《Wholesome Horrors》


 The Storm

    "Row your boat. Row, row your...Boat down the stream." the children tried singing instead of primal noises of terror: shrieks and howls. Theirwords formed in the air like some kind of passive epitaph. A hollow memory of gentle sounds amid the tumultous roar of the sea''s raw fury.


    "Keep singing!" Mike hollered over more resounding clapping in the bedlam of overhead thunder. He knew Death''s drownings waited, the rowboat was half full of salty coldness already. All around them tall waves marched by, each more capable than the last of sinking them in a heartbeat. What was Death waiting on, the chorus?


    "Lord!" Mike screamed in horror, although it was the only prayer he had ever said before. Was this true fear? Or was it a kind of faith?


    The children were bailing the water with their tiny, cupped hands and the sea was mocking them by refilling it just as quickly as they could throw water.


    They sang in rhythm with their bailing; song, prayer and splashing all one dedication.


    Another blast of lightning crackled brightly without mercy and arched across the sky over them. Then another such bolt came back the same direction as if it had noticed them. Perhaps the wrath of the static was returning to finish off the survivors of the split and burning timber that had sank with little resemblance to a ship.


    A third brilliance, much brighter and hotter than sunlight, lanced towards the little boat as if an aimed deathblow from the gods of the storm. It struck a buoy with nova violence and the metal peeled, glowed and ignited. The buoy was on fire, pointing the way to shore.


    "Dear God and Jesus!" Mike heard his atheist voice swear in defiance of the miracle. He started rowing again, rowing with all his strength. Somehow the sinking boat started moving a little bit with each stroke, against resistant waves that rolled under the prow, conveying the vessel back out to sea as the man struggled.


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    It was a battle and the sea was winning, wave after wave. At best, Mike could keep the boat moving enough to almost stay in place, but the scorched buoy''s glow was receding in the wrong direction. Doom grinned malevolently upon them.


    The children were still singing something but he couldn''t hear them anymore. The icy wind sliced into his ears and the salt cut his eyes. Mike just pulled and pulled until his left arm stopped responding. He gripped the oars and started yanking with his back until his spine felt like it would burst free of his ribs. His lungs wouldn''t take the air he was gulping, still it was better than seawater.


    "Merrily, merrily..." It was Ruth that was still singing.


    "Row!" Mike ordered himself, almost a song, but more of a battle-cry.


    Maybe there was no shore to row to. Surely there was no way to survive. The storm responded with a wave that threw the boat onto its side. Something dragged it backwards as the children and Mike fell out of it.


    A monstrous wave had flung them and whatever they struck, be it the black embrace of the ocean''s finest particles, or Death itself, could not in such a moment be realized. Their boat was taken far away and flung separately upon its own destruction.


    Many pieces of the wreckage from the rowboat flew in every direction and plopped one by one into the bloodthirsty sea. There they bobbed and floated and drifted apart. Each fragment was a testimony, a syllable of courage and prayer sang without true fear. Instead the fear was temporal and wasted.


    A kind of faith had done something else. With effort and focus: the bailing of the boat had been enough. Mike''s efforts had been enough.


    They all lay upon the freezing sands of a wet beach that was strewn with every manner of pulverized sea life and man-made debris. Four children were still breathing, although unconscious and shivering, their strong bodies endured in torpor. The man did not survive.


    Moments after one of the children''s eyes fluttered awake she saw him draw his final breath and sigh it back out with relief. It sounded like he said "Hallelujah".


    The sun started to rise as the storm went to fresh new places to ravage with its awesome rage. An old man and his old wife arrived to comb the storm-decorated beach, as they always did this time of year and found all four of the survivors there.


    They awoke in safety and warmth. The old couple adopted the four children, who remembered Mike and their doomed voyage to this world, as in a dream anyway. They were alive, their dreams living on, waking again and again from the dark turmoil.


    Life is, after all, but a dream.

 To Blaze This Heart

    It was Timothy holding the forty-five in both hands and throwing up empty gasps of inner turmoil. His guts were tight and his ears were ringing.


    Two of the bodies were twitching. He had shot all three of them to death, lots of people had seen it, because after he fired the first shot, everyone out at Jile''s Kegger looked at the parked cars where the shot had exploded. Then about ten or so more shots as he gunned down the three boys that had bullied him all through high-school and had put their filthy hands on Piper. She had some of their blood sprayed onto her and she was standing still with her palms upturned. She wasn''t processing that Timothy had brought a gun...and killed Marcus, Michael and Mod. She started smiling, a curious reaction, she was in shock and also she was high.


    Timothy, now much older, awoke in the cold gray place. The quiet place that could be loud. Aricko Prison.


    Everyone knows all about Aricko Prison, and that is where Timothy now lived. But there was horror in his coming days. He had resigned himself to live in Aricko for the rest of his life, every once-in-awhile he appealed for fun but sofar he had only gotten one of his life-sentences reduced.


    At this time in his life he lived here. This was home, the cold and the gray. He had killed them, confessed he had done it on purpose, had rehearsed drawing the gun and shooting them in the exact way he had. Three life sentences. Aricko. Home.


    Now something horrible had come, some new thing from outside that wanted to take Timothy away from home. This was where he lived now, where he went to school, where all of his friends were. He had spoken with the warden, Warden Michaelson, a towering man that looked and sounded exactly like Ving Rames and he had apologized to Timothy. New case law was presented.


    It was an atrocity! This darkness had crept in day by day as the State Supreme Court re-examined his case. It was precedented in this state to release prisoners like Timothy when it could be found in case law that a plausible defense was not considered by the court. It was called the "Act of Unbiasing {R.1.2.8.9}" and a public outcry for Timothy''s release had followed the release of Ronin Vorgin, a man that had systematically shot and killed five assailants, one of them shot in the back while fleeing. Ronin had confessed to all five counts as first degree murder. The five assailants had harrassed Ronin on many occasions and Ronin had practiced with a handgun until one day they were bullying him and he drew his weapon and quickly shot all five of them to death. He had received five life sentences for five counts of first-degree murder. Later the case was overturned and Ronin went free because of the technicality that a plausible defense was not considered by the court.


    It was the victim''s initial role as assailant that made the charge of first-degree murder biased in the first place. No plausible defense was even allowed after the confession. This was late seen as an injustice and the case was overturned. Now they wanted to overturn Timothy''s case, a famous but much older case.


    He had seen television shows about crime or the state featuring a segment on him. He wasn''t surprised the world outside knew about him. It just made the world outside that much scarier. Everyone would know him but he would be a stranger among strangers. Like that Hemmingway book. Timothy said so to Warden Michaelson. The warden shook his head and corrected him:


    "Heinlein. You getting enough sleep?" Warden Michaelson asked him.


    "Oh you''re right, it was Heinlein. Hemmingway never wrote anything that good. Silly me. Sleep? Whats that for? Guy''s been awake since the second world war."


    "I think I am beginning to see your point, Timothy. You are what I would call an ''institutionalized'' inmate. You see this as your home now, it is all you know. You have no living family members outside. The world is grabbing at you, calling to you. You''re afraid to go out there." Warden Michaelson knew his prisoners well. He was their god.


    "Can I come back and visit? Or become a guard?" Timothy asked.


    The warden shook his head slowly, sadly. Technically this could be, but he knew it would not be healthy for Timothy to try to cling to prison. He made a decision to tell him he could not do either of those things.


    Silence in the warden''s office. Tears fell out of Timothy''s eyes and rolled down his cheeks. This was the worst of it, he hoped.


    "I am afraid the news is that you are to be released." the warden told Timothy.


    The pain in the prisoner''s heart swelled to his throat. He had a tightness, a lump in his throat. His tears flowed as he felt the agony that he would certainly be cast from his home. Aricko would become his past.


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    The darkness, the madness and the unknown awaited him outside. Out there he was no longer among the men that had become like his family over the decades. Out there it was night, it was winter. Only the eyes of strangers and strangeness.


    He knew things had changed a lot. Computers were on five- and three-quarter floppy disk drives when he went in. Now everybody carried a phone that was smarter than they were. Cars drove themselves. The internet.


    He barely remembered the world he had left, and it no longer even existed out there. Everything was different and he knew nobody out there. All his close family had died off over the years. Timothy had spent his life in Aricko.


    That night he lay awake. The warden did not tell him how much longer he had. He wondered if it would be days or weeks? How long until the orders to release him were carried out? His eyes were wide in the dark as he lay in mortal dread of the coming doorway into the white.


    In the morning he had not slept again, and the warden had him brought to his office again.


    "I was told you aren''t feeling well today. My guards tell me you seem depressed and tired." the warden spoke after a few minutes of silence in the office. Just the ticking clock. Peaceful, sanctuary.


    Timothy was feeling drowsy and nodded off right in front of the warden. He awoke on a cot, still in the office. It was night. A guard sat at the warden''s desk reading something on his phone.


    "I''m awake." Timothy told him.


    "Just a minute." the guard responded. He focused on his phone a moment longer, then he took Timothy to his cell.


    "Hungry?" the guard asked.


    "Yes."


    "Its cheeseburgers tonight. I will be right back, okay?"


    "Another of my favorites. What a coincidence."


    "Everyone knows you are leaving."


    "When am I leaving?"


    "Soon. There is a pool, you want in?"


    "Uh yeah. How about another year. Can I stay another year?"


    "Funny as always, Timothy. I''ll have them added, its one pack."


    "Okay, I think I can afford that." Timothy said to the guard as he left him there to go get cheeseburgers for him.


    He felt a little better from the sleep he had gotten. Also, Timothy felt a little better after he had eaten in his cell. It was considered a privilege to eat in the cell. They were letting him have all the privileges. From the perspective of the guards, Timothy was a free man behind bars right now. A civilian waiting to happen.


    It was soon morning, and he went and played a game of basketball.


    Afterwards it was Johnny''s birthday, one of the officers who had gotten a blood transfusion from a prisoner after an accident in the machine shop. Every year on his birthday the warden brought doughnuts for the guards and also for the prisoners and they formed two lines to each get a doughnut. Then they all sang happy birthday and there was a talent show sometimes too. They did all of that.


    The talent show was a full list, rap battles, drag queens and some musical instruments mostly. There were musical numbers and skits and standup comedy. It was great.


    That night Timothy prayed. He prayed that a technical reason why he couldn''t be released would be found. He begged God to make the paperwork for his release get bogged down in red tape and that Jesus would personally bless any bureaucrat that added to the complexities of paperwork that might keep him in prison longer. Then he thanked God for all of his friends in Aricko and asked for a special blessing on the warden, a man so dedicated to his work that he looked down on his prisoners as if they were his sons. Then he fell asleep, mid-prayers.


    "Timothy?" it was the warden''s voice.


    "No." Timothy woke up and felt hot tears welling up in his eyes.


    All the guards were there. They read him a pardon from the state governor and then the doors were opened, and they led him towards the entrance of Aricko.


    Slowly they walked him towards the big doors. He shuffled along with his feet reluctantly. He could barely breathe.


    The unknown and the very terrifying was on the other side of those doors.


    The doors would open up and the light would be blinding and white. Nothing but empty whiteness beyond. It was another world out there, a hostile and inhospitable world. Out there it was the desert, it was the wasteland.


    Banishment, exile, outcast. He tried to speak and only said:


    "No, I can''t go."


    Nobody spoke back they just kept him walking forwards towards the two great doors. A loud buzzing went off to indicate that these doors were opening.


    Slowly the doors opened and the cool breeze of an outside world predawn touched his face. The cool breeze smelled of the unknown and he associated the lavender and lime-mist on the cool breeze with utter dread of the unknown. He stopped and, in his terror, began to dry heave.


    The warden made them all stop for a moment and put his hand on Timothy''s shoulder.


    "Are you okay? It is almost done. You are almost out."


    "No, I''m not okay. Is there any way we can wait to do this? I am not ready." Timothy begged, gagging a little on the taste in his mouth.


    "No. It is time now." the warden replied. He helped Timothy along and soon they had stepped out into the cool morning air. The sun would come up soon.


    "There is someone here for you. Tomorrow morning you have some appointments. The state is going to help you get back on your feet. Today, when the sun comes up, I want you to just relax, take it easy. You have an old friend waiting for you." the warden told Timothy.


    Then Warden Michaelson and the guards went back inside, and the doors closed behind them.


    Alone.


    Timothy stared at the outside of Aricko bewildered.


    "Timothy?" a woman''s voice. He turned and beheld Piper.


    "It''s me..." she pointed to herself, about to say but he spoke her name for her, recognizing her after all these decades.


    "Piper. Yeah, it''s you. I am sorry I am surprised."


    "Well, you should be. I waited this whole time for you. Still a virgin."


    "Bullshit." Timothy laughed. She laughed too.


    "No, I am actually a grandmother. Let''s get going." she smiled. Same old Piper. Timothy smiled too.


    Grandkids. Maybe the outside world wasn''t entirely night.


    As they drove away from Aricko, the sun began to rise.

 Notes On The Death Of A Child

    <blockquote>"If one bell should ring in celebration for a king..."</blockquote>


    <blockquote>-Led Zeppelin</blockquote>


    The grandfather clock ticked almost in silence. I had it maintained recently. I set my coffee down and sighed. There was no way that I could finish writing my definitive work, it was far too horrible to contemplate. I shuffled my notes for The Death Of A Child and looked at the smoldering fire in the large fireplace in the manor''s library where I come to work.


    I was tempted to toss my notes into the fire. Suppose someone actually read this book when I was done? Well, people would, because I am one of the world''s most renowned authors and everything I write gets read. But this one was different. This work: The Death Of A Child was different. This would break the world.


    But it was the truth. Who am I to toss the truth onto the coals of a fire that had burned for two days? Who am I indeed? I stood up suddenly and felt light headed. The precious notes went from my lap to the floor. What if nobody understood any of it? Who could?


    There they were, my notes on The Death Of A Child all over the floor of the library. I stared at them in horror and revulsion. Only the truth could be so awful, and that is why humans prefer the illusions of the modern world: lies.


    When I die the past will die with me. The past is gone, obsolete. This is different. Children should not die, it is the pall of our existence. We breath the air of the living, but the dead once shared this with us. They are no longer with us, these loved ones.


    I lifted the cold coffee to my lips and savored the bitterness, the desolate flavor.


    I examined the noose I had made in the corner. My maid was horrified when she saw it, but I told her it was my way of threatening myself out of my loneliness. She cares about me enough that she offered to be my mistress if it would ease my loneliness. I told her that I appreciated her concern, but my loneliness was not of the flesh and blood. Just remember what we are is flesh and bone. That is what I tell myself.


    A comedian asked "Is suicide self-defense if you kill the guy trying to kill you?" as some kind of joke, but too close to home for me. I find everything around me presses upon me what I am contemplating to escape this pain. There must be a better way. I wrote my last will last week. There still must be...something...


    I leave six and a half million dollars to a foundation for children''s hospitals that will primarily cover their insurance premiums. That is all I am worth: more dead than alive. But these terrible thoughts and feelings are the horror I now face. I have lost my desire to live in this pain and anguish and I doubt I have anything left to give.


    Except to live and show courage. I do care about this world. I do care about all the people who look up to me and admire me, even if I do not feel the same way about myself. I must show a good example. I must show strength, even if it makes me live.


    Death is a promise, that life will end. I must have faith.


    I walked to the shelf and removed a children''s book. These are what I wanted to write. Instead, I write horror fiction, pretty much the opposite. More feelings of self-loathing, like bile rising from my empty stomach.


    What was in my hands was a golden classic, a world of beauty and images and innocence.


    It was about two chickens, one of them silly and the other one wise. One day the silly chicken gets kidnapped by a fox in a hot air balloon and the other chicken dresses as a fox to come rescue her.


    Every story has a moral of some kind. In my fragile state I was unable to grasp the meaning of this story. I just stared at the illustrations. I took from the shelf another, after carefully placing the other book back in its place. I care about my library.


    I sat on the floor of the library and fell asleep cross-legged sitting up, my arms folded across my chest as I leaned on my own spine''s tension. I am very limber for a fifty-seven-year-old man. I used to do a lot of calisthenics.


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    When I awoke the maid I mentioned earlier was there. She had cut down my noose and burned it. She had picked up my notes on The Death Of A Child and placed them on the table near my chair. She had made me breakfast which was good because I hadn''t eaten in a couple days and my low blood-sugar was keeping me in my treacherous state of mind unnaturally. She had opened the curtains of the library and let the sun in.


    She was wearing a dress.


    Now I should mention she is no spring chicken, but she is a handsome woman, and her voice is very attractive. She is ridiculously well-mannered and modest, usually. Evidently when she is shocked enough and desperate enough to protect what she cares about, she is willing to forego the pleasantries and get down to business. I find her to be an admirable woman in every regard. It is why I hired her to take care of me. Now she was going above and beyond the call of duty, offering to be with me so that I might be happy. She knows I like her, so she was using herself as a distraction from my pain.


    I don''t take painkillers.


    "You eat now." she said. I obeyed and ate off the tray on the floor.


    I explained to her that I was not going to kill myself. I was addressing my pain in my own way, and I was sorry for making a noose. She accepted my apology and when she realized I was not going to promote her from maid to mistress she disappeared in an elegant vanishing act. When I saw her next, she had resumed her usual duties in her uniform, and we never talked about it again. I was grateful, never-the-less.


    I went to my notes on The Death Of A Child to sort them out. The fire was cold, and I looked around the library and listened to the silence. She was done and had left, and the manor was now silent. The day had flown by rapidly, the clouds had flown past my window and the shadows and light had swung across the room sweeping it first in rays of golden holy sunlight and then bathing it in the shadows that now crept from every corner as the sun set.


    I was still just sitting there holding my notes. It was going to be a long night, I knew this. I started writing and it came like a fever. Despite the chill when I opened the window, I was sweating. The words were coming, and I could not stop them.


    One by one each of the words of horrible truth were writ upon the innocent whiteness of the page in black and wise ink.


    My eyes were wide, and the heat of my head made the air around me feel like the pall of our existence. I prefer my species, I love humanity. Our future depends on the most valuable of all conceivable resources: our soul-carrying children. Our existence is trapped in the mortal-coil and our days might have no tomorrow. Our children share our world and watch us make war and pollute and steal from each other with bureaucracies and banks. Then because they admire their fathers and mothers, they do the same when they grow. But if they do not grow then all is lost. Death is our master, and we cannot hide our beloved children. They too can die, although the horror of this is unimaginable.


    I stopped writing.


    I could hear something in my home. It was the laughter echoing. A sound that had not sang for four months. I wept. It was not real.


    I stood and the table leg caught under my knee and toppled all that I had written to the floor. The pain shot through my leg, and I shouted some profanity. There was a disturbed shuffle nearby and a whine of a child frightened by a father''s sudden anger. I spoke reassurance to the darkness that daddy had hit his knee and shouldn''t have yelled or used bad words.


    A plush soccer-ball with a face on it rolled from the darkness and touched my foot. A favorite toy. I gently kicked it back with my sock-covered big toe and it didn''t quite reach the shadows it had come from.


    A tiny and pale hand reached for it, taking it back to wherever it had come from.


    I sat back down and examined The Death Of A Child where it was all over the floor. No such thing could be carried by one man. I am not the god Atlas, and I doubt even such a mythical proportion could bear this weight.


    I yet live and I yet share part of this burden. To not build this pillar would be to allow further collapse into the night. Mankind must rise above the pain of separation.


    Long ago men that lived in caves had to leave their families behind to go and find food to feed them. Their world demanded this profound attachment, self-sacrifice, overwhelming sentiment for our offspring or even the neighbor''s child adopted. The caveman was no brute, he was a passionately loving family-man. The proof is that our species thrived and there is no other scenario in which we rise from the pall of our existence. It is supposed to be an unbroken chain of fatherhood. Does that make me the weakest link?


    I stared at The Death Of A Child and I began to understand with some kind of clarity why I must be the one to suffer. In no other scenario do we survive the modern age. Men are losing their dignity. Fatherhood is becoming an unrealized ideal. We need this.


    I sighed and looked at the shadow and said: "Daddy cannot play right now. He has work to do."

 Under The Sea

    The telecom had gone silent. So had the bridge of The Kinnerethian. Not entirely silent. Emma was crying and she had sank into a corner. Her sobs masked the silence. Everyone was lost in their own way, observing with the mind''s eye the last moments of Professor August.


    "Emmet, Emmet" her words punctuated her softening breath. It was as if she too could not breathe.


    "Somebody say something." Captain Argyle ordered. He stared down the surface team. They had all assembled and stood together, apart from Emma. None of them had words.


    There was a bottle of champagne that someone had opened earlier when the eleven-thousandth meter was reached by the heroic Professor August. They could all still hear his last transmission.


    By now he was surely dead. His final words were quiet, gasping, slow. He was losing air with each breath. The exact cause of the engine failure was unknown, but he had become trapped down there. The lights he had turned back on; draining the rest of the batteries after every effort had been made to restart the engines of his submarine. He had wanted to see what was down there and tell them what it was. What else was left to do? Then he spoke until there was no power left to transmit to the surface, to the bridge. He was dead now: the oxygen would have run out minutes ago. They had all just stared helpless at the clock.


    But his words, ghost-like, lingered in their ears, echoing like a song:


    "It is a seabed of diamonds. The rocks are covered in red crystals and there is indeed life down here. I see living things everywhere."


    Then like that song by David Bowie:


    "Tell my wife I love her so. I am coming home. Hell, I am home."


    There was a fizzing noise as someone, Samual, poured the champagne into the glasses. He left them all sitting there neatly and took one with him as he left the bridge. Outside the railing waited him to pour what he didn''t taste over the edge of The Kinnerethian. The rest of the day was spent by each of them in silent remembrance.


    Emma eventually wove her way to their quarters. Everyone had loved Emmet August, but perhaps nobody loved him more than she had. He was more than just her husband, he had always confided in her what he could say to nobody else, not even himself. And it was more than that.


    Everybody loved him because he listened so carefully and with such curious wonder to anything someone wanted to say. He had a thousand different ways of laughing and the whole world held secret reasons to be full of joy and he gave that joy to anyone he met. People were changed by him, transformed into their higher selves.


    People became lost in Emmet''s world as subjects of wonder and adoration by him. He loved everyone and they felt loved by him. Nobody was left out. And for Emma: she saw him as he really was. She was the one who got to love him the way he loved all others.


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    Emmet was not naive, he had known all manner of horror and pain. He saw how the cruelty of the world offended the soul of mankind and it bereaved him and angered him. But he kept that darkness deep inside. Only Emma knew the wisdom of his old soul.


    When The Kinnerethian had returned to the rest of the world there was a lot of mourning yet to be done. The fate of his final mission was kept a secret until it could no longer be held back. It was a tide of grief. Professor August''s adventures and exploration had become legendary. This is because the world was in a state of unsustainable ravages. What he had found down there was that there was a way to reverse all the consumption and a despoiled world. Generations that came before had used too much, taken too much. It was the life work of Professor August to find ways to reverse the damage.


    His quest had taken him deeper and deeper into the darkness, searching for ways to renew the world. He had found what he was looking for. In the past there were tremendous extinctions and the world had become ravaged by meteor impacts and the caldera''s of Hell itself. Life could exist, even human life, in the measures he had anticipated.


    There was a future and a hope because of the bio-technologies he had seeded with his research. And his adventures in the deep were celebrated.


    The whole world was shocked to hear of his final adventure. But none so than just one man.


    Gareth August was an old man, the father of Emmet. He had gotten the news first. That is why the death of Emmet was kept a secret by The Kinnerethian before they reached shore. His daughter-in-law came to the trailer he lived in and told him personally. Gareth had already known, could sense that his son was dead.


    She drove him to the beach.


    It was a two-hour drive and very little conversation occurred. Gareth said a few kind words to his beloved daughter-in-law. Mostly just a list of things that she had insisted were present at her wedding to Emmet. He reminded her that she had always made the first moves with his son and that she had proposed marriage.


    He told her that every child on earth that would be future generations would be their children. A dying polluted planet was no place to raise children when there was no hope for a sustainable future. One man''s sacrifice was her sacrifice and the sacrifice of an old man. Emma did not cry, not this time. She couldn''t cry anymore, part of her was in that submarine grave with her husband and felt no fear. Just like him.


    Gareth got out of the car and lowered himself down the sea-wall to a beach that seemed to stretch across the horizon, the tide such a distance away to make the sky seem massive and tall where it was like no other sky. A kind of desolate wind moaned like a static.


    He walked out where the winds of the Pacific whipped sand across his ankles like a flowing stream. The skies and the water were a gray color that matched his grey colour. He just stood there, his broken heart dying over and over with every beat.


    Gray skies and an endless, white horizon. That is the beaches and this is the sound: desperate and dirge like, the sands work in concert blown by the wind like a mist along the ground. It is a music, the music of the world, sang like a funerary song here at this beach.


    He remembered Emmet as a gifted child, the one he had taught to love everyone. The little boy who would read Hawaiian Aquarium Guide with a hundred illustrations and memorized all of the species. The little boy whose exuberance infected all the children he played with. He had sang or hummed melodies to his son each night and loved him as the center of his world. The little Emmet that had created undersea landscapes with his toys and watched every kind of undersea adventure from Spongebob Squarepants to Octonaughts to Blue Planet. At five and a half years old he had said:


    "Dad I really love you, but I have to go explore the ocean. I will rescue everyone. I just have to do that, okay?"

 Green-eyed Lady

    The sea is my mistress, and she is cruel beyond the loneliest bone-strewn beach. I met her while a storm obscured a sunset I had seen only in a dream. This happened on my boat, Alacrity, before I scuttled her off the coast of Shud''s Rock. The sea stood in the green light, her eyes glowing, her breath a mist.


    I took the dripping fisher''s net from her cold skin and dropped it unceremoniously onto the deck of my boat. In her nudity, the sea felt cold and helpless. That is when I put my warm coat around her shoulders and led her below to get warm. Then I made the sea my mistress. The glimmering moonlight cast its gaze upon us as we warmed my bed together.


    "I must return to my realm; but I will always come to you, my love." She promised. And she left me there and went without a splash.


    When I returned to my village it was dawn. I went to my cottage and rested there. It was a thought about myself that kept me awake:


    "Why me?"


    And to this I had to question my life. I had always done things my own way. I have swept every moment of joy into my laughter, which I give freely, along with all of my stories. But I do not bother with money or women. Those do not satisfy me. Money doesn''t belong to its holder and women do not accept my independence. And I am independent. I built my cottage and as soon as I had amassed enough money I bought a boat, Alacrity, and I have fished and sustained myself ever since. My adventures take me far and wide. I cannot be tamed.


    Loneliness can be like a drug. It can overwhelm and it can distort the mind. But it can also be very satisfying. I have earned my loneliness. It belongs to me.


    And as I sat at sunset drawing in an empty net, that is when she came.


    When I met her again she was different. This time she climbed into my boat, starboard, wearing a dress cut from a jib, and a flower from the bottom was in her hair. She smiled excitedly to see me, her eyes sparkling with merriment. Again we spent the night together. When I awoke she was gone.


    I stared out over the glassy waters filled with the clouds above. My eyes were watery. I missed her.


    As I returned to shore I felt my passion''s true desire was now to get some sleep. So I went to my cottage and slept. I dreamed.


    Night was a cloak she wore, here in a dream. She emerged from the midnight waves as I lay upon the sand on my back, waiting for her. The moon watched our lovemaking with a silent jealousy that summoned back the waves to wash the beach. And again I woke with my arms empty, on one side of my bed.


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    As the moon would rise and the wind would come, I fished as I always had. Lapping and tickling Alacrity she hid in the shadow of my boat, waiting for night. I knew she was there, I could feel her gaze. Admiring my work from beneath the waves. Soothing feelings made nightfall a distant time. But one I knew would come.


    And so she did. I had somehow drifted into the sleep of a man who is too patient for his lover. She woke me with her kisses. Urgent, needful, hot and insistent. When she was finally satisfied the sun was threatening her dwindling form. And I watched as the sea slid back over the side of my boat without even saying goodbye.


    I recalled things she had said during the night. Some of those things were words and I remembered them now:


    "Only now, and never again." As well as: "This is our last night together. I cannot again for the world. All of it, for you."


    I had heard this but it had not meant anything while she was still with me. Now I wept bitterly and fell naked onto the deck of Alacrity. I would never see her again.


    Days went by and I fished. My loneliness was very different now. I yearned for her, the sea, my green-eyed lady. My heart ached as I reeled in full nets. I always caught fish wherever I cast. No storm would touch Alacrity. I returned one day to the village, having sailed under a sky that wrecked every other boat but mine. Those winds had turned from harming her sails and those waves had passed me without noticing her at all.


    "How is your boat untouched? You the man who has no wife? I know what pact you have." An old man sitting by the sea said to me as I loaded a new net into my boat.


    "You know nothing." I glared at him and he looked away.


    "There is a way to bring her back." He laughed. I paused and turned to hear this. I gestured for him to speak and he smiled toothless and said: "Go out to Shud''s Rock. Where criminals are marooned. Stand among the bones. If you have no way to escape your fate, she will come for thee."


    "You say that if I am doomed, the sea will claim me?" I asked. He nodded.


    The thought of that conversation haunted me. It was not long before I stood dripping and cold, where bones lay upon the rock. I had swam here from Alacrity. She was sinking.


    "I will die here if you do not come for me." I said, shivering.


    Then I saw her. She was standing upon the darkening water amid the jagged rocks. She was dressed in a robe of kelp, a sagging hood hid her face. She walked slowly toward me. I could not see her in the darkness of the cowl. Her hand beckoned for me and I waded to my calves out to her.


    "My love, what have you done? I could not leave you to die this way. But now, I have broken my word, the moon shall be very angry." The sea spoke slowly and with sadness. I was filled with remorse and regret. "No man may take the sea."


    "What?" My eyes filled with tears. I had done her wrong!


    "But the sea, she may take any man she wishes." She said deliberately. Then the waters rose up around me. I knew then, only darkness.


    Darkness in the deep, together forever.

 Im Going To Prom With Cinder Allison, Even If It Kills Me

    I love Cinder Allison. I''ve never told anyone before, but I''ve loved her ever since she transferred here. She knows it too, she has told me she knows I love her. In her own way.


    We always sit together after school and eat our lunches with Catchy and Tickles and Asia. I really hate this crowd so much, with all my heart. Someday I won''t be eating lunch with them and I hate that. I glare at them sometimes when I think of it.


    It''s Cinder that I love, because I am going to marry her someday. We''ll just talk about her thing with Catchy or the time I went to the movies with Tickles. Those were just childish things; her and I have a distant future together. That is why we are not together now; we both know it. It''s written in our stars.


    I still get a little jealous when they sit close together and I know she feels the same way when Tickles follows me around. That''s why we need Asia: she seems to be the only sane one among our after-school lunch. Asia told me I "should take Cinder to our Senior Prom" or I "might regret it later".


    So I worked all summer long for two summers, mowing lawns, even though I am deathly allergic to grass when its freshly cut. In misery I sweated and ached and pushed that damn thing. At one point I upgraded to a gasoline powered lawnmower I bought at a pawn shop.


    Cinder saw me pushing it home with a big dumb grin on my face.


    "Got you a new mower?" Catchy was driving his dad''s pickup.


    "Will you help me get it home?" I asked, blushing at Cinder seeing me down there with my contraption. It had peeling paint and rust and some ragged duct tape stuck to it and a makeshift primer button. I tried to block her view of it by shifting slightly to my left. I was too skinny.


    "Dude, we are going to the lake; to party all night. Later, dude." Catchy winked at me and drove off with Cinder. It wasn''t as easy to smile as I pushed the thing from the pawn shop.


    People honked at me and at least one person slowed down with his windows tinted and his music loud. I considered waving; but it seemed predatory and I didn''t want to get my ass beat. A guy walked up to me without a shirt on and asked me if I had a lighter.


    "No." I said.


    "Can I come with you? I will push that shit for you." He said. "My name is Winston." Winston articulated himself. I bought it. I gave him my lighter and let him push my mower for six miles.


    "Want something to drink?" I asked him.


    He nodded and waited in my driveway while I went inside and made him a drink. My stepdad was already asleep and half of his gin was left. When I had made an OJ and gin for my new friend and one for myself I went back outside with the styrofoam cups full.


    He accepted it and drank it without seeming to notice the alcohol. I sipped mine.


    "You got two mowers?" He noticed my old mower, the push-mower where I had to sharpen its blades.


    "I am keeping my old one, I know I can rely on it if I need it." I said.


    "You''re doing this because of a girl." Winston smiled. I blushed.


    "I don''t want to talk about that." I said, blushing. I drank.


    "Right, let''s talk business." He sounded agreeable.


    "Back to business." I agreed.


    "If you can get me about five hundred dollars today, I can double that and get it back to you with ten percent interest, by tonight." He put his bald hands up as if I would not believe the awesome deal he was offering.


    "What do you got for collateral? You don''t even have a shirt. You realize I killed myself for this money I''ve made?" I flexed my muscles for him, glaring.


    "You should jack off more. You are tense as fuck, kid." Winston laughed. He took my drink as it was tipping out of my hand and swallowed it in one gulp and handed it back to my empty hand, an empty cup. He made a satisfied noise and wiped his lips. His eyes never left me, I felt like he knew something very deadly about me.


    "I do sometimes." I decided to say, calming down. I''m not a bitch. "Let''s go to a strip club or something and you show me how much street credit you got."


    "The pawn shop. You want a bitch?" He nodded.


    I nodded. The thought of Cinder drinking and making out with Catchy all night and the need to get proof that Winston could swindle back my money doubled so that he could pay it back with interest was a lot of thought.


    So we went back to his pawn shop. He didn''t know I had all my money still, or so I thought. There were some girls from my school behind the place where some music was playing and some guys without shirts sat drinking beer out of those really big bottles. Forties or whatever. Winston asked me which one I wanted a blowjob from.


    I laughed and pointed at April. I didn''t think this was for-real.


    April went with me smiling, obviously on-drugs. I felt very guilty and actually refused the sex in the privacy of someone''s car in the parking lot. I asked:


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    "Who''s car is this?" And it turned her off right away. I guessed it was her boyfriend Mike Gravies''s car, well his mom''s car probably. For some reason, as if her pattern of behavior just needed to be derailed, she just walked home after that.


    I took the keys and tossed them to Mike, valet style. He had no idea where April was or where she had been. I pitied him.


    I gave some money to Winston. He proved he could do whatever came out of his mouth. I expected a quick return. "You really did kill yourself."


    "I guess." I shrugged and walked home. I had work to do on my new mower.


    That evening he came over with bling and he was fully dressed. April was with him with a bruise on her cheek.


    "She needs a place to stay the night, Sir Lancelot." Winston told me. "Want her?"


    "If my stepdad knows she''s here it will be drama." I was trying to think of an excuse, but that was it. I''m not a good liar, I can''t come up with excuses.


    "Please?" April gave me big tear-filled eyes. I ushered her into the garage. I wasn''t sure what to do with her. Winston was giving me trouble, I decided.


    "Where''s my money?" I asked, my hand out.


    He smoothly made a neat stack of hundreds appear in my hand. I gasped.


    "Now you go get your prom queen. Take April with you. She''s a good girl, just needs a steady friend. You don''t know what that is like, not yet." Winston stopped smiling after he said this and then he left me there.


    I had given him a thousand dollars, taking a leap of faith. He had indeed doubled it and with ten percent interest. Then he had given me his share and my money back. I was going to prom.


    After staying in my room like a church-mouse for two weeks, April went back to her mom''s place. I was very relieved. The temptation to exploit her for sex, a man''s demon, I felt dirty just from contending with it. I was glad she was gone.


    Ironically she was grateful to me. I begged her not to be. It turned out I''d given her sanctuary of some kind. I didn''t see it that way.


    "You stay away from April." Mike''s voice came from behind me. Then he started his car and chased me down the street, trying to kill me. I managed to scramble over a fence.


    That is when Keith Parker shot me. First his dog came out and started biting me on my arm and leg. It hurt like crazy and I was so scared I peed myself. Then I looked up and some girl was getting out of Keith Parker''s hot tub with no clothes on. She started screaming and Keith Parker came running out with a small rifle.


    He aimed it at me and shot three times, missing me each time as his dog retreated. Then he shot me, clipping my left ear. I thought I had died as the bullet felt like it touched my skull. I thought he''d blown my head off. Then I realized that if I was thinking I was still alive.


    I got up and clambered back over the fence. Mike was there but he decided to drive away after the gunshots. I almost made it home before he caught me again. This time he jumped out of his car and tackled me. He straddled me and smiled weirdly. I took several punches to my face and jaw and then he just got up and left me there. I rolled over and looked at him.


    "Rapist." I spat out some blood in his direction as he drove away.


    I spent the weekend in my garage, drinking my stepdad''s beer and trying to recover. I kept looking at the mowers. They had to go.


    I skipped school on Monday and took the push mower first. I got fifteen dollars for her.


    The clunker was next and I got six dollars for it, even refurbished. I took all the money and handed it all out in change to the bums I saw. It was like a sky-burial for the mowers. I turned them into coins and scattered them among empty hands. That''s my poetry.


    As I neared home I saw Catchy there. I asked him what was happening and he simply told me that he was going to take her to prom. Then he left.


    On Tuesday it was time to ask Cinder to Senior Prom. I couldn''t wait until after-school lunch so I skipped class and asked her during her lunch. I found her playing chess with Timmy Griefim and losing.


    I got down on one knee for her and asked her:


    "Cinder Allison, will you go to Senior Prom with me?" And realized my voice was trembling, my heart beating out of my chest.


    "I can''t, I am going with Catchy." She smiled and shrugged. Then she went back to her game of chess. Someone tapped on my shoulder.


    "I told you that already." Catchy smiled, evilly.


    I felt angry and had to regroup so I left. I sat down on the curb with cars roaring by and tried to get a grip. So she was going with Catchy instead of me. At least she was getting to go with someone, I didn''t want her to not go. It was hard to think of a positive outlook. I tried to be objective and eventually I advised myself of a decent plan:


    Why not all of us go together? That seemed like a winning solution. I was already going to go all out and spend every last dollar, that''s what the money was for. This might even be better, sharing this with our friends.


    After school they were kissing as I approached and I took a deep breath. I resolved not to let my hormones and jealousy control me. I was on a mission. I wanted to jump on Catchy and beat him up, but settled for interrupting his smooches with Cinder. Even she looked relieved as the rest of our lunch friends greeted me.


    "We are getting a limo." I announced. And it was that simple. We were all going together.


    Catchy was not pleased. He was at my house again.


    Now he looked primal and insane, how I''d felt earlier before I crushed him. He said:


    "You''re not taking her from me. I get to pop that cherry, bro." Catchy was inching towards me.


    "I thought you two already did that." I said honestly. I actually didn''t believe him, Cinder had mentioned sleeping with him before. It had seemed obvious too, that they were together, he was practically her boyfriend.


    "All she ever does is talk about you. I''m sick of it." Catchy sprang at me suddenly. The knife he held glinted in the moonlight. At first, I didn''t realize he had cut my throat. He dropped the knife and took off running.


    I turned to go back into my house; something was wrong. I staggered and slipped. Then I felt a few thoughts, impatience, outrage and denial. Those stood out. I wanted it to just be over, I was upset it had happened and I didn''t think I was going to die.


    I looked around and saw that he had left his truck there down the street. He came running back. I picked up the knife and stopped him, blood spurting from my neck.


    "Hospital." I managed to say, hijacking him at knife point.


    I passed out on the way, but he delivered me anyway. I awoke two days later, just one week until prom. I got visited by everyone, Asia brought them all to me together in one visit. She also went and got my cash and took care of everything. She makes things like that seem easy and simple. She even found herself a prom date, some mysterious guy from another school. He seemed really nice.


    My stepdad fixed me up with a tie and looked at me with the limo I''d rented out the window behind me.


    "Fucking proud of you." He murmured.


    We all went then, without Catchy. Nobody had seen him up to that point.


    The limo ride was divine. Felt like that was the whole world. I told him to just keep driving around for a little while longer. Cinder kissed me then, something about the way I said it made her want to kiss me, she told me.


    All my friends and Thomas, Asia''s date. April had come with us and so had Tickles. Tickles had brought Timmy Griefim. It was very good walking up those steps with all of them. I was glad things had turned out to this end.


    The pictures were being taken at the entrance. We were almost to them.


    Then Catchy came back to finish what he had started.


    At least I flinched, thinking he was going to. But instead he just told me:


    "This is all you get."

 Im Getting Married To Cinder Allison, Even If It Kills Me

    Light was flashing in our eyes as we ascended. The pictures for our Senior Prom were at the entrance. Our school was transformed into the forest of A Midsummer Night''s Dream. All of my friends and I had gone to the prom together, all except one friend. Part of me felt a complicated bitterness towards Catchy, my lost friend.


    And then I saw Death standing in my path. Catchy had a look in his eyes that frightened me. I wanted to turn and flee from his wrath. Then after he had spoken, I could see how small and weak he really was.


    The glass of his eyes said he meant no harm to me. He wanted nothing more in the world than to be by my side and with Cinder and everyone else; yet I didn''t let him.


    We left him outside in the cold where he sat for a little while and heard the music. Then he dropped his boutonniere and left. He walked away and didn''t look back; couldn''t turn his head or raise his eyes.


    It should have been me.


    That night Cinder slept with me, that wasn''t part of my plans, it was her''s. She told me she loved me. Honestly, it wasn''t as good as when I was with Tickles; because I had bandages all over me, and staples in my neck like Frankenstein''s Monster, and Cinder was a virgin.


    Because I loved her: most of the night I just pleasured her; though she didn''t reciprocate any of that. I realized my love for her was not something I wanted to be in bed with her for. At least that is how I felt at the time. We didn''t actually start dating until August.


    There was just this long awkward summer where she kept asking me to come over whenever her parents had left and I would not come over.


    Eventually it was a letter she wrote to me that convinced me. She explained that her love for me was always poetic in-nature, and that she had not actually meant to disappoint me. Her letter expressed that she had longed to show me her affection and that I needed to give her a chance.


    So I went to her as Summer waned.


    August was a good month for Cinder and me. We actually had a decent relationship for almost the whole month. Then she started packing for college. She hadn''t told me. Evidently she had waited until the last minute to show me. I told her:


    "This is confusing. I need some time to think." And I probably sounded hurt and angry; but at least I escaped with my dignity. I went home and cried very pathetically until she had gone, refusing her calls.


    She was gone after that.


    I didn''t go to college. I hadn''t thought that far ahead. I had planned to marry Cinder and after she left I worried that my plans were insane. I had wasted so much time on a very petty moment in our lives. I had treated her unfairly, and finally realizing the consequences. I could have spent all that time with her, I already knew she loved me. I didn''t need her promises and sweet words. I missed her so much it drove me mad.


    I started working at the pawn shop. I tried to forget Cinder while she was gone. Every day I either made money or I lost my shirt. Sometimes I just drank beer out of an oversized beer bottle and sat there watching girls take their Johns out on dates. Winston gave me a gun and a set of keys and told me not to fall asleep. Then he looked at me again and said:


    "On second-thought, maybe you should get some sleep."


    I did fall asleep after the vigil became too long. I woke up staring at Cinder. At least a vision of her. She was sitting somewhere alone with Catchy. He was groping her. I shrugged. My mind was trying to play tricks on me, make me feel insecure.


    It wasn''t going to work because I was ready to completely give up. I felt quite directionless. I really didn''t deserve her, did I? I should have appreciated her more while she was still with me.


    Winston walked up to me as the morning light shone behind him. He took away the gun and keys and knocked over all my empty forties. Then he pulled me to my feet and put my arms up like a cross. He sleeved a shirt onto me and buttoned it up.


    "You need some money?" Winston asked. He showed me a fan of hundreds and then offered it to me. I shook my head. "That''s all I can do for you. You came here and did everything like a gangster. Except you don''t want your pay. What do you want?"


    "I want to marry her." I recalled. It seemed very far away.


    I examined the butts of my thoughts, hieroglyphs of spit on the ground where I''d sat. So, these were lies, these words I had invested my thoughts with. They hurt, the lies hurt more than the truth. And now I knew fear, a real instinctive kind of fear. Fear of what is not the truth.


    "Take this then." Winston took my hand and put the money in my hand. "Go get your wife and marry her."


    "Thanks Winston." I thanked him. I walked home in cold sunlight, feeling bathed somehow.


    I called Cinder.


    "Dude, why haven''t you called?" Her voice broke. How''d she know it was me?


    "I didn''t know you wanted me to." I was in a weird place when she left. I tried to tell her that: "I fell apart. I just sat...waiting..." I was apologizing in my tone. Then Cinder said:


    "Me too." And she was crying. "Please come."


    "Okay." I said. I listened to her weeping over the phone and I felt like the world''s worst boyfriend. It was almost unendurable and it went on for some time before she hung up. Then I shattered into self-admonishing tears.


    I caught an overnight bus and thirty hours later I was at her college. I hadn''t even packed anything. Well, I pocketed my toothbrush on the way out.


    Cinder was waiting for me with a timeshare car. Some kind of new rental thing. I''d never seen one before. When she got out I was stunned.


    She looked completely different, her clothes, hair, everything. She''d even grown more. Cinder was grinning and ran to me and we embraced and kissed, both of us swapping hot tears to our cheeks.


    "You missed me." Cinder squinted cutely. "It killed you not to hear from me."


    "I''m surprised you survived." I told her. "I thought you''d gone off to war."


    She took me back to her dorm and I had to get a guest pass. My curfew was six.


    "I''m gonna get an apartment near campus." I told her. "And a job. I can''t ride a bus for thirty hours away from you. I''d be three percent more dead with each passing hour."


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    "You''d still be ten percent alive." Cinder pointed out. "I can work with that. I bet I could keep you alive at just five percent."


    "Let''s not try that." I laughed.


    We just stared into each other''s eyes. We had renewed all of our favorite things to do together and this was a new one. Just laying there staring into each other''s eyes because there is nothing else either of us wanted anymore.


    I was supposed to leave after six, as a visitor. Sort of hard to follow a rule that only seems to be there to make you miserable. So I stayed.


    When we woke up it was from a restfulness we had forgotten. I wanted to remember it always and told her:


    "Cinder, I am going to marry you. You know that, right?"


    She sat there looking at me strangely. Sadly. There was something wrong, yet. Then she said: "We can''t get married. I love you, Dude, you are my soulmate. Get a home and a job and be with me. Never leave me."


    I was confused and I went from her side. I got to know the college town. I took a job assembling lawnmowers and doing gardening retail at a home and garden outlet. I found a cottage next to my work that I could walk to Cinder''s from. Everything was close-by. I leased the cottage to buy it. I didn''t like the idea of wasting money on renting something. Then I returned to Cinder and told her what I had done.


    She seemed like she had expected me to say everything that I said. Then she told me she wanted to marry me; only that I needed to bring back all of our friends.


    "You want them too." She reminded me. I agreed. "Even Catchy."


    "I don''t know where he is." I shrugged. She didn''t accept my attempt at an excuse.


    "Make it right and I will marry you." Cinder said seriously.


    She moved into my cottage from the dorm and we lived there together. I worked hard at my new job and made the place shine. After her next year of college was over, I already had my first promotion at work.


    I had called Asia many times and she was already planning the wedding.


    Tickles was a little bit harder to find. Her and April had opened a bar, a mysterious benefactor had funded them out of nowhere. They called it ''Moonshine''. I went there and visited, to give them their invitation to a wedding that might not even happen.


    "Cinder is all-about honor." Tickles finally turned from all her bar chores and spoke to me about Cinder.


    "I am honorable enough for her. Will you come?" I asked again. Tickles sighed and gave me a sidelong look.


    "What about Catchy?" Tickles asked.


    "What about him?" I demanded she make a clearer inquiry. Tickles scoffed and pointed at me like I had my answer. This is why her and I only lasted one date.


    "Cinder isn''t gonna marry you and leave him out like at the prom." Tickles pinched her lips and widened her eyes, expecting me to fully comprehend what she was saying.


    "She already told me I had to make it right with him." I surrendered. "And I will."


    "There is a scar on your neck. How you gonna make it right?" Tickles held her elbow and put one finger over her lips.


    "I am gonna get him to talk to me. I''m gonna listen to him." I told her. She nodded.


    "Dude." Tickles gestured for me to lean closer to her and she whispered: "You got this."


    Then the excitable creature in her licked my bullet scar and giggled crazily.


    "You''re sick." I laughed. I left Moonshiners, as the place was actually called, not ''Moonshine''. Or something like that. It seemed to have two names.


    April was out in the parking lot. She had come to pick up Tickles. I greeted her and told her I had come and invited Tickles to the wedding and asked if she would come too. She smiled and hugged me and said:


    "Yes."


    Then, on a caprice of intuition, I thought to ask her if she knew where Catchy was. She darkened slightly and I regretted deputizing her. April looked away and a cold wind blew.


    "What is it?" I asked.


    "He isn''t well." April looked at me sternly. "I can''t look at him again."


    "I understand. Can you tell me where he is?"


    She nodded. Tickles came out and April suddenly switched to her normal self, and to hide her countenance, she hugged me again.


    "Dude, I am so glad you are back. You have to come stay on my couch. Please?" April asked, not letting go of me until I agreed. She gave an affirmative laugh and pushed me into the back seat of her car and closed me in. Then she spoke to Tickles for a moment.


    Tickles didn''t look happy with whatever bullshit April was saying to her. Why April lies when she feels awkward, I don''t know. I thought: I''d just rather tell Tickles, she already knows I am gonna go see Catchy.'' It occurred to me this elaborate sleep-over cover was so that Tickles wouldn''t know April would be going near Catchy to take me to him, wherever he was. I sighed.


    Then we dropped off Tickles and April took me to a trailer. I expected this was where Catchy was, but indeed it was her place. I was already irritated with her for spinning a web with Tickles. I looked at her and complained:


    "This is your place. I want to go to Catchy, right?" I was pushed into a chair.


    "What is wrong?" April asked. She sounded wounded by my tone so I confessed to her with a nicer expression:


    "I don''t like that you lied to Tickles."


    "I didn''t lie to her. I told her I am taking you home with me and in the morning I will take you to see Catchy. After breakfast." April sighed strangely and sat down with some intensity, across my lap. I was startled and my arm held her waist on reflex as she almost slid off. She wrapped her hands around the back of my neck and held me like that.


    "April, I am with Cinder. We live together." I objected verbally to her proximity and yet my body was all-for-it.


    "She doesn''t care." April looked at my eyes finally. She believed it and she looked slightly insane. "You are not married yet, so you shouldn''t then either."


    "I do." I protested. Then April covered my mouth with her''s and stood, only to straddle my lap instead. I was terrified that I was going to get with her, because it would mean I didn''t really love Cinder or have enough honor for her.


    Then she took a picture of us like that and got up, saving it to her cloud. She looked down on me. Now she looked excited, instead of seductive. I''d never seen her look crazy before.


    "That''s mine." April challenged me.


    "That''s it?" I was bewildered. Then I hesitated, realizing I was pursuing her, even leaning forward. I was still turned on, blushing, not thinking clearly. I leaned back, trying to calm my breathing.


    "Yes." April was also trying to calm down. She wasn''t pretending to be aroused. "Unless you want more?"


    "No, no. I''m good. I got scared for a second." I wondered what I sounded like at that moment.


    "I will behave myself. Come be next to me, like before." April''s demeanor slowly cooled and she led me to where she wanted me.


    So we did, like church-mice, lay there all night worrying about falling asleep. She''d given me sanctuary and now I knew what it felt like. She''d wanted me to touch her: not. And I hadn''t. I knew why she was so grateful to me back then.


    Best breakfast ever.


    She was texting to Tickles. "I told her we fucked. Sorry. Anything else would be a lie. You understand."


    "I am a dead man." I laughed. "Cinder will think so too."


    "She will still marry you. Your good behavior is my secret, understood?" April glared. I tried to understand her insanity. She rolled her eyes at me and then thought about saying something to me and then didn''t. Instead: "Just trust me."


    We drove out to Catchy.


    Out by the lake he was living in a kind of freaked-out hut. Animal skulls adorned the place. He had a hunting rifle leaned against a stump with an ax in it. He was gutting a small deer with a huge knife. Steaming guts were under it on a black trash bag.


    April had waited back down at the car.


    "Catchy?" I asked him. He turned with a feral look on his face.


    "Dude." He growled.


    "I need to talk to you." I told him.


    He waved the knife menacingly. I wondered if he was going to cut my head off completely, this time. His eyes betrayed depths of despair and loneliness. All of his pain was named after my relationship with Cinder.


    "About what?" He grinned evilly.


    "About Cinder. We are getting married."


    "You came out here to tell me that?" He nodded appreciatively, his eyes mad.


    "No I came out here because I wanted to apologize to you." I told him. "I wanted to hear things from your perspective. What happened? Why did you cut me?"


    He hesitated. "I don''t remember."


    "Then can you accept my apology, for being an ass to you? Whatever I did, it was so bad you did that. So I''m sorry." I apologized, as best I knew how. I hoped this meant things could be right.


    "Is that it?" Catchy asked, still holding the knife.


    "Will you come to the wedding?" I asked. I hoped he wouldn''t.


    "No." He mused.


    "Well, it''s good to see you, Catchy." I told him. He gave me a weird smile and waved. I left him there and went back down to where April was waiting.


    She called Cinder and we talked to her. "I made peace with Catchy. He doesn''t want to come to the wedding though."


    "Alright. Come home, my love." Cinder blew a kiss to me. "For better or for worse."


    "Till death do us part." I said. As she hung up I felt like that was our vows.


    Suddenly April was wide eyed and choking on a scream.


    From behind, my death pierced my heart.

 Rosemarys Abortion

    It isn''t difficult to look away, cover one''s eyes, ignore anything unsettling. This is something that a young woman should ignore. Don''t look.


    By definition, anything that is undefined is also undefinable. Is an experience that a human being has, undefinable? If it can be defined, then why is it not? Why is it lost in a hushed fear of controversy? Why is not the experience able to become defined?


    Rosemary was fifteen and she had become pregnant and she was the victim of a crime and all of that was defined. If she wanted to become a mother all she had to do was wait. She didn''t want to become a mother, and certainly not the mother of a baby conceived the way her baby was conceived. It was just a fetus, though, don''t forget.


    ''While abortion is legal  it is culturally unacceptable'', Rosemary believed, and she said to herself: "Christians will hate you for it. You are killing your baby. It is your choice. It is just a fetus." Rosemary was sick of all of it.


    And morning sick too. This was not their experience, it was her experience.


    Her world, her body. Her choice. Nobody needed to be telling her anything, good or bad, for or against. Everybody just needed to shut up and let her finish throwing up. And flush.


    She started brushing her teeth. It was a long bus ride. She was afraid of the emotions that went with the ride. She didn''t trust her emotions. Every damn thing was all over the place. Choice? What choice? What was there to choose?


    "I never got a choice." She reminded herself.


    She somehow hated those that were leaving it up to her to decide. Everyone-in-general. Anyone who supported her or stood in her way was wrong; somehow everyone was wrong. They didn''t really know anything; they were just being tacky and ignorant and assuming they knew what was up.


    How could anyone say this wasn''t a baby in her? How could they say it was wrong to kill it? Both sides were just assuming they knew what they were talking about.


    "It''s me, just me." Rosemary protested the support and the protest. They were both wrong. Society, an evil entity, people assuming the roles of the Other, of the royal ''They'' needed for controversy. It was the real evil behind all of this: the conflict itself and the hatred and fear it generated.


    The truth was not complicated for Rosemary.


    At fifteen years old, in this state, no parental consent is needed. Or wanted; this is something that belongs to Them, to the Others. The ones we always call ''They'' when we say things like "You know, They always say that a young woman is responsible for her own body, can make her own choices. It is a matter of choice, of freedom, of control over one''s own body. Reproductive rights."


    So what exactly are They, anyway? Certainly They are not human. She pondered all of this in a convoluted stream of consciousness that was hard to follow. Why should it be easy? What is worthwhile that is also easy? Anything?


    She wondered what They were, these things with eyes and white masks over their mouths and noses. They have these machines They use, and needles. It is terrifying. Much worse than the day she actually became pregnant. That had happened, it was horrible, but this was much worse. This was not natural and instinctively she was very afraid. Who were these, or what were these, with the masks?


    Masks a convention of the Other. The Other hides behind the mask. When They were doctors and nurses and social workers these masked ones were human, no masks. Now they all wore masks, even her. Rosemary wanted to scream, but the drugs had made her calm. She was screaming inside, but she just laid there, defenseless, unable to now change the course of the ritual.


    The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    And now it was like a ritual as the nurse used two hands to deliver a tool to the doctor. Rosemary felt a chill as the doctor took the tool, white gold and gleaming, a sacrificial knife.


    "No." she uttered, lips trembling weakly behind her mask. Like a dream that could not be awoken from. Like a waking nightmare, the suffocation of night terror. This was no dream, under that bright light.


    That is how she imagined her abortion would be. The crazy people in the parking lot had burned the image into her psyche of horror and revulsion. The pictures of blood soaked fetus on signs were not their tactic. They simply stood there and looked at her, their protest was pleading and warning her of stepping into a dark world of nightmares and terror. They would have scared her less with ''dead baby porn'', but their gentle gestures towards a loss of innocence was far more frightening, somehow.


    Nobody needed to blow up abortion clinics, they belonged entirely to the world. It would be the same as taking offense to a graveyard or a retirement home. Their evil was natural and needed no violent demonstration. There was simply nothing more to say. But there was so much more to say, after-all.


    Rosemary was inside and the place was nothing like she expected. There was no danger, no controversy, no secrets. Here the devil was chained up and served mankind like a cartoon fry-cook. A harmless genie with a scalpel.


    Her eyes stared at the form with dyslexic abandon. Watery eyes, emotional from surviving and not sleeping afterwards. The world wasn''t safe and doing this would make it no safer. She knew this.


    It was the fact that she could, if she actually wanted to. Rosemary wondered if anyone ever actually got an abortion, or if they just sat here with the form and cried in this safe and quiet place.


    "Fucking-Hell." she cursed the blank television next to the fake plant. She meant it too. She had never actually sworn before, it felt kinda good, actually.


    "You alright?" Someone was asking her.


    "I have an appointment. I already filled all this shit out. Shit." Rosemary told the shade. It shifted back into the shadows.


    "I see. Just fill it out anyway and then we can get you checked in."


    "No. I don''t think I will. No, you go ahead and fuck yourself, Ma''am." Rosemary responded.


    Several moments went by and Rosemary looked up and noticed the lady was standing there waiting for her to fill out the form on the clipboard. She started filling it out, but her handwriting kept vexing her.


    "You okay?" The person standing there asked Rosemary. There was nothing condescending at all, in her voice, but Rosemary did feel some edginess in the conversation.


    "What is wrong with my handwriting?" She wondered trying to ignore the woman next to her.


    She finally finished filling out the form and then refused to hand it over. "It is my choice whether to do this or not?"


    "Of course."


    "So then I can change my mind if I want to?"


    This just got a blank stare for a response from Ms. Interruption. Blinking.


    "This all looks fine. You ready to come back?"


    "I think I will wait here for now." Rosemary decided, belligerently. She was tired of all the pressure she was feeling. She just wanted to feel safe and this had all started to make her very uneasy. The more comfortable they tried to make her the less comfortable she felt.


    "Do you need to reschedule?" They asked, staring. Her eyes had that weird shade in them again, like she herself was tired of her own game. And it was a game, wasn''t it?


    "I want to see it first. And nobody touches me unless I say it''s okay." Rosemary insisted.


    This got a positive reaction and she was led by the brighter Ms. Interruption, to where it would be. It was a very small operating room with generic pictures of flowers in frames. Everything was simple and discreet and painted in the most blighted colors she had ever seen. She wasn''t sure if it was green, brown or gray, so pale and pointless it was.


    "The doctor is in the room right there."


    "I want to see that room too." Rosemary insisted.


    "Sorry but it is off limits." Ms. Interruption told her. "But you can look inside from here, if you need to see."


    "See what?" Rosemary felt it again, some touch of the Other, something about to be changed by a mask. It was here, a sensation of letting go, of choosing dignity instead of shame. Of being particularly proud of the ''courage'' to make a choice. Even a wrong choice.


    "What is the matter?"


    "Does anyone ever actually go through with it?" Rosemary was trembling.


    "Why yes, all the time. It is going to be alright, it doesn''t hurt at all." Ms. Interruption had a voice that was distant, strange. It didn''t make any sense.


    "I change my mind. I don''t want to. I say no." Rosemary''s eyes watered with tears. She wasn''t one of Them, she was going to be somebody''s mother. She had never felt so sincere about anything. The thought of taking one more step had filled her heart with far more dread than the worry of becoming a teenage mother. A victim of Man''s World. Better than this, somehow.


    "You have the right to do that, still. Nothing you signed took that right away. You will still have to pay, and insurance won''t cover you now if you leave." Ms. Interruption had changed her tone after-all.


    "That is fine." Rosemary was already walking away. "I quit. You can keep the money."

 Automatic Ghost Writer

    I had dozed off. Writing grant applications and searching and researching all night long had finished me off. After thirty-seven hours of homework and papers and letters explaining why I need more money, I crashed. My cold coffee in my lucky mug hit the hardwood floor and the handle broke and didn''t wake me up.


    My hands were still on the keyboard, holding Jay on caps lock. I woke up with one of my housemates staring at me. I was on the floor and she was sitting at my laptop. She had checked on me and seen the screen of my laptop.


    "I read what you wrote. That''s jacked up." Cherry told me. I looked up at her groggily from the floor.


    "What?" I had no idea what she meant. She got up and left me there. I sat at the bar and looked at my laptop. I had not written what I read. I had no idea who had or why. It was some kind of story about a child being abducted, tortured and murdered from first-person narration and in sadistic detail. Frightened and disturbed, I deleted the whole thing, noticing the description of the killer and his home and ignoring it.


    A week later I was studying late and the same thing happened again. I was waiting for a webinar with some classmates and my camera was going. I fell asleep, half asleep at the keyboard. When the meeting started I woke and said "Hello".


    Then I noticed there was another disturbing account. A cold chill ran down my spine and I began to sweat. My camera was already recording for the meeting and showed me sitting there typing in my sleep. I jumped from my seat, tipping it back. My fingers had flown, typing an astounding one hundred and eighty words per minute. I normally just peck at the keyboard doing about twenty, top speed.


    I dismissed myself from the meeting. I could see the perspiration on my forehead and the dilation of my eyes to tell me I was panicking. I was also standing there breathing heavily. I had written a terrifying account of a murder victim in horrifying detail. I had no memory of it. I couldn''t comprehend those two facts. I was gripped in fear, glancing around, feeling as though something were with me, watching me. The fear slowly bubbled down when I anticipated no tangible threat. It became the quality of a dull horror, like a pain becoming a familiar ache.


    Days went by and I could think of nothing. I could no longer sleep; exhaustion would not rock my nerves. Every shadow held a pair of unseen eyes. I could feel it. I was a rod, a conduit; they knew and I knew they knew. When I slept I met them:


    I cannot describe my dreams here because forbidden are the worlds within my mind. They are only thoughts and therefor I cannot state them as facts. My reaction to the specters who spoke to me in my sleep, and as shades of night when my eyes opened, was primal. Screams and hysteric violence, as I woke up from my nightmares, were my first reactions.


    I had to sock my hands to keep from scratching my face or pulling out my hair. I had to close the door on my cat because the damage to my room indicated nocturnal thrashings and violence that would have endangered her. My dark skin grew pale and flaky and my eyes became puffy and red. My grades went from a ninety-nine percent average to just eighty-six. The guy I was seeing got scared away and even though we weren''t official yet, I felt dumped. So while my actual dreams might not be tangible, the nightmares became my life.


    I woke up one Saturday afternoon. I was dehydrated and starved and hadn''t shaved. The decision to resist what was happening to me by taking care of myself was a gradual thought as I lay there. I rose to go get water and breakfast and to take a shower.


    Terror seized me when I came out of a faint. I was sitting naked at the kitchen-bar with my laptop, and I had done it again. The new story was beyond the others. The details were so intensely horrible that I fell off the stool and began to dry heave. Cherry found me there and frowned severely. Her and the others had already complained about my recent problems to the landlord. I was causing a disturbance. She took a picture of me there, with her phone.


    Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    I started to cry, trembling. I hadn''t written it, hadn''t written any of those terrible stories. I had no idea how I had, but it wasn''t me. Those were my severe troubles before I dropped out. It wasn''t long before I couldn''t pay my rent on-time and then not-at-all.


    At least the six months of being homeless and tramping kept me from my laptop. I resolved that all that had happened was just stress, just caused by being too stressed out at school. I managed to get a job working at a drive through burger place. I slept near there until I''d saved enough to rent another room. By the end of last year I had gotten back into school. There was still a lot of anxiety about getting back on my laptop.


    I had never deleted the last story. As I read it I began to realize that since that time I had heard of the same murder in the news. It was a true story, I had somehow written every detail and then some, even getting the name of the victim right. It wasn''t yet in the news at the time I had written it, so there was no way I could have known, unconsciously.


    My time outdoors and my previous experiences, the darkness, the loneliness and all I had done to rebuild my life encouraged me. I was still quite afraid, but I was more afraid that I almost knew the truth, and yet I could still believe myself to be crazy.


    I drank some sleeping medicine from the corner drugstore. Then I sat at my laptop and waited. Drowsiness overtook me, the drug taking effect. When I was almost asleep it took hold of me. I almost knew it was happening, almost felt it. Then I was gone, asleep at the keyboard.


    When I woke up I knew the truth. I had another victim''s testimony, a first-hand account of a murder in terrifying and graphic detail. Somehow I had channeled her and written her story. I felt nervous about what I had to do with it, but the fear of what I had become was slowly leaving me.


    I got on my phone and called the police department, asking to be put in touch with the homicide department.


    "This is Detective Winters, Homicide. Who are you?" The man on the phone asked me.


    I identified myself and then explained that I had information about a local murder. I told him who she was and where her body was. Then, as he sat in silence I felt a gnawing fear of the police. Would I somehow get blamed because I knew so much?


    "How do you know all this?" He asked.


    "I type what the dead say when I sleep." I said, hoping and praying he would believe me. When he said nothing I asked: "You don''t believe me, do you?"


    "Actually, I do believe you." The homicide detective assured me. "I have seen more unbelievable things. Besides, the details you described are all accurate. We are already on a case like that. I''m also watching the suspect you described. I know it was him. With your help I am going out to my car right now to collect the weapon from where you said it is. Then I am going to go arrest him."


    "That''s it?" I asked.


    "Yes." Detective Winters promised. "Next time you have something to get off your chest you can call me directly."


    "I don''t understand." I confessed. "What is going on?"


    "You know better than I. I am just another messenger. That''s what you are now too. So that''s that."


    I didn''t get anything more from the police. They had confirmed that my stories were true. I wrote another and called them and they took me seriously. Another and another left me prematurely gray and developing wrinkles decades before I should. I feared their visions: the pain and the grotesque moments becoming my own memories. I cannot understand what I am now: an automatic typist for ghosts. Some kind of literal ghost writer. The police pay me for my help solving murders and I get to remain anonymous to the public.


    A cold, lonely and misunderstood life; ghost writing for the dead.


    Alone, I got in touch with Cherry and asked her if she had cared for my cat like she had promised. When I had Madame Whiz back in my life I felt better. When I slept I slept soundly, having a way out from my nightly terrors, now that I would write and share their stories. I think my cat knows what I have gone through, somehow; she senses it and forgives me for being gone for so long. The darkness was not so cold with her curled up, keeping the ghosts away.


    For that is all they are and they only wish for rest. At least that much I understand.

 Granny Vs. Python

    Last summer is when it happened. My son was finally over a year old and I was willing to leave him at my mom''s house with her and go out with Lamar. We needed some time to get back together. He was an okay dad, spending time with me and his son. I only wish we hadn''t broken up. We both wanted to get back together, we just needed some time to sort things out.


    I had felt something awful after dinner and I had wanted to go home. It wasn''t Lamar, he was being very good to me and paying for everything because he had a new job. I could really believe he was sorry and wanted me and his son back in his life. But something was terribly wrong, back at home.


    When we got to the apartments, we were met by my mother''s neighbor, Mrs. Peabody. She was standing outside her own apartment. She had Lamar Jr. at her apartment. She promised me he was asleep and that he was perfectly fine.


    "Where''s my mom?" I asked, a dreadful fear creeping up inside my throat. All the signs pointed to something being horribly and terribly wrong. Was she alive?


    "Your mother." Mrs. Peabody said slowly. "Is at the hospital. I thought she called you."


    "Nobody called. Jalara knew she had to come home. What''s going on?" Lamar asked for me.


    "Raven is the bravest and strongest woman I know." Mrs. Peabody proclaimed. "I don''t know all of what happened, but she killed that monster and saved her grandson."


    "What?" I felt tears in my eyes. "Where''s my son?"


    "He is fine, he is sleeping, like I said." Mrs. Peabody repeated herself. "The police and animal control just left, right after the ambulance."


    "Ambulance?" I was distressed. I needed to see my son, but I needed to know my mother was alright. It didn''t sound like she was.


    "I''m sorry, baby-girl. I don''t know how she is. That monster did some damage to her. I am praying for her, that''s the best I can do." Mrs. Peabody led us into her apartment and to Lamar Jr.


    I sat down with him and started to cry from confusion and fear. I lay down beside my napping child and held him. "I''m never leaving you alone, not ever again." I whispered.


    "I''m going upstairs to get the diapers." Lamar put his strong hand on my hip and told me where he was going. "I''ll be right back."


    He left us momentarily and went upstairs to get the diaper bag. He came back with his eyes wide with disturbance at what he had seen. I sat up slowly with dreadful terror at the circumstances I was about to know. He set down the diaper bag and an eye bear. Then he just sat there for a long time staring soberly at his son. I could see something had just changed in my man. His eyes looked different, and that look never left him. He was changed by what he knew.


    "Tell me what happened." I told him. He shook his head slowly, his own fear too strong for him to speak. After awhile he said:


    "It''s a mess." He began slowly. "Blood everywhere."


    "What?" I gasped in horror. I looked at my little boy and trembled. What monster had come for him?


    "Everything is knocked over." He continued in a quiet voice. "Window in your room is open. I think that''s how."


    "What?" I asked when he stopped talking. He sighed and picked up the eye bear. It had a nanny cam and recorded up to eight hours at a time. He unzipped its back and looked at me for approval at what he was doing. He knew about it because he was the one who bought it for me, back when he had started trying to get me back. He''d hoped it would help get me out of the house so he could spend time alone with me. When he had finally gotten me alone he had treated me perfectly, very sincere and determined to earn my forgiveness.


    I nodded and he extracted the USB cable from it to plug into his phone. We had matching phones because he had bought a new one for me, too. He wasn''t surprised I had spied on my mom by setting up the eye bear. The toy was really a video camera and microphone inside of a stuffed bear.


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    He was watching it from the beginning and I could hear my mom singing to Lamar Jr. His dad was smiling as he watched that part, even though he knew it was going to get awful.


    Things went quiet and he watched for a little while and commented: "He sleeps a lot."


    "He is your son." I said on impulse and somehow it made us both laugh a little bit with some kind of comic relief. Anything to break the tension.


    Lamar began to fast-forward the video until he got to the part where things got scary. I could only see his reaction. His eyes widened and darted from his phone to his son and back to reassure himself of the outcome. Then awful horror crept across his face and I could feel his fear, gnawing inside of me like the teeth of some primeval reptile.


    He gasped and looked away and then looked back. Then I could hear my mother screaming in the video and Lamar turned down the volume so it was less intense to hear. As he was turning it down her screams grew more horrified and loud. Finally he nearly had it on mute. I could still hear her noises as she struggled with some unknown and monstrous intruder.


    "Lamar?" I asked him with my eyes watering and my voice breaking. I kept covering my mouth like he was doing. I could see his eyes had become like orbs of tears, ready to spill across his cheeks and fingers while he covered his mouth and stared at the nightmare.


    "I feel sick." He coughed after it was over. I could hear my mother moaning in pain and my baby crying. Whatever had happened was over, but the pain and terror lingered on, the part of the monster that could never be killed. Lamar retreated from the room to collect himself out on the porch.


    I slowly got up and looked at his phone. The most frightening horror movie in my world was still playing. I couldn''t look, at first. I am not someone who likes scary things, I certainly don''t like horror movies. I got scared watching the third Ghostbusters and it was supposed to be funny.


    My mother''s beautiful singing. When she was just Raven, she used to be a female singer. She went up with Kool Moe Dee. She has a framed picture someone took of her on stage with him performing live. She just sings gospel music now, but her voice is still very beautiful.


    While her grandson was asleep she left the room. I fast forwarded until I saw it. I stopped the video and gasped at the sight. In the open window it had appeared: a giant snake.


    It moved inexorably towards my sleeping son where he slept and it was obviously going to eat him. Nothing scares me more than snakes. I couldn''t watch. My whole body was tingling, my nerves were frayed, I was hyperventilating and sweating while I watched it crawl. It slithered up to him and tasted him with its tongue. Then it lifted itself and opened its mouth, unhinging its jaw. I knew it could wrap him up and crush his bones and then eat him. That is what it was going to do, I knew it would. I had to look to where Lamar Jr. was sleeping to know he would be fine. He was still sleeping soundly.


    That is when Raven attacked it. She came out of nowhere screaming "No! No! No!" and grasping the snake''s head in her hands, she pulled it away from him. She dug her nails into its eyes and pushed it against the dresser. The snake wasted no time using its strength to fight back. It began to writhe and coil itself, trying to wrap itself around my mom while she held its head in her blood covered fingers.


    Lamar Jr. woke up and started crying from all the noise. Raven wrestled and dragged and rolled the serpent out of the room and I could not see everything that was happening. Then I saw that one of her arms was hanging limp at her side. She had a broken arm. She still had one good arm and she collected a piece of a broken wooden chair they had fallen onto.


    The snake seemed to be done with her and was crawling away. Raven was on her knees, crossing the floor with the stake raised. I could hear the pinched, hissing noise from the snake the first time she stabbed it. With grunting effort she pulled the wooden shard free and raised it again. She had enough strength and fury to stab it five more times before she collapsed beside it. There she lay moaning in agony. She was covered in cuts and bruises and it had bitten her cheek and pulled a piece of her face off.


    The incredible awfulness of it had somehow made me numb at that point. I felt strangely calm as I turned it off and looked at my son. I snuggled up next to him and waited for his father to come snuggle up next to me. After he was ready he came back in and comforted me.


    "I will stay and guard him. He will be fine, you have to go see her." Lamar said quietly.


    "I am in no condition to drive." My numbness wore off as soon as I felt safe and I was speaking. My voice broke up and I started sobbing.


    "Mrs. Peabody can take you. She can drive my car. You gotta go see her." Lamar was adamant.


    "Okay." I sniffled. Then I realized that he never let anyone drive his car. I had sometimes felt jealous that he was more territorial about his car than he was about me. I laughed that kind of laugh that comes from someone who was just crying and said: "You never let anyone drive your car."


    "It''s just a car." He said. Like he was a totally different person: that was my proof. I kissed him with all my loving and left him and his son so I could go see my mom. Before I left I heard him say for the first time since we were first together:


    "I love you, be safe."

 Night Of The Munes

    The Clan Of Munes had captured my imagination like no other story before. It was a children''s book, written by one of my ancestors. He had written and illustrated a story about a medicine man of the Pacific Northwest natives that had created living creatures from driftwood. His magic had helped him find the ingredients that had some of the leftover power from the creation of the world. Then his magic had helped him to shape them roughly into humanoid beings and to bring them to life. He gave them their powers, including invulnerability to fire. In the end, however, the medicine man could not command them. In their revolt they destroyed his home and drove him from their island, never to return.


    Besides his one book he was a skilled artist that specialized in seascapes. The author''s art designs had fought in the war as more than just simple patterns. The Navy called it camouflage, but it was more than that, for his efforts actually protected all the ships that were painted. His spirit was one of guidance and harmony and his powers of protection and blessings were genuine.


    I needed those protective powers. I needed his guidance and wisdom. I had completed my training with the Coastguard and my first adventures quickly taught me of the power and rage of the sea. I had to experience multiple failures that resulted in the deaths of three people that I was responsible for rescuing.


    I sat in the dark at Black Whale in North Cove, sipping my misery very slowly and savoring the bitter burn. Outside the sea had claimed the land, carrying away nearly a thousand feet of shoreline since the beginning of the town. It was the world''s fastest eroding coastline; cursed by those whose land this once was.


    "Used to be a mile to the shore from here." McReady said to me from his table. We were the only two drinking that night at Black Whale.


    After a few minutes of silence followed his words I said quietly and firmly:


    "Don''t talk to me." And then I looked up at him and he saw I meant it.


    He had a pitcher of amber ale, the kind with a lion on it. When he finished it he decided it was now okay to talk to me and began with some insults. All I could do was nod and agree, frowning with the menace of my threatened emotions. He was saying:


    "Couldn''t help them when they hit the Columbia Bar? Too dangerous for you? Just let them get torn to pieces by the waves? Pieces of them kids washed up. Sea washes away the land and spits out the dead." He was reminding me with a little too much mirth and mayhem in his voice.


    The bartender was clearing his throat at McReady. Mcready ignored him and offered me some more of his slurred prose:


    "Graveyard of the Pacific. They don''t stay buried, do they? You didn''t have to pull on a dog''s leash. Not your job to pick up what''s left of them when the sea spits them back out. Body bags had sand in them." McReady said and then raised his voice to say the last part again: "Body bags had sand in them. Sand and dead bodies, obviously."


    "Goodnight McReady." The bartender cut him off and offered the old Marine a salute.


    "Johnny boy here thinks he likes it. He looks like he''s listening. Couldn''t hear a damn thing over the crashing waves, couldn''t hear their screams, could you?" McReady surmised for me. "Could you hear them screaming kids, their voices raw with the saltwater and their eyes white with foam? Can you hear them over the roar of the mighty sea when you sleep? When you look down from the sky and see their open mouths, the sea swallowing them up, can you hear them?"


    "That''s right." I tried to speak but the sound was choked and hoarse. I just nodded instead. I wanted to get angry with him and fight him, but it was no good. The man was Jonah, the prophet, and Black Whale was Nineveh.


    "That''s enough, Mcready. Get out, go home. You and Johnny are friends here, so knock it off." The bartender chastised.


    "That right, Johnny boy? Are we friends?" McReady looked amazed at the revelation. "I didn''t know either of us had any friends."


    "I''m your friend, McReady. If you are trapped out there, I come to save you. That''s my job. I am with the Coastguard."


    "So, does that mean that Matilda wasn''t your friend?" McReady suddenly sounded too sober for my liking.


    I stood up with instant regret at the gesture. His words had hurt and I felt the need to fight or run away. Instead I controlled my instinct and sat back down, patting the table gently. I was then biting my own mouth in a variety of facial contortions of a man struggling with rapidly changing emotions. I shook my head very slowly and took a deep breath. I was only halfway through my shot and decided to just finish it. I don''t enjoy alcohol and when it was done I would gladly pay for the poison.


    "I tried." I looked up and said defensively.


    "Lots of good it did her. She didn''t even wash up on shore like them kids from the first adventure. Just lost at sea, forever." McReady''s voice sounded appropriately drunk when he told Matilda''s story. I nodded appreciatively and got slowly up as I tossed some green wadded paper onto the old wooden table.


    "Goodnight McReady." I said as I left Black Whale.


    The eroded shoreline was like my eroded soul. I was no hero nor savior. I was just a messenger for the ways of the sea. Just a pall bearer of misfortune. I was nothing but a failed rescuer. What was the point of all my training and my so-called courage if it only amounted to watching people die?


    The darkness of the Pacific stood in silent emptiness for unfathomable distances. The moonlit clouds watched me and judged me. The stars held their conference in cold and uncaring eons of an endless void. My eyes reflected the washaway of my soul and the sea collected all of it. The sea was a vengeful god punishing a mortal for challenging its boundless majesty. I felt damned.


    "I know you!" I suddenly had to let it all out and I was screaming at the waters. "I know! Damn you!" I let it out like a howling wind, my lungs swelling painfully in my chest until I had to breathe. I fell to my knees, my head a whirlpool, my hands clutching the grass of the sand dune in front of me. There was a kind of echoless silence that lasted until I heard an owl ask me if I was done with the disturbance. I was done so I made myself get up and to begin walking along the shore.


    I wasn''t sure where I was going. Then I reached the ruins of the old Coastguard base, destroyed by the unbridled revenge of the sea and wiped out from the untempered waves as they came rolling and crashing in. I felt like a ghost while standing there looking at the halfway submerged foundations. Nothing made sense anymore, not while I felt so unfulfilled.


    I had dedicated my life to the job and at twenty-three I had joined. I had always wanted to be in the Coastguard. It was stupid, a commercial for a career in the Coastguard had inspired me when I turned thirteen. I had insisted on swimming lessons although I was actually afraid of water. I wanted it so badly, to be the man I had seen in that commercial, that I had forgotten to be afraid. I drowned on my first day at the pool, before the lesson had even started.


    It did nothing to make me remember how to fear the water. I was truly inspired and I came back for every lesson. I became an advanced swimmer, athletic and dedicated. I became a lifeguard and worked out in gym. I had no interest in girlfriends or video games or much else. Instead I could feel myself growing into the man I had envisioned I could become.


    I learned all about the history and traditions of the United States Coastguard. I learned every kind of appropriate skill, long before I ever applied. I knew how to sail, how to tie knots, basic navigation and survival skills. I loved camping or going sailing so I could practice my skills. When I was twenty I got into a flight school and within two years I had over three hundred hours of combined helicopter and airplane piloting.


    From there I went and got my scuba diving certification. During that winter I dated one of my diving classmates, my first girlfriend. When Lilith learned how important the Coastguard was to me she backed off. She explained that she didn''t want a widow''s watch, wouldn''t marry a sailor who was so brave. Before she dumped me: she made love with me. Then she was gone.


    My application in Tukwila was a monumental day for me. It felt like I had prepared for that moment my entire life. My recruiter didn''t know what to say to me and it was only later that I understood that he had never met anyone like me before. I graduated at the top of my class from the Coastguard Academy. It was then that I understood what I had brought with me to the table. I had almost realized my dream. Only one thing remained:


    I was to be put to the test.


    I was stationed near Grayland in a beautiful and God-fearing community called North Cove. I was trained for the most dangerous job that they had to offer: rescue diver. It was not long before my first call.


    I was not killed during my first mission. Only those I was supposed to save died. Later their bodies, or what was left of them, washed up on the shore.


    I was haunted by my own mortality. I was nearly killed in the deadly moment of truth. Those who had relied on salvation from me had looked up to find nothing. Although I had tried, I was unable to save them.


    I did not have enough time to resign afterward. As soon as I had decided that I was a failure, and that I needed to quit, there was another mission. It was worse, as fire and horror claimed her life and there was nothing I could do to save her. I wished I had died on the missions so I wouldn''t have to face the discovery that I was a worthless coward.


    I could not look at my own reflection. I had learned that I was not the man I had meant to become. I had learned that no amount of bravery could pave over true and utter cowardice. Just because a man faces danger and dives into those raging waters doesn''t mean he is worthy. I was not worthy.


    The true coward knows his own lies. The great liar can rush into a maelstrom of terror, telling himself that such an act is selfless and heroic. He can reach for the drowning and catch only the dead. Then the truth is there for all to witness, that this man is not a hero, he is only an accomplice to a false hope. I did not have the true courage to face my own failures and continue as a symbol of ''not quite good enough''. I had to be a hero or nothing at all.


    I could not wear a false face of pride, a mask, a parody, a mockery of the man I had tried to be. I thought back to that stupid commercial. Ten years ago and I could still remember it like the night sky was the projection screen of my sundered dream. It played silently, ghost-like on the sheets of clouds.


    Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    I stood there for a long time, shivering. I looked upon a strange sight on the beach. I saw a fire of burning driftwood with nobody around. I went to it and sat there, wondering who had gathered the wood, set it ablaze and then disappeared. Nobody showed up while I sat there. When the fire burned low, I stood up.


    From that moment onward I had begun my journey towards truth and manhood. I had sat at the light of the Great Spirit and stared deeply into it. I had enjoyed the warmth of the spark of creation and knew a feeling of renewal. Immediately the pain inside my own stormy seas became calm. Ancestral echoes swept over me, carried on the four winds into me.


    A strange new courage was in me. My vision quest had begun from where I became lost in my own destroyed coastline. Had I known the terrors and awfulness of that place I would never have strayed upon it. To trespass into one''s own darkness, in such a terrible night, was to learn that ultimate fear exists. No amount of bravery can protect a man from such a destiny.


    I walked to the edge of the water where the fog was rising as ghosts. An unseaworthy dugout was there. Painted upon it were the designs of the people of this land. Long gone were their ways, their medicine men, their magic. They were all but gone themselves. I climbed into the canoe and found the pointed oar. The wood felt alive and warm where I sat and where I held the oar.


    I began to paddle out into the darkness, somehow the waves did not stop me. I should have flipped into the waters before long, but instead the sea was unnaturally calm and the fog quickly took away the land. There was no going back.


    I stopped rowing and just sat and savored the emptiness I felt. Then I could hear it, the wooden tapping and sweet flute, a song like the rings of the sun. They played there upon the beach of an unknown coast in the firelight of dead bark and roots. The canoe was drawn to their shore and I climbed out, taking the oar with me out of fear of what I had seen. Perhaps I would need to defend myself.


    My feet left footprints as I trembled at the sight I had glimpsed and approached. Climbing the rocks of their world, I hid and watched them. They danced around their fire, celebrating my defeat. Each of them was like a short twisted comedy of nasty design.


    I stared, horrified by the spectacle and enthralled by their beautiful music. They had voices like those of men and women and they sang in a language completely unknowable, for it repeated the voice I had given them, with the knowledge of damnation that I had screamed. This is where my echo had died and upon the shore where the wave of my despair had broken.


    The horrid little monsters flailed and leapt and ran and danced with creaking swaying branches for arms and legs. Their bodies were carved totems and their eyes sat asymmetrically within the wooden skulls. Their heads were carved pieces of wood that evoked both animal and demon. They were celebrating around and around their fire with their human voices raised in a song of words that belonged to their language.


    The realization that I was seeing the mythical creatures, the Munes, gradually became a thought in my clear mind. They were entirely real, as impossible as that was, and I was witnessing them as they partied late into the night. It was a pandemonium of their wicked shapes spinning and gesturing so that I knew the meaning of their festivities. These creatures were happy that I was spiritually vanquished.


    My fear kept me hidden. If they saw me then they would vanquish me the rest of the way. Each of them held a spear longer than their bodies which they thrust into the darkness with obvious menace as a repeating part of their dance.


    Then the clan''s native music was blasted by unexpected light and noise from the water. Another boat had arrived without warning. They did not seem to realize what was happening on the beach and responded with Del Shannon''s Runaway. Their light scanned the rocks I was on as they were passing my hiding place. I stood up and tried to wave to them a warning with my thumbs across my palms and by closing my fists. I followed that with throwing back motions, hoping they would realize I was warning them, they should at least fear that there were hidden rocks ahead. Their light was on me and they still couldn''t make out what was happening on the beach.


    The creatures scattered and took up hidden positions, leaving an abandoned beach fire like the one that my adventure had begun with. I tried to shout to the boat: "Danger! Danger!"


    It was to no effect. They crazily drove their boat up onto the sand, still blaring their odd classic selection. They got out of their boat and began to head towards the flames, like suicidal moths.


    I came running out of the darkness at the teenagers yelling: "Get back! Get out of here!"


    "What is the matter?" Their jock asked, grinning stupidly.


    "I''m with the Coastguard. This island is very dangerous. You all have got to leave, right now!" I told them with deadly seriousness in my voice. Even after descending the rocks and running at a mad dash to their position I wasn''t even panting. The jock noticed how fast I had moved and without losing my breath.


    "Your in hella good shape." He acknowledged.


    "I''m trying to save your life! This beach isn''t safe! They will be back any moment." I looked around into the concealing darkness all around, every piece of driftwood and rock could hide those creatures. They could approach us where we stood and surround us and we wouldn''t know it until they attacked. I had seen their murderous spear stabs. The Munes were a bloodthirsty band, intent on hunting whatever the sea had to offer.


    The song they had brought ended, evidently on a cassette tape. Nothing else began playing and their radio went silent. They stood there blinking at me in the firelight and it was then that I took a step back.


    Were my eyes playing tricks on me? The two boys, the same as the ones I had lost? And the young woman:


    "Matilda?" I gasped in horror. I completely forgot the Munes closing in around us and stared at the dead.


    "How did you know my name?" She asked.


    Coldness washed over me and I began stammering and taking slow steps backing away from them. None of these people were alive! Panic swept through me like a scythe of ice harvesting the last of my nerves. I felt the chill bite of the blade in my heart and I could see my breath there in the flickering light.


    "Dear God!" I cried out, pointing feebly at the apparitions before me. I looked to their boat and saw how it was unsmashed from a thousand shattered splinters. It was more impossible than the Munes. All three of them were already dead, I had seen all of them die. "Dear Jesus." I added and felt tears of rejection at the horror of an impossible reunion.


    "You okay, man? What''s going on?" The other boy asked.


    "Yeah dude, what''s up?" The older boy, the jock, asked.


    "Nothing." I gasped unable to take a breath as the grip of terror sucked the air from my lungs.


    We just stood there in the silent firelight staring at each other. Whatever fun they had hoped for was gone from their smiling faces. Whatever hope that I had that this was the end of my nightmare was gone from me.


    While we stood there the slow wood tapping sound began rhythmically all around us. Then the hollow beat of wooden sounders, ridged instruments rubbed with a stick, joined the tapping. This was followed by a solemn humming from their human sounding voices and then a solitary flute joined them. This was different than their earlier song. The Munes were playing a bone chilling melody that drove terror into my heart. They were close by and all around us.


    Slowly and quietly their chanting words began. I knew what they were singing. They were welcoming the young to die again and for me to a greater death to watch helplessly as they were killed. I knew the wicked creatures intended to attack us and to massacre us on the beach. The Munes were promising that I would only die when I accepted that I could not save the kids.


    "We have to go." I told them.


    "What is that?" Matilda stared into the night all around us as the female voices joined into our death song.


    "No. Just go. Go to your boat. I will try to hold them back." I shook my head to her request. "Now!"


    The three of them started back towards their boat, impelled by my command to take flight.


    The Munes were not so easily evaded. They gave chase from behind every log and rock in the darkness. Pieces of gnarled wood stood up and lifted hidden spears from sand. The devilish brutes stopped singing with a wild shriek, delighted that the hunt had begun.


    I swung the oar at one and struck it, knocking it back down into its cavity in the sand. As it sprang with agility back to its feet I had to ward the attack of another. They were all around me within seconds. I fought them as fiercely as I could, connecting the oar with their abominable driftwood bodies with loud knocks.


    My weapon did no harm to them and barely kept them back. They were proclaiming their superiority from all around me in a cacophony of human voices in their old language. Their spears teased and stabbed and lanced at me from all around, but they did not want to kill me until they had the others first. I knew that is what they meant to do.


    Matilda and the boys were screaming as the creatures rose up inside their boat. They had completely cut them off from retreat. When I saw their doom I could not accept it. I roared in a defiant scream that made everything look red and blurry.


    With a great crack I struck one of the creatures with such force that the tip of the oar flew off in one direction and the creature flew the short distance to the fire and landed in the high flames.


    The warrior of the Munes leapt out of the flames, completely unharmed. It let out an angry warcry.


    All of the creatures around me hesitated for just an instant at my sudden burst. I broke through their circle and rushed towards the kids, blasting the Munes aside as I went through their ranks to reach the boat.


    We had to get off the beach. "Follow me!" I was hollering raggedly to them. They were wide eyed and trapped and had no choice but to have courage and to run behind me. Again I charged through the ferocious creatures, sweeping them from our path by swinging the oar at them with all my strength.


    We reached the rocks I had spied upon the Munes from. They clambered up while I turned around to face the charging horrors. Their game was up and now they were just going to kill us all, I could see it in their enraged eyes. The clattering of thrown spears on the rocks signaled their approach as surely as their furious warcries.


    As soon as the kids were at the top I began my own climb, keeping the oar. Matilda had spotted my canoe in the moonlight and led the boys down the other side of the rocks towards it. They were shoving it into the water when I reached them.


    "Go! Go! Go!" I yelled as splashed towards them. Behind me the Munes were leaping recklessly on the downside of the rock pile. They had caught up by not needing to climb down, but rather just plummeting with their wooden bodies.


    I got into the canoe, nearly tipping it in my haste. I began to paddle us away from the island, finding the mild waves were helping us. When we had some distance from the deadly beach I began to slow down, tired already as I had exerted myself to the extreme.


    "Is that it?" Matilda asked, panicked hysteria recessing from her voice.


    "I think so." I sighed from the ordeal.


    "No, look!" The older teenager pointed behind us.


    The wicked Munes had loaded into the captured boat with spears and torches and figured out how to use the outboard motor.


    "Shit!" I gaped. They were coming for us and quickly.


    I dipped the broken oar once more and paddled for our lives. If they caught us they would burn us alive!


    They were closing the distance with an overloaded motorboat against a dugout canoe. I rowed and rowed with all my remaining strength, giving it all I had. The sacred fog was just ahead of us.


    My arms felt like the bones were swelling inside and my lungs burned with the air I was taking. We were moving at the maximum speed of the canoe and they bested that by reaching the top speed of the motorboat. I realized they would sooner ram us than let us escape into the fog.


    I could hear their evil laughter and the motor and the crackling of their windfed torches as they came up behind us. The fog bank was just ahead of us like a finish line. The kids were looking at me and I saw in their faces that they believed we were going to make it. Encouraged, I summoned a strength beyond what my body had left.


    From someplace deep within me something awoke from a primordial slumber. It came rushing out of me like an explosion. The paddle detonated on the water and for a split second the dugout rose out of the water, sailed the distance like a flying fish, and landed safely into the fog.


    As we drifted into the dreamy, starless darkness: there was a silence enveloping us. The sound of the frustrated creatures was behind us. They knew that they could not cross the boundary that had given us sanctuary. They were no more a part of our world then we were of theirs.


    As they skirted the edge of the fog I could understand their words for a moment, somehow I knew what they were saying among themselves. They feared getting lost in the fog and caught by the morning upon the open water. They would be trapped and become as dead driftwood. Such was their curse, that they could not leave the place set aside for them in creation by the Great Spirit.


    As we drifted slowly through the cold whiteness our fears subsided. There was a calm that came after the storm. In the darkness I knew I was among living people. They were not ghosts, nor illusions. I could not understand the terrible adventure we had just experienced, but I thanked the Great Spirit for it.


    The fog took us safely back to shore. I watched as they climbed from the canoe. While they stood there I got out of the canoe and it began to drift away, back out into the fog. I was left holding the remains of the oar. I stared at them, I had saved them, somehow, despite fate. The Great Spirit had smiled upon me and given me a second chance.


    "We''re alive!" They kept saying. I just smiled, my eyes watering at the sight and said:


    "Yeah. You''re alive."

 Meridian

    "A good neighbor is never around, except when wanted." Beatrice said sagely. She always had such original quotes that sounded old. But only in Micah''s backyard did such wisdom transpire.


    "I do need you around. You are the only person that could even begin to comprehend what this is about." Micah looked from her to his work. He was digging a perfectly round hole in his backyard and it was already three feet and one and sixty-eighths of an inch deep. He had just finished measuring it electronically. He set down the Mititoyo device on the rim of his pit.


    "Is it about work? I know you lost your job." Beatrice knew Micah had lost a lot of things. Not just his job. His son was gone to live with the grandparents and the wife was dead, killed in a car crash. Micah drank the days away and the job had gotten lost in a cascade of envelopes full of debt and a company that didn''t care about the human-experience.


    "It is about work. I am doing something important."


    "Digging a hole in the ground? One that is perfectly round and constantly under measurement?" Beatrice asked.


    Micah looked up at her and thought about telling her she could be a good neighbor.


    "Do you want me to try to explain it?" Micah shook his head.


    "Estar en misa y tocar la campana" Beatrice told him.


    "Whatever that means, I didn''t hear yes or no." Micah responded.


    "Say whatever you want. It is a hole-in-the-ground." Beatrice shrugged. "I said you cannot be in church and also ring the bells at the same time. You can''t tell me what it is and it still be a big secret, what you are doing."


    "Well, that is true." Micah realized. He shoveled more dirt from the hole and tossed it up onto the side of the shallow pit.


    "I am going to go now." Beatrice was not so young to stand outside in the heat all day. She went back inside and watched the strange activity from in her house.


    Micah worked on his round hole all day until he had it at nearly seven feet. Then he used his small step-ladder to climb out where the sides still had the grass of his dead lawn.


    Back in his house he cracked open a cold beer and drank it unceremoniously. There was nothing to eat so he went to bed hungry. That night he awoke from dreams of the Pleiades to the shuffling of a pile of clothes nearby.


    It was a pile of his wife''s clothes on the floor. He could hear her voice telling her restless husband "Come to bed" and he watched them manifest her and move about in the darkness.


    The next morning he tried to call his son before school but there was no answer. A tow truck had arrived outside for the remains of the car, with his wife''s blood staining the interior. He had to go out to the driveway and sign over the title. They gave him seventy dollars and drove off with it.


    Micah folded the money into his wallet and walked to the convenience store and bought some cheap whiskey and some more beer. He drank one of the beers of the six-pack on the way home and tossed the empty can into the lawn of his other neighbor, Ferrel.


    Ferrel found Micah napping on his front porch and offered him a bottle of beer with the lid off. Three of the six-pack had made it inside while one of them had gotten finished on the porch. The other had a dead fly on the rim and sat getting warm while he slept there on the front porch as the sun climbed again into the sky.


    Micah didn''t remove the dead fly before he finished the warm beer and then switched the empty can with where he had set down the cold bottle.


    "You know I hate my own wife. It isn''t fair." Ferrel told Micah.


    Ferrel''s pity for Micah was more than Micah could stand.


    "That is the only thing that you say to me anymore." Micah grimaced.


    "It is the only truth I think about. I won''t look at her or touch her. I hate her." Ferrel told Micah.


    "What is her name?" Micah asked, sipping the cold bottle.


    "Call her anything you like. I don''t want her in my house anymore." Ferrel sounded strangely deadly. "Her effect on me and my daughter is toxic."


    "I don''t understand." Micah leaned away from Ferrel''s grim-tone.


    "You must be very hungry and your house must be a mess." Ferrel was making some kind of apology, Micah realized. He didn''t know how to take it so he just sat there and listened to Ferrel:


    "I took care of your house payments. You haven''t gotten your mail, just letting it pile up. The other bills, I am sorry." Ferrel turned and looked mournful.


    "You are sorry?" Micah felt numb, it wasn''t Ferrel''s fault, not really. People blamed themselves for things they didn''t do while guilty people accepted no responsibility. That is how it seemed.


    "Well I kinda own this place as long as I am paying for it." Ferrel pointed out, but it wasn''t mean sounding. This was still part of some kind of elaborate recompense. "So it should be cleaned up and you should get fed and taken care of. It is the best of both worlds. I get rid of her and also I know you are getting taken care of."


    "I have no idea what you are talking about." Micah got up, went inside.


    He looked at his drawings of the hole he was digging and compared his notes from yesterday to where it needed to be to be complete. He had to get a much larger ladder from the garage and take it to the pit in the backyard. He lowered it in and removed the step-ladder and tossed that up onto the side. He started digging and climbing, removing dirt with a five-gallon bucket. Then he got to the rocks and had to climb with those. Finally he hit a layer of clay. This was at nine feet and point seven-sixths of an inch, as he measured. He got out of the hole or rather a pit, and carefully measured the sides to make sure it was perfectly round on all the sides.


    It was and so he noticed that it was getting dark outside. He went in and was surprised to find whats-her-name in his kitchen and the power was back on. She was a terrible cook according to her husband but she had made some kind of casserole for him.


    "Thanks." he accepted the food and ate it with two of the beers off his six-pack.


    "I have to stay here." she said flatly. Micah looked at her finally.


    She looked a lot like Carole somehow. The lights flickered and he blinked. She even wore Carole''s clothes. Micah shrugged.


    "Mi Casa Su Casa." he stumbled on something Beatrice might say.


    "Apologizing isn''t enough. I can''t forgive myself. I have to know you are alright." she told him.


    "Whatever. Do whatever you want." Micah shrugged. "I am going to bed."


    And he took a shower with the hot water he had actually started to miss and then went to bed. That night he saw the apparition moving around in his room again. It was the disturbed pile of his wife''s laundry shuffling around, doing something in the darkness. He got up instead of watching it and also he turned on the lights. It was gone.


    He went out of his room and got the last beer of the six-pack and drank it with the plastic rings of the rest of the dead soldiers still around it''s neck. He looked around for Mrs. Plancer and saw her on the couch watching him. He could see her eyes there in the dark, but the rest of her was just a silhouette of a woman on the furniture. It was creepy the way she stared at him from the dark like that so he turned on the kitchen light.


    She sat up, exposed.


    "Sorry if I woke you up." Micah kept drinking and made a fake-sounding apology.


    "I wasn''t sleeping." she said strangely.


    "Whatever you were doing, I could see you there awake." Micah admitted.


    "I know." Mrs. Plancer nodded. Her gaze followed him around, almost with cruel precision.


    Micah stopped and examined his plans, his pacing had taken him to opposite her in the living room. He appreciated that she hadn''t asked about the work he was doing. She minded her own business and asked nothing from him.


    "Mrs. Plancer?" Micah looked up after she sighed loudly.


    "Don''t call me that. My husband took away my ring and won''t look at me. He won''t touch me. He won''t let me come home."


    "Okay." Micah looked at her. She looked sleepless and disheveled, Carole''s dress that she wore slipping from her shoulder with vulgar exposure. She stared at him without blinking or looking away. Like she was insane or something. "What do I call you then?"


    She took her hand out from under the blanket and rested it on the couch and laid back down. She said: "I don''t know. I feel like I don''t have a name anymore."


    "Everyone has a name." Micah defended her in some way. She did smile for one second at that and closed her eyes to the light from the kitchen.


    Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    "I don''t want to hear mine anymore." she insisted, then pretended to sleep.


    "Tomorrow we will go out and get you one then." Micah decided, finishing his beer. He left it there on the floor of the living room with several other empties.


    Then he got up and went back to bed. He managed to sleep, despite the heat in the house, by opening a window to the cool night air.


    The next morning he awoke to find Carole in bed next to him as though nothing had happened. She wasn''t killed in a horrific car-accident by his neighbor''s wife. His son was still asleep before school. The alarm for them to get up and get ready for their jobs hadn''t gone off yet. It was like any other morning when the house was cooled off from the night and the sprinklers'' rattles and crows and garbage trucks outside woke them early.


    Then he sat up in cold sweat alone. Carole was dead and his son was gone. He went and found his phone, realizing he hadn''t paid the bill for the phones. He still had service though, because someone had called Verizon and talked to customer service. They had extended his service again and again, somehow considering the human-experience, unlike his job. Of course his job might have gone over better if he had called them or something but he had just stopped showing up for work. Micah didn''t care.


    "Hello?" he thought the call went through but again there was no answer.


    "Come eat breakfast." the woman in his house was there in the doorway. She didn''t come into his bedroom and he appreciated that. She somehow knew he wanted to be left alone in there.


    She must have left to get groceries because she had cooked an omelette for him. He noticed she ate nothing and said:


    "Aren''t you hungry?"


    "I ate leftover casserole." she spoke dutifully.


    "Oh." Micah shrugged as he said, between mouthfuls.


    "I bought beer for you too." she told him.


    This made him smile, but he had suddenly decided he didn''t want to drink today. Somehow removing the ritual of going to the convenience store took all the magic out of the beercans. They sat on their own shelf in the fridge and he stared at them while she sat at the table staring at him.


    "Not thirsty right now. Got to get to work." Micah closed the fridge and turned and pointed to the big freaked out hole in the backyard.


    She said nothing, showed no reaction to this. He started wondering what she thought of it. It was as if she accepted it like he was just going to work or doing something normal and routine.


    In the backyard he worked all morning until the sun shone down into the hole. He had cleared away the clay and hit some kind of sandstone. He started breaking off chunks of it with his pick, with just enough room down there to swing it.


    After awhile he got tired and climbed back out. He went inside and looked at his plans on the floor of the living room. He then looked up and noticed the house was relatively clean. He looked to his pile of empty cans and was relieved to find they were still there. She had left his project and the spoiled old beer cans undisturbed. The rest of the house was clean. He wasn''t sure where she was until he heard some water running in the shower. She hadn''t gone, then, whatever her name was.


    Micah got two beers from the fridge and drank both of them without any ceremony. Then he fell asleep next to them on the floor in the living room while staring at the hand-drawn plans and numbers. He had forgotten to take any new measurements today.


    He dreamed of holding Carole while he slept. Some warm comfort of lying next to her and sleeping soundly. Then he awoke where he had fallen asleep, the carpet. He realized he needed for the person to have a name so he called her: "Seline"


    "Seline?" she asked. She was sitting across from him on the couch, under her blanket again. She had just laid there watching him sleep. Or whatever. Micah ignored her habits as closely as she ignored his. She took her hand out from under the blanket and placed it on the couch as before.


    "Yeah it is what comes to mind. You can be Seline." Micah offered her a new name.


    She was crying. "Thank you." she squeezed her eyes shut and couldn''t look at him anymore.


    He wanted to go hold her, but her shuddering was all her own. He couldn''t change her human-experience any more than anyone could change his. He realized that her being in his house was some kind of purgatory for her. He accepted her presence and knew that he had not looked at her enough, spoken to her enough. A little more was required. She was not a ghost like Carole.


    "Come on." he stood up and offered her his hand.


    "What?" she took it with resistance. Wanting to be touched but denying she deserved it. He led her from the couch to the bedroom and they both slept there. It was just sleep; but it was not the lonesome and troubled kind.


    The next morning she woke him up by nudging him awake.


    "You let me sleep in here, in the bed." Seline reminded him.


    "Yes, so what?" he opened his eyes and saw she was not Carole.


    "Thank you." Seline looked moved by this. Rested, restored somehow. Like she felt whole for just a moment.


    "I don''t like being alone in here. It isn''t anything else." Micah thought he was being assuring.


    "I wish it was." Seline said honestly.


    "Well you are going to have to trust me that I know it should just be sleeping next to each other. That way this can all be over and we won''t regret anything." Micah heard himself say. Some animal part resented this statement, but Micah knew what he was doing and knew better. The man ruled the beast in his home.


    "This can all be over?" Seline did trust him and that thought amazed her.


    "I am looking for something out there." Micah told her.


    "In the ground?" she asked. There was terrible reluctance in her voice to ask anything about his work in the backyard, but he had brought it up.


    "I appreciate that you haven''t said anything. But no, not in the ground. In the sky."


    "Okay." Seline asked nothing else. Clearly she had decided not to question him.


    "I will make breakfast." Micah decided.


    "Wait." Seline said, almost pleading with him. "Could you do it just once, pretend I am Carole?"


    "I told you to trust me; that we should not do anything like that." Micah got out of bed.


    "Then stand there for a moment." Seline said with resolution. She put her hand under the blanket and stared at him while she did whatever. Micah did stand there while she did, but felt like he might get back into bed with her after-all. Then she was finally done and he left her there and went to go cook something to eat.


    "Good-morning." he said when Seline emerged from the bedroom.


    "Yes, good one." she agreed but had a guilty look on her face.


    "What is it? Be honest with me." Micah asked, serving her some bland breakfast items on a plate.


    "I feel bad about doing that." she admitted.


    "Then you see what I meant. You have to trust me. You wanted me to take you and I said no and that is because I already knew what it would feel like...afterwards." Micah explained.


    "Thank you." she apologized.


    "It is okay. I can''t get drunk around you because I don''t trust myself." Micah said this. "So you are keeping me sober. It means a lot to me, having you here. But you don''t have to sleep on the couch if we have this agreement. When this is over you can go home. You will be healed."


    "Healed?" Seline was crying again. She felt very awful. She didn''t want to believe in this because it was too frightening to accept. She had actually forgotten her real name somehow. She was just as broken, being here, as he was.


    "I have work to do. Don''t clean that laundry or the living room, please." Micah said. It was an unspoken rule before, but now it was official. Seline nodded and ate her breakfast.


    She felt very small and childish somehow. Micah left her there and went to do his thing in the backyard.


    Then they fell into a kind of routine. Her actual husband was taking care of all the bills of both households and she actually started to believe that Ferrel might take her back. She was outside mowing the front lawn, wearing Carole''s clothes, and saw Ferrel and Maggie with their feet in the pond at her own home next door. One empty beercan left by Micah was still sitting there. The grass was greener on that lawn.


    Maggie waved and smiled as though it was nothing unusual to see her mom living next door for over a week. Ferrel was looking at her and it felt wonderful. Seline held her chin up, feeling his eyes on her.


    Then she looked over and they were gone. They had left to go somewhere and she hadn''t seen. She remembered that Maggie had piano recitals today and felt some kind of regret that she could not be there. Ferrel had told her not to bother them until it was over. Whatever it was and whether it could or would be over she had not known then.


    Micah had made it clear that as long as she followed his rules it could be over. She couldn''t interfere with his work in the backyard, she had understood that at the beginning without being told. She had known not to disturb Carole''s things or the room but had ended up in the dead woman''s clothes. There was nothing else to wear and Micah hadn''t said anything about the dresses. Just the pile of dirty laundry.


    Then there was the other thing. She realized she had thought that would somehow get her out of trouble but Micah had protected her from herself. It would have made things worse if they had slept together and it would have resolved nothing. Just added confusion and a kind of uncleanliness to what they were doing together. Just healing each other and both households. She always felt childish having such a need for his attention.


    Micah got out of the shower after he came back in and went straight to bed. Thirteen days he had gone without changing their routine or drinking. She ate alone and then climbed into bed next to him. She needed to feel warm and often did something for herself right next to him but he never reacted except to pretend to be asleep. This night he watched her and when she was finished he said quietly:


    "I wish you would stop doing that. It torments me." Micah said to her.


    "You could do it too, or do something to me and pretend I am Carole." she still felt hot and couldn''t help it.


    "Wait a little while then, wait until you feel different and then say what you really feel." Micah rolled over, away from her and waited patiently for her to cool down.


    Then Seline did cool down and felt awful for saying those words. She was very glad he had done nothing but scorn her the way he had. She felt safe lying there beside him and she had abused the sanctuary of it. This was Carole''s bed, Carole''s husband. Her own husband was next door waiting for her to get through her guilt and shame of texting while driving and killing someone in a car accident. But she felt a little bit angry and a little bit defensive and said:


    "You are scorning me." quite plainly.


    "Would you rather I put my hands on you, or ignored you?" Micah already had his words prepared. Clearly he was annoyed by her nightly routine.


    "No." she realized. "I am sorry. It is all I can do to feel good. I want you to feel good too."


    "It wouldn''t feel good." Micah assured her.


    "You stopped drinking because of me. Because you think you would do it too." Seline muttered distractedly. She wasn''t sure where she was going with that and resented the entire conversation. She felt small and childish again and went and got up to go back to the couch. Being out there and alone felt worse somehow, "But it is where I am going to sleep from now on", she decided.


    Another week went by with the new routine. Micah drank now and seemed almost finished with his project. He had dug a pit that was over twenty feet deep and had a ladder he had borrowed from Ferrel in it now. And then a pump for the water he had hit. He needed special cement for the bottom and beams to brace the sides before he could call it done.


    That night he woke her from the couch. She hadn''t touched herself in the entire time since she had moved from the bed back to the living room. His hand on her made her tremble.


    "What are you doing?" she asked softly. She thought he was drunk and was going to do it to her on the couch but he wasn''t. He was waking her up for something else and he was sober.


    "Come and see this." he said. He took her by the hand and led her to the pit of darkness in the back yard.


    He climbed down first and lit her way with a flashlight. She followed him and then he turned it off and said:


    "Look up."


    And she did and she could see some infinite distance, feeling claustrophobic, buried alive, the only warmth the body of a man she trusted after their time together, trusted in his forgiveness and sincerity. But besides the context of those feelings she did see what he was showing her. A single star stood out very bright and red and next to a blue star and a very yellow one. All around were numerous white stars and unknown constellations.


    "It is strange." Seline was crying again. Somehow being surrounded by such a dark and earthen pit and standing up the her ankles in mud she felt very clean and whole.


    "I think you know this feeling." Micah told her.


    "I do know it. I know where I am right now." Seline''s eyes were blurry with starlight.


    "I think you can go home." Micah offered.


    "Okay." Seline chirped. He handed her the flashlight. She climbed out of the pit, like emerging into another world.


    "What about you?" she asked. There was no response.


    She shone the light down into the darkness. She couldn''t see him down there at all. Then she heard his voice saying:


    "I am just going to stay here...for awhile..."

 Im Not A Terrorist, The Dolphins Made Me Do It

    I''ve always loved dolphins. They are a part of me, ever since surfing near San Diego when dolphins saved my life. I had believed that dolphins nearby meant that there wouldn''t be any sharks. So I stayed out in the water near sunset and learned that it is a myth. Sharks aren''t afraid of dolphins. They should be, though.


    The beautiful sunset and a whole day of surfing had me exhausted and just relaxing on my board. The dolphins were playing nearby, I could hear them splashing and laughing. They would swim up next to me with their big happy smiles and I could tell they liked the sunset too.


    Then came a shark, a juvenile Great White. It had probably circled me already and I hadn''t noticed, because I thought I was perfectly safe. It brushed me from under my board and the hard bump tipped me into the water. Then it dove down and spiraled up and in the clear water I could see its mouth aimed at me. It wanted a bite and then it would have me at its mercy.


    I was all alone out there and if it opened me up I would bleed to death before I got to shore. Then it would eat me. It is also a myth that sharks don''t eat people. Surfers and swimmers get eaten by sharks every year.


    I was screaming in terror as I tried to get back on my board, splashing frantically. My board was the only defense I had and the image of so many surfboards with shark bites taken out of them flashed through my mind. I was panicking because there was no escape. I anticipated the attack from below, driving me out of the water in its mouth as it clamped down and my blood sprayed everywhere. I knew I was going to die, I could already feel its teeth slicing through my wetsuit.


    Suddenly, before impact, the shark was knocked aside as two dolphins rammed it from the side. They weren''t done, they kept ramming it with their pointy beaks until it decided to retreat. As the bleeding Great White left me alone it grew dark. I was crying and laying on my board. I had to get back to shore.


    As I paddled my way back the dolphins escorted me. When I was safely ashore I looked back and saw them leaping away, laughing playfully. I waved to them, thanking my totem animal for the protection.


    I approached a driftwood fire on the beach where a guitar was playing and a bottle was being passed around. I was welcomed and enjoyed meeting some new people. They liked that I believed that dolphins were my totem animal.


    "I was out there and a Great White was coming for me." I told them.


    I got sighs and "yeah right." and some of them rolled their eyes or gave me an indulging smile.


    "No, let her talk." Joshua stood up and they all respected him: so there was silence for me to tell my story.


    I explained that I was watching the sunset with the dolphins and a small Great White had attacked. Before it could get to me, however, the dolphins had attacked the shark. Then they had escorted me back to shore.


    "That''s quite a story, Noel." Joshua smiled at me. I really liked his smile and I was blushing.


    "Not a lot of girl surfers out here are as brave as you. Most girls are just posers." Another guy around the fire tried to get my attention, but I already liked Joshua.


    I saw him again after that. He seemed to show up wherever I was along the beach. We surfed together and I spent the night with him. He told me he was leaving for the Amazon. He wanted to know if I would go with him.


    "You got a job in South America?" I asked him. We were sitting there drinking soda while the morning warmed up.


    "Can I trust you, Noel?" He asked. I nodded, excited that he would confide in me.


    "I love dolphins too. A lot more that you do, I think." Joshua claimed.


    "Okay." I conditioned, "But that is a whole lot. I''d do anything for dolphins. They saved my life."


    "That really happened." He agreed. "What if I told you that someone has got to protect the River Dolphin?"


    "I don''t know." I hesitated.


    "Would you at least come with me? If you see what is happening, I think you will understand." He promised.


    So I got my passport and borrowed money from my aunt so that I could take a trip to South America with Joshua. I was infatuated with him and it seemed like he was totally sincere about helping the pink dolphins. A week later I was sitting next to him on a plane.


    A few days of travelling by boat brought us to where Joshua wanted me to meet his friends. They had their own boat and I was brought into their meeting, as one of them. A map was unfolded and a plan was made. First they explained what was going on, mostly for my benefit:


    "We are heading here, to this village. There are so few Boto left that the dam they are building will endanger the whole species. They travel through this area and when it is complete the Boto will be trapped on either side. It is a hydroelectric dam and they don''t care how many dolphins die because of it."


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    "What are we going to do about it?" I felt a kind of fear of knowing I had gotten involved in something I shouldn''t. I was excited and scared at the same time.


    "What do you mean?" Carmine looked at me with surprise and then at Joshua.


    "Noel is with us. She will do anything for the dolphins." Joshua spoke for me.


    "I''m asking her. What do you think we are going to do about it, kid?" Carmine was glaring and and put his hands on his hips, pulling back his jacket so I could see that he was wearing a gun.


    "Ba-blow it up?" I gulped nervously.


    "That''s going to be your task. You and Joshua will plant the charges." Carmine said firmly.


    "But I don''t know anything about bombs." I felt terrified. Just the thought of handling explosives was enough to make me sweat. I can''t even light the fuse on a firecracker without panicking.


    "You don''t need know nothing." Gus told me with his broken English and heavy accent. He put a satchel on the table and showed me the charges. "Deez are see-four exploded. They don''t go boom until remote triggers them. All you and love-boy do is set them on top of dam every fifteen yards and then walk aways."


    "It''s easy, Noel." Joshua put his hand on my shoulder and reassured me. I was trembling with anticipation. The team began to make their final preparations while Joshua and I only had to wait to do our part.


    He went below deck and left me looking at the beauty of the Amazon River. The sounds of the forest were almost soothing me and the sun was setting. I looked out on the water at the beautiful sunset. From where I sat on the boat I could see some of the dolphins I had come to save.


    They were playing in the water and swimming back and forth. Pink dolphins were still dolphins and my totem animal. I felt the way I had when the shark had come for me. I felt very afraid of what I was supposed to do. I felt like I was in the jaws of a shark, except the shark was the men on the boat and the teeth were the bombs I was to set for them.


    "It is time." Joshua came up behind me. We were dropped off at an old half submerged dock and the satchel was handed to Joshua. It was dark and we had to follow the path through the jungle to reach the top of the dam.


    Despite the cool breeze from the water I was sweating in fear. I kept trying to think of some sort of excuse of delay. I didn''t want to blow anything up. Finally, with the dam and its lights and the barbed wire fence I stopped him:


    "I''m scared. Please, I can''t go there. We can go back home. Let''s not do this!" I was shaking and my feet firmly planted. I was holding his arm, trying to plead with him.


    "Are you serious?" He snapped. "We came all this way and you want out now? What about the dolphins, I thought you would do anything for them. They are counting on you to save them." He shook off my grip and scolded me.


    I started crying. I was so scared that I couldn''t go on. He shook his head at me in disgust and left me there while he approached the fence. He took a pair of heavy bolt cutters out of the bag and easily cut the chain and opened the gate.


    "We''re in." He told me. "Let''s go."


    With fearful reluctance I followed him. I prayed to my totem animal for guidance. Was this really for the peaceful dolphins, or was something more sinister happening? My instincts told me that I was being used and that the dolphins would be fine.


    "Take these and plant them like you were told." Joshua handed me three of the charges and gestured to the other end of the dam. He had already set the first of them.


    I went along to the other half of the dam to set my charges. It made sense to start at the opposite end and make my way back towards him, so that is what I did. When I got there I was at the parking lot for the dam. I could see the village below and a building set aside from the dam was called ''centro de visitantes''.


    I set my armload of explosives down on the concrete barricade and wandered into the unlocked visitors'' center. The first thing I saw was a mural of Boto, the pink dolphins I had come to save. I couldn''t understand most of it, but from what I was seeing, the dolphins had a fish ladder to safely cross the dam along with every other kind of wildlife. I read some of it out loud and got a different impression of the dam than I was told:


    "Conservaci¨®n es la protecci¨®n, preservaci¨®n."


    A model of the dam in the children''s area had toy dolphins on strings and other animals that lived in the Amazon. I picked them up and guided them safely through the state-of-the-art dam. I found a plaque in English that proudly stated that this dam was a world class hydroelectric dam that was designed to function with the least amount of impact on local animals and people as possible. No expense was spared.


    And I was there to blow it all to Hell.


    When I went back outside I looked along the length of the dam. I saw Joshua had finished planting the explosive charges and was fleeing back out the way we had come in. He was abandoning me. A chill ran across my skin as I realized that as soon as he was back at the boat they would blow up the dam. I was still on the dam.


    Panic nearly overwhelmed me. I had to escape but then I looked down from the dam and saw the village sleeping below. Nobody had said anything about murder. All those people would be in the path of destruction if the dam exploded.


    "What do I do?" I was hyperventilating. If I ran away and did nothing then I was the shark. I called on the dolphins, remembering how they had bravely defended me against the Great White. They were my totem and I could be just as brave. I was the dolphins this time.


    I started with my own charges, hurling them over the side of the dam as far downriver as I could. Then I ran along and found one every fifteen yards and threw them as well. I was nearing the very last charge when its little red light turned on and it emitted an audible beep. I flinched, the teeth of the shark coming up from below to take me, my hands were held up defensively against the explosion.


    It beeped again and again, the little red light flashing its warning. I ran towards it as the beeping and flashing red light went faster and faster. It was about to explode. I picked it up, seeing the dolphins making their attack on the shark at the last instant and saving my life. I hurled it out over the dam into the dark night.


    I fell down and skidded on my butt across the dam from the percussion of the blast. It had exploded midair and knocked me down. My ears were ringing and I was bruised, but otherwise unharmed. I just sat there crying in relief that I was still alive and the dam still stood.


    I was found, treated for my injuries and arrested and taken in for questioning. When I told them the truth and that I had saved the dam they changed their questioning. They wanted me to give them the details about Joshua, Carmine, Gus and the rest of them. I told them everything, even how they had lied to me and used me. I apologized.


    I was released without being prosecuted for my crimes. I was told I would never be allowed back in their country again. On the flight home, sitting beside a U.S. Marshal, I stared out over the water below.


    I could see them, even from the clouds. As the sun was setting on the water they were swimming and leaping towards it: all my beautiful dolphins.

 Shepherd

    Beasts within men can swim out of a bottle. That''s what happened to Tyrell Gruin, a drunk and disgruntled DSHS worker that decided to visit my kid''s elementary school. Dreads had heard the howls of the madman and known the migration of the bottled beast. Dreads had bound over the fence and followed.


    The day became one of long hours and terror. My heart nearly stopped at the sight of my child getting murdered in front of me. They say that every dog has his day, but it seems they are referring to the behavior of men. A man that we would call a dog is not a good man, not a good boy.


    Dreads was a good boy, a purebred Alsatian and a gift from Uncle Richter. He had played with and loved my family for six years. He rarely barked and was a gentle animal, considering his monstrous natural abilities. One of those abilities was to know the route my kid walked to get to school and he followed, the scent making his tail wag. Dreads had always wanted to go to school, but good boys stay in the yard and would never jump the fence.


    Dreads was supposed to come back inside after using the yard. I had heard the disturbance and looked out the window. I saw my dog go over the fence. I saved my work and turned my wheelchair so I could see what was happening. My dog following some crazy drunk guy who was holding a knife until they vanished around the corner.


    Worried at my dog''s behavior, I took a break from my work and followed him out into the streets, wheeling myself along and calling to him. He was much faster than me as I struggled to keep up in my wheelchair. I lost sight of him, heard police sirens and forgot my dog when I arrived at the school, moments after two police cars with their lights on. I was told to stay back, that there was an incident. That my kid was in the school did not matter. The place was on lock down.


    As the classrooms were evacuated more police arrived. With terror in my eyes I stared, clearly seeing that it was my own child''s class that was still in the building. Time progressed without meaning, the hours felt like minutes as I sat and waited with the police. Minutes felt like hours when things seemed to be happening. It was like a bad dream, the details having sensations of terror drifting from them. As I waited I experienced the outcome. My child was going to get murdered by a naked drunk guy with a knife while an army of police did nothing about it and I watched helplessly restrained by them. Everything I looked at convinced me that I was going to sit there until that happened. I felt sick in my soul and my painful stomach became my religion. Prayers felt like snipers without a clear shot. God couldn''t hear us over Tyrell''s blasphemies, anyway.


    Tyrell Gruin had a knife and a whole classroom of hostages. I couldn''t understand why the SWAT was just sitting there around the back, doing nothing. The police were just waiting, waiting for Tyrell. Apparently he was in charge.


    I experienced a variety of dull and horrible feelings as I watched and waited; knowing my baby was in there with that psychotic social worker. I only glanced away when a news van or a police helicopter crossed my vision. When Tyrell showed himself he was surrounded by the class and carrying my child. His knife had blood on it and the teacher was missing. For some reason he had stripped himself completely naked. He was screaming something while he held the bloodied knife to my child''s neck.


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    I cannot describe the utter nightmare sensation of seeing something so impossibly evil. My eyes refused to tell my brain what they saw, like I couldn''t actually see anything. Involuntarily the tension in my body, the terror I felt, had forced shut my eyes. I willed myself to look, sweating from the strain. I couldn''t breathe, my chest felt like my skin was being pinched inside my ribs.


    There were several police sharpshooters with the SWAT team but none of them had a clear shot. They would only shoot him if he slit my child''s throat. He had already killed the teacher, at least. He was demanding a school bus for his getaway.


    That is when Dreads trotted out of the grown shadows of the late afternoon. At first I did not recognize the smiling puppy. He had a strange look on his face, his grinning fangs contorted in a growling frown. Even his posture was different, the playfulness and gentleness was gone, replaced by the beast within''s anger.


    Everyone could see my dog behind Tyrell and there was a strange kind of silence and stillness that had fallen over the crowd. His echoing rant died away and he slowly followed everyone''s gaze to the greater monster behind him. When he made eye contact with Dreads there came a bark; not an ordinary obnoxious bark of a dog saying nothing but "hey!". It was a singular battlecry as his teeth flew towards Tyrell and the word was "die!".


    Dreads impacted with Tyrell teeth first. The man staggered and had to let go of my child. His knife clattered harmlessly on the ground. He tried to turn and get away from the huge dog. He was flailing and shouting in panic. Growling and snarling and the sound of his naked skin getting torn could be heard.


    Tyrell had to drop Dreads''s kid to defend himself against the fury of the dog and it still wasn''t enough. The children fled from him while he cursed and called out for help. He kept hitting Dreads but had lost the knife to the ground. Dreads didn''t stop until he had his teeth in Tyrell''s throat and the cries for help had become pathetic red gurgling. He choked the man to death and then dropped him and left him there, a limp corpse. He wandered over to where me and my child were embracing on my wheelchair. I wiped the mess off of his chin and we hugged him with us.


    I held my child close while the medics and police were all over us. One of the police told me that Dreads was a hero and that they were not going to see him taken away. I was debriefed that Tyrell had recently gotten fired for assaulting someone while working for DSHS. His drunken rampage had started early that morning when he crashed his car, robbed a convenience store at knife point and left a path of vandalism on his way to the school. My kid''s teacher, Mrs. Driver, was taken to the hospital where she remained in critical condition all weekend. She later returned to teaching and with a companion animal similar in size and breed to Dreads.


    The school''s team is called the "K9s" after Dreads. I could feel that everything was going to be alright. The part of me that had watched my child die stayed there like a ghost. I held my living child and patted my very good dog.


    "Let''s go home." I said to my cuddled kid. Then to my best friend I added: "Good boy."

 Theory Of Good Stuff

    From the notes of Doctor Sumerlien on Subject Amy; the Forest Girl:


    Outside it is bright and the air is thin and cooling. When I breathe that air it makes me feel lightheaded. I don''t ever want to go back inside. Not ever.


    They drag me by my arms backward into the dark portal of my exit. I protest, kicking and crying. The door to the outside closes.


    I am again in my darkness, the darkness of the world I know. I feel a biter skitter across my hand as I sit on the cold floor. With reflexes honed over a lifetime I catch and eat it, savoring the first tasteless crunch. I eat it slowly, avoiding squishing the sour parts between my teeth and swallowing those whole. I can feel its twitching leg on my tongue and consider that there might be something good to eat outside that doesn''t taste bad.


    I wait in the dark for them to come. The darkness is mine. The lights coming on terrifies me, for it proceeds their entry.


    They abuse me and then leave me in the dark. When I am fed, it is in darkness and when I sleep and when I catch prey. I am always hungry. I drink from the dripping faucet. Its sound makes it easy to find and I pool it in my cupped hands and lick it from them. This is the world I have always known.


    When I think about them I wonder if there are people who do not want to hurt me. I can imagine such people because they would be like me, for I know my own instincts and understand myself. It is, in fact, all I know. There must be people who will like me.


    There is a smooth stone that belongs to me. It is always where I have found it and I can hold it and touch its coolness to my bruises. I know this stone very well and I know it knows nothing. This is an instinct of unrequited knowledge of another. I cherish it, therefore, as evidence of something that is unknown and good. This is my strongest instinct and I trust it. It is the only thing that I can trust about myself.


    Very often I lie to myself. Then it is easy to believe the things I do not trust can be ignored. Otherwise I might lose what little awareness I have, which is something I fear.


    I choose the stranger in my hand to be my friend. I do not choose to reciprocate the suffering I have known upon this creature. This is in spite of the fact that I know, beneath my lies to myself, that this creature is incapable of returning the sentiment. This is a fact I can learn from, spiraling my thoughts outward from.


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    I resolve to go outside again; to escape from the darkness and the light. To seek something beyond the world I have known. I believe that good stuff exists out there.


    Light comes and it belongs to them. Darkness falls and it covers me. The brightness outside is different because of the air and the smell and the warmth. It is a different light.


    When the biter stings my hand I drop it and it escapes. This I know, is what I must do. I must bite as the biter does when it is caught. Then I can stumble and crawl, weak and hungry, to the outside. As they drag me back into the darkness I try, with all my tiny strength, hysterical. There is a cry from my own mouth as I taste the blood from when I bit them.


    I burst out into the outside, still screaming. I cannot go over the wall of wire. I am small enough to get under. When I look back, one of them is caught from trying to climb over, dangling and bleeding and wrapped up in the deadly wire on top of their wall.


    I hear thunder and plumes of ruptured dirt rocket up around me as I run. They are trying to shoot me, to keep me from escaping. I find a wrecked tree stump to run in the shadow of. I escape into the forest.


    I must hide as they search for me. I find a darkness and I am safe inside. I can go out when it is night. I go into the forest and they do not find me. I drink the water that drips and I eat the biters that skitter. There is plenty of both and I am patient and cunning. I am fast and elusive. I become stronger outside. I do not fear them finding me. After some days they give up looking. I can watch them and see them from the forest and they do not see me where I am in the darkness.


    The outside is a good place. It is very easy to hide. I used to try to hide when there was nothing to hide myself with. Now it is easy, the forest conceals me where I crawl in the dark and sip the dripping water and eat all the crawling things that don''t taste wrong. I can choose not to eat them because there are so many to find. I find ways to cover myself from the coldness of night. I find the black plastic bag to be very useful attire and when the rain comes again I get drunk on water and I am also protected from the chill.


    The outside provides. There is much goodness all around. I sometimes leave the beautiful and strange forests. It is quiet in the fields beyond. The music of the birds and the animals becomes the humming and chirping of the delicious crawlers, the grasshoppers.


    I find the hard ground again and realize it is a road. I follow it and I find roadkill animals and discarded objects. I feast on fresh meat and I learn to use the tools and objects I find.


    I can see the places where the good people live together. I see their lights at night. I wait and then I decide that I am right, that the people I see outside are good people. I know it, my truthful thoughts agree with my feelings, I am not pretending.


    I have learned to dress in clothing. My muscles have blossomed from the nutrition outside. I walk in my own way and I communicate in my own way. I have learned all there is about lies and truth and I know when something is one or the other. I have an awareness that I hold consciously as who I am.


    I know the lights up ahead are those of the good people. They wait for me. I cannot wait to meet them.

 Gifts From The Sea

    "Traditions. Our survival, as a species, depends entirely on our collective behavior. Traditions are collections of behavior that time has proven are good for our species survival." Mr. Hisomeru told me before he ate some of the raw seafood between us.


    I stared at him until my eyes burned. Meg and her mother were still in the bathroom. The whole restaurant seemed to be watching us.


    I felt like that moment was the crossroad of my life. If I had gotten up and dropped my napkin and left, then nothing would have changed. I realized I could go back to school and leave Meg with her parents, and we would not get married. It would all be over.


    "You do not approve of me, because I am not like you?" I asked him. I heard myself speaking, unsure how I had the boldness to speak so plainly to him. Perhaps it was the realization that I could walk away or else he would make me walk away. I wasn''t going to marry his daughter; Mr. Hisomeru was a powerful man and he had said ''no''.


    Except he hadn''t actually said ''no'' yet. I felt like he had, but he hadn''t. He had something on his mind. He wanted to confide something deep and dark and horrible in me. He saw me very differently than I thought he did, in that moment, in the restaurant.


    "Sushi is uncooked fish." He seemed to be ruminating something else while he spoke. I attempted to engage while some caprice of frustration made my choice of words facetious sounding:


    "Sushi is half-assed and homophobic. The Red Hot Chili Peppers say: ''I like the sushi ''cause it''s never touched a frying pan'' and that''s that." I snapped.


    Mr. Hisomeru slowly raised one eyebrow and sipped his water. He cleared his throat, a satisfied ''ah''. He looked intently at me and spoke:


    "You remind me of someone I have learned to fear and respect. You are defiant and a little crazy - inspired. An artist - no doubt." Mr. Hisomeru spoke carefully to articulate himself with precision in his third language of English. "And I like you very much. I understand my daughter''s passion. I am not angry with you about the pregnancy. I am looking forward to having you for a son, David." Mr. Hisomeru sounded sincere and strangely so, after my little outburst.


    "Then what is it? What is this?" I gestured at his demeanor, his coldness, his distance. Mr. Hisomeru had calculatedly put me down since we had met an hour earlier and relentlessly observed me, as though he were inspecting me for flaws and finding them in abundance.


    "I need your help. I have searched for someone like you and my greater quest is at a standstill. I find it ironic that I did not consider the man Meg described as anything but a reflection. Yet here you are: perfect. I do not know what to think or say. I feel embarrassed that I have so much to say to you and I am so impatient to get to know you. I am proud of Meg and I am...I am...I am proud of you." Mr. Hisomeru was not bothered by my insolence. He contradicted himself by telling me that his real feelings were positive. I felt my face go red and hot. I did not know how to take his sudden departure from his formalized degradations.


    "I misunderstood you." I said quietly to him.


    "Don''t." Mr. Hisomeru said sternly. "I was precisely like you are - when I was a student. I also found myself distracted and my studies halted by finding a woman that I loved as dearly as you love Meg. I also had the same initial goal of finding the last great secret of this world. I also knew where to look. Most of all, you are just like me, you do not know how to apologize."


    "I was going to marry her despite you." I admitted. "I knew I should go, but I couldn''t."


    "I know." Mr. Hisomeru had a strange, almost imperceptible smile. "You do not know when it is time to give up, you do not realize when you are caught, trapped."


    "What is your greater quest?" I asked him.


    "To my business partners I am a happily married fisherman with one child: a grown daughter. I have humbly elevated myself to the owner of a small fleet and a facility where we now attempt to breed captive Pacific eels."


    "Attempt?" I wondered. "Eels do not breed in captivity?"


    "Eels do not breed." Mr. Hisomeru stated.


    "The quest." I realized. "It is an old one. The Holy Grail of Science."


    "To my son I am King Arthur. A man only really cares about what his son sees in him, not the rest of the world." Mr. Hisomeru''s eyes watered slightly. He was being sincere with me.


    "I feel like I''ve known you much longer than this dinner." I nodded.


    "We share a truth, and it is only the first." Mr. Hisomeru made a smile and in that gaze: I saw a glimpse of the horrors to come.


    The women returned to the table and seemed grave. They had discussed the bleak interaction between me and Dad and decided things were not going well. We (Dad and I) surprised and delighted them when we reached across the table to feed each other a piece of sushi with our chopsticks. Then Mr. Hisomeru ordered the most expensive bottle of wine on the menu and told the waiter that we were celebrating an engagement.


    I thought about that dinner many times. I thought about how that was the moment when everything changed for me. I had begun a path of destiny, one that would lead to my fate and the discovery of a lifetime. It was a memory of my first step on a path towards ultimate horror.


    While I sat in Venya Industries fishing fleet administration with my application: I felt strangely nervous. I couldn''t speak Japanese or Hindi and I felt like I had no relevant skills or education. I questioned what I was doing there and how I had arrived. I wanted the job, I wanted to join Mr. Hisomeru on his quest, that is all I knew.


    I knew I loved Meg and that she was even more nervous about my interview. If I didn''t get the job, what would I tell her? What would her parents say?


    "David Whitemoon?" The heavily accented recruiter called me into her office. I looked around, wondering about the size of the international organization.


    She had my file in front of her and had read it. I waited for her to ask me something but instead she just sat filing her nails. I cleared my throat and stopped waiting when I asked:


    "Did I get the job?" I asked.


    "Nepotism is alive and well, Mr. Whitemoon." She looked away from me to gaze at a giant crab claw taxidermied and mounted on a board on her wall.


    "Jokes aside, what exactly are the qualifications for the job?" I asked. She pondered my English and responded:


    "You are incomplete of many skills: swimmer, scientist, diver, biologist. Son of important business partner. You have the job. Paid internship for student. That is job I have for you." She didn''t look at me. "Details printed out for you. Staying at company apartment. You leave with expedition in three weeks."


    When she stopped talking and began humming to herself: I got up and took the printout and left. I spent the last of my money on the taxi back to the company apartment. Twelve other employees from Venya and Nippon were already staying there, with room for more. I became acquainted with all of them, although none of them spoke English. While the weeks went on, I studied my classes online and met more sailors and scientists gathered for the expedition.


    Our vessel, Miyamoto, was owned by my future father-in-law. As we all went from the shuttle up the gangplank with our bags, I saw him there: Mr. Hisomeru. I looked at him watching his expedition team boarding. He looked very proud and regal.


    Later, alone, Mr. Hisomeru told me the most vital details of our mission. Only he and I knew the exact scope of our search. Each of the other team members all knew what they needed to know to do their part and Captain Ishikawa and his crew were competent enough to get us to the expedition site.


    "You must know we are going after the Atlantic eel, in the Sargasso Sea. The mythology, the facts, these are just the tip of the iceberg. We will find out the truth." Mr. Hisomeru began. "Years ago, there were researchers that tried to watch eels breeding under the sargassum using cages suspended from buoys. If all we had left to do to solve the great mystery is that, then it would have worked. Unfortunately, the cages were all destroyed by something unknown and unseen. Since the beginning this is always what happens, anyone who seeks the secrets of the eel only finds deeper mysteries. Maddening mysteries."


    "Something is down there." I deducted.


    "Is there?" Mr. Hisomeru gestured for me to elaborate.


    "The eels are born there and return there. They do not breed. Somehow, they find their way from fresh water back to the darkness and horror of their birth. What is down there, that is nowhere else?" I thought-out-loud.


    "Questions I have asked. Consider that the count of mature eels does not change from season to season. How do the eels know when they will arrive, if they all leave from different places and at different times to return home? The seasonal fishing of eels, traditional harvests, only anticipate where and when the eels will migrate. Greatly curious scientists have spent their lives and funding at sea, narrowing it down. Such knowledge is still missing the big picture." Mr. Hisomeru walked slowly to a hand drawn map of the coasts where eels were fished for, colored to match the seasonal fishing and the maturity of the eels in the waters.


    "We''ve known for a long time that they return to the Sargasso and never leave." My voice trailed after his, following his thoughts to their conclusion. "And that young eels come from there."


    Mr. Hisomeru sighed and reverted his thoughts to dismiss what we thought we knew already: "Yet they do not go there and nest in the sargassum and they do not breed. Aristotle thought that eels must spawn from mud, Freud that they are sexless. Svennson wrote that Eel is, for lack of scientific quantification, truly mystical." Mr. Hisomeru looked at me, from his map, over his shoulder.


    A strange and alien sensation of horror began to rise up inside me as I imagined the shaded sea under the green umbrage full of writhing eels. I knew then what I was expected to do. There was something beneath the mass of knotted serpents that watched them and knew them. Something that lived always in darkness and felt worshipped. A pillar of the oceans, a monster, something beyond what I could imagine, something truly beyond comprehension. I must have looked pale as my mind''s eye anticipated the world I would see down there.


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    "If you do not wish to discover it, if you are too afraid..." Mr. Hisomeru turned and looked at me, concern, disappointment and relief all evident on his unmasked expression towards me.


    "This is what you have chosen me for." I said with my voice trembling.


    "I chose you?" Mr. Hisomeru denied it with his tone-of-voice. "This is greater than you or I. This quest started thousands of years ago. It is more important than visiting the moon or splitting the atom. The secret, the last secret, is also the first." Mr. Hisomeru sounded like he found Eel to be mystical.


    "My fears and my wishes are in conflict. I want to see my child born." I realized there was certain danger, even from imaginary sea monsters.


    "My grandchild will be born into one of two worlds." Mr. Hisomeru spelled it out for me. "This old world or one that the father has made whole."


    "I see." I agreed. I intended to conquer my fears. I was an expert swimmer, a diver, a student of biology and I was a scientist; I had a job to do.


    The weather held up during the first four days of the expedition. We collected the buoys set out in the previous weeks by Vimana on the company''s precursor expedition. The cages under them were all missing or mangled.


    "The underwater trail cameras show the eels in the light. We uploaded as many pictures to satellite as we could and then we tried to recover the cameras. As you can see by the condition of the cages: the cameras did not survive." Dr. Ryu reported what her team had found. "These images show that the cages were destroyed while the eels were inside. When the cages were badly damaged enough, the eels escaped."


    "What destroyed the cages?" I asked after there was a pause in the report. It was what everyone was wondering.


    "Exactly." Dr. Ryu pointed at me and then shrugged. "Who takes it from here?"


    "Thank you, Dr. Ryu and Team A. Your work will be handed over to my research laboratories at Nippon and also to Venya. We have to keep the investors informed of our progress out here. You all may go back to your cabins; Team B will be briefed independently." Mr. Hisomeru told Dr. Ryu and the rest of Team A.


    When only Team B remained, he looked at me and the others. "You all have your orders when you go down there. You are there to support Whitemoon, your dive leader. The difficulties of this dive rate it as extremely hazardous, dangerous even. Nobody has attempted this before and if you fail, if we have any casualties, I mean, it will probably be the last. That is why I am going to say that we only have one chance. That is why only Whitemoon will complete the dive. David is the only one among you that I trust with our future."


    "Sir, may I ask?" Riddin raised his hand. The whole dive team was required to speak English for my benefit and Riddin and Neveah were both Americans, like me.


    "You may ask, but I doubt I could answer and if I could, I probably wouldn''t." Mr. Hisomeru disclaimed.


    "What do you expect to find down there?" Riddin seemed boyish and jocular as he smirked.


    "The truth." Mr. Hisomeru said honestly.


    We prepared for our first and possibly our only dive. I felt like we should be getting prayed over by a chaplain or something, even though I had no beliefs. We all felt nervous and made our preparations in a kind of uneasy silence. Riddin kept telling inappropriate jokes that ended with him asking us "Get it?" until Neveah said to him:


    "Nobody is laughing except you. Get it?"


    I inspected everyone''s gear and then I said: "It is time."


    Neveah was to go first into the water, and I was to be next. After her and me the rest of the team followed. They remained in position, filming, holding lights and communicating with Miyamoto. I descended into the darkness.


    The light quickly faded. The chatter became more scrambled. I was approaching my maximum depth and I had never felt so alone and helpless in all my life. Then the silence and the cold and the darkness were absolute.


    I was in another world. The seafloor was below me somewhere. Down there, beyond my limits, an even darker and more terrifying landscape lay as a wasteland that had never known daylight. Down there something lurked, waited and knew the answers I was there to learn.


    I could not control my imagination. Fear began to take hold of me as I hovered at my maximum depth, noting that I was surrounded by living creatures, all of them eels. They swam lazily, waiting for something as I did. They knew what we were there for, and I did not.


    "What am I doing here?" I asked.


    "Unclear, repeat. Over." Neveah''s voice was digitally reconstructed by the communication equipment. She sounded robotic and far away. It only added to the surreal dread I was feeling.


    The eels seemed to hesitate. It felt like the moment between a flash of lightning and a thunderclap. Then some massive thing I could not identify rose just past me and took them. It was there, taking them, then it was gone, swiftly descending back into the world of night everlasting.


    "There''s something down here." I choked on the words, trying to whisper them quietly. I felt exposed, surrounded and watched. The eels were gone, would I be next?


    Terror was growing inside of me; I could not say when it began or how it blossomed. I felt the edge of panic and fought it down, knowing that such hysteria would certainly get me killed. Whatever was there should strike if I tried any sudden movement. Even if I escaped and swam back up as fast as I could then the nitrogen in my body could boil and I would die even more horribly.


    Two of my dive team moved into a closer position, thinking I wanted them to. They shone lights down on me and I gestured to them that I was alright and to hold their position. With the lights on me I somehow felt even more exposed than I did in the darkness. I still couldn''t see anything.


    I moved forward at my depth, slowly, while they followed me from above with the underwater lights. I found another swarm of eels congregating and I watched and waited.


    "Is the camera getting this?" I pointed. I was trembling in dread and barely able to maintain my composure. I fantasized about being safe at home and holding my newborn. My mind rejected the peaceful anticipation and insisted I was in serious danger.


    "The cameras are rolling on Whitemoon. Over." Riddin''s voice assured me.


    I checked my diver''s watch and sighed. There was no more time to wait as well as the fact that my nerves were gone. I feared the part of me that was doing the job despite the obvious morbidity. I heard the voice saying, in my thoughts: ''Someone I learned to fear and respect''. I had to begin my gradual ascent. It was when I left my position that the nightmares became reality.


    At that moment I was trapped, caught, unable to escape. Between two worlds, one of light and one of dark, one that I belonged to and the other my bane, I was held. I did not see what happened to Riddin. There was a camera that he had which would show what happened, if it were ever recovered. Perhaps it will someday wash up on a beach; but judging on the capacity of the thing that took him, that would be unlikely.


    After we listened to his screams of insane horror in our communications, all of us were pushed over the precipice of fathomless scare. I don''t remember what I said, the recording failed to catch my voice. My team opted to take their chances with a rapid ascent. They wanted out of the water.


    I couldn''t blame them. I had reached a level of panic that I could not function within. I had frozen in hesitation, unable to see or know from which direction the greater danger was coming. Should I kill myself with a rapid ascent or feed myself to whatever had gone for Riddin?


    Like a drunk I blacked out. My mind was gone somewhere else while my internal amphibian gave the commands from the reptile-layer in my brain. While my skull became the bedlam of an insane asylum my body gently hovered, taking calculated steps towards the surface until I was retrieved.


    I was aboard Miyamoto in the sick bay. Only our nurse Yui and Mr. Hisomeru were with me. I blinked and recalled, like the black fog of an evil dream, the sound of Riddin being taken, as his cries explained that the horror was real.


    "Riddin?" I sounded hoarse. I sat up and cleared my throat.


    "We have lost Riddin. The mission is over. We had to report his death and now we are done. They are shutting us down." Mr. Hisomeru sounded bitter.


    "It''s down there. We found something. It was huge, taking eels." I told him. He looked up and the spark of King Arthur was in his eyes for just one instant. Then he remembered the quest was at an end. We had failed.


    "Leave us." Mr. Hisomeru told Yui. She obeyed and silently left us alone.


    "What is it?" I asked.


    "I cannot send the team back down there. We only have six hours until we must be underway. Captain Ishikawa insists on honoring our orders." Mr. Hisomeru explained.


    "That''s plenty of time." I heard myself saying. I couldn''t believe I was tempted to return to the realm of inescapable night. Then I could feel the crawl on my skin of the nearby lunging thing, taking whole swarms of eels in a bite, or even a diver.


    "I''m not losing you down there." Mr. Hisomeru objected.


    "We lose everything, then?" I asked. He sighed and realized I was right.


    "Let me speak to Captain Ishikawa. I do own this ship, should have some say in our departure schedule." Mr. Hisomeru stood to go. "Get some rest. Yui will have to approve of your condition before you dive."


    "She isn''t a doctor." I noted.


    "For my own worries, son, for me." He put his hand on my right shoulder before he left me alone.


    When I was alone in the dark, I was back there, in the dark and all alone, the world above was far away. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine being home. It wasn''t easy. Instead, my thoughts reassembled themselves in a dream, a memory, an epiphany. I knew what was down there. I realized: Everyone does, we just choose to believe that it isn''t real. That is the eels'' secret: Eel accepts it. It is their destroyer - their creator.


    Captain Ishikawa wanted to see me before I dived. He couldn''t speak English, so Mr. Hisomeru translated. "He is telling you that he does not want you to go into the water. Losing one man is bad enough, he does not believe you will survive. He says that today he has come to believe in sea monsters."


    "The real monster we face is not in the water. The real monster is the monster of ignorance." I told him. Mr. Hisomeru translated my words as the captain shook his head and looked at the two of us in comparison before he left us alone.


    "There is a storm coming. We cannot hold back the weather." Mr. Hisomeru plotted.


    "Activity down there precedes the violent seas." I hypothesized.


    "We will find what we are looking for." Mr. Hisomeru anticipated. He agreed that the approach of the weather was fortunate for our efforts, even while it limited them.


    "I will dive alone, without support. I will have to take the camera and light with me." I understood, with anxiety. Even without the danger the difficulty alone presented potential hazards. "I don''t know how I will do it."


    "I will go." Neveah was there, in the portal.


    "I don''t think so." Mr. Hisomeru told her without looking at her.


    "Cameras rolling on Whitemoon, get it?" Neveah argued strangely. "Let me finish this."


    Mr. Hisomeru sighed as he saw the look on my face. "Very well. Be ready to dive in one hour."


    "I''m ready now." Neveah held herself akimbo.


    "Let me suit up." I got up, fatigue washing over me briefly, despite the rest I''d had. It was the fear, rooted deeply in me, that took my energy like the creature had taken the eels.


    "It comes from below. So, we film from below, instead of the strike zone." Neveah added her thoughts. Our eyes widened as we realized she was right.


    "You are right. We both complete the dive. It is how we will find the Grail." I smiled at her plan.


    The time it took to get back into the water was spent in morbid illumination. Then we were in the holy black seas, waters filled with living things.


    "I am afraid." Neveah confessed.


    "So too am I. Over." I told her. I felt nothing. The fear had become so familiar that it had somehow become a comfort, assuring me I had not met a most horrendous fate.


    We found a swarm of praying eels as they slowly circled in sacred holding patterns. Together they formed a mouthful for their god. We were filming, waiting while every second seemed eternal. At any moment the strike would happen, instantly and unavoidable. We were beneath the swarm and our light shone upward. I felt safer, outside the buffet line. We were not safe, it was only a good camera angle.


    The eels slowed, coming together and holding perfectly still. I sensed it in the water beneath us, I felt what they felt. Neveah said "Whitemoon." and then she was gone, or rather, I was.


    It had come from below and taken me in a single gulp. I was disoriented, engulfed and pressed. I was inside the Grail, as it retracted to the depths that were its home. Something slick was wriggling along the lining inside of it. I took a handful of it and felt a strange push from below. Inspired by the reaction I pushed my hand into the soft interior. Every time I did, I was drawn deeper into it and crushed more. I was able to get my dive knife in my other hand. I cut into the Grail, and I saw light as it launched towards Neveah for a second attack.


    In a cloud of blood: I was ejected from it, still alive. "You''re alive!" Neveah called me, shining her light into the murky crimson. All around me were newborn eels. I still grasped what I had taken from inside. We made our ascent, our horrible fears manifesting as manic laughter. Perhaps something was wrong with our mixture.


    "Get it?" Neveah kept saying.


    The weather had begun to menace Miyamoto. In the diver''s prep room I finally ungrasped my prize. They lay there wriggling on the table while Neveah, Mr. Hisomeru and I stared and smiled like lunatics. Living eels, freshly born.


    Mr. Hisomeru hugged me and said into my ear quietly, so the monsters could not hear:


    "While you were down there, I got a call from home. Just a few weeks premature, they will be fine. Twins."


    "I guess that is two good reasons to marry Meg." I laughed and grinned.


    "Well, son, it is tradition."

 Little Girls Chained Up In My Basement

    ''Confirmation on Sunday'', my calendar reminded me. I wasn''t going to make it. Something had come up.


    Something that made my blood cold and tested my faith.


    I got my rotating index off my desk and flipped it to Father Dublin''s number. I had crossed it off. There wasn''t a new number. I sighed, I hadn''t called my brother in years.


    The fear I felt was tangible. I could almost see that Christmas from so long ago. Chills ran down my back and not just from the sweat. There was something cold and cruel touching me.


    "Goddammit." I muttered. I loosened my clerical collar and wandered into my kitchen for a drink. While I was pouring it, I glanced up at an old crucifix hanging over the entryway. It was there when the parish moved me in. As far as I knew it was there when the parish had bought the house.


    I didn''t feel protected. I felt terrified. I was alone in the house with something I hadn''t even really believed in. It was real and I was not safe. I was afraid.


    "What are you looking at? You gonna come down here and help me on this one? No? I''ve got this, huh?" I asked Jesus.


    Jesus didn''t respond.


    "Typical." I looked away and tipped my drink into my throat. "Could you at least fix the tap to pour out more of this?"


    I gulped, hoping that my challenge would be met by a power greater than myself. I felt alone and endangered. Nobody was going to save me.


    I held my empty glass up and then I ran it under the sink and had a glass of water to drink. Jesus didn''t come through for me and I said: "No miracle booze today."


    The sinister moan of a deathrow convict groaned from the open door of my basement. I heard the man''s voice: "Come back, Father Dublin. I want to confess something to you. It''s going to be a good one." Then the voice added in a loud whisper: "I swear."


    I trembled in unresolved tremors. Part of me was committed and the rest of me wanted to flee. I wanted to get into my car and drive as far away as I could. I wouldn''t look back. I couldn''t look away. I had already crossed the point of no return and I was there and there was no escape.


    "I''m coming. Hold on." I responded. There was a loud thumping noise from down there as though someone were lifting and dropping something very heavy and very quickly over-and-over.


    I shuddered, dreading my return to face the horror I had already witnessed.


    I looked at the print-out I had of Roman Rituals. I realized it was time to call Arch Diocese. I was in way over my head. I should have gotten help right-away. I worried that after what I had done, it might be too late.


    The phone was in my hand when I reached the middle of my terror. How it began was coming back to me, bit by bit. I wasn''t sure if that moment with the phone wasn''t how it all started. It had started earlier, with a gradual progression of seemingly unrelated incidents. Perhaps it had begun when I had used zip ties on a little girl to detain her in my house. Perhaps it had begun a thousand years ago when the creature in her had first walked among the world of men. Perhaps the story would begin with my defeat and the rise of some new and horrible abomination. I could not be certain.


    Until my phone rang and I heard my brother''s voice, I wasn''t sure of any of it. I needed to confess to someone. It was when I told the truth that things became clear to me, that I could see what had happened and piece it all together. Until that moment it was all just a series of things happening, without any connection.


    When I started my story with "I have to tell you what I did." that is when it truly began. He was listening to my confession. He stopped me and said:


    "No - no. Start at the beginning. I don''t understand what is happening."


    So, I told him:


    "Two weeks ago, there was this couple that came in, asking me all these weird questions. No wait, three days before that there was a break-in down the street, no wait, it was the last day of last month. This guy comes in and asked me if he could do confession, he looked homeless and he smelled really bad." I gasped, realizing that what was happening to me had started so long ago. I had no idea how far it would go, to what extremes the horror would escalate.


    "Slow down. Just start at the beginning." My brother, Father Dublin, told me.


    I am also Father Dublin. I chuckled, a soft cough, as I said his name. Nobody ever got confused that there were two Father Dublins in the same diocese. I mean, as a joke, obviously it causes some confusion.


    "I''m okay." I lied. I caught a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror. I looked like a mess.


    "Homeless guy comes in and asks for confession." He started me off.


    "Guess it started with our new soup kitchen." I sighed, "Weeks before he came in."


    "What is going on?" He worried at my scattered details that seemed to be going nowhere.


    I realized that he had called me out-of-the blue and I asked him:


    "What made you call me?"


    "I was praying for you, and I started getting this feeling. Remember that Christmas, all those years ago?" He asked me. He sounded like my big brother, protective and concerned. I was able to agree to talk about it briefly:


    "I remember that Christmas. I am sorry."


    "I''m sorry too. It felt like that. I felt like I needed to call you. I was going to apologize, see if you wanted to get a coffee or something." He paused. "Or get a drink."


    "Let''s do that, I need a break." I said. He said:


    "Tonight, at O''Malley''s. Get it together. Whatever is happening, I will help you." My brother promised.


    I agreed to meet him and hung up. I glanced at the open door of the basement. I felt watched. A horrible sinking feeling was in my stomach as I took a step and then another toward the entrance. Then I was there and I closed the door.


    Exhaustion crept up on me and I sat down in the living room, listening to the ticking of the grandfather clock. Somehow a dreaded sleep overtook me. I had always found the sleep of the restless to be profound, having provided grief counseling to the bereaved and to victims. A kind of restfulness without actual sleep, a kind of sleeplessness without rest. Dreams do not come to those who suffer such a slumber.


    My drive to O''Malley''s was slow and rained on. When I got there, I found Father Dublin waiting for me. We had both taken off our collars and wore black.


    "I am sorry I didn''t believe you; I knew you were telling the truth." Father Dublin told me. "I was a coward."


    "I''m sorry for telling you that you were being a coward." I apologized right back. We were both sorry about that Christmas, all those years ago.


    "Alright, I am here now, ready to listen and to believe this time, whatever you tell me." He took a deep breath and took a drink and watched me, his eyes told me he was fighting his reluctance. He could see I was badly shaken and disturbed by something. He had heard the convoluted beginnings of something awful, could tell that at any moment he would know why I was so afraid. He didn''t want it, but he had given himself no choice.


    "We opened up a soup kitchen." I sipped and eased into it. "From there we got some traffic. One of these guys came into the sacristy." I paused while he frowned.


    "I told him: ''not right now, I am preparing for First Communion.'' and he said it couldn''t wait. He just had to confess. I couldn''t get him to leave, and he smelled so awful. I thought he would get my vestments dirty. I let him confess right then and there, on his knees. He muttered some kind of weird prayer or spell or something and then he left, without receiving penance. That was the last I saw of him, never came to the soup kitchen or anything. I asked about him and the other soupys didn''t know where he was."


    "And did they?" My brother asked, finishing his first drink.


    "Yes. He broke into a guy''s house, attacked the little girl. He bit her. The guy shot him, reloaded and shot him again." I explained. "They knew. I could tell they knew, and I found out why."


    "He was a fugitive? The one on the news?" Father Dublin nodded. I glanced up at that exact moment and saw the face of the missing child I had in my basement on the television. My eyes widened and my face color changed. I started sweating.


    "Yeah." I agreed, almost choking on the word, so I just nodded.


    "The guy who killed him, he and his wife?" Father Dublin was piecing my story together without me having to tell him too much. I wanted him to stop doing that, afraid he would come to the worst conclusion of all. I was terrified he would figure out I had kidnapped a little girl and had her locked up in my basement, without first understanding why.


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    "They started asking me all these questions about..." I hesitated and lowered my voice. "Demons and stuff like that. You know what I mean?"


    "Elaborate for me. Think first." Father Dublin got up and went to the bar to get more drinks. I finished mine while he was away from our table. When he came back, I was ready to tell him what they had asked.


    "They asked me if someone who was baptized could be demonically possessed. They told me their little girl was baptized. I found out that theirs was the house that was broken into. Their little girl had spent the night in the hospital after the intruder attacked her and bit her. When she came home, she was different."


    "Well how about that?" Father Dublin grimaced.


    "Exactly. I told them she needed their care, their love and that they should also seek counseling. I told them I would pray for them and that I could ask for special prayers from the church." I agreed with his facial expression, at least at the time of the interview. I had come to agree with their original assessment of her, of course, but I wasn''t ready to tell him that part of what was happening.


    "Let me guess: you eventually agreed to see her, and it turned out she is possessed and now you have her tied to a bed in your house?" Father Dublin smiled, thinking he was telling a joke and that I was upset about some other development. When I said nothing, he kicked me under the table and said in a completely different voice: "Tell me that isn''t what is going on!"


    "She''s in my basement." I swallowed. He stared at me for a long time, processing the awfulness of my situation and deciding how he was going to take it.


    "Goddammit." He growled at me. "You''ve sure put me in a spot."


    "You have to see for yourself." I reminded him. "You have to believe me this time."


    "I know." He recalled. "I gave you my word. I owe you one."


    "There''s no time to waste. She is becoming dehydrated."


    "Freaking Christ." Father Dublin pushed away the rest of his drink, unfinished. "Let''s go. I will drive, you drive like a grandma in a school zone under construction with a cop following."


    "Sure." I stood up and tossed some wadded Hamiltons onto the table. We left O''Malley''s and took Father Dublin''s car back to my house.


    Outside he looked at me and asked: "Is this for real?"


    "I''m afraid so." I testified. We went in and he found my printout of Roman Rituals and asked:


    "You believe in demons?" Demonic possession?" He wondered. "That''s you, now? Christmas and soup kitchens have changed you."


    "That''s right." I told him. "And you won''t be the same either."


    "Alright, show me this kid." He took a deep breath and rolled up the printout like he was going to swat something with it.


    I opened the unlocked basement door and led him into the darkness. I felt the fear rising up and we descended. I was afraid of the creature I had captured; I didn''t understand it, I did believe in what I had seen, and I knew it was deadly.


    "Father Dublin, you have brought a friend." A man''s voice spoke from the shadowed corner. When I turned on the light, my brother gasped.


    A little girl was unconscious, her hands in cruciform, held to the pipes with zip ties. Her legs were free, and she sat on the floor, a puddle under her, soaking her pajamas.


    "What the hell?" My brother grabbed my shoulder. "No way! No, no, no!"


    "What is the matter, Christopher? Don''t you like fresh scented goodness?" The creature spoke from her mouth, the voice of the dead man. I suddenly recognized that she was using the vagabond''s voice. She looked up, her eyes sick and yellowed. We could see the bitemark between her neck and shoulder where her clothing hung loosely. It looked infected and bubbled with saliva and pus.


    Father Dublin looked at me and then back at her. The fear in his eyes gave way to some kind of resolve, as he remembered his ministry. He took from his pocket his Roman collar and fastened it to his own neck.


    I had mine in my shirt pocket and put my own collar back on. I was shaking with fear, and I wanted to flee back up the stairs, to escape into the night, from the nightmare under the light. We held the papers together and began to read aloud to the demonic thing. It just laughed at us.


    "You think that some stupid words from the Internet will cast me out? I own this body, I am in her. She is mine to be, I am a violator, a trespasser. You cannot tell me where to be or what to do. You have no authority over me. I grow stronger as she grows weaker. You shall see." The man in the little girl told us.


    "She is innocent! Let her go!" I told the demonic thing.


    "That is what you think. You see a little girl, but not what she has done. You know nothing, Father Dublin. Nothing!" The creature seemed irritated by my plea. I blinked and looked at my brother.


    He had noticed the change in its attitude also. It had gone from confident and terrifying to defensive and annoyed simply by my mention of its host''s innocence.


    "She, uh, couldn''t have done anything wrong. She is just a child. An innocent child." Father Dublin lowered Roman Rituals and spoke carefully. The creature realized we had caught on, to whatever it was trying to conceal from us.


    "You''re right. She is just an innocent child." The demon agreed, grinning evilly. It said nothing more. It wanted to taunt us, to toy with us. The exertion was weakening the girl, and that was its game. If she gave in, if she expired, then it would have her body for its own. Her soul was still in there, her mind, her memories, still intact within it. Behind those yellow gleaming eyes, she was watching, trapped within.


    "You are Bal-thash." My brother said without any meaning. I had no idea what he meant.


    "I know you are, but what am I?" The horrible thing mocked him.


    "That''s from Pee Wee Herman." Father Dublin nodded grimly. "Let''s go. There''s nothing we can do for her."


    We went back upstairs and I closed the door. I asked, my voice shaking with fear:


    "What do you mean there is nothing we can do for her?"


    "Bal-thash was the demon that possessed all those children on the Pee Wee Herman Show. When you told me about the children singing the Christmas carols backwards and that they had changed the words to make it Satanic, I eventually did some research. There were two exorcisms, and the name of the demon was Bal-thash. The same demon from Christmas and the same one tonight. It will have two other children. To destroy this demon, we must exercise all of them, at once. We don''t have much time. She is getting very weak. If she dies: it will own her remains. Bal-thash will walk among us."


    "Wait. You knew about this? It has come back to me?" I was confused, terrified. I couldn''t understand what I was up against.


    "When the ''Pee Wee Herman exorcisms'' freed two of the children the third was kept out of it. Bal-thash had another chance. There was a grown man out there, somewhere, carrying part of Bal-thash." Father Dublin considered.


    "And Christmas?" I asked.


    "A manifestation. You heard something, a warning, perhaps. I don''t think the children were possessed. Nobody else heard anything weird in their singing. I don''t think you were drunk, like they said. I think it was a spiritual encounter. Bal-thash and your destiny - mysterious ways."


    I sat down and a whole rush of emotions came flooding into me. Fear and relief, horror and redemption. I felt reunited with my brother, with my faith and at the same time we were in deathly peril and our faith was about to be tested.


    I stopped shaking and began to cry.


    "You alright?" Father Dublin asked me. He got a drink of water in the glass on the table. He didn''t offer it to me, he gulped it down.


    "That is what you think?" I asked. I wiped away my tears. My brother''s faith meant the world to me.


    "It is." He promised.


    "There''s two more children out there." I realized suddenly.


    "We need something stronger than zip ties. That thing will break those when it reaches its full strength." He pointed out.


    We left my house and went to a hardware store that was still open. We got enough chains and locks for all of them and more zip ties. The person at the checkout looked at us weirdly.


    "We''re gonna lock up some stuff." I explained weakly.


    In the car I asked my brother: "How will we find them?"


    "They will be around." My brother supposed.


    We went back to the church and started looking at some of the recent records, phonecalls, anything that could be a clue. I found something on the message machine and was listening to it when Christopher said:


    "Who cancels Confirmation?" He held up a postcard, shaking it like it was one of our targets.


    "Listen to this." I played the message for him. A distraught mother from my parish was asking for a housecall for her daughter.


    "Do these girls know each other?" He asked. I shrugged. I didn''t know the people in my church as well as I should.


    "Come on Randal, you''ve got to have something." He prodded.


    "Sunday school." I guessed. "There''s two classrooms."


    We walked through my church at night, feeling like intruders, in the dark. In the classroom, where the three girls attended Sunday school, we spotted three missing places on the Jesus wall. They correlated to three removed art works on the teacher''s desk. Demonic visages.


    "These girls got into something." Father Dublin dropped the papers back onto the desk. They fell like they were heavy.


    "We''ll get their addresses." I felt sick. I had already kidnapped one little girl, why not a couple more?


    It was just before dawn when we were parked outside the first of their houses. I thought about the bum that had gotten shot repeatedly after breaking into someone''s house. I was afraid. We realized:


    "We are wasting time."


    I crept around the back until I found her bedroom. The window was not locked and I was able to open it. I climbed into her room and found the creature sleeping in her bed, in her body. Before it woke up and raised an alarm, I was upon it. I wrestled it to the ground and zip tied it and gagged it. I handed her, struggling and kicking, to my brother, who was outside her window.


    We stuffed the little girl into the trunk of my brother''s car and drove off, the sun still hadn''t risen.


    The final kidnapping took place as she left her house, yelling profanity at her single mother. She wasn''t going to school, she was coming with us. We pulled up next to her as she walked to the bus stop and grabbed her and forced her into the car. Then we sped away. I knew we were spotted doing so, two priests taking a child. Someone called the police and gave them a description of what they had seen, me and my brother, the car, everything.


    Back at my house we took the little girls down to my basement and chained them up. We printed out a backup copy of Roman Rituals from the PDF and began exorcising Bal-thash, just after sunrise.


    The demon cried out in the man''s voice, a threefold entity. It had each of them in different stages of possession, but all three of them were the same. As our prayers and chants unified the being and bound it, we cast holy water onto it, weakening it and strengthening the faith of those it would own.


    We were both very afraid. Fear nearly silenced us, but our faith bound us and we stood together, facing the evil. The creatures roared and hissed and spewed hot venom onto us. One of them laughed as it focused its eyes on Christopher''s copy of Roman Rituals.


    My brother''s papers burst into flames and he fell over, his sleeve on fire. He had to stop and drop and roll before he could resume. My voice had reached a high pitch, the terror rising within. I stood alone against the shrieking and cackling demons, trying to pray, trying to have faith. As the exorcism reached a crescendo, I heard the doors to my house being kicked in. Police were entering my home.


    I shouted the final words of Roman Rituals and blessed the little girls, praying for their souls. I added, in my own words:


    "This is it, Jesus, if you''re ever going to help, now would be super-fantastic!"


    The door to my basement opened while I was finishing it. Police were coming down the stairs into the basement, guns drawn. They were telling me to be silent, to drop the paper and put my hands up. Father Dublin intercepted them as I was ending it.


    I heard gunshots and his body thumped. I realized I had heard that heavy thump already, I had heard it over-and-over. I flinched and completed my prayers anyway:


    "Amen."


    And then the police tackled me from behind. The police held me down and beat me with their nightsticks and called me names while they did it. While I was sitting in handcuffs in one of their cars the parents of the girls showed up.


    They were reunited, freed from the horror. The demon was gone, never to return. We had somehow done it.


    My brother''s body was down there, bleeding in my basement. I knew he was dead. I hoped he could hear me as I said goodbye. I told him:


    "I love you bro, thanks."

 Daguerreotype Of The Volcano God

    Ashes of the natives were all the evidence I needed to pursue the truth, even to my own destruction. I needed to know what had happened to them. As a photographer of wartime atrocities, I had developed a certain insensitivity to what I saw through the lenses. My clinical ability to take pictures of indescribable horrors was contrasted by my concern for the posterity of truth.


    In wartime, truth is certainly the first innocent murdered. It was never the last.


    I watched the natives of the island in their outriggers, crying babies in their arms, supplies of food, men standing and watching their abandoned village grimly. Alone, I turned and went the opposite direction. I was armed only with the latest digital and preferred outdoor photography and my desolate nerves.


    The island jungle gave way to a blackened wasteland. Pumice crunched underfoot and burnt logs embedded in shiny black stone were the edge of a realm of nightmares. The island beyond the muted jungle was the scorched earth of divine wrath.


    Those who had stood and faced the vision were as statues made of ash, human remains, preserved as gray ash. I could only view them through the lens. The inutterable words they had screamed could only be silenced behind the glass. Their faces told me of living death, trapped forever, the name of their sculpture, the god from the volcano.


    There was a silence all around so that the minimal audible beep of the digital camera was a death chime. The jungle was silent, no birds sang, no insects scurried, no animals traded, no vines grew, and no leaves rustled in any breeze. It was as though all life and all associates of life had fled the advance of the red flow.


    Though the sun warmed the cremated landscape and gray-brown smoke ribboned from cracks in the ground, there was a coldness permeating the air. The absence of heat, in such evidence of inferno, was unnatural. The canny coolness was, as though, the warmth was absorbed by the burning sent from above.


    I shivered among frozen flames.


    As I lowered my digital image capture, I exchanged the outdoor camera to my hands and raised it up as though a shield. I hadn''t looked at any of the standing dead natives with my own eyes. It was how I was able to do my job. As long as I was the photographer, I was not a participant, I was not truly witness to the horrors in front of me. I just pointed and clicked.


    As I ascended to the source, hiking the steep slope, I left something behind that I would never recover. I do not know what it was. My mind had begun to accept, for the sake of my work, all that I was experiencing.


    I knew that the mere sight of the volcano god meant turning instantly to solid volcanic ash. The natives had said so and I had just finished photographing a number of them that had seen the vulcan-thing. Some part of me was fully aware that it was real, terrifyingly so, and ignored the obvious danger.


    My feet were commanded by the part of me that was not native, the foolish part of me that did not believe in the volcano god. I was able to stand in warzones and film mass graves and far worse and had never believed in Hell. Evil, I thought, was incidental, relative and isolated to the human experience.


    I subscribed to the belief that evil was contextual. If someone poured gasoline on an ant hill and tossed a match, to the ant, evil had come. To the ants crawling on the dead humans in a mass grave, there was no evil. Perhaps we too were merely ants to something pouring gasoline onto our hill. The match was not concerned with good or evil, it merely fell, struck and burning, transferring energy.


    That is not to say that I had no belief in humanity. I was trapped in the human experience. To me, evil was a force of nature, as tangible as gravity or light. What I understood was that nature did not care about humanity.


    If anything, nature wished to hasten our removal, abhorring the vacuum, the wastefulness.


    "It is just a volcano." I said out-loud to myself. I had begun to believe in the volcano god, in some subconscious faith. My instincts told me that the danger was entirely real. I tried to isolate superstition from science, fact from fantasy, and found that in the realm of ruins: I could not.


    That is when existential fear and immediate dread became the only thing that could save me.


    I sensed it before I felt it. Terror rose slowly within me, as the most imperceptible trembling of the solid rock I stood on increased. When I could feel the mountain shaking with suppressed rage I began to shake with unsuppressed morbidity.


    Instead of running I did what the dead I had passed had done. I turned and looked to the crater of doom. I waited in trembling terror behind the lens of my camera, as though it would preserve me if the god emerged.


    The silent words, held in eternal echo on the lips of the ash statues, screamed in my mind. Their fire carved eye sockets forced shut my eyes. I could still see it.


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    With my eyes closed and the camera shielding me, I could see the outline of the molten monster. I beheld its formless body, its faceless head, its spewing maw. I saw the dripping lava, the cracking skin, the inferno within. It was moved without life, lived without mortality and came without natural purpose.


    I knew it in my thoughts, the cells in my body recognizing it, the molecules of my composition remembering it from the fragmented eons of the cooling first days of Earth. It was something from before, timeless. The god was already at the end of time and it brought with it the starlessness of the beginning.


    My brain assembled into a singular thought: knowing its true name in an abundance of unpronounceable syllables that were endlessly ululating within my skull. A wind of boiling air blew past me, singeing my hair and crisping my clothing.


    The film of my camera was crumpled by the image, or possibly the intense heat of that instant.


    I dropped my camera, unaware that it was already forgetful of what the lens had captured. Different kinds of indescribable terror thrashed as chaos within me as I screamed. No sound came from me.


    The air was gone, sucked into the volcano as the god emerged. My scream was empty, without release. I was covering my eyes in the crook of my elbow, shielding my eyes from the x-ray glow of the fiery monster. I could still see it, even as I turned my back and staggered across the cold magma.


    My other hand was a reflex that had felt the concussion of nearby explosions and remembered them. My other hand recalled the sensation of stray bullets in the air around me. My other hand responded to the odor of decay, the wail of the bereaved and the mindless evil of the human experience. My other hand calmly grasped my trade, despite the relativity of evil.


    Without aiming there was a blurry image stolen from the daytime nightmare. My digital camera froze the struck and falling match and the hand that would drop it upon the human-anthill. I held the second theft of the devil''s fire, such knowledge of nature''s insidious message.


    I had reached the village ahead of the molten blood of the mountain. All that was in its path was burned away, leaving nothing. I stood there, somehow suspecting without immediate understanding of why: that I was not the first fire thief.


    Fumes choked me and gave me visions. I was a charred prophet, alive and having known the name of the god, the true name of the volcano god. As an oracle, asphyxiated and red-eyed, I stood in the god''s shimmering shadow. In such timeless shade I knew of the first to take a picture of the god.


    Long ago there was another who had come to prove that the islanders were not mere savages. They subdued the god by feeding it the young and the innocent, beautiful virgins, often the children of their noble line of chiefs. This was done out of necessity, not brutality. The human sacrifice was almost invariably a kind of volunteer, drugged and tied up to ensure the ease of those who would survive them. There was great horror in pushing someone into a caldera, to feed a monster.


    The food of such a person sedated the god, causing its unbroken slumber.


    When the islanders were forced, by the laws of those who did not know the truth, to abandon their religion, that is when the volcano began to again lay waste. Except the destruction was not consistent with any known volcanic activity.


    An esteemed anthropologist, hearing of the forbidden religion, teamed up with a ridiculed geologist that had studied the strange volcano. They brought with them a special camera, state-of-the-art at the time, to the base of the volcano. It was a daguerreotype camera. I knew what it was, in studying photography as a student I had heard of it. The camera took only one unreproducible silver plate image.


    Their ghosts had held their silence until I stood among them. I felt their presence and heard their mad prayers. Amid their mutterings they spoke of an iconoclasm of a buried god-slayer. The god had come back from below, so soon, to destroy the impossible replica of its form.


    I wandered around the burning village, past the fleeing chickens as they clucked and burst into flames. The chief''s hut was marked with the broken triangle that honored the tradition of noble sacrifice. My eyes were burning in the smoke and I felt around in the hot and packed soil under the mats with stiffened fingers.


    I was in a trance, survival and madness, fear and horror, all my thoughts in disorder. One singular drive made me dig with shoveled hands. Then I found the fearsome icon, the silver plate. A sensation of d¨¦j¨¤ vu calmed me enough to lift it from the steaming socket in the ground.


    "Nothing survives the god''s visage." I recalled the words of the natives. I kept the plate facing away from me. I was terrified beyond my ability to reason with myself. I was chuckling in disbelief, even while I knew the truth. The god was coming, it would not stop until it was satisfied.


    I walked out amid the drifting cinders and the darkness of smokey skies. From behind the silver I stood, holding it in front of my sight. From the mountain the gaze of the god found me. I was quaked and stunned, petrified with fright.


    Then the volcano took back the monster from within. It collapsed, splashing into oblivion and crumbling into inanimate rocks. There was a sound, a blast, that knocked me backwards and scalded my skin and deafened me. It was the death knell of the eternal abomination. It had seen its own image, and not in the distorted reflection of obsidian, but the perfect outline of the daguerreotype plate of silver.


    The seething fear and thoughtless wisdom left my mind and I lay there, still alive. Some kind of sanity was left to me upon which to reconstruct my experiences. I was intact to a degree, although changed forever.


    When the island natives returned to their village, they knew their god was dead. My survival testified to that for them. I also told them what I had done. I had shown the god its irrevocable image, made its evil relative to its own experience. It was not so timeless after its final emergence.


    I had, in my fleeting madness, looked upon the sooty plate in my hands. If the mere image still had the power to kill me, it would have. Instead, there was nothing there except the outline of the mountain and a place in the blossoming smoke where the god was revealed. Its image was gone, along with its existence.


    I was cared for as my injuries healed and humbly thanked. I looked with my own eyes upon the green life that was starting to push through the black cracks. The village was rebuilt, and the island healed as I did.


    The dormant volcano - the dead volcano, became a geological anomaly. I went home and looked at the digital image of the eruption, fearless of any danger. Nothing remained except the truth.

 José The Wholesome Ghost

    I found the old diary of Jos¨¦, one of the first students at our high school, hidden in the school''s library. As a first-year Spanish-language student I had difficulty translating it. I was very curious about what had happened to Jos¨¦ and to solve the old mystery of where he was buried.


    I stayed in the closed library as it became night, one hundred Halloweens later. I lit candles and read the book. It was slow going, translating and learning Jos¨¦''s story.


    Jos¨¦ had died mysteriously on Halloween night, a long time ago. He was an orphan, according to the legend, and was relentlessly bullied by a trio of cruel older boys. Somehow, he had died, and then he was buried somewhere in an unmarked grave.


    The diary was written by Jos¨¦ and included a poem he had written, after having a dream about his own death. He wrote that ''if dreams come true, then dreams come true''. Jos¨¦''s dream was to be friends with everyone at the school, someday, and to protect the students from bullying. He would kindly kick some butt and reform any bullies, solve everyone''s problems and even find a home - haunting the halls of his beloved high school forever.


    Then he had dreamed that he would die tragically and would remain asleep - dead - until someone wanted to become his first friend. He reasoned that if one dream should come true then so should all dreams. The last page of the diary had words that he loved, his own name being called upon by a new friend.


    The simplicity and thoughtfulness of his writing inspired me. I felt like I knew Jos¨¦ and that if he was right, then I could be his new, first friend. I read the words out loud, pronouncing them carefully to preserve the magic:


    "Hh-oh-zey mi amigo ven aqu¨ª." I carefully said, in the dark of the library, late that night. I sat on the floor with the candles around me, reading the words out loud into the darkness. The poem repeated twice more, the exact same words:


    "Jos¨¦ mi amigo ven aqu¨ª." I read with confidence, the words meaning: "Come here, Jos¨¦, my friend."


    Then I read the final line and felt a chill. Terror gripped me as I was alone in the dark. A glow was forming in the air near me. I wanted to scream, afraid of the ghost.


    My eyes were wide with fear, my pulse racing. I was very afraid of the presence of the dead. The ghost began to take shape, the air became cold and I tried to crawl backwards away from it. I finally screamed as I saw the form of the boy Jos¨¦ take shape. I tried to get up and run, but the laughing ghost gave chase.


    I could not escape from the dead. I was cornered and the smiling ghost of Jos¨¦ spoke to me in Espa?ol. Somehow, I understood him perfectly, like there were psychic subtitles in my mind. He laughed playfully and told me:


    "You are my first friend. I am so happy to meet you. This is a dream come true!" Jos¨¦ told me.


    I trembled in dread and stuttered: "You''re a ga-ga-ga ghost!"


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    "That''s right. I knew I would be, before I would get a friend." Jos¨¦ sounded a little sad; but perked back up and asked: "But hey, I am here, now. Want to play?"


    I tried to calm my breathing, to slow my heartbeat. I took deep breaths and leaned on the wall, sliding down it until I sat. After I stared at the floating ghost, I eventually agreed to play with him.


    Jos¨¦ was a good sport. We played Hide & Seek which was his favorite game. He was so happy to have someone to play with that he kept letting me win, even though he could easily have found me or caught me with his ghostly powers. After a while, I started to forget my fears, although he did enjoy startling me whenever he decided to find me, with a friendly:


    "Boo!"


    As dawn approached, he began to fade. I asked him if he would be alright and he told me he could always come to me or to anyone if they would just say the words, while in the school. Then he mentioned that he could never go too far from where he was secretly buried.


    From that night on we became good friends. I introduced him to anyone who dared to sneak into the library or anywhere else in the school and speak the invocation. All he wanted to do was play and tell jokes, and his jokes were hilarious, but things kept happening. Students had all sorts of problems, and he could help with anything.


    By the end of the school year, Jos¨¦ the Wholesome Ghost had made friends with the entire school. He had solved countless mysteries, resolved conflicts, advised students, listened to people''s problems and played a few fun pranks.


    Most of all, he rid our school of bullies, the one thing Jos¨¦ would not tolerate. Jos¨¦ used his ghost powers to terrorize bullies and force them to reform. I learned the horrible truth about what had happened to him.


    A hundred years before I had summoned him, Jos¨¦ was tragically killed by three bullies, their own ghosts still bound to the halls that he roamed. Poltergeist activity began and increased, and the evil trio of ghosts caused all sorts of mischief and problems, bullying from beyond the grave.


    Jos¨¦ could do nothing to stop them, because his death was linked to them. As the three evil bully ghosts became more powerful, Jos¨¦ weakened. Just before graduation, his best friends gathered, me included, to summon him one last time.


    We knew what we had to do. We had to exhume his remains and give him a proper burial. If we did, he would be free, and the evil ghosts would be gone forever. We called him up:


    "Jos¨¦, my amigo, come to us." We chanted. When he formed before us, he was in his winter formals. He knew what we were doing, and he approved, it was his wish that the school be free of the three bad ghosts.


    "One last game of Hide & Seek." Jos¨¦ smiled for us, lifting our spirits.


    We searched for him as he gave us clues, making it the best - and creepiest - Hide & Seek game ever played. When we all gathered by an old rusty janitor''s locker in the basement, we knew we had to smash open the lock. There was a lingering horror in our eyes, and I felt a chill of dread. Then we broke the lock and opened the rusty old locker. We were all afraid of what we would find.


    His body was there, stuffed horribly in the locker, where he had expired.


    We were all crying at the sight of his pitiful remains, but Jos¨¦ told us a good joke:


    "It''s about time someone found me, I was starting to get a little cramped in there."


    We laughed in relief with our faces wet with tears. We all loved Jos¨¦ and seeing his dead body was heart breaking. His cheerfulness melted the chill in the air.


    The right thing to do was to go to the police and to tell them that it was time to close the case on what had happened all those years ago. The troubles in our school, caused by the bully ghosts that had risen to reenact their wickedness, stopped abruptly. A dignified interment was given to our friend Jos¨¦, and he was to rest in peace.


    As the entire school gathered for his centennial memorial service, the principal gave the eulogy. She ended it with words that forever held meaning in all our hearts:


    "As we lay you to rest, Jos¨¦, our school spirit lives on, with your memory - our friend, forever."

 The Witch Cat Of 13B

    Alone at college, I was unprepared to live alone - with loneliness. It was the thought of arriving in my apartment and walking through that silence to turn on lights and put something on tv - that depressed me. Some instinct to obtain a companion made me turn into the animal shelter. I adopted Miss Marvel, a rescued black cat.


    Strange and unusual feelings were the first thing I noticed. I''d never had a pet before - so I attributed my sensation to her presence. There was one thought that I should have accepted. I did notice right away that Miss Marvel had two different personalities. Sometimes she was my friend, taking treats and letting me pet her and sleeping next to me. Other times she was like a pair of eyes in the shadows - watching me and making me feel menaced and hunted.


    She had known her way around the apartment from the first moment I had opened her carrier. She went to a spot in the kitchen that was perfect for where I would put her food and water. If I squinted I could almost see where someone had kept two bowls on the floor, slightly cleaner where the floor was covered. The exact same spot.


    I tried to meet her in her shadow realm but she made warning noises and even swatted at me, drawing a drop of blood. When I had rinsed it I heard her licking where the drop had spilled. I shuddered, wondering again if I had two different cats.


    Other than that: I found her companionship to be the best that I could have. She was a lovely cat, purring and playful and responsive to my call. I didn''t suspect her of the darkness that began to manifest in my home. Not her, yet it was all from her. I knew somehow that it was not right, my cat wasn''t responsible.


    My homework was shredded, things got broken and my plants wilted. The smell of ammonia became overwhelming and I''d have to leave my windows open. The swarm of flying insects swirling in my living room must have come in through the open window. It''s how they went back out: all-at-once.


    Then my own behavior began to change. I found myself waking up in strange places and missing time. I worried I might be losing my mind, until I noticed there was a pattern to my activities. Every time I slipped away I always came back with Miss Marvel sitting near me and staring intensely. She would hiss and run off when the spell wore off and I would think to myself:


    "Is she somehow controlling me?"


    After this had occurred a number of times I felt her power growing stronger. Miss Marvel would become the witch cat and mesmerize me and control me like a puppet. I filmed it with my webcam, but the recording wouldn''t open. I took it to a college friend who worked in the campus IT and they said the file couldn''t be repaired, because it wasn''t broken. It had filmed just one frame and the software had interpreted it as a non-video file. They showed it to me, just one image of a weird star made out of triangles with a peculiar questionmark-like symbol emblazoned over it.


    My investigations took me to the animal shelter. I determined that my cat was using witchcraft - entirely by my own instinct. I''ve always believed in witchcraft, found myself attracted to witches and living a charmed life. My involvement with Miss Marvel seemed to be part of my lifestory already. That didn''t mean I wasn''t frightened.


    Knowing I was dealing with witchcraft of some insidious alignment made me afraid. I felt powerless to deal with her and I knew I couldn''t escape. I felt drawn to my home, despite the horror I felt at opening that door.


    The shelter had, after I convinced them, told me the address where Miss Marvel had come from. She''d belonged to on old woman who had lived alone and died mysteriously. The address was my own. Miss Marvel had lived in my apartment before.


    I called my brother and convinced him to look into the police report. He told me he''d have to get back to me with it. When he came over he apologized for not coming over earlier, like when I had started college. Or at any point since.


    "You''re here now. That''s what I need." I told him.


    He stopped apologizing for neglecting me and told me what the police report had contained.


    "It started as a wellness check that went into a possible homicide. Later it was ruled as a possible suicide and finally as a natural death of unknown cause."


    "What does that even mean?" I felt the eyes of Miss Marvel, watching - her ears, listening. I looked around and saw her nowhere.


    "The lady who lived here - she had died of fear. Screamed until her lungs boiled and collapsed and hit her head. It looked bad, but she got scared of something and then died. That''s what happened." He explained.


    After my brother was gone, I reflected that his career had made him so calloused. I remembered him different growing up. Miss Marvel found me sitting and thinking and she was my cat, so she came to me and loved on me.


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    The next morning, I was sipping tea, when I remembered a spell someone had shown me. It was a gesture and some magic words, a cheap charm, that would reveal the hidden nature of someone or something.


    How did it go?


    I spoke the rhyme and focused my intention on the syntax, while looking at my cat through the corner of my eye, between the ''window'' of my pinky and pointer finger - while my other two fingertips were holding my thumb. Nothing happened. I didn''t give up, because I know that magic rarely works without increasing one''s efforts. I''d never cast a spell before, but I knew this from what I was told. I tried the charm again and again. Early in the evening, while she was eating and the sun was setting, my spell worked.


    I could see the witch standing beside my cat, the horrible open mouth looking both dead and violent at the same time. She could see me too, knew that I knew. The eyes of the creature burned with hatred, my reflection a pyre light. I put my hand down and looked away. When I looked back I felt a cold shiver, fear in my spine, knowing she was standing there unseen.


    My cat stopped eating suddenly and turned and faced me, staring with far more intensity than my cat. I knew it was the witch and not her. I knew it was up to me to figure out what to do. My only problem was that I was too afraid.


    I had nightmares from that night on. I''d sometimes wake up somewhere else in my home, turning butter into ashes on my stove. I would be drawing symbols on the floor in ash. I was trying to do something when she had control over me. I kept breaking free of her control before she could make any progress. At the same time - every time she got ahold of me she seemed to hold me longer and do more. She was getting stronger and I was getting weaker.


    I had to know what the old witch was trying to do. There was nothing else that I could do to free myself and Miss Marvel from her power. Moving or getting rid of the cat seemed impossible. Perhaps I could have tried one of those things, but the weight of such ideas felt like I was falling to even consider those options.


    Instead, I did my homework. I found out who she was, a rotary and well-known occult bookstore owner. Her obituary mentioned that there was a guest registry at her funeral. At the local library I was able to find out who held the registry. I called on them and they allowed me to look at it. They even told me that most of the guests were members of her coven, a large group of witches that had practiced together.


    "I just want to know about her life. All I know is about her death. It isn''t how she should be remembered?" Were my exact words to them. They were convinced I should be loaned her diary. Nobody had taken the time to read it, but it was kept with the spellbook and the registry. Of her spellbook I was given no permissions.


    I sat there and read her diary and discovered she had her own agenda within the coven. Some sort of personal spirit guide of her''s was to manifest for her. When I described the creature to them, they told me I had misunderstood.


    "Maroni is an ancient and powerful demon that grants eternal life. There is a bargain though, the use of a body for the demon, in such a consortment. No witch would fall prey to such a well-known scam."


    Yet she had made a deal with it and learned of a dangerous spell to summon Maroni. It involved writing with ash and speaking the contract in the demon''s own language. I guessed that the witch had tried and met the demon and died of terror.


    Somehow, she could inhabit her cat and channel her magic through Miss Marvel to control me. She was trying to complete the spell, probably so she could become alive and immortal. I felt pale and cold with fear as I realized I was her choice of bodies to live in.


    Every night my dreams showed me the ritual in different times and places. Different people, religions, civilizations had all come and gone. Each had danced with the demon upon the ashes of its summoning. All of them had tried to bargain with it. Always the demon won, always it got what it wanted and gave nothing in return.


    I was falling asleep in lectures and having visions or sightings of the tormented souls trapped by the demon''s spell. Shamans and druids, priestesses and warlocks, all as ghosts in their ritual garb, dead for whole chapters of history and trapped in our world, unseen. I felt sick, my body trying to reject the infection in my spirit.


    As I deteriorated there became less and less of a distinction between her control and mine. I felt myself slipping into the embrace of her power, somehow relieved to stop struggling and just give up. My fear became a constant anxiety, knowing what was happening and helpless to stop it.


    "Now you will perform the ritual." The voice of the witch spoke to me from Miss Marvel, contorted and barely human-sounding.


    I gathered what little of my willpower was left. I thought about the good times with Miss Marvel, when she was my cat. I wanted to break free, to somehow throw off the weight that was crushing me. I needed to begin, whenever I start something - I finish it.


    "No." I said weakly. Then I felt my voice, felt my willpower backing me up, motivating me to resist. I added: "No - I said. I won''t do it."


    "You will. You have no choice." The witch promised.


    I began to move, despite my resistance. I was under her control and aware of it. I felt her power over me slip even further. In a moment I regained control and swept the symbols of ash on the floor, ruining the summoning.


    "You insolent dog!" The witch exclaimed. "I''ve used it all up! Damn you!"


    And with that she was coughed out of Miss Marvel like some kind of hellspawned hairball. I stared at the lumpy and bubbling ectoplasma and felt a nauseating revulsion and the last of the terrified feelings I had lived with for so long.


    My cat lifted the stringy dead thing and brought it to me and dropped it at my feet. She meowed with expectation and I lifted her and took her with me while she purred. I was very tired and fell asleep right away.


    Of Miss Marvel I can only say we are happy together. Whatever got into her was long gone, having slithered up the wall and down the drain, leaving a trail of slime. I cleaned it up and relaxed.


    Together, at college, I live happily with my marvelous cat, Miss Marvel.

 Saltwater Crocodile Ate My Dog

    Call me Mack. Sunfall Beach was the haven of my solitude; alone with Vicky, the only companion I wanted. Ours was a paradise of two seasons, where the chorus of a thousand birds and insects repeated Nature''s Greatest Hits every Saturday.


    Saltys rarely ventured into my fishing waters, with one exception. Dimbi Dun owned the same waters, but he tolerated me and never bothered us. The old man on the bluff, Jarli, had told me that Dimbi Dun was almost two hundred years old. The monster crocodile was twenty four feet long and had a distinct golden streak along one side of his snout, head and shoulders. Of his draconian countenance, we rarely saw him, but it was his laws that kept away the sharks and other saltys.


    I''d draw up the nets and see the dragons basking on the strata of the estuaries. They''d yawn so birds could clean their teeth. Their grace was ours, a balance existed. Vicky would run along the shore as the waves retreated from her galloping paws. Her barking was met by their unflinching stares. A mutual respect of territories was enjoyed by all the creatures of Sunfall Beach.


    I loved Vicky very much.


    I had a radio on my boat, Fisherman''s Pride. On the day when things changed, it began with a distress call. A sheila identified her vessel as the Miss Terry, a name I recognized as a poacher''s. She told me they were being attacked by a giant crocodile. They were so close that I could hear their gunshots in the distance. I told her to send up a flare. I got out my binoculars and spotted it, as the first cool shadows of evening raised a silence.


    With some dread I took my boat to the site. What I found turned my stomach. Dimbi Dun had killed the safari poachers and left them in pieces and sprayed blood all over their camp. Even the girl was dead. I guessed the nature of their visit. A wealthy family had hired the poachers for some crocodile hunting.


    I felt terrible fear as we landed next to the wrecked boat. Dimbi Dun had smashed through it, spilling fuel and oil into the water. I was breathing shallowly, looking around nervously. Vicky was growling softly.


    I opened a crate and noted they hadn''t made it to one of their weapons, a thirty-caliber machinegun. There were other rifles scattered among the dead, but none of them were proven effective against the beast that had come for them. I could smell the primeval reptile and so could Vicky.


    Her growling became a sharp barking as she turned and faced the darkness of motor oil on the water. Fear stopped my breath as I turned in time to see that Dimbi Dun was not gone. The trap was sprung, and the living-horror lunged as a black wave and glistening white teeth. In an instant, Vicky was caught, and her neck broken.


    There was deep terror in me, but my hands kept moving. My eyes were wide with fear, but I kept them focused. Had I hesitated, I would not have survived.


    I knelt and opened the ammo box while Dimbi Dun tore apart my dog''s remains. As soon as I had loaded the machinegun, Dimbi Dun turned and came for me. He was so huge that part of him was still in the water while the rest of him blocked my retreat to my own boat. I started shooting, missing and spraying thunder and light.


    Several bullets ricocheted off the fuel barrels of the poacher''s camp and sparked the spilled oil on the water. The flames turned our battlefield into a hellscape. Dimbi Dun was turned and the loud rattle of the machinegun spit lead across his armor. The dragon was bleeding and burning and decided he''d had enough of me and retreated into the water, vanishing into the darkness.


    With a such a darkness rising inside of me, I too retreated, before he could come back for me. When I was back home, I just sat for a long time, all night, my pain at losing Vicky changing me into a monster. I feared what I was becoming as I contemplated my revenge. I no longer cared about the balance of nature or the grace of Sunfall Beach. A war had begun.


    I reminded myself that I was Mack the lone fisherman of Sunfall Beach and that I was happy with my dog, Vicky. No, I was afraid.


    Dimbi Dun, the ancient golden crocodile, had taken Vicky from me. I was still afraid as I recognized that I was changing, mutating into a different kind of man. I feared Vicky would not recognize me, what I was becoming. Vengeance consumed me and I became empty and devoid of my love of nature.


    My descent into darkness even corrupted me in The Dreaming. When I stood there facing the dragon, flames swirling all around us, I was given terrible strength. I killed Dimbi Dun by lancing him through his heart. As he died, he spoke to me:


    "As I die, what dies with me? When I am gone, what becomes you?"


    "I don''t care, die monster!" I responded.


    My spear went through his heart over and over until I decided he was dead.


    I stood upon the dead giant as it floated in a sea of blood. Parts of my flesh crumbled dryly away, revealing I was hollow inside and full of wriggling black anger. It was eating me from the inside out, leaving only my husk standing and casting a shadow. My shadow grew to the edge of the sea where the sun hung low and then my shadow eclipsed the sun itself. Dimbi Dun''s corpse was sinking slowly, and I stood upon his remains, as my vessel in the waters of dead blood.


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    Dimbi Dun also crawled up beside me as a much smaller crocodile, but his golden streak identifying him. He looked up at me and stared into my eyes and said:


    "Is this good? Will you call this peace?" Dimbi Dun asked me.


    I fell to my knees and began to weep. I was broken, realizing that I had only made things worse. There was no peace, only a curse.


    When I opened my eyes, I was standing there upon the beach and Vicky was running along the shore, barking at seabirds and leaving her pawprints. Then she was gone and there was no Vicky. Her pawprints were still there and I watched in sadness as the waves crept inexorably towards her pawprints and washed them away, leaving no trace of her.


    I returned to the false world from The Dreaming, but I had not changed my mind. My heart was broken, my fears were confused and shadowed but my mind was the mind of a man who believed he could right a wrong with violence. I sat up and heard the distant song of Jarli. I recognized his didgeridoo as my eyes fluttered to the morning light.


    He was trying to use his magic to restore peace to Sunfall Beach. He was aware of the conflict and the rage and sought to bring back the sacred balance and harmony that made our corner of the world a peaceful place. He was right, and I knew he was right, but I refused to accept it. I was damaged and afraid, and I needed to pursue the fever, unable to let go.


    I went to the poacher''s camp, now cleaned of all carnage. Animals and insects had worked tirelessly to remove every scrap of skin, every drop of blood and each broken bone. Only the weapons interested me, I was part of nature, a strange part, that came and took what nothing else wanted.


    I took it all back home, where I would prepare for battle.


    As I made my preparations, cleaning and loading all of the rifles and the machinegun, I saw Jarli approaching from a distance. Every once in a while, he would turn around and stare back in the direction of his own home, while standing on just one leg, the other propped up on his knee. He was praying or casting a spell. I honestly don''t know the difference. I do know his teachings are all true. Our world, the world of Man, is false.


    Only The Dreaming is real.


    "Mack, my son, what is it that is happening?" Jarli asked me from a short distance.


    "I am going to go and..." I hesitated before I said what I planned to do. Somehow it sounded very evil, when I put words to my will: "I am going to go kill Dimbi Dun."


    "Mack." Jarli said, walking slowly towards me. "You''re angry Mack. You''ve lost Vicky?"


    "He took her." I stated.


    "Mack, you know this isn''t right. The battle is over. Let it go. Let peace return. Even Dimbi Dun is ready for peace to return." Jarli said a lot of words, it seemed. I thought about it and said:


    "I''m not ready." I said. Something in me was begging me to listen to Jarli, some part of me that was afraid of what would happen if I succeeded. Killing the crocodile wouldn''t be the end. If I killed Dimbi Dun, the war inside of me would never end.


    "We have storms on this beach, terrible storms." Jarli was standing behind me without casting his shadow over me while I loaded Fisherman''s Pride with weapons and traps.


    "I don''t have time for another story." I objected.


    "We live where tourists don''t come." Jarli changed stance and shifted his efforts.


    "I''m leaving, Jarli. Best you go where you are supposed to be." I looked at him and then I looked the direction of his home.


    I shoved off and was ready to leave. I heaved myself up into my boat. Without effort, Jarli appeared in my boat.


    "I am your conscience. You aren''t listening to me, but I am still with you." Jarli told me.


    I said nothing and sat down while I steered us towards the home of Dimbi Dun. We navigated the waters in mutual silence, although I knew he knew the intimate words in my skull and surely as I knew his. We were arguing there, without looking at each other or speaking. I admitted to him that I was grateful that I was arguing with him instead of with myself.


    He pointed out, wordlessly, that part of me agreed with him. I had said as much, silently. Jarli was only accompanying me as far as he could, before he was participating in trespassing. When he stepped off my boat at the entrance to the salty''s cave, I felt alone in a way I didn''t like.


    Dark fears rose deep from pain.


    When I was in the lair of the dragon, I felt another kind of fear. Dimbi Dun was a dangerous monster, and I was trespassing. I put on the lights and saw two female saltys abandon their nests and retreat. They sensed I was too deadly and were too afraid of me to stay and guard their eggs.


    What I did next was an act of evil. I stepped off my boat and waded to the eggs with a machete in my hand. The work I did was short and horrible and when I was done, I finally realized that I needed to quit my quest.


    The horror I felt was at what I had become. A tear escaped as I acknowledged that I had become the monster. I was the bringer of warfare and horror to my peaceful home. We could have had peace already, but I had carried yesterday''s battle to today. I knew it was wrong and I had done it anyway.


    Dimbi Dun attacked from nowhere. Somehow, I evaded two of his attacks and struck him across his snout with the machete. With my feet feeling like they were slipping - I leapt along his thrashing back and caught the edge of my boat. His mighty tail struck the side and churned the waters white.


    I got my motor started and backed out of the cave. Outside I held a rifle ready to defend myself. When I saw his eyes watching me from the darkness, just a lunge away from me, I realized he had me too.


    We both had the other in our sights. It could all be over. He could have me and I could have him. We could end each other.


    Instead, we both just stared. Very slowly, without fully knowing, my fear slowed to a heartbeat. My sweat dripped and I saw him blink. Then my weapon was lowered, and he was gone, back into his home, leaving me there.


    It was like a miracle. I had let it go, as I stared at him, and somehow the crocodile had decided too, that it was over. We had made a treaty.


    I went back home and sat on the beach, trying to remember Vicky. I could see her running along, her wet paws flinging clods of sand. I heard the digeridoo from Jarli''s clifftop. As the sun was setting, I let sleep my anger and embraced the memory of my lost friend.


    There was no darkness in the night sky. There was no silence on the breeze. There was only peace.

 Cold Custody Patent

    Feverish, I''d actually dreamed of the day I would sell my invention to Oryx Plastics. I''d never heard of them before; I just saw the horned animal and identified it. When my suffering ended, I looked them up and discovered they were real.


    I''d applied for patents before, and never gotten through the whole process. Something changed, my passions ignited, simply by getting sick and visiting the doorstep of death. I''d spent four days in the hospital with food poisoning and invented it in my mind. I called it ''Cold Custody'' and it would revolutionize the safety of food packaging.


    To describe my invention in simple terms, the resealable plastic strip for frozen and refrigerated foods would change color from blue to red if the food wasn''t kept at the right temperature. What I had eaten had spent almost thirty hours sitting on a loading dock outside the grocery store and it had spoiled. My poor taste and smell receptors were from an infection I''d suffered from a similar food poisoning when I was in college.


    The recall didn''t happen until I was already hospitalized.


    "Dr. Emily Parker, we are certainly interested in purchasing your invention." The acquisitions department of Oryx Plastics had told me over the phone, in my dream. It had seemed so real, and then I had begun to develop it in my lab, in real life.


    I had no idea of the nightmare I would endure to make my dream come true.


    It started when I first began the application process for my new patent. Cold Custody was immediately rejected, as being implausible. I had to set up an appointment to demonstrate my prototype. As I made preparations, I worked late into the night.


    As I left my lab I felt a cold dread from the two men watching me leave. They were staring at me and I felt like an antelope, and they were the lions. It was a cold and calculated gaze, predatory and merciless.


    The next morning I returned to find my lab was ransacked, vandalized and robbed. The prototypes were all gone. I had to cancel my appointment with the patent office and file a police report. My insurance didn''t cover the burglary, and I was left without funding, since I had paid for everything with the last of my inheritance.


    I had to close my lab and sell most of my equipment. At home I continued my work, recreating the prototype of Cold Custody. One night I was turning out the lights when I saw them again, sitting in a car across the street from my home.


    I felt terrorized and called the police. While I waited for them to respond, there was a knock on my door. I thought the police had shown up already, although I didn''t see a patrol car. Something told me not to open the door. Instead, I asked loudly, "Who is it?"


    And the response was the sound of glass breaking in the back bedroom where I had set up my lab. I panicked and hid in the coat closet while they robbed me a second time. I sweated and cried, afraid to confront them or to run outside. Before they left they fired a gun into my front door, a warning, a threat.


    When the police finally showed up they focused on the two bullets in my front door. The destruction of my lab was barely a concern, compared to the gun the lions had used.


    For a few days, I stayed with my sister, but she told me her story about the ex-boyfriend who had stalked her and terrorized her. Sindel explained to me that by living in fear she had given him what he wanted. It was only when she resumed her normal life and pursued her relationships that she defeated him. I had never met Mike, as he had kept Sindel isolated from the people who cared about her.


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    In the end, he had given up. Despite years of abuse followed by months of terror, she had won, because she had not let him take away the life she wanted.


    "When you give into the fear, it is worse than dying." Sindel told me. "I decided I didn''t care what he did, I wanted out, I wanted to live again."


    She had also rescued a kung fu Pitbull named Caradine. Caradine was the sweetest and smartest animal a girl could want, but he had the temper of a dire wolf whenever someone bothered his girl. Caradine was very dangerous and very protective. Deadly sweetness.


    One day her ex had come over drunk and broken into her house. Caradine had discarded his normal chilled attitude and menaced him, making it clear he would tear the man apart if he didn''t leave. Sindel had told Caradine to sit and he had obeyed, but if she had said nothing, Mike probably would have gotten mauled.


    "I had gotten over my fear, but I also took measures to ensure it could never come back." Sindel sipped her wine. I nodded.


    When I went home, I began again and applied my inventiveness to making a homemade firearm. When the zip-carbine was complete: I loaded both barrels with ethanol-filled syringes. I kept it under my bed with the trigger mechanism detached, for safety. I felt secure, knowing that I could protect one invention with another.


    I began work again, and when it was complete, I set up an appointment with the patent office. The lions knew it was time to pay me another visit. I suspected that they must know, with some precision, the exact status of my application.


    I was on the phone with Sindel when she mentioned that Mike''s office job had kept him busy. I told her I suspected someone at the patent office was intercepting my efforts to fulfill my dream, and that is when she gasped and said, "He works at the patent office!"


    Just then I heard a pounding on my front door, using the same tactic they had used before. I told Sindel to call the police, and then I went to my bedroom and prepared my weapon. Instead of hiding I went into my lab, the window still boarded up, and waited in ambush.


    "Emily!" I heard my sister''s upset voice, somehow echoing in my mind, as I had hung up the phone.


    An axe head burst through the plywood board and was used to split it and pull it free. I was very afraid, but kept myself steady, fighting down the terrified feelings. There was a man there, a lion, wearing a ski mask and armed with the tool to enter and smash stuff with. He seemed confident that he could destroy my work a third time, and ruin everything for me.


    When he was inside I turned on the light. He looked at me and tried to menace me with the axe. That is when I shot him in the leg. He screamed in pain and fell over. I resisted the temptation to shoot him a second time. I wanted him to live.


    He staggered around, dropping the weapon. He began to crawl towards me, yelling for help. In his stupor, he cried out for the other lion, the one named Mike. I went to the front door. From the hidden corner of the coat closet, I opened the front door. For a moment he wasn''t there, but he had heard the door opening from halfway around the house and returned. He had no idea I was there. I held my breath, my fear beating in my ears like wild drums.


    Mike came in, waving the gun around like a pathetic version of John Wick. He went right past me and saw his friend lying on the floor, unconscious. That is when I shot him in the back, aiming it at his huge butt. I didn''t wait for his response, but ran outside and hid in my front yard, through the front door.


    My heart was beating and I was suddenly afraid, having realized I had crossed some threshold. It wasn''t over until he fell. I heard gunshots, as he dizzily and drunkenly shot up my house. He came outside and fell down the stairs, one last gunshot flashed towards me.


    I felt a coldness on my face and reached up. My hand came away bloodied, and I felt that my right ear was gone. Panic washed over me as I realized I was shot, and then I collapsed.


    In my fevered dreams, in the hospital, I was running free across the savannah. The lions could not catch me, and I shed my fear, leaping higher and higher, running faster and lighter. Soon I was in a place where they could never catch me.


    When I showed my prototype, it was exactly like I had first known it, in my dreams. The patent examiner complimented me for my diligence and creativity. There was also an official apology from the patent office, mentioning the security breach and assuring me that it had never happened before. I said it was okay, and that I was just glad to be moving forward with my application.


    My dream wasn''t entirely fulfilled, I still had one last and very important phone call to make.

 On The Rooftop - Click Click

    Where artifice ends and the heavens begin, a median that has existed as long as civilization and art. It is where the beauty and the desolation can be seen in contrast, a silent conflict rising with the feathers of falcons and pigeons. There are ghosts there too, remnants of the tragedies that linger in the morning shadows. My heart will always be there, in those silent and shaded bowers.


    I wasn''t the same Alain that I once was. The city wasn''t the same, even when I had found the eerie landscape and forgotten vantages. I had an eye for it, but my finger on my camera was no longer attuned to the illumination that had given my name meaning.


    I spent most of my time ascending and looking from the vistas of the rooftops. I held my camera and looked through the antique eye at a district that was not always seen. There were hidden angles, mirages, and glimmers of what the heart of the city once was. That is what I was seeking, the art and emotion, the colors and the phantom of light as it played for just one flash across the broken glass and ashen facades. I wanted to be there, clicking the shutter at the precise moment that the light arrived, when things were beautiful. Always, the moment was too brief, I could never click fast enough, as the gray ruins reverted to their dying vigil.


    I would sigh, for in the past I was younger and had a different perception. I used to be able to capture the moment. I was not touched by the age of the city, I was vibrant and I drew life into my film. My earlier career was charmed and granted me the status of a successful artist.


    Time had crept up on me and taken its revenge. I had stolen those moments, those brief flickers between the measurable seconds when the light was eternal. I had taken and captured in my images what belonged to the ghosts, to the ones who had known the streets and windows when they were whole and new. As a photographer whose career had aged and withered, I knew what I had done and I could no longer replicate my passions from my youth.


    I descended as the day ended. There really was no point in sunset photography. The truth was in the first rays of sunshine. The fading fire was the darkness that anyone could see at any time. It meant nothing to me.


    At my studio, I found my answering machine had recorded a cryptic message. An acquaintance who had found something intangible yet moving in my earlier art. Miriam was a crisis counselor with the police department. Her message was vague, saying that she needed help with something I was familiar with, dealing with a repeating phenomenon. It was hard to ignore her offer to compensate me for my time, I had overdue rent to pay. I called her back on the cell number she had added after her number at her office. Reaching me was important enough to leave both numbers.


    "I''m sorry to call you at home. You sounded like it is urgent, and I do need the money. What can I help you with, Miriam?" I said over the phone. I listened while she soberly told me she didn''t believe in ghosts, but that she thought if ever someone could solve her problem, it would be someone like me.


    "Ghosts?" I asked. I felt a chill. It is hard to disregard something you''ve spent your life looking at, even through the glass.


    "We''ve had calls from the heart of the city, twice now, where there was a potential jumper. When I arrived, I found someone there, waiting. Someone unresponsive, unidentified, and when I went, they were gone. No bodies, nothing. It has happened before, many times, but these last two times I was there. They just vanished." Miriam sounded hesitant, but she had committed to recruiting my help and had to explain why.


    I felt a coldness in my stomach, a reaction I get when I am looking at something that disappears a few seconds later, or when I lower the viewfinder and the glass, my naked eye sees nothing. I knew it was possible to see something and to watch it disappear. I had not succeeded in capturing such an image in a very long time. While I felt dread at the thought of chasing a ghost, my heart also quickened, for if I took such a picture, the spell on me would be broken. I would be like I was in my past, someone who could take such pictures, with a finger and eye quick enough to escape the dying world.


    "From the rooftop?" I asked. I heard my own voice, a mixture of apprehension and excitement. This was already about more than just some money.


    "The Fassen building. He was there three nights in a row. The last two times I was there, and I saw him go. But there were no remains. Nobody was there." Miriam reiterated her earlier statement.


    "Who is making the report?" I asked.


    "I can''t tell you that." Miriam said quickly. Then she added, "But the call came from across the street, where there are some new tenants."


    "On the west side? At sunset?" I asked.


    "Yes." Miriam agreed. "You seem to know what you are doing. If you can get a picture, we could identify whoever is doing this. Perhaps it is someone who needs my help." Miriam sounded doubtful.


    "I take it you must be there, then." I worried. I worked better alone, and if she was there I might not be able to enter that magic moment when things were clear.


    "I must follow protocol. You are a consultant, not an investigator." Miriam decreed. I sighed and agreed to meet her later, giving her my address so she could pick me up.


    This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    When she arrived she called me down from her cellphone and I met her on the empty windswept street. The chill of autumn wasn''t what froze my blood. I knew it was a night when things could be seen. I felt somewhat worried we would actually encounter whatever she thought was a jumper, and that I would not want to be involved. My premonitions kept me standing there as some leaves rustled thickly along the sidewalk and I looked into the darkness of her car, seeing my reflection as the streetlight overhead flickered on.


    We parked next to a damaged old meter in front of the abandoned Fassen building. Miriam was younger and more professional that I remembered her from my gallery. She had seemed older and more carefree when I had met her. She had a flashlight and I had my camera. There was police tape over the broken door to the building, where boards were removed so she and the officers from the nights before could enter.


    We went up the creaking stairs and I asked her:


    "Did it happen at the same time each night?"


    "We have few minutes to spare before the time when the calls came in." She spoke softly, adopting her counselor''s voice. She sounded confident and compassionate, a practiced tone.


    As we climbed the stairs I felt a foreboding and I questioned my decision. I did need the money and I might just capture a ghost on film. But there was a sense of wrongness and dread that I could not escape. It was as though the walls were pressing in on me, infusing me with their decrepitude and that the ghost would do the same. If I saw it, I would know the frailty of life and I would forget my pursuit of accomplishments. It was a feeling like I was putting myself into flames - no - into ice. It was a burning coldness, as we neared the rooftop.


    "Do you feel that?" I stopped and asked her. Miriam was leading the way with her flashlight and she stopped and said, without turning:


    "I think so. I don''t like this, it isn''t like helping someone. It is something else. Like I am interfering. Like I am forcing myself to go where I am in some kind of terrible danger." She was honest with me. I appreciated it and I said:


    "Thank you. I didn''t know how to explain this."


    We stood on the rooftop and it was unnaturally cold. There was stillness, and although we were both bundled up in coats and there was no wind, the cold was penetrating and seemed to be inside, not just around us. Miriam didn''t need to point. I was already looking where she was looking. I somehow knew the exact place where the man would be.


    And then, as though he were already there, coming into focus, the shadows and the place that he was now had him there. It is hard to explain, how someone who wasn''t there can just appear. I held up my camera and began to ''click-click'' away.


    Miriam was addressing him, but he was indifferent to our presence and didn''t respond to her attempts to plead with him. I shuddered, realizing this was not a person. I decided it must be some kind of entity, as I could see it in my mind, as well as in my view. The ghost''s eyes were hollow and the sound of my camera seemed to echo helplessly.


    I tried to collect the photographic evidence I was hired to take, but my hands were shaking and I couldn''t seem to get a clear shot, even though it was right in front of us. Like Miriam''s words passing through it without effect, it was intangible to the mechanism and chemicals of my photography.


    When it reenacted its doom we both shuffled to the edge, without wanting to look, we did. There was nothing down there. He had leapt and vanished.


    "That''s it?" I asked Miriam. She said nothing, but the disturbed and frightened look in her eyes spoke to me. I felt the same horror.


    In the morning she came and got me, asking me simply: "Do you want to come with me? I am going to find out who he was."


    I had a picture of him, but it was blurry, showing only a shadow. When I stared at it long enough I could see him in it. I showed it to her and asked her if she could see him there too.


    "I don''t need that. I see him whenever I close my eyes."


    Miriam took me to where the old police records were kept, most of them never filed digitally, as they were not relevant anymore. We sorted through a stack until we had just a few that pertained to the Fassen building.


    "This is it." Miriam showed me an old black and white photograph from a newspaper that showed the same man we had seen. "His name was William."


    There was in investigation into William that had briefly preceded his suicide. He was the main suspect into the killing of a gallery owner, a death that was highly suspicious, unlikely to be accidental.


    Two nights before William had jumped he was the last person seen with the victim, who had fallen backwards and hit his head and died. The police had searched for William to question him, and when they had found him, he had already jumped.


    There were other newspaper articles in the case file. They were collected as evidence of motive. William, a once exceptional painter, had faced rejection and mockery from the art community. Critics had slandered him - shattered his dreams, and left his soul tormented.


    His pain had turned towards anger for the gallery owner who suddenly refused to display William''s new work. In an argument, I considered, William had somehow shoved or hit the victim, resulting in the accidental-looking death. Consumed by guilt at having caused the other man''s death, William had taken his own life.


    Miriam and I had sat there all day searching and reading and discussing what seemed to be the obvious story about William''s origins as a ghost. While we were there, Miriam was called out to the Fassen building again. We returned and she ascended with the police. I stayed below, looking up to see the ghost perched and ready to jump.


    Several people were outside their apartments across the street, looking up. I aimed my camera and managed to see the despair and desperation, even in the darkness. Somehow with just one click, I knew I had captured the image, telling the truth of who William was in those last moments.


    As we waited below, Miriam spoke to him from the rooftop. She knew his name and why he had jumped, and the ghost responded. We had overcome our fear of it, and something had changed. He never jumped. Instead, at that moment, my camera found the light.


    I processed the film and looked at it for a long time. My eyes watered, as I saw that the horror was at an end. In my picture I had caught the exact moment, as the darkened image of the man had turned radiant, released from his unending death.


    There was no ghost in the picture I took, just a flash of light at the top of the building. I had seen many such moments earlier in my career and I knew what I was looking at. I recognized it as the release from the dying darkness, the moment everything turned bright. It was that imprinted memory on all things, that brief moment in all the despair when hope can be seen. While it is not always visible, it is always there.


    Anywhere, if you look for it.

 The Umbrella Ripper

    Rain always makes me uneasy. It rains a lot, and they say the rain is polluted. I remember from science classes, my teacher told us that rain has all the chemicals we release into the air.


    Anyone here can put a pH strip into rainwater and measure its acidity. Normally it has a pH between five and five-point-five. I tested the rainwater all the time, and more often than not it reads lower than five, sometimes with a pH as low as four. It''s called acid rain.


    I only go out in the rain to hunt for nightcrawlers. I like fishing, it takes my mind off the strange things around me, like all the missing persons posters and the acid rain. When I go out for nightcrawlers, which are large worms, I wear a raincoat.


    The first time I saw the man with the umbrella, I was looking down at the mud, looking for worms. I had a flashlight and an open can, which I put them in. Later I could use them as bait when I fish. I had looked for quite some time for a worm and saw none. It just wasn''t a good night for finding nightcrawlers.


    I heard someone cough, a girl; I recognized her as a babysitter. She was walking home from babysitting. I also noticed a man dressed in a raincoat, his face shaded from the streetlight by an enormous umbrella. When I looked back at what I was doing, looking for worms, I saw they had all come up.


    I''ve never seen worms act that way, all of them sticking up out of the ground, waving and wriggling straight up out of the mud. There were hundreds of them, and I was so surprised I didn''t reach down and take a handful. I just stared at them.


    Then the babysitter was walking past the man with the umbrella. He said something to her and she nodded and then he walked beside her, holding his enormous umbrella over the both of them. I thought it was strange, to see her accept the offer of a stranger like that. I felt scared for her, and I felt like something was wrong. I avoided stepping on the worms and I followed the man with the umbrella and the girl.


    They went around a corner and I looked for them, and then I spotted them. I could only see their feet. He had lowered the umbrella, hiding them both behind it from the streetlights and from sight. When he raised it back up, he was standing alone.


    He looked at me, and I could see just his eyes, reflecting light like a predator in the dark. Then he walked away, splashing through puddles and disappearing around the corner. Then I noticed the body of the girl lying on the sidewalk. At least, that is what I thought I was looking at. I felt terrified, thinking she was hurt or dead.


    I was trembling and crying, as I neared her. Then I saw that what was lying there was not her. It was just some black trashbags someone had left next to their garbage cans, and the waste management hadn''t taken them. There was a soaking wet citation taped to the bags.


    I looked around, but I did not see the girl anywhere. I began to feel relieved, because I was telling myself I had only imagined all the terrible things, like her getting murdered behind the umbrella. She must have gone inside one of the houses already. So, I took myself home, because it had started raining harder.


    The very next day, however, the police were out looking for her, because she had never come home. They knocked on doors throughout the neighborhood, and my mom told them she hadn''t seen her. I got up and told them that I had seen her.


    It was with great fear that I recounted my search for worms and my sighting of the man with her. I realized that something had happened to her. Somehow, she had vanished.


    Later I went fishing, hoping to take my mind off of things. The water in the canal was high from all the rain. While I fished, I got out my kit with the pH strips in it and my logbook of the acidity of the water. The water in the canal was almost entirely rainwater, and fish got into it from the creeks and ponds and Adam''s Lake, which was privately owned and stocked with fish.


    I sometimes caught fish, and there was no need for a license to fish in the canal. Technically I wasn''t stealing, to fish for escaped ones in the stormwater. That is when my blood froze, staring at the pale hand that was in the murky brown flowing waters. I stared, holding the pH strip in one hand and my pole in the other.


    Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    I wandered back, in a daze, and found the house empty. My mom was at work, after-all. I took up our housephone and called the detective I had spoken to. I told the police about the dead body in the canal, and I knew somehow, by the hand, that it was the girl from the night before. I hung up, shaking and cold, afraid of what I had learned and what I had seen.


    I didn''t want to stay home, so I walked to my mom''s work, at the diner. Along the way I saw people out walking with their umbrellas, and every large black umbrella scared me, because I thought it might be the killer with the umbrella.


    When I reached the diner, I was seated at a window, and looked out at the drizzly day. That is when I saw an umbrella turned down, hiding someone behind it. I watched in horror, unable to look away or cry out. I was holding my breath, like I was underwater, afraid to blink or gasp for air. As the umbrella lifted, I spotted the same dark raincoat wearing man, the killer, and another mound left there for dead.


    I screamed, a high-pitched wail of terror, and stood, spilling my hot chocolate. Everyone in the diner got up and looked. Some of the men ran out and found the remains, lifting the soaked paint cloth from it. The killer had hidden the body there, covering it up.


    I knew then that I was tricked the first time, that the garbage bags were used to cover up the girl''s dead body. He had waited until I had left and then come back for her. The police were called, and the victim was a kid from my school. I hadn''t known him very well, but he lived in my neighborhood. I couldn''t help but feel as though he was targeted instead of me. It was like the killer had meant to kill me, a witness, and had missed.


    For a day or two, at the diner mostly, and sometimes at school, the neighborhood talked about the killer, the Umbrella Ripper, as they called him. I knew he was more than just an ordinary killer. I couldn''t sleep and I couldn''t go out at night to look for worms in the rain. My appetite decreased and I missed a lot of days of school. I lived in fear, terrified of every sound in the house both at night and alone during the day.


    I knew, somehow, that the Umbrella Ripper was no ordinary killer. He somehow made himself unknown. Just a week after the killing in front of the diner, it was like nothing had happened. The police went back to their usual routine of writing tickets outside of town and drinking coffee in the diner. All the other kids kept going to school and life continued, as though it was perfectly normal to have someone going around murdering people behind an umbrella on rainy days.


    I begged my mom to let us move, to pack up and go somewhere else. I didn''t feel safe. She asked me, "Whatever for?" like it was no big deal that the Umbrella Ripper was still out there. The whole neighborhood, the whole town, seemed to forget about him and go on with life.


    More missing person posters went up, and that was the only thing that seemed to mark the passage of time. Day and night were a gray blur of rain and mists and streetlights. I had forgotten what the sun looked like and the smiling characters on my cereal box didn''t make me hungry. I just slowly sipped my milk and listened to the rain.


    I thought about the earthworms, how they had come up from below by the thousands, and waved and danced like they knew, like they somehow knew the way that I did, that the killer was near. I could feel him out there. Every umbrella I saw could have him under it, walking in the night or in the day, under the crying clouds and the dimly lit streets.


    There were dark rings under my eyes. When my dad called me, I asked him if I could come live with him. He said "No. You wouldn''t want to live with me on base. It''s just not good for kids."


    That is when I told him about the killer, told him all about the Umbrella Ripper.


    "That''s strange, there''s nothing about this guy in the news. I realize a lot of people go missing there, more than anywhere else. But why doesn''t anyone talk about it?"


    "Dad, I am really scared, and I really miss you. I want to live with you on base. I don''t want to live with Mom anymore. I''ll be really good, I swear. Please?" I begged Dad.


    "Alright. I''ll talk to Mom about you coming to live with me. It''s her decision, she has custody of you. But if you''re really not doing well and it would make you feel better, then I''ll let you come live with me. You have to really behave yourself though, no screw-ups, alright? You do something bad, and I''ll send you back to live with Mom, got it?" Dad spoke both softly and sternly. He had a way of doing that.


    "Okay." I sobbed, choking with relief.


    I had to last four more days before Dad came and got me. I was already packed. There were new missing persons posters up all over town, and the latest victims looked more and more like me each time. I looked out the window as Dad drove me and all my packed boxes and my backpack out of that place.


    As we were leaving, I saw a great black umbrella turned down, and fear struck me like a cold splash from a puddle, thrown by a speeding tire onto a pedestrian. When I looked back it was raised to its natural position, skyward. I saw the gleam of the eyes in the shadow under the umbrella, as Umbrella Ripper watched me go.


    Then, soon after, we were out of that awful town. The skies ahead were clear and bright, making my eyes water. The fear slowly subsided like the canal after a heavy rain. Then, for the first time in my life, I saw a rainbow.


    "I love you, Dad."

 It Came Home For Christmas

    Darkness prevailed in our community. No lights, no music. It was as though the year would not have a Christmas. Ours was the brightest, the place for carols and the inspiration for everyone''s festivities. Not anymore.


    My husband had always gone all out for Christmas and put up the most lights, inflatable snowmen, an arbor of candy canes and a life-sized Santa on our roof. We even had a nativity scene, although we were atheists. We just loved Christmas and it was always the time when our family was at its best. Year after year, after our son had grown, he had brought his family home for Christmas.


    They had always made a card together, a homemade Christmas card in a gold envelope. Each was a treasure to me. I loved the drawings from the kids and the handwritten greetings from my daughter-in-law and my son.


    They wouldn''t be coming home this year. Not after the horrific accident. The temperature had plummeted suddenly after nightfall, and the light rain from earlier had made conditions just a little bit icy. Sometimes a little danger is more dangerous than a lot of danger.


    I wasn''t sure anymore. The pain was too great. In the morning I wouldn''t get out of bed, because I was holding onto the dreams of my son and his family. I wanted to live in the dreams, forget the world. I couldn''t speak or take care of my home. I just wasn''t able to move on.


    My husband had kept working, and it angered me that he seemed to be handling it. I knew he was hurt by the loss, but he had healed, and continued with his life. I was never going to heal, for me, life felt like a punishment, like I had somehow done something wrong and deserved the agony of losing him.


    The next year, at Christmas, it only got worse. Nobody put up lights. The community we lived in had followed us into the holidays, and we had stopped celebrating. They still had their Christmas parties, but we weren''t expected to come, and nobody decorated. Part of me felt that too, but I asked myself if I wanted something different, and although I would have accepted it, I wasn''t going to ask for it.


    "I am going to put up the tree and leave their gifts under it." My husband told me. I just nodded and said nothing. There was some part of me, a little girl who had believed in Santa, that thought their ghosts might come at midnight and have Christmas one last time.


    I fell asleep watching a Christmas movie where they said that anyone can make a wish and it will come true on Christmas. I wanted to believe in that, I wanted to believe I could wish it all away. Then my eyes opened up and I beheld them gathered, just as I had wanted. I should have left it alone, should have accepted the visit and begun to heal, but I wanted more. I couldn''t accept that was the last time I would see them.


    I wish my story was about how I had spent those sleepy moments on Christmas Eve with them, enjoying their ghostly visit and then saying goodbye. It is what I should have done, it would have ended the tragedy and allowed me to heal and move on. I simply couldn''t let them go, and they even told me to let them go, but I couldn''t.


    I loved them too much, and the pain was too great.


    A dark quest began, searching for a way to bring them back. If they could come to me once, they could come again. I did my research, my energy slowly coming back. After almost a whole year of searching, I found out about a relic that could grant one wish. Occultists online agreed that it was real, and all of them also stated they would never touch the thing, for it would grant a wish, but only at a terrible price. I became a believer in the Lazarus Touch, a mummified hand that had reputedly already raised the dead on many occasions for thousands of years. I left the house and drove to the city, finding the bookstore that had last held the object of my obsession.


    "I am looking for the relic you sold." I told the owner of the bookstore. "You advertised it a few years ago. Who''d you sell it to?" I asked.


    "What are you talking about?" he asked.


    "This." I showed him a printed-out screenshot of a dried-up hand. "You called it the ''genuine'' Lazarus Touch. Here''s the final bid. You sold it."


    "I''m not going to tell you who I sold it to." he smirked.


    "Then tell me, is it real?"


    "It''s real. I never used it, but it came from the Peabody Estate. Do some research and find out what happened there. You tell me if it is real or not."


    I felt a chill, some instinct warning me to stop myself and let it go. I should have listened to my instincts. I pushed past the mild trepidation and said:


    "You seem like a man who will make a bargain. I''d do anything to know where it is."


    He smiled evilly, and I was right about him. He was willing to make a bargain with me. I only had to sell my soul, it seemed, but I felt driven and alone, and I wouldn''t let anything stop me.


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    With the secrets of the relic''s location in my hand, I left him there, wondering if I had paid too much. I made myself forget the bookstore owner and focused on my quest. I took his advice and researched the Peabody Estate, hoping I could learn something new. What I read shocked and horrified me.


    I should have stopped myself. I should have turned back. I felt the first pangs of fear and regret, seeing the rumors of what had happened. I knew they were true, something about the man''s reference to it had convinced me he knew it was all true, and I could feel it. There was an evil presence already watching me.


    The decision to drive halfway across the land to get to the relic seemed irreversible, even before I left. I had paid a heavy price for the information, and I wasn''t going to back down without at least seeing it, to know I could possess it and make a wish. One wish that would come true.


    When I arrived at the home of the relic''s new owner I sat outside in my car. I felt nervous, unsure how to proceed. The malevolent presence that was haunting me seemed to be feeding on me, and I felt afraid of it, afraid to let it in. If I just turned back, I could let it go, but I thought about Christmas Eve a year before. I remembered seeing them, smiling and with me, ghostly but intact. My fears were overwhelmed by my desire.


    When the lights in the house were out and I felt like everyone was asleep, I crept up. I found the back door unlocked and I entered. I''d never done anything like that before, but I was desperate. There was no way they would sell it to me, not when they had paid more money for it than my home was worth. I had no choice but to steal it.


    I was shaking with fear when I found it. My instincts were telling me to stop and go back, to leave it secure under the glass they had it under. As I stared at it, I knew its power, I knew it was real. It occurred to me I did not have to steal it. All I had to do was hold it and make my wish.


    Lifting the glass felt like a bad idea, not because I could get caught, but because I knew it would exact a terrible price. I was afraid, knowing the danger I was in, but I did not care. I had to see my son again, no matter what.


    "I wish my son would come home for Christmas." I said. I felt its power, I knew my wish was granted. Dizzy, I dropped it and staggered and fell over. The noise I made alerted them of my intrusion. I clambered to my feet, my heart racing, and fled.


    As I sped away, I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the old man who owned it. He had come outside and was watching me drive away. The look on his face was of great concern, rather than anger or fear at the burglary. He looked like he was afraid for me, not of me.


    At home, I couldn''t relax. My heart was still racing. Would he call the cops? Would they find me somehow? Those material fears presided. I tried everything to relax, I made myself some tea, took a hot shower, watched infomercials and pretended I would buy something. I fell asleep on the couch and my husband found me there in the morning.


    "Where did you go?" he asked.


    I wondered if he could somehow sense the things I had done. He was looking at me like he knew my sins. I just shrugged.


    "I went out." I said. "I''m home now. I just needed to go do some things."


    He eyed me with suspicion, and I felt guilty. I went to him while he was quietly making some coffee and I kissed him and loved him. He forgot his suspicions, leaving for work feeling happy, thinking his marriage was going well. It was the least I could do for him.


    Christmas Eve was just a day away. Years had gone by, and a few of our neighbors were hanging their lights. I walked around the neighborhood, greeting them and encouraging them. I knew my son was coming home for Christmas.


    On the night before Christmas, I sat awake, waiting for his arrival. My husband came downstairs and found me there and finally asked:


    "Alright, what is going on?" sounding worried, like he thought I had lost my mind.


    "He''s coming home for Christmas. He''ll be here soon. He''s on his way." I said.


    "Who?"


    "Our son. He is on his way, right now."


    "From his grave." my husband nodded. "I dreamed he was walking here, from his grave. And now you are sitting there, telling me it is happening." he looked pale.


    Coldness washed over me, a deep feeling of horrified dread at the fruit of my efforts. He was right, our son was walking through the night, from his grave. I felt sick, I felt terrified. I thought of the smiling visitants I had met last year that had lingered and then said goodbye.


    What had I done?


    "What have you done?" he asked me, a look of unrecognition on his face.


    "I - I don''t know." I claimed. I knew what I had done, but it was too late. We both just stared at horror as the clock chimed midnight. Just then there was a singular thump on the first step of our front porch.


    We both slowly turned and looked at the front door, our eyes widening in realization and terror. What was out there was not our son, although it was him. Dead for three years. There was another thump, something shuffling slowly with difficulty up the steps.


    "My god." my husband was backing away. "He''s here."


    "No - no!" I whimpered in fright. "This isn''t what I meant!"


    There was a final thump as the last step was taken by the shuffling corpse. Then it began to walk from the steps, across the porch to the front door. I wasn''t breathing, sweat beaded on my face and I was holding up the couch''s blanket, covering my mouth. My husband fled upstairs, unable to bear the horror of his son''s remains knocking upon the door.


    Each knock on the door sent chills down my spine. I was frozen in terror, unable to respond. I just sat there shaking. It seemed to go on and on forever. I felt like I was in Hell, being punished for my sins. I''d never believed in such things, but I no longer had that luxury. I knew what it was like, to feel that torment and terror, without end.


    Finally, after the longest and most horrifying night of my life, the sun began to rise. The knocking ceased, and the corpse reversed its steps, descending the stairs and leaving me to wail in anguish and trauma.


    When I had wept and shaken, I forced myself up to go to that door. With nauseating trepidation, I unlocked it and began to open it slowly. There was a coldness outside, and a stench of moldy old rot. There on the porch, I saw grave dirt and dried maggot casings. The muddy footprints of the corpse showed its path through the night.


    I looked down and saw what he had left for me, a little dirt was smudged on the golden envelope. I fell to my knees and picked it up. I held it to my heart, and somehow, as I stared out at the Christmas sunrise, I was finally able to say goodbye.

 Dreamable

    Hesitation on the ramp of the sleep clinic of Doctor Guelder was natural. I understood that going into this quiet and dark building was a choice, and not one I cared to choose. It was a large flat sarcophagus of a structure, carved from a blue kind of nether stone and fitted together so that no two slabs were the same, yet they all fit together perfectly.


    I sighed and looked over at the witten that grew all around. They were plants like water elder, high cranberry, snowball, and redberry hedges. I loved the plants, and I could stare at them for hours. In my strangeness, I knew their thoughts, and in a way, I was more like them than like other people.


    "Wonderful to see you, Clair." Doctor Guelder found me there.


    "These witten are all roses from your name." I smiled. I realized I had not smiled in a very long time. My dreadful thoughts kept me in a darkness that I knew little outside of.


    "Do you dream of roses, Clair?" Doctor Guelder asked me. "You seem to know them all by name, their old names."


    "I do." I was still smiling, distracted by my friends. "That is the High Rose, that one is the White Queen and those are all Crampling. This one, this is my favorite, it is the Rose of Thorn Crown. Those are their true names."


    "And they know your name too, that is my understanding." Doctor Guelder gestured to the door. "Won''t you come in? You have come here seeking healing."


    "In your sleep clinic? I am here for sanctuary. I have nowhere else to hide, anymore. You know what it is, what has happened to me." I shuddered and my smile faded. I could feel it watching me, standing always behind me, like a shadow, except it was not my shadow.


    "You will be safe here. Come inside." Doctor Guelder told me.


    I reluctantly went in. I do not like being indoors, I much prefer to stand on the soil barefoot, under the sunlight and with the dew and the rain. Indoors I begin to wilt, but I was worse off where it could get to me. If I fell asleep, my time on this world would be at an end.


    "There are others here?" I asked.


    "Yes. Some are somnambulists, others are narcoleptics and many are insomniacs. Which are you?"


    "I daydream. Except it is no longer possible to distinguish from dreams and the rest of the world. I am haunted by a shadow. Something has come for me, and it wants to hurt me." I trembled. My fears also made me walk while I slept, made me sleep while I sat and kept me awake in the dark.


    "I thought you suffered from all of the above." Doctor Guelder reminded me of our meeting.


    I thought back to those days, what seemed like a long time ago. When it had all started, I would daydream about becoming a rosebush. My flowers were white and my thorns were green. I grew for eight hundred years and I adorned both kings and maidens, heroes and fathers, messiahs and wizards. I was the Pagan Flower, in my daydreams.


    Then one day I was walking, as though I were asleep. I looked down where I was planted, for so many thousands of full moons. There was nothing there by the moonlight. I stared in horror at the hole in the ground, torn up by the roots. I looked to where it was, holding the plant that was also me, and it had built a withering fire.


    It looked straight into my eyes, a towering darkness, a shade in the night, blotting out the light and the stars. It smiled with teeth of obsidian, and then it tossed the Pagan Flower upon the blaze.


    Instantly I felt the heat where I stood barefoot in my pajamas. I crumbled, blistered and searing. I screamed, both in agony and terror. I began to crawl from it, willing myself to reach the edge of my nightmare. The creature from the place between did not want me to go, it clawed at my ankles and tried to drag me to the hole in the ground that it had uprooted me from.


    Doctor Guelder had asked me when we met: "You feel you are becoming like a plant? Turning into one?"


    "Is that even something that happens to people?" I asked.


    "There are myths of people being turned into plants. A kind of botanical metamorphosis."


    I felt a cold splash of dread as I realized I was going to say out loud what I had long believed. "I think maybe I''d like that to happen because I used to be a plant. I am not supposed to be this." I gestured to my body.


    "You described an incident in which you were sleepwalking. You woke up and you found a hole where your rose bush used to be, and a monster was burning it."


    "Perhaps that was just a dream." I admitted. "But the monster is real. It keeps me awake at night, for if I sleep it will come for me. And when I am sitting in class or on the bus I fall asleep, I cannot stay awake for long."


    "These are all mild symptoms of conditions known as narcolepsy, insomnia and somnambulism." Doctor Guelder had told me. "I want you to come to my sleep clinic. Your stay will be voluntary, but you must come and live there so that you can receive the proper care. Your education can continue while you are there, we have a classroom."


    "How would that be paid for? I am a ward of the state, there''s no money."


    "I own the sleep clinic. You will be my guest and I will cover all the expenses for your treatment. For me, this is a rare chance to study a unique condition."


    The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    "I don''t want to be your experiment." I told Doctor Guelder. I had refused. It was not long though, that the days and nights became one kind of time, always in my nightmare.


    I daydreamed of the monster when it was not there, and when it was I could not see it. Yet those two things became the same. I knew it was hunting me, stalking me, always behind me, like a shadow. I couldn''t sleep or stay awake. My feet carried me wherever the monster chased me. Sometimes I awoke in strange places and other times I was in a dream, but I was wide awake, looking down at my body, and watching the monster pull me up by my roots, as the plant, and toss me onto the flames.


    "You are here now. It is safe for you to face your troubles." Doctor Guelder had told me.


    "Is it real? Am I mad?" I was sitting and shaking. It had felt like it had gone on and on endlessly. Finally, within the walls of the sleep clinic, I felt safe.


    "Whatever was following you cannot get to you here. You can sleep soundly." Doctor Guelder told me.


    I began to cry with relief. I cried myself to sleep, the terror leaving my body like a fever breaking. I had lived in fear so long, so tired, that I had forgotten what sleep even felt like.


    It was dreamless and restful. When my eyes opened I was in an enormous bed of light blue sheets under a heavy blanket. The air was cool and there was a stillness, a quietness to the sleep clinic. It was as though it were a place where I was truly safe.


    That is when I rolled over to face the window of morning. I saw it out there, looming behind my friends, the other roses of the hedge. The darkness touched one of them and wilted the plant as its claws gripped it, heedless of its thorns. I trembled, feeling trapped suddenly. I had not realized I had gone into the sleep clinic and it would become my prison.


    "How did you sleep?" Doctor Guelder asked me.


    "It was very restful. I feel more intact, more rooted. This place feels real. The pervasive disorientation of being terrorized and sleepless is gone." I reported.


    "And the monster?" Doctor Guelder asked me.


    My eyes watered and I covered my mouth. I wanted to tell the truth, but somehow, to say I had seen it, would spoil things. Finally, I confessed: "It is outside, waiting for me to leave this place. It grasped a bush and while it did, the plant wilted and died in its clutch."


    "I will go and see this." Doctor Guelder told me. I watched from the window, apprehensive that Doctor Guelder was in some kind of danger. The creature had hidden though, leaving only the evidence of the dead plant and its footprints on the lawn.


    Then my terror grew, as I saw Doctor Guelder was following the blighted trail. I couldn''t see where the trail led, so I went to another window. I was just in time to see Doctor Guelder fall down, touched by the deathly thing from where it had hidden.


    Doctor Guelder had personally financed the stay of the remaining patients at the sleep clinic. There was a trust set up, but some technicality allowed the bank to seize the property, and all of the patients were required to leave. The death of Doctor Guelder weighed heavily on me, for I blamed myself and also, I knew the creature was real, not just a daydream.


    I felt great apprehension of leaving. The last night in the clinic was my last chance for sleep. In the morning they would evict everyone. The remaining patients all needed their stay, they needed Doctor Guelder. It was my fault the good doctor was dead, for I had brought the creature.


    Back outside I looked around, seeing the roses had all died. The creature had systematically killed every flower. With all of my friends gone, I felt truly alone. I scurried down the street, knowing I was to go back to being the prey of the shadowy thing. Its touch drained life and took it quickly. I had felt myself aging when it touched me, it is how so much of my hair turned white.


    I could still feel its burning grip on my ankle where it had grabbed me and tried to drag me. Back at the orphanage I sat and waited to see it. I was asked about my stay at the sleep clinic, but I was too afraid of returning to the world of nightmares to speak.


    I just sat in a corner, huddled and shaking with fear. I knew it would come and find me. It would not leave me in peace.


    "Don''t be afraid." Doctor Guelder''s voice spoke to me. "I have not abandoned you. It was only able to kill my body, but my will - my spirit - it could not harm. Here, between dreams and sleeplessness, I linger. You can hear me."


    "I can hear you." I whispered.


    "When it comes for you, you must overcome your fear. You must fall asleep in its presence. It is in this world, trapped like me. When you sleep, it will follow you into your dreams. There it could remain trapped. All you have to do is fall asleep in its presence. When the moment comes, I believe you will end this thing."


    "I can''t." I started crying. I was too afraid. I knew it had killed Doctor Guelder and it had killed the Pagan Flower and all the rest. It was a terrifying monster, and there was no way I could fall asleep in front of it.


    "You have to trust me. I am certain it wants to continue to feed on you until there is nothing left of you. It won''t kill you, not all at once. You are its host, the one who daydreamed it into existence. It started by killing your most precious dream, and it won''t stop until there is nothing left for you to dream about. I know all about it now. I can see the disease of this nightmare thing."


    "Doctor Guelder, you have to stay and help me." I said quietly. I was terrified.


    "I will stay until I have healed you. I promised you I would help you, and that is my unfinished task. I will be here watching over you. When it is time to close your eyes and go to sleep, you must be brave."


    "I will try." I swore, even though the thought of doing so horrified me. I trusted Doctor Guelder, and I knew I must take the chance to be free of the nightmare thing.


    Then it was bedtime. The lights were all turned off and I lay in bed, shaking in dread. I knew it was coming for me. That is when I saw it there, looming in the darkness. It was watching me, staring into my eyes, keeping me awake. I was paralyzed with fear, feeling the burn it had left on me and recalling the death of Doctor Guelder.


    "Go to sleep. It is okay, I am watching over you." Doctor Guelder told me.


    I tried and tried again but I couldn''t sleep. My feeling of horror that I was trapped awake and in the presence of the nightmare thing grew and grew. Finally, I felt like I had to scream.


    I stood alone by the hole where the Pagan Flower had stood for eight centuries. My memory of all the joy and beauty that I had given the world flooded back to me. I saw that the shadow I had cast had sat in bitter resentment, jealous of me.


    When I had become a human, born into the world, my shadow had long held a vow of vengeance upon me. It was determined to keep me from resting, and to devour me, every last bite of my life, sipping upon my years, stealing my childhood and killing whatever I cared about and any who cared about me. The nightmare creature was there, in my memories, in my dream.


    That is when I began to scream at it. My voice, a wail of terror, became as a cry of defiance and anger. The creature shrank and fell, splintering and melting. As a liquid it lay bubbling, like the dying shadow of the burning bush. I turned and looked to where my roses had once stood.


    "You will plant them again. This you will know. And the nightmare is over." Doctor Guelder told me. Then I was alone.


    When I opened my eyes, the creature was gone, but upon my chest, with fresh dew, lay a rose of white.