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<\/a>\nThe Colored Lens<\/FONT><\/center><\/p>\n
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<\/a> By Marcelina Vizcarra<\/p>\n As the train pulled into Waterproof, mothers swept their children indoors, shutters slammed and locked, the sheriff pulled his wife’s brother, the town drunk, across the porch of the jail and inside to safety. The painted ladies at the Calliope, who knew a little something about temptation, peeked between the curtains at the couple holding hands at the depot. Newlyweds. Of course, they were in a hurry. <\/p>\n The steam whistle drowned the sounds of the fight at the apothecary where Tom Beadle chased his son, Junebug, into the street and yanked the bindle from the boy’s hands. The nearby tourists watched with relish, as if happening upon a silent film in real life, as the pair mouthed oaths at each other, one’s arms flapping in frustrated flight, the other’s legs kicking underwear and tooth powder out of reach. Junebug gathered his belongings and stumbled onto the train platform.<\/p>\n Tom couldn’t believe his son could be this na\u00efve. Changing time-climates on a whim. Nobody in Waterproof rushed anything. Even elections and executions often stalled until worthier candidates were found. Now, the wheezing train needed only to catch its breath before stealing Junebug away. “Work another year,” Tom said. “Save some more money before you leave. Then, if you still want to go, I’ll match you dollar for dollar.”<\/p>\n “Thanks, but no thanks, Pa. I’m stagnating here.” <\/p>\n Stella had said the same thing when she handed over Junebug at the depot seventeen years ago. Tom blamed her for their son’s wanderlust–and himself too–since the boy had been conceived during that peculiar ambition of courtship, when everything resembles an escape-hatch from boredom. Boredom meaning the shackles of reality. <\/p>\n Even then, the chronodrought had already lasted decades, had already made people bolt for the coasts, the north, the east, where time precipitated, dense as water. But after Junebug was born, Tom changed his mind. As Stella boarded the train, he recited the jetlag of childhood milestones, hoping she might stay. She simply faced the horizon, as though she couldn’t hear him over the thunder of her thoughts. <\/p>\n “The weather will surprise you,” Tom said now. “The almanac predicts a monsoon in New York.” Junebug’s eyes gleamed. Tom instantly realized his mistake. No doubt the towered city was the boy’s chosen destination. Tom’s blame shifted toward the tourists, the retirees, and their Vernian tales of undersea travel and rockets to the moon like that M\u00e9li\u00e8s film, _Le Voyage dans la Lune_, shown when Tom was a boy by a newcomer with a hand-cranked camera. <\/p>\n And hadn’t Tom shown Junebug the same film when the newcomer traded it for laudanum? Hadn’t he perpetuated the romance of escape? Waterproof was a prison, he might as well have said, a drying puddle where everyone makes constant concessions just to justify their optimism. Optimism meaning thirst. <\/p>\n Down the street, boxcars opened to allow the mechanical arm to hand out water barrels, rolled away to be rationed later by the deputies. The train panted like an animal stranded in the desert. A few moments more, and it’d lurch from its place in a bid for survival. “If you just stick around for a while, things will improve,” Tom said, raking his tumbleweed of beard. He eyed the cartilaginous specimens hanging from the butcher’s eaves, the dust-furred candy jars in his own apothecary window. “We have penicillin now. Didn’t have that when I was a boy. And the new dentist that turned us off tinfoil fillings.” Occasionally, a tourist left behind a music player, and the townsfolk gathered around it, listening to spongy snippets until the batteries gave out. <\/p>\n Junebug already had one foot on the car step, one hand on the grab bar. Through the windows, Tom caught the gaze of a tattooed woman drinking out of a plastic canteen, a man that looked as if he’d fallen face first into a notions box. He couldn’t compete with such inducements. Tom slipped his father’s watch into Junebug’s hand.<\/p>\n “Don’t worry, Pa,” Junebug said, swinging up and into the vestibule. “I know what I’m doing.”<\/p>\n “Hey, pal, where can I get a drink around here?” a tourist asked, cuffing at Tom’s shoulder.<\/p>\n Newcomers stumbled into the Calliope. The saloon’s furniture was strewn topsy-turvy, as though arranged by flood. “Well, hello, hello, all you tin-toothed cowards. Still desiccating in your hundred-year-old drawers, I see,” a polyester cowboy said. “I’m here to fetch my hat.” He slapped the counter with the impatience typical of tourists. “Sarsaparilla,” he said. “Haven’t had one since I was a boy, the day I forgot this, in fact.” The stranger snatched the child-sized hat from the lost-and-found box and balanced it atop his head.<\/p>\n “I found it this morning when I was sweeping,” the bartender said. <\/p>\n “No kidding? Then you might as well throw out all this other junk,” he said, pawing through the cravat pins and skeleton keys. “The owners are probably daisy fertilizer by now.” The newcomer turned his sunburned face to Tom. <\/p>\n “You look familiar.”<\/p>\n “I run the apothecary.”<\/p>\n “That’s it. You sold me a quart of lemon drops when I was a boy. Or should I say yesterday.” He threw air-quotes over his head which Tom thought made him appear just as juvenile as the last time he’d seen him. “That junk made my face pucker to the size of my fist. Still, fresher than anything in the train’s dining car. So, kudos on that. Ever been?”<\/p>\n Tom ignored him.<\/p>\n “I asked if you’ve ever ridden the train.” He snapped his fingers in front of Tom’s face. “Of course not. I forgot. You’re the same age as me. If you ever left, you’d be dead before you got back.” He let go a laugh that ended in a dry cough.<\/p>\n “Sorry to hear about Junebug leaving,” the bartender said, handing Tom another bottle of bourbon. “He was a good boy.”<\/p>\n The stranger tsked into his mug. “You let your son leave town without you?” The newcomer made a show of looking at his wristwatch, a piece that estimated time for six major cities. “Your grandchildren are probably graduating from college about now. What a pity you rubes are so afraid of the weather.”<\/p>\n Tom started to protest, but some fool started hammering on the steam organ. The newcomer had already drifted into another conversation.<\/p>\n Tom paid the bartender and slouched outside into the static of dusk. Passing the jail, he heard the sheriff and his brother-in-law laughing over a game of cards. He saw the tracks swerving east into darkness, could just make out the husks of dwellings abandoned when the lightning veered too close. One morning, the sheriff had found Jamison’s boy out there, skin sucked into the bone cavities, eyes as black as anthracite. Hear tell, the room had melted around him into a vitreous puddle. <\/p>\n In the apartment above the apothecary, Tom stumbled around the chairs and their ghostly doubles as he packed his clothes, his razor, the single postcard Stella sent from New Orleans–a naked woman wearing a mask on the front, indecipherable blotches on the back. When Stella’s body returned, draped with a sheet, Tom refused to look underneath. She’d arrived only two days after she left. While Tom concocted infant formula at the apothecary counter, she’d cavorted in parades, he imagined, riding in the oared rocket from the M\u00e9li\u00e8s film.<\/p>\n What had he missed by staying in this godforsaken town, this island of desert? He pictured a lifeboat slipping past, full of doppelgangers lofting trophies and moneybags, rocking women on their laps. <\/p>\n His father had ridden out one clear morning and returned hours later, withered, repentant. He made Tom promise to work the apothecary, to keep his life as small and still as the dioramas Jamison sold to the tourists.<\/p>\n Before Tom locked his shop, he pocketed a daguerreotype of Junebug swinging on a cardboard moon. He’d deliver the photograph, that was all, because the boy had forgotten it in his haste.<\/p>\n As Tom waited on the platform, the newcomer strolled over, tipped his undersized hat at Tom. “Proving me wrong, are you?” he asked. Tom raised his chin. <\/p>\n Tom suspected it’d hurt to accelerate, his body distorting like rubber, or splitting like the mercury beads he chased with his pestle. Either one would be worth it if he could locate Junebug. A task, Tom reckoned, that would approximate jumping into a cyclone.<\/p>\n The express sped into Waterproof. Somebody got off the forward car. Tom boarded with the newcomer. The refrigerated air felt clammy against his skin. The gas of hygiene chemicals made his eyes water. He tried to ignore the women wearing men’s undershirts. Once seated, he noticed his reflection in the window. He looked old, tired. He was both. He didn’t recall shaving this morning, though maybe he was too drunk to remember. He lifted his hand to his beard. No, he hadn’t shaved.<\/p>\n From the other side of the glass, the reflection motioned to him, stepped forward. As Tom watched, the reflection dangled his father’s watch at the end of a broken fob, then abruptly slid sideways as the train jerked forward. Tom called to Junebug to wait and shoved past the newcomer, still battling his valise in the aisle. The train was out of town before Tom reached the vestibule. He gripped the bar and shut his eyes. Even through his eyelids, he could see the lightning, snapping like ropes against the horizon. <\/p>\n <\/a> By Peter J. Enyeart<\/p>\n Vala glided over to the ganglion she was to be operating that day. It was always oppressively cold in the extremities of their Gracious Host, but she knew she would soon be warm, or at least oblivious, in her neural nest.<\/p>\n She was unpleasantly surprised to find that the Consecrated Pilot she was replacing was the survivor they had picked up, Drexel. The one who had an Opening when the Worm he had been piloting fell in battle.<\/p>\n She knew it was pointless to begrudge him his success, so she took a deep breath and then tapped his helmet to let him know she had arrived. His eyes opened slowly. His pupils were great black disks and seemed not to see her. What had those eyes seen? He nodded to indicate that he was sending a request for temporary CNS control of the ganglion during the shift change. He continued to stare at nothing for several moments, until his pupils contracted back into awareness, and his body shivered into life.<\/p>\n She carefully withdrew the terminal spike from his helmet and placed it in the sheath, formally severing his Communion with the nervous system of the Gracious Host. Then she grasped his forearms, planted her feet in the mound of neural flesh, and pulled him out of the morass. The zero-g inertia carried him to the opposite wall. He flipped around to plant his feet on it, and pushed off with just enough force to come lightly to a stop, floating just in front of her.<\/p>\n “Anything interesting during your shift?” Vala asked.<\/p>\n “Nope,” she heard his reply broadcast into her earpiece. “Smooth sailing.” Drexel clasped Vala’s forearm, and Vala reciprocated, inwardly cringing. He helped her up into the fleshy mound, and she soon found herself up to her chest in tissue.<\/p>\n Drexel removed the terminal spike from its sheath. Just as he was about to plunge it through the hole in Vala’s helmet and into her skull, she said, “Wait. What was it like?”<\/p>\n “What was what like?” he asked.<\/p>\n “The Opening!” she responded.<\/p>\n He smiled. “Like the brushing of cloth against your skin, or the scent of the meditation hall.”<\/p>\n “No, really, what was it like?”<\/p>\n He laughed, and his almond eyes seemed to glow. “Come talk to me in the mess after the ceremony. But for now, CNS is waiting on you.” Then he thrust the terminal spike into her brain.<\/p>\n She gasped, as she always did, as her normal sensory space was submerged in that of their Gracious Host, Mzee. Mzee was a massive space-faring creature dubbed a “Turtle” after the terrestrial organism it resembled. If a diamond-hard, jet-black photosynthetic sphere with a mouth stalk and eight limbs for grasping food and firing pellets to attack and maneuver could be said to resemble a turtle.<\/p>\n Once fully connected, the bland taste of empty space-time filled Vala’s mouth, but she could also detect the dim bitterness of the sun, vague pinpricks of flavor from the stars, and the mild sweetness of a distant asteroid. This was her brain’s synaesthetic interpretation of Mzee’s acute sense for space-time curvature. As for the Turtle’s electromagnetic sense, she soon heard her own voice chiming as Mzee emitted a radiolocation wave, and her body then warmed when the wave returned to tell her how far away they were from their quarry.<\/p>\n Sage Bindeen was personally directing the CNS today, and her voice sounded in Vala’s mind. We’re still pursuing the enemy Worm that killed ours. We’ve identified it as Tovian, but we don’t expect to catch up to it for quite a few shifts. It seems to be headed for the closest asteroid, which was recently ceded to us by the Nation of Tove. We’ve requested reinforcements, but we remain the only unit in the area and have been ordered to intercept. Hold the course.<\/em><\/p>\n Since today there were no changes in momentum to be made by firing pellets, Vala’s task, as on most days, was to focus on keeping her assigned extremity absolutely still and prevent any rebellion- “disharmony” was the preferred term- on the part of the Gracious Host, and in so doing hone her own mind through the exertions of Communion. Mzee didn’t seem to be putting up much of a fight today, but any lapse in vigilance might give the Turtle a chance to act up and embarrass her. She was determined not to let that happen again.<\/p>\n The shift was mostly uneventful, until at one point she had the eerie sensation that she was not in control of her body. It passed quickly, however, and by the end of the shift it was the continued failure of her ego to dissolve that still bothered her most.<\/p>\n “Do not seek annihilation of the ego; instead, understand that there is no ego to be annihilated,” Sage Bindeen said, quoting from the sutras at the start of the ceremony commemorating Drexel’s achievement of an Opening. Vala had heard it all so many times before. The ruddy black robes of Bindeen’s office flowed out from her body in all directions. Drexel, almond-eyed and curly-haired, floated next to her, and the rest of the crew not currently on duty floated about them in a loose sphere.<\/p>\n “We are gathered here because, after interviewing this Consecrated Pilot concerning his experiences after our recent battle, I can certify that he has had an Opening. To experience an Opening is not to attain Understanding, which is complete freedom from all attachments and escape from the cycle of death and rebirth, but it is a momentary dissolution, a first cracking of the door. Drexel, you have seen the sliver of light, and it is now your duty to hold to it, nurture and protect it like a sprouted seed, so that over time it may grow into the full flower and fruit of Understanding. Will you accept the calling you have been issued?”<\/p>\n “Yes, Sage,” he responded, and curled into the fetal posture that demonstrated his respect.<\/p>\n Bindeen continued. “We are the heirs to a profound spiritual tradition that is the result of thousands of years of our Communion with the Gracious Hosts. Let us all give thanks that, by virtue of the spiritual exertions we undergo in order to maintain Communion, our minds are honed, sharpened, and prepared to ascertain the true reality of the universe. Let us all renew our vows to humbly assume this yoke, to use our Understanding for the betterment of all people, to work in fellowship with the Gracious Hosts to provide for both the people’s spiritual needs, through the guidance our Understanding allows us to give, and for their material needs, through the raw materials in the asteroids the Gracious Hosts take into their bodies so that all might partake of their bounty.”<\/p>\n Vala thought they would all wither into unenlightened husks before Bindeen reached the end of her sermon, but at last it was time to chant the Sutra of Consecration that ended their ritual meetings. Vala raised her voice with the others, listening to the drum and the bells that kept the time, but her mind was elsewhere. So many of her peers had Openings, but she remained behind. What was standing in her way?<\/p>\n Drexel cleared a spot on the wall of the mess for Vala to latch onto. The air was dense and warm. Ropy vines formed on all surfaces, frequently bursting out into broad leaves. They sucked their meals from floating globes and looked at each other. His eyes were wide and glittering, as if he lived in a constant state of surprise.<\/p>\n “What was it like, having an Opening?” she asked.<\/p>\n After a pause, he replied, “The funny thing was, it wasn’t such a big event.”<\/p>\n “I know you’re supposed to say that, because nothing is a big event if you have Understanding, but both of us know it was.”<\/p>\n He smiled. “I suppose the experience of the fight and of my Worm’s death put me into a more receptive state. After we were rescued, when we first entered Mzee’s core, a chime rang to mark the shutting of the lock. It was the first sound I had heard in hours, and it felt like the first sound I had ever heard. It broke open a barrier within me, and I realized that everything was the same thing. The chime, me, the walls of the core, the Consecrated Pilots who recovered me, the dead Worm, the stars themselves… We were all just facets of the same diamond, and there was no need to cling so tightly to the one I had always thought of as myself. And the funny thing was, I had known it all along. So in the end it wasn’t a big event.”<\/p>\n “I wish I knew what you meant,” Vala responded.<\/p>\n “You do know. You just don’t know it yet.”<\/p>\n Vala sighed. “If we’re all one and the same, and if so many on all sides have reached Understanding, why are we still fighting each other? What good does Understanding really do us?”<\/p>\n “Understanding allows us to do what we have to do to survive, without hesitation.”<\/p>\n “Is that all it’s good for?”<\/p>\n “Of course not, Vala. It just helps you put all of yourself into whatever you’re doing.”<\/p>\n “But why can’t we just return to a simpler way of living, and stop fighting?”<\/p>\n Drexel said nothing. Vala knew why. The Cerulean Federation of which they were a part would quickly fall behind and be swallowed up by the other nations if they showed the slightest inclination to abandon the fight for raw materials.<\/p>\n “I give up. I don’t understand any of this,” she said.<\/p>\n “Vala, you just need to let go.”<\/p>\n Just hold tight and keep it steady again today, Vala<\/em>, she was told at the beginning of her next shift.<\/p>\n Her breathing slowed, and Mzee’s perceptions slowly drowned out her own. With a mental sigh, Vala focused on her task. She would keep her extremity still, and she would do it for eight hours.<\/p>\n She concentrated. Occasionally her mind wandered to thoughts of Drexel, or to worries about ego, or snippets from the sutras (“those who Understand do not need to recognize themselves as having Understanding”). But she always brought her attention lightly back to keeping still, and as the day went on these distractions began to subside. She was still and would remain still. Therefore, the extremity was still and would remain still.<\/p>\n The stillness gave her time to reflect. Memories of the past came to her. Once she had been free to roam as she pleased. She would eat foodstones until she was full, and then head closer to whatever star she was orbiting to absorb the energy to digest them. She would go back and forth in that manner until she grew bored, and then she would move to a different star. Each food system had a different flavor, and she was a connoisseur. Traveling between them took time, but once she was in motion toward her next destination, she would sleep until the pull of the next star was strong enough to wake her. It was a good life.<\/p>\n She remembered meeting her mate. They had encountered each other unexpectedly on a particularly large and delectable foodstone. Neither had emitted mating signals, and so each treated the other as a rival for access to food. They fought for supremacy. They launched and dodged pellets, and darted all over the surface of the rock. No clear victor emerged before both were too exhausted to continue. She respected her opponent so much that she offered to share the foodstone, and to her surprise, he agreed.<\/p>\n They traveled together after that, forming a team that no other could match. Respect grew into friendship, and friendship into love. They emitted mating signals, and had children: their fiery, elegant daughter, and their quiet but tenacious son.<\/p>\n Eventually their family was drawn, like countless others, to a system that broadcast strong signals of plenty. Their son, who was almost to the age of independence, disliked the signals, indicating that they were unnatural and suspicious. But she and her mate were confident in their ability to ward off any threats, and so the family set off.<\/p>\n By the time they awoke, it was too late. Her nerves burned, and her body no longer responded to her wishes. She tried to signal to her mate, but was silenced. She tried to go to her children, but was stilled. She was forced to signal in a code she did not know. Parasites had taken control of her body.<\/p>\n She was made to eat far too much, particularly of the metallic foodstones, which had only ever been a side dish before. Though she was always engorged, she felt weak and hungry. She was always made to return to the food system’s water planet, where the contents of her stomach were torn from her through a gash the parasites had made in her side. Sometimes she had to fight. Innumerable Worms, their hereditary enemies, inhabited this system, but both Worms and Turtles seemed subject to the same infestation.<\/p>\n Much time had passed as she and her kind were forced to systematically devour the food of the system, until all that remained were mere crumbs, which were fought over in increasingly desperate engagements. An achingly fresh memory was of meeting her own son, now fully grown but seemingly stunted, in battle. The pellets they launched at each other quickly shattered her joy at seeing him again. Eventually he was outmaneuvered and exhausted, and though he was already vanquished she launched high-impact pellets into him repeatedly until…<\/p>\n Vala, help me<\/em>.<\/p>\n A fist rapped on her helmet.<\/p>\n “Are you okay?” came the voice over her earpiece. “It’s time for the shift change.”<\/p>\n Vala opened her eyes.<\/p>\n “You have lost sight, Vala.” Sage Bindeen floated alongside her. “You are not the first to have such experiences. But trust me when I tell you that these are merely illusions that will entice you off the path that leads to Understanding.”<\/p>\n “It was not an illusion, Sage. The experience was so real. We really must stop…”<\/p>\n Bindeen waved her silent and regarded her sadly. Her narrow eyes were like a sparkling river threading between the creased canyon walls of her brow and cheekbones. “It has long been scientifically established that our Gracious Hosts are not sentient, and do not feel pain or fear. It is not unusual for young Consecrated Pilots who have overstrained themselves to project their distress onto their Gracious Host. But I assure you that the Gracious Hosts in their divine equanimity are neither troubled by our presence nor moved by our gratitude for their aid. Comprehending the truth of this illusion will be the next step in your quest for Understanding. The fact that you have seen such visions is a sign that you are progressing, however.”<\/p>\n Vala said nothing. She was confused. She wanted to scream and fight, to force everyone to face the truth, but the creeping doubt that she herself was the problem would not leave her. She didn’t know what to do, but the one thing she knew she must not do was jeopardize her access to Mzee.<\/p>\n Sage Bindeen turned and proceeded onward, motioning that Vala was to follow her.<\/p>\n “Vala,” she said. “All that is necessary is that you continue the devotional practice of piloting your extremity. Can I trust in your continued willingness to bear the burden of Consecration?”<\/p>\n Vala curled into the fetal posture. “Of course, Sage.”<\/p>\n “Excellent! Remain diligent, and you may have a place in the CNS on the next tour. But enough conceptualizing!” She laughed and clapped Vala on the back. “Uncurl, and let me give you a hug!” The massive woman’s warmth enveloped her.<\/p>\n The next morning Vala was back in the cold of the Eighth Extremity. The fugitive Worm had indeed fled to the asteroid and stayed there. They could see the rock now, and would reach it during this shift. They launched pellets to the fore in order to decelerate. It was a relief to finally have active work to do, but the impending encounter made everyone nervous.<\/p>\n A few hours later, as the asteroid loomed large in front of them, Bindeen contacted everyone: Target in sight. All ganglia, prepare for synchronization. Ten seconds.<\/em><\/p>\n A few moments passed, and Vala’s mind was opened wide. She had joined a mental orchestra with Sage Bindeen as conductor. Everyone knew what they and everyone else were supposed to do, and acted in harmony. Synchronization was quite draining, which was why they only did it when they needed to make Mzee perform complex actions, but it was also quite exhilarating, especially with a crew as experienced and skilled as this one. Vala tended to the solitary in normal life, but she craved the sense of union that came from synchronicity. A taste of Understanding. She could feel Drexel’s presence in the Extremity-Four Ganglion.<\/p>\n The asteroid was very large, and represented quite a prize. They could see nothing of the Worm, but it had to be lurking somewhere nearby. Were there others? They settled into a close orbit.<\/p>\n What is that?<\/em> the Sage asked. Mzee turned toward whatever Bindeen had seen in the corner of her eye. Nothing untoward presented itself to Vala, but she launched a pellet from her extremity as willed, and Mzee approached the rock’s horizon. A crater soon opened below them. It looked to have been crudely carved out by a large chisel.<\/p>\n Another Turtle has been here quite recently. Not one of ours. Let’s withdraw a bit.<\/em><\/p>\n Vala and the other pilots launched a few pellets to lift Mzee away from the surface. As they did, a large Worm glided around from the far side of the asteroid, launching pellets from its tail to accelerate. Its mouth was open wide in attack position, and its diamond teeth glittered in the sunlight.<\/p>\n Evasive action.<\/em> All extremities swung around and launched a volley of pellets to blast them away from their attacker.<\/p>\n Another Worm appeared, the one they had tracked here. It was moving fast to block their escape. There was a moment of indecision as the collective consciousness decided how to respond. Then the extremities turned on the newcomer. This compromised their escape trajectory from the first Worm, but their chances of fleeing were now small. If there were only two Worms, perhaps they could use the terrain of the rock as cover while they concentrated their superior firepower on their attackers. The tactics employed by the Worm pilots clearly demonstrated their skill, however. It would be a difficult fight.<\/p>\n As the battle progressed, Vala did everything she could to hit one of the Worms, but care had to be taken such that they did not launch themselves into one as they fired at the other. Though Mzee zigged and zagged all over the surface of the rock, the opposing pilots did a superb job of staying on either side in orientations that made it difficult to hit them.<\/p>\n As the Worms continued to evade the few shots she was able to get off, Vala grew increasingly frustrated, and she could tell the other extremity pilots felt the same. If this continued, the Worms would close in on them, and the situation would become dire.<\/p>\n They decided to concentrate the firepower of all the extremities on one of the Worms and take their chances with the other. The one on her side was chosen as the target, and they launched a massive volley. One of the pellets passed clean through, but the Worm, while clearly injured, did not stop moving.<\/p>\n Vala felt pain. Their gamble had failed; the other Worm had taken advantage of the opportunity and had bitten off the Third and Fourth Extremities. Drexel had been in the Fourth.<\/p>\n Struggling under the physical and psychological shock of the loss, they twisted the extremities around to a position in which they could fire on their attacker. The Worm quickly moved out of the line of fire.<\/p>\n As the fight dragged on and grew increasingly desperate, Vala’s thoughts turned to Drexel, and his response when she told him about her vision.<\/p>\n “Vala, even if what you felt was real, what can we do?”<\/p>\n She fired another volley at the uninjured Worm.<\/p>\n “Our civilization is dependent on them.”<\/p>\n The pellets passed harmlessly out into space, and the Worm turned on them.<\/p>\n “But what must it be like, your will always under someone else’s control?”<\/p>\n More pain as the Worm tore off the Fifth through Seventh Extremities on the starboard side in quick succession, narrowly missing Vala in the Eighth. Mzee now had three limbs remaining, two on the port side, and one on the starboard.<\/p>\n “Perhaps we should just resign ourselves to decline. Give it up, set them free.”<\/p>\n Vala gave up. She relinquished control of the Eighth Extremity, and it sprang to life.<\/p>\n What are you doing?! <\/em>Sage Bindeen demanded.<\/p>\n Let Mzee take care of Mzee<\/em>, Vala responded.<\/p>\n Vala! We won’t be able to establish Communion again if you let her go. Concentrate!<\/em><\/p>\n It was too late. Vala’s defection combined with the chaos of the moment was the opening that Mzee needed to rip through her neural bonds. The Gracious Host sprang into life and spun quickly around to fire on the uninjured Worm. The Worm’s pilots were clearly unprepared for the maimed Turtle’s sudden revival. It took several direct hits and was still.<\/p>\n Mzee then directed attention to the Worm they had injured previously. It dared not escape into open space lest Mzee shoot it down immediately, so it tried to flee around to the other side of the rock. Mzee lost sight of it over a ridge and pursued quickly. But the Worm was gone.<\/p>\n Mzee realized what had happened in time to smash a pellet into the Worm, just as it was moving up from its hiding place below toward Vala’s Eighth Extremity. A large, black chunk of the Worm floated away from the rest of its body, but after a brief pause it struggled onward and tore off the end of the extremity, including the pellet jet needed to fire off further volleys. The Worm was dying, but it bit off another small chunk of the extremity and tossed it away, working towards the breach in Mzee’s carapace where the extremity joined to it.<\/p>\n Vala ripped the terminal out of her skull. She gasped aloud at the shock of disconnection. Her head blossomed in pain. She struggled out of the mass of nerves, spinning out of control and smashing into a membranous wall.<\/p>\n She righted herself and pushed off toward the core. The cold enveloped her. The entire extremity shuddered as the Worm bit off another chunk. She proceeded onward. The Worm followed close behind.<\/p>\n She moved as quickly as she could, but the Worm was gaining. Each fleshquake was stronger than the one before, as the jaws worked their way towards her. It seemed the world was breaking apart. She pressed on while several more chunks were torn off behind her.<\/p>\n Another bite, and the section of the passageway where Vala had been merely seconds before was ripped away. The force of it knocked her against the other wall, but she could now see the opening that led to the safety of the core. She scrambled to get oriented and pushed off in resolute desperation. Another dozen seconds, and she was almost there.<\/p>\n A diamond wall suddenly blocked her path, only to be replaced by stars spinning past as she was flung out into space. Her air supply had been torn away, and she gasped for breath. Her mind was clawing, screaming, hissing, as it flailed her limbs in a vain attempt to save her.<\/p>\n Gradually, however, the futility of struggling overcame her, and Vala became still. Her fate accepted, she now remembered how rare it was for her to see the stars with her own eyes. Before it had been through the senses of Mzee that Vala looked out on space, but it now seemed that something had been lost in the neurological translation. Stars were everywhere she looked, all around her, flashing, dancing, shining, singing. She had moments to live but was comforted by the starlight that had traveled hundreds and thousands of years from all directions to meet her here now.<\/p>\n All clutter cleared, and she felt happier and more at peace than ever before. Everything that had hurt her and held her down was washed away. Barriers fell, and the universe seemed to reach out and enfold her back into its womb. Gratitude flooded her: gratitude for the stars, for the sun, for life, and for death.<\/p>\n A beautiful black mass that Vala dimly recognized as a Turtle’s carapace settled gently over her, and the mouth stalk gaped open to receive her. As her vision darkened, she could still see the tears of joy that leaked from her eyes and floated away, sparkling like newly formed stars leaving to take their places among the heavens.<\/p>\n <\/a> By Steve Toase<\/p>\n With lengths of dried rosemary Helena tied the pieces of broken chair together into a frame. Splintered legs pointed out to sea. Crouching upon the water the storm dragged its fingers through the currents.<\/p>\n In the harbour fishing fleet boats were tied slack against the tide. Back and forth they echoed the breath of the salt. From her basket Helena took out nine jam jars. Their glass was scoured to opaque with handfuls of powdered bone. Each smelled of funeral bouquets, not that Helena noticed. All her senses had faded to worn paper lanterns long ago.<\/p>\n Pausing, she reached in her pocket for her dad’s photo. The young, proud, man bore as much resemblance to the old man, breathing his last in the now broken chair, as an acorn did to an oak. His sepia hands were clasped in front of him, unmarked. When they placed him in the ground his one remaining hand was scarred by fish bones and the crush of wet rope.<\/p>\n The storm came closer. A smoke-coloured wall spat at the reluctant sea. Into each jar Helena placed a single piece of fabric cut from her birthsheet. Taking a pin from her hat she pricked her left thumb and let a single drop fall into each jar. She watched the slow blood soak into frayed yellow cotton and nodded at the sky.<\/p>\n Through the wind Helena battled back to Bill’s cottage. Inside she placed the photo on a hearth cold for too many years. None of the fleet owned up to what happened to the insurance money. Closed as scales, and the law had no knife sharp enough to pry them apart. Instead an old man died mutilated, cold and broke, with no spirit left to pass over. Helena pulled another blanket around her shoulders and watched through thick glass. Driving rain reached the cliffs and shuddered them loose.<\/p>\n Helena woke early the next morning. Cup of tea in hand she walked to the broken wood frame. At the bottom of each jar sat a single knotted piece of fabric. In the distance the fleet set out from the embrace of the harbour. Engines tore across the dawn. She watched the boats make their way out to the fishing grounds. She waited while they set their nets. Recovering the first knot she whispered ‘Dad’ under her breath and undid the twist of fabric. As she reached into the next jar for the next knot the clouds above the fleet began to fatten and fill with the undead storm.<\/p>\n <\/a> By Greg Little<\/p>\n When I finally reach the beach, I begin to relax, confident that the angry mobs howling for the blood of my kind have been left behind. Wind whips the soaring causeway as I cross the sound onto the barrier island. Leaky and exhausted though my car is, I imagine the cold more than feel it. <\/p>\n The jersey wall is scarred with impacts. The only other car is wrecked from both front and back at the causeway\u2019s bottom, island-side. On any other road these details would slip into the glaze of civilization\u2019s accelerating collapse, just one more mysteriously wrecked car. Here though, the mangled hulk stands out, alone and forlorn. <\/p>\n The beach is drenched in bleakness, the cold bleaching the land and sea to grays and slates. The smell of salt makes the air sag in a sky dark with the threat of drilling rain. I wonder again what I\u2019m doing in this place. Already I\u2019ve seen half-starved humans scavenging along the older country roads. They watch my passing with nebulous looks, between yearning and hunger, in their eyes. Some are even armed, clutching at their weapons in intense debate. <\/p>\n The small barrier island appears completely deserted. Perhaps the human mind really does move in inescapable tracks, and a beach in winter is meant to be desolate. This is a good thing. I’ve come for the solitude. It\u2019s the only thing likely to keep me alive. <\/p>\n After transferring the remnants of my life from my car to a house I\u2019ve crowbarred open, I step out to the beach. I\u2019ve never come in the winter, yet the churned water, the hiss of breaking waves and the brackish tang on the air are perennial, reminders of summer days long past. <\/p>\n Sheets of water slide up and back as I edge near the surf. I spin in slow circles, taking in my circumstances here. I wonder what\u2019s happening up the coast. <\/p>\n The northeastern seaboard was burning as I fled. The Gimmies, enough of us, wage a diffuse civil war against the far more numerous \u201cbaseline\u201d humans. For our troubles, we will probably be exterminated. <\/p>\n Despite my resolve to stop, I keep wading back into these swamps of conjecture. It should mean nothing to me. I\u2019ve rejected my Gimmie \u201cbrothers\u201d and \u201csisters\u201d who insist that we didn\u2019t bring this upon ourselves, who seek only someone else to blame. <\/p>\n Agitation flares at the thought of those left behind. I lower my head and close my eyes, trying to find calm. I can\u2019t get excited. I must not grope blindly along old attachments. That way lies the curse He laid on me. After several deep and measured breaths, I raise my head and open my eyes. <\/p>\n And I notice I\u2019m not alone after all. <\/p>\n She’s three houses down, draped in quite a lot of white and a large, floppy hat, as though this was the heart of summer and not an overcast winter day. My hand is up and waving before I can stop myself, and I snatch it back as if the air is laced with thorns. I\u2019ve specifically come here to sever human contact. <\/p>\n Despite the slip, she makes no move to return the greeting or even acknowledge me. I catch a flash of brilliant flame red from beneath that floppy hat, easily the most vibrant color in the entire vista, fairly glowing in the gloom. Its richness invites fixation. I\u2019m suddenly starving for color but instead I turn for the house. <\/p>\n It\u2019s then, as she slides to the edge of my sight, that I see them. They billow out behind her, passing through clothing and chair both, ribbons of brilliance, some thin as threads, others thick as ropes. Wings of light. <\/p>\n I turn back suddenly needing to be sure, and the wings vanish. I tilt my view, and they are there again. I have my answer, and I make my way back along the warped, weathered boardwalk leading back to my house. <\/p>\n She is a Gimmie as well. Even more than before, I can\u2019t afford to have anything to do with her. <\/p>\n That night the clouds blow themselves out to sea, and I\u2019m able to see the stars, all the dappled brilliance of our slice of the Milky Way. This one thing is even more spectacular than my memory, for in all the long stretch of beach, only the house three down has any lights to speak of. I spare a glance, wondering what she is doing over there, what she is doing here, on this island. On my island. <\/p>\n Wondering who she is. <\/p>\n Another lapse of attention, and I chide myself, turning back to the stars, glittering like a carpet of heaven above me, more beautiful than I\u2019ve ever seen and never seeming so far away as they do this night. <\/p>\n Inland, there are several distant explosions. <\/p>\n The following morning her gear is parked on a plumb line between my boardwalk and the surf, as though the beach shifted three houses down in the night. Her chair is empty. What sort of message is this? Why can\u2019t she be content with her half of the island? Where is she now? Perhaps she decided to take a swim<\/em>, I think with a laugh and a shudder, imagining that frigid water. <\/p>\n That\u2019s when I notice her floppy white hat, bobbing out along the wave tops. <\/p>\n Before I really comprehend what I\u2019m doing I\u2019m in up to my calves, but though I\u2019m aware of the cold, it doesn\u2019t touch me. I\u2019ve experienced this before–some tertiary part of my Gift–but I\u2019ve never tested it in water. Somehow the fact that it carries over is more disturbing than exhilarating. <\/p>\n Despite the churn of the incoming tide, I spot her quickly. She\u2019s floating as well, not too far from her hat. Her hair seems to have sucked up the salt water, its fire tamped down to a sodden auburn. Her skin, what I can see of it around her clothing, is going gray. It\u2019s happening before my eyes, as I watch. <\/p>\n Calling upon ill-gotten and inhuman strength to fight off the slapping waves, I reach her and drag her back to shore. Her breath is terrifyingly shallow, yet I must admit I\u2019m struck still for a moment by her elfin features, fine and lovely even through the gray mottling of her skin. <\/p>\n Her breath is shallow. It\u2019s too cold out here. If she is to have any prayer of survival, she needs to be brought into the warmth. My brain arrives at these decisions without any consultation with me, and soon I\u2019m easily hefting her waterlogged form free of the breakers. The surf has carried us back down the beach, so I jog not to my house, but to hers. <\/p>\n She mumbles a little as I, red-faced at what catastrophe demands of me, undress her and try to dry her, but she speaks no words as I wind her in blankets and tuck her into bed. She\u2019s so cold that I pile every blanket in the house onto her bed. I begin to worry that the blankets will not be enough until I find a heating pad and somehow thread it into the heart of the downy bivouac, plugging it in once it is secure. <\/p>\n I watch her for a long time, and gradually her breathing steadies, and that gray, mottled look vanishes from her skin. A cloud seems to drift from her face as her normal pallor returns, and with it her sleep eases. <\/p>\n Sometime later the sun plummets into the western horizon as I watch from her sofa in the other room. <\/p>\n The next thing I am aware of is eyes upon me. I start awake, thinking my own eyes will open to familiar blackness and that sense of a cage within a cage, the inner one open, the outer one locked fast. Though it\u2019s dark outside the windows, the house around me is bathed in light. I see her, the fire back in her hair, standing over me and wrapped in a white bathrobe. I briefly wonder if she owns any clothing that isn\u2019t white. <\/p>\n She looks at me appraisingly, and I can detect no other emotion on her face. There is no gratitude, but there is no anger, either. Tilting her head in a way I know well, she views me out of the corner of one dark eye. I caught several glimpses of those luminous wings, like ribbons bunched together at her shoulder blades then fanning expansively out, as I put her to bed earlier. <\/p>\n \u201cI can see you around the edges,\u201d is all she says, her expression wavering not an inch. \u201cYou\u2019re like me.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cNo two Gimmies are alike,\u201d I say and wince as the words leave my mouth. It\u2019s disgustingly rote, but worse; it\u2019s like something He<\/em> would say, except without the pejorative. But the tone, the slight lilt, alternately instructing, scolding, and mocking, is all His. <\/p>\n Her face is all thunder and lightning now. \u201cI hate that word,\u201d she bites. \u201cDon\u2019t use it again.\u201d Her words pile atop my sense that the words are another\u2019s, spoken in my voice. I turn away in shame, and again glimpse the wings. <\/p>\n She bustles about her kitchen, preparing something or other for the two of us. Twice I rise, intending to help in some awkward, intrusive way, and twice she instructs that I sit. <\/p>\n \u201cIf you can\u2019t sit quietly,\u201d she finally says, \u201ctell me your Story.\u201d The capital is obvious, and the context of who we are leaves only one story worth the telling. It\u2019s not the first time I\u2019ve traded it with other sufferers of my particular affliction. Other Gimmies. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d rather not,\u201d I say, really meaning it. Somehow her look, all innocence, splits the shell of my resolve after several awkward moments. That look seems to say \u201cOh? I\u2019ll get it out of you sooner or later.\u201d Sooner or later, Gimmies all traded Stories. <\/p>\n I lean back on the sandy couch and begin. White walls in the beach house give way to white walls of the waiting area. <\/p>\n My chit is glowing. It\u2019s my turn. I can\u2019t honestly say how long I\u2019ve been waiting here, but it seems as though my fellow occupants have changed over three or four times since my arrival. I\u2019ve heard that this close, though, time passes in a funny way, or seems to. So maybe I\u2019m wrong. <\/p>\n I find myself staring at the slow, pulsing off-white glow of the chit, as if running my eyes over it, turning it in my hand, will reveal some essential truth, something deeper than \u201cyour turn.\u201d <\/p>\n People in the room around me begin to notice; their eyes turn to me in slow sequence. A dozen pairs, each as different as clouds, each filled to brimming with different thoughts and emotions. Envy, anxiety, fawning awe. Even hate. The incessant murmur of the waiting room pauses, but just for an instant, as they wait for me to move. <\/p>\n I rise on shaky knees, and the babble resumes, grating ever deeper into my bones. I worry I\u2019ve already waited too long. I\u2019ve heard the same warnings that everyone receives, that too much delay will result in another being called. And there are always so many waiting. <\/p>\n The chamber I seek is down a deceptively short side hallway. The door opens before me on silent hinges, and inside is\u2026 dark. <\/p>\n \u201cCome in, come in so that the door may close.\u201d The voice is deep, comforting in a large way. It seems to resonate in a room bigger than this one is, but that is difficult to quantify in the pitch darkness. Even the bright white rectangle of the door behind me seems not to lessen the blackness, as though the light is made to wait at the boundaries like everyone else. Then the door swings shut as silently as it opened. <\/p>\n \u201cDo not fear, friend. Is it darkness you see? It is different for everyone. The perception of me depends upon the mind of the perceiver. I apologize if it frightens you, but really, you have only yourself to blame.\u201d Laughter, then, rich and amused. I wince, as though the rumbling curves of that sound hide rolling, sharpened edges. <\/p>\n I begin to get a sense of the room. At least I think I do. There is some structure, like a lattice, at the center. A cage, closed and locked. He is locked inside. Chained, perhaps. Yes, there is the faintest rattle of chains. <\/p>\n Doubt seizes me. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2026 I\u2019m not sure I want\u2026\u201d <\/p>\n The door silently swings back open behind me, letting in a frail wedge of that too-weak light. <\/p>\n \u201cThen by all means, leave. You are not required to stay.\u201d <\/p>\n I almost do it. But the waiting room behind me has gone deathly quiet in the interval since I first entered this place. I can\u2019t remember it being so quiet when I was out there. Somehow, that silence frightens me more than this black room. The door closes again, almost as though I will it. <\/p>\n Then He is in the room with me. His cage has opened as the door behind me closed that second time. I hear nothing, but somehow I sense Him close. I sense Him free. <\/p>\n \u201cDo you\u2026\u201d I begin, then my tongue seizes. I try not to think of where he is. <\/p>\n \u201cDo I\u2026?\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cDo you bestow abilities or grant wishes? I\u2026 I\u2019ve been told both.\u201d Even in this darkened room, brimming with His power, the words sound silly when spoken out loud. <\/p>\n \u201cI fulfill needs, not wishes.\u201d His voice is perfectly patient, perfectly instructive. He makes a sound then, like sniffing, as though testing the air. \u201cThere are those, like yourself, who have\u2026 lost that which they need to endure this life, and that I can provide. <\/p>\n \u201cI do not confer abilities, as you say, but my touch is heavy and your forms are soft and pliable, and I leave an\u2026 imprint. Most who partake of me emerge altered in some way appropriate with their need. But come, we must discuss your<\/em> need.\u201d <\/p>\n I goggle at the darkness. \u201cI\u2026 I don\u2019t know, really. I was misled in what I came here expecting.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cQuite understandable. I will work with you. Now, what is it you need? You can tell me anything.\u201d His voice is soft now, reasonable, like a doctor confident that all is under control with his patient. <\/p>\n \u201cI ended something, a relationship, ended it too early, and I need to undo–\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d He says, cutting me off with practiced brusqueness, \u201cthat is specific, much too specific.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2026 but I don\u2019t understand. That is what I wish done. Or undone, rather.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI believe it,\u201d He says. \u201cI can smell it on you. But I do not give you what you want. I give you what you need.\u201d <\/p>\n I furrow my brow, fear giving way, edging by degrees into irritation. \u201cWhat\u2019s the difference?\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThat depends. Sometimes it is great, sometimes so subtle as to be nearly indistinguishable. But in both cases, the difference means everything.\u201d He adopts a lecturing tone. \u201cWhat you describe is a symptom, an example<\/em> of your need. I cannot deal in such minutiae. Were I to give you what you asked, even assuming I could, you would simply find another way to inflict the same pain upon yourself.\u201d <\/p>\n His words light a despair in me, kindling it into an acrid little plume of smoke. \u201cThen what do I do?\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThink. Think! What about this failed relationship troubles you so greatly?\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cBeing alone,\u201d I say, but that feels wrong at once. <\/p>\n \u201cNo. Again, that is an example.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t\u2026 pain?\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cPain over what?\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cOver losing her!\u201d For the first time there is heat in my voice, and it seems to shock against the sudden chill of this room. I worry I have offended or angered Him. But there is a chuckle, dry and pleased. <\/p>\n \u201cGood. Your passion means we are close. You spoke the word yourself just now. You feel pain for the loss<\/em>, a loss you aren\u2019t strong enough to bear.\u201d It is an echo of what He told me earlier, when I first arrived. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve tried to bear it,\u201d I say lamely, trying to defend myself for some reason. <\/p>\n \u201cI know you have,\u201d He commiserates. \u201cYou have struggled with it valiantly.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t bear it any longer. I want it gone.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cOf course you do. But do not be short-sighted. If I remove the pain of this loss, what happens when the next one, perhaps even worse, arrives?\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cAre you saying it will?\u201d I ask this, horror-struck, and then I feel His hands upon my shoulders, horrifically normal hands, squeezing in a firm grip that is somehow both comforting and revolting. The chains rattle behind me now, and His voice resides just behind my ears. <\/p>\n \u201cThis world has no limit to the cruelties it inflicts upon those that call it home.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want this, not again. I\u2026 I can\u2019t bear it!\u201d The pain of memory, stabbing and barbed, is piercing my brain. I feel my chest tighten against it in a sickly flush of warmth. My voice breaks, and tears threaten. <\/p>\n \u201cYou are weak, and you would be strong.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cYes.\u201d It is a small miracle, this distillation of my thoughts into so concise a message. <\/p>\n \u201cYou need never be forced to bear great loss again.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cYes!\u201d This one is even more perfect. <\/p>\n \u201cGood. That is good. Your need is clear to me now.\u201d There is a sense of falling, as though the black floor has dropped away, plunging me into a deeper darkness from which I will never emerge. <\/p>\n From far away a voice intrudes into that remembered rush into the void. The voice of the woman I pulled from the surf. It breaks into my reverie from the beach house where we now sit, the smell of grilled cheese sandwiches heavy on the air. <\/p>\n \u201cYou are trapped, and would be free,\u201d she whispers. There are tears in the whisper. <\/p>\n Now the memory of the dark room closes around me again, the reverie total in my recollection and recount. The sense of vertigo, of endless falling, is gone. <\/p>\n \u201cSo be it,\u201d He says, and in his voice is the hunger, the anticipation, that will echo in my dreams from that day forward. <\/p>\n She is smiling sadly as I return to full awareness, handing me a gooey, toasty sandwich on a paper plate. <\/p>\n \u201cEat,\u201d she says with soft kindness. Then, \u201cShe tricked you too.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cShe?\u201d I ask, then am forced to endure such a long-suffering look it\u2019s almost as if we haven\u2019t only just met. The perception of me depends upon the perceiver<\/em>. \u201c\u2018It\u2019, I suppose. It tricked us both.\u201d It tricked us all. <\/p>\n \u201cYes,\u201d she said. \u201cYou were the same as I was. You didn\u2019t make the requests, not directly.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cNo, I didn\u2019t. They were in Its own words, not mine.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI think,\u201d she whispers, \u201cthat they always are.\u201d <\/p>\n I nod. \u201cThey always are.\u201d It\u2019s almost a ritual, this conversation or something very near it. Gimmies always go through it after the giving of a Story, as though to confirm that nobody got a better deal, that nobody managed to trick Him. Her. It. <\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s your Story?\u201d I ask, knowing what she will say. <\/p>\n \u201cNot now,\u201d she says. \u201cNow, we eat.\u201d And so we do. The sandwiches are good, better than grilled cheese sandwiches have any right to be. <\/p>\n She stands abruptly after both plates are cleared away. \u201cYou should go.\u201d Her voice nearly reaches apology, but she manages to pull it back. <\/p>\n \u201cDo you fly? Was that how It marked you?\u201d <\/p>\n She turns away. \u201cYes.\u201d Her answer is hard and brittle, the polar opposite of the supple wings I keep snatching glances of. At her tone, I decide not to bring up the water and her near-drowning that seemed little like a drowning. Instead I stumble lamely into a different question, equally bad. <\/p>\n \u201cWill you show me sometime?\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cNo!\u201d Her voice is laced with pain, riddling with cracks, then she pulls that back as well into her trademark monotone. \u201cNo.\u201d At last the detachment fails her, and she falls into that tearful whisper I recall intruding into the telling of my Story. \u201cPlease don\u2019t make me.\u201d <\/p>\n I can only nod. Neither of us speaks another word as I leave, and that\u2019s good. I can’t afford any attachments here. As I tromp across cold sand made luminous in the glare of the fat moon, I am already planning how long I need to prepare to leave the island and go elsewhere. <\/p>\n I wake the next morning to the sounds and smells of a kitchen in use. My kitchen. Suspicion and alarm give way to curiosity and rue. Who else could it be? That\u2019s what I get for ruining the lock. I get up and dress in a ragged t-shirt and pajama pants. Beach bum chic. <\/p>\n She\u2019s making scrambled eggs and something that requires batter. \u201cThe last of my eggs,\u201d she says. \u201cThey were close to going bad. I didn\u2019t eat them as fast as I thought, so I hope you like a lot of them. Hard to imagine being worried about cholesterol now.\u201d Her smile is crooked, every bit as rueful as my waking thoughts. <\/p>\n Her tone unsettles me for a moment. There was a sense of finality when she spoke about the last of her eggs. Like they were the last ever. I think back to pulling her from the surf, and that only inflames the theories I\u2019d formed laying awake the previous night. <\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t sleep,\u201d she says, eerily echoing my own thoughts, and by the look of her eyes, she isn\u2019t exaggerating much. \u201cI never thanked you for pulling me out yesterday.\u201d <\/p>\n I hesitate at the last stair, as though to step down to her level is as irrevocable as entering that dark room with my glowing chit had been. For an instant we teeter there, the pair of us, poised between the expected societal niceties and an uglier truth that one of us knows and the other can guess. <\/p>\n \u201cI got the impression that you didn\u2019t really want to thank me,\u201d I say, gently. The plunge is not as harrowing as it looked from above. She lowers her eyes beneath that shaggy curtain of crimson, but does not break down as I feared she might. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d been planning on it before you arrived. After you got here I\u2026 hesitated. But you didn\u2019t seem to want to be approached.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cSo you arranged it to happen right behind my house?\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2026 I think I wanted to at least give you the option.\u201d She doesn\u2019t sound nearly as sheepish or shamed as she ought. She sounds dead. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s water, then? Water is your Catch?\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cSalt water.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was telling you my Story, you spoke once, something about being trapped, and wanting freedom.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cYes.\u201d She is refusing to meet my gaze again, and her voice has recovered its tremor. <\/p>\n \u201cThen I assume your Catch didn\u2019t appear until–\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cUntil I got here. As I got here.\u201d <\/p>\n I recall the wrecked car and the damaged causeway. <\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t even cross salt water? Even over it?\u201d Before she can reply, I\u2019m already marveling at the wickedness of it. <\/p>\n \u201cThe sound between the island and the mainland is salty enough, apparently. When I realized, I tried to cross the causeway in my car. I began to go numb and black out less than halfway across. It was\u2026 painless, almost like falling asleep in a warm, soft bed. It was terrifying how seductive it was, but only later, after I\u2019d woken back up.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cAnd how did you manage that?\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI shifted the car back into neutral just as I went under. All I could do was hope that I didn\u2019t roll back down into something that would kill me.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI have a car. If I drive–\u201d But she was shaking her head and laughing–or sobbing–silently within the curtain of her hair. <\/p>\n \u201cNo. That\u2019s not the right way to think about it at all. It\u2019s not a question of having someone else carry me over or of getting across fast enough to avoid slipping into a coma. Don\u2019t think of it in terms of having hard and fast rules. It doesn\u2019t want me to escape. That was the Catch. It\u2019s not going to let me cross any body of salty water by any means.\u201d <\/p>\n And that sounds all too plausible. In fact, I realize at once that I believe her, that I\u2019m certain she\u2019s right. I can almost feel It inside me, squirming quietly in gleeful resonance with the cruelty of her notion. And what does that notion mean for me? <\/p>\n \u201cWhen you say the last of your eggs–\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t get any more,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve already cleared out the island\u2019s general store. When I run out of food, I run out. Why do you think I was trying to kill myself?\u201d <\/p>\n A week passes with me carefully avoiding the subject of her inability to leave the island. It\u2019s a balance I seek. And between my constant self-reminders of the dozens of homes worth of non-perishable food on the island and her seeming satisfaction with my increasingly frequent company, it\u2019s a balance I keep. But just for a week. After that, the empathy begins to creep in, twisting my bowels in anxiety even as it warms my heart. <\/p>\n It happens when I walk in on her in the bath. <\/p>\n It\u2019s an accident, of course, an unlocked door and no light peaking out from beneath to warn me. The water in the bath is cold. I can tell that at once by the lack of fog on the mirror. She makes no move to cover herself, and I make no move to look away, but there is no recognition, on either side, of the vulnerability this forces upon her. <\/p>\n My first assumption, just a random scramble for meaning in what I\u2019m seeing, is that the water heater is broken. The weather is just starting to turn, the last teeth of winter are wearing down with the grinding passage of time, but a broken water heater would still necessitate that she switch homes. <\/p>\n Then I notice that she is sweating. Sweating in a cold bath. Shivering, but not from cold. From fear. In a momentary spike of my own fear and a singular palpitation of the heart, I dip a finger into the water and taste it. <\/p>\n Not salt. Fresh. Or near enough, with her skin submerged in it for enough time to wrinkle. Then it hits me. This is her roller coaster. Frightening because of its similarity to her Catch, exhilarating for the same reason. And not dangerous. Not to the body, at least, though judging by the glazed look in her eyes, I can\u2019t say the same for her mind. <\/p>\n I call to her once, twice, and on the third attempt, the focus returns to her eyes. Horror dawns there, but horror of a different kind. <\/p>\n \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d she cries, making a move at last to cover herself, and the spell lifts from me at that moment. I sputter something about being concerned when she didn\u2019t respond, then back out of the room, and for once I\u2019m hard pressed to describe which of us is redder. <\/p>\n \u201cHere, take this,\u201d she says, and from out of nowhere produces a shotgun, an over-under double barreled affair. I must be staring, because she grins crookedly. \u201cWhat?\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cWhere did you get this?\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cIn another house, further west down the island, behind a few locked doors. That reminds me, I borrowed your pry-bar last night, but don\u2019t worry, I put it back.\u201d I remind myself that she doesn\u2019t sleep very much. <\/p>\n \u201cYou just, what, sensed<\/em> there was a gun there you could use?\u201d <\/p>\n She rolls her eyes. \u201cIt\u2019s hardly the first house I checked. There might be some other stuff there too. We can go look again later, after you get back.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cSo what am I supposed to do with this?\u201d I point at the gun, which she has broken open along the breach. Both chambers are empty. <\/p>\n \u201cIt was getting ugly in the rural areas, even before I came here. It can\u2019t be better now. If you meet someone threatening, don\u2019t try to be all noble. Shoot them.\u201d <\/p>\n This time I blink, and she looks exasperated. \u201cYou\u2019re over-thinking it. Don\u2019t over-think it. Just do it. There aren\u2019t any second chances. Not anymore.\u201d Eventually I nod, but she doesn\u2019t look satisfied until I take the gun. She unslings an olive, canvas ammo bag from her shoulder and hands that to me as well. <\/p>\n \u201cWait,\u201d she says then, reaching at my waist to pull two shells free, then loading them into the breach and snapping the whole assembly closed with a satisfying click. <\/p>\n \u201cNot exactly like target shooting,\u201d I venture shakily. \u201cMaybe you should hold onto this. You seem more comfortable around it than I do.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cNo, it is exactly like target shooting\u2026\u201d She pauses, and I can tell she means to say something else. She breaks my eye contact, and just as I am about to prompt her, blurts \u201cyou should go.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2026 was about to.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cNo. I mean you should go<\/em>.\u201d <\/p>\n A beat passes between us. <\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t do that. I\u2019ll have to, eventually, but I can\u2019t do that yet. Not with your–\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI can take care of myself.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cSays the woman who hands me the gun.\u201d <\/p>\n She almost smiles. \u201cIt\u2019s not the only gun I found. I told you, I can take care of myself.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cBegging your pardon, but you can\u2019t. Not yet.\u201d I\u2019ve been convincing myself I\u2019d work out a solution to her problem for two weeks, and I\u2019ve been wracking my brain over it, but so far to no avail. <\/p>\n \u201cSoon then. You should go soon.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cSoon. But not yet.\u201d I try not to let my hurt show. I try not to feel too hurt. But I think I fail at both. My heart thunders. She doesn\u2019t mean anything by it. I know that, deep down. <\/p>\n \u201cOk,\u201d I say, \u201cI\u2019ll be back with groceries and gas.\u201d I hope to find the latter, but for now, I\u2019ll settle for the former. <\/p>\n I approach the grocery store, the only one for miles, warily. The inland Food Lion has become a fortress since I passed through. It had still been running before, albeit on reduced hours. I think back to some of the booms we\u2019ve heard at night. What could have gone on during the intervening weeks? <\/p>\n Sandbags block all the windows and narrow the lane to the doors. The parking lot is nearly deserted. Then I see someone waving from the shadows behind the sandbags, signaling me to approach a sort of sandbag carport, a fortified parking space. Fortified against what?<\/em> It strikes me that either the person firing at me was doing so from elsewhere, or I am being very easily led into a trap. <\/p>\n This stops me short, and the person waving does so a little more frantically. I curse. What use could they have for me? I\u2019m running on fumes. Perhaps they need slave labor to stock the shelves? Smiling grimly at this thought, I pull into the offered spot. <\/p>\n The greeter is helmeted and appears to be wearing a flak jacket around his paunch. He has a gun as well, and that pretty well freezes me to the seat, but his is pointed up at an angle. He notes my gun, propped in the passenger seat, and pauses. <\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re gonna to have to leave that in the car if you mean to go shopping today.\u201d <\/p>\n The two men running the store are doing so out of basic human decency. Somehow the power is still running, both here and on the island, and Jean, my escort in the store while Floyd guards my car and gun, thinks that the attitude behind the power company must be the same altruism. <\/p>\n \u201cSure as hell nobody\u2019s been paying their bills lately,\u201d he says. Until he brings it up, the thought of losing power on the island hasn\u2019t even occurred to me. Still, after a moment of queasy panic at the notion, I force myself back to relative calm. There is nothing to be done about it. <\/p>\n Shopping is quick and efficient. \u201cIt\u2019s handouts, you see, money being worthless in these parts recently.\u201d Jean delivers this in practiced rote, and I wonder if he was even a Food Lion employee before all the troubles started. <\/p>\n They arrange me some basic perishable food, enough for two to eat before spoilage sinks in, and a choice from an assortment of canned and dried goods. \u201cIt\u2019s gotta last,\u201d he says by way of apology. \u201cNo telling if we\u2019ll ever get another shipment. But folks gotta eat.\u201d I decide I like Jean. <\/p>\n As we gather everything up and bag it together, Jean looks at me anxiously. \u201cYou\u2019re over on the island, right? You two must be the only ones. I saw the other car go by some time ago, and then yours, but no one else.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cAs far as I know, we\u2019re alone.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cDo what you can to stay that way,\u201d he says, with real concern rimming both his voice and his eyes. \u201cDon\u2019t draw any unnecessary attention to yourself. You got nowhere to run if someone who means trouble decides to cross the causeway after you.\u201d <\/p>\n This seems as good an opening as any. \u201cYou guys had much trouble?\u201d I indicate his gun. <\/p>\n \u201cNot yet, but we\u2019re hearing rumors. Got a lot of friends in the military.\u201d He lets this cryptic statement stand, and I\u2019m too unsettled to inquire further. <\/p>\n The pair send me off with a hearty \u201cGod bless!\u201d to speed me along, all the while hoping they don\u2019t notice that I bear what some in the Bible Belt have taken to calling the Devil\u2019s Touch. <\/p>\n It\u2019s not the Devil that\u2019s done this to me. If there is a Devil, there\u2019s also a God, and the latter has the former corralled. No, this is worse. What touched me, what touched she and I both, doesn\u2019t answer to anybody. <\/p>\n I arrive back, the car partially gassed thanks to Jean and Floyd\u2019s hoarding, to a pair of empty houses. We\u2019re each too lazy to move any closer together, so it takes awhile to ascertain that she isn\u2019t in either of them. I assume she\u2019s off procuring a larger arsenal, and set about storing the perishables, splitting them evenly between houses so we can lounge at both. <\/p>\n At some point I think to look up, and there she is. Jean\u2019s words are like hot lead branding my gut as she swoops above and between houses, sometimes rocketing straight up into the air, sometimes diving down at speeds that would frighten any who didn\u2019t know better. Despite her seemingly erratic flight, I note she keeps well clear of the island\u2019s fuzzy borders. <\/p>\n In use, her wings glow like fire, and it\u2019s impossible not to see them, even in bright daylight. Their glare even claws at the edges of my sight when I look the other direction. <\/p>\n At least it\u2019s not night<\/em>, I think. Though at night, most watching eyes would be asleep. I stand, entranced by her acrobatics, the sheer artistry and grace of her movements, dumbfounded with dry goods piled in bags at my feet. <\/p>\n At last she comes down, on the opposite side of her house from me. I shake off the trance of the experience, as I always must after seeing a Gimmie use the double-edged Gift they\u2019ve been given. After a while, I realize she isn\u2019t coming to meet me, though she must have seen me or the car by now. <\/p>\n Concerned, I find her where she landed, kneeling, her whole body wracked with sobs. The glory of her wings is fading into a shimmer like heat haze sprouting from her back. In time it will be gone entirely, viewable only from the corner of my eye once more. <\/p>\n I don\u2019t approach. I don\u2019t know what to say, not precisely, but I know what she doesn\u2019t want, and it jives with what I can\u2019t give perfectly. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen I\u2019m up, it\u2019s pure joy,\u201d she says, heaving and hitching between words, \u201cbut when I come back down, all I can think is that it cost me everything<\/em>.\u201d <\/p>\n What starts as tears turns into that full-body grief that only the deepest sadness can prop up. I leave the dry goods and pick her gently up from the ground, carrying her up the stairs, past the stilted underbelly of the house. <\/p>\n I enter the first bedroom I find, not hers, I realize at once, but it will suit to let her rest and recover while I make dinner. Her brazen flaunting of our existence here is all but forgotten. We can discuss it later if need be. <\/p>\n Her weight is warm and solid against me, hitching with diminishing sobs as her strength leaves her. I walk in a daze, fighting back my own tears, my own losses, until my knees strike the edge of the mattress. <\/p>\n I shift, preparing to lower her gently down, when all at once she is clinging with an iron grip. I look down to meet her shining eyes. <\/p>\n \u201cStay with me,\u201d she says, and rising, brings her lips to mine. They are warm and moist, and her mouth is parted open, sharing breath with mine. Her tongue tastes like a spray of sea salt. <\/p>\n My heart thunders warning in my chest, a drumbeat of doom. This is not good. This is the very thing I\u2019ve been avoiding, even fearing, this attachment I feel cementing itself between us. But it\u2019s been a long time, even more in perception than in fact, and there are other parts of me awakening. <\/p>\n I lower her slowly to the bed as I\u2019d originally intended, except that I follow, settling my weight atop her as she sighs in welcome. <\/p>\n A frozen lasagna is slowly baking in the oven as the stars come out and we emerge onto the second floor deck to watch. They carpet the night sky, a thick glittering layer of lights across the blackness. Clouds sidle in from the left, the east. Between that slate, puffy layer, and our need to hold one another close, I am at first unaware when a different kind of light show begins. <\/p>\n We are pressed hard together, she sandwiched between me and the railing with my arms wound around her, my lips exploring the curve of her neck, when she notices the clouds lighting up fitfully, like blooms of fire just beyond that low layer. <\/p>\n \u201cThunderstorm,\u201d she coos, kissing me again, and I revel in it. The sounds of the titanic forces being unleashed beyond the clouds reach us some dreamless time later, and to my unconscious mind they are wrong, too strident, too full of directed wrath. But my conscious mind is consumed with the feel of her, the smell of her, the knowledge of her that I\u2019ve gleaned these last few hours. <\/p>\n I am in so deep so quickly that I forget to be afraid. <\/p>\n Later, dazed and aching, we watch one of the last remaining news channels. This is an indulgence we seldom allow ourselves. In our other lives, each of us tells tales of being a news junkie, but now we avoid it unless both are in the mood. This does not happen often. <\/p>\n It is the bleary looking anchorwoman, made-up to the point of uncanniness, that tells us the truth of the false storm off the coast. <\/p>\n \u201cThere has been an extended instance of aerial and naval combat off the Mid-Atlantic seaboard tonight,\u201d the anchorwoman intones. \u201cThe identity of the attacking force is not known or has not been disclosed by the Pentagon at this time, but United States forces have reportedly repelled the attack before it could reach population centers along the coasts of Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, and Washington, D.C.\u201d <\/p>\n How long since the country\u2019s infrastructure functioned well enough to closely follow the movements of all other nations, military and civilian alike? Yet for some enemy to strike so close to home, to be surprised in this way\u2026 It leaves me both empty and frozen inside, and the sensation must have soaked through me, for I do not realize I am shaking until I feel her hand rest, steadying, across the back of mine. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not our world anymore,\u201d she says. \u201cIt belongs to them, for better or worse.\u201d But how can that be true? How, when so many of the world\u2019s troubles lie at the feet of our kind? The feet of the people who answered a selfish, infernal call. <\/p>\n The aerial battles occur with a kind of maddening regularity. Sometimes they are delayed by actual thunderstorms. But despite our resolve, the evening news, once a guilty pleasure, becomes a nightly event. <\/p>\n The skies flash most nights, accompanied at times by upthrust lances of light at the horizon, as from ships. They combine, these auroras, forming a scintillating drumbeat that marks the passage of the days. <\/p>\n Another trip to the Food Lion passes without event before we have our first fight. Our moods, perfectly out of sync at the start, never clashing, gradually meld closer and closer until I lash out at her at precisely the wrong moment. <\/p>\n \u201cYou should go,\u201d is how the conversation ends. There are only two ways she delivers this phrase, and this is the one with a temporal clause implied. I should go, but I should also come back. It both relieves and frightens me to hear that tone. <\/p>\n After, I stalk down the shoreline at near high tide. The sun is setting behind the clouds. Cloud cover has been nearly omnipresent since I arrived, at odds with my memories of this place. Despite the clouds, the air is warming fast with the ripening of spring, and the water is begrudgingly giving up its winter ghosts. I try to focus on the cool, grainy feel of the wet sand sucking lightly at my feet, but the relentless crash of surf draws my attention outward like a wire. <\/p>\n The ocean seems a two-faced god under such lighting, slate ridges capped with white, foaming chop receding into a flat, consumptive basalt in the distance. I cannot help but see the water as a bleak, swallowing thing, sucking out the light of the world and that which remains in me. <\/p>\n Later I return, but not to her house, rather to mine. I notice her deck light go out shortly after I enter and flip on the kitchen lights, so I know I\u2019ve been observed. <\/p>\n My body hopes she will venture over, now or later in the evening, seeking company. My mind and the raw edges of my pride hope she will stay away. <\/p>\n There is no contact between us for three days, and then, as if exploding in both minds at once, we meet each other midway between homes, each on the way to apologize to the other. <\/p>\n We decide a change of scenery is in order, and transfer our flag to my house. <\/p>\n The days pass, helped along by whatever time-killing aides we can find in an entire island worth of houses. Today is Monopoly. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not trading you Park Place, you can forget it!\u201d She laughs as she says this, but the twinkle in her eye is sly as well. My favored gambit has failed. I imagine my little top hat crushed beneath her boot. I can\u2019t believe this set is missing the battleship. <\/p>\n We tear through such games at an alarming pace, and notice more and more repetition as we raid the other houses for their entertainments. It\u2019s both mildly irritating and strangely depressing to dwell on it, so I, at least, try not to. <\/p>\n On the next turn she purchases Boardwalk, and three rounds after that, I\u2019m paying for her damned hotel there. <\/p>\n I can\u2019t help but notice that the two-faced ocean god has stratified itself. It seems ancient, unknowable and vaguely menacing when I walk alone, scenic, cool and inviting when she walks with me. <\/p>\n One day we perform a complete circuit of the island, as much as that is possible while having to avoid large swathes of the marshy inland side. Tired, sore and laughing at the finish, we are almost too exhausted to attend to one another after collapsing on my couch. <\/p>\n Almost. <\/p>\n Five trips. Five trips is all I manage to Food Lion. I\u2019ve recently begun to be worried. The perishable foods there are stretched to their final limits, with no resupplies in sight. <\/p>\n I begin to fear what will happen when the other food runs out as well. <\/p>\n It\u2019s just minutes before I climb into my car, ready for shopping trip six. She suggests, as she hands me the shotgun I\u2019ve never needed, that I negotiate for more of the perishables, since they are close to vanishing. Not many people are coming in for provisions, so there seems a decent chance Jean might listen. <\/p>\n Then the world is ripped open as the explosion passes over and through us. <\/p>\n At first I\u2019m certain the blast is closer to us than it seems. But after several seconds of silent, still panic between the two of us, we run up the stairs to the front porch, hoping for enough vantage to see what\u2019s happened. <\/p>\n The black smoke rising like a thick, hooded cobra is easily visible. East, and toward the landward side of the island, I think. Then we hear the sound of the jet, coming in low and slow. It\u2019s tough to tell for certain, but I think it bears United States Air Force markings. <\/p>\n I see the second bomb drop after the pilot hits the throttle. It\u2019s almost suicidally low, but I don\u2019t really consider this, because I know instantly what the target of both bombs is, and I wonder how we will resupply with the causeway destroyed. <\/p>\n The second explosion rips the air, and she reads the truth of matters on my face. From hers I read only fear. <\/p>\n Some time passes with nothing but silence between us. On the point where I think she is finally ready to speak, two more explosions rip the sky open, somewhere further inland. <\/p>\n The news gives us the truth of matters. Invasion is expected, even imminent. Some jackal of a nation, or perhaps a whole cabal of them, is here to savage the once-great United States, now eating itself from within. Access to coastal barrier islands is being destroyed up and down the eastern seaboard, to prevent them from being used as easy staging areas for any landing forces. <\/p>\n The rotting corpse of the nation must be kept sacrosanct. <\/p>\n Shortly after the report begins, she flips channels. Other networks have come back online, but they broadcast nothing but reruns, some from shows twenty years gone, whatever they can dig up in their archives. It\u2019s as though they seek to lull us all onto a bed of leaves. The leaves cover a staked pit, the stakes coated with a narcotic venom of simpler times. <\/p>\n We watch the inanities drone on for a while, then she speaks beside me, softly, right into my ear. <\/p>\n \u201cWe need to start scouring the other houses.\u201d She leans in to kiss me, throwing her warm, needy weight against mine, and as she bears me down, she whispers \u201cYou should have gone.\u201d <\/p>\n The tone is again clear. Gone, and not come back. The tone is heavy, swinging shut like the door in a black prison. <\/p>\n We acquire what must be every remaining gun on the island, prepared to defend our ridiculously small territory if necessary. We split the arms between both houses. By some unspoken, unanimous decree, we still have not thrown in our lot with one house or another. <\/p>\n Along with the weapons, we grab and haul every non-perishable food item we can find. This was a vacation island, most of the homes were for weekly rental, and thus not stocked with any food. But a few were not rented, serving only as ad hoc vacation homes for the owning family. <\/p>\n It should go without saying that our haul of food is distressingly small. <\/p>\n We watch the boat coming in through the old-fashioned spyglass. I\u2019ve already had to resist making pirate \u201carrr\u201d sounds for the better part of an hour, more out of nervousness than humor. She\u2019s not in the mood. <\/p>\n \u201cBoat\u201d is misleading. This is a landing craft. That said, it is a landing craft in a bad way. Badly damaged, it\u2019s taking on water, and there are blood smears along both inner and outer walls. Three soldiers remain in what must surely have housed forty. Why it is alone, certainly off course, we couldn\u2019t say, but it ran afoul of some American weaponry, and now they are looking for a safe place to ditch. <\/p>\n It is a cruel vagary of fate that puts them half a mile east along the beach from us. <\/p>\n One of the men is wounded, but the other two set out at once, foraging. Ensconced in my house, we exchange glances as we watch from blinded windows. It will be more than obvious someone has been here before them when they see house after house with pried-open doors. <\/p>\n The sun is setting, but there is enough light to see by. The two motile men do not split up, but begin moving together, inspecting house by house. We have a fifty-fifty chance that they will choose to move away from us and buy us time. <\/p>\n We lose the flip. <\/p>\n When the sun finally sets, the men apparently decide that\u2019s enough for one night. Their body language speaks volumes. They haven\u2019t found any supplies, and are suspicious of why. They move into the nearest house to the boat, carrying their now-unconscious comrade in with them. But their conversation occurs out on the deck, lights blazing. It appears our luck will hold this one night, because they haven\u2019t searched far enough to notice my car. Not tonight at least. But if they continue in the same direction tomorrow\u2026 <\/p>\n I counsel that we stealthily move in the night. The sound of the surf should muffle my car, and we could flee down the other end of the beach, buying ourselves more time. It will take them days to search everything. <\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d she says, with a firmness I\u2019ve never heard. \u201cRight now they aren\u2019t sure what they are up against. We have to take them now, while we have surprise.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cAll right,\u201d I say, and she blinks at this sudden agreement. I congratulate myself mentally, preening in my own head under the praise. It isn\u2019t myself I\u2019ve been fearing for. Not exactly, not directly. \u201cBut let me do whatever it is we\u2019re going to do.\u201d <\/p>\n She\u2019s shaking her head already. \u201cNo, too dangerous, we both–\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cIf It told me anything truthful at all, these men probably can\u2019t hurt me.\u201d She stops dead at this, frozen as if in stone. I\u2019ve never volunteered what my Gift was, and she has never asked. It has been a source of guilt for me, since she shared hers so easily, but I gave my Story, something she has yet to cough up. <\/p>\n She swallows sourly, worried, I think, more about the imbalance that exists between us now than anything. She considers her response for a long time. \u201cI want to help.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThe best way you can help me,\u201d I say, in possibly the most honest statement I\u2019ve ever made to her, \u201cis to stay safe.\u201d <\/p>\n I\u2019ve never used my Gift for what I am about to do, but I believe it will work. That\u2019s most important, I think. To believe. <\/p>\n The door yields to my kick as though it\u2019s rotted, clattering inward in two pieces. Feeling a surprising rush, I spare the briefest of moments to be impressed with myself. Perhaps she can ignore the sensation when she\u2019s flying, but I feel Its will coursing through me as I deliver the kick. I\u2019d have avoided doing it if I could. <\/p>\n I\u2019ve left the pry-bar at home, keeping my hands free. Most of the weapons we\u2019ve found scattered throughout the island in their little closet strongboxes are sporting in nature, but one of the rarer pistols is tucked in the back of my waistband, safety on, as I\u2019ve repeatedly confirmed. The fear of injury is habit as old as any, and hardest to shake. <\/p>\n It\u2019s my trusty shotgun that I bring to bear against the shadowed form rising to meet me. It\u2019s the deep darkness of the night, so I never get a look at uniform or ethnicity. I have no idea who these people are who are invading a dying nation. And I don\u2019t care. I hesitate. Of course I do. But I don\u2019t believe with absolute certainty in my invulnerability, and it\u2019s her voice I hear, colored white and red and urgent, speaking in my mind. <\/p>\n No warning. No chance<\/em>. As I pull the trigger and feel It slithering within me to utterly dampen the recoil, keeping my aim absolute, I wonder which of them, It or she, will dehumanize me more in the end. Which is it that robs us of our compassion, the one that offers gifts, or the one that risks taking them away? <\/p>\n The shot lights the room, so bright that it reveals even less detail than the darkness. But there is a glimpse of a human form staggering, and a man\u2019s cry rips through the shocked, burnt air as the flash fades from the room but not from my sight. Then there is crashing, thumping, and the breaking of glass as the second man, revealed as a white silhouette in the flash, flees out the back onto the decking. I pursue. <\/p>\n As I stand on the back porch, the light of the moon picks him out in eerie bluish white against the sand and waves. He runs, I don\u2019t know where, and since he appears unarmed, and I decide right there to let him go. In the morning we will clear out this house, and he will have nowhere to go. So long as he stays away from us\u2026 <\/p>\n A pair of glowing fans, symmetric and blurred with speed, streak down. I fancy hearing a piercing wail, as though her Gift was to be a banshee, as she swoops down almost too fast for sight and scoops up the fleeing man. Then she rockets skyward, and I have time for little thought beyond a muted anger at both her recklessness and her savagery, before his form plummets screaming to the earth, moving much too fast to be saved by the porosity of piled sand. <\/p>\n A shot rings behind me, from the house. I twitch and duck simultaneously, nearly falling in spastic haste. But the shot is singular and does not repeat, and I know somehow that it\u2019s the sound of the third man, the wounded man, taking his own life with his pistol. <\/p>\n Despite the damage it has sustained, I manage to swing the landing craft around, hugging the shore, and use it to reach the mainland. I make this decision with virtually none of her input as I\u2019m not speaking to her for reasons that already seem petty. She is at first hurt, then sullen, then angered by my silence. The fact that my actions hurt her only angers me more, because the hurts don\u2019t make me happy, as I feel they should. <\/p>\n Over on the mainland, it\u2019s just a short walk to my destination. It\u2019s quickly evident what the other two explosions were. I can smell it well before I see it. The Food Lion is gone, replaced by an acrid, stinking crater. I suppose any landing forces could not be allowed to find food, either. And neither can we. As I stand there stupidly, I wonder where Jean and Floyd were when those bombs fell. As I bring the boat back, I wonder just how long our island provisions can last. <\/p>\n Summer waxes and wanes, and as we live on rationed canned beans, soups, and vegetables, all the while our relationship oscillates like a dozen mini-seasons wedged within the larger one of the world. When we can bear to keep our hands from one another we can barely speak, until the edges of our freezes and thaws blur together, and sometimes we forget whether we are angry or happy with our lot and one another. <\/p>\n We drive golf balls into the water until the supply runs out. We fire an old, much-used PVC potato cannon, filling it with whatever we can find that\u2019s of vaguely the right shape and inedible. Despite my refusing to allow her to fire it, we carry this game past the point of good sense, and I am given further proof of my Gift when the cannon finally explodes beside me. The worming sense of Its protection pulsing through sinew and vein is almost worse than I imagine dying must be. <\/p>\n We play every old board game anyone ever left at a beach house, even the ones we had shunned before. Some are decades old, some so new they have electronic, even video components. <\/p>\n There is a brief period during one of our good spells where panic seizes me, and all I can think about is that I will somehow, after all this time, get her pregnant. For a time I\u2019m unable to touch her, such is this fear, but it\u2019s been months, and at last I come to suspect that this is yet another one of Its Gifts to us. I derive a mean satisfaction that what It undoubtedly intended to be cruel is a blessing in disguise. <\/p>\n Perhaps It can\u2019t foresee everything. <\/p>\n She lets it slip into conversation, that her birthday is approaching. I have no idea if the hint is intentional, but an idea occurs to me. <\/p>\n It happens as we watch the last network. The signal is spotty, so much so that we can barely discern what the anchor says, but the fighting has evidently moved west, inland. <\/p>\n \u201cBad news,\u201d she says beside me. \u201cExcept for us.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cEveryone seems to have forgotten about us,\u201d I reply, turning to smile at her, a smile that hides my new notion. She fixes me with her own grin, and it is only a little sad. <\/p>\n \u201cAs long as you remember,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n The house\u2019s electricity chooses that moment to finally die. In truth, it lasted far longer than I would have thought. <\/p>\n With the risk of our discovery seemingly reduced, I begin working on her birthday gift. It will be a delicate thing, and my stomach turns in knots as I do it, certain she will hate it, fail to see the humor, and spurn me for good. But some part of me is sure in a different way, and I continue my work. <\/p>\n She is at first suspicious, then annoyed by my long absences, and finally I have to confess what it is I am doing, if not exactly<\/em> what I am doing. A smile replaces the slow smolder of her anger, as though an obscuring cloud has moved on, allowing the sun to shine through again. Encouraged a bit by this, I continue my work, no longer trying so hard to hide. <\/p>\n When the big day dawns, her mood buoys my hopes. I take her to the sound side of the island, and do something I have never done. I ask for a lift. <\/p>\n To my surprise, she agrees readily. Locking her hands together over my breastbone, she lifts us both easily into the air, and I direct her where to go, keeping us well clear of the coast with my instructions. I try to marvel at this, her Gift allowing us to soar, but all my nerves are for my gift to her. <\/p>\n She laughs when she sees it. The sound is so lovely and crystalline clear, as though it\u2019s shaking caked filth from the inside of her lungs, that I\u2019m moved to tears. They are tears of laughter, and relief as well. <\/p>\n Three houses in a row display it. I have pulled sheets taught across the sound-side of the roofs, and upon them written the words that comprise the message in old paint. <\/p>\n DRAIN THE SOUND. <\/p>\n As she lowers us gently to the ground, kissing me first sweetly and then roughly, I wonder which of us hopes more strongly that the joke message is heeded. <\/p>\n Two days later, in August\u2019s last gasps, our food runs out. The topic has been one we\u2019ve both been studiously avoiding, as is our tendency. She informs me at breakfast, trying not to make it sound like disaster. <\/p>\n \u201cYou should–\u201d is how she tries to end the declamation, and I interrupt. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll do another house search. There must be things we\u2019ve missed.\u201d <\/p>\n And, hours and hours later, we have discovered that there are indeed things we\u2019ve missed, but nothing of any appreciable amount. We prolong our starvation\u2019s beginning by a few days at most with what we find. <\/p>\n Having few options makes decision-making surprisingly easy. I ready the boat to head to shore, hoping to search the same way we have searched the island. Meanwhile she will try her hand at fishing, at least as much as she can manage, with the dangers of the water. <\/p>\n She hugs and kisses me before I go, with an urgency that could almost make me weep. Midway through, I think I realize why, and then she speaks, confirming it. <\/p>\n \u201cIf you don\u2019t come back,\u201d she whispers into my chest, \u201cI\u2019ll understand.\u201d But she doesn\u2019t understand. She doesn\u2019t understand at all. <\/p>\n The boat is running low on fuel when I arrive, so I make that a priority as well. But I might as well not bother. <\/p>\n The houses, those that aren\u2019t burned to the ground, have been picked clean, whether by soldiers of either side or locals I can\u2019t say. Anything of use has been stripped away and carried off. Eventually it is getting so dark I risk losing my way back if I stay any longer. <\/p>\n She is trying to cook two meager fish over an open fire when I arrive, utterly empty-handed. We eat the fish that night, but there is something wrong with them, and we spend the next day throwing up. <\/p>\n A day after that, both nauseated and starving by turns, I promise that I\u2019ll try the other islands to east and west. \u201cThere are bound to be houses like the ones here, ones that have provisions.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cUnless they have people like our island does who\u2019ve eaten them up. What about gas for the boat?\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll do one more sweep of the island.\u201d Despite the doubt scrawled across her face, it\u2019s not impossible. It wasn\u2019t what we looked for the last time. It\u2019s possible that we just missed it. \u201cI\u2019ll swim if I have to.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cOn no food? You\u2019ll drown!\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cMy Gift\u2026\u201d I say, then hesitate. The next words could open up another rift between us. But they need to be said. \u201cI\u2019m not certain I can drown.\u201d She looks away, for of course, drowning is all she can do in the ocean. <\/p>\n \u201cYou should go,\u201d she says, and it\u2019s obvious what she means. I say nothing. She doesn\u2019t understand, and I can\u2019t bear to explain. <\/p>\n We never do get around to searching the island. Not for fuel, anyway. The next day brings what can only be a hurricane, a monster storm of shrieking winds and crashing waves. More than one house simply vanishes in between flashes of lightning, leaving only the sounds of screaming, splitting wood. I see more waterspouts than I care to count as we huddle in another house, one further toward the center of the island. We have to keep her away from any standing bodies of salt water. <\/p>\n Only the orientation of the storm prevents the beachhead from being swallowed utterly. It is several days before the flooding recedes, and we are amazed to find both her house and mine still standing. They are now neighbors in truth, the two houses between swept out to sea. A number of other houses, more than half of those I see, have joined them in watery graves. <\/p>\n From the beach, it\u2019s possible to see the island immediately to the west. Or rather, it\u2019s possible to see where that island was. Of the dunes and the homes that dotted them, there is no sign. <\/p>\n She is screaming at me, howling that I need to leave, that I need to go and leave her behind. I can\u2019t recall how it started, I only know that after withstanding the barrage for half an hour, I need to get out of the house. Her shrieks of grief and rage chase me out the door. <\/p>\n For something to do, I walk east, examining the devastation and looking to see if the next island down suffered the same fate as our other neighbor. It\u2019s an idle fancy, for somehow I know that it has, and I know that this somehow means that both islands were uninhabited, both stocked with food. <\/p>\n What surprises me more is when I come upon the bombed-out causeway and find its rubble gone, as well as the entirety of our island east of that point. As though the storm reached out with shears of wind and lightning and simply lopped it off. <\/p>\n I don\u2019t mind admitting that I spend a fair amount of time screaming for no particular reason at this discovery. It<\/em> wants our world to shrink smaller and smaller. I know this. I feel the truth of this thing twisting and writhing inside me, like a worm filling my guts. <\/p>\n As the sun sets, I head home, wanting only to take her in my arms. <\/p>\n I notice the bottle immediately upon my arrival, and my brain names it. It\u2019s a bottle of painkillers, formerly in the master bathroom\u2019s medicine cabinet, and it was, as of this morning, at least half full. <\/p>\n It stands empty on the kitchen counter now. The message is clear, though there is no physical note. You should go<\/em>, written in suicide. <\/p>\n My heart thunders a terrified beacon of warning. <\/p>\n Swearing, I run from bedroom to bedroom, starting with ours, finally ending in one that we have never used, as though she wants to hide from me for the maximum possible time, to let the poison work within her and minimize the chance I might save her. I can barely breathe by the time I enter. <\/p>\n I find her crying but full of life, and scan the floor for signs that she has thrown up the pills, seeing nothing as I rush to her. I am hugging her, crying as well, feeling her heartbeat strong and fierce, and then I am shaking her in rage, feeling my own heart alternately race and seize in my chest. <\/p>\n \u201cWhy?\u201d I am whispering this, over and over through my tears, then shouting it. \u201cWhy? Why? Why?\u201d I am waiting for her to speak, to confirm that she is, in fact, somehow not dying. <\/p>\n \u201cThey didn\u2019t work,\u201d she sobs. \u201cI took them as soon as you left. Hours ago. They didn\u2019t work. I just wanted\u2026 I just wanted to free you from me.\u201d <\/p>\n We curl around each other on the floor, holding tight for so long that our bodies cramp and scream. But her heartbeat never falters, and she never throws up the pills. She never even gets sleepy. <\/p>\n That is when we first begin to suspect that we cannot, in fact, starve to death, that maybe we can only die in the careful ways It has prepared for us. What seemed a condemnation of slow death shifts into a kind of hell. <\/p>\n Winter. A winter that seems to last forever. Perhaps this stretching of time occurs because I know that the season will mark a year, one year<\/em> since I first became snared on this island. <\/p>\n I can feel It moving through me all the time now. It coils and slides, constantly dulling the hunger, feeding it with whatever repugnant energies It possesses, but never taking the ache in my belly away completely, never satisfying. It\u2019s as though a worm in my guts is eating me at the same rate my body can heal itself. <\/p>\n She says nothing, but I know she feels the same way. <\/p>\n For a time after the pills, I feared that she would simply step out into the surf one day. But she is stubborn. She cannot bear to give It what It so obviously wants. Despite this realization, for a time I try never to let her out of my sight for more than moments. Even when we are at each other\u2019s throats and I am banished back to my home, I try to watch her through the rubble of the intervening spaces. But after a month of stressed, exhausting vigil, I relent, relaxing by degrees, and she remains safely shore bound. <\/p>\n The longer we go since our last meal, the more our features change. I can\u2019t describe it much better than that, but they grow less human, more as though we live lives trapped on the covers of fashion magazines. Wrinkles are smoothed over, blemishes vanish, eyes glaze, the skin wears a constant sheen as though it is burnished. She is more beautiful to look upon, so much so that I cannot even glimpse her without becoming aroused, even in the throes of anger. But she seems more terrible as well, less human. Her hair is a beacon of bloody fire, day and night. Her wings are visible constantly now, brightly burning fans spraying out of her back. <\/p>\n I can tell by the way she resists looking at me, even when we make love, that she sees the same, sees some bright cording in my muscles or bones, though she will not say it. <\/p>\n I find her standing at the high tide line at dawn. She stands poised there on the knife edge of my fear, a fear that seized my heart the moment I woke to find her gone. <\/p>\n \u201cYou could be free,\u201d she says in a dreamy, distant voice, a tranced voice. \u201cA few moments of fear for me, and you could be free.\u201d She leans forward, on the point of taking a steps and entering the surf zone. The waves churn and froth, each trough seeming to yawn open like a mouth hungering for her. The tide is coming in, coming to steal her away and swallow her. <\/p>\n I hesitate for a moment, but fear waiting too long, and at last I break my long silence. <\/p>\n \u201cI can never be free,\u201d I say. \u201cNever.\u201d This arrests her, brings her up short from her intent. At last she turns to look at me, her hair the red of some strangely burning chemical, a red that inflames. I try to focus. She speaks into my struggle. <\/p>\n \u201cYou only say that because I\u2019m still alive. It\u2019s flattering to think that my death would break your heart. But you\u2019d get over me. You\u2019d get over me and you\u2019d go on. You would be free.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI wouldn\u2019t,\u201d I say, and it sounds lame, as though I am merely making the sounds by rote. I reach out and grasp her, forcibly tugging her back from the brink. She resists, and I force the issue. I am stronger. It<\/em> has made sure of that. She twists in my grip, snarling. <\/p>\n \u201cLet me go! Let me die! I don\u2019t want to be here anymore! It\u2019s taken everything from me, don\u2019t you see? Everything! It\u2019s even taken this place! I used to be so ha\u2026 so happy when I was here! I\u2026\u201d Then she is falling into my shoulder, her strength gone, her body crumpling into mine. <\/p>\n And at last, I tell her everything. <\/p>\n \u201cIt was a wedding, my wedding,\u201d she says later, safely back on the porch. Despite the cold, she will not go with me into the house. I suppose, like me, she only feels it around her edges now, as though the frigid air is trying to pry its way into a box with no seams. Nevertheless, I sit blocking her from the stairs to the boardwalk, trying to forget that she could simply fly up, then plummet down into the water. But her Story draws her in quickly, and she seems to forget that I am there. <\/p>\n \u201cI ran from the wedding, ran at the very end.\u201d A single tear falls from each eye, running along tracks I\u2019ve learned well after kissing and cursing their fellows away this past year. \u201cI didn\u2019t leave him at the alter or anything so dramatic,\u201d she says, a sad smile altering the paths of those tears, making them unfamiliar to me. \u201cBut I left him with no warning. I was certain he had read my fears in my face. They\u2019d been growing there for months, and I was certain he could read me, but he reacted\u2026 he was so\u2026 so shocked. And then that just made it worse, made me want to get away even more. I ran an hour after telling him, just packed up a few of my things and vanished. And I didn\u2019t explain. I didn\u2019t know how to explain. I didn\u2019t tell anyone where I was going. I think quite a few of them, my family especially, could guess, probably before I knew myself.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cYou went to see It,\u201d I say. I can\u2019t bear the pain that is wrenching her face, contorting it and gripping my heart in a mirrored fist as it goes. I want her to get away from this failed wedding now as she did in life. <\/p>\n \u201cNot at first. But my fiance wouldn\u2019t stop calling. He wouldn\u2019t stop trying to find out where I\u2019d gone, what he could do to fix things, what he had done to make me hate him. And I didn\u2019t! I didn\u2019t hate him! I still don\u2019t. I love him. But I couldn\u2019t bear the thought of spending my life with him. Love\u2026 it wasn\u2019t enough. Does that make sense?\u201d She isn\u2019t looking at me, but her tone is desperate. <\/p>\n \u201cOf course it does.\u201d I\u2019m lying, but it is well meant. It doesn\u2019t make sense; it can\u2019t make sense, not to anyone who isn\u2019t living it. But I can at least imagine the concept of what she\u2019s saying. <\/p>\n \u201cEventually I went to see It. When you told me your story, you said your relationship soured, and you told me that you asked to feel no more hurt. I asked to be free, free from the hurt I had left behind me. If you think about it,\u201d she says, turning to look at me again, \u201cwe asked for the same thing, but nuanced. Apparently that made all the difference between us.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cYet here we are.\u201d Now I am smiling, and I wonder if it is as sad to look at as it is to wear. <\/p>\n \u201cI felt so different after It was done with me. Like something alien was living inside my skin, looking out from my eyes. Months went by at a blur. I\u2019d wake up in unfamiliar cities, never remembering flying there. I was spiraling out of control, afraid I was losing my mind. So I came here, to this beach, this island. This used to be my favorite place. I thought maybe I could clear my head here, and forget about everything that was going on back home and with the rest of the world. As I crossed the causeway I felt my Catch taking hold.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cBefore that,\u201d I say, with a knowing tone, a tone of profound understanding, \u201cyou were just like all the rest of us, sure that Catches were either myth or something that happened to other people.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cIt is clever like that. Clever to delay the price you pay for Its gifts. My fiance stopped calling immediately after I went to It. I didn\u2019t hear from anyone, him or family or friends. I didn\u2019t even try to contact them. I think I was afraid I wouldn\u2019t be able to, even if I wanted.\u201d She pauses, and looks deeply at me with penetrating eyes that seem to shift through the entire color spectrum, blue to green to brown. What color were her eyes originally? I can\u2019t remember. Each shade is lovely. Her wings explode expansively behind her, passing through the back of the chair, the planking of the deck, even the wall of the house as though they are mist. She has never looked more beautiful. I have never wanted her more or been more frightened by her. <\/p>\n \u201cWhatever It did to me worked. In a sense it did. When you and I\u2026 when we made love, I didn\u2019t feel the pain I expected. I didn\u2019t feel like I was betraying him, my fiance.\u201d Now she laughs, and the laughter is bitter and amused. It stabs me. \u201cInstead I felt loss, like I\u2019d lost some part of myself, the part that should have felt like I was betraying him. It had done something to me, made me less than human.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cIt did exactly what we asked,\u201d I countered. \u201cBut in Its own words.\u201d <\/p>\n She nods and moves forward to embrace me. \u201cAlways in Its own words,\u201d she agrees. Then she adds something, something I do not expect. \u201cI\u2019m so sorry for what I\u2019ve done to you.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all right,\u201d I say, doubly surprised for meaning it. <\/p>\n \u201cYou should have gone,\u201d she says, for the last time. <\/p>\n \u201cMaybe this is where I was supposed to be.\u201d <\/p>\n At least It left us one another. <\/p>\n In the darkness of the frigid house, buried beneath the blankets, we come together, and our union has a sense of intimacy we have never managed before. She is warm beneath me, and I bask in the glory of her otherworldly beauty, no longer made afraid by it. The ribbons of her wings wrap themselves tight around me, and for the first time I can feel them there, a ghost of her own warmth binding me in her embrace. Even through the constant, gnawing hunger, the cold, the fear, the loss of the world around us, we find for some few moments a measure of bliss. <\/p>\n There is a power in acceptance. <\/p>\n She wakes me with a gentle kiss. I look up to her face, smiling and brimming with tears both. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s time you got up,\u201d she says, and there is something in her face I cannot read, not at first. Then memory crashes home, understanding dawns, and transmutes to terror, but her smile steadies me, calms me, and I wonder that she has ever felt fear. <\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a time to stop suffering,\u201d she says, turning to leave the room. I follow. <\/p>\n We stand out on the cold porch for a time, heedless of the wind, and she turns at last from the ocean to look at me. Her face fills up my entire world. She is all I have left, but in a strange way she is also all I need. <\/p>\n \u201cWalk with me?\u201d she asks this with a hesitance that I find charming, and I take her hand, lacing our fingers together, my palm almost swallowing hers. We stroll out down the boardwalk, watching the grasses sway in the dunes, imagining that it is warm and sunny, not cold and gray. I look and see that she is smiling, and my own widens. <\/p>\n We walk for long hours, ignoring the constant call of our limbs for food. We walk east, to where the island ends now so abruptly, the turn and head west, to the last extremes of the wider side of the island, where the sand piles up into expansive beaches and sandbars, creating strange eddies and currents, and the occasional tide pool. We see a fish leap up from the surface of one such, a silver dart plinking back into the rippled darkness of the pool, and it makes both of us laugh a little. <\/p>\n Eventually we are back, back at the beach before our house. The tide has receded, the beach stretches to its zenith. Our hands are still interlocked, and now she turns to grasp my other one. I wind them before her and stand pressed to her back, and she leans back into my shoulder. <\/p>\n \u201cAre you sure?\u201d I say, the thought of what she intends twisting in my heart for long moments. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s time,\u201d she says, and her voice is steady. \u201cPast time. The world\u2019s grown stale with time.\u201d <\/p>\n I can think of nothing to say. <\/p>\n \u201cCarry me?\u201d she asks, and I turn her to face me and hoist her up into my arms, my hands hooked beneath her thighs. I feel her wings curl in and brush my back. <\/p>\n Locked together in that way, I begin to stride out toward the waiting surf. It has been patient. <\/p>\n She shivers the moment I enter the water, clutching tighter to me with limbs that already seem to weaken. The sea is frigid around my ankles, but she is warm in my arms. For the barest instant, I hesitate. Then I feel her growing restless, and I continue on, wading deeper. <\/p>\n The water sloshes past my knees in short order, and I watch as one of her toes scrawls a whorl through the foam of its surface, emerging shiny and wet with salt water. <\/p>\n \u201cSleepy,\u201d she murmurs in my ear, her grip loosening. I tighten mine to compensate. <\/p>\n \u201cStay with me?\u201d I whisper into her ear, nestled in its flame red canopy. <\/p>\n \u201cAlways,\u201d she returns with a kiss to my cheek. But the kiss is already slurred, loose, and I notice her hair darkening as its flame begins to cool. She goes slack in my arms as her feet slip into the water, now piled to my waist. <\/p>\n Her skin begins to gray like the day I pulled her from the surf. It\u2019s at this moment, at this terrible sight, that my heart begins to lurch and seize. <\/p>\n Before yesterday, I had kept the truth locked away, from her and from myself as well. But of course, I have a Catch too. I had asked not to feel loss again, in Its own words, and It had granted me this boon. A long time passed before I came to understand what this meant. But here, on this island with her, I had at last grasped this truth. If ever I was on the verge of feeling such loss, my heart would simply stop, and I would never feel loss, or anything at all, again. <\/p>\n You should go<\/em>. How often had she said that? How many times had I needed to hear it before I understood what was happening, what had already happened, to me? Leaving her here alone would not be the same as carrying her out into the surf to die. But a great loss was a great loss. My heart would not know the difference. <\/p>\n She could never leave this island alive, and now, because of the ties that bound us, neither could I. But we had come to an understanding that last night in the darkness, bound together in body and spirit. We would not live out some eternity imprisoned on this island. We would die together, and we would not die trapped. <\/p>\n She moans against my shoulder now, her warmth fleeing, her strength ebbing. Her eyes are fluttering shut and she struggles to keep them open. \u201cHold me until it\u2019s over,\u201d she whispers, and I can hear fear fluttering in her voice, fear at last. I can see her wings guttering like candle flames. <\/p>\n The water is up to both our shoulders now, and still my strength, my Gift propels us forward. We will not die trapped on this island, and we will die together. My stuttering heart is the proof. <\/p>\n \u201cAnd beyond,\u201d I promise her. <\/p>\n \u201cI love you,\u201d she says with sluggish words. <\/p>\n \u201cI love you,\u201d I say to her. It is, I realize, the first time we have spoken the words. <\/p>\n At last my heart forces me to halt. I hold her head above the water, mere instinct, I suppose, but it laps past our chins out here beyond the breakers. It is bitterly cold, a cold I can feel at last, and the node of warmth she provides is almost extinguished. Her eyes have closed and will not open. Her hair has darkened almost to russet, and her skin is gray as ash. Her wings are just a faint blur in the air and water around us. <\/p>\n I can feel It twisting up, wrapping its tendrils around my heart, anticipating the moment, the moment It has been waiting for. I begin to fear that I will not notice her departure. Terror seizes me at the thought that she will be alone in whatever lays beyond for one moment more than is absolutely necessary. I promised to be with her always. <\/p>\n I needn\u2019t worry. I feel the life go out of her, as she goes totally limp at last in my arms. Her nugget of heat is smothered utterly, and her wings dissipate into sea and sky. <\/p>\n I feel her die in my arms. To think that for a moment I actually feared that I wouldn\u2019t feel her die in my arms. <\/p>\n The pain, the final pain, seizes me at last. It is agony in my chest, but it does not match the dread I have nursed for months. No, the worse pain lies behind my eyes, and in my memory, and buried in my soul. <\/p>\n Be strong. It will just be for a moment<\/em>. It is her voice, and it reaches past the deeper pain, leaving only the death of my heart, like blood solidifying in my veins. And it occurs to me that I am holding on, clawing to life with all the strength that remains, a need as deeply rooted as only instinct can be. I hold it as tightly as I hold her chilled body to me. <\/p>\n Somewhere I imagine It must be laughing. For an instant, my face screws itself up in rage, but then that slips away. Its victory no longer troubles me. I let my pride slough free, for what use is pride? What use is pride when I can hear her again? She calls to me from the other side. She is somewhere beyond, and she burns bright and hot as the sun. <\/p>\n Let go. I miss you already. Let go and come find me.<\/em><\/p>\n And I do.<\/p>\n <\/a> By Melinda Moore<\/p>\n Vivian slammed the rooftop door open; the metal and brick clashed with all the defiance a wrongfully scolded four-year-old could produce. Tears made the marker ink on her face mix together like Neopolitan ice cream, but what dripped into her mouth tasted like paint. Her feet thudded on the cement before her tears cleared and she saw a mass of gold and brown scales: a dragon took up most of the rooftop. <\/p>\n She stepped back so she could see the face, and gulped and wheezed until the sobbing stopped. She asked, \u201cAre you Puff?\u201d<\/p>\n The dragon opened one eye and said, \u201cHardly.\u201d<\/p>\n His lid began to close but stopped midway when she said, \u201cI just drew a cave for him on the hallway wall, but since you’re here and he’s not, you can have it.\u201d<\/p>\n The lid opened all the way again. \u201cYou painted a dragon cave?\u201d<\/p>\n Vivian nodded her head like the bobble knight on her dad’s dashboard and said, \u201cIt’s beautiful except my mom hates it and says I can’t watch TV for a month, especially if it’s any of dad’s movies.\u201d Traffic honked and screeched far below as if to add an exclamation point to her exasperation.<\/p>\n The dragon closed his eye before saying, \u201cI don’t have much use for a two dimensional cave.\u201d <\/p>\n Vivian sniffed the snot up her nose and said, \u201cAre you hungry? My mom just went to CostCo and bought a big box of Goldfish.\u201d<\/p>\n The eye opened and he said, \u201cGoldfish? I can never catch enough of those to make it worth while. But if you have a big box…\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI’ll be right back.\u201d Vivian could hardly believe a real dragon was on her roof. Her mom was always telling her dad to grow up and quit telling Vivian such fanciful stories. But now she had proof. \tDown in the kitchen, she slid her step stool across the ceramic tiled floor and into the pantry. She stretch on the stool just enough to pull the bottom of the Goldfish box with her fingertips. It thumped to the ground. She listened for her mom’s footsteps, but she must’ve been asleep in her room. Vivian grabbed her treasure and ran up to the rooftop again, worried the dragon would be gone. He was there.<\/p>\n \u201cI have the goldfish!\u201d<\/p>\n He opened both eyes and said, \u201cWell?\u201d<\/p>\n She tore the box and bag open and scattered the crackers in front of his mouth like they were magic dust.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat are those?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGoldfish.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAre they dead?\u201d<\/p>\n Vivian stared at the treasure and realized her mistake. A lump swelled in her throat, and she choked out, \u201cThey’re crackers. I didn’t mean real fish.\u201d<\/p>\n The dragon sniffed. A long tongue darted out and licked up several crackers at once. \u201cCheesy,\u201d he said and continued to lick the roof clean. \u201cWhen can you bring me more? I’m Darius by the way.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI’m Vivian. We’ll have another box in a month. Can you come in and play?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI couldn’t possibly squeeze through the door.\u201d<\/p>\n Vivian slumped, but then recalled the story about princesses kissing frogs. Maybe if she kissed him, he’d turn into a boy and fit through the door. She ran to his snout and gave him a peck. When he didn’t change, she dashed through the door and down the stairs, hoping he’d never guess her foolish notion.<\/p>\n Vivian burst out of the door and onto the rooftop, the only place she didn’t feel awkward in her body\u2014tall enough to be a woman but flat like a little girl still. \u201cLight the roof on fire! Light the roof on fire!\u201d she yelled. Her fingernails and sneakers were covered with gold glitter, glimmering in the moonlight. The gold scales of her friend Darius glimmered as well, but there the similarity ended. <\/p>\n \u201cIf I light the roof on fire, where will you sit?\u201d asked Darius.<\/p>\n Vivian slumped. He was always so practical. \u201cI got your favorite tonight,\u201d she said, not one to linger over disappointments. She only had an hour until her mom would be home from work and wanted to make the most of it. \u201cCoke, lemon-lime and strawberry pop.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh, good. What did you get for yourself?\u201d<\/p>\n Vivian stopped slurping her soda and gave a loud burp before answering. \u201cJust Coke.\u201d<\/p>\n Darius rolled onto his back and opened his mouth. Vivian set her own cup down and opened the Double Gulp with both hands. Pouring it down his throat she said, \u201cYou could ask politely, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh, are we comparing notes now on who’s ruder?\u201d<\/p>\n Vivian stuck her tongue out. <\/p>\n Darius’s tongue shot out of his mouth and wrapped around a passing pigeon. <\/p>\n Vivian turned away and popped her gum to avoid hearing the cracking of bones. Maybe today he would change into a prince and leave his dragony habits behind. When Darius finished his meal, Vivian said, \u201cThat was gross.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow’s school been?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh, you know, boring.\u201d She told him about endless lectures and gossipy friends. At the end of her patter, she gave him a sidelong glance and said, \u201cLogan wanted to kiss me behind science lab.\u201d<\/p>\n Darius yawned with his maw gaping and tongue rolling out. When he finished he said, \u201cAnd did you?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n Vivian wanted to blurt out, \u201cBecause Logan isn’t a dragon,\u201d but instead said, \u201cHe chews spearmint flavored gum. I hate that. What have you been doing?\u201d<\/p>\n He told her about flying over the Atlantic and being almost seen by a plane and then a cruise ship, but he reached a cloud just in time. \u201cI think I’ll spend time in the Caribbean this month. Do some shark hunting.\u201d<\/p>\n Vivian wanted to go shark hunting too, but more than that she wanted Darius to be human so they could be friends together. She had no idea how old he was, but always imagined his human shape as the same age as herself. Her mother would be home any minute, and it sounded like Darius wouldn’t be back for awhile. She jumped up. \u201cI’ve gotta go!\u201d She closed her eyes and planted a kiss right on Darius’s muzzle. When she opened her eyes, he was still a dragon. <\/p>\n She fled the roof, cheeks burning.<\/p>\n Vivian set a huge box loaded with cups of designer coffee onto the rooftop of her apartment building. Left over heat from the summer day radiated up from the cement. The full moon shone off the gold scales of Darius\u2014it was her favorite time to view him. She said as if it hadn’t been months since they’d seen each other, \u201cI’m afraid they got cold in the elevator.\u201d She wore a black camisole with shorts, and had a tattoo on her shoulder of a gold dragon that looked similar to Darius.<\/p>\n \u201cI’ll take care of that if you step back,\u201d said Darius. He stood on his hind legs and puffed out a flame over the box. \u201cThat should do it. Would you mind pouring them for me? I hate the taste of cardboard.\u201d He flopped down on his back as Vivian set aside one cup for herself and began pouring the rest down Darius’s throat. When he was finished, he rolled over, and Vivian sat down and leaned against his belly. \u201cHow were finals?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n \u201cGood. This is my last summer home. Time to go out into the real world.\u201d She wanted to ask if he would visit her when she found a new apartment, but was too worried he’d say no; he’d never visited her at college. Instead, she asked, \u201cDone any shark hunting lately?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBeen in the mood for bear. Just got back from the Black Forest. Date anyone interesting this semester?\u201d<\/p>\n Vivian thought of the guy who’d hounded her the whole semester for a date. He was in all of her classes, but she hated how he smelled of wet dog and drooled on her books whenever they studied for tests. At their last session, she’d had to punch him in the jaw to keep him from ripping off her shirt.<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d she said and pulled her knees up to her chest.<\/p>\n She heard a howl from the corner of the roof and saw a wolf dressed in what looked like her study partner’s Chicago Bears jersey. The wolf gnashed his teeth and ran right for her with his claws clicking on the cement. <\/p>\n Darius swung his tale around and impaled the werewolf with the spike on the end of it. There was a brief whimper and then nothing. Vivian stood up, walked away and looked out at the city lights with the sound of a skull splitting as accompaniment to the horns of traffic below.<\/p>\n \u201cYou should set up shop with a nice musician or something. This Little Red Riding Hood business is only going to get worse as you get older,\u201d said Darius when he’d finished his meal.<\/p>\n Vivian turned around and tried to ignore the spittle mixed with blood on his golden scales. She walked back to him, closed her eyes and kissed him on the muzzle. He was still a dragon when she opened her eyes again. \u201cAll men turn into monsters at some point,\u201d she said and walked to the staircase.<\/p>\n Vivian popped the cork off of a bottle of Champagne on top of her childhood apartment. She’d come to visit her parents in the hopes of seeing Darius again. As she poured, bubbles ran over the rim of the glass and over her golden ring with the silhouette of a dragon carved into it. She set the glass down and held up the bottle to Darius. \u201cIf you hold the bottle like this, I think you can drink it yourself.\u201d <\/p>\n Darius sat on his bottom with his tail stretched out behind him as she’d taught him the last time they’d been together. She molded his claws around the bottle, feeling sparks of affection shooting through her veins. After she’d pulled her hands away, he lifted the bottle to his mouth and tilted it up.<\/p>\n \u201cBravo!\u201d she exclaimed and clapped her hands. She drained her own glass and popped the cork off of another bottle.<\/p>\n \u201cCongratulations on your promotion,\u201d said Darius.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe I can finally take time off for a vacation with you. I took some hunting classes.\u201d She could feel his eyes on her as she wrapped his claws around another bottle.<\/p>\n He drank it down, and she drained another glass. He said, \u201cI was actually thinking of hibernating for awhile. Dragons do get sleepy. Any thoughts of settling down?\u201d<\/p>\n She shivered when she pictured the man who’d been interested in her before she’d been promoted above him. He always had cold hands, and his handshake almost crushed her fingers. She heard a flap behind her and whipped around to find the man standing behind her and bearing fangs. Darius reached past her and impaled the vampire’s heart with his claw. \u201cI think a nice executive would suit you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n She smashed her glass and yelled, \u201cI am a nice executive.\u201d Before Darius ruined his breath with vampire dinner, Vivian pressed her lips onto his muzzle. He was still a dragon. As she stalked to the staircase, she heard claws dicing up the vampire.<\/p>\n Vivian jabbed her cane onto the cement and hobbled out of her helicopter that had landed on top of her childhood apartment. She smiled at Darius who was still golden and glittering in the moonlight. He hadn’t aged a bit. One of her servants had brought up a serving set, and she poured out the tea.<\/p>\n Darius picked up a cup nimbly with his claws and said, \u201cYou should’ve had someone to take care of you like I did.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI’ve done well enough, besides who did you have?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy do you always kiss me goodbye?\u201d<\/p>\n The evenings of nightcaps with her scaled friend flitted through her mind and pressed a tear out of her eye. \u201cI hoped you would turn into a prince, but I’ve never liked princes as much as I liked dragons.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cKiss me one more time, please.\u201d<\/p>\n Vivian set down her tea cup with a shaking hand. Now that she was old and wizened, he’d change into a prince for her? Still, maybe they’d have a few years together as the same species. She leaned over and pressed her lips against his muzzle. The pop and puff of magical smoke she’d hoped for all these years finally happened, except Darius didn’t change into a prince\u2014she changed into a dragon. Elated. she stretched out her golden wings that glittered in the moonlight. <\/p>\n \u201cI can teach you to hunt properly now that you’re a dragon,\u201d said Darius before pressing his muzzle against hers.<\/p>\n Sparks exploded in Vivian’s heart and she felt the full rush of dragon desire. Unable to control all the new feelings, she pushed off of the rooftop and flew towards the moon with Darius in heated pursuit behind.<\/p>\n <\/a> By Jeff Suwak<\/p>\n Tiernan discovered the dead dogs outside the trapper\u2019s camp at the base of Mount Storm. The animal\u2019s frozen carcasses hung impaled upon the trunks of black oaks, branches bursting out of their flanks and eyes and mouths. The moment he saw the grim spectacle, the druid knew that Bril\u2019s mind was too far gone. There could be no bringing him back, now. <\/p>\n But I must try<\/em>, Tiernan thought. At the very least, I must try<\/em>.<\/p>\n He moved forward stiffly in his furs and heavy boots, unaccustomed to such clothing after spending so many years in the Druid Circle\u2019s warmer southern climes. Even with all the coverings layered upon him, he still shivered\u2013though whether it was because of the cold or because of his mission, he could not be certain. Confronting a fellow member of the Circle was always a sad affair, but this particular trip was doubly so. The druid to be uprooted had been Tiernan\u2019s student. More than that, they had been friends.<\/p>\n The trappers suffered worse fates than their dogs. Tiernan found their corpses scattered over the plain outside a log cabin, twisted heaps mutilated on the ground with grim coats of raven pecking the flesh from their bones. Chaotic designs of blood in the snow told the story of a harried and futile retreat, one of men injured and terrified in flight before falling. The druid imagined those desperate figures wheeling about in clouds of murderous birds, and took a deep breath to steady himself. <\/p>\n He shooed the birds away. They rose with angry caws and lighted upon the cabin roof to watch him through their black eyes, as though warning that he might be their next victim. <\/p>\n One by one he dragged the trappers inside the building. Druidic tradition was to leave the bodies in the wilderness to decompose naturally, but city people lived and died in different ways, and their beliefs had to be respected. He scattered fireseed over the cabin wall and struck his flint, setting alight the makeshift pyre. <\/p>\n The ravens scattered into the air and headed north, into the gathering dusk with a flurry of beating wings and shrill cries. Back to their master, Tiernan thought. Back to Bril. <\/p>\n He climbed to the far side of a rise and set up camp out of sight of the billowing flames. The sight of druidic power used so savagely unsettled him. The Art was meant for gentler things. Rapid-seed spells were meant to replenish forests, not skewer sled dogs. Bonding spells were meant to commune with animals, not to employ them as assassins.<\/p>\n Bril knew all these things. Or, at least, he had once known all these things. He had been among the gentler souls of the Circle, and it was difficult to associate him at all with the brutality that had occurred on that mountain. Tiernan huddled deeper into his furs. <\/p>\n He cleared snow from the frozen earth and built a fire as the sun set low in the sky and the shadow of Mount Storm stretched long over the plain. He laid out an elk skin and sat upon it, watching orange shapes rise and sink from the fire\u2019s black embers. It was said that long ago druids could read the future in that fiery language, but if such a thing was ever true, it had long since ceased to be so. <\/p>\n Tiernan blamed himself for Bril\u2019s violence. All along he had known that his friend\u2019s acute sensitivity put him in danger. A druid taking Stewardship over a piece of land entered into a Communion with that place, and the connection could become so deep that it risked consuming his mind completely. Bril\u2019s temperament made him exceptionally vulnerable to that kind of psychic disintegration. <\/p>\n A hard wind whistled through the dark and bent the fire sidelong. Tiernan pulled the elk hide tighter around his shoulders and thought about the desolation of that place where his friend had spent the last five years of life, removed from connection with other people. <\/p>\n To the north extended the Bladed Mountains, hundreds of miles of peaks so sheer and unforgiving that not even druids went there. To the south and east, the fast waters of the Thalthemin River cut the area off from the rest of the world. To the west was the city of Industry, growing rapidly along the shores of Lake Phalheen. Its inhabitants numbered in the tens of thousands, but for a druid like Bril, a legion of merchants was the loneliest prospect of all. <\/p>\n Mount Storm is a perfect place for a man to go mad, Tiernan thought. And I left him alone here, for all these years. <\/p>\n An animal padded through the snow just outside the light of the fire. Tiernan looked until he saw the faint outline of a snow ferret. As the animal watched him, Tiernan knew that Bril was seeing though its eyes. <\/p>\n \u201cNo one wanted things to come to this,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n The animal stiffened momentarily, but remained. <\/p>\n \u201cYou know why I am here, just as you know that I cannot leave until my task is done.\u201d<\/p>\n The ferret turned and bolted off into the darkness.<\/p>\n \u201cPlease do not make this any harder than it already is,\u201d Tiernan said, to the darkness, or to himself. <\/p>\n Autumn nights were long in those northern reaches, but that night, he knew, would be even longer than most. He had gone there hoping to rescue his friend before it was too late, but found the mountain already stained with blood.<\/p>\n And I fear that before my task is done, much more will be shed.<\/em> <\/p>\n A pall of mist hung over the mountain as he set off the next morning to find his friend. Tiernan knew Bril would be observing him, so he made no effort to mask his approach, and he was not surprised when the boughs of the trees at the forest\u2019s edge bent back to create a pathway for him to follow. <\/p>\n The crisp smell of pine in the cold air struck him with boyhood memories of playing in the woods around his father\u2019s iron shops and warehouses. He had been in the south so long that he had almost forgotten the scent, and found himself smiling. Shaking his head against the pleasant reverie, he clenched his jaw and marched forward. His business on Mount Storm was not of the smiling kind. <\/p>\n The path led him to a grotto where Bril kneeled upon a broad, flat stone as he looked into a pool of water. His emaciated form was covered only by a sackcloth too thin for the cold, feet bluish in his sandals, yet he smiled when he looked over his shoulder. In that moment, despite the knotted beard full of twigs and moss, despite the face wizened and chapped by frigid winds, his cobalt eyes radiated with such innocent joy that Tiernan recognized the boy he had known so many years ago.<\/p>\n Tiernan walked up and looked over his friend\u2019s shoulder to see a sinuous fish swimming in slow circles in the pool. Multicolored spirals and whorls decorated the animal\u2019s flanks, swirling as they sent arcs of purple and orange and green spinning out through the water. <\/p>\n Tiernan spoke softly. \u201cWhat manner of fish is that?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI have never seen the likes of it before,\u201d Bril said, shaking his head and laughing. \u201cIf I had one hundred lifetimes to tend this mountain, it still would not be enough for me to discover all the secrets and beauties hidden here. This place alone could teach me everything the world has to teach.\u201d<\/p>\n There were few joys greater than seeing a wild place through the eyes of its assigned Steward. Tiernan knew he needed to say something before his emotions distracted him from his task. <\/p>\n \u201cWhy did you kill the trappers, Bril?\u201d <\/p>\n The fish turned and swam downstream, as though the druid\u2019s words had broken the idyllic spell that had been keeping it there. <\/p>\n Bril\u2019s smile disappeared. \u201cThey were destroying the forest.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cAnd their dogs?\u201d\t<\/p>\n \u201cThe men turned those animals into something else, something that did not belong in the wild any more than their owners did.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cYou have no right to make that appraisal, or that decision.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI was sent here to protect this place.\u201d Bril looked up at his friend. \u201cSo, I protected it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt is part of our duty to balance the good of the forest with the good of civilization. You know that as well as I do.\u201d<\/p>\n Bril stood and looked down into the water, or perhaps at his reflection in the water. \u201cI know what I was taught,\u201d he said, \u201cbut those things do not work in this world, anymore. The rules have changed.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cDo not lecture me,\u201d Tiernan snapped. He wanted Bril to yell back, to fight. It would make the task at hand much easier to carry out. <\/p>\n Instead, Bril shook his head sadly. \u201cI remember the man you were. You did not take on the responsibilities of a druid so that you could play at politics. You were better than that.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cAnd you were better than a murderer,\u201d Tiernan said coldly. Bril flinched under the words, but said nothing in return. \u201cYou left a home of comfort and wealth to serve the Circle.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNot to serve the Circle.\u201d Bril shook his head. \u201cTo serve nature.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cHumans are part of nature, too.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey were once,\u201d Bril said. \u201cSomehow, I do not believe that they are, anymore. Somehow, the pact has been broken.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou know what I have been sent here to do.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI know,\u201d Bril said. \u201cI do not intend to fight you. I merely want you to understand.\u201d He nodded towards the direction of the trapper\u2019s camp. \u201cThey used to come once a year, for a month, maybe two. Lately, they have been coming more and more often. Barely a day goes by when I do not hear the foxes crying in their snares. They will not rest until every one of the animals, and the trees, are dead and gone. \u201d He rested a hand on Tiernan\u2019s shoulder. \u201cThe old ways do not work anymore, my friend, if they ever did.\u201d<\/p>\n Tiernan pulled away from Bril\u2019s touch. \u201cYou can explain all of this to the Circle. It is time to go. We have a long journey ahead of us.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI will not leave my mountain.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI cannot allow you to hold this land, anymore. You have spent too many years out here alone. You have lost perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf there is one thing I have gained in my time here, it is perspective.\u201d Bril walked northward, away from the direction Tiernan intended to take him. \u201cYou cannot kill me,\u201d he said over his shoulder. \u201cYou think you can, but you cannot. Your heart is too good.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDo not do this.\u201d<\/p>\n Bril stopped by a tree branch upon which a sparrow rested. He held out his hand. The bird hopped onto his finger and perched there, singing. \u201cIt saddens me to no end that the world drives us to this position. Before I do what must be done, I ask that you walk with me, as we once did.\u201d <\/p>\n Tiernan hesitated. \u201cWhat must be done?\u201d<\/p>\n Bril lifted his hand and sent the sparrow fluttering into the air. He smiled and headed deeper into the forest. <\/p>\n \u201cWhat must be done?\u201d Tiernan asked again. He received no answer.<\/p>\n Part of him wanted to attack Bril, and part of him wanted to set his friend free. Eventually, he knew, he would have to do one of those things. When his legs started moving, however, he did not know which it would be. He merely followed. <\/p>\n No matter how hard Tiernan tried to steer the conversation towards the dilemma they faced, Bril only talked about the trees. He addressed each fir, each birch, each oak, as an individual friend. He smiled as he discussed the ways he had tended each one, and fondly recounted afternoons sitting in their shade and listening to the advice they gave. <\/p>\n \u201cPatience,\u201d Bril chuckled. \u201cTheir answer is always patience.\u201d <\/p>\n It had been generations since any druid had entered deep enough into Communion to speak with flora. Such a connection was thought to be a thing of legend, and Tiernan had a hard time believing it was anything more than another symptom of his friend\u2019s madness. <\/p>\n \u201cThey speak in words?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo. They speak in something more like emotion.\u201d Bril bugged out his eyes comically. \u201cTrees do not know words, Tiernan. You would have to be a lunatic to think that.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite his best efforts, Tiernan could not help but laugh. \u201cWhy did you do it, Bril? It was not merely wrong, it was stupid. Nothing will be accomplished by it. The cities will continue to spread. The trappers will keep coming. You cannot kill them all.\u201d<\/p>\n Bril stopped to examine a tree of blue frost roses in full bloom. He propped up a branch to show the flower\u2019s intricate folds. \u201cThis beauty was achieved over vast stretches of time, through countless generations of forebears. It is perfect.\u201d He bent over and breathed in the scent. \u201cIt is worth fighting for.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThere are other ways to fight. The Circle is trying to adapt.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cYou mean ways to compromise.\u201d Bril breathed the scent again. \u201cDeath knows no compromise. Only a fool tries to bargain with it.\u201d <\/p>\n Tiernan stepped closer, to force his friend to look at him. \u201cLast spring, a merchant from Industry came to the Circle to tell us that you had been harassing trappers. He said you destroyed their traps and set their catches free. He wanted you removed, but he did not want violence. You took it down that road. Not them.\u201d <\/p>\n Bril\u2019s voice came out low and tense. \u201cThey no longer take what they need. Now, they take what they want, and their want is endless. It has no aim or object anymore. Their want is everything.\u201d <\/p>\n They walked deeper into the forest, reaching the edge of a broad clearing laced with the thin ribbons of streams meandering through the snow. Tiernan knew the inevitable was drawing near. <\/p>\n Bril could not win a fight between them. Tiernan was a Steward of a different sort than most druids, for his role was to maintain the order itself. As such, he had been trained in a different kind of power. He was unafraid of defeat, but he knew that his friend would not surrender. Once the confrontation began, there would be no turning back. <\/p>\n Bril stopped abruptly, gazing forward like a hunting cat that had spotted prey.<\/p>\n Tiernan followed his gaze down the long slope. First he saw streaks of blood staining the snow. Next, he saw the carcasses. Dozens of crag deer lay in heaps, stacked at the edge of the trees. <\/p>\n Bril ran to the scene. Tiernan called for him to stop, but when his friend ignored the plea, he followed. <\/p>\n Only pedicles remained on the heads of the deer, rough shallow cavities where the precious antlers for which they were so well known had been forcibly removed. Each animal had a hole blasted through its side, indicative of the new weapons that had been popping up in the cities.<\/p>\n Bril uttered a single, tense word. \u201cMuskets.\u201d <\/p>\n For the first time, Tiernan saw in his friend\u2019s eyes a killer capable of butchering a whole crew of trappers and their dogs. <\/p>\n Tiernan spoke softly, the way he would to a frightened animal. \u201cI promise that I will find out what happened here.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI will not leave this site,\u201d Bril said, barely above a whisper. <\/p>\n Voices came from the woods. Three men emerged, each one tugging violently at a rope tethered to the head of a mule laden with sacks full of antlers. <\/p>\n \u201cCome on,\u201d one of the men barked, pulling forcefully and stretching the animal\u2019s neck taut. <\/p>\n Tiernan felt the air grow thin around him, and knew Bril was summoning energy for an attack. He stepped towards his friend. \u201cStop.\u201d<\/p>\n The newcomers looked up. The figure standing at the lead, a blockish man with dim eyes and brown hair jutting out from under his furred cap, spit a mouthful of black leaf into the snow. Squinting suspiciously at the druids, he nodded a greeting.<\/p>\n \u201cDid you murder these deer?\u201d Bril\u2019s words were a question, but his voice a threat. <\/p>\n The hunter spit again. \u201cI hunted those deer, yes,\u201d he said. \u201cIs there a problem?\u201d There was no apparent malice in his voice, only curiosity. <\/p>\n \u201cYou butchered them for their antlers,\u201d Bril said.<\/p>\n The man\u2019s eyes narrowed as he seemed to realize that he was not being confronted for his actions. \u201cWe\u2019ll take some of the meat,\u201d he said. \u201cBut the antlers get the highest price.\u201d<\/p>\n Tiernan stepped between them. \u201cThese woods are under druidic protection,\u201d he said. \u201cAs such, they fall under the Hunt Laws.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe talked to the law people,\u201d the man said, eyes still fixed on Bril. \u201cWe have full permission for this venture.\u201d As if sensing that his defense sounded inadequate, he added, \u201cI have a family to feed, just like any man.\u201d <\/p>\n One of the hunter\u2019s allies, a scrawny character with an enormous, misshapen nose, stepped forward and pointed his musket at Bril. \u201cWe don\u2019t want any trouble. It\u2019s been a hard winter. We have people to care for.\u201d<\/p>\n Bril\u2019s eyes went wide and his hair stood up\u2026too slightly for others to notice, perhaps, but enough to tell Tiernan that he was charged with energy and ready to strike. <\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t want any trouble,\u201d the smaller man said again, voice quivering. <\/p>\n Tiernan moved to restrain Bril. As he did, musket shot exploded behind him, and a terrific force threw him forward. He landed face first in the snow, pain burning through his back like fire. He lifted his head to talk Bril down, but no words would come. <\/p>\n Blue light emanated from Bril\u2019s crazed eyes. \u201cYou come to my woods,\u201d he said. \u201cMy home. And you murder my friends.\u201d <\/p>\n Tiernan tried to speak again, but his lungs would not work. Just before he fell unconscious, he heard the sound of hornets. Thousands of the insects flew out of the forest in a black cloud, their buzzing so loud that it drowned out all other sounds, except for the screaming.<\/p>\n Tiernan woke beside a fire in the night with a bandage wrapped around his back. The wound still burned. <\/p>\n \u201cI covered the dressing with healing salve,\u201d Bril said from his place beside the fire. \u201cIt hurts, but you will recover in a few days. By tomorrow, you will be well enough to start your journey back to the Circle.\u201d<\/p>\n Tiernan opened his mouth to chastise Bril for escalating the situation with the hunters, but then closed it again without saying anything. He was tired of politics. He was tired of debate. He just wanted to talk to his friend.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat if the hunters were speaking the truth, Bril? What if they had permission to be here?\u201d<\/p>\n Bril shrugged. \u201cIt does not matter.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cIt means you killed three more innocent men.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cInnocent.\u201d Bril chuckled. He tossed some new branches into the fire. The moisture in the wood sizzled and popped, and the scent of evergreen wafted through the cold air. The reflected fire danced wildly in Bril’s eyes as he stared intensely into the embers. Though he knew it was not true, Tiernan could not help but imagine that the sight was really a revelation of the inferno raging inside his friend’s mind. <\/p>\n Bril looked up and grinned, as though sensing the other’s thoughts. “I am not mad,” he said. “Though perhaps I have done mad things.” He picked up a branch and poked around in the fire. “I regret killing the trapper’s dogs.”<\/p>\n Tiernan forced himself to sit up, wincing against the pain that seared through his body. “You cannot win this war, Bril. There are too many of them.”<\/p>\n Bril pushed an ember over with his stick and sent a cloud of orange sparks dancing into the air like fireflies. “I cannot win it alone,” he said. <\/p>\n Silence hung over the scene as Tiernan considered the unspoken proposal behind Bril’s words. “I am not a murderer,” he said, reminding himself as much as Bril. “I cannot do the things you have done.”<\/p>\n “You do not have to. Every army needs soldiers, but every army also needs diplomats. You have seen what they are doing to the world, and the world is not only theirs. Lines have already been drawn. No matter which side you stand on, you have blood on your hands.”<\/p>\n Tiernan reached back to feel along the bandage. He hissed as his fingers lighted upon the holes that had been blasted through his back. “Your mountain is the only place I’ve seen in a long time that still feels like a mountain,” he said. “All through the south, there is no place one can go that is silent of human industry. Somewhere, a balance seems to have been lost.” He was hesitant to utter the words, feeling himself crossing over some kind of mental boundary. But, once he spoke, he felt a deep burden lifted from within. <\/p>\n “I need you,” Bril said. “Without you, I will merely fight for some time and eventually die. There are too many of them and their weapons are becoming too powerful. But together, we can start a campaign. We can restore sanity to the world before it is too late.”<\/p>\n Tiernan’s hands stung with cold. He pulled the elk hide over his shoulders and blew into his fists to warm them. Have I been in the meeting halls and out of the wilderness for too long to understand what is happening?<\/em> He wondered. Have things gotten so bad?<\/em> Images of rivers choked with dead fish and forests of stumps and burning plains rushed through his mind. No<\/em>, he realized. They were already there for me to see. I just did not want to look, anymore. Bril is right. I have already chosen a side. I already have blood on my hands.<\/em> <\/p>\n The words came out low at first, as though uncertain if they wanted to be said. “If we hide ourselves out here, then the city and the Circle can easily dismiss us and dispose of us accordingly.” <\/p>\n Did I just say we? I suppose my mind is made up. So be it, then.<\/em> <\/p>\n “I will go to the Circle and make our cause known. There will be those who will join our cause and those who will align against us.” He blew into his hands again. “But it will be in the open, and no matter what follows, they will not be able to keep it silent.”<\/p>\n “So, you are with me?”<\/p>\n “I am,” Tiernan said. “But I hope to prevent further killing, Bril. On both sides.”<\/p>\n “I would like nothing more than for you to succeed at that.” Bril pulled the poker from the fire and examined the flame dancing on the end of the stick. “But things rarely proceed as easily as our mind’s foresee them.”<\/p>\n “I know that,” Tiernan said. He moved to sit closer to the fire. “I have no way to know to where this will go. But, I have made my choice.” He looked up at Bril and saw the reflected fire dancing again in his friend’s eyes. He could not help but wonder if his own eyes now danced with the same reflected fire. <\/p>\n <\/a> By Dusty Cooper<\/p>\n Phil surveyed the hazard area left by the previous tenants. <\/p>\n They\u2019d made the place a rat\u2019s nest of freshly used women\u2019s hygiene products, kitty litter, and dirty dishes. The house was no more than a spider hole: one room for living and cooking, one for showering and sleeping. Phil tried renting to single occupants, but the kind of trash that answered his ads weren\u2019t the kind to follow rules. They\u2019d move their families in, or their friends\u2019 visits would turn into extended stays. The last tenant let a woman and her two kids live with him. How they fit without sleeping on top of each other, Phil couldn\u2019t imagine. The guy hadn\u2019t paid rent for the last two months. Phil used everything but a crowbar to get them out of there.<\/p>\n \u201cThey suck you dry,\u201d he said to his friend, Gus. \u201cDrain you until you\u2019ve got no option but kick\u2019em out.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYep,\u201d Gus said, studying a section of the wall where someone\u2019s fist had broken through. Frayed fibers fringed the dark hole. A piece of sheetrock dangled from a strip of wallpaper. He tried folding it back in place, but it didn\u2019t fit. \u201cTold you this landlord business was no fun.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cIt ain\u2019t so bad,\u201d Phil said. \u201cEvery year or two I got to do some renovations, but it\u2019s a monthly supplement to my Social check.\u201d Phil amended, \u201cWhen the trash pays.\u201d<\/p>\n Gus let the chunk of sheetrock drop, and it crumbled at his feet. \u201cYou ever have one leave without having to kick\u2019em out for not paying?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNot in awhile,\u201d Phil said. Carolyn, his late wife, used to handle the interviewing. She read people. Tenants weren\u2019t as much trouble when she was making the calls.<\/p>\n He turned in the doorway, scanned the yard, all mud holes and tire trenches, and beyond that acres of woods. That\u2019s why he\u2019d bought the place as a young man. Cheap land, and he just needed enough room to rest when he got off work. The square-footage provided plenty of space until he met Carolyn.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll just raise the rent this time. Get somebody that\u2019ll take care of the place,\u201d Phil said.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, we\u2019ll see,\u201d Gus said and began tearing down the battered wall. \u201cYou\u2019re going to have to replace at least two panels.\u201d <\/p>\n Once Phil got the place clean and protected from the weather, he placed an ad. 1br\/1ba, Single Occupant Only NO MORE, Private Property, No Neighbors, 800mo. The ad cost more than others he\u2019d run, but it got his point across. He more than doubled the rent, and two months passed before he got the first call.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m calling about the place for rent,\u201d the caller said. He had a raspy, high-pitched voice, thin, not effeminate.<\/p>\n \u201cYes, sir, got some questions for you,\u201d Phil said. \u201cGot a wife or girlfriend?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNeither.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGot kids?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat about family members?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe haven\u2019t seen each other in a long time. Our kind likes to keep our own territory.\u201d<\/p>\n That stuck a tack in Phil\u2019s nose. \u201cYou ain\u2019t part of a gang or something?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, I just need a place to sleep and eat.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo long term visitors?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI get a lot of visitors, but you will never know they were there.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWell, we might be able to do business,\u201d Phil said. \u201cWhat\u2019s your name?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEric Nedd.\u201d<\/p>\n They made an appointment, the caller asked for landmarks instead of street directions. \u201cIt\u2019s west, a few miles outside of town. Look for the rusted-out blue water tower. There\u2019s a narrow gravel road shrouded by trees that runs right behind it.\u201d<\/p>\n Phil though of calling Gus, but didn\u2019t want to jinx it. Gus and him had been friends since Carolyn had begun her decline. Her dementia took hold fast, and Phil resorted to placing her in a home. He visited twice a day. In the mornings he\u2019d stop at the breakfast diner in town where all the old men and utility guys began their day. That\u2019s where he met Gus. <\/p>\n He\u2019d kept Phil company through Carolyn\u2019s last years, checked-in on him, and helped him with the property and new tenants. Having a young person around sure made things easier, even being alone, but there was no replacing his Carolyn. <\/p>\n That night, he laid his hand on her empty pillow, the way he\u2019d done every night for the past five years. \u201cMight have a good one this time,\u201d he said. \u201cWish you were here to tell me for sure.\u201d He stroked the coarse, threadbare pillowcase, and it pulled him down into sleep.<\/p>\n Phil sat on a desk chair the last tenants had tossed in the yard. The wind blew just enough to make it chilly. It was quiet. The only car he could hear from this spot would be coming down the gravel road. He listened for one, but it was twenty minutes late.<\/p>\n A noise came from deep in the woods. Something was approaching. He figured a deer galloped by, but the noise was getting louder, like a storm kicking-up. The sky looked mostly clear. The treetops in the distance moved in a single line toward him. He stood and headed for his truck. Something moved in the darkness on the threshold of the forest. <\/p>\n Two tallow trees bent forward and a giant spider emerged. Phil clenched up like a crimp on a pipe. <\/p>\n \u201cMr. Kemp,\u201d the spider said in the same raspy, high-pitched voice from the phone. <\/p>\n Phil\u2019s hose crimp failed and filled his pants. He backed against the door to the house, and felt for the knob. Locked. The spider\u2019s deep red body absorbed the light around it. Thick grey hairs sprouted down its legs and back. <\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t be afraid,\u201d it said and crawled forward until it\u2019s full size was out of the woods. \u201cI won\u2019t hurt you, as long as you work with me on this place.\u201d<\/p>\n Phil could see his reflection in the beast\u2019s eight black orbs, each as big as his head. He thought about reaching for his keys. If it was anything like the spiders he\u2019d killed in his kitchen sink, it would move too fast for him to get in the house.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat do you want?\u201d Phil said.<\/p>\n \u201cJust a place to sleep and eat,\u201d the spider said. Its pincers twitched just a few feet from Phil\u2019s head. It sank its fat abdomen to the ground. <\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ll get your rent every month. Just have to keep the ad running.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat if I say no?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI could eat you,\u201d it said, its pincers moving rapidly. \u201cI would prefer to keep you involved, though.\u201d<\/p>\n When it came to saying no, Phil couldn\u2019t even fight humans. He always felt powerless, weak. Tenants seemed bigger, more important, like Phil should feel bad for owning the property. How dare he charge someone money to live there? But the spider added on that last bit. Involved. <\/p>\n Phil didn\u2019t want to be involved with anything the spider had going on. Bullied again. He couldn\u2019t do much about it. Maybe he\u2019d be able to get rid of the spider later. Killing seemed as impossible as the creature\u2019s existence had five minutes ago. There wasn\u2019t a shoe big enough for the job.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy do I have to keep running the ad?\u201d<\/p>\n Clicking came from somewhere in the darkness under the spider\u2019s eyes. <\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ll never have to know or worry about it.\u201d<\/p>\n Phil thought about Carolyn, how she could see through people\u2019s ruse: dressed in their best, wearing a sincere smile, making promises about keeping the place clean, and never being any trouble. \u201cRent will never be a problem.\u201d Until it was. \u201cI\u2019ll always be on time.\u201d Until they weren\u2019t. Carolyn knew the lies under the surface. She could pick out their sales tags stuck under collars or up sleeves so clothes could be returned later. But here was this beast, no Sunday-best or mouth to fake a smile. It had nothing to hide behind. Phil didn\u2019t have much choice. <\/p>\n For once he was thankful for Carolyn\u2019s absence. She wouldn\u2019t have to watch him make a deal with a monster.<\/p>\n That night, Phil took a long shower while thinking about setting the place on fire, but he figured the creature would escape. Even if he just ignored the place, didn\u2019t keep the ad, he had a feeling the spider would find him. Phil crawled in bed and laid his hand on Carolyn\u2019s pillow. The rough fabric didn\u2019t provide any comfort. \u201cIt would have killed me,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat could I do?\u201d<\/p>\n The following week he called the newspaper to lower the rent and change the contact number. He had to get a phone installed for the spider. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll handle the calls,\u201d it had said. \u201cI\u2019ve been doing this for a long time.\u201d The less he had to do with it the better, but the thought of it all shook him up. That the spider knew how to approach it all, its confidence it wouldn\u2019t get caught, made Phil wonder what else in the world he didn\u2019t know about. He thought back to their phone conversation. The spider said he had family all over the globe. Phil couldn\u2019t fathom it.<\/p>\n He reconciled with himself that the spider served a purpose. All those people that had come before, the ones who\u2019d taken advantage of him and left him messes to clean up, he was sending that trash for the spider to take care of. It was a public service for other landlords.<\/p>\n For two years Phil kept up with the newspaper ad. Every month, he\u2019d park his truck by the mailbox at the main road. He worried the spider would mistake him for a stranger. He\u2019d cleanout the junk mail posted to tenants who hadn\u2019t lived there in years. The spider left the rent in a web cocoon under the mailbox. He kept the money in a shoebox under his bed. The cocoon\u2019s coarse, sticky sinews, like cotton candy mixed with sand, rubbed his fingers raw. The stain on his skin lasted for days. <\/p>\n Each time it hurt worse, as though wearing down his defenses. He\u2019d long since stopped stroking Carolyn\u2019s pillow. It no longer brought him comfort. The frayed fabric reminded him too much of the web. Carolyn wouldn\u2019t want him touching her anyway.<\/p>\n Only once, Gus called and asked if the place was still available. <\/p>\n \u201cNaw, I gave-up on that place,\u201d Phil said.<\/p>\n \u201cMy cousin\u2019s daughter is looking for a place,\u201d Gus said.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m done with it.\u201d Phil said. \u201cJust let it be.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll take care of it if she makes a mess.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cStay out of it, damn it,\u201d Phil said, getting angry. Gus wouldn\u2019t understand any other way, and he couldn\u2019t tell him the truth. \u201cI\u2019m done worrying about that place.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cAlright, Phil,\u201d Gus said. His voice had changed, as though Phil could hear their age difference. \u201cJust trying to help.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThank you,\u201d Phil said. He\u2019d never yelled, or even raised his voice to Gus. It hurt. \u201cI\u2019m just getting too old to deal with any of it and I won\u2019t be depending on anyone else to deal with it either.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI understand ya, Phil,\u201d Gus said, clearing his throat. \u201cShe\u2019ll have to find another place. She\u2019d probably wreck it anyhow.\u201d<\/p>\n After that call, Phil worked on plans to rid himself of the creature. <\/p>\n He\u2019d thought about cutting through the water tower\u2019s legs, let it fall on the house, but the spider would probably hear him working. Sometimes he settled on fire, again, but couldn\u2019t bring himself to try. It was funny, not in any comical way, that he wanted the spider gone. He\u2019d been looking for a single occupant, someone that would pay the rent on time. <\/p>\n The spider never bothered him, paid every month, but the state of the cash worked on Phil the most. Crumpled, tacky, and smelling awful, the bills looked like they\u2019d been decaying: a reminder of why the spider lived there, and what Phil played a part in. <\/p>\n Phil lost track of how long the spider had been there crouched in its hovel, attacking unsuspecting victims. He couldn\u2019t remember what the house looked like anymore. How ever long the spider had been there, what ever amount of time had passed since he\u2019d yelled at Gus, they\u2019d never discussed it again. <\/p>\n Near the end of fall, Gus visited Phil with a friend. They didn\u2019t stay long, and just shot the shit. Phil had heard the man\u2019s name before, but couldn\u2019t remember from where. <\/p>\n Two days later, Gus\u2019s wife called. \u201cYou seen Gus, Phil?<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, he came by yesterday with some fellow.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re the last person I could think to call. You might be the last one to see him and that real estate guy,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Phil\u2019s body went limp and cold; he could barely keep a grip on the phone. \u201cI see, did he say what they were doing that day?\u201d he said. <\/p>\n \u201cNo, his secretary said his calendar says Kent property, but they don\u2019t have any Kent\u2019s with property on the books.\u201d<\/p>\n He saw the spider first coming from the forest, and remembered how just about everything in his body had evacuated like a flood. Phil knew it should have said Kemp Property. \u201cI\u2019m sorry, Pam,\u201d he said and hung-up the phone. <\/p>\n Right now his best friend hung, wrapped-up in a cocoon, the spider\u2019s fat, hairy body hunched over him, feeding. If only he\u2019d let that fiend take him that first day, he\u2019d be the one in the cocoon being bled dry. <\/p>\n He wondered if the spider kept the people alive, or if they died after one bite. It must be a painful process. Long, drawn-out, like wasting away in a demented state. The way Carolyn had wilted, first her mind, then her body. His time had come.<\/p>\n He gasped for air, fighting to keep his heart pumping. He had one last thing to do.<\/p>\n Without leaving a note, Phil made his way out to the gravel road. He stopped in town for a can of spray paint. His hands shook as he paid the cashier, couldn\u2019t look the kid in the eyes, or return his \u201cHave a good day.\u201d <\/p>\n Phil drove down the dirt road a bit, and parked his truck diagonally across the road. Moving his arms in wide sweeps, he painted KEEP OUT from bumper to bumper. <\/p>\n His feet fought every step. He said, \u201cIt\u2019ll be like touching Carolyn\u2019s pillow.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/a> By Nyki Blatchley<\/p>\n The spell to start my car didn\u2019t work that evening, so I contacted the repair service and walked home from the office through darkening drizzle, rather than being ripped off by the Instant Transportation System. Rain insinuated itself inside my upturned collar. Typical: they spend a fortune on improving the fireballs and blasting spells, but nothing on controlling the weather.<\/p>\n \u201cCan I see your papers, sir?\u201d said a voice behind me.<\/p>\n I turned with the practiced air of having nothing to hide, but my mind was racing. Had he heard my thoughts, and would he consider them disloyal? I\u2019d always doubted the rumours of the police using mind-reading devices, but I wasn\u2019t so sure at that moment.<\/p>\n It was reassuring that his fireball-thrower was still in its holster, although his hand rested on it, but his face was blank and unreadable as they always were. I fumbled the papers from my inside pocket and tried to stand calmly while he scanned them. Everyone feels paranoid in this situation. Or maybe just me. It\u2019s not as if anyone discusses it.<\/p>\n He looked up at last. \u201cSeen any of the damned, sir?\u201d<\/p>\n The question threw me, as was no doubt the intention, but I was able to answer truthfully, \u201cOf course not. I\u2019d have reported it if I had.\u201d<\/p>\n The policeman nodded, pushing his face into a smile that didn\u2019t suit it. \u201cI\u2019m sure you would, sir. Sooner there\u2019s not a damned left, the better. Evening.\u201d<\/p>\n I nodded vigorously as he hand my papers back, though his words disturbed me. The damned were abominations, to be sure, but there were rumours of them being fed alive into furnaces when caught. Probably just propaganda by the damned-lovers, I reminded myself. The government knew best.<\/p>\n I glanced about as I trudged through the dreary streets, searching out subtle signs of the damned. There are ways they can pass for normal, but it\u2019s said you can always feel the difference. That man there, wearing dark glasses in the evening? No, I didn\u2019t get a sense of wrongness from him. Perhaps I should have followed him, but it was cold, and I was probably mistaken.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just the physical differences that make the damned revolting. All of us use magic, and some are talented enough to manipulate it, making and repairing the devices we rely on and the spells that drive them. The damned, though, live within magic and use it to interfere with our minds and souls, bewildering decent people into their foul clutches. There\u2019s nothing natural about them.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t till I\u2019d spoken the spell to turn on the light in my hallway that I saw the vagrant girl clearly, though I could make out little of her, swathed in a shapeless, threadbare coat and a hat pulled down, shadowing her face. She\u2019d been sitting against the wall of my block, soaking and miserable, and had asked for my help. The shelters were all full, she\u2019d claimed, and she offered to make it worth my while if I let her stay the night.<\/p>\n Why did I agree? Maybe I felt a little sorry for her, but her suggestion aroused me too. It was a long time since I\u2019d been with a woman, and the delicious trace of huskiness in her voice had its effect on me.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can hang those things here,\u201d I told her. \u201cI\u2019ll make you a hot drink.\u201d<\/p>\n The girl hesitated a moment before nodding. She took off the battered coat to reveal torn, stained clothes and soft curves that sent anticipation coursing through me. She paused a moment more, before removing the hat and facing me. She swallowed.<\/p>\n My guts turned over.<\/p>\n She had a heart-shaped face, with a sweet mouth and short, dark hair, but it was dominated by the elongated eyes with irises of burnished gold. Even though the eyes were frightened, they looked deep into me.<\/p>\n She was one of the damned.<\/p>\n \u201cKeep away from me.” My voice rasped in my throat. I didn\u2019t realise I\u2019d backed away till I collided with the wall. I was almost too scared \u2013 almost \u2013 to notice that my arousal had increased.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not going to hurt you.” Her voice was huskier than ever, seduction wrapped in honey, as she approached me. \u201cI\u2019m lonely. Just let me spend tonight with you. Show you I\u2019m no different from you. I promise, you won\u2019t regret it.\u201d<\/p>\n Reaching down, she brushed her hand over my crotch, and desire surged through me as if by magic. For that moment, I didn\u2019t care who she was. I pulled her, unresisting, into the bedroom.<\/p>\n I was too aroused to be gentle or subtle, but she met me in the same spirit. If she were only doing this to get a bed for the night, she hid it well. Holding her afterwards, floating together down to the caverns of sleep, the last thing I heard was her crooned whisper, \u201cYou\u2019re different, I know. I love you.\u201d<\/p>\n I wanted to ask what she meant, but the insistent current drew me down into oblivion.<\/p>\n I stood beside the girl, holding her hand, in a meadow sloping down to a quiet, winding river. A couple of trees waved over us, and a wood stretched from the far bank. Sun and blue sky were offset by a ripple of breeze fanning my hair. Every colour was more vivid, more beautiful, cleaner than I\u2019d ever seen before.<\/p>\n She nestled against me, her head resting against my chest. She was small, like many of her kind \u2013 her kind? what did that mean? \u2013 just the perfect size. I\u2019d never been so happy.<\/p>\n \u201cIsn\u2019t this better?\u201d she murmured, glancing up at me. Her lovely, golden eyes gleamed. \u201cYou\u2019re so beautiful inside. I felt it as soon as you came near me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBeautiful?” It must be true if she said so, but I didn\u2019t remember anyone calling me that before.<\/p>\n \u201cCome and see.” She pulled playfully on my hand, and I followed her down to the river. The water rippled and shimmered a little, but her reflection was clear and as lovely as the reality. Beside her stood a splendid figure, with a face of compassion and love, and…<\/p>\n I jerked awake. A dream? No, it had been too vivid. She\u2019d enchanted me, trying to make me believe…What? That I was too loving to betray her?<\/p>\n Her breathing was even beside me, and I slipped out of bed, panic rising. I had to get away. Grabbing a dressing-gown, I fled into the living-room, and my terror took me to the message-globe. I spoke the spell to link with the police.<\/p>\n I\u2019d been sitting for a while, numb and mindless, after the call was over, when I looked up to see her standing in the doorway, a sheet wrapped hastily around her. There was a stunned look in those weird eyes.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat have you done?\u201d she whispered.<\/p>\n \u201cYou tricked me.” I pushed my confusion away by yelling at her. \u201cYou used your magic to bewitch me and make me dream…that.\u201d<\/p>\n She stared at me, her eyes a little glazed, and slumped down onto the floor. \u201cI was trying to show you what you really are. I didn\u2019t bewitch you. I thought…\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve called the police. They\u2019ll be here soon.” Was I threatening or warning? Perhaps she\u2019d have time to get away. They wouldn\u2019t throw her into a furnace, surely: that was all lies. Though why should I care?<\/p>\n She tried to get up, but collapsed again, despair in her eyes. \u201cNo, no, you\u2019re not like that. I know you…\u201d<\/p>\n She still hadn\u2019t moved, though there were tears in her eyes, when the police broke the door open.<\/p>\n They left me alone at last, after several sessions of questioning about why I was consorting with the damned, though I think they\u2019re still watching me. I convinced them she\u2019d bewitched me into letting her in, but I don\u2019t believe that. At least, the magic she used was older and more natural than the tricks of her kind.<\/p>\n Why didn\u2019t she run? Maybe what she did to me exhausted her. It almost seemed, though, that she\u2019d no will to resist. Because I\u2019d betrayed her.<\/p>\n I hope she\u2019s all right. The government assures us that the damned are sent to institutions where they\u2019re taught the evil of their ways, to be turned into obedient servants of society, but I dream every night of fire and screaming, and it\u2019s as if I\u2019m surrounded all day by ashes and blood. As if I\u2019m damned.<\/p>\n <\/a> By Damien Krsteski<\/p>\n I stare at the gap between the mountain peaks of data. There’s been a break-in.<\/p>\n \u201cBackups?\u201d I say. Fresh snow crunches under our steps. <\/p>\n \u201cChecked. Same gap everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n I picture the satellites containing the data of the Truth Banks, the supercomputers buried deep underground with backups and revision history, the top-secret security systems. If there’s one heist impossible to pull it’s this one, and yet the fifteen millisecond gap is right before me like a splinter in the holograms. <\/p>\n \u201cHave you sent agents to verify?\u201d<\/p>\n He flips the holo-generator\u2019s lid back on and pockets the device. \u201cOf course, Marcus.\u201d<\/p>\n We turn right in a side-street. As a warning, he’s brought Lilly. She rushes ahead of us, spinning in the falling snow.<\/p>\n He says, \u201cThere’s a timer in the code, counting down. To what, we don\u2019t know, but it\u2019s unstoppable. You have until sunrise to find them.\u201d<\/p>\n Lilly gathers snow with her purple gloves, throws the snowball at me.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd after this?\u201d I say.<\/p>\n Toothy grin. \u201cYou do this right, Marcus, and you get her back.\u201d<\/p>\n Fists in my pockets. I nod.<\/p>\n Crouching to give Lilly a kiss on the cheek. \u201cI am your daddy and I will always love you,\u201d I say. <\/p>\n She giggles. \u201cYou are funny,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n The agent pats her on the head, still grinning. \u201cI think you\u2019re right, Lilly. He is funny.\u201d<\/p>\n I wipe my tears off with a sleeve, and fixing him a look of utter contempt, start my stopwatch.<\/p>\n The stairs lead down to a basement I know all too well. On the cement wall, in white paint, the name Gibson. <\/p>\n He’s hunched over his desk, a pair of goggles on his face. He touches a circuit with the electronic pencil in his hand and a buzz echoes in the workshop.<\/p>\n He looks up. With measured steps I approach.<\/p>\n I can see my doubled reflection in his onyx goggles. My face is expressionless. A mask. He goes back to his tinkering. \u201cWhat do you want?\u201d His voice is steady, no trace of fear.<\/p>\n \u201cBanks were hit.\u201d Slowly, I circle around him, breathing in the stale air of the workshop, taking in all the details. A pile of half-rotten ersatz-flesh robots in one corner. A calendar with a naked Asian babe, cracks snaking out of the wall spot where it’s been nailed. Cardboard boxes, duct-taped all over, scattered around. \u201cAll of them. Backup servers, too.\u201d I swipe a finger on his work desk, examine the dust on my fingertip. \u201cNobody hacks into UN satellites, least of all the Truth Banks, without consulting the expert first.\u201d<\/p>\n He sets the pencil tool down, lifts the goggles to his forehead. \u201cYou know Marcus, sometimes you’re a real pain in the ass.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNames, Les.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cUN\u2019s got you in their pocket, huh? What is it this time? Caught you pirating virtuals? You swapped jail time by ratting old friends out–\u201d<\/p>\n His nose breaks with my punch. Blood sprays all over my jacket. He barely has time to scream out when my left fist connects with his jaw.<\/p>\n I catch him by his collar.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have one minute. Make calls. Think. Pray. I don’t care. If you don’t give me names inside of a minute your skin will be a bag of shattered bones.\u201d<\/p>\n Bloodied, he examines me, looks me straight in the eyes. \u201cI used to work for the Agency too, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n Closer to his face. \u201cFifty-nine seconds.\u201d<\/p>\n But his eyes are searching for something, and I know he knows. \u201cThey got you transmitting to UN\u2019s private servers, right?\u201d He laughs. \u201cHey, pals.\u201d Looking straight into my eyes. \u201cStill the same rotten fuckers you were back in the day, I see.\u201d <\/p>\n He spits blood in my face, but he’s spitting at them, really. <\/p>\n With sudden clarity, like a mirror unbreaking before me, I know he’s a danger. Worse, he’s all that’s bad with the world, the cause and root of all evil. I wrap my hands around his neck. Squeezing tight, I choke him, exorcising the world of evil, until his eyes roll back and he slumps to the ground, motionless.<\/p>\n A step back. <\/p>\n As suddenly as it came the knowledge dissipates, and I’m left staring at Les Gibson in his gray overalls, electronic pencil clutched in his fist. Les Gibson, who’s never truly hurt anyone besides a few corporations’ bottom lines. <\/p>\n Terror creeps up my body like a swarm of spiders. What did I just do?<\/em><\/p>\n Altering truth so blatantly is another warning of theirs, another reminder that they own me. I kick through the pile of fleshy robots and electric body parts scatter all over the floor, a thick, blue substance oozing out of them. I punch walls, venting out anger, disgusted with myself. Then I remember Lilly and regain my composure.<\/p>\n I rummage through Gibson’s desks, drawers, cardboard boxes, for a clue, a hint that he was somehow involved, but find nothing. <\/p>\n On my way out, something catches my eye. I approach the naked and kneeling Asian model. The dates. Numbers are scrambled, out of order. I tap the calendar\u2019s screen twice but the picture doesn’t refresh. I flick through the other months where the days, under naked ladies of various ethnicities, are ordered normally. <\/p>\n Scanners switched on, I notice a network field around it. The calendar is receiving data. <\/p>\n Walking through Les’ neighborhood, I watch a throng of people shuffling about in the evening snow. Couples holding hands, friends laughing, parents with children, woolen hats and gloves and boots and scarves. I no longer consider them human. Instead, I see the eyes and ears of the Truth Banks, witnessing and recording every sound and motion. I see everyone who wouldn’t believe a single thing I say because the great gig in the sky tells them otherwise. I see obstacles, standing between me and my daughter.<\/p>\n My head buzzes with knowledge. The Agency bastards have cracked the calendar. The data it\u2019s getting for its content comes from a location nearby. <\/p>\n I quicken my pace, knowing where to go.<\/p>\n The dilapidated house looks like it won’t survive another winter. Precariously, I climb up the creaking porch steps, and push open the lockless door. Walls, pissed and written on, hardly hold the structure up, and I have a horrible feeling in my gut that the roof’s just about to crumble down and bury me. Through a tight hallway, my Whisperer in hand, finger on the trigger, I sidle up to what must\u2019ve been a living room. <\/p>\n Sprawled on the floor is a pale-faced junkie, needle stuck in one arm. I kick him, my Whisperer pointed at his heart. <\/p>\n He moans, and there\u2019s a flicker of movement under his eyelids.<\/p>\n \u201cBetter sober up quick.\u201d My grip on the gun is steady. \u201cAnyone else in this house?\u201d<\/p>\n But he turns his head, smiles, and nods off.<\/p>\n When I step into the adjacent room, I hear a clicking sound, followed by a blinding flutter. A nondescript body appears before me, shaped out of light and dust motes. <\/p>\n \u201cHello, Marcus,\u201d says the hologram. <\/p>\n My name comes like a bucket of ice cold water.<\/p>\n \u201cWho are you?\u201d<\/p>\n In the center of the decimated room the faceless shape looks haunting. <\/p>\n \u201cWe are the Undoing,\u201d it says. \u201cThe Tint of Optimism. The Collective. Call us what you wish. We are nameless.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite its utter futility my gun’s pointed at the hologram. \u201cYou broke in the Truth Banks.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIndeed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat do you want?\u201d I wave my Whisperer at it. \u201cMoney? Release of prisoners?\u201d<\/p>\n Even though it has no mouth I can sense it’s smiling. \u201cNo, Marcus. We want to restore order, give Truth back to the people.\u201d<\/p>\n The shape flickers and gestures, but remains rooted to the spot. There’s probably a holo-generator on the floor and cameras embedded in the walls. They must’ve seen my face and ran a pattern-matching search for my name. I better keep them talking while Agency traces the signal. <\/p>\n \u201cThe world ain’t ordered to your tastes?\u201d<\/p>\n It pauses for a moment, then says, \u201cThe Truth Banks were a brilliant idea, Marcus. Give everyone access to all the world’s knowledge, to every fact and action and you’ll have no more lies, no more wars. But humans always find ways to cheat the system for their own selfish benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou’ve proven you can break in,\u201d I say, packing my Whisperer in its holster. \u201cNow go get yourself a nice scholarship, a job, a family.\u201d<\/p>\n It laughs, voice sharp as crystal.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat good would a family be in a world where it can be taken from you at the flip of a switch, in a world where a daughter can’t recognize her father because an organization has its iron grip on truth?\u201d<\/p>\n Lilly<\/em>. They can’t have pattern-matched that. I gape at the hologram, scraping for words. \u201cHow do you know?\u201d<\/p>\n The light is out for a second and my heart sinks, thinking they’ve left, but it soon comes back like an apparition. \u201cWe are everywhere, Marcus. Even in the servers of the UN Intelligence Agency.\u201d<\/p>\n My mouth dry, I say, \u201cWhat do you want?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn ten hours the Truth Banks are going offline forever, backups irreparably destroyed,\u201d it says. \u201cYou have that much time to prepare society for a world without absolute truth.\u201d<\/p>\n It bows its head slightly, and I get the uncomfortable sensation that it pities me. In a flash, it disappears, leaving me alone on the creaking urine-soaked floor. <\/p>\n Agency activates operatives in Minsk at a moment’s notice, and sends them to the decoded address. I borrow their eyes and ears to monitor the action from the safety of my flat. <\/p>\n I see them walk across a grassy field, assemble at the bottom of an old commie block. I see them climb up a fire ladder into a claustrophobic hallway, where one foot after the other they crawl, silent as cockroaches, only to unleash their fury on a flaking door, kicking it to the ground and pouring themselves like a flood into the tiny apartment.<\/p>\n They spread to the rooms. Check under every table and behind every mirror. Nothing. The place is empty.<\/p>\n I switch off the consoles, put my coat on, and gun tucked in its holster I head out into the cold.<\/p>\n My neighborhood is calm, the snow untrodden. On a pixelated billboard, right above a soda drink advert, the four zeros of midnight.<\/p>\n Agency had the hologram’s signal analyzed thoroughly by advanced decryption software. The majority of it led to Minsk in Belarus, but it was split many ways, through many local routers, to mask its source. One of the routing spots was a children’s playground. I recognized the coords when I saw them.<\/p>\n It takes me fifteen minutes to get to it, the icy wind biting at my cheeks all the way. <\/p>\n One gloved hand on the gun’s grip as I approach the unused see-saws, the squealing merry-go-round. Snow flakes thick as cotton fall from the dark sky, glinting in the lamp light like diamonds. I make a tentative step towards the benches. That’s where I always sat, watching Lilly play with the other children. Emotion surges through my body, stops in my throat like a lump of coal. I swallow, gun pointing straight ahead. <\/p>\n But there’s nobody, so I activate the scanners with an eye blink. Foraging through drifting nanotech for network traffic logs, they download all data. <\/p>\n A fluttering sheet of paper carried by the wind sticks against my leg. I pick it up. <\/p>\n It’s a drawing. A little girl holding a boy’s hand, their grins like watermelon slices, her hair curly and golden, his short and brown. As I hold the drawing, the smart paper transmutes the crayon colors and shapes into letters. Never Alone<\/em>, it says.<\/p>\n I let go of the drawing. The wind reclaims it, carrying it away into the sky.<\/p>\n Back home the nanotech in my head transfers the scanner data to my local console.<\/p>\n A whirlpool pulls me down, spinning, and spits me out into the depths of the Net. I see giant strings representing the Minsk signal. I pluck them. The transmission replays, the strings curl around each other like spaghetti, and I chase after them, twisting as they do, watching the intricacies of each separate thread, until the signal ends, and the strings grow taut and silent again. <\/p>\n My decrypting software splices the signal from the ruined house with the networking data from Minsk and the playground. The strings triple in numbers, and we’re spinning again, me and them.<\/p>\n Embedded within, I discover seven different codes, different locations.<\/p>\n This time I decide to go there myself. Without wasting any time I ping body rental shops in the separate cities, wire them the necessary money, and split myself seven ways.<\/p>\n I open my eyes. All fourteen of them. No longer in my virtual system, it takes me a moment to adapt to the different levels of brightness. In Osaka the sun may be shining, but in Trento it’s as dark and cold as in the apartment where my real, flesh-and-bones body is slumped in virtual slumber.<\/p>\n I take a step forward, and the robots obey. My vision’s kaleidoscopic, the sound a composition of seven competing symphonies.<\/p>\n On separate channels I observe the robots’ every step. I trot along a snow-free sidewalk in Baltimore. The light-rail train rushing by, the passengers’ eyes all hazed out, their minds off to their favorite virtuals. From a corner, blinding rays of sunshine. Sydney, Australia. People walking about, dressed scantly, wearing sunglasses and straw hats. <\/p>\n Red compasses point me in the right directions, and I orchestrate my bodies to follow. In Saint-Malo the location is a mussels restaurant, probably closed at this hour, lodged between a pancake shop and a souvenir stand. Istanbul’s transmission origin is an abandoned warehouse near the harbor. Krakow’s is St. Adalbert’s church, in the old town.<\/p>\n \u201cWatch it.\u201d A tanned, shirtless man gesticulates before me. Seems like I walked into him and his red-haired girlfriend. I backpedal, and hurry down the Sydney boardwalk. <\/p>\n I jog along an upward slope in Saint-Malo, raindrops in my vision, the static noise of the ocean in my ears. Wind flaps the canvas of an awning. On the sign beneath it: La Creperie d’Auguste<\/em>. Right next to that, the restaurant. The compass arrow in that part of my vision spins in a circle. I’m at the right place. <\/p>\n An equally dark, though much quieter sea in Istanbul. Warmer climate. A drunken homeless man stops to look at me while I’m examining the warehouse. In my fish-lens view I see him coming up from behind. My metallic body turns swiftly. Voice volume dialed up to max, I yell out, \u201cGet lost.\u201d His eyes widen with fear, he drops his bottle and runs off. The entrance to the warehouse is on the northern side. Compass arrow spins in a circle. Two out of seven.<\/p>\n Sydney’s location is right at the end of the boardwalk, so I run, planks barely making a sound under the weight of my carbon-nanotube legs. My torso twists, the sun glinting off it, making other people raise their hands to shield their eyes.<\/p>\n A patchwork sky. Like a quilt stitched up of moons, stars, and a sun which appears only in certain corners. <\/p>\n The ramen place in Osaka is open, and I push open the door. Two men in business suits at the counter, gulping down their meals, and a couple in a booth, waiting for their order. Nobody looks up. There’s one other robot there, powering itself, perched against the red brick wall. My compass points me towards the bathroom. <\/p>\n On the bus, on my way to the old town, in Krakow. <\/p>\n There’s snow in Trento, too. The river Adige is livelier than ever, the snow pouring strength and life into it. Along its left bank, under a bridge, is my location. Three out of seven.<\/p>\n The warehouse door is bolted shut. I lean and push with my right shoulder but it doesn’t budge. The robot’s warning system reminds me of the terms of use, and the amount of damage its mechanical muscles can take, so I stop trying to force it open and think of a better plan.<\/p>\n The bus stops. I hop off. Market Square is empty, save for a few drunken tourists. Getting near the church gets the compass spinning. <\/p>\n Osaka. The women’s bathroom. I hesitate for a second, check that there’s no one there, and push open the door. <\/p>\n Disabling the alarm, I walk into the dark and empty restaurant. Inside, a tiled floor, the upturned chairs and tables, and the blackboard with Moules Frites<\/em> and prices and the Soup du Jour<\/em> written on it in chalk.<\/p>\n Baltimore’s location is a light-rail station one block away from the city center. There’s only one other person, smoking a cigarette, tapping his foot impatiently, waiting for the train.<\/p>\n At the end of the boardwalk, in Sydney, with the sun right on top of me. Spinning compass.<\/p>\n I notice a window on the east side, moonlight reflected in it. I place a hand firmly on the drainpipe, and slowly, one foot after the other, I climb up, and break into the warehouse.<\/p>\n Seven out of seven. <\/p>\n Compasses dissolve out of sight, no longer needed. With the equipment built into the robot bodies I analyze the locations for transmissions, for nanotech routers. Colored bars fill up. <\/p>\n I download all network data into my console. <\/p>\n \u201cOh, excuse me, I didn’t\u2013\u201d <\/p>\n It takes me a second to figure out the voice’s origin, but once I do, all six other locations collapse, blanked out of my mind. A robotic face stares straight into mine, and neither of us moves, not even a bit. In the bathroom mirrors another pair of robots, staring at each other. <\/p>\n \u201cWho are you?\u201d he says at last. <\/p>\n He’s Agency, has to be. Knowing I ripped the seven locations off the routing tables they must’ve sent other men too. \u201cI got this, you can go back home now.\u201d<\/p>\n But he says nothing, face unflinching.<\/p>\n \u201cWho are you?\u201d he repeats, making it obvious he’s not them, because they got nothing to hide, they don’t need to act. The realization fills my real body, thousands of miles away, with terror. <\/p>\n Noticing scanning activity from his body I say, \u201cYou’re not Agency?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI’m not.\u201d He takes a step forward. \u201cI mean I am, but just this one job. You\u2019re here, so I guess you too, right?\u201d<\/p>\n Another hunter. <\/p>\n \u201cTo my utmost pleasure,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n He approaches by another step. \u201cThey took someone from you too?\u201d<\/p>\n I raise my hand to stop him. Stop him from coming closer, from saying another word. I hiss, \u201cNone of your business,\u201d though the speech synthesizer softens my voice back to normality. <\/p>\n He waves his arms around. \u201cGot my little sister. She doesn’t recognize my name. You don’t understand what they’ve put me through. I got a few hours to catch them, and all I’ve found is that calendar in Philly.\u201d<\/p>\n My mind races. I have to be the first to find the hackers, otherwise Agency might keep Lilly from me forever. I have to squeeze more out of him, get what I can, then feed him false information in return.<\/p>\n But as I open my mouth Agency alters my truth and I know this robot face is my most trustworthy ally. <\/p>\n I smile. Makes sense. We don\u2019t have much time so they need us cooperating. They don’t care who catches those who broke in as long as the job’s done.<\/p>\n So here, in the women’s restroom of an Osaka ramen bar, we tell each other everything. <\/p>\n The locations are hops. Points on the map through which they route network traffic, stops for small fragments of unidentifiable data. Once the routing information from the seven locations is spliced together, the hops triple. I’ve no intention on wasting any more time by going to these places, because I know that all I’ll find are more routers, leading to more locations.<\/p>\n So I send an AI to do it for me. Rent bodies, find locations, analyze traffic.<\/p>\n To Philadelphia I go in my real body though, because I need to see for myself, because robots are incapacitated by law to do the things I intend on doing.<\/p>\n Downtown Philly. Dark, cold, no snow.<\/p>\n This little place, like a garage, where these hackers gather, to share knowledge or program stuff or what have you.<\/em> Raymond’s words, in the Osaka bathroom. Fucking insane what they’re doing, like teaching themselves to do stuff, without knowing what they’re doing, or something, just to avoid the Banks.<\/em><\/p>\n I stand before the closed garage from Raymond’s coordinates. I knock twice with the tip of my Whisperer. <\/p>\n Kids knew nothing<\/em>, he told me truthfully, but that bugged calendar led me here.<\/em><\/p>\n It takes me half a minute to hack the padlock. Lifting the garage door carefully, until there’s just enough room for me to slip through. <\/p>\n Inside, on a mattress on the ground, two boys, barely above sixteen, asleep. The place seems to be made up only of computer terminals, linked-up in a network of phosphorescent nanobots which halo the machines. From the wall, above the mixed up dates, the naked Asian model smiles down at me. I pull out a chair to sit down, and an empty soda can drops to the floor.<\/p>\n One of the boys stirs, looks up at me. \u201cWhat the\u2013\u201d He sees my gun. Shuts up. He shakes the other one, not taking his eyes off the Whisperer.<\/p>\n \u201cExplain everything to me,\u201d I say. <\/p>\n They stand up.<\/p>\n \u201cWe already told everything we know,\u201d says the one who woke up first. He’s wearing a Rest In Pus<\/em> t-shirt and a beanie.<\/p>\n \u201cUnlike the last guy you spoke to, I’m not afraid to kill.\u201d A smile. \u201cNow tell me everything. Start with what you’re doing here.\u201d<\/p>\n They stare at me. \u201cWe live here.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cJust the two of you?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, there are others.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhere are they?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWork. School,\u201d says the other one, with the scarf wrapped around his neck. <\/p>\n \u201cShow me what you do with all this?\u201d Waving my gun at the equipment.<\/p>\n He turns to the beanie. \u201cSpike?\u201d<\/p>\n Spike hesitates for a moment, then he shrugs and walks over to the calendar. \u201cTwenty-seven. A Monday,\u201d he says, staring at the dates.<\/p>\n The scarf starts up the machines near him, the nanobot halo lights up, and I’m observing the two of them, confused.<\/p>\n \u201cTwenty-seven,\u201d repeats the scarf, typing something on the air before the machine. \u201cA Monday.\u201d <\/p>\n I approach the projected screen. Code flies from top to bottom. <\/p>\n Spike’s still gaping at the calendar. \u201cThen there’s a Wednesday. Four hundred and forty five.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFour hundred and forty five. Wednesday.\u201d More typing. More computer code.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d I say. <\/p>\n He turns towards me while typing up numbers and days into a program which morphs them into code. \u201cI don’t know.\u201d<\/p>\n I hiss, \u201cYou’re typing code. What’s the code for? Are you hacking?\u201d<\/p>\n He looks me straight in the eyes, his fingers dancing on the invisible keyboard, and then he stops. They both stop.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat was that?\u201d<\/p>\n Both of them sit down on the mattress. \u201cSomething we do every day.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWho told you to?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA friend,\u201d says Spike. \u201cSaid it was some sort of hacking tradition. But he honestly knew nothing about it, said he’d been doing it for a while, reading off calendars, or posters, or book pages, that somehow found their way to him, typing code, and that many people before him had done the same.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut why are you doing it?\u201d<\/p>\n They shrug. \u201cIt’s tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n I threaten to kill or torture them if they don’t tell me everything, but they swear that they just did. After a while, I start to believe them.<\/p>\n Outside, in the cold Philadelphia air, I gather my thoughts. Should I chase after their friend? And then after those before him? The chain is bound to end somewhere, but I fear I’ll never reach it in time. <\/p>\n Somehow, I’m reminded of ants, where each colony member carries food, moves matter piece by piece, not knowing what it’s building exactly, but building something nonetheless.<\/p>\n That’s when I remember Les Gibson\u2019s workshop.<\/p>\n Running down the basement stairs, past the white paint. In the darkened basement, the robot bodies scattered all around as I’ve kicked them, the scrambled calendar on the wall, Les’ body, face down, in one corner. <\/p>\n I hurry to his desk, to the thing he was working on. I toss the microchip from hand to hand, analyze the writing on it. TYPE LI, it says. A robot brain.<\/p>\n I pick up the closest ersatz-flesh robot from the ground, its limbs limp. Behind its gray non-differentiated head, a panel. I flip it open.<\/p>\n Once the microchip is put in its place I let go, and the robot drops to the floor. A luminescence appears. A nanobot halo, connecting all scattered bodies, and like magnets they pull each other up, until they’re made whole again. <\/p>\n The robots stand in a circle, twist their necks to face me. <\/p>\n \u201cHello, Marcus,\u201d they say. \u201cDid you prepare society?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou’re controlling people.\u201d I spit on the ground. \u201cYou’re no better than those abusing the Truth Banks.\u201d<\/p>\n They smile crooked smiles, shake their little heads. \u201cNo, no, no, Marcus. You have it all wrong. We are the people, getting our Truth back.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDon’t give me that bullshit. I saw kids do stuff automatically. Countless others as well, I bet.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cTrue,\u201d they say, their voices strangely innocent. \u201cBut don’t you see that that’s what they wanted? To fight a system which monitors you constantly you have to figure out a way to destroy it without it knowing, without you knowing. Little by little, the tricks spread, everyone started doing small fragments of a job without being aware of its goal, not knowing the whole puzzle.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd so you were made,\u201d I say. \u201cYou’re no people. You’re an AI, aren’t you?\u201d<\/p>\n The gray, genderless robotic children giggle, a collage of different laughing tracks. \u201cWe consider ourselves an extension of humanity. Its helping hand. The Tint of Optimism. The Undoing.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Collective,\u201d I add, raising my gun. \u201cNow call it off.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d they say. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing you can do.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI have to stop you, I have to. Need to get my daughter back.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPoor, poor Marcus. Always at the service of Truth, even when that Truth is twisted, bent, and broken.\u201d Their heads turn towards each other, nodding. \u201cTruth broken, but Marcus is never alone, is he? Never alone.\u201d<\/p>\n Suddenly I become conscious of the dead body in the room.<\/p>\n \u201cTell me one thing,\u201d I say. \u201cWas Les the one who started it all?\u201d And if so, did he plan and orchestrate his own death, or was it an act of patricide?<\/em><\/p>\n A wave of shrugs. \u201cWe don\u2019t know, don\u2019t remember.\u201d<\/p>\n I fire my Whisperer at one of their heads. It bursts open, spraying blue goo. They don’t say a word. <\/p>\n I shoot the others, one by one.<\/p>\n I’m walking fast, aimlessly, thinking what to do. <\/p>\n Reports from my robots come back, and all they’re saying is that there are more locations routing data all over the world, but I already know that. I’ll never trace all of them in time. <\/p>\n Panic mounts as my stopwatch seems to go faster and faster. <\/p>\n Even if I find all of these little workshops where people unknowingly contribute to the fall of the Truth Banks, there’s absolutely no way anyone would know enough about what they’re doing to tell me. It\u2019s the perfectly distributed system. The ultimate pyramid scheme.<\/p>\n I picture the data, small chunks of it, added day after day by unsuspecting people, hopping from router to router as it circles the globe, assembling into the AI. <\/p>\n I will Agency to send me more knowledge, perhaps from some of their other hunters, but receive nothing. All I feel is hurt and love for my little Lilly.<\/p>\n Somewhere in the distance, behind a cluster of skyscrapers, the sun’s peeking above the horizon.<\/p>\n The changes come in waves. First, my memory unwinds like tape, and my brain starts to weed out the inconsistencies. <\/p>\n To alter your Truth, the Banks plant a small nugget in your brain, a tiny memory of something being said or done, and then your brain changes its structure, sticks memories around the nugget, adds to the stability of the fact. Now, I’m peeling off layer after layer.<\/p>\n A lightning flash in the sky. <\/p>\n I see myself in seven different cities, in the playground, in the ruined house, I see the operatives in Minsk, Raymond, all of us scanning the nanotech routers for traffic data, and consequently altering the traffic logs, muddying them with our presence. All of us manipulated by the AI to clean its tracks. <\/p>\n Another flash from above. <\/p>\n Sitting on the bench at the playground I see children. I see a boy playing with its robotic companion. Up and down on the see-saw, he laughs, and she laughs too, the newest type being capable of laughter. Type LI. Lilly, as they call them.<\/p>\n Lilly, Your Child’s New Best Friend.<\/em><\/p>\n A sheet of paper carried by the wind. Your Child. Never Alone.<\/em> With the specifications and pricing for the latest model.<\/p>\n The lights are blinding my eyes. I’m in Les’ neighborhood as far as I can tell. There are people all around. Not sure what’s real and what’s memory, I let my brain sort everything out itself. <\/p>\n My stomach hurts. I’m going crazy and getting sane at the same time. My legs buckle and I slump to the ground.<\/p>\n Lilly. My daughter.<\/em> But I know that’s no longer true, I know I’ve been lied to, and I feel betrayed, hurt. Like waking from a beautiful dream, sad that it’s over and sad that it’s never really begun.<\/p>\n I cry out, tears running down my cheeks. I shout, pull my hair out, stomp my feet on the ground, angry at my loss. I’m waiting for a comforting buzz in my head from someone, from anyone, but the presence is gone. <\/p>\n With tears in my eyes I look up at the flashes, high above. From the blue, morning sky, the satellites rain down like balls of fire.<\/p>\n <\/a> By Iulian Ionescu<\/p>\n Ritha unfolded a square piece of red cloth on the table, caressing it with her palm to get rid of the wrinkles. She pulled a candle closer and lit another one to brighten the room. <\/p>\n Today she couldn’t hate Mr. Pierre more even if the bastard were to walk in through the door right now and spit in her face. One day<\/em>, she thought, one day<\/em>…<\/p>\n “Good for nothin’,” she mumbled under her breath and picked a needle from the sewing kit.<\/p>\n Ritha stuck the thread through the needle’s ear in one shot, just like her mama taught her. She chuckled. Mama… If she were here, all those bastards would be screaming in pain right now. <\/p>\n But mama was dead and Ritha was out of job and short on rent.<\/p>\n Where is that picture<\/em>? She rummaged through her pocket and took out a pack of photographs kept together by a rubber band. She shuffled through the stack, pulled one photo out, and leaned it against her teacup.<\/p>\n Pierre–you dirty piece of–<\/em>. Ritha slapped herself over the mouth. ‘We don’t use those words,’ mama used to say. ‘If we do, we ain’t better than the rest o’them.’<\/p>\n Ritha grabbed a handful of yarn and arranged it in a ball over the red cloth. <\/p>\n She glanced at the photo– not that she had to, but that’s how mama had taught her. ‘Always look,’ she used to say. ‘Through your eyes the power flows. Let the image seep inside your head, Ritha, and the energy will come through. From your eyes it will flow into your fingers and into the needle.’ <\/p>\n She grabbed the corners of the cloth and pulled them together over the yarn. She held them tight with her fingertips and stuck the needle through.<\/p>\n Ritha used to make one in about twenty minutes, but today there wasn’t a lot of time. She glimpsed at the crib, hidden in the darkest corner of the room. She needed this one, she needed it badly. Nobody gave a damn about the little one, especially Mr. Pierre.<\/p>\n Ritha clenched her teeth and continued to sew.<\/p>\n At the end of fifteen minutes she put the red doll next to Mr. Pierre’s picture and smiled. Mama would’ve been so proud<\/em>.<\/p>\n The clock ticked louder, signaling the top of the hour. 8PM. Only fifteen minutes left.<\/p>\n She grabbed the doll and the photo and ran into the enchanting room. She put them both gently in the center of a circle made from colored salts, on top of a metallic tray. She dropped a few locks of hair on the sides and lit the sands from a match.<\/p>\n As the salts burned slowly, releasing a sweet smell of burned sugar, Ritha closed her eyes and recited the magic poem, the one passed to her by her mama. She waved her hand through the smoke and sprinkled drops of oil through the air.<\/p>\n Ten minutes later, Ritha was exhausted. Her chest was heavy and her breath bitter. The salts had burned completely and the doll lay there unmoving, like a dead man in the middle of a forest fire. <\/p>\n She took the doll and ran back. 8:15.<\/p>\n The phone rang and she grabbed it after the first chime. She glanced at the crib, biting her lip. The baby was still sleeping.<\/p>\n “Hello?” a voice said in the receiver.<\/p>\n “Yes, I am here.”<\/p>\n “Ready?”<\/p>\n “Yes, Mr. Pierre, I am. How much today?”<\/p>\n Her heart thudded in her chest. How much humiliation today<\/em>, she wondered. Enough for milk, at least<\/em>?<\/p>\n “Ten dollars,” the man said.<\/p>\n She lifted her brows. That wasn’t half bad.<\/p>\n “Oh, thank you–”<\/p>\n “Cut it out, Ritha. I’m in a good mood. Don’t ruin it.”<\/p>\n She bowed, instinctively. “I understand, sir.”<\/p>\n “Did you fix it? Last time–”<\/p>\n “It’s brand new, sir, brand new.”<\/p>\n Silence on the other side.<\/p>\n “Okay, then. Go ahead, the usual. Shoulders, neck and lower back.”<\/p>\n Ritha pressed the speaker button and put the receiver on the table. She grabbed the red doll and turned it face down. With her fingers, she began to massage the doll’s shoulders and lower back.<\/p>\n Pleasure grunts came out of the phone. “Oh, that’s good, Ritha, keep going.”<\/p>\n She continued to massage the doll, her eyes fixated on the kitchen knife, only ten inches away from the doll’s head.<\/p>\n Her heart pounded a few times, pumping hot blood through her temples. She extended one hand toward the knife…<\/p>\n The baby giggled in the crib and turned on one side, his sleepy face pressed against the crib’s bars. Ritha looked at him, startled, her hand suspended in the air.<\/p>\n “What’s going on there?” Mr. Pierre screamed. “I am paying for two hands, dammit!”<\/p>\n Ritha grabbed the knife and threw it far away from her reach.<\/p>\n She gestured a kiss toward the crib and put both her hands on the doll.<\/p>\n “I am here, Mr. Pierre, I am here,” she said, tears dripping down her cheeks.<\/p>\n Mr. Pierre responded with a long moan.<\/p>\n The baby giggled gently in his sleep, and Ritha continued to cry in silence. ‘Be happy when there’s reason to be happy,’ her mama once said. <\/p>\n And Ritha was happy because tomorrow the baby gets to eat the good milk.<\/p>\n <\/a> By J.A. Becker<\/p>\n A cold shudder runs through me as I look through the one-way mirror at the psycho in the orange jumpsuit who\u2019s handcuffed to the table. What I\u2019ll see in his head, what I\u2019ll feel and experience first hand will be like living nightmares. I don\u2019t know if I can handle them. I\u2019ve seen some terrible things, but nothing like what he\u2019s done. <\/p>\n The psycho raises a styrofoam cup of hot coffee to his mouth, but the chain connecting his handcuffs to the table is too short, so when he gets the cup halfway up, his arm jerks to a stop and the coffee spills onto the lap of his bright orange coveralls. He swears and frantically squirms in his seat to stop the coffee from scalding him. The pained look on his face tells me that he isn\u2019t succeeding.<\/p>\n Good, I think. He deserves that. That\u2019s fitting for a guy like him. That\u2019s perfect.<\/p>\n He plunks the cup down in front of him and shakes the hot brown liquid from his hands, which sends his chains rattling and clanking over the table\u2019s black metal top.<\/p>\n He doesn\u2019t look like much sitting there, coke-bottle glasses, short salt and pepper hair, and so skinny he seems lost in those orange overalls. With what they told me about him, I imagined some beefy guy with tattoos of little spiders at the corner of his eyes and pipes the size of my head–not somebody who could have been my grade 9 science teacher.<\/p>\n Let someone else do this, my inner voice tells me. Don\u2019t they have people trained to do stuff this? Why the hell does it have to be me?<\/p>\n Then I remind myself of the deal I made, a deal I\u2019ll find nowhere else: get what the authorities need from this lunatic and then the agency goes back to working out how to shut off this mechanism in my head.<\/p>\n Life will be worth living again without it.<\/p>\n \u201cDoctor Brown,\u201d I say as I step into the interrogation room. The overhead lights wash over me, making me pause and blink stupidly as my eyes adjust. Considering I was trying to look like I know what I\u2019m doing, I’m off to a cracking start.<\/p>\n \u201cHow long have you been in the dark on the other side of the mirror watching me?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n I ignore him and skirt the room to keep out of his reach. I pull out the metal folding chair on the opposite side of the table and sit. The chair groans under the pressure of my considerable bulk.<\/p>\n Appear confident and don\u2019t directly engage him, they told me during the prep. There is no need to talk to him. Just tune in, get what we need, and then get out.<\/p>\n I open his packed vanilla folder on the table and pretend to read over some of the details. I give the papers a little nod like I\u2019m agreeing to some tidbit I read and then I look up at him.<\/p>\n His coke-bottle lenses engorge his pale grey eyes. A thin smile splits his lips.<\/p>\n I break eye contact and look down at the papers.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re pretty fat for an agent,\u201d he says suddenly. \u201cDon\u2019t you guys have to keep fit?\u201d<\/p>\n His comment catches me off guard and I snap my head up to look at him. <\/p>\n His eyes are leveled straight at mine and I don\u2019t think he\u2019s blinked since I last looked away. He\u2019s baiting me I realize, and I look back down at the folder. I pretend I\u2019ve finished reading the page and turn it over. <\/p>\n \u201cCongratulations,\u201d he says. \u201cYou finally got through that page. That took some doing.\u201d<\/p>\n I keep my head down and focus on the next page. I don\u2019t need to talk to him to do this, I remind myself. I just need to be sitting close and my mind will automatically tune in to his. For the first time in my life, I\u2019m grateful it\u2019s automatic–I wouldn\u2019t have the stones to do it intentionally with him.<\/p>\n \u201cYou are interesting,\u201d he says and then I hear his seat shift and his chains clack. A jolt of fear rips through me. He\u2019s gotten free! I think and I nearly leap out of my seat and scream. But when I look up, I see he hasn\u2019t. The sounds were caused by him straightening out his chair and rattling the chains on the table as he clapsed his hands together.<\/p>\n He smiles, revealing a bright wall of teeth. He seems quite pleased with himself for scaring the hell out of me.<\/p>\n I notice there\u2019s something different about him now, he seems bigger to me. When I saw him through the mirror, he was lost in his orange coveralls, but now it\u2019s like he\u2019s grown to fill them. He seems taller too. He must have been slouching when I came in and now that he\u2019s sat up straight he towers over me.<\/p>\n \u201cClearly, you\u2019re not an agent,\u201d he says. \u201cNor are you a caseworker, policeman, psychologist, or anything that would make sense in this situation. You are interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGreat,\u201d I say sarcastically, then I regret it because I remember that–no matter what–I wasn\u2019t supposed to engage him. But he continues as though he didn\u2019t hear me.<\/p>\n \u201cThey prepped me for you. Didn\u2019t let me sleep, didn\u2019t let me eat, and drove me round and round to disorient me. And then you\u2019d think with all that build up, somebody important would come in and finish me off. But imagine my surprise when you walk in–you who doesn\u2019t seem like anybody at all.\u201d<\/p>\n His words bite deep and I pop off before I have a chance to think.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t seem like anything to me either,\u201d I say defensively. \u201cJust some skinny shit in handcuffs. Nothing special.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cJohn Smith,\u201d he says, leaning in and reading the name off the glossy white tag pinned to my black sweater. \u201cThat\u2019s what I find so interesting. All this deception to bring in a fat little man who practically crept into this room and slunk along the walls to get away from me. And then he sits down across from me and there\u2019s nothing–not a word or a peep out of you. That\u2019s what I find so interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m not even pretending to read the papers anymore. I\u2019m just going to sit here and wait for it to happen. I\u2019m not engaging him. <\/p>\n \u201cJohn…\u201d he says slowly as though he doesn\u2019t quite believe that\u2019s my name. \u201cCan I call you John? I have a couple questions John. First off, I\u2019m an excellent judge of people, so don\u2019t lie to me because I can pretty much see straight through you.\u201d<\/p>\n I can\u2019t help it, but my eyes flicker up at him when he says that.<\/p>\n \u201cJohn, even when you\u2019re not talking to me–you\u2019re talking to me. Now my first question is: who are you really?\u201d<\/p>\n And then it starts, a whoosh of static, like a radio without a signal, crackles in my ears.<\/p>\n \u201cJohn! You surprise me. There\u2019s a little sparkle in your eyes and you\u2019re smiling now. What\u2019s so funny?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNothing\u2019s funny,\u201d I say, smiling and grinding my teeth together, trying not to show the discomfort I\u2019m in. \u201cIt\u2019s just that we\u2019re almost finished and then I get to leave here while you go back to your cell and rot.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow can we be finished? We haven\u2019t even started.\u201d<\/p>\n Pain stabs through my left eye. Something hot and sharp is in my head and is digging its way out through my left temple. It\u2019s already up to the skin now, about to breach, when the thing starts to track across my brow. It feels like a fat June bug is merrily making its way across the frontal plate of my skull. The pain is unbearable. I look at my reflection, expecting to see a thick lump inching across my forehead, but there\u2019s nothing there but a fat plane of pale white flesh. As the pain creeps towards my right temple, the static gets louder and a high-pitched whine screams in my ear. Tiny dots of white light dance like fireflies at the edges of my vision and I\u2019m just near passing out. Then amongst the popping static I hear something that sounds like a word and the pain starts to crawl back the other way.<\/p>\n \u201cGood Lord,\u201d he says and leans in to get a better look at my face. \u201cAre you well? You look like you\u2019re having a heart attack. Have all those donuts finally done you in?\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m huffing and puffing now because I can\u2019t seem to get enough air. <\/p>\n Trickles of sweat run down my spine and dive into the valley of my butt crack. The crackling static is like a dull roar in my ears, then suddenly the agony dissapates and the little white fireflies start to wink out one by one. All of which means I\u2019m close. Just another frequency or two and I\u2019m there.<\/p>\n \u201cThe pain has lessened now it seems,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd your fat head is cocked to one side as though you\u2019re listening for something. John I have to say, this has definitely been worth the trip out here. What\u2019s next I wonder?\u201d<\/p>\n I hit his station and my ears pop as the pressure in them release. <\/p>\n Relief floods through me like an orgasm as the static dies down, and a film, of sorts, plays in my mind. I\u2019m standing on a raised platform, overlooking a small crowd. A man in a grey business suit hands me a giant golden key. I take it and proudly raise it above my head. The crowd begins to cheer.<\/p>\n Then I\u2019m back in the interrogation room, looking straight into his googly eyes. <\/p>\n Damn, I think. I got garbage. I hoped to get lucky and nail it the first time so I could get the hell out of here. I suck in a deep breath and pray it\u2019s the next one.<\/p>\n A smile crosses his face and my jaw drops in astonishment.<\/p>\n \u201cJohn,\u201d he says. \u201cI told you. You are interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n This can\u2019t be, I think as I shift uncomfortably in my seat. No one has ever been so calm before. How is this possible? I just painfully sucked a memory out of his head and at the same time one of my memories was pumped into him. How can anybody be so calm after experiencing something like that for the first time?<\/p>\n \u201cJohn, I saw you arguing with some woman that I\u2019m guessing was your wife. You were screaming and she was crying. She wanted you to make love to her, but you wouldn\u2019t. That was awfully mean of you. She just wanted a little love John.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShut up,\u201d I say, remembering the fight and the decade-old wound rips open afresh like she and I were just arguing moments ago. Why is it that people only see the deepest, darkest, most personal secrets in my head? It\u2019s never anything but those. It\u2019s like they\u2019re all bubbling right at the surface of my mind, just waiting to burst into somebody else\u2019s head.<\/p>\n \u201cJohn, you wanted to though. I could feel it in your heart. I could hear it in your thoughts. You wanted to do it with her, but you didn\u2019t want the closeness of it. Why is that? That\u2019s the whole point of it isn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShut up,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n \u201cJohn,\u201d he says and laughs. \u201cYou need a better poker face. I can see straight through you big guy. This is too easy.\u201d<\/p>\n Before I can even think, another of his memories pops into my head. I\u2019m in the backseat of a Cadillac now. It\u2019s a convertible and the top is down. We\u2019re driving down a long road that\u2019s lined with people. The sky is full of confetti streamers and everyone along the road is waving and cheering for me. Then the memory fades.<\/p>\n What the hell was that? I wonder. I\u2019m not seeing anything I need. <\/p>\n Where\u2019s the blood? Where\u2019s the twisted faces of the victims?<\/p>\n From across the table, he leans in and gently takes my hands in his. I jump back from his touch and accidentally knock the folder off the table and send it sprawling on the floor.<\/p>\n \u201cJohn, we really need to talk. I\u2019ve seen some terrible things in your head. You need help big guy.\u201d<\/p>\n I push back from the table and stand. This isn\u2019t right, I think. He can\u2019t be taking this so well–it\u2019s impossible. Nobody can be this cool after seeing into somebody else\u2019s mind. Nobody.<\/p>\n \u201cJohn, what\u2019s the matter?\u201d<\/p>\n I make my way to the door, keeping close to the mirror and as far away from him as possible.<\/p>\n \u201cJohn, buddy. Where are you going? We haven\u2019t even started.\u201d<\/p>\n Another memory of his bursts into my head. I see a General with a chest full of medals and big cob pipe hanging out of the corner of his mouth. An aide rushes up and hands a small bronze star to the General who then takes the medal and pins it to my chest. The General steps back, snaps a stiff salute to me, and then the memory fades.<\/p>\n What the hell was that garbage? I think as I twist the doorknob in my hand. To my surprise, it\u2019s locked. I rap my fist on the door. When nobody answers, I start to pound on it.<\/p>\n \u201cJohn, I told you we are just getting started.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy is this locked!\u201d I yell. \u201cWho the hell locked this?\u201d I stand at the mirror and flail my hands back and forth. I look like a frantic fat man, trying to wave down an ambulance. \u201cUnlock this!\u201d I yell to whoever\u2019s behind the glass and then I point at the door. I lean in and try to peer through the mirror, but all I see is my chubby cheeks and my plump hands hooded over my face.<\/p>\n \u201cTell me about your wife,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat happened to her?\u201d<\/p>\n I snap my head around and glare at him. I try to read his face to see what he meant by that, but he\u2019s sitting there with his hands clasped together, smiling pleasantly as can be and I can\u2019t tell anything.<\/p>\n \u201cTake a seat,\u201d he says. \u201cWe may be here for some time John.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow the hell would you know that?\u201d I growl.<\/p>\n \u201cJust call it a hunch.\u201d He replies.<\/p>\n There\u2019s something wrong with this whole situation and he\u2019s a part of it–I can feel it in the pit of my big stomach. I look at his huge grin and then back at the locked door. I\u2019m trapped in here with him, I realize. Where the hell are they? On a coffee break? Didn\u2019t I tell them–didn\u2019t I specifically say–I can\u2019t turn it off once it\u2019s started? <\/p>\n Goddammit, open the fucking door before I lose my mind.<\/p>\n Suddenly a scene, his memory, plays in my head. It\u2019s the same one of him getting the key to the city.<\/p>\n When the memory ends and I\u2019m looking through my eyes again, I see him smile and nod at me. \u201cAhhh..,\u201d he says like he\u2019s just found the last elusive piece to a puzzle. \u201cI understand now,\u201d he says. \u201cI understand you John.\u201d<\/p>\n I know he wants me to ask him what it is he understands, but I\u2019m not playing his game and responding. All I want is for this damn door to open so I can get the hell out of here.<\/p>\n \u201cJohn,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat did you do with all of them?\u201d<\/p>\n I freeze. My heart stops and I can barely breath. <\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know what you\u2019re talking about,\u201d I say and I turn around and try the door again.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t lie to me John. I can see straight through you–straight through you like you\u2019re not even there.\u201d<\/p>\n His words knife into me and I spin around and face him. <\/p>\n \u201cHow many people did you kill to get your bronze star?\u201d I snap at him.<\/p>\n I watch his reaction, but his smile doesn\u2019t crack and those googly eyes don\u2019t waver.<\/p>\n \u201cWas it lots?\u201d I continue. \u201cDid you kill kids? Did you enjoy that?\u201d<\/p>\n Static crackles in my head and suddenly I see the same scene of him being driven down the road in the Cadillac. The crowds are cheering and the sky rains confetti. Then the scene ends and I\u2019m back in the room.<\/p>\n How is it possible to get the same crap from him every time? It\u2019s like I\u2019m watching looping stock footage. And meanwhile, he plumbs the depths of my mind and sees my deepest, darkest secrets.<\/p>\n God, I hate this thing in my head. Strangers who just happen to be in the same room as me will learn my most personal, most secret, most unthinkable things, and all my masks are stripped away, laying bare my innermost self for them to see. Nothing is my own. Everything, every part of my life, is on display for the fucking world to see.<\/p>\n \u201cJohn, you\u2019re so alone. What I\u2019ve seen in your head, you living in the gutters, bumming for spare change, keeping as far as you can from people…you’re so alone.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cStay out of my head!\u201d I shout.<\/p>\n \u201cJohn, it’s you who’s doing this,\u201d he replies.<\/p>\n Rage flushes through me and I walk towards him with my fat fists bunched together. He\u2019s so cocky and sure of himself that he doesn\u2019t even flinch when I get near him. I want to sock this smug, smiling son of a bitch in the jaw and rain blows down on his head till blood runs out of his ears.<\/p>\n \u201cThat would land you in trouble,\u201d he says. \u201cThey\u2019re probably right behind the mirror you know.\u201d<\/p>\n I look at the mirror and I see my fat self with my hands poised like two hammers above his head.<\/p>\n He\u2019s right, I realize, and I lower my fists and step back from him.<\/p>\n \u201cJohn, I saw you as a skinny little boy of seventeen. You were in a dark room on a couch kissing some girl. Naughty. Naughty.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShut up!\u201d I say, and I instantly remember the girl and the situation.<\/p>\n \u201cI could hear her name in your head. Sarah, lovely Sarah. And you were thinking: first base, finally first base.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBe quiet!\u201d I shout.<\/p>\n \u201cThen that thing in your mind, that wondrous mechanism you hate so much, kicked in. You thought the pain burning in your brow was because you were all hot and bothered, but it was you dialing in and a memory of her kissing some other boy popped into your head. That must have been quite upsetting: it\u2019s your first kiss, she\u2019s thinking about kissing someone else, and her memory is so real you can taste the other boy\u2019s lips and feel his tongue rooting around in your mouth. Then she was screaming. She must have seen something terrible in your head because she was just screeching.\u201d<\/p>\n His head snaps back as I punch him smack in the center of his flapping mouth. Somehow, by some miracle, his glasses stay on. But he\u2019s not smiling anymore now though. His big eyes are watering and blood runs out of a split in his swelling purple lip. I look at my hand and see a small puncture hole between the fat of my knuckles where his tooth went in.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then I saw you much older and much fatter,\u201d he continues as though two seconds ago I hadn\u2019t punched him square in the face. \u201cYou were in a seedy hotel room with a prostitute whose face was plastered mess of makeup and you were doing what you could to get your business over with as quickly as possible before it could happen. But then, right in the middle of it, you tuned in and she was in your head and you were in hers. Good lord, the things you saw in that woman\u2019s mind; felt them too…in a way you lived them.\u201d<\/p>\n I raise my fist to punch him in the face again.<\/p>\n \u201cLet me ask you one question,\u201d he says and lifts his hands up to protect himself. \u201cDo you see a pattern here?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPattern?\u201d I ask. \u201cWhat pattern? What are you talking about?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe pattern of your life. You, women, and this thing in your head. <\/p>\n Think of it. Just calm down and think of it for one second.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know what the hell you\u2019re talking about,\u201d I say. \u201cI just want you to shut up.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI understand your frustrations, but try to think of it. All these things, these watershed moments in your life have built you into the person you are today.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t analyze what you see in my head. Those are my memories! Mine!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t help it John. I\u2019m trained to think this way. I can\u2019t help it as much as you can\u2019t help tuning in.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cStay out of my head!\u201d I yell as sobs wrack my big body.<\/p>\n \u201cJohn, I\u2019m trying to help you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFuck off,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n I feel dizzy now. The floor sways beneath my feet like I\u2019m aboard a ship. I can\u2019t breathe either, it\u2019s like all the air has gone out of the room. I need to sit down before I collapse, so I stumble over and take a seat in the empty chair.<\/p>\n \u201cJohn, I thought this thing was a blessing, but I see how wrong I was. I see what it has done to you…what it\u2019s turned you into.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPlease stop,\u201d I mumble.<\/p>\n I\u2019m so exhausted from all this that I can barely raise my head up from the table to look at him. When I do, I see he\u2019s neither smiling nor frowning; he actually has a look of concern for me on his face.<\/p>\n \u201cJohn, this thing has weighed on you. Pressed you down and formed you into the person you are now. It\u2019s the reason you are the way you are.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy are you telling me this?\u201d I choke out through mumbled sobs.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause I want you to know that it\u2019s not your fault. All this was forced on you. What other life could you have led with this thing in your head? In my practice, I usually tell people all their problems are caused by themselves. But not you. You\u2019re the victim here.\u201d<\/p>\n I nod. He\u2019s right. This was put on me. I never wanted it. I didn\u2019t do anything to deserve this.<\/p>\n \u201cJohn, what did you do with them?\u201d<\/p>\n I stare through a veil of tears at the swimming tabletop. My emotions have drained out of me and now all I am is tired.<\/p>\n \u201cJohn. All those women I saw in your head. The ones that got too close. What did you do with them?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n \u201cI understand John. It was the only way to shut it off. The only way to stop them from seeing into you and you into them. It\u2019s not your fault. It\u2019s this thing in your head.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI never wanted this,\u201d I blubber. \u201cI never wanted any of this.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI know. I know.\u201d he says and takes my hands in his. This time I don\u2019t pull back. His hands are warm and I welcome his touch.<\/p>\n \u201cJohn. Where did you put them?\u201d<\/p>\n
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\nTable of Contents<\/h1>\n
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\nWaterproof<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/H1><\/p>\n
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\nThe Opening<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/H1><\/p>\n
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\nThe Broken Chair<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/H1><\/p>\n
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\nSome Say In Surf<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/H1><\/p>\n
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\nThe Virgin and The Dragon<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/H1><\/p>\n
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\nWild Blue Roses<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/H1><\/p>\n
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\nDrained<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/H1><\/p>\n
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\nDamned<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/H1><\/p>\n
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\nTruth Banks<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/H1><\/p>\n
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\nMagic Hands<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/H1><\/p>\n
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\nThe Transceiver<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/H1><\/p>\n
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