Aurelie’s long black hair hung down her back, the twisted braids being slowly undone by fat raindrops that fell. It seemed as if they were all hitting her at once. She was grateful she’d chosen the oversized jacket and combat boots to wear, though that was more for fashion than practicality. She regretted not choosing something with a hood. That would require her to check the weather ahead of time, though, and she rarely did that. She rushed down the gray city streets, people rushing past her in each direction. No matter how fast she moved, there was always someone moving faster. Always someone who was more desperate to get wherever they were going. Aurelie’s thoughts grew darker as the rain became more of a deluge, each gush carrying trash and debris past her in streams. In another two blocks she would reach the coffee shop, where her date awaited. Another Saturday, another hopeful date she’d matched with on the newest dating app. The marketing promised it would be better for women, because the women initiated contact first. The good part was, this meant she got less unwanted pictures of certain body parts in her DMs. Not zero, though. Just less. As she waited in the crowd to cross another street, the grumbles of complaints circled around. The atmosphere of the dim weather was heightened by a thrum of discontented protest, thrown back at the storm by city dwellers. The general attitude of misery annoyed her. Even her own misery felt like a chafing friction in her spirit. I’ve got to lighten this terrible mood, even if just for myself, she thought. She determined not to enter this date with a dour face. The mob of people rushed forward to cross the street. Aurelie hung toward the back of the group, taking more time, but still moving forward. Another group crossed the street toward her, heads buried under umbrellas. Minds inside their phones. This would make a cool shot, she thought. Aurelie glanced behind her and swiped her phone into portrait mode with pure muscle memory. Checking that her red lip stain was still strong, she put on a smile and took the photo. “You’re not even happy!” a gruff voice yelled, as a man bumped into her shoulder. Aurelie jerked to the side, removing her body from the shocking contact, and raised an arm reflexively. She looked around, but the stranger was already gone. There was only a writhing mass of long overcoats and black umbrellas. No one else seemed to hear him. Her mouth gaped open, and she turned quickly, dragging her own feet forward, heart racing. She had no desire to get into an argument with a stranger, especially with anyone who would so easily fling their own negativity around like a weapon. “What the- Wha...? Huh-” she stuttered as she flowed with the crowd, and replayed the event in her head. Her mind failed to grasp the strange encounter. In all her years traveling the city alone, she was familiar with rude strangers, though most people ignored each other, preferring to mind their own business. Sure, some people shouldered past you too hard, or slid into the seat on the train right before you. But that was a natural part of living in a large city. She had never been yelled at, though. And for what? Taking a selfie? The words continued to ring in her mind for the rest of her walk. You’re not even happy. Aurelie blinked her eyes against the onslaught of rain and tucked her phone back into her oversized jacket pocket. You’re not even happy. The ting of a bell rang as she entered the bustling coffee shop. You’re not even happy. Her date droned on about his high powered job, where he was very important and made a lot of money. He asked her no questions. Her coffee got cold because she forgot to drink it. She felt dazed. You’re not even happy. A painful hour went by and she said polite goodbyes. She dodged his questions about whether they’d see each other again, and wandered back down the bleak gray streets. Rats piled up on top of each other around light poles, flushed out of their burrows by the weather. She thought of her life and the choices she had made. Combat boots sloshed in puddles, but she didn't feel the rain anymore. Am I happy? She wondered, entering her apartment and locking the door behind her. She leaned back against the door and looked around at the sparse space. She had renewed her lease for the third year, but hadn’t even hung up pictures on the walls. Hadn’t she said she promised herself she would decorate this year? Bed. Nightstand. TV. Desk. Desk chair. Bookshelf. Closet. Kitchen. Bathroom. You’re not even happy. Her computer screen blinked to life, and she saw her screensaver flash. A majestic castle, nestled in the Scottish countryside, next to pristine blue waters. A trip to Scotland had always been on her bucket list. She scheduled vacation time last week, but then rescheduled it to work overtime on a new project at work. She thought it would impress her new boss, but it backfired. He had taken all the credit for her ideas and then left her out of the final presentation with the executives. You’re not even happy. Aurelie threw her rain soaked jacket over her desk chair and sank onto her bed, throwing an arm over her eyes. She knew it was true. She wasn’t happy. How had she not realized it? Somewhere along the way, she’d traded her intentional pursuit of joy for... for what? For swiping right on guys she knows she’s not going to like? For an apartment in a neighborhood she hated, to be closer to the job that was sucking the life out of her? For microwave dinners and another weekend Netflix binge? Her brow wrinkled as she tried to remember when things had gotten off track in her life. In college, Aurelie was confident that she would be in publishing by now. She took the entry level job at a financial company, because she needed stability. It was supposed to be temporary. Just temporary. That was seven years ago. You’re not even happy. The gruff voice grated on her brain. She sat up, walking over to her computer desk. With a swipe of the mouse, the dreamy scenery went away, replaced by an email from her friend, Morgan, dated two weeks earlier. Sweet Aura Lee, Aura Me, Aura Mine, Look what I found! They created a new role at my friend’s publishing company. I think you’d be perfect. I put the link below. It’s your dream!! Go for it! Put me as a reference! I’ll put in a good word. Love, Morgs PS- I’m bringing the snacks to girls night next week, since you bought last time! See you then! Love youuuuuuuuu. PPS- is it "PPS" or "PSS"? I always forget. It's like Post Script Script or something, right? Whatever, you better apply for this job! Byeeeeee! She smiled as she read Morgan’s words. Morgan typed like she talked, in excited proclamations. Every statement, whether written or verbal, came out with a lilt of hope at the end. Aurelie's grin faded as she remembered canceling girls' night. She’d been too tired from work to go through with it. She hadn’t rescheduled. YOU’RE NOT EVEN HAPPY! The voice was like a roar of white noise in her mind now, and she felt her heart seize with panic. “I’m not...,” she muttered, an ache rising in her chest. She squeezed her eyes shut. She felt a quaking begin in her shoulders, and stood up, pacing to try and give her anxiety somewhere to go. It flowed out of her eyes anyway, and hot tears fell. “I’M NOT EVEN HAPPY!” She roared at no one in particular. Her gaze darted around the apartment, and an irrational laugh bubbled up out of her. “I- I’m - Of course... I’m not even happy!” she muttered, the only noise in the apartment was her loud, painful gasps of breath. Her fit continued, starting with laughter and melting into fitful sobs. She flopped back onto her bed, arms and frizzy braids flailing around her. “I’m not even happy,” she whispered, forcing herself to take a deep breath. Tears hit her ears and created wet stains on her comforter. With another deep breath, her mental fog began to lift. She felt a clarity that she wasn’t sure she had ever felt before. She sat up, wiped her eyes on the back of her sleeves, and marched back over to her desk. A calm determination started to replace her panic. I may not be happy right now, she thought, but I can change that. She clicked the link. ______________________ Earlier that day Arjun hated the rain. But he prepared, donning his long coat and bringing his umbrella. What he was not prepared for, was his friend’s mind boggling stupidity. “Dude, she wants to get back together,” Julian whined in his ear. Arjun rolled his eyes, pulling the phone away from his ear as he waited to cross the street. He impatiently tapped his foot, and lamented forgetting to charge his Airpods last night. “I know, I know, I hear your silence,” Julian continued, “But she apologized, man. She said it was just a one time thing and it didn’t mean anything. I should believe her, right? Forgive her? That seems like the right thing to do.” “Julian, please, we can’t do this again. We’ve already discussed it three times this week. Look, you know I’ll support you in what you want to do, but I just don’t feel like I’m being a good friend if I don’t tell you the truth.” “Yeah, but, like she’s really, really sorry about this time. Man I don’t know...” Julian trailed off, sounding unconvincing, even to himself. “Don’t you remember how things were? Even before she cheated? You were-” “No, man, I think she’s really changed,” Julian rebutted. “In two weeks? Wow! Call the pastor, it’s a Christmas miracle,” Arjun’s sarcasm dripped out. He looked around at the huddled crowd, bombarded with rain. Some people didn’t even have umbrellas. Check your weather app, people, he silently chided. “Arjun, man, that’s not funny. Look, you know I appreciate your advice on this kind of stuff-” “You say that, but you don’t seem to want to take my advice. I want you to have the kind of relationship that is simple and joyful. I mean, let's just review the facts. She threw away three years of your relationship together on an old fling from high school because he wears flannel and owns a tree farm in her hometown. How cliche is that? I don’t want you to live in a hallmark nightmare, Julian, I want you to live a real life!” Arjun shot back. He felt his temper growing. He remembered how devastated Julian had been when his ex broke the news to him that she had cheated on him. “No I think it's like a-- a bakery or something,” Julian said contemptuously, “And it doesn’t matter. They’re not together now, she told me how it happened and I think she was just-” Julian kept talking but Arjun could hardly hear him over the swell of his own anger. He felt protective of his friend, but also knew that he needed to let his friend make his own mistakes. The push and pull of the two sides of him warred, pushing his tension higher. The traffic light flickered from green, to yellow, to red. The sea of pedestrians surged with the change of the light, a river of coats and bags propelled forward. The echo of footsteps on the pavement pulsed in his ears, like currents of urgency wearing down the concrete paths ahead. The roaring waves in his ears grew louder. Julian still droned on about how much he missed whats-her-name and the truth finally came out of Arjun’s mouth, in the middle of a city crosswalk. “You’re not even happy!” he shouted, sidestepping the giant rat that ran by his foot. He felt his shoulder bump into something, and saw a flash of red lips. That was louder than he’d meant to say it. He was met with silence on the other end of the line. “I’m sorry Julian,” Arjun kept moving, the throng’s urgent hum forcing him to move forward. “I didn’t mean to say it like that. I just care about you, man, but you gotta ask yourself... I mean seriously, ask yourself. Were you really happy with her?” Another beat of silence. Arjun let the question stew. He realized, belatedly, that he’d bumped into someone and not even apologized. He glanced around, but saw no one looking his way. He kept moving. “I guess- I - I don’t know, I guess I haven’t really stopped to think about it like that, man,” Julian acknowledged. “If you haven’t stopped to consider whether or not you're actually happy with your life, maybe it’s because you know... like you know, deep down, that you’re not really satisfied. Not really living life at its fullest,” Arjun said, letting gentleness take his voice to his broken hearted friend. “Alright, you’ve got a point. I hear you. Anyway, wanna come over and watch the game tonight? I, uh-” Julian stuttered. Arjun knew that this was his stoic friend’s way of agreeing with him. Julian was asking him to spend time together, so he could avoid calling his ex. “For sure, man. I’ll bring the wings. Text me what you want and I’ll swing by the store on my way. See you later.” Arjun kept walking down the street, still irritated. His irritation was redirected at himself, right now. He’d forgotten his laptop at work, and was now having to go by the office on a Saturday to pick it up. He stepped into his building, the sound of his shoes clicking on tiles echoed in the empty lobby. He took the elevator up to the 15th floor, unlocked his office, Wild Oaks Publishing , and stepped inside. Ping . The sound was loud in the silent office. He knew he shouldn’t, but he sat down in his desk chair to glance at his emails, feeling the urgent pull that the ping had conditioned in him. He had been interviewing candidates for the new position for a week but so far, no one was impressing him. His email informed him that someone else had applied to the position. Looks like he had another applicant to interview this week.


The yearning for something raw, coarse. The wild instincts clawed at his insides like nails against a freshly painted wall. He could feel his hands twitching, his legs hurting at the knees from his refusal to run free. But he ignored these obvious signs, like he’d ignored them for so many years. Only now, he knew deep within something had to be done about them. -x-x-x-x-x- Drake looked up from his packing, peering over the suitcase lid at the petite woman at his door. “You’re sure you want to go? Tonight you can stay. Its 31 st .” “‘Those who leave have a reason more powerful than the one to stay.’” “The Chosen?” “The storyteller’s secret.” “So I’m not enough reason?” Drake sighed, exasperated at her adamant ways. But for all the show he put up, she was the only woman he’d ever loved. And would ever love. He wasn’t capable of love. He tended to be overly ... possessive. “Mom, I love you. But I can’t stay. I don’t want to hurt you.” “I don’t understand. Tell me, how will you hurt me?” Drake shook his head. “You wouldn’t. Understand. Even if I told you. You couldn’t trust me, even if you wanted to.” “Which one is this now?” “The story of my life - Drake Lawrence” The woman let loose a bubbly laugh, reminding Drake of their days with his dad. It hadn’t been a heartbreaking death or a remorseful divorce. They’d simply decided it was best they live apart for a few years. Because of Drake. And his unusual ways. The woman walked in now, looking around at the bare room. The walls stripped of their ghoulish human-cum-wolfs posters that she’d loved. She trailed her fingers across the scraping paint, at the clotted red here and there. He’d called it art, but her husband had refused to accept it. She couldn’t continue to live with a man who doubted their son. “Did you find an apartment?” “Yes. And it is not an apartment, mom. I told you. It is a shared bungalow.” “Who’s sharing it with you? Have you met her?” “Yes, I spoke with him. Yesterday. The girl is his sister.” The woman smiled, hopeful. “You like her?” Drake’s head snapped up, reddening at the cheeks. “NO.” The woman nodded, still smiling. For a moment, Drake wondered if she could really do that thing she claimed. If so, could she see the picture he’d painted of the girl in red? His hands twitched and he buried them in the pile of clothes left to fold on his bed. Half an hour later, his suitcase packed and farewells bid to the only person who cared for him, he lugged the brown weight to a nearby cab. Leaning an arm on the hood, he rapped the window, awakening the sleeping driver. “Brisbane?” The man looked around, then at the clock flashing on his dashboard. 4:13 p.m. “Lunch break.” “Oh come on. I need to be there before sunset. I’ll pay you extra.” The driver waved a hand, motioning him to stack his luggage in the trunk. At 5:20, they still had a considerable distance to travel. Drake shifted uncomfortably in his seat. At this time of the month with sunset just around the corner, he didn’t know if could afford to delay it any further. Keeping pace with his raging thoughts, he decided it was best if he walked the remaining distance. “You can stop here. I’ll walk the rest of the way. Nice weather.” The driver looked incredulously at him, then back at the dashboard. Blowing out a smoke ring, he shook his head of shagged hair furiously. “You’ll reach. Before time.” Drake nodded absently, urging the driver to ‘press down on the accelerator’ every five minutes. By 6:23, Drake was heaving onto the cobblestone pavement, supporting himself with the edge of the open passenger door. If someone were to see him then, they would think he was just suffering a food poisoning. But his bloodied face and the still driver said it all. -x-x-x-x-x- Brisbane was every inch the suburb Drake had imagined. A walk around the neighborhood had confirmed his suspicions. There wasn’t another soul for miles and all houses next to his were either locked up or up for sale. He wondered what had driven him to choose this particular town, but when he did recall, he wished he hadn’t given it a thought. Walking back to the impressive mansion of a house, Drake wondered what it felt like to grow up with a sibling. His had run away and blamed it on him. He imagined growing up with one, learning to share ... he’d somehow always been efficient at sharing. A yellow post-it called his attention to the vast but scarcely furnished living area. He walked over to it, tugging it free from a nook between the wall and cabinet. ‘WELCOME HOME! Make yourself comfortable. I’m Ava and I assume you and Noah have spoken. That’s all I can fit on this note. The last room down the hall is yours. See you later!’ He smiled at the sloppy handwriting on the note, just until realization hit him. He remembered Noah’s smiling voice when he’d said Ava was excited to have someone living with them. With no further description, he’d assumed Ava was older, around his age. But the smiley at the note and the poor cursive characteristic of a kid made his blood run cold. He couldn’t be trusted around children. After an unnecessarily long shower, Drake systematically opened his bags, pulled out the heavy-duty metal chains, and sat down on the polished floorboards. Clasping one end around his wrist, he circled himself around the chain, locking the other end to the barred window. When he was sure he’d secured himself, he shifted around, finding a spot where the moonlight couldn’t penetrate through the drawn shutters. He rested his head against the hard wall, his mind unwillingly recollecting every time his father had done it for him. The eager noises woke him from his disturbed sleep. He sat up, wincing when something sharp pricked his back. Second later, he felt warmth seep down his back, but he didn’t feel the pain. No, he felt it, but his growing restlessness and desires overpowered everything. They were so close, he could smell them. "Noah, Nooooaahhh, he's here, he's here. Can I please go say hi? Just a hi. I won't disturb him." “A, he might be tired. He’s come a long way.” Before he could protest further, the young girl was already running down the hall, giggling excitedly as she called out for Drake. She knocked politely on the door, before banging it open happily and stepped inside, Noah right behind her. Drake looked up at them groggily, hoping his eyes conveyed his apologies. He didn’t want to do this. Noah gripped the little girl’s arm, who stared in fascination at the disoriented man in front of her. “I’m Ava. It’s so nice to meet you. Noah said you have a little sister, just like me.” Drake nodded, barely able to focus on her words. His mind flashed pictures of heavy chains strewn around a room, of a young girl giggling gleefully as Drake staggered to her. Him clutching her frail body in his arms. Yelling at himself to stop, but being unable to. The sudden terror on her face. Much like on Ava’s. “I did. Have a sister. But a very, very, bad man took her away. He bit her off and ate her raw.” Ava’s terrified face morphed, tears running uncontrollably down her face. She was hysteric, clawing with her fragile hands at his face, scraping skin off with her sharp nails. Drake shook her body, screaming in pain and frustration. His body twitched, his eyes flashing between amber and uncanny blue. Noah stared quietly from the corner of the room, where he’d retired to when Drake stared speaking, explaining her fate in detail to the little girl. He didn’t want to do this either, but unlike Drake, he could control himself. He would wait for the prey to come to him. It always came to him. He’d ensured that when he’d first bitten Drake, years ago, in their garage. -x-x-x-x-x- A week later - “Was she ours?” Noah looked up questioningly at Drake, who was staring at the checked tiles of the kidney-shaped pool. The water gave them an eerie, undulating look, making the water seem shallower than it was. “What do you mean?” Noah seemed to ponder over it for a second, then blinked at Drake. “Oh. Yeah. But not mom’s.” Drake nodded absently. When he looked up, Noah was smiling at him softly. Somehow, Drake knew what he was going to say and smiled back at him. “You know, mom always loved you best. Because you brought home the food.”


Dearest ‘fella’,  I am continually haunted by the ghost of you. No, my dear. You are not dead - not yet at the very least. You stand before me right now, clad in white. (So, why do I call you a ghost?)  Because, the memories we created, shared, and bore within our hearts, the very core of our soul. The memories that I kept locked away from sight, in the lacquer box that was passed down by my mother, to me, for you, when she ‘left’ for a better place that required no passport.  The memories that are - unquantifiable, unthinkable, worthless yet priceless, these memories that I store away like treasure, as though they were diamonds found among the ruff. Memories that I wish the next generation that I bear would be able to keep, these, moments, that hold immense value as intrinsic as it may be. Moments that I’d never be able to forget - at least, not in this lifetime.  These memories I carry like baggage for the rest of my life, in my fleeting heart - like a traveler that roams aimlessly, in search for something to fill the emptiness that is harbored within that red pulp of vitality. Sometimes they are as heavy as the weight of the entire universe - sometimes they are as light as the weight a new born baby carries in his heart as his first innocent breath kisses the very existence of the world. This, cruel, cruel, unfair world.  But for when they feel weightless, I feel uncontended. I simply fill the void within my soul with vices, cigarettes, alcoholism, gambling, the very vices that I swore to never touch when we made our promises to one another under the sapphire moonlight that fell ever so smoothly on your face, that effaced the very beauty of your opal skin that I long to brush my fingers against once again, as tenderly as an artist would be to his first and last painting. Ah, this memory once again, it haunts my very being.  Bittersweet.  Most of the time, these memories feel like a weight that even God - the creator of heaven and earth, the creator of you and I, cannot lift off my soul. I remember the times you would say that you’d be there for me, from dawn till dusk, from then till the end of our exhaustible life, or even from there till the ends of the world, “for you a thousand times over.” I remember the last time we talked as though it were the fondest memory of a lifetime that I have yet to live till the end, but yet a chord strikes within my heart - I know, I’ll never forget this memory, the memory that haunts my existence, the memory that eats me from within till I’m no longer a man but simply a being that eats, breathes, lives, and exists for no other purpose than to live till the day I leave this world for a ‘better’ place, where I would meet my mother once again, to give one last gasp of breath - indicating the end to the vitality of my pathetic life in which the shell of my body - the vessel of my soul carries. Before my soul goes towards the underworld, past Cerebus, into the gates of hell.  Dies Irae, dies illa.  I’m sorry; I got carried away. Back to the memory which I was talking about before my mind was engulfed in a series of completely, undesired but necessary emotions. The memory, the last chapter of our story as ‘one’, the last day I spoke to you in which you were still willing to receive a portion of my love with contempt and dejection, but refused to reciprocate even a percent of it. The day you left me.  It was a more than average, typical Saturday afternoon, we met at the café that we went to on our first date, the name? I forgot, a distant memory. When we sat down on that round mahogany table that separated the two of us by no more than a single meter, for some reason I could feel the distance that you were trying to put between you and me. Your eyes refused to meet mine, is it because mine was filled with the furious unquenchable passion of love that you could not match, or because you could not look into the eyes of the man whose life you were about to shatter with a few words. Under your breath, you muttered a series of incomprehensible words that to this day I still couldn’t make out (or I couldn’t bear to come terms with).  “... love you, ... working out.”  Then, you got up and left, leaving nothing behind but a man that was left void of emotions, emotions that would only come flooding in at once later in that dark night as he is accompanied not by you but a fine bottle of chardonnay. Oh, you left a 10-dollar bill behind as well, which was just enough to cover our usual order of 1 vanilla latte (decaf, no sugar) and 1 cappuccino (extra shot), (even though you didn’t even take a sip of yours) which would leave behind 20 cents of change. The 20  cents that I still keep today in that lacquer box of memories that I shared with you. The last memory of you and I.  Goodbye.  Today I came dressed in the suit that I intended to wear on the day of our marriage, I came with my best intentions for you. I don’t understand why you invited me. Was it because you wanted to spite me? To let me know that you were no longer mine? Or as an attempt to get my pathetic excuse of a human being to finally move on? - If so was it out of love? Whatever it is, seeing you smiling with him beside your side as though the entire cosmos stopped in their tracks just to watch you for that day, to watch you get wed into the arms of a man that wasn’t me. I realized that you are no longer within my reach, but more importantly making me realize how I was selfish to ever think that you were in my reach when we were thousands of miles apart. That weight was finally lifted off my chest, the weight of the memories that I held close to my heart in the foolish belief that we would one day be able to relive them once again. No longer will these memories haunt my soul, as watching you, that part of me has died in an attempt to become as pure as a drop of a dew on a morning in spring, to be innocent and to be void once again of any memories. The remaining of my life has become a new, blank, canvas. For in his arms, I saw that you were the happiest person in the world and I’m no longer bitter and sorrow, but happy for you.  The memories we made shall simply become a chapter in my story that I will hold dearly in my heart, but yet I shall choose to forget. For  memories distort the reality of life and prevents one from moving on towards a better future for themselves.  I’ve finally become a better person, by the memory of you.


It’s the middle of the night. About two in the morning. Flint is terrified to go to sleep. Apparently in the nearby cities, there’s been creatures causing power outages so that nobody will see them and then the next morning everybody would be slaughtered. Nobody knows who or what is doing this or what city they will attack next. Flint just wants to run away and move to a different city. Maybe even a different country! But he can’t afford that. He can barely afford his next meal. Let alone a whole move. So he sits. Waiting in his living room. Waiting for them to attack. He has his shotgun in his left hand, ready to shoot if they came into his house. It was his dads. He gave it to him for his 16 th birthday. It was the neat gift he could’ve asked for. He never thought that he’d have to use it. He’s terrified to shoot anybody or anything but if he has to, he will. Then all of a sudden he hears a boom. He goes to the window and looks outside but doesn’t see anything. Then his power shuts off. He runs downstairs into the cellar and locks the door. He keeps bearing crashing sounds, booming, screaming. He’s terrified but at the same time he wants to know what the hell is causing all of this. “Who or what is it!?!” He yells to himself. He grabs his hair and starts pulling at it, wanting to just rip it all out. That’s when he heard something in his cellar. He grips his gun, getting ready to shoot. The only problem is, he can’t see anything to be able to shoot. That’s when he grabs his phone and turns on the flash. That’s when it appeared. One of the creatures. It looked kind of like a giant ball with long skinny legs, two eyes, and a huge mouth with long sharp teeth with drool dripping out. It was just standing there, looking at him. Flint didn’t know what to do. He was in so much shock at what he was looking at. Then the creature pounced onto him. Making Flint drop his gun. He started throwing punches. One hit after the other but the creature wouldn’t budge. He kept pounding and pounding while the creature kept trying to bite at his neck. Flint tried to reach for his gun but to no avail. It was too far away. When the creature noticed he was trying to reach for his gun, it picked him up and started carrying him outside. Flint didn’t have his gun. Or his phone. He didn’t have anything to protect himself with. He was terrified. “What are they going to do with me?” “Are they going to take me to their hideout?” “Or are they going to kill me and leave me in the streets?” He kept asking himself more and more questions, all without any answers. That’s when he looked around. His city was on fire. Dead bodies just lying in the streets. He kept looking around, and that’s when he noticed the other creatures. There were so many. So so many. The creature carrying him stopped in the middle of the street, waiting on his colleagues. After the other creatures were done destroying the city, they all gathered around the one holding flint. They all started to communicate in a weird language. All the other creatures took a good look at flint and then suddenly jumped up and all of them started to run out of the city. Including the one that was holding flint. He started to pound the back of the creature holding him. He didn’t want to go with them. He didn’t. He wanted to stay. Or at least go to the police. Somewhere safe!! But he couldn’t get loose. The grip of this creature was undeniable. They ran for what felt like ages when they suddenly stopped. Flint looked around and noticed a huge dark cave. All of the creatures entered and placed Flint next to a fire. They were all staring at him. He ran up against a wall, sat down, and curled up into a ball. He was crying, saying he wanted to go home. That’s when the creature spoke. “Now now you skittish fool. You’re going to be perfectly fine. You just have to take your medicine. Now calm down. Here it is. Go on take your pill and everything will be just fine.” The creature said. But flint knocked the pill out of its hand. All of the creatures looked down at the pill, then looked at Flint. Full of rage. Their eyes turned scorching red. Their skin started to drip with sweat. They all gathered around him. All of them breathing heavily. So heavy, Flint thought he seen smoke come out of their noses. Then suddenly, the creatures gripped his legs and arms down tightly while another one shoved the pills in his mouth, forcing him to take them. Flint kept trying to fight them. Trying to shake them off one by one. But nothing worked more creatures joined in. Holding down his stomach and head. Shoving the pill in his mouth and holding his mouth shut until he swallowed. “Did you swallow?” They asked. He nodded his head. The creature holding his mouth, moved it hands and told him to open and stick out his tongue. So he did. That’s when they all let him go. He sat down next to the cave wall. Just staring at the creatures. “What pill was that?” Flint asks. “Your schizophrenia pill. You see we let you out about a week ago and when we let patients out, we have to check on them weekly to make sure they’re doing okay. Well, we went to check on you today and you were in your garage with a shotgun talking about how “they’re coming for you and your city” and talking about how scared you were. So now you’re back here with us. At the mental institute. Welcome back.” They finished talking. That’s when the monsters started to turn into regular people with with coats on and Flint was laying in his bed. Safe. He turned his back to his doctors and tears started to run down his face.


I remember now, years later, that bittersweet day when our lives changed irrevocably forever. A heads up would have been nice. But, oh no, Mr Ugly Duckling had to be all dramatic and incredibly sadistic. But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. This is the story of me and my family. I am called Sabrina Swan of the great Swan Family. My founding ancestor was of course Mr. Ugly Duckling who turned out to be a Swan. We were deemed to be special, a clan of Swans who grew up slowly like humans and attained ripe old ages like them...quite different from the other swans. So, we were something like royalty. Of course, I didn't think like that. Of course, that Silly Old Duffer probably did. Now, I had mixed feelings about this illustrious ancestor of mine. Granted, he thought that he was an ugly duck who actually turned out to be a beautiful Swan, but that did nothing to humble him or anything. In fact, quite the opposite was achieved. Oh the horror! I still remember those days, when That Old Boring Duck ( for to me a Duck he is and will always remain) called up his innumerable descendants as a flock to his miserable hideout. (I should have suspected something even then. His hideout! Somewhere to hide. How cunning he was!) He told us, day after day, the same old story of how beautiful he realised he was, after a long, long time. And how we would realise we were beautiful too, if we learn to look within ourselves and somesuch yarn similar to that. I would sit there, muttering curses and phrases like , 'you Ugly Old Bore!' To be frank, I realise now that he was a charismatic speaker. But therein ends his virtues. Bloody Rascal. I was named after the character Audrey Hepburn played in the movie, 'Sabrina'. Thanks to my dad, who was a house swan, and whose human 'dream girl' happened to be Audrey Hepburn. Hence, my elder sister Eliza, and me, Sabrina. My little brother was named Audrey. My father had realized by then that names could be unisex. I suppose if I had another sister, she would have been named 'Holly'. So, Eliza, Audrey and I grew up in that protected home environment with those occasional early dawn visits to That Old Bore when our humans slept. Why? Because that was tradition, said Mom. I knew she hated that Old Duffer as much as me. However, Eliza the Great and Good, loves tradition and history and all that - and I think that girl actually loved those visits. Audrey pretended to be sick at times to escape it. My dad needed his 'morning sleep' or so he said. (Are mornings for sleeping, Dad?) So Eliza, my mom and I visited That Old Bore most of the time because...I had nothing better to do. Sometimes my mom played hookey as well and I was stuck with the adoring Eliza. I did it out of a courtesy - no one can accuse me of being rude. It was on one such occasion that IT happened. The morning was bitterly cold and I was squatting halfheartedly with Eliza who was slightly bigger and slender and could fly longer distances than I. Meanwhile, That Old Bore droned on and on. (The same old story, how did he do it? Exactly the same words. I strongly suspect that if he had said one word extra, he feared that we would find out his nasty secret). I was dozing off as usual. That Old Bore likely wouldn't catch me - I was betting on my belief that he was half blind and well...he had a lot of his adoring and fawning descendants crowded around him. Like Eliza in the front row. Me, I was a perpetual middle bencher. Convenient to sleep if I wanted to and no clever back row targeting. I'm safe, I thought smugly. Wrong. Then I saw IT. At first, it seemed like there was a human standing, just a few yards away. In my half asleep state, I thought I had imagined it. I struggled to wake. Humans could be dangerous, and if a human with a gun sees a flock of swans like this one, it could be doubly dangerous. It WAS a human. And the human was looking straight at the flock. I grew uneasy. I was ready to sound the alarm. There was no need and basically, there was no time. Because, the next moment we were all changing into humans! It was a terrible sight to see. Necks and legs and feathers in all the wrong places. Yes, even That Old Bore got changed into an ugly old man with a head full of white hair and a strange mud coloured beard. Ew. I looked down at my hands. Yes. Hands. I screamed. I then saw Eliza, somehow, I recognized those eyes, yes, it was Eliza...running towards me. She was a fully grown up girl now, around 20 yrs, human age. "What the ***!", Eliza swore. Now, that was an improvement. My model sister swearing. There was again no time to register surprise or shock because That Old Bore had descended upon us and snarled, "You there, Sabrina! Here, now!" I scowled. Me? I didn't do this! Silly Old Man. It turned out that I did. It turned out that the Old Rascal was lying all along. He had been a human who got himself turned into a Duck and finally to a Swan. His whole romanticized story was a fake! (In retrospect, probably one part of his story was partly the truth. The swan or even the duck would have been a vast improvement from the Silly Old Duffer's human form. Ugh. He looked horrible.) Now, you may ask me, why we got turned back to humans at that exact moment. Because, surprise, surprise...Sabrina the Swan had turned 19 just then. And of course, as is usual in such cases, there was some obscure prophecy all along- about a descendant of the Silly Old Duffer that when she turns exactly 19 years of age , blah, blah, blah, then the curse would be reversed , blah blah , yada yada blah blah. Guess whose birthday it had to be that very day and that exact moment? My father always had fondly said I was born in the early dawn. Romantic, he sighed. Me, of course. How sweet. ( I could have killed that Silly Old Duffer right then. He called us to his little hole everyday to fill us with his lies? And now who's caught in between? Me! ) EPILOGUE: Human life turned out to be infinitely more complex than Swan life. But, well, atleast our family did well. The Great Eliza Dolittle lived upto to her namesake. She became a professor of linguistics. "Romantic", sighed my father again. I agreed. My Mom and Dad lived well into a grand old age. They kept swans! Strangely, we used the Silly Old Duffer's wealth. He had it stashed in various places. He was apparently once a good looking (I don't believe this part), wily (and nasty) man with supernatural skills- which he used against unsuspecting people. Turns out he was cursed for one his cunning little games that he played. And the last one he played it on, was...well, I'll tell you about that sometime later. Audrey surprised us all by settling down to a quiet life in the countryside with my wonderful sister-in-law and their lovely family. ( I personally thought he would become a bandit. No offense). Our house humans were astonished to find that their five beloved swans had just vanished into thin air one fine day. They survived the shock, though, and in due course, my life again became entwined with theirs. And what about me, you may ask? I - Sabrina- whose birth happened to change my whole family's life- that too is a story for later. I bid you adieu.


We are both 16. We are sitting in Math. I'm the awkward, nerdy, skinny, shy boy. You are the pretty, popular girl. The school bell rings. You walk out with your friends. You carelessly leave your book under your desk. I catch up with you and give you your book. You tell your friends to go ahead. You thank me. I blush. Silence. This is my chance. Ask her out! WannagotothemoviesonFriday? You get a confused look on your face. I feel a sharp pain in my chest. Why would you go to the movies with a nerd like me? I try to save some dignity and turn to walk away. Wait, you say. You didn't understand me. The nervousness has subsided. I speak more slowly now. Would you like to go to the movies on Friday? You smile. Of course you would. We turn to walk to our next class. Here comes some bullies. I will protect you. They all come at me. I fight them off and keep you safe. You thank me. You kiss me. You fall in love with me. We are getting married. We are having babies. We are living happily ever after. The teacher is calling my name. I snap awake. I look over at you. You are looking at me. The class is looking at me. X squared over Y minus seven. The teacher says correct. The school bell rings. You walk out with your friends. I look under your desk. You took all of your books.


Continued from:  “Was it worth it?” he thought. He had just given away his only means of escape to someone he had just met. “Classic. An attractive girl gives me five minutes of attention, and all reason goes out the window. What was I expecting to get out of this? A date? A kiss? What an idiot.” The dark blotches beyond the lamplight were inching closer. Should he run? He could see the edge of town. No, he would never outrun orcs. Physically, they were far superior to humans. If he called out for help, would anyone hear him? Could they reach him in time? Would that just provoke the orcs to attack sooner? He laughed at the hopelessness of his situation, then unholstered the dagger from his thigh. At least he could take a few with him. About thirty feet ahead, a massive orc stepped into the light of the next road lamp. Redge figured he must have been eight feet tall and built of muscle. He wore nothing but the standard orcish loin cloth. Nearly all of his exposed skin was covered in scars and tattoos. “Must be someone important,” Redge thought to himself. “Where’s da girl? Is no fun witout ‘er,” the orc said as he crossed his huge arms. “Gone. I can’t bring her back. Looks like you’re out of luck.” “Guess yuh’ll jus’ ‘ave ta squirm ‘nuff fur da both of ya, eh?” he said as laughter came from the darkness. A flash of inspiration lit up Redge’s mind. This guy was some kind of leader. Too young to be an elder, but maybe one of their sons. If Redge challenged him to single combat, he would be obliged to accept or lose face in front of his followers. In a one-on-one fight, he at least stood some chance of survival. He just had to last long enough for help to arrive. Surely Rose would have alerted the town guard by now. “How many orcs does it take to kill a human?” Redge taunted, “By the looks of it, I’d say about twenty orcs to one human. Sound right to you?” “Jus’ one,” the big orc said with a grin. He bent down to pick something up. Redge activated his dagger which caused it to emit a dim purple light. What started as a low hum rose to a high-pitch whine. The blade was vibrating with increasing frequency. This drastically increased its cutting power, but the dagger only had enough stored magical energy to maintain this effect for two to three minutes. The orc stood back up so Redge could see what was in his hand. It was a rock, about the size of a human fist. Again, laughter came from the darkness beyond the lamplight. The orc wound his arm back and launched the rock forward with incredible speed. Redge couldn’t consciously perceive the projectile, but his arms reflexively moved to protect his face. The rock smashed into his forearms, breaking bone and knocking him backwards onto the ground. The dagger flew out of his hand and landed several feet behind him. He lay there dazed and semi-conscious, unable to comprehend what had just happened. Looking up at the stars, he could hear footsteps getting louder. They were coming. This was the end, he thought. To his right, an orc howled in pain. The footsteps stopped, and the howling abruptly gave way to gurgling. A scuffle broke out. Redge could hear the chopping of flesh and more howling. He was too weak to lift his head. The orc leader let out an ear-splitting warcy, and Redge heard footsteps charging past him toward the source of disturbance. A loud blast lit up the sky, and he felt a strong, hot gust of wind from his right. Finally he heard multiple footsteps running away and then nothing. Redge closed his eyes. The pain in his arms was getting sharper, almost unbearable. When he opened them up again, he caught a glimpse of a man in a helmet staggering past. Draped over his shoulders were the tattered remnants of a smoldering cloak. What remained of his armor was modern, mostly leather with a few strategically placed steel inserts. But his helmet was an antique, once part of a set of plate armor. Plate armor had been phased out of non-ceremonial use hundreds of years ago. The visor, with its narrow slits, concealed his face. Various metal components of his armor were still faintly glowing with heat. He stopped for a moment, looked down at Redge, and then staggered on. Not long after, Redge fell unconscious.


It was December 2066. It was so terribly cold. Snow was falling, and it was almost dark. I was 14 years old and my mother was driving me to my father’s house in rural Wisconsin, outside of Madison. There was no way I was going to spend the obligatory Gift Exchange and New Year’s holidays with him again. Last year instead of getting me presents, he smashed my guitar against the fireplace then put the mangled remains of it as well as the notebook where I kept my musical scribblings into the burning hearth. “That’s about as good a use as you’re going to get of those things, Abbey Zhang,” he had said. “No offspring of mine is going to waste his life composing songs about high school angst and pubescent hormonal fixations. You’re better off becoming a raiser of cage-free chickens, like your old man. There’s dignity in that profession. ‘Early to rise, to pluck from the dawn hens their golden-yolk prize,’ was your grandfather’s favorite refrain. It should become yours.” I couldn’t bear the thought of spending another two weeks on my dad's pasture chicken ranch, waking up before the light of day, feeding hens and harvesting their eggs, while the man who wanted to kill my adolescent musical dreams loomed over my shoulder. So, as I was sitting in the passenger seat of my mother’s car and as she drove at approximately fifty miles an hour on a two-lane highway in the waning hours of that cold, snowy day, I forcibly took hold of the steering wheel and turned it with all my might to her left. The hydrogen-fuel two-seater crossed the lane into opposing traffic and we crashed head-on into an older model electric vehicle, the kind that were still common when China had not yet occupied the country for peace-keeping purposes. My relationship to mother wasn’t ideal either. Although she never complained about my music, she did complain about my friends and my conduct at school. She was a drinker, and sometimes the guys she’d bring over from her nights in the town’s bars would get rough with her. Some nights she’d become hysterical and ask what she had done to deserve such an ungrateful, troublesome son and such a miserable life, more generally. Although the Chinese were real law and order types, even they couldn’t control the kind of trouble that found a lonely woman who was also a single mother and given to drink. On more than one occasion, after a night at the drinking holes, she’d told me how I, Abbey James Zhang, wasn’t really her son, that I had been born of her loins, but that I wasn’t her flesh and blood. Even though I didn’t bear much of a resemblance to either of my parents, I didn’t know what she meant. I would only find out when my face finally began to take on the adult contours of Morris James, the grind music star clone whose genome I possessed. It was a freezing December, but I still got out of the car and started tossing money out onto the road. Money was only really used by people involved in the underground economies: low lives and recently arrived immigrants. The low lives used cash because they didn’t want to leave trails of digital currency linking them to suspect citizens known to sell drugs and outlawed weapons. Recently arrived immigrants who hadn’t received the government’s newly nationalized banking app also made use of the aging low-density polyethylene bills that had stopped being produced two decades ago, after the Chinese occupation. I had money because I used to help my high school buddy, Hank, peddle black market synthetic drugs like LSD, MDMA and ketamine. The Chinese had really cracked down on sales and use of illegal drugs, and I risked getting thrown into juvenile reeducation camp until my 18 th birthday for helping Hank, but I used the money to buy stuff at garage sales in the Latino barrios where some residents still didn’t possess means for electronic transfers. One of the things I had bought was the guitar my dad had smashed and burned. While I tossed plasticized bill after plasticized bill of the multi-hued hundred-dollar denomination currency, printed with the face of Barack Obama, onto the highway, I loudly shouted the lyrics of “Heathens” a song by one of my favorite millennial bands, 21 Pilots that had been covered by All, a band from the 2050s. It was one of the songs that hadn’t been banned by the Chinese who had imposed decency laws regulating cultural production. All music that made explicit mention of sex, violence or drugs had gotten the governmental axe. A concerned passerby driving a Great Wall hydrogen fuel coupe slowed to a crawl, rolled down his window, asked me what I was doing, and when I just kept on singing, he stopped and started picking up the old currency. Another passerby must’ve called the police, because not five minutes after I had caused the accident, a Madison Community Surveillance hydrogen hovercraft landed at the accident site. The Community Surveillance monitors found my mother unconscious in the driver's seat. Our airbags hadn't deployed and she had passed out upon impact with the steering wheel. I told the monitors that she was abused by a boyfriend and that if they looked for evidence of abuse on her body, they would find it. While the bystanders who had stopped to help looked on and reported what they had seen, I contemplated my options: either being taken to my father’s where I would be subjected to his sermonizing and paternal cruelties, or doing something rash to avoid transport to his torturous poultry-raising dominion. I made a lunge for one of the monitors. They quickly subdued me and after my mother had come to, she tearfully told the monitors that I wasn’t her son, that all they need to do was run a DNA scan to discover that the little demon didn’t belong to her. The monitors took me to a behavioral crisis unit for adolescents. After I had been processed by the Madison Youth Behavioral Health Authority and given a DNA scan, I was shown to my room. There I met Dwindle, a lanky seventeen-year-old who told me he had been brought to the crisis unit after his parents had called the Community Surveillance Agency and told them that their son, who neither regularly took his meds for depression nor attended state-mandated therapy for anti-social personality disorder, had absconded. Dwindle was picked up by the monitors after being caught shoplifting in a gritty part of town. As we exchanged small talk typical of newly acquainted behaviorally-troubled teens, he told me that he’d been in and out of behavioral crisis wards since the age of twelve. Shortly after we had given each other a glimpse of our dysfunctional lives, Dwindle tossed a small bundle of pills, tightly wrapped in cellophane onto my bed. “What’s this?” I asked. “Smell it,” he said. The nugget-sized package smelled of feces. “Smells like shit,” I said. “Yeah, that’s because I keistered it when I was changing out of my street clothes and into the crisis unit uniform.” By “keistered,” which was pronounced like “key” and “stirred,” he meant he had surreptitiously hidden it in his anal cavity so that crisis unit staff wouldn’t confiscate the contraband. “It might smell like shit, but that right there is the shit that’s going to let me and you to get our kicks while we’re locked up in this hell-hole.” The purple gelatinous pills didn’t look like any of the kind I had helped my high school black marketeer friend, Hank, peddle at high school and on street corners. “It doesn’t look like Molly,” I said. “Molly’s for idiots looking to experience love artificially,” said Dwindle. “We live in times when the likes of me and you are an endangered race.” He was referring to the fact that combined nuclear war in Europe and the epidemic spread of rapaxia, a virulent and extremely deadly disease that affected people of Northern European descent, had decimated light complected populations on the planet. No one was sure if rapaxia had evolved on its own or developed in a biological weapons lab. I was only partially white: my maternal grandfather was German and my paternal grandmother was Irish. Both my parents were half-Chinese, I wasn’t subject to rapaxia’s ravages, only people with red or blonde hair and blue or green eyes were, but I nevertheless harbored a fear that I could fall victim to its ethnocidal contagiousness. “Love is for losers," declared Dwindle. "That substance you hold in your mortal hand is Moxy, and Moxy’s gonna change your life. It’s gonna make you want to kill something. It’s gonna make you see things, make you hear voices that’ll reveal the true meaning of your life. It’ll help you understand who the tormented soul that aches for meaning underneath your skin really is.” Sure enough, seconds after we took the Moxy, I felt a surge of adrenalin that made me feel like I either wanted to fight or break something. Dwindle started howling and encouraged me to do the same. The loud racket we made seemed to quell the violent urgings the drug elicited, but Youth Behavioral Health staff intervened. Both Dwindle and I attacked the intervening psychiatric technicians. They found the remaining Moxy, put Dwindle on another unit and me in restraints in a side room. While fastened with rubberized straps to the side room’s metal-frame bed, the drug-induced adrenalin rush died out and the hallucinogenic effects kicked in. The buzzing of the fluorescent lights overhead began to grow louder until they sounded like the deafening hum of a nuclear power station. The subdued hiss of the climate control vent on the ceiling began to sound like a titanic respiratory system inhaling then exhaling. On the mattress next to my head, a lone ant, on some programmed mission to benefit its colony, unsteadily climbed onto my arm. I found its genetically-coded determination comforting, and when I focused on it, the distorted cacophony of the lights and vent died down. As I followed the ant with my Moxy-influenced eyes, it began morphing: first into a larger thumb-sized ant, then a rhinoceros beetle, a tweeting canary, a belching blue-bellied lizard, a roaring golden mouse, and on up evolutionary changes in the taxonomic chain of being until it became a chattering capuchin monkey, then a Jiu wӗihύ, a nine-tailed, white spirit fox that my maternal grandmother, Jing, had told me about when I was younger. My grandmother’s name in Chinese meant “quiet,” which was quite ironic, since she was given to excessive chatting about topics that usually never captured my attention for more than a moment or two. Grandma Jing’s talks of the nine-tailed fox provided a distracting alternative to the monologues she would often give about her Han, or pure-blood, genealogy, about the days of the Chinese peace-keeping force’s occupation, and the need for Chinese to conduct themselves like exemplary global citizens, reflective of our nation’s recently established manifest destiny. She was fond of telling me, “Abbey, you must stop frowning all the time. Bad moods are contagious,” words that now this nine-tailed fox repeated to me as it sat on my chest and gently rose and fell to my breath. “Grandma?” I asked the fox. “No, I’m not Jing, Mr. Abbey Dour--walker on the Abbey Road, seeker of the Abbey door--but, Jiu Wӗihύ, here to show you the true way-hu,” said the fox with a sharp-toothed smile, it’s nine tails flickering. “A Jiu wӗihύ, here to show me the true way-what?” I queried, feeling both confused and entertained by the hallucination that seemed straight out of Alice in Wonderland, a book my mother had read to me when I was in third grade. “Way-hu, as in ‘path’ and ‘hu,’ meaning ‘to call,’ ‘to cry,’ ‘to shout,‘ and ‘to breathe out,’ in two of your grandparents’ native Mandarin, Mr. Abbey Zhang, Sir Abbey Tao. I’m here to say nĭ hăo and reveal your true name. I am the cry of your past, that is also the echo of your future.” I knew nĭ hăo meant “hello” and that the Mandarin, “hu” translated into the English “to yell.” But the word had additional significance for me. My freshman year, after Hank had turned me onto the rock music his Wisconsin-born grandfather had listened to, I had turned him onto the Hu, a turn of the millennium Mongolian folk-metal band that still had a large following amongst Asians of many nationalities. Grandma Jing couldn’t stand when I would listen to the Hu. She called them, “bard-barian descendants of Genghis Khan,” and when she did I would reply with an “Amen,” and a “mother may, I?” before turning the volume of the Bluetooth speaker up even louder. I could hear the Hu’s version of Metallica’s twentieth century “Sad but True” blare from the intercom speaker in the isolation room, which I’m sure the nurse’s station wasn’t playing for the patients, but then the growly vocals started coming from the nine-tailed fox’s mouth. “I’m here to tell you to sing,” the fox said in Mongolian, which even though I couldn’t understand, I nevertheless understood due to the effects of the Moxy. “No matter what your father, the guitar smasher and burner, the dream killer, tells you, you’re no bringer of evil. You’re a derelict bringer of hope, you’re a singer.” “How can I ever be singer? Most of the time I wish I didn’t even exist,” I said to the fox. It put its snout against my nose, winked one eye, then the other, then opened both eyes wide. “Eight of my tails represent a time you will cheat death,” said the fox, and after saying this, it ate one of its fluffy tails. “You’ve already cheated death once, last summer when your mother took you to California and you dared the turbulent commotion of the Pacific Ocean despite the red flag warnings. You barely had the strength to swim back to shore. I will keep you safe until my tails run out. Until then, we must remain perfect strangers.” I managed to ask the fox what my real name was. He answered, “My time here is up for now, but you’ll find out soon enough.” As I tried to get the fox to answer additional questions, it started to chew at my restraints. With a brilliant lightning flash that momentarily blinded me and a rumble of thunder that faded onto my sobering eardrums, the effects of the Moxy wore off, and my now-sober eyes could see that a tall psychiatric technician with a cleanly shaven head, full, graying beard, and blue eyes was unfastening the tethers that tied me to the bed. Behind him an attractive Asian woman with a white physician’s coat, a clip board, and a brass name tag that read “Dr. Bennet,” said “Abbey Zhang, there is someone important on a holophone who wants to meet you.” Holophones, that used hologram technology formerly confined to a few 20 th century science fiction films, had been introduced three decades ago and had made traditional teleconferencing obsolete. I had an unexpected, lumpy-throated hope the person projected by the holophone was going to be my father. Dr. Bennet, who must’ve been married to a white man to have a name like that, walked me to her office, where the hologram of a dark-eyed, honey-skinned man with a pencil mustache sat with his legs crossed and the fingers of his hands clasped over his uppermost knee. “Hello youngster, my name is Charles,” said the man as he reached out an open hand for me to shake. I obliged and shook it, feeling the still unrefined plasma-hologram technology’s capacity for limited tactility. “Where are my parents?” I asked the Singh-o-gram. “Your mother is recovering from the accident. The Community Surveillance monitors have deemed she is no longer fit to care for you. Your father demands I deliver you to his pasture chicken ranch. But those facts are neither here nor there. To be more exact about my name, it is Charles Ravi Singh,” said the hologram, “I’m an agent for a powerful media corporation, and I am also now your legal custodian.” The hologram took a corporate identification and electronic fund transfer card from his suit’s breast pocket and held it for me to see. I read his name on it as well as the name of 21 st Century American Entertainments, a firm that possessed the rights to many of the more popular films, music and books of the 20 th century. They also owned the copyrights to most celebrity clones. “You were given the name Abbey Zhang at birth, but that is not your true name. While your mother Alice birthed you, neither she nor your father, Lee, are genetically related to you. You are a genomic replica of the grind music star Morris James, and whether you like it or not, your genome, and therefore, your life and death, belong to the 21st Century American Entertainments corporation.” The last James clone had committed suicide 49 days before my birthday. I was now fourteen, and although I know I didn’t bear much a resemblance to either of my parents, I didn’t think I bore much of a resemblance to James until the moment Singh mentioned I was the replicant of the grind star. As Charles Ravi Singh turned to speak to Dr. Bennet about my impending release, memories of my barely adolescent life flashed before my eyes, of my parents’ dysfunctional ways, of my only high school friend, Hank, and his pills, of my grandmother complaining about the Hu, of my foolhardy swim in Malibu Beach, of the white, nine-tailed Jiu wӗihύ, whose words had made me stop wishing for death. Before I once again started listening to the conversation between Dr. Bennet and my new legal guardian, I wondered about what my other seven brushes with death would look and feel like.


Crimson blood dripped down into the ancient apartment stairwell. I cursed and put my finger in my mouth, sucking on the fresh cut. I had cut it on a piece of upturned metal on the railing. The whole damn apartment was falling apart; last week my shower head had fallen off. I shook my head and continued descending on the staircase, the metal groaning with each step. "Morning princess," a voice said from behind me. I whipped around to face Kane, my neighbor. I scowled and removed my finger from my mouth, wiping it on my sweater casually. "Morning asshole," I crooned. Kane grinned and swept his dark hair back. "Did you hear there's a party at Jer's place tonight? It's supposed to be quite the rager," he said while wiggling his brows. I rolled my eyes, not stopping to wait for him. Kane continued walking down the steps behind me. "You should come with me, May," he suggested. I paused and turned around. Two steps above me, he was towering over me. I was average height, but he was already tall. The stairs made him a giant. I took a couple steps up so that I was closer to his height. "Yeah?" I said casually. Kane smirked. I shrugged. "Maybe. Now I have to get to work," I said as I began walking again. This time Kane continued in step beside me. "Got somewhere to be?" I inquired. He was beginning to annoy me now. Kane smirked and elbowed me playfully. "Nah, I just enjoy your company so much. You do have a way with people," he said sarcastically. I jabbed him in the stomach and he let out an "oof". That made me laugh. "That's what I get for being friendly?! Well, I don't want to see what happens if I'm rude," he breathed. I sped up in step until finally, I got to the first floor. "You have a good day," I said as I opened the front door to the building. Kane smiled goofily. "I'll see you at the party." I did not respond as I walked outside. The sounds of people chatting and car engines rumbling greeted me. I coughed on the fumes of a smoker standing outside the building and shot him a dirty look. I was late for work, but it did not matter much. My boss never noticed when I ditched, and I still got a meager pay check at the end of each month. It was a pretty simple way to make enough money to live in the city. It was better than living in the suburbs, where nothing much ever happened. For my whole life, I had felt like there was something waiting for me, something that would take me far away. The city was calling my name, so I answered. Now here I was, earning minimum wage at a pizza shop, living in a crappy apartment. My day was fairy simple. I worked the ovens, putting the pizzas in and pulling them out when they were ready. When my shift was over, I went home and flopped down on the bed. The springs squeaked under the weight of my body. I sighed and glanced at my dresser, which was overflowing with clothes. Maybe a party would be nice to take the edge off? It was free booze, which was better than nothing. A small part of me whispered something else, a name, but I ignored it. Yet... Kane would be there. Although he drove me crazy, there was something about him that made me feel... happy? no, that was not the word. I guess the only way to describe it was that I actually had fun when he was around. So I got up from bed and put on my favorite cocktail dress. It was way too fancy for an apartment rager, but I did not care. If I was going to show up somewhere, I would show up looking fabulous. The navy dress cut off just above my knees and had a mesh cutouts on the sides. I tied the halter around my neck and then slipped into a pair of converse. I said I wanted to look fabulous, but I was not about to walk down all those steps in heels. I picked up a lipstick tube and painted my lips a bright red. Perfect. The minute I walked into the apartment, I regretted coming. It smelled like vomit and old beer. Couples were sprawled out on couches, groping each-other and drinking themselves silly. Before I had the chance to turn right back around out the door, Kane pulled me inside and handed me a cup of beer. "This sucks," I whispered. Kane nodded. "I know right. But it's free beer!" he exclaimed. I laughed and chugged the beer. Kane cheered my name as I finished it, wiping my mouth. "What a woman," he murmured. I grinned. Kane lifted his cup and then took a deep sip. I laughed and began pulling him towards a table with bottles and cups scattered all over it. I knocked back a bottle of god knows what. Kane howled with laughter and put a hand on my shoulder. I shook him off and stopped abruptly. His touch on my shoulder felt off. It was as if his fingers against my bare shoulder were electric. Before the better part of me could stop myself, I was pulling him against me. I wrapped my arms around his neck end brought my lips up to his. He stood there stiffly, shocked. So I pulled away and stepped back. "I-I... I shouldn't have done that. I'm going home asshole," I snapped. Kane just stared at me, bewildered. I did not look back as I ran out of the apartment. The next day, I took the day off to walk around the city. It was so... grey. The skies were gray, the buildings were grey, and the street was grey. Even some of the people were grey. I passed a hotdog cart and glimpsed a large man trying to convince tourists that his hotdogs were New York's best. I began crossing a crosswalk but stopped in the middle. People passed me, ignoring me completely. I had to do something. It bothered me that my life was just... uneventful. So I turned around, making my way back to the apartment. It was as if something had just clicked. He had been right in front of me the entire time. Kane opened the door and grinned. I pushed through the doorway and kissed him. This time, he seemed less surprised. His hands wrapped around my waist. I pulled away just long enough to say, "this doesn't mean I like you, asshole." He laughed against my lips and that sound had me kissing him even harder. When I finally pulled away, we were both breathless. Kane had a smug look on his face, so I rolled my eyes. "So, you don't hate me after all?" he asked. I crossed my arms. "Maybe." For the next few weeks, I spent a lot of time with Kane. We even went out to dinner one night. He took me to a nice Italian place and bought me dinner, all the romantic stuff. He even bought me flowers when Valentine’s day came around. Things were truly starting to brighten up. The city seemed brighter too, with colorful billboards and happy-looking people. Maybe they had been there the whole time, but I was just too blinded by my own slump that I never noticed. All that brightness turned into dread on one Sunday afternoon. I was humming to myself in the bathroom when it struck me. I scrambled to check the calendar on my phone. I gasped quietly and quickly got dressed. I ran down the street to the pharmacy and bought what I needed, not even pausing to think. Then I was at Kane’s doorstep, crying silently. He tucked me into his chest and brushed my hair back, shushing me gently. Hand shaking, I held up what I had bought at the pharmacy. He took it with his free hand and examined it. Without a word, he pulled me inside and set me down on the couch. “I-I don’t know how this happened,” I sobbed. Kane offered one of his smirks. “I think you do,” he said. I scowled at him. “This isn’t time for joking, Kane. I could be...” I drifted off and sunk deep into the cushions. “Hey, it’s ok. It’s going to be fine. Just... head on into the bathroom, we will find out the situation, and then we will take it from there. It’s all going to be fine,” he explained. I nodded and got up from the couch. I took his hand and we went into the bathroom to find out if this was really happening. I prayed to myself that it was not. I was too young to be a mother. I had plans! Plans that I had not yet acted upon, but I was going to. A baby would complicate everything. It would ruin everything. As we waited for the test, Kane’s foot tapped on the tile anxiously. He had never told me what his plans were, but I doubted they included a baby. Kane reached over the counter to pick up the test. He stared at it intently. “Well? What is it?” I asked. Kane flipped it around, displaying a large negative sign. I exhaled. Kane was still silent and emotionless. I smiled brightly at him and gave him a tight hug. “Thank god,” I sighed. Kane looked at me with his brown eyes narrowed. “Would being pregnant with my baby have been the worst thing imaginable?” he asked. I thought about that for a moment. Then I told him the truth. “It’s not time. I have so much ahead of me... For a year I’ve been living in this city. I came here because it was supposed to be the city of opportunity. Yet I’ve done nothing but mope around. I think... Kane, I think this made me realize something,” I explained. Kane raised an eyebrow. I smiled sadly. “And that is?” “I need to do things. I need to work hard, at a real job, and I need to motivate myself... I hope you understand, but I don’t think I can do that with you,” I said softly. Kane looked hurt for a second, but then he nodded in understanding. “I'm going to miss you, May. If you ever need me... I’m just a few floors below you,” he said. I knew he meant it. If I came running to him for help a week from now, he would help me. That was the kind of person Kane was... And I had not seen it for months of living here. Yet when I finally had, this is how it ended: a broken relationship. But I was not broken. In fact, I felt fixed . I smiled to myself as I made my way out the door and stepped into the city. The lights were bright and people were laughing. The sky was blue with big white clouds drifting by. I glanced to my right and there was a huge billboard down the street. In big black letters, it read “It Starts Today”. I may have been crazy from an emotional day, but I began walking towards that billboard. I could have sworn it was calling my name.


The feeling of a shift in gravitational pull is something Onii’kvi will never fully get over. Stepping out of his pod, feeling his body and organs shift, readjust to the new redistribution the atmosphere is forcing upon him, he nearly stumbles. Taking a look around for his bearings doesn’t work either because even the immediate vicinity around the ship, the ground beneath Onii’kvi’s boots, it’s all virtually desolate. Black. Empty. Of course, it isn’t actually but it definitely feels that way. The density of the air, the foliage around him, and the planet’s actual distance from any type of sun or star means that nights on the surface compare to the empty voids of black holes. [How am I supposed to navigate the ground if I can’t even use my flashlight, ‘cap?] Onii leans against the ship and looks down at the gauntlet on his arm, trying to activate the lights on his suit, a headlamp, something to give him the advantage of sight. [I’m basically Kaskan food if I don’t have some kind of light.] {Ninety clicks to the signal ping, Oni.} Sai’urn’s voice comes through on the communications channel. {Use the radar, it’s the strongest light source you’re going to get. Besides, Kaskan hunt in the mountains, we’re about fifty-thousand clicks from their normal hunting grounds. Just walk towards the ping on radar, I’m meeting you there.} For the first fifteen or so minutes of walking in complete darkness, staring at his radar hoping and praying nothing sees him at a snack, Oni faintly wishes Sai’urn were beside him already. At least then he wouldn’t be navigating this void of a jungle alone and underpreppared. After those fifteen minutes pass, and Oni begins tripping over small things-a tree root popping up from the ground, a large flower, a rock-he’s suddenly grateful for the silent, lonely treck. Gods know the Captain wouldn’t ever let him live it down if he’d have seen it happen. After another ten minutes, the sound of his own thoughts begins to gnaw away at Oni’s sanity. [Cap, you there?] {Mmm-hm. Something wrong?} [Erm, not really... can I ask, how long have you been stationed on IRIS?] {Longer than you’ve been a pilot, or in school for it, I can promise you that.} [So... longer than six years?] {I’ve been stationed with IRIS for about ten years. Before that I jumped ship pretty often, working on some of the most physically-demanding stations we have in the GDC doing either odd-jobs or acting as extra muscle for assignments.} [Gods... Wait, so you went to Caelestis, then went into freelance work?] {Exactly. I was trying to figure out if I’d rather be stationed somewhere, or if I was ready to take on the throne, work with the Council on more civic matters, attend meetings and such.} [And?] {Well, obviously I didn’t fit in with the Council staff quite yet, nor did I think a good use of my time was to be in court settling trade agreements. I was your age, I’d just turned twenty-three, there was no way I’d sit in a court for the rest of my life, only seeing the galaxy for Royal Court business. It just... it’s not me, yet.} [I think I can understand that... not the royal council stuff but, wanting to see the galaxy on your own terms. Before I moved to Holarus everyone kept telling me it wouldn’t work out, that there was no way I’d survive the school, graduate, become any kind of a pilot or even a technician.] {Well, I think it’s safe to say that the people in your home world don’t know what they’re talking about. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever met a graduate more eager to get out and help in every sense of the word than you, Oni. You’re just so genuine in your interest in the technology, the way things work on the ship and in the world... honestly I admire it.} [Sheesh, that... really means a lot, Sai, thank you.] A comfortable silence envelopes the pair as they walk their respective paths. It honestly felt like neither one could stand to break up their peaceful moment. Eventually, though... [I’m coming up on the ship, Cap’. Three clicks out.] {Four for me, I’m walking south now, be with you in a sec.} As they come upon the ship on radar, barely visible blinking lights shine in the pitch blackness suffocating them. Oni draws his gun instinctively, catching a shimmering glare of Sai’s rifle out of the corner of his eye as the pair begin their approach. [It’s just a personal pod?] Onii’kvi observes, circling the foreign ship and the feeling of its impact on the ground, muted by his thick boot but identifiable nonetheless. [Scratch that, it’s... bigger. Lighter. ‘Left a crater in the ground on impact. Even a crash landing would’ve tore a personal pod to shreds with Ac’ai’s force of gravity.] Oni can just barely see an outline of Sai’s suit as he circles the pod the opposite direction, and lowers his rifle slightly. On the opposite side of the ship he reaches out, brushes a gloved hand over an insignia on the outside, something Oni almost recognizes. Looks... familiar, but not enough to strike a response out of him. Sai looks like he’s seen a ghost, though. [Cap...?] No response. Oni lowers his gun completely and waves his hand in front of Sai, then turns on his flashlight to wave that instead upon reaslizing his hand wouldn’t be seen from that distance. Sai doesn’t even look up. [Captain Ne’la’c? What is it?] {Get ahold of IRIS. Now. } “That’s all he said? He didn’t give you any other information? Did you recognise the insignia he was looking at or anything at all?” Nox all but flails his arms in frustration, walking beside Oni through IRIS’s halls. Oni throws his hands up and shrugs exaggeratedly. “Yup! That’s all I got! Nothing! First he stands there-” The pair freeze as a higher ranked officer walks by in a group of three, looking like they’re rushing towards something. It was always something. Oni quiets down before continuing with the recap. “ First he stands there like he’s seen a ghost or a note telling him the world is going to end if he gives me any information, and then he’s telling me to get ahold of IRIS, get back to my pod. ” Nox grabs Oni by the collar of his hoodie and yanks him into an empty study room nearby. “And you did it ? No questions asked?! What the fuck, Oni!” The other boy hisses, slapping his arm in offense. “Listen it wasn’t like I was going to flat-out ignore a direct order , Nox!” Oni peeks his head out to look both ways and make sure they weren’t spotted and/or followed by another crew member or worse--an officer. “I wanted him to give me answers too, hell I was the only one he brought with him to even check it out! I deserved to know! I still deserve to know, but I wasn’t about to disobey him directly. I hauled ass to my pod, contacted IRIS, and the next thing I know they’re telling me that this stays between Cap’ and I and to stay on IRIS for the next few days. No BLIPs to visit my dad, no breathing a word about ever being on Ac’ai in the first place!” Oni exhales deeply, like a weight is lifted off his chest. He all but collapses against the wall, sliding down to sit on the floor against it, his knees pulled to his chest. Nox copies him, sitting beside him with his head on the other’s shoulder. The both sigh in unison. “So... what are you going to do? If they told you no BLIP’s, don’t breathe a word... shit, that has to be some heavy stuff, right? You got pulled into some serious shit... and you had the Captain right there with you.” Nox reaches for Oni’s hand, interlacing their fingers together and offering a gentle squeeze. Oni shrugs, resting his head against Nox’s in return. “I... have no idea what I’m going to do, or what’s going to happen. I saw them taking a body to medical, or a body bag at least, and the ship was going downstairs to labs.” “They’re probably running tests. Maybe the Captain saw it was a biohazard or something, wanted to get it tested as soon as possible?” Oni snorts softly, “If it was just a biohazard, they would have told me that. We’ve dealt with a hundred of those since we got stationed, Nox... This just felt different. Heavier.” For a few minutes the pair sit against the wall in the dark room, hiding from the thoughts of what could come of this assignment, what possibly could have scared their fearless leader so badly to immediately get them out of the area and essentially lock Onii’kvi on board the space station. Footsteps approach from the South Wing hallway, the officers’ barracks. Oni and Nox quickly open the door a bit more and flick on the light, taking a seat at one of the tables so that they’d be seen casually ‘talking’ instead of sitting weirdly in the dark as they had been. Nox buries his nose in a magazine left on the table: The Art of Mecha-Link and BLIPs - Is Holarus The Answer? Thankfully for Nox he’s read the article fifty times and picks the longest page to skim. Oni pulls out his phone and props it up with a video against one of the potted plants in the middle of the table. A quick glance at the officers as they pass is all Onii’kvi needs. Sai’urn, Cayde, and Nal’eid. Shit. Oni clears his throat and stands, stuffing his phone in his hoodie pocket. “Hey, I’m going to head to the showers, try and clear my head a little bit... you’ll swing by later, right?” His eyes flick to the door, then back to Nox not-so-subtly faking his magazine interest. Nox glances up and nods, tucking the reading material back into the rack he hastily yanked it from. “‘Course, I’ll be ‘round in a few hours. Text me and I’ll head down, okay?” He tries to clean the room up a little bit to look busy as Oni leaves, staggering their exits to look less suspicious for any passers-by. With Nox out of the equation for the moment, Oni glances down either hallway and heads up the North Wing, towards the communications room where he saw the officers heading a few minutes earlier. With enough luck he sees Cayde’s grey tail enter the room before the door shuts. At least with it being so late in the night, there aren’t many people roaming the halls, most of them confined to their own rooms for the night or in the common areas on another floor. The only things on this floor besides the officer’s barracks and the comms rooms were a few bathrooms and some restricted-access rooms for the higher-ranking pilots to use for training. With the space around him checked out and clear, Onii’kvi stands outside the locked door for a moment, trying to listen through it and see if it was about their mystery distress call they’d intercepted. After a few minutes of unintelligible mumblings through the metal door, Oni pulls out the custom-made amplifier Tick designed for him in their Academy days. He pushes the device into his ear gently and presses his head against the panel of the door once more as the voices begin to make sense. “What do you suggest we do then, Lieutenant? Just let the corpse sit in the medical bay until he walks in and finds it?” That sounds like Cayde, ever the challenger in a serious conversation between officers. “I’m not suggesting we leave the corpse in the med-bay, Cayde, OR tell him the truth, Sai’urn. The boy wouldn’t be able to handle something of this... caliber. I’m not sure any of us could handle it in his position.” Were they talking about Onii’kvi? They had to be, right? And what did Sai mean by ‘telling him the truth?’ What did Sai find that Oni was connected to but couldn’t know about? Sai’urn’s loud, defiant groan filters through the door. “Yes, Captain Ne’la’c? Would you like to add something to this conversation besides your inane suggestions to tell the boy everything?” “Why are you two afraid of him knowing the truth? He’s MY responsibility, you’ve already said so before. I’ve vouched for his abilities on assignments despite your doubts and I’m the one that authorized his medical treatment while he’s on board IRIS and living on Holarus when not on the station. I’m aware this is not my jurisdiction as it is not my solar system we’re residing in, but I do still hold some pull in situations like this. He deserves to know the truth and you don’t deserve to pass judgement on whether or not he’s able to handle something.” Sai groans. “You care for the boy, clearly, but this isn’t entirely your decision either. This is a matter of GDC security and to be frank the personal ties here are none of the agency’s concern, and they shouldn’t be your concern either. Care for the pilots and crew, yes, but don’t stick your neck out for them when it is not your issue to begin with. Know where to draw the line with the people in your care, Sai’urn.” Harsh, but that sounds pretty accurate for Nal’eid. The Rules above anything personal, the Code upheld. Sums up his entire personality. Sai’urn goes silent for a few minutes while Cayde and Nal’eid conference call other officials from a few different stations. One of them being Kepni, Onii’kvi’s home planet, from before he attended Caelestis Academy, before he became a pilot, before he was diagnosed. The group of officers talk about the incident, and as they go over Sai’urn’s official report, it settles it in stone. They were talking about the assignment, the distress ping and whatever Sai saw there that shook him so badly. “Have you talked to the boy, gotten his side of the story? Does he know what you found out there?” One of the people on the speaker asks, a little harder to hear than the rest. Nal’eid clears his throat. “No, ma’am, we haven’t spoken to him, but Captain Ne’la’c is certain he didn’t see anything on the ship, or at least didn’t recognize anything.” “Seeing something and recognizing it are not so different. If he saw what was written on the ship, the insignia, it’s very possible he’s already looked it up and found out what happened on Ac’ai many moons ago during the Xhi’ka Conflict. Captain Ne’la’c. Can you positively tell me he didn’t see anything on that ship?” There’s a long pause, and Onii’kvi has the briefest white-hot flash of fear running down his spine. He never thought about if Sai’urn had noticed him that entire time. Sure, he didn’t respond or look directly at him, but he was very spacially aware. It’s entirely possible that he’s aware Oni saw the insignia. What happens if Sai’urn tells them? Is he going to get kicked off of IRIS? Is he going to get thrown in some kind of max-security prison for what he saw? Blackmailed to never pilot another ship again? “I can say with absolute confidence that Pilot Onii’kvi did not see any defining marks on the fighter ship, nor did he recognize it as being one of the GDC’s.” What?! It was one of theirs?! It didn’t look anything like their ships! From what Oni saw it was really old and rusted and the materials they use for the ships now are used primarily so they don’t rust or crush completely flat upon emergency impact. There’s no way that ship was one of their models! One of the officials on the phone clears his head and makes an acknowledging hum, clearly believing his captain’s testimony-whether or not he was lying to their faces. He might not have actually seen anything. “Mhm... what about the pilot? Were we able to figure if they were DOA?” Sai'urn sighs heavily, one of the office chairs creaking slightly as he sits down. “First Officer Shaii’kvi died on impact due to engine failure in the pod. We suspect she was seeking refuge on station RELLE that was taken down a decade ago, sir.” Wait. Mom?


Moving to England from Old New Jersey wasn't the worst thing in the world for Tom Rhodes. He was in the fourth grade, about to be in dreaded fifth, and he wasn't exactly Mr. Popular amongst his classmates. He thought that they thought he was a weirdo - and what was wrong with that? Everything, apparently. More likely, they just never thought about him at all. England could be a fresh start for Tom. His brother and sisters did not agree. "I hate it here already!" said Elle, the youngest sibling at six years old. "Me too. There's no beach, mom!" said Susan. "I was supposed to lifeguard this summer." "Sigh," said Peter, followed by a literal but quite exaggerated sigh. "You were never gonna be allowed to lifeguard, Sus." Susan and Peter were twins, just over two years older than Tom. Susan arrived a full half hour before Peter, which she often reminded Peter of. Their mother, Abby Rhodes (her parents had a bit of a thing for The Beatles and couldn't help themselves), glanced back at her kids from the rear-view mirror. Her stiff-upper lip, as the Brits would say, was curled into her forever crooked smile, thanks to a field hockey accident in college. "Give it a chance, everyone. We're almost there. I think you're gonna like the house." Their mini-van scratched against the bushes on the skinny country road. "Maybe I should drive, Mom," said Peter. "You're not used to driving with the steering wheel on the right side." "And you are?" asked Abby. "Yes, actually," said Peter. "I've played every single racing video game in the world, and I'm fully prepared to drive this car." "Over my dead body," said Susan. Peter was about to say something, but the lane cleared into a long expansive yard, at the end of which stood a massive stone house. "Woah," said Tom. "It's a castle," said Susan. "And that's where we're gonna live," said Abby. "You know how English houses all have special names? Well, ours is called Coldfast." "Cool," said Peter. "*Coldfast*. I dig it." "Is it really ours?" asked Elle. "Well, we're technically renting it for the summer," said Abby. "But, if we like it -- and my job here works out -- then maybe we can buy it." "Yay!" said Elle. Tom's stomach turned, the way it did when he tried reading in the car. "Can we get out, Mom?" he asked. "I was going to drive up a little closer, but why not?" She stopped the car, and unlocked the sliding doors. The kids pushed out and flew across the grounds towards the house. "There's a stream back here! It's like a little river!" "Look at this climbing tree!" "I think there's 5 floors!" "Kids! Can you come here and help me carry in our bags?" "Yes, mom!" they all replied. There were enough bedrooms in Coldfast that none of them had to share a room, and there wasn't even much fighting over who got which one. Tom's choice must have once been an old library or a study, because it was filled with wall-to-wall bookshelves, which were now mostly bare, except for a complete set of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Tom pulled out the "T" and skimmed ahead to the find the section on turtles when an old-fashioned bell rang from somewhere downstairs "I'm gonna have to figure out how to call you all, and this bell seems pretty good," said Abby. "A little different from our house in Old New Jersey, huh?" "Yeah, Mom," said Susan. "I love it here," said Elle. "Good," said Abby. "Now I have to drive into town to get situated at work. They want me to start at Bletchley Park tomorrow, and I've got to get my ID card and whatnot set up today. So, Susan and Peter, you're in charge. Stick together, and have fun. I'll bring home something English for dinner. Ok?" Everyone nodded. They stood at the large doorway to Coldfast and waved at their mother's minivan crunch away on the gravel driveway. "So, we're splitting up, right?" said Peter. "Obviously," said Susan. "We've gotta explore this place, and I want to do it my way." "Me too!" said Elle. Tom pulled on Susan's arm. "But didn't Mom say we were supposed to stick together." Susan patted Tom's head. "Don't worry. I'm in charge now." "No, I'm in charge," said Peter. "We'll meet back here in an hour and report back on our findings." "Ugh, okay," said Tom. "I'm going outside then." Something about the house creeped him out. "Elle and I will explore inside," said Peter. "Susan you should try outside, too." "I will, but not cause you said it." Tom and Susan went outside and set off in different directions, Susan towards the stream and the rolling hills beyond the western side of the building, and he towards the pine trees on the east. He'd always loved the smell of Christmas, and pine trees were as close as you could get during the rest of the year. It wasn't long before Tom had lost sight of Coldfast. He kicked up tufts of fallen pine needles as he walked, like little yellow fireworks for potato bugs. He wondered if potato bugs lived in England. Or if they had some other kind of rolly-polly bug. He spotted a particularly gigantic pinecone and kicked it. The pinecone bounced and tumbled before rolling into a hollow at the base of a large oak tree. The oak seemed rather out of place in the pine woods. Tom approached the tree and crawled down to try to snag the pinecone. He felt a warm breeze coming from the hollow, and reached inside for the pinecone. He couldn't quite reach it, so he crawled his head inside. The warm feeling grew. Soon Tom was fully inside the hollow, still crawling forward. Maybe this was a cave, he thought. This would be something cool to report back to his siblings. His head bumped into something. He reached forward. It felt like a door. It was wooden and smooth, with those boxy groves that doors sometimes have for styling purposes. Tom's hand found a cool round handle in the center of the door. He twisted it and the door opened into a sunny afternoon in a completely different forest from the pine trees where he'd been. Something snuffled nearby. Tom flinched, worried it might be a raccoon or something with rabies. "HALLOOF!" Tom turned towards the sound. Something fuzzy with two legs was sticking out of a rabbit hole. "HALPF!" Tom was pretty sure it was trying to say "Help!" so he grabbed onto its legs and tugged. And tugged, until finally the thing got unstuck and the two of them rolled backwards into the meadow grasses. "Oh, thank you, Christopher Ro -- wait a second, you're not him." It was a talking teddy bear. *Yes*, Tom said to himself, *A teddy bear is standing up and talking to me. I must be unconscious or something.* "Well, I always do say, a Stranger is just a Friend you haven't met yet. I'm Edward Bear, but my Friends call me Winnie. The Pooh." Tom nodded blankly, because at this moment, behind Edward the Pooh, were three more stuffed animals: a piglet, a tiger, and a baby kangaroo. "Pooh! Oh, Pooh!" cried the piglet. "There you are!" "Ho-hoo," said the tiger. "And a-who do we have a-here?" "Are you coming on our Expodition to the South Pole?" asked the baby kangaroo. "Because we could use someone Strong and Brave." "I..." stammered Tom. "I don't know..." "You either Know something or you Don't," said the bear. "But you can never Don't Know something. That's like saying honey isn't sweet and sticky and delicious." "A pa-pa-paradox," said the tiger, hopping on his rather coiled tail. Tom had enough. He was clearly losing his mind. He began crab-walking backwards towards towards the door, and grabbed its handle. "Are you leaving us before the Expodition?" asked the kangaroo. "Yy-up," said Tom, opening the door, scrambling inside, and pulling it shut. He crawled through the dark back into the pines, and then ran back to Coldfast as fast as he could. He opened the front door and found his siblings arguing in the foyer. "Well, where have you been?" snapped Peter. Tom could barely catch his breath. "I... I found something." "Yeah, we all did," said Susan. "No, no, no," said Tom. "I found this tree, with a hole in it, and I crawled through it, into this whole other forest, and there was a talking teddy bear, and a talking piglet, and a tiger that bounced on its tail, and this baby kangaroo, and they were all going to the South Pole." "Uh-huh..." said Peter. "Sure, you did." "No, I'm serious!" said Tom. "You have to see it. I can show you!" "I found winter," said Elle. "Your cheeks," said Tom. "They're freezing. Did you find a cellar or something?" "She was just about to tell us, Tom, before you interrupted everyone," said Susan. "Not a cellar, but a wardrobe, in another bedroom," said Elle. "I opened it up, and it was filled with these heavy coats, perfect for snowstorms, and I tried to take one off the hanger, and then I just felt more coats hanging behind them. So I climbed into the wardrobe and kept walking. I couldn't find the back of it. And it kept getting colder. Until I looked down and saw that I was walking through snow, and then I looked up and I found a lamppost, and I was standing in a forest covered in snow." "Your shirt," said Tom. "Are those snowflakes on it?" "Yes," said Elle. "But then I saw this goat-man walking towards me, and I screamed and I ran back here." "I don't believe you guys," said Susan. "I saw something *real*, though. It was a huge battle of these rabbits on the hills beside the house. There were almost a hundred of them. One of them had a big funny tuft of hair, and another had a broken eye, and then there was this big bird helping one of the two sides. It was like watching a real war, I don't even know who won, because suddenly a bunch of the rabbits climbed onto wooden rafts and floated down the stream." None of this would have seemed possible to Tom, if he hadn't had his own experience with the talking stuffed animals. Something was happening here in Coldfast. "That all sounds great, team," said Peter. "But I've found something even better." The other three stared at him. "They have a regular Nintendo here." "What?" said Tom. "A regular Nintendo. The old kind. It's in the den." "Do they have Duck Hunt?" asked Susan. "Yep! It's the one combined with Mario Bros." "What's Mario Bros?" asked Elle. "Oh, you'll see, because I found something else. Something amazing. I was playing one of the levels and then I hit this block as Big Mario and then somehow Mario got sucked into the bricks and then I was at this warp pipe, and it was a new level, one of those awful water levels, but the level name was World -1." Tom had played a lot of Mario in his life and he'd never heard of World -1. "What does that even mean, Peter?" "It's a secret world, obviously," said Peter.