not for her intervention of my affairs, I would have been part of the ash that is now all that remains of horsell common. I had made quite some distance from the area before the firing of the heat ray began thankfully. After news of the devastation spread, the military deployed from the local garrison. My neighbors son, Frederick was one of the men who fortified the position around the sandpits as a artilleryman. With such strength being deployed against the martian aggressors, for a time I felt reasonably safe remaining in my home and awaiting further news of the situation. But once the shelling began, It was decided that me and my beloved were to stay at her mothers in Reading until I felt it prudent to return to our home after the men from mars had been dealt with. So that evening we packed our things and booked passage towards Woking station. It was during the transit I saw it. As we passed the road through Sutton Green, the shelling slowly stopped. One by one each cannon began to become silenced into the eerie quietness of that warm placid night. At first this was of great relief. The Martians dead! Slain at the hands of English might! A sense of jubilation filled me as my wife and I discussed the possibility of turning back around and going home. And that we almost did indeed, If the treeline ahead of us hadn't burst into the most furious flame as we spoke. Screaming shook the air as fire leaped from tree to tree in the distance, illuminating a small collection of buildings now aflame. It was Mayford! The Martians were burning the village with the heat-ray! I didn't understand, the Martians were Twenty miles north in a sandy pit, they could barely move in our gravity, let alone travel here! I ordered the driver, no I demanded he turn around and make the utmost haste towards Guildford. he agreed and lashed at the reigns, pulling the carriage in a sharp flick sending me flying into my wife. Jumbled and disorientated, I saw the silhouette of something tall flickering in the light through the small window frame. I did not get a long at the fighting machine. It was a great Tripod that stood at least a good 50 foot into the air. I remember seeing a mass of tendrils hanging lank from the main body. It was too dark to perceive any good detail but it reflected a sharp silvery glow quite akin to moonlight with the fire. Slender, with a conical top that arched into a point is the only way I could describe it's form from good memory. Dear god how it stood there. Above the trees and the buildings and the devastation it had wrought upon the poor folk of Mayford. Like a shimming, immovable mountain it watched, silently, as the world burned and smoked around it. Before long my wife had shunted me off herself and snapped me from my fixed visage of the monstrosity, I must have been transfixed by the sight it seems. Hysterical, she cried for the dead of that village so I consoled her the best I could with my trembling hands. I could smell the fresh ash of the fires behind us. We made it to Reading the next morning and spent the remainder of the events that took place in a public refuge. With great fortune, the town was spared mostly with the majority of the fighting taking place to the east. The red weed and the Martians died off not long after their arrival as you of course know. Law, order and an established government soon fell quickly back into place. I shall never forget the sight that I saw that night. I saw the Martians and I saw hell.

Though I've no intention of doing the much needed sequel for a while (i'm busy with the dark lord zer0) this was meant to serve as a world demo. I also put an homage to R.A. Salvatore in there. Chapter 10 The Black Dragon sword Fire coaxed the metal into a dull orange glow, carbon dust was then sprinkled atop the orange glowing mass and from there the dwarf would hammer with care and precision, a single mistake would surely set him back a week or more, and he was having none of that, intent on getting it right as often as he could. And so the steel folding process continued for weeks upon weeks over the course of the next decade while kuro taught him a few tiny bits of craft the elderly smith dwarf could take with him across his long and grand career as a master smith. And through it all kuro learned far more from the dwarf as he worked, intent on using his time as a “dwarven” citizen under the pardoned mac's care to hone his body in the fires of dwarven craftsmanship. It was said in a fairy tale that a dwarven king of fiery hair had once thwarted a barbarian attack and from the attack, adopted a young barbarian boy he'd beaten on the field of battle. In an effort to tame the boy to his cause and set his heart on the dwarven path, he sent the youth to the mines and had him hammering on metal, working the anvils for many a year. The boy had grown into a grand and noble warrior with muscles capable of crushing the horns of a dragon to dust, and with such power he returned to his tribe, defeated their corrupt leader and took chieftanship from him, intent on setting his people on the just path. Of course, it was but a humble fairy tale the dwarves spoke fondly of, for none could deny the character building nature of the hammer and anvil, like teachers of one's soul they taught one how to temper their minds and the burning in their spirit as surely as their arm. And so it went without saying that kuro, already a fairly old “man” of forty, took the time to learn of that character building process personally. He knew the day would arrive when he would have to break that stone in his pocket and accept his true nature as a black dragon, and he feared that moment. For to become something so powerful, so unrelentingly powerful, might corrupt his already resilient and disciplined heart. Placing him far from the path of the samurai. He didn't wish to take such a risk so early in his life, but neither would he deny himself his heritage, for to lie to himself was equally wrong in his eyes. And so he trained under the old dwarven blacksmith, content to help mac and maltan as the two worked together to design his sword. His goal was to finish ironing out his frustrations at the world that he might hold his sword and his true form with equal responsibility. And never give up his honor. Oh yes, he fully intended to end his time as a ronin and offer his services to the current emperor of new solstern, that his father's demise would not be in vain. More importantly, he could restore his own honor, honor he hadn't known he'd put at risk. He would surely find purpose with the peoples of new solstern, his own culture by all accounts. He would bring dragons and men together in renewed kinship. And he would protect them both. It simply felt right. Five years passed, and when kuro wasn't working, he'd trade tales of his long ago ventures as a ronin in the ancient era with the captain of the guard, harry hammertooth, and he, mac and maltan would sit around a circular table, laughing, drinking and reminiscing about the days long since passed. Days that would again be! Days turned into weeks, turned into months, and eventually ten years did pass in earnest. As the final year reached its end, mac and kuro stood before the almost completed weapon. “By the gods, it's a fine one!” mac remarked. “it's why these things have to be taken damned good care of! The durned things are so well made they take a decade to actually create!” he explained, pointing to the finished steel. “millionfold, any dwarf'd do the same.” he sighed as he considered the tireless years of folding. “Millionfold?” kuro asked. “aye, I know ye solsterns do it with less folds, but....I had to give it a million folds as opposed to the half million as is the solstern technique.” “shivana's scales.” he reasoned and the dwarf smith nodded, his graying beard sweeping the floor with each nod. “that dragon's scales up and got firmer than I recall em being. She must be getting long in the tooth.” he shrugged and moved forward to grip the handle. “which brings us to our final dilemma. The hilt has to be composed of shadow wing bone.” he handed kuro a smaller sword he'd devised. “and as is tradition, ye gots to go out and kill one yerself!” he warned. “Ye'll find shadow wings in the sulfur caverns far below, ye know the place, ye been out huntin' in em fer a few years.” “shadow wings are powerful creatures.” kuro remarked, remembering his last encounter with one when he, mac and the captain of the guard went out hunting daggas for sport. “and ye got tae kill one if'n ye expect tae have a hilt capable of keeping the blade's balance perfect!” the smith warned. “Now enough o' this “OH but it be too dang'rous maltan! Save me!” nonsense o yo'rn, it's a beast, bleeds like a beast, dies like a beast.” kuro shrugged. “Very well then, i'll be off to the sulfur caverns if anyone needs me.” hours later, and with the small weapon the smith had granted him, kuro made his way into the sulfur caverns, so named for the glowing green vents in the ground from which spewed forth all manner of treacherous gasses. Kuro had to put on on ornate dog-stylized gas mask for this expedition, hunting in this region was not an uncommon thing, indeed, many a dwarf found the underground mushroom forests of the sulfur caverns to be fine hunting grounds. As did the shadow wings. He moved quietly and carefully through the gloom, hand on his weapon as he slowly picked out a cluster of giant mushrooms, the native fungii of this deep cavern that replaced the trees of the surface world, and slowly but surely made his way near a fresh kill. “shadow wing.” he muttered upon inspecting the fresh corpse of what appeared to be a dog sized rabbit, durahops they were called, a dwarf's favored meal in lieu of wyvern meat. The fang marks on the durahop's brown fur coated its flesh a grotesque black, a sure sign of shadow wing venom, and kuro calmly settled some distance from the kill, knowing full well that the shadow wing would return. All the while several of the glowing green vents grew in intensity, their glow casting shadows through the smoke and playing with kuro's poor low light vision. He slowly drew his weapon, glancing about beneath his ebon sugegasa as the sound of air rushing above him became apparent. Slowly he glanced up, to see a pair of golden orbs rushing at him as a great shadow descended upon him, red talons reaching out to pierce his flesh.

I pass by the same tree everyday. An empty field about a mile back from my house surrounds it. I always take the back way so no one sees me leaving for the day. I have to keep going further and further because I’ve already been in all of the abandoned buildings and houses around me. I go through the same pattern every time. I walk back and forth in front of the house twice to make sure no one’s watching me. Then I have to move fast. If the doors are shut tight I take the crowbar out of my bag and pry it open. If it’s loose, I just kick it in. I quickly shut the door behind me and listen. If a person or animal is in there they would definitely be making noise either when hiding or trying to get out. If there’s no noise, I know I’m fine. Most of the time the copper is already gone. I go for the more unique older items: antique tools, car parts, toys, artwork, anything that someone might buy. I try to move fast so I don’t get caught. I pack up all my findings, and then sneak out. This is my everyday, After my dad died I stopped going to school. He died nine years ago, which would be first grade. My mom has always been useless. From morning to night she watches television, chain smoking and only getting up to use the bathroom. She knows I stopped going to school, but she doesn’t say anything. It wasn’t my choice. After dad passed she spent all of the money we got in two months on an assortment of knick-knacks and shit. We survived off of welfare for five years until they realized my mom wasn’t trying to change her situation. After the third eviction notice is when I started breaking into places and selling the stuff I found. I know the town hoarders (other than my mom). I usually make up some history behind whatever I have and they give me a few bucks. I can cycle between them without them getting suspicious of how I get what I’m selling. After the food and rent is taken care of, I have a little left for myself. My favorite thing to do is go to the movies. I don’t have any friends, so going to the theater is a perfect way to spend an afternoon. The local theater plays only classics and foreign films. My mom hates old movies. I didn’t find much yesterday so I left a little bit earlier today. There’s an old school house in the middle of nowhere, probably about a hundred years old. It’s been abandoned as long as I remember. The door has already been broken in, not a good sign for finding anything good. I walk through the main room and just find a couple pieces of copper in the walls. I head down to the cellar. The cellar is a lot darker than the rest of the school. The only light being let in is through a hole in the foundation. I follow the light with my eyes. In the furnace room is a shoe sticking out. I walk closer. The shoe is connected to a leg. I walk closer. The legs are connected to a torso. I walk closer. There’s a dead body. I sprint home. My mom is watching infomercials trying to find the perfect weight loss pill. I bust in the door and scream at her about what I saw. She tells me to quiet down, she’s trying to find out how to be healthier. I tell her everything. She mutes the television. “Did you take the wallet?” “What?” “What’s the use of money to a dead body? We should have it.” “I don’t think…” “Yeah. Yeah, go get the wallet. But first make me lunch.” I get back to the schoolhouse and sneak in the back this time. I don’t want there to be any chance I could be seen. He was probably in his late twenties. There was blood coming out of his nose and mouth, and he was pale. I search him as carefully as possible trying not to touch him much. His wallet is in his back pocket. He has sixty-four dollars, some coupons, and his license. His name is Isaac Murray, born on December 4, and is an organ donor. Mom used the money to buy her pills. She said she’s going to get more guys than she did in her twenties, and I start seeing Isaac everywhere. His face plasters the ticket booth at the movies. He looks at me from light posts. His voice talks to me over the radio. I tell him I’m sorry. Each house has a history. Every building contains some baggage. Everything I take feels like a personal attack to the previous owner. I go back to the schoolhouse. I didn’t know what I would do when I got there; it just felt like something I needed to do. I go down the stairs and look into the furnace room. He’s gone. The posters start disappearing, and I do too. I say goodbye to my mom and she tells me to go get her some more cigarettes. I say I will when I come back so I won’t be lying. I have a couple sandwiches packed, some water, our last Coke, and the rest of our money. I grab my bag, and I leave.

I expected a good day. The coffee was fresh, two of my ideas were complemented, and I was given the go ahead on a project I’ve been waiting on for many abysmal years. Years of waiting telling the people I love, one day I’ll be famous. Today I should’ve started work on on my dreams, but instead I had my ear to the phone listening to the woman I thought was loyal to me. “You’ve been fucking the man renting the trailer?” She blamed it on my lack of communication, the lack of trust. My loyalty towards work. She didn't understand my passion, her lack of an understanding caused her to stab me in the back. Back pains are the worst types of pain. Just when you think you body is safely held up, the structure begins to collapse because this bitch decides to guide a blade right through my spine. I’m not going to lie to myself and believe cheating is not in the norm, because I have crossed the lines a few times. During a dark time of being alone, I messed around with one of the secretaries, but during this time I never forgot who was more important: my wife. Instead, she felt this scumbag is her ideal mate, and maybe she's right. Sadly she didn’t understand evolution. If you mate with shit, you'll give birth to shit. I couldn't believe it. I tried to come up with a plan to rid it from my mind, but it was burned into my memory like a morning cigarette, or old coffee sunken into the carpet. Some ask, "If a tree falls while nobody is there, did the tree really fall?" I say yes, if I discover the fallen tree later. Today I discovered my tree was a whore fucking a man renting a rusted old trailer behind my house. Fucking some lowlife scum out to destroy my world because I knew how to use my resources better. I must admit he did have the checkmate this round. "John are you there?" she asked in an angry yet apathetic manner. "Yes" I said sternly, swallowing some stagnant saliva. She began to ramble on about my attention span. She always wanted to be the center of it. I turned to my side where I have a hanging mirror I use to check the status of my attire. I noticed my eyes. They were as red as blood exposed to oxygen. When I'm stationed at work I must never show anger, empathy, or worse of them all, mercy. This rule is not going to change just because she thinks I am weak. She should have known better, I am stronger than that. If she wanted to prove that I'm the loser of this game she had another thing coming. I am the provider, I am king. She is the cunt. She had to understand this. She had no choice. Silence. She must have hung up. That bitch never gave me a fighting chance. No sportsmanship whatsoever. I've wasted four years of my life to an ungrateful piece of shit, not worthy of the title “human”. First she called, then she yelled, finally she hung up. I wasn’t even given a chance to rebuttal. In my mind, I won. Two hours passed. I was in the office for probably one more hour. Time paused in my mind as I reflected on everything. Even if she were to come back I would be screwed with the knowledge of my fallen tree. I have come to terms with my mind. I will release her, but first I must bundle her shit. So I walked around the office. "What stuff in here is hers, “hmmm…" I thought to myself. I stumbled across a dog toy from a dog we owned only about a year ago. She hated that dog. I threw her regret into an empty cardboard box. I pulled open one of my dresser doors and found a pen. She had given me this pen when I started this job. My name is engraved on it. I throw her compassion into the box. I start to worry about her financially. What if she marries that son of a bitch, how will her future children eat, or what if they live on the street? So I threw my wallet filled with hours of hard work into the cauldron of post love. At work I'm very skilled. I annually won awards and broke records. I even appeared on the cover of a magazine no one reads. My job has treated me well. My job is like a woman I make love to then leave knowing it will never reject me for anyone less. My job understands sportsmanship. If I were to lose to my job, it would be an honor. I begin to seal the box when I remember a vital entity missing from the box. My effort. I look around my desk, nothing. Open drawer after drawer, nothing. On my way back to the box I found a box cutter to split the tape. I slice from right to left. The tape disconnects. Then I stop. The blade shines. It reflects the light, blinding me. I look down. "I've got it!" I screamed. I then slammed the blade down cutting off my left hand. "While my right hand is my skill you have always tried your best to be as good as your brother. Unfortunately, I’m right handed and that is where my compassion lies.", I told my decapitated partner. Therefore, there is nothing that shows my effort better than my left hand. I throw it into the box and seal it up. I begun to notice the blood I've lost, I'm going to die. "I'm satisfied with life", I said with confidence. I started to close my eyes, but then I realized I need to remember the most importing noun in the human race. It is love. So I took one more look at this blade, it's dull but should get the job done. I stared with no tears because I was about to give my true love the greatest gift of all. My one true love I would never let go of. She earned it, she’s been waiting for it. I carved a pleasant oval on the left side my chest. It stuck deep enough for me to pull out my skin and muscle. I saw my heart beat while being sheltered by the bones. Using my right hand and the passion I had accumulated over the years I tore apart the bones. I pushed the box off the desk realizing the worthlessness of this woman. I shall give my love to who truly deserves it. Feeling the effects of blood loss, I knew I was running out of time. I dug my hand in ripping my heart out. I slammed it down. I then smeared it on my beautiful project. It’s done. My heart was now where it belongs.

The boundless space of darkness and light, you call it the universe— we call it the Eternal. It was created eons ago, by a being far older than any of us, the one you call God, Allah, and many others. There was no voice, no wave of a hand, and most of all, no explanation. The Eternal is a collection of Infinities. Your so-called Earth is an Infinity, and it is comprised of multiple Realities. With that said, you are not alone. This may seem terrifying for most of your kind, humans have this ridiculous sense of self-importance. You are not the first or the last of creation. In fact, it was my kind that came first. We are not strangers to you. Some of you believe in us, but you cannot fathom anything that isn’t like you, and so you gave us limbs, bodies and genders. You believe that God shaped you in ‘His’ image, when in truth it was the other way around. You gave him a face, a voice, and a body just like your own. All this as an attempt to understand what you cannot. After the creation of the Eternal, God crafted three beings, two from celestial fire and the other from pure light. One was to lead the legion of God, the other to traverse the Eternal. I was to be the messenger. You know us by the names Michael, Lucifer and Gabriel. Our purpose was clear, but the creation of Michael’s legion changed that. God had created more of my kind, but this time he used pieces of Himself. He grew weaker, still stronger than us all but not strong enough to govern the Eternal alone. God was going to choose one of us, we were sure, Lucifer most of all. Lucifer had been created to explore the Infinities. He studied them, and so he had the most knowledge about the Eternal than any of us. God had considered this, but Lucifer was created to move from one Infinity to the next, to explore...not lead. With that, Michael was chosen. Contrary to what you have been told, Lucifer did not envy God. He envied Michael. You were told about a war of the angels, yes? Well, it was not so much a war rather a coup against Michael. In every Infinity was a watcher, they are the Grigori. Lucifer knew them and convinced them to fight for his side, with who you call Azazel as his second-in-command. And so they fought, the Grigori versus the Legion and Lucifer against Michael. God found out and the battle stopped, everyone was now at fault. The Grigori were to be punished for leaving their posts, and the Legion was absorbed back into God’s being. If there was anything God hated, it was creation deviating from purpose. Lucifer knew this, and so he fled. Michael, on the other hand, was to prove himself worthy again. Michael fell, and was sent here. He was the first of your kind, forced to undergo several lifetimes until he achieves what other humans cannot— absoluteness. You know this process as reincarnation, and for regular humans it ends in enlightenment. Once Michael reaches perfection, he will realize who he is and will then prove worthy to serve by God’s side as a ruler of the Eternal. It sounds simple. It should have been, but Lucifer knew about this and so he made it his mission to lead Michael astray, to keep him from ever achieving perfection. In your stories, Michael’s first form was named Adam. God took care of him at first, for he knew nothing. No memory of what he or his purpose was. Lucifer saw this, and took action. Your books tell of a serpent, but there was no serpent. Lucifer’s first form was named Eve. God released Adam from His care, not because of some apple. God drove Adam away and divided Earth’s landmass so that Lucifer would not find him. That’s the reason humans were created, to confuse Lucifer. Michael was given a different form for each lifetime, this made things harder and so Lucifer called upon the Grigori once more to help him with his mission. Azazel, Lucifer’s second-in-command, thought of a plan. He taught the humans several distractions, you call them the deadly sins. They were sins simply because their widespread could cause the clueless Michael to deviate from his mission. God sent down the newest angel, Rafael, to bury Azazel and stop the further spread of the distractions. This was a huge setback, but Lucifer was determined. The Grigori then mated with the daughters of man, producing offspring you call the Nephilim. These half-breeds were bigger and stronger than other humans. As a solution, God flooded the Earth, saving only one man, Michael, better known at the time as Noah, and his family. After the flood, life was restored and the hunt for Michael was back on. Generation after generation, Lucifer and the remaining Grigori searched. Some lifetimes they succeeded, such were the deaths of your beloved Abraham Lincoln, Princess Diana, and other lesser-known vessels. It was prophesied that by the time man first reached enlightenment, Michael would be close to fulfilling his mission, but it has been several years since Buddha and nothing has happened. We fear that the end might come and Michael would never reach perfection. People are starting to reach a higher form of awareness, not enlightenment, but a little closer. The human race can’t reach enlightenment before Michael reaches absoluteness. This is why we have tried to suppress their knowledge, we have created intricate systems to make sure of that. They find purpose in them, and so it benefits both sides. Religion, school, jobs, love...all illusions of purpose. Man cannot handle the truth, you see. Man has but one purpose, and that is to help conceal Michael. Man’s power is in numbers, that’s why the Church is so against contraception. It helps man deviate from purpose. Man was given free will because they have no higher purpose but to multiply. He reaches enlightenment when he realizes this. There’s that saying...’ignorance is bliss,’ it truly is, but ignorance can’t save us now. Lucifer has found a way to stop the reincarnation process. The Horsemen have been awakened and the Legion has been restored. There’s a war coming, and Heaven needs a champion. We need you. YOU ARE MICHAEL.

I lifted the shotgun to my shoulder, finger resting next to the trigger. I had a shell in the chamber, ready to be cocked. Missed my first shot. Maybe the butt of the gun wasn’t shoved far enough into my right shoulder, or maybe I didn’t look down the sight the right way. It was $13.50 for the three of us to shoot clay Frisbees for 30 minutes. That’s $4.50 per person, not counting the boxes of rounds. So $9.50 for each of us. Not bad for a half hour of target practice. I took aim at the horizon. I was told to point the barrel between two very tall mountains. They were jagged, treeless, and yet still dotted with green from the cactus forests that called the hillside home. I didn’t know their names. “PULL” My stare darted to the bunker as a disc flew out. I followed it with my eyes, then my gun. It slowed down as it reached the height of its arc. The sun froze. A glint of light bounced off the disc and shone like a watch reflection onto sunbleached concrete. I fired, and clay shards shot off in every direction. Whatever remained of its center accelerated over the bramble and out of my view, propelled by the sudden impact of a 20 gauge round in its rear. I cocked the Remington, and saw the busted cap of the shell as it launched out of the chamber, flared by the round. By some circumstance it landed perfectly on the brass and stood up on its end, searing towards the sky. I yelled for the pigeon 23 more times, and hit another 16. And every burst disc floated with the warm wind down to the remains of its clones. Even the ones I missed exploded upon impact with the dirt. I walked over a sea of gleaming glass to clean up my used shells, and strode across its sandy shore, shoulder aching from its single bruise.

We always think we know our best friends well. Of course you do. You’ve spent years together, you’ve built so many memories. You know every little thing about them, and they know every little thing about you. Except that just isn’t true. When you go home, from work or from school, and settle back into your sweet suburban life, do your friends have any idea what you are doing? Of course not, they are busy doing whatever they do in the evenings, this is your personal time. Ah, but that’s it isn’t it? Just as your friends don’t know what you get up to, neither do you know what they are doing. Maybe their ‘personal time’ isn’t so relaxed. Maybe they go home and drop the happy façade, and spend their nights trying to stave the demons off. “That’s ridiculous” you cry, “I would notice if something was wrong with my best friend!” but would you? How easily could you be pushed away with a simple laugh and an “I’m fine, it’s just a stressful day”. How easily would you agree and just get on with things because they’re “just a quiet person” and because that gaunt, down look is just a case of “resting bitch face” or whatever they choose to call it these days. Because nothing is wrong with your friend right? They’d tell you if something was. They’re not just hiding it so you don’t get hurt. They don’t cry themselves to sleep. They don’t wish death upon themselves every night.

"Miranda, would you come with me to the market?" John asked his wife as she was reading a capacious book about the history of Cornwall. Miranda had, for as long as she and John could remember, always fashioned Brittan’s history, and did not mind reading large and hefty books that would fill her mind with vivid pictures of the past. "Of course dear," she said as she closed the book. John grabbed her arm as she was about to get up from her comfortable arm chair. "Oh what would I do without you?" she said to John in a humorous way. "I had an unusual dream tonight, I wasn't even in the dream," he said as they entered the car. "The sun was out in the market, almost like today. There was a small family of three that were walking over the crossing close to the cheese stand, the husband got run over by a bus, and I don’t think he survived." Miranda looked at him with curious eyes as she put on her seatbelt. By the time she had put on her seatbelt John had already started the car and put his foot on the clutch. "So it was a nightmare?" She asked him. "Not really, I wasn't involved in it, so why should I care?” Miranda’s curious eyes turned away from John and faced the dashboard. “John, a nightmare doesn’t become a nightmare because you have a bad time in it, it is when anything bad happens in the dream.” he didn’t answer, and started to drive towards the market. "Did you want that apple pie they sell here, or do you want to make your own?" "I'll make my own, I already have the apples I need." John simply nodded and gestured that they should keep walking down the market. "It is such a nice day today John, look at all the families that are out enjoying the sunshine." Again, John simply nodded and gestured that they should keep on walking. “If only we could walk in peace, this nice weather is bringing out every family in Yorkshire.” he said with a grumpy voice. As they were ploughing their way through the crowd of people, they were both stunned by the sound of screeching tires quickly followed by a large bang, not even seconds had gone past before they heard a boy cry: "Daddy!" The attention of the crowd immediately turned towards the crossing not far from where John and Miranda were standing. "Jonathan! No, no! Jonathan!" The woman cried whilst running towards the person that was hit by the bus. **Two months later** “John, you can’t possibly blame yourself for the death of Michael. It is only natural for people to die.” Miranda said to John to try and comfort him. He looked at her with a painful gaze and said “I am cursed with this thing, and trying to use it for a good purpose just doesn’t seem to work. I have tried to save three people after I realised that I can see people’s deaths, what if it just cannot be stopped?” “Honestly, I don’t know, I don’t understand this curse of yours, and I am glad I am not the one in your place. I wouldn’t know how to deal with it.” She said as she left the chair and headed towards the kitchen. “Yeah, I bet you are happy it’s not you,” he mumbled annoyingly as he contemplated going for a walk to clear his head. “If you only knew what I am going through, I am too old for this.” “I cannot begin to understand what you are going through, but it is not fair that you let out your aggression on me, I never asked for my husband to get this thing.” John could feel the anger building up inside him, and felt that he should make his contemplation into action. “I am going for a walk.” He said as he picked up his flat cap and his tan Barbour jacket and left the house. John was reminiscing about the past visions, and how he hadn’t managed to save any of the damned souls from death’s grasp. “I don’t even know the name of the last person I tried to save.” He said to himself whilst walking past the local park. John decided to go and sit on a nearby bench. As any sane person, he thought to himself: “Why me?” The second he sat down on the bench he started feeling dizzy, he started having difficulties breathing through his nose, and his eyesight got blurry. “Is it the stress that is taking its toll on me?” He thought to himself as he concentrated on not seeming like he was in trouble. The dizziness lasted for a couple of seconds longer and his head started to clear up again, he could breathe through his nose and slowly his eyesight started getting better as well. He noticed a couple of young children staring worriedly at him. John just smiled at them and they continued with their games. He looked around for the parents of the children, but he could not see any adults nearby. He then took it upon himself to keep a watchful eye over the children, it was the least he could do as he wasn’t able to save the people he had seen in his visions. A couple of minutes went past, the children were still playing the same game that John had assumed was an alternative version to the tag game that he had played when he was young. One of the children ran away from the kid that was chasing him, straight towards John. He evaded crashing into the bench John was sitting in by changing his trajectory in the last possible moment. The kid that was chasing him slowed down and looked at John. “You have a nosebleed, sir” The kid said to him before continuing the chase after the other child. John placed his finger underneath his nose, and it only confirmed what the child had said, John had a nosebleed. He picked up a small packet of tissues from his jacket pocket and wiped the blood away from his nose. John was about to get up and put the tissue in the bin close to the bench he was sitting on when he started feeling dizzy again, this time it was worse, a lot worse. John got so dizzy that he had to put both hands on the bench to sit up straight. His eyesight went from blurry to black. John heard children’s voices in the distance, slowly he could see a light approaching, and the light grew larger and contained vibrant colours. The light came closer, and closer until he could see that it was the outline of the park he was in. “What was that? How long have I been gone?” John thought to himself. He looked around for other people that might have noticed him passing out, but nobody was in sight, except for the children that were still playing the game of tag. John felt weird, almost as if he wasn’t present, but how could he not be present? Was he having another vision? He looked at the children playing, still heavily engaged in tag. “Matt, got you! Now it’s your turn to cap!” One of the kids said to the other kid he had just tagged. “Alright, one, two, three, now it’s me, four, five, Dylan, you are mine” The kid that just got tagged said as the other kids were running in front of the kid that seemed to be Dylan. Dylan was running as fast as he could possibly run. The kids in front, and the ones that Dylan managed to outrun stopped and stood still and counted to three before running away again. After three kids had been outrun by Dylan, Matt started running towards the group of kids. They all spread out in different directions, and Matt set his trajectory towards one of the slower kids. Matt was right behind the kid he was chasing, stretched out his hand to tag the other kid, slipped and hit the other kid so that he fell over. Matt’s body fell straight towards the other kid that was already on the ground, his neck hit the heel of the others kid’s foot and John could hear a loud snap. John’s throat lumped up, his heart started racing as he rapidly got up from the bench and hurried over to the kids that were currently standing in a circle around the two kids. “Move, let me help!” John said as he grabbed Dylan’s shoulder and moved him out of the way. The kid Matt was chasing was in tears, sitting with his back towards Matt. Matt didn’t move, Matt wasn’t crying, John could not see any signs of Matt breathing, Matt was dead. John’s heart started racing, he looked around himself looking for someone that might have a mobile phone on them. Nobody was in sight. John started feeling dizzy again, and quickly lost control over his legs. He fell to the ground and his vision fainted quickly after. A light appeared in the distance, slowly creeping up on John, as the light came closer, John could see grass, cloudy sky, green trees and silhouettes of children that were playing. As soon as his vision came back, he noticed that he was still sitting on the bench. “Now it’s me, four, five, Dylan, you are mine!” Matt yelled as the children started running away from Dylan. John’s heart started racing, he quickly made the decision to break up the game, and hastily walked towards the children. > I am planning on continuing this short story, and writing it into a full story if the interest is big enough. Thank you for reading it, and please let me know what you think! > The title "Dying Wish" is directly related to how the story is supposed to end, I will not spoil the ending, but this might help you understand the title.

The first rays of the mornings sun sting my face as I awake from a long restless sleep. I have grown used to the lack of rest. Ever since it happened.. My brother was taken by a group of bandits notoriously known as "The Smiling Men." I stare into the mirror hanging on the wall, what I see in the reflection shocks me, when did I start looking so rugged. I see my short brown hair, stubble out of control, scars cover my body. A product of the life I lead. I take one last long look into the bright blue eyes I share with my brother before I turn away. As I sit on the bed, I can't help but wonder how my brothers family is faring, I must do something to bring him back. I get up and dress in my favorite garb, a long black trench coat with a round brim hat. I must save my brothers life. Today is the day I set out on my journey. Today is the day I bring my brother back safely to his family. I grab my sword down from the wall, scoop up all the coins I have left, and head through the door. As I walk through the lively village, I look around at all the people moving through their lives, no purpose, no goals, just passing the time until they die, sad really. Although I suppose I have always had a nhilistic view towards this shithole called Earth. I leave the village and prepare myself for the struggle ahead. I walk along a lonely stretch of road, trees in abundance. As I approach a particularly ominous section of the area, I grow weary. I see a large burly looking man step out from behind a large tree. Here I am, just travelling along the road minding my own business, and come across some confident little crook looking to rob innocent travelers. He comes strutting up to me, he might have a few brigands waiting, I must remain cautious .. "Give me your gold and you'll be on your way." I reply with "Try and take it." He was too slow on the draw, I drove my sword straight into his chin and he crumples lifelessly as his last bit of consciousness quickly slips away. A stir of movement from the trees and now I am surrounded by 4 angry foes, all with swords drawn, what a fantastic start to the day I think to myself as I size up my enemies. The first one lunges and I dodge to the side, kicking his left leg out simultaneously, I twirl around steel flashing as I catch the second one in the hip. He falls to the ground maimed. As I am distracted with him the other two rush me, a flurry of steel, blow after blow, I parry and dance around them all. One drops his guard for just a moment and I quickly seize opportunity ducking a blow and driving my sword straight through his heart, he drops and takes my sword with him. I quickly pull the dagger out of his belt and duck just in time to avoid a sword wooshing past my head, I jump on the attacker and drive my dagger straight through the eyehole in his visor. Now there is one. He hesitates slightly, having witnessed the entire battle with his friends, a quick burst of confidence causes him to charge me full force with his sword in the air, rookie mistake. I side step him and pull my sword out of his comrades breast. A quick parry and slash and now 5 lay dead around me. Child's play. I take what I need from their corpses, the dead have no need for earthly possessions, and I'm once again on my way. I sit in a pub, in the corner of a dimly lit room, drinking ale and observing everyone around me. I might as well stay here for a night, a nice alternative to the cold hard ground. As I am draining the last bit of ale, I hear my name being called. "ORNELL!!" As a familiar face comes walking up to me, "Aldo! I didn't expect to run into you here." Aldo was a fellow mercenary, and probably the closest thing I have to a friend. He has medium length straight hair and carries a Two-Handed greatsword. We have fought side by side in many battles, a hardened warrior. "What are you doing so far from home, Ornell?" Aldo asks, curiosity teeming in his voice. "I am looking for information about The Smiling Men, I have some business that needs to be conducted with them." Aldo looks at me with those piercing green eyes "The Smiling Men? Ornell, don't tell me you are looking for a fight, you know how ruthless they are, and you know more than anyone how dangerous Oudin is.. They say he is the best killer alive.." I nod nonchalantly and stare into my cup, questioning whether or not I could trust Aldo. "They have taken my brother." I rise before the sun, having overheard information about the bandits the night before I am determined to follow the lead. I get dressed and head out the door, I pull my hat down so it covers most of my face and walk slowly through the street, looking for my mark. This town is ratty, most buildings appear to be unfit for human inhabitation. As I observe my surroundings I feel the familiar distaste brought to me by these zombie-like poor excuses for human beings. I can't stand the site of people wasting the potential of life sitting around waiting to die. I belie- wait, I think I found who I am looking for. As I see him slowly teeter into view, I knew this would be an easy task, I quickly duck into an alleyway as not to be seen prematurely. As soon as he rounds the corner I wrap one hand around his throat, and pull him into the alleyway. I toss him to the ground and put my sword to his throat. "So here's the deal, you are going to tell me everything you know about Oudin, and The Smiling Men, and I am going to give you a quick death." The despair is evident in his croaky voice. "I- I- I don't know anything!" I smile slyly and shove the tip of my sword into his knee. He screams in pure agony and tries reaching for his knee, but my foot on his chest holds him firmly in place. "Wrong answer friend, next I cut off your fingers one by one." He screams in desperation, his words slurred by too much drink "I ALREADY TOLD YOU I DON'T KNOW ANYTHNG!" With one quick slash three of his fingers are detached from his hand. He clutches the hand, clearly faint from the amount of pain being inflicted. "I'll ask one more time" As I drive my sword through his lower abdomen, he begins spitting up blood. "Tell me what you know" I say calmly as I sense the fear of The Smiling Men being over ran by the pain of torture. "Okay okay okay.." he says chokingly through the blood dribbling out of his mouth. He tells me everything I need to know. "Please.. I gave you what you want.. end my suffering.." I give him one last look of disgust before I slit his throat. I wander off to find Aldo. The sun is shining as I make my way back to the pub, somehow the condemnable buildings look less ominous in the light. As I walk through the door, I find Aldo enjoying breakfast, he looks up and catches sight of me. He waves me over, through words, muffled by food, he yells "Ornell! Come enjoy some ale!" I smile as I take my seat. A breakfast consisting of eggs, chicken, and potatoes. "So, I followed the lead. He told me there are rumors of Oudin attacking a merchants wagon in the east" I say as I shovel eggs into my mouth. "Well, we have a destination now don't we." He says matter of factly after taking a swig of ale. I chuckle and look down at the table, the mornings events racing through my mind. "So, when do we dep-" His words are cut short as a large man starts yelling at the innkeep. "4 coins for this piss drink?!" He screams, spit flying out in the process. "I'm.. I'm sorry sir, I do not control the prices." The innkeep says through chattering teeth. The man throws the cup at her head and laughs as the blow drops her to the ground. Aldo grunts as he quickly stands up and charges the man. He drives his shoulder into his chest and tries dragging him to the ground, but the man counteracts by throwing him into the bar. Aldo stands up and smiles, he waits patiently. As the man winds up to take a huge swing, Aldo quickly moves in and wraps around him, one hand on his bicep to prevent the strike, the other around the back of his neck. With full force he slams the mans face into the counter and blood spurts. He crumples to the ground, teeth laying around him, labored breathing through a broken jaw. "Been too long since I've had a decent fight" Aldo jeers as he makes his way around the counter. He picks the innkeep up off the ground and plants a kiss on her hand. "I apologize for this brute fool my lady." I walk to the counter and place enough coins to cover the damage, the food, and the room for our stay. "Come, Aldo, let us be on our way." "Did you see the look of despair on his face right before I slammed him!" Aldo says, laughter ringing through the trees. I laugh along with him. "He almost shit himself for certain." "So, have you thought of what your plan might be once we reach the end of our journey?" Aldo asks curiously. "No, not yet, maybe I'll head over to Dawsbury and see if any nobles have need of my services, what about you? What were you doing back there at the pub?" "Ah, looking for fights!" We both chuckle as we continue along the dirt road. "You know, Ornell, it's been quite a while since we have crossed swords." "Indeed it has" I let out with a long sigh. Aldo perks up and with a sly look asks "Would you care to cross swords now, and see who of us is the better warrior?" Not one to back away from a challenge I agree. We both draw our swords, his clearly has the reach advantage being a few feet longer than mine. He slowly circles around my sword arm, and I lunge, he jumps to the side and swings his sword around in a long arcing blow. I block and strike him in the face with my elbow while his guard is down. He falls to the ground and I pounce, I jump on top of him and move my sword towards his throat, before it gets there he rolls out from under me and grabs up his sword. "Not a bad shot!" He says with a bloody smile. He runs at me and brings his greatsword down with a hard blow, I side step and swing my sword at his leg, he lifts his leg just in time to dodge the swing, I follow up with another aimed at his chest. He dodges back, and I quickly run forward and kick him in his chest while he is off balance. He rolls when he hits the ground to quickly be back on his feet. I hold my sword with both hands and swing full force at his shoulder, he uses the momentum against me and disarms me with one quick parry. He swings over and over as I am dodging every blow, he swings too wildly on one attempt and I quickly take advantage of it and grab up my sword. Again he swings and I spin around, place my leg behind his, and knock him to the ground with my shoulder, I quickly put my sword to his chest. "Yield!" He says, I laugh and help him up. "Ahh, Ornell, the years have done nothing to diminish your skill I see." I give a sarcastic chuckle and reply with "I wish I could say the same to you" We both laugh and continue on our way. We decided to make camp in a small forrest clearing, as I lay there wishing to be taken by sleeps sweet embrace I am troubled by visions of my past.. I struggle to repress them back into the deep fabrics of my mind. This.. This can't be real, I thought as I slowly push open the charred door, the smell of burnt wood and flesh fill my nostrils. I look around, desperately praying that this was all a horrible dream. I stand there in shock as every worry I had is realized. I immediately burst into tears and utter anguish as I rush to the site of the burnt body that used to be my wife, I drop to my knees, and clutch at my head as if I was going to rip my face off. I can't believe this is happening. I turn her over, and immediately throw up. No.. no.. no no no NO GOD NO!!! My son! He was my world! IS MY WORLD! She must have been trying to protect him from the fire. This CANNOT BE HAPPENING! WHY! I slump back into the floor, I grab- "Ornell, Ornell!" I awake to Aldo leaning over me, shaking me. "What are you doing Aldo?" "You were talking in your sleep, yelling no and rolling around.." I sit up, drenched in sweat, "Just.. a bad dream.." If only it were just a dream.. I gulped back tears as I tried hard to forget the past. Aldo and I quietly sneak along a hill covered in trees. We have reaced the hideout of The Smiling Men. We duck behind a rather large tree and listen as we hear random chatter. "I can't believe that fool, Ornell actually believes we took his brother.. HA!" what is he talking about? I think to myself. I quickly move along until I spot Oudin's tent. This place should be guarded.. Where is everyone.. Aldo draws his sword and walks out into the clearing. "Aldo, what are you doing, get back here" I whisper quietly. He gestures me over, I quickly draw my sword and follow. I look towards Oudin's tent.. Suddenly I feel my leg buckle and I'm down on one knee. Blinding pain shoots up my right leg. I drop my sword and grab onto my leg with both hands. I turn around to see Aldo's bloody sword and smug grin. "Once a fool, always a fool Ornell." He laughs in that smug way he does. Suddenly, the tent flaps start moving, and out emerges a figure.. "Brother?! Is that you? What is going on here, why are you walking free?" He smiles and walks over to me, sword in hand. "You fool, I am Oudin." He quickly drives his sword deep into my chest, I feel the cold bite of steel as every inch of metal penetrated my body. My consciousness starts to slip as I look up, dumbfounded. Oudin kneels down and stares deep into my eyes. "I want to make sure betrayal is the last thing you see as you die, Ornell." I stare into his eyes.. I see him stand up, and prepare for a swing..

God created the Heavens and the Depths and the Great Yonder and the green Earth and it was good. However the silence got to God. He could hear his own thoughts. And so, God created Animal and it was good. God placed Animal on this green Earth and stepped back to look at His creation. "My Lord!" said Animal, "I was created in your image and I shall live by your will." Animal roamed the fields as God intended. Animal swam the seas as God intended. Animal flew the skies as God intended. God looked at Animal and Animal looked lovingly back at God. God found Animal so boring. And so, God picked an infected scab from the back of his neck. The scab oozed pus. God placed the infected Scab upon His green Earth and watched as it wriggled and crawled, reforming itself into the shape of a strange starfish. The awful scabby Starfish stood up and looked around. "Hello my child." said God to this absurd creature. "What the fuck is this?" asked the Starfish "This is my green Earth, created beneath the Heavens and above the Depths to house my Creations for all.. are you listening?" The strange Starfish was not listening. It was peeling its own rib out of its mangled chest. The rib formed legs of its own and arms and before it had even finished growing a head the first scabby Starfish was already fucking it. The second scabby Starfish became swollen and out of it fell two more scabby Starfish. God wasn't sure what was going on here. He certainly didn't like this. Animal came by to meet the new neighbours on this green Earth. Immediately the four scabby Starfish began feasting on Animal, ripping large hunks from its torso. The four scabby Starfish fought violently for bloody pieces of Animal which they forced down their putrid throats. From their filthy behinds fell rotten pieces of Animal and the Starfish began to... It was around this time that God left.

We came into each other’s lives without really noticing. She joined an organization to which I already belonged. She, at that time, was not an individual. She was another member of the group. She had no defining characteristics, no personality. To me, she simply was. Even when we both attended functions outside of the confines of the club, she was still just a part of a whole. A piece of a larger thing, so large that its pieces were completely indistinct from one another. Time passed, and still I did not notice her as anything more than a piece of the whole. It took me being removed from the organization we shared for me to notice anything more. I began to notice that she was attractive, even pretty when she wanted to be. She had long, dirty blonde hair and bright green eyes. She was charming and funny, in the mean, sarcastic sort of way that complimented my own innate mean-spiritedness. I enjoyed her company. Conversations between us came naturally, despite neither of us having overly much to say. We were each quiet in our own ways. This was not concerning, and the silence we often shared did not strain us. It was a pleasant quietness, one filled with smiles and gentle touches of the hand. We would walk, chatting occasionally when we felt the urge, and watch the world go by us. These were happy times. Eventually, I had to move away. The city we had once shared, that afforded us so easy personal contact, was now lost to me. A world away. We promised to visit each other, to talk on the phone and share our lives us much as we could. For a little while, it worked. Phones calls often, visits every few weeks. But this wasn’t sustainable. The thing that had made us compatible also made being apart from one another intolerable. We were quiet. Always quiet. On phone calls, minutes would pass in silence before one of us would come up with something to say. In person, this was not a problem. But silence cannot be shared over a phone line. It can only be felt; like a gap between two souls where once there was a bridge. I could feel the gap grow as time between each visit passed. When we did reunite, it was like throwing logs back onto a small pilot light. Each time we would go through an awkward phase, akin to reintroducing ourselves and what it meant to be “us”. Then we separated again, and the flames dwindled down to an even smaller light. Not bright enough to keep us happy, but bright enough that promises of “soon” and words like “I love you” kept its diminutive flame. As the time between visits grew, and the light dwindled further still, I found that I no longer was truly in love with the person to whom I seldom spoke. I loved a ghost. A fragment of my memory that I clung to with all my might even as its shadow went beyond my reach. Each time we did speak, I found my memories to be more satisfactory than the actual communication. I didn’t enjoy hearing from her. Her speech, her messages were all strained, lacking true joy. It was a poison to the real joy I felt; remembering. I loved a ghost. A dead thing, whose time had long ago passed and whose only life now resided in memory. Our pilot light had gone out, snuffed by the distance that separated us. But still we continued. I cannot speak for why she chose to drag on the state of affairs; why she spoke so bitterly to me, so seldomly, and without any love in her voice. I even find it hard to pin why I chose to continue. I can label it as an innate weakness, but I don’t know the truth of that. What I do know is that despite knowing that I loved a ghost, I loved it still. Like all who love ghosts, I desperately wished it would come back to life. My ghost even spoke to me, promising me that things would be better, promising that we would one day be in each other’s arms again. I do not know whether I truly believed my ghost, but these were the words I wanted to hear, and so I chose them as the truth. Time flowed. Months between visits turned to years, and somehow we kept a pretense of a relationship. Time between not just physical contact, but virtual contact increased as well. It went from days without hearing from her, to weeks, to months, and eventually, years. At this point, it was routine. I loved a ghost, and instead of allowing me the peace to continue, it haunted me still. I found myself wishing it would just die, or that I would. Still it haunted me, clung to me with a steel grip while simultaneously holding me at arm’s length. When finally she died, I felt almost relieved. It had been five years since we had seen each other, and two since we last spoke on the phone. A few months before, she had sent me a vague note saying that she would love to see me again soon, and asked if I would be free sometime in the next year or two. I had yet to respond. I was now free to love my ghost without being haunted by it. I visited her grave two years after her burial, on what would have been our 60th anniversary. I had not attended her funeral. No one had thought to let me know until several months after her passing. I had not even known she was ill, for she had not told me. I felt little remorse at this. I was in love with a ghost, after all. It made little difference if she was old, ill, or even dead. When I placed the flowers beneath her tombstone, there was no inscription. I thought that fitting. I had no idea who her friends were, or if any of her family was still alive to attend the funeral. I did not know anyone who was close enough to her to think of an inscription. I certainly was not qualified. I read the date of her death written below her name, and I was suddenly brought to tears. I knelt atop the grave, weeping openly. I had lived my life telling myself I was in love with this woman, yet I had not thought about her name in many years. Her full name. She had been more than just a ghost. I remembered that now. She had been a woman, with hopes and dreams and goals, the same as I. I remembered at one point in my life I knew them all, and had held them as dearly as she had, for I had believed her happiness to be my own. This was before we had died, when we had planned our lives together and meant every word without hesitation. I wondered if she had every gotten the dogs she had dreamed of. If she ever went to law school, or got her business degree. I did not know. She never told me. I wondered if she had ever married, if she still continued with the ghost she had become. I did not know. These realizations devastated me. I traveled home that night, the long drive back, thinking the thoughts of a younger man. One who had known and felt real love, not just remembered figments and fragments. I walked to my door that night with more vigor than I had felt, finally determined, finally free to make the kind of choices that I wanted to make. I sat in my desk chair. It was dark, soft leather almost as ancient as I. I pulled a few framed pictures of my ghost from the bottom drawer. They were covered in dust. I brushed them off, and set them lightly on the empty space of the desk in front of me. The pictures showed two smiling faces pressed close together. They were much younger faces. Once each picture had been removed, my hand brushed the final occupant of that drawer. It was a small, square box. I pulled the box from out the drawer, and placed it too on the desk in front of me. I had forgotten about the box, had forgotten why the pictures had covered it from my view. I remembered now. I opened the lid, and drew from the box my old pistol. It was a revolver, loaded. The wooden handle was covered in mold, but the metal still had a dull gleam. I was no longer haunted by my ghost. The only thing left haunting me, was myself. There is only one way to escape yourself. I imagined, just before the end, that I saw her. She was young, vital, and smiling. I had not seen her smile in decades. I died happily, knowing that I can finally be what I had always wanted. A ghost.

This is a story about a Fragile Girl and a Boy, a Man and a Woman, and a Dream within a Dream. The Man and Woman were married, and they had been for a great many number of years. They met when she was a Fragile Girl and he was a Boy. The girl was terribly fragile, and she had no defenses. When she was hurt she felt as she would die, and she was always hurt, and unable to defend herself she only thought of escape. Death would save her, surely it would, but then she met the Boy, who loved saving things and he saved her instead. Even though the Fragile Girl had been saved from Death, the need to escape never really left her. The boy saved her, but he also hurt her, for she loved him in a way only fragile people can: full of need and dreams of Love with a capital “L”. This kind of love takes the energy of two people who both know the idea of Love so intimately that is part of their soul. A definition doesn’t exist, because the magic of it is so mysterious. Like the mixing of two colors. Two colors combined are no longer known by their separate names, but a new one. It is a whole new creation that cannot exist without two separate colors, and once combined cannot be separated again. And although you can name Blue and Red, and combine them to make Purple – you cannot take Purple and make Blue and Red. That is the kind of love the Fragile Girl needed. The Boy didn’t know about that kind of love, but he wasn’t the type to need it. He was practical and dutiful and ordinary to those that were close to him. He knew about Loyal Love. This kind of love is special, but not magic. This is a love whose greatness lies in that it is not exclusive. The more it is shared, the more content the loyal person is because they are fulfilling all their obligations. People who know this kind of love only know how to bestow it equally on all people. This kind of love is great, but common, and has as its companions Responsibility and Duty. Loyal lovers are irresistibly drawn to people who need saving. Loyal Love cannot be reciprocation to Love, because magic cannot come from worldly ideas of obligation and duty. Although the Boy and the Girl had such different ideas about love, they were very young. To a girl that needs saving and a boy who needs to save, they were for a time, exactly what the other person needed. The girl, never knowing anything but hurt, was saved by the boy and Loved him, and the boy was happy, having saved the girl. Years passed, and the Boy and Girl grew up to be the Man and the Woman. They had a daughter. The man was happy, for he had a family to which he could bestow his Loyal Love. He was content that he could Provide, and provide well. He didn’t bring magic into the lives of his family, but also did not see the need for it, as he was very practical. They had what they needed and more, and so he did not see or feel the need for anything else. The Woman however, was terribly unhappy. While she knew that they had everything they needed, she also knew that they were ordinary. While she had grown out of many childish ways and set aside many immature ideas, she could not forget that she needed magic in her life. She needed Love. She needed the color purple. The woman felt selfish, for she had lived with the Man for many years and could see that he did not feel bereft or lacking. He was content, so why couldn’t she be? She knew the reason. She had Loved him for so long and it was given loyalty in return. Not his heart, not his soul. There was no magic between the two of them. She tried desperately to win his Love but nothing she did ever reached him. She tried writing letters, but how can you explain the color purple to someone who’s never seen it before, who can’t imagine mixing two colors, who thinks mixing two things and getting one back is wholly impractical? She tried to show him purple, to gift him with examples of how amazing it was, and while the Man was thankful, he did not respond to her in kind. She tried being angry, to see if he would try to win her, to fight for her. She fell into a crazed despair, because she really never stopped being the Fragile Girl, begging and pleading and screaming for someone to love her, and receiving silence in return. She was frantic. She needed him to take charge of this, to grab her and hold her and convince her that she was loved, that nothing in the world could stop him from loving her. She wanted him to grab her to him, to comfort her. He would never do that, never think that she would need it, would never feel the need to do so. Her old companion death visited her again then, to offer his hand, to save her from her suffering. And when death returned, so did the Man, because he was doing what he always did, which was to save the girl. And this terrified the girl. What would happen if death came to visit her, and the boy chose not to save her? She knew that she would die. And although she wanted Love, she was more afraid of death. Why? Because of her daughter. Her strange, beautiful, loving daughter who was magic. She couldn’t leave her. The Woman knew how broken it made her to live without magic. She couldn’t harm her daughter. So the woman tried to be strong. She leaned on the man less, to be her own person. She thought maybe the man would love her more now, to see her as someone worth giving his heart and soul to. But he didn’t. He was too busy saving everyone else, doing what he needed to provide, making lists and crossing off lists. As long as he crossed everything off, what else could be asked of him? His indifference scared her. She knew she could not give anymore of herself to him, or she would become nothing. Her Love couldn’t be his, because he couldn’t Love her. So she stopped. She became angry. She couldn’t understand. She pushed him away. She said ugly things to hurt him. But he wasn’t deep enough to hurt. And he was angry too. Maybe because she made him feel inadequate. He was indignant that what he had given wasn’t enough, that she was always wanting more. That she always needed something he couldn’t provide; it wasn’t something that could be put on a checklist and that was all he knew how to do. And because he was angry he hurt her, saying things that he knew would call her old friend death back. Maybe that’s what he wanted after all; it seemed the only way to get her to leave him alone. She threatened to leave; he didn’t try to stop her. She drugged herself to sleep every night to protect herself, and he made sure that he wasn’t around for that so that he didn’t have to pretend to try to stop her. He halfheartedly went through the motions of being loyal, so that he couldn’t be faulted for not trying. He deliberately made weak motions of trying to “fix” things, ones that he knew she would deflect in her pain so that he couldn’t be accused of not trying.

The woman was sleeping poorly, even with the drugs and the alcohol she used, each night taking a little more, wondering (hoping) that she wouldn’t wake up. If it was an accident, then maybe her daughter could be ok. She didn’t know. She only knew that she was not, and had never been, strong enough to be in the world alone. She went to sleep fitfully at night, her head full of anger and sadness and hopelessness. This went on for several nights. One night the woman had a dream. In this dream, the man and the woman were fighting and saying all manner of ugly things to each other. The woman, wanting the arguing to cease, to stop the madness and the fury, threatened to kill herself. This always put the man in saving mode. But in the dream (nightmare?) the man called her bluff, and the woman’s greatest fear came true. He didn’t care if she died. He told her to get on with it. He didn’t have time for her, he told her. His list of things he needed to do was too long, and she was something he needed to be able to cross off, once and for all. She crumpled to the floor and he left, off to finish Important Things. Despondent, the woman knew it was finally time to let death collect her. She looked about her on the ground and noticed strange, red, glowing cubes. They looked evil and even though she did not know what they were she knew that if she ate them, they would kill her. She scrambled about the floor, grabbing at them until she had a handful. She looked at them, glowing red in her palm, and lifted her hand to her mouth. As she did, she looked up and saw two children watching her - a young boy and a girl. She knew immediately that they were her children – her daughter, and the son that she had wanted but never had. She had never become pregnant again after the birth of her daughter, but she had secretly always wanted a second child. While her daughter favored her father in looks and manner, she had always wondered what it would be like to have a son that looked like her. She always felt like an alien in her own family, without anyone that tied her into their group. Her daughter and the Man got along so well, and she was an outsider. She knew her daughter loved her, but she didn’t feel like she belonged to these people. With every passing year after the birth of her daughter the feeling grew and after a long time she knew that she would never have that son. The man, who was always content and practical, did not know to wish for a son, for he was happy with his daughter. The woman looked at the children, and as she did, she saw them looking at her hand holding the evil cubes glowing with death within it. Then one of them (she isn’t sure which) said, “May we have one, too?” in a tone that made it clear to her that they also knew what ingesting one of the cubes would mean. It was too much. Should her children die too, because she suffered? At that moment, the ground crumbled beneath her. Because it was a dream, the ground was literally crumbling beneath her body until she was riding on a sea of grey rubble. She looked around and she could see artifacts from her life with the Man tumbling around in the whirlpool of the ground: unimportant things, symbols of domestic life, laundry, toys, their material trappings. She scrambled to find purchase but she was drowning in detritus. Then, she spotted a man. This man had a shovel over his shoulder. And this man was Magic. He said to her, “I can stop this. I can change this. I can change the past, but it will also change the future. Do you want my help?” Of course she did. She was lost, spinning, being tossed and beaten by her life crashing around her. “Yes”, she said. “I will help you. When I begin to dig, I will change the past. But remember, it will also change your future. A warning, once the magic begins, do not touch any of the items you see from your past life or things will be as they are now, and nothing will ever change.” The man lifted the shovel from his shoulder, and began to dig. As soon as the blade of the shovel broke the surface of the rubble, everything began to shoot straight up toward the sky in a vertical column. The rubble, the detritus, their worldly trappings. She was shooting upwards as well. She could barely get her bearings as she was tossed about in the tornado. As she spun she spotted her son, who was reaching for an orange shirt that he recognized. She yelled at him to stop and threw her body over him to stop him from grabbing it. They stayed frozen in this horrible whirlwind for an eternity until suddenly it was completely silent. The woman opened her eyes. All was calm. Everything had disappeared and she was standing alone in a room that looked like a warehouse. All she could see of it was one corridor. She began to walk down the corridor, and as she did she felt that she was becoming younger. Although she could remember her past life, everything that she knew was beginning to fade the further she walked. She didn’t know how she knew, but she felt like she was making her life’s journey again, from the beginning. As she walked a little further she met the Boy. And they walked together, and they fell in love. And although they weren’t doing anything but walking, the memories of their lives together were de-constructing and reforming. They understood as they walked along that they were falling in love – Love, this time. And it was wonderful. They were so overjoyed; they enjoyed life together, or had the memory that they did. They had the children they wanted, did the silly romantic things they wanted. They built the memory of an extraordinary life. The life they could have lived. As they neared the end of this corridor, they approached a wall. And at the wall they turned right, and then right again, and began walking up this corridor, which ran parallel to the one they just walked down. Again, they didn’t know how they knew, but it seemed clear that the first corridor was the beginning of their journey, and they had just passed the middle section and were now continuing on with the second half. They walked up quite cheerfully, their newly formed memories making them excited for what the future held for them. But as they walked further this path, it became clear that there was a hint of sadness to the memories being made here. They still loved each other, and were living extraordinarily, but something was permeating these events with sadness. They couldn’t see the end of path from where they were, and so continued on walking. As they came nearer to the end, they became sadder. It became apparent that there was a sign at the end of this corridor, as well as a set of doors. When they got close enough, they could see the sign. It had a date on it. The date was the current date in this dream, and it had their names on it. Underneath the date there were the words “Marriage Terminated”. Because this was a dream, and dreams are strange, the man and woman knew what they needed to do next. They had to walk out of the doors, and go their separate ways, with their new memories of a happy life led to accompany them. They looked at each other and were sad, but in this dream they had no choice but to walk through the doors. The man and woman walked out the doors, turned in separate directions and left. The woman began to come out of her daze, and the gravity and strangeness of what just happened hit her all at once. She grieved for the loss of the happiness and joy she felt walking down that first corridor. She wondered what would happen if she walked back through those doors and walked backwards. Could she do it all again and somehow avoid the ending? Make a new one? She walked back to the doors, pushed through them and was surprised to find the man already there! He was looking at a collage of pictures that had appeared in a long border above the door. She could tell that they were pictures of the journey that they had made in here, from beginning to end. She hadn’t noticed it when they passed through the doors on their departure, so it must have appeared after they left. She looked at the long line of photos, travelling it with her eyes from start to finish. When she looked at the end of the border, she could see that the end of it was disintegrating. The ends were tattered and rolling up like old wallpaper, and it was peeling away from the wall. The photos were losing their color. And the damage was spreading further to the left, closer to the beginning of the photos. As it did, she noticed that the man had already seen that this was happening and was trying to stop it. He reached overhead and smoothed the ends with his hands. As he did, the damage was reversing itself. But as soon as he lifted his hands, the deterioration began again. He tried again and again to smooth it, and again and again it would continue to crumble to dust. The woman knew that the man was trying to stop the end from happening - that he had come to try to reverse things too. But just as in real-life, the man’s efforts did nothing to reverse the damage. The woman wondered why he didn’t try harder; try something else, fight to stop it. Instead, he just kept smoothing and watching the damage fade and re-form, over and over again - never trying anything different, never fighting harder to make it stop. Then the woman broke completely. Even in her dreams she ended up alone. And although she was completely undone by this reality, she didn’t cry or scream or fight. She was blank. The man must have sensed something was very wrong, because he took one look at the woman and grabbed her in a fierce embrace against his chest. And he did everything that she always wished he had done in the waking world: fought to hold her when she pushed back. Didn’t let her speak. Fought to keep her with him. Only in dreams. Then she cried. She cried so very hard, and he held her, and stroked her hair while she sobbed. And as she cried she knew these tears wouldn’t keep him with her. She felt that their purpose was in lubrication, to make the separating of their lives together easier. She cried and a strange thing happened. She woke up. Only the crying in her dream had been real. But unlike the dream, the man did not embrace her. He let her cry. Are dreams truth? Is Magic? Was the dream proof positive that the man and woman had to live apart? The magic man did say that his magic would change the future. It didn’t in the dream. In the dream, despite all the extraordinary things that happened the man and woman still parted. But the dream tears did become real tears. The magic man said that his magic would change the future.

In Glasgow, drugs rule everything. Heroin, crack cocaine, meth; it controls every low life and business man. It draws in addicts and entrepreneurs from every slimy corner of Scotland. Aberdeen, Dundee and Stirling, they all have their kingpins and their scumbags. Glasgow, however, was a “fecken shite ‘ole” Without any knowledge on where he was going, Darrel ran. He ran until he could no longer: the soles on his shoes were worn, his mouth tasted like a horrible concoction of blood and vomit and his crouch was covered in bruising. All he drugs in the world couldn’t remove what he had seen from his fried brain, all he had now was the hope he would suffer immense memory loss at the hands of an overdose. This pathetic charade began when Darrel was sixteen years old. He had decided to sneak out of school with his friends and finally try this strange substance that his friends had been bragging about, they called it tar and they hadn’t shut up about it for the past week. Darrel had some experience with drugs, cannabis and pills were pretty much a rite of passage for Scottish teens, but he’d never touched the hard stuff. With the wisdom of peers, he used his belt to cut off the blood to his arm, found a large vein and inserted the syringe into his arm. Within seconds he was in heaven, “’oly shite lads, ‘tis be better than any shag!” From then on, any chance he received, Darrel filled every vein, artery and capillary with smack. He had a permanent mark on his arm from where he tied his belt. After four and a half years of experimentation with methamphetamines, LSD, acid and even drain cleaner, heroin was still Darrel’s preferred poison. He had done anything and everything he could to get a hold on even a milligram of gear, usually the favours he performed involved the backstabbing of his friends or the stimulation of a dealer. He enjoyed his lifestyle though, sleeping on a thin mattress and watching the same bootleg porn movie more times than he could remember was enough for him. During the summer months Darrel’s usual dealers went unexpectedly dry, causing a need for venturing to the other side of town, which was run by the blacks. Darrel, being whiter than snow, stood out like necrophiliac in a morgue and when he stepped off the subway onto the platform, every pair of eyes darted his way. He knew exactly what he was after and did not waste any time in wondering up to the biggest group he could fine, “yo lads, ‘nyone ‘ere sell’n gear.” Obviously unimpressed with his interracial social skills, one of the men lifted his jacket to revel a handgun, “’ey rusta! ‘ou best be scampen on outta ‘here! Ain’t no one peddl’n an’ ‘ting!” Getting the message, Darrel removed himself from the area and continued outside where he was approached by a child, “’ey brudda! You is look’n for tar ain’t ya! Best deal for ‘uo would be to follo’ meh innit?” This strange character could have been no older than 13 years old, but the pathetic Darrel was growing impatient, so he reluctantly followed. It took about 35 minutes, but Darrel didn’t care; all he wanted was a hit. Arriving at their destination, a dry cleaner’s, Darrel was taken around the back to meet the owner of this legitimate business. “Whitey! What you be doin’ ‘round deez parts? I ‘ate white boys, and I feck’n ‘ate you to!” This statement entered his mind like a bullet and was processed as well as one. The moment he realised what that kid had led him to, he was met with a tire iron to the back of the head. Having his fair share of horrible wake ups, Darrel was hardly taken by surprise by this one, until he saw what was around him. This ghastly sight would make even the toughest war veteran shit his pants and run: surrounding Darrel was a room full of raped, tortured and mutilated women and children, all white. The fishing line around his hands and feet was easily slipped off; Darrel was a heroin junkie after all. Clumsily sneaking up to the nearest guard, Darrel held the fishing line in his hands and wrapped it around his throat. As he forcefully tightened his grip, the skin of the man split like an over-boiled Frankfurt and his raw flesh was given the touch of air for the first time. Looking around, Darrel saw his meaning behind this monstrosity: he was inside a warehouse belonging to a chapter of the ‘Organization Us’, an extremist black supremacy group. Darrel hadn’t a racist cell in his body, but these people saw nothing but skin. He broke into tears, an already lost soul now completely broken, all he wanted to do was to die, but he couldn’t. Darrel, in an incredibly rash decision, planned to avenge all of these innocents, through the blood of the lovely man he’d met at the dry cleaner’s. Armed with nothing but a piece of fishing line and a large knife he had picked up off the man he had killed about a minute beforehand, Darrel approached the warehouse office, where he could see the man that would soon be on the other end of said knife. Believing he was alone, he smashed in the door of the office, walked up to the man, and punched him between the eyes. The man responded by reaching for a gun on his desk, it was a waste of energy however; Darrel planted this knife straight into the man’s lower back, paralysing him from the waist down. Darrel then continued to make the man suffer for his crimes, by unhinging his jaw with a pen found on the desk. “Feck’n wanker!” the man murmured as his eyes were removed from his face with a fork, like you would scoop out ice cream. Thinking he had suffered enough, Darrel pulled the knife from the man’s back and inserted into the back of his neck, angling it upwards, and left. Darrel ran.

Part 1: Year 1998 "9:30. C'mon." She stares at the clock behind the counter, watching the minutes turn. She thinks "I like to get everything cleaned up by 9:30. Then all I have to do is turn off the lights, make sure everything is locked, put the money from the register in the vault, and I'm good to go". She can't wait to be done and meet up with her boyfriend. She's tired, but wants to smoke a joint, fuck, and watch TV til she passes out. Even though her feet are aching and burning, she can't stop fidgeting. She's bouncing her knees, and anxious. "No one has been in for the last hour! I wonder what will happen if I close 15 minutes early?" She says to herself. Then, "FUCK!! It's just my luck. As soon as I'm ready to lock the door this asshole has to pull up." She takes her place back behind the counter. She leans on the counter in a way that will let this guy know to hurry the hell up, get his shit and get out. Lost in thoughts about finally getting to her boyfriends she doesn't really pay attention to the man in the store. Suddenly, someone starts yelling and points a pistol at her. Is this guy serious? Dammit! He's sweating, and skinny. Fucking punk. "Pull the register out. Get the money, put it in the bag, and throw it over." He yells. It takes a while, but she's starting to get nervous. He seems strung out enough to do something dangerous. "Ok. Ok. I'm opening it now. I promise that I don't care enough to get in your way here, man. Take it all." She says as she starts loading the bills into a plastic bag. "Are there cameras in this place?" He asks, nervously. Trying to say the right thing, she answers "Uh, yeah. But I don't think they even work. I've never seen anything recorded." "Shit!" He spouts. "Shit!" "I'm telling you, I can get the tape if you want. Just take the money, and be on your way." She says. She was nervous, but now she was terrified. This isn't how this is supposed to happen. He puts the gun to her back, and pulls her by the arm while he pulls his hood down as far as it will go. At first she thought he was taking her to the back to get the tape, but he pulls her outside. "Holy shit! Hey. Hey, I promise, man. It's not a problem. I don't know what you're worried about, but take the money. I won't even tell the manager." She stutters, trying not to cry. "Listen, I need you to just get in the car." He says in a calm voice, but nerves wracking under the surface. He pulls her to the back of the car, opening the trunk. As soon as she sees the trunk open she freaks out. Fight or flight kicks in. She pulls away from him running backwards, facing him, stuttering "Please. Please." While tears stream down her face. She sees him coming forward. Can't tell if he's running or walking. She hears him say something, but can't make it out. Then a flash makes the world go quiet. She wakes with a jolt. She tries to turn to her boyfriend, but she's too sore to move. So she just reached over, but her hand meets the wall only inches away. "What the fuck?" She feels the other side, but same thing. "What the hell? This can't be real." The dream was vivid, but it can't be real. She can't see. She can't move. It's all wood. Boom! The box jolts, sending a white hot spike of pain through her torso. Bright colors smear the darkness of her vision. What's going on? "Hey!" She yells as loud as her slimy, burning belly will let her. Her clothes, hands, skin it slick and sticky. Way more than sweat. The flash comes back to her memory. "I've been shot. I'm inside of a box". And her world jolts again. Suddenly her head crashes against the ceiling. Her body folded like a pile of stick dumped in a drain pipe. The only thing that matters is the pain in her stomach, and back, and ribs, and chest. She can't breathe. Or she's breathing too much. "Hey! Please! Don't do this! You don't have to do this! Please!" She screams. Over the pain. Over the nerves blocking her throat. Boom! And her box levels back out, sending a new shock of pain through her. "I'm begging you! This can be fixed." She pleads. Hearing him out there rustling, and grunting. There's a muffled crunch on the top of the box. Relief washes over her. Crunch. He's opening this goddam box. Crunch. Crunch. Then she hears that each crunch is becoming more muffled. Less crunch, more fluff. Fluff. Fluff. Quieter, and quieter. There's no panic at first. Just cautioned yells, trying to get his attention. There's no way that this can really happen. She thinks about how this is going to sound to her boyfriend, her family. It is crazy, but it'll be alright. She thinks. Breathing is getting harder, which brings her back to the moment. The fluff sound is so quite she can barely hear it now. She is trying to breathe but the pain flies like a solar flare. She starts to sob, screaming with no words. The tears so heavy that they matte her hair to her head. Her forearms are soaked from holding her torn belly to try to staunch the pain, which is only made worse by her uncontrollable, shaking sobs and screams. After a minute the screams become whines. Her air is low, and she's exhausted. Too afraid to fall asleep she fights the light headed daze overcoming her. The colors that have been blinking and streaming her vision are fading. She watched them closely. She thinks of her life, her mom and dad, which only makes the sobbing return, but she loves them so much. She thinks of heaven. She is afraid. All of the anxiety gone, and now just afraid. She asks God to forgive her and help. She asks Him to just let her come to him if there's no way out of this box. She tells God she's sorry for never going to church. She says sorry to her father. She doesn't know why, but she does. Her head swimming. Her tongue heavy. No voice left. Just mouthing the words. "I'm sorry.

Part 2: 2014 "Only a monster would shoot someone three times, not killing them, and bury them alive! How can you have any sympathy?" He remembers the table of people on the news taking about his case, and whether the death penalty was the right sentence. Back then he was scared shitless. A kid. A junky. The situation had gotten out of hand. All he needed was sixty bucks, but his mom wouldn't give it to him. He thought she was a bitch, but now he understands. "I was a low life junky." I whispers to himself. Alone in his cell. He can see that the sun is on its way down by the burnt orange hue on the cement walls. I am that monster they were talking about. I don't feel like it, but I am. I didn't want to hurt anyone. I was afraid. Once I shot her I knew I was screwed, and that made more nervous. I hoped the second or third shot would be enough. I didn't want her to suffer. I didn't want to see death. Burying her at least put it out of my sight. Even though it was the only thing on my mind. What started as a way to get dope money began the end of my life. Prison was a relief. The withdrawal sucked, and the organized life was a change, but he grew to love it. Now, he can say he's sober, and has been for 16 years. He has written so many letters to his family, apologizing and updating them on his progress in recovery and school. He wrote the family of the girl he killed once, but it was a long letter. He wrote pages about how sorry he was, stupid he was, worthless he was, but he only ended up sending one page with one short paragraph, saying that he was truly sorry. It was years after that night, and he figured her parents didn't give a shit about his sob stories, and didn't want to cause them more hurt. That was five years ago. The mother actually wrote back. She forgave him. He remembers crying that night. Crying until his eyes were red and raw. His throat hoarse. He wanted to tell her so much more. He never believed in God, but who else was there to talk to? When he dared to write the mother again to thank her he wasn't sure, but he did. Since then, they had written back and forth. His own family's letters stopped years ago, but he still talked to the mother. The girl's parents had divorced a year after the murder. He figured it was because of him, which made him feel worse. So, when the mother continued to write, he couldn't help but write back. She excused herself by telling him it was because she was a Christian woman that she wrote to him. He got to know so much about her daughter thought the years, and wondered if that had been a way for the mother to feel a connection to her lost daughter. A decade later, and after countless appeals, I now sit, stare, try to feel alive through the moments of reading, writing, and praying. Because, in only a matter of hours he dies. The execution is tomorrow, bright and early. For years I've dreaded this night, that morning, but it's only now that I realize that my life will end. People may think that life on death row isn't much to give up, but being able to take a breathe, being able to think, being alive is so beautiful. He hears a metallic rattle and notices that his legs are jumping and his hands are shaking. Knock knock comes at his door, and the small slat window opens. "Hey, bud. I've got your dinner." It's the prison chaplain. "Please. Come in." He calls to the chaplain eagerly. The door opens, and the guard stands aside to let the chaplain through with the cart. Thinking of his last meal was easy. Eggs, sunny side up, a pile of undercooked bacon, a quarter pound of hash browns loaded with onions, wheat toast with no butter, and a tall glass of orange juice. When he picked it out he thought "I'll eat like a king, at least". He was pretty nervous then, like he always was thinking about this night. But now, he was literally shaking. He had to think about his breathe or else he would stop breathing for a second. "My mouth has been watering since the mess hall" the chaplain says, trying to lighten the mood, but quickly seeing the nerves racing through him. "Ha. I bet. Mine was, too, when I thought about all this good food. Now, I'm not even hungry. Actually, I think I might be sick." He said. "That's why I'm here, son. I have met many inmates. I have gotten to know them, and have had to say many goodbyes. I know you're feeling hopeless, but know, you are a good person. I know that, and I'm not alone." The chaplain said in a stern and fatherly tone as he sits next to him on edge of the metal bed. He starts to cry. Tears turn to weeping turns to heavy sobs against the chaplains shoulder, soaking his button down shirt. One thing he always liked about the chaplain is that he didn't wear any fancy robes. Just a normal guy. "It's ok." The chaplain says. "I can't believe this. I don't know. I don't know what will happen. For years I've waited, feeling like I deserve this. But now I'm just afraid." He mumbles over his cries. This seemed to help. He takes a deep breathe and sits up. Tears still falling but his composure returning. This wasn't the first break down he's had. "Can I ask you something." He questions. "Anything." The chaplain replies. "How do you know? What makes you able to truly say you know God? That he's there and has a plan for us?" "Well, that's a big one." Says the chaplain with a smile. "I have pondered this for years of my life. Especially where I am and what I've seen. I have seen the worst in people, and the worst of what they are capable of. But, out of this horror, I've seen the best in us. I've seen how people who are considered true evil are actually caring, loving, wonderful people. Think of yourself. Some will think of you as a monster, but we both know that you are a beautiful person. The balance between life and death is so fine." This started a new kind of crying in him. Monster. That word has haunted him, but he now felt differently about it. "Thank you, father." He said. Flashes of the end like strips cut out of a movie reel keep him from smiling. "Still, how do you know it's God?" "Not letting me off easy, huh?" The chaplain said, laughing and putting his hand on the inmates shoulder. "There is no way to know. But what I just told you is what gives me faith. Faith that there is more at work than just the work of men." That night he tried hard to confirm his belief. Asking God to help him know. Help him believe. He was chewing a piece of bacon he grabbed from the plate before they wheeled it away, completely untouched. His mouth was dry cotton, and all he ended up wanting was a cup of water he sipped on. Even a gulp would make him vomit. Even now, his mouth was watering the way it did before throwing up at the taste of the bacon. His thoughts racing. Good and bad. Mostly bad. Even the good thoughts were bad. All bad. No good. My parents, "I'm sorry." Her parents, "I'm sorry." No sleep. He gets up and walks to the door and bangs. A guard walks to the other side, "What's up?" "Can't sleep. What time is it?" He replied. "One thirty, bud." Bud? The guards were never really mean, but they weren't nice either. I guess they realize. His breathing picks up, becomes heavy. His chest becomes tight. He can't stop the thoughts from breaking down the wall he's worked so hard to build in his mind. Hours. One thirty. "In four and a half hours I'm going to be gone. I'm going to be dead." His heart is beating out of his chest. There are no thoughts other than what happens after you die. What is that? Where do I go? Will it hurt? Have I made the right amends? "What did I do? What did I do?" He repeated. He's said it too many times to count in the last decade. It was so long ago it didn't even seem real. He felt like he about to die for something he didn't do. "You fucking asshole." He snapped at himself. Of course he deserved this. Through the appeals he convinced himself that he was temporarily insane, and that he didn't know what he was doing, or he didn't mean to do it. But, he knew. He was out of money, was dope sick, and needed a fix. He did something out of a desperation, impulsive, and over a decade later he was pacing his cell facing the consequence. "Just a dumb fucking kid." He spouted. "Dammit. I'm sorry I'm sorry." He prayed. "I'm sorry, lord. I didn't mean to use those words. I'm so sorry." His sobbing was making his ribs sore. His bottom eyelids rashes from wiping. His upper lids sore from tears. He was alone. He noticed the little available light from outside was brightening to a dirty grey. It's time. "I'm so sorry." Bang! Bang! Someone knocked on his cell door, and his knees went weak, and he collapsed to the floor.

I looked at my watch. *2 hours left* Inside my ship, I was safe from the empty vacuum of space. Sitting mere inches away from the window, I could see the stars, planets, and moons crossing my path. My mission was simple : undertake a journey outside of our galaxy and search for signs of life. Yet, as simple as can be, I still failed. I didn't find any life, be it intelligent or not. There were only vast deserts of nothingness. There was never as strange a thought as the fact that I crossed millions of miles of nothing to find more nothing. In that nothing, I could find respite for my loneliness, one that wasn't satiated ever since I left our space station 7 years ago. At first, I was excited - seeing all of those planets first, those unexplored worlds - but as time went on, I realised that there wasn't anything to be excited about. In fact, there wasn't anything at all. *1 hour, 30 minutes left* Sometimes, when gazing out of my tiny window, I could see an asteroid whizzing by, unaware of its existence. Oh, how life would be simple if I were an asteroid. I could help form moons and planets - I would serve a purpose. A life without purpose is a life not worth living, after all. Wandering alone amongst the stars isn't a healthy way to live, and I should know that better than anyone. Yet here I was, paying the consequences of my negligence - or should I say, my ignorance. I was supposed to orbit a planet behind another one a couple of months ago - the only problem was, there was no second planet. *1 hour left* I had used up all of my fuel trying to get back to the first planet. Maybe then, I could've sent a distress signal, but I was too far away now. In a last ditch effort, I sent a signal right as I realised there was no second planet. I was supposed to be rescued a few weeks ago. Instead, I received an emergency transmission coming from the very same space station that I had departed from. The screams I heard, I shall never forget. The metallic ripping sounds I heard, I shall never forget. Yet, the most disheartening of all, were the cries for help - asking for *my* help. All I could do was sit back and listen to the demise of the station I once called home. *30 minutes left* During the latter part of my trip, I could only think about that station. Ares-09 was its name - a name forever imprinted in my memory. All I could do now was to wait. As my ship advanced with great speed to the outer edges of the galaxy, I was met with a sense of despair, as I was forced to watch as the stars and planets got further and further away from me. I had to face reality sooner or later : I wasn't coming back. I was prepared. I had time to be prepared. Time to be prepared for my inevitable demise. *0 seconds left* *OXYGEN LEVELS CRITICAL* As I felt the air inside my lungs escape my body, I felt a strange sense of relief. All those years of pain, of loneliness, were finally over. As I slipped into the eternal darkness, I rested with nothing but a smile.

Jerry could not fathom what he had stumbled across that fateful morning. Instead of attempting to make sense of what he saw, he stood; skin cool to the touch, hands clammy, face expressionless. Mr. Beaver saw Jerry standing there, but continued his work. His beautiful Beaver wife, Mrs. Beaver and their three innocent beaver kits continued to insatiably grid their paws and teeth into the cold, hard earth. "I... I should probably do something about this" Jerry internally inquired to himself. "No you God damn should not" said Mr. Beaver to the least favorite of his kits, Emmanual, the runt of the litter, who is only the age of 12 human years. Jerry didn't understand him though, his heart still at its normal non-beaver understanding pace. "Alright, this lil piece of down-stream-poop better do something else than stand there looking like a bloody cunt wilz pissn' in th' wind Mrs. Beaver." Mrs. Beaver replied: "Ya' dum' cunt, watch 'ur dum' sheep cock eatn' mouth round the wee lassies." You always do this Miranda, every. Damn. Time. They why do you keep doing it? I don't know, maybe because I think you'll respond positively for a change rather than undermining everything I work for to accomplish for this family. When was the last time you took charge of maintaining the shrine. All you and the kits do is a half-assed job maintaining H-dog's legs because you don't have the gaul to climb up and comb his mustache. Well... I... I... You what Miranda? I'll tell you what. I'll stop imagining useless characters gazing at our creation in awe if you don't mock my Aussie accent. Can you do that for me? Can you? Sure. I won't accept sure as an answer; yes or no? yes. Yes or no, I cant hear you. YES! Better. TL;DR One foggy morning upon a shallow stream, Mr. Beaver and his beaver family were out building a dam, or so it seemed. Back and forth, scaling their creation they were building something worthy only of damnation. Ten feet high and four feet wide, an ode to Adolf Hitler was transformed from the moist mountain of dirt into a shrine.

This is the prologue of a short story I'm working on with a group. Any and all comments and constructive criticism would be appreciated > If the Earth had a heart, it would have skipped a beat. All around the world every screen cut off simultaneously and was replaced with the familarly disturbing image of a faceless man, and an echoing roar came from every speaker. “HEELLLLOOOO LADIES AND GENTLEMAN~!” People from every country frantically pulled their cellphones from their pockets to see the direct stream. In Tokyo, every digital billboard was broadcasting the message. In New York, everyone in time square stood paralyzed in fear, and in Bangkok thousands fell to their knees to pray for protection for themselves and their loved ones. “It’s that time of year once again~!” The voice was reminiscent of a radio show host from the 1930’s, and the man danced around the blinding white backdrop with the eerie finesse of a practiced routine. Despite being faceless, his jubilant demeanor was echoed through his movements. The camera followed him fluidly until he came to a stop at an upright game wheel that was rather large. Assuming the figure was of average height, the wheel would have stood at about six feet tall; it had several dozen color-coded sections separated by wooden pegs, and each section had a seemingly random word cutout from a newspaper headline glued on. After years of watching the self-titled “host,” everyone knew his game would be themed. When he gave the wheel a swift jerk, millions of eyes watched in anticipation. “Let’s see what this year’s theme will be~!” The host exclaimed in a singsong voice. The wheel steadily began to lose speed as it approached the “children” section of the wheel. No one wanted a repeat of the previous year, but it wasn’t looking good. To the dismay of the viewers, the pointer was seemingly going to stay caught on the peg of the “children” section, but it was just a hair’s breadth away from “renowned.” The fraction of a second that the pointer lingered on the peg felt like hours, but, finally, it snapped away. “Renowned!!!!” He cheered, mockingly throwing his arms in the air as if he’d won an award. “Looks like we’re gonna have some contestant that have fans to root for them this year!” A black and white outline of glasses and a suit appeared on the host and his voice changed suddenly to a professional tone. “Seriously people, a little bit of support goes a long way.” He laughed hysterically at his own joke as he hunched over and clenched his own stomach. His convulsions came to a sudden stop; an instant later he was standing erect and back to his previous state. “Anyways.

First there was the light. The light was brighter than the sun. Brighter than the ten-terawatt laser that the ignition facility used. Brighter than the light of a million, billion galaxies that we had yet to discover. It woke me from my slumber. I ignored it, thinking another police helicopter was searching. Then came the shockwave. It blasted across the city like the hand of God, wiping clean the dirty slate of civilization. My window shattered in a burst of glittering, sparking glass, and for just a moment, I was able to see the stars. My eardrums burst. I screamed, blood pouring from my ears, as the drapes covering my window burst into flame. Rolling to the ground, I crawled under the bed and bawled like a toddler. As the pain began to subside, I managed to get my wits about me. *What happened? A bomb, explosion, something nearby.* I shook my head trying to think clearly. *The army? They must need me. Something bad happened. Really bad. Where is Anita, she was in here!* A thousand thoughts raced through my mind at once. Half of the room was engulfed in flames as the light outside subsided. I crawled to the door and flung it open, gasping for cleaner air, only to find more acrid smoke filling my lungs. I half crawled, half tumbled down the stairs in a bloody mess to where the open kitchen was all but gone. The front door had been blown in halfway across the living room. I managed to get to my unsteady feet, my balance all but gone. Stumbling out onto the street, a wave of heat hit my face and made it feel as if it was going to boil away. Wiping away some of the dirt and blood from my eyes, I managed to look up, shielding my eyes from the heat and dust. *Dear god, and all that is good in this world. It happened. Shit, shit shit shit shit shit.* Ahead of me in the city center, a menacing mushroom cloud rose into the sky and proclaimed it's sentence of fiery destruction to all who were near.

“Tell me what you see”. “I see the ground springing with vegetation, I see the land teaming with livestock, I see the waters teaming with terrible creatures, I see the skies filled with celestial light—and I see that it is good.” “A good place for the angels in all of heaven—“ “Yes, a good place for the angels in all of heaven” hesitated Lucifer, “But it is lacking one thing yet.” “What would you have added?” accused God “We drink and fulfill no thirst. We work and lose no energy. We eat and satisfy no hunger. We love, and we satisfy no…” “So you’re pleasures are empty as they add not to your perfection.” “As such our burdens are no burden at all so that they detract not from our perfection.” “How do you propose to complete this world?” “Souls of flesh and bone.” “But if they were to understand what angels cannot they must suffer.” “And their suffering cannot be our choice—lest we are responsible for the death of all men.” “It must be their choice. If they choose to live unlike the angels and grow closer to Heaven or if they choose to be unlike the angels and become closer to the world, they will suffer for equal measure to their joy—but so that their joy may be full, and the universe may be complete.” So God spun the soils of the earth into Man, and with his rib formed Woman. And he called the Man “Adam” and the woman “Eve” “Man and Woman—I give unto you the universe, which may be used to your every need. I have prepared for you a garden, in which you may live for eternity, and I may spend my morning and evening walking among the flowers with you. But also in the Garden, there is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—eating from the tree will give the understanding of what could not be as so this could be, and you will be expelled from Eden.” And Adam and Eve heard this, and lived for many years in the garden as the angels do. And once upon a day Lucifer appeared to Woman in the form of a serpent. “Do you ever wonder about what had to not be for this place to exist” “I do. And sometimes I wonder if there could be something better. I eat and I am full, I drink and I am merry, I love and I am… but” “There is more. I swear to you. There is more and it is more beautiful than any of this.” “That can’t be so—how can that be so?” “Have you ever felt happy Eve” “I am happy all the time—I have felt nothing sense I’ve existed but pure happiness” “What does it feel like?” “Well... I... It's like...” Eve stammered “How can you say you’re happy when you don’t even know what it is? Eve if you eat this fruit, you will KNOW happiness." Lucifer interjected,"You will KNOW love and lust, joy, rapture, splendor. You will know terror and amazement. You will be alive Eve. You will no longer be just a ghost—cursed to haunt this garden atop a blue sphere in the Celestial crown of the Almighty. You’ll be alive.” And Eve ate of the fruit of the tree, and so did Adam. And they came to know love and lust, joy and rapture, splendor and amazement. They came to know the feeling of holding your own child in your arms for the very first time and the sound of rain on the roof. They cursed God from hiding these things from them. And they cursed the Devil for hiding from him the death and famine, hunger and thirst, the loneliness’ and pain.

The professor shook his head. "What you're doing, doctor Geier, is a very questionable thing". The doctor rolled his eyes, avoiding the fierce gase of the professor. Standing up from his terminal, he crossed his arms. "Alright, professor Stanson, why?" "You're creating a virtual brain and are toying with it!" "Look. If the Pentagon hired us, it was because I knew perfectly how this could be done. Besides, you shouldn't feel remorse for a serial murderer. The guy raped dozens of women, and led them to join a terrorist cult! What perfect experimental subject for this than him!" The professor sighed. "But what if the brain is capable of suffering? It doesn't matter who this person was. Furthermore, you should know -" "Yes, yes, I know you adhere to the Harris philosophy of free will. So what if Parsa was himself a victim of abuse and torture during his early childhood? Everyone in the country classified him as a monster, and they already gave him the death penalty." "But they wouldn't condemn him to more torture and abuse!" "And we're NOT doing that. It's just data!" "It's his connectome!!". Professor Stanson was losing his patience. He inspired and recovered his breath. "Look, I read the experiment's configuration parameters, doctor Geier. You programmed him into a virtual nightmare. It's an ethical abomination, no matter how much makeup you paste over it." "Look, professor, when all of this is done, we'll just delete the data and the virtual brain will cease to exist. It will be as if nothing happened." "You think that will calm my conscience? Suppose that I submit you to several years of torture. Will that matter if I kill you after the seventh year?" "I wouldn't mind if you tried to torture a virtual representation of my brain. As long as I'm the real one, I wouldn't give a dime." The professor stared at him. "You must be joking. You're willing to let your own brain be simulated in the computer and exposed to torture!?" "Of course! Do you think I'd be doing this if I weren't convinced that virtual brains have no consciousness? I'd be mad!" "Maybe you ARE mad." "Alright, alright. Let me show you this paper. I had it printed in case this eventuality happened." The professor read the paper. "Yeah, I'm aware of this." "Please read page 25 carefully." The professor turned the pages until he reached the 25th. "You even highlighted the paragraph." "Go ahead, read it." The professor cleared his throat. "This is because in a digital computer there is no way to group physical transistors to constitute macro-elements with the same cause-effect power as neurons… yadda yadda, hence the brain is conscious and the computer is not - it would have zero phi and be a perfect zombie." Geier smiled. "See? Look, professor, I know this is a very disturbing process that we're carrying around here, but that man hid God knows how many bioweapons and we need to make sure we find all." "Why not just read his memories? Why submit him to such a torture?" "Not him. Just his virtual brain. But I'll tell you why. Because those are the parameters. Orders from above." "And Uncle Sam made sure to pick a megalomaniac to carry out their orders. Don't you realize, doctor? First it will be Parsa. But think about this, who will be the next? What will happen when you perfect this technology to torture and manipulate people fighting an oppressive government? Furthermore, what if the simulation of the finally conditioned subject gets inserted back into the real subjects?" "Professor, please. You're falling into the slippery slope fallacy." "It's not a fallacy when you're the one pouring the oil over the slope." "Are you finished with this, professor?" asked doctor Geier, returning to the computer. "I have much work to do." Silence. Doctor Geier turned his head, and the professor was gone already. "Poor fella. He won't be tomorrow when the general sees this tape." "No", said the professor's voice. "The general won't see that tape." Geier turned around. There was nobody. He smirked. "Very funny, professor. I'm going to find that speaker. Your hero complex is starting to show." "Oh, no, doctor. I'm not a hero at all. I'm just conducting an experiment." "What?" Before he knew it, doctor Geier saw the computer vanishing into thin air. Then, the windows, then the door. "Remember when you said you wouldn't mind a copy of your brain being submitted to torture? Well, guess what, doctor. THIS is the copy of your brain." The doctor saw a black blob oozing out of the air conditioner vent. "Prepare to be submitted to the same torture you gave to Parsa. Then we'll see if you're really conscious, or it's just data." "No! No!!! I take it back, I take it back!!!! PLEASE, STOP! STOP!!!!" Outside a computer room, two engineers were examining the simulation. "Don't you think we're taking this too far, Steve?" "Nah, the guy deserved it. He tortured millions of souls in the government's supercomputer. I say this would be the perfect punishment. Hey – what are you doing!!! Matt, DON'T!!" With a few keyboard commands, the simulation was stopped, and all the data was deleted. "Do you realize what you just did? You wiped ALL the data!" "I don't care. This isn't science, and I don't think it's the right thing to torture anyone – even if it's virtual, and even if the subject's the worst criminal scum on Earth. Nobody deserves that. Nobody." "You're going to get fired, you know that?" "At least I won't have a virtual ghost haunting me in my sleep.

EDIT: Nevermind, formatting fixed itself. Doesn't really matter either way. > Getting Out Stakes *The Driver* The girl on the radio drawled on about her muse while the knightish gargoyles cloaked my car in darkness as I drove out of the cheap, gated neighborhood where I was temporarily living. Where thirty minutes ago I shot Cassidy White with one of my own antiques, I’m proud to say- a 32 caliber by Smith and Wessen. Great gun, lots of firepower, easily concealed... Great gun, really... *“Beginning GPS waypoint tracking on account 02...Holden, Tennessee.”* The woman on the radio kept talking about some Madre casino, just down the road, too... as if I need my gambling addiction to get even worse. Already spent all my money and lost it. Speaking of, did you know that spending your money and losing it are two different things? You should, it’s a fact. Proven, by yours truly. Over two thousand times at a slot machine. *“Fifty-five minutes to destination.”* See, when you spend money, you get something in return. Goods of some kind, or a service, like my cleaning lady who used to come by every Tuesday. But when you lose money, it doesn’t go anywhere. Well, at least not back in your pocket. It goes on a pipeline, directly to the House- that’s a gamber’s term. Means that the casino gets the money, not you. Yeah, that’s right. All those bright lights and neon signs? Winstar? Cherokee? The gargantuan waste of electricity that is Vegas? It’s all paid for... by the losers. The House always wins, they say. That’s why Cassidy was at mine- debt. Ten thousand dollars, all spent in a drunken romp, in some casino whose name escapes me down South. He’d been looking for me for a while. And I’d say that’s the long story short, but, heh- a gambling addiction and the aftermath.... it’s never a long story, really. *“Thirty minutes to destination.”* Always ends with some poor sap getting corked with something, perhaps a little higher of a caliber than what I used on Cassidy. I could tell you a lie, tell you some people make it, tell you not everybody dies in this business. Including me. But then, of course, I’d be lying. No, the only people who beat the game are the ones who don’t play. One or two trips every three years or so,win some money, maybe the jackpot, and then go home. The addicts aren’t the ones who don’t go home, though. They’re the ones who live in the goddamn casino. *“Fifteen minutes to destination.”* And as for me and Cassidy...believe me, it wasn’t an easy decision to make. Or an easy thing to pull off, for that matter. Still, though, I had to do it. You have to understand, he was going to keep coming. I couldn’t run f- The car jolted to a halt and the GPS stopped yammering as I hit the brakes hard, the tires screeching painfully against the cracked and broken road as I slowed down fast. The empty, vertical dropoff in front of me where Elmer Bridge used to be and the headlights behind me told me that my story just got a lot shorter. *The Attendant* I’ll make this brief. My name is John Mercer and I’m almost retired. I’ve worked as a security guard at the Dinero Muerto for almost decade now, and, after doing some wetwork jobs for the higher-ups, I guess they liked me enough to promote me to Vault Attendant. That means I guard the Vault. Crazy, huh? Y’know, the big one that the suckers at the craps tables don’t get to see? Every last dime made at the DM is stored there in some form or another. Usually, that means massive piles of money scattered around the room. No, that isn’t an exaggeration- seen it myself. Mountains of cash just thrown around the room in the most haphazard way possible, almost like Sal himself said, “You know what, I think that whoever can break into that Vault deserves some kinda reward before Johnny kills ‘em. So next time just kinda leave the money out in the open, hah?” The guy talks like he’s a real mobster. Well, he is a real mobster, but most mobsters don’t actually talk like that. I think.Don’t tell him I said that, though. As much as I’ve done for him, I’m still disposable. But not for much longer. After today, he’s not gonna have anything to dispose of. I said I was retiring? Yeah, well, you don’t retire. Not from Sal’s employment. If you get old enough, he just kills you himself so he doesn’t have to keep on paying a fossil who can’t compete with the newbies anymore. In this job, you either die by his stupid fat fists or by some goon during a raid. So how am I getting out? Simple. If he thinks I’m dead, he can’t really do much about it, can he? Nope. Not a single thing. Not a single damn thing. My pager buzzed twice with the words WHITE DEAD, REPORT as the Vault alarm echoed through the casino. *The Nightowls* I don’t really remember when we got lost. We didn’t really mean to go too far from the house, but, I don’t know. After you drink a lot, things kinda become a big blur. And lots and lots of drinking equals a really, really big blur. My memory is not great right now. At least there weren’t any drugs at this party- I think. Not like last time, otherwise we’d have never gotten outta there. But oh, getting lost. Yeah, I dunno how that happened. I mean, how do you get lost? What’s lost when you’re not trying to get anywhere? Can you even be lost then? Define lost... ...How can you define something? ....Maybe there were drugs at that party. But, hey, the cops are nowhere to be seen! That’s great. Like, really, really great. Sam looks like he’s doin’ alright. Victoria is doing really great, as usual. They’re as good as they can be, considering the circumstances. After all... Man, there were a lotta cops. Now we’re in the woods somewhere. Better than back at the house, at least. And hey, were people gambling there? I think somebody mighta been. “God, why are we in the woods?” Now a sound’s ringing in my ears. A short whine, only for a second, then it stops. Victoria thinks she knows where it’s coming from, so I’m following. Suits me fine. Better than being lost, heh. Elmer Bridge is over that way, too, I think. *The Janitors* “Gunshot, but you knew that. .32 caliber, probably from over there...” My partner pointed at a raggedy armchair at the other end of the room. “...a clean shot to the chest.” He picked up the spent casing with his tweezers and put it in his bag. We had arrived maybe forty minutes ago at the guy’s last known location. Some junky-looking, walled-off apartment complex by a gas station. Almost missed the damn thing. It doesn’t really stand out, if you know what I mean. There are five other almost identical apartment complexes like it within a few hundred feet, all of which are listed under the same address for some reason. And it doesn’t help that the guy we’re tracking isn’t a moron, either. Rented the room with false credentials, used cash. Cash from the casino, mind you, so tracing it doesn’t do us any good. Just takes us back to the place where we fucking work. Big help, asshole. “Hey Mark, whaddaya want with these?” Don had finished searching the body and now held up two charred toothpicks that looked like they’d been thrown in a fire. “What are they, fags?” “Looks like it. Really burnt, though.” He stood up from his crouch, delicately brushing off his suit. “I don’t see a fireplace.” “Yup.” “So how did they get burnt?” “..What?” “I said, how did they get burnt? Nobody’s stupid enough to use a lighter on the entire freaking cigarette.” Instinctively, I reached in my pocket for the Lucky’s I always carry. He was one step ahead of me, smoke already billowing from his stick. “Oh. ...Dunno. Maybe they lit a fire.” He took a long drag, closing his eyes for a second. I caught up with him, tar filling my lungs as I put the fag to my mouth, inhaling. Cigarettes always helped me calm down, think more straightly. Straight. Straightly? Think...more....straightly...or straight? Fuck. Maybe I shouldn’t have accepted that kid’s offer. God, I think that pill I took was drug. Great. There were drugs at that party. “You okay ?” Don looked at me with some concern showing on his normally blank face. “Yeah, yea-ah...f-fine. Look, is..is that all? The evidence and all that, I mean.” I was getting nervous. The more I stayed in that room the more tempted I was to look at White’s sprawled-out corpse in the second armchair next to me. He scratched his head worryingly and did a three-sixty, scanning the room. “Well...I think so.” “You think so? We’re goddamn Cleaners, Don. Leave no trace and all that sphiel. You sure we got everything?” He looked about the floor nervously, chewing on the end of his cig. “*Well*?” I knew what he was doing. He’d been trying to not look at the ceiling for the past few minutes. I gestured at him, made a noise. He got the message and looked back at the floor, worriedly. “I-I’m just looking....” He stared at one spot for second. “.....wait.” He bent down and tried to pick up something I couldn’t see, pinching his fingers together unsuccessfully a few times. He managed to grab it on the third try and held it up to the light. Clenched tight between his fingers was a short, dark brown hair. I moved closer to get a better look. “Holy shit.” Don spit his cig on the floor and absent-mindedly ground it out with his heel, then looked at the hair again, confused. “What?” “Cassidy was a redhead, right?” *The Boss* The cigar jutted out from his reddened lips like an iceberg that had sunk too many ships and was now worn down because of it. Smoke blew not only from it, but also from his entire mouth, toward the fan at the far end of the room, which in turn gave the entire place a hazy, fog-like visual effect. The door opened shortly after Sal’s sixteenth puff. The V.A. stumbled inside, gasping for breath, gun drawn. The smoke choked out whatever words he had prepared and he started coughing violently. Sal turned around in his chair, looking away from the monitors for a moment. He spoke with great difficulty as a mouthful of fumes erupted from what the Attendant could only assume was the general region of his face. If Sal hadn’t been serious, the sight might’ve been amusing. “Mercer, good. How’s our vault doing?” John paused, opening the office door the catch his breath for a minute. He returned to the room at Sal’s silent insistence (he had a way of telling you something without saying it, and that something was usually hurry) and spoke, barely. “Sir...the vault is...well...” “Speak up.” “I..” Sal pulled out what looked like a .44 revolver from his suit and pointed it at Mercer’s forehead. “Speak up.” “EMPTY. IT’S EMPTY, SIR.” He braced himself. Sal thought for a moment and then started laughing- a hollow, deep chuckle that was muffled slightly by his trying to keep the cigar between his lips. “...Empty? Empty? You’re telling me that the most secure cash depository within a hundred miles of this city has been broken into, all the contents stolen, and the culprit left without a trace? And under your supervision, no less?” The answer Sal wanted was not the answer Mercer or anyone else had. The Attendant was trying to choose his words carefully. “Well, almost, sir...you see, although the vault was secure, and although it was broken into-” Sal tightened his grip on the gun and cocked it with his free hand, slowly. “-not everything was stolen, though! Not everything was stolen! And there is a trace! We know who did it, we know, sir!” His teeth were gritted and his eyes were closed. He opened one temporarily too see what Sal was doing. He relaxed his grip on the gun slightly and scowled. “How much was stolen, Mercer? I need an exact amount.” The Attendant made a quick glance at the computer screens on the wall in front of Sal. They showed various feeds from around the casino, a few body cameras from the guards. Twitching, he looked toward the lowest left monitor. The screen was filled with an image of two men in dirty suits standing around a corpse, talking. A ceiling view. Four other suits were now crowding around them, lifting the dead one by his limbs and starting to carry him out of the apartment. The two immobile suits handed them plastic bags as they left. They just stood there, smoking. C’mon. “Mercer...” C’mon.. “Do you want me to shoot you, Mercer? Because you’re getting really, really fucking close.” Sal sneered as his teeth clenched, crushing the cigar. They’re still fucking standing there. “*MERCER*!” Sal peered down the ironsights from where he sat, finger quivering. Suit number two spit out his cigarette and stamped on it as Sal fired two shots at the chest of the nervous figure standing at the entryway to the office. Mercer turned toward the door as the bullets carved their way through the smokescreen and smashed into his side. They hit their mark and he crumpled against the door, gun still in hand. Sal stood up, throwing the gun down, fuming. Suit number two dropped his bent Lucky’s package and bent down to retrieve it as the casino alarms sounded and the crumpled figure shot Sal Foreman in the temple mid-stride. His bulk crashed to the ground, eyes rolling back. The two suits were now barricading the apartment door with two old armchairs and a desk while John Mercer was dying. He sent a message through his pager and passed out as guards flooded the office. *The Plan* The van outside blew up violently as four bricks of C4 were detonated remotely under it. The four Cleaners carrying the deceased were incinerated, along with all evidence of Cassidy’s murder. The firelight penetrated the walls of the apartment that Mark I haven't finished the rest. Any feedback or comments are welcome, I'd like this to be good for when I turn it in.

So this originally was supposed to be only a brief origin story for my character in Edge of The Empire that inevitably turned into a Short Story. This is my first one, so all constructive criticism and positive reinforcement welcome! Name: Diarmuid Ballister Obligation - Responsibility: to honor his parentage by helping those in need, especially the Wookie race he grew up alongside. Motivation - Religion/Spirituality: To follow in the steps of his parents and become a Jedi. Morality - Compassion Diarmuid Ballister is the son of former Jedi Knights Falion and Anora Ballister. Wishing to live in peace with the love they shared (forbidden by the Jedi Code) and away from the brewing conflicts that would be known as the Clone Wars, the two self-exiled themselves to the densely forested planet of Kashyyyk. The pair lived in harmony for a time, and gave birth to their son. Diarmuid formed a close bond with the arboraceous planet as well as the loyal Wookies that were indigenous to it. He learned the ways of their culture, history, and society. From his parents, he learned of the Force and what it means to have compassion for all living things, "As the Force connects us all to each other." The Ballister's knew a time of peace, prosperity, knowledge, and love. All was well, until the Galactic Empire rose to power. What was once protected by the Galactic Republic became invaded by the new Galactic Empire in the year of 19 BBY. It was the beginning of the Empire's Enslavement of Kashyyyk campaign, one that would go on to enslave thousands of Wookies for constructing Imperial projects, such as the Death Star. During the Battle of Kashyyyk, a few Jedi were present in an attempt to flee from the Order 66, which inevitably drew the attention of the Dark Lord Vader. As the hailstorm of destruction crashed around their once peaceful existence, the Ballister's planned to escape aboard the ship of their well known Twi'Lek friend Vanikk Reft, a Smuggler of some importance. During the final preparations of leaving aboard the ship, an elder of the Wookie village hurriedly approached them, telling of a group of Wookie younglings being pinned down by a battalion of Stormtroopers. Embracing their true Jedi heritage once more, Falion and Anora could not abandon their family to certain death and slavery. Having made Vanikk promise to treat him as his own, the two lovers said their goodbyes to their only son Diarmuid. As the parting words were spoken, they noticed their son was beginning to cry. Anora, seeing this, went to one knee and embraced her child. "Hush, little one," she said warmly as she wiped his tears. "There is no place you can run off to that we cannot follow, and we will always be there with you." Falion knelt as well, laying his hand on his son's shoulder and looking into his emerald eyes. Just like his mother's, he thought to himself. "Remember my son: have compassion for all existence..." They arose from their knees. "As the Force connects us all to eachother," the three Ballister's said as one. Vanikk stepped forward to put an arm around Diarmuid to guide him back to the loading ramp. As the light freighter named Olympus slowly lifted into the atmosphere, Diarmuid watched from the still-open loading ramp as his parents gave him a smile that was filled with as much love as it was with sorrow; his father activated a lightsaber that emitted a blade of emerald green as deep as the tallest Wroshyr trees, the color of his mother's eyes; his mother, one of silver-blue, the color of his father's. With the ship climbing ever higher, the two lovers gave one last look to their child, turned, and ran off into the surrounding forrest. It was the last time Diarmuid ever saw his parents again. The years passed, and it was assumed that they, along with many Wookies and other Jedi present at the time, perished. Vanikk raised the boy as his own, teaching him the ways of the Smuggler's life and how to be Streetwise. Diarmuid developed a natural talent for flying (perhaps due to his force sensitive reflexes), even beating Vanikk a couple times in his own ship. Despite living the Underworld lifestyle for quite sometime, he never truly felt at home within the confines of the rugged life. He always felt a calling to follow in the footsteps of his Jedi heritage and to eventually return to the home he left behind. Sensing the growing restlessness and wanderlust that Diarmuid held, Vanikk was able to secure a timely job opportunity from Korro Tech Inc, which would give the young Force-Sensitive the opportunity to travel to wild space where there may be answers for him, or perhaps something far more unexpected...

3.14159265358979323846264… The numbers spanned across the giant screens in the laboratory, going on for what seemed to be an eternity. The computers had been crunching numbers for years. Hundreds of them, never ending, never faltering. The silence in the room is broken by a few beeps, an indication that one of the computers had reached the end of the sequence. A technician quickly entered the room and examined the computer. “Damn thing, must be a glitch.” As he spoke another computer began beeping, followed by the rest. The technician looked at the screen, and sure enough the sequence had ended. 793014549105875302768134 END. The technician dialed a number and raised his phone to his ear “Hey I need some help with the computers down in block C,” the technician states and waits for a response. “What’s going on down there, Tre?” The voice replies after a few moments. “There’s a glitch in the system, saying that they’ve found the end of Pi,” Tre replies. “We’ll get some of the guys down there to help you out, there’s no way Pi has an end right?” the voice asks “I’m not too sure, not my field of expertise. I’m just here to fix the computers” Tre responds. A few minutes pass and the other technicians arrive in the room, bothered by all the beeping and begin checking each computer individually for possible malfunctioning parts. After determining that the computers were fine they began checking for possible bugs in the software, and at that moment a handful of scientists burst into the room, mouths agape at what they saw on the screens in front of them.They had received calls and reports from the other labs that the end of Pi had been found. The scientists sat down slowly, with varying looks of wonder and horror painted on their faces. As they saw that each number matched the reports of the other scientists. 793014549105875302768134 END. Tre laughed and said “Don’t worry, just a glitch, we’re working on it.” The scientists were speechless, they knew nothing was wrong with the system, after countless years of waiting they had found the end of the seemingly endless. After a software glitch was ruled out as well the technicians asked the scientists what it meant to find the end of Pi. “It couldn’t possibly...” Erik, the lead scientist began shakily. “It means our world, our universe, is only a simulation” The technicians began laughing hysterically at the thought, “You’re kidding right?” Tre asked, half curious, half afraid. “I wish I were” Erik replied. The technicians looked at one another thoughtfully, and then at the screen before exiting the room, they needed a break from all of this. The scientists retreated to their break room to inform the others of what was happening, the looks on the faces of each scientist went from joy to horror as the realization of what reaching the end of their project truly meant. A few weeks went by and the news had soon spread to virtually every corner of the world. The final lab still computing Pi had reached the end of the sequence. A few days passed with little trouble, but with the realization that their lives, world, and universe was a simulation sinking in, the people of Earth went into a frenzy. Global suicide numbers quintupled and crime rates skyrocketed to unbelievable highs. No one seemed to care about their lives, or the law for that matter, now that the truth was revealed. It was all just a program. “What reason was there to abide by laws, or live anymore?” The question swept the globe and left many clueless on how to act. The few that denied the fact were swept away by the masses that had embraced, beyond reasonable doubt, that nothing they knew was part of the “real world”. Billions lost their lives and the world was left a former shell of itself. Cities burned to the ground, bodies scattered on the streets; in a matter of weeks the world had crumbled, destroying civilization as its people had known it. Tre looked sadly at the building he once entered each day to fix computers, now nothing more than a pile of rubble. Bang. A bullet passed clean through Tre’s skull as he fell to the ground. Blood oozed freely from the hole in the now deceased Tre’s head as a masked man searched his body for any valuables: Finding nothing but a few dollars and a picture of a woman, child, and the man he murdered smiling happily in front of a house, the masked individual ran off in search of anything that could be used to help itself survive. Somewhere in a dimly lit room, a man looks somberly at his computer screen. The death and destruction of the once densely populated Earth playing out in front of him. He shakes his head as he looks on and slowly reaches his index finger toward a small green button. As he presses the button, the computer screen flashes white. A laboratory appears on his screen. 3.14159265358979323846264… The numbers spanned across the giant screens in the laboratory, going on for what seemed to be an eternity.

I don’t see you a lot anymore. Well, I see you, but you always have those sunglasses on that make you look like everyone else. We only say a few words to each other now and then, all just friendly formalities. You talk to everyone like that, like you’re some kind of cross-clique ambassador that has to be good with everyone. You also always have your sleeves rolled up now. It doesn’t look bad; it’s just something I noticed. There are pictures of you all through the halls for student counsel, or future leaders today-whatever one of the thousand clubs you’re a part of. It makes me so mad seeing your face up there because your smile isn’t your real smile. Your real smile is slightly wider to where you can see the tooth you chipped in sixth grade at Nick’s. And I’m the only one who can tell. I can’t quite pinpoint what made us grow apart. It was freshman year in the fall. You started hanging out with the preppy kids. Freshman year everyone grew a part. Everyone left me. I just didn’t think you’d be one of them. I was the only one who didn’t change, and I was the one abandoned. It’s not fair to anyone that you left…especially not me. You used to ride your blue Huffy bike over to my house. I’d be sitting in my room, and I’d see you pull up to my driveway. I started seeing every bike rider as you. It’s hard to tell, from so far away. They pedal their bicycles the same as you. When they get close enough I can see what color their bike is. Not a lot of people ride blue bikes. Not a lot of people are like you. That’s why. That’s why it hurts to see you try to blend in with everyone, try to be the one that everyone looks to as the cool guy. The one they want to talk to. The one who tip toes the borders of the school’s niches. The one whom when they look at me give a passing smile and a “how’s it goin’?” The nicer you try to be the more insincere you become. I understand. I really do. If people found out that we were together it might make you a little less popular. It might make for an explanation to your new friends. But to me, that’s how you know you aren’t with the right people. I can talk to David. Brian doesn’t care. Luke supports me. Emma talks a lot but you don’t. And I don’t think she cares about you. And I don’t think she’d support you no matter what. And if you abandoned her, I don’t think she’d hold onto it for so long. But if she did, hold onto it for this long I mean, I don’t think you’d leave her. You wouldn’t want to hurt her that much. You would notice the small twitch in her eye every time you’d pass each other in the hall. That’s the worst part. Not that we don’t see each other anymore. Not that we started on different paths. It’s that you don’t see the pain in my face when I look at you, because I see the pain in yours. I know what it looks like. I memorized it. But you didn’t.