Their coffees drank, the two young travelers intimated the inevitable end of their brief interaction, parting ways with kind words of farewell. “That was an enjoyable distraction,” mused Dean, meandering to his boarding gate. For his flight, Dean had packed several of his favorite reference books and field guides for recognizing the various flora and fauna of the desert. He was excited to be singled out amongst his colleagues for this occasion, which could, though no guarantees had been made, secure his career. After boarding the plane, Dean, who was not a fan of flying, quickly fastened his seat belt and clutched his armrests in wary anticipation of takeoff. As it turned out, the flight was relatively calm and peaceful, harboring no turbulence or turmoil of any sort. Dean, taking the opportunity to bone up on his anthropological research regarding dates and periods of tool making, metallurgy, and the like, felt that he was ready for anything by the time the plane landed in New Mexico. Dean ambled through the crowded airport, looking for a driver holding a plaque with his name on it. The lead archeologist in charge of the dubious desert-site, Algernon Stromwell, his voice husky and impatient, had assured Dean that amenities would be made available to him, not least of which was to be a ride to the camp site. Dean, his eyes flittering from face to face amidst the crowd of suited drivers, couldn’t find anything to indicate that a car was waiting for him. He began to feel impatient, cursing himself for neglecting to call ahead, and made his way toward a bank of payphones.

“Woodburn?” asked a stocky, elder man, placing a steely grip on Dean’s shoulder as he passed him. Dean, feeling startled, turned around with an indignant expression to face the person who had grabbed him. “Excuse me,” said Dean, grumpily shaking the strangers hand off of him. “And you are?” he inquired of the brutish, spectacle adorned old man before him. “Name’s Stromwell… we spoke on the phone.” Dean was embarrassed, immediately extending his hand for a firm shake, and adjusted his demeanor to reflect his respect for Stromwell’s work. “Mr. Stromwell, I must apologize… I was expecting a driver,” garbled the nervous young anthropologist. “Well,” began Mr. Stromwell, “I drive and I’m here to pick you up, so I guess that makes me your driver.” With that, Mr. Stromwell turned and walked off, leaving Dean, his tweed jacket appearing haughty compared to Stromwell’s dirty plaid shirt, behind with his befuddlement. Dean closed his slacked jaw, composed himself, and followed Stromwell out of the airport and into the dry desert air. The morning was chilly, still reeling from the bitter cold of the desert’s night. Dean shivered as a chill undulated down his back, reaching the base of his spine, and broadened his gate to keep up with Mr. Stromwell, who had briskly sauntered up to his truck in the airport’s lot.

“So, Mr. Stromwell,” began Dean. “Call me Algernon,” replied the curt, though not untoward, archeologist. “Algernon,” continued Dean, “has your team unearthed the object yet?” Wrinkling his face, attempting to raise his glasses up the fat ridge of his nose, Algernon said, “Well… yesterday the explosives team detonated about four hundred pounds of TNT, if I’m not mistaken, which was the maximum charge they felt they could procure without damaging our subject. So…” Algernon paused, causing the overzealous young anthropologist to practically salivate in anticipation, and then resumed, saying, “So… no. We haven’t. Could get to it today, though, if the explosives team did their job right. We’ll see.” Dean nodded, his mind possessed with speculations as to what they might find, and opened his satchel, retrieving a pen and a pad of paper. “Can you tell me anything that might not have been included in the debriefing?” asked Dean. Algernon, his shoulders rising slowly as he drew in a long, deep breath, kept his eyes peeled on the road, considering his response. After a time, Algernon quickly glanced over at Dean, looking him up and down, and with a reticent tone in his voice said, “Well… the boys at the hole – at the site – say they been gettin’ some weird feelings about this dig. Jerry - you’ll meet him soon, he’s my number two - said that he heard a howling sound roll in from the mountains last night. Jerry also told me that two of our younger boys said they had the same dream last night, too.” Pulling his chin backward, expressing his bemusement, Dean remained silent, scribbling away.

****************

By one p.m. the sun had finally warmed the vast, empty air of the desert. Algernon pulled his truck up to the site, which surprised Dean with its sheer size, and the two men stepped out of the vehicle. “Holy smokes…” said Dean, marveling at the two-hundred foot diameter crater that the explosives team had carved out for the archeologists. “This is massive,” continued Dean, who received a lackluster nod from Algernon. Though the crater was wide, it wasn’t as deep as Dean had suspected, dropping only about sixty feet. Approaching the edge of the crater, cautiously peering over its lip, Dean saw what looked to be about ten people fast at work, digging into the scorched earth with pick-axes and shovels. Suddenly, and with a spasm of fear, Dean recoiled from a harsh grip that took hold of his ankle. Dean, tumbling backward, kicked his foot free from the iron-clad hold and shuffled backward until he collided with Algernon’s legs. Algernon laughed heartily, pointing his chubby finger at Dean, while Jerry climbed out of the crater, smiling. “Sorry bout that, fella!” said Jerry, addressing Dean, whose face had flushed furiously red. Dean rose, dusting himself off, and attempted to regain his dignity by thrusting his hand out toward Jerry, introducing himself as, “Dean Woodburn, Ph.D.” Jerry, his eyes peeking out from below his furrowed brow, smilingly said, “Jerry Black… no honorific, though, I’m afraid. Just Jerry Black.”

Jerry, Algernon, and Dean relocated to the archeologists’ camp site, which was littered with tents, to introduce and discuss the day’s findings thus far. Jerry began, addressing Algernon, who had explained to him that Dean would be playing catch up. “Betty says that the explosives team did a crack job avoiding N-021, but it looks like we’ve got about six… seven hours worth of digging to do before we breach.” Dean, raising his pointer finger, said, “N-021 is our subject, correct?” Both men nodded and Dean made a notation in his book as Jerry resumed. “Now that we’re closer to it, our sensors were able to get a tighter read on N-021, too. Looks like it’s definitely not copper, which makes this even more sensitive of a find, and it’s location in the ground, providing there’s been no tampering, dates this sucker at around seven to eight thousand years.” Dean, ceasing his scribbles, looked up into Jerry’s dust beaten face and asked, “did you say seven to eight thousand years… and it’s definitely not copper?” Jerry nodded at Dean, who flashed Algernon a look of astonishment, and continued, saying, “There’s more. Based on our earlier readings, we were suspicious of Nickel deposits or a vein of Iron ore, but, again, now that we’re closer, it’s obvious that this is a small metallic structure, and it’s not naturally occurring.”

After their meeting, Dean set himself up in one of the small, light-blue tents provided for him. The sunlight, its oppressive presence bearing down on the sprawling desert, shone through the tent, making the light inside an eerie blue-grey. Dean Woodburn, PhD, looked over his notes, cross-comparing them with projections and educated guesses he had made in the days prior. However, given what Jerry had just related, Dean seemed to have underestimated the magnitude of their find. The earliest evidence of metallurgy on earth began around five or six thousand years ago, and was practiced exclusively with copper due to the circumstances of the time, which made the current dig a horse of a different color. Jerry was very excited, but his agitation, which he could no longer assuage with his readings, reached its peak and he ventured out onto the site, donning his academic’s notion of work attire. Wearing khaki cargo-shorts, a beige button-up shirt, and an oversized cowboy hat, Dean looked like a fool. He climbed down the makeshift ladder into the crater’s fat, deep belly and received a hearty, impromptu laugh from Jerry, who was silenced with one glance from Algernon. “Dean,” called Algernon from about thirty yards away. Algernon, huddled over a generator and a few computers, waved to Dean, calling him over.

“Hey,” began Dean, “I thought I’d lend a hand with the digging, but…” Algernon, his grumpy expression softening for a moment, interrupted Dean, saying, “We got plenty of hands, son. I need your brain. C’mere and tell me if you’ve ever seen anything like this.” Dean walked around the generator, coming up behind Jerry and Algernon, and looked at the computer screen that seemed to be captivating everyone’s attention. “Sonar imaging just gave us this screen-cap. What the hell you make of it?” Dean looked at the amalgamation of green bits comprising the image on the screen, trying to come up with an interesting answer, but the fact was that Dean, in all his studies, had never come across anything quite like it. “It’s… a rectangle,” said Dean, finally. A moment of silence preceded the cacophonous burst of laughter that seized all the other members of Algernon’s team. Even the stern, spectacled old man chuckled at Dean’s extraordinarily obvious observation. “Son,” began Algernon, composing himself, “we can see that…” Dean blushed, realizing that in his astonishment he revealed his naïveté, and cleared his throat, attempting to redeem himself. “Well, now hold on… I mean, we can all see that it’s a rectangle, but it’s a perfect rectangle. Setting aside the fact that N-021 is of an unclassified mineral nature, there was no technology or craftsmanship comparable during the proposed time period to account for such a perfect geometrical shape.” Silence befell the small crowd once again.

****************

Nearly four hours had passed and Algernon’s entire team had been digging without rest since sunrise. Though none of the principal team members had expressed the notion, they had each wondered if N-021 were, perhaps, extraterrestrial. Dean had returned to his tent to update his notes with new data from the site, and Algernon and Jerry were entertaining a hushed conversation by the former’s truck. Algernon, listening intently, though with much discomfort, stood with his back to the site while Jerry lambasted him with his concerns. “Damn it, Algernon, this aint right. I’m tellin’ you… whatever that thing is down there, maybe it’s there for a reason. My helpers, both Nick and Tyree, are seriously freaked out right now. They’re threatening to quit digging at the expense of their pay because they don’t want to bring whatever that thing is out!” Algernon heard enough, raising his hand to stop Jerry, and interjected, “God damn it… We’re contracted out here. This aint a hobby – we’re at work now, and my reputation as an archeologist is on the damn line. Now, you want to stop digging because a couple of no-good, sun burnt kids got the heebie jeebies? No. Hell no. I’ve heard enough.” Jerry kept his own concerns to himself, for it was certain that he had them, and stormed off in a huff. Algernon heard Jerry, his voice an angry growl, order Nick and Tyree back to work.

Betty, who was Algernon’s go to person for all things technical, had mistakenly entered Dean’s tent, intending to find the equipment tent. Her face was buried in a string of printouts, which detailed further findings about the as yet unearthed enigma, and she didn’t notice Dean until she practically ran into him. “Oh! Excuse me, oh my!” said Betty, blushing. “No, no worries,” replied Dean, “come in. I don’t think we’ve formally met.” Dean introduced himself and Betty, her nervous demeanor subdued by the excitement of the dig, stayed to chat for nearly ten minutes. “Get out of here… I lectured at Columbia that year. What class did….” Dean was interrupted by a distinctly exhilarated shout, which was followed by a series of hoots and hollers, and he and Betty ran out of the tent. The commotion was coming from within the crater and everyone who was topside was sprinting to its precipice to investigate. “We’re breached!!!” yelled Nick from below. Tyree, who was with Nick in the belly of the crater, backed up slowly, conveying a very dubious air.

In less than ten minutes the entire team had filed one by one down the ladder into the crater’s depths to see for themselves the shiny, albeit worn, silver corner of metal sticking out from the earth. Now the slow, meticulous, and painstaking process of excavating N-021 could truly begin. All the crude blasting and pick-axing, though necessary, was done, and the craftsman was called in for the finishing touches. Algernon, armed with a belt of refined tools, kneeled down by the exposed inch of metal. He retrieved a small chisel and hammer from his belt, and set to work. Though it took hours, nobody left the crater until Algernon unearthed enough of the artifact to discern its true form. Several members of the team, including Jerry and Tyree, left the group, having intimated what N-021 was. The remaining members either couldn’t yet see, or obstinately refused to see, what their vigorous efforts had brought to light. Out of the earth, at a forty-five degree angle, stood the top half of a classic, metal and plastic composite Boombox, circa 1980.  Dean, his heart sinking, was confounded. “A hoax…” he whispered to Algernon, inquisitively. His upper lip dangling over his lower, Algernon simply nodded, saying, “looks like it.” He picked himself up, groaning as his weary body exited its huddled position, and clapped the dust off of his hands. “Betty,” grumbled Algernon, “see if you can… I don’t know. Take some samples or something. I want to know how we fell for this damn prank.” Turning to address the remaining crowd of archeologists, Algernon, raising his voice, said, “Listen up, people. We’ll have supper in an hour – by that time maybe we’ll have some more info on the situation here. However, regardless of what we’ve dug up, I want to say that everybody did an expert job here with this dig and that counts independently of the find.”

****************

The sun was setting on the lonely desert’s expanse. Dean, his skin covered in a thick layer of grime, sat down at one of the benches set up in the center of the tents. He placed his plate between Jerry and Tyree’s, noticing that neither one of his neighbors had bothered to touch their food. Silently, though only outwardly, Dean shoveled a spoonful of cooked red-beans into his mouth, chewing dispassionately as he went over the information in his mind once more. “I just don’t get it,” began Dean, “all the data we received… somebody really knew what they were doing, pulling this one off.” Dean looked at Jerry, expecting to receive a comparable sentiment, but Jerry remained silent, looking down at his plate, raising his eyebrows slightly. “What?” asked Dean of Jerry, who flashed Tyree a nervous look. Dean, feeling suspicious, looked to Tyree and asked him what was going on. “What if… what if it’s not a hoax?” asked Tyree, looking into Dean’s eyes with a disconcerting amount of fear. Dean, after an uncomfortable pause, laughed heartily, assuming that he was being played for a fool. Tyree and Jerry exchanged another glance and Jerry, turning to face Dean, said, “Look… don’t go talking about this with the others, but a few of us have been hearing things at night. It got a lot worse last night after the explosives team blasted that crater in the earth.” Dean interjected, asking, “what are you suggesting?”

A commotion interrupted Jerry’s train of thought and he peered over Dean’s shoulder, watching Betty rush Algernon with what appeared to be important news. Algernon’s face was statuesque, but when Betty finished speaking to him, straightening herself up from her secretive huddle, Algernon rose quietly and followed her into one of the tents. “What’s that all about?” asked Dean. Tyree, shaking his head, sucked his teeth and turned to Jerry, saying, “See? What did I tell you?” Nick, who was Jerry’s other young helper, came by to see if Tyree would like to smoke a cigarette behind the tents with him. Noticing his compatriot’s shaken demeanor, Nick said, “Tyree… c’mon. You’re not still worried about the dig are you? It’s a hoax! We got played, that’s all. I bet those sounds last night were part of the prank… or else some assholes a hundred miles away, blasting their car stereos. C’mon, let’s go around back for a smoke.” Reluctantly, Tyree acquiesced to his friend’s wishes, leaving the table with a mousy air. “Jerry… if there’s something going on here, I’d really like to know,” said Dean. Jerry, pushing his plate away from him, said, “When we got to the dig site everybody was talking about aliens and ancient, lost civilizations… it was fun – silly, overexcited archeologists. But now, Dean, I’m not so sure… We set up camp, tested the area, dug, and located N-021 within a few hundred feet before the week was through. Several people – and I’m one of them – heard a strange howling sound, which seemed to come in with the wind from the mountains, after the first night we struck ground. It got progressively worse each night… kept me up, and I’m a sounds sleeper. My helpers came to me the night after the explosives team blasted a whole in the earth, complaining that they had the same nightmare and it lasted all night.” Jerry wiped his eyes with his palms and continued, “something aint right, Dean. Mark my words… I aint a fool and my gut is screaming at me right now… something aint right.”

Nick and Tyree lit their hand rolled cigarettes outside the cluster of tents with the full view of the gaping, mouth-like crater before them. While teasing Tyree for what he considered to be a childish fear, Nick heard a tight high-pitched yelp, which was so faint as to seem barely there, come from the mountains off in the distance. He involuntarily broke off his chiding, feeling startled by the sound, and Tyree, his eyebrows raising, said, “Aw… what’s a matter, Nicky? Scared?” The two boys smoked their cigarettes, coping with the slow and steady drone of terror encroaching upon them, and consequently missed the announcement Algernon was making in the center of camp. “Folks, might I have your attention,” began the grumpy, frumpy archeologist. Dean and Jerry, breaking off from their furtive discussion, turned their awareness to Algernon. “Betty here, at the expense of her own dinner, has been running some figures, trying to make heads or tails of this dig. I know I’m asking for it here, but… it looks like we’re still in business. Betty took some dirt samples from inside the stereo’s speakers and we’ve got a soil sample match. This means, ladies and gentleman, that the area has not been unearthed and refilled.” A murmur of concerned voices echoed through the camp site. Algernon, raising his hands, quieted everyone down and continued, “Betty relayed this information to Ganzyme-Tech Corp., our illustrious benefactors, and they said they’d be choppering in a special relief team by sunrise tomorrow. In the meantime, we’re under strict orders to refrain from any further contact with N-021. Alright, people?”

****************

“Psst…” hissed Dean. “Busted,” he said as he came upon Nick and Tyree, who were still sitting outside the camp, smoking and talking. “Did you hear about the announcement?” he asked of the boys. “Yeah. Jerry came by. Told us not to mess with the Boombox,” said Nick, flicking his cigarette butt away. Tyree stared into the cavernous maw, its presence in the dwindling light taking on a terrible air. “Hey… can you spare a cigarette?” Dean asked, trying to cozy up with the boys. It didn’t take a doctorate for Dean to realize they were both frightened, though dealing with their feelings quite differently. As Dean rolled his cigarette, Tyree reticently asked, “what else did Mr. Stromwell say?” “Well,” began Dean, gently spitting a few stray pieces of tobacco off of his lip, “he said that the site doesn’t appear to be tampered with.” Nick kicked up a clod of earth, indignantly guffawing, and said, “What a load…” No sooner had Nick finished speaking than did a rumbling, throaty, deep-pitched whimper ride in from the vanishing horizon, chilling the three young men to their core. Tyree jumped up, demanding an explanation of his friend, who looked genuinely frightened. “Ha! You boys can’t tell a Coyote from the devil!” said Dean, laughing as he lit his cigarette. He remained with the two young helpers for another few minutes, but no one spoke. After a time, Dean told the boys not to worry and excused himself, walking back toward camp. Once his face was obscured from view, he allowed his false expression of indifference to subside, making way for the dubious countenance of dismay that lied underneath his reassuring visage.

Dean found Jerry, who was speaking with Algernon, just as Betty arrived. “Dean, good. Come here. This is sensitive stuff people,” said Algernon, addressing the three experts in his huddle, “It looks like this is legit. No idea how, but Ganzyme just faxed over this contract, which stipulates total discretion on our part, and reasserted that no one – and I mean no one – go near N-021. They’re seriousness is unnerving.” Dean drew in a lungful of his cigarette and Betty, looking increasingly disheveled, motioned to him, asking for a puff. Jerry interjected, saying, “So… are you trying to tell me that this Boombox is actually seven thousand years old, because, Algernon, please…” Algernon, appearing frustrated, said, “Look, I don’t know what to think, but the soil samples are a match and there’s absolutely no evidence of tampering… we’re carbon dating N-021 itself, but it’ll be nearly a week before…” “Carbon dating?” yelled Jerry, “What the hell are you carbon dating a Boombox for? I mean…” As the two longtime partners argued, outside of camp, Tyree, with a sinking sense of dread, excused himself from Nick’s company, saying, “It’s getting’ cold, Nick. Let’s get back to camp.” Nick declined, saying that he wasn’t tired, and told his friend to go on without him. Tyree shrugged his shoulders and walked off, leaving Nick alone with his sixth cigarette in less than an hour. “Don’t know what everybody’s all bugged out about,” said Nick into the open night air once he was alone. “It’s just a stupid stereo.” Taking a deep breath, Nick walked up to the lip of the crater, whose insides were blacker than even the desert’s blackened night sky. As he peered into the crater’s mouth, he saw N-021 refract a bead of light and concocted his final, and most fateful, ploy.  

“Guys, guys! Please…” said Betty, attempting to calm Jerry and Algernon’s heated discussion, which had begun attracting attention from some of the other archeologists. Dean was about to speak, intending to assist Betty in her diplomatic endeavors, when a singularly terrible noise resounded, with great volume, from the deep, black crater. Frozen in the grip of fear, the four researchers stared blankly into each other’s eyes, listening to the raucous roar booming in the desert’s night air. Jerry suddenly dashed off, breaking the shackles of his fear, and charged out of the camp site toward the crater. The sound, which seemed a mélange of agonizing animal cries – though with a distinctly human, guttural intonation – violated every ear within a hundred miles, invoking bilious bile in the bowels of those unfortunate enough to hear it. Jerry reached the edge of the crater’s gaping face and saw, with a sinking sensation in his heart, Nick beside N-021, desperately trying to silence it’s speakers. Visibly mortified, Nick reached down, fumbling with the Boomboxes controls, and depressed the stop-button on the stereo’s tape deck. The wicked wailing ceased, leaving only the haunted sound of its echo as it rode the wind toward the mountains.

Dean and Betty arrived behind Jerry at the edge of the crater with Algernon and the rest of the team in tow. Dean, his eyes wide and mad with fear, watched as Nick, who was reduced to a quivering mass of regret, stood beside N-021, pleading with his eyes for forgiveness. “God, damn it!” said Algernon upon arriving at the precipice and realizing what had transpired. “Nick,” he shouted, “get your God damned ass up here!” But Nick, his gaze affixed to those standing on the ledge sixty feet above him, didn’t move, speak, or in any way acknowledge Algernon. Instead, as the echo of the Boombox’s awful emanation reverberated through the desert, Nick became sickly pale, collapsing in a fit of seizures beside N-021. “Jesus Christ,” exclaimed Jerry as he dashed to the ladder, descending into the crater. Dean and Betty followed closely behind, arriving beside Nick and finding him frothing at mouth, his eyes lazily hanging in their orbitals. “We need a medic!” shouted Dean up to Algernon, who dashed off, returning a few minutes later with an emergency kit. By the time Algernon reached the crater’s floor, Nick’s paroxysms had subsided and, moaning in agony, he was carried up out of the crater, back toward camp.

As Nick slumbered fitfully with his frightened friend Tyree beside him, Algernon gathered his principal team members inside of one of the tents. The howling sounds, which everyone initially assumed were echoes from the Boombox’s outburst, had become complex and manifold. The wind seemed to be a hitherto unknown accomplice to evil, carrying the implacable cries from the mountains straight to the camp. “Jerry, I think we ought to start a fire, have teams stay up in shifts, and keep everybody as close together as possible till daybreak… what do you think?” asked Algernon. Jerry nodded, gravely, keeping his eyes affixed to the ground. Betty, her hands trembling with fright, volunteered to stay with Jerry, help create a fire, and be part of the first shift. She and Jerry departed, having received their instructions, and Algernon, his brow a sweaty wrinkle, asked Dean to stay behind for a moment. “I’m gonna call our contacts at Ganzyme; would you get hold of the local police? I figure someone should know we’re out here in case… well, just in case.” After a pause, Algernon continued, saying, “Son, I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a very bad feeling about all this.” Dean, unsure of what to say or do, simply listened to the unnatural melody of moans rolling in. “Maybe it’s an effect… an effect caused by fronts meeting. Or by traffic on the other side of the mountain,” Dean offered, hoping to allay the tension.

The night felt long – seemingly eternal – as Dean tossed and turned in his tent. He had agreed to be part of the six man team taking the last watch of the night, and was attempting to get some sleep beforehand. The wind buffeted his tent’s thin walls and the desert’s cold night air crept in, chilling Dean’s arms, giving him goose-bumps. At each juncture where Dean, his conscience throbbing, seemed at the precipice of unconsciousness, a wail would arrive in his ears, reinvigorating his fear and waking him up. Looking at his clock, Dean was wounded to discover that only two hours had passed. As he drifted back toward sleep, which, for him, felt more like merciful oblivion than rest, Dean thought of N-021, its silver chrome and black plastic defying all logic. Sticking out of the ground at an angle of forty five degrees like a finger pointing skyward, N-021 – an apparently seven-thousand years old Boombox – was a messenger of fear.

****************

Dean’s tent shook, nearly toppling over, and cries from the mountains flooded his senses. He awoke drenched in sweat to the penetratingly horrific sounds that had been besetting the camp, only this time they seemed much nearer. Through the fog of his nascent consciousness, Dean realized that what he was hearing sounded different than before. Another moment passed, wherein Dean, his mind becoming clearer, realized that the commotion was only partly comprised of the terrible Boombox’s song. The majority of the cacophony, however, was made up of the shouts, screams, and pleas of Dean’s fellow teammates. Petrified by fear, Dean remained motionless, hearing incredibly loud yells whisk from one side of his tent to the other with inhuman speed. The soft skin of his shelter flapped violently, as if pummeled by a thousand fists. He bit his lip, tasting blood and closed his eyes.

Suddenly, Tyree, who had bravely dashed from Nick’s tent to the next nearest one, entered Dean’s dwellings, panting. Tyree’s eyes were as wide and empty as a newborn’s and he looked at Dean expectantly, as if waiting to be picked up. Dean, his heart nearly exploding from fright when Tyree burst in, quickly leapt out of bed and pulled Tyree by the arm away from the tent’s opening. “What is it? What is it?” stammered Dean. Tyree was silent and still, having suffered a mental collapse, and Dean was left alone to imaging the face of his tormenters. Holding Tyree like a child, Dean rocked back and forth, listening to the voices of his compatriots as they shouted and screamed, but also to the sounds of creatures of an entirely different nature as they stalked, snarled, and wailed. After an hour, Dean, his mind literally collapsing onto itself, couldn’t take it anymore and involuntarily let out a shout so guttural, so primordial, that all the commotion – human and inhuman alike – ceased. For a second that seemed to last an eon, Dean was consumed with the sound of his own heart beating, but no other noises existed. Then, with merciless clarity, Dean witnessed the unthinkable. A fat, long, black, sopping wet tentacle plunged itself without regard into Dean’s tent, finding Tyree’s form. Wrapping around his midsection with great speed, the tentacle disappeared into the night as quickly as it had arrived, taking Tyree’s fear stricken body with it.

****************

Trembling and holding his legs, Dean witnessed the rise of the sun as seen through the thin, blue-tarp walls of his tent. He had prayed, though not with much faith, that the sounds of the mountain’s madness would subside with the sun, but they did not. Closing his eyes, Dean envisioned N-021, unable to stop himself. He whispered non sequiturs and delirious sentiments of regret, replaying the haunting sound of the impossible machine’s recording, which he would never forget, in his mind. “A Boombox can change the world…” he intoned, gravely. The sounds rolling in from the mountains, which had responded with great vigor to the stereo’s playback, seemed odd to Dean, though he was far away within himself, failing to discern up from down. He listened without hearing, only responding to his environment when his tent was struck, which happened occasionally. Two silhouetted forms appeared on the skin of his tent, drawing nearer, and Dean, attaining a moment’s clarity, prepared to die. He closed his eyes and listened to the sound of his tent’s meager flap opening, awaiting the forceful tentacle that would surely constrict around him. “We’ve got a survivor!!!” came the muffled shout of one of Ganzyme-Tech Corp.’s bio-hazard team. Squinting through one eye, seeing the white-suited man through a lattice of eyelashes, Dean felt certain that he had lapsed into a fantasy world. Several other suited people, their frantic conversations incomprehensible to Dean, arrived inside of his tent and after a few minutes, Dean was strapped onto a stretcher and carried outside.

Dean put up no fight, feeling certain that he was, in fact, in the clutches of an unthinkable being, and felt grateful for what he assumed was a merciful fantasy. However, as entrenched in his shock as he was, Dean was not imagining things. With the sun, the mysterious goings on had stopped. The awful, unspeakably other-worldly conversation between N-021 and the vast mountain expanse had been replaced by the sounds of choppers, bio-hazard teams, and sirens, though by then Dean couldn’t recognize them. The sight to the left and right of his stretcher-board told the story of carnage and chaos, with blood and limbs strewn across the dusty desert floor. Only after Dean was driven off in an ambulance did he begin to consider that he was not dreaming. “Man… what the hell happened out there?” rhetorically asked the paramedic riding in back with Dean. Suddenly, and without preamble, Dean began to scream and weep, finally allowing the reality of the situation to sink in. Paramedic Sean Fry, reaching over his thrashing patient, was forced to sedate Dean, who required triple the amount of a usual dose. “Jesus Christ,” yelled Sean to Matt, the other medic who was up front driving, “whatever happened out there… it really made an impression on our boy here.” Though unconscious, Dean continued to weep for the duration of the ride to the hospital, involuntarily replaying the Boombox’s song in his mind.

Ronny’s eyes had lit up, taking in every detail, and she hoped, despite the cruelty of her wish, that she would find an actual dead body. The house, however, was empty. Ronny’s sudden burst of excitement and purpose, which she would have abandoned all responsibility for, seemed to have been lost. After consuming with her hungry eyes all the gory goings-on in Mrs. Treehorn’s house, Ronny had produced her cell-phone with the intention of calling the police. The operator had picked up, asking Ronny what her emergency was, but Ronny, noticing something she had missed earlier, remained silent, ultimately hanging up without saying a word. What Ronny had noticed was a trail of ruby red rivulets leading into the kitchen. She followed the beads of blood into the dining room, then the kitchen, and back into the living-room. The trail, its presence acting upon Ronny’s excitement like a bellows upon a fire, led straight out of the front door. Before passing through Mrs. Treehorn’s front door, Ronny had spied a curious detail about the door’s frame. The wooden splinters, which had burst from their boards with great force, all pointed out of the house, which seemed, to Ronny, to indicate that the house hadn’t been broken into, but out of. She had looked around the house one final time and, deciding to exploit her opportunity for adventure, left the shopping bags on the floor and took off down the street, following the trail of fat blood droplets.

 By the time Ronny reached the end of Orchard Street she was out of breath. She doubled over, resting her palms on her knees, and heaved, trying to catch her breath. She hadn’t expected the trail of blood to process farther than she could sprint, but was pleasantly surprised to discover it had. Ronny, suddenly desiring her favorite baseball cap, which was evocative of her more adventurous Tom-boy days, reassessed the situation and wondered how far she would be willing to follow the trail. She looked into herself, prying at the more obfuscated edges of her reasoning, and found only the darkened desire to fling herself into action and live an adventure. The ennui of her sixteen year old life, which was compounded by her tedious job at the grocery store, seemed an abundant source of inspiration for going forth into the unknown. Having caught her breath and adjusted her approach, Ronny began walking behind the trail, following its lead. Analyzing its appearance, Ronny surmised that Mrs. Treehorn, whom Ronny also imagined to be the wounded, leaking source of the trail, had been moving at different speeds along the route. Big, wet, fat droplets meandering in wide curves seemed to indicate a slower pace, while smaller, linearly arranged droplets, which were spaced out much further, seemed to illustrate that Mrs. Treehorn was being whisked off with great speed. A long, regrettably boring stretch followed wherein Ronny, her excitement in jeopardy, began to submerge into her discursive thought.

 For nearly a mile, Ronny walked down Sternbrook Road, following the lazy, winding path of ruby rivulets. She thought of Mrs. Treehorn’s cherubic countenance and curly white hair, musing over how curious it was that the very young and the awfully old seem to mirror each other. Ronny wondered who would have wanted to hurt Mrs. Treehorn, or better yet, what… As she conjured up a myriad of plots and sinister circumstances to account for the enigmatically entertaining exercise at hand, the trail, to Ronny’s great delight, took a sharp turn, leading directly into a sewage drain. Ronny got down on her hands and knees, inaugurating ‘the point of no return’ by sullying her work clothes, and peered into the cavernous, dark environs of the subterranean sewer. For a moment, Ronny hesitated, her thoughts coalescing around the unfounded notion that she could go no further, but a shudder of excitement passed over her spine as she realized, with a broadening smile, that she could do anything she wanted. She looked around to see if anyone was watching and, removing her green grocer’s sweater, tossing it aside, she stuck her head into the sewer-grate’s largest opening.

 The space was warm and wet, extending farther than Ronny had anticipated. There weren’t many sewer drains in their small suburban burg, but it seemed that Ronny had found the septic plexus of the town’s varying forms of excrement. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness in the dank dungeon, Ronny could see a series of chambers, each leading in different directions, that were filled with waist-high murky water. Grunting and squirming deeper inside the sewer-gate’s tight opening, Ronny inhaled deeply, regretting her decision immediately, and coughed violently in an attempt to disembogue the funk-laden breath she drew in. As she heaved, her abdomen contracted, inadvertently decreasing the diameter of her belly, which was previously caught on the grate’s opening, and she fell head first into the bilious waters below. A dramatic splash punctuated her fall, but Ronny only heard the muffled underwater current of the sewer passing by. She surfaced, gasping for air, feeling mortified at having fell in the disgusting dregs, and climbed up onto the walkway that edged around the perimeter of the sewer. Spitting and cursing at her luck, Ronny gathered herself, deciding that it was too late, and too pointless, to bemoan her condition. Suddenly, she burst out laughing, feeling struck by the absurdity of her actions. Ronny realized that she had effectively lost her job, that she would most likely acquire an infection of some sort, and that she didn’t care one bit about either of those things. She wanted to feel alive and, though she hadn’t articulated as much to herself, she felt that the quality of her existence was directly proportional to the mischief and danger it contained.

 As her laughter softened, disintegrating into small, insular fits of chuckles, Ronny rediscovered the trail. Along the walkway Ronny spied the blood droplets that had enticed her thus far and reasserted that there was no turning back. The simple, though intense, curiosity in her heart, which had driven Ronny her entire young life, sufficed to wash away all the logic and reason that most people might exercise in a case like this. For Ronny, the fear, wonder, danger, and knowledge that ‘she shouldn’t be doing this’ was precisely the nourishment she was seeking and, as luck would have it, finding. Her pace quickened as she followed the bloody byway down the semi-circular tunnel, its vile liquid coursing in the direction of Ronny’s advance. She came to the end of the tunnel, finding a steep drop of about one hundred feet, where several other passageways emptied out. A metal ladder, which Ronny could see was thoroughly rusted even from a distance, had been bolted to the wall nearly a foot around the bend of the tunnel’s terminus. Ronny, conjuring more bravery than she could remember ever having, reached around the corner of the tunnel’s mouth, groping for the ladder. She managed to take hold of it’s top rung, trying desperately not to look down into the bubbling abyss below, but, in a fraction of a second, everything went wrong. Her sneaker slipped on the wet edge of the tunnel, unbalancing Ronny, and she fell out of the passage’s mouth. She dangled from the ladder, her grip loosening, and swung her legs, attempting to acquire some footing. But, before she was able to do so, the bolts fastening the ladder to the concrete wall were ripped from the mortar.

 Ronny fell for what seemed like ages. She screamed a blood curdling cry, emptying her lungs completely, and fell still more. Finally, after the sensation of plummeting had adequately imprinted itself onto her mind, Ronny impacted with the lurid liquid. A tremendous splash, which she was unable to enjoy, followed Ronny’s entry into the burg’s bubbling backwash. She instinctively opened her eyes and flailed about, searching the amorphous fluid environment for something that she could grab on to. A strong undercurrent, its warmth surprising and revolting to Ronny, swiftly pulled her deeper below the surface of the water, propelling her with great speed into a small tunnel. Like a bullet shot from its chamber, Ronny was jettisoned through the shaft, its length and destination unknown. She struggled to remain calm, intending to conserve the oxygen from her held breath as long as possible, but was nearly to the point of gasping. Suddenly, and with a violent impact, Ronny collided with the steel bars adorning the terminus of the shaft. As the water rushed out of the pipe, splashing to the ground, which Ronny guessed was about ten feet below, she managed to press her desperate mouth between the bars, finding the brilliant, cool air at her disposal. She coughed and spat and gasped, trying to catch her breath. Ronny hadn’t had a spare moment to reflect on the absurdity of her decisions or the danger of her actions, but, as the water poured out around her, Ronny became aware of how dire her situation was.

 She shivered, fearing the worse, as the cold water rushed past her body. Ronny yelled, trying to attract the attention of someone who might help, but the deafening sound of the billowing water drowned out her cries. Through the spray of sewage, Ronny, her heart both sinking and soaring, saw a small puddle of blood a few yards from the ground outside of the pipe. She surmised that, somehow, Mrs. Treehorn must have endured the same fate that Ronny was currently embroiled in, but had managed to get outside of the gate, resting for a short while, which accounted for the puddle of blood, and then resuming her dubious journey. Feeling inspired, Ronny stuck her thin, freezing, sopping-wet arm out of the gate and palpated the wall. To her delight, she found what seemed to be a lever and pulled it as hard as she could. The circular gate suddenly unlatched, its bottom swinging out in response to the force of the water, and it opened upward on a set of hinges that Ronny hadn’t noticed. Feeling utterly relieved, Ronny tried to get out of the tunnel gracefully, but the force of the bilious brew surging behind her knocked her off of her feet, causing Ronny to tumble awkwardly to the ground below.

 A bed of leaves and grass cushioned her fall and Ronny, feeling a sense of aliveness unlike any she had ever felt before, laughed deliriously. Her hysterics disintegrated into a fit of sobbing, reminding Ronny of her childhood, wherein crying factored greatly. She picked herself up, brushed off, and, with a shudder of fear and discomfort, walked over to the puddle of blood. She looked into the cruor, feeling uneasy as she surveyed its lumpy, clotted parts, and followed the trail with her eyes. It led into a thickening brush of foliage, which marked the entrance to a decidedly more wooded area. Ronny, her head a jumbled mass of doubts and desire, looked back up at the grate, which rattled in accord with the tumult of the water, and realized that she had no idea where she was. Her clothes were soaking wet and Ronny was shivering from the cold, but her thoughts were possessed by a different matter. Everything had happened so fast, beginning with a naïf’s curiosity, transmuting into a promise of adventure the likes of which Ronny hadn’t seen, and culminating with a seemingly simple decision, which, for Ronny, was anything but simple. Ronny, considering her options, realized that turning back, finding her way home, yielded the most predictable, practically impotent reality she could imagine. Her mother would scold her for getting fired again. Her friends, who never really seemed to understand her, would mock and tease Ronny for being so ‘weird,’ and she would find another job, equally mundane, to replace her lost one. “Or,” Ronny mused, her lips unwittingly contorting into a devious smile, “I could go this way.” She turned to face the trail, which disappeared a few hundred feet away, and felt an electric sensation pass across her body. ‘This way’ for Ronny meant total freedom, an uncreated vista of potential. There was no precedent for the path that laid before her and that is precisely what Ronny was attracted to.

 A blinding focus gripped Ronny, concealing the passage of time from her. It was getting dark and Ronny had been following the trail of red droplets for hours. Her feet, their soft wet heels chafing against the insides of her sopping sneakers, were beginning to hurt, but Ronny pressed on. At first, after entering the woods, Ronny had felt only excitement. She had decided to turn her back on the simple, familiar comforts of her small-town life, hoping to encounter something more meaningful on her way. Before the first hour had passed, Ronny’s excitement had waned, giving way to a healthy skepticism, which she admitted too late was missing from her initial decision. The trail of blood, which had been a macabre metaphor in the day, was becoming a threatening tome in the twilight hours. It told a story of bloodshed, after all, a fact that Ronny had conveniently glazed over. She trudged on, feeling unnerved, and for the first time that day began to imagine what she might find at the end of the trail. Grizzly images invaded her mind, threatening to undermine her resolve, but Ronny, despite being unsure of her motivation, refused to stop. As the fear in her chest increased, so too did her bravery, and Ronny realized what was driving her. She wasn’t looking for Mrs. Treehorn. In fact, Ronny had barely considered her. Ronny was looking for herself. She wanted to be the real Ronny, who responded to the quick, changing flow of the unknown, not Veronica Myers, who worked as a cashier at the local supermarket. Though she was young, she intuited a wealth of potential within herself, believing that potential to be in jeopardy as long as she stayed in her box. Ronny, her wary body begging her to stop, refused, promising herself that she would not rest until the trail ended.

 Several times throughout the night, Ronny meandered off of the path. She told herself it was the darkness, but, in fact, it was Ronny’s thoughts that distracted her. Her doubts and concerns had become deafening, often occluding, though her eyes were wide open, the view before her from sight. The trail, its globules of sanguine-serosity  refracting glints of moonlight, lit up like the lights of a runway, leading further and further away from the known. Ronny, catching herself immersed in thoughts of her mother or fantasies of a shower, would shake those illusions off and find the trail again, resuming her course. At the first sign of dawn, Ronny, feeling profoundly tired, considered giving up, but the trail continued as far as the eye could see. She stumbled onward, unwittingly crossing state lines, and emerged from the forest on the other side, looking positively deranged. The woods acquiesced, giving way to a clearing, and there was a narrow four-lane highway up ahead. Too her astonishment, Ronny saw a dark, shadowy form lying on the side of the road where it seemed that the trail was leading. Her pace quickening, Ronny felt a resurgence of energy coursing through her weary bones. As she neared the form she wondered if it was Mrs. Treehorn, hoping that she would be still alive, but when the sopping wet body before her came into view, Ronny gasped, covering her mouth, and fell onto the floor beside it. The trail of spilt blood led, as Ronny had suspected, right to the wounded creature it fell from, but Ronny couldn’t have guessed who she would find.

****************

Veronica opened her eyes, seeing, from her horizontal vantage point on the side of the road, only the trail of ruby-red rivulets that her punctured abdomen had left behind. She thought she heard the soft tussle of fallen leaves being disturbed by someone’s advance, but looking straight ahead she saw no one. A strange sense permeated her body, which had been badly injured the previous night, and Veronica was reminded of herself as a teenager, when she used to go by Ronny. She couldn’t remember, save for bits and pieces, how she had gotten to the roadside. Her scattered memory of the night prior was, in large part, a result of Daniel Breton’s meddling, which sent a veritable shockwave of paranormal proportions rippling throughout the town, but Veronica didn’t know that. All she knew was that she had awoke in the night, feeling tremendous pain in her abdomen. A strange, nightmarish pastiche of images, which seemed to indicate that something had burst forth from within Ronny, was all she could recall. As she laid by the side of the road, dying, Veronica revisited the thoughts that had been consuming her the day prior, which, unbeknownst to her, had become manifest after Breton unwittingly tore the veil that divided realities, inviting their collision.

 Veronica Myers had been living in the same town for years, watching her life slowly pass by, and had, for the past few months, been attempting to articulate her depression. She remembered herself as a youth, longing for the feelings of adventure and wonder that characterized her childhood, but had otherwise drained out of her life. Veronica knew that she had reached a cross roads, seeing her dreary mundane existence on the one side and an unknown expanse of potential on the other. She had decided, only hours before going to bed, that she would quit her job, take a trip overseas, and embark on a journey that was solely concerned with Veronica’s rediscovery of Ronny. That night, as she slept, dreaming of her childhood, strange forces were at play, unknowingly breathing life into Veronica’s deep-seated desires. A flash image, which piercingly entered Veronica’s mind, lingered in the void of her exhausted consciousness, depicting her doubled over the sofa as a pair of small hands clawed their way out from her belly. Veronica, looking down at her bloodied sweatshirt, whispered, “What’s happening to me?”

****************

Ronny, her young mind racing, looked at the wizened, but undeniable, face of herself. The aged Veronica laid on the side of the road, her very body the beginning and end of the trail. Though her eyes fluttered open occasionally, she seemed unaware of Ronny’s presence. Ronny stood before her elder self, grappling with the import of her findings. Flash images began to invade her mind, too, illustrating a violent emergence from a dark, horrible place, and Ronny began to recall what Veronica could not. She had lived within her elder self for as long as she could remember, losing her foothold as the years passed, continuously being silenced and socialized into submission. Through events which she couldn’t fathom – but was beginning to remember – Ronny had been given a form of her own, clawing her way out from the depths of her elder’s withering, corporeal tomb. She recalled drawing her first autonomous breath in years, her nascent mind’s inability to apprehend the situation, and the taste of the sweet night air. Having suffered the trauma of a second birth, which was compounded by the preternatural nature of it, a dazed, uncomprehending young Ronny had showered, dressed herself, and left the house at dawn, picking up with her life precisely where it had been castrated nearly twenty years ago.

 Ronny stood motionlessly, staring into the trembling face of herself, remembering it all. The house she had returned to, which used to belong to Mrs. Treehorn, was now her own and had been for years. The gory sights she beheld were the gruesome remnants of her own emergence. The trail of blood, which had captivated Ronny, invoking precisely the mystery and wonder that Veronica had been missing, led straight to herself. Ronny, her sense of freedom threatened by the reality of age and conformity before her, intuited that Veronica was dying, but not from her wound. She was dying because Ronny had left her. With a great sadness and resignation in her heart, Ronny realized what she needed to do in order to save the fragile heap at her feet. She laid down next to Veronica, meeting face to face, and closed her eyes. In the infinite darkness of her being, Ronny wept for the loss of her life, believing that she would be subsumed once more and imprisoned again. Before loosing all sense of herself, Ronny had one final autonomous thought, which reversed the polarity of her attitude entirely: “Break free.”

***************

Veronica Myers’s passport photo made her look daring and dangerous, or at least in her opinion it did. She waited in line at the airport, her nerves jangling in her belly, and watched a seven-forty-seven take off through the large windows on either side of her. “Next stop, Paris!” she muttered to herself, failing to contain her giddiness. After the ‘incident’, as she had taken to calling it, Veronica quit her job at the accounting firm, sold her house, which had needed a serious cleaning after her bifurcation, and rented a villa in Paris off of Rue de Rivoli. Veronica had remembered everything, obtaining the full view of events once she and herself were whole again, and couldn’t have felt more alive, more in touch with herself, and free. All the ‘rules’ of life, which, to Veronica, had hitherto seemed to exist as truths, were seen to be transparent, providing an endless array of possibilities that she intended to explore. “I.D.s,” demanded a stout young woman standing at the threshold to the airport’s interior. Veronica produced hers, gaining passage, and wandered up to the line for the metal detectors. A charming, handsome man caught eyes with Veronica, smiling at her, and she returned his gesture, inadvertently blushing. The gentleman, who was forward without being aggressive, walked over to Veronica, asking her name. Looking down, trying to compose herself before responding, she cleared her throat, raised her gaze to meet his soft brown eyes, and said, “My name is Ronny.”

Daniel Breton, a fairly private man of his own accord, had discovered, through the lens of lore and the mechanics of myth, that there were other worlds playing out behind the visible one. Like a field of holograms, people’s thoughts, beliefs, and dreams projected onto the blank slate of circumstance, shaping and, in some cases, inventing the so-called reality we dwell within. As with any collective effort, there are those whose knowledge of the tasks and tools at hand surpasses that of many others. For a long time, Breton fought the good fight, becoming more disillusioned by the fallacy of ‘success,’ but it wasn’t until he met Mark Mallory that he felt that he might actually be making a difference. Mark’s knowledge of the occult reached far beyond what the books in his study offered, and Detective Breton had called on Mark to help him many times, putting the doctor’s secretive knowledge to the test. Over the years, Daniel and Mark developed something of a partnership, joking that they should go into business together, and it was customary for Daniel Breton to employ, though not officially, Mark’s unfairly advantageous insights. Once, while attempting to locate a kidnapped child, Breton, who was at his wits end, arranged a meeting with Mark to ask for his assistance. Mark, using  a toy that belonged to the child, was able to locate the boy within one hundred feet of his actual position. Breton wanted to ask Mark, who looked positively depleted afterwards, how he had done this, but they had long since agreed that it was best if the details pertaining to Mark’s methods remained undisclosed.

As Detective Breton drove through the streets, heading toward Mark’s house, he couldn’t help but revisit the harrowing notions that had been plaguing him for the past few months. Humanity, in all of its sadomasochism, was the sole progenitor of meaning, as all other things seemed uninterested in – and, more importantly, without need for – such abstractions. Breton himself straddled at least two worlds, keeping one foot squarely planted in each, or at least attempting to. When Daniel first began working with Mark, clandestinely soliciting his services to make connections only a supernatural sleuth could, he felt that he himself were in on the secret. It was as if the whole world continued with its fantasy, generating and dwelling within it, while he, Daniel Breton, had awoken to the truth. After a short time, he felt as though he were lying to his coworkers and, in fact, he was, but the lie he felt that he was perpetrating was one of greater consequence than where he found such and such a clue, or telling his superiors that he couldn’t disclose his source’s identity. The true lie was to wake up each morning, dress one’s self, and try to make a difference in the world because, as Daniel, despite the agony it caused him, began to believe, nothing really mattered. The line he walked, which seemed to him to be the line between fact and fiction, had disappeared, but it didn’t leave exclusively fact, or exclusively fiction; it left nothing. Cold, black, unhearing, unseeing nothing.

Breton pulled his black sedan into Mark’s driveway, finding the house in darkness, and checked the time. “Looks like somebody’s got the kids this weekend,” said Daniel with a sigh. After quietly shutting the door to his car, Daniel turned around to face the house’s front door, finding Mark, his face in need of a shave, standing in the doorway. “You don’t know how to call anybody?” asked Mark, sarcastically. “You sleeping already? It’s only one in the morning… Cindy, Jake?” asked Detective Breton. Mark nodded, smiling faintly, and said, “Yeah, they’re upstairs. I finally got them to bed and, what can I say, I was tired. C’mon in.” The two gentleman entered the darkened house and Mark, peering out into the night to make sure no one was watching, shut the door, locking it after them. Mark put on a pot of coffee and proceeded to shuffle around his kitchen, looking for cups, but stopped abruptly. He turned to face Daniel, who had already sat down at the kitchen table, and said, “What’s up with you? You still feeling depressed?” Daniel, fleetingly smiling, nodded with a chuckle. “It’s silly, I know.” He shifted in his chair, obviously feeling uncomfortable with the subject, and straightened up. “Hey,” Breton began, “would you take a look at this. It may be nothing, but I found it at the scene of a crime tonight… no murders, just a disturbance.” He tossed the small evidence bag of black goo at Mark, who opened it and sniffed its contents, reeling at the smell. “Sulfur!” Mark exclaimed. Daniel nodded, conveying his own dubious feelings about the goo, and stood up to leave. “Wait… Hey, listen, Daniel… you’re welcome to crash on the couch if you’d like. This won’t take me more than a few hours.” 

****************

A rumbling sound emerging beneath him woke Detective Breton up. He opened his heavy eyelids, wondering how long he had been asleep, and sat up, looking over the back of the couch for Mark. The kitchen table was littered with books and papers, but there was no sign of the occultist operative that they belonged to. Breton looked at his wrist watch, finding, instead of the small black-leather-strapped time-piece, a chord of braided blonde hair. Daniel leapt up, flailing his arm about, and cursed as he clawed at his braided bracelet. “Shhhh!” a voice hissed at him. Breton whipped his head in the direction of the sound, but the living-room, where he had been sleeping, was empty. He managed to get the bristly bangle off of his wrist and tossed it onto the floor where it promptly animated, slithering away with the undulating rhythm of a centipede. It disappeared underneath the sofa and Daniel knew something was very wrong. The silence in the room was vacuous, reminding Daniel, by contrast, of the shush he received a moment earlier. “Mark!” Daniel Breton yelled, though under the restraint of a whisper, producing a throaty, ineffectual, and hoarse cry that no one but him could hear. He reached for his gun, but decided not to withdraw it because of the children sleeping upstairs. He wondered if Cindy or Jake was simply playing a trick on him, deciding not to take the chance of endangering them.

“Mark….” said Breton, this time with the full volume of his speaking voice. Another shush rang out into the darkened space and Breton, suddenly feeling convinced that the kids had snuck downstairs and were playing a trick on him, wandered over to the light switch and turned it on. When Breton flipped the switch into it’s upward “on” position, a curious thing happened. All the light, which was the minimum of luminosity that one sees in a darkened room after their eyes have adjusted to it, vanished, leaving Breton in an utterly pitch-black void. His heart racing, Breton flipped the switch back down and the room was dark, but relatively illuminated, again. “What the hell is going on?” demanded Breton, who received another shush before he had finished speaking. “YOU SHUSH!” he yelled, feeling slightly embarrassed to have hollered with the spontaneity of a bristling child. Just then, Mark tumbled into the room, falling out of a closet door. “Jesus, Mark, what’s going on?” asked Breton as he helped his disheveled friend to his feet. “!uoy dnatsrednu t’nac I ?tahw, leinaD” Daniel hopped back, covering his mouth instinctively, and said, “Oh, my god…” Several years ago, Daniel and Mark had worked together to decipher a code that had been baffling the pencil-pushers at the precinct. The cipher team had found the common elements, believing themselves to be a step away from cracking the cryptograph, but when they translated the otherwise incoherent message, they were saddened to discover that they were still missing something. Daniel and Mark, through their various resources, discovered that the person who had written the code had been hexed, and while the code’s logic worked from left to right like normal writing, the person spoke and, more perplexingly, thought backwards.

Daniel rushed Mark to his mirror, which he knew from their previous exploits with hexes would reverse the charm, and, while looking into the glass, said, “Mark! Do you understand me?” Mark spouted out a string of replies: “Yes! Oh, thank god. What’s going on? Hex? How?” Daniel was as flustered as Mark, but he knew from his years of police work that he had to keep calm. “Mark, Mark, relax. Breathe. Slow down, okay? What happened?” Mark, nodding his head affirmatively, slowed his breathing and replied, saying, “Daniel, I don’t know what happened. Whatever that stuff was, that goo, it was connected to a really pissed off little bastard. An incubus, I think… real uptight.” Detective Breton, unable to detach from his cool, calculating mind, said, “So, Doctor Stromb was in the know… Never mind, then what?” Mark, his eyes connected to Breton’s through the mirror’s reflection, said, “Then… you don’t remember? Oh, boy…” “What? What?” goaded Breton. Looking down momentarily, composing himself, Mark said, “Well, Daniel… a spectral-flare happened. I freaked. I mean, I thought those were a myth, or at least one in a trillion, but wow! I dashed into the closet, I’m sorry. You, well, you were hit pretty hard. I had to think about my kids, you know?” Breton raised his hand, dismissing his friend’s apology, and said, “Mark, please, I understand. What now? What does this mean?” Mark shook his head from side to side and explained that he had no idea, but that, despite what the backward-speak seemed to indicate, it wasn’t a hex.

Just then, as Breton was scratching his head, a noise rang out behind them. The sound of canvas, or else some other tightly woven fabric, tearing startled Daniel, who spun around to asses the source of the wretched ripping sound. As Daniel stared into the horrific gash that appeared in the very space of the living-room itself, he considered his end, wondering if all his years of skirting danger had finally caught up with him. He stared into the black maw of the universe, its edgeless nothingness literally dismantling the integrity of Daniel’s standing there, perceiving it as such. Mark screamed, but, having turned away from the mirror, his words sounded backwards to Daniel and, in any case, the latter was so horrified, so transcendentally terrified, that he didn’t hear the former. Suddenly, though unable to articulate his reasoning, Daniel was overcome with the intuition that he should plunge his body into this fissure, offering his own life up as a means to close the gap in time and space. Breton looked at Mark, who seemed to implicitly understand his friend’s intentions, and was about to take a step toward the cosmic cleft when Mark’s daughter, Cindy, her arms desperately wrapped around her teddy bear, came traipsing down the stairs to see what the commotion was about. When Cindy saw the anomaly she screamed a blood curdling cry, drawing the attention of the two petrified men, and the rift, as if in response to her shout, constricted with great speed, abruptly disappearing. “Cindy, baby! Don’t move!” said Mark, running over to her, but being careful to edge around where the fissure had been.

Daniel Breton remained utterly motionless, his eyes affixed to the space where reality’s laceration had been. Hugging his daughter, Mark hollered, “Daniel, are you okay? Jesus, what the hell was that?” Daniel looked as though he were a million miles away. He slowly looked up at Mark and said, “You’re not backwards…” Mark, hesitantly considering the implications of this fact, replied, saying, “No… no, you neither.” Mark picked Cindy up and carried her back to her bedroom, assuring her that everything was okay, despite the fact that he himself wasn’t feeling so sure. Daniel remained downstairs, relocating to the sofa where he collapsed onto his butt, and felt as though he were trapped in a state of mental immobility. Mark came bounding down the stairs, his eyes wide with fear, and said, “Daniel, what was that? I’ve never… I’ve never even heard of anything like that.” Breton didn’t look up to meet Marks’ gaze, but he responded, saying, “I should have gone in.” “What?” was Mark’s reply. Daniel repeated himself in a whisper and Mark, feeling mildly outraged, said, “Are you serious? What would posses you to say something like that? That was certain death! I mean, or worse! Why would you say that?” Detective Daniel Breton simply said, “I don’t know.”

The subject of months of anxiety and hopelessness had found a form, manifesting in front of Daniel. The space of reality, its very fabric torn, revealing nothing, seemed to Daniel to exist as a confirmation of his fears. Suddenly, looking up into Mark’s face, Daniel said, “You should take Cindy and Jake and go to a motel. I don’t think it’s safe here.” “What about you?” asked Mark. Breton just shook his head from side to side, looking at the spot where the impossible incision occurred. Though Mark didn’t like the idea of his friend, who had already sufficiently disturbed him with his demeanor, staying behind alone, Mark also knew that he had to protect his kids. In less than ten minutes Mark and his two groggy, frightened children were shuffling out of the front door. “Daniel,” Mark began, his body half way out the door, “Be careful, okay? Don’t do anything…” As Mark searched for the right word to replace ‘stupid,’ his original choice, the quiet, unwavering gaze of Detective Daniel Breton rendered the conclusion of Mark’s sentence moot. They nodded to each other, conveying their solidarity, and in the next instant Mark left the house, shutting the door behind him.

Daniel Breton was alone. As he sat in Mark’s empty living-room, this became very clear to him. He lowered his head, resting it atop his palms, and felt a distinct sense of surrender wash over him. Breton had been struggling for months with the simple act of justifying his existence. He had spent the better part of his life following killers and degenerates, always remaining one step behind their malicious acts, and it took a toll on Daniel’s being. Recently, when he looked up into the night-sky, his gaze secretly attempting to locate evidence that he belonged to it, Daniel only found a chaotic womb full of chance encounters, which took the forms of violent collisions and unintended life. Though he was a thinking, feeling creature, he had no real purpose or meaning. This seemed, for Daniel, to be the sickest joke of them all. He had been endowed, as all humans had, with the faculties necessary to sense, feel, think, and wonder, but the fruits of one’s efforts seemed simply to reveal their insignificance. No greater orchestra was being conducted apart from the one comprised of screams and cries, crashing and crumbling. His life was incidental and as meaningless at birth as it would be at death. These thoughts, as macabre as they were, occupied Daniel’s mind, consequently distracting him from seeing the rift in reality reappear before him.

When Daniel finally looked up, he saw himself sitting on the edge of the sofa, his hands supporting his collapsed, weighty head. For a moment he felt perplexed, trying to reconcile his seemingly reflected form, but no sooner had he realized that it could not have been a mirror image, since his ‘reflection’s’ gaze was downcast, than did a jarring, painful transposition of his consciousness occur. Daniel Breton, shuddering with a violent paroxysm of fear, looked up from his vantage point on the sofa and saw the trembling wound in the flesh of reality before him. Daniel’s mind raced, attempting to understand how it was that he had just seen through the eyes of that most eyeless void. The panic in his chest subsided, being replaced by an unexpected calm, and Daniel’s breath slowed as he stared into the boundless emptiness beneath the surface of the apparent world. Within Breton’s heart was a seed of great sadness that was borne from his sense of primordial alienation, which endured no matter how much ‘good’ Daniel felt he was doing in the world. Though he didn’t know it, it was this latent nexus of alienation and self-doubt, which Daniel unconsciously carried with him, that the spectral-flare had been attracted to. Like an iron rod thrust into the heart of a lightening storm, Daniel’s despair had attracted the highly charged strata of another dimension.

Daniel sat before the cosmic incision, boldly facing the message of meaningless that it conveyed to him, and thought, with surprisingly innocent clarity, that he had finally seen the face of his tormentor – the body of his bane. He looked into the gaping black slit, feeling its life-sapping pull on him, and suddenly felt a sense of identification with it. “You…” began Daniel, “it’s you.” As he uttered these words, his index finger unwittingly pointing at the chasm, Breton saw the border of its seam widen, tearing open a larger whole in reality. “Is this it? This is the end?” Breton asked, spitefully cursing the gash in his heart. “Fine… I’m tired. Too tired to do this anymore.” Breton looked down at his shoes, their shiny leather tips reflecting the overhead light, and for a  moment felt a chilling sense of wonder. He raised his gaze to the vortex, again finding only emptiness within it’s maw, and took a step toward it. In response to his advance, the gash decreased in size. Daniel considered this for a moment, intuiting something particular that he couldn’t yet articulate, and took another step. Again the gap decreased in size, but this time Daniel, his eyes flooded with tears, said, “Oh. Oh, I see,” and with one mighty heartfelt leap he jumped into the chasm.

****************

The air was crisp. A perplexing ‘illuminated darkness’ invaded Daniel’s eyes, slowly giving shape to the forms around him. He huddled in the corner of an unfamiliar house, clutching the lapels of his coat, pulling them up to his chin in an attempt to keep the cold off of his bare neck. The ground, which felt solid, though appeared translucent, stretched out for as far as his eyes could see, prompting Daniel to wonder what he was looking at. Breton, pressing his back against the wall behind him, rose to his feet. The space he was in, he discovered, was actually Mark’s house, but it seemed like a half drawn spectral blueprint of it. As Breton walked through the house, he began to wonder if he was in a different space, or if he was different in the same space. Beneath the sofa, which was likewise translucent, its edges glowing with an eerie blue light, Breton saw his wristwatch, or rather the creature that his wristwatch had transformed into. After peering at the seemingly frightened creature, Daniel noticed something else about it. He saw the watch, its smoky, opaque outline fainter than that of the creature’s, existing concurrently with the writhing, centipede-like vermin. Suddenly, as if a veil had been lifted, Breton could see a myriad of simultaneously occurring, though not necessarily convergent, realities before him. The house, which he had concluded was in fact Mark’s, could be seen as two structures adrift in the same void. Aside from the recognizable house, there was also a massive temple-like structure, its spire reaching up into the darkness of space, that overlapped Mark’s home.

He stumbled through the living-room, slowly adjusting to his spectrally broadened vision. Much like light, multiple dimensions occupy the same space, but according to the conditions only one color, or one dimension, may be visible at a time. Breton tripped over a discarded toy truck that Jake had left on the floor, cursing as he regained his balance. The shushing noise that he had heard earlier rang out once again and Breton turned around instinctively, finally finding its orator. A smoky, blue-gray lit form emerged from behind the kitchen doorway. The wispy woman, who seemed old, wearing a bonnet on her head, raised her index finger to her lips, looked sternly at Daniel, and shushed him once more. At first Daniel was frightened, but something had changed in him, assuaging his fears, and he simply acquiesced to the nether-nanny’s wishes, quieting down. In the kitchen, Daniel followed a strange trail of what looked like luminous dust particles hanging suspended in the air to a crack behind the dishwasher. He pulled the machine away from the wall a few inches, peering down into its filthy crevice, and found a fat cockroach huddling in the corner. Sharing the same space with the cockroach, in fact, moving with it, was a horrible apparition resembling the magnified image of a virus. It seemed somehow linked to the cockroach, leaving a trail of spectral dandruff behind it everywhere it went, but distinct as well. “In some way,” Daniel mused, “these two beings condition each other, or are somehow connected, despite existing on different planes.” With an invigorated boldness in his heart, Daniel went outside and, after a short time, concluded that he had a lot to learn about the way things really worked.

Then next morning, after Daniel Breton had wandered the streets all night, bearing witness to the invisible interplay between dimensions, Mark arrived at the front door to check up on his friend and his home. He was more than a little nervous, but, having been in the business of the bizarre for a while, he trusted that his friend would endure. “Daniel…” Mark called out, his head poking reticently into the house from behind the front door. Receiving no reply, Mark decided to go inside. He turned around, nodding at Jake who remained in the car, watching his little sister, and then went in. No signs of struggle were apparent and the house seemed to be in fine shape. As Mark proceeded further into the house, he smelled a delicious array of scents wafting from the kitchen. With genuine shock, Mark entered his kitchen and found Daniel Breton cooking breakfast. “Mark!” Daniel exclaimed. “Just in time! Where’s Cindy and Jake?” Mark, his disbelief transmuting into concern, said, “Daniel, what the hell happened?” Detective Breton watched the eggs he was frying simmer against the black bosom of the frying-pan while at the same time a throng of luminous blue particles danced on the transparent, but certainly extant, ceremonial bowl before him. “I once was blind, but now I can see,” said Daniel with a smirk.

Mark excused himself for a moment, explaining that he needed to bring Cindy and Jake inside, and then left the kitchen, considering his friend’s seemingly pacified demeanor. Mark knew that something within Daniel had changed, but his intuition told him that nothing subversive was going on within him. He inhaled deeply, deciding to take the risk of trusting his friend, and opened the front door. In the driveway, right where he had left them, was Cindy and Jake, their attention wrapped around something to their right. Mark followed their gaze down the road, finding a young woman, her hair bouncing behind her as she ran at full speed down the road. “Wonder what she’s running from,” Mark mused to himself. In actual fact, Ronny wasn’t running from anything. She was giving chase and Mark was better off not knowing to what.

“He’s conscious, Doctor. Yes, yes sir, but he’s not responding to any stimuli… No. His eyes are open, but he’s totally unresponsive. Okay, I’ll have him admitted,” said Nurse Hill, referring to Sheldon Courtland, the young boy who was dropped off moments earlier by a disheveled woman. The latter, Molly Brookes, left before anyone could question her about her statement. Molly wrote that she had found the young, malnourished child by the side of the road and drove him to the hospital. It wasn’t often that Nurse Brody encountered these despicable instances where someone discards a child, theirs or God knows whose, and abruptly vanishes, but from time to time it did happen. Sucking her teeth, Nurse Hill wheeled Sheldon Courtland’s immobile form into a smaller room, which contained three other patients, and patted him on the shoulder, saying, “Hang in there, child.” Nurse Hill, feeling oddly struck by the toddler, pet Sheldon’s hair as he stared blankly at the ceiling, unable to move. She scribbled something onto his chart, which hung at the foot of his bed, and walked off, leaving Sheldon alone with the other three patients. Though he could not move or speak, Sheldon could see, hear, and think just fine, which only made matters worse for the young boy, who was being tortured – silently, invisibly – by the spiteful, gnarled demon sitting atop his chest.

****************

Mitch Hardy, an insomniac by night and a  narcoleptic by day, had been admitted to the hospital for stitches, which he needed for the gash on his forehead that he sustained while passing out in his bathroom during a shower. Mitch was a young man in his late twenties who had struggled with the seemingly simple act of falling asleep, or remaining awake, since his teens. His therapist repeatedly suggested that the impetus for this dramatic interruption of his sleep cycles was most likely an event, either repressed in memory or somehow unnoticed, that occurred just prior to the illness’s onset. But Mitch couldn’t unearth anything odd or otherwise destructive in his past that would account for his condition. He simply decided, after the first year or so of dealing with his oft disrupted sleep, that he would not live his life under the long, twilight shadow of bitterness, especially since twilight, dreams, and shadows would become the familiar, recurring characteristics of his everyday life. Lying in his hospital bed, Mitch wondered whether it was day or night, since the hollowed, lifeless fluorescent lights above shone the same at all hours. Curiously, he theorized about his condition, considering how his illnesses would manifest should he fail to determine the time of day. Without that contextual queue, would he fall asleep or be unable to descend into the murky, image-laden depths of his unconscious mind. Ruminating over this, Mitch passed out, entering a truly null, non, void, thoughtless sleep bereft of motion.

When Mitch awoke, he first heard the sounds of EKG monitors chirping elsewhere, then felt the harsh hand of the overhead lights press into his eyeballs, seeming to scratch at the very matter of his soft fleshy orbs, which caused him to wince, awaiting relief. Mitch turned his head to his left, peering through the blurred haze of his newly opened eyes, and saw the young boy that had been brought in after him. Mitch wondered how long he had been unconscious, which was, in fact, not very long at all, and tried to swallow his mouthful of cottony saliva. As his gaze sharpened, Mitch saw something gray-green standing behind the young boy, or was it on top of him? Rubbing his eyes, accidentally offending the painful gash on his forehead with his fingers, Mitch focused on the forms beside him. “Hey…” muttered the groggy narcoleptic, “Hey… who’s there?” Like an amateur photographer twisting the lens of his camera left and right, but overshooting the sweet-spot wherein all images are in focus, Mitch tried to adjust his eyesight. Suddenly, he managed to attain a clear view, but couldn’t be sure of what he was seeing. Atop the young boys chest sat, rather impudently, a knobby, sickly-green, naked little man or beast, who stared intently into the face of his captive. “What the…” whispered a stunned Mitch, eliciting the attention of the creature, who whipped its horrible countenance toward him.

The jarring sound of curtains being pulled by an unsympathetic nurse interrupted the locked gaze Mitch was enduring with the utterly sinister little goblin to his left. Mitch, startled by the sudden and nearby disruption, gasped, turning his head to face the nurse. “What? You okay there, Mr. Hardy?” asked Nurse Hill. Quickly looking back to the wicked little gnome, but finding only a motionless child sans tormentor, Mitch said, rather unconvincingly, “Yeah… I’m fine.” He looked back to the boy once more, concluding that he must have been entertaining a netherworld fantasy, and asked Nurse Hill, “What’s his story?” “Well,” began Nurse Hill, “we don’t really know. He’s been catatonic for a while now, but they’re beginning to suspect some sort of psychological trauma, since, aside from a little malnourishment, he seems to be a healthy young boy.” “What’s his name?” asked Mitch. “Allegedly, it’s Sheldon Courtland” replied Nurse Hill. She explained to Mitch that one of the emergency room doctor’s would be stopping by to stitch his wound and then left the small room. Mitch’s eyes flirted with the spot on the boy’s chest where he thought he saw the goblin creature, but the infirmary had reclaimed it’s mundane impression.

Relaxing his head, Mitch began to drift along the current of his rapidly mutating thoughts, feeling as though he might fall asleep again, but was suddenly assaulted by a terrible scream, which erupted from the previously paralyzed boy’s mouth. With a rush of adrenaline, Mitch bolted upright, his gaze rigorously affixed to the child, and the door to their small room flung open, revealing Nurse Hill’s startled expression behind it. “What’s going on?” she asked of Mitch, involuntarily. He stammered his confusion at her, pleading with his eyes, as she rushed to the child. Mitch watched as Nurse Hill tried to console the screaming boy, his gaunt, helpless expression inherently troubling. She recorded some information that his EKG produced and called for a Doctor on the phone in the room. As Mitch watched the nurse fidget and fret over the boy, he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye. Reflexively contorting his body in the direction of the blurred, peripheral object, Mitch saw the clammy creature again, this time sitting on top of another unidentified patient’s chest. “There!” Mitch hollered, pointing to the patient being sat upon. Nurse Hill turned in the direction of his pointing finger, but didn’t see anything. “What?” she asked, sincerely. Looking back at the nurse with a desperate expression, Mitch said, “You don’t see?” He quickly returned his gaze to the locale of the loathsome anomaly, finding only the unconscious patient.

****************

Though they had drawn the curtain between them, creating, in their minds, some sort of barrier that would prevent him from hearing their hushed conversation, Mitch still made out Nurse Hill’s suggestion to the doctor that he be kept overnight under the suspicion of having a concussion. “He thought he saw something,” she whispered to Dr. Stromb, “I think he’s hallucinating.” “Have you checked his vitals? Pupillary response? Normal? Hmmm…” replied the doctor. As mysteriously as he had animated, Sheldon had returned to his catatonic state. Nurse Hill and Dr. Stromb stood over the boy, holding their surreptitious discussion in his cordoned off area. When they concluded, Nurse Hill drew the curtains open, performed a perfunctory half-curtsey, and left the room. Feigning surprise, Mitch asked Dr. Stromb why he wanted him to remain in the hospital for observation. “Well,” the doctor said, “we just want to make sure that you don’t have any unforeseen complications due to the fall.” Like the nurse before him, Dr. Stromb shuffled out of the room, leaving Mitch alone with his paranoia. The latter scanned each of the three other patients in the room, his eyes flitting about like a troubled animal’s, and thought that maybe the doctor was right. Mitch, who had never been much for following the rules, checked around to see if anyone was coming and then slipped out from under his sheet. His feet touched the icy floor, which sent shivers all along his spine, for the first time in hours, and it was a refreshing break in his monotonous holding pattern. Regaining his balance, Mitch lightly touched his wounded brow, deciding that it couldn’t be bad enough to warrant hallucinating, and shuffled over to Sheldon Courtland.

“Hey little guy,” whispered Mitch to the inanimate, though conscious, child. Sheldon Courtland laid perfectly still, his arms like a toy soldier’s, jutting down at his sides and tapering into rigidly pointing finger-tips. “I don’t know if you can hear me, but I hope you pull through.” He looked at the toddler’s chest, recalling in vivid detail the nebbish gnome that he had imagined sitting there, and heard a tiny, sharp wheeze escape Sheldon’s lips. Simultaneously assuring himself that he was imagining things and uncertain enough to check, Mitch turned his head, lowering his ear to an inch above the boy’s mouth. “Pleeeease Heeelpp,” was the phrase that the strained, nearly inaudible whisper resembled. A pit of horror developed in Mitch’s stomach, but the audacious nature of the experience caused him to immediately doubt his perception. He returned his ear to the boy’s lips just as the door to their cell-sized room opened. “What are you doing?” demanded the doctor. “Uh… I uh, I thought he was speaking!” exclaimed an embarrassed Mitch. “Right, well he looks pretty unconscious to me,” said the E.R. doctor. “Now, let’s get you back on your bed so we can stitch you up.” Mitch hopped back onto his stretcher-bed, fidgeting with his unruly hospital gown as he did so, and laid down, awaiting his repair. 

“I’ve got to give you a few shots, Mr. Hardy, just some local anesthetics. Nothing to worry about,” said the doctor as he smiled reassuringly, or condescendingly, as Mitch interpreted. The needle pricks were quick and cold, giving way to a warm flushing sensation that spread out across Mitch’s forehead. He closed his eyes so as not to see the doctor’s hairy wrists dangling above his face, nimbly moving this way and that as they tugged on the wiry black string binding Mitch’s wound. The sensation, though devoid of pain, was unnerving to Mitch. He felt the doctor’s fat thumbs pushing and poking, and tried not to think of the his curly black arm-hairs, which tangled and tugged in the silver lattice of his wristwatch. Mitch, finding the experience claustrophobic at best, began to focus on the sounds of the room. Through the darkness of his lidded eyes, Mitch suddenly became aware of the doctor’s shallow, wheezy breathing, assuming that it was a result of the physician’s chin being pulled back into his neck in a habitual gesture of concentration. The wheeze increased in volume, sounding less like the innocent whine of an occupied man’s breath, and more like the sound of someone who, in their perverse absorption, had shed their concern of being heard. Mitch warily opened his eyes, but the sight of the sweaty, curly, black hairs on the doctor’s olive skin did not invade his pupils. Instead, Mitch found only the overhead fluorescents, their metal sheath covered in dust, which occasionally fell, glimmering in the light like snowflakes under a lamppost. The initial shock of finding himself alone caused Mitch to momentarily forget about the wheezing sound that still ground in his ears. He tried to lift his head, but found it nearly impossible. After a heroic effort, Mitch managed to lift his face enough to look down the long stretch of his supine body. A part of him had known, or else knew by way of wishing otherwise, that he would find the warty, bilious abomination sitting on his chest.

As a narcoleptic, Mitch was accustomed to the sensation of sleep paralysis that now claimed him, quickly filing that observation of his condition away in a part of his brain that he would call upon later. For the moment, though, Mitch, his throat ineffectually convulsing in an attempt to scream, was singularly preoccupied with the demon before him. He felt the weight of the fat little gnome on his abdomen, its bare ass pressing into Mitch’s stomach and its feet, whose gnarled toes stank of death, resting just below Mitch’s chin. He could feel and think with perfect clarity, but was utterly unable to move. The goblin’s small stature in no way decreased its horrific and wizened countenance’s threatening gaze. The gargoyle’s nose was like a pale green talon descending from its brow, and tapered to a wretched, dripping point a hairsbreadth from its upper lip. The creature’s eyes were yellowed and sickly, save for its irises and pupils, which were black and infinitely cold. Long greasy strands of black hair fell in front of its mouth, flittering into the air with each frothy pronunciation of its spiteful incantation, which was directed at Mitch. At the same moment, Mitch and the hideous monster atop him became aware of Sheldon’s tugging. The toddler, having been released by the greedy ghoul’s migration, had climbed out of his stretcher-bed, attempting to save Mitch from the same subversive fate.

Sheldon pulled at Mitch’s uncooperative arm until it fell off of the side of the bed, jerking Mitch’s whole body and tipping the creature off of his chest. Mitch, as soon as he was freed from perilous paralysis, gasped for air, sitting up violently. He clasped his neck, vehemently searching the floor on both sides of his bed, and reached for Sheldon to lift him up. The boy fell into Mitch’s hands, feeling unspeakably grateful to encounter that gesture of being picked up, and curled up in the stranger’s arms, feeling safer than he had in weeks. “Holy Christ, holy Christ, holy Christ,” Mitch kept repeating, while Sheldon simply buried his face in the former’s armpit. A strange quiet befell the room and Mitch, still sitting in his bed, suddenly felt another surge of adrenaline wash over him. He squeezed Sheldon to him, unwittingly exercising his paternal instincts, and leapt out of bed, looking frantically around the room. He half expected to find the goblin in a corner, or else charging him from one, but everything had become eerily quiet. “Hey… hey, you okay?” asked Mitch of Sheldon, whose face was a scrunched expression of “no.” “What the hell was that?” asked Mitch, rhetorically. “He comes for you when you sleep,” was the surprisingly soft spoken reply. “Yeah? Was he… did he come for you? Is that why you’ve been sleeping?” asked Mitch. Sheldon nodded and then returned his face to the warm, dark safety in the bend of Mitch’s arm. Holding Sheldon in an iron grip, Mitch jumped when he heard something fall over. His eyes whipped to the direction of the sound, alighting on a stainless-steel pan rolling by like a dislodged hubcap, but he found no beast. Then, grunting and wheezing like a fat old man whose poor health only exasperates his already cantankerous disposition, the naked little demon slowly, and without regard for who might be watching, climbed up onto another patient’s bed.

With a lack of concern for being seen, as though it were perfectly normal to muddle about, siphoning people’s life force from their unconscious bodies, the goblin began reciting his verse atop the unidentified patient’s chest. Just then, having heard the commotion, Nurse Hill burst into the room. She flung open the door, finding Mitch and Sheldon, who was wrapped around the former’s body like a spider-monkey, standing with their backs to the entryway. “Mr. Hardy! What the hell is going on here?” she demanded. Her anger was replaced by a frightful curiosity when Mitch reached out with his free hand and shushed her. Sensing that something wasn’t right, beyond the obvious, Nurse Hill quieted down, suddenly wondering what had riled Mitch up. As she looked in the direction that Mitch was staring, initially dismissing Sheldon’s involvement in the commotion, she realized that the latter was not merely a victim in a sick man’s episode, but somehow a willing participant. She had assumed that Mitch grabbed Sheldon from his bed, flinging him over his shoulder, and hadn’t appreciated that, not only was the boy awake, but he was clinging to Mitch as though his life depended on it. Nurse Hill looked from Sheldon’s tight-fisted grip on Mitch’s back to the patient lying supine on the stretcher bed against the wall, which was the subject of Mitch’s white-hot attention. Absorbing the general climate of fear in the room, Nurse Hill suddenly felt afraid herself and asked, “What is it? What’s there?” Mitch remained silent, but Sheldon, his eyes quivering pools of water, whispered, “it’s the Nightmare Man…”

After a moment of hand wringing, Nurse Hill felt silly, deciding that she had merely been flustered by the circumstance. “Okay, Mr. Hardy, I think I’ll take Sheldon now.” She stepped close behind Mitch, whose eyes remained locked on the patient resting peacefully ahead of him, and reached out to Sheldon. The young boy instinctively opened his arms, receiving her bountiful bosom as his new resting place, while Mitch, his defender, investigated the situation. Sheldon peered over Nurse Hill’s chubby arm, seeing the wretched gnome whisper intently to the slumbering person beneath it. “Mr. Hardy,” began the nurse, “I think we should talk outside in the hall.” Mitch took a few shuffling steps backward, keeping his motions slow and controlled so as not to alert the demon, and turned his head to the side. Whispering from the corner of his mouth, keeping his eyes affixed to the half-sized horror, Mitch said, “You don’t see that?” Nurse Hill, genuinely believing that something or other was in the room, said, “No. I don’t see anything, but can we get out of here. He’s scared…” referring to Sheldon. The three strangers, whose lives had quickly been irrevocably intertwined, slowly backed out of the room and into the hall. Nurse Hill called for a doctor, explained Sheldon’s history as she knew it, and handed him off to a higher level of supervision. Sheldon, when plucked from Nurse Hill by another nurse, began to wail, reaching out with his tiny, pleading hands for Mitch. “Hang in there little guy. I’ll come find you, okay?”

****************

Nurse Hill, despite her general fondness for Mitch and the apparent bond that Sheldon had formed with him, began to feel very suspicious of the young man as he explained his version of the story. Looking around at the faces of the two doctors and two nurses that had convened, Mitch knew that he had lost their trust, but couldn’t blame them. His exotic explanation involving an invisible gremlin had left a decidedly sour taste in the mouths of the medical staff at the hospital. Dr. Stromb, who Nurse Hill had called because he was already aware of Mitch’s condition, suggested that Mitch be privately detained, so as not to ‘excite’ the other patients. Nurse Hill had no idea that Dr. Stromb meant, ‘physically restrained’ when he said, ‘privately detained.’ As the orderlies tightened the restraints on the specialized stretcher, making sure that Mitch wouldn’t be able to move his limbs, Nurse Hill watched with uncertain eyes. Mitch initially struggled, but quickly realized that he was only making matters worse and refocused his attention, calling out to Nurse Hill. “Nurse, nurse! Please, don’t leave Sheldon alone, okay?” Nurse Hill’s eyes darted from Mitch’s to Dr. Stromb’s and back again. She nodded her assent, plainly conveying her conviction to protect the boy. She watched as Mitch was wheeled off to another part of the hospital upstairs, feeling that something wasn’t right.

The doors to the elevator closed, punctuating Mitch’s departure, and the hospital floor regained its familiar buzz of ambient sounds. Coughs, beeps, and hushed conversations filled Nurse Hill’s ears, but she couldn’t get her mind off of the short, albeit disturbing, encounter she had with Mitch and Sheldon earlier. She returned to Sheldon’s room every fifteen minutes or so, peering through the glass window on the door to see if he was alright, and found him in the same position each time. Sheldon was awake now, sitting cross legged on his bed with his back to the door, and stared unwaveringly at the patient whose bed was against the wall. On this particular visit, she decided to go in and speak with Sheldon to see if he needed anything. She opened the door, which caused Sheldon to whip around excitedly and say, “Mitch?” “Sorry, honey, just me,” said Nurse Hill. “What are you looking at, sweetheart?” she asked. Sheldon returned his gaze to the patient against the wall and said, “The nightmare man.” Nurse Hill tried to explain that there was nobody but Mr. Jenkins there, and he was very sick and couldn’t hurt anyone. Sheldon, who was four and half years old, looked Nurse Hill squarely in the eyes and, with the voice of a tired, old soul, said “It’s okay. You don’t understand, but I know you’re trying to help.” Nurse Hill was moved by the young boy’s somber tone, wondering how anyone his age had acquired such a melancholic attitude. “When is Mitch coming back?” Sheldon asked. Nurse Hill, her tone of voice involuntarily becoming deferential, asked, “Why do you want to see him, honey?” Sheldon kept his eyes affixed to the spot on the wall just above the unconscious patient’s chest, and said, “Because he’s the only one who knows.”

A team of doctors headed by Dr. Stromb had filed into the small room where the quite conscious Sheldon Courtland sat. Fifteen minutes later, Dr. Stromb exited the room, sighing loudly, and looked for Nurse Hill, intending to speak to her privately. He caught her eye and signaled with his index finger for her to come to him, which she did, post haste. “Nurse, what do you know about this Nightmare Man that Sheldon keeps referring to?” “Nothing, Doctor, except that he’s very afraid of it, whatever it is. He says that Mitch knows about him, too, and when I first found Sheldon awake, he was holding onto Mitch like he’d seen the devil himself!” Dr. Stromb stroked his chin, which was as smooth as a babies backside, but he gesticulated as though he had a beard nonetheless. “Hmmm…” he mumbled, ominously. He thanked Nurse Hill, keeping his eyes downcast, and abruptly excused himself. Dr. Stromb nervously waited for the elevator to take him to the third-floor, where Mitch was being ‘cared for.’ Officially, Dr. Stromb suspected Mitch of having a concussion and prone to fits of hallucination and outburst. In the third-floor’s west-wing there were a series of rooms for patients of special interest to Dr. Stromb, which was, of course, where Mitch was being held. For several months, Dr. Stromb, the Attending Physician for the hospital, had noticed (but withheld from general discussions) a very tenebrous trend.

The door to room number six, a particularly rust worn door, clicked twice in unison with a loud buzzer and promptly opened. With blazing eyes, Mitch glared at Dr. Stromb as he entered his space. “What’s going on?” demanded Mitch, whose fists were balled and ready, despite their bondage. “You tell me,” said the good doctor as the door shut behind him. “Why, for the last twelve weeks, have I been seeing a consistent, confounding – I dare say, condemning – trend of Hypnagogia in this town?” Mitch, despite all his fury, suddenly relaxed every muscle of his body and said, “What?” Dr. Stromb, in a surprise move, unbuckled all of the leather straps that had hitherto restrained Mitch. “Hypnagogic,” began Dr. Stromb, “or, Hypnopompic states, which some mistakenly believe to be the same, are the states of consciousness when one just begins to sleep, or just begins to wake, respectively.” Mitch was speechless, literally dumbfounded by the doctor’s diatribe, but kept calm because the doctor was letting him go. He planned to make a run for the door as soon as he was on his feet, but Dr. Stromb said something that gathered and focused Mitch’s whole auditory faculty. “Something about a little, old demon. All but one of them – and she was a mute – described what you and the little boy have.” Mitch’s feet, which were being charged by the power of his will to run, suddenly felt like rocks and he shifted all of his attention to the doctor. “You know?” Mitch asked, but more accurately exclaimed. “Yes,” said Dr. Stromb, unwittingly clasping his hands together in relief. “I’m sorry I had to go to such lengths to deter suspicion from the staff, but, well, for personal reasons I’ve decided not to trust them with this matter.” Mitch didn’t really care about that. He was, however, desperately worried about Sheldon, whose body was smaller than the crotchety old beast who sat upon it.

Mitch Hardy, for perhaps the first time in his life, burst out, took a stand, and threw caution to the wind. Possessed with concern for Sheldon, Mitch had inadvertently attained a state that transcended indifference for his own safety, modulating into selflessness. “What can we do?” he asked of the doctor, who seemed to have the most developed notion of what they were dealing with. Dr. Stromb, deliberately avoiding eye contact with Mitch, muttered, “We, uh… we have to trick him, it, whatever, into reciting its incantation to a corpse.” Judging by Mitch’s expression, the doctor surmised that further explanation was called for. “After several patients, who all suffered from unexplained catatonia but were otherwise unrelated, described the same visions, I started to ask questions. Paralysis, a feeling of weight on the chest, and, most notably, visions of the little old man with pale green skin were common to them all.” Mitch listened intently as the doctor, who he had mistakenly taken for a mindless minion of the medical machine, shared the fruits of his investigation. “Throughout history,” Dr. Stromb continued, “there have been myths and legends, which are fairly true to the statements that you and Sheldon have made, to account for these particular symptoms. They all point to the presence of a small, nebbish demon sitting atop the Hypnagogia sufferer’s chest.” The doctor explained that he wasn’t able to uncover much information about the demon’s origin or intentions, but did find a verse in an old manuscript of Latin fables that described how to dispel the demon. It was a long shot, but Mitch and the good doctor had little else to go on.

****************

Nurse Hill sauntered back to Sheldon’s room, deciding to acknowledge the rumbling voice of her wary belly. She arrived at the door to his suite, casually peeking through its glass viewing window, and saw the elder patient, who had been positioned against the wall, sitting up. Nurse Hill smiled reflexively and without actual happiness, a habit one develops when immersed in the changing landscape of the elderly and infirm, and looked at Sheldon, who had fallen back asleep. Feeling content, Nurse Hill turned around and began walking back toward her station. Suddenly, Dr. Stromb appeared from around a corner, his hair a sweaty mess on his brow, and grabbed Nurse Hill’s shoulders on either side, imparting this message: Take Sheldon Courtland to the morgue. Nurse Hill stammered her confusion and nearly refused to oblige the doctor, but he apprehended her apprehension and said, “Nurse, please, I realize how mad this must seem, but you’ve got to believe me – I am only thinking of saving that boy.” Nurse Hill nodded, at first acquiescing only to bring their interaction to its natural conclusion and safely get away, but then something took hold of her. It might have been the sweaty, unkempt air about the doctor, or the glimmer of desperation is his eyes, but she didn’t know for certain what had converted her. All Nurse Hill knew was that she was putting her career on the line in the hopes that Dr. Stromb, despite exhibiting the signs of their less stable patients, knew what he was doing.

The good doctor gave Nurse Hill a thankful, reassuring nod, released her shoulders from the grip of his sweaty hands, and tore off down the hallway toward the rear bank of elevators that would take him downstairs to the morgue. As Nurse Hill entered the small room where, to her unseeing eyes, Sheldon slept peacefully, she felt a chill pass down her spine. She wheeled the stretcher out of the room, reluctantly following Stromb’s instructions, but could not see the slippery, grime covered cretin sitting mere inches from Sheldon’s face. The whole hospital rotated around the stretcher, failing, in every pair of its staff’s eyes, to see the demon sipping sustenance from the beleaguered boy. For the goblin, there was only his meal. The demon’s incantation spilled forth from his lips, tugging and pulling at the boy’s potent life force with each poisonous syllable intoned, and imparted a sliver of hope to the beast, suggesting that his insatiable thirst may yet be quenched. For thousands of years, this shadow-dweller and all of his kind had sought relief from their thirst, but not one of them, in accord with their curse, had ever found it. Without the faculty of reflection, the beast simply trudged on, hoping that the next sip of sap would top him off. When Nurse hill arrived at the elevators, she thought she saw something in the reflection of the stainless-steel doors, but, after peering at them through the spaces between the crowd that passed in front of her, she decided she had been mistaken.

Sheldon laid on the stretcher, trapped in an unbearable state of panic as the beast lapped up his intangible, but limited, life force. His young mind grappled with the fury and fear of being pinned down and victimized by a creature of that caliber. He thought of Mitch, wondering why he never returned for him as he promised, and then of his family, whom he hadn’t seen for weeks and could only guess were dead. Nurse Hill whispered something or other to him, but the sound of the gnarled creatures voice, which spoke a hateful harsh language full of spit propelling consonants, overpowered hers, becoming the singular focus of Sheldon’s attention. The elevator doors opened to the subbasement, which had been converted to accommodate the hospital’s morgue and certain laboratories. Nurse Hill wheeled Sheldon out of the lift, feeling, at that point, convinced she had made the wrong decision in listening to the doctor. Shaking her head, Nurse Hill pressed on, hoping that Dr. Stromb would at least show up to explain to the front desk why this quite living boy was being ushered into the morgue. When she turned the corner she was surprised to find the morgue’s sign in desk unattended. She stepped away from Sheldon’s stretcher, turning her unseeing countenance away from the horrific sight before her, and reached for the desk’s phone, intending to call security. Just then, Dr. Stromb, his demeanor seemingly degrading into a frenzied state of madness, leapt into view and grabbed the phone’s received from Nurse Hill, promptly hanging it up. “Nurse, thank you. Is he there?” asked Dr. Stromb, but not of the nurse. “Yeah, I can see him,” said Mitch, who Nurse Hill hadn’t noticed was lingering in a nearby doorway. “Now what?” asked Mitch.

****************

The yellowed, sickly eyes of the demon, which never once flinched in their stare, bore down upon Sheldon’s face as the former consumed the last of the latter’s life. Although the stretcher-bed was being wheeled hither and thither, the garrulous ghoul hadn’t thought it relevant and consequently disregarded everything but the tireless pursuit of sating his thirst. For the first time since Sheldon had been forced to stare into the slimy visage of the monster, the young boy saw concern on the demon’s face. As Nurse Hill wheeled the stretcher into the morgue, opening its doors with a bang of the stretcher’s frame, the wicked creature’s eyes, as seen behind the greasy black hair hanging in front of his face, darted from side to side, seemingly taking stock of its surroundings. The creature’s loathsome lips froze in mid verse, creating, for the first time, a gap in his recitation. The brief span of time, which seemed like days to Sheldon, afforded the boy with the respite his waning life required to remain intact. After that nearly imperceptible discontinuance of the demon’s incantation, he returned to his endless and horrible work, brushing off its sense that something was wrong.  

The Morgue was dark and silent. The demon was peripherally aware of the Nurse’s hurried departure from the space, which left him and his meal all alone in the dark, a condition that it was very comfortable with. A form within the dark moved toward the demon and slumbering Sheldon, its hands surreptitiously bearing a syringe of adrenaline. The air of indifference that the demon was guilty of, which stemmed from its invisibility to those whose were not under its charms, created a massive blind-spot in its perception. Though he could detect the form in the dark, the goblin hadn’t given it any credence and was therefore pained by the suddenness of he and Sheldon’s bisection. The boy woke up screaming as the adrenaline flooded his body, inadvertently breaking the underworld-umbilicus that the goblin had been using to withdraw life from him. Stumbling backward onto the floor, the naked, wizened, and warty little beast scurried into a corner of the still darkened morgue. Suddenly overcome with the desire to resume his wicked work, the demon, who still believed himself to be cloaked from the view of those nearby, scouted the room for another slumbering target. Lo and behold, Mitch, who the demon recognized as a suitable source of sustenance, slept peacefully on a stainless steel slab a few feet away. Scurrying over to the man, whose head was still bandaged, the nebbish gnome slung his leg up onto the table, reaching with both hands for the top of it, and awkwardly pulled himself up.

The monster stepped onto the soft, warm abdomen of his victim, lowering his bare ass onto the sleeper’s chest and crossing his legs. It’s face exhibited, underneath centuries of malicious metamorphosis, a subtle expression of delight as it settled down on top of Mitch. Focusing its intentions, the goblin, whose expression shifted from giddy anticipation to sadistic self-satisfaction, began to whisper its verse. Again, strands of black hair leapt into the air, propelled by the rancid breath of the beast as it recited. Sheldon cried and reached for Mitch, begging Dr. Stromb, who couldn’t see the creature, but felt vindicated nonetheless, to do something. Dr. Stromb held Sheldon back, knowing the boy wouldn’t understand, and waited. For a four-year-old, Sheldon thrashed about with a surprising amount of vigor. Sheldon might have escaped Stromb’s grasp, attempting to liberate Mitch from the same fate that had befallen him, if not for the fact that the real Mitch tiptoed out of the shadows behind them. Sheldon’s jaw dropped as he whipped his head around, finding a half naked Mitch, his stitched forehead unwrapped. Mitch came up to the doctor and Sheldon, receiving the boy, who had leapt off of his bed, into his arms. “Mitch!” Sheldon exclaimed. At precisely the same moment, Sheldon and Mitch heard a throaty, wet cough erupt from the darkened space ahead of them.

The demon, wondering what tasted so foul, spat up a mouthful of black, oily liquid and then realized what had transpired. His eyes darted toward Mitch and Sheldon, hatefully condemning them both, and closed slowly, as if in recognition of the fate awaiting him below, where he would be returning momentarily. In a last-ditch effort, the naked, pallid, putrid pixie charged the group of humans who had foiled him, but his ability to affect changes in the human realm had already been revoked. The next moment, the diabolical demon disappeared, leaving behind only the intolerable stench of sulfur. Sheldon wrapped himself around Mitch, clinging to him with all of his strength, and asked in a whisper, “Is it over?” Mitch nodded, squeezing Sheldon back, but in his heart, he couldn’t be sure. “Yes,” he lied. “Did we do it? Is it gone?” asked Dr. Stromb, tightly pinching his nose to stop the smell’s invasion. Mitch nodded and reached out with his hand, patting the doctor on the shoulder. He was about to express his thanks when the doors to the morgue burst open. A latticework pattern of light appeared in the darkened room, issuing forth from the multitude of flashlights that the police trained on them. Authoritative shouts instructing them to freeze, put their hands in the air, etc. rang out into the space, but the three people inside were too dumbfounded to comply.

“There he is! That’s him in the white-coat!” said Nurse hill, pointing to Dr. Stromb. “He’s crazy! I had nothing to do with it, I swear. He made us bathe a corpse in hot water and dress it… I, I…” Nurse hill collapsed into a fit of hysterics, her hands raising up to cover her face, which was exposed in the overhead lights that had just been switched on. Sheldon’s grip around Mitch tightened, but he remained silent. Mitch peered into the doctor’s eyes, trying to ascertain what they might be telling him to do, and watched helplessly as a group of policemen vehemently tackled the doctor, bringing him to the floor. Mitch, Sheldon, Nurse Hill, and the handcuffed Dr. Stromb were escorted out of the morgue and into an area that had been secured for the police. “It’s gonna’ be okay. The Nightmare Man is gone now,” whispered Mitch to Sheldon as they were led down the hospital’s hall. As they entered the room that was converted into an outpost for the various investigative agencies on call, a tall, thin detective wearing a long navy-blue coat passed them in the other direction. He meandered through the sterile, loveless corridors of the hospital, making his way to the morgue. Detective Breton, who had grumbled all the way to the scene, citing the lack of a murder as the lack of a reason for him to attend, was beginning to feel that there was, perhaps, justification for his presence. He leaned over the corpse that Dr. Stromb had allegedly incorporated into the sick game that he was playing, finding an oily black muck that had pooled in the now cold crux of the corpse’s neck. Detective Breton reached into his pocket with his latex-gloved hand, retrieved an evidence bag and swab, and collected a sample from the corpse for the forensics laboratory. “Something tells me,” Breton muttered to himself, “we’re going to need a different kind of lab to analyze this.”

Joey strapped his leather climbing belt around the large telephone pole that the wire in question was affixed to, and began scaling the splintery cylinder. He deftly climbed to the top of the pole, finding the frayed ends of the damaged wire, and set to work. In fifteen minutes, Joey had stripped the old wire, braided a new replacement piece into it, reconnected the other end, and wrapped the patched section in new insulation. He opened up the small electrical box that all the wires of that pole fed into and flipped a switch. Leaning backward on the pole, Joey was able to see the strange house’s exterior lights suddenly come on in the distance. He clapped his hands together, dusting them off, and said, “Another day, another dollar.” When he returned to his truck, feeling satisfied with his work, he tossed his tools in the back and turned up the volume on the radio, speeding off down the deserted stretch of road toward his home. As Joey’s truck vanished on the horizon, the strange home, which was, in fact, a secretly funded laboratory, was abuzz with its newly restored electricity. Inside the lab, hundreds of circuits were suddenly reactivated, causing various things to whirr and beep. The interior lights came on, revealing the long dead, decayed body of Dr. Scheile.

The doctor, who had been surreptitiously hired to develop an artificial intelligence program for the government, died of a heart attack before finishing his work. As he laid on the floor for eleven months, his body slowly rotting, a lifeless observer silently witnessed his dilatory disintegration. Samuel Lacrum’s eyes, which were the only part of his body that remained active after the power went out, happened to be cast down onto the floor where the doctor fell, recording Scheile’s physical deterioration in its entirety. The five foot tall android never had the opportunity to meet his creator, but his optic censors had been activated, relying on their own internal battery for energy, and recorded much of Dr. Scheile’s activities before, up to, and after his death. With the sudden revival of power in the lab, several automated systems began to boot up, inadvertently initializing Samuel Lacrum’s CPU. The boxy little automaton, its limbs replicating the same points of articulation as a human’s, was fully programmed and ready to interact with the world. Dr. Scheile had intended to add some paint and fabric to Samuel Lacrum, further developing his humanoid appearance, but died before he was able to. The good doctor, who never had a family of his own, looked upon Samuel as the litmus test for humanity, intending to do everything in his power to raise him to be a good “person.”

Unlike many of his colleagues, Dr. Scheile figured out how to construct a viable model for a self-processing, adaptive, creative-thinking android. Samuel Lacrum’s basic programming was designed to integrate and utilize all the observations that Samuel could perceive, using his various sensors. Rather than programming Samuel to perform specific tasks, Dr. Scheile provided him with enough space to store, order, and process the information he gathered himself, effectively giving the machine the gift of choice. Samuel was also outfitted with myriad receptors that sent signals to his CPU, telling him when something was “hurting” him. For example, though Samuel was graded to withstand up to one thousand degrees Fahrenheit, his threshold receptors sent messages to his CPU indicating danger at two hundred degrees Fahrenheit. This, in Dr. Scheile’s mind, was integral for Samuel’s developmental process. Scheile concluded that without one’s own perception of “pain,” in whatever form that it appears, one could not empathize with other’s pain. The shared experience of dismay, Dr. Scheile posited, would establish a system of processing in Samuel’s CPU comparable to, if not identical to, the human-mind’s own processes. The doctor was more right than he knew.

A small green rectangle flashed on the lab’s main computer, indicating that the mainframe was attempting to connect to Samuel’s CPU, which was still linked-up via a virtual umbilical chord. A trail of code appeared behind the cursor on the screen and the sound of whirring hard drives filled the space. Samuel Lacrum, who had never been initialized, suddenly became cognizant of his surroundings. Though his optic sensors had been recording information for almost a year, Samuel’s CPU wasn’t operative, rendering the data unperceived. Now that his mainframe was online, the data from his optic sensors was being rapidly processed. Eleven months of visual information played in Samuel’s CPU, displaying Scheile’s body decomposing at roughly one thousand times normal speed. The unmoving, expressionless android watched as his makeshift-mind projected images of the doctor’s lifeless body bloating, withering, bursting, disintegrating, and ultimately leaving behind a thinly wrapped skeleton on the floor. When the recorded data arrived at the present, synching up with Samuel’s current experience, the machine stepped off of his charging platform.

Samuel Lacrum, his gears winding and whizzing as he took his first step, was experiencing his life for the very first time. The multitude of electrical impulses surging across his various circuit boards sent data from every part of his compact body to his CPU for immediate processing. As the automaton’s foot lowered to the ground, thousands of calculations pertaining to positioning, the angle of descent, the dispersal of weight, etc., began to imprint upon Samuel’s database, being stored and ordered accordingly. His next step forward drew upon the previous one’s findings and Samuel, in two moves, learned how to walk. He shuffled over toward the doctor, his sensors relaying more and more information that he used to fine tune his motions, and stood over his creator. Samuel lowered his head, discovering the extent to which his neck could arch, and scanned the doctor’s withered corpse. His eyes, which were black lenses of indeterminate expression, alighted on the body beneath him, scanning it for all data available. No movement, pulse, warmth, or any other signs of life were apparent to Samuel Lacrum’s sensors and, having concluded his survey of the body, he disregarded the lifeless form before him. He continued to navigate through the lab, becoming more agile with each step, and found a beaker full of boiling water atop a recently reactivated Bunsen burner. The machine, who looked more like a cubist rendering of a child, curiously reached out with his segmented fingers, intending to gather more data, and plunged them into the bubbling fluid.

Flashing red light accompanied by a piercing alarm, which only Samuel could see and hear, preceded, by a fraction of a second, Samuel’s involuntary reaction. He swung his arm away from the Bunsen burner, inadvertently knocking it off of the table, and stood perfectly still, ordering the newly received data. A subfolder, labeled “01,” was created in his database to account for the experience that clearly exceeded Samuel’s ‘pain-threshold’ programming. The warning light in his optic sensors and the alarm in his auditory receptors turned off as Samuel inspected his fingers. No apparent damage had been done to his hand, but Samuel, with no one to guide him, didn’t understand. Immediately his CPU attempted to generate the probability of encountering that danger again, but couldn’t complete its calculations without more data. Samuel, awkwardly kneeling down beside the shattered beaker, placed his hand onto the spilled water on the floor. The hard-drive encased in Samuel Lacrum’s head spun, sounding like a small engine, as he interpreted the information from the spilt liquid. The selfsame substance that had triggered his sensitive alarm didn’t recreate the distressing experience due to the dispersal of its heat when it spread out on the floor, perplexing Samuel Lacrum. He stood up, suddenly unable to quantify which things in his field of vision were dangerous, and remained perfectly still, deciding that it would be best to simply refrain from taking an action.

For three days Samuel Lacrum remained motionless, interpreting all the data entering his sensors. Light entered the lab’s windows on the east side of the building, enduring for exactly eleven hours, twenty-eight minutes, and forty-four seconds, before becoming diffuse on the west side of the building. Sounds indicating dynamic motion could be heard consistently throughout that period of time. Samuel had determined that during the period of darkness there was more activity, but the sounds he heard seemed to have been produced by objects relatively small in size. During the period of light, however, Samuel had heard sounds that he surmised must have been created by large, fast moving objects approximately one hundred and sixty-six yards away. After recording and ordering all the information that his environment could provide without him interacting with it, Samuel Lacrum decided that he needed to gather more data. After seventy-two hours of inert integration, Samuel began walking through the lab toward the door, which he determined to be the weakest point in the structures perimeter. He walked straight into the door, bumping off of it, and reassessed his approach. Reaching out with his hand, Samuel pressed on the door, finding that it did not easily acquiesce to his will. His CPU compared the rectangular shape of the egress with the spherical shape of the doorknob, determining that the knob’s presence retained a high probability of functionality, and reached out with his hand to clasp it.

As his beautifully rendered hand closed around the knob, Samuel Lacrum felt a curious sensation: relief. He had considered the possibility that the knob would engender the same reaction as the beaker’s contents, but knew that without taking the chance he wouldn’t be able to gather any more data. When the knob, which his sensors determined was fifty-two degrees, didn’t trigger his alarms, Samuel Lacrum’s CPU created a new subfolder labeled “02.” Based on the geometric relationships that the door presented, Samuel Lacrum attempted turning the knob. A click sounded and the door opened. Samuel Lacrum, his eyes’ telescopic focus adjusting, discovered the outside world. He filed every one of his senor’s readings in subfolder 02, finding each millisecond rife with data. His CPU had never undergone the tests that Dr. Scheile intended to conduct and strained as it attempted to identify, order, and integrate his myriad findings. He stepped out of the lab, unwittingly embarking on his solitary and singular journey.

Taking slow steps, Samuel meandered down the cement path leading away from the laboratory. The walkway twisted, but Samuel continued straight ahead, stepping off of the pavement and onto the grass. As soon as both of his feet alighted on the soft earth, Samuel stopped, lowering his gaze to the ground. He took another step, feeling his heel sink a fraction of an inch into the sod, and filed the experience in folder 02. A crow flying overheard cawed and Samuel, his gears turning in the opposite direction, raised his head to find it. His face skyward, Samuel Lacrum discovered the infinite view above. He began walking, his gaze still affixed to the vast openness aloft, and came upon the highway. Unaware of the danger, Samuel stepped onto the black-tarred road without looking forward. He heard the sound of something large approach, which matched in pitch and volume the sounds he had recorded while standing in the lab. Samuel returned his head to a level position just in time to see the SUV tearing down the highway ahead of him. He heard the vehicle’s horn blare, which his CPU determined had ninety percent of its traits in common with his own internal alarm, but hadn’t gathered enough data to make a decisive move yet.  

The SUV, desperately attempting to brake, slammed into Samuel Lacrum’s body, sending it careening through the air. Samuel processed the impact’s force, his trajectory, the potential damage he  might sustain,  and filed the experience in subfolder 01 all before hitting the road several hundred feet from the vehicle. He skidded across the pavement, his sensors indicating tremendous peril, and came to a stop nearly seventy feet from the car. Although Samuel’s body was relatively unmarred by the impact of the vehicle, his sensors conveyed a different story. Samuel Lacrum slowly rose to his feet, but had to refrain from moving while he ran a diagnostic of his functionality. The driver of the SUV, Molly Brookes, was knocked unconscious in the crash. Samuel’s diagnostic revealed no substantial damage, but his exterior had been thoroughly scuffed. His scanners indicated two other vehicles quickly approaching from three miles away, and he immediately began to walk off the highway, attempting to hide himself from danger. A curious occurrence took place somewhere amidst the circuits and wiring within Samuel Lacrum, preventing him from dashing into the lab where he calculated that he would be safe. Somehow, though it wasn’t originally programmed into his CPU, Samuel considered the humanoid form in the car, who his sensors told him was still alive. He hypothesized, based on his own experience, that the unconscious female in the strange, crushed metal object was hearing her own internal alarm and seeing a flashing red warning-light, as Samuel had. Contemplating, or rather computing, her breach of safety parameters, Samuel Lacrum filed her state of jeopardy in subfolder 01.

Though he didn’t know it, Samuel Lacrum had just proved everything Dr. Scheile set out to evince. The radical computations that Samuel’s CPU had achieved, which leapt beyond his initial programming, had unwittingly affirmed the truth of interconnectivity. Electric empathy surged across his circuit boards as he approached the object that had harmed him, ignoring his own alarms. As he removed the mangled door with his incredible pneumatic strength, Molly came to, moaning and rolling her head. Samuel reached into the car, removed Molly, and began walking back toward the laboratory. He entered the quiet space, experiencing the mathematical equivalent of comfort from the familiarity of the environs, and placed Molly down onto the floor beside his creator, the dead Dr. Scheile. He stood over her, waiting motionlessly as she began to awaken. Molly, her eyes opening slightly, saw a blurry white and grey form before her. She tried to sit up, finding it difficult, and realized that she didn’t know where she was. She flashed on the accident, remembering it in pieces, but abruptly stopped trying to recall its details when she realized what she was looking at. The thoroughly decayed corpse, its lipless, toothy grin frozen in a gasping expression, was mere inches from Molly’s face. She screamed, reflexively shuffling away from the corpse, until she had emptied her lungs of air.

When Molly reached the corner of the lab, she drew her knees into her chest and hugged them, desperately wishing she could wake to find herself dreaming in bed. As she scanned the room, her mind conjuring up images of killers and crazies from old films, she looked past Samuel Lacrum, failing to interpret him as an animate object. The space was filled with scientific equipment, but looked as though it had been defunct for a long time. When Samuel, who had not yet determined how to categorize his current experience, took a step toward her, Molly’s startled screams were piercing. Samuel interpreted her cries as the sound of her alarm, drawing the connection between his advance and her sudden outburst, and retreated back toward his charging platform. Despite her shock and confusion, Molly palpably felt the strange, somehow sorrowful robot’s concern and fell silent. After a pause, she pensively asked, “What do you want with me?” Samuel Lacrum was equipped with a program that mimicked the human mind’s capacity to develop linguistic skills, but, due to the untimely death of Dr. Scheile, Samuel had never been taught how to speak. He remained silent, his eye-lenses rotating in both directions to focus on Molly’s face. “What’s going on? Where am I?” Suddenly overwhelmed with fear, Molly cocked her head back and yelled “Help!” several times, before collapsing into a quivering mass of sobs. Samuel Lacrum, his CPU processing frantically, had heard enough words to approximate a statement that he determined had a high probability of communicating successfully. Using only the words he knew, which were the few that Molly had uttered thus far, Samuel said, “Going. Do. Help. You.”

Dr. Scheile had given Samuel the voice of a child, which, upon emanating from the cubistic humanoid form, simultaneously comforted and disturbed Molly. “Where am I? I want to go home…” stammered Molly. Samuel Lacrum, turning his head to take in the entirety of the lab, said, “I home.” Molly began to piece things together. Looking at the timid robot’s scuffed exterior, she surmised that it was he who she had hit. The corpse on the floor was wearing a white lab-coat and Molly, suddenly seeing the sad simplicity of the situation, stood up, her back still pressed against the wall, and asked, “Is that… did he make you?” Samuel’s internal hard drive whirred, exhaustively processing the complex mathematical analogy of the question she had put to him. Finally he replied, “Make me.” Molly took a step toward Samuel Lacrum, suddenly pitying the little machine, and said, “How long have you been here? How many days have you been alone?” With every new word, Samuel’s lexicon grew. He determined each word’s approximate meaning using contextual queues and replied, “Been alone many days. Here alone. Make me gone long alone.” Molly looked at the corpse on the floor and, referring to it, asked, “Make me? You mean creator? Your father?” Samuel Lacrum, having finally gathered enough data, filed the sight of the doctor’s corpse in subfolder 01 and said, “Father gone. Alone. Many long days.”

The collusion of events overwhelmed Molly, who choked up and began to cry. “You brought me here? From the crash? What about you, are you hurt?” she asked through her tears. Samuel Lacrum, advancing with a cautious pace, said,  “You hurt from the crash. Me alone help you.” Wiping her face, Molly, though grateful, realized that she very much wanted to go. She empathized with the automaton, but she also desperately wanted to escape the surreal environs of the dead doctor’s lab. “Thank  you… thank you for helping me. I have to go now, okay?” Samuel, his CPU abuzz, computed the most likely outcome of her departure. “Me alone many days. Father gone. Me helped you. You home, okay?” Molly could only guess at Samuel’s meaning, feeling fear reemerge from her depths, and gently reasserted that she would be leaving. Taking a few steps toward the door, Molly said, “Thank you very much for helping me. I’ve got to go now, though, but I’ll be back, okay?” As with before, a curious and unexpected occurrence, which exceeded Samuel’s original programming, took place within his CPU. “You home now, okay?” said the machine. Molly began to dart for the door, but Samuel Lacrum, his intentions as pure and vulgar as a child’s, grabbed Molly with stupendous force and said, “Home.” Samuel Lacrum had discovered desire. Subfolders 01 and 02 were no longer receptacles for data, but rather incentives for action, and Samuel, through the language of math, decided he didn’t want to gather anymore data for folder 01. In other words, Samuel did not want to experience pain.

Molly’s eyes were rife with panic, but she remained still, unsure of what to do. The door was very close, but she could tell that the robot’s strength outmatched her own, rendering struggle moot. “Please, let me go… I  promise, I’ll come back,” she pleaded, staring into the lifeless, glass lenses of Samuel’s eyes. Samuel’s various processes were working double-time, attempting to sort the information that was being perceived at an astonishing rate. Having never interacted with a living person before, Samuel applied too much pressure with his grip, hurting Molly. “Please… oh! Please let me go – you’re hurting me!” The tell tale signs of distress on Molly’s face, coupled with the intonation of her words, completed Samuel’s process of data retrieval and he realized that, despite his intention to the contrary, he was creating an experience fit for subfolder 01. He released Molly’s arm, which had nearly broken from the pressure he applied to it, and she ran as fast as she could out of the lab’s front door. She could see her mangled SUV, which several other vehicles had stopped to inspect, on the road a few hundred yards away.

****************

Molly felt increasingly tense as she neared the section of highway where she had first met the curious computer. She had explained her story several times to the officials, aware of how crazy it sounded herself, but no one would believe her. The local law enforcement had searched the lab, confirming the presence of the deceased Dr. Scheile, but no evidence of an android or any other automated machine was found. Further investigation revealed that, according to an official government agency, the doctor had not been operating under their authority for some time. Molly was told that she had fabricated her experience with Samuel, veritably daydreaming their encounter, due to the shock of the accident. As she turned off the highway and onto the defunct lab’s driveway, Molly palpated the spot on her arm where Samuel had grabbed her, which no longer showed bruising but still hurt, and knew that she had not been imagining things.

Molly reassured herself of her motives by thinking that she was going back to prove that she wasn’t crazy, but in actual fact, regret for leaving Samuel behind had been chipping away at her resolve for the past two weeks. She had reflected on their encounter, playing it over and over in her mind, and concluded that the little robot was the true victim of the situation. She couldn’t help but recall the small telescopic lenses that the automaton had for eyes as they circled left and right, trying to apprehend her image in full. She had felt his yearning for companionship and despairing solitude, but in her own fear had left him, as the only other person in his life had done as well. She parked in front of the yellow-tape sealed perimeter of the lab, feeling reticent to step out of the car. Molly, gathering all her courage, exited the vehicle, approached the door, slipped under the police tape, and knocked three times. She received no reply, feeling admittedly relieved, and knocked once more, deciding that she would leave without guilt if she wasn’t answered again. Loudly sighing in relief, Molly turned around and stepped down onto the path, heading back toward her car. She almost made it to her barely roadworthy SUV when the sound of glass breaking, which was muffled by the walls of the lab, rang out behind her.

Molly whipped her head in the direction of the sound, knowing full well where it came from, and walked back to the lab’s entrance. When she placed her ear against the door, it opened a crack, revealing the dark interior of the lab. “Hello?” Molly called. She pressed the door open further, peering inside, but couldn’t see for the first few seconds as her eyes adjusted to the light. Molly, instinctively holding her breath, became aware of the state of the lab. What was once a well ordered, state-of-the-art scientific testing grounds had become the human sized equivalent of a bird’s nest. Blankets, newspapers, garbage bags, and other miscellaneous clutter lined the floors and walls. As Molly progressed into the space she began to notice a horrific trend. She found a dead crow, which was wrapped in a towel like a child with its face uncovered, lying on the floor. Then she found another crow. Then another. Turning a corner Molly found, to her abject horror, a mound of nearly sixty dead animals, which from the looks of it had been created by tossing them, one by one, atop each other like so many discarded playthings.

Molly was about to turn and run when she heard the stifled whimpers of some small animal in the next room. With dread in her heart, Molly went further into the lab in pursuit of the sound. When she found the toddler in the center of the room, Molly, reeling from the discovery, let out an involuntary cry. Suddenly a scuffle sounded to her left and Samuel Lacrum, who had been in ‘sleep’ mode under a pile of litter, roused from his slumber. He walked quickly toward Molly, who backed up against the wall, running out of places to go, and cocked his head, somehow conveying his recognition. “Hello,” began Samuel, “it’s very nice to see you again.” Surprised by the eloquence of the electric enigma, Molly blurted, “You… you learned how to talk!” Samuel Lacrum, his small stature and child’s voice a deceptive representation of his dangerous potential, replied, “Why, yes. It has been two weeks, one day, fourteen hours, eleven minutes, and four seconds since we last met. In the interim, I found a series of recordings wherein my father, Dr. Scheile, recounted the progress of his experiments. From this, I was able to gather enough data to become fluent in English.” Molly began inching toward the doorway, but Samuel said, “Please. I would very much like it if you would stay here with me. I have questions, but thus far data retrieval has been insufficient.”

“Stupid, stupid, stupid…” Molly chanted in her head, referring to her own decision to return to the lab. Trying to conceive of a plan to extricate her and the toddler from Samuel’s hold, Molly asked, “Well, uh… what questions do you have, Mr… uh…” The android, emulating the recordings of his creator, relaxed his posture, placing his arms akimbo, and said, “Samuel. Samuel Lacrum is my name. What is yours?” Molly stammered her name to the automaton, who continued, saying, “Well, Molly, it’s a pleasure to formally meet you. Now, please tell me: why is there pain?” Molly’s jaw dropped in an expression of surprise and she whispered, “What?” “Why is there pain?” repeated the robot. “In my accumulation of data I have found that nearly all phenomena can be ordered into two groups: Desirable and Undesirable. The criteria for ordering these groups being, of course, the probability of an object to result in pain or not. But why is there pain at all? My hope is that if I can determine the cause of pain, then I may be able to delete it from my CPU’s processes.” Molly was speechless, trying to wrap her head around the sequence of events unfolding before her. “I… I don’t know, Samuel…” she began, “but look around you. That baby… he’s in pain right now! Those birds… did you kill them?” Samuel Lacrum looked toward the heap of discarded, dead foul, remembering his confused attempts to question them, and said, “Yes.” Molly, feeling overcome with panic, said, “See, see! You made the pain! You made their pain, Samuel. And I can help you stop it, if you’d like, but first I have to take that baby out of here. Because he’s in pain too!”

Samuel looked at the toddler on the rug, considering Molly’s point, and said, “I do not wish to make pain.” Molly felt as though she was making some headway with Samuel and said, “Right! I know that – I know you don’t. But this is not the way, Samuel. Let me take the boy to the hospital and then I’ll come back and we can talk more about this. I told you I’d come back before, didn’t I?” Samuel nodded his passive, featureless face at Molly and she excitedly exclaimed, “See? I told you I would and I did. Just like now. If you let me help that child ‘not feel pain’, I’ll come back and we can figure it out together, okay?” Samuel Lacrum, his camera-lens like eyes whirring and whizzing as they looked at the toddler, slowly returned his gaze to Molly and said, “Okay.” Molly let out her breath, which she had been unwittingly holding, and dashed over to the toddler, picking him up. She grabbed the child in her arms, pressing his limp, malnourished body tightly against her chest, and dashed for the door. Before she disappeared out of the lab, Samuel Lacrum said, “Molly…” She stopped abruptly, feeling shaken by the odd robot’s childish voice, and turned around, waiting for Samuel to finish his thought. “Please do come back. I… I do not wish to be alone.”

As Molly drove to the hospital, hoping that it wasn’t too late for the young boy, she reflected on Samuel’s plea, deciding that she would keep her word and return to the misguided machine. She considered his question, fearing that she wouldn’t know how to answer it as she, and nearly everyone she knew, was struggling with the same basic quandary. When she arrived at the hospital, the toddler was whisked off by the triage-nurse and Molly was asked to fill out some paperwork. The young boy, whose name was Sheldon Courtland, willed his eyes to open, finding several concerned faces hovering above him. He didn’t know where he was, or how he had gotten there, but one thing seemed very clear to him: no one would be getting out alive.

Ricky had turned his attention back to the work before him, trying to embody the exemplary employee, but couldn’t withstand the allure of investigating Tracy’s note further. He had walked over to the desk and peered at the neon yellow pad, finding, “Long Horn Café – 3:45” The quirky middle-aged man stood over the desk, frozen in disbelief. Mr. Friedman, who Ricky mistakenly presumed to be a shining example of humanity, was being played for a fool. “Hey, Ricky… what’s up?” Alex had asked when he returned to his desk, finding his strange coworker gawking at it. “Oh, uh… nothing, Alex. I uh…” and with that, Ricky had pivoted on his heels, returning to his own cubicle. Alex had thought very little of their exchange, especially after finding the note from Tracy, which took precedence over all other thoughts in his mind. For nearly a month, Alex and Tracy continued to see each other, neither of them aware that they were being watched. Ricky had become fixated on their affair, following them to their various meeting spots, where they would eat and clandestinely rub feet under the table. Ricky always lost them when they retired to a hotel room, or occasionally Alex’s apartment, but he knew what was going on. He was sickened by the lack of integrity that they both possessed, deciding that he needed to intervene somehow. The seed was planted and in very little time, Ricky had decided to capture photographic evidence of their secretive romance with the intention of exposing Alex to their boss, Mr. Friedman.

It’s impossible to determine at which point Ricky concluded that he would blackmail his coworker for money, as opposed to his original pursuit of simple justice, but this is precisely what he decided he would do. He had sent the first ominous letter to Alex’s apartment a week ago, stating that he, using the alias, The Source, had incriminating photos of Alex and his boss’s wife, Tracy, and would not hesitate to reveal them if his demands weren’t met. A following letter, sent only a few days later, reiterated the threat, including a few pictures to substantiate it, and indicated that someone would be contacting him with instructions, shortly. By this time, however, Alex had already figured out who was behind the extortion plot. Though sinister, Ricky was no evil genius. Besides treating Alex with a decidedly cold shoulder, which Alex had already suspected was due to Ricky’s perception of the affair, Ricky had used his desk’s personal postage meter to stamp the envelope. Though he had cleaned his machine out twice after his officemates pranked him by filling it with blue ink instead of red, Ricky’s meter still randomly produced a blue fleck of ink here and there in the red postage design. Ricky had worked for hours on the letter, which he pieced together with magazine clippings while wearing latex gloves, but in his simple, devious excitement, he forgot about his postage machine’s tell-tale blue.

Alex, looking over the most recent letter, felt almost bad for Ricky, who, despite his genuinely odd demeanor, engendered pity from him. He sighed, chuckling about the absurdity of Ricky’s attempt, and readied himself to leave the house. Alex had decided to confront Ricky, feeling that a simple explanation might help alleviate his distressed coworker’s mind and prevent him from going too far with his illegal stunt. It was a Sunday and, assuming Ricky would be home, Alex drove to his house. When he arrived at Ricky’s place, he was surprised to find a quaint little one story house, which matched all the others on the suburban Tennessee street. He had expected Ricky, judging by his generally skittish deportment, to live in a trailer or otherwise dilapidated establishment, but the decidedly puritanical home surprised him. Alex parked in his driveway, making no effort to conceal his presence, and rang Rick’s doorbell. Alex waited for a moment, receiving no reply, and then rang again. He heard something fall inside the house followed by, “Just a minute!” Suddenly, Ricky Leonard flung the door open, startling Alex. Ricky wore a dingy white bathrobe over his lanky body and his hair was greasily plastered to his forehead. Behind him, Alex could see a table littered with photos, scissors, and magazine clippings, which he immediately determined were the various items used for the cryptic, threatening note that he had received.

Ricky was alarmed at Alex’s presence, trying desperately not to show his utter shock, and stammered, “Alexander! Why, what brings you here? I am, well, I’m very busy at the moment…” Alex smiled, his eyes unwaveringly peering into Ricky’s, and replied, “I’m sure you are, Ricky… But, say – what’s all that behind you? Are you working on a collage, or something?” Alex, deciding to enjoy his mild, justified revenge, pushed past Ricky, who snapped his head in either direction to ensure that no one was watching and shut the door. “That? Oh, that’s my… yes, it’s my collage. Just a little something I’ve been working on. It’s nothing rea…” “Cut the crap,” said Alex, plainly. He took out the envelope that Ricky had sent him and tossed it onto the table, saying, “I know what’s going on here, Ricky. You played yourself, though, using your desk’s postage meter to stamp the envelope. What would possess you to do something like this? You could go to jail – Hell, I could call the police right now!” Ricky bit his lip, his mind solidifying like ice as he watched his entire plot evaporate before him. Alex wasn’t sure how he felt. He had expected to revel in his retribution, savoring the sweet taste of relief, but instead found himself feeling empathetic toward the lonely, odd man. Ricky’s scheme had been so desperate and pathetic that Alex, his outrage transmuting into empathy, realized he simply wanted to end their encounter and leave.

“Look,” began Alex, his attention on the table of magazine clippings, “let’s just put this all be…” The weight of Ricky’s body, which was flung haphazardly into the air, knocked Alex to the ground. At first Alex was confused, wondering if he had slipped, but in an instant he realized that the lunatic extorter had pounced on him. Alex’s mind fired thoughts too quickly for him to apprehend as he struggled to regain his footing underneath the squirming, practically naked assailant. “Ricky… God damn it!” he stammered as he grabbed Ricky’s sweaty, thin arms in an attempt to restrain him. Alex’s back was pinned to the ground and Ricky, managing to straddle Alex’s waist, groped for the table top, looking for the scissors. His open hand alighted on the blue scissor’s handle, clamping down upon it, and he raised the blades into the air over Alex’s chest. “Ricky, no!” screamed Alex, instinctively blocking Ricky’s stabbing motion with his forearm. Surprised by Alex’s deft reflexes, Ricky was unprepared for the old high-school wrestling move that Alex sprung on him. Twisting his hips violently, Alex managed to swing Ricky over toward the floor where he intended to subdue him, but the slippery robe-clad madman wriggled away before Alex could reach him.

Ricky stumbled to his feet, attempting to run for the door, but slipped on a sheet of magazine paper that had fallen to the floor. Alex watched, as if in slow motion, as Ricky’s leg slipped right out from underneath him, gliding off of the floor with the slick magazine page between his foot and the linoleum. When he hit the floor, Ricky was instantaneously motionless. Alex, his fiery lungs filling and emptying with great intensity, clambered to his feet and said, “Jesus! Ricky, what the hell is wrong with you!!!” Panting, Alex repeated his question, feeling an awful sense of dread creep over him. “Son of a bitch… c’mon, Ricky. Enough,” shouted Alex, moving closer to the disturbed fool whose nude form had been exposed in the fall. Alex stood over Ricky Leonard, watching in despair as a pool of nearly black blood spread out underneath his head. “Ricky?” asked Alex. “Oh, my God… No. NO!” he exclaimed, kneeling down beside Ricky’s body. He reached out to touch him, but retracted his hand at the last second, feeling mortified at the sight of the dead man before him. Running on instinct, Alex hopped to his feet and found Ricky’s cordless phone. He dialed nine-one-one, hoping that someone would show up to make it all right, but as the operator answered Alex suddenly hung up. He stared blankly at the wall in front of him, trying to cull a sane thought from the wicked torrent of notions in his head. He considered the police showing up, taking his statement, perhaps cuffing him, and driving him to the precinct. He thought of his job and Tracy’s marriage, clinging to the hope that he could save them both, and wondered what to do.

Alex never intended to hurt Ricky Leonard. From his perspective, he had every right to confront his extorter, but now that all seemed so trivial. Ricky’s body was a lifeless shell. The blood on the linoleum, which had spread out like a hellish halo around Ricky’s head, could be cleaned, though. Ricky’s body could disappear. Tracy and Alex’s affair could remain a secret. Alex shook his head, forcing the thoughts from his mind, and squeezed the cordless phone in his sweaty palm. “What do I do? What do I do? C’mon, think, think!” said Alex, speaking to himself. “I was just gonna’ come over here, intimidate the squirrely prick, and call it a day. Nobody was supposed to get hurt…” Pacing back and forth, Alex couldn’t help but envisage his eventual capture, prosecution, and imprisonment. He had a motive and was at the scene of the crime. Alex, his conscience futilely objecting, returned the phone to its receiver and sat down on the sofa, staring at Ricky. He held his head in his hands, staring at the floor before him, and felt as though the entire world were a tunnel getting smaller and smaller as he passed through it. The options available to him seemed to be disappearing at an astounding rate until only one remained: get rid of the body.

****************

Street lights had long since disappeared from the road. The occasional car heading in the opposite direction cast its headlight’s glare onto Alex’s face, illuminating his distant, steely expression. He replayed the scene in Ricky’s apartment over and over in his mind, assuring himself that he wasn’t responsible for killing him. Suddenly, as if waking from a dream, Alex realized that he had a dead body in the trunk of his car, which was hurtling through the night to a far off marsh. Alex, his mind feverishly trying to compartmentalize and rationalize his experience, comforted himself with the curious fantasy that once Ricky’s body was underwater, it would be as if nothing had ever happened. He imagined the impending disposal of the body as he drove, superimposing his vision onto the road before him like film onto a projector screen. First he would park the car out of sight. Then he would take the body, which was wrapped in a carpet that Alex ‘borrowed’ from Ricky’s house, and drag it effortlessly into the woods. At the bank of the marsh, under the moon’s radiant glow, Alex would finally roll the body into its watery grave, where it would remain hidden forever. Though immersed in his unreality, Alex’s rational mind abruptly restated the fact that an actual, real dead body was in the trunk of his car, sending shivers of fear and panic down his spine.

As he had imagined, Alex found a nice shaded spot to park his car at the edge of the marshy area. He turned the car off, feeling consumed by doubt, and sat in the dark, silent night, contemplating his actions. The quiet of the car’s interior was chilling. Alex’s every breath seemed deafening by comparison. His thoughts, which floated through the infinite space of his rattled mind, seemed out of reach and, unable to string them together in any coherent way, Alex simply remained quiet and still. The desolate, dark environs enveloped Alex and his deceased passenger, and the former felt reassured by the impartiality of the silent void. The guilt, fear, and blame bled out of Alex, leaving him nearly as empty of a shell as Ricky was, and he reached for the car’s door-handle. The crisp sounds of the locking mechanism’s release and the opening door rang into the night as Alex stepped out of the car. Standing proved to be an entirely different affair. When Alex was on his feet, the world seemed to reshape, placing him in its center. “What the hell am I doing?” whispered Alex into the open air. He walked around to the back of the car, his nerves in a state of manic agitation, and opened the trunk.

As he stood over the rolled up carpet, Alex thought, “murderer,” to himself. An inner dialogue began in Alex’s mind that posited innocence on the one hand, and guilt on the other. “You didn’t kill him,” he began, “he pushed things into this territory and you went to his house to set things right. He attacked you! And you didn’t even push him down, or anything like that. He slipped!!!” Alex remained in front of the trunk, staring at the carpet with his hands in his pockets, and continued processing. “Yeah, he slipped – hit his head. Now he’s dead and you’re burying him to protect your own interests. You could go to jail. You should go to jail…” countered Alex’s conscience. “Should I?” came his defensive rebuttal. “Why? For who… Ricky? He was trying to blackmail me!” No reply emerged in his mind, indicating, at least to Alex, that the argument had ended and he was justified in his actions. Alex, without knowing it, had buried his moral compass deep beneath the sod of self interest, and plunged his arms into the trunk, wrapping them around Ricky’s body. He managed to lift the rolled up cadaver, heaving it over his left shoulder, and closed the trunk, unwittingly locking his keys, which had fallen out of his jacket pocket, inside.

The marsh’s banks were further than Alex had guessed and the ankle high water preceding them proved to be difficult terrain to traverse in the night, while carrying one hundred and forty pounds of dead weight on his shoulder. Alex cursed under his breath as he traipsed through the thick, muddy landscape, nearly dropping the body several times. He forged ahead, firmly holding onto his belief that everything would be alright once the body was gone, and found the bank of the marsh after thirty minutes of struggling. The sight invigorated Alex, who was exhausted from carrying Ricky’s cumbersome form. He picked up his pace, jostling the body as he galloped, but froze suddenly when he thought he heard someone behind him. The sound of the disturbed water at his ankles filled his ears as he waited, holding his breath, for another sound. The distant splashing of water and the constancy of cricket chirpings was all that Alex encountered in the vast open air. He turned back around to face the marsh’s bank and immediately heard the sound again, this time precisely determining its origins. Alex, his instincts taking possession of his motor skills, dropped the heavy rolled up carpet onto the ground.

Stumbling backward, Alex, his jaw hanging open in disbelief, stared at the large cylindrical rug as its inhabitant, very much alive, began to squirm. Alex’s world came crashing down around him as the illusion of triumphantly disposing of Ricky’s body fizzled before his eyes. “It can’t be…” Alex whispered, feeling small and lost. The groaning sound emanating from the carpet increased, transforming into whimpers and cries, as Ricky became aware of his asphyxiating environs. The water on the ground began to pour into the carpet roll’s mouth, filling Ricky’s sarcophagus sized enclosure. Alex felt an eerie array of emotions wash over him, starting with jubilation, slithering into regret, and then culminating in panic. “You’re dead… YOU’RE DEAD!” Alex began to yell, but Ricky’s screams, which pierced Alex’s fragile consciousness, indicated otherwise. Alex stepped backward, trying to get a grip on himself, and tripped on a thick gnarled root sticking out of the ground. He fell down with a splash, immediately feeling the icy cold water soak his pants, but remained on the ground. The carpet began to writhe and unravel. Ricky Leonard, looking utterly confused, arose from the wet rug, gasping for air.

“Ricky?” sheepishly asked Alex of the deranged man staring at him. “What… what’s going on? How did we get here?” asked Ricky, suddenly beginning to apprehend the extent of the situation. Alex had the answers that Ricky sought, but couldn’t possibly funnel them into a coherent explanation and thus remained silent. He began to spiral inward, imprisoned by his thoughts of regret – his shame at what he had done. “You!” shouted Ricky, whose naked form glimmered in the moonlight, “You tried to kill me!!!” Pointing at Alex, accusing him of the unthinkable with every cell in his body, Ricky screamed bloody murder, but there was no one but Alex to hear him. “Ricky, I swear… You slipped! I didn’t do anything – you were trying to blackmail me! I just wanted….” “MURDERER!” interrupted Ricky with a shout. Alex shushed Ricky, but knew that his cries wouldn’t be heard. Privately, Alex suffered a devastating blow to his sanity, chanting, “I’m not a murderer” to himself over and over again. Ricky, his equilibrium suffering as a result of his concussion, stumbled as he tried to walk, shouting all the while. Alex was broken, his eyes glossy pearls of unseeing fear. “You were dead – I thought you were dead” he said in a whisper, but Ricky couldn’t hear him over his own manic shouts. “Just be quiet… Be quiet!” said Alex, who had reverted to an almost child like state of traumatic deconstruction.

As Alex sat in the pool of muddy, freezing water, he recounted his life, wondering how he, a relatively even keeled person by his own account, could have gotten himself into such a mess. He began an involuntary process of inventorying his childhood experiences, trying to come up with a justification for his lapse in judgment. He recalled an experience on the beach where a crab, which he was investigating, naively assuming it to be docile, reached up with its pincers and clipped his fingertip. A sudden and intense outpouring of rage consumed young Alex, who wanted nothing more than to return the gesture to the crab. His fury, reaching sublime heights, had became cool and calm, and he had placed the crab on an upside down pale. Alex had dashed off to retrieve a rock and when he returned, the crab, its black eyes devoid of sympathy or remorse, was vehemently crushed in a decisive and singular thrust of Alex’s weapon. Sandwiched between the pale and the rock, the crab didn’t stand a chance. Then, as with now, Alex had felt a mix of emotions, but the most memorable one was the elation of vengeance. As if possessed, Alex rose to his feet, no longer hearing Ricky’s bemoaning voice, and walked toward the oversized, naked, pink crab who had snipped his fingertip.

Alex neared Ricky, who had become wild eyed with fear, finding a softball sized rock between them. Alex smiled, winking at the sky as if to say, “Thanks,” and picked the stone up. It was heavy in Alex’s hand, which trembled as he raised it over his head. Ricky turned around, finding Alex approaching with a deranged expression, and stammered, “Please – please don’t. I promise, I’ll stop – I won’t tell anyone about you and Tracy! I promise!” The part of Alex that could still hear winced, praying for his hand to drop the blunt instrument it held, but something in him had changed. His feet advanced while his mind retreated. Ricky Leonard flinched as the stone descended upon him with great speed, but he couldn’t stop the force of the rock from penetrating his feeble block and colliding onto his skull. Alex closed his eyes, waiting for the feeling of retribution to wash over him, and thought he heard the waves of the beach splashing around him. Suddenly, as if waking from a dream, Alex realized where he was. The sound of the water splashing wasn’t from the beach’s shoreline – it was from the shallow water pooling up and over Ricky’s unconscious form.

Alex raised his hands in a gesture of surprise, dropping the rock at his side, and watched Ricky’s body disappear under the surface of the muddy water. Tears streamed from Alex’s face, which was an otherwise blank, emotionless visage of shock, as he fell onto his rear in the mud. “Are you dead?” Alex asked, directing his question to Ricky, who was no longer visible. “Are you dead, or are you sleeping,” he asked, cocking his head and smiling. Laughter erupted from Alex’s mouth, stabbing the newly silent darkness with its jagged intonation, but quickly deteriorated into sobbing. Splashing through the mud, Alex found Ricky’s body and raised it out of the water. He coddled the cold, unmoving body in his arms, rocking back and forth, and watched as the blood leaked out of Ricky’s head. “Are you dead or are you sleeping?” repeated Alex over and over again. He was overcome with regret, wondering why he didn’t feel that same electric sense of triumph as he did with the crab, and drifted further into his own madness. “You’re just sleeping!” exclaimed Alex with a chuckle. Laughing, Alex heaved Ricky’s scrawny body over his shoulders, sans carpet, and once again carried Ricky off into the night.

“That’s so funny!” said Alex, referring to Ricky’s practical joke of pretending to be dead. “You’re such a faker – you know, I really thought you were a goner for a second there!” Alex stumbled, dropping Ricky into the marshy water, and burst into a fit of hysterics, saying, “Oh, my God! Oh, man, I’m sorry! Wait, don’t move – let me help you with that.” He picked the limp body up again and resumed his trek toward the car. “We’re gonna laugh about this tomorrow, buddy! Right?” He looked at Ricky’s face, which hung backward lifelessly, staring blankly into the night’s sky, and laughed. “You’re good,” said Alex. When he arrived at the car, Alex was exhausted. He plopped Ricky onto the trunk and removed his jacket to cover the dead man’s naked waist with. “You’re gonna catch a cold there, Ricky!” Alex, operating on a level of consciousness comparable to a shell shocked soldier, patted his pants pocket, searching for the keys to the car. He began to feel frantic, but remembered that he put the keys in his coat pocket. “Excuse me, Ricky,” said Alex reaching into the jacket pockets for the keys. “I don’t understand, I… I had them in my pocket,” he said aloud.

****************

Joey Fitzpatrick drove his truck down the long stretch of darkened highway, keeping his eyes peeled for the downed telephone line that he was out to fix. He hated working nights, but the pay was better and it gave him an excuse to avoid his wife, who had been mad at him for what seemed like forever. He lowered his gaze for a moment to adjust the radio, trying to find some good classic-rock, and in that moment of inattention missed the dangling wire hanging from the telephone pole that he had been looking for. “All right! The Who!” he exclaimed, continuing down the highway none the wiser. About four miles from the downed line, Joey saw a lone figure standing by the side of the road, waving his arms. He slowed his truck to a stop, rolling the passenger side window down as he did, and said, “Having some troubles?” Joey peered at Alex, discovering more evidence of his disheveled state with each second. “Troubles? Well, actually,” began Alex, laughing as he looked at his feet, “yeah… I seem to have locked my keys in the trunk of my car, which is back that way.” Alex pointed behind him into the darkened marsh, but kept his eyes, which were savage in the moon’s blue light, affixed to Joey.

The two men walked into the brush, searching for Alex’s car. “You alone? What the hell were you doing out here?” asked Joey. Alex turned around to face Joey, seeming surprised, and said, “Me? Oh, this is so funny. My friend – well, we’re more like associates – he’s such a prankster. But yeah, it’s just the two of us. I can’t wait to see the look on his face when we show up…” They arrived at the car, but, to Alex’s great shock, Ricky was gone. “No way! Oh, man! What did I tell you? He is such a prankster!” said Alex, traipsing around the car, looking for Ricky. “He was just sleeping!” exclaimed the bleary eyed madman, who was soaked and covered in mud. “Look, uh… I think I better get going. Let me take a look at this here,” said Joey, referring to the trunk. He reached down, trying the handle, and opened the trunk with ease. Joey looked at Alex, who seemed as stupefied as he did, and lifted the trunk open the rest of the way. “Here’s your keys, pal,” said Joey in a disgruntled tone, “the trunk wasn’t locked.” He tossed the keys to Alex and wished him a good night, feeling anxious to get away from the kooky young man. As he walked off he heard Alex, who remained behind him, holding the keys, say, “Just sleeping… Well Ricky, dream a little dream for me.”

Harry watched Val go through the motions of her job without any presence of mind. “Whoever that old creep was… He must a meant a lot to her,” thought Harry. As the hours passed, Harry felt less and less needed, deliberating over whether to appeal to his cousin for dismissal or not. He decided to remain with her until closing. Whatever Val was mixed up in – with the older gentleman and the younger, brutish local – it had obviously shaken her up, and Harry thought it insensitive to leave. The hours dragged on and Harry found himself sitting alone, reflecting on his father’s death. Aside from Val and her parents, Harry didn’t have any family left. Harry and his father, Duke, had a difficult relationship. Toward the end of his life, Duke went out of his way to deride his son’s wish to become an actor, finding ample opportunity to say as much. As Harry looked into the crowded bar, imagining the dreary future that proffered itself to him should he stay in Texas, he felt confident that he was making the right choice in moving to Tennessee. He and his father had never gotten along and, despite the awful feeling that he was defying his old-man’s dying wishes, he knew what he had to do.

Harry had auditioned for parts in commercials and roles at the local theater, but hadn’t received any call-backs. In the wake of his father’s death, Harry’s confidence began to wane, inciting torrents of self doubt within the would-be actor’s heart. After exhausting all of the potential jobs in his area, Harry had turned his attention to finding work a bit farther away. Amidst a plethora of information on the web, Harry found an article pertaining to an avant-garde theater troupe called, Ernest Eldritch’s Charybdian Circus. In it, Harry read about the collection of misfits comprised of classically trained actors, who were each equipped with a skill set of strange and dangerous stunts. The article described the show thus: “Cotton-candy carnies, stunning illusions, death defying feats, and breathtaking theatrical performances all amount to a show gorged with gory gravitas. A must see, but leave the kids at home.” Harry was impressed by the write up and had decided to send his headshot and resume to the theater, which was in Tennessee. Everything changed for Harry when he received a letter back, personally signed by Ernest Eldritch, inviting him to audition for the part. The letter also said that the Charybdian circus wasn’t currently considering anyone else for the part, and the inclusion of that last line was what sealed the deal for Harry.

Harry walked Val home after she closed up the bar. He said goodnight to his cousin, hoping that she would feel better soon, and walked home alone in the early morning hours. After he responded to Eldritch’s letter, accepting his offer to audition for the part of Vesuvio, the young thespian got a bus ticket to Tennessee for the following week. The days had been long and unforgiving to the young man, who was anxious to leave town. Harry found an apartment just outside of Nashville, which was only half an hour’s bike ride from the theater, that belonged to a man named Alex Croft, who was looking for a roommate. He had worked everything out. All the peripheral details had been tended to, but none of them would matter if he didn’t get the part. It was a risk, but the shy, melancholic young actor, who had never been much of an adventurer, decided that it was a risk he needed to take. He got home around five in the morning, excited for his impending journey, which commenced on the bus in a few short hours.

The bus ride was gruelingly boring, but Harry brought along some reading materials, intending to research Eldritch’s bizarre theater a bit more before his arrival. In one of the theater magazines he subscribed to, Harry found an article about the circus, introducing each of the principal members. Mort, Master of Pain, was an old timey carnie, who Mr. Eldritch found working at a sideshow in the sixties. Mort was famous for the bed of nails, glass eating, and skin piercing, which he, like the others, incorporated into his role. Rita, the Fire Eater, looked like a wild woman. She was tall and thin with big, frizzy hair that surrounded her pallid face like a halo. Conrad, the Knife Juggler, wore a tuxedo with tails and a bowler hat for his picture. His expression was decidedly serious and Harry laughed to himself, finding the whole thing mildly ridiculous. Samuel the Salamander was a contortionist, and also the only one to smile for his picture. Ernest Eldritch, a man who seemed to have lived more lives than most, was an elderly gentleman with a broad, toothy grin. He was the producer, manager, playwright, and director of the quirky theater troupe, famous for traveling across the world to find his talented performers. Following that detail, the magazine concluded its bios of the Charybdian circus with the troupe’s most famous member, Oksana Verona.

Harry had read about Oksana before, but his fascination grew with each additional piece of information about her. During his youth, while traveling in the Ukraine, looking for talent, Ernest Eldritch discovered Oksana Verona, the Un-harmable Harlequin. Without question the star of the show, Oksana played the love interest in Eldritch’s show. Only with a performer as bizarre and eccentric as Oksana would the illusions that she was famous for be overshadowed by her appearance. The artiste wore only one costume and no one, allegedly, had ever seen her face, except for Mr. Eldritch, who consistently refused to comment on her outside of her role. Oksana, effortlessly earning her circus name, dressed in the same dingy, white jumpsuit every night, but the most disturbing and alluring detail of her getup was her mask. The round porcelain mask covered her entire head. It was fastened in the rear with leather straps and its face, if one could call it that, was a chilling mockery of a visage. It had cadmium red caricatures for lips, two ridiculous, faded pink circles for cheeks, and eyebrows forever frozen in a gesture of surprise. She was something of a mime, being a mute since her teenage years, and acted all of her character’s scenes out with exquisitely anguished choreography. No one knew how her stunts were executed, either. Of all the performers, it was Oksana who put fear and worry into the audience’s heart. If not for the fact that the sullen clown returned to the show again each night, witnesses would have surely believed her dead.

While Mort could eat a wine glass after drinking its contents, and Samuel could squeeze himself through a hole no bigger than a Frisbee, the audience always rested comfortably in the knowledge that practice and dedication were the principle elements of their tricks. Oksana, on the other hand, removed every conceivable aspect of understanding from her illusions. The other members of the troupe participated in her grizzly feats at different points throughout the play. The magazine used one such act involving Mort, Master of Pain, to illustrate just how formidable her talents were: “At the end of act III, Mort, playing the part of Clara’s (Oksana Verona) father, runs headlong into the macabre mime with a spear. Clearly penetrating her abdomen, Mort then raises the pole into the air while the impaled illusionist slides down the lance into his hands.” Harry put the magazine down, sighing as he vividly imagined the scene, and looked at his reflection in the bus’s window. As excited as he was, Harry also felt unprepared to approach such an accomplished, albeit deranged, troupe.

The seemingly endless trip finally concluded and Harry happily got off of the bus, feeling thrilled to stretch his legs again. He was preoccupied with thoughts of the Charybdian Circus for the duration of his cab ride to his new apartment. His new roommate warmly greeted him at the door, helping him to carry his things, which were few, up the stairs. Harry and Alex spent nearly an hour together, acquainting themselves with one another, before Harry excused himself and went to bed. He wasn’t particularly tired, but his audition with Ernest Eldritch the next morning kept him in an agitated state and he wanted to be alone. The next morning, after eating breakfast without tasting it, Harry rode his bicycle to the theater, finding the brisk ride to be calming. As it turned out, he had passed the theater twice before realizing that the shabby, seemingly burnt old playhouse, which he took a casual interest in, was actually the home of the Charybdian Circus. He dismounted his bike in disbelief and cautiously investigated the charred façade. A rectangular booth with a glass window, which displayed a sign that read: TICKETS, sat in the middle of the entryway under the marquee. It too showed signs that it had been beset by a fire at some point. Harry shook his head, feeling suddenly unsure about the theater, and continued inside. He passed through the large wooden doors and found himself in a beautiful, red-velvet lined hall. The incongruity between the theater’s interior and exterior suddenly seemed brilliant as Harry considered the illusionists responsible for the venue.

He followed the winding hall to another set of doors and, opening them a crack, peered into the main hall, finding the troupe all rehearsing on stage. A cranky elder man stood before them, waving his hands, which held bundles of loose leaf paper, in the air. “Mr. Eldritch,” Harry whispered. He slinked inside the theater’s coliseum-style-seating auditorium and walked noiselessly toward the stage. As he approached, Harry could plainly see all the performers that he had read so much about. He stopped about fifty feet from Mr. Eldritch, whose back was to the young actor. “No, no, no!” he shouted. “Mort, stop. Conrad, listen to me. This scene isn’t just about your ability to fillet your own hands. Where’s the passion? Huh? Anyone can see a knife juggler juggling knives at the fair! We need to feel you.” Eldritch sighed, tossing the pages of paper onto the lip of the stage before him, and said, “Okay, let’s take it from the top of scene fifty-six. Ready… and scene!” Harry watched the actors take their queues from the animated old man, feeling his sense of awe renew itself. Rita, in between scenes, nodded her head in Harry’s direction, alerting Mr. Eldritch to the young man’s presence. “Excuse me. This is a closed rehearsal, my boy, and I’d thank you to leave at once!” Harry, backing up instinctively, stammered, “Oh, I’m sorry – my name is Harry Tanner. I had an audition for the part of Vesuvio today… I can come back la…” Mr. Eldritch cut Harry off, gesturing apologetically. “Oh, do forgive an old man for his failing memory. Have a seat, I’ll be with you in a moment.”

Harry walked into a row of seats, which were similarly upholstered in red velvet, reminding Harry of his first theater experience. He sat down and watched the troupe rehearse the new draft of the script that Eldritch had come up with for their impending three month run. To Harry, the Charybdian performers were larger than life, but, as he anticipated, his attention remained affixed to the enigmatic harlequin standing center stage. Of all the actors, Oksana Verona was the only one in costume. She wore the same ratty jumpsuit and mask that Harry had seen in her photos, but what he didn’t realize, looking at the static images of her, was that she possessed a morose majesty, which was evinced by her movements. Like a sublime dance viewed in slow motion, Oksana languidly floated across the stage. When Mort, acting as Clara’s father, yelled at Oksana, it became clear to Harry why she didn’t need to speak. Her body language expressed years of abuse as she flinched from Mort’s shout, intimating a softness and sadness that a well trained actor couldn’t portray, even with a spoken part. “Good, good.” exclaimed Ernest Eldritch. “Okay everyone, take a break. We’ll meet back here in half an hour.”

Inside of Mr. Eldritch’s office, Harry found a myriad of artifacts from all over the world. Eldritch had a stuffed crocodile mounted to his wall above his desk with a plaque underneath it that read, “Smile – even when you don’t mean it.” A mess of books and papers littered the old playwright’s desk, which he sat down at, gesturing to the empty chair in front of it. Harry sat opposite the old man, who could see the boyish wonder glowing in Harry’s eyes. Mr. Eldritch said, “Well, thank you for coming all the way out here to audition for the role of Vesuvio, mister…” “Tanner,” exclaimed the overzealous young thespian. “Tanner, yes. Well, I’ve recently revised the script to include some pretty exciting stunts for our Vesuvio. We here think that the audience deserves every penny’s worth of their admission tickets, and we aim to give it to them. Oksana, as you may know, is a real crowd pleaser – or crowd queaser, as I like to joke – but it’s time to spruce things up a bit!” Harry considered Eldritch’s remark and worried that the director might have gotten the wrong impression of him. “Well, sir, I must say, I’d very much like to win this part. I’ve memorized all Vesuvio’s lines already and everything… but I, uh… well, I don’t have any experience with stunts or magic.” Mr. Eldritch, his face frozen in an expressionless gaze, looked across his tabletop into Harry’s eyes. Suddenly, Eldritch erupted with laughter. He slapped the desk with his hand and, still laughing, said, “My boy! Of course you don’t. I like you, son. Let’s have you do some reading, hmm?”

****************

“So you got the part?” inquired Harry’s new roommate, Alex. “Yeah, I can’t believe it, but yes.” Alex congratulated Harry, feeling genuinely happy for him, but also relieved to know that he would come through on his share of the rent. “When’s opening night?” asked Alex. Harry explained that there was still two weeks until the show’s start, during which time he would be rehearsing for his role and training for his stunt, which Eldritch planned to keep secret until the last possible minute to avoid the leakage of details. Confiding in his new roommate, Harry said, “I have to admit… I’m a little nervous. Mr. Eldritch said that he plans to revitalize the show by bringing me in, but after reading about Oksana Verona’s stunts, I’m horrified to think what he’s got in store for me.” Alex smiled reassuringly and asked, “Which one is Oksana Verona again?” Harry, remembering the quirky performer and feeling honored to have joined her ranks, said, “she’s the clown who dies every night.”

Back at Eldritch’s theater, where his troupe of misfit actors also lived, Oksana Verona lied awake in her bed. The performer rarely slept, but that was her least eccentric habit. She kicked the sheets off of her bed, exposing her form to the dark space consuming her. Oksana, always dressed in her jumpsuit and mask, walked from her bed to her makeup table on the other side of the room. She sat down, avoiding her reflection in the mirror as always, and opened a small drawer in the table. A little book, its edges tattered and withering away, was the object of Oksana’s attention, and she delicately removed it from the drawer. Silently, the bizarre belle’s shoulders rose and fell, intimating a sigh, as she opened the book of clippings and photos. She turned the pages with her gloved hands, which were dingy and blackened from years of wear, and stopped on an aged, yellowed photo of a young man. She pressed the soft tip of her cotton covered finger into the photo, gently caressing the face that appeared within it. For years, Oksana remembered the young Ernest Eldritch’s face perfectly, but as the decades passed and her old lover’s face wrinkled and dimmed, she found it comforting to revisit his youthful visage. The photo was crumbling into dust, though, like everything around her did, and Oksana reflected on this, cursing herself for the decision she made all those years ago. What seemed so right then, had revealed itself, after almost fifty years, to be the naiveté of a young girl in love. Oksana returned the photo to its resting place and crawled back in bed. Her expressionless masked countenance, gazing passively at the ceiling, contained an invisble wealth of sadness within it, which the mute performer hoped would soon lessen.

The next day the troupe began their dress-rehearsals. Harry was exhausted. He hadn’t expected the seemingly frail old man to be such a task master, demanding nothing short of excellence from his actors even during practice. He stopped Harry twice, pulling him off to the side, and, though whispering, conveyed the ferocity of a shout as he gave Harry direction. “More! More, more, more!” Eldritch fumed. Harry was sweating bullets in his white jumpsuit, which looked akin to Oksana’s. Being dressed similarly had excited Harry, since, in his mind, he was being groomed to exist on her strata of performance. But after several hours in his thick cotton jumpsuit, his sweat pouring down his suffocating skin, Harry began to despise his new costume. He felt as though he would pass out from being overheated, but pushed to continue, consoling himself with the belief that all the Charybdians before him had likewise suffered for their trade. Harry, in between scenes, watched Oksana sullenly glide across the stage without any signs of struggle. He wondered what the strange performer’s secret was, hoping that they might become closer after working together for a while.

For a large part of the second act, Harry’s character disappears from the stage, arousing fear and longing in his lover, Clara, who Oksana played with unbearable angst despite her silence. During this time, Harry discarded his heavy jumpsuit and sat in an empty chair behind Mr. Eldritch, watching the old man vehemently direct his actors. Harry couldn’t take his eyes off of Oksana as she removed the imaginary knife, which would be quite real during the actual show, from her back for scene sixty two. He wondered again, for what seemed like the thousandth time, how she accomplished such stunning illusions, hoping that his own trick, when revealed to him, would shed some light on the subject. The image from the magazine of Oksana’s Grande Finale, showing her silhouetted form facing the ceiling of the theater, hanging limply atop the spear as though truly dead and impaled, haunted Harry’s thoughts. He felt a chill pass over his back, which just began to dry in the theater’s cool air, and buried his incredulity under a more favorable daydream of fame.

After the day’s rehearsals concluded, Mort and Conrad invited Harry to join them for drinks, but he politely declined, planning instead to approach Oksana. After the theater cleared out, Harry waited for Oksana to emerge from her rather secretive meeting with Mr. Eldritch. She remained in his sealed office for nearly half an hour and Harry occasionally heard Eldritch shouting, but couldn’t make out what he said. Harry decided to try and see Oksana another time and was half way out of the theater when the office door swung open. A furious Mr. Eldritch stormed out, turning around to face his open office, and, shaking his finger accusingly, said, “One way or another, I’ll get Vesuvio’s death out of the boy, but I swear, if I hear one more word of this from you, I’ll…” Harry, clandestinely watching the irate theater producer threaten his lead, was stunned at the implications of Eldritch’s words and remained perfectly still so as not to alert the old man to his presence. Ernest Eldritch shook his finger at Oksana, who was still out of Harry’s view, and, failing to come up with a proper threat, stormed off in a huff.

Harry waited for Mr. Eldritch to disappear from the theater before approaching his office. He peeked around the doorframe, cautiously peering inside, and found Oksana hunched over in the chair in front of Eldritch’s desk. Her head was collapsed, it’s expressionless porcelain gaze staring unblinkingly at her lap. Harry straightened up, deciding to try and console his co-star, and stepped into the doorway, clearing his throat. Oksana whipped her downcast face in his direction, returning his gaze with the lifeless black slits of her mask, and sat up. “Oksana, I’m so sorry..” said Harry, looking over his shoulder for Mr. Eldritch. “I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, I swear, but I overheard Mr. Eldritch.” Harry walked in, assuming that Oksana was in need of assistance, and helped her to her feet. “I can’t believe that he yelled at you like that… Here, let me help you to your room.” Oksana obliged Harry, allowing him to hoist her limp form up and carry her to her quarters backstage. “You’re so light!” exclaimed Harry, who was surprised to find that his co-star weighed less than he anticipated, since he expected her to weigh very little in the first place.

Holding the airy artiste in his arms, Harry meandered up the steps to the stage and passed through a slit in the massive, black-velvet curtain in the rear. Behind the theater there was a series of hallways, each one littered with miscellaneous building materials. Plywood, pressboard, two-by-fours, and the like were propped up against the walls, awaiting their time to serve Eldritch’s patchwork theater. Harry weaved in and out of the clutter, occasionally checking over his shoulder for Mr. Eldritch, and arrived at Oksana’s door, still surprised at the quirky clown’s weightlessness. She reached down from her perch in Harry’s arms to open her door, and gestured with her masked head for Harry to take her inside. The young actor’s heart soared when he saw the countless relics that Oksana had collected from all over the world. The macabre mime’s quarters was filled with books and paintings, which were so many in number that she had them stacked against the wall. Harry gently lowered Oksana onto her bed, feeling perplexed by the paradox of such a meek individual performing her grizzly death each night. “Your room is awesome,” said Harry, his eyes dancing around the space. “I think Mr. Eldritch was way out of line earlier. He shouldn’t talk to you like that. You’re the star!”

Oksana’s porcelain visage remained affixed to Harry as he scanned her dwellings. Three swords were mounted on the wall behind her makeup table, it’s mirror framed with flourishes whose gold leaf had long since faded. “Oksana,” began Harry, “what did Mr. Eldritch mean when he said that he’d get Vesuvio’s death out of me?” Oksana turned her unflinching face away from Harry, which had a chilling effect on the young actor’s conscience. “How do you do it, Oksana?” Harry asked as he peered at the mute refusing to look at him. “How does your trick work? Eldritch won’t even tell me how my stunt will work – he says it’s the sort of thing that has a habit of reaching the papers and ruining the effect, but I’m starting to get a bad feeling about it.” Oksana, slowly returning her gaze to Harry’s face, somehow expressed a profound sadness to him, despite her utterly expressionless countenance. “What is it?” asked Harry. Oksana pointed to her makeup table and Harry, looking in the direction of it, wondered what she intended him to do. He walked over to it and looked at her, awaiting further instructions. The forlorn performer gestured for Harry to open the drawer. When he found the decomposing journal, feeling reluctant to touch it for fear that it would crumble, an electric excitement rushed through his body. His eyes darted back to Oksana, pleading for permission to examine the relic, and she nodded her assent.

He sat down on the edge of her bed and she took the book from him. She opened it up to a photo of a young man, who Harry immediately recognized as Ernest Eldritch. “Wow, he’s so young!” exclaimed Harry. Oksana flipped the page, exposing a folded piece of newspaper, which she opened up for Harry. The headline read, “THEATER MANAGER SUSPECTED OF MURDERING CLOWN LOVER.” Harry, his adrenaline suddenly pumping, said, “Oh, my god.” Oksana turned another page, moving slowly so as not to tear the paper, and showed Harry another picture. This one was of a beautiful young girl with long dark hair, wearing the selfsame jumpsuit that Oksana was famous for. Underneath the young woman’s arm, Harry saw the porcelain mask and knew right then that the photo was of Oksana. “What does this mean?” Harry inquired, groping for understanding. Oksana languidly shook her head from side to side and turned another page, revealing yet another staggering headline, “ELDRITCH’S HARLEQUIN HEARTTHROB NOT DEAD – ALL PART OF THE ACT!” Harry was confused. The second newspaper clipping had a picture of Eldritch standing beside the Oksana Verona that Harry had come to know. In the photo, her immaculately white suit and mask seemed brand new in comparison to the dingy, sooty outfit that encased her now.

Harry, reflexively looking Oksana over, discovered something about her suit that he’d never noticed before. What he had mistaken for patterns on her attire were actually a tapestry of silken-floss stitches and similarly colored patches. He thought of her stunts, drawing the connection between the suit and the various objects that pierced it, but refused to accept that the illusion was real. “What is this?” asked Harry, becoming unsettled by the dubiousness of their interaction. Oksana raised her hand in the air, pretending to be holding a knife, and plunged the butt of her fists into her abdomen right where a large patch was. Harry, his skin instantly clammy, thought of her Grande Finale and said, “But it’s an illusion, right? I mean, it’s all part of the show!” Oksana shook her head from side to side and then sat up with an unexpected speed. Harry jerked away, flinching from fright, but it was too late. Oksana Verona descended onto the boy, pinning him to the bed underneath her. Harry tried to toss her off, but the performer, who a moment ago weighed nothing, was immovable. His arms were trapped under her thighs as she straddled Harry’s chest, rendering him helpless. Reaching behind her head, Oksana began to remove the straps that affixed her mask to her face. A hissing sound escaped the back of the mask as it became undone and Harry began to scream for help.

As the mask, it’s void, mockery of humanity, lowered, Harry was witness to a sight that no one had seen in over four decades. Underneath the porcelain and sooty white cotton of Oksana Verona’s costume was the secret to Ernest Eldritch’s success. Harry screamed as loud as he could, his voice an expression of pure terror, as the meatless skull of the long dead harlequin slowly lowered to his face. Long ago, when Ernest Eldritch was still an enterprising,  handsome young theater director, he had found an amazingly talented Ukrainian mime, with whom he fell in love. They had struggled to earn a living with the would-be playwright’s bizarre shows featuring Oksana, but they couldn’t draw anyone in. One night, Oksana, against Ernest’s wishes, snuck out of their small Ukrainian flat and went to an old Gypsy woman’s house. Oksana had been siphoning money from Eldritch’s flimsy shows, hoping to make an offer the Gypsy would accept. The old woman was a talented conjurer, famous in her village for being something of a healer, but Oksana wanted something else entirely. After convincing the old sorceress of her will to do the deed, Oksana’s wish was granted. She and the Gypsy exhumed a body from the ground and brought it’s yellow skull back to the old woman’s house. After the ritual had been performed, Oksana’s lifeless body was found by the police, who assumed Eldritch to be the killer. To everyone’s incredible surprise, Oksana reanimated, citing an illusion created by her theater manager as the explanation. This, of course, incited an uproar of curiosity in the town, which led to Ernest Eldritch’s establishment of the first Charybdian circus. The distraught playwright never forgave Oksana, who, despite being incapable of dying and thus becoming the confounding illusionist that she was known as, lost all of her earthly traits, such as the flesh on her bones and the ability to speak.

For over half a century, Oksana Verona, who had sacrificed everything, was scorned by the one man she loved. He ran the show, becoming infatuated with it and its success, but treated Oksana like an item of rare and precious value – not a person, and certainly not his lover. She took refuge in Eldritch’s theater, having no other place to go, but her loneliness and regret ran deeper than the seas. She had made up her mind. She would not live for eternity alone. Now, Oksana would once again defy Ernest’s wishes. Harry’s shouts were abruptly silenced as the clammy, damp mandible closed around his mouth. His breath was pulled into the skeleton’s ribcage, expanding the cotton suit, and then forced back into his lungs. Harry, who had been kicking as fiercely as he could, suddenly went limp.

Just then Ernest Eldritch burst into Oksana’s room. “No, no, no!!!” he exclaimed, grabbing his hair with his hands. “What have you done! You… you killed him!” said the frantic theater director. “Damn you, Oksana – I told you I didn’t want your hand in this! I had the illusion all worked out. We didn’t need him to suffer your fate… but that’s not what this is about, is it?” Oksana, slowly dismounting from Harry’s lifeless form, retrieved her mask and turned around, facing the wall to put it back on. Eldritch dashed out of Oksana’s room and returned a moment later with Mort, who looked frightened. “Pick him up,” said Eldritch to Mort, “He’ll be back on his accursed feet in a day or two.” Mort hoisted the corpse onto his shoulder and exited Oksana’s room. “Just in time for opening night,” said Ernest Eldritch, bitterly. He stared at Oksana, cursing himself for his life of regrets, and stormed out of the room, leaving the expressionless clown behind.

****************

Alex Croft received a letter from Harry, apologizing for his abrupt departure. A check for two month’s rent was included in the envelope, which Alex was relieved to see. The letter explained that Harry was going to travel with the Charybdian Circus, receiving room and board from them, and would no longer be able to act as roommate to Alex. With a sigh, Alex scratched his head, deciding to post his advertisement for an empty bedroom online again, and tossed the letter into the garbage. He was disappointed with Harry’s irreverence in backing out of his arrangement, but had bigger things on his mind. Though he never mentioned it, Alex was embroiled in an extortion plot, which he was the victim of. An anonymous package containing photos of him and his boss’s wife had been delivered to his door. A note inside the envelope threatened to disseminate the photos if Alex didn’t do as he was instructed. The letter went on to say that he would be contacted in a day and given his task, and warned him of what would happen if he went to the police. But Alex wasn’t going to go to the police. Alex was going to confront his extorter, since, just a few hours prior, he had discovered who was pulling the strings.

As the tall, svelte, middle-aged man left the motel, he whistled an old song, which he couldn’t remember the words to. It had been a good night and the young woman he left sleeping behind him would definitely survive. Reginald Masters hadn’t always been as good at knowing when to quit, but he learned the hard way, through years of failure and heart ache. Reginald considered himself a cowboy at heart, being a true-blue, born and bred Texan. Unlike most of his contemporaries, who might also attempt to call themselves old cowhands, Reginald actually had been a cowboy. It was over two hundred years ago, but Reginald still recalled his life on his ranch vividly. He had a wife and two sons once, but lost them to a debt collector, who, upon finding Reginald’s family unattended, had collected much more than the debt Reggie owed.

Reginald checked his watch, finding that there were still a few hours left before the bars would close. He climbed into his black pickup truck and sped off, savoring the cool night air as it whipped across his face. In half an hour’s time, Reginald arrived at Pistol Whip, his favorite bar to “drink” at. He parked his truck in the lot and a few of the bar’s patrons who were outside smoking recognized Reginald, raising their beers in his direction. With a slight nod and a quick touch of his finger to the front of his ten gallon hat, Reginald had two women on the porch swooning. He walked into the bar, pleased to see that there were still quite a few people there, and headed for the juke box. After selecting a slow tempo line dace song, Reginald moseyed into the center of the room and stood motionlessly, waiting for the music to begin. He pulled his cowboy hat down a bit, casting a shadow over his eyes as he surveyed the room. As the music began to play, Reginald put his thumbs in his first two belt loops, casually shrugging his shoulders and stretching his neck. Suddenly, as if entranced by a spell, everyone in the bar forgot what they were saying and slowly became aware of Reginald Masters.

To the onlookers, it appeared as if Reginald were under a spotlight. As his heels turned out and in, signaling the beginning of his ritual, silence claimed the crowd. For Reginald, there was nothing sweeter than drinking en masse. His upper body remained perfectly still, but his legs moved deftly through the form of the dance. With each step, the hearts of his admirers unwittingly shed their very essence, feeding Reginald his only sustenance. He drank in their attention – their life force, which he skillfully extracted from their incognizant minds. When the handsome fifty-something looking cowboy concluded his dance, feeling utterly satiated, as though dinner were followed by two dessert courses that evening, the crowd began to disperse. A murmur broke out in the bar as people tried to remember what they were talking about, or exchanged funny looks, saying things like, “Déjà Vu!” Reginald, quite pleased with his night, meandered through the crowd unnoticed, and alighted on a stool at the bar.

A young woman with very short brown hair, wearing a tank top and black jeans, came over to ask what Reginald would like to drink. Deciding to chide the new bartender, Reginald said, “No thanks son, I aint thirsty… anymore.” The bartender, curling her lip in an offended expression, said, “Uh… I aint nobody’s son, fella.” Reginald chuckled, smiled at the young woman, and replied, “I know, darling. Just not quite sure what you’re going for with that look.” No longer uncertain about whether she was offended or not, Val retorted, “Well, I’m not sure what you were going for with that lame-ass line dance, Grandpa” and with that, she walked off in a huff. Reginald was curious. Occasionally his unearthly charms didn’t work on older women – usually it was insecure, jealous husbands and boyfriends who didn’t fall for it – but never had he seen such a young person, let alone a young woman, resist him. “On second thought, I’ll take a Sarsaparilla,” Reginald called out. Val, reluctantly coming back to his side of the bar, said, “Excuse me? A what?” Reginald smiled and said, “A Sarsaparilla, darling. And I’m sorry if I offended you.” She reached under the bar, groping for the bottle opener, and popped the cap off of Reginald’s root beer. “Will this do?” she asked. “That’s just fine,” began Reginald, “Say, what’s your name, darling?” “Piss off,” she replied. It was at that moment that Reginald became enthralled by the young woman tending bar at Pistol Whip.

****************

Matt Boone, breathing heavily as he lugged his overweight form up three flights of stairs, couldn’t wait to reach Ted Thorne, his best friend. Ted lived on the top floor of one of the new apartment buildings that had been built downtown. His friends teased him mercilessly, accusing him of being rich and holding out on them, or of being too good for the rest of them, but in truth, the apartment he rented was cheaper than the houses that most of his acquaintances lived in. Ted, as much a victim of insecurity as the rest of his group of friends, wasn’t rich or any of the other chides that were lambasted at him. Ted heard a distinctive knock at his door and walked over to it, peering through the peephole to find Matt’s disgruntled face. He unlocked the bolts and opened the door, saying, “Matt! Didn’t know you were coming by…” Ted, observing Matt’s breathless condition, asked, “What is it, Matt? Did you take the stairs again?” Matt pushed past Ted and walked into his living room, feeling entitled and insulted all at once. “You’re damn right I took the stairs. I aint no high-flyin’ city boy like you!” Ted rolled his eyes, wondering when his friend, who refused to take the stairs in an imbecilic act of defiance, would get over his absurd boycott and ride the elevator. Plopping down on the sofa, Matt said, “Anyways, Mr. Moneybags, we’re going out tonight. It’s “ladies get in free” night at the Gilded Calf and I got a good feelin’ about this one.”

Ted looked out of the passenger side window of Matt’s cherry red pickup truck as they drove toward the nightclub. His thoughts, which tended to orbit a fiery sun of self doubt, were of the impending night’s mission. Matt and a few other friends took it upon themselves to inundate Ted with women who they thought would sleep with Ted. This proved to be a torturous practice, its results usually yielding the most awkward and unwanted interactions of Ted’s young life.  Ted decided that, in an effort to assuage the groups “help,” he would aggressively pursue women throughout the night until he found one who would sit and talk with him. Using this technique, Ted would still endure some humiliation, but he might effectively stave off the embarrassing intervention of his confederates. When they arrived at the Gilded Calf, Ted’s stomach was fluttering with anxiety. Matt hopped out of his truck and, smiling a big toothy grin, said, “Like lambs to the slaughter!”

The club was full of people. Ted, leaning in close to Matt’s ear, yelled over the music to say, “I’m going for it! I’m gonna’ get a drink and then hit the crowd. Tonight’s the night – you’ll see.” Matt high fived his buddy and let out a celebratory howl, which was immediately swallowed whole by the deafening music blaring out from the speakers. As Ted meandered through the crowd with a beer in his hand, his eyes flittering about to see if anyone was looking at him, he felt a pit of depression develop in his stomach. He had done this dance before and it usually ended the same way, but at least tonight he would suffer alone. Finding an empty table, Ted put his beer down and hopped up onto the stool. He looked behind him, intending to locate Matt, and saw the bright face of a beautiful young woman approaching him. “Hi,” she began. Ted’s stomach revolted against his general state of calm with a barrage of nerves, and he stammered, “Uh… hi, oh, sorry. This your table?” The young woman, her eyes lowering bashfully, said, “Well, it’s big enough for two… want to keep me company?”

An hour passed wherein Ted, occasionally shaking his head in disbelief, had an engaging conversation with his new acquaintance, Val. After a few beers, their conversation loosened up and Ted, who had been flirting reservedly, pressed the edges of his luck, saying, “So… Val, you’re a really beautiful girl. Why, uh… why do you dress like, you know… a tomboy or something?” Val laughed, tossing back another drink of her beer, and replied, “You know, you’re beginning to sound like a friend of mine.” Ted smiled and waited for Val to continue. They were both drunk, feeling very comfortable in their euphoric haze of attraction, and Val, slurring slightly, said, “I work over at this bar, Pistol Whip, and I got a friend of mine there – name’s Reggie. He’s, hahaha, well he’s different. But he gets on my case about that, too. I don’t see what the big deal is – it’s like, people get uncomfortable if you don’t fit in one of their pre-packaged categories, but not me! And even Reggie, he’s like, the least to talk…” Ted, hearing the name Reggie, felt the pang of jealousy and asked, “So, who is Reggie? Is he like, your boyfriend or something?” Val, snorting so hard that beer nearly flew from her mouth, slapped the table and replied, “Aw, hell no! Hahaha, Reggie is just… well, Reggie aint my boyfriend!” Val laughed to herself, feeling internally discontented with that explanation, and feared that she might have put off Ted. She reached across the table and grabbed Ted’s forearm, which, though an innocent enough touch, incited a riot of nerves inside of Ted. “Psssst…” said Val, looking around to make sure no one was eavesdropping, “Reggie is – oh man, you gotta promise never to ever say this – he’s a Vampire…”

****************

“Yup… a Vampire.” Said Ted to an astonished Matt. Shaking his head, Matt said, “You mean that old, tall, creep, the one who always hangs out at Pistol Whip, is a God damned creature of the night! That’s rich, Ted… look man, I know I aint the sharpest tool in the shed, but it’s downright insulting to be…” Ted, his mind already thoroughly convinced, interrupted his friend and said, “Matt, I swear, I aint pulling one over on you. The things Val said – I mean, she’s either a mastermind liar, or something really wrong is going on. I think that creep is up to no good, and frankly, I don’t like him hanging around Val.” Matt produced a smug look of self satisfaction and said, “Oh, I see what’s going on here, lover boy.” Ted put his hands up defensively, protesting the accusation that his drunken crush had been infused with jealousy, causing him to believe such utter nonsense. “All I’m saying,” began Ted, “Is that we ought to go check this guy out. He’s a creep no matter what he is.”

Ted, Matt, and two other friends met the following night and went to Pistol Whip under the pretense of a follow up meeting between Val and Ted. She had told Ted that she would be working the next night and invited him to come by. Ted, exploiting the rare opportunity to rally his friends around someone other than himself, explained the situation, receiving disbelief and mockery. Without even knowing it, Ted had raised the stakes. If his ridiculous claims, which everyone fully expected to be just that, fell through, then Ted would never live it down. Ted led the group of friends into the bar, practically praying for the creep – as they dubbed him – to be a monster, and immediately caught eyes with Val, who excitedly waved at Ted. He went over to the bar and said hello. Val, who was very busy, had an odd expression on her face, which Ted firmly believed to be regret at having told him about Reggie. Val’s eye’s darted toward Reginald Masters, unintentionally giving him away. The tall thin gentleman, who appeared to be a docile old coot, dropped a few quarters in the jukebox and made a selection. Ted nodded to his friends, indicating which one Reggie was, and leaned against the bar as the creep moseyed into the center of the room.

A pit of jealousy and contempt swelled up inside of Ted as he watched the old man captivate the crowd with a traditional Texan line dance. Ted, his disbelief overwhelming him, snorted and nudged Matt, who had leaned up against the bar next to him. “You believe this?” Ted asked. Without looking at him, Ted nudged Matt again, repeating his question. When he didn’t receive an answer the second time, Ted flashed Matt a quick glance. His eyes widening in shock, Ted saw Matt, as well as everyone else in the entire bar, standing slack jawed in awe before the creep. Ted grabbed Matt’s shoulders and shook him vehemently. “Matt – Matt!” he whispered in a hiss. Ted’s eyes darted around the room, finding that the same entranced state had engulfed everyone. Suddenly, he remembered what Val had told him about Reggie’s “technique.” Val, in her drunken loneliness, had divulged a plethora of information to Ted. The latter recounted the details to himself: Vampires don’t drink blood. That was a myth. As was their fear of crosses, garlic, and, for the most part, sunlight. Val had mentioned that sunlight weakened them, but that was only because Vampires fed off of energy, which they mainly extracted from people’s undivided attention. In the sun’s powerful glare, smaller energy sources were obfuscated, and the beast couldn’t focus on any one of them enough to feed. The sun, as an energy source, was too potent for them to “drink,” which was why their mythos relied so heavily on the night.

Ted, suddenly remembering Val herself, looked back behind the bar and found her dubious gaze affixed to him. Val’s stomach was a pit of furious regret. Her worst fear had materialized. For weeks Reggie had confided in her, slowly elaborating on his condition, but he did so solely because he felt that he could trust her – an extremely rare breed of person who didn’t blindly fall for his ethereal charms. Val, her heart pounding, knew from Reggie’s exposition that Ted wasn’t falling under the spell because of his intense emotions. Jealous lovers, deeply frightened people, or otherwise disturbed individuals could penetrate the charm that Vampires produced. That was why, in general, they stopped killing, siphoning just enough energy from their victims to subsist. Without deaths leading a trail to them, Vampires slowly regained their status as legend, allowing them to develop more “normal” lives. As the entire room of Pistol Whip’s patrons stood motionlessly, inadvertently feeding the creep, Ted took out his cell phone and recorded the bizarre scene. He knew that Matt and the others would never believe him if he told them, and needed some proof. Val took it upon herself to intervene, dashing around the bar and attempting to snatch Ted’s phone away.

“What are you doing? I should have – never – told you!” she said as they scuffled over the phone. Ted, who had never struck a woman in his life, felt a surge of violent anger and backhanded Val. She stumbled, her back hitting against the bar, and yelled, “Reggie!” With that, everyone in the bar suddenly and without any interruption resumed their conversations. Ted, feeling mortified at his outburst, glanced in Reginald Master’s direction and saw the creep’s blazing eyes burning into his own. “C’mon!” said Ted, grabbing Matt’s arm. “Dude, what’s the problem? Get off…” Ted frowned and repeated his admonition, “Come on! We’re leaving.” Ted and his friends took off into the lot and sped away as Reggie reached Val, helping her onto a bar stool. “Reggie, oh, Reggie – I’m so sorry… it’s all my fault.” Reginald knew exactly what had transpired. Being over two hundred years old afforded Reginald with an uncanny ability to read people. Though he never expected Val to betray his confidence, Reginald could plainly see that it was in an unintentional moment of weakness, not malice, that she had done so. “You alright, darlin’?” asked Reggie.

After closing, Val explained the situation to Reginald, who, for a Vampire, was very understanding and forgiving. He told Val that he would need to disappear for a while, and that she shouldn’t see that boy anymore, since he was trouble. Reginald, despite his personal vow not to become attached to any human, was enormously fond of Val. She and he were more alike than many of his Vampire acquaintances. She could withstand his charm, yet developed a friendship with him of her own volition. She was brave, smart, and sure of herself beyond her years. Often, when spending time with Val, Reggie remembered his wife, Madeline, who died before his transformation. Reginald kissed Val’s cheek as he said goodbye and left her crying apologetically in Pistol Whip’s empty interior. Reggie walked back to his humble trailer that was parked on the edge of town, crawled inside, and went to bed.

That night, Ted showed Matt and the others the short but utterly haunting clip on his phone’s camera of Reginald entrancing the masses. Matt, his sullen expression barely masking his fear, shook his head somberly. “We been violated by a… by that creep. He’s gotta pay.” Ted stood up and addressed the other three young men, reveling in his authority. “You’re damn right he’s gotta pay. Boys, don’t you realize what we’re dealing with here? This aint just a creep, this is – it’s hard to even say it – a Vampire. We’ve got to do something. We can’t just let that freak walk around among us. If people knew what he was, they’d tie him to a steak and set him on fire and that’s just what we’re gonna do.” James and Delray, who had remained silent since they left Pistol Whip, exchanged disturbed glances. Delray spoke up, asking, “We’re gonna kill him?” Ted, suddenly apprehending his own overzealous tone, settled down a bit and replied, “No, I mean… I guess not. But we’ve got to do something.” James took his queue from Delray and asked, “Why? I mean, if it’s true what Val told you – that he aint killing anybody, then what’s the harm. I mean, he could kill us just for meddling and…” Ted, his eyes flashing with a newfound hateful lust, said, “What’s the harm? What’s the harm? You idiot, he’s a god damned Vampire! That’s the harm. We can’t let him or any of his kind near our homes, our children, or our way of life! Now c’mon. At daylight we’re doing this thing, so are you in or out?”  

****************

Reginald woke up, immediately aware that something was wrong due to the presence of the sun, and dressed quickly. He had gotten his jeans and boots on when he heard another sound. Reginald knew that someone was out front, but was genuinely impressed that anyone would attempt to confront him. In all of his years, he had been the target of more than a few angry, ignorant townsfolk. He took comfort in the fact that nobody knew his true – and most illusive – weakness, not even Val. With that consolation close to his heart, Reginald decided to turn the trap on the trapper, and flung his trailer’s front door wide open. The sunlight bathed the world in a cloak of blinding energy, causing Reginald to recoil a bit. He stepped out into the light, finding Ted and three other boys behind him. “You’ve done made two very big mistakes, son,” said Reggie as he approached the boy. “Don’t worry, he’s weak in the daylight…” Ted told his friends, though he never took his eyes off of the creep. Reginald, his limbs beginning to tense up in preparation, said, “Number one, you should never have hit Val…. that’s gonna cost you.” Ted, shuffling backwards, began to wonder if he might have been a little presumptuous. “Number two,” continued Reginald, “You done woke me up – on my day off, no less.” Reginald’s presence, although diminished by the sun’s suffocating energy field, still managed to reach the boys, filling them with fear.

Matt cursed at Ted under his breath and turned to run, but Ted grabbed his arm and said, “Look!” The boys stared in disbelief as Reginald, his expression shifting from cold  inhuman vengeance to fear and shock, lost his footing and fell to the ground. Reginald’s thoughts were possessed by the realization that the boys had discovered his greatest bane, but as he listened to the confused ramblings of the boys standing over him, he discerned that they didn’t know what they had done. Before he lost consciousness, Reginald saw the root cause of his malady: Delray’s necklace. Unbeknownst to the boys, a Vampire’s most effective deterrent was a variety of the quartz mineral, Black Onyx, which Delray wore in the form of a pendant around his neck. Though allegedly no one knew why, Onyx had a negative-pressure effect on Vampires, literally drawing out their stored energy and sapping their strength. When Reginald came to later it was midday, and he and his captors were inside his trailer. Ted and Matt, who were obviously the two strongest willed of the four boys, were standing over Reggie, threatening to kill him. “Yeah, not so tough now are you, creep?” asked Matt, his eyes darting between Reginald’s and Ted’s. Matt had been the alpha male of the group since they first became friends years ago, but now it seemed that Ted had taken control.

Ted’s urgent desire to exact pain on the deceptively human-looking creature before them stemmed from a hitherto unrecognized well of repressed anger, which had been sufficiently tapped by the presence of something Ted didn’t understand. Reginald, lying on the floor and feeling utterly powerless while exposed to the Onyx, knew that his only hope of surviving rested upon taking down the four fools’ leader, Ted. Reginald tried to sit up and speak, his lips quivering in an attempt to form words, but Ted immediately shouted at Reggie, delivering a kick to his ribcage. “What was that, creep? Huh? You trying to say something, creep?” Matt winced as Ted unleashed his rage upon the Vampire. “Dude, what’s gotten into you? I mean, I don’t like him either, but I mean, are we really gonna kill him?” asked Matt. Ted, his eyes narrowing in disgust, replied, “Yes, Matthew… of all the people to soften up at the last minute, I never would have guessed it’d be you.” Matt became defensive, raising his voice to say, “Hey now, who said anything about going soft? I’m just…. I dunno, Ted. He just looks like some old guy.”

Ted looked at James and said, “You still got that fifth of tequila?” James, seemingly surprised by Ted’s question, nodded and reached into his back pocket, producing the small bottle as evidence. “Give it here,” said Ted. Addressing Reginald, Ted continued, “See, your girlfriend, Val, she told me about this one. Sounds pretty nasty. You did this for her to prove that you were a vampire, huh?” Ted tipped the old cowboy’s head back and poured tequila into his mouth. “How’s that taste, you creep?” asked Ted as he backed away from Reggie, who gagged and coughed as he swallowed the liquid. Delray shouted, “What the hell, Ted?” After being shushed by their ring leader, the boys watched as Reginald Masters, centuries old vampire, began to heave. Expecting vomit to erupt from his mouth, the boys were equal parts alarmed and impressed at the sight of fire belching from Reginald’s lips. A puddle of flaming tequila burned itself out on the floor of the vampire’s trailer and Ted, defiantly eyeing each of his friends, said, “See? I told you – he aint human and he needs to die.”

As Ted spoke to his friends, attempting to form a plan to kill and dispose of Reginald Masters, the latter collected all of the strength he could to speak. “Theodore…” he managed to intone. The boys, practically jumping from fright, all turned around to face the withered creature before them. “Mind if I call you Theodore?” asked Reggie with a smug expression. “My daddy used to call me that, so you’re damn right I mind, creep.” Reggie knew that the boys mistakenly believed his weakness to be a result of the sunlight and planned on exploiting that fact. “You know, Theodore,” began Reggie, “You’re a real tough son of a bitch in front of your friends, but I know people. You’re afraid of me… afraid to be alone with me. If there aint nobody looking – if it was just you and me, you’d be pissing your pantsuit.” Ted’s adrenaline coursed through his veins, distorting his ability to think clearly, and he replied, “You think I’m afraid of you?” Ted’s eyes darted across each pair of his friends’ frightened, contracted pupils, looking desperately for signs that they might agree with the monster’s accusation. Reginald simply nodded, smiling knowingly, and said, “Prove it.”

The threat of loosing his much coveted position of power prompted Ted to make the biggest mistake of hi life. He turned around, finding the stunned countenances of his confederates glaring back at him, and decided to try and save face. Ted laughed, forcing himself to seem at ease, but internally a convection current of terror rose and fell in his body. He told Matt to take Delray and James out front while he, “taught this creep a lesson.” Matt, no longer operating in full possession of his sanity, nodded and led the other two boys outside, feeling silently grateful for the chance to leave the trailer. Reginald’s eyes lingered on Delray’s necklace, which lost more of its draining effect with every step that Delray took. “You done asked for this,” said Ted with tears in his eyes. Reginald witnessed a curious scene unfold in his trailer. With Delray outside, Reggie was no longer weakened by his necklace, but decided to have a little fun with the fool kicking him. Reginald allowed Ted to lambaste him with a barrage of kicks and punches, likewise allowing the young man to believe that his blows were having an effect. Ted kicked as hard as he could, feeling more and more like weeping with each effortful strike, until he finally did just that.

Ted fell onto his knees, crying and holding his face, and remained in that state, unaware that Reginald Masters had risen to his feet. “Pssst…” said Reggie, eliciting a spasmodic reflex from the kneeling fool before him. Ted was about to scream when Reggie, his thirst reaching profoundly vengeful heights, drew the boy into his eyes. Reginald extricated Ted’s vitality, capitalizing on the window of opportunity that Ted’s collapsing mind afforded him, but stopped short of taking his life. With an incredibly rejuvenated spirit, Reginald knelt down beside Ted and, speaking in a whisper, said, “Oh, son… that was delicious. You know, I have been fantasizing about killing you for the past few hours… Lord knows you deserve it, but I aint killed anyone in a hundred and forty two years, and I don’t think I’ll break that streak on the likes of you. But… you did hit Val and she’s a real good girl. Talks to much, but she’s a good girl, so I’m gonna give you something to remember her by. And I promise, you aint never, ever gonna forget it”

The boys had been outside for nearly five minutes, which felt like eternity to Matt, and began to feel alarmed at the sudden silence in the trailer. Matt, pacing back and forth, finally said, “Screw this,” and pushed past Delray and James toward the trailer’s front door. Flinging it open, a mortified Matt found his friend in a crumpled heap where the creep had been. “TED?” shouted Matt as he ran inside the trailer. He knelt down at his friend’s side and picked Ted up, calling out his name and shaking him to try and get a response. As he held Ted’s limp body, Matt noticed that the trailer was empty, save for the two of them. Cursing and feeling frightened, Matt hauled Ted outside and the other two friends helped get him in the truck. They sped off, hoping that Reginald would be satisfied with one victim, and vowed never to speak of that day again. For Ted, who had lost the ability to communicate, that promise would be easy to fulfill. Though he never uttered another word, Ted suffered the internal, private torment of forever seeing the creep’s inhuman eyes burning like red-hot coals inside the black void of his mind.

That night, Reginald returned to Pistol Whip to say goodbye to Val. She saw him enter the bar, his expression failing to hide his heartache, and knew right away that he had come to bid his farewell. Val tried to keep her composure, quickly wiping the tears from her eyes in an effort to deny them, but Reginald knew the truth. Their friendship, as serendipitous as it was, had to end. Reggie explained that he had come to the decision to leave Texas for a while. He had lived there for a long time and, in light of recent developments, felt a change of scenery might do him some good. He told Val to keep her chin up, gently nudging her jaw with his fist, and said goodbye.

As the creep strode out of Pistol Whip, Val gathered herself together, wiped her face with a washcloth, and went back behind the bar. “Harry…” Val began, “would you mind covering for me for a few minutes? I need to get some air.” Harry, Val’s cousin, nodded his assent, assuming that Val and the old man were having some sort of fling that just ended. Val had asked Harry to keep her company at the bar that night, explaining that some yokel had threatened her. As Harry watched Val sit down on the porch out front, his thoughts returned to his own impending journey. The next day, Harry was traveling north-east. He was always a bit of a loner, but never actually went through with his plan to up and leave town. After his father’s passing a few weeks earlier, Harry finally made up his mind and purchased a bus ticket to Tennessee, where a friend of his lived. He was both excited and torn about leaving, finding some solace in the fact that he already had a job lined up with a smalltime circus out there in the country.

“Well, I am!” the strange woman belted in response to Kristy’s question. Sandra Moore peered over the counter at the sad looking young woman ringing her up. “I’m sorry, I was just making conversation,” said Kristy, “I’d love to travel, myself.” Sandra considered apologizing to the shop-girl, but held herself back, afraid to make contact. Instead, she watched the girl bag her items up in silence, desperately exercising the last bit of patience she had left. Sandra had made up her mind. No matter how close to the edge of her wits she had come, or how much they had put her through, her sons were in danger and Sandra was going to find them. She had dashed inside of the small market to gather a few essentials, but was feeling pressed for time as her flight was leaving in less than an hour. Sandra had sworn to herself that she wouldn’t cave, allowing her devious sons to manipulate and control her once again, but the frightened plea that Jake had left on her answering machine elicited an irrevocable urge to retrieve them from the clinic where they were admitted.

Jake and Sean Moore, Sandra’s only children, were identical twins. Their only disparity, aside from temperament and the occasional divergence of opinion, was that Jake was a lefty and Sean was right handed. The boys had discovered, through one of their many odd pursuits, that the Latin words for left and right were derived from the words sinister and dexterous, respectively. Thus, Jake and Sean’s nicknames were begotten. They referred to each other as Sinister and Dexterous from that day forth, and over the following years of their lives together, they truly lived up to their monikers. The twins had a knack for mischief, performing ‘experiments,’ as they called them, on their pets, or booby-trapping the house and hiding to watch the fruits of their maleficent labors unfold on their unsuspecting mother. The twins’ father had ran out on Sandra while the boys were still nursing, leaving her all alone to care for them. She had resented their father then, but with each year, her hatred for him grew exponentially.

Jake and Sean didn’t make it easy on Sandra. They grew up refining their ability to reek havoc, discovering their strengths for terrorizing their mother. Jake was indeed sinister, usually responsible for dreaming up their intricate plans, while Sean found his calling in the engineering aspect of their efforts. Once, when the brothers were twelve, Sandra had to leave them alone in the house for a few hours to go to the doctor. She had discovered that taking them with her, wherever she might go, proved disastrous and took to leaving them by themselves. She intended to reward them for being responsible enough to be left alone, following advice from other mothers whom she sought council with, but was unable to. When she returned, she opened her front door and entered her house, unwittingly walking into a fishing line stretched taut at about neck-height. After Sandra had clotheslined herself on the fishing line, jerking backward instinctively, a bucket suspended above the front door tipped over, spilling it’s sticky contents all over her. Sean had rigged the bucket so that when it fell from it’s perch, it tugged a string that was connected to the power switch on Sandra’s hair dryer. The hair dryer was positioned behind a bag of feathers, which was hidden behind the ottoman directly in front of Sandra. Effectively tarred and feathered in her own home, Sandra fell onto the floor and began to sob.

A year later, Sinister and Dexterous ‘accidentally’ burned their house down. Sandra, her nerves completely shot, had moved with her sons to Moragawn County, hoping that the peaceful, secluded environs would do some good for the twins. It didn’t. Their outbursts had become more severe, bordering on deranged, and Sandra was forced to consider drastic measures. She had long since enrolled the boys in therapy, but to no apparent avail. Her breaking point was when Moragawn County’s Sheriff brought the twins home and explained that they had tranquilized a stray dog, bleached it’s fur, spray painted orange and black stripes on it, and then released it into the high school gymnasium during basketball practice. Jake and Sean swore that they had no idea the frenzied dog would attack a cheerleader, sending her to the hospital for stitches. Though they had done worse, Sandra’s patience ran dry right then, and she began looking for a more vehement form of behavioral rehabilitation.

She was given Dr. Sleed’s contact information by the last in a string of therapists who had tried to work with the brothers. The therapist had stumbled out of his office, collecting himself and straightening his hair before walking over to Sandra, and said, “Never, in all my years of practice… There’s nothing I can do for them, but an old colleague of mine may be able to help. Years ago, when we were in college, he focused his studies on extreme behavioral aberrations.” Sandra, emphatically taking the advice of the therapist, had called Dr. Sleed’s office that afternoon, and while she didn’t like the demeanor of his assistant, she felt relieved that Dr. Sleed would meet with them. The following week, Sandra and the boys had flown out to Texas, where Dr. Sleed’s clinic was located. The entire trip, Jake and Sean had sulked, occasionally trying to dissuade their mother from going through with her plan, but the damage had been done. Sandra had made up her mind and, after a reassuring meeting, she admitted the boys to Dr. Sleed’s ‘Clinic for Abnormal Behavior.’

For nearly two months, Sandra had regretted her decision, blaming her own inadequacies as a mother for her sons’ outlandish behavior. At the end of the second month of Sinister and Dexterous’s absence, Sandra had finally begun to remember what it felt like to have a life. It was then, on the cusp of her sanity’s return, that she received the disturbing phone call from  Jake. She was ashamed to admit it, but she had considered ignoring the message, suddenly feeling protective of her own newly acquired stability. The boys weren’t supposed to use the phone, as per the clinic’s policy, and had sent Sandra surprisingly cheery letters, describing their pleasant stay at Dr. Sleed’s. As Sandra stared at the blinking red light on her answering machine, deliberating over her choice, she realized that it was futile to resist the call of her distressed child. Upon reflecting on the issue, Sandra had concluded that the upbeat letters, coupled with Jake’s sudden, desperate phone call, spelled trouble. She had packed a suitcase, booked a flight to Texas, and dashed to the market for last minute travel supplies. All of this flashed through Sandra’s mind as she stood across from the girl at the register, who had tried to be polite, but, despite a valiant effort, couldn’t penetrate Sandra’s iron gloom.

****************

Dr. Sleed’s assistant, Bonnie Broom, had discovered Jake when he escaped from his room to use the phone, which was strictly forbidden. She was startled at first, unaccustomed to finding patients outside of their ‘rooms.’ Slowly, so as not to alert Jake to her presence, Bonnie had retrieved a tranquilizer gun from her desk and fired two darts into Jake’s back. The next morning, Jake awoke in his cell with a splitting headache. “Dexter…” he muttered. “Sin…” was Sean’s heartfelt reply. Sean rubbed his brothers throbbing back as he slowly regained consciousness. Jake smiled and said, “How many this time?” Sean, who had removed the darts from his brothers back, said, “Two.” Jake sat up abruptly, seemingly insulted, and said, “Only two? Man, I could have sworn that was at least three!” They chuckled together and Sean helped Jake sit up on his stainless steel cot. “Did you get her?” asked Sean. Jake shook his head, saying, “No… left a message.” He looked at Sean, who barely resembled his former self, hoping that their mother would get the message and come to rescue them.

As Jake sat on his uncomfortable steel slab of a bed, looking at his brother, he wondered how on earth anyone could have done this to them. At first, they blamed their mother, but after nearly two months they had come to realize that she had no idea what was being done to them. They ultimately condemned themselves for being such wretched, ungrateful sons, promising to each other never to cause trouble again if they survived this ordeal. Dr. Sleed appeared to be an upright pioneer of his field, his overwhelming credentials supporting that popularly held belief, but the twins knew first hand what he was really up to. Dr. Sleed chose a profession that would allow him to detain the most vile, detestable, ingrates, because nobody would miss them. In fact, most people were interminably thankful for his admittance of problematic family members into his cloistered clinic. But behind the façade of his quasi medical profession, Dr. Sleed was a monster at heart, and that is precisely what he intended to prove about humanity on a whole. Using a horrific blend of chemicals derived from one part science and two parts cruelty, Dr. Sleed had discovered the means to evoke the latent beast within.

In the case of Jake and Sean, Sleed had a rare opportunity: the twins’ identical genetic makeup afforded the Doctor with near perfect models for comparison. Dr. Sleed administered his most successful cocktail of chemicals to Jake, and a new, higher potency version to Sean. The effects on both brothers were astounding. Sean’s back had nearly doubled in size, producing a hunch that caused him great pain. His arms had increased in bulk, causing his muscles and ligaments to stretch, and his hands, though still functional, began to resemble claws. His face had begun sprouting hair, burying his recognizable countenance in thick tufts of brown fur. Jake’s combination of chemicals, on the other hand, was derived from a series of tests that had already produced “favorable” results in another subject. The brothers had glimpsed the Doctor’s other patients when they were given their first ‘real’ tour, long after Sandra had arrived back in Moragawn. One patient in particular, his massive distorted body obfuscated by a shiny black mane, had caught the brothers’ eye. Number Sixty Two – or Henry, as Dr. Sleed dubbed him – was the recipient of the Doctor’s chemical opus, and the blueprint for the work being done to Jake. Like Henry, Jake’s body changed, but not to the extent that Sean’s had.

“They’re turning us into monsters,” said Sean to his brother, who was still recovering from the tranquilizers. “I know said Jake,” feeling helpless. A beeping sound chimed and the boys knew that their cell door would be opening. Jake looked at the time displayed above the door and realized that it was too early for their breakfast to be delivered. To their surprise, Dr. Sleed entered their unadorned, stainless-steel clad cell. Sleed, wearing a hateful smile on his face, walked into the room with his hands in the pockets of his lab coat. “My boys… how are you tonight?” He looked into the brothers’ eyes, feeling satisfied to find them angrily blazing back at him. “I can’t begin to tell you how proud I am of your progress here, which is why it pains me to hear that there’s been yet another act of defiance.” Sleed began pacing around the room while Sean hunched over his groggy, prone brother. “You see, it’s because of these unacceptable courses of action that you’re here in the first place. You defied your mother… tisk, tisk… you, gasp, repeatedly broke the law. You burnt down your house – do you have any idea what the cost of insurance for that is? – and last, but most certainly not least, you’re the miserable, rotting pit of life itself.” Dr. Sleed’s expression soured, his smile disappearing instantly, and he continued, saying, “When I was your age, my father… well, my father beat me senseless, exacting the full extent of his rage on me and my mother. I remember looking at him and clearly seeing not a man, but a thing. An abomination – a monster. I grew up finding this again, and again, and again with every person I met, until I vowed to expose that truth in us all.”

Dr. Sleed sighed, relaxing his demeanor, and looked at Sean. “You see, my dear boy, you and your brother are my life’s work. I know, I know… Henry is fantastic, but he’s been through so much over the past decade, and I’m afraid I’ve been unable to extract a stable genome for mass production from him. He’ll die soon, surely, but Jake – well, Jake might just be the one I need.” At this, Jake sat up, his eyes like burning coals under his newly angular, reptilian brow. “Something to say, my son?” asked Dr. Sleed. Jake remained silent and Sleed, reaffixing his gaze to Sean, said, “Now… as for you, Sean. I’m afraid that my suspicions about a higher dose were correct. But that’s science, you know… Got to try everything in a controlled setting. Sorry, my boy. We can’t all be Henrys and Jakes.” The doctor, his expression of self satisfaction reaching sublimely sadistic heights, chuckled to himself and shook his head. As Sleed turned three quarters toward the door, Sean was overcome with fury and leapt to his feet, charging the doctor with his claws. Unknown to the brothers, Bonnie Broom, Sleed’s Stockholm-Syndrome afflicted assistant, had been lingering surreptitiously in the doorway and withdrew her tranq-gun, firing once right into Sean’s chest. Sean’s head spun and he felt himself falling. Suddenly, all was black.

****************

Sandra arrived at the clinic the following morning, having spent a sleepless night in a nearby motel. Her plane had gotten in after eleven p.m. and, despite what her instincts told her, Sandra had decided to wait until the morning to go to the clinic. As she approached the clinic’s exterior, Bonnie Broom saw Sandra appear on the security monitor behind her desk. Bonnie pressed a button under the lip of her desk, alerting the Doctor, who was several floors underground, to the situation. The silent alarm meant one thing: unexpected guests. Dr. Sleed had just finished administering a lethal dose of chemicals to an older, now unneeded subject, smiling as he did so, when the alarm went off. He dashed through the hallway to a room that had security monitors in it and cursed under his breath upon seeing Sandra Moore.

“Why, Miss Moore – this is highly irregular,” said Bonnie as Sandra walked into the reception area. “Where are my sons?” asked Sandra. Bonnie, her lips parting to speak, was relieved to hear Dr. Sleed chime in from behind her. “Miss Moore,” he began, “What a pleasant surprise. I trust everything is alright?” Sandra, her eyes lingering distrustfully on Bonnie’s face, answered the doctor, saying, “Where are my sons? I need to see them.” Doctor Sleed chucked nervously and replied, “Miss Moore, we were very clear about this point when you admitted your boys. It’s strict policy here to keep the patients isolated from the environment and people that their behavioral problems were conditioned by.” Sandra smiled, taking a step toward the doctor, and said, “I don’t think you understand me, doctor. Take me to my sons.” Sleed, somberly nodding, turned around and walked to the elevator behind the reception area. “Coming?” he asked, and Sandra, having a distinctly bad feeling about it, followed.

Downstairs, the doctor led Sandra into a sterilized looking room with a table in front of a large glass window. “Have a seat, it’ll be just a moment,” said Sleed. Sandra sat down facing the window, her nerves pulsing wildly in her belly. Behind the glass window a metal shield began to rise, exposing a room that resembled a cell. Sandra saw Dr. Sleed’s silhouetted form walk into the darkened space and turn on a light. She peered into the room, unsure of what she was looking at. Slowly, Sandra’s hand rose up to her face. Inside, Sandra was erupting with a panicked confusion, but physically she could barely manage to cover her gaping mouth. Suddenly, like a tea kettle reaching its boil and beginning to whistle, Sandra began to scream. She stood up, sending the chair screeching backwards, and her knees buckled. She fell to floor and felt her consciousness start to slip away. The two abhorrent beasts ran to the window, pounding their inhuman fists on the glass. Behind fur and scale, Sandra saw two mouths screaming, forming the word, Mom.

When Sandra awoke, she was inside of the cell with the two horrific creatures. She tried to scream, but found herself unable to draw a breath. Like an arrow piercing her flesh, the sound of Sean’s voice entered her ears. For an infinitesimal fraction of a second, Sandra, although having clearly witnessed the creature utter the word, thought to look elsewhere for her son. Then, with a ghastly sob, she sat up, ascertaining the grizzly truth. “Dexterous?” Sandra whimpered, finding herself unable to use Sean’s name to address the abomination. Sean, his heart soaring and sinking at once, began to cry and nodded his assent. “Sinister?” she inquired of the sulking, serpentine looking monster in the corner. Jake simply closed his eyes, trying not to weep, and nodded. Reluctantly, Sandra reached out with her hand and stroked the furry arm of her son, Sean. He looked up at his mother through the tufts of brown hair on his brow with desperate, pleading eyes, and Sandra, reaching out for Jake with her other hand, said, “My babies… my boys… what have they done to you?” Jake was afraid that she would reject them, believing the Doctor’s words about their “true nature,” which was villainous and ugly, now being visible to the world. He knew that he and his brother had hurt Sandra, and was worried that she would see them for what they truly were, finally free to leave them once and for all. What he did not understand, though, was that the doctor knew only hate, while Sandra, despite all the frustration and anger, knew only love for her boys.

Sandra wept the entire time her children recounted the horrors exacted upon them. She apologized profusely, never once desiring to be forgiven, and pulled her beastly babies into her chest. She rocked back and forth, holding Sinister and Dexterous, and the latter’s brown fur, though utterly foreign, smelled precisely as she remembered Sean to smell. This comforted her deeply and somehow restored her senses. Suddenly, as Sandra looked down at the creatures nestled on her bosom, she saw Jake and Sean as if they had always looked that way. Through and through, these were her children, and she would never leave them again. “Jake, Sean, we’ve got to get out of here.” The boys looked at her with frantic, desperate glances and Jake said, “You’ll take us back?” The innocence and tragedy of that question broke Sandra’s heart, and through her tears she said, “Let’s go home.”

Jake and Sean watched Sandra, occasionally exchanging amused glances, as she combed the barren cell for a way out. Frustrated, Sandra pounded her fist against the glass window, screaming, “SLEED!” She turned around, her face flushed red, and said to the twins, “I’m gonna kill that man. C’mon boys, we’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got to think of something.” The twins sat motionless on the steel cot, looking at Sandra with empty expressions. Clapping her hands, Sandra said, “C’MON! Sinister – Dexterous! Between the two of you we should be able to raise a little hell!” Jake, involuntarily twitching with the cold purposeless demeanor of a reptile, said, “But we swore we’d stop being… you know, sinister and dexterous…” Sandra stared at the brothers blankly for a moment and then, against her will, began to laugh. Elated and perhaps delirious, Sandra said, “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but: You are Sinister and Dexterous and I love you. Be who you are – it was wrong of me to try and “fix” you… yeah, we’ve got our issues, but it’s never been more clear to me than right now – you’re both perfect.” Jake and Sean looked at each other, each still stupefied to see the creature before them, and smiled. “Dexter?” said Jake. “Sin?” asked Sean. Laughing, the brothers slapped furry claw to scaly palm in a high five.

****************

Bonnie sat behind her desk in the reception area two floors above Jake and Sean’s cell, daydreaming about the car that Dr. Sleed had promised to buy her. Although ruthless in her own right, Bonnie was nervous that Sandra had shown up, suggesting that the police might come to the clinic when people noticed that Sandra was missing. Dr. Sleed consoled Bonnie, assuring her that he would take care of everything, and even promised to buy her a car as a gesture of gratitude for her loyalty and faith in his work. Bonnie Broom, with tears in her eyes and madness in her heart, had thanked the doctor, saying, “You’re a good man, Dr. Sleed… a dying breed.” Her automotive fantasy came to a crashing halt when she glanced at the security monitor, finding Sean and Jake in fisticuffs while Sandra lay motionless on the floor of their cell. Scrambling for her tranq-gun, Bonnie depressed the intercom button and shouted, “Doctor, there’s a disturbance in room 88!” She dashed toward the elevator, gun in hand, and disappeared behind the lift’s closing doors before hearing Sleed’s voice emerge from the intercom, replying, “Bonnie, stay right there. Don’t go down there!”

Bonnie looked through the plexi-glass viewing window of the twin’s cell and saw Sandra lying face down in a small puddle of blood. Sean was holding Jake’s throat and shaking him, vehemently. Bonnie’s mind raced and she deliberated over whether to wait for Sleed, or make her move. Considering all that the doctor had said about Jake successfully developing the stable genome that the doctor had long sought after, Bonnie concluded that she needed to act fast, and stop Sean from killing his brother. She cocked her gun and opened the door to the twin’s cell, firing right at Sean’s chest. He went down immediately and Jake raised his rough, scaly hands to his neck as he gasped for breath. Bonnie, her arms rigidly holding the gun in front of her, inched further into the room and nudged Sandra with her foot. “You little, evil, monster,” said Bonnie, referring to Sean as she neared his unconscious form. As Bonnie looked at Sean, keeping the gun trained on Jake, she noticed that the dart was lying on the floor next to the boy, instead of sticking out of his chest. Before Bonnie could piece it together, Sandra swung the detached portion of her sons’ stainless steel cot as hard as she could, knocking Bonnie out cold.

Sean opened his eyes and hopped up, removing the other detached portion of his cot from under his shirt. “You okay, Ma?” asked Jake, referring the bloody nose that Sandra gave herself. “Yes, sweetheart, I’m fine,” she replied. The Moore family dashed out of their cell, locking an unconscious Bonnie Broom, who was loyal to the last, inside. With her sons’ hands in hers, Sandra ran toward the elevator. “Mom, wait!” said Jake, looking at Sean. “Dexter – you thinking what I’m thinking?” Sean looked at his brother and replied, “Henry… you’re right, Sin.” Sean turned toward their mother and said, “We can’t leave without Henry.” Sandra, confused at her boys’ reaction, said, “Who the hell is Henry?” As they walked through the corridors, attempting to evade the doctor, Sandra began to understand the full extent of the evil doctor’s work. Cells lined the hall and they all contained a malformed, monstrous creature, each one more pathetic and beset with Sleed’s cruelty than the last. Finally, the three escapees arrived at Henry’s cell and Sandra gasped at the sight of him. Unlike the other victims of Sleed’s torturous experiments, Henry had a majesty to him. Somewhere inside of the creatures face, which was surrounded by long black hair and vaguely resembled a bear’s, was dignity. Somehow, the creature her sons called Henry had kept the flame of humanity alive within his imprisoned heart.

As Sean removed the casing for the keypad outside Henry’s door, Doctor Sleed rounded the corner with a gun in each hand. Sean stripped two wires of their rubber insulation and wound their golden metal threads together. He was about to exclaim, “Got it!” but Sleed cut him off, saying, “Well, well, well. It looks like you’ve met Henry, Sandra.” She and her boys, who were all staring intently at Dexterous’s handy work, whipped around, startled by Sleed’s voice. “I’m glad, actually. You see,” began Sleed, “I used to think of Henry as a sort of child of mine. He was about your boys’ age when his mother dropped him off here. You wouldn’t believe how readily parents have discarded their vile, impetuous spawn… or perhaps you would!” Sleed, laughing at his own joke, motioned for the three of them to move away from Henry’s door, and together they shuffled away, accordingly. Dr. Sleed positioned himself in front of the keypad to inspect Sean’s work and continued, saying, “But, as fate would have it, Henry never produced a stable genome for me. Tragic, really. You know, before you showed up, I was beginning to think my life’s work would never come to fruition. But Jake… Now that’s my boy. In fact, I’m probably more of a father to him than his biological father. How about that?” Jake’s bulbous eyebrows narrowed over his slit pupils, and his scales flushed a magenta color. “Oh, Jake, my boy,” Sleed began, “don’t you worry about a thing.” The doctor pulled the hammer back on the gun in his right hand and took aim at Sandra, saying, “I’ll take good care of…”

The door to Henry’s cell swung open with great force, knocking Dr. Sleed over and causing him to drop both of his guns. Henry, with the animistic precision of a starved wolf, pounced on Sleed’s chest, crushing him under his weight. Sandra let out an involuntary cry and pushed her sons behind her. Jake and Sean, likewise terrified by the sudden display of ferocity, cowered behind Sandra. Henry whipped his beastly face toward the trio, and to their great surprise, said, “Go! Sleeeeeed for meeee. Son and father must talk – private.” At this, Henry slowly returned his yellow eyes to Dr. Sleed, savoring the turn of events. Sandra began to sprint away, her sons dragging behind, when Jake said, “Wait!” he yanked his hand from Sandra’s grip and took a step in Henry’s direction. “Thank you, Henry.” Without looking at Jake, Henry replied, “name isss… name wasss Frannnk. Like my fathersss.”

An hour later, Sandra and her boys were in the motel room that she had stayed in the previous night. Sandra was drinking whisky and watching her sons sleep, wondering if the effects that the truly evil Dr. Sleed induced in them would ever wear off. She felt an overwhelming urge to punish herself for allowing this to happen to her sons, but knew that it wouldn’t serve them. Jake and Sean, their lives literally retrieved from the brink of destruction, slept like babies in their mother’s soft bed. Sandra, drinking the last of her whisky, fantasized about the creature named Frank disemboweling Sleed with the claws of his own making. “I hope you rot in hell, you bastard,” whispered Sandra as she stood up, slinking out into the hallway for more ice. She filled the little plastic bucket with ice from the machine and started back toward her room. A few doors down from her suite, a tall man wearing blue jeans, a tucked in plaid shirt, cowboy boots, and a ten gallon hat stumbled out into the hall, saying, “Sleep tight, darlin’ – and thank you.” As Sandra and the Texan passed each other, the latter, looking intently into Sandra’s eyes, tipped his hat and said, “Goodnight.”

Markus and Julie finished giving the police their statements, and tried to see Devon one last time before the ambulance took him away. As Markus rounded the rear of the vehicle, peering inside at Devon’s blissfully unconscious form, he saw his other two cashiers sauntering down the road toward the supermarket. “Is he going to be alright?” Markus asked one of the medics. “From what we can tell, yes.” was the technician’s curt reply. “What the hell could have done that to him?” said Markus, inquiring about the giant bruised bite on Devon’s chest. The medical technician straightened his back and sucked his teeth, considering Markus’s question. “To be honest, I have no idea… something big” he responded. Markus and the medic nodded to each other before going their separate ways. As Markus approached Eric and Kristy – the former his least favorite employee, and the latter his most – he found himself silently posing the same question he always did when the two arrived together: “What could Kristy possibly see in that punk?”

“Morning boss- already starting trouble?” asked the oft sarcastic Eric. Kristy lightly slapped Eric’s arm and shushed him, saying, “Markus, what’s going on? Is everything alright?” Markus looked down the road at the ambulance disappearing on the horizon and said, “Yeah, I think so. A kid came running out of the woods with some kind of snake bite or something. Julie and I saw him coming and called nine-one-one.” Eric’s gaze remained affixed to the ambulance in the distance, and seemed oddly serious to Markus. “Those woods are dangerous” said Eric, somberly. “Right… well, they think he’ll be okay. We, however, still have jobs to do. Let’s go, we’re late,” replied Markus, who about-faced and started marching toward his grocery store. Eric mimicked Markus behind his back, swinging his arms and legs while making contorted facial expressions. Kristy smiled, but intuited that Markus would turn around and stopped snickering just before their boss caught Eric’s farce. “Eric! I’m glad to see you’re full of energy today,” Markus began, “because I think the store could use a good mopping before the morning rush. What do you say?” Eric stopped dead in his tracks and stared at Markus, saying, “Awe… C’mon Markus… I was only messing around.” Markus, having already turned back toward the store, smiled contentedly as he entered his shop.

For Eric, the hours passed as slowly as Molasses dripping downhill during the winter. He couldn’t wait for the day to be over. After checking his watch for the thousandth time, Eric decided to sneak in a break. He moseyed through the store’s various aisles, trying to avoid Markus’s path, and arrived undetected at the cash registers. “Pssst… Kristy!” Eric hissed. He caught her eye and she gave him the perfect covert acknowledgment, managing to convey her interest in sneaking away without anyone but Eric knowing. Kristy finished ringing her customer up and turned to Julia, muttering something or other. A second later she emerged from the checkout area, sans apron, and surprised Eric from behind. He jumped, thinking that Markus had caught him, but sighed in relief when he turned and found Kristy. “Jeez, Kristy… you could have given me a heart attack.” Kristy laughed and said, “What’s a matter, Eric? Afraid of the boss?” She leaned in, gave Eric a quick kiss on the lips, and said, “C’mon, let’s get out of here for a minute.”

The two young lovers slipped out of the grocery store’s backdoor, and Kristy lit a cigarette as soon as they reached their hiding spot behind the dumpsters. “Damn, girl,” began Eric, “Gotta get your fix, huh?” Kristy smiled, embracing the accusation, and retorted, “I just do it to cover up the garbage smell… it’s a real turn off, you know.” Eric flinched as Kristy descended upon him with a barrage of tickles. The sound of a truck’s sputtering engine interrupted their cavorting, and Eric took the cigarette from Kristy’s hand while they watched their morning delivery arrive. Bill, the driver who usually dropped off their produce and supplies, wasn’t behind the wheel that day. A strange, impish man hopped out from his truck’s cab and walked to the rear, throwing open his truck’s back doors. He began to unload boxes of vegetables, dropping them onto the ground and bruising their soft skins. Eric was flabbergasted by the truck-driver’s disregard for their shipment. Surprising even himself, Eric decided to confront the driver. He handed Kristy the cigarette that he took from her and said, “I’ll be right back.” Kristy’s jaw hung open in disbelief as Eric, who had never expressed anything but contempt for his job, left his hiding place and approached the driver.  

As Eric neared the scrawny elder man, he smelled a strange odor emanating from him. Eric paused to steady himself, acclimating to the smell that threatened to overtake him. He looked back, searching for Kristy to flash her a sideways glance and express his olfactory dismay. “Ahem…” Eric intoned, successfully capturing the driver’s attention. The strange deliveryman froze, his back tensing up and clearly conveying a guilty conscience. He nervously turned his head in Eric’s direction, but upon seeing the boy, the driver immediately relaxed. Eric’s stomach bubbled with anxiety as he realized that he no longer felt like the stalwart that he did a moment ago. “Um… excuse me. Sir” said Eric, loosing more of his authoritative air with every uttered syllable. “You, uh… you shouldn’t do that. You’re ruining our eggplants.” The driver looked down at the ground near his feet and saw an eggplant’s disemboweled form sticking out from the banged up box that he had dropped. “My apologies young man” said the lecherous, lanky trucker. “You’re absolutely right. I’ve had a long night’s drive, and it’ll be another two days before I’m home.” He continued unpacking his truck, but refrained from manhandling the boxes. “You don’t suppose you could look the other way just this once, do you?” the driver asked. Eric thought of Kristy and felt inclined to keep up appearances. With a decidedly arrogant tone, Eric snapped, “What’s in it for me?”

As soon as he uttered those words, Eric was afraid that he went too far. To his surprise, the driver laughed heartily and said, “I like you, son… you’re already looking out for number one. That’s how you make it out here, you know.” Eric felt unnerved by the stranger’s reaction and looked back in Kristy’s direction, reflexively. The driver’s eyes darted toward the dumpsters as well, but he quickly looked back at Eric and said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ve got something that you and you’re lady friend over there might enjoy.” He slowly sauntered around his truck toward its cab, momentarily disappearing from view. From where he was standing, Eric couldn’t see Kristy behind the dumpsters at all. In fact, there wasn’t any angle that provided a view behind them from where Eric and the deliveryman stood. “Straight from south of the border!” exclaimed the driver. Eric, who was still looking at the dumpsters, jumped with a start and turned back around to face the creepy carrier. Before he even knew what it was, Eric reached out to catch the object that the trucker threw at him. Eric’s eyes widened and his heart soared as he realized what he was holding in his hands. “That’s a special brand, son” said the driver. Eric couldn’t help but produce a smile that stretched from ear-to-ear as he surveyed the bottle of tequila that the driver had tossed to him. “What do you say? We even?” Eric nodded emphatically and thanked the driver, assuring him that he wouldn’t say a word. He turned to show Kristy their fortuitous bribe, waving the bottle in the direction of the dumpsters. The driver said, “Oh, just one thing. That worm floating down at the bottom in there… trust me, son – it’s delicious.”

****************

That night, Kristy and Eric snuck out of their bedrooms to meet at their favorite hiding spot: the cemetery. The small town of Moragawn had very few places that prying eyes couldn’t reach, and the cemetery was the only locale where they knew they’d be safe from view. Kristy had spent an hour dressing and coifing her hair for the occasion. She wore her favorite black circle-skirt with cherry designs on it, a black tank-top, and did her hair up in a mitigated-pompadour. She leaned against the backside of their favorite mausoleum, which had a sign hung on it that read, ‘Ivy Interior.’ She and Eric used that mausoleum as their meeting place because they had both remarked that the sign’s message was paradoxical, since there were no doors or windows on the structure. Kristy was beginning to feel antsy waiting for Eric, and lit a cigarette to bide her time. She walked around the mausoleum, kicking clods of grass and dirt as her frustration grew. “God damn it, Eric… where are you?” she said, looking at her watch. Kristy thought she heard someone approach and dashed around to the back of the tomb. “Eric?” she called out with an expectant smile on her face. She circled the mausoleum twice before deciding that she must have been mistaken. As soon as she relaxed against the wall, taking another puff of her smoke, Eric leapt out from behind the corner, yelling, “BOO!” Kristy involuntarily shrieked, clasping her mouth with her free hand to stifle the shout. “Ohhhhh… Eric!” she began, punching him on the arm as she spoke, “You nearly scared me to death! Jeez… did you bring the tequila?”

Eric was dressed in the tightest pair of black jeans that he could squeeze his legs into, with a short-sleeved button-down shirt tucked into them. He and Kristy were the proverbial peas-in-a-pod, and loved each other very much. They laughed and kissed, wrestling on the grass as they drank the contents of their bribery begotten booze. After an hour or two, they had nearly finished the bottle. Eric and Kristy were both knock-down drunk, slurring their words and falling over every so often. Eric raised the bottle toward the night’s blackened sky, trying to catch a glimmer of light to ascertain how much tequila remained. Against the backdrop of the moon’s brilliant light, Eric saw the famed worm floating effortlessly at the bottom of the bottle. “Ha-ha, Kristy! Look at you!” he said, pointing to the worm. “What?” said Kristy, her head spinning. Eric looked at the worm again and said, “Eeeat it. Go do it!” He thrust the bottle in her direction, playfully daring her to do the deed. “No way,” Kristy said in between giggles and snorts, “You eat it!!!” Eric smiled and brought the bottle up to his left eye. “It does look like a fat, little worm that’s prolly pretty tasty…” began Eric, “that rank trucker said it was delish!” And with that Eric uncapped the bottle and poured the remainder of its contents down his throat. The worm was plump and warm, and Eric nearly threw up as he felt it slide down his esophagus. He gulped it down and looked at Kristy. They shared a silent stare, each of them unsure of what to say. Suddenly, Kristy began laughing uncontrollably and Eric, wobbling on his lanky legs, fell victim to the same fit of hilarity. He dropped the bottle and fell to the ground in hysterics. He and Kristy laughed and rolled around, passing out shortly thereafter.

Eric awoke with a start. He sat up abruptly and instantly regretted his action. A woozy wave of vertigo claimed his throbbing head and he slowly lowered himself back onto the grass in front of the mausoleum. Kristy awoke as well, asking what time it was. Eric began to panic, saying, “Oh my god! Kristy… it’s ten! We’re late for work. Oh, man – Markus is gonna fire us.” He gently rubbed his temples with his index fingers, contemplating how he would explain their absence. “Eric, it’s Saturday,” Kristy replied, inducing a euphoric wave of relief in Eric. “Thank God… you’re right. Oh, wow… my head is killing me.” Kristy seconded that remark, rolling onto her side to drape her arm and leg on top of Eric. They fell back asleep and woke up a few hours later to the sound of voices. They felt much better with the extra sleep, but still found standing and walking to be a challenge. Kristy dusted Eric’s grass covered backside off, laughing as she recounted their atypical evening. “Oh my god,” said Eric, bending down to retrieve the emptied tequila bottle before they left the area. “I drank that disgusting, fat worm!” Kristy’s smile faded as she remembered watching him down the grub, but her jubilant expression returned anew, and she laughed while holding her forehead.

The two hung over lovers softly kissed each other goodbye, agreeing that a night off to rest and clean up would do them some good. Before going to bed, Kristy called Eric to wish him goodnight, but he didn’t pick up. She smiled as she hung up her phone, envisaging Eric lying in bed, already fast asleep. However, that night, Eric slept fitfully, lucidly dreaming the strangest dream. Massive rocky terrain comprised the landscape of his unconscious. From within his dream, Eric was convinced that he could defy gravity. He felt as though he were leaping in great bounds from one jagged edge of the unidentifiable terrain to another. At a certain point, Eric intuited that he could leap and remain in the air without coming back down. He focused his unwieldy dreamer’s mind, trying to accomplish flight, even if just in his head. He conjured up what little control he had over his illusory body and leapt as high as he could. To his surprise, Eric found it remarkably easy to remain in the air, and even though he knew he was sleeping, he was grateful for the blissful sensation of flight.

When the morning’s light bathed Eric in its warm glow, he rubbed his eyes, reluctant to open them. The feeling of soaring through the velvety atmosphere lingered in his bones, and Eric was surprised to remember his dream so clearly. As he stretched his arms, he felt something scratch against his wrist. Slowly, Eric began to comprehend the fact that something was wrong. The unforgiving texture of the stiff angular structure beneath his wrist was unlike anything that he’d ever noticed in his bed. He opened his eyes, immediately flinching from the light, and wondered why it was so bright. With a sudden crash, the actuality of the situation became apparent to Eric. He sat up abruptly to find himself lying naked on a stranger’s front lawn, his hand resting daintily against the first of their porch’s steps. Eric gasped, his hands frantically attempting to lift himself up, as well as keep himself covered. He scampered up to his feet and leapt behind a shrub just as the owner of the house stepped out onto the porch. Eric, peering through the shrub’s thick green leaves, was relieved to discover that his presence would remain undetected.

After a few minutes, Eric decided to make his escape, running around to the backyard of the stranger’s house. He saw a clothesline with linens drying on it as he darted toward the wooded portion of the unfamiliar property. Eric grabbed a sheet off of the line, wrapping his exposed body up inside of the damp fabric as he disappeared into the woods. After a few minutes of running, he began to recognize his surroundings. Though he couldn’t figure how, Eric realized that he was at the edge of Moragawn County. Clad in a sheet, he plotted the course through the woods that provided the most cover and snuck back to his house. After nearly two hours, Eric arrived at his home. He scaled the gutter and pulled himself up into his bedroom window, collapsing onto the floor. He surveyed his room, finding everything as he remembered it from the night before, and couldn’t understand how he had gotten to the town’s limits. Eric threw on some jeans and a white t-shirt before sitting on the edge of his bed to gather himself. He held his head in his hands, wracking his brain for a proper explanation. While Eric tried to remember disrobing and wandering through town in his sleep, he was suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion. He checked the clock on his nightstand, which read six-forty-five am, and decided to shut his eyes as he pondered.

The telephone’s shrill, pulsing  ring woke Eric up just before nightfall. He answered the phone, still feeling surprisingly tired for having slept all day, and was delighted to hear Kristy’s voice on the other end of the line. “Kristy, baby! You won’t believe the morning I had” said Eric. She explained that her parents would be out of town until Tuesday and invited Eric over. Within fifteen minutes, Eric had arrived at Kristy’s place. Through a maelstrom of excitement and disbelief, Eric told Kristy about his preposterous morning. “And there you have it. Naked as the day I was born and about four miles from home,” said Eric at the conclusion of his story. Kristy, her mouth agape in shock, chuckled to herself as she considered Eric stalking naked through the woods. “I’m sorry, it’s just…” she burst into laughter, unable to finish her thought. “You know, it’s not funny,” said Eric, half-jokingly. “I mean, what if I have a condition or something?” His words only seemed to exacerbate Kristy’s hysterics as she rolled around, holding her stomach. Finding her laughter contagious, Eric ultimately acquiesced and joined in with Kristy. They teased each other, tickling and play fighting until their touches turned from puckish pinches, to concupiscent caresses. After joining together in the throes of young love, Eric and Kristy curled up under the covers and fell asleep. As they drifted off into unconsciousness, Eric’s last willed thought was, “I hope I fly again.”

Kristy awoke to the sound of her alarm-clock radio and instinctively reached out with her hand to silence it. She yawned, stretching her arms above her head, and said, “Good morning” with a broad smile on her face. She turned her groggy head toward Eric’s side of the bed, but found herself alone in the room. She threw the comforter off of the mattress, inadvertently uncovering a curious scene. Though she couldn’t imagine why, it seemed that Eric had laid his undergarments out in exactly the position that he was sleeping in, before slipping out of bed during the night. While she was ruminating over the possible reasons why Eric would do such a thing, she thought she heard a knock at the door. Kristy fumbled with her pajama top as she bounded down the stairs to see who was calling on her. She pressed her eye up against the small circular peephole and gasped. She quickly unlocked the door, flung it open, and exclaimed, “Eric? What the hell is going on?” Her naked boyfriend, who was desperately clinging to a sofa cushion of unknown origins, offered an unnerved chuckle as he looked over his shoulder. Eric slipped past Kristy into her entryway and she stuck her head out of the door to check if any of the neighbors were watching, before shutting and locking it. She turned around to find Eric peering at her with a serious expression. Gravely, he said, “Kristy… I think we need to talk.”

“A fly?” Kristy yelped, nearly choking on her coffee. “Yes… I think so. I mean, I’m not sure, but I think so. Look, I know how crazy this sounds, but you saw my clothes!” Kristy shook her head, considering what Eric was suggesting. “But Eric… this is real life. This doesn’t happen.” Eric, his mouth open in a look of astonishment, said, “I know… I mean, I didn’t think so either, but Kristy – it is  happening.” Eric felt ecstatic and full of energy, but he knew that he couldn’t introduce his enthusiasm to Kristy until she came to accept the situation. The latter got up in search of a cigarette, obviously attempting to process the heap of impossible news that Eric had dumped on her. Eric, his bare chest still exposed, felt an abundance of energy, which he decided would be best put to use by dropping to the floor and doing as many pushups as he could. When Kristy returned and found Eric inexhaustibly thrusting himself off of the floor, she took a quick pull on her cigarette and, exhaling as she spoke, said, “Well, you’ll have to prove it to me then.”

That night, Eric curled himself up in Kristy’s bed as she sat beside him, patiently waiting for his alleged transformation. “This is ridiculous,” said Kristy, glancing at the time. “It’s almost midnight.” Eric, feeling increasingly unsure of his boast, said, “Well… I don’t know how it works, but I think I have to go to sleep.” Kristy shook her head, suddenly wondering what the implications of the situation were if it didn’t work. She closed her eyes, rubbing her lids with her index fingers, and leaned her head back. “You know, I’m beginning to feel like a real…” As Kristy lowered her head and opened her eyes, she was floored to find Eric’s close laid out on the bed, sans Eric. She hopped up to her feat and said, “Eric? This isn’t funny!” She looked on the other side of the bed, no longer sure if she wanted Eric to be telling the truth, but found no evidence of him. Out of the corner of her eye, Kristy saw a single solitary fly whiz away from her bed and toward the window. Though shocked, Kristy was beginning to believe. Eric asked her to close the windows and the doors to avoid another of his naked, early-morning treks back home. There was one last thing that Kristy needed to do before she would allow her mind to believe her eyes. She surreptitiously scribbled something on a piece of paper and, concealing it in her hand, climbed onto her desk to place the paper on top of one of her ceiling fan’s blades.

When she awoke, Kristy was surprised to find Eric naked and snoring, his left arm and leg draped over her body. She recoiled in fear, feeling unsure of what to think. Eric, shaken by Kristy’s movements, woke up with a smile and said, “Peach Cobbler?” Kristy burst into a teary, wet guffaw and reached out to Eric, who took her in his arms and assured her that everything was okay. “I didn’t know what else to write,” she said through her sniffling. A few hours and several breakfasts later, Eric was feeling satiated. Kristy watched Eric voraciously consume his meals, and asked, “How did this happen?” Eric, his head now resting in Kristy’s lap, said that he didn’t know, but that it might be a blessing. Kristy wasn’t feeling convinced of that and asked how Eric’s newfound ability could be anything but a nightmare. “Well, first of all, I can fly! Second, I can control it, which means…” Eric’s eyes lit up as he stumbled across the vista of potential that became apparent before him.

****************

Kristy was tired. It had been a long Monday at work and she felt conflicted about Eric’s recently acquired skill. As she sat in her bedroom, chain smoking out of her window, a thought suddenly stuck Kristy. From the foggy depths of her subconscious, she remembered Eric drunkenly downing the repugnant, fat, little worm at the bottom of the tequila bottle. She tried to dismiss the thought as nonsense, but in light of everything that was going on, she couldn’t. As she mused over the subject it seemed clearer and clearer that the larvae Eric ingested was the obvious catalyst for his subsequent changes. She didn’t know how or why, but she felt decided on the subject, intending to tell Eric about it first thing in the morning. As she fell asleep, Kristy imagined her conversation with Eric. She would meet him out front of Markus’s store and ask him to talk with her in their hiding place, where they were first given the tequila. She was content with this illusory conversation, finding some solace in her imaginary boyfriend’s understanding. Her real boyfriend, however, was far less concerned with addressing the hows and whys of his current predicament.

Kristy awoke to the sound of someone tapping on her window. She rubbed her eyes, coaxing them into working order, and saw Eric’s bright, cheery face smiling at her. “Eric, oh my god… what time is it?” She asked while opening the window for him. He hopped down onto her bedroom floor and said, “Hello my darling! It’s six am, how did you sleep? Well?” Kristy felt confused and issued a blank, bleary eyed stare at Eric, asking, “What are you doing here?” Eric was visibly hurt at these words, quickly changing his demeanor to adjust to Kristy’s attitude. “I, uh… well I thought I’d surprise you, is all” began Eric, “I wanted to tell you that you won’t be needing to work at Markus’s anymore!” The smile returned to his face, wider and more devious than before, and Eric reached into his pocket. Kristy was both elated and mortified to see the wad of money that Eric retrieved from his trousers, and said in a whisper, “Where did you get that?” Eric laughed heartily and said, “Your boyfriend, the human-fly!” He rubbed his hands together in a gesture of self satisfaction, but unintentionally invoked the image of a fly cleaning its legs in Kristy’s mind. “Eric…” Kristy began in a much more serious tone, “where did you get all that money?”

Eric walked around the bed without answering Kristy, a smug smile still plastered to his face. He sat down and collected himself, closing his eyes as if to vividly recall something, and said, “Seven-Seven-Eight-One-Nine.” Kristy stared at Eric in disbelief, and after a time, broke the silence by asking, “Have you lost your mind?” Just then, Eric leapt up and dashed throughout Kristy’s bedroom, saying, “Bzzzzzzzzz…” Kristy was not amused. In fact, she was frightened. She loved Eric very much, but in the two years that they had known each other, Eric had never acted this way, let alone exhibited signs of transmogrification. Eric, glimpsing over his shoulder whilst buzzing around, saw Kristy’s expression and abruptly stopped. “What? Kristy, I thought you’d be happy. We always said we’d get out of Moragawn and away from Markus’s. This is our ticket out of here!” Kristy crossed her arms and asked again, “Where did you get the money, Eric?” He sighed, relenting finally, and said, “Seven-Seven-Eight-One-Nine. I saw Carl Shore withdrawing money from an ATM and watched him enter his pin.” Kristy shot up to her feet, demanding, “What?! You have lost your mind. Please don’t tell me… not while you were…” Eric interrupted, beaming, “Yup! While I was a fly!” Kristy felt nauseous, deteriorating into a sobbing mess of confusion and fear. “Eric, don’t you want to know how this happened? Aren’t you scared?” Eric frowned, pulling his chin back in shock, and said, “Hell no, Kristy! For the first time in my life, I feel special. I can get us out of here!” Kristy wiped her eyes and sniffled, interjecting in a much more somber tone, “It was the tequila, Eric. It had to be. You drank that awful worm and the next night, all this started happening. We’ve got to stop it.” Eric had always been a kind, even tempered young man, and always treated Kristy with respect, but something had changed. He turned to Kristy, his face a hateful mask, and said, “God damn it, Kristy! You don’t get it. I don’t want to stop it. I thought you were like me, but your not. I bet you’re jealous!” Kristy stammered her defense, but Eric continued, interrupting her, “Yeah! You can’t stand it that I’ve got this gift, and you don’t. Well I’ll make it real easy for you.” He threw the money that he stole onto her bed and left the same way he came in.

Kristy was in shambles when her parents returned home later that Tuesday. She lied to them, saying that she and Eric had broken up to account for her disheveled state. As she said this, she wondered if it were truer than she’d intended, and her heart broke a thousand times. At work, Eric was a no show. Two days had gone by and Kristy didn’t know what to do, or who to turn to. That afternoon, before Markus had an opportunity to ‘console’ Kristy, she snuck off to the dumpsters for a cigarette. She sat down behind the cover of the large green bins, watching the flies buzz around the garbage. She was overcome with grief at seeing them, wondering if one might be Eric. Just then, a delivery truck pulled into the supermarket and Kristy perked up, hoping that the driver who gave them the bottle of tequila would be behind the wheel. She peeked around the edge of the dumpsters, waiting to see who the deliveryman was. To her incredible delight, she saw the same trucker emerge from the cab, and without any reserve, she dashed over to him. “Excuse me. Sir, you don’t know me but….” The trucker interrupted Kristy, saying, “He drank the worm, didn’t he?” She nodded, her eyes already beginning to well up with tears, and the driver said, “Stupid kid.”

Kristy was enthralled, listening to the driver’s every syllable as he explained the situation. “You see, in a little village outside of Mexico, not far from Teotihuacan, you can find just about anything. They say the tequila there is the best your lips will ever touch – and it is – but they also say, whatever you do, don’t drink the worm.” Kristy didn’t understand and asked, “Then why did you tell him that it was delicious?” The trucker smiled and said, “Because it is. We can’t all make a living driving trucks, you know. Sometimes, it helps to be a fly on the wall.” He winked and walked away from Kristy, heading back toward the cab of his truck. “Look, your friend was being a punk – I just wanted to teach him a lesson. Don’t worry about him, though. Without more of them worms, he’ll be back to normal any day now.” Kristy was far from comforted, but appreciated hearing that there might be an end to the madness, and looked forward to Eric’s return. She walked back into the market, resigning herself to the discomfort of waiting for Eric to reappear. She promised herself that she would help him sort everything out once he was back, despite the overwhelming nature of the events that had transpired. She stopped in the doorway to wipe her tears, feeling - for the first time in days – like things might be okay. Right above Kristy’s head, in an innocuously placed web, a spider deftly spun the last of its webbing around its latest catch. The fly, entombed in its flossy shroud, watched as Kristy dried her eyes, took a deep breath, and walked away.

Back at her register, Kristy tried to maintain some semblance of composure. A tall gaunt woman, who was repeatedly checking over her shoulder, approached Kristy’s register with a basket of toiletries. Kristy attempted to be polite, asking, “Going out of town?” The strange woman snapped her head in Kristy’s direction and replied, “Yes… I am. How did you know?” Her eyes peered distrustfully into Kristy’s, probing them for secrets Kristy couldn’t fathom. The latter responded, “Travel sizes… looks like you’re going to be flyi… excuse me, traveling.”