Generic #4

EMERSON’S ONLY GENRE FICTION LITERARY MAGAZINE

C I R E N E G 13

E ISSU

#4

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Here’s to Four...and More!

Generic, Emerson College’s only genre fiction magazine, is going strong with its fourth issue! If you want to read a myth with a new twist, explore alternate history, or scare yourself with some horror… we’ve got you covered. Generic is dedicated to presenting the best genre fiction Emerson has to offer.

Featured Genres | Fall 2013: Alternate History, Horror

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IN THIS ISSUE : GOD OF MISCHIEF ERIN ARATA

INSOMNIAC SHANNON BUSHEE

OFF WITH HIS HEAD JANELLE CAPUTO

RED-HAND MIRIA TALIA ROCHMANN

THE PRODIGAL SUN RETURNS LINDSAY GELLER

THE BIG BAD JANELLE CAPUTO

MASQUERADE ANNIE WHITEHOUSE

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Ge ne r ic , I s s ue 4 , Fa l l 2 0 1 4 Co py righ t f o r a ll s to r ie s be lo ngs to the i r cre a t o rs Ge ne r ic i s c o p yr ight o f Undergradua te S tude nts f o r P ubl is hi ng, Em e rs o n Co l l e g e De s ign by Li z a C o r tr ight C o ve r A r t by Ta lia R o c hm a nn This is s ue is se t in Gi ll S a ns , S tylo gr a p h, a nd Pa l a t i n o L i n o t y p e

Ele ctr o nic e di ti o n p ublis he d a t is s u u . co m P r i nt e diti o n p r inte d a t the Emers o n C o l le ge P r i nt a nd C o p y C e nte r , B o s t o n M A

table of contents foreword

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God o f M is c hie f

6

Erin Arata

In so mn i a c

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Off Wi th H is H e a d

22

R e d - Han d Miria

27

Th e P r o d ig a l S u n R e t u rns

35

Big B a d

41

Masq ue r a d e

48

author biographies

60

Shannon Bushee

Janelle Caputo

Ta l i a R o c h m a n n

Lindsay Geller

Janelle Caputo

Annie Whitehouse

Generic Staff Editors-in-Chief: Alexandra Kowal, Liza Cortright Editorial Staff: Caitlin Anders, Sydney Hermanson, Elizabeth Venere, Chelsey Falco, TJ Ohler, Jacqueline Marr Copyeditors: Natalie Hamil, Kaitlin Coddington, XXXX Proofreader: Julia Domenicucci

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Dear Readers, Undergraduate Students for Publishing is proud to present its fourth issue of Generic, Emerson’s only genre fiction magazine! While there are many opportunities to learn about literary fiction at Emerson, we noticed that the college lacked outlets to discuss genre fiction. Generic was founded to provide a haven for students wanting to gain experience in the world of genre writing and publishing.

Every month, we hold writing workshops dedicated to specific genres. Students are given an overview on writing within the genre, and an opportunity to begin a genre piece. The genres covered this semester were alternate history and horror, with past genres including romance, paranormal urban fantasy, Western, and more.

Regardless of genre, quality stories are quality stories. We want to promote the idea that genre fiction is as valuable as literary fiction. In Generic, you can read well-crafted stories about monsters or alternate historical events or a future sunless world.

Although the stories in this issue highlight the elements we love about genre fiction, we hope that you can also appreciate them simply as fiction. Our stories will make you think, entertain you, and hopefully encourage you to further explore the world of genre fiction.

Enjoy! xoxo,

Pub Club

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My th o lo gy A da p t a t i o n

God of Mischief "

Erin Arata

The man who called himself Bryant Parkson was waiting for Dagny across the street, watching her from the shadows of a tall, steel-fronted bank. He was wearing his long, black coat, buttons reflecting the sunlight as it bounced off a pile of snow, and she recognized his winding, green scarf. His skin was pearly and his cheeks were flushed; he was half-hidden by a pillar, but clearly defined, as bright as he’d been in the cafe. He smiled when he saw her. She felt herself frown.

Okay, she thought. It’s going to be okay.

The night had been a long one, spent perched on the edge of her sofa, barely shifting, barely breathing, as her pulse pounding through her skull like a fly against a window pane. There had never been a question of sleep: her bare feet quivered along the sofa seam with far too much vitality for a girl who hadn’t slept in two days. This wasn’t usually a problem. After two years and six Tech Weeks at the Lapis, the fact that unsolved problems kept her brain on high alert seemed like more of a blessing than a curse.

Even when she wasn’t on Skype, coaching Kyle at four in the morning, or being startled awake by an email from Marcus, with the latest script revision that she “just had to approve,” she considered it a gift that some quirk in her DNA made it impossible to get into bed when there was a stack of unread books beside it. This had been most valuable in the past few months, as she’d pored over mythology for Guardians of the Realm, insatiable as she characterized Thor, Njord, and Loki, bouncing ideas back to Marcus at all hours of the night.

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This morning though, as these same ideas leaked their way through her memories, trying to explain what she thought she’d seen, it was no blessing that sleep refused her escape.

Still, she was curious. She was worried, yes, and terrified; possibly more than she’d even been in her life and she’d flown from Portland to Broadway at twenty-three, without a dollar in her pocket or any idea what to do. Her parents had called her crazy then. Maybe she still was, especially for thinking Bryant Parkson might have really done what she thought she’d seen him do.

But if she was crazy, she would’ve been the only one to see him do it. If she was crazy and Bryant Parkson wasn’t real, then the waitress in the cafe wouldn’t have handed them two menus or brought two cups of coffee-no-milk-one-sugar-please.

She wouldn’t have turned around from the table behind them and blinked twice before asking, “Where’d your friend go, sweetie?” If Dagny was crazy, no one else –– not Marcus, not the waitress, not the girl on the street who’d given him a once-over on their way back from the Lapis –– would have seen Bryant Parkson. But they had seen him. And if Dagny wasn’t crazy, that made Bryant Parkson something more than a harbinger of horror and loss. He was a fact to research, a problem to solve, and the only way to solve it was to find him again.

Luckily, that part was easy.

She waited for a gap in the traffic. Then, she crossed the street.

A stream of businesspeople was suddenly all that separated her from Bryant Parkson. This detail didn’t escape him as he held her gaze and stepped through a gap in the stream of people. The light hit him seconds before the crowd; one woman turned, lips forming an apology, and he replied graciously with words Dagny couldn’t hear. She had a feeling he’d planned for the collision. As if he wanted to prove he was really there.

It’s going to be okay, she repeated.

The last of the businessmen folded his way around the stranger. Then, he was standing, unimpeded, on the sidewalk in front of her. He still had that smile on his face and the intelligent glimmer she’d seen in his eyes the night before. It took her a moment to realize she didn’t know what to say. What could she say to this man who’d been a coffee date, a possible hallucination, then a complete and utter mystery?

“I had hoped you would come,” he said, saving her the trouble.

“Oh,” she replied, almost whispering. “Well, I thought you might be here.”

The man’s smile widened as he took another step; Dagny would’ve moved but, at the last second, he veered to her left.

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“Shall we walk?” he asked, nodding toward a wave of approaching tourists.

“I’ve found it difficult to stay still in this city’s crowds, and I imagine you have a few questions to ask me.”

He started down the sidewalk and, without really thinking, Dagny followed him. She kept an arm’s length between them as he led her down Forty-Ninth Street, her eyes trained on the back of his head. Every so often, she caught a glimpse of his face, turned to examine a building or watch a bus pass; he looked interested, appraising, entirely genial, but he never looked at her.

Finally, as he took a right onto Sixth Avenue, she opened her mouth.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

Bryant Parkson shrugged.

“What does that mean?”

He shrugged again. “I had no destination in mind.”

Dagny felt an unexpected rush of annoyance, her lips gathering into a line and her boots crunching as her steps came harder, angrier. She had to stop herself from surging forward and demanding that he stop being so cavalier. If she did, he might disappear again, and the thought of not knowing was what truly terrified her. More than being crazy. More than anything.

“Do not mistake my silence for apathy,” the man continued in a calm, pleasant voice. “I’m simply waiting.”

“For what?”

“For your questions.” A man in a sweat suit passed close to the stranger’s shoulder and he stepped back, falling in line with Dagny. “I’ve said many times now that I will tell you what you wish to know.”

“Okay.” She lifted her gaze from the sidewalk and realized, with a jolt, he had turned his eyes onto her face. They were duller, somehow, than they’d been in the cafe –– their shade of green was just as vibrant and they glimmered with the same sort of sly intelligence, but there had been a flash of something, right before he’d vanished, that was missing now. It had been the same, the night before, when he’d appeared, then disappeared, on the street. She remembered it now that it was missing: the way his emerald eyes had looked limitless. It was all she could do to hold contact as she asked, “How did you do it?”

Bryant Parkson’s smile turned devious. “Magic,” he replied.

“So you’re a magician.”

“Yes.” “Do you do card tricks, too?” She wasn’t sure if he meant to toy with her or if he was answering honestly. She worked in theater, after all, so she knew

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her way around fly systems and trap doors. “Was it mirrors, then? Hypnosis?

Misdirection? Did you bribe the waitress to help?”

“Not that kind of magician,” the man replied, quietly.

But Dagny was on a tirade. Her thoughts came more rapidly than she could think them until her ears were burning and her pace became quick and deliberate; soon, she was three steps ahead of him. “Whatever you did,” she growled in his general direction, “Can you tell me why you did it? You said you wanted to talk about mythology. Then, you went all David Blaine on me.

You interfered with my life. You made me think I was insane. I’m all for practical jokes, but I don’t know you. Did I do something to offend you I don’t know about?”

Bryant Parkson’s smile faded.

Good, Dagny thought. He deserves to feel bad. But as her pulse thudded back to normal and her footsteps slowed –– after thirty seconds passed with no response from the man –– she felt herself frown. Had she taken it too far? Was he going to refuse her questions now? Maybe she shouldn’t have compared him to David Blaine...

“Look,” she said. “I just want to know your game here. You said you’d tell me anything, so just answer this: why me?”

The man’s voice was painstakingly measured as he said, “Because you could see me.”

“What does that mean?”

“It would be easier if I could show you.”

“Then show me!” Dagny cried.

Suddenly, Bryant Parkson had hold of her, tugging her back in the direction they’d come. She snatched her wrist from his grip, avoiding eye contact, but followed him anyway until, with a last turn, she realized where they were headed. “Are we going to the library?” she asked.

“Nearly,” he replied. “I’m taking you to Bryant Park.”

“Bryant Park,” she repeatedly, blinking. Her anger deserted her as she followed him past the stone lions and the first barren trees of the dusky, snow-muffled park. She couldn’t believe she’d been so stupid: she’d lived in New York for two years and been to the library more times than she could count, so how could she not have noticed the fake name? More importantly, why did he need one?

She frowned, more fragments of memorized myths wedging themselves into her half-formed explanations. But there were a thousand reasons to hide a name. He might be an escaped convict or a former politician or some esteemed

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British illusionist, who thought his real name would be recognized. There were a thousand reasons to hide a name, not one of which was the fact that he might be a figure from her library books.

The first place he took her was the shops.

Stuck in among the cluster of pop-ups, artist corrals, and nearly empty holiday stalls, which had been packed with ornaments, decorations, and post-Christmas bargain shoppers only three weeks ago, was a wooden, teepee-like structure, devoted to metalworking. Folding tables stuck out of the open front doors, displaying twisted bits of steel, reworked into trees, miniature humans, and strange, metallic monsters in varying positions.

Dagny followed Bryant into the shop, which was warm and cramped, despite its open doors. Every once in a while, a breeze would sneak inside and tug her hair over her eyes; each time she brushed it away, she noticed that it stirred Bryant’s as well, and used this to remind herself he was real. It also helped that the shop-owner, seated at the back of the store behind some kind of school-desk, kept glowering at Bryant, like he was about to pocket a dragon figurine.

To the owner’s credit, Bryant did seem distinctly interested in the creatures; with a swift, graceful movement, he picked up one of them, lifting it until it was level with his probing gaze. His puzzled expression turned thoughtful and, for a moment, Dagny could’ve sworn the dragon opened its mouth in a silent roar; startled, she blinked, and everything was as it had been. Well, that wasn’t exactly true.

Bryant Parkson was now smirking at her.

“Was that...” she started to say, but decided against it. Impossible, she reminded herself, but so was turning invisible and he’d somehow managed that.

“Was that another question?” he asked, still smirking as he stepped closer.

She shook her head. “You said you were going to show me something,” she chided, injecting some semblance of annoyance into her voice, despite the fact that it was shaking.

Bryant raised his eyebrows. “Patience,” he said, softly. “I don’t forget my promises so easily, even when faced with metal dragons.”

“Oh, of course,” Dagny tried to maintain her sarcasm, but felt it fade by her second word. “Do you face many metal dragons?” she asked after a moment, not sure if she meant it or not.

“I wouldn’t say many,” he replied, lowering the figurine, and reaching for one on its left: an ouroboros with gilded metal scales and shards of sea glass for eyes.

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“This one, however...”

Dagny was sure, this time, that the metal snake winked at her from the man’s open palm. The idea almost paralyzed her when she realized it looked exactly like her favorite painting of Jörmungandr: The World Serpent, child of the giantess, Angrboða.

Fathered by Loki.

Breaths coming in shallow bursts, Dagny watched Bryant Parkson raise the ouroboros and wave it at the shop-owner. “What’s the price of this creation?” he asked, voice twisting into velvet ripples.

“Sixty,” the man answered. “Cash only.”

Bryant Parkson smiled. “Ah,” he said. “Cash only. Of course.”

And then he faded.

For a moment, it seemed as if his form would continue to darken and Dagny worried that he would vanish as he had in the cafe, leaving her answerless for the second time. Please, she thought, not again, not now. Not after he’d waved Jörmungandr in her face. But he didn’t disappear; he was paler, swathed in shadow, but stood before her, turning to face her with a malevolent smirk. His eyes were the only bright things about him, and their depth right then was unfathomable.

“Hey!” the shop-owner shouted, making Dagny start; her eyes jolted away from Bryant and she watched the man swing his head from left to right. “What the hell?” he demanded, blinking rapidly, expression dancing from anger to confusion as he tried to convince himself that he’d looked away at the wrong moment or missed Bryant walking out. All the thoughts she’d had last night were written across his brow, plain as lines on a script. All except one: the impossible idea that this man might be...

“Thinks he’s quick on his feet, does he?” The owner interrupted, his face settling on fury. “You’ll be paying for what your friend took then, or I’ll be calling the cops on both ‘a yous.”

“I – I –” Dagny stuttered, her gaze flicking from the metalworker’s to her companion, still very visible, very present in the shop; Bryant Parkson caught her eye and winked. “Um, I...” She swallowed, trying to keep panic from rising. This was all happening too quickly; she needed time to think. It was one thing to consider, safe in her apartment with her playbills and cat, that a man had and could disappear. It was one thing to discuss it, quietly, as he led her down the sidewalk. But now that it was actually happening, it was all she could do to stay upright.

“Hey – I don’t know what he’s – ” Her voice broke before she could finish,

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which was just as well because Bryant had begun to speak.

“I am invisible,” he explained. “This man cannot see me and, should anyone enter this shop, they will not see me either. Typically, when I become invisible, this is what happens. Now, however, I am one of two beings on this realm –– and eight others –– who knows where I am standing at this very moment.”

Two beings, Dagny thought. He said beings, not people. And realms. Nine of them.

She tried to focus on what that meant, but the man behind the desk was still shouting, completely unaware that anyone beside Dagny had spoken. “I don’t care what he thinks he’s doing,” he thundered. “Only thing matters is he left my shop with my merchandise and you’d best be handing me sixty bills in the next five seconds or I’ll be –” Before he could finish, before Dagny could move or speak or quell her confusion, Bryant Parkson brightened again and, with his back to the owner, said, “On second thought, your prices are rather steep. I apologize for the inconvenience, but we’ll be going now. If you please, Dagny.”

Without pause, he took her gently by the elbow and led her through the door. She was so stunned that her legs wobbled beneath her. He was holding her upright by the time they’d crossed the path.

“That man,” she sputtered. “I thought he was going to kill me. And you... what did you...” Her knees knocked together and she broke from his grip, sinking to the stone curb; she could feel snow seeping through her leggings, but the sensation was calming, somehow. “He couldn’t see you,” she said, “And you didn’t...” She trailed off, glancing back at the shop, noticing how small and bare its walls were: no mirrors, no trap doors, and barely any light. There had been no time for mentalism, hypnotism, or any kind of misdirection; even if there had been, Dagny had been watching Bryant the whole time. He’d moved.

He’d spoken, all without the other man noticing. “How?” she whispered.

“Magic,” he told her.

Her neck drooped until her nose bumped her knees and she stayed like that for a while, playing and replaying the scene in her head, watching again as her companion faded, then spoke without being heard; re-imagining the shop-owner’s furious shouting and his dumbfounded look as Bryant reappeared; remembering the dragon, the ouroboros, and Bryant’s words: I am one of two beings on this realm –– and eight others –– who knows where I am standing at this moment. “I don’t believe you,” she said, softly.

“Yes, you do.”

She looked up, lifting her chin to barely meet his eyes. They had returned

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to normal, but there was something –– some semblance of the power she’d noticed –– churning behind the irises. He was right; she did believe him. But that didn’t make it any easier. What she knew qas magic was little more than a mirage, an illusion, a mischievous trick, meant to fool.

But Loki was the god of mischief.

She swallowed, lungs squeezing and expanding as Bryant sank into a crouch beside her. “I find,” he said, holding her gaze until she dropped his, “that, when faced with the possible and the impossible, it’s important to consider which satisfies more of your questions and eliminate the other.”

“What are you, Sherlock Holmes?” Dagny choked out.

“Who?” But she didn’t answer him; she was already taking his advice.

Two nights ago, as playgoers and crew rushed across the lobby of the Lapis Theater, squeezing their way into souvenir lines and through the doors, toward bathrooms and exits, no one had paid a second glance to the man standing still, or noticed his surprise when Dagny asked him if he needed any help. No one had acknowledged his soft, clear voice, as he’d asked her role in the production, or been concerned by his pointed grin as she told him she was the dramaturge, in charge of research and dialects, and that she was immensely interested in Norse mythology –– especially when it came to Loki.

No one had said anything, but it began to occur to Dagny that she may as well have been talking to herself for all the strange looks she got, even though Bryant Parkson had been right beside her. And last night, in the cafe, after telling her that, sometimes, the Norse god of mischief traveled to Earth, searching for a bit of fun among men and women who could not see him, she’d watched the man fade into nothing –– how was that possible? Because she’d imagined him? Because she was crazy? She didn’t think so. And the girl on the street, the waitress, Marcus –– now the metalworker, too –– had all looked at Bryant, had all seen him, had spoken to him. How could he hide himself like that, and then return to normal, as if nothing had happened?

His voice snaked its way through her thoughts. Magic.

She took another breath and looked into the man’s face. “All right,” she began and, though her voice chirped on its way out, at least it sounded steady.

“Let’s say I believe you. You do magic. Is turning invisible your only power or do you do other tricks?”

His delighted smile had the hint of something savage.

“Oh, Dagny,” he said. “There is so much you have yet to see.”

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" Ho r r o r

Insomniac "

Shannon Bushee

After his exhausting three-month ordeal of a business trip, Gary was happy to finally be surrounded by the domestic bliss of a warm kitchen. It wasn’t his own kitchen, which would have been ideal, but it was close enough. He was spending the night with his childhood best friend, Scott Coulton, and his wife, Marge. They lived thirty minutes away from the airport, and whenever Gary came back home on a late flight, they insisted he stay with them instead of trying to drive jet-lagged two and a half hours back to his own house.

Gary sat at the table, while Scott leaned against the counter. Marge, wearing the same ratty pink bathrobe she’d worn when the three of them were in college together, passed out mugs of tea before taking a seat at the table opposite Gary.

“Thanks.”

The tea warmed Gary’s fingers, which had nearly gone numb from the stormy weather outside. After the perpetual rain of London, he had been looking forward to the warm weather of home. He was more than a little annoyed by the minor hurricane beating down on them that night. Even the five minutes he’d spent standing on the curb waiting for Scott to pull up in his van had left him shivering and soaking wet. His clothes were now in the Coultons’ dryer, so Scott let Gary borrow a pair of pajamas.His coat, however, was slung over the back of his chair. He never liked to be far from his coat, because he kept his most vital possessions in its pockets.

“Tell us about your trip,” Scott said. “London must’ve been exciting, judging by the look of things.” He pointed to the black cast on Gary’s left arm,

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which had been put there about a week prior.

“It was an on-the-job injury.” Gary lazily raised his arm in the air and, with a grin, he added, “I could tell you how I got it, but then I’d have to kill you.”

He drew his thumb against his neck in the universal gesture of pretending to slit someone’s throat.

Gary had established years ago that Marge and Scott were not allowed to ask him about what he did for a living. They knew that he took part in clandestine operations for the government, but they did not know what those operations were, why those operations had called him to London for the past three months, or even to which department he reported.

“Aren’t you getting a little old for this?” Scott asked. “I feel like every time I’ve seen you lately, you’ve got a new injury. Before it was your leg, and before that it was your other arm—“ “Fine, I’ll tell you. I fell off my motorcycle.” It was a lie, but Gary felt worse about letting Scott worry than he did about lying. “It’s really not a big deal.

Don’t worry about it.”

Scott and Marge were still watching him worriedly, so Gary realized that he would need to change the subject to one he knew would distract his friends entirely.

“Enough about me. How are the kids?”

Gary adored the Coulton kids. They were smart, well-behaved and funny, everything he hoped his own kids would be, if he ever had any. His line of work made it difficult to even date, much less to settle down and take care of a family. His only consolation was that he had been made the Coulton kids’ honorary uncle.

Marge quickly caught him up. The oldest, Michael, would be going to his first-choice university on a baseball scholarship. Tammy was fourteen and recently got her first boyfriend, so the family’s new favorite pastime was trying to embarrass her when he came over to the house. The baby of the family, eight-year-old Gracie, was starting ballet class.

“Although sometimes she’s too tired to really dance, poor thing,” Marge said. “She’s been having a lot of trouble getting to sleep lately.”

“Oh, really? Why’s that?”

“She thinks that there’s a monster living in her closet,” Marge said wearily.

“It comes out at night to scare her. We’ve tried everything to make her go to bed. We’ve taken all the clothes out of the closet to show her that there’s no monster there.

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“We tried using Monster Repellant—you know, filling a squirt bottle with water and just spraying it everywhere—but she says it doesn’t work.”

“After dark,” added Scott, “she won’t go in any room unless the lights are on. She says the lights are the only thing that scares it away, and as soon as it gets dark again, the monster comes back. Michael’s started giving her his iPad so she can watch cartoons until she falls asleep. I’ll go to wake her up for school in the morning, and she’ll be clutching the thing to her chest, passed out sitting up. It’s terrible for her, but it’s the only thing that will make her tired.”

Gary frowned. “That’s…interesting.”

Marge opened her mouth to speak again, but then she put her finger over her lips and pointed towards the ceiling. Gary, too, listened silently for a moment. He heard the faint sounds of feet pitter-pattering on the floor above them. The footsteps echoed down the stairs and a small girl with big, brown eyes came into the kitchen, holding a Barbie flashlight in one hand and a teddy bear in the other. When she saw Gary sitting in her usual spot at the kitchen table, she stopped short.

“Uncle Gary? I didn’t know you were here.”

“Oh, you know. I just show up sometimes when the wind is right, like Mary Poppins.”

Gracie smiled, revealing a gap where a front tooth had fallen out. She was thinner and paler than he remembered her being, and there were dark grey circles under her bright hazel eyes. She crossed the room and climbed up on her mother’s lap.

“What’s the matter, honey?” Marge asked, combing her fingers through her daughter’s wispy brown hair.

“I can’t sleep. Can I please have ice cream?”

“No.” “But it would make me feel better.”

Gary snickered. Gracie had a natural talent for wrapping adults around her finger.

“How are you going to sleep if your belly is all full of sugar?” Marge asked her. “And more importantly, why aren’t you asleep already? Is it the monster again?”

Gracie nodded hesitantly. She glanced at Gary and then, noticing his cast, sat up a little straighter. “What happened to your arm?”

In his mind, Gary flashed back to his trip to London, remembering the long, dark alleyways and the things that lurked in the shadows. He thought of the nameless, shapeless chill that sunk so deep into his body that he could feel it in

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his bones, and of the force that made him fly through the air and land hard on the pavement arm-first, snapping the bone neatly.

“I had an accident at work. Don’t worry about it.” He leaned forward and rested his chin on his good hand. “Tell me about this monster, Gracie. What does it look like?”

“Well… it looks kind of like a lizard, except scarier. It has pointy teeth and shiny black scales and a long tail. And it smells awful.”

Gary nodded. “I see. Do you want me to get rid of it for you? I know plenty about fighting monsters.”

Gracie looked unconvinced. For that matter, so did both of her parents.

Refusing to let this deter him, Gary pushed himself out of his chair, his tired muscles aching from the effort. He took his coat off the back of his chair and slung it over his bad arm.

“Trust me. I had a monster in my closet when I was younger, too. I’ll show you how to get rid of it once and for all.”

After a moment, Gracie hopped off her mother’s lap and walked over to Gary. Scott and Marge exchanged a glance and then, evidently deciding that this was just Crazy Uncle Gary getting up to his usual antics with the children, shrugged.

“Don’t be disappointed if it doesn’t work,” Scott said. “We’ve tried everything already.”

“Have patience, ye of little faith.” Gary saluted his friends cheekily, and then he held his good hand out for Gracie. “Lead the way.”

Gracie put her hand in his and led him up the stairs.

“There really is a monster,” she told him when they were far enough away that her parents could no longer hear her.

“I believe you,” Gary said.

“Mom and Dad don’t.”

“No, but you can’t blame them for it. People see what they want to see.”

They got to the top of the stairs and walked down the long, narrow hallway that led to Gracie’s room. The first door they passed had a poster hanging on it which had the words MICHAEL COULTON #25 written in bright markers, surrounded by red lipstick stains. The door to the next room was ajar, revealing that Tammy had fallen asleep in the middle of watching an episode of Gossip Girl on her laptop.

Finally, they reached the room at the end of the hallway. Every light in the room was on, revealing all kinds of posters, CDs, and toys, most of them pink.

Gracie put her Barbie flashlight on top of her dresser, then crawled into her

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pink-and-purple bed with her teddy bear and pulled the covers up to her chin.

“Can you really get rid of the monster?” she asked.

“Of course. I’m just going to need you to be brave.” He sat on the floor next to her bed and began to fish around in one of his coat pockets. “Also, I’m going to need you to keep a secret for me. You can’t tell anybody about what I’m about to show you. Not your mom or your dad or Tammy or Michael. Not anybody. Do you promise?”

“I promise.”

“Good.” Gary began to lay the contents of the pocket out on the bedroom floor. There was a box of matches, a map of the London Underground, his cell phone, and, most importantly, one of the two items he was looking for: a plastic object that somewhat resembled a small water pistol, although the end of it had a light bulb attached to it, and there was a plastic shield around the light bulb that fanned out like a lamp shade.

He handed it to Gracie, who turned it over in her hand and asked, “What is it?”

“It’s a light. The monsters don’t like it. Now, what we’re going to do is pretend to be asleep, and when I say so, you’re going to point it at the monster and pull the trigger.”

He stood up to turn off the lights, and Gracie sat upright.

“Don’t!”

“We have to turn the lights off,” Gary said. “How else are we going to lure the monster out?” He looked around the room and saw a large bean-bag chair in the corner. He dragged it closer to Gracie’s bed as he said, “I’m gonna pretend to be asleep here, and then I’ll tell you what to do. I won’t leave you alone. Okay?”

“Um… okay?”

“Please say that with some confidence, so I know you won’t chicken out on me.”

He was kidding, but Gracie stared at him seriously and nodded her little head. “Okay.” “’Atta girl.” He flicked the switch, and the lights went out. Then he sunk into the bean bag chair and pulled his coat over himself like a blanket. Gracie, following his lead, curled up in bed and curled the covers over her head.

Gary dug around in his coat pocket until he found the second item he was looking for: his trusty, rusty dagger. Keeping the handle clenched tightly in his fist, he rested his chin against his chest, slowing down his breathing.

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Pretending to be asleep was a skill Gary had perfected over the years. That was how one lured them closer, after all—by pretending to be vulnerable. They loved to catch people off-guard.

About three minutes had passed by the time that Gary smelled the familiar odor in the air. It was noxious, like garbage left in the sun on a hot day, if that garbage included a dead body. It was the smell he remembered from the first time he was been approached, when he was not much older than Gracie, and the same smell he now encountered on an almost daily basis.

Then he heard the closet door creak open, followed by a sound like a snake hissing. He could tell from the small gasp from somewhere next to him that Gracie had heard, too. Gary opened his eyes slightly, and in the corner of the room, he could see the shadows start to change their shape.

“Hello, little girl,” said a voice from across the room. It was more like a rattle than a voice. “Won’t you come out and play with me? I know so many games we can play together. Just come out from under the covers and let me see that pretty little face of yours.”

“Gracie,” Gary whispered. “Get ready to move when I say ‘now’.”

“Why don’t you want to play with me? Just stick your head out from under the covers. Or a hand, or even a foot. Anything will do.”

Gary shuddered, remembering from his own childhood the cold, slimy appendages of the monsters that would reach out and touch any part of him left exposed in the night. Sometimes they would gently caress his head; at other times, they would grab him roughly by the ankle and try to drag him out of bed. He’d been subject to it enough in his adult life, too; the cast on his arm was proof of that.

Aside from his own experiences, he’d seen enough other children— and enough of his adult comrades—being flung about like rag dolls. The awful thought of Gracie being hurt pushed him to act a moment or two before he ordinarily would have.

“Now.” Gracie sat up and aimed the toy gun across the room. The strobe light on the end lit up and began to flash wildly, revealing a black, serpentine creature clinging to the closet door on the opposite side of the room. Its eyes were black, and there was some kind of tar-like goo dripping from its mouth.

Gary heard Gracie whimpering next to him, and he said, “It’s all right. It can’t hurt you now. You’ve paralyzed it. Just keep aiming right at it, honey.”

Gary got to his feet and, still clutching his dagger, ran up to the monster on the wall. He raised his dagger above his head and sunk it deep into the

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monster’s back, directly into where he knew its heart would be. The monster writhed in pain. It was fighting the dagger with its whole body, and Gary struggled to keep the dagger in place. The monster let out one final scream that Gary knew only he and Gracie could hear. There was a boom!, and the monster dissolved into the air, leaving nothing but tiny particulates of fine, black dust.

As Gracie put down the gun, Gary walked over to the switch and turned the lights on.

“And that,” he said, walking back over to the bed, “takes care of that.”

Gracie’s eyes were wide. “You had that in your closet when you were a kid, too?”

He sat on the edge of her bed. “Not that exact one, but probably one of its cousins. These guys are just babies. They aren’t strong enough or brave enough to pick on anyone else, so that’s why they come to pick on you at night, when you’re vulnerable and can’t fight back.”

“Does it have any more cousins?” Gracie asked.

“Of course.” He thought about elaborating, and telling Gracie about the monster’s bigger, scarier cousins that he had met in London, but he decided against it. He said instead, “But that, my dear, is a story for another time.

Anyway, there are no more monsters here. You should be getting off to bed.”

“But I’m too excited now! How do you expect me to sleep after—after—“ Her sentence faded into a yawn, and Gary laughed. He picked the iPad up off the nightstand and handed it to her. “Watch some cartoons, if it will help you calm down.”

Gracie put the iPad in her lap and turned it on. She tried to hand him back the toy gun, but he shook his head.

“Keep it. You’re going to need it.” He picked his coat up off the floor and felt around in the pockets until he found his spare switchblade. It was old and too dull to cause any lasting damage to anything that wasn’t a monster.

“Take this, too, but don’t tell your parents I gave it to you. It’s been soaked in sheep’s blood, which is poisonous to the monsters. My dagger has been, too.

That’s why it kills them.”

Gracie took the switchblade and frowned. “Sheep’s blood? Gross.” She put the switchblade and the toy gun on her nightstand, and then she looked up at him one more time. “Thank you for getting rid of the monster, Uncle Gary.”

“No problem. Now get to sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow morning, and then I’ll explain everything to you.”

“Okay. Goodnight!”

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Gracie pulled the covers up over her head, and Gary could see the light of the iPad’s screen shining through her blankets. Smiling, he crept quietly out of the room. He meant to go down and rejoin Scott and Marge in the kitchen, but he stopped at the top of the stairs, distracted by his thoughts.

There was merit to what Scott had said earlier, about him being too old for this. When Gary was younger, he was the best in the business, and the fact that he’d been called on the elite trip to London showed that he still had some game left. But the truth of the matter was that he would be turning fifty in the not-too-distant future, and it was getting harder and harder to keep up to his usual standards. Even the fight with that baby monster had been a little tougher than he would have liked; his arm was still sore from trying to hold the dagger in place.

After he’d broken his arm the week before, his boss had spoken to him about taking on an apprentice.

“I’m not saying you should retire now,” she’d said hastily. “You’re still in great shape. But you’re getting older. If you start training someone now, they’ll be more than ready to go by the time that you retire.”

The thought of having to train his replacement did not quite sit right with Gary. There were so few who had the Sight for the monsters, and even fewer who were able to face them and all the horrors they brought. The younger men and women who Gary worked with were great in their own ways, but he didn’t really want to take any of them on as his pupils. He wasn’t sure what there was to teach them, or even that he’d want to teach them anything.

As he glanced back at door to Gracie’s room, however, Gary realized that he may have finally found the solution to his problems.

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" A lte r n ate His t or y

Off With His Head "

Janelle Caputo

All Amelia Cabot wanted was to write a fantasy novel that involved a vampire, a few pirates, a love triangle and a government conspiracy.

From the time she learned to talk, she would sit on her front stoop on Friday nights while the adults were at Disclosure and tell stories to the neighborhood kids. Sometimes, while she helped her mom tow medical supplies to Base, neighbors young and old would stop her and ask for her latest yarn.

She loved making people laugh. Even if the wrinkles between their eyes sunk back into place a second later, she liked helping them forget the world they lived in for those few moments. When she was young, her parents entertained her whims. Her dad even brought her a book once, a rarity since most books had been recycled to serve the military years ago. She kept that copy of Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland under her pillow and read it every night for years until her fifteenth birthday, when she was forced to donate it to Base.

By that point she had memorized it, and she made sure to recite chapters regularly so she would never forget the White Rabbit or the Mad Hatter or the Mock Turtle. Sometimes, usually the day after Disclosure when everyone was forlorn over the utter lack of change on the warfront, she would twist the story until the King of Hearts was so obviously a parody of Hitler that by the time she had Alice shout, “Off with his head!” and swing an axe towards the King’s neck, her entire audience was dissolving into applause.

But she couldn’t be a child forever.

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The evening she turned eighteen, her parents sat her down and told her she was to sign up to be a nurse or a soldier. Her dad paused on ‘nurse,’ stretching the word out a few extra syllables. She knew he didn’t want her on the front.

It had nothing to do with her being the youngest or a girl. But it had everything to do with the fact that all three of her older brothers had already been across the Pacific, and only one had made it back.

Her father didn’t want to lose another child, and, wishful as she was, Amelia knew she would never have made a living as a novelist as long as a Hitler was alive.

It had been seventy years since the first Hitler, Adolf, had taken control of most of Europe, coined it the United Republic of Germany, and proceeded to attempt to conquer the remainder of the continent. Russia and China were the only countries safe from German control; the former by a natural, mountainous barrier, and the latter by an arsenal of nuclear missiles.

America was a military state. Citizens who didn’t work as nurses, engineers or soldiers either distributed or mass-produced the income each family was allotted. This included, food, clothes, and shelter, among other necessities. Poverty was virtually unheard of. No one starved, no one stole.

Everyone had the same amount of everything.

Amelia hated it.

She knew it was selfish of her, but she yearned for the old days—the days her elderly neighbors spoke of, when there were plays and books on every coffee table and street performances and music. When life wasn’t dull and government sanctioned.

There were some lively journalists who catalogued the war effort, but most of the paper went to Base to be recycled, so it was hard to print even a small selection of articles. The articles that were printed were hardly read. Nobody had time to idle around reading when there was always work to be done.

Besides, the news in the papers was always covered at Disclosure, so there was really very little need for journalism or the written word.

In her own way, Amelia rebelled. After her parents made her donate her copy of Alice In Wonderland, she kept scraps of paper hidden under her mattress and filled them with words. She wrote whenever she could, hiding the scraps in the shadows of her sweaty palms, feeling giddy at the thought of being lauded for her stories.

She even spent an entire afternoon heckling Antonio Thomas, an infamous journalist with short eyebrows and thick, dark hair, who was reportedly German and did nothing to quell such rumors. After three hours of

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her sitting outside his paper stand reciting The Odyssey, which she had found a copy of in a recycling bin at Base—she’d had to recycle it, eventually, but she’d memorized it before it came to that—he agreed to let her help edit his articles before they were printed. She did this for a whole two weeks before her father found her and dragged her back to her station at the Veteran’s Hospital by the nape of her neck.

At nineteen, Amelia was simmering. She was so unhappy with her lot in life that she was liable to fly across the Pacific using the heat of her own anger and sock Hitler on the jaw herself.

One Friday night, she spent two hours at Disclosure and headed home early, tired from two night shifts at the Veteran’s Hospital. She pulled her long blonde hair from the neat white cap pinned to her head and hitched a chair to the table.

She’d been home for all of four minutes when her brother, Benjamin, walked in and handed her a beer. She’d been drinking since she was much younger, but the drinking age was eighteen. That was the only good thing about wartime.

Relaxing in her chair, Amelia let her eyes drift toward Benjamin. He would have been taller than her, but his prosthetic legs had been made an inch shorter and now they were the same height. His dark blonde hair was strewn across his forehead and his skin was pale because he hadn’t left the house in weeks.

His twin, Francis, had died over in France. Benjamin had barely spoken since.

The one good thing about this war, besides the drinking, Amelia thought as she took a swig of her beer, had to be the technology. Everything had advanced much faster in order to keep up with the Germans. Benjamin’s prosthetics were linked to the nerve endings where his knees used to be, so he could move them like regular legs. Seventy years ago, that technology had been the stuff of dreams.

Benjamin swung his legs under the table, their metallic sheen gleaming in the fluorescent light, and Amelia asked him if she’d ever told him the story of the Tin Man. Benjamin shook his head and Amelia started telling.

She had learned of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from a teacher during elementary school.

They hadn’t had books in school, they had just been taught the requirements: how to read, write, and do basic math. Then they were shipped off to start honing their specialties straight after the sixth grade. Amelia had been

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a hard case, switching between nursing and combat engineering programs, never quite finding the niche she wanted in the wordless education system she was stuck in.

But one teacher in elementary had been old, well into his seventies, and he remembered the funny book with lions and tigers and bears that had been published mere decades before the war began.

She had no idea what made her remember it after all these years.

Maybe it was Benjamin’s legs, or the hopelessness that almost always came with attending a Disclosure, but she felt like telling a story. She remembered Dorothy but for Ben’s sake she twisted it so the Tin Man was the hero; forced into an alien body, he had to learn how to live all over again while simultaneously caring for his three bumbling friends. That was the Tin Man she wanted Ben to know.

Benjamin’s demeanor relaxed during her story. Whether it was due to the alcohol or her talent with words, she wasn’t sure.

All she knew was that she had just finished explaining how the Tin Man single-handedly took down the Wicked Witch of the West with a bucket of water when their parents burst through the back door.

Amelia jumped, her beer slipping from her hand.

“Where the hell did you go?” her father said. The huge smile on his face contradicted his words in a way that made Amelia feel dizzy.

“I was tired,” she explained, and then said something about night shifts that made her father shake his head.

“They’ve surrounded it!” Her mother shrieked as if she couldn’t quite hold it in any longer.

“Surrounded what?” Benjamin said.

If Amelia wasn’t so concerned for her parent’s mental state, she would have taken note that that was the first time he had spoken in three days.

“The Fuhrer’s estate, it’s surrounded by our troops,” her father almost sobbed. He grabbed Ben’s half-drunk beer and downed it.

Amelia asked what that meant, but her parent’s only babbled on with tears in their eyes about blasting the Fuhrer’s brains to itty-bitty bits.

The next morning, Amelia woke to the news.

Hitler was dead. It only took seventy years, but Adolf Hitler III, grandson of the original Fuhrer, was dead.

She sat on the front stoop of her apartment building beside Benjamin who was leaning against the railing without a hint of a smile gracing his face, as

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men and woman danced in the streets. There was confetti in her hair and it smelled like it had been sitting in the back of a closet for nearly a century.

Which wouldn’t have surprised her.

Everyone was happy, happy that the Great War was over, happy that sons and daughters were coming home, happy for the first reason to celebrate in over seventy years.

Amelia was happy too. This was what she had wanted. Now America could return to normal, no more military state, no more government-chosen career path. She could write novels and no one would tell her it was a waste of time.

Still, she couldn’t help but notice there wasn’t anything her family did other than serve the military. As she sat on the front stoop, watching jet planes do loop-de-loops in the late October sky, she heard Benjamin sigh beside her. He stood and closed the front door behind him as he went back inside.

Hitler dying didn’t bring Francis back. It didn’t bring any of the dead back.

All it did was confuse things.

Amelia Cabot placed her head in her hands and tried to enjoy the celebration while she could.

She knew this was the easiest her life was going to be for a long time.

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Red-Hand Miria "

Talia Rochmann

Miria didn’t mean anything. Until she had been born, it was a nonsense word; her birth gave it its meaning, its weight. Miria was a girl like a half-tamed mustang, hair like spun wheat, eyes like dirty ice. Miria was almost like Mira, which had its own meanings. Mira could be a sea, an ocean, could be peace or the world. For a long time she’d thought that Miria was just a white woman’s tongue stumbling on the Spanish mira, mirar, mirado. The Spanish sight, motive, watchful, pues mira qué bien, see how nicely—how nicely she rides, how nicely she waits for the old cows to move, how nicely she treats the dogs.

White as you could get spending twelve hours in the sun for her whole life and with a Spanish name, a Spanish mis-naming. She felt ashamed but also proud, Miria among Heathers and Paytons and Marys. Their mother was like that. Their mother’s favorite horse was named Loma, another nonsense word.

“I like the sound of it,” mother had said, “and haven’t you heard of Gertrude Stein?”

No, Miria had not. When she tried to read the books their mother gave her she was lost between sentences. She read for a week and then left the books under the table in the den, in the dark near the ground and maybe the mice would make sense of them. Her sister said she understood what Stein and their mother were trying to do. Then again, her sister knew the names of things forgotten and unused: the trumpets played by the heralds of Ancient Rome, the coronets used for Charles I. Models and makers, and how much they were worth. Their mother named and didn’t do, and Charré named and did in equal measure. Miria was movement, Miria was sight. Miria could only do.

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They had been riding for five days straight, stopping at night to sleep under their tent with the horses tethered and the dogs bunked outside to keep watch, where they stayed no matter how much they whined and scratched to be let in and cuddle up between the sisters. Times were different. Keeping off strangers was more important than waking up to a warm furred body against your back.

Guelph had thirty people in the town proper. It’d been easy to count: as they’d ridden in, rifles cocked and hats tipped low against the sun, the people came out of the houses with hammers and guns and hard faces. Eased right up after Charré hollered that they had coffee to trade for a roof.

“There’s been some trouble lately,” the head woman, Martha, had told them. “Bandits two weeks ago made off with the last of the cattle. Not too bad.

Perry keeps his goats far enough out of town to hide when he gets word, so we’ve got those.” Then a silence.

After making introductions—Charré and Miria Featherstone of Big Timber, Montana, which wasn’t hit bad but had some wildfires still going—some of the townspeople had gone off. More had stayed.

“Not a lot of people coming from your part of the country,” Martha said finally. “Just those fires up in the West, ain’t you? No twisters or zephyrs or whatever foolishness been heaped on the rest of us.”

“We’re not running from anything,” Charré said, her voice easy. Miria did not feel so easy: they were surrounded, they had arms and goods. But the people here looked tired and stressed. Something was running in the current under their voices and she didn’t know what.

“We’re looking to make a few friends, find other people. Maybe some orphan people, farms dusted over or drowned out. And we’re going to Leavenworth.”

A few sharp breaths at the word Leavenworth.

“The army will snatch those horses out from under you before you can tip your hat,” one of the men said, voice bitter. “Hope you’re not hiding any gas in that wagon. They’d probably kill you soon as they see it, save the trouble of stealing it. You can’t steal from a dead man. Woman. Pardon.”

No pardon needed. They were both in cowboy boots and jeans and buttoned-up shirts, hair up in their hats. Better to look like a man from a distance, Charré said. Miria didn’t think it mattered. If someone got close, it didn’t matter if she was man or woman, if the stranger was a bear or a child. If they made trouble, she would give them trouble.

“We’re not hiding any gas,” Miria said, one of the first things she’d said for weeks; she’d been letting Charré do the talking for a long time. “We’re not stupid.”

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“You’re going to Leavenworth,” the man said. “Sounds kinda stupid to me.”

A generalized grumbling. “Shut up, Hank,” someone said. “‘Least in Leavenworth we won’t have to deal with that sonofabitch who—” But Martha turned her eyes on the person who’d been speaking and she quieted right down. Too quick.

“We’ve had some trouble,” Martha said. “If you saw a tallish man on the road, on a bay stallion, coming or going, we’d appreciate knowing it.”

“Haven’t seen anyone since Bozeman,” Charré said.

The gas in most places had run out, and few people went traveling on their own. Fewer would be able to get horses to get away. It was hard in the ruined world on your own. Miria knew this, from before. The world of before was her ruined world, and the world of now was the one she had always wanted. In many ways. But not all.

“Why?” she said.

“We’ve had some trouble,” Martha said again, gave them a searching look.

“Nothing you wouldn’t expect, considering circumstances.”

Later, around the fire in the empty house loaned to the Featherstones: “Some desperate, soulless people out here. We’re in a bad spot, to tell the truth.

You two are the first we’ve seen except for that man and those bandits. So, one out of three people not looking to rob us or worse. Those ain’t good odds.”

No, they agreed, those weren’t. Martha breathed out, great chest heaving.

“If you could send word when you get to Leavenworth... well, we’re all scared. That’s no secret, no surprise either. We’ve got guns, but somehow all who’s left around here is too young or too old. Hell’s coming at us hot from up north, and they say more land’s being swallowed up by the water out west every day. If you two make it to the fort, to Leavenworth—and I’m not too sure you will—well... I’d appreciate if you let us know, somehow. Better than waiting to die out here in the middle of nowhere. Or worse.”

The Featherstones were given a small house on the edge of town for the night, or as long as they wanted. It’ll be good, Charré said, to give the horses a rest for a day or two. Being around a town relaxed them as much as it did Miria and Charré. People meant oats and bran and plenty of water. The horses could get some lazing in before they kept going.

“What happened here?” Miria asked Charré that first night, the two of them in the double bed, three dogs at the foot and one between them with the unfortunate outlier on an armchair in the corner. There was another bedroom, but it seemed too far. Nights were lonely when you had nothing but your dogs and

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your sister.

“The woman who spoke up before had a girl next to her,” Charré said. “Her daughter, I’d say. Wouldn’t you? I was looking at that girl. Soon there won’t be many girls who look pretty like that. We’ll all be flinty eyed. I think I’m not the first one to think that.”

“Rob us or worse. Die or worse.” Miria said, the words soft enough she almost mouthed them.

“That’s what I think, too,” Charré said. She shoved the dog and put her forehead against Miria’s. “It’s only women who say ‘or worse’ in this kind of place, isn’t it?”

They lay thinking. Miria could feel her sister waiting for her to speak. Miria, mira, she said to herself in the dark. Look, see. Be the watcher, the motive made flesh. The flesh made motive. She felt her skin go cold and something twisted in her heart. She could see into the souls of horses and dogs. People, she’d always thought, were harder. Now, she was thinking people might be harder, but men were still easy.

“Three days,” she said in the darkness. “In three days we can find him. Easy.”

After this, the name Miria would sweep across the West. A demon with gold hair and mean eyes, red lips and a meaner snarl. Only they wouldn’t just call her Miria.

Red-Hand, men whisper around campfires and spit. Men with stubble and smooth faces, babyface and houndface, and no souls or hearts, both things thrown away to give their lungs more room for yelling and cursing and fueling powerful hands like a bear’s mitts. Good for crushing. Good for grabbing.

Made to break the fragile, bludgeon the good out of any living thing. Red-Hand Miria, they’ll call her. A little girl riding a horse big enough to crush the head of a bull in one kick. Red-Hand Miria, who finds the wicked and bleeds them dry. She’ll crack open your chest to check if you’ve got a heart, however small, and she’ll eat it right in front of you. Got the strength of all the men who came before, that way. She-bitch; bad luck woman times a million. See a blonde on a bay horse with a fiery mane, you turn around, hope to God she isn’t already after you.

Fall coming meant the air was dry and the ground moreso. No rains or snows to drown out tracks, and the girl had been found in a certain barn about a twenty minute’s ride to the Northwest. He’d been heading towards the disas-

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ters, Miria thought. Hoping, maybe, that the superstitions cropping up, the fears, would keep off pursuit. California’s all the way gone and Oregon is a swamp.

Colorado is all mud and Montana’s been on fire for months. She knows the chitter chatter of townspeople even though she’s only been among them for a few hours. Who knows what’s out there? The ground could crumble from right under you. But fear hadn’t kept them out in the end, and the girl had been found.

Miria didn’t hear the story firsthand. Wild-eye Miria saw to the dogs and she asked Charré to find out, because Charré was the sister that people trusted.

She had an easy smile and a way of listening that people found relaxing and Miria knew was miraculous. Charré’s husband and baby in the ground and she could still listen with an open heart. That was a miracle.

When she’d left that morning, Charré had taken her hand and asked her if she wanted to do this alone. Miria had said to her, “I think we both know that I’m the one to do it,” and more, that she had always wanted to do this, but she had not told her all of it. How in the world before, there were so many rules that muddled up the clear path in life. Miria had stumbled along it, going to school, working like other people, though she worked in the forests and hills.

She couldn’t tell Charré, who had suffered too much already, that she had been born to this. Miria, mira. The sharp look. She saw through the clouds to the ground below, and she followed the tracks clear as day. She was the one to do it, for now, for the first time, and for all the times to follow.

“Why didn’t he take her?” Miria had asked Charré before riding out.

“He’d have to feed her,” she replied.

Miria didn’t have more to say after that. See into the hearts of men. She will.

She will learn. And she will find them.

The barn rose on the horizon like the mouth of a great beast, rusted red with white lines of jagged teeth and the black throat wide open. It was close to where they kept the goats, and there were bales of hay stacked in forts and walls for goats and children to play in. She dismounted and circled the barn, one of the heelers and the big white dog at her side, thinking of invisible eyes on her back. She had a knife in her boot and another in her bra, and she could pull both out fast as a blink. Could skin a rabbit in two minutes. People’s skins were softer than a rabbit’s.

At least ten coyotes had passed by, and all at once, which she didn’t like; her dogs liked it less, sniffing deep in the dirt and growling. It didn’t mean anything for the man, but it meant a lot for the goats. The paw prints clustered and broke off, making the ground hard to read until she found a hoof print

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perfectly pressed into the mud by what had been a water trough, and near it the imprint of a boot.

The blue heeler she’d brought along, Lacy, seemed to dance around the prints. The white dog, the akbash Odin, had the fur on his back up from smelling the coyotes. They were smart dogs and bored, if worn out, by traveling.

Here, she said, leading them and pointing to the tracks. Find him, she told them. Odin wasn’t interested but Lacy, smelling the horse, must have been thinking of cattle and the fun of herding, put her nose to the ground and took off with her tongue lolling. Miria got back on her horse, a light-footed bay mare with an orange-yellow mane, and went after her. Odin trailed behind.

Near noon, she saw the smoke.

Miria called the dogs back—Odin ranging, not tracking really—and circled it, maybe a mile off. A shape which could have been a tethered horse, bay. A movement which could have been a man stirring a pot over a flame, tallish and handsome. She sent Lacy to the left, Odin to the right, and rode her mare straight towards the smoke and the man and the horse. Her whistle, when it came, was sharp and high as the cry of a hunting eagle. Odin came towards the man and horse, bursting up like a wolf, big as a wolf, the fur on his back up, and then Lacy bolted towards the horse. She had been taught to leave horses alone but sometimes Lacy would play with the foals, so the little blue heeler went for it. The bay horse was startled before the man could think to mount it, and if it hadn’t already been in retreat, it was right after Miria pulled the rifle to her shoulder, sighted, and fired.

A crack liable to tear the sky in two. Or shatter the shoulder of a young man, young criminal, and scare his horse to the next county with a dog at its heels, if it hadn’t been tethered—but she saw it in flight anyway. The knot on its tether must have been sloppy, and no wonder, there was no one out here for miles.

No one but them. She rode in at a trot, in no hurry. Charré was still in town, getting information, doing a little trading, a little socializing. They would be in Guelph for one more night, maybe two. Miria had time.

More time than the man on the ground, too injured to scream, clutching his shoulder and limp left arm and breathing hard, snuffing in the dirt through his nose like a horse. Miria dismounted. There was a stake driven into the ground two feet away with the remains of the bay stallion’s rope, loose and half-coiled on the ground. She tied her horse with more finesse but more slack as well. No matter how well-trained a hunting horse, they were animals who didn’t like the smell or sight of blood, who startled at suffering.

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After years of rodeo in high school tying up a broken man was easy. A man with a broken shoulder could try to struggle, but his blows were weak because the muscles sent pain shooting all up through his back, his neck; one arm was useless, and unlike a steer he didn’t have a head hard as a cannon ball to knock her dizzy when he writhed. Easier than tying a pig, though not dissimilar: she had to turn him on his front instead of a pig on its back, but once there it was the same manner of cinching the delicate wrists and ankles.

The camp itself was just under a stunted brush tree, and once she had tied the man to the tree and borne his curses she could do more looking around. It was clear that more men or women had camped here. Five, maybe six bowls and plates. Three sleeping rolls in disarray. A storm of hoofprints all heading in one direction.

“You a friend of those bandits?” she asked him.

“Fuck you,” he said, and she looked at him then hit him hard in the face with the butt of her rifle.

She repeated the question.

He swore.

It went on for a long time like that. She didn’t want his face too ruined, so she stopped hitting him with the gun and took out the smaller of her knives. In a horse, she explained as she worked, there was one great tendon in each leg, the tendon that ran from the back of the hoof up to the pastern or ankle, and this tendon was responsible for all the weight and give and snap of the horse’s heavy body in movement. This tendon was wound so tight it was the reason racing horses had splints on their legs at all times, because even the nick of a thorn during a hard run at the wrong moment could have the tendon break in two with a sound like a rifle shot and much the same effect on the horse. Horses were heavy, too heavy for three legs without help.

“You’ll have help, maybe,” she said.

People didn’t have quite the same tendons, but what they had was close.

The great hamstring, the ankle. The tendons deep in the flesh of the forearm which let fingers open and close. Miria cut these while the man cursed and thrashed, yelling Stop, please, stop, for the love of God, and then you fucking bitch, you whore, bitch, bitch.

It went on for a long time.

“Miria,” he says, and she sees his eyes seeing her, focusing for the first time in hours.

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She’s playing with her little knife, picking her nails. She’s told him her name, to tell others. She was waiting for him to say it.

“Will you remember it?” she says, and stands. Knife still in hand.

“Miria,” he says again, more urgent, moving his head in a way that’s trying to be a nod. “Fucking,” he’s laboring, “fucking no-good, fucking vigilante bitch, red-handed Miria.”

It’s true that her arms are blood from the elbow down. She’s just a little girl, not more than twenty-five and younger than that at heart, so she smiles and looks down at her hands. She gives herself war paint under her eyes.

She leaves him there for the coyotes.

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The Prodigal Sun Returns "

Lindsay Geller

The shades were open. The old man leaned his back against the sterile pillow and stared out the window. “I miss it,” he said.

His grandson sat in a chair across the hospital room and looked down at the square shaped screen in his palms. It glowed beneath his tapping fingers.

“The nurse wants to know if you want jello or pudding with lunch.”

“I miss it,” he repeated.

“What?” his grandson asked.

“The sun.”

The man stared blankly at his grandfather, “So...pudding or jello?”

“Don’t you miss it?”

“You can’t miss something you never had,” he shrugged and pressed the word “pudding” on the screen.

The young man had been born in a sunless world. He and his generation, however, didn’t know it. They knew what the sun was but, as their elders would routinely mutter to themselves upon seeing a mob huddled around the giant television screens that showed the sun blazing in stunningly high resolution, “They didn’t know what they were missing.” The younger generation just scoffed at the older people, with their faded brown spots and ancient worries about skin cancer.

The grandson tapped the screen a few more times until it lit up his face. He walked over to the window and placed the screen there. A tiny, high-resolution sun beamed out of the small square. “There,” he said. Like the rest of his generation, he had grown up with the idea that there was one sun, but multiple

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outlets for it. Everyone could have a piece of the sun, all the time. This was considered progress.

The old man turned over onto his other side, away from the artificial glow.

“Turn it off,” he said.

“Why? You missed the sun, so I pulled up the Sunny Side Always Up app for you. I designed that one myself. It’s a Northeastern American sun in the middle of fall.”

“You can’t design the sun. You can’t make it out of nothing,” the grandfather said. “You have to...unlock it.”

“Unlock the sun?”

“It’s trapped—held down by chains of gray and shackles of clouds.”

The grandson walked around the bed and crouched down in front of his grandfather. He reached a hand out to his grandfather’s forehead. The old man swatted it away.

“I don’t have a fever. I’m perfectly sane,” the old man said, sitting up in the bed. “You have to unlock the sun.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’re a smart boy. You’ll figure it out.” The old man reached across the bed and opened a drawer in the bedside table. He pulled out a gold pocket watch to check the time.

“It’s—” the grandson began.

“12:22. I’m going to take a nap before lunch comes.” The grandfather shut the pocket watch definitively. The grandson had always admired his grandfather’s watch. It was made out of something other than stainless steel and engraved with his grandfather’s initials, SR. His grandfather caught the young man eyeing the watch and said, “You like it? Do something to deserve it.”

Sitting in the hospital lobby that night, the man Googled the phrase “Unlock the sun.”

In the 2580 depression after the loss of the sun, a majority of old and well-established companies went out of business, but Google and a few others remained. Hydroponics was practiced regularly by a large amount of independent farmers and large food companies, but most of their production had remained a slave to the sun. When their master died, they did not, rise up and take control, like in human revolutions. Instead, they died too. This, incidentally, set in motion countless human revolutions. At that time, the sky was gray and the ground was red. Still, he hadn’t been there and didn’t see any point in being hurt by something of which he had not been a part.

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In a mere .000536 seconds, he had an answer. He learned, through various websites and online newspaper articles that “unlock the sun” was the phrase used by a cult, the Solaris Resurrectus, which had formed about a year after the sun’s disappearance at a time when most people had come to the realization that it was never coming back. Members of Solaris Resurrectus believed that, by using meteorological information and appropriate planning, they could pinpoint the perfect time, place, and natural disaster to create a break in the clouds and find the sun.

The man minimized the search engine window and pulled up the Sunny Side Always Up app. He changed the settings a few times before settling on a Moroccan sunset and adding that setting to his Favorites list. He smiled at the screen, satisfied. His finger moved up and down, toggling the brightness scale.

No matter what he did to the little sun, it was always perfect—the best that had ever been made. He had never seen that as a problem before.

The next morning, he walked into his grandfather’s room. “You look like shit,” the old man said, gesturing to the bags under his grandson’s eyes.

“I was up late, researching,” the young man said.

“You can’t remake it,” the old man said. “But you can find it. That’s the beauty of losing something. You can always find something that is lost.”

“You really believe that?”

“I haven’t been proven wrong yet,” the old man said. “Except for hair. I’ll be damned if I ever see that stuff again.” He rubbed his hand against his bald head. “Lost that in the first round of chemo months ago.”

“Have they given you the results of the test yet?”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m a terminal case,” he said. “The doctors are keeping quiet, but my body has been telling me so for months.”

“You’re fine,” his grandson insisted.

“I have cancer,” the old man said. “Did you know you can still get sunburnt when it’s overcast?”

“No,” the man said.

“Well, you can.”

That night, the old man passed away. In his will, he left the pocket watch and his small fortune to his grandson. The young man returned home. Before falling asleep, he opened up the pocket watch. A piece of white paper fell out.

He had no idea how his grandfather had acquired even a miniscule amount of the rare material, but the rough fibers rested in the palm of his hand. He unfolded the piece of paper and read, “Unlock the sun.”

The watch’s engraving didn’t stand for his grandfather’s initials.

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The next morning, between e-mails to the crematorium, church, and cemetery, the young man began another Google search. He typed “meteorological information” into the search bar but could barely understand a word of the results. He changed his search. He began looking for colleges with strong meteorological studies programs. It was seen by most as a dead science, with little to no change. Still, some people taught it on the off chance that, one day, the knowledge would prove useful again.

The first result was a name: Sarah Nilstein, Professor of Natural Disaster Sciences at Harvard University. Harvard was one of the only universities still affluent enough to afford such a superfluous department. The biography section described her as the foremost authority on meteorological studies and detailed the location of her office and available office hours. The website also displayed her office phone number, but he didn’t know how to explain his questions over the phone. He wanted to see her in person to convince himself that his plan was, at the very least, plausible. After packing a small bag, the man got into his electric car (the supply of oil had run out before even his great-grandparents were born) and set off on the six-hour trip to Cambridge, Massachusetts.

He and Sarah were about the same age, which struck him as odd. He didn’t think that anyone his age, or his parents’ age for that matter, was still interested in meteorological events.

“Well, the wind is still strong. A tornado is difficult but still possible,” she said, shortly after he sat down. They were sitting on opposite sides of a stainless steel desk, framed by filing cabinets, a lamp, and trash bin, all made of the same material. Desks made of wood were a thing of the ancient past.

“We would need to create an artificial warm front,” she mused, turning on her computer.

“How do we create a warm front?”

“How we do anything—technology. We have the power heaters, we have the air,” she said, staring at the large computer monitor on her desk. Her finger clicked on the mouse rapidly as she switched between weather reports. We would just need a controlled area, with a retractable roof, of course.”

“And if it doesn’t work?”

“It will work,” she said. “But you need to understand that as soon as we retract the roof, we’ll no longer be able to control it. It will become a real storm, with its own agenda and its own path of destruction. People may die. Can you live with that?”

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“I am. But, if I may ask, why are you so willing? This ‘experiment’ as you called it is going to take a lot of time, money, and effort. The money I’ll provide, but the other two? That will be up to you. What’s got you so invested?”

“When someone knocks on your door and you hold the key, it’s only polite to turn the lock.”

“Turn the lock? You mean ‘unlock’?”

“I never said that,” she said, her eyes suddenly jerked away from the screen.

She stared innocently at the young man.

“You’re one of them! You belong to Solaris Resurrectus.”

“I never said that,” she smiled and returned her eyes to the screen. She typed steadily on the keyboard. “I just sent you an e-mail with the preliminary equipment costs.”

The entire arrangement consisted of three linked buildings; each of the two end buildings were fitted with power heaters or power coolers. The middle room was a vacuum. Nilstein reasoned the only way for the tornado to live outside the controlled area was to shoot in the cold and hot air from either of the side buildings with force and let the laws of nature go into effect.

After a few weeks of charting, calculating, and planning, the date for the tornado was set. Nilstein and the young man watched their plan unfold from a small television screen linked to an indestructible video camera, inlaid into one of the middle building’s walls. Nilstein had created a handheld control center and pressed two buttons at the same time. The young man pulled out the pocket watch and glanced frantically between it and the screen. For the first five minutes, there was no visible show of action. Suddenly, it was there, and it was increasing. The tornado started small, about five feet tall, but then augmented until the eye filled up half of the building. Nilstein pressed another button: the top of the building retracted immediately.

The storm did not last long. It was over in about five hours and had only travelled about 300 miles.

Everyone, both young and old, ran for cover. Many had never witnessed any kind of weather like this before, but their self-preservation instincts guided them into basements and other dwellings. Once it was over, the young emerged slowly from their shelters to see what kind of damage had been done.

They were greeted with a bright and shining ball. It looked familiar, yet completely different—foreign. Everyone gathered in their respective town squares, huddled together, and stood in fear and hatred of what they perceived as unholy brightness.

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For five minutes, they cowered and glowered at the sun. In the center of each town square stood a giant screen, undamaged and untouched by the storm’s fury. It had turned off momentarily, but flickered back on. The reassuring glow comforted the crowd. One small child broke away from the crowd and ran to the screen. She tapped the bottom of the screen and pulled up the Sunny Side Always Up app. A recognizable yellow ball shone warmly on the crowd one second later. The little girl hugged the screen and pressed her cheek against the lower curve of the sun before returning into the fold of the smiling crowd.

They preferred their sun. Even as it stood as a hollow and lowly imitation of the “real” one, they preferred it. They were used to it.

Even the man, who had orchestrated the entire event and had been waiting with baited breath for this moment, was disappointed. He began to cry, not at its beauty, but at his own foolishness. Nilstein remained standing and gazed at the sun expectedly. Even she was unmoved.

The pocket watch fell from the young man’s hand, and he did not pick it up.

Thus, the sun was “unlocked.” In its unlocking, man’s view of the sun changed. No longer was the “real” sun regarded as “lost,” but as banished.

Only the old and senile, those who had been too weak to leave their houses on the day of the tornado, still wished for its return. The rest—the young, the powerful, and the ignorant—lived happily. They knew what they were missing, but they did not miss it.

Sup e r natur al

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Big Bad "

Janelle Caputo

At the third toll, Washington turned the volume of the radio down so that instead of causing Topeka’s ears to bleed the noise only made her temples ache dully. He tried to start a conversation by asking her about school, if she was returning for finals, if she was quitting, if she had decided on being an engineering major.

When she only pressed her head against her window, he tried a different route.

It was a strange sequence of events that found Topeka buckled in the passenger seat of her brother’s Chevy while he blasted Blue Oyster Cult and didn’t let the throttle sink below seventy the entire way to New Hampshire.

The instigating incident was probably when Topeka’s Jeep flipped across three lanes of traffic, killing her girlfriend instantly, but the last straw had been her mom’s incessant pestering to move on, when it had happened less than two weeks ago. If her father wasn’t on a business trip in Europe, Topeka would have moved in with him. As it was, her only friend had been her girlfriend, Beverley, and the only person she had left to turn to was her brother, Washington.

When Topeka called to ask if she could stay with him for a while, he agreed on the condition that she spend the weekend helping him open the cottage for the summer. He didn’t seem to care that she had staples in the left side of her head, or that her ribs were fractured, or that every time she closed her eyes Beverley’s screams pureed with the sound of crumpling metal rung in her ears.

He just wanted help turning on the water heater.

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“When was the last time you went to the cottage?” he asked.

She hadn’t been to the cottage in years. Their dad bought it when they were little on a whim when he was promoted from Assistant Secretary to Managing Secretary. They hadn’t been there as a family since Washington left for college.

These days, according to their mom, it served as a Thoereauvian getaway for Washington to write during the summer, but Topeka knew he just invited girls there for weeks at a time and got zero writing done. Anyone with a Facebook and half a brain knew that.

“Mom was right, you really have knocked a few screws loose,” Washington said, clapping a hand on her shoulder.

Topeka’s heart almost jumped up her throat. “Put both your hands on the wheel,” she said, clutching her armrest. She cowered in her seat, half-expecting the brake lights of the car in front of them to blind her as Washington eased his foot off the gas.

“She speaks!” Washington said, throwing his hands in the air for a moment before slamming them back down on the wheel.

Topeka felt like her heart was playing jump rope with her throat.

“We haven’t had a chance to catch up in awhile,” Washington said, as if he couldn’t see the way she was trembling. “Hey, there have been animal mauling’s by the cottage recently. Weird right?”

He soon launched into a tirade about the MSPCA that Topeka knew for a fact he memorized to impress a girl last summer. After that she ignored him long enough to stifle his questions and they maintained an uncomfortable silence for the rest of the trip.

When Washington turned the engine off a hundred miles later, Topeka kneeled on the damp gravel beside the car long enough to slow the panic attack that had been building in her chest the entire drive.

Washington asked if she was okay, and when she looked up he was showing more concern than she’d thought he was capable of.

“Yes,” she said, climbing to her feet with an arm over her ribs. They didn’t hurt as bad as that first day in the hospital, but then, thanks to the Vicodin, that hadn’t been a physical pain. The pain then she mostly associated with the numb ache that came from the knowledge that Beverley was dead.

Washington stared at her like he was waiting for something and Topeka blinked several times before digging the cottage keys from her purse and tossing them to him. He didn’t seem to see how gaunt her expression was, or maybe he did, maybe he thought if he ignored it long enough it would go

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away. This was his philosophy on most things in life, i.e. college classes, girlfriends, responsibilities.

Topeka thought his philosophy wasn’t that bad, that maybe it could be applied to her own problems. So she pushed all memories of the accident and Beverley’s white smile to the smallest corner of her mind and took a couple steps in the direction of the cottage.

Finally taking a good look around, Topeka found that the place looked the same. It was a three bedroom, flat-roofed affair with thick cream-colored paint and wide windows facing the lake.

The house itself was situated on a five-acre plot of land so it was surrounded on three sides by thick forestry. She hadn’t been there in a few years but it still felt nice to walk to the waters edge, take her shoes off and scrunch her toes in the sand without the threat of nosy neighbors peeping at her through slatted blinds.

In the house, Washington was un-boarding the windows. Topeka figured she wasn’t needed until he started fiddling with fuses, so she ambled in the direction of the woods, still barefoot, reveling in the pinprick of rocks on her toes. After so long in the hospital and then on her couch, wrapped in blankets, dosed with three kinds of painkillers and sterilized until her skin was dry, it felt nice to feel anything. And she’d always loved the woods.

That was one stark difference between her and Beverley. Topeka loved nature and dirt and when her skin was flecked with dried sweat. Beverley had been an architect, loved going to museums and goggling weird houses and poring over design books. All indoor activities, that made it hard for them to agree on anything but sex and Hitchcock movies. Topeka couldn’t remember one fight they’d had, although she was sure there had been many. All she could seem to remember was Bev’s face when she saw an old house for the first time.

She would have loved some of the houses here, Topeka thought looking up to pick out the mansion on the other side of the lake with the pink turrets.

But she couldn’t find it because the lake was almost obscured by undergrowth.

Topeka hadn’t realized she was well into the woods until this point. She was at least two hundred feet from her beach. The familiar cream-colored paint of her cottage was blurred by dozens of thick trees.

She turned to head back and her toe caught something sharp.

It usually wasn’t this painful walking this deep in the woods with her shoes off; if anything the thick smattering of brown leaves that covered the forest floor was as comfortable as any carpet, so she was confused to see the blood dribbling down the arch of her foot. She hissed at the sight of it, but when she looked to

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see what she stepped on she couldn’t quite find the will to scream.

It was a skeleton.

Thankfully, it wasn’t human.

She bit her bottom lip and squinted at it as she inched her feet away. It was a deer carcass. She would have guessed a hunter had come during last fall’s hunting season, killed it, skinned it and left the rest to rot, except the skin was still there. It had been skinned thoroughly, the bones gleaming Crest white against the forest floor, but the rotting tufts of thick deer hide were still stacked beside its skeleton, like a peace offering.

Topeka had a strange urge to take a picture of the remains. Washington would never believe her and he would be too scared to walk all the way out here. Besides, it was getting dark. As Topeka thought this, the sun seemed to quicken its descent past the crest of hills on the other side of the lake. All around her shadows grew wider and darker. They strained in her direction like they were trying very hard to swallow her whole.

Shaking her head she walked around the carcass and started in the direction of her cottage. Before she could take more than two steps, a howl rented the air.

For a strange moment she thought she was back in her car and Beverley was still screaming. She slapped both hands over her ears, whispering hasty It’s okay, babe’s and Everything’s gonna be alright’s. It wasn’t until the howling stopped that she realized the sound was more animalistic than anything Beverley could make.

She turned around, almost hesitant. The howl hadn’t sounded that far away.

Two red eyes shone at her from the shrubs.

It was Topeka’s turn to scream.

As she opened her mouth to do just that the red eyes jumped at her. Paws landed on her chest, pushed her to the ground. She had been the only survivor of a three car pileup at the hands a middle-aged alcoholic with three previous DUI’s under his belt and she was going to die in the woods in New Hampshire because her brother didn’t know how to turn on a damn water heater. She felt stupid for all of three seconds before she started pushing at the bulk on her chest, struggling to stand. She didn’t want to die here.

Before she could do much more than press futilely at the hairy arms holding her down the arms became slender and hairless. She opened her eyes only to find that it wasn’t a wolf straddling her, but a girl.

The girl had the red eyes and her skin was puckered and thick and as dark as her hair.

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Topeka didn’t think she’d imagined the wolf lunging at her, but it could have been an affect of the PTSD. Some kind of coping mechanism that made her imagine wolves in the place of pretty girls. Yeah.

The girl skittered to her feet seconds after Topeka’s eyes met hers.

She was naked.

“Um, werewolf?” Topeka said, because she didn’t know what else to say to a naked girl that had just tackled her to the ground for no reason.

“Who are you calling a werewolf?” the girl said. Her voice was deep, rusty, like her throat was a corroded pipe. She rubbed her arms to fend off goose bumps, which made her seem more intimidating as she narrowed her bright red eyes.

“You. No. I mean—“ Topeka winced as she pushed herself to her feet. Her ribs felt like a car had hit them, again. “This might sound weird. I thought I saw a wolf, but it was just you.”

“It was me.”

“I know. I know it was you but I thought you were a wolf.”

“I am a wolf,” the girl said.

Topeka blinked and standing in the girl’s place was a four-legged animal covered in black fur. It was bigger than any wolf she’d ever seen; on all fours it was as tall as her waist. It bared its teeth, its red eyes shone like spotlights and when Topeka stepped back, the girl had replaced it again.

The transformation was so fast that Topeka had a hard time convincing herself she hadn’t imagined it.

“You’re a wolf,” Topeka said. While the girl nodded Topeka tried to remember just how many painkillers she’d taken today. She was supposed to take two but if Washington had been distracting her she might have taken three, or five.

Hell, maybe she’d swallowed the entire bottle.

“Werewolf is kind of offensive. I’m a dire wolf. Shouldn’t you know that?” the girl said.

She had her arms crossed over her chest and Topeka was trying very hard not to stare at her unmentionables, she really was, but she had a feeling the girl was only crossing her arms because she was cold and Topeka was far too busy cursing the chilly April evening than disciplining her eyes.

She let them wander a bit, just a tad, and noticed how well built the girl was.

She was ripped, her entire body seemed deflated over corded muscles like an Olympic athlete. Topeka would have been very distracted ogling her six-pack if it weren’t for the scars, thick pink creases that covered almost every inch of skin. Some looked old, some looked very, very recent. If Topeka hadn’t known

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better she would have said the twin lines circling the girls hips were healing before her eyes.

“Do you…live around here?” Topeka asked. She didn’t know what else to say to a naked, wolf girl. And it’s not like she’d seen her around before. It was a fair question.

If Beverley were here, what would she ask? Topeka thought when the girl hesitated for more than a few seconds.

Before Bev could grace her subconscious with something intelligent to say, the girl replied, “Yes, I just moved in next door.”

From the direction the girl was pointing to, Topeka could only assume ‘next door’ meant the Martin place. The Martins were a big family and they all lived in the converted barn just down the road. Topeka had never actually met any of them but she remembered her first summer here, her mother telling her to stay away from them with a cold, pompous height to her chin.

“Why are you—um—” “Naked?”

“I was going to ask why a gorgeous girl like yourself is gallivanting around the woods alone, but sure, let’s go with naked,” Topeka said, the quip falling from her mouth before she could stop it.

The girl laughed and Topeka felt her lips arching in a smile.

“This is a little strange. I didn’t know you lived around here, Topeka,” the girl said, shivering All the blood in Topeka’s face rushed to her feet.

“How do you know my name?” Topeka asked. She was sure she’d remember meeting this girl before if she had, but she didn’t, and the girl knew who she was.

The girl tilted her head, watching Topeka with thin eyes before they widened to tiny saucers. “Oh, shit, I’m not—“ But before she could finish her eyes rolled to the back of her head and she face-planted on the leaf carpet at Topeka’s feet.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding,” Topeka said.

She waited five minutes for the girl to show some sign that she was something other than dead. When she snored, the sound pierced the quiet and sent a sigh cascading from Topeka’s lips.

She wasn’t prone to taking strays home but she felt a strange attachment to this girl. She was the first person in two weeks who hadn’t treated her like she was made of glass. It was strange because she hadn’t spoken this normally to someone since Beverley died, not her brother, her father, her mother. And

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here was this stranger who could pry banter from her tongue by just standing, literally, bare before her. Topeka still missed Beverley with an ache comparable to having both of her arms ripped off, but she’d missed talking so normally with another person.

That, and she couldn’t leave the girl lying there, alone with nothing but a deer carcass to keep her company.

Topeka shrugged her sweater off and pulled it down the girl’s shoulders.

She’d just hoisted the girl onto her back when she heard Washington shouting from the cottage. She could see him on the edge of the woods, his iPhone a shining beacon against the dark.

She called to him to help her carry the naked wolf girl onto their futon and he asked, very seriously, if she’d gotten into his stash of blue grass weed.

Topeka breathed in and out slowly. Her ribs ached, her head was pounding, but she hadn’t felt so awake since she woke up in the hospital to the news that Beverley was gone. As she adjusted the girl’s weight on her back she realized there were many questions she still needed to ask her.

Starting with how they knew each other.

48

" Ho r r o r

Masquerade "

Annie Whitehouse

The sound of squealing teenage girls has always been like nails on a chalkboard to me. I stood in the fitting room of Frighteners, the tacky re-branded Halloween spin-off of the party store I work for, and watched as a high-schooler brought her friend another armful of impossibly short nurse costumes. The tall and slim blonde, playing Barbie for her crew, clapped her hands together in delight.

“You guys,” she said with false sheepishness, “My mother would never let me out of the house in these!”

“Oh come on, try them on anyway,” her shorter and slightly less attractive friends nodded in unison. They kicked the pile of worn costumes toward me while keeping their eyes trained on the ringleader, who disappeared into the changing booth.

I glanced at the clock on the wall. 10:12. Frighteners closed at ten, but my supervisor, Randy, never let us herd the customers out come closing time. They were like walking dollar signs to him, but they were like walking nightmares to me. Shrill laughter cut through the air again as the blonde emerged, turning from side to side and examining her “Candystripe Cutie” costume in the mirror.

I leaned out of the doorway and spied Randy standing around near the makeup display. Pointing at my watch, I jerked my head toward the fitting room, but he shook his head and rubbed his fingers together in a “cha-ching” gesture.

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As one of them ran past me to grab more outfits, I experienced a vivid vision of sticking out my arm and clotheslining her on her way out the door.

Revenge fantasies were the only thing that kept a smile on my face during these late shifts.

I took a few steps out of the fitting room to take a deep breath and discovered that the girls had done considerable damage to the racks of costumes in their pursuit of the shortest skirt in the store. Balling my hands into fists, I puffed hard, short breaths out of my nose, looking up at the store’s orange and black explosion of décor instead of down at the messy floors. The rest of the year, the store sported a clean, white color scheme, with racks of neatly stacked birthday cards, wrapped candies, and party streamers.

But the store’s owner insisted on transforming the space into a house of horrors each October, stuffing the place to the brim with motion-activated screaming plastic decorations and more tacky costumes than you could possibly imagine.

My roaming eyes stopped when they locked with those of a frazzled girl on the other side of the store. She was carrying a large black garment bag, which obscured most of her short frame. Her dark brown hair looked unwashed and unbrushed, sticking out at odd angles from under an oversized beanie hat. I pegged her for early 20s, but her eyes had pronounced crow’s feet extending from their corners. I didn’t notice her when I made the rounds earlier, and Randy, who was texting near the front door, didn’t seem to see her there at all.

She didn’t look away when she saw me staring. Instead, she smiled.

I shivered and retreated back into the dressing room. The girls were taking cell phone pictures in the mirror, a fresh pile of unwanted costumes at their feet.

“Do you want me to bag any of these up for you?” I asked.

“Nah, they didn’t fit right,” The blonde giggled, pushing past me to get out of the fitting room. As her cape of hair brushed my shoulder, I was reminded of Sally Donohue, the girl who sat in front of me in elementary school and told the whole class my Portuguese bag lunches were dog food. I would stare at her shiny golden pigtails every day, daydreaming about reaching forward and ripping them off her head.

“Have a good night.” I snapped out of my reverie with a strained smile and ushered the group out of the trashed fitting room. I faked smiles so much during the day it made my cheeks hurt. As I stepped out behind them, I saw that Crazy Eyes was still staring at me, this time from an arm’s length away. Shit.

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“Can I help you?”

“Do y’all buy used costumes?” She asked. I detected a southern twang in her voice, unusual to hear up here in Cambridge. My eyes darted down to the bulging garment bag. This wasn’t going to be a micro-mini Minnie Mouse dress, so we probably couldn’t use it,but Randy would have my head if I sent her out without looking at it. I glanced at my watch again. 10:35 pm.

Flashing her a big, cheesy grin, I said, “Sure, let me help you up front.”

She stuck close to my heels as I made my way up to the register. A yellow square was stuck to the counter – a Post-It note in Randy’s ugly scrawl.

‘Lydia – had to head out. Clean up the mess and lock up before you go.’

I could have killed him. I hadn’t needed to deal with this girl at all, not if Randy wasn’t here to scold me. She shoved the bag over to me, and I tore open the zipper, ready to turn her down immediately so I could get on with my night.

The opening revealed a luxurious gold and burgundy fabric with an intricate vine pattern. It felt like pure silk, nothing like the polyester I was used to handling all day. Intrigued despite myself, I pulled the dress out by the hanger, and the fabric opened up with smooth, rippling movements, like a beautiful waterfall. The top was a strapless dark red bustier laced up with gold ribbon. The waist was trimmed with a braided gold rope and accented with big ruby gemstones.

The rope bled seamlessly into the skirt, which boasted the winding, hypnotizing pattern that led me to open the bag in the first place. It flowed down to the floor, so structured and well-made that it already looked as if there was a woman inside of it. I turned to the girl with wide eyes, but before I could open my mouth, she pointed back at the garment bag.

I couldn’t believe I didn’t see it before. It was right on top of the bag. The most beautiful Venetian mask I had ever seen. It was a brilliant shade of gold like the accents on the dress, covered in a raised, swirling pattern that culminated in a point between the eyes. The holes in the eyes slanted down, giving the mask a strangely beautiful expression of rage. A large red ruby sat at the top, serving as the center from which a bouquet of blood-red flowers bloomed.

The pièce de résistance was the pair of glittering black horns, which sprouted organically from either side of the mask.

Without thinking, I grabbed it and held it up to my face in the mirror, tying the black ribbon back behind my ponytail. It formed perfectly to me, hiding the oily skin, the bushy eyebrows, and the bags under my eyes. All that remained were my lips, which looked so full and red under the disguise. I felt like a

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femme fatale, as if I should be charming James Bond in a train car somewhere only to slip poison in his Martini. The girl smiled behind me.

“Like it was made for you,” she said. “I knew it as soon as I saw you.”

“We’ll take it,” I said, reluctantly untying the ribbon. “But God, how much do you want for it? Are you sure you want to sell this?”

“Just take it,” She said, edging towards the door. “I don’t really have a choice.”

“But I can’t just take this from you. “ I took a step towards her and her mouth set in a hard line.

“I don’t know. Ten dollars. Please, I want it off my hands.” She stuck out her palm and I popped open the register and grabbed a ten without hesitation.

The girl gave the dress one last look, an expression I could only describe as a mixture of ecstatic relief and deep longing. She grabbed the bill and darted towards the door as if she was worried I might change my mind. She turned back, looking as if she might say something, but then she shook her head and slipped out.

I started to fill out a bought costume invoice, but my eyes kept catching the gleam from the golden mask, watching me from across the counter. It seemed to be beckoning to me, drawing my hand over to it. I grabbed it and walked back to the mirror, examining my plain, pale, tired image. I held the mask up to it, and then pulled it back down. It seemed to color my face, enhancing it with vitality I hadn’t felt in a long time – maybe ever.

I tied it back on and saw the world through the golden visage. The store was still in shambles…and the schedule taped next to the mirror said Randy was opening up shop tomorrow, alone. I smiled, reckless, and crumpled up the invoice. This shop wasn’t getting cleaned tonight, and this mask was coming with me. Like the girl said, it was made for me.

Feeling like the best possible version of myself, I packaged up my new dress and locked the door behind me. “Have fun tomorrow, you fucker,” I said to the empty storefront, before untying the mask and slipping it into the bag. As soon as I lifted it from my face, I felt a deep surprise. The girl looking back at me in the reflection of the glass was not the type to leave such a wreck behind for someone else to clean up. I thought about going back in, but the garment bag pulled at my arm, seeming to tug me forward. I fretted, but it wasn’t like Randy deserved my pity, anyway. The dowdy girl in the reflection didn’t always know best, I reasoned. I hugged the bag to my chest, and the contact put the doubts out of my mind.

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My shift the next day began at 12 pm, so waking up should have been easy, but I felt like I had been hit with a thousand-pound weight. I had an odd dream where I took an axe to the head of Angela DeMarco, who always seemed to be whispering about me in our lecture class. I had doodled various scenes of revenge in the margins of my notebook before, but the dream felt much too real. The blood on my hands was warm, and I still felt it when I woke up.

I brushed my teeth and made my toast, same as always, but it was with an inexplicable melancholy. The garment bag was hanging from my closet door, and it caught my eye each time I was near it. My proximity to the costume seemed directly proportional to my mood, so before I headed out the door for work, I slipped the mask in my purse. My spirits were lifted instantly, and I felt lighter as I walked outside.

On the block-long walk to the store, reality began to set in. The strange dream almost made me forget about the fact that I left the store looking like a tornado blew through it. Randy had been there by himself, doubtlessly cleaning up, for the last three hours. He would be about ready to rip my head off.

When I opened the door, I found Randy trying to convince a male customer to buy the deluxe edition Iron Man suit. That bought me some time. I tried to tiptoe behind him, but my feet crunched on a costume that was still lying on the floor. I guess he couldn’t get it all cleaned up on his own.

He whipped around and narrowed his eyes at me. “One moment, sir, I have to talk with Lydia in the back.”

He grabbed my arm and dragged me to the back room of the store. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” He demanded as soon as we were out of earshot.

“You can’t just leave that guy alone out there,” I said, gesturing back at Iron Man. “Can’t leave him alone? I obviously can’t leave you alone. This place was fucking trashed, and what is this?” He held up the crumpled, half-filled invoice, which I obviously did not think to hide in the trash can before I left for the night. “I can’t find this costume anywhere, and there’s ten dollars missing from the register. I know you’ve been here a few years, but I knew there was something off about you.”

“Randy—“ “Save it. How long have you been stealing from us? You got sloppy this time, but I bet you’ve done it before, with that stupid fake-ass smile. I knew it.

I’ve been telling the boss all along.”

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I felt my blood rising. It was a strange mixture of guilt, embarrassment, and anger, and it made my stomach churn. I reached into the bag to hand him the mask and end this crazy tirade, but when my fingers brushed against it, indignance washed over me. How dare he? I gave so many hours to this company, and I worked ten times harder than he did. This was my mask.

“Are you listening to me?”

As if it was on a puppet’s string, my arm reached up and slapped him hard across the face. It was just as I imagined so many times in the past. He reached up and touched the red spot on his cheek, gaping at me. Before I had a chance to process what had happened, I turned on my heel and stormed out the door.

As soon as I reached the door of my apartment, full-tilt panic mode set in.

Living in this area wasn’t cheap, and I had racked up a few raises in my few years of dutiful service to the party store. If I had to start at minimum wage again, I would have to work a lot more to make up the difference, and with my senior year looming over my head, I just didn’t have the time. I started to dial the phone as I opened my front door of my studio apartment, but the costume obscured my field of vision, almost shining from its perch on the closet door. I could have sworn I left it in the bag, but there it was, in the open and looking as perfect as the minute I saw it. If I called Randy now, he would want it back.

And it would be such a shame not to wear it all together at least once.

I pulled the dress from the hanger and stepped into it. There was no corset boning or hoop skirts, which struck me as odd because it always looked like it was filled out with a woman’s curves even while it was hanging. But oh, it was so soft. The fabric cascaded over my legs and I thought I had never felt anything so soft and opulent in my life. It gave me chills, as if I were wearing a moving stream or a warm summer breeze on my legs. I slipped on the fur stole, pulled my hair up into a messy bun, and reached into my purse for the mask, which felt warm in my hands. Steeling my nerves, I stepped in front of my full-length mirror, almost scared of what I would see.

I looked incredible. I couldn’t remember ever looking this good in my life.

I could be mistaken for the leader of a small country, or a glamorous Italian film star. The costume made my messy bun look incredibly formal, my skin look vital and flushed, and my lips look full, red, and sultry. The devil horns enhanced my cheekbones and gave my face a beautiful shape.

Even though the stole and the long dress kept most of my skin covered, I looked damn sexy – the tiny window of my pale skin between the top of the corset and the soft fur became downright salacious, and I shivered with de-

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light. I was a siren. My mother always called me plain, but if she could only see me now, she would fall on the floor. I thought about all the men I could conquer in this ensemble, and I grinned.

The week before, I had gotten a Facebook invite to one of those frat house ragers that were begging to be shut down by the cops. I ignored it, like usual, but this one was a costume party. While this wasn’t the ball my costume deserved, it would have to do. This gown wasn’t landing in Randy’s grubby hands without at least one showing. Or, I thought, the heat of the mask warming my cheeks as my mouth twisted into a devious smile, it wasn’t landing in his grubby hands at all.

I had to step over a red Solo cup to get into the house party. I showed up at 10:30, after it was in full swing, hoping to make a grand entrance. I usually didn’t like to draw attention to myself, but this night was different.

It worked. As soon as I walked into the door, heads began to whip around and stare. My costume ran circles around the trashy bunnies, nurses, and witches, most of which had been purchased at my stupid store. That cheap polyester had nothing on this dress, which continued to hug my body in a way no other garment had. Watching the eyes trail down my dress as I walked through the party, a sense of incredible power washed over me. I didn’t have to pretend to like anyone that I didn’t, and I definitely didn’t have to stand in the corner and wait for people to come to me. I was in control tonight.

I picked a boy – tall, brunette, and so out of my league – and grabbed him by the waist, surprising myself with my forwardness. He grinned at me and came with me, dancing close and grabbing the back of my neck. The mask felt even warmer, and the feeling spread through my body. I was ethereal; the lights from the party turned into white orbs as I spun and danced, and I felt myself floating from my body. My every cell was charged, and each touch felt like a beautiful electric shock. The skirt of my dress flowed around me, and I lost myself.

That is, until I saw the red coloring the edges of my eyes. I turned and saw her. Angela. The girl from my lecture class, and my dream.

I remembered it so vividly, as if it had happened in real life: the feeling of blood on my hands, the way the axe went through her neck like a knife through soft butter. I focused in on her, trying to figure out where the red blotches were coming from. The anger started again, low in my stomach. She was pointing to me and whispering to her friend. Both of them were dressed in white leotards with bunny ears, and they giggled in my direction. My face grew hot, but not

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in the pleasant way it had before. It was on fire. I shoved the boy away from me and turned to her, watching them laugh at me. The anger was nothing new; it was something that I felt every day., but this time, it grabbed at me from all sides, pushing and pulling and waiting for me to do something. They weren’t going to laugh at me. Not tonight.

I walked toward them, and as if it were acting of its own accord, my arm reached out and snatched a heavy textbook sitting on the floor of the apartment. My vision was obscured in red now, so unlike the gold tints that made the world so lovely through the eyes of the mask before. But now it gave me tunnel vision, and I was headed straight for Angela. My rage lifted and lifted in my stomach, and I felt like I was floating out of my body and watching myself, like in a movie. In movements I had no control over, I lifted my arm up and smacked Angela hard across the face with the textbook. The might behind the swing was astounding, and Angela fell to the floor, hard, dark blood running from her temple and staining her white bunny ears.

I recoiled, stunned, and stared at my own hand as if it belonged to a stranger. Angela still wasn’t moving. Her friend backed away from me.

“What did you do? Why? She was just telling me how much she liked your costume!” She sobbed, hysterical, and ran to find help. I looked around, and all the eyes were still on me, but they regarded me with terror. I sprinted out the door before anyone could think to stop me, running back to my apartment. The streets were a blur, and I felt as if I might unravel like a ball of yarn. I wasn’t a beautiful siren—I was a psychopath.

I reached my door and groped blindly for the lock, bursting inside and scrambling to take the costume off. I hadn’t noticed how scalding hot it had become. It was burning my skin, and it felt stuck to my face as I tried to claw it off. The stole felt like it weighed a hundred pounds, and it seemed to have a life of its own as I lifted it off, clawing back at me as if I had been wearing a live animal on my shoulders.

The dress was tight, and it felt like it was getting tighter. I walked over to the mirror and gaped as I watched the gold ribbon of the corset lace itself up more and more, assimilating itself to my body. I ran and got the scissors, and began to cut up the ribbon, yelping in pain when I realized it felt as if I was cutting into my own skin. The scissors made it through with some effort, though, and I ripped it off my body.

The skirt seemed to go on forever, and each time I took a step out of it, more fabric trapped my legs. I fell onto the ground and crawled away from the constricting garment, terrified at what the mask might entail. The eye holes

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narrowed more and more, and my reflection smiled at me. Terror seized me as I pulled harder and harder at the mask, the one that once seemed so beautiful.

The blood red haze in front of my eyes was back, but this time, it seemed to be pressing down on me, preventing me from lifting up my arms. With one last Herculean effort, I pulled as hard as I could on the glittery devil horns, and the mask came off with a sick sticking noise. I looked up at the mirror, horrified, and saw that small, hard bumps on my head where the devil horns had been.

The gold vines of the mask were mirrored on my face, mapping black lines out of the corners of my eyes and curling around my cheeks. I remembered the girl’s crow’s feet and her oversized hat, all of which seemed so odd to me then, and retched. She knew. How could she do this to me?

I grabbed the horrible bundle of clothes and raced out the door, shoving it in the dumpster behind my apartment. I waited with trepidation for it to crawl out, but it sat innocently on top of the rest of the black bags, just a tattered pile of cut-up costume, not unlike the ones that ended up on the floor of my shop every night. It didn’t look like a woman was in it anymore—it was just fabric.

I sighed with relief and went back up to my room, wondering if anyone from the party knew my address and was directing the police to my apartment now.

Had anyone even known it was me under there?

When I reached the door, I froze. The costume was hanging from the front of my closet again, as if nothing had ever happened to it. It glowed, waiting, taunting. I could swear it was asking me a question: What are you going to do about it?

I remembered the girl, so frantic, with her faraway accent. “I don’t have a choice,” she said before she left. I looked at the dress, which seemed to move closer and closer with each passing second, and I knew what I had to do.

I pulled my rental car into the parking lot of a thrift store in Alexandria, Virginia seven hours later. The garment bag was in the trunk, but I could hear it bumping against the door the whole way here. I needed it to be as far away as it could be so that it couldn’t be tracked back to me.

I opened the door and saw a girl standing at the register, her cheeks stretched into the mask of a smile as a customer shook his fist at her, yelling an intelligible rant. She was clearly about one second away from losing it.She looked over to me when she heard the front door. I hadn’t showered, I was wearing an old, oversized rain jacket with the hood up, and my face still bore some of the dark track marks from the mask’s wrath.

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I must have looked like a crazy person, because I saw fright cross her face when she locked eyes with me. It didn’t matter. I had seen the anger in her balled fists and frown lines, and I knew she was the one.

“Can I help you?” She asked in a sickly-sweet voice after the man had left.

“I have this costume…” I pushed the bag across the counter. “I think it was made for you.”

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Author Biographies Erin

Arata

is a junior at Emerson College, taking part in the BFA

Writing program. She spends most of her time procrastinating, watching Tom Hiddleston dance on South Korean talk shows, and wishing she were a New York City dramaturge with the ability to perceive Norse deities. If you’re looking for Erin, you can find her in the Iwasaki Library, raising funds to see Thor: The Dark World for a sixth time, or in Hubbardston, Massachusetts, where she bonds with the only thing she loves more than Loki: her slightly overweight cat, Babe.

Shannon Bushee

was born and raised in Malden, Massachusetts, and

is a sophomore Writing, Literature and Publishing major. Her writing has also been published in Whippersnappers, and she is a co-president of Kaleidoscope, a workshop for fiction aimed at children and young adults. She frequently has trouble falling asleep, which sometimes serves as an inspiration for her writing, and other times leads to late-night History Channel marathons.

Janelle Caputo

is a WLP major. She likes to procrastinate, take naps

and buy owl paraphernalia. She’d like to thank the Ghostly Secret Agents for all their unorthodox support, she’s kind of in love with them.

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Talia Rochmann

is a senior Writing, Literature, and Publishing major

who just finished the rough draft of a novella about how to alienate everyone around you and make your crazy mom crazier. Not based on a true story.

She finds the bounds of strict realistic fiction boring and is drawn to the complex struggles of real people in not-so-real situations and settings. Also, torture scenes.

Lindsay Geller

is a junior Writing, Literature, and Publishing major.

She’s currently engaged to her blender, Nigel, and they are planning a fall wedding. The menu will feature various soups.

Annie Whitehouse

is a junior WLP major from a small town in Mas-

sachusetts. She grew up reading R.L. Stine and Stephen King until she couldn’t sleep at night, and has dreamed of scaring readers ever since.