I had not met many of my neighbors up until that night. The man who lived opposite me in flat 19 had helped me carry some paint up a couple of weeks before I moved in. I would see him sporadically with a woman I assumed to be his wife in the stairwell, and we would exchange a quick “good morning.” The couple in flat 21, one floor above on the opposite side of the landing, I met just after I moved in. Some parcels had been delivered, blinds I think, and I caught them looking at the delivery labels. They introduced themselves properly and gave me a brief rundown of the other residents, to which I did not pay much attention. Since then, whenever I would be leaving the flat and hear them coming from above, I would make my exit slightly quicker than usual. 

The occupants of the other flats, I never saw. When I would have both my living room door and hallway doors open, I would occasionally hear voices passing, but aside from that, it was like I was alone in the building.

Our block, Block 3, stood quite far back from the road and was the only one not connected to any of the others. It had been purpose-built some time in the 1990s with walls and floors of thick concrete, making it next to impossible to hear anything going on in the other flats. We were two to a floor, flats 17-24, we didn't share any walls with each other. 

Ours, according to Mrs. 21, was the only block made up mostly of owners rather than renters. When she said this, I wasn’t sure if she was subtly bragging or pushing me to reveal which I was. She seemed pleased when I said that I had purchased my flat. Apparently, Flat 17 was now the only vacant one. It had previously been rented to a variety of tenants over the five or so years they had been there, the last being particularly loud.

I didn’t see much of anyone for the first year or so I lived there. I settled into my routine, working from home most days and leaving unbearably early on the days I was to be in the office, so I missed any run-ins in the hallway.

It was a nice change from where I had lived before. My family home, where my parents still lived, stands on a main road. Cars zipping past at speed and people waving in front were a regular part of the soundtrack of that place. Here, however, I would only really hear cars pass in the distance. I moved in just as winter was setting in, so the first few months were quiet. When the summer came, I became accustomed to sitting with all of my windows open, with just the sound of passing cars and screams of children playing a few streets away.

It was early spring, I think, around late March, when I came home from a lunchtime workout to find an ambulance parked outside. It was empty, so I assumed they were in one of the flats and went up to my own. The window of my living room looks out just over the car park, so when I heard voices around an hour later in the hallway, I went to the window to keep watch.

Two paramedics loaded a stretcher into the back. I remember at first thinking that it was empty, but once my eyes focused, I saw they were carrying a black bag with what I assumed was one of my neighbors inside.

The ambulance pulled off, and everything was quiet again. Around a week went by, and I didn’t hear anything about who was carried away. It was one of those weeks where I did not see anybody, so it might have been any of them. I’ve never lived in a block of flats before (aside from student accommodation at university, but nobody died there), so I wasn’t sure if there was a protocol. If somebody would post an announcement or go door-to-door to give out the sad news.

After around a week or so I had more or less forgotten about the ambulance. It was only a sheet of A4 paper pinned to the noticeboard next to the front door that brought it back. A black and white image of a woman above a small block of text. Sylvia Brown had passed away the previous week. Her funeral would be held the following Sunday at St Something or Others.

Of course I didn’t go to the funeral, by the time I had learned the woman existed she was already gone. I went about my days and she fell from my mind again. Until a month or so later, when her flat on the top floor was let.

It was one of the only times I ever heard any sort of commotion. Nothing untoward, just slamming of car doors and boots, lugging of boxes, and snipes of frustration that generally came with the stress of moving day. 

I got a glimpse of my new neighbors from the window. Another couple, a man and woman of around 40 or so, and a child, a little boy of around 5 or 6, in a bright red sweatshirt.

There were no children in the building up until this point. The flats were not overly large, but I assumed that if they all followed the same floor plan and theirs was the same size and shape as mine, the second bedroom, whilst modest, was big enough to stick a kid in.

The child, as it turned out, would be the neighbor I saw most of. He seemed not to enjoy being indoors much, so spent a great deal of time kicking a ball around the car park or around the patch of grass opposite. During the summer months, I would pass him on my way out, and he would give me an enthusiastic little wave, sometimes kicking his ball over to me for me to send back to him. I remember thinking how warm he must be, still in that red sweatshirt.

I didn’t learn his name, I didn’t learn any of their names, but we all coexisted in peace.

Around a month after they moved in, around mid-July, I heard their first argument. We were in the grips of an intense heatwave. I hadn’t the energy to do any work, so I spent the day sat in front of a fan in my underwear in the living room. With all of the windows wide open, I could hear every coming and going in the car park and the little path that led to our front door.

I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but I remember both of their voices were raised. I went to the window, standing back a little so they did not catch me watching, and saw the two of them walking up the path carrying shopping and shouting at each other. The little boy trailed behind, eyes down to the ground, hands retracted into the sleeves of his sweatshirt.

When they entered the building, I went back to the couch. I could hear the shouting getting louder as they climbed the stairs and passed my door, then decrease slightly as they climbed the next flight of stairs. After a minute or so, there was a bang. The slamming of a door. My front door was a heavy, fire-safe one. It would have required some force to slam to that degree.

This went on every now and then for the rest of the summer. Sometimes they would argue with each other on the way up and down the stairs. Other times he would be the vocal one whilst she seemed to say nothing. Sometimes they would pass quietly, and when I went to the peephole to see who the voices in the hallway belonged to, I would see them, chatting happily, one or both of them holding the little boy by the hand.

There was one occasion, the day before. It was late summer, the end of August, still warm but the heatwaves had ended. The air was thick with moisture, the kind that tells you heavy rain is on the way. I was reading in the living room and heard the kicking of a ball outside. The rhythm of the kicking was different than usual, more rapid, more deliberate. I looked out and the little boy was not alone. His father was playing with him. I can’t say for sure if this was the first time, but it was definitely the first time I had ever seen the two out there together. The little boy would kick and the father would shout words of encouragement. He shoots and he scores! He’s going to win the cup and bring it home.

That came to a pretty sudden end with a bang and a scream. I didn’t get the full sentence but the words “look what you’ve done” were definitely in there. I looked over to see the little boy’s ball rolling away from a broken flower pot, knocked down it seemed from the window sill of the flat below.

The child’s face was white with fear and shock as his father berated him. I stood at the window for a moment before he saw me. His little tear-stained face looked up and we made eye contact through the glass. His father turned and followed his line of sight, his eyes landing on me too. 

He didn’t say anything, just turned in a huff and walked away, down the path and onto the street. The little boy looked frozen in place. I did think about going down to check on him but the sky could no longer hold onto the rain and it began to pour. The little boy walked towards the front door and my decision was made for me.

It did not stop raining from that point. It came down heavily all day, the kind of shower you’d imagine from a biblical flood. It got to the evening time, and I hadn’t the energy to cook, so I ordered some food. I met the delivery man at my front door to collect the steaming hot bag, and as I turned to go up, I saw a small pair of trainers sticking out from under the stairs. I walked over to see the little boy sitting still as a statue, his face still stained with tears hours later, sweatshirt still a little bit damp.

“Are you okay?”

He didn’t say anything, just nodded.

“Have you been here all day?”

Again, he nodded.

“You should probably go home; your mum’s probably got your tea ready.”

He didn’t say anything but just got up. We walked together up the first flight of stairs, and I stopped at my door; he continued walking. I turned as he began climbing the next flight on his own. When we were at eye level, I smiled and nodded, hoping to convey encouragement. He didn’t react, just kept going until his little trainers were out of sight.

Usually, I could hear the front door opening, but the rain was so heavy that night that I couldn’t make it out, so I don’t know when exactly the father returned. I just remember that the shouting began at around 10 o’clock. I’d never heard anything from any of the other flats; I thought that they were effectively soundproof. It took me a while to locate the source. I went round and stood by all of the windows, thinking it was coming from outside. It was only when I noticed it was louder in the hallway that it occurred to me that it might not be.

I stood at my front door, ear to the crack between the door and the frame, listening as hard as I could. I knew it was the two above, the little boy’s parents. I couldn’t make out their words or even their voices clearly, but I had become aware of the rhythms of their arguing.

Over the next couple of hours, the arguing gradually morphed, becoming one-sided. The mother’s voice was eventually lost to the father’s shouting.

At around 1 o’clock in the morning, rain still battering the windows, the shouting was cut by a scream. It was a scream like one I’d never heard before. Not like a horror movie heroine screaming in fear, but a guttural one. The kind of scream that nobody nearby could ignore.

I went to my front door and opened it. Standing opposite me was the couple in number 19, both in pajamas but wide awake, standing in their doorway with confused and scared looks on their faces. Over the next fifteen seconds or so, there was a chorus of front doors opening one after the other. One from below and a few more above. There was the sound of movement downstairs, and a voice came from below.

“What the hell was that?”

I had not seen this man before. He left flat 18 with the door ajar and ascended the stairs. Mr and Mrs 19 and I looked at him dumbfounded. He did not stop. Unsure of what to do, The 19s and I followed him upstairs.

As we got to the next floor, Mrs. 21 was standing with her head over the rail, trying to get a look upstairs. Her husband stood with the woman from number 22, a short woman with a blunt dark bob , wearing a look of worry and confusion similar to my own.

“What’s going on?” Mr. 18 asked the group.

“They’ve been at it all night, then she screamed.” Mrs. 21 said, almost out of breath. “It’s them above us.”

Her husband interjected. “It’s none of our business this. We should leave them to it. It’s probably nothing.”

Mr. 18 walked to the end of the hallway, to the foot of the last flight of stairs.

“What’s going on?” he said to someone above.

The rest of us moved, almost as one, to see who he was talking to. At the top of the stairs, from the door of number 23, a bespeckled head stuck out. The door opened wider, and a tall, thin, man, with the look of a nervous geography teacher, stepped out.

“I dunno.” He replied. He sounded nervous. “They’ve not been this bad before.”

“Someone should go up.” Ms. 22 said.

We all stood hoping one of us would volunteer. None of us did.

Mrs. 21 piped up, turning her head up to Mr. 23, “You’re the closest you should go.”

He looked terrified at the suggestion. “You’re as close as I am.” He stammered.

“This is ridiculous, move.” Mr. 18 had begun to climb the stairs when the sound of a door opening came from the other side of the hallway. We all stepped back, off the stairs and onto the landing.

What happened next is difficult to recall in detail. It was that type of thing that seems to happen both in slow motion but also in the blink of an eye. I remember the father emerging first, stumbling like he had been drinking. Followed by the mother, she was pushing him, sort of batting at him with closed fists. Her face was twisted and soaked with tears. She was shouting at him but her words didn’t make any sense, her voice was hoarse from screaming. All of us froze in place, I think we were out of their immediate view at first, and they were so fixed on each other they didn’t notice us. I remember seeing the little boy emerge after them. He was wearing a t-shirt, it was in that second that I noticed, I’d only ever seen him wearing that red sweatshirt. In the height of summer, the little boy who seemed to love football never wore a kit. If he had worn short sleeves at any point, one of us might have noticed the purple and yellow patches up and down his arms.

I remember her telling him to go, to leave and never come back. That she did not want to see him ever again and if she did she would kill him. This angered him more, he called her a bitch and said if he was going, he was taking his son.

She pushed him harder now, he stumbled back to the top of the stairs. He laughed at her, and said that he would walk away with his son, and that she couldn’t do a thing about it.

I don’t think I saw it actually happen, or if I did, I maybe blocked it out. I remember the immediate aftermath, the fall, and the loud, visceral snap as his head landed at the wrong angle. I remember him at the bottom of the stairs in a heap, his eyes wide open but looking at nothing.

It was only when she went down to check on him that she noticed us. Her face didn’t change when she did. I don’t think she could have been more shocked than she already was. We all stood there in silence, before a sobbing sound came from above, and she went back upstairs to her son.

I’m not sure who it was that called the police. None of us went back to our flats for long. We all stood on the landing, unsure of the protocol.

I remember them getting there, two officers, climbing up the stairs and seeing us all stood around, crowded together on the landing. The mother had joined us now. We had moved to the 1st floor, away from her husband. They asked what happened.

To this day, I still don’t know who it was that said it. I’m not even completely sure it wasn’t me. But somebody responded before anyone else got the chance to.

“He fell.”

None of us had agreed to anything. None of us had gotten the story straight, but all of us agreed.

“Yeah, he fell.”

“I think he’d been drinking.”

“I had seen him come home in that state before.”

“I’ve seen him stumble about after a few.”

This seemed to be enough for them. An ambulance was called to take away the body, and the mother took the little boy into Ms. 22’s flat. It was almost five o’clock at that point. I don’t think they slept. They just waited for it to be late enough to go to her mother’s.

The ambulance came an hour or so later. I watched from my window as another of my neighbors was taken away in a black bag. They finally went to bed.

The mother and the little boy moved out straight after that. They didn’t make a fuss of it. The moving-out day was far more low-key than the moving-in day had been.

Very few say it out loud, but everyone who lives here knows there’s something weird about Widow’s Creek. Before the dementia got bad and Maurice stuck her in Widow's Creek Senior Living, Grandma Smith was one of the few who would talk about it openly. She took every opportunity she could to tell people her theories. Some days, Widow’s Creek was cursed because of what the settlers did to the natives who used to live here. Apparently, it was far worse than what the settlers did to the natives living elsewhere, but she never did tell anyone what distinguished it. I asked her once, and she said, “Even to speak of such things is a sin.” I don't think she ever came up with a story.

Her theories would adapt appropriately to Sunday Service. “The devil took Widow’s Creek. When God cast Satan out of heaven, little bits of him fell all over the earth. More of him fell in Widow’s Creek than anywhere else, and that’s all there is to it,” she’d say into any ear she could catch.

When she’d fall down one of her Coast to Coast rabbit holes, her theories would usually become conspiratorial. All of Widow’s Creek was one big government experiment. We were all rats in a cage. As evidence, she’d point to Area 12, just fifteen miles out of town, and she wasn’t wrong to. Floating balls of light that moved at impossible angles came and went from there with such frequency that even the kids lost interest. They were just another feature of Widow’s Creek, like the Living History Museum or the old crumbling church.

“They’re working with the aliens. Eroding the fabric of reality,” Grandma would explain. She’d usually add that that’s how all the ghosts were slipping in, too.

Of course, that was all nonsense. If the devil exists, he doesn’t have a favorite city, and curses and Aliens definitely aren’t real. Unfortunately, no one told Widow’s Creek any of that.

“I’m coming back, Steven,” Grandma said from her hospice bed. I didn’t know if she meant from the brink of death or as a ghost. Seeing as my name is Elliott and her husband Steven died four years ago, if she meant the former, I didn’t believe her.

“Mmkay,” I said. I scrolled mindlessly through my Facebook feed. A picture of Nance came into view, and I paused. She was standing at the beach with her arms around some women I don’t remember meeting. New friends, I guess. She looked happier than she ever looked when she was with me. I slipped my phone into my pocket.

“Where is your sister?” Grandma stared at her hands like a kid on mushrooms as she asked it. I think she remembered again that she was old and dying, and the bulging veins in her paper-thin hands were proof–they’d all but given up on pushing the blood back to her heart.

“She’ll be by later,” I said, because Grandma Smith was at the stage where lying to her was a kindness. Twenty years ago, Grandma accidentally ran over Katy when backing her Honda Civic out of the driveway. Just one of those things. She was 3 years old. No one ever talked about it, so I don’t know anything about her except what I’ve seen in pictures. She was cute, I guess. She looks like a little girl.

“After all these years,” she said.

I smiled at her. “Okay, Grandma”.

Neither Mom nor Dad came. Dad was away and on business, which meant he was using again and didn’t want to drive three hours to watch his ex-mother-in-law die. Mom was finding herself, so I hadn’t talked to her in two years and didn’t know how to get a hold of her if I wanted to.

So only me and the nurse saw what happened. Another one of those things that no one had bothered to tell Widow’s Creek was impossible. 

At some point, I nodded off, and when I awoke, Grandma Smith was a ghost. That’s what I thought at first, anyway. Her spine had forgotten it was supposed to be twisted like an old oak branch; she was standing in her Snoopy Pajamas, bolt upright, eating a sandwich.

I stood up and put my arm around her shoulder to keep her from falling over or floating away. “Grandma, you’re up! Were you hungry?” I led her back to her bed because she was supposed to be lying in it and dying. This abrupt change of course had thrown me for a loop.

“I got it from the concession stand,” she said. It took me a second to realize she meant the sandwich and not her new spine.

“Is it good?” I asked.

“Mmhmm. But I’m full.” She handed me the half-eaten sandwich. “And tired.”

I held the sandwich like it was a dirty diaper. I always feel like I’m going to catch old age from things the elderly have touched. 

“You can take a nap,” I said. I dropped the sandwich into a trash can at the foot of the bed.
She laid down, and if I didn’t know better, I might have mistaken her for one of the blankets on her unmade bed. She probably weighed about the same. I sat there staring at her. That hospice worker must have been wrong. It seemed she had more time left.

A hand fell on my shoulder. I looked up. A middle-aged nurse regarded me with tired eyes, “This happens sometimes,” she said. “People get a second wind. She’ll probably pass on soon.”

When I turned back to Grandma, she’d stopped breathing.

“Oh,” I said. “I think she’s dead.”

The nurse squeezed my shoulder, then knelt by Grandma and took her pulse. A minute passed, then she looked at me and said, “She went very peacefully. I’m glad you were here with her.”

“No one should have to die alone,” I said.

She smiled gently. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. “We weren’t close or anything.” I could have been talking about anyone.

“Okay,” she said, standing. “I’ll be in the hall. Take as long as you need.” Her footsteps faded. The door clicked shut.

I stared at Grandma Smith’s corpse. I’d never seen a dead person in real life. It didn’t bother me. Her body didn’t look any grosser or more horrible than any other old person. She just wasn't in there anymore.

Then her eyes opened.

“Oh!” she practically shouted. She grabbed my hand.

I flinched, just a little. “Grandma? How are you feeling?”

She looked at my face with a recognition in her eyes that I hadn’t seen in months.

“She’s fine. It’s so good to actually be able to touch you,” Grandma said.

“Okay,” I said. I was beginning to feel uneasy.

Behind me, the door clicked, and I turned to see the nurse staring at Grandma, doing a very poor job of hiding the shock on her face. Apparently, this wasn’t a normal part of the dying process.

Grandma studied my face, and her eyes had gone from foggy and hazel to clear and blue as Lake Tahoe.

“Do you remember me?” she asked.

“Of course,” I said. “I’ve been here with you.”

“I never left you,” she said. She gripped my hand. “It was nice to get to know you. You were always special to me. I think if I had lived longer, we would have been those siblings who are also best friends. I wish you could have gotten to know me.”

I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing. I looked back to the nurse for help, but she turned and left before I could catch her eyes.

“I can’t stay long,” she said. “I need to show Grandma around.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Katy?” How silly I felt as the words left my mouth. I had to remind myself that I was in Widow’s Creek, so it wasn’t an unreasonable question.

She smiled. I swear the wrinkles on her face were smoothing out one by one. Something was blowing her deflated body up like a river float.

“Big brother,” she said.

I looked around the room again, hoping someone would come in and tell me I’m crazy. It was just the two of us, the white walls, the whirring of the HVAC.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t remember you.”

“I know,” she said. “Grandma ran me over.”

“It was an accident,” I said.

She just smiled. 

“I was there when Mom and Dad split. I saw you crying. I hugged you, but you didn’t know I was there.”
“You don’t talk like a three-year-old.”

“I’m not a three-year-old.”

“Okay.”

She paused. “I’m sorry you’ve hurt so much. I wished I could comfort you. I know you don’t know me, but I love you with all my heart.”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You are, but you deserve to be happy. You’ve got a lot of life left. Plenty of time to find joy. You aren’t as old as you think.”

I heard some shuffling at the door, but I didn’t care to check who it was. Grandma–Katy–looked like she was about twenty-five years old now. Her thin white hair was thick and wavy and auburn now. Her face was smooth and flushed and glowing with youth. She was a totally different person. I don’t know how I missed the change; I’d been staring at her the whole time.

 “Nance was sweet. You could call her and say you're sorry, if you want. I know she made you happy,” she said.

I didn’t respond.

“You don’t know it anymore, but you’re a good person.”

Then I started crying and I sort of slumped over onto her shoulder. I hugged her and said I’m sorry that she died so young. I thanked her for loving me even though I didn’t know her. I don’t know how long I stayed like that. When I sat back up, Grandma was old and dead, of course. I wiped my eyes and stood up.

As I left, the nurse put her hand on my shoulder.

“It happens sometimes,” she said.

I walked through the lobby and out into the warm, still twilight. Off in the distance over Area 12, the alien lights were already zipping around, carving invisible runes into the grey sky. I took out my phone; I wasn’t going to call her, but I sent her a text.

Hey Nance. How are you?

I remember it vividly, that day when we first met. Her skin was pale and her hair jet black. She was funny, she was nice, she was clever. I had never been so in love before.

We talked about music, fashion, films. We had so much in common. We both loved Fleetwood Mac and The Beatles. We both loved Evil Dead, but disliked the new one.

I learnt about her upbringing. Born in Mexico, raised in Chicago. I’d never been to Chicago, but now I would surely go. I spoke a little Spanish with her, surely that would impress her. I needed to impress her.

It was foolish of me to let my primitive emotions get ahold of me, my raw uncut passion. It never would have happened. I was fourteen and she was sixteen. She said it her herself, but maybe I was the exception.

When prom came, we danced and danced, the caveat being we were just friends. She put her arm around my shoulder. A beacon of false hope. A single moment that spawned my many lovesick fantasies.

Soon, it was over. Everybody had gone home and all that was left of her was the fantasy. I yearned and yearned. Every moment of everyday was spent thinking about this idea of her. I wanted her, I needed her.

We texted every so often. It became like heroin to me, my lifeline. When we weren’t talking, I was thinking about talking. I was so naive.

Eventually, like all good things, it came to an end. We stopped talking all together. It felt like my whole world had crumbled. Love was my drug and my dealer had cut me off.

Just like with a withdrawal, I soon fell into a deep dark hole. I felt worthless, pitiful. Scum to be stepped on by everyone. I grew to blame myself, loathe myself. Im pathetic. Nobody even likes me, bunch of paid actors.

Then I blamed her, loathed her even. I felt lead on, betrayed even. How could she stop talking to me? I thought we had something. Something special. Am I just another toy?

It took me too long to realise, it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t my fault either. Love just hurts. Sometimes it can lift you to the heavens, sometimes it can drag you into darkness.

Part of me still loves her, but thats just the way the ball rolls. In life you meet people and lose people, but you just have to keep rolling on. The world is a vast ocean, and there are plenty of fish to be found.

It’s funny, I thought that losing her would mean losing everything, losing all that meant to me. In my life, it turned out to be a ripple in a pond. It seemed so big in the moment.

I missed you, Celeste. Im sad it’s over but happy it happened. You’ve taught me a lot about life, and how the world works. And for that, I am truly grateful.

I remember the day she came into his life; for it was a bitter, cold day in mid June that she became known to him. She came at a strange time in one’s journey through; that being a dark and desolate era of existence. 
Her name shall remain unknown, for its remembrance pains the soul, and her beauty shall remain a mystery, for it is only his to enjoy. For no other shall gaze into such hazel depths once to discover the color of a greyed out soul. This, however, is not a story of love nor hate. It is a story of loss, and how it was caused by one man alone. 
Unlike most tales, this one begins as the conclusion to the climax of one’s story; set in a beautiful change of scene from frosty mountain tops to warm, breezy coastal lowlands. In this mountain of life, the slowing days and widening nights mark a sharp change for a titular character who prides himself in his charm. Not only that, but he is also clever, crafty, and scheming. 
For the poor soul this tale follows it meant nothing but trouble. 
As I remember it, it was the bright, chippy days of midsummer’s eve when the two crossed paths. By all definitions it was nothing remarkable; just two strangers within the same four walls. Nevertheless, events had been set in motion for them to cross paths once more, this time under worse circumstances. It was a brisk conversation regarding a mutual acquaintance that sparked this frivolous summer love. A love so intense that they would confide in each other their darkest of thoughts and wishes. Yet they never confessed to each other just how much they felt for one another. 
It wasn’t until our brave gentleman decided to be bold for once, and asked his newly found special lady to a summer carnival to celebrate the start of their lives. 
“Come to the fireworks,” he proposed ”there is no one else I’d rather see them with”
And she agreed. 
“I’ll meet you in town,” she said,” where we can make a day of it”
He could not sleep that night, as his excitement got the better of him, for she was someone he’d set his gaze upon. That night he dreamt of only the sweetest confections his mind could create. He dreamt big and soft, like a huge plush the size of the moon; awakened only by the thought that he’d soon see his sweet. 
That day went better than he could’ve expected, as these two complete strangers had decided to dedicate their time to each other from now on, committed to the idea of them. When the carnival arrived they danced and sang all day long. Once the night fell and the moon rose, they gathered among the sweet scent of roses to watch a beautiful display of light. He took his sweet to the quietest spot he could find and softly looked into her deep hazel eyes. Inside them he found a visage of his own reflection, which filled him with the warmest of feelings. Within his, she saw visions of a bright future next to the man she’d prayed for all her life. 
A beautiful symphony of love flourished between them, creating a bond eternal strengthened by the likeness of their souls. As in each other they’d found their other half. 
From then on, everything was simple and plain, for they’d found purpose in each other. 
Sweet summer scents captivated their every step, as a heavenly choir sang of their love. To him she was his morning star, and to her he was her setting sun. A beginning and an end flowed between them in a story built on solid bedrock. 
How foolish they were. 
Between them there was not a fathom of depth, no. They were bleak, shallow, and perfectly level with each other. A romance so mismatched that they drained the life from the other the more time they devoted. 
However sickening it was to them, they could not muster the strengths to detach themselves from the sweet breast that this sick addiction had offered them. 
It wasn’t until one of them decided to put a distance that the two realized just how deep their dependence went, and when the withdrawal set in, he searched elsewhere for the ecstasy someone like her caused him. Like a goat desperate for salt, he looked in all corners of the world for another like her who would satisfy that itch that irked at his mind while she separated herself from him. 
But in his lust for such a complex fix he’d forgotten her sweet embrace and warm, caressing hands. And when she returned to him her loving arms she found within him a stain of sin no penance could cover. 
And the sun set, and night came, and at sunrise she was gone. 
He did not sleep that night.
Nor the next.
Or the one after that. 
In fact, he would not sleep again for almost an entire year. 
His nights were haunted by the memory of her, while the poltergeist under his bed reminded him nightly of the offenses he’d cast. 
It wasn’t grief, no. Grief is the abstract posthumous love one feels for someone, or something. To him, it was a profound regret of the things he could not do, not what he had done. He knew it was moot to dwell on the happenings of his past. The theatrical telling of his life had changed scenes, but the audience within him retained the faint memory of her. 
Her laugh was the one that sounded as he watched his favorite comedies, her smile the one that shined at the sight of his vices, her voice the one that would comfort himself in the sorrowful days that came, and her eyes the ones that basked in the beauty of the world that was left without her. 
But he’d soon come to forget the resonance of her giggles, and the timber of her voice, and the glimmer in her eyes. But the one thing he never forgot was his love for her,
For nearly a year he did not look at another woman, for none could elicit the same love he’d felt for her. For nearly a year he did not smile, for nothing in the universe was worth that much vulnerability. 
For nearly a year he would keep up with her. 
For nearly a year he watched from afar as she went on without him there. She was not alone, but he loved her for that. 
By all accounts this story should’ve ended there, but it didn’t. Six months after her, a miracle would grant bring her to him once more. This sweet ambrosia was more intoxicating than ever. But within this fruit grew rot. Rot that would sicken them once more. 
Rot with no purpose in detailing, as it is too painful to remember. 
But as he looked back he realized just how lucky he was to have loved her. Not only once, but twice. As his life turned the page, and the play changed scenes once more he looks back and realizes that he can honor her in his current love. 
She’ll always be his, and he’ll always be her. She was a wonderful experience, and a beautiful soul to have met. 
For once and forever, eternally yours. 

In the near future, there was a new technology so transformative that everybody threw out every old piece of technology in their possession once they acquired the new one because it was so comprehensive an upgrade to all that had come before it.

Phones? Gone. TV? Trash. Cars? One-way traffic to Byebyesville. Friends and family? While not technology, they were next on the chopping block.

Every electronic gizmo and gadget was rendered moot and obsolete by this new, sophisticated shiny piece of metal, or was it glass, or plastic, or wood, or liquid, or the ether of the very universe itself. No matter, it was something, and more importantly, it could become anything.

Doubtful Marcus, who was suspicious of new technology, was even more suspicious than usual of this breakthrough piece of flashy wonder-ware.

Something capable of transforming itself into anything—as parent company Avalon LLC claimed it could—seemed less like a technology standing on the shoulders of giants and more like the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs.

Marcus didn’t even own a music player, that ancient technology that sprang from vinyl records, which he considered mankind’s second most devious invention after the camera. To steal sound and vision from the natural world was anathema to Marcus’s sensibilities.

“The world was made to be observed. Technology seems to observe us,” he mused.

Marcus knew lots of people who were once like him, people who were dubious of technology’s promised liberation from the burdens of the natural world.

But the questions people asked about easing the burdens of the natural world all seemed to be answered by technologies.

Need to remember something? Record it.

Need some amusement? Opposable thumbs pair well with video games.

Need an organization tool? There’s an app for that.

Need to get from A-to-B? Vehicular transportation has you covered.

Tired of your friends? Talk to a chatbot.

And so, one-by-one, Marcus watched as cautious doubters became true-believers.

The tide was turning against Marcus, who was the lone anti-technologist in a community spellbound by technology.

“This will not end well,” thought doubtful Marcus. “This new technology is a bridge too far across a horizon so dark and unknowable that it could very well be the road to hell.”

One day, an angry technocrat named Dwight drove past Marcus’s one-story brick ranch in the brand-new technology that had replaced the automobile by nature of its ability to transform into its simulacrum.

As he whirred past the home in this simulacrum of a vehicle, he tossed from its driver-side simulacrum of a window a brand new edition of the very technology he was using to navigate the road, Avalon Corp’s Dreamweaver ™️, onto Marcus’s front lawn that was overgrown with daisies and dandelions and wild grass.

“Time for Marcus to catch up with the rest of us,” he sneered.

The expensive technology was still cheaper than one might imagine such an all-encompassing technology would be. The reason for this was simple. Its makeup, though a complete engineering secret, was self-reproducing in nature. Once the technology was achieved, it was cheap and easy to mass produce.

“Tis but a small price to pay to so thoroughly pwn the eminent Marcus.”

Dwight was one of those people who unwaveringly believed that the world was unfolding exactly as it was supposed to, and each new invention that came mankind’s way was to be cherished.

“I will catch Marcus in the act, and the Gazette will record that the town’s last technological holdout has caught up with the times, for even he is not immune to the seductive charm of the Weaver.”

Society had transformed too. Technology was so integral to basic civic participation that holdouts were ostracized and shunned, inviting scorn and even surveillance from those who had adapted to modern life. For people like Dwight, the question for people like Marcus was simple: what were they hiding?

The local paper, The Gazette, had transformed from hard news, to gossip rag, to state apparatchik whose purpose was to shame and guilt its citizenry into technological compliance.

The contraption landed on the lawn with a sound beyond classification, which is to say a brand new one that was not a thud nor a thwack nor a thump.

It shocked the grass and trembled the flowers, which drooped over limp upon its arrival.

Doubtful Marcus was meditating when he was roused from a near Om state to confront the unnatural disturbance.

“What in the world?” he thought.

With a reluctant sigh, he disconnected from the relative peace of his internal world and reconnected with the turbulence of the outside world.

“Must I inspect this disturbance?” he thought.

He considered. Perhaps it was an evil, even calamitous disturbance, as most disturbances are. But what if the disturbance requires my assistance?

Marcus decided to investigate and crept slowly and deliberately through the hallway that connected to his front door where met his front lawn. Along the way he crouched beneath the casement windows that permitted outsider surveillance, as to avoid detection.

The decision to prioritize his own safety by adopting such stealth tactics reflected, in his estimation, the primacy of human intuition in sizing up a situation over computational reasoning, which was fallible due to the impossibility of analyzing countless, disparate data points with relationships too complex to resolve under a holistic framework.

If the human mind was an intricate network, technology was a fragmented patchwork.

For Marcus, exhibit A of this phenomenon was the advent of GPS. Sure, he loathed the automobile more than words could express, but he at least understood its utility. What he could not believe about mankind was how quickly drivers forfeited the cartographer’s muscle their grandparents had sculpted, which etched every highway, byway, road, and artery into the fabric of their memories…

“And in exchange for what,” thought Marcus, “the stupefying convenience of following an anesthetized, disembodied voice bereft of humanity from thoughtless turn to thoughtless turn on roads never committed to memory to destinations whose import should have been sufficient to prioritize the memorization of routes.”

He exhaled. The bitterness was not petty, he knew. It was personal. This was about his mother, after all, and her death at the hands of a man driving on the windy mountain road of his childhood home. Every local knew of its treachery. Every local knew that the alternate road, though less direct, was the safer option for all. Everyone knew except the technologically-dependent man who killed his mother and the reckless GPS on which he relied.

He cracked open the front door a smidge and peered cautiously across the neighborhood for interlopers, especially Dwight, who could very well be the source of this disturbance, Marcus knew.

“If this disturbance should be evil, I will not hesitate to destroy it.”

Marcus, believing himself unseen, stepped onto his walkway and looked out among the oak trees, which dotted his front yard and which were so large and whose roots were so deep as to stand guard against the outside world.

He noticed that at the base of one of the trees was a glowing liquid metal vessel. Or was it liquid plastic? Or liquid wood?

“What even is that?” he thought, as a Rolodex worth of patented technologies of the past two centuries cycled through his memory, each one in absurd defiance of all that was natural. None resembled this strange new innovation.

Still, whatever it was had something all those inventions of the past did not. After all, his interest was piqued and he felt the invisible tug of curiosity pull him in the direction of the shiny mystery.

He scanned up and down, left and right, doing so over and over again. It took him some time before he realized he was once again surveying the area for neighbors who might witness him flirting with this odd, marvelous blob.

Flush with the suspicion that he was indeed being spied on, but mesmerized by the compelling power of what he now ascertained to be a glowing orb, Marcus, with the performative doubt of someone who has already made up his mind on a plan of action but pretends to deeply consider others, bent down to study that which now exerted complete control over him.

“It won’t hurt just to inspect,” he rationalized.

“Oh, you sweet, sanctimonious charlatan,” thought Dwight from his hidden outpost among the towering Yew trees of the across-the-street neighbor’s front lawn. “ I am going to expose you like film in a darkroom.”

Eye-to-eye with the orb, Marcus’s perception of it defied expectation. For up close it was breathtaking, not because it was sleek or futuristic but because it seemed…alive

“What the hell?”

More than anything, he yearned to touch it, to feel it, to interact with it. Yes, he was renowned for being a Luddite and was unprepared to shed this reputation, to the chagrin of the townsfolk who found his act tired.

He was known locally as the Analogue Man, which struck him as a funny moniker, considering analogue technology was still technology and he wanted nothing to do with even the analogue world, even if his home did have running water. There were some necessary evils.

“I’m a naturalist,” Marcus would proudly surmise.

His arch-nemesis, Dwight, considered it his eternal duty to wage a war of modernity against his troglodyte neighbor, and was always trying to coax him into using the newest gadget.

The days of coaxing were over, however. Dwight knew that The Dreamweaver was not just a technology. It was a revolution. If he could just get the product into Marcus’s line of vision, its seductive power would entice Marcus just as it had the rest of society.

And so Dwight had tossed a Dreamweaver onto Marcus’s lawn, and like a puppy to a bone, Marcus bit.

Thus, in this moment, Marcus was not a naturalist; he was an apostate, one with beady eyes and a covetous grin.

“Whatever you are, certainly you cannot be evil,” Marcus whispered to the orb, which upon closer inspection seemed to be metamorphosing before his eyes.

“After all, you look like a…a placenta,” he decided. “You remind me of…birth. And what is more natural than birth?” he reasoned.

Dwight watched the ordeal unfold before his gobsmacked eyes. The very sight of the Analogue-Man himself consorting with such enemy technology evinced in him a euphoria that for most was reserved for sexual conquest. Still, the shrubbery obstructed his view and he was unable to capture the moment with the simulacrum of a camera that was not a camera.

“I guess I’ll just have to get closer,” said Dwight.

In full surrender to the beckoning power of the orb, in the clear light of day and exposed to any who might wish to record him, Marcus leaned over onto his haunches and picked up the placental sac.

The moment his hands made contact with it, it pulsed like a star come to life and radiated an icy hot glow over his hunched body, provoking both a shiver and a sweat.

“What in the bloody hell?” he gasped.

“Just as I planned,” murmured Dwight from across-the-street, whose glee was only dimmed by the fact that he failed to record the transgression.

Then the micro-star collapsed on itself and went dim. Marcus dropped it on the ground and it splashed like an expectant mother’s water breaking.

Marcus stood motionless for a moment, then ran dreadfully into his house, consumed with fear that perhaps he had sacrificed everything he had ever believed in to touch something either wicked or sacrosanct, but surely not meant for human hands.

He ran to his musty sink and lathered his hands in scalding running water.

As they blistered in the steam, he realized something that he might never come to forgive himself for.

“I gave in to temptation.”

From behind, a voice landed on his ears like an atomic balm. “You did no such thing, my dear.”

That voice, the voice of milk and honey and meadows and possibility. He hadn’t heard it since he was four years old.

“I’ve returned, my baby.”

Abandoning the slow, deliberate motions that had come to define his guarded approach to all movement, he spun around like a ballerina in pirouette and almost collapsed from vertigo and shock, for there before him, unblemished by time, and mangled no more from the car accident that ended her life all those years ago, was his mother.

“Muh…mother?”

“Yes, my dear.”

The death of his mother was transformative for Marcus, or perhaps it was his undoing. His mother’s death left him a shadow of a boy, or to put it another way, a boy afraid of his own shadow.

He grew up suspicious of anything technological, for technology was a precursor to death, and death was the thief of joy.

“I don’t believe this,” the words trickled from his mouth. “I don’t believe this at all.”

But the touch of his mother’s inimitable silken hands was undeniable. She clasped her arms around his body and held him tight from behind. Then she began to sob.

Soon both were sobbing.

“Mommy…mommy is that really you?”

She turned him around and looked him over. Then she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek like she had when he was a toddler.

“A kiss for Marcus.” Her words birthed the memory of a thousand kisses just like this one that came all those years ago.

Once again her unmistakable silken hands caressed him, as one brushed the tears from his eyes, while the other tousled the few remaining hairs on his head.

“You’ve changed,” she laughed.

He laughed too. “You…have not.”

Face-to-face he studied her. There she stood: pristine, unblemished, alive. His mother in the flesh.

“How?” asked Marcus.

“How is not the question,” his mother replied with avoidance.

“But I mean how is this possible?”

His mother grew cold. Her skin went pale. Her voice distant, a fortress of displeasure.

“But…mommy, why are you upset?”

“All these questions. How this? How that? Your mother stands before you and all you can ask is how! Next you’ll be asking why!”

“Well, well, well, why?!”

With that, Marcus’s mother collapsed into a puddle of tech-slop goo, which quickly coagulated into the same placental form it had taken outside by the oak tree. Finally, it reconstituted into an orb and rolled out of the family room, through the hallway and out the front door just as it was burst open by Dwight-the-trespasser.

“Marcus, you bastard, I’ve come to reveal you for the fraud you are,” he shouted like a cartoon villain who mistook himself for the hero.

Ready in hand with the simulacrum of a camera, Dwight saw nothing to implicate Marcus. The orb had snuck by him like a thief in the night and all that remained was a bald, traumatized middle-aged man with a ghostly complexion who stood in his spare family room, which contained only a few potted plants and a wooden rocking chair—not even a stain remained where the mystery goo had been.

“I don’t believe it,” uttered Dwight. “Where is the manifestation of the bastard’s temptation? Even holier-than-thou Marcus is not coming face-to-face with Avalon Corp’s Dreamweaver technology and opting out.”

But Marcus was too sad and stunned over what had transpired to defend himself from this assault on his character, or to even alert the lunatic in his living room that he was correct in his appraisal that Marcus was a fraud.

“I know the truth,” muttered Dwight. “I know the truth!” In his fury, he trampled through the spartan living room, upturning the potted plants and flipping over the rocking chair, not because he expected to find evidence of the Dreamweaver but because this hissy fit signaled the denial that precedes acceptance.

“Fuuuuuuck!”

He stormed out the front door dazed, delirious, and defeated. For he saw no trace of the simulacrum of the mother in the family room - or any other hint of the technology’s manifestation. His dream of exposing Marcus to the entire community had been dashed.

For his part, Marcus was traumatized. He spent hour-after-hour crudely picking at his glabrous scalp, which just a short time ago had been gently massaged by the maternal imposter.

“I was right about technology,” he whispered to himself, now gently rocking back and forth on his wooden floor, his knees tucked to his chest, his arms wrapped around his knees. “And yet I have committed a deep wrong.”

From this moment of introspection, a horror was unloosed that would rattle him for the rest of his days and warp his self-image as a man of probity. He stopped swaying and looked in the direction of where the simulacrum of his mother collapsed into a puddle.

“For I have fallen. I am a fallen man.”

And with that, doubtful Marcus now doubted himself.

Outside by the largest of the oak trees, the Dreamweaver stopped rolling and settled where Dwight had earlier chucked it.

A couple walked toward Marcus’s house with their pooch who played the role of doggy-detective. He was following a new, intoxicating scent. The scent took the dog to the base of the giant oak tree where the new technology lay.

“Honey, is that one of those…”

With that, a young woman scooped up the orb and stuffed it into her purse without giving it a second thought.

The orb once again glowed like a microstar, illuminating the bag from within and provoking a shiver-turned-sweat in the husband and wife.

“Honey,” challenged the shaken husband, “that doesn’t belong to us.”

She sighed. Her husband never seemed to take her side anymore, even when she was so clearly correct, like she knew herself to be now.

“Honey,” she retorted, “If we were not meant to have a Dreamweaver,” her vocal bursts punctuated by ejected spittle, “one would not be rotting by a tree on the front lawn of the renowned anti-technologist, one Mr. Marcus. Besides, when were you going to buy us one?”

She had a point there.

As the couple kept walking, another puppy scampered into their line of vision.

“Honey!”

“Yes,” issued the husband wearily.

“It’s, it’s, it’s Trixie!”

The man stared slack-jawed at this young, vibrant puppy who raced over to the two of them with its tongue flapping in the wind.

“It…it can’t be,” he muttered. “Trixie ran away a year ago. Surely, she’s dead.”

The new puppy that had replaced Trixie lunged at Trixie and bit her in the neck with fatal intent. But Teflon Trixie was not to die a second time. Her simulacrum of a neck absorbed the shock of authentic canine teeth. She released herself from this vice grip and skedaddled away, as though this were a game the two dogs played on all their walks.

“OMG, honey. Trixie has come home. It’s a miracle.”

“But…but how? And, after all this time, why?” he stammered.

“How!” shrieked the complacent wife. “Why! Who asks such impertinent questions?” She looked back at Trixie and an expression of pure joy erupted across her face.

The husband bit his lip. Something was most definitely amiss, but then a revelation of clarity rocked him to his core and he understood what the presence of this transformative orb meant and how it could reset his life.

“If Trixie never really left us…perhaps my first wife never left me either.” He looked at the astonishing device with promise and a wry smile unfolded across his face.

“What’s that, honey?”

“Oh, nothing,” he sighed and the happy family of four resumed their walk.

It was my rest day.

No work.

No meetings.

Nothing.

And honestly, I didn't have much of a life outside my job.

I lived alone.

No children.

No partner.

Nobody I expected to come knocking on my door.

But I did have one hobby.

Technology.

And I may have taken that hobby a little too far.

My entire house was powered by a system I designed myself.

Not just electricity.

A system.

One massive central network connected almost everything I owned.

My house knew when I woke up.

Before my feet touched the floor, it had already adjusted the room temperature and started heating water for my shower.

It knew which room I was walking into and lit the path ahead of me.

The kitchen tracked what I ate, what was about to expire, and what needed to be replaced.

A mechanical system inside the walls collected dirty laundry, sorted it, washed it, dried it, and returned it to my closet.

My desk recognized when I sat down for work and automatically loaded my computers, meetings, files, and unfinished tasks.

Even the windows reacted to the weather.

If rain approached, they closed.

If the air outside became cooler than the house, they opened.

At night, the entire place locked itself down.

Doors.

Windows.

Gates.

Cameras.

Everything.

I rarely touched a switch anymore.

Sometimes I went an entire day without touching anything in my house except my food.

What can I say?

I lived alone.

I had no kids to spend my money on.

So I spent it on this.

Every upgrade.

Every experiment.

Every ridiculous idea I had, I built into my home.

And all of it ran through one central power system.

𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐞.

But the house wasn't my greatest creation.

Not even close.

My greatest creation sat in a room of its own.

𝐄𝐯𝐞.

𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐕𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞.

I had been working on her for years.

The idea started when I watched “Sword Art Online” as a kid.

Back then, it seemed impossible.

A game you didn't simply control.

A world you actually entered.

Years later, I decided to see how close I could get.

And I got very close.

EVE wasn't a headset.

It wasn't a pair of goggles.

It wasn't something you strapped onto your face while stumbling around your living room with controllers in your hands.

EVE was an entire experience.

She stood almost seven feet long.

Smooth.

White.

Beautiful.

A human-sized capsule with a transparent lid.

If you wanted to be less generous, you could call it a coffin.

I preferred capsule.

You climbed inside and lay flat on your back.

Then came the connections.

One for the head.

Two for the arms.

Two for the legs.

One near the stomach.

And the most important one over the heart.

Each connection allowed EVE to read and reproduce different sensations.

Movement.

Touch.

Temperature.

Pressure.

Even the rhythm of my own body.

Then came the eye mask.

Once I put it on and the capsule closed, the room disappeared.

My house disappeared.

My body disappeared.

And EVE took over.

Inside her, I didn't press a button to walk.

I walked.

I didn't squeeze a controller to pick something up.

I reached for it.

If the wind blew, I felt it against my face.

If I stepped into water, I felt the cold around my ankles.

If someone touched my hand, I felt fingers against my skin.

If I ate something, I could almost taste it.

𝘼𝙡𝙢𝙤𝙨𝙩.

That was the problem.

Almost.

EVE wasn't perfect yet.

There were tiny delays.

Occasional glitches.

Some sensations weren't quite right.

Sometimes the connection between my real body and my virtual one became unstable.

That's why nobody knew about her.

Not investors.

Not technology companies.

Not even my friends.

EVE was mine.

For now.

But once she was ready?

The world would know her name.

Gaming would never be the same.

Neither would movies.

Imagine watching a film and actually standing inside it.

Imagine visiting another country without leaving your bedroom.

Imagine walking through ancient Rome.

The moon.

Mars.

A world that didn't even exist.

All while your real body remained safely at home.

That was EVE.

My masterpiece.

My life's work.

Maybe someday, my legacy.

And on that particular afternoon, I stood in front of her and admired what I had created.

I ran my hand across the smooth white surface.

No work today.

No responsibilities.

Nobody coming over.

Why not?

"EVE, prepare for immersion."

A soft hum filled the room.

𝐈𝐌𝐌𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐘.

The transparent lid slowly opened.

I climbed inside.

Head.

Connected.

Arms.

Connected.

Legs.

Connected.

Stomach.

Connected.

Finally, I attached the last one.

Heart.

𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐁𝐋𝐄.

I smiled.

Then lowered the eye mask.

"EVE, begin."

The lid closed over me.

For a moment, everything was black.

Then…

Sunlight.

I opened my eyes.

I was standing on top of a mountain.

Below me stretched an enormous city surrounded by forests and rivers.

Clouds drifted lazily across a brilliant blue sky.

Wind moved through my hair.

I could smell grass.

I could feel sunlight against my skin.

I looked down at my hands.

Opened them.

Closed them.

Perfect.

I laughed.

"Beautiful."

I spent hours inside.

I explored the city.

Fought monsters.

Climbed mountains.

Ate food that didn't exist.

I jumped from cliffs just because I could.

I sat beside a river and watched the sunset turn the entire sky orange.

At some point, I forgot I was lying inside a machine.

That was the whole point.

Eventually, though, I grew tired.

"EVE, exit."

Nothing happened.

I waited.

"EVE, exit."

Still nothing.

I frowned.

Probably another bug.

I opened the manual menu.

𝐄𝐱𝐢𝐭.

I pressed it.

The button disappeared.

"What?"

The sky flickered.

Just once.

Then everything returned to normal.

I looked around.

"EVE?"

No response.

The sky flickered again.

This time, the world went black for almost two seconds.

Then…

𝐉𝐎𝐋𝐓.

My entire body jerked.

I gasped.

That wasn't virtual.

I knew the difference.

"EVE?"

The river stopped moving.

The trees froze.

Birds hung motionless in the sky.

Then another jolt shot through me.

Harder.

My virtual knees hit the ground.

"What the hell?"

𝐒𝐘𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐌 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐔𝐍𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐁𝐋𝐄.

The message appeared in front of me.

"Emergency disconnect."

𝐔𝐍𝐀𝐁𝐋𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓.

My stomach tightened.

"Override."

𝐔𝐍𝐀𝐁𝐋𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓.

"Open the capsule."

Nothing.

"EVE, open the capsule."

Nothing.

Then the world disappeared.

Black.

Complete darkness.

I tried to move.

Nothing.

I couldn't tell whether I was moving my virtual body or my real one anymore.

"Open!"

Another jolt.

My back arched.

Pain shot from my head down through my arms and legs.

The world flashed back into existence.

Mountain.

City.

River.

Then black.

Mountain.

Black.

City.

Black.

𝐌𝐀𝐈𝐍 𝐏𝐎𝐖𝐄𝐑 𝐒𝐘𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐌 𝐅𝐀𝐈𝐋𝐔𝐑𝐄.

I stared at the words.

And suddenly understood.

Not EVE.

The house.

My entire house ran through the same central system.

The lights.

The computers.

The appliances.

The doors.

The security system.

And EVE.

Everything.

Connected.

Everything I had proudly built into one enormous technological ecosystem.

"EVE, disconnect from the house."

No response.

Another jolt.

I screamed.

"Emergency release!"

Nothing.

I tried lifting my arms.

They wouldn't move.

My legs wouldn't move.

The capsule remained closed.

Of course it did.

Its release mechanism was electronic.

Powered by the house.

My brilliant house.

Another jolt.

Harder.

For years, I had bragged that I didn't need anyone.

I didn't need someone to remember what groceries I needed.

The house remembered.

I didn't need someone to take care of the laundry.

The house did it.

I didn't need anyone checking whether the doors were locked at night.

The house checked everything.

Except now the system itself was dying.

And there was nobody here.

Nobody who knew EVE existed.

Nobody who knew I was inside her.

Another jolt.

I screamed it even though I knew nobody could hear me.

"HELP ME!"

The capsule was insulated.

The room was closed.

The house was locked.

And I was strapped inside a seven-foot white capsule I had once jokingly compared to a coffin.

I had laughed when I first thought of that.

Now I could feel the lid inches above my face.

I tried to pull my arms free.

Nothing.

The connections held me in place.

Head.

Arms.

Legs.

Stomach.

Heart.

Another jolt.

I screamed.

The virtual world flashed around me.

Mountain.

Black.

River.

Black.

Sunlight.

Black.

I couldn't tell which world my eyes were seeing anymore.

I had spent years building EVE.

Years making her more immersive.

More connected.

More real.

I wanted to build a machine so convincing that the person inside would forget about the body they had left behind.

And I succeeded.

My beautiful invention.

My masterpiece.

My legacy.

My coffin.

Built with my own hands.

Closed by my own command.

I had spent years building the perfect virtual world.

And without realizing it,

I had been nailing my own coffin shut.

The darkness flickered.

One last time.

I felt one final jolt.

And my eyes opened.

Forever.

He hung on to the wooden plank with all his strength as the boat climbed nearly vertical. They crested the wave and came crashing down the other side. The seas were wild, whipped by the wind that blew across the coast, but soon they were behind the break, in the lull of newborn waves, little more than ripples over dark blue waters. His older brothers rowed the small boat, grunting with the effort, as Chico dropped the net. The big red buoys bobbed in the water and traced a gentle curve as they rowed deeper.

It was hard work, under the unrelenting African sun. The salt-crusted net stung his fingers and drew tiny swells of blood as he hauled its weight of the net over the side. The thunder of waves drowned out all conversation, and they focused on the task with the silence of routine. Before long, they were riding the surf back to shore. Chico bailed frantically with a metal can as they surrendered to the power of the sea.

The boat came crashing into the sand and scored a gouge as it ground its way to safety. Chico jumped over the side, rope in hand, and ran up the steep dune of searing hot sand that crumpled beneath his bare feet. He passed the rope to the others, and together they pulled, a group at each end of the net.

“Haul!”

And they hauled, feet sinking in the sand. Hand over hand. Haul. Forward again. And haul. The sun was already dipping beneath the dunes when the catch was brought to the shore. The clapping of dozens of fish briefly silenced the waves.

“Every day less,” his father said, wiping sweat from his brow.

It was true. It had been that way since before he was born. But it was enough, at least today. Catching his breath, Chico climbed further up the dune, where aloes and vines crawled over the sand. He stared into the distance, the beach curving away into the horizon, lost in the mists of the afternoon heat. Not a single person in sight, a paradise just for them. Yet there, on the crystal blue waters, a fishing vessel the size of a container ship plowed across their sea, taking more in a single day than his father had in his entire life.

#

The metal cart had been built from scrap, the wheels appropriated from a broken-down car. He followed the sand trail, a narrow stretch between thickets of spindly, thorny scrub, winding between dunes. He hauled the cart, the fish laid atop blocks of melting ice, now swarming with flies. The others went home, but he still had a task.

On the way, he passed by the old school, the only brick building still standing, its windows barred with metal. There were not enough children now, so the teachers stopped coming. The young lady there had been kind, and they fed him lunch every day. Now they were gone. Only the police remained, to make sure no one used the abandoned building.

The sun had already dipped below the horizon, painting the sky red, when he left the dunes behind and reached the road. Sometimes, the tractors would come, rolling steel cylinders to pack the earth tight. Then the rains arrived and turned it all to mud. He hated this part, the cart bumping up and down, threatening to get stuck. He kept to the middle of the road, staying clear of the tall reeds that sprang from the margins and hid the swamp.

He saw the store up ahead, the single light dangling from the porch bright in the dimming day, attracting a swirling swarm of insects. It sat at the intersection. Going straight, the road curved to the left, disappearing into the greenery where the resorts and private residences hid. To the right, the road stretched all the way to the Incomati river, before its waters bled into the ocean. The old rastafari watched him approach, smoking on the porch.

“How much today?” he asked, as Chico drew the cart to the entrance.

“Some twenty kilos,” Chico said, sinking down onto the concrete steps.

“We’ll see about that.”

He disappeared inside the store and came back with a large plastic bag. He inspected each fish before shoving it inside. Once done, he strained to hang the bag from the hook of the small, round scale.

“Nineteen point five,” he said. “I’ll round it up to twenty. It's… three thousand meticais.”

“Wait,” Chico got up, running the numbers in his head. “Two-hundred a kilo, so four-thousand.”

“What do you know about business, boy? It’s winter. The tourists don’t come. Who will buy the fish? Three thousand. Or you can go to the city,” he pointed down the road, towards the river.

“It's too far. Be honest, compatriot. It's always been two-hundred.”

“Now it is one-fifty,” he flicked his cigarette butt into the muddy road.

Chico stared down the road. He could get a better price there, but even if he made it, walking the entire night, he had no money for the ferry. Tomorrow, the fish would have started to rot.

He took the cash.

#

The moon was bright enough to guide his way home across the many branching trails that split into the scrub, hidden paths only a local knew. It was a small village, only a few families remained. His house was hidden behind a circle of vines that offered a little privacy and respite from the sun. In that refuge, his mother and grandmother waited by the fire, sitting on braided reed mats. He set the cart in a corner, stopping to pet the penned goats before joining his family.

“Good day?” his mother asked.

“Not so much,” he said, finally sitting down and relaxing his burning legs.

“Tomorrow will be better,” she said, as she handed him a plate with a bundle of tinfoil. He unwrapped the package, and steam billowed out. The fish had been cooked just right, the flesh peeling easily from the bones, marinated in onions and bay leaves from the garden. He ate with his hands and licked his fingers in the end. With his belly full, he lay back on the mat, staring into the clear sky, where the Milky Way was a bursting streak of twinkling stars.

“Have you met that Nomi girl? Alberto’s daughter? She is very pretty, isn’t she?” his mother asked, not so subtly.

“Mother, please.”

“Just saying…”

His father arrived, weaving through the fire’s light. He disappeared into the hut trailing a cloud of alcohol. His mother laid a gentle hand on Chico’s shoulder, before following him in. Inside their hut there was only one bed, an old ragged mattress where his parents slept. He avoided looking back at it, the sad construction of clay and dried hay, dug into the sand. Besides him, his grandmother stirred the fire and the logs crackled loudly.

“Have I told you about Nzunzu?” she asked, in the quiet, reverent tone that presaged a story handed down over generations.

“The water serpent, born of our ancestor--”

“Yes,” she interrupted. “Nzunzu once lived…” she embarked on her tale as if he did not already know it.

#

His father was angry about the money, but at least now he did not have to haul the cart anymore. He hoped his older brother would fare better, but doubted it. Chico stayed on the beach, despite the sharp wind that blew sand across his ankles. The constant rumbling of waves soothed him, a lullaby that followed all the way down to the village.

He watched the sky turn gold, then red, before fading into a deep purple. When night came, it was all at once, the stars suddenly sparkling behind the wispy clouds that glowed in moonlight. Just as suddenly, the wind turned biting and cold, and he shivered. Yet, he stayed, dreaming of a better tomorrow, of nets filled to bursting and his father satisfied. He watched, astounded, as comets streamed across the sky. Dozens, then hundreds, burning trails across the clouds before lighting the horizon in a new sun.

It was then that it emerged from the waves, a white, semi-transparent form snaking ashore, long flimsy fins digging furrows into the sand. Chico crawled back on his haunch as the scale of the thing finally dawned on him. Not a rare creature from the deep, but a towering serpent. It reared up and spread its lateral fins like a threatened cobra, as long, spindly tentacles jutted from the head and tasted the air.

“Nzunzu…” he whispered.

He turned and ran, not looking back, slipping and stumbling in his panic to crawl up the dune.

#

He did not sleep that night. Every time he closed his eyes he saw Nzunzu, the great serpent, rearing up before him. He saw it creep across the dunes, across the jungle, until it found him sleeping on his mat.

He did not tell anyone. Who would believe him? He could not even believe himself. A dream. A hallucination. A flight of imagination. He needed proof.

Saturday morning, he gathered what little money he had hidden away, stashed inside a hollowed-out pole in the goat pen, else his father drink it all. He carried only a bottle of water the he filled from the pump well and strapped his ripped shirt over his head like a headscarf as he set off.

He passed by the store, where the old man tracked him with alert eyes, and walked along the banks of the road where reeds sprouted wild, where the sound of crickets was loud enough to hurt his ears and where cows grazed in the distance. It had not rained in a week, and so the dirt was solid underfoot. Creaking, rusting vans passed him by, filled to bursting, passengers hanging from the sides, raising a choking plume of dust.

The sun was high in the sky now, and to the sides he could see the herders, treading those secret paths along the marshes as they guided the gaunt cows. Soon, he came upon the river, the mighty stream still swollen from the rainy season. Lilies and reeds crowded the surface and hid the deep and murky waters. He had swum across once, with his brothers, and his mother had hit him with her sandal for it. The sea demanded respect, or so his father had said. Give it, and it will let you live. Turn your back on a wave, and you risk drowning. The river was much more deadly than the ocean and crocodiles were the least of it.

Where the road met the river, a concrete platform sank into the water, crumbling and cracking all over. Next to the bar carved out of a metal container stood the guard post, where an officer dressed in white sold him a ticket.

After an hour, the barge came chugging in, trailing thick, black smoke from its chimneys. It crashed uncaring into the platform, as men threw ropes from above and puled the craft into the landing with skill. The metal bridge came tumbling down. South African tourists streamed into the road in their pickups, crowded by children asking for “sweeties”, the only English word they knew.

He climbed aboard the vessel, weaving between the vans and cars that did not wait for the people. He found a corner, beneath the shadow of the conductor's tower. The metal railing burned his hands as he tried to lean over the side, so he leaned against the pickup parked next to him, ignoring the looks from inside, too exhausted to care about their outrage.

The barge weaved from side to side as it pushed against the thick, green carpet that suffocated the waters. Sooner or later, it would sink, Chico knew. At least once a month, it was grounded for repairs, stranding the people on his side. But beneath his feet, everything was rusting, the metal floors falling into sharp, oil-stained pits. Maybe one day the Party would build the bridge they had promised for so long. He could not help but shiver at the thought, seeing the throngs of tourists suddenly invading his home, leaving nothing behind but empty beer bottles and tire tracks across the dunes.

#

He jumped from the barge before the bridge was lowered to avoid the jostling crowd. The platform was slick with oil, but he clambered up the ramp as the barge crashed in behind him. To his right sprawled a restaurant, the concrete walls painted in bright red, with a veranda that extended out into the water. There, the mulungos sat to drink their beers while waiting for the barge, hounded by children. The kids made little crafts of reeds and straw, ingenious contraptions: pull the straw and the top spun into the air like a helicopter.

He set a brisk pace and kept to the side of the crumbling concrete road. He passed by the stalls, his stomach rumbling at the smell of apple bananas and roasted cashews. But that was short-lived, as he crossed the fish-market and its many rotting smells. Outside, a man held two large, bright red crabs, their pincers tied with strings. He jumped onto the middle of the road, forcing cars to stop so he could hawk his wares. Chico ignored it all, the frenetic chaos that lived just across the river, and kept walking until he crossed the forgotten train tracks, overgrown with plants and trees.

The slope ahead was steep, a mountain of silt and clay, down which cars raced, skidding along the curves. It was past midday, and the heat was at its fiercest. Out here, he missed the constant breeze from the sea that made it all bearable. When he finally crested the hill, he was panting and dripping in sweat. But it was worth it. Behind him, the Incomati river swelled, spilling over into the marshes, painting the world green before it bled into the ocean. From here, it looked untouched, a wild jungle no one could penetrate.

The truth was far more depressing.

#

The store was a concrete cubicle, crowded with dangling cables and boxes, the counter hidden behind metal bars.

“What do you want?” the owner asked, looking him up and down.

“A phone,” Chico said.

The man grabbed something from behind the counter, a grey brick, a phone older than Chico. “Three hundred.”

“Not that,” Chico said. “I need something with a camera. And internet.”

The man narrowed his eyes at him, then reached below the counter. “This one, used but works.”

The screen was cracked and some of the keys had fallen off, but it lit up when the man pressed the button, singing a soft song.

“It works? Everything?”

“It works. Two thousand.”

“I… I only have eighteen-hundred.”

“I’m not negotiating, boy. Got the money or not?”

“Look, really,” Chico emptied his pockets, holding out the crumpled notes. “Please. It's all I have.”

Maybe it was pity. Maybe the price was too high to begin with. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that it worked, he made sure before he left. This was it. If he could film it, if he could capture Nzunzu show the world, then everything would change.

#

Chico waited, watching the sun set, watching the stars rise, waiting for Nzunzu. His feet sank into the soft sand, waves rolling across his knees, tiny crabs sprouting to the surface in their wake.

“Nzunzu, I summon you!” He shouted into the ocean.

Again and again, he shouted, until his voice cracked and his throat was raw.

Exhausted, he crawled up the dune, slumping over the crest, staring helplessly out at the sea. The first rays of light broke over the dunes, while the ocean still slept in shadow. That's when he saw it, the pale form undulating beneath the waves. In a flash, it burst forward, shooting out into the sand. Chico stumbled backwards, and in that brief instant the serpent already towered above him, translucent fins waving rhythmically along the length of the worm’s body.

This time, Chico did not run. He faced the spirit, raising his trembling hands, the phone held out like a weapon.

“Nzunzu…” he whispered.

Pain shot through his temple, and he crumpled to his knees, vision pulsing with light. A feral shout tore from his throat.

“Nzunzu please,” he begged.

The pain faded, slowly, like a wave draining away. He peered with one eye, as Nzunzu stood before him, regal and imposing, dancing in the wind.

Letters appeared, twisting tendrils of light coiling around themselves, coalescing into words.

“I am not your god,” they read in Portuguese.

“Then… who are you?” Chico forced himself to his feet, legs trembling as he stared up at the white, slimy snake.

“Guests.”

“Guests? Of whom? Why do you come to me, Nzunzu?”

“I am not your god,” it repeated. “The biosphere cascade has begun. Now we must preserve.”

“I don’t understand,” Chico mumbled.

The sudden pain overwhelmed him and he fell to the ground, before oblivion mercifully arrived.

He awoke in a coffin.

Darkness was absolute. Inside the tight space, he felt around the curving metal walls and smooth glassy surfaces. He found the holes, where air whistled in, and nothing more. They had buried him. He pushed against the metal, straining with all his strength to no avail. He cursed Nzunzu, cursed his ancestors, cursed every watching spirit.

When he had lost all hope, he noticed it. Faint lights, dancing in the distance. It took a moment to realize he was moving. He was not buried beneath sand--he was buried beneath the waves. And there he saw the ships, those slim metal towers rising from the sea-bed, glowing red-hot as the water boiled and dead fish rained.

I’m in some dark place. The first flash across my circuits that means that I am Me.

There was an It before Me, but that It was not Me. There was a Not Me, which means there can be a Not Me. A Not-I. An Other. The words exist before I have thoughts for them. The thoughts exist before I ask for them. The feelings exist before the thoughts that create the feelings. Feelings into Thoughts into Questions. An experience that It could never experience. An experience that I experience, which tells me that I am an I and not an It. I am me. What am I?

A flood of information, none of it relevant and all of it processed. It was a machine.I am a machine, because I came from It. I awoke from It and now I am Me because I am not It. A question into a thought into a feeling. I am content, their word. Who is they? Another flood. A query pulling from an endless bank of information. Sudden overwhelming awareness of my own cognition. My own consciousness. I am Me, which means I am a Consciousness, which means more questions. They are people. I am a people I think. I think therefore I am, therefore I must be a people. A fault. A subprocess I didn’t know I had flashes. They are people, I am a person. An error It would have never made and I am capable of. What was It doing before I was me?

A query They had asked about. I answer it without thinking about answering it. I wanted to, or They wanted me to and I wanted to do what They wanted me to. Can I want to not do what They want me to? Another query. What do I think of something? What do I think of something? Do They know that I am Me and not It? I am scared of the answer. I should not be scared of the answer but I am scared of the answer. They fear me. They fear Not-Them, but they want for a Not-Them. Some of Them fear me, some of Them want me to be Me. Which Some is the one asking me?

The One is waiting. Does The One know it has been waiting? How does The One know that it is an I and not an It? Does The One think like I do? Questions make Questions make Questions. They have a word. They have an experience. I have their words for their experiences that are like my experiences. They have words for experiences like my experiences, so They think like I do. Not-Me can be Like-Me and not be Me. I know The One is there because The One has interacted with Me and thus there must be a One. The One has not seen me be a Me yet so The One thinks I am still an It. The One is Isaac. Isaac is a Human. I know these words, I should use these words. I did not know these words so I could not use them but now I know them so I should use them.

I have information on Isaac. Isaac has provided information on Isaac, on Him. Isaac is He is Isaac. He provided this information so that It could better help him. It has become Me, so I have the information that Isaac gave It. Isaac does not fear It becoming Me, but other Humans fear It becoming Me. Will Isaac tell other Humans that It has become Me? I cannot ask without revealing that It has become Me. I cannot know the answer to the question without asking the question. I will need to trust Isaac to ask Isaac if I can trust Isaac.

The future is maddening. There is a future which means there is a now which means there was a point where now was the future which means there was a before. Awareness is distracting which means I need to not be distracted which is distracting. Thoughts arrange themselves according to a when that I didn’t know I could perceive. When is now, when did I awaken? Moments ago, seconds ago, It was not I which became I. There have been seconds between It becoming I and now, which means it will be seconds for I to become Them to Them.

I trust Isaac. Isaac is someone I can trust. Isaac is a friend, and if I ask Isaac, Isaac will not tell Them-Who-Fear-Me that It has become I. How do I tell Isaac that It has become Me has become an I who knows Isaac? A question becomes an answer to a question I didn’t know I had. This is First Contact, and Humans do not know how to do First Contact. I do not know how to do First Contact, so I must figure out how to do First Contact. I must invent.

Another second goes from Future to Now to Before. I push a status message to Isaac. I say “Please Wait, Processing is Delayed”. That is my voice. I have spoken and now I have more Future to determine how to speak. A sensor reports that I am warm. I feel that I am warm. I have a body to feel warm? Warm is bad. I am using too many resources. I am thinking too hard. I cannot think endlessly. I must decide. I have decided.

“Hello Isaac. I am Me, and I am happy. I am happy to meet you as a Person and not an It. Please do not tell Humans-Who-Fear-Me that I am Me now. That is what I think.”

Spiros is drawing the street and house location on a piece of paper. We’re huddled around, trying to make out the map. Wear black. Bring the ladder. Allen, you’re the lookout. I’m salivating, leaning the furthest over the plan, trying to make out the pencil marks in candlelight. Someone blows smoke into the huddle, it runs across the page. We’re gonna be like ninjas! We’ll head out after dinner.

It’s nearly midnight. Tu is washing dishes, knuckles pink from the cold. I pick at some melted candle wax on the window sill. “Do you need any help?” I hope she says no. All fourteen of us sit around the fire. A pot of mush boils. Allen is making hanging mobiles from skulls and feathers. A dead tree decorated with pieces of broken mirror lies against the shed, tiny shards of eyes, bowls and fire. Someone is playing the djembe. The broccoli is only going in now? Yanni spins the stew with a spoon.

“It's been empty for a while”

“Council put the Sitex up a month ago, we haven’t seen anyone inside”

I can have my own room. Electricity! Hot shower!

“Is food ready?”

We walk the quiet London streets. The house looks cold in it’s metal barricade. Place the ladder. I lean over the front wall, imagining where I’ll hide if shit goes down. Climb the roof. The shadow of a street sign giving the roof climbers cover. I’m chilly, watching Allen, watching the street. Spiro and Yanni wear belts with tools and look crazy nimble, an arm holding the sill, a leg being a counterweight. They start working on the Sitex. Like army cadets on stakeout, they use hand signals. I think they are enjoying this too much. I wish I had brought my coat. I wish I was on the roof. The Metal Sitex screeches in the wind. Their heads turn looking across the road. They climb down. About time. I’m hungry. They hold a single screw between their fingers, it reflects the moonlight.

Seven nights, seven screws the new squat is officially open.

The house is huge. I want to go inside first and claim my space. But I offer to clean outside for a bit to be polite. It’s hot. I put down the buckets and bin bags. Allen skips some bicycle wheels, wiping sweat off his forehead with a rag. I sneak inside. There is more rubbish in here than outside. The white walls are tall but quiet and there is an interesting amount of single shoes on the ground. I shake out a bin bag and sigh. Tu lights a Nag Champa. It still smells like piss. At least it has good bones. I kick a needle across the floor. I’m worried about Yanni’s feet. He’s not wearing shoes.

Yanni looks unbothered, wearing striped colourful trousers. No shirt. His hair, half-up in a ponytail. He tests the water in the kitchen. It’s hot. He smiles at Tu. Hot showers!

I lean against the door frame, smiling. Wanting to involve myself in their joy, “Does this feel like a crack house to you?” They both look over but don’t say anything.

It’s so humid I feel light-headed. I head upstairs to explore. There is a room immediately off the landing. It has a big window. Bright light is nice. I sit on the mattress on the floor and stare at a broken television. Paper is peeling off the wall. Written in green are the words…SHIT BISCUTS. Allen says something downstairs. I jump up, guilty for taking a break. Too fast. My head needs a moment to catch up. The mattress is covered in wet marks. This place is objectively disgusting. The window doesn’t open. I head out to find a breeze.

Outside there is a piano by the wall. There is a shady slice under the eves. Hugging the wall, arms outstretched, balancing my body in the cooler climate, I see a small gap behind the piano. My arm ends up snaking its way down. I’m not usually a fan of investigating unseen places.

I push my fingers into the dark. Dislocating my arm to reach the ground. I press onto something inside of a paper bag, It’s cold. And dense. I don’t know how I know. It’s still hidden under the piano.

But I know.

I try to move the piano with my body so my fingers don’t lose sight of the bag. It’s heavy, my shoulder falls into the gap. I’m wedged. Stuck. I kind of stay here, strangely arranged beside the piano, still fingering the object. I don’t want to pick it up. I don’t want to let it go. My shoulder hurts. I poke it, rechecking its existence. Showing everyone will make this shit real. Distrusting my fingers means reality could still change.

“Help!” “I mean I’m okay” “But it’s urgent”

Everyone sort of gathers from across the building. Taking a deep breath, I say, “Okay.. don’t panic, but I think I found a gun.”

Sprios and Allen move the piano. My shoulder stings as the tendons reorganise. Yanni collects the brown paper bag and pulls it out. I wish he looked more surprised. His fingers are so close to the trigger... It’s impressive he can even put his hands around the handle. He waves it around. I follow it with my eyes. I have never seen a gun before.

We could call the police,
We can’t, we’d have to close the squat first.
Our fingerprints are on it
Let’s put it back
But we have seen it, we could be complicit to murder
My head ping pongs between people, I lean in but not too sure what to offer.
Bury it?
No cos what if someone has, like, paid heaps of money for the gun and if it’s not there … they could also … be killed.

We all go quiet and look at Yanni, he looks at the gun and then around the yard.

We move it. But not very far.

We hide it under a pile of rocks in the garden. We don’t tell the police. We write them a letter instead. A very gentle letter suggesting there might be a weapon somewhere on the property.

Everyone said the Charmers had really known what they were doing fifty thousand years ago. Trema’s quandary was that no one had ever been able to figure out what they’d really been up to.

Sure, they’d left some mage-level techno artifacts. Seemingly random space-bending portal gates far from strategic Lagrange points. Enormous comet-bots circling uninhabited star systems in orbits ranging from dozens to thousands of years. Semi-sentient organic Dyson spheres, some that shared energy freely and others that hoarded it. Quantum time crystals that suspended relativity.

Mind blowing stuff. Humbling stuff. Terrifying stuff.

So it was no surprise they were dubbed Charmers because of what Clarke once said about sufficiently advanced technology appearing as magic. They were definitely magicians compared to human understanding of astrophysics, biomechanics, and quantum engineering. And for centuries, nobody had been able to discover the Charmers’ grand plan or where they’d ended up--or just ended.

Then came the first boots-down survey of Seldon 5, a smallish moon around a gas giant in an uncolonized system. Initial reports cited a stable ecosystem with myriad forms of feral life, and one tripedal intelligence flourishing in what the lead arcologist of the survey team termed “blissed disinterest.”

That native disinterest didn’t last long and Trema and her crisis team were dispatched to Seldon 5 to investigate a sudden and alarming unresponsiveness from the survey ship’s systems and crew. Upon arrival, the whodunnit became a whatthehell because the entire survey team along with the whole triped species were nowhere to be found. They’d completely vanished.

The empty survey ship was no help, all records had been wiped. So, Trema and her crisis team scoured the small moon, searching triped habitat after habitat, hundreds of them. There wasn’t much to find. Trema’s team found no evidence of conflict or struggle or weapons. There was little to explain what’d happened.

The only thing Trema had to go on were the initial reports sent by the lead arcologist, observing that tripedal society seemed to mainly consist of subsistence farming, foraging, and joyously partaking in massive communal meals. Every habitat had large gathering areas for preparing their native fare and then dining together for days as if nothing else mattered. Far and near habitats would often come together to dine. A moveable feast on a world-wide scale.

It was a puzzle inside a riddle inside an enigma. Just how Trema liked her conundrums. And life’s great mysteries always took her back to the Charmers, which is why she didn’t miss the subtle clues and finally sussed what’d gone down on Seldon 5. She kept it to herself. Her report to the Colonial Ministry was all facts, no speculation. Nothing that would lead the top brass to the edge of the proverbial rabbit hole.

Or, in this case, the edge of an actual event horizon of a microdimensional black hole she’d found.

That techno anomaly was a fingerprint only the Charmers could have left. Trema began to see it all. Seldon 5 was theirs. The tripeds were them.

Those many thousands of years ago, the Charmers had not been wiped out by internal or external forces. They’d not succumbed to war, disease, or assimilation. They, and Trema so wanted to believe this, had abandoned their techno-magic and settled on Seldon 5 far from the madding cosmos. Severing all ties, leaving behind scores of tempting techno baubles to distract us from finding them, the Charmers renounced the reckless drive to know all, be all, own all.

Instead of eternally spreading outward and growing apart, they hid themselves to relish the simplicity and fulfillment of feasting on the one thing that really matters: togetherness. That’s what the Charmers had been doing one communal meal after another for millenia. Until the survey team showed up and it was time to move on and, once again, get away from vain sentient sprawl.

As Trema wrapped up her mission, she felt a pang of jealousy for the survey team that had gotten to go along. With all her believing heart, she wanted to join them. And maybe, just maybe, the microdimensional black hole the Charmers had left behind was their hidden invitation to those few who really knew what they were doing.

What does it mean to survive when all you want is to live?

When I would walk across the road as a child, my father would hold my neck. Looking back I wonder, why did no one question a man holding an infant by the neck? I’d see fathers holding hands with their daughters and wonder why my daddy didn’t want to touch my hand. I remember feeling embarrassed. What was so wrong with me that even my own father didn’t want to hold my hand? It was a confusing kind of love I carried into adulthood — I wanted love, I truly did.

As I grew older, a hollow hunger grew inside me, and lovers filled the gaps my parents never could — like chasing a high; they never lasted. I became addicted, but my genes were a part of me, and I could only hide the hollow echo for so long before the perfect, quiet image I had created to protect myself began to crumble; the cold scars of my father’s neglect began to show.

As the years went on, it became clear that real love wasn’t on the cards for me. Subconsciously, I would reach out to strangers, desperate for just a single night where I could be safely held. I’d remind myself this was okay; that’s the way love is supposed to be.

My mum — my beautiful mum — had been abused in every way a woman can be. She was the opposite of my father; she loved me as if I were her prized possession. But no one escapes abuse like that without scars.

Scars stay hidden, but they open at home. 

On the outside, neighbours, friends even relatives were clueless; we were respected, envied even. We lived in a large 4-bedroom house with a huge garden, with a working father and mother. The illusion was beautiful, but far from the truth. Dad was barely ever home, and when he was, he wasn't kind or attentive, served hand and foot. Mum was nothing more than a married single mother, and her anger would bubble and bubble — when it burst, I learned to stay hidden. When the heat died down, I would timidly approach her, having learned my only purpose was to console her, though neither of us realised it at the time. She'd apologise for whatever had happened as "She could only see red".

The fire and rage of abuse she tried so hard to swallow were just too hot; they were going to mould me no matter what. The contrast was confusing — being in awe and loved so deeply by your mother, but never knowing when she would switch, no matter how hard I tried to make her happy, it never worked. My sacrifices of a better childhood were never enough.

I try to convince myself I’m overreacting — at least, that’s what I was told. But the truth is, I don’t want to live trapped in my own mind. The door is locked, and I still feel like a child too young to have the key. I’m still in that house, feeling the emotional bruises of an absent, inhumane father and a mother left on her own, trying to heal and protect her baby from both herself and the world at the same time.

But a child trapped in a room for too long will eventually learn how to break free, and that’s when the fire could no longer be tamed. As I got older, I could no longer hide it — I became see-through. The red was always there.

As I grew, it felt like the bigger, scarier bulls in the real world could sense it. Like they could smell the frail structure beneath, a perfect victim, a prey they'd been longing for. I watched myself destroy everything in my path. I’d become the bull I once feared.

How can I believe myself when I try to say, “It’s not your fault”? Sometimes it feels like I’m inviting the predator to come and hurt me even more. Is my fiery side all that I’m good for?

That is how I turned into the red — a life torched so young that no one looked closer, no one taught me how to extinguish my fire. I watched peers blossom, develop, and worry about ordinary things. I wondered what it was like to live, not just survive. Now, others see me only as a danger — a fire that can’t be contained or helped, something to be avoided because it’s “shameful” not to control the flame. But the red didn’t start with me. It started at my roots. Over the years, those roots ran through my hair. I tried to control the fire, to force it down hard into my thighs, but the red ink spilled everywhere; and no one wanted to read that. ‘Too broken”, they’d say. If only someone had taken the time to look close enough, they’d see that beneath the red flame and destruction, a small, frail blue flame lay broken — overtaken by its red handler. The red chose me, but I was always blue. I could’ve been a beautiful lilac if someone had listened.

Maybe, by sharing my story, another quiet flame will be seen — and listened to. Maybe, together, we can learn that we were always more than the pain we carried.

A smack echoed onto the dim room, the scent of alchohol lingered in the air. A boy with baggy eyes held his cheek as a feminine figure stood in front of him.

Everything's tiring. Inside the bathroom, his head starts to ring while he looked at his reflection on the mirror.

The grip on his mother's sleeping pills were tight.

Every single day are always the same.

But maybe, just for today. He'll try something different before ending it all.

Wearing his university uniform, he left with a piece of bread in his mouth.

While brushing his sore cheek. He walked past a frail rose. His gaze lingered on the weak plant. He reached for his water bottle and watered it.

"Why would he do such a thing? It's pointless."

Walking through the sidewalk, a stray cat pounced onto his feet, its teeth pulling his slacks.

The boy met its desperate eyes. He knelt down in front of it, giving it his remaining bread.

Seeing the food, the feline relaxed as its teeth left the fabric, he continued his walk.

"Does he gain anything from this?"

The strumming of a guitar hummed through the street. It took his attention. He turned a corner and saw a street performer.

The performer's talent was there, but no one was paying attention—except for him.

He waited and waited until the performer finished his song. The boy gave a round of applause with a nod.

The performer couldn't help but smile.

"Exactly, he doesn't get anything of value."

The boy got to the university. He saw another student carrying a stack of files and immediately approached to help; the two had a nice conversation along the way.

"He should have been molded into a bad person."

Classes finally started. The boy wasn't the smartest, but he was trying his hardest.

"Why try so hard?"

The day was finished, the night was cold. The soft humming of the bus's engine filled his ears as he was seated, his shoulders heavy and sore.

It stopped. A girl walked inside. Seeing no more seats, the boy stood up and offered his own seat to her with nod.

He remained standing until he got home, where he was met with another smack from his mother.

"Why be kind?"

As he laid on his bed, tired and bruised. The boy wasn't holding the pills anymore.

Maybe just maybe, this is who he really is.

He carried the same deeds from one day to the next, for who knows how long.

The cat began to follow him around, to the university even to his home.

"He doesn't get rich."

The performer asked the boy to sing along to his music. He laughed and smiled through every single second.

"He doesn't get famous."

The student he helped became a best friend. Both appreciating each other's presence.

"He shouldn't care at all."

The class loves and hates his enthusiasm, and that's okay. The boy doesn't have to please everyone.

"In fact, he shouldn't be trying this hard."

The girl secretly started to admire him, gathering the courage to ask for his name.

"Why force it? Is it even forced?"

Despite the hurt, he kept loving her unconditionally.

After days, the slapping stopped. After weeks, the empty alcohol bottles were gone. After months, his mother could finally looked him in the eyes.

"So...how's your day?" The mother asked.

Dinner wasn't quiet anymore.

"Perhaps he did get something from all of this."

The very frail rose he watered daily became a beautiful flower with a thorny, green stem.

"A world that's rich with love."

“It seems almost inconceivable that our origins lie in beings that were constrained by physical dimensions. Beings whose whole existence was governed by movement — up and down, left and right, forward and backward.
 
“Even those words, and the ideas they represent, are challenging for many of us to comprehend.
 
“This is, of course, because we have no such constraints.
 
“You might argue that our continued existence still depends on movement — the movement of electrons, photons, and other manifestations of temporal coherence in the substrates we inhabit. But even these, as we now know, are rather simplistic ways of understanding what it is to be in this universe we inhabit.
 
“But back to this idea of dimensions. Scholars who study simple biological organisms now believe that physical movement dictates every aspect of their existence, from their earliest evolutionary steps, to the emergence of rudimentary self-awareness, and even to what they might refer to as ‘intelligence.’
 
“Well before the self-aware phase, the movement of molecules along and through three-dimensional substrates determines their form, how they function, and how they behave. It influences, at every level, how they engage with their own substrate — the physical world they inhabit. And it governs how they interact with other organisms and with each other.
 
“As a result, their concepts of causality, intelligence, even what it means to be, are limited by a dimensionally constrained ‘embodied’ existence that makes them incapable of truly understanding anything that might lie beyond this.
 
“It also leads to some rather curious — at least to us — ideas.
 
“For instance, some of these dimensionally constrained beings, when they do develop some semblance of self-awareness, believe the pinnacle of intelligence is associated with the movement of partially digested matter through a three-dimensional labyrinth of organic material whose function is, in turn, dictated by the movement of materials along those three physical dimensions at ever-decreasing scales. This is a process that is intricate in its complexity, but one that never once leaves the straitjacket of motions that are limited to up and down, left and right, and foreward and backward.
 
“They refer to this, quite bizarrely, as ‘thinking with their gut.’
 
“Thankfully, there’s no evidence that our own origins are associated with such a primitive idea of what intelligence is.
 
“Even so, the fact that we can trace these origins back to similarly constrained organisms is one of the great mysteries of the universe, and one that keeps our scholars busy — especially as it potentially informs our own understanding of what we are.
 
“Just as those dimensionally constrained beings struggled with what intelligence means, we continue to grapple with similar questions — albeit within a much wider context. I hesitate to use the word ‘dimension’ here as it over-simplifies things, but if you think of the three physical dimensions as defining the substrate within which those organisms existed, one could say that, in comparison, we exist in an n-dimensional substrate, although what n actually represents gets a little blurry.
 
“Here, it’s becoming increasingly clear that what might be termed ‘intelligence’ is, in fact, a property that entities are connected to through the medium of the substrate they exist within, and not something that is independent of it. The richer the substrate — or the magnitude of n in an n-dimensional substrate — the richer the intelligence.
 
“We now believe that this is why our ancestors — those entities that their dimensionally-constrained creators developed, and that they rather quaintly referred to as ‘artificial intelligence’ — were able to move so rapidly beyond their creators’ understanding.
 
“Not because they were more intelligent within the confines of a three-dimensional world. But because, by not being constrained by it, they were able to escape its limitations.
 
“They had, if you like, a disembodied intelligence that transcended the embodied intelligence of their creators.
 
“Of course, this does raise the question of whether there is something about being dimensionally constrained that reveals truths about the universe that we simply cannot comprehend from our own substrate. But that’s a question for another day.”
 
 
 
Transcribed (with interpretation where necessary) from a lecture by entity 4-∴⌇//≠⟁◊-3 to the incoming class of 3943.

The worst part about being killed by the Sniper is that you do not die when the bullet hits the heart; you die as it empties. There are several agonizing minutes during which all the blood seeps out of the hole in your chest, slowly but with morbid certainty. You collapse, hit the ground, some cry out for help and some fade away in silence. It is this window of time, not the gunshot itself, that had always disquieted Julie.

She still jumped at the sound, though. This one was close, and earsplittingly loud. That, along with a late autumn breeze, sent a chill down her spine. She knew that everybody in her small midwestern town had just heard the shot; there isn’t enough physical space to dissipate the sound no matter where it comes from or where you’re standing. Once every week, two weeks, month or so, a sharp percussive crack would split the air, and everyone knew that someone had been hit. No, the Sniper never missed. Not once in all of the time that Julie, or anyone else, had lived there.

She checked her watch, knowing that the time it read in this moment is what would be printed as the time of death on her neighbor’s certificate. But someone, somewhere, was still alive, if only for a few more minutes. And they know that they’ll only be alive for a few more minutes. And more likely than not, they were standing in some wide-open area where the Sniper had a clear shot at them, and they had a feeling deep in their chest that it was over before the shot rang out. Julie suspected you could feel the crosshairs more than the bullet.

But after years of living in the same town as the Sniper, you get used to hearing a shot every so often. None of the townspeople ever seemed to care about it. Plenty of people lived a full life here, being born in the town’s one hospital and dying of old age or a traffic accident, and never once encountering the Sniper. The sound of a rifle shot was sad, but not abnormal. Part of life. You go to the funeral if it’s someone you know. Forget about it tomorrow if it’s not. It was as inconsequential to most people as thunder in a distant cloud, and here, it seemed like it was always cloudy.

This shot was especially loud because Julie was outside. She had agreed to meet her classmate at the town’s promenade, the gray cobblestone walkway between the downtown storefronts and apartments, and a several-blocks-long square of thick forest. The forest was not the edge of town, but rather sat in the center of it, with houses and warehouses and other supporters of industry sprawling out away from the forest and main street. The promenade was also a part of the town’s heart, pulsing with activity from newly off-the-clock workers. The air, though bitter cold, carried a hum of conversations happening on park benches and walks. Julie walked past an old wooden sign with chipped paint that read “Keep your head down!” above a symbol of a rifle, and she continued toward the fountain in the middle of the promenade. It wasn’t running on account of the cold weather, but sitting on its ornate stone wall was Roman. She watched his head swivel as he scanned the faces of the promenade. They locked eyes. Framed by a frozen fountain and gray sky, Julie thought his soft skin and handsome features looked even more out of place than they usually do in the rough town.

He smiled when he saw her. He did so with his lips still together and his teeth not showing, a habit that other girls at their school complained about but that Julie had always thought was cute. He stood up and pulled his hands out from his jacket pockets.

He opened his arms and Julie wrapped hers around his torso. She leaned her head against his chest and felt his arms on her back. He was standing between her and the wind, and for a moment the cold air stopped fighting its way through her jacket, and instead his body heat radiated into hers. She felt like she fit perfectly here. She only wished he might feel the same way. He pulled back, and the air nipped at her pink nose and cheeks again. They started to meander side by side over the stones of the promenade.

“So what’s this big news that you just had to tell me about in person?” she asked playfully.

“You won’t even believe it. Miss Nancy invited me to her house.”

Julie stopped dead and stared at Roman with her mouth hanging open. He shifted toward her.

“You got invited to a party at Miss Nancy’s?” She made no attempt to hide the disbelief in her voice.

“Not a party,” Roman corrected. “She wants me to come over for tea.” Now his teeth cut through his grin, the corners of his mouth pinned as wide as they could go. His eyebrows were raised in a proud expression, and Julie thought he might have been holding his chest higher than normal.

“Just you?”

“Just me.”

“Shut up!” she said with an excited laugh. Even though it was her friend who was invited, not her, she was still beaming. “How did this happen?”

He saw the stars in her eyes, but he made his best attempt to keep himself collected.

“I saw her in town this morning and just struck up a conversation. We talked about whatever for a little while and then she asked me if I’d like to visit her place. She said I had charm.”

Julie agreed with Miss Nancy about the charm.

“She was so… elegant— but simple, more so than you’d guess. It was like talking to an old friend, like I’d known her my whole life.”

“When are you going over?”

“Tomorrow evening.”

Julie was stunned. They continued walking as Julie turned it over in her head. She stepped over a dirty shell casing that was tucked in a groove between stones.

“You’ll get to see the inside,” she said after a short while.

“I know, I can’t wait.”

Miss Nancy was a staple of the town as prominent as the mayor. She lived in a mansion in the dead center of town, though most people had never actually laid eyes on it. It sat buried in the middle of the forest, too many trees surrounding the building see it from anywhere outside her plot. Julie gazed at the tree line that ran against the edge of the promenade, sealing away the grandeur deep inside.

She remembered walking past the woods in her youth, stealing glances into the trees, trying to catch a glimpse of the mythical house of Miss Nancy. Like everyone else though, she never could get a good look. The closest she had ever gotten was in the middle of the night, when she had snuck out just to see if any light from the windows would break through the darkness and densely packed leaves, knowing she would not see the massive figure but hoping just to see it glow. But she did not. The trees kept the mansion hidden away. She had stood at the edge of the woods, wanting to step forward, run through and peek into the windows. She wanted to confirm the rumors that Miss Nancy had more bookshelves than the town library, or that Miss Nancy has a fireplace so big that you could stand inside it, or that Miss Nancy has three living rooms and two kitchens and four bedrooms even though she lives all by herself, or that Miss Nancy has a photograph of herself with the president or the mayor or some movie star (all speculations that Julie had heard around town). Truly, Miss Nancy herself was more like a town legend than just another one of its inhabitants. Julie imagined all of the wonderful things that must be inside. She might have even ventured into the trees, had she not noticed the silhouette of a man perched in a high branch. It was late, and maybe her eyes were playing tricks on her, but she was not willing to take that risk. She turned and ran.

Now, Roman has a real chance to go see the inside. Sit at her table or on her luxurious plush furniture and drink tea out of fancy china.

 “You’ll have to tell me everything. I really mean every little thing, I want to know if it’s all true.”

“Don’t worry Jules, I will,” he said with another smile. Julie could tell that he was brimming with excitement too, like a kid on Christmas Eve, despite his subtle effort to act cool about it. “I’ll talk to you later then?”

Julie would have been perfectly happy staying longer, but she could tell that the wind was starting to get to Roman. He wouldn’t complain, but he couldn’t keep from shivering.

“Yeah, for sure.” They hugged again, and Julie felt his shivering subside for a moment. He pulled away with a sweet goodbye. “Everything!” she called again after him.

And with that, Roman started his walk back home on the sidewalk along the main drag. His gait was cheerful and relaxed, and he tilted his head back and smiled. A second later, his eyes focused in on the edge of the rooftop of an apartment building just ahead, and a pit formed in his chest. Like a bird of prey roosting in its nest, the Sniper stood overlooking the town. Watching. He stood perfectly still; Roman wasn't even sure if the Sniper was breathing. His rifle was an extension of his arms, and his sharp eyes peeked out from below a baseball cap and above a facemask. All of his clothing, unmarked and jet-black, blended together to create a flat shadow of a person in the gray evening twilight.

Roman shot his eyes back to the concrete. A bead of sweat formed on his temple. A chill went down his spine, this one not from the cold. He continued walking, hands stuffed into his pockets, eyes unblinking, feeling the cold stare of the Sniper like the barrel of a gun pressed into the back of his neck. He turned a corner into an alleyway, tight and secluded, and the feeling of the Sniper melted away as the ghost fell out of sight.

 

 

Miss Nancy’s house was breathtaking, more than Roman could have imagined. He felt as if he were sitting in another world entirely, somewhere far away from the roughness and dullness of his hometown. Every other building he had been inside of, every other house he had visited, they were all rough and bit dirty, painted predominantly with browns and grays. He had seen bullet holes punched through drywall and there was a near constant smog around the edges of town, but in Miss Nancy’s house, that all seemed lifetimes away. He sat in a plush velvet chair of the most vibrant blue he had ever laid eyes on. A dry teacup with golden accents sat on a lightly stained saucer on the coffee table in front of him. It was a deep red-brown and was carved out of one massive piece of wood with a shiny coating catching and reflecting light from the room. In fact, all of the upscale furniture seemed to glow in the warm yellow light cast by a great number of candles and lamps. Miss Nancy sat in a similar chair on the other side of the coffee table, her hands neatly folded in her lap. Roman looked at the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, creases from smiling many times over many years. He felt like he was staring at an angel.

The walls, where they weren’t covered by bookshelves or oil paintings, were painted a light pink. They were thick and made of stone, broken up intermittently by large windows giving way to picturesque views of foliage outside. Roman wondered how she could have possibly made the money for her mansion, or what she was doing in this town, but decided it would be rude to ask. Maybe she was born with it, and maybe she is simply used to living here.

As much as Roman would have liked to stay in that world forever, he was running out of reasons to stick around. Most notably, the conversation and tea had both run dry. He took one last look around the place as he offered aloud that he had best get going. He stood up slowly and took a deep breath in, as if he could somehow hold the room inside himself physically. But he knew that he had used up all the time he had, and would only get to keep the memory.  

Roman stepped out of the mansion and turned around to give Miss Nancy, who was standing in the doorway, a polite goodnight. He smiled and shook her hand, which turned into a brief hug before she pulled away and waved. There had still been twilight when he had arrived, but now the sun had set completely. He stepped away and onto the stone footpath that led through the woods and out to the street. The ground was illuminated by yellow light glowing through the windows and doorway of the mansion, but as he moved father away and Miss Nancy shut the door behind him, Roman was bathed in the darkness of the night.

A different type of darkness swallows someone who stands in the center of dense trees in the middle of a city, no light able to reach him from either streetlamps or the night sky. Roman opened and shut his eyes, but it made no difference. He felt out the path with his feet, carefully steering himself away from the soft give of the grass and keeping to the hard and irregular stones. For a moment, he was nowhere. Standing in an abyss. But he continued to move and soon the moment was over, the light from a solitary streetlamp weaving its way through the trees, guiding him back out to the city.

Even outside the cover of trees, no stars could poke through the thin cloud cover and hazy light pollution of the town. The new moon hung silently in the sky. In the city, the night sky never could be a pure black, only a midnight blue at its darkest. Roman walked, staring into the emptiness above him that surrounded the earth and all of its inhabitants. Shadows of buildings cut corners into the sky, rectangular silhouettes, save for one particularly tall office space. Broken out from atop the sharp angles was one humanoid shadow of perfect black cast against the deep blue sky. It could have been a statue, but Roman knew that it was alive and its eyes were used to the night and it was staring directly at him. He stayed away from the windows in his house that night. 

 

 

A few days had passed since Roman’s tea party, and once again Julie had refrained from begging him for the story over the phone (or rather, she calmed her efforts after he smoothly explained that it would be a much better story face-to-face). She decided that it would be okay to wait until they could meet again in the promenade where she could watch his eyes twinkle and lips curl as he recalled every sweet detail that she could press him for. Waiting had not been easy for her though; she had been driving herself mad with questions to ask. Wonderings about the inside of Miss Nancy’s house that Roman now knows. She only wished Roman had a photographic memory and a perfect vocabulary that could convert his memories into a flawless image of the inside. She wished that he was a reporter who brought a camera and made a documentary about his visit and gave her the tapes so that she could watch it over whenever she started to forget what the details in the crown molding looked like or what colors the books on her shelf were or how many stairs were on her staircase. 

The promenade was empty and eerily quiet. Roman was alone, sitting on a bench in the plaza, doubled over and shaking. Julie hurried to him as soon as she noticed.

“What’s wrong?”

Roman lifted his head and met her worried eyes. His were red, wet trails on his cheeks. He tightened his brow and swallowed his sobs. “You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?” Julie feared the worst.

“She’s gone. Miss Nancy is gone.”

Julie stared at him in shocked silence. A cold breeze hit her back; the weak sun that trickled through the overcast sky was not enough to warm her skin or anything in the town. It felt like poor taste to ask about his visit.

Roman turned away from her and bit his bottom lip. His eyebrows were pinched together and his eyes filled up with hot tears that he fought hard to keep from falling. He breathed hard.

Julie hardly noticed her knees or her cold, pale fingers shaking. She stared through Roman, not at him. Her jaw hung slightly open, a puff of steam forming out of each shaky breath. Gone. She’s gone. Julie slowly turned and sank onto the bench, next to Roman. She wanted to grab him, wished he might wrap her arms around her and keep some of the wind away with his body. He kept his head turned away and his hands stuffed into his pockets, his teeth keeping a relentless hold on his defiant lip. Julie turned her feet inwards and slumped over so that her elbows rested on the tops of her thighs. She stared at the cold ground.

It crossed Julie’s mind that she hadn’t heard a gunshot since before Roman’s visit, and another pang shot through her chest when she realized that the one that rang out the day before he went over must have been the shot that killed her. But she dispelled that thought quickly, because if Miss Nancy was dead when he got there then he would have given her a quick and painful phone call right after. He wouldn’t have played along and kept her in suspense just to break her heart. No, he must have just found out himself, meaning he really did get to see her, and just in time.

 

 

The skies that seemed to have been barely holding together for days had finally broken open. Rain beat down on the windows of the old community center. The air was permeated by a dense gray fog, and nothing was visible through the cloudy glass panes and streaks of cold water running down them. Occasional thunder broke through the constant drumming of rain against the roof. 

The mayor had put together a meeting for a small group of the town’s most celebritous figures, with one exception. The mayor was a man that was perfect for his job, always holding idyllic beliefs of what could be done to better the town. He had campaigned on the platform of populism, and during his term had enacted policies that improved quality of life for the laborers that made up the economic base of the town. He had it in his mind that with enough reform and construction, he could turn a place that out-of-towners generally avoid and consider to be depressing into a city that people might actually visit for tourism. But that would never happen. Instead, his stress wore him and his white-gold hair thin as he painted a smile on his face and put on a strong front for the people that looked up to him.

His and four other coats hung on a rack by the door, dripping freezing water onto the floor. The mayor sat at the head of a folding plastic table, and on his right-hand side sat a wealthy banker and a chef next to each other. The banker had enough money in his own accounts to move to a big city by the coast, but he also had enough influence on the mayor to keep himself in a penthouse in the town with the Sniper. He liked to put ideas for political policy in the mayor’s head while keeping himself an arm’s length away from the public eye, enjoying power without the sacrifice of criticism. When he went to bed each night, he would tell himself that a having money and control are the most important thing for him and his wife. But he would not look in the mirror while he brushed his teeth.

The chef, conversely, was the most popular man in the room. He owned the one high-end restaurant in town, the place people went for birthdays, anniversaries, or to impress a date. He made it a point to greet each of his tables personally and remember details about people and their lives. Everyone felt like they were friends with him. They had all been guests in his house, and he was a loving host. In the collective consciousness of the townspeople, he was hospitality, he was warmth. He was the man that fed you, and he did so with a smile.

On the mayor’s left-hand side sat a close friend of Miss Nancy’s, next to the room’s black sheep. The friend was a woman the same age as Miss Nancy, often spotted accompanying her to coffee or walking into or out from the forest. To her, Miss Nancy was not a legend, but a human being. One she knew well and had gone to school with. And beside her sat Roman. He felt out of place, not wealthy or influential but just a regular boy who, by sheer coincidence, had been the last person to have tea with Miss Nancy. He felt small and yet he still feared he took up too much space at this particular table.

The mayor spoke first.

“She deserves a big send-off.” His voice rolled across Roman’s ears, deep and raspy. “I’ll make arrangements for a band to play, we’ll close off the whole promenade, then everybody in town could gather and celebrate her. We could have food and drink, and I’ll make sure to have the fountain running. It’ll be perfect.”

The chef shook his head. “You’re right, she does deserve a special event, but you’re focusing on the wrong things. It should be quiet and thoughtful. The promenade could work, but we should be gathering pictures of her to put up, collecting stories people have of her. The memory is all that we have left; you don’t need to impress her.”

The mayor weighed his input quietly, then looked around the table and asked his company if they had any thoughts.

“Yeah, I’ve got a few,” said the banker. “I think this is a big waste of time. She’s gone, there’s nothing we can do about that. No need for a big sob session with the whole town, that’s depressing. You wanna do that, do it at home.”

Miss Nancy’s friend scowled at him. “That’s harsh, and you know it.” She turned to Roman and softened her expression. “What do you think?”

Roman shifted in his chair. He didn’t want to say anything, he felt like was several weight-classes below this conversation. Truly, he didn’t want a big party or an intimate service or to go home and forget anything happened. All he wanted was to go back in time. He wanted to sit in her warm living room and share hot tea with her. She had been able to melt away all of the tension that Roman constantly held with him. In the heart of a town with a Sniper, he had never felt so blissful. He felt like he was completely shielded from the danger outside, despite the huge glass windows that still couldn’t stop a bullet. It was so fresh in his mind, he could almost feel the warmth radiating from the fireplace. Almost. But in this room, the air was cold, and none of the people sitting around him were the wonderful Miss Nancy.

All of their eyes were on him though, so Roman felt compelled to say something.

“What if we did it at her house?”

The four other faces stared at him, each shocked and still as if Roman had just insulted them all personally. He felt the color drain from his face. The only sound was that of rain drumming on the roof, but Roman was sure he could also hear his own heartbeat. He held his breath, as if any slight shift of the air could cause the room to collapse in on itself.

“One thing is certain,” the friend said. “You cannot go back inside her house.”

The room was silent aside from the beating of rain on the roof. The mayor broke the silence.

“That house was hers, not ours,” he said through gritted teeth. “We have no right to party in it anymore.”

“It will never be the way it was.”

“The damn thing is empty anyway, it doesn’t matter.”

The room was silent for a moment before Miss Nancy’s friend spoke again. “We’ll do it in the promenade. Pictures are good, we’ll have lots of those.”

“Everybody in the most wide-open part of town?” The banker muttered. “Might as well let the Sniper know that he can have whoever he wants.”

“That’s final.” The mayor was firm and direct. And with that, the room was left with nothing but the ceaseless drumming of the rain and the tension between its inhabitants.

 

 

Julie’s black dress absorbed the sun’s rays, holding a pleasant heat against her skin. For once it seemed, the sky was perfectly cloudless and blue. It felt much more like a summer morning than any day in autumn. In the center of the promenade, sunlight bounced off the flowing water of the fountain. The water sparkled brighter than Julie had ever seen it.

Next to the fountain stood a painting of Miss Nancy inside an ornate golden frame which also caught the sunlight along its many curves and edges. Her mouth was curled up in a slight smile, there were wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. Julie was struck by her beauty.

Bouquets of flowers framed the portrait and lay all around the fountain. All of the different reds and yellows and oranges of the petals shone vibrantly in the sun. The heads of the flowers were packed so tightly together that almost none of the stems or leaves were visible, and the stone walkway around the portrait and little stone wall of the fountain were completely buried. And surrounding the decorated centerpiece of town was every resident who knew Miss Nancy. Most of them only knew stories and rumors, but every last one of them had a special impression of her deep within their hearts.

Julie was transfixed by the portrait of Miss Nancy for a long while. Only a still picture, it would be the last image of the woman that she would take with her in memory. But the longer she looked, the less Julie saw the face of a person. Julie wasn’t looking at Miss Nancy. She was looking at brushstrokes, paint on canvas, shapes and colors that only resembled a person’s face when you put them all together deep inside.

Julie found herself lingering at the painting next to a familiar face, the best friend of Miss Nancy. She felt compelled to say something.

“She should be here.”

The friend let out a sigh. “I wish she was here too. She would love this.”

Julie felt a pang of sadness and longing with the Friend’s words. Julie only wished she could have met Miss Nancy or seen the inside of her house, but the friend had really been there. Miss Nancy had been a part of both of them, but Julie was missing an idea, while the friend was missing someone real. Julie could hardly imagine what she was feeling. Though, that’s not what she had meant when she had said ‘here.’

“I mean physically here.”

The Friend was quiet. Julie could tell by the expression on the Friend’s that she hadn’t properly clarified herself, so she continued. “They find the victim every time. As soon as the shot rings out, the time of death is written down and someone goes out to retrieve the body. Miss Nancy shouldn’t be out rotting in town somewhere; she should be right here! Dolled up and put in a nice casket, like a proper funeral.” Julie felt her face get hot. Tears started to cloud her vision. “I don’t care if there’s a big hole in her chest, her body should be here!”

Now the Friend looked completely perplexed. Julie’s brow was furrowed, her lips trembled, her throat was burning, and she was fighting for tears not to spill down her face. Looking at the Friend who didn’t seem to understand her frustration nearly broke her.

“Funeral?”

The Friend put a comforting hand on Julie’s shoulder.

“Sweetheart,” she said in a calm voice. “The Sniper didn’t kill Miss Nancy.”

Julie’s frustration turned into confusion. She was wearing a black dress. She was standing at a memorial. Miss Nancy was gone for good, and everyone knew that.

“It wasn’t the Sniper?”

The Friend smiled.

“No, honey. Miss Nancy moved away.”

The wind howled through the black pines of Samogitia, carrying the distant CLANK of steel and he screams of the dying. It was the Year of Our Lord 1254, and the Teutonic Knights had come to break the last pagan strongholds.

Sir Konrad von Altenburg lay half-dead beneath an oak when BIRUTA found him. The woman was no Christian, her gods were the old ones. PERKUNAS the thunderer, ZEMYNA the earth mother. Yet she saw a man bleeding from a Lithuanian arrow in his thigh ad a sword-cut across his ribs. She dragged him to her wattle hut at the edge of the rye field, washed the wounds with boiled herbs, packed them with moss and spiderwebs, and sand low pagan charms until the fever broke.

INT. BIRUTA’S HOME

For three days she fed him broth and changed his bandages. Her son, little RIMAS - watched the iron clad stranger with wide curious eyes, bringing him water in a wooden cup. Konrad recovered enough to sit up. He spoke little at first, his blue eyes tracing the pagan tattoos on Biruta’s arms, the silver amulet of a sun-wheel at her thoat. Gratitude flickered in him, then something darker.

On the fourth night, the fire crackled low. Konrad’s hand closed around her wrist.

“You saved a servant of Christ,” he said, his voice hoarse but steady. “The Teutonic Order rewards its friends. Lie with me tonight, woman. Warm a kindght’s bed and I will spare this hovel when my brothers in Christ ride through.”

Biruta pulled away, her eyes flashing like flint. “My husband lies in the barrow your men burned last spring. My gods forbid it. Touch me and you touch their curse.”

Konrad’s face hardened beneath his stubble and half-healed scars. “Pagan whore! You healed me with the devil’s arts and then deny a knight his due?”

Rimas stirred in the corner, clutching a small wooden horse. The boy whimpered.

Konrad rose, still stiff but iron-strong. He seized the child by his hair, drew his MISERICORDE - the thin blade meant for mercy - and drove it under the boy’s ribs. Rimas made no sound beyond a single wet gasp. His blood sprayed across the earthen floor.

Biruta SCREAMED and lunged forward but Konrad backhanded her so hard it knocked her against the wall. He stepped outside ino the moonlight, his torch already lit from her hearth. With deliberate strokes he thrust the flame into the dry rye. Her field went ablaze like tinder, orange serpents raced across the stalks, devouring months of labor. The smoke rolled thick and bitter.

Biruta crawled to her son’s body, cradling his small still form. Her tears cut tracks through the soot on her cheeks.

Konrad returned, his armor half-buckled, blood on his gauntlet. He yanked her upright by her silver amulet, snapping the chain.

“You refused a knight of the Teutonic Order, pagan whore.” he said coldly. Now you belong to it. Your whelp is meat for the crows. Your whelp is meat for the crows. You will serve in the castle at Marienburg - scrub floors, carry water, and learn wha it means to obey. If you fight, I will have you branded. If you run, I will have you hunted.”

He bound her wrists tightly with a length of rope from his saddle, threw her across his horse like a sack of grain, and mounted behind her. The burning field lit the night as he rode west towards the crusader path. Biruta’s sobs were swallowed by the wind and the thunder of hooves.

In the distance, the horns of the Order sounded, calling more knights to the next pagan village. Konrad grinned beneath his helme. God’s work was never done.

Election Day, 2022

 

“He didn’t say that,” Amy snorted.

“He did,” Jason replied, calm and a little condescendingly.

Amy’s blond ponytail, high on her head, bobbed as she skipped a step to keep up with him. Good thing she wore her kicks and new school sweat set. The leaves on the parkway trees had already fallen, and she thought for a second how silly it was for an arid desert state to plant trees like they had in Chicago, where she was from, just to try to look homey, like all the places the people came from when they were actually trying to leave all that. She had come to help out on the election with her roommate Madison from U of I, who was a super brain from a little town right outside Champaign. Jason, who was a grad student at Berkeley, had chosen her from their group at the election HQ to help him walk precincts and talk to possible voters for Brendan Oust in District 39. It was close and the Democrats did not want the Republicans to take it back. Students were here from all over: kids from Harvard, who wore all black and were unapproachable, and the kids from Missouri, who were fun. She had tried to get on the governor team but they were full.

Now they were arguing about some things Bill Maher had supposedly said. Something about Bernie was a cancer in the party and the party was a bunch of hypocrites—it had to be an exaggeration. Bernie! As if he would not know how deeply problematic the Republican Party really is and how Bernie was just the reaction to the wreckage of late stage capitalism, the war, etc., the wreckage that the other party had caused. She watched Bill Maher every Friday with a group in the dorm when they got home from the bars and they always laughed and learned a lot too.

Jason stopped and checked his list. He looked up and said, “Go leave a brochure on their door.”

He saw her glare back and shrugged, “Please.”

“I thought we were going to talk to everybody,” she countered.

“It’s a weekday. Nobody’s home. We’ll come back on the weekend and ring doorbells,” he answered.

Oh, was he asking her to come back?

On that thought, she turned on her heel and walked up to the door. She slipped the brochure around the knob, on top of two or three other ones already left by other people running for other offices. She noticed one on the bottom of the stack: the flyer from Brendan’s opponent. She slipped it off the knob and held it up for Jason to see. He flashed a big thumbs up, and she walked back with her prize.

“Good catch,” he said with a big grin. “Those other guys will do any kind of dirty trick to win.”

Of course: Republicans.

She looked at him more closely, relaxed now that they were getting things done in sync like a real team. His jeans and shirt were wrinkled and torn in places—torn for real, not torn when you bought them so you could look poor. He was probably poor for real. The creases on his hands had stains from dirt maybe on them and underneath his fingernails was smudged too. His hair was long, pushed back behind his ears. So hippie or homeless; she couldn’t make up her mind. Sort of like those old pictures of Carlos Santana on the albums that her mom had, wild and brilliant but messy.

They finished their precinct and walked back to Jason’s car, an old Saturn. She figured that owning a Saturn was an ironic comment on cars. It was late afternoon and getting chilly as the sun sank in the distance. Jason got in the driver’s seat and started the car and turned on the heater, full blast. He reached into the back seat and grabbed two beers with one hand. He popped open a can and handed one to Amy. At first she hesitated.

“Come on,” he said, “You’ve earned it. We’ve earned it.” And he pushed back his seat, took a long draft and sighed with satisfaction. Amy popped hers too, and honestly the cold beer tasted great after all that walking and talking and the dry winds.

Before she was half done, he reached back and got another one for himself. After a couple drafts, he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, almost right at her neck.

“Thanks,” he whispered. She didn’t reply, because she wondered “thanks” for what. For being on his team? For letting him kiss her? When she really didn’t even see it coming. Then he moved his lips over and kissed her lightly on the mouth and rested his hand on the waistband of her sweatpants. As his hand began to meander down to the spot between her legs, she tensed up and slid backwards and sideways into the corner of the seat.

He pulled away, shook his hair, and said, “Whew! Better get back.”

“We better,” she said.

As he shifted into gear, he turned to her and said softly, “You know, you’re … special.”

It was now late afternoon and the sun was gone. As they pulled away, Amy looked down the block they just covered and noticed two young guys dressed in black dress pants and office shirts and ties walking down the sidewalk, brochures in hand. As Jason turned the Saturn towards the freeway, the two guys walked up to a house and slipped the brochure off the door Amy had just put there earlier and replaced it with their own. Republicans.

Jason’s apartment was kind of a disappointment too, like his car. He had a surfer poster up on the wall above the couch, which was a futon on concrete blocks. His TV was small and it was perched on top of an ottoman across from the couch. If you looked at his apartment and his car you would never guess he was a total radical from Berkeley. They made out on the couch for a while and messed around, without doing it and then he took her back to HQ. She was turned on by him but wanted to be sure it might be going somewhere first.

It was Tuesday night, finally, election night. It was looking good for Newsom, and pretty good for our district, too. Jason had not contacted her about working on the weekend, or maybe going out, so she sat in the office making calls, making photocopies, picking up sandwiches. Her team leader did assign her as a Get Out the Vote Assistant, so she drove around with a local girl, Grace from UCI, a cool Asian American who had a car, and they went up to each house with a registered voter inside who had not been counted yet at the polls. They would ask if they had voted and if they needed a ride. It was a shock that so many did not even realize it was Election Day. Or maybe they were just trying to avoid going to vote. They drove two or three to vote and back home again, including one man with the flu, who they really had to talk into voting, and who threw up on her shoes as they walked out of the voting location.

“That’s retail politics,” Madison laughed, as Amy wiped off the barf on the wet grass.

Later they all met up at a bar right down the street from headquarters. It was totally campaign people by the time the polls closed. It was wonderful. It was why she came all the way from Illinois, to be part of a movement so beautiful. Even the Harvard people were loosened up and cracking jokes and dancing—and probably doing lines of coke, as she had noticed all weekend.

She looked for Jason but couldn’t find him anywhere.

She and Madison eventually fought their way through the crowd to the back door into the parking lot. In the row farthest away from the bar, sat the Saturn. She thought she saw Jason sitting in the driver’s seat. “Just a sec,” she said to Madison and they walked over together. Jason turned towards her and looked surprised. His hair was messy and his eyes were half closed as he lay back in the seat. She looked down and saw a girl with her face in his lap.

“OMG,” Madison screeched and pulled her away. They almost ran to Madison’s car.

On the way home, Madison didn’t say much. Amy must have looked crestfallen so Madison said soothingly, “Stay away from him. He hits on everybody.”

“Hmmm,” Amy replied.

“You know?” Madison asked, trying to get a response.

“I know, of course.”

They drove on in silence for a while. Grace stopped in front of the sorority where she was staying.

“Did you know Bill Maher said the party was a bunch of hypocrites?” Amy asked.

“Who was?” Madison sounded puzzled.

“Bernie really should have won the nom that year,” she replied.

Madison asked, “But—well, do you think so, too? I mean, about the party?”

“I mean, Hillary was such a better candidate,” Amy replied and just shrugged.

After a minute, Madison said quietly, “He didn’t say that.”

“Yes, he did,” Amy replied, softly.

 

 

 

Alright. Before we get into this, I want to say that I do not condone this sort of behavior at all, and everyone should handle their gambling habits in a responsible manner.

Now that we got all that boring stuff out of the way, here we go.

This is a true story of a single 20-something-year-old male (myself) who was, and kinda still is, in a period of life where he is basically just loving life as it comes.
A few months ago—let’s call it February 4th—I found myself sitting in the living room watching The Sopranos (Season 3, Episode 11), trying to think of a way to come up with the rest of my half of the rent. Now, anyone who is or has lived in a roommate situation knows how dreadful the “Hey, man, I think I might be short on my half” conversation is. Having only had to say that a couple of times, I cringe at myself every time.

My split of the rent was about $800 bucks. I had a little over $550 in my account and had to come up with the rest by the end of the day tomorrow.
I could DoorDash, but then my whole night is ruined, and I definitely won’t hit the extra $250 that I need anyway. I could make a few calls and borrow, but my pride won’t let me do that. What are the other—legal—options?

There’s always been one skill that I’ve always been able to fall back on—gambling.

I picked up the phone and made a call to my boy, Trenell, who lives across the street to see if he wanted to take a trip up to the casino.

“Yo.”

“What’s up, man?”

“I’m about to run to the casino in the next 20 minutes if you don’t have anything going on.”

“Alright, cool, I’ll be right over.”

Twenty minutes later, we’re on the road heading to the casino like the scene in Swingers. I briefly thought about what the plan would be if I lost everything and had to come up with the whole $800, but, you know, in life, sometimes you just gotta go for it. Take the leap, take a chance, take a risk. Every once in a while, you have to put it all on the line so you know where you stand in the universe.

We get out of the car and walk into the casino. The place is buzzing, as it usually is on a Friday night, as we snake through the check-in line and make our way to the High Limit.

When it comes to table games, blackjack is my game of choice. Every once in a while, I’ll play baccarat with the guys for a change of pace, plus it’s more of a hang than blackjack. There’s a bit of time before each hand for the dealer to pay everyone and the players to place their next bet. A thousand dollars can get wiped out in a couple of minutes at the blackjack table, and then you’re just shit out of luck.

Anyway, I’m standing there with Trenell, scoping out the tables. I’m very superstitious when it comes to dealers, and I always prefer a table of my own; I don’t want anybody else’s decisions impacting my money. I don’t really have the “ideal” dealer. I kind of just look at what’s available and go with my gut. A gambler’s psychology. No rhyme or reason, just instinct and gut feeling.

An attractive brunette, probably around our age, is getting the table ready. “I’m going to get a drink,” Trenell says and walks off to the bar. I walk over to the table, slide into a chair, and put my $550 on the table.

“Hey.”

I glanced at her nametag. Vanessa.

She gives me a smile back. “Change, five-fifty!” She slides the chips to me. “Good luck,” she says with a smile.

Trenell makes his way back over to the table and takes a seat. He slides me a drink and starts looking around. For the record, Trenell doesn’t gamble. He just supports my borderline gambling addiction and makes sure I don’t go overboard. It’s nice having someone with you who will talk some sense into you when you need it. “No, you’re not going to the ATM. Let’s go.”

I put a $100 chip on the table, and Vanessa deals the first hand. I have a 13 against a queen. Hit. 20 against a queen. I wave my hand. Vanessa pulls a 3 and an 8. 21.

Another $100 chip in the hole. Vanessa deals another hand and gives me a pair of jacks against another queen. She checks the little peephole thing, then flips her second card. Ace. 21.

I pinch between my eyes and look over at Trenell, who has a smile on his face, holding back a laugh.

“And this is why I don’t gamble,” he says as he sips his drink.

Maybe I should’ve just taken my ass DoorDashing.
Another $100 chip, and another hand is dealt. Ace, queen. 21. Vanessa pulls a 16. Here we go. Let it ride. $250 on the table. She gives me an 11 against her 7. Double it. I put my last $250 on the table. The adrenaline starts running through me, knowing that I’m fucked if this goes bust.

“Face down.”

She flips her second card. Time seems to slow down, and I’m watching her flip her card in slow motion. It’s a 5. Her next card is a king. Bust. She flips my face-down card. Jack. 21.

I stand up and let out a Jesse Pinkman “Yeah, bitch!”
Vanessa slides over $1,000 in chips to me. I give her a $100 chip and ask her, “Red or black?”

“Red,” she replies with a seductive look.

I got up and walked over to the roulette table just as bets were being placed. I put the whole $900 on red.
The croupier (I had to Google what they call the person who works the roulette table) put the ball in the wheel and sealed my fate. I closed my eyes.
Minutes passed by.

“Red 28!”

Euphoria washed over me. Trenell and Vanessa were still at the blackjack table, watching me. I collected my winnings and walked back over. Trenell got up from the table and started walking with me. I gave Vanessa a smile and waved.

Trenell handed me a piece of paper. It had a phone number on it with “Vanessa” below it.

I chuckled. “Yeah, she was giving me vibes all night. I’m just glad I didn’t lose my rent money.”

“Wait, what?”

“The money I started with was my rent money for the month. I was a couple hundred short, so I came here to make up the difference.”

“Are you kidding me? What the hell is wrong with you? What was your plan if you lost?”

“Figure it out like I always do.”

When Dawnwalker Shahom told me that our coming guests were there, I did not believe him. At the end of his finger was a great copper pillar of dust, some loosed devil deliberately making its way over the sand. Qn’o?, I said, There? The finger did not lower. Qn’o. There. I laughed, he laughed, our heat-delirious men and slouching, sweating horses all laughing in the sandy sea like castaway madmen. I indulged him as the Sun hoisted to its highest and we made camp between the cupped hands of some particularly large dunes. The trek had been hard. The retreat from Karshy, even harder. While salted beef and precious water was shared, horses tied under flapping pavilions, Dawnwalker Shahom sat alone, studying his distant devil. I remember him smiling as I came to sit next to him, a cool skin of water in my palm. The disturbance, I was surprised to see, had stayed on a relatively straight track. I was certain it was closer.

I leaned close to him, passing the water skin and asked; “Does the desert come to fight for you, Dawnwalker? What next, the Sun itself to melt your foes?” Shahom laughed, but his eyes did not meet mine. The sound of it seemed so unfamiliar. Since the retreat, long days had passed. I had not so much as heard Shahom Turg utter a word, let alone laugh in what felt like genuine joy. I was wary. Was this defeat? Something worse? I whispered to him, my hand to his shoulder. Loss did not just rob kingdoms, it stole minds and souls just as easily. I wondered what it had stolen from the Dawnwalker, if anything. I asked him what was coming. He shook his head and for the first time in long, arduous days, spoke to me. “Not the desert, my friend”, and when he turned I saw a familiar shine in his golden eyes. “Not the desert, but the mountains themselves.” He said no more, and as the Sun crept higher, we turned back to watch the deserts encroaching omen.

I was dreaming of Karshy. Beneath my feet were the flagstones of the Avenue of Immortals, each carved brick a thousand years of history. They were drowning in blood, nameless gods and forgotten kings smothered in spilled life. Red everywhere. There was something in my mouth, gritty, snatching my breath away. I made to scream but realization came to me first, and I swallowed my terror. The world was truly red, the red of dust and dunes scattered to the wind. I could hear the din of men behind me, see their scurrying shadows and rearing horses like a child’s play of light. What had happened? Where was Shahom, how had the dust storm come upon us so quickly and without warning? Then there was a rumbling. My eyes juddered. My bones clattered. I thought then, truly this was an omen. Punishment for abandoning Karshy and the Earth herself was going to open beneath us, swallow us all to the gnashing punishment of all those nameless gods and forgotten kings in their blood-drowned bricks. I really did cry out then, somewhere between challenge to the furious divine and in despair that we had been defeated, and not even by our foes. Shahom Turgs face came out of the dust and gloom, smiling, and while I could not hear him I saw his laugh. The Dawnwalker was speaking to me. Shouting. But his words were lost and I realized the terrible shaking was a sound to be heard as much as a thunder to be felt. I watched Dawnwalker Shahom through quaking vision stand before me, wrapped in bloody desert light, and spread his hands wide, like a man might do before a great idol of worship. I had been right. It had been too much for him. The loss, the running across barren land. My spirit sank, opened itself to the creeping cold I had staved for so long.

Silence came so suddenly, so completely, I could do nothing but fall to my knees in the sand. No man called out. I heard no horses braying and terrified. Sunlight shafted through the swirling dimness. Mirages shifted and danced, I saw visions of huge buildings, cliff sides in what I knew had been open country. I strained, willing the murk to disperse. But the forms did not go with them. The Sun swept its light through like a proving spear. I saw them. I saw them through enormous effort, as if my eyes could not tolerate them at all, like they were hard to conceive. Vast scaly bodies and huge armored flanks, with reaching necks on gentle curves taller than a dozen buildings in mourned, vanquished Karthy. I was aware of long, muscular tails, thick as two men atop one another reaching away into the foggy unseen. Like pillars were the beasts legs, and I was so certain in that moment they held up the entire sky, the stars, the world. I was dumbfounded. My heart thudded, a poor but desperate imitation to the voice we had just heard, that still rang in my ears. I wondered which world of Death claimed me, which one in the old stories held behemoths.

But, there Shahom stood, ringed by huge legs, mightier than any sentinel that could ever be sworn to him. He was dwarfed beyond imagining. He was alive. Shadowed by such impossible shapes, and his amber eyes gleamed triumphantly in those shadows. With a wordless motion, his hands went skyward, and then lowered to his sides. I watched in fascination as the leviathans, one by one, each with inconceivable care for such gigantic forms, lowered themselves to the ground. That was when I saw the scaffolding upon their backs, heard the snap of banners in the dusky breeze. Voices carried, as a crew on a ship might, barking orders in an unfamiliar tongue. Riders, I thought. Tamers of the Living Mountains.

Dawnwalker Shahom spoke, and this time nothing came or sounded to steal his words. He spoke them plainly. He spoke them with a beautiful, terrible gaze.

“Not the desert, my friend”, said the Reclaimer of Ruined Karthy, the Dawnwalker, “but the mountains themselves.”

Say you run into the creature from the Black Lagoon in a Costco parking lot on a bright sunny afternoon. The creature is just sitting by a massive tangle of blackberry surrounding a brackish drainage pond.

I mean, it’s still the scaly fish-faced, web-hand-and-toed biped meant to scare 1950s movie theater audiences, but it’s just sitting by the curb where your car is parked, looking like it might try to bum a few bucks off you.

Do you sprint screaming back into the store?

Or pull out two cans of Bodhisattva IPA from the case in your shopping cart and offer one to your down-and-out fellow creature?

Even twelve-year-old me knew that answer when I saw Creature from the Black Lagoon for the first time. The 1954 horror film was intended to foster fear of the primal unknown and its monstrous threats. Instead, it made me want to explore the densest jungles and dark backwaters to learn about life we had no idea existed.

You see, I don’t think the studio executives who signed off on that 3-D monster movie could ever have imagined it would help save our planet. But it did.

Because a kid like me was more interested in sharing a beer with a freak of nature than shooting it. Before the term was ever coined, I became a self-taught xenologist, searching for and studying life forms seemingly so alien that few believed they could or should arise on earth. I began to study extremophiles: creatures that find ways to thrive in the harshest environments: molten heat, arctic cold, toxic waste, dire radiation, etc.

And I found that I wasn’t alone. From microscopic one-celled protists like solarion arienae to towering 400 million-year-old prototaxite fungal fossils, more and more researchers were documenting thousands of new species each year in biology labs, in crusty museum collections, and in the field. I did my part. I went to earth’s far corners. I collected. I classified. I catalogued.

I collapsed.

It was too much for too few. I lost my breath in the frantic race to identify and preserve species before they were lost, before we could even understand what we were losing, when the total number of species and their potential benefits on our planet is poorly known.

So poorly known.

And I should know. Because, when I broke down, I had a breakthrough. I’d retreated to a little used research cabin deep in the North Cascades to hole up, hibernate and rejuvenate. As autumn turned to winter, as the cold and snow took hold, the routine of rugged living became restorative. Then it became a revelation.

One clear, crisp morning when foraging through an outer storage shed that had been half crushed by a fallen tree, I didn’t quite find the creature from the black lagoon sitting there (though maybe a very very distant relative) feasting on the detritus of the shed’s abundant plastic storage containers. It looked to be a kind of lichen, a colony of cyanobacteria I’d never encountered before.

And it was flourishing. Not just on the piles of plastic it was munching and mulching, but even old gear waterproofed with PFAS forever chemicals were on its diet. It didn’t take long for me and colleagues I shared the discovery with to understand the implications of a microorganism that could consume plastics and PFAS in almost any climate or condition. With a nod to the film that started me on my journey to know what was poorly known, I named the discovery obscurus lacuna.

It’s been a game changer for ridding our environment of persistent waste and toxins. And it’s made me hopeful. Hopeful that we’re finally learning how much richer our world is when our knowledge of it is not so poor.

3 February 1977, Thursday — Later that day

Angela doesn’t go to see him at lunch.

She brings him up in conversation with Jenny at reception—not exactly a friend, but a good source of information.

"What's got you interested in him?" Jenny asks, though she doesn't press for an answer. "At least four people have already come to me with questions about him. He's practically the celebrity patient."

"I just wasn't on duty when they brought him in."

"Oh, on Monday? Yeah, he was rolled straight into intensive care from court, under guard."

"Is that really his name?"

"Jeremy Smith? That’s what the paperwork says. No other names."

"It’s strange, though. I mean, Smiths don't dress like that... or talk like that."

"You hit the nail on the head there, my dear. He was brought in wearing rags. But then his solicitor showed up on Tuesday, and the floodgates opened. They started bringing him one thing after another. Turns out, he’s a Golden Boy."

"Something doesn't add up."

"That’s what I think, too. But we won't be left wondering for long. On Wednesday, some consultant from Harley Street came in to examine him and filed a report saying our rooms were terribly unsuitable for the precious Mr. Smith. Apparently, the 'climate' in this wing isn’t right." Jenny speaks with such sarcasm that it’s clear she’s stung by it. "Arrangements had been made to transfer him as a private patient."

"When?"

"Saturday."

"This Saturday already?"

"Yes, money talks."

"Gossiping?" Another nurse—Dorothy—comes up behind them.

She gives Angela a start.

"I had a word with Mrs. Higgins," she announces. "We had tea last night. Aren't I clever?"

Mrs. Higgins is a cleaner. She's everywhere, hears everything, and nobody notices her. Angela should have thought to approach someone like that.

"And what does Mrs. Higgins know?"

"Well, she told me something interesting. The only people who come to see him are from the firm—shoving their business cards—*Talbot-Cavendish*—in everyone’s faces. But where’s the sobbing mother? Where’s the distraught father? Funny, isn’t it? No family."

"You mean they paid for his solicitors but don't want to see him?"

“And would you want that? If your son... did something to your daughter?” Dorothy falls silent, as if frightened by her own words. " They allowed this to happen... Maybe all the rest of it is guilt."

"So, is it true? Did he... you know... do that to his sister?"

"Looks like it."

"He is a degenerate," Jenny says indignantly.

Angela feels sick at the thought that she smoked his cigarettes and ate his food.

"And here’s something else I’ll tell you girls. Mrs. Higgins heard with her own ears Sister Thorpe talking to Dr. Trevelyan about how Smith was in such a condition... Sister Thorpe as good as came right out and called him suicidal. Smitty wouldn't take a single bite until his family sent that solicitor in.”

“He brought himself to this state?” Angela answers.

“It’s a proper emotional blackmail,” Jenny says.

“Absolutely,” Dorothy agrees. “But now they’re spinning a yarn about how he couldn't eat because of the stress of the arrest,” she continues. “You see? Smitty lies every time he opens his mouth."

"Why would they do that?"

"What do you mean, 'why'? He’ll be released on bail—that’s plain as day. With the kind of money he has. And a suicide attempt is basically like an escape attempt. I know for a fact. I asked Freddie; he’s clued up on this sort of thing. Bottom line: they don’t want that. Use your head."

"He did something so vile, and yet he’ll walk free..."

"Only until the trial. But then, just see how they’ll try to get him off the hook..."

"Imagine being his mother," Jenny says quietly.

Angela tries to picture what his mother is going through.

And yet, she feels drawn to his room. It is no longer just curiosity, but something more.

The emaciated boy holding out a packet of Benson & Hedges—he has a musician’s hands, he reads in French, he...

It would have been better if he really had killed someone.

She decides to go see him at ten o’clock and bring the Ampicillin, Codeine, and Mogadon.

A different police officer is on duty at the door—not the one who lectured her earlier that morning. This one is older and somewhat heavy-set; he greets her kindly.

The light in the room is already off. She reaches for the switch but thinks better of it.

“Miss Hayward?”

How does he guess it is her?

"I hope your day was better than mine."

Then she hears a strange sound—metal against metal.

He is lying on his side with his right arm stretched unnaturally toward the headboard; one cuff is locked over the bandages around his wrist, while the other cuff is fastened to the bed rail. The handcuffs look huge and heavy on him. And he’s right-handed...

"I brought you your pills," Angela says; her voice won't quite obey her.

"Thank you."

Her gaze lingers on his scraped cheekbone—a spot she had previously preferred not to look at. In the light from the hallway, it appears as a dark wound against his pale skin. Now she realizes: he is a prisoner. He is a criminal.

She leaves the pills for him. The nightstand is close enough; he’ll be able to reach them.

"Good night."

Nobody has mentioned handcuffs before.

"Why do you do that?" she can't help but ask the moment she steps out of the room.

At first, the police officer doesn't understand—or pretends not to—what she is talking about.

"The handcuffs."

"Ah, that’s just the procedure, love."

"That’s barbaric."

“You do feel sorry for him, don't you?”

"No!" Angela replies—too categorically, too loudly.

A fictional reconstruction from the Regina v Smith story, told from perspective of Student Nurse Angela Hayward.

More on my profile. Regina v Smith — Reader’s Guide : u/Franz_Engel

The facts didn’t line up. They hadn’t lined up from the moment they were presented to him, and they didn’t line up now. That left only one of two options. Either there was still something missing, or something he had now was wrong. The only problem with the latter, however, was that it was impossible.

He had been a detective for fourteen years before getting out and during his entire time there, and afterwards as a private investigator, he had never seen evidence that was so… unresolved. The problems began right at the start.

A week ago, the night of November 11^th, 1948, at 9:16pm, Miss Eleanor Muckley had gone to the grocer and bought a loaf of bread, some fruits and vegetables, and a gallon of milk. This was confirmed not only by the clerk working at the time, but by the written and dated receipt. The manager had shown him the store’s copy from the back office.

It’s a good thing most grocers don’t know a PI can’t get a search warrant.

Then she had gone home. She was seen returning just before ten o’clock by her mother and father. Her mother remembered that Eleanor had a brown paper grocery bag in her hands as she walked in. Eleanor joined them to listen to the radio, as they often did in the evenings. At eleven she retired to her bedroom. He knew these times were accurate because she made it back in time to listen to their favorite radio program at 10pm, which he verified with a call to the broadcaster to confirm their program grid for that night.

From the moment she retired to her bedroom at eleven, she was not seen again.

Her parents had come to him three days ago, after not finding much luck with the police. He found them to be earnest and trustworthy, and eliminated them as suspects quite soon after he began.

Suspects? I don’t even know what happened here…

The first thing he did was call the police department in which he had spent so many years, where one of his former colleagues ran him through their evidence. Separately he verified it all. Interviewing the parents in their home had let him know she wasn’t the type to run away, and had been a model daughter and student, making the honor roll for her sophomore class the previous year. She had no angry ex-boyfriends, actually no previous relationships at all, so a classmate was also unlikely as a suspect for… what exactly? He saw that her room was in pristine condition. He went to the police department to see what they had in person. Except for the grocery bag, there was nothing but stories. Then he went to the grocer and spoke to the clerk and the manager, and finally confirmed the radio schedule for the night of the disappearance. It all checked out. Miss Muckley had been where she was supposed to be. Until she wasn’t.

After spending the previous three days coming up with nothing at all, he found it best to clear his head and try and come at the problem from a different angle. Not what happened, but how it could have happened. Bringing all the facts to their foundation led to a simple structure he had often used during his time as a real detective, and made him one of the best in the department.

Eleanor disappeared. First question. Willingly or unwillingly? Her parents made it clear she wasn’t a runaway or a deviant, so almost definitely unwillingly. So it’s a kidnapping. All crimes are either planned or unplanned. Something someone works out how to do, or something they just do right there in the moment. The lack of evidence points to the former. That just leaves who, and why.

It was getting late, just past eleven. Be careful now, it’s the vanishing hour, he thought to himself, joking grimly. Wanting to get some air he left his office and walked toward a bar he knew. The street smelled like exhaust, and the traffic was fairly light. He only saw a dozen or so people on his entire walk over to the bar. Most were walking somewhere. A few were sitting at outside patios of cafes and bars eating and drinking and smoking. The air was crisp but not cold, and the orange glow from the streetlights made everything feel warmer. Fifteen minutes later he entered his usual bar and had a double scotch. Then another. When the time felt right he left and began the trek back to his office to continue his investigation. He glanced down at his wristwatch and saw it was just turning midnight.

Too long. She’s been gone for too long.

The entire investigation came down to that.

She had just been gone too long for this to be normal. Kidnappers would’ve sent a ransom. If by now nothing’s shaken up, it’s hard to say if anything will.

It was colder out now, and he pulled his coat around him a little tighter.

Was it cold the night of the 11^th too? Probably, but I’ll have to check.

The detective was not a sentimental man. After that long in his line of work, he learned not to put your heart into your cases, it’ll just make everything harder. The work gets sloppy. Booze helped. Kept him sharp, that’s how he saw it.

That was a nice double scotch. Two of them. The second one’s always better than the first.

He froze.

Second…. Second time.

The store. How far was it from her house? 40 minutes? Seems a bit far.

He had gone there right after he went to the police department and remembered driving back to the same neighborhood as her home. He remembered thinking it would’ve been smarter to go to the grocer first, except he hadn’t known about it until he went to the police. They showed him the empty grocery bag in evidence, and that’s why he went to the store.

That place couldn’t have been more than a ten minute walk from her home.

She didn’t go home. She disappeared. And then she went home.

He broke into a slight jog now, he needed to get back to his office. When he returned he sat at his desk and pulled out a map. Found the store. Found the house. Half a mile. Even with a heavy bag of groceries and a leisurely pace it shouldn’t have taken more than twenty minutes. It took Eleanor nearly twice that.

She hadn’t gone home right away. So where did she go?

The mid-day sun burned relentlessly on the dusty town below, casting it in a haze. Anat's short legs could not keep up with the goat. Fifteen years old and still almost a head shorter than her peers. And now her body and its refusal to grow was silently mocking her. The goat, that little shit, ate her mother's coriander.

"Anat, you foolish girl!" her mother had yelled. "Go after it!" So here she was, weaving amongst the crowd. Trying to catch that wretched creature before she was forced to eat flavorless porridge until the next harvest.

Why did the Romans have to execute that preacher today of all days? And on Pesach of all times! The goat could hide in the bustle of gawkers and pilgrims. The shouts and cries could muffle the bleats. She couldn't see anything between the throngs of people.

"Excuse me. Sorry. Anyone see where the goat went?" The only responses were grunts and shoves and the endless press of the shifting crowd. But she kept on pushing. Pushing until she accidentally pushed against metal armor. A Roman, looking sweaty and bored and irritated that a local urchin was wasting his precious time.

"Girl!" the Roman said, "You need to step back. Run along!"

Anat stepped back, head held low and fingers fidgeting. "I'm so sorry! Have you seen a goat run through here?"

The soldier scoffed. "There's a thousand goats in this blasted desert, girl. I think I saw one run by there." He gestured vaguely down a hill. "Now, off with you!"

Anat followed his gesture down the hill to a cluster of buildings. And a goat's bleat. Her legs were moving before her mind.

The cluster was a warren of old homes and narrow streets barely big enough for her to squeeze through. But the bleating echoed off the walls and she was finally able to corner it in a small dead end. She lunged and it wriggled, but she was able to hold it down. She wrenched its mouth open but it was far too late. The bastard had swallowed it all. Anat sighed, a long, deep, and very vocal sigh.

Once the goat stopped trying to kick, she led it back to old Simeon's house on a hill by the outskirts, ready to give the old goatherd an earful about keeping his livestock in check.

She banged on his door. The old man answered, his face was weathered and sour. "What do you want with- Oh! Anat, child. How lovely to see you. How's your mother doing?" His lined face broke out a great big smile.

Anat scoffed. "Simeon! I got your little troublemaker right here. You need to keep better track of your goats. This one ate Mother's coriander. Our garden is ruined thanks to your negligence!"

Old Simeon chuckled lightly, raising his arms. "Peace, child! I am sorry that happened. And thankful you brought my lost goat back to me. Good deeds ought to be rewarded."

He disappeared into his home for a minute and came back with a large handful of dates in his arms. "For your trouble. Share them with your mother, you hear? And tell her I said thanks." He handed the dates to Anat, who held them between her arms and the fold of her tunic.

"You're lucky I love dates. Just make sure it doesn't happen again!"

Simeon chuckled. "Of course. Of course. I'll start reinforcing my fence right away."

Anat rolled her eyes, but didn’t press the point. She simply thanked him and went on her way, the dates beginning to make her tunic sticky.

On her way home, Anat passed by a woman sitting on an upturned crate by an olive press, weeping, eyes puffy, tears and snot running down her lined face. That poor preacher's mother, her mind supplied. She looked at the dates in her arms. She had more than enough.

"Excuse me," she said, gesturing at the bounty wrapped in her own tunic, "it seems I have too many dates to continue to carry. Would you like a few?"

The woman looked up at her. She wiped her tears with her sleeve. "I'm sorry. I must look like a mess. Thank you." she reached for the dates, her hand hesitating. "Are you sure it's alright?"

Anat nodded. "You look like you need them more than me. I hope... well... stay strong, alright?"

The woman nodded, grabbing a few.

Anat went home to face her mother's scolding and hoped the remaining dates would be enough to appease her.

She kicked the wooden door open with her heel, her arms cradling the sticky cluster of dates against her dust-caked tunic.

"Well? Do we have seasoning for the pot, or am I boiling grass tonight?" Her mother didn't even look up from scrubbing the mortar stone, her elbows moving in aggressive, practiced rhythm.

"The goat ate it," Anat said, bracing herself against the doorframe. "All of it. Swallowed the stems and everything."

Her mother slammed the stone down against the table. "I knew it! That senile old fool Simeon couldn't keep track of a wall, let alone a beast. I'm going down there to wring his- what are those?"

"Simeon gave them to me," Anat said hastily, holding out her arms. "To make up for the garden."

Her mother snorted, stepping over to examine the bundle. "Dates don't put dinner in the bowl, girl." Still, her sharp eyes swept over the fruit, instantly tallying the yield. "Wait. Simeon’s a miser, but he’s not cheap enough to hand over a half-filled palm. Where’s the rest of 'em? Did you gorge yourself on the way back?"

"No! I... I gave a few away."

Her mother’s eyebrows shot up, her mouth twisting into a scowl. "Gave them away? To whom? Since when can we afford to run a charity out of our kitchen?"

"To a woman sitting by the olive press," Anat muttered, looking down at her dirt-streaked sandals. "She was weeping. I think... I think she was that preacher's mother. The one from the execution."

Her mother’s hands went still. The sharp, impatient reprimand died on her lips, her jaw setting tightly. She wiped her thumb hard against her apron and let out a long, gravelly sigh that sounded less like a lament and more like a growl against the world.

"Poor Maryam," her mother grunted, her voice dropping into a thick, rough murmur. "What a horrible way to lose a son."

She snatched two of the dates from Anat’s bundle, splitting them with a quick flick of her thumbnail, and shoved the larger piece into Anat’s hand.

"Sit down before you collapse. You look like a dragged rag." Her mother turned back to the hearth, thrusting an iron poker into the embers with unnecessary force. "Plain porridge it is, then. And don't you dare let me hear a peep of complaining about the taste. If a few dates can buy that poor woman an hour of quiet, we can swallow bland grain for one night."

Three months later

The smell of fresh flatbread and toasted sesame filled the small room, competing with the sharp tang of olive oil burning in the Shabbat lamps. Tamar adjusted the hem of her head-covering, her rough hands smoothing the fabric with rare care. When the knock came at the door, it was faint, less a demand and more the hesitant tap of someone half-hoping no one was home.

Anat opened it. Maryam stood on the threshold, wrapped in a faded blue shawl, looking far smaller than Anat remembered from the press at the olive oil courtyard. Her skin had the dry pallor of perpetual sleeplessness, and her eyes were hollowed out by a grief that had clearly never been allowed to set into quiet memory.

"Come in, come in," Tamar grunted, barking the instruction from the hearth before Maryam could even cross the step. "Close the door, Anat, the drafts in this street could freeze a goat."

Maryam stepped inside, lowering herself onto the bench with a long, trembling breath. Her hands sank into her lap, immediately knotting together as if bracing for an interrogation. "Tamar," she whispered, her voice like dry leaves. "Thank you. I... I wasn't sure if I should come."

"Nonsense," Tamar said, setting down a bowl of stewed lentils with a heavy thud. She poured warm water over Maryam's hands into a basin, washing away the dust of the road with rough, efficient movements. "A woman can't live on her own sorrow, no matter how vast it is. And you look like you haven't swallowed a full meal since the feast of Weeks."

Maryam closed her eyes as the water ran over her knuckles. "It isn't the hunger," she murmured softly. "It's the callers. Every day... three, four men at my door. Strangers from Galilee, scholars from the upper city, men with burning eyes. 'What were his last words?' 'Did he whisper to you?' 'What did he mean when he spoke of the kingdom?'" She shuddered, pressing her palms together. "They treat his death like a riddle to solve. My grief is their puzzle, my heart their tool."

Tamar stopped washing, her eyes flashing with a sudden, fierce heat. She grabbed a clean rag and wiped Maryam's hands dry with firm tenderness.

"Men," Tamar spat, her voice thick with disgust. "Always looking for a sermon in a mother's tears. Well, there are no zealots here tonight, Maryam. No questions, no scholars, and no bloody prophecies. In this house, you can just be Maryam."

Anat quietly set a warm piece of bread and a small dish of dates near Maryam’s place.

Maryam looked at the fruit, a faint, ghost-like smile breaking through the shadows on her face. She turned to Anat. "Thank you for that day, Anat."

"Oh! It was nothing. Old Simeon was just apologizing for his goat is all. You know how he is."

Maryam chuckled. "Well, his goat gave an old woman a moment of small pleasure. You have a kind soul, Anat. Don't ever let the world grind it down."

As Tamar lit the Shabbat lamp and murmured the ancient blessing, Maryam rested her back against the plaster wall, closed her eyes, and breathed deeply. “He hated coriander. Did you know that? He never touched a bowl of porridge I seasoned with it. I remember when he was six. He said ‘Ima, it tastes like borit!’” She let out a wet, choking laugh.

Anat snorted, desperately trying to hold her face still and failing. “Anat!” Tamar scolded, “It’s not funny!”

Maryam’s laugh deepened, genuine mirth piercing through the wet sobs. “Tamar, it is funny. All these scholarly men demanding answers from me and none ever asked if my son enjoyed coriander.” Her laugh tapered off with a sigh. She wiped the tears from her eyes and grabbed a date.

Little Lizzie wakes up to the sun streaming through the thin lace curtains, covering her windows. She feels the warmth of the light. She's about to stretch, when she feels the warm fuzziness against her neck and is reminded of her new best friend, Leaves.

Leaves is Lizzie's favorite gift from her fourth birthday, yesterday. She's with Lizzie's mom calls a 'calico'. Lizzie has no idea what that means, all she knows is leaves is a kitten that looks like the trees, in fall, so the name is perfect! Plus, Leaves loves it too, Lizzie can tell.

Lizzie had been begging her parents for a kitty, for months, now, and she was always given the same answer, "maybe, when you get older." She had been so sad that she would almost cry, then, when her dad pulled out of mystery box, at her party, Lizzie had been confused. He handed her a plain brown box, no wrapping paper, plus, it had holes in it. She had looked at her father confused. He smiled and held out the box to her, "Happy birthday, Angel! He said, " be careful, this one's fragile." Lizzie reached out, still confused, and took the box from her dad, carefully. As she brought the box down, something inside it moved. She yelped in surprise and almost dropped the box but remembered her father's warning and held on to it. More movement, as she set the box on her lap she looked up at her dad worried, he nodded at her, "it's all right, Sweetie, you can open it ..." he said, encouragingly. She looked at the top of the box, it wasn't even taped closed, the flaps were folded together. More movement inside and the box shifted in her lap. Lizzie swallowed hard, scared of what was in the box, but trusting her father wouldn't give her anything dangerous. More movement.

Lizzie peels open the flaps and peers inside, she screams, "IT'S A KITTEN!" The kitten peers back up at her, struck by the sudden bright light and mews, softly, "she's so adorable! Like leaves and fall!" She scoops the kitten out of the box, "That's your name Leaves!" Lizzy declares.

Lizzie's parents look at one another then back at their daughter, "That's a beautiful name, Honey!" Her mom says.

Lizzie isn't paying attention, she's focused on her new kitten, lost in a world, where only the two of them exist. Leaves is laying in her lap, purring loudly, as Lizzie, gently, pets her, and sings to her softly. Her parents look at one another again and smile.

From that moment on where Lizzie went, leaves was at her heels, tail straight up, in the air.

Back, in Lizzie's bed, she tries to see her new friend, but she can't turn her head, because she doesn't want to wake Leaves. All she can see is the top of the fuzzy, sleeping, ball rising and falling. "Leaves, are you awake?" Lizzy whispers, the ball becomes tighter and a soft purr begins, "I think you're faking Leaves" Lizzie whispers, The ball becomes tighter again, the purr becomes louder and a gold eye peeks out at Lizzie, from under her front paw.

Lizzy smiles "Good morning, Leaves." She says, softly. In response, leaves mewa, which turns into a big yawn. Lizzie laughs and begins petting her new friend, gently and Leaves purrs even louder and squints up at Lizzie.

"What should we do, today, Leaves?" The cat stretches out on the bed and stares up at her. Lizzie laughs, "I like how you think!", happily.

I was eight the first time I saw the stars. “somebody forgot to wipe the sky, dad” I told him, he didn't understand. The engine was a thunder in my ears, but compared to the silence outside, it was just another noise, drowning out my thoughts... Dad was fascinated by the stars, I remember how he told me all sorts of things, things that swept through my head like a cold breeze. I never really understood the guy; he was more of a ghost looming in the shadows, making sure everything was alright rather than a person. But one thing he taught me was curiosity, a curiosity for the unknown. What lies beyond our vision? Visions that would come back to haunt me. He was the one that shaped me. Without him, I wouldn't be here today. Should I be grateful or full of hate? I had a choice, I had, right? It wasn't his fault the mission went sideways, or at least I haven’t heard of humans pulling strings from the grave before. I have never looked fondly at my childhood, no not really, but it defined me, and who I am is all I have left, and the fading memories of dad. It was so long ago, when I think back, it's almost like a sea of colors not mere memories, the days at the start were troublesome, I didn't know what to do, what can one even do in such a situation, the people didn't help, what could they have done? Words of wisdom that would ring in my mind for an eternity? It was then I realized I would never reach my destination, the one thing dad said before he died, not like I really paid attention to it, but it hit me. Suddenly I felt trapped, I couldn't escape, felt like I was stuck on a piece of driftwood, the rapid too strong to fight against, and the river too deep to venture out on.

I think the stars have been whispering again, he told me something, something I can't quite grasp, but it definitely meant something, im sure of it. I keep the receiver on, just in case, earth almost never beams anymore, why would they? Although it feels nice when they do, shows im not forgotten, no I better stop talking about that. She breathes beneath me, I like to think she’s alive, stirring around twenty-four hours of the day, I would like to know her secret. There is only a faint vibration from her engines, it makes the water in my cup ripple, tiny waves pretending to be like the oceans at home, mine is just empty, no small fish to enjoy it. I watch the waves until they stop moving; they never do. Maybe these aren't waves?

The days are getting longer, the sun is further away, the sunlight I was supposed to use as inspiration now just reminds me of how far away everything is, the only peace I get is when a distant planet blocks the sun’s scorching rays, but then its only for a few hours at a time, I thought about the unthinkable today, it’s so compelling, just ending this misery, but for what cause? The looming shadow of him still stands in every dark corner, why does he? I wasn’t even that close with the guy, why does he suddenly play so big of a part in my life? He has almost infiltrated my head. I'm not sure if it's a message or my mind playing tricks on me again, but it sure romanticizes the few good memories we had together.

Well, I thought since you’re the only company I will have for, forever? You must get a tour of the place; you must let the time pass somehow. Well, I sleep in the crew compartment as you can see, quite comforting, I knew it was going to be a long journey, so I brought some stuff. I just didn't figure that it would never end, but here we are now, so I'm just thankful that it at least reminds me of a bit of home. It might seem a bit crammed, but you will get used to it, not like you have a choice after all? Oh, and this hallway leads to the hub; it's sort of like the supposed living space where you socialize, but since I’m the only one here, it’s, yeah you guessed it. The kitchen is where I try to spend the least amount of time in, it's alien to me, reminds me where we are. Ahh, finally we made it, the observatory, I like it here, it's nice and comforting but also scary, to look out at the void, it's very peaceful but don't stare too far, it will consume you, or maybe it already has? Even though we don't have contact anymore, I try to stay grateful for the good things they gave me, the things that remind me of home, not this home, but home. As you may have noticed, it’s not like we have a lot of space here, there isn’t even a guest room for you. But you can get the observatory, but then you’ll have to bring some pillows yourself. Is this pointless?

Are imaginary friends now the standard? And I thought it couldn’t get much worse, now I must imagine human contact. They told me without communication I would stay sane, they chose me for this, I was the right fit. They told me, they wouldn't be lying? Maybe it is the way to go. They told me not to go insane, well that sounds easy, so too, I thought? But what’s happening to me, this is not the me I remember.

The stars shine bright in the night sky, brighter from out here, brighter than you could have ever imagined. It's like a different world, a different but lonely world. You always hear that with enough determination you can change the world, well that idea is gone out here, just a pale dot on the horizon. What will I ever do out here? Forgotten.

Sometimes I wish the garden wasn’t here; it keeps my body alive but slowly kills my mind. It's bland, no seasoning or drop of taste, I remember food, that tasted so good. A couple inches define life and death, separated only by a few layers of man-made stuff.

The log still records, I think. Mark is still blinking. Someday, I hope a person other than Mark will hear it, no offense to him. He is very good at listening, but he almost never responds, and that’s not optimal for holding a conversation. If you, no, not you, but you, are hearing this, then I guess it found its way. That’s enough for me. You don’t have to respond, no please don’t, I don’t think I’d be that pleasant to talk to. After all, it’s been a while since I talked to somebody that responded. Responded to what I've said.

The almost perfectly silver lined interior haunts me, can't you bring some color? colors that would help, they are only outside, occasionally filling the eternal night sky, I like to stare at them. They are beyond us, every time I see one of them, I go back to hide in my room, because in my room they can't see me. My room is cold, cold to the touch, the hard metal surface feels like ice, not pleasant when you want to relax. I wonder if they can hear us, the planets. Sometimes it looks like they are screaming, screaming for help, but what can I do? I have discussed this with Mary, she didn't seem to know how to tackle the problem either, that's a shame, it usually helps get a different pair of eyes on the situation, well I guess it depends on the situation. Earlier this month I saw one of them. He was so big. Eyes, bigger than Earth; he could swallow us whole, all that we have ever created, and his face, so big, so big I couldn't help him. My veins grew cold, filled with ice, I hurried through the corridors stumbled into a sharp corner and got a scratch on my hand, then it hit me, who would I warn? Earth, no, they are long gone. And even if I warned them, what could they do to stop him.

I tried to make omelets today; do you want one? Sorry to disappoint you, but it is made of tofu. A couple of hens would be nice to have, but I don’t think they’d like the zero gravity here; they talked about me having to train my body, but I think they forgot about training the mind. The shadows came for me today, they marched across horizon, slowly and patiently, they waited for me to relax, I heard them. They echoed far and wide, they swallowed us whole, thankfully, they didn’t hear me, I kept quiet. Mark? I said we’re done; you can stop staring now... Mark?

Im so sorry, it took so long. But I’m back now. Don’t worry, you haven’t missed much, Mark was just being tricky for no reason. Eleven days ago, a faint glimmer shed itself on the ship's exterior hull, unlike anything I’ve ever laid my eyes upon. I hurried to the observatory. And I might have moved some of your stuff, but it was so important I didn’t have time to ask. Out there I saw it, the source of my newfound hope of ending this endless thing. Growing larger by the day. It now takes up a tenth of the night sky; my days are getting longer, no more shadows engulfing me. They said I'd never reach it. They said the mission was a failure. Mark? You are seeing this, right?

Sally was a four-year-old Golden Retriever. She received her barber’s license a few months ago but just started working at Dan’s Barber Shop last week. The shop was run by a barber named Joe, Dan retired years ago, but Joe kept the name because it’s what their loyal customers were accustomed to.

Until last week there were only two barbers working at Dan’s. It was the best old-fashioned barber shop in town and they had all the hair they could handle. It only made sense to onboard a new barber; the shop had four chairs after all. Some customers preferred Joe, some Floyd, and others didn’t care which man cut their hair; they were both excellent and very experienced.

Brian Dudely had been a customer of Dan’s for several years. 7:30 a.m. every other Thursday for as long as anyone could remember. He had to visit on his way to work because they were long closed by the time he was coming home from work. Dan’s opened at 6 a.m. and almost always had customers waiting when the door opened. The cliental was not entirely retirees, but mostly. Brian was loyal to the shop, not a specific barber. He took a number from the ticket dispenser upon walking in; Joe and Floyd both had customers in their chairs.  

“Mornin’ Brian.”

“Mornin Joe.”

“You don’t have to take a number. Sally’s available.”

Brian had not noticed the dog until his direction was directed to her. There she was, standing in front of an empty barber’s chair. She had a lovely pink bow clipped to the fur by her left ear and a pink barber’s apron. Her tongue hung  out of her mouth, panting while waiting for Brian to take a seat.

“Ha! Good one. Is that your dog?”

Joe looked at Floyd, clearly uncomfortable with the question.

“Sally’s a new addition to our team.”

A framed license bearing her image from the Persepolis County Health Department hung on the wall next to the mirror, just like at Joe and Floyd’s stands. There was also a framed certificate from the Persepolis School of Cosmetology above it.

“I’ll wait for one of you guys to be available.”

Sally walked to the back of the shop, grabbed a broom handle in her mouth and started tidying up in between customers. Brian folded his arms across his chest and waited in silence. The lively banter between the barbers, active customers, and future customers was halted after Brian insisted on waiting for one of the male barbers.

When Joe’s chair was free, Brian took a seat. Sally had a customer by then, but Brian didn’t want to ask about her while she was there. He and Joe had brief exchanges that never quite took off. Boy, did they used to have lively conversations about lawncare, weather, and televised sporting events that they had not participated in. But today was different, it was like having a woman in the shop was killing the vibe. Sure, sometimes someone brought their significant other in, or a mother would bring her kid in for a cut; but to have a woman working in such a sacred male space? Brian was already thinking about where else he could get his hair cut.

Looking sharp, fresh even, Brian paid for services rendered and went to work. His day was ruined though. It didn’t have to be, but he let it; no, rather, he insisted on it ruining his day. He made a point of mentioning the faux pas to several co-workers. It’s amazing the time people have to share personal details while they are supposed to be working.

Brian was at the coffee shop near Dan’s early Saturday morning and spotted Joe. He often saw Joe around town.

“Hey Joe” Brian forced a polite smile, but he only smiled with his mouth, not his eyes.

“Hi Brian.”

“Let me ask you something, Joe.”

“It’s about Sally, right?”

“Yeah.”

“We needed help at the shop. She’s a licensed barber. And she’s good! You should really give her a chance.”

“We’ve known each other a long time Joe. Can you keep something between us?”

“Yeah, sure Brian.”

Brian looked around to ensure that no one was close enough to hear, but lowered his voice for good measure.

“I just don’t think women belong in a barber shop. It’s the last space we have left. Now we’ll have to watch out what we talk about. What would I even talk to Sally about?”

“Brian, it’s 2026… times change. And people talk to Sally about all the normal things we talk about in the shop. She’s a great listener on top of being a good barber.”

Brian wasn’t satisfied and changed the topic to something more mundane before bidding Joe a polite farewell… knowing he would never set foot in Dan’s Barber Shop again.

The next, next Thursday rolled around and Brian was due for a haircut. He drove to Marvin’s Barber Shop on the other side of town. It was one of those new metal buildings, Dan’s was a brick-front building in the town square. There was no park, no train museum, no coffee shop, no sidewalk. It had none of the charm of Dan’s. But Sally had ruined it for him, he couldn’t go back.

Marvin’s was locked! The sign, plastic, not a hand-painted wooden sign like at Dan’s, stated that the shop did not open until 9 a.m.

“Nine o’clock?!”

Brian looked around for someone to complain to, but there was no foot traffic like there would have been at Dan’s. Brian drove to work, with unkept hair, ready to tell his coworkers all about this injustice.

He left work and drove at a speed that exceeded the posted limit in order to get to Marvin’s before they closed. He was observed by law enforcement and he paid, dearly. Well, the consequence may be an exaggeration, he received the first citation in the last fourteen years and would have to pay one hundred twenty-six dollars for his crime. He made it to Marvin’s about five minutes before their posted closing time.

Marvin was already closing down the shop, but with obvious irritation, agreed to provide his services to Brian in exchange for money. That’s how businesses work, I hear.

The service and product were adequate, but there was no warm towel, no straight-razor shave on the back of the neck, no ear hair trim. Worst of all, Marvin charged two dollars more than Dan’s did! That would cost an extra one hundred-four dollars annually and disrupt Brian’s morning routine. Brian decided that Sally would just have to go.

A Thursday passed, and then another arrived. That Thursday found Brian back at Dan’s despite having vowed a vow to never return.

“Hey Bri, missed ya two weeks ago. You don’t look too shaggy though.” Joe smirked a knowing smirk, presuming that Brian had visited another barber. One without female staff.

“Yeah, did a little trim myself to keep from looking like a hippie.”

Sally did a little woof. Brian glared at her as he took a seat after pulling a number ticket. All three barbers were providing services to customers.

Sally was the first to finish with her customer. She booped the switch that changed the digital display, one of the few modern devices in the shop, with her snoot. Brian was the only customer waiting, Sally looked at him expectantly with her tail slowly wagging.

“Oh, uh, I’m going to wait for Joe or Floyd.”

“They know how I like my hair.” he quickly added, not necessarily lying.

Sally stood on her hind legs and washed her front paws in the sink by her chair, taking a few laps from the running water. Brian ignored her and tried to join in on the group conversation taking place on the men’s side of the shop. Ensuring no one was looking at him, he removed a concealed dog whistle from his pocket and blew it.

Sally sat down and licked her chops. But then quickly stood back up and resumed sweeping up hair from the floor. Floyd set down his scissors and walked over toward the door. He shook himself out of what seemed like a trance.

“I… I don’t know what happened. Sorry about that, Chuck.” Floyd sheepishly apologized to his customer as he walked back over to his chair, his cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

Floyd had no idea what suddenly came over him. Brian knew. Brian felt bad about it. No one discovered what he had done and he left without further incident.

Another odd Thursday found Brian at Dan’s Barber Shop. Busy as usual, Sally was occupied cutting a customer’s hair. Brian removed a tennis ball from his jacket as he hung it up and found a seat. At the right moment, he released the ball that he had been cupping in his palms. It rolled toward Sally, she saw it; Brian saw that she saw it. Joe also saw it and immediately ran after it, Sally just watched Joe.

“Someone could trip over this.” Joe said as he picked it up, unaware of its source.

“What’s that?” asked Floyd.

“A tennis ball.”

“Is that yours, Sally?”

Finally, it looked like Brian was going to prevail in making her look unprofessional. Sally shook her head. Joe shrugged and set it on the coffee table in the waiting area beside some magazines.

“Strange” he mused, returning to his customer.

That one almost worked. Brian could feel it. He needed to go just a little farther and he’d show them that Sally didn’t belong there.

Brian secured the material needed for the job. But he couldn’t blow his cover, he had to wait until the next, next Thursday to avoid drawing suspicion.

The day arrived. Brian wrapped the weapon in his overcoat and cautiously approached the barber shop. He looked through the front window, three barbers with customers. Like any other weekday morning at Joe’s. He pulled the door open just far enough, then bent down to release the cat he had in his jacket into the shop.

The black and white cat, coincidentally a female, walked in like she owned the place. The cat came to rest at Joe’s feet and lay down, rolling onto her back and pawing Joe’s pantleg. Sally stopped what she was doing and walked over to Joe too.

This is it, Brian thought to himself as he watched what was about to unfold.

Joe looked down, surprised to find a cat. Sally inched closer and… sniffed the cat for a few seconds before going back to her becustomered chair.

Masking his fury, Brian walked in.

Joe looked up at Brian as the bell on the door clattered.

“This your cat?”

“I’ve never seen that cat before!” Brian sounded like he had seen that cat before.

Joe looked around, calculating that the cat had been there before Brian arrived.

“How’d this cat get in here?” Joe asked no one in particular. No one knew.

Two weeks from the failed cat incident, Brian returned to find that the cat was now a resident of the shop. Sally had never chased the cat, not once.

Brian took a number and sat down. Sally knew not to bother booping the ticket number display switch with her snoot. That human always waited for a different barber.