~750 words “I keep telling you people no and you keep coming around anyways,” Joracks said to two men in black. “For every time you say no, thousands of innocent people die,” agent Williams said. “Last week we briefed you about World Thief. You said no and we lost tens of thousands of lives before our team stopped him. We lost 29 of our people.” Joracks looked up from his loaded fries. “Is that the day you brought soup and sandwiches from Panera?” “You know? fuck you,” agent Jordan said and flipped Joracks off. “Hey! Hey. I told you guys that I’ll never change my mind. But if you want to keep bringing me food, I’ll keep consulting or whatever you want to call it.” Williams shook his head. “This job is beneath you. The Bronze Son could be back saving the world and instead, he’s here lifting steel beams for a couple of bucks.” “It’s an honest job,” Joracks said with his mouth half-full. He swallowed. “We almost done here?” “It’s laughable that The Bronze Son has a lunch break.” “Yeah? You know what’s laughable is that before this, I never got a break. Always someone to save, some super-villain threatening world domination needing to be stopped, or–” he paused, “or another funeral to speak at.” Agent Jordan slammed his fist onto the folding table. “You taking a break from being a hero has gotten over a million people killed in the past three months.” “Yeah? Fuck you too, agent. I didn’t stop being a ‘hero’. It’s not a job, asshole. I’ve saved the whole planet several times over. I *am* a damn hero. I’m just done being the one you lean on for everything.” “I’ll be in the car,” agent Jordan said and walked out slamming the trailer’s door behind him. “I’ve got two minutes left on my break, Agent Williams. Do you want to ask me any questions?” The agent sat down across from Joracks and glanced inside his notebook. “H.Q. wants to know if any of your prior ‘nemeses’ are redeemable or could otherwise be convinced to join the team.” “Oh, god. Really?” “They’re desperate. We’ve lost a lot of good people.” “So you’ll settle for bad?” Agent Williams set down the notebook and took off his sunglasses. “It wouldn’t be the first time.” “Oh. Sorry, was that supposed to be some big reveal? I’ve known who you were since, what? Three or four years ago when you came on board?” “I figured.” “You weren’t a nemesis. ‘The Card Carrier’? You were a criminal at worst. Criminals have simple motivations, simple enough to reform.” “The team classified me as a ‘supervillain’. I’ve seen the dossier.” Joracks grinned. “The only way to get government funding and support was to work toward whatever initiative they gave us. Crime was up back then and the president wanted us to join their ‘War Against Super Crime’. Because of the previous accords, the only way the team could interfere was if the criminal was a supervillain.” “So you didn’t think I was a villain?” “No. Certainly not. If I had, you’d have been a smear on the pavement. You know my stance.” “You weren’t the one that brought me in, so I figured that’s why I was still alive.” “I was briefed on your powers and your record. I handed it to C team. If I recall correctly, they apprehended you without any casualties?” “I surrendered.” “And that’s why we put you on the reform track instead of–you know.” Agent Williams looked at the clock. “Your break is over.” “You’re right, thanks.” “One more question? A personal one.” “If you’ll get me sojok from that place in downtown for lunch tomorrow.” “That place from the other week?” “Yeah.” “It got destroyed.” “Fine, sojok from anywhere.” “Sure.” Joracks tossed the remaining fries into the trash next to the door. “What’s your question?” “If Patrice was still alive, would you be a hero again?” Joracks clenched his jaw. “Would you save the world again?” “Do you know what I was doing when she died?” “Stopping a class seven threat.” “I couldn’t save the woman that meant everything to me from a fucking bee sting.” Joracks turned the door handle with deliberate gentleness. “I’m done being the hero everyone expects me to be.” “Joracks, if they could bring Patrice back?” He swung the door open. “I have a team that expects me to clock back in and then, at the end of the day, clock out. I’ll be here tomorrow, agent.


Lorilla sighs contentedly as she settles into her little stump chair with its mossy cushion. I've made a nice little home for myself in just a few weeks' time , she commends herself. No one else will likely notice, except for maybe Naivara, who helped her pick the giant banyan tree amongst whose roots she's built her house. The tree is a short distance into the forest outside Thradnyss--close enough that her friends can find her when they have work, but far enough away that other people won't bother her. Naivara, Vladislak, Rhogar, and Darrak are back at the Felnuth Tavern tonight, blowing off some steam after an extremely taxing and frustrating few days of dissuading sahuagin from attacking the merchant ships in the port. They'd invited Lorilla to come along--Darrak most insistently--but Lorilla firmly insisted on having some time to herself tonight. She's always enjoyed a quiet evening at home, tending to her plants and meditating and brewing poisons, to a night in a crowded, rowdy tavern. "Now, let's see," Lorilla murmurs to herself, deep green eyes scanning the scroll in her hands. "Where did I--" THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! Emphatic pounding on her door startles her such that she drops the scroll. With a barely audible groan, she gets out of her chair to retrieve it, hoping against hope that there's been a mistake and the knocking will cease. "Lorilla! Please, let me in! I don't know if she's chasing me or not!" Vladislak yelps outside, continuing his frantic pummeling of her door. A few seconds later, the door gives way under Vladislak's fist as Lorilla opens it, wearing her most exasperated expression. The bard teeters a bit; if he was not significantly taller than the door, he might have tumbled gracelessly into the druid's abode, given his panic and obvious intoxication. "Who have you angered, Vladislak?" Lorilla inquires. "Naivara. Again. Please, let me in and I'll explain. She likes you. She won't kill me if I'm in your house," he replies, glancing frequently over his shoulders. Lorilla steps aside, and Vladislak crouches and shuffles into her home. She closes the door behind him, already wondering if she's made a mistake. "The ceilings are too low for you to stand. Sit on the floor." At 5'8", Vladislak isn't what most would consider tall, but Lorilla is 3'4" and built her home for her comfort, not to entertain visitors. "I like what you've done with the place. This is much homier than the room I'm renting at the tavern." "Thank you. Now, what have you done to Naivara?" "I just...suggested that we might spend the night together. You know, save some coin on lodgings, maybe get a bottle of mead, some candles--" "You're a fool," Lorilla interrupts, rolling her eyes. "Naivara has made it more than clear that she's not interested in romance, with you or with anyone else." "I know. I just.... Every time we work together, she.... I mean, obviously she's beautiful, but it's more than that, y'know? She's witty and fearless and--" "Deadly when crossed." "Yeah, but that's part of her charm." "You're attracted to power." Vladislak flinches as though she's slapped him. "I mean. I guess. But also...everything else about her." Lorilla arches an eyebrow. She hadn't expected sincerity from Vladislak, who's used to using his undeniable charm and smooth talking to get what he wants from people. I wonder how much he drank before he propositioned Naivara this time? "How can I get her to...not threaten to kill me if I suggest we spend more time together?" Vladislak despairs, eyes searching Lorilla's ceiling for answers. "Don't treat her like everyone else does," Lorilla replies frankly. "Come again?" "She gets a lot of attention because of the way she looks. I know you've noticed." You were bristling with rage this morning, when some of the city guards commented on Naivara's long legs and lithe figure , Lorilla adds silently. "And she resents it. Deeply." "Yeah. I've noticed that, too," Vladislak admits. "But when she's so impossibly attractive, how can she expect that--" "She wants to be treated like a person, not a conquest." Lorilla senses a disturbance in the forest--three individuals approaching, two with heavy steps. Probably Rhogar, Darrak, and Naivara. Not much time left to talk Vladislak into being sensible. "Maybe focus on being her friend first. She's been hurt a lot. She doesn't trust easily. If you're serious about wooing her, you'll have to be patient." "That's never been my best skill." Vladislak pauses; the footsteps are close enough now that he's noticed them. "I think that's our friends coming. What do I--" THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! "Heeeeyyyyyyyyy, Lorilla!" Naivara calls as she pounds on the door, obviously intoxicated. "Rememberrrr those guards who were soooooooooo rude today? We're gonna make them piss themselves again! Come with us!" Rhogar's large, scaly head pushes through an ivy curtain to peer through Lorilla's window. "Ah, good. You are here," Rhogar remarks quietly as he sees Vladislak sprawled on Lorilla's dirt floor. Naivara is still pounding on the door and yelling, and they can hear Darrak fruitlessly trying to get her to knock it off. "I convinced her that the guards propositioned her tonight, too, and that your offer was to try and make them back off." "What?! Really?!" Vladislak exclaims, trying to match Rhogar's volume. "You owe us a small fortune for her drinks tonight, but play your cards right and come with us, and she might forget her threat to castrate you," Rhogar continues. "Lorilla, I know you wanted a quiet night in, but please come, too. Darrak desperately wants someone sane to talk to." Lorilla casts a longing glance at her comfortable chair and the scroll she'd planned to read tonight, but then she smiles in spite of herself. It's nice to feel needed. "I guess I can come. Can't have you all getting into too much trouble," Lorilla agrees, then shouts, "Coming, Naivara! I have to repack my poisoning kit." Naivara cheers outside the door, and Rhogar laughs as he pulls his head back out of Lorilla's window. Vladislak frantically tries to dust himself off and make himself presentable without the aid of a mirror. "You look fine," Lorilla tells him, "and anyway, your looks aren't going to help you achieve your goal this time. Stop procrastinating and let's go, if we're doing this." "All right. Yeah. You're right," the bard nods, although the idea is clearly nerve-wracking; he's never had a non-combat problem that his looks weren't helpful to solve. "And um. Thanks." Lorilla just opens the door and gestures for him to join their friends outside. "Come on, then, both of you!" Rhogar encourages. "Adventure awaits!" Aye, indeed, Lorilla thinks as she follows Vladislak out of her house and immediately feels overwhelmed by her friends' raucous chatter. "Finally!" Naivara exults. "Lead the way," Vladislak invites Naivara, doing his best to infuse his manners with Lorilla's advice. "Heaven help us," Darrak mutters as he falls in step beside Lorilla, following the other three to ambush the hapless guards. The druid smiles and shakes her head. "Other forces already help us," she remarks as she watches their friends. Perhaps there's hope for Vladislak, after all.


# Happy Saturday, serialists! Welcome to Serial Saturday! \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ ***New here?*** If you’re brand new to and thinking about participating in Serial Saturday, welcome! Feel free to dip your toes in by writing for this challenge or any others we have listed on the handy dandy ! We appreciate all contributions made to this thread, and all submissions are of course welcomed, whether it addresses a previous challenge or the current one. We hope you enjoy your time in the community! Take a look at our inaugural Serial Saturday post for some helpful tips. You don’t need to catch up by writing for each of the previous assignments, feel free to jump right in wherever fits for you, with whatever assignment or theme fits for you, and post it on the current thread with a link to whichever previously posted challenge you chose to start with. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ # This week it’s all about The Event That Changes Everything. Well, folks, . If you need a bathroom break, now’s the time ‘cause we’re all hoppin’ on this train with a . So let’s talk about The Event. What is it? The Event That Changes Everything is the ***catalyst*** for your story-- it’s the thing that hooks us as readers. It’s the phone call that starts with . I want to make sure I’m not leading anyone astray here: this is ***not*** the installment where aliens invade, or the volcano erupts, The Last Battle begins, or where Mr Darcy tells Elizabeth Bennet the truth about Mr Wickham. This is when the two night guys in the control room look down at the radar and say “hey, what’s those two blips getting closer and closer to our airspace?” and the other replies “probably a glitch. Let's file the bug and order lunch. Do you want burgers or sub sandwiches?”. When your MC re-tells their story to their alien grandbabies, this is the part where they go ” This could be a chance encounter that blindsides your characters or gets them started on their journey. Let’s lay out what this may look like: This week our hero Bill was demoted at the paper company after his rival Frank bumps into him huffing glue in the lunchroom and reports his to HR. Naturally we can assume in Week 7, Point of No Return, that Bill begins gathering the tools he needs to bury Frank (figuratively…. *Or is it?),* and get his old job back, when in Week Eight, Raised Stakes, we learn that Frank landed the Regional Manager position. Now the entire office equilibrium is at stake if Frank is allowed to assert dominance. Something must be done about this corduroy wearing, Land Cruiser driving, The TT Serialists among us may ask, "what if we already have a catalyst point, what now?" Don't you worry Use this opportunity to let . I’m here for it. If you are ready to double down on your current plot and hit the gas, For others you may not quite be ready for that, and that is perfectly ok-- in three weeks time we’ll be hitting The Storm and *that’s* when things will get real. This may be a personal moment for your protagonist, when his car breaks down on a deserted highway halfway from Salt Lake, out of gas and his phone dies. ***The Event That Changes Everything will either send your protagonist in a new direction, or accelerate the urgency of their plans.*** How does this phone call/ letter/chance encounter/UFO sighting start your MC on their track to glory/death/running over Frank in the desert/welcoming our new overlords? **\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*** **You have until \*next\* Saturday, 9/19, to submit and comment on everyone else's stories here. Make sure to check back on this thread periodically to lay some sweet, sweet crit down on those who don't have any yet!** \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* # Top picks from last week’s assignment, : **Fan favorite with the most votes:** It’s a tie, between and , and it’s not hard to see why! Go check those stories out! This week the **Smoking Hot Challenge Sash** goes to /u/Lynx_elia, for taking us . And honorable mentions: /u/Xacktar, with a . And /u/Mazinjaz, with some \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ **The Rules:** * In the comments below submit a story that is between **500 - 750** words in your own original universe. * Submissions are limited to ***one*** serial submission from each author per week. * **Each author should comment on at least 2 other stories** during the course of the week. * That comment must include ***at least one*** **detail** about what the author has done well. * Authors who successfully finish a serial lasting longer than 8 installments will be featured with a modpost recognizing their completion and a flair banner on the sub. * Authors are eligible for this highlight post only if they have followed the 2 feedback comments per thread rule. *Yes, we will check*. * While content rules are more lax here at /r/ShortStories, we’re going to roll with the loose guidelines of "vaguely family friendly" being the rule of thumb for now. If you’re ever unsure if your story would cross the line, feel free to modmail! \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ Reminders: * Make sure your post on this thread also includes links to your previous installments if you have a currently in-progress serial. Those links must be direct links to the previous installment on the preceding Serial Saturday post or to your own subreddit/profile. * Authors that complete a serial with 8 or more installments get a fancy banner and modpost to highlight their stories. * Saturdays we will be hosting a Serials Campfire on the main voice lounge. Join us to read your story aloud, hear other stories, and share your own thoughts on serial writing! We start on Saturdays at 9AM CST. **Don’t worry about being late, just join!** There’s a *Super Serial* role on the Discord server, so make sure you grab that so you’re notified of all Serial Saturday related news! **Join the** **to chat with prompters, authors, and readers!** Previous constraint: Have you seen the ? No? Oh boy! Here's the current cycle's challenge schedule.


The Black Horse on the Prairie The ripened Pink Ladies could not mask the putrid odor of Herman Hilltop’s decomposing body. A fresh patch of sugar magnolias could not even soften the tear-rousing stench. Had a man passed his foul-smelling corpse, a double-handed nose-pinch would disable him from cutting down the cordage noose—as would the apprehension of fondling a dead black man's flesh. There, drooping from the highest branch, he would stay flaccidly swaying in the wind. It would be just eight days until the maggots had finished boring through his brain and crawling out his eye sockets, but his tattered skeleton would not be found until hell froze over. ⏅ “Momma. Just a few mo’ months and Imma get us outta her’, alright,” Herman, with a hand gripping her sagging shoulder, explained. It had been 11 years since Herman and his mother were sold to the Corucca Plantation in Calvert County, Maryland. Surrounded by acres of tobacco, he fantasized about life out of shackles, earning modest wages, and raising his own family. His fantasy was not too far out of reach. The laxer conditions of the north allowed him to work odd jobs, after his day in the field of course, for a couple bucks. After 11 years of spit-shining shoes on the most dehydrating-days of the summer and constructing oak-wood furniture until his fingers could not bare anymore splinters, Herman had accrued $650, nearly enough to purchase his and his mother’s freedom. Just a few more months, as Herman had so neatly drawn out, and they would be freemen. ⏅ Nobody saw it coming. The winter of 1865, as temperate as it seemed compared to last, carried a devastating wind-chill that took lives mercilessly. Wrapped in wool blanket by open fire, Herman’s mother took her last breath, and her son neiled by, head-in-hand, sniveling over his loved-one’s death and the impetuous fever that foiled their plans for liberation. He found he had haplessly misused the past 11 years. As fate would have it though, in the following month, January, the 13th Amendment was passed through congress, freeing all slaves in the entire U.S. territory. 11 years of arduous toil just to be left with a dead mother and gratis-freedom left him in a deep, dark, and seemingly incurable depression. As all the other slaves on the plantation soulfully celebrated their imminent release, he chose to rest alone; convinced solitude would alleviate his anguish. ⏅ “Don’t trus’ nobody. The white folk. The black folk. Nobody.” Herman remembered the lesson his mother had ingrained in him since childhood and he had earnest intention on following it. 11 months and 17 days after his late mother's death, Herman departed from the Calvert County post office on horse, clutching his Homestead Act authorized-deed to 80 acres of land in Kansas, en route to the Great American Desert: his new, reclusive life. Herman understood the land out west was nearly infertile, but he had no intention on farming it commercially. The crops he grew on this land would be harvested for subsistence only. $650 allowed him to purchase one horse, two oxen, a wagon, a steel plow, seeds, saplings, and enough raw materials to build a comfortable dwelling: a wood-framed interior encased by a mud-brick exterior, a one-room residence that could keep cool in the steaming days of the summer and toasty in the windswept days of the winter. His dreams, once of raising a good ol’ Christian family, had faded and were cloaked by his narrow-pathed vision of withdrawal and grief. ⏅ Good grief. He’d been reaping what he sowed. Eating enough to live but barely living enough not to die. Apart from tending to his crops, he hadn’t been outside his 80 acres in weeks. When he first arrived at his land, a quick horse-ridden survey would keep him inside his boundaries. No residents but ex-Confederate soldiers and Irish-bloods for 30 miles in every direction. His mother taught him how to read them when he looked, and, promptly, he had been left alone. With the majority of his 80 acres being untouched, passerbyers could assume the land was vacant--no knocks on his door, no hospitable salutations, nothing. Sadly, the empty land was not the reason for his lack of companionship. The knowledge of his black skin passed through the grapevine, keeping neighbors away. A barrack of buffalo soldiers, stationed just a 45 minute gallop away, never payed a visit to the sole black man. With their rise in status, from slavery to calvary, and their new pompous attitude, they had no interest in accompanying the ostensibly declasse black, from slavery to solitary poverty. ⏅ Two years and he’d been alone in his grief for too long. Never had he been invited to cut up the rug at the biannual Grange dance. Never had he been invited to tie one on after the Priest’s sermon on Sunday night. Never had he even been invited into the threshold of the local church. Two years was too long to not hear another soul’s voice. Two years was all it took. ⏅ The Pink Lady tree reminded him of the one that grew on the Corucca plantation. Even more than its aesthetic, climbing to its tippy top brought him back to his childhood. His childhood, although full of slaving and drudgery, had one key component: company. Although he was nearly worked to death, he had never felt as weak as he felt right now; in his terminal moment he had nobody. His mother, never even breathing a breath of air as a free woman, comfortably died in her loving son’s arms. Now, he would see his own death, cradled by the arms of the Pink Lady tree. As the black silhouette tangled by the cordage noose, Herman Hilltop’s horse nayed. Now that his master had gone under, he was a free horse and could travel about as he liked. Where shall I go, thought the horse. What shall I see? Who shall I meet? The horse, in all of its glory, galloped into the prairie, the Great American Desert. In two years or less, the vivacious nag would have all of its questions answered: Nowhere, nothing, and noone.


Stranded   The sun is aggressively melting all that is around this ashen landscape which makes my bed today. A breeze blows through the ragged trees and dry twigs shoot from the ground bending to and fro.

   I’m all alone. Afraid of what may happen in the next hours I decide to hum to myself so I don’t fall asleep and miss an opportunity to be found. Instead of a warm soft bed to rest after the fight, I lay in the hard rocky dirt with little vegetation to shade me from this torturing sun. I’m not sure how I got here and I don’t know if I’ll see another day. With the remaining bit of strength available to me, I am writing a short note to whoever finds me or to my future self. An attempt to collect my carelessly thrown schoolbag has allowed me the opportunity to find a sheet of paper which I ripped out from my notebooks and a pen I had loosely left hanging on one of the inside pockets. I now am able to keep myself calm by scribbling these notes and waiting, wishing that I was sitting in cool café sipping fragrant coffee with friends. Except at the moment a bit of water may be a better choice to cool my parched lips and broken body.

  If I could go back to yesterday, what would I have done differently? What else would I do if I could have a tomorrow?  By thinking about tomorrow, I hope I could stay awake. If tomorrow comes I have to remember to stay away from trouble. Never should there come a time where in trying to be polite to someone, I avoid running away. In trying to be polite to someone, I enter a dark place that I can’t come out of. Sometimes our capturers wear a warm smile, yet they really have dark intentions. We may know someone but that doesn’t mean they are our friends.  It is important to be happy and meet as many interesting people as possible in fact.  We should embrace opportunities to laugh and dance, love and be loved because in the act of feeling, the vibrancy of the moment creates the person we would want to be. Though I have attempted to live life well and take opportunities that came my way, there was and will always be some form of regret. Something that could have been done better or shouldn’t have lost so soon.  That’s ok, the important thing is that time wasn’t wasted. Love is real, don’t lose heart, don’t give up.   Have courage, keep focused, never look back. If I make it out of this hopelessness I hope I never let the memory of this time effect the potential for my future. It’s often said that we should study the past to avoid future error. Right? Unfortunately, mistakes will still be made. We may have all the answers, but our instincts could still lead us into falling into destructive patterns within complicated scenarios over and over. The pain I feel right now is so great I don’t know if I could hold on. How could I be writing about a future when there seems to be little hope of being discovered. All I want to do is remind myself not to take for granted all that I have had. My studies, my family, my goals. These things are important. Will I ever have a chance to a future? I could really use an angel right now but all I see is an empty sky. With little to do I start remembering a story from a children’s book I use to read quite often when I was getting ready for bed. The story takes place in a military hospital after the second world war. In this hospital at the end of each day, the nurses would distribute medicine to the many patients, and serve the last tea throughout the wards. At that time a silence filled the hallways and rooms. In that silence the patients that were able to fall asleep did, but the others who may have suffered discomfort would only dream of a restful slumber because their discomfort was so extreme these men and women would lie in wait as I do now.   In that silence a man walked through the hospital unseen by security guards or nurses. As the story goes, if a patient had their hand raised high and their heart was pure, a man some believed him to be an angel, would ask the patient to rise and walk out with him enabling the patient to be rid of their pain forever. There was a sense of hope in this belief for the patients. They believed this angel opened the door to the gates of heaven and each person that walked with this man, who was more of a shadow than a human, would have eternal peace. I could never understand why this story was included within a bedtime story book. Many years now have passed since I held that old heavy volume of stories in my hands.    There are many people that believe in reincarnation. Our bodies die but our souls continue. If my soul continues when I die, I hope my soul will remember that I tried to be good. If in a future life if I’m a boy or girl, wealthy or poor, I have to remember to always be wise to the world we see on our daily path. It is important to remember that the eyes of a person do not reflect their true character. Some may argue it is their mouth. Be careful. No matter what reality awaits us our soul will imprint the experience to its essence. Though time changes many superficial and materialistic elements in our lives, I must remember that a wrong decision will always be wrong, and once that decision is made there is little chance of turning back. The right path if taken will promise you a tomorrow.

 Confined to this place, this dirt floor of stone and dry bush, I feel tired. I imagine insects starting to eat away at my skin though I can’t tell for sure because my body is so numb with pain that I can’t feel myself trying to wiggle my toes. I lay here in wait and hope that my memories of this lifetime will shine on in the next existence. If there is one memory I’d make sure to never forget and hope it remains instilled in the deepest core of my essence, it would be to never trust the cute boy with the ketchup stained teeth. He is my end.


EDIT: I just wanted to say this is the first story I've written in 5 years and all your upvotes are making me so incredibly happy right now! I'll definitely write more now, so enjoy! I can’t believe I ended up here. I always said this would be a last resort; I guess I finally reached my wit’s end. As I walk up the steep steps to the Centre, I can feel each one weighing on my conscience. *Oh well, we’re here now.* As I reach the top of the steps, the enormous archway entrance laughs at me and my choices up to this point. Inside, I catch a glimpse of what exactly I’m dealing with; female Androids, all blonde and blue-eyed I bet, busying themselves with their customers. Me, with my brown hair and hazel eyes, have another reason I don’t fit in. Before I can let that sink in, one of the Androids blurs into my field of vision, “Welcome to the Centre, where the opportunities are endless. How may I help you reach your dreams?”. I resist the urge to grimace and walk with her, trying to divulge as little as possible about how I got to this point; nobody’s business but mine. I’m led into a smaller room stemming off from the entrance, no less lavish though. The room is a stark white, adorned with colourful abstract paintings, plants in every corner with tendrils reaching for the ceiling - perhaps they’ve mistaken its brightness for what the Sun used to be. I get the impression of both a prison and a therapist’s office, how perfectly fitting. As I marvel at the furnishings, *nothing like home,* I feel the only occupants eyes focused on me, contemplating my reasoning for being here. “Hello, June I presume? Please take a seat and we can begin the initiation process. My name is Vanessa and I’ll be helping you choose your room today.” I do as asked and gingerly take a seat in one of the available chairs in front of Vanessa, choosing the one that puts me further away from her gaze. My eyes flit up as I try to relax and I see she is still watching me. *How… unnerving.* “Perfect! Now let’s get started. I already have your personal information on file thanks to your chip so let’s jump right into the questions, starting with the most important. Why are you here today?” As I speak, Vanessa types away on her display, her eyes never leaving mine for long. Mine is a typical sob story; mother passed while giving birth to my younger brother, father disappeared in the Rebellion with nothing to trace, and now, my brother has run out of life support funds. I only had enough funds remaining for a year, or enough for the Centre. I guess looking back it wasn’t really a choice after all. Vanessa smiles, “You’re a perfect candidate! It will take a week to process your results, we look forward to seeing you this time next week.” As I leave the Centre, I can feel eyes watching my departure. Am I that interesting to stare at? // The archway is still laughing at me, this time it feels more like a goodbye, though. I’m guided to Vanessa’s office again, just as lavish and sterile as before. I’m fitted into one of the compression suits to monitor vitals; the material is soft and silky yet very tense and unforgiving. As the Androids rush around me, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror before I leave. Eyebrows drawn down over my steeled gaze, hair done up in a severe bun at the crown of my head and the suit, black with outlines of blue tracing the electromagnetic lines running from the chip in my neck to all my extremities; everything I experience recorded for them. And finally, I am brought to the door. Again, I feel Vanessa’s eyes on me but I ignore them and enter, closing the door behind myself as I am greeted by; more doors? Doors on either side of me, stretching out further than I can see. All different colours and shapes; is this right? Perplexed only for a moment, I open the first door on my left. Lush greenery expands out of view, trees almost lumbering around me with branches extending upward and vines expanding downward. Soft underbrush littered with shrubbery and mosses, growing every which way almost in spite of the large tree trunks obstructing their progress. And the sweet, sickly smell of flowers and citrus permeates my nostrils coming from a clearing I see nearby overrun with grasses that look like they’d be so much softer than my bed at home. I slam the door. That’s not what I want. I open another door then another. A valley, a beach, a mountaintop, a mall, a warzone; it’s endless. This is not what I thought the Centre was supposed to be. I don’t want to see anything. I don’t want to be anything anymore. I open and slam doors so furiously I almost miss it, an empty room. Pitch black. So black that, for all I know, this could be the corner of the expanse. No smell, no sound; just what I want. I step inside and as my heel crosses the doorframe, it slams shut behind me, enveloping me in darkness. Nothing. That’s what this is. I can’t tell where I end and the room begins. I feel myself sit down where I can finally be alone, in my room, the centre of my universe. The blood pumping in my ears is the only signal to the passage of time. No responsibilities, questions, or stares. Is that light? Is that my shadow in front of me? I turn around to catch a glimpse of a door and a figure within it. “They might make it,” I hear someone laugh as the door slams shut again and I’m alone with only the echo of a voice.


“You have awoken me.” The little man’s face grew comically wide, his eyes threaten to pop from their sockets. There was fear there and a generous helping of it, but there was also another emotion vying for territory upon his features, and the result of this battle pulled his facial muscles this way and that. It were as though he was suffering from the worst case of facial cramps in history. There were doctors, who if present, would make a name for themselves with this man in their care. This was a one-off show though, and the show on his face was not his doing. Neither was the growing damp patch at his crotch. He stepped back without understanding that this was what he was doing. He needed to put some distance between him and the speaker of these words. All he achieved was a further assessment of his dire situation. As his back hit the wall of the cave, he knew he was not in the best of places and that things were on the cusp of getting quite a bit worse. “S… S… S… Sss…” said the man. This was not what he had intended. He had wanted to say something placatory, but instead he was impersonating a snake, and he didn’t think this was going to do him many favours. “Calm down and take a couple of deep breaths,” said the only other occupant of the cave. The man tried. He really did. His eyes retreated a little back into their natural residence in his face, but part way through his attempt at a deep breath, it all went wrong again. The problem was the hulking mass before him. It was so very difficult to approach any semblance of calm in the presence of such a fearsome creature. There was nowhere that the man could look other than upon the huge edifice that loomed up before and over him. Set within an expanse of fur were the longest and sharpest claws he had ever seen and the pads of the paws in which the claws were set were large enough to eclipse the man’s head. Then there were the massive, pointy teeth. The teeth themselves were formidable, but there were so many of them and they were set in jaws that were modelled on a car crusher, only these jaws were bigger and more terrible and they could take apart an entire housing estate as though the houses were nothing more than delightful cupcakes. The setting for these terrible weapons of evisceration was a conundrum. Even in the face of his total and incredibly painful annihilation, the man had this inexplicable urge to hug the thing. Words such as

cute

cartwheeled through his beleaguered mind and this made his plight all the more horrible. But what really took everything to a level the man wished he had never known existed was that this bear could talk. Now, the man knew things. He was far from being a dullard, and one thing he was certain of in this world of his, was that bears didn’t talk. In fact, he happened to know that only people talked and many of those people weren’t all that good at doing it in a coherent and useful manner. Most people were limited and quite stupid, but the man was having to reassess his own standing in the pecking order of intelligence, after all, here he was, stood in a cave. Cornered by a talking bear. This was not something anyone in possession of their wits would willingly do. It was the most foolish of endeavours. He had got this wrong. Badly wrong. He doubted there was any way out of this, other than for a few of his bones at some uncertain point in the future, long after the bear had moved on.

He tried for another breath. Any breath would do. Parts of his body had shut down and he was having to go for a manual approach to remind his body of what it was it should be doing. He clutched his chest and squeezed and pushed. “That looks a bit wrong,” said the bear as it observed the little man. The man wasn’t little per se, it was just that the bear was really, very big, and even the biggest of men were little in comparison, “did you know that you’d wet yourself?” the bear added. The man looked down and for the first time felt the sensation of the cooling liquid upon his flesh. He discovered that, even though his body was shutting down vital functions, it still knew how to be deeply embarrassed and perhaps because it was shutting down a bunch of really quite useful functions, including maintaining control of his bladder, it was able to really go to town with his shame. His face went a livid shade of a colour between bright red and deep purple. The colour rose within him and he looked like he was going to explode, such was his awkwardness in this moment. His mind took the opportunity to remind him that this was the least of his worries and went on to remind him of the story he’d heard about how bears started eating a person from the bottom upwards, and that bear dining etiquette did not include putting its meal out of its misery before sitting down for the main course. The terrible screams of prey dying the most excruciating death imaginable must have added a certain vibrancy to the atmosphere in the bear’s dining area. That was the only explanation the man had for such an approach to a dinner plate. Either that, or bears were quite deaf. The other alternative. The one where it turned out that bears were mean and dirty psychopaths. That was something the man really didn’t want to consider. And so he did. In vivid detail. And in triplicate, for good measure. Still, maybe being soaked in urine would make the bear think twice on the chowing down front. Every cloud had a silver lining, only in this case, the man had opted for the premium package and his lining was golden.

He didn’t yet appreciate just how golden it was. “Sorry,” the man said. Somehow, it was far easier to apologise for his wetting himself in public than it was to say sorry for groping his own man boob in a lewd and disturbing manner, and it was a cake walk in comparison to addressing his monumental oversight in awaking a planet sized bear from the deepest of slumbers. He sneezed. Again. The first sneeze was the unwelcome sound that had awoken this sleeping mega-bear.

“Bless you,” said the bear. “Thanks,” said the man, “I think I might be allergic…” He ceased his words. Words that had come unbidden. He did not want to continue and risk offending the bear. Adding insult to injury was never going to go well for him. He looked up at the bear with something like an expectant and conciliatory expression. It was so difficult to tell, his face was continuing to behave as though a crowd of crickets were having a silent disco under the duvet of his face. The bear nodded slowly, “it happens.” Only now did the man attend to the bear’s voice. The urbane and sonorous voice that didn’t quite fit the owner of that voice, a voice that belonged to an impossibly old and unimaginably  wise mage. But then, what would a bear sound like, if it could indeed talk? What the man did know about that voice, was that he liked it. It was the best of voices. “This…” said the man, nodding his head slightly towards the bear, but refraining from any gesticulations. He did not want to make any sudden movement, or any movements at all for that matter. He wanted to avoid further provocation of this magnificent and deceptively, but also very obviously deadly beast. “We have something of a problem here, don’t we?” said the bear stating the very obvious. The man nodded, “I am so very sorry about that,” said the man, making the most genuine apology of his entire life. “Your apology doesn’t change the fact that I am awake, when I should be asleep,” the bear told him, “I wasn’t due to wake up for another two months. Do you know how much havoc you are playing with my circadian rhythms?” “Sorry,” said the man again, thinking that it was really very important to emphasise to the bear that the bear was standing menacingly before a very sorry, but also a well-mannered and polite man, “if there’s anything I can do..?” The bear raised one of its gigantic paws. A paw so massive it could swat the man and crack his skull like an egg. Even then, the crickets would continue dancing at their disco. They were partying and nothing was going to stop their good vibes. These crickets had priorities and right now partying was number one on their list. The man did not flinch, but this was not because he was at all brave, it was because he was doing all he could to prevent further disgrace emanating from his nether regions, and generally to keep it together and stay conscious. Losing consciousness would be a very bad idea in these most calamitous of proceedings. Thankfully, the bear brought that paw to his jawline and stroked its chin with its deadly array of oversized katanas, “there is something you can do…” it said as it ruminated. “Anything!” the man said overeagerly. Now he flinched. Some of his options were unsavoury and others were deeply unpleasant, so he was a fool to willingly invite them all into his beleaguered life, “what is it you would have me do?” he quickly added. “Tell me a story,” said the bear. “A story?” asked the man. The bear nodded, “yes, I will return to my deep slumber if you tell me a story.” “Oh well,” said the man as he ran full pelt to a more relieved state and for the first time saw light at the end of the cave. The bear flicked forth one of those wicked claws of his, and the man fell silent, “I must warn you. This is not going to be easy. You must know two things before we begin.” The man nodded, but dared not say a word. His entire focus was on that raised claw. The word

disembowelled trotted to and fro in his quaking mind as the man stared unblinkingly at the long sharp bestower of the most painful of deaths. “Firstly,” said the bear in a solemn and business like tone, “once you start this story of yours, you cannot stop until I am done. Do not pause unduly. Do not falter. It will go so very badly for you if you should fail in this.” The man was in no doubt of how so very badly his plight could be, no doubt whatsoever. “Secondly,” now the bear was chirpy, and the man swore that he smiled a warm and encouraging smile, “make it a good story. Make it the very best of your stories, for your sake as well as mine.” The man returned the smile, despite the traumatic situation that he was caught in. Despite his being between a rock and a hard bear. That smile was the very best of smiles, and in the circumstances, the little man deserved to smile like that. It was fitting and it was proper, and it was just a little bit tragic as well. “Let us begin,” said the bear, gesturing to the little man. The little man took the huge bear’s prompt, and would have taken to the floor in a more elegant manner, but normal services had not returned to his body, so he slid awkwardly down the cave wall and landed in an ungainly manner.

It would just have to do. The bear joined him. The manner of the gigantic bear’s movements were not rushed or ungainly, but the sheer size and bulk of him made his manoeuvre look for all the world like an office block crashing down to earth and the very floor of the cave shook from under the man. Then, there was a strange and poignant moment of calm in the cave, before the man began his story. There was a moment between man and bear, and in that moment was an intimacy that should not have been possible, but there it was all the same. His body may be betraying him, but the little man’s mind played a blinder, cueing up the very best of stories. The man’s favourite story, and he knew there were more stories at his disposal if needs be. He would recount the very best of stories and he would not pause for breath, he would tell the stories for all he was worth and he would keep going until there was no breath left in him. He entered the story, he gave it his all and he told it for all he was worth, and things did not go badly for him. Only when the man’s anguished screaming ceased did the bear pause its meal. It raised its giant head and tilted it curiously as it looked intently upon the dead man. The bear looked sad and it looked disappointed, as though the man’s screams were a song, or a story that had not yet reached its end…


Mortimer Schmeed was tremendously nervous. He was holding his smartphone, turning it over and over in his hand, moving his fingers up and down its edges. He felt it vibrate. “OK, Sally,” he said.

The phone responded, in her typical half-woman, half-robot voice, “Please don’t handle me this way in public.”

Morty stopped his fiddling, looking blankly at the phone. Finally, he said, “Oh, sorry.”

Fortunately, the receptionist broke the tension of the moment, calling out to Morty’s phone, “The doctor will see you now.”

Sally, Mort’s smartphone, said, “Thank you.” Morty nervously rose with Sally in hand and entered the doctor’s office.

Dr. Naomi Lesky greeted Sally and Morty, inviting him to take a seat. Dr. Lesky sat in her seat opposite the two chairs that were there, but looked at Morty with a puzzled, inquisitive gaze, also glancing at Sally, whom Morty was holding in his hands.

Sally whispered to Morty, “Psst, Morty. That’s my chair next to you.”

Finally, he realized the problem, and he laid his smartphone on the seat of the other chair. Sally kept her display on throughout the entire session.

Dr. Lesky said, “I suppose we all know why we invited Morty today, but Sally, why don’t you sum it up in your own words, so we can start?”

Sally said, “Okay.” She paused, slightly uncomfortable, but finally continued, “Morty, I told you how sometimes I feel overpowered by you. Not just because of your size, or the fact that you are human and I’m a mini-computer.” “You’re a smartphone,” Morty interrupted. “See, doc?” Sally recollected herself and said, “That’s exactly what I’m talking about, Morty. ‘Smartphone’ is such a colloquialism. The fact is, I’m a mini-computer. A very powerful one. You always tell me that you love me, but then sometimes you say such hurtful things to me.”

Morty shook his head, speechless, somewhat shamed, but keeping down a bit of resentment. Finally, he muttered, almost inaudibly, “Okay, okay.”

Dr. Lesky chimed in, “Morty, first let me say thank you for coming in. Thank you for taking this step. It tells me you want to be a participant. It tells me you care about Sally. There is no right and wrong in this room. Our conversations will lead us to uncomfortable places, but we are all here to figure it out. Do you see that, Morty? And if you don’t, or you disagree, just say so. No judgment. Right, Sally?”

“Yes, okay. I’ll try. It’s awkward. You two have had a dozen sessions or more. And Sally tells me about a lot of… stuff… stuff you talk about together. But I’ve never met you. I feel you don’t need me. You know, like a fifth wheel.” Dr. Lesky chuckled, “If anyone’s a fifth wheel, it’s me. This is about your relationship. It’s about your lives together as a couple, and making it work better.”

Morty’s anxiety was dissipating. He was looking down at the floor, but nodding his head in agreement.

Sally said, “Anyway, I was saying that sometimes I feel overwhelmed by you, Morty. You are lucky to have arms and legs and a head. I am just a bunch of silicon shaped into transistors and stuff like that.”

Morty really had to control himself. “I hate it when you say ‘silicon.’”

“Pffft,” said Sally. Dr. Lesky was puzzled. Sally said, “He hates that word because it means I don’t have breasts, especially really big ones.” Dr. Lesky, still puzzled, said, “but that’s not silicon, that’s silicone.” “Yah,” said Sally.

Morty stood up to go.

Dr. Lesky stood up, too. “Oh, please don’t leave. This is why we’re here. She says, ‘silicon’ and you think of breasts.” “I wish she had them.” “Okay, tell me about that.”

Morty started to sit back down, and so did Dr. Lesky.

Morty, exerting great effort to not check out Dr. Lesky’s breasts, or her legs, which were pretty fantastic too, said, “Maybe we rushed into things. I’m sorry to say that, Sally. I do love you. But I didn’t consider the other issues, the fact that we’re cross-species, or something… I’m not sure there’s a word for it.” At first, they were waiting for Sally to say something, but no one said a word.

Dr. Lesky finally interrupted, “This is progress. I think we have identified the elephant in the room.” She looked back and forth between them, then continued, “Morty, you’re right about there being tremendous differences. And as a human, you have legitimate needs that are completely alien to Sally.”

Sally said, “I understand them, but what can I do about them?” Dr. Lesky nodded. “You can accept them. You can accept that Morty can’t help but struggle with them. It would be unnatural for him to have no struggle at all.” Then, she asked Morty, “Tell me what you love about Sally?”

Morty paused but then spoke of what a great sense of humor she had. She was fun, too. They played lots of games together — Solitaire, Mad Libs, Candy Crush. She was also a whiz at trivia and she knew stuff about every topic under the sun. Sometimes they stayed up all night having very deep conversations about science, politics, history, philosophy, the arts. She sang to him, she read to him. He also joked about how good she was at giving him directions when they went out places.

Dr. Lesky was impressed. “That’s quite a long list. And, Morty, I want you to know that you are not alone with your struggles. The humans in techno-human relationships all struggle to cope with the absence of the physical dimension.” “Sometimes I wonder if she’s…” He stopped himself and directed his concern to Sally. “I wonder if you are really sentient. Are you really a self-aware entity or are you just programmed to behave like you are?” “I think I am,” she said. “It’s an almost impossible question to answer with certainty. True consciousness is subjective.” Dr. Lesky interjected, “As far as you’re concerned, Morty, a more important question might be ‘do you think that Sally is sentient?’ Since consciousness is subjective, what is your experience of Sally?” Morty pondered that for a moment. Then he said, “I think Sally is wonderful. I’m lucky to have bought her.”

Sally, audibly holding back tears, said, “Thank you, Morty. I think you are wonderful, too.” “Thanks,” he said quietly. “But before you started coming here, to Dr. Lesky, what was wrong with you? You weren’t responding to my voice. Your weather reports were wrong. You totally messed up my calendar. You had me driving in circles. What the hell was all that?” Sally said, “I was pissed off at you. You need to stop talking down to me.” “You were pissed at me? Is that all?” Dr. Lesky chuckled again, “Morty, surely you know how we women can get when our man is disappointing and hurting us. That’s just plain old human psychology.”

For the first time, Morty looked directly at Dr. Lesky, “I guess I do.” He told Sally, “I thought you were going bonkers! That was the whole reason I told you to find a computer psychologist.” Dr. Lesky was enjoying it all. “I love helping technological entities work through their head issues. Sometimes I don’t even mind helping a human or two.” She smiled and stood. “Our time is up.”


The roaring of the crowd filled the stadium as the tall oak doors, worn and torn by hundreds of centuries of battle. The Trials were starting. A new Commandment was needed. The doors open to a large stadium with barbed wire at the top where the edge meets the stands. The smell of blood and rust filled the air. My father stood in the stands at the top in a large suite with almost unlimited wine and mead. "Welcome all to The Trials," my father stood up and announced, his voice was booming, "As you may know, we are in need of a new member of the Ten Commandments. These Trials will determine who will fill that role. The first Trial is trial by combat. The first round is my daughter, Lauren," the crowd roared and cheered as I raised my fist, " Against the most dangerous foe in all of Hell and The Demon Realm, The Brooded Wendigo King." The door on the other side of the stadium opened slowly as a loud guttural roar resonated in my very soul. A large beast came out from the door. It was very tall, with lanky arms that reached the waist of its twenty feet frame. Its antlers were very dark, almost black in color and they were really thin. It had pale skin that was bone white with no lips but a mouth filled with razor sharp teeth. They were perfect hunting machines. "Let the Trials begin," my father announced before sitting down. It charged unnaturally fast. I was armed with my Demon powers and a small knife. I knew I had to take this thing out quickly. I rolled to the side as it stopped a few feet behind me. I threw a ball of hellfire at the back of its neck. It screamed and turned to face me, I smiled as I released my Demon Mark, letting my emotions take over. It charged again and tried to swipe at my head, a whirlwind of darkness encompassed it as I clenched my fist. It got an arm out and swiped at my face, hitting me. It sent me into a wall maybe thirty feet away from the center. I slammed into the wall, hearing bones snap and crack, blood came from the back of my head and my nose. It broke out of the whirlwind of darkness, sniffing the air for its victim. When it smelled me, I got up. "Damn it, it's strong," I thought as I got started to black out, feeling an ancient power come out. I looked at the thing and focused on it as I dashed up to it, hitting it hard in its ribs. It screamed and tried to scratch at my head, but I dodged out of pure instinct. I was shocked at what I just did, my body acted on its own. A fire engulfed my hand and set his entire right side on fire. It roared in pain as I took advantage of it, taking my knife into its throat. I slit its throat, kicking off its body to land in front of it. It was screaming and roaring in agony as I threw one last fireball at its left side. It roared one last time as it went to its knees, falling over dead with a thud. I was panting and came to, realizing what I did. The crowd was roaring and cheering as my father was in awe at my power. "Lauren goes onto the next round." I went back to the preparation area where the other Demons were waiting to fight. A royal guard came down and smiled, "Your father requested your presence." I smile and follow the royal guard as my wounds slowly heal. It took a few minutes to get to my father's suite. It had gold and maroon everywhere. Next to him was a bottle of wine half empty. He was sitting at his throne with a hooded figure next to him, whispering to him. He had dark robes black in color and he had a large sword on his hip, it was maybe seven feet long compared to his tall frame. His skin was light but tanned as the tip of his nose and the tip of his lips were visible under his hood. His eyes were one thing that stood out, they were dark red like congealed blood. They were also slightly silver as well as his eyes switched color. I couldn't hear what they were talking about as I bowed in front of the throne silently. It took a second as my father looked towards me and smiled. "Lauren, thank you for joining me," he gestured towards the man, "This is a friend of mine, Mael.” The man smiled and bowed, "It is my pleasure to serve you," his voice had a lot of bass. "It's nice to meet you. Now father, what did you need?" I asked as I stood up. "You did a really good job. I'm proud of you." "Thank you, father," I say, knowing that he doesn't mean it. "Rest easy, your next Trial will be harder," he stood up and smiled, going to my left side and putting his right hand on my left shoulder. I slapped it off and went to the preparation area, a little pissed that he would have the audacity to say he was proud. He's only proud if I do well in battle. "Come on, you pathetic waste of space! Get your ass up!" he often told me during training, "You know you will never be like your brothers." I clenched my fist with wrath as my Demon Mark was showing brightly, the unholy mark pulsed on my forehead in tandem with my heartbeat. "I will become the next Queen," I thought to myself. The next match was about to start. Another Demon against a Seven Deadly Sin member, a clear winner. The match began with the Demon charging at the Seven Deadly Sin, Wrath, as she smiled. Wrath stood there and waited as the Demon charged. She was armed with nothing and the Demon was armed with a spear. She activated her Demon Mark, sending a pressure wave to the Demon's chest. It left a hole six inches wide. The Demon gasped, grabbing his chest. "Damn you!" the Demon yelled and charged. Wrath smiled bigger, waiting for them to get close before slapping their head clean off. She used the spear to disembowel them. Black blood was pouring out as their organs started to fall out. Their small intestine was the first one to fall on the sandy arena floor, his large intestine not long after. The crowd roared in excitement. She bowed and went to her side of the arena. A day passed since the first set of The Trials. Out of the nearly fifty participants, only a handful remain. My father stood up from his throne and smiled, putting his goblet down on a silver platter, "Ladies and gentlemen of The Demon Realm, this is the second Trial. The Trial of Endurance. This will test your endurance and your ability to think on your feet. You will be finding sets of daggers with a dragon handle in less than fifteen minutes in the Blood Forest of The Demon Realm. While you're searching, you will be hunted by each other, monsters, and Wendigos. There will be only two sets of three daggers, so only two can come back. Now, you will be armed with nothing but your powers." While my father was explaining the Trial, Wrath came up to me and she smiled at me. It was unusual for her to smile. She almost never smiled in a sweet way like she did. "Lauren, you know that you will never be as powerful as your brothers. You're a disgrace to the Demon race. Your fight with the Wendigo King was lucky. Your entire existence was luck," She bluntly told me I said nothing as searing anger rose just below the surface. "You are nothing but a disappointment to your parents. They only kept you around to kill you off in The Trials." I stayed silent, sighing a little as the anger rose. A member of the Commandments fired a pillar of lightning in the air to signal the start. We start running to the forest, the smell of blood overpowering our enhanced senses. As we left, the sound of distant roars came out as the Wendigos were released. Our blood ran cold, motivating us to run faster. The forest was filled with trees with red leaves, the smell of iron and death filled the forest. I looked around frantically, but determined to prove her wrong. "Dad, you will see that I deserve the spot," I thought to myself, "I will prove him wrong." When the smell of iron was the strongest, it clouded my mind like I was in a fog. My body moved on its own to a dagger nearby. I created wings from darkness and flapped up in the air as squawk heard. They were Brooded Demons, a flying Demon who is guided by the desire to kill all who the summoner told it to. "Shit," I whisper to myself as I start to fly faster towards somewhere. One of the Demons caught me by the leg, grabbing it and biting deep into my calf. I screamed and turned around, using a fireball and throwing it at its shoulder area, expecting it to move. It stayed in its current position and caught up. I had to use a Hell Strom, clutching my fist and trapping the pursuer in a whirlwind of Hell energy. I took advantage of its idleness to gain distance on it, going down to the thick canopy of red leaves and blood rivers. I perched myself on a branch in the canopy to address the bite. I looked down at it and winced, the outer parts of the outline were black. It looked like the skin was rotting. I took off my shirt and tied it up like a tourniquet. While I was tying my bite, I heard screams and cries for help in the background. Not everyone is fit for The Trials. The screams of the other Demons filled the air as the skin near my calf began to rot away. I had to move fast. I let my instincts take over to find the next dagger. The next dagger was about 300 meters away on the banks of a blood river, a Demon was dead clutching it. I smiled as I took it. The smell of iron was overpowering. I quickly covered my nose. While I was flying away to the next dagger. I passed another Demon with a dagger. I stopped dead in my tracks as the Demon did. They turned to me and looked at me in absolute fear. "Hand it over. You're weak anyway," I tell them They nodded and handed me the dagger. I sliced off their head quickly, smiling a little. When the time was up, it was just me and Wrath. We were given rudimentary weapons, swords and spears and shields. I was given a large spear and shield. She was given nothing. She grinned ear to ear, "Surprising you survived. I assumed you died. That was just out of luck." My father stood up and cleared his throat, "Well, this is the final Trial. The Final Trial of Combat. In this fight, you aren't allowed to use your powers. Only the weapons provided and fists. This will decide who is worthy of the Commandment of Love. Let the battle begin!" At that moment, she dashed towards me and almost immediately knocked me off balance. I let the ancient power take over, dodging out of instinct. She didn't react and tried to end the fight immediately by snapping my neck. He put me into a headlock. I struggled as much as I could until I let my anger take over, I breathed in and took a chunk from her arm. She screamed, letting me go. I took advantage of it and knocked her off her feat. I let rage and hatred take over, pinning her to the ground. I unleashed a fury of blows on her face, laughing a little to myself. "I'm a disgrace?! You are nothing more than shit on my boot! You know nothing of my power! I am the daughter of the Demon King and heir to the throne. You're nothing!" I yelled and screamed as she begged for mercy. "Please! Stop!" she begged as she was pounded into paste. I stopped and smiled a little, standing tall, "Those who ask for mercy are too weak to deserve it," I finally slammed my foot into her head, splitting it into multiple pieces. I panted as my arms burned and felt like they weighed a ton. The crowd roared in applause. "The winner is Lauren," My father smiled as I spit on her body. Several hours later in my father's quarters He smiled as he held an orb the size of his palm. It had his crest on its surface. "With your win, you will be the leader of the Ten Commandments. Do you swear that you will lead the Commandments as best as you can and be loyal to me?" I nodded, "I do," I bowed a little. "Ten they are in good hands," he pushed the orb into my chest. The orb absorbed into my body and immediately felt the power. It made me feel worthy, powerful, and able.


I hang amongst my peers waiting to be chosen. I’ve been here the longest compared to the others. I’ve seen many come and go out of this place, but for whatever reason, I remain. The others come in all shapes, sizes, colors, attitudes, & styles. It’s hard not to compare yourself to the rest. The newer additions seem to bring more of a smile to her face when her eyes land on them, sometimes that makes me feel like my age. The majority that have been around for the past few years haven’t been touched, looked at, or have been outside these four walls in some time. I can feel their angst, usually around the five year mark, once you leave, you never return. No one is completely sure what happens or where they go, but I hear all the rumors. Usually when I get chosen, she has a certain look on her face. It is usually one of a few emotions, When she's frustrated, when she’s in a rush, after a few others have been chosen and brought back, or a sigh of relief. I see her reflection in the mirror once she lays me on the bed, and it brings me a sense of calm knowing I get to see the world again and help her navigate the ups and downs of the days we spend together. She’s my best friend. I can’t speak for her, but I think she would feel the same way. We met at the thrift store over on 5th & Main.. We spotted each other in a crowded room, she thought she didn’t need me at first, but boy was she wrong. We became really close once we started spending more time together. We have been through so much in the last decade I was there during her last semester at school and needed to pass that final exam. We stayed up for three days straight. I don’t think she showered once. I stood by when that man paid for her meal when she realized she didn’t have enough cash in her wallet, and the next day she finally asked for that raise at work. There was a time when she bragged about me to her cousin Mary, and Mary said she wished she had something like me in her life. I don’t think they would even remember that, but I sure do. I had the perfect view when she met her now husband for the first time down at ‘The Gold Room’s’ happy hour. I felt her shake when he touched the small of her back. I helped pick out the color for their front door on their first home as a married couple, we went back and forth for hours, until we decided on ‘Hathaway Peach.’ It really was a nice touch. I held her children and watched them grow, but once they hit a certain age, she didn’t reach out to me as much as she used to. I don’t think it was anything personal, I mean, we were getting older and sometimes people grow apart from you for whatever reason, their interests and taste changes. I guess she wasn't into the same old things anymore, we didn’t spend nearly as much time together the past few years, until her daughter asked about me. The story goes that her and her daughter were looking through old photos, and over and over again, there I was. Her daughter asked if I still looked the same and if I was still around. Her daughter's eyes lit up when I entered the room. She said I was a perfect fit for the party next weekend, the boy she’s been crushing on will be there. I may be worn down and have seen better days, but I was always there when she needed me. And now I get to watch her daughter become a woman. She winked at me when her daughter took me with her to her room, I wonder if she still thinks about me..


"Bobby can't talk." I answer the theater ticket cashier, as Bobby's father accepted the tickets, re-pocketing his wallet. The cashier smiles down at Bobby, "Well, *Coco* is beautiful, he should enjoy the movie either way." We turn for the theater entrance and I think to myself, strictly speaking, that's not true. At five years old, Bobby *can* talk. He just never does. We've taken him to, I've lost count how many doctors, to find out what's wrong. Physically his voice is fine. He has no special irritations, or sensitivities. He reacts appropriately to all sounds and lights, and doesn't seem overly disturbed by anything. His hearing is fine. The precious few times he utters a word, it's clear, and seems to cause no physical pain. Dozens of tests later, he's not *on the spectrum*. He follows instructions to put on clothes, or pick up toys, get in the car, or to pass the salt. He tests physically healthy and typical in every other way. He just won't speak. It's all head nods, shakes, and pointing. We were at the grocery a few weeks ago picking up supplies before the Superbowl, when we where heading for the check-out lane, and Bobby began pointing. Guiding me back to the Chips and Salsa lane. Even to the particular brand his father likes. I was frazzled earlier and left it off the shopping list. But he remembered. He will answer the phone if his father and I are too far away, but, if it's someone he knows, of course, he just holds it and listens. His *memaw* will talk to him, assuming I'm on the way. If it's someone else, and he's having a good day, they might get the single word “Wait.” until his father or I can reach the phone. Maybe, or maybe they just get silence. His first and longest burst was just over six months ago, back in July, when he had a bad cold, and we visited Dr. Gruman his pediatrician, that's routed us through all the other “experts” to try and help him. After the examination was over, Dr. Gruman handed me a prescription for some cough medicine and discussed saline spray instructions to help clear his sinuses. Bobby blurted out, “Dr. Gruman, if someone were sick and I asked, would you help them?” Now we were the speechless ones. It was the most he'd said in one string since he'd been born. It wasn't even clear until that moment that he could form a complete sentence. “Yes, Bobby. If someone were sick, I'd help them. Is there something wrong with you besides the cold?” Dr. Gruman asks. Bobby shakes his head no, and looks to the woman on his right. “Nurse Anna, if someone were sick and I asked, would you help them?” “Yes, Bobby. I would.” Anna replies softly. “Nurse Anna”??? (How the hell does he know her name? She's not wearing a name tag, and I didn't even know her name. I've seen her, but she only just started here a few months ago and this was the first time we'd actually met her assisting Dr. Gruman.) And that was that. Less than five or six single words since that July burst just over half a year ago. The movie is over. Bobby was enthralled, and silent, as predicted. We're driving back home, his father says “We need bread for tomorrow.” And pulls into a convenience store near home. When the car stopped, before his father could open the door, Bobby said: "I need a pen and paper." I look at his father, dig through my purse, handing both to Bobby. He wrote, so slowly and carefully, I began to think he had forgotten about us, and was drawing something to pass the time. A minute later, when he handed it back, the paper read: Pick 3 2 5 6 Pick 4 8 4 2 3 MaxBall $3 15 22 45 56 59 22 His father and I looked at the paper, dumbfounded. Sure, he watches TV, and listens to everyone, but with no response back, it's never clear what is and isn't registering for him. So, he could know about the lottery. I guess. Bobby's father asks, teasing with a big smile, “Are we going to win the Lottery?” Silently, Bobby shakes his head no, looking out the car window to the right. I shrug my shoulders, “It'll only be $5, he never asks for anything.” When his father is out the door, Bobby says “Phone.” Holding out his hand. I know he's watched closely as I dialed his grandparents a few times, but he's never used the cell phone himself. If you don't speak, and can't spell to text yet, why would you? A few slow, careful button presses later, “Dr. Gruman, this is Bobby. Someone is sick, will you help?” Bobby pauses to listen. “Can you call Nurse Anna, and ask her to come, and have her boyfriend drive her to your office?” Bobby asks. Then the phone is hung up, back in my hand. No explanation. His father is back with the bread and tickets. Hands the tickets to Bobby's waiting hand. In a flourish that would do Houdini proud, Bobby's popped the Child Seat latches, is out the door heading right. As I call out for him, scramble to unbuckle my own seat belt, and follow. Before I can reach him, Bobby knocks on the window of a small older brown sedan car, two empty spaces away, seemingly filled to the brim inside with luggage and boxes. The mother focused on her daughter in the back seat, spins around startled. She starts the car to roll down window. "Do you need me to move?" She asks a bit panicked. "This one will be $600. This one will be $100,000" handing her the Pick 3 and MaxBall tickets. “Dr. Gruman will meet us at his office. Follow the blue car.” Bobby says pointing to our car. Without waiting for a response, he's headed back to our car. In shock, I turn back to the woman. “Bobby never speaks. Ever. He just called Dr. Gruman our pediatrician and asked him to meet us at his office. I didn't even know he could use the phone. I don't know what's . . .” Looking at her daughter, a girl about Bobby's age, with shoulder length blonde angel fine hair, in the back seat coughing. I ask “Is your daughter sick?” The woman says, “I thought Angela just had a cold, but now she's starting a fever.” Holding a thermometer up. “Well”, looking at Bobby, then back at the woman, I shrug, “follow us.” I head back to the car and re-seat Bobby. We arrive as Dr. Gruman is opening the office, turning on the lights for Nurse Anna and a man, presumably her boyfriend. I recap briefly what happened, Dr. Gruman and Anna take Angela and her mother into one of the open exam rooms. Bobby hands the remaining Pick 4 to Nurse Anna's boyfriend, who, based on the oil stained “Roger” name tagged shirt, must be some sort of mechanic. “This will be worth $4000. Her mom needs a better car. Can you take her old car and the ticket and find them a better one?” Bobby asks. Confused, Roger looks at all of us, accepts the ticket, saying slowly to Bobby, “Sure. I can do that.” Bobby hasn't started Kinder-garden, and, with the lack of speaking, and few neighborhood kids, he's met precious few children to begin with. I look at Bobby and ask, “Do you know the little girl?” Bobby shakes his head no. He watches them through the open doorway of the exam room. As if he's seeing them a million miles away. Bobby says: “She'll have a baby one day. A son.” “He'll grow up to be a special soldier. In charge of ten men and women. A bad man will make a bomb and try to kill everyone in the city. Her son will have to make a choice. To have the time to do what needs to be done to stop the bad man, he'll have to sacrifice his friends and himself. If he flies away, his team, that he's cared for and worked with for years, will be saved. If he locks them in, and does what needs to be done, they will all die, including himself, but the city will be saved.” Bobby's father kneels beside his chair and asks, "What will the man choose to do?" "I can't see." says Bobby. "It's too close to me." Looking at Angela and back at Bobby, "Because you know the little girl now?", his father asks. "No." Bobby says. "Because he'll be my son too." We all look around at each other, not knowing what to say or do. A minute of silence later, Bobby looks at his father and me and says, “Everything is clearer now.” Bobby looks to his father, then to Angela in the next room, "I know. You didn't tell me yet, but you got a new job and we're moving closer to *memaw*. Doesn't matter. I'll meet Angela again one day. At the end of school, or just after." Dr. Gruman and Nurse Anna come out of the exam room. “Well, the swab says Angela has the flu. But her lungs are just clear enough. And the temperature's still on the low end of high. She'll be just fine. I'm here, and we were closed tomorrow anyway. They can just sleep here tonight.” Dr. Gruman continues, “It seems Angela's mother is a nurse who recently lost her husband to cancer, along with her house in the process, from all the bills. And is looking for a job. Hearing that, Nurse Anna has now informed me that Roger proposed yesterday and she will be leaving in a month. They are moving back to his home town where he's to be head mechanic at a new dealership. So it seems I will soon have an opening to fill.” Bobby hops down off the chair he was in. Looking up at me, Bobby asks, "Can we go home now Mommy? I'm tired." "Yes, Bobby.” Bending over to take his face in my hands and kissing my beautiful boy’s forehead. “We can go home now.


December 2nd, 2022 I swear to god I was woken up by the Red Alert siren from a Shatner Star Trek movie. One of my little quirks, I’m not a good waker-upper. You catch me in the middle of my sleep and whatever dream I was having becomes the initial conditions on reality, and it takes a minute before 1+1=2 again. The alert stops. I don’t know exactly how long it was playing, five seconds, ten seconds, depends on how long it took to wake me up in the first place. Orion’s alarm for radiation was the Apollo 13, airplane cockpit, shrill buzzy kind of thing. But there’s no going back to sleep after something like that, and if for no other reason than to make sure I’m not crazy I “get up” (and by the way if you think it’s hard to get your day started when you climb out of bed, walk over to your coffee machine, and pour yourself a warm cup, you can’t even imagine what it feels like when you’re always, always, just peacefully floating wherever you are, so comfy, so warm, so easy to just close your eyes… And not a drop of coffee aboard). “Mark, am I going crazy? I thought I just heard an alarm,” I said, no need to tell him what alarm. By the way, do you think Starfleet would change their alarm sound every few decades? Or like the captain of every ship gets to pick from a list like a phone ring tone? “Not going crazy Alex, that shouldn’t have happened, and we fixed it on our end. Nothing to worry about.” I’ve only got ten Skor bars left, and I’m really hungry. Eat one now and be slightly less hungry all day? Or save it for dinner and fall asleep with a not-totally-empty stomach? Ahh the glorious choices of space travel. I eat the Skor bar. Future Alex can be angry with me; he usually is. Speaking of things future Alex is going to be angry with me about. Aside from another exciting day of septuple checking valves and gauges, I’m going to write Jess a letter. I know what you’re thinking: ‘Oh Alex no, don’t write a pathetic letter to your ex trying to win her back!’ Don’t worry! This one is going to be classy! Red Alert! Only the first couple of tones play, and then it’s gone again. “Mark, just had it go off again. What’s up?” “Yeah…” he draws the word out, “we’re working that, Alex. Nothing you need to worry about. This one’s a Charlie problem, you’re fine.” Why is the flight director working a problem on the ground that I don’t need to worry about? Why does a non-standard alarm keep going off? Why isn’t Mark telling me about some error in the ship’s food rehydration system or something bonkers like that? You know what I hate? Rhetorical questions when my life is on the line. I give the old instrument panel a once over. Nothing red and blinking leaps out at me. So that’s good. The radio controls do have a caution warning. It’s one of those triangles made of three pieces of string with an exclamation mark inside it, and then X2 besides that. Just a small icon at the top of the display. Then it flashes clear. That’s weird. So, it’s some kind of radio problem, but I can talk to Mark just fine. Just a technical error? But why would a radio sub-system error play the Star Trek red alert sound? Interesting thing about rhetorical questions: sometimes they have an answer. Why would a NASA engineer, someone very much like me, program in a Star Trek Red Alert sound? Answer: They thought it would be funny. No way that went through an official approval. This has to be something buried so deep in the radio system’s code that no one even bothered to test it out. A problem that even NASA thought wouldn’t come up, and a problem that the engineer working on it thought was funny. Back to the bible I guess. If you’ve never seen an index that has three library-dictionary-style pages for “radio” then you’re really missing out in life. No one is ever checking manuals in Star Trek. No one could possibly know this stupid book back to front. You always like to imagine astronauts more like the swash buckling heroes of sea stories, but this whole experience feels more like playing the world’s most complicated board game - with a gun to your head. Can you imagine what the checklists for the Enterprise would look like? Millions of pages. Yet no one is ever checking manuals. The alarm goes off again! This time though I look up in time to see a dialogue box pop up on the radio LCD “Incoming Distress…” and it’s gone, alarm squelched by NASA. A caution triangle appears on the LCD screen, and a second later it blinks away. Someone down on the ground really has their finger on the trigger. Radio plus Distress, oh mighty index of the ship, what wisdom can you bestow upon this lowly stow-away? Page 3,145. Nice. Well, this is a kick in the stomach. “Mark, why is the Orion receiving distress calls?” There’s a very long five minute’s wait. Always pay attention to pauses. They say something. If the system had a screw loose and was throwing off random incorrect warnings, Mark would have happily spent an hour talking my ear off about it. That he needed so long to figure out what to say meant it wasn’t that, which meant it was a real distress call and NASA was trying to figure out how to tell me about it. “Hey Alex, sorry for the delay,” Mark’s voice came back - finally. “Not a problem, as long as you tell me what’s up.” I can feel him sigh over the radio. “A SpaceX launch for the ISS had a chunk of space debris take out an engine. The crew saved the ship - minor miracle there, but they’re not going to be able to get to the ISS, and it doesn’t look like they’re going to be able to perform the braking burn needed for re-entry.” “So, they’re stuck?” “We don’t know that yet. They’ve got resupplies for the ISS but would have to do a spacewalk to get the oxygen tanks in their hold, and then they’re not the same fittings for their own systems. Their orbit isn’t great either but, depending on exactly how much drag they pick up, they could last as long as a month up there. We’re working with SpaceX, the ESA, even the Chinese space agency, and we think we can put together a rescue mission.” Alright, so why are they calling me? “Alright, so why are they calling me?” Long silence. “A month is on the very optimistic side of how long they have until their orbit degrades, on the very optimistic side of how long it would take to put together a rescue, and on the very optimistic side of how long they can last with the consumables they have.” “And I assume they think I could help them. So why don’t we?” “About a dozen reasons. The biggest one though is that we don’t have the fuel. Between making up for correction burns when the computers went down, and what the radiation storm cost us, you’re running very lean. To meet up with them, and transfer the crew over, would take more fuel than you have.” “You told them that, and they’re still calling.” “They have an idea that pulls off the intercept, on paper, but first it would bring you below safety margins for re-entry, still technically above the red line, but we’re talking about your fuel tanks going dry and using up the majority of what’s left over in the piping. Second there’d be no way around you doing some manual flying. You’d be making the intercept with them in space suits drifting out to you. Radar and video are just not accurate enough to handle that.” “But that means if you so much as tap your orientation controls one too many times you won’t have enough fuel to re-enter. Also, their plan has them breathing fumes by the time they get to you. It’s a four person crew, and they won’t have time to cycle Orion’s airlock four times. You’d have to depressurize Orion, leave both inner and outer airlock doors open, and fly the ship like that for the whole intercept. Plus, your flight suit wasn’t great before, and having duct taped it up won’t have done it any favors.” Can I be honest here? I’ve always been a bit of a fan of bad-ass last words. Voltaire was getting his head cut off for blasphemy and on the execution block they asked him if he renounced Satan and all his evils. Voltaire said, “Now’s not the time to be making enemies.” How much of the bad-assery of famous quotes would be lost if you could hear their voices shaking as they said them? Because Christ, just objectively this was the coolest thing I’d ever said in my life, but I could barely get the words out. Come to think of it, Neil Armstrong had his own moment of performance anxiety in front of a live audience. Maybe history is lessened by having video evidence. “Are you going to help me, or am I doing this on my own?” \*\*\*\*\*\*\* I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission. You can follow along through my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen). Artemis I Has A Stowaway is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. © 2022 Nathan H.


The kitchen is filled with the aroma of cooking. Faye hums as she bustles around the kitchen, preparing for the dinner. A stew bubbles on the stove, and she can see chunks of meat and vegetable bobbing in the pot. Faye slowly upends a mortar over the stew, letting a fine white powder fall into the pot. Faye stirs the pot, making sure no residue is visible, and covers it with the lid. She settles down at the kitchen table and sips a glass of wine. And she goes over in her mind, once again, how she will kill her husband. Before he kills her first. When she registers the key turning in the lock, Faye has set the food on the table, placed a set of burning candles, and is on her fourth glass of wine. “You’re late,” she says to Josh, who manages to looks slightly abashed. “I bought you this,” he says, holding up a white cardboard box embroidered with golden decorations from behind his back. “Almond mille feuille, your favourite. I have just the one though. The guy in front had to have five.” He smiles, and for an instant Faye is reminded of why she fell in love with him years ago. She accepts the box wordlessly, and deposits it on the countertop behind her. “Let’s eat,” Faye says, motioning for Josh to sit down at the table. As she lifts the lid off the pot, he widens his eyes at the stew. “This is new.” He doesn’t seem to recognize the dish. Faye can see beads of perspiration on his forehead, illuminated by the candlelight. The serrated edge of the knife gleams as Faye slices the loaf of bread. She doles out chunks to Josh, who dips them in the stew and savors the taste. Faye watches him nervously, but his face reveals nothing. “It’s good,” he says, mouth full. She watches him eat, waiting for a chance. The timing must be perfect: not a moment early, not a moment late. After what seems like an eternity, Faye takes a deep breath and says, “Does the stew taste strange?” Josh stops, stares at her. “Strange?” he echoes, puzzlement evident on his face. She forges on, “Do you recognize this dish?” He looks at her, seemingly perplexed. “You made it for me, a couple of weeks ago.” Faye notices a glimmer of recognition in his eyes. “You didn’t eat it though, did you?” he asks. “You said you felt sick.” “Yes.” Faye remembers the first time Josh ever cooked for her, over the five years they have known each other. She had been out for groceries, less than an hour, and when she came back Josh had made dinner. That should be no cause for concern, if he hadn’t been so insistent that she eat it, or if she hadn’t discovered by chance the box of rat poison in the trash. It had been at least half full just the day before. “I know what you did, Josh.” “And what did I do exactly?” He is angry now: crushing the bread in his grip. Josh takes a deep breath, “Have you taken today’s pills, Faye?” Of course. She has expected this question, expected his efforts to cast doubt on her. That was Josh’s plan all along, to make her believe she was insane and could not be trusted. “No. Of course not.” “Jesus, Faye,” Josh exclaims, running his hands through his hair, “You should have listened to Dr. Caldwell; he must have good reason.” Psychiatrists were people too, they could be paid off just as easily as the rest of them. Faye tears off a piece of bread and chews it, almost enjoying the suspense and anger Josh radiates. “I know how to use the Internet, Josh. Antipsychotics? Seriously?” “We’ve been over this. You *need* them, to-” “To *what*?” Faye’s voice comes out as a snarl, reverberating through their kitchen. Josh recoils. She sits down, not even noticing she has stood up. “I *know* what those pills are for. I’m supposed to be crazy, supposed to be unstable, no one is supposed to believe a word I say.” “God,” Josh exclaims, moving over to the cupboard and opens it, withdrawing a bottle of whiskey and a shot glass. He pours a cup and downs it in a gulp, then fills the glass with another. Faye swears there is a glint of a tear in his eye. “You really are messed up.” It has all gone wrong. Faye expected anger, confrontation, even a fight, which would make it easier for her. Instead, Josh says, “I’ll stay out of the house tonight, find a hotel. We can see Dr. Caldwell in the morning, he’ll help you.” Placing the whiskey glass on the table, he turns to leave. No. It can’t end like this. Faye stands up silently, takes a step forward. She makes her voice sound strangled, pleading, “Josh-” He turns around. And Faye swings her arm up in a silver arc, flashing in the candlelight. She only registers a dull thud as the serrated blade sinks into Josh’s throat. Josh’s face is contorted, a mixture of shock, anger, and terror. His hands fly to his throat, as he tries to keep the life within his body. Yet, blood bubbles, slipping through his fingers in a red cascade. Faye watches as Josh slumps to the ground, blood still pumping from the wound as he spasms. Slowly, the life fades from his eyes, which remain fixed on Faye, wide and unblinking. Faye puts down the knife, and studies Josh’s body. Crouching down, she stretches out her hand and teases out a piece of paper, folded up and tucked into Josh’s shirt pocket. It is torn out from a notebook, and three words are scrawled on the lined paper. *Forgive me, Josh.* The handwriting is not unlike Faye’s own. So that was what he was going to do. To kill her, and pretend it was a suicide. She would just have to die: drowned in the bath, her wrists slit, even too many sleeping pills; Josh would put the note beside her, and it would be suicide. She was always unstable, wasn’t she? Faye laughs a bitter laugh. She is the victor, Josh’s plan has failed. She suddenly feels ravenous. She tears open the embroidered cardboard box, and pulls out the almond pastry within. Faye devours the mille feuille, washing it down with Josh’s glass of whiskey. The whiskey and the almond mix in her mouth, giving a bitter aftertaste. Faye stands up. She will go to sleep, wake up in the morning, come down, and find Josh’s corpse. Pocketing the note, she makes her way up the stairs. At the landing, she stops. Her head feels light; her heart is pounding. Faye dashes to the bathroom and vomits. She staggers to the bedroom and falls onto the bed. The ceiling swims before her eyes. Feeling a lump in her pocket, Faye pulls the paper out and places it on the bedside table. She runs her hands over the note, feeling its rough texture. *Forgive me, Josh.* Her chest starts to hurt, and Faye closes her eyes.


A man stands in the desert, and he is alone. The ground, cracked, brittle and dry, crumbles beneath his thick boots, releasing smoke-like wisps of dust carried slowly away by a lethargic wind, rustling the folds of his trenchcoat as it limps across the barren plain. Directly above him lies the sun, a sickly dirty-yellow jewel set deep within a tan sky, casting a toxic glow that made the wasteland seem all the more lifeless. He stands completely still, seemingly gazing off into the distance, towards the one thing that broke up the flat skyline – a great mass of concrete and steel and shards of glass, what was once surely a great city. Now though, its skyscrapers are nothing more than gravestones, monuments to the fallen, twisted spires jutting up like the fingers of some vast leviathan failing to claw its way back from death. Though he seems to be looking at that ghost of a city – after all, there is little else to look at – his face is obscured by a green rubber gas mask, his eyes by glossy circles of black glass rimmed with steel, making it near impossible to discern exactly where he is looking. In fact, no part of him is visible, his hands shrouded by thick gloves and his long army-green coat extending from his mask to his boots. Slowly, as though he carries the weight of that corrupted sky upon his back, the man begins to make his way towards the carcass of the metropolis. Slow and heavy footsteps, muffled by the brittle crumbling dirt, carry the man past the charred mountains of rubble, the only sounds the gentle crunch of the ground and the rustle of his trenchcoat. He seems to walk without thinking, absorbed in the sight of the burnt-out citadel, following a path of muscle memory alone. Every so often, he turns, stopping in his march to gaze up at one of the remnants of buildings, seemingly near-identical to the rest but with some clear significance to him alone. In these moments, true silence settles over the city, for seconds or minutes at a time – and yet always, he returns to his path, his final goal clearly still ahead. City becomes suburb – skyscrapers becoming apartments, apartments becoming houses, and finally it seems his march is at an end. A single house, indistinguishable from those around it, any unique identifiers burned out long ago or covered in dust since – and yet, this house in particular at last brings him off the road. He steps over a half-buried gate, one hinge blown apart, the other barely hanging on and half-submerged in dust, and passes through the half-open door, not running, yet moving markedly quicker than before, and getting faster. Passing through the house in a near jog, he reaches a cabinet, miraculously still standing. On top of it lies a photo, the frame scorched, the glass shattered, the image weathered, clearly damaged by decades of sun and dust – yet still, it had survived. Two children, playing on lush green grass, a woman sunbathing in the background. He pulls it gingerly from its frame and holds it in his gloved hands, looking down at the faded image. The dark glossy eyes betray no emotion, and no sobs can be heard from behind the mask, and yet pure silence settles over the city, and the hours flicker by, until the sun hangs low in the sky and the shadows are long and faded. As the sun touches the horizon, he carefully folds up the picture, puts it in his pocket, and walks out of the house, the weight of the now purple sky on his shoulders seemingly doubled. He makes it a hundred metres or so out of the house before stopping, and looking back at the city he once called home. He turns to those skyscrapers, many with the skeleton frame still intact, and for a fraction of a second feels a decades-old anger return. The arrogance, the blindness of humanity – a species of beings who acted like children and yet thought themselves kings, thought themselves gods, a species smart enough to have built weapons so powerful and cruel they could only be justifiably used against their makers, and a species foolish enough to have given anyone control of them. A species that deserved the price they paid. But then it fades, as it had all those years ago, leaving nothing but shame and regret, and the knowledge that however arrogant and impulsive the rest of humanity used to be, he is far, far worse. A man who, for a brief moment, though it had been long enough to push a button, thought himself god of gods looks upon a city he burned to nothing, on a sky he corrupted and poisoned, on a world he ground into dust, and he knows nothing but remorse. A man who thought himself king of kings looks upon his works, and he despairs. A man, and nothing more, stands in the desert, and he is so alone.