Encounters Magazine #2

ENCOUNTERS M

A

G

CONTENTS

A

New Rules by Cheryl Gilbert

Z

I

SPRING 2010

N

It hit the cities first, but now it's starting to spread ...................................................................................

Along Came a Spider by Robert Mammone

E

3

There are some tourist traps you don't want to visit .................................................................................... 7

The Crash of Flight 1217 by Stephen Frentzos

It was bound to happen... sooner or later .................................................................................................... 16

Wounded Dog by Jason Helmandollar

Facing life is much harder than staring into the gaze of Death ............................................................... 19

Unearthing the Archon by Andy Eliason

Digging for dragonbone is tough... ever more so when living dragons get in the way .......................... 26

The Munificent Editors of Nowhere Magazine by Dustin Reade

When your muse strikes, who knows what form it may take ...................................................................... 48

Birth Day by Kurt Fawver

Look again, can't you see it's a beautiful baby girl .................................................................................... 51

Driver Education by David Soyka

Things can only go downhill when your past comes back to haunt you .................................................. 58

Shadows by Rose Blackthorn

Beautiful and exotic, she's a dream come true... or is it a nightmare? .................................................... 65

Touch by David Durkmann

Welcome to a world where being online isn't a convenience, it's a requirement for survival ............... 75

Everything There by Terence Kuch

Living in more than one reality ultimately has its consequences ............................................................... 84

Screen Six by Neil Coghlan

Getting a glimpse of your future... interesting. Now, changing the outcome, that's a bit tricky ............ 92

I Am Not God by Bill Wilbur

Life is harsh, but sometimes hope comes from an unusual source ........................................................... 100

She Had Never Been His by Chris Struyk-Bonn

The students at Holly's Home are expecting some special visitors ............................................................ 104

Dappler's Department Store by Kristin Dearborn

Welcome to Dappler's. We hope you enjoy your visit, and good luck on finding a way out ................ 108 Front Cover by Char Reed, illustrating a scene from "Along Came a Spider" This publication copyright 2009 by Black Matrix Publishing LLC and individually copyrighted by artists and individuals who have contributed to this issue. All stories in this magazine are fiction. Names, characters and places are products of the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance of the characters to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Encounters Magazine is published quarterly by Black Matrix Publishing LLC, 1252 Redwood Ave. #52, Grants Pass, OR 97527. Our Web site: www.blackmatrixpub.com Other publications by Black Matrix Publishing include: Night Chills, Outer Reaches and Realms.

Welcome to the second issue of Encounters Magazine.

Once again we've gathered together an eclectic mix of fiction for those who like variety, and we have made a few changes since our first issue, based on reader input.

We have added more pages so we can squeeze in another 10,000 words or so, changed the main font to a style that is neater and easier to read and also added a little bit of info supplied by the authors at the end each story.

Availability of all our publications continues to grow. You can find them on our Web site, and on Barnes and Noble, distributed via Ingram and on Amazon.com sites around the world (Canada, UK, Germany, France and Japan). You can also order them through your local bookseller.

Black Matrix publications are also available at the following libraries: Multnomah County library system (Portland, OR) Eugene Public library (Eugene, OR) Jackson County library system (Medford, OR) Josephine County library system (Grants Pass, OR) I hope you enjoy the stories in this issue, and we will be back with more in a few months with the Summer issue. While you are waiting on that one, check out the new issues of Realms, Outer Reaches and Night Chills as they are released throughout the Spring (Realms by the end of this month and the other two in April).

Guy Kenyon Editor/Black Matrix Publishing LLC Kim Kenyon Publisher/Black Matrix Publishing LLC

New Rules

by Cheryl Gilbert

It hit the cities first, but now it's starting to spread. ___________________________________________________________

The

truck driver spat and repeated the same sentence that he had repeated five times already.

Stephanie was staring at him with her bottom lip stuck out. I began to be sorry we had come down. He wasn’t a clean man, and he wasn’t a local. When Julie Barnard came over to say someone from the City was at Basil’s it had seemed we needed to hear him. But once there it felt just as pointless as everything else we had tried to do in the last two days.

There weren’t as many people out to hear him as I might have expected. But I realized that we were mostly missing the neighborhood women. At least half of the families had lost someone in the City. And most of those alive were the wives. I guess they didn’t want to hear what a witness would have to say. I guessed they were still holding out hope of someone coming back. I guessed I couldn’t blame them for wanting not to hear anything. We’d had so many rumors in the last two days.

He was a little man, the driver. His skin looked greasy. The grease was probably fear and fleeing, but I could tell he was not a champion at washing on the best of days. He kept rubbing himself like he had a bad chill, and stuttering his words. Not that he had really seen anything to make him so scared, not exactly. He just had happened to be near the border of the City line. Close to the end for all those poor souls.

“I was up on 104 close to Kodak Park,” he began again. It was kind of shocking by itself, actually.

Nothing really bad could ever happen close to Kodak Park. Not in this part of the world. Excepting layoffs, of course. Maybe that’s what had happened after all.

God had done a giant layoff.

I laughed a little, because I had to-- earning myself a nasty look from Helen Simpson. She had put on a navy skirt and a white blouse to hear him talk. I don’t like Helen much, never did. But I kind of admired that. The end of the world upon us and she’s still dressed for the office.

“You said that already, mister.” Stephanie piped up loud and clear. She was at the age where kids seemed to change every day between chubby and weedy.

Today was a weedy day. She roamed with restless energy in circles around the trucker. “But what happened?”

“Stephanie, hush!” I interjected. My heart wasn’t in 5

it. It was what all the rest of us wanted to ask too. She gave me a look startlingly like the look Helen had just given me. I was plain getting on everyone’s nerves. I kicked the dirt by the grassy mound.

The mound was all that was left of Basil’s Diner. It had burnt down two years ago. Nothing at all to do with what happened in the City. We still called the empty lot “Basil’s”. It had been the only restaurant in the neighborhood. I guess it was a natural place for those of us in the Bucket to congregate and listen to the trucker.

“It was dark. I could see other drivers up ahead getting out of their cars,” he began again as though Stephanie had not interrupted. “I thought it was an accident or something.”

“But did you see it?” Mr. Warthman was asking. He had not dressed for the office. He was wearing pajamas. He looked about twelve years old in pajamas. “Did you see anything at all?”

“It was too dark,” the trucker replied mournfully.

“Too dark. Dark, and somehow thick. But I heard it. I heard people start to scream. The lights of the cars went out, and there was only dark. The screaming went on and on, on and on— like a thousand broken car alarms all going off at the same time.”

The rest of the story was predictable. He didn’t see anything else. He ran. And through luck or smarts or instinct or whatever he ran in just the right direction so that whatever got the City didn’t get him. Further down Ridge Road he saw a kid’s bike sitting in a front yard. The screaming was loud enough he could still hear it. People were in their front yards, staring east.

He grabbed it, and headed west. As west as he could go, he figured. The bike broke down in Spencerport, and yesterday he had started walking.

My daughter was fascinated. “Screaming and screaming,” she mused. She was thinking about her grandparents. Maybe picturing what they would look like, making such a noise.

The trucker put a heavy hand on her shoulder.

“Like all the souls in Hell,” he said solemnly.

“Stephanie,” I said firmly. “You go on home. Walk carefully, and go back to the house. Tell your Daddy I’ll be back in a bit.” Helen Simpson looked approving this time. She didn’t approve of me bringing Stephanie to the gathering. Might hear something not suitable for ten-year-old ears. I hadn’t thought about it, really.

I liked to keep her with me. It seemed as though the whole world had become unsuitable for ten-year-olds.

Stephanie nodded and dodged out from under the trucker’s hand. “I’m going home,” she announced, as if it had been her idea all along. She darted over and clung to me briefly.

One of the lucky ones, I thought. Neither her Daddy nor me lost in the City. I shook my head at what passed for lucky.

“Why don’t you go read a book?”

Stephanie nodded. She hated reading books. It was a stupid suggestion. But the computer had gone out with the electricity and it didn’t seem likely to get restarted soon. Maybe next week? Maybe not at all.

Perhaps she’d develop a new appreciation for nononline words.

I watched her walk away—a little girl with long brown hair in fourth-of-july striped shorts.

W

hen I came home, Stephanie was not anywhere to be found and neither was Tom. We border a series of big old fields—part of why we bought the house.

The whole point of the place was so we could raise children without them being stuck inside.

I should be happy she’s out playing, I thought dizzily. I couldn’t help my panic. Playing? How could she play at a time like this? Typical of me. I was upset if she acted scared and upset if she acted indifferent. I would call Tom. Call? Idiot. There had been no phone networks of any kind since the City was taken. I sat helplessly at the table and drummed my fingers. It was an old table— Tom’s family table. Burn marks, rings from hot cups, dents, chips and scratches. I loved the table. Where is my daughter?

Before I could do something stupid like mount a door-to-door search, I heard Stephanie’s voice out back. She was walking with some younger girl I didn’t recognize—a skinny little blonde thing with scraped up knees. I opened the screen door from the kitchen.

The other little girl fled, piping “Bye!” at Stephanie.

Stephanie was carrying a box. I couldn’t see what was in it until she passed me into the kitchen. She was carrying a box of Hormel Soup cans.

“Where did you get that?” I asked.

“The Skoog house.”

“What? You can’t go stealing from the neighbors!”

Stephanie put down the box. She had pulled her hair back into a ponytail. Her eyes were serious and clear. “They aren’t coming back, Mom.” “Honey, you don’t know that. They could be staying away until it’s safe. He travels a lot for work—maybe he’s in a safe town like ours. You can’t be sure.”

She shook her head. “Then we’ll give them their 6

stuff back when they come home.” I stared at her. She sighed. “Useless says it’s only a matter of time before the police stop folks from stealing. Or take the food themselves. Mr. and Mrs. Skoog had a lot of food in the basement. I left the stuff in their kitchen, so it didn’t look like we took any. But I got most of it already. I put it under the stairs in the cellar. Useless thought it was a good place for it.”

My eyes filled with stupid tears. She was right—they would have a lot of food. Rosemary and Johnny Skoog were (had been) survivalist types.

Lawyers who had moved to the country so they could be prepared for whatever they thought was coming.

Turned out they were right. But not too right— they had, after all, kept working in the City.

“Who thought it was a good place?”

Stephanie shrugged. “That little girl. She comes from out back, I think. Guess she must have heard stuff from her Dad. She liked my Fisher Price castle.”

“Out back” meant a trailer park which had gone up about a half mile away, through the fields and woods behind our house. The drive to it let out on Pine Hill Road and not our street. When the old farmer had died, his son had sold the lot to a developer who had originally intended to put up a housing complex. But every year it appeared there were less people in the town, not more. They put up the trailer park instead.

There were a fair number of trailers out there, and seemingly hundreds of kids.

“What was her name?”

“She said her name was 'Useless'. I guess that’s a nickname.”

I laughed. “I guess so too.”

Maybe I should have argued with her about the food, but I really couldn’t fault the logic. We had no idea how long we’d be without—without what?

Without the City. Without electricity. Without whatever it was coming to get us too… I pushed that thought down and kept it there. I wouldn’t let Stephanie catch a hint of it in my face.

“Where’s your father?” I turned away and took a dish to the sink. We still had water. I didn’t know why.

“Out with Mr. Simpson.”

I nodded. Stephanie went down to the cellar to put the last box of soup away. Put it away behind her toys and her Fisher Price castle.

T

ime went by, as time does. Even in that kind of time, time goes by. Nothing really momentous happened. A Sheriff’s car from the Rt. 31 Station rode out to check on us—taking a census of which houses still had people. They didn’t have any answers as to what had happened. They had no idea if all the Cities

were taken or how many people were left alive. They had no idea if it was all over the world, or just here.

They could tell us we weren’t the only towns to survive. Even some big towns like Batavia seemed to be okay. There had been travelers—some peaceful, some less so.

They were keeping order for order’s sake—trying to hold some semblance of normal life. The Sheriff took a box and carted up the usable food the Skoogs had left in the kitchen. He left a mark in blue chalk and a letter taped to the front door.

Useless had been right. Once they saw the food in the kitchen, they didn’t suspect at all there had ever been food in the basement.

The water eventually stopped for good. Tom unboarded the old well in the front yard and the three of us got used to drawing water. He also plowed up the back yard. We spent a lot of time looking at our seeds and wondering what we would have a chance to grow with only half the summer remaining.

There were rumors on the street that the library in Churchville had somehow got a net connection up again by using a generator. But the rumor was a lie.

Some college kids from Brockport took bikes out to the city one day—and they didn’t see anything living.

Just empty buildings and cars. No blood, no bones. No anything else. Or so they said. Some men set off north to see if the big cities were still there. They never came back.

Nobody set up schools and nobody voted for any interim governments. I think we were all hoping that the whole thing would resolve itself. We would have gotten around to civilization eventually, I suppose—but for the meantime we were just hunkering down.

Or most of us were. People disappeared. Nobody knew if they ran or what happened exactly. It seemed at least once a week another house somewhere went empty. They didn’t always stay empty. Families blew in— some from other towns nearby, some from farther afield. Once they got settled, a sheriff would show up and talk to them to see if they needed running off. A couple without kids from close to Buffalo settled in the Skoog house. Buffalo had been taken too.

The neighborhood actually started to feel full—nobody went to work. Nobody had much gas to drive their cars. Tom had stored quite a bit of gas in our shed in cans. I didn’t ask him where he got it. He called it the post-apocalyptic version of walk away money.

I cried at night. Every night, in fact. My parents and sister had been in the City. Stephanie never said 7

anything, but I’m sure she could hear me. She played from time to time with the neighborhood kids, but her heart wasn’t in it. They played kickball, once. I don’t remember which side won.

Almost nobody wanted to let their kids out of their sight. As time went by with no further sign or news, the paranoia actually seemed to get worse. We all went to church on Sunday. It was where we traded for goods and news and wondered if the Rapture had finally arrived. And found us wanting.

It was getting well into the fall when Useless came back.

I had woken up late when I heard Stephanie’s voice. She was crying and arguing with someone.

Someone outside. Tom hadn’t stirred. He was a warm breathing lump under the quilt. Even after everything, he was still a champion sleeper.

I looked out the bedroom window. It was a clouded night, with the moon half covered. I could still see two little girls with flashlights standing under the maple trees, right up at the edge of the field. I am ashamed to say my first reaction was anger. We had precious little for batteries, even with what we had taken from the Skoogs. We couldn’t be wasting them on games.

I jumped out of bed and pulled on a bathrobe. It was unearthly dark outside. I couldn’t get used to seeing the other houses with no lights burning. We had forgotten what night was.

I stuck my feet in some socks and old sneakers and went hunting little girls.

“Stephanie?” I peered into the darkness. “What are you doing out of bed? What’s the matter out here?” I could hear her sobbing.

They didn’t seem to hear me. Stephanie was wearing her robe, her pajamas, and an old overcoat of Tom’s. She looked like a scarecrow. She was crying as though her heart were breaking. Useless (I could see it was the same little girl) looked at her soberly and without much sympathy. Neither looked up as I joined them.

“What’s going on?” I demanded, more hysterically than I intended. My power as an adult seemed siphoned away by the night. The clouds blew off as I spoke and the moon lit up the edge of the field.

“There! Look! You have to look!” Useless took Stephanie’s chin in her hand and turned her face towards the border of the yard. “You can see it much better now—much better than with the flashlight!”

Unwillingly, Stephanie looked.

When I followed her gaze, at first all I saw was the old field. Frost and dew stained clumps of pale grass, dirt brown and gray in the moonlight. But as I looked farther in, I saw it. I saw what they saw.

There were places in the field where the light caught. No other word for it. They weren’t too close, the places, but they weren’t too far away either. The moonlight seemed to tug on the edges of something, and then disappear into a hollow. The night was gray to begin with—but these things were a bruise.

Useless aimed the flashlight back along the border.

“This is normal,” she said, in a patient voice. The light shone into the weeds, caught a glance of something flying—a bug, a moth. She then aimed the flashlight at the closest patch of the something. I peered into the thicket. The beam cut off at half of its length as though it had been sliced. “That,” said Useless, “is the Dark.”

“The Dark?” I took Stephanie by the shoulder and held her against me. The fear was a skyhook, dragging me to my toes.

“The only way to avoid it is to use a light. If the light shines through the night, you can go on and keep walking. If it catches, you have to stop. Don’t go near where it catches. The Dark doesn’t move very fast, but it will get you if you stand still for too long. Let’s head back.”

Useless trudged toward the house. I followed, feeling helpless. “But what happens if it catches you?”

I was unmoored. Stephanie was still crying, stumbling with me.

Useless didn’t answer until we were right next to the screen door. Her face was as hollow as an old woman’s. Even her hair looked white in the half-light.

“You suffer,” she explained. “You die.” She didn’t sound like a little girl at all.

“And it’s getting closer?”

Nod. “It won’t get here tonight, but it’s attracted by the towns.”

“What can we do?” I pulled Stephanie back from the strange child.

“Run, or nothing. Up to you. Like I said, it ain't fast.

But it can be real hard to see in the night.”

I shook my head to clear it. It was very important to ask the right questions.

Stephanie got there first. She asked: “But can’t it go back to the way it was before?”

Useless shook her head. “Those times are gone. I can’t help you bring them back.”

“My Lord,” I said.

“Save your prayers,” Useless spat on the ground.

Stephanie bolted and ran inside, catching her robe in the screen door. She pulled it out with a frantic gesture which I had never seen her make before. She ran for her father.

I caught Useless by the arm. “If we run, will it help?”

8

She shrugged. “For a while. Don’t know how long.

It will go places where there are a lot of people. The more people, the more Dark.”

Stephanie was shouting to her father to wake up. I heard Tom’s sleepy panic in response.

I lowered my voice so they wouldn’t hear me. “You have to do something!” I hissed. “We all believed in you!”

“I told her I was Useless.”

I stared at her. She didn’t look evil, just tired. I turned my back on her and went inside.

Tom was half dressed and comforting Stephanie.

He looked questioningly at me. Useless was already gone.

I understood the problem. We had our truck, and our bit of gas. We could go West, but we’d soon enough run into the Buffalo Dark. North, maybe north? Just avoid Toronto and head for Nova Scotia?

“Mom?” Stephanie tugged my robe. “Tell Daddy.

We have to go. We have to run.”

I looked at her.

“Pack up some food for all of us. Go get those boxes from downstairs.” Her face brightened, and I knew I had given her hope. She scampered away. I was ashamed.

Feeling one hundred years old, I turned to my husband. He was pot-bellied and gray in the moonlight. He loved me. I knew before the night was out we were going to run. Even if running was useless too.

Cheryl Gilbert is a US writer who has been based in Amsterdam for the last twelve years. She has published poetry in small journals (Caliban, New Stone Circle, Sojourner, among others) and has recently returned to writing with a focus on the short story.

Along Came A Spider

by Robert Mammone

There are some tourist traps you don't want to visit. ___________________________________________________________

The

restaurant spilled out onto the footpath, tables and chairs forming a peninsula around which the constant stream of pedestrians flowed. Cars crawled along the curb, honking at each other like stray geese, a constant chorus which only added to the sense of chaos. Music from the band inside the restaurant filtered out, the fast paced tempo of guitars and drums matching the roiling clouds racing across the sky.

Martin wiped the sweat leaking from his brow with a napkin then tossed it onto his empty plate. Patting his full stomach he looked around, watching the rest of the tour group eat and savouring the noise and movement.

The humidity was a constant; sweat bloomed across exposed skin and cold drinks turned tepid in minutes. Moisture sweated out of the restaurant's cracked brick facade. A ragged awning offered shelter from the constant drizzle, a warm, sifting shower warmed by the day's lingering heat. Tendrils hung from scudding clouds in ghostly streamers, dissolving buildings into shadows.

Looking down the road, passed jostling buildings, Martin caught a glimpse of distant, canted streetlights marking the town's boundary. Beyond that was the jungle, a tangled mass untouched by three centuries of colonisation. And above the jungle, mountains bulked darkly into the sky, watched over by an ochre moon inching its way through the cloud-shrouded night.

Underlying everything was the heavy, luxuriant smell of the jungle; a green, vast expanse hiding a heart of darkness.

Martin chuckled at his imagination, took a pull from his beer and turned his attention to watch Gunther work his magic on the two Polish girls who had joined their group that morning. Already the American cheerleading twins were scowling at the tall German. Martin leaned over to their tour guide, Miguel, who stared at Gunther with open admiration.

"It'll be World War Two all over again, Miguel," he said, watching the interplay crackle across the tables.

Miguel set his fork down and smiled, amused at being caught. His smile grew broader and he quirked an eyebrow."And you, Mr Martin?"

"Me?" Martin shook his head, chuckling. "Believe it or not, amigo, I'm just here for your country's cultural 9

delights. That sort of hassle is on offer in old London town every Saturday night. No, I'm here to experience something completely alien to my oh so comfortable, oh so bland life." He leaned forward again.

"Tell you the truth, I was expecting a bit more from the tour. Everything we've seen so far has come straight out of a Lonely Planet guide. No offence, mind," he said absently. "I'm just eager to get off the beaten track and see something more...exotic."

There was a sudden commotion out on the road.

Metal crunched, eliciting a renewed chorus of horns which briefly drowned out the music. Martin craned his neck for a better look. The facade of interest Miguel had maintained for days slipped a little and his eyes grew hooded, staring at the gringo with barely concealed contempt. Hope unfurled in his chest, a feeling that had grown alien to him in recent years.

Unbidden, his father's face surfaced from the deepest currents of his memory. He felt a vein tremble in his temple and he wasn't surprised to see his hands shake.

With an effort, he stilled them. When Martin turned back, blearily focussing his eyes on him, Miguel was smiling blandly.

Taking a sip from his glass, Miguel let his face settle into a mask of diffidence. "Carefully," hissed a voice inside his head that sounded remarkably like his father.

"If the tour company charged you more, I would be able to show you more. Their money doesn't make it worth my while to take you to some of our true, hidden treasures." He stopped, watching to see if Martin took the hint. He wasn't disappointed.

"And they would be..?" There was no mistaking the eagerness in Martin's voice. Miguel sat back and glanced from side to side, ostentatiously ensuring no one was listening.

"Well, my friend. That would depend on the mutually satisfactory arrangement we can agree on."

He left the idea dangling, a baited hook with a wicked barb.

Martin laughed, exhaling a warm mist of beer fumes over Miguel. He shook his head, then clapped Miguel on the shoulder. "Now you're talking my language," he said, pulling out his wallet. He slapped it on the table, the empty beer bottles clinking. "Name your price."

A minute or two of haggling ended with Miguel

discreetly folding his payment away. For the first time that night, a genuine smile creased his face. "Wouldn't you like to know where your money will be taking you?"

Flicking away an insect that had settled on his sleeve, Martin looked up. "Miguel, we've followed you into dusty museums, endless galleries, cheap shit markets and down to the docks. Anywhere, your bathroom even, would have to be more of an authentic experience than yet another archaeological dig. Take me somewhere...memorable."

Miguel noted the slight slurring of Martin's voice and his flushed features. A look of condescension flitted across his face, then abruptly he pushed back his chair and stood.

"Now?" Martin saw that some of the other tourists were looking at them. Annoyance at their curiosity needled him. Let them drink and eat and screw the night away, he thought. I've paid for this and it's all mine. He manufactured a smile and nodded, raising his beer. A ragged cheer rose before the gawkers returned to their drinks.

"You go on," he said quietly. "I'll meet you in a few minutes down at the corner. I don't want any of this lot coming along for a free ride." Miguel nodded minutely then stood, bidding the tourists a good night and sharing a joke with Gunther.

Martin watched Miguel's retreating back. His head felt like it was clogged with cotton, numbing the insistent thoughts that had started to niggle him when Miguel had seemed eager to take his initial lowball offer. Before he could think on it further, Martin was distracted by a raucous cry from Gunther's table. His thoughts grew muddled, slipping into a maze of confused impressions until they were lost. A little dazed, Martin lurched to his feet, knocking the table with his leg and rattling the plates and glasses.

Steadying himself, he left money for his meal with the others and walked off, leaning into the breeze slinking along the footpath.

The alcoholic haze lifted a little once he was on foot. The clouds overhead had bled from gray to indigo with the falling light, a churning soup that made him feel nauseous. Keeping Miguel in view, Martin turned and twisted his way through the throng, drawing glares when he bumped a pedestrian.

Some were in a hurry, ushering children along, while others strolled arm in arm, gawking at shop windows.

All of them ignored an old man, whose weather beaten face drew Martin's attention. The beggar sat listlessly in the mouth of an alley. His head was tilted to one side, and his milky white eyes rolled in their sockets. One palsied hand held a battered tin cup 10

between his knees. Martin was about to throw him a coin when he saw a fat spider crawling through the folds of a stained parka draped over his shoulders.

Shuddering, Martin ducked his head and hurried along, finally catching up with Miguel who was waiting impatiently at the street corner.

He nodded once, then jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Someone should see to that old fellow back there. I think he's picked up a friend he could do without." Miguel looked round Martin, but shook his head. Martin turned and saw with some surprise that the old man had vanished, leaving the parka lying crumpled on the ground.

Ignoring Miguel's questioning look, Martin shook his head "Where's my money taking me?"

"We'll need to visit my father first," Miguel said, keeping his eyes fixed on a point further along the street. "He took me once when I was a child." He looked at Martin, his smile so wide it was almost a snarl. "After that, he sent me to live with relatives in America. Until you came along, I've not had reason to go back."

An outburst of noise from the street drowned Martin's question why. Horns blew and people shouted at one another in a whirling throng of waving arms and reddened faces. Martin saw Miguel gesture impatiently. Feeling awkward, Martin hurried in Miguel's wake, turning off the main road into a narrow side street. Dim shapes dawdling in open doorways were the only sign of life. Martin hunched a little against their probing stares, aware that his clothes marked him out as a stranger. Keeping his head down, he walked at Miguel's shoulder until the last of the watchers were behind them.

They walked in silence for a while, the soft haze of wind and rain swirling around them. The jungle was close, its thick scents reaching into the heart of the town on green tendrils that filled Martin's mind with images of looming trees and clearings full of nameless creatures crawling in the dark. Miguel stopped in front of an alley choked with debris. Wind soughed softly through it, carrying a sharp stench of rot which Martin gagged on.

"Down there?" Martin cleared his throat of bile and pressed a hand against his mouth. Miguel waited, eyes glimmering in the thin light, for Martin to recover.

When he did, his face was pale and tense with anger.

"We're not going to be stumbling around in the dark, are we?" Miguel reached into his backpack and withdrew a long barrelled torch. There was a click and a powerful beam stabbed out with an almost palpable electrical fizz. The dark retreated and Martin felt an

oddly childlike sense of comfort.

"I've offered to take my father in to live with me," Miguel said. "But he refuses. So, we must venture into his domain." His smile was crooked.

Martin looked up to the main street, conscious of the unknown waiting for them in the alley. There were several streetlights at the intersection, a fragile link with civilisation. A voice in his head urged him to return to the restaurant. He looked over to Miguel, who waited patiently, gripping the torch in one hand.

"You're not going to clock me with that thing and rob me blind of all my money as soon as we go down there, are you?" There wasn't any banter in Martin's voice.

"Would you trust me if I said no?" Miguel asked.

His smile had thinned.

Staring into the dark, Martin shook his head. "I think even here, in the middle of nowhere, the authorities would consider it impolite if a tourist were to vanish. All that foreign money draining to other, friendlier destinations. I imagine the police wouldn't be tender in their investigations of a gringo's disappearance, either." The silence grew taut until it threatened to snap. Smiling wolfishly, Martin stared at Miguel, feeling a little of his apprehension drain away.

"Come on then," he said, the decision made and his fears silenced. "If we're going, let's go."

Torchlight flickered ahead, probing the dark before bleeding out into a gray smudge. The alley was a broad rut of churned mud, a far cry from cobble stoned lanes familiar to Martin at home. Along both edges, a sea of rubbish had washed up in sodden, colourless clumps that oozed rot into the air. Miguel led the way down a narrow central wash, pocked here and there with soupy puddles of muck. Martin shuddered to think of the heavens opening up and water running in full spate along the filthy bed.

They turned a corner and entered an alley bordered by low, huddled buildings. The lime washed walls were now reduced to a colour reminiscent of a scabrous piss stain. All the windows were boarded up, eyes turned inwards on abject squalor. By the swinging torchlight, Martin uneasily thought of them as slowly awakening after years of hibernation to gaze on the creatures inching past. The thought sent him scurrying after Miguel, who waited impatiently at a corner.

The corner opened into a small square, bordered on all sides by brooding buildings. The drizzle and wind provided the only sounds. The open ground was dotted with muddy pools of water whose depths Martin wasn't keen to hazard. Miguel wended his way around these pools, aiming for the opposite corner 11

where a box of corrugated sheeting bleeding rust stood. A sudden burst of noise echoed around the square, a mad fluttering of wings arrowing upwards, before swooping across the low roofs. Gritting his teeth, Martin waited while Miguel rapped on the door.

Between gaps in the iron, Martin saw a dark shape jitter towards the sound. Hinges shrieking thinly, the door opened.

A shadow stood in the narrow doorway, backlit and blurred by a smoking lantern sitting on a low bench.

Miguel murmured a few liquid words in his native tongue and the figure stiffened. The response sounded harsh, but the figure stepped aside. Miguel gestured to Martin, who stooped to cross the threshold.

Before he had left on his holiday, Martin had read about the poverty he could expect to see. Within the charmed circle of the touring group, he had encountered it at the edges; dispossessed Indians begging with their children in the street, half paved roads in even the largest cities, the obvious squalor bordering the main tourist precincts, the desperate, humbling servility of everyone he had met. But this...

The floor was bare earth, swept clean and pounded rock-hard by generations of feet. The roof was pitched sufficiently to form a dingy, web-shrouded ceiling that shivered as a thick, humid wind curled through gaps in the iron. The lantern cast swirling shadows across the cardboard-lined walls. Sitting in one corner was a narrow bed, neatly folded blankets at one end. Next to it was an old, cast-iron camp oven, covered in a collection of pots that had been mended and remended down the years. Shutters hid a window that Martin doubted had ever had glass fitted in the frame.

There was no sign of a refrigerator, no evidence of running water or electricity and no toilet or bath. For all the painstaking neatness, Martin knew exactly where he was. A hovel.

Miguel watched Martin's silent appraisal of the room and drew himself up, his face settling into a tight mask only partially hiding his shame. Martin affected ignorance and made a gesture of thanks to his silent host, murmuring words of greeting in the local tongue.

Ignoring him, the old man turned and shuffled over to a stool sitting in the lantern's dingy light. He settled himself down and watched them, features blurred by shadow. Feeling awkward, Martin watched the conversation between father and son. Martin had the sense that they were arguing. It grew heated for a time, and the constant looks in his direction unsettled him.

Finally, the old man jerkily nodded agreement. He turned to Martin and leaned forward, his face

emerging from the shadows. Martin was barely able to keep the revulsion from his own face.

The skin was the colour of beaten copper, seamed and lined with age and a peculiar suffering that had stamped itself onto his features. His lips bore old scars and recent cuts, and a thin foam bubbled at one corner. A dark tattoo sprawled across the proud nose, tendrils of ink running across his cheeks and digging deep into his scalp. But it was the eyes, terrible and haunted and exhausted that caught and held Martin's own. Within that searing gaze he felt himself examined and judged then cast aside. Abruptly, the eyes flickered upwards, searching for something in the shadows. The old man's hands trembled a little, then he grunted to himself. Nodding once, he reached under the bench and pulled out a long, polished stick.

He stood, gesturing angrily at the door. Without warning, he blew the lamp out, plunging the room into thick, clutching darkness.

Disoriented, Martin felt someone brush past, the noise of their passage like bristles running over coarse fabric. He turned, then stopped, captured by a scattering of brilliant points of light spread across the ceiling. At first he thought it was moonlight glimmering through holes in the roof. Then the lights moved, slowly at first, then swarming in a single mass towards them. He heard a sharp intake of breath, and his shoulder was roughly grabbed, propelling him towards the angle of light from the open doorway.

"What the fuck was that?" Martin exclaimed. He swore again when he splashed through a pool of mud, the thick sucking noise it made as he struggled free himself echoing around the empty square.

Miguel, his mouth working like he was probing a sore, refused to look at Martin. "The luxuries of civilised existence stopped at the mouth of the alley, Martin. Poverty and vermin go hand in hand. As you say, our government is more interested in your money than our existence."

Martin glared at the two men. Insects, perhaps, he thought to himself, but couldn't shake the way the lights had seemed to move with intent. Before he could respond, the old man walked off, with Miguel closely following. Martin hurried after them, casting one final look at the shack before entering the alley. A weight lifted from his mind when it vanished from sight.

T

he trio plunged into the network of alleys penetrating deep into the shanty town. Lights and sounds and smells assaulted Martin at every turn. The few people they met quickly averted the gaze from the old man. Miguel answered Martin's questions with 12

non-committal answers. With the night advancing past midnight, Martin was about to angrily call the whole venture off when they suddenly emerged into a deserted, pot-holed road. On the other side a thick wall of jungle rustled in the stiffening breeze.

"I could be watching the porn channel right now," Martin muttered angrily, waiting for the old man while he searched for a gap through the mass of looming trees.

"Or even cosying up to one of Gunther's girlfriends."

Miguel's father abruptly vanished into the trees.

Slipping through the gap after Miguel, Martin was surprised at how quickly the distant mumble from the town faded, replaced by the jungle folding itself around them. His earlier uncertainty eroding, Martin’s spirits rose with the knowledge he was close to his goal. With renewed vigour he followed Miguel's dark outline down the path.

At the bottom of the trail a clearing opened up, a pocket of space beneath the overarching trees. The old man had already crossed to the far side, swinging his walking stick back and forth between two barely visible game trails.

Waiting, Martin listened to the jungle. Hidden birds hooted to one another, marking the trespass of humans into their domain. Water cascaded in a medley of sounds, splashing and dripping to the thick jungle floor. The breeze tossed branches about, the rising hiss of leaves oddly loud in the clearing's narrow confines. Here and there, brilliant beams of moonlight penetrated the canopy, illuminating the thick undergrowth.

The old man grunted out a word that floated around the clearing. Gesturing choppily with one hand, he moved down the left hand trail, muttering to himself. The noise they made following him masked the sounds of the jungle once more.

Soon enough, there was another delay while the old man considered a fork in the trail. Feeling the weight of the jungle on him, Martin looked upward, eager for any sight of the stars or the moon. In the dim light, the canopy moved like a living thing, a constantly changing vista that left Martin disoriented.

From a glimpse through a ragged gap, he thought the stars had shifted in their wheel across the sky, taking up new, unfamiliar positions. Rubbing a hand across his sweat slick face, Martin felt something claw at his guts. The moon, no longer round and fat as a wheel of rancid cheese, was now sickle sharp, ready to cut the heart out of the night. Miguel hurried off, forcing Martin into a jog to stay in touch.

And then they arrived. Another ragged clearing lurched into view, bordered by trees choked with thick

vines squirming like glistening pythons up slimy trunks. At the clearing's centre a dark mass swarmed into the night sky, drinking the light of the moon, an event horizon Martin suddenly feared to cross.

Steadying himself with a deep breath, he moved past Miguel, who was shining the torch over the ruins.

Shadows fled the sterile light, revealing how the jungle had almost swallowed the buildings. Creepers crowned a stubby central tower, winding like tentacles round and round and round the stonework until it was impossible to tell where the building started and the jungle ended. Huddled on either side of the tower were two smaller structures, their outlines lost in a thick tangle of foliage. Across the structure, the stonework was fouled by a thick growth of moss, a brown and green and gray scab that made Martin wince to look at.

"Is this Aztec?" Martin asked, puzzled by the simple architecture so at odds with what the guide books described. Miguel looked at him, and Martin was jolted to see what seemed like pity cross his face.

"Before the Conquistadors, Martin. Maybe even before the Aztecs." His face grew distant. "My father says our family has links with this site going back generations. History is a burden, Martin, especially here..." Fear shaded his voice and he looked away.

Martin shivered and the urge to leave felt suddenly overwhelming. He turned and fruitlessly searched for the path leading back into the jungle. In the dark, the trees had massed together. When he looked back, Miguel had joined his father.

Fighting a rising sense of panic, Martin felt the breeze die. In the brooding silence, his pulse surged until his vision swam. Thrusting out a trembling hand he stumbled towards the waiting men. The old man swung around, holding his stick in the air and barring his way. Branches shifted, letting a cold light play over the old man. The light bleached his face, rendering it like tallow. The tattoo seemed to come to life, standing starkly on the flesh, its writhing contorting his features. Between the bristling legs, his eyes were fever bright with madness. A torrent of words issued from cracked lips, harsh and full of urgency.

"My father greets you in the name of his people and the old religion. He is the Vessel from which the living words of the god issue and go forth," Miguel intoned, his voice dead. Moss hanging from the ruins rippled, a soft crackling that sent shudders up Martin's spine.

"He bids you enter the temple so that you may gaze upon the high altar and give praise to our god."

Suddenly sure that was the last thing he wanted, Martin backed away but found himself pulled up short when Miguel clamped a hand around his arm and 13

drew him close.

"This is what you wanted, isn't Martin? To see history up close and personal?" Martin flinched, feeling the wetness of Miguel's lips brush his ear. Mute with terror, Martin let himself be led through an opening in the base of the central building and into a narrow, musty smelling corridor. An image of a killing chute in an abattoir occurred to him and he trembled.

The torchlight filled the corridor, chasing away shadows that had groped towards them. Passing through a small chamber, Martin's frantic gaze fell on smashed mosaics and a rubble strewn floor. Then into another corridor which twisted and turned and branched before emerging into a large chamber.

The altar room was choked with moss, heavy fronds of it clinging to the walls and ceiling and flowing over the altar itself in a shivering brown tide.

Leading to the altar was a broad mosaic covered ramp. Other mosaics, larger and more distinctive, were visible trough the moss on the walls.

The moss rustled, a scraping noise that prickled his skin. Martin became aware of a new presence in the chamber, something that watched him with a chill, passionless glare. He looked around and saw that amongst the moss, thousands of tiny pinpricks of light had winked into life. His mind turned back to the shack in the square in the shanty town and the lights swarming towards him overhead. Gooseflesh rippled across his skin and an insistent itching began in his head. He felt if he could just scratch it... ... awareness dawned in him like light breaking over the horizon, washing away the confusion in a burst of clarity. Senses howling, he saw that the constellation of lights adorning the walls were hungrily watching him.

Miguel's father continued his chanting and he could see Miguel tensing to flee, his face a mask of caged fear. Martin felt cold sweat trickling between his shoulder blades and he abandoned the men. With a sense of foreboding that was rising like the tide, Martin turned and looked at the altar. When he did, his world tipped on its axis.

Eight globes of light burned with a frigid glare.

Taking an involuntary step towards them, Martin saw his face, a white, shifting blur, reflected eightfold. The altar shifted and the moss tore apart, revealing hundreds and hundreds of fat, bulbous bodies covered in stiff bristles of gray and brown. They quivered, swaying minutely back and forth, a living mass of malign intent. Whimpering, Martin willed his legs to move but found that panic had rooted him to the floor.

A tiny part of Martin's mind that hadn't fled in

atavistic terror watched the altar lurch down the ramp, a living thing crawling ever closer. Sickle shaped mandibles clacked, the noise filling the room like a tolling bell. A noxious stench, recalling fields of the dead, filled his nostrils and he gagged. Slumping to his knees, Martin vomited, splattering the worn mosaics of tiny, stylised figures fleeing a swollen brown tide.

Spiders fell from the ceiling, joining the tumult surging towards him. The last thing Martin saw before consciousness and memory fled was the giant spider, that ancient god Miguel's people had long worshipped out of fear and hate, looming over him, vast, hungry eyes laying claim to his soul and dragging him down and down into darkness.

S

itting at a desk, heart racing, Martin stared raptly at the open book in front of him.

“Tell me what you see, Martin.” The voice probed, seeking a way into his mind.

A tic fluttered over his left eye and a tear trickled down his cheek. No sobs, no anguished cries, just the nervous, frantic tug of flesh and that single wet track.

“Take it…take it away. Please.” That last word through gritted teeth.

Sighing, Rebecca reached over and pulled the book away. Martin stared at the empty desk, the afterimage of the spider shimmering in front of his eyes. He blinked it away, a frantic fluttering that matched his pulse. Overcome with exhaustion, he slumped in his chair. On the other side of the desk, the book closed with a heavy thud.

“We've come a long way in the past three weeks, Martin.” Rebecca watched Martin slowly sit up. “But we've still a way to go.” Rebecca straightened a pen on her desk, then caught herself. A smile fixed itself on her face, though Martin saw that it didn't ease the tension around her eyes.

“Have you had any more dreams?” she asked.

Martin shook his head, but didn't meet her steady gaze. “These sessions would be more useful if we could get to the heart of what happened to you on your trip.”

Martin shook his head. He didn't like lying, especially when he knew Rebecca was doing her best to help. But how could he even begin to describe the dreams that had relentlessly forced themselves on him night after night? Caught in a dismal twilight between sleep and wakefulness, conscious enough to want to scream, but not enough to let anything but a pathetic, terror filled groan escape his frozen lips.

Her face settled into a slight frown. “I've read a few studies which have shown that those suffering from 14

amnesia are able to recover some, if not all of their memories through recalling their dreams. Like I said, I believe we're getting somewhere, but I think we can make real progress if we involve a friend of mine, a specialist, who has experience with dream therapy.”

Martin nodded automatically, but his mind had returned to the photo of the spider. The eyes, those blank hemispheres that were always watching, always waiting for any sign of weakness, probed him even now. He sensed...something, swirling around the edge of his thoughts, patiently waiting to claim him.

“Good then, we'll make the appointment for next Wednesday evening.” Martin nodded again, then saw Rebecca reach over and take his hand.

“We'll beat this, Martin. Me and you together. Your memory loss and these incidents of arachnophobia are nasty, but that is all they are. With persistence, we can make them both, well, a distant memory.” She lifted her hand away and a smile, this time genuine, lit her face.

“Wednesday then. See my secretary to make the appointment.” He nodded, smiling absently in return.

She watched him leave then returned to the paperwork on her desk. He lingered for a moment at the door, looking at her. Wondering, as he closed it, what she would look like with spiders crawling over every inch of her body.

Martin checked his e-mails when he returned home. Work had grudgingly given him sick leave, and apart from his weekly sessions with Rebecca, the Internet was his only real contact with the outside world. While the PC booted up, he put the kettle on.

Absently spooning coffee into his mug, he watched the street through the window over the sink. The shrubs in his front garden shivered in a light breeze, their leaves barely visible in the fading light. An image of every limb and leaf laden with dozens of the spiders burst across his mind. The grass dissolved into an undulating mass crawling towards his front door. He hadn't realised he was shivering until the kettle's whistle cut across his thoughts.

A pinging from the computer announced the arrival of new e-mails. Settling into his chair, Martin scrolled through, automatically deleting the spam that clogged his inbox more and more each day. He was about to remove the last message on the basis of the dodgy spelling in the subject line, when his eyes settled on the sender's name – Gunther Haas.

“Jesus.” He took a sip from his mug, hoping the warmth would dislodge the ice that suddenly clogged his chest. Grimacing at the bitter taste, he opened the e-mail and began to read.

Martin, I hope this message finds you well. I know it has been some time since the tour finished, but I have been in contact with some of the others (the Polish & American girls, you know how it is 8-) ) and they asked about you. So, how are you? None of us were allowed to see you in the hospital, and with Miguel having vanished, we didn't know what to do. There was some issue with your memory after we went to that restaurant and I thought some of these photos I found on my camera might be helpful.

Martin ignored the rest of the message, feeling the ice spread into his guts. From the insurance report, he knew that he had been found, delirious and lost, wandering through a ramshackle ghetto on the edge of the town. His insurance had paid for a stay in a very basic clinic and when the money had run out, he had been shipped back, economy class, to the UK. The touring group had moved on and since then...

Four .jpegs were attached to the bottom of the email. The first three were of the tour group eating at the restaurant, happy snaps of tourists mugging for the camera. All this he remembered and his nerves settled a little. He clicked on the last attachment.

A rubbish strewn patch of land under a dismal sky, bordered by low tenements. The remains of a building in the foreground shot a dizzying sense of familiarity through him. A blackened ruin of charred timber, twisted metal and crumpled corrugated iron. Wisps of frozen smoke framed against the turbulent sky. A thick carpet of ash scattered around the ruin, heaped in where the doorway had been.

Unbidden, the stench of petrol filled his nostrils and his hands rubbed together, rubbing at something acrid and stinging. Screams and someone battering against a door, their cries receding as the sound of crackling flames filled the air. Fire danced across the ground towards him, surging forward before collapsing in a cloud of cinders.

Martin magnified the image with trembling fingers.

It jumped forward and a band of iron clamped around his chest. The carpet of ash around the ruined shack took on a new dimension; thousands of charred, twisted bodies, legs frozen in death. Gagging, he tumbled out of his chair, scrambling for the power cord and pulling on it hard.

The room plunged into sudden darkness. Pressed against the wall, Martin dug his fingers convulsively into the carpet. With the PC's hum gone, he heard noises from the garden. Branches creaked, their leaves tossing and hissing, sounding so much like the endless creeping of thousands of bulbous bodies that Martin 15

had to bite his lip to stop from screaming. Crawling to his bedroom, Martin searched every inch of the room before slinking into bed, piling the blankets up around his head. He lay there for the rest of the night, cocooned, eyes staring into the darkness, watching, watching, watching.

R

ebecca was shocked by Martin's condition. His tic had worsened, constantly pulling at the soft flesh around his left eye. His face was drawn, a graven mask that looked ready to collapse at any moment. He constantly rubbed his hands together, the skin cracked and red in places. Without looking at her, he collapsed into the nearest seat and looked out the windows, his head cocked to listen for...Rebecca wasn't sure what.

Martin completely ignored the man seated next to her.

Exchanging a glance with her colleague, Rebecca shrugged slightly when he quirked an eyebrow. She coughed, then leaned forward.

“Good to see you again, Martin. Martin?” Martin started a little then looked at her, dull eyes focussing slowly. A few mumbled words escaped his stiff lips before he settled deeper into his chair.

Rebecca was about to ask another question when her colleague raised a finger, shaking his head slightly. He stood and crossed the room, extending a hand towards Martin.

“Hello there, Martin. I'm Doctor Higgins. You can call me Tom, if you like. With a bit of luck, I should be able to help find the cause of your condition. Though don't expect me to fix any diction problems you may have.” He smiled broadly, fully expecting a response.

It slipped a little when Martin kept his head turned towards the window, eyes blinking slowly.

Rebecca hurried to fill the sudden silence.

“Martin, I've brought Tom up to date with your situation and the treatment we've been working through. Why don't you tell us how your week has been and then we can make a start. Martin?”

Martin stared raptly at the window. Along the sill stalked a daddy long-leg, dainty in the afternoon light.

It stopped, then turned towards Martin who started to shake. Catching a glimpse of the creature, Rebecca crossed the room and brushed it aside, closing the blinds to hide the crumpled remains. Keenly watching the exchange, Tom reached into his satchel. He pulled out a small, triangular shaped device and sat it on the low table next to Martin. With a finger, he set the hand ticking back and forth, the sound quickly filling the room.

“Dreams are really just symbols representing real world activities which the mind has processed into memories. My research has shown that amnesia can

be partially, even fully cured, when dreams are unlocked by therapy of this sort.” Tom sat opposite Martin, whose eyes were fixed on the metronome.

“Back and forth, Martin. The metronome is a symbol as well. We'll be reaching back into your recent past to bring your memories back with us.”

Tom looked at Rebecca and smiled.

“And the good thing is, he's so susceptible at the moment that he's already in a trance.”

Rebecca held up a hand, watching Martin uneasily.

“Do you think he's ready for this sort of treatment? His deterioration since I last saw him is shocking.”

“All the more reason to use this technique, Bec. Judging by his response earlier, he's close to being unable to function in normal society. Soon enough, every little insect creeping by will send him into a fit.

No, I'm certain this is his best option. Shall we begin?”

Rebecca nodded, still feeling uncertain but unsure how to articulate her unease. From their first session, she had sensed something odd about Martin, some special quality to his suffering that hinted at...she didn't like to think of it in so hysterical a term, but hinted at something terrible. Dimming the lights she took her seat and watched Tom begin.

“You need to concentrate on my voice, Martin.”

Nodding his head slowly, Martin reminded Rebecca of a puppet, waiting for the pull on his strings to react.

“Good. I want you to go back to the restaurant outing with your tour group. Tell us what happened that night.”

In his fugue, Martin nodded, eyes focussed inwards, warily watching his memories unfurl with languid grace. The dinner on the footpath in the steaming heat. Street sounds and music echoing in his head. There was Gunther, leering at the women while giving Martin an exaggerated wink with each of his eight eyes. An abrupt shift, then he was amongst the pedestrians, their faces clogged with webs. Into an alley lined with silk, and he half glimpsed people with too many legs looking down on him. Into a shack, walls festooned with cocoons, wriggling shapes trapped inside eager to be free.

Then into the jungle drowning in an ocean of sound and the moon above rapidly passing backwards through its phases and a chittering, undulating carpet that was all legs and wickedly gleaming eyes and... ...Martin came awake screaming, thrashing in the chair while a stranger loomed over him and then he saw, really saw who was holding him, the lined, leathery face with the thick black tattoo writhing obscenely, legs clawing at the sides of its head and then the stink of petrol washed over them both. A snap of light and a mighty yellow and red concussion.

16

The world burst into flame and all around him thousands upon thousands of spiders writhed in the fire while the old man shrieked and shrieked until the flames ate his face away. And in the far corner of the empty square, Miguel had run, scrambling into the darkness, his words echoing.

“You are the Vessel now. When the time is right, the living word of God will issue from you. Again and again and again and again.”

His voice ragged, Martin opened his eyes and looked down into Tom's goggling own, bloodshot with the pressure around his throat. There were shouts at the door and then Martin was dragged off Tom and flung to the ground. Dazed, he saw Rebecca, her face frozen in shock, lean over him, a syringe full of clear liquid in one shaking hand. Then a rush of warmth washed him away in a cascade of broken memories filled with a monstrous black shape with dark, watching eyes...

W

henever Rebecca had to venture into the asylum's concrete warren, the waxen colour of the walls reminded her of the corpses used in her dissection class in medical school. She shook off the memory with a twist of her mouth. A muffled hooting echoed dismally from the far end of the corridor, eventually winding down like a dying siren. Shivering a little, Rebecca moved again to the window set high in the door, the square chunk of glass heavily laced with wire threads. Rising on her toes, and hating herself for it, she peered through.

Martin knelt in the centre of the room, the light from a single bulb high overhead pooling weakly around him. In the shadows, she could see stained padded walls rising into the darkness. Head bowed, his chest hitched with each breath. The shapeless smock he wore had ridden up, exposing bare legs.

Only Rebecca's outraged objections had prevented Martin from being laced and buckled into a straitjacket. She thought she saw a thin line of drool slowly descending to the floor from his slack lips. She was reminded of a broken marionette.

“You’ll look after him?” Rebecca stepped back, looking at the grim faced man patiently waiting.

“We look after them all.” The lines around his eyes softened a little when he saw the look on her face.

“He’s better here than anywhere else, Rebecca.

Here, there’s only the demons in his head to worry him.” An alarm distantly rang and his face stiffened.

With a curt nod, he turned and hurried off, the jangle of his keys echoing down the corridor.

Rebecca stayed for a little longer. The alarm abruptly cut off and a hollow silence descended.

Shaking her head, she turned and left. *** After the screaming, the blessed quiet. Martin’s throat was raw and his body shook with tremors of pain. His fingers, nails still crusted with blood, ached. His eyes were far away, thoughts drifting.

The thread from his mouth gathered in a bundle between his knees. His eyes slowly focussed on it and his mind started ticking over, images and associations falling into place. A breeze stirred in his mind, thick and heavy with the scents of the jungle. Something large and hunched scuttled in the darkness, circling closer and closer while a thick chanting echoed through the trees.

His eyes widened and he felt a tickle start deep in his gut, rising slowly into his chest. A tearing pain blossomed behind his breastbone and his hands scrabbled futilely over his pulsing skin. His throat bulged and then his jaws stretched brutally wide, muscles and tendons tearing wetly. Something fat wriggled into his mouth, legs hooking into his tongue for purchase. His mouth yawned open and a spider dropped heavily to the floor, legs uncurling before it scuttled away.

Before Martin could scream, his chest heaved again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

And‌ Robert Mammone resides in Australia and has published fiction in Doctor Who Magazine, Microhorror, Pseudopod, House of Horror and Fantastic Horror.

You can purchase all of our publications directly from our Web site at www.blackmatrixpub.com, or through Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. You can also order them through your local bookseller.

17

The Crash of Flight 1217

by Stephen Frentzos

It was bound to happen, sooner or later... ___________________________________________________________

The

time has finally arrived for me, Joseph Oswald, a former employee of the Federal Aviation Administration for forty-one years, to divulge the true cause of the crash of Artemis Airlines Flight 1217. It has been kept as guarded a secret as the hidden location in which the wreckage from the accident has been stored since the day the Search and Rescue team I was in charge of was sent to explore the disaster site nearly thirty-seven years ago.

The Central Intelligence Agency was quick to respond once they had been informed of my team’s findings, arriving at the scene within twenty minutes of my telephone conversation with the Secretary of Transportation. It took all day for the myriad of bulldozers and cranes sent to the site to load every last scrap of debris onto the beds of waiting trucks, and I remember watching as the convoy of vehicles piled high with disorderly heaps of bent metal and broken glass disappeared down the road and out of sight under the cover of darkness like a pack of wolves who had just finished picking apart the evening’s latest catch.

My entire team and I were forced to stay behind and sign a stack of papers as thick as a novel, promising to the government of the United States that we would never mention to another soul a single word regarding what we witnessed that day. Instead, we were instructed to report to the media that a tornado had spontaneously formed in close proximity to the plane as it began its final descent toward the airport in Omaha, and although the pilot had fought courageously to regain control of the commercial aircraft once it was swept up in the powerful winds, his efforts were in vain. I, like everyone else in my company, agreed to the terms I was presented with, as had we indulged the public with the actual facts behind the catastrophe, a frenzied uproar unlike any other the world had ever seen would have certainly followed. So, instead of spreading the fear and confusion that our inspection of that crash site elicited within us to any innocent people, my colleagues and I confined our astonishment to our own minds and went on with our lives like nothing out of the ordinary had taken place.

For almost four decades I have continued on with the memory of that fateful day burning uncontrollably 18

in my conscience. And, just as I swore to the highest powers of this country that I would, I have not described to anyone the unsettling images that I can never forget. But it is not because of my devotion to the government that I have remained quiet. It is instead because of the polygraph test that the Central Intelligence Agency administers to me twice a year, even now, more than twelve years into my retirement.

The tests were a stipulation of the agreement I signed on the side of that field in Nebraska, and one that carried with it the threat of lifetime incarceration if the results of the examination were to show that I had betrayed my honor.

But now, as my health has begun to fail me and as many of the men with whom I share this shrouded bond have perished while still grasping tightly the secret of so many years, I have decided that I will not suffer a similar cowardly fate, for the public has a right to know exactly what happened on the morning that Artemis Airlines Flight 1217 crashed into the empty field in Nebraska.

T

he call came into our headquarters in Washington at around three o’clock in the morning. I was awakened by my supervisor who phoned me with the tragic news, telling me to gather my team and meet at Dulles International Airport in an hour. I complied, and within fifty minutes, the seven other members of my team and I were in the air on our way to Nebraska.

None of us were able to sleep on the private jet, all of us dreading the grisly sights we were about to encounter. No one dared to break the silence as we sat there staring straight ahead in reverie while gripping the arms of our chairs, and it felt to most of us as if we were in the midst of being shipped off to a brutal war.

It was the eleventh such commercial airliner crash that I was in charge of inspecting in my career, but never did I develop a numbness to the abject horror that undoubtedly awaited me. Even though I was a professional who was expected to maintain my composure during the most gruesome of investigations, the staggering amount of charred, bloodied limbs and torsos of human bodies that my team and I knew we would have to sift through made me shudder with revulsion at the mere thought of

them. in half and parted lengthwise like an opened clamshell.

After landing at the airport in Omaha, we took a Alan and I ascended the wing of the plane and short helicopter ride to the smoldering ruins whose instantly my stomach dropped as I caught sight of familiar stench of death greeted us from high in the what it was that held the captivation of each of my air. The field, which was miles away from the nearest colleagues so firmly. There, clearly visible beneath the residence, would have been indistinguishable from the fractured cabin of the aircraft, was a mysterious black other similar fields that stretched as far as the eye metal object of about the same size and shape as a could see had it not had what looked like the schoolyard baseball diamond. It was thin and broad, remnants of an enormous, recently-extinguished and its smooth, sleek exterior gave it the appearance campfire located almost perfectly in the middle of it. of a giant manta ray. The object appeared to have Smoke rose from the center of the mound of suffered almost no damage save for a large crack that blackened rubble that decreased in height as it fanned ran from one of its corners to a dark, semicircular outward in every direction. The yellow, arid grass glass dome roughly ten feet in diameter that that had been dried out from the relentless summer protruded near the opposite end of the sizable mass. heat surrounded the disheveled assemblage of folded Along one of its edges, a line of white symbols and crumpled airplane parts, and the local firefighters belonging to a language I had never seen before stood who hastily responded to the out quite resplendently against disaster accomplished a small feat the blackness of the metal on in preventing the entire section of which they were written. land, bordered on all sides by When I was finally able to My entire team and I narrow dirt roads, from becoming wrest my stare away from the were forced to stay behind object, I turned around and engulfed in flames.

The helicopter touched down and sign a stack of papers asked, “Has anybody inspected as thick as a novel, near the edge of the field, and, this yet?” after we were assured by the “No, sir,” announced Kevin promising to the small crew of firefighters who still government of the United Albright, another veteran member lingered at the scene that the site my team. “We thought you States that we would never of was safe to examine, my team would want to look at it first and I approached the wreckage mention to another soul a before we tampered with it.” single word regarding with the intention of pulling as “I see,” I replied, trying to many bodies out of the debris as what we witnessed that day. conceal the nervousness in my we could without the help of the voice. “Well then, let’s figure out machinery that was soon to arrive. what we have here.” I leaned I had just finished dragging forward and rested my right hand the burnt corpse of a young woman I found along the on the edge of the wing beneath me before jumping perimeter of the carnage to a patch of grass some down to the surface of the unknown object. A loud twenty yards away when Alan Remington, a veteran thud echoed off of the dense black metal as I landed member of my team who I admired for both his heavily upon it, and after taking a deep breath, I strong, confident demeanor and his astute attention to walked over to the shiny glass dome. the most minor of details, hurried up to me and I crouched down, holding my head close to the panted, “Sir, we found something underneath the glass, but I could not see inside. I then made an arch fuselage of the plane that we think you should take a with my hands, wrapping my fingers around my face look at.” as I placed them against the glass in order to shade “What is it?” I asked. my eyes from the sunlight pouring down on me. My “It’s hard to say. I’ve never seen anything like it heart was beating rapidly as I strained to see inside, before.” but still I could not view anything beyond the glass.

I followed Alan’s lead as we maneuvered past the After several seconds of grueling anticipation, I looked overturned cockpit and climbed onto the detached left up and asked the anxious crowd above me, “Does wing of the plane that formed a makeshift ramp as it anybody have something to pry this open with?” slanted sharply upward toward the apex of the chaotic Alan nodded his head as he disappeared down the mess. At the top of the wing stood the rest of my team inclined wing, returning a minute later with a blue, huddled closely together, the group gazing down in lusterless crowbar. He bent down and held it out in unison into the cabin of the plane which was now split my direction, and as I took it from him, we exchanged 19

a brief glance of mutual uneasiness. I then turned around and struggled to jam the end of the crowbar beneath the bottom rim of the glass, my violently shaking hands hindering my actions considerably.

Somehow I was able to muster enough coordination to complete the task, and with one forceful thrust of my arms, I dislodged the entire piece of glass from the metal beneath it.

With my heart nearly leaping out of my chest, I lowered myself toward the shadowy hole. It was then, in that profoundly terrifying moment, that I first witnessed the pair of lifeless bodies of the extraterrestrials whose ship had collided with and caused the crash of Artemis Airlines Flight 1217.

Stephen Frentzos grew up in Massachusetts and graduated from Boston University with a degree in mathematics. He has been continuously cultivating his writing skills over the years when he is not busy with his day job as a mutual fund accountant.

If you like traditional fantasy, order a copy of Realms from www.blackmatrixpub.com, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and many other Web locations. You can also have your local bookseller order you a copy. Every issue is packed with over 80,000 words of fantasy fiction and high adventure.

20

Wounded Dog

by Jason Helmandollar

Facing life is much harder than staring into the gaze of Death. ___________________________________________________________

The old man is staring at me again.

I glance up, meet his eyes for an instant, and then lower my head to my cheeseburger. He looks familiar, although the chances are pretty slim that I've seen him before. This is my first time in the diner. Hell, this is my first time in South Carolina.

But still, he stares, like we're old buddies. I shove a cold fry in my mouth and look up again. I hold his gaze. His eyes look milky. Maybe he's blind and not looking at me, at all.

"You hardly ate a thing."

I jump a little and turn to the waitress. She looks prettier now than when she first took my order, like she went in the back and put on some makeup – or maybe took some off. I notice for the first time the tip of a tattoo peeking out from behind the collar of her shirt. An ornate cross, it looks like. I didn't see it before because she had one extra button closed on her blouse. She has unbuttoned a button for me.

"I hope you're planning to eat the rest of that cheeseburger," she says.

"You’re pale as a marshmallow."

I shrug. "I'm still working on it."

She leans in close.

Her breath smells like cinnamon gum.

"That's good, 'cause Sundy gets offended when people don't finish his burgers." She flips a thumb at the narrow window separating the front of the diner from the kitchen. Just then a fleshy hand reaches through the window and snatches an order from a metal carousel.

I wonder why they called him Sundy, but not enough to ask. "No, the burger's fine. I'm just not that hungry."

"I'll tell you what," she says. "You finish that cheeseburger and I'll throw in a piece of pumpkin pie, on the house."

She's so close that if I were to lean forward just a few inches, we would be kissing. Our eyes lock, and in the span of a heartbeat, I feel like I know her intimately. She's about my age, twenty-two or three.

She's probably better looking and smarter than any of her friends, and she uses that to her advantage. She knows how to get what she wants. But she's insecure, too. She says she's working as a waitress to save money for college, but she doesn't really plan to go.

Her mother taught her that she wasn't good enough 21

for college. She says her favorite author is Faulkner, but she's never finished anything by him. She's had a couple really bad, maybe violent, relationships. She has the eyes of an angel and I find myself suddenly in love. I want to take her away with me. I want to drive with her across the country – her, in the passenger seat, her dark hair blowing in the wind, smoking cigarettes and telling jokes that don't make any sense. I want to look over at her and laugh, and have to force myself to keep my eyes on the road.

And we can keep driving until we reach the ocean somewhere and I'll drive right out on the beach and we'll hit the sand running and not stop until the foamy water is up to our waists.

"Thanks," I say, "but I'm not a big fan of pumpkin pie."

She nods once and stands straight. "I'll check back," she says, and moves on to another table.

I place a palm flat against the back of my head. A headache is starting.

From four tables away, the old man continues to stare.

I get up and head for the restroom in back. By the time I reach the door, my vision has gone blurry.

Inside a grimy stall, I sit down on a toilet and lean back against the cool piping. The pain in my head ratchets up quickly, to the point where I feel like I may need to scream. I hold it in, though, because I know that within seconds the pain will reach a level that my brain can no longer register. Everything after that is twilight and broken dreams.

I wake up on the floor, curled up on my side, staring at dried piss stains on the tile. My hair is damp with sweat. Also, my eyes are wet. I've been crying. I roll over onto my back and stare up at a florescent light.

Usually my headache dreams are lost to me, but this time, I remember with surprising clarity.

I dreamed of Starlight. He was licking my hand and whining, his back legs crushed and spread out behind him. He wanted me to wake up but he couldn't bark.

I'd taught him not to bark while I was asleep; it was the only way Mom would let him stay in my room at night. After a few moments he gave up, brought his front legs together and rose up, a painful effort, so he could look at me one last time. Then he crawled, dragging his ruined rear half behind him, off the

porch and back to the yard.

The images play through my mind and I find myself stifling a sob. Shaking my head, I sit up and pull a wad of toilet paper from the dispenser, press it hard into my eyes. A whisper of sound makes me peek under the stall at the bathroom beyond. Someone is standing next to the sink. I can see only a pair of black, shiny shoes. I hold my breath. The owner of those shoes is facing the stall, unmoving. For several seconds, I hear nothing but the steady drip of condensation from the sink's plumbing striking the floor. Then I scoot down to get a better angle, to see this guy's face, and he turns and walks out the door.

While I'm washing up, I realize the fingertips of both my hands are numb.

The old man is gone when I return to my table. So is my cheeseburger. It has been replaced by a piece of apple pie. I sit down in front of it and exhale loudly.

The waitress slides into the chair across from me.

"Don't like apple either?"

"No, I ‌ yes. I like apple." I pick up the fork and ease it into the crust. I don't look up as I chew.

"I was beginning to get a little worried about you."

"Worried? Why?" She points in the direction of the restrooms. "You were back there for almost an hour. I was getting ready to send Sundy in after you."

"Why do they call him Sundy?"

"Because that's his name."

"Sounds like a nickname."

She pauses. "I don't know. I've never checked his driver's license or anything."

I glance up and see that she's staring at the crook of my left arm. I pull it off the table into my lap and run my numb fingers across the fabric of my jeans. It feels as if a stranger is touching me. "I'm not a druggie," I say.

"Not unless you tape the syringe to your arm. That looks more like an IV line to me."

I shrug, take another bite.

"You're not from around here, are you?" she says.

I shake my head.

"You from out west? California?"

"Ohio."

"Oh." A bell rings from Sundy's little window. She twists to look and I get another view of her cross tattoo. It's actually kind of elegant the way it rests on her pale skin. She turns back and sighs. "What brings you all the way down here?"

I set the fork onto the plate and push the mostly uneaten pie forward a couple inches.

She looks at it for a second, nods, and gets up.

"I've got an order up. I'll be right back with your 22

check." She has put her game face back on, her waitress face.

"Just driving," I say as she turns to walk away. "I'm just driving."

She stops and turns back.

Her lips squeeze together in a smile. "That sounds nice," she says.

"Just driving sounds nice."

While she's gone I leave twenty dollars on the table and walk out into the gravel parking lot. It's nearly dark. A single light on a pole illuminates the few cars parked outside.

Bugs revolve around the light, buzzing and snapping, orbiting it like electrons around an atom. I reach my car, a beat-up Monte Carlo, and begin digging in my pocket for keys when a voice calls out from the side of the building.

"Young man! Young man, can you help me?"

A dim figure is motioning from a van a few yards away. I move closer, my feet crunching in the gravel.

It is the old man. He waves a thin arm and smiles.

His teeth seem enormous in his head. His white hair sticks up in cottony wisps.

"Could you help me?" He points to the open back doors of the van. "It'll just take a second."

"I really should be going," I say, gesturing to my car. But still, my legs carry me to the van.

"Just a second of your time. Please." He points through the open doors. "I wanted to drop off a box of flyers for the church picnic, but I can't seem to lift the box." He steps aside so I can see into the van. "If you could just get it out of there, I'm sure I could carry it inside."

I peek around one of the doors. There is a nice, bright light inside the van, illuminating a cargo area with several cardboard boxes stacked near the front seats. "Which box?"

"Doesn't matter," he says. "They're all full of flyers."

I turn to the old man, only a foot away. Beads of sweat dot his forehead. He smells sour. "Okay, sure," I say and climb into the van.

Head bent forward, I duck-walk to the front of the cargo area. Along the way, I stub my toe against a steel ring that appears to have been welded to the floor. I bend down, grasp the nearest box, and nearly bump my head into the roof when I stand up too quickly with it. There's nothing inside. Grabbing another box, I find the same thing.

"Hey," I say, turning. "These are all—" The old man is inside the van, right behind me.

The skin of his face is stretched tight, his eyes bulging.

His arm flashes forward and I see something that looks like a giant beetle in his hand. I hear a snap and feel fire in my side. My whole body goes rigid, my head arcing up and striking the metal ceiling. In a

haze, I feel myself falling back, into the empty boxes that collapse beneath my weight. My body is frozen, but my eyes are open and I see the gangly man bend down and jab the beetle-device into my thigh. The last thing I focus on before falling unconscious is one of his black, shiny shoes.

I

was a quiet child. I wasn't much for friends, or school. I rode my bicycle everywhere. One of my favorite things to do was to drag an old lawn chair out into the middle of the back yard and look up at the stars. I grew up in the country, and on a clear, cloudless night, the sky was spectacular – like a blanket of light surrounding me. Protecting me.

That's why I named him Starlight.

My arm is hanging down from the porch swing and he's licking my fingers and whining. His eyes are wet.

His nose is wet. His tongue is warm, rough on top and silky on the bottom. His back legs are shattered.

He is dying.

I can still feel Starlight's tongue on my hand, even after I realize I am awake. I open my eyes and see the curved side wall, the bulging wheel well, of the van. I am on my side. The vehicle is moving and rocks beneath me. Occasionally, I see an arrow of light dart across the metal wall.

But for the most part, everything is dark. My body feels strange – tingly.

Then I remember the old man, the raging beetle device, and I sit up fast. Something is wrapped around my left wrist. In the dim light, I see it is a plastic cable tie, zipped tight and holding me to the steel ring I bumped my toe against earlier. I stare at this ring and suddenly I can feel my heart pound in my temples, under the curve of my jaw. The old man welded the ring to the floor of his van for this sole purpose.

I look around. The cardboard boxes are gone. I am directly behind the driver's seat, about halfway between it and the back of the van. Behind the passenger's seat, out of reach, is a canvas gym bag. I yank on the cable tie. It feels like an iron band around my wrist.

"You awake, son?" the old man calls from the driver's seat.

I say nothing. I can see his white hair sticking up over the top of the headrest.

"No point playing possum," he says. "I heard you moving around."

My head still feels light. I shake it and take a deep breath. "What did you do to me?"

"Oh, this?" He holds up the beetle. I see now it's a stun gun. "Greatest invention ever made. This one will take down a bear."

23

"What do you want?" I can hear my voice fluttering.

"I'm sorry, son," the old man says. "I've got these urges. Had them since I was a little boy. There's nothing I can do about them."

"What are you talking about?" I find myself sliding away from the driver's seat, twisting my bound arm painfully in the process. "What urges?"

The old man sighs. "I'm taking you to a spot I picked out a few days ago. It's nice and quiet. There I'm going to lay you out in the grass and cut you open." There is a pause. "I'm going to kill you, son.

I'm sorry. It's what I do."

For a long moment I stare, unmoving, at the back of the seat before me. Then I begin to laugh. It is low at first, almost silent. The van sways beneath me, like a cradle in the breeze. My laughter builds until I feel tears streaming down my face.

"I know why you're laughing," the old man says.

"But I can tell you, the irony you find so amusing doesn't exist. I picked you because of what's in your head. I saw the scribble."

My laughter dies away. Leaning right as far as I can, I try to peer around the seat at the old man's face.

"It's so thick," he says, "I can barely see your face.

You're close now. It's coming soon."

"What are you talking about? What about my head?"

The old man says nothing, and suddenly I'm shaking, unable to control the sudden flow of energy that radiates from every pore of my skin. "Answer me!" I scream. I jerk my arm, yanking at the plastic band until the bones of my wrist ache. I kick out at the metal wall beside me, and then the back of the driver's seat.

The van veers gently right and then eases to a stop.

My thrashing fades. The old man's head snakes around the side of the seat. He looks back at me and smiles, his teeth a white picket fence.

"If you kick my seat again," he says, "I'm going to come back there and cut the tip of your nose off. Do you understand?"

I nod.

He stares at me for a long moment. Then he turns back to the road and coaxes the van into motion.

"Even in my earliest memories," he says after a time, "I killed things for pleasure. First bugs and worms. Then I moved up to rodents and cats. When I was eleven, I killed my first dog. I can’t describe the way it made me feel. I was addicted to the act of ending life. But like an addict, I grew immune – desensitized. I knew that true pleasure would only come from killing another human being."

He falls silent, surely waiting for a response. After

a full minute, I can bear it no more. "So you started killing people. What do you want, a trophy?"

"No, I controlled myself. I bit back the fury of my addiction, to the point where I nearly died. I couldn't eat or sleep. I thought of nothing else. But still, I couldn't bring myself to murder an innocent person. I considered suicide."

"Obviously, that didn't work out for you." The canvas gym bag is partially unzipped. Stretching as far as I can, I peer inside. I see a bundle of rope and what look like tent poles. He really is going to lay me out.

"When I was fourteen years old, I was saved," the old man continues. "I was saved when my father died of a heart attack."

Again, he waits for a response. This time I'm able to outlast him.

"About a month before my father collapsed in the driveway," he says, "I began seeing a black scribble in front of his chest. It was filmy and indistinct at first, barely there. And then it darkened, like someone had written in the air with a marker. When he turned around, I could see it behind his back, too. I didn't tell anyone what I saw. At the time, I was so consumed by my addiction I thought I might be losing my mind.

"Then, when the scribble was so thick across my father's chest I could hardly tell what color shirt he was wearing, he clutched his heart and fell over dead.

My mother and I rushed him to the hospital, even though it was too late.

There, I saw people everywhere with scribbles over parts of their bodies – over their kidneys or lungs or head. But I also saw others, clearly sick, with no scribble at all." The old man guides the van into a sharp left turn. "I was confused at first. But eventually I learned that I could tell when people were dying. The scribble appeared over the part of them that would eventually kill them.

In my father's case, it was his heart. My mother, who died of what I now know was Alzheimer's, carried a halo of black around her head for years. It gradually darkened until, over the course of only a few days, it spread over her entire torso as her organs quit working."

The van now trundles along an uneven, pot-holed road. I scan every inch of my surroundings, searching for anything that might help me escape. There is only the canvas bag, which I cannot begin to reach.

"You're awfully quiet back there," the old man says.

"You're fucking insane," I say, spitting the words.

"You know I'm telling the truth. There's something in your head, son. Don't pretend you're ignorant to it.

It's too far gone for that. You're dying."

My keys. I pat the outside of my jeans and feel 24

them there in my pocket. The old man didn't bother to search me. I'm nauseous with anticipation as I dig into my front pocket. My escape is something I can see now. It is just out of reach in my future, barreling toward me like a runaway car.

My key ring holds a tiny pocket knife.

"I was actually there for the girl, the waitress," he continues, as if dictating into a recorder. "I'd been watching her for days, picking out this spot up ahead.

But then I saw you and I knew you were the one. She has much more time left."

The knife is slow biting into the band around my wrist. If only to keep the old man talking and distracted, I say, "Why are you telling me all this?" My voice rattles like that of a man trapped in a meat locker.

He doesn't answer for a long moment. Then he sighs and says, "As an apology. I tell this to all the people I take, just so they might understand why I do what I do. I'm not an evil man. I have an addiction – and God has given me a gift that allows me to feed it.

I only kill those who are about to die anyway."

The plastic band snaps.

My body hums and vibrates. I pull myself upright and, without thinking, throw my arms over the top of the driver's seat. The old man squawks and jerks the wheel as I pound my hands into his chest.

The knife does not even penetrate the fabric of his coat, but instead closes on my thumb, slicing into the skin. I make a noise that is somewhere between a scream and a growl and hook my forearm under his bony chin. I look forward, through the windshield. The headlights illuminate a dirt road. The van swerves and suddenly I'm looking at waist-high weeds.

Too late, I see the old man reach out and snatch the stun gun from the console. Before I can pull away, he jabs its metal pincers into my arm. My world turns to pounding thunder and lightning, but beyond that I can sense the old man rattling along with me as the electricity flows through me and into him. Then the van rotates beneath me, the floor becoming the ceiling. There is a crash and I am slammed into a metal wall and the van spins again and I float backward, into the rear doors and through the rear doors and finally into a cradling mattress of weeds.

I never lose consciousness. I merely lie in the weeds with silence all around me and stare up at the heavens. The stars are like spilled sugar across the sky. I think of the vast distances between each dot of light, as I did when I was younger. As I did when I was younger, I dream of traveling among those dots of light in a spaceship designed for a boy and his dog. I am at ease. I almost wish it would happen now, while

I am looking up at the stars and thinking of Starlight.

I am tired of waiting. Of running.

Moaning pulls me from the sky. I sit up slowly.

Other than the cut on my thumb and a sharp stiffness between my shoulder blades, I seem to be unhurt.

Several yards away, the van sits on its twisted wheels, a crumpled tin can. The moaning comes from there. I stand and walk to the warped and gaping driver's window. The old man is still strapped into his seat, head back, blood drooling down the near side of his face. His head must have struck something during the crash. It's open and broken near the crown, spongy tissue exposed. He looks at me, blinking, his milky eyes trying to focus.

"Help me," he whispers.

I study him for a moment. Then I grasp the side mirror, which is miraculously still attached to the vehicle, and twist it so he is looking at his own reflection. His eyes widen. His head begins to rock back and forth. He gazes at his reflection and then swipes at the air in front of his face, as if he is swatting at a fly.

"No," he says. "No." He digs at the air around his head. "No. Go away. Go away."

I leave him and walk back to the dirt road. After only a few minutes, I reach the paved highway. The old man turned left off of it, so I turn right. My head feels clearer than it has for months. Not a headache in sight. I walk for two hours or more, and it feels good.

I'm almost disappointed when I begin to see signs for the freeway, and then, ahead on the left, the glow of the diner.

The Monte Carlo is right where I left it, only one of three cars in the lot. As I'm unlocking the door, I glance into the diner. The customers are all gone.

The waitress is mopping the floor. She seems to be in no hurry, swiping the mop back and forth methodically. A lock of brown hair has fallen from her ponytail and trails down one side of her face. She is beautiful, and for no other reason I can immediately fathom than that, I hop up on the hood of the car and wait.

A half-hour later, the lights inside go dim and she emerges. Alongside her is a large man with the face of an old boxer who has made his career out of fighting people who forgot their gloves at home. They both stop and stare at me for several seconds.

"You can go on, Sundy," she says without taking her eyes from me.

The big man's forehead crinkles. He leans down and whispers something I cannot hear.

"You don't need to do that," she says. "He's harmless. I'll see you on Thursday."

25

Sundy nods and lumbers to his car. Before he pulls away, he waves to the waitress and then shoots me a withering look of warning.

"I was wondering whose car that was," she says, gesturing to the Monte Carlo.

I shrug and try to smile a little.

She steps closer. The single light pole in the middle of the lot provides the only illumination. I see her squint and lean forward, studying me.

"What happened to you?" she says.

"It doesn't matter," I say. "I wanted to ask you something."

"What's that?"

I open my mouth, close it, and then sigh. I look up at the sky. "I think I know something about you," I say. "I think I know that you might be dying."

She doesn't move. In the trees behind the diner I hear a chorus of crickets. It reminds me of home.

"Who told you?" Her voice is small.

Lowering my gaze, I look into her eyes. "No one."

"Don't give me that. Only a few people know." Her hands move to her hips. "Who told you?"

"The old man."

"What old man?"

"He was in the diner earlier. Skinny. Creepy looking."

She looks down and stares into the gravel, thinking. "I don't know him. He's been around a lot lately, but I've never talked to him other than to take his order."

"He told me."

She raises her head and looks up at me for a very long time. Finally, she says, "Look, if it's pity you're trying to give, you can save it. I don't need your sympathy." She takes a step back. "And if you think you're going to sleep with the terminal girl to get your jollies, you can forget that, too. You're wasting your time." She begins to turn away.

"Wait," I say, throwing up a hand. "I'm dying, too."

She stops, still half turned to walk away. I watch a single tear trail down her cheek. "We're all dying," she says. "From the minute we're born. Nice try, though."

"I have a brain tumor. It's inoperable." I slide from the hood of the car and hold up my left arm. "These holes you noticed earlier in my arm? You were right.

They're from an IV. After the last round of tests, after they told me I only had a month or so to live, I ripped it out, got dressed and walked right out of the hospital. I got in my car and started driving, and I haven't stopped since."

She sniffs and wipes her nose with the sleeve of her jacket. "Why are you telling me this?"

"I don't know. I guess ‌ because I've never felt so

alone in my entire life. I see people all around me, but it's like I'm the only human being on the planet." I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I thought you might understand that."

Again she looks at me for what seems like years.

All at once her face softens and I know she has decided to believe me. She moves closer. "I do understand," she says. "I do."

"Come with me."

"What?"

"Come with me. Tonight. Leave your car right where it is and come with me."

She laughs, high and quick. It is an innocent sound, like a child on a playground. "Come with you where?"

"I have no idea. Everywhere. Nowhere. I was thinking about the ocean, maybe Florida."

"You're crazy."

"No, I'm dead serious."

As soon as the words leave my mouth, I raise my hand to my lips. Silence hangs over us for an instant, and then she bursts into laughter. I find myself laughing, too.

I watch her eyes move from me to my Monte Carlo and for a brief moment I believe she will do it. I believe she will go. And then a hardness creeps into her expression, a look of resolute duty, and I know she is going to turn me down.

"Please," I say, all I can think to say.

"I can't," she says. "I'm sorry, I can't."

"Why not?"

"I … just can't. My parents and my brothers, they'd never forgive me if I left. I have responsibilities here.

Besides, the doctors say I might just be able to beat this thing. If I left with you, it would be like giving up hope." She reaches out and cups my cheek in her palm. "What about you? Don't you have any family in Ohio?"

I pull away from her hand, my eyes stinging. "That doesn't matter."

"Oh, no," she says. "You didn't tell them you were leaving?"

I say nothing.

"Do they know where you are? Do they even know if you're still alive?"

I cast my gaze to the gravel at my feet. "No." "Why would you do that?"

An image of Starlight materializes in my mind and I know that is her answer.

"When I was a kid," I say, "I had a dog named Starlight. He was my best friend. We did everything together. One day when I was twelve, I was playing outside with him and I fell asleep in a swing on the 26

porch. When I woke up, Starlight was gone. I looked all over, but I couldn't find him. I called my dad, and we both looked for what seemed like hours. Then we found some blood in the yard. The more we looked, the more we found, and pretty soon, we realized there was a trail of blood leading all the way from the road to the corner of the porch." I pause to swallow a growing lump in my throat.

"What happened to Starlight?" she asks in a whisper.

"He was way up under the porch, dead. He'd been hit by a car. His whole back end was crushed. But still, he'd managed to drag himself all the way across the lawn to the porch. I couldn't understand why he'd done that, dragged himself all that way just to die.

My dad told me it was because animals like to die alone, in peace."

"I'm sorry," she says. "That's awful."

"I respected that, I guess – the idea of dying with dignity. Starlight didn't want any of us to see him like that. He just wanted to die by himself. He spared a twelve year old kid, his best friend, the pain of seeing him die."

She pinches her lips together and nods once. "I see your point."

We stare at each other. I decide I could look at her forever.

"I should go," she says. Before I can respond, she darts forward and kisses me on the cheek. I smell her hair and her cinnamon gum breath and I fall in love all over again.

"Good luck," I tell her.

"You, too." She turns and heads for her car. After a few steps she stops and faces me once again. "I'm curious," she says. "Your dog crawled all that way – past where you were sleeping, right?"

"Yes." "Don't you ever wish he'd gone to you instead?"

She begins to back away, fading as she passes beyond the boundary of the lamp post's halo of light. "Even though it would have been hard, don't you ever wish he'd said goodbye?"

Seconds later I hear an engine start, but the receding vehicle is lost in the liquid blur of my tears.

I

climb the hill behind the old house, breathing the clean morning air in gulping mouthfuls. The Monte Carlo is parked on the road, behind the row of pines lining the front yard. No one knows I'm home. Not yet.

The grass is high. The dew has already soaked through my sneakers, chilling my feet. My hands are shoved deep into the pockets of my jeans, my

shoulders hunched against the cold breeze blowing through the trees. None of this is uncomfortable. My head is clear. I feel good.

At the top of the hill the lawn ends in a line of tall weeds. Without hesitation I plunge in, parting the way before me with wide sweeps of my arms. The ground curves down again into a shallow valley.

Burrs catch on my sleeves and the legs of my pants. A whipping reed throws droplets of water onto my face.

I pause, unzip my jacket, and use the bottom of my shirt to wipe it dry. I'm in no hurry.

Deeper into the sea of weeds, I encounter the thorns.

I know from experience thorns are no problem if you take it slow, move them aside with care. When I was a child, thorns were the enemy, vicious barriers to wherever I wanted to go. Now they are my friends. Protectors of a sacred place.

The thorns part and give way to a circle of thick, bent grass. I step into this circle and look around. It doesn't take long to find – just a few steps toward the center, sweeping the grass aside with my legs. And there it is. I look at it for a long time, feeling the wind and the damp between my toes. It's only a rock, a football shaped stone two feet long, sitting in the middle of a field. I put it here when I was twelve years old. I used my father's wheelbarrow to haul it from a creek bed more than a mile away. It seemed much bigger then.

I kneel down and place both hands on it. There are no markings, no name or date scratched into the side.

It's just a plain rock. Closing my eyes, I run my hands across its surface, feeling the smooth contours, the bumps along the left side, the shallow gouge inches from where it meets the ground on the right. The gouge is closer to the ground than it used to be. The stone is settling. In a hundred years, or two hundred, it will be under the ground, perhaps one with the bones that lie beneath it. I want to be down there, too, with Starlight. I want to curl up with him and sleep in peace.

I think I'm crying. I'm not sure. I'm still gulping the air, but now it sounds more like sobs than breathing. My eyes remain closed. I lean over and engulf the stone in my arms, press the side of my face against its cool, unyielding body.

I know now the purpose of gravestones. They are not only erected so you can find your way back to the ones you love. They are also something tangible, something real. Something you can hold on to.

27

Several years ago, Jason Helmandollar's story, "Bluelight," appeared in Stygian Articles.

More recently, he has another story accepted for print publication in the March 2010 issue of Sideshow Fables.

Some places you can find our publications online: Alibris Abebooks Amazon.com Amazon.ca Amazon.fr Amzonn.de Amazon.uk Amazon.jp Barnes and Noble Betterworld BiggerBooks Booksamillion Biblio Buy.com eCampus Powells

Unearthing the Archon

by Andy Eliason

Digging for dragonbone is tough... ever more so when living dragons get in the way. ___________________________________________________________

The young elf climbed out of the hole where she’d

spent the last two hours and slapped the dust off her shorts and shirt.

“So what do you think we’ve got here?” she said when the Project Director wandered over.

“I don’t know,” he said, peering in the hole. “A jawbone. It could be one of the minor dragons, but you’ve got a long way to go. Perhaps it's a Telraamni Age Ogre that died clutching his favorite weapon.”

Eryth Wey’Dell sighed. Her boss, despite his elvish heritage, had been on too many digs in human lands.

She had a deep suspicion that his sense of the spectacular was forever ruined. He didn't even seem to hope for anything magnificent.

“Or…” she started, very carefully. “Or… it could be… and I’m not saying for sure, here… but, given the exposed line of teeth and the rounded jaw line… remember I’m just speculating here… but wouldn’t it be… nice… if this were… you know… part of… the Archon?”

Lecit Korathin countered with a sigh of his own.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s just finish the dig and get it all sent to the University for cataloging.

Then you can speculate on the nature of the Archon all you want.

“But without me.”

Eryth rolled her eyes then scrounged up a few of the smaller picks and brushes from her case before sliding back down into the hole. Talking to Professor Korathin was like talking to a rock, only without all the witty banter.

The dig was originally a huge deal for the government, the University, and, to a certain extent, the general populace. There was supposed to be something great up here. There was supposed to be something magical.

Unfortunately, they were supposed to have found it months ago, which is why interest and funding had started to wane.

Somewhere on this mountain – somewhere in this vicinity – it was said that they would find something of great social, cultural, and historical significance.

Everyone knew it was here, but they knew it was here the same way they knew there was a continent called Ukok’ianari full of humans and dwarves across the ocean. Everyone said it was there. How could so 28

many people be wrong? It could be discovered, but only if you really wanted to find it.

The humans were interested in this dig, too. Elven Seers had worked out the “Archon Probability” with their Maths and Divinations, but the Human Philosophers had come to the exact same conclusion with their Metaphysics and Mysticism. They were expecting something great from this, too. That was why Lecit had been given this job. The government had no intention of allowing humans direct access to the Dig, so Professor Korathin was the compromise.

Apparently the humans trusted him.

The human governments were still playing every last diplomatic card imaginable to get some of their own paleontologists and archaeologists involved, and up until now none of it had worked. But as national interest and funding dissipated, it was less and less likely they’d be able to keep them out.

Eryth didn’t feel good about that. It’s not that she had anything against humans per se, and she had known a few while gaining her Three Academic Degrees. She just didn't believe they'd be much help.

Dwarves were a different story. Eryth’s university had been trying to recruit a Dwarven Dreamsmith, or even an apprentice Dreamsmith, for nearly a century.

There were two dwarves on staff – Professors Polrosly and Solemny – but neither of them knew, or would admit to knowing, anything about Dreamsmithing.

The official story was that only a dwarf was genetically capable of it, so the diplomatic recommendation was to let the matter lie.

That was currently a little hard to do, however, since no Dreamsmith had supported the theory that an Archon was buried around here.

Eryth didn’t like to admit it, but in her heart of hearts she knew the actual motivation for the dig: pure and simple jealousy. Proof of a magic greater than Dwarven Dreamsmithing meant that the dwarves were not so great, that there was something even more magnificent. Something that could restore her people to what they once were.

And as much as Eryth didn't like it, she also couldn’t deny it. The elves had lost something – and they had lost it so long ago that they had even forgotten what it was. There were, of course, stories and legends, and the Academics loved to speculate, but none of it was founded on facts.

But the problem was bigger than that. The elven countries were some of the most powerful in the world. They had a standard of living that the human and dwarven countries could barely aspire to. The elves were secure, powerful, rich, and unified. What, on a national level, could they possibly be missing?

What about a personal level? How would they know it when they found it? Would they really find it, or would they find something new and call it “It”?

Every academic discipline, from the Seers with their maths to the paleontologists with their Archon, said they could find it. Every discipline believed they, and only they, would restore Elven Magnificence.

And that’s why Eryth believed that Professor Lecit Korathin had no place on the dig. He had absolutely no sense of the spectacular, glorious, or miraculous.

They’d never find a thing as long as he was here.

It felt like he was actively working against them, even if he wasn’t aware of it. As far as she knew there weren’t any laws of science or magic that said a bad attitude could disrupt or derail the Seers’ predictions, but Eryth was willing to grant this as a possible anomaly… possibly one worth studying. Maybe she’d write a paper.

Eryth pushed the thoughts aside and began gently sweeping at the fossil. She had to admit it was starting to look more and more like a lesser dragon’s jawbone, and if that was the case, they were in trouble. There weren’t many of the greater, Iare Dragons left in the world, but the ones that remained were very guarded about their smaller ancestors.

They had an uncanny sense for the uncovering of ancient dragonbone, and the unfortunate habit of descending on the scene and consuming every last fragment of it.

It was a scientific hindrance.

On the other hand, the alternative was that the dragons return to the old ways and begin consuming scientists again. And while a mighty dragon chowing down on your work is certainly bothersome, it is, at the same time, very life affirming to know that you can try again somewhere else.

The best news revolving around the fact that “somewhere else” does not involve the inside of a large reptile with centuries of pent up anger management problems.

It’s generally a good idea to let a creature like that have its way, and it was official University policy to do just that. So far it had worked out pretty well, and in the years since the policy was instituted the turnover rate in the archeology and paleontology departments had dropped off significantly.

The day passed painfully slow. The work was intense, the sun was more so. The useless First 29

Degreers were kicking up more dirt than they were actually clearing, and through it all Professor Lecit Korathin stood his post. A marble statue could not epitomize the word “stone-faced” the way Professor Korathin did when he was supervising.

His arms were crossed behind his back and his only movement was to occasionally glare at a passing First Degreer, and then – when he thought no one was looking – to glance up at the large rocky peak in the distance. It was as if he expected to see the dragons descend from it at any moment.

Which was stupid. Dragons were natural shape shifters and gave up the mountainous caverns centuries ago in favor of comfortable society.

Dragonform was good for intimidation and aggression, but otherwise it was big and clunky and tended to get in the way of everyday life. If they were going to show up, they were as likely to drive a vehicle as fly by their own power.

Although sometimes she would also catch him muttering something about “needing to go higher.” It was a little unsettling.

By nightfall they had uncovered the entire jaw and a partial skull. The good news was that it wasn’t an Ogre. The bad news was that it definitely wasn’t the Archon either. The jaw was clearly dragon, the skull, though, was undeniably elvish.

They’d seen this before. Iadoc Elves often wore dragon armor. Ogres may have used the occasional jawbone to club their friends and enemies, but the elves found that dragon scale and bone did a fair job at repelling most weapons.

They usually didn’t have to worry about a dragon showing up immediately for a single jawbone, but they didn’t know how much armor was buried under this elf. There could be more than enough to attract a nearby dragon, and history had shown that where they found one elf they usually found another. The dragonbone could add up and things would quickly go from bad to worse.

But according to their histories there had never been anything resembling a city for hundreds of miles around this mountain.

The only reason for an armored Iadoc Elf to be here would be as part of an army… or if he deserted one, and that was an unspeakably rare occurrence. Either way, there was a good chance an ancient army spent some time in this area. This wasn’t a waypoint or an outpost. If an army came to this mountain it was for something in these mountains.

Maybe an Archon.

But if that were the case, they could spend years upon years digging up soldier after soldier, until the

whole land was clear-cut and pock-marked in the name of excavating dead people.

And what would they learn? Probably that the Ancient Elves had never realized that dragon bone and scale may have been great for deflecting attacks, but it was not so well suited for deflecting the cold.

Eryth took a moment to wipe the perspiration from her forehead and then took a special moment to glare at Professor Korathin.

His pessimism was starting to infect her.

There was nothing for it. She’d see the dig through to the end no matter what Lecit Korathin thought.

The Archon was here somewhere, and she’d find it just to spite him if she had to.

“How many is that?” Lecit said.

“Thirty seven,” Eryth said, thought about it for a while, then corrected herself. “Thirty eight.”

She sighed.

They’d been at this for six months now and she was starting to get a little discouraged. The sheer number of Iadoc Elf bodies they’d found was unprecedented.

It suggested the army that came through here must have been enormous – bigger than anything they’d ever heard of. Bigger than anything their histories said was even possible. This find had guaranteed their funding for years. They even received renewed press interest and some industrial strength tents.

She shouldn't have been discouraged. She should have been elated.

She blamed a lot of her mood on Professor Korathin.

Though in all fairness, some of the frustration was because of the dragons. There were thirty seven (or thirty eight) sets of dragon armor down there. So where were the dragons? There was enough uncovered lesser-dragon material here that the Iare ought to be swarming.

But there was nothing Word had it (when they actually got the occasional word up here) that the dragons known to make their lives in elven society had all casually disappeared, and no one could say when, why, or how.

They were somewhere.

Dragons were always somewhere.

You just had to keep your eyes open.

And know when to duck and cover. That was important. A healthy paranoia could do more to keep you alive than any of that ancient dragon armor.

But there was still something even more troubling than the lack of ravenous dragons.

“How’s the cataloging coming?” Lecit asked.

“Well, so far we’ve documented and photographed the twelve that we’ve gotten completely out of the 30

ground.”

“And they’ve been sent down to the University?”

Eryth was dreading this part of the meeting. (The unfortunate corollary to all their new funding also meant they were expected to hold more “coordination” meetings. Somehow meetings, and not actual results, were thought to give a project a sense of professionalism.) She knew this moment was coming. She just didn’t want to be the person to deal with it.

“No,” she finally said. “Nothing has been sent.”

Lecit raised an eyebrow. All elves were born with an innate ability to raise a questioning eyebrow, but only a select few had the ability to cause physical damage with it. “Why not?”

“Well…” Eryth knew that her only option was to keep her head down and charge through this as fast as she could. “No one will transport them.”

“What are you talking about? The First Degreers aren’t up here for a nice camp out. You are in charge.

Tell them to get it done.”

“It’s not as simple as all that, Professor.”

“Are they nervous because of the dragonbone?”

“That’s part of it.”

“Then what is the other part?”

“There’s a lot of… um… speculation going on in camp.”

Lecit exhaled slowly and purposefully. “Not the 'did the Archon have wings' argument again. Oh, well. I'm sure it's all very scientific and communal. It will certainly bring us all closer together.”

It always amazed Eryth how Professor Korathin could deliver a line like that with an absolutely straight face and oppressive monotone, and she really couldn’t think of anything to say in response.

Lecit sensed her hesitance and looked up from a couple of documents. “Okay. On what are they speculating?”

“There’s a lot of the Iadoc out there.”

“Yes.” “And everyone is assuming that they came here to chase down the Archon.”

“Well, of course we have no proof, but that is a sound theory.”

“And we haven’t found a trace of the Archon yet.”

“Yes.” “So… they… everyone in camp that is… is just thinking…”

“Yes?” “Everyone is just wondering… what if they didn’t kill it?”

Lecit Korathin shrugged. “They probably didn’t.

Given the legends of the Archon, even an army this

size probably couldn’t bring it down.”

“Well… they’re starting to wonder… what if nothing killed it? Ever.”

If Professor Korathin was capable of smirking, he would have done so now. Fortunately, Eryth believed, his face was incapable of displaying any sort of amusement.

“You can’t be serious,” he said.

“I’m very serious. They are starting to think that nothing can kill it.”

“You mean: ‘not even age’.”

“I mean: ‘not even age’.”

Lecit sighed. He was very capable of expressing disappointment. “We’re supposed to be scientists,” he grumbled.

“We’re supposed to be monster hunters.”

Lecit glared at her. She hadn’t meant to say it, but sometimes things just get said.

It was almost magical.

Maybe she’d write a paper.

For now she’d just take solace in the fact that Professor Korathin had no rebuttal.

Small victory, but victory nonetheless.

“The Archon is extinct,” he finally said.

“Of course,” Eryth said, desperately trying to bury her flippant tone. A small victory was easily quashed if you didn’t take care of it.

“But then again,” she added quietly, “we don’t have any evidence that the Archon wasn’t…”

“Immortal?”

Eryth shrugged and forced herself to maintain eye contact.

“Immortality was lost a long time ago.”

“Lost to the elves.”

“Lost to the world.”

“We don’t know that.”

“Neither biology nor magic support the concept.”

“But everything we do know about the Archon says it never conformed to any known magical or biological laws. And if the Archon were still around that would explain the ‘mysterious’ absence of the Iare Dragons.”

Eryth could feel herself getting worked up. She knew the signs. Her heart rate was going up and blood was rushing to her head. Next she would start speaking too fast and then anything that came into her mind would find a way out through her mouth. And this was not a productive method of argument. Not with Lecit Korathin. He could take the smallest unfounded claim or insinuation and turn it on you with the verbal equivalent of a punch in the throat.

Right at this moment, however, she would take a punch or two if only Professor Korathin would admit to the possibility of finding something spectacular up 31

here. The Iadoc Elves were unprecedented. The Archon, though, would be the miracle.

“The only thing we know about the Archon,” Lecit said, “is that it may not have even existed. We are here because certain Authorities have put together all our lack of evidence and convinced themselves that zero plus zero equals one great and marvelous legendary monster. But the fact is: zero plus zero always – always – equals no monsters.”

Eryth forced herself to remain calm. She needed a different approach and better tactics. But she was too slow, and another question slipped out without her consent. Although this time she was more pleased with the results.

“What happened to you?”

Lecit looked stunned and confused. Chalk up one more small victory, even if she didn't understand it herself.

Finally Lecit said: “What are you talking about?”

Eryth knew she had him. She just didn’t know why she had him. And she couldn’t back away now that she had her foot in the door.

She tried the silent staring tactic, but without effect. Not surprising, really. Lecit was a master of that game – he could make a First Degreer cry just by staring at them and raising an eyebrow.

She had to try and keep him off balance. “Were you like this before you went to the Human Lands?”

“Like what?” he said.

“Boring” fought a valiant, but ultimately futile battle to make it into the open. Instead she said: “Unimpressed.” She organized her thoughts a little and then continued. “We are sitting in the middle of one of the most important digs in history. Even without the Archon the things we’re finding here could revolutionize the scientific world.”

“I am aware of that.”

“Then. Why. Don’t. You. Care!”

That last came out as a shout and she cringed at her mistake.

Lecit paused. Eryth recognized this strategy, too.

He already knew his rebuttal but he would wait for the anger to pass. Lecit never participated in shouting matches. A shouter was not a listener, and Lecit refused to speak when people were not listening.

Eryth forced her shoulders to relax. This was the sign that she'd allow him to complete a sentence.

He said: “I care… enough.”

And then the shouting really began.

She felt like a fool. She knew very well that yelling wasn’t going to make her point… to anyone. She wasn’t even sure what her point was, anymore.

Lecit waited calmly until the fit of yelling subsided.

His ability to stare down an angry Digger without blinking was impressive. At least he refrained from the eyebrow. If he’d done that she may have been forced to stab him in the head with her trowel.

“May I continue?” he said.

Eryth felt herself reach for a random tool at her belt, but somehow managed to stay her hand. She didn’t trust herself to open her mouth either, so she contented herself with trying to stare a hole through his head.

He seemed rather impervious.

“You believe the results of this dig will give us a new understanding about how things used to be?”

Eryth’s only answer was a slight tightening around her mouth.

“Well, you’re right. This Dig could very well change everything… Archon or not.”

He quickly held up his hand to stop her inevitable outburst and then continued speaking.

“Now let’s say we uncover another twenty or thirty Iadoc down there. Let us say that, miracle of miracles, we happen upon the Archon remains. Or, as you suppose, the Archon itself. And assuming that it only eats three or four of the First Degreers, what happens then?”

Eryth knew a rhetorical when she heard one. Lecit barely took a breath before continuing.

“We will dig up these bones, we will catalog these relics. We will see the story these fossils tell us and we will record it. History, as we know it, will have to be rewritten to correlate with our story, and it will affect every story any Digger after us tries to tell.

“And as a happy side note, we will be made rich and famous.

“Congratulations, us.

“But, aside from our own suddenly leisurely lifestyle, what will it really mean?”

Still rhetorical.

“What will happen to the average elf on the street?

Will he run his shop differently because the Archon is real?

Will she finally be able to create that masterpiece on her canvas because we found some bones? Will this build a home for every elf?”

Lecit let his words hang. Eryth had some answers, but she also knew he had his own.

“The answer is: no,” Lecit said. “And if we cannot do that, we cannot restore what was lost.”

“The Seers claim otherwise.”

“The Seers have their maths. That doesn’t mean they understand science.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“It makes perfect sense.”

“Then what are you saying? We should just quit?

32

Just forget it all? Forget our history?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I want to tell a better story.”

The sentence dared Eryth to question it. It begged to be examined. And Eryth was never one to turn away someone (or something) in need.

But, just as she was about to delve, the importance of the argument took a back seat to the sudden and ear-splitting screams of First Degreers outside the tent.

“What the –“ Eryth jumped from her seat, but a genetic predisposition for self-preservation stopped her from charging out the tent door.

“What’s happening?” she shrieked.

Lecit was holding his head in his hands. Without looking up he said: “The dragons have come. Duck and cover.”

T

he good news was that the dragons hadn’t done any damage to the Dig. The bad news was that they had done considerable damage to the useless First Degreers.

Eryth did a quick head count as she stepped out of the tent. All the Diggers were accounted for, but at least half of them were nursing injuries.

There were five dragons.

Four had already assumed bipedal forms by the time Eryth got out of the tent and the last one was slowly pulling itself together. The mortal mind wasn’t built to witness this kind of transformation. While the laws of magic clearly allowed it, the laws of biology and physics were somewhat opposed. Thousands of pounds of dragon-mass could not be condensed into a hundred pound biped, and Eryth's mind fought with what she was witnessing. One part of her brain knew it was possible, the other part wanted to pop.

So she stared, unmoving, until the last dragon was completely bipedal and glaring at the Dig with his companions.

Eryth was at a loss. She’d met one or two dragons in her academic career, but five together, showing up now, after weeks of conspicuous absence, left her terrified beyond words.

Eventually she found a few.

“My Lords and Ladies…”

Two of the dragons were more or less female, and as Eryth mustered the courage to look closer she also realized that one still had a slightly bluish tint and the other a hint of emerald green. They were still beautiful – dragons in bipedal form had a knack for physical beauty – but those were some very dragon hues.

She had never seen that before and wasn’t sure

what it meant. Maybe it would go away, or maybe her mind was playing tricks on her. Either way it wasn't natural.

Eryth couldn’t say what bothered her more: the idea that these dragons didn’t feel the need to completely transform, or that maybe they couldn’t.

She realized they were staring back at her and she felt a sudden need to fill the growing silence (the moans of the First Degreers just wouldn’t cut it) and made an awkward sort of bow. She didn’t really know if this was the appropriate gesture, but it allowed her to break eye contact so it couldn’t hurt.

Well... it couldn't hurt yet.

“My Lords and Ladies,” she said again, wondering what was taking Professor Korathin so long. “You are, of course, here to take what is yours.” Eryth was surprised how confident she sounded. It was likely her academic training cutting through the panic. At the University you must say everything with authority, whether you had it or not. Elven professors may only metaphorically tear you limb from limb, but they were as quick as a dragon to pounce on any sign of weakness.

The dragons didn’t acknowledge her. Instead they slowly walked the dig site, looking over every stone, tool, or twig that happened to be laying nearby.

For the quickest of moments, Eryth actually allowed herself to believe that maybe the dragons weren’t here for the bones. Maybe they’d be allowed to keep their find and tell their story. It was a fleeting, but nice, moment.

“This is bad,” Lecit said.

Eryth nearly jumped. She nearly screamed. And hardest of all to resist, she nearly punched the Project Director.

She hadn’t heard a single foot step. Hadn’t even sensed him nearby. You didn't get far in Academics if people could sneak up on you like that.

Sarcasm didn't get you far either, but right now she felt justified. “Do you think?”

Lecit didn’t acknowledge her remark. He only assumed his stony “supervisor” stance and watched the dragons wander the site.

“What do they want?” Eryth said, quietly. “Why don’t they just take the bones and go?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask them?”

“Very funny.”

“Someone has to.”

“With all due respect, that sounds like something that only a Project Director has the authority to do.”

“Funny. I was just about to say that only the Project Director has the authority to delegate such a responsibility.”

33

Eryth felt a chill run the length of her spine. He wouldn't...

She glanced up at his face and… he was grinning.

Professor Korathin never smiled. It was almost worse than having dragons tramping through the Dig. Lecit stepped off the entry deck without giving her a second glance.

Eryth wanted to follow – knew she should follow.

It was her duty. More than that, the curiosity to see and hear what passed between them demanded that she follow. And yet… her legs wouldn't move.

So she watched.

She watched Professor Korathin walk directly toward the bluish female.

Dead Professor walking.

She was watching her boss – literally – walk into the jaws of death.

Only he wasn’t…

The dragoness looked up from the small pit she’d been examining and nodded at him.

Nodded at him!?

Lecit stood toe to toe with the Blue. She was a couple inches taller than he was so she looked down on him, though not aggressively.

Eryth caught her breath as Lecit reached out and touched her hair! The dragon smiled – smiled – as he let the lock of silky black hair trickle through his fingers. When the sun caught it just right Eryth saw the hair was not actually black but the deepest shade of blue.

Lecit gave her a questioning look.

Rather than flattening him – as would have been appropriate – the Blue only raised an eyebrow in response. She should have clawed him to pieces. She should not have looked slightly sheepish. (Of course, it was the kind of sheep that could rip your throat out, but a sheep nonetheless.)

They didn’t seem to be saying anything, just staring at each other in a vaguely amicable fashion until the other four dragons congregated around Professor Korathin.

None of them seemed likely to rip him to shreds. It was so… anticlimactic.

Not that she would ever wish a painful, gruesome death on the Professor. Not out loud anyway. Not in earshot, certainly. Yet every instinct she had said that Professor Korathin should be doing his impression of a rather disgusting smear on the ground.

Something was out of place here. Something had to happen to restore the balance. She was sure the Laws of Nature demanded it.

Maybe she’d write a paper.

Eryth tried, but couldn’t catch a single word that

passed between the Professor and the dragons. Still, it was fascinating to watch. No dragon spoke over another. And when they addressed him, Professor Korathin would turn in place until he could look directly at the speaking dragon. They kept him spinning, but he managed to keep up.

Eventually their meeting came to an end. Lecit nodded his respects to each one in turn and then returned to Eryth’s side. The dragons didn’t move, just remained in their little circle staring at each other.

Eryth wasn’t quite sure what to say. She had been so sure she wouldn’t have to say anything to him ever again.

Lecit just stood for a moment, watching the dragons and the groaning First Degreers until he finally broke the silence himself.

“So…” he said. It wasn’t the best way to open a discussion, but it was as good as could be expected.

“So…” Eryth answered.

“Well, they’re not going to take the dragonbone.”

She was thrilled. And terrified.

“Does that mean they’re going to… uh…”

“They’re not going to eat us, either.”

That much, at least, was a relief. But it didn’t help answer the mystery of their arrival.

“What… what do they want?”

Lecit seemed to struggle with his answer. Finally he said: “They want to find the Archon.”

That didn’t sound good.

“They want to… help us?”

“They don’t want to displace us. Not yet.”

Eryth didn’t like the sound of that either, but something else was tickling the back of her mind and making her uncomfortable.

“So… they want to find the Archon’s remains?”

Lecit’s lips curled into a strange shadow of a grin.

“They didn’t say.”

Eryth sighed. “I don’t think all the fame in the world is worth this.”

Lecit finally faced her, a strangely compassionate look in his eyes.

She could take disdain and contention from her boss, but she wasn't sure how to cope with kindness.

“Don’t worry. We’ve got a long way to go,” he said, and turned back into the tent. Before he ducked through the opening, though, he cast one last glance behind him – toward that massive, high peak in the distance.

Eryth followed his last look and then realized that all five dragons were staring in the same direction.

She groaned. “We need to go higher.”

The next month was not enjoyable.

It was getting 34

cold, they'd hit some rock that was next to impossible to dig through, and the dragons were completely disruptive. Worse than that, the Bureaucrats and Seers had decided to take a more active roll in the Dig. Or that’s what they said, anyway. Everyone knew they were really here because the of dragons.

Five “helpful” dragons appearing in the camp had brought the Dig a notoriety that even forty-two Iadoc Elves couldn’t garner.

But between the dragons, Bureaucrats, and Seers, the Dig had practically ground to a halt. It was amazing how people who had never so much as held a shovel could have an opinion on where and how to dig, and how people who wanted to “discover the Truth” could have such a strong aversion to getting dirty.

The most disturbing turn of events, though, was the way all this brought Eryth and Lecit closer together. It wasn’t that they liked each other any more – it was just that they now had a common enemy. Many friendships, she'd learned, were based more on disliking, rather than liking, the same things.

It was a strange phenomenon. Maybe she'd write a paper.

The dragons were the most disruptive but were, of course, not a target for any direct derision or disdain.

Eryth and Lecit were annoyed, not suicidal.

Despite the friendly tolerance that had grown up between them, though, she hadn’t been able to get him to spill anymore about his conversation with the dragons or how he had come to know them. Since that first day Lecit had barely acknowledged them; he certainly didn’t show any of the same signs of familiarity.

Eryth tried to keep an eye on the dragons while still maintaining a level of productivity. They didn’t seem to do much. They would wander around the Dig, hover over someone as they worked, and occasionally sniff or taste a handful of loose dirt. They paid some attention to the elven fossils, but seemed thoroughly uninterested in the dragonbone. Eryth was grateful for small blessings, but she just kept expecting reversal of moods and the inevitable berserk rage. It was making her a tad jumpy.

Eryth spent as much time as possible huddled in her tent where prying eyes couldn’t interrupt her work. She enjoyed the solitude. Hidden from needy First Degreers and pompous Bureaucrats, she could lose herself in her work. It was a refuge. In her tent the Iadoc could come alive. This was why she loved her career. She had a gift – an ability to take the clues ancient peoples left for her and and truly understand who they were.

At times she could almost believe she was one of them.

Well, not in this case. On this extraordinary Dig they had uncovered forty-two Iadoc Elves, covered in dragonbone, and all men. Eryth had yet to find a reason for that. All other anthropological evidence had shown that the Iadoc did not discriminate based on gender. They should have found at least one female by now, and Eryth grew more distressed with each new find. What could have possibly made them send this large of an army without a single woman in it?

In a single month Eryth had cataloged and examined more dragonbone than she thought she would ever see in her life. She had carefully inspected each piece for signs of scarring, acid burns, or claw and teeth marks. But, except for the expected nicks and chips from normal military use, the armor was clean. They had come this far, suffered what must have been a grueling march, just to die without a struggle. Eryth could find no signs of a pitched battle and no signs that they had encountered the Archon.

They just brought their entire army up this forsaken mountain… to die.

There had to be a better reason than that, and Eryth was determined to find it. She wouldn’t let the Dig be for nothing.

It was as she was pondering along these lines that her tent flap flew open, revealing Lecit Korathin.

The full moon cast a bright silver aura around him.

“Get your tools together,” he said. “Quietly.”

“What? Why?” “It’s time to get this over with.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We need to go higher.”

D

igging under the moonlight… it was almost romantic – in a chipping through rock, embedding dirt beneath your fingernails, and filling your lungs with dust kind of way, but romantic nonetheless.

And she didn't mean “romance.” This was Lecit Korathin she was working with, after all. It was romantic in a strictly objective, “ideal situation” sort of way.

Eryth’s experience with romance of the “relationship” kind had never been this nice.

Moonlight digging was new to her, and she was enjoying the work more than she had in months. It was strangely therapeutic, and she and the Professor were making surprisingly good progress.

Apparently Professor Korathin had wanted to come here for months. He simply didn’t have the means.

No Mech-Flyer could find purchase on these rocks, and no climbing party could scale the cliffs with all the 35

necessary equipment.

Now a dragon on the other hand…

The blue dragon stood watch over them, having resumed her bipedal form so they could all fit on the small outcrop of dirt, rock, and foliage. They were working just under a rocky overhang which was the actual peak of the mountain. A couple of ancient plants were clinging to the otherwise barren rock, and they had a spectacular view of the wooded areas below.

“Why didn’t you just call your dragon friends earlier if you were so sure this is where the Archon is buried?” Eryth whispered between chipping out some crumbly rock.

The Blue chuckled.

“Because they’re not my friends,” Lecit said.

“But still,” she said, “couldn’t you have done something to speed things up?”

Lecit gently set his brush on a rock and turned to face Eryth. “I was never here to find the Archon. I was here to dig because the Seers said to dig here.”

Eryth glared. “I knew your defeatist attitude was holding us back!”

“My defeatist attitude has nothing to do with this.”

“Of course it does!”

“You would defy the Seers? And the Bureaucrats?”

“If I knew where to find the Archon, you better believe it!”

Lecit picked up his brush and began examining the bristles with meticulous care. Without taking his eyes from the suddenly oh-so-interesting brush, he said: “Have you no faith?”

“Faith? Faith! What does faith have to do with anything? We’re supposed to be scientists.”

The moment she said it she knew she’d lost.

Lecit was smiling. It was a real smile, almost friendly. “No,” he said. “We’re supposed to be monster hunters.”

Eryth smiled back and returned to her work. “Fine.

But if that’s so, why didn’t you bring the hunt up here sooner?”

“Eryth, we found forty-two Iadoc Elves down there.

Don’t you think that has value? Don’t you think there’s a story there worth telling?”

Eryth felt a sudden wave of shame. Just a few hours ago she was promising herself and the Ancient Elves her complete devotion. All it took was the prospect of a famous discovery and she’d forgotten all about them. The thought made her sit back and stare at the Professor.

“Whatever we might think of the Seers and their maths, like it or not, they saw something down there.

Why don’t you have the faith to believe it is worth

finding? Don’t you have the faith to see it through to the end?”

Eryth suddenly missed her old relationship with the professor. At least then she could be justifiably offended, shout at him a little, and have done with it.

As it was, she could only sit in the dirt and the moonlight and feel really, really bad.

“I think I understand,” she finally said. “And I’m sorry.”

She felt a little better when she saw how her apology startled him.

After another pause she said: “So what changed your mind? Why are we here now? You’re not having a sudden crisis of faith, are you?”

Lecit shook his head.

“No. Circumstances changed.”

“How so?”

“The dragons.”

Eryth cast a cautious glance at the Blue, who only returned a steady, hard gaze.

“Could you elaborate on that?” she said.

Lecit started chipping at the dirt with his trowel.

Between strikes he said: “We’re not. The only race.

Trying to. Find. What. Was. Lost.”

“You mean immortality?” Eryth said.

“That’s what we’ve lost… or what we think we’ve lost. Who knows what the dragons are missing... “...each other, maybe.”

Eryth looked at the dragoness again. She was leaning against the cliff wall, her blueish complexion mixing almost perfectly with the moon-cast shadows, and she seemed unlikely to provide any answers to the mystery.

“Is that why they consume dragonbone?”

“I don’t know.”

“And they think the Archon is the key?”

“Everyone thinks the Archon is the key.”

“I’ll give you that.” Eryth picked out a brush but then said, “If we find it, are they going to consume it?”

“No.” “Isn’t she going to tell them if we find it?”

“They’ll know.”

“And they’ll take it?”

“Yes.” “Then why are we doing this?”

Lecit stopped digging and looked her in the eye.

“Eryth, you’ve studied the histories. What do you think the Archon is?

Biological?

Demonic?

Dreamform?”

“None of the above. The Archon has never been classifiable.”

“They didn’t reproduce?”

“No.” 36

“They weren’t spawned?”

“No.” “Not summoned?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then where did it come from? Are you saying the Archon 'just was'?”

“No. Nothing just is. That's why we're digging it up. So we can learn that sort of thing.”

Lecit returned to his digging.

“No,” he said.

“That’s not why we’re trying to find it.”

Eryth was getting tired of his cryptic answers.

“Then why?”

“So we can survive this Dig.”

T

hey didn’t say much after that; just concentrated on their work.

An hour or so before sunrise Eryth heard the dragoness take a deep breath – almost a gasp.

“You’re close,” she said. “Stop here.”

Eryth didn’t like that particular order and looked to Lecit for support but found none. He was already boxing his tools. He nodded for her to do the same.

Eryth groaned, but had to admit she was pushing her own limits. They were so close, but she would need some sleep before tomorrow’s official work started.

Lecit stood by Eryth as the Blue began to change form. “The Lady can weave a barrier over the area that will hide it from the other four, but only as long as there’s just a hint of it. Any more than this and she’ll never maintain it. Tomorrow night we’ll have to work fast.”

Eryth had given up on real answers tonight. She didn't have the energy to fight for them.

Then again… the power of Curiosity had taken more than one elf up supposedly unconquerable mountains.

“Why is she doing this?” Eryth whispered.

“The Lady?”

“Yes. Doesn’t she want to help her own kind? Why does she want to help you?”

“Because I can offer her something more, I suppose.”

Another cryptic answer. What a surprise. Maybe it's a genetic compulsion.

Maybe she’d write a paper.

Eryth kept to herself as the dragoness transported them back down to camp, but before splitting off for her own tent she needed some clarification.

“Professor?”

“Yes, Eryth.”

“How will finding the Archon help us ‘survive’?’

“Let me just say this: we’re not going to find what

you think we’re going to find.”

It had to be genetic.

She rolled her eyes.

He smiled.

“Get some sleep, Eryth. Tomorrow is going to be a hard day.”

I

t was a hard day. And while the elves were no longer an “eternal” race, Eryth believed she now understood what eternity really meant. It was exactly the amount of time she was forced to spend ordering around First Degreers and putting up with the Bureaucrats and Seers while knowing what waited for her further up the mountain.

She was careful to avoid the gaze of the dragons.

Everyone said they could read your mind. There was no scientific evidence to support that, but if everyone said it, then it was probably best to not take any chances.

Professor Korathin was doing the same. He hid out in his tent, but once or twice she caught him poking his head out, and by sheer “coincidence” that just happened to be when the Blue Lady passed by.

Eryth knew she was letting her imagination get the best of her, but the image of Professor Korathin sending secret mental messages to plan their excursion kept entering her mind. It was crazy and completely unscientific… and she loved every minute of it.

And then another First Degreer would need an answer to some inane question and ruin it. She had to check her temper. Too many unnecessary questions today and she just might have to destroy them all.

The only thing that kept her going was Lecit's gentle but surprisingly sharp chastisement last night.

This was important too. It was! Glory and fame waited for her on the highest peak of the mountain, but something very real and very serious was happening down here. She was literally hip deep in it.

This story should be just as important as the Archon.

It just wasn’t as exciting.

And every time that particular thought entered her head she felt that much worse. Exciting shouldn’t have anything to do with science. So every time a First Degreer approached her she ground her teeth and forced herself to remember the Iadoc.

This is important too. This is important too.

They pulled out more Iadoc today than any other, which was more proof the Universe was conspiring to make this day a trial. Every moment she wasn’t in a pit she was cataloging this bone or examining that dragon skull, and on and on and on. By the time the sun started to edge closer to the horizon she was 37

wondering whether she’d still have anything left in her for another all-nighter up on the peak.

But as she was retiring to her tent just before dusk, Professor Korathin gave her one meaningful look and she was completely revitalized.

This night she would see the Archon.

She also intended to interrogate the professor some more. She thought he knew more than he was saying, and then she realized that was a useless thought. Of course he knew more than he was saying. He wasn’t saying anything. And between his relationship with the Blue Lady and the fact that he knew exactly where to start digging, she just didn't know where to start.

“What are you thinking about?”

The voice startled her, and she nearly dropped the bone she was cataloging. She hadn’t heard the flaps of her tent move, or a single footstep on the makeshift wooden floor.

The Blue Lady was standing just inside her tent.

“To be completely direct, my Lady, I was thinking about you.”

“I am flattered.”

Eryth knew better than to return the sarcasm. Only the truly suicidal spoke their mind around a dragon.

“How may I help you, my Lady?”

“Are you prepared for this night?”

“You mean the… the peak?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I am a little worn out, but I’m ready to work more.”

The Blue Lady sighed. Apparently that was the wrong answer. The dragoness turned and left as silently as she had come.

T

he Lady had left her with a deep sense of foreboding which this night was far less exciting than she had expected.

After the sun had gone down and the First Degreers, Bureaucrats, and dragons had all departed for their individual abodes, the Blue Lady appeared in Professor Korathin’s tent and once again flew them to the peak.

From the start, Eryth knew this night was going to be nothing like the previous one. There was a determination on Lecit’s face that bothered her. She’d never seen him like this. He was always determined, and he always pushed the Diggers hard, but now there was something more… desperate about the way he attacked the rock.

All of her hopes for gleaning a little information were dying a slow and painful death, but she wasn’t willing to give up on them quite yet.

She just had to pick her moment. And it had to be

done just right. “… moonlight… could have been better… “ he grumbled.

Perfect!

“So how did you know this is where you’d find the Archon there’s things you’re not telling me and I think I have the right to know and what did you mean that we’re doing this so we can survive the Dig?” When she realized that it had been said in a single breath she had to concede that maybe the moment wasn’t quite as perfect as she thought.

Lecit barely paused in his digging. “We don’t have time for that.”

She’d messed up. Any chance for a civilized discussion between equals just took a flying leap off the cliff of professionalism. Luckily a couple of hopes were still clinging to the craggy rock-face of indignity.

“It’s a poor Digger that can’t dig and talk at the same time, Professor.”

“I would rather that you put all your efforts toward doing this quickly and efficiently.”

“I’m sure, but…”

“Eryth, look at the Lady.”

Eryth sighed, but did as instructed. It was hard to see her. She stood in the same shadows she did last night, blending surprisingly well, but she was close enough that Eryth could see what the Professor meant.

She gasped. Then she whispered, “She’s sweating?”

“That’s right. Every tiny bit we expose makes it harder for her to maintain the shroud covering the site.”

“The other dragons…” “…will be here soon,” he finished.

Eryth, having survived five years of academic competition and achieving Three Degrees, thought she knew what it meant to panic.

Now she really knew.

But then those same academic instincts kicked in and made her ask: “Then what’s the point of this?

We’re chipping through rock here. We won't even be able to extract them properly. If they’re going to know, they’re going to know. Shouldn’t we just accept that and… make the best of it? Maybe run away?”

“No,” Lecit said. “We shouldn’t.”

“What do you think, we can uncover the entire Archon before they get up here?”

“No.” “You just want to find a couple bones?”

“Yes.” “What’s the point?”

Lecit actually put his tools down and looked Eryth right in the eye. “Hopefully,” he said, very carefully and very deliberately, “we can find the right bone.”

38

Then he picked up his tools and returned to work.

In sheer frustration Eryth turned to the dragoness as if she might provide a translation. She turned quickly back away, though. The Lady was already looking worse.

It was disturbing to see a dragon in that condition.

Everyone knew that dragons had nearly limitless power. In fact, the Archon was supposed to be the only thing in creation that even approached their power.

If they were reaching the limits of the limitless… well, Eryth had never excelled at philosophy, but she didn’t like what that implied.

“Are we getting close?” Eryth tried, knowing that the question would sound childish.

Lecit, in a completely unsurprising move, did not answer.

Eryth returned to her own work, somewhat disgruntled but determined to do her part. This was the most important Dig in history, and now wasn't the time to let unanswered questions get in her way.

Hours passed in silence, except for the occasionally labored breathing of Lady Dragon, until Lecit muttered something to himself and then cursed as he stood up.

“What?” Eryth said.

“This isn't it,” he growled.

“What is it?”

“This is looking like a femur. Maybe a tibia or fibula or whatever equivalent the Archon had. This isn't what we need.”

“What do we need?”

Lecit didn't answer immediately. He took a couple steps in one direction then changed his mind and took a few halting steps the other way. In frustration he went a third direction before he finally said, “Something in the ribs. Maybe close to the collar bone.”

Eryth finally understood. Given the direction of the leg bone, the Archon could only be laying in one of three or four positions. And given the state of their dragon-protector, they only had one chance to get it right.

If that.

“Make your choice,” the Dragoness hissed.

Eryth watched the Professor and realized she was seeing something distressingly abnormal.

Lecit Korathin was indecisive.

This was not a good time for famous firsts.

Eryth stood up and looked around the site. There really was no way to tell where the head lay buried.

For all she knew she could be standing right above it.

She looked at her feet... and had a feeling.

Scientists weren't supposed to have feelings.

Feelings were for philosophers and poets, and Eryth didn't even like philosophers and poets.

But that was the only way she could describe what had come over her. Whatever it really was, it made her take a number of careful steps backward. The rocky ground wasn't easy to navigate this way, but she managed.

Lecit saw what she was doing, stopped pacing, and watched her closely. Eryth waited for the ridicule or the chastisement, but neither was forthcoming.

She stopped and dropped her small pick at her feet.

“That's the head,” Lecit said.

“Yeah,” Eryth replied, even though he hadn't actually asked a question. He didn't question her judgment at all, and that alone was wrong. There was no reason for this to be the location of the Archon's head.

But it was. She knew it.

Scientists weren't supposed to give into explanations like “I just know it” or “it just is.”

But in this case, it just was.

And why not? The Archon, apparently, “just was.”

So why not find it the same way?

Professor Korathin gathered up their tools and brought them over to Eryth. He may not have questioned her, but he didn't seem pleased either.

“What's wrong?” she said.

“You're certain that the Archon is right beneath you.”

“Yes.” “But you don't have any reason to be.”

“No.” “Don't you wonder why?”

“Of course,” she said. “I just didn't think I had time to dwell on it right now.”

Lecit looked at her for an uncomfortably long time.

“You're right,” he said. “We don't.” He dropped to his knees and started the excavation.

“But?” Eryth prompted as she joined him in the dirt and rock.

“But you noticed that there were no female Iadoc Elves in that army down there?”

“Yes.” “Did you ever wonder why?”

As a matter of fact, Eryth did wonder why – and quite often – but it wasn’t Professor Korathin’s questions that made her suddenly sit up in textbook terror.

“The rock is wrong,” she said.

Lecit nodded without looking up. “Yes,” he said, and Eryth watched, completely absorbed with how the rock practically flaked away.

“It shouldn’t be like this. Up here… this rock 39

should be as solid as everything else we’ve been digging through. More so.”

Lecit groaned. “Yes, Eryth,” he said. “You are exactly right. This rock is supposed to be solid, and no elf is supposed to know where the Archon’s head rests beneath it. Yet here we are.”

“I know, but – “ “The time for discourse is later. We don’t have much time.”

And then, as if to highlight his point, he chipped through a thick layer of supposedly solid rock and exposed a wide, porous section of bone... and the dragoness crumpled into unconsciousness.

The Professor turned at the sound of her hitting the ground and stared at the heap of bipedal-dragon.

Eryth, on the other hand, was weighing the career prospects associated with stepping off the ledge. It was roughly the same as waiting for the inevitable arrival of the other dragons (or the promotion prospects were the same, anyway – if one looked at moving from this life to the next as a promotion), but the cliff would likely be the least painful of the two.

Finally Lecit let out a very long and very disappointed sigh.

“I take it back,” he said, and lay back on the ground, staring up at the stars. “We don’t have any time at all.”

E

ryth could only imagine the sheer chaos and terror down at the camp. Even on the peak they could hear the echo of elven screams and the roar of dragons.

It took only moments for the dragons to reach them, and even less time for Eryth to switch from panic to anger – at Professor Korathin.

He had no right to take this so calmly. Or, more literally, to take this lying down.

But as the dragons circled the peak, looking for a suitable perch, Lecit did eventually stand up and brush himself off.

“Well,” Eryth said. “I guess this is where I say it was a pleasure working with you, Professor.”

Lecit turned and gave her a look. “Was it really?”

It wasn’t what she was expecting – which forced her to think about the answer. “No,” she finally said.

“I guess it wasn’t.”

She thought some more and added: “But it was an honor.”

What she now saw had to be at least as rare and mystical as the bones they stood over.

Professor Lecit Korathin was blushing.

He cleared his throat. “Thank you,” he said. “But I believe our time together is not yet over.”

She really didn’t expect that. “You don’t think they’re going to… you know… chow down?”

Lecit shook his head as he watched the large male Orange claw at the rocky overhang.

“No. They’ll want us to dig. They can’t do that on their own.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Then I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what bone you were so intent on finding.”

Lecit was tied up in a Staring Contest of Doom with the Orange but managed to say: “When we find it, you’ll know.”

M

orning broke and they were still digging. The night returned, and they were still digging. Her life was currently buried in this rock.

Once all the dragons had found a nearby perch, and the initial threat to their Dig and their lives had passed, the Orange had indicated that they should continue working. He and the other three then turned and faced all four directions without another word to them or – Eryth couldn’t help noticing – to their unconscious comrade. Were she not working so hard, she might have felt concern over the dragoness.

But she was working hard – harder even than when she was an eager First Degreer trying to prove herself worthy. She hadn’t, in fact, stopped working since the dragons took their post and took up their song.

Eryth had never heard or seen anything like this.

The dragons swayed at the neck, in perfect unison, as if under the same hypnotic trance, and they each sang a portion of a deep and hollow harmony. The sound was not quite a growl, nor was it a hum. She’d only call it a purr if she were tired of living, but the echoing rumble that came from their throats had the same kind of calming influence on her.

“As long as they keep it up,” Korathin said, “so will you.”

Eryth shook herself from her reverie. “What?”

Professor Korathin looked at her and then glanced at the smaller, greenish dragon just off the ledge.

He’d caught her staring at them instead of working.

She probably should have been embarrassed, but her brain was so choked off with questions that there was little room for niggling little things like shame.

The dragon was a magnificent sight to behold with the moonlight glistening off its pale green scales, but she pulled her eyes from it all the same.

“What are they doing?” she asked.

“Come now, Eryth,” he said while shaving more rock from the remains. “Do you really believe we could have done all this on our own? Even with this 40

brittle rock? Eryth, we haven’t even stopped to eat!”

She took a moment to think that through. Surely they had eaten. Surely they had…

But no. It was all a nonstop blur of rock, dust, and bone. No meals. No rests. No achigum tea breaks.

It was practically blasphemy. Periodic tea breaks were practically a requirement on a dig.

“The song?” she asked.

“Yes.” “It’s a spell?”

Professor Korathin leaned his head back and forth as if weighing both sides of his answer. “More like a ritual.”

“And it’s making us work harder? Or is it changing the stone more for us?”

“I don’t believe they’re doing anything ‘for us’,” he said. “But yes, the ritual allows us to work without traditional rest or sustenance.”

“That’s not normal magic,” she said.

“True. For this to work they must impart of their own vitality. It’s not something elvish, human, or even dwarvish magic can accomplish.”

It took a while to fully digest that. “This is hurting them?” Nothing was supposed to hurt a dragon.

“I believe so.”

She thought a little further and felt a whole new kind of horror. “Killing them?”

Lecit opened his mouth to answer, stopped, then just shook his head and shrugged.

“What does this mean?”

“It means you should get back to work,” he said and glanced ever-so-quickly at the nearest dragon then added: “And keep watching.”

And so the Dig continued. And now that Professor Korathin had pointed out what was happening to them, Eryth began to feel… squirmy. Her body offered no indication that it required a break, but her mind knew otherwise. She managed to keep digging, but her work was starting to suffer. It would be hard for anyone else to notice, since the rock was practically falling away in sheets now, but there was such a thing as professional pride.

The dig stretched on through the night, and Eryth couldn’t help but notice how Professor Korathin had subtly guided the Dig away from the head. She hadn’t said anything because she was morally opposed to becoming dragon food, but it certainly weighed on her mind.

It had turned out that Eryth hadn’t picked the exact spot of the head, but just below it. The smooth surface they had uncovered was a shoulder blade, and from that discovery they knew exactly where the head was, but Lecit had quietly shifted their direction

toward the legs.

That, as much as the presence of the dragons, was driving Eryth crazy. Whatever bone Lecit was hoping to find was clearly in or near the skull. They knew that, yet did nothing about it. That’s not how science was supposed to work.

“How about that?” Lecit said, drawing Eryth back to the here-and-now.

“How about what?”

“It really did have wings.”

Eryth looked casually at the Professor’s new find and sighed. It was just the impression of a wing, with no actual fossil there. “Yeah. How about that?”

This Dig was becoming painful. Not two days ago this kind of discovery would have been cause to celebrate. They were settling the kinds of questions that had kept scientists up at night for countless years, but everything was different now. She wasn’t a scientist anymore. She wasn’t even a monster hunter anymore. She was a pair of hands doing the work for others.

That wasn’t science. That wasn’t anything.

Lecit seemed to feel the same way since he merely shrugged and returned to work. He was, she noticed, looking slightly apprehensive.

It only took a moment for her to realize why. They were almost to the feet. Even with the discovery of the wings there were only a few hours of work left before they would have to uncover the head.

W

hen morning came around the two diggers stepped back from the project. They didn't need a break, they simply felt they deserved a moment to appreciate their discovery.

Lecit paced the length of the skeleton, giving it a critical examination. It was about twice the height of an average elf, though not much wider. The fingers and toes were disproportionately long and displayed at least double the joints of an elf. The shoulder blades, where the wings would have been attached, were like nothing she had ever seen before. She couldn’t say why there was only a fossilized impression of the wings and no bones, but a Digger didn’t get to choose what they found. They could figure out what it meant later.

Perhaps it was just the last attempt of the Archon to remain mysterious.

Although in truth the most mysterious and possibly disturbing thing about their find was the position in which the Archon was lying. It was – no matter how many times Lecit circled it – the fetal position.

They had yet to discover anything that would explain the manner of its death, but Eryth associated 41

that position with fear, pain, and cold – three things that were not supposed to affect an Archon in any way, shape, or form.

What happened up here?

Lecit looked as frustrated as she felt, but instead of going back to the Dig to find the answer to the question, he decided to take a full-fledged break and hunkered down next to the fallen dragoness. She hadn’t moved once. If it hadn’t been for the soft sounds of her breathing, Eryth would have given her up as dead. Lecit sat down quietly, as if she was only taking a quick nap that he didn’t want to disturb.

Without anything better to say, Eryth mumbled: “Almost done, I guess,” and sat down next to him.

He gave her an annoyed look. He hadn't used it in a while, and it warmed her to see it now. Dragons may come and civilizations may fall, but Professor Korathin was always Professor Korathin.

And Professor Korathin hated when people stated the obvious.

“Yes,” he said.

“Is she going to live?” Eryth asked.

“Probably.”

“Are we?”

“In a way.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means we’re not going to find what you think we are.”

“You said that before. But we did. We found the Archon.”

“No. We’ve found some bones. We haven’t found the Archon yet.”

“What are you talking about?” she said, right on the edge of shouting.

Lecit shushed her, which almost pushed her over that edge.

He leaned back against the outcropping. “We have not found the Archon because the Archon does not exist.”

Before she could squeeze in another outburst, the Professor continued. “What do we require of a thing in order for it to exist?”

“What? We don’t require anything. It either exists or it doesn’t. And the Archon is right over there,” she said and waved her hand as if to swat away the whole argument.

“It obviously exists.”

And then she conceded: “Or it existed at some point.”

“That’s not what I mean at all. You know very well that any good scientist, or even any good monster hunter, requires proof that something exists.”

“You’ve spent too much time with the Human Philosophers. I don’t require proof that you exist.

You just do.”

“You have the proof of your eyes, and that is enough. But have you ever seen, for example, a unicorn? In person?”

Eryth sighed. He was in lecture mode now, and there was nothing you could do but duck and cover.

“No,” she said.

“But you know they exist?”

“Yes.” “Why? Pictures? Other elves telling you they exist? Scientific documentation?”

“Yes. They exist. They’re just very rare animals.

They don’t need to prove anything.”

“But why do you accept it?”

“What?”

“What tells you that a unicorn can exist?”

This was getting worse and worse, so she just shook her head.

“A unicorn, as you understand it, falls into certain natural classifications. Correct?”

“Yes. Both Biological and Magical.”

“Precisely. One of the few known creatures to fit two bodies of classifications. But it is exactly because it fits into Natural and Magical laws that you do not doubt its existence without ever having seen one yourself.”

She shrugged. “I guess.”

“Yet the Archon does no such thing.”

Eryth bit her lip. She was pretty sure she could see where this was going.

He continued: “We’ve already established that the Archon is not born, spawned, or summoned – as all Natural, Occult, and Magical Laws demand. The Archon, however, fits none of these Laws.”

“And hence, can’t exist,” Eryth finished for him.

Lecit gave her a look and a shrug.

“Forgive me, Professor,” she said.

“But that’s Philosophical drivel. Of course it fits into the Laws.

We’re on this Dig to find out which ones. We simply haven’t had the right evidence before.”

Lecit allowed his lips to curl ever-so-slightly. “The right evidence?”

Eryth rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“But consider, Eryth, you have yet to devise an answer for me. If, indeed, the Archon is not born, summoned, or spawned, where does that leave us?”

Eryth stared at the bones they had worked so long to uncover – at the discovery she had thought too wild a dream to ever come true. “You already know the answer,” she accused.

“Yes.” But that was impossible.

He couldn’t know anything about the Archon because no one did. For some reason, though, she was certain that Lecit knew 42

all about it.

“Okay,” she said. “What’s left?”

Professor Korathin reached out and ran his fingers through the blue-black hair of the dragoness.

“Change.”

“Change?” This made absolutely no sense. “A shape-changer? Like the dragons?”

Lecit sighed and allowed some of the hair to trickle through his fingertips. “No,” he said. “The Archon was not a shape-changer.” He sat back from the dragoness. “A dragon that looks like an elf is still a dragon. The Archon is something else completely.”

“Hah!” She had him here. “You just admitted that it exists!”

He seemed about to respond, but then stopped and just shrugged. Another small victory, but one to document if they managed to survive.

He rallied for a counterstrike.

“Very well, Eryth. Let me rephrase. All our science, all our magic, all our studies are directed at describing How Things Are. Human Philosophers get bogged down in Why Things Are, but that’s not our concern. The interesting thing to note is that both the sciences and the philosophies have a similar dislike of things that Just Are.” “Nothing ‘just is’,” she blurted out. All this time and she still couldn’t hold her tongue when debating Professor Korathin.

“Exactly,” he said. “And if nothing Just Is, but the sciences cannot explain How It Is, and the philosophies can’t even devise a good Why It Is, then logic indicates that it Cannot Be.” Eryth could practically hear all the capitol letters he was dropping for special emphasis.

“But it’s right there,” she growled.

“I know,” he said, and his smile this time was a little warmer. “Disturbing, isn’t it?”

“What does this have to do with ‘change’?”

“What does current theory have to say about something like that?”

“Change?”

“Yes.” “Not like shape shifting?”

“Not like shape shifting. A change. A complete change in being – in your very nature.”

“Impossible. Magic theory has speculated on the possibility, but, like you say, turn a person into a toad, and it’s still a person who just happens to look like a toad.”

“Impossible?”

“Yes. Impossible. Even when we’re dead we’re still us. We’re just not walking around and arguing useless points anymore. We’re just Dead Us.” She could

throw capitol letters around too.

“It's inconceivable, then? At least, according to current theory?”

She didn’t want to play this game anymore.

Lecit kept right at it, though. “Yet the Archon is also plainly impossible. Even inconceivable. Why, then, have we spent so much time searching for and uncovering such an obvious impossibility?”

She shook her head. “Your next statement is going to be: ‘If we’ve proved one possible, how long before we prove the other?’”

Lecit tilted his head and stared quizzically at the ground as if testing the statement for familiarity. “Not bad. But I probably would have said something closer to: ‘And here we sit with two impossibilities right in front of us.’”

Eryth couldn’t see it, but she could feel one of the dragons watching them. Nothing weighed on you like a dragon’s stare. They would have to get back to work soon, but there was another question she had to ask before that happened.

“Professor Korathin?”

“Yes.” “Why were there no female Iadoc down there?”

The Professor must have felt the same pressure she had and was in the process of standing up and dusting himself off, but her question froze him in place. Then she saw something new in his expression.

It was sadness.

She reached up and grabbed his wrist. “What is it?” she pleaded. “What happened here?”

Lecit tightened his lips. He gently removed her hand from his wrist and set it in her lap, then reached up and held her shoulder. The strangely intimate gesture was at once completely welcome and absolutely terrifying.

“Eryth,” he said. “The problem with change is that you can’t change nothing into something. That would be creation.” He squeezed her shoulder. “Something has to change… or be changed into the Archon.”

Or be changed.

They were uncovering the head now, but Professor Korathin’s last words swirled through her mind and refused to rest anywhere long enough for her to fully accept their meaning. They moved through her head, setting off chain reactions of philosophical thoughts that clouded her mind and obfuscated their impending practical application.

A complete change in nature, she thought.

Are we changeable? Malleable? Elf. Human.

Dwarf. Even dragon. Are these really names of a state of being, or merely the temporary description of 43

happenstance?

Or be changed.

The Archon is said to stand between the gates of life and death. What bigger change is there than that?

Or be changed.

Why would the Iare Dragons want the secret of change?

Or be changed.

What does it mean “to be” an elf?

Or be changed.

If someone can make you change… what are you then?

Why does it have to be me?

In other circumstances she would have considered writing a paper. But now, like Lecit, she was much more interested in surviving this Dig than her academic career. She just wanted to walk away from this Dig alive… and as herself.

Whatever that meant.

They worked, but the remaining rock was not as forgiving as the rest. Perhaps the dragons were getting tired. And that could be good news.

But then logic took over. Irrelevant, it said. You can’t outrun even a tired dragon on this peak. There’s nowhere to go but down.

Her only hope, though she didn’t like it, was the mysterious bone that Lecit had been so determined to find before the dragons arrived, and diligently avoided after they were caught.

He wouldn’t tell her what it was. Only that she’d know it when she saw it.

He was right.

It wasn’t long before she uncovered the bone that should not have been there.

It was… bone. Not a fossil; bone. Elvenbone. She knew it at a quick glance. This bone connected the skull to the spine and was unique to elvenkind. She knew it well.

The dragons knew it too, because they stopped singing.

All eyes were on her.

“Destroy it!” Lecit shouted.

Why did it have to be me?

“What?” she screamed back.

He growled and lunged at it, hammer at the ready.

The effort could be labeled “valiant,” or, more accurately, “futile.”

Her mind registered a flurry of scales and claws, and then Professor Korathin was lying in a heap next to the unconscious dragoness.

The four dragons resumed their bipedal forms and stared at her.

Or be changed.

They drew closer and the Orange said: “Remove the bone.”

Eryth did the work for others.

E

ryth harbored many questions. The one that demanded an immediate answer, though, was the one that asked: why, oh why, hadn’t she paid attention in school when they covered what you were supposed to do when four dragons had you tied to a rock and were intending to transform you into the mythical and longsought-after Archon?

She had to consider that they probably never included that lecture in her curriculum. And for that lack of foresight she remained outraged.

She was hungry and thirsty – whatever the dragons had been doing they clearly didn’t see any reason to continue. Add to that the fact that her wrists were tied behind her back – to her ankles – and it was just an uncomfortable situation to be in.

She sighed, but breathing deeply in this position hurt so it was followed by an “ouch.”

Eryth had been moved up to the top of the rock outcropping, and she lay on her side overlooking their Dig. They had gotten so close. The Archon was curled up down there, the top of its… of her head (it was a “her” after all, wasn't it?) was mostly covered by rock, but Eryth could still make out the elongated cranium, the deep, disproportioned eye sockets, and a jaw with far too many teeth.

She supposed there were worse things to be, but given the choice she’d just as soon stick to the elven paleontologist/monster hunter.

And that was the whole point, wasn’t it? Choice.

They had dug up “change” and somehow managed to bury “choice.” The dragons were about to prove that she could no longer choose who she was, or even what she was.

Eryth had spent the entire day up here, gazing at the bones of the Archon. Lecit had come around about an hour after the attack and dragged his body up against the outcropping to get some shade while he nursed his wounds – which were many and varied.

The dragoness awoke sometime around noon. She sat up and stared vacantly at her surroundings, saw the uncovered Archon remains, and her head sunk against her chest and didn’t move again the rest of the day.

After the discovery and her subsequent capture, the dragons took shifts, with three gone one to guard the Archon bones and captives. She could only assume they were off conducting whatever preparations where necessary before… before they changed her.

“Can you hear me, Professor?”

44

Talking was a bit of a challenge, too, but she needed to know some things before the end.

“Yes,” he replied, and groaned. “What is it?”

Eryth took a moment to prioritize the need-toknow value of her questions and then asked: “How did you know the Archon would be up here?”

Lecit coughed an unhealthy sounding cough. His damage was clearly as bad on the inside as it looked on the outside. “The truth?” he asked.

“Obviously.”

“I found one in the Human Lands.”

Eryth rolled that statement over a couple times in her head and then decided: “Okay, maybe you should just lie.”

“I didn’t think you’d appreciate that.”

“Of course not!” Shouting hurt a lot so she forced her tone back down. “Why haven’t I heard of this before? Why hasn’t anyone heard of this before?”

Eryth wished she could see Lecit’s face right now.

More specifically, she wished he could see hers – for surely her look of indignation would have driven icicles of terror straight into his heart.

Surely.

“Because it was officially concealed,” Lecit said.

“Not even the Human Authorities who weren’t there know anything about it.”

“And they changed someone into the Archon?”

“Not exactly.”

“What does that mean?”

He coughed again, this time even worse than before.

“It means we tried.”

“We? You were part of it? You wanted to make someone… into something else? You wanted to do this to someone else!”

“Well –“ he started but she cut him off.

“You knew this was going to happen to me!”

She cried after shouting that, but the pain would have been worse if she’d kept it inside.

The Professor waited for the crying to subside and then said, “Eryth, please listen to me. Yes, I knew this was a possibility.” He took a long, ragged breath.

“But you’ll just have to believe that I was doing everything I could to make sure it wouldn’t happen to you.”

“Then why didn’t you just tell me? Why did you have to drag me up here, let me find this… this incredible being, and not warn me?”

“And if I’d told you that we were digging up the Archon specifically to destroy the evidence of it, what would you have done?”

Thrown you off this cliff, she thought.

He seemed to know what her silence meant

because he said, “Exactly. And I’m sorry that I had to bring you up here with me, but I needed your skills. It was the only way to find that bone before either the dragons or the Bureaucrats got to it.”

He chuckled and coughed. “And we almost did it.

You really have become a skilled Digger.”

“Thanks. For whatever good it will do me now.”

She gathered her thoughts and said, “So what happened to your other Archon?”

“We tried. We failed.”

“Can you be more specific?”

He took his time before answering. “We had made a huge discovery. Not only did we find the remains of the Archon, but a group of Philosophers had discovered the ceremony required to change someone.

We thought we had everything.

We thought everything was right. I was… so sure…”

“How could you want to do this to a person?”

“Because it would have been worth it.”

“What would have? Sacrifices are for Magic and the Occult. It doesn’t fit with our discipline.”

“Sacrifice? What sacrifice? We weren’t killing anyone. We were… making… yes, I guess we were making someone transcend what they were to something even greater.”

“But why would you –“ “Because I wanted to tear down everything you ever believed in.”

She paused.

“What are you talking about?”

“I had come to believe that our Science had stagnated. I was certain that the only way to make any true progress was to tear it all to the ground and then build it up again. The Archon was… is… the only way that’s going to happen.”

“Our Science isn’t stagnant!”

“The cry of the morally offended,” Lecit chuckled.

“But it is. All our experiments, tests, and questions are given to us by our theory. Unfortunately, the theory also gives us the answer we should get. We’re trapped in Theoretical Legacy. Just going in circles looking for the 'right evidence'.”

Eryth was impressed. Even with internal bleeding he could still pontificate. “You really believe that?”

“I did.”

“You don’t anymore?”

Eryth could hear his labored breathing as he fought another coughing fit. “Now, given the option, I think a stagnant science is good enough.”

“What happened at the other Dig?” “We couldn’t do it. Half the Philosophers there said it would go off without a hitch, and half said it would never work, and the other half said we just shouldn’t 45

do it.” He paused. “I know that’s three halves, but you get used to that kind of thing around Philosophers.”

“And the ‘wouldn’t work’ half was right?” she said, knowing that she was merely expressing her own impossible dream.

“No. It was the ‘shouldn’t do it’ half.”

“Somehow I’m not surprised.”

“I didn’t imagine you would be.”

“Did she change at all?”

“Oh, yes.

It lasted about a day.

She was changed… into a ravenous, psychotic monster. Those she didn’t kill or consume she drove to insanity with a simple look. She escaped the mountains and worked her carnage in the three closest towns.”

“How did you survive?”

“I don’t know. Immediately after the ceremony she killed everyone else who was responsible, but just stared at me a moment before running off toward the nearest town.

“Eventually she just died. More like ‘stopped being’ I guess. She broke back down into the same fossilized remains. The Authorities covered it up and that was pretty much that.”

“Did you ever discover what went wrong?”

“No. It could be that an Archon, despite the histories, really was nothing more than a psychotic monster. It could have been something wrong with the human woman. But mostly I’d say that not only did we prove that some things ‘Just Are,’ but that some things ‘Should Not Be’.”

Eryth sighed. “I don’t know how much I agree with that,” she said. “But I’m pretty sure it ‘Should Not Be Me’.”

She heard the stifled cough/laugh.

“I agree completely.”

“But none of that tells me how you knew exactly where to dig.”

“Have you ever heard of the Cult of the Archon?”

“No.” “Neither had I until the Dig with the humans.”

“They worship the Archon?”

“More like preserve it.”

“They taught the Philosophers the ceremony?”

“Yes.” “They told you where to dig?”

“Not directly. But the Cult is old. Ancient. At least as old as the Iadoc Elves down there.”

“The Iadoc weren’t here to find the Archon?” Eryth said, carefully.

“No.” “They were after the Cult of the Archon… to… stop them from creating one?”

“Yes. At least that would be my guess.”

“They didn’t have any females with them because they didn’t want to take any chances that they could be changed.”

“Yes.” “Then how did they tell you…”

“They leave markers. Hints. If they cannot bring about the Archon, they preserve the knowledge for others to try.”

“What markers?”

“It is in the bone. Always in the bones.”

“What?”

“Did you make a study of the Elvenbone down there?”

“Not really. Not enough time. Just cataloged and sent it on its way. Studied the dragonbone as much as I could, though.”

“Yes. That’s why you missed it.”

“They carved clues into the bones of the dead?”

“Or their own before they were killed.”

“Ouch.”

“Quite.”

“The Blue is one of them, isn’t she?” Eryth asked, watching the still form of the dragoness. “Part of the Cult?”

“Yes.” “But the others aren’t?”

“No.” “Then what do they want with the Archon?”

“I truly don’t know. Dragons don’t exactly practice magic or science the way we do. They could very conceivably do anything with the Archon.”

Eryth nodded. Anything, she thought.

Why does it have to be me?

O

n the whole, Eryth preferred the dragons’ previous ceremony to this one. They all faced her now, but really the problem was not the outward aspects but the inevitable result.

The moon was rising in the distance, casting its light over everything in sight. It was beautiful. She took solace in the knowledge that something this magnificent would be the last thing she saw.

But the lousy Red keeps getting in my way. I swear, if I turn into a psychotic, murderous monster, I’m taking her out first.

They’d been chanting or singing for at least an hour, and Eryth began to wonder if this was according to plan.

“Is this what’s supposed to happen?” she said.

“What?” the Professor replied.

“Is it supposed to take this long? I don’t feel any different yet.”

46

She heard movement below her and then Lecit stepped back where she could see him. He was trying to assert some kind of dignified stance, but too many things inside him were broken, and the best he could managed was a hunched over sway.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Remember, we did it wrong.”

“Did she… the other time… did it… is this going to hurt?”

Lecit looked around at the dragons and then back at Eryth. “If they do it right… who knows?”

“If they don’t?”

He took another ragged breath. “The one I saw before… seemed a very painful experience.”

She sighed. “Well, that’s about what I expected, too.”

“Excruciating, really.”

“Thanks.”

“Her whole body just started to –“ “Thank you, Professor.”

“Sorry,” he said, and pulled himself back from that horrible experience.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter,” she said with a groan.

Professor Korathin didn’t immediately respond, but eventually he said, “No. I suppose it doesn't.” He returned to his seat beneath her without saying anything else, but a moment later Eryth heard a faint whisper. “But watch for the last chance to end this.”

She wasn’t going to let herself get too excited over that. Her heart wanted to race and her voice wanted to shout or cry or both, but she fought down those urges. Lecit had a plan, and that meant hope, but she knew that a plan was just a good idea until someone made it work.

So she waited. As a scientist she was used to a certain amount of waiting. No worthwhile experiment had any sort of instantaneous results. Of course, experiments didn’t usually require her to be tied up so tight that her hands and feet went numb, but maybe that was just because she had never attended the more interesting schools.

A last chance, she thought. It could be anything.

She hoped that it would be something very soon.

The pain was starting to reach overwhelming.

Then, just as she felt like her only option left was to give in to the pain, the Orange’s head swung into view. He looked at her for a moment – still swaying, still humming – and then changed shape.

He stood on the ledge at the head of the Archon’s remains and surveyed by turns the bones, the Professor, and then the Blue. As none of them seemed likely to move, he finally looked up at Eryth. She defiantly returned his gaze because that was really all

she had left.

Slowly, the bipedal dragon opened his mouth. He was still contributing to the harmony, though the sound he made could not have come from any elven throat. He reached into his mouth and removed the small Elvenbone.

He should have said: “It is time,” or “This is the end,” or something suitably ominous along those lines.

That would have been right and appropriate, but all he did was silently make his way up to her outcrop.

He remained silent as he cut her bonds with his fingernail.

She had no feeling left in her extremities beyond the sharp sting of blood rushing back into them. It made it a simple matter for the dragon to gently roll her onto her back and position her arms and legs precisely where he wanted.

Within moments she was sprawled out on the rock, her arms and legs fully extended, and he was drawing a circle in the rock, the circumference touching the tips of her fingers and the balls of her feet.

When he finished his chore he turned back to Eryth. She still really wanted him to spout some kind of doom-and-gloom villainous nonsense, but he didn’t.

Eryth couldn’t even detect any true malice in his expression.

He never stopped singing, even as he stood over her again, staring straight into her eyes. He bent down and gently placed the Elvenbone on her sternum.

Eryth gasped.

And Eryth knew.

At the touch she knew. And she knew why she knew – why she knew where the Archon’s head was, why she knew that the dragons were going to perform the right ceremony… and why it had to be her.

It was reaching out to her. It wanted Eryth to change into the Archon every bit as much as the dragons.

The one thing she didn't know was who, exactly, “it” was.

What if the Professor was wrong. What if the change wasn't complete? What if something of the elf remained? Could the elf be the one reaching out to her?

It was possible. The feeling she was getting was not demanding. It was almost a supplication.

Do me this favor, it seemed to say, and I promise I’ll be good to you.

And then she really knew.

The Orange had withdrawn and was slowly resuming his position and dragonform.

She knew what had gone wrong in Lecit’s previous attempt.

47

The song was growing louder.

She knew what the dragons wanted.

The light from the moon seemed to intensify until the entire peak was washed out in silvery light.

She knew what had to be done.

The circle in the rock began to glow with its own light – a pale gold to counter the silver. It grew brighter until she was forced to look away... …and into the face of Professor Lecit Korathin.

“Some things shouldn’t change,” he said, and reached for the Elvenbone.

And Eryth knew he wasn’t referring to her.

Not directly, at any rate. He was seeing the Big Picture, right now, and a single individual can have trouble fitting in a Big Picture - which is odd, because there should be plenty of room.

The current Big Picture was the ramifications to their people and their science. The exact thing he had been determined to “tear down” while in the Human Lands was what he was now giving his life to preserve.

Her own life would be saved in the process, but that was only a fortunate side effect.

Or an unfortunate side effect – depending on how you looked at it. And if you knew.

“No!” she shrieked, and grasped at his hand. Her strength was returning, but it wasn’t enough to stop him.

The dragons roared, but while he stood in the golden circle they seemed reluctant to attack.

Eryth pulled herself up to a basically sitting posture. She looked at Lecit who was glaring at the dragons. She had to convince him not to do this.

“You’re wrong,” she said. “This has to happen.”

“No. You must trust that this is for the best. We must preserve what we have. Or we will have nothing. I know that now.” His gaze was fixed on the dragons as he spoke.

“No,” Eryth said, struggling to get closer. “I know what went wrong before. I can –“ “No! This is over! Now!” “We’re on a rocky peak thousands of feet up!

There’s nowhere to go!”

Except down.

He wouldn’t!

“Except down,” he said, a sly grin on his face.

She stared at him.

He looked down at her. “It truly was an honor and a pleasure to work with you.”

And then he was gone.

Eryth couldn’t make out much beyond the golden light – just shadows, colors, and shapes – but it didn’t take much imagination to connect the blurs of color and ear-piercing screams to the Professors ultimate

and painful demise.

He never even made it to the ledge.

Whatever the dragons had done, it was fast, brutal, and efficient.

Then there was movement, and the dragons were back on their perches. The Orange was slower than the others, though, and she could make out the sounds of an abbreviated and intense conversation.

The Orange returned to his perch and all four took up the song again. A shadow moved outside the light, and Eryth could hear the measured footsteps of the Blue’s approach.

The dragoness stepped through the light. Tears streaked her face, and she held the Elvenbone out in her open palm. “Do you understand?” she asked.

Eryth looked at the bone, then at the Lady. “Yes,” she replied.

“Do you know?”

“Yes,” Eryth repeated and took the bone from the outstretched hand.

“Then what do you choose?”

And that was the key right there. You are what you are – right up until you’re not. And the Archon was nothing but a choice. A choice to change. Take it or leave it, but do it now.

Eryth made her choice. This had to happen now.

The Blue took a step back and bowed her head as Eryth held the bone against her chest.

She tilted her head and lifted her voice to match the harmony of the dragons. They were soon joined by another voice, though this one came from no physical source.

The golden light grew stronger, more fierce. It filled all of Eryth’s senses, blocking out every sensation except for her voice and her ethereal accompaniment.

I’ll be good to you, the song promised.

And Eryth Wey'Dell was no more.

T

he Archon stared at her fingers. The golden light was emanating solely from her body now. She let the light fade and then stretched her arms and wings, reveling the sensation.

Adjusting was always a delicate moment. Her memories were distinct, but there were too many.

One set told her she should not have wings, that her fingers and arms should not be so long, that she shouldn’t be towering over the dragoness by two feet.

But her other memories said that those features did, and always had, belonged to her.

It took time to accept the truth of both memories, and she had to get her mind right because she’d never kill all four dragons if she had to fight herself as well.

As her realities came together she took a deep 48

breath and then soared into the air – the dragons trailing quickly after her. They soon surrounded her and the Orange drew up in front of her. She gave him a lazy look.

“Release us!” he roared.

The Archon blasted the dragons with a powerful burst of the golden light, pushing them all back.

“The Archon stands between this life and the next.

There is no greater change than life to death. I am the sentry. And you are not allowed in the next world.”

“Release us!” he demanded again. “Or we will return you to the rock.”

“I will not.”

“Then you will make the change from life to death!”

Finally something appropriately villainous. She’d been waiting for that all night.

Hadn't she? Her memories, it seemed, were still a little tangled.

Dragons – even the great Iare Dragons – were not as powerful as an Archon. Not by a ways. But four on one? An odds maker’s nightmare. This was anyone’s game.

The battle raged through the night. The Iare cast everything they had at her, whether magical spells, biological breath-weapons, or tooth and claw. They were strong, and they were coordinated.

They had been planning this for a long time.

For hours they fought – in the sky, on the ground, through the entire mountain range. A struggle this epic had not been witnessed in living memory.

The Archon was not as prepared for this fight as she should have been, and she could feel her energy begin to wane as more and more of their attacks drew blood or broke bone.

But she knew what she had to do. She knew what she was.

And one by one (starting with the Red) the dragons fell from the sky – burned, broken or torn – until only the Orange remained.

He was strong, but she was stronger.

Even if it was only just.

They circled each other in the sky above the peak where she had been found, until the dragon made his last, desperate attack.

She'd been waiting for this.

He swooped and released a burst of dragonfire, but he was too weak to control its direction. As the burning plasma coursed through his throat, he couldn't turn his neck without seriously harming himself.

The Archon didn’t move until the last moment and then dove through the flames and dug her claws into his exposed neck.

The Orange swallowed back some of the fire and growled, “It doesn’t end here!”

The Archon shook her head. “No. Not for you.”

With the last of her own energy she forced her claws through his scaly hide and into his soft flesh.

The golden glow still surrounded her, and she got brighter as she gave her last push, though it was far from its previous intensity, and her energy was quickly failing her.

She had just enough to push past the flesh and into his throat where he was still choking back the burning plasma.

Her hands and arms burned as the fiery liquid shot out the wounds and coated her body in flames.

She screamed, but so did the dragon, and they plummeted to the earth, demolishing her former resting spot and crashing through the forest below.

T

he Archon awoke when the sun stood directly overhead.

She wasn’t alone.

She stood up and surveyed her surroundings. The corpse of the Orange lay not far from her, and all the trees in the vicinity were scorched black. The Blue had resumed her dragonform and was curled up in some unburned trees and watching her… …very closely.

“You defeated them,” the dragoness said.

“Yes.” “He will be back.”

“Yes. You always come back.”

If dragons could sigh, then that is what the dragoness just did. “We cannot escape this life,” she agreed. “We never change.”

After a moment’s consideration the Archon asked, “Why did you choose me over them?”

She shook her head and nearly quoted Professor Korathin.

“Because sometimes things shouldn’t change.”

“Perhaps,” the Archon conceded. “But now many things will.”

“Yes.” Still the dragon stared at her.

“Why do you look at me like that?”

“You… don’t look as you did.”

The Archon returned the curious look and then examined her own hands and was startled.

Gone were the overly-long fingers with extra joints, gone were the wings, and gone was her sense of height. She reached up and felt the familiar points on her ears.

She actually laughed. This was new to her. She had never had such trouble separating mind and 49

memory.

“I thought…” the dragon said carefully, “that perhaps you had… burned out. That possibly you were no longer the Archon.”

She reached inside herself and found the answers.

The Archon was still there – the power, the responsibility, and the knowledge – but so was Eryth.

And Eryth knew what had to be done.

“No,” she said. “Things will change, but this form will be required in the beginning. I am the Archon. I just happen to look like Eryth Wey’Dell.”

The Eryth Archon stretched muscles that didn't know which body they belonged to. “Will you take me back to the camp? There will be many questions and I have to deliver some answers.”

“Of course,” the dragoness replied.

On the short trip back to the camp the Archon could clearly see the extent of the damage she and the dragons had done.

It was extensive.

In truth, though, it was only a portion of the damage that would soon result because of her existence.

The Orange had said that this wasn’t the end. And he was right. This was, more than anything, the beginning.

Andy Eliason has also published fiction in Leading Edge: Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy and Mobius The Journal of Social Change.

The Munificent Editors of Nowhere Magazine

by Dustin Reade

When your muse strikes, who knows what form it may take. ___________________________________________________________

Every

magazine, online and otherwise, was currently closed to submissions.

Karl Rosemount closed the web page he’d been looking at, and spun around in his chair to face the hollow of the living room. His ferrets, Aaron and Neville, lay sleeping in a bundle of one another, unaware. He briefly wondered why he had ever bought them. Anything caged made a lousy pet.

Outside, under dense streaks of silver, shadows moved and whirled through the skeletal branches of the pine trees. Inside, Karl was close to giving up the ghost.

“Well,” He said to the stuffy, silent room. “If none of the real magazines will look at my work; I’ll just have to send it to a FAKE magazine!” He laughed.

Aaron briefly pulled his head up from his dreams to investigate. Finding nothing amusing or edible, he quickly went back to sleep. Karl stood up and began shoving his stories into a 10.5 in. x 15 in. envelope. A strange smile began to form at the edge of his lips.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, sealing the envelope.

“Its not as if anyone would have accepted them anyhow.”

On the envelope, he wrote, “NOWHERE MAGAZINE, Fiction Department. 1313 Isn’t Road, Nowhere, WA. 66666.”.

He waved the envelope menacingly at the two sleeping ferrets.

“I’m off to mail this,” he said, faux anger dangling from his smile. “When I get back, I want this place spotless!”

Slamming the door behind him, Karl marched down the three flights of steps, and shoved the manilla envelope clumsily into the mailbox. Having done what he had set out to do, he walked jauntily back up the stairs, with the aire of a man who has accomplished his goals.

T

he next day, of course, Karl woke up with a terrible hangover. The sun cares very little for people in this precarious position; and often opts to shine brightest upon them. Karl shielded his eyes as best he could and walked into the clutter of the living room.

Aaron and Neville were wrestling excitedly in their cage, pitching up the stinging smell of animal urine.

Karl slammed the cage with his fist as he walked by, 50

careful not to spill his coffee.

Slowly, he sat down at the computer and clicked ‘open’.

All of his files—no, all his stories—had been erased. He wracked his brain, trying hard to remember the strange rush of anger he had felt that had led him to send all of his stories to an imaginary press, somewhere in Washington. He was no stranger to these fits. His friends and lovers (few and far between) had often told him how they worried about his temper, his emotions. He needed to get a grip on himself; his reality was too misanthropic.

“Oh no,” he said, as the memories flooded his eggshell fragile brain. “What have I done?”

There was a knock at the door.

As if in a dream, Karl stood up, tied his robe, gave one last forlorn look to the blank computer screen, and opened the door.

Karl needed a moment to process what he saw.

Three people, two men and a woman, stood staring at him with the widest eyes he had ever seen. All three of them were grinning insanely, as though seeing Karl was parallel to meeting Christ in the flesh. Karl felt very awkward in the wake of those gazes. Their heads seemed too large for their pencil-thin necks to support. They reminded Karl of those suckers he bought as a kid that had bubble gum inside.

They stood in a tight triangle; a tall, rail-thin man with black peppered hair and a thick mustache in front; and bringing up the rear, a fat balding man, and a strange, wispy woman. Their oblong heads almost resting on his shoulders.

The man in the front held out his hand.

“Mr. Roseland?” He asked, raising one eyebrow almost to his widow’s peak.

Karl shook his head.

“No,” he said, grasping the man’s hand and shaking out of pure instinct. “No, my name is ‘Rosemount’. Not 'Roseland’.”

The three of them chattered quickly in a strange, high-pitched language Karl had never heard before.

The leader of the three turned to face Karl once again.

“Of course,” he said. “Mr. Rosemount. My name is Douglas Exeter, and these are my associates, Mr. Grills, and Ms. Gourmand. We’re from Nowhere Magazine. Could we have a moment of your time?”

Karl shook his head.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “You’re from what magazine?”

“Nowhere,” Douglas Exeter said again, this time grinning even wider. “We’ve read your stories. They are very good. We think you have a tremendous talent, and we would like to give you a monthly article in our magazine.”

Karl put his hand up to his forehead.

“But,” he said. “That magazine doesn’t exist! I made it up! I didn’t even write a legitimate zip code! And besides,” he checked his watch, “The mail doesn’t even get picked up for another two hours!”

The three strangers shrugged their shoulders in unison.

“Mr. Rosemount,” Mr. Grills offered. “If I may? We are not mailmen, nor are we connected in any other capacity to the postal service. So of course, we cannot tell you how your stories came into our custody. But through some miracle they did, and we are here now to discuss them with you. Perhaps, if you’ll let us in, we can all talk and figure something out. As it is, there is little any of us can accomplish standing in your doorway.”

Karl stepped aside. “Of course,” he said. “Come on in.”

The three of them marched awkwardly, though deliberately, into the living room, and sat down on the couch. Karl went into the kitchen and began mixing himself a gin and tonic. When he returned, each of them had an open briefcase in their lap.

Karl sat on the love seat in front of them, trying not to stare, but still attempting to put his finger on what made them all appear so…different.

It's their height, he realized suddenly. They all look as if they had started out at five-foot-eight, and someone or something had stretched them out to six-foot-three.

Ms. Gourmand began pulling what looked like a long strand of flimsy, black rubber from her briefcase.

She caught Karl staring and blushed noticeably.

“Don’t mind me,” she said softly. “I’ll have it all uncoiled in a moment.”

“Oh,” Karl nodded, as if he understood.

Mr. Exeter pulled a large stack of papers from his own briefcase.

“My stories!” Karl shouted. “You have them!”

Mr. Exeter looked at him, confused.

“Yes,” he said. “Of course we have them. I told you, we read them.” He began shuffling through the papers until he came to the one he wanted. “Ah! Here it is, ‘The Night I Learned to Fly!’ Now, tell me Karl, what made you write this particular piece?”

“Um,” Karl stammered. “I guess it was because of a dream I had. See, I dreamt I was sitting at the base of 51

this massive tree. The tree was at the top of a lush, green hill, and my entire family was at the base of the hill, coming up. They seemed to be moving very slowly, and I was terrified of what would happen if they found me up there, sitting with the tree. So, I began jumping. See, I was convinced that if I jumped hard enough, and somehow managed to trap that feeling of weightlessness you feel mid-jump before gravity kicks in, that I would be able to fly.”

Ms. Gourmand let the long, black rope rest in her lap for a moment.

“And in this dream?’ She asked. “Did you actually feel like you were flying?”

Karl nodded.

“Was it a smooth sensation?” Mr. Grills asked, gesturing with his hands crazily. “Or was it more of a shifting feeling, like being pushed or pulled?”

“Pulling,” Karl nodded. “It was as if by simply willing myself to move, some external force jerked me towards it.”

Mr. Grills nodded.

“I see,” he said. He turned towards Ms. Gourmand.

She had just finished pulling the last of the wet rubber rope from her briefcase. The rope resembled a massive, rotten sperm cell. Tapered at one end, with a bulbous nodule at the other. Several long red tentacles hung from the bulb, all surrounding what appeared to be a gaping mouth lined with what appeared to be broken glass. The whole thing was about two-inches thick.

The woman stood up and looked at Douglas Exeter.

He nodded. Then, turning to Karl, he said, “For your own safety, Karl, I’m going to have to ask you to remain calm. This will all be over soon.”

Before he could do anything, Ms. Gourmand threw the rope at Karl’s face. The rope seemed to straighten itself out in mid-air and aim directly for his mouth.

There was no time to scream, or think, or move. The thing was upon him, coiling itself around his body and forcing its grotesque, bulbous head down his esophagus. Karl thrashed about on the love-seat, but the rope pulled tight around his legs and chest, strapping his arms to his sides. He tried to bite down, to kill whatever it was, but it was impossible, the rope was too strong. Words and phrases paraded before his eyes in burning, phosphorescent images. He got the impression he was being filled up with something strange; something unnameable. Letters tore across his field of vision. He began to cry. Tears streamed down his face like veining mascara. The thing forced more and more of itself down his throat. He could feel the coils around his legs pull up around his knees as more of the thing fed into him.

After what seemed like forever, Karl found he had eaten the entire rope. And though he was still paralyzed, he could talk.

“What the hell was that!” He screamed. “What did you just do to me?”

“Calm down, Karl,” Mr. Grills said. “That was your inspiration!”

“What?” Karl screamed, writhing internally at the agony of memory. “What the hell does that mean?”

Ms. Gourmand walked carefully over and sat on his lap. Karl looked up into her eyes and saw himself reflected back over a thousand broken mirrors.

“Now Karl,” she said. “Tell me how this makes you feel.” She pulled his face up to meet hers, and leaned down to kiss him.

Multiple explosions tore through the hollow cavern of Karl’s chest. The sound of two hearts beating like jungle drums, slamming into one another, fighting to escape rib cages filled the room. Worlds began to grow like blooming flowers, exploding wide in flashes of brilliant color. The blood of dear Mother pumped and raced through electric blue veins; and Karl realized what had been done to him, and who these people were.

Ms. Gourmand pulled away, severing the cosmic link. She looked down into Karl’s eyes.

They’ve changed, Karl thought. Her eyes, they’ve become normal. I’ve taken some part of her.

Suddenly, Ms. Gourmand’s expression began to change. Where a strange contentment had been, now there was a look of terror. She leapt from his lap and scrambled towards the others on the couch. Mr. Grills took her gently by the shoulders, consoling her.

“Now, Now,” he said. “What’s happened?”

She was crying too hard to answer. Finally, Douglas Exeter stood up.

“I know what’s happened,” he said. “Karl has sapped her of her inspiration!”

Karl leapt to his feet. Mr. Grills ran for the door, practically dragging the defeated Ms. Gourmand by the arm.

“Jesus Age!” He screamed. “He’s supposed to be paralyzed!”

“No,” Douglas Exeter shouted, smiling like a madman. “You cannot stop inspiration! He has the divine muse in him now! He is unstoppable! Someone get this man a typewriter!"

Exeter leapt at Karl as though possessed of a demon. Karl opened his mouth and reached inside. He could feel the pointed tail of the black rope. He grabbed at it and pulled with all his might. The thing shot from his mouth, spun around in mid-air, and with movements faster than the eye could register, forced 52

its way down Douglas Exeter’s throat.

Exeter let out a scream like a rusty chainsaw and fell to the floor.

The body immediately dried and blackened. A rotten husk…an empty shell, crumbling to dust with the smell of burning leaves and fading orange sunsets of old photographs. Karl turned his attention to Ms. Gourmand, and Mr. Grills, still clutching desperately to the door knob.

They seemed smaller to Karl. The doorknob appeared massive and comical in Mr. Grills child-size hands. Ms. Gourmand was very close to fading away completely. Karl took a step towards them.

“NO!” Mr. Grills screamed, his voice high-pitched and terrified. “Please! What are you going to do?”

They were both no more than three inches tall now.

Karl walked over, picked them up by the back of their necks, opened Aaron and Neville’s cage and threw them in. The ferrets, at first, seemed hesitant.

But soon they were happily chewing on, and playing with, the last few bits and pieces of what had once been Mr. Grills and Ms. Gourmand.

Karl smacked the cage with his fist.

“Shut UP!” He yelled. “I’ve got a goddamn headache!” …and he walked to the computer to write something.

Dustin Reade has been previously published in Nerve Cowboy Literary Magazine (non-SF), and his first SF story "Four Plastic Reindeer" recently appeared in the Whortleberry Press Anthology "Christmas In Outer Space". He also has two short stories in the SF/Fantasy genre appearing in upcoming issues of "Sideshow Fables" and "Kasma Magazine".

Birth Day

by Kurt Fawver

Look again, can't you see it's a beautiful baby girl? ___________________________________________________________

The waiting room was suffused with the drone of

a thousand flies, all buzzing as one inside the vending machine that flickered in the corner. Darkness peered through the row of windows along the far wall and an impotent breeze tinged by lavender and ammonia wheezed from the ventilation duct overhead. James could still taste the putrefied tang of the outdated tuna sandwich he'd eaten in the cafeteria.

The evening was alive with subtle signifiers of death and decay. Of course, James thought, how could it be any other way? I'm sitting in a goddamned hospital. The whole place is a temple to our fragility and our inevitable degeneration. Death is in the mortar.

He sighed and ran a hand across his forehead. It came away covered in a sheen of lukewarm sweat and cutaneous oil. A Dr. Hooker was paged to the cardiac unit.

Two young women walked by the room, a cloud of silver mylar balloons trailing slightly behind their tread. Most of the balloons read “It's a Girl!” in brilliant fluorescent pink lettering.

James stared at them and wondered if the baby they were visiting had been premature or if it had its umbilical cord coiled around its neck. Probably not.

It was probably healthy and pink and gurgling happily in someone's arms. He studied his watch mindlessly.

It had been almost forty-five minutes since they'd wheeled Dawn into surgery.

Routine procedure, they'd said. We do it all the time, they'd said. One small incision and you'll be parents, they'd said.

James knew they weren't lying. Cesarean births were common. Only a microscopic fraction of women died during the operation and the resulting babies were generally as healthy as any other. The risks were minimal, at best. And yet, James couldn't shake the anxiety that made hammer falls in his bowels.

Something was not quite right. Something didn't make sense.

Two weeks ago, he had taken Dawn to the obstetrician for a scheduled exam. Her due date was, then, only five days away. Most of the tests had been normal. There was a slight irregularity in the amniotic fluid – some sort of chemical composition issue James didn't understand – but the doctor had assured them that it was “just an intriguing abnormality... nothing to be concerned about.” Their child was supposed to 53

arrive healthy and on time. Again, the doctors had asked whether James and Dawn wanted to know the sex of the baby or see any ultrasound images and again they had declined.

Dawn told James she wanted to “revel in the mystery and the magic of birth,” which was fine by him. He'd always felt that ultrasound pictures showed little more than a drifting mist of blurry, human-shaped but not quite human blobs of gray and white. Ghosts in the uterine lining.

Things masquerading as people. It was unsettling.

So, Dawn and James saw no sneak peeks of their impending child; they learned nothing of its nature beyond a few inscrutable medical terms. They were happy and supposedly prepared, and drove home to wallpaper the nursery with anticipation and hope.

But no one came to fill the room. Five days passed and the baby refused to be born. Another week slipped by and still the fetus resisted its introduction to the world. Finally, this morning, just as James and Dawn were about to eat breakfast, it charged for the gates, knocking Dawn from her chair with tremendous contractive pain. The couple rushed to the hospital and waited. The doctors waited. Everyone bit their bottom lips and spoke in hushed tones. But still nothing happened. Dawn's labor continued and the attending nurses began sweating. A battery of tests were run; their results made the doctors huddle together in the hallway and steal brief sidelong glances at Dawn's maternal bulge. Eventually, a decision was made to speed the child's fall over the precipice into life.

The doctors recommended a Cesarean delivery and explained that prolonging labor could result in various complications involving infection and oxygen deprivation. Dawn and James didn't know the correct questions to ask, so they simply consented.

That had been almost two hours ago. Now James sat on an over-cushioned couch in the waiting room, leg shaking rapidly, wondering why the doctors had been so quick to jump to surgery and why they had looked at Dawn only in uneasy flashes. What had they withheld? What did they not say? Why wasn't Dawn in recovery yet? What should he do?

Another half hour passed, during which James absentmindedly picked apart a seam on the couch.

Every nerve in his body quivered. Errant visions materialized in the unlit alleyways of his rationality.

He saw Dawn's torn midriff spilling organs and blood onto a grinning toddler beneath the operating table.

He saw Dawn screaming and slowly being pulled inside out, as if her flesh was a reversible jacket. He saw a surgeon lower her surgical mask to reveal a gaping black hole where her mouth and chin should have been. He saw a clear plastic cube stuffed with gurgling babies constrict and expand, constrict and expand - a pumping heart crushing the tiny bodies inside with every compression. He heard skulls burst.

He heard bones snap through skin. He heard someone enter the waiting room.

It was Dawn's obstetrician. James blinked back to reality, but not before the doctor began speaking. “...wife's operation went extremely well,” he informed James. “She's awake and in her room, but is still a bit groggy. Also, you should know that you're the brand new father of an eight pound, ten ounce daughter. Very alert. Very healthy. Congratulations, Mr. Dodd.”

James nodded. His muscles unwound, ever so slightly.

“Thank you. I can see Dawn now? And my daughter?”

“Absolutely. Your wife is in room 319, just up the hall. I'll have a nurse bring your daughter in. It'll be just a few moments.”

Again, James nodded.

The doctor glided away and James was left to his withering jitters. He slowly rose from the waiting room couch and ambled to his wife's bedside. She weakly grabbed for his hand and mustered the will to smile, although vacant space still clung to her pupils.

“How're you feeling?” James asked, taking her grasping hand in his and squeezing.

Dawn shrugged.

“Like a rounded square.”

James bent down and kissed her. She tasted of chalk and evaporated desire.

“Someone's supposed to bring in Samantha soon.

We're sticking with Samantha, right?”

An unfamiliar ripple dashed across Dawn's pupils.

She shook her head.

“What? Who? Who's Samantha?”

“Samantha. As a name. For our daughter. They said it was a girl.”

Zeros flitted about the room. Dawn opened her mouth to speak, but said nothing. Somewhere beyond the door, a machine beeped rapidly impending doom.

James felt hair rising on his arms; a prickle of dark ice ran from his neck to his temples. This was supposed to be one of the happiest days of his life. He was supposed to be puffing a cigar and lifting his golden 54

child high in the air for all the world to behold.

Triumphant music was supposed to be playing in the background. This should have been the prime halcyon hour. But, instead, he was coaxing his wife out of a drug-induced cavern and barely controlling an irrational, intangible dread.

“Remember, hon? Samantha. We talked about that name for two or three years. We said that's what we'd name a girl.”

Dawn still stumbled inside herself.

“Oh. Yeah.

I remember.

Samantha,” she murmured. “A girl. They told me it was a girl. I remember that. When I woke up they told me. And they said something else. Something important, I think. I'm not sure what it was.”

James ran his fingers through his wife's hair and let them fall against her neck.

“Don't worry about it,” he said. “Just rest and relax. We're parents now. We have to be on our game for the next 20 years or so. We're going to need all the energy we can get.”

Dawn breathed deeply and lazily, but didn't exhale – it was her peculiar variation on a sigh. James had always been bothered by it. It was a gesture that seemed incomplete, a signpost that pointed the way toward exasperation, boredom, and exhaustion but never actually welcomed you to those places.

“Why aren't you smiling?” she asked suddenly.

“I... um... I'm... not?” James hadn't anticipated that his unspeaking mouth would betray his calm, reassuring words. An unnameable fear mounted his shoulders, sunk its knotted tentacles under his flesh, and squeezed.

“No. You're not. Why?” she asked again, more emphatic this time, her concern blooming. “Why aren't you smiling?”

James had no explanation. He had no logical port where he might anchor his ill ease. How could he describe a thing that had no definite origin, no absolute shape, no real reason to exist? How could he read a story from a blank sheet of paper?

Someone knocked on the doorframe. Dawn and James turned to see a nurse entering the room. In her arms, she carried a crisp, white bundled blanket in which their daughter presumably rested.

James couldn't see his child's face yet. He didn't see any movement in the depths of the swaddled cotton, either.

“Mr. and Mrs. Dodd?”

James nodded and mumbled a mostly unintelligible assent. Is this it? he wondered, his pulse rapidly firing. Is it really happening? Is she finally here? Our baby. My princess.

The nurse stepped around the couple and gently placed the bundle in Dawn's waiting arms.

“I'd like to introduce you to your daughter.”

The nurse stroked Dawn's forearm then leveled a reassuring gaze at James. With such a gaze, she might have said “all is ordered and well, Mr. Dodd” or “the world is at peace now,” but she didn't. It was more the look mourners might exchange by casket-side, all misty carnations and firm palms on the shoulder.

“I'll give you some time with her,” the nurse said, and breezed through the doorway, off to perform other duties.

“Isn't she beautiful?” Dawn cooed, gently rubbing a finger along some unseen curve within the blanket.

James stepped closer to Dawn's bed. He attempted to angle his body so that he could bask in the revelation of his daughter's freshly minted form, but her tiny face still eluded him. Is she this small? So small I can't even see her from two feet away? Can that be normal? Is she smothering in all that cloth? he worried, a needle of panic probing the base of his skull.

“James, look!” Dawn gasped. “She's staring at you!

She's staring at her daddy!”

He leaned over Dawn's shoulder and flipped back part of the blanket, hoping to be more than an oblivious bystander to one of Samantha's first moments of wonder. But what greeted James was not a tiny fist or an adorably scrunched nose. It was not love and possibility and eyes overflowing with the future. It was nothing. Space leered up from the soft, barren plane on which his daughter was supposedly resting. His stomach began churning.

“Where? Where is she? What's wrong here?”

James implored, unraveling the blanket and tearing it away from Dawn. No child was beneath its folds. No daughter had been cocooned inside.

Dawn was cradling a void.

“What are you doing?” she snapped, “Are you trying to be funny? She needs those covers.”

Dawn snatched back the blanket and wrapped it around itself, tucking in the corners and leaving an open triangle at one end, a hole for a head that was not there.

“There you go,” she breathed into the opening, drawing her hand across a downy scalp that did not exist. “It's all better. Daddy was just being crazy for a minute.”

She was speaking to a flattened blanket. James' mind spun on its axis, his emotional spectrum oscillating between poles of terror and rage. Yet, he managed to maintain a level tone when he finally spoke.

55

“Dawn? Where is she? What's going on here? I...I don't understand. Am I missing something?”

Dawn rocked the blanket in her arms. She stared into the emptiness and smiled.

“What do you mean? Missing what? She's so beautiful, James. Samantha. Our Samantha. So beautiful. She's everything I wanted. She even has your chubby cheeks.”

Dawn giggled.

James was either losing his mind or some bizarre plot was unraveling before him.

His wife was laughing at an imaginary baby, a baby she fully believed to be nestled in her arms. And the nurse.

The nurse had brought this nothing child into the room as if it was truly what had been born. This day, James was a man wandering in hysterical darkness; this day, he was supposedly a father.

“Can I hold her? Just for a minute?” he asked.

He carefully slid a trembling hand over the folded blanket and forced stillness into his digits.

Dawn studied him carefully, her eyes more focused than when he had initially entered the room. She was shaking off the anesthetic rapidly.

“Of course,” she answered. “Why would you even have to ask? Just remember you have to keep a hand under her head. Her neck is weak.”

“I know, I know. I read the books and the magazines, too.” James lifted the blanket away from Dawn and pressed it to his chest, pleading to unseen forces of darkness and light that he might feel eight pounds of euphoria squirming within its recesses. But he didn't. The blanket was only that – a blanket. His daughter was a myth. The belief in her presence was a virus that had somehow not infected him. His pulse blasted through his arteries, his hands shook despite his best effort to control them. A terrible chain of reasoning slithered up from the pits of his burning cortex.

Dawn was definitely pregnant for the past nine months, James thought. Something was growing inside her. But what if that something was, literally, nothing?

What if she had been gestating an abyss, her womb a cavity? What if we've been laying the foundation for our future, for our happiness and our hope, atop a bottomless chasm, atop a thing that exists but does not exist - an idea, a word, and nothing more? And what if our Samantha is that thing? What if she is constructed of nothingness?

No. He forced the idea from his over-clocked brain. It was absurd. It was insane. It was the ranting of a tired, stressed man who had seen too many horror movies.

There was a rational explanation lurking around a corner somewhere.

There had to be.

The nurse ducked back into the room and, it seemed to James, stifled a gasp when she saw him holding the empty blanket. Maybe it was only a yawn.

“Everything alright in here? The little girl's doing fine? No problems?” she asked. A sweet, creamy sheen coated her questions. It was too authentic, too gentle, too slathered in kindness.

Such utterly altruistic caring was unnatural. James didn't trust her.

“She's wonderful,” Dawn replied. “She's a dream come true.”

“That's what we like to hear,” the nurse said. “And how are you feeling? Any pain from the incision?”

“A little. But it's not really pain, I guess. My insides just feel... I don't know... hollow.”

The word sent a crisp shock through every nerve ending in James' body. A hollow feeling couldn't possibly be normal.

“That's normal,” the nurse said, checking the tubes running into Dawn's arm. “It's the combination of the pain medication and antibiotic that we're using coupled with the reduction in internal pressure that comes from getting your baby out of you. It's nothing to worry about.”

The nurse's explanation seemed straight from a bad medical drama or a poorly researched novel. James doubted that a feeling of bodily hollowness could be caused by a change in “internal pressure,” but he remained silent, clutching the bundled blanket tight to his chest.

After jotting down a few notes on Dawn's chart, the nurse turned to leave. She brushed by James without even so much as a glance and swept back through the doorway.

Though his heart was slamming against his ribs and his otherwise stationary organs were vibrating with apprehension, James knew he had to speak with her.

He had to ask questions that might make him sound delusional or schizophrenic. He had to risk being hauled away to the psychiatric ward; his daughter's life – whatever that entailed – hung in the balance.

He turned and followed the nurse, straining to swallow back the bile writhing in his throat. Dawn called after him, asking where he was going with Samantha, but he ignored her. He could explain the intricacies of his bravery - or his insanity, depending on the outcome - when he returned.

J

ames caught up with the nurse only a few yards down the hallway. Once he was only a few steps behind her, he tried to gain her attention.

56

“Excuse me,” he said, half under his breath.

She continued walking. His intestines gurgled.

“Excuse me, nurse?” he tried again, this time with more confidence. He reached out and tapped her shoulder.

The nurse halted in mid-step and spun to face James.

“Mr. Dodd,” she said, her voice wound taut, “is there a problem? Do you need something?”

James began to sweat.

His body was one tremulous collection of doubts and fears.

“Um... yes, actually. There's... well... there's no baby here, in my arms. My wife doesn't seem to notice. She thinks our daughter is here, but she isn't.

Look. You brought us nothing but a blanket. So where is our daughter?”

He offered the folded mantle to the nurse for inspection, for validation.

She surveyed James' pleading eyes and frowned. Not even for a brief moment did she glance down at the pile in his hands.

“I think you'd better come with me, Mr. Dodd. You should meet with Dr. Grant, the head of the post-natal unit. He can answer any questions you might have.”

The nurse turned and continued walking. James followed, unsure but willing to meet anyone who could help explain the situation.

“Am I going crazy? Is this some sort of condition, like postpartum depression?” he asked as they glided through the hallway. “Am I holding my daughter right now or not? Do you see her?”

James' questions dangled in the air like worn nooses waiting to be filled by the necks of the condemned.

The nurse ignored them.

“Just follow me, Mr. Dodd,” she said.

They walked on, through corridor after corridor.

The rooms along the hallways were changing as they passed. New and expectant mothers had lain inside the rooms that branched off from the first few passages, but as they traveled further, the occupants gradually grew fewer and fewer, the rooms darker and darker. In the final hallway they had traversed, there were simply no patients – at least, as far as James could tell. Every doorway led into a pitch black void; the light from the hall seemed to be barred from entering those rooms. James wondered how such a thing was possible. He also wondered who or what was beyond the inscrutable darkness. Light didn't just stop at a threshold like some common vampire needing permission to enter. Entire corridors of hospitals were not totally deserted, either. Something

was fundamentally wrong here.

James' hands were shaking again.

After passing through two more hallways of void rooms, the nurse finally stopped in front of a plain oak door. Engraved into the wood in small, neat letters was the name “Dr. V. L. Grant.”

“Here you are, Mr. Dodd,” the nurse motioned at the door.

James waited, hoping the nurse would go in first.

She stood perfectly still.

“You can see Dr. Grant now. Please, go in.”

James breathed in deeply and swallowed hard. He reached out, turned the knob, and pushed open the door. A blast of frigid air escaped from the doctor's office. The room was poorly lit and radiating an intense chill. Even so, James haltingly stepped inside.

As the door swung closed behind him, he thought he heard the click of a lock. However, he was too preoccupied by his surroundings to care. Now that his sight was adjusting to the dimness, he could see that, on every side, he faced a geometric nightmare.

The doctor's office was a confusing amalgam of obscene angles and jagged architecture, as if several other rooms elsewhere in the world had exploded and all the shards had attempted to reform here, in one spot. There was no symmetry or readily apparent logic to the design. There were no windows and there was no furniture – only unnameable shapes protruding where desks, chairs, and cabinets might have otherwise rested. It was like nothing James had ever seen before.

“Yes, most people have difficulty making sense of it.”

A sinewy voice had issued from just over James' shoulder. Its owner stepped from the shadows and extended his hand. He was short and portly, with a dark beard and poorly combed hair. He wore a white coat and white button-down shirt. James had been expecting someone imposing, someone with the cadence of a god. This man was laughably average.

Slabs of fear began to crumble and fall away from James' chest.

Maybe there was a simple misunderstanding.

Maybe there was a rational explanation.

“Dr. Grant?” James asked.

The man nodded and lowered his hand, realizing that James had still not shaken it.

“Yes. What can I do for you?” he asked, his voice a smoothly swirling oil slick in James' ear.

No expression had yet crossed his face. He didn't seem to blink, either.

“I'm... I'm missing my daughter. She's supposed to be here, right here,” James lifted the empty blanket 57

higher so the doctor could see, “but she's not.

Everyone else seems to think she is, though. Everyone else sees her. But I don't. There's nothing here.”

The doctor motioned to a wall from which jutted a thing that resembled the offspring of a pyramid and a honeycomb.

“What do you see there?” he asked.

James shrugged.

“A weird shape.”

“Nothing more?” the doctor asked.

James shook his head no.

The doctor pointed at another figure rising out of the floor - an inverted trapezoidal, star-like configuration.

“And there?”

“Pretty much the same. What does this have to do with my daughter?”

James' extremities were beginning to ache from the room's temperature.

“Don't you see the beauty? What are these things?

What are these shapes? Impossibilities. They are nothing. They are created, but they are ultimately nothing. You could no more describe this place than you could the idea of zero or infinity. And we are all children here. You, your wife, myself. Your daughter.”

James was losing his patience quickly. He was freezing to death while the doctor provided nothing but quasi-mystical babble.

“I don't understand.

Where is my daughter?

Where is she?”

The doctor pointed at the blanket then spread his hands wide, in a gesture of expansiveness.

“Right there. Nowhere. Everywhere,” he said.

“Let me show you something that will help clear up this matter entirely.”

The doctor raised his hand to his own face and dug his nails into the flesh of his cheek. James watched, dumbstruck and disturbingly fascinated. His stomach was flipping end over end.

As the doctor pressed harder and his fingers sank into the fatty tissues, blood began flowing down his jawline and dripped onto his coat. At no time did he wince or make even the slightest sound. He simply plunged his fingers deeper within his face, into layers of muscle and bone. Balling up his hand and yanking backward quickly, the doctor suddenly tore one side of his face away. From eye socket to mouth, only wet, glistening skull was left.

James doubled over and vomited.

When he glanced up between heaves, he realized that the doctor wasn't finished.

“What the hell?” James muttered. “What the hell?”

The doctor was tearing the rest of his face off with

one hand while the other was battering his skull with already ragged knuckles.

As James clamored for air, he heard a series of staccato cracks.

“No, no, no, no,” James stammered. He lifted his gaze and lost all sense of reality. There, standing no more than four feet away, was the doctor, fully erect, arms crossed, with a deep, placid, penetrating blackness in place of his upper head. It was stark absence. The doctor moved toward James and his tongue dropped away, hitting the floor with a heavy splosh. Only his lower jaw, still covered in skin and beard, remained above his neck as a human reminder.

James straightened and backed away. This could not be real. This had to be a psychotic episode.

“You see now?” the doctor's voice undulated through the air, “You see the truth? What are you?”

The doctor reached out to touch James' shoulder, but James managed to slink backward, closer to the door.

“What are you?”

James turned and bolted for the exit but it was, as he already subconsciously knew, a false hope. He tried the knob, but it was locked from the outside.

The doctor, the thing – whatever he or it was casually strode up behind James. He could feel the pulsing chill of it on his back. The doctor leaned in and spoke to James' neck. It was too close. It was too dense, too massive. James' sinuses started to throb.

His sense of balance was also fading.

“What are you?” the doctor asked again.

James twisted around and met the abyss. The darkness enveloped him, probing his nostrils and mouth. The pressure behind his eyes was building ever greater. This couldn't be real. It simply couldn't.

It made no sense.

“What are you?”

The darkness pounded inside James' being.

“What are you?” James screamed.

“What are you?” The question more insistent, heavier than before.

“James Dodd,” he answered through the intense pain rising in his head. He felt disconnected, as if he might pass out.

“What are you?” The doctor's voice reached into James' brain and squeezed. A thin trickle of blood ran out his nose.

“An accountant!

A father!” James cried out.

“Human! What do you want me to say?”

“What are you? What were your parents? What is your daughter? What will her daughter be? What are you?

What are they?

What is the nature of everything and everyone that ever has been or ever 58

will be?”

The emptiness crushed James' life under the weight of its insistence. He felt something burst in the back of his head, a searing coldness. In one fractional instant, he understood.

“Nothing,” he answered, and fell to the floor in a heap of ruptured belief.

T

wenty minutes later, James, tightly gripping the empty blanket to his chest, wandered back into Dawn's room.

His stride was less hesitant, less haphazard than when he had left. He moved forward in a straight line to Dawn. His eyes were frozen forward, unblinking and unrolling, as if encased in the head of a wax figurine.

“Where have you been?” Dawn asked. Both anger and relief snaked around her question.

James didn't respond. He simply rocked the balled up blanket in his arms and laughed – an echoing, cracked sound without blood or sunshine coursing beneath its pitch.

“James, where have you been?” Dawn asked again, impatience creeping in. “What were you doing with Samantha?”

“She's so beautiful,” he answered. “I was out with my little girl. We went for a walk.”

The reply was not a defense for his absence or an incitement to verbal combat; it was a statement of fact: pure, simple, and even. Any subtext had been purged from James' voice.

“Where did you go?”

James stared at Dawn, his mouth slack.

He couldn't remember.

Only vague outlines of images floated through his head. The events surrounding his visit to Dr. Grant were little more than an unconnected series of dots that took no recognizable shape.

“Just... out. I talked to the nurse. I walked around for a while. I don't know. It doesn't matter. I'm here now and I'm fine and Samantha's here and she's perfect and healthy and... look... isn't she beautiful, hon? Look at that chin! It's exactly like your mom's.”

He swiveled the swaddled bundle toward Dawn and crouched so that it was level with her vision, then carefully slid it into her arms. Concentrated joy washed over Dawn's face. She fingered the blanket edges back to reveal more emptiness.

“It is like mom's,” she said, tears welling up in her words.

“My princess,” James murmured. “My world.”

“What do you think she'll be when she's grown?

What will she be like?” Dawn asked quietly, stroking space.

“Everything,” James replied, beaming. “Anything.”

The couple sat in quiet contemplation.

A woman in a room nearby screamed, cracking the pristine silence. Neither James nor Dawn looked up.

After a few more minutes passed, James began to softly sing a lullaby to the nothingness. Dawn smiled.

James couldn't wait to take his daughter home.

Pick up a copy of Night Chills at www.blackmatrixpub.com, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and many other sites on the Web, or have your local bookseller order you a copy. 112 pages, trade paperback binding and over 80,000 words of horror fiction from writers around the world.

59

Kurt Fawver has published poetry in the literary journal Sand, short fiction in the trade paperback anthology Zombie St. Pete, and has a forthcoming short story in the April '10 edition of Morpheus Tales. One of his academic articles won the International Association of the Fantastic in the Arts Graduate Student Award and will be featured in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts.

Driver Education

by David Soyka

Things can only go downhill when your past comes back to haunt you. ___________________________________________________________

Not so long after I first opened my driving school

business, one of my just-graduated students wound up on the front page of the newspaper having caused a three car pile up on the interstate resulting in his demise as well as four other fatalities. That bothered me, for a little while. The kid seemed to have had decent coordination, he actually managed to parallel park without knocking any cones over. I had written on the final report to his parents, “Jonathan is extremely careful, always has two hands on the wheel, and is very attentive to my instructions. He does seem to have a little trouble with his night vision, though.

Perhaps an eye appointment would be in order.

Otherwise, he should do fine.”

The accident, by the way, happened during the day.

I just teach them to drive. I don’t issue the license.

He was old enough, he passed the exams, the state qualified him as road-worthy. Considering that the newspaper reported a couple of six packs of beer and a bottle of vodka found in the front seat of the kid’s car, I didn’t feel directly responsible.

How I got into the business was that I used to coach high school football. That was my main job, though I was officially a phys ed teacher, which meant that in addition to forcing uncoordinated kids to play sports I also taught Driver Ed. So when I got fired (a combination of consecutive losing seasons exacerbated by a pushing match with a particularly irate father of a player who felt he could do my job better), it seemed like a good career choice. I always preferred to work with kids rather than adults. Not so much because I like kids as that kids at least have an excuse for the way they act, unlike adults whose childish behavior is not only more irksome, but more difficult to control.

So, anyway, business was good because, think about it, who really wants to teach their own kid in their own car how to drive. Better dents in one of my car’s fenders than yours.

Business was good, that is, until Mavis Lake sashayed into my office one late Friday afternoon.

A tall, short-cut brunette dressed in a “Ms. Executive” get-up, black suit, white blouse, dark hose, silver jewelry. Everything about her was black and white. Except for the blood red color of her lips.

So, if you get the picture, you can understand why I initially thought she was making an appointment for 60

her daughter to take lessons. Not that she would be the student. Not that she was still in high school.

She was old enough to drive. And I was old enough to know better.

All her forms were signed, paid in full by a check that cleared for the full course of 13 weekly lessons.

She had asked me if it was all right to smoke, and though I told her I don’t allow it in the car, I opened a drawer and rummaged through some stuff I don’t know why I was keeping for an old crystal ashtray from my own days on the nicotine stick. I slid it across the metal top of the old desk with a nice backspin that landed it on the edge without falling over into her lap. From her black alligator pocketbook she removed a silver cigarette case, withdrew one of those long thin “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby” slim cylinders, and placed it in the middle of her lips. She leaned forward.

“Got a match.”

“Uh, not since Superman died.”

“Pretty lame.”

“Sorry. Since I quit, don’t have much need to carry them around anymore. Did I mention there’s a ‘No Smoking’ policy in the car.”

“Twice, already.”

She leaned back in her chair, produced one of those old metal flip-top Ronson lighters engraved with initials that didn’t match hers, and ignited the dangling cig.

She sucked the air through the tube until the embers burned hot and flicked the lid of the lighter shut with an impressive click. A mild odor of butane mingled with the lilac scent of her perfume. She inhaled deeply, pursed her lips and blew a smoke ring that dissipated about halfway towards me.

“I hope that’s the only vice you’ve given up, Jack.”

“Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer ‘Mr. Hartwell’.”

She shrugged.

“Whatever.”

She stubbed out her only halfconsumed cigarette, not hard enough to really put it out, just enough to leave it there smoldering. She got up from her chair. “Well, see you next week. I’m looking forward to getting started,” she arched an eyebrow, looked me up and down, then, just before she spun on her heels and walked out the door, added, “Mr. Hartwell.”

I reached for her not-quite extinguished cigarette, examined the thick red smear at its tip, and before I

crushed it out of existence, I took a long drag. It burned my lungs. It felt good, the way that things that actually aren’t very good for you feel.

I

usually picked students up at their house and then dropped them off after the lesson.

Mavis’s address was on the ritzier side of town, with the added exclusivity of a gated entrance. I fumbled with the intercom to see if someone would open the gates, but was just getting static, when she announced her presence.

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

I turned to see her leaning against the car. Black pants, black turtleneck, black shades. Red lipstick.

“This the best you could do?” she asked once she got into the driver’s seat of the bright yellow (I liked colors that would stand out to other drivers as a sort of warning beacon) but otherwise unremarkable looking sedan. She brushed a red-polished nail on the dashboard. “At least you could have dusted.”

“Sorry, it’s the only manual in the fleet. Don’t usually get much call for students who want to learn on a stick. “ “I happen to like playing with a big shifter,” she said.

In most cases, I spend the first lesson jerking and stalling as the student tries to coordinate raising the clutch pedal to engage first gear. Mavis was already in third, an elbow out the open window, the wind tousling her hair, before I realized she hadn’t put her seat belt on.

“Uh, I think we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves, here,” I said as Mavis expertly downshifted while leaning the car into the curve as if she was driving the Indianapolis 500, not piloting an econoimport designed for short trips to the local Wal-Mart.

“First thing is that it’s the law to buckle up.”

She pretended not to hear me. Or maybe she really didn’t. The speedometer was approaching 90 mph, nearly double the velocity it had ever obtained in its life span. There was a lot of noise, both from the wind and the engine straining, the sort of situation where Scotty would advise the Captain he didn’t know how much more of this the ship could take. Mavis was on the bumper of a baby blue Ford Taurus whose white haired driver barely reached above the head rest.

Mavis passed her across the double lines. I shielded my face, as if that would somehow prevent the little old lady from reading the name and phone number of my driving school on the rooftop display. I glanced in the rear view mirror as we sped past and noticed that the old broad was giving us the finger.

I let Mavis surge ahead until I figured we were well 61

ahead of being caught by granny road rage, hit the brake on my duplicate set of controls, took control and steered to the roadside. Mavis crossed her arms and pouted.

“Forget what I said about the first thing you do is fasten your seatbelt. The first thing you do is to understand that I’m the teacher, you’re the student, and we do things the way I want them done. You can do that, or you can get the hell out.”

Which is exactly what she did. Slammed the door.

I confess that I focused on her ass as she got out. But then I noticed she had her thumb out. Great, just what I needed, I could see the headlines: “Ordered out of the car. Hitchhiker raped. Driving instructor indicted for negligence.”

I yelled out the window. “Get in.”

“You told me to get out.”

“Now I’m telling you to get in.”

“Is this a teacher-type ‘I’m the one in charge’ order.”

“Just get in the goddamn car, Mavis, and stop fucking around.”

I saw her eyebrows arch over the top of her BanRays. She shrugged. Got in.

“Look,” I said. “You obviously know how to drive all ready. I guess you’re taking the lessons to qualify for the insurance discount. We don’t even have to do any more lessons. I’ll fill out the paperwork. You pass, and daddy’ll be happy. You can go to the mall instead.”

“You don’t want to see me anymore?” “ I don’t see the point in giving someone lessons who already knows how to drive.”

“Well, there are other things we could do.”

She leaned over and grabbed my crotch. “I’m real good at shifting other things.”

I’d like to be able to say that I removed her hand and place it back on the steering wheel and instructed her to drive back home. I’d like to say that, because that’s what I should have done. But I didn’t.

I

suppose I could have cancelled the next lessons.

But, every week I arrived promptly and there she would be waiting for me at the gates. I kept telling myself she was the legal age of consent, she was mature beyond her years, she obviously knew what she was doing, even if I wasn’t sure I was.

I started smoking again.

No need to get into the tawdry details here, suffice it to say that Mavis was energetic and energizing. It wasn’t just sex and while it certainly wasn’t love, it was a connection beyond the mere physical. I know, that sounds like some bullshit way for a middle-aged guy to justify getting his dick sucked by someone half

his age. But there was something going on beyond the thrill of mere depravity. What the attraction was for her, I couldn’t tell. I figured we’d get into that when the last lesson arrived and then we’d have a “Is this just a good time or do we really have a future here and are we still going to see each other” type discussion.

But the day of the last lesson, she didn’t show up at the gates. I checked my messages. She hadn’t called about canceling.

I decided to wait, smoked a cigarette, then another. Called my machine again. I waited until long after the lesson time elapsed, smoking and calling.

I canceled my afternoon appointments.

It might have been one thing if we had talked about ending it. But here it was ending without my participation, without me at least being able to nod my head in accepting the inevitable conclusion of a kind of relationship typically characterized as “doomed.”

It’d been fun while it lasted, I told myself, and now it was time to move on and get back to reality.

Instead I put my hand on the intercom button at the gates and kept it there until someone finally responded.

“We don’t want any, whatever it is you’re selling.

Now go away.”

“Excuse me, Mrs. Lake?”

“No ‘Mrs. Lake’ here. You must have the wrong house. Good-day.”

“Well, I don’t think I have the wrong house. This is where I met Mavis for her lesson.”

“Well, I’m glad you and Mavis were able to meet.

And I don’t know what you taught her, young man, but someone should teach you not to bother people.”

“Look, I’m just a little concerned because this was supposed to be her last lesson and she didn’t show up, and, you know, there’s paperwork that has to be completed.” And I’d like to have the opportunity to fuck her in the ass one last time, I thought even as I was jabbering on about my seeming concern for the girl’s eligibility for an important insurance discount.

“Look, sonny, I’m sorry she stood you up, whoever she is, but she don’t live here. I’m the only one who lives here. And I don’t know any Mavis or Mrs. Lake.

Now leave me alone.”

She cut the connection.

I got on the cell phone, called the number that Mavis had listed as her home phone.

No such number. Called directory assistance for the listing of any “Lake.” Not even an unlisted entry.

I didn’t quite give up, though, even in the depths of my post-coital depression.

Obviously, there was 62

someone who had been giving me great head for the past dozen weeks.

I asked my students if they’d ever heard of Mavis.

Most of them thought I was talking about a pop group. Then I thought to call a sports writer I used to know from my coaching days, asked him if he could run a search of the name in his newspaper files. He told me he’d check out their “morgue,” so I guess the email he sent me was kind of ironic: Mavis Lake, aged 18, died last night from injuries suffered in an automobile accident on the Rt. 666 bypass currently under construction. The bypass, which is not scheduled to open for another three months, has become a favorite site for drag racing contests among local teenagers, Chief of Police Charlie Wadner said.

According to eyewitnesses, Miss Lake was participating in a game of “chicken,” the object of which is for two cars to head straight towards one another. The driver who veers off first is declared “chicken” and loses.

Apparently Miss Lake was noted for never being “chicken.”

John Hartwell, Plenview High’s star quarterback, was the driver of the other vehicle.

Hartwell was taken to Sloan Memorial Hospital where he was reportedly in critical condition. Oddly, despite engaging in a very reckless contest, Chief Wadner noted that Hartwell had been wearing a seat belt. “That’s what saved him,” the Chief believes. The head of Miss Lake was recovered a hundred feet from the site of the accident.

My sportswriter friend had attached this note: “Fortunately, the paper has hired some high school geek to convert all our microfiche to electronic data files. Otherwise, if you asked me this a couple of months ago, I never would have found it. This article dates back to 1965. Hey, Jack, you wouldn’t by chance be the same Hartwell?”

By chance, I was. Just out of curiosity, certainly not nostalgia, I asked my friend to broaden the search during that same year for anything with my name on it after the date of the accident. There was the whole inspiring story . How I’d been in a coma for weeks, doctors didn’t know if I’d walk again. But in fact I had walked up to get my diploma just like everyone else at my high school graduation. To cheers.

Even still managed to play college football, though the Big 10 schools that had scouted me when I led the Plenview Schooners to the state championships figured I had become damaged goods. And, I guess I was. Still good enough to play at one of those mid-west State schools where most students major in animal husbandry, though. Probably just as well. Had the

accident not happened and I did wind up at one of those big schools, I probably would have been the third quarterback, the guy who holds for the extra points and maybe gets in during 20 point leads.

Instead, I got to be the star, which meant I got laid whenever I wanted.

None of the articles even mentioned Mavis Lake.

So what was I doing playing James Dean? Even though I was a jock, I wasn’t one of those madrashirted, penny-loafered assholes. I had just started to hang out with the duck-bill coifed, leather jacket crowd when I realized that while the cheerleaders would let you get into their pants, they wanted to save the championship event for marriage. The greaser chicks not only went all the way, they actually enjoyed it.

Do we detect a theme here?

That Saturday night was the first race I’d gone to.

It was kind of surreal, all these souped up Dodge Mopar and Shelby GT roadsters with chrome wheels pointing their high beams to a straightaway while guys bet ten dollars that their hot rod could beat yours. The concluding event was two drivers going full speed at one another to see who would veer off first. I’d been drinking and someone had suggested that “Jack Jock” should show everyone what his balls were made of. So, you see, it wasn’t something I could walk away from.

This wasn’t a contest of sheer brute speed, but of nerve. The Plymouth Valiant I had been embarrassed to drive was for this particular event as good as any other. It also had the unusual feature of seatbelts, something that wouldn’t be standard equipment for another twenty years. I ordinarily didn’t wear them, despite my promise to my father, but I did that night simply because I was scared shitless.

None of which explains why I didn’t remember the other driver. When I woke up from the coma, details were a little fuzzy. I’d been told someone had been killed. The doctors, my parents, my friends didn’t think I was responsible.

I didn’t think I was responsible, either. No one told me her name. She wasn’t from our school. She was from the other side of town. No one I knew, knew her. I didn’t even realize she was a she. I’d been drinking with my buddies and I’d been dared to play chicken with the reigning champ. So I did. I had to. I didn’t know that Mavis Lake always won, never blinked. That’s why no one else would take her on. Except those who didn’t know any better.

The way I looked at it, it was a competition, we both knew the rules, and I managed to break the tie by virtue of surviving. Early in my coaching career 63

one of my players got his neck snapped from a clean hit. Put him permanently in a wheelchair. It happens, sometimes. Just part of the game.

So, eventually, I just forgot about it and, like everyone else, got on with my life.

None of which cleared up the mystery of who, by some extraordinary coincidence, with the very same unusual name seduced me more than 35 years later.

T

wo weeks later I’m driving down the interstate, still desultory, but beginning to get over her, just getting to the point of reconciling myself to not caring who she was or the point of the charade. All good things come to an end. But I still daydreamed about her body on top of mine, and when the car coming from the opposite direction swerved over the median, I almost wasn’t paying attention in time to get out of the way.

There wasn’t any other traffic, so fortunately us being in two different lanes didn’t have the repercussions it could have had. The other car, one of those cutesy retro VWs in godawful apple green just continued on its way as if nothing special had happened.

Which pissed me off enough to turn around and try to catch up with it. I followed her (I knew it had to be a “her” -- guys, at least real guys, don’t drive these types of cars), into a strip mall parking lot. I pulled behind her, got out, slammed the door, and was about to give her a piece of my mind.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. It was Mavis, right?

Well, no. What do you think you’re reading here, a story in some pulp magazine?

No, it wasn’t Mavis. At least, it wasn’t the Mavis I’d been boning the last two months.

I was standing by her door as she rolled the window down, sputtering “What the hell is your problem, don’t you realize you could have killed me back there,” when something struck me as very familiar about the driver. Dressed in black, blood red lips. But, on the pudgy side. She removed her dark glasses. There were crow’s feet at the side of her eyes, a leathery skin beneath the rouge that is symptomatic of women who’ve been life-long smokers and stayed out in the sun much too long.

“Hi, Jack,” she said. “Or should I call you ‘Mr. Hartwell’?”

“I’m sorry, have we met?”

“Oh, how quickly they forget,” she said, chuckling.

“She got out of the car. Kissed me. Ground her hips into mine. For a moment, I was grinding back.

But then I pulled away.

“Who the hell are you, anyway?”

“Oh, what’s the matter, Jack, am I too old for you, is that it? You prefer them young don’t you? Like my daughter’s age, maybe?”

I looked at her more closely. Yeah, more than a passing resemblance. What Mavis would look like if she were middle aged and didn’t take care of herself.

Like her mother might look.

“You have a daughter named Mavis?”

She shrugged. “I might. I might also have had a sister by that name,” “A sister?”

“Yeah, a sister. I named my daughter after her.

Mavis Lake. She’s the same age as when my sister was killed. By you, Jack. And you got the chance to fuck with each of them, although in different ways.”

Then she got back into her Beetle and peeled out.

She was long gone before my head stopped spinning.

I don’t know how much time went by. I was thinking, trying to piece it together, make some sort of sense of it. Mavis Lake – the late Mavis Lake – has a sister, who has a kid. For some reason she holds it against me, thinks I’m responsible, and she tells her kid about how unfair it was that her “murderer” gets away with it because he’s a popular jock and his father’s got connections. But someday, they’re going to get even, as soon as the daughter is old enough.

Then they’re going to start playing some severe head games with Jack Hartwell. Where this was going to lead, I wasn’t quite sure. Another attempt on my life?

And what was the point of having the kid seduce me, how was that getting back at me?

The ache in my heart for the loins of Mavis Lake answered that already.

And as to where this was all leading, I didn’t have to wait much longer for an answer. Because when I went back to my car, there was Mavis Lake, my Mavis, waiting for me in the passenger seat.

I got in to the car, closed the door, sighed. Looking straight ahead, both hands on the wheel, I said, “Let me guess. Your Mom dropped you off.”

Mavis lit a cigarette. She was wearing a tight black t-shirt and, of course, red lipstick.

“Put your seatbelt on, Jack. Let’s go for a drive.”

“Where to?”

“It really doesn’t matter.”

For the next few minutes that’s all I did, drive. I was waiting for an explanation, not to mention wondering if the explanation might conclude in something carnal. Mavis smoked, stared out the window. I couldn’t stand it any longer.

“All right, I give up. Just who the hell are you?”

“I’m the girl you ran into thirty-five years ago. And 64

I’m the girl you banged in the back seat.” She took a long deep drag on her cigarette, held the smoke in her chest, and then exhaled through pursed lips weighted with white vapor and exhaustion. “What difference does it make who I am, Jack. To you, anyway.”

“Look, whether you’re a niece or an avenging ghost, what’s the point? It was an accident. I’m truly sorry it happened. It fucked my life up a bit too, you know. But she could have veered off.”

“So could you have.”

“You know, honest to God, I don’t know why I didn’t. All I remember was pissing in my pants and blacking out, whether from drinking to much or just plain terror, I couldn’t tell you.”

For a while she just sat and stared ahead.

“I’m not Mavis, you know.”

“Well I kind of figured you weren’t the Mavis from the, uh, accident.”

“I’m not related to her either. And that wasn’t my mom in the VW. My aunt. We look a little alike, and she’s an actress, and I told her I was shooting a movie for a class project. Wrote a script for her to follow.

She isn’t related to Mavis Lake, doesn’t know anything about her.”

“Okay, let me see if I’m following this. You’re not Mavis, the dead Mavis, and you’re not related to her in any way. Well, just who the hell are you and what’s this all about.”

“Well, I am eighteen and I am still in high school.

And I am, in case you didn’t notice, a little mature beyond my years.

Not just physically, but intellectually. I’m going to MIT in the fall. In fact. I’m so good with computers the newspaper hired me to convert their old microfiche records and put it on-line.

Sometimes I’d read some of the stuff, just out of curiosity.”

I remembered then what my sportswriter buddy had said about them hiring some “geek” to do just that.

“I don’t know, Jack, something about the whole bit really hit home. I mean, poor Mavis loses her head, and nobody writes about her. All the follow up stuff is about you, what a brave boy you were. Nobody gave a shit about Mavis. So I decided it was about time somebody did. I decided Mavis deserved better.”

“That’s what this is all about? I mean, I think it’s great when kids find a cause to believe in, but couldn’t you have, I don’t know, done volunteer work at the animal pound instead?”

“You still don’t get it, do you Jack?” She shook her head, like a mother at her wits end in disciplining a child’s errant behavior.

I wasn’t particularly worried that Mavis was a nutcase. I was, after all, in the driver’s seat. I thought.

Except that in my driving school cars, the instructor has a set of overriding controls. Which “Mavis” engaged.

“Fuck you, Jack, though I guess I already have.”

With that, “Mavis” pointed the car directly in the path of an oncoming tractor trailer. She did her namesake proud – she didn’t turn away.

W

hen I woke up, I couldn’t move anything below my neck. I figured it was the painkillers they were passing into the web of tubing connected to me from various mechanisms that were managing to keep me alive. It wasn’t until a couple of days later that they told me my spine had been snapped in a particularly nasty way that made me a quadriplegic. They had to punch a hole into my throat to make sure I kept breathing.

Unlike the last time, I was concerned with what happened to Mavis. Even though, this time, it was all her goddamn fault. I kept asking about her, but with this god damn thing shoved into my trachea it’s hard to make myself understood.

When an actual doctor manages to make an appearance at my bedside, he talks about me to the nurse as if I’m not there, as if having a broken body means I can’t hear either.

“Who is this Mavis he keeps asking about. His wife, maybe?”

“I don’t know, Doctor. Best I can figure out, he thinks this Mavis person was involved in the accident.”

The doctor’s eyebrows go up. “Accident! Hmmph.

Well, I think when someone deliberately drives their car into a tractor trailer the correct term is ‘suicide attempt’.”

Suicide attempt? More like murder attempt, I thought to myself.

“Jack, they didn’t find any body. They don’t know who the hell you are talking about.” And there was Mavis sitting right next to my bed, black veil over her face as if in mourning, though the fishnet stockings clashed with the somber look of the rest of her outfit.

The doctor and the nurse seem as oblivious of her presence as they are of mine.

“The only guy who does know who you are talking about is that sportswriter,” Mavis holds up the front page of the local newspaper. “This won’t appear for another day or two, but no harm in showing you now.”

She holds the paper up so I can read it.

Former High School Football Star and Coach Endures Tragic Deja-Vu John Hartwell, owner of Hartwell Driving School and 65

former local high school football coach, is recovering from severe injuries that resulted from a head-on collision with an 18-wheeler last Friday that eerily mimics the circumstances of a tragic mishap thirty-five years ago that ended Hartwell’s hopes of a Division I college football career.

While Hartwell was able to make an heroic comeback from his first mishap, the prognosis for recovering from this latest accident is much less promising.

As a teenager, an admittedly intoxicated Hartwell was involved in a horrific head-on collision in which two cars played a deadly game of “chicken” in which neither driver veered off. It’s unclear what the cause of last week’s accident was, though police are theorizing vehicular suicide as most likely.

In a bizarre twist, on the occasions when Hartwell is seemingly lucid and attempting to communicate, nurses report that he continually asks, “Is Mavis Lake okay?”

Mavis Lake was the girl that was killed in the earlier accident. Fortunately, the driver of the tractor trailer had only minor injuries. Hartwell was driving alone.

Mavis was blowing smoke rings. “Want a drag, Jack? Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot, you can’t even breathe on your own, much less inhale.”

Though I could barely speak a few words to the hospital staff, for some reason I had no trouble at all communicating with Mavis.

“Are you satisfied, now? Does this make you feel better? Are we even?”

“It’s not a question of how I feel, Jack. To most people, reality is pretty complicated.

Even the religious have a hard time figuring out why bad things happen to good people and vice versa. But I’m here to tell you that there is an underlying logic to the way things get done, that there is a wheel we all take a turn in riding and our individual karma determines where and when we get off. In the end, things do balance out. It doesn’t really matter whether we understand the how or why of the way it works.”

“Thanks for the philosophy lesson. Instead of the meaning of life, what I’d really like to know is just who are you, anyway?

The real Mavis, some descendant, or some facsimile thereof?”

“Why does it matter, Jack? Who I really am has nothing to do with how you’ve turned out, now does it?”

“Always the coy one.”

“Cheer up, Jack. Your body may be a smashed sack of shit right now, but some things are still working.”

Mavis pulled the bed covers off, followed by the flimsy hospital pajamas, and then proceeded to demonstrate what remained fully functional in an otherwise useless

body.

And, yes, it is some sort of consolation.

Since then I’ve read that book by the guy who used to play Superman. Somewhere in there he says that when he sleeps, in his dreams he is always walking, back to his old normal self. The dreams, he says, are the best part of his life now.

Well, I don’t do much dreaming. I don’t have to.

Because every day Mavis, or whoever she is, visits me and, though I can’t move, she takes matters into her own capable hands. Whatever karmic bill I may owe, for her sins Mavis evidently also has a long way to go to pay off a not inconsiderable debt.

Visit our Web site at:

David Soyka has published short fiction most recently in Steampunk Tales along with past appearances in Altered Perceptions, Byline, Carriage House Review, Circle Magazine, Santa Barbara Review and NeoOpsis; He also reviews science fiction/fantasy short fiction for BlackGate, among other print and on-line publications.

Check out the latest from Black Matrix. Take a look at digital samples of all of our releases - and you can order direct from the site. Search and find other online stores that carry our publications.

www.blackmatrixpub.com

66

Shadows

by Rose Blackthorn Beautiful and exotic, she's a dream come true... or is it a nightmare? ___________________________________________________________

Matt woke with a slowly rising level of pain that

made him very careful not to move. He didn’t think the pain was getting any worse as the seconds ticked by; he thought he was just becoming more and more aware of how really uncomfortable he was. Carefully, he opened his eyes, allowing just the tiniest slice of light to hit his dilated pupils. The pain of the light in his eyes was almost enough to block all the other aches and pains that assailed him – almost, but not quite.

Tears welled as his eyes stung, but he forced himself not to blink. Where was he? How had he gotten there? And what, really, was his last clear memory?

When his eyes adjusted, he realized the light wasn’t really all that bright; it had just been a shock after the darkness behind his eyelids. He was lying on his stomach on a hard tile floor, his left cheek and ear against the cold solid ceramic. There was a faintly metallic taste in his mouth, and his nostrils flared at the realization that it was blood. In fact, his face felt tacky and tight from blood dried on his skin; the smell of it was suddenly overpowering.

The room, wherever this was, was completely silent. The only thing he could hear was the steady thumping of his heart, a shallow wheezing sound that seemed to come from his own lungs, and the offbeat plink plink of water dripping somewhere nearby.

He allowed his eyes to open a little wider, sweeping what he could see of the room without moving his head. The white porcelain curve of a toilet bowl blocked the view directly above; the rest of what he could see was simply empty tile floor with wood cabinets on one side, and a closed door on the other.

The tile was white with white grout, so the smears of blood were shockingly intense.

Matt took a deep breath, surprising a groan from himself at the pain from his ribs. Cautiously, he slid his hands up beside his shoulders, and levered himself up off the floor. Every pain he could feel doubled at the movement, and he gritted his teeth at the agony.

Even his teeth hurt. Without thinking about it, he felt with his tongue and gasped at the sharp stab of pain when he encountered a broken tooth. Maybe more than one.

Moving like an overworked octogenarian, he 67

managed to push himself up a little, resting his weight on his left hip and splayed hand. His head swam, vision darkening for a moment as he threatened to pass out once more. He concentrated on breathing slowly, trying to ignore the band of agony that tightened around his rib cage when he did so. When his head had cleared again, and he didn’t feel quite so nauseous, he looked around the room once more.

The room had seemed somewhat familiar, although he’d never seen it from his previous angle before; it was the master bathroom in his own house. Blood had pooled where he’d been lying, and was streaked across the otherwise spotless white tile floor as though he’d been dragged in and then dumped.

What had happened to him? Had he been in a car accident? Had he been mugged? Why couldn’t he remember?

He leaned back, resting his protesting back and shoulder against the wall, then slowly let his head fall back as well. Ignoring his present surroundings, and his inexplicable injuries, he tried to force his mind back. He had to remember. How had he come to this?

The water continued to drip slowly and unevenly from the sink faucet; the barely audible plink plink kept rhythm with his stuttering heartbeat.

M

atthew Jacobsen was a rich boy with a dream.

He dreamed of starting over, of having complete control over his own life. He wanted to make his own decisions, without having to get permission from someone else. And so, at the age of 27, he moved from the East coast to the West. He walked away from a partnership at his father’s law firm, from the paid-off 3000 square foot apartment, and all the accompanying strings that had been tied to him. He packed up some clothes and a few photographs, and without a word of explanation to his parents or friends, left everything else behind.

Of course, being rich had its advantages. Once reaching Los Angeles, he bought a house in an upscale neighborhood, and furnished it with black leather and chrome as he thought a successful graphic artist would do. He centered his office around the large drafting table, surrounded by the best paper and paint, ink and pens, and the computer that he could design on as well. He dreamed of making a name for himself as an artist, writing and publishing his own

graphic novels. No longer would he be known only as Martin Jacobsen’s son, the young man who followed obediently in his father’s footsteps. He would be Matt Jacobsen, brilliant artist and writer, with a huge fan base stretched across the country, if not the world.

After a month in his new surroundings, he came to realize that the dream was still powerful; but his sense of inspiration was lacking.

His plot lines went nowhere, and his characters were painfully twodimensional. He needed something to stimulate him, a muse to give direction to his talent.

What he needed first and foremost was a main character to pull everything together. He spent some time at the beach, then in restaurants and shopping centers, trying to catch a glimpse of a woman who could inspire him.

Beautiful women abounded, almost everywhere he looked; but their bleachedblond hair, aerobics-contoured bodies, and carefully tended tans did nothing for him. He needed someone darker, more dangerous. He needed a woman who could add a thrill of danger to the edge of lust.

Finally, feeling rather desperate, he went to Hollywood, to the Boulevard.

The street was glamorous and seedy all at once, filled with teenagers and twenty-something’s looking for a way to fulfill their own shadowed dreams. On a whim, he parked his black sports car in a lot, and stood in line for one of the rock clubs that had held popularity here for decades.

He was getting excited; everywhere he looked were women. Dressed in leather, or shredded denim, or skin-tight spandex. They wore their hair in outlandish styles, dyed every color known to man. Their faces were made up to enhance high cheekbones, sparkling eyes, and full luscious lips. They seemed almost shockingly free, afraid of nothing and no one, spirits and archetypes more than flesh and blood human beings.

Once inside, Matt ordered himself a drink, and found a spot to stand where he could watch. The band on stage played with a level of volume that was almost painful, gyrating on the small platform with such abandon Matt was afraid one of the so-called musicians would fall. His eyes moved over the crowd of bodies, looking for his muse. When he spotted her, he immediately recognized her for what she was. He was less surprised than he should have been at finding exactly what he’d been searching for.

She was tall and slender, with pale alabaster skin that spoke of little time in the California sun. Her long black hair fell straight to her hips, not a bit of dye or backcombing to mar its beauty. Her face was lovely, eyes huge and dark in the spinning chaos of 68

lights that strobed the crowd. She wore skin-tight faded jeans and a sleeveless black top; he couldn’t see any jewelry, except for the muted glimmer of an earring in her left lobe. And it was hard to tell in the erratic lighting, but he didn’t think she was wearing makeup, either.

She danced between two men, brushing herself against first one and then the other, perhaps teasing them. Both men seemed unable to take their eyes off her, but Matt guessed from her expression that she might have been dancing alone in the room; she seemed not to really notice either one of her would-be partners.

He realized he still held a drink in his hand, and lifted it to take a sip. His hand stopped of its own accord when he realized that she was watching him.

Her body still moved, hips swaying gracefully as she raised her slender arms above her head. But her eyes met his, and he had no doubt she was seeing him just as he was seeing her.

A moment later, she walked away from the dance floor, finding her way through the crowd of people seemingly without effort. She paid no attention to the two men she left behind, although they both suddenly seemed aware of each other. Matt fought back a wry smile as they began to argue with each other in her absence.

When she reached him, she gazed directly into his eyes and slowly reached up to touch the bottom of his glass, reminding him that he’d been about to take a swallow. He gulped quickly, trying not to choke as the taste of the liquor burned his throat.

“You’ve been looking for me,” she said, her voice so soft he shouldn’t have been able to hear it over the pounding music.

“Yes,” he breathed, just as softly. But again, he had no doubt she heard him.

Her slender hands touched him, palms resting lightly against his chest on the fine silk of his shirt.

Her scent was musky and pleasant, banishing the smell of smoke and booze and hot sweating humanity.

She moved closer, so close he could feel the heat from her slender form, and slightly dazed by her proximity, he set his glass aside.

Then she was leading him away from the wall onto the dance floor, her hands sliding up around his neck, pressing herself against him with no hint of shyness.

He let his own arms circle her, fingers sliding through the silk of her ebony hair. The rest of the club became indistinct, and the volume of the music muted as everything around them became less substantial, less there.

How long they moved in the crush of gyrating bodies he could never have said. Time ceased to have

any meaning. All that mattered was the woman, his muse; she was solid and alive, moving against him, seeming almost to vibrate with some hidden energy.

Her eyes were as black and emotionless as the night sky, her face excruciatingly lovely and yet alien in some way he couldn’t fathom. Her hands never left him, and she didn’t allow anyone to come between them while they danced.

It came as a shock to Matt when he realized the club was closing. The other patrons were finishing their drinks and queuing at the exits; he still stood on the dance floor with the woman he’d been searching for, and he felt as though he’d just wakened from an erotic yet exhausting dream. Sweat sheened his face and darkened his blond hair; his heart was pounding as though he’d been running for his life. Before him, she stood still and relaxed, no indication that she was at all affected as he’d been.

“It’s time to go,” she said, her voice so soft he shouldn’t have been able to hear it over the recorded music playing on the sound system, or the crowd of people still talking and laughing as they prepared to leave the club.

“What’s your name?” he asked, almost gasping as he fought to catch his breath.

She smiled, an expression that unbelievably made her even more beautiful to him. “Toni,” she replied, turning to walk away, breaking physical contact with him for the first time in what might have been hours.

“Wait,” he said, following her, not wanting to lose her in the crowd. “Toni, wait!”

She might have kept walking, but stopped abruptly, as though taken aback. As Matt drew abreast of her, he noted that she was biting her bottom lip almost hard enough to draw blood.

“Toni, I –" he hesitated, not sure what to say. He only knew he couldn’t let her go. He moved another step, turning to face her directly. “My name is Matt.

Matt Jacobsen. I need your help.”

She was gazing past him, at someone in the crowd, but he didn’t take his eyes off her still face.

“Can I take you to dinner? I need to talk to you,” he pushed on, feeling as unsophisticated as a callow teenager.

She turned her head, looking past his other shoulder, and her expression became colder.

“I’d really like to get to know you better,” he said, appalled to feel himself blushing. What was wrong with him?

Her white teeth found her lower lip again, but only for a moment. Then she squared her shoulders, lifting her eyes to meet his at last. “I’d like that,” she said levelly; there was no coyness, no flirting in her tone.

69

She took his hand, her fingers tight around his, and added softly, “But hurry.” Then she turned, pulling him behind her, and dodged through the slowly closing crowd of people waiting to exit the building.

He stumbled, struggled not to trip, and managed somehow to keep up with her. He muttered quick apologies to those he bumped into, but didn’t need to worry that he’d lose her in the press – her grip on his hand never loosened.

On the front steps of the club, her hand abruptly slipped free of his, and that quickly, she was gone.

People were moving everywhere around him, going in all directions. A traffic jam on the Boulevard only got worse as people swarmed between the stopped cars on their way to other parties.

“Toni!” he yelled, looking one direction then another, but was unable to pick her out of the sea of people.

Someone bumped into him, hard enough to nearly make him fall, and he turned to see a man about his height facing him. The other man had straight black hair pulled back into a braid that trailed over one shoulder. His eyes were a deep lightless blue that glittered in the neon lights, and a sneer curled his mouth as he met Matt’s angry gaze.

“Don’t let me get in your way,” Matt said sarcastically.

“Don’t worry,” the man replied in a cold voice, “I won’t.”

“Where did she go?” a voice said in Matt’s ear, and he whirled, nearly falling again. The second man was the same height as the first, with the same cobalt blue eyes and shiny black hair, although this man’s hair was only a little longer than Matt’s.

“Huh?” Matt asked, catching his balance.

The second man strode closer, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. “The woman. Where did she go?”

“What’s it to you?” Matt asked, anger making him reckless.

The man moved so fast, even looking right at him, Matt never saw it coming. A closed fist struck his jaw, and Matt staggered back, losing his footing this time, and fell heavily to the pavement.

The crowd had thinned out a little, and there was a clear space around the three of them as Matt looked up at the other two men. He touched his chin gingerly, a scowl drawing his brows together.

“Where did she go?” the second man asked again, and his companion stepped closer as though ready to help if Matt wasn’t forthcoming.

“I don’t know,” Matt admitted sullenly.

The two men looked at each other for a moment,

and something seemed to pass between them. Then the first one with the long braid nodded, and walked away. The second man looked back down at Matt.

“Consider yourself lucky,” he said, smoothing his hands back through his dark hair. “You were about to find yourself in a bad way, but now you’re going to be okay.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Matt asked, getting back up onto his feet; but he kept a wary distance between himself and the other man.

The man sniffed, as though he were disgusted with Matt’s obtuseness. “Go home, man. You don’t belong here. Go back to your big house, and your rich friends, and stay away from the Boulevard. Next time you might not be so lucky.”

Matt watched the man turn and walk away; he strode across the street, still jammed with traffic, as though he hadn’t a care in the world. Matt took a deep breath, rubbing his jaw carefully. He tasted blood, but not a lot; he’d bitten the side of his tongue when the man hit him.

Finally, he turned and headed back for the lot where he’d parked his car. He had no idea where to look for Toni, and was starting to wonder what the two men who’d assaulted him wanted her for. She was his muse, the inspiration he’d been looking for, of that he was sure; but he wasn’t sure if he was up to dealing with a couple of thugs looking for trouble.

He left the Boulevard a block later, walking into the narrow lot where he’d left his car. As he approached the black sports car, a shadow moved away from the wall, and he hesitated.

Toni stopped, looking at him with her head cocked to one side. “There you are,” she said softly, “I was hoping you’d come this way.” She paused, gazing at him intently, and added, “You’re hurt.”

Matt shrugged, a little embarrassed actually. He’d done absolutely nothing to defend himself.

“It’s nothing,” he muttered, rubbing his jaw cautiously.

“What happened to you?”

She looked down, her dark hair falling forward to shadow her face. When she spoke, there was a note of what might have been shame in her voice. “I’m sorry I took off on you like that. I saw a couple of guys in the crowd that I don’t want to talk to, so I just…” She hesitated, looking up at him again. “I’m sorry Matt. I didn’t think they’d mess with you.”

He smiled a little, suddenly feeling better for no discernible reason. “No big deal.”

“No, it is a big deal,” she replied. “You shouldn’t have been put in that position. There’s no reason for you to have gotten hurt. That’s my fault.”

“No, seriously,” he said, wanting suddenly to 70

comfort her, “I’m okay. Just a couple bumps and bruises; nothing catastrophic. What could you have done if you’d been there, anyway?”

She shrugged, and tossed her hair back behind her shoulders. “I don’t know. Something.”

“It’s none of my business,” he said, stepping closer to her, “but what do they want with you?”

She laughed softly, a breathy sound that made his heart-rate increase. “You’re right. It’s none of your business.”

That brought him up short. He was incredibly attracted to her, besides being inspired by her beauty.

The somewhat frosty words were a shock.

“You said something earlier about getting to know each other better,” she went on, as though she hadn’t just shut him down. “I was wondering if you were still interested?”

He nodded, finally approaching her, remembering the feel of her slender hands on his chest, then moving around to the back of his neck. He remembered vividly the feel of her body against his, the soft silk of her hair sliding through his fingers. “Yeah, I’m still interested.” When he stopped before her, she gazed deeply into his eyes for a long moment, as though searching for something she didn’t expect to find. He wasn’t sure who moved first; he just knew that her lips were touching his, and his heart was pounding madly in his chest, her cool words from a few seconds before forgotten.

The moment stretched as she molded herself against him as she’d done on the dance floor. The scent of her was as intoxicating as the taste of her lips, and he found himself wishing they were at his house instead of standing here in this deserted parking lot.

“How sweet,” a male voice drawled from the shadows beyond the parked car.

Toni pulled away from Matt and sighed, seeming resigned. “Long time, Dane,” she said, pitching her voice just loud enough to reach the man who stepped leisurely into the dim light cast from the street.

“How’ve you been?”

Astonishingly, he growled, sounding like some kind of large cat, maybe a cougar.

Toni stepped away from Matt, turning to face the man who approached them. “Where’s Rand?”

“On his way,” Dane snarled, neither hurrying nor slowing his steps.

“Get in the car,” she said softly to Matt, her hand touching his arm lightly as she pushed him toward the vehicle. “I’ll meet you at Wilshire and Western,” she added, barely above a whisper. “Better tell him to hurry,” Toni said to man she’d called Dane, and then pushed Matt toward the car again.

He hesitated; whatever this man and his friend had in mind for Toni, he didn’t think it was anything she was interested in. She was a beautiful, fragile thing – how could he possibly leave her to fend for herself?

This was the kind of thing he imagined putting into his graphic novels, but not something he really wanted to experience first-hand.

Toni seemed to realize that Matt hadn’t gotten in the car yet, and flashed an irritated glance at him.

“Go,” she said, steel in her soft voice.

“Hang around, man,” Dane called, a sneer crossing his handsome face. “When we’re done with her, we can play with you.”

“Go!” Toni said again, a touch of anger in her tone, and Matt suddenly found himself thinking that no matter how beautiful she was, he didn’t need this.

He unlocked the door with the remote on his key chain and got in, starting the engine. As he backed up, teeth gritted in a mix of emotions he wasn’t sure he wanted to untangle, he got a final glimpse of Toni in his rearview mirror. She’d closed the distance between her and the man she seemed to know; as Matt watched, her hand flicked out lightning quick, and the man’s head rocked back. He smiled as he said something to her, reaching up to touch the bloody scratches she’d left on his cheek. Then, before he could see anything else and talk himself into being a man instead of a coward, he screeched out of the lot onto the Boulevard, fishtailing as he fought to straighten out his car without hitting anyone. Horns blared and people yelled, calling him all kinds of names.

He ignored them, splitting his attention between the cars ahead of him, and checking his rearview mirrors. He did not want to see either one of those men following him.

A few blocks later, he finally allowed himself to relax. There was no sign of any kind of pursuit, just the long stream of cars cruising the Boulevard. He took a deep breath, not sure if he should feel relieved or guilty.

He turned south on North Highland Drive, keeping his attention on the still busy streets; but deep inside his mind was going over and over what had happened.

He couldn’t stop thinking about Toni, remembering again how it had felt to kiss her – like drowning willingly. Every time he thought about what might be happening to her right now, he felt a burning in his chest. But what could he have done, except get himself beat up?

It took him about half an hour to reach Wilshire Boulevard. He turned east, planning to catch Western Avenue south to the I-10, then head west back to Santa Monica. When he got home, he was going to 71

pull a bottle of Xellent Swiss Vodka out of the freezer, and drink as much as it would take to help him forget about this very unsatisfying and unsettling evening.

Other than the continuing traffic, the drive was uneventful. He was trying to convince himself that he’d done the right thing, the only thing he could have done under the circumstances. When he stopped at the light on Western, he put his hands over his eyes for a moment, rubbing them gingerly.

He felt exhausted. When the passenger door of his car opened, he started, turning quickly to his right.

“Perfect timing,” Toni said, sliding into the plush leather seat and pulling the door closed.

“How…” he breathed, unable to believe that she was here. How had she gotten here so quickly? How had she caught up to him at all?

“I told you I’d meet you here,” she said, a sly smile curving her lips. She reached over and put her hand on his leg in a way that was less familiar than possessive. “Sorry about the interruption back there.”

“Toni, I –” he started, but a horn blared behind him.

“Green light,” Toni said helpfully, and sat back in her seat, her hand still on his thigh.

The driver of the vehicle behind them laid on the horn, and by habit more than anything, he put his foot on the accelerator and pulled through the intersection.

Beside him, his muse had turned her head to watch where they were going, the warm breeze coming through her open window teasing at her long hair.

Forcing himself to keep his eyes on the traffic before him, he finally managed to say, “How did you get here?”

She glanced at him, a wry twist to her lips. “I ran,” she relied easily. “I knew you’d wait for me.” Her hand moved slightly on his leg, and warmth seemed to move through him at her touch.

“Is everything okay?” he asked, feeling slightly dazed as he drove with the flow of traffic.

“Everything’s fine, now,” she answered, the throaty tone of her voice making him feel even more disoriented. “Where are we going?”

“I was – I’m heading home,” he replied, shaking his head slightly in an effort to clear it.

“Sounds perfect,” she said, and looked forward once more, her hand still resting possessively on his knee.

By the time he’d reached the 5

Street off-ramp, he’d convinced himself that the altercation earlier this evening hadn’t been that big of a deal. Toni sat beside him, relaxed and at ease, watching out the windshield or the passenger window as they drove. Matt headed north toward Montana Avenue, then cut over to 4th. th

From there it was a short winding route to Mesa Road.

He lived in a U of the road where it cut back and turned into Upper Mesa Road.

“How long have you lived here?” Toni asked.

He shrugged. “A little over a month, is all. I think I’m going to stay for a while.”

“That’s great,” she said, the tone of her voice strange as though she were speaking without paying attention to her own words. Her dark eyes scanned the wooded hilly neighborhood around them.

As he turned off Entrada and onto the bottom end of Mesa Road, beginning the slow climb up the hill toward his house, something large and black stepped out onto the road in front of him. He wasn’t driving that fast, only about 35 mph; but fast enough that he instinctively hit the brakes and swerved to the left to avoid it. The car slid, turning sideways before coming to a stop just before the curb. Luckily, there was no other traffic in sight, so he wasn’t in immediate danger of being struck by another vehicle. He took a deep breath, glancing back into the road in search of whatever had run in front of him. The street was empty. Lights were off in the houses around him, only a couple of street lights casting cones of yellow-orange light onto the street. He covered his eyes with his hands for a moment, willing his heart beat to slow down, and took another long slow breath.

“Are you okay?” he asked, turning to Toni – but she was gone. The passenger seat beside him was empty, the door still closed and the window still down. He turned quickly to look out the back of the car, then turned again checking both sides. There was no sign of her.

“What the hell –" he breathed, pushing his fingers through his blond hair to get it out of his face. He was sweating, though the night wasn’t that warm, and the breeze coming through the open window was definitely on the cool side. The car engine had died when he’d nearly lost control, and he didn’t bother to start it now, just putting the shifter into park so he could get out.

The night was silent; as least, as silent as it ever got in the Los Angeles area. It was quiet enough he could hear the cool breeze soughing through the trees on his side of the street. “Toni?” he called, pitching his voice low out of nervousness. There was still no sign of whatever had run out in front of him, but it had been big. Bigger than a dog; bigger than a man. “Toni, where are you?” he called a little louder.

“Lose something?” a male voice asked, pitched as low as Matt’s voice had been. He whirled, seeing the man with the long black braid that he’d last seen in an alley off the Boulevard.

72

Matt’s mouth hung open; he literally couldn’t speak for a moment.

“You look like a fish, man,” the guy said, a cruel grin revealing sharp white teeth. “You make great bait, too.”

Suddenly the man was knocked to the ground, something large and black and sinuous on top of him.

A long black tail lashed the air, and sharp claws ripped at the man’s back as bared fangs sank into the muscle between shoulder and neck.

Matt cried out, stumbling back away from the animal and its prey. His keys fell from nerveless fingers, and he didn’t see where they landed. He kept backing away, unable to take his eyes from the conflict. He didn’t think about getting back in his car, he didn’t even think about turning and running. He just wanted some distance between him and the man on the ground, and the thing on top of him, ripping and tearing as blood sprayed the blacktop.

He’d only gone maybe a hundred feet, staggering backwards as he watched the man change, his form rippling and blurring until there was no longer a man on the ground. Now there were two of the beasts, both as black as night, covered in thick inky fur and armed with claws and fangs. One was larger than the other; but the larger one was wounded, with bright red blood dripping from its muscled shoulder down the foreleg to the huge clawed paw.

“This can’t be happening,” he whispered, feeling as though at any moment he would wake up, and find that this had all been a dream. He heard an engine revving as a vehicle approached at high speed.

Headlights appeared, flashing across the insanity only a few yards before him, and some kind of full size truck or SUV appeared in the road; it was doing well over fifty miles per hour, and the driver never seemed to touch the brakes. Matt stared at the vehicle like the proverbial deer in the headlights; at the last possible moment he flung himself out of the way, and the truck rammed the back end of his car. The sound of the impact was phenomenally loud, the shriek of twisting metal like a scream of agony. Then the asphalt smacked him in the face, and everything became dark and quiet.

I

t took a while, although probably not as long as it felt, for Matt to get to his feet. He braced one hand against the wall to steady himself, groaning as every movement caused him intense pain.

His head throbbed, broken teeth aching as he unconsciously gritted them. Forcing himself to keep going, he lurched across the tiled floor toward the vanity. The sound of dripping water made his throat burn with

thirst, but even more he wanted to look into the mirror. His feet slipped in the half-coagulated blood on the floor, and he fell into the cabinet, crying out hoarsely as pain ripped through his rib cage. Then he got a look at himself in the mirror, and nearly cried out again.

His face was bruised and bloody, so swollen he couldn’t even recognize his own reflection. He was still in the same clothes he’d worn to the Boulevard, but everything was torn and liberally covered in blood, dirt and grease from the road. With one shaking hand, he reached up to touch a cheekbone, swollen to twice its normal size and purple with bruising. Both eyes were black, his nose possibly broken, and the side of his jaw road-rashed from rough contact with asphalt. Tears filled his eyes, only adding to his discomfort, and he fought to keep from dissolving into sobs of self pity.

“What the hell happened?” he whispered, all the volume he could get from a larynx that seemed to have been attacked with a cheese grater from the way it felt.

When the bathroom door opened behind him, he didn’t bother to turn. He was afraid if he moved at all he’d fall; he simply looked over his shoulder in the reflection.

“Good morning,” the dark haired man said, standing casually in the doorway.

“Who are you?” Matt asked, his voice a tortured croak.

“I am Rand,” the other man replied, smiling slightly. He didn’t look any the worse for wear, jeans and black t-shirt still immaculate on his long frame. “I thought you might need these,” and he tossed a bottle across the room, which bounced and landed on its side next to the sink.

Matt glanced down, seeing the orange-colored prescription bottle.

“Afraid you’re gonna be in here for a while,” Rand continued, his voice cool. There was no sign of any sympathy or compassion in his voice or expression.

“Like Dane said, you make great bait. So no worries, man. We’re gonna hang onto you for a while.” Then with no further explanation, he turned and closed the door behind him.

Matt picked up the bottle. The prescription was for pain pills, but when he opened it, there were only four tablets inside. Whoever Rand and Dane were, they weren’t going to let him overdose, not even by accident.

T

he next little while passed like a fever dream.

The bathroom had no windows, so Matt had no idea if 73

it was day or night. He’d made it to the doorway once, but the knob wouldn’t turn – locked from the other side. His captors must have added the lock, because the bathroom had only locked from the inside before. He slept on the cold hard tile, using a rolled up towel for a pillow. Twice he woke to find a tray with food, but could barely eat because of the pain from his broken teeth. They weren’t going to give him anything he could use as weapon, so no knife to cut the meat into manageable morsels. No fork, either.

The third time they brought him food, he was awake, leaning against the wall beside the toilet.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked the long haired man, Dane he assumed.

The man grimaced, setting the tray on the floor by the door. “If we don’t feed you, you’ll starve to death.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

The man huffed, as though disgusted to even be in the room with him. “You’ll starve anyway, if you don’t eat.”

“I can’t chew,” Matt said, tears burning his eyes again at the admission. “My teeth are broken.”

Dane grinned, showing his own perfect white teeth.

“That’s too bad,” he said, and left the room. But it was only a little while later that Rand returned, bringing a plastic bowl with pudding and a plastic spoon to eat it with.

“How long?” Matt asked, wanting to know how many days had passed since his visit to Hollywood.

“Until she comes for you,” Rand returned, either misunderstanding or not choosing to answer.

“Toni?” Matt asked, a bitter note in his low words.

“What makes you think she’ll come for me? We only met that night.”

Rand gazed down at him for a long time, no expression on his handsome face, but there was something cold and angry in his cobalt blue eyes.

“She has a thing for guys like you,” he finally answered, turning to leave the bathroom.

“What are you going to do to her?” Matt called after the other man, not expecting an answer.

“I’m going to keep her,” Rand replied before pulling the door shut between them. “Or I’m going to kill her.

That’s Kwan’s decision, not mine.”

Then Matt was alone with his own thoughts again.

T

ime passed slowly. His bruises and scrapes were beginning to heal, although his teeth still ached miserably. He showered often, having nothing better to do with his time. He would stand for long minutes under the spray of hot water, just letting his mind empty of fear and worry, trying not to think of anything at all. His captors had given him clean

clothes, pulled from his own well-stocked wardrobe.

They gave him food at regular intervals, making sure it was soft enough he could eat it without having to chew. Whenever he could, he tried to engage Rand in conversation; Dane never said more to him than he had to. But he was unable to find out much, only that the men were still waiting for Toni to show up, and still convinced that eventually she would.

“How much longer?” he asked Rand the next time the man brought him a tray of food.

The black-haired man shrugged, but there seemed to be tension hidden behind his carefully smooth expression. “You better hope she comes soon,” he said softly, “Or we’ll have to change our plans. Not sure how you’ll come out if that happens.”

“None of this has anything to do with me!” Matt exclaimed, sudden anger rushing through him. “I don’t even know who she is! I don’t know who you are!”

Rand chuckled softly, as though his own amusement had surprised him. “You went looking for trouble, that night on the Boulevard. Guess you found more than you expected.”

“I wasn’t looking for trouble,” Matt returned bitterly, “I was just looking for some inspiration.”

“You’re the artist?” Rand asked, pausing in the doorway. “I looked through the drawings in your office. They’re not great, but there’s some talent there.”

“Stay out of my stuff!” Matt yelled, surprising both of them with his vehemence. “That’s none of your business,” he finished in little more than a whisper.

The dark man shrugged. “It’s my business if I want it to be. You should’ve stuck to the beach or the malls; my kind don’t hang there. You’d have been better off.”

Matt looked up at him in surprise; how had the man known he’d been frequenting those places in search of his muse?

Dane appeared behind Rand, his hair pulled back into the ever-present braid, his lightless blue eyes indistinguishable from the other man’s. “Jehn is coming,” he said without preamble, “Evan and Zion picked up a trail.”

“Where?” Rand asked, turning away from his captive.

“Hollywood,” the other man replied, paying no attention to Matt. “Kwan is already on his way to meet them.”

Rand huffed, in resignation or irritation, Matt couldn’t tell. “Alone?”

Dane shook his head, “Kamm’s with him.”

Rand glanced back at Matt, still seated on the tile floor beside the toilet. “Maybe we won’t need you 74

much longer.”

“All I want is to go back to my life,” Matt muttered, so softly the words should have been indecipherable.

“If we find her, all things are possible,” Rand answered him, then pulled the bathroom door shut and locked it.

W

hen Matt awoke, the house was silent. He could hear nothing moving anywhere; not even the muted sound of the TV or stereo, which he’d heard almost constantly during his imprisonment. The only light in the bathroom was the muted glow of the night light by the sink; it was dark in the bedroom, as no light shone under the door.

He shifted his weight, trying to find a more comfortable position on the cool floor. He froze when he heard a soft muffled sound from the bedroom. It hadn’t been the quiet steps of either of his captors; it had sounded furtive.

“Hello?” Matt called, not raising his voice. As soon as he spoke, he wished he’d said nothing at all.

Something brushed against the other side of the door, something soft and thick, but heavy. The hinges and bolt creaked slightly at the weight.

“Who’s there?” Matt asked, fighting to keep a tremor of fear from his voice.

Whatever it was pressed against the door again, harder this time, and alarming creaks came from the door panel itself, hinges and bolt lock screeching in protest. Matt pushed himself up, ignoring the usual ache in his ribs as he pressed back against the wall.

He thought about climbing into the cabinet beneath the sink, but was sure he’d never be able to get the door closed in time to hide himself.

Whatever was in the bedroom stopped pushing against the door. Everything was silent once more, but for the pounding of Matt’s heart. His eyes, completely adjusted to the dim light in the room, fastened on the door knob as it began to turn.

He closed his eyes, hands clenched into fists, as he furiously tried to figure out what he could do.

The bolt lock clicked, the sound sharp as the report of a rifle in the utter silence, and he waited, eyes unable to leave the still-closed door across the room.

Time passed, he wasn’t sure how long; but long enough for his stuttering heart to slow, and the rigidity of terror to drain from his exhausted muscles.

There was no other sound, no light, nothing to give him any indication of what, if anything, might be waiting on the other side of the door.

Finally, with a feeling of Fate heavy on his mind, he got to his feet and walked as quietly as he could to the door. Gingerly, he pressed his ear against the

wood, listening intently. No sound, but for his own quiet breathing. Holding his breath, he put his hand on the doorknob, and slowly turned it. The door opened toward him, and he stepped to one side as much to clear the door as to hide for a moment longer from whatever might have freed him.

Toni sat on the floor, leaning exhaustedly against the end of his bed. Her feet were bare and dirty, hair lank and sweaty where it fell across her shoulders.

She wore what looked to be the same jeans and black shirt she’d worn the night they met, both much the worse for wear, and darkened here and there with wet patches. It wasn’t until he moved closer that he realized she was bleeding profusely, from more than one wound, and it was her blood that had soaked her clothing.

“Toni,” he breathed, going to his knees beside her.

“What did they do to you?” In her presence, he was once again swept up in a kind of religious fervor, and all that mattered to him was her.

She looked up at him, grimacing slightly when she got a good look at his face. Her black eyes were as deep and endless as he remembered, and he leaned forward slightly when she reached up to him. “They really messed you up, didn’t they?” she asked softly.

He shrugged. “I don’t know what happened; I woke up this way, lying on the floor. Maybe it was from when they hit my car.” He put his hand over hers against his cheek, reveling in the feel of her skin against his. Again, he could see her, as drawn by him, the heroine of his graphic novel. If only his talent could do her justice!

“I’m sorry about all this,” she whispered, and clenched her teeth against pain as she sat up away from the bed.

“They said they were going to Hollywood, that one of them found your trail,” he said, taking her into his arms as she moved closer.

Even bloody and exhausted, she felt so good to him. “When they can’t find you, they’ll come back here. We have to leave – call the police –” She shook her head, pressing her face against his chest as her arms encircled him. “The police can’t do anything,” she whispered.

“We still have to leave,” he insisted, not moving a muscle except to pull her closer. “They’ll be back here when they can’t find you.”

“They already found me,” she answered, her arms tightening around him.

He closed his eyes, remembering something heavy pressing against the bathroom door before the bolt clicked back. He could see in his mind’s eye the huge black creatures that had fought each other only a few 75

feet from him before the SUV had hit his car. “What are they, Toni?” he asked, rubbing his hand up and down her back soothingly. “Rand said something about them, called them ‘my kind’ as though they’re not… human. What are they, and why are they after you?”

She sighed, moving even closer to him, and he felt something hot and wet soaking into his shirt where she pressed against him. “Kaiferre,” she answered, turning her face so her breath whispered against his throat. “They’re after me, because of Kwan. He’s their Leader, and he’s chosen me for his mate. I ran, and they’ve been chasing me. They won’t stop until they catch me, or kill me. They’ll never stop.”

“Toni, you’re bleeding,” Matt said, suddenly alarmed at the amount of blood that was soaking into his shirt. “I need to get you to a hospital!”

She shook her head, burrowing against him as though terrified he might pull away. “No, no hospital.

Kwan would find me there.”

“OK,” Matt said, trying to think, “But I need to get you some help. You have to let me help you.”

She sighed again, her hold on him loosening as though her strength were draining away. “You’ll help me?” she asked, her voice so soft he could barely hear her. Her head had fallen to the side, as though she couldn’t hold it up any longer.

“Anything, Toni. I’ll do anything I can to help you,” he promised, cradling her in his arms.

She took a deep breath, black eyes opening to gaze up into his face once more. There was no pain in her eyes, no tenderness; just a fierce light that seemed to change her entire face. “I accept,” she said, her voice even and strong. Her hand came back up to curve around his neck, and she pulled herself up as though she were going to kiss him. “Thank you, Matt. Thank you for your offer.”

Then she changed, body lengthening and broadening, thick black fur covering her from head to toe. Dagger-like fangs glinted as the creature she’d become seemed to smile, and sharp curved claws dug into Matt’s neck as she pushed him backwards, all but frozen from incredulity.

“Toni –” he cried, looking up at the heavy furred predator crouched atop him. Everything had changed but her eyes; her eyes were still exactly the same, deep and full of shadows. *It will be quick,* her voice spoke in his mind, and then she pushed forward, exposed fangs sinking into his throat with absolutely no resistance.

R

and stopped in the doorway of the bedroom, his eyes going to the body lying on the floor at the end of

the bed. There was some blood, but not much. His hands clenched into fists at his sides, and he gritted his teeth to keep from growling.

Finally, he stepped into the room. The bathroom door was unlocked and standing open, dried blood still smeared on the white tile floor. He turned back, looking down on the dead man. Matt’s face was still bruised, but his expression was peaceful. He lay relaxed on the thick carpet, arms at his sides, a small patch of blood beneath his head and left shoulder.

The shirt he was wearing, a plain gray t-shirt, was marked here and there with small bloodstains. Upon closer inspection, Rand realized the blood had welled up into the cloth from beneath.

He knelt, reaching down to pull up the bottom of Matt’s shirt. Carved into his chest and stomach was a message. “Go home. Before someone dies. Forget me.”

Rand got back to his feet after pulling Matt’s t-shirt back into place. He gazed down at the man for a long moment. He’d liked the man; had at least admired Matt’s determination and self-control. After seeing Toni with this man at the club, he’d never expected her to sacrifice him.

Then, turning his mind back to what was important, he left the bedroom and then the house.

Speaking mind to mind, as his kind could do, he called out, *She was here, but is gone again. She killed the man, took his kai for her own. She must be healed of her injuries by now. We’ll have to start searching for her again.* Rand left the front door standing open, knowing it wouldn’t be long before a neighbor called the police.

He didn’t want Matt’s body to lie rotting in the bedroom for weeks. He wondered momentarily what the police would make of the enigmatic message left carved on the body. “Go home. Before someone dies.

Forget me.”

One thing he knew for sure; Kwan wouldn’t forget her. And no one was going home until they caught her.

Rose Blackthorn has published poetry in anthologies and online. This is her first published short story.

Ask your local library about carrying Black Matrix publications.

Contact: publisher@blackmatrixpub.com for detailed information on our wholesale availability to libraries.

76

Touch

by David Durkmann Welcome to a world where being online isn't a convenience, it's a requirement for survival. ___________________________________________________________

Never argue with a chiplet. Even if you can keep

her attention for more than a few seconds, lead her along a chain-link of singular logic without sparking off into hyperlinked tangents, you just can’t beat the Bank. Going home afterward, or to the nearest Tap Zone, you’ll see the chiplet was right – she had the dates and details, even without the understanding. All semantic memory, and no conscience – that’s being chipped.

Bayne’s prospects narrowed with each application.

He’d grown up in a market where a job could be found by the influence of who one knew. And now that most everyone knew most everyone else at first sight, by reading ID bubbles above their heads and by tapping biodata, Bayne was in the margins – he knew no one, and no one knew him.

“Look, Ms Walker,” Bayne leaned over the desk.

“All I want is a chance to fail.”

Ms Walker blinked her freckled lids one at a time.

Her face, draining inward, held the abject expression that offliners inspire from chiplets.

Bayne recognized the look. The language of the body, tone of voice, and the sudden, telling flashes across the face mean little to a chiplet. If the modes weren’t flashing above or scrolling out along the periphery, they might as well be looking at a wad of clay.

And that is how Bayne felt across the desk from Ms Walker – like clay without the vital spark of humanity.

The memories he had were organic. All his, invented and otherwise.

“I am sorry, Dr. Bayne,” Ms Walker said, her eyes still and blank, deader than she perceived him to be.

“There are no positions to match your qualifications.”

Bayne knew she was scanning. Likely, her mind was on the other side of the world, or off-world, or projected like a ghost into another time. He could always tell when a chiplet was scanning.

Ms Walker saw the man with her eyes. Her brain registered the form of a man. She saw the awkward knot in the tie that spewed like a tongue from his jacket. She traced the wrinkles down the length of his lapels. She noted how the hair around his left ear was longer than that around his right.

It might be worth his effort to prepare his dress and actually pay for a haircut before an interview. She 77

would never say that, of course; although she noted it in Bayne’s Bank file. He’d never know, no offliner could know of the vast tracts of information that swarmed around their names. Offliners believed that avoiding the chip meant avoiding specification. It wasn’t the case. And what was filed in the Bank meant a great deal in the so-called real world, the world of flesh and voice, work and debt.

“What am I expected to do?” Bayne said.

“We have several openings in information transference, but you are not presently qualified for these appointments.”

There it was. The hard sell. It came more frequently in recent years. What started as an optional convenience had become a necessity.

“I will not be chipped,” said Bayne.

“We have no other work.”

“This is discrimination,” he said. “You cannot deny me a job on the basis of my physical nature. What about the Interface Laws? They protect the rights of offliners, you know.”

Ms Walker looked at him for a moment.

“Amendment B-157 allows employment selection based upon the ability to perform requisite duties.”

“B-157 was repealed by High Commission a week after it passed.”

“Correct. And the repeal was vetoed by the Chancellor.”

“I didn’t hear about that,” Bayne said.

“It went out over all the scrolls. Perhaps you’ve forgotten.”

“How could I forget something that blocks my ability to get a job?”

Ms Walker shrugged. Not even the vast Bank had an answer for that one.

“Isn’t there a non-medical job available? Couldn’t I work with the sanitation crew? Anything?”

“That would violate our treaty with the Union of Robotic Workers. As a former mobile surgeon with BathyTech, you must be aware of these arrangements.”

“I am,” said Bayne, “Very aware of the current situation. I do, however, disagree with you on B-157, and will investigate the fate of High Commission’s repeal.”

“Please do,” said Ms Walker.

She fixed her gaze to the distant wall, staring over

Bayne’s shoulder. He could see she was involved in another conversation, perhaps more than one. He imagined the lines of text that spooled through her inner eye, the puzzling sensations broadcast from far away.

Bayne left the office without saying goodbye.

The hydraulic lens clenched to a close behind him as he stepped into the hall. It had been a decade since he’d slammed a door, and he missed the punctuation, the sound of bridges burning.

He walked the marble hall, past office bots and chiplets milling about their work, toward the towering solar-sapper windows that framed the street outside.

An urge spiked through him. He thought of tossing the nearest chair through those beautiful windows, and knew it would only bounce off. The solar sappers were designed to withstand bomb blasts.

Chairs through windows were as extinct as slammed doors.

T

he city’s dense silence nauseated him. Its noiseless racket, electric motors, turbines whirring from rooftops, the clank of cleaner bots and patrol drones, dug into skin. Earplugs couldn’t keep it out.

There was nothing to shield against. In this quiet, the sound of one’s own heart was overwhelming. Bayne thought he might drown in the silent world, drown in the supposed silence of his body. To be swallowed by his own heart, by the buzzing of his nervous system.

What a way to go.

Offliners, begging for tokens and food, some selling whatever possessions they had left – the semblance of entrepreneurship, a front to insulate pride -- formed a ragged gauntlet along the row of glass-faced office buildings. Matthew Bayne wasn’t there yet, but he might be soon. He measured the breadth of his savings against the expanse of days and expenditures, and predicted that within four months he would have to pawn his possessions for tokens. Two weeks later, he guessed, it would be time to line up with the others.

He pushed against these thoughts. Despair would follow such projections. Best to see a job, a credit windfall. Best to live as if his welfare was an essential component of a great universal design.

That used to be called faith. Bayne didn’t know what to call it now. Naiveté? Denial?

Chiplets walked by without seeing the wall of human misery. In their designer worlds, they projected trees or fields of poppies where the beggars stood, and translated pleas for help into gentle winds, or the gargle of distant thunder. Bayne could only imagine the multitude of imagery curtaining the ugly truth. He had no way of blocking out the offliners, and 78

that he was one of them made him a more available target.

“Come on, brother, you’re doing good,” came the voices, the hands reaching out for anything they could grasp.

“How are you hanging on?”

“Look at the rich man.”

He’d had to fight his way through the crowds every time he came to town. It had been months since he carried any tokens with him at all. It was too dangerous. For now, while accounts were accessible through retinal scan, he would avoid hard currency.

It was rare that a desperate offliner attacked a chiplet. Interfere with a single node and the whole network vibrated. Drone patrols pounced without any audible signal. Besides, chiplets had no hard C. They had no need for it.

Other offliners, those not yet desperate enough to go begging, those who managed to hold jobs, those who clung to dwindling capital, were open game. To get the attention of a patrol, an offliner would have to tap in and request assistance. By the time help arrived, the worst of it was over and the assailants were gone.

At the corner, Bayne passed a woman standing with a small child. Boy or girl, he couldn’t tell. But the sign the child held brought a sharp blade down his spine.

“This child will perform for food,” it read.

Bayne wished he’d brought some tokens with him.

H

e’d almost cleared beggar’s alley, and was a block from the train that would take him home, when Francis Gaude caught up to him.

Gaude had worked with Bayne at Deep Sea Recovery. He had been among the first offliners to be dismissed. Like Bayne, Gaude resisted the chip. At DSR, Gaude used his thirty years of influence in government to organize a resistance movement. For a time, the workers union was onboard. That was before the changeover, when two-thirds of the Earth’s human population, whether through distraction or seduction, began to tap the Bank with neural links. It seemed to happen all at once, although its evolution spanned a century from the telegraph to the telephone, email to instant text, teletouch to complete uplink. When the mass changeover happened, everyone scattered and Gaude found himself without the support of a unified offliner front.

Bayne did what he could. When Gaude lost his house some time later, Bayne took him in. When the policies of residency were enacted – policies that restricted occupancy to marital partners and biological dependents – Bayne had to turn Gaude away.

He hadn’t heard from Gaude since.

A knotted beard masked his face. Wet fissures streaked down his cheeks from the corners of his eyes.

It was only his wobbling gate – tentative, as if each step threatened to uncover a landmine – that identified him as Gaude.

“Matt,” he called. “Matthew Bayne. I know you remember me. Stop, please.”

Bayne turned around.

“I can’t help you Gaude. My apartment’s monitored.”

“Do you have a token or two to spare?”

“None.”

Gaude stepped in close so that his cloak of musk filled Bayne’s nostrils.

“You’ve linked up, haven’t you?” Gaude said, and pulled away from his old friend.

“Why would you say that? I’m no chiplet.”

“How is it that you’re still together then? You working? I know DSR let you go last winter.”

“I’m just hanging in, Gaude. Barely. Turned down for another job a few minutes ago.”

Gaude laughed, opening his mouth to reveal a fused mass of brown teeth. “You’re still applying for jobs? With no chip? You’re crazy. Who interviewed you? Where’d you apply?”

Bayne was by nature stingy with information.

Direct questions made him feel naked, imposed upon.

Usually, he met such affronts with belligerent resistance. But he saw no danger in exposing the company and its discriminatory hiring practices.

“It was Domo-cile. I was hoping to get into building management, or at least maintenance.”

“And they told you all the jobs were chip-compliant or protected by the Robotics Union.”

“The same old, yeah.”

“Who interviewed you? Bill Diver?”

“Who?” “Bill Diver, a chiplet working for Domo-cile. I gave him his first job at the DSR years ago. He turned me down after DSR let me go.”

“Wasn’t him. It was some half-bot named Walker.

Seemed like Ms was her first name.”

“Red hair? Pale face? Lots of freckles?”

“Yeah, do you know her?”

“She’s a new chiplet. Hard to believe but a few months ago she was panhandling out here. She linked up, and got hired on right away. A few days before she was here freezing, begging scraps from the rest of us.

Now she walks by everyday without seeing us at all.

She’s new generation. I think she got the deep implant.”

“Seemed more machine than most.”

79

“Dangerous. Especially because she knows all the hiding spots out here. Knows the ropes pretty well.”

“Well, she seemed pretty satisfied in her new office.

I don’t think she’s coming back,” said Bayne.

“Don’t waste your time with these interviews. That world’s gone. Besides, why would you want to work maintenance? You should be practicing out here. Real people need you.”

Bayne looked over Gaude’s shoulder at the ragged bunch picking through scraps and begging for tokens.

Where would he begin? And where would it end? On the street with no sterile supplies. It wasn’t the type of medicine he’d trained for, or the type he’d practiced.

In his prime Matthew Bayne got used to fine dining, drivers, a fully equipped office and lab with a secretary and two other doctors working beside him.

In the last year, all that had been taken away. His condo replaced by a one-room apartment. His drivers replaced by train tokens. And all the while the fortune he’d amassed dwindled by weekly ration.

“You’d be better off putting your time into figuring a way out of here,” said Gaude.

“You know a way out of here, Gaude?”

The man’s head dropped. “I suppose all of it’s here now isn’t it? The whole world is here. How are you surviving?”

“I’m living off the carcass of a lifetime of work and cautious planning. Don’t worry, I’ll be out here soon enough. Where are you staying, anyway?”

Gaude’s eyes narrowed. “You’ll find out if you don’t sell out. I’ll take you down there myself when you need to go. For now, you’re looking a little too clean.

You could be a chiplet yet.”

There was no sense in getting angry. Indignation did nothing. Bayne was solid in his resistance. What Gaude or anyone else thought meant nothing.

“It’s still free, you know,” Gaude said as Bayne began walking. “You can link up for free. If you’re going to go over, now’s the time. In a while, they’ll be charging more than you can pay.”

His apartment greeted him as he entered.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Bayne. This month’s rent has been deducted from your account. Your current balance is 217,741 token credits. Have you found a job yet? It would be a shame to lose you as a tenant.

You’ve kept an orderly space.”

In the small cooking area to the right of the door, Bayne boiled water for tea. The apartment droned on, reminding him of tomorrow’s garbage collection and laundry bills, obligatory maintenance, and the recycling schedule. With these matters exhausted, it started counting the micro-Joules consumed by the

electric kettle.

Bayne sat at the small table near a window overlooking the burned out buildings adjacent to his own. That this apartment block survived the riots was a miracle, or, at very least, a fortuitous fluke. Families, all offliners, picked through the charred rubble, looking for reminders of their former lives, or seeking the treasures of the dead and displaced.

Bayne knew he should be grateful, knew these last days of structured life were a gift. But how to make the most of it while charging toward the jagged future?

He sipped his tea and swore at the burn it left on his bottom lip.

“Be careful,” Bayne’s apartment said. “The water temperature is 98 degrees Celsius. Estimated cooling time, two minutes, thirty-seven seconds.”

He’d stopped yelling at his apartment long ago. It didn’t respond to verbal commands. Newer models did, but Bayne’s apartment monitor was second generation. It watched over household matters, weighed and measured, and offered advice without provocation.

Two years after he moved in, Bayne disconnected the system after receiving a rather harsh critique of his tooth-brushing technique. What did his apartment know about teeth? Bayne had reached into the control panel, breaking the official service seal, and yanked out a wad of circuits and wires. Not only did the apartment go silent, the lights went out as well.

Within an hour of performing the operation, Bayne heard a rap on the door. A technician had been sent, and the damage repaired.

Since then, he’d learned to ignore his apartment.

He logged on to his account, scanning the Bank for news about the war, for bulletins from the Department. Remembering his interview, Bayne searched for “B-157 repealed.”

Text scrolled down the display monitor. Bayne’s apartment read along: “Introduced to the Commons Labor Code on October 14th, 2045, Amendment B-157 allows discriminatory hiring. Repealed by unanimous High Council ruling on the date of its passing, B-157 was upheld by Chancellor veto…”

He tapped the Esc key, bringing the display back to gray static and silencing the voice.

The apartment was quiet for a moment, just long enough for Bayne to realize he was beginning to relax.

“A reminder,” said the apartment, startling Bayne so that he tipped the cup and spilled tea down his 80

wrist. It soaked through his shirtsleeve, leaving a pink trail on his skin. “Today is Thursday. If you are planning to bathe this evening, as you do most Thursday evenings, it would be best to draw the water within the next forty-five minutes while reservoir demand is low.”

Bayne wrapped a dishcloth around his singed arm.

He considered the complexity of disconnecting the wires that ran from the computer output to the wall and ceiling panels. There must be thousands of them, he thought. Thousands of metallic veins snaked and looped behind the vibratory panels lining the entire apartment. The human heart was simple by comparison: four little rooms dancing together, aorta and veins carrying the message, valves keeping the peace. Although he was more experienced in trauma surgery, Bayne knew he had a better chance of performing a coronary bypass than he had in rewiring his apartment computer.

The sun was red and sinking over the mounds of debris outside. Most of the scavengers had gone, slunk off to wherever they went at dusk. A few remained.

One figure, hunched, no more than a shadow against the unsteady background, crossed through the minefield of shattered brick and blackened timber, unmistakably Gaude. He stood on a mound of rubble and waved his hands above his head. Bayne squinted through the window. Gaude couldn’t see him, Bayne was sure of that. But Gaude knew the apartment, and knew Bayne would be getting ready for curfew.

He’d followed Bayne home.

Gaude continued to swing his arms above his head in senseless semaphore. What could he want?

Bayne’s apartment said, “A reminder that the optimal time for your Thursday bath is within the next half-hour.”

He stood from the table, grabbed his coat and left.

As the sphinct-door closed, Bayne heard the apartment talking to itself, “Two hours to curfew. Two hours to curfew. It is highly unusual to step out on a Thursday evening. What about your bath, Dr. Bayne?”

The night air was cold and sticky. He kept to shadows, moving along close to the building, and made quick dashes to crouch behind every tree and post on the way to the ruined buildings in the distance. There was no law against being there that Bayne knew of. It just wasn’t advisable.

Gaude had retreated into the cavernous remains of a brick apartment building. Its south wall had collapsed and the top of the building was folded down around it like toy blocks. Bayne followed him through a small opening.

“I’m glad you came,” Gaude said.

“I don’t have much time,” Bayne said. “We’re just strung along the walls leading to a brightly lit two hours from curfew.” chamber.

“Get in here so no one sees you.”

Several men and women looked up from their work Gaude pulled Bayne by the sleeve into the cool as Bayne entered the room. Their clothing was clean. darkness of the fallen structure. Water dripped from A few wore lab coats. All movement stopped when broken pipes. Bayne sensed the presence of others they saw Bayne. around him. The air smelled of excrement and its “This is Dr. Matthew Bayne, an old friend and soonstaleness grew thicker as they tunneled farther into to-be outcast,” Gaude told them. the ruins.

The slight introduction did little to soften their “Where are we going?” Bayne said at last. gazes.

“There’s a young girl who’s been injured. She needs The room was large with a vaulted ceiling and help. I was going to tell you on the street but I didn’t impressive Doric pillars. Bayne felt like he’d entered a want you to get into trouble if we were overheard.” temple.

“So instead you lure me out here? What if someone Computer components and machine parts were saw me come in?” strewn on long tables. Complex formulae flashed “Believe me, Matt, the last thing I want is to involve across the monitors of a dozen or so small computers. you in all this. She’s just a child, and injured. We’ve “How do you power all this?” he said. done what we can for her, but she needs a real The people in the room began shutting off their doctor.” monitor screens.

“And she just happens to be in my backyard.”

A woman in overalls, who Gaude introduced as “I had her moved here today. I was hoping to run Cora, approached, an array of tools rattling from a into you at some point. As luck would have it, there pouch at her side. you were. What do you say? It beats cleaning toilets?

“Why have you brought him here?” said Cora.

How can you say no?”

And then to Bayne, she said, “Who are you? Are In other times, Bayne may have cited malpractice you chipped?” as a deterrent. An injured person belonged in a Gaude answered for him. “He’s a resistor. One of hospital, not in an abandoned building under the care the last. He holds an apartment in the building across of an unemployed physician. But these were not the field. I’ve worked with this man. He’s just who we regular days. need right now. He’s a doctor.”

“All right,” he said. “Bring me to her.”

“What kind of doctor are you,” she asked.

“I was a surgeon. I specialized in trauma.” aude was graceful in the unsteady terrain. While “You’ve seen combat?”

Bayne slide on loose gravel and tripped over hidden “Urban combat. No field work. Who are you?” girders, Gaude prodded silently through the narrow Cora turned away. “Never mind,” she said. “Just do pathways. Bayne held on to Gaude’s shoulder, what you were brought here to do.” allowing himself to be led through a system of He heard a faint beeping sound and recognized it tunnels. as coming from his wristwatch. One hour to curfew.

“Watch your head here,” said Gaude. “There’s quite “I have to go back,” Bayne said. an overhang.”

Gaude smiled broadly. “There’s no going back now.

Bayne reached up to feel a steel beam running from You’ve been emancipated.” the level of his chest to the top of his head. He ducked Bayne saw numerous hallways spiking off from the under and remained bent over for longer than room like spokes from a hub. Any one of these might necessary, as if searching the ground for a lost contact lead him back to the maze of tunnels where he’d be lens. inextricably lost.

After a time, Bayne could no longer tell in which “You’ve kidnapped me,” he said. direction he was walking, how many turns he’d taken, “I’ve freed you.” or the distance they’d traveled.

“Hardly. I don’t even know where I am.”

“Here we are,” Gaude said at last and peeled back “You told me earlier today that you were waiting the darkness, sliding a plywood membrane aside, to for the money to run out, applying to jobs you have no reveal a distant light. hope of securing. Don’t you see? You no longer have The path from there on was illuminated. The to worry about losing everything. Everything is lost. ceiling of the tunnel had been reinforced with beams, We even have a job for you. You can save a life.” and meticulously coated in plaster. LED lights were Bayne felt anger boiling up. He wanted to strike

G

81

out at Gaude, to smash his head against the plaster wall. But this would accomplish nothing. Bayne would still be lost in an underground maze with strange and suspicious eyes on him. Gaude was his only chance.

“I didn’t ask to be emancipated,” Bayne said.

“You didn’t have to, my friend. You aren’t even aware of the danger you were in, nor of the security you’ve found here. We are completely off line, untraceable. Self-sufficient.”

“Self-sufficient? You beg for tokens and scraps from people who don’t even see you.”

“Yes. Some do that. Many offliners are desperate.

But not us. When you see me on the streets, I am not begging, not really. I am surveying, gathering information.”

Bayne looked at the people in the room with him.

They were all well-dressed, clean. None of them appeared to be starving.

“You live like this, in this little oasis, while half of the human race starves out there?”

“Is that so different from the way you’ve been living your last days? Or how you’ve lived the last decades?”

Bayne sat on the floor. His wristwatch beeped again. Forty-five minutes until curfew.

“I will have to ask for your watch,” said Gaude.

“The batteries and mechanism are valuable to us.”

Bayne slid the watch over his hand. “If you’d told me I was going to be abducted, I could have brought in all my kitchen appliances as well.”

“That would have raised too many questions. What would your apartment say to that?”

Bayne imagined his apartment scanning for him.

The countdown would begin soon. In forty minutes or so, the apartment would alert police of the curfew breach. Shortly thereafter, all of Bayne’s assets would be locked and patrol bots would begin looking for his face in the offline masses.

Life as he’d come to know it had ended.

“Bring me to the patient,” he said.

Bayne followed through a series of doors that opened to Gaude’s retinal scan. There could be a prison cell, a torture chamber, at the end of it all.

Bayne followed anyway, seeing little choice.

“You asked how we power this complex. Below the city is a web work of water and sewage culverts and drains. We have little turbines spaced out along the water routes. We also capture and convert off-gassing from the city’s recycling plants and factories. Basically, we generate power from the city’s waste and collateral activities. Other sites, which you will see later, are powered with geothermal. Some coastal complexes, and there are several, use tidal energy. We have a production time of about nine hours a day, after which 82

we power down and divert everything to backup batteries.”

Gaude leaned into a face receptor one more time. A blue light flashed, reading his eye, and the wall before them dilated into a doorway.

Bayne was introduced to a man who held an antique shotgun, the kind Bayne had seen only in movies.

“This is Trope. He is guarding the prize.”

“Prize?”

“I meant patient,” said Gaude. “Come this way.”

He led Bayne through another door, into an operating room. A stainless steel table fitted with stirrups and wrist straps dominated the room.

Hovering over it were spotlights on retractable arms.

Various saws and scalpels were arranged on trays around the table.

“This does not put me at ease,” Bayne said. “Have you performed many procedures down here?”

“None with any great success,” said Gaude with what looked like a smile moving through his beard.

Gaude pointed to a glass cell in the corner.

Sitting in a plush reclining chair, her hands and feet belted in place, was Ms Walker from Domo-cile Inc. She was shouting but Bayne could not hear through the clear walls.

“What have you done to her?”

“Very little yet,” said Gaude.

He opened the door to Ms Walker’s cell. Her voice tore out, filling the silent lab with her anger.

“Ms Walker, I’ve brought you a visitor. Someone you’ll be seeing quite a bit of in the next little while.”

She wore a helmet fitted with a black device that emitted red laser pulses.

“Ms Walker has been deactivated,” said Gaude.

“You don’t have the right to do this,” Walker said.

“Necessity gives us the right, Ms Walker,” said Gaude.

“Why is she here, Herr Doktor?” Bayne thought of the B-movies he’d endured on rainy weekends as a child.

Gaude laughed, affecting, Bayne thought, a madscientist’s zeal.

“I can see how strange this might seem to you,” said Gaude. “This little underground Metropolis. But Ms Walker – Shelley – is very important to us. Rather, what is in her head is important to us. I told you she is new generation. In her brain is the most advanced chip yet developed. What its designers do not know, but will soon discover, is that the chips are vulnerable to disruption.”

He pointed to the helmet and the flashing red device.

“This is a modified inventory scanner. Simple. Set to the correct pulse and applied properly, the scanner knocks the chip offline. We think the node is dropped from the link without any trace, although we can’t be certain. We do know that for as long as the scanner pulses, Ms Walker is free of the line and untraceable.”

“Tell him the rest,” said Shelley Walker. “Tell him what you plan to do.”

“We are going to free Ms Walker of the chip for good. Take her offline.”

“They’re going to drill into my brain,” she said.

“They’ll make a vegetable of me.”

“She’s exaggerating. We expect that you will recover quite nicely. Then you’ll be free of the chip.

Your thoughts will be your own again.”

Gaude ushered Bayne out of the glass cell. As the door sealed shut behind them, Bayne heard Walker say, “You’ll lobotomize me and drop me on the streets…”

“Understandably, she’s quite upset. If she only understood the importance of the procedure, she might be more cooperative.”

“Why not explain it to her then?”

“When you abduct someone as they walk along, and separate them from the self-generated bliss of virtual projection, they are reluctant to trust you. If all goes well, Ms Walker will see the greater good.”

“If? You were talking as if it was a sure thing.”

“Nothing is a sure thing. It’s brain surgery, after all.

And this particular chip burrows deep into the cranium. There will be a tremendous amount of exploration involved. She may not survive.”

“You are prepared to murder her, aren’t you?”

“Bayne, in my opinion. Ms Walker committed suicide when she allowed those monsters to inject her with the chip. No one comes back from that connection. Think of it. How could you stand the solitude of organic thought and individualism after the link? No network whispering sensation. No projected realities to dance through. Ms Walker is experiencing symptoms of withdrawal that none of us can truly understand.”

“What’s so special about this chip of hers?”

Gaude sat at a desk and motioned for Bayne to do the same.

“If we can keep the chip offline, isolated throughout the process, we should be able to make changes to it that will allow us to infiltrate the Bank unnoticed.”

“But the system’s sure to detect that she is offline, or at least detect that she’s not where she’s supposed to be,” said Bayne.

“Not if we’ve calculated correctly, and I believe that 83

we have. You see, we have sympathizers within.

People with dead chips in their heads. They broadcast and receive, but remain autonomous. With the new chip, we will have a deeper penetration. We can then affect small, gradual changes to the master programs.

Imagine if, slowly, offliners found themselves receiving support payments. If jobs opened up. If the curfew was extended then repealed all together. It is possible that such changes could be made to relieve suffering across the board.”

Bayne squeezed his temples between thumb and forefinger. “You want me to cut that thing out of her.”

“Yes.” “I have never operated on a chiplet.”

“To my knowledge, no one has, Bayne. The implant procedure is the most noninvasive you can imagine. A simple injection, really. But I’m afraid getting it out will take some digging.”

“I can’t do it. ‘Do no harm.’ It’s like second or third in the oath. If I open her skull, she will die.”

“And if you don’t do it, I will,” said Francis Gaude.

Trope, the man with the movie shotgun, stepped closer.

B

ayne sat on the edge of his cot. He’d been issued a small room with desk and chair, shelves, and several sets of clothing – all white – arranged in a closet. In the far corner of the room there was a bathroom stall with a basin and mirrored cabinet. Showers and toilets were down the hall. It reminded him a little of his first year in college, pre-med, when a basic dorm room was all he could afford. Having a roommate was out of the question for young Matthew Bayne. At that time, just out of high school, sour from what he saw as parental neglect, he could barely stand his own company let alone that of a complete stranger, and a competing student for that matter. So, he’d taken the smallest, cheapest room on campus. In a way, what he had now was a step up: his college room hadn’t had a washbasin.

Gaude had led him to the room along a spiraling combination of plaster-white hallways. The first thing Bayne noticed was the absence of a lock on the door.

He was grateful that he wouldn’t be locked within, but wished he could exert some control over who entered and at what time.

Gaude saw him checking the door handle.

“No locks in the living quarters,” said Gaude. “No need.”

Bayne didn’t know if this meant that his new neighbors, the residents of this underground metropolis, were honest, or if it meant that Bayne had nothing worth stealing. The sparseness of his room

suggested the latter option.

From the edge of the cot, Bayne saw an envelope on the floor. Someone had slipped it under the door while he slept. He had no idea of the time. Soft blue l.e.d. light radiated from above him. A window would have been nice, he thought. But there was no way of knowing how far underground, how deep into the rubble he was. It must have taken years to build all this.

He ran his finger along the seal of the envelope.

Inside were medical charts, MRI and CAT scans, and xrays. A handwritten note was stuck to the first x-ray.

“All of these images are on file.”

Someone had made a small circle on the image of Shelley Walker’s brain, in the region of her hypothalamus. If this is where the chip is located, it might not be necessary to open her up at all. A rhinoinvasive procedure might work just fine.

Bayne threw the envelope and its contents on the bed.

How can I even be thinking this way? This was not a voluntary operation. Shelley Walker did not choose to have this thing removed. And who knew what kind of securing devices were in place. Her diencephalon might come out with the chip.

Francis Gaude had been an effective manager in his day. When Bayne first came to work as resident mobile surgeon with Deep Sea Recovery, Gaude was the first to befriend him. Over the years, they’d shared meals, and went to movies together a few times. But Bayne preferred to be left alone after work. He thought of social interactions as ‘dealing with people,’ a painful necessity like an exploratory examination. At the end of a shift, which, depending on the amount of carnage that wheeled into the operating room, could go on for days, Bayne was emptied. It wasn’t the work that drained him – he thrived on long hours, lived to solve problems: it was being near people that sapped him of strength.

Where Francis Gaude might have wanted to know Bayne better, Bayne wanted to erect walls. Both men were shocked when Bayne took Francis Gaude in.

It surprised Bayne that someone as good with people as Francis Gaude was so unconcerned by their suffering. Were people just parts in a grand machine for Gaude?

Francis Gaude would operate. Without a moment’s self-doubt, he’d tear into Shelley Walker’s brain as if digging the pit from a cherry, and she would die, or be left with the mere imitation of human function.

A bot surgeon could go in without an incision, feeling its way with sensors, and bypassing major organs. Bot surgeons are what put Bayne out of 84

business. But bot surgeons were not easily found.

Their every move was logged. And removing com chips was most likely against their programming, an unthinkable act – as it should have been to Matthew Bayne.

He pushed Shelley Walker’s charts aside and lay down on the mattress. The ceiling, white with a mesh of cracks spreading out from the center, bulged slightly above his head. He followed the cracks, feeling himself sink into sleep. He imagined the pristine hallways beyond his room, projecting out like the cracks in the paint above him. Could he find that laboratory again? Blinking his eyes hard, he sat up.

With Shelley Walker’s charts in hand, Bayne left his small room. There was no one in the halls. The dry hum of generators ached around him. The lights in the hall and in the distant rooms had been dimmed to a mere glow. He followed along in the direction he’d come from. The central control room through which he’d passed was uninhabited. On the desk, a halfeaten sandwich lay on a square of cellophane. A door opened and Cora entered, followed by the gurgling of a flushed toilet.

“What are you looking for,” she said.

“I’ve been studying these charts,” Bayne held up the scans. “And was hoping to look at the operating room.”

“Can’t it wait until morning?”

“That would postpone the procedure by a day at least. I need to familiarize myself with the equipment.

Besides, I work best at night.”

Cora tore a sizable hunk from her sandwich and threw it back to the desktop. A tomato slice popped out and rolled like a coin across the surface, leaving a spotted trail of mustard behind.

“I’ll bring you,” she said.

Bayne counted the turns they took through the maze of halls, noting the number of doors they passed along the way.

A brown curtain had been pulled around the cell where Shelley Walker was bound. Trope sat in a straight-backed wooded chair. They were in the operating room for several seconds before he reacted.

“What? Why are you here,” said Trope, reaching to his shotgun which he’d propped in the corner.

“Dr. Bayne wants to prep for the operation,” said Cora.

Trope sat back, leaving the shotgun in the corner.

Matthew surveyed the operating room, saw the scalpels, the ventilator, the table with its straps. With Cora gone and Trope watching from the corner, Bayne recognized a new option. Keeping his back to the gunman, he filled a syringe with a mild neural

inhibitor, estimating the amount needed against weight and height.

“Mr. Trope,” Bayne said. “Could you open the cell door, please? I need to take a look at our patient.”

As he turned, Matthew Bayne wondered how he’d convince Cora to lead them out of the labyrinth.

T

he sun was rising over the hills. In the distance, Bayne saw the lights of his apartment complex winking out. From where they sat the underground city could not be seen. It blended into the horizon, just another part of the ruined landscape.

“It’s the loneliness that I don’t miss,” said Shelley Walker. “Even sitting here with you, talking like this, there is distance between us.”

The inventory scanner continued to pulse from her helmet. Its battery indicator flashed. Soon the disruption beam would fade and Shelley Walker would go online. She would no longer be invisible to the network and the drones would come.

“I can’t imagine having every mind in my mind,” said Matthew Bayne.

“That’s not quite how it is. There is no mind of your own. Every thought is within a larger mind. It’s really just one mind.”

They sat in the grass watching the world turn toward the sun. Trope’s shotgun lay forgotten at their feet.

“When they come for me, you should be gone. It will be hard to explain,” she said.

“It’s probably safe to unlock your hands now, isn’t it?”

“I won’t take off the helmet until you’re well away, or until the batteries have run down…”

She needn’t finish the sentence. Once the batteries run down, there would be no need to remove the helmet. The link in her brain would take her far away from the moment. Then the drones.

Matthew Bayne reached behind her and, with the key he’d taken from Trope, unlocked her shackles.

Shelley Walker rubbed her wrists and shook the blood back into her hands.

The light from the inventory scanner was getting fainter. Matthew Bayne wanted to put his arm around her, but they hardly knew each other.

He rubbed a blade of grass between his thumb and forefinger. It grated like a cat’s tongue on his skin.

She’d be gone soon. Maybe I’ll just sit here, watch her disappear, Matthew Bayne thought.

David Durkmann has published poetry, reviews and essays in The Literary Review of Canada, The Globe and Mail, Rain Taxi, The Dalhousie Review, Quill and Quire, Relix, High Times, Books in Canada, and many other newspapers, magazines, and journals. His first collection of poetry will be published in 2010.

Check out our blog for the latest information on

projects and new releases from Black Matrix Publishing at blackmatrixpublishingllc.blogspot.com.

85

Everything There

by Terence Kuch

Living in more than one reality ultimately has its consequences. ___________________________________________________________

New Year’s Eve faculty party at Madeleine’s, very

quiet. Her take on mojitos a real disaster, but everyone drank it anyway. Perfunctory kissing at midnight, mostly Madeleine and Arlene.

There! Morgan finished his notes for the day and the year. The last entry came out just at the last page of the dying year’s notebook. He went to bed alone, as usual.

Robert Morgan, Ph.D., had entered his life into these black notebooks, a little life at the end of each day, a notebook a year for twenty years. At first, he had written the entries to assist his future biographers; there would be two or three of them, at least. But now, twenty years later, he was sure no one would bother writing his life, or even a dreary dissertation on his contributions to theoretical physics. No, there would be no biographies, not of him.

He recalled all the times he’d been passed over for tenure at the university. “We were all set to do it, Bob, but at the last minute--”; “Next time, for sure. I’ll see to it myself.” Yeah, yeah.

New Year’s morning: Dirty snow descended like ash from some awful disaster. In an annual ritual, Morgan descended to his basement, coffee in hand, to add the latest volume to his completed years’ notebooks and to select a new, blank book. He opened the doors of the old wooden cabinet and surveyed the stack of smudged, wrinkled tomes. He added 2010 to the stack, picked up a new one, yet-unlived.

He flipped the cover open, about to write “2011.”

But on the flyleaf, “2011” was inscribed in his own neat hand. Had he already begun the new year’s book? He didn’t remember doing that. Perhaps at 1 a.m., when he’d returned from the party? He had a moment of panic. Was this it, the first dreaded senior moment? But it was too soon for that, wasn’t it? He was only 51 (“only?” a little voice in his head mocked; “only?”). Well, he thought, perhaps I wrote the yearnumber a year ago, a year in advance. That’s it. He turned the page, about to write “January 1.” But an entry was already on the page. “January 1,” it read.

And “ten p.m., still a little hung over from Madeleine’s party.”

He stared at the open book. His mind turned to possibilities. Dementia? Possible. But Morgan didn’t remember any recent mental lapses. What else could it 86

be? Was someone playing a practical joke on him, secretly observing his life and writing in his notebook before he could, imitating his handwriting? But who would bother? And who would know him well enough to guess how he might report the day?

Helen might like to play this sort of trick on him.

She’d divorced him years ago, in such a rage that she might well take it into her head to wreak some weird kind of psychological revenge on him. He hadn’t seen Helen in years, had no idea where she was. But she knew him well enough, he supposed, to play with his mind this way.

Had he already begun this year’s book, then forgotten about it? He hadn’t had that much to drink at the party, had he? Anyway, he usually wrote notebook entries the last thing before bed. He didn’t know, yet, if he’d still have a mojito hangover by ten in the evening of January 1. He hoped not. A sense of panic gripped him. He flipped a page, then another.

The rest of the book was blank, he saw with relief.

Carrying the 2011 notebook in his right hand and gripping the banister with his left, he climbed the stairs to his study. He set the notebook aside, resolved to ignore it until bedtime when he would make the day’s real entry, hung over or not.

He looked around the room, gazed out the window. What would he do today? Yes, he would write another article about his theories, this one for the popular press. That would take his mind off any impending mental dissolution, wouldn’t it? Then he’d add it to his pile of rejected manuscripts without bothering to send it out. Why wait for the inevitable?

Just short-cut the whole process he thought, bitterly.

In the past, he wrote, when physicists thought there might be other universes, the thinking went something like this: at each moment, different things can happen. You can walk out the door or stay home, and so on. And everyone else in the world, too, has many different choices. And not just people: a given leaf could fall today, tomorrow, or next week. So the conventional quantum-mechanical theory was that at every moment, billions of different things could happen, and every one of them did.

He gazed toward the ceiling, not sure of his next sentence, not that it mattered. He’d published only in obscure journals. Even there, the referees’ comments seemed gratuitously cruel. No grants, he thought

painfully, few students, no colleagues hinting they’d like to be ‘et al’s on his next paper. No citations in the literature except a few ‘see also’s, which everyone knew meant ‘don’t bother to see also.’ And in middle age, he knew that now or never had become never.

He’d made what he thought was his major contribution, would probably never make another.

Now all he wanted was a disciple or two, a bit of renown. He’d give anything to be respected for his scientific work. But that would never happen.

His despondent thoughts were interrupted by the phone. “Hello?” he said neutrally, looking at the callerID display. It was his son’s number.

“Hi, uh, how are things?”

Morgan didn’t let his voice change. “Hi, Dillard.”

“Mind if we come by this afternoon?”

“You and Mella?”

“Yeah. About two o’clock?”

“That’d be OK. I’m not busy.”

“Thanks. Bye.” Click.

Morgan became, for him, somewhat excited. He cleaned up around the house, although he knew that neither Dillard nor Mella would care about, or even notice, dirty dishes and strewn clothing; their own apartment was proof enough.

Four hours until the visitation. Morgan went back to the computer, tried to turn his mind to the new article again.

Each different event, the theory went, spawned a new universe. The differences snowballed, because in the next instant billions more things become possible in each of the billions of new universes, and they happened, too. But recent research (my own, of course, footnote here) suggests that of all these possible universes, there are really only two that actually exist: Ours and one other. For convenience, researchers (me, another footnote here) refer to the other universe as ‘Altworld,’ and our own universe as ‘Ourworld.’”

One of Morgan’s unpublished articles had conjectured that we could somehow experience Altworld, but he didn’t know how that could happen.

He wrote that thought into the new article, a teaser that there might be a whole new world, not just in theory, not out there but ‘in’ there.

He stopped for lunch, something microwaved that tasted like everything else he’d ever microwaved.

At two they arrived, bearing popcorn and beer.

Dillard plopped down on the living room couch and fiddled with the remote until the TV filled with football. Mella nodded absently at Morgan and joined him. The two snuggled and slurped beer.

Morgan sat across the room holding a beer. He 87

offered occasional comments, his presence clearly unneeded, and watched the symbolic animals contend. This time, it seemed to be badgers and beavers. For the next game coming up, the announcer announced, right after the locker room report please stay tuned right here folks, it would be bulldogs and bears.

At halftime, Dillard looked up. “Want another beer? Oh yeah, our TV’s on the fritz.” Morgan accepted a beer in spite of still being hung over from Madeleine’s party, his curiosity satisfied now as to why Dillard and Mella were at his home.

After the first game, Dillard went out for more beer. Morgan and Mella made uneasy small talk. After the second game, Dillard and Mella got up to leave, waving and saying “Thanks a lot!” Mella called him “Mr. Morgan.”

Morgan went back to his article. Altworld is constantly with us, he wrote. The two worlds affect each other every moment. As his catch-phrase went, “When you breathe, it breathes too.” Ourworld and Altworld were probably very much alike most of the time, sometimes identical; but other times there might be differences -- great differences.

By bedtime, he’d finished writing the first draft, put it aside. He picked up his notebook for the ritual inscription of the day’s events and added “Dillard and Mella came by to yell at my TV and spill popcorn” to the “hung over” comment already there. He was again bothered because he couldn’t have written about being hung over, could he, before he was hung over?

Wasn’t last night’s confusion just a momentary effect of alcohol? How could this still be happening?

With a feeling of annoyance that kept him awake till three a.m., Morgan went to bed.

The next morning he drove to the university. As always, the Physics Department staff were barely polite to him. Some didn’t deign to notice him. Young Cunningham, that self-important asshole who’d recently been named Assistant Department Chair, actually turned his back on Morgan, pretending to study something.

Associate Professor Rachel Gordon-Ogawa, cheval façade herself, again pretended that Morgan was attracted to her, but who could be, given her horsefaced whinneys when she found something funny, her chortles, sighs, her other theatrical mouth and body noises. Who would, indeed? Ogawa must have been, at least at some point. Perhaps when stoned, or desperate to have sex with someone six inches taller than he.

Morgan avoided her when he could, but today she was there, ostentatiously avoiding him and accusing

him, with her awkward body language, of staring at her ass.

That night, Morgan’s notebook already read “...pretended to be studying something ... stared at her ass.”

Action! He must understand this! Someone was faking the notebook entries, or he was writing them himself, then losing short-term memory. Considering the similarity of wording between what was written and what he had been about to write, Morgan had to admit that the culprit was probably himself. But he decided to give the conspiracy theory one last try.

He locked the notebook in his desk that night, kept the key on him. But the next night, when he opened the notebook, there was already an entry for January 3: “Lectured, turned in expense report. Snow again today.” He put the notebook under his pillow, and the next morning took it to the university, kept it on him or within sight at all times. When he opened the notebook that evening, it read “Slept with notebook, took to U., kept with me at all times. What’s happening to me?”

Who else could know that he had slept with the notebook? No one. Could this be Altworld? Perhaps he’d been right all the time? Had he? But Altworld was ‘just a theory,’ as he’d often secretly acknowledged. Morgan regretfully concluded that he was suffering an accumulation of fatigue and that he should just ask for time off to rest. But he was sure that Professor James O’Neill, the Department Chair, would turn him down, perhaps lose whatever last shred of patience he had for Morgan. Any such request might endanger Morgan’s already tenuous status in the Department.

Or perhaps it was both: his own psyche and Altworld. Wouldn’t it be ironic if Altworld were a product of his own mind, a kind of psychosis? That must be it, he thought. After all, how could Morgan be the only one living both in Ourworld and Altworld? In his theory. that wasn’t possible: Altworld would be there for everyone or no one.

Morgan had a moment of inspiration: Perhaps everyone else was, in fact, experiencing both Ourworld and Altworld, wavering between the two, always had been without knowing it. That would explain why people disagreed over the tiniest differences in events; why our memories seemed faulty in so many ways; why there were so many ‘he said, she said’s; perhaps, even, why squirrels didn’t always find their hidden nuts.

Morgan shook himself out of his reverie. ‘Nuts,’ indeed! He’d visit the university’s resident shrink.

Right away. He opened the notebook. It read “Decided 88

to visit the university shrink right away.”

Morgan tried one last experiment before he promised himself he’d see (quietly of course, just a precaution) the psychiatrist. He erased yesterday’s notebook entry, about resolving to visit the psychiatrist, and wrote the first irrelevance that came into his head: “the owl and the pussycat went to sea in a pea-green boat.” He put the notebook, once again, under his pillow.

The next morning, the notebook read “How did that erasure happen? I don’t remember doing it. Am I afraid to get help? The owl and the pussycat? Is that some kind of code? Maybe I’m going crazy! I’ll get the phone number from Alison right away.”

Morgan didn’t know any ‘Alison,’ but when he got to the Physics Department office he found that Glinda the Admin had taken emergency leave, and the temp agency had sent ‘Alison’ to sub for her. Dutifully, Morgan got the university psychiatrist’s phone number from her and retreated to his office.

What really got to him was that the damned notebook knew what he was going to do before he did it. Determinism! No one could stand the thought of determinism. Marx embraced it, but that hadn’t stopped Communists from trying their best to make the inevitable happen. Of course he could have avoided asking Alison for the number, but it was the logical thing to do. And he was uneasy as to what the notebook would have said, or possibly done, if he’d defied it.

The next day, something happened that increased Morgan’s suspicion that he was oscillating between Ourworld and Altworld: He’d had lunch at the Hard Times Cafe with one of his grad assistants. The notebook that night said they’d been to the Viet Garden. But the Viet Garden had closed a year ago to make way for a new office building. So he knew he was right. In Altworld, that office building had never been built. Or was he in Altworld, and it was in Ourworld that the building had never gone up?

Actually, he thought, which world was ‘Ours’ and which was ‘Alt’ was just a matter of perspective.

Wasn’t it?

For the next week, Morgan alternately almostcalled and almost-didn’t-call the psychiatric office for an appointment. Ultimately, ‘didn’t call’ won out through inaction.

For the rest of January, occasional differences occurred between the notebook’s version of reality and his memory’s; and the differences were growing larger. On two occasions, what the notebook said had nothing at all to do with what he’d done that day. On Tuesday the 31st, the notebook said he’d flown to

New York and back. But he’d had three classes and two faculty meetings that filled the day. Really he had; the Departmental calendar said so. Where would this end? Would the differences grow until, like some topheavy object, he’d just flip over from one world to the other?

But on February 10, of all unexpected events, a dramatic improvement in his faltering career: a glowing reference to his work appeared in Physical Review Letters by none other than Edward Cruller, the leading candidate for next year’s Nobel. He made only a glancing reference to Morgan’s theory, but he heaped praise on the branch of mathematics Morgan had developed to deal with its physics. “Its compelling significance for the future of mathematical physics,” wrote Cruller, “far outstrips in value the dubious theory it claims to support.”

By three o’clock, Morgan had gone from pariah to star in the Physics Department. Glinda the Admin smiled at him for the first time in months. Alfred Mesmer, Dean of Arts and Sciences, made a point of descending from his ivory tower and shaking Morgan’s hand personally.

Young Cunningham, too, offered congratulations, although off-handedly and obviously tinged with envy.

“Dr. Morgan,” he began. Cunningham had never called him “doctor” before. For months, it had been just “Morgan,” if Cunningham had addressed him at all. Cunningham had, after all, until that very day been the department’s prize theoretical physicist. “I think we should consider collaborating on a piece of research I have in mind,” he continued. “I have some ideas about orbital versus spin angular momentum in test bodies.” Morgan made an understated brushingoff or ‘aw shucks’ gesture.

But that night, his notebook read “Department library. Cruller’s latest paper, no references to my work. Dull day, nothing new.”

Morgan wondered at his success. ‘When did I sell my soul to the Devil?’ he asked himself, half-seriously.

Well, he thought, he’d take what he could get. He was famous, renowned. All was wonderful. Awe-inspiring.

Utterly delightful. Even the notebook was optimistic.

“President declares new era of universal peace,” he wrote one evening, “nuclear disarmament accelerated.”

On February 13, Morgan received a call from the New Scientist, asking to schedule a lengthy telephone interview with him from London. Would he please pick a convenient time in the next day or two? Never had success so curled his tongue or puffed his cheeks.

He treated himself to lunch at Kinkead’s. Postcards requesting reprints began to pour in, the mating ritual of science.

89

That night, his notebook reported “Lunch at Kinkead’s.” But that sad refrain, “Dull day, nothing new.” And it added “Heard rumor: my position at U. now in jeopardy.”

And so, as Spring came and persisted for its customary months, things were better in the version of life Morgan chose to think of as ‘real.’

Item: His students started asking questions in class, and a few even after class.

Item: Three of the brightest physics grad students asked Morgan to be their dissertation advisor. No one with better than a B- average had asked that of him before.

Item: Assistant Professor Rachel Gordon-Ogawa stopped insinuating that Morgan had a crush on her, and developed a crush on him instead, including whinnying hints that Ogawa wasn’t satisfying her in all the ways a man should. Morgan pretended not to catch the meaning of her hints, winks, nudges, and occasional ‘accidental’ gropes.

Item: Dillard and Mella came by more often. They even acceded to the occasional conversation. Dillard actually took some of Morgan’s fatherly advice instead of just nodding.

But his notebook kept reporting abject failure in his professional and personal life. Some evenings, Morgan didn’t even open it. No, he vowed one evening, he’d never open the cover again. He closed it and put it away.

One other item of interest occurred that Spring. As Dillard and Mella were leaving his home one evening, Dillard said “Oh yeah, Dad, Sandy called. She said she wants to see you.”

“Sandy called you? When was that?”

“Oh, yesterday, I guess.” Dillard was never very good with dates. It could have been this morning, or last week.

“What did she say?”

“She said she wants to see you.”

“That’s all?”

Mella gave Morgan a crooked smile. “It’s never ‘that’s all’ with my mom, is it? I guess she’ll call you.”

Then they were gone.

Sandy had been chasing him, in a tentative longdistance sort of way, ever since Dillard met her daughter Mella. Morgan hadn’t got a very good impression of her. For one thing, she’d never liked the idea of Mella’s having taken up with Dillard, once blamed Morgan for having such a dolt for a son. Yes, she’d actually used the word “dolt.” Morgan tried to defend Dillard, but secretly agreed that Dillard was, indeed, a dolt. So, he thought, was Mella, although he didn’t offer that opinion to Sandy.

Morgan

was relieved not to be looking at his journal every night. Too negative, he thought, and who needs that? His world, although he wasn’t sure which world it was, was becoming ever more wonderful. And to cap his run of good fortune, one bright day in June Morgan had been informed, “unofficially, don’t quote me of course,” that he had been nominated for the Weltbau Prize, the highest honor the College of Arts and Sciences could bestow, and one that had not been given to anyone in Physics for at least ten years. In the following weeks he was informed, also unofficially and confidentially: (a) That he was, in fact, a leading candidate; and then (b) That he’d been short-listed, at least the buzz had it so; and then (c) That he was sure to win, and receive full honors at the traditional December awards banquet.

Congratulations began pouring in.

Morgan had never known fame, not since a winning high school science fair project. He wondered if he was handling it well, tried to keep the triumph from his stride. He was self-consciously gracious to underlings, judicious in judging his students’ work, soft-spoken in criticizing colleagues’ research.

A few days later, Sandy called. She sounded fluttery and evasive, all hints and wriggles. She was obviously angling for an invitation to visit him, and not with Mella along as chaperon, either. Morgan had thought long and hard about it. Yes, he thought, it would be convenient to have a companion for the parties and the university functions he was more frequently being asked to attend. And perhaps there would be sex. He hadn’t had sex with another person in a long time. So now Morgan heard himself saying yes, agreeing to the following Friday.

Morgan hadn’t looked at his notebook in two months now. He thought about it occasionally, uneasily wondering what gloomy things it might be reporting. If he had steeled himself to open it, turned to the day’s page, he might have been surprised at the way things were going in Altworld, or was it Ourworld? Whatever: the notebook recorded, reported; occasionally erased and corrected.

Another nuclear power. That makes 23, including Palestine now. Threats, Congress alarmed.

Dillard called, asked for money, wouldn’t explain why.

Called Sandy, left message again, not returned. She’s avoiding me. I can’t let that happen. Afraid she might have complained about me to someone, the authorities?

But Shirley she wouldn’t do ... and they must have more important things to do with their time!

S

andy and Morgan saw each other once, twice, more. They became known as a couple. They 90

began sleeping together. He found Sandy’s belongings gradually occupying one and then another of his dresser drawers, understood their message.

Morgan was amused and bemused by her. He enjoyed her mindless chatter, like the society of birds. And so a hot July passed, more and more frequently with Sandy. ...protective order. My lawyer told me that...

Sandy began, in the sweetest possible way, of course, to take over. She asked about his work at the university, made some innocent suggestions. To humor her, he complied. Then she mentioned a few more useful changes, about how his classes were run, his teaching methods. And she suggested a vacation.

Morgan hadn’t had a real vacation in years. Sandy mentioned Rajasthan, Jaipur and the old forts, but only if he were inclined, of course. She was sweet reasonableness itself.

Disarmament summit, traffic near the U. totally screwed up, had to walk several blocks. Major efforts to calm the international situation, but...

September came in with a chill. Morgan hadn’t looked at the notebook for a long time now. Why bother? That was his old life, a downer. Now he had a new life, full of honor, sex, and a respectful, albeit doltish, son.

Life at the university was disrupted, briefly and almost entertainingly, by a sit-in in the nearby State Department headquarters building. The protestors demanded universal health care for all people everywhere. They were ejected without serious injuries; a few were held briefly.

Trouble at State: a right-wing group occupied the main foyer at HQ demanding the end of food shipments to developing countries. They did serious damage to the building; most of the protesters were shot and killed by police. The few who managed to escape were hunted down by armed Neighborhood Watch groups.

On September 23, a routine query from the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare reached Morgan. It mentioned an indigent elderly man named John Morgan, now institutionalized in Philadelphia.

The Department wondered, based on birth certificates, if Robert Morgan were his son, or if not, perhaps otherwise related to him.

Alive! But that wasn’t possible. He remembered his father’s death very well, the service, the burial. Was Altworld intruding on him? But that hardly seemed believable. Morgan determined to find out if there were two John Morgans, one his father (dead), and one not dead (somebody else’s father, perhaps). Well aware of what Pennsylvania’s bland communication implied, Morgan did not respond to it, but instead called all the private and public nursing homes in the

Philadelphia area. Actually, he had Glinda the Admin do it; rank hath, etc. Glinda found two people named John Morgan. Further inquiry revealed that the first John Morgan was known to have three daughters, no sons. The second John Morgan was not immediately locatable, not known if he had children.

October and early November passed smoothly.

Morgan received tenure at the university. He pulled up some of his older, previously rejected, papers, brushed them off and submitted them to several journals. The editors were highly pleased and promised a speedy review.

Anonymous phone calls. Something about Dillard. Called him, put me off. And then Helen...

On December 1st it was formally announced: Morgan had won the Weltbau prize. The Physics Department was the scene of great huzzahs. Glinda the Admin began to coordinate preparations for his appearance at the award ceremony later in the month.

Somehow, Sandy managed to involve herself and now regularly hung out in the Physics Department office.

On Sunday, December 12, Robert Morgan nervously drove to Philadelphia to see the second John Morgan, who had been located. A nurse directed him to the day room, pointed out John Morgan. He was watching TV, a football game. Robert introduced himself. John said nothing. John did not respond to anything, not even when the Rams butted the Chargers, who charged back at them, resulting in much whistle-blowing.

The nurse, who had been watching from a distance, finally approached them. “I’m sorry,” she said. “He’s usually like this. Don’t take it personally. Are you a relative? Our financial office would really like to see you, if...”

Morgan was uncertain if this John was his father or not, not having seen him in the thirty years since father had died in Ourworld (or was that in Altworld, and here he was still alive in Ourworld?). He beat a hasty retreat to his car and drove away before the nurse could get his tag number and report it to the financial office.

On Morgan’s drive back home Madeleine called him, delighted that the ceremony would be held only eight days before New Year’s Eve. She would make sure that her traditional NYE party was organized as a special tribute to her own super-scientist hero-friend.

She laid it on thick. “Dearest Robert, sweetie, you are planning to come to my party again, aren’t you?

Everyone else from Physics will be there.” Morgan assured her that wild horses, etc. This year, he thought grimly, he wouldn’t be ignored, wouldn’t be the wall-flower.

91

Dean Mesmer announced it today: E. Youngman Cunningham has won the Weltbau. That smug little bastard won it!

Late in the afternoon of December 23, as the sun was beginning to slip into its nightly coma, Morgan was dressing for the awards dinner with Sandy’s help.

Or rather, she was dressing him, fussing with zippers and buttons and using a roll of reversed masking tape to relieve his tuxedo of its last stray hairs.

Sandy, Mella, and Dillard drove with Morgan to the university, where Professor O’Neill led a triumphal procession on foot from the Physics Department to the awards ceremony at the Faculty Club. All Morgan needed, he thought with a mocking deprecation he did not feel, was a triumphal arch, elephants, booty wagons, waving palm-fronds, and foreign kings in chains. Young Cunningham would show well as a captive being dragged behind Morgan’s chariot.

John Morgan died today. Pauper’s funeral. Still don’t know if...

The group had a few minutes’ wait in the Club’s lobby. Morgan was pulled aside by a carefully neutral Cunningham.

“Dr. Morgan, ah, Bob, congratulations. It’s really deserved and a long-overdue recognition of your work,” he mumbled formulaically, looking away. Then he frowned. “But I’ve been looking at your last two or three papers, and just this morning I saw some dubious asp....” Morgan raised an eyebrow, a gesture he had recently mastered with help from Sandy and the bathroom mirror.

“No, no, Dr. Morgan,” Cunningham continued, catching the eyebrow in mid-vertical-ascent, “your mathematical work is sound; brilliant. But when you’ve applied it to this ‘Altworld’...”

“Thank you,” Morgan interrupted. “I could certainly check on that,” he said, with forced conviction. “But I’ve put that aside, you know. Red herring. False scent. I’m planning a new series of papers now, a different theory. I’m really not working on, ah, ‘Altworld,’” he said with an air of disdain, “anymore.”

Cunningham looked concerned. “But Dr. Morgan, you might be a little hasty about that. I think Dr. Cruller misunderstood one of your axioms. I think there may be -- just perhaps really might be -- some state of physical reality meeting the description of what you called ‘Altworld.’” Morgan looked at him in surprise, then quickly resumed a professional demeanor.

“But what I wanted to say,” Cunningham continued, “if there really is -- really were -- an Altworld -- I’ve reworked your math over and over,

and it’s inescapable: Altworld would be unstable.

Highly unstable. A chaotic system, where some vanishingly small factor occurring just by chance could...”

Morgan smiled. “Certainly. Next week I’ll take a good hard look at...” The dining room doors opened.

Morgan’s party of four seated themselves at a table for six. They nodded and mumbled perfunctorily at two strangers, presumably from the Arts side of Arts and Sciences who, after looking for familiar faces at the various tables, shrugged in despair and seated themselves at Morgan’s table.

Morgan made polite conversation around the table, smiling and shining the light of his face on Sandy, Dillard, and Mella in turn, and even, very briefly, on the two Arts people. He was determined to enjoy his new-found fame.

Morgan’s contemplation of triumph were interrupted by Dean Mesmer, clinking his water glass for attention. Mesmer spoke, a calm and practiced voice promising care, interest, empathy. He thanked all those present for being present, allotted each table the proper proportion of his smiles and nods. Surely each separate person thought himself the principal object of Dean Mesmer’s solicitousness; it was this very talent that distinguished him from all the others who had coveted the Deanship he graced with his presence.

“Today we remember the memory,” he began, realized the redundancy, started over. “Today we honor the memory of the late Milton Weltbau, in thanks for his gift of so many fruitful years ago, of the endowment that has helped support our arts and sciences program all these years.” He lowered his voice, cast his eyes respectfully downward. “I had the inestimable pleasure of meeting both ‘Milt’ and his charming wife at a function very similar to this one, some, oh, eighteen years ago, when I was but a humble teaching assistant.” He memorialized that august event at some length. An outbreak of fingernailexamining spread through the room. Suddenly there was silence. Those assembled looked up at Mesmer, who was smiling broadly. Not knowing quite whether he had told a small joke, or said something worthy of applause, most people at the tables applauded quietly and emitted a sound that could, if appropriate, be interpreted as a slight laugh.

Mella called in hysterics: Dillard has been arrested. I called the court house, but...

The rest of the evening went by in a blur as Morgan accepted the award, made a short, modest speech about the shoulders of giants, thanked everyone he could think of by name, and had his hand shaken and 92

his neck hugged by the adoring multitudes. To himself, he wondered what his notebook would make of this occasion; but he was firm in his resolve never to open it again. Afterwards, he had sex with Sandy and emerged, half an hour later, tired and faintly disgusted.

The year’s last week went by. Morgan settled into his life as Authority cum Elder Statesman. He fielded a few calls from journalists seeking his opinions, not just on physics, but on the world at large and its problems.

There were always plenty of such problems, and so Morgan had ample opportunity to pontificate happily on them all.

Christmas Day. The President has declared a national day of prayer for the survival of the world.

Helen has been plotting with Sandy. I just know it. How else could...

New Year’s Eve came again. How different this occasion would be from last year’s! Madeleine’s honored guest, not merely invited as the next door neighbor.

Morgan and Sandy arrived about 10:30 pm, shuffling their way through an inch of snow.

Madeleine’s house was overflowing with people. She greeted them effusively and kissed his cheek, as did Arlene. Morgan excused himself for a quick visit to the bathroom. Just as he was removing the lipstick from his cheek and sniffing the scent with some pleasure, he felt a slight trembling, as if the world had just moved half an inch sideways. His stomach felt dizzy.

He clung to the bathroom sink for a moment. A faint sound like the ripping of silk passed through the room.

He returned to the party but, surprisingly and unpleasantly, he was ignored. Oh well, he thought modestly, even lions get a break. Sandy had been cornered by a voluble Gordon-Ogawa, who bent her ear with some story about visiting the Punjab, it really wasn’t, you know, as dangerous as everyone....

Morgan wandered off and joined a small group centered on Arlene, who was going on and on about something.

“Why not?” she asked rhetorically, waving an arm, “Why wouldn’t some awful terrorist group pick this very night to attack? Fewest troops on guard of the entire year, I should think.” (“Should” for “would” usually indicated that Arlene was at stage one of drunkenness; at stage two she would begin saying “one” for “I.” A few of her onlookers were waiting for that to happen, having placed bets on how early in the evening it would occur.) Arlene continued: “And those troops, preoccupied with thoughts of other people getting laid, perhaps their own nearest and dearest

getting laid while they’re away, hovering their hands over some bright red button, waiting for a call on some bright red phone, the color of...”

Lahore has been destroyed, too soon to determine if...

India has denied responsibility, but is rushing troops to its western border. Tourists in Rajasthan have urgently been advised to...

Morgan turned away, vowing to achieve his own stage one of inebriation as soon as possible. But before he could down his second mojito he was intercepted

by Professor O’Neill. “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you, Bob, hate to tell you right now but the departmental budget, you know, the need to promote younger faculty, well, and the tenure that I couldn’t push through, and I really did try, you know, Bob, several times, really did try, really did. Well, Bob, what I’m getting at is -- I need your resignation,” he blurted. “We can call it an indefinite leave of absence, and extend your medical coverage for...” But Morgan, stunned, had tuned out.

Just then Madeleine appeared, dragging with her someone who looked familiar. Too familiar. “Bob,” she said to Morgan, “have you met Robert, here? He’s a famous physicist; he just won the Weltbau Prize.”

Madeleine went on to other guests. Morgan stared at his double. The double stared back.

With a mumbled apology he ran from the room, out the door, home. Where had he put that damned notebook? He opened dresser drawers, frantically throwing his clothes to the floor. Not there.

Not under his pillow. Not in the kitchen. Not in the bathroom. At last, desperately, Morgan descended to the basement, opened the worn doors of the old wooden cabinet. There it was! He picked it up, hands shaking, and turned to December 31.

Wonderful time at Madeleine’s, everyone admiring and fawning. Only dark spot, some clown who looked a little like me. Too much like me. Some neighbor of hers, Madeleine said, just invited so he wouldn’t complain about the noise. Had no place else to go on New Year’s Eve, I guess.

Morgan looked up from his notebook. There was a pounding on the door, a sound of crashing, incoherent shouts. The house shook, a jolt that sent him sprawling to the floor. He heard, upstairs, his front door being battered in. Morgan crawled under a table.

He picked up the notebook and wrote.

I am hiding. There are footsteps on the stairs. I am beginning to understand. The worlds are...

Morgan’s words broke off in a splat of ink. In the distance a thin, wailing sound. Then silence. Then shuddering. Then darkness.

93

little private book these secret things little book all my own the heart’s outpourings day by day it’s forbidden one big book and everything there -- Samuel Beckett

Terence Kuch’s publications and acceptances include Clockwise Cat, Colored Chalk, Creature Features anthology, Dead Bells anthology, From the Asylum anthology, Marginalia, Noctober, North American Review, Northwest Review, qarrtsiluni, Slow Trains, Sonar-4, Timber Creek Review, and others. He has studied at the Writers Center, Bethesda, Maryland, and is a member of the Dark Fiction Guild.

Screen Six

by Neil Coghlan

Getting a glimpse of your future... interesting. Now, changing the outcome, that's a bit tricky. ___________________________________________________________

On Sunday, there had been a storm. When Manny

Gibbs arrived at the Orlando Towers apartment complex, where he worked as the chief security officer, all the surveillance cameras were out. The technician promised him they’d be back on within the hour so he took his seat behind his console in the foyer and looked at the six blank screens, feeling a little redundant.

Manny had been working at the Orlando Towers for every one of the six years he’d been in West Palm Beach. He was well paid to do his job and he was probably a little over-zealous in carrying it out. There hadn’t been a serious incident on his watch for all those years, a record he was proud of. There were twenty-two very expensive apartments at the Orlando, a homage to marble and glass.

At eight thirty, the technician called to say his work was done and wished Manny a pleasant evening.

Manny picked up the small remote control and pointed it briefly at each of the six screens in turn and watched them flicker into life. The first showed the foyer itself, with the elevators on the left, the entrance in the center and Manny’s own console on the far right. The next two screens showed different angles of the front of the building. Number four gave a grainy image of the entrance to the underground parking garage. The final two cameras were positioned at different ends of the garage.

The evening until about eleven thirty was busy, Manny greeting many of the residents of the Orlando as they returned from work or nights out. The following day was Monday, so most were back in the building by midnight. By twelve thirty, Manny had been left in the silence that he knew so well. He worked his way through some crosswords and thumbed through Sports Illustrated, all the time keeping an eye on the six screens in front of him, his world in black and white.

A little after two o’clock, Pete Lawson, a tall bachelor from up on the fourth floor, came into the building. He would often come back with a girl, even two on occasions. Tonight, he was alone.

“Hey, Pete. Parking the car, is she?” Manny said, laughing.

“Evening, Manny. No luck tonight, I’m afraid. The women of this town don’t know what they’re missing 94

out on. Good night.”

“Night, Pete.”

Manny glanced over to camera six. Pete’s white Lexus was there and there was no busty blonde stepping out of it either. He smiled to himself as he watched Pete get into the elevator. There was something about Pete Lawson that reminded Manny a lot of his brother up in New Jersey. A certain way he had of holding himself, exuding confidence. He couldn’t help but admire him.

His musings were interrupted by something on camera six. There was smoke coming from Pete’s Lexus. He grabbed his keys from the top of the desk and raced to the door that gave direct access to the parking garage. Manny ran down the two flights of steps and burst through the heavy metal door into the wide open area of painted parking bays. As the door slammed behind him, he grabbed the fire extinguisher hanging there on the wall.

Breathing heavily, Manny jogged along the long line of Jaguars, Mercedes and Audis, until he reached bay 52, where Pete’s Lexus, glowing an odd yellowywhite in the sodium lighting, sat parked. There was no smoke coming out of it. Manny cupped his hands up against the windows. Inside, a newspaper lay on the front passenger seat. Behind, the seats were empty.

Manny looked over to the cement beam running across the roof of the garage where camera six was perched, all seeing. He lowered his eyes and looked down to the far end of the garage. There was nothing out of place. Not a sound and certainly no smoke to be seen.

He walked back to the foyer slowly. When he arrived at his console, he looked again at the camera six screen. Far from emitting a little smoke, Pete Lawson’s Lexus was now on fire. Flames could be seen coming out of the driver’s window that had evidently smashed due to the heat. The smoke was billowing up in great clouds, flattening and rolling on the ceiling in the very top of the shot. Manny knew there were ultrasensitive smoke alarms down in the garage. They would have sounded minutes ago. He scratched his head, just above his receding hairline.

“What the?” he muttered.

He did the only thing he could think of doing. He walked back down to the garage and stood at the entrance door, sweeping his eyes first to his left where

the burning Lexus apparently stood, then to his right.

The whole place was as silent and still as he would expect at two fourteen in the morning.

When he arrived back at his console in the foyer, Manny picked up the remote and switched off screen six and laid the remote down on the console quickly, as if it was burning hot. He sat down, casting his halfdone crossword to one side. For ten minutes straight, he stared at the dark gray of the blank screen, running over every possibility in his troubled mind.

“I’m going crazy,” he said after a while, “and this is confirmed by my talking to myself.”

Three more times during the night, he stepped into the underground garage and each time, there was nothing to be seen. Three residents came back during the small hours and Manny greeted each with a lessthan-enthusiastic nod of the head. Screen six stayed switched off, Manny more than a little perturbed what he would see were he to switch it back on.

H

is shift ended at seven in the morning, just as the Orlando was waking and the workers and the joggers began to pass before him across the shining marbled floors of the foyer. The console would not be used during the day, but Manny put a Post-It onto the smooth glass of screen six anyway.

Out of order. Do NOT switch on.

Manny left the Orlando Towers and headed to his home down the coast in Lake Worth. He had trouble sleeping and finally got up just after noon and spent the afternoon with Michelle, who worked from home as a database programmer. Saying nothing about what had occurred overnight, he tried to act as normal as possible until shortly after six when he kissed Michelle tenderly on the forehead and headed for work.

Manny walked across the entrance of the Orlando at six-forty-five and headed straight for his console, his own home away from home, where he’d spent pretty much half of his life in the last six years. The Post-It was still in place. With the remote, he turned on the other five screens. There were no messages for him on the desk, nobody complaining about having found their car a smoldering wreck that day.

The usual stream of traffic through the lobby showed no signs of easing up as the Monday evening proceeded. Flustered workers returned from a day at the office and stressful miles on the interstate. Others, dressed for a restaurant or a couple of drinks, passed in the opposite direction.

“That damn interstate gets worse every day, Manny” one would say.

“I’ll be late, Manny. Don’t wait up!” another would joke.

95

Before he realized it, the art deco clock by the elevators was reading midnight. Manny had often stolen a quick glance at the blank screen six. It teased him with the distorted reflection of himself, staring back at him like a goldfish in a bowl. What would it be showing now?

He immersed himself in another tricky word puzzle and tried to forget the one sixth of his job that he wasn’t doing. Like the night before, Pete Lawson strolled into the foyer at a little after two. He playfully looked at his watch and gave an exaggerated shrug of his shoulders.

“What can I say, Manny? I’m a bad boy. Catch you on the flip side.”

Manny gave Pete a melodramatic military salute as he stepped into the elevator and watched the numbers light up until it stopped at the fourth floor. Seeing Pete had set Manny’s thoughts running back over the events of the previous night. In truth, he’d been thinking of nothing else all day and felt mentally drained. No wonder he was struggling with the puzzles tonight.

A few minutes later, there was a buzzing sound and a red light on his console lit up. It was the parking garage smoke alarm. In an instant, Manny had the remote control in his hand and he flicked the ON button towards screen six. When it brightened fully, he was greeted with the site of Pete’s Lexus again. It looked alright, except for the passenger window was missing and quite a large portion of that door was blackened. Manny canceled the smoke alarm.

“What the hell’s going on?” he grunted as he headed for the door down to the garage again.

Before he even reached the entrance to the garage, he realized he was smelling smoke on the stale air. He opened the door and headed left. Pete’s Lexus was on fire. There was smoke coming out of the passenger side. As he watched, he heard an odd popping sound as the window gave way and then stared at the billows of acrid smoke that came out and rolled across the low ceiling.

He ran back to the fire extinguisher at the entrance door, an extinguisher that had been in his hands only twenty-four hours earlier. The fire hadn’t really got started and it only took Manny a minute or so to dampen it down with a couple of blasts from the extinguisher. When he was sure he’d killed all the flames, he flipped open his cell phone, found Pete’s number and pressed Call.

Within two minutes, Pete entered the garage wearing only his boxers and a shirt.

“Manny, you’re a life saver. Holy shit, look at it.”

“It’s not too bad, Pete. The driver’s seat’s pretty bad

and I’ve gone and given everything a good soaking.

Sorry.”

“Hey, you’re apologizing for saving my car. I must have dropped that damn cigar on the seat.”

The two men looked at each other conspiratorially, smiling.

“That wasn’t the smartest move, Pete.”

After double checking everything and saying goodnight to Pete again, Manny returned to his console, his head swirling. Was he going mad? Really this-guy-needs-to-be-quietly-popping-pills-in-awhitewashed-room crazy. He looked at screen six.

Pete’s Lexus was just as they’d left it: the driver’s window broken and some sooty black marks down the door, but he’d seen this just before going down to the garage to see the car in flames. The ground that was visible from the high camera was dry: there were no signs of water from the extinguisher. This was not a live shot.

Manny picked up the remote and hit the Menu button. A simple green menu appeared, overlaying the view of the garage. From here, he could alter the brightness, contrast and so forth. And the date, which would appear in any video playback. He scrolled down to Date and Time Settings. The time set was two fortyone in the morning and, checking his watch, Manny saw that was correct to the last minute. He pressed OK and the date appeared. August 5th, 2009. The TV set was set twenty-four hours ahead. The power outage from Sunday’s storm must have thrown it all out of kilter, he thought.

In turn, he checked the other screens, but they were all set correctly. It only seemed to be screen six that was playing up. Though the lobby was air conditioned, Manny was sweating heavily. He picked up his newspaper, walked down to the garage and laid it on the roof of a BMW, parked next to Paul’s sadlooking Lexus, water still dripping slowly from the driver’s side. He walked briskly back up the stairs that he’d used so often in the last twenty-four hours and went to his console. On the last screen to the right, camera six, he could see the BMW, but there was no newspaper on the roof. Manny fingered through the buttons on the remote again, pulling up the date and time settings. He pressed the right button until the date was flashing. He left it blinking there at him for a few seconds.

5th. 5th. 5th.

His thumb hovered over the down key. Manny was afraid of being confronted with his own insanity, but finally he pressed it. The number four appeared, but nothing happened to the image in the background.

Another message appeared on the screen.

96

Save new settings?

He pressed the OK button in the center and he saw the image change. Paul’s Lexus remained where it had been, but the BMW beside it shifted just a little further into its bay. Perhaps six inches. And there was a newspaper on the roof.

“Hey, Manny. How was work?”

As was the case every day, when Manny got in from his shift at around seven thirty in the morning, Michelle was to be found having breakfast in the kitchen. She would get up so they could have half an hour together before Manny clambered, exhausted, into bed.

Manny, like Pete Lawson back at the Orlando, had been a bachelor well into his thirties. Then this simple New Jersey mechanic had met the love of his life and moved down to the Sunshine State to be with her.

Now forty-four, Manny, prematurely balding on top and carrying a gut he wasn’t proud of, had found contentment with Michelle, a woman he wanted to grow old with.

“Same as,” he replied and grabbed a hunk of pancake off Michelle’s plate.

Manny and Michelle talked for a while about something she’d seen on TV the previous evening, but Manny’s head wasn’t in the conversation. He took himself off for a sleep, but for the second day in a row, slept poorly and only until around eleven thirty. When he rose and entered the lounge yawning loudly, Michelle had her hand raised to him, her sign that she was in the middle of something complex on the computer and he shouldn’t speak. He was relieved in a way. He decided he needed to be outside in the sun and fresh air.

Once outside the house, he could feel waves of heat rising from the driveway. The skies were cloudless, although he knew after six Floridian summers that there’d be a build up of cloud from two or three in the afternoon.

Manny got the lawnmower out of the garage and began to cut the front lawn. He could lose himself for hours in the gently rising and falling pitch of the blades as they sliced through the thick stubborn grass.

He kicked off his shoes and enjoyed the prickly sensation of the stubbly newly-cut grass through his socks. It was one o’clock before Michelle stuck her head out of the door and called him in for lunch.

As he was putting the lawnmower back in the garage, he had a thought and got out his cell phone.

He wrote out a short message.

These guys are good, if you need them. Doug’s OneStop Auto Repair. 555-2723.

He sent the text to Pete Lawson, feeling guilty about having his car stuck there all day. After all, he’d seen on screen six that the Lexus would still be there tonight, so he hoped Pete would be able to get the car collected tomorrow morning.

M

anny passed an eventless night at work, screen six still switched off. A taxi pulled up outside the building at around one o’clock and Pete Lawson entered the Orlando.

“Manny, my main man!”

He came over and shook Manny’s hand.

“Wanted to thank you again for last night, Manny.

You must watch those damn screens like a hawk.

Probably saved my car from being wrecked.”

Pete didn’t know about the smoke alarms and he certainly had no inkling of the fact that his burning Lexus had appeared on Manny’s screens a full day earlier.

“Just doing my job, Pete. Hey, did you get the car into a garage today?”

“Yeah, man. Got it into that place you suggested.

Thanks for the text. They came over at four and picked it up.”

Manny’s mouth dropped open.

“It’s not parked downstairs now? They came and got it?”

Pete smiled, but also raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, Manny, they collected it this afternoon.”

“OK, that’s great. Have a nice evening. I mean, goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Manny.”

Pete walked towards the elevator and looked back towards Manny as the doors closed.

Manny was looking down at his screens, taking in what he’d just learned from Pete. His car wasn’t in the garage. He had to see this for himself, so he headed once again to the garage, quick stabbing strides as he resisted breaking into a run. When he arrived, he looked left. Pete Lawson’s bay was empty. As if imagining that this huge Lexus had become a toy, invisible from the doorway, Manny walked briskly past the other premium cars until he was standing a foot from the empty bay. He put his hand up onto his head.

It didn’t make any sense. When the smoke alarm had gone off at two o’clock last night, screen six was supposed to be showing the garage as it would be at two o’clock tonight, still an hour or so from now. And Manny had seen the Lexus parked in its usual bay, window broken and black sooty marks streaking the driver’s door.

Unless.

Had he changed the future? He’d sent Pete the 97

number of Doug’s Auto Repair and Pete had used them. He’d made the recommendation only after seeing Pete’s Lexus still parked up in the garage a day after the accident on screen six. He had done something, interfered somehow with the natural order of things, and the future as he’d seen it had altered.

“Did I change it all?” he asked himself out loud, each syllable echoing off the rough cement walls.

He walked back up to the foyer and turned on screen six, something he’d been avoiding for the whole evening. Pete’s Lexus wasn’t there. Manny knew it wasn’t a live shot; it was supposed to be tomorrow evening it was showing, but Manny had only doubts in his head now. He flicked it back off with the remote and put the Post-It back on the screen.

“I’ll be seeing you tonight,” he said, almost threateningly.

W

hen his shift ended at seven, it was all an exhausted Manny could do to get his car down the highway to Lake Worth. He popped a couple of sleeping pills and slept like an old dog until two in the afternoon.

On Wednesday evening, Manny arrived at work with a determination to get to the bottom of whatever it was that was happening with the screen furthest to his right. He removed the Post-It and turned it on.

Pete’s Lexus was there, window intact and driver’s door a shiny white without any black marks. He’d already checked, while leaving his own car down in the garage, that Pete Lawson’s bay was empty. So this meant the car would be back tomorrow. He guessed.

He checked the date on the menu. It was showing 7.10 p.m. on 6th August, the following day. With wellpracticed flicks of the buttons, he altered the date to the fifth and Pete’s Lexus disappeared.

Manny left screen six showing a live shot for the rest of the evening, but when the Orlando quietened down, he knew what he had to do.

Pete Lawson came into the Orlando at just after eleven thirty.

“Hi, Pete. Did you hear back from Doug’s today?”

“Evening, Manny. Yeah, they’re bringing it over tomorrow morning.

That was a great recommendation, man.”

“Hey, just doing my job.”

“A little more than that, Manny. I owe you one.

Goodnight.”

Manny watched again as Pete stepped into the lift and gave Manny a playful wink as the doors came together. He watched until the number four lit up.

Pete had confirmed what screen six had already told him. The car would be back tomorrow at this

time. He picked up the remote and pulled up the date again.

11.38 PM. August 5th, 2009.

Manny knew the Orlando had been constructed in 1974 so he went straight to the year and put in 1973.

Then he changed the PM to AM and waited a second or two.

Save new settings?

OK All the cars in the shot disappeared. The walls of the garage disappeared. All Manny could see was an expanse of earth. This was probably a year or so before the Orlando was built. There was no construction equipment lying around, no builders’ accommodation, nothing. Just a cleared site. The camera was very low down to the ground, just a foot or so above it. Manny guessed that the ceiling of the underground garage was about a foot or so above normal ground level. That at least made sense, if anything did.

He changed the year again, to 1963.

Now, he saw only the edge of a pond or lake, with rough grassland and tall trees behind. From his visits with Michelle into central Florida, he recognized this as virgin wetland forest. Manny cursed the fact that he was having to look at all of this on a poor black and white screen, only about ten inches across. He went to 1953, 1933, 1903 and saw more or less the same in every shot. Some trees in the background were shorter or missing as he went back, one tall tree suddenly appeared, evidently an old specimen that had fallen soon afterwards.

Manny happened upon a violent storm, perhaps a hurricane, in 1803. He watched transfixed as the canopy of trees swayed one way, then another as the heavy gusts of wind buffeted the forest. The water in the foreground rippled as the heavy raindrops pounded the surface.

“Holy shit!” he said, then peeked over the top of the console to ensure he was still alone.

Manny resumed his journey back into the distant past of this tiny portion of Florida, looking through this pin prick hole into history. As he changed the year ever faster, he watched the tree line come and go, rise and fall, the lake disappeared for a century or more, then was there again.

And then, suddenly, they were on his screen. Three men, sitting on a fallen log, by the water’s edge. The year was 1483, a decade before Columbus would land in the Bahamas, only a couple of hundred miles from where Manny was now sitting. He felt as though he was watching an Amazonian tribe on his screen, naked but for a cloth around their waists. They spoke 98

to each other for a few minutes, their mouths moving silently for a while. Then they sat quietly, one of them reaching into a pouch by his hip for something to eat.

The three were sitting almost to the inch where Pete’s Lexus was normally parked. Manny wondered what the three would make of the car, occupying exactly the same space in the physical world, separated by a mere five hundred years or so.

Manny spent half an hour or so watching the three natives, flicking the time forward a couple of times.

They spent a total of two hours at the site before rising slowly as one and heading into the trees. Manny felt sorry when they left. He felt as though he’d made a connection with something, a transient happening that would otherwise have forever remained obscured to all human existence. He’d shared with them a simple part of their daily routine. He didn’t feel obtrusive, but privileged to have born witness to their passing.

Manny looked across at the clock; it was getting on for one thirty and he still had a lot to do.

He drew the menu back up with the remote control and looked at the date and time that were set.

1.26 PM, August 6th, 1483.

He moved the right cursor key until the year flashed. He knew there was no point going further back. He’d seen something so incredible in the shape of those three simple hunters, that he now wanted to go the other way. What would he learn by watching those thirty yards of stained concrete?

He keyed in 2010. The lush forest faded and Pete’s Lexus emerged from the trees, a familiar site. There were a couple of the cars he didn’t recognize and he knew for sure he was indeed glimpsing the future.

He continued to alter the year by one. 2011. Then 2012. In 2013, the picture appeared much brighter.

The stronger contrasts in the shadows told Manny that improved lighting was being used down in the garage, something he’d requested for at least two years.

“Huh! Finally.”

Pete Lawson’s Lexus was gone, replaced by a car he didn’t recognize. It looked very European in its lines.

“Am I still there?” Manny asked himself as he continued working away on the remote control.

As security guard, there was usually very little reason for him to go down there, unless of course one of the resident’s cars was on fire! How would he know if he was still employed at the Orlando Towers in 2013? He went on to the following year and then to 2015.

There was a man in the shot, probably one of the residents. It was August 6th, 2015, six years almost to the hour from now. Manny watched him for a while

before noticing he had a flashlight in his right hand.

His heart began racing as the man checked behind some cars near the far wall and then walked directly under the camera. He was in a security guard’s uniform and unless the next six years of Manny’s life involved losing his gut, growing black curly hair and growing a foot, the security guard on the screen was not him.

“Hey, Manny, you with us, buddy?”

Manny jumped to his feet as if his mother had caught him with his hand inside the ice cream tub. It was Daniel, the professional gambler from the second floor.

“Good evening, Daniel. I didn’t see you there.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” he replied, studying Manny’s face. “You OK?” “Yeah, I’m great, Daniel. Just a little busy, you know?”

Daniel made a big show of looking slowly around the silent foyer.

“Uh huh, I can see that. Well, goodnight, Manny.”

Manny waited a couple of minutes before returning to screen six. The garage was empty so he put the time back a few minutes and watched the scene with the mystery security guard again. Manny knew he could watch the same scene a thousand times and still not learn anything new. He needed to see the other half of the garage, where he put his own car in the evening.

Could he switch the cameras?

Grabbing his keys, he unlocked the access door and descended the stairs to the garage. Camera six was on the left while camera five showed the opposite end of the garage. He took a stepladder from just inside the door and carried it over to camera six. The camera itself was quite small and sat in a heavy duty plastic cradle. He’d seen them removed for maintenance a few times. He put his hand on the base of the camera and applied pressure, trying to slide it out of its cradle.

With a little effort, it moved. When there was a three or four inch gap behind the camera, Manny reached in with his stout fingers and unplugged the two wires that ran from the camera into the part of the cradle that went up into the ceiling. With that, the camera came out. It was remarkably small and probably weighed a couple of pounds.

Within a few minutes, he’d taken out camera five in the same way and completed the swap. Camera six was now pointing down towards the garage entrance, seeing any car that came down the ramp, including his own. He parked the car at about ten to seven every evening and left the garage just after seven every morning. His continued employment at the building would be easy to trace and with that in mind, he 99

returned to his console.

He now turned his attention to screen five. The date was set correctly and was hence showing a live shot. He changed the date.

6.56 PM, August 6th, 2010.

His space was empty and he only had to wait a couple of minutes before his Honda Accord swung into view and deftly found its usual space.

“There I am!” Manny said.

Manny managed to see himself parking the car, a little shabbier each year, for each of the next four years. Then he reached August 6th, 2015, the date he’d seen the different security guard. He still had the time set to just before seven o’clock and when the image refreshed, there was a small black car in his bay, a Fiat or Seat or some such. He put the time back a few minutes and watched it arrive and the same guard that would later the same day come down to the garage with a flashlight, got out of the car, took his jacket from the passenger seat, and walked under the camera on his way to the foyer.

Manny was sweating again and a few drops splattered onto the polished wooden surface of the console. Somewhere in the back of his mind was the thought that setting out on this journey into the future was only ever going to end like this: finding a day when he wasn’t there anymore. But he never expected it to be so soon.

Having leapt forward a year at a time before, he now began to work backwards month by month, scanning the image on the screen for his trusty Japanese automobile. He only had to go back a couple of months: on July 6th, 2015, there it was again. Now moving forward day by day and then hour by hour, he saw it for the last time on July 9th, 2015. Michelle came into shot from under the camera, got in, reversed adeptly out of the bay and left the garage.

Manny frantically searched back and forth but that was the last time that his Accord was parked down in the garage.

“Where am I?” he asked himself.

Michelle had taken, or rather, he kept telling himself, will take the car, out of the Orlando’s parking garage on July 9th at ten in the morning. It had been parked there since the evening of the 7th. Why? Manny watched himself leaving the vehicle on the 7th and that was the last time he was anywhere on the screen. Where had he gone?

It was now nearly four o’clock in the morning.

“I gotta move it again,” Manny said, getting back on his feet and heading down to the garage. He was thinking less and less clearly. He now wanted to put camera six into camera two’s cradle, outside the front

of the building. He put camera six out in front and left the camera that he’d removed from there sitting on top of the console. He knew he’d be fired if anyone saw what he was doing, but this possible consequence was starting to matter less and less to him.

With camera six now out front, with a perfect view of the Orlando Towers entrance, Manny sat down, remote control in hand, and looked now at screen two. He began to alter the time, something that was now second nature to him, employing a muscle memory that turned the action into something as mundane as coughing.

10.07 AM, July 9th, 2015.

It was the exact moment that he knew Michelle would be taking his car out of the garage. For half an hour he jumped around July 8th and 9th and finally, at 6.15 a.m. on the 8th, he saw it. Two paramedics carrying out what was clearly a body, the face covered.

As the scene unfolded, Manny watched through hands half-closed around his face. He felt like a child watching a horror flick and wished there was a couch to hide behind. The paramedics moved out of shot and a minute or so later, Bernie, the general condominium manager, emerged from the entrance. He was joined by a couple of other people, maybe residents, one dressed for the office, another for jogging. Nobody that Manny recognized.

Manny and Michelle had watched a National Geographic special on out of body experiences and he felt like that now, looking down on what was probably his dead body being carried out of his workplace, then random other people probably passing comment about what had happened.

At eleven in the morning of the 8th, he saw Pete Lawson leave the building in handcuffs, one police officer either side of him. They just appeared and were gone from the screen within three seconds. Manny pushed the clock back a minute and watched it three times. It was definitely Pete and he was in cuffs.

“Did the bastard kill me?”

The footage continued to play while Manny sat in silence at his console, deep in thought. Putting the pieces of the puzzle together didn’t make pretty reading. At 6.15 a.m. on the July 8th, paramedics will leave the Orlando carrying what appears to be him, dead. Five hours later, the police will arrive and take Pete Lawson into custody and the next day, his wife, or should that be his widow, will arrive to take his car away. From that day onwards, no sign of Manny or his car is seen.

If Pete had killed him, even in a fit of anger, an impulsive moment of hot-blooded rage, was there anything he could do to stop it? He had already seen it

was possible to change the future with Pete’s Lexus.

Suggesting Doug’s auto repair had altered the future reality. How could Manny stop Pete from killing him?

Without knowing the motive, it was impossible. He would have to arrange things so that Pete wasn’t at the Orlando in 2015. He had six years to work on a plan. It was like an asteroid approaching Earth. With so long a warning, he just had to nudge it a little now and it would miss its target further on down the road.

He could push to get Pete removed from the Orlando, though that would be almost impossible. He could become closer friends with him, thus removing the danger. However, if it was a spur of the moment rage killing, being friendly over the coming years would unlikely safeguard him.

It was getting light outside and his shift ended in a little over half an hour. The second part of the night had raced by. He’d seen so much and still understood so little. He decided to go back and have another look at his body being carried by the paramedics, to see if there was any evidence at all that it was really him.

6.15 AM, July 8th, 2015.

He watched for a few minutes, but saw nothing. He went back another few minutes and did the same. He was nowhere to be seen. Manny had noted the important dates and times down on a Post-It and he now double checked them. He went forward to quarter past eleven but couldn’t find the police or Pete. Everything had changed.

“Who’s driving the car?” he said loudly.

He grabbed the camera sitting on top of the console. He was acutely aware that he had stopped thinking clearly hours ago, but he needed this one final question answered. Putting the original camera back outside, he took the all-important camera six down into the garage and put it to the right of the door, facing the ramp. He needed to see what had changed.

As he attached the two wires of the camera into the back of its cradle, he thought about the implications of the latest pictures he’d seen. The future had changed again – because he’d seen Pete being led away. He already knew that he was going to act to prevent Pete killing him, but he didn’t know what he was going to do.

“The future changes so easily,” he said as he slid camera six into its slot.

With camera six in place, he wheezed his way back up to the foyer. Screen five now held camera six’s images. He set the date for May, 2015 when, according to what he’d seen a couple of hours ago, Manny should still be working there. At a little before seven in the evening, a black Jeep drove into the

100

garage.

“What?”

Going back a year, the Jeep arrived again. In 2013, it was a light colored Toyota and the same again a year before. Where was Manny’s car?

“I already checked this!” he yelled, throwing the remote down in frustration.

He had. Only a few short hours ago, Manny had watched his grubby Honda Accord drive into the garage every year until 2015. Now his parking spot was being filled with Jeeps and Toyotas and he didn’t recognize either of the drivers.

The elevator pinged open and three residents came out and wished Manny good morning. He looked at his watch. It was six minutes before seven o’clock. He had to find out where he was. He now went to 2011 and cursed loudly as the Toyota appeared again at 6.54 p.m. on July 8th. Two others leaving the elevator glanced over at the console and shuffled on their way out of the main entrance. Manny was sweating profusely from the forehead and was growling angrily at the screen in front of him.

2010 brought a new car, but it wasn’t him driving it. On the black and white screen, it was hard to tell what color it was, possibly a blue. It was a new Volkswagen Beetle, a car Manny wouldn’t be seen dead in. Finally, with the traffic in the foyer getting busier, Manny went to August 20th, 2009, only a couple of weeks from now. He set the time on the screen to 6.52 p.m. and waited. The employee bay was empty.

Manny’s hands were clasped white at his mouth, his elbows digging into his knees that trembled under the weight. His eyes drilled into the center of the screen, waiting for the fender to appear from behind the wall. He knew it would only be a couple of minutes. Every thirty seconds, he’d allow his eyes to dart to the bottom corner to check the time. It was 6.55 when the probably-blue Beetle swung off the ramp and turned a graceful one-eighty degree curve and stopped in the waiting bay. The driver got out, another guard a foot taller than Manny and a head full of blond hair. Manny had never seen another man look less like him. Resigned, he switched off the screen and put his now-tatty Post-It onto the screen of the fifth TV. It was ten past seven. He had to leave. He’d check the screens again tonight and try and get to the bottom of this. As he walked down into the cooler air of the garage, he became aware of the tracks of tears on his cheeks. He must have looked quite a sight to the Orlando residents this morning, shaking, sweating and cursing. And probably crying. He’d be back to

good ol’ Manny, everyone’s buddy, tomorrow.

A

s Manny headed down the coast road towards Lake Worth, he ran over everything from the night in his mind. He had just about managed to comprehend why the ambulance, the police leading Pete away, had all disappeared. He was going to make it all disappear, just that he hadn’t decided how yet. Manny making the discovery of his death had acted like the texted suggestion to Pete – it had changed the future. He couldn’t figure out why he then disappeared from all the shots of the garage. That’s what made no sense to him. Had he changed the future simply by observing it?

Manny had to find himself later that night at work.

He had to sit at his console for another week if necessary and find out where he had gone. According to camera six, some new guy will be turning up in that horrendous Beetle in two weeks’ time.

“Was that red?” he muttered as he drove through some lights, distractedly.

The truck impacted Manny’s Accord just at the driver’s door, a collision that drove the upper door frame into Manny’s skull, which fractured and then splintered with ease. The left side of his brain took the full force of the hit and Manny was slipping into unconsciousness within five seconds, bent forward like an unwanted rag doll, oblivious to the continuous sound of his car’s horn or the frantic attempts of two other drivers trying to force open the door.

As Manny slipped deeper away, deeper into his final sleep, his last thoughts he expended not on the woman who had changed his life so completely, not on the good honest New Jersey folk that made up his family that he’d left behind in the chilly north. He wondered, painless and numb, how screen six had only so belatedly foreseen this future of his. How many other futures were out there for him and why had he had to land, feet first, on this one?

101

Neil Coghlan has other stories due for publication in the first half of 2010 in Retro Spec: Tales of Fantasy & Nostalgia, Bards & Sages Quarterly Magazine, Crow’s Nest Magazine and Elements of Horror Anthology.

I Am Not God

by Bill Wilbur

Life is harsh, but sometimes hope comes from an unusual source. ___________________________________________________________

The streets seemed darker than usual and Scott

pulled his coat tighter around him. Threadbare and tattered, the jacket did little to keep out the cold, but he supposed it was better than nothing at all. Keeping his head down, he stared at the sidewalk before him.

The shadows teemed with phantoms, lost people whose grip on reality had slipped, and eye contact could sometimes turn deadly. What would have been a safe ten minute drive home was now a dangerous forty minute walk thanks to a bad transmission.

In his head, he ticked off the bills he had to pay this week, trying to find a few extra dollars to fix the heater. If it were only him, he’d suffer through this winter as he had so many before, but his father lived with them now and at eighty-seven, never seemed to be able to get warm enough. And Joey, forced to grow up too quickly at eleven when his mom died two years ago, was beginning to lose faith in everything, but especially in Scott. They’d been so close once, back when the world was beautiful and bright. Was it too much to ask to be warm in the winter?

A soft breeze ran along the sidewalk, but no answers came with it. This year, like last year, the choice was a desperate one, warmth or food. He shook his head. They’d have to get in the mission line early this year, before the free blankets and food packages were all gone.

Up ahead he saw a man with wild, flyaway hair and carrying what looked like a machete, slip into the shadows of an alley. Scott chose to cross the street where he only had to avoid the occasional prostitute.

In an apartment three blocks away his son and father waited for him, one angry, the other wilting and frail.

How was it that paychecks from three jobs added up to just enough to squeak by? And even then only with the help of a landlady filled with compassion and understanding whenever the rent was late.

Taking a left onto Bayberry Avenue, Scott braced himself for the flood of memories attached to this street. On good days, he could shut them from his mind and walk these six blocks without tears. But tonight he was cold and tired. Depression rode him like some demon bronco buster intent on breaking his spirit, and the little bastard was really digging the spurs in deep.

He opened himself up to the taunting memories of

a brighter time when his world still included Victoria, back when they were happy and Joey was still in diapers. Back before God closed his eyes and the world turned mean. They’d met on this street, lived on this street, loved on this street, and Victoria had died here. Two years ago, during a light dusting of snow, she’d parked her car and in the fifty yards between her Honda and the front door of their building, one of the shadow people took her from the world. Police found her body in an alley down the block, beaten, raped, and strangled. The snow had soaked her through and when Scott identified the body, her beautiful, long, brown hair was still wet and matted and a small puddle pooled beneath her neck.

Scott closed his eyes against the sting of fresh tears.

It was that last image of her that finally destroyed his soul. Constant in his mind was the thought that she’d never again blow dry her hair, now forever plastered to her pale face, never again pull it into a ponytail to go jogging, never again brush it until it shined.

He hated this street, but he didn’t have to go as far as the alley where Victoria had died, only about half the distance. It was the only ATM on his way home and the closest one for twelve blocks. His Dad’s prescription needed to be filled, and Joey needed lunches for school. He would pull out the last remaining twenty from the only bank willing to give him an account and pray that the check he’d written to the electric company wouldn’t hit until Friday when his paycheck cleared. He still hadn’t gotten the heat turned back on yet.

The ATM jutted from the outside wall of the pharmacy, which had been closed for hours. The brick wall was covered in graffiti, but had been strong enough to withstand two robbery attempts to rip out the machine. The ATM was lit by a sodium vapor light from the roof of the building, but even as he approached, Scott knew something was wrong. The white pool of light spilled askew across the face of the automated teller, but the face itself was dark.

His shoulders fell, slumping even more, and he let out a deep sigh. For a moment he only stared at the blank screen and then tentatively ran his fingertips across the numbered keypad.

“That figures.” He looked along the street for a long minute and his thoughts turned dark. A half mile away was the East Bay Bridge and a leap from there

102

could solve his problems for good. A millisecond of bravery was all he’d need to step into the empty air.

His heartache for Victoria and his failure as a father could end.

He stood there long enough for suicide to start sounding like a good idea, and then hastily turned and headed for home. The night felt colder now, or maybe it was the entire world that chilled. From behind him came a tinny, metallic chittering noise, like a mechanical chipmunk, and then a faint wispy sound like the faraway swish of a skater’s blade on ice. Scott turned around to see the last of four twenty dollar bills flutter to the ground.

It took several seconds for what he was seeing to sink in and then he slowly walked back to the machine. He nudged the bills with the toe of his work boot and then bent and scooped them up. Glancing cautiously up and down the darkened street, he slipped the bills into the pocket of his jeans, keeping them wadded tight in a protective fist. The screen of the ATM was still dark, save for a blinking cursor in the upper left corner. Scott punched at a few of the keys and when nothing happened, he pulled the bills from his pocket to examine them, to see if his luck had truly been good just this once. Satisfied, he folded them neatly this time and shoved them back into his pocket. “Thank God for small miracles.” It had been his mother’s saying and seemed to fit.

Immediately a chittering, high-pitched squeal emitted from the machine and words flashed across the screen:

loud and insistent, but Scott kept walking. As he crossed the street, the noise became a sustained, highpitched, parrot–like squawk rising in volume until it was all he could hear. It drowned out the sounds of the city, the traffic and the electric buzz of street lights, and resonated inside his skull like a dentist’s drill. When he couldn’t stand the noise anymore, he ran back to the ATM. The screeching stopped immediately but the screen remained blank.

Breathing heavy, Scott closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against the side of the machine. “Who are you?” His voice a whisper. “What do you want?”

Chitter He looked at the screen.

Do you miss your wife?

He groaned. What the hell was happening here?

He was exhausted and not in the mood for games.

The eighty dollars in his pocket would help ease his stress for a while, but the bills suddenly weighed a ton. “Yes,” he blurted. “I miss her. I miss her so much.” Scott stared at the screen awaiting a response.

He was about to give up when the machine screeched again.

You have questions He smiled grimly at the absurdity of talking to a machine, but he had never spoken to anyone about that night before and it felt good to get it out. “Yeah, I’ve got a few.”

I am not God

There are answers

The words appeared just long enough for them to register in his mind before they disappeared again.

He stared at the screen for a few seconds, and then with a glance at the security camera, he stepped to the front of the pharmacy and peered into the darkened store. He didn’t know how or who, but somebody was playing some sort of game. He decided to leave the money; with his luck, whoever was doing this would report the money stolen and point directly at him.

Even if it was a joke, it was a mean one and he needed no part of it. But as he laid the money at the foot of the ATM, the chittering began again.

Joke? No. Keep the money Scott blinked hard twice and re-read the screen.

How could they know what he’d been thinking?

Nervously, he stuffed the folded bills in his pocket and walked quickly away. The machine chittered again

“Okay, I’ll bite. Why did she have to die?”

There are no answers here His jaw dropped. “What the f...?” he said. It surprised him how much he had expected one. “What are you good for then?”

This machine is down.

Sorry for the inconvenience. Please use our other ATM two blocks east of this location “Yeah...whatever,” he said and turned to leave.

The machine chittered and the message blinked on and off and on again. His energy draining, he said, “I’m done.”

Chitter.

103

Not Yet And then: Please visit our other location two blocks east Scott looked east along Bayberry. He could see clearly for several blocks.

There was no ATM anywhere. He turned back to the screen.

Two blocks east The high-pitched squawk began again and Scott started off briskly walking east before it could invade his mind again. After two blocks he stopped and turned slowly around in a circle. There was nothing.

He looked back toward the ATM but it was dark, even the sodium vapor light had gone out. Turning to leave, he noted a soft, flickering blue glow emitting from the alley. A familiar, soft tinny chitter beckoned him forth. The alley lay before him like a waiting crocodile and he would not enter. This was where they found Vicki’s body. The chitter turned into the angry squawk and threatened to drive him insane in its intensity. His brain fairly vibrated with the sound.

Cupping his hands over his ears, he fought against it until he no longer had the strength, and he slowly allowed the sound to pull him forward into the croc’s mouth.

Set into the alley wall, next to a trash bin, was an ATM with no markings, a screen and keypad encased in a frame but nothing more. The metallic squawk grew louder as he approached, but ceased when he stood before the machine.

“ALL RIGHT!” He screamed. “I’m here, now what?”

Chitter Behind you “What?” He glanced behind him just in time to see the wild-haired shadowman raise his machete above his head. Scott ducked to the left as the blade glanced off the wall, missing his head and sending angry sparks flying. The man pulled back for another swing and Scott tackled him. They fell into a pile of debris and the shadowman lost his grip. The machete clanged off the asphalt and slid a few feet away.

Scott rolled free and leapt up to run but a hand clamped around his ankle and brought him down.

Suddenly the shadowman was on top of him, heavier and stronger than he looked.

With a primal scream, the man tried to bite Scott’s nose with his rotting teeth. Scott squirmed and

bucked, fighting for his life, but when the shadowman’s teeth flashed too close, Scott head butted him. He shoved the man off and rolled toward the machete. Staggering to his feet, he stumbled toward the street.

From behind him, the shadowman screamed and lunged. Scott turned to face him and felt a knife blade sink into his shoulder. The shadowman yelped in triumph and drew out the blade before plunging it deep again.

He was going to die. Suddenly Scott was sure of it.

He was going to die here...in the same alley as Victoria...and he was going to die bloody. He could hear the tinny squawk of the ATM, rising in volume, but distant. Mustering his strength, he kneed the man between the legs and heard a satisfying pop. Shadow man screamed and staggered back a few steps. Scott fell to his knees. His hand closed on the machete.

The ATM screeched at a fever pitch.

Shadowman came for him again and with the last of his strength Scott lunged forward swinging the big blade wide. He caught shadowman in the throat and a gusher of warm blood spewed forth, spraying Scott in the face. The man’s mouth moved, but only a gurgle escaped. Blood soaked the shadowman’s shirt and then he pitched forward.

Scott leaned heavily against the brick wall. He was losing blood fast, becoming light-headed. He closed his eyes trying to muster the strength to find help.

Chitter He let out a weak chuckle. Pushing himself along the wall, Scott read the screen.

He killed Victoria.

Tomorrow he would have taken Joey.

The tears came then, fresh and new. All the anger within him turned into a scream of rage and he threw the machete deep into the shadows of the alley. In a stumbling run, he left the alley, he had to get home – had to make sure Joey was alright. Weaving his way along the street, he prayed he would make it home before he passed out.

Twice he had to stop and vomit, but somehow he made it inside his building and to his front door. His heart was racing and his mouth and nose were filled with the taste and smell of the blood soaking his shirt.

He reached into his pocket for the keys, but his fingers no longer had the strength to grip them. He tried to knock but couldn’t. He moaned and haltingly slid to the floor. Drifting into the hall from beneath the door, he could feel warm air escaping. When the door opened a rush of fresh air warmed him, somehow the

104

furnace was working. He glanced at the unit in the corner, sure he could hear a tinny chitter on the rising, heated air. And just for a second, as he slumped forward into Joey’s arms, he thought he saw a flickering blue light play along the furnace’s edge.

Bill Wilbur began writing in junior high and has published numerous short stories over the years and is the author of the western novel, "Saragosa" and it's sequel "Balacera" set for release in 2010.

Classic Hoodie 90/10 cotton-poly blend classic pullover hooded sweatshirt.

Double-needle stitched armholes and bottom band with 100% cotton face.

Sizes: Adult S to Adult 3X.

Find thousands of custom printed apparel items like above with scifi and fantasy themes at www.kggear.com. Posters, shirts, keychains, mugs, caps, even skateboards with elves, dragons, skulls, fairies and more... preprinted or create your own.

105

She Had Never Been His

by Chris Struyk-Bonn

The students at Holly's Home are expecting some special visitors. ___________________________________________________________

As soon as the office door closed behind his guest,

Mark slumped into his seat, his entire body limp. His glasses clung to the tip of his nose and circles of sweat stained the armpits of his blue button-up shirt.

Mark swiveled in his desk chair and stared out the window, out onto the twenty acres that comprised the school, and ran his fingers through his hair. He could see the ducks on the pond from here – little white dots on the water – and he could make out the first twenty feet of the maze. The maze had been his idea – create an organized world of six foot high bushes and allow the children to think their way through the twists and turns. So many of the children could work through the maze once and then know exactly where to go the next time. He still wasn’t sure which path lead to the exit.

He felt a hand on his arm. He turned in his chair and looked up at his wife. Her make-up needed to be retouched, even her hair needed to be smoothed back into the French twist.

“Are you ready for the next one?” she asked.

“How many more are there?” Mark wiped his hand across his forehead. His fingers came away sticky, salty.

“Five, but I saw another car pull into the parking lot. The family hasn’t made it up the stairs yet.

They’ll be here soon.”

“That makes thirty-four in one day.” His hands shook. He’d had no time for lunch. “What the hell is going on?”

Amber slid her hand over her graying hair. Only this year, when she’d turned fifty, had her hair started to turn gray. Mark had been partially gray since he was thirty-five.

“I don’t know, Mark. Something.” Amber’s blue eyes closed for a minute. She shook her head. She had been leaning against Mark’s desk but now she stood, straightened her skirt, and clicked her way to the door in her pumps. Mark caught a light scent on the air. Jasmine. Amber opened the door and gave the man and his son a big smile.

“Come in,” she said, her voice brisk again, energetic. “Mark is ready to see you now.”

Mark stood up from his chair, pushed his glasses back in place on his nose, and walked around the desk.

“Mark Hanoy,” he said while shaking the man’s hand.

“Ernest Plum,” responded the man. Ernest pumped Mark’s hand up and down while squeezing tight. He was a big man, broad in the shoulders, tall, with a healthy girth. His hair was long and still very black.

It was tied back at the base of his neck in a straggly ponytail. Short wisps of hair stood out around his face.

The boy standing next to him was an almost exact replica. The boy wore black pants, a white t-shirt and a zip-up red sweatshirt. His black hair hung thick and curly down his back; a reminder of how his father’s hair must have been at one time. The boy stared at the objects in Mark’s office. He stared at the globe, at the desk, at the lamp. And then he saw the magnetic balls that swung back and forth, clicking off of each other in rhythm, and the boy approached the desk, staring.

“This is Paul,” said Ernest. He pointed at his son.

Mark nodded.

“I’ve got to tell you, Mark,” said Ernest while swiping the hair away from his face, “today has been a break through for us, an absolute miracle. It feels like I have been waiting all my life for this day, for this moment.” Ernest brought his hands forward and clasped them together.

He radiated heat and energy.

“For more than seven years I have been waiting for Paul to speak. Seven years. In all that time, he hasn’t said a thing. He screams sometimes, yells, but never tries to use words.

We have our system of understanding each other, as you can probably guess, but from Paul’s end, it has never involved spoken language. Until today.”

Ernest couldn’t keep the smile down. He fought it, but it covered his features, squeezed his eyes up and moved his ears back.

“Today he spoke.” Tears appeared in his eyes. “He said two words. ‘Holly’s Home.’ I tell you, it was as clear as a bell.”

Mark seated himself on the edge of his desk, one foot still on the floor. He curved his hands around the edge of the desk.

“I’d heard of your school, but didn’t think it was for Paul. I wanted him home with me, near me. He’s never been much trouble as long as his environment

106

stays the same, so I work from home and he keeps me company.” Ernest blinked the tears out of his eyes and pulled in his smile. “His mother left us a couple of years ago.” Ernest glanced at Paul and then lowered his voice. “She had a difficult time with Paul and his inability to show physical affection. Paul wasn’t quite what she’d bargained for.”

“Sure,” said Mark, nodding, “sure.”

“But when Paul spoke, when he said Holly’s Home, I knew I had to bring him here. If he wants to come here, then he’s got to come. This will be a huge change for him, for me, well, for the both of us, but when your kid stays mute until he’s eight years old and then asks for one small thing, you’re certainly not going to deny him what he wants. He’s got to come here.”

Mark turned his head to look at Paul. Paul’s fascination with the magnetic balls had waned. He now walked, toe to heal, to the lamp, sat down beside it on the floor and pulled the plug out from the wall.

He inserted the plug back in. He did this again and again. The light flashed on, off, on, off. Mark reached over to the lamp and turned it off.

“Sorry,” said Ernest, but Ernest made no move to stop his son from unplugging the lamp.

“No apology needed,” said Mark. “I can see that your son would fit in very well here.”

Mark paused.

“But Ernest, I have one question for you.”

Mark glanced down at his hands curved around the edge of the desk. He studied the crease in his slacks for a minute and then raised his head.

Ernest stood with his head to the side. He still smiled but unclasped his hands and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Why today?” Mark asked. “I have seen twentyeight other children on this very day and almost all of the families relay the same occurrence. Their child spoke today, said the words Holly’s Home, the families brought them here, end of story. What is today, April 22nd? Why are all of these children demanding to be brought here on this specific day?”

“Twenty-eight you say? All autistic?” Ernest’s smile disappeared. Then his arms dropped to his sides.

“All autistic. They range in age from about ten years old to four. All of them have limited speech. All of them are very much lost in their own world but chose today to breech the communication gap. Why?” Ernest shook his head.

“Spring.

Barometric pressure? Who knows. I sure as hell don’t. I can read some of Paul’s body language but I have no idea what’s going on in his head. Like right now.” Ernest pointed at Paul who continued to unplug and plug the

lamp into the outlet. “He does this at home all the time. He’ll do it for hours. I used to worry that he’d get electrocuted but he’s never been shocked. Why does he do it? Who knows.”

Mark nodded. Twenty-eight families- now twentynine - all relaying the same story. It didn’t make sense.

Mark stood up and offered his hand to Ernest again.

“Well, welcome to Holly’s Home,” he said. “We have never turned anyone away before, and we will make room for Paul. My wife or one of the office aids will give you and your son a tour of the school. If you would like, we could show Paul to his classroom and settle him there for an hour while you view the grounds. It’s up to you.”

Ernest shook Mark’s hand with the same strength as before but his smile wasn’t quite as wide.

“Twenty-eight you say. All like Paul.”

Mark nodded.

“That’s damn peculiar.”

Mark wanted to lie down, take off his glasses, rub at the dent in his nose where his glasses rested, but he had five more families to meet, and with thirty-four more students in the school, he had teachers to hire.

He moved to the door, opened it and called for his wife. She was speaking with a parent in the hallway, a thin blond woman with two little girls beside her.

Identical twins. One stood with her head back, counting the ceiling tiles, while the other stared at the back of her hand which she held in front of her face.

A

mber clicked towards Mark, ushered the next parent into his office, and escorted Ernest and Paul down the hallway.

The school was old, wood paneling lined the main corridor; large windows filled the hallway with light. It was a clear day, sunny and bright.

Both Amber and Ernest gazed out the windows as they walked, surveying the lush property around the school, but Paul kept his eyes on the floor, walking with each foot placed in front of the other while avoiding any seams between the tiles in the flooring.

“This will probably be Paul’s classroom,” said Amber, stretching her arm through the doorway.

Ernest stepped into the room, Paul standing next to him.

The class was filled with pillows and cushions.

About twelve other children occupied the room and all the children worked on their own projects. One child painted, another child poked a string through a miniature loom, another child played chess with a teacher.

Three other teachers worked their way

107

around the room, from one child to the next. There were no desks, chairs or tables. A panel against the wall to their left was filled with buttons, switches, pulleys and doors. Paul walked right up to the panel and began pushing the same button again and again.

Above the button, a small light went on and off; first blue then red then green.

Ernest rubbed his eyes with his right hand.

“He’s going to love this place,” he said in a high voice while wiping his eyes on the sleeve of his red flannel shirt.

Amber backed toward the door and touched Ernest on the sleeve.

“Let’s view the grounds while Paul is occupied,” she said.

P

aul continued to turn the light on and off. His concentration was complete; he noticed nothing else in the room. He did not see the seven year old girl pull off her pants and pee on the floor. He did not see another boy smack a teacher in the face with the flat of his hand. For twenty minutes Paul pushed the button and then, his eyebrows drawing down and his nose wrinkling, he stopped. For a minute he glanced around the room, a look of concentration on his face.

And then he dropped to his hands and knees. The other twelve children in the room did the same thing.

In perfect unison, the children began hitting their foreheads against the floor.

“What in the world,” said Mrs. Aubrey Brink, a grayhaired woman wearing a black cotton dress that flowed to the floor. She yelled at the other teachers, “Get the pillows!”

Each teacher grabbed a handful of pillows and cushions and slipped these under the children’s heads.

The children continued to bang in unison. This lasted for five minutes, the teachers rushing from child to child, frantically angling the pillows to cushion the blows.

And then the children stopped. The tallest student, a slim girl with a long blond ponytail, stepped to the doorway while the other children joined her. The youngest, four year old Samson, brought up the rear.

Once all the children were in line, they began to move their feet up and down, up and down until they were synchronized. And then Rachel, the girl in front, moved through the doorway.

“Stop! They can’t leave the classroom,” cried Mrs. Brink.

Another teacher, a young stocky man with thinning hair, ran to the doorway, squeezed through and jumped in front of Rachel. Rachel stopped, opened her mouth and screamed. All twelve children opened

their mouths and screamed with her. The young teacher covered his ears with his hands and looked at Mrs. Brink.

“What the hell is going on?” yelled the young male teacher at the head of the line.

The students continued to scream.

“Move out of the way,” yelled Mrs. Brink.

The male teacher stepped aside and the children stopped screaming.

Mark Hanoy stepped through the doorway beside Rachel and glanced over the children who all stood in line. “I heard screaming.”

He addressed his statement to Mrs. Brink who stood beside the third child in line. She was biting down on her lower lip. Her hands clutched at the fabric of her dress.

“We don’t know, Mark.

The children started banging their heads and now…”

The children were marching in place again, their feet stepping in time. After a minute of synchronized stomping, Rachel moved forward and all the children followed.

Mark took his glasses off, rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“Well,” he said, straightening his shoulders and putting his glasses back in place, “let’s see where they’re headed.”

Rachel led the children down the hallway to the front door of the school. She pushed the doors open and marched down the broad cement stairs that led to the front lawn. Each child held the door open as she came to it, Samson straining and groaning to work the heavy door open. The children marched out onto the front lawn of the school and then formed a wide circle. As Mark watched, the doors to the school opened again and the next class joined the one on the grass. Then the next class came as well until all the children in the school stood grouped in a wide circle on the front lawn. With the new students, over a hundred pupils were assembled on the grass. They did not touch, they did not acknowledge one another; they stood facing inwards, staring at an invisible scene in the middle of the circle.

They waited.

Mark, Amber and the teachers all stood outside the circle and waited as well. Mark waited behind Holly.

She was the oldest autistic child by far, having reached the age of nineteen but she would be at the school forever, at her home, and would help her father and mother as best she could. He watched her from behind. She remained motionless, her honey colored hair stirring slightly with the breeze – the only movement in the field.

108

A figure was rushing down the front steps, moving heavily across the cement path. Mark glanced to his left and saw Ernest.

“Hanoy,” he yelled, “what is this?”

Mark turned to Ernest. The two men examined each other. Ernest had sweat across his forehead and a dark red blush to his cheeks. Mark paused a moment before replying.

“I don’t know, Ernest. The children are waiting for something.”

Mark caught sight of a dark shadow moving across the grass; involuntarily he crouched down as did Ernest beside him. The teachers looked up; not the children. The darkness over Mark’s head felt full, like a hole packed with secrets. It swirled in patterns of black, grey and cream. It emitted no sound. The shape hovered over the circle of children and as it churned, the children raised their hands, looked upwards and closed their eyes.

The darkness descended in columns, each child swirled into an individual cloud of blackness and space, and then they were gone.

The onlookers had time only to blink.

No one moved. Mark closed his eyes and through his mind breathed a word. One word. Holly.

Ernest broke the silence when he pushed Mark aside and ran into the grass, where the children had once stood.

His arms raised to the sky, his eyes wide open, Ernest screamed again and again.

“No…No…No…” Mark covered his eyes with his hands. She was gone. Just gone, but even as the sting of tears filled his eyes and even though he felt the hollowness in his chest, he understood that she’d never been his. In nineteen years of caring for his daughter, she had never hugged him, never held his hand, never sat on his lap and clung to him. He’d always wanted her more than she’d wanted him. He’d been necessary in her life but not loved. Never loved.

Ernest sank to his knees in the middle of the circle.

He moaned, his arms still raised to the sky and his head back.

“Please, take me too,” he cried, his voice shaking.

“Take me too. Paul is all I have. All I live for. Please.

Take me.”

A swirl of blackness shot over their heads, swirled about Ernest, and sucked him away. The dust spread, circled about their heads, but no one else spoke; five other parents crouched in the grass, whimpered but did not move. Mark held his breath, felt his wife’s hand slip into his own, and the two stood together, watching the particles dissipate and then disappear.

109

Chris Struyk-Bonn is a MFA student at Portland State University. She disagrees with the notion that science fiction or fantasy can not be considered literary forms of writing.

Dappler's Department Store

by Kristin Dearborn

Welcome to Dappler's. We hope you enjoy your visit, and good luck on finding a way out. ___________________________________________________________

Not Dappler’s. Anywhere but Dappler’s.

“Are you sure we can’t go to Best Buy?” Amanda asked, the sun’s heat baking off the asphalt in the parking lot. Glass sliding doors were a weak attempt to modernize a façade that hadn’t changed since 1970.

White lettering against olive green proclaimed “Dappler’s!” in a bubbly font.

“Dappler’s has the best prices around,” her husband said, and Dave would know. He’d spent the entire morning comparing prices at all the local retailers.

“When you see you’ll stop being such a snob. Some of these TVs are a steal.”

“Thanks,” she said.

“It was a joke.”

Amanda exhaled through her nose and raked her fingers through her short, styled hair. She knew that doing this made her look like a porcupine, but she didn’t care.

“I know. Sorry.”

Instead of a whoosh of air-conditioned air, what met them inside Dappler’s was too warm and almost moist. Staying too long, this close to lunch, was going to make her sick.

She hadn’t crossed this threshold in over two decades.

Amanda thought she could amuse herself in home furnishings while Dave picked out the new TV. She wanted a fabulous new television just as much as Dave did, but he got so much more passionate about the shopping. She wanted something to watch when she came home from work. She didn’t care if it was 1080p or 1080i. He would compare every feature on every model, and they would be here for hours.

She stared at another plaid comforter. They didn’t need a new comforter. She wanted to go home and put her feet up. She’d wanted to visit some of the other stores at the mall, but being here just made her want to go home, surround herself with nice, clean things. Crossing over into the large appliance section of the store, she wandered among the water heaters.

They didn’t need a new one of those, either.

Unlike most of the stores in the Cascades Run mall, Dappler’s department store hadn’t been rebuilt after the fire in the late nineties. It looked like a holdover from 1974, and Amanda wondered how they managed to stay in business. While the Sears’ and Kohls’

employees dressed fashionably, the Dappler’s staff all wore shapeless canvas aprons in a drab green, the store’s predominant color.

She spent a few moments looking at paint colors.

The names always amused her, such as a pink called “Stolen Kiss.” Dappler’s, she decided, was best described as “Relentless Olive”.

She looked at her watch and saw the hands were still. As if she needed one more thing today. Tapping the face with a manicured fingernail, she sighed and decided that Dave was done. If he’d picked one out they would buy it, if not, it would have to wait for another day. His voice floated to her across the store, deep and booming and slightly monotonous. He asked about component cables versus HDMI cables, but something stirring by the glass doors to the automotive section caught Amanda’s attention.

A shadow?

She hurried toward the sound of Dave’s voice and came to a dead-end she didn’t recognize. These places were all like mazes. At least the newer stores had hanging placards as signposts. She turned, wondering when she’d come into ladies fashion and how they could get away with selling such ugly retro looking clothes. That was the style these days, the bizarre nostalgia today’s youth had for the past. Fluorescent colors hadn’t been cool the first time around, and they were no better twenty-five years later, but the prices, she noted, were very reasonable. A half-smile played on her lips when she saw a patterned dress just like the one she’d worn the first day of her senior year in high school. And her first day of work. The unbidden thought banished the smile from her face.

Another flicker of movement caught her eye, this time just beside a rack of blazers that looked like they’d been splatter painted with a rust color. The clothes still swung on their hangers from the sudden movement.

“That’s just creepy,” she said, realizing she was talking to herself. They shouldn’t have come here.

She rummaged through her purse for her phone, she would call Dave—that would get him moving—but her cell had no signal.

“Dammit!” She shook the phone, as if that would help. They needed to change carriers. This was the last straw on that front. She was sick of not having signal when she needed to make a call. Humanity had

110

put a man on the moon—you’d think reliable cell other shoppers, she kept seeing them from the corners service, for ninety dollars a month, wouldn’t be too of her eyes, gone like mirages when she turned. The much to ask. must in the air was heavier now, and the store was “Can I help you?” A voice lowed, breaking Amanda warmer. She smelled a faint smell of smoke, the kind from her mental rant. you can never get out after a fire. She reached for a The bored girl in her tentish canvas apron didn’t folded t-shirt and brought it to her nose. Smoke look well. She gazed at Amanda with watery brown damaged. You couldn’t sell that. This must be how eyes bracketed with dark circles. they could afford to be so cheap. She set it down, not “Are you all right?” Amanda asked. She didn’t caring that it was a crumpled heap around its neatly know what she would do if the girl said “no” and folded kin. regretted asking.

There. The customer service desk. It was deserted, “All ladies sweaters are on sale,” the girl recited, in front of the men’s dressing room doors. A silver bell her voice dull. sat on the counter, accompanied “Thank you. Are you okay?” by a typewritten sign, “Please ring The girl blinked at her. bell for service.” Who used a “Can I help you?” typewriter these days? She could Amanda inhaled, ready to ask Gina looked up from where even see the indents from the she was folding men's where her manager was, carrier on the paper. Her hand shouldn’t she sit down? “No. hovered above it for a moment. polyester slacks, keeping Thank you.” The girl nodded and the creases perfect on every She let it drop and a merry “ting!” turned, refolding a sweater filled the room. The sound rang pair. Her skin moved a which didn’t need the attention. for a moment, echoing perhaps split second behind the She realized she couldn’t hear more than it should have, then turn of her head, like a Dave anymore. She turned to ask she touched the bell to silence it. the girl to direct her to the She looked around. Maybe Dave gelatinous covering. electronics section, but she was was done. Maybe he was looking gone--vanished in rows of for her. unfashionable, outdated clothes.

“Can I help you?” A greenWhere had she gone? She must smocked woman spoke in front of be kneeling somewhere, one couldn’t just vanish. her, and Amanda jumped with a stifled squeak. “I Dappler’s employees couldn’t even keep up with didn’t mean to frighten you.” changing the light bulbs. The fluorescent bulbs No. Impossible. The woman looked exactly like the overhead flickered and many of them were out. It boss Amanda had in high school, the one who would didn’t seem this dark on the way in. There should be never let her go home until the entire store was clean, an exit to the parking garage, an exit to the mall, and and didn’t pay her for the extra time. The one that one that faced the massive parking lot. The low green screamed at her and called her an idiot. She would be ceiling and rack after rack of mediocre merchandise much older now, well into her sixties…this woman dominated her view. After a few moments—she couldn’t have been much more than forty. She didn’t couldn’t be sure how many, her watch had wear a name tag. What was her old boss’ name? stopped—she found herself back in the ladies section. Jenny? Jean? Gina. Besides, she’d heard Gina was Walking in a circle involved three turns, but she was here when the fire happened. And she hadn’t survived. sure she’d been walking in a straight line. Twice more “Can you direct me to the electronics section?” she saw flickers of movement in the shadows, even The woman chuckled. “Right this way. We have the went so far to call out “excuse me!” in a weak voice, finest selection in the county.” She smelled the but dull muzak from old speakers in the ceiling was all slightest odor of something rotting as she passed, a she could hear. This song, she was certain, was an mixture of old woman and something more foul. instrumental version of a Partridge Family tune.

“Is this a joke?” she asked, when they arrived at the The ceilings hadn’t been this low when they electronics section. Nothing in this part of the store arrived. Of course it had. But a more primitive piece of was less than twenty-five years old. Huge TVs, mostly her insisted that it hadn’t. with faux wood paneling, knobs instead of buttons, Why wasn’t there anyone else in the store? and bulbous backs mocked her with their glassy, Wednesday afternoon wasn’t prime shopping time, but colored images. A He-Man cartoon played across all of there should be someone else here. But there were the screens.

111

The woman smiled at her, her waxy, pudgy cheeks turning up. “I told you it was the best around!”

“Where are the newer TVs?” she asked. “Where is my husband?” She pulled her phone out of her pocket.

Now it was off, and pushing the button wouldn’t switch it on.

“This is the newest one we have,” she said, gesturing to a twenty six inch RCA model.

Where were the flat panels, the LCDs and the plasma displays? Where was Dave?

The woman stepped in closer and she exuded a sweet, rotten smell that roiled her stomach, covered in Chanel perfume. “Can I get you a glass of water?”

It was Gina. It had to be. The perfume was the same, and the cloying stink brought back a swath of memories.

“No!” she cried. The thought of drinking anything that this woman brought her was unbearable.

“Just calm down,” Gina said, taking a hesitant step backwards. “Why don’t you come upstairs to the office with me, and we can have your husband paged.” Oh, Amanda knew where the Dappler’s office was, and she wasn’t about to go there.

Gina’s doughy cheeks seemed to be drooping now, leaving red, rheumy pockets under her watery blue eyes.

“I’d like to go outside,” Amanda said, her voice hoarse.

“Your husband will never find you if you leave the store. Come on, we’ll page him.” Gina turned and walked away, raising a hand to her face, as though she were adjusting something. Amanda’s feet were rooted to the spot. This wasn’t the same store she’d come into. It was the same store she’d worked in twenty something years ago.

“Ma’am?” Gina said, turning to her, her trademark impatient tone creeping in, the voice Gina used with the idiot customers.

“I’ll see myself out,” Amanda said, and as they stared at one another for a moment longer, “Don’t you remember me?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Never mind. Thank you for the help.” Amanda turned and walked in a straight line. Away from the dark, unimposing stairwell which led up to the Dappler’s offices. She spent twenty hours a week here for most of her senior year, she could find the exit.

Instead of the exit, she found herself moving through ladies fashion, past the blazers, and back at the Men’s dressing room and the ominous maw of the stairway.

Gina looked up from where she was folding men’s polyester slacks, keeping the creases perfect on every pair. Her skin moved a split second behind the turn of

her head, like a gelatinous covering. Amanda rubbed at her eyes, tears were starting there, but the amorphous wobbling stayed.

“I remember you now.”

“No,” Amanda said, and she turned and ran. Her purse dropped from her shoulder, spilling its contents on the tile, but she didn’t stop for it, didn’t look back.

Exit, exit, there had to be an exit. She started to cry, the slick soles of her heels slipping, the straps of the expensive shoes digging into her ankles.

She was back at the dressing rooms.

“No!” She looked left and right, desperate for a glimpse of anything.

“Miss Amanda Wheeler. Too good for us here. So good she had to steal from us.”

The words hit like a bucket of ice water. As soon as she’d seen Gina she knew this was coming.

“There’s nothing worse than a liar,” Gina said. “I gave you a promotion after only a few months and you did this to me?” Gina reached out, clasping Amanda’s wrist. The flesh of her fingers felt like sausages of gelatin, but the grasp held her tight.

Amanda’s stomach roiled and she closed her eyes.

Opened them again. Her diamond tennis bracelet broke, dropping to the floor.

“You fired me.” It was hot in here, so hot. Her little sprint had her covered in sweat. “And I gave it back.”

The hand was tight on her wrist.

“You’re a thief and a liar. And I trusted you.”

Gina’s eyes changed, milky white now instead of blue, like something that’s been left under water for far too long.

It was a replay of a twenty year old conversation.

Only this time, Gina’s skin didn’t seem to fit. The rotting Chanel stink and the smoke smell gagged Amanda, forcing themselves into her nose, she could taste them on the back of her throat. We didn’t have the money to get a dress for the dance. I turned myself in. I gave it back. The guilt of taking the dress, the shame of bringing it back, worn once, eradicated any fun she’d had at the senior prom, even the memory of dancing under the colored lights with Dave. He’d complimented the dress, told her he fell in love with her that night.

And she’d never told him about her theft.

Amanda pulled at her wrist, but unlike the past when she’d broken the woman’s grip and stormed out weeping, Gina’s grasp didn’t budge.

“I’ll give you another chance, Amanda.”

“Another—” her voice croaked off into nothing. So hot, and the smell. Her ears began to ring, her mouth was filling with thin, coppery saliva. She was going to pass out. No…couldn’t be helpless, not here. White

112

swept in from the edges of her vision, followed by a soft, sweet black.

She wore the green Dappler’s apron when she came to. Out on the sales floor, she moved like an automaton. When she saw a woman admiring outdated sweaters she asked, her voice dull, “How can I help you?”

Order a copy of OUTER REACHES online at www.blackmatrixpub.com, Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble, or have your local bookseller order one for you.

Every issue is packed with over 80,000 words of science fiction adventure.

113

Kristin Dearborn is a freelance writer in Burlington, Vermont, currently enrolled in Seton Hill University’s Writing Popular Fiction MFA program. Kristin is a member of the New England Horror Writer’s Association and the 2004 winner of the University of Maine’s Hamlet playwriting contest.

114