The Fable Online Issue 16

The Fable Online

Issue 16 June 1, 2016

Sarah Kedar Editor-in-Chief Readers Heather White Katelyn Barbee Steven Fischer Tim Tanko Mari Noller

Š2015-2016, The Fable Online|Contributing Authors

Table of Contents Is

by Charles Hayes ............................................................................................................................4 Rain against the window

by Glen Wilson ................................................................................................................................6 Ageless Love in a City Garden

by Rob Francis ................................................................................................................................ 9 Cinnabar and Salt

by Christine Chang ......................................................................................................................12 Phoenix Burned

by Richard Mark Ankers ...............................................................................................................19 The Aldini Way

by Philipp Mattes ........................................................................................................................21 The Horn of Plenty

by Konstantina Sozou-Kyrkou ......................................................................................................25 The Waters

by Danny Hale ..............................................................................................................................27 To the Waters and the Wild

by Nina Shepardson .....................................................................................................................28 Wet Work Blues

by Chris Glanzer ...........................................................................................................................42

Poetry

Is

by Charles Hayes Dark colors of wind swept silk blush, as the ao dai birds around the alabaster pants.

Pump clad feet stride with poise and purpose, youth an essence of their track. The Lunar New Year at hand, firecrackers burst and rocket high, while her smile reveals hope, and dark eyes climb with the sizzle of a rocket’s flight. Watching it blossom, like a birth from slip to slap, she knows her wishes need only such a time. Her heart is big.

Crossing the wood floor, a rough cut of aged wear, the after sound of a New Year sizzle mates the green pop of a wood stove fire. And though I be here, I am with her, where the moon is new, and hope is simply a matter of time. Her dark hair has glints of starlight, her boned cheeks an olive glow. Holding a window of pearls, her face turns to the cordite sky as she sits beside me, her bamboo bench for my feet.

Filling my glass, time and again, her eyes seeing only what she can see, ne’er a frown or crease of disdain, she comforts me. As I drift, her hand cradles my drink from a limp grip and sets it near.

Watching the clusters of color above her ville, her step is light, but that is not all. Like her dreams, so clear when time is new, though she strides a tad, it is only forward for her to be, for me. A thin wire, like a viper's sting, sticks her shin and calls her eyes below. As sizzles sound above, a click she hears afoot. And echoes of echoes, lights of lights, spray the New Year Night.

Puffs and booms, throwing shattered colors across the heavens, carry this New Year throughout the ville, the pungent smell of nuoc mam, atop the cordite odor of happy lights. Along the path an ilk of sound, more profound than those beyond, calls a syncopated beat. Like a heart that pumps an extra time, a mist of red balloons the air, and an ao dai, it's dark blush limp, over alabaster pants, a crooked bent their avantgarde, marks the spot we meet.

Charles Hayes, a Pushcart Prize Nominee, is an American who lives part time in the Philippines and part time in Seattle with his wife. A product of the Appalachian Mountains, his writing has appeared in Ky Story’s Anthology Collection, Wilderness House Literary Review, The Fable Online, Unbroken Journal, CC&D Magazine, Random Sample Review, The Zodiac Review, eFiction Magazine, Saturday Night Reader, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and others.

Rain against the window

by Glen Wilson for Michael Guiney It comes and goes without clean breaks, clouds obscure the sun; darken the room as we talk job transfers, the roman republic, ottoman empire; “resizing to meet business needs”, one of us was leaving, the other to be left.

You describe the basilica cisterns of Istanbul, how large pillars hold up the city above, fresh water flows past monuments made from remnant stones of Constantinople and Byzantium.

Thin bridges and lights weave through the dripping dark as tourists listen to busking cellists and Ney flutes that fill the space with people song.

Mosaics covered for centuries in the Hagia Sophia now reappear as the white wash is stripped back, byzantine gold beside Islamic calligraphy, God in flesh and word.

We look ahead at territories we will never see but know all greatness has to fall, empires are known by the shape and the legacy of their ruins, the curious pick through the rubble, conjure stories.

The street lights flick on, dusk filters in like an army, we always knew this siege was coming, we’ve trusted too much in the watchmen, everyone looks the other way when coins jingle jangle in their pocket.

Tracks are made on the glass, tears of God for me, the emptying of clouds for you. Surely these are patterns never to be repeated but we can’t fully test that, all we know is its just rainfall.

Someone else will fill these conversations after us, there will always be Forums, buildings to bear the erosion, and people so unknown no one even knew they were there to forget.

Glen Wilson lives in Portadown, Co Armagh with his wife Rhonda and children Sian and Cain. He has been widely published having work in The Honest Ulsterman, Foliate Oak, Iota, Southword and The Incubator Journal amongst others. In 2014 he won the Poetry Space competition and was shortlisted for the Wasafiri New Writing Prize. He was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing 2016. He is currently working on his first collection of poetry.

Twitter @glenhswilson glenhswilson@facebook.com

Fiction

Ageless Love in a City Garden

by Rob Francis The gilded iron roses wreathing the Memorial Garden gate were as beautiful as always, shining their brilliance in the late afternoon sun. Aloysius maundered beneath the familiar arches, his heart lifted in contemplation of the walk ahead of him, and of his love waiting at the end.

The paved boulevard was wide and firm underfoot, and he passed dreamily along the rows of cherry trees, savoring the warm spring afternoon and the beautiful pink and white blossom that turned the Garden into a pointillistic masterpiece.

Aloysius had walked this way more times than he could count, always delighting in the charms of the well-crafted paradise hidden in the middle of the city. The cherry, hornbeam and elm trees lining the paths, and the stands of boungainvillea, iris and rhododendron growing beneath them all sang to him of burgeoning joy and happiness. It was a wonderful place, all the more so because this was where he met his love. As he ambled, he could feel a smile creeping up his face, until he was sure he was beaming like a foolish young amour.

He knew he made an odd sight, with his imperial whiskers, worn frock coat, and rattan cane. Little more than an effete flâneur, an aged dandy drifting aimlessly through the Garden like an old boat abandoned at sea. But his love didn’t care. She would be waiting for him, as always, in front of the glorious buddleja bushes planted by the rose garden.

She would not consider him old, in spirit or body.

As the pink twilight began to settle Aloysius turned off the main boulevard and skirted the great stand of holly bushes that nestled against the rose garden, at last coming in sight of the buddleja.

His love was waiting. In a lavender blouse and black skirt she stood before the bushes, her dark boots tapping lightly—perhaps nervously—together as she gazed around expectantly.

And what surprise! She had dyed her hair for him today. The luxurious brown waves she had borne at their last assignation were now a deep chthonic black. She had heightened the effect by lacing her lips with crimson, making her pale face impossibly beautiful; a divine nymph emerging from the glorious bounty of the garden paradise. Held lightly before her, like a delicate thought she was afraid she might crush, was a single red rose.

Aloysius’s heart soared like the doves over the Garden, swooping and diving in carefree abandon. He smiled and waved at his love, his cane bouncing on the paving in his excitement. After a moment, she noticed him and his smile was returned, a thousand fold more beautiful and more radiant. While she waited for him to reach her, her eyes drifted behind him, to further take in the wonder of their urban oasis.

Finally, he stood before his love and, gentleman that he was, knelt and took her hand in his, brushing his lips against her knuckles. She looked down at him almost with an expression of surprise, and then her lips parted and her eyes rolled back as she swooned. She crumpled to the ground with a cry that was so discordant with the natural hymn of the Garden that it made him want to weep. The rose struck the path softly at his feet.

Behind him, someone cried out a name in anguish, and he heard quickening footsteps approaching. A young man he had never seen before was patting at his love’s face, shouting out for help. Across the path, another woman watched with her hand over her mouth, eyes wide. No-one spared Aloysius a second glance.

With a heavy heart and exaggerated care, Aloysius reached out to the fallen rose and plucked a petal from the flower. It was soft, and smooth, and wonderful.

He opened his coat and unbuttoned the pocket, sliding the petal down into its depths, where it joined all the others.

As the sun finally vanished and the man started wailing, Aloysius left his love behind and strolled on through the Garden, once more to enjoy the verdant city and all it offered.

She would be waiting for him again, one day soon.

Rob Francis is an academic and writer based in London, UK. He has published numerous scientific articles and books, and his fiction has appeared or is forthcoming at SpeckLit, Swords & Sorcery Magazine, SQ Mag, The Lorelei Signal, 9Tales and Every Day Fiction.

Cinnabar and Salt

by Christine Chang It was a very unusual hotel. For one, there was no proprietor. There was also no town around it. The tall double doors were always open, all hours of all seasons, rain or frost or summer heat so thick you could drown in it. There was nothing to steal.

On the second floor, a shepherd was sleeping, tucked under a worn blanket. His feet poked out the ends, but when he was old and shrunken it would fit him again. He'd checked in that morning, rushing to beat the sunrise; come daylight, he would no longer be able to travel. The fishermen coming back from the sea had seen him come over the mountains, flashlight beam cutting a thin swathe of light before him and a neat line of corpses strung out behind him. But mostly it was bands of children that crowded at the edge of town for a glimpse of the pageant, wanting to look and afraid to look and jostling for the best view. The figures were small in the distance. Besides the shepherd, there were four of them – three full-size, one slightly smaller. They shambled and hopped on their stiff legs, and the black cloths over their faces breathed in the wind.

In a few minutes, the day market would fill the air with the smell of fried dough and scrambled eggs. To the shepherd, it was tempting – he missed the crush of people, the sound of voices other than his own singing – he had not spoken to a living person in seventy-one days. But he stayed on the corpse road. It was more trail than road, and it broke off in places, but it took him clear of the living cities and the places he was not wanted. It made the journey longer, but peaceful. And there were always hotels to be found along it. The few times he had to cut through a city, he struck a bronze metal disk in time with his footsteps as he walked. He hated this part of the job, the incessant clanging that numbed the bones in his fingers and gave him a headache. The metallic ring of it shimmered in the air and carried, distinctive and obnoxious, warning people to stay inside and tie up their dogs. Dogs were a problem. Their bark could startle a corpse into falling over, and he'd been bitten more times than he could count prying a dog's jaws off the dead. The scars stood out white against his dark skin, like rings of mushrooms blooming across his arms.

Under the curious stares of the townspeople, the shepherd disappeared into the hotel.

This was his last stop. The corpses stalled behind him, too weak or too dead to clear the

high threshold. He threw his bag in a corner and then reappeared to carry each of his charges across the threshold, four trips all told. He tore off the charms he'd glued to the black cloth that veiled each corpse, taking back the animation he'd lent them. He didn't want any ghosts wandering off in the day. Before he turned in, he stashed them behind the open doors, propped against the wall like wooden planks.

They were still there now as he slept. Outside, the families who had been expecting his delivery had left four coffins. It was as close as they would come to the hotel; already the corpse road was too close for comfort. The name of the deceased was written on a slip of paper, folded once, and left inside the coffin along with a change of clothes for burial.

The shepherd had tried to take the gentler routes, but even so the corpses' traveling clothes were dusty and stained with the hundreds of kilometers behind them. # When the shepherd came down for breakfast, the sun was bleeding a slow death into the sea. He made a quick head count of the corpses on his way to the kitchen, where he emptied two handfuls of rice into a pot. The raw grains rang out against the metal. He washed the rice and left it to soak.

As he waited, he brought each of the coffins inside, standing them on end so they'd be easier to lift. The heaviest was made from a solid piece of cypress; the family must be very rich, to afford that. (What a waste of a perfectly good tree, was his second thought.)

He could smell the fragrance of the wood from where he was standing. It was a wild, uncoiled thing, the smell of early mornings and great heights. The other caskets were pale wood, plain and unvarnished, the edges barely sanded smooth. Inside the half-size coffiffin, there was a drawstring pouch with five small beanbags, filled with rice and perfect for games of five stones. Each stone was made from a different color cloth and embroidered with animals – tiny, even stitches that would protect the ghost on its journey. He brought one to his ear and shook it. This one had a chimera on it, a lion with antlers and scales instead of fur. He tossed it into the air – he couldn't help it – and raced to pick up one of the remaining stones before he caught the first stone on its way down. He kept going until he'd caught all five in his palm. Then he put them back.

Once the coffins were lined up against the wall, the shepherd brought his pack over to the desk in the kitchen. Stray blotches of ink had bitten into the wood grain, left by other

shepherds. He set out his tools, inkstone, and brush on his right, fresh rectangles of parchment on his left. Taking a bottle of water from his bag, he took a sip, then poured another sip into the well of the stone. He put the tip of the brush in his mouth to soften it. From his box of inks, he lifted out a red cinnabar stick, ground more than half away, and began to grind the ink. It smelled of leaves turning back to the earth in winter. The water darkened to a rich, opaque red, and he wet the wolf's bristle brush in the ink and wrote out a set of fresh charms. Once the thick ink had dried, he brushed rice glue over the paper and replaced the charms on each body.

They followed him down the hallway to the shower. The shepherd rolled up his pant legs to the knees and his sleeves to the elbows. He shucked off the long coat with the high collar, regulation blue, that marked his profession. One at a time, he stripped off their traveling clothes and lifted the veils. Beneath, their skin was painted with the same cinnabar he used for his charms, brighter than blood. He'd prepared the decoction himself, to preserve each body for the journey, and now he rinsed off the ink, water spiraling red into the drain. The corpses twitched and shuffled, but stood without complaint. He toweled them dry, dressed them in their fresh clothes, combed their matted, brittle hair.

Once, losing patience, he yanked too hard and pulled out the roots. He stared at the matted strands caught in the teeth of his comb, and at the coin-sized bald spot on the desiccated scalp. He had never been so careless.

When it was done, he led them back to the foyer. They waited quietly as he levered each casket down to the ground. He opened one of the plain caskets first. Unfolding the paper from the bottom of the coffin, he matched the name to an old man with a chin of white stubble and the calloused hands of a farmer, though the nails of his smallest finger he'd left long. It was supposed to bring good luck since no one could do rough labor with their nails so long. As corpses went, the shepherd liked this one. The body had been light to piggyback over the mountains, and although it swayed alarmingly in the wind, it hadn't straggled.

He took the old man by the arm, guiding him to the coffin, and helped him to step into it.

Left leg, right leg. His knees were knobby beneath his death clothes. The shepherd laid him down and folded his hands over his chest. For the last time, he took back the charm he had drawn. The body slumped a little, sinking into the casket as the ghost left it, and the shepherd lowered the lid. He did the same for the others, leaving the smallest coffin for last.

This one was a girl, dead of fever maybe – there were no wounds that he could see. He wondered if it was a factory job that had taken her so far from home, and so young. But not the youngest he'd ever shepherded. That one had been hours old, still tethered to the cord. No amount of returning the ghost could make the child walk, and so he'd smeared the boy with cinnabar and carried him in a sling around his chest. Despite the cinnabar, whenever the wind changed he could smell the rot, sick and sweet. Nights he found himself humming to the child, the only lullaby he knew.

After that trip it was as if the borrowed life he gave to each of the bodies had cost him, hollowed him out and shortened his life. But even as he thought it he knew that shepherds tended to live long. They said it was the god's favor to those who served her. He wasn't sure he believed that.

When all the coffins were closed, he hooked one foot around the short rattan stool in the corner and dragged it close. There was a hole in the center where the plaited fibers had snapped, but the frame held. He took a candle from his bag and held a lighter to the wick until it caught. Then he brought out a comb of beeswax and broke off a piece, heating it in a spoon over the candle flame. When the wax melted down, he mixed it with oil, rubbing it into the wood grain with a rag as he went. The pale wood honeyed, taking on a shine as it sealed.

In the beginning, when he was just starting out, he'd burned himself on the hot wax every time. Now his fingertips were not so tender. He broke off another piece of honeycomb and kept going until all four caskets were done. For many years, this part of the task had been his favorite: the quiet solitude of sending someone off on a long journey.

Now the ritual felt empty, had for a while. He'd rushed, and the coat was not as even as it should have been, but still the burnished wood threw back the candlelight like an echo.

All that was left was to seal each casket with pine resin, but that was the undertaker's job. In the morning the families would come and bear the caskets away, the undertaker would be called, and the shepherd would go back to sleeping nights.

He took the candle outside and, reaching into his coat, withdrew the stack of papers that rested against his skin. These were also charms, but of a different sort; each had been given to him by a family member of the deceased at the start of his journey, and on each

they had written the name and birth hour of the dead. It gave him control over their particular ghosts so that the bodies could make the journey home.

And now he'd brought them here, he'd discharged his duty, so let the ghosts roam as they would. The mountains were no more than outlines in the darkness. He let the candle flame lick along the edge of the sheaf of names, caramelizing the ink as it went. As his control faded, he felt his heart grow lighter, as though the ghosts had taken up residence in the chambers of his heart and now were leaving. The papers grew lighter, too, as the ash crumbled and swirled around his feet. He held the papers for as long as he could until his fingers smarted with the closeness of the heat.

For some shepherds, this was the dangerous part. There was a chance a ghost might wind itself around you and refuse to leave, but it had never been a problem for him.

Ghosts were negative space, lonely and easily affected by beauty, drawn to it. He was very ugly. Course features on a broad face, cleft lip twisted into a permanent snarl, a heavy brow that left his eyes perpetually in shadow. There was no refinement in it. His ugliness was one of his qualifications for the job; it kept him safe, like armor.

When the last scrap of a name was eaten up, he snuffed out the candle between thumb and forefinger. He should have gone to sleep, but instead, he left the hotel the same way he'd come. There was a candied mouse tucked in his pocket, its bones and skin made of thin lines of drizzled caramel. In the last town over, he'd woken before the sunset and crept into the city without his blue coat, like a thief, just to sop up the sounds and smells.

He'd watched the vendor as she drew in caramel, every motion sure as she controlled the weight and curve of the sugar. There had been a tiger, a deer, a shrimp with sweeping, delicate whiskers – but it was the mouse that caught his eye. She'd wrapped it in newsprint for him, which now crinkled in his pocket as he walked.

On his way to the hotel he'd seen a small temple, and although he hadn't gone in, he knew whose house it was. There was only one god on the corpse road. The shepherd headed there now, peeling scales of wax from his hands as he walked. Leaves crunched underfoot, and the air was clean in his lungs. The temple, when he found it again, was closed. He stood there sucking a stray splinter from his palm, unsure of protocol. Was it breaking and entering, if there was no lock?

Finally, he shook his head and pulled the door open. When his eyes adjusted to the greater darkness, he saw the altar before him, and the plates of gifts set out beside the

brazier. Dragon fruit with its green spines like a crown, mangoes, sun-cakes and wheelcakes and red turtle-cakes. The god had a sweet tooth.

The shepherd drew his own incense from the quiver hanging at his belt. It was white, the incense and the stem both, but when he lit it the flame burned blue. He always kept a handful on him, in case of emergency; every good shepherd did. He'd heard the legends: shepherds caught in a snowstorm, on a corpse road threading so high through the mountains that the air was thin as a knife and the incense that burned through the night and kept them warm, even as the snow covered them up. Or shepherds crossing the desert, and the incense leading them to water or the occasional lizard to fill a hungry belly. Most shepherds told a similar story.

When the flame caught, he shook the incense until only the ember remained. He bowed three times, the incense between his palms, and then he pressed it into the brazier beside the other sticks. By its weak glow, he could just make out the idol at the far end of the temple. Her painted face was light as if her skin did not remember the sun, and a scar soared from the back of her neck up to her cheek. In this carving she was turned three-quarters away; in others, she wore a mask, or her long hair obscured her. The sculptors never showed her face.

They said she sat for a portrait every hundred years. She was picky in her artists and, like her ghosts, easily susceptible to beauty. They said that even those who painted her or carved her had never seen her face, that each person could look into her eyes only once, and then only when the threads of your life had torn loose from the fabric. The shepherd had seen her, though, once, and he was not dead. It was raining that day. She'd sat across a small square table from him, and watched as he practiced the charms in plain water, not ink. There were only four: one to walk, one to go uphill, one to go downhill, one to give up the ghost. My priest, she'd said to him, though he was only ten, and one of those was a hollow year, which he'd spent in his mother's stomach. He'd wondered if she was mocking him – he did not feel like much of an apprentice shepherd, much less a priest – but her voice as she said it had been kind.

The smell of incense stained the air, smoky and rich, and he forced himself to breathe it in. He did not say her name, but he thought it.

He waited. But he didn't expect an answer. Outside, the sun was just beginning to burn away the stars.

The shepherd peeled off his shepherd's coat, fraying and faded. He stood there with the fabric in his hands, the collar darkened by sweat, the hem stained with dirt and salt from walking too close to the sea, and then he folded it on the ground. The packed earth was cold under his knees. Rising, he unbuckled the quiver of incense from his waist and leaned it against one of the legs of the altar table. Then he laid the neat square of his coat on the altar. On top of it, he placed the caramel mouse, nestled in newspaper, and he left the way he'd come.

Christine Chang received a BA in neuroscience and creative writing from Oberlin College and is currently an MD candidate at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. She has previously been published in Beloit Fiction Journal. In her free time, she plays guitar and wishes on albino squirrels.

Phoenix Burned

by Richard Mark Ankers It melted the tarmac and wilted the plants, a merciless, marauding heat. Nobody set foot outside anymore, the world had become cloistered.

I sat on the end of my bed and peered out across the deserted city. A citrine sky belted out gold light that reflected off each and every polished surface creating an ever increasing haze. All was silent. The tin can cars remained in drives and garages, undrivable unless folk wanted to cook like roasted ducks. I wasn't even sure how many neighbors still resided in the adjacent apartments? People were too hot to waste energy on moving and eating. I'd sometimes see a ghost pass a distant window front or the twitching of a curtain that sought to keep out the sun, but not often, and less all the time.

It was due to such a planetary stillness that when it broke, I almost fell off my balcony. A bird flew past; I'd forgotten they existed. At first, I thought it golden or white and caught by sunbeams. The truth was altogether more horrific: it burned. Like a mythical phoenix, the avian fell in saffron flames lower and lower until it crashed to the floor at my feet.

There, it writhed in pain its feathers rising as ash on self-made thermals. My reaction was to race for water, as it trilled and squeaked, but when I returned bottle in hand, the bird was already dead.

It rained the next day for the first time in months. Liquid poured from the sky like a waterfall from heaven. It was beautiful in a bizarre way. People left their homes and took to the streets in ad hoc pool parties. I did not.

You see, all I could think about in the days and months after the heatwave was that bird, its flaming body, its charcoaled stink. I left for colder climes much to my family's disdain. I hoped the little bird's screams, those that fluttered through my every moment, would be silenced by the snow. They had to be! But they weren’t.

Richard is a former authonomy.com gold medalist. He has featured in Daily Science Fiction, anthologies by Third Flatiron Publishing and Leap Books, and feels privileged to have had his work published in many more. Richard also writes daily for his own self-titled website at richardankers.com. A lover of the outdoors and a keen runner, Richard can often be found jogging through the countryside dreaming up fantastical stories for his readers.

The Aldini Way

by Philipp Léon Mattes Edinburgh Castle, 1875, five months after the undead ‘plague’ has reached the harbors of Dover and Portsmouth.

With a cry, Angus slammed his shoulder into the gate and pushed hard. He could hear the grunts of his comrades beside him who were adding their weight to close the entrance. The pressure from the other side was frighteningly strong and Angus strained all his muscles to shut the gate. Someone rammed into him, pressing him to the rough wood. But he hardly noticed the pain, he felt the wood and then the gate slammed shut.

In great frenzy, it was barricaded and at last, he could catch his breath again.

“Damned undead! Dinnae thought they’d made it this far north,” Gordon muttered.

“Aye, but after the deid de’il took London, the Sassenach were too stunned to do anything,” Angus said to his friend, watching the gate through the heavy rain. With the securing of the gate, they had postponed their fate — had given themselves some more time on earth, as living, breathing beings. Nothing more.

“Och, that problem’s solved! Well done, lads!” Kenneth, their captain, said, tearing Angus out of his thoughts. “Now come on, there are problems at the northern wall. But,” he hesitated, as if remembering something, “Angus, ye and Gordon, go up to the citadel.

Ye’ll find a lass there, follow her orders.”

What was going on? Angus could hear the undead groaning and hammering at the gate behind him. Why should they leave the fight to be ordered around by a… lass?

He was about to say something but Kenneth held up his hand. “Dinnae ask questions.

Go!” Angus shared a quick glance with Gordon. They set out for the citadel of Edinburgh Castle, where a small airship landing place had been erected. Angus’ body felt leaden from exhaustion. His kilt was soaked through with rain and gore and clung clammy to his hip and legs. His feather bonnet was rain-drenched too. The water ran down the black

plumes into his collar where it turned into an icy stream which trickled down his spine.

He would have given his right hand for a warm and dry place where no undead would try to eat him.

When they reached the gates of the citadel, the tension of the Black Watch troopers at this final line of human defense was palpable. In the yard within the citadel, several chests were being lowered from two airships. A strange young woman was observing the process. She wore trousers and those goggles which are nowadays worn by technicians.

Hesitantly, Angus and Gordon stepped to her. “Are ye the lass we have tae met here?”

Angus asked.

The young woman looked around the yard where only soldiers and other men could be seen. “I am one of the few persons around wearing trousers but yes, I suppose I am the woman you are looking for.”

Angus felt foolish at his own question, but he could not take it back.

The woman stepped up to one of the chests and opened it. Two dozen strange cylindrical devices were within. “My name is Geraldine King. I doubt you have the nerve for a longer introduction so I will make it short: I have invented these devices which will destroy the undead.”

Angus stared at her. “All scientists of the British Empire have tried to stop the undead and failed. We’ve lost this war, ye ain’t going tae change it, lass.” He spoke the truth. He had lost hope weeks ago.

“Au contraire, sir,” Geraldine said with a smile. “Perhaps you have heard about the discovery that our body uses electric impulses to function, as the famous Giovanni Aldini has proven. Now, I figured out that this electric system must be weaker in these undead, because, well, they are dead, and their bodies do not create much energy anymore; only some devious infection keeps the rudimentary parts of their brains going. So if we disturb the electric impulses in these monsters, their bodies will stop working.” She looked at Angus and Gordon with an excited expression.

“Well…,” Angus said. “Of course, I know Aldini and his strange… experiments. But you lost me in the sentence after that name.”

Geraldine glared at him. “If that is too difficult, let’s say, these things make the undead unconscious.”

“That’s fantastic!” Angus cried.

“You’re welcome,” Geraldine said. “I have a personal interest in surviving this apocalypse.”

The battle sounds at the northern wall became louder and louder. Panicked screams and shots rose up to the citadel.

“Better hurry, or else these things ain’t good for nothing,” Gordon grumbled. He took two of the cylinders and ran towards the gate.

“Excellent, so we can test them right now,” Geraldine said agitated and put a few cylinders into a bag.

“Test?” The relief which had risen within Angus turned into desperation.

“Sure, come on!” Geraldine said while running towards Gordon who waited impatiently at the gate.

Angus grabbed two of the cylinders out of the chest and followed her. What else could he do?

They stormed down the way to the northern wall. Yelling, they pushed their way through the throng of soldiers and reached the battle scene. Angus was shocked when he saw at least five undead clinging to the top of the wall and trying to crawl over it.

“Turn the crank, then throw it!” Geraldine yelled.

Angus looked at the cylinders in his hand. At the upper end, a small crank was connected to the main body. He turned it several times until it stopped and started making a humming noise. Angus quickly threw it towards an undead who was crouching on the wall. Within moments, the cylinder exploded and small bolts of light shot out of the copper shell. The undead jerked for a moment, then fell straight down, motionless.

Beside him, the other creatures fell prey to the cylinders Geraldine and Gordon had

thrown. Angus stepped up to the wall, turned the crank at his second cylinder and threw it down on the teeming crawling mass of undead which were trying to reach the castle.

Two dozens of them fell down the slopes, frozen by his cylinder.

Seeing this, Angus was now sure Edinburgh Castle would not fall to the undead. “We’ll survive,” he murmured.

“So ye can finally stop with yer gloomy thoughts,” Gordon said. “With these shells at hand, we can finally turn the tide.”

Angus nodded, still stunned by the thought of really surviving this apocalypse. He turned to Geraldine. “How many of these… shells dae ye have?”

The young woman flashed him a smile. “I suppose enough to hold these creatures at bay.

We can produce more of them and, perhaps, could begin reclaiming Britain.”

Philipp Mattes lives in rural southwestern Germany and after completing an B.A. degree in Anthropology and Modern India at the University of Tübingen, he is now studying English and American Studies and International Literatures at the same university. In his freetime he is working as an editor for a publishing house. When Philipp Mattes is not studying or editing he is reading, writing, practicing Kyudo or walking with dog Peter.

The Horn of Plenty

by Konstantina Sozou-Kyrkou

Iron-clad soldiers clomp along the smoggy forest, metallic boots sweating against crumbling soil and crackling branches, jumping over fallen tree trunks, treading on bloodied, squashed animals.

‘The cornucopia is thirty miles away’, they radio each other. Laser guns annihilate everything that gets in the way. Their uniforms counteract high temperatures. The hotter the earth turns, the colder they become. The nearer they get to the place where the horn of plenty is hidden, the more their visors lower over their faces to protect them from the increasing heat.

At the beginning, they just had to follow the aroma of flowers and fruit the horn emitted.

But the nearer their detectors indicate they get to it, the fainter the smell, and their noses, fingers and toes become icy cramped, their lungs stung with every breath.

These state-of-the-art GPSs are precious, they think, now the smog is so dense their gloved hands cut through it as if shoveling mud away.

‘Ten miles,’ a soldier says, his visor having dropped onto his nose. He can only see his boots now unless he raises his head up to the foggy sky. Two more miles and their bodies are freezing numb, the outside of their uniforms in a rash of sweat.

There it is, on a podium in a steamy cave. They glimpse at it through the pinprick their visors leave. They won’t be able to taste the fruit unless they take their helmets off. They bite into apples, pears, and strawberries. Nothing but pins and needles in different areas of their tongues. Gardenias, carnations, pansies and daffodils all smell of burning earth.

And then they hear the snap of their body parts breaking into small pieces, arms like chopped branches, fingers like axed twigs. Frozen limbs clatter against iron like bones in a golden sarcophagus or the coins in a kid’s piggy bank that’s lost its key.

Konstantina holds a BA(Hons) in Literature and an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University. Her short and flash fiction stories have been published online and in print in several literary magazines. Her first short story collection entitled 'Black Greek Coffee' is available from Amazon.

The Waters

by Danny Hale You never achieved life so can you achieve death?

Would it be mortal sin to end what has not begun, as the Nuns say? As the Fathers say?

I always wanted a child, but one born of such monstrous lust, that was never part of a mother’s dream. The planting of seeds is something a woman always hopes will be fairytale. Something removed from the animalism, something moist like candle wax rather than damp like dog’s fur. My little stunted tummy-ache, an angel preparing. They promise by the time I wake, they’ll be through with tearing the hole in me that will always remain in the face I will imagine for you. The women hand me rice-wine and tell me it’s nearing my time. Aha, poor choice of words, deary! Pay no mind to Old Petal. The wine is bitter and reminds me of salts – God, what if they’ve drugged it and plan to leave me here, exposed or whore me out whilst I sleep? No. Keep your mind. Stay your mind. Still your panic. Let it be a mirror for the sky, walk over it and into…

The warmth I felt all over me, it has calmed. It still radiates out of every joint, muscle and layer of fat. It’s just, now, there’s a cool calm – placid – easiness to it all. It’s like I’m coated in that reflective lake, in that panic, frothing, and worrying made easy, made to lay on.

Made to walk on and into fogs, overhanging trees and the smell of… Salt in the water.

The fog is clearing and lifting, the water seems to bend, the mirror becoming concave and my face, the face reflected in its surface turning from still calm and reassured to screaming, mouth open and white sound rushing like water breaking on jagged rocks. I am screaming. I am waking. I can feel the salt and the bite of it at my fingertips, pushing itself through my pores. Oh and the hunger, the hole, the empty part that used to contain my soul is bounding away from me in a dog’s mouth, while the witches sew me up and prepare me to pay their way.

Danny Hale is a writer and musician from Coventry, England. His fiction follows in the intense, visceral tradition of Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates and Anne Tyler. He is currently working on a Young Adult novel and his work can be found at 'www.dannyhalewriting.wordpress.com'.

To the Waters and the Wild

by Nina Shepardson The wagons trundle through the early morning mist. Their wheels turn without creaking, and their passing raises no dust from the road.

I've been traveling with the caravan for as long as I can remember, and although I have no recollection of my mother, I assume that I must have been born here. As a child, I had vague dreams of a broad-shouldered man with a thick, scruffy beard and a plump woman whom I followed around as she collected chicken eggs in a basket. When I woke, the images faded like the mist under the rising sun.

My father's wagon is painted the vivid red of holly berries in winter. It's pulled by a pair of dapple greys, and I've always loved the way they blend into the fog that clings to us for a while after disappearing from the rest of the land. Inside, a lantern swings from a hook on the ceiling. Each of its panes of thick glass is a different color, so it throws wavering squares of variegated light across the dim interior. Although the wagon's old—certainly older than me and maybe older than the couple in my dreams—it always smells of sap, as though its boards were cut from a tree just yesterday. Some of my fondest memories involve sitting beneath that swaying lantern, with the mingled aromas of fresh-cut wood and the tea my father brews all around me, while he tells stories of the fantastical places the caravan's been and the mysterious folk he's met.

I've asked him about the man and woman in my dreams, but he'll say nothing of them. # My childhood was, for the most part, a happy one. I had chores, but my duties were never onerous, and I had hours of leisure in which to dance through the fields and forests, pick flowers, or simply stare up at the stars and make up stories about the shapes I saw in the sky. No fever or plague ever touched us, and in fact, I can't recall any member of the caravan ever dying, not even the wizened old lady who could tell your future from the lines on your palm. Nor did we ever want for food, no matter how much the peasants bemoaned the poor quality of that year's harvest.

My one sorrow was that I had no companions my own age. Whenever the caravan came to a halt on the outskirts of some tiny hamlet, I sought out the local boys and girls, inviting them to join my ramblings and games of make-believe. They were always happy for an excuse to leave their chores, and stared at the bright wagons with wide-eyed wonder. These friendships never lasted long, though, and not just because of our transient lifestyle. The adult villagers always shooed their children away after what I considered far too short a time, glancing back at me over their shoulders almost as if they were afraid.

It was this constant search for friends that led to the only frightening experience I can remember from my younger years. We had been traveling through Cornwall when Brighid led her wagon off the road and into a grove of rowan trees. With a shrug, my father, who was second in the line, led our wagon after her, and all the others followed.

There was a village across the road from the rowan grove, and I could see people peering at us from around doorways and over fences. A thin beekeeper with skin browned by the summer sun was the first to work up the courage to approach us. He offered Brighid a piece of honeycomb, dripping with sweet golden liquid, and in return she gave him a bundle of herbs that could be brewed into a tea to calm headaches.

Seeing the beekeeper's success, a few others crossed the road, bearing gifts or goods for trade. As the adults grew braver, the children emerged from their hiding places and continued going about their chores or playing in the fields and lanes between the houses. I climbed down from the seat of our wagon and sprinted across the road, eager as always to meet new friends.

"Hey, hey, do you want to see something?" a boy with hair like straw asked me. When I nodded, he grabbed my hand and pulled me to his family's stable. He opened the door just a crack. "Look," he whispered. I peeked around the edge of the door and saw a brown cow laying on the floor, chewing her cud contentedly. Beside her was a calf, wobbling on spindly legs that didn't seem like they should be able to support its weight.

It took one trembling step after another, looking around as though everything it saw was a wonder.

The boy was grinning at me, and although I'd seen calves before, his joyous astonishment was contagious, so I grinned back. "I'm Christopher," he said. "What's your name?"

"I'm Boann," I answered.

He laughed. "That's a funny name."

Everyone said that wherever we went. "It's the name my father calls me," I told Christopher.

The husband and wife in my dreams always called me by a different name. To them, I was Mary. When I told my father about that, he laughed and ruffled my hair. "Mary! Such a boring name! Why would you want a name like that?"

"We've got lambs too," Christopher said, evidently proud that he'd been able to impress me. "They're really soft. You want to see them?"

"Yes!" The day passed like a galloping horse as Christopher showed me his family's lambs, and their chickens, and the sycamore tree he liked to climb. As the sun began to sink towards the western horizon, he led me to his house. "Mama, this is Boann. She's with the travelers. Can she stay for supper?"

Christopher's mother was a sturdy-looking woman, with a square jaw and brown hair tied back in a no-nonsense bun. I expected her to shake her head and say no, as so many adults did. But instead, her face softened as she studied me. "Of course, she can," she said. "The Good Lord only knows how long it's been since the poor child's had a proper meal."

That seemed like an odd thing to say since my father never failed to give me food when I asked. I supposed she must think that all wanderers were poor.

I sat beside Christopher at the table by the fire. He chattered to me about all the work of the farm: the spring planting, the shearing, the calving, and lambing. "Someday, I'll be doing all those things, just like Papa!"

The door swung open and Christopher's father came in, clearly tired after a day of tending the farm, but I could see on his face the sense of accomplishment that comes

from knowing you've completed a job and done it well. Christopher's mother drew him aside and they conversed in low tones, often glancing at me. I hoped that Christopher's father wouldn't send me away. He sat down across from me and stared at me with eyes that were startlingly blue. I didn't know what to do, but I thought that complimenting his family couldn't possibly hurt, so I said, "Your son knows a lot about the farm, sir. I think he'll be a good farmer when he grows up."

Christopher's father responded with a solemn nod. "That he will." He sat back on the bench and said, "Christopher, go next door and ask William for a pair of horseshoes."

Christopher's face twisted in confusion. "But Papa, we don't have a horse. We always borrow William's for the plowing." His father glowered. "Just do as I say, and come back quick so we can eat our supper!"

"Yes, sir," Christopher answered, chastened.

I squirmed on the bench, waiting for Christopher to come back. "How long have you been with the caravan, Boann?" his father asked.

"I don't know."

"Well, how old are you?"

"I don't know."

Aside from the dreams, I have no memories of being anywhere other than the caravan, and I don't really know how old I am. After a few seconds of thought, I added, "I'm about the same size as Christopher, so I suppose we must be near the same age."

The door banged open as Christopher ran back in and slapped the horseshoes down on the table at his father's elbow. Meanwhile, his mother came over and put a loaf of bread and a wheel of cheese in the center of the table. The bread was warm and fresh, and the cheese had a smooth, creamy taste. "It's from our cow, the one I showed you," Christopher said.

Then his mother spooned steaming porridge into simple wooden bowls. I breathed in the wholesome smell of it, and swallowed a great mouthful, only to feel my stomach clench.

Christopher's mother asked if I was feeling well. I didn't know what to say. In truth, the porridge was terrible. A metallic tang permeated it, like the taste of a bitten lip. I was certain that I'd throw up if I tried to eat any more, but I didn't want to be rude to a family that had shown me such hospitality. "I'm full," I said. "I'm sorry, but I just can't eat any more." I tried to smile, but I don't think I was very convincing.

Christopher's mother looked hurt, but his father nodded as if some suspicion had been confirmed. "Don't worry, Boann, you don't have to eat more if you don't want to. Or would you like some more of the bread and cheese instead?"

The cheese looked appetizing, and Christopher's father set another slice of bread and wedge of cheese in front of me. Then he stood, picking up the horseshoes, and as he passed by his wife he bent his head to her ear and whispered, "It's the pot, I think." I looked back over my shoulder at the fire. An iron pot was suspended over the smoldering logs, darker and duller than the copper or bronze we always use in the caravan. Christopher's father went outside, and I heard the sound of hammering.

After Christopher and I had finished our supper, his mother knitted and his father carved another bowl from a block of wood.

Christopher retrieved a wooden board and some discs from a chest and suggested that we play a game. It was fun for a while, but the house was too quiet. Back in the caravan, someone—quite likely my father—would be singing in a sweet, clear voice, while others harmonized on fiddles or flutes. It wasn't uncommon for even birds or woodland creatures to sneak close to the camp and listen to the music. Besides, the game board Christopher's family owned was so plain and the rules of the game so simple. The boards we used were painted in a wide variety of colors, like the lantern-light in my father's wagon, and the rules changed with the season, the phase of the moon, and the whim of whoever had won the last round.

"Thank you for your hospitality," I said, "but I should be going home now. Maybe Christopher and I can play again tomorrow?"

Christopher's mother and father looked at each other, and his mother said, "It's already dark. Why don't you just stay here for the night? You can go back home tomorrow."

Her voice was light and even, but I sensed that the calm was fragile, ready to be ripped away as easily as cream skimmed off the surface of milk. I stood up and brushed off my dress. "I'm sorry, but my father will get worried if I'm not back soon. I really have to go."

"Please?" Christopher asked. "You can even have my bed, and I'll sleep on the floor. And tomorrow we can play with the lambs again!"

I hesitated. Having a playmate my own age was fun, but I really wanted to listen to my father sing and Brighid play her flute. "I know!" I said. "Why don't you come with me? You can sing with us, and I'll show you the shapes that the stars make in the sky. You've shown me so much today, and now I can return the favor!"

Christopher's mother stood up, her knitting falling to the floor. "No!" I was shocked to see that there was genuine fear in her eyes. She turned to her husband. "Harold, you mustn't —" Christopher's father stood up too, carefully setting down his knife and the bowl he'd been carving. "Don't worry, Beth, nothing's going to happen to our son." He crouched down in front of me. There was a reassuring smile on his face, but like Beth's earlier calm, it was only on the surface. "It isn't safe to go outside after dark. Just stay here with us, and you can go back to your father tomorrow, alright?"

I wasn't sure what was going on, but Christopher tugged on my hand and pleaded again for me to stay. I nodded.

Christopher was true to his word: he slept on a fur that Beth spread out in front of the fire while I took his bed. I didn't sleep well, though. The straw mattress was lumpy, and the room was filled with the thick smell of porridge instead of the crisp scent of newly-cut wood and the sweetness of sap. # Beth and Harold tried to feed me porridge the next morning, but it was just as inedible as it had been the night before. "What's wrong?" Christopher asked. "Are you sick?" His brow furrowed with the worry of someone who, despite his young age, had experience of illness as something that was often fatal.

"She's fine, son; she just doesn't like your mama's porridge," Harold replied. He drew Christopher aside and whispered to him for a few minutes. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but Christopher was nodding vigorously. His father's words, whatever they were, seemed to reassure him because he bounced over to me and asked if I wanted to play with the lambs some more.

Despite my misgivings, we ran out to the pasture, hand in hand. Just as I was kneeling down to stroke the soft, curly wool of one of the lambs, I remembered my father. What I'd said to Christopher's parents the night before about how he'd worry for me wasn't quite true—I'm not sure I've ever seen my father worried about anything—but I did want to get some decent breakfast. "I'm just going to go tell my father where I am and then I'll be right back."

Christopher shot to his feet, looking much more alarmed than seemed reasonable. "Um, but don't you want to keep playing with the lambs?"

"Of course," I said, "but I'm hungry. I won't be long, I promise!"

"You can't go!" he protested. "You have to stay with us! Mama can make you something different to break your fast! We have chickens, and I'm sure they've laid. You like eggs, don't you?"

I do like eggs, but the desperation in Christopher's voice made me wary. I'd heard desperation like that before, in a dream that thankfully troubled me only on rare occasions. It featured the same couple as all the others, but they were no longer happy and doting. Instead, their faces were deeply lined, and their eyes red from crying.

"Please, please, don't go," they begged, pulling on my arm. I didn't want to stay, though, because the inside of their cottage was dim and drab. I slipped away from them, passing through their clutching arms like the ghosts that rise from men buried in unconsecrated ground. Their voices faded into the distance while the brilliant colors of blue sky and green meadow drew closer, and birdsong filled my ears. No, not birdsong—the voice of my father. The memory of that dream made me uncomfortable, and I backed away from Christopher and his lambs. "Mama!" he cried, his voice still laced with fear. "Mama, Boann's running away!"

Beth strode out of the house, cutting off my path back to the road. She scooped me up in

arms made strong by lifting bundles of wool. As she carried me back over the threshold of the house, I looked up and saw that an iron horseshoe had been nailed above the door. My stomach twisted, and I was glad I hadn't eaten any of the porridge.

I screamed and wailed, ripped apart Beth's knitting from the night before, even threw the crucifix that hung above their hearth to the floor. But nothing I did made Beth turn me out in anger. On the contrary, compassion was etched in the lines around her lips and at the corners of her eyes. "It will be alright, I promise," she told me. "We'll trade in our iron pot for a copper one, and Harold will make you a wooden spoon. Then you'll be able to eat our food. I'll sew you dresses, and Harold will carve dolls for you, and Christopher will teach you how to take care of the lambs. You'll have a good life, better than you'd have with those other ones."

"I don't want your food or your dresses, and I don't want to take care of your lambs! I have a father who feeds me good food and gives me pretty dresses and tells me what chores to do! Why are you ding this? Why won't you let me go home?" " 'Cause it ain't your home," Christopher murmured. "Not really."

"It is!" I insisted, but Beth only held me tight against her chest, stroking my back as if she thought she was comforting me.

I refused to eat the midday meal, and supper too, which was served after Harold came home. Once again, Christopher gave up his bed to me. Softly, I sang one of my father's songs, and I saw Beth shiver and draw closer to Harold as if the music frightened her.

I cried myself to sleep. # Beth kept me inside the next morning while Harold and Christopher went out to take care of the chores. "It's only for a few days, poppet, until that nasty caravan leaves. Then you can go outside as much as you want." I stomped on her foot.

Harold came back in a few minutes later, looking worried. "The calf's sick," he said.

"Sick?"

"She won't stand up, and there's snot running from her nostrils."

"What about the cow?"

"I think she might be why the calf's sick. Her milk's gone sour."

No sooner had Harold finished speaking than the door banged open, bouncing off the wall behind it. Christopher ran into the middle of the room, a basket in his hands.

"What's wrong, Christopher?" Beth asked.

"It's the eggs. I think something's happened to them. Smell." He thrust the basket up into Beth's face, and her nose wrinkled in disgust as she drew back. My own nose was tickled by the thick, sulfury smell emanating from the white and tan eggs. "That ain't all, either. The sheep and lambs seem like usual, but the bags of wool we collected from the shearing have gone all moldy."

Harold and Christopher left the house again soon after that: there was water to be drawn from the well and goods to be traded with the other townsfolk. Beth set about making bread, but I could see that her mind wasn't really on her task. Her lips were pressed tightly together, and she often glanced at me over her shoulder as she worked.

After dinner, I huddled on Christopher's bed, arms wrapped around my knees and head resting against the wall. Some of the nighttime sounds from outside were transmitted through the wood: crickets chirping, owls hooting, and...singing?

I pressed my ear flat against the wall, straining to hear. Yes, it was singing! And not just any singing, but my father's voice! He sounded different, though. All his brash good cheer was gone, replaced by melancholy. I couldn't hear well enough to make out the words, but the feelings were clear.

I began to sing too, in a low voice. It was one of the few sad songs I know, about the dying off of things in winter, the loss of color, the deep sleep that animals enter to escape the cold. As the song progressed, my voice strengthened and swelled, filling the small cottage. From outside, I could hear my father ceasing his previous song and easing into

the one I was singing, joining his voice to my own. His deep tones and my higher ones complemented each other to create haunting chords. Turning my face briefly away from the wall, I saw that the whole family was staring at me. Beth clutched Christopher tightly, her eyes wide while Harold's gaze darted around the room like that of an animal caught in a trap.

The last notes of the song diffused into the night like colored dye dripped into clear water. I turned my back to the family, drew the woolen blanket over myself, and slept.

I had the dream again that night, the one where the couple tearfully begged me to stay with them. Something was different, though. Usually, the couple in the dream called me Mary, but tonight they called me Anne. As I ran down the dirt path towards my father's voice, I glanced into a duck pond, and the reflection I saw there wasn't my own. I had bouncy brown curls and a square jaw. I paused and struggled to figure out whose face this could be. It was someone I knew, but who?

"It's already dark. Why don't you just stay here tonight? You can go back home tomorrow."

Beth! The face in the water was Beth's! But no, that wasn't quite right: Beth's hair wasn't curly. Her sister? # I woke up to the sound of Beth and Harold whispering in urgent voices. "She isn't happy here, Beth," Harold was saying.

"Only because she isn't used to living with us! If we give her time to adjust, I'm sure she'll grow up just like any other little girl."

"And what about those she's been living with up 'till now? You don't think everything that went wrong with the farm yesterday was a coincidence, do you? How much worse do you think it will get if we don't give her back?"

"If they truly wanted her back, they'd have come and got her! They don't even care enough about her to—"

"Use your head, woman! It's the iron over the door that's kept them out! And it's only us that have that protection, not our livestock. If we don't return her, every animal we have will sicken and die, and then how will we feed ourselves? Or Christopher? How will we feed her? You want to give her a better life—well, what kind of life will she have if we're starving?"

There was a quiet sniffle. "I know," Beth said, her voice husky with tears. "But she just reminds me so much of Anne. I just want..."

Harold sighed. "She isn't Anne, Beth. Keeping her here won't bring Anne back."

Breakfast was a silent affair. Christopher swirled his spoon around in his porridge but didn't eat anything. Afterward, Harold pushed himself back from the table and stood up.

"Well, let's get you back to your family." He smiled and forced a hearty voice, but I could hear an undercurrent of wariness.

He took me by the hand and led me towards the door. "Wait!" Christopher called out. He dove for the chest in the corner, extricated his game board, and shoved it into my hands.

"Here, you can have this."

"Thank you." I tucked the board under my arm.

There was a man leading a horse down the road that separated the houses from the field where the caravan was camped. I wondered if this was William, the neighbor Harold had borrowed the horseshoes from. He nodded to Harold as he passed, but his eyes were on me.

The caravan had withdrawn farther back into the field, past the rowan grove. The wagons were lined up against the gnarled, twisted trees of the forest. Someone had set up a cook fire, and Brighid was stirring a shining pot. She leapt to her feet as we approached, and called for my father.

The door of his wagon swung open, and he hurried down the steps. "Boann!"

I let go of Harold's hand and ran to my father. I wrapped my arms around his waist in a

bear hug.

The others gathered around us, patting my shoulders and ruffling my hair. I smiled up at Brighid, at the old palm-reader, at all the others whose company I'd known for as long as I could remember.

Harold shuffled his feet, glancing from one of us to another. "I'm sorry," he said in a hoarse voice. "I'm sorry. If you want to blame anyone for this, blame me." He squared his shoulders like a man aware that an unpleasant fate was about to come upon him and determined to meet it with dignity.

My father looked from Harold to me and back again. "Your calf will die," he said brusquely. "It's fragile, and it's gone without its mother's milk for over a day. The chickens too, from the eggs, rotting inside them."

Harold swallowed hard but made no objection. Finally, his gaze shifted from my father to me. "Fare well, Boann," he said, then turned on his heel and walked back across the road.

For some time after that, I was wary of playing with the children in the communities we stopped at, for fear that the adults would try to keep me with them as Beth and Harold had done. My fears abated as I realized that most grownups seemed to have no interest at all in inviting me into their homes, temporarily or otherwise. I sometimes still had the dream in which I was called Anne instead of Mary, but the dreams grew less frequent as the years passed.

I brought out Christopher's game one evening, but everyone agreed that the consistent rules and bland colors were boring. I kept it anyway. # About a month ago, I was sitting beside my father on the seat of our wagon when a peculiar feeling began to tickle at the back of my mind. To the left of the bumpy dirt road was a broad field on the edge of a forest. There was a clump of trees in the center of the field, dotted with clusters of bright orange berries. On the right-hand side of the road, the musky scent of farm animals rose from the outskirts of a village. Smoke wafted from chimneys as women cooked the morning's porridge, and chickens clucked and scratched

in their yards.

It was the rowan grove that did it. This is Christopher's town! A strange mix of emotions filled me. Whatever his parents had done, Christopher had been my friend. What was he doing now? Did he look the same? Would he recognize me if he happened to see us passing on the road?

We were passing his house this very moment. The split-rail fence around the yard looked new, and the thatch on the roof was fresh. The wooden door opened, and a young man stepped out into the yard. At first, I thought it was Harold...but Harold was older.

His eyes scanned our wagons, and as they landed on me, his mouth dropped open. The bucket he was carrying fell to the ground, and he ran towards the gate. "Boann! Boann!"

His voice was deeper, but there was no mistaking it.

Christopher stood there, with his hands on top of the gate, watching as the wagons rolled past the field on one side and the village on the other. Suddenly, he flung open the gate and sprinted up the road after us. My father's wagon was near the back of the line this time and the one man behind us watched in bemusement as Christopher hurtled past him.

Christopher skidded to a halt beside the horses. "Boann, it's me, Christopher! Don't you remember me?"

My throat grew dry, so all I could do in response was nod.

"I've missed you ever since you left. I could hardly believe it when I saw you. Hive voice became soft, “I… I want to be with you, Boann. I want us to be friends.”

I thought of the game board that I still took out to look at sometimes and the way Christopher had grinned when he showed me his family's new calf—but I remembered being carried forcibly back into the house by Beth and the terrible sorrow of being separated from my father. "Is that what you want? For your mother and father to keep me captive in your house again?"

Christopher shook his head vehemently. His head dropped, "I was a child then, and when

they told me you'd be better off with us, I believed them! They're my mama and papa, after all. If your father tells you that something is best, don't you trust him?"

"You're right. I shouldn't blame you for something your parents did. And you were my friend, Christopher, despite everything else that happened. But I can't stay with you."

"I'm not asking you to."

"Then what..."

"If you won't stay with me, then,” he hesitated, “then… will you let me come with you?"

I was speechless. I must have looked at him for a few long moments. Finally, I managed to whisper, "Come...with us? You mean, travel with the caravan?"

Christopher nodded solemnly. "What I really want is to be with you, Boann. If you were willing to stay here in the village, that would be wonderful. But if you're not, then I'll go with you instead. If you'll have me, I mean."

Slowly, like someone moving underwater, I extended a hand to help him up onto the seat beside me.

I didn't dream about the couple who called me Mary (or Anne) that night. Or the next night. Or the night after that. I haven't had that dream since Christopher joined us—and somehow, I don't think I ever will again.

Nina Shepardson is a scientist who lives in the northeastern US with her husband.

She's a staff reader for Spark: A Creative Anthology, and her work appears or is forthcoming in Zetetic: A Record of Unusual Inquiry, Devilfish Review, and Electric Spec, among others. She also writes book reviews at ninashepardson.wordpress.com.

Wet Work Blues

by Chris Glanzer

Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal. — Thomas Moore Often even a whole city suffers for a bad man who sins and contrives presumptuous deeds. — Hesiod Helen uses a damp rag to wipe clean a stack of laminated menus as a threadbare sliver of pale yellow light breaks across the horizon, signaling the end of her shift. She pulls her coat from a wooden accordion hanger and bundles herself tight and exits through the back door of the diner. Hands into the shallows of her coat pockets and the steel door behind her closes. Morning clouds wear gray skins with burnt edges and she massages her arthritic hands. Helen walks across the street to the bus stop and sits on a metal bench. The Number 7 Green Line arrives fifteen minutes late. There is the pharmacy and the farmers market and a connection with the Number 10 Green Line.

The Number 10 Green Line grinds to a halt at the corner of Hemsgrove Avenue and Douglas Street. Fifteen-minute walk and home. Groceries put away. Breakfast. Plastic bags in the recycle bin. She runs a bath and slips into her blue cotton robe. Sips hot ginseng tea while sitting beneath a covered patio. The threat of rain passes and afternoon is family and walking along a black sand beach wearing faded blue jeans rolled up mid-calf (salt water cool against the skin). Evening is group bible study and a bus ride home followed by dinner and late-night news.

Sleep arrives in broken hours. Helen sits at her dining room table drinking warm milk and playing solitaire. After her eleventh played hand she moves to the sofa and plugs in her brown heating pad (placing the pad against her lower back) and closes her eyes, remembering the fearless young girl she once was—memories where the end was ever changing from the beginning (a time when life was simpler and choices held consequences easily mended).

Grandfather clock in the foyer. Early morning. She rises from the sofa and slides her feet into a pair of yellow and blue striped slippers (stretching her back and switching off

the floor lamp). Walks down the hallway and into her bedroom. A collection of family photographs frames an antique vanity—three generations of weddings, family reunions and celebrations past.

The clock on her nightstand displays the time in large blue numerals: 2:47 a.m. Helen lies down in bed and stares at the ceiling and sleep gives a firm push. In the blink, she quietly slips through the ether—removed from the everyday and placed into the unrecognizable without script or direction (behind the mirror, neither welcomed nor turned away, and left alone to question the how and the why).

His Christian name is Roman and his passion is THE BLUES—ushered into the arms of Hillbilly Music through mother's piano and father's harp and a childhood shaped by the Windy City’s outdoor concerts and hole-in-the-wall clubs. South Loop. North Side.

Logan Square and Wicker Park. Speakeasies void of age and race where the blending of generations blurred skin color and music paralleled one’s soul. The delta and spirituals.

Work songs and field hollers. Juke joints and single malt and the smoky haze. A steady pocket and thick groove that snaked through inky blacks and forced itself through the soul’s underbelly.

The morning is overcast with a chill nestled between fall and winter. November’s leaves lie scattered in damp patches of red and orange and burnt yellow. Breath frosted. Helen blows into her hands for warmth and rubs the thin silver cross that hangs from around her neck. Biting winds with icy breath snake through bare birch trees. Her eyes narrow.

Helen scans the horizon in search of the familiar but there is only the wind and penetrative dampness and a rustic cabin with a worn trail of crushed leaves and dead grass to guide her way.

The music fades and the whiskey bottle is empty and the sleeping pills consumed.

Roman’s nightmare unfolds in wide swaths. Images unchanged from the previous. The electric surge and his eyes opening sudden. Choking on dirt and rock. A struggle for breath and sheets soaked through. Sterile bathroom lighting and a glass of tap water.

He returns to his bedroom and sits on the edge of the bed—fearful of lying down and closing his eyes and returning to memories of locks and keys and switchback roads pulling him through tidal waves frozen and the ice mountains that remain. Faceless shadows. A mother’s scream. His own childhood traumas. Victim. Survivor? Those

called family who slipped into his room in the thick of night smelling of cheap liquor and stale cigarettes and a single thought always living and breathing and forever wedged into his gray matter (to have lived life shortened—used for purpose and tossed aside into a deep hole to remain forever as bone and cloth).

Minutes. Hour. Sleep prevails and a return to the alternate story.

(Strangers run across the scratched lens of a black and white security camera and the child is dragged by the arm through a shopping mall parking lot and pushed into a nondescript vehicle. There is a press conference with family members holding photos and personalizing their child to ones on the other end. Discovery begins with an article of clothing located along a body of water and hidden beneath thick underbrush.

Authorities create a police line. They wear bright orange rain jackets and carry flashlights. Drag marks end at a shallow grave that is partly obscured by dead leaves and broken tree branches. Roll of yellow crime scene tape—young boy prepubescent and stripped of clothing. Flesh-flies and carrion beetles and blistering skin. The smell of methane and ammonia. Blood settling in bluish-purple pools along the underside of the arms and legs and the empty spaces where eyes and teeth and tongue once rested stuffed with pine straw and oil scented rags. Headlines fill local newspapers and the evening news tells the story of a horrific event and a family in turmoil. Another victim slips from the public consciousness.)

The cabin's exterior carries the sores of age and neglect. Rotting shutters. Moss covered roof. What once was a chimney now lies in a pile of bricks. Helen is pulled by forces unseen towards a small window hidden behind layers of dead vines. She pushes the vines aside and wipes her palms against weathered glass. Into focus. A sparsely furnished room. Cracked and aged white tile floor. Red stained sink. In the room’s center is a bathtub with tarnished brass claw feet and in the bathtub, a man floats in ice water the color of Azaleas. She closes her eyes but the details of the room remain translucent echoes—lazy ripples across water’s surface and his shallow breathing the groaning of old pipes. Helen desires to move forward to places greener and sunnier.

The evil man brings out of his evil treasure what is evil. — Matthew 12:35 Roman Muller is a MONSTER.

Consciousness returns in fragmented bursts. Non-linear images discover their beginnings and middles and ends. An unfamiliar room. Cold dampness seeps through to the marrow. Memory’s tears and macabre snapshots flip into focus from dark to light like a child’s picture book. Each horrific action following the previous. Roman wearing a black leather car-coat and his gloves soaked with blood. Flip. Splitting of the parietal bone above a missing right eye and the broken jaw hung limp, covered with the bugs of the earth. Flip. A woman frozen in mid scream her scalp pulled front to back revealing the connective tissue and blood vessels and the skull an oily red. Flip. Young father.

Hog-tied and his tattooed chest sliced from trachea to pubis bone and the inked flesh pulled apart exposing ribs and muscle. Flip. Mattress soaked with blood and feces and partly covered with a nude and mutilated body. Eyes staring into the void. Flip.

Collection of knives and ropes and surgical instruments. Tools of his trade.

A horizon free of form and shadow and there is only the cabin and its single occupant and lingering questions unable to be pushed through to an undisturbed and forgotten depth. Cracks run across plaster walls like poorly spun web and she imagines a past where nails and hooks displayed children's artwork and a fire place glowed against the framed glass. Eyes close and Helen’s family in the cabin and she is a child wanting to run through the season’s first snow and bathe in the sunlight. Boots laced tight and grandmother's knitted scarf wrapped around her neck. Snowfall and the chill thickens.

(The front door opens and she steps outside. Her smile fades. Landscape monochrome and drained of color. Bleeding sun. Trees dead and toppled over with their roots emerging from the ground like porcupine quills. Grass shades of coal. Anticipation ripped away and buried deep in the earth. In the distance, dark figures stumbling through the tree line—blurred forms pulsating to a silent rhythm with eyes and mouths stitched shut and arms outstretched. Seeking. Reaching. Elongated fingers with thick nails. Sharpened. Closer with awkward steps. Smell of sulfur and copper heavy in the air. Turning to run but her feet are planted in a swallowing mud and the pulsating rhythm and the overwhelming odor and a feathery touch across her neck…)

Remembering is an art—digging through the pedestrian for the horrors forever present no matter how high the garbage piled on top. Rows of rusted metal file cabinets stretch from focus to the distant edges of the unconscious. The files of Roman’s existence gather dust. Past deeds in morbid detail. Dreams. Nightmares with bloodstained trails.

Eyes spring open with palms pressed against the window and Helen finds her breath.

Listens and the air is still. Change remains hidden in the quagmire. Dusk arrives and the snow continues. The light in the room slices through shadows. Secrets hidden within are imagined against a whitewashed canvas and repeating scenes painted in thick oils and light brushstrokes of yellow (silver chain following the wide curve of a single naked bulb, mindless rays striking against the floor, spot of light across his shoulder and the back of his shaved head bathed in a circle of yellow).

A sidewalk in the dry desert heat south of the strip. Ambivalence. Sin City. Tourists.

Hustlers and beat cops. A club for every vice. Soft rain falls through the jeweled night.

Roman’s black suit is bathed in harsh Vegas lights. He glances at his watch and climbs a set of marble steps and strolls through the glass casino door and navigates the casino’s heartbeat with the ease of experience. Expansive rooms and walls without clocks.

Glimmering slots and the ring of coins filling metal bins. Green felted tables groaning under the weight of stacked chips and lorded over by sharply dressed high rollers with paid companions at their sides.

Roman’s destination is secured by two large men dressed in off-the-rack suits pulling tight against muscle (feet spread shoulder width apart and arms crossed at the waist).

One of the men pushes against a door and holds it open. He passes through and both men nod.

In her eyes, discovery. A lone spark hidden and then brighter and bathed in oxygen. A larger purpose to what she’s experiencing and loneliness for her to witness. Forces of nature hiding in the darker hues and a man with life fades towards a history that will carry little weight when the Pale Rider arrives. Helen considers this possibility and turns it over in her mind. The room remains and through the window the final truths of a broken man.

(His mind electric. Blind Willie Johnson’s “The Soul of Man” spins in open D with the Texas preacher’s gruff vocals and nimble slide guitar bringing happiness in a moment when walls blur and his mind’s eye sketches the club and the stage. The music and emotional skin.)

Thoughts snap back to the present as he enters an office where the existence of others is determined by a powerful few. There is a brief exchange of words and Roman is handed a photograph and on the backside of the photograph is written a name in permanent

black marker. Particulars are shared and instructions provided (the where and the why).

His ears tune to the old man’s vinyl and on this night it’s the Ray Charles instrumental “Sweet 16 Bars”.

Helen watches him (eternity?) and his eyes blink and his head slowly turns from left to right and back to center. There is blood along his forehead and lacerations around his chin. His nose appears broken. A renewed reverence. Attention to this man and his purpose in this place. Dream-scape of desolation and confinement.

The foot of the bathtub is towards her vision left and she looks in that direction and there are stainless steel trays covered with items undefined. Her thoughts uproot.

Moving around in internal change. Her mind allows a connection to occur and she sees this place and this room and it whispers to her. Hospital. An attempt for clarity. Blood and the sink and the trays with bottles and instruments and other means of healing (torture?). But this space is not a room defined and promoted by Faith and Peace and Hope. This is a room ripped from a sociopath’s blueprint factory with a thick walled basement and silent screams—a room in the belly of an asylum where physicians use various instruments in their attempts to stand on the shoulders of those before and place themselves on the cutting edge of science with words like lobotomy and psychosis.

Helen’s anger begins to turn.

Driving through the loneliness and music is his companion. 12 Bars allowing his thoughts to drift unhinged and removing him from the job at hand and drowning the emotionless creatures inside yet to emerge. a beat longer. Blue dash light glow diagonal across his chest and his fingers tap against the steering wheel. Headlamps pierce the night. The sedan's speakers pulse. Tracks one through four—Muddy Waters and the King and Robert Johnson and John Lee Hooker. Track eight—The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions. Track ten—Elmore James. Track twelve is Lightin’ Hopkins. Big Bill Bronzy is the night’s final performer. The song was “Key to the Highway”.

A small wave of water flows over the side of the tub and one of his bruised arms slides across the porcelain and falls against the floor. Winces in pain. His hand is missing the ring and middle fingers and the stumps are thick with blood like red frosting layered on cake. There is a twitch in his wrist and then closer with the angle of the light and his remaining fingers scratch against the floor and reach and pinch against the cartilage without success.

Roman turned eighteen and was lost between a horrid past and distant future walking homeless in a fugue state uncaring and unconcerned for his own life—assault and incarceration and a system to spiral down into and the shame and despair of a hollow vessel filled with rage.

Age twenty-three with a propensity for violence witnessed. Shared with men of influence and he was rescued and pulled aside and asked what he desired most in life and he responded that he wanted to find God. Into the family. The church and the God he sought. Life and purpose—a choice that would require him to do bad things to bad people. Family. Loneliness. Acceptance or pariah.

Individuals who would look out for his interest. Bloodshed. Roman accepted without hesitation and his once discarded life was fed anew with the resulting growth barbed and treacherous and layered in patches of briar.

(A lifetime ago. Running numbers between betting parlors and the policy bank. Enforcer.

Violence and pain inflicted and the moment when bruised hands and broken bones failed to quench the hate. A decision to go beyond the pale and on a night with snow blinding and roads layered with black ice and dimly lit street corners a man cowered and begged—all would all be paid tomorrow and Roman nodded in understanding. The man lowered his arms. Snow blew sideways and Roman pulled a Beretta 71 semiautomatic pistol from inside his jacket and attached a suppressor to the end of the barrel and took the man’s life in red spray across fresh powder and the feeling was exhilarating. More lives and the demons inside screamed release and the work was a trusted lover and an open door to heightened levels of violence—a threshold he could no longer prevent himself from crossing.)

Helen follows his arm to his shoulder and the thickness of the neck and the dark red hole on the side of his head where his ear had been attached and he places a finger against the space and drops his hand and again tries for the fleshly piece on the floor. It catches between his fingers. The twitch returns and the ear slips from his grasp. There is another wince of pain and the part of her that is afraid takes a step away from the window but another part hidden that occupies the same space and tells her there is not only physical pain in that room but an emotional awareness about to surface.

Roman waits for the music to end and then he switches off the ignition and pulls a black

duffel from the back seat and steps into the cool desert night with a lit menthol pinched between his lips. He inhales and holds the smoke a beat. Exhaled smoke dances across the still highway and disappears into the night air. His hand finds the car remote at the bottom of his jacket pocket and with the push of a button and a soft thud the trunk opens. A blue hue spreads across the trunk’s interior and he steps waist deep back into the outlying shadows.

Stands with his eyes closed and head tilted slightly to one side and finishes his cigarette.

Then he reaches into the trunk with a gloved hand and grabs a blood-soaked shirt collar and pulls the Body from the trunk where it quickly falls to the ground. The Body struggles to its knees. Gasping. A fish fighting to breathe. From between blood stained teeth and a swollen lower lip and in a futile attempt to engage compassion the Body calls out words to elicit a sympathetic response. Father. Family. A gold chain loops through a diamond crucifix around its neck. The Body pulls out its wallet and points to photos of a wife and young child and speaks of faith to the community and responsibilities to family and employer.

Roman motions with his hand past the edge of the road and into the desert beyond. The Body enters the dark with short and awkward steps. Its face is bruised and its right eye swollen shut. The Body turns and stumbles backward with its hands clasped in prayer.

The distance from the highway acceptable and Roman squeezes the Body at the shoulder and forces it to the ground.

A shot fired. Muffled. A splash of red escapes the back of the Body’s head and the Body slumps onto its side. Eyes blank. He kneels against the ground and zips open the black duffle. From the duffle, he pulls out polyester rope and a long bladed knife for managing the flesh. Flip.

The expression on his face. Layers of fear and fatigue and acceptance and it's a look Helen knows well. (Her mother displayed that frozen sadness each time her father was late for dinner and his car came to a screeching halt against the curb. He’d been unable to rid himself of his own devils and his bibles and vestments remained incapable of cloaking his weaknesses. When his soul’s needle was pushing empty he found after-hour solace at local dives and preached for the lives of the misunderstood inebriated and accused Jesus of having left his side. She would go to her room as her mother instructed but through the trailer’s thin walls always heard the yelling and the breaking of glass

against a wall and then the awful silence and not knowing if her father had passed out or if her mother had finally fallen lifeless to the floor.)

Turns his head and his neck aches. Roman’s injured hand begins the slow dull throb that will grow into unbearable pain. His toes brake the water’s surface. Pink with shades of blue running along their tips. The room. The names in his ledger and the red ink marked through and the results of his decisions and the fulfillment of watching his reflection melt away in the eyes of a dying man. Catching him. And he is here in this place and his employers have spoken.

His peripheral. Foot of the tub and a rack of stainless steel trays and on the trays lie surgical instruments. Some are clean while others have blades stained with blood.

Medications and hypodermics and a staple gun for quick wound repair and Aripiprazole to increase blood clotting and other items needed to keep his heart beating and allow the circling vultures more time to pick over his mind’s fertile landscape.

Paralytic drugs weaken and Roman’s chest rises and lowers with each struggling breath and his past pounds endless waves against the rocks of his consciousness. He will soon understand the nature of his injuries. The cuts and cracks and breaks. Missing pieces sloppily removed and discarded into the sink. Pain rooted in his brain's synaptic connections and projects onto the motor and sensory areas of the cortex to be delivered to his muscles through a highway of nerve fibers. Surface of the skin. Fire and daggers and thousands of needles entering his body in one slow injection and he is hurt and cold but this is only the beginning of the wait.

Days lived in regret and anger and fear and Helen wants nothing more than to be in that room holding his hand and telling him the worst has passed and that there will be greater soul healing opportunities. She is also a realist and as her moment of euphoria quickly darkens she sees the absolute unfold before her through a small glass window in a nameless field and wood that lie below a snow filled sky. She sees not a fresh beginning but an end to a lifetime of suffering.

Pain finds hidden crevices and darkened doorways connecting anticipation to arrival and spreads across his body in endless waves and each swell more decisive and aggressive.

His sight clears and his blue eyes find the door at the far end of the room. The doorknob rattles and turns and the door opens and Roman sees a wide hand with thick fingers

gripping the opposite side of the doorknob. The end begins its reveal.

A second light flickers to life. Helen watches a darkness break through the lit doorway and the darkness is followed by its creator. The Shape is large and wide shouldered and she studies its exaggerated features. Deep set eyes hidden in the shadow of a heavy brow. Barrel chested. Thick arms attached to large and callused hands. The Shape reaches inside its suit jacket and its fingers emerge with a cigar and from its right jacket pocket the Shape pulls out a gold guillotine cigar cutter. She watches the Shape slide the freshly clipped cigar under its nose and inhale. It grips the end of the cigar between its teeth and returns the cutter to its jacket pocket and pulls out a box of Redhead Matches.

The Shape strikes a match against the box and holds the flame to the end of the cigar and turns the cigar for an even burn. Inhales. Blows puffs of grey smoke.

Helen’s hands flatten against the glass and her fear rises. She sees him staring at the Shape and he struggles to keep his eyes open and the blood on the side of his face has dried in flat and misshapen patches. An acceptance of fate in his stare.

The Shape steps forward. Movements breaking through shafts of light. Cigar to mouth and another bellow of smoke. The Shape’s silhouette disappears. Leather gloves. Hand in pocket and light breaking across its face. Five o'clock shadow and a square jaw. The end of the cigar glows a circle of red ash. The Shape approaches with slow and deliberate steps and when the Shape ends its walk and stands at the foot of the tub and holds the cigar between thumb and forefinger it raises its head and looks at him with indifference.

He’s never met this walking shadow. This hulking killer and gatherer of information. But he knows its singular purpose is to wade through the lies and find truth in another’s answers. It is now his turn to answer the questions and those questions will be slow and painful.

Roman closes his eyes. The sound of steel sliding across a metal tray. He chooses to drift towards the glow and follow the notes and in those final moments is the club.

Intimate. Flow and movement and the bass. Progression and the turnaround. Fears and the cold slip away. He finds warmth in the repetition and a space where the best of him can move forward.

She looks away. Helen wraps her arms around her own body for warmth and uses a shoulder to wipe tears from her face and gazes at a half sun peeking over the horizon (minutes, hours). Metamorphosis. Colors in the air and life begins a gentle push. She drops her arms to her sides and breathes deep and the leaves across the ground vibrate in coordinated dance and bright yellows and deep violets sweep across the ground and she is lifted inches into the air. More colors arrive in droves and there are plums and rose and shades of greens and orange and her breathing is deeper and filled with lavenders and vanillas. The colors settle against her skin and are absorbed and the tastes of fruits and life pushes harder through the dying.

Helen looks back towards the cabin and the walls are translucent and the opening above the ground starts pinpoint and the circle spreads until the abyss overwhelms the space and the colors move through walls and float through a crawl space and wrap themselves around him in grays and blacks. Fading. Losing their thick edges and reduced to smoke.

The horizon bends upward and the sun shines blinding and warm and colors have force and purpose and push her arms up and to the sides and the cabin far away growling and the whispering of names in an endless and rambling stream like the prayers of a dying man. Through a wood within the folds of rebirth. She sees the bright white. A nurturing embrace.

Towards the cabin one final time but he is gone to rest and there is only the abyss and the whispers of the dead. Her eyes close and her time as a witness in the passing of two souls from polar opposites crossing paths for a brief moment in eternity is now complete. She knows her place. She has new questions that will move forward and in time be brought to answer. Out of habit, she massages her hands.

Chris Glanzer lives in Southeast Alaska with his wife of nine years, and their two chihuahuas. He spends his days fishing and his nights playing blues guitar.

Thank you for reading Issue 16. It's been a wonderful experience reading the submissions. So, a big thanks to our contributors and our readers. See you in a month.

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