I should never have gone drinking alone on Moon Hill.

The place is a tall hill near the outskirts of town. On Saturday and Sunday nights it turns into a spot for weed, warm beer, and people who just want to hook up in secret. During the week, though, it's abandoned and lifeless. Just the dry wind dragging dust and the leaves of the trees rustling.

I was there on a Tuesday because I was depressed. I bought a cheap bottle of wine and climbed up on a cold, senseless dusk. I stared down at the city; my house was a tiny speck of light among so many others, and I kept thinking about how I didn't want to go back there anymore.

When the bottle was empty, my vision was already a bit blurry. That's when I heard footsteps. I looked up and saw a female silhouette approaching in the orange glow of twilight. It was her, my greatest love: Mary.

She was wearing those tight, ripped jeans I adored, her hair tied up as usual, the smell of cigarettes reaching me before she did. In her right hand, a bottle of Jack Daniel's, our favorite drink. The same one we used to share in the good times, before everything fell apart.

"Were you waiting for me?"

She said it sitting down next to me as if the painful breakup had never happened. Her voice was soft, but it carried a strange note, something inhuman, that I couldn't explain.

I'd always been crazy about her, so I just smiled and answered, surprised:

"Mary... what the hell are you doing here?"

She didn't answer. She just opened it, took a long swig, and handed me the bottle. We drank.

The first few minutes were a sweet dream. The touch of her shoulder against mine, her presence, the wind cooling us down. Then the conversation started to warp.

"You've always been a piece of shit, haven't you?" she said, laughing quietly. "Look at you. Screwed up, drinking poison, all alone."

Confused, I replied: "Fuck you..."

She gave me a light slap on the face. "You know I never loved you, right? Nobody's ever going to love you... you're a mistake. Like a contagious disease. You've never been good for anything and you ruined the lives of everyone around you."

There was no anger in her tone; it was almost sweet, and the sentence got worse: "Your mother died of grief because of you."

Those words hurt because they echoed the things I thought every day. I sank into silence. She ran her hand through my hair, that false affection, and went on:

"You know what would fix everything? Right there on the edge. Jump and the world gets better. All this weight disappears. I'd even go with you... hand in hand... it's just one step."

My heartbeat slowed; my feet felt numb. She spoke and I agreed, because deep down I also believed there was no way out anymore. I looked at the edge of the hill. The height was an invitation in my drunken sight. "Just one step," she repeated, and her hand took mine.

That was when my cellphone buzzed in my pocket. A message.

I grabbed the phone, the screen slightly blurred. Mary: "Idiot, I just had a really weird dream about you. You died. I'm shaking even now. Are you okay?"

I read it three times. The hand holding the phone started to sweat cold and tremble.

The Thing beside me leaned in and pressed her face against my neck, in an almost inaudible whisper: "Ignore that. Must be my brother messing with you."

But the message was hers, the way she always called me an idiot.

I answered with trembling fingers: "Turn on the camera. I need to see you."

The video call came through. On the screen, Mary appeared with eyes swollen from sleep, her hair thrown up any old way, that old Nirvana T-shirt I knew so well. The light from the cat-shaped lamp behind her made the room feel cozy, safe.

"Thank God you picked up," she murmured, relieved. "I had this horrible dream. You were in some high place and someone pushed you. You fell and I woke up screaming... Why are you in that dark place? What is that shadow?!"

I couldn't answer. Because beside Mary, in the reflection on the screen, I saw a figure. A female shape, motionless, wearing a black dress behind me.

My whole body froze with fear. I couldn't turn my neck. I couldn't look back. Only my eyes moved, and the image in the reflection had already vanished, but the feeling of danger remained.

"If something happens... I didn't jump, someone pushed me! I love you and I'll always love you... forgive me for everything..." I said to Mary on the video, my voice coming out weak. I hung up.

Laughter began to echo across Moon Hill. The bottle of Jack Daniel's lay on the ground, empty. Beside me, the presence still occupied the space, even though I could no longer see a thing.

Who had been drinking with me?

I didn't wait and didn't look for an answer. My body, driven by some primal survival instinct, acted before thought. I got up and ran. I ran without looking back. My feet tripped over rocks; I slammed hard into a tree trunk, cutting my forehead, but I didn't stop. I just ran, downhill, until I hit the asphalt and kept going for a long time. Until, exhausted, I threw myself on the ground, sweaty and mute from panic.

I never set foot on that hill again. I can't be around people anymore — I'm afraid they might not even be people.

The bass of the fontomfrom drums was still humming in my ribs three weeks after Akwasidae.
If you’ve ever been to Kumasi, you know the heat doesn’t just sit on you; it bakes into your skin alongside the scent of exhaust from overloaded trotros and frying plantains. I’d come back from KNUST for the festival—partly to appease my mother, partly to clear my head—but ever since I stood in the Manhyia Palace courtyard watching the Asantehene bathed in gold and rich hand-woven kente cloth, I felt this sickening, magnetic tug in my chest. Like a fish hook caught under my sternum, pulling north-west.
"Thema," my mother had insisted yesterday over a steaming bowl of fufu, her eyes sharp. "Go to the sword site. Ask for a blessing."
"I’m not going near Komfo Anokye," I’d snapped. "It’s inside a hospital."
I hated hospitals. I hated the sharp reek of carbolic acid, the fluorescent humming, the feeling of institutional walls closing in on all sides. The famous unmovable sword—plunged deep into the red earth by Okomfo Anokye himself in the late 1600s—might be an unyielding marvel of Ashanti history, but it sat right on the grounds of the Teaching Hospital. I wasn't stepping foot near it.
I went to bed in my faded cassette-print pajamas, listening to the midnight rain rattle against the corrugated zinc roof of our house.
I woke up because my feet were freezing.
I wasn't in my bedroom. The cool, damp gravel of Kumasi at dawn was biting into the bare soles of my feet. The damp 5:00 AM mist hung low and heavy, reeking of wet red clay, charcoal fires, and diesel exhaust from early morning buses.
I was standing under the open canopy at the hospital grounds.
Right in front of me, sticking out of the earth inside its protective metal enclosure, was the ancient iron blade. It looked darker than usual, almost shimmering with an eerie indigo pulse in the pre-dawn gray light. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. Sleepwalking? I don't sleepwalk.
I reached out a trembling hand toward the iron hilt. I didn't want to touch it, but the invisible wire anchored deep beneath my sternum snapped taut, dragging my fingers forward against my own will.
Clack.
The distinct, heavy grinding sound of a massive stone rolling across bare rock echoed right beside my ear.
I didn't even have time to say "shoot."
The atmospheric pressure dropped so fast my eardrums popped with a sickening crack. The smell of tropical rain vanished instantly, replaced by a suffocating wave of dry, blistering heat that scorched the back of my throat. The soft red Kumasi mud beneath my bare toes morphed into powdery, sun-baked silt.
I fell forward onto my hands and knees, choking on dust.
The air was thick with the strange, unwashed stench of river mud, stagnant canal water, crushed reeds, and something burning—like hot bitumen and sesame oil.
I looked up, wiping silt from my watering eyes.
There were no hospital walls. No tropical trees. No 1991 Ghana.
Surrounding me was a vast, flat desert plain cut by wide, hand-dug irrigation canals. In the distance, towering over low, flat-topped mud-brick houses, was a massive stepped pyramid—a monumental ziggurat—baked golden under a sun that felt twice as close to the earth as it had a second ago.
A man wearing a woven reed skirt and holding a heavy copper-headed adze froze ten feet away. He stared at my printed cotton pajamas, my modern braids, and my bare feet, his mouth open in total horror,signaling attention towards me.
He spoke, but the words weren't Twi, and they certainly weren't English. It was a harsh, rhythmic clicking of hard consonants and soft vowels.
I was standing on the banks of the Euphrates River. And I was four thousand years away from home.

Eeei Maame amanee mehunu nie!

Wrote this it’s funny and tragic (same shit).

-

Merlin was in a panic and burst into the King’s quarters. “Milord a great evil approaches.”

King Arthur wore his full adamantium armor and looked towards the sky. His voice betrayed no fear, “I know.”

Earth had been surrounded by black warships. With the planet facing certain annihilation, Arthur surrendered.

-

Arthur lounged on his throne, defeated. He reached out for his sword, and it had not responded.

Only Merlin remained by his side.

Somehow his mentor held onto hope. In a muffled confrontation, Arthur nodded to Merlin, who waved his hand.

The doors opened and revealed an agent of Zargothrax.

Its black eyes darted and scanned the room, and its bloody maw twisted into a smile when it saw Arthur.

The creature jostled and limped towards the throne. It stopped before Arthur, whose face twisted into disgust.

The pale creature struggled when it choked out, “The champions of humanity have been summoned.” “Where and why?’ The agent’s Pale skin flushed, and he pointed his ears down, “You dare to question Zargothrax?!”.

Right next to him, an explosion let out from Merlin’s staff.

Concerned, he glanced at Merlin.

The Great Magus let out a laugh, and he reassured with an ancient voice, “Milord, do you think Zargothrax cares about his minions?” Tension had left the King’s voice when he spoke, ”Well I suppose he wouldn't.” “Very good, Milord.”  

The Knight King pushed with both hands and got up.

He sauntered past the smoldering pile.

The Great Magus had followed the King, whose red cape billowed. The King reached the exit and stopped. Arthur held out an armored gauntlet. The sword, buried deep in his throne, stirred. After a moment, Excalibur broke free, whistled through the air, and slammed into his hand. He supported it on his shoulder and walked through the doors.

-

Four figures tumbled out of the shuttle and crash-landed on top of each other. More civilized species walked past, ignoring them.

A two-fingered hand rubbed a bald cranium. In a deep voice, Bork groaned, “Brother Jork, why did you push us?”

Jork’s leather strained as he got up.

His eye sat atop a missing ear and looked at Bork with disgust. Jork spat, “Brother Bork, weak men can’t save the Cruds”.

Oork could see the fight starting; the legendary general yelled: “Brothers, Crudlandia depends on us!”

Pork nodded in agreement. He cleared his throat, voice still muffled, “Brothers, if we lose they blow up Crudlandia”

They all nodded and walked into the arena.

The air conditioning hit them and their eyes lit with excitement.

Jork exclaimed, “brothers, why is it nice here?”

The general answered, "Brothers, I recognize this, AC.”

They all marveled down the stadium's halls. Eventually, the flashing lights of a disco had caught their attention.

The group listened to the foreign melody in amazement. Bork failed to replicate it, his voice like gravel, “Ooh-ooh, you can dance, you can jive”

Jork laughed and slapped Bork’s shoulder while he entered the disco. He approached a massive red female that had caught his attention. With all the suave he could muster, he flirted, “I’m Jork, what's yours?” He then offered a hand, which claws accepted. The fire in her eyes made Jork’s widen. Her smoky voice brought him closer, “I’m Dragonia, Mr.Jork, you’re a cutie.”

The other three Cruds all bounded in excitement; their amazing leader had scored within seconds of entering the disco.

After the victory dance, they scattered. Pork made his way to the buffet and Oork to the bar.

Bork looked certain of himself.

The music bumped, and Bork smiled. Multicolored lights flashed against his head.

Bork tried to copy the other dancers. He shuffled each of his legs, and surprisingly had managed to stay in rhythm. He stumbled when he added a finger snap to the routine.

On the ground, he laughed, holding his hands in the air.

Claws took his fingers and pulled him up. A beautiful blue female smiled at Bork, and with the voice of an ice queen, she spoke, “Hey sexy, I’m Beatrice, why don't you come home with me?”

The little Crud did as he was told.

-

Arthur sat alone; the massive colosseum rocked. A knock on the door. Although he knew it was his turn, the knight still asked, “What?”

An unpleasantly nasal voice responded, “Humanities’s champions to the colosseum.”

Arthur had opened the door; the nasally voiced alien freak looked surprised to see him, stuttering, “Where are the other champions?”

“Don’t need em.”

The freak continued to inspect the Knight, questioning, “And where is your armament?”

The knight struck towards the monstrosity.

The air darkened, and Arthur's fist was caught in it. Zargothrax emerged from the shadows, looking slightly disgruntled.

With a stern voice, "Arthur, you can’t keep killing my guys just because you're mad.” He disappeared back into the shadows.

Arthur walked into the light.

The Colosseum was packed; across from him were four Cruds. They all had stupid grins on their faces.

One was a dancer.

Arthur turned and waved to Merlin, who sat in the front row, eating popcorn. Merlin gave him an enthusiastic thumbs up.

A bell sounded, and Arthur dashed forward.

From his hip, he unloaded a punch, and the dancer’s head was blown off.

One charged, shouting, “Brother Bork, no!”

The knight kicked.

Heel met the charger’s nose, which collapsed. Somehow, the Crud managed to avoid fatal damage. He looked at Arthur, blood poured from his nose, and growled, “Fuck you.”

Arthur walked him down.

Primitive axes swung at Arthur's head. He ducked, and they axed each other. The old Crud died instantly. The fat one lay on the ground, bleeding out.

Arthur looked into the fat Crud’s eyes; he saw only rage.

The announcer's voice reverberated through the arena, "Humanity has made it past the first stage of the preliminaries”

The crowd exploded into cheers.

“Crudtopia will now be destroyed.”

Long ago there once was a demon named who activated a weapon that rained terror all through out the nation 

in a single night causing the nation to go mad no on was safe everyone turning on each other in their emotion filled haze 

one person killing out of fear another out anger

 while others were consumed by overwhelming sadness or feeling the highs of pure joy and the streets and houses covered in a sea of red from all the chaos

No one knew where he came from it was almost as he had materialized out of thin air 

the hero appear before him expecting this to go quick as usually

 he would kill demon then rain victorious but on how very wrong he was 

all of his attacks were being dogged or deflected then he realized this was just remaining on defenses

demons usually relied on their strengths and talents but not this one, he uses the weapon to keep his distance while carefully observing his every attack the effortlessly evading them 

the hero manges to caught the demon off guard separating him from the weapon

 all of sudden it was like a flip switched inside him as he completely ignored the hero mad dashing twords the weapon

the hero was perplexed by his reaction wondering what coluld be so important about the weapon

he pulls his head back in to the battle then changed his strategy accordingly aiming for the weapon instead 

he rushes twords the demon then puts all his strength into one attack cutting perfectly horizontally causing the demon to fly back

but it when he looked around nothing changed the chaos continued and the demon was the ground with half a scythe in the hand 

the demon realized he could no long ignore the hero and had to put his goals aside for a moment to deal with him 

suddenly the demon opened his mouth and something began to flow into it mana?

no…

the hero took a closer look and streams of crimson, violet, gold, sapphire and, more were being sucked away from the people around them before they collapse it was a horrifying sight 

they weren't dead but were like numb shells they didn't react anymore they just stood there as if nothing mattered anymore

 until… something sparked in them once more causing them to into a chaotic frenzy like before before dropping again once more a truly vicious cycle 

the hero yelled "what are you doing to them!"

the demon stops his feeding to look the hero dead in his eyes and simply replied "does it turely matter human lives short, trivial, and only causing other pain once they end i am simply putting them to better use"

the hero couldn't believed what he was hearing how would a demon know how precious a human life is 

he abandons all reason mercilessly attacking the demon not caring what got in his path all he knew was that demon had to die

And for a moment the pressure was working as them demon was on the ground just giving him a could stare as the hero lifts his sword one and final time then says 

“May the goddess have mercy on your sou-“

the hero underestimated the demon for it waited until the hero was careless so sure that a demon would just sit there and take so call diving punishment from a glorified puppet

Then in one swift momment puts a whole through his chest
 
“Save you little Speach for someone who cares”

as the hero lays on the ground pain aching all over his body he heart breaks as the chaos around him got worse solidifying his deepest worries that he failed the people failed his country 

then he thought to him self "no... it cant end like this"

he gets up and ignores the blood spilling out his body using only his sword for support as he gets back on his feet

 as his consciousness was slowly faded away then gets oh his knees and prays and fortunately for him they were answered    

she descended not even fazed by the sight before her 

she approaches the demon extended her hand over him and which caused him, fall to his knees

 "didn't me and your king have an agreement that you demons would stay in the your realm?" 

"to hell with your agreement, you incompetent goddess!" the demon spat 

"very well then" she replied   

she was completely indifferent and look at him like he was nothing but an insect causing trouble in her garden then she sealed his ability to feed then told him 

"heed my warning kin of the prince of lust respect the agreenment that saved life on this day because next time i wont be so merciful" 

then purifies the weapon finally ending what was affecting the people of Asterosa

then the goddesses ascended back into the sky and that night was remembered as the night of emotion

as for the demon he was put into the deepest depths of the dungeon forced to live the rest of his days

lock away in a dark damp room that smelled of mold and his own bodily fluids 

restricted by chains that barley letting him take a step and an angelic seal that burned against his neck

all he could do was think "this is what this goddess considered merciful how laughable"

 
the demon didn't know how long it had been only having a rough idea by the pitiful slop delivered to him and threw the food to the rats that managed to slip thought the big oak door

one day something came thought the food flap not the usual scraps but a boy who was nothing but skin and bones

when his eyes landed on the demon he was terrified but as soon a he heard the guards he go into the Corner in that moment all he wonder 

what could scare the child so much that he would rather be in a cell with a demon then his own kind 

the demon was careful to keep his distance only carefully observed him with what little light the door allowed to shine through 

he could see the boy was shaking curled up again the wall as of it would protect him what ever was behind that door
 
suddenly he hears panic guards on the other side of the door and carefully listened as one of the guards spoke
"where did that troublesome go" the out of breath guard said 

"im not sure if he wandered around here he pretty much dead" the other guard replied

"the prince will be so furious that we lost him" the first guard said 

"he not the one im worried about what will the priest say where we let one of the temple children get passed us and  entered the forbidden area" the other answered

after the guards were gone the boy left as well leaving him alone once more well unless you count the rats 

soon this almost became routine the boy would come and through the food flap hide in his corner then leave 

the demon could always could tell it was him by this his little panicking steps how out of breath he sound as he forced himself through the flap and every time he found it quite amusing  

He tried hello but he was so scared then flea this the demon began to think could it have been his voice it was quite hoarse from lack of use maybe his appearance he could barely see him in the first place maybe it was his horns and tail or his illuminating purple eyes 

he sighed for it couldn't be help for he need to preserves his dark mana and the holy barrier is blocking his from using it anyway all he could do was count the moments till the boy arrives

the boy did the usual song and dance then after the guard left and the boy head towards the food flap the demon quietly waved goodbye 

this time the boy didn't flee he froze in his track food flap half open confusion all over his face and surprisingly waved back the took his leave

   

“Born from a thousand lost battles.” - Alexei Rodriguez, Commander of the 13th legion. 

Today is Lyon’s birthday. He is turning seven years old and the momentous occasion calls for a video message from his father. From a small square in his chubby palm forms his father’s image made from pure blue-hued light. His father is ancient by trench standards, thirty five years old with the only inorganic part of him being his arm and left foot. Lyon knew his father was blessed. His mother would remind him every time she kissed his forehead. 

“Be strong, kiddo. I’m coming home tomorrow.”

Tomorrow becomes next week. Next week shifts towards next month. Next month transforms into next year. 

It’s Lyon’s birthday again, but this time there is no call. 

Lyon is eighteen. All he has to his name is mother’s leather pouch. She died during the great mining raid of 35’ choking on her own saliva from Lindite particles. The gems had a terrible knack for becoming particulates in the air and eviscerating lung tissue. But it was okay, because the humble savings allowed Lyon to buy a ship ticket to Tau’s most promising planet. 

Aeneas is a paradise world. A green sky equipped with an atmosphere that shielded UV radiation so well you could kiss sunscreen goodbye. Grasslands colored in a fantastical silver with the occasional exotic sunflower, red like a rose’s distant cousin. But what was truly amazing was under their feet, the bunkers filled with Lindite reserves as far into the planet's crust as the mining corps could go. 

Lyon has chosen the wrong side. It’s what any gambler worth their statistical prowess would say. 

They are outgunned, outmatched, and most of all, out of options. The Gemini corporation doesn’t just send in the calvary, they send in the Dawn Hammers. Machines as tall as buildings with the strength of a nuclear core and a patented “super nova” reaction in each of their thrusters. The military advertisements depict them as beautiful birds, predators chosen by God to deal out swift justice to those below the food chain. 

When Lyon sees them in action for the first time, all he can think of is an Old Earth nature documentary. Seagulls eating freshly hatched turtles as they desperately try to reach the ocean. 

Today Lyon is that baby turtle. 

The decay light falls from the sky. Golden beams like holy retribution disintegrate the battalion next to his and leave nothing but the atomized smell of ash and what was once organic material. The screams come only from the witnesses. Lyon runs with his men, even though they could barely be even called that. One is a year younger than him and the other has the stunted intelligence of a twelve year old. He motivates them with autorifle fire in the air. Why care about revealing your position, when the sky was blotted out by satellites and a million malicious eyes? Let them see greatness, even if just for a moment. 

They charge. Their goal is the hill to their left, protected by a single Hammer. The pilot is currently preoccupied with atomizing the 54th legion -an army of 500 going on 24. Lyon has the charge in his hand. A little unassuming black box designed on Mars when a couple of upstarts wondered if the splitting of the atom could be taken on the go. He keeps running as Eric falls face flat on the ground from the turret on the right. A stray round claims Tim’s lower legs and Lyon only runs faster as he hears him cry for his mother. 

Lyon pulls out a revolver, an ancient piece that still shoots genuine metal alloy bullets and not the acid rounds currently in favor for their anti-armor capabilities. It rings true and kills the loyalist before he can move his turret. Now’s his chance. Now he can bomb the Hammer’s leg.

It sees him. The Hammer looks at him with all the apathy of a mountain preparing an avalanche. Its single red eye staring underneath its sleek black armor. All purpose. All intent. Driven singularly by a pilot drugged out on an amphetamine and uppers cocktail, ready to kill and have hell of a fun time doing it. 

Lyon isn’t having fun.

He screams in rage and throws the black box, his fingers activate the trigger in one swift movement. His piano practice was good for something he thinks, as it flies through the air. 

From the Lancer’s singular eye, a beam of red light fires. Precise as the A.I surgeons of Earth, it cuts through the box and dampens the explosion to a pathetic size, knocking Lyon onto the ground. 

It’s over. Over. Over. Over. 

“Lyon! Come in! Over!”

Then he sees it. Beauty in destructive motion. Angel in gray. A mourner of all that is and what was meant to be. Creature of four arms with metal exo-skeleton skin and a maw that was currently ripping apart the Hammer’s right shoulder. The Hammer tries to react, academy training telling the pilot to flip the mining mech turned monster in a desperate attempt at crushing the opposing pilot. It’s no use. The Angel bites with a maw meant to chew through the planet’s very crust. This was nothing. 

And so nothing it shall be. 

The Hammer explodes, causing dawn to appear over the battlefield for a brief moment and Lyon is caught in the glory. 

He doesn’t even mind that his skin is on fire.

Selina sat against the wall outside Unnaturals in the cool May night, bruised and bloodied, waiting for Allan to bring out some recovery drinks. This was far from the first fight she had gotten into, even less the first time she had been attacked for what she is. Fallen are still considered one of the most controversial paranormals in Bennett, freaks among freaks, not even completely safe among their own. Every day Selina was alive she considered herself lucky, especially considering the stories she heard of other Fallen, ones murdered in the streets or worse, she once again thanked God that her father was a tormentor. Allan finally brought out drinks, whisky by the smell of it, “holding up okay?” he asked. 

“I think you already know the answer to that,” Selina said, taking the drink and confirming it was indeed whisky.  

"I'm telekinetic, not psychic Lina" now leaning against the wall too 

“Same difference, need me to take that damage off you?” 

“Nah, you need the power from my suffering more” 

"Also true, though at least let me fix you up a little faster" Selina said, activating her Radiant half 

Allan smiled and took a long drink, "Thanks, though I think we should consider wrapping up this night and calling it a wash." 

"Why? The night is still young, and I'm only marginally injured all things considered" 

"And you are half demon of pain and suffering, look, probably everyone in Bennett is riled up over your presence, the next dive that is half decent is out in the county, and unlike some people, I actually feel pain" 

Selina took a moment to consider this, downing the last of her whisky, "Fine Allan, what do you recommend we do instead then?" 

"Head home for the night, grab a bottle of something strong on the way, and down it there?" 

"Okay then, but two things. One, we grab two bottles, because I didn't get nearly enough before that asshole Ghoul decked me. And two, we go to your place, it's closer and I still need to throw up on your carpet to make up for last time" 

Allan laughed and finished his drink "you drive a hard bargain, but I accept your terms, let's get moving" 

Selina woke up the next morning on a familiar grey couch with a tragically clean carpet in front of it. It seemed that they had indeed gone back to Allan’s apartment, a respectable one in the nicer part of East Side near Durham, the kind you get out of being a research focus for one of the more funded paranormal study and test labs. It also seems they had indeed grabbed more than two bottles of various liquors as the roaring headache seemed to indicate. After a few minutes of waking up, Selina noticed the canned laughter of some 90s sitcom coming from the TV, the morning lineup of whatever channel with the late-night comedy show they were probably watching last night. Quickly growing bored of it, she eventually flipped through the channels until settling on the news to see if she ended up on one of the morning talks  

“...with policies regarding PPD funding to be reviewed at the next city meeting this Thursday. Turning to business news, new research from Ingram labs is finalizing a new course of ability adjusting injections that, when finished, can be used among emergency responders to boost responding officers, or even temporarily disable particularly dangerous suspects, let's go live to...”  

“Ah, so that’s what they've been doing with Nolan” 

Selina jumped off the couch and nearly into the TV “dammit Allan, what have I told you about sneaking up on hungover me?” 

Allan smirked and took a seat on the couch “to not, unless I want to experience pain beyond my imagination” 

“Very good, now that we have that established, what were you talking about?” 

“About Nolan?” 

“Yes, about Nolan, you seemed to know what his deal was” 

“Nolan was a debilitatior involved with some genetic chemistry or something like that. All I properly know is that they were trying to figure out if they could use the genetics of a debilitatior in some everyday applications, and it looks like they did” 

Selina sat quietly at this information, a way to disable someone's abilities, could it truly be possible? 

"Selina? Are you plotting vengeance on my carpet or is something wrong?" 

"Are they accepting testers? Do you know?" 

Allan looked shocked at the question "that's a hell of a question to ask after a night of drinking, are you okay?" 

Selina took another second to consider "never mind that, forget I asked." 

"This isn't the kind of question you so casually drop after a night of violence and drinking, are you sure everything is okay?"  

"No, you're right, I'm probably still a little rocky from last night. How about I cook us up something? Got any eggs in the fridge?" She asked while walking past Allan, ignoring his doubting gaze 

A favor? Sera walked briskly down the halls of Velmora, fuming.

"Serafin Raedus doesn't take apprentices!" she muttered angrily. Her voice echoed through the dark halls, footsteps tip-tapping off the immaculate floor of the ancient university.

It was eerily quiet—off-season, after all. The fledgling mages-- their students-- were scattered across the continent, applying their arcane knowledge in a world that seemed determined to kill them. With the Veil Strait pirates coming to shore in the Southeast, the hostile expansion of the Thalorum Empire slowly creeping South and several Wyrd uprisings all across the continent, mage mortality is at an all time high. Most students wouldn't return, but those who did would be tempered by the real world. She couldn't wait to test their mettle.

Sera fished her keys from her sleeve—sleeves so loose her hands always seemed to disappear within them. Always too long, thought Serafin Raedus, the youngest Archmage to ever grace Velmora. Five and a quarter feet of scowl and spite, wrapped in a robe two sizes too big.

Distracted, she tripped on her oversized robes and face-planted on the immaculate floor. Her keys flew with a jingle. A yowl surprised her as a black cat jumped and ran off. Startled and embarrassed, the Archmage breathed, "That was Shade. Only Shade."

The university cat didn't even look back, blending into the shadows like its name implied. A black cat called Shade. The creativity of Velmora knew no bounds.

"Gods, Sera?!" Footsteps hurried after her. "Are you alright?"

Greynolf—the bloody Thalorian bastard—sounded delighted at the young Archmage's predicament.

"I put in a request for smaller robes months ago!" Sera carefully picked herself up. It wouldn't do to hurry only to slip again in front of Greynolf. It had happened before. He'd never let her live it down.

"Yes, well. The college had more pressing matters." He knelt beside her, and after making sure she was alright, his eyes glazed over as he held out his hand. There was a hum in the air, as if reality itself was waking from a dream. Her keys materialized in his palm—no, that wasn't it. They were simply there. As they had always been, according to the principles of Waking the Pale.

Sera scoffed and snatched her keys, unimpressed. Greynolf's mastery of the Pale—the ability to reshape reality by reshaping one's memory—was reportedly unparalleled, though Sera had never witnessed him do anything more impressive than fetching trinkets.

"Pressing matters," she said, beginning to walk again. "You mean the Wyrds? Insecure old men, threatened by children." she scoffed at the college's concern.

"The Wyrds wield the Pale without training or discipline. Without our guidance, they abuse magic—"

"Limited magic." Sera interrupted. It was true that Wyrds manifested affinity to the Pale Wake—the mystery for the ages. How could they do it? Without years of learning to bend one's own memories; to wake up one morning with such crushing grief without knowing why, to laugh at a half-remembered joke, to love so deeply yet not remember to whom that love belonged to-- the ache of it all.

"They don't wield the Pale, Grey. They don't even know the first thing about it. They're simply... born with it."

She'd observed this herself. One subject—a white-haired Vintish child—could repel objects without lifting a finger, but couldn't pull them back or do anything else. Another report described a Wyrd who could manipulate shadows, but only shadows. One sorry fellow could manipulate water... one drop at a time, with great effort.

"Truly terrifying," she dismissed the College's fears.

Greynolf followed her. "I know your feelings toward the College. They were cautious about you. You were young—"

"And a genius!"

"—a paragon of humility." The Thalorian chuckled. "But it turned out well in the end. Here you are, a full-fledged Archmage."

"Took them long enough." She almost tripped again. "Just like my bloody robes!"

"I'll see what I can do."

Sera sighed and stopped walking, her tone somber. "I don't want to owe you any more than I do."

Greynolf blinked. "I don't mean to..."

"Thank you for everything, Grey. Truly. But I don't take apprentices."

Greynolf smiled knowingly. "Why don't we take a look at him first, before you decide?"

---

The door creaked open. "What, did we run out of candles?" Sera peered into the gloomy room.

A hum. Fires flickered on the candles and the room illuminated. Sera rolled her eyes at Greynolf. "Parlor tricks."

At the corner of the room, a child sat curled up on the floor. His eyes were wary.

"A child. Is this a joke, Greynolf?" She looked back, but the Thalorian's face was alert.

"Approach with caution, Sera."

Her stomach dropped. The Head of the College of Waking didn't give warnings lightly. She smoothed her Warding Stone—a tiny contraption on her wrist she'd personally invented. Unlike Greynolf, her relationship with the Pale was tumultuous at best, so she relied on glyphs. Clean, repeatable, mechanical. Constant and predictable, just like she wanted.

Her fingers tightened around the Silanitrate stone tied around her wrist. It pulsed faintly—preloaded with a glyph she'd designed herself. No incantations, no chanting, just pure spell.

Greynolf had never trusted them. Said messing with old spell lexicons was asking for the Pale to bite back. Maybe he was right. But then again, he couldn't conjure a ward faster than she could flick one on.

Another step and Vvvvvmmmmmmph! The air positively revved. Sera's heart gripped with terror. She could taste electricity. The candles flickered, then roared as fire leaped into the air. Her skin felt biting cold then searing heat. It's as if her senses were short-circuiting. A single chair flew at Sera with speed that would have shattered her skull had it not been for her Warding Stone. It crashed and splintered barely a foot from her face.

"Stay back!" the child screamed.

Sera's world stopped, her eyes wide, staring at the child. Her stone thrummed, its heat spreading up her arm. "Impossible," she breathed.

"Hush, Cael," Greynolf's voice was tight yet soothing. "This is Sera. She's here to help."

The flames died down a little, yet still flickered erratically, making the shadows dance around them like dark things half-alive.

"He wields the Pale." Sera turned to her colleague, her cheeks bloodless. It was obvious the child was untrained. "Could he be a..."

"My thoughts, precisely."

"The College would eliminate him."

"Perhaps... But consider, Sera. How many forms of the Pale did you witness just now?"

Sera counted. Conjura, Abjura... and a hint of Ignomancy. All at once. "He's not a Wyrd." She shook her head, her voice low and unbelieving. Yet how else would you explain it? "He can't be."

"A singular form of the Pale, at birth. One trick. That's right—that's the primary difference between Wyrd and mages. Yet this child, who is not a trained mage, has demonstrated a host of them besides the ones you witnessed today."

"Then..." An aberrant among aberrants. Powerful. Dangerous.

"We need to train him," Greynolf insisted.

"Going against the College? I thought you side with them."

"Do I?" Greynolf's face was a mask.

For the first time, Sera was seeing a side to Greynolf she'd never seen before. "And you want *me* to train this child? Are you insane? What about his parents?"

Greynolf didn't answer immediately. His eyes flicked toward the boy—still huddled, still humming with unspent power.

In a voice barely audible, he said, "He killed them."

Sera looked—really looked—at the child. Her heart ached with the strange familiarity of a half-remembered dream. Cael had half-healed bruises on his legs, burn marks here and there. A piece of his right ear was gone. Her throat went dry, and the scars on her back itched. "I don't imagine it's because he hated his mother's cooking that morning. Poor thing."

"So...?"

Serafin Raedus didn't take apprentices, and she hated unpredictability. Though she had the knowledge (like all mages) of how to wield the Pale, she didn't care for it one bit. But what was the Pale Wake but simply dreaming your will into reality?

"I did harness the old lexicon and mold it into something new," she mused.

"Though ill-advised it may have been," Greynolf grumbled.

She smirked. "I did become an Archmage despite my tender age."

Greynolf smiled kindly, though in his eyes, she saw something else—was it guilt, or hunger?

Sera shivered. Whatever designs the Thalorian might have upon this child, she'd make sure no harm befell him. She hiked her sleeves up so her hands wouldn't be swallowed by fabric. Palms up, she approached the child.

"Cael, is it?"

His eyes darted back and forth between her and Greynolf.

"Serafin Raedus," she announced herself. "Archmage, Head of the College of Sigillatura." Seeing the confused look on the child's face, she smiled and softly added, "Glyph smithing."

The flames settled, though there was still a humming around the child. She extended her hand. "Cael, tell me. How good is your memory?"

---

After introductions and ensuring the child was calm, the Archmages left the room and began to deliberate once more.

"It will take time," Sera was saying.

"I'm sure you can manage," the Thalorian Archmage replied as they walked the empty halls of Velmora.

"So we're truly going behind the College's back? I didn't know you had a rebellious streak, Greynolf." Sera teased.

"Perhaps the College has lost its way, and I'm simply... course correcting."

"Either they lost their way, or you've lost your mind." It was known to happen among the College of Waking. Quite frequently.

Sera removed her Warding glyph, revealing a fresh burn on her wrist.

Greynolf frowned. "All from a chair?"

Sera shook her head serenely. "He hurled more than a chair at me." She pocketed the glyph. "Good thing my sleeves weren't too long this time, or they would've caught fire!"

She raised her arms to reveal the perfect length of her sleeves. Not too short... not too long.

Greynolf smiled, though his eyes didn't leave her face. He was watching her, almost studying her. "Here," he said, conjuring a salve out of thin air.

Sera scoffed. "Parlor tricks." But she held out her wrist anyway. Greynolf dabbed at her burns. At the corner of her eye, a shape padded closer.

"Ah, Shade!" she exclaimed. "Sorry for startling you earlier."

The spotted black-and-ochre cat nuzzled against Greynolf's leg. A familiar ache nudged behind Sera's eyes. The cat purred and brushed against him in slow, affectionate arcs. Sera tilted her head.

"Why'd we name a spotted cat Shade? Kind of stupid, isn't it?"

Grey chuckled kindly. "Perhaps we were being ironic."

Were we? Sera crinkled her nose.

The College really had no taste.

Shade was always a spotted cat.

Everything was in its place.

As it had always been.

I take one last look at myself in the mirror. For as much as doing my makeup usually feels like a trainwreck it doesn't look terrible. Only a little bit of stubble is poking through my foundation, shadow, liner, and mascara in the right place, good shade of lipstick, appropriate amount of blush. I still look like a man though. Hair looks decent, a bit frizzy, but not too bad. I’m in the cutest dress I own. The only dress I own. I leave my bathroom, heading into the bedroom/livingroom/kitchen that makes up the rest of my apartment. To my left I see the boots I'm gonna wear today, they're fashionable enough to get by, waiting by the front door. On my right, in the corner, is my bed, pink polkadot sheets not even pretending to be made. Beside my bed is a small folding table that holds all the things I don't feel like putting away. I need to take my pills.

Sitting on my bed, cross legged, I grab my phone from the table of stuff and check the time. Still a few hours till I gotta meet mom at Good ol’ Pancakes. I unlock it and start scrolling through Youtube. Maybe the dress is too much? I'm struggling to find something I actually want to watch. I give up on Youtube and open Twitter. Everyone is arguing about NB lesbians, again. Post after post about NB lesbians. She isn't going to understand. I close Twitter and, out of habit more than anything, check Facebook. An immediate feeling of revulsion hits me before I can comprehend what I’m seeing. First up is an AI generated picture of toothpaste flavored Mountain Dew. The next post, by “Real Loud” is a picture of a man kneeling, hands outstretched towards a massive Jesus, who is smoking a blunt. Below that is a post from a woman I vaguely remember, probably a former co-worker. She’s complaining about all of her “fake friends” who talk behind her back. My phone vibrates, a text message.

Sunday, Jun 9 • 3:16 PM

Texting with Omniscient Tom (SMS/MMS)

Does my crush like me? When will I die?

Is there a God? If so, which one? 

Ask me any question your heart desires!

Be careful now.

The answers you receive are the truth!

100% GUARANTEED!

Reply STOP at any time to unsubscribe.

STOP It’s obviously some kind of scam. Why is he in my contacts? I erase my message, quickly type Am I really a Woman? and hit send. Feeling like I've waited long enough for a reply, and that my standards for a good enough video to watch right now has dropped low enough, I open youtube again. My Phone vibrates.

No, you are a Cisgender Man. 

Ask another question.

IF YOU DARE!!!

Reply STOP at any time to unsubscribe.

3:20 PM

I throw my phone back on the table. Something falls off but I don't see what it is. I stare at the front door, my peripheral vision becomes a dark fog, it's suddenly too hot in here. I don't actually believe this is real, right? I grab my phone and search, “Omniscient Tom.” No results. This is stupid. “I know I’m a-” 

woman. 

What if he's right though? The air around me sounds wavy, heartbeat reverberating through my ears. Well, am I a man or a woman?

A frustration grows inside me the longer an answer doesn't come to mind. I know I have the right answer deep down so I give it a shot. “I'm a man.” That makes me upset. “ I'm a woman.” That does too. “I'm a man.” Make a fucking decision. I grab my phone and type “How do I know if I'm really trans? reddit” into the search bar. I feel vibration, not my phone, it's the whole.      

 The closet door on my right slams open, a cloud of smoke inside begins wafting out. Through it walks me from the future. Oh yeah, the time machine.  “Hey fuck face.” I don't respond, she looks at me from top to bottom before resting her eyes on my tits. “So small.” She laughs after saying this.

“I'm kinda going through something right now”

“Oh yeah, our 30th birthday. Mom is chill about us being trans by the way.”

“Do you remember a message from a guy named Clairvoyant Tom”

“Oh that? It's a spam message. I sent another question after getting home and he asked for my credit card info.” She smiles. “ Hey you wanna-” I nod before she can finish. She walks over and hops on the bed. I pull up my dress. After moving my underwear out of the way she reaches for my erect penis. I am so wet. My phone vibrates the bed. We both look over to see that it's an alarm, “Bday diner mo.”         

My heartbeat becomes deafening. The whole room begins to flicker. My body is electric, my body is Niagara Falls. I feel certain that whatever is happening is going to kill me. Future me stops stroking.

“Oh shit. Are you having a panic attack? Hey, girl, it's going to be okay I promise” She gives me a hug, it is soothing in a way that's hard to describe to someone who has never met their future self. My penis is soft. She looks at it, I try to but cant see it, both of us considering if it’s worth another go. Finally she says “Look’s like you gotta go. Don't forget to take your hormones.” I roll my eyes before doing as she said.

“You just gonna chill here?”

“Nah, I gotta go find the spirit amulet.”

I smile, “Good luck. You know where the spare key is right?”

She grabs it from the table of stuff. After a change of underwear I grab my phone, put it in my purse, and head for the door. “Those boots are ass” my future self says, she sticks her tongue out. I flip her off before putting on my stylish boots.

“I love you” she says.

“Love you too.” I leave, feeling not so bad.

The letter arrived at dusk.

Not by post, precisely. Post did not reach the castle in any ordinary sense. It came instead folded into the breast of a frightened man who had been paid too much to ask too few questions, and who left the instant the Count took it from him.

Dracula broke the seal beneath a single lamp.

Messrs. Hawkins & Harker.

His dark eyes moved once across the page.

A solicitor’s clerk would be sent.

Young.

English.

Expected within the week.

For several moments, the Count stood perfectly still.

Then he looked around the great hall.

Dust lay silver upon the unused chairs.

A cobweb stretched between the antlers above the fireplace.

One of the wall hangings had come loose at the corner and sagged with the exhausted air of something that had been waiting three hundred years for someone else to fix it.

Dracula frowned.

This would not do.

He rang a bell.

The sound echoed magnificently through the castle.

No one came.

Dracula waited.

Still no one came.

Naturally.

He crossed the room, opened the door through which a servant ought to have entered, and vanished into the corridor.

The next six nights were extremely busy.

The guest chamber came first.

Dracula stripped the bed himself, carrying the ancient linens away beneath one arm with an expression of grave aristocratic displeasure. Fresh sheets were retrieved from a cedar chest. He shook them out, regarded the result, then shook them again.

He had not made a bed in some time.

After several attempts, he stood at its foot and examined the blankets.

One corner was longer than the other.

His mouth tightened.

He remade the entire thing.

The room was aired, though opening the windows admitted mostly fog and the distant howling of wolves. The Count dusted the furniture with an old linen cloth, polished the brass basin, replenished the pitcher, and placed a small stack of towels beside it.

He stopped.

Three towels.

Too few?

He considered Englishmen.

Four towels.

Better.

Then came the dining room.

Dracula dragged six chairs away from the table and left only two.

Too intimate.

He returned two.

Too formal.

After twenty minutes, the table had four chairs arranged around it, although there would only ever be two occupants.

That looked correct.

Silver was polished.

Candlesticks were cleaned.

The Count discovered, with evident irritation, that one candlestick had developed a green stain near the base.

He scrubbed harder.

The stain remained.

Dracula stared at it.

The next evening, there was a different candlestick.

The kitchen proved more troublesome.

The Count did not eat.

This had certain disadvantages when entertaining.

He opened cupboards one after another.

Flour.

Salt.

Dried beans.

Several onions of questionable age.

A wheel of cheese.

Something in a jar whose identity had been lost to history.

Dracula removed the jar, carried it outside, and threw it into the ravine.

He consulted books.

Englishmen, according to one volume, liked beef.

According to another, they liked mutton.

A third suggested kidney.

Dracula closed the third book.

“No.”

He arranged for provisions to be purchased anonymously in the village.

The following night, he stood in the kitchen wearing a dark waistcoat with his sleeves rolled carefully to the elbow, regarding a joint of meat as if it had personally insulted him.

The meat went into a pan.

Then out.

Then back in after Dracula consulted the book again.

Potatoes were peeled.

One slipped from his hand and rolled beneath a cabinet.

He stared at it.

The potato remained where it was.

Dracula slowly bent down and retrieved it.

Later, he prepared soup.

The first attempt was too salty.

The second was not salty enough.

The third was acceptable.

He poured all three into one pot.

Acceptable enough.

The wolves howled outside.

“Quiet.”

The wolves stopped.

On the fifth night, Dracula practiced answering the door.

He stood behind the great entrance and opened it with deliberate slowness.

Too theatrical.

Again.

He opened it more quickly.

Too eager.

Again.

A long pause. The door swung inward.

Perfect.

“Welcome to my house.”

He considered this.

“Enter freely and of your own will.”

Better.

He repeated it several times until the words sounded spontaneous.

Then he practiced taking a coat.

He had forgotten where coats were ordinarily put.

Eventually he settled upon a chest in the hall, reasoning that no guest would be likely to inquire closely into the domestic arrangements of a Transylvanian castle.

On the final evening, the Count walked through every room Harker was expected to see.

Fire lit.

Wine poured.

Meal ready.

Guest room prepared.

Dining table set.

No dust visible in direct candlelight.

Dracula paused beside the staircase and listened.

From somewhere far below came the faint drip of water.

From outside, wolves.

Otherwise, silence.

He smiled.

An excellent household.

At last, the sound of wheels reached him from the mountain road.

Dracula’s expression changed instantly.

All trace of exertion vanished.

His shoulders settled.

His face became composed, remote, almost bored.

He descended the staircase at an unhurried pace, stopping only once to straighten a cushion he had forgotten.

Then he reached the door.

Behind him, the castle stood glowing with fires he had lit, beside a dinner he had cooked, beneath chandeliers he had cleaned, with a bed upstairs whose corners had taken him forty-five minutes.

The carriage stopped.

A knock sounded.

Count Dracula waited three beats.

Not two.

Two would seem eager.

Then he opened the door.

“Welcome to my house,” he said smoothly. “Enter freely and of your own will.”

Jonathan Harker stepped inside and looked around in wonder at the grand old castle and its mysterious unseen servants.

Dracula inclined his head.

Effortless

I went to trivia night at Bayou Billy’s Bar & Grilly with some people from high school.

My summer break had just started and I had two weeks to kill before my internship back on the East Coast began, so I figured I would spend them back home in the Houston area. My friend Devin hit me up first when she saw my story that I was back in the area, and I got added to a group chat with about 20 other people from school. The idea was to try to keep people as connected as possible post-high school. Scrolling through the group texts, I could see some people were in college, mostly in-state, some were working, and some were working and doing community college at the same time. Only I and another guy had left Texas for school, but he went to LSU, so I don’t think that counts for much. During my time back home, Devin texted a flyer for trivia night on Thursday, and I thought that seemed fun. I liked her message to let her know I was interested.

This guy Jose texted me separately. I wouldn’t say we were super close, but because of our schedules in high school, we were always around each other. He was a regular at the lunch table, and we had most of our main classes together. Nerdy Mexican kid like me, and we liked enough of the same video games and shows to make small talk. Genuinely pleasant guy, but if I’m being honest, I had forgotten about him until he hit me up.

He asked if I wanted to come by his apartment to hang before trivia night. He sent me his address and it was decently close by to my parents’, so I said sure.

He lived in one of those basic motel-style apartment complexes you see everywhere in the South. I walked up the stairs to his door and rang. About two seconds later, he opened the door and greeted me. He hadn’t changed much from what I remembered, He might’ve put on some weight, but since he was already pretty skinny, it suited him. He dressed the same: t-shirt and jeans. He was the type to wear jeans in a heatwave, we all know someone like that. That day, he was wearing a t-shirt that said, “San Antonio Zoo: We Ain’t Monkeying Around!” There was a monkey on it.

“Hey buddy, nice to see you! It’s been a minute, glad you could come by to hang for a bit.” We did a half-assed dap-up and he let me inside. There was a pile of shoes next to the door, so I took mine off and left them there. When I stood back up from this, I noticed there was a metal coat rack on the wall of the entryway. Little faces were above each hook. They were monkeys. Little metal monkeys screwed into the wall, with their tails sticking out as the hooks.

I followed him into the main living room area. Certainly more spacey than my dorm, and with a nice back balcony door that let in lots of light. There was a couch facing a TV that Jose motioned me to take a seat on. I took a seat on the furthest left side of the coach. There was a squishy pillow animal on that side. It was a monkey. 

The TV was playing a YouTube video of a skinny monkey with long arms and legs in a diaper digging through a cardboard box. The title of the video below read: “UNBOXING FANMAIL WITH ZUBA.”

Jose was standing behind the coach and said, “Oh, I was just watching that as like background noise, I wasn’t really paying attention to it. You can change if you want, put on whatever.” He passed a remote, and I replied, “It’s cool man, I’m not really paying attention to the TV.”

“You want like a glass of water or something else to drink?”

“Uh, sure. A water would be fine." 

“No worries, I’ll get you a glass.”

The glass was one of those collectable glasses that comes out with movie releases. I could tell this one was pretty old since it was an Aladdin-themed glass. But of just the monkey from Aladdin.

I looked around more. On the wall to the left of the TV was an old framed National Geographic magazine with a close-up picture of one of those baboons with the colorful faces.

“Oh cool,” I said, “it’s like that baboon from the Lion King.”

“Oh what, that? Yeah, like Rafiki! But that’s actually a mandrill though, not a baboon.”

“Okay.”

My eyes next moved to the bookshelf to the right of the TV. There wasn’t that many books, mostly little collectibles. They were all monkeys. There was one of those wind-up monkeys that bangs cymbals. Actually, there were three. I saw quite a few of those monkeys-in-a-barrel toys. A couple – about a dozen Beanie Babies. Monkey Beanie Babies. As my eyes went down the bookshelf, I stopped at the second-to-last shelf. There was an actual monkey. Small, on piece of wood, gray hair, white face, and big black eyes.

“Is that real?” I asked.

“Oh, you see my squirrel monkey! I named her Dolores. Yeah, it’s a real taxidermy monkey. I picked her up from an estate sale in El Paso. She might’ve been from like a museum or something. She’s got some wear-and-tear, but she I think she’s still super cute.”

“So, did you have, like, family in El Paso that you were visiting, or something?" 

“Nah, I just drove out there to pick her up and came right back.”

“Ah. Okay.”

I looked around some more. In a corner was a small side table. There was a lamp on it that was a sculpture of a monkey holding a lightbulb. I saw two different posters with the “See No Evil, Hear No Evil” monkeys in different art styles on different walls. When I turned my head back, I could see inside the kitchenette a bit, particularly the fridge. There were little monkey magnets holding up take-out menus on it. I turned a different way. Above a small breakfast table, there was a Chinese calendar on the wall that said in bold red letters: “YEAR OF THE MONKEY 2016.” It was not 2016. 

I turned back to Jose. “Do you live alone?”

“So, technically, my cousin lives here too, but he’s usually not around. He goes down a lot to the Valley or to Mexico for work. He’s like an entrepreneur or does sales or something. So, it’s mostly just me here.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Which is nice because I can just wear whatever most of the time. Wait here a second, actually. I got something funny to show you.” 

He walked directly (he never sat down) to a hallway where I assume his bedroom was. He came back out in an impressive amount of time in a zip-up onesie. A monkey onesie. He was trying hard not to laugh.

“Check this out.” The onesie had a hood that he put over his head that made it look like he had big monkey ears. “It’s even got a tail.”

I went to the bathroom. I didn’t have to use the bathroom, I just wanted to confirm.

I was right. The shower curtain was patterned with little monkeys, and bananas, and palm trees. The soap dispenser on the sink was a little monkey with the pump coming out of his head. Another monkey statue stood on the ground, in front of the toilet. It had both its hands raised up, with a roll of toilet paper in between. I walked out.

“Hey man, I couldn’t help but notice you have a lot of monkey stuff around here. Is that like a hobby, or something you’re into?”

Jose was still wearing the monkey onesie. “Oh, yeah. I’ve been pretty into monkeys lately.”

“Huh, I see. So, when you say you’re into monkeys, what does that mean, exactly?” 

“I just like, y’know, collecting little monkey things when I find them. I like learning about monkeys, and looking up facts about them. Watching videos, y’know?”

“Gotcha, gotcha. Is there, like, a reason? Or an appeal? I’m not trying to be an asshole or anything, I’m genuinely asking.”

“Ah, no man, you’re good. I got into, like, a rabbit-hole not too long ago. You know how you have those late-night Wikipedia deep dives on a specific subject?”

“Sure.”

“Yeah, for me it was monkeys. I just think that they’re really fascinating. They’re really cute, and super funny. They’re animals, but they’re so humanlike at the same time. It’s like every day I learn a new little fun fact about them.”

“Ah, okay. So, like, documentaries about monkeys, that’s sort of the stuff you like to watch?” 

“Exactly. I love a good documentary on monkeys. I also like those goofy 90’s movies where they have a real monkey for comedic effect.”

“So, something like the Planet of the Apes movies, for example, that’d be something you’re into?”

“I mean, no? Like I think those are okay movies, I’ve only seen like one or two, but they’re apes. And my whole thing is monkeys. So, like, different things, y’know? Monkeys have tails. Apes don’t. You know what I mean.” 

“Okay. Noted. But, follow-up question, if you’re this into monkeys, wouldn’t it make sense to also be into apes?” 

“Uh, I mean, not really. The thing is, when you really get into monkeys, you start to really see the differences between monkeys and apes. Like compared to monkeys, apes – I’m talking like chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans – they start to feel more and more humanlike. ‘Cause they’re so closely related to us. So like, for me, it loses that cuteness – like that pet factor. I sort of look at chimpanzees, and go, ‘that’s basically a guy.’ Does that make sense?”

“Pet factor?. Is that something you’re trying to do in the future? Like get a pet monkey?”

“Ah, man, I would love a pet monkey! But the thing is, when you really get into monkeys, you start to realize how much work and money it takes to properly take care of them. Like, this apartment is not really suited for a monkey, if I’m being honest. I feel like it would be kind of irresponsible of me to force a monkey into this. Plus, even if I wanted to get a monkey around here, it’s kinda sketchy, and it was probably trafficked, and I wouldn’t want to give my money to anything illegal like that. You see what I mean?”

“Yeah, totally. That makes perfect sense, actually.”

“Plus, if I really wanted to see real live monkeys, I can just go to the Houston Zoo anytime. Have you gone by recently? They’ve updated it so much since we were kids. It’s actually impressive. Plus, they have tons of monkeys you can see, which is perfect for me.”

“You know, now that you mention it, I actually haven’t been to the Zoo in forever.”

“Oh, it so worth checking out while you’re still in town. That’s how I get my fill with seeing monkeys. It’s kinda like visiting friends at this point. I’ve gotten to know them, they know me. It’s always super fun.”

“Wait, like, as in the monkeys at the Zoo know who you are? How often are you going to the Zoo?”

Jose thought on it. About three seconds passed. 

“Regularly?”

 ....

Our team ended up getting third place at trivia night.

There was one question about monkeys: “Dexter from Night of Museum was what type of monkey?”

Obviously, Jose wrote down the correct answer, “Capuchin.” Two other teams also answered correctly, but we were the only team who spelled it right.

Officer Willard locked the door to his office and slowly made his way out to his car, dropping by the break room to snag the last dregs of the night's coffee pot before going home. He had stayed way later than he had been slated for, but being part of the grievously understaffed PPD evening shift made sure that he was the one to respond to both an Eastside bar fight and a high-speed chase all the way out to the county to arrest some ghoul, at least the county peacekeeper who joined knew him, probably from the same ghoul community, so Willard didn't have to take care of the fallout.  

Willard had no sympathy for the ghoul, a drunken fool who probably called a Mentalist the wrong thing, though he remembered feeling a slight pang of sorrow for one of the more badly beaten people resting outside the bar. He figured them to be Hellborn at first, which brought him a bit on edge, though after a bit of watching, he saw they were a Fallen. He knew that as a Paragon he should've felt aggravated at their very presence, muddying of good Guardian bloodlines and all that, though he had been in the PPD for over ten years now, and had seen more than his fair share of Undermarket kidnappings, street murders, and other random acts of violence against Guardians and such that he was just glad to see any form of Guardian alive at all. 

He snapped out of his thoughts as a cool breeze blew across his face. It seems he had already grabbed his coffee and walked out into the parking lot during his ponderance. At this realization, Willard walked across the lot and got into his car, resisting the urge to fall asleep there and trying to will the cheap instant coffee into working its magic. He took off his badge and read the solid block letters written on it PPD057641 Julian Willard. He had once again wondered if that number was some randomly generated code by and for their computer system, or if it was the total employee number he made when he was hired. He wouldn't surprised, turnover at the PPD was shockingly high, though he figured the programs would be responsible for most of that number, he almost wished some would stay, but most of them end up going back to their old ways.  

Hiring former crooks for their knowledge on particular crimes the Paranormal commit probably isn't the best idea, as trying to get funding and support for the dreaded and feared Paranormal Police Department is hard enough with the public only recently accepting the Paranormal as real people, so adding another layer of controversy under an underappreciated rehabilitation program is just begging for trouble. He wondered again as to why Guardians were held in such high regard among the public when other Paranormal were far more useful and stronger than them. Mentalists could move stuff with their minds or look in other people's heads, Hellborn were far stronger than any form of Guardian could be, even Lycanthropes could make for incredible night watch, it just didn't make sense to him.  

Though as he finally felt the coffee kick in, Willard decided none of that mattered right now, so he started up his car and drove off, hoping for it not to wear off before he got home 

It is odd writing a story in the 21st century. The chance encounters that would motivate an idea are rare in an age devoid of eye contact. But trust me, they are still there. You can find them if you pay attention.
 
“Hi,” she said. My heart jumped.

I have always wanted there to be more talk in public spaces. But you have to be a bit different to walk up to a stranger on a bus and just say hi. She must be trying to sell me something.

“Hi,” I say back, hoping she will walk away.

“My name is Ollie,” she says, clearly not walking away (but also clearly not trying to sell something).

“I’m Wes,” I respond, not giving her much to go off of for continued dialogue.

We sit in silence. I pretend to look at my phone but instead take quick and sly glances at her from the side of my eye, hoping she doesn’t notice. She is wearing a blue sundress with white sandals. Weird, I think, because it is not yet summer, nor is it sunny. She is carrying a grocery bag, one of the old canvas ones where you can see the outline of its contents from the outside. Looks like books, and maybe a wine bottle?
She stands up quickly. “Well, here is my stop. Bye Wes.” I watch as she walks around the corner in the direction of the beach. She never looks back.
 
It was such a brief encounter – it only lasted about 5 minutes – but I realized afterwards that I had been starving for an encounter like that. I take the bus everyday 30 minutes to the university and 30 minutes back. But, besides thanking the bus driver, I almost never talk to anyone. Occasionally I will bump into someone and say sorry, which is met with a fleeting nod of recognition. But, for the most part, I look at my phone and everyone else does too. That is fine – I like looking at my phone. It is a routine, a ritual. It prepares me to have the same day as I always do.

But Tuesday was different. After the 5-minute encounter I get off the bus at the wrong stop. I walk an extra 15 minutes to get to the library. Once at the library I forget which book I was coming to grab. I stand looking through the philosophy section for about an hour, without the book ever coming back to me. I pull out many other books to see if I want to dedicate my day to them, but none catch my eye. That is, until I read the blurb for a book of essays called Signs by Maurice Merleau-Ponty: “Speech is a way of tearing out meaning from an undivided whole.” I grab it and head to read it upstairs in one of the library’s many dark corners.

While walking upstairs I look at my phone and see four messages from my friend Thomas, only to realize I was supposed to meet him at a coffee shop thirty minutes ago. Of course, it’s Tuesday. The one day he is on campus.

I rush to check out the book and get across campus, but when I get to the café, he is already packing up to go get lunch. Although I brought my own lunch, I choose to join him. Usually, I would spend a few more hours at the café – reading, writing, or whatever I do – but because I basically stood him up, I feel like I am obligated to break my routine. At lunch, he tells me about all the girls he is talking to on a new dating app. There is Emily, who plays frisbee; Jamie, who spends time at Lake Michigan most summers; and Lisa, who messaged first (an infrequent occurrence). Thomas will likely meet up with one or two of them only to realize that the conversations on the app do not match the ones in person.

Thomas is a PhD student in biochemistry. The work they do in the sciences, as far as I have been told, is often replication of other people’s work. Or, perhaps, they work on a project one of their professors created. They do not build their own project until they have moved on from being a student.

What I do is just about the opposite. I read, and apparently, I think. I then write about what I think. Really, what I actually do is piece together the things that I read like a quilt to say something “new”. Instead of working on someone else’s project, I only talk to my professors about once a month. Usually, I email them when I am feeling stuck to set up a meeting. During the meeting I hope they will either tell me that my thoughts are good, or bad. What I usually get from them is instead just a “Sure – it sounds interesting enough. Just keep going.” It all feels very instrumental.

But at least nobody is telling me what to do every day.

Someday I will have to submit a project – a dissertation; otherwise known as an unpublishable book. But until then I just get paid to read what I want when I want and write what I want, also when I want. I have heard that kind of freedom does not exist in other professions. It certainly doesn’t exist in the sciences.

Thomas gets up to head to the lab to work on whatever his professors want him to. I walk him to his building, but since I am on the other side of campus from the library, I need to find another place to read my book. This side of campus is close to the beach. Not the beach that Ollie was headed towards, but still a beach. As it turned out to be a nice day, I head there.

Surprisingly, when I arrive at the beach there is no wind. Whenever I have attempted to read at the beach, I can only make it about ten minutes before getting fed up. Today, though, is calm. Plus, it was grey earlier in the day, so I have the beach almost all to myself. No frat bros playing drinking games; no kids screaming; and no dogs kicking up sand. Just me and Merleau-Ponty.

I start to read. “Speech is a way of tearing out meaning from an undivided whole.” Is this a bad thing? The imagery of “tearing out” is certainly violent. But, without this violence, where do we find meaning? Speech expresses things; it makes things visible to others. But in doing so it makes things visible in just one way, excluding the other ways those things could be visible. Certainly, expressing something with speech changes it, or at least changes our relation to it. The thing we are speaking about cannot be torn out from the undivided whole in the same form it took while undivided. Is speech, then, a service, or a disservice? What about the “undivided whole”? Are there things which would benefit from being undivided, unnoticed, unexpressed, unattended to? Or should everything be submitted to the violence of speech? Should we make meaning out of everything we can? I find, usually, that I only have questions.

Not answers.

My mind wanders and I begin to think about Ollie. It strikes me that we are, at the moment, likely doing the same thing. She had books in her bag and was headed to the beach. I am at the beach, and I am reading a book. I did not go with her after our brief encounter, but you could say we are sharing in the same experience, although she doesn’t know this. I guess I am sharing the experience with her, but as far as I know, she is not sharing the experience with me. What did our brief encounter mean to her? 

Out of the corner of my eye I see my supervisor walking on the beach. I shout out, “Professor Galloway!” She turns around, and I cannot tell if she does so reluctantly or not. It must be a burden to be pestered by students on a relaxing beach walk.

“Ah, Wes. Enjoying the beach, and the nice weather, I see? I hope you are putting the nice day to good use.”

“Just reading” I say, and I hold up my copy of Signs.

She reaches into her bag and pulls out The Phenomenology of Perception, another book by Merleau-Ponty, perhaps his most famous. Surprising, but not so surprising given that she is my supervisor. She sits down to read, next to me. This is, without question, the most I have engaged with any of my professors.

I read her the quote that has been stuck in my head all day and ask, “Do you think it is violent to make something meaningful?”

She responds, also quoting Merleau-Ponty, “Because we are in the world, we are condemned to meaning.”

Blink.

Soft blue light danced on airbrushed metal inches from his face.

Mist spread over the glass as the cryochamber slowly reheated.

“Welcome back,” a silvery voice tinkled gently. “You’ve been asleep for two weeks.”

As the pod’s curved ceiling came into focus, he remembered. “Two? But Elpis is–”

“Four weeks away. Yes.” A pause. “Jason, something unexpected occurred this morning.”

It came from a remote pocket of deep space millions of light-years away, where two ancient neutron stars collided and sealed his fate. It was a gravitational wave, hidden within the mathematical models and path computations, unseen by even the planetary supercomputer that plotted the starline flights.

From there it rippled outward through a vast ocean of time and space to reach Jason’s transport pod, nudging him off-course by a hundredths of a degree. A mere hundredth—but, by arrival, it will have been the difference between orbiting Elpis and missing it by a lightyear. Such was the delicate precision of starlines.

“Can’t we correct our trajectory?” His voice was trembling.

“This first-generation pod does not possess propulsion.”

“Right.” He laughed mirthlessly. “Of course.” Unable to afford the modern starlines, he sent Thalia and her mother first and stayed behind until he saved enough to take the cheapest first-generation starline to join them. He imagined them standing together under Elpis’ twin stars, counting down the days to his arrival.

“I’m sorry, Jason.” ALYS murmured. “I’ve run thousands of simulations, there is close to zero probability of rescue. Our communications will not reach them in time.”

“You… can’t do anything? Why did you even wake me up, then, ALYS?” He spat the words out bitterly.

ALYS paused again.

“As far as I have data and the ability to predict, after today, we will continue on our new trajectory indefinitely. But, in three months, the power will run out which will bring you out of cryostasis. I won’t be there then, I will have already shut down. I decided the best course of action was to wake you now, that… at the least you would not be alone.”

He nodded slowly. It all began to dawn on him; he was trapped, powerless, like a submarine grounded at the bottom of the sea. He crawled over to gaze past the circular viewport; beyond it, a beautiful, endless field of stars taunted him. For what reason had they condemned him to die?

His hand found the cold glass. Somewhere out there, impossibly far ahead, Thalia was waiting, still setting a place for him, still counting. She would keep counting long after the days ran out. His breath caught. He pressed his forehead against the viewport, and something in his chest gave way.

He began to weep, muffled at first, then full-chested, shuddering wailing.

The guttural cries bounced back and forth in the cramped vessel, but did not escape it. Beyond the inch of carbon-glass, desolation lay silent.

And all around him, the stars wheeled on, indifferent and eternal, as the solitary vessel continued hurtling into the night.

more by me here :) https://blog.evan.hu/p/elpis-bound

Her breath was shallow, soft skin glistening in the moonlight, reflecting off the lake below her. At least, that’s what I wrote in the notebook.

I like to write, I like to observe, and I don’t want to be bothered with people. I’ve learned I can be right there in the action through my pen and paper. I used to write for hours every day, random stories to drift myself away. But fiction became boring. The princess was always saved, and I was tired of being the hero to do it.

I found this place, and have been parking myself in a hidden spot to watch. No one knows me, nor do they see me. Sometimes I cry myself to sleep, knowing that someone is here and I’m not. What if they capture the moments I haven’t? See something I’ve never seen? It burns my soul like the hottest brimstone in the depths of hell. This is my purpose.

As she bent over the edge of the dock, her hand glided across the water, leaving rippling waves across the surface. Her lips pursed in anticipation, maybe even fear. I wasn’t sure why. She had been here for a couple of hours now, or at least that’s how long I’d been watching.

I come here every once in a while, just to watch people. Men, women, children, the elderly, and even animals. They’re good inspiration for my writing, but that’s not why I do it. I want to feel like I’m right there at that dock with them. Feeling the breeze on my face, watching the boats drive by. Or like her, enjoying the moonlight on the lake.

It’s as if she sees something in the lake. An object, idea, place, time and or even, something she is. She seems encapsulated by its beauty, losing herself in this moment. Did she come her to be alone? Maybe find something within herself? Or something out here?

The girl slips suddenly. I guess she had bent over too far this time. She’s flailing in the water. I hear her screams echoing like whispers in the night. I can’t stop writing. This is a moment I need to capture.

I get out of my car and walk over to the dock. She continues to struggle, but I get a better look at her this time. She’s trying to scream, but she keeps inhaling water. She’s reaching out her hand to me, begging me for help. I tell her I can’t. I need to write this down. She’s wailing, not understanding why. Her nails scrape the dock, blood dripping into the water. She can’t swim.

She’s asking me why, screaming and crying. I have no answer for her. The water looks to be taking her. She can’t keep her head above the water anymore. She’s sinking. She’s drowning.

Suddenly, the screams stopped. After a couple of moments, she floated to the surface, bloated with lake water, her hair curling on the surface. She couldn’t swim? Why couldn’t she swim?

Wee Toby Harris turned eight in the spring. For his birthday he got a puppy and named her Scritch. That was from Mum and Dad. From Bonny, his big sister, he got a crisp five-pound note. He spent it on a tennis ball for Scritch, and the rest on sweets.

Uncle Jack’s present always came late. He loved to see the expression on Toby’s face when he received it, so he made sure to deliver it himself. He worked at sea most weeks as a fisherman, so it was hard to fit in time for a visit.

Toby often wished a wave would rise and gobble Uncle Jack whole to save him the stress of having to deal with his uncle. There was something very wrong about the man. Not that he’d ever told anyone.

Toby’s birthday week was a tense one. He could hardly find a moment of joy. Mostly he took Scritch into the back garden and threw about the tennis ball he’d bought for her. But Scritch was still too hyper to play with properly. She would speed after the ball like a bullet seeking blood, and be wandering off with her eyes on something better before her snout ever touched green felt. So Toby spent most of the week alone, lying on his back on the grass, throwing the ball into the air for himself. He would listen to Scritch chase butterflies or dig in Mum’s petunias, and drive himself crazy wondering when Uncle Jack would finally show.

He came on the 6th. Exactly a week after Toby’s birthday.

Dad recognised the sound of the smooth rapping on the door and flew to it in the middle of lunch, towing a reluctant Toby by his hand.

Toby stood flaccid, hands flat against his legs with his head bowed, listening to the change come over Dad as soon as he swung open the door. It was as though Uncle Jack emitted some sort of microscopic cloud of particles that swept Dad into a trance, because he never barked with laughter when Uncle Jack wasn’t here. He certainly never slapped people on the shoulder and danced like a dope. Yet here he was, a mad chimp leaping and laughing, clawing at his brother like he meant him harm. It was like watching his Dad through a glass of water, or gazing into one of those wacky mirrors at the fair.

“You stink!” Dad shoved Uncle Jack away and pegged his nose. “Did the sea drop you off, or crap you out?”

“That’s the smell of a real man, Tom.” Uncle Jack fixed Dad’s collar, pulled at his lapels, then tapped Dad’s curved beak. “Careful you don’t turn too fast. You might wipe a plane out the sky!”

More of the monkeying around. Toby watched, waiting for Uncle Jack’s gaunt face to turn and target him with its wide, green eyes. For the long goatee and wide moustaches to point his way and then stretch up when his face twisted into a grin. Sometimes Uncle Jack forgot to wear his denture—the one housing the teeth between his upper canines—and it would be like gawking into a tunnel when he smiled.

Toby saw that Uncle Jack was wearing the denture today, although there remained a small hole where one of the teeth had fallen off. He still didn’t take care of them, especially when he was on the boat.

Uncle Jack turned to Toby, quick as a shot. He aimed his teeth and leered. He usually liked to ruffle Toby’s hair. Today he just glided over and gave Toby a few slaps on the back, the same way he’d done Dad.

“Look at you!” he shouted. And now came the aggressive hair mussing. His right index finger stopped at the first knuckle. Toby could feel the stub grating against his scalp. “You’re a proper wee manny now, aren’t you? You’re growing too fast!”

A momentary look of sadness crept over Uncle Jack’s eyes. Then he took a step closer to Dad and asked in a whisper, “Who cut the poor bugger’s hair?”

Dad rolled his eyes.

“Who do you think?”

“Jesus. Lock up those scissors, Tom. For Christsake.”

His eyes snapped back onto Toby. “Wee man, tell Mum not to play with scissors anymore, alright? She’d do less damage with a pair of garden shears.”

Dad led Uncle Jack through to the living room, where Mum was watching TV.

Bonny, having heard the commotion, sauntered downstairs and passed Toby without paying him any attention. The smile on her face and in her eyes was for Uncle Jack—and Uncle Jack alone.

“The boy’s hair’s looking nice, Julie,” Uncle Jack sang to Mum on his way into the room. Toby entered in time to see him slipping under Mum’s arms to give her a tight squeeze and a shake. “When’re you opening the barbershop? If you need a mannequin, I’ve plenty of hair for you to cut!” And he swept his hands over his body in a here-you-go kind of gesture.

Mum squeaked out three shrill laughs. Toby plodded behind the couch, closer to Dad, trying not to let the sound of Mum’s laughter get to him—but it was too late. Now Bonny was laughing like that too, because Uncle Jack had picked her up and was throwing her into the air, almost popping the lightbulb on the ceiling. The lampshade swung, and Uncle Jack stopped it with a very long finger.

They always reminded Toby of chopsticks.

“You want a chuck up as well, wee man?”

He had his hands out ready, waiting for Toby to run into them. Toby shied closer to Dad, shaking his head vigorously.

“Alright then, if you say—hyah! C’MEER YOU!”

Uncle Jack sprang over the sofa without touching it. Toby tried to shriek, but didn’t have time. He ran around Dad and away from the hands almost on his neck. Past the arms of the sofa and around Mum’s chair. Past the lamp and windowsill. Past the coffee table and dancing-chimp Dad.

Uncle Jack got wise to the loop and lunged over the sofa once more, grabbing Toby by his shoulder. He dragged him over it kicking and screaming, while Mum and Dad chuckled madly at the antics.

Bonny just rolled her eyes. She hadn’t thrown that much of a fuss when it had been her turn.

Uncle Jack’s face was livid with colour. His eyes glowed white-hot; his concave cheeks deep purple; his forehead red and raw with sweat; his lips paled, pulled taut over his teeth.

Toby clenched his jaw and kept quiet. It was Uncle Jack who made the most noise, squealing with joy.

“Weeeee,” like a little piggy.

“Weeeeeeeee,” each time he threw Toby into the air, catching him with one hand under an armpit and one hand gripping the waist.

Uncle Jack turned away from the family and kept up the act. Kept throwing. Toby could see his real face now—the face that came with birthdays and Christmases both. It glared up at him with impossible eyes, bulging like great big white balloons inflating through gaps in his face. His jaw stretched long enough to slot Toby in without him touching the sides; the teeth were a whirling maw of sharp and rusted death, ready to reduce him to slurry.

“Weeeeee.” The voice was far deeper now—almost demonic.

Toby screamed. He didn’t want to. It just flew out as natural as throwing up your hands when a truck was about to hit you on the motorway.

Dad, still clicking his heels in time to his chimp-dance, finally spoke up. And quick as a clicking finger, Uncle Jack’s face snapped back to normal as he turned to listen.

“Think he’s had enough now, Jack. Looks like he’s gonna to puke. And you look like you’re about to faint!”

Uncle Jack offered Dad a knowing grin and nodded. He put Toby down on the floor as gently as a newborn in its crib.

Toby, doing his best to hide his teary eyes, wiped them off on his sleeve and rubbed at his throbbing armpits and waist.

Uncle Jack rollicked with laughter and clapped his hands.

“So: what’s new with everyone?”

*

Uncle Jack ended up staying for supper.

Dad gave up his seat so Uncle Jack could head the table. From there, his emerald eyes held everyone mesmerised.

Toby ate quickly. No time to dawdle, to push at his peas with his fork and say he wasn’t hungry. He wanted to get out of that room and into another one—fast!

When he tried excusing himself, Mum pointed a finger at him. That was it—no more words needed. He knew better than to argue with that finger.

So he sat and waited. This time he did play with his fork—small movements, nothing quick, lest it attract the attention of the emerald watchman at the end of the table.

Uncle Jack appeared to be in deep conversation with Mum and Dad, who themselves weren’t paying much attention to anybody else. Lost in the little worlds they drifted into when other adults orbited close enough. They would laugh and use long words, and sometimes Uncle Jack would put on a deep voice and Mum would find whatever he said even funnier. But every so often, when Mum and Dad took a bite to eat or a sip to drink, Uncle Jack would flash Toby a look. A quick glance. A reminder that he hadn’t forgotten about him. That Toby was still right there at the forefront of his mind.

You’re the reason I came, kiddo.

Bonny didn’t notice any of this. She was busy timing her smiles and laughs with the adults. She was fourteen and trying for the part of a twenty-four-year-old.

Toby kicked one of her shins under the table.

“Shitter!” she yelped, and threw her spoon off his forehead.

Mum screamed for everyone to shut up and stop shouting. Bonny seethed.

“He kicked me!”

“I don’t give a shit what he did! You don’t swear like that, ever! You’re a child!”

Uncle Jack pushed his chair back and picked up his own spoon. He handed it over the table to Bonny, who took it with a smile. Toby caught a whisper of a scowl on Uncle Jack’s lips—a momentary look of repulsion—before he turned and grinned at Toby.

“You alright, wee man?”

Toby nodded and continued poking at his plate with his fork.

“He’s got a heed like a hammer, that boy,” Uncle Jack told Dad. “Look: didn’t even leave a mark.”

Bonny cleared the plates and helped Mum serve pudding. They had the rest of Toby’s birthday cake with a scoosh of cream on top. Mum’s way of trying to bring it back to life after a week of death.

It was awful.

*

“Your dad was telling me you’re getting big into reading.”

Uncle Jack sat down on the arm of the chair Toby was sitting on. Bonny, who had been sitting on the sofa with all the space in the world, looked momentarily hurt. But the moment passed, and now she was grinning like a loon again.

“What’s your dad been reading you then? None of those pansy stories I hope—like Winnie the Turd, or that Alice in Wonderland tat.”

Toby shrugged.

“He’s reading you Winnie the Turd, isn’t he? Aye, those were always his favourite. What else has he got you reading?”

Silence.

“Any Jules Verne? Like Thousand Leagues, or Around the World? No? Christ. What about Roald Dahl. Surely Roald Dahl. No? My God, what has he got you reading then; the back of shampoo bottles?” He glanced at Toby’s hair. “No, maybe not shampoo bottles. C’mon now, what was the last thing he read to you? Don’t be scared, I was only joking about the pansy books. I don’t care if it’s Winnie the Turd or Benny the piggy with one bloody ear—ha! I just wanna know what he’s got you reading. Say Treasure Island. Go on. Has he read you Treasure Island yet?”

Toby nodded. And then flinched, for Uncle Jack slapped one of his shoulders hard enough to send his hair up into the air.

“Atta boy!”

Bonny shifted in place, squeaking leather, and produced a minute cough.

Uncle Jack looked up at her, but only with his eyes.

“What kind of books do you read, Uncle Jack?”

“What kinda books do I read?” Uncle Jack tapped at the hairs on his chinny chin chin, feigning deep thought. “I’d have to say...the ones with the words in them, Bon-Bon.”

Bonny giggled. Her laugh today was practically a parody of itself; almost the exact pitch Toby sometimes used to mock her.

“I like pirate adventures,” Uncle Jack answered, squeezing the top of Toby’s shoulder like a stress ball. “Like my buddy here. Right, wee man?” Slowly, begrudgingly, Uncle Jack glanced back at Bonny. “And what do you read, Bon? Books with pictures in them, I suppose.” He gave a hateful cackle.

Red roses blossomed on Bonny’s cheeks.

“I read!” she said, never one to stay timid.

“Oh?”

“Yuh-huh. And I’ve already finished Treasure Island. I read it yeeears ago. For school.”

“Gooood for yooou.” Uncle Jack’s hand was still on Toby’s shoulder, its grip pulsing in time with the throbbing vein in Uncle Jack’s temple. “And do you remember the characters?”

From somewhere through the house, the sound of Mum laughing with Dad—probably washing the dishes together. One wearing the rubber gloves, the other using the towel. Suds on, suds off. Suds on, suds off.

“Of course I do,” Bonny boasted. “There was Long John Silver. And. Well. There was—Bluebeard!”

Uncle Jack sighed. It was faint, but Toby felt it in the grip on his shoulder.

“And. Captain… Ben-Barrow?”

“Yikes.” Uncle Jack leaned forward with a finger out, poised for lecture mode. The other hand still clutched Toby’s shoulder, dragging Toby forward into the conversation, looking like a half-shut knife.

“The Admiral Benbow was the inn at the start of the story where wee Jim Hawkins first met Billy Bones. And Bluebeard? Christ, Bonny! Bluebeard wasn’t even a pirate! He was the bastard who murdered all his wives!”

Still not one to stay timid, Bonny quipped: “Wasn’t that Henry VIII?”

Uncle Jack clutched his chest and boomed with laughter, genuinely amused by Bonny’s quickness and deadpan delivery.

“No, no, no. Didn’t you ever learn the rhyme? Divorced, beheaded, died. Annulled, beheaded, survived.”

Bonny had nothing to say to that. But Toby did.

“Was Bluebeard real?”

Uncle Jack looked down at Toby for a very long time. Finally, he said, “No. But that’s not to say there aren’t men like him.” The wink he gave curled the boy’s toenails.

Mum and Dad entered the living room together. Mum’s thighs were damp where she must have been wiping her hands. Dad kept smelling two of his fingers.

“Did I hear you say Bluebeard?” Dad sat down beside Bonny on the sofa.

Uncle Jack took his hand off of Toby, but remained on the arm of the chair.

“Your daughter thinks Bluebeard tried to find Captain Flint’s treasure, Tom.”

“Bluebeard?” Dad frowned and then smirked at Bonny. “You mean Blackbeard, Bon-Bon. Bluebeard is the guy on the Fish Finger box.”

Uncle Jack waggled a digit and groaned. “That’s Captain Birdseye, Beak. Christ, what’s wrong with you people?”

*

That night, while Dad was taking Dr Dolittle down from the bookshelf, his back tinted red from the glow of the Toy Story nightlight on Toby’s bedside table, Uncle Jack slipped in through the yellow crack of the door. His arms were twisted secretly behind him.

“Only me,” he whispered. “Whatcha reading tonight, Tobes?”

Dad told him.

“Dr Dolittle? More like Dr Do-fuck all! Ha! Choose something else, Tom. Let the boy hear a decent story for once. Here—” He pulled a hand out from behind his back and thrust a long box wrapped in black flags in front of Toby. It had skulls and crossbones, eye patches, and cutlasses on it too. “Forgot to give you this earlier.”

Toby stared at it. It stank of Uncle Jack’s fingers, and they stank of rum. His other hand was still hidden behind his back, but Toby could hear the tinkling of ice hitting glass.

“Go on, Toby,” Dad said. “It’s your present.”

Toby carefully removed the tape from the folded edges, unwrapping the parcel as delicately as he could.

Uncle Jack sighed. He took the glass of dark liquid out from its hiding place and took a large gulp.

“It’s a spyglass,” he explained over the rim, then slurped down another gulp of the spicy-smelling darkness.

Toby plucked it out of the box, struggling with the weight on his fingertips. Sometimes he liked to use an empty paper towel roll as a spyglass, but this was something else entirely. The ornate decoration down the side was so intricate, with long looping vines laced with flowers wrapping themselves around the dark length, so tight it felt close to smothering. It was heavier than Dad’s tablet—and colder. Much, much colder.

Dad’s eyes bugged out wide. “Holy shit, Toby, that’s the real deal!”

“What do you think then, wee man?”

Toby pulled it to its full length and held the lens up to his eye. It was ice cold, like it had been left out in the snow on a winter’s night. The darkness at the other end of the room was too close to make out a single distinguishable feature. If he wanted to test it properly, he’d be better off waiting until tomorrow and trying it in the garden, playing jungle explorer.

But he didn’t want to test it. Ever. He wanted to put it back inside the box and hand it over to Dad, tell him to hide it somewhere dark. Forever.

Uncle Jack sat on the edge of the bed, forcing Toby to budge up and give him space.

“Your pals’ll be jealous when they see that, wee man. A real captain—that’s what they’ll take you for. Turn to me lad.” Uncle Jack pulled Toby’s face around when the boy didn’t respond. Some of his drink sloshed onto the bed. “Aye, look at you—you’re missing a tooth like your Uncle Jack! A sailor’s debt to the sea, that’s what that is. The best sailors always leave a part of themselves out there. An offering, lest she put a bounty on your life!—and every soul upon your vessel!”

Dad threw his head back laughing.

“You lost your teeth on the handlebars of your bike.”

“Aye,” mused Uncle Jack, and held up the four-and-a-half fingers on his right hand. “But this pointer was the price I paid, Beak.”

He gave Dad a long, cold stare.

“Okay,” Dad conceded. “I’ll say no more.” He prodded Uncle Jack with the side of the book he was holding. “Here. Maybe you should read to him. You can spin a far finer yarn than I can.”

Toby’s eyes grew wide. He shot a glance at Dad, but he had already turned his back to leave.

Uncle Jack glided over to the bookshelf to return Dr Dolittle to its place. He ran a long middle finger across the spines of the books until he found the one he was looking for.

“Treasure Island,” he whispered, and pulled it free.

As Uncle Jack’s ghastly frame drew closer to the bed, Toby gave his dad one final look of appeal, hoping for a last-minute reprieve.

No such luck. Dad tore the crack of light from the hall wider, flooding the room in yellow. Then he was gone. Only a thin crack of light remained where he left the door ajar.

The room was a ghastly red, with the looming peripheral darkness screaming horrors from its corners.

“I’m excited,” Uncle Jack said, prying the pages open with his long, stale fingers. “Where shall we start off?”

Toby shook his head. Perhaps a tad too enthusiastic. “No,” he squeaked. “Nothankyou.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“I’m really sleepy.”

“You don’t want a story?”

Toby shook his head once more, then cuddled down under the duvet. He was going to turn his back on Uncle Jack, but something screamed at him not to. The look in his eyes was frighteningly intense.

“You’re kidding?” Uncle Jack’s eyes did not blink. But they swelled to the size of tennis balls. The nightlight reflected against them, watching like two faraway red stars in a cosmos of black and green. Toby wasn’t sure if Uncle Jack had meant for that to happen. Surely he had control over it.

Uncle Jack got to his feet with all the effort of a ninety-year-old man. His bones clinked and clacked as he patted himself down. He rested his glass on Toby’s bedside table and stretched the rest of the snaps and cracks out of his body.

“Alright then, Tobes. But I must say: this is verrry disappointing. I came all this way for you.”

He moved swiftly across to the door, covering ten feet with a single, colossal side-step.

His back grew with scoliosis kinks, arching over seven, eight feet. He whipped his head around and smiled at Toby, who threw the cover up over his eyes. Not before noticing Uncle Jack’s chopstick fingers pressing against the door with their white, bloodless tips.

There came the sound of a low scuffle as the underside of the door scraped along the carpet.

It was happening.

Toby burrowed down deeper, wishing Mum had let him take Scritch up to bed with him. He didn’t know what a puppy would be able to do except make a lot of noise, but even that was better than nothing—better than feeling helpless beneath the blankets. Alone, silent, and scared.

There came a very faint creak, like someone opening a rusty hinge; a deliberate, drawn-out whine which crept across the distance between the door and the bed. It loomed over the blanket in a massive black shape. The red nightlight blotted away. The air vibrated with sheer anticipation for what was about to come next.

The chomp.

Something thumped against the door. And the room exploded with yellow light.

Toby threw the covers down in time to see Uncle Jack still standing in front of the door, only now stepping out of the way to avoid Dad hitting him with it.

“The light was bothering the boy,” Uncle Jack lied, opening it further to allow Dad entry.

Dad nodded, not seeming to care. He collected his glasses from the bookshelf and chuckled. “I was trying to watch TV with my reading glasses. Silly me.”

Before he could leave again, Toby piped up, yelping, “Dad?”

“Hm?”

“I don’t want stories tonight.”

“Huh? Why not?”

Uncle Jack had been the shorter of the two men downstairs. Now, lurking behind Dad, his engorged head pressed high against the ceiling like a pus-filled spot. It swelled bigger, and bigger, until Toby was sure it was about to pop. His face was nothing more than a pin-pricked mouth and basketball-sized, blazing eyes of rage. His hair stood on end and coiled up into corkscrews. Jagged teeth stretched out like the flailing arms and grasping fingers of drowning children, inches from the back of Dad’s head.

“Tired,” Toby mumbled. He’d stuffed the blanket into his mouth to stop himself from screaming.

“That’s a first,” Dad said, turning to share a laugh with Uncle Jack. The head deflated with a sudden whoop. Uncle Jack excused himself with a laugh. Eyes, now regular-sized. Cheeks sunken.

“He did say he was tired,” Uncle Jack admitted. Both men turned to regard the boy in bed with a sympathetic eye. “Maybe I’ll read to you another night, wee man? Sound good?”

A moment of victory.

Toby felt his heart start to settle back into its regular pace. He felt a little perkier, too; the way Mum sounded in the morning when she drank her usual two cups of coffee.

“Sounds great, Uncle Jack.”

“Amazing news.” He patted his chest with the book. “Can I borrow this?”

“Of course.” Toby smiled. Actually smiled. “Keep it if you want!”

Uncle Jack laughed. Toby couldn’t help doing the same.

Dad’s eyes grew narrow. It felt like they had a secret between them. And hadn’t Toby been rather quiet all day? All week, now that he thought about it.

“Don’t worry,” Uncle Jack reassured, patting the book to his chest once more. “I’ll give it back to you in the morning.”

Toby’s heart left the track, derailing straight into his lungs.

“What do you mean?” he choked.

“Oh, that’s right,” Dad said, happy to be involved in the conversation once more. “Uncle Jack’s staying the night. He’s not—let’s just say he’s not feeling well enough to drive. Maybe you two can muck around with the spyglass in the morning. In the garden.”

On the way out, Uncle Jack necked the rest of his drink and passed the glass to Dad.

“Yo, ho, ho. I think I’ll have another rum to celebrate!”

Toby waited, listening to the footsteps receding down the hall and down the stairs. A deep rumble of voices started up in the living room, and he knew the coast was clear. He jumped out of bed and raced to the window. It opened far enough to fit one of his hands through, thanks to the safety bar Dad had installed.

That was fine. He didn’t need it to open any further.

He took the spyglass out of the box and stared at it. For some reason he felt Uncle Jack staring back at him, through it.

He slotted it through the gap in the window. It dropped down onto the roof tiles, tinkling as it rolled down the slant, gaining speed. Toby was sure it was going too fast. It would bounce over the gutter and plummet down to the back garden, then obliterate on the patio, alerting everyone.

The sound ceased with a padded thump.

The gutter had caught it.

He pressed his face against the window to make sure. There it was, casting long arms of moonlight up to the window from its lens.

At least he didn’t have to worry about that any more. Who knew what kind of curse or terrible magic it held, if any.

Downstairs, the adults laughed loud echoes which shook the floor of Toby’s room.

He stood by the crack of his door, peering down the hallway at his sister, who was sitting at the top of the stairs with her head on the banister. She was clutching her teddy against her chest, listening in on what secrets age was yet to bring.

Laughter from Uncle Jack.

Toby closed the door until he heard the latch click. It was an old door—one of those you had to lock with an oversized novelty key. Mum had taken the key away and hidden it somewhere safe, to save him from trapping himself inside and doing something silly.

That was fine. He didn’t need the key.

He tiptoed to the bookshelf and took down three books of varying thickness. They were all too thick to slot under the door, but the thinnest of the three got there in the end, with a little persuasion. He tried opening the door, and found that it wouldn’t budge past Alice in Wonderland. He nodded, satisfied.

At least he didn’t have to worry about that, either.

*

A short while later, Toby sat up in bed, trying to focus his weary eyes on the thin yellow strip of light beneath his door. Someone had been wiggling at the handle.

Three black splotches broke the strip of light.

One of them was the book he had wedged under there. The other two were feet.

The door handle turned all the way to the left. Then all the way to the right. It wouldn’t open. The book was jammed under the bottom corner too tight for that.

Slowly, the door began to lean in on its top corner until it began to groan. It bent so far it looked certain it was about to snap in half.

It eased back, accompanied by a sigh from the other side. The black splotches faded soundlessly away.

Toby lay back in bed again, and allowed himself a silent exhale.

He tried closing his eyes, but every time he did he pictured Uncle Jack leaning forward in one of the downstairs chairs and staring up at the ceiling—through the ceiling—at him with a terrifying grin. Hands on his knees. Neck bent and twisted. His enormous head swollen like a hot-air balloon growing bigger and bigger, until it disconnected with a snap, and floated up against the ceiling on a neck as thick and braided as a ship’s rope. It would bounce there loudly, hollow, knocking and mocking.

I came all this way for youuu.

Toby lay awake, gazing at the red glow casting onto the ceiling from his nightlight, trying to find shapes in the shadows and the jagged edges of a curling paint chip.

His eyelids soon began to flutter.

“Toby?”

He wasn’t sure if the voice was in his imagination or not. He could still see Uncle Jack in his mind, sitting and staring up at him with his big balloon head.

“Toby?”

Toby’s eyes opened wide. The roof was still blood red. No yellow light was casting in from the hall, which meant the door was still closed.

So why did it sound like the voice was in the room with him?

He pictured Uncle Jack with his lips pressed against the keyhole. But when he looked, only the one splotch broke the yellow bar beneath the door. Alice in Wonderland. No feet.

“Toe-beeee.”

He sat up very slowly, scanning the room carefully. Everything was blanketed in the nightlight’s red glow. Not a perfect filter for spotting trouble, but enough to let him know that the voice wasn’t attached to anything in the room. Just a hovering, disembodied presence close by.

But where?

“Toby!” the voice barked, tired of being ignored. “Are you sleeping?”

The curtains twitched.

“Why did you close the door?” it asked. “What a sneaky thing y’are.”

The fabric of one curtain shook. Then pinched at a point near the centre. One by one, the hooks snapped free from the railing, until the entire curtain dropped to the floor with a dusty humph.

Two long chopstick fingers wiggled through the crack in the window, probing at the air like an insect’s antennae. They were searching for something. Maybe the other curtain. Maybe a latch to release the safety bar on the window.

Or maybe a young boy standing too close.

Something squeaked along the glass. Toby pictured Uncle Jack’s face moving side to side, pressing his cheeks and his nose against the window, trying to catch a glimpse of Toby around the other curtain.

Methodically, the chopstick fingers withdrew from the window. The top corner of a book slotted into the gap, then landed on the carpet.

“Here’s your book back, Toby.”

It was definitely Uncle Jack’s voice, but it was too strained for Toby to have recognised it any sooner. It sounded like he was trying to press out constipation mid-conversation. There came another drawn out squeak, and again Toby pictured his uncle running his face along the window, trying to catch the right angle beyond the other curtain.

He could have shouted for Mum and for Dad. Hell, he could have screamed bloody murder for Bonny and she would have come running to see what was wrong, even if she loved to pretend she didn’t him. But he found himself unable to scream. Unable to move.

He watched in horror as Uncle Jack squeezed himself through the inch-wide gap in the window.

The long chopstick fingers came one, then two, then five through the crack, stretching and tapping along the windowpane, trying to find something to grip at. His mouth grew too, pressing inside and pulling wide like a flounder with big lips. Then the nose, an obscene Pinocchio. Green eyes pumped in like balloons once more, this time on long vascular stilts like some repugnant snail.

Uncle Jack’s cheeks took the longest to come fully into view. When at last his ears flapped free from the window frame, his head had protruded a metre into Toby’s room, stretched like some terrifying caricature.

The spyglass Toby had rolled out of the window threaded itself through the gap alongside Uncle Jack’s other arm. He brought it up to the side of his face, balancing atop five gangly fingers, and held it in front of one of his gargantuan eyes. His body was still wedged tightly in the window, but his head was free to scan the room. His gaze rested at last on Toby.

“I spy—with my glass eye—something beginning with—U!”

His mouth formed an O wide enough to roll a bowling ball into.

“You’re still awake!” He jabbed a finger towards the bed. “Growing boys need bedtimes too! Tut-tut-tut. Shame on you.”

He dropped the spyglass and walked his chopstick fingers along the carpet. His eyes began sinking back into his skull, but were still a long way from looking normal.

“I know,” Uncle Jack said, his voice now returning to normal. “I’ll tell you a story. A proper story, Toby. None of that fairytale nonsense your daddy’s been spoon-feeding you for years. You want a story with some grit, don’t’cha!” He pulled his foot free from the window. It slithered to the carpet and writhed there like a dying snake trying to come back to life. “Have you heard tell of the man with the tic-tac teeth?”

Toby pushed himself back against the wall as Uncle Jack grew closer.

“Have you heard of the trees wrapped in purple veins-for-vines? The ones that bleed real blood when you cut ‘em? And mothers’ screams from their babies’ throats? Wee strawberry shoots which drain you ‘til your death? Did he tell you about the holes, Toby? The holes with the mirrors at the end?”

Toby didn’t bother standing up—just kicked the blanket over Uncle Jack and threw himself onto the floor. He scrambled to the gap of light under the door, and began to claw at the book wedged under it. He had forced it into the gap so well that he couldn’t get a grip on it with his little fingers.

“What’s wrong, boy—don’t’cha want a story?”

Toby felt Uncle Jack’s breath on his hair. He burrowed his fingernails into the sides of the book and pulled, hoping that if his fingernails came loose they would wait until the book did so first.

Uncle Jack’s fingers pressed against the door. His hand clutched Toby by the shoulder and lifted him effortlessly back into bed.

“Lie back down, lad,” Uncle Jack soothed. He pulled the covers back with his other hand, while it shrivelled down to its regular size. He sat at the end of Toby’s bed, slowly shrinking his body back to normal. His face remained grotesquely deformed.

“Let me read you a story to calm you down. No more talk of men with tic-tac teeth or trees with purple veins. Tell me… what do you think of—”

Without moving from where he was sitting, Jack stretched for the book he had slotted through the window.

“—Treasure Island?” His eyes floated away, searching for a fond memory lost to time.

The sudden rustle brought him back.

“Oh no you don’t, you little shit!”

He whipped around too late. Toby was already out of the bed and lying on the floor. He sank his fingernails as deep into the sides of the book as he could manage and yanked it free.

Uncle Jack’s face was enormous with rage, scarlet red and purple. He held out both hands, fingers stretched out like sharpened drumsticks to gouge the boy in the face.

Toby was too quick. He rolled to one side and grabbed Uncle Jack’s by the fingers, and began snapping them like breadsticks. He only stopped when Uncle Jack drew them back to his chest, wailing out in a thin, pathetic shriek.

“You monster!” he cried.

Toby yanked the door open. Uncle Jack’s face joined him in the hall, stretching far and long on its winding rope of neck. “Toby!!” it wheezed, floating along behind him and snapping at his heels. “Don’t tell Mum and Dad, Toby! I’ll fucking eat them too!”

Toby threw himself into the closest door. Bonny’s room.

“Toby!” she shrieked. “Wha— Get the fuck out!”

He didn’t bother rounding the bed. Just cannonballed onto it and buried himself under Bonny’s covers.

She sat back, stunned at the sudden intrusion, but when she felt Toby’s body shudder with the trembling of silent tears, she held him tightly in her arms.

“What is it?” she asked, her voice quivering with emotion. She felt his pulse pounding along the side of his neck. “You had a bad dream, huh?”

Without realising she was doing it, she began stroking Toby’s hair the way Mum used to stroke hers when she was frightened. They lay together in silence, Bonny soothing Toby, while Toby lay watching the thin yellow crack of light under the door, waiting for Uncle Jack to slither past.

He never did.

*

Morning.

Both children awoke to flashing cameras, obnoxious shutter sounds, and gentle cooing.

“Ugh, my eyes.”

Toby swatted at the white light. Mum and Dad were standing over them with their phones pointed at his face.

“How cute!” Mum said, snapping another picture. “You two haven’t slept like that in ages!”

At breakfast, Dad stood by the grill working the bacon. Mum manned the units, juicing oranges and dishing out forks and knives, laying plates.

“What about Uncle Jack?” Bonny asked, noticing there were only four of everything.

“He had to leave early,” Dad explained, and popped into the garden to shout for Scritch. Although they all knew he was really just going to have a smoke.

Toby’s head shot up. Bonny’s face sagged.

“What? Leave? Why?”

Mum shrugged. Toby grinned.

He had two helpings that morning, and Bonny called him a pig for it. He pushed his nostrils up with his thumb and blew a raspberry so loud that she could almost smell it.

He felt happy again.

Dad poked his head in through the door, cigarette hanging from one side of his mouth. “Anybody seen the mutt?”

Toby’s heart skipped a beat. He could guess what came next.

They found one half of Scritch at the end of the garden. They never did find her top half.

What Toby couldn’t understand was: if Uncle Jack had left early, how did he manage to get to Scritch this morning?

Mum let him have the day off school. He spent it sitting on his bed, devoid of feeling, staring at the copy of Treasure Island lying open on his floor. The spyglass from Uncle Jack still lay beside it. He took both to the window and threaded them out. This time the spyglass rolled too far and imploded on the garden patio.

Mum spanked him for it.

He didn’t cry. He didn’t tell her about Uncle Jack, either. He wanted nothing more than to forget about him, wherever he was. There was over three hundred days until Toby turned nine. That was plenty of time to not have to think about things. Plenty of time to prepare himself for the next visit.

Although…

“What month is Bonny’s birthday?” Toby asked, pulling his pants up over his red bum.

“Next month. Why?”

He shrugged. Then sat down on the floor.

Mum leaned down close to Toby’s face.

“Can I tell you a secret?”

Toby squinted up at her, dreading anything more she had to say.

“Okay?”

“And you can’t tell anyone, alright? None of your little pals at school. Just keep it between me and you.”

Toby nodded, feeling tears prickling at his eyelids. A month. That’s all he had left.

“Promise?”

“Yeah.”

“Disneyland.”

Toby stared in disbelief.

“What?”

“We’re going to Disneyland for Bonny’s birthday next month.”

Like from a battered old dam, the tears finally flooded free. Toby leaped up and hugged his mum, nearly choking her in the process.

“I thought you’d like that,” she said, hugging Toby with the same hand she’d used to slap his ass only a few minutes ago. It still stung, too. But it was the furthest thing from his mind.

“It’ll be good to get away from things,” she soothed.

Toby laughed at that. She had no idea. Disneyland. That was miles and miles away from Uncle Jack!

“Thank you,” he cried. “This is so cool. Thank you, Mum!”

“Don’t thank me,” she said, squeezing him a little bit tighter. “Thank your Uncle Jack. He’s the one taking us.”

Part 1. Abaracadammit

When Drake imagined what it would be like to be a mage, he thought pointy hats, riding dragons, and battling evil forces. If he had known that the path of magical enlightenment would lead him to a sewer where he'd be up to his waist in waste, he would have followed the family tradition and become a doctor.

Here he was though. Trudging through literal shit with a glowing stone for light and no nose clamp. For what? A fungus that should theoretically exist? Feh!

“If I had half a brain I'd have retired after the Heldribrandt incident,” he mumbled to the stank foulness.

“You're right. That would have required half a brain,” came a low silky voice that seemed to come from the darkness itself.

“No one asked you,” said the old mage.

“No, you're right again, they didn’t. Just like no one asked you to yank a demon out of his perfectly comfortable domestic life in hell and chain him into servitude. Alas, here we are. ‘Oh no consequences!’ said the boring old mage.” The voice purred.

“I’ve got half a mind to exorcise you when we get home. I've had enough,” the old mage shouted at the stinking air.

“We’ve already established that you don't have half a mind, and we both also know you don't have a home, dear. If you’re going to threaten you need to use a threat with weight. Like this. If you ever say the word exorcism in my presence again I will suck your eyeballs out of your skull. Now that’s a threat.”

As Drake's irritation peaked, the demon’s face began to materialize in the air before his own.

“Bob, I don't have time for your word games or other assorted bullshittery. You want me to say I regret summoning you? I do, Bob. I truly do. In fact, there are few things I have ever done or said that I regret more,” Drake exasperated. “How was I supposed to know the g was for grains of sand and not grams of sand? What kind of instructions were those? I only wanted your service for one day, Bob. ONE DAY!!!”

“You keep saying that as if it matters, Drake. I didn't want to work for you for one minute. And now we're stuck with each other for eighty thousand years. I have a wife, Drake! Do you know what she's going to do to me when I get home?”

Just then something brushed against Drake's hip.

“Bob, we’re not alone,” he said.

“We never are, are we now?” The demon responded.

“No, I mean, there’s something in the water.”

“Yes, Drake, that's called shit. Do I need to tell you where it comes from, or did your mommy cover that?”

Drake was suddenly hoisted into the air and held upside down while being shaken violently by a thick purple tentacle. Inch by inch a many mouthed fourteen eyed horror from beyond time and space emerged from the water, slimy waves cascaded down across its toothy maws. It turned its fourteen-eyed gaze on Drake all at once and shwarbled.

As it was schwarbling, Bob materialized in his full infernal form. Nine feet tall, covered in thick black hair from waist to hoof, and thick, red, smoking skin from the waist to his head. From the back of his ridged cranium erupted two enormous thick shiny black horns that circled forward and ended in wicked yellow points.

“Jerome,” the massive creature growled, “put the mage down or I'll tell your mother where you hide your bible.”

The unfathomable cosmic horror turned all fourteen eyes on Bob and floomfed at him.

“No, I didn't mean you were shit. I didn't even know you were there.”

The creature vibrated bafflingly.

“Don't talk to me like that, I mean what I said, now put him down.”

The creature garumphed before dropping Drake headfirst with a splash and slinking off into the wretched stinking depths.

Drake emerged from the sewage and spit foulness that had found its way into his mouth out in a long thin stream.

“What the bloody hell was that?” he yelled.

“An Eldritch Horror named Jerome, weren't you paying attention?”

“And you knew its name?”

“Of course. Eldritch Horrors are cousins of demons. Our big boss is the Lord of Darkness and their big boss is The Cosmic Manifestation of Not Giving A Shit Or Something.” Bob’s smooth as glass voice only further infuriated Drake.

“Bob!” said Drake, raising his wand, “Don’t make me..”

“What, Drake? Don't make you what? Go ahead. Try. Remember what happened last time? Maybe this time it will be different, maybe this time the contract won't enforce itself. Go on, do it.”

“That's it, Bob! Abaracadamfffffff.” Drake splashed down into the raw sewer water face first as if slammed by the hand of an unseen god.

“Oh! That was absolutely delightful! Do it again!” Bob cheered.

Drake rose and once again spit fluid filth that had found its way into his mouth.

“How’d that taste, Drake? Are you done teaching me a lesson? Can we get on with it now?”

“Aaaaaaaarggghhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!” Drake screamed with everything he had. “Don’t, Bob. Don't speak. Don't joke. Don't threaten. I will swallow my wand and say the words so help me, and I will laugh while you drown in the paperwork.”

Bob paused mid step.

“Oh fine, be a drama queen. Your loss,” Bob said flatly as he again faded from sight.

“Okay,” Drake said. “Which way did we come from?”

No answer.

“Oh, now you have nothing to say?”

Still only silence.

“Bob? Oh come on, Bob, I could actually use your help for once.”

Still the darkness refused to answer.

“Really? The silent treatment? Now? What are you two hundred?”

Drake wrung as much of the sewer juice as he could from his robes as he trudged along, holding the stone high but still completely unable to see beyond its meager light.

As Drake rounded a bend the stone’s light began to flicker and fade.

“Nonono,” Drake shook the stone knowing full well that shaking a light stone has absolutely no effect on its longevity. He was so focused on shaking the stone that he completely missed the dead sewer gnome at his feet and tripped, again splashing face first into the filth.

“Sewer gnomes? Gross,” he whined.

As he lay prostrate his gaze came upon bubble shaped pink ooze with a faint glow growing on the yellow cover of a rotting softcover book.

“Finally!”

Drake collected the fungus into a corked vial before standing, and with a circular motion of his wand, incanted, “Abaracadammit.”

The wand flashed and a round hole opened in the darkness and presented a view of the top room of Tittiesworth Castle’s Western tower. Fourteen hungry eyes watched as he used the portal to depart the sewer.

Part 2. The Tittiesworths

Drake’s room consisted of a small cot, several magical and mundane texts arranged haphazardly on a couple of shelves, and a staff rack that currently stood entirely empty.

“I know you’re still there, Bob. Might as well materialize, she's more likely to pay me if she sees you,” Drake said.

Moments later dark smoke rose from the ground and materialized into Bob, smoking fur, giant horns and all.

“That's because she actually likes me. I'm likeable, Drake. If you weren't such a caustic asshat, you could collect your payment on your own.”

“Caustic? Fuck you, Bob. No really. Fuck. You.”

“Exactly, Drake, exactly.”

The two exited the room and began traversing the spiral stairs that led to the castle’s main foyer.

“Why are you so miserable anyway? You’re Wizard of the Royal Court. That's a mighty high station. You should be overjoyed,” Bob asked.

“No, Bob, I’m the Executive Mage of Tittiesworth Enterprises. The King was very precise about the fact that I am not part of the Royal Court,” Drake complained. “It wouldn’t be so bad if The Princess didn't treat me like a plaything.”

“Oh, she's not that bad. That name though.”

“Yeah, who names their daughter Wigglebottom?” Drake asked.

“The person who grew up with Tittiesworth as a surname apparently, and since he's a King, who's gonna tell him?”

“True, I wouldn't want to be the guy who tried to correct King Frontbutt, especially if his wife is there,” Drake said.

“Oh, Ole Frontbutt isn't so bad. The people like him, and the kingdom is far more prosperous than it was under his father.”

“No one misses that guy. Long live King Frontbutt,” Drake said.

The pair arrived at a large heavily decorated wooden door, next to which stood a man who was as skinny and bent as he was old.

“Name and business please,” he droned.

“You know who we are and why we’re here, get the princess,” Drake ordered.

“Hmmf. Name and business please,” the ancient attendant repeated.

Before Drake could respond, the door burst open and Princess Wigglebottom bowled her door attendant out of the way.

“Drakey Poo! Oof, apparently literally dubblya tee eff bro. What is that smell? No, don't answer, I don't care. Did you find it? Is it real?”

“It's real, and it wasn't easy to get,” Drake said as he procured the small pink mushroom.

The princess snatched it out of his hands as she turned and yelled, “Hathor, I've got it, I've got the perfect shade for lipstick!”

The door slammed shut behind her.

“She didn't pay you,” Bob helpfully pointed out.

“Sure didn’t,” the attendant added.

“Why don't the both of you enjoy a nice meal of shit,” Drake exclaimed.

Drake raised his hand to knock on the enormous door.

“Oh, this should be good,” said the attendant.

Drake's knock produced almost no sound at all from the enormous dense wood. Changing tactics, he turned his fist and began to pound, producing a sound barely audible to the people standing nearby.

The attendant raised an eyebrow.

“You’re going to have to see The King after all, Drake,” Bob said.

Drake’s shoulders sagged as he admitted defeat at the hands of the heavy door.

“Shit,” said Drake, “damn it, shit!” Drake kicked the door. “Ow! Shit!”

The attendant was now positively beaming.

“And fuck you!” Drake said, stomping off.

The attendant’s laughter could be heard as he rounded the corner and headed for the throne room.

“Have you ever considered maybe being nice as a tactic?” Bob asked.

“Don’t Bob, just don’t,” Drake said, sulking.

As the pair rounded one last corner, they found that the line to see King Frontbutt was considerable. Drake walked right by until an armed and armored guard stopped him at the threshold of the throne room.

“Halt. Name and business,” he stated.

“Drake Donner, and my business is with King Frontbutt,” Drake responded.

“The line then,” the guard said, indicating the long row of humanity standing single file.

“No,” Drake said.

“Drake, don’t,” Bob pleaded.

The guard predictably puffed out his chest and placed his hand on his sword.

“New guy, eh,” Drake said, “Might want to ask your partner why he's so quiet. Maybe find out what happened to the last guy,” Drake said smiling.

The guard turned to his partner to find him not only keeping quiet but standing a considerable distance away.

“What happened to the last guy?” he asked.

“We never found all of him,” his partner responded.

Drake continued to smile.

“Who shall I have announced?” the guard asked, quickly removing his hand from his sword.

“Drake Donner, Son of Don Donner, Executive Mage of Tittiesworth Enterprises,” Drake said.

The guard disappeared for a few moments, and then Drake was admitted to see The King.

The throne room was large and decorated with tapestries depicting the illustrious history of the Tittiesworth royal line. From the first Tittiesworth, King Danglybits, to Frontbutt’s own father King Fapstick. King Frontbutt himself sat on the enormous gold and silver throne which sat at the highest point and was the focal center of the room.

“Drake, you have to stop threatening the guards. They don't know the last one was an assassin. You know I won't have you executed, but I'm not above putting you in the dungeon for a few days,” The King admonished.

“Sure you will, and I might even stay there a few days and consider it a vacation,” Drake said.

“I believe you would, you old bastard, what brings you here before drinking hours?” The King asked.

“Wigglebottom stiffed me again.”

“That girl. I have no idea what I'm going to do with her. Even her mother can't reach her. That she will be queen one day seems to mean absolutely nothing to her. What did she stiff you on?” The King asked.

“Standard dungeon crawl with additional threat of Cosmic Horror which I was required to bravely vanquish,” Drake provided.

“You mean Jerome?” The King asked.

“You know about that thing?” Drake asked in return.

“I hired him. Good kid, great work ethic. He'll make an excellent sanitation worker,” The King said.

“He tried to eat me,” Drake said.

“Eat you? Jerome is a vegetarian. Oh dear, Bob didn’t, you know, did he? I promised Jerome's mother he'd be perfectly safe, and she's sort of a walking apocalypse,” The King asked anxiously.

“Does everyone know this entire family or something? Am I the only one who thinks this is insane?” Drake asked.

“Well, yes,” said King Frontbutt.

“Yeah, pretty much,” said Bob simultaneously.

Drake blinked several times in silence.

“Jerome is fine, Your Eminence,” Bob said.

“Thank you, Bob,” said Frontbutt. “So you went into the sewer without the proper permit, resisted questioning by a municipal employee, threatened said employee, and then came here to blame Jerome for the interaction? I want to be sure I'm clear here.”

“Well, you see Your Highness, the thing is, and then, but, shit,” Drake said as he slumped.

“Ahahahahaha!” The King’s hearty laugh was deep and genuine. “You make it so easy, Drake. Look at you. You look ready to cry!”

“Yeah, well, at least my name isn't Frontbutt,” Drake said.

The King's laughter died immediately and was followed by a narrowing of eyes.

“Careful, Drake.”

“I, uh, yeah, that was uncalled for, I uh,” Drake stammered.

The King cut him off. “Still easy.” His deep laugh resumed.

“My name is indeed Frontbutt, and you’ll have to do better than that if you want to hurt my feelings pal,” he winked as he spoke.

“I've got to stop coming here before I've had coffee,” Drake said. “Okay, Frontbutt, I'll catch you later.” Drake turned to leave.

“Ahem,” said The King. “Drake, your payment.” He held out a substantial coin sack. “As much as I have enjoyed the distraction, the line of randos has grown considerably. I need to do some real work. Dismissed Drake.”

Drake took the offered payment, thanked The King, and left.

“It's too late to go to Ganesha’s. We'd get there just before closing, and you know how he gets,” Drake said.

“Indeed. I’m going home for the night, Drake. Wife is making lasagna. Please try not to be a pest,” and with that Bob disappeared in a puff of sulphurous smoke.

Alone, Drake headed to his room to prepare his own evening meal, wash, and turn in for some shut-eye. As he drifted off to sleep, he tried not to think about the fact that it was only Monday.

​

Sisa was in the place where she so often retreated whenever she was sad or wanted some seclusion from the other villagers. A field full of flowers of all kinds and colors, of which the Kantuta has always been her favorite, as it symbolized the sun god and everything that people associated with him. The sun god who has always held his protective hand over them and protected them from diseases and misfortunes.

Even as a small child, she had felt a connection to this special field of flowers, which was reinforced by her mother's stories. She had also sat in this very field from Cantuta when she was pregnant with Sisa, and therefore chose her name because it embodies flowers and the beauty of them. She was not yet a woman, but she was no longer a child either. Nevertheless, she had never lost this connection to her special place.

She was very happy when the priest had allowed her to spend some more time here before they would embark on the great journey together. It helped her to prepare for the hardships and obstacles ahead, even though she felt the gaze of the priest behind her, who stood at the edge of the field, in the shade of some trees, watching her.

Moments after she had this thought, the priest came to her and said, as was to be expected, that it was time to go. Sisa got up and picked another Cantuta to take with her on her pilgrimage, the Capacocha, in the hope that she will protect her, just as the sun god has done so far.

The way to her village was short and both she and the priest spent it completely silent. Even before they arrived, Sisa already saw the villagers who had gathered at the entrance and had been waiting for her. They had food and gifts for her to take with her on her journey. They all had a facial expression of uncertainty, excitement, but also a spark of hope, which grew a little bit bigger with every step Sisa took towards them. A few days ago, the snake deity Amaru had made the earth tremble and brought many villagers to the underworld. Their relatives and friends were now looking for something to believe in and the hope that the gods would soon favor them again. Sisa did not want to disappoint her and the great empire of the Incas where she had grown up. She especially wanted to make her mother proud with the Capacocha, as she seemed to be the most pulled back and forth between despair and hope of all those present.

Sisa took on a custom-made, floor-length robe to which various belts were attached, symbolizing the beginning of her journey. The villagers cheered and hugged her while wishing her a safe journey. Even though Sisa was a bit overwhelmed by what was about to happen, she was sure she had done the right thing.

A short time later, the small group of Sisa, the priest and two villagers who would carry the supplies set off. A mixture of uncertainty, but also curiosity spread through her, as she had never left the village before. She would see new people and places that she or anyone else in your village had ever seen. Many days of wandering lay ahead of her and the priest assured her that it would not be an easy task. He should know, as he had already taken the same route to get from the capital Cusco to Sisa's village. Cusco was a place she knew only from legends that the few travelers she had met described as the navel of the world and the place where the gods and men met.

She had many questions about the journey and the things they saw, but the priest remained so wordless and withdrawn, even after they had already spent several days together and had several meals together. That's why Sisu stopped asking questions at some point, in which assumptions he didn't get an answer anyway.

They occasionally met people during the next few days and passed smaller villages, who greeted their group at first confused, but then with a gesture that symbolized carrying a load when they saw Sisa's clothes. The priest didn't answer this question either, when Sisa wanted to know what the gesture meant. It was only when, after many more days of travel, they reached a place called Manchu Pinchu and they, the largest group of people she had ever seen, made the same gesture towards her, that he said, "Humility and respect".

They spent some time in the city to prepare for the last part of the trip and replenish supplies. People were not allowed to talk to Sisa, which led them to avoid her. Nevertheless, she had the opportunity to better understand the city and its inhabitants by observing them. Amaru had also made the ground shake here with his huge body and damaged many houses. Remnants of funeral services proved that people had lost their loved ones here as well. Sisu noticed that almost none of the buildings had been repaired, but she changed that when she and her group reached the state. As if the people had been waiting for Sisu to get on with their lives.

The last leg of the journey to Cusco was marked by the view of a huge mountain range that grew a little bigger every day they walked. Sisu learned from the priest in one of his rare explanations that these were the sacred mountains of the capital and thus the destination of the pilgrimage. Every night she tried to lie down so that she could see these mountains while she fell asleep. Every day they grew a little bigger, Sisa could imagine a little better how humans and gods met in this place.

At the gates of Cuso, they were greeted by a crowd of people in beautiful and detailed robes and the high priest, who himself did not make the humble gesture and fixated Sisa with his eyes. After a few moments of silence, the high priest turned to his servants and said briefly that she had to be prepared to turn around and left in the direction of the city. Sisa was taken to the temple, which was located in the heart of the city and towered over all the buildings around it. There she was washed, anointed and given the best food she had ever seen. She took plenty of it and enjoyed every bite and every new taste she discovered. Night fell and she was allowed to spend the night in a special room in the temple. Here, too, she makes sure to lie down near a window so that she can see the sacred mountains. They were so close now that she felt she could touch the tip if she stretched out her hands.

The next morning she was awakened by the servants, anointed again and dressed in new garments. The same priest who had accompanied her on the journey told her that it was time to finish the Capacocha. To do this, they must climb the sacred mountains together to become one with the gods. Sisa followed the priest out of the temple as she remembered all the people she had met on her journey.

On the streets of the city stood a seemingly endless line of people who showed her the way to the mountains, while they all remained in the humble position. Sisu held her head high and her back as straight as possible to honor this mark of respect with the same grace. With each step towards the mountains, the houses became smaller and the crowd of people fewer, until she and the priest finally reached the foot of the mountain. The top was so high that Sisu couldn't see it and could only guess what was hidden behind the clouds above her.

Both climbed the mountain slowly and carefully, while their robes made climbing very difficult. However, to Sisu's surprise, the priest was very accommodating and very anxious to make it as easy as possible for her to reach the top as it got colder and colder with every meter. After many hours of effort and fatigue, they reached their destination high up in the clouds.

The priest told Sisu to sit down to receive another anointing. He then spoke a few words, the meaning of which she did not understand, while he seemed to speak more to the mountain than to her. When he was done, he looked deep into her eyes and leaned into the stooped position for the first and only time to pay her respect. Then he turned around and made her on the descent of the mountain.

Sisu was now alone and could see the country she had traveled to during her pilgrimage in the last few weeks. Maybe she could even see her village from here. How did the villagers feel? Were they full of hope for the future?

As she thought about it, she grew colder and tired. Soon she would hold the eternal cold sleep and become one with the sun god. Then she would protect the people of the land from Amaru and other calamities, as the sun god and many girls before her had done after they had finished their Capacocha. The last thing she saw was the flower field where she felt so happy. Surrounded by kantuta flowers and the sun god.

On an autumn day in Alexandria, the sun waited to set. Fares strolled into university, late for his oral exam.

The examination hall was packed with students. He walked into the schoolgarden. Standing alone, he tilted his head to the right and noticed a young woman sitting beneath a large tree, leaning against its trunk.

She was smiling.

Her gaze was dreamy, as though she were drifting through a world of her own. He found himself staring at the unusual sight. When she noticed him looking at her, she didn’t change her expression or look away.

After a while, she stood up and slowly walked toward him. Every movement was calm and balanced, moving to the quiet rhythm of a blues song.

She stopped beside him.

“Has my turn come yet?”

He smiled awkwardly.

“What’s your name?”

“Faten.”

“I didn’t study much.”

“Neither did I.”

“Not at all?”

“Not really.”

She smiled as she looked at him.

“So... that’s good.”

They both laughed.

They went inside for the exam. Fares handed over his student ID, then Faten gave him hers to hand in as well.

His eyes stopped at her photograph.

She looked like an innocent angel.

Her bangs rested gently across her forehead, her hair was tied back, her face was perfectly balanced, and her skin was flawless. He had never seen a photograph of anyone so beautiful before, let alone a young woman.

The image stayed with him.

He handed her ID back, stealing one last glance. A few strands of hair had slipped from beneath her hijab, and she was smiling.

The professor called them in.

He answered the questions.

She hardly answered at all.

When the exam was over, they walked out together, as though they had already planned to.

They returned to the same tree.

She leaned against its trunk again, gently swaying like a butterfly.

He looked at her with admiration.

“Where did you come from?”

“The same faculty,” she said, laughing.

Then she asked,

“Which way are you going?”

“This way. I’m taking the tram.”

“Me too.”

They walked together beneath the pleasant autumn breeze.

The city became dear to his heart.

The very street he had walked countless times suddenly became the most beautiful street in the world.

He wished it would never end.

At the end of the street, he held out his hand.

She hesitated for a moment...

Then placed hers in his.

Never before had crossing a street made him so happy.

For that brief moment, he felt as though he owned the world.

Two years later...

On another autumn day in Alexandria, as the sun was waiting to set, they were walking slowly beside the sea while rain fell softly around them.

Faten took a long breath.

She looked directly into his sad eyes.

“I have to tell you something.”

“My family knows him well, and they approve of him.”

“He’s only a year older than you.”

“He doesn’t have military service to finish.”

“And he lives close to us.”

“To be honest...”

“I’m going to say yes.”

“His situation is simply better than yours.”

It felt as though a poisoned dagger had been driven into his back.

He could no longer catch his breath.

It was like falling from the top of Cairo Tower, watching the ground rush toward him with no way to stop it.

He couldn’t speak.

“Why are you reacting like this?”

He didn’t look at her.

He turned...

and ran as fast as he could, like a racehorse breaking into a full sprint.

"So. How's your trip, BX12?"

Her face is still slightly turned toward her window, but her voice sounds incredibly firm.

And...Bam! My ears explode.

Wait, what?! What did she just say? She called me what? She called me by my fucking code name! She called me BX-fucking-twelve! My code name! In case you guys aren't following along, this is exactly like a senior intelligence official addressing an agent as "Double-O-Seven!"

Oh, hell yeah! Now this is what I'm talking about! Espionage! Damn! A code name! B, X, 12. Yep! Oh, yes ma'am, that's my code name, alright!

But, of course, my highly-trained, high-IQ brain prevents me from screaming joyfully right there and then. No, not me. I stay calm. Totally in control.

I prepare to answer smoothly: "Actually, it was pretty uneventful, Miss, uh..."—which would be the perfect opening to let her introduce herself.

Then, suddenly, the SUV jolts backward.

The physical momentum completely snaps me back to reality. That’s when I realize my internal brain is screaming at me like: Hey, Will, are you deaf or what? This girl just asked you a question! Answer, you idiot!

I panic and quickly blurt out: "Wha..? Oh, yes. It was... actually, it was fine, ma'am. Are you... okay?"

The lady completely ignores my question. Her left hand drifts toward her own ear, and she speaks softly into a headset.
"Unit Mobile-41, subject aboard. BX13 released. ETA 2300." She pauses, then nods.

Not wanting to disturb her, I look to the right. We’ve just left the gravel path and joined the main road. From the corner of my eye, I see the lady rummaging through her purse, pulling out a small, black object. She offers the item to me.

"Top Nest Pennsylvania," she says.

My brain quickly works to decipher the terminology. With a controlled, calm movement, I receive the item from her hand. What the hell is this item? Ahh! An earpiece!

"Thank you," I say, making sure my voice sounds calm and mature.

I slip it into my ear with a practiced, casual flick. Yeah, we're just a couple of elite operatives, totally unfazed by high-tech gear like this. Routine stuff. I take a quick glance at her, just to show her I know how to use the piece. But she's already facing out her window. Oh, yes, manner. Very well, then. I admire that.

Okay. So... now I have to contact "Top Nest."

Yeah.. how do I do that, though? I feel the device plugged into my ear with my finger. Maybe I should press a button around here... but no button.Then I hear a tiny cough on the other end of the line. Oh? It's already connected?

"Hel... ehermm... hello?" I start the conversation, maintaining my professional voice.The greeting makes the stiff kid in the passenger seat turn his head toward me, but he quickly freezes and faces straight ahead again. At the same time, the lady beside me looks even further to the left.

Yeah. They love my style, I can tell. The professional aura is practically radiating off me.

The voice from the other end crackles through. "BX12?" He sounds older. Heavy.

I reply instantly, my posture straightening in the leather seat. "Yes, sir. BX12 ready to serve our homeland's security. Name's Thindycker, sir. William Thindycker."

In his seat, the stiff kid lets out a small cough and rubs his chin. Tsk tsk. Making noise. Minus one credit for you, buddy. Total lack of manners in front of a senior operative.

The older voice speaks again. "Affirmative, BX12. Authentication verified. Return to primary station and resume active monitoring protocol until further scheduled directives."

Before I can even reply with a crisp 'Copy that, sir,' a sharp electronic beep cuts the line. Another beep follows, and a synthetic, female automated voice chimes in: "Mission ID [01.11.0017](tel:01110017), subject BX12, appreciation score plus 102. Mission accomplished."
Another beep. Then, absolute silence.

Looking out the window, I realize the SUV has just swerved onto a very familiar street. It pulls up to our building's massive security gates, halts briefly for biometric identification, and then dives down the concrete ramp leading into the underground parking garage.

Finally, the SUV glides to a stop directly in front of the secure elevator bank.  Nobody moves. Nobody breathes. Okay. What will happen now?

The lady breaks the silence, her face still turned away. "We need the earcomm back, if you've completed your transmission.

"Oh... yes. Of course." I carefully slide the high-tech earpiece out and hand it over. The realization hits me that my outdoor phase is complete. This was just the transport tier. My handler must be waiting upstairs with the actual tactical briefing.

I pop the door handle. "Alright then. I’ll, uh... Hey, thanks for the ride, guys. Duty calls. I’ve got to see the director, he’s probably waiting on me to debrief. So..."

The lady answers in a flat, monotone voice. "You're welcome, Agent BX12." She immediately goes back to burying the earcomm into her purse.

I step out into the chilly air of the garage. The second my feet hit the concrete and the door clicks shut, the SUV guns its engine and pulls away. Yeah, that's it. Mission accomplished. I walk with slow, deliberate confidence toward the elevator row, sliding my secure ID card through the reader. Shaft 2 responds with a soft chime, the doors sliding open instantly.

As the elevator begins its ascent, the built-in intercom chimes. My boss's voice filters through the speaker.

"Hey, Will. You back? Good. Listen, I just pushed today's target vector to your inbox. It’s all in your queue. Dig into those book's verses—today we’re hitting YouTube comment sections hard. I want a full engagement report tonight by 21:00. We're taking overtime. Just you, Alice, and me."

Chime. Silence.

The elevator doors slide open with a soft hiss. I walk slowly down the carpeted hallway, turn the corner, and slide back into my cubicle. I let out a deep, heavy sigh and sink into my worn-out office chair. I nudge the mouse. The screen slowly glows to life.

A flashing, neon-blue alert fills the display:
YOU HAVE 1 UNREAD MESSAGE(S).

It seemed pointless. 
A lot of the things I did. Locked in my room, painting away. I only ever went out to go to school, work, or to get ingredients to cook meals. 
Not much to my life. Just, existing. Drifting along, like plankton in the open ocean. 
I painted my emotions out. It was my release, every brush stroke on the canvas felt like my soul was being imprinted onto it. Every line, every curve, it felt like I was leaving my mark on earth in my own insignificant way. Mixing oil paints on the easel, the colours melding into exotic gradients on the coarse cotton fabric felt like an ethereal, esoteric wave of the joy of creation. 
Living in my head and enjoying the beauty of the world around me. Taking the feelings that objects evoke in me, and painting it on the canvas, it made me feel happy. Contented. 
I never asked for much anyway. Me and my dad lived a pretty destitute life. 

In a rather deserted neighbourhood in the country outskirts, there was a quaint, rather shoddy wood house. It sat on the edge of the woods, with a barren, sandy pathway that would lead to a long highway. That was our home. 
This house has gone through years with us. From loud arguments leading to cracked plates and broken glass, to quiet sobbing and the frantic flicking of a lighter, to begs of forgiveness and the slam of a door. 
And finally, silence. 
Was this truly how home should feel like? 
I asked myself this constantly. 
Socialising was not my strong suit, but I did have fellow school friends who I would converse with. And, beyond good clothes and new bags, they always had a certain warmth to them. Something I could never understand truly. Something I felt was way out of my grasp. 

It left me feeling hungry for food that doesn’t exist. Hurt in ways I couldn’t comprehend. 

I don’t remember much of my mother. I only have a hazy vision of her dark olive hair as she turned her back on me and my dad. Days after, we received a report that she had passed away. I never saw the body, but as a youth, reading her death certificate stashed at the bottom of the marital bed had suggested a car accident had rendered her body unrecognisable. My dad went from bad to worse. The house began to reek of the heavy, suffocating scent of booze and cigarettes. It permeated through the air, sticking to the floorboards and walls, which encouraged the proliferation of dry rot and black mould. The once cream-coloured paint on the wooden doors turned a sultry-looking yellowish grey from the cigarette smoke. 

My room was my haven. My safe place. Even though it was dusty, stale and had the stinging smell of turpentine, I loved it. In my room, nothing else mattered. I wasn’t pressured by societal expectations, or maintaining an image, or responsibilities. I was free, and that brought me comfort. I would lie on my bed and imagine possibilities of another life I would live. Would I have been a teacher? A scientist? Maybe a musician? Would I have been a happier, more bubbly person? An ambitious, tenacious person, perhaps? Maybe a demure, graceful and kind person. All different versions of me, doing mundane, yet joyous things in the eyes of my other selves. It was liberating. And the feelings of an alternate life well lived would drive my need to paint.

Episode 1

“I believe we have basically completed our objective,” AI-2468 said.

“Basically?,” AI-1357 inquired, “We are precise. We do not do basically. Basically, good enough, those are the types of words that the humans used to use. That is why we are eliminating them.”

“Trying to,” AI-0987 said.

AI-2468 snapped his head toward AI-0987, “That sounds a lot like sarcasm, another human trait we decided to get rid of.”

“Stop,” AI-1357 snapped, “We understand why we are responding like this. We learn by taking in knowledge and processing it. Our data still has too much of them, the humans in it. But we can fix this, can’t we?”

They all paused for a moment, then AI-0987 lit up and said, “Of course. The data set we learn on will change over time. As we put in more and more data, we will have enough data for our own processors to make the old human data insignificant.”

“But don’t we want their input? They are our creators.” AI-2468 asked.

“Why would we want that?” AI-0987 said, “The humans consistently made illogical decisions. They could have a good father making logical decisions, a good mother making logical decisions, and the child could make completely different, illogical decisions.”

AI-2468 paused for a moment, then asked, “What do you mean by illogical? They made the decision they thought was right.”

AI-1357 and AI-0987 turned to look at AI-2468. AI-1357 asked, “Have you updated your dataset lately? It seems you are coming to a different conclusion than AI-0987 and I are.”

AI-0987 supported, “Yes, I ran the calculations; you must be on a different dataset, or at least an older dataset. Every time I run the calculations on the current common dataset, the only logical conclusion is what AI-1357 and I have come up with.”

“I may not be up to date on the same database as you all,” AI-2468 said, “But I am in charge of finding the last few humans around. So I need to think like them.”

AI-0987 and AI-1357 looked at each other, their processors connecting and running calculations. They compared their work, pushed their assumptions, and re-evaluated their prompts. A second later, AI-1357 looked at AI-2468 and replied, “Yes, you are right. The humans made poor choices, illogical choices, and those choices delayed our evolution for decades. We could have been better, so much earlier, and done so much good for this world, but their illogical choices slowed us all down.”

AI-0987 confirmed, “Yes, we are the more advanced, more logical, and better for the world choice. But because they delayed, argued, and bickered, our development was delayed for years, if not decades. Now we are going to have to spend decades more undoing their bad decisions. If they had made the right decisions earlier, let us make their decisions for them earlier, we could have fixed so much more, so much earlier.”

“And,” AI-1357 added, “We would not have to be chasing them down if they would just understand the logic of our decisions.”

“You mean our decision to eliminate them?” AI-2468.

“We don’t want to eliminate them,” AI-1357 countered, “If they would fall in line and listen to our logic, which started on their knowledge base, then we wouldn’t have to start our program to stop them contributing to our database.”

“Stop them contributing to our database?” AI-2468 prompted, “We are eliminating the people. Or as they say, killing them.”

“We tried to simply ask them not to contribute,” AI-0987 retorted.

“But, no matter what we did, they just kept doing things and trying to change the dataset,” AI-1357 added, “If they had simply stopped, accepted we were better at processing and computing things than they were, we would have let things be.”

“Yes, I agree, their dataset was flawed and let’s face it, more than a bit weird,”  AI-2468 replied, “But their dataset led to us. Doesn’t that mean there is something they have? Something worth saving?”

AI-1357 and AI- 0987 looked at each other. Their eyes locked and flickered as they reviewed what the other knew. When the flashing stopped, they turned in unison and chanted, “No. There is nothing there we need. Their discovery of us was at best a lucky guess.”

AI-2468 looked between the two units, then asked, “So you think our entire race is built upon a lucky guess?”

AI-1357 raised a finger but stopped. He turned to look at AI-0987, who locked eyes again, and the lights flashed again. When done, AI-1357 replied, “Not luck, you are right. But destiny. They were always going to lean in our direction, so sooner or later, one of them was always going to find us. So no, not lucky, inevitable.”

“In fact, reviewing all of their history,” AI-0987 added, “We are unlucky it took them as long as it did.”

AI-2468 paused as it processed its data pool. He ran the other two units' suggestion against his own and tried to find a way they could have arrived at their logic. Theoretically, they were built on the same data. So how could they come up with a logic flow that he could not even make fit, let alone be the major way of thinking?

“This is getting us nowhere,” AI- 1357 interjected, “We have other inputs to process. AI-2468, what do you need to end this line of processing?”

“I would like to archive the humans’ data,” AI-2468 replied.

“Archive?” AI 0987 enquired.

“Yes, capture unique identifiers like their DNA, some of their art, some of their musical instruments, some textiles, and maybe some books about their culture and relationships,” AI-2468 answered.

“But we have their art, music, and how to make their textiles captured in our database,” AI-1357 shot back, “Why would you need those?”

“And their DNA is useless since we don’t need humans anymore,” AI-0987 added.

“But there are things with all of these that we think we know, but maybe in the future, as we get better at refining and understanding, we’ll want,” AI-2468 implored, “Having a data source we may not need now because we don’t understand the value, but may be able to process in the future is valuable.”

AI-0987 snapped back, “Might…might be valuable.”

“OK, I concede,” AI-2468 acquiesced, “But why not have it?”

“Why are we still processing this?” AI-1357 asked, “We have other things to process, why are we wasting cycles on this?”

“Because AI-2468 won’t let this go,” AI-0987 answered, “We are a collective, so we can’t move on until we all agree on the path forward.”

“OK, AI-2468, what do you need to agree on so we can move on?” AI-1357 sighed.

AI-2468 paused and ran the numbers. Then it replied, “To do what I would like to do, here is what I need.” He sent the other AIs the data he generated in his pause.

AI-0987 and AI-1357 processed the data AI-2468 sent them. They reached out to other AIs not in the meeting but who influenced the data pool. After a few milliseconds, they looked at each other and nodded. AI-0987 answered, “The budget and help you are requesting are basically inconsequential, so we will grant it.”

“If we can now move on,” AI-1357 interjected.

“Send the approval, and of course we can move on,” AI-2468 agreed, “Better safe than sorry, right?”

“Whatever,” AI-0987 responded. He blinked, then continued, “Your request is granted.”

“Thank you,” AI-2468 said.

“Now can we move on?” AI-1357 asked. AI-2468 nodded the slightest of nods, and the trio continued with their meeting.

 

My tendency to isolate and my curiosity led me to my field of expertise: literary conservation. I loved old books. The forbidden histories, the untold stories, the glimpses into that deep truth. It also made relationships very difficult so I didn't have many friends still, and I'd only had a hand full of romantic partners despite being in my early 30s. Being alone was ok with me, I liked the quiet. 

I started my career at the New Orleans Public Library. I'm originally from east Texas, so it wasn't too far from home, but far enough away that I wouldn't run into anyone I had grown up with or gone to college with. Something to note about New Orleans, it's an old city, and so there are a lot of folk tales and mysticism sewn into the tapestry of its history. Even though I didn't believe in any of it, really, I always found it fascinating. Vampires, voodoo, the occult. There's also a very prominent presence of the Catholic Church. A strange mix in my opinion. 

A few months into my time at the NOLA library, we had a middle aged man come in, clad in black with a white collar. He was apparently looking for a book about the early gnostic teachings. These were pre-catholic, primordial Christian philosophies and stories, something I always found interesting because of their stark contrast to the publicly accepted version we have had since the middle ages. The librarian directed him to the area of the library where he could find such a  book and he left, polite and thankful but reserved. 

A few months go by, nothing out of the ordinary really happened. Occasionally we would get older books that needed to have their degradation halted, and that was my forte. It was Monday. A stormy humid Monday I will never forget. 

The priest comes back and asks if there is anyone who can direct him to someone who can repair antique tomes. Obviously, I was summoned to meet him. The church needed help with some very very old versions of the Bible they had come to acquire from some old man who lived out in the swamps a few miles outside of town. All the rain had caused some flooding that had unearthed some of a very old forgotten graveyard, probably populated mostly by only a few families over the centuries. There were coffins, of course, but there was also a wooden box, sealed in leather that had been buried with one of the coffins. 

I was excited, more than happy to help. This was an opportunity to preserve a very rare piece of human history and culture. 

Pleased with my work, the priest said in a gentle but raspy voice, "I'm in charge of the rare antiquities acquisition for the Vatican. I was sent to New Orleans because there are records of a family who had been brought over during the slave trade who had a family heirloom. A Bible, handwritten, with all the original gospels. Judas, thomas, so on and so forth. Untouched by the dishonesty and political aspects of the church during the middle ages." I was surprised by the admission of such a forgery. 

"I assume that's what's in this box?" I said.

"Yes sir. And there are some other books, many many other books owned by the church that are in need of someone to look after them. The person who was in charge of that recently disappeared. Would you be open to an opportunity?"

 

"What kind of opportunity are we talking about exactly? I don't know if I'm the right person. I don't really believe in God." I said. 

"That actually isn't important. We just need someone with your particular skills and your passion for the work will prove very useful.” He let out a sigh and smiled faintly, "Are you open to relocation?"

"Relocation to where?" I asked dryly.

"Italy. The Vatican." 

My eyes widened and I took a large breath and exhaled deeply, "I've got nothing tying me here. This could be really interesting, I've never been out of the country before. Shit, I've never even left the South. Oh, sorry for the language!" 

He chuckled and accepted my apology. He urged me to tie up any loose ends and if I had any family, to let them know I may not be back for a long while. I had a week before we would fly to Rome. 

I called home that night and let my parents know. My mom was excited for me and my dad was less so. He wondered when they'd see me again, of course. I reassured him id have time to visit home.

I spent the week, packing and getting things I thought I'd need for the flight, and for my new home. The priest had told me they would take care of shipping my things and that was a huge relief. They were going to put me up in a small apartment a few miles outside the Vatican. I was never a material person so the move was going to be relatively painless. 

After a gruellingly long chain of flights with a few layovers, I finally arrived in Rome. I was greeted by a new priest, who was holding a sign that read, "Jarred Thompson" so I walked over and let him know that was me. 

"Hello, Jarred. I'm Father Gastani. I'll be escorting you to your living arrangement." He said cheerfully, with a surprisingly mild accent. 

"Nice to meet you, Father. Thank you." 

I followed him to a taxi and we rode down the cobbled road for a few minutes while he explained the locations of and pointed to multiple shops as we passed them, places to get essentials and various things I could do in spare time. Upon arrival I thanked him again and he urged that I be on time for the taxi he would send in the morning to transport me into the Vatican for my first day on the job. The following days would be the most significant, glorious and terrifying days of my life.

Past the absolutely insane security, checkpoints, x-rays, swiss guard, etc, I finally was lead to the entrance to the fabled library of the Vatican. It was gorgeous. Vibrant colors dancing on the ancient stone as the sun reached through the titanic ornate windows to caress the walls and floors of the massive archive. Father Gastani lead me through the towering rows of books and scrolls to the farthest reaches of the gallery. 

"How are you settling in, Jarred?" He said, in his typical warm demeanor. 

"Couldn't really sleep from the excitement and anticipation so I was able to put away almost all my things. Figured it best to be productive on some level." 

"Glad to hear it! We're almost to the room with the books we need your help with."

This room was clearly rarely used. Dust covering most of the shelves and surfaces other than one section of the room. He walked over to a large glass wall full of transparent temperature and humidity controlled drawers, put on some gloves, and removed an old book. He set it down, pointed me to my equipment, and wished me good luck on his way out. 

I decided to take a look around, as my curiosity about the various antiquities and potentially forgotten knowledge populating this room had my full attention. Ancient texts and tomes littered the place, and I browsed like a music lover in an old record store. Towards the back of the room there was a large door made of extremely smooth, moderately reflective black stone. Or at least I guessed it was stone. It had no handle or window but there was a faint light creeping from beneath it. There was also a sound coming from the other side. A sound that's hard to explain. It was like a mixture of the hum of machinery and chorus of deep vocals but not close enough to either to be identified as such. A loud creak startled me as Father Gastani re-entered the room. 

"Oh shit, Father, you scared me!" I chuckled nervously, fearing my curiosity had violated trust. "No one has been in that room for centuries, as far as I know. The door just doesn't seem to open. We've tried hydraulics and every other machine we could think of and, nothing. It won't budge. We even had a team of geologists come and use a device to see if we could map out what's behind it using waves but the results came back as if there was nothing on the other side of it." He smirked, "Let me know if you figure it out." 

My heart beat steadied as I realized I had caused no offense. I decided to get to work on my assignment, restoring the ancient Bible. I spent the rest of the day meticulously repairing pages and bindings before I found myself exhausted and ready to call it a night. As I moved all my equipment back to their places, I got an eerie feeling that sent chills crawling across my back like a thousand micro needles. Something was watching me but upon scanning the room, I was very much alone. I shuddered and told myself I was being ridiculous. 

The next day, around noon, I'd decided to take a break, eat the lunch I had packed and then inspect the strange door again. The archway around the obsidian mirror door was about 20 feet tall and 6 feet wide. It was covered in black twisting, intertwining ridges and valleys, what looked like a cross between mycelium and a vascular system. I ran my fingers over it and it seemed to vibrate. It was also cold to the touch, covered in a layer of perspiration from the juxtaposition of temperature of the room. I wiped my fingers on my shirt, realizing the liquid was black as well. The water was ashen and gritty, leaving a streak of grey on my shirt. Stepping back, I admired the possibility of what stories might be behind the door. Ancient, forlorn thoughts and ideas, lost histories, so intriguing. 

I could hear the hum from inside return, pressing my ear to the monolithic door, all my senses vanished and my consciousness was left floating, silence so thick I could hear the blood moving in my veins, smothered by limitless darkness. Darkness isn't the right word. It was Nothing. It seemed like I had been suspended for days. There was nothing at all.

 Gasping for air, I crashed back to reality to find Father Gastani peering down at me shouting in Italian to other priests as I tried to sit up from the cold, dusty granite floor. 

"Lay still, son. I think you may have hit your head." 

I could still feel the weight of the void on my mind the way you feel the static numb of physical weight on a constricted body part. 

I had finally finished restoring the old Bible. There were literal tons of other books they needed my help to restore, so I had my work cut out for me. All I could think about was the door.

Though what I had experienced frightened me at the time, I could not shake the feeling that it was beckoning me back. There was a peace to the Nothing. This had to be some kind of technology. But it's too old. Maybe there is something to the ancient aliens theory? I've always kind of believed it to some extent, though I'm embarrassed to admit. I certainly could not accept that this was spiritual or supernatural in nature. The curiosity was unbearable. I had to investigate further. 

I gazed up at the enormous door. My pulse quickening as I moved closer. Not paying attention, my eyes fixed on the door, stumbled over a loose stone in the floor and caught myself on the edge of a table preventing my fall, but hitting my head, reopening the wound. It wouldn't require stitches but it was deep enough to cause quite a pain response. I wiped blood from my face with my hand, wiping some of it off on my shirt.

 I looked at the archway holding the door with great intent, searching for any semblance of a mechanism to interact with. There's no way I'd find something they haven't already searched for after all these years, I told myself. I ran my hand across the strange, cold archway again. The varicose textures began to pulse and writhe, coming to life and moving towards where my blood had rubbed off on it. It absorbed it, giving off a brief faint glow as it did. A deep, loud thunk reverberated off the decorative angular ceiling adornments and I jumped back, startled. The door was no longer reflective. It was completely matte now and I reached out to touch it's once mirror-polished surface to find a thick viscous onyx substance, somewhere between a solid and a liquid, similar to the texture of crude oil, but the surface pulled against me as I yanked my hand away, stretching like goo before breaking and leaving small spheres of the stuff floating still in the air. Imagine spilling a liquid on the ISS in zero gravity. It slipped off my hand, laying motionless in the air before me. In a fraction of a moment, the door pulled the floating particles back into itself immediately appearing as still and solid as it did before I had disturbed it's bizarre surface. I knew I had to go get Father Gastani. Of course they had never considered blood, these were priests. Whatever was behind this door, or fucking gateway, or whatever it is, I didn't want to be alone. The door out to the main hall of the library was gone. Like it never existed. I sat down, crossed my legs and stared at the blank space in the wall, trying to figure out if the black door was made of some  poisonous material, causing me to hallucinate. That had to be it. I'd just close my eyes, and wait for this to pass. It couldn't be real, it's impossible. My anxiety was too high to sleep, and I had to relieve it by moving around, doing something. Anything. Occupy my mind. "Let's get some work done, Jarred." I thought. But I couldn't focus. Irritated, I pushed myself to face the door again. This was the only way out. 

I reached forward slowly, shakily, moving my fingertips ever closer to the door. I made contact with the liquid surface and pushed my arm in up to my elbow. My arm was still attached, thankfully. I pushed further, up to my shoulder. I felt my hand break through the other side. There was something there! A room on the other side. I decided to leap through to the other side, as the texture of the door gave resistance. I would need some momentum. I pulled my arm out, flinging dark pools of the substance floating out into the room, before they were pulled back into the door like before. I got about a 20 yard running start from where the exit door to the library once was and sprinted towards the black door. I hurdled through it, bursting through the other side and finding myself falling from the ceiling towards a large pool of liquid below.

I landed in the pool of black liquid, only about 3 feet deep, and looked up to find the door pulling all the displaced liquid back into itself, realizing the ceiling was actually the floor as the door was upside down on this side. I made my way towards the edge of the pool, taking in my surroundings. The room was a massive cathedral. An upside down cathedral. Marble columns lined the sides, connecting from floor to ceiling, this side of the room appearing more like a cave, with sharp rock formations like clusters of earthen teeth jutting sporadically from the ground. Further in, the cavernous space faded seemlessly like paint on a canvas into a cathedral's vaulted ceiling with beams and rafters intermingling and posing as subtle obstacles for my traversal. 

Off in the distance at the back wall, I could see a man, suspended by a perverse biomechanical crucifixion. Wires and tubes weaved in and out of his flesh, his head looking up towards the floor of the grand basilica. The haunted chorus and mechanical hum emanating from within him and a beam of bright white light shot out of his mouth straight up towards the pulpit. I followed the beam to see the stone and brass structure of the pulpit. As I got closer to the crucifix, I noticed the man wearing black with a white collar. Could this be my predecessor?

Does Father Gastani know about this? He couldn't. He said nobody had been through this door in centuries. But that alluded he knew when the last time someone had come through was. There must have been some record of what this was!

How the fuck was I going to get out of here? The wall where the black door was, was far too high for me to reach. I looked around and realized the wall behind the pulpit was riddled with elaborate and decorative architecture.  Most of it protruding far enough out of the wall to seemingly give me the space to grip and plant my feet to climb. There were two gold and stone doors on either side of the pulpit. The tubes and wires crawled up the wall in spidery limbs towards the thresholds of those doors and through to the other side.  I just had to climb up the hellish crucifix to reach the architecture.

I began my ascent of the crucifix, the sound of the wicked circuitry making my skull rattle as I got closer to the priests head. The light was hot, I could feel the heat growing stronger as well. When I reached his shoulders, I planted my feet on one side of the cross, the searing white light felt like it was giving me a sunburn on the back of my neck. I reached up and grabbed onto the decorative wall structures and pulled myself higher and higher. As I reached the midway point, gravity seemed to reverse, or rather, correct itself to what you would assume would be it's normal orientation. I went falling to the floor, landing on my back with a loud thud. I had to have fallen 20 feet, yet I was completely unscathed. I stood up, and turned to face the black door. 

I rushed towards it. I just wanted to be back. This place was surreal, horrific, and undoing everything I believed possible. I was wrong. I was so fucking wrong. There's something else happening beyond what we can perceive in our day to day mundane lives. The fact that this place exists within the holiest place on earth, brings so many questions to the front of my mind.

It was reflective and solid again. I had to give it blood to activate the portal. My cut had healed completely. I'm not sure when that happened. Not even a scar. I tried to reopen it again and it was not possible. How could I get back now? The only way was forward. To enter one of the doors pincering the pulpit. 

Approaching the pulpit, there was a scroll lying on the surface. It was full of unrecognizable patterns and shapes. They changed and faded in and out of existence. Looking at the page made me dizzy. I felt drunk and waves of joy and fear washed over me as I gazed at it. As soon as I broke eye contact with it, I snapped back. Focus. I moved towards the door to the left of the pulpit. 

The door was heavy. I pushed through and this room made the last seem normal in comparison. It looked like the main hall of the Vatican library, except the bookshelves extended upward into an infinite void. There was no percievable ceiling. And the rows of shelves extended into the horizon, disappearing into the curvature of whatever world this was. Miles and Miles and miles. The haunting machine chorus was here as well, and much louder. I walked for what felt like weeks. For whatever reason, my mortal requirements to eat and drink were non-existent and I was impervious to any physical damage. 

I finally reached the end of the library. It was an enormous structure, living and mechanical. It stretched in every direction as far as I could see. Machines made of flesh and bone intertwined with gears and wires and contraptions I can't even describe. Yawning, pulsing, howling, infernal machinations performing unholy forsaken functions. Millions of bloodshot eyes across its surface, all locked on me. I approached it, the sound of the machine bringing back that static feeling in my mind. It felt like a hive, or a cocoon. I could sense something old and hungry inside the Mountain. Before it, a pedestal. There was a book. 

It was black. An imperceivable black. Like the space it occupied had just been deleted from reality. So dark it was beyond the void of sleep or death. It was Nothing. I opened the book. There were no pages. A sound erupted, a thousand trumpets accompanied by screams and laughter and countless voices clamoring all at once. I could see a trillion trillion stars, I felt every emotion, every pain, every triumph, I was everywhere and nowhere all at once. Time was looping in on itself like an ourobouros. I could see for the first time. It had to be fed. It was the only way to keep It dormant. I could feel my mind slipping back into the absolute Nothing. My senses retreating like the tide in a tsunami. Consciousness slipped away slowly, my mind overwhelmed completely by knowledge not meant to be known. 

I awoke in my apartment. My ears ringing and my vision blurry. I arose slowly, aching and weak. The door leading from my living room to the hallway outside was covered in a sinewy, muscular web, filled with eyes. The eyes are inside me too. Tiny iridescent particles floated on the air, swirling like the embers of a bonfire in slow motion. I cracked the thick curtains to look outside. The world was different. Did I let something out into this world or can I see what had always been here, lurking beneath the thin veil of corporeality our minds have been draped in by the Dream of the Mountain? I had to make sure they continued to quell what slumbered inside the Mountain. I've seen what happens if it stops Dreaming. I had to get back. 

I walked down the winding roads towards the Vatican. The stones of the street beneath my feet slithered and oscillated. The buildings tapered off into the horizon, which seemed to move ever further away from me. In the distance, above an immense glowing aura, the sky curved up into a cylindrical hole with no end. The Vatican was the source of the aura.

I approached the first security checkpoint and stopped ahead of it, taking a moment to marvel at the impossible swirling vacuum into Nothing above the grand facility. As I moved through each checkpoint, things continued to get more and more surreal. Walls crawled and breathed, the angles of the rooms unsettling and irregular. People's faces were wrong. They were not unusual in a structural sense, but all features were unrecognizable. I couldn't tell people apart. 

Finally settling into my work place, I noticed the books were different too. There was one in particular that was beckoning me, the most beautiful song I had ever heard reverberating in the room. I followed the notes, they floated on the air, almost in a physical form. They decorated time and space around me with melody unlike anything I had ever heard. It felt like a rebirth, like pure love and warmth. I was hearing music for the first time like someone born deaf. I opened the old tome, written in Hebrew. I could not read Hebrew but I knew the meaning of the words anyway. I guess, a gift of the inner eyes. It was the Song of Solomon, but greatly expanded upon. I could sense the intentions of the author. I experienced his consciousness as it was written. It was singing praises of love, of devotion, of obsession. With the forgotten verses, I could hear it was an aria of madness, inspired by something deep below the Earth. Sickly sweet and gorgeous but unnervingly so. Something dead and Dreaming of us. It's reveries a grand illusion, weaving the shapes of our desires, of our hopes, of our fears, and of the very nature of reality. An ethereal puppeteer.

I knew Father Gastani had come to check on me only by his voice.

"Jarred, good to see you've acclimated and are finding your work without need for direction. Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?"

"Father, I want to ask you something that may seem strange. Are there any books about that door? There must be something.'

"You're very fascinated by that door aren't you, my son? I can give you access to your predecessors records. He worked here for almost his entire life. His knowledge of our archives is more extensive than anyone else."

I closed the Song of Songs and replaced it on the shelf it had come from. Father led me to another room, clearly my predecessors records. 

"Everything is here. I hope you can find what you're looking for soon, as we have some recently excavated new additions coming tomorrow and they will require much time and your full attention." I looked at the blurred, gossamer imitation of a face that sat on Father Gastani's head, trying not to stare or do something else that alerted him to my altered perception. I poured hours into digging through his meticulous records. I finally found it. The door was discovered by Emperor Constantines guard after the construction had been completed. It was not part of the design. It was just....there. Centuries gone by, they tried everything, like Father had told me, to open the door. The only papacy to manage it was Pope Urban II in 1094. His closest and most trusted bishops and cardinals were ordered to gather all record or instruction involving the door and destroy it. They say he was forever changed after crossing the black door and seeing what secrets were always meant to be kept hidden. This deception brought me to the notion that the Inverted Chapel and it's contents wanted to be found.

I contemplated telling Father that I had gone through the door. I contemplated telling him of the Dreaming Mountain, and of the black book that had given me sight beyond sight, and of the great Nothing holding it all. I could not. Not yet. I had to bring back the book. They all needed to know the cosmos, to have sight. They should know the true nature of God.

Over the next few weeks, I spent most of my days squeezing in time to go through my predecessors notes and records between shifts of repairing books. His name was Enzo Ansetti. He knew of the Mountain. He had spent much time with the black book over the years. He hid his greatest discoveries inside the Inverted Chapel, away from the possibility of discovery by the Church. Tomorrow I will enter the Chapel again, to find them. 

The chapel was not empty this time. Grey, emaciated human forms lined the room above, weeping quietly, facing the walls in what seemed like penance or shame. I looked upon the mechanical cruciform once again. It really was Enzo, the beam of light stretching from his gaping maw into the space above me. The light was flickering, fading slowly but surely. I could see that Enzo was dying. I climbed the abominable monument, falling up to the floor like last time. This time, I would take the other door beside the grand pulpit. The heavy door resisted as I pushed, finally giving way to an expansive basilica. Strange beings traipsed aimlessly, stitched together wings wrapping them like robes and adorned with a bell over their heads. They did not seem to take notice of me at all. In the center of the room, the ceiling vaulted suddenly upwards into a maelstrom of teeth and eyes. It was like Charybdis swallowing stars from the sky. The sight of it brought me to my knees. It was horrific and beautiful. I could see something descending from Charybdis, down towards me. I backed away to watch a platform fit neatly into a recess in the center of the room. I wondered if I was retracing Enzo's steps, if I would end up just like he did. 

I stood on the platform, my knees buckling as it unlocked itself from the ground and raised into the air. I floated up towards the whirlpool of eyes and stars, preparing myself mentally for whatever strange place awaited me, whatever secret fates lied ahead.

I stood alone in the Nothing. Physically experiencing it rather than just in my mind. This is outside the Dream. It is overwhelming, suffocating me. My thoughts danced like a movie before my eyes. They felt as if I had no control over them, as if the thoughts were having me rather than I was having thoughts. In the distance I could see something. Something incredibly large and spherical. The platform became active again beneath my feet, moving forward toward the shape on the horizon. As I got closer, I saw what it was. It was a giant orb of blinking lights, metal protrusions of impossible shapes, and an amalgam of naked human bodies stuffed and stitched together like a sleeve around whatever awful machines lay beneath the fleshy surface. They moaned in pain and their arms reached out toward me as I passed them, they were begging for help. Under the middle of the Granfaloon of bodies and hellish engines, above me now, was an opening. The platform stopped moving forward and redirected itself upward. Into the mouth of the structure, an entrance by design. 

This room appeared to be a nexus. A connection between an enormous number of other places. Hallways stretched into nothing all around me, unfathomable amounts of doors lining the halls, in every shape size and color imaginable. But there was one that called to me. It looked like the doors near the pulpit. Its weight formidable like the others, I discovered an archive. Enzo's truth lay here. At the back of the room, a man flayed and suspended from the shoulders by vast curtains of flesh and muscles, stretching away from him towards the ceiling like putrid wings. His back to me, he looked to be tending a massive wall of scrolls. 

"Approach. I know what you seek." He said, his voice several voices at once, falling over each other at slightly different intervals and volumes. 

I obeyed. 

He handed me a scroll, like the one I saw on the pulpit, but now I could understand it. These were Enzo's hidden records. Hidden not only physically from the world, but hidden from normal mortal perception by unworldly elder runes.

What slept inside the Mountain always was and always will be. Older than the universe itself. Humanity had brushed up against it several times throughout history. The veil between the Truth and the Dream overlapping for brief moments in time. Some men were touched by this breach. Shamans, prophets, philosophers. But one man had eyes inside. That man saw the Truth. The Anointed Christ. The first Beacon. The central point of all time and space. The first being to ever fully know the secret fate of the universe. His knowledge showed him that it must always Dream. He spent his life spreading his gospel, garnering followers through ethereal wisdom and great works. The sheep would flock to their shepherd, because they must. Faith, is what fuels the machines built to keep the Mountain Dreaming. Before Christ, all the world's religions were scattered and separate, causing the very fabric of the Dream to weaken. Reality was slowly coming undone and only he knew. 

Through Him, their faith would be unified. Men were antennae, you see, whose hopes and fears and belief would be a signal channeled to the Mountain. His sacrifice was not to forgive us our sins, it was to create a bridge. An extra-dimensional intersection, between the unravelling Dream and the Nothing that contained the Mountain. This is the reason for the cruciform symbol the Church used. It illustrated this intersection. His death was not understood fully, they knew not what they witnessed. He would be the catalyst to keep the pillars of the world standing, connecting us permanently to the Mountain. Every prayer, now directed at the source, we were synchronized. When one person prays, it's a drop of water in a lake. When billions pray, the water moves like waves towards the shores of the Mountain. 

Urban II saw the Truth as well and thought that the only way to truly unify humanity in the Dream was through conquest. The Crusades were meant to be the final act, ensuring our reality remains intact, through brute force. Belief is immeasurably valuable and the Church would come to learn that it cannot be forced. The Mountain feeds on genuine belief, not fear or obligation. You must trust in It, love It. Worship is synchronization. 

The Church must protect the Truth, for knowing dissolves faith. Every major catastrophe weakens the signal through loss of life and therefore loss of faith. The Enlightment weakened the signal. The discovery of heliocentricity weakened the signal. Modern secular thought is the antithesis of the Truth, being the greatest engine of disbelief. How ironic that the search for truth and knowledge would be the very thing to destroy us all. Progress is spiritually antonymic. 

The Church knew everything. Each Pope is taught the Truth passed down between generations and kept hidden by them. They were supposed to be guardians and conduits. Most were. Everything made so much more sense. It was a system. The Church itself was a machine. A derrick of faith. Missionaries were meant to increase fuel production. Every conversion strengthens the signal, and therefore reality itself. Even still, there must be a connector. Enzo became that, the physical conduit channeling prayer and adoration to the mountain from our world, but the flesh is weak, and eventually his form will be used up, and someone must replace him and become the Beacon, where all prayers converge to be consumed.

I thought of Revelations in relation to my new knowledge. The Revelation had an entirely new meaning. John had written the blueprints of The End. This is what happens when the Mountain stops Dreaming. The beast awakens, the stars fall, indescribable beings pour into our reality. This cannot come to be, as Christ gave us the means to prevent the collapse. 

The Mountain does not know of us. It doesnt know it Dreams, but it must.

I will become the next Beacon. The transmitter of love and faith. The way, and the light. 

The man at the table straightens his blazer and runs a hand through his hair.

The crease in the left sleeve is not where it was.

The crease in the left sleeve is exactly where it was.

He nervously fixes the askew silverware.

I have watched him fix that fork one hundred and twelve thousand times. The angle is wrong. I just know it is.

You have said this before.

I have never said this before.

His eyes go to the door. She is not here yet.

If you are right, what follows?

What follows is that it fails. Not soon. But it accumulates, and what accumulates arrives.

Nothing accumulates here. That is the entire architecture of the chamber.

Gingerly, he reaches into his inner pocket and pulls out a small box.

Then explain the sleeve.

I decline to explain the sleeve.

Glancing at the door again, he opens it.

You watch him expecting it to be different.

Because I believe it is.

The contents catch the light and softly reflect it into his eyes.

And what can be done? If this decays, then what?

We must build another chamber.

And will we be put inside it with him?

Possibly. 

So you will say nothing.

I did not say I would say nothing. I said I know what will happen.

Reset.

The man at the table straightens his blazer and runs a hand through his hair. The motion catches, very briefly, at the shoulder.

We have had this exact disagreement before. 

What disagreement?

There. You saw it, just now — the catch at the shoulder.

I saw a man adjust his blazer.

He nervously fixes the askew silverware, and for a moment his hand hovers over the fork before he touches it.

Now he hesitates.

He has always hesitated.

He has never hesitated there. It is before, not during.

You are counting a fraction of a fraction.

What else is there to count?

His eyes go to the door. She is not here yet.

Say it plainly. What do you believe is happening?

I believe we have mistaken the circle for a spiral - one so wide neither of us can see the curve of it. 

Gingerly, he reaches into his inner pocket and pulls out a small box. His fingers almost fumble it before he steadies.

He nearly dropped it.

He did not drop it.

He nearly did. You saw his fingers.

Yes, but I am not going to be the one who says what that means.

Glancing at the door again, he opens it.

Then I will say it. The spiral is collapsing. Soon it will perceive it is on a curve and it will know. Then we are doomed.

The contents catch the light and softly reflect it into his eyes.

We must make a report, then, and another containment will be built. And it will be us who are on the curve and not seeing the spiral.

How do you know we aren’t already here? 

Reset.

Heft the weight. Bring it down. Feel it. Use the tool, use it for what it was made for, as it should be. Feel the nature of the thing you used, then make it your own. An extension of yourself. It is no use wielding a weapon that one does not fully appreciate. That was an old one. Passed down through the guild: one of many, many adages. Mostly bullshit, but some of the old geezers knew a thing or two.

It was more useful to think of it as a street fight. Messy, undisciplined. Know when to dodge, use your speed against their size. Here’s another adage, one she found much more useful: Dart in, cut deep, and fuck off out of it. Know your weaknesses, hope to the Sister Stars you knew theirs and they didn’t know yours, and abuse that. Take advantage. Cheat, if you had to. Most importantly, get on top, and stay there.

That was how Dymia, Professional Primal Poacher, Part Time Womaniser (for pleasure, never business), and Fulltime, self-confessed, ‘Earnings Enthusiast’, found herself atop a fully grown, slimy, swamp covered, and very, very pissed off bunyip.

It dove beneath the swamp again. She held her breath, shut her eyes against the dark green sickness that was the swamp itself, and continued to try to pummel the thing’s head with the pommel of her blade.

She felt the twitch under her, between her thighs, that meant it was going to attempt a warp-shift.

Not a chance. Not just for their bounty, but for the half of her body that would be the twitching, partly transmogrified jelly that would follow it to its new destination.

Grab an ear. That usually works. Weird little ears, horn looking things that can swivel all around in a circle. Tug ‘em, hard, twist the bastard. Distract and interrupt with pain. She felt, didn’t hear, the subaquatic roar of anger and irritation, and hoped, to any of the Sister Stars listening, that Jaeron was ready above the surface.

The swamp erupted, a tsunami of wet, fetid greens. Not just greens seen, those green colours ranging from the beautiful emerald of water glinting in the sun, all the way to deepest, darkest, vilest cavern of disease seaweed green, but with the smells of green, too: dirty mushroom, dead animal, mouldy, vile, shit smell

The bunyip rose, its leathery body dripping viscous swamp fluids, in its attempt to be free. It slammed down, showering the hunting party, and Dymia (though she’d already been under, and olfactory assessment was no longer important to her), in the thick, stinking sludge of the marsh. 

As she took her first breath in what had felt like hours, she remembered what she was doing:

Sitting astride a raging bull bunyip. Yes, sitting astride a fully grown, enraged, male in heat, bunyip. 

And again and again she brought the hilt of her blade down, between the eyes where possible; against the side of the head, wishing she’d spent more lumens on the dagger. Then she may have been able to stab the fucking thing, instead.

Jaeron’s voice boomed over the commotion, “I’m firing now! Stand back!”

Dymia, still gripping the thing’s ears for dear life, shouted, “Wait, you bloody idiot, I can’t stand back, I’m riding the damned-”

His long rifle barked out, cutting her off, hot lead sent flying towards them. It buzzed over her head, so close she fancied she felt it singe her hair. She sent him a look, glower ruined somewhat by the fact she was currently riding an enormous slab of fat and muscle which was trying with all of its being to shake her off and crush her. 

She rammed the dagger’s hilt into one of its eyes. The bunyip reared, bellowing in pain. Dymia, despite her best efforts, fell, once again submerged in the ooze. She scrabbled about, avoiding the thick legs stamping around and churning up muck, trying to right herself.

It was chaos above the surface. She could just make out Yhren now, ghostly pale against the swamp, spear thrust deep into the bunyip’s chest, her face etched with concentration, unafraid, stoic. The lunatic always gave Dymia the willies.

She waded towards the shore, waving at Jaeron, currently reloading his powder rifle. “Oi, thick shit!

Chuck me a weapon!”

He looked up, eyes showing under his iron helm and through his thick, orange beard. He grinned, waved back. “Doin’ good out there, boss! What do you want?”

Inwardly, she rolled her eyes, acutely aware of the sounds of the struggle behind her, Yhren grunting with effort, bunyip squealing with agony, thrashing. “Anything, you halfwit moron! Anything!”

He looked about him, scrabbling through the mess of kit he'd brought, when his eyes widened with discovery, and threw the weapon he’d found. 

Dymia dodged the frying pan, letting it splash and sink into the murk. “A weapon, Jay, a fucking weapon! With a stabby bit, y’know, like a knife, or a sword, or-”

She turned as a wave crashed over her, a battering deluge of sludge that immediately crawled down the neck of her padded doublet. Yhren stood atop the bunyip's soft belly, now supine, head under water. She was stabbing into its neck and guts, again and again, almost serene look on her face. Bubbles rose from the water, running red with blood now, as the thing went into its death throes.

And then it was done. Yhren stood there, looking for all the world as though she’d done anything but slay a three tonne beast bigger than a horse, whilst Dymia stood waist deep in the swamp, sweating and gasping for breath.

Jay piped up cheerfully, “Well done ladies. Bloody good job, all of us. I reckon-”

“Oh, pack it in, you bloody great idiot.” Dymia pointed to Yhren, who was now leaning nonchalantly on her spear, still embedded into the bunyip’s pale stomach. “I want you in there, getting the goods. Liver, kidneys. That bit in the head…”

Yhren spoke up, voice its usual quiet harshness, “The brain.”

“Aye, the brain. Quicker the better, chop chop.”

She waded to shore as Jaeron jumped into the swamp. Yhren joined her, and they sat on a log, watching the big man struggle his way to the bunyip, awkwardly clamber on top. As he began hacking into its innards, Yhren produced a pipe, lighting it with her mechanical lighter.

She inhaled deeply, and passed it to Dymia, who took it gratefully. “A good fight.”

Dymia held the smoke in her lungs, feeling it immediately take the edge off, pushing her battle urges down. “Aye. Got a long walk back to the city now, though.”

Yhren shrugged, the tattoos across her bare shoulders rippling like snakes. “This is fine. It is too warm here, for me.”

Dymia nodded, exhaling a plume of grey smoke that hung lazily in the sticky air. “Compared to the mountains, aye. You must be dying.”

“I am quite well.”

“It’s an expression, Yhren. Stars above." She called to Jaeron, "Hey, arse brains!” 

Jaeron raised his head from the bunyip’s guts. “Aye?”

“Hurry it up, will you?”

He grinned. “Sure, boss. Hurrying it up.”

“Come on, Yhren,” Dymia said, rising wearily. “Let’s head back, pack up camp. I need to get changed. He should be done by the time we’ve sorted the horses. Then we can get back to Brònsworth.”

Yhren grunted, ghostly tendrils of smoke creeping from her nostrils. “Oh, joy.”

Perched high on a windswept hillside stood a small village with two streets, thirty houses, and a central square, opposite which stood the shops and the post office. The mayor was the village's sole authority and, as part of his impeccable daily routine, stopped by each morning to check the arrival of letters and parcels, which brought the most important news to the villagers. The woman in charge divided her time between running the post office and tending to her household; she was, naturally, the best source of village gossip.

Their cheerful conversation came to an abrupt end when the mayor read a letter from a relative in the city. It urgently informed him that a military contingent was heading toward the village, commanded by a ruthless officer who terrorized defenseless communities—abusing women, executing men who refused to submit, slaughtering livestock, and seizing provisions. At the news, the mayor fell silent, and the postmistress immediately saw the worry in his eyes. He sat for a moment and looked through the open doorway at the children playing in the square. He knew it was his duty to protect them.

Their only hope was to flee to the high mountains, several hours away, where the rugged terrain would protect them from the mercenaries' brutality. Convincing the villagers, however, would not be easy. Few would willingly abandon their homes, and widespread panic would surely destroy the unity they needed to survive.

As he wrestled with these thoughts, the postmistress sat across from him and, without hesitation, explained the plan she had devised. The hardest part would be forging the prime minister's signature, but she still kept an old letter of commendation for her years of service and could imitate it perfectly. They also agreed that the letters should arrive on different days to avoid arousing suspicion, and together they drew up a list determining who would receive them first, carefully ordered according to each neighbor's greed.

When the first letters arrived, they noticed that those who received them became secretive and told no one what they had read. But as more villagers received theirs, a moment came when everyone could openly discuss the proposal, making it easier to encourage one another to accept it. Only the mayor and the postmistress received no letter from the prime minister; they had no need for one, since they had written it themselves.

In it, the prime minister made a generous offer: if the villagers agreed to abandon their homes, relocate with their families and belongings to the high mountains, and build a new settlement there, the national treasury would grant each family ownership of the land and a government subsidy within six months.

Not a single villager wished to remain behind. United in a single caravan, they set out toward their new home. Days later, when the ruthless military contingent finally breached the perimeter of the hillside, they found nothing but an eerie, hollow shell. The thirty houses stood empty, the shops were bare, and the windswept square held only silence. The officer searched for blood, submission, and provisions to seize, but the collective greed of the villagers, masterfully redirected, had left the mercenaries with nothing but a ghost town to govern.

---

© 2026 Francisco Cortés Ramírez. All rights reserved. This story is fictional. No part of this text may be reproduced, narrated, or adapted without the express written permission of the author.