-Somewhere in London, 1829-   The darkness of the forest started to recede, losing to the fire and torches of the town. As he sprinted away, his steps were hushed on the stone roads, rather than the twigs of the woodland that would crack under his bare feet. His shoes were down by the pond, where he had taken them off to try and stifle his footfall, however he regretted not bringing them, as his skin was now cut with small rocks and covered with splinters.   Pete, was his name, was relieved of not having to carry anything as he ran, bearing the bags of money no longer. Somehow, someone had known of their plans, him and Ida, and had tipped off the bank to alert them of the couple's intent. This is why instead of them being together, with the money, quietly leaving town on a carriage, they were seperated, the money hidden and both on the run. Pete had no idea where Ida was, but he knew exactly what to do. Just as they had discussed.By this time, he was out of breath and his legs were in pain, but he felt a rush of adrenaline, and he continued until he made it to his destination.

  It was a small old tower, that was composed of a door to go in, a tall staircase, yet another door, and finally a rather minute room. As he entered the tower, and locked the door with a key hidden in the unprepossessing shrub just outside, he quickly ran up the cold stone steps, and set foot in the room. It was a messy place, with papers bearing writing and drawings on them, mainly of one particular building, the bank. However he paid no attention to this, and instead took a piece of blank parchment, a quill and some ink. He then began to write as fast as the wet ink would allow him.

To My Lovely Bonnie:  -I write to you in sorrow, as I will not be able to visit you this week.  Realisation fell upon me that I came down with a sickness, and I shall not be able to leave my home for a bit of time.  Even though I want to see you once again, I wish to keep your health safe more.  Do not bother worrying however, since- But he then stopped writing when a sudden loud banging came upon the door at the bottom of the tower. He heard incomprehensible shouting, and the knocking grew louder, till a tumultuous banging took place. The Peelers, those who guarded the banks, found him. This did not terminate his original intent however, hoping to have enough time to finish his letter and throw it out the window, in aspiration Ida would obtain the simple piece of parchment. Even if it meant getting caught, resulting in his demise. -since I do not think it will be too bad, and I'll be fine in a few days time.

 Beatrice is doing well (on a side note), and seemed to be happy enough with the adjustment. The food is splendid and the forest is a congenial place for walks.  And she will be thrilled to see you once more!

 Rats have started to come through the interstice in the wall we were trying to fix last week. I filled it in with stone, so hopefully they won't come in anymore.  Every day is always filled with joy here, with the sunshine and very friendly townsfo- But then Pete heard a few muffled yells and the knocking then ceased. His heartbeat quickened, and he set a chair below the doorknob to block whoever would try to enter. A droplet of sweat fell onto his nose, so he took a rag thrown aside and wiped his face, then sat back down. He had to make sure Ida had a way to find the money and live her life, with his existence only a mere memory. He stopped and thought that was not what he wanted at all, but realised it was better for her to have it than anyone else. So the Peelers would not have the satisfaction of catching them.

-townsfolk. Lots of love is sent from I and Beatrice.

-Clyde As these last words were jotted down, he perused the letter, to ensure it would have any meaning to only her. He grinned as he read it however, and thought I don’t even know a Beatrice, which was indeed accurate.

  You see, this letter was for Ida, and Ida only. The young couple had chosen two random names to use in letters, in the event that they would get seperated. Bonnie and Clyde.

  They did not discuss however where one would hide the money, as Pete had to, in case they got seperated. So, once Pete had the bags of money and Ida took care of the additional Peelers, he ran away, which led him into the woodland near the edge of town. As soon as he set foot on the damp moss, he knew where to hide the money.

  It was a week before their heist, and after reviewing their plans, the lovers went out to the edge of the small town, into the immense forest. With no particular destination in mind, they wandered all day, until they came upon a small pond. It had a giant fallen tree above it, closer to the side, that they used to sit on. It was only when Pete almost fell over they saw that behind it was a partially destroyed barrel. Upon closer observation, Ida noticed it was a very old wine barrel, and that some of the wooden planks on the top had fallen in. It also happened to be a bizarre colour of wood, instead of the usual brown, it was an almost blood red barrel. As they observed it, they never thought that would be the last time they would set their eyes upon it while feeling content, during the halcyon days before the heist.   However, when Pete was running in the forest, looking for the place to hide the money for Ida, he passed the pond, and sighed in relief. He had found his hiding place. The red barrel. Carefully placing the money on a plank of wood inside the ‘carcass’ of the barrel, he ran. The feeling of wind caressed his face, transporting him to a different time, a different place, with a different plan. Something he did not like. No, not at all. Improvisation.   And that is what brings us back to the room, the room in the tower, the tower in the village, the village outside the gloom and shadow of the tree’s. He had finished writing this letter filled with utter nonsense, but that held critical information, of where the money was. Pete knew he could not risk writing it plainly in the letter, in case it fell in the wrong hands. And Ida was probably the smartest person he ever knew, smarter than him, and at only 17 years young too. So this was why he wrote a code. If she found the letter, addressed to a girl named Bonnie from a guy named Clyde, she would know it's for her. And then she would figure out that it's a code. A simple code, but even if someone else figured it out, they would never know that it's for money. Because once you read the first letters of every paragraph -try it you'll see- it says RED BAREL, or red barrel. Now in the message it was in fact just one phrase with R, but he knew Ida would know what it meant.

  Pete could imagine her smiling when she figured it out, running with the letter in hand into the woods. And it was at that thought he came back to his senses, by taking a deep breath, and praying no one was outside the door waiting to kill him. He could hear the cicadas outside, and a few shouts in the distance, but the rest of the town seemed so calm. How he wished he was one of those kids sleeping in a nice bed, only worrying about school and the next day's weather. He slammed the door open, and rushed down the stairs two at a time, almost tripping twice. But as he spiraled down the staircase he knew something was wrong. The crisp breeze was drifting in from outside and the smell of campfire was also to be noticed. But right before he took one more step and would be able to see the door, he stopped dead in his tracks. He had never smelled anything quite as horrid, horrendous, grim as this smell. The smell of blood. He closed his eyes so firmly shut they started to water.

  He took two more steps down, and opened his eyes. As he correctly guessed the door was opened, and there was blood on the ground. The latter of which was from a gruesome scene, with four visible bodies laying, dead on the ground, weapons astray, their bodies blemished by scratches of various sizes. He slowly walked out into the middle of this act of pure wickedness. There was one more body sitting against the wall, held up by a spear going straight through him and seen on the other side in between two bricks. Two of the men had arrows sticking out, one had two on his arm and stomach, the other had one going straight through his head. Pete felt like he should puke, but he had not eaten in hours, depriving him of the feeling of being a normal human in this situation. He closed his eyelids once more, not on purpose this time, but of fatigue. He put his hand against the wall, transferring some of his weight off his bloody and sore feet.

His notice was soon afterwards attracted to the last two bodies however, mainly out of curiosity. He turned around, and saw them. Several large scratches littering their skin, with one man having an axe sticking out of his stomach, the other had no presence of a weapon beside him. Pete let out a sound he never thought he would have to in his life, a whimper. Bizarrely, he only had one thought in his head, in fact a word. Clyde, his made up name. I am Clyde. I am Clyde. He repeated to himself, for no particular reason. The letter for who he now thought was only Bonnie and no more, was crumpled in his hand, after gripping it so tightly his knuckles were white.

A presentiment of death came upon his thoughts, washing away what little hue of red and bronze from his face, turning it as white as snow. Instead of running back in the street where he could hear people coming, but in the tower. Clearly he was not thinking straight, as they would link the bloodbath to whoever was in that tower, but in the moment the thought never crossed his mind. He raced back up the stairs, while simultaneously trying to calm down. But a horrible, horrible image crossed his mind. He stopped with no hesitation, on one of the flat landings beside one of the large and dark holes acting as a window.

  He turned to face the descent of the stairs. Whoever opened that door… Well he had definitely locked it. And the lock was not broken when he went down. Whoever had opened it… Had a key. And whoever opened it… Must be in the tower. No. he thought. It can't be. She wouldn't. “SHE WOULDN'T!” he yelled to try and convince himself. To try and rid that thought in his head. That it was- That it was all… Bonn- But was quickly cut off from a dagger coming out of his chest.A shadow stepped out of the opening. The blade retracted, and as Clyde fell onto his knees, his hands held his wound as the letter drifted harmlessly to the floor. While falling flat onto his stomach, he leaned and was able to face his attacker. He gaped in shock while staring at the beautiful face he once loved. Bonnie. She smiled as she held the bloody dagger, and said “Sorry baby, but I need to make a livin’.” while looking at the weapon. She cocked her head towards him, and said. “You will be dying soon, but I still have the time to make your life hell. Before you go back down.”. Her smile faded. “So where did you hide the money?”, repeating it twice in a sweeter voice then natural, twiddling the dagger with her finger.

  Betrayal. That was what he felt. Betrayal and loathing. How she must have used him this whole time. He would die before letting her know. He let the blood flow from the wound in his chest, while the hole in his back also seeped blood out in the cracks of cement. He slowly moved his hand towards the fallen letter, in hopes of hiding it. He managed to grab it between his fingers, but she very quickly saw what he was doing and snatched the parchment. “And what would this be?” she said teasingly. Opening the piece of bloody paper, she saw the random phrases, and realised what it was. Clyde felt woozy, and knew he lost too much blood. However, just as Bonnie chuckled and muttered something about how it was too easy, Clyde smiled. While grabbing it, he had managed to smudge half of the first words, deleting the code.   Bonnie did not appear to realise this, and she walked down a few steps and said “Bye Chief.”, a nickname she had given him when they first met. Clyde watched as the figure of the person he once knew walked down the stairs, smiling at the thought that she would never get the money, but it was for the next adventurous couple, or little kid wandering by the barrel to find.   And then, without another thought, he then slipped back into the darkness of the woodland he once came out of.


The Tree                                                                                2647 words The wind raged through the winter-blackened branches of the great forest with the ferocity of the sea-wolves, from whose land it came. The oaks creaked and swayed with the blast, acknowledging the force, but holding fast against the attack - just as the humans, who lived on the forest fringes, held fast, trying to repel the warriors from over the water - warriors who came in dragon-ships to destroy, pillage, steal - and then retreat across the eastern sea. The humans loved the forest, it sustained them throughout the year with its bountiful provision: they revered its maternal presence; its wood for building homes and warming the hearth; its thickets and glades in which to hunt and forage; its summer shade and wild honey to collect from the split heart of the biggest tree; the medicinal plants and dyes for wool; and finally, as a place of autumn rooting - acorns and beech-mast for fattening the hogs before the Winter slaughter. Even during the long nights of the solstice on the the dark side of the year, they knew that life's wheel would turn to begin the cycle anew. The storm increased its force under slaten clouds, slashing the upper branches and sending ice-bound rain to soak the crevassed bark of the patriarch, the special one, the proudest, most ancient of the stand. The humans had garlanded it at the equinox, revered its presence, drew comfort from its enduring strength, but now, like a cold breath through the teeth of the edge of the world, the tempest stripped off the mistletoe and holly tributes - as if cursing feeble human endeavour. Lightning cut the darkness as the storm ripped off twigs and whole limbs, spitting ice and debris along the forest floor. Small animals within the colossus, whimpered, trembled and huddled together. For centuries the sacred oak had provided, sheltered, shaded, nurtured, fruited, but finally, aged and weakened, it shuddered and split with a sickening crack before the power of the storm. The heartwood, fresh and vital even now, splintered as the mighty trunk fell onto a carpet of its own progeny, biting into the fecund, acorn-rich litter of the earth and causing the whole forest to shake. Calmness settled over the trees; chill water dripped, but the greatest one of all lay shattered. The spared ones sighed, bereft, as their branches swayed into stillness. A red squirrel scampered off, seeking refuge and a startled fox slunk away to find a new territory to claim. Task accomplished, the wind abated, leaving those that remained to mourn. Winter sunlight, wan, but penetrating, touched the forest floor for the first time in centuries, allowing a new story to begin. * As the days lengthen into Spring a jostling crowd of pink-tipped shoots pierce the earth, tiny frilled leaves seek the sun; slender roots reach for moisture, grappling for a foothold in this new arena of opportunity, this new fight for existence. But, even in death, the fallen tree, and its heap of amputated limbs, continues to shelter the red deer and their young; the fawns nibbling all but the hardiest of the seedlings which are now competing for prominence in the clearing. Through the heat of the Summer, worms, ants, beetles and a myriad forms of life colonise the tree's entrails, thriving, multiplying, seething, but slowly, inevitably, hastening its decomposition. When the year's cycle again reaches the time of harvest, the humans create a new sacred grove, and spill the sacrificial bull's blood beneath a different tree, hoping to assert the old regime. But times are changing: the forest people are moving westward and the sea-wolves come upriver, abandon their dragon-boats and stay, to cut and carve the oaks to decorate their long-houses, and to coppice the under-growing hazels and willows for wattle and fencing. The strongest of the oak's saplings, the one growing closest to the fallen trunk, where it is protected from the searching lips of the fawns and the squashing weight of the adult deer, continues upwards straight and vital. Life in the greenwood goes on: birds find nesting places; men hunt; pigs root; women collect herbs and berries whilst their children gather moss and bracken for the home. Monks from the new priory, their dark homespun robes tied up with twine to avoid the briers, pick galls to stew for ink. Charcoal burners arrive clearing the undergrowth around their encampments, coppicing alder and maple and collecting young oak branches to set up their smouldering heaps. Lumbering ox-carts gouge tracks along the forest floor, and, at the edge of the trees beside the new houses, bird-song is silenced by rhythmic raspings from a saw pit. To the newcomers, who pass along the widening track, the mouldering remains of the sacred oak are barely discernible from the rest of the undergrowth, but are a Garden of Eden for tiny creatures: voles; rabbits; hedgehogs and mice. The funereal humped mounds of moss, almost hidden amongst towering bracken and advancing brambles, cloak a fodder of decayed wood, a russet compost nurturing all manner of growing things - and one silver barked little oak tree showing its first immature acorns to the Autumn sun. The humans no longer throng the sacred grove at harvest time: different rituals are enacted amongst the cornstooks. But one year, the land is uneasy – new invaders threaten, this time from the South. The villagers come into the forest with a sense of panic, of fear, to hack at the stands of ash, choosing only the longest and straightest of the branches, searching out lengths of fallen oak with swollen, gnarled ends to carry off into battle. Then there is silence. A waiting time. A bated breath, as the forest regains its solitude and, even in the village, there is no sound. Badgers, deer, squirrels and small mammals continue their innocent existence and the little oak reaches ever upwards. At the dark time of year, when the nights are long and the sun so pale and low, that the light barely reaches the forest floor, bands of armed horsemen clatter along the cleared track, with a fierce urgency. Shouts come from the village, drifts of wood smoke, the acrid stench of burning thatch, of timbers - and of something else - hangs amongst the skeletal trees. The forest animals go to ground and the deer twitch nervously in the trampled bracken. When summer raspberries hang heavily in the dappled shade, the charcoal burners return. Lumbering ox-carts laden with earth and gravel - and later with white building stone - creak along the road towards the expanding settlement, hampering other travellers. Armed soldiers wearing acorn- shaped helmets with long nose coverings, gallop and shout, to clear the way. Many of the tallest oaks are felled and, once again, the saw pit emits its rasping snarl. New stands of evergreen-oak, elm and beech are planted to replace the increasing number of trees being felled, the wood is needed for houses and furniture, weapons and coffins, vehicles and ships. Coopers come to choose and cut the perfect timber for their barrel staves. The village grows, surrounds the white stone castle and extends eastwards, almost to the water meadows, where masons are lodged to work on the construction of a new abbey. Fewer and fewer people come to enact magical rituals in forest and field. Beltane fires are rare, but now a bell is rung, at the beginning and end of the working day, in the tower of the squat little church, where the people go to receive solace and fear, in equal measure. The peaceful rhythm of the year is no more - unrest is rife and there is clamour in the market place - no invasion this time - but a call to travel, to fight in a distant, heathen land. By the abbey gates, cloth tokens are handed out to be sewn to clothing. Serfs are pressed and freemen are mustered, their hymns echoing around the vault of the forest, as they depart in a fervent throng. Our little tree, heir to the fallen veteran, flourishes, now providing a home to a colony of bees, who prosper in a fungus-eaten cavity where a young branch was pulled off by a foraging stag, years earlier. Strong and sturdy, it is still too small to be worth the labour of felling for timber, too insignificant to be noticed by the increasing number of soldiers and hunters, carters of grain and wool, or carriages and processions passing between the trees. But, even with its lower branches trimmed by nibbling deer, its foliage-roofed cave is well able to shelter outlaws or fugitives who seek sanctuary in the greenwood, easing their starvation with the bounty of the bees, whilst starlings and jays shriek in the upper canopy. Years later, the tattered remnants of the hymn-singing company straggle home to pick up the pieces of the life they left, to find solace in home and hearth - but not for long. Soon, when the crop of acorns hangs heavily on our little tree and the town is eerily silent, the monks and the women steal through the forest to collect willow bark, wild garlic and black nightshade. A family comes to take shelter under the oak, willing to risk the threat from prowling wolves, content to sleep in the open, to breathe the clean air away from the pestilence. A large pit is dug outside the town walls, and carts creak out by night to unload unknown lumpen cargo. Later, the pit is closed, filled in, but the forest remains unvisited. No garlands hang in the sacred grove: these are turbulent times. One summer, troops of men with longbows of yew, unstrung against the rain, march off at the start of more than a century of war and conflict. The rhythm of life is disrupted, fancy cavalcades no longer venture through, but a ragged crowd of shouting peasants, clutching farm tools for weapons, marches to the town to ransack and destroy the castle and the grand buildings. Summer breeze lifts charred fragments to drift on the air and settle on the pristine foliage and on the abandoned hovels at the forest edge. The people return, but not so many, some to scavenge, some to hide, and some, once again, to cut trees for building. The forest track is busier and the sound of galloping hooves is commonplace. There are smaller deer now, fallow and roe - hunting parties come and set up pavilions, and then the greenwood rings to the sound of horns and clamour. Eventually an area is cleared some way to the west of the place where the great giant fell five hundred years earlier. A hunting lodge is built, using oak spars in decorative angular patterns in the walls. Some days, cavalcades of opulently dressed riders make the ground vibrate under the hooves of their brightly caparisoned horses. Very few ordinary people come here these days, and then only under cover of darkness, for the penalties for trying to feed a starving family are brutal. The new enclosures make life more and more difficult for those who seek the traditional maternal bounty of the forest, but Nature is resilient: the deer multiply and, when all is calm, will gather beneath the spreading branches of the adolescent oak which is slowly becoming the new colossus. One year there are no horns or galloping hooves. Ordered work-gangs with carts, axes and saws, set about felling the oaks – but not for houses. Over the next century, thousands of trees are cut and hauled across country to the shipyards. New trees are planted and harvested in turn to fulfill the burgeoning need for ships. The heart of oak of one flagship alone consumes six thousand trees on forty acres of ground, but, for some reason, our new giant is spared - perhaps its serpentine branches are the wrong shape? - and it is left to tower incongruously above the new plantations. The saplings thrive but the tallest tree takes the brunt of the winds from the East and its heavy crown groans in the winter storms. In Spring each year, tiny red flower buds, yellow catkins, and startlingly bright, lime-green, leaves adorn the dark twigs, but when the wind is in the West, the air is not so pure. The settlements beside the little streams on the slopes of the western hills, are creeping, merging, expanding: water-powered workshops and coal-burning, satanic, furnaces, belch soot, which blows eastwards, darkening and choking the tender foliage. The spreading city, which was once a town, which was once a village and once a hamlet, now blankets much of what is left of the forest. Suddenly, one year, sirens wail, and concrete shelters are built and painted green to ape the canopy of leaves. The deer are gone from the woods. Searchlights take their place and rake the dark sky when droning engines are heard overhead and the city is alight with leaping flames. But, in a twinkling of an eye, the buildings and lights disappear. Peace returns and the great tree is revered once more. A fence is erected around it and the ancient limbs are supported by chains, for fear of collapse. In summer, tourists and picnickers arrive. They park their cars on a gritty patch where the voles, rabbits, badgers and foxes used to live amongst the greenery. The visitors read the notice, which bears a nosegay of the tree's own distinctive leaves, and seem content to admire what is left of the majestic wild wood as they try to stop their children ignoring the fence and climbing too far up into the gnarled branches, where the bees still hover. The track which once saw the passage of bare feet, of hooves, of wooden wheels and marching boots is no more; in its stead are four lanes of black tarmac edged by shining metal barriers and unhappy grey bushes. The constant roar of vehicles passing along it ensures that silence has disappeared from the greenwood - perhaps for ever? The forest has shrunk. The winter storms arrive with increased vigour, unpredictable violence and inflict greater punishment. The winds howl with primeval energy to attack the pollution-blackened limbs of the major oak causing it to bend before the blast. The storm renews its force under slaten clouds, slashing the upper branches and sending ice-bound rain of unprecedented, biblical, intensity to soak the crevassed bark. Like a revengeful breath through the gritted teeth of the injured world, the tempest rages – as if to curse invasive human endeavour, interference and self interest. Lightning cuts the darkness as the wind rips off, first twigs, then whole limbs, spitting ice and debris along the old forest floor. For almost a millennium the oak has provided, sheltered, nurtured, fruited, but finally, isolated, aged and weakened, it gives a last shudder and splits with a sickening crack before the power of the storm. The heartwood, fresh and vital even now, splinters as the great timbers fall onto the carpet of its own shattered self, biting into the fecund, acorn-rich litter of the earth and causing the land, again, to tremble. * In the days that follow, humans, holding clip-boards, and wearing plastic helmets, yellow jackets and rubber boots, pick their way around the sad debris, the broken remains of the old tree. They climb over the corpse, heedlessly, unseeingly, trampling on the delicate, hexagonally-patterned, fragments of the bees' nest. They take photos. Shout into phones. One of them kicks a fallen limb of the ancient one and turns to his colleague: “No problem now then with Conservation Issues - or planning gripes. I'm sure we'll get the go-ahead ASAP.” He grins. “Then we can clear the lot.” The other man looks around at the destruction, slips his phone into his pocket. “ Yeah. Best result we could hope for really.”


Beyond all of the stories you might hear passed or told, you may always take comfort in the idea that perhaps they are not real. I am going to quickly take away that one comfort that you have clung to. What I tell you, nay, what I rave to you is the utter truth. Perhaps that should make it more than a story, but a warning. A warning, to never look upon the stars. A short amount of backstory before I begin in earnest. I always had peculiar dreams, but oftentimes the worst moments were before I went to sleep. The time where I sat in that darkness and thoughts raced faster than your mind. These thoughts are a benign experience to a person. Perhaps it was a prior experience, or maybe you had too much electronic time before bed. Easily explained, easily dismissed. Well, until one fateful night which will live as I live. It began as most things do in the night. A moment of delirium there, a spectacular display of your mind over here, but most importantly was the thoughts. You know the thoughts I speak, the half-formed ones that sit on your waking tongue. Aye, I believe that all of you do know of what I speak. I remember these times like a blur, as when the countryside became a single conglomerate of green and browns on long road trips. These thoughts hardly mean anything, but I remember it so unbelievably clearly still.  The world became quiet. Utterly quiet. This was an odd thing to me because I had tinnitus, so these moments of true quiet were a welcomed moment. Something to be welcomed as a dear old friend comes to visit before a long journey they don't intend to come back from. A thought startled me then, thought about the stars. I remember writing it down, and I will transpose it here.  " The stars, when they are so close. When the sky is so low you can hear the crackling of the fires, like the crickets at night or the gulls above the ocean. You can't reach for them, because it is something we can't reach, only something to aspire to reach. "  Well, I had that thought. It was a half-thought, not given very much time to formulate in one's head. More of something that you believed without reason than something that you didn't believe with reason. It was shortly after that I felt that I should try, really try, to grab one of the stars. I concentrated. I lay down upon my bed, and I had never been so comfortable before. I took one of my hands and stretched it out from my shoulder to as far as I could extend it into the air in front of me. I imagined myself in that place with the stars. I suppose you could call it space if you were a romantic.  Then I gripped one of the stars, closed in a fist that my hand had formed around it. I dragged it down out of the sky, and then I opened my hand. It was the most trembling of moments. The light was blinding, yet my eyes did not close. I was alone in that darkness, a floating form in a vast empty space. In my hands lay a star, one plucked out of the sky. I looked upon it, and let the light flow over me. It was the most unbelievably expansive moment of my life. It felt as if it lasted hours, but it could have been no more than a moment. No more than a moment was all it took. I cried then, the first time in a decade. It was not a trembling beast, nor some alien entity, it was myself.  It was everything I had done, my sin's laid bare to myself. For a while, I cried and shook inconceivably, and yet I found myself laughing. Laughing because this was it, the truth. The truth I sought about myself so much, and it was laid in front of me. At that moment I hated myself but found an acceptance as well. It gave me strength. Yet it was a strength given, not taken. I resolved to make myself a better person, for I could not live with what I had done. I fell asleep shortly after, although I could give you no exact time. I found that upon waking I felt good, great even. It was the best sleep I had had in years.  Yet time stands still for no man, least of all. The next day, I had risen. I felt good. I continued on, resolving to be a better person. I failed spectacularly and shortly fell into old habits. I was lazy, and overall not a good person in my most private of moments. Then I felt what it really was, it was not some blessing. It was a curse, a penance. It spoke against your nature and gave you goals beyond what you could achieve. It drives you mad, to know what you want so desperately, and to know that you have not the strength to do it. Oh yes, completely and utterly mad.  Thus events lead us here. The present. I feel it calling, always. A desire to look upon the star once more and see judgment. Yet I am scared too. I have phrased it many a time differently but when it comes down to it, I am just scared. I am scared because I know what that Star is. It's a door, a door to madness. I have the keys to it, and I can't get rid of them. It calls to me, not in some schizophrenic voice way, but it's there. In a way, it's comforting. I can leave everything behind, with just a turn of a nob.  You may question the horror in this story. You may sit down and state your beliefs, but of this I remind you. You no longer have the comfort of maybe, perhaps, it was all a story. You forfeited that when you read this story. That is the horror of it, that no matter what you think, you are a witness. You will imagine that star eventually, and it will change you. Some of you sooner than others. By telling you, I have damned you. I am sorry, and that is truthful.  Now, I am on the edge. I take deep breaths, my hands move deftly on the keyboard. My room smells of old socks, the hallway of filthy water. My screen is slightly too bright and puts a strain on my eyes. The lower of my back aches slightly because of how I have been sitting. The one light in my room is off. The room is deathly quiet.  The light is off because I am going to look upon the star again tonight.


That summer I'd been hired as a temporary replacement drummer for the band backing bluesman Jailhouse Lemon Lee on a tour through the southwest. In the small hours on the road from somewhere to someplace, I asked Lee, then in his late 70s and blind since birth, how he managed to hold his own in the endless nickel and dime Five Card Stud games that we played to kill the road hours. I suspected that as the New Guy that I was being set up as a mark in a long con because I'd played in dozens of games and while Lee didn't consistently win, he rarely lost big. I couldn't figure out how he did it. I asked. From behind his aviator sunglasses Lee told me he used mirrors. Then he chuckled and settled back in his seat and started quietly chanting lyrics to songs unwritten, his baritone barely above a whisper, the music more felt than heard. The blues poetry of midnight trains and hound dogs, of prison, times good and times hard, and throughout ran the thread of love and lost and loved and lost again, all in 16 bars. And then he was finished. I should have left the lingering magic alone, but I didn't. "But how do you see things? How do you know those playing cards? How can you even describe a color like pink? Spell broken, we were back on the tour bus with diesel fumes and near-sprung shocks, stale beer, snoring, road thrum. The eastern sky hinted pale blue. He sighed, like a man explaining a simple concept to a child: pink was meeting the girl next door for the first time, your first kiss, how she looked on her wedding day, your first child, and how you chose to remember her the last time you were with her, when friends and family quietly stepped out of the room to give you some last time alone. He was a widower pushing three decades by that time. He never spilled about the playing cards. But that's how he explained the color pink.


The umbrella in our yard was bright pink and had a giant slice torn out of it the morning I went to the porch after the rains had hit our town. I recalled my mother had bought the umbrella at an estate sale for around three dollars; how excited she was to bring it home and plant it on our back porch. Well. Now it was in tatters, not unlike the rest of the yard, which had flooded last night in the storms. I didn’t want to tell my mother her prized umbrella was broken now, but she would notice soon enough. She managed to notice everything. I walked closer to inspect the damage. What caught my eye, though, wasn’t the brightness of the umbrella or the large gash breaking it down the middle, but instead a little green bug wrapped around the base of the pole. It was a caterpillar.

I thought about throwing it off the porch because my parents would be mad if it got to the porch garden and chewed through the leaves, but the thought better of it. What did the caterpillar ever do to us, huh? Instead of flicking the tiny fiend, I let it crawl up my arm.

“I think I can find a jar for you, buddy.” I said as I walked into the kitchen and, as expected, found a jar for the caterpillar. Luckily for me, I had been to kindergarten so I did know how to raise the bug. Give it some sugar water, let it make a cocoon thing, release it when it was a beautiful butterfly. Easy, easy, so easy. Right?

Well, as it turned out, the only easy part of raising this butterfly was getting it off the umbrella pole, because the next morning when I looked at the jar, there wasn’t a caterpillar there at all, but instead a nasty, glinty eyed mini dwarf. It was sitting on a broken stick I put in the jar and staring up at me through deep black eyes. I backed up and hit the back of my shins on the bed behind me.

“Are you a mini dwarf?” I asked it, and then I realized that the lid was still on the jar. I unscrewed the lid and peered in. “Are you a mini dwarf?” I asked it again.

“No, I’m the queen of England.”

“Um, really? The last time I checked she wasn’t two inches tall.”

The mini dwarf leapt off his seat and kicked the glass wall. “Well, the last time I checked, I didn’t ask you for these accommodations, buddy!”

“I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what to say. I thought I was helping, honestly. But this little mini dwarf, this little beady eyed freak, was absolutely livid with me and I knew what guys like him could do to humans. Especially me. “I didn’t mean to capture you. I thought you were a caterpillar.” “You were wrong.” “Yeah, I know that now, thanks for the reminder.” I peered deeper into the jar. The mini dwarf had a shock of blue hair and an orange beard. He reminded me of a fruit snack, only harder to get along with. “What’s your name, and then I’ll let you go.”

“What’s your name?”

“Phillop.” It’s a lame variation of the Phillip because my parents tried to be original and just made me sound like a moron every time I said my name. What kind of accent is that, people would ask me, and I’d have to explain that I wasn’t from anywhere exciting, just the small town of Drixmin, and they’d laugh and laugh.

“That’s a stupid name, Phillop. I have a much, much better name than you do.” “Is it Shrek?” The mini dwarf didn’t appreciate that comment. “Nooo, Shrek is an ogre and I am a mini dwarf of the blue and orange beard variety and my name is Marmalade.” “Um.” Marmalade scoffed. “You don’t like that name? Too bad because now that I know your name, I am your ruler.” Oh.

Fae.

“I don’t think that means you rule me. Maybe I owe you something, like a coupon for three in one shampoo, or my firstborn child…” Marmalade chucked at this. “You’re never going to have children, Phillop, and if you did, they wouldn’t be very attractive.” That was rude, but probably true. “I don’t want your firstborn child and the only three in one shampoo I can use is available only at the Fae Walmart of Vancouver.”

“What do you want, then, man?”

“Don’t call me man.” Marmalade crossed his arms. “I think that you should have to come with me on my next trip.”

This worried me. What kind of trip would a little bitty mini dwarf have to go on? Was his travel insurance printed out on the backs of fun sized chocolate bars? “I don’t know about this. It was an accident, you know, me capturing you. If you had been a caterpillar I would have let you go as soon as you were a butterfly. Plus, you were disguised as a bug. How was I supposed to know you were a member of the fae?” “What kind of caterpillar is blue and orange, Phillop?” “A neat one? I don’t know! But I have school.” I did have school. Not that I liked it all that much, but I’d like summer school even less. “I have a family!” I had a family that was never home, but surely they’d miss me if I was gone. “I have friends.” I had two people I sat at lunch with that would be upset if I wasn’t there to share my egg salad with. “And…” this was my crowning glory, “I have a girl friend.” That was true. Kind of.

“Sure you do, Phil. I think you should pack up your bag and we can get a move on my nightfall. See, when I said I wanted you to come on a trip with me, I meant my vacation to the leprechaun realm. They’re having a fantastic party that I would hate to miss.” “Um, what do you need me for, then?” “Human sacrifices do spectacularly at the buffet table.” My eyes widened. “Nope.” I swallowed hard and sat back down on the bed. “I really don’t like that plan.” “I didn’t think you’d be thrilled.” Marmalade ran his hands through his beard. “But it must be done if you want to pay off your debt.” “ Dude, if I am being used as a human sacrifice at a fae buffet table, why does it matter if I pay my debt off or not?” “You know, there is another option. You won’t like it any better though.”

“No, no. Tell me what it is. It could work. Anything is better than this option, honestly.”

Marmalade nodded smugly. “Alright.” He rubbed his hands together malevolently. “I’ll take your girlfriend instead.” “Wait, no.” That wouldn’t work either. That definitely, definitely wouldn’t work. Where was the wiggle room with this deal? “It’s either me or her?” Marmalade picked his teeth with his dirty nails and shrugged. “Yeah, that’s the deal.” “Well, that is a terrible deal.”

“She’s not really your girlfriend though.” This was correct. Sabine Monte was not technically my girlfriend. In fact, she was nobody's girlfriend. In fact fact, she wasn’t even alive and had never been alive to begin with. I made her up at a party in eighth grade when I spun the bottle and landed on the unibrowed, tuna breathed Tina Lard. I panicked and said Sabine, my very real, very not imaginary girlfriend, would kill me if I kissed Tina. It got me out of that trouble, but now I was in some more trouble and it involved me being a human sacrifice.

“Yes, she is!” This could maybe work. “Sabine is my girlfriend and she’s real and she would be happy to join you for you leprechaun party but she’s so smart, she would make it out of there alive. I dare you,” I stood up again and pointed at the glass jar, “I dare you to try and keep her for your ridiculous, not to mention inhumane, buffet table.” “I accept your challenge, young human.”

Craaaaaaaapola.

“Fine. I’ll call her.” I picked up my phone from the bedside table and scrolled through my contact list looking for some girl unfortunate enough to have my number. As I scrolled through the short list, I caught a glimpse of my pasty face in the phone’s backlight. I looked like a toad. A fat, bloated, contaminated by chemicals in the lake toad. Grooossss. I clicked further down my phone list. There was someone I could call… but considering this was the girl who I had refused to kiss in eighth grade, she probably wouldn’t be happy to hear from me. Tina Lard. I changed her contact name to Sabine Monte (girlfriend) and showed the screen to Marmalade. “Here she is.” Her contact picture was one of Natalie Portman, but chances were Marmalade had no idea who she was, so in his book she could be Sabine Monte. This was my first mistake, because if Tina Lard showed up to the leprechaun party, she would most certainly not look like Natalie Portman, right? Righttt.

“Call her.”

I gave the mini dwarf a thumbs up and called Tina. The phone rang twice and then a voice answered. It sounded different, but for sure it was Tina. Maybe she’d had her braces taken off or something. That was another one of the reasons I hadn’t wanted to kiss her; because I had braces too and I had always bought into the myth that if two people with braces kissed, well, they’d be stuck together forever and all of eternity, which didn’t seem like a terrific fate for me. “Who’s this? I don’t have the number saved.”

“Oh, hey, Sabine.” “Sorry, wrong number, my name’s Tina.” “Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s a great name. This is me, um, your boyfriend, um, Phillop. I know after our last argument we’ve been on the rocks, but I need you. You’re smart, you can get through this. Come over, please?” “Are you crazy? I haven’t talked to you in like three years! I don’t know you anymore. I’m not coming to your house.”

“Please? I need you.” This was getting awkward… “I need you to come to my house. There’s an issue.” “What kind of issue?” “A fae issue!”

“Oh.” “Yeah, oh. So can you help me? You’re the smartest person I know and I think you’re the only one who can help me get out of this. Please?” “I’m not doing anything else so I guess I’ll be there in five minutes.” “You live really close by?” “Nope, I can teleport. Yes, I live close by. See you soon, weirdo.” Who was she calling a weirdo? Last time I talked to her she was the one who was extraordinarily strange. She cosplayed as a toaster for the fifth grade cosplay ball!

“She’s on her way, Marmalade.” “Good luck… Phillop.” I glared at the non caterpillar. “You’re mean.” “No kidding! I thought I was akin to the Easter Bunny! ” The doorbell rang. Tina Lard had arrived.

“You’d better go get that, stud.” Marmalade grinned from his jar. He picked up the bottle cap of sugar water and threw it back like he was at a little tiny fae frat party. I ran down the stairs and opened the door, but Tina Lard wasn’t there.

Instead she had been replaced by… by someone else who sounded like Tina had on the phone, but had two whole separate eyebrows and, considering she was on my doorstep, she was close enough to me that I could tell her breath didn’t smell like tuna anymore. She looked like a whole different Tina Lard. Was it possible there were two Tina Lard’s in the county? No? Maybe? Or. Was it just true that the ugly duckling made the most beautiful swans?

“What did you get yourself into now?” “I thought a mini dwarf was a caterpillar and I captured it and now it wants to take me to a leprechaun party as a… as, um, a human sacrifice.” Tina Lard scowled. “You want me to be the human sacrifice?” “Not at all! I know you’re smart enough to not be a human sacrifice!”

Tina crossed her arms in front of her chest. “This seems like a trick.” “It’s not a trick, I promise!” I lowered my voice. “Look, I can show you the mini dwarf, he’s upstairs in a glass drawer.”

Tina resolved to step inside, but as she did she tripped and held out her hand.

I grabbed it to stop her from falling and… Tina Lard’s wings sprouted from her back, orange and blue as a monarch butterfly. Seems that now I owed favor’s to two fae, not just one.

A name and a hand had become my chain and ball.


Stella of Vault 21: 1, The Sea of Sand. A girl roams the endless sea of sand in search of food, water, shelter, anything. As the sun sets she begins to become more and more hopeless she drinks the last of the purified water as she crawls under a rock outcropping. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ Taking out her blanket and lying down in the small alcove. she turns over and sees the lights of New Vegas. A tear rolls down her cheek. She thinks of her past home the only place she knew, Vault 21. She misses it, her family, her friends, her home. She remembers how her family would roll dice every night to see who got the extra food ration. Her first job was at the general store. Her Nuka Cola Collection at this point she tried to stop herself from crying to prevent herself from getting dehydrated but she couldn't. She soon fell asleep. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ Waking up sometime later she realizes in the alcove is a door, this door leading to a vault entrance, Vault 11. Hoping someone is inside she activates the intercom. \_ "Hello," she says \- "Is anyone in there" \- "I'm from Vault 21 please answer" Nothing She asks once again but no response so out of desperation she loads up her Pipboy 3000 and opens the door. With a loud screech of rusted metal and steel, the door opens. She cringes back trying to cover her ears. Now open she realizes something is off. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ "Next time on Stella of Vault 21: Will she find food or water within this derelict vault? What horrors await inside? \- Tune in next time to find out.


My first year in the United States was a complete culture shock to me. A huge part of this was the food. It was difficult to get authentic Asian food; you had to go to specialty stores to get the basics. And in the normal aisles? I had no idea what a lucky charm was, or why you'd have it for breakfast. A PB&J was a foreign, strange acronym that was supposedly a lunch staple. I mean why the fuck would you put something salty with something sweet!? A pop tart was a piece of bread, slathered with icing, then swallowed with sugar and vomited into a box. And school was even worse. This was one of the roughest periods of my life and school was a major component of that. My parents hadn't taught me anything to prepare for our move; they didn't know any English. So imagine, as a young kid, coming over to a new country you had only seen rarely in a movie (and as we all know, the one city you always see is only New York), going to a new school, and not being able to communicate with your peers. It was hellish, and I don't use that word lightly. It meant instant social ostracisation. There were no other Chinese kids in my class, and the teacher had to essentially smile and nod and hope for the best whenever I spoke (which, as you can imagine, was not often). Oh, by the way, my name “Tommy”? It was a result of my kindergarten teacher inability to pronounced my actual name, Toan Ly (Its two syllable!), so she decided to name me Tommy, like some sort of Asian pets she just adopted. After the first week, I was being picked on every day. Everyone seemed to join in on the bullying and I had no one to turn to. I couldn't even tell the teacher they were bullying me, not that I would have – I was too scared to. And I couldn't tell my parents. I had neither the courage nor the resolve to do so, as this would mean I've somehow failed in our big move; the move being, obviously, a huge step forward for our family. They seemed to be adjusting fine, or, more realistically, they didn't let me in on their difficulties. And so I didn't want to be the only one having trouble, and they were left in the dark. I used to hide in the bathroom stall and cry. Every lunch time, I'd run out of class before the teasing and bullying could start, I'd quickly find the nearest bathroom, I'd pick a stall and I'd sit on the closed toilet, knees pulled up to my face, crying my eyes out. I still tear up thinking of the despair felt by younger me in those moments. But something happened during my second week. I came out of my stall after my usual routine and an older boy came up to me, asking what was wrong. I was stunned – I could understand him. He spoke Cantonese! I was absolutely shocked. I couldn't believe it. He must have noticed my face; one or two bruises, and red from the tears. I couldn't even speak, I just stared at him. He told me it was going to be alright, and took me by the hand to the school office. The first gift he gave me was acting as translator, meaning I could actually communicate with the school officials and the teacher. I'm sure he was infuriated by the lack of facilities for new immigrants adjusting to the school, as he probably was once, and took it upon himself to help me not go through what he must have had to go through. The teacher was called in and I promptly explained in Cantonese, happy as anything with my new translator by my side, what had been going on. I'm sure my translator/new friend added some things, as he and the teacher spoke a bit without my input. The teacher left and I went back to class, thanking the older boy. I still didn't know his name, and I actually never would, not to this day. But his tale isn't over. He invited me to have lunch with him on the next break, later that day. I think the kids engaged in my torment were spoken to; I'm not certain, but it more or less ceased from that point on. I went to the lunch hall, and excitedly found my new friend. He introduced me to the rest of his Cantonese speaking friends, opening up a whole new world of social interaction and acceptance. Finally I had some people to just speak with! A whole revelation had been made and I was chatting away to them in my own language. I was no longer ostracised wholesale; I was included in something and that made all the difference. That same lunch break, after eating, the older boy had me come with him, and he approached the white kids who had been bullying me. I didn't understand a word he said to them in English except a lot of expletives. He pointed at me a few times, then himself, and the table of Chinese kids we just left. The conversation went something like this; “(pointing at them) *Fucking* (gibberish) *fuck* (gibberish) (pointing at me) *fucker* (gibberish) (pointing at himself, then the table of our friends) *fucking* (gibberish) (pointing at me) *fuck* (gibberish).” If I repeated any of those words at home my dad would have beaten me to death. But my older Chinese saviour with reckless abandon managed to scare those kids enough to stay away from me for the next year. I saw their wide eyes and frightened looks. I called him “Big Brother” in Cantonese after that, still not knowing his name, and it stuck for the whole year. I spent every lunch break with him and his (now my) friends, we hung out after school and he helped me adjust; he helped me to learn English, he helped with my schoolwork. He was the kindest boy I had ever met in my life and to this day I am so thankful for his existence. I wish I could thank him today. But it wasn't meant to be. The next school year, I went to a different school, and I never saw him again. But I've thought about him many times since, and I sincerely wish he's doing well. He deserves to, for giving that new, little Chinese kid crying in the stall a lifeline he longed for, and truly turning the darkness to light in his mind.


“Just sit and watch,” Alexi said. “Don’t go anywhere, alright?” He said it with a smile, but I knew a command when I heard one. I also knew the way mama would scream if he came home without me. Without waiting for me to answer he trotted off back towards the beaten patch of dirt where his friends waited, the tallest one tossing a ball back and forth between his hands. My palms itched just looking at it. On our way over to the court I’d asked him if I could play this time. I always asked him, and he always had some excuse. I was too clumsy, he said, I’d fumble the ball. They didn’t want new players, he said, because someone would have to give up their position. No one wanted to give up their position. Not to some kid. Not to me. So I had to sit and watch them throw the ball against the glass over and over again. I watched and watched and watched so the day Alexi said yes, I was ready. I would be the best they’d ever seen, I was sure of it. They’d see what I could do and invite me again, call me off the sidelines and -- The ball flew inches from my head as it careened out from Alex’s hand. I flinched as it rebounded off the glass behind me, and went rolling back towards the court. My heart racing from the close call, I got onto my knees and turned to face the surface I had been leaning against. The glass was dirty, stained with layers of smog and graffiti. Paint made of ochre and stolen metal, curling letters in languages I could read, and some that I couldn’t. Even scraping my nails against it yielded nothing but more grey. I pressed my forehead against it, felt the roughness graze my skin. Mama had told me that it wasn’t always that way. There was a time where the outer windows were bright and clear, and the sun would stream in even brighter than the lights on the ceiling. She said she’d never seen the sun, but her grandparents had. Or maybe she had said it was their grandparents. Whenever it was, it was a long time ago. I looked back to the court and saw Alexi focused on a strong defensive move, his arms spread wide. The opposing team let out a scream, and I knew he was distracted, too much so to see me slip away. Pushing to my feet I ran off towards the nearby neighborhood, enticed by the smell of cooking food. My stomach growled, a beast even louder than the constant yelling and shouting in the lean-houses. I ducked into their shadows, hiding from the dimming lights beneath the scarves and shirts made into roofs. The only thing on my mind as I ran through those tight corridors was the sun, whatever that might have looked like. If I ever stole away from the game I went hunting for food, but today the questions hurt even worse than an empty stomach. So I pulled my eyes from the dirt and looked for someone, anyone. I knew she was the one to ask the moment I saw her, tripping over myself as I came to a halt. She had wrinkles so deep I could have lost my fingers in them had I tried. Her eyes were hidden in the folds, but I could feel her watching me nonetheless. “Mem, have you ever seen the sun?” She laughed, and I knew she would humor me with an answer. “Once.” Her voice was raspy, choked by decades of smog. “Just a little. The South window cracked a long time ago. They repaired it when they thought no one was watching. But I was watching. It was the brightest thing I’ve ever seen. Gold. The sun was gold.” Gold was something I knew. And I knew the ceiling lights were not gold. I stepped closer, wanting to hear more, anything more. I was stopped in my tracks by a hand wrapping around my arm, so tight that I felt a flash of pain. The rough grasp yanked me around where I stood, and I found myself staring Alexi right in his eyes. There was no question he was angry. “Just listen for once, Matvei!” He shouted, pitch raising almost as high as mama’s. “Stay put when I tell you.” He dragged me back to the court, but the thought of gold hanging in the air carried me on light feet. Alexi didn’t understand that even small things were grand adventures, even fleeting memories. And he most certainly didn’t dream of something beyond the walls. Of the sun I knew there was. **Adolescence** With every breath daylight slipped away, and growing shadows obscured the words on the page. I reached behind me and flicked the flashlight on, only to turn it off a heartbeat later. I had nearly burnt through my whole month’s battery ration over just a few late nights of reading. Just as I resigned myself to inevitable nightfall, a voice grabbed my attention from just outside. “Matvei, you home?” I could have recognized my brother’s rasp anywhere. And true to form, he didn’t wait for my response before pushing through the entrance of the lean-house. It was that very impatience that got him into trouble, his toes catching on the scraps of metal I had laid out in the waning light. In the next moment he tumbled headfirst towards me, curses filling the air as he crashed to the floor. “The hell is all of this?” He shouted, indignant as he struggled to raise himself from where he had fallen. “Work,” I said, my mood instantly soured by his arrival. Alexi never understood what I was tinkering with, and it was a waste of time trying to explain. It didn’t make sense to him, and likely never would. Just as I expected, he grumbled in what I assumed was confusion as he pulled himself off the floor. “It’s not good for you to be in here studying all the time. You need to go outside, play ball with friends. That’s what I did when I was your age.” “Yeah, and look at you now,” I muttered, creasing a dog ear in the page before snapping the weathered book shut. Even in the low light I could see what had become of him, how the recycling plant had ground him into a husk of his former self. His skin was stained grey from the smog of the city and his forearms were crossed in fresh lacerations. The skin around his eyes was textured with wrinkles, his eyebrows singed from hours spent alongside glass-melting heat. Alexi had never understood that studying was an act of rebellion, more than playing ball ever could be. I knew better than to believe I was invincible, having seen my entire family take slow steps towards an early grave. Alexi was hardly seven years older than me and already had the deathly cough that came with long days working in the plants. My studies were my only shield from a similar fate. “I’m just here to make sure you’re not losing out on everything else,” he prodded. “Like what?” “Well, you’re a man now. Hell, you’re almost as tall as me. I want to make sure you’re taking time to do things outside of studying, or whatever the hell this is,” he said, nudging some of the scraps he had just tripped over. “I don’t know what you mean.” “Well,” he stammered, eyes suddenly focused elsewhere. “You know, if you ever need to talk to me about girls, I guess. It’s normal to have questions.” “No, no!” The words exploded from my mouth before I could stop them. “Just, I don’t want to hear that.” “I don’t mean to say that it’s only girls. If it’s guys you can talk to my friend-” “Alexi, stop!” I cut him off and tried desperately to contain my mounting frustration. “I don’t want to talk about girls, or boys, or playing ball. I need to keep studying so I can get a job, a real job, not one at the plants. A job that will get me out of here. Maybe you too.” “Those books won’t give you a way out of here,” he said. His usually deadened eyes had a spark of something like anger in them. “Becoming a Fixer isn’t some miracle. You might eat a bit better, but you’re not getting off this Floor.” “I’m not just going to be a Fixer,” I growled, grip tightening on the book. “I’m going to be a Mechanic. And I’m going to have the keys to every door in this tower, and I’m going to leave this Floor for good.” “Maybe you’re not as grown as I thought. Hope won’t save you,” he sighed, anger gone. It was replaced with the same defeat that had overtaken his own youthful ambitions, apathy which had snuffed out the flame of dreams. “Hope is naïve. But this isn’t hope, it's hard work. I’m going to get out of here. Just because you gave up on that dream doesn’t mean I have to.” Alexi blinked, and turned back towards the entryway. Those few moments together had cost us the last slivers of daylight, leaving the air thick with his skepticism and disbelief. So out of spite I grabbed my flashlight and let its soft glow illuminate my pages. It was my only way out. **Adulthood** I drained the last of the coffee from my flask and set it down on the floor, its bitterness persistent on my tongue. It had been almost twenty-four hours since I last slept, and most of that time had been spent hunched over the current switchboard and output projections for the Twentieth through Twenty-Fifth Floors. I was on the cusp of a breakthrough, if I could just figure out -- “Hey boss, you busy?” The call pulled me from my concentration, all but shattering the line of thought I had been clinging to. Biting back a sigh I turned around to face the junior Mechanic standing at the threshold to the operating room. “What is it?” “Management says they need you to check on a Plant outage on the Fifth Floor.” Again I had to swallow a sigh, this one out of frustration. As the only Mechanic who had come from the lower ten Floors, if an on-site visit was ever required they would only send me. It was as though they were afraid their status would be tainted by so much as a short visit down. “Sounds like a job for a Fixer,” I responded, hoping to dodge the excursion if I could. “Fixers have been, almost six times in the last two months. Keeps going out. Said it was time for a Mechanic to check it out.” “Alright,” I said, resigned. “Tell them I’ll check on it tomorrow.” The acrid smoke of the recycling plants bit into my lungs the moment I stepped off the elevator and into the crowded quarters of the Fifth Floor. But no matter how much it burned my eyes in those first few seconds, I quickly settled into the memories of a long childhood spent among the sprawling streets of lean-houses with pollutants assaulting my senses. Behind me I pulled a mobile diagnostic lab packed with tools of my trade and let the haphazard structure of the foremost recycling plant on the Floor consume me. Even rooms away I could feel the heat meant to melt glass and metals down to their usable forms, later to be transported out for processing at manufacturing on another Floor. But I grit my teeth to the sounds of a life of labor I had fought so hard to avoid, settled into the Mechanic’s quarters, and got to work. A few minutes into my analysis a hand tugged on my sleeve, and I whipped around to be met with a familiar set of tired blue eyes. “Alexi?” His weathered features were all but unrecognizable, but his voice was the same as ever. “Hey brother. It’s been a while.” “So the outages have been you this whole time?” “Not just me,” he said, a smile lingering on his lips. “There’s a whole lot of us. We’re working to bust out of the lower Floors for good. But we need a man on the inside. I figured if we shut down the plant with enough errors, they’d have to send a Mechanic out. And I was right.” "You’re an idiot to tell me about this so readily,” I answered, my brows furrowing. “My responsibility is to the Tower now. I could report your and all of the other workers at the Plants and quash your movement before it even begins.” I watched the shock cross his face. It was as though the thought of my reluctance had never even crossed his mind. “But you wouldn’t do that, right?” Fear bled through his words. “No one knows what they’re doing really, but I said you would. I said you’d have a way out. Hell, you’re the only one I know who ever has.” Silence hung between us, split only by a rat darting through the tight quarters of the lean-house. It had been so long since I had seen one that I nearly flinched, but I managed to keep my face neutral. Finally I spoke, running my fingers across the keys on my belt as I did. “No, I wouldn’t. You were right to trust me, but this blind faith will get you killed if you don’t learn to keep quiet. There’s danger in opportunity. I know that better than anyone by now.” The tension in the room lifted and he smiled again, a whisper of glee working its way into otherwise deadened eyes. “Then let me tell you what we have planned so far-” Before he finished I pulled a key from its loop, and showed him the engraving in its brass. By his wide eyes I knew he recognized the symbol immediately. “The resistance is so much bigger than you could imagine,” I whispered. “And it’s about more than just the Floors. If you give me some time, we will break out of the Tower altogether.” **Seniorhood** vibrant-shadowsr/InTheShallows 1 point just now There was a rumbling in the basement. It began as a low growl, but slowly grew into a deafening roar. Matvei watched the lights of the Tower flicker as energy surged downwards, wrenching open an egress which had been sealed for generations. The Mechanic felt the trembling of the earth beneath his feet, a grand awakening he had dreamt of for many years. He thought of the building swaying above him, of worried mothers clutching their children, of chaos as the Tower's citizens realized that change was finally upon them. It was euphoric. In his mind’s eye he could imagine the metallic beast pushing its way through layers of dirt, a portal which opened to golden rays of light. He had wandered down that very tunnel many times before, treading silently through the quiet passage coated in dust, all the way to its once insurmountable dead end. He had spent years pressing his hands against the metal of the long-closed door, craning his neck to hear the whisper of freedom’s promise. It was the promise of something beyond a life enclosed in glass, a dream the people in the Tower had never given up on. It had never just been about windows. The dirt-streaked, smog-soaked windows of his childhood had never been the endgame. When he had first felt warmth from behind the glass of the Fortieth Floor, Matvei had discovered joy. It ignited a spark in his heart, a desire for freedom which had since grown into a burning flame. This hunger for liberation was shared with many others, but it was not without loss. As a Mechanic, he had always had the luxury of patience: he never wanted for food, never worried for his safety. It was easy to formulate his plan with precision and steal glimpses of sunlight when he could, just enough to get him by. For Alexi, and for so many others on the lower Floors, waiting had been impossible. As the entirety of the Mechanic’s quarters began to shake from the might of the door wrenching itself open, Matvei thought of how the tower had shook like this once before, almost a decade ago. The insurrection in the Plants had made the steel support beams tremble under its violence, a sensation which had only intensified as boots hit the dirt and gunfire rang out. It was only silent when blood pooled beneath broken bodies, crimson dripping like molten glass. And just like that, Alexi had died in the one place he had vowed to escape With the anger of injustice guiding him, Matvei began to walk forward. He was the first, but the others would come soon. They would pour from the lower Floors and into the darkness, following a faith that had not died with their fathers or their brothers. As the trembling came to a halt, Matvei saw the first golden beams lighting his way. Matvei took a deep breath, savoring the fresh air. Each ribbon of sunlight felt like a kiss, every breeze an embrace. The love of the sky above was unlike any other, a love which would never grow old. He knew he only had a few more years left to appreciate the His heart ached knowing Alexi wasn’t there to watch his grandchildren grow. A small boy of only ten years bore the same name, and carried the familiar blue eyes that Matvei had missed so much. But unlike Alexi this boy had grown up under the bright rays of a golden sun, with grass beneath his feet, and boundless opportunity ahead of him. This Alexi had the opportunity to dream. The sound of children shouting filled the air. Young and old together they kicked the ball back and forth between them, running and sweating and howling in elation. His hips ached even watching them run, the health of a youth left behind. It was the same game Matvei had watched with longing in his childhood, too tied up in books and dreams of escape to waste afternoons on the makeshift courts. But there was time now, even if just to watch again. Just as Matvei was about to close his eyes and let the sun warm his bones, he heard a familiar voice call out to him. “Uncle Matvei!” Alexi ran up to him, waving and clutching the weathered ball beneath his arm. Once he got closer he asked his question, still shouting. “Do you want to be goalie? Just for a little?” Matvei smiled and hauled himself out of the chair with a groan, ignoring the protests of his hips and clicking of his knees. “If you’re sure you want the old man on your team,” he said. But Alexi was already darting back off towards the field, without a single wall in sight.


Maria could tell almost before waking that Santiago was sleeping next to her. From the street came the sound of distant sirens, a noise that had become a comfort to her by familiarity, and she felt the early morning sunlight filter through the curtains onto the bed. With a groan, she rolled onto her back and glanced to her left. There was Santiago, his suddenly long and lanky body sprawled over the white sheets, face dark and expressionless. Maria watched him breathe softly through parted lips. The sun lit up his sweaty head like an angel. “Santi,” she whispered, shaking his shoulder. Her fingernails stood out pale against her sun-spotted skin. Maria was not used to thinking of herself as old– she wasn’t, really, only prematurely aged. “Santi,” she tried again, louder this time. She propped herself up on her elbow. “ Mijito , wake up. I’ll make you coffee and bacon, OK? You don’t want to miss your very first meet.” Santiago curled up like a roly-poly and threw his arms over his head. But at least he was awake. Maria sat up and yawned. She blinked sleepily at the small room: her dresser, piled with jewelry and religious candles; the closet door, broken where Santiago had once batted a baseball indoors; the bathroom, which connected her room with Santiago’s. Besides the kitchen, these were the only rooms in their apartment. She stood with a sigh. “Get up when you’re ready,” she said gently. By the time Maria had finished dressing, Santiago was already sitting bleary-eyed in the kitchen over a bowl of Cocoa Puffs. Maria fussed with the little coffee pot and made one-sided small talk. “We will have to wear sunscreen today, Santi,” she said. “It’s going to be eighty-five degrees. It’s very sunny, so maybe you want to wear a rash guard under your jersey.” “None of my friends at school drink coffee,” Santiago muttered. Maria’s heart sank. Lately she had been afraid of Santi showing defiance. He was such a sensitive, gentle boy– a weak boy (but Maria would not acknowledge even to herself that she thought of him as weak)– he didn’t know what it would mean for him if he resisted her affection. He didn’t know, either, what it would mean for her. She loved Santiago, she adored Santiago, she sacrificed for Santiago, she would die for Santiago. No one else could ever do that for him. As for herself– there was nobody, nobody at all except Santi. Maria could not have endured it if he had turned away from her in shame. “Mexicans always drink coffee at breakfast,” she said out loud. “Don’t forget, I’m also making bacon, your favorite.” Maria wondered which of the other eighth graders he meant by his “friends.” Last August, when she had requested that the school move Santiago from the Special Day Class to the ordinary sections, Mr. O’Connell warned her that Santiago would have a difficult time making friends. “Students with autism can really thrive under the care of our specially qualified teachers,” the principal explained, slowly, as if Maria couldn’t speak English, or hadn’t heard these exact words a hundred times. “But he has Asperger’s,” she argued. She was angry at how close she was to crying. Mr. O’Connell gave her a pitying smile. “Asperger’s is on the spectrum, Ms. Martinez.”

Maria did not know how to explain to him that she already understood this, or how to articulate just what she meant. But she refused to leave until she spoke to both SDC instructors, the child psychologist, and one of the eighth grade teachers. Whether she convinced them or simply wore them out, Maria succeeded. Santiago turned out to be a B student with particularly good grades in science; Maria was tempted to show up to San Miguel Middle School herself and taunt Mr. O’Connell. “I told you so,” she'd say, in perfect English. But Santiago also came home angry most of the time, complaining that he was being bullied or left out. Every so often, he’d have a full-blown tantrum (oh her baby, her angelito ) and start throwing objects at walls and windows. The worst was the night he destroyed his snow globe, the one she’d bought him at SeaWorld. Santiago loved that snow globe– he could spend hours turning the little dolphin, mounted on the crest of a wave in perpetual leap, surrounded by a flurry of sunset-hued confetti. But he had seized his own greatest treasure with both hands and brought it down, hard, on the corner of the kitchen table. Shattered glass and glycerol flew every direction. Maria watched the shards glisten slow-motion in mid-air, then fall almost gently to the carpet in a puddle of pink glitter. Both she and Santiago cried that night. But Maria scolded herself afterwards. “If I am not strong for him, who will be?” she asked herself. Gradually, the bubbling coffee and sizzle of the pan cheered Santiago a little. He put on his Roadrunners uniform, a red-and-yellow jersey and shorts that were several sizes too big– he said they were more comfortable that way. Maria snuck a glance in the mirror before they left. There was no helping her hair. It had always been rough and curly like wool. Her father used to call her his “ ovejita negrita ,” his “little black sheep.” She’d just pull it back tight and hope most of the hairs would lie flat. She winced a little at her blue Albertsons polo, size large, envisioning the other parents scoffing at her. But Maria was annoyed with her own embarrassment; she decided to wear the shirt just to punish herself for such a thought. Almost as soon as they got outside, while they were still waiting for the #6 bus, Maria began to sweat copiously under the thick knit cotton. She resorted to fanning herself with the track schedule. After the bus, the walk from their stop to the track was another quarter mile. Maria puffed for breath, languishing in the California heat, as she struggled to keep up with Santi. He wouldn’t hold her hand to cross the street. This surprised Maria, and made her uneasy; but she supposed it would look silly, her leading along a boy five inches taller than herself. Maria had never been to Buffman Charter. The school was a private junior-senior high in a slightly nicer part of the city. A tall metal fence painted blue surrounded the outdoor facilities. The buildings looked modern, mostly glass, and the lawns were so green she guessed they must feed them bottled water. The track itself was completely disorienting. Maria felt overwhelmed by crowds of middle-aged men in baseball caps and their middle-grade kids, most of whom like Santi towered over her. She thought she must look very foolish, floundering about with her face brilliantly red and sweat stains appearing at her armpits. “Stay close to me, Santi,” she gasped, “stay close, you will get lost.” Maria impulsively clutched at his arm. Santi pulled away from her. “ Mami , I know where I’m going,” he said. “Look, there’s the Roadrunners tent”– Santi was pointing somewhere Maria couldn’t see– “and over there’s the long jump pit”– in the opposite direction. “That’s my first event.” “Are– are you sure?” she said, stunned by his confidence. “ Mijo , I don’t–” But now it was Santiago’s turn to lead her by the hand through the maze of much more competent parents, all who looked at her with disdain (so Maria imagined). Suddenly they were standing with the San Miguel Middle School track and field team under a red-and-yellow tent, set up against the back of the outdoor bathrooms. Santiago went to check in with Coach Rasmussen as Maria, almost frightened, looked back and forth quickly between the other families and the schedule. She couldn’t make anything of it. Times, events, and names swam on the pages– there were multiple, stapled together– until she managed to find "Santiago Martinez" written in several places, clinging to them in desperation. No one tried to speak to her. Good , she thought, maybe they think I understand . Maria waited for Santi. She grew nervous as his teammates began to disperse in all directions, but still she waited for him to come back and lead her to their next mysterious destination. She needed to make sure he had water and put on extra sunscreen, and then she would cheer him on as loudly and expertly as any of the other parents. The idea comforted her. But why wouldn’t he hurry? Maria stood for several more agonizing minutes, tortured by the sun. Only when other Roadrunners started coming back from their events, crimson and exhausted, did she realize that Santi must have gone off without her. Maria tried not to panic. She asked the nearest sweaty kid, “Please, do you know where is Santiago? Santiago Martinez, can you help me find him?” The kid, a blond boy taller even than Santi, graciously agreed and asked to see the schedule. “His first event is long jump, then he’ll run hurdles, the 100 and 200 meters, and then the relay at the very end,” the boy said, pointing to each instance of Santi’s name. Maria didn’t know what all this meant. “Boys’ long jump is still going. I can take you there so you can see if he’s gone yet.” “Yes,” Maria said. “Yes… thank you…” They arrived at the sand pit just as Santi landed his third jump. “Sixteen feet, two and a half inches.” Several onlookers clapped and nodded, impressed. Another Roadrunner offered Santi a high five, who accepted mechanically. He kept swiveling his head around, looking for something; when he caught sight of Maria he came running to her. Maria was closer to being angry with him than she had ever been in his life. “I waited and waited for you,” she said before Santiago could say anything. It came out sounding childish, petulant. The blond boy took his leave delicately without waiting for thanks. “I did not know where you were.” “Sorry,” Santi said, a little surprised. “I told you I was doing long jump. Did you see me?” “I did not see you at all.” Maria’s voice shook. “Please, remember me next time.” Maria followed Santiago to the stands overlooking the crowd. It was relatively pleasant here (at least she could see everything), but the metal seats radiated white-hot, preventing her from sitting down. Their shadows shortened and shortened until they were directly underneath them. “You can do this?” she asked, gesturing generally at the girls’ hurdles. “That looks very hard.” It looked impossible– Maria’s legs could never have moved that way, like the two hands of a clock. “Uh-huh,” Santiago said, distracted. “I need to go down in a second.” “I am going to stick next to you,” Maria insisted. She took the little bottle of sunscreen from her purse and poured some into her fat palm. “You need more of this, you are sweating so much.” Santiago brushed her hand away from his face. “You can’t come onto the track,” he said. “I want you to see me run. Wait in the bleachers.” “But–” Santi was getting upset. “You treat me like I’m a baby just like everyone else, but I’m not. I can run track by myself.” “Santi”– Maria would not cry– “please let me follow you”– how did he know everything?– “I don’t know where to go”– and wasn’t he her baby, after all? “These are the results for the boys’ A-Team Long Jump event,” a voice crackled over the loudspeaker. “In sixth place, Logan Abrantes from Pleasant Valley. In fifth place…” Santi straightened up and listened hard. Maria cupped her hand behind her ear to catch the sound. “...David McKenzie from Buffman Charter. In fourth place, John Suarez from Pleasant Valley.” Santiago gripped the railing. “In third place, Santiago Martinez from San Miguel. In second place…” “Third place!” Santi whipped his head around, shocked. “ Mami , that means I got a medal!” “You won a medal?” Maria repeated stupidly. “A bronze medal, in long jump, that’s third place.” Santi flapped his hands in excitement. “I’ll pick it up at the end, but I have to go, Mami , stand with Coach Rasmussen so you don’t get lost.” He pointed at the grass in the middle of the track where the coach was standing. It looked like several parents were near him, keeping a sharp eye on the hurdlers. “OK, Santi, OK,” Maria sighed, “I’ll watch you the whole time.” Coach Rasmussen waved as she came over. His eyes were hidden behind sunglasses, but his smile was kind. “Hi there, Ms. Martinez,” he said. “I heard Santiago got a medal for long jump.” “Yes,” she answered with dignity, “third place.” “So, Ms. Martinez, what's gonna happen is that all the hurdles will go, then all the meter dashes, and relays last,” the coach explained to her. Maria was grateful that she didn't have to ask. “We'll be here for a long time. Several more hours, at least.” Coach Rasmussen was true to his word. Maria gave up trying to understand what was happening and fell back on imitating the other San Miguel parents. She learned to cheer at any suggestion of red-and-yellow. Only after several rounds of strangers’ hurdles did she see Santiago’s heat. He didn’t do very well, losing to twin boys wearing green-and-black. She mislaid her schedule, forgot which events Santi was in, and became steadily more miserable. Santi won both his heats in the meter dashes– even Maria could tell that much– but they were over so quickly and sandwiched between so many others that she lost him almost immediately. When Coach Rasmussen wasn't running alongside the track, screaming at the sprinters, he would courteously jog over and tell her which event was next. But it didn’t matter. She didn't even notice if Santiago’s name came over the loudspeaker. Maria did not know and hardly cared where he was anymore. That was the real agony. After fifteen years of dedicating herself solely to protecting Santi, Maria had been defeated by a silly middle school track meet. She had thought she was strong because she could endure anything, tough and silent, the way a poor mother had to endure. Endure anything– what a joke. She couldn't endure four hours in the sun. Maria accepted her suffering in humiliation and prepared to wait it out. “Hey Ms. Martinez, you'll wanna watch this.” Coach Rasmussen nodded his head toward the track. “Last event. I think Santiago’s gonna do great.” “This is the last one?” Maria roused herself. “I need to see. I want to–” Then Maria saw Santiago standing nervously with three other Roadrunners. All four boys kept shifting around and wandering in circles, arms folded or hands on hips, thrusting their shoulders back and gazing upward. Santiago’s demeanor perfectly matched the others. He looked like an ordinary teenager, Maria realized with a slight pain. “Boys’ A-Team Medley Relay, to your places!” Maria watched Santi and his teammates jog to separate corners of the track. “The first two boys each run 100, then 200, then Santiago’s gonna run a 400 around the whole track.” Coach Rasmussen traced their paths on his hand like a map. “He's our anchor, so just watch near the finish line for him.” Maria inched closer to the track. She watched the first runner from San Miguel, a curly-headed black boy, kneel and rest his hands on the polyurethane. He closed his eyes and let out a deep, controlled breath. Someone blew the whistle. The first boy was gone before Maria had time to process. She barely caught sight of him as he passed the baton to the blond boy, the one who had helped her earlier. He took off beyond her field of vision– she was afraid to move from her spot and miss Santi– but she kept cheering, straining to see the third runner as he came around the curve. Two other teams were ahead of him. “ Come on! ” Coach Rasmussen shouted, his face purple. The runner, who had long orange hair that clashed with his uniform, stretched the baton toward Santiago, who was already picking up speed. As soon as his cupped fingers made contact with the aluminum Santi’s feet seemed to lift from the ground. Maria saw a familiar glint in his eye– anger. She screamed sounds and not words as his legs moved like coupling rods past the boy ahead of him. Coach Rasmussen started running alongside him with clipboard in hand, waving his arms frantically above his head. Santi gritted his teeth and bowed hard into an italic stance. He was far enough from Maria now that she couldn’t make his features out exactly, but she saw him closing the gap on the boy in first, one of the green-and-black hurdlers. Santiago tore around the last corner, his long skinny fingers balled into fists. Now the whole crowd was in uproar. Maria forgot her own misery in the rush of colors and noise and adrenaline. Santi was a machine, his legs hydraulic pumps. They were tied– Santi edged in front– then the other boy– Maria was nearly hysterical– at the last moment, Santi stretched his neck out, eyes bulging, and lunged over the finish line half a step ahead. Santiago was laughing, actually laughing. Maria, dumbfounded, watched his coach and teammates surrounding him, leaping with supernatural energy, pouring their waters out on his head. The blond boy slapped Santi on the back. Santi grinned almost bashfully with surprise, then turned and gave Maria a beautiful, radiant, gentle smile, the one she knew so well. Maria’s knees felt very weak. She saw herself and Santi as if from above: a fat, frail old woman and a healthy, victorious young man. “Who will be strong if I am not strong? Santi will be strong. He is strong. How did I not know?” Maria wept, but she was not ashamed.


Not many people can say that they met someone they came to love while having their car repaired. Well, I can. It was a minor issue but I was upset as the car was new. New as in less than two months in my garage. The service writer at the dealer was surprised I had arrived so early in the day. I was more than put out and wanted the matter taken care of before I went to work. It was so early that the service department wasn't actually open yet for business. But the mechanic who fixed the sort of problem I presented happened to be at work and ready. I was allowed to drive my car into the service area – instead of waiting in a cold little room. The porter who usually drove cars to the mechanics wasn't clocked in yet. The mechanic was a very pleasant looking man. Perhaps younger than I but I cared only that he could and would take care of my car. He chatted nearly the entire time he was working. Perhaps it was a nervous reaction as the customer usually isn't with their car while he's working on it. Regardless, it was a short time later that he declared the car ready to go. Warranty covered the situation so I could just drive out and go on to work. Which I did. This was a Friday morning. Monday morning, as usual, was a bit hectic at work. I'm a one-girl office for a small ad agency. First thing every Monday is to check the answering machine. I had just recorded the last call when the phone rang. The voice asked for me and sounded familiar but I couldn't place a name or face. Guess I hesitated too long and he said, “I'm sorry. Guess I didn't make as good an impression as I thought. This is George from the dealership. I worked on your car Friday.” Click, click. I knew who it was. Now to not let him know I didn't. “Hi, George. Guess I'm just trying to figure out how you had my office number.” “It's on the work order.” “Of course. What can I do for you?” I was totally intrigued by this time. Guess I made more of an impression on him then I thought I had. 'It's short notice and I expect you're already booked. But would you have dinner with me tonight? I have to be at the courthouse at 7 but it'll take only a few minutes and then we could go to dinner. Maybe the Pepper Mill?” The Pepper Mill is a white linen establishment. Kind of pricey. Elegant. “Courthouse?” “Have to check in at night court but it won't take long. Any chance you can have dinner with me? Forgive the short notice but I figured if I'd asked Friday you'd shine me on.” “Well – “ He is a nice looking guy. Seemed polite enough. And the Pepper Mill? Did I want to chance it? Night court? “I usually don't go out on Mondays. It's a catch-breath night after the weekend.” Good lord, now I sound like I play all weekend. “Well, I figured you would say no but decided to chance it. Anything I can say to change your mind?” “George, I've just met you. Where would I meet you?” “I'll pick you up at 6:30 at your house. If someone goes out with me, it's my job to pick up and take home.” “You don't know where I live.” “Of course I do. It's on the work order.” “6:30?” “Yeah.” “Okay. I'll be ready.” “Thanks. See you then. I have to get back to work.” I hung up. What in hell have I just committed to? I wrote myself a post-it note and put it on my purse. I don't do things this way. I know absolutely nothing about this guy – other than he's a mechanic at the dealership where I bought my car. The day flew by. Fortunately, I had put that note on my purse and at 5, instead of staying over half an hour as I do often, I locked the front door, told the guys they needed to answer the phone, and went home. George was prompt. He parked in a city lot and we went into Night Court. There were a lot of people there. He had gotten a speeding ticket and wanted to see if he could beat it – or at least have it cut down. 125 on the New York Extension. That's a fairly new, four lane road that connects Altadena to Sierra Madre. It's not very long but evidently long enough to drive really fast. The judge decided that the citing officer may have pulled him over too soon and some of the speed resulted from the officer trying to catch up to him. He cut the ticket to 65 in a 45 zone. That reduced the fine by over $200 – George says. He paid the fine in cash; got a receipt and asked, “Ready for dinner?” The Pepper Mill was a bit busy for a Monday. We were seated in a small dining room off the main dining area. That was fine with us – a group of rowdies from CalTech were pretty loud in the main area. We ordered drinks...surprising, both the same. And George started talking. In half an hour I had pretty well heard his entire life story. The waiter had brought menus with our second martini. We ordered the same entre. And during dinner, George talked some more. It was as if a fountain of words had erupted and he had to get them all out in one sitting. Thing is – it didn't seem as though he was trying to make an impression. Though I think he was trying to convince me he was an all right guy. And I believed him. It was after eleven when I finally got home. George walked me to my door, took my key and opened the door. He shook my hand and asked if he could see me again. I nodded. “Give me a call sometime.” I've gone on some wild first dates – usually with someone I've known, or known about, for a while. But this one was really different. I am truly impressed. If anyone had ever said I'm meet the perfect man while having my car repaired, I would have laughed at them. I'm not laughing now. His appearance before the judge about his speeding ticket was flawless. He stood at ease with his hands behind his back as he related his side of the story. “Yes, Your Honor; no, Your Honor; and, I understand there are standards for clocking a speeding vehicle. I believe these standards were not met.“ The Judge and his bailiff poured over a map of the area for several minutes before agreeing. He wasn't arrogant, belligerent or smart ass. Just cool, calm and collected. Thursday morning George called me at work. “I hope that I'm not too late to ask for your time on Saturday evening.” “After your last call, how can you say that? You gave me all of eight hours notice.” “Yeah, I know. I apologize. But I so wanted to get to know you that I took advantage of Night Court to do it. I apologize. Truly. I would very much enjoy seeing you again...Saturday if I'm not too late in asking.” I didn't want to sound like I never have a date and jump at the chance. If I turn him down will he call again or ask for next week? I must have hesitated too long. “You can't make it. That's okay. Maybe another time.” I could tell he was ready to hand up. “No, no. I was trying to decide how to change plans. I would love to see you Saturday night.” I could hear the deep sigh. “When I met you, I knew I had to see you again. I've never been so impressed on a first date before. You were everything I imagined. Poised even in rowdy Night Court. You drink gin martinis. Not many woman drink gin – martinis or otherwise. You eat your steak medium. You chose strawberry over chocolate. You're a good listener and you laugh honestly. It irks me when a woman laughs and makes idiotic cutesy sounds instead of an open honest laugh.” Does one say thank you to such an expansive compliment? Well, I did. “Thank you, George. No one has ever complimented my laugh before.” “It's beautiful. I love it. Now about Saturday; do you dance?”