After Dinner Conversation: Philosophy | Ethics Short Story Magazine

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JULY 2020

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After Dinner Conversation Magazine – October 2020 This magazine publishes fictional stories that explore ethical and philosophical questions in an informal manner. The purpose of these stories is to generate thoughtful discussion in an open and easily accessible manner.

Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The magazine is published monthly in electronic format.

All rights reserved. After Dinner Conversation Magazine is published by After Dinner Conversation in the United States of America. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher. Abstracts and brief quotations may be used without permission for citations, critical articles, or reviews.

Contact the publisher for more information at info@afterdinnerconversation.com .

ISSN# 2693-8359

Vol. 1, No. 4 .

Copyright © 2020 After Dinner Conversation Editor-In-Chief: Kolby Granville | Acquisitions Editor: Viggy Parr Hampton Design, layout, and discussion questions by After Dinner Conversation Magazine. .

https://www.afterdinnerconversation.com

Table Of Contents FROM THE PUBLISHER .................................................................................... - 4 MARBLE LIONS ............................................................................................... - 5 HOLY NIGHT ................................................................................................. - 14 PERFORMANCE ............................................................................................ - 34 SACRIFICING MERCY ..................................................................................... - 51 AS YOU WISH (CHILDREN’S STORY) .............................................................. - 64 LAY ON ......................................................................................................... - 72 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ........................................................................ - 86 FROM THE EDITOR ....................................................................................... - 87 -

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From the Publisher ***

After Dinner Conversation believes humanity is improved by ethics and morals grounded in philosophical truth.

Philosophical truth is discovered through

intentional reflection and respectful debate. In order to facilitate that process, we have created a growing series of short stories, audio and video podcast discussions, across genres, as accessible examples of abstract ethical and philosophical ideas intended to draw out deeper discussions with friends, family, and students. *** Enjoy these short stories?

Purchase our print anthologies, After Dinner

Conversation “Season One” or “Season Two.” They are both collections of our best short stories published in the After Dinner Conversation series complete with discussion questions. *** Subscribe to this monthly magazine for $1.95/month or $19.95/year and receive it every month!

AFTER DINNER CONVERSATION

HUNTER LIGUORE

Marble Lions Hunter Liguore *** “…the distribution of various disease germs was no longer a merely theoretical possibility. Little containers, made to look like fountain pens, were already being manufactured. The caps would be removed to expose the soluble ends, and they could be dropped into reservoirs or running streams … easy to distribute but hard to limit their field of action…”

–H. G. Wells, Shape of Things to Come. *** Janice Flint sat beside the riverbank holding open a blank journal.

In her right hand, hovering over the empty page, she held a pen. The jungle surrounded her with tall, bowed trees, where slabs of light cut through the vines and branches like heavenly beacons. The smell of clay and earth mingled with the mist rising up from the dewy vegetation. Stillness ruled, despite the stitching movement of water over stone and mud.

This was her mark.

The place of rendezvous to complete her mission.

She needed only toss the candy-looking pen into the river, where SEPTEMBER 2020

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it would dissolve against the current and rush down into the water supply of an unsuspecting village, sickening thousands and killing hundreds.

What are you waiting for? she wrote.

She didn’t actually expect the pen to work, but it scrolled with ease in blue. As she waited for an answer to come from inside her, she studied the pen, imagining a child finding it—one like her own—pulling off the clear casing and licking the yellow glob like a lollipop. It looked sweet, she thought, but in it contained the seeds of death—germs that would spread and mutate, before it destroyed.

Janice’s hand cramped. She didn’t dare set it down. She noticed the rest of her body hadn’t moved either, stiff and still like the wood. She reminded herself that she’d already been inoculated—it held no threat to her.

Just throw the goddamn pen and go.

She had a train to catch, at least an hour’s walk, through hills of stone and huts. Her family waited for her in the tourist area of Calcutta, two-hours away. The trip was a cover for her real purpose. It was one of the perks of the job, to travel to places she’d always dreamed of going, places that she’d marked on a map with colored flags when just a girl— China, Sri Lanka, India—she was always fascinated with the Far East ever since she’d read the travels of Marco Polo. But when the little girl in her imagined seeing India, it wasn’t quite like this.

There was a reason Janice signed on to this. Research, knowledge—she would study the germ strands, find its weakness, help create a super-antidote. People would no longer be at risk. Money turned on all sides of the endeavor—the pharmaceutical company she worked for, the doctors needing to administer it, the stores selling it, the generic versions that would spin-off, body bags for the dead, funerals, coffins, newspapers that kept the world updated, flowers and tombstones, food for gatherings, the transportation delivering the antidote, the research SEPTEMBER 2020

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teams, doctors, journalists, aid workers, and the displaced people as they tried to beat the flow of the disease—money that kept her and her family clothed and fed.

It kept many fed.

She couldn’t forget this.

Someone had to start the wheel turning—her job was like the masked executioner, putting the head of the accused on the block, and hefting the axe to separate head from body—life from unlife. She was in company with all the other people pulling triggers—doing jobs that no one wanted to do, but needed to be done. It was part of an already established order. This was just how things were, she told herself.

Janice imagined the hands of those with jobs like hers, ordinary people who did unordinary things. She found them in articles, on the TV, in the street, through gossip—people that were more carnival-wonder than human… …Like the hands stuffing newly born male chicks into a shredder for fertilizer, someone had to do it—there was no moral dilemma—the hatcheries didn’t need male chicks, only females. The scraps turned into feed, to fertilizer—bought and sold people made money—families were fed. Or the hands that dropped the Bomb—it was a duty, an order, a condition to receive a paycheck, which kept poverty at bay. Hundreds of hands released bombs, or gas, or bullets. Hundreds of hands tortured other humans. Hundreds of hands gave the deathblow to cows and chickens.

Hundreds of hands cheated and bribed. Hundreds of hands caused others to suffer. It was a way of life, a behavior that made the world spin and function, without it there would be no order, no way to subsist. At the end of every trail of suffering, there was one person, like her, numb to its true implication, willing to betray the rest of humankind.

Without suffering, there would be no healing.

Janice toughened her resolve.

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Privation begets prosperity.

Without suffering there would be no churches or prayers, the gods and goddesses would be out of business, bankrupt without tears. People wouldn’t need to rely on each other, or come together with banners of hope. Without Suffering Inc. there would be islands of isolation, the hands of humanity unjoined.

Janice laughed at herself, seeing her average body take the shape of a female Atlas, the weight of the world burdening her mind and shoulders. She was giving herself too much credit. She was a speck in the scheme of terror, a loose stone on a hill, one vibrating ripple stirring the soon-to-come avalanche.

Janice had memorized the case file. Was instrumental in picking the location. There was nothing more to deliberate, and still, her hand clutched the pen as if it was the precipice of a cliff from which she hung.

The village was remote. Picked for being far out of the way.

Containment was key. This was a people that still shit and pissed in the woods. A people that sought the gods in the temple when a child was sick.

As a woman, if she’d been born in the village, Janice could expect marriage at thirteen, rape from her elders, servitude and beatings from her motherin-law—to her village she would be Untouchable, forced to erase her footsteps from the grid as she walked, eyes down, head always in shame.

Her education would be that of a third-grader, and unable to read or write her own name. She would be malnourished, as would her children that would come yearly; many would die from basic hygiene, others from starvation and some from disease. Janice reasoned that she wasn’t doing anything that wasn’t already part of the typical cycle.

But look at all the advantages.

The remoteness of the village would dissipate, as news spread across the globe. The attention that would follow, after the virus took hold, would bring doctors, health care, new infrastructure. She imagined the SEPTEMBER 2020

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money wheel, turning out new schools, toilets, a hospital. Soon there would be better farming, better food, a market for wares—women could grow independent, Touchable, and educated, even. Yes, she thought, to begin, many will suffer, but in time, a generation or two down the road, this singular action will grant betterment to them all.

Am I god, now? Did I answer the age-old question of why God allows suffering?

Or was she thinking too much into it. Maybe the pen was no different than Medea’s poisoned cloak to the queen or the smallpox blankets left for the Cherokee—cruel and without mercy. No, she thought, the pen would usher in change and change brought balance to the scales: some suffered; some prospered. She had a job to do, just like the cashier, or the lawyer trying a case, or the teacher giving a test.

Janice stood and shook out her legs. She put the journal in her bag, and took out her canteen, managing to open the plastic lid with her teeth, so as not to need the hand holding the pen. She glanced at her watch. If she left now, and hurried, she might still make the train. By night-fall, she’d be eating dinner with her family, listening to her two girls try to imitate the Bengali language. Each would be wearing silk dresses, like princesses in a novel. She would tell them of her day traveling, a story she’d make up on the train ride, about bears and lynxes and exotic birds, travelers and traders, of mountains made of marble lions, covered bridges where people walked two-by-two with buckets of water from the stream, of the fields of grain, the canopy of heavenly light, as if she was a modern-day Marco Polo.

Janice held the pen over the river. She listened to the buckling of the water against the bank. The sun heated her back. Her feet felt rooted to something primordial, ancient. The ground, she noticed, was worn and smoothed with the pounding of centuries of footsteps, of weary travelers who came to the river for renewal and survival. She recalled one story, from Marco Polo’s travels, the tale of Ahmad, who held influence over the SEPTEMBER 2020

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Great Kahn: It seemed, as was learned after his death, that this Ahmad used to bewitch the Emperor with his black arts to such purpose that he won a ready hearing and acceptance for everything he said; and so he was free to do whatever he chose. Whenever he wished to cause the death of anyone who he hated, whether justly or unjustly, he would go to the Emperor and say, “So-and-so deserves to die,” to which the Emperor would say, “Do as you think best.” … Everyone was afraid of going against Ahmad. In this way, he caused the death of many innocent people.

Janice recognized that she was like Ahmad, wielding her black arts however she chose, and like Ahmad, centuries ago, she would cause the deaths of many innocent people. Justly or unjustly. Past or present. The wheel turned—choices made.

Janice dropped the pen in the water. There was nothing ceremonial about it. She watched just for a moment, to make sure the current took it downstream. Already the yellow coloring leeched, dissolving. She rinsed her hands upstream. Sprayed a chemical on her clothes, shoes, hair, saturating her skin to ensure she didn’t carry anything out with her. She tore the written pages from the journal, ripped them into a pile, then burned them to ash with a single match. She stomped the embers until it looked like the rest of the flattened ground. She headed out, looking back, ensuring she left nothing behind. Protocol was followed.

She did her job and did it well.

On the train ride to Calcutta, Janice listened to the conversations of the English-speaking people around her. Occasionally, she’d pick up on the Bengali talk, although it was mostly irrelevant, neither held any news of importance.

By nightfall, she’d reunited with her family. Something in her made her all the more appreciative. She kissed her girls and then her husband, ignoring his surprised look, him saying, “What’s this for?”

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“Because I love you all so much,” she said.

They had made a plan to stay in Calcutta the next day, but Janice surprised them with tickets west toward Kashmir, to Pradesh, to see the Taj Mahal. She told them they’d spend two days, and then return to New Deli to get their plane ride home. Janice knew that they needed to get far away from the area, which would get crowded very soon. But there was time still. Time for everything to seem normal. She remembered a colleague telling her: “Just do the job and go back to life. It’s that easy. It’s what I call a real paid vacation.”

A week later from her home outside of London, Janice Flint got the first news alert about the Bharat Virus. She read with interest, looking for the verifiable symptoms: fever, yellow eyes and skin, red patches on the palms of the hand and feet. In more severe cases, she knew it would progress to swelling limbs, or in rare cases bleeding eyes, impaired breathing, and eventually death. The death toll was at three. Three lives.

One of her girls called from the other room. Janice found her still in bed, sick, hot to the touch. Panic filled her. She checked for yellowing, for red patches, for anything that would tell her that she’d endangered her own child, but there was nothing there. It was only the common flu. When she returned to work at the lab, she’d bring home an inoculation kit just to make sure. There was little to worry about, so far away.

For now.

Janice found another news alert waiting for her, and then another.

She read quickly, devouring the article in minutes, making a list of symptoms, and marking the map with colored flags for each location. A third news report came in; this one reported that the first child had died.

Four lives.

Four lives were taken.

She tried to consider it with a little more truth—four innocent lives died because of what I did. But it had little effect on her in London, far from SEPTEMBER 2020

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the origin, far away from the moving banks of the river. ***

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Discussion Questions 1. If you knew, for certain, that dropping the pen in the river would cause improvements to the community (and fewer future deaths) in the generations to come, would you have done it? Why or why not?

2. What, if anything, should be Janice’s punishment for dropping the pen in the river? Assuming the action does cause exactly four deaths, but also moves the community developmentally forward over generations, how should history books portray/describe Janice? Does the fact that she did the action without malice determine the way you view her, or the way she should be portrayed/punished?

3. Janice considered the good that would come from the tragedy she is creating; schools, infrastructure, jobs; is there ever a ratio (1/10 vs 1/100 vs 1/1000) of suffering vs benefits that would make the action worth taking? Is all intentional harm to others always to be avoided?

4. Is there an intellectual difference between those who cause harm to others vs those who profit by providing the tools known to be used to harm others? If so, what is the difference?

5. Is the biggest issue with the pen in the river the fact that the community didn’t choose to be made sick for later generational benefits? If that is the case, should community leaders refuse to make hard choices that cause short term pain for society, but create long term benefits? (For example, flooding a community to build a dam, or removing homes to build a road.) ***

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VERONICA LEIGH

Holy Night Veronica Leigh *** December 1943 Auschwitz-Birkenau Ida Kowalska cracked open her right eye and quickly surveying the vicinity, she deduced they had a few minutes before the kapo and guards summoned them to morning roll call. Opening her other eye, she crawled out of the lower bunk that she shared with three other women and made laps down the aisles of the barrack, in search of anyone or anything that might be useful to her existence. The morning moonglow cast a whitish sheen through the cracked, dirt smudged window and that helped, but she had trained herself to be able to “see” with her fingers. Groping about, the second her fingertips came in contact with something, she could “see” what it was, even if her eyes couldn’t. A piece of cloth, a sock, a button, a crust of stale bread – any and all of those things could make a difference between life and death in Birkenau.

Her spirits soared when she found a motionless heap in the middle of the floor, at the rear of the building. Instantly, she knew it was another prisoner. A dead prisoner. Before her incarceration, she never would have SEPTEMBER 2020

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rejoiced over another person’s demise. However, Birkenau changed everything. Her life was divided into two parts – before Birkenau, and after.

Ida crouched down beside the motionless body and rolling it over, she remained nonplussed at the horrified expression on the woman’s face.

Death and life held hands in the camp and to make it through another day, she no longer allowed it to affect her.

She jerked the woman’s cap off her head and put it down on her own, pulling the knitted material down to her ears. Then she pulled off the clogs and sat on them, until she could find a good place to hide the shoes.

She was in the middle of tugging the deceased’s sweater off when two other prisoners swooped in and began to claim what they could of the woman’s belongings. They had become like birds of prey – vultures, scavengers – their humanity faded days after their arrival in Auschwitz.

Ida glanced the other two prisoners. She didn’t know them by name, but one wore a black triangle on left breast of her prison garb, and the other woman wore two yellow triangles superimposed forming a star.

A black triangle signified an asocial person, but the barrack’s kapo had harassed this woman in the past for liking women. And a yellow triangle signified a Jew, which was worn by the majority of prisoners. Names no longer mattered – numbers were all that counted to the Germans. I am my death number. Ida pressed her palm to her own triangle, a green one which indicated she was a criminal. It had been ages since she heard her own name that she sometimes forgot what it was.

The one with the yellow triangles gasped loudly and dropping whatever was in her hands, scrambling back a few feet. “Oy!” The woman exclaimed.

“What is it?” The one with a black triangle asked, her head snapping up.

The Jewish woman’s mouth moved, but her words weren’t audible.

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Ida snatched it up and knew from the touch along that it was a small, compact book. A book in Birkenau. She opened it, the pliable cover easy in her hands and the thin pages whispered as she thumbed through them. She was suddenly brought back to her life before the camp. When she was a girl and she listened to her parents read from this book. And later, when she was in the convent, she studied from this book to become a nun.

“It’s a Bible.” Ida declared.

She knocked the clogs out of the way and sat back on her heels, stupefied by how a Bible ended up in hell. Her contemplations were cut short when the barrack door was wrenched open and the kapo stormed in, slamming her truncheon against the wooden bunks…and the prisoners.

It was time for morning roll call.

“Quick, hide it!” The one with the black triangle ordered.

Ida crammed it into her trouser pocket and scurried outside, following those who lined up in formation to be counted. Usually during roll call, her mind wandered back to more pleasant times. But now her thoughts were focused on the book laying against her thigh.

Where did it come from? Ida pondered. How was it smuggled past through all the inspections?

But where there was a will there was a way. After all, on her arrival in Auschwitz, she snuck in a crucifix. She slipped it between her lips, tucking it in her cheek, and she was able to conceal it through the stripping, tattooing, shaving, and showers.

She clung to the cross in those early days of her incarceration, but her faith fell by the wayside after a few weeks. Especially when it felt as though her hunger pangs would gnaw a hole in her stomach. The crucifix was traded for an extra portion of meat, which extended her life another day. For her, God ceased to exist in Birkenau.

But now that she had this Bible, she wondered if her faith was SEPTEMBER 2020

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being resurrected. At the very least, a small piece of her humanity had been returned to her. The Bible was words and words were life. Books enlightened the mind and the spirit, offered strength, and distracted the troubled soul. The Bible would give her something to think of, besides her present circumstances. *** After rollcall, Ida and the other prisoners were herded into an unheated building where she and many others sewed and mended for their German captors. This work was preferable to the manual labor other prisoners did and Ida was able to sit down. Unfortunately, she lost her thimble a few days ago, and she had to spend hours on end piercing and bloodying her fingertips until they were raw. The only breaks she received was midday and after evening roll call when her work detail received their rations and were allowed a few minutes to eat.

The Bible smacked against her thigh as she strode past, scanning the hordes of prisoners in search for the two ladies she encountered earlier that morning. The one with the black triangle and the one with the yellow star. But it was nearly impossible to differentiate from one prisoner to the other. Everyone looked alike: bald as a new born baby, hollowed out emotionless eyes, greying skin, bloated bellies from hunger. Some had sores – scabies - breakout on their bodies, from where the mites burrowed into their skin. Others lost teeth from malnutrition. Their grey and white striped garb hung on their emaciated frames and their clogs slapped against the red-clay pathways. The mire was so thick and strong that it tended to suck the clogs off their feet and to make it easier, they tried to find old footprints to step in rather than forging their own. It was called the “Auschwitz walk.”

Once upon a time they were all women – feminine and beautiful – but now they were shriveled skeletons. Herself included. But she ceased caring about such trivial things – not when food and water and survival SEPTEMBER 2020

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took precedence.

Her shrewd gaze landed on the ladies, not far from one another, nursing their cups of coffee. Wiggling her index finger, she motioned them to follow her. They did. The three huddled on a bench outside of their barrack, Ida planting herself in the center. “What are we going to do about it?” She asked directly.

“Do about what?” The one with the black triangle scrunched her round face into confusion.

“The Bible.” Ida reminded her, feeling a little exasperated. How could they have so easily forgotten? All day long, she couldn’t get her mind off of it.

“You still have it?” The Jewish woman took a drink of coffee from her tin cup. It wasn’t coffee in the sense that it was caffeinated or tasted good, but it was warm liquid and a combination of something else. “Burn it! In the stove in the barrack.”

“What?” Ida placed her hand on her pocket, where the Bible was still hidden.

“They will kill us if they find it and I don’t particularly want to die.”

The Jewish woman said.

Ida gulped. It ought to be easy enough for her to burn a book – even one as sacred as the Bible. She traded her crucifix for more rations, she gleaned the dead for their belongings, she had stolen and lied and did whatever she could to make it through another day. God was forgotten, her faith was broken, and she hadn’t prayed to Him in ages. The Scriptures shouldn’t matter anymore and burning the book in their small barrack’s stove might fuel enough warmth to prevent them from freezing to death.

But for whatever reason, she couldn’t bring herself do it.

“I can’t.” Ida shook her head and would have shed a few tears if she could. But like her faith, her tears dried up long ago. “I was a nun before all of this.”

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“Don’t look at me.” The one with the black triangle held up her hands in refusal.

“Fine, I’ll do it.” The Jewish woman scowled. “I no longer believe in God.” Ida glanced over her shoulder and when she was certain the guards weren’t looking; she extracted the Bible from her pocket and slipped it to the Jewish woman. Ida and the one with the black triangle trailed after the Jewish woman as the latter marched into the barrack and went directly to the stove.

Ida held her breath, watching the Jewish woman’s every movement, and exhaled when the woman paused and retreated from the stove.

The Jewish woman returned to them, glowering. “I should be able to do it, but I can’t.” She gritted what teeth she had left and shoved the Bible back at Ida. “It’s ridiculous.”

Ida didn’t know why, but she felt relieved to not be the only one unable to burn this Bible.

“Now what do we do?” The one with the black triangle’s shoulders fell. “Trade it?”

They might be able to get a few rations from trading the Bible and they would divide the food evenly, but again, Ida didn’t want to do that.

She didn’t want this Bible to be separated from her. As far as she knew, God was not in Auschwitz – He couldn’t be considering all the heinous things that occurred. God had turned His Back on Jesus when He was on the cross, and God had turned His Back on those in Auschwitz. But this Bible was as close as she could get to Him. “We could read it.” Ida suggested and could have sworn that both ladies visibly brightened at the thought of it. “My name is Ida Kowalska, by the way.” Her name sounded odd on her own tongue, especially when no one else used it. The guards summoned her by her numbered tattoo or by SEPTEMBER 2020

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a foul word. Never by her own name.

“Ruth Rosman.” The Jewish woman supplied.

“Helena Gutt.” The one with the black triangle answered and held out an open hand. “I want to read it aloud first.”

Ida handed it over without a second thought and followed them when they invited her to sleep in their bunk with them. She drifted off that night listening to Helena recite the 23rd Psalm and she clung to the verse that read, “He restoreth my soul…” *** Ida pressed in closer to Helena, peering over the woman’s shoulder, watching her move her finger under the words she read the tale of Esther aloud. Ruth was on the other side of Helena, either to also follow along or seek body warmth. Helena read aloud more than she or Ruth; her voice was stronger and rarely weakened on the long passages. They always gathered together after roll call and receiving their nightly rations, in their top bunk, and studied the Scriptures. Since they decided to keep the Bible, it had become a ritual for them. Other prisoners listened in, to whatever story, psalm, or proverb was being told. Religious beliefs were never discussed, nor were prayers offered up.

Those are things we can do on our own time. Ida figured, resting her chin on Helena’s shoulder.

She believed there was something miraculous about a Bible being in Birkenau…Or perhaps it was ironic. That a Bible could be in the midst of hell when God was not. But she also believed if it were any other book – be it a Shakespeare play, or volume of Mickiewicz, or even “Gone with the Wind” – the three of them would be pouring over it as religiously. There was something about holding a book, turning those thin pages, smelling its scent, and above all, hearing the words aloud, that planted seeds of hope.

There was a world outside of Auschwitz. “…who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a SEPTEMBER 2020

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time as this?” The verse no sooner left Helena’s lips than the door of the barrack crashed open.

Those familiar booted footfalls echoed throughout the building, striking terror into their souls.

Ida and Ruth scooted forward in the bunk, to block the view of Helena prying back a loose plank. She hid their Bible beneath the board and covered it up, then scattered bits of straw to conceal it. Then the three clamored off of the bunk and lined up with the others, standing at attention like soldiers.

A statuesque, slender, blonde woman, clad in an angora sweater, wool skirt, and a fur lined coat, marched before them. Her name was Emma Wagner, but in the camp, she was infamously known as the Bitch of Birkenau. In her time in Auschwitz, Ida had encountered her share of brutal guards and kapos, but no one could rival Emma Wagner in sadism. She took particular joy in the torture and misery of prisoners. Beatings, demeaning competitions, selections, shootings, guard dog attacks – one flick of her carefully manicured thumb and any of those punishments could be doled out. She never shed a tear or showed remorse for her actions, and she never would. Before Auschwitz, Ida believed there was a little good in everyone. But when she witnessed the Bitch of Birkenau mutilate a prisoner, slowly killing her by stabbing and cutting until the poor wretch bled out – Ida realized some people were born without souls.

Emma’s icy gaze swept over the prisoners, freezing them far worse than the painful blasts off the Tatra Mountains. “Where is it? I know it’s here. Your fellow prisoners betrayed you.” She withdrew a whip from her waist and snapped it against her open palm. “A Bible in hell! Well, I am God here.”

Ida swallowed and schooled her features. One wrong look, a noise, a slight movement could draw Emma’s attention and incriminate not only her, but Ruth and Helena. They never vowed their allegiance to each other, SEPTEMBER 2020

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but in their studies of the Scriptures, they had become friends.

“I know you have it.” Emma stamped her foot and shrilly screeched, “Give it to me!” Curling her lips, she bore her white teeth. Her snarls were worse than the dogs she had trained.

A prisoner from across the barrack let out a squawk and broke down sobbing.

The Bitch of Birkenau pivoted sharply on her heel and stalked over to the cowering prisoner. She backhanded the woman, and then sticking her index finger and thumb in her mouth, she whistled for her German Shepherd.

The dog tore through the room, frantic for its mistress and on hearing a snap of her fingers, the dog lunged for the prisoner. The woman wailed for mercy as the German Shepherd tore her limb from limb. The sound of flesh being ripped from its bones echoed in Ida’s ears and she knew she would never be able to put it out of her mind.

Ida closed her eyes, but no tears fell. Horrible as it was, she could only be relieved that she and Ruth and Helena had been spared.

When the dog was through and was licking the blood off its chops, Ida watched as Emma calmly bend over and scrounged through the remains of the prisoner. She withdrew a small book from the woman’s remains and held it up for the other prisoners to see.

“This is what happens when you try to deceive me!” Emma hissed.

Then the guard smiled demurely.

In another time and another place, Emma Wagner would have been called pretty and admired for her looks. The Bitch of Birkenau was consumed with darkness, but there would moments, when Emma would smile simply, toss her curls, or laugh, and Ida would forget how evil the woman was.

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true.

Emma departed, without a backward glance at the woman she murdered. Her dog, her faithful companion in all her evil actions, loyally followed her outside.

Only when Ida was convinced that Emma was gone for the night, she exhaled and wrung her hands. “I was sure she was going to kill us.” She whimpered and made the Sign of the Cross. Her faith might have been gone and one could take the girl out of the Catholic Church, but it was nearly impossible to take the Catholic Church out of the girl. “Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.”

Helena hugged herself and rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet. “We should have burnt the Bible when we found it. I’ll do it.” She turned and began to climb back up into the upper bunk.

“No!” Ruth grabbed fistfuls of Helena’s striped garb and jerked her down, shoving her aside. “No one is going to destroy that book.”

“What do you care?” Ida threw up her hands, feeling exasperated.

There was no understanding Ruth. In the beginning, she was the one who wanted to burn the Bible and now she wanted to save it. “You are an atheist.”

“So, what if I am?” Ruth shrugged. “Those monsters have taken everything from us, we can’t let them take this too.” Her eyes began to shine and Ida wondered if Ruth was about to cry. A flush crept bloomed across her generally greyish complexion, giving her color. “I’ll die before I give it up.”

Ida covered her mouth, feeling convicted by Ruth’s devotion. She ought to have been the one willing to lay her life down for the Bible.

Instead, she was prepared to forsake it altogether. She stole a glimpse at Helena and though she couldn’t read the woman’s thoughts, by the woman’s guilt-ridden expression, Ida deduced that Helena felt convicted as well.

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“They are going to kill us, you know. We will die here at some point.” Helena withdrew from the bunk and paced a bit before them. “But they can only kill us once and it may as well be for something worthwhile.”

She reasoned, facing Ida and Ruth once more.

Ruth and Helena turned to Ida, waiting for her response.

Holy Father, please forgive me for my doubts. Ida prayed. It was the first time she prayed in an age and she feared it fell on Deaf Ears. There was only one thing they could do.

“We are in agreement, then?” Ida glanced at one and then the other. “If the Bible goes, we go with it.”

Ruth and Helena nodded. The three climbed back into their bunks, eager for respite.

It was late and her thin frame throbbed with the customary exhaustion, but Ida couldn’t sleep and she found herself silently praying to God…truly praying to Him. She hoped He could hear her, on His throne outside of Auschwitz. *** Ida was late in joining her friends for their nightly Scripture reading. She had overheard two other prisoners talking about the upcoming holidays, and lingered nearby to eavesdrop. Since her arrival in Auschwitz, she rarely thought about the calendar, what date it was, or the holidays. Time did not exist in a place like Birkenau. But when she heard the words Chanukah and Christmas roll off their tongues and what days the holidays would be on, her heart skipped a beat.

This cannot be a coincidence. This means something. Ida pressed her palm to her to chest to calm herself and rushed to the barrack. She climbed up into the bunk she shared with Ruth and Helena and bowed her head in regret when they began to scold her.

“Where were you?” Ruth grabbed her by the shoulder and gave her a small shake. “We were worried.”

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“Did something happen?” Helena asked in a kinder tone, but her brow was also creased with concern.

Ida sighed and apologized. “I am sorry, ladies.”

It had been a long time since anyone cared about her, or since she had anyone to care about. Her parents and sister were living, last she heard, on their farm near Krakow. But they hadn’t any idea of her whereabouts. Like many others who rebelled against their Nazis occupiers, she was arrested and merely “disappeared.” Mother Superior and the children at the orphanage she worked at were her last true friends. Until now. Her father said that during the Great War, soldiers formed bonds stronger than blood. The bond she shared with Ruth and Helena was as strong, if not stronger.

“I heard others talking.” Ida slipped her hands into theirs and squeezed their thin, boney fingers. “Christmas, Chanukah, and the Jewish Sabbath coincide this year. Friday night will be a holy night.” She waited for them to partake in her enthusiasm, but she was left crestfallen when they didn’t.

“And?” Helena gave her a blank look.

“I think we should celebrate it.” Ida proposed.

“What is there to celebrate in hell?” Ruth snorted, shaking her head.

“They’ll kill us.” Helena reminded her.

Ida frowned and admitted reluctantly. “Probably.” She couldn’t put it into words why it was important to her to celebrate. Yet she felt it was something they were meant to do. The appearance of the Bible in Auschwitz, their meeting, the studying of the Scriptures…it couldn’t be a mistake. God might not be in Auschwitz, but maybe He was closer than they originally thought. “But we already vowed to die for the Bible.”

“You are a sweet girl.” Ruth reached over and patted Ida’s cheek.

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but she was hardly a child. “Listen, we are going to die here anyway. The only way out is through the chimneys.” From all of her observations, there was no other way to escape Auschwitz. One way or another, every prisoner died and met their fate in the chimneys. “If we are going to die, we may as well die on our own terms.”

“They can only kill us once.” Helena chimed in, echoing the sentiment she uttered a few days before.

The Nazis dangled the threat – or promise – of death over their heads. And in hopes of survival, she and everyone else complied. But the writing was on the wall. Even if the war ended someday and Auschwitz was liberated, Ida doubted she and her friends would live long enough to see it. They were going to die, that was all there was to it. So, they might as well find hope where they could, and if they couldn’t find it, they could create it.

“All right.” Ruth pinched the bridge of her nose and lifted her head, snickering. “But I will lead the celebration of Chanukah. After all, what do a couple of shiksas’ know about Chanukah?”

Ida joined in her laughter. It was her first real laugh in ages. “Point taken.”

She swapped a glance with Helena and could sense that hope was taking root inside of her too. *** 24th December, 1943 When Helena’s voice started growing hoarse from reading aloud the Nativity story, she passed the Bible to Ruth and took a seat next to Ida in their bunk. Ruth slid out of the bunk and stood in the center of the aisle.

Dozens of prisoners were gathered around, offering their full attention to whoever spoke.

Ruth smiled and hugged the Bible close to her abdomen, then in a clear and strong tone, she began the story of the Maccabees and the origins of Chanukah. According to Ruth, their Bible lacked the books of the SEPTEMBER 2020

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Maccabees and she had to recite the narrative from memory.

Ida hunched her shoulders and blew into her hands, then rubbed her palms together. The friction helped her numbed fingers. Christmas and Chanukah in Birkenau barely resembled what they should have been. Her knowledge of Chanukah was limited, but she knew it spanned eight nights and a candelabra was lit, there were feasts and songs. The best they could do was scrounge together eight measly candles and light them in a makeshift menorah. A dreidel was carved and a few were able to play it. Later they would sing. Capturing Christmas was difficult too. Traditionally, Christmas began on the first sighting of a star in the night sky, which was easily located when they were out at roll call. Straw was spread beneath a cloth on one of the bunks and food was laid out for their “feast.” A feast of rations that had been saved up for days. But there were no decorated trees, a Nativity scene, or presents.

However, none of that mattered.

Ida allowed her gaze to wander and survey the faces of those listening in. Some bore looks of hope, others’ expressions were vacant…But for a little while, they were able to cling to something and briefly take their minds off their current sufferings.

She closed her eyes and was able to feel a warm sensation, one that she hadn’t felt since she was last in Mass. It does feel like a Holy Night.

The Germans left them to their own devises for a few hours and would no doubt resume their torture tactics the next day, the 25th of December.

Christmas was the Nazis’ holiday; they would celebrate, exchange presents, erect a Christmas tree…But the 24th of December – Chanukah, Christmas Eve, and the Jewish Shabbat – belonged to the prisoners. And it would not be taken from them.

Ruth loosened her hold on the Bible and quirked her finger for Ida and Helena to come closer. They hopped down and leaned in to hear what she had to say.

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“I think we’ve made a mistake.” She murmured under her breath.

“What do you mean?” Helena asked.

“This Bible, we have kept it to ourselves and that isn’t fair.” Ruth explained, and gestured to the other prisoners. “The Bible is for everyone.

We should share it.”

Ida chewed on her lower, Scabies-cracked lip. She hated to part with the thing that brought them together and offered a measure of hope.

But Ruth was right; the others deserved to have the Bible too. Over the years, she had committed enough Scriptures to memory to be able to recite it.

Ida crossed herself, took the Bible from Ruth, and tore out the first couple chapters of the Gospel of St. Matthew. She handed the Bible over the Helena and then scanning the small crowd, her gaze landed on a prisoner with a vacant expression and gave the pages to her.

Within a few hours, the pages of the Bible had been dispersed throughout the barrack and a low hum of chatter filled the building. *** Ida stretched out in their bunk, sandwiching Ruth in the middle.

She crossed her arms under her head, substituting them for a pillow. Her lids were heavy, her belly was swollen, and she counted the rafters above her, waiting to fall asleep.

Ruth coughed. “I think 1946 is the next time Chanukah and Christmas coincide again.” She commented and then grabbed each of their hands. “Wherever we are, we must meet up again and celebrate.”

“Yes, it can be our special tradition.” Helena concurred.

Ida nodded and wondered where they would be in three years. She liked to believe the war would be over by then, Auschwitz would be liberated, and they would be free. But she was too cynical to hope too hard.

They might be dead by then. Her beliefs evolved since her imprisonment.

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going to hell or purgatory after she died. If she, Ruth, and Helena were dead

by December 1946, she believed with all of her heart that their souls would somehow find each other.

She sat up and looked at where Helena was lying. As much time as she spent with these ladies, she didn’t know their histories. Helena was Polish and asocial, and perhaps something else, and Ruth was Jewish.

Before Auschwitz, Ida would have judged Helena for her lifestyle, and Ruth for her heritage. But after Auschwitz, her past prejudices seemed foolish.

“Helena, how did you come to be here?” Ida asked gently, hoping she wasn’t prying into a painful subject. “I mean, what was your life like before Birkenau?”

“I was a journalist in Krakow.” The barracks were unlit and too dark to make out Helena’s face, but Ida remembered what she looked like and was able to envision what she might have looked like before her incarceration. “I had no family, so my work was my life. Nothing else mattered. I consider myself a spiritual person, but I left the Church in my university years. I met Wanda, my lover, on a trip in Paris.” Ida believed could picture Helena as a modern woman, stylish and serious, whose beautiful spirit came alive when she found love. “I never expected to fall in love, but I did. After the Nazi invasion, Wanda and I were able to keep our relationship private.” Emotion swelled her voice and she sniffed. “But somehow, someone figured it out and betrayed us. I don’t know who, I don’t want to know. Wanda and I were arrested and sent here as a punishment, and on our arrival, we were separated. Wanda was sent to work in the brothel – she killed herself by throwing herself against the barbed wires. And I am still here.” She clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle her sobs.

Silence filled the barrack, with the exception of Helena’s weeping.

Uncertain of how to offer the woman comfort, Ida patted her friend’s shoulder. Minutes later, Helena’s crying tapered off.

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“Ruth, what is your story?” Ida whispered to her other friend.

“I was the wife of a rabbi and a mother to two beautiful boys.

Ephraim and Lemuel.” An image flickered through her mind, of Ruth glowing, doting on her sons and husband. “They were my whole world – there was nothing outside of my family. We were blissfully happy; it was like a fairytale. When we went to the ghetto, my husband and I tried to find a hiding place for our boys, but we did not have much money. At least not enough to bribe someone to hide them.” The upper bunk groaned as Ruth shifted and sat upright. “So, we decided it was best stay together. My husband and sons were taken from me when we were brought here.

Ephraim and Lemuel were young – they went to the gas chambers and knowing my husband, he went with them.” Unlike Helena, Ruth cried no tears. In life there was often such a great sadness that tears could not express.

“Ida?” Helena rolled onto her side and poked Ida’s knee. “You said you were a nun?”

Ida closed her eyes and felt a stray tear trickle down her dirtsmudged cheeks. “From the time I was a girl, I knew God intended me to become a nun. When I was old enough, I took my vows and I was placed at a girl’s orphanage to work. We hid some Jewish girls and one day, the Germans came. They arrested us all and sent us here.” She wrapped her arms around herself, trembling as she relieved the memory of that fateful day. “Mother Superior went with the younger children sent left – the ones gassed – and I went with the older girls sent right. But the older girls, did not last very long. Maybe a few weeks.”

Life would never be the same after Birkenau. Even if the camp was liberated and they survived and were free, they would be forever marked by their time in Auschwitz. It would follow them to the end of their days.

“However long we are here, whatever happens, we must stay together.” Helena stated.

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“Absolutely.” Ruth claimed their hands once more and brought them to her rough lips to kiss. “We only have each other.”

“Amen.” Ida then remembered a passage from Scripture and said it aloud, “‘For whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.’”

Her vow to them was as sacred as the vows she took on pledging her life to the Lord. Maybe even more so. After all, she had ceased being a nun, but her devotion to Ruth and Helena would never end. *** Morning dawned early and Ida, Ruth, and Helena found themselves chased out of the barracks for roll call. They lined up with the others and with her neck craned back, Ida watched as reddish plumes of smoke billowed from the crematoriums, indicating that the Nazis didn’t stop the gassings and cremations even for Christmas. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed movement and looking in that direction, though it was in the distance, she could make out the Germans setting up their own Christmas tree. To her horror, they rolled the corpses of the dead beneath the tree, molding the bodies around it as if it were a tree skirt. Someone arrived with an accordion and played “Silent Night,” while the others guards belted out the words. She sniffed and could detect the scent of meat and bread nearby.

We still had our celebration. Ida reminded herself, straightening her shoulders. They can never take that away from us.

Roll call ended awhile later and as she and her friends began to depart for their work detail, they stopped in their tracks when Emma Wagner stood before them.

In unison, the three lowered their heads and they waited for her to speak, but Ida could feel the intensity of the Bitch of Birkenau’s icy glare.

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“You three, come with me!” Emma barked and snapped her fingers.

They meekly followed after the guard, not daring to utter a sound.

With Emma’s back turned, Ida ventured a glance at Ruth and Helena. They were whiter than usual – if that were even possible. But Ruth gave her a small, encouraging nod and there was a glimmer of hope in Helena’s expression that wasn’t there before.

This could be it. Ida sighed. On Christmas day, of all days.

Perhaps word had gotten back to the Germans about the Bible and the celebrations. The Nazis could not abide an ounce of hope in Auschwitz, and that is what she and Ruth and Helena did. They offered a little hope.

Or maybe this was a completely random selection. To the Germans they all looked alike – thin, bald, starving prisoners. Emma could be taking them to be gassed, or perhaps they were being moved to another work detail, or even another camp.

Who knows? Ida felt her eyes water and was grateful to God to be able to cry again. Wherever the Bitch of Birkenau was taking them, she, Ruth, and Helena would be together. She claimed their hands, lacing her fingers through theirs, finding courage in their presence. ***

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Discussion Questions 1. The characters are excited to find something that shouldn’t exist in a concentration camp, a book (a bible no less); why it is so important to them to keep this dangerous item? What does it represent to them?

2. What purpose, if any, does the book serve for the three prisoners?

Why is its symbolic importance? Why are they unable to burn it?

3. It is conceptually impossible to drive the last bit of individualism, rebellion, and/or humanity out of a person? Why or why not?

4. Is the single goal of being in a concentration camp (or any horrible situation) to survive? If that is the case, why keep a contraband object that puts you at risk?

5. If you were in their shoes, would you have traded the bible for a bit of food, thrown it away, kept it, or something else? Why did you make this choice? ***

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Performance A.M. Todd *** “Wait here,” the guard said as he shut the door behind him, leaving me by myself.

The floor inside the lab was polished and the air smelled of disinfectant, and yet the room felt unclean. Leaves shook on a tree outside the window, making shadows on the floor that shifted when the leaves did.

Branches brushed against the glass, but I heard no noise, not one sound from outside coming through the hard metal walls. I would’ve welcomed some noise to break the quiet. I would’ve welcomed anything to distract me on the night when I might sign my life away for two million dollars.

It felt as if I should do something to prepare myself but I didn’t know what. Taking a seat at the table, I noticed the cot and washroom in the corner. They hadn’t told me they wanted me to live out here. Perhaps I shouldn’t have come. It never turned out well when I took chances.

A buzz sounded from the front door. The lock was scanning someone’s eyes, as it had for the guard when he brought me in. The door opened and a well-dressed woman in her thirties strode towards me, her SEPTEMBER 2020

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heels clicking on the concrete.

“Alistair Briggs?” she said. “I’m Dr. Larson’s assistant, Jean.”

“Yeah, I’m him. I’m Alistair.” The awkward reply seemed to slip from my lips onto the table like an ugly worm, writhing between us. To calm myself, I fiddled with my watch and adjusted the strap. My fingers lingered on the plastic, scuffed from overuse. I wore the watch everywhere. It brought me luck. Back when I had a job, my male colleagues mocked me for wearing such a cheap plastic thing, but I didn’t care what those brutes thought.

Jean sat on a chair across from me and surveyed me with hard, distant eyes. “Thank you for agreeing to move to a secure location,” she said. “Our staff couldn’t tell you the full details of what your work will involve, not at your apartment. The information is too sensitive.”

“I haven’t agreed to sign anything yet.”

“Of course,” Jean said, nodding in the manner of someone who knew she was in total control. “We’re willing to pay a high fee for your help.

But you’ll understand shortly why you’re the only person who can do this job.”

I didn’t answer.

“Your task will be to work undercover for us and gather information about the Sixth Cartel, a group of organized criminals. But first, Dr. Larson will need you to do one thing for him.”

“What?”

“He’ll need you to be someone else.”

Jean pulled a flat, touch-screen device from her pocket. As she activated it with a retinal scan, we sat without speaking, the air of the lab hanging stale and stagnant around us. The room felt too hot. But at least it was small and contained.

“You’ll understand what I mean when you see the footage of the suspect,” Jean said. She folded one leg over the other, her neatly SEPTEMBER 2020

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manicured fingernails resting on one thigh. Jean was attractive. This situation was already stressful enough without that. I fiddled with my watch to calm my nerves.

She tapped the surface of her device, and three screens turned on in the metal walls behind her. The inside of an office building appeared from a different angle on each screen. Employees in cubicles worked their way through small, unremarkable tasks. At first, the scene looked drab and routine. But then a man leaned in to whisper a few words to a woman and she laughed, the sound anxious and stifled, as if laughter were a forbidden thing. When that laugh came out strangely like it did, I knew that something in that office felt wrong.

The elevator doors opened, and a tall man in a suit stepped out into the hallway. When I first caught sight of him in the distance, I thought he was me, but I dismissed that thought. I’d never been in that office--I knew that perfectly well. The man strode towards the cubicles. The fear that he was me came back again, growing more persistent as he approached the camera. He stopped beside an employee’s desk. His face was plainly visible now. There was no way to mistake what I saw.

I recoiled instinctively from the screens, stood up, and began pacing the lab, wiping sweat from my forehead. Behind the window the leaves shook, but still they were mute, no sound in the lab but my hurried footsteps. Jean paused the footage and waited for me to calm down, her face expressionless. The black holes of her pupils, rimmed with green and yellow flecks, watched me closely.

I pointed at the man on the screens. “What is this, then? Some kind of joke?”

“This is something very simple. It’s something biological. This man, Travis Findlay, is your twin.”

“No. I don’t have a brother.” But even as I denied it I realized it wasn’t impossible. I’d grown up in a foster home and never known my SEPTEMBER 2020

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parents.

“We can show you DNA proof if you need it. While we were investigating Findlay, we looked into his history and learned of your existence. That’s how we were able to track you down.”

Staring at Jean, I sat down again. She showed no reaction to my distress, her face emotionless.

“Findlay is part of the Sixth Cartel,” Jean said. “Your job for us will be to learn to imitate him perfectly--to speak like him, walk like him, gesture like him--and then infiltrate his criminal operation, disguised as him, to gather information from his conspirators about something they’re planning. If your performance is flawed, it’ll almost certainly raise red flags.

At that point, I don’t know what they’ll do to you. But if your performance is passable, you’ll be free and left with the sum we agreed on. We’ll wire the first million into your account when you sign the contract. The rest will follow when it’s over.”

“I’ll want to see proof of the wire transfer, if I do agree.”

“Of course.”

Jean tapped her device and the footage resumed. Findlay leaned on the desk of an employee and ran a hand over the dark stubble on his jaw. He looked like me, but he carried himself differently. His posture was tall and strong. He seemed to take up more space than I did; others shrank in his presence and made the space around him larger. The planes of his expensive suit were smooth and tailored like steel.

Findlay waited until the other man glanced up and acknowledged him.

“Boss,” the seated employee said.

“Listen,” Findlay said, “things are busy right now. I’ll need you to take care of my Simpson project tonight.” His voice was my own, but louder. Heavy with dark clout.

Findlay shifted his weight and leaned forward on the desk, one SEPTEMBER 2020

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hand on each corner. He rapped on the wood three times with his knuckles.

Tap, tap, tap. “Get started on it this afternoon.”

As Findlay walked away, he passed a young woman. He stopped and stood too close to her. “You look nice today,” he said. “You wear that for me?”

She said nothing and kept walking, eyes on the floor. But after she passed out of his sight, I saw her look anxiously at herself in the mirror, unsteady fingers fastening up the top button of her blouse. A minute later when Findlay walked by again, she avoided him, ducking into the women’s washroom before he passed.

“I--I don’t think I can do this,” I said, repelled by the course, aggressive behavior of my twin. “It would be too unnatural for me. We’re two different kinds of men.”

“Dr. Larson will teach you. I’m only his assistant. You’ll live in the lab and do your training here. It’ll take some time, but he believes you can do it. You’ll learn by rote--repetition, repetition, repetition.”

“I can’t do it. His conspirators, they’ll know I’m not him.”

“Your conditioning will be assisted by the performance shell, a piece of experimental technology.”

“Experimental technology?”

The faint lines around Jean’s eyes sharpened--the start of some expression, which she quickly stifled. Jean struck me as a person who, in her spare time, entertained herself by cutting the wings off insects and watching them for a while, just to see what they would do. In Jean, the well of empathy appeared to have run dry; nothing inside her reached out towards others.

“I’ll leave you for the night now,” she said, “so you can think it over.

I’ll mute the video but leave the images playing, so you can start getting used to Findlay. Observe him carefully.”

I stayed awake all night, lying on the small cot in the corner. Earlier SEPTEMBER 2020

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that night, when Dr. Larson’s staff had showed up at my door and offered me two million to sign the contract, my eviction date had been two weeks away. Either I came here, or I lived on the street. But to get the money, I’d have to survive this first. I almost never tried new things. New things could be dangerous. Normally I stayed inside, leaving only to use the free Internet at public libraries to look for jobs. At home, I sat and watched from a distance as the crowds milled on the street below. I hated those crowds.

I socialized only with one or two friends whom I trusted, sympathetic minds who could exchange thoughts with me about the world and its failings.

Night fell and filled the lab with darkness. Only the screens lit the room, three copies of Findlay still striding through his office. I felt cold when I watched him. It was like watching my body move around without me inside of it. Those strange postures of bravado and intimidation. As the clips looped on repeat, I watched him address the same female employee over and over, watched her fasten up the top button her blouse.

He repulsed me. I’d never behaved that way with Courtney, not once. When she was sleeping, I lay completely still, almost afraid to move, like she might break if I did. I remembered my uncertainty when things started with her. She’d had to teach me everything. Even after a month I still found it hard to look her in the eye. And every so often I woke up in the night and panicked when I saw her lying there, so still and statue-like that she appeared to have stopped breathing, as if she’d never been real at all but was a portrait or a photograph.

“I’m not made of glass,” she said once when she woke up and saw me staring at her. She said that more and more, in the months before she left.

Slowly, while I lay awake watching Findlay, I began to reconcile myself to his existence. As the morning dawned, I realized that while he and I had a body in common, there was more to me than my external shell, things inside that ran much deeper than that. Impersonating my repulsive SEPTEMBER 2020

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twin would be nothing but a temporary performance. Then it would be over. Actors put on performances their whole lives. I would only need to alter my words and actions, and words and actions were not me. The gathering light of the morning seemed to enforce that knowledge and make it definite. And I needed the money. I had no other option.

As the light came back, so did the shadows on the floor, branches trembling outside my window. Sometimes when the shadows held still for a moment they resembled lines of text, but they were cyphers, never legible. Outside, a profusion of green life waved in the wind, growing, shaking, and changing, but it remained separate from my room. The window marked a divide between two worlds. *** The signing of the contract was cold and unremarkable. Jean arrived in the morning, I told her my answer, she showed me proof of the money they’d transferred and handed me a tablet with the agreement. I swiped my fingerprint and the tablet was whisked away, my life packed up into a case, slipped inside a bag, and carried out the door.

Soon after, the door opened to admit a middle-aged man with a briefcase in hand. “I’m Dr. Larson,” he said. “Let’s get started.”

Dr. Larson’s figure was defined by sharp lines and angles: white pinstripes on his navy suit, diagonal blue slashes on his tie, a clean-shaven jaw carving the outline of his face. His neck was too thick for his frame. As he walked by, the muscles in his face remained slack and inert, as if no feeling could bend that face into the shape of an expression. No feeling seemed able to penetrate the metal walls of this lab. When could I leave this place?

Dr. Larson settled himself at the table while I stood in the middle of the room. As his deep-set eyes scanned me up and down, his eyebrows raised slightly in surprise. The expression looked misplaced on a face that seemed otherwise meant for no feeling. That look of astonishment, I would SEPTEMBER 2020

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soon learn, appeared often when he saw me. No matter how many times we met, he remained perpetually surprised and disappointed in me.

He ordered me to stand in the empty space in the center of the room. Bright floodlights shone down from the ceiling. A familiar clip appeared on the screens and began to loop on repeat: Findlay, walking down the office hallway.

“Do as he does,” Dr. Larson said.

I ventured a few tentative steps.

“Cut!” Dumbfounded, I stood still. “What?”

Dr. Larson’s face was set in its expressionless mask. “You’ll learn quickly that I’m going to talk to you frankly throughout this process. I can tell we’re going to have a tough go at this. They told me I had my man for the job, then I get here and I’ve got this--hardly a man at all. Look at that posture.”

“Sorry--” “Stop apologizing. That’s the first thing you’ll need to change. Now go.”

I forced myself to study the way Findlay moved: the shoulders, the position of the chest. I straightened my neck and back; the posture felt gigantic and foreign, even painful. I began again.

“Terrible.” The clip started over. “Repeat it!”

I tried again.

“Repeat it!”

The video looped and looped. I walked and walked.

“Jesus Christ,” Dr. Larson said. “We’ll have to go to the tech right away. Take off your clothes.”

While I obeyed his instructions, he pulled a box out of his briefcase and placed it on the table with a metallic clank. Made of gray steel, the box had scuff marks near the bottom, a dent on the lid, and a single latch on SEPTEMBER 2020

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the side. My pulse quickened. For some reason, I didn’t want him to open that box.

“A while ago,” Dr. Larson said, “we embedded Findlay’s office with thousands of micro-sensors to collect data on his movements. Then that data was programmed into this performance shell. It’ll move your body for you. Even your vocal cords. If you repeat the behaviors enough, they’ll become natural to you. Eventually you won’t need the shell.”

“Will that really work?”

Dr. Larson sighed. “The behavioral patterns will change you. If you alter your posture, your body will release more testosterone. Your chemistry will change. Ready?”

I forced myself to say, “Yes.” He opened the latch and pulled up the lid of the box. A horde of miniscule pieces of metal rose up into the air and floated in a black cloud made of thousands of airborne micro-parts, each moving of its own accord.

The cloud seethed and expanded, then raced to swarm me. Within seconds the metal pieces found every inch of my skin and attached themselves like leeches.

I stared at my hands, completely coated with steel. Organic motion rippled under the metal as my fingers flexed. “It feels so unnatural,” I said.

Dr. Larson folded his arms across his broad chest. “This is all perfectly natural.”

I remained standing stupidly in the empty space with the lights beaming down. Dr. Larson restarted the video. My shell jerked into motion in time with Findlay. The movements were choppy, erratic gestures straining against me as my muscles fought to regain control of my body.

My heartbeat hammered as I tried desperately to resist the movements. I did not want them. I did not want those movements.

“Relax your muscles!” Dr. Larson shouted.

Slowly, my muscles began to weaken from the effort of resistance.

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The performance shell took over, and I walked. I walked into an imaginary office with my shoulders back and head tall. I leaned on a desk, threw my weight around, rapped my knuckles on the wood.

“Listen,” I said, “things are busy right now.”

The perverse satisfaction my double obtained from talking down to his employee; I could feel it in the movements, in the weight shift and forward lean and hand on each corner of the desk. Disgust overwhelmed me. If this was the man I would put in jail through this mission, then this was a mission I wanted to be part of, even if he was my brother.

“Listen. Things are busy right now.”

“Listen.”

“Listen.”

“Listen.”

“Listen.”

My voice, heavy with dark clout. The weight shift and forward lean and hand on each corner of the desk. Tap tap tap. My knuckles on the wood.

“Cut!” “Listen.”

“Repeat it!”

Days went by. In time, I forgot I was wearing the shell. The motions became familiar. My muscles seemed to meld with the metal, to move in time with the mechanical steps. I made progress. I repeated Findlay’s actions in countless situations. Leaning back in a chair with one elbow on the backrest. Ordering the assistant to get coffee. Telling jokes and slapping male colleagues on the back. In the afternoons, I studied the faces of Findlay’s fellow criminals and memorized their names. I learned more about the Sixth Cartel: the language they used, the slang, where they drank, what they wore. They often joked about the women around them, mocking the way they sounded when they spoke with authority or with SEPTEMBER 2020

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“too much confidence.” I would never speak of Courtney that way. She was as perfect as an art piece, still and silent like a painting I could hang on my wall. I longed for the training to be over so I could escape all this.

I was permitted walks in the forest outside the lab, but I couldn’t go far and a guard chaperoned me every time. On the long nights I spent in the cot, snatches of my past life rolled through my mind: the rows of bunk beds in my foster home, lying beside Courtney, the night I lost my job.

If only I could escape this torment and go back to the past, to the days before Courtney left. If she had stayed with me I could’ve kept watch on her, kept her close, preserved her perfection, and protected her from scum like my brother. But during the day when I wore the shell, my past faded from my mind, faint shreds of memory just out of reach. At night I clung compulsively to the watch Courtney had given me, but during the day I had to take it off. It was terrible the first time I removed it. It brought me luck.

I spoke only with Dr. Larson, and Jean when she came to bring food or check on me. Every other moment I spent alone.

“Can I go into town?” I asked Jean on one of her visits.

“It would be dangerous if you were seen, Alistair.”

Bitch, I thought. A few seconds later, that thought surprised me.

“I think I need some company,” I told her. “I’m isolated.”

Jean said nothing and glanced at the table. It was covered with food that I’d barely touched. Lately I just didn’t feel like eating.

The next day Dr. Larson showed up with a miniature tree in a pot.

“It’s from Jean,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t have time for this kind of sentimental bullshit, but she insisted.”

It was a money tree. About one foot tall, the braided trunk was topped by a delicate fan of leaves. I set it up next to the window on one of the chairs and tended to it constantly. Maybe too much. As the days crawled by, the tree became everything to me. It was the green that made it stand out, the green leaves and green shadows they cast on the floor, SEPTEMBER 2020

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the only color in the darkness of the lab. In time, I came to believe that if the tree died, some terrible change would follow, though I didn’t know what.

“Listen.”

“Listen.”

“Listen.”

Soon I began practicing without the shell. It was difficult at first. Dr. Larson sighed the morning when I first tried to rehearse without it.

“Terrible, Briggs,” he said. “What have you been doing with yourself this past month?”

“Just working my ass off for you and Jean with fuck all to show for it.”

Dr. Larson’s eyes widened.

When I stared back at him my spine felt straighter than it used to be, my chest a bit broader. The posture filled me with strength. At the time, I didn’t think much about what I’d said. But hours later, as I lay awake that night, I remembered what happened and shook with the strangeness of it, shook with the strangeness of everything. When would the training end? I wanted to return to my life before the conditioning, to a life spent in the shadows, avoiding all attention.

Only weak, second-hand light filtered through the green gauze of leaves outside my window, and barely any light reached my money tree.

Dead leaves fell from its branches, dry and curled like fingers. When I saw the first leaf die, I rushed to the washroom, filled up a cup of water and drenched the soil with it. But nothing helped. The tree needed more natural light. Leaves fell daily as it struggled to cling to life.

And then there was the day when I figured out how to remove the glass from the window, climbed outside and wandered into the forest for hours, directionless. I stopped to rest beneath the drooping vines of a willow tree. In the blue gaps between the leaves, the sky was vast and SEPTEMBER 2020

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streaked with long clouds drifting slowly. I strained to find patterns in the shifting leaves--somehow it seemed there might be patterns there, lying just below the surface of the greenery--but the branches were too dense and in constant motion, criss-crossing and changing. The patterns eluded me, illegible like the cyphers in the shadows on the floor of the lab. I wandered further through the woods without turning around, wandered through the willow trees in the morning light that became the afternoon sun. Eventually I made my way back to the lab and replaced the glass, but when I woke up the next morning, steel bars had been installed outside my window.

After that, Jean started coming by more often to keep me company and check on me. I think she’d started to worry about me. She asked questions about how I felt, what I thought about. I laughed at that. Laughed at her fake concern, laughed at her small clean fingernails, laughed at the money tree wilting by the window. Jean was a poor actor. All this imitation-it was nothing.

The lab was a perfect square. I measured it one day with my feet, one step at a time.

“Listen.”

My voice, heavy with dark clout. The weight shift and forward lean and hand on each corner of the desk.

“You look nice today,” I said. “You wear that for me?”

“What did you say?” Jean asked, her clear oval eyes watching me intently. It was night, and Jean and I were sitting side-by-side at the table.

“I said did you wear that for me?”

“We’re not doing conditioning right now,” she said, fiddling with her things on the table. “We stopped hours ago. I need you to be able to distinguish between when we’re doing the conditioning and when we aren’t.”

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when she lay there still as a portrait. But Jean’s body appeared less distant, as if the portrait had been painted at closer range.

“Listen,” I said, “let’s quit messing around. We both know you were assigned to this mission as a way to manipulate me because I’d find you attractive. You’re here for me. So why aren’t we sleeping together yet?”

Yes, Jean was here for me. That much was clear to me now. It had become a little bit clearer every day I did the conditioning.

Jean stood up and disappeared into the dark space in the middle of the lab, the makeshift stage on which I performed every day. The door scraped open and shut.

When she was gone I thought about the day Courtney left. I’d watched her exit the building through my window, the figure of a man with sunglasses helping her haul her suitcase into the trunk of a car eight stories down, and my last sight of her a flash of red hair disappearing behind a car door. I used to think I’d played a part in driving her away. Maybe I’d made her into a kind of idol. But when I thought about Courtney now, I realized my mistake. I’d given her too much care and attention to be treated the way I was. She owed me more than that. Damn her.

That night the last leaves fell from the money tree. Nothing green could survive in here. There wasn’t enough sunlight.

After I said those things to Jean, Dr. Larson started watching me more closely when he came to do the conditioning, his small round eyes fixed on me throughout the day. I kept quiet when he was around, apologizing often and feigning meekness and timidity. But that was only an act.

When Dr. Larson arrived one morning he said, “You’re looking like just a bit less of a loser, Briggs. Better posture. More confidence. A better man.”

I nodded and took the stage, ready to practice without the shell.

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with fast and fluid motions until there were four of us, four identical men marching in unison.

Three men on screens marched over to a desk, and I marched with them, approaching Dr. Larson’s table. Tap tap tap. Four knuckles on four desks. But then a change, a rupture from the unity when one of the figures pulled his arm back and smashed his fist into a man’s face.

Dr. Larson stared at me, his eyes wide and blood dripping from his nose. Before he could react I shoved him to the floor. I acted without thought, moved as a machine would, months of training operating beyond conscious direction. When I kneeled over him my dimensions felt magnified a thousand-fold. I smashed him twice in the face with my fist.

I dragged his unconscious body to the door, hauled him upright, and pulled open his eyelid to activate the retinal scan. Dumping him just inside, I quickly made my exit. The head office may have seen what happened if they were keeping an eye on the surveillance footage, but it would take them a while to respond. Long enough for me to get a running start through the forest. The nearest town was only a mile away. With luck, I’d be able to get there, access the million they’d already transferred to my account, and disappear.

Their mission was a fool’s errand. As the conditioning progressed, my view of my situation had changed. I’d decided to take matters into my own hands. The Sixth Cartel was brutal. The chances of me getting out of the mission alive were too slim. Jean and Dr. Larson knew it, too, but I think they hoped I’d at least be able to gather a bit of useful footage with the micro-camera I’d have on me, before Findlay’s conspirators found me out.

If I managed to escape, who knew what I would do next, where I would go? The world was open. Maybe I’d find Courtney and leave that man I saw through the window lying on the ground like Dr. Larson. I was free now, free of those leaves that shook behind the glass, free of the dead skeleton of the money tree on the window sill, free of those words and SEPTEMBER 2020

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actions I repeated until they faded into little nothings. I barely remembered my life before I started the conditioning, the man I used to be. The conditioning was complete. I no longer needed the mechanical shell. I’d shed it like snakeskin, and I was flesh again.

I ran as quickly as I could, vanishing into the living, shaking green of the forest. ***

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Discussion Questions 1. Are we, as the story suggests, a product of our repeated physical habits? Is a person who repeatedly acts confident, likely to become confident? Is a person who repeats misogynistic phrases, likely to become misogynistic?

2. Do you believe you can, through repeated physical habits, hard-wire yourself internal mind to be someone different? (More confident, more respectful, more whatever‌) What, if anything, would you like to change about yourself that could be done by simply changing your repeated actions?

3. Doesn’t the fact that the two men are identical twins in the story mean that all of the differences in their personality are related to their environment, not their genetics? To what degree do you agree with this part of the story?

4. Does the repeated hard wiring process only apply to what the person does, or does it also apply to what the person hears among their friends, family, and coworkers?

5. To what degree did you believe the concept of the story, that repeated physical and speech changes can rewire who you are internally as a person? Do you think the main character will eventually return to his normal self? ***

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Sacrificing Mercy Henry McFarland *** Inwardly I raged against Jenny’s religion, her God, and yes against her. She had a chance at life, at health, how could she refuse it? Damn the religion that told her to destroy our hope! But showing my rage would make it harder to persuade her. Besides, it was time to help her into bed.

The doctor’s visit had exhausted Jenny, and she quickly dropped off to sleep. She looked as peaceful as a saint in a stained-glass window, and as fragile.

On a spring day ten years ago, a petite young woman with a pixie haircut pushed a shopping cart piled high with groceries across our college campus. Some cans fell from the top of the pile. I picked them up and offered to help push the cart. Jenny’s bright blue eyes widened in a smile that lit up the world.

Jenny led me to the food pantry at a local church, where an obese woman with a loud cough sat on the stoop and puffed on a cigarette. Jenny sat next to the woman and said in a cheery voice, “Good morning Mrs. Simpson, I hope you feel better. Come on inside, we’ve got tomato soup— SEPTEMBER 2020

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your favorite.”

Mrs. Simpson might have been better off if she used the money she spent on cigarettes to buy her own soup. Still something in Jenny’s kindness to her touched me. Because of that, and to spend time with Jenny, I began to help in the food pantry—just one day a week. Soon my life revolved around Jenny. We married the week after graduation and settled down for a blissful four years of health.

Then came four years of sickness. Cardiomyopathy attacked her heart and began a deterioration that doctors could slow but never stop. I did what I could for her, including learning how to draw her blood for the tests that never found any hope. Nothing stopped the disease. Every halting step she took, every moan she made, every tear she shed reminded me of how helpless I was.

Only a new heart could save her, but the chance of that was slim.

People who needed hearts far outnumbered the donors. The hospital put her on a waiting list, but she’d likely die waiting.

My one source of hope was a daily search of the Internet for information on possible new treatments. Three years ago, there was something promising. I told Jenny about it as I drew her blood. “They just started trials on a way to grow a new heart.”

“So that’s why you looked so intense, like you wanted to jump inside your computer. How could they do that?”

“With stem cells from embryos that are clones of the patient.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Cloning’s unnatural.”

Nature wasn’t helping us much. “It’s a way to get a new heart without waiting for a donor.” I swabbed a spot on her arm with alcohol.

Her flesh had once had a rosy glow—now it was almost blue. “You’ll just feel a little pinch now.”

“You’re always so gentle. Mike, what happens to the baby?”

“Baby?”

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Her eyes got narrower, her forehead wrinkled. “The embryo, what happens to her?”

“Don’t know. Maybe they won’t have to use an embryo.”

As the disease progressed, Jenny’s life seemed to shrink. One by one she had to give up the activities she loved. Her worst moment was when the doctor said that she could no longer teach. She wept on our way home after that appointment, and her hands clutched the cross she wore around her neck. At home, we embraced on the sofa, and she poured out her sorrow and frustration.

“I feel so useless.”

“Jenny, no, you still mean the world to me.”

“I can’t work, I can’t help around the house, I can’t even be a wife to you anymore.”

I was all too aware of that last loss, but I didn’t want that to show.

“You’re the woman I love, and don’t you ever forget it. You aren’t useless.”

Jenny hugged me tighter. “I love you too, Mike. I must have faith.

God has a reason for all this.”

I didn’t say anything about God’s reasons. Soon after we’d started dating, Jenny gave me her big open smile and asked me to go to church with her that Sunday. At Calvary Evangelical, the congregation gathered in a large undistinguished space with a high ceiling, like the waiting room in a train station but with an altar and pews. Nothing hung on the walls but a large cross. During the service, she stared at the altar with a wide-eyed fascination. I was mildly interested, or maybe less than mildly. Luckily it only took an hour.

As we left, Jenny gave a little laugh. “At least you didn’t fall asleep.

That’s a start.”

Time to be positive. “I liked the choir.”

She hugged me. “You’re a good person, Mike. Keep coming to church. You’ll get it.”

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I didn’t get it. Jenny wanted me to go to church, so I did, but with no real conviction. For hope I looked to research, not to heaven. *** Now research could save us. The trials were over, and the method worked. Dozens of patients had gotten newly grown hearts. Jenny had a chance, and I brought her to Dr. Yifang Phang to take that chance.

The doctor explained the procedure. “All we need now are some cells from your body—a blood sample will do fine. We can use that to start the cloning.”

Jenny’s voice was weak but clear. “What happens to the baby?”

Dr. Phang took a deep breath. “You mean the blastocyst? It would not be viable after the stem cells were extracted.”

“So you’d kill her.”

Dr. Phang sounded as if she were reading a script. “Some would feel that way. Others would question whether a blastocyst, that’s what I prefer to call an embryo at such an early stage, would really be a baby.”

Jenny leaned forward. Her eyes were fixed on Phang. “Whatever you call the embryo, it’s a human life at its earliest stage, when it’s most helpless, most vulnerable.”

“Not all share your point of view. Also the process here is not similar to the typical process that results in the birth of a baby. The blastocyst would be formed by somatic nuclear cell transfer, not the union of a sperm and egg.”

Jenny paused for a moment. “Is there any other way to get the stem cells?”

Phang shook her head. “Not for this procedure. It requires embryonic stem cells because of their greater pluripotency, their ability to become other types of cells. In a few years, we may be able to use other types of stem cells. But Mrs. Thompson, you don’t have that time. Without a new heart, you won’t live more than a few months.”

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Jenny sighed. “Could we do something else instead?”

“This new procedure is the only way to get a heart. There’s no real chance of an old-fashioned transplant with a donor heart. Now that we’ve developed this new technology, getting donor organs has gone from hard to almost impossible. No one thinks of donating organs when new organs can be grown instead. Besides insurance wouldn’t cover it.”

That surprised me. We hadn’t had an insurance problem before.

“Why not?”

Phang gave me a sympathetic look. “Because the heart wouldn’t have the recipient’s own genetic make-up, the patient would need lifetime treatment with anti-rejection drugs. Those drugs are very expensive and often have serious side effects. Because it’s so much more expensive than using an organ cloned from the patient, the insurance companies won’t pay. The cost is well over two million, not including the anti-rejection drugs post-transplant.”

That we could never afford.

“Doctor, I can’t have this procedure.” Jenny sounded so calm.

I reached over and touched her hand. “Jenny, this could save you.”

She turned to me. “I’m sorry, Mike. But this procedure is wrong. I can’t do it. I don’t fear my death.”

I feared her death! Without her I’d be alone. I felt nauseous. We’d been on a long journey, and with the destination finally in sight, she refused to move. Phang was the specialist. Couldn’t she say something to change Jenny’s mind?

Phang’s voice showed no emotion. “Then all I can do is continue palliative care. You should sign a living will. Also, you’ll need a medical power of attorney. You’re likely to go into a coma before you die, and you should designate someone to make decisions for you during that time.”

She gave us the paperwork, and Jenny left the office with me trailing behind.

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The next night Jenny, her breathing slow and labored, lay in bed. I sat next to her and took her hands in mine. “Please Darling, have the procedure. I need you, to have you near me, to hold you.”

Jenny sounded regretful but adamant. “Mike, I love you so much.

Please try to understand. The procedure goes against my beliefs.”

“If you have this procedure, you can have your life back. You can teach again. Once you told me that poor people shouldn’t be denied medical care. How can you deny yourself medical care?”

Jenny began to cry a little. “Mike, I don’t want to die. But do you remember in my second year of teaching when that little boy, Bryan, died of cancer?”

“You cried all night.”

“I did, but that taught me that yes, bad things happen, and we don’t know why God lets them happen or what his plan is. But we always have God’s loving presence in our lives, and that presence gives our lives meaning. To find that meaning, we must follow God’s laws. There’s no true hope in going against those laws.”

I stroked her hand as she dropped off to sleep. Jenny had spoken from an inner strength. Perhaps I should have admired that. I couldn’t. *** Jenny’s mom came over a couple of days later. Esther Davis was a quiet, diminutive woman in her early 50s. We weren’t close, but we got along. Jenny told her mother everything, so Esther knew about her daughter’s refusal and its consequences. Esther was as religious as Jenny.

What side would she be on?

The three of us sat on the sofa with Jenny in the middle. Esther shook her head no to my offer of tea or soda. She fixed her eyes on her daughter. “Jenny, I’ve been thinking about the procedure and praying about it, and I believe you should have it.”

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talked to the pastor about it. I can’t do it.”

“Jenny, Jesus says, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ You’re only 29— if you don’t have this procedure, there’s no other hope.”

Jenny reached over and touched her mother’s hand. “There is, there’s always hope in God.” “Please Jenny,” Esther pleaded, “Jesus wouldn’t want my baby to die.”

“Jesus teaches us that sometimes we must suffer for our faith. The early martyrs knew that.”

“What about Mike? You’ll be leaving him all alone.”

Jenny kept looking at her mother, not at me. “I know it’s hard on Mike. I know, but. . .”

Esther began to sob. “You don’t know how hard. You don’t know how hard it is to lose the one you married. I’d have done anything to save your father.”

Jenny sounded sympathetic but unmoved. “Jesus comforted you when Dad died. Jesus will comfort Mike too.”

I kept silent, not saying the comfort I wanted was health for Jenny.

Esther moved closer to her daughter and put her arms around her.

“Jenny, you’re my only child, please promise that you’ll continue to think about the procedure and pray about it. I love you, and God loves you too.

He wants you to live.”

Jenny hesitated. “I’ll still pray about it. But I have to follow the Lord.” She bowed her head for a moment. “I have to rest now Mom.” Jenny watched through the window as Esther’s lonely stooped figure walked to her car. Then she sighed and went up to bed.

The next evening, Jenny sat next to me on the sofa and took my hand in hers. “Mike, I have to give someone a medical power of attorney.

It has to be someone who’ll respect my wishes.” She stared up at me with big eyes the pale blue of the early morning sky. “Can I trust you to do that?”

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We were preparing for when she would slip away from me and into a coma.

Jenny went on talking. “At first, I planned to ask Mom to do it, but it might be too hard for her. Can you make sure only good things are done?”

I looked her in the eyes. “Yes. Yes I can, and I will.” I embraced her and rubbed my hands over her back. I hoped I’d find the courage for what I knew I had to do. *** Dr. Phang and I met in her office, where nothing hung on the walls but her medical degree. She leaned back in her chair. “Mike, growing a new heart takes time. If we’re going to do it, we have to start now.”

“Jenny’s still against it.”

Her voice softened. “I’d been hoping that she’d change her mind.

But if she won’t, we’ll have to talk about end of life care.”

“Suppose you developed a heart from someone else’s cells, that would solve the problem of not having a donor heart, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, but the patient would still need anti-rejection drugs, so insurance wouldn’t cover it.”

I already knew that. “Just growing the heart itself isn’t too costly, is it?”

“That alone no, but what’s the point of doing that if you can’t use the heart?”

“How much would it cost for everything up to the operation?”

She gave me a why do you want to know that look. “First there’d be the compatibility tests on the DNA, those are about $5,000. Then there’d be the growth of the blastocyst, the harvesting of the stem cells, and the growth of the heart. That would be about $25,000.”

“Could you postpone the compatibility tests until after the heart is grown? If I can’t use it, I don’t want to pay for more than necessary.”

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She hesitated for a moment. “Yes, we could do that. The tests don’t take long, and they don’t have to be done until just before the operation.”

I drew a small vial of blood from my pocket and put it on the desk in front of her. “This is my blood. My wife won’t agree to using her cells in cloning, but you can use mine. Grow a new heart from my cells.”

“Wouldn’t your wife still object—it would involve embryonic stem cells?”

“Maybe she’ll change her mind. You make sure that if she does, there’s a heart for her.”

“What about the cost of the operation and the anti-rejection drugs?”

“My worries, not yours.”

She looked at the blood. Then she looked at me the way a TV cop looks at a suspect. “You realize, Mr. Thompson, that the law has serious penalties for using someone’s cells in cloning without their permission.”

“So what? They’re my cells, and you have my permission.”

“You’re sure?”

I tried to sound irritated, the way someone who was telling the truth would sound. It’s especially important to sound truthful when you’re lying. “I know when my blood is drawn. If you want me to sign something, I will.” I signed a lot of forms and left her with the blood.

Jenny’s life faded like a picture left in the desert sun. Eventually she lapsed into a coma, and they took her to the hospital. Dr. Phang met me in a small conference room near the emergency room. “I’m very sorry about your wife’s condition, Mr. Thompson, but we do need to discuss how to care for her.”

“Doctor, take the heart grown from the blood sample I gave you and transplant it into her body.”

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drugs. That would-” “You won’t need any anti-rejection drugs. That was her blood, and the heart is genetically hers.”

“You told me that it was your blood. She didn’t authorize using her blood.” Her voice showed no emotion.

“What do you care? I told you in writing that it was my blood.

You’re off the hook, aren’t you?” She opened his mouth to speak, but I kept talking. “All that matters now is you have a heart that matches her genetically. I have medical power of attorney, and that gives me the right to make treatment decisions for my wife. I’m making that decision. Give her the cloned heart.”

“I have to report the unauthorized cloning.”

“Go ahead. You can’t be blamed for cloning the heart, and you’ll face no consequences for it.” I waited a second then went on. “If my wife dies because you refused her a legally authorized treatment, that’d have consequences.”

They let me see Jenny after the surgery. She looked tiny and frail as she lay in a large bed with tubes running into her body and monitor screens all around her. But she lived.

In a few days, Dr. Phang thought Jenny was well enough to be told why a healthy heart now beat inside her. When the doctor finished her explanation, Jenny turned on me. “You knew I didn’t want this! You betrayed me.”

“Jenny, it was the only way to save you.”

“You haven’t saved me! Leave me alone now, please.” She turned her face to the pillow and began to sob.

Dr. Phang touched my arm and suggested that I leave. Four days later, her nurse called to say that Jenny wanted to see me.

She sat up in her hospital bed. Color had returned to her cheeks, and her eyes were bright. She was like a flower that was blooming again, SEPTEMBER 2020

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but her eyes bored into me. “Mike, I can’t accept what you did.”

“I needed you to live. I wanted to have you-” “Yes, you needed, you wanted. You didn’t do it for me. You did it for yourself.”

“Darling, you wouldn’t be alive if I hadn’t done it.”

“You don’t understand. I’d wondered for so long—I knew God has a reason for my suffering, but I didn’t know what it was. Finally, I realized that the Lord allowed my sickness to happen because by refusing the treatment, I could show others how wrong the treatment is. My suffering could have had a purpose, but you destroyed that.”

Could I make her understand? “Your suffering showed that you needed help, and I got it for you.”

Jenny’s voice softened. “You didn’t help me. My life was based on principles. That’s what gave it meaning. Now I must live a life that comes from betraying those principles, a life that’s been forced on me. Can you at least tell me you realize what you did was wrong?”

I took a long deep breath. “Saving you wasn’t wrong.”

Tears began to run down Jenny’s cheeks. “Then we can’t be together Mike. Please leave now.” *** I had to spend only four months in prison, a chance to get a lot of exercise and read a lot of books. The hardest part was knowing that when I’d be released, Jenny wouldn’t be there.

One day they brought me up to the visitors’ room. Dirt had turned the white walls a light gray, and the air reeked of unwashed flesh. Dozens of voices filled the room with a throbbing sound. Esther sat there braving it all. “Mike, I want to thank you for saving my daughter’s life. I told her that Jesus who called Lazarus from the grave would bless what you’ve done.”

“How is Jenny?”

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Esther smiled. “She’s a lot better. She’s going to teach kindergarten this fall.”

“That’s so great.”

Esther’s hands moved closer to me. Perhaps she would have hugged me, had prison rules allowed it. “Mike, she feels hard against it now, but I’m praying that Jenny will forgive you and that you and she will reconcile.”

“Thank you so much, Esther.” How could reconciliation be possible? Jenny would never accept what I’d done. I’d never say it was wrong.

When I was released, they found me a new job and a small apartment. Its bare walls kept saying Jenny wasn’t there. One day I walked past her school. The kindergarteners were playing in the school yard, and a little boy fell down and began to sniffle. Jenny went to him. She was as quick and light on her feet as before the sickness. She comforted the boy then sent him off to bravely rejoin the game. I didn’t let her see me. She wouldn’t want her ex-con ex-husband hanging around.

Later I passed a large red brick church and decided to go inside.

The church was much more ornate than the one Jenny attended. Sunlight streamed through stained glass windows and filled the space with color. I knelt before a mural of a robed figure with long hair and a beard and prayed to the God who had called Lazarus from the grave. ***

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Discussion Questions 1. Do you respect Jenny’s decision to refuse treatment? Would you refuse treatment if you were in her shoes? Is your opinion different, knowing that the blastocyst that would be destroyed would be just a few hundred cells?

2. Is Jenny being selfish to others by refusing treatment based on her religious values? Would she be selfish if her religious values caused her to refuse more common treatment, like a blood transfusion, or taking antibiotics?

3. Even if the husband disagreed with Jenny’s decision, did he have a duty to honor her wishes? Did Jenny have a duty to divorce him after she found out what he had done?

4. Is a person’s sense of honor, duty, and/or faith more important than their life? Is a person’s first duty always to their life? Why or why not?

5. Jenny says, “I realized that the Lord allowed my sickness to happen because by refusing the treatment, I could show others how wrong the treatment is. My suffering could have had a purpose, but you destroyed that.”

Is Jenny correct, given that she didn’t personally accept

treatment? Does it matter that, even if she died, practically no one would have known she refused treatment, or the symbolism of the refusal the important thing? ***

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As You Wish (Children’s Story) Tyler W. Kurt *** Sad Bear and his friends had been living in the pitch black for years. Absolute blackness. They had been put in the trunk shortly after their child, George, had gotten a puppy. There’s no sense of time in the blackness so they didn’t know how long they’d been in there -- months, maybe years.

And then, one day, they heard footsteps in the darkness. Clack, clack, clack, clack. The sound grew louder as it approached. Clack, clack, clack, clack. Would it mean a person would finally set them free? Would this be the person to let them out?

The room shifted violently. Fluffy, a stuffed white rabbit with just one eye, landed on top of Sad Bear, a teddy bear. Mr. Giraffe, a stuffed giraffe, fell onto Dolly, a hard-plastic doll with a yellowed dress and loose threads. Dolly also had, down the side of her face, a long red crayon mark in the shape of an A which made her self-conscious. As the trunk jostled SEPTEMBER 2020

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the stuffed animals rolled around on each other until they finally landed with a thud.

The top of the trunk opened. After years of living in the dark the bright light temporarily blinded the animals as they looked up. Their eyes slowly adjusted and they saw, towering over them, an eccentrically-dressed elderly woman.

The woman had white hair that looked as if it hadn’t been combed in years and a face thick with wrinkles from smiling. She was 75 years old if she was a day, but her clothes were that of a teenager in a time long past. In fact, her blouse and poodle skirt made it look like she was about to go to a 1950’s dance. Her shoes, however, were Converse; one red and one white. And when she spoke, she used the words of an elderly woman but said the words in a light, fairy-like voice.

“Why, hello dears,” said the woman. “What do we have here?”

The woman pulled Dolly out of the trunk and examined her. ”Now aren’t you in sad shape. Old dress, torn threads …” the woman quickly licked her thumb and started rubbing the red crayon mark off Dolly’s face “… it looks like somebody was learning their alphabet on you. Well, this will never do.”

The woman looked down at the other stuffed animals in the trunk. ”A sad lot indeed.” She gently set Dolly down outside the trunk and picked up the stuffed Beagle that was jammed between two other animals. As she lifted the Beagle it exposed its missing leg with stuffing hanging out.

“Be careful with my stuffing!” shouted the Beagle.

“I’m being careful,” the woman replied.

“You can hear me?!” the Beagle asked, shocked.

The woman held the Beagle up to look him straight in the eye, because she felt it was more respectful to look someone directly in the eye when you spoke to them. ”Well of course I can. Is your leg in the trunk? Should I get it for you?”

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“It’s not in the trunk, the puppy ripped it off!”

“Well,” the woman said, “if I ever meet that puppy I will have to explain to him the proper way to play with children’s toys.”

The woman gently set the stuffed Beagle on the ground outside the trunk next to Dolly. ”At the very least, I can sew that hole of yours closed so you don’t lose any more stuffing. You will be a three-legged dog, but that’s better than being a dog that’s losing its stuffing.”

“Excuse me, ma’am,” said Sad Bear from the trunk looking up. Sad Bear, you see, was named Sad Bear because he had a frown sewn on his face for a mouth when he was born. This caused him to be sad even when happy things were happening all around him. ”Excuse me ma’am,” said Sad Bear. “Can you really hear us?”

The woman picked up Sad Bear to look him in the eyes, just as she had done with the stuffed Beagle. “I suppose I can. Hold on, let me get all of you out of the trunk so we can be properly introduced.”

The woman gently set Sad Bear down then reached into the trunk and pulled out all the stuffed animals: Mr. Giraffe, Edwina the elephant, as well as Fluffy the white rabbit, Mr. Panda, and a rainbow unicorn that all the other animals made fun of because she stood out and had no name at all. She grabbed them all, and, one by one, lined them all up in a circle, so they could have a proper conversation.

When they were all sitting in their places, Fluffy the stuffed white rabbit, looked up at the woman and spoke first, “Excuse me Miss, but how is it you can hear us?” he said in a rabbit’s squeaky voice.

“Well,” the woman said, sitting down cross-legged in front of them, a rather impressive feat, considering her age, “You all can hear each other, can’t you?”

“Yes,” said Fluffy, “but we’re stuffed animals and you’re a real person. And real people can’t hear stuffed animals, except sometimes when they are very young.”

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“I guess I never grew up,” the woman replied. Then she glanced around at the other stuffed animals in the circle to examine them. ”Well, you all are a motley group in dire need of repairs, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“We have been in the trunk a very long time,” said Sad Bear. ”And before we got put away by George, that was our child, the puppy would play with us very rough.” The three-legged Beagle held up his stump where his leg used to be to prove his point. The woman looked over at the Beagle.

“Indeed,” replied the woman looking where his leg used to be. ”But, like I said, I will fix you. I will fix all of you, and you’ll be in ship-shape and ready to go to a new home in no time. So, let’s make a list of all the things that need to be fixed. First, of course, my Beagle friend, I will sew your leg hole shut so you can stop losing stuffing. Or, if you would prefer, I can make you a new leg that matches.”

“You can do that?” asked the Beagle in wonder.

“Why, of course I can,” said the woman, who took out a small notepad and a pencil to write notes as she spoke. ”One new Beagle leg.”

“Excuse me ma’am,” Dolly said, seeing her chance. “My dress is very dirty, you see, and it has yellowed with age when it should be white…and the threads are all coming out -- “ “ -- Yes, yes, of course,” the woman interrupted. “I shall sew you a new white one.” The woman spoke out loud as she wrote in her notepad, “One new white dress. You appear to be a size negative 32, is that correct?”

Dolly blushed and lowered her head. “Why, yes ma’am, that’s correct.”

“How many dresses would you like?”

“I like?” Dolly asked.

“Yes. How many dresses would you like me to make for you?”

“Well,” said Dolly, “I’ve only ever had the one.”

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want.” Dolly heard this and blushed.

Fluffy, the white rabbit, spoke up next in his squeaky rabbit voice. “I lost one of my eyes to the dog; could you sew me on a new eye?”

“Oh my, yes, I see that. That will never do. I will find you a new eye to sew on.” The woman wrote in her notepad as she spoke. “One new rabbit eye.”

“Actually,” Fluffy said, “If it’s not too much to ask, my eyesight wasn’t all that good even before with two eyes. You see, when I was born my eyes were made with the cheapest plastic. Do you think you could sew on better eyes so that I can see better than before?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“And I…” said Mr. Panda, speaking up for the first time in a Panda’s deep proper voice. ”I am quite fat, even for a Panda. Would it be too much trouble for you to take some of my stuffing out? Not all of it, mind you, just a little bit, so that I still look like a Panda, but I look like a thin Panda?”

“Of course,” said the woman, “What else? I can change anything you want. I can make you taller, or shorter, or fatter, or thinner. I can change your eyes, or even your fur. As a matter of fact, while I’m at it, would anyone else like me to take some of their stuffing out?” The elephant’s trunk went up.

Mr. Giraffe, a stuffed orange and brown giraffe that spoke very quickly when he spoke, spoke up next. “I know I’m a giraffe. And I know giraffe’s have long necks, but I think I look very silly standing next to everyone else with such a long heck. I would like 4 1/4 inches taken off of my neck please.”

“Of course,” the woman replied with a smile and note in her notebook. “Exactly 4 and 1/4 inches….”

“You can do that?” asked the very shy rainbow unicorn.

“Yes I can.”

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unicorn -- “ “ -- Yes, I see that,” said the woman. “Unicorns are very rare and very special indeed.”

“Yes, but you see,” said the unicorn almost in a whisper, “I don’t want to be rare and special. Could you…please…take off my unicorn horn and make my fur brown, so that people would think I was a horse?”

The woman gave a slow nod-like bow. “If that is what you wish.” The only animal that hadn’t asked for anything was Sad Bear and so, the woman turned to him last. “And what about you Mr. Bear, that frown stitched on your face looks terribly sad. You must be sad all the time.”

“I am,” said Sad Bear. ”From the first day I was made I’ve always had this frown on my face, and so I’ve always been sad.”

“Well then, I shall fix that too. It won’t take but a minute. I shall take that stitching out and stitch a smile on your face, so you will always be happy even when sad things are happening.”

“Thank you,” responded Sad Bear politely. “But if it’s all the same to you, I think I’d like to keep my frown.”

“Well, why would you want to do that? I am going to fix his leg, and her dress, and give him two brand new eyes that are better than the cheap plastic eyes he was born with. I’m going to turn a unicorn into a horse, take the stuffing out of Mr. Panda and his elephant friend, and make the giraffe’s neck shorter. As long as I am doing all of those things, I could just as well sew a smile on your face.”

“Yes, I’m sure you could” said Sad Bear. “And thank you for helping all my friends, but you see, ma’am, my name is ‘Sad Bear’ because I have a frown on my face. Because I am a Sad Bear.”

“I see, but you don’t have to be sad,” said the woman. “Don’t you know that being happy is good and being sad is bad. Just like missing a leg is bad and having all your legs is good. And having one eye is bad, and having two eyes is good, and having two very good eyes is even better SEPTEMBER 2020

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still. And why would you want to be a unicorn or a giraffe and stand out, when you can be so very average and blend in? Don’t you want to be fixed?”

Sad Bear thought about this for a while and thought a long time about how best to explain himself without offending the eccentrically dressed woman or his friends.

“I think…” said Sad Bear slowly, “…even though I have a frown sewn on my face, and I am sad, even when good things are happening… I think…” said Sad Bear, “…I would prefer to just be me. Even if, you see, that is just a sad bear.”

“I see,” said the woman with a warn smile and a nod. “As you wish.” ***

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Discussion Questions 1. Which of the toys asked for things that you think were okay for them to ask for? As a reminder, the beagle wanted his torn off leg sewn back on, the doll wanted a new dress, the panda and elephant wanted to have some stuffing removed. The unicorn wanted to look like a horse, and the rabbit wanted his eyes replaced with better eyes. What is the distinction between each request being a “good request,” and a “bad request?”

2. What are the things about us that we should improve, or correct, and what are the things we should leave alone? What is the distinction between the two?

3. Was Sad Bear right in refusing the woman’s offer to remove his frown and sew a smile on his face so he would always be happy? Why/why not?

4. If someone could magically fix something about you, or improve something to make you better, would you let them? What would you change? ***

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Lay On Vera Burris *** A mischievous gale from the bay blew into the city, lifting miniskirts and tangling long hair, but the three women standing across the street didn’t seem affected by it. Christopher watched them, wondering at their serenity, as he played and sang off-key on a street corner of Haight and Ashbury. Polly sat against the prickly brick wall behind him, arms crossed and trembling.

“It won’t be long now, Babe,” he assured her. “Just another couple bucks and we’ll have enough for you.”

She was working on a gig for him, but needed to score before she could confirm with the club manager. Her habit had grown much worse since their first meeting, when he’d moved from Oklahoma two years earlier.

Back then, in 1967, it was the Summer of Love, a time of hope for the flower children. With escalating war, riots and assassinations, however, 1969 was more of an ugly-chick-one-night-stand: dirtier, more jaded and more desperate, like Christopher and Polly.

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He stretched a brilliant smile across his face as the three women approached him. “What can I sing for you lovely ladies?”

They were dressed similarly to others on the street in long wrapped skirts and ragged tops drooping with no bra, but their eyes—hazel, black and cinnamon brown—seemed to hold the memory of centuries.

The statuesque one with a magnificent Afro brought forth a sheaf of dollars. Polly jumped up to stand beside him, eagerly clutching his arm as a twenty floated into the battered fedora.

“You can have fortune...adulation,” said the black woman.

“You can be king of the music festivals,” a smaller one with brown eyes added, with another twenty.

“The envy of all who have wronged you,” the third, a redhead, said.

She stooped down to drop the rest of the bills in the hat.

Christopher looked first at the money, then the three women. “Who do I have to kill?” he joked.

The mysterious trio smiled and said in unison, “You’ll know”. *** Incense and pot wafted through most of the rooms, but in the blackened apartment for Ingrid, Wasi and Anita, the scent was a Hell Brew of feline blood and noxious weeds.

They’d been banished from witch society for multiple crimes, including their cowardly escape from the original Friday the Thirteenth scourge of 1307, and their failure to help the accused during the travesty of justice in Salem, Mass. They were in San Francisco to repair their reputations and ignite chaos.

Leaning over an ancient cauldron, they watched Christopher. His redgold hair and beard shone after a bath in a hotel. Yet even after a large meal from room service, he maintained that thin, compelling look of insatiable hunger that people would instinctively want to satisfy. It was very promising.

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Polly also looked better, her blue eyes gleaming after her fix. Long, blonde hair hung loose and full down her naked back as she and Christopher made love on the virginal white sheets of the hotel bed. The witches studied Christopher, seemingly docile while Polly gyrated on top of him.

“But how can we know if he’s truly malevolent?” asked Wasi. “Many steal, many sell pills. Are we sure this is the one to spark mayhem? Would he do our will for his desires?”

“It will be for him to decide what he does with what he’s offered. We must not question because he looks innocent. He has not yet been tried,” Anita said.

When Polly dismounted to dress, the witches noticed red fingerprints where Christopher had gripped her arms. In her drugged state, Polly might not have been aware of the casual violence of his clench, but to the trio watching them, it was a good sign. *** Tattered Victorian buildings on either side of the street enclosed the heavy traffic on the road and sidewalks. Power wires dangled between them, precariously close to the human swell, like giant, electrified garrote.

Storefronts on the once-stately buildings were warts on the collective body of architecture.

Christopher and Polly entered the door of a scarred Mission Revival with a hand-lettered sign on the streaked window--Beer with Folk. The interior was unlit, except for the grey sunshine that snuck in under the canopy above the door. The sound was the strike of shoes on wood floor, scrape of chairs and awkward coughs.

The witches raised their arms and closed their eyes as they circled the bubbling cauldron, sweat glassy on their bodies, chanting and incanting for hints of more malice.

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table as Polly and Christopher approached. He looked as if he might have been selling bad cars in the previous six months and had just bought a faded t-shirt and badly fitting jeans for his new job.

“Yeah, and this is my old man Christopher,” Polly said. “I told you he could be the next Dylan.”

“Hmph,” grunted Bernie, scanning Christopher. “Well, he might keep some girls around the stage for guys to buy drinks for. Let’s hear ya.”

Wasi, Anita and Ingrid made a web of their open hands over the cauldron, framing Christopher’s handsome but nervous face.

“Uh, what do you want to hear?” he asked, swinging his guitar across his chest and releasing an accidental, jarring chord.

“Just play,” said Bernie. He picked up his pencil and rifled the papers before him.

Christopher swept over the strings, adjusted the tuning pegs, and began a whispery tenor. “How many roads must—” “That’s enough,” growled Bernie. He looked up and smiled at the sound of a long, slow gait nearing them. His gut lifted the table slightly as he rose to greet the new person in the room. “Hank, good timing. This is Christopher. He’ll be your sub if you don’t make it tonight.”

Hank reminded Christopher of a high school football star who had discovered Speed. He was bulky, but his eyes twitched behind blue, tinysquare glasses. His black hair coiled down to his sallow chin, and his lips were chalky. He stuck out a wide hand to shake Christopher’s and checked out Polly with a raised eyebrow. “Don’t waste your time. I’ll be here,” he snickered and sauntered out.

The trio grasped hands as Christopher lifted a corner of his lip in a sneer, and he and Polly followed the bell-bottomed singer out of Bernie’s bar.

“Do something,” Polly said in a strained whisper.

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back and watched him pinch a young woman who walked past him.

“Anything. He can’t do your show tonight. Don’t you have any guts?”

Polly asked, her voice carrying a new note of scorn.

The witches leaned closer over the pot, their excitement mounting.

This was it.

“You’ll know,” the women had said. Christopher set his jaw and set his shoulders and took long strides to get closer to Hank. The throng of pedestrians seemed to help, pushing him against the other musician. Hank turned, opening his mouth to speak, as Christopher shoved. Hank fell in the street, into the path of a speeding van.

Christopher drew shallow breaths as the crowd gathered around the body. His blood rushed to his head and sang in his ears, “Fame and stardom.”

Polly, pretty in paisley, caught up to him and took his arm.

“It was an accident, Babe,” she whispered, leading him away from the scene. “Let’s get you ready for your show.”

Music filled the dark of the witches’ room, not the psychedelic or jangling of the age, but strings, pipes and drums mingling in old melody— joyful, sensual and ominous, all.

They ate the last of the cats they’d used for the potion and skipped and spun around the fire faster and faster , until collapsing in a friendly heap, exhausted and exultant, on the cool floor. *** The club wasn’t only dark in the evening, with fifteen-year-old red wall sconces providing the only light, but the veil of cigarette smoke further compromised vision and perception.

The three witches sat in a window alcove at the front of the bar.

Dressed in black, their heads alone were distinguishable and appeared to float, disembodied in the dark. The light from a streetlamp that shone through the window seemed to give them ironic halos.

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A platform at the other end rose about eight inches from the floor.

Christopher appeared there, the lights shining up on his face imparting a subliminal outline to him, as well.

He didn’t play or sing any better than he had before, but the reaction to him was stronger. The conversation buzz of the crowd stopped and all eyes fixed on him. Young women in hip-huggers gathered in front of the stage, looking up at him with the adoration he’d been promised.

No one wanted him to stop, requesting encore after encore. The witches watched as Christopher’s confidence and swagger grew, only hours after committing his first murder.

“Yes,” said Ingrid, “I believe he’ll do nicely.” *** When he’d realized he could hold a crowd and have followers do his bidding, his ambitions changed. Why should he work at all if others were willing to work for him?

“What does a good man with power do?” asked Anita, bent over the cauldron to watch their subject.

“He’ll share it, use it make things better,” Wasi answered from the area where she and Ingrid were preparing ingredients for more potion.

Stray cat population had decreased significantly since their arrival.

“And what do we think Christopher will do?” Anita asked as she saw him mingling with hippies in the park.

“I’m the only one you can trust,” Christopher told the young people who had gathered around him. He walked among them, fixing his eyes on one face after another, so they each thought he was speaking directly to him or her.

He dropped before a beautiful brunette wearing a daisy chain headband. “I know they’ve hurt you,” he said, taking her hands and boring his eyes into hers. “I can heal you, if you do as I say.”

The girl answered with a Madonna smile. Her gaze followed him as he SEPTEMBER 2020

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rose to comfort another, and another, exchanging small packets of powder and pills for crumpled dollars.

“And that’s what a bad man does with power,” Ingrid said, now looking into the pot at Polly, clean and sober, seething with jealousy as Christopher collected a harem and army of the nubile and enthusiastic.

“We can’t go on like this, Christopher. It’s wrong,” Polly said after they’d moved to a house in the suburbs owned by the father of one of his sycophants, Marvin. When Marvin Sr. returned some time later from an overseas assignment, he had no choice but to raze the abused, milliondollar property.

“I’m tired of your nagging, Polly,” Christopher shouted, nursing a hangover. “You didn’t mind when we killed Hank.”

“I wasn’t thinking right then,” she said, “but he’s not the only one you’ve had killed or beaten or robbed or — “ “ — Shut up!” Christopher rushed across the once-elegant salon and closed his hands around her neck, his head pounding and guts roiling, anger mounting higher than he’d ever known.

“Sisters, hissed Anita, “it’s happening.” Polly’s shocked, terrified face filled the mouth of the cauldron, blue eyes gaping as she struggled to breathe. Christopher’s slap reverberated in the witches’ room, bringing satisfaction tinged with discomfort to the women.

Polly picked herself up from the floor, hand protecting the side of her red face while tears steamed. She ran out of the salon, out of the house and away from Christopher.

“With her gone, he’ll think himself betrayed and unable to trust anyone,” Wasi said with a grimace.

Ingrid nodded. “We must be prepared when he next comes to us for counsel.”

As they predicted, paranoia clung to Christopher like a cheap Nehru jacket, making him more dangerous and callous. He drank because he SEPTEMBER 2020

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couldn’t sleep. He segregated his followers according to his own prejudices and feelings of who was least deserving of him. He became more reckless with money. He needed… something.

“Start the drum,” said Wasi. “It’s time.” *** The witches had never seen anything like the gathering in the Catskill Mountains of New York—the music, the crowds, the color and abandon. It was the activity of covens, multiplied by thousands. For women rejuvenated after centuries, it was quite intoxicating. They mingled through the masses, singing and dancing, rubbing against naked bodies of strangers, participating in the moment as they hadn’t allowed themselves in ages.

Duty called, however, and they moved from the teeming open area to the trees on the outskirts, finding an uninhabited spot, cave-like in its dark compactness. They made a fire and set the pot upon it and waited.

“Sisters, dear, does your skin sear as evil draws near?” Ingrid asked with a chuckle.

“No, but my sex revives when a bad man arrives,” responded a laughing Anita.

“Pain stretches o’er my forehead at the approach of something horrid,” Wasi added as Christopher burst through the foliage, having followed the drum’s summons.

“Help me,” he said. “They’re out to get me. I demand you tell me what you see.”

Anita glided forward and wrapped her arms around him, her chocolate brown hair draping over him as if offering protection. “Patience, our love,” she said to him. “We have much to show you.”

The drum beat again with the appearance of babies marching around the pot.

“These are children who will carry your name,” Wasi explained. “The SEPTEMBER 2020

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first are those whose mothers love you. The circle means they will go on long after you.”

Ingrid hovered above the ground, a flaming-haired specter. She tossed Christopher a wallet heavy with bills. “Your fortune continues as long as you breathe free,” she promised.

The women stood before him and spoke as one. “You are safe provided none survive your attack.”

Christopher nodded in relief. He was rich until his dying breath and as long as he ensured men who were his enemies were dead, he was untouchable. He left without a “thank you,” a former musician unmoved by the excitement and sound of Woodstock.

The women looked after him. “Well, my sisters?” giggled Ingrid.

Wasi spoke first. “Yes, our thumbs do prick…” “... when faced with a dick,” Anita concluded.

Applause broke out beyond them as a headliner took the stage.

“Shall we join the party?”

“Groovy!”

“Far Out!” The trio was beginning to enjoy 1969. They ran back to the mix of mud, skin and music and gave into their natural instincts for revelry.

For the return trip, they bought a Volkswagen bus from a Wisconsin couple and enough paint from others around them to properly decorate it, with giant flowers and swirls, and a sexy witch gripping a large, phallic spoon over a cauldron.

They’d adapted to every innovation in the past six hundred years.

They could handle a Bug van. Anita set the controls to perform correctly, then pretended to steer as they joined the caravan heading West.

“What’s he doing now?” she asked.

“Feeling very sure of himself,” said Wasi, monitoring the pot for Christopher’s activity. “He’s coming out of a motel with two girls, no more SEPTEMBER 2020

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than fifteen if they’re a day.”

The disgust for their protege was heavy in the vehicle. The witches had watched the progress of women for centuries and understood fifteen was different now than in ages past, when girls were considered nothing more than breeding stock. If he lived another five hundred years, Christopher would never learn that.

While Anita pretend-drove and Wasi watched Christopher, Ingrid sifted through a stack of old newspapers she found in the rear of the van.

“Cuyahoga River catches fire,” she read. “Diesel fuel and oil accumulation in the river caused it to ignite in June near Cleveland, Ohio.”

Wasi shook her head. “And we witches are accused of being destructive. At least we know better than to harm Mother Earth.”

“True, and we only cause trouble to man for all of his wrongs, Ingrid agreed. “As they say, you can lead a horse to water, but how much he drinks is up to him.”

“Yes, and Christopher has swallowed an ocean’s worth,” said Anita.

“What is he doing now?”

“Driving drunkenly,” reported Wasi. “If he ever cared about his fellow man, he doesn’t now.”

“He has exceeded our highest expectations,” Ingrid sighed. “How much we might have accomplished with him as a leader, how many people he might have diverted from their paths, if he hadn’t sealed his fate with Polly.”

“But people won’t knowingly choose a man who has abused women as their leader,” said Anita. “Therefore, there’s only one way in which he can still be of use to us. What other news is there, Ingrid?”

The youngest of the three scanned the more recent publications and gasped. “There have been a number of home break-ins and murders in Los Angeles this month, including a Hollywood starlet, but this isn’t Christopher’s doing. Do you think there could be other witches engaged in SEPTEMBER 2020

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a scheme similar to ours?”

“We shall ask Hecate, but probably not,” Anita said. It doesn’t take magic to cultivate evil or for the vulnerable to find it appealing.”

“They have him!” squealed Wasi from her station over the cauldron.

“He’s been arrested.” *** The women were nearly unrecognizable when Christopher entered the visitors’ room. Ingrid wore an egg-blue suit with a pleated, knee-length skirt. Anita enhanced her simple black shift with cultured pearls at her neck, and Wasi sported a leopard circle coat made famous by Jackie Onassis.

“You said I was safe as long as I killed all the men who could hurt me,” he spat at them.

Wasi shook her head. “We said you were safe as long as none survived your attack. Apparently, a woman didn’t seem a possibility to you. You forgot Polly, whom you tried to strangle; she turned you in.”

He rubbed his forehead. “They said I didn’t have money, not even for bail. You said I’d always be rich.” Ingrid smiled at him. “Again, you heard what you wanted to hear. We told you your fortune would continue as long as you breathed free. How free do you feel now?”

He glared at them. “What about all who love me and would name their sons after me?”

“There will always be the gullible, Christopher, but we didn’t mean your actual name. Killer, mad man, thief, cult leaders and copycats will all be associated with you.”

He jumped to his feet. “Why did you do this to me? I was a street musician with a junkie girlfriend I tried to take care of. She told me to kill the first time. Why didn’t you do this to her?”

Anita shook her head. It was almost possible to feel sorry for him, but not quite. “Polly told you to do something. You translated that into pushing SEPTEMBER 2020

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Hank in front of a bus. We had given you money. You might have offered him some to allow you to perform instead.”

“Or,” said Wasi, “you might have hurt Hank but stayed to help him, had your triumphant night at the club, then gone on to be a better musician.”

Ingrid leaned back in her chair. “Or not taken our money at all.”

Wasi picked up her purse and stood, followed by the other two. “As for Polly, she’s remorseful. What do you regret, Christopher?”

He looked from one to the other, mouth agape, his mind recreating their first meeting, his gathering of followers and fortune, the changes in Polly. Betrayed by everyone. “I regret I didn’t kill you bitches.” *** “Well, Hecate?” Wasi and her sisters stood in an anxious knot as Hecate the Ageless viewed the contents of their cauldron, with Christopher’s sneering, defeated face dimming in the boiling brew.

The goddess of witches shrugged her thin shoulders. “Amusing, but can you take credit for what became of him and those around him? After all, you said there was another man here in Cali-forn who created a “family” of outcasts and ordered them to murder. He needed no magical influence to embrace evil. A river on fire? That is against Nature. It speaks to more sinister activity than we are capable of. Man is horrid on his own.

There is nothing to say his story would have been different without you.”

Ingrid moistened her lips before addressing the formidable crone.

“We believe people are influenced by everything and everyone, for good and bad. If we plant an idea with someone, such as when our sisters did with the Scottish king, then of course we are part of what happened, along with his family and the intoxicants of drink, power, money and sex. A girl wearing a daisy chain might have reminded him of someone he wanted to impress when he was a boy. It’s impossible to know what will make the bit of wickedness they all have stronger than the good.”

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“But we also used your tactic of making him believe he was entitled to what he wanted, and no one could take it from him.,” Anita added.

“Aye,” Hecate conceded. “As with the king, confidence in his security was his downfall. Very well,” she said rising from her crouch over the cauldron, “you’ve acquitted yourselves. It’s time to come home, beldams.”

Ingrid, Anita and Wasi looked at each other. Yes, this age might have its cruelties, but there was music, color and energy. Man had walked on the moon that year, for Hades’ sake.

“Thank you,” said Anita, “but we’d like to remain here.”

A disappointed Hecate lifted her hands in resignation. “As you wish.

Farewell.”

The trip flashed a V with their fingers as she disappeared. “Peace.” ***

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Discussion Questions 1. What specifically was the goal of the witches for Christopher? For society? Are they evil?

2. Is giving someone the ability/tools to do evil an act of evil in itself?

3. The witches ask the questions, “What would a good man with power do?” and “What would a bad man with power do?” What do you think are the answers to these questions? (Beyond “Do Good” and “Do Evil”) 4. Is a person who would do evil, if given the chance, an evil person, even prior to the opportunity or acts being committed? Is evil in the heart or in the act?

5. Who is more responsible for Christopher’s decline, Christopher, or the witches?

6. Did the witches foresee the future, or create the future by telling Christopher it would happen? Did the act of telling Christopher about his supposed fate simply give him the confidence to make it true? ***

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From The Editor There is a scene in both the movie, and the book, “Fight Club” that I think about quite a bit. It is the convenience store scene. In that scene Tyler Durden brings the clerk out at gunpoint to the back alley, holds a gun to his head, and questions him about what he wanted to do with this life.

Turns out, the clerk dropped out of community college, but wanted to be a vet.

Tyler takes the driver’s license of the man and says, “I’m going to come back looking for you and if you aren’t on your way to become a vet, I’m going to kill you.”

I always thought that was an interesting scene and often wondered if Tyler was doing the man a cruelty or a favor? Is it a kindness to force someone to follow their dreams?

If that had been the whole exchange, that would have been enough. However, I went back and re-read the book and realized that what Tyler actually says is, if you aren’t doing this, “…you will be dead.”

You see, it’s not that that he is going to kill him, as I initially thought, it’s that if you aren’t following your dreams, you are dead. You may be breathing and walking around, but you are dead inside.

An interesting point. I think about that scene a lot.

Best Wishes, Kolby Granville

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