It was Wednesday. Average and uneventful for most--but not for *her*. Never for *her*. She was a small girl--only about 65 inches in height; her arms seemed to long for her body, and her eyes seemed too deep for her face. Her hair hung a bit further down than her ears, curling and twisting in various directions as though trying to fit more comfortably on her head; or perhaps it was trying to escape from her head altogether--it was hard to tell, really. The girl's face was closed and frightened--she tried to make herself seem open and approachable, of course. It just didn't work. Especially that day. That Wednesday. She wore thick, square glasses with rims too large for her face and a smile too bright for her soul. The girl didn't know her own name. But then again, people usually didn't know their real names; the only difference between her and the others was that she knew about her *lack* of a name. Her lack of identity. Others seemed to take whatever identity they were given, because they simply didn't care--but this girl would rather live without a name than be forced to live with one that wasn't hers. She walked around the outside of the large, stone building--there was a thick railing to her right, overlooking a deceptively cheerful garden. To her left, there was a row of grimy doors leading to brightly lit classrooms, containing rows upon rows of unmotivated students. With a quiet, "excuse me," the girl hurried towards a door with a sign above it marked 'Restrooms.' She pushed it open, finding herself facing a line of grimy urinals packed into the tiny space. She grimaced at the poorly-done grafitti covering the walls. there was one stall at the very end--it reeked of urine, defecation, and...other bodily fluids. Wrinkling her nose, the girl walked into the stall, closing the graffiti-covered door behind her. She noticed that its lock had been torn off, and decided that it didn't matter. With a sigh, she hung her backpack gingerly from the half-intact hook behind the door, noting that there was no toilet paper next to the toilet, which hadn't been flushed in several hours. With another sigh, she flushed the toilet and flopped miserably down onto the seat like a discarded pile of rags. Observing the walls around her, she noted the peeling paint and the incoherent messages scrawled across the cracked plaster like the nightmares of a madman. Right next to the girl's head were the words, "God loves you," with a poorly drawn heart under them in bold sharpie. The girl stared at the words--stared at them until her eyes burned--and then she began laughing. She didn't know why; there was nothing to laugh at, after all--and yet she was shaking with mirth, bordering on hysteria, gasps escaping her parted lips, tears streaming from her closed eyes... Then suddenly, her gasps weren't of mirth anymore, but of suffering; she felt her tears turn to shards of ice, piercing her mind and shattering her smile into a thousand broken pieces. *God is dead,* she heard herself think. *God died the same day people forgot their names--God died because we don't know God's name anymore.* She stared blankly at her backpack, hanging limply from the bathroom door like a hanged corpse. *Perhaps we never knew God's name, not really--maybe God isn't dead; it's possible that God simply never lived.* The girl looked down at her reflection in the dirty toilet water, glaring at the broken face staring back at her with empty eyes. She flushed the toilet again, watching the face break into fragments like a torn photograph. It reformed a few seconds later, grinning triumphantly at her. It taunted her, winking with its watery eyes and grinning through its discolored mouth. She could hear its voice--mocking her, whispering to her. *You don't belong,* it whispered. *Not here, not anywhere--there's nowhere to run from me, nowhere to hide. I'll come with you no matter how far you try to go, because in the end--you're always in the same place. You're in here, you're with me; you're always mine.* It laughed, causing her tears to fall harder and her gasps to become more saturated with pain. Her tears were flames now, dripping down her cheeks and onto her shirt, into the toilet below, setting the grinning face on fire. It kept laughing, mocking--its voice was deafening now; filling her ears, her head, her stomach... The girl felt sick, frightened, and broken. She tried to rise, but her legs refused to obey her. *You're a freak,* hissed the voice from beneath her. Its eyes flamed in their watery sockets, its crooked grin widening. The girl felt its cold grip on her arm; she forced herself to stand, grabbing her backpack and hurrying out the door, past the line of urinals--she stopped in front of the sink, raising her eyes up to the mirror. The face was there again, laughing at her. She tried to look through it, to find herself hidden inside it, behind it, cowering in a corner of the reflected room--but she wasn't there. There was nothing there--nothing but the face with the crooked smile and the eyes like shattered glass, reaching through and grasping her arm. Slowly, the girl raised her left arm, rolling up her shirtsleeve. she looked down at it, glared at the white lines crisscrossing up and down her forearm--each one a lost battle, a flaming mark carved into eternity. She stared into the mirror, into those cold, shattered eyes the color of muddy quicksand, wishing that she never had to see them again. She looked behind the face, looked at the row of grimy urinals, looked at the sign reading "Men's" in front of the door. She saw the sneering masks appearing behind the crooked grin, chanting a name that wasn't hers, chanting words that carved out pieces of her soul like knives, words that poured like gasoline onto her skin, burrowing into her like needles into a vein. The bathroom was empty. Empty, except for the girl and her demons, standing there in front of a dirty sink and a trash can overflowing with paper towels. It was a Men's bathroom, lined with urinals and a single stall--empty. Empty, except for a broken girl standing alone against a horde of demons that nobody else could see--a girl trying to ignore the darkness grasping at her, the icy tendrils of suffering squeezing at her lungs and seeping into her mind--a girl who didn't belong anywhere, who had nowhere to go--a girl who wore darkness like a shawl to cover up her brokenness, trying to collect all the jagged fragments of herself and stick them back together from whatever memory of herself she had left...whatever memory she had of who she was, of the name she didn't know. There was blood on the girl's hands and she couldn't quite tell whose it was--it might have been hers, or it might have been the blood of a demon. It was black and cold--she didn't know where it had come from. She looked down at her hands, except they *weren't* her hands--they were too big and too aggressive. She looked down at her arm and saw a new line among the old ones; a fresh battle, a fresh loss, another reminder of her own worthlessness. It was bleeding endlessly, bleeding cold and black, breaking into her soul. The girl was crying, but her tears were frozen again, freezing her wounds shut and turning her heart to ice. She felt the grinning face next to hers, laughing through the mirror and asking her how it felt to be a demon--to bleed cold and dark, to have blood like frozen tar and tears like ice. Its crooked smile widened as the girl sobbed, looking down at the hands that weren't hers, the wounds frozen shut...she felt her tears freeze in her eyes until all she was was ice, and all she could feel was the cold. Her heartbeat was slowing. Slowing, slowing--almost stopped. Her shawl of darkness had become a noose now, dragging her upwards to the ceiling of the bathroom--the only part without graffiti, ironically. The girl didn't struggle. To struggle was to fight, and fighting was for those who had hope. Fighting was for people with names. The girl rose past the mirror, seeing the masks laughing and cheering on her empty noose--and then she saw something else. Something that wasn't a mask. It was a face--not the face of a demon. The face of a girl. A girl with a name. She stood near the back of the room in the mirror, with black square glasses and a green backpack, wrinkling her nose at the graffiti on the walls. The girl outside the mirror watched her, watched the girl with a name--their eyes locked through the mirror, and the masks began to whisper to each other nervously. The girl without a name felt her noose begin to loosen, felt the ice begin to recede. The girl in the mirror was walking now--walking towards the mirror, smiling at the masks around her and watching them disappear in frightened puffs of empty smoke as she laughed. Her hair was long and black, stylishly messy; her eyes were a warm, liquid brown, piercing the mirror and melting the ice in the other girl's eyes and untying her noose. Her arms were long and graceful, her smile like warm sunshine. The girl without a name stood dumbfounded, watching the girl in the mirror banish the masks and the face with the crooked grin, watching her walk into battle with nothing but her own smile, her laughter, and her eyes like fiery brown galaxies. *She's beautiful,* thought the girl without a name. And then she was gone. The mirror was gone, the demons were gone--the bathroom was empty once more, except for a frightened girl staring at a hollow mirror, looking for those beautiful eyes again. And then she saw them. Saw those eyes, that hair, that smile--saw the girl with a name, and she *knew.* She knew who it was, who *she* was. She looked into the mirror and felt a smile cross her face, watched the girl in the mirror giggle happily along with her, her eyes warm and comforting. The girl smiled at her reflection in the mirror, where the demons used to be. She smiled because she remembered now, because she knew her name again--because she'd found the girl with the stylishly messy hair and the big square glasses. She whispered to herself, to her reflection, to the girl with the warm brown eyes; she whispered four words, words that could untie nooses and melt ice--words that could glue together pieces of a broken girl's soul. Smiling at the mirror, the girl whispered: *My name is Hope.


When I was very small, my aunt took me aside and asked me why I was deliberately stepping on every snail we passed. She grabbed me by the shoulder, pulling me back from my next victim. I remember we were in front of a church. “Why are you doing that?” she asked. The sun was behind her head, and it made it very hard to look at her directly. I tried anyway, squinting at her, hoping I could extract from her angry expression. Because I could, I thought, but didn’t say. Because I was bored? Maybe, but I didn’t say that either. I don’t remember what she said afterwards, or if she said anything at all. I don’t remember how that conversation ended, but I think about it everyday. I’m thinking about it now. I think about it as I watch Arnold Packet beat the ever loving shit out of another one of my classmates. The other boy was Jack Fisher. I knew him, but he was no friend of mine. I didn’t have friends. I was walking through my highschool’s main hallway when it started. I think it was something about a girl, almost definitely it was about a girl. My classmates think I’m simple. I don’t talk much, and I don’t try very hard to fit in. They’re dismissive of me, but I don’t really care. It doesn’t bother me. The important thing is that I see more, understand more than they know I do. Maybe they let me see more because they think I’m simple, maybe I’m just that good. I try not to let it go to my head. I’m no narcissist. For weeks now both boys have juggled the heart of one Jessica Noel, undeniably the prettiest girl in school, as they were themselves the most handsome boys. I was partial to Jack fisher myself, and so was Jessica Noel, not that I cared. I was partial to Jack, but impartial to their love triangle. It wasn’t the type of thing I tended to care about. The hiccup was that Jessica Noel was ostensibly the girlfriend of the aggressor, Arnold Packet, but they weren’t seen together much at school, preferring to rendezvous after class in the evening. They met in the corner booths of local diners, and stole kisses in the darkness of movie theaters. What they didn’t do was interact at school. They didn't dare exchange a single wanting glance in shared classes, or in passing in the hallway. But do you know who Jessica Noel did share ethereal romantic exchanges with? That’s right, Jack Fisher. I don’t know why she didn’t just leave Arnold Packet for Jack Fisher, or why she didn’t publicly acknowledge Arnold as her boyfriend at school. If I had to guess, it's because while Arnold would like to think they were exclusive, Jessica Noel would not. I think, but I’m not sure, that Jessica Noel liked to visit lots of other boys, and only Jack Fisher was fool enough to blatantly eye fuck the girl that the biggest, meanest, son of a bitch in town wanted to be his and his alone. All hearsay, I should warn you. I didn’t know any of this for sure. It was a story I pieced together through hot romantic glances, through rumors and speculation. To the rest of the school, Jessica Noel was very much Arnold Packet’s girl; who only, just only, enjoyed teasing other boys, and nothing more. As far as the rest of the school could tell, Jessica Noel kept a marital bed. So when Jessica stopped buying tampons from the dispenser in the girl’s bathroom, there was no question why, and who. Obviously it was Arnold Packet’s kid, obviously. Except unless you were paying attention. Any guesses? I walked past the viscous, and brutal mauling of Jack Fisher in the hallway. It wasn’t my business. There was no starring role or bit part for me in the soap opera of their lives. Like I said before, I didn’t care. Not then anyway. It was weeks later, closer to a couple months I think, I can’t recall now, it’s been so long and I only had a passing interest in the entire affair. Jack Fisher had gone missing. No one knew why, but many suspected that he simply decided to run away, riding his motorcycle into that cool orange sunset reserved exclusively for handsome teenage boys. Never to be seen again. I knew better though. Jack Fisher didn’t ride off to wherever teenage heartthrobs ride off to. He was still in town, taking a long nap underneath a heap of dirt. I wonder who had tucked him in? The rest of the town certainly never found out. It was another one of those secrets that you could only know through the tension between lovers, through a hot war gone super cold. After the vicious beating of Jack Fisher, Arnold left him completely alone. It was almost like someone had intervened on his behalf, sparing Jack Fisher further beatings, but sealing his death sentence in the long run. Who can say, really? All I had was cold conjecture, not concrete fact. I had enough for myself though. I had been partial to Jack Fisher, maybe, I think, I had a fondness for him. Maybe I had liked him, as much as anyone like me can like anybody. “Why did you kill Jack Fisher?” I asked Arnold Packet one night. He was alone, drinking beer by a misty lake, leaning on the hood of his car. It was prom night, but neither he nor I were attending, had never planned on attending. I couldn’t care less about prom, and he was miserably single. That on top of being a newfound reject. Since Jack Fisher’s mysterious disappearance he’d been very quick to anger, and very emotional. His instability at this time had nearly cost him the life of what everyone believed to be his child. Jessica Noel wanted nothing to do with him afterward, and the entire town, including Arnold’s parents, had stood behind the mother to be. “Why did you kill Jack Fisher?” I asked him again. He didn’t answer. I don’t think he had a good one. I shot him. Once in the gut, and once in each knee, in quick succession. I don’t mean to sound narcissistic, but I was a very good shot. I blew away the smoke from the end of the barrel like I was a femme fatale in a movie. I watched Arnold Packet crawl away from me, his bleeding gut leaving a trail of shifted dirt, not unlike a snail’s.


People don’t read like they used to. That is for sure. When I was lost one year. I think it was 1984 here which means 1976 to me there I was in Disneyland. First and only time I was there. I was like eight or nine, maybe. I had gotten lost in the Halls of President’s. Now in Disneyland there is a secret passages everywhere. And? Well, I saw a Disney character go into one of the passageways. My parent was elsewhere and? Well, I like exploring it is probably why I am lost most of my life. Anyway, I go into this hallway. Cement floors and a corridor going down into an underground passage ways. Like a pirate, I went off exploring. Figuring at this age that maybe Captain Hook had left something for me. So like most of my problem is remembering where I am at. Meaning? I am not an idiot. I counted one right turn etc. Figuring how to get back if I had to. After the fifteenth turn seeing the employees’ lunch room. No one was there. Finding the custom changing room. Blush, I walked in on Cinderella and some old guy fondling her. When she saw me, she screamed. The guy looked pretty busy trying to get his pants up. I figured it was time to take 15 left turns to get back upstairs. Well. That is a dilemna not dilemma in my reality. Meaning? I ended up in some private movie theatre. And? Well, they were watching the premier of the Black Cauldron. So? Well, there was a guy that looked like Disney there and several other people. One I remember and recognize when I got lost elsewhere. Anyway they were watching and talking about how the ending was bad. Meaning? Well, in the movie I saw. Meaning I sat down. I had no clue as to who was in the dark, and I was not interested being caught by Cinderella. They were talking about the ending. Meaning? Well, I got to see the movie after that. In the one I saw the witches boiled someone and the kid kept the sword and became some ruler of the Skeleton’s kingdom or ah yes now I remember my memory was the villain called the Horn King or something like that. So anyway, the original one I saw the kid for whatever nonsense became just like the Skeleton or Horn King for whatever reason. And I think the movie they boiled the dog. They were talking about how the music was praise worth and wondering how much they would have to pay critics to praise this evil ending. Then the lights came on. The guy evidently finally got his pants up because he ran into the theatre. The guy that looked like Disney turned to him and asked what he thought of the movie. And that was when I left. Now you might say. Silly, the movie you are talking about did not come out in 1976. All I can say is what I remember. And the secret ingredient was a dog. Now getting out of there, I ran. And ran. When I stopped running, I recognized where the heck I was at. I was somehow climbing the stair case for the Pirates of the Caribbean entrance to the dining area that one floats by when you are on the ride. So I somehow ending up almost like half way across the park in my little movie adventure. At this time I, being a nine or ten-year-old kid, realized how screwed or lost I was and went to find someone to ask for help to find my parent. Well, that did not work out so good. Evidently my adventure was recorded on some close circuit television thing. I ended up with the guy that looked like Disney. The conversation was spooky. He asked at the end what I had thought of the movie? I bluntly said I liked the dog better than the main character why not throw the main character into the pot instead and boil him? It was a rather long day at this time. My parent had started the search for me and I ended up being talked to. My parent at that time had to sign some papers, and I was forbidden to talk about anything. Years later I heard that the guy with his pants down got caught doing thing with a lady on the elevator that is in the Cinderella castle in Florida. This story of course, being in California. I always wondered if that movie did not make any sense because the one I saw seemed like a pretty solid story and the one I saw afterwards seemed dark and disjointed. As for the dog coming back to life, that part I liked. Years later, I meet one of the people that was sitting in that room elsewhere. He was a changed man. Seemed scared for his life. Why? He talked about things that made no sense to me. Like a train from Orlando Airport right to Disney World. How that the Empire State Building had once upon a time had an Evil Cafe. And the evil villains were made to look like good characters and public was sold on the idea. He even went as far as talking about a book Disney had gotten which was magical. Where from? No idea the story teller just told about how Disney had purchased a book right after losing Oswald. Now this is the problem for me. I had to ask who Oswald was. Evidently Disney story was different. I remember business college how Disney first character had been Mortimer Mouse. That you do not sign anything unless you are sure you know what it means or you could lose it was the moral of that college leature . So I guess I the guy was from elsewhere or my college professor was nuts. One or the other. Anyways, meaning the guy talked about how Disney had opened a book from Chaldean’s time. And if you were stupid or evil enough, you could just poof things into existence. Seemed rather far fetched. Even where we were talking, which was a Skiff room doing a bizarre secret project with sound and light. Meaning? If you have not guested it yet. We all are avatars in some absurd game. Laughter. No really you don’t believe me do you? The secret is we all eat plants. And plants are made out of light. And wola the secret ingredient of life are light making you nothing more than an avatar. Which is sad because unless you are playing pirate usually life is boring. Making me think whoever is playing me has a fate for me. The question is it I am pot asking God why I was made this way? Or a person kicked out of heaven for a dress code? Or am I just a traveling spirit telling you that you are nothing more than light? Shh.. Keep the secret to yourself until you ask what the key is. The key? Sure. After hearing that absurd story about Disney World and a book. I had to find the book. And? I know the where about in 1997. Since then? The storage area might have burnt down, who knows. Was I stupid enough to read the book? Read the Secret of Light and then comment what you think.


A hundred years ago, a small group of Englishmen were sent to South Africa on a mining expedition to gather gold for her majesty the queen. However, weeks of digging inside dark and empty caves yielded nothing, nothing save a conspicuously round boulder. The men thought its curious spherical shape charming enough they sought to take it. After all, they needed something to show for the time they'd been there, and it was a fun project to keep them busy before they returned. It took the entire force of ten men and the whole day to roll it out, and by the end of it they were all exhausted. Once in the daylight, they noticed cuts and tiny grooves which glistened. After several hits from a pickaxe, the boulder split open into two halves, revealing a glowing red centre of pure crystal and gemstone. Realising the rarity of what they found, the ten men agreed to break it down further into ten pieces - one for each member of the group - and take their share home. On the last day, they got on their planes and left. But they wouldn't make it back to England. The planes ran into a tropical storm and the pilots lost control. All of them came spinning down and crashed into a heap of scrap on the dusty plains somewhere within the Angolian desert. Both of the pilots died immediately, but the ten miners on board survived unscathed. How was this possible? The only explanation was the chunk of rock they all had in their backpacks. Realising they'd found the key to immortality, the men rejoiced, throwing their hands in the air and weeping tears of joy. But when they searched the backpacks for their respective crystals, all they found were piles of gravel and crushed glass. The impact of the fall plus the explosion of the engine had obliterated all but one stone. And, just like before, they cut it down into ten smaller pieces. Using the powers of the gemstone, they survived a week in the Angolian desert without food or water, treading through oven hot sand and baking in the equatorial sun. They were all exhausted and in great pain, for the crystal would save them from death but it could not cease their physical ailments and deficiencies. Finally, they arrived at a small settlement. They were in so much pain that they gave their crystals to the people there for water and shelter from the heat. After all their efforts to obtain and keep their jewels, death was far more favourable than the relentless thirst that pulled at their guts and scorched their mouths. Not long after giving away their gems, the men began to feel strange. That night they slept in tents, and in their sleep some events prior to their arrival began to replay their effects. Scratches and bruises appeared. Large lacerations. Bones snapped. Limbs just fell off. Organs ruptured, and their bodily functions began to collapse one by one. They feared that death was coming, so the strongest and least damaged among the men exited their tents under the intentions of stealing the gems back from the settlers. However, barely fed and hydrated, the men fell to the ground and suffocated in the sand. None of them survived. Not realising that they held ten immortality gems, the settlers traded them off for supplies of cotton and livestock. Over a hundred years later, their whereabouts is unknown.


The night sky is always so enchanting, mysterious and full of wonder even to a scientist like me . “Lying on this blanket with you, on this mountain, and watching the sun drop behind the clouds, beyond the horizon below us is a resplendent high. Witnessing the sky turn brilliant oranges, and reds with grey shadows, and streaks of gold is always mesmerizing. When that moment passes and the gloaming sky turns into a velvety, diamond-studded, serene mantle, dreams and dreamers change. Yet, it is still romantic. Isn’t it Dawn?” “Yes, Al. It seems to wrap around us, comfort us, until we recall that each beautiful diamond is actually a furious, powerhouse of energy. Then, I suddenly feel so insignificant under the vastness. That chilly change means we better get inside and start our shift.” “Just ten more minutes, Dawn. Let me dream ten more minutes before putting on my astronomer hat and replacing the romantic dream with our sciences’ dream. How lucky are we to have so many dreams to follow? The observatory powers up quickly and we are early. Breathe this cold mountain air deeply for just ten more minutes.” “Five minutes. I can’t wait to bring the new equipment online for our first look into deep space quad nine.” -sigh- “I’ve been looking forward to tonight too. It’s taken a lifetime to develop our tech to do more than detect neutrinos. Until we had a supernova we could target, there was no point in collecting neutrinos. Come on. I can’t wait to make history with you.” We wrapped our blanket and slowly walked, hand in hand, up to the observatory under dim moonlight. Pausing at the three steps before the door, we kissed passionately before assuming our professional roles. The outer door slid open when we reached the top step. The inner door opened after the outer one sealed. We inhaled the puff of conditioned air from the positive pressurized lab then entered the telescope chamber. The large room in non-reflective, drab, paint was crowded with new consoles and equipment, all surrounding the base of the enlarged, 200 inch optical telescope. “The power reserve level gauge says that we have funneled and contained enough neutrinos to create and control Tacyons for faster than light communication and data transfer. That revolutionary collection with the recent breakthrough on understanding and controlling Quantum elements makes this night possible. I’m so excited!” “Yes, Dawn. The LDPA (Large Disk Planetary Array) is nearly aimed at that ‘empty’ space where LETI (Looking for ExtraTerestrial Intelligence) caught a brief pattern of cohesive bits so long ago. Until this moment, we had to assume it was an empty hole in space. Just challenging that assumption makes this a worthy project. Don’t you agree, Committee 9?” I couldn’t help taunting the bean counters. Maybe that was foolish. I whispered, “Many brilliant minds, project funders, and short sighted politicos are monitoring us right now, in real time. Let’s hope we can find something for them tonight, though we didn’t promise LETI results for several months.” Without waiting for an answer, I continued narrating our progress for the Committee’s benefit and spoke up. “With the power boost from all this new tech combined, we can reach out 100 light years (LY) and scan one billion bands round the clock. Let’s hope computer projections about habitable planets in that area are correct. LDPA is set. Power on the array, Dawn, and sequence in the neutrinos.” “Done. Starting Tacyon stream and enhanced Pings. Brilliant minds had to go primitive to take simple aquatic pinging tech and step it up to reflect LETI data in real time across 100 light years. Impressive!” That’s my woman — helping the politicians grasp how significant this is. I pulled Dawn out of camera range. “This committee must be impressed enough to recommend expanding our program. Only one member has any physics background. I’ll try to give them a simplified taste of what we’re doing. Back to the consoles, love.” We kissed while we had a moment. “Al, pings are already showing thousands of unknown, large planets with reasonable spectroscopic results.” I turned to the room cameras and gave the observers a sarcastic thumbs up. “In less than an hour, we have more data than we can process in detail in a year! This is an absolute success, though the LETI screen shows nothing yet.” I hope the morons are satisfied. Speaking up for all to hear, “We don’t expect LETI results with intelligible data for some time, if ever. Besides distance, timing is a huge issue. At this stage, at least one of those planets must be beyond its version of agrarian and industrial ages. If they progressed as we have, they need to be in a late stage of an early electronics age and reaching out from their own LETI. "Thanks to our new tech, we overcame the reply problem. Without Tacyons, it would take 100 years to hear their message, 100 more for them to hear our response and 100 more to hear their reply — ‘hello, anyone there’ - ‘yes’ - ‘who?’ What a dreadful, slow exchange that would be. What if they won’t get to that stage for another 90 years? We can’t and won’t wait that long. So our initial contact window is small at this time.” From one of the politicos, “So the odds of E.T. contact are still near null and we wasted billions in taxpayer expense and years of brilliance on this boondoggle, as I thought!” “No, Senatoris. Even with no contact EVER with another planet, this project has advanced science and technology by at least 100 years. Electricity, horseless carriages, space flight all seemed to be ‘boondoggles’ too when conceived. Look at how civilization benefitted from those advances. Look at the 1000-fold benefits returned from those programs. There are 1000s of spinoffs already from this project and an uncountable number more that our descendants will uncover. Our expenses are a small investment in our future.” His screen abruptly went blank. I smiled at my victory. “Excuse me, Dr. Al, can you give a layman a simple explanation of neutrinos and this tech?” “Well Senatoris Will, you’d need some background in physics and astronomy to grasp the simple explanation and a PhD to really understand it. So the highlights — neutrinos were theorized more than ninety years ago and proven sixty years later. It took decades to capture their tiny energy.” “But what is it? Dark matter?” “Not at all like that. A neutrino is a subatomic particle that is very similar to an electron, but has no electrical charge and a very small mass. Neutrinos are one of the most abundant particles in the universe. Years ago we achieved transmission of information using a beam of neutrinos. It is easy to transmit, easy to detect and can carry a lot of information over short distances. “The easiest source of neutrinos is from our Sol. Neutrinos are born during the process of nuclear fusion in the sun. In the sun's core, the reactions that fuse hydrogen into helium produce electron neutrinos with energies of 14 million electron volts (MeV). By comparison, photons in the visible spectrum carry only about 1 electron volt of energy. About 100 billion solar neutrinos pass through your thumbnail every second. “We know of four different types, but I won’t go into all that. Quantum-mechanical effects, which normally operate only at microscopic distances, were observed on terrestrial and astronomical distance scales. Neutrino physics and astrophysics is one of the most difficult jobs, requiring us to invent incredibly sensitive detectors and techniques. “The best source is the high-energy neutrinos from outside our galaxy which immediately precede a Supernova. Neutrinos are affected only by a ‘weak’ subatomic force of much shorter range than electromagnetism. If neutrinos have mass, they also interact gravitationally with other massive particles.” Dawn continued, “They are a basic building block, with some investment payback on their own, but are not enough for our purposes. We are now merging Tacyons with them to greatly extend their range and speed and using new knowledge of Quantum Mechanics as well. This 100 LY test is just the first step to interstellar and inter galaxy communication in real time . We already added a Tacyon substream to return the pinged data instantly. “As advanced as our Ping tech is, it too is in its infancy. Once we refine and enhance it, we will communicate with any race’s electronics and maybe even with just sound waves they produce. The exponential knowledge we will gain is unimaginable. I better get back to my console.” So proud of her, I sent her a subtle kiss. Despite two long shifts a day, we found no ‘wow’ communications, but did locate 300 more planets of interest. Other, astonished, astrologers identified red dwarfs, planetary collisions and rogue planets in real time. They analyzed atmospheres, temperatures and seismic activity on hundreds of planets. Seven are habitable by our standards, pending more detailed inspection. ~~~~ Three months later ~~~~ Alarms sounding, “Dawn, look at the LETI screen! That’s real. It’s analog data, but it seems intelligent. Let the committee and the public know, we made contact. One computer is already breaking it down and decoding it.” “Maybe we should wait for more — look, there are more data coming. It reads just fourteen LY away. We can trace it back to the source. I’ll alert everyone and break out the bubbly.” The computer announced the stages of decoding. It found better patterns as the new data continued in a steady stream. When it found no basic alphabet or language instructions, it declared the data was a nonbinary, probably a random intercept and not directed communication. Further, it said the transmission used overlapped AM and FM coding and analyzed them separately. “Dawn, let’s run the signal through an audio amp and the large screen oscilloscope app and see — whoa! Voices. I don’t know what they are saying, but they are clear and there are crowd sounds. Some of their odd language sounds musical and pleasant, but some sounds bellicose. I suppose we should have expected that.” “Al, look at the big screen. There are images. People like us are competing in races and throwing poles and round things. Amazing! There’s a whole section of the crowd dressed the same way. Could those be dark uniforms? Look at the strange salute and cheers from them. We are recording this, right? Good.” “The image is unstable, Dawn. Let’s sweep the signal. Oh no. It’s gone. The AM signal is still streaming.” The computer took days before it could translate the audible gibberish into our real words — most were words. Other bands of AM produced other sounds. Beautiful music, odd crashes, and horns. Our Tacyon beam focused farther along the data path and found another transmission three LY later. More crowds, primitive tech exhibits, another odd language — same results as before. Eleven LY farther, a complex and steady stream overlapped. “Al, the video is back. We are detecting multiple streams on closely spaced frequencies. There’s a red headed woman making faces, fake crying, and the crowd may be . . . laughing? I don’t get it.” “Maybe there’s a hidden code in all this. The computer is checking, but found nothing.” With time, hundreds of data streams flooded us. The main computer separated and processed them. Hours later, “Dawn, we found the source and our pings have detected something small on orbit around one planet so far. Oh, there are many satellites around it. LDPA is locking onto one of them. The satellite is transmitting a digital signal that’s very different from the scattered analog signals which would have covered large areas of the planet. This transmission is extremely tight. Perhaps the analog was some sort of entertainment? This one is different.” “I see that, Al. Again, it’s a mix of audio and video, but the code is unlike the analog signal. This image is absolutely clear. It’s slowly sweeping a ground image. Look! There’s a huge observatory dome on that mountain. The satellite is zooming in on it. OH! There are two live people outside it on a blanket — in real time. Make it louder so we can hear them if possible? OH! We can.” The stopper in the bubbly happily released itself. The computer translated. . . . “The night sky is always so enchanting, mysterious and full of wonder even to scientists like us.”


Ok, so let me start off by saying that I’m not like all the other girls who get scared and shit when they hear about ghosts and demons and stuff. I think the paranormal is like so kewl. So when Cindy and Sherry came over with the Ouija board, I was like totally do DTD (that means Down To Demon LOLZ). Anyway, we se up the board and the little thingie that moves over it in my room. We sat on the floor on my $3000 Persian rug. I don’t mind sitting on the floor like that. I’m just like so down to Earth, it’s unbelievable. Cindy started chanting some sort of mantra. It sounded Asian. I LOVE Asia. It’s like my favorite poor country. As Cindy rambled on and on in Asian, I took out my phone and took a selfie with the whole board in the background and posted it on insta. My 14241 followers would like totally freak! I commented how Cindy was chanting in Asian and how Sherry was setting up the pretty designer candles. They cost $30 dollars a piece. Stupid Sherry just had to cramp my style to tell me that Asian is not a language. What is with her? She’s lucky I let her hang out with me. I bet she’s never even seen an Asian. Cindy just kept chanting and the lights began to flicker. She stopped speaking Asian and told me the Demon was here. It’s this demon named Zozo and he’s like this celebrity demon and he’s really famous and I’m gonna get so many followers when he shows us. Maybe I’ll get an endorsement deal when this is over. I’m gonna be like Kylie Jenner, but like prettier. The thing on the board started to move. Cindy said it’s a blanshet(?) Planchit? Oh I dunno. It started to go to all kinds of letters and numbers on the board and Cindy said it spelled “You’re doomed” Ugh! Whatever demon! He was being a real jerk, blowing air into the room. It messed up my hair. I wanna look perfect for my selfies. Sherry was being a total bitch yelling at me to stop fixing my hair and keep my hands on the board. I was just gonna tell her to stop policing me when the demon turned the lights off. No fair! He’s being like totally retarded. Doesn’t he know I need this for my insta followers. I mean, I’m like a role model to them. I was just gonna tell Cindy to get him to turn the lights on when I heard Sherry make a weird noise. It was like the sound when a dog throws up or something. GROSS! Now Sherry was leaking blood from her neck. It was dripping all over my $3000 Persian rug. Dammit Sherry! Cindy said she couldn’t hold the plankit thingie anymore cause it was hot. Bitch! Just make your retarded demon stop messing up my stuff! Sherry was being totally lame just lying on the floor, leaking blood and making that dog puking noise. Ugh! The shit I put up with. Now Cindy was turning into this total dram queen spinning in circles. She knocked over my $200 Pink Himalayan Salt lamp. I’m like so woke, I’m actually into African culture. But stupid Cindy and Sherry were n my last nerve. I decided to tell this Zozo dude to stop being a jerk and take a selfie with me. I mean I let him into my nice room with all my nice stuff, it’s like the least he can do! But then, the asshole knocked my phone out of my hand. What the actual fucking fuck! That’s like so rude! I was gonna tell him to get out when my closet door, my walk in closet door opened and my $1800 Gucci dress came flying out of it and started to go down Cindy’s throat. She took that whole dress down her throat. I knew she was a slut! She started to make the puking dog noises and then she just stopped. Whatever! Sherry was now standing up. Her hair was a total mess and she was like all bloody and stuff. Hey! Maybe I could just take a selfie with her and post it on insta. I’ll just tell them it’s a demon. LOLZ! They’ll believe me. I’m gonna be an insta influenzer when this is done. But stupid possessed Sherry wouldn’t hold still. She kept trying to get her hands around my neck. Bitch you’re getting blood on my perfect skin! If that wasn’t bad enough , these gross little insects started to come out of her ears and like they started to eat Cindy. Well, maybe that’s a good thing. Cindy should really lose some weight. But wait, why do I feel like I can’t breathe? Sherry has her hands around my neck. Sherry stop being possessed and clean up this mess. Some friend you are! And she’s grabbing my neck tighter. She totally ruined my selfie.


Prohibition I feel the sweat. Moistening my palms, dripping down the back of my shirt. My breath quickens and my mouth goes dry as I knock. Knock four times, as I was instructed. There’s some soft fumbling behind the door, before the shutter slides across to reveal an aggressive pair of eyes. “What” the eyes state, rather than ask. “I… I’m here to… to see Clifford” the words stick in my mouth. The shutter slams back closed and I hear some soft muttering before the lock clicks. The door swings open and a thick arm waves me in. A slam, and I’m inside. It takes more than a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, thick with smoke. I’m brimming with anxiety and excitement. I’ve not been anywhere this… illicit for years. I’m frightened but so tantalised to experience something that’s been missing from my life for decades. “You know the ground rules?” the looming figure breaks my reverie. “Ah I think so” The tattooed tree branch that brought me in points to scruffy writing on a dirty blackboard: No touching, unless invited. No illegal drugs. No wanking. “I, erm, yes. That should be fine for me” “Downstairs then.” As I descend the narrow staircase I notice the dim light is not from bulbs, but tumescent lard candles dripping from black sconces in the wall. “Smart” I think to myself, “no electricity” Further down I travel, until I come to another plain door. I can hear soft laughing and music from behind it. My hands are trembling now. I grip the brass knob and push the heavy door ajar. Immediately I am overcome. The noise of revelling; laughter and loud conversation washes over me. The smell of bacon from the candles fills my nose. I enter and am greeted by the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. “Just yourself, sir?” I nod affirmative, and she walks me to a plush leather wingback with a small side table. Without asking she places a glass down and fills it with chilled water from a fine glass carafe. Next to this she places a small folded card with ‘Fine Libations, New and Old’ printed on the front. “Have a look through this, and when you’re ready to order just call over one of the staff. Do you have any questions?” I glance through the menu. The concoctions all sound delicious, but that’s not why I’m here. “I erm, I’m here… for eh, Clifford” She looks at me, as though waiting for some clarification. “I’m here to see Clifford” I restate. “Very well sir” She briskly walks back to her stand at the door. She seems to be fumbling in a drawer. Picking something out, she walks back. I sip my water. I am too nervous now. The water cools my thoughts just enough. The woman slips another card into my menu. “This is the list of today’s specials.” She says quieter now, leaning close to my face “When you’ve decided what you would like ask only me. I will show you through” With that, she turns, places the smile back on her face and resumes her place at the stand. I gingerly pick up the specials menu. My heart is racing. I am so close. I look at the list. I take a drink of water. I do not want to seem too keen. A list of names. Some masculine, some feminine, some completely new. Arranged in order of price, lowest to highest. I look at the most expensive. There’s no way I can afford it, but curiosity gets the better of me. ‘Reuben – A proud little boy’ it reads. Even if it was in my price range, that’s not what I’m after here. I look around at the other guests. Some couples, a few small groups, but mostly individual people. Men and women. I drink some more water and investigate the specials further. There is a list of extras. I have made up my mind. I start to get out of my chair. The woman from before notices and hurries over. She tops up my water glass. “Have you decided what you would like?” “Yes. Could I get the” this is it “Could I get the…” I glance down at the menu to make sure I don’t make any mistakes “…Could I get Jazz?” My voice is a whisper “And the” I point to the extras list. “Jazz and a bag of meat munchies. Excellent choice, sir. Please come with me.” She leads me to an unassuming door to the side of the room. “Before I let you in sir, do you know the ground rules? “Yes, the ah, the big guy at the door made sure of it” “Excellent news. We cannot be held responsible what should happen to you if you break one of those rules, sir.” “I understand” I say and go for the door handle. She stops me and unzips a pocket on her money belt. “We need payment upfront sir” In my anticipation I had almost forgotten. I pull a roll of notes from the inside of my coat pocket and start counting them out. Fumbling I drop them. Before I can reach down, she has swept down and picked the roll up. Almost instantly she has separated the correct amount out and passes the rest back to me. Gratefully I accept them, and pull a note out to offer her. “I’ve taken my service charge already sir” She opens the door and leads me inside by the hand. We are in a dimly lit corridor, darker even than the staircase earlier. We walk past several doors. Each door muffles the noise of the action behind it but I can still make some things out. Grunting, howling, excited yelps. Eventually we come to a halt. “Wait inside here sir, Jazz will be through shortly” I thank her and move inside. The door softly clicks shut behind me. I survey the room. Not much larger than a cupboard really. Dark, lit only by one familiar smelling candle on a side table. A battered old armchair next to that. I sit in the armchair and wait. I wish I had brought the water in with me now. My anxiety has lifted, I’m in too far now. I know what I want and I’m going to get it imminently. My mind swims with possibilities. What I could be about to do. Remembering the last time I was able to. A knock at the door and my heart jumps again. The door opens slightly, and a man’s voice comes through the gap. “Jazz for you, with a bag of pork rinds” I’m too excited to correct him. The man enters and places the bag on the table next to me. He glances at me with a smirk and says “You’re in for a treat. Jazz is one of my favourites. She’s… enthusiastic.” He leaves, and then I see her. A big white bitch, grinning from ear to ear. She’s carrying a little extra weight and I’m here for it. “Come here Jazz” She rushes in and in an instant she’s on my lap, kissing my face. The door closes behind her. I’m overcome with emotion. I can’t stop laughing! A dog! After all these years! After the bans and prohibition and the horrendous culls, a real dog! I wrestle her off me and get her onto the floor. I grab the pork rinds off the side. I find a big chunk of dried flesh and hold it over her. “Sit… paw… good girl!” She takes the pig snack gently, before scoffing it down fast. I can’t believe this moment. I laugh again, and stroke her head. She moves to lick the snack dust from my hand. This is wonderful! She rolls on her side, inviting me to stroke her tummy. I reach down. Suddenly there’s a banging at the door. It opens and the man from earlier frantically pushes his head in. “It’s a raid! Get out! Get out of here!” Jazz gets up instantly, much more nimbly than you would expect, and bolts out of the door. With the door open now I can hear much more commotion; glasses breaking, doors being knocked down, yelling and screaming. I follow Jazz out into the dark corridor, other doors being flung open with people and dogs running out. Other guests fleeing in each direction, but the dogs purposefully all heading to the end of this corridor. A crash, and I see the door man from before standing in a broken frame, wood hanging loosely from its hinges. He’s bleeding from one eyebrow, cradling a bunch of frightened pugs and chihuahuas in his arms. “Far end! Go! Now!” He yells at me. There’s gunfire behind him. He bolts past. I quickly follow. Looking back I see a silhouette of a man brandishing a club in the doorway. I’m spurred to run faster as he belts a man trying to get past. “We just wanted to pet dogs!” the man sobs as the cop lays into him on the ground. The door man looks at the wall at the end of the corridor. He puts the small dogs down beside him. He braces himself against the sides of the corridor. He raises a foot and slams his boot into the wall. It bursts open. A secret exit! “Everyone out!” None of the dogs hesitate. They stream out of the door, howling and barking into the night. An enormous ridgeback barrels past me and knocks me to the floor. I look up and see Jazz hesitate at the opening. She looks back at me. The cop is on me. He rains down blows on the back of my head. Jazz turns and leaves.


Prom night, 2012, the attending students and faculty of Mooretown High School fall asleep, never to wake again. They don’t age, or stir. When cut off from life support, they persist, not needing food, or water. Cassandra Blake, twin sister to one of the victims, takes a sip of her coffee. We’re in a diner, eating the lightest breakfast they serve. Cassandra Blake is, and appears as, a woman entering her thirties. She stares wistfully out the diner window. “Mr. Alvarez,” she says, “I don’t understand what you hope to do here.” “Help, if I can,” I say, and it’s true. “Document if I can’t.” She shoots me an angry look. She doesn’t believe me. My name is Fernando Alvarez, I dance with the weird that goes bump in the night. I told her that much, but she thinks I’m some kind of sensationalist media or quack “scientist”. “How do you intend to help?” “Let’s start with your sister. You claim to have contacted her.” She eyeballed me, really tried to suss out my intentions. Was I a ghost-hunter style sensationalist? A journalist wackadoodle? Or was I genuinely trying to help? She scrutinized me with her gaze, but I guess my sincerity came through. “I did,” she admitted. “Elaborate, please. How did you talk to her?” “I didn’t. Not really. It was when they were still in the hospital. I spent every hour I could with her, hoping that she would wake up. I ended up sleeping nights there. One night, I fell asleep in a chair next to her, and the moment my eyes closed I felt my heart jump inside my chest. I woke up, but it wasn’t me, and I wasn’t in the hospital anymore. I was my sister. She was in this horrible hot tunnel. There were broken pipes, and steam. It looked nothing like the school, but it was like a dream, I just knew that it was. I… she was hungry, so hungry. The only food had been the stuff set out on tables in the gym, and that was gone. She– I… She slinked around the warped version of our high school. She was trying not to be seen. She did that for a couple hungry days. Until she ran into another student. I recognized them, it was her date, had been her date. He was weak, and emaciated. Oh god. Mr. Alvarez, her mouth was watering. I could feel her thoughts. She was hungry, and so, so sorry. He would have done the same to her, had done the same to her. When she finished eating, she found a crawlspace in the pipe tunnels to sleep in. When she woke up again, she was in a different part of the school. It was a reset. She was back in her prom dress. The first thing she did was tear it up, and take off her heels. She was getting ready to swipe the food in the gym, when she heard something. I saw what was coming, I tried to warn her, and she heard me! I saw through her eyes, she tried looking for my voice. She called my name, but she– I– she couldn’t find me. I only distracted her. Her prom date appeared from somewhere, and that was it. She woke up in another reset, and I woke up back at the hospital.” It was a lot to take in. “It felt so real,” she said. Her voice was hoarse with tears. “You probably think I’m just making this up.” “Cassandra?” I said, pulling her attention away from the floor, “I believe you.” She blinked at me. Now I was the crazy one. “Your twin sister,” I continued, “she was moved into your mother’s home when it was found out that the victims did not require life support. You were still attending high school at the time. Did you ever try sleeping beside her again? To reconnect with her?” “Yes.” “Did you learn anything else?” I wasn’t questioning her experience, I was asking if she had been able to gather any more information. An important distinction. I saw an emotional wall crumble in her. I wasn’t a probing sensationalist or quack scientist anymore, I was a co-conspirator. “Hannah Hert.” I mentally flipped through some notes. “The troubled girl?” Hannah Hert was one of the slumbering students. A dark haired girl, terribly thin, and awfully pale. She was a ward of the state. Her father had been her only family, and he had died of a heart attack on the night of the prom. It was doubly tragic, as he was apparently a healthy man still in his prime. Of the victims afflicted, hers was probably the saddest story. Poor, bullied, never fit it. She had a habit of coming up in my interviews for this case. “If that’s what you want to call her,” said Cassandra, “Hannah was a sweet girl. Emphasis on the ‘was’ I guess.” I raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “During one of the resets I was able to see my sister sneak into the gym again. There were bodies on the dance floor, arranged in a circle. I recognized pretty much all of them. My sister’s body was in there too. In the center of it all was Hannah. She was floating. The air around her was moving the way it does near the road on a really hot day, and it was dark. She was like the opposite of a lightbulb.” “What was she doing?” “Besides the floating? Nothing I guess. She looked like she was sleeping. All the bodies looked like that.” Noted. It became immediately apparent to me that Hannah Hert was the source of the nightmare. A very obvious solution presented itself. End Hannah, end the nightmare, and I made a solemn vow to avoid that if possible. Call me soft or naive, but I don’t think Hannah Hert meant to hurt anyone. She trapped her peers, sure, but she also trapped herself. According to Cassandra her sister saw a sleeping body double of all trapped individuals in the gymnasium, meaning floating Hannah wasn't the actual Hannah. I wrapped up my interview with Cassandra, gathering more details about the nightmare world. There was the warped school, with its dimly lit hallways and pipe ways. There was also the neighborhood, with its neighbors. Of all the places, Cassandra said, the neighborhood was to be avoided at all costs. Once you entered, you didn’t get out until reset. “Thank you, er… detective… agent…?” I shrugged. “Detective works. What for?” “For taking me seriously. I’ve never opened up about what I saw before. Thanks for making me feel like I could, I guess.” “Thanks for being cooperative.” “What do you plan on doing now?” “Well, I’ve got an idea, but I’ll need your help.” “Wait really? Yeah, anything! What's your plan?” “Have you ever tried lucid dreaming?” After explaining my plan, we paid our bill at the diner and hopped into our cars. I followed Cassandra Blake back to her mom’s house, where we would find her sister. We still needed to get Cassandra’s mother on board, but thankfully that wasn’t too difficult. Watching one of your twin daughters cease to age while trapped in a magic coma could open you up to a lot of unconventional ideas. From there, it was only the waiting. Time ticked at a crawl. Cassandra and I sat around in the cozy light of her mother’s kitchen. It would be a nice night, if not for the planned endeavor. “Explain it to me again,” she said. “Magic is sympathetic. Twins share stronger bonds than other siblings. Oftentimes they view each other as other pieces of themselves. The same thing can happen with two people in love. It's actually exceptionally rare to see that kind of bond in a non-romantic relationship." “And that’s why I can connect to her in the nightmare?” she said, then yawned. I nodded, and yawned back. “Looks like it's time.” Momma Blake had graciously allowed us to use her room for the plan. It had a king sized bed, which wasn’t absolutely necessary, but very welcomed. Cassandra and I entered. Her sister was laid on one end, carried over earlier by us. It was strange, seeing her sister lying there. I’m stating the obvious here, but the resemblance to Cassandra was uncanny. She was Cassandra, scrubbed clean of ten years. “Okay,” I said, setting an alarm for five hours from now. “Sweet dreams Cass.” I was sandwiched between the two sisters, holding their hands. Cassandra and I were taking advantage of the “wake back to bed” method of lucid dreaming. Five hours from now a soothing alarm would wake us up, and we’d stay up for about thirty minutes before going back to sleep. Once we reentered sleep, it would hopefully be as lucid dreamers, which would then give us agency in the nightmare. If this idea worked, then Cassandra was a shoe in. My hope was that I could use her connection to her sister as a bridge, and tag along. Sleep came surprisingly easy. Five hours later I was woken up from a very dark nightmare.I couldn’t confirm if anything I saw had been in tune with Cassandra. We needed to stay quiet, and calm. We couldn’t accidentally “wake” ourselves up anymore than necessary. Thirty minutes passed. I squeezed Cassandra’s hand to let her know, and we tried going back to bed. Soon I was back in that dark nightmare, and so was someone else. I could feel Cassandra’s presence. For a moment I experienced some mild dysmorphia, as I was, for a split second, a teenage girl. Then, just like that, I was staring at a chain link fence that bordered a nightmare version of Mooretown High School. I was back in my body, thankfully not in my sleeping clothes. I was suited up in my usual leather jacket and jeans. No gun though. Cassandra appeared beside me a moment later. She was wearing a hoodie and sweatpants. She was also eighteen. She noticed the age change, but didn’t comment on it. “She’s not too far away,” said Cassandra. She made for the school, and I followed. The fact that I was with her here meant the first experimental part of the plan had worked. Actually the whole plan was experimental. This was just especially crucial. If I could cross over with her, then someone could cross back. We entered the school. The first thing that hit me wasn’t the twisted hallways, or the walls with the lockers that stretched at odd angles. It was this creeping paranoia. This place wanted to let you know that you weren’t safe. Likely this was a reflection of the nightmare’s creator. Nothing else could explain the sudden onslaught of negative emotions. I felt fatigued, lonely, hopeless, ugly. It was all I could do to not give myself a hug. “That was something,” she said. “It felt like hitting a wall,” I said. I ended up giving myself that hug. There there me, it’s gonna be okay. “I saw desks and a chalkboard before I appeared,” said Cassandra. “So she’s in a classroom.” “Yeah, but I think I know which one. It didn’t look exactly the same, but I bet it was our old math class.” “Lead the way.” We ran through stretched out and twisted hallways before hearing a commotion. Someone was trying to break into a classroom just around the corner. Cassandra and I stopped at the turn. We were silent for a moment, and wondered if whoever was working the door had heard us. A moment more and we were sure they hadn’t. “They’re trying to break into our old math room,” said Cassandra, after having a peek around the corner. “I bet Claire’s hold up inside trying not to get eaten.” “Right,” I said, much calmer than I actually was. I was unarmed, and the guy around the corner looked like his college financials hinged on a football scholarship. “Get his attention and come back this way. I’ll jump him and put him to sleep.” “Okay.” Cassandra jumped out and shouted at the big guy around the corner. She lured him back our way, and just as planned I jumped him. I got my arms around his thick neck and started choking him out. The only hiccup was that he was much stronger than I was, and armed. We hadn’t noticed the shiv he was carrying. The big guy tried to stab my face, but settled for my forearm. I almost let go, but didn’t, so he slammed me into a set of lockers with his back. I held tight. I was slowly bringing him down. Too slowly. At this pace I was worried that I would give out before he did. Cassandra saved us both the anticipation of who would finish off who when she managed to pry the shiv out from his increasingly tired hands, and gave it to him good in the eye. He was down a minute later. “Christ,” I said. “Yeah…” Cassandra was shaking. “It’s alright, follow me to the room and call out to your sister.” Simple instructions. Easy does it. I couldn’t let Cassandra freeze up on me. Cassandra followed me, and did as I asked. She stood in front of the classroom door, and called out to her sister. There was a rummaging sound, then click. Another Cassandra poked her head out of the classroom. There was a lot of initial shock, followed by a lot of disbelief. When Cassandra’s sister, Claire, finally settled down, we were able to explain the situation. “So you can get me out of here?” said Claire. It broke something in me. She sounded so much like her sister did when she started crying back at the diner. “I…” don’t want to get your hopes up, “can’t say with any certainty. For now just hold on to Cassandra, and hopefully when she and I wake back up in the real world you’ll have crossed over with us.” Claire had to undo her barricade to let us in. So I spent the remainder of our time in the nightmare rebuilding it. Somewhere in between stacking desks in front of the door, I blinked, and found myself staring at the ceiling of momma Blake’s bed room. I heard stirring on my right, as well as my left. Bingo. Claire Blake woke up into reality for the first time in over a decade. When she saw me, and an older looking Cassandra, she blinked. “So it was all real,” she said. “Afraid so,” I said. We’d already given her the rundown in the nightmare, but now that she was awake it was fuzzy. The past decade trapped in the nightmare was just a passing dream for her now. I left the Blake home, promising to return in a little while. I wanted to give them some time alone. The family was reunited for the first time in decades. Well… most of the family. Pappa Blake had passed some years ago. Another reason I wanted to get out for a while. I came back a few hours later to find the twins sitting together at the small kitchen table, mamma Blake let me in on her way out. “How do you feel?” asked Cassandra. “Tired actually,” said her sister, Claire. “But sleeping is the last thing I want to do right now. Thanks for the coffee.” “Hey,” I said, cutting into their banter. “Greetings detective,” said the younger looking twin, Claire. “Cassandra told me you’re the reason I’m out of that nightmare.” Don’t thank me yet, kid. I cleared my throat. “Yeah, no problem. I have some questions if you don’t mind.” A flash of protest appeared on Cassandra’s face. She wanted to give her sister more rest before talking about the nightmare again, but I couldn’t say how long we had. I had told her when explaining the plan that getting her sister out would probably not be a permanent solution. “Sure, anything, detective,” said Claire. “What can you tell me about Hannah Hert?” Claire tightened her grip on the coffee mug. She narrowed her eyes, but not at me, more like at something past me. She was recalling a very unpleasant memory. “Why do you want to know about that whore?” Okay… not what I expected. “I think she may be the source of the nightmare. It might be hard for you to remember, but she was a central figure in the pile of bodies that manifested in the nightmare’s gymnasium. “Hmmph.” She took a sip of her coffee. “It would be Hannah fucking Hert. That little homewrecker was always a trash bag like that.” Whoa. “What?” interjected Cassandra. “You didn’t know? I thought everyone knew. I guess I never told you.” “Told me what? It’s been a long time, but I remember Hannah, she was a sweet girl.” “Oh yeah, super sweet. Cassandra, she was fucking our dad.” Cassandra and I were both agasp. “Hannah harlot is what we used to call her. Slutty Hannah used to get into everyone’s bed, the older the better I guess. Shit, I heard she shacked up with her own dad too.” Her dad? My instincts told me that Claire only had half the story. “Is that why Hannah was treated so poorly at school?” “What do you think, detective? She had her lips wrapped around half the dads in Mooretown.” Cassandra interjected again. “And you just never thought to tell mom?” “And ruin their marriage?” I took that cue to leave. I got more than I needed. I stepped outside the Blake home. I had myself a sit down on the curb, sipping on a cup of coffee stolen from the kitchen. I was thinking about Hannah Hert. I didn’t have much to go on, but I thought it was much more likely that Hannah was abused. Much more likely that a father would force himself on his daughter. With that assumption, I don’t think any of Hannah’s relations would have been consensual. Meaning there wasn’t anywhere that Hannah must have felt safe, hence the neighborhood in the nightmare, and the onslaught of negative emotions inside the school. My interviews before Cassandra had told me just enough about Hanna’s school life to know that she was a barely tolerated presence there. That brings to mind an interesting question. If Hannah was so vilified, then why had she been at prom? I can’t imagine wanting to spend a whole night surrounded by people that I knew hated my guts. I went back inside after finishing my coffee. When I reentered the Blake home, things had cooled down. The twin’s weren’t talking. “Claire, would you mind if I asked you something else?” She gave her twin sister the side eye. “Go ahead detective.” “Why did Hannah bother going to prom? From what I understand the student body was pretty clear about how they felt about her.” “Pffft. Hannah harlot got around, but she always had eyes for my boyfriend. I guess she wasn’t completely happy just sleeping with older men.” “You don’t mean…” said Cassandra. We were probably thinking the same thing. “We all agreed it would be funny. I had my boyfriend play around with her for like a week. That’s really all it took to get her to come. When she got there he pretended not to know and we all had a good laugh. Like anyone could ever love that whore.” So there it was. A perfect storm of abuse and broken trust. Combined with Hannah’s latent talent for magic, and you get this decade long nightmare. Fuck me. “That will be all Claire, thank you.” I wanted to step back out again, but Claire stopped me. “Detective, wait. Cass told me. Me being awake is only temporary right?” I turned around. “Yeah.” “Do you have a permanent solution?” “Working on it.” Claire wasn’t happy with my answers to her followup questions. I let her be mad. I excused myself from the Blake home just as momma Blake returned from her outing. I went out for a drive to mull some things over, then came back to the Blake house. This time we entered the nightmare much later. Claire did not want to go back to the nightmare. She understood what she was being sent back to. It was most of the way toward sunrise when she finally hit the hay. Cassandra and I followed her, employing the “wake back to bed” method again. This time I focused my thoughts on Hanna, hoping that like Cass and her sister, I would gain insight into her location in the nightmare. I entered the nightmare with flashes of the outside. A field with a thick mist settled on it. I appeared beside Cassandra. This was the final step of the plan. Find Hannah Hert, and bring her back out of the nightmare, thus ending it. At the very least we would have to see if she was in a state to want to leave. As far as Hannah knows, outside this nightmare is just another bigger one waiting for her. Mooretown had not been kind to her, so why would the rest of the world. “She’s in a field somewhere,” I said. “It’s not a big school, there’s only one field. C’mon.” I followed Cassandra, rounding the school. The outside was lit by bright fluorescent lights. Here and there I noticed Cassandra tilt her head toward the school. She was worried about her sister. “Thanks,” I told her. “It must be hard knowing she’s in there somewhere.” “Yeah.” She didn’t turn back to look at me. We came to the field. There was a set of bleachers, and hidden underneath the seats, Hannah. She saw us too. I approached her slowly. “We don’t mean you any harm,” I said. The frail looking girl slinked further back into the darkness of the bleachers. In another life, I wondered, would this have been where she’d have run off to cry that night? “Hannah,” said Cassandra, “It’s true. This is detective Alvarez, he wants to help you.” “Fernando Alvarez, at your service. I just want to talk to you about what you’ve been going through.” Cassandra had been unaware of the rumors surrounding Hannah. Maybe she was a friendly face for Hannah, a rarity in this town. I was a total stranger, but one with Cassandra’s endorsement. That probably already put me at the top of Hannah’s list relative to the rest of the people she’d known in her regular life. Wide eyed, Hannah stared at me. She dared to inch closer. Bit by bit she came out into the open. She took a couple tentative steps toward me. Then there was a crash behind us. A set of double doors was thrown open. Out came Claire and a coterie of students she’d apparently gathered to her side. “Claire?” said Cassandra. “How… why are you here?” “Sympathetic magic. Just like the detective said. I thought about you all night, and knew where you two were heading the moment you arrived. It was like a rapid fire slide show in my head, but I figured out where you were going.” “But why?” “Cass, the only way to end this is to end her, if he doesn’t want to do that then maybe we can do the job here, and set everyone free.” “Claire, this is psycho.” “It’s necessary.” Claire and her new goons started running at us. Hannah bolted, and I chased after her. Cassandra threw herself in front of Claire and her goons, allowing us some precious distance. Hannah ran like mad through the misty field. The further we went in, the heavier the mist became, until it was dense fog. We were losing Claire and her goons, but I was also losing Hannah. Eventually I lost sight of her, and when I exited the fog, it was at the entrance to a neighborhood. I recognized it as the one that had the Blake house. Hannah must have gone in. There was a sinister energy coming from inside. The hair on my neck stood up as I entered. The neighborhood was dark, darker than the eternal night of the rest of the nightmare. I wondered how I was able to see anything at all, but I reminded myself that this was a dream. Nothing had to exactly make sense in here. From the windows of the houses I could see shadows. I knew without knowing that they were staring at me. *Whore. Slut. Mistake.* This place was unsafe. It didn’t offer any solace, it was just a much more manageable danger than the field at the moment. I hurried along. I didn’t like the way the shadows were looking at me. I could feel their eyes going up and down my body. *They knew what I looked like naked.* I saw Hannah. She was watching me from the end of the street, but ran off, deeper into the neighborhood. More windows, more shadowy neighbors. *Stop looking. He made me do it. Please don’t touch me*. I felt sick, but I had to keep going. At last I made it to what had to be the deepest, darkest part of the neighborhood. The only light here was coming from a house at the end, the door was wide open. *I felt a hand crawl under my skirt.* “Get the fuck off me!” I turned around, but there was no one there, and I wasn’t wearing a skirt. Fuck me. I finished my trek, entering the threshold of the door. Inside was a living room with flickering lights and electronics. Hannah was in her baby blue prom dress, a white gloved hand outstretched. Opposite her, her father. In the flickering light of the television, I saw her father clutch his chest. I saw life escape from his wide terror stricken eyes. The lights in the living room flicked hard once more, and the scene was gone. “I don’t regret it one bit. Does that make me a bad person?” It was Hannah. Suddenly she was stepping past me to enter the house. “No. I don’t think so,” I told her, following her in. She sat down on her couch, in front of the now off TV. “I think I’m a bad person. It’s why I’m in hell. Dad always said I’d end up here.” “Your father was wrong. This isn’t hell Hannah, this is just a bad dream, a really, really bad dream.” She gave me a quick glance, then cast her eyes to the floor. I heard her sniffle. “Why do you feel like you’re a bad person Hannah?” “I have to be. Why else would he hurt me? Then he got bored and let…” she choked on her tears. “No one would want me now. I’m… I… I thought that boy did but…” “Hannah… none of what happened to you was your fault, it was always your father and some shitty people. They hurt you, because they were bad people. You didn’t deserve any of this.” “Then why did he do it?” she managed to say between sobs. “Because he’s evil. What he did had nothing to do with who you are as a person or what you did. You have to believe me, you did nothing wrong Hannah, you still haven’t. You wiped one bad person off the face of the planet that night. Sometimes that’s just tuesday for me, and you did it because you had to. For your own safety. This,” I said, gesturing vaguely at the nightmare world, “I wasn’t lying, it's just a dream and once you choose to leave, no harm no foul.” She sniffled. “And after this, what? You’ll leave me alone, let me fend for myself? What’s waiting for me out there? I’m a monster.” “If that’s what you want, I can leave you alone. You tell me what you need, but I won’t leave you alone in this world unless you want me to. You’re a gifted girl Hannah, and I can help you get in touch with people that know how to teach you about your gifts.” She was just on the edge of wanting something more. The crying had stopped. She was looking at me. “There’s a way forward, you don’t have to wallow in here if you don’t want to.” I stretched out my hand, and she stood up to take it. “How do I move forward?” “I had a plan in mind with Cassandra. It might have to wait though. But after we get you out of here, you’ll wake up in an assisted living facility far away from the town. From there I’ll come pick you up, or if you don’t feel safe coming with me, then I can bring those people I was talking about to meet you instead.” “Okay,” she said. “Things are going to be better from here on out Hannah, I–” I was awake. Cassandra was shaking me awake. “Christ!” “Holy shit, you’re awake.” “Why wouldn’t I be?” “I’ve been up for half an hour. I don’t know how this dream magic stuff works, I thought I left you behind.” “Half an hour?” I looked around the room. “Where’s your sister?” “She’s in the kitchen. She’s pissed.” “Yeah, well, I don’t have anything nice to say to her either.” Just then momma Blake burst into the room. “Honey!” “What is it?” said Cassandra. “Is it Claire? Did she do something?” “No! Look!” Cassandra’s mom showed us a picture. It was from a support group hosted on an old social media site. The caption read: *After more than a decade, my beautiful boy finally woke up*. “Is that…?” “One of my old classmates,” said Cassandra. I made my field report shortly after seeing that picture. Turns out I didn’t need Cassandra to be a bridge for Hannah, which made sense, I suppose. Hannah was the source of the nightmare. I just didn’t suspect that she would have had the magical talent to undo the nightmare on her own. Speaking of Hannah, I did keep my promise. The assisted living facility was surprised to see her wake up. I was able to visit her that same day. She only barely remembered who I was. The nightmare was as fuzzy to her as it had been for Claire when she first woke up. It didn’t happen overnight, but Hannah got better. She was placed in a loving coven of honest to god spell casting, broom riding witches. Last I heard from them, Hannah was excelling in her studies. Another case, closed.


A vulture floated high in the desert sky, circling around. It looked like an insect struggling in the spiderweb of the broken windshield. The taste of iron was heavy in my mouth as my nose began to drip to the back of my throat. The steering wheel of my Chevy was slick from my slit hand and the shotgun was still wet with blood in the seat next to me. The shadows of the setting sun behind me pointed me down the highway to where I needed to go. My phone rang. Don't do this. I listened, but there was nothing she could say. They're your family. He's your brother. Not any more. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX I pushed open the side door of the bank and hurried to my truck parked in the alley. I opened the door and I traded the velvet pouch in my hand for some of the gauze inside the glove box. I rolled two strips and put them up my broken nose. I went around to the driver's side and got in. I reached for the shotgun under the back seat and it in the seat next to me. I started the engine and pulled onto the street in front of the bank. Dale came stumbling, bleeding, down the steps of the bank and ran into the middle of the street and held his hands up in front of me. I didn't stop. He tried to jump when he realized it was too late. He rolled up onto the hood. Dale's head shattered my windshield before he rolled off onto the street. Then I stopped. I grabbed my shotgun and got out. I slowly walked over to Dale, writhing on the black pavement. Some people ran on the sidewalk. Some watched stunned. There were sirens in the distance. Where are you going? He knew the answer, but I guess he saw a little hope while looking at that light at the end of the tunnel. He spat the words out of his blood filled mouth again. Where are you going! I didn't answer. I stood with the shotgun, him under me laying on the blackness. I got down on one knee to look into Dale's eyes one last time. He didn't want me to see. He grabbed his knife and slashed. He opened up my hand. That was my fault. I underestimate the desperation of a man who no longer had anything. I stood back up and raised my shotgun, my right hand bleeding on the trigger. The anger was gone from his eyes and he was crying now. He muttered one last pitiful time. Where are you going... I pulled the trigger. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX My brother, Eddie, Oliver and I walked into the bank clean cut and in our nicest suits. I fired my revolver into the air and they pulled their knives and ran towards the patrons. Ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry for the inconvenience, but we are here to make a withdrawal. Please follow my associates into the room to your right so I can have some privacy with our bank. This will all be over in a minute. My brother and Eddie herded the 9 patrons present in the bank into the small side room of the bank and collected their wallets. Oliver and the security guard locked the front door. I hopped the front desk to speak to the tellers. You, take me to the safe deposit boxes. You, money better be in the bag by the time I get back. I left a duffle bag with the young woman at the front desk and the young man took me back to the safe deposit boxes. I holstered my revolver. He took me to the room. I told him thank you and went in. I felt my brother come up quick behind me. He had left his job of hero control in the side room. He grabbed my revolver from my side as he jumped in front of me and pointed it at my face. You think you can sneak off like this? What are you talking about? I know why we are here. Give me the key. Calm down. He drove the butt of the revolver into my nose as hard as he could. I fell to a knee. I'm not stupid. You thought I was your whole life. Well look where we are now. He kicked me in the chest. I fell onto my back. He stepped up and pointed the revolver down between my eyes. We aren't just here to take this bank. This is your stash. He laughed. They always said you were the smart one. Give me the key or I can just take it. You know I won't do that. You know I will. Do it. You have three seconds. If you don't give me the key, it's over for you, bro. One. I didn't say anything. Two. I smiled at my brother standing above me, pointing my revolver between my eyes. Three. He pulled the trigger. The silence was deafening. I grabbed his hand to use as leverage to kick him in the ribs. He was too stunned to counter and he fell to the ground. I got up and gave him another kick in the face. Dale never retaliated. He couldn't understand what had just happened. I beat him senseless in that room. I slid a bullet in the revolver and spun it shut. I looked at Dale, slumped in the corner of the room bleeding on his suit. That a chance you want to take? I opened my deposit box and grabbed the velvet pouch and left Dale in the room. I walked out to the lobby and gave the entire duffle bag to Eddie and Oliver and went to the side door. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Eddie, Oliver, my brother and I were sitting around Eddie's table discussing the plan of action for tomorrow. This was a small bank in a small town. Another day at the office for us. Sounds good boys. So you are really going to be done after this? Yes sir. Hanging up the spikes and leaving Tucson for good tomorrow. Who's gonna get the gun? My brother laughed. We all get guns after this. No more knife bullshit. I trust you guys. He shot a sly smile at me. Eddie gets the gun. My brother looked at me. What about your stash? Don't worry about my stash. Well how much you still got left? How are you going to get it? I looked at my brother. What's it to you? He smiled. Just looking out for my older bro. Loosen up. He changed the subject. Mines in gold. 1.2 mil right under my house. Eddie shook his head and took a drag from his cigarette. Why the fuck do you keep 1.2 million in gold in your house when your wife is there all day? Under the house. She don't know about it. She's too worried about the baby all day to ever figure anything out. She don't know that right under her feet there is 1.2 mil in gold.. Christ baby brother, we know about the 1,196,000 in gold bars you have. Stop flaunting it. You should have more. Says the guy with the brand new 1995 Chevrolet. He smiled. Seriously man, how much you got left. This meeting is adjourned. See you tomorrow, fellas. It's a big day. Look sharp. I walked out and got in my truck. I thought about how my brother was acting. He seemed off. It didn't feel right. If it had been Eddie or Oliver, they would have been out of the job. But he's my own brother. I couldn't just trust my gut. I needed to see him stab me in the back. When I got home I took 5 of the bullets out of my revolver. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX My brother walked through Eddie's door for the meeting. He left his wife and kid in El Paso to help us pull one last job.


Big Villain, by Hana Aianhanma, December 2019. This story is made up. Any and all resemblances to real people or animals are truly coincidental. The author would like to emphasise that this story should in no way be taken as an endorsement of villainy as a career option. ***** # Big Villain Samuel Snortinsdotter had a grievance. Not his name, though he would have liked a few minutes of loving conversation with a crowbar and the Snortin in his ancestry who had had a daughter. Nor had he that much anger to direct at the fellow pupils who called him Snorty during his time at school, much as he wanted to pin some red-hot needles into them in embarrassing and painful places. No, Samuel´s biggest discontent at the world was that Santa never brought him what he wanted. When he was six, he wanted an electric train set. Santa brought him a tea cup that was decorated with drawings of cute bumblebees. At seven, he wished for a remote controlled car. He received a wind-up toy with an accompanying one-foot track. At eight, he was seen salivating at the games console section of his favourite toy shop. Santa decided that a digital watch would be good for him. One that was branded with the logo of the company his father happened to work at. The first time, when the electric train set had failed to materialise, Samuel had written a polite note. Surely the gift had been an administrative mistake? Could Santa please correct it before the end of January? Santa sent him a response that dripped in sarcasm at Samuel’s expense. Santa, it concluded, does not make mistakes. Samuel stopped complaining about Santa’s presents after that. Still, he fumed inside at the injustice of it all. Mentally scarred down to the soul. Samuel Snortinsdotter was going to get his revenge if it was the last thing he ever did. He held a cup of coffee and thought about his plight. Unfortunately, the world was filled with evil people. He needed to not only figure out some unspoken horror, it also would have to be something less common. His first Evil Deed would need to be original to make a splash. So Samuel considered, watching the table next to him. The student sitting there slurped his cappuccino offensively. Samuel bet he always got what he wanted from Santa. That student was smugly wearing a new suit and exhibiting an obviously new laptop for the world to see. The back of the gleaming screen was only marred by the picture of a cute little dog. That was it. Samuel was not going to take that. He was angry enough to kill puppies. Yes! The more he considered it, the better the idea seemed. A truly dastardly deed. Attention grabbing amongst the world’s horrors. Appropriate for the announcement of the arrival of a modern humble Big Villain. He would find the dog shelter with the most puppies in town and blow it up this Christmas. Let’s see, what would he demand in his threats? The shelter in question was a lone building next to Percy Park. Samuel had sent the announcement of his intentions to all the newspapers in town. Not a single animal shelter seemed to have increased security. Did they not believe he could do it, or did they simply not care? There were no people at the shelter. Just the dogs and not that many puppies at that. No extra treats for Christmas, it seemed. Samuel shook his head before he descended into the cellar. He carefully placed the explosive, plugged them into a wall socket, and set the timer. Samuel climbed the stairs back up. Before he could reach the front door he passed the dogs. They drooped in their cages, an occasional whine emphasised their misery. They barely reacted to his passing. Clearly, the shelter’s owners were either unwilling or unable to take proper care of them. Their failure to be present during the festive season suggested the latter. Pathetic. Samuel opened the door and looked back. Oh well. The newspapers were satisfyingly alarmist in response to the explosion. The screaming headlines declared that some madman had actually gone through with his threat to “blow up some puppies”. Luckily there had been no victims in the explosion, they said. No mention of what happened to all the dogs. Typical. The threatening letters were dug up. Neighbours were shocked. Questions were asked. Fingers pointed. Samuel could hardly contain his evil grin. He had made an impact. From now on, no one would dare ignore his threats. All would cower in the glow of his villainy. He finished his celebratory macchiato, folded his newspaper, and left the coffee shop. When Samuel arrived home he was greeted with welcoming jumps and barks. It had been exhilarating and frantic near the end, but he had managed to move all the occupants from that shelter before the blast. They would do fine as his new henchmen. Or should that be henchdogs? ***** Thank you for reading! Feel free to share. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.


When I was young, family members would share things with me that a child doesn't need to hear. Decode some nuanced gesture at a gathering. Divulge secret half-siblings. Confess that they didn't fall down, they were pushed. Maybe because I was quiet, listening intently like a small adult. Never interrupting or asking questions. Providing the proper, sympathetic, reassuring "oh's" and "mhm's." But that kind of real-world shit fucks a kid up, especially the quiet ones. We were poor, usually on one income with 3-5 kids, depending. My mother "got sick" when I was five and died. Not literally died, but the mother I'd known to that point disappeared and in her place was Chaos. So, dead to me. Took me years to understand. She didn't work from then on and left my dad when I was eleven or so, took my sisters and I to live with her mother, a religious zealot, and her grandmother, also a religious zealot but of an older, harder breed. Nanny and Mamaw had a noticeable impact on my early pre-teens, while I only saw Daddy on rotating weekends for several years. Four generations of women (and me) sharing one small house at the end of a side street for a couple of years. I miss the maple in the front yard, building an imaginary life from its twigs and branches. During that time, I had all the legal obligations to but none of the maternal protections from Chaos. After flourishing a short while in government-assisted housing, we moved to a slum known as "the Mill Hill," an homage to the old mill for whose employees the area had been established. Our four-room mill house (with addition!) sat in a shaded curve on Reedes Street, sharing the back fence with the Community Center, a feature that did not increase the surrounding property values. The two indoor/outdoor cats and the Dachshund with halitosis ensured constant flea infestations, though the sinks and tubs were regularly sanitized. The neighbor to our left was a self-employed snake-milker and his wife was a child-molester. I never saw the other neighbor but they were constantly hosting guests. Thankfully, by the time Chaos started having to the clear the yard of unconcious prostitutes before taking us to school on Monday mornings, we were living every other week with each parent. My older sister, Kay, and I had matching suitcases, cleaned weekly to rid them of the nicotine-and-tomcat-spray smell that lingered from the Mill Hill. Shortly after Chaos dismissed my claims in defense of her friend the snake-milker's wife (with whose mid-20s son Chaos was sleeping, as I'd surmised after multiple late-night visits and sleepovers), Kay and I decided fuck the court orders and her swollen flea bites and moved in permanently with Daddy while our younger sister, Pinky, continued week-to-week-ish or as-desired until she eventually moved out for the first few times and then for good (pending). We were pawns, which was most evident at holidays. Biological weapons in the hands of emotionally immature WASPs of the southern-fried, bless-your-heart-I'll-pray-for-you variety, itchy fingers for the local police dispatch hotline coupled with a desperate need to stay out of the mouths of their respective congregations. Those memories blur into a chorus of "You'll understand when you're older" and "None of this is YOUR fault" against a backdrop of pulsing red and blue lights. At twelve years old, Chaos dropped my sisters off at school but had me stay behind. She drove me to the city and took me to a psychologist because she'd found a journal entry where I'd referenced jumping out of a window. My musing wasn't intended to suggest suicide, but I was nevertheless deemed manic-depressive and immediately prescribed Lexapro, which I took back to Daddy and refused to take. I never told my sisters why I'd missed school that day, I gave them the half-truth that I was sick. I couldn't face the terminal diagnosis: I was infected with Chaos.