“Hey yeah, I wanna shhh, baby. Here I go, here I go, here I go again. Shhh shhhh ba-doop.” “Yes, here you again,” she remarked to herself through gritted teeth. For the last two hours she had been listening to this man turn Salt N Peppa into a quiet joke that was ironically not quiet at all, the cadence of his deep voice crescendoing and decrescendoing as he roamed up and down the many lanes of bookshelves. All she wanted to do was put her head down and finish this project. Is the library not the place for this exact situation? Peace N Quiet was what she needed. Not Salt N Peppa, though she was not too above humor to realize that salty was definitely what she was becoming. What was he even doing here? He clearly had no concept of how a library is to be utilized. “Shhh Shhh ba-doop.” The voice became louder as it moved to the shelf behind her working space. That was it. She had had enough. Someone needed to tell this man that this was a library and a place for quietude. With this new resolve, she got up from her desk and skirted around the shelf to face this intruder of silence. “Excuse me,” she said, sternly. The man paused with his task, glancing down on her. “You’re excused,” he said, angling to the side, leaving space for her to get through, which was a necessary movement. The man almost filled up the entire aisle with the breadth of his body. More disgruntled now than ever, she opened her mouth to rebuke this man, but then left it hanging open with no words. At that moment, she noticed the book he had been placing on the shelf. The top shelf, she might add, with no assistance of a stool. “Excuse me,” she repeated, but with different intentions this time, getting distracted from the original purpose of her operation. “You’ve already said that,” the man noted, turning back toward the shelf, and continuing on with his task, “and I’ve already permissed you.” “First of all, that’s not a real word,” she stated. “But second of all, that there is fictional historical romance novel,” she continued, pointing up at the book he had put on the shelf. “Astute observation,” he smiled. “Did you get that from the title, Love in the Time of Cholera , or from the fact that it’s one of the more critically acclaimed novels in history?” Even though his voice was kind, and his disposition genial, she could not help but read between the lines of someone who was being sarcastic. “Clearly, you have no observational shrewdness of your own, because this is the health section,” she stated, gesticulating to the many books in the area, as if this would be enough to prove her point. “10 points to Gryffindor!” he exclaimed, clapping his hand against another book still in his arms. She looked around, horrorstruck by this outburst. Does this man have no awareness, no concept of the literal unspoken rule of the library? “Why are you putting this book here? It doesn’t belong,” she whispered, frustrated, her voice coming through clenched teeth, like the quieter she spoke, the more she could make up for his noise. “Hmm,” he observed, in what she perceived as fake ponderance. “Last I checked, Cholera was a disease that one would want to avoid in order to be healthy.” “It’s fictional,” she replied. “Cholera?” he asked, now smirking. He had finally decided to drop his fake pretenses. She sighed, exasperated that she was even arguing a fact that she knew that he knew what she had meant. “You know what, I don’t care,” she said. “All I wanted to do was to come over here to tell you that you’re being too loud, and if you could please keep quiet so that some of us can work in peace, that would be appreciated,” she responded. “If you want to upend the entire Dewey Decimal System for some form of personal amusement, then you know what, that’s up to you,” she rambled, turning on her heel to go, but then turning back around. “I mean really what is the point of this? Did you get lost? Or do you think someone is going to see that book and think, this is what I’ve been looking for? I’ve always wondered about Cholera and how it relates to love." At this point, he was leaning against the shelf, clearly amused at the frustration he had caused. “I think this book’s creation is proof that someone has thought about cholera and how it related to love,” he pointed out. “That’s not the point,” she stammered, taken aback by this logical argument. “So, you made a point that is not a point?” he countered, his fake ponderance returning. “Ugh,” she grumbled. She wanted him to understand that it was wrong. Everything about him was wrong, from his singing in a library, to his displacement of books, to his misuse of words. “The book is fictional,” she stated slowly. “This section is not. It doesn’t belong here, quite like you don’t belong in a library,” she retorted. “Do I not?” he questioned, smirking again. “Why so? Perhaps you’re not a fan of my singing?” he continued, turning around. He began putting another book on a different shelf. “Well that’s a start,” she said. She did not bother looking at the other title, lest it perturb her further. “Maybe it’s the song?” he suggested, turning his head toward her with a smile. “Being a larger man with an exceptionally deep voice, I could never quite pull off the subtle sassiness of the artistic female. You do not want to see me attempt Beyoncé.” “How about you attempt no one,” she recommended. “I can attempt that, as you say, but I make no promises. When the words call...” he trailed off, in a fake mystifying trance. “Then you read them in a book. Not out loud,” she interjected. “So the spoken word is less meaningful than the written?” he countered. “Maybe not less meaningful, but more permanent,” she stated, moving to grab the misplaced book off the shelf, which was too far out of her reach. “And they should be easily accessible, which starts with them being put in their rightful place.” “Ah,” he said, again in the mystified voice, while grinning at her inability to get to the book. “So I don’t belong because I put books on what you perceive is the wrong shelf?” “What I perceive?” she questioned, flabbergasted. “It is not I that perceives this. It is fact, like this section should be.” “I wasn’t aware that systems were fact. In fact , I believe Dewey was an innovator, and innovation is almost like the antithesis of fact. Innovation is creation, brining into existence something that wasn’t there previously.” “So you’re a self-proclaimed innovator?” she snorted, stepping off her tiptoes, and giving up on retrieving the book. “Saving libraries from the tedious nature they’ve become accustomed to, are you? A new system in a new era. What will you call it... The Reality of Fiction System?” “Ah see, you do have ideas,” he mused. “Not necessarily good ones,” he added, raising an eyebrow at her in a studious glance, like he was taking her System suggestion into real consideration. “But all ideas start as scraps before someone can make sense of them,” he replied, giving her a doe eyed look of fake encouragement. “Someone already did,” she noted. “With that attitude, he never would have, and you’d be looking for your library book based on oldest to newest. Good luck finding the next George R.R. Martin book in that system, a book squished somewhere before Harry Potter, but after Lord of Rings. Although,” he added, pausing. “By the time you found all the corresponding books in the series, he may actually finish it. Then it’d be the last book, making it much more accessible, as you are so fond of.” “This conversation is going nowhere,” she stated. “Good thing it’s not permanent then, isn’t it?” he observed, amused. “Yes, my only saving grace,” she scoffed, annoyed with herself now for letting this drag on. “I’m going now. Please keep it down, and please show some respect with the books. If not for the patrons that are looking in the section, then at least for the librarians who have to fix what you’ve done,” she finished, pleased with her final admonishment. And before anymore could be said, she turned and walked back to her desk, sitting down with a sigh of relief that it was over. How anyone could be so unaware, was beyond her. Maybe, just maybe, she could finally work in peace and quiet. She reached for her closed book with satisfaction at the now silent space around her, flipping it open with vehemence, accidentally knocking her water bottle to the floor. She panicked as it clonked to the ground and rolled noisily into a table leg. As she hurriedly reached over to pick it up, her elbow knocked her book off the table, causing a loud thump as it fell gracelessly to the floor. She quickly bent to retrieve both fallen items, stretching for her water bottle, which had sidled itself on the other side of the table. Just as her fingers trapped the loop on the top of the bottle, her butt knocked the edge of the chair backward. She quickly turned, watching it weeble wobble in uncertainty. Should it stay or should it fall... Forgetting her water bottle in her hand, she swiftly grabbed for the unstable chair, once again dropping the bottle with a clunk. In reflexive horror, her hands went to her face, releasing the chair to its tilted position. And fall it did. With a thunk louder than that of the book or the twice fallen water bottle, for it had managed to collide course with the tin trash can to the edge of her desk, creating a reverberating memory, echoing every fallen soldier before her. “Excuse me,” a familiar voice said from above her. She looked up to the man she knew was there, and for the first time, she saw him fully frontal, facing her. As she scanned to the top of the mountain before her, she frowned at his chest. There, plainly visible in this light and in this position, was a name tag. The inscription of the library’s name and logo engraved next to the name. “This is a library, ma’am. I’m going to need you to quiet down. People are trying to work.” And like the etching on the owner’s name tag, the man walked away, a smile etched onto his face.


“So, what’s it going to be Mr Jones?” His finger hovered over the innocuous green knob. Superconscious of all the eyes staring at him. Unblinking. Some wide with expectation, others narrowed as though suspicious. He didn’t look at them, no matter how hard they bored into the back of his neck. He only had eyes for the button in front of him. The size and shape of a Tunnock’s tea cake, but green - and inedible of course. Plastic. Everything here was plastic. Even the potted ferns in the reception area he’d entered three hours ago, were plastic. Horrible. Milo Jones was old enough to remember when there’d been more greenery. The real stuff. Not this manufactured shite that never changed with the seasons. Never wilted, rotted, or carried the aroma of nature, of reality. Nothing was real anymore. Milo Jones, aged 103 - though you might mistake him for a spritely seventy-something if you passed him in the street. Saw him collecting dropped debris and garbage. Watched how he shook his strong fist at the drivers and passengers in AirSlides when they lowered their windows to dump rubbish. Tramped around and between and over the enormous heaps of the country’s waste. For the number of people left on the planet, they created an astounding amount of crap, Milo cursed. The reason it became fucked-up, Milo expounded loudly and belligerently, was because of the biggest fucked-up race of incompetent primates that ever walked the Earth. Don’t you go blaming God! He yelled at the placard-wearing-end-of-the-world-human-billboard-God-botherers. God had no part in this - as though Milo had ever believed in a supernatural, omniscient deity. God did not make you shit in your own backyard! Throughout his lifetime, Milo Jones had been arrested, imprisoned, and hospitalised more times than he cared to remember. Milo had been accused of being a conspiracy theorist. A scrounger. A tramp. A crackpot. But when the Arks left - with the planet’s ‘top politicians, top economists, top entrepreneurs, top educators’ - Top! Top! Fucking top! shrieked Milo from his rooftop, there had followed an eerie kind of stillness in the media, on the streets; everywhere. I told you so, didn’t cut it anymore. Being proved correct in his predictions was no consolation to the demise of a whole planet. He’d scoured through decades of warnings, final warnings, imminent disaster, the disaster. He had written and talked to anyone within his radar, and beyond. Unfortunately, he concluded, humans were still apes with sticks. Sticks with which to beat each other senseless or into submission. Meanwhile, the plastic had mounted. No one. Not a single person had resolved the issue and the chokehold on the environment had finally throttled the last wonderful life out of it. Earth’s arteries were clogged as surely as an ageing, obese, doughnut-obsessed, pie-infatuated oldster with atherosclerosis. The fucked-up, incompetent apes that remained here - including Milo Jones, were truly living on borrowed time. After The Evacuation, when planet Earth’s best and brightest had fucked off to find pastures new, Milo had expected things to settle into some semblance of normality. Had imagined that the lack of super-industrialists would finally curb the ceaseless drive towards self-destruction. Hoped, with every centimetre of his grubby being, that the plants and animals would proliferate and expand beyond the countryside. He recalled an image he had discovered during his period of research, animals in towns and cities. There were no people. It had been a planetary-wide pandemic, and to Milo’s eyes, it had seemed glorious. He giggled at the idea of goats around the bar in a Welsh village, of deer in the stock exchange and swans at the checkout in Tesco. He pasted his cardboard walls with found magazine images of plants and animals until he lived in a green box dappled with every kind of creature. But it had not come to pass. Milo’s rantings, pleadings, and physical assaults on businesses had done less than if he’d taken a piss in the Pacific Ocean. People being what they are, regardless of status, quickly set about grinding the wheels of productivity again, churning out tonnes of carbon dioxide, ammonia, methanol, sulphuric acid, styrene, hydrochloric acid and more into the atmosphere. Sewage, animal waste, human waste, nitrogen, phosphorous, pharmaceuticals, and pesticides into the rivers. And plastic! What is wrong with these people? Milo shrieked from street corners. Can’t you see you’re killing us! Then they started with their altered realities. Better than Life games, Sim-u-Love. VR headsets were old hat, they said. We can make it realer than real, they said. We’ll take care of your every physical need whilst you live the life you deserve. That’s what they actually said in the adverts - you can live the life you deserve! Ha! Who says they deserve it? Everyone who contemplates such crap needs shooting. Everyone who whines about what they deserve whilst driving the latest plastic bloody AirSlide and lobbing plastic wrappers out of the window and consuming everything plastic and eating off plastic plates with plastic cutlery wearing plastic clothing watching plastic programmes on their plastic monitors and, and, and... Milo blinked. Finger still hovering there. He curled it into his palm and sat back and stared. There was an almost identical button next to this green one. The other was white. The room was cliché clinical white. Plastic walls. Plastic table. Plastic buttons. “Mr Jones.” “Eh.” He’d forgotten they were there. “Mr Jones, you do understand why you are here, don’t you?” Oh, he remembered alright. Milo had made quite a name for himself on the streets. Cracked Crusader, Chicken Little, The Doom Monger, Solo Jones, were just some of the sobriquets with which he had been labelled. Milo knew that if you courted controversy, one could find oneself in a difficult situation. And here he was. The remaining ‘top’ scientists, developers, visionaries - they were the crackpots, not him, had developed something so amazing, it would blow your socks off, they said. Milo said he didn’t wear socks. They had devised a way to alter reality, they said. They could literally flip a switch and have things return to a time the button pusher chooses, they said. Milo had been given this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Milo was the oldest man on the planet, he could remember stuff. He could remember what it was like before. Milo Jones had been chosen to change the world. These men and women had reached a similar conclusion about the planet as Milo but from a different and circumspect route. One button would fold and recreate time, thus shoving the here and now back to there and then. The other button would annihilate the world’s population. Just the people, they said. You can live on a green planet where the plastic’s all gone, they said. Or you can remove all human life. “So, what’s it going to be Mr Jones?” Milo said, “And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long, In the sun born over and over, I ran my heedless ways,” * Milo pressed the button. The End *Milo quotes from Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas.


Waking up you head to the kitchen and brew dark roast, then sip the precious liquid on the back porch under autumn sun caressing your skin.  Showering and dressing in yoga wear, you drive to pilates session. Janette calls, and you answer maneuvering traffic with one hand.  “What are you up to?” she asks.  “On my way to pilates. You coming for lunch?”  “Of course. You must check the new place down by Vincent’s. It’s called ‘Pete’s butcher shop’. The guy is a candy and sells grass-fed meat. Let’s sink our teeth into proper steaks today, shall we?”  “Sure, later,” you respond dropping the phone onto your lap.  After the pilates session, you head to the butcher shop. Entering you see a tall, broad-shouldered man with copper-color hair. He is standing with his back to you, holding in his hand a large butcher knife rhythmically going up and down on a substantial piece of meat. You force your gaze to the impressive produce on display with various percentages of fatness and loudly call for his attention.  Lowering the knife, he turns and looks at you with the indifferent face, his emerald-green eyes scrutinizing your features. Thoroughly washing his hands, he approaches in a blood-stained apron asking how he may help. You point at the leanest steaks and ask for three. He wraps them inquiring if there’s anything else you wanted. In your head, there are many things you want from him now that he’s standing so close to you, but of course, you shake your head. Paying for the brown bundle, you smile to the serious face and leave the store.  At home, you sip Pinot Noir waiting for the girls. Janette arrives bringing flowers. Jasmine is late as usual but brings gluten-free cupcakes. The three of you drink and gossip cooking medium-rare steaks and fixing a salad.  Cutting the meat oozing with juice, Jasmine compliments it but notes the unusual flavor. Janette gushes about Pete, openly expressing her desire for the guy. You agree he’s hot but also gives you creeps, and nod to the meat tasting like nothing you had before. Lunch is finished with cupcakes and more wine.  The girls leave, and you nap then decide to go for a walk. You drive to the reservoir surrounded by trails. Walking with music in your ears and admiring the winter landscape barren of colors you realize the park is eerily deserted. Suddenly you feel someone’s arm around your neck clenching you tight against their steel-hard torso. Grabbing that arm with both of your hands to loosen the grip you see a hand moving to your mouth with a cloth and inhale a sharp acidulous fume. Darkness ensues.  Lying on your side with your arms between your legs tied to your feet, you gain consciousness in a trunk of a car, and see someone staring down at you. Your eyes widen in recognition, and you scream. Your muffled voice gets trapped in your stuffed mouth.  “Don’t worry,” he says with a sickening wide grin, distorting that indifferent face. “I’ll feed you with the finest grass too. And you will taste delicious!”  The lid falls shutting you from the rest of the world.


Nagoro is a small village in Japan, situated in the tumbling valleys of Shikoku. I was nearing the end of my journey at the time, with three days left before my flight back to Australia. I was on my return from Minokoshi, a beautiful place, relatively close to Nagoro. A friend had told me about the strange little village, almost entirely abandoned, so I thought I would pass through it before continuing home. Apparently, a woman who grew up in the village returned there to care for her dying father, only to find the town almost empty. Once he had passed, she constructed two life size dolls of her parents. She then continued to re-populate the village with more and more of these human dolls, each one representing a person she once knew that had either passed or moved away. There was still a tiny living population there - mainly people who were born there and never moved away. I had caught an odd single-carriage train, being the only train to pass nearby the village. Devoid of any other passengers, the carriage deserted me at a lonely station from which I caught a bus to the outskirt of the town. As I approached, the village seemed to be flourishing with life - I could see people working in the fields, a family at a bus stop, a school full of children. A picturesque village lying against a backdrop of lush forest and clear skies. It was only as I got closer that I noticed the villagers were motionless. The people I saw, were in fact life-size dolls. I knew they would be there, but I didn’t think the place would be so infested by them. From a distance they were so life like it felt as though they could turn and wave to you at any moment. This feeling wasn’t helped by the fact that the buildings were all intact. It felt as though everybody in the village had just decided to up and leave the day before I arrived there. As I wondered through the streets, I passed a group of cyclists; frozen in time, balancing on their bikes. An old man sitting by a creek had caught a fish made of fabric on his rod. He was dressed in human clothes - green boots, khaki pants and a red coat. His button eyes were dark and wide, his canvas skin smooth and plump. I walked over to the school I had seen as I approached the village. The door stood open, the hallways empty. My footsteps echoed like water dripping in a cave. I turned quickly as I noticed somebody staring at me in my peripheral vision. It was just another doll - a teacher standing in the corridor, hidden behind a wall. I wondered how the people that lived here got used to that constant feeling of being watched. I continued down the corridors and noticed the clocks had all stopped at the same time - 2 p.m. I reached a class room completely filled with the life-sized dolls. The children sat at their desks; some working, others staring out the window, while the teacher leant against the back wall. The scene reminded me of the La Brea tar pits - the dolls paused and trapped in time, like the mammoths trapped in tar. The whole village reminded me of a video on pause that I was free to walk through as though I was the master of time and space - a fantasy that I found to be quite lonesome in reality. I approached a large vegetable patch full of worker dolls, bent over tending to the plants. They were dressed like the others in human clothes; gardening boots and overalls and large sun hats, their chubby hands like stuffed mittens. Each of them had a unique expression sewn onto their face. It was uncanny. I observed one kneeling over in the middle, just as I saw it’s arm twitch. It was facing away from me looking down. It twitched again and then, to my surprise, it rose up and turned around. I was relieved to find that it was a breathing human. An older man wearing a brown-buttoned shirt, holding a garden trowel. He smiled and waved at me. The first human I had seen so far. “*Konbanwa*!” ‘Good evening!’, I called out, overly excited to see another person at last. The man bowed his head in response and continued gardening. Spending time alone in Nagoro is nothing like spending time alone in other settings. When you walk alone through a forest, you can find peace in the serenity. Your thoughts can wonder and you begin to reflect on yourself. You are free to admire the natural beauty. Nagoro on the other hand, although charming in it’s own way, is not a calming place. Because you are not actually alone when you are in Nagoro. You are surrounded by bustling life, only you are just not apart of it. It feels as though you have been exiled from a happy place; a joyful, simple village life that many would envy. I found myself constantly thinking about what the dolls were doing. I wondered who they represented and how it would feel to be apart of their lives. The sky began to blend into pink and orange, so I decided to head back to the bus stop. I weaved through the masses of empty vessels, passing a shop full of dolls holding baskets of real, rotting fruit and a park where a stuffed dog raced a ball back to its owner - both of them frozen in time. When I reached the giant elm tree that towered above the bus stop, the timetable informed me that there were no buses coming through until tomorrow morning. The last one had passed through half an hour ago. I considered walking to the train station, but it was much too far away and it was already getting dark. I would have to stay the night. I lugged my hiking bag back into the village and searched for an abandoned house that I could sleep in. Nagoro doesn’t feel the same at night. It doesn’t feel right. It’s not a big city that doesn’t sleep; it’s a tiny village which, at the fall of night, you’d expect everybody to return to their beds. But the village dolls don’t retreat to their homes. They stay about their business. They become black shadows - ghosts, everywhere you turn. Compared to the day in which the village feels warm and full of life, the night is haunting, the dolls completely out of place. I entered a street lined with houses, all of them abandoned yet not a single one empty. I walked into the first house I came upon, the door carelessly open. I didn’t bother taking off my shoes out of respect, as there was no one living there, but I still felt guilty when I walked in to face the resident family. I could make out three dolls in the dark - a father, reading and two kids holding toys. Much of the furniture in the house was gone. The walls and shelves were bare, not a signal piece of memorabilia left behind. Even the toys that the kids held were fabricated to match their own design. It was like the family had just stayed here while everything was taken away from them, refusing to acknowledge it. The only item that stood out was a clock on the wall. It had stopped at 2 p.m. Just like the one in the school had. There was a futon in what I assumed was the parents room, where the mother doll was sound asleep. She was turned on her side so I couldn’t see her face. I walked around and poked her just to make sure I felt soft, cold material and decided to sleep in the kids room, on the floor. I set up my sleeping bag, had an energy bar, and cautiously drifted to sleep. There is nothing comforting in trying to sleep in an occupied house, of which the residents are unaware of you. ... When I woke up the next morning, I was startled to see a doll standing in the corner of the room, opposite me. He was looking straight at me, holding books to his chest. I mustn’t have noticed him, hidden in the night. It was unsettling, but I didn’t dwell on it as I planned on leaving the village straight away. I packed up my things and left the family behind me - the father stuck on the same page of his book. Outside, the village was back to life, the dolls trapped in happy memories. I walked through the streets until I had left the village behind and continued toward the bus stop. But when I reached the giant elm tree, the bus stop was nowhere to be seen. The wooden shelter and the timetable had vanished. I looked up at the tree. It’s leaves rustled far above me like an expression of sympathy. I was sure it was the right tree. I hadn’t seen another one like it. I stood there a while, completely bewildered. I was certain this was where the bus stop had been yesterday. I turned around and looked back at the village. It seemed as though it was looking straight back at me. The dolls were far away but as I squinted, it looked as though all of them had turned to face me, all in the same position. I shook my head. No, I knew it was all in my head. I was just tired and disorientated from all the travelling. There were real people living in that village. I had met one the day before. I must have retraced my steps the wrong way. I decided to return to the village and talk to the man I had seen in the field. I walked quickly along the lone path, realising the dolls were still in their individual positions as I came nearer. They hadn’t been staring at me - I knew it was just my imagination. I didn’t expect the village to have such a strong effect on me. I passed homeless dolls, asleep on their benches, and a row of very patient fishermen until I saw the elderly man in the distance, working in his vegetable patch. I reached the fence and called out to him. “*Ohayou*!” ‘Good morning,’ I called out. He was surrounded by the working dolls, some bent over, others leaning against the fence. He was turned away from me and didn’t seem to have heard me. I opened the gate and walked between the rows of vegetables, getting closer and closer until I realised something. His hands. They were swollen. I finally reached him and tapped him on the shoulder. My hand sunk into soft body. I walked around to his front, confronted by the soft smile sewn on his face. It was just another doll. But it was wearing the man’s clothes. The same garden boots, the khaki pants, the brown buttoned shirt. It was even holding a garden trowel, the same one he was holding yesterday. Where had he gone? Was my mind playing tricks on me? Did I wave and speak to a doll yesterday? No. I was sure I hadn’t imagined it. He had waved back to me. I remembered it precisely. I ran over to the house that seemed to be joined to the patch of land. The door was open and a single doll sat inside. A woman, staring up to the ceiling, her pants grey and her white shirt hanging loosely. I didn’t know what to think of it. I just wanted to get out of there. I ran back through the village to the giant elm tree where the bus stop had vanished. I checked my phone. It was stuck on 2 p.m. Friday. But it wasn’t Friday, it was Saturday. I tried to unlock it but it wouldn’t let me in. It kept saying I was entering the wrong password. I didn’t know what to do, so I followed the road. If I remembered correctly, I was progressing in the direction that the bus had continued. It would have to lead me to a neighbouring village. A thick forest bordered the opposite side of the road, so dense and dark it was as though the night slept among it’s branches. I continued along, keeping to the opposite side, away from the looming trees. I had walked for what seemed like at least an hour before the road turned and entered the forest. I stood before it. The morning light barely penetrated a few metres in. But what else was I to do? I had to keep going. I let my bag down to consume another energy bar before continuing on. No buses or any other vehicles had passed through the road yet. The forest was completely still. Not a leaf rustled as I entered. Deeper inside, I noticed a young girl sitting beneath a tree. She was crouched next to the road with her head between her knees. When I walked up to her, I felt something change in the air, as though I was being watched. I turned around and there leaning against a tree, was another doll. A man with a hat on, his arms crossed and his head tilted to one side - staring blankly at me. I turned to the young girl and grabbed her arm, only to feel the soft distortion of fabric. Her limp body rolled to the side, slumping onto the road. Her morbid expression piercing into me. I stumbled along the road, looking back at the man that had appeared behind me. The forest grew darker and darker, adamant in its silence. Until, I saw someone in the distance. “*Tasukete!*” ‘Help!’, I shouted. They didn’t move, only stared back at me. As I got closer I realised it was another doll. It was positioned to face me, just like the one I had encountered earlier. My skin shivered and I grew cold. I turned around, overwhelmed by the identical trees, every leaf completely silent. And then I noticed them. More of the dolls. At least ten of them, all spread throughout the forest behind me. Some crouched behind bushes, others peering out from behind the trunks. All of them were staring at me. I turned and ran into the darkness. Twigs snapped beneath my feet as I suddenly realised I was not on the road anymore. I was lost. Completely lost. And I was being followed. I continued running, swerving through the trees and climbing over monstrous roots. I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t have a plan. I just needed to get away from that village. I ran and ran until I fell upon a clearing, relieved to finally be out of the forest. The daylight poured onto the grass and wildflowers. In the centre, a little cabin rested beneath a pink myrtle tree. I raced over, knocking frantically on the wooden door. “*Tasukete! Tasukete!*” ‘Help!’ I yelled. An old frail woman answered the door, startled by my frenzy. “*Gomen nasai*” ‘Excuse me, sorry,’ I said. “Do you know where I am right now?” “Yes, you are near Mount Miune,” she replied. “Are you alright? Please, come in.” The old woman opened the door as I obliged and laid my bag on the floor. “*Arigato*” ‘Thank you,’ I said. She lead me into the kitchen and gave me some water. “Where are you from?” She asked. “Australia. I just passed through Nagoro on my return from Minokoshi.” Her eyes widened. “Nagoro?” She stood up and hurried to the door, locking it. “How long did you stay there for?” She asked, as she came back into the kitchen. “Just one night. The buses stopped so early.” “You spent a night at Nagoro?” She said in shock. “Oh, no. You shouldn’t have slept there.” “There’s something wrong with that place, isn’t there?” I said. “Those dolls. Those human dolls. They followed me into the forest.” “The village is cursed,” the old lady whispered. “Once you sleep there, the curse takes hold of you. You become part of their world, you begin to freeze in time.” “What do you mean?” I asked nervously. “I’m so sorry, dear. I’ve seen this happen so many times. People think it’s some kind of fun place to visit, as though it’s just some novelty they can tread through.” I felt my arms and legs lose sensation as she spoke. “People think the villagers left,” the old lady continued. My whole body grew numb until I couldn’t feel the chair beneath me. “Nobody has ever left that town,” she said. I wanted to speak but my mouth wouldn’t move. I couldn’t move at all. “Nobody ever will.” I watched, completely paralysed as she reached beneath the table and placed a basket of needles and fabric in front of me. “Well, my dear,” she smiled, while threading string through a needle. “We better get started.


Fireworks were always a big to-do on the Fourth of July. Some considered the fireworks a nuisance -- lights and sounds designed to wake children and traumatize dogs. Others treated them as the show going on in the background of more important things, like gossiping with friends and neighbors, kissing a new boyfriend, or keeping an eye on children in the dark. Joe Peterson was one of those children, the kind who watched the entire fireworks show from the first dinky firecracker to the final blast of the grand finale, whose only consolation as the last lights fizzled out was that another show was coming next year. He loved standard fireworks, the ones that came in reds and blues, sometimes exploding across the night sky, other times fizzling out before they could realize their full glory. As years went by, new explosives came on the market, dazzling him with golds and bright silvery whites, sparkling brightly before sinking down toward earth like the branches of a weeping willow. But once, during the last Independence Day celebration his mother attended, he saw a green firework. He was still young, at the cusp of being too big to sit wrapped in his mother’s arms in public. But that night he let his mother fold him into her, feeling the steady beating of her heart against his back, her thin fingers tracing little circles on his forearms, and her chin resting on top of his head. “Wake up, Joey,” she said, and Joe realized he’d fallen asleep. The field was filled with people, but all was silent. “It’s starting.” She stretched out behind him and splayed her legs in a wide V. Joe did the same, and laid his head against her stomach. An old man by the grandstand shouted something into a microphone. Everyone clapped, and then it was quiet again. Joe began to tense up a little bit in anticipation of the noise, but relaxed when he felt his mother’s hands reach up to cover both of his ears. The show was magnificent, leading with a series of red, white, and blue fireworks that zigzagged in the sky like showers of shooting stars. That was the first summer Joe saw the weeping willows, feeling his mouth gape open a little and looking up at his mother, whose face lit up with each firework. After the opening rounds faded away, a faint circle of gold shot up into the night sky, fizzing as it rose until it exploded, revealing streams of bright green light that stretched out in a circle like the petals of a flower. Joe gasped and his mother held him tighter. “The green ones are special,” she said. “Like Tinkerbell. I’ve never seen a green firework before.” Joey laughed. “I still like the weeping willows better.” “That’s fine,” she said. “You keep the weeping willows. The green ones are mine.” His mother never saw another firework. That fall, a drunk driver crashed into her while she was out on her morning walk. Joey never saw his mother’s face again, except in pictures, which he looked at every night before bed, staring at her bright hazel eyes, her long brown hair, and her smile, willing her to reappear next to him. The first summer after she died, Joey went to the fireworks on his own, sitting in the back against a chain link fence. The show was the same as ever, loud, bright, red, white, and blue. The weeping willows were back, too, but no greens. It was the same every year after that, variations on the same old thing, with the exception of a new pink firecracker his little sister loved. Each show began with hopeful vigilance as Joe watched and prayed to see his mother’s favorite firework, to feel closer to her in its light, but ended in bitter disappointment. Joe stopped watching the fireworks show eventually, letting go of the magic they held for him when he was a boy, like most grownups do. He moved far away from home, went to college, got a job, got married, and had kids -- a boy, Joe Jr., and a girl, Sarah, who he named after his mother. They spent their summers in Western Michigan, running up and down the sand dunes, hiking in the woods, and swimming in Lake Michigan. When the kids started elementary school, Joe and his wife Nellie decided they were finally old enough to stay up late to enjoy the Fourth of July celebrations in the nearby beach town. They walked along crowded streets, eating ice cream and holding hands, stopping to play carnival games when the fancy struck. At sunset, Joe and his family found themselves being pulled along with the crowd toward the beach for the fireworks. Joe grabbed Sarah and hoisted her onto his shoulders so she wouldn’t get lost, and the four of them settled on a patch of cool sand near the edge of a jagged dune. Nellie held Joe, and Sarah curled up on Joe’s lap, falling asleep almost instantly as he petted her soft golden hair and pulled unruly strands out of her face and smoothing them back across the top of her head. “It’s starting!” Joe Jr. yelled, jumping to his feet and clapping his hands in excitement. Joe looked over at him and saw his son standing next to Nellie, with one hand resting on her shoulder. On the way to the beach, Joe had felt an anxious knot in his stomach, but it loosened and disappeared when he felt his daughter’s warm little bottle curled up on his lap. Sarah started snoring softly, but when the fireworks began she startled awake and cried softly until Joe comforted her, cradling her tight against him until the whimpering stopped and she sat watching the show, just as excited as her big brother. Joe felt he’d been transported back in time -- the fireworks were just as he remembered them as a boy, the same colors, the same shapes and sizes, even the same weeping willows he’d loved so much. Joe Jr. gasped at the big ones and Sarah clapped in delight at the weeping willows. In the middle of the show, during a lull between the big opening and the grand finale, a single firework rose in the night sky. “Aw, this one’s a dud,” Joe Jr. complained. But then it exploded in a burst of jade green, its sparkling tendrils trickling outward before collapsing to the ground. “Green, daddy!” Sarah said. Joe looked down at her face as the lights flashed in the sky and saw a twinkle of amazement, the same one he imagined he’d had as a child. Sarah sat back down in his lap, and he splayed his legs in a V, propping himself up with one arm and holding his daughter tightly with the other as she leaned into him. “The green ones are special,” he said. “Like Tinkerbell.”


“What year is it?” asked the man. I was at a loss. I remembered the turn of the millennia, but I haven’t been paying much attention since. After giving it some thought, I mustered “2007”. The man, who I know recognized to be a police officer, said, “Close enough. Alright, get out of the vehicle sir. You’re under arrest for suspicion of driving under the influence”. “That’s impossible!” I cried, “I don’t own a car”. I remember getting fired at a Burger King in Kentucky. That place had the worst managers. This bitch Britney tried to write me up every time I took a smoke break, so it was pretty often. “It’s my god given right”, I f***ing told them. I’m entitled to have one every now and then, but she is entitled to complain. I was born in Warsaw, Indiana which is in a dead tie with Warsaw, Poland for the most depressing Warsaw's out there. I figure they are similar and the tiebreaker has to do with yearly cloudiness. Anyway, my geography is not very good beyond my childhood hometown. I know that by and large I have headed South since then. However, after I left the Popeye’s in southern Illinois, it is quite honestly just foggy. There are a lot of rectangle states and then the states divided by rivers get confusing around the clusters where the rivers meet. I don’t know how to describe the smell of the floors after we mop them, but it’s not clean. If there was some middle ground between leaving the smell and curing the smell, say prolonging the smell, that’s what that cleaner did. I would mop those floors every morning at 7:45 (having been supposed to be there at 7) and they’d be dirty by noon. Having grown up thinking why do this now if we have to do it again later? You know, start the dishwasher after dinner sort of family? One day I realized this job was never going to be ‘done’. This floor would be mopped long after I got fired, long after I died, and long after this store closed at this building. Lately, my shifts ain’t been too hard to manage. I actually open, which I have come to prefer more and more over the years. The reason being that by and large, life in this country doesn’t start until twelve o'clock. They say that most heart attacks occur before noon. Anyway, opening means now that I start at 7 which is perfect because I get up at 5 and don’t come in until almost 8. They don’t care because A) I work pretty hard all things considered and B) It is damn near impossible to get fired from these places. Well not impossible. So, I get five hours in the clock before noon and tend to get off with daylight left. Plenty of time for my extra curricular activities. I am beyond class. Yes, I am in fact that enlightened so to speak. I may be in a class all my own though I imagine there are some others like me. My existence makes more money for other people than it makes for me. The hotel I stay at gets some sort of incentive for ‘providing me with affordable housing’. My employers do too. A little felony hardly worth mentioning back in Ohio. There are more people with felonies in Ohio than in the state you know? So, what does the man with free crap housing and free crap food use his s*** salary on? Forgetting all that trouble with stiff booze and cheap drugs. I am the tread upon. The opposite of the face of history. The gum getting scraped off of history’s boot. You won’t even read this. The algorithms won’t see it to you. P*** in the wind. There was this one time that I thought maybe I was doing something worthwhile, before that place got shut down for some OSHA violations. So, I hate to slander good American companies and I cannot remember every fine establishment that I have worked at, so I won’t even try to set these tales in a corporate place. Anyway, I did work in this restaurant and the building we occupied had a small area set for a children’s play space. There was nothing crazy, but a little jungle gym thing with a slide and basically places to climb. I would go on break and order a Big Mac meal (medium for my health) with a Coke and watch the kids play out of the corner of my eye as the sunset blinded my vision in general through the windows. It could have been the sugar rush or remembering my own youth, but I felt satisfied. My job created satisfaction or joy or fulfillment in some way. I have this one memory that I can describe as almost being in black and white. My grandmother is pulling me and my little sister along in a wagon. I’m not that old ; the wagon is plastic and not metal or wood. It’s weird that going downhill in that thing gave me more butterflies than taking an overpass onto 55 at 100 does now. When I was a younger man, I really hit it off with this one coworker. She was like twenty and the perfect mix of kind and can take care of herself. Well anyway, we got along pretty well her and I. I could do this one magic trick with a toothpick and some tape. I’d stolen it from this television magician. So, I showed it to her, you know, made the toothpick disappear with a snap and come back out of thin air. I did this trick three times that day and screwed it up twice. The one time I got right was in front of her and she loved it. I was smitten and would have gone for it. The problem was she was in college and doing this gig part time. I would talk to her and when we got to weekend plans, I realized I had nothing to offer. ‘Ah man...my head is killing me. Is that some old Warner Bros cartoon? S**t, I’ve seen that one. “You should call your mom” I hear my dad say. Oh yeah, mom died. Nevermind that then. Hey, what day is it?’.


Look, I had pica , ok? Oh sure, Aesop tried to disguise his retelling and pretend it was just some "random" fable he "suddenly" invented, but everyone knew who and what he was really talking about. Thanks to him , I've never heard the end of it at our volcanic-barbecues-slash-virgin-roasts. I'm Larry. That's right, Larry the FireLizard, go on and get it out of your system. My folks weren't very creative when it came to naming their whelps. To be fair, there were about 200 of us, and pretty soon you kinda run out of the interesting stuff. At least I wasn't a girl - I was going to be Lizzy the FireLizard. Anywho... It all started when I had finally reached my 250th birthday, the proper age for a young dragon to leave his thunder and begin his lifelong hobby of treasure-seeking. Only, for me, it wasn’t just a hobby. It went deeper than that, man: it was a calling. I loved gold. The way it sparkled and shone, the way the melted stuff poured, the way it shimmered as it flowed through my claws. It was mesmerizing. I wanted to bathe in it, marry it, become One with it. Yeah, that all sounds wrong now , but I guess you’d have to have been there. And been dragonkin. Now, that’s not to say I wasn’t an aberration amongst my kin. But, see, we didn’t have all these sissy therapies back then like you have now. Can you imagine? “Tell me about your mother.” “She ate a kingdom. No, not a king, the entire kingdom. Don’t believe me? Do you remember Schlendia? Nope? See, wiped it clean off the map.” (Don’t even get me started on how that "makes me feel ”... “You look pretty tasty,” is how it "makes me feel .") Anyway, so that birthday, I was super excited to get started. I began with the little stuff, roasting a wealthy traveler here and there, maybe an occasional bordello flambello. I particularly loved gambling runs: the gold always smelled filthy, but it came with a side of beer if I was careful not to cook it off in the initial volley. There was a lotta competition, mind you. The countryside skies were so thick with me and my kind, you could hardly see daylight. I started going further and further afield, just looking for that delicious hit of mellow yellow. Flying over the sea one day, I chanced upon something novel: floating buffets. I later learned they were actually called “ships,” and they were built by the Phoenician people whom I had menaced regularly. I guess I never thought to check, before then, if they were fleeing me by water. They were extremely tasty, so I feel kinda stupid that it took me so long and had to happen purely by chance. Soon as I got hip to that floating action, I didn’t rest on my laurels: it turned out they had no way to warn each other when I raided them at sea, so all I had to do was camp out at a spot on their route - a little tucked-away island with the most delightful cave - for a few months, and before I knew it, hey presto! My cave was full to the brim. I know what you’re gonna say, but do you know why the history books think the Phoenicians were only trading in tin? Me. I made sure and stripped those suckers of every bit of the good stuff and kept going back for more. (...Excuse my wings, they do that little flippity flip flip thing when they're happy.) Now, I’m a collector, yes, but more than that, you have to take some time and smell the roses, know what I mean? By the time I finally stopped savaging Phoenician ships, I was ready for a nap. I buried myself up to my neck in my golden lair and fell into a deep, soul-satisfying sleep that lasted until a new era had dawned. By that time, the planet had grown more crowded, and my kind had been chased away from the populated routes by weapons the likes of which I had never seen. I couldn’t find much to raid that was safe, so I ended up mostly killing time on my island. It started off harmlessly enough: I loved gold, and I was bored. It smelled good, looked good... you can see how it might happen, right? I tasted some. Don’t judge - have you ever tried it? I know you have: you people have gold-flake-topped cakes and liqueurs imbued with the stuff. Delicious, right?! Awww yeah: guilt-free gilt! Look, I’m a beast, I have huge appetites. What happened next was the natural progression of things: I ate it. All. Thing is, it was kinda like Chinese food... I was hungry again 2 years later. That stuff doesn’t digest well, apparently. When I was forced from my lair in order to find more of anything to eat - which, oh, musta been around 600 BC, in retrospect - I happened to be over Greece when my first “accident” occurred. (Hey, that guy in the back: show him the door if he’s going to be juvenile about this.) Anyway, upshot is, I accidentally buried a small town in golden deuce. I don’t recall the town's name, being as I was too mortified to stick around. Obviously, reclaiming was out of the question: I have pica, not scatophilia. Well, what can I say after that? Once the dam breaks, it’s on, and it’d been a couple centuries in the making. Pretty soon, much of the Greek and Roman countrysides were buried in my piles of filthy lucre, and I was helpless to do anything about it. (I understand those “hoards” are still being found to this day. You’re welcome.) Turns out, stories started going around everywhere about some “goose” who “laid golden eggs,” but unless all those villagers had sh... bad eyesight, I knew they were punchin’ down on me. I was at one of my kin’s get-togethers not long after that, and it happened by accident. Once . ‘Course, they put two and two together, and ... well, there you have it. “Larry Loosie Goosie,” “Goldie the DungLizard,” “Izzy” (Izzy or Izn’ty Gonna Crap Gold on the Populace) - I’ve heard it all. My reputation was in the toilet, both among my kin and among the countryside. I could hear the laughter coming for miles. Naturally this Aesop dude heard the "goose" tales, too, and - being appropriately terrified of naming and shaming me, specifically - decided to make it one for the history books and wrote it down for all time. So, people, all I’m saying is: please stop telling your kids that stupid goose fable, ok? You’re gaffelighting my serious mental and physical issues, and you should be ashamed of yourselves.


“How was I supposed to know it’s her fucking birthday?” Anne said, her voice more of a whine than anything. I don’t know how she could see the road through her stream of tears. Why did I let her drive? *She’s the only one with a license, dumbass.* “You’re the one that fucking found her,” said Rich, always looking to blame someone. “She’s from YOUR grandma’s church, *you* told us about her!” he said, sticking his little sausage finger in her face. “I- I don’t even know my own grandma’s birthday,” Anne said, ashamed. “Both of you shut the hell up. Now is not the time to bicker like children, dammit,” I said, “Just focus on the road and the task at hand.” Rich slumped back and just sat there staring out the passenger-side window. I’d like to see what’s going on inside his head, but I know it’s not much. Anne locked her eyes on the open road, her face expressionless, except for her quivering lip. She never could hide that from me. I hate to admit it, but I’m still so overcome with adrenaline that I can barely think straight. I’ve never felt so powerful before, so in control. The last hour feels more like a dream than reality. “Why is it always so fuckin’ cold in this car?” I asked, trying to sound natural as I reached for the back-seat temperature controls. I didn’t realize my hands were still numb, shaking uncontrollably. I fumbled with the knob for a second, not sure which direction to turn it. My brain was still going a million miles a minute, thinking ahead, thinking back, thinking about how knobs work. *Does blue mean cold? Or does red? Does it even matter?* I sat back, stuffing my hands into my hoodie pockets. Now is not the time for distractions. I need to focus, determine our next move. *There’s no way the cops can know it was us, I made sure of that. Do we go home and pretend nothing happened? Or do we run and never look back?* As yet another road sign whizzed past my window I decided, "We need to go back home, it’s the only way we can avoid suspicion.” “Are you insane?” Rich said, “We need to get as far away from home as possible right now!” “You don’t get it,” I said, “If all three of us disappear right now, we’ll instantly be suspects.” Rich was looking at me intensely as we spoke. He was trying to keep his cool, but there was a twinge of fear in his eyes that was unmistakable. “Getting back home right now is our best chance of going unnoticed. Just go home and do whatever you’d normally do on a Sunday afternoon. Anne, next chance you get, turn around and take us home. It’ll all be okay, I promise.” After a few minutes of silence, Anne pulled into an overgrown driveway and turned us around. I kept running through my preparations in my mind to make sure we’re rock solid. *Gloves, check. Different size shoes, check. No phones, no prior relationship with her, no one knows we’re together, check. I really think I’ve done it. We’re rock solid. I’m untouchable.* It’s just a shame our cleanup time was cut short. “Hey Dave,” said Rich, trying to lighten the mood in his usual way, “have you seen that new *Star Wars* movie yet?” “You know I don’t watch that crap,” I said. *I’m really not in the mood to hear him blabber on about fucking* Star Wars *right now.* “Come on man, they’re fun,” he said. “You just gotta turn your brain off and enjoy the action.” “I like the old movies. The new ones are bad though,” Anne said, perking up a little, but not looking away from the road for even a second. “Well yeah,” Rich said, “but they’re still fun to watch.” “I don’t find it *fun* to watch awful garbage,” I said, sick of this conversation. “Why don’t you just watch an actually good film instead?” “Oh yeah, and what movie should I watch, you pretentious fucker?” said Rich. “*Schindler’s List* is a fantastic movie,” I said. “A beautiful story, well-acted, and not too complicated for you.” Rich sat there with his mouth hanging open for a moment. “You just smashed some senile old woman’s skull in with her own goddamn cane, and now YOU’RE telling me to watch *Schindler’s* fucking *List*. Go fuck yourself.” The car fell silent except for the warm hum of the car engine. “You said you’d be gentle,” Anne said, choking on her words. “You said it’d be like euthanasia. How could you?” “Shit happens,” I said. Rich was supposed to keep his mouth shut about that. *Dumb bastard*. “Richard, what the fuck did I tell you?” “Screw you Dave. I’m not going to follow your orders anymore.” “They’re not just orders, you idiot. We cannot let anyone else know about this, or we’re all cooked,” I said. “We need to just put today’s events behind us and keep on living as if nothing happened. Nothing. Everybody just shut up and calm down.” Anne just kept driving, tears silently rolling down her cheeks. Rich sighed sharply and resumed staring out his window. Hopefully, those two can eventually move on from all this so they don’t screw me, but I never will. I’ve dreamed of today for years, but I never could have imagined how good it would feel. The beauty of extinguishing another person’s life. I don’t even know her name, but no one will ever know that old bitch like I do. In her final moments, laying on the floor in a scarlet puddle, she didn’t scream or cry or plead or pray. She just accepted her fate, allowed the void to take her. *I respect that*. She didn’t fear eternity, she embraced it. Now she never has to feel pain again. She doesn’t have to worry about her bills or tomorrow’s weather or taking her meds. She no longer exists. *I gave her that, and I loved every second of it.* Lost in my own head, I suddenly realized coming up on our right is the local police barracks, so we’re almost home. I’d rather not pass by here, but it’s by far the fastest way back. Nobody says anything, but we’re all weary of the barracks. Anne slows down so she’s perfectly going 45. Rich stares blankly at all the police cars, watching for movement. I keep my eyes forward so I don’t alarm the others, but I can see the barracks just at the edge of my peripheral vision. Nothing seems out of the ordinary. *Her daughter must not have come over to celebrate yet.* It felt like minutes, but after only a few seconds the barracks were behind us, and nothing but trees and some small houses surrounded us now. A minute goes by without incident. Just as we’re starting to get comfortable again, Anne spoke up. “Guys, there’s a cop behind us.” I turn around to see a police car coming around the bend a few hundred feet behind us. “Shit. Make sure you are at the speed limit. Right now.” I said, trying to keep her calm. “He might not be for us.” *Do you really believe that?* “We’re done for,” Rich said, seeming more defeated than afraid. “I can’t go to jail,” said Anne. “everyone will hate me.” The police car was gaining speed. “Nobody’s going to jail,” I said, “I made sure of it.” I can’t help but let their doomsaying get to me. *What if I go to jail? My life will be over. Could I survive in there? Could I fend for myself, or would I be some skinhead’s bitch? What would mom think? Will they tell her what I did? What will she say when somebody asks about her son? She’ll probably just dismiss them, pretend that I don’t exist. But she can never truly forget me. Her first son. Her beautiful little boy. Her little star pupil, class president, future CEO son. She won’t be able to brag anymore. She can’t tell her friends how successful her favorite son is. That’s what she’ll miss the most when I’m in jail. She’ll never accept that she failed.* Who gives a shit what she thinks. “He’s right behind me,” said Anne between shallow breaths. Her eyes, red and puffy, darted between the road and the rearview mirror. I knew well enough not to turn and look out the back window suspiciously. I was peeking at the left side mirror. His lights weren’t flashing. *They’d be flashing by now right?* Anne started panicking and pulled over quickly. “What the hell are you doing?” I said, “His lights aren’t on.” The cop was coming up on our left, all I could see was his front license plate hood in the mirror. “It’s over Davey. Just accept it,” Anne said, her voice calm and sad. “We deserve this.” *Just accept it? Coming from the bitch I could barely get to suck me off after prom. I’ll never just accept anything. I’m in control. I’ll always be in control. I’m not weak like everyone else. Why did I bring these two into it? Idiot.* “Holy shit he just passed us,” said Rich. He was right, the cop sped past us as if we were just some roadkill in his way. The clunk of Anne pulling the e-brake pulled me back into reality. We all took a second to breathe. “Hey!” Rich shouted, “Dave said no phones!” Anne had dialed the three magic numbers before either of us noticed. She had that phone in her pocket the whole time. “Yes, I’d like to report a murder,” Anne said, without hesitation.


“I’d like to go see it,” I said one Saturday morning, when we were lying in bed. “See what, Mark?” Surya, my wife stretched herself lazily. “The most famous painting in the world... you know.” “You must mean the famousest painting in the world. Please use real words,” she said and smiled. "Why did I marry a Pleiadian?” I said with a heavy sigh. Before 2030, famousest wasn't even a word. Surya giggled and rolled over in the sheets. She kissed me on the neck. Yes, why? I thought to myself. They’re pompous, boring and are always correcting people. Famousest, most famous. What the heck does it matter? Of course, I knew why I married her. I fell in love, head over heels. She was more beautiful than any Terran woman I’ve ever seen. Deep, gray-blue eyes, silky hair, not quite white but almost. Depending on the weather they seemed gray or a shimmering beige. The Pleiadians brought with them a new culture. They were peaceful, honest and agreeable. Something Terrans had never experienced in written history. With their culture they introduced new words and rules of literary purity. Everything had to make sense. It wasn’t “the most beautiful” anymore. It was: the beautifulest, the grotesquest or the incrediblest. Surya had told me that the Pleiadians couldn’t come into contact until we reached their level of emotional evolution. Otherwise, we’d kill them right away. There weren’t many of them on Earth. About eight hundred thousand extraterrestial Terra fans. The most dedicated. They knew everything about us. We knew nothing about them. Surya studied Terran anthropology in school and she took a course on Terran politics. She knew everything about our social customs. Sometimes I felt she pitied me. Our ways were different but our biology didn’t differ at all. We were technically the same species. Earth was once a Pleiadian colony, thousands of years ago. Then it gained independence and became controlled by another species of humanoids. Surya said she couldn’t tell me anything more about that part of history. When they landed on Earth it wasn’t an invasion. It was tourism. And then they stayed and offered real civilization. Really humane like. They brought with them their Pleiadian technology. Massive construction robots and modified mushrooms capable of producing any organic matter from penicillin to Parmigiano cheese. And the sweepers. *** We went to see the painting the following afternoon. The art center was located near the river. The building was a pristine rectangular block made of smooth concrete. Sweepers were busy day and night cleaning its surface, like every surface in the city. There was a loose crowd, we didn’t have to push through. We went in and there it was, a twenty foot canvas, all lit up in an otherwise dark, black room. The painting was ridiculously huge, painted with tiny strokes in a hyper-realistic style. It depicted something I didn’t expect to see at all. A dirty snow path between piles of old snow. On the path - two feet in slippers. The skin had a pinkish-gray color. Above the ankles, several layered skirts. Rough, wrinkled linen fabric. Nothing matched, the layers had been put together out of necessity not fashion or aesthetics. The slippers - a rubber undersole and dusty, light mauve, quilt stitched velvet. Granny feet, I thought. Everything covered with a layer of black dust and dirt, so common to Earth. That's all? I didn’t understand. “What does it mean?” I whispered, shaking my head. “It’s so beautiful.” Surya said, teary eyed. “What’s so beautiful about it?” I asked, squinting, trying to analyze the painter’s technique. “It’s the essence of Terra,” she whispered. I looked at her and my mouth dropped. Now I understood. The artist tried to appeal to the Pleiadian aesthetic. And this painting was exactly just that. That’s why I didn’t find it compelling. I was a Terran. I’d never understand. “You mean old Terra. When there was still dirt and snow,” I said. “Yes. I think that dirt is very poetic,” she said. “You can have all of your poetic dirt back. Just turn off the sweepers,” I said. “You can’t turn them off,” she said and smiled, “besides, that would be unwise.” Yes, the Pleiadians - always the wise. We left the gloomy art center. The painting made me think. There had been no snow since 2055. And dirt? Well, it technically existed. In the fields outside the city. I could go there one day and maybe touch it. Get really dirty. And snow? Ice cream was now the closest thing to snow now. We got some on the way back. It melted quickly in the heat. A milky drop landed on my shoe. The gray blur of the sweepers immediately cleaned it. The cleaned everything in our home too, but usually at night. It happened everywhere, all the time, in every household. Abstract paintings were a problem though. The sweepers perceived random specks of paint as accidental spills. And many of them were probably exactly just that. Humanity lost some art pieces, but no one really cared. The sweepers stayed away from human skin but cleaned the animals while they slept. They were tiny, smaller than a fruit fly. Too fast to see them. All you ever saw was a blur. “We too have ice cream on Qiacubba. It simply doesn’t taste anything like Terran ice cream,” Surya sighed and licked the bottom of the cone. “Oh look, a tree rat!” she said, pointing at a squirrel. The animal climbed down the tree, watching her with its two shiny eyes. She fed it some peanut crumbs and laughed. It’s been ten years since she came here and she still acted like a tourist, marveling at Earth’s nature, animals and local food. She wore khaki pants, a white, linen shirt and brown loafers. She dressed like this on purpose. She wanted to look Terran. The clothes contrasted with her alien beauty, making her look even more stunning. Of course, she looked nothing like a Terran. She shone with an inner light. She was peaceful and calm. Their evolved emotionality made them age slower, they lived up to two hundred years. No stress hormones. And her hair. Silky smooth, greyish white, not like an old woman’s hair, but like the hair of a kitten. The details of the painting haunted me. The texture of the layered skirt, the bright snow, the stubbornness of the two feet. Why? Damn it, I thought. I won’t be spending my time thinking about some painting. Maybe that’s why it was the most famous, oh excuse me, the famousest painting in the world. People couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was all in there, poverty, pain, entropy, decay, the lost winter, the poetic dirt, so cherished by the Pleiadians and... the human stubbornness, our unapologetic will to live. No matter where life would throw us, we’d persist, against all odds. Naked feet in slippers, in minus temperatures, a slap in the face of brutal reality. Frail old feet, deprived of the things, that could protect them from the cold. They carried a message. Here I am, out in the snow, wearing slippers and some old clothes, not dressed for the weather at all. And I will persist. *** I needed to find out more about the sweepers. My good friend Jake did some conservation work on the servers in the sweeper processing facility. We met for a beer in the park one afternoon. “What’s it like in there?” I asked and nodded at the grim, oval shape on the horizon. “You don’t want to know,” he said. “What? It can’t be that bad,” I shrugged. “The sound is unbearable. And the smell!” I decided I’d go with him, to see it for myself. The grey buzz filled the hangar. It was the size of a small stadium. They dumped all of their load on the floor and left it there to dry. Every tiny bug ejected the dust, scraps and grime. They piled the tiny lumps layer by layer, building a rug of a dark sludge. Bits of animal droppings, vomit, food waste, dirt, oil and paint. All the worst smells in the world combined. It was difficult to bear. Even with a mask on. “I thought they ate it,” I said, as we stood on a high balcony overlooking the plant. “Nah, they’re bio-bots. They run on solar,” said Jake. “I can’t take it, let’s go.” “You know, birds eat them sometimes.” “Oh yeah?” “They go through unharmed. These suckers are indestructible.” *** “What do you love most about Earth?” I asked Surya one night, after making love. “You?” She said and threw her arms around my neck. “But seriously,” I insisted. “The animals. We don’t have many animals on Qiacubba.” It had crossed my mind, that I also was a type of an exotic animal to her. I had always wondered what she saw in me. Surya was beyond beautiful. Her grace was unearthly. Literally. And when we made love, it felt like traveling to another dimension. Next to Pleiadians, we were cave men. As for me, I was never particularly handsome. A hopeless nerd with a blobby face. No distinct features. Almond shaped, brown eyes, a button nose and thin lips. But she loved me. On some days, when we were out together, I’d just watch her, frozen, mesmerized by her beauty and absolutely confident she’ll dump me any minute. But she never did. She loved everything Terra. That summer, I became obsessed. It started with the painting. It haunted me. It was a window to a lost reality, a dirty world. It made me think about the invisible sweepers. But they weren’t really invisible. They were just too small and too fast for human eyes. “Have you ever seen one?” I asked Surya, as we stood in the kitchen preparing our lunch one morning. “No. It’s impossible to see them,” she said. “I want to see what they look like,” I said. Surya looked displeased. Her blue eyes turned stormy gray. “Why would you want to do that?” she asked with a worried face. “They’re in our home. All the time,” I replied. “All of those years, you didn’t mind.” “I know but... It just bothers me,” I said. We packed our lunch and went to work, and I kept thinking of a way to trap one of the sweepers. Fly traps didn’t work. They’d just eat their way through the glue. They steered clear of the electronic traps too. They were programmed to avoid danger. But I didn’t need to trap one to see one. All I needed was a microscope and a high-speed camera. I had to hide my plan from Surya though. I went straight from the store to the park. I called her and said I needed to work late, cringing at the cliché phrase as I lied. Like a traitor, cheating on her with my own, sick curiosity. It was a sunny afternoon with a bit of cloud. The park wasn’t too crowded. I saw some couples walking by. I bought an ice cream cone, sat down on the fake grass. I set up the microscope and the camera, and pressed record. I dripped a tiny speck of ice cream on the glass. It only took six seconds and the sweepers came in a blur. I repeated the process a couple of times to make sure I get a good shot. I took the camera and played it. The third sweeper was slow enough to get a clear picture. For the first time, I saw what a sweeper looked like. It didn’t look alien, even though it was the product of Pleiadian biotechnology. Its entire body was transparent, like one of those deep-sea creatures. The abdomen was irregular and whitish, like a fat larva. I took a closer look at its wings and head. It resembled... “Oh God, it’s a cockroach,” I whispered to myself, staring at the screen. The sweepers were genetically modified, tiny cockroaches. I felt sick to my stomach and put the camera down. I looked at the blur of the sweepers on the benches and the paved alleyways. All of a sudden it all looked completely different. It wasn’t just a nameless blur. It had a face. The face of a cockroach. I shivered in the sun. I had to tell someone. I called Jake and told him everything, about the painting, about my obsession, my little escapade to the park and finally my discovery. He wasn’t shocked at all. “Well, it makes sense. That’s what cockroaches do. They feed on dirt,” he said. “Do you not realize what this means? We have a cockroach infestation. Everywhere!” I gasped into the phone, “they’re on our clothes! In our homes!” “Well, they clean things,” he said. “They look like cockroaches. Aren’t you at least a little bit alarmed?” I asked. “I don’t know, I mean, I can’t see them,” Jake was unmoved. And then it hit me. Surya knew. She had to know. That’s why she didn’t want me to go looking for answers. I packed up the gear and wandered aimlessly, not wanting to go home. The clouds of the sweepers, I saw them everywhere now. On the pristine sidewalks, hanging above the cars, on the walls of the buildings, the walls scraped clean and beautiful. *** “They’re cockroaches,” I said in the door. Wow, I thought I would play it a little more subtly than that, I thought to myself. “Mark... You shouldn’t have looked,” Surya said, her eyes gleaming with the promise of tears, “your human mind is too prejudiced. That’s why I didn’t want you to know.” She hugged me and cried. *** The next two years, I now remember as “the transition years”. I moved out of our apartment and rented a cheap, rundown cottage outside the city. There were less sweepers in the countryside. I sealed all the windows and rarely left the house. Whenever I did, I’d put on a hazmat suit. Some of the sweepers went through anyway. I kept spraying them with metallic paint. It was the only thing that worked. Surya visited me sometimes, each time a little sadder, but eventually she stopped. I kept busy. The picture I took went viral. Soon everyone was photo-hunting sweepers, trying to get the best shot. I remember the posters when the Pleiadians first introduced them. A white cartoon man in dungarees with a broom. They lied to us. Not the Pleiadians. Our government did. Three months later I started an anti-sweeper campaign. It was vile, I admit. I used every manipulation I could come up with. I made flyers, stickers, wrote articles. Everything. I worked day and night. I built groups, sites and reached out to likeminded people. And scientists. I was looking for a way to get rid of all the sweepers on Earth. And I found it. “We can only affect one area. But it will work,” said Cal. He studied bioengineering and had it all figured out. “How?” “Very simple. The sweepers are bio-robots. They have an AI neural network, sensitive to electromagnetic bursts, just like any other electrical device,” he said. “But won’t an EMP destroy the infrastructure?” I asked. “Not if we design it to target the sweeper frequency. We need to be very careful,” We deployed the EMP through cellphone towers. One day, the sweepers started falling out of the sky. In our underground the news spread fast. Everyone wanted our tech. And then the day came when all the sweepers had gone. Grey piles of sweepers filled the streets along with other garbage that had piled up during the days of their demise. Three weeks later I went back to the city breathing in the dirty air. For the first time, the air smelled like something. I needed to see Surya. Now I could move back in with her. Without feeling stalked by cockroaches, I felt free for the first time in years. I got to our apartment building and walked in. There was litter everywhere in the hallways. They didn’t have time to hire cleaners. The job hadn’t existed for the past twenty years. It would take time, I thought, but it will go back to normal again. In time. I knocked on the door. Surya opened. At first, I didn’t recognize her. Matted hair, wrinkles and... she seemed to have a skin rash. Her skin had aged visibly. Her eyes were red. She saw my expression. “I’m allergic to dust,” she explained. “Oh... Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out,” I said and hugged her. The apartment was a pigsty, just like my cottage for the past two years. But that was understandable. No one in the city owned a vacuum cleaner. She tried her best using cut up clothes and shower gel, but she was a Pleiadian. They had no cleaning skills. “I love you Mark,” she said. “I love you too,” I replied. “But I’m leaving. I’m going back to Qiacubba,” she said and sobbed like a little girl, “I can’t live like this!” “Surya... Don’t go,” I said, holding her fingers in my hands. I kissed her fingertips and noticed her fingernails were dirty. I fought the desire to wipe my mouth. “We have lived with the sweepers in a perfect symbiosis for hundreds of years. We aren’t used to this,” she said. “But... but... You said that dirt was poetic!” I protested and looked into her eyes. “Yes, poetic! Meaning it belongs in art galleries and tiny books that never earn the cost of the paper they’re printed on,” she yelled and pushed me away. She hid her face in her hands. “Surya,” I pleaded, but less heartily, "It’s not fair.” “Go away. I don’t want you to see me like this,” she said quietly. And I didn’t too. She had lost her unearthly beauty. Her Pleiadian loftiness had gone. No more playful or happy but downtrodden with the toil of everyday labour. The endless job of fighting the earthly grime, the dust that somehow gets everywhere. She finally became something she had been longing for all of those years. And the dirt made it possible. She was now a Terran.


The sky smiled down at you and I, that beautiful June morning. Colors painted the sky in my mind's eye, that beautiful June morning. “It’s you and me,” I say. “Always you and me.” A week blows by, in the blink of an eye, and now it is July. You and I, licking our fingers dry from a birthday cake, blue as the sky. Ten candles blown out one by one, for each year we have done. “It’s you and me,” I say. “Always you and me.” Christmas lights up the sky, twinkling way up high. Snow floats down from the blue, blue heavens, while the bows on the wreaths beckon and beckon. Snow in your hair near the trees that are bare, and no day can compare to the smile on your face when you stuff yourself with food after they say grace. “It’s you and me,” I say. “Always you and me.” Summer’s in the air, but not without care because your beautiful, beautiful face is in despair. “No one will love me. Never the way you do.” And you cry and cry, while June is nigh, and the sun is high in the bright blue sky. “It’s you and me,” I say. “Always you and me.” Autumn is here and the sky is clear, as we watch the deer with the balladeer. “I am music and the music is me, for I am a devout and you have no doubt.” The leaves from the trees, and the breeze from the seas, the warmth of the chai, and the promise of July, with you and I side by side: “It’s you and me,” I say. “Always you and me.” Spring is in full swing, here in Beijing and the flowers are a ring about your wing. The wings of a fairy, so light and airy, who could be wary of a girl so daring. When the butterflies fly and the clouds are shy, it’s you and I in the fields close by. “It’s you and me,” I say. “Always you and me.” Graduation is here, and we all cheer, even though our futures aren’t quite clear. Your head’s in the clouds with your feet on the ground, and your heart knows no bounds, for you’re reaching for the stars. “It’s you and me,” I say. “Always you and me.” July comes by to say hi, and you and I sit down by the lake. College is hard, and there’s no time to be off guard, so we sit by the lake, in our spot by the lake, and being with you is like coming awake. Now your hands are in my hair, your blue eyes so rare, staring in mine and laying me bare. As your lips capture mine, and our bodies align: “It’s you and me,” I say. “Always you and me.” The wedding bells chime and your hand is in mine, as we run down the aisle toward a life worthwhile. Your white, white dress billowing like a cloud, and your beautiful, beautiful face make me feel proud. The words flow between us, the words once treasonous: “I love you. I love you. I love you.” Now you're squeezing my hand, as the baby lands in the arms of a nurse who was never adverse. She’s placed in your arms as she works her charms, touching your face as you name her Grace. With her mother’s blue eyes and her father’s brown hair, she learns to walk without a care. And when the cake is adorned with a big, giant one, she blows out the candle after the song is sung. She dances ‘round the house in her favorite blue blouse, and I know without a doubt that she will sprout. I take your hand and think of all we have planned. “It’s you and me,” I say. “Always you and me.” On Valentine’s Day, we sway by the fire and listen to the music we inspired. The balladeer is here, a friend so dear, for he taught us to be devout and have no doubt. “I am music and the music is me, for I am devout and you have no doubt.” Grace makes a face, demanding to sing, and her voice makes me feel she knows everything. Sixteen candles on a blue, blue birthday cake, so soon she’ll be leaving us in her wake. You by my side, your eyes filled with pride: “It’s you and me,” I say. “Always you and me.” When wedding bells chime for the second time, I know in my heart that she is quite smart. With a ring on her finger and a man on her arm, for certain he will never do her harm. I turn towards my life, gray streaks in your hair, a wrinkle or two from the laughs we’ve shared. And I’ll never be wary if you are nary. “It’s you and me,” I say. “Always you and me.” Granddaughter in my lap, small teeth with gaps, she looks in my eyes and asks for french fries. We all have a laugh as she slides down my calf, crawling to the kitchen where we all pitch in. July is nigh, but you are my ally through everything, everything, even things beyond. “It’s you and me,” I say. “Always you and me.” Christmas again, when our granddaughter is ten, now it’s snow in her hair near the trees that are bare and her smile is yours and your smile is hers. She covers herself in bows, sits in your lap and says, “Grandma, I have a gift for you to unwrap.” She’s the best gift given, for no day can compare to the smile on her face when Grace gives chase. They run ‘round the house the way Grace used to do before she grew. The tears in your eyes, as you look up at the skies: “It’s you and me,” I say. “Always you and me.” It’s that beautiful June morning, in our spot by the lake, where I scatter your ashes and my heart breaks. The moon high in the sky, I know you’re nearby, for your shadow is in the water to say goodbye. The reflection of the moon, that early morning June, I say our words one last time. “It’s you and me,” I say. “Always you and me.”


" Do you know about Quantum Physics?" Professor aked the question , I was waiting that someone would stand now and give the answer while playing game in my phone but suddenly I felt the gaze of everyone was on me, I slowly raised my head , only then I found that professor was asking this question to me. I immediately stand up and muttered "me?" " Yes you Mr Ayush" he replied calmy. I started rubbing my hair, patting my head , pretending to remember something while he was continuously staring my each moves. " You mean the quantum physics that we see in the Antman movie?" I said in excitement as if I got the answer. " This is not the answer of my question" he said rudely. " Yes I know obviously.. you need the describtion of Quantum physics." I said while frustrating because I didn't know the answer. " Yes.. then start, I don't have much time" he said while looking at his watch. " Ah.. Quantum physics.. Quantum physics is a fantastic branch of physics through which we can go in any time...I think all the branches of physics should be as fantastic as Quantum... I think quantum physics is the king of all the branches of physics." I took a long breathe after answering the question while everyone started laughing and I felt like a celebratory of our class but His eyes on me become an ice cold. " Do you think Quantum physics is all about the time travel?" His volume raised by few decibals, I gulped and said " Professor..movie had showed only about the time travel and nothing else.." I said innocently and didn't know why whole class started laughing again and his gaze become more cold. " Ohh so you only know about time travel then in which time do you want to go..past or future" he asked me in calm tone but his pursing lips, chewing words , told me that he was very angry at that time but who cares , I replied " Future." " But I would like to go in the past " he said. " Why?" I asked though I had no interest in his wishes. " Because I want to stop your parents to give birth to a rascal like you.." he shouted on me. No professor says like this but he was different from everyone. He could even abuse us before everyone. Whole class started Laughing at me. This time I didn't feel like celebratory but a joker. I was angry, I said " You want to go in past just to kill me, but do you know what I don't need to go in past or future, I can kill you in present too." Though I was joking but I said this word in serious tone so that he would be scared of me and will not dare to insult me before everyone. I rushed out of the class in middle. I was coming out from college when I heard that Principal was calling me in the office. I went there and he scolded me for misbehaving with professor. He also told me that if I want to attain the class, I would have to bring my parents next day. " This old man..he really complained about me.." I cursed him in my mind but I was frustrated as I was going to be scolded by my parents. I thought about it after returning home and came to the point that I would apologize to the professor and request him to talk to principal not to call my parents as my parents were too strict. They used to give me long lactures on my small faults and now this was a huge scandal for them. I rushed to professor's home. The door was open, So , I directly came in but there was no one. I kept wandering here and there then I saw the door of study room was open, I went there but professor was still not there but I saw that there was a secret door behind the bookshelf which was open. I didn't hesitate for a second to enter that room. I was stunned now.It wasn't a room but a huge lab. There was so many equipments but one thing that amused me a lot was a circular machine. Strange type of rays were sparkling around it. I went there in excitement and saw that there were few buttons to set the date. I had seen many sci-fi movies. I could guess that this was the time machine. My eyes and mouth were widely open in shock. An idea came to my mind and I set the date of 20 years hence. I choose this date because my father kept telling me that being a father of teenager kid is not easy. So, I wanted to know how would I be being a father. Everything around me changed, this home had become a lab and there were many scientists roaming here and there. I saw an identity card of someone lying on a table. I stole it, and run out from the lab. The outside view was completely changed now. There were many changes. Buildings had become the skyscraper, home had become the building, car models were also changed. I saw the workers in the shop, they were using many machines in their work , road was also different, there wasn't any dig in the pitch. My city had undergone a huge development. I liked it, " I love you future." I screamed. First thing that came to my mind was my home. I rushed towards my home and knocked at door. A lady in her Thirty's opened the door. I must say she was very beautiful. She was not my mother, I guess she would be my wife now. I thought to tease her.." Hello Darling..do you remember me?" I said while pulling her waist towards me. I know she would remember me how could she forget how her husband looked 20 years ago but she was stunned. I thought she would be stunned to see me young. She was staring at me coldly but I didn't care of her gaze and rushed in. There I saw a girl, may be her age would be 16 or 17. I walked up to her and hugged her. I was so happy that I had a beautiful daughter in future. She was outstanding but then my gaze fell on her mini skirt. " Which type of dress you are wearing huh.. How can you let our daughter to wear these types of dress ?" I scold my wife to let our daughter wear such dress but the little girl stared at me coldly " Who the hell are you to decide what I should wear and what not?" She sneered but I hugged her again " I'm your father silly girl." I gave a kiss on her forehead. " What is happening here honey" a sound came to my ears and I let go of her and turned back. There was a man in his fortys standing behind me.. " Dad..this man is saying that he is my father" little girl pouted. He stared at me coldly then looked towards the lady " I told you to keep an eye on your daughter..look she is cuddling with her bf before our eyes and playing tricks on us... and you how dare you to touch our daughter before us..I will smashed your face now." "Wait what.." I didn't know how to explain..they were thinking that I was the bf of their daughter whom I had been considering my daughter. " Honey..I know her ver well..he is not her bf..he is another man." The lady told to the man who was going mad on me..." Yes of course..I'm his father" I shouted. " What ..then you and this man had a relationship..how can you do that to me he must be 15 years younger than you.." the man again become mad on the lady. " O please..Are you insane? How could he be the father of our daughter? He must be less than 25 years and our daughter is 17 years old..I think he came here from a mental hospital." The lady shouted on him and then glared at me coldly.They were busy in fighting with each other and I got to know that this was not my family. They were someone else. " Hello Mr..can you please tell me where is the owner of this house..Mr Ayush sharma and his parents? " I asked him restlessly as I was dying to see my family. " Mr Ayush..you know him? His parents sold this house to our parents..after then I didn't see them." I was stunned. My parents would die but wouldn't agree to sell this bungalow as there were many memories of our forefathers.. " Why..?" " You don't know? Ayush sharma had murdered his physics professor and for his bail his parents sold this bungalow but unfortunately they lost the case... What a demon he was..he killed his professor only because he had scolded him in the college." I was shocked, sad , frustrated after listening this, I turned to leave but I heard a voice " Hey handsome.. would you mind to go for a dinner with me?" I glanced at the little girl who was trying to flirt with me whom I was considering my daughter few minutes ago. I didn't reply her and rushed out. I was in rage, disappointed,sad. I started pulling my hairs due to frustration, how much excited I was to see my future but at the end what did I find? People are remembering me as a murderer.How could I murder someone? I felt extremely bad for my parents. How much they would have suffered because of me. I shook my head and rushed towards the professor's home that had been transformed into a lab. Fortunately, I had stolen the identity card of a scientist, I went in easily and came in front of that machine again. I couldn't bear this that people will remember me as a murderer in future. I set the dates of present time and again pressed the ' start' button. Soon I felt like I'm grinding in a big machine like earlier and again everything changed around me and then I was back. I started calling my professor but suddenly my shoes hitted something and I looked on the floor, I was stunned. Professor was lying on the floor dead. Someone had shot him by bullets. His body was filled with blood and his eyes were widely opened. I was scared now. I thought about future then recalled that I had touched many equipments there, then it was obvious that police will find my finger prints and arrest me for murdering my professor due to the small fight between us. " Shitt..what should I do now..?" I asked to myself then professor's word came to my mind that he would love to go in the past. My hands and legs were shaking now because of this horrified scene but the fear that was haunting me more was being called a murderer in future. I again went in front of machine and set the time of today's morning when I rushed out of the class. Soon everything changed around me and I run towards the college and stood there where I was standing at that time. I saw that professor was going towards the principal office, may be he was going to complain about me. " Professor" I called him, he turned back. " Professor I wanted to tell you something.." I said while breathing faster but he glared me coldly. " Professor you won't believe but you are going to be murdered by someone at night and I'm going to jail in the accusation of murdering you." " How dare you..you are threatening me that you will murder me then go to jail?" He shouted at me. He took this wrong. I was telling him the future but he thought that I was threatening him. " No..you are taking me wrong..Someone else will murder you." I said firmly but he stared at me coldly and turned to leave. " Professor listen to me carefully..May be someone knows about your time machine idea and that's why he will kill you after stealing your idea..you don't have much time.you will be murdered tonight." I screamed " How did you know about my project huh.." he grabbed my collar while asking me. " I know everything professor, I have seen your secret lab and also the future..I travelled through your time machine." I said. " You must have watched a sci-fic movie again..Get out of here..I haven't made any time machine now..It's incomplete now then how could you travel through it." He pushed me away from his way and left. I hit my head with wall out of frustration. This man was too stubborn. He didn't want to listen me. He didn't know he was going to be killed and not only that because of him, my whole family will suffer and I would be called a murderer in the future. He was as rude and arrogant as the professor Hunk of Ant man movie. I felt pity for Scott to endure the arrogance of Hunk as I was also experiencing the same because of this arrogant old man. At night , I was restless, frustrated, in rage because I know that at this time professor was going to be killed by someone. My subconscious mind was telling me to rush toward professor's home to save him but another voice was stopping me as if I go there but couldn't save him then I will be charged in the accusation of his murder. The night passed by twisting and turning in the bed and finally the sun risen. I rushed towards the college and went straight to his class only to find that old arrogant man. When I entered the class I saw him giving lectures on Quantum physics. I can't explain in words how happy I was to see him there. May be it was the first time when I was happy to see that arrogant man. I walked up to him and hugged him. " Oh professor, You don't know how happy I 'm to see you alive." I said while whole class was staring at me blankly. He smiled " Why..? Were you thinking that I would be dead?" He winked at me and again said " Wait for me outside..I'm coming" I came out and waited for him eagerly and finally he came out. " Professor.." I greeted him, he smiled. " I know there would be many questions in your mind..but first of all I would like to thank you for saving my life. Yesterday , when you told about what you saw, I didn't believe you because my machine was not ready yet but at evening I figured out what I was missing in my machine and I finally got the point and could made my machine perfect but then I remembered what you told me at morning, I checked my lab and found that there were too many tracking devices and hidden cameras. Someone was monitoring me and I knew that he must be my old collogue who had known about my research and secret lab. If I hadn't checked that and completed my machine he would send his goons to kill me and stole my idea but as you had told me the future so I didn't complete the parts of my machine. Now I'm going to somewhere else to finish it and then I will register my name to the research department of our country..After that I won't care if I die.. " He explained me calmly and I took a sigh of relief. It meant that I changed the future and now I wouldn't be called a murderer in future.. " Quantum physics is really the king of physics, isn't it?" He said while winking at me.