Welcome to the inaugural issue of Black Works. It has been a longer road getting here than it looked like when we first started down this path. But it has been fun and we got to read a lot of good and some scary stories along the way.

We send our thanks to Berne Bush for his webmastery and invaluable assistance navigating the pitfalls within this electronic realm. Also, thanks to Michael Blain-Rozgay for his tireless eyes in putting all this together.

Our goal is to put out another edition every three months (along with Underwood, Rue Scribe, and True Chili). Our formats may change as we learn new techniques but we will always be looking for finely crafted and a little bit dark storytelling.

As always, we hope you enjoy the stories here as much as we did when we read them.

She picked at her fingernails as he watched. She hissed when she picked too close to the cuticle, hand flying up to her mouth for the comfort of her full lips. He remembered the times when he could take comfort there.

“Anyway,” she enunciated, “it’s not going to work out. We’ve tried for so long.”

His hands around his mug shook, sending ripples through his lukewarm coffee.

Their house together was beautiful and so were their children. Successful in academics and extracurriculars. Loving of their slightly overweight father. They had been happily married for thirteen years, his wife initially accepting of his weight.

But now, he thought that she held his struggle with weight against him. Obesity was down significantly since Henderson implants were made accessible, and she had pressured him into getting one. Even with his implant, he couldn’t fight his urge to eat. When things were stressful at work, he ate. When things were stressful at home, he ate. It was his way of coping with life: finding comfort in food.

“Another binge has occurred, this time in the neighboring Anise. The patient, who will remain anonymous, was reported to have stopped on a busy highway, exited their vehicle, and ate an animal that had been run over.”

His wife squinted. She looked directly at his stomach, then back in his eyes.

“That implant never did you much good, did it?” She sipped her tea. “You still eat as much as you want.”

“…Company assures that Henderson implants are not dangerous, and that this is due to a reaction that occurs in the pancreas of some patients.”

“Christ, would you turn this off!?”

His booming voice struck a bolt of lightning through the barista, and she quickly changed the mounted television to a more palatable station. Now a family was looking at a home for renovation while light music played.

“Why were you always so hard on me? About how I raised the kids, what I ate, when I woke up, everything. It’s like you didn’t want me to do anything right; you could always find something.”

“Does that really matter?”

She tapped the back of her phone to the electronic bill and it gave a small beep of confirmation. The bill whispered an automated thank you.

“It might not, but I want to know.”

Exasperated, she crossed her arms and huffed. “Well, look, I don’t know. Maybe it just isn’t meant to be.”

He watched as the small screen on his end of the table lit up with the check. He winced, not knowing his coffee would be so expensive. He copied his wife’s movements, pressing his phone to the screen until it chimed at him.

He remembered coming to this café together, not both from separate cars at a designated time. They were happier, even if things weren’t perfect. She would get an Americano and a turkey sandwich. He remembered it all so clearly.

Her heels clacked against the floor as she stood, smoothing out her bright green dress. Was she trying to impress someone? Was this her way of saying, this is what you lost? It only infuriated him that much more, seeing how it stopped inches above her knees.

“I’ll have my lawyer mail you the papers.” And she clacked away, out of the café and out of his vision. He sat alone and in silence, studying each individual pixel on the monitor. He felt as if they were staring back at him, judging his sorry state.

As he walked home, he surveyed the people he passed and wondered how many of them had undergone a similar procedure. It was impossible to tell; there were so many minimally invasive procedures nowadays with any number of cosmetic benefits. He remembered his shock at how small his incision was, and how interested his son was in it. This is where they cut you open, Dad?

Even brain surgery could be done with the smallest of incisions. He remembered when he was younger and saw pictures in his medical courses of the large stitching running up from above the ear and ending next to the brow. Horrifying scars, he thought, that children now couldn’t even imagine.

He shut the door of the hotel he was staying it behind him. He missed his children, and he could only hope that they missed him. It had been almost a month since he moved out, ending up in the hotel with nowhere else to go.

The refrigerator was nearly empty, save for bottles of water and takeout boxes illuminated by a sickly yellow light. While he had planned to gorge himself on his leftover burger and fries, upon opening the box, he found he had no appetite.

He paused. All he had consumed during the day was yogurt and the coffee with his wife. He should be starving by now. Unless the implant was finally working.

Henderson implants had been on the market for around three years when he finally decided to undergo the procedure. Since the creation of the implants, the average BMI in America had dropped significantly, putting more pressure on those who fell outside of the healthy range. The implants became highly in demand, especially given their quick recovery period and easy procedure. If he remembered correctly, the implants worked by inhibiting production of ghrelin, therefore reducing appetite. Another aspect of the implant was changing what foods were craved—switching from foods high in sugars and salt to those high in protein.

The success rate was high, but he had wondered if he was one of the outliers. A failure. Given his tendency to drown out his stress in food, this only made him eat more. His life had followed that pattern for six months since his procedure. He knew his wife was ashamed to be married to someone even slightly overweight, and that was one of the main reasons she sought a divorce. She could have easily found someone with everything he had to offer and more in a more fit package.

But this gave him hope. He grabbed his coat, the takeout bag still in his pocket, and decided to go on a walk to collect his thoughts. It was dark by then, with few people roaming the streets.  Crickets chirped around him, harmonizing with the stream of his mind. He would often walk the dog at this time of night, and fondly remembered the quiet times they had together on their walks in the neighborhood.

Should he contact his wife? She should be happy that the implant is working. It may even mean he could return home. Phone in hand, he stared at the screen as he walked, thumb hovering over her name. He nearly tapped the screen when a strong scent wafted into his nose.

By his feet was an animal. It was mangled beyond recognition, its only defining characteristic its chestnut fur.

He felt an odd, misplaced pang of hunger. This is how binges tend to start, a doctor had explained on the news. The implant patient is overcome by a hunger for the odd and unusual, typically animals that are normally not eaten. There had only been a handful of binges, all occurring in the daylight hours and in public. In the crisp autumn air, he felt completely alone.

He didn’t want to do this. Part of him was desperate to simply go home and rest, forgetting this ever happened. But his hunger had instinct to it, and he was unable to deny it. Slight fear set in as his body moved of its own accord, kneeling next to the animal. Under any other circumstances, being this close to a deceased animal would make him stomach roil. But now, he felt as if he had found an oasis, while the logical part of him panicked, convinced it was a mirage.

Looking over his shoulder to be sure no one was watching, he took the bag from his pocket and stuffed the creature into it before hastily returning to his hotel.

The kitchen in his hotel was small, but big enough. He may have been hungry, but not enough to eat this animal without preparing it. He stripped it of its skin and removed the meat, placing it in the small, cheap pan he had bought when he first “moved in.” It sizzled as it seared, and he periodically used a plastic spatula to flip the meat over until it was completely cooked.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than consuming the animal raw, which many bingers did. They told stories of feeling as if they would die if they didn’t eat at that exact moment. He couldn’t believe that he had to include himself in that category now, but it was irrefutable at this point. Still, he didn’t feel close to death–he instead felt an uncontrollable desire. He transferred the mostly-cooked meat to a paper plate and grabbed plastic utensils before sitting at the small table.

The second bite was better than the first, the third better than the second. He felt as if he were eating after a period of starvation, his taste buds embracing every nuance of flavor in the meat. Not even the gristle deterred him as he devoured his feast, leaving no scraps on the flimsy plate, now dyed yellow from grease.

After taking a moment to process his feast, he prepared himself for bed. Eating with such vigor brought sleep to him quickly. His plate and utensils remained on the table, as did the pan on the stove; reminders of this metamorphosis of self.

He awoke restless, yearning. He surveyed the remains of his last meal, serving their purpose of driving home the fact that he was no longer the man he knew twenty-four hours ago. It shook him, but not as much as it had the previous night. His logical reasoning was beginning to fade, replaced by his desire for meat.

After a shower, he visited the same café where he met with his wife, its proximity making it the most convenient place to visit. It was still mostly empty at that time of day, save for a few women who seemed to be on their way to work.

He could feel sweat beading on his forehead. His hunger came back full force. He felt his mind wandering, hoping that he would come across another animal on his way home. Sitting at a table with nothing but another cup of coffee, his hands shaking, one of the women suddenly approached him. Her black hair fell in her face as she leaned forward, speaking quietly.

“You’re binging too, aren’t you?”

He stared at her wide-eyed in silence. He had made sure no one saw him the previous night.

“I can smell it. Call it a sixth sense.”

He let out a breath, relieved that, at the very least, he hadn’t been seen. There was something mortifying about being seen in such a state. Still, he was now alarmingly conscious of his scent. Was there truly a scent to those who were binging?

“My name’s Maria. Can I sit?”

“Uh, sure.” He cleared his throat and motioned to the chair across from him. “I’m Ross.” It felt as if he were introducing someone else.

She smiled at him briefly before sitting, laying her coat across her lap. She was young; not young enough to be his daughter, but at least ten years younger than him.

“Sorry, I know this is weird.” She ran her fingers through her hair, brushing past a few knots in the process. “I just felt like I should talk to you.”

Maria scowled as a banner about the binge the day prior scrolled across the screen.

“There’s more of us than the news is letting on. Even though they’re broadcasting them more frequently.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

She cupped both hands around her mug, speaking into it. “I think they knew this was going to happen.”

Ross shook his head in disbelief. Who was they? Why would she think such a thing? He wondered if doctors would perform procedures with such dangerous potential outcome. Then again, even today, lifesaving procedures carried the very real risk of death. Was this better or worse than death? There was so much he wanted to ask, but he could tell that this conversation would be brief. He had to prioritize.

“But then… Why wouldn’t they stop production?”

“Money. They make too much off of the successes to even consider the failures. And even though they’re reeling it in, the publicity isn’t hurting them.”

She quickly tapped on her phone before showing him her screen. “Look at the statistics. Just as many people are getting Hendersons this year.”

Ross rubbed his temples. She was one of those types. A conspiracy theorist. But what if there was truth to what she was saying? “Is there anything we can do?”

“Some groups are fighting back. We’ve decided to accept it and see what happens. Besides, it’s not like we can get the implants taken out. You must know how they adhere to the wall of your stomach.”

Groups? He began to wonder just how many cases of binging there were, and how those people were coping. Beyond that, imagining the implant merging with his stomach disturbed him. The implant itself may have been unnatural, but it becoming one with his body was an entirely different issue. He wondered if it made him less human.

“I’ve probably said too much, but…” She reached out and put her hand over his in comfort. “You’ll be alright. We can still eat and drink normally, see?” She took a swig of coffee to prove her point.

“Yeah. I hope you’re right.”

He looked down at his lap. He had no appetite for “normal” food. It wasn’t so much that looking at it or smelling it repulsed him, it simply felt that it was something he shouldn’t eat, like glass or paper. Before he could ask if there were others experiencing this, Maria had disappeared from the café, leaving without so much as a parting word.

When he finally returned to his room, he found he still felt nothing toward “normal” food, although a tiny disgust began to creep in. His hunger overtook him, nearly negating all reason in his mind. He felt almost feral. Still, he wanted to control himself, to not eat such terrible things. But he wasn’t sure if his body would even take normal food anymore.

He stayed awake that night, considering his thoughts during his conversation with Maria. He had never considered humanity much, he found it took too much energy. But now he was inclined to question his own humanity. It was inhuman to crave such meat. If he couldn’t eat acceptable foods, and his body was merged with a man-made device, what was qualifying him as human? His flesh?

The small television in the corner caught his attention momentarily.

“…a notable doctor, famous for performing the first Henderson implant procedure, was discovered after a suspected assault this morning.”

His mind drifted to Maria. She said her group was peaceful, but could it be someone connected to them? He began to feel thankful that he didn’t have the opportunity to be mixed up in their politics.

As the sun began to rise, his eyes slowly closed.

He didn’t leave the house when he woke up that afternoon. He spent hours and hours in silence, considering everything other than the possible consequences of his actions. The hunger he felt overrode such logical thought.

The urge came to him when he first awakened. Less an urge and more of a duty. It was worse than the day before; worse in what he desired, and worse in that the small part of him that felt remorse was deadened. It feared him no longer,

Flesh. Young flesh. Where did the boundary between humans and animals sit? When it came down to the meat, what was the true difference?

But the skin was different. At least, he thought it was. He imagined it was. And he wanted to know what it was like. He saw it as a religious rite, biting into the skin and feeling the muscle beneath. He was still an acolyte, feeding off the scraps with feathers caught between his teeth. He had to become something greater.

He used the afternoon the formulate his plan. This couldn’t be spur of the moment; it had to be well thought out. He remembered: the house key mixed among his things, his wife’s weekly trip to the grocery store. If he hadn’t known better, he might have called it fate, that this came to him on this specific day.

When dusk fell, he made his way to his wife’s home.

The ride felt longer than it truly was, and he watched as the farmland, dyed red from the sunset, stretched as far as he could see. Any number of bugs collided with his windshield as he drove, their insides remaining on the glass.  Rather than wavering, his resolve only solidified as he approached the comfortable home.

He felt nostalgic standing in the driveway and gazing at the house. He used to play in the modest yard with his children, building them playhouses and treehouses. He suddenly wished he could return to those easier times. But he couldn’t allow himself the comfort of sentimentality now. He came here to complete a task, one of great importance.

His son was in the kitchen fixing himself a messy sandwich.

“Hey there.”

His son turned, his brows folding together in confusion. It had been months since he had seen his father, but he didn’t seem particularly happy. If anything, he spoke in a questioning tone. “Dad? Does Mom know you’re here?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course she does.” Ross approached the boy, holding his arms out. “Come here. I haven’t seen you in a while.”

As his son approached, Ross faltered for a moment. This was his child. How could he even consider doing such a thing? His arms lowered an inch. However, his thoughts were quickly overridden by that all-consuming hunger, and his fingers twitched in anticipation.

His wife opened the door just as he wrapped his hands around his son’s small neck.

“What the hell are you doing!?” She dropped the bags in her arms and rushed over to pry her husband’s hands away. His grip loosened almost immediately, requiring little effort. Their son was sobbing, running to his room as soon as he was freed and slamming the door. Their daughter peered down the staircase, her mouth agape.

“Jesus, I’m calling the police,” his wife whispered as she fumbled around in her purse for her phone.

Ross stood in silence and began to sob.

Maria sat huddled around a television with the rest of the small group. She twirled a lock of her hair around her finger, gnawing on a bone.

“A suspected binge has occurred in Glenshaw, this time resulting in an arrest. Officials are not releasing any information about the arrest at this time, only that the binger was arrested in his wife’s home. However, this is the first binge to lead to an arrest, as opposed to admittance to a medical facility.”

The bone snapped off in her mouth.

“Ross, was that you?” she whispered.

Two of the members next to Maria spoke up.

“Arrest?”

“I heard from another group that one of the members developed a taste for human blood. Do you think that’s it?”

Maria simply shook her head. “I really hope not.”

If binging led to the eating of human flesh, their groups would be searched for and rounded up. They would be separated and placed in either hospital rooms, or more likely, cells. Maria clasped her hands together and quietly prayed, wondering what god would answer.

Melanie Czerwinski is a graduate of the University of Delaware. Her work has been published in The Sucarnochee Review, Dark Ink Press’s Fall Anthology, and From Whispers To Roars.

The truth was I didn’t really need a book that night. My Christmas shopping was finished. Earlier I had built a cozy fire and I could have stayed home, trimming the tree, baking gingerbread cookies, maybe phoning far-away friends or answering letters.

A brittle box of holly trimmed notepaper had been cloistered away, pitched in with some outdoor lighting. The year Jim died, I didn’t want to decorate our front windows, then I failed to revive our custom. Funny how one long-held tradition or belief can evaporate altogether.

When I decided to give away the lights, old gifts I had meant to wrap resurfaced along with the stationery. I had enjoyed sending festive missives at the end of the year along with photos —— but when did that urge die? When had I become a person who no longer cherished life so much?

As if to prove something, I selected a crisp envelope and one sheet and started off with a cheerful greeting to Miranda. When did I see her last, my former schoolmate? Had it really been thirty years ago?  Maybe I didn’t get far and this is where a wandering began. 

Light snow was falling, filling the windowsill, decorating certain angles of the trees while avoiding other branches, like people who knew how to keep apart. On the mantle was a sturdy snow globe, purchased in the Alps, a solitary snowman in the center. When I shook it, the swirl drifted up, obscuring the miniature scene in a glamorous blindness.

The weather urged me to stay put. Instead, for reasons I can’t explain, I put on my insulated boots and my cashmere muffler and headed on foot to the bookshop by Cemetery Hill.

Though the signpost sounds ominous, there is no longer a graveyard near the hill. Older residents remember there was once and wicked things happened during a full moon or the equinox. But there are also numerous taverns in that part of town. Loiterers might say anything after a few drinks, especially to the gullible. There are teasers who like to toy with a listener, repeating formidable yarns, crypts that opened, drawers of ash becoming whole, circular footprints in the snow, a ghostly touch, narratives of regret. Some thrive on goosebumps.

When Jim and I were deciding on a property, the real estate agent seemed nervous telling us about Cemetery Hill. Jim winked. “If it’s haunted here, Lissie, we’d better find out how it affects the zoning ordinance.” And we laughed. Anytime I overhear a whispered story, I think of that afternoon. Buying our first house, we were hopeful and happy. I never had nightmares then. 

After navigating the icy steps, I searched to see what phase the moon was in. Heavy clouds swiftly crossed the sky, chasing the night. Luminarias dotted the way up a few driveways, coffined electric candles blessing the way out, their yellow glow challenging the gloom. An upward draft blew the snow’s secrets towards the rooftops, away from the sharp defining edges of the traffic lights.

Foolishly, I took no umbrella and the white stuff made itself at home on me as I trudged along, trying to spot any treacherous patches and avoid a spill. Blanched bones of streetlight made an odd geometry across the walkways, unevenly shoveled earlier today.

Though the bookstore was deserted at this hour, music was playing. It sounded a little like that holiday CD Miranda had sent me, right after the funeral. Some Christian boy choir, with angelic voices, tried to feed emptying hearts with anemic Gregorian chants. We had less and less in common, Miranda and I, but her kindness was the glue that kept our friendship from fraying. 

Cold flakes dusted my shoulders and hair. When I brushed them off, moisture hit the book jackets and I tried to dry them with my scarf. A paste of rock salt and dead snow that had clung to my tall boots was melting as I prowled the aisles, leaving a trail as murky as redemption denied. Red poinsettias along the cashier’s counter were insufficient to dispel the despair. What was I after, I wondered? Maybe a midnight sale table is just a distraction from the loneliness that can grip a soul at yuletide. 

I exited as empty as I entered. The door closed behind me with effort, sighing in exasperation.  Heavy clouds had thickened into a clotted substance overhead. Perhaps the residents had turned off the luminarias at bedtime. Or maybe these slight votive candles were overcome by the humid haze. 

Then I saw him.

At least the figure seemed to be male, confidently striding along in a navy nylon track suit with a hood carefully tied to obscure the face. A sexton’s cottage and generous churchyard were on my left. I could have moved closer to the wrought iron railing to let the stranger pass. But an impish impulse arose, guiding me to commandeer the sidewalk and stand my ground, so he would have to defer and pass around.

Everything happened quickly. As a car passed, the headlights collided with his silhouette, revealing that he was transparent. Next moment, the faceless creature merged with me. My right leg froze, mid-gait. My muscles could no longer move.

This had been a bitter winter but my shearling coat had shielded me from the elements. Only if I stayed out too long did my face and fingertips feel frosty. Tonight, locked in an eerie embrace, I felt a deep cold penetrating me. It was useless to try to break free. Whoever this was, he had me.

A dog barked, probably resenting the iciness, and I wondered if the individual walking the pooch was aware of me, caught off balance on one leg, like an ungainly woman turned to stone. But the dog owner didn’t seem to notice anything. Had I become invisible andimmobile?

Just then a few bars of church music reached me. Trying to touch the pavement with my right foot, I attempted to anchor myself to a section the boy choir had sung. Instead the overture from “Die Fledermaus” materialized, the last performance I had enjoyed with my husband. “The Blue Danube” flowed through my system like an irresistible heart humming. Suddenly, a force lifted me, drifting with me around an imaginary ballroom, weaving and dipping to the strains of an unworldly orchestra. I surrendered to it, let myself be swept along. I felt as excited as Rosalinde, getting ready for a masked ball at Prince Orlofsky’s.

As quickly as this possession took hold, it departed. My boots gently made contact with the sidewalk. I turned around to see a transparent figure strolling away, then a vanishing. 

Early morning light greeted me, shaking off my extraordinary adventure. Extremely hungry, I decided to head to the bakery, always so crowded on Fridays, especially before a holiday. Their cranberry muffins sold out before lunchtime. I’d get a few dozen and treat my neighbors. But when I got there, it was in darkness. Another peculiarity was that the colorful evergreen wreaths were gone. Were they going out of business? I bought muffins at the supermarket and quickly headed home. Then I realized why it was easy to walk briskly: the snow had been completely cleared away.

Another surprise was that my mailbox was full, jammed with Christmas cards, bills, and circulars. The postman certainly deserved his annual tip. There was a postcard from Miranda. “Call me, Lissie!” she demanded with big letters in red ink. “We’re worried about you, Lissie!”

Just then a neighbor’s child ran up my steps and rapped on the outside door. “My mother wanted to return your cookie trays,” she said. “I rang your bell but no one’s been home. Do you need them?” I assured her that there was no hurry and sent her home with two warm muffins.

As I shed my coat, I tried to make sense of my feelings. But words do not live entirely inside language and neither does new-found joy.

Native New Yorker LindaAnn LoSchiavo has had short fiction recently appear in Flatbush Review, The Indian River Review, The Moon Magazine, 101Fiction, Metamorphose, The Round-Up Zine, along with several anthologies.

Personal Journal: July 15, 1891

I knew her as Francine.

In reality, I didn’t actually know her; I only knew of her.  But, what I knew was everything there was to know.

Francine McCallister, aka Francine Jonesburg, aka Francine Potter, aka Janice Potter, aka Janice Smithson was a woman as fluid as a cloud.  She moved unencumbered from one point in her life to the next, regretting nothing, taking nothing with her, leaving nothing but memories if others even bothered to remember.  Francine wasn’t a ghost, but she was as difficult to track as one.  I should know.  My insurance company hired me to do just that.  I work on a 5% commission of what I save them in insurance fraud.  Francine was an expert in insurance fraud.  I was the wizard in insurance fraud investigation.

So far, I liked my odds.

I followed what leads I found and scoured the land for signs of Francine’s excessive spending habits.  She was a fancier of fine living, fine jewelry, and high stakes gambling.  The first two she mastered in her teens.  The last often eluded her clutches.  Once her money disappeared, Francine disappeared.  She frequently surfaced as a new bride in a new town with a new insurance policy on a newly deceased new husband.  I am certain she did not do the killing herself, however, Francine usually spearheaded the plan and directed the execution to perfection.  Dividing a lump sum insurance settlement with her cohorts usually precluded a midnight escape prior to presented claims against old gambling debts.

Her modus operandi concluded with a hasty retreat under the cover of darkness, a new identity, and a new town.  After trailing her for months, it is in this scene of her one act play that I find myself barely two weeks behind her trail.

I am close.

And she does not even know I exist.

All I have been doing is traveling from town to town inquiring about newly written life insurance policies with large cash payouts.  Rarely am I within three weeks of the beneficiary making a cash claim.  This time, today, I am in Topeka, scrutinizing the details of a $5000 life insurance policy on Mr. Julian Tidrow, a circus performer, with a new wife, and an (apparently) popular knife throwing performance.  Mr. Tidrow, as advertised, can throw a series of knives, while blindfolded, at his wife, after securing her to a rotating plank of lumber, while not laying harm to her person in any manner whatsoever.

The circus bill does not fit the pattern of Miss McCallister, but it does involve enough of a payment to warrant my further investigation.

The circus will be in town for three more days.  Ironically, so will I.

I encountered Mr. Tidrow practicing his skills with an outline of his wife during the morning hours.  His performance was not scheduled to begin until later that evening.  Without disturbing the maestro, I marveled at his accuracy.  All twelve knives found their mark within one inch of the pitched outline revolving before me.  Even if his blindfold was not opaque as claimed, his skill was more than well honed.  Once finished, I introduced myself and my purpose.

Mr. Tidrow was an amiable fellow, enthused by my enthusiasm, and eager to introduce me to his ladies.  I raised an eyebrow before he explained.  He whistled loudly and three women, all blond, all dressed daringly alike to distract the men in the forthcoming performances appeared and awaited their formal introductions.  He introduced the first as his wife of four months, Mrs. Rose Tidrow.  The next two Julian introduced as Suzie and Lucy (sisters) and in training to replace Mrs. Tidrow who wanted to exit her chosen career as a target to begin her new one as a mother (due in six months).  All three were kind and gracious in their demeanor.  The sisters seemed very excited to be part of the act.  The circus gave them a new purpose in life and the ability to leave the rural community to see the world.  All in all, I found no malfeasance from these four.  I did not divulge all of the details of my purpose, only that their insurance carrier found it strange that the thrower of the knives, and not the target, was the insured.  It should have been the other way.

Mr. Tidrow bellowed with a loud laugh before he clarified his purpose.  Because he was the only knife thrower in the circus and possibly the best knife thrower in the world, he was the act.  Should he die, he wished to establish enough funds for his wife and unborn child to live comfortably.  The sisters would receive a stipend during their time in find another position, not to exceed one year in duration.  The chance of a non-smoking, non-drinking, non-gambling man perishing prior to an exceedingly old age was slim.  The policy was just that, insurance against the improbable.

I thanked all four of them and divulged my intention to attend this evening’s performance.  They all waived me goodbye as I departed.

I was happy to have met the lot.  However, I was still skeptical by nature.

The Tidrow Knife Extravaganza was scheduled for 8pm.  I was not even 10am.  There was more than enough time for Francine to make an appearance and thus a disappearance.  I saw it before.  I do not wish to witness history repeat itself.

I rented a room in a nearby hotel and took an afternoon nap.  My ticket to tonight’s performances said a 7pm start.  This gave me enough time to dine in one of Topeka’s many fine steak houses.  After waiting in line for nearly thirty minutes and greeting other patrons in the pack dining hall, I had just enough time to finish my dinner, partake of a whiskey, and saunter to the circus.  My goal tonight was to watch the Tidrow knife act and then watch Mr. Tidrow for the rest of the night.  If I were Miss McCallister, I wouldn’t permit such a perfect opportunity to pass.

By ten til eight, I receive a note from Lucy (one of the sisters) to immediately come back stage.  I hurried and was greeted by Lucy in tears.  She said that Mr. Tidrow was dead.  I pushed forward and found Mr. Tidrow bound and gagged to the spinning wheel his wife so recently frequented.  Near his person were three knives embedded in the wood.  In his chest was one knife embedded to the hilt.  Both Mrs. Tidrow and Suzie lay dead on the sawdust floor, each having stabbed the other with two of the remaining knives. 

I calmed Lucy enough to listen to her testimony.  She said Mrs. Tidrow caught Mr. Tidrow and Suzie in a compromising position.  Mrs. Tidrow hit Mr. Tidrow over the head with the knife hilt knocking him unconscious.  Suzie (with a knife) lunged at Mrs. Tidrow.  Her balance was neither as refined nor practiced as that of Rose.  Lucy said Rose (with a knife) lunged at Suzie.  Both women stabbed each other and died immediately of their wounds. That is when Lucy ran and saw me in the crowd.  She wrote a note for me to go backstage and asked a circus hand to deliver it.  It took me a few minutes to make my way through the thickening crowd of nearly two thousand patrons.  When I arrived, I found Rose, Suzie, and Julian deceased.  Lucy was in tears.  The Ringmaster of the circus (always at the ready) diverted the attention of the crowd by extending the duration of each act until he could find any replacement for the Knife Extravaganza.

It would take nearly two hours for the Ringmaster to admit defeat. 

A single call to the Sheriff and the deputies removed all three bodies.  All that remained was Lucy.

I helped escort Lucy to the Sheriff’s office where she made her formal statement.  I had no other reason to doubt her story.  She stood to gain a mere pittance, what Julian referred to as a stipend a mere $5 per week for a year.  The former Mr. Tidrow was insured by a friendly competitor of mine and I found a small pleasure in knowing they had to pay off the policy to a dead woman with no heirs.  Both the Sheriff and I agreed the death of a pregnant woman was indeed tragic.  He asked me what I was going to do.  I told him I was going to Lincoln, Nebraska to follow a lead about a new widower who possessed nearly 50000 acres of rich farmland.  We both shook hands and I departed Topeka at sunrise the next day.

Then, I returned at sunset the next week; this time with a Federal Marshall and an Eastern Schooled doctor.

I met with the Sheriff and his fiancé, a Miss Lucy Barcley and had them both immediately arrested for murder and insurance fraud.  Miss Lucy immediately protested her incarceration.  The Sheriff found solace in silence.  Both demanded a lawyer.

By morning, both would need a very good lawyer.

I contended that Miss Lucy was not Miss Lucy, but rather the widowed Francine (McCallister) Tidrow.

How did I know this?

Because the good doctor is a very good maternity and baby doctor.

Lucy was not pregnant, but Rose Tidrow was.

So how is the deceased Mrs. Tidrow not pregnant and the living Lucy is already at three months?

Since all three ladies (Suzie, Lucy, and Rose) looked alike and dressed alike to a recent acquaintance such as me, it should be difficult to tell them apart.

However, I didn’t have to.

Rose Tidrow, if she was Francine, would be operating from a basis of greed.  I believe she took out the insurance policy on Mr. Tidrow and had him add the rider to pay the replacements (Lucy and Suzie), not out of charity, but more for a diversion.  If Rose could get either Suzy or Lucy to fall for Julian Tidrow, then Rose could kill her husband in a fit of emotional rage.  If all three women dressed and acted alike (not to Mr. Tidrow who knew them all, but to a newcomer such as myself), then Rose could kill either Suzie or Lucy (whoever was the true lover of Mr. Tidrow) and blame her for both murders.  Only the fact that Mr. Tidrow didn’t have one lover, he had two (both Suzie and Lucy), gave Mrs. Rose Tidrow a unique opportunity.  Rose killed Julian with the knives.  Now it didn’t matter.  Either Suzie or Lucy could come in and see Mr. Tidrow dead.  Then Rose would kill the girl.  A brief call to the other (either Lucy or Suzie) and Rose would kill them also.  Rose gave a great performance as Lucy and directed me to find the ghastly scene.  I arrived, and then the Sheriff, and the both of us declare the three deaths as crimes of passions.  No suspicion befalls Lucy for she will not benefit greatly from Mr. Tidrow’s insurance policy.  I leave in the morning.  The circus leaves in two days.  The grieving Lucy (actually the widow Rose Tidrow) suddenly finds love in the arms of the Sheriff and the two are soon engaged to be married.  That is the story I accepted when I departed Topeka.

I returned with experts and a new theory.

I still believe that Lucy Barcley is Mrs. Rose Tidrow is Miss Francine McCallister.  My hired doctor can prove that she is pregnant.  The Federal Marshall inquired to a few bankers to find the debt load of the Sherriff amounts to nearly $1000 in overdue loans. 

I believe that the Sherriff, who had ample opportunity to meet and greet the circus performers, knows that Lucy is Rose.  Their engagement is simply a ruse to wait for me to leave (permanently) so Lucy (Rose) can discreetly claim Mr. Tidrow’s insurance policy, pay the Sherriff his $1000, and leave a very wealthy woman.  All he must do to earn his money is falsely file the paperwork (full of lies no one would ever read).

I know all of this as a fact.  I am positive.  However, I cannot prove any of it.  The Sherriff knows this.  The Marshall knows this.  Specifically, Lucy-Rose-Francine knows this.  Her attorney advised her to remain calm and quiet.  After two days, the Marshall ordered the release of Lucy and the Sheriff and wished them both a happy marriage.  Then, he publically scolded me for incompetence.

I permanently left Topeka that day.

But, I did not leave ashamed or sorry.

It took eight months, but I encountered Miss McCallister in Lincoln, Nebraska posing as Sarah Montingue, heiress to some coal baron fortune and eager to find a suitable husband of similar taste and wealth.  My brother, posing as a rich widower with 50000 acres of rich farmland, found her anxious to merge both fortunes and secure her with a lucrative life insurance policy for him.  My brother agreed to her terms if the life insurance policy covered both of their lives.  With a $20000 benefit at stake, Miss Montingue agreed to be wed.

The wedding lasted a mere 1 hour.  The marriage lasted the rest of the day.  Unfortunately, a bandit raided the home of the wealthy landowner, with thievery as the sole intent, and encountered the bride attempting to negotiate a deal for nearly $1000 of the insurance benefit in exchange for the bandit not killer her.

Unlike the Sheriff of Topeka, I did not have debts hanging over my head.  However, after years of dismal failures, I did have a wealth insufficient to retire upon.  $1000 will not last for the duration of my life.  What my brother offered ($10000 or half) was more than enough to live comfortably in the style to which I have want to become accustomed.  While not a wealthy landowner, my brother did sign the insurance policy in his real name, thus avoiding the charge of fraud when claiming the benefit.

All that remained between me and a nice retirement was Sarah Montingue, aka Miss Francine McCallister, and one bullet of the 45 Colt caliber.

She hit the floor in a somewhat less-than-graceful manner.

At four cents a shell, I can afford to reload.

With degrees in physics and chemistry, Andy Betz has tutored and taught in excess of 30 years. His novel, short stories, and poems are works still defining his style. He lives in 1974, has been married for 26 years, and collects occupations (the current tally is 95).

Articulated. That’s what Dr. White called the brand new skeleton that moved joint by joint and was now hanging prominently in his private office. Henry Webster’s eyes were wide as he took in the skeleton, reaching out to stroke the ulna, to flex the phalanges. Most doctors didn’t have a skeleton, but then most doctors didn’t have their own apothecary shop or office. Dr. White wasn’t most doctors, and that’s why Henry liked him so.

     Originally hanging in the front window, Dr. White moved the skeleton to his examination room under intense community pressure. The good people of Gilmanton, New Hampshire, were fervent in their belief that the dead should be buried as soon as possible and most certainly not desecrated, and that this monstrosity was simply not for the eyes of God-fearing people. Interested less in educating the masses and more in maximizing his profits with best-sellers like “Dr. White’s Soothing Syrup for Babies and Toddlers, pat. pend. 1873,” the doctor acquiesced to his paying public.

     When Henry had tired of hearing his mother prattle endlessly about yet another ailment he stared politely past the brass mortar and pestle, past the small brass pill maker, and at Doc White until he received a knowing nod. Then, through the open door across from the apothecary’s cabinet, Henry wandered toward the skeleton’s new place of residence. He let his fingers trace the length of the examination table on his way to the adjacent private office. It was here that Henry did what he normally did under these circumstances: looked in on the perfectly preserved specimens floating in liquid. There was an eyeball, a heart, a lower jaw, a malformed foot, and, Henry’s personal favorite, an infant who died at birth—and its parasitic twin—on full display.

Henry could hear his mother asking for more laudanum. She was going on and on, questioning how people could have a funeral when they hadn’t even found the body to know he’s dead.

     He’s dead, mother. He’s been missing for three weeks.

     “I just don’t understand, Doctor. How can they do that? How can they give up hope?” Mrs. Webster’s voice rose hysterically.

     Because they know he’s too stupid to last this long on his own. Henry snorted, then felt a twinge of guilt. It’s true. The guilt disappeared.

     “I’m just not sure how I’ll get through Olin’s funeral without more laudanum, Doctor. It sounds devilish of me, but I’m thankful it’s my nephew and not one of my children. But these children–first Austin Bunker, then little Georgie Foss, then my dear niece Mary, and now–” She sobbed.

     Henry closed his eyes tightly and allowed his thoughts to drown out his mother’s voice. It didn’t take long, for Dr. White’s office was a place of respite for him. He enjoyed making himself at home while he perused the specimens. Dr. White had given him free reign of the office long ago after learning of the boy’s interests. When Henry’s nosy sister Ellen discovered he was dissecting animals and told their parents, they promptly consulted Dr. White. The doctor dismissed their concerns about his mental well-being. In fact, he told them to encourage Henry’s curiosity. He even suggested they allow the boy to come round so that the doctor could teach him all he knew. Henry’s first lesson was how to make the mercury and alcohol concoction used in the preservation of specimens.

     “You have a brain built for the scientific method, Henry,” the doctor told him one warm afternoon. “You aren’t bothered by the sight of the unusual, nor do you let our religious underpinnings trap you into thinking this is wrong. Your mind is open enough to see that our old ideas about the body being made of humors is incongruous with what we know–and can see.”

     Soon thereafter, Dr. White presented him with a book by Andreas Vesalius called De humani corporis fabrica: On the Fabric of the Human Body. Henry was just ten but was fascinated with Vesalius’ depictions of the dissected human body. Bones, cartilage, ligaments, muscles–it was all there, and it enthralled Henry. He knew with this knowledge, things would never be the same.

     Henry gingerly touched the bones one by one, flexing the joints to make each dance its individual dance. He thought back to the time when he feared the doctor’s office, before he’d found the human body fascinating, before Dr. White became his friend. Only three years ago, it now seemed to Henry like a dream.

     A group of his classmates had walked home from school just behind Henry. As the group dwindled down to three of his cousins–Olin Mudgett, Samuel Whitehouse, and Josiah Webster–their abuse of Henry began. At 9, Henry was in the same grade as Olin, though Olin was 12. The boys usually picked on Henry about his intelligence, but anything was fair game to them, from Henry’s appearance to his sister taking a job cleaning for Dr. White.

     “Henry, are you ever going to grow, or will you always be scrawny and skinny?” Olin started. Olin always started. He was pulling a small strip of leather through his fingers absentmindedly, like a mother would stroke her daughter’s hair.

     “He’ll always be scrawny and skinny. He doesn’t even look like a Mudgett,” Samuel said.

     “He doesn’t look like a Webster either,” Josiah added. “Maybe someone left him on Uncle Levi’s doorstep and Aunt Theodora felt sorry for him.”

     Olin snorted. “Aunt Theodora wouldn’t remember if she gave birth or not, what with all the laudanum she takes.”

     Henry kept his head down and continued walking. He didn’t stop even when he felt the crack of the leather sting his neck.

     “You know your father really made mine mad, Henry,” Olin said, slowly drawing the leather through his fingers. It was attached to a stick, making the ‘whip’ part of a whip-and-top toy. He’d stopped playing with the top long ago and instead used the whip to torment weaker living beings. “He made it sound like our family’s not as good as yours, but father reminded him that we’re the same family.”

     Henry rolled his eyes. He felt the leather take another bite of his neck. He kept going.

     “I told my father our family is better than yours.” Olin jumped in front of Henry, forcing him to stop. They were next to Dr. White’s. “I think you’re a chicken, just like your father.”

     Henry glared at him.

     “Want to prove you’re not?”

     “No.”

     “Too bad.” He flicked the whip at Henry’s face, but Henry jumped out of the way just in time.

     Josiah added, “I heard he’s afraid of Doc White.”

     “I am not,” Henry said, glancing sideways at the doctor’s office. The boys were right. He was afraid. His mother came home from there once and didn’t know who Henry was. And whenever she took spoonfuls of Dr. White’s syrupy liquid in the brown bottle, she often fell asleep so hard Henry couldn’t wake her up.  

     “You’re afraid of what goes on in there.” Olin pushed his finger into Henry’s chest. “So I think you should go in.”

     “No.” In spite of his best attempt to slow it, Henry’s heart was racing.

     “If you don’t go in, I’ll make you go in.”

     “I heard Miss Oberhund after school saying that Doc White got called to Old Man Wissen’s farm to help deliver a calf. So guess who isn’t here?” Samuel taunted.

     Henry grimaced, but his patience was extraordinary. The boys hadn’t laid hands on him up to this point, and he was used to their verbal abuse. He could wait anything out, just like his father’s punishments in the attic.

     Suddenly, Henry felt several hands on him, pushing and pulling and forcing him to the door of the doctor’s office. The small leather whip bit into his face and neck. He saw the solid wood counter go by. The glass in the apothecary cabinet glinted in the sun. Before he knew it, the boys shoved him into the doctor’s private office and pulled the door shut. Henry’s eyes roved all over the room, looking for an exit, but something on a shelf arrested his eyes. He blinked and cocked his head. He gingerly took a few steps forward, shortening the distance between him and the oddity floating in liquid in a huge glass jar. He let out a gasp. He clenched his eyes shut, but they flew open in seconds.

     Is that the devil? he thought.It looked like a baby, but it had part of another tinier baby growing out of it. Only part–two legs, an arm, and part of a head. Atop the head was a small tuft of hair and a single tooth. That’s not the devil, he told himself. It’s just not normal, that’s all.

     It grew dark, but Henry didn’t notice, for all he could see were the parts and pieces of humans in the other jars, labeled and lined up beautifully.

     “What are you doing in here, young man?”

     The voice startled Henry back to reality. His stomach rumbled. What time is it?  He turned to see Dr. White.

     “I say, what are you doing in here?”

     “I’m sorry, Doctor White. My cousins, they–” Henry hesitated. He didn’t want any more tricks from the boys if he told.

     “Three of ‘em?” Doc White asked, his voice turning friendly. “Another Mudgett boy, a Webster, and a Whitehouse?”

     Henry nodded.

     “What’d they do, son?”

     “They shoved me in here and shut the door on me.”

     Dr. White nodded. “Ruffians. I know they’re your cousins, but they’re ruffians.” He walked over to the specimen jars. “Henry, isn’t it?”

     “Yes, sir.”

     “Do you find these interesting, Henry?” The doctor put his large paw-like hand on Henry’s shoulder.

     “Yes, sir!”

     “You don’t find them scary?”

     “No, sir. Why should they be scary? They’re just, well, they’re–” His nine year old brain couldn’t find the right word. “Like me. Like my brain. Different.”

     “Anomalies, Henry. Anomalies. Not usual, different. And you’re right. They should not be scary, yet many people find them so. There are worse monstrosities walking this earth than that poor baby there.”

     From that point on, Henry respected Dr. White more than anyone else, and not solely because he understood Henry’s preoccupation with the human body or because he assured his family that boys dissecting animals was a sign of robustness. Medicine was on the cusp of changing. Phrenology was on its way out, and real medicine was on its way in. In England, Dr. Lister championed for cleanliness in surgery. Many doctors thought him a quack until post-surgery mortality decreased.

    The feeling was mutual. Doc White looked at Henry as his potential protégé, a boy beyond his years in intelligence and maturity, a boy who was not surprised by medical findings, a boy who was not deterred by what others found gross or against God. Henry thrived under Dr. White’s tutelage.

     “Henry,” Dr. White called, breaking the boy from his reminiscence. “Are you–there you are, son.” He smiled at the boy. “I think your mother is ready now.” Henry winced at the reminder.

     “Did you give her more laudanum?” Henry asked. He’d told Dr. White about his mother’s attentiveness to the little brown bottle.

     The doctor nodded. “But–” He put one finger to his lips. “It’s diluted.” He winked. Henry winked back. “Remember, Henry, your mother has many difficulties in her life. Few people are as rational as you. And now, with your cousin, Olin…”

     “I understand, sir,” he said. “I’m an anomaly.”

     Doc White patted him on the shoulder. “It’s not a bad thing, Henry. Say, Mrs. Oglesby’s sow should be giving birth in the next couple of days. Want to help?”

     Henry’s eyes widened. “Really? I can?”

     “I think you’re ready. Have you been studying up on Vesalius’ book?”

     “Every day, sir. Every day.”

     “I’ll send for you when I get the news.”

     “Oh, thank you, Dr. White. Thank you.” Henry was beaming. He was on his way to becoming a doctor.

     “Off you go, son.”

#

Henry had skipped all the way home, circling back when he strayed too far from his mother. He didn’t care who saw him. He didn’t care that he was supposed to be in mourning like his mother and the rest of his family. He was going to get to see the inner workings of a real, live pig. He was happy being an anomaly.

     “Henry!” His father’s voice boomed up the stairs. “Change into your Sunday clothes. Olin’s funeral starts in forty minutes.”

     Up in his attic bedroom, Henry sat on his floor and pulled out the small wooden box from under his bed. He opened it and smiled as he admired Austin’s favorite marble, Georgie’s sweater button, and Mary’s white leather glove. He carefully made space for the strip of leather from Olin’s whip. His collection was growing.

J.J. Fletcher is an English teacher, writer, and dog rescuer. “Anomalies” 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.

By the time the tree turned 100, its past was so fractured that no one knew how old it was, let alone where it came from and what was now buried, wrapped in cloth of molder and decay, at its roots. A succession of private owners of the house, all strangers to one another, ensured that legends of the tree died well before the tree itself did. Some of the children who once lived there carried the myths away to new locations, told them as scary stories at campouts or sleepovers or—more often—kept them locked away in hearts that still beat in fear at tree shadows cast onto ceilings on windy, moonlit nights. But no one stayed close enough to the tree for the myths to hang on and create the legends that, in an earlier time had clung to its branches and warded off prospective buyers.

The first half of its hundred-year-life, on the other hand, had been fraught with legend and myth. Neighborhood kids back then knew that it had been planted by the Widow Maureen whose husband had died in the First World War, and who, desperate for the family fate had robbed her of, stole a baby from the county children’s home. When the child died of malnourishment after only two days, the neighborhood kids also knew that she had buried it in her backyard and planted a fig tree over its grave. The fig tree.

Kids who told the story embellished wildly, claiming that the Widow killed the child on purpose and planted it like a seed, hoping it would sprout into her own child; that the Widow was a witch whose spells went wrong and gave life to the tree itself instead of the remains that lay buried beneath it; that the Widow, years and years after she’d done her murderous deed, hung herself from a withered branch of the tree with a note clutched in her hand requesting that she be buried with her stolen child among the snaking roots of the fig tree. But who can say what portion of legend contains truth, and who can read the intentions of a heart shattered by grief?

So children made up jump rope rhymes about the Widow and her tree (Old Witch Maureen/She was snoring/one-two-three, I touched her tree/four-five-six, it started to twitch/seven-eight-nine, it grew a spine). They retold the stories to scare younger siblings, and avoided it like all children do to all haunted things.

Yet, like all haunted things, the tree still had its victims.

Mostly they were children from the neighborhood, and mostly they just… disappeared. Many of them were troubled, and so it was easy for the police to say runaways, make the perfunctory gestures, and then let the forgetting begin. Others, though, died in their sleep, so it was harder to forget, but still impossible to understand the truth. No one thought of the tree because how could anyone know that each child died swathed in waking nightmare? How could they know of eyes wide-open in the dark, watching paralyzed as tree limb shadows danced on the ceiling of the bedrooms? Or the way the shadows, with a house-shaking gust of wind, would peel away from the ceiling, catch at the souls of the children, and leave their bodies lifeless?

And, of course, no one noticed the strange fruit that grew on the tree—out of season, even—how the flesh twisted and the skin split like little open mouths.

Then, gradually, gradually, the stories from the past twined themselves into the tragedy of the present. Old memories stirred themselves awake. Parents who had been children when the Widow Maureen planted her tree remembered the fear the whole town felt back then, remembered crossing the street when passing the house, peering over the fence on a dare to get a glimpse of the gnarled tree.

This was in the 1940s, and the Widow, though a recluse, was still alive—at least according to legend. Any sympathy the people in town might have had for the Widow and her broken-down life had died with their children. Angry parents threatened to rout the Widow from her home, to burn it down along with the accursed tree—but the truth is, they were just as terrified as their kids, clinging to sweat-damp sheets at midnight, had been.

And so the Widow died of her own natural or unnatural causes, and her house lay, desolate and unsold for a decade or two afterwards. But then time passed, neighbors moved away, and the old stories lost their hold on the town. Someone bought the house for dirt-cheap from the bank, renovated it, sold it at a profit. Families moved in and out through the decades. Another handful or so of kids died or went missing, and no one made the connection. The small town had become a large one filled with busy people with disconnected lives.

And this is where Heather comes into the story. She was only nine when her parents bought the property where the fig tree, ancient and immense, grew and thrived. They bought the house from a pair of grandparents whose own kids, grown and far away, were safe from the tree, and whose grandkids bound as children are to the schedules and demands of their parents’ lives never came to visit. That was what eventually caused the owners to sell—they tired of always being the visitors, never the visited, and so they packed it all in and moved to be closer to the grandkids just at the same time Heather and her parents moved to this Texas town.

From the beginning, Heather hated the tree. With its twisting branches reaching into the air like a dozen outspread arms, and its roots thick on the ground like fat snakes, the tree seemed to be composed somehow of living parts. It creaked and groaned and whispered through her window at night. It even breathed like a living thing.

This she noticed one morning when she was playing in the backyard a week, maybe two after moving into the new house. She was dragging around a stick she’d found, inspecting all the trees in the yard. She wanted to build a tree house, a massive construction that would bring in other kids from the neighborhood, earn her some friends. Some ambitious homeowner, somewhere along the line, had turned the backyard into a virtual orchard, spacing fruit trees a few feet apart stretching from one side of the fence to the other; but these were barely more than saplings, and would never support her weight, let alone the wooden masterpiece she was already building in her imagination.

Only one tree on the property would do, Heather knew, and it was with something like fear that she went to check it out. By the time she got to the dark, ugly corner of the yard where the fig tree grew, she was walking on tiptoe. Sneaking. The tree loomed. Heather hesitated, then stepped into its shady grasp. She moved around under the branches, looking up. Shadows shifted up there among the fuzzy leaves and wizened fruit, and she whacked her stick against the trunk, watching for squirrels or birds in the branches above. Listening for them too, but instead, she heard a sound coming from the air around her. A ragged, uneven sound, like someone trying to get their breath back after a run. Quiet-like, but not quite under control. For just one or two seconds she thought it was her own breathing, but when she sucked in, held her breath, the sound went on. Cold fingers seemed to grip her lungs then, and she ran back to the house like a wild thing was after her.

It wasn’t long before the tree started creeping into Heather’s dreams. The dreams never really made sense, never seemed scary when she thought them through the next morning, but they felt scary somehow, the sense of them if not the detail. She’d be playing in the backyard and she’d hear something moving. Looking over her shoulder, she’d see the branches of the tree whipping around like a tornado was settling down on it. Then, with the sudden surrealism of dreams, all the trees would be moving, thrashing around, and a wind so strong that she couldn’t fight against it would begin to push her backwards, towards the tree. Relentlessly. That was a new word for her then, and she felt it, that relentless force in the pit of her stomach during those dreams.

She never told anyone about the dreams or about the real fear that caused them. It seemed like such a little-kid thing, to be afraid of a tree. So she kept it in through the spring months and into summer, through the growing season, ripe with baskets of figs brought to the table and baked into treats she refused to even taste—not all figs are for eating, she knew. The summer harvest led into monsoon season, with its storms and storms. Even with her curtains closed, even on moonless nights, the tree shadows still danced their frenzied dance on her ceiling. If she closed her eyes, they crept closer, so she stared, her eyes open and bleary to keep those shapes at bay. But there’s only so much a kid can do against the wrath of storm and the desperation of a century-old curse.

One night, Heather woke to crashing and flashing, and it was like the summer tempest had broken in to her bedroom. The tree shadow danced madly, its twiggy fingers beckoning, and Heather, against every muscle of her straining will, answered. The dreaded and familiar dance cast onto the walls and ceiling, Heather got up from bed. She paused at the window and watched the frenzy of the storm. It was wild in a way she’d never seen before, tornado-wild, all lightning and thunder and slashing winds. She slid her window up.

If she could have watched herself from a distance, if some shadow version of herself could have stayed behind, she would have seen her own small form swing one leg over the sill, then the other, and drop down into the mud-slick flower bed outside. She would have seen how the tree shadow slid out of her room then and curled around her shoulders like a comforting arm. She would have watched and been powerless to stop herself, just as she was powerless to control her own movements, her legs walking her across the backyard, toward the fig tree, backlit strangely against the storm-lashed sky.

Lightning flared and thunder cracked like boughs breaking. Standing at the trunk of the tree, Heather looked on as a fork of lightning split from the clouds and struck—boom!—the crown of the tree. She stood without flinching as the tree trembled, shrieked, and fell to the ground, a final step in its twisting dance. Its roots, clinging still to the earth that had cradled it for 100 years, erupted into the air, flinging clumps of dirt onto Heather’s unmoving form. Hot, scalding hot air rushed out of the pit the tree roots opened up. “Heeeaaather…” the air hissed, the tree hissed, the stormy night hissed.One minute Heather stood at the crumbling edge of the hole, looking up, and the next minute—flash!—she was gone.

The tree isn’t there anymore. Another family lives where Heather’s family used to live, and they know nothing of the hole bulldozed over where a woodshed now stands. The tree is gone and now its stories are gone, too. They fell into the hole the toppled tree left behind, decaying and breaking down like everything else in that dark space. Maybe Heather is down there, too, with only a dead baby for company. Maybe Maureen and Heather and the baby make up new jump rope rhymes together. Or maybe Heather survived that night, Maybe she and her family moved away and she forgot all about the tree or maybe she never forgot. Maybe she never got over that night and never talks about it to anyone ever. Or maybe the tree that isn’t there anymore still casts shadows on the ceiling and kids still huddle under blankets watching them move. Maybe there was no Heather, and no Maureen, and no tree, or maybe the tree still stands, unscathed by the storm. Maybe it’s all just a legend.

Laura Walker holds an MFA from Northern Arizona University, where she was editor in chief for Thin Air Magazine. She writes both poetry and fiction, and teaches writing classes at Southern Utah University. She comes from Southern California by way of Flagstaff, AZ, and always finds herself wishing for a little more snow and a little less sun.

Sunday Morning

James woke on the cabin floor. The smell of pine filled his nose and an ache like a dagger split his frontal lobe. As the world came back into focus and memory flooded over him, he sat up quickly. Was he alone? Was the creature gone?

He leapt to his feet, staggered, caught himself on a kitchen chair. He’d either drunken himself insane or last night was real. He glanced around, gingerly touched his forehead. It was sticky, red when he pulled his hand away. He moved toward the back door that stood ajar, afraid of what he might find. This wasn’t how this weekend was supposed to go.

Last Thursday

The Great Smoky mountains loomed in the distance, their silhouettes rising into the sky like frozen tidal waves, dark against a blue backdrop. A white cloud rolled overhead, casting a shadow that crawled across grass and trees seamlessly, like an impending monster. Veronica held her breath as it passed over her, and James reached for her hand but she didn’t notice. His fingers found hers and she received them, but did not tear her gaze from the landscape. She was like that sometimes—dreamily lost in a place where he couldn’t quite find her.

“Thinking about our wedding?” James asked, almost afraid to break the spell the mountains had cast on her.

“Yeah,” she whispered, glanced at him slowly. “I’m excited to announce the engagement.” Her eyes were pools of chocolate.

“Good, let’s go get that selfie by the falls,” he urged, but her gaze was back in the distance like a fly caught in honey. “We’ll post it tonight.”

She nodded slowly, then smiled back at him and pulled herself away from the picturesque scene. It dragged after her like gum on a shoe.

They cleaned up the remains of the lunch they had eaten at the picnic area and tossed the garbage into bins that warned: clean up waste—bears will pillage.

*

It was dusk by the time they pulled away from Laurel Falls and drove toward the vacation cabin. Google said it was several miles away, but the sun fell fast, its last rays sinking below the horizon, leaving them with only their headlights as guides. The darkness was thick on either side of the road and the land grew murkier as they climbed in elevation.

James felt disoriented by the change in topography. The road was the rim of a glass—if they veered off course, they would plummet down either side. It twisted and turned, mist played with the light, reflecting it back to them as they drove higher, higher. They ticked up the rollercoaster, the front of the vehicle on a sharp incline. Veronica’s breath quickened; her anxiety grew by the minute. It had been a mistake to wait until dark to head to the cabin.

“Are we almost there?” she asked with a shaky voice.

“Almost.” The discomfort was growing in him, too, but he wouldn’t let it show. “Watch for a sign that says Cave Road, then we want number 25”.

The road leveled out where they found their turn, but sloped back up to an incline sharply. Heading east, they passed driveways with signs in the teens that alternated on the left and the right. No cabins were visible—they were set back too far with no lights, no sign of humanity. They might as well have been in a tunnel underground. And then there it was, a carved 25 on a wooden sign, marking the driveway to their rented home.

James guided the front end of the Trailblazer down the rocky path, which was longer than he anticipated. Headlights illuminated the front of a rustic cabin nestled among trees that formed a canopy above. Only a small section of sky was visible above the roof, speckled with stars.

He pulled alongside the cabin where the driveway came to an end. Veronica gasped as the car went over a bump, began a sharp decline. The night was an optical illusion; they hadn’t expected the change in inclination. James slammed on the brakes, coins that had been in the cupholder spilling all over the floor. He put the car into park as they caught their breath, looked down into the thick woods illuminated by the headlights. Mist gathered among the trunks. Were they above the clouds or had the clouds descended to meet them?

“I think I almost had a heart attack,” whispered Veronica between breaths.

“Same,” said James, then he laughed apprehensively, hoping it would ease her nerves.  

They headed up a short staircase to the front door, Veronica almost on top of him.

“Honny, it’s just the dark,” he said, clicking the flashlight app on his phone, handing it to her so that he could enter the code to the lockbox that held the cabin key.

“You saw those warning signs at the park.” Her hands were shaking as she held the cell phone. “There are bears.”

“Oh my!” he said without missing a beat. He could see her smirk in the glow of the phone. The lockbox popped open and the key was in his hand. “You go inside and check it out—I’ll get our things.”

“No argument here,” she said, stepping into the cabin, flipping on the lights. A yellow glow flooded out from the windows as he trekked back and forth to the car, unloading their bags.

By the time he closed the door for the night, Veronica had settled at the kitchen counter with a glass of merlot; she stared out the back window, lost in thought. He scanned the first floor of the cabin as he slowly moved toward her, taking in their rental.

Rich pine walls surrounded them on all sides except for the windows. The open floor plan included a living room and kitchen that flowed seamlessly into one another, with columns made of intact trees supporting the two-story roof that loomed over the living room. There was a full bath on the first floor and a staircase that led to a loft bedroom above the kitchen. The rustic railing was made of crooked twigs—right out of a storybook. He ran his hand over a column of smooth wood as he entered the kitchen, felt where the knots had once held branches. The cabin was the work of a craftsman.

His eyes settled on Veronica, still lost in her stare. He followed her gaze, seeing only the dark that lay beyond the picture window. It took him a moment to notice the small white moths gathered there, like miniature angels. Their wings were pure and shiny in the light, their underbellies visible through the glass.

James wrapped his arms around his fiancé, feeling her warmth against him. She relaxed into his arms for a moment, her breath steady and calming.

“I can’t wait till we have kids and can share this with them,” he said.

She mumbled in agreement, but wriggled out of his embrace, quietly walked to the window with her finger outstretched. She moved slowly, as if her presence would frighten the moths, but they were still—flowers resting on a puddle and Veronica beneath its surface like a mermaid. Her finger connected with the glass like she could capture some of their magic, but her movement was a rock tossed into still water; the flowers took off into the night. They were in another realm—beyond her reach.    

“Hon, I’m beat,” he said, stifling a yawn. She glanced back at him. “Mind if I head upstairs to bed?”

She glanced back at him, her dark hair hanging softly around her face—his angel. “Nope,” she said. “I might just enjoy the quiet for a little while. Be up soon.”     

He kissed her on the forehead and headed toward the stairs, too tired to lug a suitcase behind him. It would wait until morning. “Don’t drink too much,” he muttered, as he tried to find his way in the dim loft.

*

James lay still beside his fiancé, his chest rising and falling in a smooth pattern. Veronica danced on the fringes of sleep, lulled by the rhythmic plunking of rain on the cabin roof, a patchwork quilt tucked gently under her chin. As she fell deeper into relaxation and began to dream, a hum arose somewhere in the dark, seeping into the bedroom through a cracked window. It drifted on thick air to her ears, calling to her. Her subconscious crawled out of bed after it, followed it across the floor on tiptoes, chased it down the stairs to the back door. Then she woke.

She lay on the expansive porch at the back of the cabin, the glass door cracked open behind her. The night air swept through her hair, tickled her face, chilled her bare shoulders. The nightgown she wore was drenched with sweat, the spaghetti straps barely hanging on to her small frame under its weight. Alarmed, she staggered to her feet and quietly snuck back inside. Had she had that much to drink? James had said not to. As the door clicked shut, she locked the handle, backed away as if it might open on its own. Shame filled her, wrapped itself around her like a blanket as she crept back into bed.

Friday

“Eleven a.m. and we already have 100 likes.” Veronica’s smile was bright and cheery as she sat in the passenger seat of the Trailblazer. James wasn’t surprised she was having fun posting their engagement announcement on Instagram. The pressure her family had put on her to get married had been constant for the last few years; she’d sighed with relief when the post had been made and then called her mother to deliver the good news.

He knew Veronica loved him, but part of him wondered if she’d said yes just to quell her mother’s hounding. He decided that accusation might not go over well, swallowed the emotion that grew in his throat and it sank into his stomach like a rock.

Veronica read from the pamphlet they had found in the cabin, the one that had brought them on this driving tour in the first place.

“It says here this land was once Cherokee territory, then European settlers came.  A town was here for over a hundred years, but then the government purchased the land in 1945.” She paused, gulped. “I wonder how amenable those families were to that transaction?”

James smirked and sarcasm filled his voice. “The government taking something without permission? Ha. Imagine that.” He huffed. “At least they got paid, I doubt the Indians got that much.”

Veronica pursed her lips, wondering if they were trespassing on sacred ground. She imagined echoes of the past beneath the surface, lingering, waiting for someone to find them like lost change.  Her mother had said they had family ties to the Smoky Mountains, but didn’t know more than that. She envisioned a woman from the past driving in a covered wagon, her husband beside her. It would have been a hard life—no electricity, harsh winters, growing your own food. And the lack of choices, too—wife or school teacher at best… no birth control. She shuddered.

As they pulled onto the path for the “driving tour” at Cades Cove, an odd feeling crept over both of them. James put his hand to his head, scratched, felt like there was something he’d forgotten that was trying to find its way back to him. Veronica was overcome with emotion; the scenery was captivating, but there was something more, something underneath the layer of reality before them. It tugged at the wisps of hair around her face, brushed against her skin like hot breath, tingled her spine in recognition of coming home. But she couldn’t capture these feelings in words so she said nothing.

They followed signs that said “10 miles per hour”, “remain in your vehicle”, and “no stopping for pictures”. The train of cars before and them and behind was long, but they didn’t notice. Perhaps everyone was just as mesmerized.  

They drove along in silence, following the road that encircled the park, a peaceful feeling finally enveloping the couple. They were lulled by the butterflies dancing in sunbeams, the golden light magical. The trees there grew from underneath a lazy river, roots spreading from little islands, disappearing beneath the water to another world.

Around a bend the landscape changed. The winding river disappeared, replaced by a pasture that stretched for miles, surrounded by immense mountains on all sides. They were in the heart of a valley that felt ancient, and despite the hum of engines nearby, a hush settled in the air. Pioneer ruins rose in the distance, their rooves filling the hollow. Echoes of people who once lived there lingered in the rustling leaves of sugar maples.

Then the cars came to an abrupt stop. They could see people getting out of their vehicles, pulling out cameras, moving closer to the edge of the path and closer to the woods that sloped into mountains. James put the car in park, huffed in frustration.

“Clearly they didn’t see the signs,” he began, irritation in his voice.

But Veronica grabbed her cell phone, opened the door and followed them.

“Hey! What are you doing? Veronica!” he called, but she ignored him.

Her eyes focused on the dark shape among the trees, slowly lurching back and forth as it walked. The bear’s fur was a deep brown, and she might not have seen her if others hadn’t noticed first. Then there was a smaller shape, bounding down a tree with agile movements. A cub! Veronica’s heart swelled. She tapped her screen, opened the camera, and aimed. Click.

There was more movement—another cub, and yet another. The three little ones followed her mother, sauntering away from the crowd all in a row. Click.

“Return to your cars!” The voice boomed over a megaphone.

Veronica turned to see a park ranger approaching on horseback. “For your safety and the bears’, return to your cars now!”

Then James was beside her, clutching her wrist. “Come on,” he said, the anger in his voice clear. “Get in the car.”

She followed after him, resisting his grip that only grew tighter.

“I don’t know what you were thinking,” he muttered once they were safe inside the car.

“I just wanted to see what the deal was,” she said, hurt at his patronizing tone. 

“Well it was stupid,” he said.

Veronica’s eyes remained on her phone and she scrolled through the pictures she’d taken. The three babies following their mother were wild and free. Magical.

“Look,” said James, touching her arm gingerly. “The signs are there for a reason. We need to heed them.”

Veronica nodded so that he would stop talking at her.

*

When James woke and felt the empty space next to him, he sat up in bed. Had Veronica even come to bed? He’d left her downstairs with an open bottle of wine, still stewing about the argument they had over dinner.

He didn’t see what the big deal was. She wanted a tattoo. He didn’t want her to get one. She was going to be his bride—the mother of his children. They were becoming one. He wouldn’t just mark up his body without consulting her and she owed him the same courtesy. He thought they were trashy. Why ruin something so perfect? He’d said. She hadn’t taken it as a compliment.

The light from downstairs filtered in through the cracked door, seeping into the bedroom like a beacon. He’d better go check on her. There was no telling how long this tantrum of her would last. Veronica was stubborn. He’d figured that out early in their relationship. If she was determined to do something, there was little he could do to stop her. He was hoping that would change with time, as they settled into their lives and had kids.

James pulled on a t-shirt and wiped the sleep from his eyes as he made his way down the storybook stairs. They creaked under his weight—a cozy sound that reminded him of childhood. He hoped that one day they would have their own creaky stairs and stories about the children who climbed them. Maybe they would sneak down them on Christmas morning to catch a glimpse of Santa.

“Hon?” he called out. “Veronica?”

Silence filled the two-story living room like a heavy weight. He turned the corner and fully expected to find her at the kitchen table, still nursing a glass of wine. But the glass sat there alone, the remnants of merlot a small puddle, like tears in a snow globe. The back door stood ajar, the moths that had gathered there seeped in, dancing like fairies around the kitchen light.

He walked out onto the back porch, glanced around at the length that spanned the back of the house. She wasn’t at the picnic table or in the hot tub, not sitting in the rocking chair or lingering by the railing. She was nowhere to be seen.

He hurried to the side of the porch that overlooked the driveway and let out a sigh of relief when he saw the Trailblazer still parked there. But if she hadn’t taken the car, where was she?

“Veronica?” he called, a little louder this time.

A rustle in the nearby bushes made him jump. It was just below the porch, which hung partially over a cliff. His heartbeat jumped. Did she fall?

“Hon? Are you ok? Veronica!” He scrambled over the side of the railing, desperate to come to her rescue, ears painfully tuned into the noises that indicated fast movement below the deck.

That was when he heard the growl. James froze. He was straddling the railing precariously, and almost lost his footing in panic. The growl intensified. James felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle. He leaned back toward the porch, quietly pulled his leg back over the railing, landed with two feet as gently as he could.

“James?” Veronica’s voice came from inside the house.

“Where were you?” he demanded, still stuck in the grip of alarm. He pushed through the back door, sending the moths up into the night.

“I-I..” she stammered, then sighed. “I was getting something from the car.” She covertly tucked the lighter into her back pocket. It would make things so much worse if he knew she’d snuck out for a smoke.

“I think there’s a bear out there,” he said, motioning to the back porch.

“Really?” She said, moving to the windows to see. “On the porch?”

“No, beneath it. I thought it was you. I—I didn’t know what to think when I came downstairs and you weren’t here.”

Veronica stared at him, not sure what he wanted her to say. She shrugged. “Sorry.”

“Look, just come to bed, will you?” He climbed up the stairs and sank back into bed.

“Yeah, fine.” Veronica’s words were lost on the first floor, so she poured herself another glass.

*

In her dreams, Veronica was back in Cades Cove. She ran through the pasture, grass tickling her naked legs. The sun played hide-and-seek with stark white clouds against a cornflower sky. Dandelion fuzz floated in the air, a thousand wishes she’d blown since childhood, leading her down the path towards home. The cabin stood in the distance in the shade of a sugar maple tree, smoke rising from its chimney. The feeling of family filled her, a deep connection that rested in her bones.

Then she heard his voice. James called to her—pulled her back toward the park gate—away from the rich valley of dreams. But she didn’t want to wake.

Saturday

Early morning light peered over the tops of the Smokies, and Veronica found herself on the back porch of the cabin. She had fallen asleep in the rocking chair, an empty wine glass still on her lap. She wondered if she could sneak upstairs without waking James but decided not to try. She would be damned if he would keep telling her what to do.

*

“I think we should leave early.” There, James had said it. It had been gurgling at the back of his throat all morning.

“That’s crazy,” said Veronica, her dark eyes traveling to the syrup and she motioned for him to pass it. “You’re overreacting.”

James handed her the bottle, watched as she drenched her pancakes even more. The amber liquid spread out across the spongy round tower, pooled around the mounds of dough. Her appetite had grown since they’d been on vacation; could she be pregnant?

“You’ve been acting different since we’ve been here,” said James.

“I haven’t been sleeping well,” she replied, taking a bite of pancake.

“I don’t like it.”

Her gaze snapped up to his in a warning. There was a fire there he’d never seen before—animalistic. Her jaw clenched, relaxed, and she took a breath as if she was holding her temper. “What is that supposed to mean?”

He wasn’t looking for another fight. It was the last thing they needed at this point. “Look, all I’m saying is that I think this lack of sleep is affecting you… being tired doesn’t flatter you.”

She cocked an eyebrow, grabbed her plate and fork. “Yeah, well, being a snob doesn’t flatter you either.” With that, she turned a walked out onto the porch, where she’d eat alone.

*

Later that day, after he had given Veronica some time to cool off, James approached her with a peace offering. She sat on the back porch, writing in her journal. As he approached, she closed it, held it protectively against her chest. He held out the brochure.

“Gatlinburg,” she read aloud.

“I propose this is what we do today. No more wilderness. Let’s go explore the village like tourists.” His voice grew more excited as he talked. “There’s a sky-lift that can take us up to the top of one of the mountains. And there are distilleries with moonshine. And tons of little shops and restaurants.”

Her face relaxed into the idea as she glanced at the pictures.

“What do you say?” he asked. “Friends?”

She smiled, feeling silly for holding a grudge. “Friends.” They shook on it.

*

“Don’t you think that skirt’s a bit short?”

Veronica clenched her teeth. His comments weren’t new, but she was seeing them in a whole new light. Maybe it was in the mountain air—a southern woman’s firey spirit come to rescue her from the compliant shell she’d worn through adulthood.

“You didn’t have a problem with the length of my skirt when we met.”

James’ mouth hung open in surprise. He held up his hands in surrender. “Never mind.”

They snaked down the mountains slowly, downshifting carefully. James thought about the night they had driven to find the cabin in the dark. The landscape was so different in the day. Some places were more treacherous than he’d thought, while others merely cast dramatic shadows at night. He was realizing that the mountains could play tricks on you—in lots of ways.

Veronica felt like she was sinking into layers of the underworld as they descended the mountain. When they pulled into the town of Gatlinburg, it was as if they crossed the Atlantic into a European village. Quaint shops were nestled beside one another with winding brick paths and archways in between. They were greeted by Tudor buildings with decorative glass panes and a central fountain filled with wishes to be fulfilled.

Taken by the charming place, the couple settled into smiles. They walked hand in hand among other happy tourists, checking out knick-knacks, woven blankets, homemade candles, and beautifully painted tributes to the landscape. They stopped for ice cream and shared a bench by the fountain, listening to the water fall like rain, rhythmic and lulling. James found himself fantasizing about future family vacations they’d take, while Veronica considered never leaving.   

They stood together before the fountain, sharing a kiss and tasting the remnants of sugary cream that lingered. James’ lips were chocolate crunch and Veronica’s were vanilla swirl. He handed her a quarter and held one for himself.

“Make a wish,” he said.

They closed their eyes, tossing in their coins. The silver glinted in the sunlight, bright against a copper background of pennies.

“Why quarters?” asked Veronica, as she noticed the difference.

“They’re worth more,” he answered, shrugging his shoulders.

She couldn’t peg why, but it bothered her. Like her wish wouldn’t have been good enough as a penny. When James excused himself to the restroom, she stood before the fountain alone, taking in the brilliant copper scene beneath the watery surface. She thought of the moths that had mesmerized her on the first night, how they clung to the window, trying to get to the light inside. What was it they were seeking? It’s heat? It’s brilliance? Did they think it was the source of all things? They didn’t realize the light was a lie.

She glanced around, made sure James was still out of site, then plunged her arm into the fountain to retrieve her quarter. She wasn’t sure it was hers and she didn’t care—it was the symbolism that mattered. Her hand grasped an object—solid and silver—a wish she took back. Then she replaced it with a bright, copper penny. The one cent meant more to her than all the desires she’d ever had. It was a bid for freedom.

When James returned, they continued down the street to the distilleries, where he drank and she turned over the secret that lay in her pocket.

*

The kind of dark that filled the bedroom that night was endless. As James woke, he was filled with unease. He fought to focus on something—anything—and suppressed the primal panic that gripped his heart. The memory of where he was came rushing back—the cabin, the mountains.

“Veronica?” His voice was loud in the nothingness.

He crawled off the bed, toward the window. He brushed up against the thick curtains and pulled them back. Moonlight filtered through the forest ceiling, leaked in through the window, and bathed the room in a dim glow. The bed was a sea of blankets, the dresser a dark looming shape in the corner. Silence filled the cabin, and then was broken.

A scratching noise crept from the first floor, up the wooden stairs with the storybook railing, across the balcony that overlooked the livingroom, to James like an invitation. “Come hither” it begged. Inside he shrank—the urge to hide filled him. Danger was near.

He moved carefully to the door, reached for the light switch. He flicked it upward—nothing happened. He flicked it again—still nothing. Was the electricity out? Was it just the bulb in the bedroom? The shiver of panic crawled up his back. His breath quickened, his heartbeat pounded. He gulped.

His love was down there, though, so he must proceed. “Veronica?” he said once again.

There was a rush of movement downstairs, a crash. The adrenaline ran through his system, his arms shook with the burst. All he could think to grab was the hiking stick propped next to the door. It was smooth in his hand, but not very strong. Still, something was better than nothing.

The floorboards creaked under his feet as he emerged on the balcony, tried the light switch there. Nothing. Scenarios ran through his mind. Was this a home invasion? They cut the electricity and had Veronica down there. Maybe they had been followed, targeted. Someone thought they were stupid tourists—vulnerable. And of all things, he wanted to curse the skirt she’d worn into town that day. They wanted what was his.

His eyes were wide, taking in the darkness. The only light that crept in was funneled moonlight, playing with the shadows. He scanned the living room below—dark shapes were motionless. He stepped down one stair. Creak. Then another. Creak. He gripped the stick with both hands, readying himself for a confrontation. He could hear nothing over the sound of his breath.

James turned the corner, peered into the kitchen, saw that the back door hung open on its hinges. Moonlight danced on the edge of the porch, a cool breeze stole in through the opening, rustling trees, muttering in a secret tone only nature could decipher. It was then that the growling arose, low—guttural. Behind him.

In a burst of panic, he turned, braced himself for the shadow moving toward him. It knocked him to the floor face-down, stood over him like a hunter claiming its prey. Pain radiated from James’ head as he struggled to breath. Then the weight lifted, moved toward the open door with a creak, creak. James gasped and the creature turned sharply, its eyes reflecting the moon. Teeth were bared, as it closed the space between them again.

Breath rattled in and out of James’ panicked mouth. His body was frozen. The bear’s face stopped inches away from his, its breath hot and wet. Saliva stretched from one row of teeth to the next, and then narrowed in a growl that shook the cabin. The bass notes rose to a baritone crescendo, then descended back into a murmur. And James could have sworn he heard a woman’s gasp. A paw reached back, then swung forward, hitting its mark. And everything in James’ world went black.

Sunday   When he woke to a sun-filled kitchen, James found the back door still open. He stumbled to the porch, were he found large, muddy footprints that lead over the railing and disappeared into the forest. It wasn’t until he made his way back inside that he noticed Veronica’s nightgown crumpled by the threshold to the cabin. Beside it was a bright, shiny quarter.

Leoson teaches composition and psychology courses at the college level in Cleveland, Ohio. She loves to write with her dogs at her feet and somehow survives on decaf coffee and protein bars. She holds an M.A. in English & Writing from Western New Mexico University and an M.S. in Psychology from Walden University. Her writing has been featured in the Twisted Vine Literary Journal, TWJ Magazine, The Write Launch, GNU Journal, The Gyara Journal, and on NPR’s “This I Believe” series. You can learn more at www.maryleoson.com

Khaalida finds the stars fascinating. Stars form constellations, shapes. The shapes rotate through the year. Aries, Taurus, Gemini. Cancer, Leo, Virgo. Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius. Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces. Repeat. Some people believe the stars affect human characteristics. Khaalida is not one of those people. Yet, she keeps an astrology book under an astronomy book. She doesn’t want to believe stars can affect behavior. But it seems as if they may. Within the stars, she finds bright chaos. She finds order and beauty. She finds imagination. In the back of her mind, she wonders if something so marvelous could be more than just hot dust.

Virgo is an Earth sign. Earth signs are considered imaginative, flexible, in control. — Madame Nixie’s Guide To The Elemental

Khaalida wakes on her balcony—again. She unfolds her body and her muscles mutiny. She thinks they will get over it. She thinks falling asleep under Leo is worth it. She looks at her fitness tracker and it’s 7:06 AM. Khaalida is delighted. She hasn’t missed her favorite part of morning. She stares at the lawn directly across the street. The guy-who-lives-two-doors-down-with-the-great-dane finally materializes. She grins. He crosses the street and lets his dog shit on the annoying PTA mom’s lawn. Khaalida doesn’t know either of their names. She knows the dog owner is her hero. And, the PTA mom is a total pain in the ass. At least according to Khaalida’s mother and the-guy-with-the-great-dane. Whether she is or is not, Khaalida is tired of hearing about her love of all things vegan and gluten free. She is not tired of the guy and his dog and poop on the lawn.

Virgo: Wear yellow to cheer yourself up — Madame Nixie’s Guide To The Elemental

She cranks the shower just shy of scalding. She lathers and rinses and stands there. She feels heavy and tired. Like she has become Osmium, the densest element. Like gravity holds her hostage. She knows today will be a bad day. This knowledge makes her stomach cramp, quickens her breathing.  3-point-1-4-1-5-9-2-6-5-3-5-8-9, she rattles off the first thirteen digits of pi. She searches her closet for that yellow top she forgot she owns. The top is mid-day-sun-bright. Khaalida wears the shirt. The color pisses her off.

The Sun is the closest star to Earth— The Science Behind Celestial Bodies

She shuffles her feet too much, she knows. Shocks from metal surfaces do not deter her. Neither does her mother’s reprimanding. She feels she doesn’t have the energy to walk like a person.

Stars convert Hydrogen into Helium— The Science Behind Celestial Bodies

Her mother doesn’t understand. Khaalida doesn’t know how to explain. If she could, Khaalida would say there’s a sadness that hurts her. Sadness is too weak a word for what Khaalida feels, but will do, she guesses. It feels as if her soul is freezing—like her organs have frostbite. She’d tell her there is a panic that overwhelms. That the sadness paralyzes and the panic drowns. But, Khaalida is a girl of facts, of numbers; she is not a girl of words. Her mother doesn’t ask for an explanation. Her mother thinks she has a bad attitude, thinks she is just fourteen. Khaalida wants to care. She can’t care.

Virgos are most likely to be depressed— Madame Nixie’s Guide To The Elemental

Her mother asks, “Which Lida she’s getting today?” Khaalida snarls “Guess.” She wants to apologize. She doesn’t apologize. Her larynx becomes a vacuum. Her eyes close as the kitchen spins. She thinks her heart is impossibly loud. Khaalida wills it to shut up. She lists sharks from fastest to slowest: Shortfin Mako, Longfin Mako, Salmon, Great White, Blue, Basking, Whale, Greenland. Khaalida’s heart slows. She feels more tired. She feels restless. 

Virgo: You will find peace in the worn out— Madame Nixie’s Guide To The Elemental

Khaalida walks without a purpose. Trees and houses and people warp at the edge of her vision. She ends up at a park. Khaalida has never seen this park. She stumbles across the jungle gym. She twists on a swing. She kicks those things on springs—watches them smack the ground in circles. She looks around the park. The park is faded and derelict. The park is rusting and crumbling and moss covered. It is comforting. Khaalida wonders why no one else is here. She is grateful for the emptiness.  Her eyes  rest on the roundabout. She grabs a handle puts one foot on the disk, and uses the other to turn it. She gains momentum, puts the other foot on the roundabout. Khaalida lays in the middle. She watches the sky spin. It makes her dizzy. She lays there. Swallows down bile. Closes her eyes. She races through the multiplication table: 1×0, 1×1, 1×2…12×10,12×11,12×12. Tears leak onto the roundabout anyway. Khaalida lays on the hot metal until her eyes dry out. She lays there until her tears evaporate.

Stars are in constant conflict with themselves; they try not to collapse— The Science Behind Celestial Bodies

Khaalida is suddenly furious. She thinks she’s stupid for crying. She thinks there’s no reason to feel like this. She thinks she has things to do— like summer reading— like laundry— like that knitting project she hasn’t finished. She does not get up. She feels she has become one with the roundabout. Which is to say: warped and creaky.

Virgos tend to think they don’t have time for depression— Madame Nixie’s Guide To The Elemental

Eventually, Khaalida forces her limbs to move. She figures she should respond to her mother’s forty text messages and nine missed calls. Khaalida languidly types, “I’m alive,” and hits send. Her phone vibrates seconds later. She stares at the screen until it goes dark. She sticks the phone into her back pocket. Khaalida tries to remember her way back.

Virgo: Be grateful for small things— Madame Nixie’s Guide To The Elemental

Khaalida takes one wrong turn after another. She is determined to get back on her own. She refuses to ask her phone, or a person, for directions. Clouds creep along the sky until the sun is smothered and the wind  begins to moan. Thunder and lightning stomp and scream in protest. Minutes later, rain inundates the suburbs. People scramble to gather children, dogs, possessions. They rush into dry, cool homes. Khaalida stops walking. She rotates to face the rain heavy wind head on. She closes her eyes, enjoying the deafening thunder. She relishes the heady electric feeling of ions kissing her skin. She is content for the first time in awhile.

Virgos are mutable, which is to say: they look forward to new seasons: new beginnings— Madame Nixie’s Guide To The Elemental

Khaalida feels lighter. She feels her sad was washed down the gutter. She feels she can breathe. She wonders if the day, Wednesday, has anything to do with her change in mood. After all, Wednesday is a Virgo’s best day. Khaalida shakes her head and thinks that’s stupid. Wednesday is just the middle of the week— a label used to track time. She wonders if it was the yellow shirt. She looks down at the shirt. She laughs. She still hates the shirt. She wonders why she keeps following those silly horoscopes. Khaalida guesses they do no harm.

Virgo is the second largest constellation— The Science Behind Celestial Bodies

Khaalida recognizes a purple house. She easily finds her way back home. She stands in front of the kitchen door, rocking from heel to toe. She knows her mother will probably explode from anger. She steels herself and decides she can handle it. Khaalida feels good. Not even punishment can ruin this good. She opens the door and the kitchen is empty. She grabs a strawberry soda from the refrigerator and chugs half. Her mother sits on an arm chair, in the living room— like a movie or a television show. Khaalida thinks her mother is so dramatic. She thinks she’s such a Scorpio. Khaalida grins and says, “What’s up, mom?” Her mother is thrown off. Her mother was prepared for conflict; she was not prepared to see her daughter’s sweet smile. She has not seen Khaalida smile in almost a year, it’s nice. She can only smile at her daughter. Khaalida kisses her mother and skips to her room. Life does not feel like a prison sentence.

The biggest stars die quicker— The Science Behind Celestial Bodies

Khaalida spends the week drawing birds. Carolina Wrens, Blue Jays, Canadian Geese, Hawks. She fills two SD cards with bird pictures. She fills four drawing pads with sketches. Khaalida sets out bird feeders and bird baths. She stares at them for hours, cataloging various avians as they frolic.  Khaalida whistles as she washes dishes or takes out the trash. She mimics bird calls. Occasionally, birds sit on her window sills. Once, a bird harmonizes with her whistling. She thinks stuff like this only happens in cartoons. Most of the time, the birds watch her. This watching calms Khaalida. This watching worries Khaalida. It reminds her that some cultures consider birds omens. Fear gnaws at her contentment. She thinks it’s silly to let superstition bother her. Then she remembers Mercury is almost in retrograde, her governing planet. Fear scratches at her throat. She bats it away. Mercury in retrograde is just an illusion, inhale. It does not actually stop and rotate backwards, only appears this way three to four times a year, exhale.

Virgo: Today the unexpected will happen, be happy— Madame Nixie’s Guide To The Elemental

Khaalida spreads a blanket over the grass. She lays on her stomach. She reads a book in her backyard. Her mother sips tea and begins a quilt on the patio. Khaalida enjoys the smell of warm paper. She is content. But remembers school is quickly approaching. Khaalida is terrified of going back. What if she has a panic attack? What if she can’t stop the tears? Khaalida feels like a freak. She thinks that she does not need her classmates thinking she’s a freak. She always hopes the fear and the sadness will leave. She thinks they make no sense. She feels like an anvil is sitting on her back. She feels she is sinking into the ground— like being buried alive without dirt. Khaalida cannot breathe. She struggles for air but there is not enough. Her mother asks, “What is wrong?” Khaalida can’t say. Instead she scrambles to the bathroom and vomits. She lists: Azalea, Bachelor Buttons, Cosmos, Dahlias, Evening Primrose— there is no calm amongst the flowers. She doesn’t go back outside. Khaalida sits in the bathtub and cries.

Virgo is known as the Disappointed Goddess— Madame Nixie’s Guide To The Elemental

Khaalida watches the stars. Virgo jetés gracefully across the sky. She thinks about how even stars that form constellations are far apart. She wonders if they are lonely. She sees her mother pass in front of a window. Khaalida wants to hug her mother. She hugs her legs instead. She stares into the darkness until her absence of light melts into the shadows.

Most of the stars we see are dead— The Science Behind Celestial Bodies

Khaalida wakes up. She stares at the ceiling and listens to her heartbeat, her breathing. Irritation crashes through her body like high tide. She thinks she’ll burst. She reaches out and throws the first thing her fingers encircle. The lamp explodes against the wall. Her mother comes to check out the noise. She asks, “What is wrong with you?” She says, “Clean that up.” Her mother leaves and Khaalida gets up. She shuffles to the broken lamp and drops to the floor. She picks up the biggest piece of glass. Khaalida watches the light exaggerate the sharpness. She does not think, she drags the glass across her thigh. Her chest hollows. Her spine prickles. Blood beads and drips and Khaalida is oddly relieved. She does this nine more times. She lays back and bleeds and glass shards float in pools of her blood.

Khaalida means Immortal, Deathless— Khaalida’s mother

Khaalida feels lethargic. She feels like a Greenland shark in molasses. She goes through the motions of school. She is not paying attention. Her focus is on her eyes and their warm full feeling. She is willing herself not to cry in public. Khaalida knows when she cannot stop it. She hides— usually in a bathroom. She leans against the wall. She bites the sleeve of her sweater and tears drip, mixing with her lotion.

Red giants make the sun look small— The Science Behind Celestial Bodies

Khaalida lumbers to the worn out park. She uses up her energy getting there. She lays on the roundabout and stares at clouds. They all look like lamp shards to her. She imagines putting the pieces back together. They don’t quite fit like they used to. She rubs her sore thigh and that makes it throb more and she is glad. She falls asleep counting glass shards.

Virgo: Today you will want to implode; don’t— Madame Nixie’s Guide To The Elemental

Khaalida knows she can’t exist like this. She tries to tell her mother how she feels. Her words are clumsy and hard to understand. Her mother says she is fine. Her mother says she needs to be less angry. Her mother suggests she doesn’t wallow. Khaalida says, “Nevermind.” She says, “Thanks.” She decides she already has a solution. She trades a glass shard for a razor.

Most stars come in multiples: they orbit the same gravitational field— The Science Behind Celestial Bodies

Khaalida is desperate to dull the ache. She wraps herself in a blanket and sits on the balcony. She craves the company of the stars. Sagittarius taunts Khaalida. She is disappointed. They make her feel more lonely. The stars make her feel hollow— as if she is all the space between them.

Stars are light years away from each other— The Science Behind Celestial Bodies

Khaalida’s appetite is further away than Pluto. She knows she should eat. Trying to force herself to eat makes her choke, makes her stomach hurt. So, she doesn’t. This adds to her tired.

Event Horizon: the invisible boundary around a black hole; nothing can escape it’s pull— The Science Behind Celestial Bodies

Khaalida is restless. She is aimless. She is consumed by the heavy void. She takes a walk and it is cold. The wind claws at her skin, tries to rip it from her bones. She thinks it feels nice to feel something—other than restless and aimless and the heavy void.

Interstellar medium: the gas and dust between the stars— The Science Behind Celestial Bodies

Khaalida lays in bed, under her thickest blanket. It seems to be the only thing that can hold her heavy. Khaalida’s mother says her phase isn’t funny or cute. Her mother says if she wants attention, all she has to do is ask. Khaalida does not want attention. Khaalida wants her mother to shut the door.

The biggest stars could engulf Saturn— The Science Behind Celestial Bodies

Khaalida’s mother gets her stars. The ones that glow in the dark. Khaalida watches her mother stick them to the walls. She hugs her mother too long and too tight. She lets go too abruptly and sits on the bed—staring at the stars. They make her tears look fluorescent.

Most stars are red dwarfs— The Science Behind Celestial Bodies

 She feels like she’s standing on wet shore sand: all the time. She is slipping, sinking. She feels the air has been replaced with something the consistency of roux.

Virgo: The sky beacons, answer— Madame Nixie’s Guide To The Elemental

She goes for a walk and it’s cold. The wind claws at her skin. It does not feel nice. Khaalida feels cold and heavy and lost. She feels lonely. Khaalida is tired.

 Escape Velocity: the speed needed to exit a body’s gravitational pull— The Science Behind Celestial Bodies

Khaalida walks to the old park. It is faded and derelict. It is comforting. Snow, like glass shards makes everything glitter. She sits on the roundabout. Khaalida thinks about how brown dwarfs, or failed stars, take 10 trillion years to deplete their hydrogen. She thinks that’s too much time. She removes a folded cloth from her pocket. She unfolds the cloth and takes the razor. The stars keep her company.

“He..who owns the youth, gains the future.” – A. H.

Dear Representative,

I’m writing to inform you of a development within the increasingly overlapping media and so called “gaming” realms of which you should be aware. I do this expecting that you in your capacity as Alternative National Leader will be just as horrified about our dire mutual predicament upon revision of these facts as myself, and that realising something must be done, you’ll take action directly.

But beyond your obvious directional virility, I’m also writing to your eminent self because it was firstly you, sir, who only yesterday I saw my child J––– shoot right there on TV.

That’s right. You read me correctly.

J––– shot you, sir, as with a real bullet from a real gun, right there on the nationally televised news cycle as if for all to see.

As it turned out, the footage I witnessed that first time hadn’t been live (though I’m led to believe the “games” from KOD®™ work just as well with live broadcasts), but was in fact a replay of you addressing the media about how the commie-inspired government besetting us with anti-working-family incompetence is without question the worst in this nation’s history. Even worse than last time, you were saying, because our renewed Triple-A credit-rating and relatively low debt’s not fooling anyone. But regardless of the veracity of your prosecution, just imagine my horror, sir, when J–––, wireless gun controller in hand, suddenly blew your head apart like an overripe watermelon.

Just picture it, sir.

Well, needless to say that having just popped my head into J–––‘s room for a random “hi” after getting no response knocking, the uncanny “reality” of seeing you assassinated in broad daylight was nearly more than I could bear. Like a near-physical stab to my blue tie heart, a swirling disconnect I imagine would inflict any right-minded person bore down, and it took at least an eternity of dying inside – in fact until J––– killed you again several seconds later – to realise that maybe you hadn’t in fact just been executed like right there on TV for the world to see. I mean, of course you hadn’t since I’d already seen that exact same press release several times on the news cycle, but I suppose I was thinking, well, maybe you’d made yet another one saying the exact same thing, which wouldn’t be unusual since that’s what you guys do these days, right? Say the same thing again and again – staying on message or whatever you call it – drumming it in right or not until it becomes reality one way or the other?

Anyway, there you were saying, “Clearly this is ah the worst government in history ah-” when, “BAM!”…blood and brains splashed across the wall behind you. There were even splatters of blood on the screen – that’s how real this thing is – which was supposed to be on the lens of the camera videoing the massacre, and for all the world even though this might be me showing my age, it truly looked as you collapsed headless and generic screaming ensued that you’d actually, really been shot. Of course, that was until several seconds later when, to my boundless relief, you faded back in, brow creased and rouge shining prosecuting your God-given belief that this is in fact the worst government in history (despite the pesky rating and low debt things) like nothing had ever happened.

Only it did happen, sir, more or less, and then it happened again.

POW! and head-explosion, blood splattering the camera slash screen, generic women screaming as the body, yours, collapsed, and then reset – I estimate about 3 seconds later – ready to go again.

Now, as you’d be well aware, sir, children like my J––– in Year 8 can be difficult at the best of times. Surly, rude, obnoxious and cruel as empathy has not yet fully developed, and though I hate to say it, sir, ignorant as they seem to spend their waking hours glued to “reality” shows while sharing inanities on social media until obscene hours of the night, is more or less par for the course. What I believe however is not par, sir, is psychopathic glee blowing the heads off TV-based authority figures like yourself for no other reason than it’s “funny”. And while I realise there’s a danger my offspring, J––, might come across as a bad apple and not in fact representative of h– cohort, you’d be ill-advised to take this line, sir. Because as I understand it, this game, which I believe to be called X, or The Rise of X, or Dumdum Head or Democrazy – even Bitchinator as one online reference indicated (I personally suspect it has multiple names which is helping hide its disturbingly wide distribution) – it’s extremely popular and played by quote unquote “everyone”. Should this be correct, and which I strongly believe it to be, then clearly this demonstrates that not only is it not my alleged parental shortcomings or those of J––– that has led to characters like yourself, sir, being assassinated by hormonal minors right there on TV, but is in fact a serious, wider problem that our troubled society itself has contracted. Now, not only are we to continue suffering under the worst government in history since the last time they were in (despite the credit rating slash low debt thing), but we’ve suddenly become surrounded by millions of empathy-less would-be killers realistically to a fault blowing the heads off television actors like yourself thousands of times a day each.

Painted in this way, sir, surely I don’t need to remind you that this is exactly why guerrilla groups in the world’s forsaken corners who’ve crossed into evil – think the Lord’s own Joseph Kony, for example – recruit children J––’s age to carry out horrendous acts. Quite simply, they choose them because, in their immature state of effective retardation, they don’t think about it, or if they do, they think it’s funny.

Exactly like The Rise of X.

With this development in mind, sir, let me just say that it’s difficult not to think how it was kids that betrayed their parents to the enforcers in Jonestown leading to the massacre, and as much those you hear about in the Hitler Youth or the settlements and even that horrendous left-wing pinko dystopia Nineteen Eighty Four for Christ’s sake. In fact, I can tell you, sir, that since witnessing your head being repeatedly exploded in degrees of realism never quite the same twice that would, without a shred of doubt, seem to the uninitiated unquestionably to have happened, I didn’t feel safe to the degree I don’t think I slept even five minutes last night. With my wife away on business – Jakarta if that’s at all important – I must admit I even resorted to, quietly, locking my bedroom door for fear that J–– in a crazed stupor having executed the likes of yourself repeatedly to the early hours of the morning, might have got to thinking that somehow I was a TV authority figure with all my blue ties and try to “bitchinate” me.

Now, before you advise your secretary to write back telling me you appreciate my concern but that maybe I need to exert some authority and remove the offending game from my apparently psychotic child, let me remind you, sir, as a fellow parent yourself, it’s not always that simple. Of course, horrified as I was, I immediately entered into heated negotiations to remove the offending software, and failing that, the hardware itself, but was prevented from doing so when my child, J––, howling like I was assaulting h–, reminded me that I was being “actively monitored” by h– BigBud®™ app, which was by that point pulsing h– ever-present smartphone a menacing red that meant it was recording and preparing to connect live to the nearest police station chatbot server. As you would know having successfully pushed for the intervention, smartphone BigBud®™-styled apps deliberately do not differentiate between domestic debates and any number of charged situations that might occur with strangers or bullies – due of course to their purported aim of reducing through the potential notification of authorities more or less any substantial “negative energy” which could become “totally uncool”, according to BigBud®™ itself – and so while I think they’re a great idea generally, it does mean that parents needing to lay down the law like in this case are at a distinct disadvantage once their kids like J–– figure out that to override said law, they only have to become hysterical. Anyway, realising that I could soon be defending myself to a police chatbot against trumped-up charges (and these from my own flesh and blood who’s not only bled me dry financially over the years having to have the latest gadget this and gimmick that for fear of crucifixion by h– peers, but whom in many ways has also consumed what I realise now should have been the best years of my life that will never come again), I withdrew as gracefully as possible warning this in no way meant I was happy with what was going on and it certainly wasn’t the end of the matter.

At that point reeling as through the door I heard further shots, splatters and ensuing screams interrupting you as you droned on and on about the horrendous government we’re suffering despite the incongruity of the Triple-A thing, I realised I needed at least information, and so reopening the door demanded where J–– had got the offending game. Two quick-fire virtual murders of yourself later, I repeated my demand and was told in no uncertain terms G–––––– at the mall and to “get the hell out of” h– “domain”. And for your information, sir, that level-three word “domain”, which I’m seriously considering being impressed by once this awful episode is behind us, was not in fact me paraphrasing.

But nevertheless, rather than turning the house mains off or getting on the phone and ringing the police whom I’m sure we both know would’ve simply told me re the “game” that, since there was no actual law being broken in the playing of it as things stand, there’s nothing they could do, I not quite in a rage but not far from it got in my car and drove to the mall in question.

I knew the shop G–––––– J–– had referred to having dropped no small amount of credit card debt there over the years, so I walked right in there and waited for the clerk to finish selling a maximum seven-year-old something called FaceBoom®™. As you might also be aware, this game I later looked up involves befriending in a “mostly virtual environment” what may or not be AIs, characters essentially, or if networked as recommended, then potentially other human “players”, with the aim of tracking down and “unfriending” with “extreme prejudice” certain outsiders, real or AI, who have become “marked” as quote unquote “uncool”.

Whatever that means.

But more to the point, when I finally got to confront the hormone-ravaged visage of the G–––––– employee probably not long out of high school h–self with: Did your shop sell my child this game with which they’re now mock-murdering authoritative characters on TV with, and if so, have you considered this might not only be unethical but downright dangerous in a multitude of real-world ways?, the employee mumbled something to the effect of was I like serious, sir?, because of course they didn’t stock the game I was describing since my child, who they couldn’t take responsibility and or liability for, would’ve purchased it independently via a KeyKardo®™, or KK®™, (even K+KK®™ standing for Kids KeyKardo®™) they sell a lot of.

And right there, sir, is the insidiousness of these game makers and their accomplices like G–––––– they indirectly employ.

Because by circumventing our locally high standards via “access kards” (sic) to websites based in obviously lawless hell-holes somewhere out there, these evil parasites can rake in huge sums of hard cash while at the same time effectively poisoning good communities with the toxic lampooning of respectable men such as yourself to the point it can only end in tears.

And here read, sir, not just any good community, but our community, sir.

But alas, teenagers like J–– don’t care about ‘abstract’ things like our community. What they care about is how many Likes they’ve got and which midget-throwing video is funnier, which is completely normal for h– age, but as I keep telling h–, they have to live in a community whether they like it or not so they should damn well start caring.

So anyway, on the verge as I was of accusing the spotty gaming employee of just this – and that’s the moral poisoning my child and thus our community – it was suggested by h– that like why don’t I like purchase a KK®™ and like see for myself if I want more info, since, like, they had solid legal advice they were within their retailing rights to sell the cards supplying access to what may or may not be The Rise of X, or Dumdum, or Bitchinator, or whatever the pestilence-ridden game is called. I of course in turn did this, and returning home and accessing the KOD®™ website (which, get this, stands for Kill On Demand, or Kraze on Demand – nothing seems to have a single signifier) via the KK®™ (and which in fact I discovered grants access to many other such KOD®™-like sites), can you imagine my horror, sir, when not only did I discover the highly purchase-ranked TRoX (its acronym but also yet another name) complete with horrendous TV screen shots of various politicians and or celebrities like yourself being “virtually executed” in all manner of grisly detail by upgradeable (read: purchasable) weapons, but also other so-called “games” such as Guilty as Charged (GaC), Taking Out [zee] Trash (ToT), Zombie Sic (Zic) [sic], and BanzaI!, all with similar smart screen interactivity utilising extreme violence?

Literally, sir, it was beyond my worst nightmares.

Take BanzaI! for example. Via its promotional videos, this conceptual abortion seems to utilise similar animated-loop-technology (ALT) on TV and movies, where the player, or gamer you’d be called playing it, to a pre-recorded shriek of “BanzaI!” (hence the title) beheads the unfortunate personality you slash at on screen. You do this apparently with a programmable controller, or even an app-enabled smart phone, and a parametered gesture.

Seriously, I’m not making this stuff up.

Another monstrosity I mentioned, Zombie Sic (I assume to be as in “sic ’em”, but which could also be “sick” as in infected or even “fully sick!”), involves “tagging” an on-screen personality with glowing green “Brain Juice” (BJ), which causes lurking zombies – animations I suppose although they looked just as real as the news anchor victim on the screen-capture – to tear the unfortunate authority figure to screaming, bloody shreds. This would occur over about seven hair-raising seconds where I suppose laughter would ensue, until, like nothing had ever happened, the original action of whatever the program is resumes.

Still another, the disturbingly named ToT (Taking out [the] Trash) features crushing dumpsters falling on targeted victims, while Guilty as Charged (GaC) sees animated loops of targeted personalities (such as your onward Christian self) falling through trap doors down into burning, screaming “Hell”.

And sir, there were dozens if not hundreds more.

Needless to say, I didn’t purchase any of these abominations. No sir-ree. And the fact that the more expensive of such didn’t even require a gaming console, but could be played with a Bluetooth screen, glasses or “jacked ad pan[el]” paired or “forced” to a new generation smart phone – the former and last of which I by the way possess – only inflamed my concern that something seriously needs to be done before it’s too late.

Now, obviously as far as The Rise of X and its offshoots are concerned, it’s going to be hard if not downright impossible to get the cat back into the bag as it were, but perhaps, with some “the adults are now in charge” resolve, not to mention your self-noted “methodical, purposeful” direct action way of “getting the job done”, we just might prevent its doubtlessly more shameless and somehow even bloodier successors eventuating.  

And yet, sir, how, I imagine you wondering, can we possibly stop the next wave of digital excreta overrunning and defiling our screen celebrities via pubescent psychosis? Well, as you should duly note, I have a few ideas.

Because upon deepening my research into these matters, imagine my intrigue all the way to mortification, sir, when I discovered that so-called “games” like TRoX and the other VIs (Virtual Interactives) in fact appear to owe their origins to a single so-called “artist’s” “exhibition” some years prior. A gallery in Houston, Texas, my inquiries have unearthed, originally hosted a so-called “installation” entitled “Vote” (hence the Democrazy alias for TRoXI’m supposing), which involved, as I understand it, several “hacked” or “jacked” and networked P–––––– consoles, a super-large flat-screen TV bought from a porn theatre, an authentic Persian rug from quote “a house deliberately or not bombed in the 3rd Iraq War”, and a gilded 17th century Dutch sofa with royal provenance. Apparently the graphics weren’t nearly as good as the offshoot VIs like X now, but the concept, I’m convinced, is inescapably the same. Technically speaking, it would appear this degenerate calling himself an “artist”, a one Paul Ngmai, Australian, paid some computer whiz to find a way for the jacked and networked P–––––– consoles to “animorph predetermined loops via sampling software” into segments of “momentarily revised” television they were recording in real-time. In essence then, when your head exploded in a mess of blood and brains while you were droning on and on about the government’s wilful economic vandalism despite the inconveniently low debt and renewed Triple-A thing, what really happened was that a recording of you in the last seconds before the controller-trigger was pulled became gruesomely animated by the game software overriding the continuing broadcast. In short: a cleverly digitised rendition of yourself beheaded utilising the very broadcast itself.

Clever, you’ll agree, but as you’ll agree even more, sir, quite rude.

And I’ll tell you this: Despite the tedious arguments about how “clever art” doesn’t need to justify itself, well, a vital question is nevertheless left hanging like a musky fart in the afternoon breeze.

Quite simply, sir: Why?

Why encourage the hormonally unstable to disrespect adult and methodical authority figures like yourself and other actors on TV to the extent of virtually blowing your heads off? How in fact and more to the point can charlatans like this Paul Ngmai fellow be allowed to get away with encouraging the virtual extermination of the celebrity class on a scale not seen since the various French Revolutions simply by calling it “art”? And even if it’s true he’s descended from an Aboriginal Australian and Vietnamese war-bride (apparently he took his mother’s name when his father abandoned him as a boy), this self-proclaimed “contemporary artist”, this grandee impersonator and would-be intellectual ultimately responsible for the unleashing of horrifically violent tendencies in youth like my J–– must be made to realise (perhaps through retrospective legislation and subsequent jail-time should you indeed re-snatch the top job?) that no-one, and especially not so-called “artists”, can be allowed to dodge ultimate responsibility for their creations.

And sir, don’t just take my word for it. Have a good look at some of his “art” for yourself. I think then you’ll agree that not only the market-place credibility of this delinquent but also his legal status as a free man should be carefully examined in the added light of his Real Big Brother series, where he apparently paid master criminals (yes, that’s what I’ve in fact read, sir!) to break into houses in various countries and install secret surveillance equipment. Sure reviewers for Art in America, Parkett and Artforum International slavishly responded with fluff-pieces gushing terms like “amazing”, “visionary”, “Attenborough-esque”, and even “the unadulterated, unconscious human animal as both artefact and ready-made”, and despite that his victims were apparently later not only paid handsomely for their simply “raw beingness”, but that amazingly none of them sued, which, you sir being in a party of lawyers would be as astounded by and or suspicious of as myself, it’s nevertheless hardly art and should never have been allowed.

A Manet nude sitting suggestively with clothed gentlemen on a river bank, sir, is art.

A Margaret Olley Impressionistic flower arrangement though a century late, you’ll also agree, is art.

What is not art, sir, but worthy of intense scrutiny and televised frowning by yourself is this Ngmai man’s horrendous Subverse prints. As you’ll be just as gobsmacked to find, these over-sized would-be political ad posters in antique frames unashamedly denigrate, if not actually defame, note-worthy individuals like yourself with outrageous montaged slogans that defy common decency and or accord. Your poster, for example, sir, sports yourself devilishly grinning in a drought-ridden paddock complete with dead animals and the unfortunately rehashed slogan CLIMATE CHANGE IS CRAP!, while another in the series of re-running American Presidential candidate Sarah Palin reads amazingly: FUCK THE WORLD BECAUSE WE CAN!

I mean really, sir. This is art?

And these are only two examples among many. If you ask me, abominations such as these mock political posters were practically the static prototypes for the virtual assassinations that Mr. Ngmai later perpetrated in his Vote show, in Houston, and now my child’s TV, yet was he stopped?

Was he stopped before J–– could trigger a virtual trapdoor purportedly for all those so-called refugees you methodically and purposively had returned to the murderous countries they fled so you’d burn in Hell?

No, sir, he was not.

Rather, he was lauded and paid outrageous sums of money (apparently those Subverse works as single editions are now worth several hundred thousand dollars each!), which only urged him to commit further crimes against humanity such as his recent and inanely titled Dog Day Parliament show. In this cruel and unusual Frankenstinian “artwork”, dogs from a local pound had their sides shaved and spray-painted with non-toxic fluorescent numbers before being set loose in a scaffolded pit arranged like a parliament. You know: two main halves in a horse-shoe; front and back benches; a table with “constitutional” documents separating them (in this case they were biology books apparently); a speaker’s chair and overlooking gallery. But despite apparently sworn testimonies from the few to actually view it directly (it was an internet only show) that the dogs’ welfare was provided for with vets on-site as well as plenty of food and water, I’ve in fact read online that the “artworks” attacked each other as they formed “gangs”, or factions as you’d know them, and that there was faeces and urine marking territories and standing orders everywhere. To literally top it all, an overhanging score board circulated the dogs’ numbers next to rising prices and decreasing time mocking, I suppose, lobbyists. Essentially, sir, if someone didn’t buy a particular dog (read politician) before its time reached zero, it would be returned to the animal shelter (read electorate) to be “put down” as per originally intended (and no gold-plated pension to boot!). And sure, even though all the dogs it seems were eventually sold from anywhere between ten to (outlandishly!) one hundred and sixty-seven thousand dollars, and the money (though I don’t buy it) was donated back to the participating shelter, are we really prepared as civilised men to stand back and allow this kind of scam in the guise of art to be perpetrated by the likes of this pestilent buffoon? I mean, explain to me if you would, sir, the benefit to society of his chocolate replica M16 rifle and grenades that, arranged in their respective glass and steel cold-cases on some national gallery wall, resemble male genitalia? What are young people, sir, to make of quote unquote “Little People in horse-suits riding gimp-masked naked models while whipping and kicking them with spurs as they race a gallery-installed obstacle course”? I think it hardly matters that the naked whipees were consenting S&M advocates or that obviously cowed critics believed it made for “uncomfortable contemplation of the Sport of Kings and inheritance of the signified”, when the real question goes begging: but is it really art?

In taxpayer-subsidised galleries and institutions no less?

Because, sir, if the answer to this vital question is a sad and lamentable “yes”, then I believe we’re in fact confronted with a problem every bit as dangerous as mass illiteracy caused by “Like” dependency on social media. Even sir, drug-resistant bacteria plunging us one headshot at a time back to the Dark Ages looks, by comparison, sorely tame.

Certainly it’s a problem that companies like KOD®™ (which since I began this letter understand now might actually stand for “Kill Or Die” instead of “Kill On Demand” – I don’t know which is worse) are profiting from evil “games” like the so-called Rise of X our misguided children believe are “knocked-up” and or “fun” and consequently spend parents’ money like mine on, but as you’re seeing by now, what I suggest is even worse, sir, and quite possibly the root of all evil behind these invasive products, is the shameless scourge of contemporary art itself. Because allowing drooling psychopaths like this Paul Ngmai fellow free reign with our imaginations, chequebooks, and now children’s’ minds, we have in essence suddenly woken up one morning to find our God-fearing community poisoned by upstream knock-offs and socially degenerating ideas. To this end, how, I now find myself asking, sir, can we justify providing cultural vandals like this Paul Ngmai with government-subsidised training at so-called “art schools”, when in effect what we’re really doing is preparing them with the means to undermine society via deviant-prone children’s minds? I mean, can you seriously assure me, sir, that even with your methodical and purposeful focus by the adults on stopping potential terrorism via data retention as much as the detestable cue-jumping by so-called asylum seekers with their greedy little eyes on our unemployment benefits and overpriced housing, can you actually assure me we haven’t in fact turned our backs to the even larger menace of art schools and the deviants they produce?    

But to be fair, sir, it’s not like I’m generally anti-art or anything. Far from it! I myself in fact even dabbled in applications to attend one of these so-called art schools another life-time ago. I still even fancy myself a crack draughtsman you mightn’t be surprised to learn, and my colour mixing, well, when I get the opportunity to muse, sir, the results are invariably  transcendental, let me tell you. And yet the fact is, sir, I count my blessings every day that perhaps through only sheer luck alone, I was not accepted. Doubtlessly such unceremonious rejection hurts at the time – I’m not shying away from such an admission – but honestly, I can see now that art school was not so much a dream misplaced as a nightmare misfired. Because to have been sucked in at such a vulnerable age to one of those festering disease pits of ineffectual hipsterism and my mind filled to overflowing with rabid deviancy and dreamy left-leaning (read commie) irrelevancies now seems like a machine-gun burst of bullets (unlike your unfortunate virtual-self, sir) I dodged by the skin of my blue tie teeth. I mean, if ever there was proof needed for ridding society of these well-springs of vegetable eating, tree-hugging deviants – even fraudsters like Ngmai, I’d suggest – then my near miss in the context of The Rise of X is it.

Because in all honesty, sir, if art schools continue to be allowed to spew out authority-disrespecting degenerates left, left and further left of centre, then what the hell’s next?

X-styled nuclear bombs triggered over cities on the weather channel?

How about participating porn stars doing unconscionable virtual acts to targeted game-show hosts in prime-time?

What if charlatans like the odious Paul Ngmai, who instead of rotting in jail for their crimes against humanity, decide it would be “cool”, “you know”, “to like”, “create”, “man”, functionally aesthetic designer pathogens that then wipe out half the world’s population?

Even: What if misguided miscreants like my dear little J–– thinking they’re artists too in fact begin making “performance art” with 3D printed guns, not for use on the TV screen mind you, but in flesh and blood press “galleries”?

Because it’s this apocalyptic scenario, sir, which I strenuously believe must be methodically and purposefully considered by your eminent and adult self. Seriously, the time to act is now.

In conclusion then, let me just add that as the leader of the newly formed Fearful Adults Demanding Safety (FADS), I, sir, will be instructing my inflating members to vote for yourself and affiliates in the upcoming election, not only to help dislodge, as you put it, the worst government in all history (despite the annoyingly renewed current Triple-A yada yada yada), but with a mind to your expected support put an end to the tyranny of contemporary art in our society.

Because by our one and only possible God, sir, we cannot afford the likes of my J–– to believe, even for a second, that they might somehow be “artists” waiting to break out. I mean, seriously, heaven above help us should that sick, sick delusion ever take hold.

Yours truly (and hoping you get another shot at even more adult, methodical and purposeful direct-action government),

(name withheld)

President, FADS

Ben Stone studied art with Saburo Muraoka and Marina Abramovic. He has published in Southerly literary journal as Leon Ward, and is the author of the novels Sex and Death in Sigatoka, Natives, Monsters are Real, and the short fiction collection, The Rise of X. Ben is currently doing a Masters by research with the novelist Rohan Wilson. www.benstone.xyz

Hel

The skies turned,
The heavens burned.
The ravens soared,
The devil roared.
The skies bled.
The rivers ran red.
The ravens fled,
No longer deaths friend.
Ashes fell from heaven,
Down into hell below.
This new world there was no love,
Only death and blood.
The Devil watched this new Queen conquer, 
Claiming the world as her own.
Her name was Hel,
And she was the Queen Now.

Pomegranate Seeds

Can’t you see?
The pomegranates are not safe to eat,
They’ll trap you here for half a year.
This place where darkness reveries,
And there is only fear.
Our home that you call hell,
Where the dead cry out.
This place of endless night, 
Where there is not even a ray of light.
And yet you hesitate, with thoughts of staying here.
In this place that the common folk fear,
So my queen what shall it be?
Will this be your home?
Or will this be your hell?
It is time to choose now.

Daughter of Darkness

Dance with me demons below,
Bring the devil knocking at my door.
Let hell’s burning fires devour my soul.
Even when my feet ache,
And the knocking grows louder.
As my lungs fill with smoke,
Dance with me demons,
As darkness turns to daybreak.
As the words witch and hieratic are thrown my way.
Dance with me devil,
As the fire burns my body.
Claiming to cleanse me of sin,
And save my soul, from the devil in hell below.
Dance with me devil,
Dance with your daughter of darkness.

Meghann grew up in a small coastal town in Maine. She spent her days being homeschooled on the family farm, her favorite past time, was time being spent at the library, used bookstores, and nestled into her favorite book. Through her passion for reading unlocked her gift to write.

His fingers wrap around my wrist, his grip too painful to shake off and his voice…his voice…is something I’ve never heard before…not from him.

‘No, no, you can’t do this…it was all going to…it…it was…I was gonna make it work this time.’  

I snatch my hand away, or try to, but his grip’s too strong.

‘Is this how it works out? We fuck them over? I can’t hurt Barney again …and you should be much too afraid to hurt Heather…but….’

‘But you can’t give me up either, that’s alright, I know away round that…you just have to trust me, Jennet. I know a way for you and Barnaby to finally be happy.’

I wince at the sound of my husband’s given-name, it’s my own fault for telling…but Anthony never could leave something alone when he found it funny.  Yet the way he said it tonight, it wasn’t the mocking way he usually said that name. It was gentle, almost…loving, it was the way he used to say my name.

Why was everything so different now that we were so close to the end? I knew tonight would change things…either we’d finally tell them, or we’d end it, and go on with the lives we already had, such as they were.

I shouldn’t complain, Barney’s a good husband, a good father…I’m lucky, but…but he’s not Anthony. He isn’t…he isn’t the man I love, not anymore.

And that’s what this is all about really, that’s why Anthony’s been so cruel with me tonight. He knows we have to tell them, but he doesn’t think I have the nerve …well…I’ll show him.

I reach up to his face, and ignore the slight flicker of irritation there, as I cup his cheek.

‘It’ll all be okay, we just have to get through tonight, and everything will be better.’

He smiles then, a real smile, not the fake one he’d been flashing me all night.

‘You’re right…you’re always right. Come on let’s get these cookie…cupcakes through, they’re already starting to sag.’

***

Anthony struts into the room as if everyone in it belongs to him, leaving me to carry dessert in myself. He sits down, not in the chair closest to me…where he’d promised he’d sit, but the one next to my husband. They’re close enough to touch knees, if they’d wanted to.

 ‘Oh Jennet, those cakes look absolutely… lovely?’

Heather always could say the nicest things, but t I’ll just let her talk, after all I’m taking more from her tonight than just her shit.

 ‘Yes, lovely…almost as lovely as your ‘friendship’ with my husband…people don’t generally like you at all, do they Anthony?’  

Anthony laughs.

‘More than they like you my Sweet, least I keep the friends I make. Do you know she’s lost…what was it dear…twelve friends within the last two months?’

‘Oh, I don’t think you of all people…dear…should be bringing up the subject of lost friends.’

Oh god, not another bizarrely specific fight…thank god for my own husband’s awkwardness.

‘So, Anthony…Jennet’s been so excited about this project, she’s barely been home. I imagine you must be vibrating on the spot.’

Oh God, let tonight end.  

***

We’ve cleared away the dishes and Anthony even offered to help my husband with the washing up. Which left me alone in the dining room…with Heather. I’m not sure what I’d been preparing myself for, but it certainly wasn’t…for her to smile at me, for her to come over and sit by me, and for her to grab my hand between both of hers and squeeze…squeeze until it hurt.

‘I know what you’re doing with him. I want you to know that, before this night is over, I know what you’re doing.’

I’m not going to deny it.

‘If you know, then why do you stay?’

She lets go of my hand then and glares at me, but I’m not finished.

‘Why don’t you leave Heather, I’ve seen you and Anthony tonight …you don’t love each other…and I don’t know if you ever did. Why stay with a man who you can’t even respect enough not to humiliate in a stranger’s house?’

She throws back her head and laughs then, high and unnerving.

‘Well,’ she says, the giggle not quite gone from her voice. ‘I can ask you the same question, you clearly don’t love Barney… why stay with a man who you don’t respect enough to even pretend you’re not fucking your co-worker for?’

I sit back and look at her then, really look at her. Heather’s a small woman, with a jagged little pixie cut framing her face. She’s much prettier than me, in every way, but there’s a certain upwards quirk to her mouth, a cruel twist at the corner, that is distinctly ugly.  

‘You don’t know anything about my marriage.’ I begin to say, but like always Heather knows better.

‘And you don’t know anything about mine… what? Did you really think he’d let me go, in exchange for a few cheap fucks with you? Oh Jenny, you really don’t know anything, do you? You see honey, I’ve been here before…at this table, eating theses cakes …it never changes, none of you ever change…he never lets you change.’

She laughs then, her neck lolling against the back of her chair and I just sit there. Sit there and let her laugh at me until she’s manic.  That’s when my husband’s scream hits us, which only makes the mad woman laugh all the harder.

***

‘Barnaby, I hope we’ve made tonight pleasant for you.’

Look I don’t want to be mean, god knows people have turned their noses up at…well…me, often enough that…I don’t want to do that to someone else…but, Jennet’s friends are weird. Bad enough “Anthony” somehow knows my given name, but he says it like he’s getting…aroused with each syllable.

 ‘Oh Yeah, very pleasant. It’s just nice to know Jenny works with such…nice people, she really didn’t use to like her job, but then you came along and it was like it was a whole new place for her. Better you know…sorry I’m rambling…Jenny says I do that.’ 

I look away from him, down at my hands in the soapy water…no, not mine, ours. When I wasn’t looking Anthony slipped his has hands over mine, entwining our fingers in the water. Okay this is weird…it isn’t just me this time…this is weird.

 ‘I know you don’t know me Barnaby, but I know you…I know what she put you through, and I’m here to make it stop.’

I yank my hands back, or try to but he’s holding them too tight and squeezing them so hard now that… my wedding ring presses into his palm, hard enough to leave a mark. And then it’s not, because he’s twisted it off my finger and thrown it into the sink.

‘Hey!’

I try and catch it, but my ring vanishes down the drain before I can, and the mad man laughs. Throws his head back in a show of such manic mirth that I think I’m gonna be sick, and then he’s tugging me forward and I’m much too weak to even try to pull back. He’s taller than me, so my fat round head fits snuggly under his chin as he sways us back and forth.

Okay…okay…I need…to do something…but everything feels so slow now…and I can hardly keep my eyes open anymore. Anthony takes that moment to whisper, almost lovingly, into my ear.

 ‘I hope you’re enjoying tonight Barnaby, I wanted to make up for last time.’

Last time? What last time? This is the first time we’ve ever met, if he should be apologising for anything it should be whatever’s happening right now.

‘You see I was just a puppy, following in the wave of your wife’s cunt.’

I finely manage to jerk away at that.

‘What…my wife…you and Jennet…no…no…you’re nuts, you’re nothing but nuts.’

‘I’m sorry I have to do this, but you see it’s the only way. Don’t worry though pet, I’ll wake you up for the heavy lifting…you can even take your shirt off this time, if you like.’

The man’s drunk…. he’s mad…he’s…he’s …and then there’s a knife in his hand and all I can see is my own blood, and all I can think is… let Jenny be safe …this time round… and then the world goes black.

***

This is how it goes…every time…Jennet and I hear the scream and we get up from the table, we run towards it but we’re too late, or so we think. When we find Anthony standing over Barnaby, a knife in his hand and that sneer…that sneer I’ve come to know so well, plastered across his handsome face, she screams…but I don’t anymore.

That’s all Anthony is to me these day, handsome, nice to look at … but nothing else. It was different the first time, I was still in love with him then…I still wanted him to stay with me…I can’t say I want that anymore.

Jennet is screaming, screaming at Anthony, at me …I think in the end she just screams to scream. But I don’t…I don’t make a sound, I just slide to my knees beside Barnaby’s still twitching body. He’s not dead, not really…my husband knows his craft, and if he’d actually wanted him dead…there wouldn’t even be a body to find.

‘Isn’t this…isn’t this what you wanted…now none of us have to leave.’

He’s laughing again, but this time I don’t even bother to look up, instead I take the other man’s round head into my lap, and smooth his dark hair away from his eyes. His breathing is shallow and slow, and I think if this where anywhere else, he’d be dead. He smiles at me, that soft quick quirk of the mouth that I’ve come to know so well over the years.  

He’s older than Anthony, mid-way through his forties while the rest of us are barely through our thirties. His hair was completely black the first time we sat down to this dinner, but it’s greyed since then. If I were a stupid woman I might have even hoped it was because time was really passing…but I’m not that stupid girl anymore. I know the world I live in now, and it’s my husband’s…everything bends to his will, even the man he’s going to kill. If Barney’s hair is beginning to grey, it’s only because Anthony wills it.

 ‘You bastard, you bastard…you…you think I’ll just let you…’

There’s a knife in Jennet’s hand when she lunges at Anthony this time…hmm…that’s new. She slices his arm and he laughs and back hands her across the face. She doesn’t fall, but stumbles back slamming against the wall and sinking down to the floor. She’s a stupid woman, a blond, bland shell of the ditz that first crossed my husband’s path; he doesn’t even want to fuck her anymore.

He’s walking over to us now, kneeling next to Barnaby and me, smiling down like we’re the most precious things in the world to him, and maybe we are… after everything… after the first night…when the three of us had to bury Jennet’s body.

Maybe this time he’ll let her live, but I doubt it, he always gets so upset if Barnaby dies before Jennet. That’s not how it’s supposed to go, and he always did have a wicked temper when things didn’t go his way.

***

Shall we play a game?

I have a good game for you tonight, it’s called who’ll die first…I play it every night I’m here, I have to find something to entertain me while we run out the clock.

The Game goes like this, four people sitting round a dinner table and two of them are fucking…and it’s not the married couple. The first time I played I got it wrong, the first time I ate this dinner I thought I loved the blond sitting next to me…well, no one gets it right first time.  

I’m told I don’t love like other people…mostly by my wife. I don’t love people, I love how I can play with them…how I can twist them and turn them into…into something else. That’s okay, most people do that anyway.

The first time we sat down here, I thought I loved Jennet…but it wasn’t real.  I saw that the first time I let the knife pierce her skin, and slice her neck into two pretty pieces. I didn’t love her. It took me three times round the table to learn that, and another five to realise what this really was…this whole farce of a night.

It was mine, it was my game, I’d just been playing it wrong…playing it as if I was like the rest of them, as if I didn’t know the rules either…but that’s not true, that’s never been true.  I can make them different you know…I can change the table, what we eat…even what we wear. I can make them thinner, fatter, sleep, awake…aroused. I can do anything and the other players, well, they just have to take it.

It always starts like this, it always starts with me and her in the kitchen…with the cupcakes she thinks she made. It was cookies the first time, she’d thought I liked that…but I never do.

She knew what was happening…my wife…not that tart I almost left her for…knew almost the first time it happened, I could see it in her eyes…but he didn’t…he never does.  

This is how it goes, Jennet throws herself at me and actually manages to cut me this time…nice job…and I throw her against the wall, where’s she stunned and slips down it like a puppet with no strings. I turn to Heather then…the man in her lap isn’t dead, I won’t let him die…not this time.

Heather thinks I don’t know what they did last time, while they were hiding in that closet, but I know… I don’t get not to know, that’s how the game works. I had to watch.

I can make them do anything, I can make her watch, as I bring him forward. He should be passed out from the blood, but that doesn’t get to happen in my game, he surges forward at the crook of my finger, practically shoving my wife aside as he throws himself at me.

And that’s where tonight’s game ends, Jennet on the floor, Heather picking herself up and Barnaby and I locked in each other’s embrace. Maybe not the way it should have ended…not the way the others would have wanted it, but then, we’ll always have next time for that.

We’ll always have next time.

Charlotte Burnett is 24, dyslexic, and has previously been published in journals like The Write Launch and Coffin Bell Journal. She is currently studying for an Open Degree with the Open University, focusing on Psychology and Creative Writing.

for Barb, from Byron

Sister, I leave you not in empty hands, as we all hold you now
together. Mother oak of an orchard all your own, of a line
you passed so much of us through, with stubbornness
and quiet pride. The dirt of this place will never leave our feet,
nor the heels of our children, nor our children’s children,
on down the line until they call to us like the legends we did,
from this land our family has bled into, has risen out of
like sleeping cicadas that hum our same old song
throughout these generations. You will not sing alone, sister,
youngest of our blood. My wife, my children and theirs,
those who carry me in your hearts and veins and heels—
this dirt will always welcome you, will always be my gift to you.
It was nothing much until our ancestors planted seed,
cleaned out the earth, built rows and home and memories
upon their labored backs and capable hands, these hands
which you now hold and carry your own in. Despite the miles
and the borders that have wedged themselves between us,
we all come back to these, our roots, to the dirt that farrowed us
to being, where we’ll all return in some manner
to give thanks for the years we toiled and loved and ventured
through this life, and so must I return myself to this land.
Breath to breeze. Soul to soil. Life to loving. Ash to ash.
I’ll greet you when your time has come for finally coming home.

Night Brings Out the Voyeurs

We tuck forgiveness beneath our arms
with the bedsheets and pillows, coming back for
the little women in their glass boxes later.

it’s a humbling process—cleaning out my neighbor’s house
after years of constant absence. Not death,
just with family a few states away, too old to come back.

She left the washroom light on, left after
her grandson drowned alone. We pass the velvet works
and the beaded hangings, collecting things

we can crash onto later, exhausted from the labor—
physical, emotional. There’s always
something left to say, to be said when closure

has been found and coddled, tucked away in a drawer
for the next fight, the next falling out. I sneeze
from the stucco and the dust and she compliments

my nose ring, a recent addition. Hers
is a rebel tattoo that curves with her hand when
she cups the first tiny woman we free from a box.

We lean in close. Marvel. Wonder how she ever
fit in there. Wonder where she was bought.
We set her gently down on the makeshift bed

in the driveway. Another neighbor passes by, waves
at her, ignores me like the fixtures we silently agree
are too cumbersome to move, much more trouble than

they’re worth. Panting, we join the tiny women outside,
surrounded by lampshades and plates, VHS tapes
and moccasins, and we leave the washroom light on,

just in case someone walking by grows curious, looks in,
thinks what we’ve left behind to be worth the trouble,
to be something worthy of a vision or a memory.

Korbin Jones graduated from Northwest Missouri State University with degrees in writing/publishing and in Spanish, and is currently pursuing his MFA in Poetry at the University of Kansas. He has had poems, short stories, and personal essays appear in various literary magazines across the nation. His translation of Pablo Luque Pinilla’s poetry collection ‘SFO’ is forthcoming from Tolsun Books (April 2019). He works as editor-in-chief and head designer for Fearsome Critters: A Millennial Arts Journal.

Don’t think I ain’t figured it out.  I know what’s going on.  You can’t fool me.  That’s why I stocked up the pantry and filled the fridge.  Bologna and cheese and Wonderbread, case of Lone Star.  Water flows outta the tap, cool and clear.  Lights cut out, I got candles and matches, lanterns and kerosene.  Miguel’s .12-gauge oiled and loaded, too, fresh boxes of shells in every room.  Doors locked, curtains pulled, TV screen dancing blue in the half-light.  I’m by God prepared, is what I am.  You better believe it.  I know what’s out there, lurking in the shadows.  Got an inkling what’s he’s after, too.  Plumb already robbed everyone I know, including Miguel, whether or not he’d admit it.  But what’s mine is mine.  That slippery sumbitch ain’t getting jack-squat from me.  You know who I mean.

The Chupacabra. 

Not everybody’s heard of the Chupacabra.  Maybe you ain’t neither.  Lucky you.  Gimme a minute, I’ll tell you all about him, his hopes and dreams and devious, disgusting ways.

Miguel thinks I’ve gone off the deep end.  He ain’t said as much in so many words, but them looks he’s been giving ain’t lost on me.  I’m sure he still loves me.  I mean, we been together all this time, ain’t we?  Stood by each other, thick and thin, through the boozing times (me) and the whoring times (him) and the flat broke times (both of us).  But there’s only so much you can count on where the Chupacabra’s concerned. 

You take it all too serious, darlin, said Miguel.

What I understand, that fiend’s from down Mexico way.

Nothing but a myth.

As I recall, your people are from down yonder.

So what you think, sugar?  I’m the Chupacabra?

Not yet, but I ain’t ruled it out none.

That’s when he give me that look.  Like I was a little no-nothing kid, and this was all just play-pretend that’d gone too far. 

It’s just a legend, honey.

My ass.

A dadblame story, plain and simple. 

Maybe once upon a time that was true, but not no more, it ain’t.

You done lost it or what?

They caught them one over to Cuero! 

Miguel just shook his head and give me a pitying expression.  That’s when I knew for certain:  the Chupacabra’d gotten to him.  He turned on his busted boot heel and loped to the door.  Paused at the threshold and give me that look again over his shoulder.  Maybe he wanted to say sumpin else, but he had to get back to work, so he donned his hat and stepped out into the afternoon dust.

Everybody says the Chupacabra’s just some story dreamt up by country folk too ignorant and superstitious to stare reality in the face.  But I’m here to tell you, that ain’t the case.  Maybe in the early going I thought it was, just like everyone else.  But how do you explain what happened to Betty and Ray’s Shih Tzu or Frank and Maria’s Weimaraner or Jen and Alberto’s German Shepherd?  How’d they wind up bleeding out all over the putting green at the fancy new golf course?  First off, it ain’t some new canine ailment that croaked them.  Look at them fang marks.  Some folks say wolves done it, but I lived here my whole entire life, and there ain’t never been no sign of wolves, Mexican or otherwise.  Now coyotes is a theory.  They been run off their home turf by all them rich folks moving into Las Colonias de Tejas Golf Village, so they might could be hungry.  But I gotta tell you, that ain’t likely.  There’s plenty of varmints scurrying about to keep them in meat.  Plus, them pooches wasn’t even ate, just throat-slit and emptied of blood, each and every one.  So what coulda done it?  Don’t talk to me about no werewolves or vampire bats.  The truth’s staring us square in the face, just don’t nobody want to look at it.

Let’s get sumpin straight right here and now.  There’s been lots of killing.  But the Chupacabra ain’t the killing.  He’s what makes the killing possible.

Miguel don’t take kindly to the lockout, and I can’t say I blame him none.  On my way back from the Piggly Wiggly, I stopped off at Martín’s and picked up a couple new deadbolts.  Got them installed PDQ, front and back.  He comes home after a long day’s work, sweat-stained and grimy, all he wants is a cold beer and a plate of chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes.  I get that.  But this ain’t business-as-usual.  Not no more, it ain’t.  We’re done playing games.  I gotta look out for number one.

Open this dadblame door, he hollers, fist a-thumping.

Be with you directly, I say, but I’m back in the bedroom oiling the .12-gauge, so he probably can’t hear me none.

Lois Marie?  He slaps the door with the flat of his hand five or six times.  You in there?

When I don’t come a-scurrying, his boots crunch around the burnt-up side yard, and next thing you know, the back knob’s jiggling and squeaking.  But he ain’t gonna get no purchase there neither.  I swapped out both those locks for exactly this reason.  Miguel cusses me up and down, then hacks and spits.  A pickup out on the highway backfires.  In the near distance, some hound ain’t yet met his demise sets to howling. 

The burnt-up grass in the backyard announces Miguel’s arrival.  He ain’t real sneaky.  He cups his hands around his eyes, forehead to the glass.  I can just make him out through the bedroom curtains.

What’s goin on in yonder? he asks.

He ain’t going away no time soon, so I say, I’m just fine, Miguel.

You laid up in bed?  Let me in, I’ll get you sumpin to eat.

You ain’t getting in, I say. 

Hell, I ain’t.  

Better get it through your thick skull.

It’s my dadblame house, he hollers, smacking the window with his palm and setting the glass panes to rattling.  I’ll be dadblamed if I’m gonna sleep out here in the heat with the skeeters.  You gonna make me kick down the door?

The sumbitch is all bark.  Gravel growls beneath his boots as he stomps up the drive. 

I sit back and breathe easy.  Things ain’t so bad.  I can still remember learning to swim in the Guadalupe River.  I can still see my parents’ faces, God rest their souls.  I can still taste them butterscotch candies my granny used to give me during the sermon to keep me quiet.  Ain’t nothing lost at all.  That Chupacabra ain’t touching me.

Then comes the crash.  Glass shards go flying.  I cover my eyes and chamber a shell.  My daddy didn’t raise no dummy.  Before I look, I already know it ain’t you-know-who.  He’s sly and shifty, skulking in the shadows, lingering everywhere you ain’t looking.  Sure enough, it’s just a hunk of brick.  Miguel’s subtle as a sledgehammer.  Glass tinkles and snaps as he clears off the window frame, preparing for his grand entrance. 

I aim my double-barrels and say, You ain’t making this easy.

His eyes go wide.  He drops the rag he’s using on the glass and stumbles half a step backwards.  His hands float up around his shoulders.  I’m tired and hungry, Lois Marie.  I need to get cleaned up.

Be that as it may, I say.

Where you expect me to go?

Ain’t my problem, frankly.  But you got friends.  Get on the horn and call in a favor.

You ain’t in your right mind, Lois Marie. 

So you say.

You’re pointing my own shotgun at me.

I sigh and shift my weight.  You better take stock, Miguel.  Who just pitched a brick through the bedroom window?

Just unlock the door, okay?  You put away your gun, I’ll clean up the broken glass, we’ll get us some supper.  How’s that sound, darlin?

You can spit around these parts and hit a gun nut, but I ain’t one of them.  Still, the time for talking’s over, so I click off the safety and blow a hole through the ceiling, plaster cascading around me like snow in a snow globe.  Does the trick, too.  Ain’t never seen Miguel move so fast.  Knifes to his pickup and peels outta the drive, gravel spray pinging against the siding.  He ain’t even hit the road, and I already got cardboard duck-taped over the busted window.  That’s good for the AC and skeeters but ain’t gonna do diddly where the Chupacabra’s concerned.

Them pooches was just the beginning.  They was all good mutts, and we mourn their passing, but truth is, they wasn’t nothing but the gateway.  We shoulda seen it coming, but didn’t nobody pay no attention.

First, it was the Hartley twins.  Don’t get me wrong, they was dirtbags, so ain’t too many regret their demise.  It’s the how of it don’t make no sense, not for two sorry sumbitches like them, even if it didn’t have nothing to do with no fang marks or bloodsucking.  First blush, whole thing looked like a dadblame suicide, what with their Chevelle idling high and them garage doors battened down tight.  Only they had the trunk loaded with meth, backseat filled with guns, duffel full of cash under the driver’s side.  They was on their way somewhere, only they forgot where or when or that that V-8 was filling the shop with fumes.  Soon there wasn’t nothing left to remember.

If memory serves, Earl was next.  He ran the saloon in town, and he was Daddy’s friend, so I knowed him since I was just a little girl.  Dumb sumbitch went deer hunting in the worst ice storm we seen in all my days.  Up and disappeared without telling a soul where he was headed.  Search party finally found him way out on Old Man Townsend’s lease, frozen stiff, sporting nothing but soiled tighty whiteys and a grimace.  Blue lips, purple fingers, skin gone ashy gray.  What’s he doing out yonder, half-naked in the middle of the dadblame winter?  Didn’t even have no ammo for his rifle.

And that wasn’t nearly the worst of what come to pass.  You ain’t heard about Marge’s three little girls, you been living under a rock.  They was cute as a boot, I tell you what, only Marge was on the sauce in a heavy kinda way.  Wasn’t her fault entirely, since it ran in the family, but the buck’s gotta stop somewhere.  Even before she fell in love with Jack Daniels, Marge shouldn’t never had no kids.  Woman can’t hardly look after her own self, so what’s she doing with three more mouths to feed?

Wasn’t nothing special about that Tuesday evening.  Marge was down to the saloon in town, her usual routine.  She might oughta just moved in.  Couldn’t get no babysitter, but that didn’t stop her.  She was too caught up in the velvety taste of that whiskey, the way them men give her wolf eyes and bought her drinks and, later, shoved their slimy tongues down her throat.  Back home, her girls finished their homework, ate their supper, brushed their teeth.  Had the doors locked and lights out before ten o’clock.  Precious as the day is long. 

What did they know about pilot lights?  What did they know about gas filling the house?  Older two went to sleep and flat never woke up.  The youngest girl, Julie, musta got up in the night, confused as all hell.  Wasn’t but five or six, bless her heart.  They found her a couple-three miles away in Van Zandt’s pasture, barefoot and in her nightgown.  None of the livestock would go near her.  Sure enough, little Julie was fang-marked and blood-sucked.

No matter how sleazy or old or drunk, folks don’t just forget to open the garage door or put on pants or check that their little girls ain’t lying dead in a heap.  They flat just don’t.  So take it from me.  That’s the Chupacabra at work.

All’s quiet for a spell.  Out on the highway, a few semis blast through the evening light.  The AC kicks on and cuts off.  The ceiling fan whirs and clatters.  Otherwise, what you call silence.  I check and double-check the .12-gauge.  I dig out Miguel’s .44 Magnum and a box of shells, then load it and set it on the side table.  I make a pot of coffee, pour myself a cup, and slide into my rocking chair.  A barn owl hoots at the dusk.  A lizard scampers across a window screen.  A scorpion skitters along the kitchen baseboards.

All that peace and quiet can’t last.  Miguel’s pickup rumbles into the drive, followed by another vehicle.  Doors creak open, then slam shut.  The mumble of voices and slap of boots on the front porch.  The screen door stretches open, and a fist raps on the door.

Mrs. Martinez?

Ain’t no such animal, I say.

More muttering.

It’s Officer Bailey.

How you been, Chuck? I say.

Can’t complain, he says through the door.  Your husband tells me we got us a little misunderstanding.  Mind opening the door so we can all get us some clarity?

I set my coffee mug on the sideboard.  Ain’t no confusion, Chuck.  And ain’t nobody getting in.  That’s what locks is for. 

Be reasonable, Lois Marie.  You can’t just throw Miguel out on the street.  He ain’t even done nothing wrong.  I can tell you for a fact his wild ways is long since past.

Crickets chirp.  A semi thunders by out on the highway.  A hound bays in the gathering gloom.

Y’all are buddies, I say.  I can appreciate that.

Me and Sharon oughta have y’all over to the house for supper again one of these days.

Tell you what, Chuck.  We all make it outta this in one piece, I’ll take you up on that.  As I recall, your Sharon can whoop her up a mess of biscuits.

That she can, Lois Marie.  He chuckles, but it sounds strained.  But, I gotta tell you, I don’t think I care for what I’m hearing. 

That’s tough titty, Chuck.

Miguel ain’t done nothing wrong, and I’m just trying to keep the peace.

You done missed the boat, I’m afraid.

Now you go and start making threats?

I take me a sip of coffee, but it’s gone cold.  Ain’t threats, Chuck.  It’s facts.  Fact one:  y’all are barking up the wrong tree.  Fact two:  I got a pair of firearms, .12-gauge and .44, locked and loaded.  Fact three:  it’s past time for y’all to be on your way. 

They mumble to each other.  Boots stomp off the porch.  Engines fire.  Then they ease away into the twinkling twilight. 

Folks around these parts are given to gossiping ways, so after the killings began word of the Chupacabra got around pretty quick.  Preacher’s wife seen sumpin evil stalking the grounds of the First Baptist Church, pissing in the azaleas.  She said a quick prayer to Baby Jesus, and when she opened her eyes again, the demon wasn’t nowhere to be found.  Shortly thereafter, the President of the Chamber of Commerce spotted a mangy critter chomping on the tires of his new Cadillac, only it vamoosed directly when he hollered and pitched rocks.  Wasn’t long before some old vets spotted a blue-gray flash one night at the VFW, but when they chased it under the pool table, then back to the john, it vanished.  Everybody said the same thing:  whatever it was left behind a god-awful stench of rotten eggs, crude oil, and road kill. 

Those was just a few of the early sightings.  Don’t hardly nobody remember them no more.  They ain’t even aware of the forgetting, truth be told.  These days you can’t even bring it up, for the sidelong looks of suspicion and resentment.  That’s just how he wants it, the slippery sumbitch.  He’s sewing his evil spell, and they ain’t got the first clue.  But he can’t fool me.  I remember every last one of them rumors.  He ain’t even started gnawing at the edges of my mind.  That’s because I’m onto him.  That sneaky sumbitch knows it, so he’s coming for me. 

The Chupacabra comes for us all.   

When night falls, I wait in my rocker in the darkness.  Wind gusts over the limestone hills, leaving warm pockets of silence.  Moonlight trickles through the window slats.  Crickets chirp.  A barn owl hoots.  Miguel don’t pull up into the gravel drive, but it’s so quiet I hear the squeak of his brakes.  He kills the engine up yonder across from Old Man Townsend’s place. 

I shut off the lamp light and kill the TV, then take me a peek through the curtains.  Sure enough, here comes Miguel, stalking through the darkness.  He’s gotta be loaded, way he’s weaving and cussing under his breath.  Probably spent the last however many hours up to the saloon in town, wetting his whistle, bellyaching to anybody within earshot.  I can see by the security light he’s got a crowbar and an attitude.  Sumpin tells me this ain’t gonna be pretty.

When Miguel starts hacking at the front door, I chamber a shell in the .12-gauge.  Got the .44 in the waistband of my Wrangler’s.  He grunts and wrenches on that door, and two-by-fours splinter.  If I don’t watch out, he’ll bust that thing down lickety-split.

Cut that out, Miguel.  You’re gonna tear the place to shreds.

Shut up, woman, he slurs.  My house.

I spy on him through the peep hole.  Sumbitch don’t look right.  Sweaty and pale and green around the gills.  Staggering so bad he can’t hardly stay upright.  Dadblame, Miguel, I yell through the door.  You drink the town dry?

Mind your business, he yells, swinging his crow bar.  He misses whatever he’s aiming at and goes sprawling into the front porch railing, then over.  It’s funny as all hell.  After a good belly-laugh, I flip on the porch light and take a gander through the window.  He’s crumpled over in the flower bed among the burnt-up zinnias.  He ain’t moving.  I’m worried he’s head-busted or neck-broke, so I throw back the deadbolt and holler his name.  He don’t respond.  Now I shimmy halfway out the door, safety off and finger on the trigger.  Nothing.  When I cross the porch and step to the railing, senses fired for any sign of the Chupacabra, I put my worries to bed.  Miguel’s down there, snoring in the dirt.  Though it’s gotta be eighty-five and sweaty as all get-out, I grab an afghan off the couch and pitch it over him.  Least it might keep the skeeters from eating him alive.     

Them rumors was just hogwash and horsefeathers for the longest time.  Ain’t nobody believed a word it.  But it didn’t stay that way.  Not on your life, it didn’t.  Not once I seen the sumbitch with my own eyes. 

Musta been a couple-three months after all the hubbub started.  It was freezing cold, I remember that, my breath pluming like smoke in the frigid afternoon.  I was wandering Old Man Townsend’s acreage.  I wasn’t sure it served much purpose, but he don’t get around like he used to, and he likes for somebody to lay eyes on his fence line every so often.  Gives him peace of mind.

I spotted the shifty sumbitch that afternoon down by the stock tank.  The Chupacabra.  I was blowing into my cupped hands when I seen this flash of blue-gray through the barren live oaks.  Just like that.  I blinked, and it was gone.  Wasn’t no crashing through the underbrush, just a light wind rustling the dead leaves, so I didn’t think nothing of it.  Till I seen him up close and personal, that is. 

I remember the whole thing clear as day.  Truth is, I thought it was a coyote at first.  Only what would a coyote be doing off on his own in the middle of the dadblame day?  I froze for a minute, watching.  I was downwind, so that thing, whatever it was, hadn’t picked up my scent yet.  But he stank to high heaven.  Like dead armadillo, rotting in the summer sun.  Like a stagnant West Texas oil sump.  Like rotten Easter eggs.  It was foul as foul gets.  I covered my nose and mouth with a gloved hand.

He stood there, lapping brackish water.  My view was obstructed by tree trunks, and I wanted a better look, so I crept down the hill.  The gusting wind musta muted the crunching leaves and snapping twigs under my boots.  About thirty yards from the tank, I hid behind a mesquite tree.  Far as I could tell, that thing wasn’t any the wiser.

It was blue-gray and hairless, like maybe it had the mange.  Built like a midsize dog, with ears that flopped over and a long snout.  He had him a long tongue, and between gusts of icy wind, I could hear him slurping at that brown water.  Soon he left off drinking and turned his head in profile, tongue lolling, sniffing at the wind.  His stained incisors shone clearly in the gray December light.  He stuck his nose back into the water, and I crept down the hill another ten yards.  But that sly sumbitch was lying in wait.  Before I knew what was happening, he spun around, glaring at me with these deep blue eyes.  His gaze bore into me, and I lost all track of time.  Sumpin sounded like snickering.  Who knows how long it went on?  Then, just like that, the Chupacabra turned and trotted off into the trees. 

I must nod off in my rocker, because I awake late in the night.  The full moon pours through the window, gilding everything in a wet sheen.  The wind’s died down to nothing.  No traffic on the road.  Even the crickets have gone quiet.  I can just make out the rise and fall of Miguel’s snoring out in the front flowerbed.  Least he ain’t dead.    

My eyes won’t hardly focus.  I sit there, cradling the .12-gauge, trying to blink myself to wakefulness.  Like I’m underwater and everything happens in slow motion.  It ain’t cold, but the wet air’s heavy and gives me the shivers.  Strong pot of coffee would do the trick, snap me to my senses and give me a warm-up, but I don’t never get past the idea of it.  Ain’t got a chance.

Because now here comes the sniffing.  First, it’s at the back door, right at the bottom seal.  Could be some stray mutt or a hungry coyote, but I know better.  Ain’t no mistaking who it is.  His tongue slaps the rough wood.  His claws click against the deck.  Then he pads around the side of the house.  A trickle and splatter as he pisses all over my burnt-up petunias, then a rotten ammoniac stench, acrid and heavy, though all the windows are shut tight. 

He taps across the front porch.  More sniffing, plus sumpin that sounds like snickering.  The room fills with sulfur-and-rot stink.  My mind goes blurry around the edges.  I clutch the shotgun but don’t move, and I may even be holding my breath.  That busted bedroom window’s my Achilles heel, but he don’t notice or ain’t interested.  The Chupacabra sniffs some more, then scratches at the door.  He don’t know jack about me, where I’m from, what I suffered, who I mighta been.  Still, I know what he’s after.  Great aunt Milly’s pecan pie and the tire swing over the Guadalupe, my beagle puppy’s soft ears and the cherry scent of my daddy’s pipe tobacco, my proud honor roll certificates and my very first date.  The whole shooting match.  Well, I got news for that greedy sumbitch, out there pissing and scratching and howling at the Comanche moon.  Nothing doing, bucko.    

He sniffs some more, then clicks across the front porch.  I still ain’t moved none, like I’m made of stone.  Shell in the chamber, but what good is it?  Sloppy snores drift in through the muggy night, regular as clockwork.  Till they don’t.  I don’t know what’s going on.  Hear this muffled grunt, followed by a long, wet slurp.  Possibly more snickering.  Then I remember what’s-his-name, asleep outside in the dirt.

I spring from my rocker, throw open the door, and blast off a shot, all in one lurching motion.  Don’t see hide nor hair of that sneaky sumbitch, though his funk clings to the wet air.  I sidle down the porch, squinting into the black night, then blast off another shot for good measure.  Ain’t likely to hit nothing, but maybe he’ll catch the gist.  This ain’t no place for forgetting.

In the near distance, a long, haunting howl.

I swat at skeeters swarming my face.  The stench settles, or else maybe I get used to it?  I chamber a new shell, just in case.  But in case of what?  I take a quick glance around and notice the front door’s wide open.  Letting the cool out, I say, then climb up and pull it shut.  And that’s when I notice what’s-his-name, bathed in amber porch light.  Half of him anyway.  The other half’s lost in shadows, so I tromp back down to inspect a little closer.  What’s he doing way out here in the middle of the night?  Where’d he get one of my good afghans?  The sorry sucker’s eyes are wide open and bulging, and while it could be the light, his face looks stretched and chalky.  His neck’s slathered in what could only be blood.  Feller don’t appear to be breathing neither. 

I squint into the night, all fidgety, kinda dancing from one foot to the other.  I’m breathing in little gulps.  My hands tingle.  Soon my gaze settles back on what’s-his-name.  And that’s when I notice them.  Just below his left ear:  a pair of neat fang holes.

J. T. Townley has published in Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, The Threepenny Review, and other magazines and journals. His stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net award. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and an MPhil in English from Oxford University. To learn more, visit jttownley.com.

            It smelled like strawberries in the pantry. And I was already hungry and it made my stomach make a noise. I pushed in on my stomach so it would be quiet. I was supposed to be going picking with my grandmother the next day, and wouldn’t it be sad if I had to miss that because I was sitting in kid prison. Because I should not have been there in the first place. I was sitting on the floor toward the back of the pantry. I had an apron draped over me. The way I was sitting was not comfortable at all. But I could not move. She was out there now, in the kitchen. She had come in the house talking to herself, or the cat, I couldn’t tell for certain. I was as worried about the cat as I was about the woman. Me and the cat had bonded earlier and I was worried the cat was going to give me away by clawing at the double doors or something. She, the human, started using some noisy kitchen device, and I took the opportunity to poke my head out from under the apron. It was still dark, besides the light coming in diagonally through the door slats. She stopped using the device and it was very silent again. I was staring at the tiny slit of light between the double doors praying it would stay that way. Praying that she would hurry up and eat and leave. The slit darkened suddenly, and the double doors shook. And I should not have been there. I should have been shooting hoops with my best friend Bobby in his driveway.

            But this is what happened, how I landed in that random pantry. It started the night before, when Bobby and I were playing basketball in my driveway. We were arguing about something stupid — he was the type who sometimes when he was in a certain mood needed to debate, no matter the topic and no matter his actual stance. I got annoyed. His ball bounced my way and I hit it with mine and sent his across the lawn. He chased after his ball and came back and called me a loser and got on his bike. I threw my ball at him and called him a bitch. He called me a loser again, and rode home. At first I was just pretending to be mad. But we are all pretenders in this town — that’s how we survive. The more I thought about it, the more I got actually mad.

            So the next day I hung out with my other friends, Adam and Kris. We didn’t play basketball when we hung out. We made horror movies, we played guns, we stole penny candy. The three of us all lived on the same street. We usually hung out at Adam’s house, because his parents were separated and his mom was always working. Kris had the most Nintendo games, but his house was tiny and one of his parents was always there. We called ourselves the Business Men, that was our group name. I don’t remember why. But since we had started calling ourselves that, it had become customary to meet at Adam’s house and sit around his kitchen table and discuss what we were going to do, before we did anything. Again, I don’t have a good explanation for this. We were eleven.

            So we were sitting around the table talking. Kris and I wanted to make a horror movie. That was all Kris ever wanted to do: he loved taking ketchup and fake knives and making me look like a bloody mess.

            “That’s all you guys ever want to do,” Adam said. “I have an idea. First let’s go to the Quick Stop and get some penny candy. Then I’ll tell you guys what we’re going to do.”

            “Why can’t we just make a movie?” Kris asked.

            Now I didn’t care either way. Penny candy sounded pretty good.

            “Because we just did that yesterday,” Adam said.

            “I didn’t even see you guys yesterday,” Kris said. “I went to the mall with my mom.”

            “Because you’re a sissy,” Adam said. “Come on.”

            We went outside and jumped on our mountain bikes and rode down the street. My bike was loud because of the baseball cards flapping in my wheel spokes. When we stopped at the Quick Stop, Adam told me I was going to have to remove the baseball cards. “Why?” I asked. I was always asking why, why, why. My brother said I was an annoying little shit.

            “Because it’s too loud,” Adam said.

            We dropped our bikes on the ground and went in the store. Kris and I went directly to the penny candy. He passed me a brown bag and I started tossing candy in one piece at a time, pretending to count. Kris was actually counting his. I didn’t know where Adam went, but I figured he was up to no good.

            I rolled my brown bag shut and went to the counter. The girl asked me how much and I said sixty five. That’s all the money I had. She gave me a look, but it wasn’t a suspicious look. Then she said: “Do you have an older brother?”

            “Yep,” I said. “Jamie Chandler.”

            “I knew it,” she said. She had a nice smile. I smiled back like a goofy kid and said, “Thanks.”

            “Tell him to stay outta trouble, will ya?”

            “I will,” I said. But I wasn’t going to do that. He’d tell me to mind my own friggin business. I went outside and waited for the other two. Kris came out next.

            “Did she count yours?” He asked me.

            “No.”

            “She looked in my bag.”

            “That’s because you left it open,” I said.

            “What was I supposed to do?”

            Adam came out of the store and immediately hopped on his bike. “Come on,” he said.

            “Where we going?” Kris asked.

            “The dugout.”

            The Gerald Thompson Field was the old Little League field before they built the new one out on Central Street. Now they only used it for practice. We rode up the dirt road to the field and leaned our bikes against the inside of the dugout, so if somebody drove up to the field they wouldn’t see us there. I later learned that my brother had lost his virginity in that very dugout. The boy had class. And it ran in the family. I lost mine about five years later under a slide at the creative playground during a game of flashlight tag.

            “Okay,” Adam said, getting serious, “listen up.” But then he just leaned to one side and farted.

            “Gross,” Kris said, leaning in for a whiff. And in that stale humid unmoving air, the smell of rotten eggs seemed to fill the dugout like it was a closed room. I breathed through my mouth and ate candy.

            “Go on,” I said. “Tell us this stupid thing.”

            “It’s not stupid. We’re gonna sneak into a house.”

            “Why?”

            “Because they’re rich people.”

            “So?”

            “So they’ll have nice things,” Adam said. “I know for a fact there’s a necklace worth five thousand dollars.”

            Kris was plugging his nose now. He said: “What are you gonna do with a necklace worth five thousand dollars?”

            “Trade it. Plus there’s probably other stuff.”

            Kris stopped plugging his nose and started chewing on his fingernails. But I didn’t care. I was thinking this sounded like something Bobby would not approve of, and so it sounded good.

            “No way,” Kris said. “We’ll get caught.”

            “First of all, if you don’t come, I’m never letting you borrow my pellet gun ever again. And second of all, they’re not home right now. They’re at work.”

            “This is so stupid,” Kris said. But his face said he was conceding. Because his parents wouldn’t let him have his own pellet gun.

            “Where is it?” I asked. I was chewing through candy now like it was nobody’s business.

            Adam nodded towards center field. He said: “Just up there, through the woods.”

            There actually was a path, but it was all overgrown like nobody had used it in a long time. We were walking our bikes because it was all uphill. We weren’t talking out loud, but I was talking in my head like a crazy person, replaying the fight with Bobby, playing it out different, making stuff up. The sugar high was hitting me hard. Adam was in the lead. He stopped, and whispered: “We’re leaving these here.”

            “But,” Kris began, because his bike was nice and new.

            “Who’s gonna take them?” Adam hissed.

            We left our bikes there, and kept on. It wasn’t very far. We came into the backyard, and it was beautiful yard, full of neatly landscaped stone and pebble pathways and little raised gardens scattered all around. I stopped and gawked at a treehouse very high up; I was jealous, then I was curious how the hell somebody would get up there — the branches seemed to be way too far apart. We followed Adam up the stairs to a huge deck, which was about the size of my house. We crept across the deck on eggshells, and I figured Kris might piss himself he was so nervous. We reached the screen door and Adam pulled out his library card.

            “I knew this would come in handy someday,” he said. I smiled. Kris was looking around in every direction, but there was nothing to look at. “Just hurry up,” Kris said.

            Adam opened the screen door and I held it open while he slid his library card in the door and shimmied it down to the latch and the door popped open easily. We went in. We were in the kitchen. Adam disappeared down the hallway. Kris didn’t appear interested in straying far from the door we’d come in. He was glancing out windows and pacing back and forth, making me nervous. I wandered down the hallway and entered a room. That room led to another room, and then another. It was like a maze in there, compared to my house. I was standing before a picture wall eating my candy and staring at people I’d never seen when I felt something brush up against my ankle. I jumped — and landed with one foot on a cat’s tail. The cat shrieked and darted across the room. But then it stopped and came back and started purring. I rolled my candy bag up and bent down and petted the cat. I liked cats, but we’d never had any. I wandered into another room, and the cat followed me. This room had one big bookcase as a wall on one side, a couple leather chairs and a coffee table. On the coffee table there was a large glass jar of coins. There were no pennies in this jar, at least none that I could see. I remember thinking there was probably a hundred dollars in coin in that glass jar, which was more money than I could even imagine what to do with, and I stuffed the candy bag in my pocket and lifted the jar with both hands and made my way back to the kitchen.

            Kris was sitting at the table eating a bowl of cereal. He looked at me quickly, then back to the cereal.

            “What are you doing?” I asked him.

            “They have Rice Krispies Treats cereal,” he said through a mouthful of food. And I nodded. I understood. Because his parents only let him eat boring cereals like Corn Flakes and Grape Nuts. He looked toward a set of open double doors beyond the fridge, and said: “They have tons of crap in there.” Then he looked at me and said: “What are you gonna do with that?”

            “What do you think?” I set the glass jar down on a chair and went over to the pantry. It was like a grocery store in there. Just then we heard a noise upstairs, then Adam coming down the stairs. Kris and I looked at each other. Then Adam was running down the hallway, saying: “They’re home! They’re home! Go!”

            Kris did not hesitate. He dropped his spoon and ran out the door. All I could think about was not leaving a trace. I grabbed the bowl and set it in the sink. I tossed the cereal box back in the pantry. Adam stood before the door, saying: “Come on, man, let’s go.”

            I started towards him, and he went out. I stopped and looked back. The jar was sitting there, perched on the chair. I don’t know what I was thinking, because I should have booked it after the other two. But instead I kicked the door shut and went back for the jar and lifted it up, and that’s when I heard the front door open. I shuffled my feet over to the pantry, set the jar down quietly, and pulled the double doors shut.

           Her phone started ringing, that’s what stopped her. But the double doors had opened enough that I caught a glimpse of her pale white arm and long dark hair. She answered the phone, “Hi,” moving away from the pantry, and she must have gone into another room because I could no longer hear what she was saying. I took the opportunity to breathe normally. Then, sitting there in the dark pantry with one leg uncomfortably twisted underneath me and an apron draped over my head — I felt like I had been there before, in that very same situation. It was a strange feeling, and it would be a few more years before I’d learn that there’s a word for it. I remember trying to think about it practically, instructively; what did I do last time I was in this situation? How did I get out of this?

            I heard the front door again, and then there were two voices, low, inaudible. But they were coming my way. I held my breath and pulled the apron back over my face. A man’s voice said something about the bathroom, then she said, “We have to be quick.” I heard the refrigerator open and close. I heard them kissing. It sounded gross. I had recently learned about the bases from my brother. I overheard him and his buddy talking about getting to third base and I didn’t understand what it meant. Second base meant French kissing, I knew that. Me, I’d barely made it to first, and that was because a girl kissed me during recess. I’m pretty sure it was a dare. These two, on the other hand, seemed to be skipping all the bases and heading directly home. It was all heavy breathing and zippers unzipping and those sloppy kissing sounds. My face was in a perpetual state of cringe, and I wanted to blurt out: “Get a room!” But no, that would have been dumb. I was trying to imagine where they were exactly; I didn’t remember seeing a bed out there in the kitchen. She sounded like she was in pain now, and he was breathing very heavily like he was doing pushups or something. And I found myself trying to picture these faceless people somewhere out there in the kitchen and suddenly something changed: I felt a new muscle in my shorts making noise, trying to move more than my awkward sitting position would allow. It was weird. Then suddenly she stopped making those painful sounds and hissed: “Oh my God! He’s here! Get out!”

            At first I thought she was talking about me. There was a lot of frantic rustling around, zippers zipping, she whispering, “hurry, hurry, get out!”, the man saying nothing. I heard the back door — the same door I should have exited through about ten minutes earlier — open and shut. Then it was quiet. She left the room. I heard her going upstairs, then I heard the front door open again.

            I moved my leg out from under me. It had fallen asleep. By now my eyes had adjusted to the lack of light in the pantry, but it wasn’t doing me any good. I sat on my butt and stretched my legs out. I briefly considered bolting out the back door, then decided against it. I heard a sound behind me, a tiny clicking sound. Then another. I turned around, but it was darker back there and I couldn’t see anything. Then I thought I saw something move — a tiny dark spot moving horizontally across my line of sight — and I didn’t know if it was my eyes seeing things or if there really was something. The scratching at the double doors made me turn back fast. It was the cat. No, I remember thinking, no! But the cat kept scratching and I was getting worried, so I shimmied over to the double doors and pushed them open enough for the cat to come through. I pulled the doors shut, leaving about an inch of space between them and a little more light to work with now. I slid back, watching the cat. Green dolls eyes coming at me, no longer purring as it had before. I was almost scared of the cat — it was like something I’d seen in a movie we’d watched over at Adam’s house when his mom wasn’t home — and it slinked by me like I wasn’t even there. I was confused — until I remembered hearing Bobby’s mom talking about how they needed to get a cat to deal with their mice problem, and slowly my eleven year old brain put two and two together.

            Somebody was stomping down the hallway. It was the man, and he was muttering angrily to himself. I heard the back door pop open — the sound of that door was getting way too familiar to me, like that of the front door at my own house — and then I froze up. Because I realized he was looking for the other guy. I started to slide toward the back of the pantry, but it was too loud and by now it was futile: if he yanked those double doors open, I was caught. And it’s funny looking back now, thinking how little decisions like that can change the course of a life. Through the space between the doors I saw him flash by one way — probably looking out the windows — and then back the other way, but he didn’t check the pantry, and maybe he should have. I was leaning back now with my hands flat on the floor. I raised my right hand to wipe the dirt off it, and I hit the cat inadvertently. But the cat didn’t care. The cat was preoccupied.

            “Hey,” I heard the woman say. I hadn’t heard her enter the room. Her voice was quite calm, considering.

            His was not calm: “Was he here?”

            “Who?” The woman said.

            “You know damn well who.”

            “No.” She sighed.

            “Bullshit.”

            “Nobody was here.”

            “After everything we’ve been through, and with the counselors and all that crap — I can’t fucking believe this!”

            “Can’t believe what?” She said. Her voice even with his now. “That I came home to take a shower because I had a little, uh, problem, at work? You can’t believe that?”

            “I’m not an idiot, Carrie.”

            “You’re being a paranoid psycho,” she said.

            “Don’t blame me for you being a whore.”

            “Don’t say that, Jay.”

            “Why not? It’s true.”

            “I know what’s going on,” she said. “ You’re listening to those people again, your brother and his slut wife and your dad who hates me too…and what they’re doing is projecting their own insecurities and bullshit on me because they’re jealous and…”

            “No,” he cut her off, “no no no…for God’s sake, Carrie, you gave me a fucking STD! And Lord knows who gave you that shit, you sick bitch!”

            “Get the hell out of my house!” She screamed, and then there was a struggle. They were thrashing around, but not like her and the other man. They were banging into walls and cabinets, and she was making these intermittent grunting sounds like she was lifting weights. I wished so badly to see them, not because I liked to see people fight, but because I wanted to see what they looked like. One of them hit the wall hard — I felt the house shudder under my little butt — and then I heard a drawer open, silverware rattling around, and then a thud. A disgusting thud.

            Then it was very quiet. I held my breath. Luckily the cat and mouse game behind me was at a silent standoff, and I was praying it would stay that way. It was quiet for so long, I started to wonder if they’d killed each other.

            She began sobbing. Slow, snotty sobs, and through the sobs she whispered: “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

            I remember feeling sorry for her. Because she was probably somebody’s mom and she was crying and I hated hearing my mom cry. She was still crying when she said: “This is an emergency.” A pause, then: “My husband and I were arguing, and things started to get out of hand, and he started hitting me and I thought he was going to kill me…”

            Her voice trailed off. I heard her going up the stairs. I was locked in a state of confusion, unsure of what to do. I looked back for the cat, but I had been staring at the light in the door slats and my unadjusted eyes saw nothing except black back there, and I realized it was time to go. I wanted to take the cat, but even at that age I knew it was dumb idea on multiple levels.

            I hopped up on my feet like a green belt and pulled the double doors apart. Immediately I saw the man laying on his side on the floor. The blood puddle was mostly around his head. The steak knife was in the side of his neck. It didn’t look very different from the stab wounds we had concocted in our own little horror movies, except it didn’t smell like a hot dog stand in there. But I didn’t have time to do a thorough critique. I had to move. I jumped over the dead set of legs and darted out the door and stupidly threw it shut, and I felt the whole deck tremble as it slammed, and I ran down the deck stairs and through the backyard and down the path to my mountain bike and I started peddling so fast my chain fell off.

            When I got home, mom was there puttering around. Dad was at work. My brother was in his room with the door closed, probably watching one of those dirty movies. Mom asked what I was up to, and I said not much, going to play basketball. I didn’t let her see me long enough to figure out I was a little upset. I thought I was mad at Adam and Kris for leaving me there, but really I was mad at myself. Sometimes you need to get mad at yourself to figure out what you’ve done wrong. Mom told me to be home before dark. I said no problem. I got my ball and dribbled up the street to Bobby’s house. He was sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal. “Hey,” I said.

            “Hey,” he said. He set his bowl in the sink. We went out to the driveway and started shooting around. He was quiet at first, probably still a little mad at me. But after a while we started talking about basketball drills. I didn’t say anything about the stabbing I’d just sorta witnessed. I pretended it hadn’t happened. I didn’t tell him about it until seven years later when we were drunk at our graduation party, and by that time the Business Men had long since disbanded and the woman was in jail for murdering her second husband.

Ryan S. Lowell is a fiction writer. His work recently appeared in Workers Write: Tales from the Cafe. His short story Things Fall Apart was a Glimmer Train short story award contest finalist in 2010. He lives in South Portland, Maine.

Five bodies of the moon

The town drunk slipped 
antifreeze in his morning orange juice.
The ME drew glycol from his blood.

I heard it from the beetle woman.
She cuts people open too.
And she says with death comes moonlight.

She raises burying beetles 
in her living room. Drops a carcass
and watches them eat flesh and lay eggs.

First the mouth, cheeks, muscle, then
deeper: into the stomach, thigh, chest.
Eggs determine time of death.

The Hanson’s boy, found in the ravine,
had his cheeks chewed out,
rice filling his mouth.
He’d been dead nine months.

And in town 
the union strikes the drilling pay
and marksmen stop shooting wolves.
But the beetle woman does not mind;
she likes dogs.

Someone’s second wife 
funneled barbiturates, her body swirled 
muddy in the backyard doghouse
shadow falling over the blonde.

The town can’t afford the oil
they jerk from the ground.

The state trooper, barrel stuck in 
his mouth like a childhood thumb, 
lay near the highway onramp, prone
the wind whistling.

Most scrape coins and head
to drink. All in the town bar 
ride the mechanical bull.
But of the dealers, you can’t
buy meth at a reasonable price.
It’s a far cry from here to city 
and the car won’t take to road. 
I may be next.

I remember it was gray

I had ripped it from my body.
The lump of un-me.
The town walked on by –
I stood waiting.

When the milk goes gray 
the clumps soften in tap water,
carton crushed in a compactor.

Blood rolling hip to ankle
I went to hang the wash.
Blood freckling the carpet
dried black,

yellowed at the edges.
Plasma dries faster than blood.
A doctor told me that.

I was not belted
to the table. 
I took pills.
I only saw it a minute—

Headsong

Weeding through droves, 
I balance a cocktail flat on my palm.
A song or a sin?
Are those the choices?
I join him at the tabletop,
but don’t ask about snowfall
in the open ocean, or
why my mother left with a bang.

Across from me, the woman’s throat
gleams oxblood on a chain.
I want to tell her —
the Costco parking lot by my house floods.
I’ve swum it drunk.
I’m wearing my funeral dress,
I want to tell her.
He’s in his wedding suit.

My mouth filled with olives,
the salt pickling and we get up to leave.
I stuff my martini glass down his coat.

My skin betrays a blueprint dress —
a zipper puckering down my back,
nubbing over my spine. The thunderheads
break to rain.
I’m naked in the kitchen,
martini glass in the sink, tap water
leaping over the sides.

Morgan Plessner is a second year MFA student at the University of New Hampshire studying poetry under professors such as Charles Simic. She has been published in Ink & Voices and Foliate Oak and has previously received the Ann Pazo Mayberry Award for poetry.

1.

They’re giving out these pills to increase mass shootings.  Don’t ask me why they’re doing this.  And don’t ask me how I know.  Let’s just say the statistics and data are there even if they’ve been buried and obfuscated.  But they’re definitely giving out these pills to increase mass shootings.  It has something to do with the gun lobby and something to do with the pharmaceutical industry or Big Pharma as some call it.  It’s beyond an insidious plot but it’s all there in black and white, with evidence to back it up…if you can find it.

There’s a particular kind of drug—a supposed anti-anxiety, antidepressant, marketed as such.  These drugs, under multiple brand names, are categorized as SSRIs: Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors.  They might inhibit the reuptake of selective serotonin—whatever that means exactly—but what they really do is desensitize the soul and dehumanize the spirit.  They slowly but surely turn people prescribed this drug into automatons and eventually, if the dosage is large enough and the time period over which they’re taken long enough, the desensitized automaton experiences sharp impulses of violence and destruction.  And such impulsive violence and destruction periodically manifests as a mass shooting.

But this is all bullshit.  This is all a conspiracy theory and skewered statistics and everything else that’s partly fabricated and false.  And besides it’s not necessarily the SSRI drugs that are the root cause.   There are other undisclosed drugs that are out there.   There might even be something they’re putting in the water or that’s being transmitted subliminally through social media or Smartphones.  I know I sound like a madman, a paranoiac, and someone deeply disturbed.  And of course I am deeply disturbed—but I’m disturbed by what’s going on.   By the fact that these mass shootings aren’t accidental or inexplicable but instead are being fostered by powers that are far more evil than you and I could ever fathom.

2.

I should remain silent.  I shouldn’t say a word about this.  After all, it’s not like I’m an investigative reporter with insider contacts.  I’m just a poor and lowly poet with a deranged sense of reality.  Anyhow I should just go out and look at the butterflies and enjoy the beauty of nature.  Too bad it’s the late fall and freezing cold already.  The butterflies are nowhere to be seen and most of the trees are leafless and silhouetted like spooky stick figures in a darkening expanse…I’m not up to the task of facing the fall this year.  There’s been too much death—and this is just more death.  But at least it’s natural death, it’s seasonal and cyclical; at least whatever portion hasn’t been affected by Climate Change.  And it’s possible that these abnormalities—the bizarre shifts in climate—are also affecting the minds of the shooters.  Or the minds of those on the brink of losing it.  I’m not one of them—I’m not going to lose it.  But I’m noticing it, I’m aware of it, and I feel it.  I feel the shifts and changes and I feel the fear and anger.  It’s palpable.  It cuts the air and drains away human commonalities.  Anyhow this is what I’m seeing.  But I’m a dark figure—I’ll be accused of being a dark figure.  But I intend no ill will.  I’m simply pointing out what’s becoming plainly visible.  These patterns of doom that are upon us and that seem strangely intentional.  ‘Thoughts and prayers’ might be just another trick language…a triggering language.  Or maybe those are simply words of innocence.  It’s doubtful though because they sound somewhat complicit—they sound like a code for something.  A code of doom maybe.  I’m sorry, I’m not saying everyone’s guilty.   But someone’s guilty—and someone needs to be charged.  Not me, no.  My job’s only that of revealer.  A pathetic revealer perhaps.  But only that.

3.

The horror of some of the mass-shooters’ faces.  And the outward normalcy of some of the others.  Most of them look as normal as you and me.  A couple were walking death masks or beyond death masks.  Flesh faces of death, with wild, bulging-orb eyes, sickening sneers or rabid expressions.  A ghoulish longing for horror and destruction, dastardly and demonic.  Or just the human heart inversed and exposed: radiographed.  The evil’s within—and within all of us—if all of human nature’s encompassed and included.  But the mass-shooting evil is not quite inborn.  No, instead human nature’s been exacerbated and infected—by the SSRIs and other drugs, by social-media, by subliminals, and by the course of current human history.

I am indebted to my sensations and perceptions for this.  I am indebted to my powers of observation and my scrutiny of the shift in being and time—an artificial age, with plasticized hearts, numbed souls, corrupted brain chemistries, the whole tortured shebang of what’s afoot…The eyes of the dead.  Some men are walking around with the eyes of the dead.  And the next moment we can expect that there will be a woman, an infamous woman, to enter the picture and claim her infamy.  A visit to Dick’s Sporting Goods—or, better yet, the local gun show.  No background checks—so booty up the armaments!  The bigger the clip the better.  The more automatic the semi-automatic, the better.  She’s as beautiful as she is deadly.  Maybe somebody will headline that.  A new form of celebrity founded and refounded as the female mass shooter of the species. 

Anyhow this is a long way down.  We’ve come a long way down and the ‘thoughts and prayers’ have sucked us more downward into the vortex of impotence and abetment.  These people will die and then those people will die.  Let’s hear about the victims, let’s give a block of time to the victims.  But not the first block, not the lead block.  The victims are boring, they’re dead.  Dead people are often boring—they can’t help it.  The killers are more marketable, even dead.  But let’s pretend not to market them.  Let’s withhold their names or say their names as little as possible.  We can give body counts; after all, it’s become a competition.  I think that Vegas shooter’s the winner so far.  But don’t forget McVeigh—if we can include bombs and bombings.  No, that’s a separate category and even a different algorithm perhaps.  There’s overlap in the arenas of mass murder and death.   There is that overlap.  But it’s still different.

4.

Yes, madness.   We’ve come to an age of madness and the solution, then, is of course more madness.  More guns and more weapons and more armaments and everything that’s needed to stop these shooters or secretly support these shooters too.  Let’s have more pharmaceuticals as well, we’ll come up with catchy names and maybe the name will be so catchy that no one will notice the potential side effect of death.  It’s a pity that we have to say this aloud, that we can’t just have this scrawled on the screen.  We’ve really got to get that law overturned.   It didn’t used to be like that.  Just a few years ago, a couple of small-print onscreen sentences were all we legally needed.  The damn liberals or leftists or some other enemy of capitalism and mass death changed this law.  The goal—not for the safety of the country but for the lining of rich company’s pockets—is to change it back.

I am a man.  I am one man.  I will lose.  There’s no hope for a single, solitary man.  I know I’m not alone—but I feel alone.  I feel very alone.  And it’s just a matter of time before I’ll have to cringe again.  Before the ‘Breaking News: Mass Shooting’ announcement is made again via CNN and all the rest.  Here we go again, the stupor, the stupefaction, the senselessness, all that.  But still, it’s got to be covered.  This is news—this is our society.  A society of death.  Of random mass murder.  Shoot them in schools.  Shoot them in shopping malls and open-air settings.  Soft targets.  Whatever soft targets are available.   And a good guy with a gun too.  Get them all involved.  Friendly fire.  Run, hide, fight.  That’s what they tell me, have trained me, are my workplace options—run, hide, fight—when the blasting begins.

5.

It’s inexcusable.  It’s horrific.   It’s ongoing and seemingly eternal.  ‘Man’s inhumanity to man’ as my high-school English teacher Mr. Bounty used to say.  Somehow, then, it all made more sense.  Even The Painted Bird made more sense, as awful and outrageous as that was, because at least that was war.  All-bets-are-off war but now it’s war all the time as Mr. Chinaski posed.  Whatever’s happening now is, unfortunately, just the early phases and stages. The moon’s gone and hung itself too.  I don’t know what to ask from my neighbor or from my good friend.  Here’s a version of a good friend today: Let me drug you and rape you.  Here’s another version: Let me murder and dismember you in the bathtub with a power-saw.  Then I can bag you up in plastic and dump you in a landfill…                

Ah, maybe I’m watching too much ID TV.  There are at least 24 murders a day taking place there.  It’s not that unusual, I suppose.  I guess it’s time for good feeling—a drastic mood change.  It’s time for legalized pot—in New York!  If that’s where I live still.  I can’t recall.  I was planning on leaving the city long ago.  And even left it.  But then I came back.   What’s funny is that the shootings started shortly after I came back.  Like two or three months later, there was Columbine.  A sign post, a milestone marker.  How those two fools with multiple weapons killed so few is the real question.  And then they turned the weapons on themselves.  Mass shooticide denouement.  Not a virgin birth in sight, I take it.

Go find your funeral home.  That’s a sweet soft target for you.  Go find the dead mourning the dead and see what you can do, how many you can strike down.

Nah.  I’m being sneeringly sarcastic and overblown.  I’m sitting on my own trash bags but thankfully they’re not filled with body parts.  Instead they’re just piles and piles of shredded paper.  Because my identity’s been stolen and I expect it to be stolen again.  I suspect I might even be dead in the next mass shooting—but not as myself.  No, instead as someone who stole me away, stole my documents, stole my name and the lines on my forehead even.

It’s an insistence.  It’s a way out for no one.  And for everyone, too, from alternate perspectives. 

Cold dead hands, I take it.

Philip Brunetti holds an MFA in Fiction Writing from Georgia State University and was the recipient of that university’s Paul Bowles Writing Fellowship while in the program. Brunetti writes innovative fiction and poetry and much of his work has been published in various paper or online literary magazines including Word Riot, decomP magazinE, The Boiler, Identity Theory and The Foliate Oak Literary Magazine. He is currently seeking a publisher for his experimental novel Newer Testaments, of which excerpts have been published in the latter two journals above.

Love, I managed to stop the bleeding.
You were bleeding out and out.
All over the place. Didn’t you notice? I still
feel like I’m leaking somewhere. You got sick 
in the night. I think our ammunition
is running low. I’m scared. Who knows

whether we will last another night. Who knows? 
But who cares? The day is already bleeding
in and see how the light is its own ammunition?
The future can go hang itself. Don’t shout.
I’m not. I’m not, I promise. You’re just sick
and photosensitive. Come here. Hold me still.

Just for a moment. I can’t keep my hands still
and the light hurts my eyes. My nose —
Sssh, it’s all right. It’s just bruised. I feel sick.
I never felt this sick before. How do you know the bleeding
isn’t internal? I might be dying from the inside out.
You’re not. You’ll live through this. Stop looking at the ammunition.

I can’t help it. I want to leave. The ammunition 
won’t be enough. We’re fucked. We might still
have a chance if we move now. We can’t go out.
We don’t know what’s out there. No one knows.
There’s no one left! No one in the bleeding
world now apart from us. They all got sick

and died and came back and died again. Sick
like I am getting sick now. We need more ammunition. 
We’re all alone. But isn’t that — look I’m bleeding
again — what you wanted all along? Jesus, I’m still
fucking bleeding. Make it stop! Pinch your nose
and listen to me. I love you. But we can’t go out —

And I love you. I really do. And I never wanted out,
not really, but fuck, what if I am sick?
Then what? What if this isn’t just a bloody nose
and — then we have the ammunition. 
It’s not enough. It’ll be enough to hold us still. 
Tell me something nice. Distract me from my bleeding.

I love you. But we’re out of ammunition.
I love you. But I‘m sick of standing still.
I love you. But my nose won’t stop bleeding.

Laura Voivodeship was born in the UK and currently teaches English in the Middle East.

I stood on the street corner in a state of dysphoria. The creases between my eyebrows – which my wife referred to as a sign of ‘wisdom’ – were a physical symptom of the anxiety that lay before me. I squinted into the unlit alley across the cobblestone road but there was nothing but the night’s darkness. There was a still chill in the air on this windless evening and my shoulders were angled inwards in a vain attempt to retain body heat. The capped hypodermic syringe, rotating in my fingers in the pockets of my trench coat, gave little cure towards my nerves. What if I could not produce it from my palm quick enough and deliver its payload?

With no breeze, the roads gave up the echoes of distant shoed-hoof and the rolling wheels of the body wagons. Street lamps, rising on slender, black poles, emitted the rush of the gas that powered them. Their glow, however, was subdued by a heavy, wet fog. With such visual impediment, every shadow had become a matter of frightened investigation. Beside the alleyway entrance, on the wall of a florist, faded posters for a circus – an event long cancelled – were glued beside warnings. A declaration from the Department of Infection, in bold red letters, cautioned against coming into contact with any person displaying peculiar manifestations.

Across my mouth, I had tied a mask to prevent inhalation of the contagion. A barking cough, emanating from deep within one’s lungs, was how the pathogens were said to spread. There was little word on a cure and the life expectancy of any soul exhibiting the first signs of the disease rarely went beyond two weeks. The body wagons – mobile incinerators – rolled through neighbourhoods on a weekly basis. Entire generations of families had been wiped out in a matter of months. Communities that once bustled with the boisterous voices of life now lay in a coffin of silence.

As the hands on my watch crept towards two-thirty, I had begun to grow restless. In my mind, I debated simply leaving and finding a different profession. My wife, a person of significant intellect, had counselled me on the benefits of the countryside.

‘We could return to my parents’ home. Father could get you a job in the factory,’ she had said to me after I had returned from another night of disturbing work.

The factory she referred to, a small annex hastily attached to her family home, was in the business of sewing garments. I could not resign myself to such a destiny. Working for Doctor Gebhardt, while not aesthetically glamorous, or even safe, was not a condemnation towards a life of boredom or poverty.

 I was broken from my stupor as, from the bowels of the alleyway, I heard the grating hacking of some poor creature. The shocking thrill of apprehension turned my skin to a cold damp. Through the fog, a silhouetted skeleton hugged his or her torso as if it was threatening to elope. The figure shuffled, its ankles barely capable of lift; its coughs, a soaking expulsion of phlegm and blood, grew in volume as it inched closer.

Aiming my chin to my chest, I took a deep breath and sidestepped my way to the wall of the florist. My shoulder rested beside graffiti begging would-be visitors to ‘Stay Away We Are Sick’. I felt the very sinews of my muscles tense and droplets of uneasiness stung at my dilated eyes. I had engaged in this flirtation with a death sentence more times than I wanted to count and I still had not gained a stoic composure.

The thin being ventured its way past the threshold of the alleyway. Under the lamp, I could identify its features; it was a young woman. Her hair was short, brown, and unkempt; she craned her neck with some effort to reveal pale skin, once beautiful and now maimed by plague. As I took a hesitant step towards her, my attention was taken by the pregnant, yellow pustules around her mouth. Staining her cheeks were moist scabs, freshly picked, and dribbling a thin film of some kind of purulence. Her eyes were victim of – as I had heard Dr Gebhardt refer to it – blackened periorbital edema with the whites turned crimson.

The desire to escape the situation with brevity made my voice come forth in a wavering lack of confidence. ‘Miss, do you have the time?’ I stepped into her peripheral vision.

The young woman recoiled at the sight and sound of me. ‘Please. Please go away. You don’t want this,’ she stammered. Her own voice was strained with dehydration and cognitive confusion.

I pulled the needle from my pocket and thumbed off the protective cap. With a lunge, I swung the spike in a wide arc. It did not have to land anywhere in particular, just with enough force to break the skin. With my extremities shaking under the intoxication of adrenaline, I missed. In a panicking tumble, we fell to the cobblestones. Her strength, given her condition, was surprising and, despite outweighing her, I found it difficult to control the dying body before me. The wailing escaping her throat reverberated between the buildings and her fingernails clawed at my arms. In a moment of absurd clarity, I wondered if she was protecting herself or me.

With another wild swing, I pressed the needle to her forearm and it pierced the tattered taffeta blouse. I held her as she drifted away. Those red eyes filled with primordial fear gazed upwards at the sky. The human reaching the end of her life – with pus smeared across her mouth – was a painting of decay, bereaved of all beauty and potential happiness. I whispered a prayer of mourning for her as I removed the syringe and hoisted her, carefully, over my shoulder.

I walked through the sidestreets, the heels of my boots casting a percussive accompaniment. Above the empty houses and boarded up businesses, the spires of the music hall towered. At the very top of its highest peak, a single light shined. I wondered if a pianist could not sleep and had taken to their instrument. I envisioned them performing Gymnopédie No. 1; a slow, melancholy caress of haunting notes to drown out the drowsy choking of the young woman.

My knuckles wrapped against the delivery door to the apothecary. The peephole slid open to reveal the yellow-tinged eyes of Doctor Gebhardt. They pierced with a sense of malicious intelligence and they flickered to absorb the diminutive form I carried. He closed the peephole and the door opened.

The backroom of Gebhardt’s shop was filled with a variety of contraptions that I didn’t know the names of. Machines that whirred with mechanical energies, apparatus that hummed, and golden, spinning orbs with steam valves that piped, seemingly, of their own accord. The doctor had never answered my curious questions about them and I had seldom seen him use them.

‘Quickly. Place her on the table,’ he said, his accent betraying a flavour of Bavaria.

I eased the young woman down onto the cold metal slab. I did not know what possessed me, but I used the tip of a finger to edge her fringe out of her eyes.

‘Do not touch. Step back. How long has she been unconscious?’ Doctor Gebhardt asked as he strapped thick gloves, similar to those used by falconers, onto his hands.

‘Fifteen minutes or so,’ I supposed. I looked at the doctor. He was a man in his mid-sixties with a well-groomed, grey handlebar moustache. Portly, but not obese, his arms were thick with muscle. Unusual, I surmised, as I did not know him to have an affection for strenuous activity. He threw a black apron over his bald head and upon its front were the remnants of the viscera of those who came before this woman. He did not wear a mask.

The doctor pressed a button on a device I knew to be a phonograph. It began to click and hiss.

‘Patient one-hundred and six. Female. Approximate age,’ the doctor took in the full form of the person on the table. ‘Late teens, early twenties.’ He dragged a tape measure along her length. ‘Five feet, five inches. Weight is, approximately, eighty-five pounds.’ Gebhardt picked up an eyeglass and peered through it. ‘Multiple boils around the mouth. Sores. Appears to be in an advanced stage of the plague.’

‘Can you save her?’ I asked. My eagerness had gotten the better of me.

Doctor Gebhardt slapped the phonograph and cocked his head at me. ‘Why do you interrupt?’

‘I – I don’t want her to die. Can you save her?’ I found myself backing against the wall. The woman coughed. Each inhalation she made was a rasping struggle.

‘Why do you think we’re here?’ The doctor’s voice had dropped into a low growl. ‘This is what we’ve been doing for months. Each night, we try to save them. To find a cure.’

‘I don’t know if I can do this anymore,’ I said. A curious state of emotion had overwhelmed me.

He waved a hand at the woman. ‘Do you know her?’

‘No.’

‘Then why do you care?’ He said. The bottom of his fist tapped the phonograph. ‘Taking samples of facial excretions.’ Gebhardt produced a vial and used a scalpel to pierce the skin of a boil above her upper lip. He miscalculated the textile strength of the wound’s coating and its ooze splattered against his apron. Using the scalpel like a spoon, he dug into the woman’s face to drip a bloody amalgamation into the vial. She stirred briefly. ‘Discharge is darkened yellow. Infection is confirmed to be advanced,’ he said.

I chewed on the inside of my mouth and held my hands behind my back as he prodded and poked her. Doctor Gebhardt took samples of an assortment of materials; he conducted himself with an emotionless countenance that would provoke horror in any observer. He took cuttings of her hair, swabbed her mouth for saliva, and even clipped her nails. He labelled them in jars and tubes and then he prepared the needles.

Gebhardt pierced the woman’s chest plate with a thump. ‘Arsenic,’ he said, for the benefit of the phonograph. The plunger forced the chemical into the woman’s heart. She did not respond and her lungs continued to wheeze. ‘No reaction,’ he said. He turned his back to prepare something else and the rotting body went into a sudden convulsion.

I stepped forward, mouth agape, but Gebhardt held a hand towards me over the table. ‘Patient is experiencing paroxysm,’ the doctor said. The phonograph picked up the woman’s final throes. A recording which might have been the only validation of her existence on this earth captured her cries. I found tears of grief trickling down my cheeks as Gebhardt tried to restrain her. A few final heartbeats passed and she left this world.

He cleared his throat. ‘Patient one-hundred and six, cardiac arrest. Deceased. At -’ he glanced up at the clock. ‘At three-forty AM. The fifteenth of March.’ He took off his gloves and slammed them down on the counter beside an electrically-charged glass sphere.

I looked down at the floor. It held the physical memories of bloody feet dragged across its surface. ‘I don’t want to do this anymore,’ I said quietly.

Gebhardt didn’t turn around. ‘Why can’t you bring me ones that aren’t as close to expiration? Don’t you care? Don’t you want to help these people? You keep bringing me subjects that I can’t work on.’

‘I would like to get paid and go,’ I said. I raised my eyes. His head was bowed, his hands splayed across the workbench.

‘Don’t you want to see your name on a bottle of the cure? Could you imagine that?’ He said. ‘The money, the fame. Just bring me a subject that is recently incubated.’

Deep in my chest, I felt an impulsive, miniscule tickle and my diaphragm contracted to let out a cough. Doctor Gebhardt slowly turned to look at me with his yellow-tinged eyes.

Charles Gerard is a writer from the United Kingdom who splits his time between New South Wales, Australia and London, England. His work has appeared in Alluvian and the Haunted Waters Press. (Twitter: https://twitter.com/Questioning_Why)

Charlie at the City Morgue
looks at the photos in Playboy
while naked bodies are chilled,
like cartons of eggs in the cooler drawers

For he all he knows, he gazes
at a woman’s photograph
while the woman herself lies
already so contained.

Bashful Charlie has learned
that thinking like this doesn’t pay,
as have I and you

Charlie goes out for a cigarette,
a Chesterfield, and says to the moon,
“What a romantic lousy night.”

REID MITCHELL is a New Orleanian teaching in China. More specifically, he is a Scholar in Jiangsu Province’s 100 Foreign Talents Program, and a Professor of English at Yancheng Teachers University. He is also Consulting Editor of CHA: AN ASIAN LITERARY JOURNAL. His poems have been published by CHA, ASIA LITERARY REVIEW, IN POSSE, and elsewhere and he has a collection due out from a small press in Berlin. Way back in the 20th century, he published the novel A MAN UNDER AUTHORITY. He also had a separate career as an historian of the American Civil War.

It wasn’t the first time a man scared me on Halloween. Rewind two years. Blood orange leaves and grinning plastic buckets. Trick-or-treaters on the cracked driveway.

What do you say? 

I’m wrapped in my woolen blanket. Thank you. 

Write a story about children who play literal hangman. Each wrong guess gets you closer to swinging. Flickering street lights. Hands dip into the candy cauldron. 

This night on Bald Mountain, let goblins dance with violins as you sit on a throne of bones. Save some candy for yourself. A winged-girl looks up at me and smiles. 

I will, I say to the fairy. Where would she go if she could fly? 

Why hello there. A man’s voice cuts my reverie. He leans in and exhales cigarette smoke. I feel the noose tighten around my neck. He extends his hand and grips mine. I try to pull away. 

Do you live here? I’ve never seen you around this house before. You look at my house? This night blindfolded me. He surveys my body. The eyes of a man who hasn’t seen a woman in a long time. I know what he sees. What is your name, my dear? I’m sure you have a beautiful name. 

Do I remain here, waiting to see him again? I look back. You will not release that trapdoor. I want to pluck out your eyeballs and use them as marbles.

Aura Martin is currently a senior creative writing (B.F.A.) student at Truman State University. She serves as staff writer for The Index–Truman State University’s student-led newspaper–intern at Golden Antelope Press, and assistant nonfiction editor at WORDPEACE. In Aura’s free time, she likes to run and take road trips.

burning the boat

the wood is warped, worn beyond refashioning,
but this is irrelevant—his wife would never smile 
within those walls. it could never be a home
no matter what its form. the smells steeped 
in every fiber. the shallow scratches at its base,
tooth and claw marks almost smoothed away. almost. 
in the raw light his tools reverse their trade, 
realize the other side of the promise. his sons 
stack cords in a clearing. at night flickering oil 
release every knotted eye, each bloated tongue 
floating in grains of gopher wood. to start again
room must be made. he sees the motionless sprawl:
bodies rotting like worms after a storm. grabbing limbs 
from his flaming hearth, he began another task.

Elpis

I will give men . . . an evil thing in which they may all be glad of heart 
while they embrace their own destruction. 
~ Hesiod, Works and Days

people are overly satisfied with happy endings.
they forget the dark chase through woods, the foulness 
of breath felt on almost hairless necks: the wolves 
and witches— the things which cannot be named—
I summoned for just such an occasion. they barely escape, 
so busy searching for a trail of crow-eaten crumbs, 
signs pointing the path home I dragged into the underbrush.
humans don’t remember the frailty they inherent 
from a mistake, the gods, fickle parents, or things 
as easily avoided as never leaving home. the task 
of reminding them has always belonged to the one 
they cherished, but have never called by my true name.

the fairytales we tell

we know the monsters we have killed
and the many more we have given safe passage
through the hamlets of our hearts. hurricane lamps
dimmed to hide the sheen of serpentine eyes.
dirt thrown to conceal the chitinous click
of talons on cobblestone. we’ve often left the door ajar
and unwarded, sword and lance rusting out of reach.
we obscure signs in shrubbery, sending hunter, 
woodsman, knight to the wrong address. by the time we hear
our skin screaming, teeth and hair set on edge, it’s too late.
with lives less guarded than a fae’s true name, we’re accomplice 
with the cadaverous claws closing around our gorge, 
hoping their promises are worth the price.

MEH is Matthew E. Henry, a Pushcart nominated poet with recent works appearing or forthcoming in The Ekphrastic Review, 3Elements Review, Long Exposure, Longleaf Review, Poetry East and The Radical Teacher. MEH is an educator who received his MFA from Seattle Pacific University, yet continued to spend money he didn’t have pursuing a MA in theology and a PhD in education.