StarkLight

Volume 1
A Compendium of Speculative Fiction
Editor, Tony Stark
Copyright 2013 StarkLight Press

STARKLIGHT PRESS
Published by StarkLight Press
a Division of StarkLight Industries
1 Kala Road, Fraser Lake, B.C.
Canada
V0J 1S0
www.starklightpress.com
Copyright StarkLight Press, 2013
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted

Any similarities between persons living or dead is purely coincidental... you know.
Set in FreeSans 8/9/12/18/28
Printed by IngramSpark. 48Hour Books
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way
of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior
consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published herein and without a
similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

"It's so much darker when a light goes out

than it would have been if it had never
shone."
- John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

Table of Contents

Publisher's Foreword...............................................................................6
Author's Foreword...................................................................................7
Normal- L.E. Caine................................................................................11
Money Grows on Trees in the Patch- Tony Stark..................................21
The Adventures of Billy Owens- Virginia Carraway Stark.....................40
Periwinke- Jeren Nethers......................................................................67
Super Powers- Virginia Carraway Stark................................................81
Martha's Ivy- Nicholas Vincenzi.............................................................95
Toadstools of Rire- Virginia Carraway Stark........................................107
Micheal and Mallory- K. Anderson.......................................................117
The Rising- Will Norton........................................................................127
Sunshine and Shadows- Virginia Carraway Stark...............................152
Blind Eye- Virginia Carraway Stark......................................................161
Sea Legs in the Bikin- Tony Stark........................................................168

Publisher's Foreword
This was the first foray of StarkLight Press into the world of
speculative fiction and, as it turned out, it was an incredibly
impacting work.
We had a great response to the short story contest that spawned it;
we were pleased to include a story from a troubled but gifted young
writer we had encountered along the way.
As a result of a tumultuous, traumatizing and heart-wrenching
interaction with the individual, we put the re-release of this
anthology on hold. It took Virginia and I quite some time to deal with
the fact that we watched a young person slide further and further
into mental illness, drowning in her world of growing delusion and
psychopathy. In spite of all of our efforts, we and everyone around
her were completely unable to help stop her inevitable decline.
The damage such individuals can do, not just to themselves, but to
those friends and family around them, is astounding. The way in
which such persons can seize on the smallest of ideas- a story, a
movie, a television programme, a news article- and jam it all
together as the sets and characters in their destructive psychoses
was played out in all its sad, violent, nihilistic glory.
We came to have a greater sympathy for the conditions of the poorly
diagnosed mentally ill- in time, we have learned to heal from the
confounding harm that was done to our lives and creative pursuits.
Realizing that stories from every outlet of the media can be sources
of manic focus for these individuals helped us to decide not just to
republish these first stories from the past, but to keep all the stories
intact. Creativity is a powerful tool, but it is ultimately a good one, for
as much misery as this individual was in, her happiest times were
still reading and taking about these and other stories from Canadian
authors.
We therefore republish this volume of StarkLight Press so that,
though evil may consume some things, the light of creativity and the
goodness it brings will always overcome.
-Tony Stark
Publisher and CEO,
StarkLight Press.

Foreword for the Second Edition of StarkLight 1

StarkLight Press started off as a place for my husband and myself
and the writers we knew to work on collaborative and anthologies
together. Tony wanted to make sure that the people he cared about
didn't lose their creative rights after we had seen several authors go
through conventional presses. The results seemed to largely be low
profits, a loss of rights and a toxic environment that thrived off of
competition and put-downs.
Not all large presses are like that but many do encourage an
atmosphere of competition even between the authors that are
already signed for long term contracts. We wanted to offer
opportunities for people without lengthy resumes as well as for
people with a successful background in writing. In short, we wanted
to offer opportunity without it coming at the expense of others
creative worlds.
Unfortunately, not all creative people are necessarily suited to work
in creative co-operatives.
It was shortly after we had first put together StarkLight 1 that one of
the authors who worked with us had some massive psychological
issues. K. Anderson had had numerous mental health issues in the
past, but after StarkLight 1 she started to escalate from someone
who was unbalanced to someone who was a danger to herself and
others.
She had always had problems with separating reality from fiction
and she became obsessed with my writing in particular and was
convinced it was real. She became more and more unbalanced until
Tony and I had to tell her to leave and to never come back or we
would have to get a restraining order. She was extremely angry with
us both and as soon as we told her that we couldn't be friends
anymore she started to spread malicious rumors about myself and
my husband.
The rumors were the same things she had told me and Tony were
happening to her at her home and part of why I had originally
agreed to let her come stay with me. I realized at this point that her
stories were mostly patched together versions of other people's
stories of abuse and suffering. I had let her come stay with me
originally because I identified with the sort of abuse she was
allegedly suffering at home but it was because it was so similar to

what I had written about as both part of my past and woven into my
stories as well.
The nightmare continued to the point where she had stolen old
notepads, journals, diaries and story notes as 'proof' that because I
had story notes and written in the first person that I was insane. She
began plagiarizing from the notes she had stolen and when she
finally returned them to me they were marked with her notes, memo
notes and ways to turn things I had developed into her own
universe. The stories she told were taken in part from my notes
about the abuse I had suffered as well as fictionalized versions of
my own fiction. Most of the notes she stole were private and should
never have seen the light of day as they were ways that I was trying
to work through traumas I suffered as I child. She not only stole my
private papers but accused me of being the abuser that I wrote
about as a form of therapy.
At the same time she was insidious at re-inserting herself into first
my life and then the life of me and my husband. She had good days
and bad days and the good days made you hope that she would get
better. We attempted to get her help but nobody could help her
because she was on a self destruct course that only she could have
changed.
The last time I talked to her she was hearing voices and alternately
crying and raging. When she finally calmed down enough to talk she
told me that she was scared and that she loved me and that she
thought I was beautiful. She told me that the voices told her that she
had been put here to destroy everything beautiful. She started to cry
and told me that she knew it was going to end in her killing either me
or herself.
That was the last time I ever saw her although I heard from her one
last time.
She had gone back to her home city of Prince George and from
there she had sent me a parcel by greyhound with yet more stolen
items in it, including personal photos, pictures of myself and of
course of journals and writings. Her note begged me to forgive her
and even in her last words it was clear that she regarded my writing
was real as it referenced, 'her family' as being the characters in
some of my stories that I had shared with her even before they were
published.

I received the parcel before I received the news that she had killed
herself.
StarkLight 1 had already sold out on our first run at this point and
we were debating what to do with it as Starklight 2 had also come
out by this point as had Tales from Space 1 and I was finishing
Dalton's Daughter. The press was thriving but StarkLight 1 had a
problem and that was that K. Anderson had read my short story,
'Not So Super Superpowers' and had killed herself in the same way
as the heroine of the story.
While K. said nothing about that story in her note to me the method
of suicide is painful and particular. We pulled the e-version of
StarkLight Press 1 and didn't do another run until now.
Why now and why did we wait so long?
As to why now, I think a lot of that has to do with our own personal
growth and development. There have been many cases of
art/writings/songs inspiring people to do the most heinous of things.
This is NOT the norm. My story, 'Not So Super Superpowers' in no
way condones drinking antifreeze. In fact, the girl in the story dies
from drinking it. I made it obvious that this was a nasty death and it
was not written in a way that I ever imagined anyone would ever
emulate.
Since K. killed herself nearly two years ago now I have realized that
there are crazy people in the world and there is nothing I can do
about that. I know that most of the people who read my writing are
inspired, touched, thoughtful or in the cases of the stories of horror
and abuse often disturbed. I also know that talking about these
things is a way to start a dialogue and a way to make the world
better.
By hiding my story and by extension the stories of the other creative
people involved, including K. herself, I wasn't doing anyone any
favors. It wouldn't bring her back to have the book out there and I
know that the sane part of K. would be happy to see her name in
print once more.
I also know that the sane parts of her were brought solace by
reading the worlds of other people. As for most people who read, or
even watch movies or TV, we do it as a form of escapism. We can
travel to other worlds, be other people, live and die lifetimes we
would never have and do things or think things we would never say

or do.
K. took that form of escapism too far. No one will ever know her final
rationale for her acts but one thing I do know is that there was,
underneath it all, a little girl who liked to hear stories. Inside us all
we have the desire to hear stories.
That is why after much thought StarkLight Press 1 is available once
more.
I think it goes without saying that you should definitely not drink
anti-freeze or do anything else because you read it in a book. We
are beings of free will and we decide how we will interpret every
story we hear and every movie we watch, every song we listen too.
The Beatles never dreamed 'Helter Skelter' would be used by the
'Manson Family' but it was. I now that it disturbed them in a similar
way to how I was disturbed when I heard the way K. had killed
herself. I also know that you can still buy The White Album and
people listen to Helter Skelter everyday and never once get an urge
to kill people.
There are a lot of unhealthy people out there and what I have
learned is that I am not responsible for their actions. What K. did
she did on her own. If it hadn't been my writing she fixated on it
would have been someone else. I'm also sure she meant it when
she said that this would only end one way and that was in her killing
me or herself.
I think that someone in her past really did abuse her. I think that
some of the stories she told about her past were true. I also know
that most of what she said was as a result of the abuse that
happened to her when she was very young. I think the rest was the
fabrications of an unbalanced mind. I hope she finally found the
peace she was searching for.
Enjoy the stories here and just do this one thing for me: Don't do
anything stupid because you read it in a book... especially this book.
-Virginia Carraway Stark

Normal

by

L.E. Caine

Do you ever have a day when you wonder what it would be like to
have a normal family? To be surrounded by people who
unconditionally love and accept you? Who always 'get' you and you
are happy to be around?
I have heard rumors that such families exist, and I have certainly
seen examples of loving relationships, mother to daughter, father to
son, etc What I have never found is a family that is 'normal'. I have
never met a single person who, after a bottle of wine and a certain
comfort zone with each other as been reached won't let a few
skeletons out of the closet. Normalcy is stagnant, normal means no
growth and no change. Things are either growing or they are dying
or they are frozen in place and none of those situations are what we
thing of as 'normal'.

Take little Billy for example. Little Billy goes to school with Little
Jane. They throw ball. They catch ball. They see spot run. They do
all the things that normal children do. Little Billy wears ironed button
up shirts and creased, ironed pants. He tries not to get them too
dirty but as his Father is fond of saying. 'boys will be boys,
Margaret'. Margaret is Billy's mother. She laughs when her husband
Jim says this as her mother had taught her to always laugh at her
husband's jokes to let him know that she thought he was special
and clever. She had also taught Margaret how to get grass stains
out of pants and Jim was a good provider so if the pants got torn,
well, that wasn't such a big deal either.
Can you see little Billy with his shining, perfectly cut dirty blond hair?
Can you see Margaret with her peroxide perfect hairstyle and her
gleaming teeth between her red-lipped smile? Can you see Jim,
sitting in his easy chair with a newspaper and pipe, plaid slippers on
his feet and reading glasses at the end of his nose?
I can see them. This lovely tableau of a family that for awhile, we all
pretended was normal.
Take that moment forward now, Margaret's smile fades, Billy, go
change into your play pants and go play outside until dinner is
ready.
Yes, Mother, Billy replies. Jim smiles at him at straightens the
paper with a rustle.
Margaret checks on the roast and turns off the potatoes. Dinner will
be ready soon at this rate. She checks the clock and puts the apple
pie into the oven. It will be exactly cool enough to cut into if she puts
it in in five minutes so she sets the timer to remind herself. She
stares out the window and watches her tulips blowing in the light
April wind. She checks her watch: it's time for her pills. She barely
has a chance to take them before the timer dings and she pops the
pie into the oven. The roast thermometer still says that the inside
has a little ways to go before it is the pink rare that Jim favors.
Do you want a cup of coffee before dinner, darling? She asks from
the doorway to the living room.
No, Margaret, I've got to go make a phone call before I forget
altogether. How long will dinner be?
Twenty-minutes at most, so don't take too long on the phone! She

said, her smile teasing. He stands and holds her loosely around the
waist and kisses her lips gently so as not to smudge her perfect
lipstick.
I love you, Margaret, He murmurs to her. For a moment it seems
as though there is something not normal, a fog, or a fugue. They
both laugh nervously and Margaret straightens her still perfect hair
as though Jim had savaged her sexually rather than so briefly
expressing his love.
Jim goes upstairs and picks up the phone in his study. He could
have used the kitchen phone, but he doesn't want to worry Margaret
with his conversation and he has always enjoyed his privacy
besides.
He dials the number, each one a process on the rotary phone. There
is no rush here, there can't be. You can't rush a phone anymore
than you can rush progress. Finally the call goes through and he can
hear Roger on the other end of the line, he can tell that Roger has
been drinking more than a casual glass or two of scotch on the
rocks and smiles at his friend's indulgence, Hello, says Roger, his
voice thicker than it should be before six in the evening with too
many nightcaps.
Roger, it's Jim here. Listen, I wanted to give you a call, about that
matter we discussed earlier.
It's too late, Jim. We were fools. We were all fools. They got out
and now they're everywhere, Roger's voice was in a panic. He had
always been an excitable fellow but this seemed extreme even for
Roger.
Calm down there, Rog. Maybe you ought to tell me what you
mean.
You know what I mean, Jim. You know it as well as I do. Get your
family inside, they're after the women and children. That's who they
want. They left me but little Jane- I can't tell you- little Jane and
Janet- Jim was startled by the sound of a shotgun blast followed by
the sound of the recver thunking against the telephone stand and
then silence.
Rog? Roger? Are you there? There was no answer and after a
moment's hesitation he set the phone back in the cradle carefully
and pondered what to do. His first thought was that Roger was

playing a joke on him but he passed that off as absurd as quickly as

he the thought came. Roger might at times be prone to
over-reactions, but he wasn't a prankster and nothing about their
phone call had been funny.
He thought about calling the police but then he decided that could
be bad for the company if word got back to them that the police had
been called to Roger's house. He and Jim had worked together for
many years and a reputation tarnished faster than silver if you didn't
manage it properly.
He came downstairs and pulled his overcoat and hat out of the
closet. Margaret watched him with the quiet submission and respect
of a woman who knows the man calls all the shots. Inside her guts
were clenching and she was grateful that her special vitamins kept
her so calm that her voice sounded perfectly serene as she asked,
Did everything go alright on the phone, Jim?
Roger sounded like he could use a bit of help with his the
paperwork tonight, I'm going to go over and check on him, make
sure he's got it covered.
You do worry too much, Jim! Margaret gently scolded. You
should let Roger take responsibility for his own work, he's perfectly
capable even if he isn't quite a clever as you are.
Jim had no soothing 'vitamins' and since he had heard the gunshot
and the receiver bang against the wood of it's stand his stomach
had been getting more nervous. He ignored Margaret's fretting and
poured himself a glass of neat scotch and drank it as a tonic. The
warmth relaxed him and he immediately felt better, more normal and
in control of the situation.
I won't be gone long.
Longer than fifteen minutes? Margaret asked, eyeing the roast in
the oven.
I shouldn't be longer than fifteen minutes, he's just around the
block from us. If I am late I'll have to live with the knowledge that I'm
responsible for your delicious roast being the slightest bit dry.
Jim jogged down the front steps and Billy came down from the tree
he had been playing I
n and ran after his Dad, Dad, where are you going?

I have to check on something for work real quick. I won't be gone

for more than a minute or two. You had best get inside now and get
cleaned up for dinner. Give your mother a hand and set the table
while you're at it.
Well, alright, Dad, Billy said. Jim rarely bossed him about quite
like that. Billy knew it was his job to set the table and he knew that
he had to get cleaned up. Jim walked Billy back to the door, he had
Roger's words ringing in his ears, It's the women and children
they're after.
Roger's house looked normal enough, but it was odd that it was so
dark right around dinnertime. Jim shut off his Chevy's engine and
frowned at the well groomed lawn and trimmed back hedgerows. It
was then that Jim realized that he didn't want to go check on Roger.
He knew what that shotgun blast had meant. He had known why it
had sounded a little muffled, it was because his best friend and
business partner for over ten years had put the barrel in his mouth
and used his head as a silencer.
He left the keys in the car and walked up the paving stones to the
front door. He rang the doorbell and Roger's pretty wife answered
the door after only a few terrifying seconds. She smiled at him but
looked around, confused as to why he was there at dinner time,
Jim, are you alright?
He knew she asked because he looked white as a sheet beneath
his tan. She asked because he should be at home enjoying his
dinner, not at their front door. The real reason she asked though, the
reason Jim knew with a cold certainty, was that this wasn't really
Roger's wife, Franny. She was an imposter.
It was hard for him to make his voice work but he made it, I think
Roger has some of the papers I need tonight, our secretaries must
have gotten the files confused because I had one of his.
She stood in the doorway, her red lips and white teeth smiling at
him, her eyes moved to the side and for one brief, horrifying moment
he saw something black slide across the white of her left eye. His
breath caught and she turned to him, she knew. She knew he had
seen, her smile widened, Why don't you come in? Roger is
upstairs, I'll fetch him for you and the two of you can work it out.
A smell was coming out of the house. It was hard to place and Jim
couldn't think at first of what it was and then it came to him. His

company had been taking a tour of one of the factories where the
sprockets they made went toa be fitted with fighter jets. The
industrial lubricant they had used had smelled just like the smell that
should have been chicken or roast for dinner. Little Jane came to
the door and hugged her mother's legs, Mother, is it time for
dinner? She asked.
Jim saw both of little Jane's eyes were filled with the black that had
so briefly crossed Janet's eyes. The smell was stronger now. The
smell of industrial lubricant and chemical.
Hush, darling, Janet murmured politely. Your Daddy and Mr.
Smith have some business to handle and then we will eat.
There wasn't just he smell that was bothering him. There was a
noise as well. The sound of a thousand tiny les moving, clicking
legs, like cockroaches. Jim looked down at his hands, they were
empty except for his hat that he had removed when Janet opened
the door.
Well, will you look at that, He exclaimed. I've come over and
interrupted your dinner and forgotten to bring the file for Roger!
Oh, dear, Janet cocked her head to the side and more darkness
swam across her pupils. Suppose you come in at least and get
your paper's from Roger, that way at least one of you will have the
right files!
Jim smiled his most charming smile, which as Margaret would have
told you eleven years ago: was a very charming smile, I haven't
thought this through, Janet. If it's alright by you and Roger and the
little missus here I'll come by after my own dinner and we can trade
files then. I'm afraid my roast will get tougher every minute I delay.
Janet and Jane exchanged a look and then smiled in unison, Of
course, Jim. You're welcome in our home anytime.
Janet closed the door but not before Jim saw that the walls were
moving. They looked like some sort of insect, some sort of alien
insect he had never imagined before with long, feathery antennae
and sharp prongs that looked like calipers jutting out of their
carapaces. He didn't take anything other than the quickest of looks.
Roger had been right, they were everywhere.
He walked briskly back to his car, resisting the urge to run or look
over his shoulder in fear that Little Jane or Janet might be following

him. When he got back to his car and behind the wheel once more
he took a glance at the front door of what had been Roger's house.
The door was closed, there were no bugs pursuing him, no little girls
with black clouds floating in their eyes chasing after him. The front
drapes were closed and the blinds in the kitchen were closed as
well but nothing followed him.
He went home as quickly as he could. He scanned his home for
bugs while Margaret and Little Billy watched him in confusion and
concern. There was nothing here. He grabbed Margaret who
protested lightly at his rough touch but let him grab her and stare
deep into her eyes for over a full minute.
Jim, what has come over you? Margaret asked. She lowered her
voice, Is everything alright? Is Roger okay?
Jim didn't know how to answer her so he sat down to dinner instead.
His thoughts were racing but how could he express what he had
seen or the phone call he had received? Nothing made sense to
him, he couldn't tell it to his wife and son. He ate his wife's mashed
potatoes and put extra gravy one his beef and peas, just the way he
liked it. He wondered if he should call the police, or if he should call
the office. He wondered if he was losing his mind.
Would you like coffee and pie for desert? Margaret asked. She
and Little Billy had been nearly silent the entire meal. What could
they say? Jim's tension was palpable but unless he told them, they
had no way of knowing what if anything was going on. Jim kept
hearing Roger saying, They're everywhere and the sound of the
gun, muffled by his brilliant mind.
Jim didn't want pie and coffee, but what he did want was another
glass of scotch. He smoked his pipe in his easy chair while Billy
played quietly on the floor with his toy cars. Margaret quietly
cleaned up after dinner and planned out her day for tomorrow.
It had to be the new contract, those military boys had looked
spooked, way too spooked. They should have known something
was amiss.
But who questions that sort of contract when it comes in? The
sprocket industry was thriving but getting into bed with the military
could make them go from their three bedroom one car garage to the
sort of house he hadn't imagined living in when he was a boy. The
opportunities he could give little Billy would be astronomical.

That contract was the only thing that had changed. They had given
Roger and Jim each a box of cigars to take home to celebrate the
contract. He hadn't opened his, he liked his pipe over cigars. That
was all that had happened today, until tonight when he had called
Roger.
Jim went back upstairs to his study. The box of cigars was in his
briefcase. With a caution that he thought was absurd he carefully
opened his briefcase just a crack. Light feathered attennae and tiny
sharp feet clamored to be let out. He slammed the briefcase closed,
breaking off antennas and a few heads as he did so. The inside of
his briefcase was swarming with the same bugs he had seen at
Rogers. But those men were from the American army. Why would
they possibly have to gain? Surely they were as unaware of
whatever plague this was as he and Roger had been.
Downstairs he heard the doorbell ring and Margaret calling, Just a
minute, as she took the time to remove her rubber gloves and
apron and check her reflection in the toaster before answering. Jim
ran downstairs two at a time. Margaret's hand was on the doorknob.
Jim put his hand over her hand and slammed the door shut and
threw the rarely used deadbolt into place.
Hello? Called a woman's voice, It's Janet and Jane, we brought
that file you were looking for. Roger said you would need it
Margaret started to answer and Jim put his hand over her mouth
before she could speak. The light was fading outside, it would be
dark soon. Jim cautioned Margaret to silence once more before
creeping to the window and peering out surreptitiously through the
window. Janet and Jane stood primly at the door, around their feet
was a massive carpet of moving insects.
Jim pulled Margaret away from the door and the windows in the
kitchen. He crept back and pushed a heavy afghan over the bottom
of the door. It was a poor defence, but it was all he had against the
bugs coming in through some unknowable crack under the door.
Jim took Margaret into the living room where the drapes had already
been pulled, Where's Billy? He whispered.
Margaret was looking outright annoyed with him now and started to
answer in a regular tone and Jim shushed her, He went outside to
get his army ranger plane, he left it outside while he was playing.

Jim looked at her aghast, He's outside? He asked in abject horror.

She nodded as the sound of the side door opening made them both
look up. It opened into the backyard and Little Billy was standing in
the doorway, his army ranger plane held limply in one hand while
bugs crawled into his open mouth. Margaret screamed and ran
towards Billy but Jim threw her to the far side of the room. He
dashed into the kitchen and grabbed a carving knife. He glanced
out the window and saw Janet and Jane and their unholy host
following them along the side of the house, headed for the side door
where Billy was still standing.
Jim pulled Billy into the house, locked the door behind him and
swept the bugs from Billy's face. It wasn't so bad, there were only
twenty or thirty on him. Margaret picked up a lamp and squished
any that fell off Billy. She was terrified, anyone could see that, but
she was fiercely protective of her baby. The bugs were dead but
then Jim saw it, the darkness swimming in Billy's eyes. Billy opened
his mouth and a fresh batch of bugs came out of his mouth.
The bugs ignored Jim but made a bee-line for Margaret. Jim didn't
understand anything that was going on, he just killed the bugs
chasing his wife and then the ones who swarmed his son's face
once more. He had no sooner killed the new ones when his son
opened his mouth and a new batch poured out yet again, God in
heaven, forgive me, Jim said, as he jammed the butcher knife
through his son's fragile young skull and into his brain.
More grey bugs were nestled inside, they had been waiting to get
out. Margaret was screaming and killing the bugs but she wanted
her baby. Inside the roiling mass of insects was one massive grey
and white bug. Bigger than the rest she was pushing out baby
versions of the bugs even as Jim Watched. He rammed the knife
through her and she started to make a terrible keening sound.
It was echoed by keening from the still living bugs in the house and
the ones outside that Janet and Jane had brought with them. He
could hear Janet jiggling the lock and then she picked up something
heavy and started to smash in the window.
Jim grabbed Margaret by the hand and pulled her to the kitchen and
out the front door. They fled down the steps and out to the car. Jim
laid his foot down as hard on the gas pedal as he could while
Margaret sobbed limply against her door.

It was over a year later and Jim and Margaret had rebuilt their life.
Margaret had a baby and name her Emily. Jim didn't work in the
sprocket business anymore, he sold used cars now and their home
was a bit more humble than their last home had been. Neither one
of them thought about their old home anymore, not much anyway.
Usually there were just the nightmares.
Other than that their baby was beautiful and James and Margy were
thought of well by their friends and co-workers. Sometimes James
was a little too quiet and whenever there was any dealing with
anyone looking for a new-to-them car who was also in uniform,
James would often go inside and crack the bottle of whiskey he kept
there. He couldn't drink scotch anymore, the taste of it reminded him
of something grey and feathered. Otherwise, they were perfectly
normal people living a perfectly normal life.

Money Grows on the Trees

in the Patch

by

Tony Stark

The ditch swallowed the windshield, then the truck.

Paul held the steering wheel steady, let the anti-lock brakes do their
work. He hoped he wasn't going over on his side. The heavy duty
pickup was new this year, filled with thoughtful and incredibly
sensitive steering and traction equipment which made it akin to
driving a hummingbird. His heavy equipment mechanics' tools
shifted in the compartments on the back of the box, swinging toward
the driver's side.
Probability of rolling the truck... climbing. 50-55-60%.
The truck stopped. He was facing down a 45 degree angle that had
been carved out by bulldozers to build up the logging road. He had
buried the nose of the pickup into four feet of snow. He had also
developed a nearly terminal yaw to the driver's side.
He sighed. Brilliant start to his day.

Paul was the on call equipment mechanic for a Malaysian oil

company. It was Paul's job to maintain the dozens of backhoes, D7
cats, skidders, 6Ks, 90s, 72s and more giant movers of things
scattered over fifty square miles of maze-like back roads in the far
north of British Columbia. His job was supposed to consist of
waiting at the laydown yard in an aging office portable and wait for a
callout to a particular site if something went wrong.
His job actually consisted of spending 14-36 hours each 12 hour
shift in his mobile workbench pickup unit and trying to fix all the
multitude of things that the half-crazed, over-amped oilfield workers
did to FUBAR the equipment. Paul was only ever called when at
least fifteen minutes of jury-rigging had occurred on the
components. This always followed at least twenty minutes of 'lettin'
er rip' to try to finish whatever task was burning out the equipment in
the first place.
He was headed down to the end of the main access artery, called
Killer's Creek Road, to a couple young idiots who had jammed up a
D7 Cat. Again. Three calls this week on the same site where they
were supposed to be building a flat pad for a wellhead. Only Paul
knew the boys weren't going to be at the well site, but 1.5 km down
at the very terminus of Killer's Creek Road. They would be at the
end of a six hundred meter gash they had torn through the treesjust like they had the past two times.
They had already been reprimanded once by their consultant, the
boss of the entire operation. The boys mumbled indistinct excuses
about having to tear a path through the trees to get a better angle on
some boulders they had to move, too much mud on the developed
pad, slope of the land. It sounded like bullshit and the Consultant
had told them as much. He reprimanded them for 'stupid life
decisions' when Paul had to be called out the day after the first
incident.
Four days after the first time the boys ripped a hydraulic hose right
off the D7, Paul was headed out to their aid once again, in the brand
new truck his company had just given him that afternoon... and now
he was in the ditch.
Paul set the four wheel drive to low, took a deep breath. The slide
had given him a rush of adrenaline and he was a little shaky. He
was too old to need a semi trailer with a tow rope to haul him out of

the ditch; he was too old to tell them the new fangled 'driving aids'
had bested him. He was too old for three in the morning callouts in
minus 40, Fahrenheit or Celsius.
He sniggered, checked his mirrors and gently applied his boot to the
gas. The front tires spat snow back at him, and the truck lurched a
bit more to the driver's side. He closed his eyes, then added a bit
more gas. The truck wobbled and reversed up the hill. The ditch
filled his windshield again, this time featuring a large hole in the
snowbank where his grill had come to rest. The truck strained
against the apex of the hill, about eight feet short of putting his rear
tires once more on the road.
Here goes nothing, Paul thought, and pressed the pedal down as far
as it would go.
The strange, thoughtful, oddly sluggish response of the drive axle
left him in an horrible limbo for a moment, then the tires caught and
shot him up the bank and back onto the road. He glanced suddenly
in his side mirrors- probably should have checked that out, he
thought, even if he hadn't heard anyone calling their approach on
the truck's two way radio.
Darkness surrounded the truck as it hopped up and over the
embankment and back onto Killer's Creek road. He braked, and the
vehicle skidded to an oddly unsatisfying stop for a truck with so
much momentum. Paul realized it was the lack of cues in the truck
that had led to his misstep- he had expected a sense of motion, or
listing, or lack of traction in the tires that fed its way up the steering
column. He resolved to take the lack of feedback from the machine
into account in the future.
He pulled the truck off the road on the appropriate side and hopped
out to inspect the damage. He fist pumped the darkness and cursed
in joy as he saw the brand new grille was untouched. Now he had
just the one problem left- how to handle the young idiots and the D7
cat. He hopped back into the truck and booted it as fast as he safely
could away from the large hole in the snowbank that marked the
scene of his crime.
This time of night, with operations only running day shift, there was
pretty much no one out on these roads, save for the two kids and
their backhoe. They belonged to a private contractor who had bid on
the five pad contract. These two kids had successfully cleared three

of the pads in the past two months, but this last one had taken half
again as long. Usually it was the last one that made the private guys
drag their heels, if they weren't smart enough to drag their heels all
the way through the contract.
Wait a minute, Paul remembered, those kids' contract was a flat
rate bid, not per diem. He frowned as he drove. So why the hell
were they dicking around in the middle of a boreal forest in the
middle of the night? He rolled his eyes. Who knew?
He was most certainly going to give them hell when he got there. He
was also going to report this, again, to the consultant, and call some
kind of shenanigans on these two. This would most likely result in
termination for cause of their contract and a delay while new
contractors were found.
But at least he wouldn't have to keep coming out this way fixing this
poor D7 cat.
36 up the Killers,he said into the handset, marking the progress of
his vehicle on the narrow road. The last thing he needed was some
psychotic road monitor lurking in some pull out waiting to ticket him
for not safely calling his kilometers.
An excited voice came over the frequency. 36? Paul, is that you?
Yes it is, he replied.
Fuck, yeah, man, hurry up- we're freezing our nuts off! It was hard
to understand the voice through its Newfoundland accent.
Well, get in your truck and turn it on, Paul said, knowing full well
why the boys weren't blasting the heater on their work vehicle.
It's like two klicks away, man- hurry!
So they were down their little rathole path, Paul thought to himself,
and the engine was stalled out. What the hell were they up to?
The well pad was half finished, the same state of completion as
when Paul had been out here a couple days ago. Deep drifts of
snow were piled twenty feet on either side of the clearing. Stacks of
brush were mingled with dirt and a couple of stacks of spindly
northern logs lined the back of the site. Nothing looked any different,
not as far as the real work went.
Paul bounced into the lot, which was far from flat and level. You had

one job... he thought threateningly to himself. He turned into the

swath cut out of the forest and headed down the recently plowed
track in the woods. Tree branches and stumps were cast in a wake
behind the dozer forming a small retaining wall on either side of the
track. Not exactly an environmental triumph in work strategy.
The D7 was about six hundred meters further in from the last time
Paul had seen it, and not at all down a trajectory that would point
the machine back at the well pad. The boys had just cut a strip out
of the forest for absolutely no reason that could be justified for well
pad construction. He pulled up behind the Cat and turned on his
work lights. They blinded the two Neufies who were standing on the
ground, shivering beside the cab of the D7.
Why aren't you idiots inside the cat? Paul called to them, hands in
the air. He set about grabbing his basic toolbelt from the back of his
truck.
The cab's all fucked up with dirt and shit, the one boy said. It's
cold and wet in there.
Paul turned and looked at them both a long, appraising moment.
It's full of dirt, and shit.
The boys' eyes grew wide. Yeah, yessir, the other one said.
Paul pulled on his work gloves as though they were going to give
him extra grip to strangle them both.
Now, why would that be?
The first boy was first to speak. It all started spraying in when we
tried to get the blade unstuck.
Spraying in. Through where, Paul started walking toward the D7.
He noticed the treads of the tank-like device were slightly elevated
in the back. The edge of the dozer blade was entrenched in some
frozen mud and brush.
It really wasn't our fault, Paul, the edge of the blade kicked up the
tree, the other one stammered. Paul shot him a glance. The little
bastard looked like he had hypothermia.
Get in the truck, Paul ordered the pair. Don't touch anything.
The boys glanced at the front of the D7 cat, then at each other, then
they sprinted off to Paul's new truck. Two doors slammed in quick

succession.
Paul walked up to the passenger door of the machine and was
greeted by the sight of a four inch tree jammed against the driver's
seat. The windshield was shattered and spread amongst the piles of
muck that had splattered themselves all over the cab and rear
window.
Shit, Paul muttered. He wondered if the two little bastards were
lucky enough to have escaped injury. Hell, it was time to call the
medic anyway- that one boy was half-frozen. He ran awkwardly
back to his radio.
Both boys were terrified when the cab light illuminated them. Their
eyes were still huge and frightened, and Paul caught the end of
frantic conversation. He studiously ignored them and picked up his
radio.
Integras Medic Killer's Creek, do you have a copy?
Shit! the one boy cried. The other boy cried out in protest. Paul
shot them a withering glare and turned up the radio with a flourish.
The two boys settled immediately but the first one tugged on Paul's
overall cuff like he was a toddler.
Paul, Paul, man, Paul, the boy whispered frantically. Don't do
that, don't man... Trev's fine, he's just a little cold- we don't need to
get a paper trail on this!
The hypothermic boy tried to control his miserable shivering. He
nodded emphatically. I'm good, really, I'm warming up!
Paul looked over his metal-rimmed glasses at the sorry pair. Do
you really think you can avoid a paper trail after you drove a tree
through a Cat's windshield?
The boys settled, deflated. The first boy dropped Paul's cuff.
Shake your heads, Paul admonished as the radio crackled.
This is Wendy, I copy. Paul?
This is Paul, 36 km down on the Killer's Creek road, Paul spoke
into the receiver in his hand. In the back seat, the boys were
throwing silent fits of terror and panic.
I have two kids here, need to be checked for hypothermia and
injuries associated from a tree impact through a Cat windshield.

What the fuck?! Wendy exclaimed over the radio. I mean, I

copy.
I'll drive them down to you at the start of the Ladyfern road, Paul
said. ETA Ten minutes.
Copy that, Wendy the medic replied. On my way.
The two miscreants politely waited for Paul to set the handpiece
back on its hook before they began mewling their disagreement.
Paul placidly kicked the truck into reverse and backed up, the
transmission shaking the cab like a paint mixer. He drove out of the
slash the boys had made in the woods, out of the well pad and back
the way he came.
After a few minutes of swearing, cursing, pleading and bargaining,
the boys fell silent.
We're gonna get fired, aren't we, the Newfie said.
Yup, Paul agreed.
They drove on in silence until they reached the y bend in the maze
of backroads that marked the start of another major artery called the
Ladyfern. Paul parked the truck and waited for the bobbing blaze of
light to bathe the tall pines, signalling the MTC was here.
There's nothing you could-
No, Paul answered.
Oh. The other boy murmured. Fuck.
Paul turned around in his seat and looked at the boys. What are
you doing back there? he asked. Why do you keep messing
around behind the well pad?
The boys looked at each other. The Newfie started to speak but his
friend elbowed him.
Don't give him any ideas, man! the elbower hissed.
Paul narrowed his eyes at the pair a long moment, then turned
around.
Wendy the medic showed up and was thoroughly unsympathetic
with the two freezing kids. She bundled them up in blankets and
cranked the heat in her mobile treatment unit, but forced them both
to ride in the back.

Halfway through a Buffy marathon and I have to come play

nursemaid to these two, she growled at Paul. They're gonna get a
bumpy ride.
Paul grinned. Her headlights faded in the dark. Paul was again
alone.
He sat in the truck another long moment, then reached for the radio.
On reconsideration, he got his cell phone and placed a call to the
consultant who was the supervisor for both Paul and the boys.
The phone rang, and rang. A groggy voice answered, remarkable
for the amount of irate energy that it conveyed while still half-asleep.
What?
Sir, this is Paul Siler on the Killer's Creek Road-
You stuck?! Jesus, Paul, you should've called before-
No sir, Paul corrected. I was just headed home when those two
contractors clearing the well pad at km 36 called me.
There was a curse and a guttural moan. Don't tell me they fucked
up the cat again?
They did, sir. Smashed a tree through the windshield. Probably
blew a couple of belts, maybe a leak in the hydraulics, battery's
dead for sure.
Their asses are so grass, the consultant asserted. Get yourself to
bed, Paul- you can fix their goddamn mess in the morning... no one'll
be using the cat for a few days while I look for new workers.
Thank you, Paul replied into the phone, but the line was already
dead.
The next morning at breakfast, scattered groups of pipefitters,
welders, swampers, truck drivers and other workers gathered
around tables in the large cafeteria. They hunkered over their
breakfast trays and chatted sullenly, all united in their resentment at
the early hour.
Paul sat in a corner of the room where he could get a good look out
for a specific guy he had it in his head to question. While he ate, he
listened to the idle conversation and watched the gossip spread out
about the incident with the two contractors.

I hear they were trying to bury a body for Grumman, said a young
rig pig-in-training, who was trying to make his voice as gruff as
possible to make up for the loss of his five o'clock shadow.
The men around him snorted dubiously. Grumman's a gangster,
son, said an older welder with as much kindness as he could. He
wouldn't get two Neufies to do something important like that.
Paul nodded slightly to himself in agreement, continuing to watch
the conversation from a distance.
I hear that, when those three kids went through here last year
running coke and liquor, you know, the ones got tossed out by the
RCMP from the Tidy Moorings camp-
There was a chorus of noddings and agreement noises made
around full mouths.
Well, I heard Grumman had just got his money off 'em, but was
stuck out inna bush cuz the cops, they had the exit roads blocked.
Both sides of Killer's Creek AND Winkin Forestry Road... that's how
far they went to catch him with the money he made.
Paul narrowed his eyes a bit. This sounded likely. He strained to
hear, turned the ear with less hearing damage to the conversation
more closely.
So Grumman went out to the end of Killer's Creek road and buried
all that money and the new drugs he and his buddy brought out for
the mules, under some bigass tree or something.
So the Neufies heard about that and went looking with a fucking
backhoe! laughed one of the rig hands. Classic!
Yeah, well, said the kid, how'd they find out about this tree and
the money? I doubt a biker like Grumman would be telling a couple
lowlife Neufies about it.
I heard about it from one of the mules, some lanky greasy kid who
runs a bit of dope outta a ramshackle house on the edge of town,
the welder said. He said he was one of Grumman's top guys, and
that's what he told him.
Paul closed his eyes in mortification. Billy.
He that kid that got his teeth knocked out by a pipe last year?
another worker asked. The welder nodded.

Oh yeah. He's full of shit. Good weed, though.

Paul's jaw set. Well, at least his no-good son could provide good
weed for the oil patch.
He never ran drugs for Grumman, the other worker, a crane
operator, waved his hands dismissively. He's just a punk.
I dunno, a well tester remarked. I got some good stuff off him
while he was at camp here, before he had his 'accident'. I could see
it coming from Grumman.
At any rate, the welder continued tersely, irritated at the co-opting
of his story. I heard that the Neufies were buying weed offa him,
and if he told me the story about the tree, well, he's probably told
him.
So why aren't you out there with a shovel, Carl? the crane op
asked. Laughter rippled around the table.
Because, Carl the welder said sagely, I am not stupid enough to
try to steal a biker's money.
If he finds out that kid was talking about it, the boy mused,
Grumman'll kick his ass.
Paul stood and bused his tray. The welder, Carl, eyed him from
across the room. He excused himself due to nicotine needs and
followed Paul out, offering him a smoke before Paul hit the door.
That was your kid, wasn't it? he asked quietly as the pair lit up.
Paul nodded stoically. The youngest. Not a champion, that.
I forgot he was yours, Carl mused. That stuff true, about him
working for Grumman, do you think?
Paul shook his head. How in hell should I know? He's so full of shit
about everything I'm surprised he didn't come out brown.
Carl laughed ruefully. I have two like that. Your eldest, Gordon, he's
a good guy tho- worked with him up at Pink Mountain last year.
Yeah, Paul took the flattery, knowing it was coming to try to pry
more information out of him. He's a good kid. Married, two kids.
So, you don't know if what Billy's saying is true, about the tree,
Carl reworded his question.
Paul sucked the cigarette back, repressed the urge to flick it away.

He butted it instead politely and turned to Carl. Even if it were true,

and I would doubt it sincerely coming out of that boy's mouth, don't
you think Grumman would a) have killed him for talking about his
stash and b) have gone to get the damn stuff by now?
Carl nodded, Yeah, that's true. Some smack talk just helps the
general mystique, but if Billy were talking truth... yeah. Dumb
fucking kids the lot of them.
Those Neufies were stupid first to have believed him, Paul
agreed. He walked out to his truck, grinding his teeth that he was
still putting out his kid's fires more than a year after he got taken
away in an ambulance.
If that pipe 'accident' hadn't sent Billy to hospital for a month, he
would have been picked up two days later in the RCMP sting and
be sent to jail. That would have ruined not only Billy Siler's
reputation, but his brother Gord's, and Paul's as well. Paul had
warned his baby boy to get rid of the drugs and the cash, to walk
away and never go back to an oil camp, and ideally walk away from
the drug life as well. But no, Billy had to know best, didn't he? He
could totally handle it.
Well, there were biker gangs, and then there were other kinds of
fidelity, weren't there. Ones that were forged through hard work and
trust. Ones that didn't much like it when hard working men were
threatened by lazy drug mongers... even if the drug mongers were
blood.
That other sort of fidelity had helped Paul out last year, but nothing
could help him out of the mess his son's surgically reconstructed
mouth was making now. Paul let the diesel engine of his flashy new
truck come to temperature and thought out the options.
Billy was wrong. However, he had a small iota of his father's
presence and was able to make people believe the bullshit he
spewed, especially if those people were high, or jonesing, while he
talked. That meant that more kids would be crashing around out in
the bush like the two he found last night- getting themselves and
property wrecked in the process. In addition, the gossip Billy was
spewing was bound to get back to the biker Grumman, who would
be less than pleased Billy was making him look like a frightened
douche who was too scared of a few pigs to go back to the bush
and get his money.

Billy was right. Paul had to light another cigarette over this one, the
consequences were so dire. Grumman would hear about Billy
shooting off his mouth, this punk who, for all Grumman knew, was
responsible for bringing the fuzz down on his sweet operation at the
camp in the first place. After all, Billy was talking now- who's to say
he wasn't shooting his mouth off last year and caused the sting?
Paul winced. Who's to say, indeed? He didn't know. Maybe Billy
was talking too much, just to make himself feel like he could
measure up to the honor and respect his big brother and dad got out
in this quagmire of 16 hour days and grueling, all-season work. Billy
never took to the idea of work hard, reap the benefits- self-respect
from such efforts never settled on the kid's shoulders, and his
money had a way of, disappearing. Most likely into Grumman's
pockets, Paul thought ruefully.
At any rate, Paul shook his head, Grumman would want serious
biker revenge if he tracked down who was starting a Mad, Mad,
Mad, Mad treasure hunt over his missing fifty gees.
Paul stared at his tired, haggard face in the rearview as he made a
disturbing realization. Grumman would come after the kids who told
him about Billy, after Billy himself, and anyone else poking around
out there... and that meant Billy's dad, didn't it?
That little peckerhead, Paul cursed, and flung his cigarette out the
window in disgust. He kicked the truck into gear and headed out to
what was quite possibly the scene of his eventual gangland murder.
He had to fix the fucking backhoe, didn't he? He had to spend
possibly hours only feet from a biker's money- money that Paul's
own goodfornothingkid kept blabbing about.
I'm sure I can convince Grumman I'm here on legitimate business,
Paul gritted his teeth again. No way I'd be colluding with my kid to
steal his cash.
He took a sharp turn onto Killer's Creek road, forgot to call his
kilometers. The nondescript pickup that pulled in directly behind him
turned on a flashing amber light. Paul looked in the mirror.
Well, fuck me gently, he cursed again, and pulled over.
The Road Monitor pulled up beside him and rolled down his
passenger window. Paul rolled down his, blushing fiercely.
Morning, Paul, Mike the monitor nodded at him.

Morning, Mike, Paul winced.

Any particular reason you're driving like a twenty-year old with a
brand new truck lease this fine icy morning?
Paul closed his eyes. Just a fuckup, Mike, he said. No excuse.
Family bullshit- let it get in the way.
Mike looked at him a long moment. He picked up his clipboard.
Well, there goes three hundred bucks, Paul thought. Not calling his
kilometers, not signalling, not changing frequency when he should
have for the Killer's Creek radio signal, speeding...
I'm gonna pretend I spilled coffee on my nuts and missed your
flagrant disregard for the rules of the road, Mike said, and set his
board down.
Paul gaped at him. Thank you, he said, simply.
Well, Mike said, breathing in and stretching his back, I know you.
I know you're the guy that trains the kids about this stuff. He looked
at Paul over his bifocals. I know whatever's on your mind must be
pretty serious, so you don't need tickets to add to your day. But next
time-
You'll pour hot coffee on my nuts, Paul finished.
Again, you'd have to pay me for that, too, Mike guffawed, and
Paul joined him, happy to fan the ego of the man who let him live
another day.
On impulse, Paul asked Mike, Hey, have you seen a lot of activity
down the end of Killer's Creek the past while?
Mike looked at him wryly. You mean kids lookin' for treasure?
Yeah, I seen a bit. More'n usual. Mike narrowed his eyes at Paul.
This have something to do with Billy, then?
Paul twitched. Yeah, he sighed. I'm worried. Worried about what
bullshit Billy's been spouting now.
Guess a knock in the kisser didn't teach him to shut the fuck up,
then.
So Billy was talking big before his timeout, Paul thought ruefully.
Probably lends more credence to the idea that all this is true...
cause bullshit doesn't usually get a pipe in the jaw.

Guess not, Paul agreed. Any truth to all this crap?

Mike shrugged, looked away, but when he looked back, his eyes
were glittering. I dunno, man, he said loudly over the roar of both
their engines and heaters. All I know is, ten months ago, a whole
buncha tricked out vehicles were bopping all over Killer's Creek
road and Wikin, lotsa big guys, no radios at first... they came back
like six times.
Well, then, Paul said.
Well indeed, Mike agreed.
Paul got a call to fix the tracks on another hoe not far down the
Winkin Road and made his goodbyes hastily to Mike the Road
Monitor. The tracks were in a bad way- the machine was a rental,
not one of the company ones Paul tended every day- and it took him
until the sun turned red and sullen and nestled onto the top of
Winkin Ridge before he could get away.
He was tired, he was exhausted, and he was most of all deeply
concerned about the safety of his family. Billy was certainly not
safe... Paul wasn't sure how he felt about that. Paul himself wasn't
safe, not with the job he still had to do, tending that very
conspicuous backhoe. His eldest son, Gord, he might not be safe,
either. You never could tell how biker justice played out.
Paul radioed his supervisor to see if he could work on the
Neufie-trashed backhoe on Monday. If he could just get Sunday to
go see Billy, give him a good shake, find out what he'd been saying,
and what was trueNo, we need that hoe five by five for the morning, new contractors
coming then, the consultant advised. Want me to have the medic
bring out food at the shift change?
Paul leaned his head back against the seat. He had a mother of a
headache. All that teeth clenching. No, thanks. I'll just get 'er done.
Good man, the consultant replied. I'll tell them where you'll be.
When Paul made it out to the end of the end of Killer's Creek where
the backhoe was thrashed, the infinite inky night of Canadian taiga
had settled on the scene again. It was like he had never seen the
place in daylight. The same snow clung sullenly to the burdened
boughs of the scrappy pine trees. A thousand stars twinkled their

brittle light overhead. Paul might as well have been on Mars.

He followed his tracks to the backhoe once more. The derelict
machine looked like it was haunted already, even though it had sat
for just the one night and day. Paul had to remind himself that
Wendy was out there again, not more than ten klicks away, and the
camp was still ticking along as normal. There was a world, and he
was still part of it. He had not walked into a horror movie where
haunted backhoes housed untold evil.
There was no sudden sign of more tire tracks to indicate untold
bikers, either, Paul had noted with a sigh of relief. At least winter
was good for writing its stories in the snow.
Paul sat a moment, looking at the backhoe in the headlights of his
truck. He flicked them onto high.
The whole day, this thought puzzle had been preoccupying him.
Why would a biker go to all the trouble of burying what couldn't be
more than a hockey bag full of cash and drugs in the middle of
winter? He would have needed equipment, which would have
blazed a trail anyone could have followed.
People fell for the story, Paul said aloud, surprising himself with
his own voice. People thought of, what were they called, tropes.
Treasure meant pirates. Pirates buried treasure. Nobody did the
math and realized the sting happened in January. He stared up at
the trees. There were some big ones directly ahead of the Cat.
Paul drove closer, noticed a large glob of snow hanging from a
branch.
No, beneath a branch.
Too large for a single branch to hold.
He threw the truck into park and rooted around in his cab amongst
work orders, cigarette packs, coffee cups and vehicle inspection
forms until he found what he was looking for.
Paul plugged the spotlight into the cigarette lighter and rolled down
his window. The subzero air fogged his bifocals and billowed into
the truck, condensing the warm moistness into clouds of mist that
collected on Paul's five o'clock shadow and spectacles. He scraped
windows of vision with his thumbs and trained the spotlight on the
top of the tree containing the snow glob.

It was distinctly forked. Of course, there had been many forked

trees along the path of destruction the Neufies had wreaked with the
backhoe, but this tree was distinctly taller and more prominently
doubled than the others. Paul scanned the spotlight down the tree
until he found the snowA flash of navy stood out in the light against the black green of the
pine. Paul could make out the last letters of the Bauer logo on the
hockey bag hanging from the pine tree. His breath caught in his
throat, and he noticed a blue poly rope tied to the handles. He
followed the rope up, up, until it looped itself around a tree branch
about thirty five feet off the ground. He followed the rope down,
down, down... there was a knot tied to a branch about fifteen feet off
the forest floor. With all the snow, Paul could easily reach the knot
from the back of his pickup.
He kicked the truck into gear and moved toward the branch holding
the knot.
Holy shit, he breathed. Then, without even thinking about it, he
added, Boy, these kids are dumb.
It looked like he wouldn't be able to reach the bag from his truck box
and the mechanical canopy wouldn't be too happy about his weight
with the bag. He moved with only small difficulty alongside the tree.
He had to admit the new four wheel drive with its push button
activation was pretty sweet- no fiddling in two feet of snow at frozen
hubs on this treasure hunt. He drove through the drift and parked
alongside the tree as though he were in a supermarket parking lot.
Kids are dumb, gangsters are greedy, and engineers generally
come out on top, Paul mumbled to himself as he clambered up on
the wet hood, his workboot lodging itself momentarily in the wheel
well as he climbed. He clambered up the windshield, making the
crack he had picked up snake further across the glass.
Paul let the roof of the pickup settle under his not unconsiderable
weight, then reached up into the wintry pine boughs. It smelled like
Christmas back when he was a child and Paul was able to reach his
gift with perfect ease. He couldn't help but grin as he untied the
square knot and let the bag drop into the snow below him.
He jumped off the pickup and threw the hockey bag into his pickup.
It was freezing out- his fingers were numb even through the rubber
palmed gloves he was wearing. Paul cranked the heater and

cleaned off his glasses properly, pausing to shake out the snow
from his hair.
At length, his eyes settled on the bag. Well, he had done it now. He
had Stolen it. Even if he put the damn thing back now, the paranoid
biker Grumman probably had the knot memorized, and would know
it had been adulterated. Which would mean that, no matter what,
Paul's son Billy would have trouble on his hands.
Might as well see what we've got, Paul muttered. He unzipped the
bag with a flourish.
His eyebrows raised. The open bag settled and revealed the
muzzles of five or six light semi-automatic rifles. Beneath was a
flash of pink. Lester B. Pearsons gazed up at Paul impassively
through triggers and muzzle ventings. In the furthest corner from
him there was a ziplock bag, filled of course with light cream
powder.
He shook his head. The sight of the guns made him at first thrilled
and then disgusted, changing to abhorrence. The money beneath
didn't even seem like cash to him. It looked tainted, tinged with a
day-glo red that seemed to flash danger to Paul. The drugs felt like
nothing he would ever want to touch. The two, no three bags in the
hockey kit felt like death and degradation distilled into crystalline
powder. Paul could see in his mind's eye Billy's reaction to the
presence of so many drugs, and the certainty of his son's greedy
ebullience and complete inability to keep from destroying his profit
margin by dipping into their musty death promises broke something
in Paul toward his youngest son once and for all.
Well, Paul breathed. I guess that little prick of mine isn't
completely full of shit, then.
He pulled away from the tree and headed back to the backhoe.
What the hell was wrong with the damn thing anyway? He
distracted himself from the emanations of grimy evil oozing from the
bag of booty. Paul parked facing the Cat obliquely so his headlights
wouldn't cast shadows on the cab from the blade.
He let his mind consume itself with his actual job; he avoided facing
the fact that bag had disturbed him intensely, perhaps finally. While
with his hands he ran through his diagnostics, removing the tree
from the windshield, checking the battery power, hydraulic lines,
safety switches and circuits, Paul's mind was sitting still in grim

determined cogitation. About the bag. About his sons. About the
ultimate betrayal Billy displayed by wanting a life that smelled like
that filth.
The Cat fired up. Paul smiled the small smile of mechanics
everywhere who fix the broken and shifted the blade into neutral for
transport mode. He backed the hoe along the track it had made the
day before using the rear lights on the unit and parked it on the
half-finished well pad.
He killed the engine and sat in the uncomfortable seat, staring out at
the darkness. Saying nothing to himself, let alone the night air, Paul
hopped out of the cab and grabbed the jerry can of gas from its
strapping on the backhoe.
He walked along the trail of destruction the hoe had made, his boots
cracking the icy snow with sounds like nails on a chalkboard.
Overhead the crystalline stars shone with brittle winter light, and the
splash of terrestrial light from his truck's idling headlights cast wyrd
shadows along the stands of tall, spindly pines about him. He
walked with an odd purpose, with a peculiar quiet that indicated to
the wise a man who had made a decision for himself alone.
Paul opened his passenger door and dragged the hockey bag out
like it was Billy by the collar. He threw it in front of the truck. It
poofed the powdery, frozen snow around it. Paul set the jerrycan
down and, with a face more suited to sorting through rancid
garbage than guns and money, removed the clips from the weapons
and scanned the bag thoroughly for more ammunition. He paused
when he found a simple, elegant Luger pistol. It looked like it was
well loved- a gangster's favorite. Paul removed the clip and tucked it
and the pistol into his overalls pocket. He replaced the guns in the
bag.
With grim purpose, he drenched the entire thing in gasoline. Twenty
litres of fuel took a long time to pour onto the bag and the frozen
earth. By the time he was done, the bag was swimming. He grabbed
the small tree and threw it onto the bag, where it landed with a
splash. He added some of the broken branches the Neufies had
brought down.
After only a moment's hesitation, Paul removed his gloves and
tossed them on the pile, too. He then fished in his pocket for his
cigarette packet and removed one with his lips.

I don't need money, Paul muttered around the cigarette. Money

doesn't impress me. I've got more than I could ever use.
He took a deep draw on the cigarette, using up half of it. This is
absolutely the last thing I ever do for you, Billy, Paul declared. No
one will ever, ever think you did this.
He flicked the cigarette on the burning pile and felt the breath of his
vow as it was sucked from his lips and into the fireball that raised
itself into the sky. Paul watched the merry blaze eat the tree, moved
out of the line of the wind as the drugs started to add a moist, sickly
sweet odor to the gasoline and pine tar.
He lit another cigarette, watched the metal of the gun barrels turn
cherry red. He removed the Luger from his pocket and looked at it
idly. He replaced the clip, turned on the safety and tucked the gun
into his toolbox in the back seat of his pickup. That would be staying
with him, now... for when Grumman came looking for the man who
burned down his cache.
The snow melted quickly around the wide, gasoline soaked blaze,
regulating the fire and turning it into a bubbling, plastic mess with
gun barrels sticking out of it. Some of them were cracked, others
bent, all clearly unuseable.
Perhaps it sent a message to cops and gangsters alike, Paul
thought. A message about what happens when you step on the
necks of people working hard to earn a good living. Perhaps not. He
got in his truck and drove back to Killer's Creek Road, turning left
instead of right to go to the camp. He would radio his boss on the
way and tell him he had to go, meet him at the highway and tell him
why.
Things would be changing for Paul, now. His son Gord would be ok,
and Billy- well, that was a few kilos of crap that wouldn't go in his
veins. Or up his nose. Or whatever.
As for Paul- he reasoned he could use a change, what with all this
fooferaw weaseling its way into the Oilpatch. And there was always
work somewhere for a good mechanic.

The Adventures of Wesley Owens,

Boy Wizard

by

Virginia Carraway Stark

Why should I be offended if the Universe chooses to give me a story

to tell?
When I was a child I thought that stories were things that happened
to other people and that adventures were something you did on
sunny afternoons. I didn't realize that for every sunny afternoon
there are cold nights and lonely hours and most of it makes you feel
like a small gnat on the flank of the universe and like you are about
to be swatted. You never realize when you are young, just how long
it takes to become a hero.
I was only a little boy, but I had a destiny ahead of me: my destiny
was to bring magic into the world.
My name is Wesley Owens. When I was a boy, some people called
me 'Wes', but in my own, serious little mind, my name was always
Wesley. I liked to think of my name as one thing: WesleyOwens. It
made me feel complete. It was my Father who I thought of myself in
terms of. My Mother was in the background of my life. She was a

thin wisp about the house compared to the shear bulk and burly
laughter and somber introspection of my Father. Both moods seem
to come on him like a storm and each were my favorite way to see
him.
My Mother's influence on me was so profound and subtle that I
often though t that anyone could have been my mother and had the
same impact on my life. That's exactly the arrogant, callous thought
that children sometimes have. They don't make any sense at all and
I still blush and squirm thinking about how I could ever have such a
thought towards the woman who gave me life. It's so easy to be a
jerk when you're just a kid.
My Mother liked to paint. She was a wonderful artist and she would
paint fanciful scenes. They were from her past, the stories her
mother had told her in her soft Danish accent about the Old Gods
and the Old Ways. She would hold me on her lap while I ate cookies
and she would tell me the stories where she had first seen the
images in her mind at her own mother's lap. Her stories got into my
head and influenced every aspect of my life, but it was all so subtle
and I was so thoughtless, that I never realized the stories of Odin,
Thor, Freja and Loki weren't coming out of my own head. It was in
this way that I grew to accept magic as a fact of life and it never
occurred to me to question it's reality. This made things much easier
for me.
My Father was my reality, but my Mother was my subconscious and
it was her rather than him that pervaded all throughout my thoughts
and it was her I would miss even more than my Father when they
were gone.
It was a dark and stormy night and I was woken out of a nightmare. I
was only eight then and my Mother came into my room and woke
me up from the bad dream that had made me scream out and had
woken the whole house. My older brother came to the door and
looked in as our Mom stroked my hair. She opened up her soft pink
flowered bathrobe and hid me against her nightgown and the safe,
soft scent of lilacs surrounded me along with her scent and the
warmth of her skin. She cooed over me and called me her, 'little
egg, oh, my little pup, tell me all your dreams, sweetheart.
I didn't remember my dream, even though my cheeks were wet with
tears, there was nothing to tell her.

My Father came in and ruffled my hair and told me I was his brave
little soldier. My older brother smiled at me and went back to bed. I
felt embarrassed that I had woken everyone up but I wasn't really
upset or scared, except in a sort of left over way, like a frying pan
that remembers it made hamburgers a couople of nights ago.
The next day was normal and I didn't think back on what had
happened the night before. I went to school and I made a picture of
me as soldier for one of my classes. I had a viking helmet though, as
I explained to the teacher, I just looked naked without one.
That night was not dark and stormy, but I had another nightmare
anyhow. Once more I woke up with my mother cooing over me and
my brother and father standing in the doorway. That was Friday
night and Saturday I heard my mother and father discussing me.
I don't understand it, has he seen anything scary? Maybe they've
been teaching him something in school? My Father sounded
concerned, he was somber and not amused.
He hasn't said anything to me. I think he's troubled by something.
Perhaps he senses something? There was the sound of the 'hiss'
of the iron as she steamed his shirt collar.
Have you been telling him stories? I noticed your latest picture, and
there was thunder and lightening the first time he had the bad
dream.
I've been telling him stories since he was a baby. They've never
scared him before.
Well, let's see what happens tonight. He's never been prone to bad
dreams, something must have changed for him. I'd like to know
what.
That night before bed my mother gave me a glass of warm milk. We
sat together in my bedroom and she played the Dvorak Air
Symphony on my tape player and told me about Nott, the
Grandmother of Thor and guardian of good dreams.
She rides a black mare, that is where we get the idea of having a
'nightmare'.
But Nott isn't scary though, even though she brings the
nightmares?
Oh, no, she doesn't bring the nightmare to hurt you. She controls it

with a bit and bridle. If you look for Nott, she will help you find what
your bad dreams are telling you. That's why she comes to you.
I don't remember my bad dreams.
I know, my love. You must say to yourself before you go to sleep,
'Help me Lady Nott, I must remember my dreams tonight.'.
What if I don't remember them? Will she be angry with me?
If you don't remember tonight, then ask her help again. There are
so many nights in so many places, she's very busy, you know.
She kissed me on my forehead and left the room, she turned the
light off when she left and my room was lit with the soft lights of my
night light.
I wasn't scared. I didn't remember by bad dream at all and mother
had explained to be that Nott was the mother of the night and the
day but that she liked the night best and craved the shadows. It was
there that I would find her, in the shadows.
The room's shadow's deepened as the full moon went from glowing
directly in my window to being lost behind the trees along our fence
line. I felt tired but I kept looking around the room, waiting for Nott to
appear and repeating the words my Mother had told me to say.
Help me, Lady Nott, I must remember my dreams tonight. Help me,
Lady Nott, I must remember my dreams tonight.
I had the blankets around my chin and my hands clutched at them. I
wished that my Mother had left the light on then. I stuttered in my
words. Help me... Lady, Lady Nott. Help me...
I doubted the wisdom in uttering the words then. I had never asked
any diety large or small or anything ever before. Then I saw her. She
emerged out of the wall by my dark colored drapes. She was
hunched low over a mare's neck and they seemed almost at parity,
such was the nature of Nott's magic. She was beautiful, but dark.
Very dark. Her lips were purple black and so were her thick
eyelashes and eyebrows. Her hair was the same color, it was very
long and tied into a ponytail on the top of her head and secured
there with more of her hair wound around it. Her fingernails were
long and sharp and curved like talons and dark again. Her dress
was large on her and hung about her in draping swathes. It was
black and glittered with secret stars. It seemed to be one very large
piece of cloth around her and as she moved there would

occasionally be a slash of white skin like the moon briefly slicing

through a cloud on a dark night. Her mare was the tiniest horse I
had ever seen. It was graceful and fine and only the size of a very
large dog. The mare was the charcoal colored and I could see that
she had a cruel snaffle bit in her mouth. She was a nightmare and
she frightened me even though Nott clearly had her under control
and the mare herself seemed cheerful and lifted her delicate feet
high off the carpeted floor. Nott was tiny too, even smaller than my
Mother. Her teeth were frighteningly white and small against her
black lips.
Her voice was a tiny whisper in the dark. Even in my quiet room, I
could barely hear her. Her voice was venomous and took my breath
so at first I could barely reply.
You called for me, Child?
She smiled at me and I smiled back, because I wanted to smile
back and because I was a little afraid of what she might do to me if I
didn't.
Yes... My Mother told me about you... Please, I need to remember
my bad dream.
She moved towards me. Her feet were silent. She seemed to slide
across the carpet towards me and I was reminded strongly of a
small black viper, with a nearly silent slither the reins for
Nightmare's bridle slid out of her fingers. The mare seemed not to
notice.
Why do you want to remember?
I- I'm not sure. I think, I think my mother thinks that my dream is a
warning of some kind, or maybe a message.
And what do you think?
I think that... I think that I don't usually have nightmares, and I think
that my Mom's usually right... so I better listen.
She laughed at me and I thought that her laugh was the nicest thing
about her. When she smiled this time I didn't find it so disturbing.
She was right beside me then. Her face close to mine and she
grabbed my head in her small hands. Her nails hurt me and in the
morning I would see little 'V' marks filled with blood on my face,
neck and scalp. She looked me full in the eyes and they were

blacker than the darkest night and abysmal. My body went limp in
her hands and I remembered.
Tall roaring waterfalls, over immense cliffs of black stone that was
at the same time flesh.
Mists rise from the waters while stars wheel overhead, an insane
dance of time
Cracking timbers from a tree fall, glowing with cinders from lava and
melted stone
The limbs fall into the ocean where the mists spring
Lightning flashes, in it the god of its making, holding his hand to the
child on the precipice
Shooting down with the bolt, arcing to the shore of the sea
A great mass of glass forms beneath the feet of Thor, as the waves
crash and the water falls
Two people lie prone in the surf, leaves and branches growing from
their hair
Ash and elm lie tangled, cinders quenched by the dark waters
Their faces obscured by sand and weed, the waves lap against
them
Lightning flashes as the waters pull away, the faces of mother and
father lie smote in the surf.
Their feet and hands charred by the lava and cinders grown too
close to the Tree
Their bodies lifeless, their leaves wilting. The boy runs to the
downed branches
Clings to their blackened limbs, cries for their fate. He raises his
head to the wheeling stars
Above him stands Wodin, the Allfather, his eye marked with
sadness.
Only breath for one have I, after the great making, even for a hero
like yourself.
He holds out his spear by its wooden end, the boy raises himself to
his feet

The Father takes a skin of mead, empties it in his throat

And breathes it swollen-sided anew. The great God holds it to the
boy, who shivering, takes the skin
Even while he pleads for one more salvation. The lightning flashes
again
There is but one limb left on the shore, and ashes where the other
remains.
Smoke and mist from the falls cannot be cleared, the boy's vision is
dark as to which branch may be saved.
I woke up from the dream to find that I was covered in a thin sheen
of sweat. My pajama bottoms were crumpled and wrinkled high on
my legs as I had fought along with the boy in my dreams, my
nightmare. A scream was dying in my throat as my door was flung
open and my mom came into the room.
Are you alright? She ran to me and held me in her arms, don't
cry.
I'm not crying, I said. She didn't say anything but plucked a
kleenex from the box and wiped away the tears that were drying on
my cheeks.
What did you dream, tell me while you remember.
The details were already growing foggy in my mind but I retold them
to her as best as I could. She was very quiet and still the whole time
but seemed even more quiet when I told her about seeing her and
Dad, their faces charred and the lightening dancing and menacing
over them.
...and then it was too dark, I couldn't see what to do next, and then
I woke up.
My mother was so still and the energy seemed to have flooded
away from her arms that now seemed cold around me, Mom, what
does it mean to you?
She sighed and it was like she started up again. Her arms slowly
warmed and she kissed my forehead and rocked me, I don't know
what it means, I'm afraid it is a warning but I don't understand it.
I didn't say, 'then how can we stop it', but the question was
emblazoned on my mind. I didn't tell Mom about the visit from Nott

that had started it all. She had faded to the back of my mind and it
wouldn't be until after some of her warning would come to pass that
I would recall who had sent the nightmare. I also forgot to tell her
about the orb that I had taken when Thor had extended his hand to
me. It seemed to me a secret between a boy and Thor that my
mother shouldn't be privy to. It was easy to forget about the orb and
dismiss it as unimportant.
I thought it was easy, it certainly wasn't on my mind when Mandy
asked if Kojack and I wanted to go to the beach with her after class.
It was stormy out without being rainy yet and I loved to look at the
ocean when it was rough and excited so I of course said yes.
We were having a lot of fun on the beach, Kojack found seaweed
that he draped over his shoulders and a stick that he wielded as a
spear. Mandy and I found our own spears and we started sparring
and playing in the damp dunes. I don't know what came over me,
but at some point the playing became too real and I started to fight
as though I was actually in jeopardy. Kojack and Mandy thought at
first that I was playing and they laughed at my efforts to come after
them but then it turned more serious when I didn't seem to want to
or maybe I wasn't able to stop. The whole thing at this point became
vague in my mind and I don't remember anything until I shouted, I
am the warrior of Thor!
It was the sort of thing that kids do when they play and normally if I
would have played out something like that Mandy and Kojack would
have dissolved into giggling and after turning very red I would have
started to laugh at myself as well. This time was different.
When I would normally play and shout out some absurd, overblown
thing, most often my voice would seem to go high and crack, but
this time, it seemed to lower, almost into the voice that it would
become one day. I raised my foolish 'spear' as I shouted. I had
knocked Mandy onto her back and even Kojack was breathless and
panting, down on one knee. When I cried out, a bolt of lightening
came down and struck me. I felt like I was being squeezed in the
hand of an enormous giant. The pain and shock stole my breath and
the time that didn't pass. It was a moment where I was in total stasis
and all I could think was: this is what death feels like.
Then the lightening dropped me and I fell to the sand.
I felt like I couldn't breath and for a minute I was sure that my heart

was going to stop as it leaped in my chest in erratic poundings that

ran and then threaded and nearly failed and then pounded again. I
gasped for air like someone emerging from the sea. Mandy and
Kojack were both hit by the shock of the bolt to the ground and the
sound of the thunder. I never even heard the thunder really, I was
too busy with the lightening. All of our ears were ringing from it and
we all sat stunned for about fifteen minutes before Kojack gingerly
got to his feet again. He came over to me, he was blinking and
wiping at his eyes. He told me later that he had been looking right at
me when the lightening struck and that he had an afterimage of a
bolt of lightening for several days afterwards. I wasn't interested in
figuring out if I was okay or not, which is what Kojack seemed
worried about.
I was more interested in what was under my feet where my shoes
had melted to the sand.
Mandy and Kojack had both wanted to touch it, but I wouldn't let
them. I dug down around the deformed lightening glass that had the
imprint from the bottom of my runners embedded in it and found
another piece of glass. This one was perfectly smooth and round. It
was the murky color of storm clouds with jagged imperfections of
mica that sparkled like glittered lightening. It was the same one that
Thor had handed to me in my dream and now I was worried for my
parents and worried for my friends as well.
The next day I was cranky with everyone. Having a secret from my
parents made me cranky but so did the increasing sense that I had
that I had no control of the warnings or of some dire prophecy that
was about to befall me and my family. I had snarked at my friends
and even at my teachers several times before lunch. Mandy and
Kojack came up to me on the bench where I was inspecting my
lunch at. They sidled up to me like I was a dog who had recently
bitten them and my heart felt sore and sad that I had made my
friends feel this way.
So many things had happened after the lightening strike and the
keeping of secrets was hard on me. It had been getting dark by the
time we had all gone home the night before and the clouds that had
been threatening with rain before were pelting us now.
What should we tell our parents?
Tell them about what? I asked, feeling the first bit of crossness

creeping into my spine.

Mandy looked exasperated and rolled her eyes before explaining,
you got hit by lightening, directly hit by lightening. We could all have
died.
But we didn't die.
No, but I know for a fact that you are supposed to go to the hospital
if you get a bad shock. You can die in your sleep. My dad told me
so.
Kojack looked worried. Mandy's dad was a paramedic and he was
our voice of god when it came to medicine. I was worried too, but
telling my parents, especially after I had already told my mom about
the dream seemed like asking for problems. I'd probably get
grounded for it, even though that seemed to me at the time an
irrational association.
I don't think we should.
Well, can you at least give us a good reason why you think we
shouldn't?
We would all probably get to take tomorrow off of school, Kojack
offered.
I couldn't express to them how uncomfortable the idea made me
feel, and of course if one of us said anything there would be a storm
of parents calling each other and we'd all be rushed to the
emergency room. They understood my discomfort better than I
could express it.
Let's agree that if we feel weird or sick or anything that we'll try to
give the others a call before we tell our parents.
Kojack and I nodded our heads in agreement. Kojack was
surreptitiously putting his hand under his jacket to feel his heart.
When he saw me watching him it was his turn to turn red while
Mandy and I laughed and then he laughed too.
My heart wasn't racing anymore and I felt exhausted and wet from
the rain that was coating me. The orb was wrapped up in my jacket
so I could try to smuggle it into the house past mom and dad. When
I opened the door the warm, welcome light of the living room was
cacophonous with the sounds of a rip roaring fight.

My parents very rarely ever fought loudly. Sometimes I overheard

them having one of those fights where adults will whisper angrily at
each other to keep from getting overheard and overheated. This
was different. Dad was yelling and Mom was shrill and screaming
back at him. I closed the door behind me as mom ran upstairs, her
face covered in tears and a large canvass under her arm.
Dad..? I wanted him to tell me that everything was alright, but he
looked away from me and left the room instead. Upstairs I could
hear my mom all the way up in the attic and the sound of far away,
muffled weeping.
I went to the kitchen after my Dad but he left and went to his study
just as I was coming through the door. I looked in the fridge and
then finally found something I could warm up for myself in the
freezer. I took my dinner up to my room without seeing either of my
parents. After I had eaten I tried to do my homework but all I could
think about was the lightening and the power of it running through
me, a thing not to be feared but embraced and submitted to. I had
rode lightening and lived to tell the tale.
I heard my mom creep downstairs from the attic and get into the
shower. I heard my dad turn off the lights downstairs and go to bed.
A few minutes after I heard the shower turn off and mom shuffled
down the hallway the way she did when she was wearing her blue
slippers. She went into the bedroom and I heard the murmur of my
dad's tenor through the wall and then my mom's higher voice, the
sound of them each apologizing and getting into bed.
I started to wonder what my mom had been on the canvass that my
mom had run to the attic with. Had it been one of the Norse gods?
Why would it have caused such a big fight?
I heard the sounds of springs as mom curled up in bed with my dad
and knew that whatever had caused the fight had been forgiven
between them. I couldn't shake the idea that I should know what
had been on that canvass.
I crept out of of bed on tip toe and went up the hallway. I snuck up
the attic steps, certain that mom or dad would hear me and I would
cause the whole fight to ignite again.
I found the canvass quickly even though my mom had taken it to the
far end of the attic. She had left a trail of her upset and near the
painting was a crumpled kleenex that she had dropped. I turned the

painting around and saw that it was indeed another painting of Thor
after she had promised my dad that she would stop painting them. I
felt like I was struck by lightening again as I gazed at the lifelike god
that my mother had picked out in careful strokes of her oil paints. He
had his arms extended and in his hands he held a storm grey ball of
glass to a boy who was the exactly likeness of me.
I examined the painting for a long time. She had put two dim figures
in the picture as well, they had been knocked over and their features
were impossible to make out hidden by the lightening bold that Thor
and I were encased in the picture in. I knew who they were anyway.
The one thing that I didn't know was how mom had known about the
orb? I had so carefully neglected to mention it, but I knew the
answer, sometimes mothers just know.
I woke up the next morning and at first I had no memory of
everything that had happened the night before but then it came
back and I was just happy that my heart hadn't stopped in the night
like Mandy had warned. I put the orb into the bottom of my
backpack.
I had saved the glass footprints as well but I put those in one of my
desk drawers. I was pretty sure now that even if getting hit by
lightening wasn't something that I would have gotten in trouble for,
that not telling my parents about it after it happened would definitely
get me into trouble.
Mandy and Kojack had been talking and they nudged each other
when they saw me coming up to them.
We were both really worried about you last night. Are you feeling
alright?
I shrugged, I guess so. I was pretty stiff when I first woke up but a
long shower fixed it up okay. Are you guys alright?
We both dreamt about that hunk of glass that you dug out of the
sand last night, Kojack's eyes were huge as he spoke.
I didn't like this, all of this was affecting us too deeply. I had that
same sense that events were running out of all of our control.
Were they bad dreams?
It was Mandy's time to shrug, I wouldn't say bad, but neither of us
remember them very well. We both dreamt about the lightening too.

Maybe the dreams were about the lightening?

Why wouldn't you let us touch the ball yesterday? Kojack blurted
out.
I found that I wasn't able to make eye contact with either one of
them, I don't know, I guess part of it was that I found it and I
wanted to keep it sort of, private. I don't know, it's not rational, I felt
like it might be something bad, that it might have a taint on it.
I didn't want to tell them about the fight or the painting. This was
reaching whole new heights of weird.
Can we see it after school?
I opened my bag and brought out the orb, you can see it right now.
I can't think of any real reason to hide it from you guys, Im just not
really myself after the lightening.
I flinched a little when first Mandy and then Kojack reached out their
hands to touch it. My worry about it was nebulous and I hoped,
unfounded.
I don't like it.
No, I don't like it either. Kojack added.
I felt a rush of heat at their response. I had to try to remind myself
about my own feeling of unease about it.
Can you get rid of it?
I didn't answer Mandy right away but carefully wrapped it back up
and put it back in the bottom of my bag.
Why would I want to do that?
Why would you want to keep it? Remember, you nearly died, I
don't see why you would want to keep something like that around.
Why wouldn't I keep it? I lived. I won.
It is pretty cool, Kojack offered.
Well, maybe we could take it into the curio shop and get it
appraised.
It was such a well thought out suggestion that I could tell that they
had discussed this before they had seen me coming. It was
reluctantly and slightly bemusedly that I agreed to take it in to have

Mr. Watson at Watson's Antiques have a look at it after explaining

several times that no matter how much he offered me I had no
intetion of selling it. The idea of having a grown up involved even
obliquely in our secret was comforting.
We all hopped on our bikes and went down to Watson's Antiques
the next day after school. I had been in there before, but only a few
times and with my Mom. Going in with Mandy and Kojack, Watson's
felt like walking into a strange and dusty world.
Mr. Watson held a place of reverence and terror in my world.
Several years ago when I was eight or nine I had been looking
through the store and found a little wizard figurine that had drawn
me towards it. My Mom had been visiting with Mr. Watson and I had
slipped the figurine into my pocket with barely a thought about it.
I hadn't really intended to steal something, it was a thoughtless act
and I didn't analyze that what I was doing was bad, I just did it. We
were walking out of the store when I felt an enormous hand wrap
around my small bicep. I looked behind me and up, Mr. Watson's
bearded face towered over me, he was tall even compared to my
parents and to me, at that age, he was nothing short of a giant.
I had no idea how he had seen me slip it into my pocket but he very
definitely knew. My mom was appalled when I produced the figurine
and offered to pay him for it but Mr. Watson had refused and asked
my mother not to bring me when she came to the store next time.
That had been the last time that I had set foot into the antique store,
until today.
When we got to the old storefront window, I hesitated, it felt like the
right thing to do to come here, but my stomach was doing nervous
flip flops
Mr. Watson was standing at the counter looking at me with the
same disapproval as the day he kicked me out of his store years
ago. In fact, it didn't look to me as though he had even moved over
the years, I found myself looking to see if he had cobwebs and dust
on him. He didn't have either on him but his presence seemed
eternal and the dull gray color of his cardigan blended with the dull
brown of his cuorderoy pants and the dull, faded non-descript plaid
of his shirt. His hair was gray and so were his eyes, his skin was
faded and as old as parchment.
I pulled the ball of glass out of my pocket and held it in my hands. It

felt cool and pleasant and I held it out to Mr. Watson with my voice
and hands trembling, I was wondering, if you could tell me if this is
worth anything, anything at all.
He snatched the ball from me as quick as a bird after a worm and I
looked at my empty fingers in surprise. He turned it around and
examined it in the light, Hmmm, where did you find it? You're
Wesley Owens, aren't you? I remember last time you were in here
you were a thieving from my inventory. You didn't steal this from
someone, did you?
His eyes glinted at me as I replied, he was the sort who could tell if
you were lying, I knew that as well as I knew my own name, I didn't
steal it, it was made, umm, by lightning.
Got hit by lightning, did you?
I nodded, he looked at the ball more closely, Hum, well then, is that
so?
Are you talking to me?
To you? What would you know about it?
I don't even know the question.
Well, there you go, you don't even know the question so why would
you think I'd expect you to know the answer. You must either think
I've very strange or be a very strange little boy yourself.
I'm not strange.
That doesn't say a lot about your esteem for me then, now does
it?
I'm lost.
I know you are, but it seems to me that you've been found by
someone. I know your mother, she worships in the old ways. Did you
know that about her?
She tells me stories, they are old stories.
Has she ever told you who controls the lightning?
Thor controls the thunder...
Well, there you have it. Thor has his hammer on you now. I can't
buy this from you. Mr. Watson

took out a small glass cutter and swiftly marred the bottom with an
'x'. There you go, I've marked it with Gebo. It's a gift of the gods
and if getting hit by lightning doesn't tell you that it's for you, I don't
know what will.
I didn't bring it in to sell it! I just wanted to know what it was
worth?
It's worth nothing, it's an oddity and someone might pay five dollars
for it and use it for a paperweight. I wouldn't though, Thor wanted
you to have it, that's the way you've been raised and if you have a
brain in that head of yours then you won't try to put a price tag on it. I
have something else for you friend though, the little girl you've been
hanging around. I would ask you to bring her in here, but she looks
like she's trying to hide from me.
Why does Mandy get something and I just get into trouble?
She gets something for the same reason you got hit by lightning,
it's what is meant to be.
That doesn't seem very fair.
Mr. Watson but a silver rod in a bag and pushed the bag into my
hand. It's none of either of our business. Make sure she gets it
though, we will both hear about it if you don't and getting hit by
lighting is enough for any little boy,
I stumbled out of the store and the fresh air hit me like I had come
from another world. I pushed the bag into Mandy's hands before I
forgot or was tempted to keep it and got onto my bike.
What is this? Mandy asked.
What did he say?
He said that the orb isn't worth anything.
Oh, well, that's okay, my mom says that he's pretty cheap. Maybe
he just doesn't want to pay you a lot for it. Kojack suggested.
I don't think that was it. He didn't want to buy it from me. Mr.
Watson and I had entered a strange conspiracy together and I felt
unwilling to spoil the spell he had woven. Telling Many and Kojack
about how he had spoken to the orb and the things he had said
about lightning and the old ways...
Mandy had opened the bag and took out the small silver rod. It was

shaped like an arrow, or, as I looked at it more closely, like a

miniature spear. It was tipped in garnet that had been edged in
amber. It looked like it was worth a lot of money.
So, he's cheap, is he, Kojack? This looks like it's worth an awful
lot. She turned to me, Are you sure that he meant to give this to
me, maybe it was an accident.
It wasn't an accident.
Well, it doesn't seem very right. I'm going to go in and ask him.
I wouldn't do that. I'd just take it and leave. He might get mad if you
go back. Kojack looked furtively around him.
Let him, if he does that then he's probably senile and didn't mean
to give it to me. I don't want to take advantage of him if it was an
accident.
Kojack and I watched anxiously as she went back in. We watched
her talking excitedly with Mr. Watson who smiled kindly at her. He
spoke and Mandy looked at the wand in her hands. She listened
some more and then put it back in the bag and came out of the
store. She was quiet and still.
What did he say?
He said it's for me. I need to go home and think about things.
I knew exactly how she felt about that. The orb was lying in my
pocket and felt heavier than it had any reason to feel. She and I
exchanged a look and she put a hand on my shoulder and then
pedalled away.
What's going on, you guys? Kojack asked, he looked jumpier than
ever.
We'll talk tomorrow, Kojack, it's been a really long day and I think I
need to go home and go to bed. This'll make more sense
tomorrow... it can't possibly make less sense.
I was wrong about that part, things in the morning would make less
sense than they had ever made in my life.
I was lying on my bed, watching the shadowy patterns of branches
on the ceiling when I heard Mandy's voice. It wasn't as though she
was in the room with me, it was more like hearing a voice through a
telephone when the speaker isn't close to your ear.

I looked around for a source of the sound but I couldn't find

anything.
It's really me, can you really hear me?
Yes, and I think I'm going crazy, I laughed in the empty room. The
phone rang and I jumped and then found it under a stack of books.
Hello?
You heard me, you aren't crazy! Mandy yelled into the phone.
How did you do that?
I'm still trying to figure it out! She laughed, I held the phone away
from my ear, it was like her voice was still echoing in the room as
well as coming through the phone. How about you, have you
figured out what Mr. Watson told you about your orb? He said it was
special like the spear he gave me.
I can use it? To talk to you?
I don't think they do the same things, but he said you would figure it
out if you just trusted the old ways. That's what I did, I just let my
brain get empty and then I could talk to you. Maybe it does other
things too.
I managed to get her off the phone, I wasn't sure if I was alone in my
own head after and worried that maybe she could hear me even
when I couldn't hear her. I was trying to feel excited for her, and I did
believe that something magical had really happened to her, I just
wanted something magical to happen to me as well. I went to bed
and put the orb on my chest. I could hear the sound of television
news coming through the wall but nothing else happened and I
heard that sound almost every night when my dad was home. I held
it up to the lamplight and looked at the smokey trail of bubbles
inside it. I tried to tune out the sounds of the television and asked it
to talk to me, hoping to hear some of the dialogue that Mr. Watson
had heard. Nothing happened.
I fell asleep clutching it, falling into a dream where I was yelling and
nothing was happening.
I woke up into chaos.
My bedroom was filled with roiling blackness but I couldn't move
except very very slowly, as though I was under a great amount of

water. The only thing that I could see was a smudgy orange glow
that filled me with alarm. I groped blindly under my pillow for the orb
only too realize that I was still holding it. Something snapped back
and I could move again, but I still couldn't breath. My bedroom was
filled with choking smoke and the smudgy orange was flames that
were bouncing around in the hallway. Oddly, I was soaking wet.
I screamed in the smoke for my mother and I remembered the
dream I had had and the promise of flames that had followed me in
it. The orb was wet in my hands and I jammed all of my terror into it.
A shield of water pushed out of the orb in my hand in a torrent. I
screamed for my mother, the door was open and I could see that the
downstairs was on fire. I ran out into the hallway, away from the
worst of the smoke and towards my parents bedroom. The orb had
organized the water it was generating into a sphere around me
where the air was more or less breathable. At the bottom of the
stairs a figure that seemed to be robed in flames and smoke pointed
at me and a bolt of fire tore towards me. I ran and behind me the fire
fizzled in the watery sphere that surrounded me.
My parents door was open and I was relieved because I couldn't
recall how to check to find out if it was safe to open a door or not
and the figure was slowly but inexorably climbing the stairs behind
me. I screamed for my mother again. I could see her and dad in bed.
She was struggling to wake up and I could hear her coughing. Dad
wasn't even moving.
I could hear sirens approaching and I saw a set of lights playing
across the inside of their bedroom. It was a nightmare, it couldn't be
real. When I had fallen asleep, everything had been so normal. I put
my parents into the bubble that surrounded me, my mother hugged
me but my dad didn't move when the water hit his face.
My mom took a deep breath and ran to the window. She opened the
window and waved to someone outside with both her arms and then
ran back to the orb. I tried to wake my dad up but he barely even
groaned in his sleep. My mom came back and grabbed me behind
the arms. She was stronger than I thought was possible for
someone not a lot bigger than me. She threw me right out the
window and onto the roof of the porch. A fireman was poking his
head over the eavestroughing. He must have seen something odd
with the bubble of water and the the soaking wet boy running
towards him because his eyes were huge but he waved me over.

The bubble collapsed around me and I ran to him.

He carried me down and handed me to a paramedic who had just
had time to jump out of his ambulance. I fought him from taking me
into the ambulance, I wanted to see my mom and dad come down
safely. He put a needle in my arm and when I woke up I was dry and
all around me was white.
Except for a bit of smoke inhalation and emotional and physical
exhaustion, I was alright. They had sedated me so that they could
treat me but there wasn't really anything wrong with me. My mom
wasn't so lucky, she was much sicker with how much smoke she
had inhaled and she had to stay in the hospital for a few days
getting oxygen and feeling better. It was going to be harder for her
though, Dad didn't make it and our lives were never going to be the
same again.
I stayed with Mandy and her family for a couple of weeks after the
fire. I didn't have anywhere else to go. I was excused from school for
a few days and I felt like a ghost, wandering around in a home that
didn't belong to me and feeling like an orphan. I tried to make the
orb generate water the way it had the night of the fire, but all I could
seem to do was make it drip down my fingers, nothing like the way it
had blossomed into a shield before.
I walked on the beach and found the place where I had been struck
by lightening. Had it been Thor putting his finger on me? If it was, he
was a cruel god. I fell to my knees on the sand and cried for my
father and for my home and for my mother, we were alone in the
world together now. I heard laughter in response to my tears and
demands for answers and I when I looked up I saw a robed figure, it
was dark and smoke seeped downward onto the sand into a puddle
of movement around him. He was laughing at me and then I
watched as though in a nightmare as he started to walk towards me.
At first I was sure that my feet wouldn't budge. That I was in a bad
dream where none of the rules of reality worked and the smoldering
priest would seize my neck with his burning fingers and... and what
would happen then, I wasn't sure, but the speculation of it was
enough to get my feet moving.
He walked slowly after me as I tore across the sand, his laughter
following me even when he did not.
I ran back to main street and tore into Mr. Watson's shop.

I could have picked any store to hide in, but I picked his. I picked it
because it felt like safety.
He looked up when I jingled the bells at the top of the door and
came over to me. He looked behind me and then locked the front
door and pulled the shades on all the windows.
How close was he behind you?
Who?
The Priest of Sirt! Was he close, did he run after you?
Who's Sirt? He... he was walking after me, but he didn't run.
Mr. Watson exhaled in relief, Well, that's something anyway, you
have a bit of time, but he's marked you so you won't have long to
deal with him now.
I don't understand, you have to tell me what is going on.
I flicked away a tear that had insisted on finding its way down my
cheek. Mr. Watson put a kind arm around me and led me further
into the store, There, there, I'll put on some hot chocolate, I'm sure
you like that sort of thing, you look like the sort of boy who would like
hot chocolate.
I nodded, more out of ingrained politeness than an interest in hot
chocolate. He took me to a back room and puttered around with an
ancient kettle and a single burner that was plugged into the wall. His
backroom wasn't how I had imagined it at all. It was littered all over
the wall with bits of papers, stuck into the plaster with thumb tacks.
Some of them had strange sigils on them, others scrawls of letters
and still others were newspaper articles or photographs. The walls
that weren't covered in paper were covered in shelves with books
and oddities haphazardly all over them. A taxidermy turtle with a
chip in his nose watched me from one shelf while a living parrot sat
on a perch quietly, cocking his head and watching me without
comment.
I sat in an armchair across from another chair. An astray was
standing between the chairs and a brown cigarette smoldered
unattended. Mr. Watson grumbled to himself while he waited for the
kettle and made himself a cup of tea and emptied a package of hot
chocolate into it. He put it into my hands and looked at me earnestly.
You have a news article about my house burning down.

Yes, dreadful thing to happen. Sirt was responsible.

I don't know-
Yes, you said that already, you don't know who Sirt is. Your mother
should have warned you about him. He's the god of fire, and he's a
bad customer.
Why is he after me? How do you know?
I can see his mark on you, that's how I know. It's a gift of mine,
being able to see such things, just like you've found out that you
have a bit of gift yourself. Bet you're glad I didn't buy your bauble
now, hmm?
It saved me, me and my mother.
Yes, I think Thor gave it to you because you had already attracted
the attention of Sirt and he wanted to give you what help he could.
Why didn't he just stop Sirt?
It doesn't work that way, there wouldn't be any great battles or
stories to amuse the gods if they could just call a stop to things
anytime they wanted.
So, all this was just to amuse the gods?
Hmm, yes, you could see why the ancient people turned to a less
frantic sort of religion with the rise of the church.
Because that's a god that doesn't play with people?
Oh, my no! That's not what I mean at all! A god who watches his
son get tortured and killed for the amusement of a people who killed
more the day before and would do the same the day after? Oh, he
likes his games just as much as any pantheon god, the difference is
that he says that he doesn't. It does pay in the god game to be
somewhat dishonest with people.
So all the gods are just jerks.
Hmm, I guess you could think of it that way, but maybe more is at
stake than one or two lives, even if those lives are you or the people
you love.
I drank some of my hot chocolate and tried to think about what Mr.
Watson was trying to tell me. It was hard to take, that my father had
died, why? Because he didn't worship Thor? The more I thought

about it, the more it sort of made sense. How could a deity protect
someone who didn't believe in them? What was their motive to
protect them? It wasn't as though Thor went around claiming to be
love or something.
I didn't bring you back here to lecture you on theology, I wanted to
warn you about Sirt and to tell you what I know: in order to defeat
Sirt's Priest when he comes for you, you'll need your two friends to
help you.
Help me do what? And how do you know this?
Sometimes if you listen you'll get messages, but only if you're
willing to listen and not decide what you're going to hear for yourself.
That's all I did, I listened and I guess you weren't listening very well
because the message came to me.
What else do I do?
Well, I guess you try to make sure you're with your friends, and
then I suppose you defeat the priest of Sirt. It seems straight
forward to me.
How do I defeat him?
How would I know that? I would venture an educated guess that
since he's a priest of fire that you use your watery orb in some ways
against him. That seems like it's a bit obvious and even you might
have thought of it.
I don't know how to use it, it only worked the once.
Well, that's nobody's problem but yours... and maybe Thor's as
well. I would assume he'll be rooting for you.
After Mandy came home from school I told her and Kojack about
what had happened to me that day, starting with the priest and the
beach and ending with as much of Mr. Watson's cryptic advice as I
could recall. None of us knew what to make of it but Mandy
suggested that we start working together to try to help me harness
the orb's shield. We decided to go down to the beach where the
lightning had struck since it seemed like a special place to connect
to Thor. I laughed ruefully at how Thor had connected with me
previously there.
I was worried about the choice of locations because the priest knew
I went there as well. I would have refused but I couldn't practice

indoors in case I made it work and ended up soaking Mandy's

house and she was worried about learning to use the spear indoors
as well. Kojack was unhappy with everything and bored that he
didn't have anything to practice with.
Maybe Thor will hit you with a bolt of lightning too, Mandy
suggested.
With my luck it'd probably just knock me into a coma and I wouldn't
get any super powers at all.
The first day was uneventful except in that I was able to make about
a half liter of water thanks to Mandy's guidance. She was able to
speak with me mind to mind and help me to relax enough so that I
could start to feel the energy that I had sensed so easily the night of
the fire.
Just calm down. You're trying too hard.
I'm trying!
That's the problem, you're trying. She said this out loud which was
a little jolting. Kojack was building a sand castle and keeping a
lookout for us. It seemed like the best way to try to exert ourselves in
this place of power and keep safe. Having a job to do made him
happier about thing as well. It wasn't fun being the center of
attention but I guess feeling left out wasn't much fun either.
The next day was even less eventful and by the third day I was
exhausted from not trying so much.
I don't know how to try to not try.
Maybe you should try to meditate or something.
I don't know how to do that either.
My mom does it all the time, that and yoga, interjected Kojack. It
seems pretty easy, I think it's just falling asleep sitting up.
I was sleeping the last time when it worked really well.
You were also scared and freaked out. Mandy reminded me.
So I should fall asleep watching a scary movie.
And when you wake up, it'll be like you wet yourself watching a
horror movie. Kojack teased.
Just try and sit there in the sand and don't think about the orb, or at

least, don't think about how to use it, maybe just feel it with your
fingers... get to know it, but don't think about your motive.
I sat down obligingly on the sand and closed my eyes. They
snapped open a second later, Are you two just going to stand there
watching me?
Mandy turned away and Kojack sat down by the ruins of his
sandcastle from the previous day and started working on it again.
Mandy walked over and sat down to help him, Just pretend we're
not here and we promise we won't even look at you while you're
eyes are closed.
I watched them for a minute to make sure she was serious and then
I closed my eyes. I felt the cool weight of the orb in my fingers and
let my hand trail over the little bubbles of imperfections in it. If I was
holding it, and hadn't seen it before I would imagine it was a
blue-green colour rather than the unremarkable smoky gray color it
actually was. It was the color of the sky today, stormy and cloudy,
just like the day we had been down here and lightning had struck
me. I found myself tensing at the thought and my eyes flew open.
Mandy and Kojack were still working on the sandcastle, their backs
were turned to me.
I closed my eyes again and let myself relax a bit more. It was easier
to do now that I was pretty sure they weren't sneaking peeks at me
while I was 'meditating'. I didn't feel like I was meditating, it didn't
feel like anything, I was looking for a feeling of magic, of being
touched by an ancient warrior god. All I felt was a sense of moisture
again, sure, it was a bit of a miracle, moisture from a stone. But it's
also something that happens a bit when you sweat and you're
clutching something in your hand. It wasn't the feeling of being hit by
lightning.
My eyes flew open, Do you guys smell smoke?
Mandy looked around, Kojack sniffed a bit and shrugged, I don't
smell anything.
I smelled again. The smell was fierce in my nose. I could see the
priest of Sirt stained on my retinas, I really smell something.
There's nothing there...
Maybe when you started to relax it kind of let something loose, like
in your mind.

I'm not crazy, I really smell it.

I don't mean you're crazy, I mean, maybe just traumatized. The
mind can play tricks on you... Mandy trailed off and her gaze drifted
upward. Behind the sand dunes over my shoulder dark gray clouds
were billowing up. Flames flickered darkly in the heart of the smoke.
The Priest of Sirt rose up from the smoke, moving like a flame and
as quickly as the flame leapt along from tuft to tuft of dry, dead
beach grass.
Kojack pulled a large jackknife out of his pants pocket and jumped
in front of me and Mandy, I hadn't known he had he had a knife,
Kojack, be careful!
The priest moved quickly and I nearly dropped the orb as it formed
the shield of water around me and Mandy once more. The priest
didn't even notice Kojack and he was about to engulf him, up close I
could see the sand dunes right through him. He wasn't exactly real,
he was some sort of man made out of smoke and fire and the
flames were about to embrace one of my best friends.
Anger and fear surged through me and a short, jagged bolt of
lightning shot through my fingers and Kojack and the priest were
lost in a blaze of white-blue electric fire.
Mandy and I were knocked over. When we disentangled ourselves
from each other we saw that the fire had burned out out and only
embers remained. The priest was nowhere to be seen but Kojack
was lying on the beach and smoke was coming up from his chest.
Mandy and I ran to him. I yelled at her, Mandy, call an ambulance!
She pushed past me, she held out her spear in front of her, What
are you doing, call an ambulance!
She whipped her head around, her pupils were so large that I could
barely see the blue edges of her irises, You call an ambulance!
She screamed at me, but her mouth was closed. I turned and ran
down the street to the nearest house and pounded on the door until
someone opened the door and I yelled at them to call an ambulance
to the beach at the end of the street.
I ran the back to the beach, my heart was pounding and I felt
drained and exhausted. Mandy was sitting and staring at Kojack's
prone body, he wasn't moving and he was pale under his tan. I
made my legs run again and knelt by his side.

Mandy looked up at me, her eyes looked scary and tears were
running down her cheeks, but she was smiling ever so slightly.
Kojack coughed weakly and a puff of smoke came out through his
lips. Mandy took my hand, I think he'll be okay, he came back.
I heard a siren start up. Kojack opened his eyes and looked around,
he started to sit up and Mandy pushed him back down, You just lie
there. You've had enough of being a hero today, now you're going to
the hospital.

Perwinkle

by

Jeren Nethers

I woke up when the comet started to melt and stream as is the

common way people think of comets. When they are out in the
darkness of space and not close to a sun they don't stream but
warm up the closer they get until they have the big tails of melting
ice and debris that looks like a fire ball from the ground.
At first it was a hazy wake up. I had been asleep for a very long time
it seemed, but during that time some part of my brain had had plenty
of time to think and ponder but it was only now that I was getting
less somnolent that I started to process these thoughts.
I didn't know that we were racing through space at the time. We had
been gathering momentum from our early and slow start and now
we were racing faster and faster. Things went from being frozen to
the first firings of neurons to a wake up and wondering why on it
was do damned cramped!

Even at those early stages of waking I had what was called the
knowing. It was a knowledge that was handed down from
generation to generation of my kind. It was a sensation for others of
my own kind and it was a sort of telepathy. The knowing told me
that I was one of the Kin and it also told me a basic version of what
was happening although the details of it were far away and so
tinged with sorrow that it was hard for me to look at them.
My mother and father had packed me and eleven other eggs into a
slow moving comet with the idea that with the knowing, perhaps we
could tell them what was out there.
So far, out there was still in here. Other than knowing that I had
been very cold and frozen and now was slowly waking and not dead
there was little I could know. I could feel them, those of my kind who
had sent me on this journey, but they were so far away and the
connection so cold that it wasn't something I touched often.
Instead, I made friends with the others in the eggs around me.
There were eleven others, a dozen of us in total. I called myself
Periwinkle as that was the color of my egg shell and I remembered
my mother talking to me before she had ever known I would be
chosen for this special venture. Baby Kin were merely called by the
color of their eggs most often until they hatched and developed a
personality. I remembered that I had had a brother and I had looked
forward to seeing what we would both be like.
All of that had been changed when we the idea of using a comet as
an impromptu spaceship had come to mind and a gamble had been
taken over whether we hatchlings could survive the extreme journey
we were about to make.
This was the way my mind rambled about for the first while. I
thought of this and that and grew irritable some days by the
cramped conditions. There was a wonder among us all that we
might never be let out of our shells but be left as body-less entities
to ramble through hot and cold patches in the universe. Waking and
sleeping. Never truly alive or dead.
This changed the day we came crashing to earth.
Things were a lot warmer but then things became hot.
The comet had been caught by the earth's gravity and was being
pulled down to the planet that was destined to become our home.

It's hard to judge speed when you have no context and are in utter
darkness but the sensation of jarring against the atmosphere and
the heating of our comet turned meteoroid was completely
unexepected after our long, slow and rambling journey.
We didn't have time to speculate though because it isn't very far
down when you get moving from the stratosphere to the surface of
earth and gravity had us in his sights an wasn't letting go.
It was with a terrible jarring that we hit the ground and then had the
sensation of rolling as the comet that had seemed so big to the
dragons who had packed it fell apart in the earth's atmosphere and
then smashed to the ground in Death Valley.
My shell cracked with the impact and I felt Mauve's light dim and go
out with the impact. She was no more. The others, including myself
were shaken but alright. The world we entered into dark. The sand
beneath our claws was soft. After a few minutes my eyes adjusted
to being in something other than total darkness and we saw first the
moon hanging high and full in the broad expanse of the desert. After
that, we saw what had sent us out here in the first place: the stars.
The heat that had broken apart the ice and more delicate rock of our
'spaceship' was fading and even though the desert was warm
compared to the coldness of space, we were new and fresh from
the egg. We required warmth and although we didn't have an
understanding that night would end exactly, we knew that we would
die like Mauve if we didn't huddle for warmth.
With slowing movements we pushed the three eggs that hadn't yet
hatched together closer to the wreckage of the comet. The
unhatched eggs were still warm from our entry into the atmosphere
and the wobbled about as the dragon kin inside attempted to crack
their prisons open. We and the unhatched eggs huddled together for
warmth in the cooling rock we had arrived in. I woke when the moon
set and wondered at it sinking beneath the horizon, looking as
though it had been soaked in blood. Our planet had no moons and
we were the first of our kind to ever see one. I was the first to see a
moon set, the others were still sleeping or still in their eggs. We had
pulled Mauve's body close to us, not sure what to do with her but
sad that what remained of her was far from us. Her egg had cracked
and she had been flung far from the rest of us on impact. Her head
hung crookedly and we were too cold and scared to croon for the

loss of the one we had touched mind to mind but would never look
into her eyes.
As the moon set I felt despair. I wondered at the fate that had set us
twelve aside to be cast into the unknown. The stars had been
watched and venerated by our kind for thousands of years but the
sun was of less interest to the kin and as a result it was less a part
of the knowing than the stars and I wondered if it would ever
become warm again.
Our bellies growled and as it slowly grew brighter across the horizon
I could see that by the time morning had come we were all half
starved.
The Kin are small and when we first emerge from the egg we are
quite helpless. It isn't until we have fed several times and eliminated
the food before our fires begin to stoke and we are able to breathe
flame. We are susceptible to heat and cold and our skin is delicate
and must be kept protected or it will crack and we can become
uncomfortable or even die from infections if it goes on long enough.
Little Kin are meant to have big kin to protect us and we had none.
Even as the sun rose I went from being relieved that the cold was
relieved to concerned by the effect the heat was having on my skin.
As we age we grow scales, but when we first hatch our skin is a
delicate as a human babies and unprotected by scales we can be
killed easily. We started to see the occasional insect, a spider, a fly
and my instinct was to hunt for them but I was so small and fragile
that I feared even trying to hunt one of these small things. I chased a
fly but it was too fast for me. I tried a few ants but after the first two I
successfully caught and ate the others began to swarm towards me
and I fled from them on my spindly legs, wings flapping to try to give
me the speed and the tiny amount of loft they offered to keep the
biting nasty things off my feet and tail.
Even though they weren't much of a meal they restored me
somewhat and it came to me that we needed help. The others were
curled up asleep in the shadow of what had been our nest. The
sand of our homeworld offered us more protection than the strange
sand of the alien world we had been flung down on. Our parents had
wanted to know one thing and one thing only: Was there an 'out
there'. They had made no plans for our continuation and surviving
from here on out was up to us. I knew that we had answered that

question for them when we woke up while we were still in our eggs
heading through earth's solar system and the far away warmth of
Sol let us gain cognizance once more.
There questions were answered but ours were just beginning. In
desperation I reached out with my mind. In many ways a young
dragon's mind is more developed than their body and I could feel
the alien presences on this planet. I couldn't feel all of them, of
course, that would have been overwhelming!
What I could feel were the few minds that were close to us but one
mind in particular that stood out like a diamond amidst the others. It
was this mind that I reached out to.
Help! Help us! I pleaded. I could feel immediately that the
diamond sharp mind had heard me. I knew she was a woman like
me.
Who are you? Have I finally gone mad? She asked with a mental
chuckle.
It's too long to explain who I am, but I and my friends need your
help or we will die. Will you help us?
Yes, I have to find my keys... Where are you? I felt her looking
around for something sparkly and jingly when she found them. I
looked around me, it all looked the same to me.
I don't know, I can make my mind as bright as possible, my spark
should get louder the closer you get to me and you should be able
to hear me better if you are going in the right direction.
I could hear her muttering to herself, thoughts that made little sense
to me. I looked at the others, they weren't doing well. A boy I knew
as 'Green' was smaller than the others and I was especially worried
about him. I had had something to eat but the others were still lying
there, nearly motionless except for their panting in the heat of the
desert.
They were no longer clustered together but had spread out and
were stretched out, as much in the shade as they could get,
desperate to disperse the heat their bodies were collecting. I sat in
the shade, leaning against the rock that had born us here and trying
to guide the woman closer to us.
You're getting louder, my dear, I think we're on the right trail.

We had had a couple of false starts but she was smart and listened
intently to my voice and changed direction as soon as it happened. I
saw something approaching from the distance, a plume of dust
rising up in the desert and headed mostly in our direction. It was a
little of course but it was her. I knew it, I could feel her and she could
sense my excitement. I saw her adjust her course a little as she
honed in on our location.
Wake up, I told the others. Help is almost here.
The plume of dust ended in a green beast called a pick-up truck. It
stopped close to us, the speed it travelled at left me questioning the
wisdom of my maneuver but it stopped readily enough near us,
choking dust was the only thing that attacked us. A door creaked
open on creaking old springs and we saw our first earthling.
She was a giant to us. Standing at about five feet tall, Maude
Montgomery was proud to be in her eighties and still living on her
own in the desert. Her eyes gleamed with intelligene and kindness,
her wrinled face crumpled into a smile.
Well, you must be the lot looking for a ride out of the desert heat,
She said aloud.
I croaked, trying to imitate her language but was unable to so I
spoke to her mind to mind instead. I could understand her language
because she thought the words before she spoke them, making
them for myself was a whole other set of problems and I wasn't even
officially a whole day old yet.
She picked me up in her apron and grabbed a few of the others as
well and piled us together. She put us on the floor of her truck that
wasn't as old as Maude but certainly wasn't young either. The truck
was hot but we were out of the sun and she had placed a large
rubber feeding container on the bottom of the passenger side of the
care. It was filled with water that was luke warm bliss. I pulled Green
into the water first and the others managed to mostly make their
own way into the pool as well. We drank and bathed our skin and
started to feel a bit better. Maude returned with the rest of my hatch
mates, including the one egg that had yet to hatch. The other two
had hatched while I was hunting and being hunted by ants.
She left one more time. I scrambled up the dusty cloth cover of the
bench seat of the truck to see what she had gone back for. I saw her
pick up the bits of hard, rock-like egg we had left behind and then

the body of Mauve which she laid on top of the eggs fragments in
her apron. She carefully removed her apron and tied it shut. I
jumped down off the seat and back to the pool before she made her
way back. She set the tied up apron beside her on the seat and
looked at us all.
Which one of you is talking to me? She asked, scanning us all. I
saw her glance frequently at Green, he was doing better but I was
still worried he was going to end up like Mauve.
I raised a talon. She nodded to me and smiled a toothless smile, I
can't eat the stuff anymore but you lot might be able to make
something of it, I didn't know who I was coming to pick up exactly so
I'm not the best prepared, She reached across the seat to a
compartment that cast shadow on our pool when she opened it. I
immediately perked up at the scent of meat that wafted out.
It's old jerky, it's probably tougher than me but Herb used to love
the stuff and I've never thrown it out. Maybe you can make it a bit
less tough if you put it in your swimming pool with you, She glanced
at Green again. You'll have to make it until we get back to my
house, I'll get you something good there if you make it.
She said pointedly looking at Green. He wasn't feeling well enough
to notice that she was speaking to him. She shook the jerky out into
the pool with us. It was meat and it was as tough as she said but the
water loosened it up and we ripped off strips and ate it voraciously. I
brought a piece of it to Green and was relieved to see him gnawing
on it. Even the smallest bit of nutrient goes a long ways for a baby
dragon. Two ants had gotten us a truck, a pool, jerky and a
sparkling old lady giant. I could feel the goodness radiating off of her
in waves. She was a good person. She would help us.
We passed by structures that Maude identified as 'houses' and I felt
the mostly dim and sometimes cruel minds inside the spattering of
dwellings, That was the city of Hawthorne, we'll be home soon,
Once more her gaze drifted to Green. He was feeling a bit better,
well enough to be chagrined when he saw that Maude was looking
at him specifically.
Maude's dwelling was small house in the desert that had a good
well and a small patch of garden. Chickens marched around the
yard. Their sharp beaks and large size was daunting to me. They
could eat us in two bites.

I won't let the chickens eat you. They'd think you're lizards and
those are tasty treats for desert chickens like my poor little flock.
Everyone out of the pool now, She ordered.
We got out and she dumped the remains of our water onto the
thirsty desert ground. She piled us all back in with the efficiency of
someone used to bossing children and other small things around for
their own good. We were an armload for her, all eleven of us. She
had to set us down to unlatch the door while our hearts froze at the
sight of the chickens that quickly noticed us and started walking in
their strange, hitching stride towards us.
Shoo, shoo, She ordered at them and picked us up again. She set
us down on a table and brought fresh water for our pool. She
opened up something she called, 'fridge' in her mind and brought
out cold meat that was called, 'bacon'. She set the bacon on the
table near the pool but not in it as she had with the jerky. She then
went to the fridge and put a roast on the counter to thaw.
The bacon had been set on a clear glass plate the color of Rose.
Those of us feeling better after the jerky quickly climbed out of the
pool and to the pile of bacon. This was much better than the jerky
had been and most of us soon had full bellies. The last egg hatched
while we were feeding, I couldn't think Blue was awfully lucky,
having avoided the night and morning in the desert and waking up
in time for cool baths an bacon. He was markedly larger than the
rest of us, but especially Green.
Maude saw him floundering to get out of the tub of water and lifted
him out on her leathery hand. He was very small, small enough to
easily curl up in the palm of the hand that held him. She gently plied
him with bacon until his belly was swollen as well. He fell asleep on
her hand and I saw her smile down at him as gently as any mother
looked at her sleeping child. She would make sure Green was
alright.
We were all growing from our feeding and some of our skin was
cracking. Maude muttered and fussed about this for awhile before
finding some butter in her fridge. She left the big rectangle of it on
the table for it and we ate it and rubbed up against it until we were
oily and fatter still and exhausted.
That looks like you've all got your needs met more or less, although
I suppose we're going to have some messes to clean up as soon as

you wake up from your naps, She assessed.

I was so tired I barely heard this part. My digestive system was
opening for the first time and letting go of the jerky, bacon and
butter was the last thing on my mind. Maude had had nine kids and
a platoon of grandchildren and several platoons of great
grandchildren and she was no stranger to the mess babies made
when they woke up. I could hear her puttering around and fell
asleep with the sound of her solving our problems in my mind. She
was a diamond, there was no doubt of that.
When we woke up we all felt distinctly uncomfortable. Maude had
set up a second pool next to the one filled with water. This one was
filled with sand.
You all go into the sand and let nature do her work, She
instructed. Her mental voice was so clear we could all understand
her words quite easily even though we could still only speak to her
mind to mind. We waddled to our sand litter boxes and had a series
of distressing events occur. Afterward, we saw that she had once
more changed the water in the pool and the roast she had taken out
earlier was frozen in the center of delicious, even if it was quite as
good as the bacon. After all our bellies were full again we smeared
butter on ourselves again an fell asleep once more. A few more
times of this and we would be able to breathe fire.
The next time we woke up we knew to go to the litter box right away.
Maude had cleaned it out and the pool too. She was meticulous in
her care of us all but she was careful most of all of Green.
Maude ran out of meat in the freezer and she took a cleaver out of
one of her drawers and outside. We heard the calling of the
chickens and then some fluttering and calling out and she came in
about an hour later with a chicken that had been stripped of all it's
plumage and laid it down in front of us. She had opened it up at the
belly for us and had pulled out the liver and heart which I saw her
discreetly feeding to Green who was turning a beautiful emerald
color for improving his health.
Every time after that when we woke up she would go out with her
cleaver and kill another chicken until there were no more chickens in
the yard.
That's it for chickens, kids, She informed us as she put the last
one in front of us.

We're nearly big enough to hunt, I told her, a spouted a bit of

flame to show off. We had been experimenting with flame for awhile
now. I wasn't sure how old we were now, all we did was eat and
sleep. When I asked Maude she told us we had been there for ten
days.
Ten day and eaten me out of house and home, She said, poking
my not inconsiderable belly. I smiled at her, showing off my second
row of teeth that was just starting to come in. It was evident by now
that we were all growing at different rates. Green was the smallest,
of course. He would never be very big. I was on the large side
compared to the others but no one was bigger than Blue. He was a
little bit vain about his size and the sapphire glint of his scales. I had
to admit some admiration of him on my part and started to wonder if
we would make a good match. He was the color of the night sky and
I was the color of the pink-tinged desert sky at early evening.
While I was admiring Blue, I noticed that something had changed
with Green. He had become healthy but his thoughts were
distracted from the rest of us. It was as though he wasn't entirely kin
anymore somehow. I realized something entirely unexpected
happened one day when Green went to Maude as she came to the
couch that we had requisitioned as our lair and he hopped onto her
hand and she said, Don't tell me you're hungry again, Charlie!
I wasn't the only one who noticed the strange address. Rose cocked
her head in confusion and Blue and I exchanged confounded looks.
I am Charlie, He said, turning to us. He spoke out loud in the same
language Maude used. His words were halting but the image and
the knowing he sent us were not. He and Maude had become
bonded somehow. They had a connection deeper than any kin had
had with anyone ever before. It was deeper even than mates or, and
here all of us felt a deep heartache, deeper than those you hatch
with.
Charlie, I said haltingly. We had all been practicing a few words
here and there that we picked up from Maude. All the dragons of our
home world were gifted with a complex language much more
difficult and with a greater range than any earth language. English,
with its simple sounds and repetitions and root words wasn't very
difficult but none of us had tried very hard to learn it. Mostly we
would call, 'Meat! Meat!' or, 'Wat! Wat! Which meant that we

wanted fresh water for our pool.

Maude never begrudged us our demands and now it became clear
to me why she so willingly served us even when we were
demanding: She was with Charlie. We were Charlie's family and she
would take care of us as long as we needed it but she would be with
Charlie until the end of her days. I knew Maude was an old lady and
I trembled at the strength of her bond with Charlie and the fact that
we had learned from her that her kind only lived to be a hundred
years at most.
What would happen to Charlie's bond if Maude died?
He smiled, he knew our questions, barraged at him in his mind and
he turned his back to us, climbed up Maude's arm and coiled
around her neck.
Maude had come and gone a few times now, always to buy more
meat for us. All of us, including Maude, liked to nap in the afternoon
when it was hottest and it was on one of the days after Maude had
returned from town and we were all napping on the couch except for
Maude and Charlie who were napping on Maude's bed when we
heard a familiar and yet completely different noise: A truck was
driving up to the house, but this was not Maude's truck and she was
asleep in her bed. A few minutes later a loud rapping came on the
thin door. We all instinctively crawled under the couch, Blue was
getting too big to get under it so he and I crept behind the couch and
saw what followed.
Charlie was perched on Maude's shoulder when she opened the
door and a male of her species that towered over her came through
the door without waiting for an invitation.
Oh, it's you, hmmm, She said to the man who made the woman
we had taken for a giant to look like Charlie compared to Blue.
Don't be like that, Ma, He said, his voice wheedling.
Get your boots off my clean floor and shut the door behind you. I
suppose you'll be hungry, She said to him. We realized that this
was one of Maude's many children in surprise. He was so much
bigger than she was. It was unusual for such a thing to happen
amongst the Kin, I supposed that her dead mate must have been
such a giant that he would barely fit in the shack.

He did as he was told and sat at the table. She started cooking what
she called a, 'fry up'. It was a tasty thing to eat but we did prefer our
bacon raw.
What's that on your shoulder, Ma? He asked, looking at Charlie
with sudden keenness.
Oh, just a pet of mine, She hedged. It was clear to all that the son
was not trusted by Maude.
Where did you get him? Is he a lizard? He reached out a finger
towards Charlie who hissed a warning at the man and bared his
teeth. If he hadn't been on Maude's shoulder and worried about her
hair that she normally tied up in a bun but was frizzed around her
face and shoulders from her nap.
Never mind about Charlie, he's mine and none of your affair, She
said. We could all hear her distaste for her son in her voice. It was
confusing as Kin were clan oriented and rarely disrespectful to their
elders but especially to their parents. It didn't serve a purpose.
There was something more to her voice than distaste, there was
outright fear. Blue bristled his annoyance and a bit of steam huffed
out of his nostrils. I held up a finger to my mouth to tell him to quiet,
something we had learned from Maude when we squacked for meat
too loudly.
He looks expensive, The man said.
He's none of your affair, Tate! I'll be getting you to head on down
the road if you won't leave Charlie alone, Maude said in her
no-nonsense tone that made us behave in a hurry.
I don't mean anything by it, but Ma, I need some money, I'm in debt
to some people. Not nice people, He whined.
Serves you right if you get involved with them what happens to you.
I don't have any money to help you with and you know it.
No, but I bet I could sell him for something, There was a pause
and the man stood up again and looked down on Maude and
Charlie. He's got wings! He ain't no lizard! He's a dragon!
He reached out a hand to grab Charlie and Charlie singed his hand
with a narrow swath of flame. Tate screamed and balled his hand
into a fist to hit out at Charlie. Without a thought for herself, Maude
turned to protect Charlie and Tate's roundhouse clipped her in the

back of the head. With that there was no more hiding for us. We
climbed out from under and behind the couch and converged
around Maude and Charlie. Maude had fallen to her knees and
Charlie was standing on her shoulders with one claw on her head,
growling and hissing at the interloper. None of us were old enough
to fly yet, our first scales were slowing coming in but it wouldn't be
until they covered us fully and hardened that our wing bones would
be strong enough.
Even a giant like Tate didn't like getting his feet and cuffs lit on fire
and he ran from the house as the ten of us converged on him,
lighting up his feet or hands or anything else he put cloe enough to
us. Soon enough he fled, his pick-up tearing out the driveway and
down the desert road.
Maude got to her feet, Charlie was tangled in her hair and beside
himself with fear for Maude and adrenaline from the confrontation.
Maude soothed him and took some ice from the freezer to put on
her head where her own son had clouted her. She was deep in
thought and none of this was over.
We have to get you all out of here. He'll be back, and this time he'll
be prepared and he might not be alone either, She sighed. Charlie
was climbing up her head and trying to examine the spot where she
had been hit. She pushed him away gently.
Nothing to worry about, Charlie. Just a goose egg, She untangled
him from his hair and set him on her lap.
I'm sorry, kids, we're going to need help for this. It's time for a
change,'' She smiled at us all. Charlie climbed up her arm again and
wrapped himself around her throat protectively.
We could all see that she was still a little dazed from the hit she had
taken but she got our pool and our litter box into the truck along with
quite a bit of meat. She drove to the town she had called Hawthorne
and went into a little house. She wasn't in there long before a large
man came out. His mind was dim and his belly was extremely
round.
None of us liked him looking at us but he exclaimed excitedly and he
and Maude talked for some time about what to do. We couldn't
understand the man's thoughts but from Maude we understood that
he was a man of some import in the small town, a sheriff she called
him. She was confiding in him about us and he was going to 'bust

the story wide open'.

Maude left him to work out his side of their arrangement, the whole
thing was confounding to us. Why Maude would trust someone as
dim as the Sheriff made no sense to us. We started driving but it
wasn't back to Maude's house, it was deeper into the desert.
We were all worried and Maude said little to us although Charlie
seemed to feel safe and slept wrapped around her neck with blissful
snores.
Night started to fall and still we drove. Finally I ventured to ask her,
Maude, where are we going? What's to become of us?
You're all about to become famous whether we like it or not, it's the
only way to make sure you're safe from Tate and the other thugs in
in this world, Her eyes clouded over as she spoke. Such words,
against her own son, I could only imagine the pain saying them must
cause her.
I'm taking you to stay with my granddaugher Ellen in Los Angeles.
She knows how to handle the television people. We'll let the world
know there are dragons and once they show you on tv there won't
be many who can hurt you. That's the only safety I can offer you
now, my little house isn't protection anymore.
We drove until the stars dotted the sky and the moon rose until we
came to a place where the lights were too bright to see the stars. It
was a place of loud noise and strange sights. We were just about to
learn that the shack in Death Valley wasn't all of earth and we were
all about to become celebrities. I knew without her saying so that
Charlie would stay with her. She had a plan to make sure Tate
wouldn't hurt her or Charlie that rested with the dim man with the fat
belly, but she was worried about the rest of us. We were about to
find out about a whole other type of 'out there' that our parents had
never imagined existed.

Not So Super Superpowers

by

Virginia Carraway Stark

You can stay in the car or walk around, just be careful of the dogs
they have around here, they are crazy sons of bitches, Her Dad
smiled at her and shut the car door.
He came to the Friesen Salvage quite a bit. Sometimes he would
pick up a part but it seemed to Katelin that mostly he came to visit.
He always told her the same thing every time he bought her with
him, be careful of the dogs, they are crazy sons of bitches. Usually
his words kept her in the car. The junkyard was a stupid place and
she hated coming here. It was a hot day and she turned on the
ignition switch and rolled down the windows, but not too far, she
didn't want any crazy dogs trying to jump into the car with her.
She checked the time on her phone, it was 4:35 and the sun
streaming into the car was blistering already. The black interior of
the car didn't help and if her Dad spent more than ten minutes in the
office doing talking about whatever men talk about in junkyards then
she would be broiled. It wasn't the first time it had happened. Why

her Dad got into his guy stuff Katelin and her brothers ceased to
exist to him and he would sit around bullshiting for hours sometimes.
She played tetris for awhile on her phone until the 'low battery' light
started to flash. She didn't get internet on her phone and she was
now sweltering.
She could vaguely see the shape of her Dad inside the grimey office
window, he was sitting and had a can of something in his hand. Cool
and easy, that was her Dad. Katelin opened the glove compartment
and rumaged around, mostly looking for something to distract
herself from the growing heat. She found a package of cigarettes.
She looked around, her Dad was too busy to notice and he probably
didn't even remember putting the pack in the glove compartment.
That was one of the good things about living with him instead of her
mom, Dad didn't notice anything she did and only about half the
things he did so Katelin could do pretty much whatever she wanted.
Smoking wasn't on that list of things her Dad would be a 'cool' Dad
for and deliberately not flip shit. He was a 'cool' Dad about her
coming home late at night drunk and even about boys spending the
night or just a few hours of indiscreet noises in her bedroom. He told
her that she was really grown up, just like he had been when he was
her age. Cigarettes were the line though. Her mom had caught her
smoking once, she had been at a bus stop, innocently waiting for
the bus and lit up a smoke. It was the bus stop just around the
corner from her mom's house and her mom had slammed on the
brakes, dragged her into the car and yelled at her for several hours.
Then she had driven her over to her Dad's house and made sure
that he had yelled at her about it too. So there wasn't a 'cool' setting
on her Dad for cigarettes even though they could share a joint
together without him batting an eye.
She had a lighter in her purse and she decided that it was worth
getting out of the heat and risking the crazy dogs to get some shade
and a smoke.
She found a private area on the far side of the shack that served as
an office and inhaled deeply. God, that tasted good.
Crunching footsteps on the gravel warned her of someone
approaching and she cursed and put out the cigarette under her
shoe and hit the packet in her padded bra before turning around to
see who had interrupted her. It was a guy, and he was kind of cute.

You didn't have to put it out, He said, pointing at the demolished

cigarette lying in the dirt and gravel.
Katelin ran her fingers through her short, punky hair. It was a habit
of hers and it made her hair stand up absurdly but she couldn't
seem to stop doing it, I thought you were my dad, She muttered.
She took the pack out of her bra and lit up another one and blew the
smoke in the boy's direction defiantly, Can I have one?
She looked up at him, gawd, he was so cute, Sure, She said and
pulled the pack out of her bra again, making a point of rummaging
just a little too much to give him a look at her tiny chest. She knew
they weren't big like some girls were but she also knew that that
didn't bother most boys. If you wore a push up bra they liked to look.
She gave him the cigarette and noted with satisfaction that he was
in fact staring down her shirt. They stood and smoked for awhile. A
thousand thoughts were whirling through Katelin's head. She was
afraid that her Dad would come out and catch her smoking, she was
excited that he might come out and catch her smoking with a boy,
she wanted to be mysterious and cool and she was dying to know if
the guy thought she was as hot and she thought he was.
She glanced up at him coyly, he was wiping his hand on his dirty
jeans. She decided that meant he was nervous and that he liked her
too.
Hey, so, I'm Katelin, you wanna fuck me?
He looked up at her shocked and surprised and to Katelin's
satisfaction she saw a bulge where there had been no bulge before.
Guys liked girls like her, girls who weren't afraid to say, 'fuck me'
before they even knew the name of the guy.
Sure, Ill fuck you, He said and grabbed her by the hand and
pulled her down a narrow path between beaten up old cars in the
junkyard. The path twisted and turned and branched off in different
directions until Katelin realized that she had no idea how she would
get back to the office if the boy didn't show her the way back. She
was at his mercy. He could hurt her, he could rape her, he could
beat her up, the thoughts made her heart race with excitement... he
could abandon her and leave her to the labyrinth and the crazy
junkyard dogs... that thought did not excite her.
They stopped in an area that was a bit broader and clearer than the

rest of the path they had taken had been. An old bench seat with a
few springs sticking up through it was resting against the grill of a
rusted out pick up truck. He had pulled her by her hand and wrist
the entire way and when he let go of her she could see the red
marks his sweaty hands had left there and when he pushed her
gently but firmly back towards the cream colored bench seat. She
resisted at his gentle push, he stopped kissing her long enough to
look at her in confusion and saw the look in her eyes, with a
mischevious smile he kissed her more fiercely and pushed her hard
against the bench seat.
She thumbed open the button on her skinny jeans and wriggled her
tiny hips out onto the sun-heated vinyl seat. He put his hands in her
short hair and pulled it and she writhed her skinny hips in response.
Fuck, yeah, The guy said, undoing his own pants quickly to take
advantage of her easy surrender. She pulled a condom out of her
bag and he obediently put it on before ploughing her in eight brief
hard strokes. He pulled out and she pulled her pants on without a
word. She never came with a man, she always finished herself off
later, it was something that made her happy that she could make
them lose control but they could never do the same to her. She
fumbled in her purse for her lighter and lit up another cigarette.
Can I bum another cigarette from you?
She handed him one without comment. He sat on the vinyl bench
seat beside her and lit up his own smoke. They were only resting for
a few minutes before Katelin heard a strange sound, light feet
running through the maze of beaten cars and trucks.
Are those the dogs? Katelin asked, butting out her cigarette and
jumping to her feet. The guy took her hand and pulling her down to
the bench seat again.
Yeah, that's Razor and Jack knife, they won't hurt you so long as
you're with me.
Two large german shepherds ran around the corner. They were
massive animals and Katelin was terrified by their slavering mouths
but the Guy went and pet them and called them by name and the
two animals sat and let him pet them and play with their ears.
You're just two little kittens, ain'tchya? The guy said. The one he
had called Jack Knife growled and barked.

The guy laughed and said confidingly to Katelyn, They hate being
called kittens, it really pisses them off.
Can you not call them kittens then? I don't want to see them pissed
off.
Are you scared of dogs?
I'm scared of big dogs. Those two could eat me and not even
notice.
The guy went and ripped a dangling exhaust pipe and part of a
rusted muffler off one of the cars, You want to talk about scary?
These dogs have super powers.
Super powers? She asked, instantly intrigued. She wanted to
possess superpowers more than anything else.
Sure, watch this, The guy threw the muffler at Jack Knife like a
boy would throw a ball to play fetch with his dog. Jack Knife
grabbed the muffler out of the air and crunched the metal down like
it was a bit of bone.
Holy shit, won't that hurt them? Katelin was fascinated, she had
heard eating a chicken bone could kill a dog and these ones were
eating parts of cars like they were snack food.
The dogs decided that she wasn't very interesting and trotted over
to a greenish stained puddle on the ground and started lapping it up.
I don't know, I mean, sometimes we lose dogs, but junkyard dogs
have to be tough, most of the stuff in here would kill a regular dog
but for some of them, it gives them superpowers and they just get
bigger, and stronger for it. I don't understand it but I'll tell you, if a
regular dog drank that puddle those two just drank they'd be dead.
What was it?
Antifreeze. It's poison but they drink it like it's candy, Dad said they
build up a tolerance for it, but it still blows me away. I think it's what
gives them their superpowers. Sometimes we get a new puppy and
he dies a few days after he comes to the yard, those ones just aren't
strong enough to handle it. It's like how not everyone turns into the
incredible hulk even if you try to do the same thing to them, some
dogs are born to have superpowers and others aren't. Same is true
of people.

People can drink antifreeze?

I wouldn't suggest you try it. I drink all sorts of shit, mostly by
accident when I'm trying to syphon something out of something else.
You can't help it, you get a mouthful of the stuff. It hasn't killed me
yet, but let me show you something cool, give me your lighter.
He took the lighter from her hands and set it to maximum flame and
then held it to the palm of his hand. He didn't bat an eye.
Doesn't that hurt?
Nope, it just tingles a bit. You think that's cool, look at this, He
moved the lighter to his jaw and put the flame right to his jaw bone.
He still didn't flinch. After a minute he tossed her back the lighter.
She fumbled it n her shock and had to pick it off the ground.
Hey, you want to fuck again? He asked, grabbing her ass as she
picked up the lighter. She stepped away from him.
I have to get back to the car, my Dad might be worried.
Sure, no problem babe, I'll take you back.
Her Dad was outside of the office and was just in time to see her
and the guy come out of the tangle of cars. She surreptitiously
tucked the package of cigarettes back into her bra and strutted
back to the car. Her dad knew exactly what she had been doing with
that guy out in the junkyard and she was glad he did. Well, unless
he knew about the smoking. She wanted to rub it into his face that
he wasn't the only man with access to her body but she didn't want
to actually get into trouble for smoking.
She didn't mind her Dad playing around with her a bit but when her
brother came home it was a different story. They got back to their
house and his car was sitting in the driveway. Kevin was always
touching her, always expecting more from her. They had slept
together as children in the same bed and one thing led to another.
Now Kevin had a boy for a lover and liked to wear women's clothes
but whenever he came home he would creep into her bed at night
and touch her while she pretended to sleep. She hated it. She hated
him. She hated that he said he was gay and then wouldn't leaver her
the hell alone
I'm going to Glenda's, Katelin muttered under her breath and
grabbed her bag.

I was going to order pizza, Her Dad offered.

I'll have some cold when I get home, She replied. She hated
everything about the house. She was convinced a demon lived in
the basement along with the evil, stinking ferrets that terrified her
and her brother.
She walked the few blocks to Glenda's house. They had just
finished having supper so she helped herself to some leftovers and
listened to them talk about their made up worlds. Katelin knew of
course, that they weren't really made up. Well, Glenda's weren't
made up at least. The others were just silly little kids stories her
daughter had made up. Glenda's characters populated her mind.
There were the good but stupid ones, the gatekeeper ones, the evil
ones and the good ones who were not as good as the others
because they said quippy things. They populated her mind and she
heard their voices speaking to her.
Sometimes she would hear one of them say, Push that little girl in
front of that bus! or they would say something really mean and she
would parrot it out. Around Glenda though, Katelin almost always
tried to be the good ones. There were two good ones: A boy good
one and a girl good one. In Katelin's mind she flipped between the
two. Most of the time when she had sex she was the boy one, a poor
victimized boy, the victim of rape while the good girl felt the control
of having the power over the boys she had sex with and the good
boy in her brain.
It was all very complicated but until something better would come
along, Katelin had adopted Glenda's fantasies for her own and she
had also adopted her family as more or less her own, too.
What did you do today, Katelin? Asked Glenda.
Katelin smiled devilishly, the evil part of her wanting to say, I let a
boy fuck me in the junkyard while Razor and Switch Blade, or
whatever the fuck his name was, watched. But she held that inside.
She had learned around Glenda that she was only capable of being
oblivious up to a point and then Glenda would become bristly and
prickly with her and she wouldn't want to talk to her very much. So
Katelin didn't say that instead she popped a grape into her mouth
and said, I went to the junkyard with my Dad.
Glenda's face grew compassionate, Oh, and in this heat? I wish he
wouldn't do that and leave you out in the car.

Katelin made her own face look forlorn, Well, I'm just glad to have
some time with him when he's in a good mood, and you know, he's
gone so much.
Glenda put the last of the leftovers in the fridge, her kids liked to
tease her that she had the food put away in the fridge before they
were done eating.
Is he going to be home for awhile?
Who can say? Asked Katelin, she felt her eyes fill with tears and
Glenda gave her a hug.
Oh, my dear little Tory, Glenda said, using the pet name she used
for Katelin that was the name she had written her into her stories
with. You're welcome to stay here, of course.
Katelin stayed with them for a few days until she got sick of them
and knew that Kevin had gone back to the city to be with his lover.
Her Dad was packing his own bags when she got in, I'm glad you
came home, I have to go out to work.
Already? Katelin asked blandly.
Yep. That's the job, He said. He kissed her on the forehead and
his hand lingered on her hip for a moment too long.
Katelin was thoroughly tired of Glenda but being in the house by
herself was scary. The albino ferrets that lived in the basement
would chase her and had grown to be huge. They had originally
been pets given to her and Kevin but neither one of them really
wanted the things and they had been roughly litter trained and
allowed to roam the downstairs wherever they wanted. The people
in the house kept the door to the top of the stairs closed, but
sometimes when Kevin was over he forgot and then she might wake
up with the ferrets looking at her, eyes glowing red. They would hiss
at her and slink off.
There wasn't a lot in the basement, mostly movies that nobody
watched and the ferrets. The only thing that she ever needed down
there was the laundry room. She would bundle up all her clothes
and run down the stairs, slamming the door behind her so the
ferrets couldn't get out and then put on the clothes, slam down the
washing machine lid and run upstairs again as fast as she could.
She had seen a demon down there. She had played with a ouija
board once and she was sure that was what had let him in.

Her Dad had forgotten to buy laundry soap so she walked down to
the store and bought some and a new pack of cigarettes. She was
standing in line when she saw the bottles of antifreeze on sale by
the front door along with the sign, 'Winter's just around the corner'.
She bought a jug of it as well.
She put on her laundry and ran upstairs. The ferrets had to be fed
but this time she would feed them something special: something to
keep winter from coming around the corner.
She only put a bit of antifreeze on the ferrets' food. She put it down
for them along with a bowl of water that was also a little tainted and
slammed the door, her heart thudding in her chest. It was always
like this in the comics, something that seemed dangerous turned out
to give animals and people superpowers. Even Glenda's favorite
characters were the products of dangerous, scary science
experiments like this. What if the whole reason they told people not
to drink antifreeze was because they knew it would give them
superpowers like those junkyard dogs? What if you were strong
enough and big enough and you could handle it.
The idea of the albino ferrets developing superpowers was enough
to make her decide to spend the night at Glenda's house. She had
picked a bad night for it, at least as far as victim boy who lived in her
head went because Glenda was gone so were the girls and that left
Katelin alone with Glenda's husband, Terrance. Terrance liked his
time with Katelin alone just fine. He liked it if she sat on his lap and
he would bounce her like it was a pony ride until his pants grew first
taut then moist. He liked the little girls and Katelin hadn't developed
into a woman even though she was seventeen.
She was like a little girl and that was what he called her, his special
little girl.
Sometimes he would just talk about dirty movies with her and
sometimes they would sit up and he would show her the world of
pornography, each new thing she saw with him making her feel
good and bad, adult and cynical and dirty and better than Terrance
who was a pedophile. She would do things to tease him, she had
since she was little and when Glenda was gone things sometimes
got out of hand. Glenda, of course, had seen some of what went on
but it was as though she wore blinders. She would walk in and
Terrrance's hand would be up Katelin's shortiest skirt as he diddled

her. He would freeze his hand but it was still up her skirt. Glenda
would pretend that she didn't see any of it and would blather
something about how she really should be writing and leave the
room.
Glenda knew and the fact that she knew made the evil parts of
Katelin very happy. She liked to taint things. She liked to make
them...different.
Glenda's going to be gone all night, but I'm having some friends
over, do you want to stay? We're having a bit of a party.
What sort of party? Katelin asked as she looked through
Terrance's endless record collection. They had albino ferrets in their
basement and Glenda had Terrance and his collection of Monkees
albums and merchandise. He had everything that he could get his
hands on of their's. He had other records too of course but his
shrine was to the Monkees. Katelin couldn't hear them playing
without a shudder.
A sophisticated party, He said, winking at her.
I guess I can stay around, She thought. The ferret would either be
alive and developing it's super powers or dead and either way this
sounded interesting and dirty. Very dirty.
The friends showed up and they were indeed, 'sophisticated'. The
first pair came in, the man dressed in leather and the woman
collared in chains.
Are we early, Terrance? Asked the man, Katelin recognized him
from Glenda's writing circle and leered at the two of them. They
were disgusting. Just like Terrance, just like Glenda, just like her
dad and Kevin, just like the boy at the junkyard...just like her.
Right on time, He replied fussily. The others are just late.
The party was a parade of the small local community of fetish
couples. A lady named Shelly had asked Terrance to have it at his
home so that she could display her wares of dildos, lubricants,
edibles body paints, collars for 'pet' humans and even the rudiments
for pony play. Katelin didn't know what that was and so Shelly
instructed one of the couples to demonstrate, putting a saddle on
the woman and a bridle with a bit.
This is a starter costume, you can order more things to make it

more , realistic, She whipped her crop across the girl's bare bottom
and she flinched. Shelly whispered to Katelin, You see how she
flinches, she's not well trained. I wouldn't put up with it.
Katelin listened to the whispering and nodded knowingly.
Terrance and Shelly kept her wine glass full and answered her
many questions, often with more demonstrations that made
Katelin's body feel on fire. She ran to the bathroom and rubbed an
orgasm out through her jeans. It was the only way she came, her
own fingers and through her clothing, never touching the parts she
freely let Terrance and any other boy play with.
She drank too much and woke up the next morning in Terrance's
drunken embrace on the basement floor. He stank and she pushed
him off of her in disgust. He was such a stupid pig. She had whisker
burn all over her face and between her thighs.
She walked home and showered and then went down to change the
laundry and check on the ferrets.
The ferrets seemed just fine. They were running around and didn't
seem to have noticed the small additions to the food that she made.
She made them up another batch and watched them eat it up. He
seemed to like it better than ever. Her Dad was still gone and with
the stench of Terrence's sophisticated party still at Glenda's house,
she decided to sit around the house, trying to write music on a guitar
her Dad insisted that she play. She thought it was a bad idea, her
voice sounded false to her own ears and tried to write again. She
was supposed to write a story for Glenda, something about 'Tory'
the good girl from Glenda's books. She didn't want to write about
Tory as a good girl though, she wanted Tory wrecked. Fucked right
up. Just like her. Just like the REAL Tory.
Tory sat on the bed, her purple ballet gown was torn and ripped.
She had just woken up from her nap and found that her cigarette
had burned a hole through her skirt, Now I'm going to be in
trouble, She thought to herself. It was then that there was a knock
at the door. A handsome man walked in. The Good Boy the victim,
Tory thought, she decided that she was tired of his pretty face.
Do you want to fuck me? Tory asked, lighting up another cigarette
and flipping him the pack. He flipped it back to her.
You know I don't smoke.

Katelin froze in her writing. She couldn't think of what should

happen next. She wanted Tory to viciously rape the Victim but she
didn't know how to write it.
The buzzer on the dryer went off and she went down with the
hamper, running down the steps to avoid the demon she was sure
existed there. The ferrets had cleaned his bowl and there was no
sign of them anywhere.
She took her laundry out of the dryer and went upstairs, hearing the
sound of wood being broken as she did. She was just in time to see
the ferrets disappear through the hole he had made in the door at
the top of the stairs.
They had always wanted out of the basement. The ferrets had
escaped every time they could but they had never managed to
make it, until now.
It's giving them super powers, Katelin said in wonder and fear.
There was no telling where the ferrets would end up now.
After such a few doses of antifreeze, she was certain that it wasn't
toxic, it was like what made Bruce Banner the hulk. It was like the
serum Howard Stark put into Captain America. It was superpowers
and it was sitting right in front of everyone. Anyone could be a
superhero, or a supervillain whispered the Evil Queen Glenda had
written into her head.
She watched as the ferrets climbed out the open window and into
the backyard. She wondered if the two of them would come back
and was afraid she would wake up with either of them on her chest,
superpowers making them not just stare at her with their pink-red
eyes. No, who knew what they might do. They might eat her eyes
out. They might take her tongue.
Katelin went into the kitchen and poured herself a bowl of sugar
puffs. She had an idea. She didn't put milk on it, she put antifreeze
on it. It tasted sweet and like chemical at the same time. She put
some extra sugar into the bowl and it made it taste a bit better. She
ate it mechanically, not aware of anything but the thought of
Terrance's hands up her skirt, Glenda's glazed look, her brother's
erection against her pj bottoms, the girl dressed up like a pony,
being whipped and flinching. It whirled in her mind and she poured
herself another bowl and and other, she thought about how the pony
girl hadn't been, 'well trained' and a thrill went through her.

The thrill was quickly ended by a surge of nausea and pain. She
looked down in horror at what she had done. She had eaten over
half a bottle of anti-freeze. She forced herself to try to calm down.
She was better than a dog, she didn't need a gradual build up to get
her superpowers, she was half there already. She was panting, her
back hurt and she couldn't breathe and alternately she couldn't stop
rapidly panting.
I need some fresh air, She muttered. She staggered like a drunk
to the backdoor and went outside. She felt bad, really bad. It was
getting hard for her to tell herself that soon she would be immortal.
She vomited and felt momentarily better but then another surge of it
came over her. Her head was pounding and she was growing
weaker by minute.
She crawled towards the steps, she had to call an ambulance. She
had been wrong, she had done it too fast or maybe it was just one of
her 'crazy eye' moments as her friends called the impulsive and
sometimes dangerous things she would do. She was too weak to
climb the steps and her hand fell on something soft and furry. She
pulled at it, thinking in her confused mind that it was a lost teddy
bear she had lost when she was little. It was one of the escaped
ferrets, Vinnie. The albino ferret was dead, his throat choked with
vomit and his lips and claws tinged blue. His body was stiff.
She tried again to climb the steps, she held Vinnie like a child but
she couldn't get up the steps. Her vision was fading even while the
anguish of her body remained. Would she go to hell? She knew she
wouldn't go to heaven? Would the worms eat her like Glenda and
her science believed? Would she be reborn anew? She hoped for
the last one but as her body was wracked with convulsions, her
hands clenching through the skin of the ferret in her seizures, all
thought of life and death left her and there was nothing. She couldn't
breathe very well now and she heard the door of the house open
and the demon who had lived in the basement came out on the back
porch. She watched him through closed eyes as he lit up one of her
cigarettes and sat on the back porch and had a leisurely smoke.
She was pretty sure she was dead now. The pain was gone and she
couldn't feel her body's struggles anymore. After a few minutes of
watching he came and picked up the bodies at the bottom of the
steps and carried them into the basement. She was about to find out

what happened to someone who dies in a haunted house, the

demons of hell don't play 'sophisticated' party games. They violate,
rape and destroy. Her last thoughts as she felt his hot breath and
was unable to move was that she wished even more than becoming
a superhero or a super villain, that she had asked her parents to
cremate her. Vinnie squirmed and bit at her fingers, she couldn't
unclench them and she could feel his broken bones in her hand
even through the numbness. He scratched and bit her hand, he
would be her pet forever now. She would never leave the basement
again, her demon had finally caught her.

Martha's Ivy

by

Nicholas Vincenzi

When Martha died nearly a decade ago I didn't know how hard it
would be. I saw her suffering, we took her home, she didn't want to
die in the hospital. She slept on the couch each night until one
morning I came out and said good morning to her and she didn't
wake up. I knew as soon as I saw her that she was gone. We had
been expecting that it could be any day, some days when she
couldn't help it she cried from the pain and on those days, God help
me, I prayed for her to just die already. I prayed for it to end. I
wanted it over as much for me as for her.
There wasn't going to be a happy ending. She was old, not as old as
I am now and cancer licks at my own bones, but she was old and
she wasn't getting any better.

She hadn't been eating for awhile and she was skin and bones. I
turned off her oxygen and removed the catheter from her nostrils. I
called the funeral home and made my poached egg and toast while I
waited for someone to show up. I put them on the plate and then
scraped them into the garbage. I didn't cry, not then. The crying
would come later and it would always be there for me, waiting in the
dark hours of the night in my lonely bed.
Even now I wake up in the middle of the night and before I'm awake
I run out to check on Martha and see how she is. I dream I hear her
voice you see. Sometimes she's calling for morphine, other times,
she's just lonely.
The coroner came and took the body. It wasn't my wife anymore,
just a body. My wife lived on in stasis, everything exactly the way it
had been before her diagnosis and life had frozen in time. The
pictures on the walls were all hung as she had placed them, the
plants were all her plants. The tiny ornaments were hers. The tin red
rooster that guarded the stairwell leading to the backdoor, all of it
was Martha's.
I had been dusting and cleaning it since she got too sick to do so
and after she was gone, it seemed natural to keep on doing so. She
had per-arranged her funeral and our sons came and wept. It made
me happy to see how much she had been loved by her boys even if
my own eyes were dry. I couldn't think she was gone. She was
waiting at home on the couch, directing me on how to dust the
knick-knacks and cranking about how I overcooked the carrots
again.
I was going through the pageant of death while the reality of it lived
on in the house that had been our house since we had been in our
early thirties. By the time I retired I had it well past paid off, our boys
had started families and the older one had already had one divorce
and expensive alimony to pay along with child support. I had worked
for the city, a good union job with good union pay. We would never
be rich but Martha never seemed to mind. We had twelve good
years together after I retired and we lived off our pensions and
savings and told the boys that they had to take care of themselves.
They had both gone to trade schools and it hadn't busted the bank
to get through it, I knew Martha helped them a little with her pin
money and they came over more meals than not. Then they got their

well paying trade jobs and only came over for Sunday dinner and for
holidays. Some days though I'd come home and Garth would be
sitting at the table with his mother. That was during his divorce. He'd
surreptitiously wipe the tears from his eyes, things that were fine for
Martha to see but not for Dad.
After the funeral and everything was over I took off my black suit
and hung it in the back of my closet. I thought when I hung it up that
I wouldn't wear it again until they buried me in it next to her.
You'll likely judge me for this, but it wasn't long after Martha was
gone that I started hiring girls to come see me. Friendly, cuddly little
things were the ones that I called back. I wasn't interested in a strip
show and a wiggling dance but it was a long ways away from
platonic too.
Martha had been wild when she was young but our fires had cooled
over the years and it had been a long time since I had felt a warm
mouth close around my twig and two berries. There was quite
awhile that I went mad for sex after Martha left me. Judge all you
want, it was wonderful and it never hurt anyone.
I hadn't realized that even while Martha was dying that she was the
living, beating heart of our home. She was the one who summoned
the children for Sunday dinner. She was the one who arranged
Christmas dinner and fixed it so the grand kids opened their
presents at our house. With her gone and the funeral over our sons
stopped coming over for Sunday dinner. The first Christmas without
her they came long enough to open their presents. I must not have
done a good job at picking them out because Garth gave me a
passing hug as he left and laughed a bit as he looked at the
bathrobe I had bought for him, You suck, Dad, He said, shaking
his head.
I felt tears brim in my eyes. He already had his boots on, Are you
going already? I thought we could have dinner, I made it, just the
way your mother did.
Don was making moves to go too. His kids already had their coats
and hats on, I offered them tinned cookies and they replied in
unison, No thanks.
I was doing it all wrong. I had done all the things Martha had said to
do but her magic was gone. The next year I bought them gift
certificates and cards and at least Garth didn't say that I sucked that

year. They had come and gone in under an hour. I watched the
blinking lights of the Christmas tree and the miniature village that
Martha had collected for years. Little carolers sang and ice skaters
skated on magnets in Victorian coats. The outside of the house was
lit up with lights, reindeer grazed on our snow covered yard and
Santa waved to all those who passed by.
I waited until it was late at night, late enough to make sure that
nobody planned on surprising me with a Christmas visit and then I
called Dazzling Nights and asked them if Tanya was working even
though it was Christmas. To my delight and surprise she was.
She showed up about a half hour later. Snow melting off her
knee-high boots and her breasts bouncing out of her low-cut shirt
under her corduroy jacket. She shook the snow out of her blonde
hair, hugged me and said, Merry Christmas, Stan, I was going out
of my mind I was so bored.
Is it quiet tonight? I asked wistfully. The hope that she actually
wanted to be with me was an illusion of course. If I was short on
funds she wouldn't come see me. It didn't matter, she was a good
actress and she was warm and cuddly.
So quiet, She said, wrinkling her cute nose. I was going mad I
was so bored.
She put her arms around me, I was lonely too, She said with a
smile.
I smiled back at her and held her on the couch where my wife had
died. She snuggled into my arms.
As the years passed, the girls changed. Some of them were doing it
to get through school, others to pay the price some single mothers
pay, some of them just because. After a decade, Tanya was long
gone and now I saw girls like 'Brittany' and 'Candy'. Candy was the
last one.
I was a dirty old man with them all. I wanted them a little plump and
as friendly as possible. I wanted to pretend with them that I was
irresistible, all the while I worried that Martha would send some
secret symbol to Garth and Don and they would catch me out. I
knew Martha didn't approve but our vow had been specific: til death
do ye part. That was what I had sworn and dammit that was what
she was going to get. She had been the one to leave me.

I made it up to her in every way I could. I dusted the red tin rooster
and the pictures on the walls, old pictures of us as a young couple,
the color all sepia or black and white. Later on pictures of the kids in
faded color ink. I added pictures of the grandchildren every year to
the big shelf across from the couch. Martha had liked to look at the
shelf even before her illness. Her family displayed and the
knick-knacks that meant worlds to her that I would never
understand. She would never explain to me why a miniature teapot
with blue vining flowers brought tears to her eyes every time she
dusted it and I didn't think to ask her questions like that until I knew I
was losing her. Then I didn't know how to ask her.
She told me to dust the plants and water them one day when she
was too weak to get off the couch. I knew about watering them but I
hadn't known she had dusted them.
It's like their skin, Stanley, it needs to be clean or they can't
breathe.
Plants don't breathe, Martha, that's one thing they're not any good
at, I protested.
You shut your mouth and do as your told. You've been sitting here
collecting dust since you retired yourself, it's the least you can do to
learn how to take care of a few things around here.
That was the first time she didn't water the plants but the times
increased after that. She was fading before my eyes. I sat in my
lazy-boy and read my books but really I was watching her sleeping
on the couch. Sometimes I would read to her but she would usually
fall asleep and then it would just be me and the tick of the carriage
clock as it waited to play its tune for the hour. I wondered if I loved
her, if I ever had or if she and I were just habits to each other.
We teased each other all the time, I would say, I love you, Martha.
She would reply with, You'd better, you're not good for anything
else.
Or she would put her head on my lap and I would tell her she was
looking more and more like a crone each day.
We weren't tender with her the way some couples seem to be. We
just were together and neither of us had ever suggested it be any
other way.

She had left me that morning and I had spent my share of her life
insurance on one call girl after another at night and during the day I
dusted the plants and kept all the pictures straight on the walls. I
vacuumed the floors and washed the kitchen floor on my hands and
knees the way Martha had always done.
Then one day I felt something gnawing away inside of me.
I tried to ignore it. I called Candy with increasing frequency and
asked my doctor for more Viagra, the pain was gone while she was
there but then she would go and the sleeping pills didn't work and I
would lay awake with the pain eating away at me.
At first I had gone to the doctor and complained that I didn't have an
appetite and that my stomach hurt. He said I had an ulcer and I
changed my diet and took different pills and I hoped it went away
but it didn't, it got worse.
Soon it wasn't even going away when Candy was there with her soft
pink lips and ample breasts. Warm and sweet she never teased me
the way Martha did. I told her dirty jokes to make her flesh jiggle
against my old man skin. Martha would have told me to wash out my
mouth if I had told jokes like I told Candy. Candy wasn't Martha and
she giggled and once in awhile told me a dirty joke one of her other
clients had told her. We watched porn together and tried to figure
out if what we saw was sexy or weird. I came too soon or not at all. I
paid for hours. I paid for all night. I took out a second mortgage
when the savings were gone and kept paying.
Meanwhile the pain kept eating at me.
I woke up one night to find Martha sitting on the edge of the bed that
we had shared so many years ago. She was prim and looked just
fine, The wolf's at your door too now, Stan.
She got up and walked away. I stood up and followed her, a naked,
capering old man with his shriveled junk dangling between the skin
that hung in folds from my thighs. She sat down on the couch and
the lied down. She smiled at me and her cheeks hollowed out and
black circles formed around her eyes. She lay still as her eyes
closed and then vanished.
It was a dream. I had been sleepwalking. The doctor had warned
me the sleeping pills might make me do that. When I went to bed I
saw that Martha's ivy was dusty and it had spread out of its pot and

was reaching out with creeping vines on the carpet. I didn't

remember when it had grown so much and thought maybe I was still
dreaming but in the morning I could see in the harsh daylight that
the ivy was still down to the floor.
I had dull memories of Martha with bigger pots that she had moved
the plants to but either she had never trusted me for such a task
while she was sick or it had never come up and I didn't know how to
make the ivy trust a new pot for home. I didn't want to start stepping
on them either though so I picked them up off the ground and made
them grow on the shelves nearby.
All of Martha's plants seemed to be busting out of the homes she
had left for them. In the decade I had tended them they had always
stayed put, some of them had died but most of them had lived and
grown as I did for them as she had shown me. Now every morning I
was picking up ivy off the carpet and moving the other plants to try
to keep them out of the way. Her aloe vera burst it's pot and stuck
it's roots out of its terracotta holding cell.
I went to the doctor and told him the pills weren't helping. I bought a
new pot and put the aloe vera into it, old pot and all. I didn't want to
mess anything up or change it and I didn't know how to lift it out of
the pot and put it in a new one so this seemed the best idea.
That night Martha came to me again and told me the wolf was
coming again and then walked to the couch and lied down and died
once more. I woke up in bed with ivy creeping up the side of the bed
and Martha's sunken cheeks in my mind.
I made another doctor's appointment.
I didn't mind going to the doctor. The receptionist was a cute
brunette trying to be a cuter blonde and it worked for me. The doctor
was friendly and didn't rush me even though I was making more and
more appointments and I could tell they all thought I was just lonely.
This time the doctor seemed more concerned. It was getting worse,
I was throwing up and there was blood in it, blood in my stool too.
He ordered that a camera should be put up one end and down the
other. They gave me an injection to help with the pain but it still hurt
and I could hardly talk or walk afterward. I regretted telling him
about either one then.

Well Stan, it looks like there is something bad in your stomach. It's
a tumor, probably benign but we got a piece of it and we'll know
soon if there's anything you need to worry about.
In the morning I woke up covered in ivy, the sound of wolves
howling had echoed all night in my dreams.
I waited until it was dark enough so the neighbors couldn't see too
much and called Candy. I kept her all night and she kept the wolves
away but the ivy had climbed into bed with us.
She looked at it in bewilderment as she got dressed to go. It was
very early in the morning, she had to go before sunrise so no one
would see her.
It's been doing this most nights, I explained.
I've never heard of ivy growing that fast, She exclaimed, her pretty
brow furrowed. It was easy to believe her act that she was a silly,
stupid girl but she was smarter than she liked to let on and it worried
me that she thought the ivy was acting oddly.
It's pretty old now, maybe it's decided to be bigger too, I
suggested, I knew nothing about the ways of plants. Only Martha's
assertion that they breathed despite my doubts on the matter.
Candy walked around my house, she had become familiar in it and
she noticed the other plants had grown too. She hugged me and left.
It wasn't her problem, none of it was. That was part of her charm in
a way.
The doctor called me into his office a few weeks later and I knew
the news was bad. The wolves were coming every night except
when Candy was there and even her presence didn't stop the ivy. It
covered the walls of my room now and each morning I awoke
covered in a blanket of it.
Don and Garth came over unexpectedly one day, they had heard
about a girl coming to my house they said. Lucky for me, Candy
wasn't there that night. I was surprised that I had gotten away with it
for nearly a decade anyhow. I distracted them by telling them that I
had to get surgery and played dumb at their accusations. Candy
was all I had left in life, Candy and the wolves that ate at my belly
and the ivy that clung to my skin every morning.
The news made them uncomfortable and sad. They would come by

more, they promised. They would come to me with the doctor.

I was relieved and irritated. I missed how the house had hummed
with life while my Martha had been alive. I hadn't known that it was
only her they had come to see and that I was incidental. That hurt
more than the wolves.
I was in the hospital for nearly a month as they chopped out the
poisoned dying parts of me and tried to give me a few more years.
Bits of stomach and intestine, parts of my liver, all of that had to go. I
woke up and couldn't eat and dreamed of wolves and Martha
weeping.
When I was allowed to go home the door wouldn't open. Don and
Garth had driven me back to the house and they had to use their
shoulders to shove the door open. The place looked like a jungle. I
was weak as a kitten but I knew that the plants being everywhere
meant that no one had come by to check on the house. One whole
month of no one watering them and dusting their leaves. I walked
across the floor that was covered in vines to the sink and filled the
watering can and started on the rounds.
Dad, let me, Don insisted. I stubbornly held onto the green plastic
watering pot.
No, you didn't do it while I was in the hospital, you aren't going to
do it right now, I argued.
Just let him, Garth said. He had always been Martha's favorite.
Don looked on helplessly, neither knowing what to do.
I can come by later and get rid of the vines if you want, Dad, Don
tried again.
I whirled on him, You'll do no such thing. Who knows what that
would do to them. Those are your mother's plants.
The boys asked if I needed anything else and then left me to my
watering. I was shaking with weakness but forced myself to water
each plant. The soil was completely dry, the leaves were dusty. I
tried to dust the leaves as best as I could but there were too many of
them.
I wasn't feeling up to saucy business but the next evening I called
Candy to come by again. I asked her to help me dust the leaves and
she did and asked me how I was feeling.

I lost forty pounds, I boasted to her.

She smiled sadly. I was skin and bones now, I had never been a
heavy man.
She moved the vines off the carpet and the bed so there were
places to walk. I thought it was better for a woman to do it than a
man, even if those men were Martha's sons or husband. She
snuggled with me for a little while and then left me to the wolves and
vines.
They were howling now and I could hear Martha, her sobs more like
the howling of wolves now than the tears of a woman. In the morning
the vines had penetrated my skin and covered me once more. They
were on the ceiling now too.
The boys came by to check on me. I could see Martha on the couch
all the time now. Sometimes she was sitting and reading a book but
mostly she lay there dying. Each breath an effort. Sometimes she
howled with the wolves even in the daytime. They didn't see their
mothers but the vines bothered them and they found ways to make
certain that they didn't have to come by very often.
The next time the boys came by I got them to fill my prescriptions. I
called Candy again that evening and asked her what her favorite
drink was. She said, 'Bourbon and coke', Much to my surprise.
Bring by the biggest bottle of bourbon you can find, no bring two,
one for us each and some coke and a big tip will be in it for you my
dear.
Are you feeling that much better? She asked, surprised and
concerned.
I feel like a new man, I assured her. The vines moved even while I
was awake. I hung up the phone and unwrapped the ivy that had
twined around my ankle during the brief conversation I had had.
I took the last of my Viagra and waited for her to show up at my
door. I paid her but I wasn't surprised that the Viagra didn't make my
withered penis hard and we stopped trying to drink the bourbon.
She had brought two bottles. I left an envelope for her on my
bureau. She never counted it anymore with me. I teased her and
played tricks on her but I always paid her the proper amount. This
envelope contained a very large tip indeed.

We drank and talked for awhile. It had been a long time since I had
drank anything harder than tea and I felt the bourbon going to my
head. Before I could get too sleepy I told her to go home.
She obediently got dressed. I knew she liked me, but at the end of
the day I was a job to her and early dismissal wasn't argued. She
took her envelope, her eyebrow raising almost imperceptibly as she
noticed the weight of it but she said nothing and pretended to be
drunker than she was and left me alone to the wolves and Martha's
sobbing wailing and the vines.
I had quite a bit of morphine and sleeping pills in my prescription
after the surgery. My hands were shaking as I poured the pills out
onto the nightstand into a pile of blue and white and yellow and pink.
I hoped my stomach would hold it down as I scooped them into my
mouth an washed them down with the bottle of bourbon Candy
hadn't taken with her. I didn't feel sick, only afraid. Martha's cheeks
had been so hollow when she had finally died. I saw the start of the
same to my own and the same black lines under my face. The
doctor said they thought they had got it all but the wolves still
screamed with Martha every night. It was still there, maybe in my
bones, maybe somewhere else, eating at me. I wouldn't cry myself
to sleep at night.
There would only be one more night of tears for me. I cried as I
thought of pretty Candy and never seeing her pink nipples again, of
all the young firm flesh that I had ever felt. I cried my old man tears
that my children didn't come for Sunday dinner and that of all the
people in my life Candy would probably think of me more than
anyone else in my life.
I didn't cry long, I was getting tired. The sucker teeth of the ivy were
gripping me around my ankle and reaching for my neck. Martha was
howling. The sleepiness was coming on fast. I took more pills, I
didn't want to wake up another morning covered in vines or hearing
Martha's insane crying that every night turned more and more to
screams.
As I closed my eyes, knowing that the end was very close now
indeed I heard footfalls in the hallway. They were as real and as
solid as if Candy had come back to check on me without being
called. I opened my eyes one last time and realized that my eyelids

were still shut. Martha stood in the doorway. She was wearing a
cape of ivy and her face was the face of a wolf.
You're in my world now, Stan, She said through her fanged
mouth. All around me I heard the howling of wolves and a new
sound, the creep of ivy growing as fast as a caterpillar can crawl.
I wanted to remind her that it was only until death that our vows held
us but to her it was all the same. She stroked my thin hair and then
lunged for my throat. Darkness was all that was left to me then.
Darkness and pain and still, I can hear the ivy grow.

Toadstools of Rire
(A Short Story from the ORU Universe,
created by Lynda Williams

by

Virginia Carraway

The volcanic steam vent was firing into high gear and there were life
forms who knew this as the signal to surge into full steam breeding
mode. Sulphur dioxide, hydrogen chloride and hydrogen fluoride
were released from their protective vesicles to mingle with the
sudden effusion of carbon dioxide, making a local atmosphere
inhospitable for humans and most other complex life forms. Simple
life forms such as viruses, bacterium, amoebas and spores however
are a different story when it comes to extreme adverse living
conditions.
The planet that would one day be known as Rire appeared to all
intents and scientific purposes to be uninhabitable without intensive
terraforming. Rire was a very young planet, only a little over three
billion years old and full of the restless spirit of youth. Rire was
made up of six continents of similar sizes with saltwater seas
separating them. It orbited a spectral type G2V star, also known as
a dwarf yellow star. The sun of Rire was nearly identical to earths

star Sol, only once again, much younger. Rions, was a youthful solar
system and its name was taken from the French verb and meant,
we laugh.
Rire was also a bit closer in orbit to its sun, a star which would one
day be named New Sol. Rire orbited at a nearly constant one
hundred and forty million kilometers from New Sol, a distance that
averaged out to approximately ten million kilometers closer an orbit
than earth was to Sol.
When the first probes arrived through the Jump, they beamed back
pictures of a temperate young planet with high seismic and volcanic
activity but low tectonic plate activity. From orbit, Rire appeared
strange and unattractive. One scientist said it was the most pizza
faced planet he had ever seen and looked like one of the kids from
his sons locker room.
Its seas were dark blue, nearly purple due to a high concentration of
iodine. The land masses were a dark black colour that offered a
sharp contrast to the brighter stains on the continents. The black
was the bare soil, it was rich, moist loam. It covered the face of Rire
which was innocent of all vegetable life. It was a strange blood red
mottling that startled the eye and stirred unfavourable comments
from the humans who viewed the early photos of Rire. The vivid
mottling radiated outward from seemingly random locations on the
land masses. Closer investigation revealed that what had appeared
random concentrations were all focused around the volcanic areas
of the planet. A still closer look revealed a startlingly arranged
ecosystem.
Although volcanic and restless, Rire was also covered in a shallow
net of underground waterways that formed a steamy union of
hotsprings that covered the globe, only removed from the poles that
were draped year long in ice caps. These hotsprings were focused
around the volcanoes and their vents and it was around these that
the red stains emanated.
The photos taken by the orbiting probe Embassy left the scientists
who examined them back on earth scratching their heads and
theories sprung from this confusion with wild abandon. Some
argued that they were algae, others rock formations and one
particularly emphatic fellow declared the red was vegetation and
that this proved that there was an excess of red chlorophyll. The

fellow claimed that this gave proof towards his theory that even a
G2V star could have an entirely different spectrum than its
classification indicated. A frantic re-examination of the light
spectrum of New Sol followed and it was a great source of tension
until it was verified that the solar radiation was indeed earthlike.
The tension was justified by the earth scientists desperation for a
planet suitable for terraforming and colonization. Billions of dollars
were at stake and the clock was ticking. The ground probe
Diplomat resolved the issue once and for all. As the digital pixels
morphed from a red and black blur into a discernible reality, the
scientists were presented with yet another puzzle from Rire.
The red splotches were toadstools.
Hectares upon hectares of toadstools, clinging to the volcanic hot
springs in eager profusion.
Impossible! Said Henri in his heavy French-Canadian accent.
Marisol squinted her eyes and tilted her head, knowing that there
was no purpose to it. The digital images were crisp and clear and
took up an entire wall-sized screen.
Marisol McKay, Henri Marchaud and Clifford Hoess had been,
along with five other groups, charged with interpreting the probe
data and giving their recommendations for terraforming to the larger
committee. Each smaller grouping of three to five scientists worked
blind of the other groups so that the committee could determine if
there was consensus and therefore veracity to their conclusions.
Cliff nodded in agreement with Henri. Youre absolutely correct.
These images appear to be an impossibility.
There wasnt a green thing alive (or dead) on Rire. The scientific
assumption was firm and obvious. Too many volcanoes, no
vegetation meant little to no oxygen and a hell of a lot of carbon
dioxide and acid from all the sulphur. The riddle on their screen was
that mushrooms needed oxygen to live the same way that people
needed it. They are different from the green things that absorb
carbon dioxide and exude oxygen. Why would an oxygen-loving
organism cling to the edge of all the carbon dioxide spewing from
volcanoes and their vents?
The red toadstools that covered the surface of Rire with their vividly
coloured caps and stipes, the presence of which was currently

puzzling teams of earth scientists, was far more complex than any
earth originating organism would ever comprehend.
Like all mushrooms, the toadstools of Rire had far more going on
beneath the surface than above. The bright, gilled fruiting bodies
humans readily identified as mushrooms are merely the culmination
of a saprophytes reproductive cycle. Even on earth, fungi are a
great mystery.
Mycelium exist independently and invisibly beneath the surface of
what humanity perceives. The mycelium are massive clusters of
threadlike microscopic structures that can exist kilometers away
from the fruiting body that humans call mushrooms. The hyphae,
the threads that make up the mycelium, are sensitive to light, heat,
chemicals, hormones and likely many more things that we have
never understood as a species. The hyphae communicate amongst
themselves, and with the hyphae of other mushrooms as well. In
fact, so much is unknown about the hyphae that many species of
mushrooms cannot be grown in captivity as we cannot perceive
their needs well enough to provide for them. Since humanity cannot
comprehend how the hyphae are communicating with each other,
they also have no way of knowing what the hyphae are saying.
The Ambassador probe sat at the edge of a vent, one wheel sat
partially submerged in the mineral bath of steaming hot spring.
Behind the Ambassador twin tracks disappeared across the rolling
plain of black earth and bright fungi. The tracks cut through the
endless field of red in stark relief to the undisturbed terrain around it.
Crushed red fruiting bodies were mushed into a paste with the moist
black earth. The paste was an imperfect blend that had been
created from the combination of living toadstools and volcanic
minerals and decayed bodies of the decayed and dead used up
toadstools.
The toadstools had formed symbiotic relationships on a microscopic
level. It was impossible to say how the toadstools had first sprouted
but over the years they had flourished by giving willing homes to the
Lagroscoppia fillicoccus bacterium. It was an unique bacterium to
Rire and it spawned from the lava that came from deep within the
planet to survive with the aid of its hosts, the toadstools. It was as a
result of this relationship that these toadstools were so very special.
They thrived off of carbon dioxide and sulfur, these were a
requirement for the bacteria and by extension the toadstools to

thrive. It also enabled the shrooms to easily digest minerals and

heavy metals. The death of the mushrooms and their exudates
lightly basified the acidic volcanic soil and combatted the attrition
brought by the sulfur clouds filled with acid rain.
Earth scientists were about to discover the answer to the toadstool
riddle. The fungi had done all of the pre-terraforming for them and
saved them a century of intensive cultivation and conditioning.
These mushrooms easily spared us a century of pre-terraforming!
Marisol was writing up the spectrograph report and exclaiming
exuberantly to Henri and Cliff.
What stage of compatibility would you say planet XG5 has for
human compatibility? Cliff was reading over the finished pages of
the report while simultaneously regarding Marisol. her black eyes
were large and full of the light of discovery. She was perpetually
coltish and distracting in the most pleasant way imaginable to an old
widower.
Hmmm, well, its always a little hard to say precisely when just
dealing with the data from a probe, but the toadstools have been
producing oxygen. As a result, there is an atmosphere on the planet
that a human being could breathe, although they would have health
complications if they tried to life there for more than a day or two
without some sort of fabricated dome or suit for protection. We
figured we would have to import an awful lot of acid friendly green
plants before any O2 would be naturally produced. The soil is way
more prepared to support our sort of earth greenery as well. We had
plans to import a lot of minerals and black earth to give us a foothold
that, apparently, we already have. A lot of the colonization will be
down to stabilizing the tectonic activity but of course the Marvisam
machinery will be dug down first thing along with the first ships, that
will settle down the earthquakes and the volcanoes
So, where does that place us on the compatibility scale?
Id hesitate to say without entering all the data into the computer,
but my best estimate is an 0.85 on the Earth Similarity Index.
Henri nodded thoughtfully. 0.85 thats pretty damn good.
Cliff drank his coffee with a smile and raised eyebrows. It was a
quirk he had to show he was genuinely pleased. He never smiled
unless he really meant it without raising his eyebrows. The original

rating was 0.73. Id say that would make our investors pleased as
punch!
And XG5 has all sorts of microbes, it has the bacteria, it has
everything! Henri rethought his statement. Well, not everything.
But we were prepared for a nearly sterile environment. If we set up a
paraterraforming dome, colonists could set up the whole planet just
the way they liked it while out in the field.
It took Marisol a moment to interpret through Henris accent but
then she nodded.
I think, judging from the samples the Ambassador took, that it is
likely that the toadstools are poisonous. I will have to wait to see
what the rest of the samples show, but the mushrooms appear to
have concentrated amounts of a cyanide containing compound in
them. We will have to ascertain the specifics and disperse a cyanide
consuming bacteria before we can grow the crops.
You are saying that these mushrooms are rich in vitamin cyanide?
Inquired Henri with a disturbed grimace.
Cliff looked up from the report he had once more become
engrossed in. Can we pinpoint a percentage of cyanide
concentration?
Henri looked over Marisols shoulder for a few minutes before
responding. No, I think we are short some numbers to work out a
reliable equation. It does appear that the concentration is more
intense around the toadstools.
Cliff frowned, Could the mushrooms contain a cyanide producing
enzyme?
Marisol nodded. Its possible, they could also be extracting cyanide
as a naturally occurring mineral that exudes from the volcanoes.
They would consume it throughout their lifetime and it would reach
concentrated levels from that as well. Either way, the bacteria we
will recommend using as the first stage of terraforming should take
care of the problem. It will be easiest to deal with if the mushrooms
are the source of the toxin rather than the volcanoes.
Why would that be? Wont there just be more and more of it
produced as the mushrooms go through their life cycle?
It was Henri who asked the question but both men turned to Marisol

to hear the answer. She was a biologist and a botanist. Her answer
was spoken softly as her conscience bothered her a little at the
answer and its long reaching ramifications.
The bacteria will stop up the ability of the toadstsools to extract
cyanide from the earth and the air or to produce it by enzyme. The
bacteria are very thorough and aggressive. They consume cyanide
of all forms and through their patented design they turn deadly
cyanide into harmless nitrogen and water. The high levels of
cyanide will actually assist us in terraforming the planet with the aid
of the aerosols we will spray.
Bacillus maxipumilar? The souped up version of Bacillus pumilus
that they discovered in the 1960s? Asked Cliff.
Yes, although the original version turned cyanide into ammonium
and forminates. Marisol wrinkled her nose. Much less nice than
nitrogen and water. Plus these little germies actively seek out
cyanide and destroy it.
The two men beamed. Marisol furrowed her brow, her conscience
still bothering her. Of course, this means that the toadstools wont
survive.
At all?
They could adapt. She offered dubiously.
But the bottom line is that we cant exist with them in their current
form, can we? Cliff asked the question while already knowing the
answer. The report the Ambassador had sent back was a definitive
as could be hoped for when being sent from across the galaxy.
No. Those toadstools and many of the bacteria and amino acids
unique to XG5 will most likely be dead as the dodos so we can have
a new home. Terraforming isnt a friendly proposal. We are invading
this planet plain and simple. Im just glad that its only a mushroom.
Cliff was practical about the matter. Well then, I will write up your
combined reports for recommendations for the committee. I think
everyone is going to be extremely pleased. Colonially speaking, we
are going to be laughing on this one.
Rire. Murmured Henri.
Pardon? asked Marisol who spoke Spanish as a second language
rather than French.

It is the French word, to laugh at. You see these pictures on all
these screens of these red mushrooms, it was their planet, and we,
we are laughing.
We will all be laughing when we have a new homeworld.
Cliff smiled more broadly. I will put it in my report as a
recommendation for the code name of this continued project. Rire
rolls off the tongue much more smoothly than planet XG5.
***
Hypahe quivered deep under the earth. Many spores had been lost
on the surface. Such losses, and much greater ones were not
unknown. Storms were capable of decimating whole generations of
fruiting bodies and scattering the spores to colonize whole new
vistas of Rire. The lava flows that boiled over the edges of calderas
had been known to destroy whole fields or even entire blood red
seas of fungi.
This, however, was a strange new menace. it had destroyed, but it
had also left many maimed. there had been a vibration beforehand,
a vibration that came from above rather than below. The individual
hyphae fed their data back to mycelium, drew conclusions and
compiled data for future reference. They hyphae also received data
bundles that were passed to them through the hyphae belonging to
other toadstools. This data was forwarded to all the toadstools in a
vicinity of the recipient and so on and so forth. Within the hour,
every toadstool on Rire had been informed of the Ambassador and
the tract of destruction he had left.
The toadstools quivered and conversed but their options were
negligible. Perhaps the alien intruder would just leave? The
Ambassador showed now signs of leaving, but after several weeks
it ceased to roll about on its wheels.
It did not cease its whirring and it continued to scoop up soil and
make assorted clicks and snaps. A tiny scalpel and a shovel
emerged and first cut and then deposited the remains of a
deceased fruiting body into a receptacle in the Ambassador. Three
hours later the scalpel returned to slice a triangle of flesh from a
living fruiting body. The pain input, the loss of cells and an urgent
appeal for energy resources resounded to her parent mycelium and
then was echoed around the planet.

Release spore. Relegate fruiting body to early loss. Release spore.

You are deceased.
The myceliums command was final in its authority. The fruiting
body felt the warmth of the sun on her cap and waited for a warm
breeze to deposit her spore onto. She released her spore and died,
wishing her children fortune on the summer breeze.
Another Ambassador arrived, then another and another. Soon they
were on all six continents, treading, sampling and slicing. The
toadstools were stoic. They were many, there spores were
multitudinous. They poured more energy into creating more spores,
just to be on the safe side. There were only six of the mysterious
enemy and the shrooms were in the billions. Surely, they had
nothing to fear.
The first ship arrived. The event was beyond the comprehension of
the toadstools. Human tread on Rire for the first time. They came
equipped with machinery and scrupulously removed the noxious,
cyanide producing toadstools within their vicinity before setting up a
habitation zone on the earth the shrooms had once lived on. The
toadstools were not worried, only the fruiting bodies were killed. The
mycelium and the capacity to produce new fruiting bodies would not
be impacted by this surface destruction.
Marisol McKay had a strong interest in primitive life forms including
bacterium and spore based life forms. She had known what she
was talking about when she recommended the use of Bacillus
Maxipulimar. The spraying of BacMax formula was as simple as
spraying for nematodes in your garden, only this was set to be done
on a global scale. Mycelium died in droves. There were places on
the planet where the shrooms received not data. They suffered a
withering, painful death of having the life giving cyanide eaten out of
them by their microscopic enemy.
Bacillus maxipulimar spread and multiplied on its own and the
toadstools soon became endangered. Their planet had become a
hostile environment. Hyphae communication was down, only spotty,
incomplete panicked transmissions were getting though when they
heard any word at all.
It was desperation as they entered extinction that caused them to
make one last pathetic dash to gather every bit of energy they could
for the final push.

More ships had arrived now. There was machinery as well and
more humans too. The mycelium could not see their invaders, they
did no have the sensory organs to have sight. They could, however,
feel the vibrations of the human voices, their footsteps, their
lovemaking, and their fights. They felt the electromagnetics of their
equipment and transmissions and felt the deep earth shaking as
excavations began the installation of the equipment that would settle
Rires restless spirit. Some mushrooms still lived as the Marvisam
machine was turned on for the first time and powerful magnets
exerted a positive harmonic that settled the spikes of the
seismographs into gentle peaks as soft as a stippled meringue pie.
The excavations penetrated far deeper than any hyphae ever had
and the straggling group of survivors marveled at the might of the
nemesis for which they had no name.
After the toadstools had gathered every last remnant of energy they
had amongst their dwindling pool of resources, they each created
one last fruiting body, different and more powerful than any fruiting
body they had ever before conceived. As the last of their kind
spored for the final time, they cast themselves to the wind and
hoped that these last spores would be born off of the planet and find
rebirth out in the great unknown.
The mushrooms knew nothing of the vacuum and cold of space but
they did know how to make their spoors hearty. The spoors had in
the past survived the flames of the magma and the cold of the
planetary poles as well as a creeping ice age that the toadstools
refused to be defeated by, The mushrooms were not rational
beings, they had no plan for their actions, they reacted as living
beings with one tiny window of survival in a dwindling spiral of
existence. They could get caught up on the invaders vessels, cast
themselves onto the solar winds and perhaps, perhaps, perhaps,
find a planet like their homeworld, the planet that had become Rire.
The very last fruit body of her kind received her signal. The
mycelium that issued her the command was already withering. The
winds were right now, The large ship would soon be leaving. They
had learned the patterns and recognized the signals. She cast
herself to the winds.
It was time.

Micheal and Mallory

by

Krysia Anderson

Mallory sat in front of the mirror and talked to her reflection as she
so often did. Not seeing her own reflection but the reflection of the
other her. The him who was her. He looked almost just like her,
blond hair and gray eyes but she thought that her reflection had a
nicer nose than her. Mallory didn't like her nose and Micheal's nose
was smaller and his eye lashes were longer. That was another thing
Mallory didn't like about herself, her eyelashes. They were pale like
her eyebrows she didn't think that she was anything special most
days but Micheal always made her feel like she was special when
they had these long talks her and him. Lately she was noticing the
differences between them more and more, like how he didn't seem
to get any older even though she was growing up now. When they
were little their noses had looked exactly the same as the other ones
nose and except for the fact that he kept his hair short and she had
her hair long they were almost impossible to tell apart. They weren't
identical twins but they were so similar they might as well have been
identical. You left me, She accused him.

He stared back at her placidly. He didn't care when she asked him
this and the more she asked him the more he would disappear. He
would fade away and her face would be the only one looking back at
her in the mirror. Her Dad loved her long blonde hair and told her
that all the time her mom loved it too. Mallory brushed her hair out
every night. She did that now that Michael had left, counting each
stroke as she did. She put lipstick on, it was plum pink and she
smacked her lips at herself. She put eyeshadow on and mascara on
and then she ran to the bathroom and scrubbed all signs of the
makeup off her face. She sat back in front of the mirror and glared
at herself and pulled her hair back out of her face and behind her
head. That was better, it made her look more like Michael. But
Michael didn't have boobs and he didn't have his cute little boy nose
growing bigger and bigger every day. And that was when she
decided that she was tired of it. Mallory opened the drawer beside
her and she took out a pair of scissors. She didn't think about what
she was doing and just grabbed all her hair and wrapped it around
her hand and cut it off right above her hand..
She kept cutting it shorter, she wanted to look like him, she wanted
to look like Micheal. He was the good one, he was the one who
should be on this side of the mirror. When she had cut it all off she
waited for a few minutes in front of the mirror to see if he would
come back and talk to her. He was her only real friend, the only one
who really understood her but even Micheal didn't want to talk to her
about some things. Sometimes she would try to talk to him about
when he had left, when he had gone to live in the mirror but he
never wanted to talk about that. She woke up in the morning she
was surprised to see that there were long golden hairs all over her
pillowcase. There was a path of them to the mirror where she sat
and talked to Micheal and it took her a minute to remember that she
had cut it all off. She groaned and climbed back into bed, pushing
as much of the hair that was in bed with her onto the floor. There
was no way she wanted to tell her mom and stepdad about this. Her
mom was going to freak out and the worst part of it was that she
didn't even remember why she had cut her hair. Something about
Micheal she remembered.
She had made Micheal up as an imaginary friend when she was
little. She couldn't remember a time before she had Micheal as a
brother, just an imaginary brother. She had believed in him so much
that she had asked her mom why he had gone away. Her mother

had told her that she had never had a twin and asked her where she
had gotten that idea. Mallory didn't know how to answer her mom.
She didn't know where she had gotten the idea from, it w as more
like something she knew than like something she thought. She still
had times where she forgot that Micheal wasn't real even though
she reminded herself of it all the time. Sometimes she would write
pages and pages over and over again that said, he's not real, I'm
real. He's not real, I'm real'. Somtimes she'd change it up a bit and
then she would say just write or say, 'Micheal's not real.' That was
shorter and when she got too lost in her conversations with him she
would start writing it out to remind herself.
She fell asleep feeling terrible. She had made Micheal mad at her
again. She could always tell because she felt her urge to self-harm
go up. She just couldn't stand the idea of him being angry with her.
When she woke up next she was confused to find Micheal lying in
bed beside her. She tried to touch him but her hand went through
him,
Am I a ghost? She wondered.
She couldn't go back to sleep after that and so she got up and
walked around the room. She soon came to believe that she was a
ghost. She could put her hands through her dresser and she
couldn't pick up her hair brush. She looked in the mirror and
became very confused. Her hair was still long but there were
strands of hair all over the floor. Micheal, lying sleeping in bed had
the rough haircut that she had given herself before bed. He woke up
and stretched and looked around the room.
Mallory, are you here? He asked.
Yes, She replied and walked over to him but her feet weren't
touching the ground. He reached out to touch her and his hand went
through her. He ran his hands through his hair, Mallory winced, she
had really butchered his hair. But she was confused. How could she
have cut Micheal's hair?
It's hard to hear you, but I can hear you real quiet, He said in a
whisper.
What's happening? Are you real? I can't touch things anymore.
Mallory asked.
Micheal flipped the blankets aside easily and Mallory could see at

once that Micheal was the one who was real now.
Have we flipped in the mirror? Mallory asked out loud but it was
like Michaeal couldn't hear her, or maybe he was still annoyed with
her and was just pretending not to hear her.
He got dressed in a t-shirt and jeans and went downstairs. Mallory's
stepdad was making pancakes and sausages and her mom was
complaining that Mallory's little sister's weren't dressed and ready
for school. How was it possible that Michael could have the exact
same family as Mallory's? Micheal was confused too. No one looked
at Micheal/Mallory and they didn't say anything then about her new
haircut.
Are these our parents? He whispered to Mallory.
That's my mom and my stepdad and my little sisters Beth and
Janet. Mallory explained, more confused than ever. This wasn't
Micheal's side of the mirror, it was that Micheal really had taken her
body. Her mom was in a bad mood.
Mallory get Beth dressed for school, she hasn't even brushed her
hair, Mallory's mom said. Micheal didn't react at first, he didn't
know that she meant him. Then he couldn't figure out which one
was Beth. He wanted to ask Mallory but his stepdad asked him,
What are you muttering about, Mallory?
He tried to think his question at Mallory but she couldn't hear what
was going on inside his head, he had to talk out loud for her to hear
him. He grabbed one of the girl's by the wrist and Mallory's mom
said, I said get Beth dressed, what do you have cotton in your ears
or something?
That was the first time mom looked up at me, What have you done
to your hair? She cried out. Micheal shrugged. Mallory's mother
sighed in exasperation.
Well, you've made yourself look terrible but I guess there's no fixing
it now. Go brush Beth's hair and get ready for school. You're barely
going to have time to eat at this rate.
Micheal took the other girl and she fussed a bit and Michael
obviously didn't know what to do. Mallory wanted to pull her hair out
watching him. While Micheal went upstairs Mallory tried to stay
downstairs but it was like she was on a tether and she was pulled
after Micheal up the stairs and into the bathroom.

You're hurting me, Beth said when Micheal tried to brush her hair.
She always says that, I said.
You always say that, Micheal repeated and then Beth shut up and
let him brush her hair.
You look stupid with your hair like that, Mallory, Beth said and ran
downstairs. She didn't seem to care that someone who was not her
sister was brushing her hair. To me, Micheal looked like Micheal
with his short haircut. All the differences that were between us in the
mirror were still evident now that he was in my body. Everyone
called him Mallory and except that his hair really was shorter they
didn't seem to notice any differences.
The same was true at school. Micheal was a lot quieter than I was in
class but sometimes I was quiet and other times I was the class
clown. I would jump up on the desk and play air guitar and get
detention or repeat everything the teacher said to annoy her.
Nobody noticed anything except that Micheal's hair was different
and they all said it looked ugly. Micheal must not have had the same
sort of school where he came from because he didn't know the
answers to the questions that the teacher asked and he was
confused by the math that I had understood just the day before.
Mallory was stuck on her tether attached to Micheal and stuck in
class. She would go around and put her hand through the other kids'
heads and stick out her tongue at them to annoy them. They didn't
notice at all except for one girl who brushed the air like she was
trying to get rid of a fly or some other pest.
When they went home Micheal was feeling worse and worse. He
was confused and he kept on forgetting what he was supposed to
do next. He went to bed early and when he fell asleep I got real
sleepy too so I curled up beside him and went to sleep.
I woke up the next morning alone in my bed. Micheal was gone it
seemed. I got dressed and went downstairs. It was my mom's day
off work and she wasn't done telling me off about my haircut.
We'll have to take you to a proper hairdresser and see if they can
fix it up. You look like a homeless person, She said.
I'll fix it myself, I wasn't done cutting it, Micheal interrupted me.
Who's Micheal? She asked sounding confused.

I shook my head, I hadn't meant to mention Micheal to her. He

wasn't supposed to be real, Nevermind, just someone from
school. I was lying but Mom was too busy to care. I skipped school
and went to the drug store and bought a bright orange hair dye. I
don't know why I did it exactly. I guess I thought that maybe it would
keep Micheal out of my body. I hadn't seen him all day until I was
sitting in the bathroom with the hair dye on my head and he walked
through the door.
What are you doing? He demanded. I didn't like that he was
demanding that since he had used my body all day yesterday and
he really didn't have any right to it at all.
I'm showing everyone that I'm not you, I said. I didn't care
anymore if I made him mad. I was mad because he had stolen my
body yesterday and he didn't do any of the homework so now I was
going to have to do it and I didn't even get pancakes yesterday.
You can't show them, changing our hair colour won't make a
difference, didn't you see how everyone thought I was you? I
started to sing loudly to drown out his voice. I had a nice voice and I
couldn't hear him talking to me when I sang. The timer for the dye
went off and I got in the shower and rinsed it off. It looked like the
bathtub was filling with blood and I started to cry. There was blood
everywhere. Blood everywhere. Mallory went back to her bedroom,
everything she had used looked like it was soaked in blood. When
she woke up the next morning her pillowcase looked like her head
had been bleeding and she started to cry again. Her alarm went off
to go to school but she turned it off and when her mom came to
wake her up Mallory called that she was sick.
What happened to the bathroom? Her mom asked through the
door. You better not have dyed your hair or done something else
stupid.
Mallory got out of bed and opened the door. Her hair was only about
an inch long in some places and three inches in other places. It was
bright orange. Her mom gasped when she saw her, What have you
done to yourself now?
Whatever, Mom, it's my hair anyway, Mallory said.
Her mom didn't know what to say at first, Well, you look horrible.
Sick or not you had better clean up the bathroom before I get home
from work and tomorrow you go back to school. I had a call from the

school this morning and they said you weren't there yesterday
either.
Mallory slammed the door without replying. Her mom called to her
through the door but Mallory started to sing loudly again to block it
out. Her mom went away as Mallory had known she would do. She
waited until she heard everyone leave for the day before going out
to pee. Her mom was right, it was a terrible mess. It looked like
someone had been slaughtered in there. It was on the walls and in
the tub and on all the towels. Mallory didn't know how to clean it up
and so she just went back to bed. She really did feel sick and the
sight in the bathroom made her gag like she was going to puke.
When she woke up again she was lying beside Micheal once more.
His hair was bright red now but otherwise he looked like Micheal
and not Mallory. She must have slept the day away because she
could hear the family downstairs making noise. Micheal went
downstairs, he seemed to be sort of ignroing her. She followed on
her tether.
Beth started to laugh when she saw Mallory and her stepdad shook
his head. He didn't know what to do and neither did their mother.
You didn't clean the bathroom like I asked, Was all Mallory's
mother had to say.
I was sick, Micheal complained.
Well, you're going to school tomorrow young lady and that's all
there is to it. You're going to clean up the bathroom and do your
homework Mallory or there will be consequences.
Micheal jumped up from the table, I'm not a young lady and I'm not
Mallory. I'm Micheal. He said and ran from the room. He curled up
under the covers and I couldn't get him to move or talk to me.
Why did you tell them that? Are you trying to make them think Im
crazy? I asked him.
Leave me alone. You are crazy, Was all that he would say to me.
He fell asleep and this time I saw what happened as he slid out of
my body and the tether that kept me close to him got tighter and
pulled me inside the body. My body. It wasn't 'the' body, it was my
body, I reminded myself.
I got up out of bed and decided I had better try to clean the

bathroom. I scrubbed and scrubbed but there were still stains

everywhere. I couldn't clean up the blood.
'It's not blood, stupid, I reminded myself. 'It's just hair dye.'
I kept scrubbing but it wouldn't come off. I started to feel sick to my
stomach again and that was when I started to remember that
Micheal was real. He had been my twin brother. It all came back to
me in a landslide. I remembered standing at his grave and I
remembered that mom held my hand and told me to stop twitching
when they started to pull the coffin into the ground.
There had been blood. There had been so much blood. I threw up in
the toilet I really was sick now. I remembered coming into the
bathroom and mom was holding a knife and cradling Micheal's
head. I remembered that she yelled at me to call 9-1-1 and I did and
there was so much blood. Micheal was real. I had just blocked him
out, everyone had. My Dad and Mom got a divorce right after that
and then mom had married my stepdad. I scrubbed at my head, it
hurt from the remembering. I couldn't remember what had
happened after that, after I had called the police, only Mom said
Micheal had cut himself. That was a lie of course. I knew then what
had happened. Mom had been the one to kill Micheal. She had
killed him and had somehow gotten away with it. No wonder
Micheal was so mad at me for being nice to mom all the time. I fell
asleep in the bathroom and woke up lying next to Micheal. Now I
knew at least why he was so mad at me. He wasn't imaginary, he
was my brother and he was a murdered ghost.
He walked down the stairs without even looking at me. My mom was
napping on the couch. Micheal picked up the big butcher knife out
of the kitchen drawer and walked towards her. I didn't try to stop
him. She deserved it. She had killed my brother. I remembered we
had laughed together and played together and then that had all
gone away. As Micheal was walking towards Mom she opened her
eyes and saw what Micheal's intentions were to her in his eyes and
saw the knife.
You killed me, Mother. Micheal said.
Mallory, what are you doing? Put down the knife, She said, her
voice was shaking.
I'm not Mallory, I'm Micheal and you killed me and now I'm going to
kill you, He took a swipe at her through the air and she held up her

arms but he sliced her wrist and I saw her blood start to welll up and
felt sick again I didn't want my mom to die and I wanted to stop
Micheal.
Mallory, you cut me! She exclaimed. Micheal was shocked and
confused for a minute. It was at that moment that my stepdad snuck
up behind me and Micheal and grabbed Micheal and knocked the
knife out of his hand. My mom wrapped a blanket around her arm. It
didn't look very deep but there was more blood again.
What's going on here? He asked.
He held Micheal tightly and then I was back in the body again and
Micheal was beside me and he was crying and saying over and
over again, I didn't mean to hurt you mommy, she made me do it.
I was now being held tightly and I started to fight and kick and
scream, She killed him, she killed Micheal!
My mom and my stepdad exchanged a look, I don't know what to
do, My mom confessed.
My stepdad sent my mom out to the garage to bring back some
rope. He carried me kicking and screaming up to my room. Lucky
my sister's were out and didn't see it all. He tied me up when my
mom brought the rope to him.
This is what you told me about? He asked her.
Yes, she seemed to be doing so much better and when she
seemed to think he was her imaginary friend we all thought it was
for the best and her mind was healing.
Murderer! I screamed at her. My mom was crying, I didn't care
and I wished Micheal had killed her. I screamed that at her She was
nothing but a murderer and she had made me forget my own twin
brother.
I'm not the murderer, Mallory. You are, you killed your brother.
I shook my head, I couldn't believe what she was saying but it was
pouring into my head, the memories were like a poison gas in my
brain, I remembered the knife being in my hand, the bathroom
covered, in blood and Mom finding me holding the knife and pulling
it out of his chest.
You were so young at the time, they thought with treatment maybe

you would be okay, She said. The treatments obviously didn't

work. The medication isn't working, I don't know what to do with
you, Mallory.
One minute I knew what she was saying was only the truth and the
next minute it was confused in my mind again.
She's a teenager now, My stepdad said. If they find out she
attacked you they are going to have to lock her up.
They won't understand her, My mom said. She's family and we
have to take care of her.
They left me tied up on my bed. Micheal woke up in my body and he
wouldn't talk to me. I was scared he had remembered too. All day I
heard pounding noises coming from the cellar and finally Mom and
my stepdad came up to my bedroom. They carried me down to the
cellar but it was Micheal they carried and I followed on my tether. He
was quiet and didn't fight them.
My mom untied Micheal and he rubbed his hands and feet. They
had gone numb from being tied up so long. I saw that the windows
had been boarded shut and that everything had been moved out of
the cellar.
Mom stroked Micheal's short bright red hair, It's okay sweetheart, I
still love you, but this is for your own good. It's the only way to keep
the girls and the rest of us safe.
They walked away I saw there was a sleeping bag in the corner of
the room and some of my books. They walked up the cellar stairs
and I heard them lock the door. I found myself back in the body and
I started to scream and scream and I couldn't stop I couldn't stop
screaming every time I woke up. Micheal was my only companion
down there and he hated me even worse now that he knew
everything, than I hated myself.

The Rising

by

Will Norton

The day started like any other winter day when you're out in camp.
I woke up and waited for the shower to be free. It still stunk like
Brian's shit in there after he vacated it so I let the fan run while I
brushed my teeth and cleared the mirror of his steam. Sharing a
bathroom with only one other guy isn't the worst thing in the world to
happen to you but it's still kind of sick. I took my jug of bleach to the
shower stall floor as was my custom and let the water run after the
bleach had a few minutes to soak any cool foot fungus Brian might
be cultivating.
It sounds like a prude thing to do but I've not done it and every
single time I come home with athletes foot or worse. So, when I
pack for camp several jugs of bleach come with me. It has the
added benefit of getting rid of his early morning shit stink. I know
mine don't smell like roses but man, smelling another man's shit
every morning is no way to live your life.

I showered and ran down to the food hall. They were starting to
close up for the morning and I shoveled scrambled eggs and all the
melons and strawberries I could find with some pancakes and then I
covered the whole mess in syrup. I grabbed some sandwiches and
some apples and chucked them into my lunch bag along with some
protein bars, filled my giant thermos full of coffee and headed out to
the truck. It had an automatic start so it had been warming up since
I had finished my shower and it was toasty and lovely inside.
I picked up the radio and reported my position and they told me to
head over the ridge to mile 56. I sighed and swore under my breath.
Camp was mile 0, I had 56 miles to go on the completely shit roads
before I could even get to the work site. It was already starting to
snow and I resigned myself to the long slow climb up the mountain
on the winding dirt road that served no purpose except to get us
men out to the work site so we could sit around and wait for the
equipment that would be at least a day late and maybe, just maybe,
do some work out in the blizzarding cold in between driving up and
down the shit roads.
I called out my mileage on the radio at every marker, waved at the
medic on my way by, he flailed at me to stop. I stopped reluctantly,
once you stop on this road it isn't easy to get going again.
What? I asked impatiently.
You've got to sign in, He said. He had that medic tone, the one
that said he had already explained this ten times this morning and
he didnt' want to do it again.
Sign in to where? I grumbled.
He shrugged, it wasn't his problem, it was just his job. He had been
told to make us sign in today just like I had been told to go to mile
56. Nobody knew why anyone was told to do anything in this
industry. We weren't a hive mind, we were more like the system of
neurons in a crazed psychopath. All of us going where we thought
we had been told to go, none of knowing what we were going to do
when we go there or what the point was of doing what we did. We
moved things from one area to another and then a week later moved
the same pile to another site.
That's what we did. It sure didn't look like the stuff had been used
but you don't argue with the foreman, you just do it and be grateful
that if you're going to do stuff that makes no sense that at least you'll

find a nice sized paycheck in your bank account when you go home.
In the meantime we all lived in this strange version of purgatory,
doing pointless tasks, obeying pointless orders and all for purposes
that were devoid of any meaning.
I got to mile 56 at long last, 56 miles taking about two hours to drive
between the road conditions and pulling over to the side to let other
vehicles past me. Wave to the other drive, mumbling between my
teeth about wondering if I was going to be stuck this time or if the
four wheel drive would pull me off the sloping shoulder of the road
one more time.
There was only one other truck there with two guys in it so we
decided to have some coffee while we waited for the foreman to
show up.
Mile 56 was a pull out on the dirt road. The only difference between
the pullout and the rest of the road was that a plough had cleared an
area and then a dump truck of gravel had been thrown in the ditch
between snowfalls. There wasn't any equipment out there, no signs
of what sort of work we were going to be set to doing, just the 56
spray painted on a spruce tree in orange and us. It didn't matter,
that's what you do out here.
You guys have any idea what we're doing out here? I asked,
drinking my rapidly cooling coffee.
They both shook their heads, Sounded like there were some
excavators coming out, other than that I haven't heard fuck all.
We talked the shit briefly and I went back to my truck before my
coffee froze inside the lid of my thermos. The truck was still running
and warm which was better than how I felt. I had backed my truck
into the pullout so I had a view of the camp far off down the side of
the mountain. The trees and the curves of the road obstructed most
of it but the camps and the slewing ponds make their scars large
and deep so it was visible even up there.
I was debating if I should turn the truck off for awhile to save gas
when I felt the ground start to rumble under me. I looked at the guys
in the truck next to me, their whole truck was shaking like it was
being rocked by heavy equipment. I was pretty sure my truck looked
the same. Down the hill the base camp was lit up with a series of
explosions that were only slightly muffled. One of the slew ponds
blew up in an mucky brown-black blast that caught on fire and

started burning the nearby trees in the patches where they landed.
The shaking in the ground got worse. A poplar fell down in behind
the trucks and I could see the guys in the other truck, their mouths
wide with expletive curses. I felt much the same way, Holy fucking
shit! I said.
Below us the road was gently sliding downwards and I pulled the
emergency brake and sat on the edge of my seat to decide what to
do next. The rumbling was worse still and soon I saw something that
I would never forget.
Red from some force of heat the edge of a huge metal disc was
whirling its way like a power saw through the frozen ground and up
through the base camp. The size of the disc is hard to express, it
was about the size of a small city by the time it reached it's widest
points. Trees, dirt, trailers, excavators and humans were being
thrown into the air and down under the rest of the debris that the
disc was displacing.
I don't think the whole thing took very long, it was one of those
moments that seems to never end but I'm pretty sure that it was only
about ten minutes. It was the longest ten minutes of my life. When it
was fully removed from the ground it rose up above the camp and
hovered there.
It was covered in dirt and spruce trees still and I could see one of
our water trucks slowly sliding down the slope of the flying disc that
had unexpectedly risen out of the ground. It rotated over the camp,
rising up as it did so. Soon it was even with us and still rising, it was
spinning and the junk all over it was being thrown off of it as it rose.
It hovered for awhile longer and then it abruptly moved due South
without making a sound except for the clumping falls of huge
chunks of earth, spruce and pine trees and the occasional trailer or
water truck falling to the ground in its wake.
The ground wasn't shaking anymore but from what I could see from
our perch on the side of the mountain the camp looked pretty
trashed and the road wasn't in great shape either. I tried the radio
but there was just static. I got out of the truck and the other guys did
the same, we all wore the same expressions on our faces. This
came as a considerable relief to me since I had briefly wondered if I
had lost my mind.
You guys saw that too? I asked.

They nodded dumbly, Did either of you check your radio? Mine's all
static.
I checked, Said the smaller of the two, I thought he had said his
name was Mike. Nothing but static for us too. That thing must've
messed with them.
Do you think we should wait up here until 5? I mean, if we aren't
here until end of shift we could get in shit, Said the other of the two.
He was just a kid, I couldn't remember his name.
Mike laughed, Dumbass. No one's getting up here after that. We'll
be lucky to get back down the mountain before five.
He was right. Not only had the road slid but clumps of dirt, parts of
trees and scraps of metal were scattered all over the road. By the
time we reached the place where the medic's truck had been and
we had signed in we had pulled over about a dozen times to move
crap off the road. My truck had a good winch on it and between us
we had a chainsaw and some shovels but it was still really slow
going and it was starting to get colder.
We were closing on camp, the last spray painted tree we had seen
said 'mile 5' but here the road ended. There was a mountain of
snow, frozen dirt and trees mixed up together where we had driven
up the road earlier in the day. It was starting to get dark by this time
and both our trucks were getting low on gas. I pulled over and the
other two followed my lead.
What are we going to do about this? The boy asked.
I'm really not sure. It's a mess and that's all there is to it. We're
going to have to climb it. I said.
The trucks won't make it! The kid exclaimed.
Mike and I both laughed, We're going to have to climb it, like with
our legs and shit. I explained.
It was getting dark and we could hear sounds in the distance. Some
ominous crunchings and grindings and far in the distance an animal
bellowed. I was pretty sure it was a moose, I can't climb that in the
dark. The kid said.
He had a point. It was an unstable mess and it quite possibly had
sharp bits or bits that could fall down on us in it too.

I think we should sleep in our trucks tonight, it's going to be fucking

cold but it's better then getting lost in the dark, I suggested.
Oh sure, you get your truck to yourself but I'm stuck with Justin,
Mike said.
You guys have a backseat, you'll be fine. You'll keep each other
warm, I said with a laugh.
Mike glared at me good naturedly and headed back to the truck with
Justin in tow. I climbed into my truck and blasted the heat. I had a
sleeping bag in the backseat that I pulled out and gave a shake to
unroll it. I still had a couple of sandwiches and an apple in my lunch
bag and about half my thermos of coffee. I ran the truck long enough
to get it blasted with heat and turned it off. I set the alarm on my
watch for two hours from now and fell asleep exhausted. In two
hours I woke up and started the engine. It was freezing in the truck
by now and I was glad to warm up the engine. It was probably
minus forty or close to it that night and I was worried about the
battery dying. I repeated the process until dawn when I woke up,
turned the truck on again and ate my frozen sandwich and frozen
apple and my cold but fortunately unfrozen coffee.
The other two hadn't bothered to start their trucks in the night and
their truck battery was dead so we boosted it so that everyone could
get a good warm up before we headed out. I had no intention of
leaving the warmth of the truck until I absolutely had to. The morning
was bitter cold and the sky was high and blue.
My truck died before their truck did so I hopped in and we plotted
from the warmth of the truck what looked like the best path through
the obstacle that looked even bigger in the daylight than it had at
dusk.
Their truck died soon after that. I saw with only the slightest bit of
guilt that they hadn't had any sleeping bags with them, just a wool
blanket and an emergency blanket between the two of them. I also
suspected that I was the only one who had had any sort of breakfast
judging from Justin's audibly rumbling gut.
We put on our work gloves and took the chainsaw and shovels with
us but couldn't carry a lot else. It was hard going but we made it
over the mountain of ripped up frozen forest and down the other
side. I was glad we had waited for daylight, it was difficult enough I
don't think we would have made it without at least an injury if not

worse,
On the far side of the obstacle was a different world. There was
almost no sign of the road on this side of things and junk had been
tossed around, earth scraped into large mountains and whole
sections of the forest ripped up by whatever that thing was.
We walked back the five miles to camp with no idea of what we
would find when we got there.
The answer was brutal. Two thirds of the camp had been squished
like a bug under a giant wall of earth that the saucer had pushed
ahead of itself as it unearthed itself from the ground. We picked our
way to the side of things that still stood. The sluice ponds that had
ignited the night before had burned themselves out in the wet snow
and trees stood like used up matchsticks in the wasteland before
us.
At least my trailer is on this side of the camp, I commented. The
other two looked at me agog, You guys do whatever you need to
do, I'm going to go see if my porn collection is ok.
I waved at them and headed for my trailer. I needed to find out if
anything was left standing and who was still around. I could hear
voices of men calling to each other and heavy machinery at work.
We had made it back to camp. Now it was the oil companys job to
get us out of this mess and other than that the flying saucer seemed
an irrelevant inconvenience.
What I did know was that I wasn't enjoying the company of Mike
and Justin enough to scope out the situation with them in tow. I was
almost to my trailer when Mr. Blackman himself came around the
corner of the still standing mess hall.
You. You're coming with me, He said.
Yes, sir, I replied and fell in line behind him. He was from head
office and had been sent out to monitor our progress. I was still
trying to figure out if it was a good thing or a bad thing that he was
here when all this happened. I decided a good thing, no one from
head office would believe it if no one from there saw it. He walked
with determined footfalls to the main office.
Unlike some men from head office who attempted to be disarming
and friendly, Mr. Blackman was an older man with an older
mentality to the industry. He had worked his way up from the bottom

and damned if he was going to make it easy for anyone else to ever
do the same. He was a big man, hefty and had strange growths on
his face. His blue eyes were frightening and when he looked at you
you hoped it was because you had spinach between your teeth
because any other reason for that intense stare to fall on you would
not be a good one.
I wanted to ask him questions but felt like I was before a hideous
ancient and malicious fertility god. He may grant my request, he
may answer my question... but at what price? I followed in silence.
For such a big man he moved with such speed that I had to jog a
little to keep up. He took me into the main office where three other
men were sitting. I recognized the medic and nodded to him, he
nodded briefly back. There was Gus, the health and Safety
inspector and Lewis who was the dispatcher. And then there was
me. I was quite curious to figure out why I had earned a place
amongst these folk.
I don't think I've got to tell you guys that we have a fucking situation
on our hands here, Mr. Blackman started.
Yes, Replied the medic, None of my radios or cellphones are
working though, I think I got some footage of that ship coming out
but I don't have any reception.
There should be some new guys coming in if this weather doesn't
clog up the roads, Lewis added.
The outside road has a crack from that thing running across it that
would be hard to take on an ATV in the summer, there won't be
anyone coming in here unless it's by helicopter until the weather
clears, Mr. Blackman said gruffly.
I imagined the scenario playing out: Next set of guys comes up the
road, if they're speeding and the weather is shitty like it is getting to
be right now, maybe they fall right into the crater. Or maybe they
manage to stop. Maybe their radios work or they get cellphone
reception (an unlikely thing anywhere near where we were) and they
report back that something is wrong with the road... then what?
Someone at some point would get back to the highway junction
where the Petro station was and report back to someone that there
wasn't a clear road through.
Waiting for that first someone to muster up a helicopter to get
across to see what was going on was a totally random question

based off of who the someone was. If it was the next medic on duty
he'd report to his dispatch and they'd tell him he better go back to
town and wait. The only one who could scramble a helicopter in a
short order of time was the man sitting in front of us and he was
already out here to inspect us. Nobody was going to really figure out
something was wrong for, maybe a week.
The snow was starting to really sock in now and it was almost dusk
again. I got up and flicked the light switch. Nothing happened. Mr.
Blackman grinned his humorless smile at me, That's the other
thing, there's no electricity. The generator station was on the side of
the camp that was demolished. We have heat for now, just
emergency propane heat. Lewis, you have any idea how long the
emergency heating will last?
Lewis shrugged, Depends on how cold it's going to get.
If we round everyone up into a couple of buildings, do a head
count, we could keep just a few buildings heated at once. That way
if we're out here for more than a day or two before help arrives we
can rotate the buildings, kind of economize I suggested.
That's a good idea, Mr. Blackman said. He pointed at me, What's
your name?
Will Norton, Sir, I said.
Good plan. You go out and start rounding everyone up into a
couple of buildings and find out how many people are in camp,
report back to me once you have some numbers. He looked at the
others. Anyone else have any ideas.
If we're going to shut the emergency heat off we'll have to make
sure the water lines are drained and the water shut off too,
otherwise we'll have a hell of a mess on our hands when the pipes
freeze, Gus pointed out.
Mr. Blackman pointed his short, stubby finger at Gus, You, do
that.
Gus was out the door right behind me. There were men running
here and there, the atmosphere in the camp was bad.
This should be fun, Gus said.
Yeah, more fun if another one of those ships don't come out of the
ground though, I replied.

That was some crazy shit. I don't even know how I'm going to start
to fill out the health and safety forms on this one, He laughed in the
way people do when they aren't at all amused.
Hey, Gus, I asked. Where do you think that ship was going?
He shrugged, Just so long as it doesn't come back that's the least
of our problems.
I started rounding up the men, using Black mans name as a cudgel
to get things done. In total there were a hundred and fifty four men
including myself. Considering the camp could hold up to two
thousand men that wasn't very many. No one had any idea how
many people were in camp originally or how many had been
deployed. I hoped that a lot of people had been sent home early for
the holidays because if we were missing that many men we had
something beyond a catastrophe on our hands.
There were twenty two trailers still in useable conditions. Gus and I
co-ordinated shutting off the propane and the water in all but three
of the trailers since they could all hold about fifty men. We had a lot
of problems happening while we were trying to do these relatively
simple tasks and Blackman could be seen huffing and puffing from
one end of the camp to the other as he dealt with them.
The medic found that there was one other medic in camp but after
doing the headcount we started to get reports that there were men
still alive in the mangled trailers and disrupted tundra. Some of the
trailers had caught on fire from either the propane or god knows
what else so we had some spot fires as well. The medics picked out
a team of twenty men who they trusted enough to go through and try
to find any injured survivors. The last thing we needed was all the
men running around and probably catching themselves on fire in
their attempts to be heroes. The medics picked out people who
either had some basic first aid or rescue background and started off
into the debris. Even from here we could hear cries for help. It was
hard not to want to run out and help but if we didn't do what we had
to do to keep everyone in camp alive we would all be in a bad way. I
stuck to my job of organizing new bunk arrangements to keep as
few trailers heated as possible while Gus handled the shut down of
the trailers we would hold in reserve.
The men who went out on their rescue missions weren't gone very
long before returning with some injured men and the bad news that

it was getting too dark for them to do much else. If the power station
hadn't been destroyed everything would have been different that
night, but the fact is it was and what happened was fated to be.
Without a power stations there wasn't any possibility of working
after dark and the surviving men piled into the heated trailers with
grumbles and moans. Mr. Blackman called me to the room he had
designated as his emergency office.
What's the mood like out there, Will? He asked without a
preamble.
They're upset. Everyone thinks we should have been rescued by
now or at least have heard some sort of word about rescue coming.
Then of course, everyone is talking about the ship too.
What are they saying about it?
I resisted the urge to run my hands through my hair nervously. They
were saying a lot of things and none of them were good, I didn't
even know where to begin with the crazy with rumors that the men
were spreading. Some of them said that it wasn't a ship at all, that it
was a mass hallucination, some sort of government test. Other
people said it was an invasion. I didn't know what sort of invasion
with spaceships could come from underground but I did know that
what I had seen wasn't a hallucination. I also knew that men don't
die from hallucinations.
Well, sir, everyone is just scared and no one knows what to think.
What do you think? He asked me.
I had to pause before I could answer. I didn't know exactly what I
thought, he was getting more impatient so I just started trying to
explain my poorly thought out plan, I think that we were drilling
pretty deep and maybe we don't know everything that's down
there... down there where we're digging that is. I think maybe, we
woke something up.
He nodded grumpily, It wouldn't be the first time we dug up
something we didn't understand. I've been around for awhile and
I've seen things a pup like you wouldn't believe. He saw my
dubious look.
Not even after today. I worked in Russia for awhile, it was the
boom years there and if you went in and were willing to get your

hands dirty you could make a fortune. I worked at this one place...
the name translates to 'Death Mountain' in English, can't remember
how to say it in Russian.
What happened? I asked, fascinated that the behemoth himself
was talking to me. Terrified of what he would say next and waiting
with baited breath to hear it.
It was something like this, something came up out of the ground.
Of course, operations there were a good deal different than they are
here. In the heyday we didn't mind skipping more than one of these
regulations that take so much time to operate. When this thing came
out of the ground it lit almost everything on fire, men were being
burned alive and the well itself caught on fire. Men were screaming
running around in the dark, lighting other men, trees, buildings,
anything they touched on fire too. The ship that came out of the
ground caught fire too. I never heard what happened to it but I'm
sure there are some interesting files on it in the Kremlin if you had a
free pass to look around, if you know what I mean.
I nodded, I did know what he meant. My mouth was dry. He gauged
me for a minute more before continuing, You might be wondering
why I'm telling you this, why I singled you out to assist in the higher
echelons.
I'm just glad to be able to help, I said.
He waived off my politeness with a wave of his hand, I can tell
when a man is going to run around and catch other men on fire and
when he's going to fucking well know to lie down in the snow and
put the fire out. I can tell that you're one of the only other men in
camp who knows this. I think that you're a man who would rather
survive no matter what then to give in to panic. Would you say I was
right?
I would say that's accurate, I replied.
Good, Because I'm going to tell you what happened to us next on
Death Mountain and I'm hoping that you'll keep your mouth shut and
your eyes open and pray that I'm wrong.
You got it, I said.
It was dark already when we hit the ship in Russia, but you would
have thought it was mid-afternoon with the ship in the air above us

burning like it had been dipped in tallow, trees, men and buildings
all on fire. The ship crashed and burned. It didn't take off like this
one did, God only knows where it went, hopefully back into space
and we never hear another word about it ever again.
He leaned forward and I could see that even this mountain of a man
was scared of what had happened next, The ship burned, but it left
a big hole. Once the flames started to go down a little we started to
see shadows creeping out of the hole it had left. We had left men
out to watch that the fire didn't get more out of control and they were
the first ones to report them, strange shadows with faces like huge
birds and single long claws in place of where a hand would be.
At first I thought they were hysterical, afraid of the shadows in the
flickering of the flames, but then the screams started. I was a
younger man then and I wasn't afraid, not at first. I thought the
ruskies had worked themselves up into a superstitious panic. I put
on my hardhat and went out to yell at them. That was when I saw
one of the birdmen for myself.
They were black as the night and dripped crude oil behind them.
They had hands that looked like the claws of a crab and faces like
vultures dipped in night. Their eyes were the only things on them
that had anything approaching emotion on them and that emotion
was hunger.
I watched one of them gut a man no more than five feet in front of
me with one of his crab claws and start devouring the intestines that
spilled into the snow. I didn't feel strong anymore, I felt like a little
boy, He laughed at the look on my face. That's right, it made me
feel unmanned. If I could have crawled into my parents bed and
have woken up from that nightmare at that moment I would have
been happier than a pig in shit. But this was not the sort of
nightmare you wake up from.
One of them put his eyes one me and started to walk towards me.
They had feet like a goat's feet and they could move fast even in the
heavy snow. I ran back to my office and slammed the door. I got my
gun loaded and when that birdman broke in the lock I shot him right
in his big beaked face. I pushed him out of the door and jammed it
shut again as best as I could. I put a filing cabinet in front of the
window and everything else in the room in front of the door. If
anyone tried the door I shot the door with my shotgun. I didn't call

out, 'who's there', I just shot the fucker. In the morning nothing but
the bodies remained. I had shot six birdmen and two rig hands
through the door in the night.
I'm... I'm sorry to hear that? I replied questioningly. I didn't really
know what to say to his confession. It was more of a statement than
a confession and he didn't seem bothered in his conscience about
the men he had shot.
I'll tell you the same thing I told the medics and Lewis, keep an eye
out there for shadows. If you see anything, I don't care if it looks like
a bird or a donkey or a fucking begonia, you run back here and let
me know. If the door is already closed you just keep on going
because if I here you scratching at it or trying the door I'll shoot you
before you can tell me you're there.
I left Blackman feeling even less assured than when I had gone in.
The men had mostly retreated inside into the warm but several of
them were wandering around the camp, smoking, nervous, our
unofficial scouts. I scanned the camp, looking for shadows but I
didn't see anything, not for the first ten minutes. By that time I was
so wound up I knew what Blackman meant about not caring who
was on the other side of that door. Survival. When you need it, when
you're that type of person, you'll do anything to make sure you
survive.
That was when I saw my first shadow.
It didn't look anything like the visions of birdmen Blackmen had so
freshly implanted into my already over amped and wired brain.
I hid against the edge of the trailer, the shape that glided past me
was over seven feet tall. It had long horns that curved back behind it
and it walked upright like a human but was covered in long, black
hair except on the face and the front of the torso that was tinged
blue in the night. Fangs glistened in its mouth. It paused and sniffed
the air and I held my breath until he continued on his way. I whirled
on my heel and headed back to Blackman's office.
The door was still open a crack, I peered inside and he looked up. I
was relieved that he didn't have his shotgun in his hands. I closed
the door behind me, They've come, I said.
He nodded, I think they always come with the ships, fuck knows
why.

They aren't like you were talking about though, they were some
sort of blue and black yeti with huge horns and fangs. They're big as
fuck.
He whistled under his breath, Did you see more than one of them?
Just the one, but I saw stuff moving out there, I don't think he was
alone.
Someone screamed outside. Blackman got out of his chair and we
pushed his desk against the door without another word. I looked at it
dubiously, That thing was huge. That desk isn't going to hold one of
those monsters out of here, let alone more than one.
We had just finished moving the desk when we heard a frantic
knocking at the door, the person tried the door and it hit the side of
the desk, budging the desk several inches.
You guys, it's Gus, let me in! Called a frantic voice.
Where's my shotgun?Mutterned Blackman. I ignored him and
pulled the ineffective desk away from the door. Gus came in right in
time for Blackman to have found his shotgun and to be levelling it at
the Health and Safety Inspector.
Dude, what the fuck? Gus asked, his voice squeaking.
Da fuck, is that nobody is coming in or out of this room now that we
know for sure that we have a serious situation on our hands,
Blackman explained without lowering his shotgun.
But it's me, Gus, and I'm already here so shooting me would be
pretty much exactly murder.
Like anyone will notice at this point, Blackman muttered. I had no
idea why he seemed bent on killing Gus except that he had laid
down the decree that no one was to enter the room after he had
started to barracade the room.
Those things might be able to smell blood, I pointed out. Plus, we
could use his help moving more stuff across the door.
Blackman relented and set his rifle against the filing cupboard. I
analyzed the room we were in for defensibility. Blackman was fairly
useless physically. He was older and a big guy, even levelling the
rifle at Gus had turned his face red and left him huffing for air. The
room was mostly used for bigwigs and health and safety meetings,

crap like that. It didn't have anything but a box of cookies for food
and no tools except a crowbar and a measuring tape that someone
had left on top of the cabinets.
On the other hand, it only had one narrow window and the door to
block off and it was halfway down the hallway of anonymous doors
so unless there was a reason to try this door we would have a pretty
good chance of being overlooked in the general kerfuffle.
That desk isn't going to stop those things from getting in here,
Gus said flatly.
This gun might, Blackman retorted. It as apparent that allowing
Gus into our 'safe' room had stepped on Blackman's toes and he
seemed hellbent on taking things out on him.
That gun might stop one of them, but there were a lot more than
that out there. Have you guys seen them?
I nodded but Gus didn't seem to notice, There were six, maybe
eight of them, they circled a group of men who were shutting off the
gas to on of the crew houses. It as like they were shadows and then
they weren't. Like shadows made flesh. By the time the guys
realized what was around them the things jumped on them, started
tearing them apart. They're fucking huge, you've gotta think like the
camp is being invaded by crazy smart grizzlies or something even
bigger. A gun like that might slow a grizzly down but he's still going
to have time to rip out your throat before he even notices you shot
him.
I only saw one of them, but I agree with Gus. I don't know how
smart the fuckers are but we should plan for the worst. They moved
more like people than animals, premeditated. They can think, that
was the sense I got off of them, I said.
Gus nodded vehemently in agreement, Yep, they were quick as
shit on silk and they were working as group to surround those men.
If any of us make it until morning it'll be a fucking miracle.
Blackman looked at his gun and at the desk and then at both our
faces. The problem was that we didn't have the resources here to
make this room safe from this sort of menace. If they hunted by
smell or had excelllent hearing then they were probably already
aware of where we were and were just pegging off the more
available targets before eating us for desert.

Alright, I'm throwing the floor open to new ideas, Blackman said
benefically.
Fucking wonderful, I replied without thinking. My brain was racing,
trying to figure out anyway out of this quagmire. We didn't know
much about our enemy. All we knew was that they preferred the
shadows but that they weren't afraid of the light, they just didn't like
it much. They hunted in packs and they surrounded and swarmed
their victims easily with their superior size and strength. Everything
else we might thing about them was pure speculation.
We can't stay here, Gus said, echoing the conclusion I had just
come to.
Why not? We can get some supplies from the utility room and
cover over the window and the door and then use the desk and
cabinets to make sure it's all firm, Blackman argued.
I started to list the deficits to the plan on my fingers, Except that
any sort of hammering or movement might draw the attention of the
things to us, the walls themselves are paper thin and a drunk rig
hand can kick or punch a hole through them so it'd be like blowing
snot through a tissue to those on't monsters.
Plus we have no way of knowing if anyone is coming to rescue us
or when. For all we know this is just the first night of many, Gus
added. We need to plan for escape, not for a siege.
I could see Blackman evaluating our statements. He wasn't a stupid
man even if he was biased towards his own comfort and safety. The
ideas Gus and I were shooting around were increasing the
likelihood that Blackman would be a liability to us and his odds of
getting thrown under the train were skyrocketing by the second.
We need more guns, I said flatly, a plan was forming in the misty
recesses of my mind. I jimmied the window open a little, it was
frozen shut in covered in a quarter inch of frost and ice. I needed a
view of what was going on outside nearly as much as I needed more
guns.
We have some in the supply shed by the medic's cabin, it'd be a bit
of a run but that's the only place I know of where we could find
anything to shoot stuff with, Gus offered.
What happened to the medic? I asked, I still didn't remember his
name, it was right on the tip of my tongue though.

You don't want to know, man, Gus said, shaking his head. If they
aren't in this room then you just don't want to ask about anyone.
I eyed Gus up, he had a bit of a puanch on him but he wasn't a big
guy, not like Blackman. If we busted out the window Gus and I could
make a break for it but Blackman wouldn't be leaving through the
front door without sizeable renovations being made to the wall.
The Medic's cabin was out the backdoor of this crew house by
about fifty feet, the supply shed huddled against the side of it with
the sign, 'Authorized Personnnel' only bolted onto it. Outside the
window I could see what I wanted about two hundred feet away, the
jointed front arm of a large excavator.
I've got a plan, I offered. It was going to be dicey and mostly luck
oriented but fortune favors the fucking brave and this plan was
either brave or stupid and whether we lived or died would pretty
much be the determination of which camp it fell into.
Blackman, you've got to give Gus your gun, I started.
That's a stupid plan, Replied Blackman.
It's a nearly worthless weapon, but it's all we've got. We can use it
as club if we have to. Gus and I are going to make a run for that
excavator, I showed them where the yellow arm was highlighted in
the edge of one of the lights that hadn't been put out in the camp.
You're going to leave me here. I'm not giving you my gun, I'll shoot
you both first just so I die happy, Blackman said, his voice
quivering just a little around his bravado.
We aren't going to leave you here, we can't afford to leave you
here, we're going to need what you're going to be getting for us, I
said, trying to sound confident and not wheedling. My run to the
excavator was going to be a lot more nervewracking without Gus
having my back and if Blackman refused to help us out then that
wouldd have to be plan 'B'.
What am I going to be getting for you? He asked, sullen but
intrigued despite himself. I had no doubt that he really would shoot
us for the sake of spite if he didn't like my plan.
Gus and I are going to run out with the gun and get the excavator,
we're going to head for the outside but we're going to stop and pick
you up on our way, and hopefully you'll have any weapons in the

supply shed.
How do I know that you'll come back for me?
Because you'll have all the guns, Dude, Gus reminded Blackman.
I could tell his patience was wearing thin with the bohemoth as well
and I was tempted to leave him and the guns behind but I had seen
Blackman with a gun and he as a better marksman than any I had
seen. He wasn't much good at moving but he could sit in the
excavator and peg off any of the creatures that tried to swarm us.
There was another thing too, the diesel was stored by the supply
shed and it wouldn't do us much good to get halfway out of here and
run out of gas. Blackman would be hard put to make it the fifty feet
to the supply shed without giving himself a coronary but it was a
better shot than trying to drag him all the way to the excavator.
I could see that Blackman and Gus were both thinking all these
thoughts as well. Evaluating my plan and scanning it for
weaknesses. It wasn't the world's best plan but it was pretty fucking
fine for being stuck out in the middle of a winter wasteland after a
huge UFO had flown out of the ground destroying half our camp and
letting loose a hoard of monsters that were at their most content
when twisting off men's heads and drinking the blood like we were
water fountains.
After a few beats Blackman stood up laboriously and started going
through his huge ring of keys. They were all labeled and he grunted
and handed me five keys all marked 'excavator' with an eight digit
number underneath it. It hadn't ocurred to me that the key might not
have been left in the excavator and I took them all gratefully. He
started going through the keyring again until he found the one he
had been looking for. I had no doubt it was labelled, 'supply shed'.
The man might be an obese jackass who would happily blow my
head off but he did have some foresight and a keen shot so I was
happy to have him on board. If anyone could survive this
apocalypse of our camp it was that fat fuck.
The backdoor of this trailer opens up about fifty feet away from the
medic shed. The back door's been shoveled because the guys like
to smoke back there so you shouldn't have a hard time getting it
open but after that you have about twenty feet until you make it to
another cleared area. Once you're free of the snow you should be
able to make a clear break of it to the shed. Pack up everything that

you can and then raid the medic's shack for food and first aid shit. I
don't know how long this will take us but you'll hear the excavator
coming and when you do be ready. Gus and I'll help you load
everything in and then we'll make a bee line through the scrubby bit
of the forest and down to the road. We might get stuck a few times
but it's a fucking excavator so we'll get it down the hill.
It's about 15 miles right through about fifteen feet of snow to the
road, Gus said. It'd be a fucking miracle if we don't get swarmed.
That's what height and guns have got to give us, I opined.
Yeah, only we don't know how many of those suckers are out
there.
That's where luck comes into it, I said with a quirk of my
eyebrows. That was my one blessing and curse in life, the gift of
luck both good and bad.
Gus and I moved the desk the rest of the way away from the door so
Blackman could fit through and we peered down the hallway. It
looked quiet. It was a little colder than it had been before but outside
sounded quiet for the moment.
We all stood in the hallway, feeling exposed and scared enough to
piss our pants. I pointed to the backdoor to Blackman. The hallway
looked a mile long to me, we were a lot closer to the backdoor than
the back. He handed the gun to Gus with a deep sense of
reluctance. I didn't blame him, it was his only weapon and he had to
go out into the unknown too. My plan made sense and it was only
fifty feet until he'd have all the guns and ammo he could handle. We
had a hundred and fifty feet through the worst part of the camp and
our only weapon would be the bucket on the excavator once we got
her going. Assuming we got her going.
The one part of my plan I hadn't mentioned was that none of us
knew why the excavator was parked in camp. Was it waiting for
repairs? Was it busted? Was it just parked for convenience? I
would have felt worse about the plan but I didnt' want to hole up in
the medic's shack which was about the most secure place and hope
we had enough weaponry and food to hold out until a rescue
mission came in. Assuming there was a rescue mission. There was
always that.
Blackman headed down the hall, he was big enough to nearly fill the

hallway and I shook my head. It'd be a fucking miracle if he didn't

have a coronary between here and the medic station.
I filed it under, 'not my problem' and with Gus at my back we started
out the front door towards the excavator.
Once we were out of the illusion of safety given to us by the crew
house and in the bitter winter cold neither of us felt as confident as
my nebulous and largely luck-reliant plan as when we had been in
Blackman's warm office.
We ran to the end of the next crew house, as soon as we did we lost
sight of the arm of the excavator and I hoped that we were both
calm and competent enough to find our way to our way out with our
sense of direction.
We heard the sound of the alien monsters feeding in the shadow of
the next crewhouse. We couldn't see anything except for the little bit
of slipping of shadows that most shadows have. The slurpings and
crunchings were impossible to miss and we gave the area a wide
berth, Gus clutching the gun while we ran to another crew house. I
figured that we had gone about thirty feet or so at this point.
Blackman should ideally be just about to the medic's shed by now. I
wondered if we were better off in the pools of shadow or the light
spread through the generators. The creatures seemed to prefer the
shadows but then, they had also walked openly in the light.
We had a brief discussion and opted for the shadows. At the very
least it gave us a bit more confidence not to me strutting around lit
up like anything. Every time we made a move we listened carefully
for the sound of men being eaten and gave those areas a wide berth
every time.
I realized that however many creatures there were the men who had
been left in camp seemed to be, at least for the moment, sating their
hunger and we had chosen an optimum time to make our way to the
excavator.
We should be there by now, Gus whispered in my ear. I nodded.
He was right, we must've veered off course from giving the
monsters such a wide berth.
I peered around the side of the crew house we were currently
huddled beside and into the murky edges of the camp. I pointed
north-ish. There it was, we had come too far south but it wasn't very

far at all. I felt in my pockets for the keys Blackman had given me.
Lets make a run for it, I said. Gus agreed and tucked the gun
under his arm.
We put our heads down and ran full out across the area of cleared
snow that lay between us an the excavator. A thousand doubts
clouded my mind, these were filed under, 'too late now' and I
slammed the drawer shut. The air was biting my lungs and we left a
trail of vapor behind us. I skidded on the icy packed snow and
grabbed the edge of the tracked feet of the excavator to brace
myself.
I climbed up the edge of the track while Gus watched for monsters. I
wondered if the guy who had parked it had followed protocal and left
the door locked and was grateful to the lazy asshole who had left it
unlocked. I climbed inside the cab and cursed that the lazy bastard
hadn't been lazy enough to leave the key in the ignition. I checked
the usual places and then started trying keys in the ignition. Gus
climbed up on the tread and peered into the darkness. I was on key
number three when I saw Gus shift his position out of the corner of
my eye, raise the gun to his shoulder and shoot into the night. He
cursed and shot again.
I was trying not to look at or imagine what he was shooting at when I
tried the fourth key and it slid into place. Muttering under my breathe
to whatever god seemed to be inclined to so frequently answer my
prayers. The excavator roared to life and Gus jumped into the cab
with me.
The excavator was one of those monsters that have cabs nearly
large enough to curl up and have a nap in. I waited for the diesel
engine to get a steady rhythm and turned on the heater. I looked out
and saw wthe ruin of what Gus had shot in the edge of the
excavator's headlights.
They seem to travel in pack, I think this baby's warm enough, let's
go get Blackman if we're going to get him, Gus said with an edgy
look at the thing he had killed. As disturbing as the alien corpse
was, it was soothing to know that good old fashioned bullets did kill
them after all. In my mind I displaced the idea of 'alien creature' with
'fucking grizzly bears' and put the excavator into gear. Gus kept up
a nervous watch.
One of the creatures came charging out at us in the dark. He was

making a caterwauling wail that pierced through even the roar of the
excavator. I paused her forward momentum and swung the teeth of
the bucket at the black shape and watched it get ripped in two with
unholy satisfaction.
Nice, Gus agreed to my unspoken statement.
We moved through the camp with utter confidence, any creatures
we saw we squished, mutilated or cut to shreds with our treads. We
had to stop once to scrape one of them off the cab when he
managed to get over the treads and try the door handle. Gus started
to open the door but I was pretty dextrous with the bucket and
scraped him onto the treads and lightly macerated him.
We had to shove some crew houses off their blocks to make room
for the excavator but we didn't think it would be something anyone
would be alive to report and we shoved a trail through the snow and
trailers with ecumenical good spirits.
When we got to the medic shed we saw that Blackman had been
having his own adventure. His trail wended unevenly from the
backdoor through the snow and to the shed where the door had
been left ajar and had been torn askance. Black shapes were
clawing at the front door of the medic's cabin. Something had been
pushed against the window but the shapes were working at
breaking the glass and getting past Blackman's solution of shoving
stuff against other stuff.
I moved the excavator in close and started squishing the monsters
like they were mosquitos. Splut, splat. One at a time until the
cowards ran back into the camp to look for easier prey. Gus jumped
out of the cab and ran to the door of the cabin, pounding on it and
hollering for Blackman to open up. I stood guard with the bucket,
waiting to squish anything that wasn't man shaped.
I heard intermittent bits of conversation over the excavator's engine,
'don't shoot me you fat fuck,' seemed to be predominantly what was
on Gus' mind. Blackman came out with an armful of guns and an
duffel bag slung over his shoulder. I took the weapons from him and
the duffel bag and then put my hand down to help him up. He looked
surprised. Don't be a fuck douche and you wouldn't have so many
trust issues. I thought but helped him find a spot to hunker down on.
I started to see some more shapes creeping out of the shadows and
revved the engine, hoping Gus would take the hint and hurry his ass

up. He came pounding out of the shack with his arms full. I crushed
some more of the creepy crawlies while he clambered into the cab.
We positioned the excavator to be closer to the diesel tank. It was a
good thing that we had planned for this since whoever had left the
door unlocked had also left the gas tank mostly empty.
The cab was getting tight but there was just room for us and the
supplies so long as I didn't expect to get a lot of room around my
feet to work the gas or brake. Blackman had found a handgun
somewhere and he was loading it up. He kept an eye out through
one of the small vent windows while I waited vigilently on 'crush,
destroy' duty and Gus had the most bracing job of jumping out and
fueling us up.
At the first sign of more of the shadows Blackman took a shot at
them.
Hey, don't do that unless you have to, you don't want to set us all
on fire, I told him. He looked unhappy but accepted my reprimand.
He was impressed by the crush capacity of the bucket and I could
rotate in any direction so it was versatile as well. With a second set
of eyes in the cab I was able to find the shadows quicker than ever
although we tried not to move around too much since every time I
rotated the cab Gus had to pull the hose out with a curse and then
start all over again when I rotated back.
It takes a long time to fill up a tank that size and we weren't to the 'F'
yet when I saw the numbers of shadow creatures moving in our
direction.
Get the fuck in the cab, Gus! I hollered.
Blackman looked behind us and his eyes bugged out at the sight. It
looked like they had mobilized an entire army. Our weaponry looked
pathetic next to the movement behind us.
Gus didn't need to be told twice and he only took long enough to put
the cap on and jump up on the treads and into the cab.
I put the think into drive and started forward.
The medic shack was near the edge of the camp and soon we were
ploughing through the snow and down the hill that I knew eventually
led to a logging road. It was on the far side of where the UFO had
caused the rift in the ground and I was confident it would be intact.

I took her as fast as I dared, veering around the really big trees but
taking down the rest. On average we were making it out at about 15
miles an hour so it wouldn't be long to be out of camp and to a
normal road.
The hoard behind us seemed to fall behind after the leading edge
was caught in our treads. None of us were fooled though, we still
knew what was behind us in the night. We still knew that whatever it
had released had also released a UFO large enough to hold several
armies worth of those monsters.
Gus still had his cellphone on him and he kept checking it for
reception that I knew he wasn't going to get.
Once we reached the forest service road the going was a lot easier
and we soon made it to the highway. Traffic looked normal and it
was possible to believe that everything in the real world was normal.
It would be easy to believe if the vision of that hoard wasn't
emblazoned in all of our minds.
The radio was working now even if Gus' cellphone wasn't and I
radioed the police who said they would send a 'copter first thing. I
laughed and said that'd be just fine and hung up on him without
another word.
These assholes didn't have the vaugest clue about what was going
to his them and if I was going to die it wasn't going to be before I
had a hot shower and a descent meal. We drove on the edge of the
highway into the night, looking for the nearest town and eating
boxes of stale gingersnaps. At least I wouldnt' die in camp.

Sunshine and Shadows

by

Virginia Carraway Stark

My husband was in a terrible state.

He was throwing things into our suitcases without a thought about
how the things fit or tangled about or whether or not he was really
picking the best things to take with us. To flee with. That was what
we were doing, wasn't it? We were fleeing.
The baby was crying on the bed. Aleena! Aleena, do you need
these?
He held up the bag with the baby's diapers in it. I started to cry. Tied
into his car seat, Amaan started to cry louder. My husband cursed
under his breath, he added papers to the suitcase he had been
packing, I saw they were the same, nonsensical scrawls he had
been working on since things had started to go wrong.

He turned me around to face him. What had I been doing? Watching

the tears drip down my face as I stared into the mirror. Watching
Noman pack and our baby cry, feeling desolate and finished. My
brain wasn't working well at all. His face was handsome and his
eyes, so large and dark. I had trusted him since our wedding night
and his words penetrated through my despair.
Aleena, I need your help. Please, get Amaan's things together, I'll
start carrying things down to the car. They could be here any minute
though. I need you to help now, and, afterwards, if we get away,
then I will hold you and you can cry. I promise, Aleena.
I managed to stop crying, or at least only be sniffling as he clutched
me to his shoulder and then, with one look over his shoulder, started
to load bags and suitcases into his arms. Amaan wouldn't stop
crying and I ran out of our bedroom and into his small nursery where
I threw everything I could into his diaper bag and grabbed plastic
bags for the rest. I was so undone, when I saw his new sweater, the
one that his grandmother in Britain had made and mailed to us and
was too big for him, I almost started to wail.
I held it in my hands, magnetized with indecision. Should I pack it? It
was too big for Amaan now, the space in the bag would be better
filled with something more his size. He might not even live long
enough to grow into it. We might not live another night any of us.
I put it in the bag, one more thing. What difference did it make? It
didn't take up a lot of space and it would be to admit that none of us
would survive this to refuse to bring it. That we had been driven to
such dire ends that we were prepared to put our sentiments aside
over practicallity and the opportunity to live one more moment. I ran
out of the nursery and into the kitchen.
I put juice and formula into more bags, and biscuits, cookies, the
fruit that was left on the counter to ripen. It wasn't ripe yet and I
flirted with the same indecision that I had over the sweater, this time
it was only for a moment and then I threw that into the bag as well.
They would ripen. I would make sure that they had time.
Noman came running into the kitchen. Aleena, now. We must go.
His words were frantic. I glimpsed out the front window, we were
three stories up and I could see the men, the soldier men unloading
from a military vehicle. They weren't rushed, they were stretching
and talking a bit. Some of them were checking their guns.

I fled behind Noman. He took the bags I had packed and I grabbed
Amaan. Our home was lost to us.
Really, what is a home?
I had time to ask myself this as we were stuck in limbo for months to
follow.
It was a strange foolishness, a nesting instinct, I have heard it be
called, that makes someone believe that a place is their home. The
place we had been evicted from on that hot day in April wasn't really
a place that we had had any right to. We were only renters there and
there were people renting around us both above and below. There
were four other apartments on our floor and in one of them the
tenants moved and were replaced by new ones every six months or
so. We knew some of the people on the ground floor, they were
cousins's of Noman's, but they were by no means the reason that
the building felt so much to us like home. The only reason I had for it
to be home was because I had perched there.
The landlord could come in anytime he wanted and change the
linoleum or paint the walls and we had to let him. He never bothered
us over much and that had helped in my delusion that this little place
that was really only ours from one month to next and was as fragile
as a soap bubble was my home. It was as foolish as a swallow who
believes her nest in the eves of a house to be safe when a
housewife with a broom might choose any day to rid herself of the
nest and all who lived within.
I cleaned the house, not house, not really, just an apartment. I
cleaned it. I bathed there. I made love to my husband there. It was
where we had moved in together after we had married. I had
brought my baby home from the hospital there. It was my home, but
always, it was easy to say 'my' or 'mine' and to have it be just a
words because in the end, none of it was mine. Not even 'my
husband' or 'my baby'.
For now, however, Noman and Amaan were mine. I dressed them
and I fed them as best I could in our new, diminished
circumstances. The food was rarely fresh and even more rarely was
I able to cook it. We were moved from place to place and I felt sick
to my stomach each time. I never felt at home after the soldiers
came and I suppose that's why they sent them.
I was always prone to these silly conclusions. Noman laughed at me

for them and tweaked my nose. My father had been annoyed by

them and told me not to speak about matters beyond me. My
mother said that I talked to much.
The soldiers weren't sent to make me feel as though I had no home.
That is just a silly, paranoid idea I had just now. The soldiers were
sent to arrest us for failing to pay our bill and if we resisted, then
they were sent to kill us.
Noman was a hard worker. He had always worked hard and he
didn't get into trouble after work the way some men would. He went
out with his friends, but he didn't spend the money he earned on
frivolous things and we always had had plenty. After Amaan had
come we had been even more careful. Before, I would sometimes
get little gifts from Noman, but after the baby came, we were careful
with every penny. We both worried about the future and knew that if
an emergency came up, it would be important to have a little bit of
extra cash on hand.
The problem started with the increase in taxes, things had been
broken down through all sorts of wars and fighting and we needed
to pay so that our country could be repaired. That happend first.
And then it turned out that we weren't the only ones that had to pay
more for things and the price of other things went up as well.
Noman worked for his Uncle's construction company and he asked
his Uncle for a raise. He was given his raise and we were able to
survive a bit longer trying to pay off the bills that had acrued in the
meantime. Then the Sunshine tax had been announced and we
were at our wit's end. We were also at our bank accounts end and
all of our friends and relatives were at their own end. Noman started
making those scrawls for the first time when he was on the phone,
hearing more bad news. He made them again and again, each one
varied only slightly from the last. It was as though he was trying to
get something just right through trial and error. That wasn't a
problem at first though, but it was increasingly coming to concern
me. Then, the concern was only about money.
It was impossible to get more money. Desperately we paid as much
as we could. I took in mending and offered to babysit for other
women I knew, but we weren't the only ones who couldn't afford to
pay anyone any more for anything. The bits I made barely paid to
feed us and we were still running to catch up. Each day, the prices

moved a little bit higher.

Then, finally it had come to this. The bill collector's final notices and
then the phone calls began, and then, the very final notice and the
soldiers had come to arrest us.
There were many others in our situation and after I became used to
that a little bit, I realized that we probably weren't going to be shot
anytime soon. We were forced to largely live off of charity of our
families. That was difficult for me but it was even more hard for
Noman. He had been the eldest son and not being able to take care
of me and his own eldest son, and so far only child, was nearly
debilitating for him at the start. His uncle had helped him again,
setting him on rotational work so that the soldiers wouldn't get word
of wear he was working if anyone thought to turn him in. People
might turn any of us in at any time.
I couldn't think of how we had become edged out onto the margins
of society but we were and I didn't sleep well anymore, I started to
have nightmares, one of them repeated most nights.
It always started the same way, I was rudely awoken to the sounds
of heavy boots and bright lights in my face. The Sunshine Police,
the soldiers with their guns pointed at us and the baby crying. Then
they would pull us from our beds, sometimes they would rape me in
front of my husband and other times they would just slap my face
when I begged for my baby's life.
We were hustled away into the back of an armored van with bars on
the small windows. Then Noman and I would be separated. After
several days of being locked up with little food or water and no
where except a filthy bucket to do my business in, I would be woken
up again and piled into the back of a truck with very high sides and
taken far out into the desert. They would back the truck up and then
open the back door. A deep, square pit, carved out of the desert
would be on the other side. The soldiers chased us out with kicks
and their weapons. None of us resisted much even though it was a
long ways down, about fifteen feet and that is a long ways,
especially when you have a baby in your arms as many of us did.
That was something I only ever seemed to notice when it was time
to jump, all of us in the back of the truck were women and most of
us had babies or small children.
When we were all in the pit there was a horrible noise, all of us

moaning and sobbing and begging or whimpering. I clutched my

crying baby and waited for something, I didn't remember what I was
waiting for until it happened: the sound of heavy equipment being
started.
Anyone who tried to climb out the soldiers would shoot now, they
wouldn't even think twice, their eyes were pale and bright from the
desert sun and they had no mercy. I didn't try to get out, I just waited
for the dirt and sand to be pushed down on us, tons at a time. They
had brought us all to the desert to be buried here, this was debtors
prison.
I tearfully told Noman about the dream when he woke me up,
concerned by my cries in my sleep. He didn't tell me not to be silly,
he just held me tightly and kissed the baby. I worried that there was
truth to my dream that he didn't want to tell me about and I worried
about falling back asleep and dreaming it all over again.
Sleeping soundly had become one of the greatest blessings in my
life. It was one of the few times I was when I woke up from a sound
sleep in our room that we shared with a hot water tank and the
water pump to the sound of Amaan screaming shrilly. I picked him
up and nearly screamed myself at how hot he was. Noman woke up,
What's happening? Is he okay?
I don't know, he's burning up.
Noman felt the baby's head and looked at me with large eyes, he
jumped out of bed and started getting dressed. He kissed me and
Amaan and darted out the door, I'll find a doctor.
I turned on the light and looked at Amaan, he was covered in a rash,
as well. The doctor came and pronounced that the baby had
measles. He gave me a bottle of little blue pills and a thermometer
for him and told us to call him if the fever went up again. The doctor
took Noman aside outside of our room and I could hear them talking
in quiet, avid whispers.
Noman refused to tell me anything about what the doctor had said
to him except that it didn't have anything to do with Amaan and that
we would be alright.
The fever lowered overnight but the itching and crankiness seemed
to get worse. The next day and night were filled with more crying
until a three in the morning there was a knock on our door. It was my

sister-in-law angrily coming to tell us to quiet the baby. Her

language was far from polite and after she left Noman and I
exchanged nervous looks, we were wearing out our welcome.
We left the next afternoon. Neither one of us had slept after the
veiled threats from our in-law the night before. All it would take is
one wrong word for my nightmare to come true, I felt that strongly
and Noman didn't contradict me so I knew he knew it too. I packed
our few things, this time eager to be gone. I didn't feel uprooted this
time, only glad to have escaped in time. After we had left Noman
told me that the doctor had warned him that he had seen his face on
a debtor's poster and that he wouldn't report us this time but he had
wanted a bribe and Noman had given him what little he had.
That was how we had came to the edge of the city by evening and
as dusk fell we prepared to set out across the desert to a cave that
Noman remembered playing in as a boy. Amaan was still very ill and
he was crying and fevered but we didn't dare call for another doctor,
or for the same one. We had to hope he would be strong enough to
heal if we could get somewhere safe and quiet and still. We had to
pray.
Noman didn't remember the cave very well and it took us until dawn
to find it. Fortunately no one came near the innocuous tumble of
rocks that hid the entry to it. It was quiet in the desert and soothing.
It was nice to be away from the prying, disapproving eyes of our
family and for a few minutes there was nothing on my mind but
peace as the sun rose.
The sun and morning were not for the likes of us, however. We
descended into cool darkness.
At first I was very frightened that we would find an animal living in
the cave, or bats, or scorpions under the rocks that tottered under
my uncertain feet. The air wasn't a dry down here and soon I heard
a small, miraculous sound, the gentle laughter of a small
underground spring.
Noman gave me the flashlight he had taken for us and I held it while
he set down the heavy bundles we had carried here with all we
owned and all Noman could acquire on short notice for us to
runaway with. We set up a camp near the stream. The stream came
out of the stone wall from a natural spout and into a small puddle
below it. The puddle drained from itself to somewhere deeper and

darker than where we had made our lair. He showed me that the
water was safe to drink, splashing me with his fingers and laughing
when I told him not to. When we lie down to sleep after our long
night he showed me on the wall where he had carved his name
when he had been a young boy who had come here to be alone.
I woke up in pitch blackness. Only the sound of the stream
reassured me of where I was and I groped in the dark to find the
flashlight to help my blindness. I couldn't feel Noman or Amaan in
the bed with me and the silence scared me, Amaan had been crying
for so long...
I found the flashlight and shone it all around me. I almost missed
Noman, standing over Amaan by the spring, he had been writing
those same words that he had written a thousand times before, but
now he did it with the spring water onto the rock. A black cat was
sitting my Amaan's head, his paws on Amaan's tiny face. The light
struck the cat who didn't flinch from it, I saw quickly that the cat had
no shadow in the glare of the flashlight and my breath stopped in my
throat.
Noman picked up Amaan and the cat disappeared in the darkness.
He put the baby into my arms and lie down in bed beside me.
Noman's skin was cool to the touch and clammy but Amaan...
Amaan was smiling and the fever and the rash were gone.
I knew what I had seen, but I didn't confront Noman. I knew from the
lack of shadow and the cat's blackness that it was a djinn my
husband had summoned to save our child. How had he known the
words to write? Was it a half recalled memory he had evoked in our
desperate situation? What price had he paid the djinn to save our
baby's life?
The questions plagued me but I didn't dare ask. I woke up several
nights later to find Noman was gone from the bed again and
standing by the spring. I held my baby, my healthy baby to me and
closed my eyes. I pretended not to hear his murmering voice or the
soft 'meow' that came in response.
My nightmare still plagued me but now when the soldiers came to
bury us alive, the black cat with no shadow sat on the edge of the pit
and laughed at me.
I lived mostly in the cave. I would come out for short periods of time
with Amaan in the early, cool part of the day and we would watch

the sunrise. I wanted him to know that he was a child of the sun and
not of the shadows. My husband returned one evening from a trip
into town to tell me that all was well, that he had repaid our debts
and that we could soon find a new home. I asked him how our debts
could have been repaid but he didn't answer me and his eyes grew
dark. It was the first time I ever thought he might hit me.
He didn't hit me then, but the darkness I saw in his eyes increased
with our rising fortunes.
We moved into a home, a nicer home than the one we had before,
one where we had a yard of our own and there weren't neighbours
on the other side of the walls. On nights where the moon was new I
would see Noman leave the house after he thought I was asleep. I
knew where he was going, back to the cave. Our fortunes would
improve still further and the darkness in his eyes would rise closer to
the surface. After one of these trips he returned with the black cat
and from then on the cat came and went when he pleased. He ate
what he wanted from the kitchen and no one punished him if he
drank cream or knocked things off the counter. He was our
honoured guest and I knew one day soon, he would want to take his
price and he would laugh as I was buried alive.

Blind Eye

by

Virginia Carraway Stark

I was searching for something to make me feel like I wasn't falling

apart when I met Jade. She was sitting on a set of old wooden steps
in an alleyway when I first saw her. I saw her face flinch when she
heard someone else in the alley with her. She composed her face
and I could see her choosing to ignore me.
I didn't mind, I wouldn't have said anything to her if it wasn't for the
fact that she was wearing a torn green cocktail dress and sporting a
bruise on her cheek. It was the sort of bruise that meant she was in
trouble and I guess that it was the sort of time in a man's life where
they want to be a hero.
I was falling into all the usual marriage probems cops have with their
wives when I met Jade. I was never home and when I was, I was
distracted by the cases I as working on. Words haunted me from
people that didn't belong in our bed and they kept me awake at

night. I wasn't seeing the smooth, pale skin of my wife in the

moonlight, I was seeing the palour of a corpse in the morgue. I was
an absent husband living at home. I knew that Ellen had problems
too, sorrows and joys that I had ceased to hear about. For the
longest time she would tell me about them, but I wasn't listening, I
was still at work. One day she stopped telling me what she was
feeling. I knew our marriage was in trouble, but I couldn't extricate
myself from the cobwebs in my brain to do anything about it.
Sometimes I would watch her while she slept and wish that I could
touch her again, wish that I could know her. That wasn't going to
happen, but no matter what I did, Ellen was fated to lie bleeding in
the snow one winter night. My job would end her life, but back then,
I thought it was just about me.
That's why I asked Jade if she was okay, even though I could tell
that she didn't want to talk, her body language screamed at me to
keep walking, I was off duty, I had no business with her. She looked
up at me, I could see that the bruise was worse than I first thought, I
could see it had been made with a heavy ring that had left an imprint
I couldn't quite make out.
Im... I'm okay. She lied to me. Her hand fluttered up to the side of
her face and then fell back to hr lap.
I'm a police officer, if you want to talk, we can talk- off the record if
you want. I winced at the offer, it felt more like a pick up line than
something rated E for everyone.
You can't help me. No one can help me.
I disagreed with her and talked her into coming with me. I kept
telling myself to just walk away but my need to save someone was
stronger than my urge to save what was left of myself and my
marriage. I noticed that the steps she had been sitting on belonged
to the Chinese Mason Hall. My cop curiousity surged but I kept my
mouth shut, at least for awhile.
I knew as soon as we started talking that I had stumbled onto
something big. Sure, I had heard rumours and had a few suspicions
about things that went on, but you just don't jump right to 'human
trafficking sex ring' every time you hear some conspiracy nut allege
something. Turned out in this case, the rumours couldn't hold a
candle up to the reality of what was going on in that old wooden
building. Jade let me buy her a hotel room, I felt queasy when I did.

It was her smiled that made me feel that way. She had a grace and
acceptance about it and what she assumed were my intentions that
made me feel like a pathetic archetype of a man. 'Hey, pretty lady,
let me rescue you from your bad situation, I only want sex from you
and promise not to hit you unless you deserve it.
I put her in the hotel room and after she was showered and sitting in
the comfy hotel bathrobe I asked her again if she wanted to tell me
what was happening to her. She was scared, but she nodded. I
ordered us a pizza and called Ellen to tell her I wouldn't be home
until late, the answering machine took my message. I think Ellen
was done listening for my calls even then.
Jade started talking and it was the start of a break in one of the
largest human trafficking circles in the history of Kingston, Ontario.
Her English was very good and I found myself as I listened
becoming more and more impressed by the woman I had 'rescued'.
I was brought here against my will. You have to understand that I
never would have come here if it had been my choice. Do you have
a cigarette? I found her one after going out to my car and fishing
one of out the glove compartment. They were mine for emergencies
only, I lit one up with her.
I was abducted, I was drugged and later I was given to a man they
called the whore-breaker. After that they put me to work.
Did this man hurt you?
She nodded but her eyes were evasive, He did, but his name is
somewhat... lyrical. He wasn't there to hurt me, or even really I
guess to break me. He was there to train me, it was what he did for
the Triad. That's who really owns the mason hall, you know, it's the
triads.
Yes, I had heard that. Organized crime isn't really my business
though so I only know a bit from what I've heard around the water
cooler.
Well, those are the bad boys. Despite his name, the whore-breaker
wasn't all bad. He talked to me. I already knew a bit of English when
they took me. He taught me how to say more. We talked a lot and
then he did something, I think he thought he was doing me a favor,
or maybe he thought it was funny, but he recommended me to be
one of the girls who worked in the inner circle. He told them I was

smart enough to understand and to do what I was told.

Do you have any ideas on who this man was?
No, only that he was white and some of the gang seem afraid of
him.
You said he hurt you, weren't you afraid of him too?
No, I wasn't. He never seemed out of control, I felt safe with him. I
was sad when I found out I wouldn't see him anymore.
I filed the information away for later. I didn't want to get too wrapped
up in a couple of players and miss the bigger picture. I realized that I
was already thinking about what she told me like it was a case even
though I had promised her that it was all between friends, how
many other girls are in there?
Tonight? Eleven, no, twelve. We were doing a ritual, they wanted
thirteen for it.
Thirteen women?
They use us as altars. How do you like that, my career is being an
altar.
That doesn't sound too bad.
It's worse than it sounds. They aren't just gangsters, they are using
us for sex magic. It's unpleasant and it's exhausting.
Do you believe that they are actually doing magic?
I shouldn't be here. I should go back, they'll have noticed I'm gone
and I'll get everyone into trouble.
Wait, tell me about your cheek-
The ritual was taking a very long time, I lost my balance and fell
over, they were angry with me. If anything happens now they will
blame me for failing them, it's a omen of trouble, and worse. I need
to go back now. She started to put on her ripped silk dress again. I
felt empty, devoid, like something should have happened and didn't.
I could take you back to the station, we could find a way to get you
home, you must have left a life behind you.
I did. I had a baby, a little girl, she would be nine now.
You were married?

I was.
Were you happy?
I was. But that girl, that one who was happy and young, she's dead
now. That is what the whore-breaker taught me, to let all the past go
and to bury that other girl as a sister who I had loved and who had
died. Now there is only Jade left. Please, I have to go back, will you
drive me? Or should I walk?
I'll drive you. I grabbed the car keys, my thoughts going a mile a
minute even while I asked her if she needed anything else. She the
rest of my cigarettes and I dropped her a few blocks away from the
alley where I had found her.
I went home and made love to my wife. She clutched me tightly and
whispered she loved me. She thought we had connected like we
used to and I felt a flush of anger at her for not recognizing that I
was making love to another woman when I held her in my arms, that
I was kissing Jade when I pulled her lips to mine.
The next day I went and talked to the Captain. I told him that I had a
source but other than that I kept things on the down low, I didn't
want to get Jade into trouble, but I did want to bust that sex
trafficking ring wide open. It took five months to track down enough
corroboration to get the warrants we needed and evidence to back
what Jade had told me. The whole time, I was walking on pins and
needles, convinced that at any minute they would pack everything
up and get out of town, convinced that they could sense me coming
for them the way I could feel them festering in their termite ridden
building and using abducted girls as altars of all things.
Then, one day, it was time.
We had a SWAT team at the ready, everything was a go and I was
sweating under my flak jacket. Things hadn't been going well
between me and Ellen. After our night of love making I had become
more immersed in this case than I had ever been before. It was a
big case, that was true, but it was also the details that Jade had told
me, I tried to work them out in my mind and move them around. No
matter what I tried I couldn't shake the feeling that I had stumbled
into a strange other world.
I dreamt about Jade being used as an altar. In my dream her body
was made out of driftwood and black candles dripped on her as she

was bent over backwards. A man wearing a cowl and holding a

dagger looked up at me and grinned. I knew he was the
whore-breaker and I knew that he knew I was on his trail. I worried
for Jade's safety and I lost my appetite. Ellen stopped making her
cautious overtures towards me and my cop sense told me
something else as well, Ellen was doing her leaving step and soon,
if I didn't pull up, I would lose her for good.
But I was here now, the case would be over today except for a bit of
testimony and all the paperwork. I could apologize to Ellen and start
making it up to her. She had told me last week that I was acting like
I had fallen in love with another woman.
We got the order to go and in a screech of wheels and the slamming
of van doors we pulled up in front of the chinese mason hall. I was
around back, in the alley and I caved in the cheap lock holding it
shut with a satisfying kick and signalled for the others to follow me.
The floors were old wooden planks, in places you could see the floor
below you. My heart sank when I saw the other side of the door, it
was a warren in here and I could see that it had been altered so it
didn't match the floor plan we had all memorized and obtained from
city hall. Without any time to hesitate I took a right and then another
right, luckily it lead to the stairwell I had expected to see down a
straight hallway upon kicking in the door. I took the stairs two at a
time, the rush of feet following me. We split up heading down a long
hallway at the top of the first flight of stairs. I didn't have time to
check behind every door, I knew Jade was at the end of the hallway
and I left the men behind to get to it.
When I opened the door I was hit by a purple smelling cloud of
opium smoke. Jade was standing about fifteen feet directly in front
of me. Her hair was half up in a bun with chopsticks holding it
haphazardly in place and half tumbling down her shoulders. She
wore a tight, red satin dress decorated with dragons and phoenixes
and slit up her left leg up to her hip. Her lips were stained red and
her hands held a grenade. There was a thin trail of blood from her
nose and her eyes were heavy and clouded. A man held a gun to
the back of her head, girls scattered away from the open door in a
scream of fear and scantily clad limbs. The man murmured
something to Jade in Mandarin, and with a look of bliss she pulled
the pin on the grenade.

I backed up enough to slam the door and take several steps down
the hall when the door exploded outward behind me. From there on,
it was chaos. It was from being a raid to being a rescue mission with
that little metal sound of everything changing. In desperation we
retreated from the building, missing most of the people who
scattered in the confusion and waiting for the fire fighters and the
bomb squad before we could clear the building again to safely enter
it. The flames spread and there was little evidence of what had
happened in there. A lot of weapons and a lot of twisted remains of
people and artifacts that had been used, perhaps some of them on
or by a girl named Jade who had never told me the name she had
before the whore-breaker was done with her.
I got checked out by a medic and then I got sent home. The story
was all over the news. Ellen knew more about it by the time I got
home than I did. She was terrified and angry. She hadn't known
anything special was going to happen today. I tried to explain to her
that it was my job to know and to keep her safe from knowing. She
got up later that night and crept away from the bed to sleep on the
couch. When I asked her why, she told me I had been calling out for
'Jade'.
Things went downhill from there and that was how I ended up living
in a shit hole apartment and working a security job just like every
other cop who made a mistake too big to cover up. I worked on
getting drunk and tried to blast away the pain that came from
knowing I had messed up every good thing in my life. Even if they
had let me keep my job, I don't think I could have kept on doing it. It
was too hard, too bad after everything I had been through. We had
lost four cops that day and five other had been seriously injured.
How could I look them in the face knowing that this had been my
plan, my scheme? The answer was that I couldn't. When they told
me to go, I gave over my badge and gun with a numbness that still
hasn't gone away.

Sea Legs in the Bikin

by

Tony Stark

Andrei Pochepnya listened to the crisp, teeth-rattling scrape of his

thin boots through the icy blue snow. The taiga was a solid icy
demesne on this subzero winters morning. The young tayoznik had
traveled this desolate stretch of snow blown riverbank many times,
checking the small animal snares nestled under tree and root. The
mink, weasel and sable he sometimes extracted were enough to
help his desperate family keep in sugar, and tobacco, but this long
and fickle trapline had never provided enough to even begin to
make needs meet. With several younger brothers and sisters, an
unemployed and alcoholic father and an overworked mother, young
Andrei did what he could wrestling a morsel of tradeable luxury from
the unforgiving Bikin Valley. Like all the others from his forgotten
village in Eastern Siberia, Andrei tramped through the arctic forest
doing what it took to survive, but always venturing forth with an eye
toward the one fateful windfall that might turn his life around.

For those in Siberia, that meant poaching, of course. An elk or a

moose could mean edibles for a few months, or food and trade with
other hungry folk. But the real game changer in the Bikin, the one
bullet that could actually buy your way out of the dead end strip of
road that led to Andreis dead end village, was the bullet that hit
something black, white and orange.
A Siberian tiger could fetch upward of fifty thousand US dollars.
To Andrei, twenty-one, fresh out of the Army and desperate, it was
a sum incomprehensible in its scope. As incomprehensible as the
luck and courage it would take to draw a bead on the Czar of the
Forest and kill it dead. There was an understanding amongst the
tayozniks about the Tiger, and amongst the tigers and the
tayozniks. For nearly fifty years, the two had shared the taiga, the
prey, the paths, without bloodshed to speak of.
A couple of poached tigers in that time. Two or three hunters who
never were found in response.
The average tayoznik in the Bikin Valley had never seen a tiger,
though they had sensed their regard on occasion. A tiger might
leave part of a kill for scavenging humans, or a human leave behind
a haunch for a tiger. A sudden movement of twig turned into a
frozen moment of rapport as the Czar stood gazing at the startled
human subject. Then a flick of the arm-width tail and the encounter
was passed.
Last month, all that changed.
A villager and dedicated tayoznik had been rended limb from limb,
that being all that remained of the tigers wrath. Some said the
unfortunate man shot at a tiger, his mate and their cubs, and was
rended apart for retribution. Others were certain it was a failed
poaching attempt that again came at a price. At any rate, all of
Andreis village of Sobolonye knew that the tender treaty between
man and beast was broken now.
A man-eater was wandering the taiga, and was as silently invisible
as it was deadly. No one had left the few ice streets of the village
since the murder was discovered. No meat from the taiga, no pelts
for trade, no logging even. Everyone had been sitting in their
houses, cooped up, nerves fraying, waiting for a particularly strident
dogs bark, or worse yet, no bark at all, to warn them of the
Cannibals approach.

For Andrei, locked in the family shack with too little food, dwindling
vodka and angry reproachful parents, it was a particular sort of hell.
As he lay on his bed, thinking of the snares no doubt rife by now
with frozen tradeable pelts, Andreis frustration turned to
resentment. Of his father, who forbade him to check the traps out of
some superstitious fear of an animal. Of an animal! Andrei had been
trained as a sharpshooter by the Red Army (or what had once been
the Red Army) for heavens sake!
Even a tiger was no match for that. Even with his fathers old gun, a
tiger would barely stand a chance. Besides, all those years Andrei
had gone into the woods, he had never even seen a tiger. Never
smelled their stink. Old men and babies said tigers could be upon
you before you knew it, that they were invisible, unless they wanted
to be seen, that they were magic gods of the forest. But old men
were slow and feeble, and babies listened to Old men. As the many
long dark hours passed, Andrei fumed on these matters, and a
thought took shape in his young mans mind. A thought shaped by
the heroism he never won in Chechnya, tinted by the brash
confidence of youth, forged to sharpness by anger that the taiga had
taken once of their own and polished to brilliance by his greed.
There was a single solution to all of Andreis problems, and it began
and ended with a bullet.
However, the stalwart, defiant confidence Andrei had displayed
upon starting down his walk and past the few houses between it and
the forest had waned considerably. The bitter minus thirty daytime
temperature and the desolate crispness of the air which echoed his
every sound sapped the bravado from his bones as it did the
warmth. As fingers, toes and nose grew cold, grew icy, and settled
into functional hypothermia the way a well-traveled tayoznik was
wont to do, doubts floated out of the clouds of ice crystals exhaled
and gathered around Andreis head.
He could barely hear a birds cry over his own breath, the corduoroy
rustle of his clothes and the crisp snow. Even if a tiger made small
noises, Andrei was now fairly certain he couldnt bear it.
With his won limitations chilling his blood and cooling his brain, I t
suddenly seemed more credible that a tiger could be more silent
than a man. The idea of a supernaturally enhanced cannibal
predator roaming the frozen wastes about him seemed more
credible than ever.

All of Andreis cozy bedtime suppositions in fact were breaking

down along this riverbank at the end of the world. The trapline no
doubt bursting with supple sable and mink was nearly empty. One
weasel and two tiny threadbare mink were all Andrei had tied to his
belt for nearly two miles effort. The weak, brief sunlight had not yet
begun to fade, but the tiny silver disk of the sun itself was at its
apex. This left Andrei with a difficult choice, turn around shortly and
leave over half the trapline unchecked, or pick up the pace, try to do
at least most of it, and make it home after dusk, but before dark.
The latter option held more than the threat of darkness along with itit meant that, due to added strain and speed, the extra caution
Andrei had displayed would be abandoned and anything could get
within a few dozen yards and not necessarily be noticed.
Andrei stopped, panting out precious moisture and warmth. The
riverbank grew steeper as the water had dug away at the hill,
forcing the trapline inland slightly and up the contour.
Damnit, he cursed inwardly at himself as he realized how tired he
was. Too tired. The nervousness had put too great a strain on him,
and the slow ginger pace had allowed the cold to erode too much of
his precious strength. He had to smarten up. Andrei smacked one
bemitted hand to his face, then pulled the glove off of it. He had
stolen (borrowed, only- if his trapline would pay out it would only be
borrowed) a small jam jar of vodka brewed by his father. A swig of
that would bring him back to reality.
He pried the frozen cold lid off the jar and took a long, bitter draught,
the way a young man who had been imbibing stolen vodka since he
was 12 does, deep and fast. He gazed at the black and white
snowscape through the curve of the glass, the lines of poplar and
oak distorted by the glass and the alcohol. A huge pine tree lay off to
his right, just by the riverside. It was a swirl of deep green and jet
black against the snow.
Andrei froze. And orange.
A splash of orange low, hidden under the boughsKhuiy! he spluttered, lowering the jar with a freezing cold splash
on his hand. His eyes swam with the rush of vodka, but it looked
through his bleary vision as though there was, yes, a tiger sprawling
majestically on a mattress under the Lone Pine. Huge and bushy
with his winter coat, his immense green/blue eyes burned with alert

disaffected regard.
You should be more careful, michman, about your vodka, a crisp
voice with a clipped eastern Russian accent advised him.
Andrei gave a shout and turned to his right. His swimming eyes
bugged out of his head at the Russian Naval Officer standing in
front of him. He wore that hat emblazoned with officers oak leaves
and the thick, much coveted woolen coat with sable collar typical of
the upper echelons of the Russian navy. Large destroyers or
nuclear submarines would be under this mans command.
Andrei had been in the ground forces, but had heard the stories
about the intensity, prestige and strictness of naval Officer. His
father had taken him to Vladivostok as a boy, and together they
watched the naval non-coms, or michmen, scurry and salute for
men in imposing hats and coats like this.
Theres a tiger! A tiger over there! Andrei let the jar fall from his
hand, raised his gun to his shoulder, hoping he still had precious
seconds to take a shot before the tigers jaw closed on him. The
officer calmly caught the jar in mid air, gazing at the terrified boy
expectantly.
Boychik, the officer said kindly, putting a hand on Andreis
shooting shoulder. No need for such theatrics. There is no danger.
Andrei, wild-eyed with the horrible imaginings of the neighbours last
moments running through his head, kept the rifle raised and spun
around in the snow, eyes trying to tear the forest apart seeking a
trace of the orange he had espied.
The Naval Offficer leaned back, eyebrows raised, as Andrei spun
the barrel inches from the older mans nose. When Andrei made a
second spin toward the mans face, he ducked down and placed the
jam jar in the snow.
Andrei began to panic as he made one full circuit of the
surroundings. Whoever this crazy officer was, he was no help, but
they would both be dinner for the Amba tiger if Andrei couldnt get a
sight on it.
Andreis right jaw exploded with sharp, bruising pain as the Flot
officer grabbed the swinging barrel of the gun as it made its third
pass by his head. Carrying the momentum down, the officer slid the
butt of the shotgun up into Andreis face in a forceful wake up

smack.
Andrei gave out a childlike yip and crumpled into the snow, played
in the deep drift as though he were prepared to drop and giver his
C.O. fifty sit ups.
I said, there is no need for such dangerous theatrics. We are
alone. The officer glanced to Andreis feet and the conscientiously
placed jam jar there between his knees in the snow.
Bring your drink and we will have a seat. He held out his hadnt o
Andrei, who, dazed from the jaw shot and tipsy from vodka and
exhaustion, took it after only a moments hesitation. The mans hand
was soft in its black leather glove, but hard, with an undeniable grip
that felt as though he could have crushed Andreis palm in his
although its breadth was slightly smaller. Before Andrei knew, he
was on his feet, standing eye to eye and hand in hand with the
incongruous officer.
The Flotman held the old shotgun out to Andrei, a small smirk on is
face. Andrei, chagrined, took it. He was grateful to the man for not
tossing it in the snow and ruining the barrel and the precious ammo
inside.
the officer gestured with one hand to the mattress under the pine
tress. Andrei, still extremely wary, shied away slightly. But only
slightly this was an officer, and an honorable one, after all.
We are alone here, comrade, the officer said in tones that relaxed
Andreis spine from the coccyx upward. Andrei gave an abrupt
laugh, and started towrd the mattress with the stranger, his footfalls
crisp and crackling. He glanced over his shoulder at the officer,
noticed he did indeed wear the insignia of the defunct CCCP. The
familiar comrade hadnt even registered on Andrei at first, though no
one used it except in scarthing irony now.
Where the hell did you come from? Andrei laughed as they sat on
the fortuitous mattress. A dusting of powdery snow floated onto
them from the tree, coating the starshinas flack coat in traces of
white. Before them, the sun began to be consumed by the poplar
and beech branches. The same place as this mattress? He
pounded its threadbare fabric and opened the jam jar. Andrei took a
swig and passed it to the man.
The officer took a deep drink, drained half of the liquid, and assed it

back to Andrei, who tried not to be shocked.

I drug the mattress through the snow too this very tree. He
guestured at the trail in the snow that led back into the trees. It has
a pretty view of the river, and the trapline, da? I did not wish to wait
in the snow for you it gets my coat wet.
But these coats are the Rodinas finest! cried the increasingly
inebriated Andrei. He fingered the black wool fabric of the officers
cuff. it was absurdly soft, and thick he dropped the cuff,
embarrassed.
I understand. You have a fine coat, sir, he said, flushing from
more than vodka.
Why were you waiting for me? Andrei gulped, the chill of the wet
snow he had collected from his fall soaking into his skin. He
shuddered.
The man cocked his chapkad head to one side and offered Andrei
a kind smile. I see by your trapline you are a hunter, and by your
dedication and diligence to it, I see you are a military man like
myself. He paused to let this soak in.
Andrei nodded slowly, letting the obvious graciousness of his host in
in. For host he was, wasnt he in his way? Providing a parley point,
not beating the shit out of Andrei for his childishness with the gunRussian Army, Chechnya, he said, touching his chest. He perhaps
wisely refrained from his normal boast of marksman on this
occasion.
the man leaned back in his seat, eyes half closed in recollection.
Ah, yes, Chechnya became quite the hotspot, didnt it? That, you
see, is after my heyday as they say.
Was this some crazy tayoznik whose glory days were long past and
who decided to startle the young in order to rehash the old times?
Andrei stared sidelong at the man, who preteneed not to notice as
he gazed at the brilliant vermillion display of the setting sun. the
blozing rays of the sun slashed livid color onto the mans face and
turned his piercing blue eyes into fiery sparks. the branches of the
trees began casting jagged shadows over them both, dappling them
in orange and black.
The tiger Andrei said, thickly. The cold was vying for supremacy

with vodkas failing warmth. He unscrewed the jar and took a swig,
then passed it to the officer, knowing what would happen next.
He drained the jar and smiled at Andrei Spaciba, he said quietly.
it is so easy to spill when the lid must be removed oneself. He
grinned for a moment, and Andreis blood froze.
As to the tiger. the officer continued, he is of no concern to you.
You could not shoot him, no matter how many problems his fine
coat would solve for you. He took a deep breath, half sigh, have
yawn and Andrei was struck by the girth of his chest under the thick
coat.
You are a taker, if the forest, of your father and mother, of
whatever will let you. He held up a cautioning hand. Not that this is
a bad thing, son why, the tiger, he is a taker, too, da? However,
there is a little matter of how much you take, and when you take it.
You take the wrong crust of bread at the wrong time, and the Cyan
he will cut off your head! This last was exhaled at Andrei abruptly,
and made him jump back.
If this were another time, and we had more of the slippery stuff, I
would probably just eat your traps, and thin catches and follow you
about while on the trail for a long hard winter to spoil your aim and
confidence just to let the cub know who is sine. At this he patted
Andrei on the sore jaw with his gloved hand. It was oddly rough.
Andrei, shivering, frozen, stared at the officer bathed in sunset.
The officer gazed somewhat sadly at Andrei, The young man still
mostly boy, quivering at his side. However, we have no time for
such pleasantries. The is the little matter of your family line, as well
Andrei Pochepnya.
My family line? Andrei repeated, roused from his stupor slightly
heraldric honor.
Da, your family line. It comes, did you know, from the blood of
kings? Why your mother's great, great, great, great grandaunt was
the mother of European kings. And your father, from his Baltic
heritage, is of the House of King David- a biblical concept I am sure
is of little use to you, my son. The officer waved a hand
dismissively.
The point of these interesting facts is that I smelled these dusty yet
important connections on your traps, which make you my kin. the

officer gazed at Andrei again.

You are the spawn of Czars, after all.
Andrei nodded slightly. He felt quiet, too calm, and numb. Perhaps
the vodka had hit him too hard. Where had the time gone? He
wondered this, staring at the bleeding disk of the sun as it sunk
deeper into the trees.
Where indeed? A forest can shelter only so long, and it is time for
me to seize those aspects of Czarship hidden in your tender young
frame once more. To reabsorb them, as it were.
Abruptly, the officer rose, and beckoned Andrei to follow him. Stiffly,
like he was made of ice, Andrei shuffled after the black coat, striped
with the moistures of ice and breath, dyed with the setting sun in
patches of briliant orange...
Oh, there you are, Andrei said thickly to the tiger. He raised his
gun slightly.
The officer turned, smirked at him, and shook his head.
We have done this already, da? he said softly.
Andrei let the gun fall from his hands. It sunk into the snow. He
turned to look back at the mattress. The trail it pushed into the snow
was punctuated by the unmistakeable round padprints of a tiger.
Will it hurt? Andrei asked quietly, staring at the tracks in the snow.
Yes, of course, he heard the officer say. And though it will take
me days to finish you after you're dead, you will feel every last bite,
every last burning dissolution of every last atom. That is how I take
back what you have held for me, what you brashly thought to use
against me.
To Andrei's left, the sun sank below the horizon. He turned, and saw
the immense head and huge, glinting eyes of his Czar. Then the
agony began in earnest.