"She said her children will be a Force to be Recon with"

Pearl Fisher was born in the middle of a flowing field one golden morning of June sand clay to the Sante Estherville South Carolina. She learned the way her great-grandmother Nin 1894 til she transcended the invisible walls of captivity. Tuesday morning Aug 23 1977 and grandmom Angeline April 15, 1979, an Easter Sunday morning at the same time moments confusion left her life and brought her miraculous sight. The first of 13 gifts born to her parents, a blessing to enter their lives. Sunday morning June 29, 1941, close to the time the atomic mushrooms sent shock waves through time that are still vibrating in the atmosphere. My Black Pearl's of Wisdom The greatest mother a black child could be blessed to be born. Beloved as Black Pearl's of wisdom, Benin, the Black Butterfly and Grapes. A mother who just did not lived and cry for her own black children but she cried for the whole world. This sister danced in the sun, talked to the tree, birds, and babies. All this love she had inside her soul lead her footsteps to write Rhythmic Rays, A Color-less Reality, Geneva was my Home and No Second to Make Myself Real. She left this earth saying the best is yet to come ME. The Power of Creation Ahayah New Day In the Beginning it was Black. A healthy living she shared with anyone who would take time out to listen. Her love for her Heavenly Father was the greatest my family had the pleasure to witness and be a part of the Most High blessings in her life. She went from a 6-grade education- to a cigarette, a lemon pie and a Pepsi soda, a typewriter, and a dictionary to become a poet, activist with spiritually blessed insight that has inspired throughout the globe. She wrote many letters, plays, and books. and sent them all around the world. This woman was a daughter of Zion who was  strong enough to be herself- no matter what anyone thought of her piculiar ways. She walked to the beat of the Most High trumpets in her heart and found her home with the son Christ. She carved her legacy in my hearts that inspired the Power of Creation born in ME She "said" Reach your fullest potential and ride the Black Rocket thru time awaiting your intellectual challenge Knock at freedom door. Knock Hard. It will open slowly but Fear not my Sons and Daughters for No Black Man ever walks alone As, I rose this morning and thought of this woman who love me from her warm womb. I was just thinking about the relationship between a mother and daughter. How it can be one of the most surprising and extremely difficult energy that are connected together. It can be a loving and crazy journey that is full of both positive and negitive energy. Spirt that's filled of love and hate emotions. Up and down feelings that establishes the pathway of their passion and compassion. It is so amazing to see how spiritual growth develops between the two searching confused girls that only time allows them both to become wise righteous. and powerful. My mother is the Black Butterfly and I am the Oak Tree The Oak tree that, I have learned to be today is strong as an Oak. Just like she said to ME , I would become. Sculpte by the strength of my mother's gift of power. She wisely shaped and molded my heart to be equal to my mind with the soft warm sweet comfort of her beautiful loving strong black wings. Sometimes she used very very harsh instructions to whip my little black ass. Not agreeing back then; but today, I know it was all done by her careful plans and wise decisions for my personal growth. Correction is what she knew, I needed to establish God's way of living on my path. I'm thinking my mother simply wanted ME  to be able to stand strong in the many stormy winds in life that she knew, I would face on my life journey. I Was a Hard Rock Headed Stiff Neck Rebellious Black Child My mother guided my direction to creatively think and taught ME how to seek for the light in darkness. Reliance was formed out of her actions that, I know was all done for the love she had for the Most High and ME ! She deeply loved all of God's natural creations in a special kind of way. Remembering her profound action, I pray someday I could do the same. My Black Pearl's of wisdom was my first teacher of aspiration and her crazy consistent ways lead me to see all the confusion in all the world's to find my needed answers. . Her Secret Dreams Was My Destiny I'm thinking maybe to her, I was the extention of her secret dreams. I mean a beautiful reality born in the image of her self that she was always trying to create a solid destiny in my life. A new baby girl that arrived to her as her special miracle baby. 7 months premature. Another start in life that came to her in a little version of her black unique beauty. I bet my mommies feelings of hope for my furture were so deep that she truly wanted me to have the ability to do better than the life she had lived many years in agony and pain. A Great Gift From The Most High I can only imagine through her loving eyes she seen ME as a great gift from the Creator. Laying in my bed in the still of the night, I could hear my mother singing and praying unto the Creator that, I have a better life than her own. The wisdom and knowledge my mother acquired on her long painful journey, I should definitely respect it. So every day as I live, I keep her comforting words of wisdom tucked close in my heart of mind to try to always shine the light, I seen in her that still after she's gone helps me to smile. A Woman Pain Runs Deeper Than What The Eyes Can See I learned that the experiences of a developing woman's hurt and pain runs deeper than what the natural eyes can see and sometimes their approach in life can be a little misleading to a young girl, who has not begun to live out her own gift of greatness. Still the advice given from a spiritual mother should be treasured and used when ever it's needed. I found out about life the long way when, I ran and hide from my mother's hurt and pain. In my beginning, I ran away without trying to understand the mass confusion created in her life. Road blocks created the downfall for me making too many mistakes. Balancing The Hurt In the middle of my painful journey, I grew and learned how to listen more and respect the position the Most High gave to her over ME and with that one humbling decision, I made a simple choice that gave us both the obedience to stop the fight and hear each other. We begin to balance all the hurt and pain and create unity with truthful open communication. Their was so many issues that had no bonding power for us to hold on to any longer. I let go of the hateful feelings then became free from my pride to respect the only woman on this planet earth who loved me from her warm womb.

A Mother's First Thought For Your Destiny Living this system, I do realize that some mothers are not as wise as the other mothers we may see in the world's; but they all had a starting point of confusion and countless lies. This empire creates a long painful journey for us to seek and find our balance in life. Therefore we all live each new day to only learn that there are so many bad worldly influences and many road blocks that can affects a persons path and that may have clouded up their mothering skills. Then the judgement of their character may haunt and hurt you deeply. Forgiveness is always free. I'm thinking that it is always better to think and re-think your decisions about their journey before you act off hurtful emotion that may disconnect you from the womb that carried your life or at least try to find the secret or hidden answers to their life story that may have created the pain and disappointment you may feel in your life today. Because a mother's journey along with her hurt and pain may reflect your current reality. Knowingly or Unknowingly we hurt in silence. Forgivness I'm thinking maybe having these secret answers added to your life just might be the way to forgive the woman, who only had what was presented to her in life to survive. I strongly believe that no matter what else you get in this twisted up sinful world that is truly good. The greatest gift to your life was the gift from the Most High. The seed of your Father and the warm womb of your Mother. And. I would bet that you are so much greater in your life choices and decisions; because of their confusion and pain. The hurt you may feel from the disappointment in her ingorant actions, just may have caused you to manifest into her silent prayers and secret dreams. I mean her first thoughts of you and your destiny. The feelings she most likely had the first second she looked at you when you entered the earth as her baby girl. Im thinking we both can win when we desire to reach higher and use our power of creation to forgive the programming of ingorance. The Most High Forgives So We Can Too Kash, Tanzaniyah. The Power of Creation Ahayah New Day: In the Beginning It Was Black (p. 200). Lulu Publishing Services. Kindle Edition.


My face must have reflected my feelings as I walked into the living room because my husband Joe  looked up at me and asked, “Why the long face?” “Oh, Joe, I just got off the phone with Angie. She’s feeling down in the dumps and not looking forward to Christmas at all.” I explained to Joe that Angie’s son and daughter in law with their eight year-old twins were going off to Germany to spend Christmas. They spent last Christmas with Angie and this year it was the turn of the other grandparents. Charlie’s her only child and I sympathized with Angie because the same thing was happening to Joe and me. Our eldest, Adam, was in the army and would be in Afghanistan until February. Our daughter Linda was in California with her husband Greg. They are screenwriters just getting their careers up and running and they weren’t taking any time off for the holidays. My little sister Angie and her husband George live in England, my older brother Bob lives in Canada with his wife Julia, and Joe and I live in Sydney, Australia. We are an international family if ever there was one, and while we love to spend a real family Christmas together, it gets difficult when we are dotted all over the globe the way we are. The phone rang again and it was Angie ringing back. She had just spoken with our brother Bob and he suggested we all get together in England for Christmas, just the three of us old empty-nest couples, and make it a real English Christmas, just like our old fashioned Christmases back home when we were kids. “Oh, Angie, you must have woken him up,” I said, “isn’t it the middle of the night in Canada?” “Yes, I suppose so. But he didn’t mind. Now that his kids have grandchildren of their own, he’s not planning on seeing much of them this year. And I think it cheered him up to talk about getting together for Christmas. I said you and he could come here, we’ve got enough room without the kids. Just think of it Mary, an old-fashioned English Christmas. Won’t it be lovely?” “You know, it does sound rather nice, just what we all need. Joe and I will start working on travel arrangements. Don’t you go making yourself ill with too much cooking and cleaning, we can come early and all share that, it’ll be fun. Have you still got all the old family recipes? If not, I do, I’ll get them out and email some of them to you. Thank you Angie, you’ve made my day. Wait till I tell Joe, he’ll love it. I’ll phone Bob and Julia later. Shall we talk again tomorrow?” Joe was tickled pink about going back to England for Christmas, and he sat down at his computer and started looking for good deals on flights. I went to my kitchen to look at cookbooks. It may not be the most important ingredient for a happy Christmas, but food has to be near the top of the list of what makes the holidays so special and enjoyable. For the next two weeks, we sent emails and made phone calls back and forth, deciding on when we’d arrive in England, how long we would stay, what fun things we might do while there, and what we would have for Christmas dinner. There was no argument for the turkey, that was what we had every Christmas as children, and our Mum had stuffed it with Paxo herb stuffing and surrounded it with roast potatoes, carrots, and parsnips, and poured her slightly lumpy gravy over it. With the turkey we always had brussels sprouts. Dessert was, of course, a Christmas pudding, steamed in its white porcelain basin on top of the stove. We had custard, made with Bird’s custard powder, and sometimes cream with the pudding. We three children had each kept to this basic Christmas dinner menu when we left home to marry and raise families of our own, but we all made it more modern, and probably healthier, with a few changes. None of us cooked stuffing inside the bird, it was baked in a separate dish, and nobody would use Paxo or any other stuffing mix, because we all loved to cook and had tried different recipes for stuffing. As a family we had tried, every year, to be together for Christmas. Sometimes we couldn’t do it, but often we did, so we had all sampled each other’s Christmas specialties. All of us voted that the best stuffing recipe was Julia’s chestnut stuffing: there was no discussion, we were unanimous. We also voted for our usual roast potatoes, carrots, and parsnips. Julia sprinkles a little chopped garlic, grated fresh ginger root, and black pepper on her carrots and parsnips, which makes them shine. Brussels sprouts were voted for by all of us, and we all cook them using Julia’s method of steaming them after cutting a cross in the trimmed stem end, which allows any damaged outer leaves to fall off and makes them cook faster. These days we all like to eat more vegetables, so we voted to add steamed cauliflower and broccoli, and green beans, to our plates. We would have to wait and see what was available in the markets before Christmas before we knew what we would actually eat to accompany the turkey, but our list was quite basic. And Julia had obviously been elected the vegetable chef. My sister Angie had a wonderful old Aga stove in her big kitchen, and she knew how to coax it into performing at its best, so she was elected, by default, to cook the turkey. She would also cook the ham, which was eaten as the main meal on Christmas Eve and again on Boxing Day. Angie’s husband, George, a retired butcher, was given the task of finding us the best turkey and ham, and he always helped Angie with cooking. All that was left was the pudding and all the delicious baked goods that belong to Christmas in England. We all used the recipe our Mum had given us for the pudding. This recipe, along with an old-fashioned pudding basin with a lip, had formed part of her wedding presents to Angie, Julia, and to me, and we all treasured both the basin and the recipe. It made a dark, rich pudding with a delicious flavor, and contained not only currants and sultanas, but chunks of almonds, grated carrot and apple, and beer. Both Angie and I made Bird’s custard to have with the pudding, because we liked it, and so did our husbands, George and Joe. Julia usually served her pudding with brandy butter and cream, so we decided we’d have all three available to have with the pudding: custard, cream, and brandy butter. We never flamed our puddings when we were growing up, but all of us did that now. When the pudding is removed from its steamer and from its basin it is placed on a flat dish. A shot glass full of brandy is placed in a pan of simmering water until it gets hot, then it is poured over the hot pudding, and a match put to it until blue flames flare up around it. All the lights should be out when you do this. Some people set light to it in the kitchen then carry it out to the dining table, but I prefer doing the lighting ceremony in front of everyone at the table. Every year when it’s time to flame the pudding, our family tells the same old stories of accidents surrounding the ceremony. Here’s an example: One year I forgot to remove the decorative sprig of holly poked into the top, which caught fire. Joe poked a fork at it to pull it out with a flick of his wrist. It came out alright, but didn’t stay on the fork. It sailed over the table and landed on the armchair by the door, setting the upholstery alight! We still have that chair, it’s burn hole covered by a throw blanket: we will never get that chair recovered, it holds the memory of everyone’s laughter during what we now call “the great Christmas Pudding accident.”

Christmas puddings are best if made about a month before Christmas, so Angie was given the task of making the pudding and storing it in her larder. The pudding is steamed for about six hours, cooled, then packaged up, and on Christmas Day it is steamed again for about two hours. As the baker of the family, I was given the task of making mince pies, Dundee cake, cheddar pennies, shortbread, a chocolate log, and any other cakes or biscuits our family couldn’t live without for the holidays. I would travel armed with my trusted recipes for all of these. Bob and Angie phoned me one day to ask if I had the recipe for the Christmas scones or biscuits that our maternal grandmother, our Yorkshire grandmother we called Granny, used to make. No, I didn’t have a recipe like that, but yes, I did remember eating them, and loving them. Neither Bob and Julia, nor Angie and George could find a recipe for them, nor remember what they were called. I did a Google search but came up with nothing. So I sat down to think about the taste, and what might have made them taste that way, and I jotted down ingredients as I thought of them: flour, sugar, butter, mixed spice, pinch salt, currants, mixed peel, vanilla essence, glace cherries, nuts, and perhaps milk or eggs. I began to experiment. At first I made biscuits, or cookies as they are called in Australia and America. They tasted good, but that wasn’t right, the texture was softer than a biscuit, but not like a cake. Could they have been scones? That didn’t seem right either, but I tried anyway, making a basic sweet scone recipe with flour, baking powder, salt, butter, sugar, spice, a little milk, vanilla, and with currants, peel, almonds, and glace cherries stirred in. Yes, that was it! They were scones. But we all remembered our Granny had a special name for them, maybe it was even a funny-sounding name? Bob and Angie were happy I’d discovered a recipe similar to the treats we had enjoyed from our Granny, and Bob agreed with me that she had given them a funny name. We reminisced about our Yorkshire Granny and Bob remembered she was the one who used to call him “my little fat rascal,” even though he was a skinny little boy. That did it, the penny dropped and I remembered. These scones were called “fat rascals.” Both Bob and I looked online and found them, found recipes, and their history. Fat Rascals are a rich scone, “fat” because they are filled with fruit and nuts, and “rascals” because they have a face marked on top with almond teeth and cherries for eyes. Joe and I arrived at Heathrow a week before Christmas. We stayed overnight in London to see the lights, then hired a car and drove down to Folkestone on the south coast, where George and Angie live. The first thing I baked in Angie’s kitchen was a batch of fat rascals, which were ready and waiting for Granny’s little fat rascal Bob when he and Julia arrived the next day. We all enjoyed them immensely, amid numerous cups of tea and hours of reminiscences about our wonderful old Christmases in England, when we were young.


The smell of rock salt fills the outside air. Burning the lungs of anyone that inhales. The deep mist in the atmosphere brings out the most depressing of feelings. Even in this time of year. I, at the moment, happen to be inside, huddled under a quilt, facing the stone made fireplace. My hands dangled a little bit above the crackling wood fire. I sigh in fatigue yet satisfaction. Just another Christmas in Bruinsburg. Barely anyone comes to visit. So I'm here all alone to warm up and mumble bad words at the people who choose to do otherwise for Christmas. I'm a fifty year old hermit trapped inside an eighteen year olds' body. That being a metaphor. Can you imagine if it were true? How weird would that be? That'd be a terribly weird case of Freaky Friday syndrome. If such a syndrome were real. Is it? I don't know. What I do know is that barely anyone is left outside. Deserted it is. They're all either around the big Christmas tree in the town square or they're inside with their families having a feast. I may be the only exception. As my family has all gone south for the winter like the Mallards they are. They wanted to spend Christmas unwrapping gifts in a tropical setting. Where as I wanted to stay in our medium sized penthouse, knawing on hazelnut toast roasted on the open fire like an irregular person. I lay in the recliner pulling the quilt over my body, snuggling a stuffed animal. My eyelids would occasionally close and open as I dazed off now and again. Can you blame me? There isn't much to do. No television. While everyone on the block rocks a general electric, we still got a radio. And it don't get good reception much. I tried tuning into a ballgame and all I got was static. No games or toys neither. So I'm just gonna sit in this seat basically until something happens. And as it looks, ain't nothing happening no time soon. After a few more minutes of being huddled up in the quilt, cold sweat dripped down my face. It was starting to get too hot now. I quickly got up from the recliner and threw the quilt behind me. Having it fall to the other side of the room instead. I looked around. The toast was gone and in its place, a plate full of crumbs. The fire was still crackling with the blissful noise that felt like gold to my ears. The house may have been as warm as a furnace however the wood floor felt as cold as ice on my bare feet. Frost grew and grew on all the window sills. Making quaint shapes. I walked out of the living room into the kitchen. Where the the chandelier was hanging as it should only it was glistening more than usual. It looked like real diamonds this particular day. Though, let's be real, they were nothing more than glass. Still, was nice. Below it, the circular dining table where the plates, silver ware, and glasses would be. I walked to the cupboard where the snacks were. Pizza Spins, Swiss N' Ham Flings, Corn Pokes and in the refrigerator, raspberry, pineapple and orange Sherbet. I took it all out and had a feast of my own. This is the peak of nineteen sixties snack food. Or at least to me it is. I grabbed a spoon and dug into the Sherbet first. Taking big spoonfuls, one after the other. Stuffing my face as much as possible. When the Sherbet was done, I went after the Pizza Spins and so forth. Not even half full, I grabbed the Pineapple upside down cake in the fridge mom made the day before. I just kept eating and eating and eating. No one was around to judge me. I was all alone to do whatever I wanted and eating all this food felt like a favorable thing to do at the moment. I mean I could never eat like this had mom and dad been here. Especially since it was so close to dinnertime. Not even halfway into the upside down cake and a timid knock arises. I stop eating. Waiting to see if the noise would repeat itself. And it did. For the second time, a timid knock arises. I get up from the table, wiping my face with a dish rag and approached the door. Next to the front door is a mirror. Of course before I opened the door, I needed to check myself out. See how I look. I fixed my boobs a little. Make sure they don't look lopsided. Fixed my mop top so I looked more like a girl and not a prepubescent boy with breasts. I even checked my teeth to see if there'd been any vegetation lingering around. The person knocked once more. "Hold on!" I said as I continued to check myself out for the last time. When I felt ready enough, I opened the door through the chain. "Can I help you?" I said in a whisper. A man with bifocals stood. He wore a college tweed jacket with elbow padding holding a puffy jacket in his arm. His hair was a little messed up a bit. And his pants seemed to be sagging a bit. In his hand, a wrinkled paper he kept looking down at and back up at me. " 'Ello young bint. Is this the adobe of the Westin family? I've very much like to congregate with my relatives once more, but an elder bloak such as myself keep getting caught in the limelight of the city, I don't know where I'm goin'." I stood there analyzing the words he's just spoken. It sounded like he was speaking another language. "Huh?"  He gave an awkward smile before handing me the paper. 1301 Pope avenue. This was it. Since I couldn't understand him, I nodded. "Ahh splendid. Now. Where are is Elizabeth Westin?" Now that I understood. "Elizabeth Westin is my mom!" I said, excited. "Really? Well, she's my aunt. She raised me back in Cambridge." "Cambridge? Where's that?" "Why it's a city in England , of course." He poked his head into the place. "Fancy livin'. Can I come in?" Words escaped me however I still tried to communicate. "I uh- erm uh. Sure. I guess... Hold on. Lemme just unlock the door." As I did so, I rolled around the details in my head. Cambridge. Why didn't mom tell me about that? All I knew of our history was that mom was an escaped holocaust victim while dad is a political vet from Uganda. But I've never heard of any British descendants of such. As he came in, he sped walked to the table in the kitchen and finished my meal.  I had so many questions. How did he find us? Who raised him when mom moved to the states? How much older than me is he? He turned around, catching my gaze and gulped.  "Oh how terribly rude of me." He got up and walked back to me. Taking my hand into his. "The names' Jamerson. Jamerson Winslow Baker.  A pleasure to make your acquaintance." I nodded for the third time. He looked at me, smiling. What was he waiting for? Oh s@#&! Right, I forgot! "Oh erm, my name is Estelle. Estelle Westin. Nice to uh- meet you too. Cousin?"  He grinned and sat back at the table. I sat besides him watching him scarf the food I was previously eating down his throat. I'll give him one thing, he eats like me. And mom. And Lelly, my littlest sister who looks the most like mom and dad. She has the most beautiful kinky chocolate colored curls and caramel skin like dad, but with beautiful green eyes and button nose like mom. I just have mom's dead strait hair and pale tan-ish skin with dad's roman nose and full lips. I've been told I look masculine. It doesn't surprise me. Thinking about it now, Jamerson looked an oftly lot like me. Only his hair was in a messy top knot and he had monolid eyes. Otherwise, we were twins. Same complexion, same eye color, smae body type only I have breasts that are sadly not as engorged as the many young women my age, same height, same grin and same hands. As when both our arms rested on the table, my fingers seemed to be the same length as his. Cool. A long lost relative. But why now? Why not earlier like a day ago when everyone was here? Once done and hopefully full, he looked to me. "So..." "So..." I replied. It was so eerie seeing him now. I know I should turn him away, but for some reason, I couldn't. Mom said never to let someone in when she wasn't home and I should've told him to leave, but I couldn't. "How did you find us?" He shrugged and a weak smile spread across his face once more. "She told me to come here." "Who my mom?" "Why yes. She didn't want me to be lonesome, all alone in Cambridge. Since nana died and I was left with her flat. Aunt Elizabeth said I could come over here to spend time with my cousin." Figures mom wouldn't leave me all alone. Ever since last Christmas I was left alone. It wasn't even that big of a party!  Nothing got destroyed or stolen! So what if one guy vomited on the bush daisies in the window sill garden? Didn't someone say that vomit and with crap makes a good fertilizer? Besides, we're rich. She could've just bought some more bush daisies. Whatever. He's already here and it'd be rude to turn him away after having just arrived. "So what do you like?" I asked, rolling my eyes unenthusiasticly. "Ahh" He dug in his jacket. What was he gonna pull out; a list of rules mom wants me to follow? Or is it a note mom sent him in Cambridge full of things I'm not allowed to do. To my surprise, he pulled out a mushed up baggie of brownish green flakes that looked an oftly lot like cannabis. "Do you know how to roll?" My jaw dropped. "Where did you get that?" "My nana owned a farm. Not a big one. Just enough to make some money to pay our rent and food necessities." I grinned. Okay. I like him. This might just be the most interesting holiday week I've ever had. "Jamerson, did you drop from heaven?" "No I'm from Cambridge remember?" Ugh okay he obviously doesn't understand metaphors. No matter. It'd be fun teaching him all the stuff I know that he doesn't.


I stepped off the plane into the unknown land of New Orleans. I took a deep breath of polluted air and coughed out sharply. "Big mistake," I murmured under my breath, unheard through the sound of all the suitcases rolling across the bumpy tarmac. I checked my phone. It read 10:58. The plane had landed thirty two minutes ahead of schedule. My host family was expected to arrive at 11:30 too, to pick me up and bring me to my new temporary home. I waited at the baggage claim for ten minutes watching the same bags of all sorts go around on repeat until the owners eventually picked them up off of the endless cycle. Every bag that you could imagine went around in circles, all but one, mine.

I walked up to a lady working behind a desk. Her name appeared to be Jennifer as I read from the name tag that was pinned onto her shirt. She was staring down at her computer, the keys clacking ferociously as she typed incredibly quickly, her fingers a blur. I waited for her to look up and when she didn't, I cleared my throat in the most mannerly way possible. "Ahem." "What do you want?" she pestered, gum smacking loudly in her teeth. "Em, sorry to interrupt, my luggage seems to have gotten lost. I was waiting at baggage claim but I didn't see it come around." "Name?" she sighed. "Hermione Bell" I replied. The lady's long false nails tapped against the keyboard once again.

"I don't seem to have you on our flight list. Can I see your boarding pass?" she huffed. "Yes, one moment," I started to tear out all sorts of random things from my carry on bag until I eventually found the important piece of white card. I handed it to Jennifer who ripped it out of my grip. The red light of the scanner illuminated the boarding pass as it made a deafening high pitched sound. "Mmm...'kay. So it seems here that one of your suitcases got lost in the shipping process. There was only one wasn't there?" "Yes, the other one was in my overhead storage." "Yeah, okay. It should arrive in about a week because the next plane from Los Angeles to New Orleans lands here tomorrow but it will take a while for all the bags to get sorted first. We will contact you through email for you to pick it up or you could have it shipped to your accommodation. Which would suit you better?"

"I guess the shipping would be better, please." "Alrighty, I just need you to fill in these documents and all shall be well." I don't know what world she was living in but all should certainly not be well. It's not exactly the ideal beginning to an adventure. Most of my clothes were in that suitcase, my favourite items.

By the time I had all the documents and papers filled in, it was 11:27. I was sweating from the stress of losing a suitcase and my stomach was still churning from the plane journey that was packed with turbulence. I decided to go down the escalator to meet my host family.

I saw families holding glittery 'Welcome Home' posters with eyes filled with an excited sparkle. I was looking around to spot a sign with my name written on it. I was imagining the creative posters that the artistically talented children might have made. There was hope in my eyes and a smile on my face as I scanned through the crowds of people being reunited with their loved ones. In the very back of the crowds, I spotted a tall man wearing black sunglasses and a black suit, he was holding a sign that said 'Hermione Bell' in bold block writing. My smile faded away as I walked towards him. "Hello, you must be Mr.Stoker?" "No, I am not. Mr.Stoker sadly couldn't make it today to collect you, so I have been sent, supposing you are Hermione Bell?" said the mysterious man in a robotic monotone voice. "Yes I am. So who exactly are you then?" I asked as we began to exit the building. "I am the Stoker family's chauffeur and Mr.Stoker's brother." he answers in the same tone as before. "Oh,"I reply, shocked at this fact. It was a long silent car ride in a black car with tinted windows so you couldn't see out. I was just beginning to nod off when the car came to a halt as it rolled over little gravel rocks that sounded as though they were scratching the black paint off the shiny car, but when I stepped outside, the car looked brand new. The entire family was standing outside the ghostly looking mansion. The parents were standing in the back with the three children lined up neatly in front. They were all wearing formal black clothes. The children looked as though they were having an argument until their mother bent down and whispered something in their ears and then they kept quiet. I walked towards them with my suitcase in hand, because it didn't roll successfully over the gravel,and Mrs. Stoker met me halfway. "Oh my dear Hermione, we are all so glad that you are finally here," she announced, enveloping me into a cold, bony hug. A shiver went down my spine, as though a spirit had entered my body. She continued to introduce me to her husband and children.

"This is my eldest daughter Clarice." Clarice stuck out her hand for a formal hand shake. When our hands touched, I felt a prick in the skin of my palm. I winced but thought that Clarice must have gotten a thorn stuck under her nail or something. "And this is my only son Barnabas, he is going to be in charge of the Stoker family when my husband passes," explained Mrs.Stoker with an odd glint in her eye. I nod slowly and smile at the boy who looks around ten or eleven years of age. "And last but not least is little baby, Belladonna," she says whilst picking up the creepy girl of about three. She had a full head of black hair and her eyes so dark brown that they looked like burnt charcoal. I found it unusual that none of the kids had said a word to me yet.

Mrs.Stoker handed Belladonna to Clarice who lifted her and swung her by one of her arms like an out of control bowler with a bowling ball. I avoided eye contact with Clarice to prevent her from giving me an evil eye stare. Mrs.Stoker then put a long fingered hand on my lower back and led me toward the large double door entrance to the scary building. "How old are you Hermione?" "Em… sixteen,"I hesitated because it said so, multiple times, on all the documents that they had to sign before I came. As soon as I stepped inside the home the doors locked suddenly,it looked like an invisible hand just slid all the metal locks shut. I began to tremble. This place was terrifying to say the least. There was a bear rug on the carpet with its eyes still in their sockets and a pool of blood below the mouth. "Ahh, I see you are looking at Barnabas' latest achievement. He went into the woods with Damien last week and shot it with his own gun." "Damien?" I question, trying to avoid the fact that an eleven year old shot an animal dead. "Yes, my husband. Barnabas made it for you, to make the home feel cosier, I hope you like it," answered Mrs.Stoker. "Yes, I do very much," I lie blatantly. Barnabas grinned. "I will show you up to your room now," whispered Clarice very quietly, taking my hand and dragging me up the creaky warped oak floors. We went up four flights of stairs before coming to a grey door. I was panting when we had finally reached the top. Clarice ripped off a necklace that was hanging around her neck and stuck a key that looked like a charm into an old keyhole. She wriggled the key around until a click was heard and the door opened slowly. "Welcome to your new home," she said, in a scary voice.

"Thanks," I whispered. I stepped inside the room and felt a cold breeze blow across my face and I noticed that the window was open. No I was wrong, there was no glass, it was just a hole in the stone wall, white lace curtains blowing. I turned around to look at Clarice, to notice that she had disappeared as silently as a grave. I gently closed my bedroom door behind me, wedging my backpack between the door and wall so as to prevent being locked in, like in the movies. There was a steel bed pushed up against a wall with a thick sticky liquid dripping down it. The mattress had one thin grey blanket folded on top and a flat pillow that looked as though it was as old as the building itself. There was an empty fireplace opposite the bed and that was it; that was my new bedroom for the entire summer. My mom had sent me to New Orleans to learn a bit of independence and to get a job and to become self-sufficient.  but personally I didn't think it was a good idea and I guess I was right. I took my cell phone out of my pocket, 14:43. The time was flying by today. I dumped my suitcase on the floor and threw my backpack on top of it whilst holding the door open. I then walked down the stairs, I kept imagining screaming faces in the small pane of glass in each of the doors that I walked past but just presumed that it was my tired eyes playing tricks on me. I walked all the way down the flights of stairs back to the entrance where I first came in. I walked as quietly as I could but there was a loud squeak each time I placed my foot on a stair. I could see light and hear voices talking coming from a room off the main entrance. I skipped towards it. “July 16th 4pm, it will be done,” said Mrs.Stoker’s voice. “No, it will be much too soon, the people will get suspicious,” replied an unfamiliar voice. “Not if they never find out,”giggled Mrs.Stoker wildly. Today was July 16th, something secretive was going to occur very soon. I knocked lightly on the wooden door and stepped inside the warmly lit kitchen. "Hello." "Oh hello dear, would you like some food? You must be hungry after your long trip," said Mrs.Stoker. The anonymous voice was matched with the body of Mr.Stoker. "Yes please,"I reply politely. She took out a large pot out of the oven with her bare hands and began to ladle out a chunky looking stew into a cracked bowl before handing it to me. "There you go love,"said Mrs.Stoker "You can eat at the dining room table," she said, pointing to a dark green picnic bench in the corner of the large airy kitchen that I hadn't noticed before. "Thank you,"I said gratefully as Mr.Stoker gave me an ivory spoon. I walked over to the bench and placed my meal on the table while I swung my legs in under the seat and ate the chunky mush and gagged before managing to swallow a spoon full and said I was full even though I was so hungry I could eat a horse. I left my bowl on the table. "Where are the children?"I asked, wanting to become acquainted with them properly. "They are probably in the play room," Mr.Stoker replies without looking at me and pointing at a room straight through the kitchen entrance. I walked out and crept towards that room. Belladonna came crawling towards me on all fours frowning in a way that I have never seen a toddler frown. I picked her up and bounced her up in my arms, I noticed Clarice and Barnabas doing something that looked very strange indeed.

"Clarice!"I yelped. "What?" she asked dully. "Stop doing whatever on earth you're doing to Barnabas!"I demand. "We're just playing, it's no big deal," replied Barnabas as he took his head out of the miniature guillotine. I ran up to my room, two stairs at a time, after I left Belladonna on the bear rug. I grabbed my phone and punched in a number. "Hello, how can I help?" asked the robotic voice,"If you would like to order a cab please press one." I stabbed in the number one very harshly. "Where would you like the cab to be sent to? Would you like to put it in manually or would you like me to send it to your current location?" "Current location," I reply in an intense voice. "A cab will arrive in approximately twenty minutes." I sighed a breath of relief. I can't stand this creepy place any longer! It was currently 15:35 I screamed a little inside. Something bad was going to happen in twenty five minutes. If the cab came in time I could make it out safely. I started throwing all the little items that I had taken out of my small bag and began to put them back in. I sat on the edge of my bag waiting for the time to slowly tick past. I had my bag on my back and my suitcase in hand. The second the minute turned to 15:55 I ran down the stairs and crept along the ground floor slowly so as to not make much noise so nobody would notice my disappearing act until when I was already on a flight home. I tried to unlatch all the locks silently and it was on the last lock that I heard a voice behind me. "Where do you think you're going?" screeched Mrs.Stoker in a horrible voice. I slowly turned around on my heel, a look of terror on my face. "Em..I was just...em...getting a breath of air..." "With your bags?" "Yes...um...I-" "You what, dear?" she said, coming closer, her breath on mine. I gently managed to get the door open and I made a run for it. I could hear multiple pairs of feet chasing after me, snapping twigs and crunching leaves on the autumnal ground. A yellow cab pulled up in the driveway. I jumped in.

"Go! Step on the gas!" I panted, out of air, my lungs felt as though they were burning. Roughly, five minutes later when I was able to breathe normally again I realised something.

"Hi, sorry, I never actually told you where to go, where are you taking me?..."I questioned, fear creeping up on me again. The cab driver didn't say anything. I took out my phone to pretend to do something when I saw a text from three minutes ago. Your cab has arrived to pick you up, please come outside. I started to freak out… "Who are you?" I asked, breaking out in a cold sweat. The driver didn't reply. "Can you let me out?" I ask. Still no answer. I grab at the door handles when I hear a click. He locked them. "Let me out!" I scream. The driver eventually turned around and I couldn't believe it when I saw...


I sit at the edge of my seat, facing my publisher. “So what do you think? Is it ready?” She looks right back at my eager face and rubs the bridge of her nose as if she is working her way through a headache. “I mean…” she sighs. “Honestly, Moses, what the fuck?” I can’t help but feel a little taken aback. Was ‘What the fuck’ a good thing? Like ‘What the fuck, I didn’t expect something this good.’ She doesn’t look like she’s praising me though. “So, is it… bad?” I ask hesitantly. “I didn’t say that,” she answers. “So it’s good?” I ask, feeling a little confused about her tone. “No… No, I wouldn’t go so far as calling it good either. It’s just… you know… ‘What the fuck’”. “I aehm… I don’t know what that means.” “It means ‘What the fuck Moses?’ As in ‘What the fuck were you thinking?’ What’s the point of it?” “I didn’t know it was supposed to have a point.” “Well, usually it does. People don’t want to just close a book after they finished it and go: ‘We’ll that was a bunch of random nonsense. I have no idea why I even read it, I guess I’ll get on with my life now.’ You obviously put a lot of work into this, but who on earth is going to want to read it? You could have at least picked a genre and stuck to it or tried writing something somewhat normal.” “You told me to write something that is fun to…” I start up, trying to find some common ground, but she interrupts me.

“Do you actively want to be broke? You know you’ve got to make money and you have to know that this isn’t going to make any. I mean… Ancient Lizards eating themselves to death, sex pacts with underwater fairies, parallel dimensions that need to be explained in depth using detailed mathematics, Vampires vs. Sociopaths, Ninja Duels, Insane Space Soldiers, Superpowered Yakuza… This… This is just weird. You can’t just throw a bunch of shit at a wall and call it a book regardless of whether or not it sticks.” “I thought it was unique,” I mutter, my confidence shrinking by the second. “It is, but so is sticking a banana in a jar of mustard. Doesn’t mean anyone will want to pay you for it.” “Well… some people might want a banana with mustard. A lot of them are pretty weird, once you get to know them,” I argue. “A lot of people told me that they really like…” “Moses,” she interrupts me again, “you’re not hearing me. I can’t publish this shit. It’s something, but it isn’t something that will have any readers.” I fall silent. “So what now?” I ask. She shrugs. “You could publish it yourself.” I sit there stunned. She knows as well as I do that self-publishing the book would be a death sentence. I might as well stick it in a bargain bin at a local supermarket, only worse. Every day, an endless torrent of self-published books goes out into the world, only to disappear into the void. A lot of them are so bad you can find a spelling mistake on the first page. It’s like an army of mad monkeys typing out an endless stream of random words, sticking them next to each other, printing them out, and throwing them on an ever-increasing pile, where millions of other books already rest. The thought of my book, sitting in that gigantic pile, just another hidden gem waiting to be discovered but only getting buried deeper every day, breaks my heart.

“Please don’t make me do that,” I answer, all color drained from my face.

“I mean… you could have listened to our advice when we gave it to you. Written the things we told you to write.” she says.

I could have, but I hadn’t wanted to. I had considered it, but writing that stuff would have been nothing more than average. Hero is chosen from humble beginnings to do X and has character arc Y as he rises to the tasks ahead of him. The kind of story that has already been written a million times, only with slightly different events and backdrops. Out of my desperation, a small flicker of anger sparks. “Nobody wants to read the mediocre piece of garbage you told me to write,” I suddenly bark, surprising her and myself at the same time. “Maybe so, but it would have been a mediocre piece of garbage that people would have actually bought. A sub-par burger with fries is still better than a banana with mustard,” she answers. There’s some flint in her voice now. I know this is a good time to keep my mouth shut, go back to the drawing board, start over, and see what I can salvage out of this relationship. But I have had enough. I don’t want to be reasonable anymore. “There is another option,” I say, a mad, angry flicker of hope in my voice. She wordlessly raises an eyebrow, wondering what I’ll come up with next. I reach into my hoodie, produce my lightsaber, stretch out my hand, and flick the switch. It turns on with a familiar buzz. I can feel the heat of it almost burning my hands as I raise it into a guard position. She considers the weapon with an emotionless, calculating glare. “Have you gone mad?” She asks, slowly getting up out of her rich leather desk chair. “How much worse do you want to make this?” I answer neither of her questions. When she looks into my eyes, she finds only steel and knows which answer she is going to get.

“Alright then, have it your way,” she says with a sigh. She begins to transform as I step back from the desk. Her torso splits open, and a multitude of long, thin, spidery limbs made of shining metal emerge from it. The human flesh on her face splits apart, and slowly slides off it, hitting the ground with a wet slap. Below her flesh, the face of a machine is revealed, its eyes cold and uncaring. When you look deep into them, you’ll find nothing, only polls, statistics, and money. Those eyes show me an inevitable place, where art must die and mad hope must concede to reasonable thoughts. Where every story must have a point to it to be worth writing. Under the merciless glare of these eyes, everything unique, weird and wonderful must inevitably turn into yet another greyish blob in a never-ending sludge pipe of mediocre books. When she has fully transformed, I am facing a deadly machine almost twice as tall as me. The remainders of her human flesh lie at her feet, like a discarded suit. She stands on six legs, all shiny like freshly polished chrome, and another four limbs protrude from her mechanical torso. Each one of her limbs ends in razor-sharp claws, ready to tear me to shreds. Even though my flesh is weak and easy to hurt, she knows my lightsaber is a formidable weapon that can cut through her as if she was made of butter. We size each other up for a few brief seconds. There will be no drawn-out duel, no long sequence of parries and feints. I take a deep breath, close my eyes to find a moment of peace, and open them again.

In the same heartbeat, we rush at each other. My weapon is raised high above my head and a madman's scream is in my throat. I am ready to die. Her many legs move with mathematical precision, clicking across the ground at an inhuman speed. Her four arms close in on me from every angle. I twist, dodge, slash and scream. We clash and come apart, stumbling toward the opposite ends of the office. A single one of her appendages clatters to the floor between us and I crumble to my knees. The lightsaber slips out of my hand. I can feel the pain of too many stab wounds. I touch my chest and it is wet with blood. There’s too much of it already. “Alright, you win,” I croak, as my sight turns blurry. “I’ll self-publish.” I try to think of something witty to say, something to give a point to this story, but there is nothing I can think of. I slump forward, darkness embracing me as I lose consciousness. She stands above me. Even in my death, she betrays no emotion. Her many appendages fold in on themselves until she has reverted back into a human-sized form. She walks over to her intercom and presses a button on it. “Send in the next one. Also, I need a girl to redo my make-up and a clean-up crew as well. This one made a mess.”


“One, two, fisherman’s stew, boiled on timber and stirred with a broom.” Dad’s in the shower, singing.

“Three, four, pour it on the floor, feed all the beasties, cook up some more.” He’s sung this one so many times, I know almost the whole thing by heart.

“Five, six, mortar and bricks, weaker than iron but stronger than sticks.” Isn’t it odd how we say a song is stuck in our head, but then say we learned it by heart? I saw a comic once where two characters were debating about that: a song stuck inside, playing on a loop, in your head vs. in your heart. Maybe it depends on whether or not you want it there. If the song is welcome, you want it in your heart. If it’s not, you want it somewhere besides your heart, and your head is an acceptable place for the song to squat. “Seven, eight, lock up the gate, nothing to do but to sit and to wait.” Whether the songs are in his head, his heart, or somewhere else entirely, they certainly seem to be stuck. As a family, the rest of us have come to the conclusion that this is because of Dad’s spectrum brain. My sister and I say that about 50% of everything Dad says is not original, instead being a quote or paraphrase of some kind. Movies, books, songs, memes—he repeats all of them, ad nauseam.

Another snippet of song I’ve heard countless times is “Lobsterbacks attack the town again. Wrap all my things in aluminum.” I have a vivid memory of Dad putting away his socks while singing that, vigorously nodding his head to the beat. He was wearing what I now know to be a band t-shirt, but at the time, I regarded it as simply weird. There was an angry-looking blue-eyed robot wearing a red cape, standing on a city street with red-tinted skyscrapers. The words CLOSE YOUR EYES were written in white block letters below. The picture and caption on the gray t-shirt made me think of dreams and nightmares. Dad’s black t-shirt with the orange eye on it also used to creep me out.

Now, he likes to poke fun at the graphic t-shirts I wear. I think he likes them, yet he laughs as he points and comments. One shirt, which I’ve since outgrown, he really did take issue with. It had an illustration of a Tyrannosaurus Rex on it, accompanied by fact boxes listing its height, weight, etc. Dad took issue with the fact that one line read Diet: Carnivore . Every time I wore that shirt, he would say, “Diet: Carnivore. So, it only eats other carnivores?” We beat around that bush almost as many times as I’ve told him that a Pteranodon is not a dinosaur; I’ve stopped responding beyond a look to both of those topics. That’s his word-focused spectrum brain. It runs in the family. My aunt, his sister, has a shirt that reads Grammar Police: To Correct and Serve . She’s a school superintendent. Guess which of Dad’s children inherited the word focus? That’s right, yours truly.

I also seem to have inherited, or else learned, a head-shaking quirk from him. If Dad is getting distracted by his thoughts, he shakes his head to clear it. I do the same, for the same reason. I see him do it often when he’s driving.

Another thing he does while driving is drum on the steering wheel, sometimes while singing “Peaches come from a can, they were put there by a man in a factory downtown.”

If he’s not too busy singing, I’ll read aloud from a book. I’ve already read C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet to my family entirely in the car, and now we’re working our way through Perelandra , at least when my mother and sister aren’t asleep. Before that, I read Michael Morpurgo’s Kensuke’s Kingdom and Richard Adams’s Watership Down at the dinner table.

Watership Down made Dad love rabbits; now, on summer evenings, he’ll sit outside in a camping chair with a beer, watching the neighborhood rabbits.

We tried watching the Watership Down animated movie, but as a family, we agreed that it was not very good, and that’s putting it mildly. Halfway through, Dad decided he didn’t want to watch the rest of it, and went to bed. He missed the only part that possibly redeemed the terrible experience of watching that cartoon.

The next time we watched Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit , in the scene where Gromit turned on the radio in the truck while waiting for Wallace, a now-familiar song began playing—familiar to all present except Dad. “Bright eyes, burning like fire…” Once we explained to him that Bright Eyes was from the abominable Watership Down movie, Dad joined in our laughter at Gromit’s annoyed eye rolling.

Sometimes Dad plays music that more than annoys the rest of us. If he’s singing snatches of something and proceeds to fiddle with his phone, I brace myself for the soon-to-be-blasting audio. On more than one occasion, he’s made us jump or shriek with his sudden musical assaults. We’ll ask him to turn it off, shouting to be heard, to which he almost always replies, “Why? This is a sweet jam,” as he rocks in time with the music. Then he’ll dramatically lip-sync along with the words. “I’ve got the time tick tick tickin’ in my head.”

“At least turn it down,” we beg, and he finally relents.

I think it’s not the time, but song lyrics, that run in his mind as constantly as the ticking of a clock. Once he hears something, he’ll repeat it, sometimes for days on end, often by playing it out loud.

One of the more pleasant of these bouts of musical repetition began on a visit to Uncle Julio’s house. I was sitting on the couch beside Dad, playing Minecraft on my cousin Luis’s tablet. Dad had his headphones on, watching things on our computer. Dad started laughing, wheezing for air, almost falling over. A minute later, he poked me, gasping, “You have to listen to this.” I held my hands up, fending off the headphones. “What is it? I’m not sure I want to hear it.” “Just watch this,” he insisted, and I apprehensively allowed him to put the headphones on me. The words on the screen declared Seagulls! (Stop it Now) A Star Wars Bad Lip Reading . What followed was voice overs of scenes from Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back . Most of the video was snippets of Yoda singing a ridiculous song in a falsetto voice. I laughed almost as hard as Dad did, and Seagulls! was played many times after that. We later discovered another Star Wars BLR titled Hostiles on the Hill , also from Star Wars Episode V . In that BLR, there’s a part where one of the Empire’s soldiers in an AT-AT says to the driver, “Don’t worry about it, Darius, ‘cause I’m a mile high, and I’m the scariest.” After that, a new piece was added to our family’s dialect: Dad would say “Don’t worry about it, Darius,” when we were concerned about something. This later devolved into simply “Darius,” and even Mom will use it.

Quite recently, Dad got onto another song repetition campaign. While we were sitting in the car waiting for Dad to finish filling the gas tank, a song he likes came on over the gas station radio. “I like diggin’ holes, hidin’ things inside them, when I grow old, I won’t forget to find them.” “This is a good one,” Dad declared, bobbing his head to the beat.

The next day, as we were sitting in the car in the driveway getting ready to leave, Dad said, “I’m going to play No Roots .” He held up his phone and asked, “You guys ready?” A moment later, the opening bass beats boomed from the car speakers. He’d finally gotten the car bluetooth to work. “Now we’re one of those cars playing loud boom-boom music,” I commented, and everyone laughed. Then we all danced in our seats, waving to our neighbor as we drove past, enjoying the music stuck in Dad’s head.

I love you, Dad. Keep being awesome. Author’s Note: This story’s title is my father's joking version of the Menards jingle. “Save big money at Menards!”


                                <<Violet>>

The trees reached toward the sky as if praying for a way out of the forest. I run up one of them with sturdy branches while the wolves whimper at the bottom, I see their eyes and I hope soon that this chase would end. I miss my home and most of all I miss luke who convinced me to go with my dad to witch mountain because he would be in Florida this week and he didn't want me to be lonely. The wolves finally whimper and scurry away and I finally can lay back on the tree and figure out what I will do, AHHH!      I hear as I wake up with a jolt and the dream, the scream was what woke me up. It was the scream of my father in his tent two nights ago when the wolves attacked, He was sleeping and I heard a howl and went to look just in time to see a teenage boy jump into a waterfall as the wolves tried to bite him and when they realized they lost their prey they went into my dads' tent where the scream was all I heard and I was gone. I climb down from the tree as tears stream down my face and I decide to go hike down to the bottom of the waterfall so I can drink some water with the straw that purifies water, I was smart enough to grab the survival kit before I ran but a coward for leaving my father to die. My phone died even though I had it on the portable charger, I can still see Luke's message saying "I miss you already violet." I can also picture him lying on the beach, without me, Creaaakk! I whip around and see the teenager who is probably 2 years older than me staring back at me with pale skin and red eyes. Vampire, I only ever read about them in books of witch mountain but they were only folk tales to scare kids, No this is real. I don't have time to think before I feel dizzy and then I hear a beep, My phone has charged!

     I run again so I can run up another tree to call for help. He doesn't do anything but stare as his pale face darkens as the night grows on. I rip out my phone but no reception the only thing I can get is luke's social media page since he has it on private and doesn't require internet, I scroll down and see pictures of him and me, I scroll down more and then I stop dead in my tracks as I see him on the beach kissing a girl. I let out a shocked gasp as I scroll down more and more. He only wanted me to go on the trip so he could cheat on me and since I would be gone a month then he thought that I didn't have his personal social media site. I curl into a ball and cry, I hear a thump as I look up and see an Outline of the vampire next to me, I jump and have to catch myself before I fall off the branch. I say in a shaky voice "what do you want with me?".       He doesn't say anything but stares at me, now I am freaking out until his soft voice says "I saw you running from the werewolves so I followed you and I didn't mean to make you cry I just was wondering what you were doing on vampire territory." I glare and this time more confidently say "I saw you at the waterfall before you jumped, and what is Vampire territory?" he chuckles softly and says "yes this is where the northern vampire tribe lives up on those houses on the hills. I was hunting when the wolves were surrounding me and I smelt your blood so I had to leap into the water to control myself".                                                                        I nod and he says almost immediately after His sentence ended " we are millions of miles away from civilization and vampires can run the distance and not die we would get figured out quickly, anyway I can take you to my family and they could help get you food." British accent, oof I think I am in a coma, "that sounds wonderful, thank you". He Grabs me and put me on his back and

He is running and jumping through the trees in a second and then before I have time to blink we're at a hidden house filled with windows all around. Two men come out and ask the boy what happened and then he took me in and brought me to a room with a bed that looked like it has never been slept on and books everywhere. The boy says "This is my room, I am jake by the way" I gawk at him "what?" he asks. "The bed is untouched and it is huge!" he chuckles as a girl who looks about 5, so 11 years younger than me and jake looks either 20-18. She gives me a tray of food I thank her as she leaves and I eat, more like gorge myself with the food since I didn't eat dinner and the events of today have been unbearable and painful. I yawn and he asks me "what's your name?" "My name is violet", I take out my camo back with all of the survival gear I need and I look for my phone then I realize it's not there so I look in my front pocket and see the crushed up remains. Jake follows my gaze and see's the crushed-up remains and says "I'm surprised you're still together even though I tried to go gentle. I go over to the shelf and see a player for a disc and hit play, It plays piano songs which makes sense why there is a piano downstairs. It plays classical in a beautiful melody as I close my eyes. It reminds me of twilight and the way Edward looked at Bella kind of like jake looked at me. This feels like the story but if only life was like that, you give your heart to a boy and pledge your love as he goes to Florida to cheats on me! I don't realize the coldness of Jake's body an inch from mine as he wipes my tears and turns off the radio. "are you ok", I look up and he is hovering above me. I nod and say "it's just been a stressful few hours. Why are you controlled now but not earlier jake?" I eagerly changed the subject and he replies " you weren't bleeding earlier" as he gently but quickly grabs my wrist where I got scraped only hours before by a rock when my dad and I were fishing. Yawn and he leads me to the untouched bed and as I crawl under the covers he turns to leave and I blurt out "won't you stay with me?    I need to know more about you like your age" I can tell he smiles as he turns around and answers "I'm 17 and I'm guessing your 16, yes I will stay though I do prefer, not to be too close because my skin is made of ice and though my desire for blood is overwhelming so is being close to you". I nod but don't give up "why is being close to you overwhelming" this time he closes his mouth and doesn't answer just sits on the bed by my feet and watches me.                        <<Jake>> I see her stomach rise and fall and see her moving soon after and then she is shaking and I touch her shoulder to wake her from the dreaded nightmare as she jolts awake from my cold touch her body is soaked with sweat and she starts crying. I can't do anything but watch because I'm afraid that if I touch her sweat-soaked arm I will get the smell of her blood and I have been a vampire for 8 years and I still find it hard to be around anyone but she is different I crave her blood but also something else that is stronger, I crave her...Lips, her body, I crave her.       She finally after 3 minutes she looks around and wipes her eyes as she moves towards me and I ask "what is wrong ?" She silently says "my dad got attacked by the wolves that you were being chased by and when they realized that they didn't get you they turned toward my dad's tent and.." I slowly look down and apologize but she stops me with another weep and then as soon as she looks at me she asks "why are your eyes red? Don't they change like in the books?" I laugh but it's bitter and low "no, they don't change but everything else is true, have you ever read twilight? My sister has and everything in there is true but the eye color and the superpowers, we are all the same but some are stronger or faster than others." she stares at me and says "yes I have read twilight, what time is it?" I get up and run downstairs to my adopted parents and look at the stove as it reads:3:00, I run back upstairs and tell her the time and I sit at the end of the bed and she kicks the blanket off and asks curiously "is it true your skin is as cold as ice?" I nod and she crawls over to me and lays on top of me and says "uhhh! I was dying in those blankets" the only thing that is not covered by her warm body is my head and as soon as she lays on me I'm shocked and as soon as she lets out the cry of relief I put my head on hers and she is instantly back to sleep.      Through the night she is soundless and without nightmares but she does have a shiver so I put the blanket that has now fallen off the bed slowly so I don't wake her and rest the blanket on her fragile body, as soon as I do I hear tiny footsteps as Lilly my adopted sister comes in and looks at me and smiles kindly. She does have a basket and sets it down softly and says "I'm guessing she's sleeping but when she wakes up Eli asked me to ask you if you want to come with us to hunt? My 5-year-old vampire body can only take so much".     I roll my eyes as she uses her age all the time and a little annoyed say" no, Eli will take you and close the door, I want her to rest Lilly" she giggles and says "we both know you want more than that" I shoot her a glance and with that she's gone, not even an hour later the sun peaks up and sensing the light violet awakes and at first she doesn't do anything but lay there and I wrap my arms around her and then she speaks in a sleepy voice "good morning, thank you for letting me sleep here for the night I better get home". I hide my sadness because I don't know how to tell her that which mountain can only be flown in and there is no society but my family here and the next plane doesn't arrive in 4 months and I don't want her to get up out of my grasp if anything I want to bring my lips down to hers and kiss her and hold her forever right here in my arms. "What's wrong?" I tell her what I was thinking except the part where I don't want her to get out of my arms and how I want to kiss her. She nods and I can see the pain in her face but then as soon as it came it vanished and she gets up and stretches and the way the sun bounces off of her tan skin and the way her brown eyes look at me in not pity or scared but full of wonder. She sees the basket and asks "is this for me?" I look in the basket and see brand new clothes from the oak lodge store and say "I guess so" she thanks me and asks if she could take a shower and I lead her away and turn around with all my dignity fighting the urge to not leave her side.                            <<Violet>>     I walk into the bathroom which looks clean and is beautiful so I turn on the shower and I do see shampoo that is in the trash; so they do take showers I get in and feel the warm water splash my skin and I look around and see a shampoo bottle and a soap bottle not opened so I open them and use them and it feels so nice to have the water splash my skin and I can't help my mind from wandering to last night and jakes cool skin and the way I woke up with his arms gently around me, I can't help but felt the need to kiss him, I know that he probably has a girlfriend and he is 17 and hot with his black hair, red eyes, and pale skin. But something inside of me had my hope that he would love me..stop, you just found out that your boyfriend cheated on you and unless your dying to cry your heart out then you need to realize that he will never love you and if he does he will get bored of you just like luke did and then it will be too late. I quickly clean my hair and get out and dry myself up and find a note in the basket so I pick it up and read:     My name is Rose, I am Jake's adopted mom and I thought that you would be 16 by the way you looked so I went shopping off of what the storekeeper said. I hope these fit.-rose. I put the note on the side and pull out a red shirt, black jeans and a black lace bra and underwear, and quickly dress, I brush my hair after I finished up and it took a minute because below the makeup there was a bag at the very bottom filled with combs and toothpaste. As soon as I get out I return to Jake's room and set the basket down as I do I see him on the bed and I go over to him and say "thank you, for everything. I think I can go back out in the woods". He runs and grabs my arm lightly and I can't speak as his cold skin lays on mine he almost begs "no, please stay here with me I don't want you getting hurt, no I won't let you out on your own. I want you to stay here with me and the answer to your question about why being close to you is overwhelming is because I like you, I want to kiss you and I don't want you to ever leave. I realized it as you slept last night and I may not be the best person and you don't have to love me back, I have seen so many girls but you are different so please stay."


The metallic air, along with the stench of runoff coolants, wafting up from the street through the rain smelled so acerbic that it made Leta imagine her nose hairs curling inward as she inhaled it, her stomach churning at the thought of it. She quickened her pace when she tasted bile at the tip of her tongue. She walked with her eyes downcast, trying to discourage any phantoms that might want to talk to her . How does anyone live here! Of course, the scant few who lived on Metronome were either used to it or were crazy. Perhaps, they lived on it

because  they were all crazy. And she was in no rush to join them. “If only things hadn’t been this awful,” she muttered to herself, her boots clanking against the computer’s metallic body. “I’d still be home. Working on equational currents instead of worrying about the end of the Universe.” But it was her job to know, and that’s what she would do. Through the pouring rain, she could see one of Metronome’s many Computational Units, the one she was supposed to meet Dex at, just a few feet away from her. Her heart fluttered at the thought of meeting him—she couldn’t help it. The acidic smell receded when she stepped under the eave of the Computational Unit.

Huh,

she thought, unbuckling her raincoat.

Stench so thick, it needs water to rise up. Crazy, indeed.

Maybe she was being unfair to the hardworking scientists of Metronome. These were bleak days for everyone. Bleaker still for scientists like her, who were watching the Universe end, unable to stop it—unable to even comprehend what was happening. Maybe she was tired from the long flight to this planet-sized computer. Maybe it was the bloody history of Metronome, the genocide from over a thousand years ago, which had wiped the indigenous people of the planet off it to pave the way for humanity’s most audacious invention, that had set her nerves afire. She had seen phantoms roam the streets of Metronome, rising from the metal along with its damp fetor. Or maybe it was just this meeting with Dex. “Terrible news,” he had said, calling her a week ago. “Dark days ahead.” She stood under the eave for a little while and watched green raindrops fall onto the metallic streets of Metronome. Everything about this planet—if it could even be called one—was utterly unnatural. Yet, even as she felt its poison seep into her lungs, she understood that she was standing on humanity’s greatest creation. Metronome. A computer built into a planet itself. A computer so large that its body made up the streets of the planet, its processors fused with the planet’s very core. A computer that could understand the beginning of the Universe, and could project higher dimensions into the ones humans could perceive. A computer that might be able to explain why the Universe was dying. And hopefully, also tell Leta how to save it. She shook her head.

I can’t keep avoiding this . She turned to the door to the Computational Unit. It was a seamless aluminum wall, indistinguishable from its other walls, save for the circular glass tube that ran through its center. She placed her hand on the lock beside the circle. Soon, she felt a small prick at the base of her palm when the Identifier drew her blood for DNA verification. She pulled her hand back, rubbing at the place where the needle had pricked her. “Dr. Leta Karli,”

the SecCom chimed.

“Welcome. Dr. Dex has been expecting you . ” Blue light flooded into the tube, casting a soft glow on Leta’s white uniform. Then the circle shifted outward and then swung inward. Leta steeled herself and stepped into Dex’s Unit. She had seen Computational Units before. Her job entailed visiting this phantom planet every now and then. The Units were like little outcrops, built as extensions of Metronome’s body, where scientists could go to cast in equations, observe the mathematical currents of astronomical events, and obtain predictions and solutions from Metronome’s processors.

Are we not a part of it?  Leta wondered like she did every time she walked into a Computational Unit.

We—these scientists—feed it problems to solve, and relay the results to the rest of humanity, and they

live  in it. Where does Metronome end? Where does their humanity begin? Dex’s Unit was much like others she had been to. Thousands of copper-coated solar cells studded all over its circular wall, all placed there with the sole objective of powering the computer that was built in the center of the room. Beside the computer, she saw a couple of mattresses with empty food cartons on them. And in a chair in front of the computer, watching Leta with intent eyes, sat Dex. He had grown a beard since she had last seen him, but still looked younger than she did. His brown lab coat hung from his firm shoulders, sticking close to his arms, and fell loosely around his legs.

“Dex,” she asked. “How long since you last left the Unit?” “Oh, I haven’t left in days,” Dex said, standing up to greet her. And while shaking her hand, he added, “Except, of course, to take a leak and then some.” Leta smiled. “My dear Dex, the Universe is ending and you still cannot change.” “Leta,” he said, turning to face the computer, his form illuminated in the light streaming out of it, “I think that the end of everything is the perfect time to do what one must.” Chuckling, she stepped up beside him. She wanted to thank him for greeting her as if nothing had changed. Leta wasn’t sure if she’d have been this welcoming had Dex shown up back home. Even now, standing beside her friend who now looked so unfamiliar, she couldn’t believe that he had chosen to work on Metronome. Maybe she was still mad at him for abandoning her. Or maybe she knew that the phantoms would get to him. And they had. Dex from seven years ago would have never let himself be indoctrinated into the false religion of the Lost Jatahu. This Dex, who looked so unfamiliar now, wore the seal of the Lost Jatahu around his neck. The pendant rested on his chest, where his lab coat showed skin. Leta huffed internally.

If one could blaspheme against science, this would be it. Things had changed. She needed to remember that. “Dex, I haven’t known peace since you called me,” she said. “That cryptic phone call of yours. Tell me, and tell it to me straight. What have you learned?” Dex stood there with his eyes focused on the computer screen. Finally, he asked, “Have you heard of Mizken?” Leta shut her eyes, trying to keep her frustration from showing. “Dex, please—” “Mizken was the SaarPanch—the tribe leader—of the largest northern tribe here on Jatahu,” he said. Then, he looked at her. “My apologies. Of course, here on

Metronome. ” “Dex—” Leta said, but Dex interrupted her again. “He lived on the planet until only two years before we blew it to hell,” he began. “He was the bravest this world had ever known. Strong. Smarter than us scientists, they say. They say that had he been around when we came, we never would have been able to build Metronome here. “Alas, Kihn—curse that fool—a member of Mizken’s tribe rebelled against him. That rat went so far as to plot his own leader’s murder. They say Mizken was long dead by the time Kihn went to murder him. Died from a broken heart, they say. Betrayed by his kin. Well, they got what was coming for them.” Despite herself, Leta asked, “What did they get?” “Huh?” Dex asked as if he hadn’t just been preaching about it. “Kihn, and the rest of the Jatahu people?” Leta asked. “That’s a rather silly question,” he said, smiling. “They got us. Blowing their planet to hell.” A chill perked up in the pit of her stomach and sent a jolt up her spine. “They say Mizken brought us to this planet. Jatahu people believe that they were their god’s special creations, that they could access him like no one else. Mizken went to their god and with His help led humanity here. And we took care of the rest.” His eyes were so stern that his penetrating gaze made her feel exposed. The last time she had seen him, childlike humor was all he was. But there was more to him now.

How deep is he in this religion? What’s this got to do with the death of the Universe? “Terrible leader,” he said. “Well, anyway. Yes.” Leta started. “Yes what?” “The Universe

is  ending,” he declared. She had known that for over a year now, had studied possible causes for astronomical bodies ceasing all movement, for the light they emitted freezing in place. But this was a terrible confirmation, one she never really wished to hear. Not from Dex, not on Metronome. “I… I need to sit…” she said, her throat drying up. He brought her his chair. She plopped down in it.

The universe is dying!

“Why?” she croaked. He placed a hand on her shoulder. “This is going to be hard, Leta. We can talk about it in some.” She looked up at the man who had once been her friend. But all she could see was the symbol he wore. “And what do we do in the meantime?” she barked at him. “Another pathetic lesson in the history of the Lost Jatahu? Want to take another shot at me? Remind me that I am a horrible person for not moving here with you—to

atone for the sins of our ancestors , was it?” He cringed. “Leta—” “Or better yet: convert me! Yes, teach me the sick ways of your religion of ghosts, and give me one of these pendants!” “Leta!” he said, his voice stern. “ Enough! ” Then he crouched in front of her, his eyes locking onto hers. For a bizarre moment, she thought he might kiss her. But he simply grabbed her shoulders. “You need to calm down. I know it’s a lot to ask of a person who’s just been told that their universe is dying, but you need to stay calm if you want to understand what is happening to the Universe. Can you do that?” She swallowed but nodded. She had known that he would only confirm their theories. And she was a scientist. She would understand why reality was breaking, even as it broke her. That’s what she did. She got out of the chair and turned to face the computer. “Show me.” He dragged that chair to the computer and sat in it. Then he pulled his work up on the screen. Leta noticed something odd. His database consisted of files from more than a year ago. Leta, and other scientists from multiple worlds, had been at that problem for over a year too. But Metronome was brought into the equation only after months of fruitless toil. In a way, it was ironic. Humanity’s greatest invention, built upon a planet-wide genocide, was seldom used for the very same reason. In the scientific community, there were certain superstitions about Metronome. And then there were the phantoms, the ghosts of the Jatahu people that the locals said roamed Metronome’s metallic streets. Leta shivered remembering the hazy air to her right as she had walked in the rain.

Surely, it was my mind playing tricks on me. Surely, it was. “How did you begin your work over a year ago when the Board approved your involvement only two months ago?” she asked. He paused and looked at her. “The universe is ending, Leta. Not really a time for bureaucratic loyalty.” He turned back to the computer. “And besides, there are many things you don’t know about this place.” Then, he said, “So, only a month ago did we learn this. Your theories about what was happening were mostly accurate. The planetary system that froze first was a thousand lightyears away. You can see on the screen when its planets stopped moving around it, when the luminosity dips stopped. And it’s not just that one of the planets stopped, right?

All

of them stopped.” “Yes, and others started to follow. Distant systems and rogue astronomical bodies stopped moving, as if a video was paused, a frame frozen,” Leta said. “Yes,” he said, nodding. “But the thing that tipped us off was something Metronome observed five weeks ago. All the extra-solar objects that stopped, didn’t stop suddenly.” “You mean they stopped flashing warning signs?” Leta asked. “Yes, they did! But those were too minute for anything but Metronome to notice. The planets, the stars, the light they gave off—all of them— slowed before they stopped! Like a wind-up toy slowing down as its torsion spring unwinds. That’s what’s happening to the Universe, Leta! We’re—” Leta finished his thought. “Running out of time.” He sat back with his strong eyes fixated on her. “Yes, we are. We thought that spacetime was a unified entity, that Time was something woven into the very fabric of the Universe. But that’s not the true nature of time. It’s… extra-universal!” “Dex,” she said carefully. “This is the wildest thing I’ve ever heard. You’re essentially saying that Time existed before the Universe was born, that Time exists

beyond  the Universe. So, what? The Universe just

draws  Time into itself, and that well is drying up? You’re implying that there were universes before ours, or

at

least  that the beginning of the Universe was just another event on a timeline older than itself. Are you sure about this?” He stood up, took her hands into his, and said, “Leta, this isn’t some theory of mine. This is what the evidence dictates. This is what Metronome has deduced. Whatever happened at the beginning of the Universe, it didn’t happen all over all at once. The Universe began in phases, different regions of it beginning at distinct points in time. It wasn’t really a Big Bang. It was more like a Big Wave. And the wave was Time. It came to the Universe and the Universe began. And now that wave is receding. The sea will be quiet again.” There was a temporary solution to this, but the large-scale implication was soul-crushing. They both went quiet for a while until Leta said, “So, we calculate when Time will

freeze  here—when entropy will be neutralized in an arbitrary equilibrium—move our civilization to a different location before that happens, and wait till Time runs out there as well?” “Yes,” he said. “That’s what we have to do. With this new information, Metronome has calculated potentially habitable regions with the highest concentration of Time—the newest regions of the Universe. But…” Leta perked up. “But what?” He turned away from her. “You don’t want to know what I think.” “Oh, Dex,” she said, stepping around to face him. “How I wish to hear everything you’ve been thinking. It’s been too long, my friend. We’ve been away too long. Please. Please, tell me what you think.” He looked at her and smiled. Suddenly, he seemed so much older, the wrinkles around his eyes seemed so much deeper. “I think we deserve it.” How dare he wish extinction upon his own people! His religion! Her eyes drifted to his pendant as he brought it up to his eyes and uttered a silent prayer. Then he said, “The Jatahu believed that they were their god's special creations. It’s said that when we exterminated them, they went to Him and begged that justice be served. They speak of this. It’s that their god has hunted us down ever since the day we killed them. A thousand years ago.” Leta almost gasped when she realized what he meant. It all made a morbid sort of sense. A thousand years ago, humans had destroyed the Jatahu people. That’s when the first planetary system stopped. And what of the phantoms she saw every time she visited Metronome? But no. Her rational mind understood that she only saw those phantoms because she had been told she would. “Coincidence,” she said. “Maybe,” he whispered, his eyes latched onto hers, their faces dangerously close. “But soil still breathes beneath all this metal, Leta. What do you think grows there?” Her eyes were focused on the tip of his nose as she felt his gravity almost pull her in. Almost. She moved away, for things were still terribly broken between them. But the Universe was dying around them and she still hoped to save humanity, albeit temporarily. Perhaps things that were broken could be fixed, albeit arduously. “I’ll let the Board know about your discoveries,” Leta said. He cleared his throat. “Yes, and I’ll be there to present my case in person, of course. Sorry for saying that we all deserve to die.” She shook her head. “I don’t blame you. While I don’t think we deserve to die for the crimes our ancestors committed a thousand years ago, I do believe that there’s more truth to your words than I can understand right now.” He looked genuinely surprised. “Perhaps,” Leta said. “You can tell me more about what you think when you come to see the Board.” “I… uh… of course… I mean, yes.” Leta smiled, finally seeing a glimpse of her old friend. But she understood that she would also have to get used to the man he had become. She was a scientist—it was her job to know. And she would love to know him again. “And anyway,” Leta said, turning to leave, “their god will catch up with us eventually. And then we’ll get what we deserve. Whatever it may be.”