This is my first post on here. Figured this would be the best place to put a piece of my work that will be evaluated. Enjoy this... weird one, to say the least lol. # At the end of his days, one scientist prepares to outlive us all... It was a bright summer day. Birds chirped their songs in the afternoon shades of their trees, children laughed and played in the parks, and couples sat together on park benches, taking in the lazy summer air that carried scents of freshly bloomed flowers. And underneath the sunny afternoon in the basement of a dilapidated laboratory, a scientist was about to spit in the face of natural law. The laboratory, once a powerhouse of innovation and genius, was now nothing more than a rotting carcass that barely resembled its former glory. From the outside, it was nothing more than an old two-story building wedged between a bakery and a pawn shop. An unnamed forgotten structure that most people never noticed. The doors were chained shut, and the windows were boarded up from the inside. The bricks were cracked and faded from decades of decay, and the grimy windows made the boards behind them appear almost ghostly. The building looked, for lack of a better word, dead. Though that was far from the truth, as Dr. Ivor VonLichten knew all too well, hunched over the keyboard in that dark basement. Most thought the laboratory was a former office for a law or accounting firm, but it was actually the birthplace of Ivor’s robotics empire. He thought it a cruel joke, that he rose to the top from humble beginnings only to fall back to square one. The paint was peeling off the bleak grey walls as mold and its stench seeped through the cracks. Rusty steel beams supported by a rib cage of pillars along the wall held the patchy ceiling, drops of murky water falling into various buckets placed along the floor. The basement echoed with the loud clacking of Ivor’s fingers on his keyboard, fervently blasting out lines of code. Wires all around the floor of the basement ran like arteries to a massive wall of monitors, dozens of screens burning images of coding commands and readings into the air. Ivor sat there in an old office chair, his tattered lab coat flapping everywhere as he typed out the next revolution of modern technology. Ivor had pepper-grey hair, with age spots dotting the skin stretched across his narrow arms and bony fingers. His glassy grey eyes were arid after staring at the myriad of screens so long, and his labored breath forebode its end. By all definitions, Ivor VonLichten was a dying man in a dying place that should have served no other purpose than his tomb. But still his fingers typed on with a ferocity that only the spark of life can bear, burning with the embers of a single fact - Ivor VonLichten was simply not going to die. For the bones of his laboratory were not going to be his grave, but rather his saving grace. Even after the failure of his business and the subsequent failure of his body, his mind was still as valuable as the day it was born. A mind that was praised and scorned by the very same people who were going to be responsible for their own demise. Ivor knew that as the people of this world laughed and played, they choked the skies and poisoned oceans, their own deluded happiness merely acting as a distraction from their impending doom. Ivor knew that humanity had an expiration date, not just individually but the species as a whole, and it was approaching exponentially faster. And Ivor knew that he was not going to join them as they dug to their own deaths. It was this very idea that drove him, even now in the decay of his own body and the ill basement he worked his last breathing hours in, to his greatest feat. And it was precisely when a screen to his left blinked green with the words *TEST #77: INTEGRATION SUCCESSFUL*, that Ivor’s jaw hung open and his eyes widened, staring in awe at the green glow of the monitor. Ivor checked. Then double-checked. He had quintuple-checked and still the integration was shown to be indeed successful. This was it. The moment he worked so tirelessly for, the moment that he sold everything he ever owned for, the crowning achievement of humanity’s entire meager existence had finally come to fruition, punctuated by a simple line of text on a green computer screen. His eyes were pulled to the corner of the room on his right, where cords as big as pythons ran into a single rectangular box, standing upright and glowing a stark ice blue. Standing eleven feet high, the front facing end of the Cradle - as Ivor insisted on calling it - was made of tempered bullet-proof glass, illuminated inside by cryogenic preservation rods, giving it the appearance of the underside of a glacier. Dozens of empty barrels labelled LN2 - liquid nitrogen - were littered around the monolith like giant beer cans the morning after a frat party. The edges of the glass flaked with frost and condensation. Yellow tubes gripped the sides of the unit like yellow skeletal fingers, each one filled with a solution that was worth more than the box, the supercomputer, and Ivor’s pension combined. Ivor slowly stood up from his swivel office chair, and stepped towards his now completed creation. His feet ached with every step, the muscles in his legs and core tightening in pain and revulsion, rejecting the need to move. But Ivor stepped closer, and brought his rattling, thin fingers to the glass face of the Cradle. Within the ice blue, like a silhouette of light, was a figure in the shape of a human body. Only Ivor knew what lay inside: a synthetic solution of several durable, flexible materials, slowly being drawn into the frozen Cradle. Ivor looked back at the room, a dank and dying skeleton of where his career started. Despite the notion of his being here a pathetic joke, he had to admit it was strangely poetic that this was the place he had found a way to begin anew. It dawned on him that this was the last time he would ever truly experience the world as it is, even now in such an infectious room. Ivor closed his eyes and took a deep breath - the rank odour of mold, the damp air, the drips of water that you *definitely* should not drink - taking everything in, and felt a strange sense of nostalgia. Suddenly, the floors were clean, the paint was fresh, and the fluorescent ceiling lights gleamed a bright white as he and his friends from college sat around drinking terrible coffee, towers of unopened boxes surrounding them, already laughing and talking through their favourite ideas and how they would change the world. Then Ivor blinked, and just as suddenly as they appeared, the lights dimmed, the walls grew colonies of all kinds, and the sounds of optimistic laughter faded away, replaced with drips of dirty water and the hisses and hums of machinery. Ivor looked back at the Cradle, and his wistful expression morphed into a scowl as he thought about how those same people would think of his creation. They would have called it insane, a delusional hope that would end in catastrophic failure. He could hear them - “Ivor, you’ve really lost it now. You call this a *solution?* You’ve built nothing but a fancy coffin!” Any other mind would scoff at his project and write it off as the tragic fall of a once great mind. But Ivor knew better. The one line of text on that small screen knew better. And here it was, physical proof that they and billions of others before him were wrong. For this wasn’t his coffin. This was his Cradle. Ivor’s focus now lay on the figure in front of him - a reflection of an old man in a rotting cave of his own failure. As those same hollow eyes stared back at him, his expression bore a new appearance that he hadn’t seen in a long time - determination. Ivor reminded himself why he was here. The Cradle was functional, meaning that Ivor was about to step into the greatest achievement by any mortal being known to man - and *become* that achievement. It was decided. Ivor pressed a button on the right side of the Cradle. A small tube ejected from underneath the button, containing an orange canister no bigger than a chocolate bar. Ivor took it in his hand and walked back to his desk, sitting down in his swivel chair. He pulled out a small mesotherapy gun from the left hand side drawer, modified with a switch array and cords running into the enormous computer in front of him. He flipped the switches to prime the device, turning on a green laser pointer on the underside of the muzzle. Ivor placed the tube inside the fixture where the syringe would go, and placed the gun to his head, the green laser fixed directly above his right ear. On cue, one of the screens switched to a diagram of a human brain, similar from what an MRI would show. A red line blipped intermittently across the screen, right through the brain diagram. Ivor brought the gun up and down, the line on the screen moving with the gun. He did this until the line beeped a satisfying green when it was aimed at the correct spot and the right angle. Ivor looked at the computer one last time before bringing his eyes to the Cradle. In that moment, he felt the embers of youth spark once again in his bones, blazing with anticipation at his feat. He took one final breath in that room, clamped his eyes shut, and pulled the trigger.  \* \* \*  Chuck del Toro was on the Eastrail 177 train when everything happened. Had he lived through the experience, he would’ve remembered every painstaking detail. The subway car barreled through the veins of tunnels, carrying all kinds of people to their daily routines to fulfill their duties as cogs in the massive clockwork of society’s machine. Chuck sat in between a wealthy-looking business executive - dressed in a suit as sharp as crystal, shoes that gleamed like polished obsidian and a watch that was probably worth more than Chuck’s apartment - and a rather impoverished individual wearing a tattered hoodie, faded jeans and busted sneakers that resembled three-week old banana peels. Chuck held his blue college backpack close to his chest, equal parts out of fear and embarrassment from his two travel companions. Too many things were on Chuck’s mind to notice that the subway car was shaking more than normal. That paper was due at eleven-thirty, right? Or was it twelve? So many mundane concerns piled onto his preoccupied mind, resulting in a migraine from the mounting pressure. Chuck resorted to looking outside at the lights as they sped by in a blur as bold, dashed streaks of light whizzing in a hypnotic motion. Then, the dashed blurs began to flicker. It was only now that he noticed the rumble of the car had reached a point beyond normality. Looks of concern and mild alarm rippled throughout the other passengers, including the vagrant and the businessman. Chuck turned his neck to look out his side of the car. Through the blur of motion, he saw cracks snaking their way up the bricks, and he heard the clatter of dust on the car roof. Panic creeped up his throat, and the hairs stood up on the back of Chuck’s neck as the tunnel in front of them collapsed open. Up ahead, a section of earth caved in, bringing that section of the subway tunnel with it. So much of it fell (or Chuck’s section raised) that the surface was now partially visible. Chuck’s subway car barreled out of the new exit. The wheels left the rail and the air fell silent as the car fell into freefall, seconds lasting an eternity. Chuck gripped the pole for support out of instinct, anchoring himself to the car. The vagrant grabbed the seats, and the businessman just tried to stay in his chair out of panic. Passengers all along the car tried their best to hold on. Some succeeded, some others had surprised expressions as they were lifted into the air, then the car made an impact on the ground below. Chuck’s car was the second one in the chain, which ended up saving him from the initial fall. The front car fell face-first into the ground as the second tried to fall to the ground, pushing against the now upright front car like an open stapler desperately trying to close. Passengers flew ahead from the force, including the vagrant and the businessman. The coupling bent too far and snapped, the momentum sending Chuck’s car hurtling ahead as it bent left and crashed onto its side. Chuck fell forward, his head bashed against the wall as the chaos of the fall began to blur. After what felt like forever, Chuck lifted his head that now felt like it weighed a ton. He touched his fingers to his forehead and felt blood. Chuck lumbered ahead on all fours, crawling to the nearest light. In the bend, the car had partially torn open, revealing the carnage outside. He made it between the businessman and the vagrant, and what he saw made him think he was hallucinating from a concussion, if that was even possible. Several chunks of earth collapsed and rose as buildings’ foundations groaned and fell, glass dust sprinkling down like rain. The land appeared to be rippling like the ocean, the surface cracking under the stress of the bends. Cars rained from the sky as they flew off of streets and parking garages, the meticulous paths of roads now crumbling into chaos. Chuck’s gaze drifted past the dissolving of civilization towards the horizon, where horror blazed. He had simply thought they were spots in his eyes from the crash, but reality was far worse. The sky was on fire as new suns began to supernova in the distance, blazing balls of light and heat rising and cooling into clouds the shapes of mushrooms, buildings on the horizon becoming translucent and fading away as the nuclear explosions raged forth, the deafening shockwaves barreling towards Chuck’s ears just before his vision faded to black. \* \* \* The Cradle hissed and hummed as the ancient glass doors creaked open, white gas billowing out as the last of the refrigeration solution faded away. Stumbling out of the Cradle was a humanoid figure made of a strange metallic material, black as the night. Microscopic cells along the body shrank and expanded, focusing on the nearest shreds of light, giving the figure a sort of ripple across its skin. The figure fell on all fours, struggling to keep its weight aloft, unused to the feeling. Slowly, two eyes opened, the aperture and artificial corneas contracting. Solid sun-yellow eyes gleamed, the pupils like sun spots. The figure slowly pulled itself up and took in the surroundings. The land had half fallen away, the side of the room opposite of the figure completely gone and open to the landscape. The room had been completely overtaken by nature, all kinds of vines and vegetation weaving from the hole throughout the room, as well as the sides of the Cradle. The cracks in the floor grew tall strands of grass, and a few flowers. Against the wall sat the remains of a supercomputer, the monitors blank and coated in dust so thick they looked like tablets of stone. On the ground by the computer was what was left of a human skeleton, covered in moss and grass, barely holding itself together. Ribs, a skull and arm bones poked out of the green, the puny remains of a hand grasping what was left of a now broken mesotherapy gun. After looking at the remains of the lab, the dark figure walked to the edge of the room, and the eyes of Dr. Ivor VonLichten absorbed the enormous scenery. The landscape was a series of jagged hills, smoothed over by centuries of erosion. Grass and trees covered the hills, ebbing and flowing in the breeze. All around the landscape, the remains of enormous fallen skyscrapers were littered like ancient tombstones in a forgotten graveyard. In between it all were great ravines formed by past earthquakes, riddled across the ground like lightning scars. Beyond that, enormous craters dotted the landscape like an enormous fist had repeatedly punched the Earth, now eroded and overgrown. A once mighty metropolis and monument to human power, now merely skeletons being consumed by the tide of earth in the wake of a new era. And yet Ivor stood there, having survived it all using the same resources as this fallen empire. He looked down, observing his metal, glistening black hands. The sensory receptors picked up every change in wind, every odour it carried, and every noise that it blew. He looked across the enormous landscape again, and nodded. Ivor brought his left leg back, bent his right knee, and lunged forward off the edge of the cliff. Suddenly, the fibers in his body began to expand and lengthen, legs merging together, each finger fusing into the remainder of the material in his arms until he was an enormous, thin sheet of metal, catching the wind with colossal wings and soaring across the sky into the expanse of the ruined city. Ivor descended onto a desolate city street, the asphalt overgrown with vegetation so that any semblance of concrete were simply slabs no bigger than three feet across scattered around the area like pebbles in a field. His body morphed back into humanoid form, performing a perfect somersault as he made contact with the ground. Looking up at the broken city Ivor truly knew how it felt to be an ant in a cemetery. The wind blew through the area, moaning as it weaved through the buildings’ skeletons, and distant clouds casting hazy shadows across the area, creating wispy shades like the ghosts of the human race. The sounds of ancient concrete cracking and crumbling under its own weight, as well as new species of birds making their nests in the decrepit skylines. Ivor took it all in, his heightened sensory receptors picking up every scrutable detail. Ivor, realizing his newfound freedom, willed his arms to change form. His fingers and hands melded into his arms and stretched out, forming two ice-pick like fixtures. He drove them into the concrete of a crumbling building and began to climb. He felt no sense of tiring or wear. Rather, it was a monotonous task as simple as breathing; his joints automatically readjusting themselves to account for structural damage in the building. During the climb, however, he would occasionally notice a strange shape at the corners of his eye. When he’d look in that direction, it was gone. He mentally cursed himself for not installing 360 degree vision. Still, he climbed forth, convinced that it was just a visual anomaly from his bionic eyes. After all, no machine would ever truly be perfect. He rose to the summit of the building, and took it all in. The cliff face where his old lab was located was now a tiny speck in the distance. If he looked at all the wreckage long enough, he could visualize what used to be the city’s original infrastructure. It was almost melancholic now, looking on at a world that used to be brimming with energy now reduced to an enormous concrete cemetery. Still, those were mortal concerns. Ivor wrote it off as nothing more, and prepared for the glide back down to the surface. Suddenly, mid-glide, he was hit by something. Ivor tried to shake it off, but whatever it was wouldn’t budge. In a panic, he retracted his glider wings and unleashed a blizzard of spikes on his back like a bionic porcupine. He retracted them and tried to unfold his wings again, but it was too late. He hit the ground with a resounding *thud.* Ivor struggled to get up, which wasn’t a good sign since he shouldn’t have had the ability to struggle doing anything. He noticed that he was now in what seemed to be the remains of a subway car, on a pile of what appeared to be three human skeletons. He couldn’t tell the difference between the three of them, but that thought quickly dissipated as those same shadows he saw before now showed themselves directly in front of him. They appeared to be strange-looking descendants of crows, now much larger and clearly stronger. They eyed Ivor with a sense of fascination, an expression that Ivor felt looked unnaturally human. Then, Ivor felt pain - a sensation that he had thought he would never feel again, and he knew that it only triggered when something in his new body was truly wrong. He looked up and to his right at his arm… to realize that it was now not there anymore, but was now in the hands (wings?) of one of these demonic corvids. The other corvids looked at him with fear and began to hiss at it and ruffled their massive wings in an attempt at intimidation. The corvid holding Ivor’s arm looked at it, almost like it was studying the strange object. It looked down at Ivor, and Ivor felt another feeling that he never expected to feel again - fear. The corvid brought down the heavy metal arm onto Ivor’s head, and did so several times until Ivor’s eyes went dark and his body went limp. The other corvids squealed in shock, confused as to what exactly this one was doing. Then, they hunched over in an act of submission. The now dominant corvid brandished the metal arm high above its head, screeching loudly in a cry of victory, holding aloft the first tool - a weapon - that would lead to their rise.


“This is it!” He says as he looks at himself in the mirror again for the 100th time. Tonight’s the night. He must look his best. He leaves early and heads down the empty cold road, with the night dropping its curtains across the starry sky. The only light is that of the milk-white moon rising high in space, lighting the path for him. Few people are out by this time, and that suits him. He’s keeping himself to himself anyways. This night he’s been looking forward to the most is also the same night he’s been dreading the most. Life will not be the same after this. Definitely not. The bus stop comes into view as he walks up the hill. He’s all alone. Leaning against the trunk of the dimly lit light post, he didn’t have to wait for long before the bus arrived. He gets on the upper deck, into the back, and sits there. The darkness engulfs the outer view of the windows; the feeble light of the bus slightly flickering; all the windows shut. He’s all alone, again. It’s a long ride, so he reaches for his glittery-cased phone and starts to play some music, no earphones or headphones. He’s all alone. ‘And I wanna cry, and I wanna fall in love…’ He skips the song. ‘Only know you love her when you let her go…’ He skips this song as well. ‘I don’t know who’s gonna kiss you when I’m gone…’ “Fuck, why is everything so sad and too close to home?” Frustrated, he turns it off, rests his head on his palm, and thinks… and thinks… and thinks…Everything starts to playback. Everything. From that first time in that class up until last week in that bust stop. Everything is playing back. He’s all alone. … “Ahhhhh! I’m gonna be late” She calls out as she looks at the time. It’s 19:26 and she’s still only gotten out of the shower. Luckily, she finds her mother waiting for her in her room, with all the necessities laying on the bed. “Come, quick” her mother orders, “tonight’s your special night. You have to look your best” With her mum’s help, she puts on her subtle yet immaculate makeup; wears her dress; puts on her perfume, the one he got her; and joins her dad in the car, ready to leave. “You excited?” her dad questions her. “Yes!! Of course I am”. “Well I’m glad to hear it.” he answers, “But remember, no drinking, no after-parties, no sex.” “Dad!!!” She exclaims, whilst softly punching him on his arm, and he laughs at that. “I’m only joking honey.” he retorts, ”Just go in there and enjoy yourself as much as possible. You’re gonna miss this, later on, so make the most of your time.” “I know, dad. And I will. It will be the best 3 hours ever!!” “I bet it will be. Also, do you want me to come to pick you up or do you want to take the bus back home with your friends?” “It’ll be very late at night. I’ll call you to come pick me up when we finish.” “Alright then.” Smiling, she stares out of her window and thinks excitedly of what tonight has in store for her. In some way, everything has been building up to this day. Her thoughts are suddenly struck with a concern: How would she be able to say goodbye to him, after everything that happened between them? She starts to panic slightly, but then calms down, and reminds herself that tonight will be the most fun they ever had together. Tonight won’t be a goodbye between them, it’ll only be the end of this chapter and a beginning of a new one. Going forward, they’ll still be together. They promised each other. He promised her. She’s not alone. … A car comes to a halt at the side of the road. ‘That must be her’ he thinks to himself. And his thought is proven to be right as she climbs out of the vehicle. He stands there for a moment, stunned by her beauty. Her dress is a perfect fit. Her hair reeled obediently to the breeze brushing through the night. Her smooth skin shone under the light of the moon, putting those stars to shame. He clutches the flowers in a fierce grip as it dawned on him that she wouldn’t be there with him anymore after tonight, he wouldn’t be able to look at her again, he wouldn’t be able to feel her again… “Heyyyyy!” she shouts as she launches in his direction. He pushes all those thoughts away and puts a smile on his face. He shouldn’t be thinking of anything right now. They still have 3 hours together, and he should be focused on the moment he’s in and enjoy it. He can’t ruin this. Not for him, not for her. “Heeyy” he replies and holds her in a long, warm embrace. He breaks away from her and looks her up and down. “Wow! You look stunning.” “Thanks” she replies “You don’t look so bad yourself,” she comments with a beaming smile. “You know what? I’ll take that,” he answers. All those bothering feelings and thoughts have been erased from his mind by her presence, for now at least. “Oh! By the way, I didn’t know what colour to pick for the flowers, so I got a bunch of different ones,” he states, handing her the flower bunch. “Awww!” she comments, “You remembered!” “Of course I did.” “And they smell good as well,” she says, as she takes a sniff of their sweet spring scent, “I love them!” “I’m glad you do. Shall we go inside?” “Okay. Let’s go.” And she wraps herself around his arm as they start walking. She’s not alone. He’s not alone anymore. They’re together. … The resort was a very large tent set up in the middle of a football field, which doesn’t sound appealing, but looks can be deceptive. The inside was very spacious and well lit and with golden bulbs hanging across the ceiling and lighting up the party beneath it. Many small tables were set up across the edge, leaving plenty of open space in the middle for people to hang out and dance. A buffet was also set up at the far edge opposite of the entrance, composed of many delicious and appetising meals, snacks, desserts, and drinks. On the far left was a small stand with the DJ on top, blasting all kinds of music for the guests to enjoy. The organisers of this party have really outdone themselves. After saying hi to friends, they go and claim an empty table on the side where they sat down with their food. They had a pleasant conversation about what each of them had been up to during the week they’d been away from each other. Once finished, they sit there for a while before she suddenly stands up. “Where are you going?” he asks, surprised. She grabs his hand and prompts him to get up with her. “Come. Let’s go dance for a bit.” “But we just ate!” he retorts, but secretly wishing she’d press on further. “Just coooomee! It’ll be fun.” she urges him, and he obediently follows her into the heart of the tent. Battling through the crowd, they finally reach the centre where she turned around, looked him in the eyes and asked: “Have you had your first dance yet?” “No. I haven’t” he replies. “That’s good because I haven’t had my first dance as well.” “Seriously?” he asks, surprised. “Yes. Why are you surprised?” she questions him suspiciously. “Nothing, nothing. But for some reason, I thought you have.” “Yeah, well, I haven’t.” she responds, “Do you want to have your first dance, with me, right now?” She purposely looks at him with pleading and hopeful eyes, and he falls for it almost immediately. “Yes! I would love to” he replies, “But I honestly don’t know how to dance.” he adds embarrassed. “Neither do I” She announces with a laugh, “this should be interesting.” “Come then, let’s do it. I don’t care if we mess up or look stupid, nothing to lose anyway.” He rests his left arm on her waist and locks his right hand with hers. She tenses at first at the feel of his touch, but she soon relaxes and rests her free arm on his shoulder. He looks down and meets her sparkling light brown eyes and smiles, before starting to sway slowly with the soothing music playing into their eyes. They stumble a few times at first, but soon grow accustomed to each other’s moves and fall into perfect sync. At that moment, no one else was there with them. Just them two, in a vast empty golden ball, dancing to the music. All of their concerns seemed to vanish, and their minds seemed to be purified by the gentle notes entering their ears. In reality, they were only dancing for minutes. But for them, it felt like hours. They were really in their own place, separated from the harsh reality of this world. Separated from the concerns of what was to happen after tonight’s over. However, that was something for them to worry about later. For now, they were enjoying each other’s company and having fun. She’s not alone. He’s not alone. They’re together. … Laughing, they walk out into the field, where the darkness of the night has settled. No one is there, other than the two of them. Everyone else is still inside. They’re completely tired and exhausted after their dance, which went better than both could’ve imagined. He stops and lies down on the perfectly trimmed grass, which was more comfortable than it looked, a feather-filled mattress in disguise. She copies him and rests her head on his shoulder, where they fell into a peaceful and meaningful silence that neither wanted to break. He softly starts to brush her hair whilst she just lay there idle, but smiling. Both of them silently wish for time to stop right at that moment and stay like this, comfortable and warm in each other’s embrace and presence, forever. “You know, now that we’re here, I cannot help but recall everything that ever went on between us. All the way from that first time we spoke, up until now.” she suddenly states. “Same.” he agrees, “I remember all of it as well. It’s like it was only yesterday that we met.” “Remember our first ever conversation?” She questions him with a big smile on her face. “Oh my god! How can I forget about the famous bikini contest” And he lets out a laugh. “You must have thought I was weird” “When are you ever NOT weird?” he teases. “Hey! Stop it” she commands with a soft punch on his chest. “Okay, okay. Do you also remember that faithful bus ride, the one that got me my phone taken away TO THIS DAY! All because someone here was scared of getting assaulted” he playfully adds. “I WAS scared!” she retaliates, “And plus, don’t act like you didn’t enjoy it, because I know you secretly did.” “Who said I did? That was the worst bus ride ever.” “Mhm… Keep lying to yourself.” “Okay, I may have enjoyed it a little bit, but only because of that first-ever hug.” “See! I told you.” She exclaims in triumph, “Do you also remember that booster class during the holidays…” They kept on reminiscing and reliving their joint past, the one that brought together and led them to be where they are now, all whilst laughing and smiling and enjoying their time under a perfectly clear London sky. She’s not alone. He’s not alone. They’re together. ... They didn’t know for how long they stayed there, they were too immersed in their own little bubble, and didn’t realise that all their time has passed, until one of the organisers came up and broke the news to them. It dawned on both of them that the dreadful moment they’d been avoiding is coming near. Slowly, they marched their way out into the cold empty street, both in a deafening silence. The whole world seems to have come to a halt, with them as the only two people left in it. They face one another and look deep into each other’s eyes. “So, I guess this is it.” He says, forcing a smile on his face. “Yeah… I guess it is.” She agrees, though in a subtle whisper. It is growing more and more difficult to say goodbye as time passes, none of them has the courage or the will to do it. “Do you want to make it dramatic?” he offers, “Whack me with your purse and walk away stomping, like those high-school romance dramas?” he adds with a laugh. “No, I don’t want to. I just want you to stay with me,” she says, stumbling on a few words. “I want to stay with you as well, but you know that I can’t.” “I know.” She tries really hard to keep them in, but couldn’t, and she launches at him and starts sobbing uncontrollably into his chest, all whilst severely clutching him, never wanting to let go. He holds her in a warm comforting hug and starts soothing her. He promised himself he wouldn’t cry, and he genuinely tried very hard not to, but he soon gave in, and let them stream down his cheeks. They both don’t want to let go, and so they stay in each other’s arms like this for a long while. “Well, now you just ruined my suit.” he jokingly scolds as he pulls her away from him. She looks up at him, her eyes sparkling with all the tears welled up, and starts to laugh. Softly, he wipes away her tears and starts laughing as well in a light-hearted manner. “I don’t know why we’re crying.” she comments thoughtfully, “We’re still gonna be talking as we do. The only difference being is that we won’t see each other.” “Exactly. You just love the drama” “Shush. You’re acting like you didn’t cry as well” she retorts “Okay, good point.” She nods her head approvingly with triumph written all across her face. He smiles at her, but his mind is racing right now. He doesn’t know whether he should tell her or not, about what was to happen after tonight’s over. He urges himself to do it, but she’s too happy and content that he doesn’t want to ruin it for her. “Helloooo. You still here?” she snaps at him. “Oh sorry. Yes, I’m still here.” “Ok good.” They stay silent for a while, both not wanting it to end right now, wanting to drag the conversation longer and longer. “You know, there’s something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time now, but never had the chance,” he states “What is it?” she asks, hopeful. He brushes the strands of hair blocking her face to the side and tenderly caresses her delicate skin, then he gently presses his lips against hers. They hold it for a very long time, both comfortable and familiar in each other’s arms before they break away again. With them smiling at each other, she exclaims: “Well, it took you long enough to do it! I just about thought you’d never.” “It’s all because of your flipping mask! There were so many occasions where I wanted to, but that mask you’re obsessed with came as an obstacle. But hey, I still did it in the end.” She tries to argue with him but fails to. Instead, she just drops a peck on his cheek. “There. I did it as well. So you can’t say It was only you.” she admits. “You don’t understand how happy I am right now” “So am I!!!” And they fall into a meaningful silence again. They both know that this is it, no more stalling. They have to say their goodbyes now. “Well, I guess this moment has come after all,” he says “Yeah, I know,” she adds, although almost inaudible. “I love you so much, and I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for everything you’ve done to make me this happy, because I know I can be a pain sometimes, but you managed to put up with me no matter what. I’m also sorry if I ever did something wrong or hurt your feelings in any way, but trust me, that was never my intention. I love you so much. “I love you too, and thank you for always being there for me from the start and ‘beliebing’ in me no matter what. I’m sorry as well if I’ve done anything wrong towards or… will do anything that upsets you. Just know that if anything like that ever happens, it’s not cause I got bored of you or don’t want to talk to you or just want to hurt your feelings. It’s just because I’m forced to and it’ll be better for you. “It’s fine, don’t worry. I know you’ll never do anything like that.” He decides to ignore that, as he doesn’t want to be lying to her any more than he has. “Goodbye” he softly says, “And just remember that I’ll always love you no matter what” “I know you do, and I love you as well.” she trips on a few of her words, “Goodbye!” They kiss only for the second, yet last time ever. They look deeply into each other’s eyes for one last time, before both went in their opposite way, not once looking back. She’s not alone. He’s all alone. They’re not together. … A car comes and stops for her to climb in, before starting to move again. “How was it?” her dad asks. “It was amazing!! The best 3 hours of my life,” she says with a big smile spread across her face. “I’m glad to hear it. I also like flowers. Whoever got them must have a really good taste.” “He does have a good taste, and I love them.” “He??” her dad exclaims, “Now I want to hear everything about him. This should be interesting, cause I never thought any boy would come close to putting up with your attitude,” he adds with a proud smile. “Stop it!” She snaps, but smiling, “You’re not funny. And he DID in fact put up with my attitude. I’ll tell you everything afterwards.” “Alright, honey. Whatever suits you.” She doesn’t cry anymore. No reason to. She’s happy they enjoyed each other’s presence tonight and got to spend all that time together. Smiling, she stares out of her window and relives what went on today. This wasn’t the end, she thinks to herself, and that wasn’t a goodbye. That was only the end of this chapter and a beginning of a new one between them. Going forward, they’ll still be together. They promised each other. He promised her. She’s unaware. She thinks she’s not alone. She thinks they’re still together. She’s all alone. … The bus stop comes into view as he walks up the hill. He’s all alone. Leaning against the trunk of the dimly lit light post, he didn’t have to wait for long before the bus arrived. He gets on the upper deck, into the back, and sits there. The darkness engulfs the outer view of the windows; the feeble light of the bus slightly flickering; all the windows shut. He’s all alone, again. He takes out his glittery-cased phone and starts to do what he has to do. “I’m sorry.” he whispers to no one. He deletes her phone number. He blocks her on all forms of social media. He unfriends her and unfollows her. “I’m so sorry.” He whispers again. “It’s not because I hate you, or got bored of you, or don’t want to talk to you anymore, or any of these things you’re gonna think of when you realise. It’s because I don’t want to hold you back. I don’t want you to be still clinging to a faint slim hope for so long. You deserve better. You will find better. I’m worse off without you, and you’re better off without me. It had to be done. You’re gonna hate me, a lot. But it’s better that you do and forget about me, than to cling on to something not guaranteed. I’m so sorry. I love you.” He reaches for his phone again, all whilst crying uncontrollably, and starts to play some music, no earphones or headphones. He’s all alone. ‘And I wanna cry, and I wanna fall in love…’ He doesn’t skip this time. He lets it play. He rests his head on his palm, looks out of the window, and thinks… and thinks… and thinks…Everything starts to playback. Everything. From that first time in that class up until that final kiss tonight. Everything is playing back. They’re not together anymore. He’s all alone. ...


It was the end of the month. She was tackling a sales report in her bedroom/office, anxiously bouncing in her ergonomic swivel chair and humming a BTS bop erroneously. It was just about lunchtime. The day had flown by. Her morning was a monotonous string of head nods in Zoom meetings she may as well have not attended and passive-aggressive emails with the morons in finance. Her work, as awful as it sounds, validated her. And she was fine with knowing this sensitive truth. Although her recent conduct may suggest a strong lack of self, the events of recent weeks revealed her deeper, darker intuitions. Of which, she was oddly grateful.

An obnoxious alarm blared from her phone, as it did at this time every day. Her attention was so wrapped in the urgent report, she hadn’t checked the time or any messages she’d received for at least thirty minutes. She grabbed her phone to turn off the racket. On the lock screen, a notice displayed a recent message from her husband: “I got out of a meeting early again. On the 23 bus, I should be home in a minute. Gotta be quick, but we should have enough time. Love you! See you soon, beautiful.”

She peered out of her window and sighed. The city bus was resting at the stoplight at the end of the block. Gray clouds were bunching in the sky around the city skyline in the background. The buildings that loomed as a beacon of sorts to all who lived in this marvelously weird place. A city that had broken and mended her heart so many times, it’s DNA was forever stitched into her being.

It’d be only a minute before he was home. She thought about waiting until he left but quickly decided against the notion, for this was a timely task. No chances could be taken. She knelt down to the lowest drawer in her armoire and rummaged through socks and sweatshirts. Underneath the strategically placed clutter was her lockbox, simple and childlike. A box for love letters and sentimental Polaroids. She fiddled through the combination lock in seconds. It’s contents, far from sentimental. No pictures or letters, but a crinkled box of contraceptives. She turned the wheel and popped out the tiny pill. The last one - she was out. The slam of the front door echoed through their tiny row home. He shouted her name and she shouted back, the pill clinging to the tip of her tongue. She swigged it down with iced coffee kept at bay by the laptop, and switched her Slack status to “Away”.

Thumps of his sturdy black work shoes on the creaky wooden staircase exposed his presence. At the last possible moment, she shoved the lockbox back in its place, tossed a sweatshirt over it, and crouched on her bed into a semi-provocative pose.

The door swung open. He barreled in like a zoo animal freshly escaped. His hands were working on the knot in his tie. He’d somehow yanked his shoed feet through his slacks and discarded them somewhere on his mad dash for the bedroom.

“We’re still in our window,” he said, panting. “I, uh, I thought what the heck? Slow day, might as well be productive in some way. Are you ready? Should we maybe do something to get in the mood?” She thought about the sales report she’d yet to send to her boss. She also thought about the leftovers from last night’s Chinese takeout and how excited she was to revisit it. “I’m ready if you are.” Six minutes and eleven seconds later, the deed was done. He was sitting at the edge of the bed redoing the tie he’d just unknotted. She, too, was redressing for work, slipping into her most formal pajamas. Whatever guilt she may have felt in the weeks before was missing from today’s shotgun baby-making attempt. If anything, the Chinese takeout had taken up the majority of real estate in her head. It was that good. Her husband’s face was stoic, but his glassy eyes revealed his frustrations.

“This has to happen for us eventually. We’ve been trying for nearly five months now.” She was well aware of how long they’d been trying . “Doc said this was our ovulation window,” he said. “Maybe we should make another appointment for next Monday, see what the problem is.” “Patience. That’s all he’s going to say. Have patience.” The thought of visiting the doctor again somehow never crossed her mind. She felt incredibly stupid. This was going to blow up in her face.

“I’ll have to send you this article I read about the best positions for conception. We can try one tonight.” “Really, tonight? Don’t you think once a day is enough?” He turned to her.

“What is up with you? I mean, isn’t this what we decided on, together? Please tell me if you have any better ideas for how to conceive, okay. Please. I’d rather hear constructive ideas than criticisms.” She wasn’t being fair to him, and she knew it. It was time to tell the truth. But before she could, he interjected. “I’m sorry. Don’t say anything.” He wrapped his arms around her. “I shouldn’t assume such nonsense. I love you, I trust you. This whole baby thing is so exhausting. I’ve been feeling quite fried lately. You must be feeling this, too.” She pulled him in closer. She’d be a fool to not take advantage of the delay. It was then that her husband reminded her what she was running from. “I can’t wait to finally have a child so we have that push to get out of this city. Get that house in the suburbs on a nice, quiet street. I’ve seen some promising options in our price range near my parents’. I’ll send you the link to those, too.” Her teeth gritted with rage.

“You know,” she started, suddenly chipper. “Noelle and Leon floated this awesome idea by me yesterday. What if, this summer, we backpacked across Southeast Asia? Temples in Thailand, motorbikes in Vietnam. We could eat pho every day if we wanted. Try regional versions we’d never get here.” “Sounds awesome. Damn. Big bummer we can’t go. We’ll be a bit preoccupied this summer, won’t we?” He was gone five minutes later. Back to work. Literally and figuratively stranded, she watched the needles of skyscrapers burst the rainclouds above from her bed. Her phone buzzes. It’s him, the article. Eight Positions You Must Try- Her arm acted on impulse before she could finish the title. She tossed the phone with disgust. It soared across the room into a pile of dirty clothes. She sauntered down to the kitchen. On the box in the fridge, a kind note from the restaurant, personalized specifically for her. Only took eight months of ordering the same thing every Thursday. She flipped the plastic lid of her true desire, cracked open a can of flavored seltzer, and walked all the way back to her room before realizing she’d forgotten to reheat her leftovers. Cold noodles would have to do.

She slurped as she typed, putting the finishing touches on a sales report that was due an hour ago. Her mouse clicked send, and then hovered over to her Slack channel. Her attention drew back to the lockbox. Instead of switching back to Active, she alerted her boss she’d be back in 20 minutes. A seasonal migraine flared up during lunch, she’d be only a few minutes at the drug store.

She slid her arms through the sleeves of her raincoat and cocked her umbrella like a soldier scrambling between trenches. The door to their home opened to an orchestra of chaos. Honking horns, sirens wailing in the distance. She stepped onto the stoop. Her eyes immediately locked on the bus stop directly across the street.

Two teenagers sat alone under the glass awning of the bus stop, passionately tangled in another. Pecking and smooching, giggling amongst the onslaught of nature around them. She stood in the rain, watching the teens for an uncomfortably long beat as her heart stood confused, unsure whether to flutter or sink.

Her convictions were reaffirmed. She didn’t want to watch this love of life grow before her eyes in the form of a child. He would be broken by her actions. The complexity of her ruse would astound and disappoint him. Their relationship would effectively end. The charade would have to continue, at least until she was ready to say goodbye. Stomping through puddles indented in walk-worn sidewalks, she pressed on to the drug store.


The intrusive squeaks of the usher's shoes preceded his hushed whisper. "The museum will be closing in just 5 minutes, sir." The usher managed to blend his white uniform into the faux marble floor as he backed away on the pads of his feet. He joined the other ushers in the center of the museum’s lobby, placing a five-dollar bill in the head usher's hand. "He's never leaving." His eyes still looking sideways at the mysterious man. The quick rustle of sleeves as they made their bets barely reached the ears of the man before the painting, who was thinking about his father. He had spent his life looking up at paintings like this. They had been his babysitters whenever his mom had to work and his makeshift father. His actual father, the painter, had done very little parenting after conception. His mother never really let him leave. She used any way she had to keep him around until all she had was the hope that his paintings would serve his role for the both of them well enough. It was the only art the man had seen until he was twenty-one, besides his forced recreations. "Raph," she would say, the same way she probably had said his father's name, as if tasking him with the same one was not enough. "Do you see these strokes? These ones . . . here, just above the water." She would pull his hands to some 'Raph' painting that she had hidden away when his father had left and he would read its texture like braille. It was every conversation he and his father would never have. His mother's words were brushstrokes. She would pause before she spoke, setting her tongue on the back of her teeth. A wry smile would pull at her thinned face like a stretched canvas. Then, she would speak in the language of paintings. She could never describe the sun as anything but cadmium yellow and every solid thing was texture built up into three-dimensional existence. No one ever quite understood the way she spoke like her son. Things were not bad and good, but warm and cool and only people who knew how much she missed the winters in Trondheim could tell that cool meant positive. She had no time for grass that was not the deepest emerald green or water that could not be painted in the most royal blues. She had fallen in love with his father's blue and white representations of spring by the time they had met. Her arm was inked in the colors he would use the most. He would know to make chamomile and honey when she would dot her forearm with the constellation he had claimed that he saw in her eyes. His words had been deft and disarming. He would pull her in with the lasso of his charm. She had not seen him since the third month of pregnancy. When she talked in the language of paintings, she always talked of his father. It surrounded them as substantially as the walls of the apartment that his paintings hung on. "Feel the texture, Raph," she would say with closed eyes. Eventually, he would close his too and each bump would pop up in the darkness of his mind's eye like a syllable. 'How are you, son?' they would say. 'Are you eating . . . and are you happy . . . and do you have my eyes and are you like me?' He could never answer. He did not know his father's eyes, but his mother told them that his eyes were the same. Just like the name. She was convinced he had his father's hands too. His crayons were replaced with charcoal and paintbrushes. They lay around the apartment instead of toys. She would lay canvasses before him with an expectant eye and a clear commandment, recreate his father’s paintings. Every step was a dance around half-used tubes of paint and unfinished canvases. His hands would cramp around paintbrushes and wooden frames as he drew the canvasses tightly across them. The acrid scent of paint clung to the walls and wafted out in faint-inducing waves. Sleeping became easy. They would escape during golden hour to walk along the nearby rivers, watching how the light came down in streams. The grass and water would languidly dance with the sunlight in a clinging wedding waltz. His mother would stand behind him and her hands would lightly cover his ears. She would lift her hands slightly, speaking in soft croissant-tones that crisped at the end of each word. "Let it pause. The water stop. The sunlight freeze." She would put her hands back over his ears, tighter. He saw the world as colors built up around him like paper-mache. When he closed his eyes to his room's broken shutters and the street lamps beyond, his eyelids flashed with veins of vermillion that mixed with viridian green to make the chromatic black that brought him into his dreams like magic. There, he would take bricks from the apartment and break them open, dipping a wet paintbrush before dragging it thickly across a piece of paper that would appear in the air before him. He would tap the edge of the brush onto the thick sheet while he looked around the apartment for more layers of color to peel and use. The faucet would suddenly turn on and then go silent. The water had frozen in place so that he could grab it like wool and wrap it around his brush, flicking it towards the canvas that caught it with a wet thud. His mother once found a painting of his own. He had called it 'The Shutters' in tiny handwriting on the back of the canvas. He had written his name the same way in the lower right corner. It looked like it was hiding away behind the trees he had painted growing out of the apartment shutters from his bedroom. Her voice immediately ascended to a hiss. "Do you know how expensive the canvasses are! The paint!" She had looked from him to the painting and back. He searched desperately in her eyes, through to the Cygnus constellation. The small points of light he only really saw when she looked at his father's original paintings. He only saw the same shadow he felt rising in himself. The painting made a warbled sound as she threw it into the corner of the room. He was the reflection that would never live up to the original. "Come," she had said to the long silent apartment. "Let's draw the cliffs again." A lamp appeared one day in the corner of the room, its sodium glow echoed the sun's as they worked into the night. He fell asleep with a brush in his hand and his school’s phone number ringing incessantly and ignored from Caller ID. The walls grew dark with jagged pencil marks and charcoal smears. He stained his bedding with the charcoal that crawled up his arms like vines. In the silent moments when his mother left the room, he would close his eyes and feel the dark marks sliding up to squeeze his heart. He could paint faster without her over his shoulder. Every time she returned, he would have to wait while she stared into the threads of his attempts. The paintings were her idols and he was the priest. She would look worriedly at him as he painted, watching the works that should have haunted her come back to life. He often wondered if they did haunt her as they haunted him. He could tell by touch alone how his lines were different than the originals, even if his mother could not see it as she stated longingly into them. He tried not to stare. When he did, he disappeared into the finished paintings. He would finish whatever paintings his mother had chosen and then become enveloped in them. He would climb the beige cliffs to find his father at the top, painting the water and the people below. He would snap out of this reverie before he could sit down with him. He could not imagine what he would say to him. The paintings hung next to the originals along the exposed brick walls. The most sacred hung above his mother's bed. She would wake up to them like holy images. Before she did, he would steal away to sneaky corners of the apartment whenever he could, sketching and smearing the pencil into shadow with his fingers. The graphite trapping the flecks of French ultramarine that had caught underneath his fingernails in the day and fell away in the night. He heard a sharp noise in the dark apartment. He squinted into the shadowy corner. He closed his eyes, breathing deeply to steady his hand before he returned to his piece. As the light before his eyelids shifted into black, he fell through that terrible memory, darkened by the unkind tint of memory. He opened his eyes again in the museum to a cliff painting. His fingers itch just a bit at the thought of the hours they had been covered in paint, trying to recreate the exact painting in front of him. The whispers of the ushers behind him did not bother him. They could not recognize his name from the sign on the central columns that held the roof of the museum up. It had been his wife’s insistence to design the museum when they had come to his firm. Returning to his past had not been easy, especially when he had seen the request for an alcove dedicated to his father’s works. When he had left his mother, many years ago, he had left her staring at the paintings. It did not matter if they were his or his father's, she stared at them in the same broken and lonely way. He had spent years never living up to his dad's image and now he was leaving just the same. It still felt strange, looking at the painting in what felt like a similarly broken way. He had left painting for architecture. He could break open the models in ways he never could with paintings, and the textures had none of his father in them. He never forgot the unspoken words though. His hands would sometimes cramp at the feel of a pencil and the smell of paint as he would pass by the art building on campus would leave him in a fog all day. The conversations echoed in the back of his head sometimes. *'How are you, son?'* Even now, dried, the paint in front of him carried over like a cloud. He could see his dad hunched over, whipping the texture of the water into a frenzy that must have echoed the one inside his head as he moved and moved and moved. The ferocity of fighting against nature to capture its light and colors, and letting a little bit of your fury bleed in. The image was still fresh in his mind, the paint still wet that he could imagine the tinted fumes leaking whenever he would breathe out. He had met his father a week ago. It had been strange, walking up to an apartment much like the one he had grown up in. In his mother's echoing rants, she had blown his father up into a titan spilling paint with perfect brushstrokes from the staircase of an opulent mansion. Instead, he was a small man-made smaller by hunching over canvasses for a lifetime. His eyes drew closed sharply at the ends from inspecting minuscule details that would cast shadows on the people who stood below his works. He had known those symptoms well and would have known it much better had he not left his mother and that life behind him. "Hello?" He had said huskily. His voice felt like a dry brush against his eardrums. His hair was thin and gray, flared out from his head like lightning. He could see how his every move felt like out of a painting. His every gesture felt like a measured stroke of paint. Every frame of his movement carried the briefest glitch as the painter waited for his next stance to be filled in. He looked through everything around like he was wondering which pigments made it up, even the man before him. His fingers moved in the air like he was mixing paint to make your skin tone or tapping out the dots of the constellation in your eyes. "I'm your son." He had practiced the line on his way up the stairs. "Ah," and he shuffled away. Confused, the younger Raph had followed. The floor seemed to be peeling, every step was a scrape along a flaking surface. He realized with a jolt that strung back to his childhood that they were old canvasses. There was paint and thick paper strewn about the place without a care. His mother would have fainted at the lack of respect. The older Raph scraped along the peeling surface of his work and settled into a tattered armchair. It was a red that was not even vermillion. The wallpaper around him was paintings too, dull lakes and beached whales that made eye contact with him like the old ponds and bridges never had. The older Raph tapped his brush on the canvass with color-stained fingers, not even looking at his son in the corner of the room. Finally, he flipped the brush over in his hand, using his other thick-jointed hand to squeeze cobalt blue onto the sheet. His eyes somehow closed even more as he pressed the brush down. He caked the paint into a deep ocean that took up the bottom three-quarters of the work. The painting was a portal, staring into it felt like gazing into something ancient and the void staring back. When the older Raph had looked back up from the abyss, he was alone in the room. Younger Raph still wondered why he had left. Perhaps the haunted place has been too similar to his old apartment, with the same ghosts. Different paintings but the same ghost hanging over shoulders in a way that covered the windows and blocked the light. The fan even turned slower there, as if time had stopped and the inhabitants were doomed to always paint and nothing more. Maybe he felt trapped the same way his mother had been. He still had not found her. He had hesitated to try and he regretted it now, having seen what she had been stuck onto or what had stuck into her. He imagined her lugging around the old paintings still, dotting constellations into her arms as the night rotated over and stars filled her view. Neither his father nor his mother had ever really left the other, and they had both done their best to hold him too. Raph looked into the painting of the cliffs. In the small upturn at the crest of the wave, he could feel the shake in his mother's hands as she cut his beloved purple carrots. He could see her dark eyes in the shadow of a figure walking along the shoreline. He saw her breath in the turquoise and red wind that swept through ancient rocks and into the unimaginable beyond the frame. His hand instinctively reached forward. He wanted to read her voice in the speckled beige of the sand. He stopped himself an inch away. He would never read her there. She had never tried to paint the rocks. She had only pushed him towards them. She was part of the reason that every pencil he held ached in his hand but she was the one who would forever be waiting expectantly for the next recreation of something she could not hold onto. Her hands must ache now from clenching onto nothing so hard. He looked down, worried for a moment that he would find his fingers stained blue and yellow. His eyes traced along the lines that he had memorized. There was a shuffle of feet as the ushers, banded together now, approached him. Finally, he reached the lower right corner. He had held few differences from his father. He had been pushed into his father’s style and trapped in his paintings day and night. He had managed to fight back in one way that his mother had never noticed. In his tiny writing had used a lowercase 'r', like the one on this painting. Leaving his mother had been hard, but made easier by the money this forgery had allowed him to leave for her. His mother would have never sold any of the paintings, even to feed herself. The younger Raph had not had the same devotion. It had made its way to this museum, but he had never wanted to see the cliffs again until he had tried to sit down with his father. he had avoided falling into any of his father’s paintings since had left. They only worsened in him those same feelings of inadequacy that he had carried for so long. The usher tapped his shoulder. "I'm sorry, sir. The manager says if you are not wanting to bu-" "No, no," Raph said, the words slipping out through the smile that he could not help. Owning the damn paintings that had almost owned him might have been too sweet. He walked out to a wet street, rain still sprinkling down. Home was not far away, with his wife and son waiting. An apartment mercifully containing coloring books with arcs of crayon bounding outside of the lines. The color-filled spheres that they would smash this weekend, powdering sidewalk with chalky colors he had never touched before. He closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of the rain. He paused and let the cool air wash over his face. He continued down the lamp-lit sidewalk, thinking that he might paint it one day.


“Whiskey.” A man slumped down on a creaky barstool. “ On the rocks?” The man sat in silence, staring at his reflection in the mirror behind the rows of liquor. “Why the long face mate?” The bartender slid the glass across the counter. “Long story.” “ I got all the bloody time in the world.” The bartender said, surveying the empty pub. The man looked up from his whiskey to eye the greying, portly barkeep in front of him. “Don’t worry mate, you can trust me.” The bartender polished a stein with a dirty rag.”I’ve heard it all in my day; all walks of life have made their way through this ol’ beaut.” He slapped his sausage fingers down on the counter. The man pounded the warm whiskey and slid the glass back across the counter. “ Its just… it’s just I’ve been feeling overworked, and underappreciated.” “Aye, all too common in this crazy world we’re living in today” The bartender filled another glass of whiskey and slid it to the man. “Why just the other week I was talking to a Japanese bloke that was crisscrossing all over the world. Flying business class don’t offer much comfort when you ain’t seen your wife's face in three months.”  The man swirled the whiskey around in the glass. “Everyone gets so wrapped up in the daily minutia of it all, they forget about what really matters in life. They inevitably get cross with me when I have to deliver the bad news.” The bartender stroked the late shift stubble on his face and studied the man with his good eye. He was a very plain man; not handsome, but not ugly, not young, but not old. He wore a dark business suit, neither fine nor tattered. “ I see then, you're in the insurance game. John Doe wrecks his fancy new sports car doing a hundred on some scarcely lit backroad, and cusses you out when you say you ain’t forking over a penny to the git.” The man chuckled as he suckled the last drops of whiskey from his glass. “ A fair guess, but no.” The bartender grumbled and moved a hand rolled cigarette from behind his ear to his pudgy lips. “ I usually pride myself on being able to read people real well.”  “Don’t beat yourself up, I’m a tough one to read.” “ I’ll tell you what, I’ll make you a deal. Next round is on the house if you give me a hint.” He reached over the bar and refilled the man's glass. “Alright, I’ll bite. Let’s say I’m in the business of collections.” The bartender struck a match and lit his cigarette. “ Well you didn’t have to make it so easy on me mate. It's clear you're a bookie, no matter how many hours you toil away down at the track, nobody appreciates the man that takes away their hard earned cash.” The man took another gulp of warm whiskey. “ Wow, you are good at this game.” The bartender smiled a gap toothed grin. “Well there ain’t nuthin to it really, you just gotta-” “But you’re wrong.” “You cheeky sod.” “ A nice try my friend but you have to dig deeper. Ask yourself, what could make a man so miserable?” “Alright. Alright.” The bartender again reached over the bar, filling the man's glass as he was bringing the last sip up to his mouth. “ One last hint, I’m gonna get it this time.” “ They say only two things are inevitable in life.” The bartender palmed his forehead. “ You’re a tax man, of course I should have seen it from a mile away, the suit, the cold look in your eyes, drinking like a fish.” He swipes his dirty rag across the bar. “There are few people in this world as hated as tax men, they’re just like bookies but you’re guaranteed to lose.” The man continued to sip his whiskey in silence. “I suppose I owe you mate, all those taxes drive people straight into me pub.” The bartender’s gut jiggled like a bowl of jelly as he laughed. “I’m sorry to say, but I’m afraid you still haven’t gotten it.” The bartender slammed another glass down on the bar and poured himself a whiskey. “I tell you what mate, I’m losing my touch, the minds the first thing to slip away as you roll into your golden years.” The man held up his glass. “Cheers.” “Cheers.” The glasses clinked, and the men pounded their whiskey, groaning as they slammed the glasses back down to the bar.  The bartender stood stoically in silence for a moment. “So what exactly is it you’re trying to tell me mate? You’re in the business of death?” He furrowed his brow. “For the life of me I can’t figure out what that means. Are you a Soldier? An Assassin? Oh, wait, a Mortician perhaps?” The man Chuckled. “You are really quite curious aren’t you?” “When you get to be as old as I am, you start to feel like you’ve seen all this world has to offer. When the unknown drops itself into your lap, you feel like a kid again.” The man adjusted his neck tie. “I’m afraid I haven’t been perfectly honest with you, I’m actually here tonight on official business.” The bartender looked sideways at the man. “ Alright mate, spit it out, there's no more dancing around it.” “Well I guess people call it all sorts of things… but the *grim reaper* is the one I hear most often.” “Come Again?” The man sighed. “ You know, the *grim reaper*? The corporeal personification of death, the shepherd of damned souls.” “Well Shit.” The bartender refilled each of the glasses with the stagnant whiskey. “If I’m going I ain’t going sober.” The man nodded and raised his glass. “To life.” The bartender nodded back and raised his glass. “To death.” The glasses clinked, and the men pounded their whiskey, groaning as they slammed the glasses back down to the bar. The bartender shut his eyes tight and savored the bitter burn of the whiskey one last time. Then the two men walked out of the bar and into the inky night.


An innocent invention gone right, or a step toward a one-world currency? That's the question many ask as bitcoin floods every country's market, enticing people to invest in digital currency. Who created bitcoin? What was their intention, and why did they suddenly disappear? I asked those questions as I opened the investigation into bitcoin and Satoshi Nakamoto. No one knew who this person was, but I was sure I would find out. And I did. It was February 1, 2021, when I was sitting at a small cafe called Two Chicks in New Orleans, Louisiana. My eyes peeked over the top of the newspaper, watching. Observing. Waiting for her to make a move. Any move would be nice, really. It was exactly one year to the date, and it'd been a long and frustrating. I laid the paper down. Even though I'd been sitting for hours, I hadn't read a single word. No story in the papers would entertain me more than exposing Nakamoto. I stood; the chair made a slight noise as it slid across the hard floor. No one seemed to notice, including her. Slowly, I made my way over to the small, two-seater table where she sat. Long dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail others only ever dreamed of creating on their own heads. Round dark glasses sat on her nose, and a frilly pink dress hugged her thin body. Long smooth legs were crossed below, and heels that matched her ensemble rested on the floor. Her attention was glued to her laptop, and she didn't notice me until I sat down. Her eyes flicked up toward me, confused. She didn't know who I was, but I knew her. "Can I help you?" She said cautiously. My small hand crept toward a piece of fruit on her plate. It was a strawberry, perfectly ripened and red. I knew it would be sweet as soon as it hit my mouth, just like the words that came out of it next. "I know who you are," I said before putting the strawberry in my mouth. The look on her face didn't waver as she stared blankly at me. However, there was something below the surface that glazed over her expression. Was it fear, or could it have been playfulness? Whatever it was faded almost as instantly as it had appeared. "You heard what I said," I said. Then, I leaned closer to conceal the next word to come out of my mouth. The one word that would change the conversation and both of our lives. Forever. I opened my mouth and said, "Nakamoto." Her eyes widened, and she looked back at her computer before closing it and standing. "I don't know what gave you that idea, but whatever it is, I want you to forget that that name ever existed." She stated before adding, "And my face." I stood and caught her pale arm in my hand. "You aren't going to leave." Her gaze turned to meet mine. It was definitely fear that I saw. "I've been looking for you for a year." Nakamoto relaxed in my grip slightly, but I could tell she was still on edge. I knew she wanted to ensure she was ready to run if she had to. "Sit back down," I said, letting go of her arm. I didn't want to lose my only connection to keeping her here, but I also wanted to be the first to show trust. Maybe then, she'd relax and trust me a little. Nakamoto slowly sat back down on the chair, probably a little cold now that she hadn't been sitting in it anymore. She leaned close once she was completely seated. "How did you find me?" The arrogance I was known to have, according to my colleagues, surfaced. "A little of this, a little of that." I shrugged with a small smile and then got more serious. "Basically, excellent detective work and a whole lotta dedication." Nakamoto didn't look amused. I rolled my eyes and continued. "At first, it was difficult because I didn't know where to start. All I had was a name: Satoshi Nakamoto. That could've been one person or a group of people, and just because it sounded Asian doesn't mean whoever I was looking for was. And that's obvious now that we're face to face. You're as American as the flag hanging outside of the white house. "Then I hired on a computer nerd, an absolute genius. He got involved with bitcoin and shared with me everything he found, like how it's an entirely open book. Everyone can see every transaction, so there's no way to cheat the system. Even if someone managed to do it, the miners could just form a new blockchain, and the cheater would have nothing. It'd be a total waste of time. We knew whoever created it started from Block 0 and is a miner. We also learned that the creator would be taking every precaution to remain anonymous. Through communication with other bitcoins investors over the years, we backtracked all the transactions until the first blockchain was created in 2009. It took time and a lot of hoops. "You see, those people do not like giving up information. I understand bitcoin isn't the most legal. So, to say there were a lot of hoops is an understatement. But we did it, which led me to a college senior from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology scheduled to graduate in the spring of 2009 with a bachelor's in computer programming. Of course, that kid wouldn't be in college anymore. They would be rich out of their minds, and of course, they would feel the need to hide their wealth. So, I asked myself what I would do if it were me. Would I flee to another country and live off the radar, or would I stay exactly where I am and pretend I don't have any wealth?" Nakamoto leaned back in the chair as she listened to my story. Her arms were folded across her chest, and a slight smirk rested on her face. I figured it must've been entertaining to hear how she got caught by a random nobody. When I paused after that last question, she placed her finger on her chin as if contemplating the question herself. "And what conclusion did you come to?" She asked. "At first, I thought you would've left the country. Found a nice, secluded spot and maybe even faked your death just to get there." I answered. Her eyes widened, mocking a shocked expression as if I'd figured her out. I did say mocking, though. She knew I wasn't done. I gave her a small smile before saying, "But that's only half true. While you live here in New Orleans, you're not from here. You're from a small town called Milton, Florida. You're a genius with an IQ of 148. You went to the School of Mines and Technology. Shortly after graduation, you faked your death by staging a scuba diving accident. "The problem is that not only did they never find you, but they also never found anything linking you to your disappearance. You left tanks on the water's edge, and you even left some belongings at the entrance to the cave. But you never left anything else indicating you went deeper into the cave. No evidence that you actually disappeared." "But if they never found evidence of a disappearance, how do they know it didn't occur?" Nakamoto asked, her gaze became more playful with every explanation I gave. "Because you were spotted two years later on a security camera in Washington D.C," I answered. When she didn't respond, I continued my story. "I'm sure you're wondering how I made all of these connections. Let me explain. I figured whoever Satoshi Nakamoto would have faked their death and made it look like an accident. So, I had my computer analyst look up every disappearance in the United States and cross-referenced them with all the unsolved cases. Then we went deeper and looked at every case with little to no evidence or evidence that didn't match what seemed to have happened. "Then my analyst took to the internet. Usually, when devastating disappearances occur, people keep on the lookout for those they care about. They'll find footage of those that disappear and report it to the public. And what popped up was security footage of a girl that was said to be mysteriously missing for two years. So, we got the name of the girl and looked into her past. This girl had grown up in Milton, Florida. A town with nothing special about it and seems like no one ever makes it out. She didn't fit in with anyone because of her genius IQ, so her life already seemed very lonely. She graduated high school and attended the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, where she pursued a degree in computer programming. An excellent school for someone of her nature, as well as a perfect background of knowledge that would aid in creating a digital currency. "Then this girl graduated, and shortly after, she disappeared. She went scuba diving into a nearby cave alone, even though she had never been diving before a day in her life. Two years later, she's caught on camera. I would have thought it was a conspiracy, but then I found some information. Are you ready for it?" Nakamoto didn't look playful anymore, just focused on my words and somewhat concerned. Obviously, she was worried about the information I found out that would lead to me verifying it was her. She moved her hand as if to gesture for me to continue. A small smile formed on her face as if to tell me I'd already figured her out. "I found out that right after you graduated, and before the disappearance, bitcoin had been released. And on the day you were caught on camera in Washington D.C., that was the same day that the hacker group, Anonymous, infiltrated national security and mined 37 new blockchains in the bitcoin industry. I saw this connection and knew this girl had to be Satoshi Nakamoto. That this girl was you." "That's an interesting story," She finally said. Then she leaned in and asked, "I'm still confused about how you found me." That made me smile big. "I ran the face from the security footage in our database and created a program to flag your face if it ever popped up again. The girl that disappeared had short blonde hair and didn't wear glasses. But no matter how much you change superficial things like hair color and accessories, you can't change your face. And I didn't think you would because it would be easy to trace plastic surgery. You've done a great job changing your style to accommodate your new life. However, you did pop up again. This time looking much more like this. So, I found out who the girl in this security video was, and then I came to this cafe to speak with you." She stayed leaning in. Her face had a slight smirk plastered onto it, unwavering like she was a real-life image on a poster on some horny teenager's wall. Her eyes were glazed over to hide the innermost thoughts, insecurities, and anxieties she was feeling at that present moment. "You still haven't told me how you know Satoshi Nakamoto is me..." She said, officially defeated. "I didn't," I replied. She looked confused, so I answered the question painted on her face in hues of pink and orange. "You just did." She rolled her eyes and put her face in her palm. At this point, she knew I was a government official, and she just gave herself away. For something like the creation of bitcoin, she could go away for a long time. Perhaps the rest of her life. Her entire world would be turned inside out. On the upside, an unsolved disappearance would be solved, and answers would be available. The closure could be given to her family, which they deserved. It's what every family deserves, and I chose a career path as a Behavioral Analyst. “I told you,” I said, cutting the silence. “I know who you are.” Nakamoto peeked through her fingers at me and spoke again. "What puzzling me is how you knew to look into Americans. How did you know I was American?" She asked and added, "Satoshi Nakamoto doesn't sound like an American at all." I smiled before opening my mouth to explain once again. "In my line of work, I am one of the best profilers in the office. Sometimes I'm able to profile details that don't make sense. When I asked myself what I would do if I was Satoshi Nakamoto, the answers I gave became my own profile. So, I asked, who would create something borderline illegal, fake their death, and then not leave their country even though it's insanely risky to stay? "An American. Anyone in this country can say what they want, but no one actually wants to live the rest of their lives in a country that isn't America. People literally risk dying to come over here for a better life. And Americans are very comfortable with their way of living. So I knew whoever it was had to be American." Her chin rested on her interlocked fingers. Her expression was blank and somewhat cold. I added, "I guess you can say I had a hunch." This made her chuckle. "Okay, well," She started. "I've confessed that I am Satoshi Nakamoto, and you have me here right now. Are you going to arrest me?" "No," I said. "I'm not going to arrest you." Nakamoto looked confused. She looked utterly flabbergasted. I could see the wheels turning in her head. She questioned my motives more quicker than a victim asking their serial killer why they are doing this. "Then what do you want?" She asked. The smile that crept onto my face was slow and snake-like. My eyes glistened with excitement and playfulness as I leaned closer to her. This entire time, Satoshi Nakamoto thought I was here to put her away for life. She never suspected that this was my interview. After a brief pause, I shrugged and opened my mouth to give my final answer. "I know who you are."


The small figure cast a quick glance over their shoulder as they scuttled through the darkened streets. In this sleepy town, at this hour, it was unusual for anyone to be out of their homes, but one could never be too cautious. The silence was pressing in on sanity; moments feeling as heavy weights on the ticking hands of time. Silence and time, when even the smallest scuff could be a booming signal, but risk for speed was a necessity. Pulling the hood of their cloak closer to their face for coverage, the figure refocused on the arrival. In a short dark alley, the figure knocked on a plain wooden door. In a hushed voice, barely perceptible, she whispered, “Maggie?” In response, on well oiled hinges, the door opened quickly and silently. The figure was reminded of her previously looming thoughts on silence and time. She stepped inside and the door closed firmly without a sound. Once inside, the figure dropped her hood and a mass of wiry, straw-like, fiery hair humbled out in disarray. This was one of the many things Fluxx had inherited from her Da, a dwarf. Others being her pale skin, stubborn and often abrupt nature, and distaste for conventional niceties. From her mother, a fire genie, she’d acquired her fierce confidence, obsession with magic, and her tendency to spark - both literal and figurative. Just one of the many reasons she’d been banned from her precious books in the city library and archive. Exactly where she now stood, in the dead quiet of night. Nothing boils the scholars more than scorched books and scrolls. Magdalena, her first and only real friend, was the only scholar that understood her passion for knowledge and the side-effects that could come from heightened emotions. Maggie, as Fluxx affectionately called her, didn’t agree with the edict that banned Fluxx from the archives, and often took the closing shift to assist in after-hours infiltration. The closing shift wasn’t something often wanted, so the upper scholars were happy to oblige. Fluxx removed her cloak as she made her way to one of the small sitting areas. She grabbed the nearest book, *The Ember in the Eye*, the nearest chair, and began absorbing what she could with her limited time. Page after page, she devoured the information. Page after page, she lost time and place. She clutched the book to her and leaned in, as if in doing so, she could take it all in quicker. Then, rather abruptly, she was ripped out of her reverie by a strand of hair. White hair, just a strand, was draped across the words on the page. That singular strand was just distracting enough to have pulled her out of her state. How odd to so easily be pulled away from such an episode, but also fortuitous to have happened before any damage. Magdalena usually kept an eye on her, but she was nowhere to be found. Probably finishing up any number of her remaining required duties. Fluxx relaxed slightly her grip on the book, plucked at the strand, and dropped it to the side of her. Rubbing her fingertips together to ease the tingling accumulating in them from her magic, she began to dive back into the words scrawled across the page. A small breeze picked up and blew the strand of hair back into place. To Fluxx, that thin strand of hair was as wide as an inlet, distracting - nay, preventing her - from viewing her precious words. She flung the strand aside, only to have it reappear with another small breeze. Small breeze? Fluxx looked up and around her. She was still sitting in the library - an indoor, closed-windowed archive. Where could that wind shift have come from? Fluxx pulled on the hair, as if to sever it from whence it came. The strand would not break. he followed it with her gaze, intent on finding the source. It trailed from her book to another on the shelf, *Abyss of Destiny*. Fluxx stood and retrieved that tome from the shelf. When she opened it and pulled on the hair, once more it would not detach, but led her to another text, *City of Smoke*, higher up. Her obsession with the strand grew. Fetching a ladder quickly, she traced the hair through book after book, carelessly ripping the tomes off the shelf and tossing them aside. *The Immortal Binds.* *The Call of Silence.* *The Tangled Throne.* *The Splintered Strand.* Tome after tome fell to the floor as more and more strands appeared. She pulled at them, twisted them, tried with everything she had to break them, but to no avail. The white hair was cascading through the books, tumbling tumultuous through her psyche. Fluxx was raw and exposed, her frustration and magic growing. Near the top, leaning precariously to one side, she reached for another tome, *The Voice of the Original*. Behind the book was a burning, glowing red eye, seeing Fluxx through strands of draping white hair. In a tone that was booming but ever quiet, she heard a voice say, “You’ve followed the tangled strands to the root. You are worthy to separate, cut, make right the wrongs of Men and Gods. Fate will be unknotted and restored. Come.