Ruth Emory's attic was proof that when things were out of sight they were also out of mind. She had been de-cluttering up there for almost a week. She had made it through a mountain of boxes filled with old dishes, discarded pots and pans, clothes and half finished knitting projects gone awry. Now that the great wall of boxes had been reduced there were only a few pieces of furniture left. There were 2 rockers, Jim's roll-top desk, a bright yellow kitchen step stool (circa 1950) and an ancient floor lamp that was mostly brass and weighed a ton. She would have to get her next door neighbor, Ned, to bring that thing down. She sat down on the step-stool and started from top to bottom throwing away bent paper clips, a box of rusty staples, a collection of almost dry pens and nubs of pencils. In the next to last drawer there was a small pile of receipts. Good Lord, in 1970 bread was 25 cents a loaf, milk was $1.32 a gallon and you could get a dozen eggs for 60 cents! Those were the days...maybe she would keep this receipt for framing. In the last drawer, under an old bank book she found a small heart shaped box made out of Myrtle wood. It was tiny enough to slide into a pocket. It HAD to have come from Bandon on the Oregon coast because that is where they bought myrtle wood. She had opened it gingerly and inside on a small piece of satin was a key... For the past four months Ruth had found it increasingly difficult to get up in the mornings. It wasn't because she was sleep deprived because she slept a lot (sleep was a safe haven). It wasn't because of a hangover from too many whiskey shots or mood stabilizers and it definitely wasn't because she had just turned eighty. It was all because her husband had unexpectedly been catapulted into the Great Beyond like some cannonball shot from a cannon. She hated this new husband-less life. Honestly, she felt like she had been abandoned in a Memory Minefield. Last week she had turned on the TV to watch the weather report and found the channel had been left on OPB (their favorite station). MONDAY NIGHT MURDERS and MYSTERIES was on. They had watched this religiously every week for the past three years; cuddled together on the sofa, ferreting out clues over a big bowl of homemade buttered popcorn. And remembering this, her grief exploded like those memory mines in the minefield- (BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!) She turned off the TV as quickly as she could and called the Salvation Army, who came the next morning and hauled it away. Even driving through town to do errands was fraught with the possibility of unexpected explosions. If she had a doctor's appointment she had to drive by St. Mary's hospital where their only child, Gracie, was born. If she had a dental appointment or an eye exam she had to pass Pioneer Cemetery where they had buried Gracie eight years later after an outbreak of meningitis had brought the town to its knees. They had sat shoulder to shoulder on hard metal chairs at the graveside; stony- faced even though their hearts felt like pulsating masses of shattered glass. Just yesterday, she had driven past the fancy restaurant on the corner of Fifth and Maple where Jim had planned a surprise costume party for her seventy-fifth birthday. He was a man of precision, a chemical engineer by profession, with a love of conquering obstacles. His eye for detail was a gift. She could almost hear him say, "Ruthie, it's just like my dad said..you have to be vigilant because the devil is in the details!" He had hired a caterer from Portland and a swing band. He even came up with a theme (the Fabulous Forties) and put together her costume as well, with the help of Agnes Stillwater, who owned the fancy Vintage Dress shop downtown. The white limousine he rented to whisk them away to the restaurant was quite the surprise! When they arrived at the restaurant he blindfolded her and led her past the streamers and the balloons into the ladies room where Agnes had hung her costume. Oh what a sweet costume it was, too...a black and white polka dot dress complete with a circle skirt held high by a crinoline half slip. She couoldn't believe that the stockings actually had seams up the back and the low wedge heels with the ankle straps were very much like a pair she once owned. She had sat down on the bathroom bench and was sliding one stocking over an outstretched leg when he said, "Honey, remember when we were in Bandon and you were putting on your stockings, just like now and I reached over and..." "Oh stop Jim! How you go on!" but she blushed a little remembering their honeymoon in Bandon. He bent down and kissed her and said, "You are my Baby Ruth, sweet as candy!" Calling her the name of his favorite candy bar was an old joke of theirs. When they emerged from the ladies room she felt like a princess and when the band started playing Glenn Miller songs they danced and whirled and shimmied around the room, secure among their friends and warmed by love then, (BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!) She had to pull the car over and park as the memory of that day engulfed her. She sat there for thirty minutes and cried her eyes out. When she came to the end of her tears, she searched in her purse for Jim's death certificate and pulled it out to look at it for the umpteenth time. It grounded her in the present, pulled her from the past where things weren't real anymore. Death...this was real. She had begged him to skip his weekly poker game. None of his friends drove except Sam and he wasn’t going because he was giving a lecture that night down at the Junior College. She would take him but she couldn’t see well enough at night to drive; neither of them could. When she suggested a Taxi he said. “Honey, you are a worry wart! It’s only a mile away; I will be fine.” She was awakened just after midnight by the doorbell. Oh, for god’s sake, had he forgotten his house key again? She wrapped her robe around her and yelled, “OK, I’m coming!” She opened the door saying, “I can’t believe you forgot....” There were two policemen standing on the porch; one tall and one short and both shifting their weight from one foot to the other, clutching their police caps awkwardly in front of them. “Mrs. Emory, may we come inside?” the tall one asked. “Oh...well, of course!” she answered in a voice that sounded foreign to her ears. They sat in the two armchairs across from the sofa. As they began to speak, she felt as if some unseen force was strangling her. “Ma’am,” said the short one, “There has been an accident. Your husband’s car was hit by an 18 wheeler.” The tall one continued. “The driver fell asleep at the wheel and crossed into the oncoming lane and there was nothing your husband could do to avoid... the fatal crash.” Her throat felt tight and she found it difficult to take a deep breath. Her hands felt clammy. She looked at each one as they spoke, directly into their eyes. Maybe it was all a big lie...she would know by their eyes. All she saw there was compassion. “The coroner said that your husband didn’t suffer... that it was instantaneous.” Said the short officer. “Ma’am, is there someone we can call for you?” “No, no...” she said, “there isn’t anyone I want to call just yet.” “We are very sorry for your loss,” the two officers said in unison. After they had gone she sat for a long time staring at the business cards they left on the coffee table. Somewhere a dog barked. It was so quiet she had heard the ticking of the wall clock and timed her breathing to it’s rhythm; in and out, in and out. Little by little things began to sink in and grief enveloped her like a straight jacket. The more she steeled herself against it, the tighter it became. She had the memorial service at their home with a lot of help from Ned and his wife, Gilda. Even though she was surrounded by friends she felt lost without Jim. There was enough food to feed half the city of Salem: steaming crock pots filled with hearty soups, trays of finger sandwiches, tossed salad, potato salad, green pea and water chestnut salad, corn muffins and numerous cakes, pies and cookies. People huddled in small groups whispering together on the back deck and in the hallway. When she teared up her friends averted their eyes and followed this with vain attempts at encouragement. “Ruthie, honey, ya know Jim would want you to carry on, to live life to the fullest and...well, thrive,” said Ned’s wife. To which Ruth thought, Thrive rhymes with Alive and since I have become the walking dead I don’t suppose thriving is something I will be doing. Catherine Amos, the head cashier at the Dollar Store chimed in, “I know just how you feel, Ruth. When I lost my Gregory I thought I would NEVER smile again.” Ruth had watched her hands gesticulating to make her point. She smelled like whiskey and cigarettes. “It seemed like the pain would NEVER go away, it would just go on and on with my heart breaking over and over. But it didn’t last forever. It does get better. It did for me and it will for you too.” Ruth appreciated their efforts, she just didn’t believe she would THRIVE or that this godawful pain would get any better at all. She dutifully made her way amongst the guests. As her mother once said, when you have to do something and there is no way around it you have to just buck up! So, Ruth had received hugs and pats on the back graciously. What she really wanted to do was give each one of them a resounding smack right across the kisser, for no good reason except that they were ALIVE. She wanted to scream, “Get out of here, the whole lot of you, and take all this goddam food with you!” None of them really knew Jim. They didn’t know how he was good hearted to the bone. They didn’t know that he got up each day and wrapped kindness around him like a cloak; passing it on throughout his day to anyone in need. She didn’t scream though...she just held onto all those awful words and they bounced inside her skull from one side to the other like a ping pong ball. She sat in Jim’s leather armchair in the midst of this crowd of people and smoothed out the material of her black dress stretched across her lap. She said, “Thank you, so much” a million times while she concentrated on the tiny flower bud pattern on the living room drapes and on dust motes riding on beams of light from the final days of Indian Summer. Ruth tackled the holidays (oh, how she had dreaded this) one at a time. She managed to put the lighted pumpkin decorations and the flying ghost mobile on the porch at Halloween. She bought and gave out candy to the kids oohing and aahing, perfunctorily at their costumes. Ned and Gilda invited her to Thanksgiving dinner with friends and family and she accepted, but by eight o’clock in the morning on Thanksgiving day she had chickened out. She didn’t want turkey, trimmings, friends or family. So she called in sick like she used to have to do sometimes when she was working and she felt guilty about it but she couldn’t face it, she just couldn’t. So she called Gilda and explained that she had come down with a very bad cold, holding her nostrils together as she spoke. “ I know, of all things...it just hit me last night and so I think I will be spending the day in bed” she had said. She didn’t though, she went straight to the bedroom threw a small travel bag on the bed and filled it with a nightgown, underwear, a pair of jeans, a tee shirt and a sweater, locked up the house and headed to Bandon. She parked the car at a rest-stop halfway there and called the Seaside Cabin Retreat. They had one cabin left. She could check in by four. She arrived at three and stopped on a cliff where there was a parking lot and a trail down to the ocean. She sat on a bench and watched the sea gulls dive and swoop, heard the crashing of waves against rock and felt the salty air on her face, in her heart, down to her soul and leaned into the peace of it. The cabin (quite expensive at the holiday rate) was charming. She had unpacked, started a fire and brewed a pot of tea. She had crackers, cheese and an apple for dinner. She and Jim had always loved this coastal town. It had been their special place. They had lived in Salem for nearly forty years but she felt like a stranger there now. It wasn’t the same without Jim. It was empty. She was empty. As she sat watching the fire, a plan emerged. She would sell the house and move here where she and Jim had begun. She slept like a baby that night under a mountain of quilts. She had fallen asleep to the sound of the waves and to the coast wind knocking against the cabin shutters. In the morning she decided she would go through the house room by room and give away anything that wasn’t essential. A few months later, by the time she found the key her house could have been showcased in a minimalist magazine. Photos, books and journals neatly boxed. The sofa and coffee table were given to a young couple two blocks over. She kept a bed, one end table and a small dresser; odds and ends for cleaning, a mop, vacuum and broom. She reduced the kitchen to small appliances and four place settings of dishes and silverware. She had 4 mugs, 4 glasses and 4 pots to cook with. Her realtor had said that staging this house, so clean and clutter free, would be a breeze! She had three bids the first week and the second week an offer was received for cash at the listed price from a doctor and his wife who had just started a practice in town. On a whim, she brought the heart shaped box, the old bank book and the key next door to Ned to see if he could make heads of tails out of it. He might know if this bank existed. The name on the front was partially worn off but she could make out First Bank of... she thought it should have said, the First Bank of Mysteries. There were pages of faded entries for $2000.00 deposited like clockwork every month from January of 1980 through January of 2020. That added up to $720,000.00! Where had this money come from and why hadn’t she known about it? “Hmmm,” Ned said when he saw the key. “This is a key to a safe deposit box. It has our code number on it. Let me look in up on the computer... What do ya know,” he said, “It’s a key to Jim’s safety deposit box at our bank.” “ What? We have always banked there but we don’t have a safe deposit box.” “Maybe YOU don’t, but JIM does. I haven’t a clue about the bank book, though...it could be anywhere. Without the full name, I couldn’t even begin to guess...shall we go see what’s in Jim’s box? Once there, he handed her a form to fill out and sign for proof of identity. He said he would also need a copy of Jim’s Death Certificate and he was sorry that he hadn’t thought of that sooner. “Not a problem, I have it right here, “ she said, fishing it out of her purse. He raised an eyebrow quizzically. “Well...carrying it around comes in mighty handy, doesn’t it” Ruth said. In the box there was a folder which was marked, READ LAST-AFTER OPENING ENVELOPE. Inside the envelope was an index card with “827 Fig Street, Bandon, Oregon” written on the front and a house key taped to the back. Both of their mouths dropped open in surprise. Inside the folder was the deed to the house, fully paid for in January 2020 and letter from Jim. Ned gave her a hug and said he would leave her for a bit while she read this. My dearest Ruth...I know this is a shock because if you are reading this I have died. I have to apologize for lying to you because all those times when you asked me about money matters I told you I had set up a plan to supplement our retirement. This is it. I planned it in case I died first so that you could return to the town we loved all our married life. We will be together again one day. Meanwhile, love me when you hear the waves and the wind and think of my kisses when you feel the salty air on your face and Know that I will always be near, loving you from where I am. My Baby Ruth... I love you forever, Jim.


High-gloss vessels of all sorts and colours were lined up on the windowsill, the narrowest of all the formerly available surfaces, and they baked again each day in the summer sunshine. Shafts of sun traversed the floor and walls in a daily search for something, pausing for long periods to examine the textures and colours of all the objects they could reach. They slipped in slow motion across pots and goblets, some holding shaping tools and random utensils that had collected there. They probed stacks of packaged clay, they lingered on bottles of paint and gloss and varnish, they took a spin around the wheel. They waited at the door of the kiln as if wondering what remained inside. Every day the silent visitor found a slightly heavier coating of dust, but nothing else was changed. ***** Vel had been a force to be reckoned with from the day she was born, kicking and screaming. Her dad said she was born frustrated, as if she knew already there were great things she could be doing if only she could walk and talk. The solution for that was to fast-track her development, and if it was possible for a baby to do so, Vel was already the author of her own destiny. She was the leader of the “Bike Riders!”, her neighbourhood pack of kids, before kindergarten began, and she was the most feral of all the pre-teen pirates and wild horses that roamed the woods at the end of the park. Vel lived her childhood years like she was an eighty-year-old with a second chance. It was as if she was aware that those years couldn’t last forever, but she got as much use out of them as possible before they went the way of all the t-shirts and jeans she wore out with glorious living. When childhood was over and done she had no trouble relinquishing what she no longer needed, but she kept the parts she loved and made sure they never wore out. Vel always had a knack for sorting her life into what she wanted and what she didn’t want. The sub-categories were what she already had and what she would get, and what she got rid of and what she avoided altogether. She just had a gift for it. She weeded through the people who entered her life like an expert gardener, cutting off the unwanted elements when they had barely shown their heads while tending the good ones with perfect doses of attention and repose. She did the same with school and work, taking what she chose from her education and chucking the rest in the compost where it belonged. It was the formula for a blessed existence. Her parents did wonder if perhaps her success came too easily. It was great that she had built so much confidence as a child, but they thought she might be unprepared for a fall when it came, as surely, it must in some form. That’s just how life was, for everyone else at least. But Vel, well, Vel began a career in travel writing just as the market perked up. She travelled the world. There was nothing out there that was daunting to Vel. Her radar for shady situations never failed, nor did her independent spirit and open mind. Each time she came home, she’d go straight to her studio to record in clay the swirl of ethnic designs she had seen in her travels. As she pictured the markets, the backstreets and lonely places she had visited, she would spin her impressions into bowls and goblets. She conjured the people who had shared their food and drink with her against the background of their traditional homes. She riffed on the idea of vessels for food being shared, of cultures, represented by food and creative design, being passed physically into the hands of guests who ate and drank from them. The anthropologist in Vel recognized clay as an ancient and intimate medium. She loved to take a lump of nothing and build it up into something beautiful with her strong hands, and then, with a delicate touch, create the patterns that told a story. While she worked she edited her current books and articles, adding the personal observations that made them best sellers. Vel knew it was a life most people could only dream of achieving. She revelled in every moment. Vel hardly noticed the years flying by. She was taken by surprise when her friends reminded her not to make travel plans for the weekend of her fiftieth birthday. They gave plenty of notice, but still, fifty was a surprising number. She felt much as she had when she was thirty. Still fit, slim(ish) and energetic, working out in airports and hiking all over the world. She hardly went anywhere without carrying her 45-pound suitcase. But on her next trip, just to Ireland, she did feel the travel weariness a bit more than usual in her knees. No, just one knee. She thought she’d shake it off once she could get some exercise. Not far into the coastal cycle tour from Fenit, Vel realized that exercise was irritating her left knee. It ached all that day and into the night. She couldn’t concentrate to write about her day. Frustrated, she took painkillers and slept. The next day, and the next, walking and cycling, the pain was worse and spreading down her shin. Painkillers didn’t work. For the first time in her career, Vel was happier to be going home than to be off to somewhere new. “It just hurts, all the time!” Vel told her doctor. She focussed on the pain, not the fevers or tiredness. That, she could concede to her time of life, she supposed. “It must be a bone spur or something. It’s just exhausting.” “Ok, I’ll run some tests,” the doctor said. “Have you travelled to any exotic places recently?” They both had a laugh. Vel felt relieved. When the tests came back the news was not relieving. It was nonsensical. Bone cancer was not something from Vel’s world. An unknown, unpredictable, uncontrollable factor? What was she supposed to do with that? Her gifts, her own special brand of carefree luck, were no help to her with this. It was not possible to simply avoid this. “Nip it in the butt, Velly, like you always do,” her dad said. “You can absolutely bite it in the butt, and you’d better get your fangs out.” The cancer was aggressive, so the treatment was too. “We’re going to cut away all the disease and create a nice stump to work with,” the surgeon said. He actually said “stump”? Vel had been having trouble processing. “They’re going to try for a below-knee amputation,” she told her parents on the phone. “Best case scenario.” “A baloney amputation? Have you checked this guy’s credentials?” Her dad was truly unstoppable. Vel laughed, taking herself by the surprise. “Maybe he was just pulling my leg, Dad.” The surgeon took the joke away when he took the knee away too. “Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “Nonie.” “Dad...” “Come on, I worked on this the whole time you were out. Nonie.” “Nonie who?” “Nonie to knock. Or how about: Nonie left, but I am Vel anyway?” Vel spent her fiftieth birthday with her friends, reclining in a wipeable plastic chair, getting her toes done. “Half price?” she quipped, and she could feel her friends relax a little. It was scary for them, too, seeing her, minus a leg, hooked up to a machine receiving chemotherapy. No one knows how that works until they need to. Vel realized she should have shared some of her wild adventures while they were still fun. Instead of a travel brochure or an inflight magazine, it was a catalogue of prosthetics her friends bent their heads over as they considered the immediate future. They had brought her a present from the shop downstairs. It wasn’t a snow globe from Iceland or a bookmark from Peru. It was a headscarf, made in China, sold in America. It was meant to cover her lack of hair rather than her hair. They had chosen one with kitten skulls in black and white, with pink bow ties. For some reason they still had their ears. They wouldn’t be cute without them. They’d be too real. Vel had been polite about the scarf. She had had a cheery day, as abnormal as it had been. When she looked at those skulls the next day, she threw up. “Howdy Chemo-Sabi.” “Dad! You really shouldn’t say things like that.” “Just checking on my girl. You still have your spark.” It wasn’t a spark. It was an ember growing dim. She was tired. Bone weary. Stress fatigued. Exhausted. How do you have hope when you can hardly drag yourself to the bathroom? How would she ever get her life back when she couldn’t even operate her pottery wheel anymore, never mind travel? She was just so tired. Vel curled into a tight ball and allowed herself to slip into darkness. ***** The long rays of summer sun came every day to explore the studio. The change was very slow, but the Sun and Time were old friends of the patient, quiet kind. The long rays melted across each patterned vessel, the halted wheel, the cold oven; and Time indicated how the layers of dust that accumulated on them were a study in themselves. Something an anthropologist or forensic scientist might appreciate. The layers were a record of Time, separated into eras. The lowest, right against each surface, was the oldest layer and the first to settle. This was dust of clay, thrown everywhere during the artistic process. It was fine in grain and reddish in colour. The second, in the middle, was thinner, paler and softer. This was the dust of disuse, the dust of emptiness and undisturbed space, the dust of Nature taking her course. The third layer, the one that settled in on top, was the thickest and most recent. It was the one that was active. This was sawdust. A shadow passed across the window, distracting the rays from their investigation of the studio. Out in the yard, an artist was stepping back to study her work. It was larger than any of the pieces she had done before. She considered this one to be the first that wasn’t for practice. This one was a showcase of her skills. It was nine feet tall. It featured a little boy launching into the air. Below him, in a rambunctious pile, were creatures from an imaginary forest, where wolves and monkeys, rabbits and parrots lived together in harmony. These were just roughed in as yet. Their features, along with the boy’s feather and leaves outfit, his panpipes and his prosthetic leg, and the fairy on his shoulder, would be added with finer tools. For now, Vel hefted her chainsaw to cut some chunks from the base. She loved the feeling it gave her, recrafting formerly living organisms into something fresh and beautiful. It was power over destiny that she had never felt before. In her travels far and wide she had seen plenty of hardship. People lost limbs all the time, and they lived without them. Vel had been fitted with a bionic prosthetic. She could do her job without a leg. In fact, she could probably do it better, now that she fit in a niche all her own in the travel writing genre. Now that she was strong and healthy, Vel was ready for a comeback. She was ready to be better than she had been before. As always, she cut what was unnecessary from her existence. She didn’t want to build empty vessels any longer. She wanted to destroy in order to create. She wanted to wield the power to create vitality in something dead with her own two hands, like the surgeon who had cut away the rot and the prosthetist who made her new leg, all rolled into one. She thought of how the surgeon had referred to her stump in such a matter-of-fact way and wondered if, in that moment when she had barely grasped his words, had been the seed of her new adventure. Her dad took the credit for himself, saying that it was his new nickname for her that had inspired the chainsaw carving. Stumpy. “Stumpy’s Chainsaw Sculpture.” How he loved watching her explain to visitors that she hadn’t lost a leg to her art. She was pleased, so far, with her piece. She wanted this one to be perfect. It was going to stand in the healing garden at the Children’s Hospital.


Content warning - Wholesome Couple Cuddles "But there's so much Evidence!" Penny said emphatically, hoping to bring their "discussion" to a close. Joe smiled and tried not to look too pleased with himself, though he didn't try particularly hard and his smile wormed across his face. "Yeah, that isn't evidence for ghosts. You got to hit me with intelligent responses or nothing." Joe said. "They say names and stuff!" Penny said. "Getting it once through that thing is not good enough, not by a long shot. I wanna hear, can you say your name, can you say my name, where are we, what happened to you, all in good time and with accurate responses." Joe said. "Well that's ridiculous no ones ever going to get that." "Exactly, the burden of evidence is too high, why is that?" Joe said . "Because you're an ass." Penny said, without much conviction. "No...." Joe said. "Because Ghosts aren't real." Penny said. "There it is." Joe said. "But what about The walking noises on the roof? In that hotel in New Orleans? What about that?" Joe said. "I don't know, maybe there was a big fat bird up there." Joe said. "A big fat bird! Making human stomping noises that's ridiculous." Penny said. "Less ridiculous than ghosts? I think not." Joe said. "So you admit that you don't know what it was." Penny said. "Yes, I admit that I don't know what it was." Joe said. "So, it could have been a ghost." Penny said. "Could have? Sure. Was it? No." Joe said. "You are so unreasonable sometimes." Penny said. "Almost always, like, look. I get it, you think this thing is real but I don't. I'm willing to be convinced but you have to do a lot better than stomping footsteps and one word answers from a spirit box to win me over." Joe said. There was a moment of silence in their shared flat, the scatter of blankets and pillows that had formed around them reminding them both of the cosy life they lived. "What about apparitions?" Penny said. "Like full body appearances." Joe said. "Yeah, me and my mum have both seen them. Do you believe me?" Penny said. Joe paused and scratched at his chin. He didn't want to let the discussion evolve into a full blown argument and they were close to it getting out of hand. He needed to be delicate in his response, but he also needed to make sure he didn't encourage this sort of tactic. "I believe that you believe you saw it." Joe said. "What kind of half-assed answer is that. " Penny said. Joe winced, as soon as he said it he knew it had been a wet noodle of an answer. "I feel that if I saw a ghost, or something that looked to be like a ghost, that I would assume that I was seeing something that wasn't there." Joe said. "Oh How convenient the old I'm crazy defence. That will never hold up in court." Penny said. "Oh but a ball rolling towards someone's name in graffiti is compelling evidence for the Jury?" Joe said. "It was uncanny!" Penny said. "It was uncanny. Dare I venture into confirmation bias?" Joe said. "I'll confirm your bias in a minute." Penny said. Then paused. "I didn't mean it that way, I won't confirm your bias." Penny said. "I was gonna say, is the debate settled?" Joe said, laughing. "But like, what about Aliens?" Penny said. "Well, what do you mean by aliens?" Joe said. He was leaning back on the sofa and he pulled Penny into a tight embrace. She nestled against his chest and wiggled until as much of her was touching him as possible. He sighed in deep contentment. "Like little green men or UFOs." Penny said. "Little Green Men? No, not really. UFOs like a flying saucer, probably not. There is something to the tic tac thing though." Joe said. "Tic Tac thing?" Penny said. "I'll show you the videos, it's really weird." Joe said. "Weird like Aliens weird?" Penny said, her voice rising with hope. "Yeah, maybe, or maybe it's just really advanced military technology." Joe said. "So you believe in Aliens but not Ghosts?" Penny said. "I mean, yeah? But also no, not really. I believe that there's other life in the Universe, it's too damn big for that not to be the case. I would be seriously surprised if Aliens have made contact with humans though." Joe said. "Why?" Penny said. "Do you have any idea how many amateur astrologists there are? People who just look at space for fun. If there was contact happening it'd be so hard to keep all those people quiet. MK Ultra wasn't even a real secret-secret and there were only a few people involved in that. We'd be talking about a conspiracy that thousands of people would be involved in." Joe said. "Arbitrary Sceptic." Penny said. "Delusional conspiracy theorist." Joe said. They both laughed and Penny turned so that he could kiss her. He was lost for a time in the soft skin of her lips. After a couple of minutes, or hours as far as Joe could tell, she snuggled back into his chest. "So no afterlife for Joe boy?" Penny said. "Doesn't seem like there will be my love. If there is, I'll find you there." Joe said. "More like I'll find you." Penny said. "Yeah, it seems more likely that I'll go first." Joe said. "We'll go out in battle together like a pair of Valkyrie." Penny said. "I think Valkyrie are all women." Joe said. "You can be an honorary one in light of your contributions to feminism." Penny said. "Why, cause I'm not the absolute worst." Joe said. "Yeah, it's a pretty low bar." Penny said. They sat together for another long moment, Penny's hand entwined with Joe's and her fingers played with his knuckles. "Sounds very serious to me. Like this is it." Penny said. Joe started to shrug but didn't want to disturb the delicate balance of their cuddle. "Yeah, I guess, I think of it as being kind of freeing. Nothing matters so only the things I want to matter actually do." Joe said. "Like us?" Penny said. "Like us." Joe said. He kissed her again. "Hmmm I like that. Penny said. "Me too." Said Joe. I love you, Joe boy." Penny said. "I love you too Penny girl." Joe said. They lingered on the magic of those words for a long time, lost in the feel of one another pressed so close together. "But ghosts are totally real." Penny said.


He wasn’t that close of a friend to anyone, but most of the guys liked him. He was an immigrant, probably illegal but you can never tell these days with all of ‘em coming in. He never introduced himself to us. I had tried to get him to talk but he'd always slip away. We had to corner him in the locker room to get his name. I mean, what the hell was he hiding it for? We’re a small company, not a head more than we need and that usually means about 40 guys in the yard and a quarter of that in the office. Anyway, with enough pushing we got it: Jorge Peña. The yard I mentioned is about 100 acres of gravel with pole-built warehouses and semi-trailers scattered around. The office is a repurposed fast food joint; one floor, poorly arranged into cubicles, with an oversized red shingle roof. A big sign sits in front of it saying “Dillard Lumber.” The company sells construction-grade wood to the housing industry. We were a big deal until the suburbs stopped expanding. Each morning I drive my rustbucket of a car to work, get out, then climb into another rust bucket, a faded yellow bug of an electric forklift. It's my job to unplug the thing and skitter about the yard for ten hours a day hauling pallets of wood between the various warehouses and from the warehouses to the idling trucks that ship to site. I’ve been doing it for over a decade now and only once was I given a raise. I mean, what the hell does a guy have to do to make a living wage? ‘Guess George Dillard has to afford his McMansion somehow. Anyway, it turned out that Jorge was a forklift driver too and a damned good one. That’s fine by the way. I’m always rushed to load and he was a great help. In about a week he was doing better than me. I don’t think he was trying to show anybody up, but intents aren’t results. Maybe the man just naturally moved like a jackrabbit on coke. Eventually I started worrying about my job. You know, nobody there is union and the word itself is banned in the office by unspoken treaty. I went to him and said, “Hey, take it easy man. You’re makin’ us all look bad.” Then I laughed and slapped him on the back so he didn’t think I was disrespecting him. We’re all working for a paycheck, taking orders from George Dillard. I mean, George Dillard's an alright guy; the typical son of a man who built a nothing hardware store into a giant enterprise. I never met his dad, but I’ve heard stories and he sounded like a man who could move mountains. Or thought he could anyway. He died of a massive stroke two years before I started. George isn’t far from the age his father died at and you can see it in his face. Fear, that is. You see, he doesn’t have an heir, spouse, or even a business partner. When George goes, so does Dillard Lumber. Maybe that's why he began fraternizing with a certain worker so much. I don’t know who noticed it first, but it certainly wasn’t Jorge. George Dillard hung over Jorge like an umbrella. Jorge would load two trucks in the time it took me to load one. There’s George Dillard. Jorge would fix a jam in his forklift with some grease he kept in a little jar in his pocket. There’s George Dillard. Jorge would shit in record time and be back out in the yard. There’s George Dillard. It all started rubbing on the other guys. Okay, fine, it got to me too. One morning, right before work, me and three other forklift drivers corner Jorge at his locker. We ask him all kinds of crazy questions. One guy asked him if he was some kind of spy for the boss. Another guy asked if he was a spy for the unions. I asked him if he thought he was better than us. Jorge started sweating bad, and it was barely above freezing. I opened his locker, took the hardhat out, and put it on his head. “Don’t suck up to George Dillard,” I said, “he’d wring the last drop of blood from your body before he'd give a bonus.” I thought that’d fix things, but stupid me, it didn’t. Jorge still worked pretty hard, but stayed weary of outperforming everybody. He really did try to avoid George Dillard’s eye. Thing is, the yard’s only so big and George is the owner. You can’t tell him to buzz off; you can’t hide without a good excuse; you can’t work and stay vigilant all at once. Everything hit the fan when clouds rolled in from the west and a batch of water-sensitive lumber was left outside. Jorge noticed first and didn’t think to, or didn’t bother to, tell the rest of us. He moved the wood into the nearest warehouse just before the rain began. Apparently, George Dillard saw it all. Jorge disappeared without a trace a few days later and we didn’t see him for the next six years. We’re all used to guys starting and getting cold feet once they see the kind of work load we carry. But Jorge wasn’t like that. I actually think it pained him to downshift his work ethic. No, whatever happened, it wasn’t entirely his choice. Every once in a while we’d hear George say something like “he’s top of the class,” or “best investment I’ve ever made.” The other guys said Jorge was going to the university a few towns over, learning finance, management, and how to keep people under you struggling for survival. I didn’t want to believe it. Hell, I was his most outspoken defender in the locker room. My position didn’t make clocking in at dawn and clocking out at dusk any easier. But then someone saw Jorge’s pickup truck at George’s house. He was all dressed up like some Wall Street banker; slicked back hair, expensive watch, and everything. Then we all saw him in person. He walked out of the Dillard Lumber office straight-backed and arrogant, arm in arm with none other than George Dillard. A meeting was called and the whole staff gathered into the yard's largest warehouse. A makeshift podium was made with a pallet and a few stacked toolboxes. George got up there and beamed with pride like a child that's just figured out how to use the potty. I remember his words plain as day. "Gentlemen, and women, if you haven't noticed I've grown old and fat. Now, the word 'retirement' is new to my vocabulary. A few years ago it would've meant leaving a bunch of people, that I consider family, to fend for themselves. Not anymore." He pulled Jorge over and put him in a fake headlock. "I've found a man as capable as me. Hell, I've found a man as capable as my father. Of course, he'll need training. But under my tutelage, he'll make a fine boss. Let's have a round of applause for Mr. Peña!" I didn't hear much after that. Jorge got up there and read off the most scripted speech I've ever heard. I mean, hell, everyone saw the thing folded in his pocket. We'd lost a friend and gained a boss. That's when me and the guys swore to never concern ourselves with a new hire. What we didn't know was that there wouldn't be any new hires. Jorge apprenticed under George for six months, then the latter packed up and moved to the Gulf Coast. Employees dropped like flies after that. Jorge, or should I say Mr. Peña, first slimmed the office staff down to five. He made half the yard workers seasonal before letting them go the next year. Now it's just him, his secretary, and a dozen outside. What keeps me hanging on? I don't know if you've looked around but jobs are scarce. People tell me I should get a trade degree at the community college. Not one of them was reaching in their wallet to pay for it. I'll stay on until Peña fires me. That won't happen by the way. I've looked him in the eye a hundred times and all I see is shame staring back. You can dress a working man in a suit but his mind and muscles remember. I'm not going anywhere.


Smell is the strongest sense. The olfactory bulb sits right on the brain and scents trigger emotions, thoughts, memories, and associations that our conscious mind barely registers. Science still isn’t sure how the chemicals we inhale cross the neurological barrier to the brain, but the effect is profound. Profoundly disturbing in this case. All I could smell was death. I’d grown up around that smell. The musky, pissy aroma of animal pelts and the sweet, rotting smell of offal. The rancidness of beaver fat. The astringent odor of chemicals. My dad had been a trapper, running lines through the Maine woods in the sixties, seventies and eighties. He’d had a skinning shed out back of our trailer that was rich with end-of-life scents. Even when he grew older and no longer ran his trap-line he’d spend hours in the shed greasing his old traps and honing his knives. It’s where I’d found him dead of a heart attack one December morning the scent of his loosed bowels mixing with the never-faded odors of his long dormant trap-line. So, more than the hard bench that made my ass ache or the buzzing sound coming from the ballast of the flickering fluorescent lights or the garish green of the vending machine in the corner it was the smell of this place that made me edgy. It was as if something dark had clawed its way out of the cellar and was almost, but not quite, touching me. I wasn’t alone. There was a little girl, maybe five or six, playing a complicated make-believe with some plastic animals on a jacket her mother had spread for her to cover the dirty the floor. And the mom, a tired looking thirty maybe or an exhausted twenty it was hard to tell. She had a fake leather purse and shoes that had been stylish a few seasons ago and nothing but resignation around her eyes. There was an older man, too. Not aged, but past mid-life with a pot belly straining his white office shirt. We didn’t talk. We just sat in the buzzy, flickering, too bright room on hard benches embraced by the smell. A clock on the wall read 10:48. I’d been here since they opened the doors at nine. I figured I’d get in early and get it over with. Joke’s on me. The mom and daughter had come in a few minutes after me and the older guy about an hour after that. No one else had come in. No one had left. I had checked in at the touch screen at the door and had received a number on a shiny slip of paper, thirty-eight, that I had no idea how to judge. I wasn’t the thirty-eighth visitor of the day. It wasn’t my age or any sort of ID number that I could understand. There wasn’t a meter on the wall to tell me which number was being served or who was up next. Just 38. So I sat. I reached in my pocket to look at my phone before I remembered that I’d had to check it along with my credit cards, anything with a magnetic or electronic signature, at the metal detector in the foyer. I wished I’d brought a book or a magazine. There weren’t any in the room. I got up and paced over to the vending machine, but in a place where visitors were deprived of cards (and who carried cash these days?) I was at a loss as to its purpose. The machine held an assortment of low excitement snacks - Fudge Rounds cookies and peanuts in cellophane sleeves and strawberry sugar wafers. I walked back to my seat. I must have dozed for a few minutes because I woke as my body jerked. I’m sure we’ve all had the experience, doctors call them hypnogogic jerks, of a sudden tensing spasm as we drift off to sleep. I’d experienced them often when I was a kid, but hadn’t recently. Maybe the smell of the room triggered some unconscious sympathetic reaction. Maybe the skinning shed odor of the room, the smell of my youth, caused my body to react. Hypnogogic jerks. For some reason I’d always associated them with falling or with danger. I chewed on the inside of my cheek. I wasn’t really, I told myself, in any danger. The door at the end of the room, opposite the entrance leading to the foyer, opened and short woman walked out holding three clipboards. She handed one to each of the adults in the room, stepping quietly around the little girl. I looked at her as she handed me a clipboard, the kind with a ballpoint pen on a chain, and opened my mouth to ask her about the wait, about my numbered slip of paper, but thought the better of it and remained silent. She looked at me with a small smile, no teeth or dimples, that seemed designed to quell inquiry. She wore a cardigan sweater with an ID badge clipped to it. The lapel of the sweater had turned the badge the wrong way and I couldn’t read the woman’s name. And as quickly as she had entered the woman left. I looked around and saw two heads bent over clipboards. I listened closely and heard the quiet whisper of the little girl talking to her animals and the plastic tapping of cheap ballpoint pens on the clipboards. I began to fill in the blanks and spaces. Name. Address. Date of birth. Mother’s maiden name. There was a box on top of the page that read NUMBER with no explanation. I wrote 38. Three pages and four minutes later I was done. I’d given them all the information they’d requested. I’d filled in my number in the box at the top of each page. As if she’d been waiting for me to finish, the small woman opened her door again. “Thirty-eight,” she said and I stood and walked toward her. She held her door open with one hand and took my clipboard with the other. I looked back at the woman with the child and the pot-bellied old man. Both of them still had their clipboards. Then I stepped through the doorway. Thirty-eight I found out was the code for my procedure, and the procedure the source of the skinning shed smell.


When in high school, I was secretly in love with a classmate named Evelyn, who had beautiful round eyes, pinkish white skin and smooth black hair. She had a face of angel so that a lot of guys like her, even the guys from upper class and colleges. Meanwhile, I was neither a handsome boy nor an outstanding student. I was not a rich kid or an excellent basketball guy either, just an average teenager so that I thought there was no chance for me to be her boyfriend. I enjoyed watching her secretly, especially when she tied her hair up or took her hair down. I sent my love for her to my songs and poems. I even wrote long letters to her yet dare not to send. Whenever she smiled or talked to me, even just a simple “Hello”, she made my day and I would recall that conversation again and again. Sometimes, when being upset, I would ride my bicycle to her house, just to see her shadow on the wall. The secret love made me happy but miserable at the same time. I wanted to tell her that I love her and ask to be her boyfriend but also scared of her answer. What if she said “No”? It would be my apocalypse. Thus, I would rather live with a little hope than nothing. I tried to be an excellent student and a great basketball player to get her attention but there were guys who also liked her was better than me in every field. I was being stuck in a hopeless situation. One day, I wandered around the city pondering about my life. I arrived at a marketplace, then suddenly heard a woman’s voice. “Are you being desperate in love?” I startled turning my head to the source of the voice. It was a strange middle-aged woman who was the owner of a weird stall. There were a big crystal ball, a skull and an owl in the cage at the stall, which reminded me of the stores at Diagon Alley, a wizard shopping centre in London hidden from Muggles. “Yes, I am.” I replied. “You don’t dare telling her that you love her, do you?” “How do you know that?” I asked surprisingly. “I can see it in this crystall ball” “I see nothing” “You don’t have the third eye” “So how can I make her love me?” “What you need is the love potion number 9,” She replied with a wink. The strange woman gave me a potion of purple fluid, which cost 50 bucks, a large amount of money to me at that point. After taking my money, she whispered in my ear how to use that magic water. I decided to try it with Amee, another classmate of mine. Firstly, I asked her to go to the cinema. She accepted. When we were already sitting on the seats, I drank a sip from the love potion number 9, which had a bad taste, and poured a bit into my right hand. Then I use that hand to grasp Amee’s left hand. She startled and trembled but did not withdraw her hands. “It works! It’s magic!” I thought to myself. Then I kissed her. It was my first kiss and it tasted so good. Amee enjoyed it, too. “I don’t know kissing is that great” she said shyly. I almost fell in love with Amee for she was pretty and adorable. Yet my heart belonged to Evelyn. And I had a plan. I would make her mine with the love potion number 9. Next day, when the school closing bell rang, I followed Evelyn to her house. “Evy!”, I called her. “Kevin, what are you doing here?” “I have a gift for you” “Oh, really? It’s very kind of you” I brought a gift but instead giving it to her, I grasped her hand. “Your hand is wet” Her face turned red. Yet she did not withdraw her hand. “I love you, Evy!” Then I kissed her and she kissed me back. It was even better than my first kiss with Amee. All of a sudden, a scream ruined my glorious moment. “Kevin!” “What are you doing here, Amee?” “That’s what I have to ask you,” Amee smirked. “Yesterday you kissed me, now you kissed Evelyn. What kind of man are you? I thought you are a nice guy but I’m totally wrong.” Tears were falling from Amee’s eyes. Then she ran away. I turned to Evelyn but she stared at me strangely. “I also thought you are a nice guy so I gave you a try”, she said sternly. “But you disappointed me, Kevin” “Listen, Evy!”, I said desperately. “Please let me explain. All these things happened because of this love potion number 9” Yet she did not listen. Evelyn suddenly slapped on my face. Teardrops were falling from her eyes. And my love potion number 9 fell into the ground and broke into pieces. That was the end of my relationship with Evelyn, right after it began. Next day, I came back to the stall of the mysterious woman. “Please give me the love potion number 9!” I told her. “The potion you bought three days ago was the last one.” She said coldly. “When will you have it again?” “Nevermore.” “Please!” I said desperately. “I need it to make Evy love me again.” “I’m sorry. I forgot to mention that it only works once to each person. If you break one’s heart, the love potion won’t have any effect on her anymore.” “What a useless magic!” “You’re right. It’s not magic water, just some forest fruit juice.” “What? I want my money back” “I’ve never said love potion is a magical thing. That’s what you suppose. The point is it works.” “What should I do now to get Evy back?” “I have no idea,” the strange woman said and gave me a wink. “I guess you have to try another way without love potion number 9.” Oh, I wish she were a real ugly old witch instead of a weird Muggle.


The cat was splayed out in a sunbeam that sliced through the curtains like a golden ray, a delicate tabby with fur as silky as autumn leaves. The drapes danced in silent delight as the cool fall breeze played with their edges. The cat's eyes sprang wide, exposing curiously sparkling emerald pools. The heat from the sun caressed its whiskers, and a satisfied purr rumbled in its throat. The feline stretched its paws wide, its claws unsheathing and sinking into the soft carpet, scratching at the surface in a rhythmic symphony of tiny scratches. With a lovely curve in its back, it flicked its tail lazily in the sunshine. The cat brought life into the room with every stretch and yawn, as if she were awakening the soul of the season itself. She rose gracefully, her gaze catching the falling leaves outside the window. Enthralled by the quivering leaves, the cat stumbled onto a covert disco in the world beyond. It leaped quickly to the window sill, anxious to welcome autumn's beauty and leave behind the warmth of its sunny slumber in favor of the refreshing embrace of a chilly fall breeze. The cat's last trip to the veterinarian was still fresh in its thoughts as it stared out at the bustling backyard scene. It brought back memories of the tense vehicle ride, strange odors, and the sterile, clinical environment of the vet clinic. The sound of other apprehensive pets barking, meowing, and chirping filled the air, adding to the cat's discomfort. The cat still felt the waiting area and its assortment of pet carriers, each holding a nervous pet. It found itself sitting in a sterile, frigid examination room, its body trembling on the icy surface of the examination table. Its tension increased whenever the ventilation system hummed. The bright overhead lights flickered, casting unsettling shadows upon the walls. Then the stranger in a white coat arrived and scrutinized the cat, inspecting its teeth, eyes, and ears. The cat twitched uncomfortably as it remembered the vet's gloved hands on its body, making the cat feel exposed and defenseless. Its skin pricked sharply the instant the veterinarian gave it a shot, leaving a lingering soreness behind. The kitty’s discomfort at the veterinarian's office was so traumatizing that it could remember its meows, quiet and sorrowful, and the reassuring but unsure touches from mother's hand. The whole experience had left the cat feeling uneasy and vulnerable, and the cat was thankful to be back home, where things were cozier, warmer, and familiar. It directed its attention back to the squirrels outside. The feline, not entirely understanding the ethereal nature of its life, growled in its stomach and questioned, "Where's mommy?" in a ghostly voice tinged with bewilderment. Unaware that it was no longer a part of the living world, it had returned home. The usual sounds and smells were warped, the place felt different, and there was a persistent, unsettling feeling that something was wrong. The cat looked for its human's consoling presence as it silently floated through the rooms, its paws melting through solid objects. It was perplexed by the tear-stained tissues and the faint echoes of sobbing that were left behind, and it couldn't understand why the house felt so empty. It moved through the rooms in a spectral shape, flickering here and there in the air like a phantom of itself. It went to the living room, where it frequently found comfort in its owner's lap, but the place was empty now. The cat missed the warm company, the comforting strokes, and the familiar voice. It meowed plaintively, not realizing that its voice was nothing more than a phantom whisper that the living were oblivious to. As the cat carried on its ethereal adventure, its confusion increased. In pursuit of answers, it went from room to room without realizing it had already crossed over to the other side. The ghostly cat was lonely, for its connection to the living world was dwindling, and the possibility that it might never find its beloved owner again loomed sadly in its fading consciousness. The cat eventually located the woman, sitting in a comfortable chair, her gentle figure lit by a soft table lamp nearby. The tabby leaped to the arm of the chair to be close to her Mommy. The woman clung to a well-used blanket, the material soaked from the tears cascading down her cheeks, her eyes glittering with loss. Her unkempt hair was pushed back allowing the light to reveal a portion of her sad face with grief inscribed in every wrinkle and line. The phantom cat saw a faint shimmering form before it as it extended its fluffy paw toward Mommy's face. With a kind and astute expression in its eyes, a different ghostly feline murmured, "My friend, it's time. It's time to move on to the next house and leave this one." The cat turned to face the phantom guest, its ghostly body trembling with indecision. "But I can't leave; I don't want to go," the cat meowed. “My favorite blanket is being held by my mother. I can't stand to leave her in this state while she's weeping." The woman embraced the blanket, and the tabby attempted to push aside the tears falling down the woman’s cheeks. The other spectral feline nodded, compassion visible in its transparent eyes. "I understand that seeing the people we care about in such agony is difficult and unpleasant. However, we must remember that this is only our temporary home and that we will soon embark on a new adventure beyond. We no longer serve the same purpose in this world; thus, we are unable to console them." With a head bowed the sorrowful cat expressed its conflicted feelings of wanting to stay with its human and having to move on. "I just wish I could let her know I'm still here, and that I love her," the feline meowed in a soft voice. "You can, in your way," the sage ghostly cat answered. From wherever you are, send her your warmth and affection. Even though she can't see you, she will sense it. My friend, it's time to say goodbye and go on. On the other side, you won't be alone, and you'll eventually meet up with your human again." The cat looked at its weeping owner and the cherished blanket in her arms for the final time, heartbroken. The feline realized it was time to let go of its worldly attachments and let go. It bid a final, tender goodbye with a flicker of energy and followed the spectral cat into the unknown, leaving behind a world of suffering and starting a new journey somewhere.


...........”It’s war. Making this proclamation was Fenrir the magnificent, undisputed king of the cat cabal. Born of noble lineage, rarest of chinchilla Persian cats. With a silky luxuriously thick white fur, finely etched streaks of black on paws and around the neck, he was spectacular. Fenrir resided in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. His owner, Lord Garvagh, was descended from the errant son of a noble English family, banished to cool his aristocratic heels in the colonies. Links to the famous Courtauld's silversmiths kept the family in financially good shape. Fenrir loved his home. The finest example of Victorian elegance in the smartest section .of the neighborhood, That scent of old money. Hard to describe, a bit of bergamot, faint lemon scented beeswax, a superb mix of deep comfort and warmth. Daily feedings from Waterford crystal dishes of minced sirloin and cartons of full cream, Fenrir knew only the best. ..........” If you keep him permanently indoors, he’ll be a lovable, loyal companion. If you let him roam outside, he’ll be the same but a much happier cat” instructed his veterinarian, Dr. Feelgood. ### As daylight faded into dusky mysterious late evenings, lights appeared all over the City illuminating the mix of tall offices, apartment buildings, and stately old Victorian red brick mansions, the architecture of Bay Ridge. That was the time, each evening, when Fenrir strode confidently into the throng. A delightfully raucous bunch his best friends were two sisters, mangey striped tabbies, who lived in a nearby apartment building. A couple of battle-scarred tomcats who thought their names were Shoo and Scram. They were subsisting in a cruel world . Food was restaurant leftovers, which they fought over with cat gangs, and anywhere they could lick moisture, usually from drains. Then there was Sheba! An alley girl, of doubtful origin, she had great natural elegance. Demurely flirting with sidelong glances in his direction, he trembled in ecstasy. To revel in the most sensual delights regardless of status was every cat’s right. There are no exceptions. Twirling his whiskers contemplating nightly trysts, he could have jumped over the moon. Interrupting his reverie, was the sight of a rodent’s rump. The signal for a full-scale attack. Every cat was expected to do its bit to save the neighborhood being slowly nibbled away. Tally ho! missile-like the chase was on, round the corner, over a mound of garbage, Fenrir would have made the kill except for a newspaper, slapped by the breeze into his face, swatting it with a paw, it rebounded wrapping itself around his noble head. #### He couldn’t have imagined how awful things could go so wrong so fast. Opening the kitchen window, placing an apple pie on the sill to cool was mistake number one, by Aggie the cook-housekeeper. Straight from the oven, bubbling rivulets of amber liquid cascaded oozing and caramelizing over the golden brown pastry. A favorite of Lord Garvagh and his luminaries at their weekly Bridge game, it was served room temperature with Devonshire cream. ### Newly arrived and settling into the relative safety of urban life, a family of crows was attracted by the aroma of the pie invitingly placed within their reach. Seizing the opportunity with a “come and get it” excitement several more arrived. Highly intelligent, they carved up that pie in seconds. Classified by some obscure woman in the 18th century the murder of crows, nomen est omen, was spot on in this case. Dastardly intelligent those birds swooped down, sliced the pie into several pieces, and up and away to their nests. A feast for all and spare in the larder. ## After clearing the first course, Aggie returned to the kitchen looking at an empty pie dish on the open window, not a crumb left. Angrily, she had to blame ...who? and looked with suspicion at the only possible explanation. Fenrir who loved the companionship and tasty titbits always fed to him, when Aggie was working, stared up at her pleading innocence with his incredibly ice-blue eyes. Witnessing the crime, knowing birds were off limits, he was stunned by their audacity, but helpless to intervene. Fenrir must have scarfed the whole thing, Aggie concluded. She couldn’t produce another pie. Biscuits and cheese and a profound apology sufficed. Banished from the kitchen and scolded by Lord Garvagh, Fenrir was In hot water. Relating the incident later to his friends, they commiserated but were doubtful of his chances. ..........” they’ll send you away, Fenrir,” said the tabbies. ..........” or drop you off at the undertaker as permanent mouser,” said Sheba, mournfully. ...........” heh heh hee.....It’s kibbles ‘n bits, ooh, and 2%. Heh heh sniggered the Toms displaying misplaced but not malicious humor. A fault of the lower classes . ...........” with a name like mine, I’m going to fight this” Fenrir exclaimed with much eclat. Sheba smiled. ...........”I’m with you, who else is up to defend our leader” A combined murmur of assent, with one paw raised, was the answer. ### It was a wonderful show of bravado, but nothing more. The nights were growing chilly, and so was the temperature inside for Fenrir. Banished to the basement, he commuted through the rusty bars of a busted window. Acutely aware of rejection, he began to molt. His once glossy coat turned dull and lifeless ### His nightly sojourn was now merely a reminder of loss of status. Dejected and humiliated, like Napoleon after Waterloo, defeat was intolerable. Although valiantly supporting their leader, there was little the cats could do. What a farce to talk of retaliation. ### Salvation is always a miracle and rewarding in every sense of the word. It came as a direct result of greed by the crows. Emboldened and fearless they circled in ever-widening flocks and on impulse rushed and struck the kitchen window with sharp impatient beats. What a commotion! Even Lord Garvagh in his study on the top floor heard it. Aggie, immediately realizing the cause and effect of the situation, ran for the broom. Flogging the daylight out of those rascals they scattered as autumn leaves disturbed by a blower. Peace and tranquility returned to the household. With an outpouring of love and affection, Fenrir was showered, primped, and cosseted like Marie Antoinette during her good days. Triumphantly restored to prominence, Fenrir glowed and Sheba wore the mantle of First Lady once more. All’s well that ends well........not quite. During his banishment the cats would often come by for a little cat nap, chew the fat and tell a few yarns. They liked Fenrir. Noticing the absence of greedy crows and no more demanding window bashing, Lord Garvagh and Aggie were cautiously optimistic. One fine evening Lord Garvagh strolling around his beautiful garden saw the two tomcats resting in a bed of golden marigolds. Aha, that’s the reason, he thought. They keep the crows away. Bending down intending to pat the head he could only see one ear, and the other cat a socket where an eye should rest. .............”Poor little buggahs” he said to himself. At his express instruction Aggie would put out each evening Tupperware containing hamburger and milk. Shoo and Scram were on easy street at last.


Cheryl dropped her mobile on the sofa then plopped down after it, exhausted from another hectic day in what seemed an exceedingly long week. “T.G.I.F,” she sighed, glancing at the fluffy doughnut bed next to her crammed bookcase as if Nabisco would be curled up there signifying his total agreement with one look from under those floppy ears. Her throat caught at how much she missed the little mongrel. His presence in her life had outlasted all her relationships. In fact, if she had paid heed to the times that Nabisco didn’t warm to a few of them, she would have saved herself both time and trouble. The emptiness of her cosy but stylish apartment pressed in on her. That she hadn’t lived here very long didn’t help. Smothering under the weight, she considered going out for a walk, get some fresh air, but this seemed pointless without Nabisco to investigate the still fairly new neighbourhood of Old Town alongside her. That tub of Rocky Road ice cream which had leaped into her shopping cart the other day was calling her, despite how well she had hidden it in the bottom freezer drawer where she wouldn’t accidentally come across and be tempted. Really, she should save it for a special occasion when she invited a friend over. But she hadn’t felt ready to invite anyone into her space yet. Cheryl patted her slender abdomen, knowing temptation could easily become a slippery slope. Although she and her sister weren’t twins, they must share some of the same genes. Always easier for both of them to put on pounds rather than shed them. She needed to be like Odysseus ignoring the seductive calls of the gorgeous winged Sirens on their rocky island. Then she recalled his followers had tied him to the mast so he wasn’t really that strong-willed, especially as they all stuffed wax in their ears so they wouldn’t hear his orders to change course for the jagged rocks festooned with human bones from previous victims of the alluring harpies. What a grisly imagination she had, but then it was a Friday when everything that had been restrained and contained and ignored all week came raging into expression. Let It All Hang Out. That was what Luigi, her most recent significant other, used to tempt her to enjoy every Friday night. Their wild times thrilled her for a while but paying for their excesses on Saturday morning with the worst hangovers and watching her carefully managed budget implode as well began the slow unravelling of their liaison. Luigi didn’t appreciate her suggestion that they limit their Friday splurge to once a month, so eventually they parted ways. She missed how funny he was and the intensity of making love, but actually, not much else. Still staring at the fluffy doughnut bed, she reflected that she missed Nabisco more than Luigi. A dog accepted you exactly as you were, perfectly happy with whatever you decided to do as long as that included loads of cuddles, as many walks as possible, and the essential combination of treats, toys and their preferred brand of dog food. She learned quite early on that variety was not something Nabisco welcomed in his bowl, so that necessitated a trip to go and buy the proper stuff. The other tins of the brand she bought because it was on sale ended up being donated to the shelter where she found him. Prior to that, she assumed a dog would eat anything if hungry while fussiness was the prerogative of cats. Her mobile emitted an unfamiliar sound like a subdued doorbell. She had assigned a specific ring tone to each of her friends and a shared one for family so that she always knew who was calling. Cheryl picked up the phone, admired the sweet photo of Nabisco, then navigated to the message screen where Unknown Number was listed at the top. She right clicked. Her fingertip hovered over Delete. This was probably someone telling Mom that he had lost his mobile and could she please send $100 right away to a bogus account or some other scam. But it was Friday. She had no plans and no commitments. She could indulge her curiosity. Meet me at The Usual Place in half an hour. She blinked. Only a week ago, she ventured to have a drink at that bar for the very first time. This was only to satisfy a work colleague who kept warning her that she must get herself out there if she didn’t want to end up as a frustrated spinster. Enjoyable enough despite being on her own, but she soon walked back home and lost herself in Netflix. She shoved the message to one side and pushed the menu down to find Delete again. The mobile repeated the subdued doorbell sound. Clock is ticking, Cheryl. I need to see you. She felt the back of her neck prickle at the use of her name. This sounded like the beginning of one of those edge-of-your-seat novels that her sister enjoyed. Cheryl preferred Chic Lit, especially with a generous helping of laughs and the requisite happy ending. Another muted ding dong from the mobile. Trust me. Staring at the two words, Cheryl shook her head and began to jab the smudged screen to reply: WTF. LOL. No way Jose or whoever you are. She set the mobile down again, imagining how delicious the Rocky Road ice cream would be, melting on her tongue. It wasn’t like drinking alone or snorting Smurf or whatever the addictive white powder was called this year. Ding dong. Cheryl grabbed the mobile with a frown. After this, she would restrict the device to only receiving calls from those few people she always wanted to be available for, mostly family except for one dear friend who sometimes teetered on the brink of despair. Ginger ale has less calories than Rocky Road. A full body shiver went through her. Whoever this was, they knew her preference for ginger ale when she went out which was fair enough, but it creeped her out that they knew her favourite ice cream was Rocky Road and maybe that she had some stashed in her freezer right now. She looked around as if a hidden camera might be filming her reaction. She felt impelled to throw the mobile across the living room but didn’t want to shatter the phone as she was still recovering her financial equilibrium after Luigi. Another subdued ding dong made her wince. She dropped the mobile onto the sofa. Somebody must be pranking her, but who? It didn’t matter who. She was not going to participate. Her mind fastened on the possibility that it could well be her most recent Ex. Maybe Luigi was already drunk and had borrowed a friend’s phone to text her. Perhaps he was trying to lure her to The Usual Place in the hope they could resume where they left off. No way Luigi. Determined to switch the settings to avoid any more texts from Unknown Number, she picked up the mobile. Because it was Friday and she was upset and tired, she automatically clicked into the new message received. Public place. Plenty witnesses. What could go wrong? L O L She tried to convince herself that the stranger was indicating laughter, but each character of the Lol, all in capitals, had a space between. Only one person she knew used L O L that way, not indicating amusement but abbreviating Lots of Love. Someone who teased her out of the habit of signing off a message with any number of Xs. Nowadays, everyone did that, work colleagues, dental receptionists, anyone. She replied quickly. Stevie? The overly active mobile became stubbornly mute. She scrolled back to read through all of the messages, unable to stop herself from imagining them being spoken in Stevie’s voice. Meet me at The Usual Place in half an hour. Clock is ticking, Cheryl. I need to see you. Trust me. Then came her first reply: WTF. LOL. No way Jose or whoever you are. Ginger ale has less calories than Rocky Road. Public place. Plenty witnesses. What could go wrong? L O L Her second reply: Stevie? Cheryl stared at the mobile with tears pricking her eyes. She shook the gadget in her hand as if that would force the next text to arrive. Silence. She checked the connectivity symbol which was at 100%. Text something else, but what? Her finger caressed the L O L before she checked the number to see if it rang any bells. But who remembered anybody’s number these days? She felt lucky she could remember her own when asked. Again, she read over the messages, reminding herself that this could literally be anyone texting her. Highly unlikely that this would turn out to be Stevie. Probably a friend pranking her for some obscure reason or maybe a drunken Luigi playing games. Then, the words came to her. Could we start the half hour clock from now? She put the mobile down carefully as if that mattered and fixed her gaze on the large, framed, sepia photograph of Point Loma Light House that Stevie bought for her because she had liked the iconic image so much at Tierra del Fuego gallery. Not immediately like most people would do, but gone back later for it to surprise her. Ding dong. Okay, just this once, seeing as how it’s you. Cheryl erupted from the sofa, knowing that Nabisco would be barking and jumping and overjoyed to see her so excited if he was still with her. Thirty minutes was not long enough to do everything she would like to do if this was Stevie and not a prank, but she simply must change out of her work clothes. She hated dressing corporate outside of work hours. But what to wear? Opening her built-in closet, she realised how much of a first world problem this was. Probably in some parts of the world, a person wore only one garment until it literally fell to pieces. She stripped off the heels, the nylons, the work-appropriate black dress and the tight underwear. No time for a shower. Again, something many people on the planet didn’t have any need to worry about. She thought of the adverts she sometimes saw on YouTube for Charity: Water. She needed to click through next time and set up a monthly donation, stop procrastinating. And stop scrolling so much, too, that was getting to be a habit when she got home after work. Just a few minutes could easily turn into an hour or more. Rebuilding from the foundations, she chose a matching set of more comfortable underwear, then grabbed an old Save The Whales t-shirt and her favourite blue jeans. Obviously, the t-shirt had seen plenty of wear, but it was a classic that she had worn for many adventures. The jeans had daisies on rainbow vines spiralling up each leg that she embroidered in high school, inspired by her teenage fascination with vintage Flower Power. She felt proud that they still fit. Cheryl blotted her “I Mean Business” red lipstick then applied a rosy shade. Studying her reflection in the mirror made her feel she was preparing to enter a time machine and rocket back into her past. A real smile appeared on her lips as she realised that she must tell Stevie as he would appreciate that idea. How she had enjoyed those stories they sometimes invented together, though they never got written down for reasons that escaped her now. She put on her most comfortable shoes in case they went for a walk around Old Town. She grabbed her capacious denim jacket from a peg by the door and hurried out. Only when she saw the glow of another walker’s mobile did she pat her pockets and realise that her mobile lay abandoned on the sofa. Going back would waste precious time. The clock was ticking. Stevie--possibly--was waiting. Their meeting was arranged, so what did she need her mobile for? As she walked briskly through her neighbourhood, a rider passing on a palomino horse tipped his hat. What a beautiful horse. Could this be a sign? She and Stevie could go riding at the stables near La Jolla this weekend, bring a picnic to enjoy at what they always called the Halfway Point. Hearing the sound of galloping, Cheryl looked over her shoulder to see them coming in her direction at speed. She smiled, thinking maybe the rider had left his mobile phone somewhere like she had. But he didn’t look like he would even know what to do with one. He probably was part of the many historical reenactments that took place in Old Town, perhaps enjoyed keeping in character even when he wasn’t being paid to do so. She kept meaning to find out when they were and go along. She had definitely seen the rider in her neighbourhood before. Nobody could mistake that palomino. She wondered if the horse was stabled nearby. Did he need some kind of permission to keep a horse in his backyard or a license to ride a horse on normal streets? She must google this during her next coffee break at work if she remembered, but Monday seemed very far away. But why google when she could get the information from the horse’s mouth, so to speak? The idea amused her that the horse might talk rather than the rider. She vaguely recalled someone telling her about an old television show, black and white maybe, which had a talking horse. Mister Ed maybe? She had not spoken to the rider yet because he always seemed to be going somewhere. But on a horse, not a bicycle, easier to pause the journey unless galloping. She could admire his horse to start with like she tended to do when she encountered a dog walker since the loss of Nabisco. Cheryl considered breaking into a run but didn’t want to be sweaty or out of breath when she arrived. Soon enough, she was entering the Mercado, the gathering of shops and restaurants which was partly what attracted her to Old Town. She didn’t mind the thronging tourists as they generally weren’t noisy nuisances. Her heart pulsed in her throat as she entered The Usual Place, the hubbub of conversation mostly drowning out jazz music coming from the speakers. As if a spotlight shone on Stevie, she saw him immediately and waved. He nodded in return as she approached, the smile raising the corners of his lips only enough to qualify as a smile, but the welcome obvious in his eyes. Seeing the table was empty, she asked, “Ginger ale?” “Best drink in the house,” he agreed, as always. Cheryl quickly fetched two ginger ales, being pushier at the bar than she normally would be. “You look amazing,” Stevie told her as she sat down opposite. “Really?” she asked because such words from him were never just flattery. “Really.” He gave her an appraising gaze. “You haven’t changed a bit.” “Neither have you,” she replied with a smile because that was so true. They talked, as usual, about everything and nothing. Somehow, resuming from where they left off easily bridged the gap of seven years. The rider on the palomino horse got a mention. Stevie agreed the show had been Mister Ed but didn’t whip out his mobile phone to see if he was correct. She liked knowing that he felt such devices were distractions rather than essential assets and was pleased she had left hers at home. Their conversation deepened as they discussed the life and times and sad demise of Nabisco, the mongrel she adopted before they first met. When her glass was empty, Stevie offered, “Be my guest.” He gestured at his own which seemed barely touched. “Thanks,” she said, moving the full glass to her side of the table, glad to not have to leave him for even a minute. Because the desire kept rising to mind, she finally told him, “No pressure, but you can come see my new place if you like.” Stevie nodded but made no comment. “Anytime,” she added awkwardly, “doesn’t have to be tonight.” “That would be good,” he replied. “Cheryl,” boomed a too familiar voice from behind her, “cara mia, what brings a nice girl like you to a dump like this?” Two hands caressed her shoulders. Luigi had always been a touchy-feely kind of guy. She gave Stevie an apologetic grimace before glancing at her Ex and saying, “I’m busy, Lu, we’ll catch up another time.” His laughter grated before he invaded her space to give her a peck on the cheek. No alcohol on his breath yet, at least. Luigi walked around the little table to claim the now empty seat opposite her as if it was his by right. “Is it true, bella? Do you live in Old Town now? There’s certainly no accounting for tastes.” Occupying the space where Stevie belonged made Luigi so lack-lustre that she struggled to think of why she had committed herself to the bigger, brasher man beyond their first date. Cheryl’s eyes flicked around The Usual Place. How had Stevie disappeared so quickly? He must have needed the restroom. She sipped the second glass of ginger ale, wishing it was something stronger as she tried to think how to get rid of her Ex before Stevie returned. Registering Luigi’s question belatedly, she resolved that she was not going to tell him where in Old Town as she answered, “I do.”


Beyond the tips of outstretched fingers, a beautiful ripe fig twisted in the breeze. Andrea’s foot began to numb as he wedged it deeper between the trunk and the cliff. He had nothing lose; he told himself. There was no other time this could ever be done, therefore climbing back up empty handed was not an option. ‘Andrea! Just give up already!’ ‘Everyone knows Lolo is the only one who can bring one up,’ a shower of gravel fell between the fig leaves and was lost to the water below. Andrea withdrew his foot and began to edge further down the trunk. ‘Andrea, come on, we have 5 minutes then it’s done.’ An excited chanting of his name began, but the shouts and laughter were lost to the sea breeze. 5 minutes was more or less exact however, and given the slow 600-year history of the tree, it seemed unfair that Andrea had just 5 minutes to grab his fig. But the reality was that in just under 10 minutes, the tree was being burnt out the side of the cliff. Over the last hundred years or so, much time had been spent over the issue of the fig tree. It was widely acknowledged by the locals on the island of Sabranio that the figs from this particular tree were some of the sweetest, if not the sweetest in the world. However, few members of the community had ever tasted the figs and by and large as many still wanted to taste them. And moreover, the tree and its figs had become something of metonym for evil. As with any good tradition, its roots lay in age-old misunderstandings of the world. The condemnation of the fruit was founded on two essential facts. 1) The inordinate number of youths throughout the centuries who have fallen to their death whilst climbing down to harvest the romanticised figs. 2) A small species of turtle who had turned their shells pink over the centuries by visiting the tree in the summer months and feasted on the fruit. The tree, and therefore its fruit, was found to be guilty of a double association with the malevolent: death, and devilishly coloured turtles. +++ Signor Conte appeared not to have read the words Private Meeting; No disturbances; Quiet please sellotaped to door as he entered the meeting room holding a pink turtle above his head. ‘End this nonsense!’ he said, rapping the shell until the room fell silent. ‘Do you see what you want to put an end to! 600 hundred years!’ persisted Conte, sliding a piece of cucumber under the turtle’s mouth. He searched the room for the effect of his bold entrance. The patchy crowd seemed unaffected by the accusation, and the elderly gentleman leading the meeting sighed and re-centred his pencil. ‘Look Conte -’ began the man. ‘How many children do we have to lose to save these ridiculous turtles?’ started a lady from the side. ‘13 children in as many years! Countless over the centuries, all for those demonic terrapins,’ put in a man from beneath large heaped cotton shirt collars. ‘You know as well as any of us,’ said Conte ‘you can’t go ahead and burn out that tree.’ A chorus of old chairs squeaked violently in response, and the man’s head craned up out of his stiff shirt in disbelief. ‘We have no interest in the university or any of that claptrap,’ he snapped. ‘The turtles can live off anything! It’s eating cucumber right now.’ The meeting agreed with its impromptu orator with more squeaking of chairs and nodding. 'And what's more, it might put an end to their ungodly shells,' the nodding exploded into a round of yeses. Signor Conte turned to the door, ‘Chiara Maio is here from a university on the mainland, she’s been studying the effect the figs have on the pigment of-’ ‘Stuff your turtles’ shouted a straw hat from the front row. ‘She’s here to explain to you all the -’ A paper folder came flying straight for Conte. ‘We’ve heard your side Conte,’ said the elderly man, standing slowly and flapping his arms about for quiet. ‘You’ve had your say, but the vote speaks for itself.’ ‘I’ve lodged a complaint with police on the mainland, they’ll be-’ ‘Let it go,’ said the man raising his pencil with authority. ‘It’s as good as done... Anyone who wants to bear witness to the burning should follow Ciro and myself up the hill, all others, I thank you for your time...’ News of the mob’s approach preceded its elderly march up towards the fig tree. The gaggle of children scrambled as the group abandoned the idea of a tasting the figs, and Andrea. ‘Hey,’ shouted the Conte, grabbing an evacuee by the arm. ‘Where are you going? Have you been playing up by the tree?’ the child gave a horrified guilty shake of its head and slipped away. From Conte’s position in the half circle around the edge of the cliff, a gnarled fig branch could be seen reaching out to sea. ‘Alas, it is a shame,’ began the elderly man, seizing the plastic can of oil from Ciro. ‘It’s a shame that maybe the very oldest tree on our bright little isle chose to grow not on the island but shooting out the side.’ To which there was a round of inaudible agreement. ‘But the greater shame is the many who have lost their lives in the dumb search for its fruit.’ At this Ciro began to sob. The elderly gentleman doffed his cap and began to soak the fig tree emptying the petrol out over the cliff edge. ‘I can’t let this happen,’ blurted Conte, grabbing Professor Maio by the arm, ‘we will stand in the way, you’ll have to burn us along with it,’ at which Professor Maio began to back away. ‘Look,’ she started. ‘Gladly,’ boomed the elderly man splashing the remains to the petrol can in their direction. ‘Ok, Tommaso, you’ve made your point,’ said Conte moving sheepishly back into line. ‘Anyone else!’ he said, withdrawing a flare from his jacket. He raised the burning rod above his head with a surprising alacrity - savaging the cloudless sky with its smoke. ‘Anyone else!’ ‘Stop,’ cried a child stumbling into the centre, ‘stop, we need to-’ ‘Shut that child up,’ shouted Tommaso, and dropped the flare over the cliff edge.


You had traveled far, far away to a foreign port in a foreign country. It smelled of foreign spices and you could hear the sound of languages you had never heard before. You needed this, and you had gotten yourself in quite some debt in order to finally get here, the legendary bar of the name «The Three Bottles». A bar famous for only serving three unusual drinks; Blind-me-not, Olympian’s sweat, and Reset. One of the few places on earth where these magical drinks can be found. Blind-me-not is a clear shot which glitters in the light, like a five year-old girl had found it and sparkled it up. The drink looks like a shot of water with glitter poured into it. It is made with one part Vodka mixed with one part juice of a strange plant called the »Visionroot». The drink tastes like a very mediocre and completely uneventful gin, but it gives whoever drinks it perfect vision for all eternity. No matter what may happen. Olympian’s sweat is a orange juice-looking drink, and no one knows what it’s made of. It’s origin is forever unknown. However everyone who drinks it notices the smell, the faint yet still clear stench of sweat. Just like standing a few feet away from someone who have just worked out. The taste however is rather good, it tastes just like Strawberry Juice. It is definetively a drink you can get used to, if you manage to ignore the unpleasant odor. Olympian’s Sweat gives the drinker the body they had when they were 17, with all the upsides and the eventual downsides. It also gives the drinker a pimple at their nose that will forever be there, no matter what the drinker may do. The body can never be changed nor harmed by anyone, and will stuck just like it was at it’s seventeenth birthday for all eternity. The final drink is the drink known as «Reset». It is a blended mix of shaved darkroot, a spoon of honey from the Stalker Bee, and a glass of Champagne. The taste is surprizingly enough just like water, even though it looks, smells and sounds just like an ordinary glass of champagne. The drink has however a rather unusaul effect. It gives the drinker the opportunity to go back to any point of the drinker’s lifetime, and at that time murder themselves. The murder will be painless and swift. You will however have died at that time, and never experienced an of the things you in this timeline experienced, even though you keep the memories. You wil enter the afterlife, whatever it may be, and spend your days there. You will find out what happens when you die. Is it painfull? Comfortable? You will now find out. The problem is you only have enough mone for two of these drinks. What may it be? The sweaty-smelling drink? The gliittering water? The glass the looks like Champagne? What may it be, you can only choose once, the kind of money it took to get here is the kind you will never find again. Choose wisely.


In the wooly cotton brains of young adulthood, I strove to be a psychonaut, seeking for a long-prolonged derangement of the senses in order to achieve comprehension of the unknown. I would use a variety of LSD-25, DMT and research chemicals to ascertain the different levels of reality that are hidden within my own perception. Further expansion of the mind was achieved by engaging in deep philosophical conversations surrounding theoretical physics and other areas of study with friends. As I got more experienced with DMT I finally achieved ego death, understanding what it means to be merely a wave packet vibrating to the cosmic frequency with no actual discernable identity. Along with ego-death came a remarkable appreciation for all of existence and being able to see the beauty in every speck of reality, for everything is united and one and the same, we only perceive distinctions between objects. Being that I was very experienced with numerous mind altering chemicals, I decided to try a new research drug called 2-ci. I had already taken 2-ce and 2-cb with marvelous results. So when I heard my friend who I would perform these shamanistic rituals with got 2-ci from the blackmarket in china, I was ready to try it. Little did I know all one needed for a strong experience was 10 milligrams and he had given me 77 milligrams inside a water bottle. I promptly chugged the water bottle while driving back to my home where several friends were waiting for me. My parents were out of town and we had planned a night worthy of Dionysus. Shortly after arriving at my home, I started to feel the first effects. A sense of euphoria erupted as my synapses transmitted this unknown chemical throughout my brain. That euphoria was short lived however as soon thereafter my auditory processing was inhibited by a “wahhhwahhhwahhh” noise that proceeded to block out all other sounds. Before I had a chance to grow annoyed at the incessant auditory hallucination, my vision started to disappear and was replaced with a kaleidoscope like experience. All images were drastically disordered and repeated in infinite regression. Next, came the physical pain, which to this day was the greatest pain I have ever experienced. Every nerve, every fiber of my being was being physically tortured as if on fire and being stabbed at the same time. As I began to shout out in agony, a new horror awaited me, a pain so great that I began to welcome the physical torture; that is the pain of emotional/psychological torment. I had ceased to exist in this world and had access to the web of all interactions I have and would ever make. But in these interactions, probabilities arose and it became apparent to me in this twisted, agonizing state that I will hurt others by staying alive. I watched each interaction of my life play out and those who got close to me only ended up hurt because of something I had done or would eventually do. It was around this time the ambulance had arrived. I was taken to a hospital where I was dosed with over 30 mg of kolonopin. I awoke a few hours later surrounded by my friends and feeling as though I had just been released from decades of physical and psychological torture. I was heavily tramatized. I had bad trips before, but this was unlike anything I had ever experienced. Later I would learn that the dose I took was the highest dose ever taken by a person and to this day no one has reported taking a dose anywhere close to that. As a result of taking such a high dose of 2ci, I would never be able to trip again, not due to lack of wishing to expand my mind but rather my mind was broken and would reject any further attempts to trip no matter what the chemical compound. I would spend the next many years analyzing what occurred during this experience and trying desperately to do good with my life. My greatest fear used to be zombies, but after that experience, my greatest fear became hurting another being. It is almost an unconscious drive at this point to prove to myself that I can help others/improve their lives., in defiance of my fate.


I thought as I gave the lock a spin to reset it. *12-click-8-click- slowly, slowly - 34-Clack. Nice, smooth as Mr. double-o-seven,* I thought smugly despite my botched first attempt. I pulled my locker door open, carelessly tossed my chemistry books into my locker and grabbed my P.E. bag. *Hell yeah*, I thought, *another chance to show Clarissa how cool I am.* I wasn't very strong or tall for guys my age, but I was agile. Many hours of class had been lost to me daydreaming about her seeing me pass through the opposing teams defensive with the masculine grace of a dancing tiger followed up by me scoring and her swooning. *sigh*. "... no of course not!" Her angelic voiced pierced the commotion of the crowded hallways as Clarissa walked in my direction. It was as if her voice were an arrow that had hit some hormonal bullseye at the base of my developing brain. I took a deep breath, pulled my hand threw my hair and prepared to give Clarissa *the look*. Exuding swagger in a nonchalant way, but still enticing enough to keep me on her mind. Looking at the tiny mirror tucked into the corner of my locker, I practiced my most ‘James Bond’-esque look I could muster. Too much eyebrow I noted as I angled my jaw to check if I had shaved well enough this morning. As Clarissa's clique approached, I was able to hear their conversation: "Mr. Matthews is such a creep, right? I swear he was staring at me this morning." said Rachel. *No way that even that pedo would see anything but bloated entitlement in your fat ass*, I thought. "Yeah, he definitely has a thing for us girls; our quiz scores are always higher than the boys." answered Melanie. “ Right as I turned around to cast my suave yet heartfelt spell on Clarissa, I felt my jacket get caught on the inside lock mechanism of my locker door. *Fuck. shit. fuck. damn*, I grumbled as I tugged my jacket. I didn't want to miss this god given moment. Finally, I found sweet release from those iron clutches and turned around. H All I saw was the back of her heavenly hair as her flowery smell wafted past. I could pick that exact scent in a field of all the worlds roses. Like her voice, her scent pressed a deep animalistic button in my brain. Unexpectedly, she looked back at me, smiled and said: "See you on then field!". *Holy shit*. My brain fritzed and my rationality evaporated as all I could muster was a feeble "Yeah thanks, you too". *Yeah thanks, you too? Was that really what I had just said. How, on God’s green earth could I have screwed that up?* I thought to myself in exasperation. It seemed as though all the blood in my brain had been redirected. I looked down and there was proof that it had.