Isabelle waves her fingers through the dust molecules floating in the everlasting light of day. Each leaves a broad wake as they cut through the sunlight, coming together, separating, doubling back. Four. Eight. Sixteen. Too many fingers. She looks unsuccessfully for the hand to which the additional finger might belong. A helping hand, perhaps.

            There’s no one there. There’s no one anywhere. Just the sound of the wind. The crackle of burning aspen logs. An occasional raven’s call.

            And that interminable, insufferable, intermittent POP.

            She surveys the room. It’s still bright, still warm, still empty. The air grows viscous and tacky on her tongue. Her chest begins to buck. She heaves. Her breath stutters and snorts in her throat, forces its way out in a wheezing laugh. She cackles. Her eyes are dry from the fire still burning in the fireplace after…how long has it been? Her cheeks bunch up under expressionless ice-blue eyes. She laughs and chokes until her breath is gone. Until the tendons in her neck strain, stand out like the fingers of something trying to claw its way up and out of her. Her face grows hot as blood rushes to the surface of her pale skin. She hopes it is something clawing its way out. She hopes her tortured soul will finally climb free, float away, leave this shell of skin and bone slumped on the floor.

            “Y’okay, babe?”

            The sound forces her to inhale a long, stuttering breath. A shame, too; she had hoped breath wouldn’t return to her this time. It brings to mind the wind that had rushed passed them when they entered the inn some indiscernible amount of time before. They’d clung to each other as the room bulged. The walls moaned. The air whistled as it ripped through the cracks. It was as if the last person who’d left the inn had closed the door behind them, cutting off the inn’s air supply, never returning to open the airway again.

            If the inn had been grateful to them, it hadn’t made mention. Isabelle can relate.

            She searches the room for the voice. There is no one there. Just pinpricks and slivers of light scattered about. It’s like termites, the light. Always finding its way in. Cracks in the sealant around the doors. Cracks in the window frames. A threadbare spot in the curtains.

            No one there. No one anywhere.

            Where had he gone? Where had they all gone?

            They had arrived in mid-June. Her husband, Graham—an anthropology major—wanted to collect stories for his doctoral research. Stories from the Iñupiat people of Utqiaġvik. His research. Always his research. He’d immersed himself in it. Burrowed deep into it until she could no longer reach him, leaving her to deal with the ever-too-recent loss of their son alone. He blamed her, she knew. But it wasn’t her fault. It was an accident.

            Her friends had chided her for taking such a senseless trip. She had remained undeterred, convinced that this would be their chance to start anew. To reconnect. To eliminate the everyday distractions in one of the most stripped-down, solitary places on earth. To shed light on their shrouded pain and animosity in a place where the sun never sets, the light never fades.

            They’d never even got the chance to begin. 

            The innkeeper hadn’t been there when they stumbled in from the cold. The air was motionless, stale, until that bitter wind rushed in past them—the inn sucking life back into its oxygen-starved lungs. Something about the desperation, the disappointment she sensed in that moment helped her realize that she couldn’t recall the details of a single face she’d seen since arriving. The recollection of the bustling airport felt more like an amalgamation of distant memories. The taxi ride was the silhouette of a daydream, like a scene for a book or a play that had fleshed itself out in her mind as she lay sleepless in bed at night, but was never captured on paper.

            Had anyone ever been in this place? Why was she even here?

            They had built a fire in the great stone fireplace in the common room and waited…again, how long?

            She recalls the yellow twinkle of reflected flames in the black, unseeing eyes of the trophy heads of local game on the walls. They had stared down at her from their mounts, the fire casting shadows along the walls into the darkened corners of the abandoned inn.

            She even remembers the vestiges of sleep encroaching on her when she first heard it.

            POP.

            It was a contained, hollow sound, somewhere in the distance. There was no echo. Isabelle hadn’t even been certain that it wasn’t confined to her own head. Graham noticed it too, though. He had barely glanced at her before he pulled on his heavy coat and headed for the door. He stopped there for a long time. Too long. Long enough to make Isabelle uneasy. She had opened her mouth to say something, but her voice caught in her throat when he cast a look at her over his shoulder. Half his face was covered by the faux fur lining standing out around the hood of his parka.

            She remembers the fuzzy threads wafting against his breath when he said he’d be back.

            He never came back.

            The sound persisted.

            POP.

            Since she’d lost track of the hours (the days?) she began counting the space in between the recurring sound as some form of irrelevant measurement. She got to four hundred something before she lost count the first time. At the next instance, she started again. Seven hundred, sixty-six. That’s when she forgot what she was doing. She may have dozed.

            She just wanted to sleep.

            One hundred twelve.

            POP.

            Five hundred fifteen.

            POP.

            She reaches one thousand twelve when the little boy appears in the doorway. Blue pants and a shirt striped in red and blue and yellow. Snowflakes spotting his soft hair, clinging to long eyelashes above chestnut eyes. His hands are clasped behind his back.

            Isabelle rushes to the door. She kneels in front of him. Her hands hover over his body, just short of contact. She wants to press her flesh against his dimpled cheek. Feel his warmth. His existence. She pulls her hand back, clenches her fingers into a tight fist. She asks him what he has there.

He swings his arm wide and stops it inches from her face. A firecracker.

            POP.

            She bolts upright on the sofa in front of the fire. Had she fallen asleep?

            She wraps herself in the heavy blanket draped over the sofa and leaves the warmth of the inn. She walks the empty snow-covered streets, into the empty shops. She walks into empty homes, sits on empty couches. Peruses empty cupboards looking for food.

            No stray dogs. No stray cats. Nothing. No one.

            Until, The Man.

            The Man stands in a doorway, jet-black against the persistent daylight that wraps around her mind the way the blanket wraps around her shoulders: heavy and stifling. He is a black hole in this brilliant world. The only part of the silhouette lacking razor-sharp edges are the tufts of fur from his hood. She wants to shed the blanket, wrap herself in him. She doesn’t know whether she craves the warmth or the darkness more. She’s five paces before him before she realizes she’d even approached him. His back is turned. The silhouette falls away. He turns and swings his arm out in a wide arc, bringing a silver revolver to the place between her eyes.

            POP.

            She is standing in the street. Her head is heavy, waterlogged. She isn’t seeing what she’s looking at. She’s seeing herself seeing what she’s looking at. Mirthless laughter, her own voice. She blinks lazily, looks around for the sound of her.

            The Boy walks out from the doorway of a building. He’s walking too fast, too purposefully, rushing, flowing unstoppable. He’s going to crash right over her, swallow her up, drown her screams, carry her away. He stops, his arm swings wide, the firecracker goes

            POP.

            She screams as she springs from the carpet in front of the fire. The Man is in the doorway. It’s happening so relentlessly fast. She mutters no, no, no, as she kicks away from him. She picks up a piece of firewood and flings it at him or past him or through him. She springs to her feet. Her breath cracks, scrapes like a rusty piston. She sprints past him and out the door, gagging on his scent, body odor and burnt seal oil.

            She bursts into the street, sprints away. She reaches the water’s edge. A pair of monolithic whale bones rise from the stones and create an arch—the Whale Bone Arch. The “Gateway to the Arctic.” She falls on her knees at the mouth of it. The tide has swallowed the snow. Rocks and sand embed her skin. She rolls over, looks back. Two figures move toward her. Her muscles scream with fatigue; nerve endings blazing, protesting every movement as she tries to clamber away. She cries. Tears burn like the smoke from the smoldering aspen in the fireplace that she now longs for.

            She just wants to sleep.

            She turns onto her stomach, faces the sea. A glassy haze of gray. Fog and water and sky. She can’t remember which way is up. She’s spinning. A raven glides along underwater, the glossy surface undisturbed by its rippling wings. The sky coils around her.

            The footsteps stop. They’re on her now.

            She looks up at them. The Boy extends his firecracker. The Man aims his gun.

            POP.

You shouldn’t even be online
if you can’t take what I dish out.
Bringing justice to the unworthy:
the weak, the soft, no sticks and stones
when words are just as damaging.
Wielded right they have the power
to destroy the vulnerable,
the immature. I have an instinct
for going for the jugular
I love to exercise — lashing out.
I see your puny presence on my screen;
your anxiety, your insecurities
revealed in every message.
You are my easy target, my prey
and your suffering is my pleasure.
I inhabit the anonymity
of the online world, a shark cruising
a coral reef. The apex predator
who delights in his impunity.

Rohan Buettel lives in Canberra, Australia. He became a poet after retiring from working for more than three decades in public service, mainly in the field of communications policy (telecommunications, broadcasting, post, online content). He rides a mountain bike, paddles a kayak and sings in a choir. His haiku and longer poems have been published in Australian and international journals.

Je t’aime, ma poupée

The black ink looks fresh against the white paper. Thin letters that curl across the page in handwriting so precise it could very well be traced. I flip it over, as if that will answer the question of what the hell I’m holding, which, obviously it doesn’t.

I found it in the mail, slipped between two junk flyers. My high school French lets me remember 75% of. Je t’aime, I love, ma, mine. Poupée, though, I have no idea.

I’m taking out my phone to translate it when Darren comes into the kitchen, his hair wet from the shower, rubbing his face against the wet towel.

“Anything for me?” He asks. I point to the Amazon package with his name on it. He puts the towel on one of the stools by the kitchen island and reaches for the padded envelope.

“What is that?” He asks, pointing to the note in my hand.

“No idea.”

He takes the paper from my hand. Raises an eyebrow.

“Was it marked for you?”

“No, it was just in the mailbox.”

He squints at the writing, seemingly just as confused as me, but shrugs.

“Probably a mix-up. Or a prank.” He kisses my cheek and walks back to the bathroom, leaving his towel on the stool.

I don’t do anything for a second, but wait until I can hear him brushing his teeth, before going to the trash and picking out the slip of paper. If someone had asked me why, I wouldn’t have a clue. But I flatten it against my thigh and shove it into my pocket.

“I’m leaving!” I call to Darren, grabbed my keys, and my purse, and walk out the door.

                                                                        *

            The drive is uneventful, but I can’t stop my fingers from tapping against the steering wheel. The anxiety wells up inside me, and I’m trying to swallow down adrenaline that makes me want to press the gas pedal a little too hard. In what seems like a minute later I’m sitting in a plastic chair outside a door marked “Dr. Lily Mercia”. I jump when it opens, and a woman in her early 50s with cat eye glasses and a warm smile says my name.

“Ella Cassidy?”

I return the smile as I stand up and follow her into the office. She takes her seat and gestures to the two chairs in front of her desk.

“Well, Ella, what can I do for you today?” Dr. Mercia asks. “You said you wanted to discuss your birth control?”

“My boy-we- well, so I have an IUD.” I inwardly cringe at the words. This isn’t what I was supposed to say.

“Okay,” she looks at me encouragingly, urging me to keep going.

“He…well, he’s been talking more about wanting kids.” My voice feels stuck in my throat.

“So, you want to schedule a removal?” She asks.

“No! Well, I mean–” I stop, and make myself take a deep breath. “Before I had the IUD, everything was awful. None of the pills worked. The IUD was the only thing that helped all my symptoms. I don’t want to go back to how it was before.”

“Well, there’s going to be side effects with any change to your birth control.” Dr. Mercia says. Her gaze pierces me, and I look at a spot on her forehead rather than her eyes. “But if you want to try for a child, a removal would be necessary.”

“Is there anything you can do? Anything to make it easier?” I ask. It’s pathetic. I know.

“How bad was it, off the IUD?” Dr. Mercia asks.

“Bad.” We exchange a look that says all she needs to know.

“And you definitely want to try for a baby?”

Again, it’s like she reads my mind.

“Your boyfriend, you said, is he,” she’s trying to find the right word. Proceed with deliberate delicacy. “Is it more a desire on his part?”

I look at my hands.

“It’s not that I don’t,” I say quietly. “Just not right now.”

Dr. Mercia is silent for a moment.

“Can I have the name of your last OB/GYN?” She asks. “So I can see a more complete medical history.”

I nod and give her the name of my doctor in Austin, from before I moved to Houston.

“How about this,” she says. “Why don’t you tell your boyfriend that I want to see the two of you together, to talk about the process of you coming off the IUD, and if there’s anything we can do to soothe the symptoms? To talk about all the side effects, and what to expect when you do start trying for a child?”

“Do you think that’ll scare him off?” I ask with a weak chuckle.

Dr. Mercia gives me a sly smile.

“Don’t worry. Listen, you’re 27, right? There’s plenty of time to decide if you want to have kids down the road. There’s no need to rush right now, and it needs to be your decision. Something you really want. You call when you’re ready to talk to me as a pair.”

I nod and follow her as she opens the door to her office back up.

“Thanks,” I tell her, leaving the office. She tells me to drive safely, and I hear the click of her door closing.

I swallow and make my way to the parking lot outside, open the door to my car, and sit in the driver’s seat. I stare out at the sky, taking several deep breaths, trying to figure out what I’m going to say to Darren when I get back home.

I think about the piece of paper from this morning and finally pull up the translator app on my phone.

Ma poupée. My doll.

            I stare at the paper for another moment, before rolling it into a ball and chucking it out the window.

                                                                        *

            “She said she has to wait for your records?” Darren said, leaning in the kitchen doorway as I stand in front of the stove making lunch.

            “And that she wants to talk to us together.”

            Darren scoffs.

            “Can’t you just find another doctor?”

            “Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a good OB/GYN? Do you have any idea how hard it is to find an OB/GYN,, in Houston, who is actually covered by my insurance?” I don’t mean to snap at him, but I can’t help it.

            “Babe,” he says, his voice gentle, and comes up behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist. “I know, I know I’m sorry. I’m just excited. Aren’t you? To start a family.” His fingers trace up to my stomach. “To start our family.” His lips meet the side of my jaw. “Think of how great it’ll be.”

            I close my eyes and let myself lean against him. I picture myself pregnant. I picture a gargantuan belly and swollen feet. I imagine having to be rolled out of bed, an adult version of Violet from Willy Wonka. I try to hide my shudder, and he mistakes it for desire. Darren kisses up and down my throat and turns off the burners on the stove. He pulls me closer to him, and I try to breathe. Try to keep a clear head as he slips his hands under my shirt.

            It’s not that I don’t like him. I think.

            If I had opened my eyes at the moment, and looked out to the right, to the living room window, I might have seen her standing there, gazing up at our apartment. But I didn’t, and I didn’t speak, letting him lead me towards the bedroom.

                                                            *

            Je t’aime, ma poupée

            Two days later there’s another note. I find it on the floor by the front door after coming in with groceries, and by the time I find it there’s a shoeprint from my Converse on top of the ink. It looks like it was ripped off from a full page of notebook paper.

“There’s another one of these,” I tell Darren, poking my head into his office.

“What?” he asks, distracted. He’s got his Switch on his lap, concentrating on whatever race he’s trying to win. 

            I hold up the paper, and he casts it a glance.

            “That’s just trash,” he says with a shrug and turns back to the game. I frown at it. Maybe it was Darren attempting romance, and realizing he didn’t like it. Or that I didn’t like it. But, honestly, I’m not even sure if he recognized that there were words on the page.

            “It’s just weird, you know?” I say, “Why are we getting French phrases shoved in our mail?”

            “Hey. did you grab pretzels?”

            “No,” I try to suppress the sigh in my voice. Clearly, the note is not of concern.

            “I’m having the guys over to watch the game tonight, could you please get some?”

            “I literally just got back from the store. Can’t you go later?”

            “I have a Zoom call in 20 minutes.”

            I glare at him, but he’s not looking at me.

            “Fine.”

            “And beer too! A pack of IPAs?”

            “Doesn’t Ben like light stuff?”

            “Some of that too, thanks!” Darren says, and I turn back to the door.

            I almost barrel into someone when I back out of the apartment, able to duck out of the way just in time.

            “Sorry!” she says, reaching out a hand to steady me.

            “It’s okay,” I say, and look at up her. She’s a good three inches taller than me, her eyebrows knitted in concern. Her chestnut hair is tied into a high ponytail that drapes down to the top of her shoulder blades. She’s got a couple of empty tote bags on one arm, and her car keys on a carabiner attached to a belt loop on her shorts.

            “You sure you’re okay?” She asks, and I realize I’ve been staring.

            I nod. “Yeah, yeah. Sorry. I’m Ella.” I hold out my hand. Her lips twitch as if she’s trying to suppress a smile.

            “Willow,” she says, accepting the offered handshake.

            “Sorry, I’m running to the store,” I say, not sure why I’m apologizing.

            “Me too,” she says, gesturing to the bags.

            “You live here?” I say, tilting my head back as a gesture toward the apartment building. It’s more a statement than a question, and Willow nods. “I haven’t seen you before,” I tell her as we walk towards the staircase.

            “I’ve been here for a few years now,” she says, “you?”

            “We moved here a couple of months ago,” I tell her. “Me and my boyfriend, I mean.”

            “Ah,” she says, “Darren, right?”

            “Yeah, how’d you know?”

            “I’ve run into him a few times,” she says with a tone I can’t quite decipher. “I’ve heard him talk about you, but I didn’t know your name.”

            “Oh,” I say, “nice things, I hope.”

            “Yeah,” Willow’s nose scrunches a bit. “Sort of. He kinda…”

            “What?”

            “Listen, I don’t know how serious you guys are, and if I’m out of line, then, I’m sorry.” Our eyes meet, her baby blues piercing through me. “But, he kind of talked about you like how a girl might talk about her Barbie.”

            “Huh?”

            Willow shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

            “No, it’s not your fault,” I tell her, because I’m honestly not sure what else to say.

            Willow splits off from me at the entrance as we get into our separate cars, and I try not to think about what she just said. Ma poupée. He talked about me like a doll.

            Maybe, he was trying to show appreciation in a weird, misguided way.

            I look towards the sidewalk, at Willow’s ponytail swishing in the wind.

            My doll.

            I shake my head and put the car in drive.

                                                                        *

            The rest of the work’s a blur, then it’s cleaning the apartment, putting snacks in bowls, making sure the beer is cold enough. Darren comes behind me as I’m passing out another round of drinks to his friends, and wraps an arm around my shoulder, pulling me into his lap.

            “She’s perfect, isn’t she?” He says, “going to be a great mom one day.”

             I’m saved from having to make an excuse to leave as Darren starts groaning at the screen, his arm falling off of me. I walk away from the group towards the living room, locking the door behind me. I just want to take a shower and go to bed, and decide, screw it. They can walk the two feet to the fridge and grab their own beer for the rest of the night.

            When I come out of the shower, a towel around my head and wearing my favorite navy silk robe, I hear something outside the window. I cross the room and glance between the blinds.

            It’s Willow, a dog on a leash beside her. I tell myself it’s ridiculous, I’m three floors up, there’s no way she sees me, but it’s like she’s looking right at me. I can’t read her expression from so far away, but I look right back at her.

            I hear the guys swear in the other room, and I’m struck by the urge to do something. Something reckless. Something stupid. Something I haven’t done since before I met Darren.

            I let the towel slide off my hair and run my fingers through the tangles. Her eyes stay locked on mine; I can’t be imagining that, right?

            She tilts her head to the side, almost like an invitation. Or maybe I just want it to be. I gaze at the line of her jaw to her neck and let the fingers of one hand rest on my collarbone as I undo the tie of the robe with the other.

            Willow smiles, that much I can see.

            I let the fabric fall from my shoulders, still covering everything it needs to cover. Her mouth opens, trying to tell me something. I glance at the TV, checking the sound of the game. It’s too quiet. Is the game over? Is Darren coming back into the room?

            I look back at Willow, then back towards the bedroom door, and it’s like my common sense comes crashing into place in my brain again. I slam the curtains shut and quickly tie the robe around myself again. I can hear the guys in the next room; chewing, voices from the TV, beer bottles clattering against the table.

            I take a deep breath and back away but don’t dare open the curtains again.

            Get a grip, I tell myself.

            It’s just a girl. Just an, admittedly beautiful, girl.         

            I can’t stop the thought of her pressing her mouth against mine.

            I let myself imagine she’s racing up the stairs, banging on the door until Darren enters, bursting into the room, and slamming me against the wall. Her fingers pin my wrists, and she calls me a tease as her lips graze against me skin, making me shiver, making me apologize, waiting for me to ask as her fingers trail down and down and —

            “Babe!” Darren calls, and I release the breath I didn’t realize I was holding.

            “Yeah?”

            “Do we have any popcorn?’

            “Check the cabinet,” I call back.

I retreat into the bathroom and resume my usual night routine, washing my face with extra cold water.

            It’s just been a while, I tell myself. Been a while, and she’s pretty, and that’s fine. A crush is fine. But no more windows. No more of…whatever.

            I think about how Darren talked about me. The notes in the mail. His doll.

            I don’t want to be a doll.

            But that’s not quite true.

            It’s that I’m not sure the doll I want to be is his.

                                                            *

            Je t’aime, ma poupée

Je t’aime, ma poupée

            Two more pieces of paper appear over the next few days, ripped out of notebooks with the same loopy handwriting.

            He scans through one, but not the other. Says clearly, it’s someone mixing up the mailboxes, and that it’s the writer’s fault for not writing down the name of who the notes were intended for. Tells me it’s silly to get worked up about it.

            Then he’s shut up in the office again, and I’m left with what he says are someone’s misplaced fantasies crushed in my fist.

            I walk out of the apartment and see Willow in the parking lot. I try to avoid her eyes, but suddenly she’s right in front of me.

            “Hi,” she says.

            “Hi,” I manage. “Listen, about the other night…”

            She shakes her head. “Don’t worry about it,” she gives me a conspiratorial smile. “When was the last time?”

            I don’t need to ask her what she means.

            “Darren, a week or so ago? Not Darren….3 years?”

            “That’s a long time,” she says, as one might say, God, I’m so sorry.

            “It’s fine,” I say, “I’m sorry though, I didn’t—”

She reaches for my hand before I can finish the thought, and without asking, she pulls me toward her car.

            She opens the backseat door and follows me in. Before I can speak she’s got one hand in my hair and the other on my hip, pulling me close to her.

            Her lips don’t touch mine, hovering an inch away. I can feel her breath on my face and am frozen in place. I want to move closer, but hate myself for it at the same time.

            “When I first saw you,” she says, slowly tracing her hand up from my hip up towards my ribs, “I knew.”

            “Knew what?” I ask, trying to keep her in focus when all I want is to close my eyes and give in. Give in to her and this thing, whatever it is, whatever is driving me into her with the subtlety of a wrecking ball.

            She pulls my hair back, making me meet her gaze. I try to reach towards her, to bridge the gap between us, but she holds me still.

            “Tell me you’re not his,” she says.

            “I’m not his.”

            It’s shocking, just how easy it is to do. To follow her command. But there is truth to it. Truth I refused until she made me see it.

            “Meet me tonight.” She says. “My apartment. 10A.”

            She releases me and lifts herself into the driver’s seat of the car. I slide towards the door to let myself out.

            “Ella?” She says, as my feet hit the ground.  “9:00. Don’t be late.”

                                                                        *

            I tell Darren that it feels like he’s been stressed from work, and suggest he ask his friends to go out for drinks. Soon he kisses me on the cheek as I wave him out the door to Ben’s waiting car.

            The clock seems to tick so slowly, but finally, it’s 8:55. I’ve got a bottle of wine tucked under my arm, and I’m crossing the building to 10A.

            Willow answers on the second knock. She thanks me for the wine and crosses to the kitchen to grab glasses. Her dog sits on a brown leather sofa with blue throw pillows, a large TV, and a wooden desk. I’m scanning book titles on the shelves above the desk when she puts a glass in my hand and tilts her drink toward mine.

            “Cheers,” she says, her smile growing as I drink.

            We’re on the couch, our glasses empty, her mouth on my chest. She’s switching between feather-soft kisses and stinging bites, her hands pressing my palms back, keeping me in place as I shiver under her touch.

            “So perfect,” she says, “my perfect doll.”

            With my nerves on edge, I can’t imagine that I heard her right.

            “What?” I ask.

            Her lips meet mine again, and I taste the red wine on her tongue.

            “Stay here,” she says, climbing off me. “I’ll be right back.”

            I wait until she’s disappeared around the corner before reaching for my phone. Nothing from Darren, which is good. I stand up, looking around the room for my discarded shirt and bra.

            I find them both on the desk chair and can’t help myself from looking at the decorations there, the mug of pens, the picture of her dog, the paper…

            The paper. Blank half pages torn from somewhere.

            I glance over and don’t see or hear Willow. I look back at the desk. My anxiety makes my fingers shake as I slide the blank papers aside. Nothing. I look for a notebook, but there’s none.

            Carefully, as quietly as I can, I slide one of the side drawers open a peek, just enough to see it’s full of files. The next is mostly office supplies. I look at the third one, underneath the desktop, that would open into your stomach if you were sitting down.

            There’s a small, black leather-bound book. I’m terrified Willow is going to appear any moment, but I have to know.

            The handwriting is the same. That loopy scrawl, the precise lines.

            Je t’aime, ma poupée

            “You weren’t supposed to see the ending, yet.”

            I try to turn around, but her arm is around my throat. I try to squirm away from her and manage to get my teeth close to her flesh.

            She shrieks as my canines sink into her forearm, and something hits the side of my head. I hear the crack of shattered glass and the world starts to blur.

            “No, no,” Willow says, somewhere above me. She pulls me back up and readjusts her arm around my throat before I have the chance to fall.

            “There we go,” she says, as the world blackens at the edges. “I wrote it a certain way, you see?”

            And then the world is no more.

                                                            *

            Willow sits on the edge of the hole, gazing at the clear plastic bag sitting at the bottom.

            “When he told me about you,” she says, “he said he was so happy he got you away from Austin, and that now that you were here, you’d finally settle down, have babies. Be a good little wife. Well, not a direct quote on that last one, but you know. It was implied.” Willow stands up and pulls the notebook out of her bag.

“But you’d never actually have the spine to leave him, would you? Never actually told him what you did or didn’t want.” She shakes her head. “Maybe if you could, this ending would be different.”

“But that’s the problem with being a doll,” she sighs. “You’re only good for other people telling you what to do. Playing with you as they like.”

She opens the notebook and finds the right page.

Je t’aime, ma poupée

I love your eyes, the fluttering lashes when you look at me,

The blush creeping up your cheeks

I love the sound of your heart beating against your chest

As I pull you close to me

I love your gasps as I touch you,

Frantic breaths of excitement, and nerves

When you don’t know where I’ll touch.

I love the way you say, “Please,”

As you try to breathe against me

I’ve loved you for so long,

Looking at the freckles on your perfect skin

The way your fingers dance against my arm,

Holding you against me

Tightly, then tighter still

Robbing the breath from your lungs,

As I tell you that you’re mine.

And I love to look at you

As you lie so perfectly still,

The moonlight seems to reflect

Off of your porcelain image

While the dirt fills up around you

The way your eyes still look into mine

Your expression imprinted upon your face,

Forever etched in my mind,

Your fear, and your acceptance.

That I have enshrined your perfection;

Made an alter for my love

A place where I can come

And worship your beauty,

Your purity,

Untainted

Forevermore.

          
Willow tears the paper out of the notebook, and tosses it in the grave, allowing the paper to settle on top of the plastic.

            “Like I said,” she says, reaching for the shovel, “You weren’t supposed to see the ending.”

Kirstyn Petras is a Brooklyn-based horror and thriller writer but primarily identifies as caffeine in a human suit held together by hair spray and sheer force of will. When not writing, she trains contortion and aerial hoop, and loves covering her kitchen in flour experimenting with new pastry recipes. She is also the co-host of Dark Waters, a literary podcast exploring all that is dark, dreary, and wonderfully twisted.

June smoked a joint as he told me of his first murder. “Jonas Sharpless was three sheets to the wind by the time I walked in,” he said. “Tobias was his handler and he waved me over while telling Jonas, ‘This is my friend Kevin. He’s going to take you home.’ I put an arm under him and Tobias wrapped his arms around his shoulders and then he mumbled, ‘Alright.’ I led him out of the bar and into the back of the van. Once we got him in, I jumped inside and pushed him forward. Morrie grabbed him and threw him down, and then Tobias put him in a chokehold until he passed out. I grabbed his legs so he couldn’t kick at us, and then I sat on his chest to make sure he was completely out. Rocko started driving the second we got inside, and he was playing Childish Gambino over the Bluetooth in case someone outside heard Jonas yell.” He paused to take a drag. He breathed in and exhaled out, hurling smoke up toward his ceiling. “Unconscious bodies are like a ton of cement,” he said. “When we got to the LaCroix River–I asked Rocko to park with the back facing out so we could push Jonas out easier–it took all of us to push him out. And he fell onto the river bank and as soon as he hit the ground, he jolted like he was lying in bed and the alarm went off.” June flailed his arms and shot his feet out, mimicking the gesture. “He was unconscious, but the collision woke him up. So we got out of the van and put our feet on his neck until he was completely still, and then we rolled him over to the water. Once we saw him sink down, we drove off.”

            Jonas Sharpless was 21 years old. He was a biology major at Reservoir Baptist College, a varsity member of the soccer team, and a volunteer at the student health center. He was honest with his family and friends about his troubles with alcohol, but he was committed to improving himself, limiting himself to two drinks at family gatherings and pursuing counseling. He planned on working in harm reduction, helping people with drug and alcohol addictions live healthy lives.

            On January 10, 2019, Jonas Sharpless walked into Jack O’Reilly’s Bar in Lamson. Security cameras captured him entering at 10:31 p.m., making his way toward the back of the bar. This was typical for him. He was a frequent visitor to O’Reilly’s, always coming in late at night and heading to the back where he could have some privacy while he drank his three or four beers. He wasn’t caught on surveillance cameras again until 1:06 a.m., which was also typical. He left the bar on most nights by himself, and every now and again with a girl, but on January 10, he was walking out with two men under his arms. Neither of their faces could be seen, nor could anyone else in the bar identify them.

            “Camera footage is easy to circumvent,” June said. “Nightclubs and bars have relatively dim lights, and their cameras are low quality, something like six frames per second with 480 pixels per frame. So right off the bat, you can slip in without much worry. Put your head down as you walk in and out, wear a hat, slouch your shoulders and puff out your chest, you can take six inches off your height and add twenty pounds to your weight. And the lighting is so bad and the bar is so busy that few workers have enough time to remember your face, and they’ll forget about you once they hear the guy died in an accident.”

            June is a manager at a mattress store sandwiched in between a take-out Chinese restaurant and a massage parlor “known for giving happy endings.” He is in his thirties–he declined to give his exact age. He describes himself as a nobody, “Mr. Low Profile, just another douchebag with a job and three pairs of Dockers,” a line he stole from Breaking Bad. When we met for the first time, he was wearing a black hoodie, blue jeans, and gray socks, and he opened the door with a Heineken in his hand. He is slightly hunched, and he likes to steeple his fingers when he is deep in thought. His favorite food is pepperoni pizza with red pepper flakes on top, and he likes to watch football in his free time–he is a Panthers fan. He wants to open up his own business; he got a business degree from a college he says is “undistinguished,” and he thinks there is an opening in the market for an eco-friendly bedding company. All things considered, he is content with his lot in life, though, as he puts it, “I wouldn’t mind being a rockstar.” His only distinguishing trait is his involvement in four murders, none of which he has any regrets about.

            On February 10, 2019, the partly decomposed body of Jonas Sharpless was found by an off-duty state trooper. According to his initial description, “his skin was pallid and clammy, his eyes and cheeks were swollen, and his torso was bloated with gas.” The coroner determined that he died from drowning on January 11, “after falling and sustaining abrasions to the neck, head, and back.”

            After I read the coroner’s report back to June, he puffed on his joint and smirked, like he was trying to hold back laughter. “Did you know that coroners are elected to their positions? That they don’t need any special training or advanced degrees or anything? They’re just rank-and-file doctors. People don’t care about dead bodies enough to get experts on them, they don’t care about what causes people to die once they’re dead, the mystery is over. They care about the people who go missing because there’s no end to the story. After Jonas died, I saw something like ten stories about him, you could speculate all you want, maybe he got amnesia, maybe he was abducted by space aliens. But then he was found dead, and there was a story about it, and that was it. Once you see someone dead and the oxygen has gone out of the room, what’s the difference between an abrasion on their back that looks like someone’s knee and an abrasion that looks like they hit a rock?”

            I asked Jones if that means he’s never nervous about killing.

            “Honestly, no,” he said. “We keep things down to earth. I don’t actually really feel anything while it’s happening. It’s only after the fact that it comes over me, which is nice. I can focus in the moment.”

            June’s second murder came at the start of the 2019-2020 school year. “That first Friday, kids are drinking, trying to make the summer last longer,” he said. “Zachary Euclid was the kid’s name, I was in the van this time around with an extension cord. Zachary bought a daiquiri and drank it in about thirty minutes, and he was a burly guy, so it would take him a few drinks in order to get drunk. I remember sitting in that van looking at my phone for the time, and Rocko had to start driving around because we were idling outside Taylor’s Bar for so long. I mean, it figured. These kids are in a bar for a reason, they want to savor the moment and they can hold their liquor, to a point, at least.”

            June was one of these kids. “I hated high school, it was all just standardized tests and preparation for college. They hyped it up, they said every little multiple-choice question mattered to the fate of your soul, because if you don’t go to college, you may as well live in a gutter. But then I go to college, and it’s just sitting in a classroom. The only preparation you’re doing there–it’s funny–is preparation for graduate school. Business classes, that’s all that really was, just listening to lectures and hoping you can take something from it into the real world. That’s partly why I want to start a business, just to make use of all that time sitting in that room doing nothing. Otherwise, it’s a huge waste of time.”

            June’s favorite spot on his campus was an Irish bar that was five minutes from his dorm. His favorite drink was the mint julep, a drink he enjoyed so much he would have three each night, “usually with a few peanuts.” He would then drive back to his dorm, trying to beat the traffic before the alcohol completely disoriented him. “Then I would go and take a shower and try not to piss my bed,” he said, “wake up with a headache, go to a biology class or something, go out for a walk and scream my lungs out, go to the bar and then come home and do the same thing all over again.”

            After he graduated, he moved into an apartment not far from his campus and worked at a retail store. He continued to drink, buying his own alcohol to save money, and he fell into a depression. “All that work I put in learning number tables, and here I am. And all my friends at school were like that, too, no one I knew who tried hard was moving on with their lives. The slackers and the try-harders were all in the same ship. I had all this angst inside me, and nowhere to turn to. It goes with working in a service industry, you can’t say anything if a customer yells at you, so you just bottle it up and go get some drinks to calm you down. For a while, I was just hoping to find some sort of outlet to get myself together.”

            Two years after he graduated, June found his outlet. “One night, I ran out of booze, so I decided to go out. I walked into some bar I had walked by on my way to work, and I’m going over to the back when this guy beats me inside. He sits down in the seat next to me just before I can sit down, and he asks me what I want and he shows me his wallet. Who am I to refuse a free drink? So he orders himself and myself a mint julep and we start talking. At first, it’s just the basic stuff, small talk. But then we start going on about work. I work retail, he works retail. I deal with all these customers all day, he deals with all these customers all day. And then we’re off to school–I was in a public school that insisted your grades mean your life, look, he was in a public school that insisted your grades mean your life. He was hmm-mmming me the entire time, affirming me, letting me talk and then he’d pepper me with little things, all buttery and nice.” June laughed. “He was trying to dunk me. Beat for beat, what you’re supposed to do before you dunk someone. You establish your connection with the same drink order, and you buy them a drink to keep it friendly. Then you let the guy talk about his life story. Then you confirm him while you keep ordering drinks, then you put in the cube. He was working me until he realized I was so fucked up that I’d be better at killing people than being killed.”

            “It did seem that you didn’t meet the profile. These guys who got killed had some sort of success, in school, in life,” I told June. “No offense.”

            “None taken,” June said. “You’re right. That might have been one reason. I mean, it’s weird that we go after the successful people, until you stop to think about it. To the wider world, it’s the losers who murder each other. They’re poor and stupid and lacking in morality, so it makes sense that they would shove each other into rivers. It’s the successful people with the varsity memberships and elite alma maters who get drunk and are trying to go pee when they slip into the river. But I like to think it was more for what I am and less for what I’m not.”

            At the end of the night, June’s new friend gave him a business card with a name and one number on it. June went home and called it, and the man who picked up the phone asked him, “So you’re the fresh meat?” His name was Lincoln, and the two talked until sunrise, following up on what June had spoken about earlier in the night. “I think the guy had a wire on because Lincoln knew everything. It was mainly just talking about life and so on, but he told me that he had an opportunity for me if I was willing to head out to Des Moines.”

            So June drove out to a mattress store in the city–he refused to say whether or not it was the same store he now works at. Lincoln offered him his current job and gave him three thousand dollars to move out to Des Moines and a new cell phone with contacts “to call if I ever got in trouble and when I was ready to give back to Lincoln what he had given me.” One week after he moved into his apartment, he called the number.

            June quickly got into the swing of things. “We did a couple of practices with the guys just so I knew what we were doing.” He studied the terms they were to use: “placer” for the guy who spoke to the target and controlled his drinks; “cube” for the drug that goes into the target’s drink; “handler” for the one who did most of the talking to the target and kept him drunk and isolated; “dunking” for the process of bringing the dead target out to the water and drowning him. “We don’t have a term for the guy who does the killing because we’re not stupid enough to say that part out loud,” June said.

            June appreciated how meticulous the murders had to be. The murders are spaced out from each other. No two targets are taken from the same bar, and no two targets are dunked in the same body of water. No two murders occur within a month. Two consecutive murders cannot occur on the same weekday. The targets are white men who go to college and like to drink, but they do not have to share any other major qualities. Any member of the killing team can pull rank and stop the murder–June stopped one after he spotted an EMT walking into the bar. “We were toward the back, but it was too close for comfort.”

            Yet there is wiggle room. The team can choose any target they want and kill them however they need to. They can be out as late as they want, and they can keep hanging out once they’re done. “The rules sound strict, but they’re ones we’ve adopted so we don’t get caught,” June said, shrugging his shoulders. “All Lincoln really insists on is that we drown him in a river after drugging him, and we draw a smiley face near where he dropped. There’s a lot of gaps for us to fill in, and we fill them in.”

            Case in point, Zachary Euclid. “So Ralph gets him full of drinks, and Marco places in the cube. Now they call us to come back because Zachary needed to get carried out. So we go in and get him up and into the van. As I mentioned, Zachary is a huge guy, and when I wrapped the cord around his neck, it’s too narrow to strangle him. So I held him down, bundled the cord up, and I pressed on his trachea until he opened his mouth, and when he did, I shoved the bundled-up cord down his mouth and pinched his nose so he couldn’t breathe. After he had asphyxiated, I stuck my fingers down my throat and vomited in his mouth to make it seem like he had choked on his own vomit. And then we pitched him off the Lamar Aqueduct and threw the cord into a trash bin.”

            Zachary was found beside the Aqueduct on September 28, 2019. His coroner’s report lists the causes of death as being: “1.) Drowning; 2.) Asphyxiation on ingested food; 3.) Collapsed lung from collision with water.”

            Similar tweaks were involved with Kyle Simmons’s murder. “Rocko beat him to death. He was a karate guy, so he was trying to fight back, and Rocko is an amateur MMAer. He got him against the back of the van because he was so groggy and then he kept slamming his head into the wall. We dunked him in Vincent Square Park by the pond where it’s all rocky to make it look like he fell against the rocks going in.” Kyle was found dead at the bottom of the pond in Vincent Square on January 29, 2020. His cause of death was “drowning and blunt force trauma to the head.”

            His final murder of Jordi Karlsen also required improvisation: “I was in the back because we were around the corner from a police station and I needed to be on the lookout. Marco knocked out Jordi by putting him in a chokehold, and Jordi was a little guy, barely five feet tall. So Marco could just pick him up and hang him until he died. It was like he’d put him in a noose, his feet were dangling off the ground and everything.” Jordi was found dead in the Scofield River on October 3, 2020, with his cause of death being “cardiac arrest due to cold water immersion.”

            But the most leeway that June and his crew have is with the smiley faces. “You have to change them up,” June said, nodding his head. “These stations have handwriting experts who have actual training in this sort of stuff. So you have to do it in different ways, even though smiley faces are so commonplace.”

            As an initiation, June was allowed to draw the smiley face at Jonas Sharpless’s dunk site. With yellow chalk, he drew one with Xs for eyes and an egg-shaped head on a railing next to the river. “I wanted it to be distinct,” he said with a laugh.

            “Ralph–” the handler for Zachary Euclid and the new member of the Des Moines crew–“drew with a Sharpie a smiley face with big Kylie Jenner lips on a telephone post. He really didn’t want to be indiscreet. Rocko drew a face in the letter O for the word ‘of’ to make it seem more inconspicuous, that was for Kyle. And for Jordi, Loren made a dotted circle and then drew an arrow for the mouth and one capital T for each eye. Pretty fucking creative. Next time, I’d like to draw one with a big grin and with each tooth visible, like a Cheshire cat. My first one was lame. I thought about drawing my next one in blood, maybe putting it up against the rocks so it would wash off, but that would be too crazy. We would get caught for sure.”

            June hasn’t received a call from Lincoln in a year. As far as June knows, none of the other crew members have been contacted by him, either. When I asked him whether he was bothered by that, June shrugs. “You can’t have the money he has to give a bunch of guys jobs and have them kill people from running a couple of mattress stores in flyover country. He probably has his fingers in a lot of things.”

            “But why go through all of this?” I asked. “You don’t even send him photographs or anything of what happened.”

            “I think the smiley faces are areas for him to go back and relish in what happened. But I don’t know. It’s not like you can tell the differences between all the different smiley faces around here.”

            “Exactly. Why go through all of it?”

            June leaned forward, steepling his fingers. “I can’t speak for anyone but myself. But for me, I could just sit on my ass and smoke weed and watch the NFL until I’m dead from diabetes or something. Every now and then, I get to do something different without disrupting my entire life. And I’m good at it, naturally, I guess–or maybe from all of those years I spent in school looking at the backs of kids’ heads and figuring I could choke them out. I won’t be doing this forever. I’m sure I’ll get bored–I might give Lincoln a call, thank him for everything, and go on my way. But I’m really content with how things are going right now, and they could go on for a while. As long as I don’t go to the police, nothing is going to change. We’ve got all our bases covered, as long as we keep our mouths shut. And for that matter, I hope to God you change my name for this.”

Samuel Fishman (he/him/his) is a proprietor of post-modernist hogwash. A graduate of Oberlin College, Sam is currently employed as an SEO marketing writer in the Boston area. He aspires to be a professional creative writer, penning books about celebrity stalkers and witches who talk to ghosts to stop serial killers. You can hear him talk about ESPN poker documentaries on the Two Fish at the Table Podcast on YouTube.

    
He had been driving what seemed like hours now. That was the problem when you owned your own business you had to do everything yourself. He had been in the undertaking business all his life having inherited it from his father. Now he was old, real old, at the end of the road so to speak, but he had no one to take over the business from him when he passed for he had no children. He had a couple of employees but to them working for him was only a temporary job before they moved on to something better.  No one was interested in buying the business from him. Probably because they realized that when you were in business for yourself, your time wasn’t your own. You always were on duty. Like tonight when he had to go out of town, because none of his employees would work overtime, and pick up a body down in Faithville which was a good  hundred miles from here.

    He had gotten a strange call from some sweet little old lady down there who didn’t exactly identify herself but nevertheless convinced him to come and get the body of a dearly departed loved one that needed to be buried in the family plot here in town. He wanted to postpone it until tomorrow but she started crying and he, being a soft touch, caved and said he would come and get the dearly beloved tonight no matter how long it took or how late it was. That and the fact that her voice reminded him of his deceased mother convinced him, against his better judgment, to go. She did offer to pay extra though but he told her that wouldn’t be necessary. He couldn’t charge a sweet little old lady now could he? He’d get there tonight at no extra charge, he told her. So he set off right after he closed up shop.  And tonight of all nights was a terrible night to make such a drive. It was pitch black out, no moon out, not a star in the sky, plus it was foggy to boot as he drove his hearse down the two-lane blacktop asphalt highway. He was stuck on a two lane highway because Faithville was not near any interstate and was literally off the beaten path out in the middle of nowhere in the sticks. It made for slow driving and though he had driven this road before, things, what he could see of them anyway, didn’t look familiar to him tonight.

    Now he saw something. There it was up ahead, a signpost, no a stop sign. He didn‘t remember a stop sign being there before but nevertheless he brought his vehicle to a stop in front of it and looked both ways. But there wasn’t any cross road there. He didn’t know what to make of it but being a good driver he proceeded with caution, edged out, and proceeded on down the road. Strange, he thought. But then it got even stranger for he realized that he was no

longer on a two lane road any more. He was now on a one lane road.  And though it was dark he also noticed that there was no shoulder along the sides of the road either to the right or to the left of him. He was on a strip of road just wide enough to accommodate his hearse with not an inch to spare on either side.

     “Just where in the hell am I? I’ve got to be lost. Somehow I must have made a wrong turn back there somewhere. I’m going to be late now.” He blurted all this out loud pushing the panic button. Then he realized he needed to calm down, get hold of himself. “There’s got to be a town around here somewhere. I’ll stop at the first one I come to and get directions,” he said to himself in a quivering shaky voice.

    His one way conversation with himself continued for the next mile or so as he kept looking ahead for signs of a town. But there were none, no signs of any kind at all. In fact there was nothing at all along the sides of the road, not even ditches, nothing except the solid  blackness of the night. Then for some reason or other he looked up into his rear view mirror and saw that there was no highway behind him anymore. For as he drove over it, the highway behind him began to crumble, disintegrate, and break up into little pieces that fell off into space and disappeared. That meant only one thing. There was no turning back now.

     He’d had enough. He needed to stop, get on the phone, and call roadside assistance per his car insurance for help. He applied his foot gently to the brake pedal but there was nothing there. It was as if it had come loose somehow and when he pushed it all the way to the floor, nothing happened. The vehicle kept going. The brakes didn’t work. He panicked. He let up on the gas pedal but the hearse did not slow down any. It kept going at the same steady speed. He looked at the cruise control. It was on. He hadn’t set it on cruise control. He tried to unset it but it stayed on no matter how many times pushed the cruise control button to off.

    He took out his phone, but being so nervous, he fumbled it and it fell to the floor. He leaned over for it, taking both his hands off the steering wheel for just a second or two to feel for it.  Then fearful that the hearse would go off the road and slide into oblivion he grabbed it. But the vehicle had never swerved. It kept going straight ahead. The steering wheel was locked in place.

    Oh God now what he thought as he punched in the preprogrammed number of his roadside assistance plan. Soon as he got all this figured out he’d call that sweet little old lady and tell her he’d be late and when he thought he would be there. But he couldn’t get a dial tone, none at all. “Jesus I must really be out in the sticks (styx) somewhere,” he thought, ‘if my phone doesn’t work.” He slumped back down into his seat, defeated, hands no longer on the wheel, his hearse driving itself onward, giving him the ride of a lifetime.

    Then his phone rang. He was afraid to answer it but then he saw that the number was that of the little old lady. “She’s probably wondering where I am,” he thought. He answered it not giving her the chance to speak first.

     “Ma’am,” he said, “I apologize but I got lost and I’m going to be a little late.”

   But before he could say another word a voice intervened.

    “You’re not lost. You’re not late son. You’re on your way home that’s all.”

    The voice hung up.

    He could have sworn that  voice sounded just like his mother’s again. But then again maybe all sweet little old ladies sounded the same.

     All this was stressing him out something terrible. He was deathly afraid now as to what might happen to him next. He was emotionally and physically drained. He’d been driving for what seemed like an eternity now and if he had been at home he’d have been asleep safely in bed. He’d needed to lie down and get some sleep. Wherever he was or whatever was happening to him was beyond his control anyway. Might as well get some sleep, wake up refreshed, and get a fresh handle on all this then he said to himself. No sense worrying about the hearse going off the road now was there. That wasn’t going to happen.

    He looked at the gas tank gauge. It was on empty.

    “So what else is new,” he mumbled as he climbed over the seat, went in the back, opened the coffin for the body he was to get, climbed in it, laid down, and stretched out. He propped the lid open though. He didn’t want to close it for fear he wouldn’t be able to get it back open, especially under these strange circumstances, for then he really would be in a world of hurt. He fell asleep.

    The limo hit a bump, the prop came loose, the lid flapped shut, he was home now.

Author is a retired attorney who started writing for something to do in his rusting years.

Of all the things I remember the night it happened, I can’t for the life of me remember why I went to the grocery store that night. It might have been more beer that I didn’t need, or a meal for the next day. I don’t even remember if I bought what I was looking for. I doubt it. The world in which I left my apartment that evening in the rain to go to the grocery store was vastly different than the one that was thrust upon me when I left it. Had I known, had I felt even the smallest hint of strangeness or dread or doubt, then I never would have ventured out into the rain and driven to the store. Maybe I did have those feelings and I ignored them anyway.

I lived alone then. I had lived in such a way for many years, and despite the protests and inquisitions from non-single friends and family alike, I was happy where was. My space was mine and mine alone, and only I dictated my nights, my weekends. My life. Friends were worried I was depressed, that I was blocking something out by being alone, and I had always wondered why Americans equate being alone to loneliness. I had lots of friends and saw them when I chose to. It was at a time in my life when I found the constant invites and social obligations exhausting. I grew up in a loud household, and I just wanted peace in my adult life. Of course, that all changed the night of the grocery store trip. I lost those friends quite a long time ago. But at least no one now can accuse me of being alone.

So, into the rain I trekked out. It must have been 8 or 9pm, not late but not early. But it was a Friday. It was a Friday, and I had the whole weekend to myself. I usually did, if I wanted it that way. The store was busier than I expected, and I assumed everyone was out grabbing their weekend goodies. I knew exactly where all my items were, yet I chose to go down every aisle anyway, even the superfluous ones. I still don’t remember why. I was zoning off between my list and the messages on my phone. A few of my friends had asked me to meet them out for drinks, go to a party, watch a movie. But it had been a long week, and I wanted nothing more than to stay inside and enjoy my own time. I ad-libbed and grabbed a few things that weren’t on my list. I still can’t see them in my minds eye. I don’t remember what music was playing on the speaker, or how loud the customers were being. All the familiar ambient sounds blended together. I remember hearing the rain pelting down on the tin roof. That much I remember. It was raining so hard, why didn’t I just stay in? I ask myself every day. But the moment I saw her, my life changed forever.

A younger woman, closer to my age, turned the corner into my aisle and seemed to be looking right at me. I remember the look of fury, the pure hate, the anger on that face as she looked directly at me. I remember thinking “Thank God she’s not looking for me.” But then, as it turned out, she was.

“There you are!” She screamed as she stormed down the aisle, walking so hard that even the items on the shelves seemed to shake. “Who the hell do you think you are, disappearing like that!” She was looking directly into my eyes. I’d never seen her before, not anywhere. I’m good with faces.

I turned around and saw no one behind me. She must have mistaken me for someone else, I thought, but the closer she got the angrier she appeared. I could feel my heart speed up and had instantly wished I had stayed at home. The crappy weather nights always seemed to lure the wild ones out from their hiding places. She could have been on something. Those types stumbled in there, too. Just walk right by her and you never have to see her again, I thought. And I did just that. I began to walk by her, and then she reached out and grabbed my cart.

“Don’t!” she screamed. “Don’t you dare ignore me. Don’t you ever walk past me without acknowledging me again. How dare you!” And then she pushed my cart hard-she was clearly stronger than me-and pushed me up against a stack of shelves.

“Miss, you’ve mistaken me for someone else,” was as all I could get out. My face turned red from embarrassment. In the corners of my eyes, I could see other people hearing the commotion and watching us.

“Look at you.” She began taking the items from my cart and throwing them on the floor. “Always fucking up simple orders. None of this was on my list. You’re only ever thinking about yourself. Do you even know how lucky you are that you have me? Do you know any other woman on this planet who would put up with your shit besides me?”

            I tried to push the cart away, but I felt myself pinned up against it. She was grinding her teeth so hard I thought they might shatter right there in her mouth. It was getting hard to breathe, and I thought I might pass out. I turned my head and saw a member of the staff walk down the aisle walkie-talkie in hand. I’d encountered crazy people in public before. Shouting, wandering around aimlessly while others pretend to not notice them or laugh at them outright. I felt like my position was plain to see. That I’d never felt saner and more lucid than that moment when this woman had pinned me up against shelves with bloodlust in her eyes. I saw hope and help coming. How wrong I was.

            The manager did not look at her but instead looked at me, from head to toe, with a look of disgust. “Ma’am, is there a problem here?”

            The woman seemed to be pushing the cart harder into me. I felt dizzy. “My dumbfuck husband can’t seem to get out of his own way. You’re just causing a scene now, Jim? See everyone looking?”

            Jesus, she knew my name. I looked at the manager, who still looked at me like I was the one pushing the cart. “Sir, I have no idea who this woman is. I have never seen her before in my life. Please ask her to leave me alone.”

            Then the woman started crying. She relented from the cart and I could breathe again. She crouched down on the floor and began to cry like an animal. “He always does this to me. See how mean he is to me?”

            The manager knelt next to her and put his hand on her shoulder. “Ma’am, would you like me to call the police?”

            She shook her head violently. “No, I just want him to stop doing this to me.”

The manager looked up at me as if I’d killed his own mother. “You should be ashamed of yourself. I’m not going to call the police this time, but if I catch you abusing her here or anywhere else I won’t hesitate to call.” Other customers were lining up behind him, their numbers growing in strength. Of course, they’d believe her, I thought. They don’t know either of us. They probably just think I’m some abusive asshole. Fine. That’s fine. I’ll walk out of here and never come back again.

            I pushed the cart back, tired and angry from the accusations. “Do whatever the hell you want. I’m leaving.”

            “Asshole,” someone said as I walked by. I didn’t stop to take names. In the corner of my eye, I saw her crouch down and cry on the floor. I hope you find whomever it is you’re looking for. I walked out of the store into the rain, no groceries, nothing to show for my time. The world outside felt different. It felt as if eyes from some unknown dark places were watching me, as if the whole world had trapped me under some invisible thimble that I would always be a part of. I was tired, and I couldn’t wait to get home and sleep this one off. I’d never come here again, and I was annoyed that one crazy woman had ruined the most convenient shopping locations for me, but I could live with that. I’d drive to Mars if I knew that I wouldn’t run into her again.

            I had half a bottle of wine at home waiting for me. It was empty once I got into bed and turned out the light. Outside, I could still hear the rain beating down on the rusted metal shell of my air conditioning unit. It sounded cold, and I was happy to be inside, and warm. I shut my eyes and tried not to replay the events that transpired just hours before. As I was dozing off, I swore I saw her face flash and stay on my retinas, the way the outline of the sun can if you stare at it too long. Imagine spending the rest of your life with that image literally burned into your eye, I thought, then chuckled.

            KNOCK, KNOCK!

The pounding was on my door, there was no doubt. I was the sole top floor unit. They must have the wrong door. Some drunken idiot forgot their apartment or went looking for their friends. It’s happened to others. I tried to chuckle it off. KNOCK, KNOCK! I thought of the event at the grocery store and my heart skipped a beat. That’s when I heard the jangling of keys at the door.

            I sat up in bed. They have the wrong door; I could just go and tell them. But it was late, and I didn’t want to get out of bed. Lots of freaks out there, I knew that now. But the person outside my door stuck their key into the slot and turned it with ease. Then my door slammed open.

            “Jim! Goddamnit Jim, where are you?!” her voice screamed in pained, angry, pure hating rage.

            I recognized the voice before I even sat up in bed. It was from the woman in the grocery store. For a moment I panicked. Maybe she followed me home? That’s possible. She’s insane. But how did she get my key? Maybe mine fell out of my pocket? But then I would I have gotten in. So that explanation was less plausible. Maybe I left the key in the locks, and she found it? I looked over and saw my set of keys on the dresser. Fuck.

            “Jim! Jim I know you’re in here!” I could hear her stomping down the hardwood floors of the hallway. I jumped out of bed and ran to the door which had no lock. I was dressed only in my boxers, and I didn’t like the visual possibility of a half-naked confrontation with this madwoman who would simply not leave me alone. I held the knob in my hand and pressed my weight up against it.

            Knocks on my door. Angry. Hateful.

“Jim, wake the fuck up!”

I opened my mouth to speak but realized then that the fear had collapsed itself into me, and I was left speechless. She began to turn the doorknob, and with all my strength I pushed against it. But she was strong.

            “Jim, let me the fuck in. This isn’t funny.” The cellphone on the dresser was too far for me to reach in order for me to call the police. Even with all my weight up against it, I could feel the sheer brute strength of her, turning the knob, opening the door and pushing me back into my own room. Finally, I relented. I stepped back quickly from the door and let her fall onto the floor while I ran over to dresser, grabbed my phone, and dialed 911. She looked up at me and screamed like an animal.

            “Don’t you dare call them again! Don’t you dare!” She got back up onto her feet, ran over to me, and began slapping me header and harder as I shielded myself from her blows, which stung hard against my bare torso. Slap after slap, each hit angrier than the one before. “I’m good to you! I’m fucking good to you, and this is how you treat me? How fucking dare you do this to me, Jim!”

            “Hello, 911?” They were on speaker, and she could hear it just as well as I. She grabbed my arm, bit into it hard, so hard then I lost my grip and the phone dropped onto the floor, but thankfully did not shatter. She grabbed the phone, then rushed out of the room into the bathroom, where she began frantically flushing the toilet.

            “Wait!” I said. “Stop!” I ran into the bathroom, where she was on all knees and flushing the toilet, and she growled like an animal.

            “I won’t let you leave me!” She screamed, and water began to erupt over the toilet seat, onto the floor. It began to soak her knees, or hair. She did not seem to notice or care.

            “Who the fuck are you?!” I screamed. “You’re going to flood the whole apartment. Get the fuck out of here before they come and throw your ass in jail.” My words did not sound very convincing. Fear was obvious in my voice. She looked over at me.

            “Get the fuck out of here?” she said, mocking my voice. “Before they come and throw your ass in jail.” She started laughing. “You fucking coward, this is my apartment. They’ll come for you. Everyone will see what you’ve done to me, like you always do!” As she said that, she slammed the toilet seat down and began smashing her face up against it.           

            “Stop that! Are you fucking insane?!” I could see blood flowing from her mouth and nose. I tried to stop her, but again the sheer force of her strength was too much for me. Her blood mixed with the rushing toilet water on the floor. I knew it would be just a matter of time before it began to leak into the unit below.

            Just then, I heard pounding at the door. “Police, open the door!”

The woman finally stopped smashing her face against the toilet seat. Her face was covered with blood and bruises, and her left eye was swollen shut. She looked up at me and smiled. “I’ll get it, honey.”

            “The hell you will.” I slammed the door shut, twisted the knob off, and left her in there as I ran down the hallway to open the door. Standing there were two taller, stark looking policemen, one of whom kept trying to look over my shoulder.

            The shorter one spoke first. “We’ve gotten a few complaints about some disturbances up here. Domestic disturbances.”

            “Yes, officer. This crazy woman broke into my apartment, she stole my phone and threw it in the toilet, and now she’s locked herself in my bathroom. She hurt herself…”

            “Hurt herself how?”

            “She was hitting her face against the toilet. Like I said, she’s fucking crazy.”

Behind me, I could hear the bathroom door gently open. How she did it, I’ll never know. But before I knew it, the officers were looking past me as the woman-battered and bruised-walked down the hallway slowly, sobbing quietly. She was no longer the possessed, iron woman breaking down doors and tossing me around like a ragdoll. Now she had morphed herself into a shorter, more vulnerable version. She even looked shorter than before.

            The officer for the first time looked concerned. “Ma’am, are you ok?”

            She started crying. “Yes officer, I’m ok.”

            “Do you feel safe at home, ma’am?”

            She walked up beside me and held my hand. Her grip was still tight, like a concrete statue’s clenching down onto mine. What could I do?

            “I do, officer. Really. It’s ok.”

            “Ma’am, you know you are welcome to press charges.”

            She held back tears. Of rage, or sadness, I could not tell. “I don’t think that will be necessary, officer. We’ve just had a misunderstanding here, that’s all.”

            The cop looked back at me. His eyes narrowed. “If there’s anything you want to say, you better say it now. If we get called back here again, I’m taking your ass in.”

            I looked at the three of them. The woman looked at me and smiled. Not a fake, gotcha smile, just a smile that was as real as if “we” were real. My heart palpitated as I realized the gravity of my situation. These two clearly weren’t going to believe me. Even if I told them she didn’t live here, that could take hours-or weeks-to explain. How many people have live-in partners that weren’t on the lease? Or that had no photos together? The matter would have to be settled afterwards, between the two of us. I was terrified of them leaving us alone together, but there was clearly no way they were going to believe me. Not now, anyway. Years later, I would pinpoint this moment as the moment when I could have maybe changed it all. Maybe I should have spoken up or plead my case to the police or-fuck it-just simply run out of that apartment screaming, never looking back. I’ve played all those alternate timelines in my head many, many times. But those paths weren’t the one I chose. After the cops left, she began putting her things over one of my chairs and looked at me:

“Don’t look at me, don’t talk to me, don’t even think about me. I’ve had just about as much as I can take in one night.”

She began to take off her clothes, then plopped down on the other side of the bed-the vacant side. There was no way I was going to sleep here, I thought. She’d wake up in the middle of the night and strangle me. But as I began collecting my pillows and some clothes to use as a blanket on the couch in the living room, she turned over quickly.

            “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

            I threw my arms up in exasperation. “I’m going to the living room to sleep on my couch. I don’t know you, I don’t know why you are doing this to me, but in the morning I want you out of here. I don’t know what you’re on, but you can go sleep this off somewhere else.”

            She stood up in bed and looked at me with the coldest eyes I’ve even seen. “If you don’t get back into bed this second, I’m going to kill your family.”

            “You don’t even know who my family are! You don’t know anything about me. You’ve either got me completely confused with someone else, or you’re so high you don’t even know where you are. Now you’ve had your fun, and you need to go back to whatever hole you crawled out from.”

            She looked at me a long while with the blankest face I’ve even seen as she slowly processed what I had said. Then she knelt, tucked her head between her legs, and let out the loudest, most painful, hateful, saddest cry I’ve ever heard. I heard my neighbors banging on their ceiling underneath us. I dreaded the police coming back. They couldn’t have gone far at this point. I ran over to her and tried to calm her, placed my hand on her back as if we truly were some kind of couple, and I actually cared.

            “Get away from me!” She screamed, then howled louder, like a wolf trapped in a bear trap. The whole block must have heard. I know our entire building did. I began to hear knocks on the door. I knelt next to her. I was exhausted and terrified and at a loss. I couldn’t call the police. Could I call family? Friends? What would I even say? I hadn’t even seen most of them for a while.

            “Look, I promise if you stop screaming, we can just go to bed.” I was on both knees, pleading to a madwoman that I had never met to spend the night with me. “I promise we won’t fight anymore. I’m sorry.”

            Her howls lowered. I could hear myself breath again over the sound of my beating heart. My head was pounding. “Are you still mad at me?” She asked. Her body trembled.

            “No,” I said. What else could I say? “Of course not.”

            She laid down flat on the hardwood floor, trembling, her loud cries now reduced to pained whimpers. “Take me to bed.”

            I shrugged. I picked her up, carried her to the bedroom, and tucked her into my bed. As I began to walk back out into the hallway, she turned over quickly and asked: “Aren’t you coming to bed, too?”

            I shrugged. “I have to turn off the lights.”

            “Well, hurry back.”

            As I turned off the lights, one by one, as slowly as I could, dreading the moment where I would have to go back into the bedroom. Would she strangle me in my sleep? Would she suffocate me with a pillow? Or maybe, just maybe, I’d wake up and she’d be gone, with only the imprint of her body left behind on the other side of the bed-gone from my life forever-never to be seen again. I could live with that.

            I laid down next to her and kept my eyes open as long as I could. I closed them slowly. Maybe it was all part of a bad dream. Maybe I never even went to that grocery store. I smiled. I liked the narrative, so I went there as I closed my eyes.

            Three years later, I still think of that night. I think of how I should have escaped, how that, if I truly understood the full gravity of what was happening-and what would follow-I would have just walked out of that apartment and never looked back. But then, the other part of me says that she would have found me anyway, that she would have found me in the deepest caverns of the arctic, or the coldest, darkest reaches of space where not even starlight can penetrate. No matter where I went, there she was. Had she always been there, waiting for me, looking for me? Was I always destined to be this prisoner?

            The next morning, she was still there, but the apartment had changed overnight. I don’t know how. I must have only been asleep for a few hours. Maybe less. But as I walked out, there were pictures on the wall of us together, that must have spanned months. Years. I could see strange furniture that clearly was not mine. In fact, very little of it was mine. I checked the calendar. It was the next day. Now everyone would believe that she was indeed with me and had been. Maybe I could just break up with her? I’m sure she’d only kill me. The large screens outside my window looked more like bars now, and the apartment looked darker, even with the morning sunlight pouring in, as if some unseen entity was filtering it, shrouding us in prolonged darkness. One moment she was asleep in bed, and then the next she was in the kitchen, wearing one of my shirts, cooking something terribly and making a mess. She looked at me without smiling.

            “I thought you went grocery shopping last night?”

            I was speechless. I did, that’s where I met your crazy ass, I wanted to say. What did I go there for? Did I find it? “I didn’t find what I was looking for,” was all I could say.

            “Well, you better get your ass back there, we’re out of a lot of things and we’re hosting dinner tonight.”

            “Tonight? Hosting who? I was going out to the bar with my friends tonight.”

            She looked at me and stopped cutting the scallions for whatever ungodly concoction she was making. “Are you saying you forgot?” She stood there with the knife in her hand. “You did, didn’t you.” She began to tremble. “It’s always about you and your friends and what you want to do, isn’t it?” She held out her arm, took the knife, and began to cut into her forearm. “You never do the things that I want!” She screamed as she drew blood.

            “Wait, wait! Stop!” I ran to her, but she backed away, threatening to cut deeper. “I’ll go. I’ll go to the grocery store, ok? Just tell me what you need me to buy.”

            And then, that became my life. I had tried to explain it to everyone I knew: friends, family. Even ex’s. But no one believed me. No one believed that she had just suddenly appeared in my life. Everyone hated her, and she hated them, and one day I woke up and they were all gone, just as quickly as she had suddenly appeared in my life. She had fought with them, alienated them, one by one, until I had no one left. No one, of course, but her. She had willed herself to become the focal point of my life. I lost touch with everyone I loved, everyone I could talk to. I gained weight. I hardly slept. I hated her, and I hated myself. Every attempt I made of leaving her, or standing up for myself, ended up in some combination of fighting and physical pain. If cops were called, they never believed me. I began secretly talking to a therapist online, only to have her search my browsing history. She took my laptop and smashed it against the wall, then stomped up and down on it like a furious five-year-old. She had no control over her emotions, which were usually negative. I enjoyed nothing anymore: not my free time, not the weekends. The only thing I had to myself were my own dreams when I fell asleep, but even there I’d find her, as if there were no plane of consciousness where I could escape her. She followed me through all our apartments, where we’d be kicked out one after the other due to our fights. I thought eventually we’d just end up on the streets. Maybe we still will.

            I walked through the streets alone when I could. I would stare straight ahead, and not notice the smells, the changing of the seasons, the new restaurants that opened. Familiar faces that did I did not acknowledge. I walked as a machine would, feeling nothing. Occasionally, I would see them, though. Women and men, like myself, walking alongside someone screaming at them, or walking ahead of them angry, and sometimes, just sometimes, we’d glance at each other, and I know that look. That look that says: “I’ve given my life to someone awful. Please rescue me.” I always wonder if they found them the way I did. If before, they were free, living their own life, everything in front of them, their dreams still free. And then one day, suddenly, their partner would appear, and latch onto them and never let go. Maybe they’ve stopped trying to explain it to anyone. Maybe now, like me, they merely accept it because there is nothing left to do but accept.

            I’ll never know where she came from. Sometimes, I question whether or not she’s real at all, but then we fight and she hurts me and the scars remind me its all very real. When I go to bed at night, I pray I don’t wake up in the morning. I never knew where she came from, or why. I never knew how she chose me. I only know that once they latch onto you, they never leave. I’ve been in the hospital a few times now, trying to hurt myself, trying to end it, but no matter where I do it, or how, she always finds me. And they always rescue me. The only thing she can’t do is take my aging process away. All I can do now is dream of the day when I’m very old, alone in my bed finally, and take my last breath, the one thing she can’t take from me anymore.

Joseph Lewis is a returned Peace Corps volunteer, and has spent the past three years living and teaching Western Literature and Film Studies to university students in Dazhou, China. He is a graduate of the NEOMFA creative writing program at Cleveland State University and his work has been previously published in Novel Noctule, Coffin Bell, and The Piker Press.

Block the light, allow no leaking
through– not an odd request
for a nighted crawler speaking
through my cuspids, my best

pale nails grown
smart in the dark. I have
lived a life in the umbra alone–
anemic crossbreed: half

ash, half unable to die.
I rob one’s will
with fetal eyes that imply
a lover’s skill, delicate kill–

ideal for luring a small lost soul
to dine on in a hole.

Marc Darnell is an online tutor and lead custodian in Omaha NE, and has also been a phlebotomist, hotel supervisor, busboy, editorial assistant, farmhand, devout recluse, and incurable brooder. He received his MFA from the University of Iowa, and has published poems in The Lyric, Rue Scribe, Verse, Skidrow Penthouse, Shot Glass Journal, The HyperTexts, Candelabrum, The Road Not Taken, Aries, Ship of Fools, Open Minds Quarterly, The Fib Review, Verse-Virtual, Blue Unicorn, Ragazine, The Literary Nest, The Pangolin Review, and elsewhere.

Check the filter. All kinds of particulates
accumulate there- Lost loves, missed
business opportunities, failed therapy
and diets. To release the dust, tap the
filter against a garbage can before
sitting down to another dinner alone.
A clear filter is essential to operation.

Keep the chain sharp. After each cut,
file the teeth, return the edge. Sharp teeth
insure smooth operation. Hard surfaces
like divorce, child support, and mid-life
dating require mid-cut sharpening.

Finally- grease the starter assembly.
Nothing is more embarrassing than
a saw that refuses to start at parent-
teacher meetings.

Remember, a well maintained,
chainsaw is a safe, efficient tool,
and significantly reduces kickbacks,
and self-inflicted wounds.

Matthew Sisson, while in the construction business, with no previous experience, began writing at age of forty-three. He found a wonderful teacher, Barbara Hyett, and went to her workshop every Thursday night for ten years and learned the craft of writing. A great restlessness disappeared and he has now published his first book. He hates when people say that writing poetry is a great hobby or therapeutic. It is not. It is his attempt to create art. He leaves the judgement to others.

A pyre waits to be consumed by heaven
rests upon broken wings of a raven

broken are the wings of many ravens
still searching for sustenance spitting

rhythmically into tide pools spitting
bits of sand and silica and feathers

and sand and silica bits plundered
palming places nevertheless touched

by palming too many previously touched
thundering god’s coalescence, lips

summoning god’s omnipresent lips
praying for futures remaining, dare we say

dare we say anything about the future
pyre waiting to be consumed by heaven.

Laura Vitcova was born in Northern California and writes from her home near San Francisco. She is a multidisciplinary artist – poet, musician, photographer – with a passion for language. For her poetry combines words, music and images in ways that create powerful emotional experiences. In her spare time, she attends workshops, hikes with Eli the shaggy dog or is found looking through the lens of a camera. Twitter: @lauravitcova IG: @starlinglaura

Mirror Mirror Art and Décor stands in a Tucson strip mall, part of the never-ending strip mall of Speedway Boulevard. It neither sticks out nor blends in. Most shoppers never notice this store, they would prefer Hobby Lobby or Big Lots. Those who do are called to by the mirrors suspended along all four walls. The mirrors come bordered in a variety of ways: romantically rounded and edged in brass, squared off by tiles, or warped with seaglass. They are like wallpaper with a perfect seamless stature against the wall. The store across the street from Mirror Mirror Art and Décor cannot see the mirrors, only the sun that reflects off them. Every noonday in the winter, when the sun is in the South, and shines most on the mirrors, the cashier wonders what the flashing lights from across the street mean. He begins to come up with theories, conspiracy theories. One week the lights are coming from extraterrestrial space signals, the next they are solstice calendars. Finally, the cashier believes that the lights are morse code signals, and even though he doesn’t know morse code, the employee decodes the message “HELP ME” from them. The cashier grabs his coat, hat, and rushes out of the store. He runs straight into the oncoming traffic to help the store across the street. The Police afterward declared it a suicide since the man was holding a note that said “help me.”

***

There is a house four miles from here that has seventeen mirrors. The house is older than Arizona, a Tucson original. None of these mirrors come from Mirror Mirror Art and Décor. The house is made of red brick and has a small green lawn. The floors are wooden and honeyed, the glass of the windows single paned. Handmade wooden furniture decorates all rooms, refurbished, though it has been chewed on by generations of dogs. The kitchen is white laminate counters, a smelly gas stove, and a fridge accented in dark wood. One man lives in this house and he is young, maybe twenty-six. The Man is muscular and neither very tall nor very short. He has tanned skin and caramel colored hair and eyes. Sometimes he has a mustache that matches, but usually he shaves. Every morning he likes to stand outside a cup of coffee and pretend he’s an old man. He’s a performer so he considers this practice. He’s a performer so he goes by many names.

The Man works as a drag queen, under the alias Mimi Solay. The seventeen mirrors in the house are therefore very important to him. They help him do his make-up, take off his make-up and make sure that he is taking care of his looks in between. A drag queen must be beautiful. From wherever he is in the small house, he can see his reflection in a mirror. At two points in his house, the bathroom and the dining room, there are mirrors lined up just-so, allowing him simultaneously to view his front and back. Even though he lives alone, he feels his reflection keeps him company. He is never scared of his own reflection.

At night when the Man comes home from work, he wipes his makeup off in the mirror. He uses long methodic strokes that streak the piles of makeup across his face, dragging it to the side of his chin where it piles and blends. One night the makeup piled and blended on his jawline in such an assortment of colors that he recognized himself as neither the drag queen nor the man. He felt like a fish. How strange he thought. He tenderly touched the tip of his fingers to his jawline, as if to make sure that he was in fact still human. The reflection in the mirror wavered before his eyes and he realized that he was in fact the person he had always been.

After this incident the man began to feel more and more that his reflection was someone other than himself. At times brushing his teeth in the bathroom he would see his arm moving with an aggressive back and forth motion that he was sure didn’t match that of his arms. Another time over dinner he swore he saw a third arm appear and scratch his belly when he glanced up at himself in the dining room mirror. When he got out of the shower, he would see that the towel had already been used by the version of himself in the bathroom mirror; when he applied eyeliner, he would realize that his vanity mirror version already wore it.

Gradually, his house edged away at his comfort, and he grew claustrophobic within it. He began to avoid the mirrors as much as he could. To do so, he walked with his head tilted toward the floor and slight inclined to the left or right. Yet images of transparent motions, or figures, like ghosts running away from the corners of his vision persisted. He began to believe that the mirrors were worlds unto themselves and that there truly existed seventeen other versions of himself in his house. The Man locked his fridge lest his other selves started to eat his food. He locked his bedroom door at night to block any of their chatter lest they began to speak.

However, the Man never felt frightened until he began to see other people that weren’t himself in the mirror. He would wake up and before seeing his own face in the wardrobe mirror, he would see that of a woman in her thirties, hair askew. Who is she?He would fill up water from the sink at night but the reflection in the kitchen mirror was of a haggard serial killer. He felt that wherever he went within his house, something that was part himself but not entirely followed him, as if his reflection in the mirrors mutated. He swore was someone else, maybe even a devil lived in the house with him. It followed him from room to room like a shadow, all the worse for its gleaming clarity. It haunted him.

A Saturday afternoon, and the Man was cutting limes to prepare mojitos for his guest and himself when he realized with horror that in the gleam of the countertops and appliances he distinguished a spectre-like glow with the nebulous form of his own body. Even outside of the mirror he was being reflected, fragmented into thousands of tiny ghosts across his house. The cabinets, the wood of the furniture, the single paned windows, everything appeared to steal a part of the man’s self.  And, he depended on them to ensure himself of his own existence. Suddenly the man’s relationship to the house changed, and he realized that he belonged to the house, and not the other way around. This thought disturbed the man so much that he drank eight mojitos with his guest, who ended up very drunk and had to spend the night.

That night the Man dreamt that all his reflections threw a party in the house. They danced across the walls and floors, their laughs shaking the walls and their steps creaking upon the floors. Their horrible faces and bodies all looked like him, but none of them were him exactly. The man woke up panting and sweating. The house was sleeping calmly. He looked over at his guest, who slept on the trundle bed slightly below. The sleeping guest’s skin was so perfectly smooth and still it appeared to be glass. The Man neared the guest, stood over the guest, and peered down at the guest’s face, their nostrils, their slightly parted lips, the two white teeth gleaming behind them, and the Man’s tiny reflection in them.

Flying back on his bed, the Man stifled a shriek. The guest was nothing but another reflection of the man, nothing other than another slightly different version of himself! When the Man looked into the guest’s face, he realized that although their nostrils were of different sizes, they were the same, and that although their lips were of different hues, they were the same, and the two white teeth could be none other than his own. The Man moaned, a deep moan that arose in his chest like an earthquake. How could he trust to know what he looked like? How could he know that he even existed if not for his guest reflecting him?He reached up to touch his face, it wasn’t there. He looked down at his hand, no hand looked back at him.

The next morning the guest awoke in the house alone. He got out of bed and made himself a cup of coffee, stood on the porch, pretended to be an old man.

Grace Penry (she/her) recently graduated for the University of Arizona where she studied Anthropology and Creative Writing. She has edited the Sonora Review and currently reads poetry for The Offing. Her favorite novels are the Neapolitan Novels and she craves Alice Munro’s stories like a five year old does Sour Patch Kids. She is also within Amy Winehouse’s top 1% of listeners on Spotify. She hopes you thoroughly enjoy this story.

“Mrs. Mosely! You’ve forgotten your laudanum.” Henry Webster called out. Mrs. Mosely really didn’t need any more laudanum, and her children didn’t need any of Dr. White’s “Soothing Syrup for Babies and Toddlers” either. 

     “Thank you, dear Henry. I’m so concerned about Thomas’ cough that I remembered his syrup but not my own!” Mrs. Mosely flounced back to the counter, her dress bustle rustling behind her.

     Henry had long ago perfected his smile. The smile that appeared genuine. The smile that hid indifference, ridicule, hatred. It was this smile he delivered to Mrs. Mosely.

     “As any good mother would.” He nodded, passing her the small brown bottle with the patent pending 1873 label.

     It was Henry’s fourth month of working at Dr. White’s apothecary counter. His sister, Ellen, had left for Oberlin College, and he eagerly replaced her. Everyone was enthralled with how he took to the work. But it was no surprise to Henry, and it was certainly no surprise to Dr. White, who had been fostering the boy’s interest in all things science for years now. The human body was Henry’s calling. 

     As the door’s bell quieted from Mrs. Mosely’s departure, Henry’s eyes roved to the doctor’s private office. With its door open, he could see the articulated skeleton, something he’d been fascinated by for as long as he could remember, despite his mother always dragging him away from it and the glass jars of anomalies that Dr. White kept.

     The door was soon thrust open violently by John Randolph. A hulking specimen of man at 6’4”, John Randolph’s muscles rippled beneath his work shirt.  

     “Henry! Get Doc White quick! Something’s wrong with Francis Leavitt!”

      Dr. White appeared, bag in hand, from his private office. 

     “What’s the matter, John?” 

      “We were working at the mill, and he collapsed. Just keeled over clutching his chest!” John gestured for effect.

     Dr. White nodded and walked toward the door, stopping before he crossed the threshold. 

     “Henry, I may need your help on this call.”

     Henry, who had thus far only helped deliver piglets, get a calf unstuck from a broken fence, and aided in setting Marshall Montgomery’s broken arm after an unfortunate horse incident, ripped off his apron, flipped up the quarter sawn oak counter, and was behind Dr. White in moments. He knew the remedy they prepared weekly for Francis Leavitt was for his angina–a treatment that would only ease symptoms, not cure the disease. John Randolph’s description indicated the heart was likely to blame. Henry’s own heart was ready to burst through his chest. 

     “Lock up, my boy.” Dr. White smiled. Henry flipped the open sign to closed and slipped a key in the lock.
     “Ready, sir!”

      The men and Henry hurried down Gilmanton’s main road. The mill had been around since the 1600s and sat just on the edge of the small New Hampshire village. When they arrived, John ushered them to where Francis Leavitt was lying still. 

     Too still, Henry thought. He’d seen life leave enough bodies to know that Francis had already left his. 

     Dr. White kneeled and pressed his stethoscope to Francis’ chest. He put his ear close to the unmoving mouth. 

    “Henry, please come check my work.” He handed Henry his stethoscope.

     Henry’s eyes were wide and glistening. He knew his glee was showing, but he couldn’t help himself. He’d been waiting for this moment, this privilege, for months.

     He gently took the stethoscope and mimicked Dr. White’s movements–left of center on the chest, further up, back down, to the right. Henry noted the absence of lub-dubs from the heart muscle pumping blood. He then leaned closely to Francis’ mouth, waiting for warm air to hit his cheek. There was none. 

     Henry nodded gravely at Dr. White. 

     “I’m sorry gentlemen,” the doctor began, addressing the small crown that had gathered. “I’m afraid Francis has passed. Likely his angina pectoris.”

     “Dr. White had been treating him with digitalis for some time,” Henry explained. The men stared at him, eyes dumb like a child’s. “Foxglove.” 

     John dropped his hat, which had been resting over his heart, to his side, then to the ground.

     “John,” Henry said. He licked his lips, and the gleam in his eye returned. “Is Mr. Leavitt married?”

     “No, Henry. He’s not.” John shook his head. “No next of kin anymore either. His mother died a few years ago.”

     Henry looked at Dr. White. This was it. It was happening. The corner of Henry’s mouth crept up. He had to fight back the smile that was begging to get out.

     “We can take care of the body, John. I’ll talk to Parson Arthur about a plot in the cemetery for him.”

     “Thanks, Doc.”

     Dr. White nodded solemnly. “We’ll be back with the wagon shortly.”

#

“I thank you, Doc, for letting me attend today.” Henry said between breaths, trying hard to shoulder half of Francis Leavitt’s dead weight. 

     They managed to get the body onto Dr. White’s examination table in his private office. 

     “You’re most welcome, Henry.” The doctor wiped his brow. “It’s nice to see a young man developing his interest in medicine.” He nodded toward his desk. “Bring my surgery kit. And Henry–” He paused. “Draw the blinds.”

     Henry dutifully followed orders. After drawing the blinds, he retrieved the large leather case. In it were all manner of implements, from small, sharp scalpels to a large bow saw.

     The master and student undressed Francis Leavitt. A penny fell onto the floor. Henry folded the clothes and placed the copper coin on top.

     “Henry.” Dr. White brushed a clip of hair from his brow. “Remember, what I told you. You cannot brag to your friends–or to anyone–about what we are about to do. Gilmanton’s citizens do not understand nor value the concept of an autopsy. We are behind the times, my young friend.”

     “I disagree, doctor. We are not; our friends and families are.” Henry winked. 

     The doctor placed each of his instruments on a silver tray. “You’ve read up on your Vesalius?” 

     “It has been my bed-time reading for years now.” He’d been enthralled with the doctor’s gift when he was younger. 

     “And your Morgagni?” 

     Henry nodded. Dr. White made sure he–and his protege–were both up-to-date on current medical practices and discoveries. Morgagni detailed over 700 case studies of autopsies in his book De Sedibus et Causis per Anatomen Indagatis—On the Seats and Causes of Diseases Investigated by Anatomy. Vesalius proved the four-humour theory wrong in De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem—The Seven Books on the Structure of the Human Body. Dr. White convinced most of the town’s residents to listen to him and not the old ways, but there were older people in Gilmanton who still believed that the way to cure anything was to blood-let. The thought of using the human body as a tool for education was akin to blasphemy. 

     “Since you’ve been doing your studies, I’ll allow you to make the first cuts.” He passed Henry a large scalpel.

     Henry’s entire body swelled with anticipation. His stomach was in knots–not from fear or nervousness, but excitement. His respiration had quickened from the moment he realized Francis Leavitt would be the first autopsy he’d get to witness, and now the doctor was passing the honor–yes, the honor–to him.

     He took the blade eagerly and traced lightly where he’d make the incisions: from the right shoulder to the sternum, then from the left shoulder to the sternum, ultimately forming the shape of the letter Y.

     As Henry pierced the skin, he nearly trembled with euphoria.

#

That night, Henry did not sit at the top of the stairs. He did not eavesdrop on his parents’ conversations. Instead, he sat on his chair, turning Francis Leavitt’s penny over and over in his hand. It would soon go into the small wooden box under his bed. Each memento in it brought back special memories, memories of moments that had directed his path. Moments like his young best friend’s death, and how the neck had twisted unnaturally from the fall. Moments like his cousins’ deaths, and how one lasted longer than the other in the rushing water. From the time he was small, he hadn’t wanted to wait to learn about the human body, so he hastened his learning experiences himself. And now, the most recent exhilarating experience commanded his thoughts. 

     His fascination with Dr. White’s articulated skeleton never waned. He couldn’t buy one of his own, but he could make one. He’d planned carefully for this moment. 

     The freshly-turned ground meant no one would know Francis Leavitt’s grave was disturbed. A large pile of quicklime, skimmed from Henry’s family farm, piled up in an old, unused barn near the creek. A coffin-sized box, built from the discarded shipping crates Henry collected from work, lay nearby. 

     All Henry needed was a body.

     He grinned, looking out his bedroom window toward the creek. 

     And now I have one.

J.J. Fletcher is a teacher, writer, and dog rescuer. “Morbidity” is part of a short story collection that re-imagines the childhood of Dr. H.H. Holmes–Chicago’s (allegedly) first serial killer. Fletcher is currently at work on a crime novel, The Devil Inside Me, in which a descendant of Holmes resurrects his duplicitous and murderous legacy in the Windy City. Learn more at www.jjfletcherbooks.com.

         
It’s been two hours. It’s been fifty minutes. It’s been a day. The sun is dipping over the horizon.

It’s still high in the sky. The trees drop their leaves even as they are green, and the mist from the

sprinklers hits your face. It’s warm. It’s cold.

This place—this restaurant—is incomprehensible.

The live musician at the patio has been playing Hotel California for the entire evening. It’s been

played fifteen times—no, twenty? Thirty. His singing blends with the crowd, who happily sing along

for the chorus. The numerous voices surround you, making you smile. It’s a lovely place. You hum

along as you wait.

There was this sense of calm that washed over you as soon as you entered, leaving you relaxed.

That sense of calm is still with you as you settle into the cushioned seat even further. It’s almost like

you’re being hugged.

You take a sip of your tea. It tastes suspiciously carbonated, almost like soda. You put it down

and look at it. It’s turned into water. You furrow your eyebrows in confusion and push it away; you no

longer feel thirsty.

“Calzone right here for you!” says a cheerful voice.

You hadn’t ordered a calzone. You open your mouth to correct the waiter, who has gotten taller,

but you close it when you see the enchiladas set before you. You hadn’t ordered that either. At the very

least, they have chicken, so you accept it and begin to dig in.

You take a bite. It tastes like sawdust. It takes everything in you to not spit it out while the

waiter watches you with blank eyes. Instead, you dab at your mouth with a napkin and hide it with that.

The waiter, satisfied, turns and leaves. You sigh in relief.

The guitar continues to play, the people continue to chat, and you continue to try and choke

down the enchiladas. The first bite was sawdust, but the second tastes like beef. Your taste buds are

confused. You are confused. You raise your hand to flag down the waiter, but he’s pouring drinks for a

table that wasn’t there a moment ago.

You wait. Hotel California continues to ring through your ears.

Minutes pass.

You shift in your seat. Someone’s crying nearby.

Seconds tick by.

After an hour of the sun teetering between dusk and dawn, you manage to flag down the waiter

to get the check. His grimace betrays his anger even as he tells you, “Of course!” You shudder at the

sight of his canines.

He whips out the check and a pen, then sets them in front of you. It has your card information

on it. You haven’t even taken it out of your pocket. You examine it carefully, baffled, and the numbers

fade into asterisks. Everything’s correct. It’s so convenient. But is it worth your sense of security?

Your hand shakes as you sign. The pen bleeds onto the receipt. It dries instantly. You set the

receipt down and put it under your plate. The plate’s too heavy for you to lift. Your throat feels dry, but

you’re not tempted by the juice that sits in front of you.

Everything’s wrong here in this lovely place. No one else seems to notice, nor do they care. But

you do, and you want to leave. Even as you think that, you feel eyes on you. You swallow nervously

and stand up from your stool. The chair legs scrape the wood beneath you.

The guitar stops, as does the chatter. All of the people, who suddenly seem solid and unique, are

staring at you. You stare back, petrified, unsure of what’s happening. One by one, they stand, never

blinking.

All of them have blank eyes like the waiter.

You turn and run. Your feet feel like molasses; it’s almost impossible to move. The faster you

go, the slower you move. It’s only when you slow to a crawl that you finally start to outpace the group

walking behind you. You pass by the building’s entrance, pushing the wooden fence against the iron.

The gate opens easily, but it’s hot to the touch.

Nothing is right. Nothing is right. Nothing is right.

You flee to your car, mystified by how fast you’re running now. The cool exterior of your car is

nice and familiar. The leather feels right, and so does your steering wheel. You sigh again, this time in

relief. You’re safe here. Everything is fine.

Everything is fine.

You start the car, then look back at where the restaurant is. It’s gone now, replaced by burned

out debris that had been long abandoned. Vague shapes of people are standing there, their blank eyes

staring into yours. Eventually, you manage to tear your gaze away.

You leave the area as quickly as possible, still tasting the sawdust in your mouth.

Nicxan Brooks is an author that loves, loves, LOVES horror in every sense of the word. She even works at a haunted attraction seasonally, that’s how much she loves it! However, she gears towards the uncanny and the unnerving; she finds that sticks with people. She lives in Georgia with her cat Pertwee.

Welcome to our 2021 issue. It seems the years get more interesting as the number of the year gets larger. Hopefully not a harbinger of things to come. Still, if it is, it means so much more material for the writing mill.

We have a bunch of new stories for your reading pleasure. We hope to put out two issues of Black Works next year.

Also, remember that Baker Street will go live in January. Baker Street will focus on mysteries and takes its name from the street Sherlock Holmes made famous.