I looked up to see my secretary, Ms. Walker, moving briskly away, her long black windbreaker consuming her thin frame. The faint scent of lilacs seemed to follow after her.

“Wait,” I called to her. Then, embarrassed by my firm tone, I smiled as she turned. “What is this?” I asked, holding up the envelope.

Ms. Walker shrugged. “I’m not sure.” The warden told me to deliver it to the supervising psychologist when I went by the psychology mailbox to get the mail. So I did.” She returned my smile and backed out of my office.

My attention returned to the envelope and I opened it. Probably just another employee assistance program referral. As much as I enjoyed working with inmates in a high security prison, my loyalty was and always would be to staff.

I ripped open the envelope and read the enclosed form. It had yesterday’s date on it. I was not at all prepared for what I would read:

January 17, 2012

To: Dr. Williams, Supervising Psychologist

From: Mr. McAdams, Facilities Supervisor

I am increasingly concerned with one of my employees, Mr. Richardson. I would like to refer him for employee assistance to address several recent behaviors which I believe warrant immediate attention. First, he is increasingly absent from work and does not always call to let me know he is taking the day off. Second, when he does come into work, he is often tardy. Third, his hygiene is poor and it is clear he often does not shower or brush his teeth. Finally, and the major source of concern, is his repeated allegations against female staff (I have submitted copies of his memos to Internal Affairs for their review). The content of his memos submitted to me in my role as his supervisor describe what appears to be delusional behavior. For instance, he describes the female staff in a multitude of departments going into the cafeteria at night at which time he describes seeing the growth of scales on their skin. He describes in curious detail the growth of claws from their fingers and the elongating of their teeth. He further reports that their hair grows longer at this time and their pupils dilate. He said they have red eyes. Beyond the absolute absurdity of his report, he is presumably not at the prison at night to observe such events and, if he is, he is further in violation of policy as he is not supposed to be at work at any time of night unless an emergency dictates his presence. But perhaps the most disturbing memo was one I received on January 15, 2012, which documented the murder of a corrections officer in the cafeteria at 1400 by female staff with the characteristics described above. The corrections officer mentioned in the memo is a Mr. Daniels, a probationary employee of six months. In this memo, Mr. Richardson details the cruel and gory execution performed reportedly by female staff. Mr. Richardson has not provided me with any names of the female workers.

I put the memo down, staring at the supervisor’s signature above his name without really seeing it. I was still sitting like that when my secretary returned, knocking on my open door.

I jumped and then attempted a smile, which I knew to look as false as it felt. “Hi, you scared me.” I said.

“Sorry, Dr. Williams. Do you need anything? Was everything okay with the mail?” Ms. Walker said, her jacket, with the name of the prison emblazoned on the front in gold, rustling as she lifted her arm to brush the dark hair out of her face.

“Oh my God,” I said, “are you okay?”

She looked confused so I clarified, only temporarily pushing the memo out of my mind. “Your hand. You have a pretty big bruise.”

“Oh,” Ms. Walker said, sighing, “The gym. I should really be more careful.”

I smiled back, “Well, everything’s fine here. I don’t need anything right now, but thanks.”

I looked down, returning my attention to the memo, knowing Ms. Walker had left only by the sound of rustling…

At noon, after I had completed staff supervision in addition to some inmate assessments, I decided to speak with Mr. McAdams directly. Lucky for me, I knew just where to find him.

The Officer’s Mess Hall was crowded at that hour. Staff in various roles lined up against the buffet-style table while inmates served hot food, piling it high on old, red trays held by impatient hands. I could find no empty seats anywhere, which is precisely why I avoided the Officer’s Mess. That and I was adamant in my idea that the inmates couldn’t be trusted not to adulterate staff food.

My eyes roved the room until they settled on a rather portly man of around forty years, wearing a beige suit and dark green tie. As if psychic, Mr. McAdams raised his eyes to mine and he smiled warmly as though expecting me. I made my way over to him. He was sitting at a table across from the Associate Warden.

“Hi,” I said to Mr. McAdams. I gave a brief nod in the direction of Associate Warden Henrick. I held a tremendous distaste for the latter man ever since he verbalized his opinion that women should not be working in a prison and should not be doctors.

Both men said hello in unison, but I focused solely on Mr. McAdams as I stood above their table. “Hi. I received your memo and would like to speak with you if you have a moment. I’ll just take a seat in the lieutenant’s office until you’re finished eating and wait for you there.” I said, eager to leave the crowd and the presence of Mr. Henrick, whose penetrating blue eyes I could feel on my ass.

I didn’t even wait for poor Mr. McAdams to answer. I just turned on my heels and practically raced out of the room. I traversed the corridor outside of the Officer’s Mess, now filled wall-to-wall with a throng of inmates. Moments later, I made my way into the quiet of the lieutenant’s office where I sat at a computer terminal facing the corridor.

I checked my email, pretending to look busy, until I saw Mr. McAdams in the corridor making his way over to me. He opened the door and smiled as he took a seat next to me, his face red and the breaths very audible as they gushed from his mouth. I hoped he hadn’t been rushing over to meet me, but I had feeling he had. He was a kind man and probably hadn’t wanted to keep me waiting.

“Sorry about interrupting your lunch. I was just concerned about this memo.” I said.

Mr. McAdams shook his head. “No, I’m actually really glad you wanted to speak with me so quickly about this matter. I’m…I’m a little nervous about Richardson. He’s usually a good worker, but I can’t lie. He’s, uh, had some problems getting along with co-workers in the past. He’s always been a little…eccentric, I guess you could say. Anyway, I’m very worried about his mental state. He just wasn’t making much sense.”

“I understand,” I said, “Is he here today?”

Mr. McAdams sighed and shook his head. “Nope. He called out. That’s the thing, too. He’s always calling out. Well, many times he doesn’t even call anymore. He called this time, though. I think he knows I’m concerned. And…Dr. Williams, that officer that Richardson mentioned, the one who he said was brutally murdered…he hasn’t been to work in three days.”

It was late in the afternoon. Most people had left work already, but I had set up a meeting with my friend in Human Resources who often worked well into the evenings.

I crossed into the administration building, brushing my auburn curls out of my face. It never looked good to run; it got people nervous. Running was reserved for emergencies. I should not have been in any particular hurry except that every hour that passed, I felt a sense of urgency and dread in the pit of my stomach.

I opened the single glass door to the Human Resources Department, which was devoid of any decoration with the exception of some posters sloppily taped to plain white walls advertising the importance of teamwork and pride. I took a left and entered the main corridor of the department, which was lined with small offices. I swung into the second one on the right and plopped in a chair, ugly and cushioned with thin green material.

Nancy sat in front of me. She and I had been friends for a long time. We didn’t often get together after work, but we had good conversations. I admired her work ethic and she was always kind to me.

“Hey,” she greeted me from behind the small wooden desk that looked like it had been a do-it-yourself project. It probably had been with the prison’s budget.

“Hi,” I said, practically breathless.

Nancy politely ignored my disheveled appearance from my rush over here. “So you had a question about a new officer, right?”

I nodded. “Yes, a concern actually.”

Nancy sat back in her black swivel chair. She rotated back and forth ever so slightly and drummed her red polished nails on the cheap desk. Her nails matched her rosy cheeks and her eyes were bright. Bright with excitement perhaps or intrigue. Nothing exciting happened in Human Resources so anything I brought to her, however small, was probably a step up.

“Candice, after you called, I checked with Lieutenant Howard. He said Officer Daniels missed three shifts in a row, including today, with no phone call or anything. Lieutenant Howard said he made an attempt to call Daniels each time, but received no answer on his cell phone. Finally, he called his home number and his girlfriend said she hasn’t heard from him. She lives with him, but apparently they had a fight so she assumed he hadn’t been coming home because he was still mad at her. She thought maybe he was staying somewhere else. Anyway, she got sufficiently nervous after Lieutenant Howard called her and so she filed a missing person’s report with the police. She called back over to Howard to tell him that she had done so after she called numerous friends and was not able to determine his whereabouts. She’s a wreck.”

I didn’t know what to say. My mind was racing. “So what do you do in a case like this? I guess he keeps his job here until we find out where he is?”

Nancy nodded slowly. “Yeah, I mean, he can’t be fired, even during his probationary year, if he’s missing, Candice.” She smiled slightly.

I didn’t smile. I couldn’t. I was scared.

When I didn’t say anything, she continued, “You called me to ask about this officer, but you never said why. What’s going on?”

“Unfortunately, I can’t say. Please know it’s an Employee Assistance issue.” I responded, wishing I could say more, but required to keep the issue confidential in my role as a psychologist.

“I completely understand. I hope everything works out. You know, you don’t look so good.”

I weakly waved my hand at her as if waving away the issue. “No, I’m fine. I’m just thinking, I guess.”

“Go home, Candice. In fact, I’m going to take my own advice. I’ll walk out with you,” Nancy said, moving her hand over to her computer, shutting it down.

She got up from her chair and grabbed her pale blue coat where it was slung over papers on a nearby table. She squeezed her slightly overweight frame between the desk and table, and stood over me expectantly as I got up from the chair. It had been nice to just sit down.

We walked out of the department and made our way past the front security desk, waving goodbye to the officer stationed there, before pushing open the double glass doors leading outside…leading right smack dab into a dead body.

“What the…” I said, looking at the mess in front of me. I heard Nancy gasp as I stared ahead at the blood—albeit not a tremendous amount—leading to the small road, practically a path, that circled the entire circumference of the prison. On that road, the mobile patrol car had come to a halt and Officer Preston, the officer manning it, stood directly in front of it, staring at what appeared to be human remains.

It was eerily silent. No one said anything. I looked at Nancy who stood still with her hand over her mouth, looking terrified. Suddenly, behind us, the door swung open, causing Nancy and me to jump. The front desk officer stood there, emulating our surprised and horrified expressions.

“What the fuck?” He said.

“I just…I just found this…whatever it is. Is it an animal?” Officer Preston asked, his voice shaking.

“No,” I said, “It’s human. When did you find…it?” I asked, finding my voice and contemplating the next step, but not knowing what the heck to do.

“I just…I was driving around. It wasn’t here just twenty minutes ago, on my last round. I stopped the car just before you ladies came out.” He grabbed his head in both his hands, looking like he wanted to rip it off. I could tell he was getting ready to become undone so I mustered whatever strength I had, went over to him, placed my hands gently around him to guide him away from the scene and back into the building. I had him take a seat inside. Then I fumbled my way through the longest night I had ever had.

It was five o’clock in the morning. I opened the door to my home, empty and dark. I was exhausted and tired from answering questions all night. Nothing happened in this town so, when something does happen, it’s surprising. But at least I felt it made things go quicker. In a town where nothing happens, everything is rushed and eager. Everyone wants answers and they want it five minutes ago. And that’s why they were able to determine the identity of the body so quickly. And that’s why we knew the body belonged to Officer Daniels. Despite the gore and despite the fact that much of the body appeared to be missing, there was still a set of teeth, which by some miracle of miracles, was mostly intact. Officer Daniels had been dead for a few days based on a report from forensics.

I closed the door behind me and leaned against it, wishing I could just collapse right there. Instead, I shook off my shoes, complete with the blood I hadn’t had the time to clean off and wandered up the carpeted staircase to my bedroom, knowing there was just one more thing I had to do before I could shut my eyes and reach sweet, sweet bliss brought on by sleep. I reached my bedroom, tore off my blouse and black pants, my underwear and bra, and replaced it all with a light pink tank top and sweatpants. I crawled into bed and grabbed the phone from my nightstand. This couldn’t wait.

“Hi, this is Dr. Williams…is this Mr. Richardson?”

I awoke at noon. I had no clue what had disrupted my slumber. At first, I just tried to go back to sleep, thinking Mr. Richardson’s account of a terrible murder was invading my thoughts, but then I heard a noise that seemed to come from downstairs. It sounded like a crash and then like plastic brushing against plastic or some other kind of fabric. I heard a screech from what sounded like an animal and my heart stilled. Then only seconds later I heard a window break. I gripped the bed and ever so slowly reached for my phone on the nightstand. Then Fuck that and grabbed my gun from the nightstand. Ever so slowly, I walked into the hallway and headed down the stairs. The first step creaked and I inwardly cringed. There was no other noise now. Just quiet.

I took a deep breath and continued. When I was mid-way down the stairs, I saw it. I screamed, gun in hand, and ran back up the stairs, grabbed my phone and called the police. I told them what was lying on my kitchen floor. No, who was lying on my kitchen floor.

“This is Candice Williams, Richmont Road. I have—I have a body in my house, on my floor. I know the victim. I have no idea what happened. Please…please come quickly.”

“Nancy, it’s Mr. Richardson. I saw him. I had just spoken with him when I got home from work. It was early. I woke at noon and he was on my floor, half eaten, but I could see his face and I knew it was him. I’m so scared.”

Nancy put her arm around me. She had just asked for the third time if I was sure it was Mr. Richardson despite the fact that she knew the body had been identified and despite the fact that I had told her seven thousand times that I had seen his face very, very clearly. I had told her the part that troubled me the most because I had to tell someone: I told her that I believed what Mr. Richardson had told me. It was crazy, but then the whole thing didn’t make any sense. And it couldn’t have been a coincidence that his body ended up on my floor after I spoke with him. He knew something. And now I knew something.

We were sitting on a bed in a hotel room, side by side. It was nearly midnight and I didn’t know how much more I could take. I knew I was at my limit. Too many bodies, too little time. I couldn’t go back home. Emotionally, I couldn’t stand to see the gore on my floor. I knew I couldn’t look at the broken kitchen window through which the perpetrator had likely escaped. I couldn’t handle anymore questions from the police. As paranoid as I was about it, the police clearly didn’t think I had anything to do with it. Maybe they figured no one can act as scared as I clearly was. I didn’t know. But they did ask me a ton of questions before allowing me to leave. My house was covered in crime scene tape and someone had been nice enough to board up my window. I briefly wondered if anyone had cleaned my kitchen…

“Do you want me to stay with you?” Nancy asked quietly.

I shook my head. “No, just coming here for a bit is good enough. Go home to your family. Your kids miss you and you’ve already been through enough, too.”

Nancy was quiet for a moment before replying. “You know, Candice, a day off might do you some good. I hope I don’t see you in work tomorrow.”

“I have to go in. There are a ton of staff who will be upset and who will want to talk to someone. I need to be able to speak with them. Plus, I’m sure administration will have a ton of questions of their own. I have to go.” I said.

Nancy just shook her head and, despite everything, smiled a little.

“What?” I asked.

Then she burst out laughing.

“What?” I said, looking at her with what must have been a confused or horrified—I didn’t know which—expression on my face.

“It’s just that—I always said that someone has to literally die before you’d take a day off…and now…” Nancy stopped talking so she could laugh in my face.

I rolled my eyes and before I knew it, I was smiling, too. It felt so good.

“And now, someone has died, and you still won’t miss work!” Nancy said, remaining in hysterics.

“That’s me,” I said, “I need a hobby, I guess. I mean, besides finding dead bodies.”

It was eleven in the morning the next day. I had slept until nine and then decided to drive to work. I sat in my office, staring vacantly, unable to do anything. It was quiet, but I could hear the rustle of plastic…on plastic…or something plastic-like. I froze. When I looked up, she was there, right in front of my desk, standing over me.

“Can I get you anything? You want coffee?” Ms. Walker asked.

“N-no, I just—I’ll just drink my water,” I stammered. I held up the bottle in front of me and mustered a smile. All the while, I thought I was going to pee my pants. Shit, I thought, as I felt urine trickle down my beige slacks. I stood abruptly, surprised by the warmth on my leg, but Ms. Walker, from her position in front of me, threw me back into my seat.

“Listen to me, BITCH!” Ms. Walker screamed, her voice taking on a demonic quality as her dark hair grew thicker and longer before my eyes. I was stunned by her strength, so much so that I had trouble focusing and could barely comprehend my situation.

When I looked at her, dazed, I could see the red eyes and the fangs…and there was a scent…lilacs. I recalled what Mr. Richardson, in his panicked and seemingly paranoid state, had told me. “I began following them at night. I watched them. The red eyes…oh my God, the red eyes…and their huge fucking teeth. There was a leader and she had a scent…like flowers maybe, like lilacs, but they all had them. All of them. They ate him, they ate him. They knelt by that guy and they literally just sunk those fangs into him. He was screaming! I know you don’t believe me. Who would? I won’t tell you who the women are. Why would I? So you could laugh at me? But I know what I saw and I know evil when I see it!”

From somewhere deep within myself, I knew this was fight or die. I just felt blessed to be in a place where there was hope because help was around the corner.

“HELP! HELP!” I hit my radio that I carried on the belt around my waist and an alarm activated throughout the building.

Ms. Walker came around the desk quickly and grabbed a clump of hair, throwing me against the wall. She was coming for me again and I could see her long claws, her wild eyes, and her grotesque scaly face. I dove right at her and took her to the ground. I could feel her claws as they slashed across my back as she tried to grab onto me. The desk was in front of me. I grabbed a pen and, as I was about to jam it into her eye, she managed to get me under her. She held down my arms so that they were pinned to my sides.

“I always liked you, Dr. Williams. I always thought we’d make an excellent team before you started asking questions. I was merely trying to get rid of the slime who preyed on us. Men like that never wanted us around here, walking around like they own the place. Fuck them. I’m stronger than they are, I’m smarter than they are.” Ms. Walker practically screamed, her foul-smelling breath hot on my face. I shrunk away as her fangs came toward my face.

Then I heard it. The most beautiful sound of all. Keys on belts accompanied by footsteps and yelling. Tears were streaming down my face as it took five strong men and one strong woman to lift Ms. Walker off of me. By my own account, I don’t know what happened after that. I passed out, letting the darkness envelope me.

Five days later, I sat in front of an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I had already been through several rounds of questioning. I knew this was it and I was relieved. They had detained Ms. Walker and she was now at a medical facility being treated for what they believed—but what I knew to be incorrect—was exposure to rabies. I tried to reason with everyone who disagreed, which was mostly the FBI agents who merely wanted to be done with this whole thing so they could go home to their families. I couldn’t blame them, but I had to try to speak my piece. After all, who were the other women who worked with Ms. Walker to complete the killing? I told them about the fangs and the claws. Some of them laughed at me even though the correctional officers who had responded to my emergency saw it, too. I had spoken with them and they all had the same confused, desperate expressions on their faces, even several days later. Aside from that, the only other person who believed me—or said she believed me—was Nancy. Everyone else, especially the warden, keeping in mind my good reputation and solid work ethic, believed that the assault following the discovery of the body on my floor had emotionally scarred me and driven me to hallucinate. How’s that for diagnosing the psychologist? “Dr. Williams, there’s nothing a good vacation can’t do for anyone! Take the next couple of weeks off, on us. You can have administrative leave; you don’t even have to use your own time! How does that sound? But we need you back once you’re rested.” [Wink]

I had seen enough to know I wasn’t psychotic or having some sort of “episode”. I sighed as my interview ended. I crossed the lobby to the front door, but I could feel someone’s eyes on me. I turned around to see Nancy standing beside the agent who had questioned me the other day and who had been interviewing another woman today…one of several agents who had laughed at my story.

Nancy smiled as she looked at me. I could see fangs. I could see the smile around her blood red eyes.

“NOOOOOOOOO!” I screamed as I tried to lunge at the agent to move him away from her. I didn’t get to him in time and I watched in horror as she sank her fangs into the poor agent’s right cheek…

Bio: I am currently a prison psychologist and my story is a fictitious account of the prison environment. The story’s protagonist, Dr. Williams, is also a prison psychologist who confronts the deaths of two correctional workers, leading her down a sinister path.

My professional career has allowed me the opportunity to publish academic material in the psychology literature. Writing works of fiction is a hobby of mine, something merely fed by my work. I have one other publication, Housing Unit Four, which was published in November of 2011 by Dark Moon Digest.

Looking back as an adult, I suppose I can understand why she reacted the way she did. Having to get two sets of glasses, standing still as she tried to figure out if she was coming or going, seeing the previously obscured expressions of those behind her must have been initially disconcerting, to say the least. But that was no reason for her to stop functioning completely. Even as a four year old, I could see so many possibilities – driving the car in reverse without turning around, watching her daily soaps while ironing, standing in the middle of the super-market aisles and seeing all of the signs without turning around. But Mama was overwhelmed initially, unable to process what had happened. When they first grew, it was like she didn’t see at all. I can still picture her blank glare…

“Maaaaa-ma. Mama. Mom-mom. Mama! It’s me, Janie.”

I wave my hand at her face and then at the back of her head. She almost looks at me both times, but she doesn’t see me, I guess. “I wannet ta help, Mama,” I whisper, tugging on her shirt hem with one hand and running the other hand up my snotty button nose. My peach eyelet halter top is sweaty, the fabric by the armpits a brownish-gold color. The denim shorts I’m wearing are too small, and the waistband cuts into my tummy. My purple jelly sandals are caked with grime that matches the sludge under my toenails. The ponytail I wrestled my stringy blonde hair into this morning is falling out, as I can’t properly fasten a butterfly hair-tie.

I crane my neck to one side, then the other, trying to get her to notice me. But Mama won’t look at me – not with either set. She just stares into the dining room mirror and at the television in the family room. Doesn’t seem like she sees anything, though. She just sits and watches, not really watching. Her tulip house dress – the same one she’s worn all week –makes her collarbone look like a wire hanger. She has a moccasin on one foot and her other foot is bare, revealing chipping fuchsia paint on her toe nails. Her skin is grayish, and reminds me of a dolphin I saw last summer at the “quarum,” as I call it. Mama’s hair is dark and oily and matted to the sides of her head and face, with twisted tendrils running down her cheeks like party streamers.

Four days have passed already and she still won’t leave the kitchen barstool, other than to schlump over to the bathroom occasionally, or shuffle over to the sink for a sip of water. No food; just water. Pa is due back from his business trip any minute, and I can’t help but think he is going to be mad. Real mad.

The house is a mess, with bowls from the cereal I ate for the first couple days and cups from Mama’s slim-quick shakes that I’ve drank the last couple days piled in the sink. Two days ago, the bathroom toilet clogged and spilled over onto the floor, the water making a flowery stain on the hardwood outside the bathroom where I put Mama’s good towels down to sop it up. I always use too much paper to wipe, which Mama tells me not to do, but I don’t listen – and she isn’t reminding me now. Not knowing where to go, I’ve been doing numbers one and two in the bathtub. Mama has been, too, since she’s not thinking right. The living area smells like the bathrooms at the beach. It’s hot inside, too. A layer of dust that Mama has never before allowed coats her knickknacks, tables, and fixtures. The house looks like no one cares, no one tries. But I do care. I did try. I tried to help Mama.

The car engine sputters to silence in the garage and my stomach feels funny, achy and tickly all together. Mama stays put, still looking at the mirror and TV. I hear Pa singing a tune – Alexander’s Rag Time Band – and I suddenly can’t wait to give him a big hug; I’ve missed him so.

The kitchen door opens and Pa comes bounding through, briefcase in one hand, newspaper in the other, and his eyeglasses still dark from being in the sun. His wavy, sandy-colored hair has been mussed by the wind, his face is reddish and shiny, and his shirtsleeves are rolled up, revealing tan and hairy forearms. He sees me and flashes a sparkling smile.

“Hey Peanut,” he shouts, dropping his briefcase and the newspaper by the door and extending his arms to me.

I run toward him, but he pulls his arms to his chest and stands straight up.

Running into his legs, I grip and hug him, and clamp my eyes shut.

“Jesus Christ. Oh Jesus. Oh God, Annie,” he whimpers. I feel his legs shimmy.

I peek over at Mama. She doesn’t move; she doesn’t look at him – not with either set.

Pa pushes me to the side and walks up to Mama and stares at her head, looking into her eyes and then around and into her other eyes.

“What ha—,” Pa chokes and turns to me, kneeling down in front of me and grabbing my arms hard. His smoky glasses are beginning to fade clear. “How… what… how?”

The tears feel hot running down my cheeks, and my neck is on fire. Pa grips my arms so tight they felt tingly. The words burst out of me. “I din’t mean it, I wannet to help! The man say I get a wish!”

Pa rips his glasses off and throws them; they clack against the wall. “What? What man, what wish,” he growls, shaking me, hurting my arms.

“The big man,” I cry, afraid of Pa’s red eyes and hot breath. My words speed up as I go on, “He gave a wish for me, say I was good girl. I wish to give Mama somethin’ but I donno what. The man say, ‘what she say she aways need?’ I say, ‘eyes in the backa her head,’ an’ he say, ‘it done,’ an’ I hear Mama screamin’. I wanna help Mama. I trya be nice!”

Pa stands up and steps away, holding his forehead. He turns and wrestles the phone off its cradle.
“I need an ambulance. 251 Stratford Place, Mirror Lake. My wife. Her eyes… I … hurry. Please.” …

It was another week before Mama started seeing again, really seeing. The doctors didn’t say what made her fall into catatonia like that; no one had ever gotten a second set of eyes before, so they didn’t know how one should react. It took a long time for the doctors and head shrinkers to get Mama used to what they dubbed, “quatra-vision.”

The day Pa came home, I remember the police officer gave me a cola, which Mama never before let me have so I instantly felt naughty. He said it was okay, though, and then asked me all about the big man. But there wasn’t much to tell – he was big and tall with dark glasses and a hat. I did remember one more thing – he had a shiny, gold tooth, but I didn’t tell the police officer that, and I still don’t know why. The police looked for the big man, but they never did find him. I saw him a year ago when I got married, but I didn’t tell anyone. Mama saw him, too, but she didn’t know who he was. As I recited my vows, I noticed him standing in the back of the church, flashing his gold tooth at Mama’s back-eyes.

Bio: I am a graduate of William Paterson University, with a degree in English, writing concentration. I have had poetry published in The Zeitgeist, an on-campus literary journal at William Paterson University, and I have had several creative works and critical papers published in campus writing contest journals.

When they had found out that Lily was pregnant they were overjoyed, even though it hadn’t exactly been planned. Now, they were in the process of transforming the guest room into a nursery. Stanley’s brother Michael had come to help. Today they were planning to remove the wallpaper that had been there since they had moved into the house five years ago. Although it was truly hideous, they had never felt the need to remove it before. In fact they had grown to have a strange affection for it. Still, the idea of raising a child in that room without some serious changes was out of the question.

“Hey,” Michael says startling Stanley out of his day dream “Let’s get to work.” Stanley takes one last look around the room before sighing and saying, “Alright, let’s get started.” The two brothers began peeling off the aging wallpaper. When they completely clear the paper from the first wall, Stanley notices something strange peeking out from behind the paper on the next wall. “Michael check this out, I think there’s something under here.” Stanley says as he begins to pull away the paper. “It looks like a little door.” Michael kneels down next to Stanley and looks down at what he’s doing. What he sees is a door, but one which no human being could have ever fit through. It measures approximately one foot tall by eight inches wide, and appears to be made of wood painted a dark green color. There is a gold plated key hole, but no knob.

Millions of questions flood Stanley’s mind. Who put this door here? When? Why? Who, or what, could have possibly been using it? But only one comes out of his mouth “How do we open it?” Michael gives his brother a strange look “Open it? Why would we wanna do that? Besides who says it even opens? Why don’t we just get on with our work and forget about it.” Stanley flashes his brother an equally strange look. “Forget it? Come on, aren’t you even the least bit curious?”

“Curious about what?” They had both been so involved in what they were doing that neither of them had noticed Lily walk into the room. They look up at her in unison and say “That.” pointing towards the door. She leans in as best she can with her newly protruding belly and takes a closer look. “It looks like something out of a fairy tale.” Stanley leans back in next to his wife and gives the door a nudge. It doesn’t move. He pushes it harder and still it won’t budge. “I think you need the key.” Lily says simply.

Stanley lays down flat on his stomach and puts his face up against the door. “Well maybe I can see something through the keyhole.” Despite the dusty smell of age coming from the wood there are no visible signs of aging anywhere on the door. The paint looks fresh and the gold keyhole sparkles as if polished. When he looks through the keyhole what he sees is not just one thing. It is everything. “Well,” says Michael “What do you see in there?”

“Nothing,” Stanley says with a grunt as he returns to a standing position. “It must just be some sort of decoration. There’s nothing on the other side but more wall.”

“Really? You were looking through it for quite a while. It seemed like something was getting your attention.” Michael bends over to look through the hole. “Hmm” he says as he peers through the door, “I guess there really is nothing to it. Should we try to take it down?”

“No!” cries Stanley a little too passionately. “I mean I kind of like it. Let’s just leave it there for now and go back to work on the rest of the room.”

“That’s fine with me, as long as the room is ready to go before this baby is!” With that they leave the subject behind and get back to work,

It takes them just three days to completely transform the former guest room into a shining new nursery, and just a couple of days after that Michael is on his way home. In all the excitement the door is all but forgotten.

Until one night when Lily wakes up to use the bathroom and notices that Stanley isn’t in bed with her. She walks up to the bathroom door and knocks, “Stanley,” she says as she pushes on the door “I hate to hurry you, but I don’t think I can hold,,,:” She breaks off there when the door opens and she sees that the bathroom is in fact empty. Suddenly her urge to use the restroom is replaced by a strange shiver that starts at the base of her spine and works its way up to her brain. “Stanley?” she repeats with a lot less confidence. She turns away from the bathroom and a flash of light catches her eye from down the hall. She walks out into the hallway and notices that the light is coming from the nursery. “What are you doing in there?” she says as she turns the corner, but she is once again greeted by an empty room. There is nothing there but a fading light coming from the all but forgotten door. She can’t say why but this light fills her with a deep feeling of dread.

She makes her way slowly back to the bedroom. “Stanley?” she says yet again this time not expecting any sort of response. She doesn’t get one, but she notices a lump on Stanley’s side of the bed. She walks slowly towards the bed and lifts the sheet not knowing what she expects to find. What she sees there is the familiar form of Stanley’s sleeping body. Instead of feeling a sense of relief her dread only deepens. She is sure that he was not there when she left and there is no way he could have gotten back into the bedroom without passing her in the hall. She does her best to shake this feeling and crawls back into bed. It takes her almost 2 hours to fall back to sleep.

When she wakes up in the morning Stanley is once again not in bed, but this time the door to the bathroom is open and she can see him at the sink brushing his teeth. Stanley spits into the sink, “Good morning sleepyhead. I was trying not to wake you.” Lily sits up slowly and rubs her eyes, “You didn’t.” she says with a yawn. His face drops in concern. “Did you sleep okay?” he asks “You look a little off.” “Fine,” she says waving a hand dismissively before turning the question on him. “What about you?” “Actually I can’t remember the last time I had such a good night’s sleep.” he says turning off the bathroom light and joining Lily on the bed. “Although, I had a really weird dream.” “About what?” “That’s the thing, I can’t really remember.” He says with a distant look in his eyes. “I just have a vague sense of light and being surrounded by…” he breaks off and the look in his eyes grows even more distant. “Surrounded by what?’ Lily asks nervously. “Hmm” Stanley shakes his head as if to clear it, “Nothing, it was just a dream.” he says as he gets up and continues to get dressed. “Anyway, I’m gonna be late for work if I don’t get going soon.” He gives her a kiss on the forehead before heading out the bedroom door. “Maybe you should just stay in bed for a while. You look like you could use the rest.”

Lily is so lost in thought that she hardly even notices Stanley leaving the room. Her distraction is so complete that only in the back of her mind does the sound of Stanley’s car pulling out of the driveway even register. The strange light from that door mixed with that almost haunted look in Stanley’s eyes weighs on her mind. She decides to get up and investigate the door for herself.

She picks up her robe and makes her way down the hall, “Ok” she says to herself “There’s nothing to worry about.” She laughs, “Except of course that I’m talking to myself.” She opens the door and walks into the nursery, unconsciously placing her hand on her belly. The room is bathed in an eerie glow, but the only visible source of light is the large window directly opposite the door. Lily walks over to the little green door and pokes at it with her foot as if it might bite. When nothing happens she taps it once again before carefully crouching down to examine it more closely. She touches it gently with her fingertips as if she expects it to be hot. It isn’t. In fact it feels like perfectly normal wood. She runs her fingers down its smoothly polished surface. She looks through the hole and sees nothing but darkness.

Her sense of dread is slowly replaced by a feeling of embarrassment. She was being ridiculous. Of course there was nothing behind the door. How could there be? There were four inches at the most between the wall and the next room. She begins to stand up but is stopped by an intense pain in her abdomen. She once again moves her hand towards her stomach but the pain is gone almost as quickly as it had come. She continues to stand, more cautiously now. She manages to get all the way to her feet and there is still no sign of the pain. She takes two tentative steps before feeling a strange warm sensation covering her legs. She has to look down before she realizes that what she is feeling is in fact wetness. Her water has broken and she is going into labor. Almost a month early. She manages to remain calm long enough to reach the phone.

Sitting in the hospital 24 hours later holding her new baby, all thoughts of the door are distant and insignificant. Stanley is by her side and her new family is as it should be. Although the baby was born prematurely, she is in all other aspects perfectly healthy. Stanley kisses his wife and new baby. “I hate to leave, but Michael should be getting in soon and I wanted to meet him at the house.” “Oh..well, If you think you should…” Lily says weakly. “If you think I should stay…” Stanly begins but Lily interrupts “No, Stan, I’m just being selfish Go ahead and meet Michael at the house. I feel like taking a nap anyway.”

When Michael arrives at his brother’s house he is weary but filled with excitement. He rings the door bell but gets no response. He rings it again and still there is nothing. “Maybe they forgot about me” he thinks without any real bad feelings. After all it was understandable that they would have more important things on their minds. He tries the doorknob not really expecting any results, but to his surprise the door opens easily. “Hey Stanley.” he calls out. “Stan It’s me. Are you in there?” Still there is no response. Michael walks into the house and sets his luggage by the door. He tries calling for his brother one last time before looking though the house to make sure no one else had been in the house.

When he ascends the stairs and nears the door to the nursery he hears voices. He stops in his tracks afraid that someone nefarious may be in the house. He listens for a while, struggling to hear what is being said. Finally, he recognizes his brother’s voice and his paralysis is broken. “Hey Stan, you scared the hell out of…” his statement is cut short when he sees Stanley crouched down in front of the little door apparently talking to himself. “Who are you talking to.” Stanley turns around and says what sounds like “…found the key.” then appears to realize who he is talking to and says “Hey Michael I didn’t hear you come in. Glad you’re here.” He hugs his brother who only half heartedly throws his arms around him. “Who were you talking to Stan and what was that about a key?” “What? Oh nothing. Hey we should get to the hospital. Lily is waiting.” Stanley says as he pats his brother on the back and heads out the door. “Yeah but…” Michael tries to argue before simply following his brother out the door.

In the car on the way to the hospital Michael tries questioning his brother again. “So what were you talking about back there in the nursery?” With a laugh Stanley says, “Oh I don’t know. I just went in there to double check that everything was ready and then,,,” he trails off, “Well, I don’t really remember. I must have been daydreaming or something. The next thing I remember is you standing behind me. Why didn’t you ring the bell, I would have come down and let you in.” Michael gives his brother a strange look before saying. “ I rang the doorbell twice and no one responded. So, I tried the door and it opened.” “Hmm” Staley says with a shrug. “Must have been some day dream.” A distant look enters his eyes, “I thought I locked that door.”

They are quiet the rest of the way to the hospital. Once there, Michael is glad to see Lily and excited to meet his new niece. However he remains distracted, waiting for a moment to talk to Lily alone. The moment finally arrives when Stanley steps out to get coffee. “Hey Lily,” Michael begins “Have you noticed Stanley acting a little weird lately?” Lily’s stomach does a flip. “What do you mean?” she says, although she has a pretty good idea. “Well, today when I got to the house I found him in the nursery crouched in front of that little door talking to himself and when I asked him about it later he couldn’t quite remember what he’d been doing there.” he paused. “And he got this look in his eyes like. I don’t know..” “Like he was possessed” Lily finishes for him. “Exactly! So, you have noticed.” She sighs, “Yes,..” But before she can finish the thought Stanley comes back into the room. “Hey guys,” he hands Michael his coffee and takes a seat. “What are you talking about?”

After one night in the hospital, Lily and the baby are able to go home. Putting Susannah into her new crib for the first time, Lily is sure she will never be able to leave her side. However Susannah quickly falls asleep and Lily finds she is struggling to stay awake herself. Instead of fighting it, she heads to bed. With Stanley laying next to her, Susannah in the next room, and Michael downstairs on the couch, Lily feels a deep sense of belonging and drifts off to sleep easily. She is soon awoken by the wailing infant cry from the next room. She sits up so quickly she nearly falls out of bed, but Stanley is already on his feet and heading out the door. “Don’t get up honey. I’ll bring her in to you.” he says as he leaves the room. Lily lays back down feeling lucky to have such a caring husband. But the seconds pass and turn into minutes and there is still no sign of Stanley.

“Stanley?” Lily calls questioningly “Is everything okay in there?” When there is no response she tries again, “Stanley?” before getting up and heading to the nursery. As soon as she stands up the crying comes to a sudden, complete stop and in its absence the silence is deafening. She rushes into the nursery just in time to see a sudden brilliant flash of light showing the outline of Stanley’s body holding up their baby as if in offering. The shock of the flash leaves her momentarily blind, but when her vision clears she can see that the room is now empty. Acting on instinct she heads towards the door, but it too is gone. There is nothing but solid wall in its place. The silence is broken by a wordless cry of misery and slowly, she realizes that it is coming from her own lips.

Bio:
Jennifer Cox received her master’s degree in Library & Information Science from San Jose State University. She currently resides in Long Beach, CA. Her fiction has appeared in the online journals Static Movement, Postcard Shorts, and Death Head Grin.

I couldn’t take it anymore—her “Harker this” and “Harker that.” I had to get out of that place. I didn’t even wait for her to start into it. As soon as she had stepped into the room, I rushed the door. It took her completely off guard. The last thing I saw was the “O” of her open mouth.

I slammed the door behind me. The corridor was empty. I made for the stairwell. I could hear Lucy banging on the observation window. Her key was no good from the inside. Somehow the other inmates on the ward got wind that something was up. They started throwing their bodies against the doors and rapping their knuckles against the windows. Despite their considerable efforts, it wasn’t loud: a kind of smothered uproar, quiet and yet extremely emphatic. By the time I’d skittered down the first flight of steps I couldn’t hear it anymore.

I stopped on the landing. I needed to think. Where was I going? I had had to get out of the room. That was certain. Going back was unthinkable. But then where was I to go now? I felt strongly that I wouldn’t really be safe until I’d gotten out of the hospital. If anyone found me here, I realized, sadly, glancing down at my (actually Harker’s) dirty white bathrobe and pathetic plastic hospital slippers, they would almost certainly mistake me for a patient and return me to the room. What’s more, here in the hospital, as I was only to painfully aware, any assertions I might make as to my identity or state of mental health were doomed to have an effect exactly opposite to what I intended. As chief officer of admissions, how many lunatics had I myself consigned to permanent custody based on their delusory assertions of their own sanity? In truth, the Hopeless Ward was full of them.

Clearly Harker had played a diabolical trick on me, but there in the hallway I couldn’t say how he had done it, or even exactly what he had done. Much of the recent past remained a blur. I knew I’d been incarcerated, but how long had I been incarcerated? I must have been given powerful sedatives. That much was clear. And Lucy was now locked back in the room? (Hee! hee!) That felt like a good thing, but why? Ought I not go back and release her?

I remembered innumerable meetings with Lucy, not in a discrete sequence but as a part of a hazy and unpleasant habitual past, in which she seemed to go on and on about the man who had been our mutual patient (Harker). But was that correct? (“How is Mr. Harker today?” “Has Mr. Harker slept well?” “Will Mr. Harker take his medicine?”) Was she talking about Harker? Or was she, rather, talking to Harker, or rather to me as Harker?? My god! That was it! Lucy thought I was Harker!

What a nefarious gambit! I thought, resting for a moment, taking it in. This far outstrips even the most outrageous of Harker’s previous hijinx. Harker has put me in his place! But what about him? Had he…?

I should have seen this coming, I thought, becoming agitated once again. In hideous retrospect, all the signs were there. Harker and I looked almost perfectly alike for one thing. (I may not have mentioned this. Can you blame me? Who would advertise such an unflattering coincidence?) His habit of mimicking me during the last several of our one- on-one therapy sessions was another clue (though those had taken place months, if not years, ago), not to mention the reports from the staff that he had begun performing his impression of me for them.

I remember that report had disturbed me briefly. “He’s started saying he’s you and you’re him and that you’ve locked him up under false pretenses,” Leo, an orderly, told me months ago over his morning coffee. “Can you beat that? What a caution! Still it breaks my heart sometimes to hear him banging on the door all night, sobbing, ‘He’s escaped! He’s escaped!’ ‘Can’t you see? Can’t anyone see?’” I must admit I may have chuckled a bit over Leo’s comical imitation of the whiny desperation in Harker’s voice. It didn’t seem so funny now nor the question with which Leo terminated his anecdote: “Do you suppose he really believes it, Doc?” Did he believe it, indeed. The point was no-one else believed it. But now I would have to make them believe….

I had to hand it to Harker, he’d prepared the grounds for this dastardly caper with uncanny thoroughness. But how he had managed the actual switch was still a bit hazy. Evidently a blow to the head—or quite possibly several blows administered, perhaps, at regular intervals—had played some role, I realized, passing my fingers gingerly over several good-sized (and growing?) lumps on my own forehead.

I needed to get out of the hospital; that much was certain. What’s more I needed to get away from the hospital. But how far away would I have to get? That depended, I reasoned, on how far Harker had penetrated in his appropriation of my identity. Had he had time to take possession of my apartment? Had he been passing himself off as me at the neighborhood café? Could he have gone to the extreme length of visiting my home country to find and lay claim to whatever of my credentials might remain there?

And what about Lucy? Could Harker have succeeded in displacing me from my perch in the nest of her affections? Or rather, could he have pre-empted me there as, I confess, despite considerable efforts, I had not yet managed to attain that perch.

That woman was a cipher! First off (of course) there was no accounting for her immoderate interest in Harker; and secondly, given that interest, not to mention her long association with him (How long I couldn’t say. She’d been in his employ when he entered the hospital. That much I knew. But how long had she been attending to him before that?) how was it that she of all people had not noticed the switch? Certainly our striking physical resemblance worked against her. But even given that, you would think, Lucy, who had in all likelihood been attending to Harker since his earliest infancy, would have spotted a counterfeit. Shouldn’t something in my eyes, for example, have given the game away immediately?

Or was it possible, though I shuddered even to consider it, that Lucy had been in on it all along? Could she actually have conspired with Harker? Was she perhaps playing out the absurd charade of continuing to mistake me for Harker only for my own benefit and that of the hospital authorities? Was she not, perhaps, in this way, playing for time, as they say, until Harker, having liquidated all my local assets, would abscond with her back to my home country, there to live comfortably off my paternity while I wasted out the remainder of my days in the ten by ten padded cell that had been allotted to him?

I sat down on the floor for a moment, stunned by the enormity of the crime being perpetrated against me.

They’ll never get away with it, I thought, rising.

At least I had already immobilized one of my adversaries. You could bet there was no noise Lucy could make inside that room that would inspire an investigation on the part of the custodial staff. She ought then to stay put at least until the next morning when an orderly would show up with her (Harker’s (my?)) breakfast. Harker, however, I was sure, would prove far more difficult. He had after all, with extremely limited resources, mastered-minded my present predicament. In light of this—I must admit, stunning—achievement, even his illness was called in to question. Could that too have been entirely a ruse? But to so perfectly mimic the vast array of symptoms he had exhibited would have required an encyclopedic, even professional, knowledge of psychiatry. But in that case, Harker would have had to have been a psychiatrist himself! Could he have been a renegade practitioner who had turned his vast and arduously acquired knowledge of the healing arts to diabolically selfish and destructive ends?! Confronting him was rapidly becoming a significantly daunting prospect. But I had no choice but confront him. My very survival depended upon it. But not here.

I had to get back to my room on the other side of town. That was the key. My clothes were there for one thing (my black ward walking shoes, my lab coats, my respectable trousers and button down shirts, even my socks for God’s sake! (How could I be expected to confront anyone without even a pair of socks?). Those at least would put me on an equal footing with my adversary (the fraud) should I choose to return. But also I had there, in my room, on the other side of town, other resources (assuming, of course, Harker had not already discovered and pillaged them) that might prove instrumental in the coming struggle. And, not least, there was the matter of my other job as Vampire Tracker—rather neglected as of late, I must admit.

I left the ward using the emergency exit at the bottom of the stairwell. The moon was full, the air cool and tangy with salt. It felt good to be outside. It had been quite a while since I had tasted fresh air.

Unfortunately the air did nothing to clear the blur from my memory. A blow—or several—to the head, yes. I could still feel a dull ache from the lumps. Only Lucy…only Lucy… I could only clearly remember those innumerable sessions with Lucy. She was pretending I was Harker. For the authorities. To gain time…But was that really all there was to it? Could it have been their (Harker and Lucy’s) nefarious ambition to expunge my identity completely? Could they not have been attempting, through a regimen of powerful psychoactive drugs and relentless suggestion, to convince even me myself that I was the lunatic Jonathon Harker? My pulse raced at the thought.

I confess that though up until then my nascent plans had so far focused exclusively upon regaining only what was rightfully mine, now my thoughts began to stray toward revenge. I even for a moment considered re-entering the hospital, returning to Harker’s chamber and confronting the incarcerated Lucy with her colossal guilt then and there. And you can bet I would not limit my expressions of outrage to vindictive speeches! But then a sea breeze passed chillingly beneath the skirt of my (actually Harker’s) dirty white bathrobe, bringing me back to the sharp realities of the situation. For the moment, I must abscond.

Still, shivering there in the scrubby, dark cul-de-sac just outside the little used auxiliary exit of the hospital’s most peripheral ward, I vowed, as God was my witness, I would return and when I did, vengeance would be mine!

It was in truth a beautiful night. The moon covered over everything with a milky luminescence such that the expanse of scrub grass through which I ran—dimpled in the night breeze, dark against white dunes cresting high into the air at its furthest edge—took on the characteristics of a stretch of oddly calmed sea, the trough of an immense wave, stretching in wait beneath the gathering whiteness of a breaking surge. My sinews thrilled with freedom. In my exuberance I may even have begun to howl or hoot at the night air. I feared no discovery. The massive face of the Hopeless Ward blank with darkened windows was dead behind me, and with each leap I left it further behind.

~ Excerpt from Harker (novel)

BIO: James Lewelling’s first novel, This Guy, was published in 2005 by Spuyten Duyvil, his second, Tortoise, by Calamari Press in 2008. Over the years, his short fiction has appeared in a variety of literary venues ranging from The Cream City Review to The Stranger to The Evergreen Review to Fence. He has been writing fiction since 1988 while at the same time teaching and working abroad in Morocco (as a Peace Corps volunteer), Turkey and for the last ten years in the U.A.E. At present, he is writing fiction and taking care of his family as a stay at home dad in Abu Dhabi.”

Larkin knelt down beside me. Together we dug up what looked like a large blob of metal, but upon closer examination turned out to be some type of electronic devise, or a couple welded together.

“Just another piece of junk,” Larkin said, but put it in his backpack anyway. We already had a couple similar items. It was fun to dig up buried treasures in the desert. There wasn’t much else to do.
***
In the dead of night the sky lit up; it seemed like a dream. Later I would wish it had been.

“Get up, Emery.”

I groaned sleepily, pushed away the prodding hands.

“Come on, Em. You and I have stuff to do.”

I opened my eyes. My best friend Larkin stared at me with his big green eyes. He was seventeen, three years older than I was. He handed me my clothes, and stared out the dusty window while I dressed.

“I kept thinking about our treasure hunts last night,” I said. “Why did we stop doing them?”

“Because we got too old, Em. Digging up garbage was a childish thing and your pa found out. Now get up I want to show you something.”

“I’ve got school, you know.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Of course Larkin wouldn’t worry about school: He had dropped out last year and now worked at the mines with his father and my father. We slipped outside quietly, but not quietly enough.

We followed a worn path to the train tracks. All around us was the Nevada desert: still and dry, ready to roast in the late spring heat. We headed across the tracks and up a steep hill. Larkin led the way until we reached our old dig site fifteen minutes later. But our dig site was gone, the land dropped off suddenly, the sides sheered cleanly. About fifty feet below was the desert floor, dry and bare as it always had been.

“How’d this happen?” I asked and instinctly grabbed Larkin’s shirt for fear of falling.

“I don’t know yet,” Larkin said. “I just found this a few hours ago.”

“Let’s go back.”

“It’ll be alright, Emery.”

Larkin lay down on his stomach and I reluctantly followed suit. We could see better now without the sun’s glare in our eyes and were able to see the bodies. There were three, directly below us, but so well camouflaged I was amazed we were able to spot them at all.

“Are those humans?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” Larkin said. “Aliens, maybe? You know how many people see UFOs around here. Maybe this time it’s true.”

I nodded. Every week someone in town claimed to have seen aliens or their spacecraft. The newspaper from the city was always filled with similar tales, but never as detailed as the ones from around here.

However, no one had ever actually seen an alien body. I shivered despite the heat. “There’s blood down there,” I whispered.

It was impossible to look away and the more I looked, the more details I was able to make out. Each body only had three fingers on each hand. The eyes were pulled from the heads and dried out in the sun. The bodies were split open spilling guts, blood, internal organs, but there were no animals around scaveging. Larkin and I had seen enough dead animals being picked apart to know that no animals had touched whatever these were.

I scooted away from the edge, stood up. “We should tell someone.”

“We don’t have too, Emery,” Larkin replied. “We can go down there ourselves, have a closer look. We could take pictures, send ‘em to the city newspapers. We could be famous!”

I chewed my lip in thought. Larkin was always more impulsive than I was. I had to be the one to think things out. “Men might come up here soon. If my pa finds out we’ve been keeping this a secret, and hanging around up here, he will kill me. He doesn’t want me wandering around in the desert.”

“Don’t worry about your pa. He’ll never find out. Come on, Emery, we could make good money off this. We could get out of this dump.”

I liked the idea of leaving this forsaken mining town. But . . .

“No, Lark. I’m going to tell my pa. Those things could have parasites or something. Do you want to die from an unknown disease?”

Larkin shrugged. “Better than dying from boredom. Just think about it. Just this morning you said you were thinking about our digging adventures. It was fun to have that secret, wasn’t it? This could be our new secret.”

“I don’t know.”

I knew Larkin wanted out of this town; he hated this place. His mom had died here and left him with his heavy drinking, chain smoking father. Larkin had to take care of himself. But he was still a boy. I tried to keep him in line even though I was younger. But I was bad at keeping secrets. I was the reason my pa found out about our treasure hunts. Yet, having a secret again would be fun. “I’ll think about it.”

Larkin grinned.

“Where have you boys been?” my pa demanded. Something about the heat and constant sun, I guessed, gave everyone a short fuse.

“Just for a walk,” I mumbled.

“You better be telling the truth.”

“I am, sir.”

“Get ready for school then. You better not be late getting home today.”

Once at school I allowed myself to dwell on what caused the land to drop away. Was it just a natural sink hole? An explosion of sorts? A meteor? Were those bodies just unlucky people in the path of nature’s destruction? Or was this something much deeper, more beyond us humans? Would we be safe?

“Emery, quit daydreaming.”

I jumped in my seat. All the children in the one room school giggled.

“Sorry,” I mumbled to the teacher and sank down in my chair. Larkin used to sit beside me, but now I sat alone.

I slipped away at recess and found Larkin at one of the lesser used mines.

“You should be in school,” he said.

“So should you.”

“You know I had enough.”

“I miss having someone to sit next to.”

“Don’t rub it in that we were in the same grade.”

“I’m not,” I said. “What are you doing?”

“Thinking. I’m going to go back to the drop. I want to figure out what happened.”

“I still feel wrong about keeping this a secret.”

“Do this for me, Emery. Please?”

I sighed. “Okay. I’ll try at least.”

After school I headed home long enough to have a snack and let my mother see me so she could tell Pa I hadn’t been late. I made my way to the exploded land as soon as I could. Larkin was already there, squatting on the dry ground and hooking bits of metal together.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Making a grappling hook to bring up the bodies.”

I wanted to groan, but managed to keep it in. “I really don’t think that is a good idea. Like I said before, they could be diseased.”

Larkin paused in his work. “This scares you, doesn’t it?”

I nodded. “We don’t know what happened here. There could be radiation or poisonous gases. We need to tell someone, or at least stay away.”

Larkin rubbed the dry skin on his arms. “Alright, we’ll leave the bodies be, but lets look around a bit. Maybe we’ll find some kind of clue to what is going on. And if weird things start happening we will tell your pa.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Larkin left his half finished grappling hook in the dirt, stood up, and brushed dust off his pants. We could have been brothers we looked so similar. But that wasn’t saying much as everyone in our town looked fairly alike. The drying heat tended to turn everyone the same.

We searched all around. Checked beneath scraggly desert plants and in them. We dug our heels into the hard ground, dug a bit with our hands, but found nothing. Sweat ran off our faces and grit from the blowing wind stuck to it.

“Might as well go back home,” Larkin said. “The wind is picking up. Might be a storm coming in.”

I nodded, wiped the sweat off my forehead with my sleeve.

As we walked back the wind picked up even more. Sand stung our eyes and made them water. It burned our throats and stung our skin. We could barely see within minutes. Larkin grabbed my wrist. “I don’t remember where the drop is,” he shouted. “I’m afraid we’ll fall in without seeing it.”

“What are we supposed to do then?” Sand flew in my mouth as I spoke making me choke.

“Stay where we are, I guess.”

And that was what we did. It was too dangerous to continue walking since we no longer knew what direction we were going in. And with the drop nearby a step in the wrong direction could be our last. We sat on the ground, bent over with the wind to our backs. I was scared. I had never been caught in a dust storm before. Now I knew why my pa didn’t want me playing out in the desert. “Don’t cry,” I heard Larkin whisper. But I did anyway. He forced my head against his chest. I sobbed wetly against him wondering if we were going to die. With my head against Larkin I didn’t see the creature approach, but Larkin did, even through the blowing grit.

I felt him stiffen and begin to stand. I stood too keeping my face against him, safe from the blowing sand.

“What are you?” Larkin asked.

I glanced behind me and tried not to scream. What I saw had huge eyes, no ears, and one long arm and one short arm. Larkin forced my head back against him. The creature made a few squeaky sounds that hurt our ears, but—if possible—sounded friendly, peaceful.

We followed the creature to a small cave. Inside all was quiet and free of blowing sand. The creature looked at us, we looked at him or her. It was an alien, I was sure of it.

“What do you want?” I asked. Larkin and my fear’s had switched. He was scared, I was curious.

The alien made squeaky sounds again. I forced myself not to cover my ears. Without the wind the noise was even worse. It handed me a piece of paper that it disgustingly took from a slit in it’s side. Some kind of pocket, I guessed, sick nonetheless, but I took the paper anyway. It had a waxy feel to it and slimy from being inside the alien. On it was a drawing. I showed it to Larkin, we both knew what it was: the electronic devises we had dug up years ago. The aliens were looking for their supplies. Had they blown the hole in the ground to try and find it? Did they know we stole their things? I had a feeling they knew we did.

My curosity was gone. I was terrified.

Larkin handed the drawing back to the creature with a shake of his head. He grabbed my hand and we ran. Outside the wind had stopped and we were able to find our way home.

“Doesn’t running away make us seem more guilty?” I asked as we ran.

“I don’t care,” Larkin said. “All I want is as much distance as possible between us and that monster.”

“If you really think about it, that creature was kind of cute.”

Larkin stopped running to stare at me. He rolled his eyes and tugged me ear. “You are so weird.”

I was grateful to see my house. I didn’t care that I would get a beating for being gone so long and out in bad weather. Larkin followed me inside. Sand fell out of our clothes in piles. Ma grabbed me in a hug of relief. Pa patted my shoulder. He didn’t scold, just asked what happened. I lied, told him we were chasing jack rabbits. It wasn’t a bad lie, Larkin and I did it all the time.

Pa sent me outside to clean off and told Larkin to go home.

“I’ll be back tonight,” Larkin whispered to me.
***
Larkin tapped on my window. Quickly I unlatched it and let him in. A rickety ladder leaned against the house. It was pitch black outside. No stars, no moon. We were far enough from the city to not see the constant light pollution.

“You weren’t asleep yet, were you?” Larkin shrugged off his backpack. Glass bottles clicked together inside.

“Almost,” I said as I Larkin closely. It had been a long time since he’d snuck over. He handed me one of the bottles. I had been twelve when Larkin gave me my first beer.

“So?” Larkin said.

“So, what?”

“What are we to do about this creature.”

“Oh.”

Larkin snatched the beer out of my hand. I sighed loudly. “Alright. I think we should keep him as a pet.”

Larkin groaned. “Be serious, Emery.”

“I am.”

“If you want to then, be my guest. Though I’m not sure how well that go over with your ma. But, seriously, Em, we have a problem. That thing knows its crap is missing and has a pretty good idea that we took it.”

“I don’t think running away helped at all. We should of talked to it more.”

“That thing didn’t speak a human language. How were we supposed to talk to it?”

“We could of figured something out.”

“Are you drunk already?”

“I’m just saying there might have been a way.”

We stayed up most of the night, both of us tipsy and hyper. I was amazed we managed to keep quiet. Around three I fell asleep, and an hour later my alarm went off: Larkin’s warning to go home before his pa got up.
***
Reddish light filled my attic bedroom. I squinted sleepily. Was it morning already? I stumbled to the window. Everything was bathed in crimson light. Suddenly, a horrible screeching filled the air. I plugged my ears, but it did no good. Luckily the noise faded away within a minute. Something had flown over town. I could just see it in the sky—a capsule shaped object—then it hit the ground and exploded. I ran outside just as Larkin reached my house.

“It hit near the drop!” I shouted.

Larkin grabbed my wrist and we ran to the explosion sight. There was no smoke, no fire, no burn marks. Only a colossal hole in the ground to the west of the first one making it closer to town.

I shivered as I peered over the edge. Everything was still, dead like. There was no breeze. The rising sun seemed to have come to a stop.

“What happened?” I asked Larkin. I was startled to see him grinning.

“They don’t know it was us,” he said. “The aliens are still looking for their things. Were safe, Emery, were safe.”

I grinned too, but only for a second. “Other people are going to know about the explosion now. What if that makes the aliens mad? What if they try to destroy our town?”

“We’ll just have to wait and see.”

I looked over the edge. The alien bodies were gone, but what looked like a human body lay in their place. I pointed that out to Larkin.

He knelt down and leaned over. A funny expression came over his face. I got down and looked too. Details were hard to make out, but I could see red hair, the same color as Larkin’s.

It was his father.

Larkin shrugged his shoulders a few times, his way of trying to let things slide away. He wiped his nose on his sleeve and stood up. “Let’s go.”

We had barely turned around when an alien appeared before us. It held a glob of welded metal out to Larkin. “You have one like this,” it said in an ear piercing, but understandable, voice. “Give me the box and your father comes back, but he must be replaced. Keep the box and we search it out by any means possible.”

“Give it up,” I told Larkin.

Larkin nodded. “It’s at home,” he told the creature. “I’ll bring it to you.” To me he said. “Go on home. I’ll meet up with you later.”

I went home, but stayed outside. After fifteen minutes or so I saw Larkin heading behind his house a box in one hand and a shovel in the other. I called his name. He looked up and took off running.

“I’m not giving it up!” Larkin shouted over his shoulder.

“Why not?” I shouted back, trying to keep up. “You can save your father. If you hide it you will kill us all!”

Larkin continued to run, but I couldn’t keep up and stopped. Anger began to boil up inside me. How dare that he do this! How dare he decide to murder this whole town. I would give the devise personally to the aliens and let them sacrifice Larkin instead of his pa.

I went home, got in my pa’s truck and drove after him. Larkin was going in a fairly straight line and it didn’t take me long to find him. He stood out in the empty desert trying to dig a hole in the rocky earth.

I blared the horn and accelerated. Larkin jumped out of the way and smashed his shovel against the windshield. The glass shattered. I ducked as shards flew at me cutting my cheeks.

I was out of the truck in a flash holding a pick ax that was in the back seat.

“Get away!” I commanded. “Give me the device.”

“No! It is mine, I was the one who found it. You have no right to take it.”

“Your going to kill us all!”

“I don’t care!”

Larkin knocked the pick ax out of my hand with his shovel. I rammed against him hard enough to push him over. I snatched the box and jumped in the truck, wincing as I sat on pieces of glass.

I was horrible at making turns, the result being a wide half circle at a slow enough pace for Larkin to slash one of the tires with the ax. He dragged me out and tried to pry the wooden box from my hands. I smashed it against his head. He crumpled to the ground and I gasped as I saw blood.

I was terrified. What if I had killed him? He had a pulse, but he wasn’t moving and didn’t appear to be conscious. He was too heavy to carry, and even if the truck’s tire wasn’t slashed I wouldn’t have been able to get him inside. I was going to have to leave him there and give the metal blob to the aliens myself. Like I had wanted to do.

But it didn’t seem like such a good idea anymore.

Leaving Larkin on the hot desert ground I plodded to the drop. Two aliens were waiting.

“Who are you going to kill?” I asked.

“Your friend knows,” one of them said.

“Only he can tell you,” the other said.

I nodded and set the box down to open it and noticed it was padlocked. To say the aliens were angry would have been a lie. They became more disfigured then beforel; they were beyond human emotion.

“I can break it,” I said frantically while using the box as a shield just in case. I worked steadily to break the lock using whatever I could find: rocks, branches, a plastic dinosaur I had in my pocket. I was getting desperate, the aliens were becoming forceful, prodding and kicking me in the back. I wanted to run, but when I happened to look up I saw Larkin. He was coming slowly across the desert, his clothes soaked with blood. I picked the box up and met him halfway.

“Do you have the key?” I asked.

Larkin took the key out of his pocket. His hands were red with dried blood. “I wasn’t going to give this to you before,” he said. “But now, after what you did, I don’t care if you die.”

Larkin slapped the key into my hand.

“I’m the exchange?”

“Of course. Go on, you wanted to give them the devise, now give it to them.”

I looked at Larkin with tears bluring my vision. He had tried to save me, let his father die so I could live. And I had bloodied him up.

But he had no right, I tried to tell myself. To save one life was not the way to go. He should have saved the town.

I was going to die! My legs began to shake and the tears fell free. I could see Larkin’s resolve began to break. However he turned away and began walking toward town.

I continued to cry as I unlocked the box and took out the metal blob. I handed it to the aliens. One of them beckoned me to follow and stand at the edge of the drop.

I closed my eyes. Why had we dug up stuff in the desert? Why had we fought—when we rarely ever did—at this crucial time?

I could feel a huge shadow move over me, intense heat, and strong pressure. I didn’t want to look, but I had to know what was going on.

A capsule was overhead, slowly making it’s way over the town. I saw the aliens nod to each other and then I was falling.

Something wasn’t right, I wasn’t falling anymore, yet I hadn’t hit the ground. Unless I was already dead. I opened my eyes and I saw that my overalls had become attached to a piece of metal sticking out the side of the drop’s wall. It was Larkin’s grappling hook! Somehow it had become embedded in the wall.

I could see nothing but dry desert sand below me and the capsule slowly moving above me. I couldn’t climb up and I couldn’t drop down. Aliens were gathering beneath me.

“I’ll have you up in a minute, Emery.” Larkin lay on the ground above me. His dry, tanned face had never been so appealing before.

A minute later a rope hit the top of my head. I grasped it and Larkin pulled. But I was stuck good. I yelled at him to wait a second and began unbuckling the straps of my overalls.

We didn’t have much time. The aliens were throwing wicked looking weapons at me attempting to rip my flesh open and sacrifice me on the wall.

Larkin began pulling me up again when one of the alien’s weapons sliced my leg. I screamed in pain and nearly let go. Larkin pulled me up as fast as he could.

I felt Larkin’s arms around me, his warmth doing nothing to my cooling body. Everything was turning black.
***
Emery didn’t die, but his fate was worse than that. He was like stone, he could feel nothing. I don’t know if he could hear me or see me. But I still would not leave his side.

The cut on his leg had healed long ago, but the weapon had been tipped with something that flooded his veins and destroyed all that was human in him. He could sleep and eat and I knew he could tell that time was passing, but he couldn’t talk and all his memories seemed to be gone; he was an empty shell.

“You saved the town,” I told him, as I did nearly everyday. “You were so brave. You were so unselfish. I shouldn’t have let them hurt the person closest to me.”

Emery stretched out his hand. I grasped it and held it to my lips. He wanted to remember, I knew he did, but there was nothing left in him.

He slipped his hand away. His lips parted as if he was going to speak, but no sound came out. Yet I understood. Everything was alright. He was okay that this had happened to him because he had saved the one person closest to him.
________________________________________________________________________

I am an aspiring writer from Montana who enjoys working with animals. I am an advocate for animal shelters and it gives me great joy to work with those animals.

“Did you say, ‘The Grape Ape Family?” She said. “Because in that tacky purple suit, I’d believe it.” What was left of the prison’s interrogation table crumbled as the attorney’s tantrum flew into full swing.

From the other side of the one-way glass two, very human, detectives watched, as Marla Anderson, handcuffed to her chair, taunted her own counsel.

“So what do you make of her Murphy?” Johannson asked. “Just another attempt at an insanity plea? Or do you think there’s something to that story of hers?”

Murphy chewed the stump of his cigar as he stared at the two of them. “I don’t know, but I don’t like it.”

Marla, looked through the one-way glass and said, “Look, I’ll tell ya’ll what I remember, one last time. Hit the record button on your wet-ware if you have to, because after this, I want my damn phone call.”

“The first thing I remember that makes any sense at all is waking in that field…”

****

“What the heck hit me?” My eyes burned as the sun gouged them open. I felt dirt and crabgrass beneath my fingertips as I pulled myself up off my back. Now this ain’t right. Looking down as I stretched myself awake, I was greeted by a number of absurdities; not the least of which was my own very plump breasts. Where did these come from?

Blinking myself out of any chicanery, I took a deep breath and looked at my surroundings. Yep, I’ve lost it. What else could someone possibly think when they are greeted by a gloved hand, extended from a man wearing blue and white spandex?

“Where the heck am I?”I asked. “Is there some kinda convention nearby?”

“Erde. We summoned you here.” His voice, so commanding and authoritative, not only inspired confidence, but made his costume no longer feel so out of place. “You’re The Invincible Girl.” He said, as if I should know that name.

But I’m not…am I?

“The who?” I said, but just as the words were chucked from my lips, my perspective widened, and I took in much more than a single man sporting his underwear on the outside of his clothes. I saw the impossible.

Across the field in which I lay, dozens of tanks barreled toward us, and there in the skies above, a murder of airships darkened the sky. My stomach lurched from my skin as I saw the approaching army, but what stole my breath away was when I noticed, tattooed upon the war machines, was the black swastika of Nazism.

“Ma’am, are you ready?” He asked.

“For what? What am I doing here? And who the heck are you?”

“For war. We called you here. And I am Major Virtue.” Again his voice tore away all doubt from my mind, leaving only this fervor to join him. He extended his arm, and in taking it, I was instantly transported with him, into the fray.

Within the lifespan of an unborn star he’d set upon the invading army, but he was not alone. All around me men and women of potence unleashed a fury unlike anything I’d ever seen.

I watched as a man to my left cleft chunks of metal from a tank with his bare hands. A woman close by him howled as she lifted a tank over her head and flung it into the sky to tackle one of the birds of prey above us. All around me death hailed, from what looked to me like ordinary people. There were even others with more amazing abilities, I could have sworn a man standing akimbo crushed the tank in front of him by giving it a stern glance, and a man with an oversized top hat, pulled a rocket launcher from nowhere to fire upon a stray airship.

From among the tanks, like a blanket of death, wolves descended upon us. Teufel Hunden in earnest breached the lines of the ubermensch and dashed beyond us. For the first time, I looked back, and fear truly struck me as the hounds sought the blood of the innocent. What these Supermen were protecting was a city of glass, and the ill-advised citizens had so much faith in their protectors, they’d come to look upon the 3^rd Reich’s destruction.

Several citizens ran as wolves the size of sedans bounded toward them, those few that did not, soon left this world in a river of blood. But I couldn’t stand idly by as so many lives were taken. I’m here for a reason. They called me here. He called me The Invincible Girl…

My strides were swift, and I was able to single out a small family, immovable as stone, and I stood before them. I locked eyes with the Alpha as the pack surrounded us. Without looking, I stole from the father’s hand, his Newspaper.

Alpha stepped forward, baring bloody teeth as he channeled a growl that emanated from Tartarus itself. It’s just a dog. They called you here. There had to be a reason they called you here. This will work…

I stared into his feral eyes, and he into mine, and all the while the pack grew ever closer.

His muscles tensed. He’d found me unworthy—

~WHACK~

Shock spread over Alpha’s…face. His muzzle contorted and his eyes became less poignant. The pack froze. Some sat down and scratched, others stood still unsure. But Alpha felt his loss of control, and that was enough for the hairs on his back to stand on end. The growl deepened as his fur rose, and his pack again became the reapers they were bred to be.

~WHACK~

Snot began to dribble from his nose at the second strike. I stood confident and proud; I was Alpha for a spit second then–

~SCHLAK~

I watched the bottom two thirds of my body devoured as I listened to my ward’s last utterances. Tears and blood flowed freely down what was left of my identity, as I tumbled through the air. I’d been torn apart by a quick swipe from the true Alpha.

The last thing I remember before losing consciousness was a young man with greasy black hair, pocket protector proudly displayed, picking me up and saying “Everything will be okay…I think I can fix this…”

****

                Geraldo, The Invincible Girl’s attorney, looked deep into her eyes and said, “Is there nothing else? You have no memory of what you’ve been doing these past few days? I mean, we all saw the news coverage of you attempting to save that family, but that was over a month ago, and over the past few days the police have camera footage, fingerprints, and eye witnesses who watched you…Is there nothing else Marla?”

“I am sorry Geraldo.” Marla said. “The next thing I remember is waking up in police custody, chained to this chair. The detectives on the other side of the mirror were watching some of the footage in there. I watched it from here—“

“That’s impossible, this is one-way glass.” Murphy said. “The freak—“

“The Freak, can hear you! And your damn one-way mirror doesn’t work. I can see right through it.” Marla looked into her counsel’s huge brown eyes. “That girl couldn’t have been me. They shot her… then she just turned and ran away…Like some kind of robot.”

“Marla…give me your hand.” Geraldo said. She reached across the table to touch him.

~TINK~

Marla’s handcuffs broke and fell to the floor.

“I don’t know what’s happened to me.” She said, as dark oily tears scared her face.

“I believe you Marla. I believe you…”

Bio: I am an Iraq war veteran and former Marine. I broke my back in 2005 and after found a passion for writing. I have always been an avid reader of fiction and after several college courses I am finding that it is time to start finding out if I can one day make a career out of this, or if it is only a dream.

1
He was a painter who didn’t use colours.

In fact, he had never painted anything. Other people didn’t consider him a painter. Those who knew him personally even had the impression he hated painting and they were right.

To him, the process itself, or the result, meant nothing. He saw no difference between an idea being born and that idea being formed. He cared only for the idea itself and all his life he had such an idea, a concept of a painting which, would he one day be able to conceive, his work as a painter would be over.

Sitting in a chair in the middle of an empty room, in perfect solitude, he felt it was finally time. He realized he had been postponing this moment for his whole life, as he was always too busy “living” and had no time for such metaphysical activities as truth-seeking and Zen painting. That’s what he called it, Zen painting, because, frankly, it didn’t involve painting. Everything was meant to happen inside the head and that was supposed to be enough.

He was old and lonely and had forgotten most of the things he had lived and the rest didn’t matter. He used to have a pretty ordinary job, one that didn’t require imagination and thus was unimportant. He had often tried to erase his unpleasant and unnecessary memories and he had often been successful.

He could remember planning his magnum opus, the work of his life, the painting of no colours, ever since he was a child. What had happened between then and now? Not much and nothing inside him had changed.

The passing of time was supposed to bring him closer to his goal. It didn’t. Life itself was expected to contribute. It didn’t. The experiences of a lifetime, the hundreds and thousands of books that filled his personal library and his head, the things he had heard, seen and felt – and even those he had imagined – nothing helped, none of these got him anywhere nearer the achievement of his life.

He had fallen in love many times, he had fallen in hatred even more, and every time he had travelled around the world, he had always found himself back to where he had started, his mind almost suffocated with the overfilled Thought-Albums of the images he had witnessed which turned out to be a burden rather than a pleasure-storage, as they were originally thought to be.

How could he ever see the One Picture, if between him and the empty painting, the armies of past experiences and blurred memories were marching triumphantly in the name of King Headache the Eternal? And how could he ever even conceive the Thoughtless Thought he was after, if the gardens of his mind were occupied by such parasites as the Fear of death and the Remorse for having lived?

He had to empty his mind. He had to gather his memories and hopes in one large pile of garbage and set them all on fire and watch the smoke vanish. Then he would be free. Then he would be ready.

Like a madman, the madman he was, he started dancing around the big white room, his hands the moving fires of deathless death, fighting against the life-consuming life, and all the illusions it brings to the eye, to the ear, to the flesh. For too long had his heart been treated as a slave, obeying such masters as temptations and habits and addictions of the senses, and for too long had she been used as a mule, carrying on her back the burden of contradictory feelings, and suffering underneath.

She was a woman made of fire, his heart, and she was tired and weakened and on her way to faint. And yet she was a loyal heart and had refused to stop beating before her beloved’s dream would be fulfilled. She patiently waited for the moment when her beloved would finish his work and be finally ready to die, so that she could also rest in peace. And she was prepared to wait forever.

2
There was almost nothing there. All there was, was a big white wall in a big white room, opposite him. Himself, in the centre of the room, the room which was a box in a box called a building. Yet he had to think outside the box, see the big picture.

Though a painter, he had no obligation to paint what he would see, or in any other way to expose it to an audience, by expressing it or describing it. Express or describe what? He had no right to paint, write down or talk about, a picture he had never seen in his head, a thought he hadn’t been able to conceive, a dream he hadn’t dreamt, a truth he hadn’t known.

He had a name for his painting-to-be. Utopia. Having a word for something he couldn’t think of, was allowed. He wouldn’t go any further than naming the thing though. Had he allowed his mind to build a personal utopia in his imagination, his vision would have been blocked by the garbage of personal ambition and prejudice, and the fight would be lost.

In his quest to imagine the Image, he saw there was the way of dreaming and the way of meditating, but he wasn’t yet certain which was preferable in order to communicate with the inner mind.

He attempted the later at first, and in a simple meditating stance, without still leaving the comfort of his chair, he closed his eyes in front of the empty painting on the empty wall, and let the silence guide him to a desirable higher consciousness.

It didn’t work. The old man fell asleep instead, and his mind was now active in the Dreamworld where a room, much similar to the one his body was in, was awaiting for him and a new painting was exposed, naked of colours, on the wall in front of him.

His obsession was once again haunting him in his dreams as it used to in the old days. He felt he wasn’t alone in the room and the presence of Another, an unknown and indefinable Other, was making him increasingly nervous as he hadn’t yet realized he was in a dream, and was slowly walking towards the picture-less frame, which seemed wider and wider, expanding as if to include the whole cosmos.

Instead of the blank paper, he found a void, much like a gate that led to another world. The presence of the Other was by then too powerful to ignore and, though he couldn’t turn his head to look, he felt the need to enter the gate to the other world and escape.

To escape, through the gate of the dream, through the painting… He never got there. The feeling that whatever was behind him, was after him, was the last he recalled when he woke up.

The gate. Utopia was a gate. That was the impression he got from the dream.

3
He was not alone.

In his head, he had two contradictory desires, as if the dreamer and the painter were two separate people occupying the same body – the dreamer was A, the original, whose wish was to know the truth, to enter the gate. B, the other, he merely wanted to paint the truth and was determined to complete the painting with an image his limited imagination would produce, regardless of whether the conceivable utopia would be a true or a false one.

He had to immediately disconnect himself from that part, letting it live separately since he could not kill it. A new chair was brought for B, who sat right between A and the painting.

That was rude, thought A. He tried not to be distracted at first, but was soon annoyed by B who was already planning what colours to use for the painting he had in mind, definitely a bad one.

“You cannot just start painting!” shouted A. “You don’t even know what you’re going to paint!”

“I have an idea of how Utopia would be like” said B.

“Your personal interpretation prevents you from seeing the actual thing. Even worse, your delusion becomes a distraction for the rest of us!”

B had turned, and the two of them were now standing face-to-face, each the enemy of the other, their faces almost identical, their eyes completely different.

“I am allowed to dream of a better world, you know” said B. “You can’t take that away from me!”

“It’s impossible. Even if your dream feels good at first, you’ll soon find it full of contradictions – it could even be a nightmare for other people. The question is – can you imagine a world that is perfect for everyone?”

“I don’t think I can. My imagination is limited, as is my reason.”

“Then shut up your reason…” said A “…your dreaming too. Until you have crossed the gate, how dare you talk of what lies beyond? Has either of us been there?”

“No.”

“Then we are not in the position to know.”

B stood up. He moved his chair to A’s right and sat by him. They both looked at the empty painting from a similar distance. They continued their conversation, trying to reach an agreement, seriously considering the possibility of a future collaboration. They gave up the thought. It’d never work.

C arrived the moment the new debate began. He was in fact born from the debate. As soon as he entered the room, he stood with his back to the painting, refusing to even think about it, let alone doing something. He believed that the truth was inconceivable not only in our present state of consciousness, but in all states. He was a pessimist and a loser and his sole philosophy could be summed up thus: “If I cannot conceive of perfection, then no-one can. There’s no utopia, because if there was such a thing, I would have known already.”

The rest of them – their numbers growing fast as more and more utopian painters arrived – almost ignored C’s existence, as he had no communication with them and refused to join in their activities.

D was C’s alter ego, the positive pessimist, who shared exactly the same mind as C’s, and had exactly the same opinions – the difference was, he thought they led to happiness. Of the two, he was the sociable one. He would write and publish the one manifesto after the other, an active dystopian thinker who preached that the man who sees the emptiness of life is a happy man, and that the future of humanity is the monkey, and the ape, and the dog. The law of the jungle was the only law he respected and as for the painting, he thought he was the only one in the room suitable for the job.

“I am the most enlightened of you all!” he shouted. “I shall be the one to paint Utopia!”

The others seemed sceptical about this statement.

“You remind me” said B. “…of the monkey-thinkers who claim they can explain Buddha and Jesus and Life. Who talk of such thing as the road to happiness and the other monkeys listen!”

D didn’t like that comment. B continued.

“The problem when you explain wisdom is that you have to be wise yourself otherwise with what authority do you claim to understand, let alone explain? Writing on Buddha is claiming you’re a Buddha yourself, which is arrogance, unless of course you have denounced the world, like a Buddha! Have you?”

“That is the problem” said E, who was strangely taller than the rest. A started to get worried. They were now different in size as well, he observed. He worried that if too many interfered, he would never finish his quest. E continued.

“I think the real question is who the Utopianist is. What makes a person able to conceive Utopia? Unless already achieved, Utopia is a work-in-process, a plan, but whose plan is more credible?”

“Are you examining the idea or the person behind it?” asked F. F was new.

“I’m not sure. But doesn’t the dream come from the dreamer?”

That was debatable. The metaphysicians would probably claim the opposite, that the dream happens to the dreamer, yet the more reasonable ones were certain that the dream is connected to the dreamer’s personality and that it’s born out of his own unconscious.

E’s argument made sense. The new law was instantly accepted by the majority: “Thou shall judge a Utopia by the Utopian who thought of it!” Even the metaphysicians had to agree that the tree was responsible for the fruit, and not the other way round.

The symposium went on and the room was now growing wider, eager to welcome new arrivals. A was not sure anymore if he was awake or in a dream, alive or dead, or perhaps was there another state of “being” he ignored? Ah, too many distractions, he thought, and tried to clear his mind.

Alas, Silence was in itself a Utopia!

4
D hadn’t spoken for a while. He was writing something, maybe making notes of the things he had heard or maybe drawing early drafts of what would be tomorrow’s masterpiece.

Of all the painters in the room – and they were by now quite a few, all of them similar in face and different in thought – not one had touched the painting yet, or even went anywhere near the frame.

A had been trying to meditate yet it was impossible. The noise was unbearable and there was little to do but wait, inactive, as he was all his life, growing older and weaker every second, unable to do anything but wait and wait and wait. He had no idea how many separate discussions were taking place in the room now, and if any of them was truly useful or if there were all noise and nothing but.

He turned his head once, out of curiosity, only to see C, the passive pessimist, holding his face with his hands, crying, probably thinking how the news of a future suicide would affect his relatives and friends. A’s attention was again distracted as he heard D, who had abandoned his drafts and was now standing on a chair, preaching the super-Man to a group of newcomers, quoting directly from popular thinkers.

As some observer rightly pointed out, their Utopian dreams were all problematic because they were based on the society they themselves would like to inhabit and not on the society they ought to. But they just liked and disliked what was, at their time, popular to like and approvable to dislike and even though they all had a different menu of opinions, these opinions were all picked from a greater Opinion-Menu which was terribly limited to include only those opinions currently acceptable by the modern up-to-date version of the Middle-Ages.

Even the most controversial thoughts they’d be encouraged to think, were suspiciously promoted by an important part of society, and there was little value in re-producing and presenting them as if they had any originality. Very few people, however, could see this.

D, who had gathered a group of teenage versions of A, was teaching them the godlessness of the universe, the random meaningless universe in which, he taught, they would only be happy if they saw its randomness and its meaninglessness.

He recited Nietzsche to support his argument: “If there were gods, how could I tolerate not to be a god! Therefore, there are no gods.”

“Do you believe this?” said F. “So is this how we really choose our beliefs?”

“If I can’t dream, there are no dreams!” shouted C who had been listening to D’s speech, forcing a war cry that had the sense of triumph.

That was helpful, thought A. He stood up and everybody stopped talking and looked at him. The oldest man in the room, the most mature of the Thoughts, though not necessarily the truest, he was the first and the last, and the source of them all.

“That’s how it is, then” he said and coughed, as if he was sick. He was. The old man was but a step away from his death, and this made his time more precious than theirs. “We don’t choose our beliefs based on what makes sense to us. Instead, we choose what makes sense to us based on what we want to believe!”

That made sense, thought everyone.

“People dream of a society that’s good for them, or the group of people in which they belong. Thus, we have scientific utopias, religious utopias, feminist utopias, hippie utopias, etcetera! No-one ever attempts to consider that the True Utopia may not be the fulfilment of their personal ambitions and unsatisfied needs, but that it may not even include them! You know the problem with the pseudo-utopians, whose dreaming is like thought-masturbation? That though they want a new world, they want to keep the old self. But how can you see Utopia, unless you become a Utopia yourself?”

After the pause that followed, and after having confirmed that A had made his point, people resumed their earlier conversations, adding new, more or less, commonplace concepts, such as “the painter must become the painting”, art for art, utopianism for utopianism, and so on.

In a new despair, A collapsed under the recurring noise, and put his hands on his chest, as if trying to hold his breath from running away or, worse, from running amok in there.

He shouted “Silence!” but there was none. He shouted a second time and a third and then he closed his eyes, and wished it was a dream, and opened them again, and looked around, and saw that either it wasn’t, or if it was, it wouldn’t go away.

5
Eventually, it got late and more and more of his fellow Zen painters gave up all hope and left. Luckily, there was some silence again during which an exotic beauty, a woman in red bearing a face of her own and not a version of his face, entered the room.

“Hello, my heart” said everyone.

His Heart sat on A’s lap and kissed him on his cheek and his cheek turned red. She then got up and walked slowly to the big white wall. He realized she was crippling. A broken heart, he thought. Not too broken, but still…

She threw herself on the wall and her body melted on the picture. The wall was now colour red as the woman disappeared inside it. Was Utopia red? That was also debateable.

Some understood that a Red Utopia meant a bloody one, one that required bloodshed to be created or to be maintained, others that it meant a Communist Utopia, a society founded under the sun of equality, and others that the colour red was the colour of love, and that all Utopia needed was love.

But all these were debatable, some of the plans too simplistic to be taken seriously, others too complicated to be used for anything other than academic self-satisfaction and thought-recycling.

The last thing the painter could remember from the dream was a picture being formed all by itself on the wall. The Great Ego Utopia, which was a third-dimensional asshole emerging from the frame, and this was the gate to the selfish utopia, where common desires and pop culture ruled.

He refused to enter the gate to the modern Dark Age which promoted itself as the fulfilment of mankind’s future, but was nothing but mankind’s Primitive Past made digital reality.

He woke up in the big white room of eternal silence, where his thoughts were loud enough to take their own formation and come to life. But he had succeeded in his dreams and meditations to silence them all and was now literary on his own, in front of the finished painting which he named “Utopia Zen.”

It was his magnum opus, a painting of no colours, a big blank paper, on an empty wall, in an empty room. It was his dream come true and the gate of his dreams was now wide open in the wall, and he would enter and depart.

The time came when people worried and started looking for him. They found his clothes in the white room. His body was not found.
The End

Biography
Christos Callow Jr. has a BA in Acting, an MA in Playwriting and is currently studying for a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Lincoln, for which he is researching Utopian/Dystopian fiction and is writing a collection of short stories, exploring utopias of perception such as the Buddhist Nirvana, the “Kingdom Within” and the Lovecraftian Dreamlands.

THE chains hung down from giant rings embedded into the ceiling and held the hooks into her back, pulling the skin taut. Feet dangling, the overhead light threw shadows onto the wall, rivers of blood trickled down her back, buttocks and legs only to drip off onto the floor. She sobbed, strands of long blonde hair clinging to her sweaty forehead. She tried not to move for fear the hooks would pull away and tear her apart. She was like a baby in an infant carrier minus the safety harness.
“Whitney.” Anthony Fraser replied in an eerie whisper. “Don’t be afraid. It only hurts when you move around like that.”
Whitney peered at the broad shouldered man leaning in the corner, his arms laced across his chest. He pushed himself away from the wall and stepped up to her, his plastic butcher’s apron winking under the overhead light. The straps from the goggles on his face looked tight against the sides of his egg-shaped head. He slid the back of his hand across her cheeks and flicked her lips with his finger.
“Do you know what these are?”
She stared up at him through the curtain of blonde hair shading her face. Her gaze fell back to the floor as the chains and hooks gleamed in the light. Something in his hand rattled like broken teeth.
“That’s okay. I understand if you don’t want to talk. I’d do the same thing if I were in your shoes. They’re plain, ordinary dice.”
“Why…are…you—.” Whitney said between sobs.
“Shhh!”
He rolled the dice in her hand, pacing back and forth like a teacher waiting for an answer. She watched the dice roll around in his hand, her head spinning from the recently administered drug.
“These are the keys to your fate. Since their invention, dice have always played a part in our lives. In board games, we either go forward or backward. In crap games, we roll an odd number and win or end up with snake eyes and go belly up. Which is where you come in,” He handed her the dice. “If you roll an odd number, you live. Roll snake eyes and your die. Don’t worry, the dice aren’t loaded so you’re guaranteed not to lose.”
Whitney rolled the dice inside of her trembling hand and threw across the floor. They rattled together like cracked knuckles, struck the wall and tumbled into place. One dice showed a one but the other teetered on the edge, switching between six and one. He walked over to the corner of the room and watched the dice away. Her heart beat echoed in her throat, her nerves twitched and her breath became difficult; fear wrapped a cold noose around her throat, rending her speechless.
When the dice settled, Whitney raised her hands in the air, screaming, “Seven. I rolled a seven.”
Anthony stood beside the switch on the wall. He looked at her with sad, basset-hound eyes.
“You have to let me go,” Whitney pleaded. “That was your rule, I could live if I rolled—.”
Without a word, Anthony flipped the switch and jerked the hooks from Whitney’s back, spraying blood across the room, leaving hunks of meat and strips of skin hanging from the tip of the hooks as her body plopped onto the floor like a wet, bloody dishcloth.

2

“OKAY, Anthony.” Dr. Robin Hammond said, “What do you see?”
Lying on the plush orange couch, his hands overlapped on chest, his eyes closed, Anthony said, “I’m walking down the hallway heading to third period class. Everyone’s smiling at me. Some of them are laughing inside their little circle of friends beside their lockers. I see my girlfriend for the senior prom pulling her books out of her locker so that I can carry them for her.”
“Who is your girlfriend?”
“Amber Dunn. She’s as beautiful as ever especially when she’s wearing her cheerleading uniform.” He gasped audibly. “Something wraps around my hips. When Amber turns to hand me her books, she looks down at me and starts laughing and pointing at my crotch.”
“What happens then?”
“Everyone starts laughing and pointing, even the teachers. I look down and see my pants down around my ankles. My dick’s hanging down like a wind sock on a hot day. Amber’s pointing and laughing even harder then Scott Richards walks up and puts his arm around her waist and when I got up to say something he pushes me back down onto the floor and as they’re walking away they’re kissing but I’m crying too much, pleading for everyone to stop laughing but they’re still laughing and pointing and laughing and pointing and laughing and—.”
Anthony’s left leg twitched, his foot shot out and kicked the glass of water off the coffee table. It struck the wall, spraying glass and water across the room. He sat up to see what happened when the door flew open; Dr. Hammond’s red-haired secretary walked into the room. Hammond was knelt down on the floor, picking up shards of glass with his bare hands.
“Be careful, Doctor.” The secretary cautioned, “You’ll cut yourself.”
“It’s okay, Sydney.”
“I’m sorry, Doctor.” Anthony pleaded. “I didn’t—.”
“Maybe you need to—.”
“It’s not his fault, Sydney. Mister Fraser’s anger got the better of him and he kicked the glass. It happens.”
Sydney sighed and stormed out of the room, shutting the door behind her. After assisting the doctor with the clean up, Anthony slumped back onto the couch, sweating profusely. Dr. Hammond returned to his chair and placed his spaghetti-thin arms together on top of his desk. The dull gray sunlight outlined the gold curtains.
“It seems that we’re making progress.”
Sighing as if he heard a bad joke, Anthony said, “You call that making process? I could’ve hurt someone.”
“From what you’ve told me on the chart I asked you to make, the dreams are not as persistent as usual.”
“Persistent?”
“Constant.” said Dr. Hammond. “You’re not having the dream as much as you did when you first came to see me.”
“The pills are doing great.”
“I thought so.” Hammond smiled at first, then took it away. “Which is why I’m going to up your dosage.”
Hammond scribbled on a nearby prescription pad, tore off the sheet and handed it to Anthony. He wished Anthony a nice day and asked him to make his next appointment with Sydney. Slipping the prescription into his jacket pocket, he left the room and walked up to Sydney’s desk. She was talking to someone on a headset telephone; she rolled her eyes, put the person on hold and dropped the headset onto the desk.
“What?”
“I need to make my next appointment.”
She searched the computer, moving the mouse with the celerity of an person hurrying to get out.
“I have the tenth of next month.”
“I can’t I have—.”
“Okay, the tenth it is.”
She clicked the mouse a few more times, printed a sticker displaying his next appointment time and handed it to him. Anthony stood, looking at her as if trying to figure out a math problem.
“What’s your problem?”
“Here’s your—.”
“What did I ever do to you? You sit at a desk all day long. We’re both human, Sydney and we need to—.”
“We don’t need to do shit. The way I see it, there are some people who can be saved and there are some who can’t. No one can save you, Mister Fraser.”
Anthony slipped the appointment card into his front pocket and took the elevator to the lobby. Since he’d been going to Dr. Hammond about his nightmares, he never understood what Sydney had against him. During his visits, he tried his best to avoid her at any costs so as not to give her a reason to berate him but it was too hard since the doctor stopped making his own appointments. He imagined her inside of a giant dome where no one could invade her space. No matter how hard he tried not to, he always took up too much room.
Before the day that would stain him forever, he attracted the opposite sex like a paper clip to a magnet. Nowadays, he was as compatible with them as the left shoe going on the right foot. Internet dating was out of the question; speed-dating—non-negotiable. He was no stranger to the nightlife and usually came home alone, his breath reeking of beer except for last night when he met Whitney and she was as easy as drunk girl got.
Of course, later on last night, he was worried about the booze making a strange combination with the sleeping aid and kill her before he had the chance to kill her himself. The events that took place at Logan Middle School fifteen years ago had, and would, stain him forever. He could never love a woman enough not to kill her, let alone marry her. He was more than willing but the desire for an honest relationship was impeded by the gut feeling that she would betray him just as the entire school had done and ruin him forever.
Crossing the lobby and out the door to his car, Anthony overheard an old couple chatting to a middle-aged woman in a dark blue business suit who was rubbing her hand over the back of the old woman’s shoulder.
“These things happen, Eleanor.” said her husband.
“Our baby boy has gone out on several dates and he’s always been home the next day, John.” She cried into her fist, the one holding the balled-up tissue. “The only thing I regret is letting him get that tattoo of his mother’s name on his chest. For all I know, he’s probably joined her in heaven.” Walking between two parked cars, Anthony dug the little ball of dried blood out of his opposite finger and flicked it toward the parking lot when a young husky woman stopped dead in her tracks, her high heels clicking. She looked down at her strapless pink shirt, then up at Anthony, her face twisted by disgust.
“What the hell was that?”
“Nothing.”
“You call that nothing?”
She pointed to the little black dot on her dress. His face flushed and grew hot; he almost gasped but he kept his composure.
“I’m sorry. I was doing some gardening before my appointment.”
“What are you?.”
“I’ll pay for the dry cleaning.”
“No shit.” She sighed disgustedly.
Anthony took a napkin from his coat pocket—he always kept a supply on hand in case the nightmare made him cry which was very often—and wiped the speck of dried blood from the dress. Looking up at her, he fell back onto the pavement in a failed crab walk. The heavily built woman had been replaced by the beautiful Amber Dunn ala cheerleading uniform, pointing and laughing, pointing and laughing. The blue sky morphed into the middle school’s plaster ceiling; the parking lot was now a rank of gun-gray lockers and Formica flooring. The vehicles in the lot became the students of Logan Middle School, looking superior as they laughed at his pain.
The past had successfully twined with the present, playing with his mind. He looked down to see if his pants were in place but the laughing seem to pierce his pride and gnaw at his soul. He looked around, crawled to his feet, rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and took long deep breaths like the good doctor suggested. The laughter began to fade away, replaced by the noise of afternoon traffic and tree-cloaked birds. At the moment he was supposed to have been pushed down, something struck his left cheek, and woke him up.
“What the hell?”
The nightmare faded; the world was back. Traffic whizzed by as the wind bent the treetops. Shadows bled everywhere like motor oil on a white cloth.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Anthony said. “I usually don’t do this kind of thing in front of a beautiful woman such as yourself.”
“You think I’m beautiful?” The woman asked, her eyes dazzled by the sun. “My boyfriend tells me I look like a roast with a pink ribbon around it.”
“Forget him. Can I make it up to you? Take you out to dinner tonight, my treat.”
Blushing like a schoolgirl, she said, “Okay. But I don’t know your name.”
“Anthony.”
“Trisha. You know like Trisha Yearwood. I’m a tax—.”
“I like country music, too.”
They exchanged phone numbers and set a date for tonight at seven-thirty.

3

IT didn’t take him long to get Trisha back to the house, via sleep aid. Getting her into the house was a different story altogether. Instead of escorting her through the threshold like a newlywed couple, he dragged her into the house by her arms and shut the door before anyone else saw him. He stripped off her dress, a floral affair this time, and hooked her up to his latest contraption; she was so heavy she would’ve pulled the hooks out of the ceiling before he had a chance to give her the dice. He opened the skinny contraption, set her inside and locked everything into place.
The date had gone off without a hitch. They chose a fancy Italian restaurant. He ordered the chicken parmesan and she ordered the fettuccine Alfredo with stuffed crabs. Although he’d ate until he was comfortably full, there was nothing stopping her. He waited until she got up to use the bathroom before dropping the pill into her Diet Coke.
He’d chose a booth in the back as not to attract any witnesses. He slipped the ruptured pill packet into his pocket as she came back to the table. She asked him what it was; he told her it was his heartburn medicine. She insisted, if he felt that bad, they could get everything to go and go back to his place. He said he was fine and insisted that she finish her meal.
After the stuffed crabs, she became groggy. She blinked her eyes, as if she were fighting sleep. He paid the check, got their food to go and carried her out to the car. He drove around until the pills took full effect, giving them plenty of time to get ready.
When she opened her eyes, Trisha looked aimlessly around the room. Anthony was standing in front of her, wearing his trademark butcher’s apron. Tears slid down her cheeks as the leather straps of his latest contraption pressed into her pasty white flesh like bread dough wrapped in a thong.
“Wake up, sleepyhead. This won’t take long, I’m sure. No wonder your boyfriend doesn’t find you attractive. I damn near pulled a muscle gettin’ your fat ass in here.”
She closed her eyes and cried, her sobs muffled by the rag in her mouth. Her arms hung down from the straps like two dead weights. She fought against the straps, whipping her hair this way and that. He grabbed her shoulders and held her in place.
“It’ll only hurt if you fight it. This is something of my own design I like to call, The Peeler. You see, you’re being held by the straps in an upright position. The blades on all sides of you are going to peel your skin off like an onion. Don’t be afraid, though. I’m giving you a chance to save your life, Trisha. It’s okay if you don’t want to talk. I know I wouldn’t. If you roll an odd number, you live. If you roll snake eyes, you die. Your fate is in your hands.”
He put the dice in her hands and smiled. She took the dice and rolled them across the floor. They struck the wall and rolled into place; their heartbeats drowning out the sound of the dice tapping together. She bit her lower lip, muffling her cries. Looking at the two dots staring back at her, she squeezed her eyes shut as if suppressing the image of the dice. A sound of applause echoed in Anthony’s ears like the sound of a television audience.
They were praising him for a job well done. The dragging, the lifting and the set up had finally paid off.
“Fate’s a bitch.” Anthony said, reaching over for the switch on the wall. “It was nice knowing—.”
A white light whipped across his vision; his head swiveled on his flaccid neck. The room spun on carousel legs and his legs buckled. His hand slid away from the switch and down the wall. On his hands and knees, his breath was hard. He tried to stick his fingers into the back of his throat to puke out the drug but his hand was too heavy to lift. He rolled over onto his back to see Trisha unlocking herself from the contraption and
stepping onto the floor.
“Sleep aids are for amateurs. I like the kind where you spray it on your clothes and all it takes is one whiff to put them down. My mamma didn’t raise no fool.” She said and kicked Anthony against the side of the head.

4
WHEN Anthony woke up, his arms had been pulled up over his head and his wrist had been tied to a hook embedded into the ceiling of a large wooden shack. Sunlight slipped through the cracks in the wall, laying gold neon across the dirt floor; the heat made his head greasy slick with sweat. The rope that bound his wrists rubbed harshly against his skin as if he were being dragged across carpet. He tried to wiggle free, but his efforts
were fruitless. Feeling the drug wear off, his head felt less painful and his vision cleared.
“It’ll only hurt if you fight it.” A familiar voice spoke from across the room.
Something clicked and a harsh fluorescent light lit up the shack. Trisha walked across the room, wearing nothing but a plastic apron and a pair of goggles. She came to the left side of the room, pulled back an old army blanket and revealed an array of tools sitting on a dirty Formica folding table. There were several knives, saws—both handheld and electric—a comb, a can of oil, two scalpels, a pair of shears, wire cutters, a small pair of scissors, tweezers, three different kinds of needles and a claw hammer. She picked up one of the needles and examined it, letting the metal wink in the sunlight.
“I’ve got to admit,” She said, kneeling down in front of him. “you were easier than the others.”
“What others?”
Trisha walked past him and flipped a button. Brass-colored light filled the shack, winking off the tools sitting on the table. Anthony looked around and stopped.
Neatly arranged against the left-side wall, nestled inside tall glass containers, were six motionless young men. Some were cute; some wouldn’t have bagged a girl to save their life. She’d had them in neat order and frozen in different poses. The first one, a dark-haired fitness freak, was dressed in a dark-red football uniform minus the helmet. The one after that was in a golf uniform but the last one was what caught his attention.
A medium-built bald man with pale skin—with the name MELODY tattooed on his chest.
The only thing I regret is letting him get that tattoo of his mother’s name on his chest.
“Look, Trisha. I was just playing a little*.”
“Shhh!” She put her finger to her lips and asked. “Do you know how long it takes to learn a hobby? A lot of practice. A beginner like myself has to endure a lot of time and patience to make you look more life-like. Sometime you have to—.”
“I thought you said you were a tax attorney? You said something about tax—.”
“You never let me finish. I went to say taxidermist but you interrupted me.” Trisha replied. “Something you have to freeze the specimen and then remove the skin, which can be tanned and preserved for a later time, of course, that’s after all the important pieces are taken out like the liver, kidneys and other body parts.”
She stuffed a rag into his mouth and picked up the scalpels. His eyes swelled in surprise.
“I’m going to start with your legs and then go up from there.” She said, kneeling down in front of him. “It’s okay. I understand if you don’t want to talk. I’d do the same if I were in your shoes.”
She pushed the blade into his left leg, spraying blood across her apron and slid the scalpel down, peeling the skin clean away from the bone.

Bio: Brian J. Smith has been featured in E-Mails of the Dead, Book Of Cannibals 2: The Hunger, Pill Hill Press’ 365 Days of Flesh Fiction, Metahuman Press’ The Dead Walk Again and And The Nightmare Begins…Vol.1: The Horror Zine and such magazines as Dark Gothic Resurrected Magazine and New Voices In Fiction and such e-zines as The Horror Zine, Postcard Shorts, Thrillers Killers and Chillers, The Carnage Conservatory, The New Flesh and The Flash Fiction Offensive. He currently resides in Chauncey, Ohio with his mother, his brother the writer J.R. Smith and six dogs.

I have heard various terms for this affliction I now suffer, but few carry weight with me. Phantasma. Hemoglobin-deprived. Nosferatu.

Vampire.

I remember being a small girl in West London, my mother desperate to instill her values in me. As the years stretch on it becomes increasingly difficult to remember exactly how those days went, but I’ll never forget the lessons I was taught. Lessons of philosophy, religion, and most notably, pain.

When my mind wanders back to those anything-but-innocent avenues of my life I usually find myself desperate for a way to snap myself back into the present. I’ve often heard tales of humans engaging in self-destructive behavior as a means to this end. Heavy drug use, outrageous outbursts, alcoholic bingeing, and even the cutting of one’s flesh.

The attention a person sometimes seeks through these methods is enough to pull them back from the edge. Unfortunately, my progressed physiology ensures that these practices will be nothing more than an irritation, not to mention the simple fact that I’ve removed myself from anyone to draw attention from which would make the acts redundant.

Cutting oneself continues to intrigue me the most, especially since I assume that not all cases are a cry for attention. Perhaps the sudden rush of adrenaline one gets from the knife slicing into the skin somehow focuses the mind, or maybe it even feeds some perverted nature the person wishes to keep contained. I know all about feeding the beast in small amounts to keep it dormant. A drop of sustenance now will save a soul later.

As I said, cutting myself does nothing more than momentarily aggravate my flesh. The wound begins to heal even before I’ve finished making it. To this end I searched for something similar that people of my nature might find equivalent. There are precious few methods of causing myself real harm but there is one that I find helps ease the pain of my morbid past by replacing it with pain rooted in the immediate present.

Sunlight.

I spend my days alone just as I do my nights, although for some reason I sense the depression is greater when the sun is awake. I can’t stand to fully be immersed in the piercing rays but I usually sit beside an open window, my hand outstretched to catch the blistering warmth of light. I imagine that when my skin boils it must be the same mental stimulation a human feels from self-inflicting harm with a blade. I always pull my hand back into the safety of darkness before long, as I’m not anxious to lose my hand completely. Just as soon as I yank my appendage back the pain begins to subside and heal, yet just before then I’ve managed to accomplish my goal. Maybe I’m trying to keep my mind rooted in the present or maybe I want a small taste of the final death. I honestly couldn’t pinpoint the exact reason. I doubt anyone could.

I stare at my pale skin as the boils quickly dissipate and the flesh fills in the tiny smoking holes. I often find myself wishing I could plug up certain pieces of my life the same way. There’s never any blood lost, as my body hasn’t produced its own in decades. What I steal from others is used up immediately and not left within my gangly form to lose. Bits of rotting muscle and tissue turn to ash as soon as the sunlight touches me but even then I’m careful not to let things get out of control.

Control isn’t something I’ve been accustomed to having my entire life. Even when I was a little girl I very rarely had opportunities to call my own.

My step-father was never around but I don’t blame him. My mother was a horrid woman full of wrath and it was not exactly like the money was easy to come by. He worked in the paper mills while I cleaned up scraps for a baker on Milan Street. Oh, how I loved to steal a bit of left over dough when I could.

My mother stayed at home, I imagined lying in wait for me to walk through the door. I had just turned seventeen when she gave me the most unforgiving lesson of my life.

God, in all his glory, hated me.

I don’t pretend to make excuses for myself by way of my childhood, but all of the negative experiences didn’t help my self-esteem. Too many times did I sit silently while my mother berated my psyche with her nonsense. It was all I could do not to cry.

“Those ridiculous Calvinists will never understand what it means to be a proper follower,” she told me. “As if their prayers are any different than mine. Cynthia! That blasphemous baker you work for is one of them, isn’t he? Shut up when I’m talking to you, girl! I’ve never known a child who hated her mother so. I bet you would sooner see me in my grave before showing some respect.”

I told her she was wrong, that I loved her. It didn’t matter how many times I tried to get that sentiment through to her since she always responded with the same accusations.

“Love is something you can’t fathom. You’re just a silly little girl with no respect or understanding of the world we live in. God has cursed me with you.”

Needless to say I refused to point out how she had once been married to a Calvinist, my father. She was now married to a godless cretin, my step-father.

Every night when I returned from the bakery she would rant on and on about something I was doing wrong. If it wasn’t my chosen employer it was my clothing. If it wasn’t my clothing it was the length of my hair. If it wasn’t one thing it was the other. Every night my mother would verbally tear into me and then my step-father would do the same physically.

Pain, both emotional and corporeal, eventually takes its toll on a person.

The night I ran away turned out to be both a blessing and a curse. The final straw that was the catalyst for my leaving was an especially brutal one. My step-father, fresh off an eleven-hour shift at the mill, came home drunk and livid.

The memory of what followed still brings a shiver to my spine.

I tasted my own blood for the first time that night as it dribbled down my cheek from where he had repeatedly struck me. I spat the red liquid out upon realizing what it was, horrified. I stared at the footprints left in the dirt, his footprints. It was then that I realized if I didn’t leave that it would only happen again.

So, I left. I packed a satchel with a few changes of clothes, a bit of bread, and the money I had kept hidden from my mother. Out the door I went, finally experiencing a shred of control in my life for the first time.

The cold night was unforgiving. I ran several blocks without stopping, finally realizing that I had nowhere to go. In fact, the only other place in the world I really knew was the bakery. I turned the corner, ready to quickly move down the stone street so I could gain entrance to my place of employment and work out my troubles in the morning. I had not realized how much easier it was to navigate the city when daylight was abundant. Each block looked exactly like the last, a myriad collection of cobblestone and gas lamps.

One corner, another, three times rapidly…I was lost. The streets were completely devoid of life at this time of night, save one: a staunch man whose eyes seemed to glisten in the moonlight.

“Kind sir,” I implored him. “Might you point the way to Milan Street? I seem to have gotten a bit turned around.”

“My dear,” he responded with a voice as sincere as the night is black. “I would not be able to refer to myself as a gentleman if I allowed a precious lady like yourself to wonder alone is this part of the city. Come.”

He lifted his elbow out for me to grasp, a hint of fortitude in his movements. “It’s not far. I walk there often to this magnificent baker for a loaf.”

I smiled, taking pleasure in the ironic secret. He led me back down the street I had wandered on to and around another corner, his tanned boots striking the cobblestone noisily. I remember thinking to myself that he must have been standing still for quite some time since I hadn’t heard his loud boots before seeing him.

“May I ask what you would you be doing out this late?” he inquired of me.

“My business is my own,” I answered. “But what of you, sir?”

He remained silent, a sneer smoothly forming above his chin.

“Sir?” I repeated.

He led me around another corner, this time away from the streets and into a dark alley. I hesitated upon seeing the darkness but he clasped his arm on top of mine, holding me to him.

“Let me go!” I urged. He paid me no mind.

I did not have much in comparison but his strength was unimaginable. He practically dragged me into the alley, its cold and rigid mouth eager to swallow us up. I wanted to scream but found the cries had somehow lodged themselves in my throat, unable to be of any help. I was at this man’s mercy. A solemn prayer whirled through my head, aimed directly at the heavens.

It was ignored.

The gentleman yanked hard on my arm and threw me up against the red brick wall. I struggled against his powerful arms as he held my own in place, the memories of my step-father still recently burned into my being. I began to beg to him, pleading to be let go and that I meant him no foul.

“Of course you’re scared, my child,” he said. His eyes were glazed over like an animal. “We all are. I can smell the fear; I can taste your perspiration. Tell me: what is it you feel damned over? You’ve been tainted by a man, and recently.”

“How…?”

He shook his head, smiling. “Look into my eyes, child, and you’ll see your answer.”

I couldn’t escape his pupils, even though I attempted to turn my head away. His gaze pulled me in, captivating my attention. It was like a sea of tranquility splashing around an obelisk of pale durability. I felt his presence all around me and I’m slightly ashamed to say that I was not repulsed. I actually enjoyed the warm feeling that he gave me as his eyes pierced to my very soul.

Then, as quickly as he touched that soul, he clenched it and ripped it away from me.

His teeth dug into my neck, two of them sinking further than the others. I felt a hot trickle of blood seep onto my shoulder as he drank my life away. Instead of lashing out wildly in hopes of freeing myself I simply slid closer to him, allowing him to take me.

He drank every last drop of my lifeblood, leaving me cold and hollow on the alley floor. I managed to blink once, twice, three times rapidly…and then there was nothing. Death cast her shadow over me as my vision went blurry. The last image I saw was my unearthly killer standing over my corpse and brushing his expensive coat off, even though there was no dirt on the sleeves.

I’ve thought of that moment every day since, trying to reason if I craved an innocent death or if I had lost the will to live entirely.

The rest, to be cliché, is history.

All I have to keep me rooted in the present and away from that disgusting fragment of the past is whatever cowardly strength I can muster to plunge my fist into the sun’s rays, only to pull it back out again before the pain becomes too much. Perhaps someday I’ll test myself and cast my pale body out the window completely.

Perhaps.

I often ask myself if God’s intentions are meant to be known by mortals. Who are we to judge Him? I think the answer is that we are nothing and life is a way of reminding us of that. It’s ironic that in order to realize the futility of life we must comprehend its inception. Why, then, do I cling to it? I’ve come to believe that my own remorse is only a further part of this comical experiment called Creation.

God, in all his glory, hates me.

But that does not mean that I would accept that lowly fact. No, I have tried, despite myself, to gain His favor. Odd, that one of the Devil’s abominations walking the globe would be a Christian.

I pray. Daily. The words burn my lips, but like the sunlight, I enjoy it. It makes me feel alive in a way that I cannot explain. This living death that I experience constantly can be backed away by the infliction of pain, but of course not enough to do irreparable harm.

I take my Christian duties seriously, although for a time I relished in the revenge I sought against the man who wronged me the most. I do not refer to the midnight gentleman, but rather the other man whom I detest thinking of. As far as I know his body has not been discovered, and by now never will be since it has long since rotted away to dust.

Yet, despite that cherished animus, I still feel as though I have been forsaken. I pray, yet no answer has come. Am I insane to continue this praise to He who has forgotten me? Or is it a matter of being so indoctrinated that I know not the difference?

I live on while those around me slip away, possibly joining Him in the afterlife, something I will never know since I have sampled the Devil’s kiss. Perhaps that is why I punish myself with the sunlight…as a means of penance.

Or perhaps I just wish to focus my mind in such a way to think that I do exist even though my maker, the first one, ignores me continuously.

Even though I am to be considered an abomination, I will always savor the taste of blood.

END

AUTHOR BIO: D. C. Golightly is a freelance writer and audio producer living in Pittsburgh, PA with his wife and kids. He loves comics, cookies, and fiction. Keep up to date with him at his blog: http://dave-golightly.blogspot.com/

BIO:
-Current student and lacrosse player at The University of North Carolina
-Former student of Daniel Wallace, author of Big Fish
-No prior work published