October 10th, 1997 Angie was the head waiter tonight. She asked if any of us wanted to leave early and I volunteered, so it was about 8:30 PM when I walked out the back door with my apron and tie stuffed in my backpack. We put so much work into making the front of the restaurant look like this elegant, understated, classy place — but the space behind the restaurant would shatter that illusion if guests saw it. Rusty dumpsters smell like expired meat. Weird slimy fluid, mostly from decaying salad greens, trickles out from under the dumpsters across the concrete and into the storm grates. Big plastic containers hold used grease from the deep fryers and recycling bins are overfilled with empty glass wine and beer bottles. The back is the shadow of the front. You can’t provide a beautiful dining experience without also having a place to dump the offal. And the same thing is true for the staff — that servility generates a byproduct — us waiters gather in the back to complain about which guests stiffed us on tips and which guests we wanna fuck. Anyhow, I wanted to leave early because in the morning when I was at school, I saw a bunch of fliers tacked up in the college union. They showed a grainy drawing of a giant squid eating sailors. Block letters spelled out “One night only — work by hometown artist F. Mayfield — inspired by the cosmic horror of 19th century weird fiction writer Harry Ludlow. Tonight at Prehistory.” Pretty cool stuff, right? Right? Once I got around the corner of the building, I saw the downtown bus coming down the road. I ran the distance and got there at the same time the driver pulled up. I love that moment. It feels like winning a footrace. The driver grinned at me and yelled over the sound of the bus engine something like “Don’t worry brother… I’m looking out for you” and it warmed my heart. I walked back to an empty seat while the bus bumped down the road. But that good feeling didn’t last. The bus ride to Prehistory takes a while because it’s in that burned out area on the east side of downtown. While I sat in my bus seat, by myself, I remember trying to get Jake to come out with me to this. Before a shift when you’re on the schedule, you can eat at a discount. I like to get to work early and have a bowl of soup and a roll. Today when I got there, I saw Jake in the break room. I’ve known Jake since I started at the restaurant. He trained me a few nights. He and I get along. While we ate, I told him about the show tonight. I dug out the flier that I grabbed at school and showed it to him. “Doesn’t this look fascinating? When are you getting another chance to see something like this?” Jake had no idea who Harry Ludlow was and so I explained how he lived somewhere in New England like a century ago. He was one of the last survivors from some really rich family. He wanted to be a poet but he wasn’t good enough. He had better luck with his short stories. I told Jake how his stories were all pretty much about the same thing too: “Some young aristocrat one day discovers a horrible evil thing right under his nose. Like a monster that only he can see that visits him at night. And then the horrible evil thing usually kills the narrator, or drives him insane, or transforms him into a monster that then devours others.” Jake didn’t look interested. More like he was confused why I was interested in this. “The stories aren’t amazing. And he was real into racial superiority pseudoscience. But the stories — they’re just so dang bizarre, Jake. They’re like reading somebody else’s nightmares.” I went on, “he kind of invented a new genre of horror. Rather than the wolfman or the vampire that hunts us down, the monsters are within us.” “And this guy” — at this point I gestured at the flier — “is drawing pictures based on that. Pretty cool, right?” I could tell Jake wasn’t into it by how he looked at the flier then back at me and back at the flier. While I sat in my seat on the bus and this scene replayed in my head, I felt alone. I looked around the bus. It was the typical bizarre mismatched crew of bus riders. Nobody on this bus looked like they were going to the show. They looked like they were going home maybe after work. Then I realized I was still in my work clothes, and of course they were pretty dirty. Every so often during the bus ride, when the sun would go behind a building, I would see my own reflection in the window for a second or so. Every time it happened, I disliked what I saw a little more. I looked too skinny. Anxious. Not sure of myself. I hated my hair. I was going to stick out when I got there. I imagined walking into a crowded space full of happy cool people and then people would stop talking and look at me. I could hear somebody say “who is that?” and everyone would be morbidly curious about the loner weirdo that showed up. Showed up in clothes spotted with stains. Showed up smelling like french fries and old oysters. Or what if I saw somebody that I knew? They would realize how I have no friends. A voice in my head said how the people there will know how I grew up poor. They’ll see how empty I am. How I nearly ended everything a year ago. They’ll see I’m a fucking ghost. Why couldn’t anyone else come out? Why didn’t I think this through? It is hard to describe what it feels like when I’m in one of these spells. I knew my heart was racing, but I couldn’t slow it down. It almost feels like those schlocky movies when somebody’s own hand tries to strangle them. Except it’s your own mind and this is real life. One waking nightmare after another played out in my head. At some point during this ride, I was hunched over, with my eyes closed, clenching my fists, and whispering SHUT UP over and over. And then I realized what is happening, what I’m doing, how I must appear to others. I unfolded, I sat up, I looked around and checked if other people noticed me. Tonight on that bus ride I felt like that time at the bowling alley this spring, right before when Penny and I broke up. That night, we were there with her friends from out of town, and I realized she was paying more attention to that other guy instead of me. I started breathing fast. My voice shook when I talked. I could barely hold my hands still. And of course every fucking time I bowled, it went straight into the gutter, and her asshole friends thought that was hilarious. Looking back now, it was obvious that she didn’t want me anymore. The resentful part of me says she wanted to end it because I wasn’t good for her image. Another part says she and I only got together in the first place because we were stuck in the same place at the same time and we were both miserable kids in a small town, waiting to get the hell out. We were in prison and I was cheap hobo wine she drank to get through it. Now she’s in another city where she is around lots of other beautiful cool people. I don’t fit in that world. I centered my universe around Penny. But I wasn’t the same thing to her. I sure mattered to her a few years ago. I should be glad that now, she’s not the same hopelessly sad girl she was back then. But I loved those nights we used to spend driving around and listening to our favorite songs. I think those were real moments. I can’t accept that she was killing time with me. I get it. People grow apart. But I still miss her. When I get really down, like tonight on that bus, I think about how P was way, way outta my league. I will never ever be with anyone like her again. It was a fluke, an aberration, that somebody like me got a moment of her attention. Gawd, that Saturday night at the bowling alley sucked. We left early that night and Penny was angry at me for acting so weird. She left the next morning and she told me on the phone that night how it was just too hard to be with me but living so far apart. Tonight I stared out the bus window and watched the city landscape change from my neighborhood, which is mostly nice little houses, antique shops, cafes, and restaurants, to the raunchier / seedier gay neighborhood, studded with leather bars and adult book stores, then to the empty night time downtown district, and then under the raised freeway bridge, and then past the empty train yards and boarded-up warehouses. The east side makes me think about the forgotten commercial ruins of a dead ancient empire. Gloomy. It matched my despair. But then I remembered another reflection I saw tonight. It was at work at the restaurant, when I was on the patio. It was during a conversation I had with a diner in my section. He was out for dinner all by himself on a Saturday night, but he was totally at ease the whole time. He ordered enough food for three people and he was so relaxed and happy that it was infectious. Right after I laughed at something he said, I saw myself in the big glass windows that separate the patio from the main dining room. That reflection was a nice image. I didn’t hate how I looked in the reflection, at that moment, at least. I asked him if tonight was a special occasion. He told me tomorrow morning he gets on a plane to some part of rural Africa and it will be a very long time before he would be anywhere like our restaurant. When I refilled his water I saw how he ate all the capers off the fish right away. Later I brought him a ramekin with extra capers. I put them on the table and we talked for a few more minutes. It was a slow night and at that moment I didn’t have any other tables. He said he was a soil scientist and was going there to work on reforestation. I guess modern agriculture has turned the land into deserts. He said how people there have been farming for at least twenty centuries with no problems. Then aid workers came in and taught the farmers to grow for global export, and now after just a few decades, the land is a dust bowl. He made air quotes when he said “modern” and “taught.” Then he leaned forward and asked if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, he would love a few more capers. I realized how he hadn’t noticed me slide the little ceramic bowl on the table, so I pointed them out. He saw them and it was like watching somebody win the lottery. In general, I don’t love being a waiter. Sure, it pays better than anything else I can do, and it opened my eyes to the artistry in food and wine, and I love cooking on my own now. I’m grateful for that part. But it drains my soul to get dressed up, night after night, in my starched shirt and tie, and smile and nod my head and fake my joy while I serve these aging brats as they get drunk and plow through dinner. We place masterful artwork in front of them, and mostly, they don’t appreciate it. We have dead serious, expert chefs in the kitchen, working with the best ingredients money can buy. But the diners for the most part barely notice it. Sometimes I watch them while they eat. They focus on each other. They look around, assessing their rank versus other diners. Who laughs the loudest? Who is the best dressed? They drop almost as much money in one night as what I need for a month’s rent. But tonight was all right. It felt really good to make sure that Mr. Africa capers had a nice dinner. And somehow, his enthusiasm rubbed off on me, and it gave me the whimsy to run and catch the bus tonight. And if I hadn’t left early and then jumped on this bus, I would have done what I always do — finish my shift, do my sidework, settle up, clock out, buy two cigarettes off Jake, and then walk home. (I buy singles off Jake because I don’t want to start buying whole packs again. Somehow I don’t feel like a smoker if I just have one or two.) Sure, walkin home while smoking feels pretty nice, but after I get home, and lock the door, it gets lonely real fast. It’s usually past midnight, but I’m too wound up to sleep. I check my voicemail. Then I play records, I study for school, I do push ups, I read, I watch the guppies in my fish tank, I write in this notebook. I check that the phone is plugged in. It isn’t fun. It’s fucking bleak. So, as I see it, my only choices tonight were A: jump on this bus, or B: stay in and wait for the phone to ring, and hope it’s Penny and maybe she’s had too much to drink and she feels alone and wants to know that somebody still thinks about her. That’s what happened two weeks ago. We stayed up all night talking. I felt so good at the end of the phone call. I went to sleep easily. And when I woke up the next morning, I felt so peaceful. Everything was how it should be. But then over the next few days, I didn’t hear anything from her. She didn’t call me back after I left messages. I still feel like trash. Psychic hangover. The bus reached my stop. A voice in my head shouted I should just stay on the bus until it looped back around and I could ride it back home. But I kept reminding myself of Africa capers… he was so relaxed! Why couldn’t I be like that? So I got off the bus. It’s a free country. I go where I want. Acute panic disorder or not. I walked across the street and then along the broken trash-strewn sidewalk. The air was a little colder now and the sun was down. The building had layers and layers of pasted-up advertisements, going back for years, maybe decades. Beer and liquor ads, posters for obsolete blockbuster movies, sports events, fashion lines, car ads, invitations to spiritual revivals. They all promise happiness somehow. They all just want people’s money. Sometimes one layer peeled off in parts, showing the ads underneath. In one funny combination, an enormous bag of fat-free pretzels floated over the head of a preacher with both his hands raised up in fervent prayer. By the time I opened the door and went inside, I didn’t feel so bad. I could walk right back out if I had to. Maybe even catch the same bus when it loops back. Prehistory used to be a hardcore club and then it was closed for a long time. I never went there when it was a punk place. But now, for whatever reason, I’ve been here several times. After you open the door and go into Prehistory, you’re in a big room with cinder block walls and a concrete floor. There’s a bar against one wall and stairs going up to the second floor balcony. Thrift store couches and easy chairs and coffee tables and shabby rugs are scattered around. They keep the lights mostly on and the music is quiet enough to chat. What they play for music is really far out there: the night I was here with Angie, there was a guy on stage playing sounds made from NASA telescope recordings and his own homemade drum machine loops. When Penny was in town, the weekend before we broke up, I brought her here on Friday night after I finished work. I thought she was gonna be impressed that I found this place. But she wasn’t impressed. She looked around and said this place went too far, past the ironic, into the realm of the bizarre, and that’s why I loved it and she didn’t. She said this wasn’t a diamond in the rough. It was all rough and no diamond. The next night, when we were out at the bowling alley with her friends, she told them how the place looked like a dingy waiting room in a Russian psychiatric hospital. And I realized she meant it in a mean-spirited way. Where Penny lives now, in MacArthur, there are no places like this. And nobody would go if there were. Everyone in Mac is too trendy and gorgeous and rich. But here, there’s a fat old guy sitting at the bar, eating who knows what out of a paper bag, while reading a paperback, and he looks like he might live in his truck. This was exactly the kind of place where nobody would notice if I still had on waiter clothes stained with wine and cheese sauce. In Mac, no matter who you are, there are a hundred other people that do whatever you do, but better. Everyone you meet is writing screenplays or dissertations or doing activism or negotiating record deals. You don’t make friends there — when you meet somebody, they scan you and then calculate where you fit in the social hierarchy. If you outrank them, they become sycophants. I never outrank anyone so I become invisible. I never met anybody in MacArthur that was just trying to scrape together rent and not kill themselves. Here though, standing in the middle of the room and looking around for where the Ludlow paintings might be, I felt a little like I was among people kinda like me. Not social climbers. Scavengers. I bought a coffee and the guy behind the bar said the paintings were on the balcony. The balcony is a cool spot. You walk up two flights of old rickety wood stairs and then you’re in a dark loft. Or maybe it’s a balcony. From up here, big dirty windows let you see the vacant parking lots and boarded up buildings nearby, and further away, the lights from downtown. The two elements in the view from those windows — a burned out and blighted section of town nearby, and the gleaming steel and glass skyscrapers a mile away — show two different cities, with two different kinds of people, somehow occupying the same physical space. The haves and the have-nots. The diners at my restaurant and the souls that sleep in their cars. I looked around and saw cheap metal easels holding a few paintings. Smaller illustrations were taped on the walls. I noticed somebody sitting behind a folding table behind plastic tubs of drawings. I guessed he was the artist. In the first painting I looked at, I recognized the story it was based on immediately. A guy travels to this dying seaside town to research his great grandfather and discovers his ancestors practiced a secret religion. And another painting showed a scene from the same story where the narrator spies on a beachside blood sacrifice. A curvy woman is tied up to a wooden post on a pier and cultists are all lined along the beach, watching the sacrifice. These two were pretty much illustrations… like what I might find in a Ludlow anthology at the start of each story. In other words, there was nothing unconventional. He drew what the text described. I didn’t recognize the scene that was in the third painting. While the other ones were just pen and black ink line drawings, and only about 18 inches across, this was huge. It was maybe six feet across and four feet wide. The artist had started with a photograph, enlarged it, and then painted on top. The smeared paint across parts almost looked like vandalism. I recognized the photo; it was taken after a lynching in the 1930s. Just the photo itself is really disturbing — white youth smile and casually chat almost as if they’re at a party, while two murdered black men hang from a tree over them. On top of the photo there were big green smears of paint across the sky, and red splatters all over, almost randomly. That was what I noticed first. But under that, what looked like wrathful graffiti, the artist did something powerful and clever by subtly altering the photo. Above the tree line, in really muted colors, almost too faint to notice because it was nearly the same color as the night, I noticed a vague outline of a hideous gigantic beast hovering over the crowd, above the tree line. Pale translucent tentacles, like the stingers on a Portuguese man o’ war, reached down into the people below. The green paint and red splatters on top looked like it was applied quickly and angrily, but altering the photo to splice in this giant translucent ancient evil ghost in the sky — this picture was so subtle, and so detailed. I imagine it required patience and focus. And mixed in with the people, he had spliced in butchers wearing bloodstained aprons, holding cleavers, and the ground was littered with dismembered body parts. And then I saw how some people’s clothes and faces had been altered to look like alien monsters. The more I studied the painting, the more detail I noticed, and the more I loved it. I looked at the price. Way out of my league! Between looking at the art and sipping this mediocre coffee out of a styrofoam cup, I studied the guy behind the table. I was pretty dang curious. He didn’t match what I had expected. He was black, first of all. I imagined that the artist would look like Harry Ludlow the author and Harry Ludlow was a sickly aristocrat that rarely left his house. This guy looked tough. He looked more like a carpenter than some anemic old money snob. The fact that this artist was black jumped out at me. It doesn’t take a literary critic to see how Ludlow’s stories about swarms of monsters were really about eastern European slavic immigrants changing the culture of New England. And Ludlow wrote hateful racist stuff in his personal letters. I walked up to his table. He barely looked up at me. I asked him “Is this your work?” and he kind of shrugged. He had a cardboard box with prints mounted on cardboard and the sign said they were $20 each. I could afford that. I started going through them. I wanted to talk to this guy. Heck — he drew pictures of sea monsters for a living — in any other context, we would be best friends! After I flipped through a dozen prints, I held up one. I asked if this was the story about the stage magician that gets kidnapped by the people that think he can do actual magic, and they want him to resurrect their mummified Pharaoh. I said I always liked that story. No reply. I paid him for the print, and then I asked if he wouldn’t mind signing the back. I said, “So you’re F. Mayfield?” He nodded. “All this stuff is really good; but that one” — I pointed to the one that I was so hung up on — “that one is amazing.” I wanted to talk about that painting but I didn’t know how to make that happen. An awkward silence began. He asked me how the coffee was. I said it was pretty good… maybe not quite as good as a church basement AA meeting, but still not bad. He smiled and I felt kinda proud that I pulled that out of nowhere. I wondered though… should I tell him how I quit drinking? Does he already know? Is it weird to drink coffee at a bar or do normal people drink coffee in bars? In other words, me drinking coffee right now… does it telegraph how I’m a mess and trying to get my life together? The dizziness started and then F’s voice interrupted it. “I’m getting a coffee. You want another? I got free stuff cuz of this show.” “And F is the name I use for art. I’m Freddie.” I followed Freddie downstairs. We went to the bar and he ordered two coffees. I felt cool hanging out with this artist and getting a free drink. Then on our way out, I walked right into Freddie because I was looking backwards at an absolutely gorgeous woman at the bar. Luckily didn’t spill the coffee. He smirked at me and shook his head. We walked outside, out onto the sidewalk in front of the bar, and I watched Freddie fish cigarettes from his jacket. It was now completely dark and much colder outside. I shivered. Then I remembered I might have my sweater deep in my backpack. I dug around in my backpack and lucky for me I still had my sweater; the brown pullover. After I put it on, I wondered why I didn’t wear this earlier, when I was so dang nervous about sticking out. I asked him how long he has been drawing. Freddie explained how when he was a teenager, he made his own comic and tried selling it at this one comics shop. The comic shop owner liked how Freddie had also drawn scenes from a Ludlow short story anthology. The owner encouraged him put his pictures up on the wall with a price tag. He sold more of the Ludlow illustrations than he did of the comic. Then I thought about that one big expensive painting. I said something like “what I don’t get — how the hell are you not famous?” I said how that painting upstairs was brilliant. He was doing something really new. He smiled at that. More quiet and then I said to Freddie how there was something on the wall that he might like and I pointed to where I saw the pretzel preacher ad mashup on the wall. He walked down with me and I showed him the weird accidental collage. I gestured at the spot, and Freddie looked at it for a minute and then laughed out loud. “That’s great! This is amazing!” I was gleeful. “Right? I saw it when I walked in tonight.” We went back inside and back upstairs. While we walked back, I felt like I was floating. Like the exact opposite of how unhappy I was, earlier on the bus. We leaned on the balcony rail and watched the people at the bar. From up there, I kept watching that woman downstairs. She didn’t match the crowd here whatsoever. She looked more like the women that go to my restaurant than the people that come here after putting together ironic outfits from used clothes. I don’t know shit about women’s fashion but I know what brands correlate with big spenders and she dressed like a very big spender. I watched her finish one drink and order another. She acted like nobody else was here. Like she was here all alone. She didn’t glance around as people came in. We were all ghosts. There was something in her face, in that weird stare, her lack of movement. Lost in her thoughts, except when she realized her glass was empty, when she became aware of the room again. I asked Freddie where the idea came from. Like where did he get this idea of taking Harry Ludlow monsters and remixing them. Freddie told me how he escaped from the stress of growing up through obsessive reading. A librarian said he might like Ludlow stories and he got hooked. It was after he became a fan, and after he was selling his illustrations at the comic book store, when he discovered how Ludlow was a white supremacist. He explained how the experience was bewildering. He found a book of Ludlow’s letters to his friends and that’s when he realized how Ludlow would not have been happy this kid was drawing his own versions of Ludlow’s stories. He said something like he didn’t fit in at home or in his neighborhood, so he escaped into reading. And he loved reading, but he found out he wasn’t welcome there either. He said he felt hurt, heartbroken even, when he read letters between Ludlow and other writers and he read his own hero say such awful things. Just listening to him talk about it, tonight, I felt angry. He said he realized that his affection remained despite this slap in the face. He said something like, “I was hooked on him, even though I knew it was bad for me.” He sighed and said, “I loved something that didn’t love me back. I stopped drawing after that.” Freddie said he joined the Navy and In southeast Asia, he toured some old temples and then Freddie realized these were the ruins of the pagan temples that Ludlow only read about. Freddie said that night he started drawing again. Thats when he decided to reverse the heroes and the monsters. Now, colonizers would be the cultists worshipping the evil gods. We stood quietly for a few minutes. I was grateful for the coffee because it gave me something to concentrate on. Then Freddie pointed to somebody that just walked in. Right away, I felt like I knew him, or at least recognized him. Older, long, stringy gray hair, holding court with several admirers orbiting him. You could tell he was a big shot. He had an invisible aura that you could detect. Watching from up on the balcony, I saw other people in the room seemed to notice him. He magnetized the room somehow. I watched heads turn and strangers drifted toward him. At one point everyone near him laughed out loud. Except for the woman. She was a few stools down but also very far away. She was ignoring him. And I could tell he hated it. He said something to her and she ignored him. Then he said it again louder, and still no reply. Then he grabbed her around the waist and pulled her close to him. We couldn’t hear what he was saying, but she looked uncomfortable and he looked like he was enjoying himself. Almost maybe because she was so upset. But I know I sometimes imagine motivations that aren’t actually there. The next part happened so fast I barely followed, but it looked like she struggled to twist out of his arms. And he gripped her tight. Then she either pushed against his face or slapped him. Then he smacked her in the mouth. Everyone started screaming and pushing away. Next somehow she tripped him, they both fell to the floor, but she landed on top and started punching his face in. The guy from behind the bar pulled her off by grabbing around her waist. She looked tiny in his arms. She ran out the door while he helped up the guy. His nose was gushing blood. I turned to look at Freddie. He was holding his hands on top of his head and looked as stunned as I was. I checked my watch and the last bus was coming any minute. I wanted to stay and figure out what the hell just happened. And also keep talking with Freddie. This whole night was so fuckin vivid. But I hate waiting for the bus late at night. It is absolutely no fun when cars pull up to the bus stop and I have to explain that I’m not playing hard to get — I’m just not a prostitute. So I told Freddie how Ludlow is gonna be a footnote in F Mayfield’s story and then I ran outside and for the second time in a row, just barely made it to the stop in time.


Christine twiddled her thumbs as she stared at her computer screen. The page she was trying to access was still loading. She had been attempting to buy some material for her job for the last 30 minutes, but the internet wasn't running as quickly as it usually was. The dentist she worked for approached her. “Have you been able to order the material I requested?” Her hands flew into the air in frustration. “I've been trying!” she said louder than she had intended. “The internet isn't working and the typical sites I go to don't seem to be online. I'm sorry, but I have to do this tomorrow!” “Whoa!” Dr. Hansen said defensively. “I was just curious. When was the last time you had some time off?” he asked. “I don't know,” she replied shortly. “Well, I'm ordering that you take some time off. I'll have Hector deal with this tomorrow. You go home, get some rest, and do something fun.” “I don't have time for a vacation...” Christine started to say. “Go!” Dr. Hansen interrupted. Christine exhaled sharply. “Okay,” she finally surrendered. “I'll see you next week.” Dr. Hansen wasn't wrong. It had been years since she had taken time off work. She needed a break. She needed to do something fun. As she walked to her car, something in the parking lot caught her eye. She squinted her eyes, trying to make sense of a shiny object. She walked towards it, and saw that it was a rock; it sparkled blue in the sunlight. She had never seen anything quite like it before. Fascinated by it, she took it home and put it on her dresser as a decoration. She stared at it for a moment, mesmerized. Shrugging, she went into her living room where her boyfriend was sitting his lazy boy rocking chair. “Any luck finding a job today?” she asked crossly. “Huh?” he asked as he pried his eyes from the TV. “Uh... no, not today.” he shoved some pop corn into his mouth. “You know we're behind on rent,” she said angrily. “The least you could do is at least try to find a job.” “Yeah, I will,” he responded without looking at her. “That's it,” she said, exasperated. “I'm going to take a nap, and when I wake up, you had better be on that computer looking for a job!” “Okay, okay!” he said. “You don't have to get so angry.” Gritting her teeth, she slammed her bedroom door behind her. Her boyfriend was just a moocher. She honestly didn't know why she stayed with him. Burying her feelings, she climbed into her bed and closed her eyes. All she needed was some quiet alone time. As she attempted to fall asleep, she was interrupted by what seemed like a flash light blaring into her face. “Tony, I swear if that's you, I'm going to kill you!” she said angrily as she sat up. To her surprise, she was alone; just her and her glowing rock. She stared in shock and wonder. What was this rock? She wondered. Was it magic? She got out of bed and walked towards it slowly. She reached a hand out, seemingly unable to control herself. She touched it, and there was a brighter light that consumed her. She shielded her face and in an instant, it was gone. She looked around, confused. She felt grass beneath her feet. Looking around some more, she noticed brightly colored plants surrounding her. She stared in awe. What was this place? Had this mysterious rock taken her to some sort of fairy-tale land? She looked towards what appeared to be a brightly lit night sky. There was blue light emanating from two moons. “Hello?” she called out. “Where am I?” obviously, no one answered. Finding a trail to her right, she followed it. The trail consisted of dark red dirt and it was lined with bright blue plants. Ahead, she saw a town that was lit up with what appeared to be glowing plants. She gasped; it was the prettiest thing she had ever seen in her entire life. She entered the town and found a strange looking animal taking a nap in some sort of nest. “Hi there little guy,” she said as she petted its head. “Hey!” the animal said, causing Christine to jump with surprise. “What do you think you're doing? How would you like it if someone came up to you and started to pet your head?!” “I...I'm sorry...I had no idea,” she stuttered. “Aw, new around her, 'aye?” the creature asked her. “Well, you wouldn't be the first.” “How did I get here?” she asked. “Last thing I remember is being in my bedroom with a...” “...glowing rock?” the creature finished. “Yes.” She eyed the creature, unsure of how he knew that. “That rock senses when someone needs an adventure, or maybe a fresh start. It brings you here, and you have to decide if you want to stay or go back home.” “Isn't that choice obvious?” Christine asked. “Go home, of course.” “Is there anything worth going back home to?” Christine pondered on that question. He was right. She was behind on rent, with a mooching boyfriend who never showed any affection towards her and her parents were long since deceased. And her being an only child, had no siblings to go home to. What was there at home for her? “Being here, you can live out the remainder of your life in peace,” the creature explained. “There are other people who live here as well, but they are few and far apart, so you don't have to associate with them if you don't want to.” “Is this a dream come true?” she asked in astonishment. “For some, yes. Others prefer the comfort and familiarity of home. Which one are you?” She knew exactly which one she was; and that was exactly what her choice was going to be. If it was you, what would you choose?


“Thank you for choosing to participate in our study, Mr. Frangere.” Her voice was familiar. She must have been the one that called me earlier in the week. She’d called asking if I wanted to be in some study, a pharmaceutical drug test. The pay was good; $250 per day for two days minimum of testing. I wouldn’t have to stay overnight, and I’d get breakfast, lunch, and dinner for free. I really didn’t need the money, but why not? I have the time to spare. “It's not a problem. So what will we be testing?” She ignored the question and peered at her clipboard from behind the desk. She was wearing a completely white outfit; dress, stockings, heels, and a lab coat to complete it. After she finished shuffling through the papers, she held out the clipboard and a pen. “I need you to fill out these forms, and then we can get started.” I took her offering, and proceeded to sign my life away. The forms consisted of basic information; a medical history form, a liability form, and several pages about the test, which I was told to read and sign. They didn't tell me much about what was going to happen or what I would be taking, just about all of the possible dangers and side effects that could occur from the medication. I skimmed through those without giving it a second thought. “All done, Miss... what was your name?” She took the clipboard and checked to make sure I’d completed it correctly. “If you could just follow me Mr. Frangere, we can get started.” The building that I entered wasn't what one would have expected to house a drug testing facility. From the outside, anyone would assume that the building was just a warehouse, and that would be the end of it. However, inside the building was much different. The room I was in wasn't that big, and was completely white. From the floor to the ceiling tiles, the walls to the doors, even the furniture, everything was white. I felt as though I could have been in the early stages of a horror movie, but I shook the feeling. The only color that I could see around me, besides my own clothing, were several small plants that had been strategically placed around the room in an attempt to negate the lifeless feeling. When I entered the main door into the lobby, I was greeted by an admission desk, which was where the woman was seated . On the wall behind the desk there were two doors, one on each side, along with a door on each wall to the left and right of where I stood. They weren't marked in any way which made the building feel like a maze. The people that work here must know where each door leads, because the woman suddenly stood and proceeded to the one that was to the left of her. I began to follow, as per her request. As we passed through the door, we entered what appeared to be a very long hallway, which continued the color scheme from the previous room. This hallway also included many unmarked doors, and more long hallways, enhancing the maze-like feeling. *How could anyone stand to work in a place like this?* I thought to myself as I followed her down several different corridors until finally we stopped in front of a specific, unmarked door. I tried to remember how to get back to the lobby, but lost track after the third or fourth turn. “Here we are Mr. Frangere, this will be your room for the next fifteen hours. Inside, you will find a set of clothes we would like you to wear, a lavatory, and breakfast. Please put all jewelry and belongings in your pockets now, and enjoy your meal. Someone will return to you shortly.” She sounded like a machine at this point, reciting pre-programmed lines quickly and poignantly. She opened the door, and I proceeded into the room, hearing the door close behind me. She was suddenly gone, and I was alone, in my entirely white room which I would remain in for the next fifteen hours. The room wasn't very big. It consisted of a desk and chair, a bed, and a door which led to the bathroom. I changed quickly and ate my breakfast, which was an enjoyable meal of eggs, bacon, ham, sausage, orange juice, and black coffee. However, while I ate, I noticed several cameras which I assumed were supposed to be hidden, but they didn't do a very good job at that. After twenty minutes passed, I heard a knock at the door. It then opened, and a different woman entered my room. She didn't say a word, but she grabbed my personal belongings and meal tray. “Excuse me, when will...” She also ignored me, and was gone before I could finish my question. *What the hell did I sign myself up for?* *This had better be worth it.* Another ten minutes passed before I was graced by a third person. This one had a tray in their hands which carried a small condiment cup and a clear, plastic cup filled with water. He placed the tray on the desk before speaking. “How was your meal, Mr. Frangere? Are you nice and full? Ready to begin testing?” This one seemed a little more friendly than the other two. “I suppose I'm as ready as I'll ever be.” “Great.” He slid the tray over to me. “In front of you, you will see a small, white pill with the numbers '3702' engraved into it.” *Of course it's white, what else is new?* “You will also see a cup of water, which you can use to assist in the ingestion of the pill. You are required to finish the contents of the cup.” The man's friendliness disappeared, and the mechanical personality was in charge. “After you take the pill, we do ask that you lay down in your bed until you hear this tone.” Suddenly, a ringing sound pierced through the room. *What the? Where did that come from?* I hadn't seen any speakers in the room, so the sound completely took me by surprise. “After you hear the tone, you are free to do whatever you choose within the room. You may leave in fifteen hours, which will make the time 12:00 a.m.” With that, the man was out the door. *So take the pill and lay down. That seems easy enough.* I took the small pill in one hand, and the cup of water in the other, and did what I was told. The pill must have had a powder-coating over it, because I had a foul taste in my mouth after I took it. I stood from the chair and used the bathroom before I laid in my bed. I wasn't sure how long it was going to take before that ringing sound played again, so I figured I'd take advantage of the chance I had. Afterward, I got in to the bed that was provided for me which wasn't nearly as comfortable as it looked. It felt as if the entire bed had been chiseled out of stone, pillow and all. I got myself as comfortable as I could, and stared at the ceiling. *Well, I guess I could close my eyes while I wait for, whatever this is, to kick in. Hopefully this will be quick.* Everything around me went dark as my eyelids closed. What felt like minutes passed, and I was shocked by the sound of the tone. *Already? I'm not feeling anything yet. Is it over?* However, something was different. The walls of the room no longer looked white, but almost a light pink color. *That's probably just from closing my eyes. They said I could do anything, so I guess I’ll sleep until they bring me lunch.* I closed my eyes again, and submersed into a deep sleep. *Adrian. Adrian, you need to wake up.* I was abruptly awakened by someone saying my name, but I didn't open my eyes right away. “Is it lunch time already? I could go for a good burger.” There was nothing but silence. *Adrian, you need to get out of here.* The voice sounded familiar, but I couldn't figure out whose it was. I finally sat up and opened my eyes, only to be startled at what I saw. The walls, which were originally white, then looked pink, were a dark shade of purple, and had a translucent liquid running down them which was glowing a baby blue color. The floor had turned a tint of red, similar to roses just after they had bloomed, and each door in the room was radiating neon green, with the color fading lighter and darker. “What the fuck dude,” I laid back down, trying to collect my thoughts. But what I saw on the ceiling is what put me over the edge. It looked like someone had painted a universe on it, however, this was much more than a painting. The swirling mass of clouds and stars were spinning, the universe was alive, and I was moving closer to it. My body wasn't physically moving as far as I could tell, but I was approaching the center of the large mass, and I was doing it quickly. Stars began to fly around me, glowing specks disappearing and reappearing everywhere that I looked, and for a second I could swear that I felt some type of wind on me. It was then that I decided this test was over. “I'm going to the bathroom, puking up this pill you gave me, and going home.” I yelled this loud enough so if there weren’t microphones in the room, someone outside of the door could hear me. I had a hard time standing, but finally managed after becoming acclimated to the rosy red-colored floor. My movement wasn't how it normally was, I had a hard time lifting my legs, and I couldn't stand up straight. I couldn't tell if I felt hot or cold, but half of my body had goosebumps and the other half didn't. I shuffled to the bathroom door but I didn’t want to touch it. The glowing green was completely unnatural, but I had to get rid of this pill. I managed to turn the knob and get the door open. As I walked through the door, everything went black again. *Adrian. You need to get the fuck out of here, Adrian.* I awakened yet again, to find myself still laying in bed where I had been after I took the pill. I hastily sat up and peered around the room. Everything looked exactly as it was when I laid down; white, and entirely blank. “Shit, it was just a dream. What kind of drug did they give me?” As I looked around, I noticed someone had entered my room while I was asleep, because there was another tray atop my desk. It was my lunch, and it consisted of a cheeseburger, a large amount of french fries, and a chocolate milkshake to wash it down. “Wow, this place delivers.” I threw my legs off the bed and stood up, giving myself a sudden head rush. The room began to darken, and I could see the familiar little stars floating around that always visit me when I stand too quickly. *Adrian, why haven't you left yet? You need to leave, Adrian.* There was that voice again. I keep hearing it, but I have no clue where it's coming from. I looked around to make sure I was alone in the room, and sat down at the desk. “Whoever keeps talking to me, you need to cut it out. You're really starting to piss me off. Unless that's the point of the test, then you're doing a fantastic job at it!” I waited for a response, but I heard nothing. I was becoming agitated, and turned back towards the tray filled with food. My perspective changed yet again. The burger on my tray was still a burger, but it also had eyes, and a mouth slowly began to appear on it. The french fries began to melt, and the milkshake was boiling over its glass. “What are you still doing here, Adrian?” The burger started talking to me. *Why is this burger talking to me? What’s happening to me?* I wasn't sure what to make of it, and I felt trapped and scared in this small room, so I did the only thing I could do. “What are you talking about? You're a burger, how can you talk?” “You need to leave. This place will kill you dead, Adrian.” I started getting worried at this point, not specifically at the fact that a burger just told me I was going to die, but the fact that the burger said anything at all. “What do you mean this place will kill me? And how are you talking?” *You need to listen to the burger, Adrian.* The voice was much louder now, as if the person who owned it was directly behind me. I jumped out of my chair and spun around, only to find that I was still alone in the room. I turned back to my plate, but the food that was there looked as it normally would. The burger no longer had eyes, and the fries and milkshake looked as edible as they did when I first saw them. I decided not to eat my food, partially because I felt guilty eating something that was talking to me a moment ago, and told me I was going to die. I walked towards the bathroom instead to rinse my face with some water, hoping to shake whatever it was that I was feeling. The drug must have kicked in at this point, because there was no way this feeling was natural. *You're going to miss your chance, Adrian.* I opened the lavatory bathroom, only to find that it was no longer a lavatory. Instead, a long corridor stretched out in front of me. This corridor wasn't like the other hallways I had seen though. The walls were a very dark gray, and every ten feet a candlestick could be found hanging on the wall on both sides. I could only see within the first fifty feet though, after that it was completely dark. I closed the door and reopened it, but the hallway remained unchanged. “I think it's time for me to leave.” I turned toward the door that lead out of the room, and rushed over to it. When I opened it, the familiar hallway I had seen before entering the room gave me a good feeling. *You're too late, Adrian.* Before I had the chance to step out of the doorway, the hall melted right before my eyes. The walls, the other doors, the ceiling, all looked like they were dripping blood, as if they were alive. *There's only one way to go now.* I looked to where the lavatory should have been, down the dark corridor, and back to the melting one. Before I could realize what I was doing, I went in to a full sprint down the gloomy hallway into the black. However, every time I would get close to the shadows, more candles on the wall would suddenly light up. I continued to run, and checked behind to see if I could see back to my room. There was nothing but darkness. *You need to run faster Adrian, or they're going to get you.* I still wasn't sure where the voice was coming from, but it somehow knew more than I did. “Who's going to get me?” I screamed as I continued running in to the abyss. “What do they want with me?” *They're going to kill you, and no one will ever know.* “Who is? Who's going to kill me? Answer me, damnit!” *They're going to kill you.* Without warning, I was encased in a giant light. I was no longer standing in the hallway, and I came to a complete stop. I was surrounded by shadows, but for some reason I felt comfort standing in the light. I knew in here, the shadows couldn't get me, but they were still trying. I could feel them moving around me. *It's too late. Only you could have saved yourself, Adrian.* The voice rang incredibly loud, to point where I had to put my hands over my ears. As I did, I could feel something warm running through my fingers and down my arms. I pulled my hands away from the sides of my head and put them in front of me. They appeared to be covered in blood, and I could feel the same warmth begin to drip down my face. “What's happening to me? Why is this happening to me?!” *You never should have came here, Adrian. You never should have came.* “Tell me what's happening! Tell me who you are! Why is this happening?” I couldn't help but be scared now. I don't think anyone would have been able to hold their composure while this was happening. I was invited here as part of a study, was told I was being paid for it, and all I had to do was take an experimental pharmaceutical drug. No one said anything about anyone dying while they were here, so why suddenly me? The light started to close itself around me, my cage shrinking smaller by the second. “Please don't kill me, I didn't do anything. I'll give you whatever you want, just don't kill me!” Tears started to fuse with the blood that was still running down my face. I couldn't figure out exactly where the blood was coming from. There weren't any cuts on my face or head, but I continued to bleed. Another spotlight lit up the floor about ten feet in front of me, hoarding off the shadows just as my beam of light was doing. I waited to see if someone would appear in the light, but no one did. After what seemed like hours, a figure began to shine. The light reflected off of their skin, so I couldn't tell who it was at first. As my eyes began to refocus, I noticed something oddly familiar about this person. They were wearing the same clothes I was wearing when I first arrived to the mysterious warehouse, and they fit them perfectly. They were also the same height, and their hair was the exact same length as mine. *Hello, Adrian.* The voice was finally recognizable. It was my own. The person that was standing ten feet away from me, was myself. But how could I be in two places at once? Was the figure I was staring at the exact same person as me? “Who are you? Why do you look like me? What the fuck is going on here?” *You don't know who I am, Adrian?* I was no longer just crying or weeping, at this point I was sobbing. I couldn't control myself any longer. I was terrified, alone, and I had no clue what was going on. And according to the doppelganger I'm standing face-to-face with, someone, or something, is trying to kill me. “If I knew who you were, do you really think I'd be asking you?” *You do know who I am, Adrian.* “Stop avoiding my questions and give me answers!” I was becoming furious, and my worries of what would happen to me began to dissipate. *I've been with you throughout your entire life, Adrian. I've been there to tell you the difference between what's right and what's wrong.* A million thoughts were racing through my head after I heard that statement. I was recollecting all of the people I had met in my life, thinking that the drug I had taken had put me in a deep sleep and I was personifying someone I knew through the image of myself. *You're not sleeping, Adrian.* I was snapped out of my thoughts and brought back to the moment. “Well you have to be in my head, or you wouldn't have known what I was thinking. None of this must be real.” I started to walk out of the light barrier surrounding me, but an unexpected force stopped me. *I can't let you do that, Adrian.* “Then answer my questions. What's in the shadow?” *The shadow is what you make of it. It could be anything you want it to be, even your fears.* That’s when it hit me. No matter who I was thinking of, no one that ever entered into my life knew of my fear of the dark. That was a secret I was prepared to take to my grave. “You must be some part of me.” *That is true.* “Were you the one that was talking to me the entire time?” *Yes, I was.* “You were trying to help me escape before any of this ever happened. Except for one problem, it wasn't until after I had taken the drug that I began to hear you.” *You could always hear me, Adrian. However, you were not aware of the apparent danger that laid ahead of you due to your choices. Tell me who I am, and I will answer your questions.* I remembered everything that I had done that day, and sequenced my thoughts in order. I played the entire day over in my head at least two or three times, every conversation I had, and everything I had told myself. That was it. Everything I told myself. Or everything myself was trying to tell me. That was the point where it all made sense. “You're my self-conscience.” Both lights suddenly vanished. I shut my eyes and prepared myself for what was going to attack me from the shadows, but I felt nothing. The warmth that was rushing down my face and my arms had ceased. I stopped crying, and I no longer felt afraid. *Open your eyes, Adrian.* We were both back in my room. We must have teleported or something, because there is no way we could have gotten back to the room after the distance it felt like I had ran. Everything appeared to be as I had left it, except for two components. The reason why I could tell this was my room, was because the food was still left on the desk. However, there was now a clipboard sitting adjacent to the tray. Also, there was a body in my bed. At some point while I was asleep in my drug-induced haze, they must have switched me to another room and put another subject in here. *You need to look at the person in the bed.* “Don't you think that's a little creepy? You are my conscience, you know.” Something didn't feel right about this situation though, so I took his, or my, advice and walked to the bed. As I did, my look-alike walked to the desk and grabbed the clipboard before joining my side. As I looked down, I had this feeling that I should have been upset, crying, screaming. But I felt nothing. I felt nothing but solitude. I wasn't happy or sad, angry or passive, I felt nothing. I stared down upon the person that inhabited my bed, and I was content. My conscience handed me the clipboard, and I read the contents of it out loud. “Theodore Frangere, male. Height, 5 foot 10 inches. Weight, 165 pounds. Test subject number 205, experimental group A. Time of death... 10:00 a.m.” My eyes switched from the clipboard to my pale, lifeless face. I had accepted the invitation to participate in this study just for some extra cash. I didn't need it, and I had no reason to be here. But I chose to do it, and I paid the consequences for doing so. “So what do I do now?” We looked at each other for what seemed like a lifetime. I was still having trouble getting past the fact that I kept thinking I was looking in a mirror, and I shouldn't be expecting an answer. *You can do as you desire. You are no longer attached to this world. You are finally free.


NORTHBOUND By Jer Long/mrmarch1@live.com “Hey!” I bellowed. The exasperated man on the step behind shoved me aside as he shot off the escalator, jolting me. My nose inches from the polished granite floor of 30 th Street Station, someone grabbed my arm and set me right on my feet. “Are you okay?” The tall god with scintillating silver eyes adjusted my disheveled coat. “You sat across from me.” “Come,” he said and guided me away from the crowd of petulant pedestrians. From nearly every track, a steady flow of frustrated travelers filed into the taxi queues of the station.  “Seems ours wasn’t the only snowbound train on the tracks.” “Rushing to stand still, after hours on Amtrack, seems a futile act in the wee hours of the morning.” His smile was wide and his shoulders broad and I, a hair shorter than the epaulets on his tweed jacket, felt small and insignificant standing before such handsomeness. “Where are you headed?” Sincerity emanated from him as naturally as heat from a flame. “Old City,” I said, noting the snow drifts grazing the tops of the taxis on the opposite side of the glass entrance. “Suppose I’ll hoof it from here. Doesn’t seem that far on the map.” The stranger leaned against the base of the towering war memorial, Angel of the Resurrection, that I surmised to be at least thirty feet high. Gesturing to the magnificent, terrifying bronzed angel lifting a dead soldier from the flames of war, he announced proudly. “My namesake.” “Michael?” “I suppose Mother was praying for an angel.” “I’m Danial.” I offered my hand and he pumped it in his enormous paw. “You’re an angel too.” “I am?” “God is my judge.” “What?” “That’s what Danial means.” Heavy on my shoulder, I sat my bag on the floor. “I knew we were in for the long haul when they harnessed the snowplow to the engine in Baltimore.” “To think that I raced to station, fearing you’d leave without me.” He patted the pedestal reverently. “Never fails to move me. Passed by it a million times since I was a boy. Still.” Sensitive. I’d misjudged him, written him off as an entitled playboy. “You grew up here?” “Philly born and bred. I could walk this city blindfolded.” He tapped on the statue’s base. “As a matter of fact, my dad’s name is here.” I stepped closer to read the plaque. “In the memory of the men and women of the Pennsylvania Railroad who laid down their lives for our country 1941-1945.” “He was killed in Iwo Jima.” “I’m sorry.” “Fifty years ago, this year.” He ran his hand through his silver-white mane of waves. “He hadn’t the foggiest idea I was on my way.” “Two strangers passing in the night.” “That’s how I’ve imagined it!” He slung my bag over his shoulder as if we were traveling companions. “Ready to face the music?” Usually independent, I surprised myself and promptly accepted his generosity. “Can you point the way to Old City?” Tucking my scarf into the throat of my coat, he arched his brow. “It may be only inches on a map, but in this blizzard, you’ll be Frosty, the snowman, by the time you cross Independence Park.” Our height and build varying greatly in the reflection in the glass door, we appeared to be two separate species. He tugged on my sleeve. “Hold on.” Gesturing for me to follow, he scurried to a bank of telephones in the adjoining hall. “I’ll try the Latham Hotel. I know the manager. It’s a few blocks from here.”

Why help me? Bored? Lonely? Attracted? Dream on Danial. Not in this lifetime. “Answering machine. Accepting no quests. Kitchen closed.” He shook his head. “Sorry.” “You tried.” Lopsided, his grin was charmingly bashful. “I’m your best last chance.” “Best but never last.” “If you don’t mind sleeping under a My Little Pony comforter, my daughter’s room is free for the night. She’s visiting her granny in Boston.” A married man . There it was, hanging like a bruised banana from Carmen Miranda’s Tootie-Fruity-Hat. I should’ve known better. No way he was gay. A queen that good looking would be one stuck-up-bitch.  “Are you sure?” “A raging Nor-Easterner barreling down on a city buried under three feet of snow with another foot expected by tomorrow,” he scoffed. “I can’t send you to purgatory alone.” His stride was great, and I scampered behind to keep up. A titanic gust of wind barreled down the colonnade as we bounded through the automatic doors, flattening me against the stone wall. Securing his cap’s strap under his chin, and with fatherly assurance, he clasped my mittened hand and stomped a path through the waist-high snow to Walnut Street Bridge. Skating over the slick surface of the frozen Schuylkill River, a dragon blast of cold slapped my chapped cheeks. Tugging on the flapping hems of our garments, a monster gale, his laugh shrill, snatched the stocking cap off my head. “Oh!” My ginger curls snapped at the remorseless beast. Although swathed in layers of cashmere and houndstooth, I felt nude as the cold feasted on my flesh.  Diminishing visibility made it impossible to see but a few feet ahead. So, I surrendered, body and soul, to my native guide, trusting him to deliver me the spoils of salvation. Swept along the wilderness of white, trapped in a whirling dervish of swirling snow, howling, haunting, and spitting shards of glistening ice in my face, we trudged block after block against the spirited tide until the blizzard flung us into Rittenhouse Square Park. Continuing its campaign, the winter warlock, growling, spun down Walnut Street, stripping doors and streetlamps of their holiday grandeur.

Standing side by side in the conciliatory calm, Michael and I gazed above us, mesmerized by the winnings of winter’s wonder. Reaching several stories to the starless, cerulean heaven, the interlocking branches of the trees, their tip-tops coifed in ivory accumulation, held a bounty of beauty in their bare, black arms. Gigantic, geometric shapes, wrapped in radiant jewel-toned lights, were scattered about the park like a child’s discarded toys. Sapphire, topaz, ruby, and emerald, their glow reflected in the iced palace we’d stumbled upon. “Enchanted,” I whispered reverently. Michael dropped my hand and walked away. The chill penetrated my glove and I shivered. A yard from me, he seemed miles from my touch. My touch . The kindness of a stranger must never be misconstrued. Never . Plain people such as I, often confused reality and fantasy. No filling in the blanks Danial DuBarry. Unimpeded by the cold, he sat on the snow pillowed bench. “Being snowbound was a favorite of mine as a boy. My speck of earth silent, swaddled in purity. My virgin land breathing a sigh of relief from the tribes of tourists trampling its history daily.” He gestured to the abandoned expanse before him. “Mine.” I wanted to ask his daughters age and if his wife had been his college sweetheart, but questions seemed totally inappropriate. So, I joined him on the bench and wallowed in the majesty of Philadelphia. “Look!” I jumped to my feet. There, planted in the center of the block, my future home stood before us, its lobby door missing its doorman. “My building. I move next week. Too bad I don’t have the keys. I could crash there.” Standing, Michael mussed my hair. “Home. Let’s get you home.” Flittering feathers of snow drifted from the sky as we tramped down the snow-blanketed Locust Street. A flicker of light caught my eye and we paused to peer into the window of the Curtis Institute of music. Its amber ambiance beckoned more than a second glance at the shimmering instruments waiting for their master’s touch. Past the Warwick Hotel we trudged, stopping to admire St. Mark’s Church, shrouded in a thick white cape, its train trailed over the iron fence, becoming one with the street. The tops of bowed evergreens, their hairy branches iced to the stone wall of the church, formed a crystal-capped tunnel through which we passed. Michael unlocked the door of an imposing brownstone, rising four stories from the frozen earth.  His keys jangling, he ushered me over the threshold. “In brighter days, the entire house was ours.” Transfixed on the domed center hall’s muraled ceiling, festive with frolicking cherubs, I climbed the staircase behind him. “I retain a modest condo on the top floor.” I gasped when we entered his circus of classical antiquities. We removed our boots, and he hung our coats on carved gargoyle hooks in the vestibule. “Relax. Make yourself at home.” Striking a match, he lit the crumpled wads of paper stuffed between the symmetrically stacked logs in the fireplace. The stone surround featured Elgin-styled friezes and was topped with a rough-cut slab of marble that showcased a collection of unframed oil paintings. “A glass of white?” He asked. “Please.” In his form-hugging jeans and cream fisherman’s sweater, he padded across the beaten oak floor in his nubby socks, his pale mop of hair in sharp contrast to his tawny tan. Long limbed and trim waisted, at fifty, he was far fitter than the thirty-two-year-old me. Sinking into the luxurious down of the tufted Chesterfield sofa, I gloried in the glow of the smoldering blue flame gorging on the maple kindling.  A treasure trove of eighteenth and nineteenth century chairs, upholstered in sumptuous cobalt, jade, and crimson silks surrounded the room, whose walls displayed a gallery of art. On the side table, a photo of him and a lovely girl in a gilded frame was the single clue to his personal life. “So, what brings you to Philly?” Michael asked after his second glass of wine. “I’ve been invited to join an interior design firm. An offer I couldn’t refuse.” “Sounds promising.” “I was happily settled in D.C., working with a lovely designer, my friend, Constance, but she retired and well,” I moaned. “She arranged this job for me.” “Someone to watch over me,” he sang sweetly, but not very well. Smoke snaked into the fireplace flue and my heartbeat quickened. “It’s been me and no one else my entire life. Dream though I might, pray though I did, Mr. Right never galloped into Camelot on his stellar white stallion.” He stretched his long arms across the back of the sofa and uncrossed his legs, resting his knee against mine. “Do you travel for your job?” I glanced at his taunt jawline and admired the graceful slop of his nose. A sprig of grey hair ventured beyond his rolled sweater collar and the light from the flickering flame licked his muscular neck. “I’m a pharmaceutical rep. From Richmond to Boston, I ride the rails. Everyone needs drugs.” “Your wife doesn’t mind?” A blink of light from above caught my attention and I looked up into the bronzed Empire chandelier hanging from the center of an enormous skylight, its crystals tingling like ice cubes in a Manhattan. Though dusted with snow, the clear center of the glass panes, brightened by moonlight, presented an ideal view of the falling snow, soothing and silver and pure. “She divorced me eons ago. I get Alina one weekend a month and for two weeks in the summer.” By the time we’d polished off the second bottle, he’d draped his arm around my shoulder. I watched the ash smoldering in the hearth and froze when he took my chin in his hand. tenderly, he brushed his lips against mine. I buzzed from head to toe.

 He gazed up as if waiting for a sign from God. “I don’t know what to do. I’ve never…” Pulling him close, I kissed him. A testament to tribal instinct, his romantic artistry bloomed bolder with exploration. * The sun cutting through the semi-parted blinds teased me awake. I kissed my snoring prince on the forehead and stumbled out of bed. Coffee. Coffee . Belting his too long terry robe around my waist, I tip-toed over the chilled kitchen tiles. Careful not to make a sound, I searched high and low for any form of caffeine. Nothing. Wrapped in my woolens, I bounded out the front door. “Wow!” The sharp rays of sunlight, reflecting off the white blinded me momentarily. I rubbed my weary eyes and plodded through the slushy street, searching for a coffee shop or café. Closed. Closed . Even the quaint Violin shop was bolted, its shades pulled low. I waved at the doorman at my building, but he didn’t return my gesture. Too busy I suppose. There know I passed a Wawa near here . The symphony of drips, trickles, and pings of water rushing through pipes and gutters cheered me, reminding me that spring was near. An elderly man opened his creaking door, snatched his newspaper, grunted, and slammed it shut. Across the street, a young woman clicked her kitchen light on. Touching her fingers on the counter, she arched her back and stretched her lithe limbs in opposite directions. The sound of a window sliding echoed down the street. A young boy leaned out of a third-floor window and gleefully batted an enormous icicle with a plastic shovel until it broke off, tumbling to its death.

“Oh!” I’d bumped into a pop-up newsstand.  A round, bundled bull of a man was riffling through a stack of magazines. “Good morning,” I trilled, but he didn’t return my greeting.

Isn’t this the city of brotherly love ? Bam! He slammed a stack of papers onto the counter and snipped the plastic straps binding them together. The bundle of newspapers metamorphosized from its chrysalis, blossoming into a neat pile of the hometown rag, The Philadelphia Inquirer. Its front-page headline slapped me hard, and I shook in my boots. 30 Perish in Amtrack Disaster! A graph, headshots of the deceased, covered three-fourths of the page. There, smack-dab in the center, smiling big and bright in black and white, were pictures of Michael and me. I stumbled back into the pop-up, rocking the booth. The counter bobbed cock-eyed, and the flock of newspapers took flight, fluttering across the snowscape. “What the hell!” The hefty newsstand man barked as he scurried to retrieve them. Dizzy, I grabbed hold of the church’s iron fence to steady myself. High-pitched, the unnerving sound of metal scraping metal startled me, and I pressed my palms over my ears. Harpooning my knee, intense agony buckled me. “Help! Help!” I cried out as flames engulfed me. Scooping up handfuls of snow, I smashed it into my sizzling face. An elderly woman seemed to make eye contact but hustled away when I approached. Humming an unfamiliar tune, a young man in a hurry bumped me and I tumbled into to a holly tree. Penetrating my bones, the mezzo-soprano-screech of brakes punctured my eardrums as I scurried through the tunnel of thawing evergreens, sparks spraying me from either side. A colossal force barreled over me, smashing me into the ice. I pushed up and the torn flap of skin on my arm wavered. My lungs scorched, squeaks and chirps were all I could muster as I crawled out of the shaft. The lower extremities of my broken body refused to obey. So, using my charred hands as feet, I dragged myself over the pristine purity, praying I’d reach Michael’s stoop before I collapsed.

Michael! Michael! I reached for the glimmering brass knob as darkness swallowed me whole. * “Michael,” I whispered, my voice raspy. “How long was I asleep?” “I stopped counting the minutes.” My head in his lap, I glanced at the promising flames waltzing over the charred bark. “I had the most God-awful nightmare.” I sat up and he rubbed my back. “It wasn’t a dream, Danial.” “I don’t understand.” “The paper boy delivered The Inquirer after you left.” He closed his eyes. “I remembered every terrifying moment of the crash.” His cheeks were wet. “I’d do it all again for you.” My mind reeled with revelation. This is it? Quivering like a bowl of Jell-O, my insides shuddered. “Should we check in somewhere?”

He grinned. “Except for my daughter, I don’t care. You’ve unshackled me. I had no idea it could be like this.” I gazed at him, unable to grasp or accept what I’d hoped he’d meant. “I love you, Danial DuBarry.” “I’ve waited my entire life to hear those words.” I took his hand and pressed it to my chest. “Feel that?” A steady stream of tears flowed from my weary eyes. “I love you.” Snuggling together, we gazed through the crystal-clear skylight at the coral striated clouds sailing across the periwinkle heaven. Free. I too was free. Loved. I was loved. “I’m not afraid,” I said and smiled. Michael kissed my forehead, my chin, my lips. “Mother used to quote from the Bible when she was low.” He traced my face with his finger. “The sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night.” I tugged gently on his earlobe, and he rested his head against mine.


What my mother had told me that day remained an unshakeable pillar of my life long after she was gone. “You can never, never tell anyone”, she emphasized in a gentle voice. We were leaving the park at sunset, and her face was bright and loving that day, a memory of us I would go back to now and then. “And you can’t use it again. Promise me. I’m sorry things have to be this way”, she had added. We never spoke about it again and I went on having a normal, relatively blissful childhood and adolescence. Sometimes during tests at school, it occurred to me that I could just stop time, browse books, cheat off of my colleagues to make the perfect paper for myself, and then get back to reality and into academic success. I thought about stealing and then pausing time just enough to cover all my tracks. I made elaborate plans about all the ways I could be richer, smarter, and more successful if only I’d use my ability from time to time. But I promised I wouldn’t. When I met Nikki, I knew immediately she was someone I wanted to be with. She was beautiful, insightful, and warm. At that moment, I was obsessed with the American show The Office, and we met in the corniest way, at a sitcom pub trivia. It was really sweet, and we started a relationship three months after that night. I had a wonderful spring, high on the sweet optimism that comes with feeling in love. Things went fantastic for more than a year, and all this happened by just being a regular guy; time flowed just as fast for me as it did for other people. I felt so lucky. I introduced Nikki to my dad and my aunt, whom I was close to. They both loved her, stressing how happy they were for me, adding that my mother would have been so proud of me. I was in my early 20s when she lost the fight to cancer, but I had made peace with her sickness and held a lot of love for her. The one thing that remained unresolved was that she was the only person who knew my secret - the whole story of what had happened to me. I had a vague memory of a wonderful, long afternoon at the park. I must have run for ages through and around the leafy grove sheltering the playground. The climbing walls, the lookout towers, the sand pit – they were all props for my imagination. My mother was reading her book on a bench, a big sunhat covering her head. A moment of serene, uncomplicated childhood happiness. I don’t remember what happened next; every time I try to think about it, my mind freezes. I remember starting to feel sweaty. Tired. Frightened; terrified later. My mother was just reading her book and I’d sob, later wail next to her. Eternities would pass and she would not turn the page. The next thing I remember is her holding me with teary, worried eyes, reassuring me, squeezing me in her arms. And then asking me to promise I’d never do that again. When Nikki suggested moving in together, just one thing was holding me back - my occasional enjoyment of gambling. I had a good job, so of course I was playing money I could to spare. After a more substantial win, I’d force myself to take a break and invest in something else for a little while. I wouldn’t linger in a casino after taking a bigger loss but rather call it “not my day” and move on. I’d schedule my indulgences, which made me feel in control of my guilty pleasure.

Predictably - in hindsight - the satisfaction eventually stopped being enough. One thing that changed is that I met Jimmy and Rufus, two truly-odd guys who introduced me to their underground poker network. The nights playing there were unique, full of surprises, the mix of people lured there really bizarre. Some players looked like real gentlemen, most likely rich conservatives who could not take the shame of their family finding out about their little hobby. They played alright but had moments when their fingers just couldn’t resist betting a huge amount after having folded a few hands. I took one of these guys’ fancy watches at some point. Some folks looked utterly broke, a hunger to win in their eyes. I found out the hard way they were the most dangerous players. I tried not to speak much during games, even though people would get drunk and in each other’s faces. Jimmy and Rufus would try to haze me, and tell people how they rescued me from the slot machines. Later in the night, they’d cuss at each other loudly, and I would try to cash in the distraction of the table and bluff boldly. One of those nights, I found myself experiencing the panic of a very tense moment. At first, I was happy, ecstatic - I was finally going to propose to Nikki. And since I had a couple of hours to kill, I reckoned a quick game of poker couldn’t hurt - it might as well be my last one. But with happiness often comes foolishness, and in a moment of impulsivity, I found myself raising the bet by tossing the engagement ring into the pot. The two gentlemen in expensive suits changed their countenance - they had taken notice of how lavish and expensive the ring was. Rufus and Jimmy also realised it and soon enough everybody was deep into their cards, eyeing up the sparkling piece of jewellery I had planned to give to Nikki that evening. I was about to lose the hand. I had perhaps thought that playing the ring would be like getting a sign from the universe that our marriage was meant to be. Or that the fear of near-losing the engagement, symbolically and literally, would only make me want it more. Instead, I was sweating heavily under my shirt, waiting for the dealer to put down the last card, imagining my savings of two years end up in Jimmy’s clammy hands. He’d most likely pawn the ring and lose the money within a month. I got wasted afterward and hours passed in a haze. I went outside of the basement to puke in the alley. It was still dark, but I had a vague feeling, like a taste in my mouth, that the sun was about to rise. I took my phone to check the time in disbelief. Twelve missed calls from Nikki; of course, we had dinner plans. I had picked a romantic, intimate restaurant to pop the question at. I imagined her waiting for me all alone in a beautiful dress, trying to keep herself from staring at the entrance door or at her phone. Being annoyed at first, ordering herself a cocktail. Getting worried after an hour, even more so after two. She had sent me many messages, some of them paragraphs long. I was too intoxicated to make out much of the blurry screen. I felt sad, sorry. So, in another stupid, impulsive moment, I decided to follow Jimmy and get back the ring. I didn’t have a plan while walking behind him. He was moving slowly, in a drunken stumble. After a few minutes, he turned around in a narrow alley close to the canal. Startled, he muttered something and stepped towards me. Without any warning, a pain stronger than anything I had ever felt before nearly knocked me to the ground. I closed my eyes, surrendering. When I opened them, Jimmy was just standing there, one drip of saliva in the corner of his mouth as he was just about to press his lips back together. A definitive, all-encompassing silence struck my ears. Even the darkness felt thicker. I stepped forward to make sure I wasn’t under the spell too. No, I had cast the spell. And I had broken my mother’s promise. I opened Jimmy’s jacket and found the ring in his inner pocket, along with a couple of hundreds folded negligently. I hesitated to take them. It felt strange, unnatural to touch this human being in this state. His body was all vulnerable, petrified in front of my eyes. I left the bills; my fingers didn’t want to linger. I stuffed the ring deep into my pocket and put myself in a natural position, a few steps away from him. Now I could just give Jimmy some drunk excuse and leave quickly. He’d think the ring fell out of his pocket, and I could rush home and make things up to Nikki. I rehearsed what I was going to say, and sought out the quickest way out of that alley. My heart was pounding, and I was ready to unfreeze time. But nothing happened. I stood still and waited, imagining all my thoughts focused on putting time back into motion. But nothing happened. I began thinking of my mom, asking her to help me. To forgive me for breaking my word. To turn things back to normal. But nothing happened. I started walking home, away from the canal and into the main streets. If Jimmy ever confronted me about the ring, I’d mock him about getting so wasted and I’d walk away. Yeah, it was an airtight plan - it’s not like he could go around and tell people that one moment I was in the alley with him and the next I vanished from in front of his eyes. I’d go to sleep, get back to reality in the morning, and sort everything out. On the main road, the entire world was holding its breath. I fought hard to keep my cool. I was like an alien walking through a museum documenting 21st-century London. All cars were stuck in place, people minding their own lives completely frozen as if sitting for a painting. In the blink of an eye, they could all spring back to life, filling the vacuum with engines roaring, radio, and late-night chatter in front of the pub. I’d always thought I’d find such a moment of silence, of shelter from the undeniable passing of time, comforting, healing. I’d longed secretly for it my entire life. But walking down the streets, the only heartbeat in a world stopped cold, an immense burden was weighing on my chest. Like in a dream, I started remembering what my mother had explained to me. “It’s a great gift, a wonder. It can make the difference between misery and bliss, between life and death. It can make you feel like the world is in the palm of your hand. It’s what makes it so tempting”, she sighed. She then looked down, light leaving her face for a moment. “Once you freeze time, you can’t just unfreeze it. Time simply picks a moment to carry on. Could be days, weeks – and nothing changes, Tony. You just wander, the world in a light sleep. Years, decades could pass.” She teared up, holding my hand. “There was no way to tell.” I felt a knot in my throat. I turned more vigilant with my surroundings, making sure time wouldn’t just move and have a car run me over. I began running, panting, thinking if I could just make it home, somewhere safe, somewhere I could collect my thoughts, everything would be normal again. In front of my house, a man was blocking the entrance, with one of his feet already outside, his body pushing against the door. I had to squeeze between him and the wall, fighting hard not to touch his inanimate body. I looked at his face from up close and gazed into his brown hollow eyes under stuffy dark eyebrows. A cold shiver crawled up my back. Upstairs, I jumped into a steaming shower. I tried to wash myself off the spell, off the memory of the night.

Back in my room, I put the dormant clock next to my pillow, ensuring it would be the first thing I saw when I woke up. I laid down and imagined the light of sunrise warming my cheeks, the hand of the clock happily ticking away again. But I couldn’t rest. The exhaustion started to wear off, but my body never drifted away into sleep. I stared at the light green ceiling, my mind consuming itself. I went through all my memories, dreams, fears, remote corners of my mind. I felt I could suddenly remember everything, like I could just rewind through the motions of my life. I waited more, and more, my eyes glued upward in a moment that stretched infinitely, but the clock remained still at 5.35 am.

Eventually, I got out of bed and decided I mustn’t despair. The situation was out of my control, and it would be sane to make the best of it, with caution. I crafted a letter for Nikki apologizing, explaining everything. Everything except my secret. I cleaned my apartment. Read books from cover to cover. Put all my affairs in order. There was no way to tell how much time had passed, so I found myself often counting one Mississippi, two Mississippi , …, to create an inner sense of time. For what I can only guess was five weeks, I kept on doing safe things that would make my life after unpausing so much better. Learning, working, creating. I missed the sun. I never slept, ate or drank, but my body didn’t seem to care. I was always careful not to put myself in a position to get arrested or into trouble if everybody suddenly woke up. One night, in a dark corner of a bus station, I saw a man trying to harass a woman. I grabbed his body by the handle of his backpack and shoved his face on the ground. I walked away, revolted. It occurred to me that freezing time was the biggest gamble I could make. And just like with gambling, I felt compelled to risk more. I started stealing things, my heart pounding, expecting time to resume in an epic moment of karma. I was ready to get out of there; planned beforehand so the crimes could not be traced back to me. I broke into houses in the posh part of the city, and spent time in their swimming pools and jacuzzi, laid on their comfortable mattresses. I kept myself away from people. One night, I broke into the National Aquarium and jumped in the penguin water tank. I couldn’t tell if I was breathing or not. I swam around, staring at those wonderful creatures I’d always found so cute. For a moment, I felt happy. But despite my best efforts to remain contained and grounded, the more time my mind passed in that void, my thoughts became riskier, my inner world lonelier. Walking through familiar places, all I saw was a cruel photograph of a life I used to have. Even Nikki was starting to feel like a stranger. I broke into her home; she was frozen on her sofa, watching a show with the lights off; her phone, and a bottle of wine on the coffee table. I cuddled next to her. I couldn’t dare touch her, violate her trust. I just stood there, sometimes talking to myself, sometimes crying, sometimes ruminating over lies I could tell her about how I ended up inside her flat. One time, I put on a T-shirt of hers, its smell of her shampoo making me sob, and tried to hug myself. Having Nikki’s ghostly company helped for a while. I’d go outside, try to get back into my hobbies or work, and then come back to her place, and sit next to her like we were watching a movie together. Were things going to be the same ever again? Things will, but you won’t, a thought in my mother’s voice responded. I felt angry at her for not having warned me better. Maybe she had hoped I would forget all about it, that it would be safer for me that way. Or maybe no matter what, it was inevitable for me to fall onto this path. I wondered if she had frozen time herself when she’d heard her diagnostic, make sure she could say she lived before it was time to go. My mind became more fragile. I’d go on top of buildings and scream my lungs out in the void, no sound ever returning to my ears. I couldn’t let go of the feeble hope that time would move on once again. If I did, I worried something in me would shatter uncontrollably, and I would do unspeakable things. Or kill myself, if it was even possible to die. I felt decades had passed, my life in solitude accounting now more than my life as just another human being on Earth. I had waited more to start living than I’d actually lived. After a while, I broke down completely and isolated myself in Nikki’s tiny bathroom. I crouched down with the lights turned off and rested my head against the tub. My memories had long become too painful to go through. I started voiding my mind. Waiting. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi. The sink faucet was leaking, the dripping sound of water piercing my eardrum like a Chinese water torture. Five Mississippi, six Mississippi, … with each count my forehead lightly bumping into the cold marble - the smallest movement to remind the universe I was still there. Nine Mississippi, ten Mississippi… * “Tony, what are you doing here?!” … two hundred thousand and twenty-seven Mississippi… “What happened to you?! Your head is bleeding.” A pair of warm hands grabbed me gently. Their perfume swept through me, like an electric impulse, a reverberation of a long-forgotten memory. “Tony, come up with me, let’s get you to a hospital. Poor thing, you must have been lying here for hours.”


Marnie opens the blinds and the sunshine is so dazzling that she has to shield her eyes. There hasn’t been much sun for months and as she looks outside she sees the ravages of winter in the garden. The lavender looks like it might not bounce back this year and there are no signs of the tulips yet. She wonders how many of them will make it as the squirrels were extra tenacious last fall. Still, there might be a few hardy ones that survived and Marnie says a little silent prayer for their welfare.

It was Claire that had the natural flare for gardening; everything she touched seemed to flourish. Marnie learned to love digging around in their patch of earth but she never had the gift for it. Even as the gardening books that she had inherited from Claire stood on their shelves gathering dust, Marnie knew that Claire had never read them cover-to-cover. They were mostly there for inspiration especially in the winter months when the garden was just a thick blanket of white as far as the eye could see. But it was exactly what the eye couldn’t see that Claire had found so exhilarating. With the winter months stretching before them, the yard covered in snow and the garden a hard frozen place, she knew that this was where the crocuses slept in the deep, waiting for the first breath of spring.

But now Marnie didn’t have that same exhilaration about the coming of spring. Without Claire the warmer months stretched before her like an endless fog of duty and obligation. The garden beds had to be cleared of leaves and debris and then maybe she might start to feel some kind of stirring but she wasn’t sure that she was feeling up to it. Even though she had finally hired someone to clear the snow from the driveway, a task she had usually tackled on her own, the winter had taken its toll on her.

At first it was just little things, like forgetting why she had entered a room and then forgetting appointments even though they were tidily entered on her calendar. Now, she had to carry around a notebook that had all of the tasks for the day written down in sequence so that she wouldn’t get muddled, but even then she still had to make sure that she knew where the book was and then of course she had to actually look at it.

She hates to complain, there is never any use in it, but she is starting to feel overwhelmed much of the time. It was the loneliness really that did it. When Claire had been there she would have reminded her of things:

Have you turned the oven off? Did you put the wet clothes into the dryer? Have you taken your pills?

But without Claire even these small tasks seemed to overwhelm her. Who cared if the wet clothes made it into the dryer today or tomorrow? As long as she didn’t burn the house down the oven could stay on all day and in the winter she welcomed its warmth. She didn’t really think her pills were doing much, but she tried to keep up with taking them anyway. It was almost as if she heard Claire’s voice. “Come on love, you’ve got to give them a chance don’t you? The doctor knows best, doesn’t he?” But the doctor didn’t know best in the end. At least not for Claire.

Flowering shrubs had always been the centerpiece of the garden; Claire had made them her specialty. “Once they’re planted they will yield years and years of beautiful fragrance and colour. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.” And it was true that Marnie had a burst of joy every year when the lilacs bloomed and the whole house filled with their fragrance. And then came the mock orange and the flowering almond and there was one fragrant delight after another until their blooms faded and the more hardy summer plants burst into flame. But it was those shrubs that Claire loved the most. “They give both beauty and fragrance so they work twice as hard as the other plants in the garden.” Marnie can’t recall which of the shrubs flowered first and in fact she could barely remember which perennials they had in the beds but she knew that there were lots of them. “Perennials are something that gives us a little hope each year,” Claire had said. “Because even though they fade every year, they almost always come back for more.”

Marnie is sorely missing Claire’s optimism but these days she is missing her in so many ways she can barely stand it. Some days she feels as if she is only half a person without Claire and when she thinks about that it actually makes her chuckle. “I’m not even half a person now with my faculties fading. Would that make me one quarter of a person I wonder?”

Marnie reminisces about when they lived out in the countryside and the magnificent vegetable garden they had then. The garden had grown in long neat rows and in the fall Claire would set about preserving everything for the winter. The carrots would be yanked out of the earth, cleaned and laid into their cold sandy beds in the basement, hidden from the cat that sometimes mistook the basket for kitty litter. The potatoes would be uprooted from their little mounds, sorted and stored; tomatoes, sauced and canned; raspberries, frozen in yogurt containers and clear glass jars; peas and beans in layers in the freezer and the giant zucchini vine composting silently beside the Japanese maple tree that they had planted in the spring.

There was such a sense of satisfaction then, as if the hard work of the summer was rewarded and there was comfort in the knowledge that they’d be well stocked with food for the winter months.

“The garden is how I make it through the winter,” Claire had said. “A good vegetable soup will go a long way towards taking the chill out of old weary bones.” But now Marnie feels only her old weary bones and her brain that is even wearier than the rest of her body. She had thought about getting another cat for company. After Biscuit died they had been so heartbroken that they had never replaced him. Marnie remembers the damage a cat might do to Claire’s garden and now that she knows her days are also numbered it isn’t fair to take that on. Loneliness is the trophy of old age Marnie thinks. Few seek it out but too many are awarded it.

She looks to the garden and almost catches a glimpse of Claire on her knees among the rosebushes. She is spreading a thick layer of dark rich manure with a trowel and she is alight with the joy of it. “There’s nothing that brings on the blooms like good old horseshit. It’s the nectar of the gods.”

Although the bushes hadn’t even begun to bud, Marnie can almost see the full bright blooms of pink and then fast forwards to the fall when all the blooms are faded and gone and only the rosehips remain. She sees that nothing is meant to last forever. Not the blooms in the garden, not the blooms of youth and certainly not life itself. For a moment she is no longer lonely. She is only in silent awe as the rich fullness of it all permeates everything and a gentle spring rain begins to fall soaking deep into the roots of the apple tree coaxing it gently to blossom once again.