I climbed over a strip of brown sandstone rocks. It was like another planet. From the top, about ten metres above the surrounding sand, I looked around the landscape. The golden waves of the desert reached as far as the horizon, where they melted into the swirling air. I looked at the compass, I had to go further west, where the end of my journey would be. A friend heard that I was hitchhiking in the south of Africa and offered me a boat. Of course, I agreed and he promised to wait for me on the coast of Namibia. I was now in the middle of the Namib Desert, and the west coast was about 50 km away, which was about a two-day walk. It was also the first time I had ever been in a sandy desert. The guides tell you to stick to your path and not make unnecessary turns, because sand is a difficult terrain and besides, the desert is dangerous in itself. I saw three people north of me. I would have really kept on my route had it not been for the bad feeling in my stomach that made me look at the three. They were about a kilometre north of me, so I went toward them. I greeted them in English, the oldest of them answered me, with a strong accent. He was probably their guide, because he had the logo of a travel agency on his shirt. When I asked him his name, he mumbled something absently. The repetition of the question made him a little upset, so I decided to let it be. The three of them sat on the hot desert sand, just swaying. I asked the guide where they were going. He yelled at me again and hissed. I figured that the volume of my voice was bothering him. So I walked closer to him and asked about their destination. He repeated, one word, "sea, sea", pointing north, where the fata morgana rippled through the air. The desert really looked like the surface of the sea, but I knew the closest shore was on the west. I tried to explain it to him, but he kept pointing north and saying, "sea, sea." As I sat next to him, I noticed an ID card pinned to a bag around his waist. The name Mateo was written there, and he was a guide to a Spanish company, Tropico Tours. The man must have been around sixty, I guessed from the wrinkled face and white wreath of gray hair around his otherwise completely bald head. His female companions couldn't be much younger. I persuaded them to put on their headgear. In vain. Their faces were without expressions and they all swayed. I looked around and found only a two-liter bottle of water, half empty, which was definitely not enough for three people, certainly not if they wanted to go to the shore. I offered them some of my supplies, but Mateo declined my offer, "Drink later, drink later," and paused again, just swaying. I sat there with them for a while, silent because they didn't seem to like me talking. Mateo looked deep into my eyes and smiled. "Do you hear that? Música.” I listened for a moment, and indeed, I thought I heard quiet choral music. I looked for the ladies and suddenly I realized why they were all swaying. The four of us were hallucinating. The music, the angelic choir grew stronger and with it a sudden peace of mind and desire to stay here. At that moment the voice of reason prevailed in my head. I realized that the music was an illusion and decided to keep walking. The ill feeling was back, I also felt the desire to save all three from certain death in the desert. I grabbed Mateo, but he pushed me away and I landed in the hot sand. I hissed in pain, but I had not given up my intention yet. I growled, “Vámonos! Vámonos!”, which means “let's go” in Spanish, it didn't work with either of them. I tried to pull them up one by one and lift them to their feet, but without any success. The angelic choir, singing a beautiful chord in C major, grew louder, but I still wanted to help them. I grabbed Mateo's hands, but he pushed me away again and asked me to be quiet. All three swayed to the music, the angels screamed at the top of their lungs, and the sun painted an arc into the cloudless sky. I realized I should drink. I had a sip of water and the angelic music was gone like that. I put the bottle to the withered lips of a 60-year-old Spanish lady and begged her to drink. "Más tarde," she muttered, pushing my bottle away. It flew out of my hand and water began to pour into the Namibian sand. In that moment, I ran out of patience. I grabbed my bottle with the rest of water that didn't spill and set off. I turned for one last time and watched the three swing into illusory music. But I suddenly had an idea, I still wanted to help them, so I drew the approximate place where I found them on my folding map. I had a rescue plan. So I went west, as I had originally intended, and I walked quite fast, not only was I delayed by this encounter, the three Spaniards were losing valuable time. I decided to walk overnight to be on the coast as soon as possible. The friend was supposed to be there today, at least in the waters of the west coast. In addition to seawater desalination equipment, the boat also had a satellite telephone on board. It occurred to me to call a helicopter to save the three lost people. I was running out of water, my eyelids were heavy, but I knew I had no choice. I pushed myself through the sand dunes with one goal in mind. I had to help them. Even in the sweatshirt, I gritted my teeth at night, but I had to keep going. I shone my headlight on the ground and regularly checked the direction of my compass. West. I had sand in my shoes. My feet were aching. My legs hurt. West. I licked my dry lips. I kept a murderously fast pace, I mustn't stop. West. The headlamp began to flicker. Angels began to sing in my head again. I looked at the compass. I couldn't stop. West. It was dawn and when I climbed on top of a large dune, I finally saw the sea. Two kilometers, I guessed. I rubbed my tired eyes and walked on. Tired after an all-night march, I slowed my walking pace and the angelic choir started to sing again. I mustn't stop, I mustn't stop, I repeated to myself. I fell into the sand. The angelic choir sang beautifully and I didn't want go anywhere anymore. It seemed to me that where I was, it was the most beautiful place in the world. There was no need to hurry anymore. The angels sang and I swayed to the rythm of that beautiful music. I fell asleep. After a while, I woke up aboard a Robinson R44 helicopter. The fear of waking up at height was replaced by the calmness of finding out that I was safe. To my right sat an african pilot in a tracksuit. When he saw that I was awake, he grinned, and wished me a good morning, he asked me to put on my headset so we wouldn't have to yell at each other. "Your friend called. He could not find you. I'm from Swakopmund.” I smiled backed and watched the landscape below us. But then I remembered the three lost Spaniards. "We have to fly back," I muttered into the headset's microphone. I searched for my things, but I didn't have a backpack with the map with me. “Backpack on the backseat. But I can't return. Only one way paid!" “You don't understand! There are three people back in the desert, Spaniards! We have to find them!” “Why they not with you?” “I wanted to help them, but they didn't want to move nor drink. They just sat and hallucinated about an angelic choir. I actually heard it too." "When?" "I met them yesterday, shortly after noon." "Too late. If you don't drink, you die." I saw the roofs of Swakopmund on the horizon and our helicopter landed on a small concrete heliport. My friend was standing there, waving. When we landed, I got out of the cockpit and Emmanuel, the pilot, handed me my backpack. I searched inside and pulled out a crumpled map of south Africa. There was a circled place in the Namib desert where I assumed I was with the Spaniards yesterday. I handed the map to Emmanuel and told him to try to find them. "Pay," Emmanuel frowned. I pulled everything I had left in my wallet after my hitchhiking adventure and looked at Johnny, my boat friend, who worked in Johannesburg as a fisherman and captain of a sightseeing boat with which, poor man, he was waiting for me on the shore, and when he couldn't find me, he paid Emmanuel to search for me. "What if I brought you my fish, free of charge, what do you say, Emmanuel?" "Okay," Emmanuel grinned, starting the helicopter. Then, Johnny and I, talked about our adventures, he talked about his fishing on near the shore and I talked about hitchhiking and my adventure in the Namib Desert. When Emmanuel returned after two hours, he climbed out of Robinson's R44 with a grim expression and handed me the IDs of the three Spaniards. "It was too late, all dead, covered with sand.


I meditate on the kitchen floor. By which I mean I sit, legs crossed, mostly still, and pointedly try not to notice the fossilised food remnants haunting me from under the cupboard door. The veneer is cracked in such a way it resembles a curling lip, and I work hard to not think about it too hard, lest it threaten to warp into something edging on sinister. I just sit, breathing mindfully, which is desperately uncomfortable, batting away any wayward thoughts, or trying to. Until at last I am disturbed by the deafening stare of a small brown cat. This is our oft practiced ritual. He is hungry, or so he claims, and I pretend to be agitated by his flagrant disregard for my inner wellbeing. “Food?” Say I. “Prrp” says he. And so the conversation goes, every time. While demolishing a generous portion of biscuits, I imagine he questions my habits. “Why are you on the floor mummy?” I tell him I do this because the internet says it is the way to inner peace. That it is the path to a shiny white plastic enlightenment, and I believe them, sometimes. Because frankly it’s a choice between transcendental bliss or ice cream, and I can’t afford to buy any more fat-girl clothes. I meditate on the kitchen floor, and he asks me if it’s white-plastic enlightenment I’m searching for down there, or whether I’m just looking for stray morsels. The latter, he says, is wiser, and I am beginning to agree. We watch the news together in the mornings and descend into furious debate over the behaviour of MPs with regularity. He is firm in defence of filibustering, claiming it has political merit, and I rankle at the notion every time. More than once I have slammed the door in petulant frustration, leaving him alone to focus fully on the washing of a limb. We do not fall out often though. He is my closest confidant in whiskers. I talk to him about silence on the hard days, and how I hate it, and how I need it, which is somehow all the worse. In sympathy he breaks it for me by demonstrating how to add volume to a stare, and I thank him with carefully placed pressure behind the ears. I ask about his childhood sometimes, and wonder what he means when he says he can’t remember. Most evenings he curls up on my lap and describes his dreams, but only those that set his paws to twitching. They are all black and white films of pursuits and victories, strategy and success. There is a violence to them I think, though he never tells me so. He says the television helps him build a world outside of our flat, and my tears cast little spikes in his fur, as I mutter sorry over and over. I cry for his freedom, and for mine, and he purrs his low hymn to drown out my worry. We are trapped here he says, confined by co-dependency and circumstance, both caught by sadness and dulled instinct. He says he forgives me, but only after tuna.


Like every day, Dylan arrived with plenty of time to spare. He had been following the same routine every day for twenty-three years, and up until this point there hadn’t been a single day he’d arrived later than he proposed. He had followed the usual route from his home to the office: first he had taken a coffee in his café of choice; once he had finished, he passed by the newsstand to get the newspaper and from there, he had begun walking in a calm pace towards his office. Twenty-five minutes later, precisely fifteen minutes before his shift begun, he was going through the entrance door of the incredibly high skyscraper in which his office was. He greeted the receptionist with a slight nod and continued through the main hall towards the line of eight elevators that were arranged to move throughout the entire height of the building. He went into the first available elevator, introduced his key to unlock the access of the highest floors, and pressed the button of the last floor, where his office was. One hundred and eighty-five stories. The doors closed behind him and the elevator started to ascend. The elevator was a cubicle no wider than two meters and around three meters in length, with a very long panel in the left wall in which the buttons for every one of the floors were installed. In front of the door, as usual in many elevators, there was a big mirror that went from waist-height until the ceiling. In the wall on the right there was a vertically oriented screen that showed a clock, a little area with meteorological information and a section devoted to showing ads. Dylan closed his eyes. The trip in the elevator was one of the few moments of the day in which he had enough time to relax. The screen flickered quickly, although Dylan didn’t notice, and the faint ambient music that was playing suddenly stopped. “Dylan,” a voice said. Dylan turned to face the screen, where the voice originated, and saw that the information and the ads had disappeared, and that in their place there was a face that didn’t cause him any impression, of a man around his fifties. “One hundred and forty-nine floors,” the voice continued. “Tick, tock. Tick, tock.” Dylan turned to face the control panel of the elevator and, after a quick calculation, realized that, indeed, he was in the thirty-sixth floor and, as a result, one hundred and forty-nine floors remained to reach his office. “One hundred and forty-eight.” The voice seemed to come from behind the screen, while the music that had been playing just a few seconds before came from the speakers installed in the ceiling of the elevator. “What the fuck is going on?” Dylan asked, slightly scared, but intrigued at the same time, while he turned around again to face the screen. “One hundred and forty-five,” a different voice from the first one said a few moments later, at the same time as the face on the screen changed to that of a young woman. “You are getting closer to your destination, Dylan.” With his nerves cracking, Dylan acted by instinct. He pressed the elevator’s emergency button, which should suddenly stop the elevator and open the doors. But nothing happened. “One hundred and forty-four,” a different voice said, this time of an elderly woman. The voice changed at the same time as the faces shown on the screen were changing. *Why doesn’t her voice come out of the elevator speakers?*, Dylan thought, attempting to analyze the situation as calmly as possible. He saw a little tab on the right side of the screen. He pulled it and the screen moved to its side, leaving a small hole on sight in which there was a speaker, a paper note with some numbers, *78-36, 43-21, 3-15, 32-2*, and a device with an alphanumerical keyboard connected to what looked like… Two dynamite cartridges? “Fuck,” Dylan muttered. Dylan tried to stay calm. What were those numbers? If he had any chance of surviving, he supposed those numbers would be the key to it. As a result, he tried to introduce the numbers on the note in the alphanumerical keyboard. “Wrong. Sequence,” a robotic voice said through the same speaker. “Did you truly believe it would be so easy?” the voice, which was human again, said. “One hundred and one.” The elevator was going up quickly. The day-to-day perception made the trip seem very long, but with the heart beating so fast time seemed to pass by much quicker. The answer had to be in the numbers. Or maybe it was a distraction? No, it had to be in the numbers. *Of course! The number pairs are all lower than one hundred and eighty-five. They must be pairs of floors*, Dylan thought, while he began to press the elevator buttons two at a time. Nothing happened. “I’m such an idiot,” he grunted. “I must input something in the keyboard I found behind the screen.” “Sixty-five,” another voice continued, this time of a kid around eleven years old. “Why don’t you like to play with me anymore?” That last voice… That last one wasn’t completely unknown. Or was it? He tried to concentrate on what mattered the most in that moment: only sixty-five floors remained until his inevitable death arrived. He couldn’t think in trifles, he had to focus on what mattered the most. What mattered the most. Dylan lived for his work. How didn’t he think about that in the first place. Clearly the situation in which he found himself had to be some kind of vengeance of something from work. “Who can have so much resentment toward me?” Dylan thought aloud. If he managed to find that answer, he was sure he would know what he needed to write in order to stop what was happening. He begun to think in events which had happened recently at work. That time he promised to his superiors to have the slides ready for a week earlier, but that he couldn’t deliver until one day after the due date. That had been a disaster, but not so much as to justify what was happening. *No. It can’t be that*. Or perhaps… Could that be possible? It was true he had been pushing his subordinates for a while with persistence, but had he pushed them that hard? Could that be so serious as to arrive at that point? He thought of the employee who was just under his level. He was the one that had received more pressure from him. If it had to be someone, it had to be him. “Peter McKinsey,” Dylan muttered while he wrote the name on the terminal. “Wrong. Sequence.” The robotic voice reverberated throughout the little cubicle. “Forty-three,” said this time the voice of a woman who should have around his age. That voice brought him memories. But he didn’t have time to stop and try to distinguish the voices that were speaking. “Fuck!” Dylan exclaimed while he channeled all his rage in the shape of a blow with his fists against the elevator’s mirror. The mirror shattered and fell into pieces, leaving a note visible behind. *It’s a pity you know to the minute in which time of day you live, but you don’t even know which day it is today*. “Thirty-five.” What did that note mean? What day was it? He pulled out the newspaper he bought less than half an hour before to look at the date. *20/01/2021*. He didn’t think that would be the answer, given that it had nothing to do with the pairs of numbers of the first note, but he tried anyway. “Wrong. Sequence,” the robotic voice said again. “Twenty-two floors,” continued the voice of the same woman who had been indicating him how many floors were left since a few moments ago. “So organized for everything and you can’t think of anything else?” And then he had a revelation. The newspaper. He glanced at the note with the numbers. *78-36, 43-21, 3-15, 32-2*. He opened the newspaper as quickly as he could at page seventy-eight and started to count words until he arrived to word number thirty-six. *Dylan*. He followed the same procedure with the remaining number pairs. *We*. “Fifteen floors, Dylan. Tick, tock.” *Miss*. “Twelve.” *You*. “Ten.” *Dylan, we miss you*. The words echoed in Dylan’s mind, when suddenly he remembered the voice of that kid that had sounded through the speaker so many floors before. Could he be… His son. Then he began to identify all the voices that had been sounding, all the faces that had spoken. His brother, his older daughter, his mother, his little son and finally… *My wife*…, Dylan thought. Always worried about work, it wasn’t uncommon that Dylan would leave his family aside on many occasions. It had been years since he had spoken with his brother. Months without calling his mother. Weeks knowing nothing about his daughter. Days he didn’t kiss his son good night. His wife. Finally, he remembered. That day it was his wedding anniversary. With a tear in his cheek, Dylan realized that the password that would save him couldn’t be the anniversary date, given that he had already tried it before. “Three floors,” his wife’s voice reverberated, louder than any of the other voices, with a sad touch to her voice, as if she was crying. “I’m sorry,” Dylan whispered. “Two.” “I’m sorry!” Dylan exclaimed, with his eyes filled with tears. “One,” whispered the voice of his wife through that speaker. “Good bye, Dylan.” And as quickly as he could, Dylan typed into the terminal: *I’m sorry*. The elevator music began to play again and a bell sound played. “You have reached your destination,” said the usual elevator voice.


Before my mom died, she rolled her head towards me, gathered all the energy she had left, and bit me as hard as she could. “Where the Wild Things Are” - that was our book. I was Max, disruptive, wild, strong willed. So was Mom. A household of Max’s and no wild things around to scare us straight. We danced and sang and broke things and ate ice cream for breakfast on good days. A week into my arrival at elementary school for kindergarten, mom shipped herself off to elementary school too, as a hallway monitor. We feared that the long days apart would allow for storybook monsters to creep in and ruin the world we had built for ourselves at home out of Shania Twain songs, pillows and sugary cereals. “Please don’t go, I’ll eat you up, I love you so” she whispered to me in the mornings at school as we parted for the 2 hours until lunch. As she let go of my hand she nibbled my fingers, to let me know she meant it. I would kiss her goodnight and nip at her cheek. I’ll gobble you up first- you better watch out, I threatened. Maurice Sendak once said that he drew a picture for a little boy who loved it so much, he swallowed it. He said it was the best compliment he was ever given. Mom’s nickname in Highschool was sunny, it stuck. People who knew her then, as 1st graders or coworkers, still talk about the sunlight that beamed out of her in all directions. You were one of the lucky ones to be cast in her light. I spent my days seeking out her sunshine in hallways and around lunchroom tables. She would write messages in pen for me on the skin of my bananas in my packed lunch. “I’ll eat you up I love you so” carved in browning, sweet letters. I was daydreaming when I was called down to the office for early dismissal. I ran there, excited about what Mom had up her sleeve. I rounded the hallway corner and she stood there, cold, dark. My sun had collapsed in on itself. The warmth of her rays were gone, but the color remained. “I’m yellow, can’t you see I’m yellow?” I didn’t understand why we needed to worry. Why we couldn’t just go home and dress up in her old bridesmaids dresses and eat pancakes for lunch. There were no wild things here to deter us, just the color yellow. Her sunlight was no match for the tumor. It ate her up before I had the chance. Please don't go. I’ll eat you up, I love you so. I rapidly became the wild things from the story, begging and pleading and crying and stomping for her to stay. Please don’t go, I’ll eat you up I love you so. Towards the end words were lost to her, but before she left, she mustered every bit of strength she had, and bit me, as hard as she could, so I knew she meant it.


I never knew pain until the day the earth caught fire. I watched as oceans fell and the mysteries of the deep revealed themselves. I saw the sun become a merciless killer. It surfaced turned red. Giant balls of fire turned cities into ashes. There was no rain. No relief from our mother. The terrains we once traversed had become desolate. Haunted by the ghosts of those souls we used to hunt. Emergency broadcast systems ran for weeks until the power grids collapsed. There was no food for the humans to consume so they turned on each other. I watched as man ate his neighbor. Mothers butchered strangers to feed their younglings. My clan found shelter in an abandoned mine. The nights above had grown shorter as the sun burned towards a luminous climax. My clan was hungry. It had been weeks since we fed on the blood of a human. Today we laid our sister Morwenna to rest. Her pale skin had the look of rot wood. There was no beauty in death. Only the foul stench of something that no longer belonged on this cursed earth. Wolfe and Cassius were the strongest of us. The two clawed out a grave for Morwenna in the dirt. The women in the clan – Effie, Wren, and Imogen – kneeled beside her and prayed. Crow was equal to my age and the more spirited member of the clan. But unlike our older sisters, religion did not take to her. I felt it my duty to keep the word of our kind alive. The Scriptures of Delphi were filled with prophecies, visions, and stories as told by the Oracles. The Vampire Bible was one of those stories and I kept it close to my heart. It was in these moments, these quiet moments of death that I looked to the scripture for guidance. Thorne was our leader but even he found it hard to keep faith. The eldest of us was Blackwell. He required the aid of a walking stick and his back was hunched. He was closer to death than the rest of us. If he did not feed soon, he would be joining Morwenna in the afterlife. Thorne stood over our sister and with the crackle of his voice he spoke these words: *We pray to our God Ambrogio to watch over and guide our sister in the underworld*. Ambrogio was the first of our kind. Our guiding light amid all that was dark. He had been cursed into the darkness by Apollo and blessed into the pantheon of legends by Artemis. Night had fallen. It was as if the stars had died. I missed tracing the constellations in the sky. The moon itself had disappeared altogether. The night sky’s flashlight. We had to rely on our failing senses to guide us. Thorne led us across a misty, ravaged farmland. Fossilized tractors. Barns burned to ruins. Barrels of hay now literal dusts in the wind. Wolfe and Cassius kept a close watch of Blackwell as he struggled to keep up with the clan. We had to move swiftly before the sun appeared again. We had to find food. Then the mist took shape and formed into ghosts. Farmhands trapped in a never-ending time loop of hard labor and cattle raising. A farmer stuck in a perpetual state of shock as blood ran from the necks of his wife and child’s ghosts. The ghosts in this world were like recorded holograms unaware of their surroundings. Crow spun around the farmhands like a ghastly black swan. I stood and watched the farmer. I became transfixed on the terror in his ghostly eyes. I pitied him. Not for his death. But for his weakness. He lacked the strength to survive in this world. The growls in my stomach became nauseating. I fantasized soaking myself in the blood of his wife. My tongue was beginning to forget the taste of blood. We made our way up a hill where to our surprise Thorne had spotted a lone human down below. The human was covered in filth. Its hair straggly. Its teeth yellow and rot. It appeared impaired, inebriated even as it stumbled towards a low burning fire pit where a **human leg roasted**. The human sliced off the meaty parts of the limb and gorged on the tendons and tissue. A pig in the trough. Then it became irritable, stomping on the dirt beneath its feet. It laid next to the fire pit. Its body tremored. This human was sick. I’ve seen it happen to others once they began to taste the flesh of its own kind. If it was really bad off, then its blood would be poisoned. But the hunger outweighed the risk. Before Thorne had decided, Blackwell had already plodded his way down to the human. He raised his walking stick high up to the heavens and struck it down into the human’s beating heart. Blackwell fell to the ground as the human flopped about like a suffocating fish. Thorne signaled for the rest of the clan to join him. Wolfe mercifully snapped the human’s neck. Thorne and Imogen helped Blackwell over to the human’s neck. He would feed first. The dull edges of his teeth clung to the arteries in the neck for dear life. I saw the sense of relief and elation in his amber eyes as the ichor flowed through the pulsating veins in his cold body. Imogen took the other side of the neck. Wren and Effie bit into the human’s wrist. I, Wolfe, Cassius, and Crow took the legs. Thorne grabbed what was left of the roasted, severed leg and sipped what little droplets of blood it had to offer. In mere minutes we had drained every ounce of blood from the human’s body. But our hunger had not been satisfied. In a panic Blackwell licked up the blood the human had gargled from its mouth and unto the ground when he stabbed it. Throne was too ashamed to watch. Wolfe and Cassius went to help the old vampire up, but Effie waved them off. I read through the scriptures as we shuffled on across the dead earth. Hoping to find something uplifting. Something that could help guide us. Then I heard a familiar howl in the night that gave us all pause. It was the howl of a wolf… We had just emerged from a tunnel deep beneath a ruined city. Thorne had caught the scent of a couple seeking shelter and food in an old strip mall. I remembered the embers that fell from the sky. Ashes of snow littered across the ground. Crow was fascinated with the small burning coals of fire and allowed drops to singe her flesh. Morwenna had been sick for quite some time and had trouble keeping up with the rest of the clan. Wren and Effie flanked and shielded her with scraps of metal from the raining embers. Blackwell had no hunch then and walked without assistance. Wolfe and Cassius were the first to enter the dilapidated building. Blackwell was right on their heels. Imogen was the first to sense something was off. She had always been intuitive. Then I smelled it too. The smell of wet fur. It all happened so fast. Blackwell went down first. The flesh of his back torn apart by the razor-sharp claws of a gray wolf. Then four more attacked. All rabid and ravenous. The wolves had claimed the humans as their prey. Thorne wrestled the first wolf off the back of Blackwell. I watched as he beheaded the creature with his long, massive hands. Wolfe and Cassius tackled two of the grays. Wren guarded me and Crow. We being the youngest, they felt it their duty to protect us. Imogen and Effie had their hands full wrestling the alpha female of the pack. Thorne stalked the leader – the alpha male. The alpha watched Thorne’s movements. Calculating. The alpha then lunged forward with its salivating tongue and long, keen teeth. Thorne side stepped the beast and snatched it by its tail. He swung and launch the alpha into a wall with a thunderous clatter. Imogen and Effie pulled and ripped the alpha female in half. Cassius delivered blow after blow to the head of his gray until it laid motionless. Wolfe bit into the neck of the other gray and drenched himself in its blood splatter. The wounded alpha limped away. Wolfe wanted to purse it, but Thorne called him back. Effie sauntered over to the human couple that was huddled behind a desk. The male was deceased. His corpse mutilated. The female was in a state of shock and rocked back and forth. Effie gently stroked her face and gave her a false sense of comfort. She snapped the female’s neck in one quick motion. That was the last time we fed before tonight. The howling grew closer as we watched a lone gray wolf limp forward in the shadows. It was the alpha male that Thorne had crippled. Thorne left us and marched towards the dying gray. It had been looking for death but could not find it. It wanted to be relieved of its pain. Thorne offered his enemy mercy as he hugged his arms tight around the gray’s neck. He squeezed tighter and tighter until there was no more life left in the creature. We continued our hunt further into the night. Crow hummed a familiar tune to lift our spirits. The rest of the women joined her until the humming drowned out the dreadful silence. I threw in a couple of ad-libs that I remembered from the jazz era. I even got old Blackwell to smile for a moment. Just one moment where he didn’t have to face his own mortality. Then a strange light from over the horizon interrupted our song. Thorne feared the worst, but it was too soon. Yes, the nights had grown shorter but never did the sun find us this fast. The light became brighter as it rose across the hemisphere. Thorne yelled for us to run! But there were no tunnels or abandoned mines in the vicinity. No old homes or buildings. Just miles and miles of nothingness. I spotted a rock formation with a small pocket and made haste. A few others spotted old planks of wood. I slid into the rock formation with Crow and Effie. Wolfe clawed into the earth hoping to dig himself a grave. Imogen and Wren found a small, shaded area under a hill and smashed close together. Cassius grabbed the old planks of wood and covered himself and Blackwell. But Thorne stood and greeted the sun as it took its seat at the throne in the sky. The skin on his flesh erupted into flames. I watched his eyes in those final moments and pitied him. Our leader had lost all faith and left us to fend for ourselves. The hours passed. Wolfe’s charred remains slowly broke apart and fell into the hole he hadn’t’ finished digging. Imogen and Wren huddled close together under the shade of the hill. The tips of their toes barely escaping the sun’s rays. Cassius’s arms trembled as he struggled to hold up the old planks of wood over him and Blackwell. His hands smoldered. He cried out to us, “Ambrogio has abandoned us. Forgive me brothers and sisters”. He nodded to Blackwell who had long ago accepted his faith. The old planks of wood fell to the ground. The two vampires embraced each other as they went up in flames. I shouted, “Keep faith! Ambrogio will deliver us from this wickedness”! I watched as the light faded from Crow’s eyes. She inched out into the sun. I grabbed her arm and yanked her back. She looked at me with sadness. She too wanted an end to this suffering. But I was not ready to lose one more. I was awakened by the sound of loud voices. Wren, Imogen, and Effie stood under the darkened sky shouting at one another. Crow was still asleep, and I felt a need to keep her that way. At least until the yelling subsided. The clan, if you could still call it that, was at its wits end. I offered up a prayer, but before I could open the scriptures Crow snuck up from behind him, grabbed them, and tossed them into the dark void. She like the others had had enough. But who are we without our faith but mere savages? Imogen said that we were on our own. There is no more food. No shelter. No salvation. No Ambrogio. When the sun came up again, we would die. But I was not ready to be greeted by death. I needed to come up with a plan and quick. I closed my eyes and prayed for the final time. That’s when the first bite came. Crow bit into the neck of Effie. She never saw it coming. Never imagined such a twist of fate. Then it was as if Crow’s madness became contagious. I watched as Wren and Imogen attacked one another. I stood in disbelief as the last of our clan descended into cannibalism. Crow fed on the blood of Effie. Imogen the stronger of the two, fed on Wren. It was as if the taste of the blood of their kin drove them insane, the same way it did the humans. I didn’t even recognize my sisters anymore. Crow and Imogen eventually turned on each other. Two voracious beasts ripping and tearing into each other’s flesh. Imogen fell to her knees and reached out to me. Crow punched through Imogen’s chest cavity and wrenched out her heart. She licked the bloody organ and squeezed it like an orange. I knew Crow would come for me next. I knew that this would be the end. It was as if I were in a dream. The rapacious monster that now possessed my poor sister’s soul showed no mercy as it lunged towards to me. I fought back tears as I grappled with her. Two soulless creatures fighting for a chance to live at least one more day. Was it worth fighting the inevitable? I tried not to let such thoughts pollute my mind as I clawed at her skin. I would not let my faith waiver. I screamed as her teeth pierced my neck. I could feel the life being sucked from out of me. I noticed a piece of the old wood plank within my reach. I grabbed hold of it and thrusted it into her skull. She released me from her jaws and fell over. I hammered the old plank of wood into her skull until it was crushed to dust. I hid in the old rock formation for one more day as the sun berated the surface. When night fell, I walked to what felt like the edge of the earth. It was as if the night dragged or maybe I had just gone delirious. I swore I saw the ghosts of my elders. Cassius and Wolfe wrestling in the dirt. The sisters crocheting each other’s long dark hair. Thorne meditating. The old vampire Blackwell shuffling about. Crow prancing around under the midnight sky trying to will the moon to come out and play. I missed my family. I was alone and afraid. The sun was approaching when I reached what had once been the ocean shore. That’s when I saw a strange sight. Surely I could no longer trust my eyes. What laid ahead of me was a ship. A ship that must have crashed from the sea long ago. My fingers glided across the words etched on ship’s wooden hull – *D E M E T E R* A stray dog bolted from out of the ship and startled me. I climbed aboard the main deck. That’s when I saw the bodies. Corpses that had been rotted for quite some time. The odor was unbearable. I counted at least a dozen. Their skin had ashen. I bit into the arm of one. There was no blood. No blood left in any of them. I could see the red giant beginning to scare away the darkness. I crept below the deck. I would be safe here until the night called again. There were boxes. Large boxes. Too many to count. I satisfied my curiosity and opened every last one of them. Inside was earth. Soil too fresh to be old. But its what I saw in the back of the ship that gave me chills. There rested a cadaver with a captain’s hat. Nestled in his hand was a crucifix. Next to the dead captain was a coffin made of black walnut. Dark. Hard. Dense. I opened the coffin and saw the most immaculate creature that I had ever laid my eyes on. A vampire with hair as dark as night. Its face appeared to have been sculpted by the great Michelangelo. Its icy pale skin had more life in it than a thousand stars. I then heard a voice in my head. It was deep and soothing. My prayers had been answered. His name was Dracula. If Ambrogio was God then Dracula was his son. His eyes opened and met mine as it filled with tears. I was no longer alone. I was no longer afraid.


It is a warm humid summer night abuzz with the sounds of crickets and the occasional passing car. As we sit at the kitchen table listening to music and drinking, he begins to tell a story. The story is lost to me as I study his features as he speaks. The slight curve of his mouth as he smiles. The redness of his cheeks. The light twinkle in his eyes as the kitchen light catches them just right. He begins to laugh, and I snap out of my trance. He notices and asks what's wrong, but I only reply that something in my mind had distracted me. He laughs again and simply brushes it off as he does. The drinks begin to take their toll as I feel myself slipping into the calm relaxed state where the world seems to pass by without a thought. We sat listening to the music and the crickets of the night. It all seems so perfectly still. The song changes and suddenly without a thought I spring up. He seemed surprised by my sudden action as he sat in his chair. I quickly grab his hand but he first resists saying he can’t dance. I say I can’t either and continue to insist and finally he gives in. He stands and comes to the middle of the kitchen with me. At first, we clumsily dance to the beat but slowly find a rhythm. What seems like an eternity we dance to the music. We dance with all our heart and soul. Sweat slowly drips from my brow and I see he has also begun to sweat. It is in that moment I realize we are now dancing mere inches from one another. How had this escaped me? How had the world seemed to blur so suddenly? I stop and admire him. He has his eyes closed as he continues swaying to the beat of the music as if in perfect harmony. His cheeks are red and as if he had sensed something wrong, he stops. Slowly opening his eyes, he looks at me and blushes even more. All I can think in that moment is he is the most beautiful person on the planet. As we stand so close, I can feel the heat of his body. The music was almost silent over the beating of our hearts. I looked into his eyes and saw something. Something primal and unstoppable. In that moment I raise my hand to his face and as it laid upon his cheek, I feel a rush as if lightning had coursed through every fiber of my body. I know he felt it too for a look of shock appeared on his face. He closed his eyes and in that moment I moved closer. As I closed my eyes and our lips brushed, it again felt as if lighting had coursed through my veins. His lips were soft, yet his stubble was prickly. He did not react. He stood perfectly still as if petrified. I pulled away and he had opened his eyes. He just stood there silently staring. I stepped back and felt as if I had made a mistake. A feeling of pain and regret washed over me like a tidal wave. I felt ashamed and I began to turn to walk away but then I felt his hand upon my wrist. He stopped me and as I turned, he smiled. He moved closer and this time he kissed me. This kiss though was different. It wasn’t soft but firm and forceful. It was a kiss born of a primal passion and desire. In this moment, the music stopped, the world stopped, and it was as if the very heavens were fixed upon us. The kiss lasted a mere few moments but for me it lasted a lifetime. All the feelings of pain, regret, and shame washed away. As we both pulled away, I looked him in the eyes and saw tears rolling down his cheeks. I too quickly realized that I had begun to cry as well. These tears though were not of sadness but of pure happiness. In that moment, I knew I made the right decision, and so did he. We choose to have faith in one another and feel love. Once more we pulled each other into a passion fueled kiss. Moments passed and finally we collected ourselves. I gently took his hand and lead him to the living-room where we sat on the couch side by side. He laid his head upon my shoulder and we sat there for a time, both thinking. Finally, he broke the silence and said, I have waited for you to do that for what feels like a lifetime. In that moment we both began to laugh. We had waited so long for one another and now we finally took that leap of faith. I laid my head upon his and we sat there for a long while. As we both faded off to sleep within one another's arms, I remembered something and whispered it under my breath... journeys end in lovers meeting.


(WP) So Easy to Forget I haven’t seen my father since I was eight years old. He’d kissed my mother on the cheek, saying that he was heading out to get a carton of milk and a few other things, and he never came back. My mother’s eyes flicked to the door that day, but he didn’t return. To this day, no one knows where he went; it was as if he’d vanished. But he shows up at the door, all these years later, milk in hand, his clothing still pristine, looking as though he hasn’t aged a day. When my mother opens the door, she screams, a sudden burst of sound that shocks me even more than my father appearing out of nowhere. “Nathaniel? What happened to you? Where have you been all this time?!” My mother’s voice is choked, tight with unshed tears. “We thought you were dead!” He looks almost exactly the same, only his hair is longer now, and shot through with blond streaks, as if he’s spent all this time away from us in the sun. “I got lost, but I came back. I found my way back.” My father says, wrapping his arms around my mother. He looks whole and unharmed to my eyes, but his eyes are different, haunted. The piece of our family that was missing is suddenly found, but I can’t stop the unease and dread from filling my chest. I don’t know what, exactly, but something is not right. My mother, on the other hand, is overjoyed. She insists on going to the store to pick up all of my dad’s favorite things to make him a special meal. The thought of being alone with my father, a man who’s been gone for a decade, sets my skin crawling. But I decide the moment the door closes, I’m going to ask where he’s been. We deserve an explanation. I’ve hated him for a long time, since he walked away from our family. My mother seats him at the kitchen table with a beer, and as soon as she leaves, I pounce. “Did you leave us to start a new life somewhere else? Did you cheat on Mom with another woman? Do you have another family you’re not telling us about?” My father stares at me for one long, breathless moment, then takes a swig of his beer. “I was kidnapped, Gabby. I don’t expect you to believe me, but it’s the truth.” I stare at him, nonplussed. Of all things I expect him to say, it’s not that. “I swear to God, Dad, if this is a lie to get out of leaving us for years--” “It’s not a lie, Gabs.” His voice goes quiet, and his eyes darken. “Who, then, Dad? Who did it?” “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” “Try me!” \*\* *The man out of time looks at his daughter, this young woman who was as high as his knee on the faithful day he’d been snatched from the human world. She looked the same, yet different: Her brown hair was the same as his, only straight like her mother’s, put up in a bun struck through with a pencil. She was a stranger to him, as foreign to him as the fairy world he’d been thrown into so many years ago.* *He’d just gone to the store for some milk. The last thing he’d expected was to be snatched off of the street and taken to a completely different world. It had been like something out of a dream: a pastel, candy-striped sky, awash with every color he could imagine, and the woman who had captured him was just as beautiful. Her skin was the rich brown of tree bark, and there were vine tattoos all over her that moved, undulating under her skin. She smiled at him, and her teeth were sharp and pointed.* *“Welcome to the land of the fairies. I’ve been watching you; you know. I can feel your longing, your desperation to be someone great. I can give you what you want. But faeries don’t give boons out for nothing, you know.” Her grin widened, and he had to stop himself from staring at her.* *She was beautiful, but she wasn’t his wife.* \*\* He’d found his way back, stumbling into the forest on the outskirts of the castle keep. Perhaps it was his brokenness that had opened the portal and sent him back to the human world. He didn’t know how long he’d been gone, but it must have been years, since his daughter was practically grown now. “I’m sorry,” He whispers now, knowing that the facts didn’t sound true. It sounded like something out of a fairy tale, but it had been real. “I know I can’t make it up to you now, but I am so sorry. I thought of you and your mother every second, every hour, every passing day. But in that world... It can be so easy to forget.


My most memorable action? I think that award goes to Intervention at Quara 4. This planet is almost entirely covered in this deep ,blue ocean with a couple of small, tropical archipelagos. Many islands are less than a mile long and only about half a mile wide. This planet was our territory and it was very important. Not because of what was on it, but because of what was under ocean. Titanium and Aluminium. Almost unimaginable quantities of this metals. And they were essential for our fleet and military, but aslo space stations and other spacecrafts. After our war with Empire began, the Zen, race native to planet, joined the conflict on our side. But after our crushing defeat at Saalaris Prime they decided to rebel, they threw out our garrison and annouced their defection to the Empire. Lost of this planet would be a heavy blow to our economy, so the High Command decided to send our Legion to take back the planet. The operation was codenamed "Operation Tide". So we were send to special trenning for underwater combat and right after that to Quara. This wasn't an easy fight. Our enemy was well equiped and well organized. The battles in ocean weren't easy. Most of the time we were fighting among the coral reefs and in deep underwater caves. We had better technology, Zen knew the terrain. And then there were aslo wildlife. Many carnivorus fish and other creatures. But, even with all of this, we managed to push the Zen Rebels all the way to their Capital, and thats where our advance stopped. We refused to enter the city before heavy equipment arrived. So we waited, but finally our sub-tanks, as we called them, arrived and the siege began. After two weeks of fighting we were able to enter the city but the battle was far from over. I swear to you that we were sure that Rebels were in every building. No matter where we came, someone was shooting at us. They were throwing grenades, bombs, one of our guys even got hit by a block of dead coral. There were destroyed buildings and rubble blocking the streets, this wasn't an easy battle, that I can tell you. Slowly but surely we pushed forward, until we arrived at the center. There was that huge, tall building that was the city hall and this was the last bastion of the rebels in the city. We couldn't storm it right away so we resolved to siege. After a two day shelling we managed to enter the building and we captured it a day later. And our flag was planted on top of it. The capital was taken, but the battle to recapture the planet was longer. Many of the Zen Rebels were hiding in caves and smaller towns and cities. So we were hunting the remaining rebels one by one. The civilians were friendly. Most of them remained loyal to us and helped us as guides, or just by chatting with us. In exchange for that kindness, our command made sure that the help will be provided to wounded. Some of our guys were helping families rebuild their homes. One of my friends, Dero, even befriended a Zen guy called Qur, at least I think that is the eqivilant in our language. Another 3 months we spend at capturing rebels, hunting the Insurgency leaders, destroying supply lines etc. But finally, after a 7 months of fighting, the last Rebel stronghold was captured and the planet was in our hands again. I couldn't wait to finally get out of this water and spend some time in my quaters on Polaris Space Station. We were joking that we are going to sleep like a dead men. Dero said that he invites us to a pool party, and everyone just stared at him with a look that clearly said: Dude, we spend 7 months underwater. Don't even dare to invite us to pool party. Yeah, I guess we had enough swimming for now.


The home where I grew up was adjacent to a cemetery. Some may have been creeped out by that, but it never bothered us because we used to ride our bikes up and down the smooth paved paths that they installed in the summer of ’97 or ’98. My sister and I spent plenty of time wandering those paths. We used to sit underneath one huge old oak that we called “The Big Tree”, which is what we still call it today because it’s still sitting in the middle of the cemetery; it’s gnarled knots growing thicker by the year. It’s overgrown a couple of the graves that are near it, they were dated around the time of the civil war if memory serves me correct. I used to go sit by it when I was reading, or if I wanted peace when my parents were arguing. They used to fight a lot back in those days. My parents still live in that same house and we have great memories of playing in the cemetery, especially in the winter because they pushed all of the snow that we would get in winter into a huge pile in the empty lot in the cemetery, before they opened it up for burials. They’d take all the snow from the neighborhood and push it into an acre wide and long parcel of land. We used to dig tunnels through the snow and I miss when they used to do it. We used to have sleepovers quite often in the summers, and would stay in one of the pop-up campers that we owned, if for no other reason to feel like we had our own place to hang out without parents buzzing around the area constantly. We’d occasionally sneak out and go wander around, the normal small town kind of stuff. I used to sneak out of it sometimes to go swimming at the high school pool. I’d have to jump the fence to get in but if the cops drove by you just ducked your face in the water and waited for their light to pass over your head, and they’d be on their way. During one of these sleepovers, I brought out my mom’s old Ouija board that I knew she kept hidden under the bed. She’d never been into that kind of stuff to my knowledge, even today she doesn’t like it. It was probably in a box of board games that she’d bought from a yard sale and didn’t realize that the board was in there until after she got it home and just hid it away and forgot about it, judging by the dust on it. We messed around with it for a bit in the camper and tossed it aside when we finished with it. Truth or Dare was the next game and it circled back around to a dare involving the board that still scares the hell out of me until this day. In the cemetery there is an enormous mausoleum that’s open to the public. It sits on the south side of the cemetery and an ugly red roof of imitation half-moon shaped clay tile tops the massive flat grey granite bricks. The door opens to a long, wide hallway lined on either side with the bodies of the dead, walled behind slabs of what looks like white granite with the names of the deceased etched into them. Some of them are from the mid-to-late 1800’s; some are as recent as the early 2000’s. Most of them still have little trinkets and baubles lining the small lip at the bottom of the graves where people have left them, as tributes to their lost loved ones. There are two small rooms on either side of the hallway when you enter, both have been locked and chained for as long as I’ve ever seen them. I used to think there were all kinds of horrors behind those doors, but after finding just the right angle at an old rusted-out keyhole I realized that one of them was actually the parlor, complete with piano where they would hold small funeral services. I never discovered what the other door was for and still wonder. Now, this Mausoleum was scary even during the day because the thick walls dampened all the sound, so even on hot summer days when they’d mow the cemetery, you couldn’t have even heard one even if they were right alongside the building. It was also always cold not matter what, it didn’t’ matter how hot it was outside, that building was freezing cold. It just felt weird being in there and it was one of the few places that we actively avoided during our adventures. We never really talked about how it scared us; we just didn’t acknowledge it was there most days. My sister had dared my friend and I to take the Ouija board to this mausoleum, which normally would have been an easy challenge during the day. But it was night, it was well into the early hours after midnight, and we were not fans of the idea. Sibling rivalries being what they are, we ended up being goaded into at least trying to use the board in there. I can still remember the sound of my flip-flops scraping on the black top of the street as we made our way onward, my friend in tow and both of us trying not to be the one that chickened out at the last second. As it were, neither of us bowed out of the challenge. Ouija tucked under my arm and only a streetlight guided my way. There were no lights mounted in the mausoleum, no electric of any kind now that I think of it. It looked like a rectangular black void cut into the fabric of reality where there could be only nothing, and everything. If we opened the doors far enough, we could get a little sliver of the streetlight to shine halfway down the length of the interior, giving us just enough courage to actually go through with the whole ordeal. I didn’t want to give my sister the satisfaction of victory. My sister and her friend would wait outside the mausoleum while my friend and I would take the board to the very end of the hallway and try to use it to contact someone or something in the building. My footsteps were loud in the night and I could feel the cold floor radiating up through my sandals. It had to have been at least seventy outside and in here it felt as low as fifty. I cast a long shadow down the hallway when I first entered, which slowly bled into the darkness the further I got into the concrete and granite tomb. My friend slunk along behind, prepared to abandon me at the first sign of anything amiss, I’m sure. I can’t really explain the feeling that grew in me as I got further into the darkness, I would call it anxiety but at that time I’d never dealt with it so it’s hard to call it that. I remember feeling almost dazed or in a stupor, like my chest felt heavy and my legs might get tangled. We did eventually reach the end of our trek and we sat cross-legged on the cold floor, board spread open between us. We never got to use the board however, as my sister slammed the door shut at the entrance to the mausoleum. We were too scared to even move, the darkness that had been kept at bay by the incoming streetlight had swallowed us up in it’s inky black. I won’t tell you I wasn’t terrified, because I was, and I knew my friend was equally as scared, his heavy and jittered breathing quickly became whimpers the longer we stood in silence. I tried to let my eyes adjust to the dark, but there was no light to be found, we were in the complete black of night. I felt claustrophobic with the weight of how dark night could truly be in the halls of the dead. It could have been the sounds of his whimpers echoing down the long hall, but the longer I listened, the more it sounded like voices between ourselves and the direction that I believed the exit to be. Sure, it could have been the sound of my own blood pumping through my ears or just my imagination, but I would have sworn I heard footsteps, too. The latch on the door must not have caught completely; because it did slowly creak open just enough for a tiny splinter of light to cut down the hallway at us like a jagged razor. We wanted to move, but couldn’t. I tried to force my legs to cooperate with me, to just get me the hell out of this place, but neither of us seemed to be able to make an escape attempt. The closest concept I can find to describe it is sleep paralysis shared between two people at the same time while neither of us were sleeping. We stood there in terror as we watched the light cut away suddenly, reappear, and then suddenly it was back again. This happened several times before I understood that I was seeing the shadows of people walking from side to side of the mausoleum, like the spirits of the dead going to visit one another in their exclusive land of the dead. I don’t know how long we stood there, afraid to say anything and unable to move, but it seemed like a decade. We just watched as the dark shapes wandered from side to side, back and forth, crossways and long-ways. I was overwhelmed with fear, and although they didn’t exactly feel threatening, it felt as though we had been a part of something we were never meant to see that night. We had invaded the privacy of the dead and we were being taught a lesson by those who believed we deserved one. They wanted us to know that those halls belonged to them once the son sank below the horizon. My sister called for us down the hall, it seems we’d remained inside long enough for her to be genuinely worried about us. It seems like her voice was what was needed for us to shake the strange feeling out of our system, because we were finally able to get our legs moving. I remember just staring at the ground as I ran towards the light, trying not to catch sight of anything that might be lurking in the dark. I couldn’t promise I didn’t imagine it, but I would swear that at the edges of my vision I could see the pleated pants and shoes, black stockings and flats with little straps across them. I wanted to squeeze my eyes shut but was too afraid that I might wander off course and run headlong into one of the memorial plates. It felt like miles, but had only been several hundred feet down the cold hallways until we burst out into the warm summer air. I hadn’t brought the Ouija board out with me; I would have to get it the next day when the dead were sleeping. We never played in the mausoleum again after that night, and the Ouija board is still under the old dresser in my old room at my parent’s house, where it’s sat ever since that night. The mausoleum is still there, too. When we go to visit my parents, my son always asks to go look inside of it. I haven’t let him let because I still try to avoid it as much as possible since that night, but eventually I’ll have to face the old ghouls inside my mind again and pay a more respectful visit to the halls of the dead.


There is something about those extracurricular lectures we get on campus that I can't explain. They are surprisingly interesting, but even after hearing the most engaging and passionate speaker in the world I often think to myself... Well, nothing. I lack curiosity by default. I stare at the road and avoid scenic routes. I cut to the chase. It's such a pet peeve to my friends that most of them call me "Missi-skippy Queen". Well guess what, this royal family is tiny. Whoever said first that opposites attract was in my humble opinion the greatest genius in history, because no other person can explain why out of the hundreds of people on campus I befriended *Cathy.* Cathy approached the guest lecturer and asked him a couple of questions about the topic. I didn't pay much attention in the latter half of the lecture and I wasn't going to start now, but judging by Cathy's questions it was a series of seemingly unrelated topics. The lecture was about Ancient Egypt and her first questions seemed about some materials they used so make gates or something, so it made sense, but then it sounded like they slowly shifted to astrology and other things she likes to talk about. Nothing new to me, she would even gossip about movies with the president if she could. She turned to me excited when they finished the chat, so I gave her the usual "How was it?". "You'll see". Her usual. You probably see by now that if I lack curiosity, Cathy is everything but. Needless to say she is the one who started the first conversation we had back in middle school, she always asks many questions in class, she likes going out to that open field not too far away with whoever she knows well enough to invite, and I don't even want to start talking about men. What bugs me the most about her though is that her curiosity got her nowhere in life and she just won't listen to me as I tell her to change. She's the prettiest girl to ever have her heart broken this many times, and she always finds interest in the most absurd things in exchange to barely passing at school. She improved but she keeps repeating the same mistakes and nothing about that trait will benefit her in life because she just can't put it to good use. A couple of days later, she called me at night and asked some weird things I had no idea about. "Everything but next week's exam, the usual, Cat?" I asked her, knowing that she cleaned her dorm twice today. A week passed. The exam went... How can I say it, do you know those times when you feel after an exam like you either aced it or failed it entirely? Yeah, that. Exams were the only exception to Cathy's overflowing curiosity; she never talks about exams until the grades are published. Instead of talking about it, she just invited me to come to that open field with her. I didn't mind, my mind was blown from the exam, so why not? Either way, we got to the usual spot with one of our guy friends when she suddenly pulled out a book and a telescope. That's a first. "There's always a first time", she humored me. Did I think that out loud? "Even for stargazing, apparently?", our friend said half-sarcastically. "You'll see". "How does that even make sense?" I complained, She just grinned in response, barely said anything. Our friend went for a minute to have a short call, and I heard Cathy murmur; "a bit above Virgo...". So this is what we're here for? To see the zodiac constellations? "And.... Here!" She said with a hopeful glance on her face. What happened next was the most bizarre thing I have never seen before. A diverging light slowly left the telescope to view an image of gates, with the title "Coma Berenices" above them, and a staircase was going down from them to the ground. Cathy started walking up the stairs, turned to me, and smiled.


"RatHoney? I'm home!" With a weary, but grateful to be home tone, a RatDad walked into the straw stuffed RatHome, taking off his RatHat and loosening his RatTie. It had been a long, cold day in the Danish RatFields scavenging for scraps and grains beneath the frozen Earth, and his RatBoss was in a particularly foul mood about it. He squeaked and eeked non-stop, verbally berating all the RatWorkers. Maybe he had a point. Maybe RatBoss was right about none of the Rats working hard enough when they were digging and scratching in the RatField, but the way RatBoss insulted and RatScreamed at them was too excessive for this RatDad's likes. That's why it was a relief for him to finally make it back to his RatHome and see his RatWife and RatKids. "RatDad!" Several of his RatKids slithered and scuttled out of their hidey holes and surrounded RatDad, encircling him before ultimately leaping at him all at once for a big, warm RatFamily hug-a-thon. "RatMom's making garbage stew tonight!" The eldest RatKid squeaked with unbridled excitement. "Garbage stew?" RatDad looked over to his RatWife with a coy smile, "That stuff tastes like *garbage!*" It was his favorite RatDad joke and his RatKids loved it every time. The RatGiggles warmed his heart, and RatMom, tending to the garbage stew, looked over to RatDad and shook her head playfully in mock annoyance. RatDad winked at his RatWife whom he loved so dearly. Just then, the rumble of a vehicle approaching reverberated through RatTown. The RatKids got nervous. RatDad held them tightly, his RatEars twitching with attentiveness. He hushed his RatKids focusing on the vehicle’s characteristics. It felt strange. It didn’t seem like the usual truck of the HumanFarmer, and if it was, there’d be no reason for the HumanFarmer to drive this truck so close to RatTown. RatDad sniffed the air, but couldn’t pick up a good scent over the delicious aroma of the garbage stew. “RatKids, go to your hidey holes…” Scared, they scurried away, all but the eldest RatKid. “RatDad? Is there something wrong? I wanna help.” he said, barely masking his frightened trepidation in his RatSqueak. RatMom looked nervous as well. She knew something was wrong. All the adult Rats had been through tough times, through anguish and struggle. Being a Rat her and her RatHusband’s age meant they were survivors. She scurried over to her eldest RatSon. “Listen to your RatDad. He knows what’s best. Go to your hidey hole and make sure your RatBrothers and RatSisters are okay. Tell them to stay quiet and stay hidden.” RatKid looked very scared now, but mustered up enough courage to run off to the hidey holes. “What do you think it is, RatDear?” The RatWife said, huddle close to him. “I’m not sure… You stay here with our RatFamily. I’m going to go out and see if any other Rats know what’s going on. I love you” He gave her a RatKiss on the forehead and headed out the door of their burrow and into RatTown. A few of his RatNeighbors were already out in the open grain silo, the foundation upon which RatTown sat. They were sniffing the air and feeling the ground with all four paws, like their ancestors used to do back before HumanMade homes, back when a Rat had to rely on all his senses and his wits to make in the deep, boreal forests of old. RatBoss was out there, too. It was odd to see him outside of RatWork, but it was reassuring to see him as just another concerned Rat just like another Rat in RatTown. The vehicle came to a stop. All the Rats were standing up now, listening intently. Was that the sound of a sliding door? The unlocking of something… It was hard to tell what was happening out there. A RatFriend quietly scurried over to RadDad, softly nudged his ribs, and spoke, “RatMarc, what do you reckon it is?” RatMarc, thinking of his RatKids and RatWife he left just a few moments ago, felt the adrenaline rising in his stomach and chest. His RatHeart was beating fiercely. “I don’t know. Just be ready.” Something landed on the snow outside of RatTown. A few footsteps crunched. RatMarc thought to himself, “Maybe it’s just the HumanFarmer and he got a new truck. Maybe he’s just picking a tool or something he forgot in RatTown.” Suddenly the door burst open to the sounds of barking and a beast tearing through the snow and dirt. A Dog! Barking and snarling, full of sharp teeth and single-minded hatred for Rats, The Dog lunged at the crowd of terrified Rats. RatMarc scurried as fast as he could and over his shoulder he could see his RatBoss in the jaws of the monster, the massive, yellowing teeth sunk deep into his abdomen. RatBoss squeaked in vain, but the Dog shook his head side to side so violently, so uncaring for RatLife. A mist of RatBlood was flung in the air, and in just seconds, RatBoss was dead. Two Humans were at the door now. RatMarc had never seen them before. They no doubt controlled the beast as they wide, full-toothed smiles did not even try to mask their jubilation for the coming RatMassacre. They cheered on the Dog. “Ja! Ja! Dræb rotterne!” They yelled with enthusiasm as the Dog pounced on and ripped apart another RatBrother. RatMarc did not know the language of the Humans, nor did he ever care to learn the tongue of such demons, but he could tell they were encouraging and directing their murdering Dog. Running down another rat, the Dog was making quick work of RatTown and hardly tiring. RatMarc heard the RatScreams and RatSqueals behind him. RatGuts and viscera was being wetly dropped down to the RatTown streets. The bodies were piling up already. He rushed as fast as he could, staying low, using the HumanJunk and HumanTools as cover like his RatFather taught him. He had to get home. He had to make it back to his RatKids and his RatWife. The terrible barking in the background. The pleading and panicking and praying of his defenseless RatBrethren. The Humans laughing and clapping. RatMarc burst through the door of his RatHome. “RatKids!? RatHoney!?” His RatWife was at the entrance of the hidey holes trying to calm the RatKids over the sound of a RatMassacre and thunderous, devilish bark of a Rat killing Dog. “Burrow! Dig deeper! The Dog can not reach you if you dig as deep as you can! Do not stop!” His eldest RatSon poked his head out of the hidey hole entrance. He was still just a RatChild… “RatDad… You’re coming too, right?” The awful sound of destruction and chomping coming from his RatNeighbor’s RatHome vibrated through his own. The crunching of RatBones, the spilling of RatGuts, the hysterical sobbing of his RatFamily just next door… RatDad was able to visualize it all too clearly. He knew what he had to do. He scurried over to his RatWife and RatSon. “RatSon… You have to dig. You have to go, now. I can distract the Dog. I’m quick enough, I think, but you have to burrow. Think of your RatSiblings, think of your RatMom. You have to dig now!” He embraced his son and there was a silent understanding that this would be the last time they see each other. With tears in his RatEyes, the eldest RatKid jumped back into the hidey holes and started yelling out orders to burrow and dig as far and as deep as they possibly could. He turned to his RatWife now, not even trying to fight back the tears. They held each other tight, RatKissed. The door to his RatHome exploded open with the clawing paws of the Dog. “GO! NOW!” She stumbled and made her way to the hidey holes to help her RatSon burrow their RatFamily to safety. The humongous, sword-like teeth of the Dog snapped and growled at RatMarc now, its DogSnout shoved into their once quiet home. He had to time this right. He had to lead the Dog away from his family, to give them time to burrow, to give them a chance to live. His RatWife cried out, “I love you, RatMarc!” The Dog pulled his head back for a moment, RatMarc did not even have time to return the sentiment. He sprinted through the small opening of his ruined RatHome and the terrible beast. Running and hopping over debris and bodies, he heard the howling and barking of the Dog on his tail. It was working. The Dog was following him! He used his agility to try to out maneuver the Dog, squeezing between tools, leaping into cracks, weaving out of garbage, but the Dog’s brute strength and relentlessness hardly slowed it down. If he could only run long enough and get out of RatTown, then maybe, just maybe the Dog and the Humans would think he was the last scared Rat in RatTown. The pursuing Dog slipped on a patch of loose dirt and its back legs flung out from under it. Thudding to the ground and yelping, RatMarc knew this was a lucky break, and so he poured everyone once of energy he could into scurrying passed the humans and out the Silo. If they wanted to hunt him down in the wildness of old, then so be it. The blood of a thousand ancestors ran through his veins, survivors all. Just two Humans at the door, nothing more. He scurried right under their feet. *WHACK* RatMarc couldn’t even comprehend what happened. He was dazed, disoriented. One of the chuckling Humans had clubbed him square the gut with a stick. They yelled out in excitement and the Dog trotted over. They looked down at the Dog, and then pointing at RatMarc, commanded, “Fang ham!” The Dog obeyed its master and clamped the blood soaked, sticky with the viscera of the fallen Rats of RatTown, jaw around RatMarc’s neck. “Goodbye, my RatLove…” Were his last thoughts before being violently shaken to death.


(WP) An Angel, a Demon, and Gordon Ramsay “Darling, are you quite sure about this?” My mother asks, hovering outside of my bedroom, floating off of the ground, wings fully spread. “I know that this is your dream, but you have to admit that the man is a little...” “Rude? Terrifying? Ornery?” I supply, smirking. “Trust me, after you and Dad, I can handle a picky head chef.” “We’ve seen Hell’s Kitchen, you know!” My father adds, appearing next to my mother, both of them blocking the door. We’ve had this conversation a million times, and I won’t change my mind. I want to be one of the greatest chefs of all time, and Gordon Ramsay is a living legend. “Won’t it be better if I’m out of your way?” I ask, raising my eyebrows. It has been their dream to rule the universe, and though I know they love me, I’ve never been their first priority. My mother is the strongest angel to ever come from Heaven, and my father is one of the most feared demons to ever climb out of Hell. I don’t begrudge them their dreams; that’s why it’s so surprising that they’re trying to talk me out of this. Maybe it’s crazy, but I’ve already accepted the job. I’m scared, but excited, too. I’ve never been outside of our little town, and now I’m headed to London. I’ve only seen it in pictures. “I’m just worried,” My mother replies, brow wrinkling with concern. “Promise me if you have trouble, you’ll call us.” My father watches me, head tilted. “I do believe her mind’s made up, my love.” “It is, Dad.” They make such a strange pair; when I was young, they would often tell me the story of how they’d met, and against the odds, fell for each other. It had become something of a bedtime story for me. But I wasn’t scared of Gordon Ramsay; what was a mortal chef businessman combo in comparison to literally having an angel and demon for parents? “Your plane leaves tomorrow at four, and of course, we can drive you to the airport. Make sure you pack plenty of books to read, okay? A flight of 15 plus hours is bound to get tedious,” Mom says, and she crosses the room, dropping a kiss on the top of my head. “Make sure to check in whenever you land, please,” My father adds, and I nod. I wonder if I’ll even be able to sleep. This time tomorrow, I will leave this place, and wake up in a completely different part of the world. I look through the thick sheaf of papers that came with my acceptance letter. My plane ticket is within, as well as directions to the restaurant. Thankfully, Mom and Dad have friends and residences all over the globe, and one of them was kind enough to let me stay with her while I work for Ramsay. \*\* The next morning dawns bright and sunny, though we’re awake before it even rises. Mom and Dad insist on stopping for coffee and breakfast on the way, and I eat a few bites of my food. But I’m too excited to eat; my insides feel like they’re dancing within my body, a tango I have nothing to do with. I kiss my mother and father goodbye, hugging them tightly. I hang out in a gift shop for a little while, sipping my coffee and reading a novel. The time seems to fly; I board the plane, thinking about how I’ll meet my boss in several hours. Compared to my parents, what’s Gordon Ramsay? But I know this opportunity is golden, and I won’t waste it. This is just the first step on the path to success.


7pm, Friday night. Couch, lights off, dishwasher churning away in the kitchen, cleaning off the grease from our usual Chinese takeaway, curtains drawn, your choice of movie on the screen. As always. And you and me, of course. We’re sitting on the couch in our usual spaces; you on the left, your legs spread wide as you take up one and half of the three seats, me on the right, legs curled in neatly under my body, grasping a pillow on my bent knees. We’re both sitting here together, but we’re apart. I pull my foot away when your hand reaches out to brush against my woolly sock covered toes. You didn’t even glance at me when your hand retreated back into the comfort of the crisp bowl. Cheese and onion. Your favourite. The smell makes me feel sick. The colours of the screen flit across your face, casting dark red shadows across your skin. I honestly can’t remember for the life of me what it was we were watching again. Some macho action movie? A horror or some thriller? I’ve not really been paying attention, to be honest. I didn’t even pay attention when you were telling me about it earlier, how it was a movie that sounded alright and you fancied seeing it. You always do whatever you fancy, don’t you? I look away from your face when I see your head turn towards me slightly, knowing that you’re being watched as your crunch through your crisps. You furrow your brows while you gaze at me and then, after a moment, you take a breath, as though you’re just about to ask me what it is wrong. But the question never comes. You shift in your seat, cough to clear your throat and shake your head, eyes back on the screen. I turn back to see you again, waiting for it to happen. We’ve not always had a Friday Night movie. Back then – God, it must’ve been years ago now – we’d go out and do something. You’d walk around to my office and wait outside for the masses to be released at 5pm. Come rain or shine, I’d know you’d be there, in that old brown leather coat, the one that you got from your dad on your 17th Birthday. You wore that thing everywhere – I think you even wore it to a BBQ we had down the beach with a few mates from work. I think you still have it now, but it’s tucked away now. All of a sudden, you just didn’t have it on one day. When I asked, you just told me that you ‘fancied a change’ and it wasn’t spoken about again. You wore it less and less and then at some point, I only ever saw it on your side of the wardrobe, hidden between your wedding suit and your funeral suit. Yeah, back in the days we used to do things. I remember the time you arranged for us to go to some restaurant, some Turkish place. You were adamant we had to go there on a Friday night and it was better that we went there for half eight-ish. I remember I was bloody starving. In between me moaning about how hungry I was and glasses of wine in a pub around the corner from the restaurant, I ate two whole packets of salt and vinegar crisps – and I even snaffled a few of your cheese and onion ones. That’s how hungry I was. I remember you gasping in mock shock and pulling the packet closer to you, only to split the foil a little more so it was easier for me to reach in and get some. You were thoughtful like that, sometimes. I remember we tumbled out of the pub and into the restaurant, tipsy and giggly already. We’d already checked out the menu on my phone and over the hours, the list of our order only got longer and longer. When the waiter gave us the menus and turned on their heel to give us time, you gently tapped on their elbow, explained that we already made up our mind, asked if you could make sure there were no almonds in any of our dishes and then rattled off our order. The woman quirked a brow as she noted it all down, pausing at one point to ask if we were expecting more people to join us and asked if we were sure if we wanted all of this when we told her it was just me and you. We sat there, me sipping on my wine and you drinking your beer, dipping big tears of flat breads in thick, creamy baba ganoush and munching through koeftes, chatting away when the lights dimmed and took on a red hue and the quiet music suddenly became louder, filled with lutes and shimmering tambourines. The grin on your face spread, as the rumbling on some hand drums became louder and stopped as a scantily clad belly dancer stepped out from a beaded curtain somewhere. Hollers and hoots filled the room and folk started clapping. I turned to you incredulously, “Did you know about this?” Your shoulders shrugged, but the smirk on your face said it all, “I heard something like this happens-” The claps and hooting got louder as the belly dancer made her way throughout the room, getting people up from their seats and wrapping the belt around their waist. She’d show them a few wiggles of her hips, encouraging them to join in, before she wandered off to the next table, ready to get her next victims on board. “Oh shit. She’s going round the room.” “I know! Ain’t it great?!” “She’s doing the outer tables first. It’s gonna be us soon.” “And you’ll show them all how to do it right-” “I’m not doing it, Ken.” “What?! Oh come on! I’ve seen those hips at work before. They can do all sorts-” I laughed in spite of myself, shaking my head, “You’re such an arsehole-” “-and you can’t bloody well leave me up there alone,” He added, leaning in closer to whisper, “Once I do my belly rolls, the auld lassies at the table behind us might eat me alive.” It didn’t take me much more convincing. Once the woman got us up and tied the coin fringed belt around our hips, the alcohol took over. We were swinging and swaying around the room for a good wee while until the music was turned off so the belly dancer could start her own part of the performance, now that we were all lubed up for the night ahead. It was a brilliant night. We’d been there a few times after, with friends in tow, hiding the big event of the night away from them until the music started. It was a great wee set up, us two in it together, thick as thieves as we threw off their attempts at trying to work out why we dragged them all the way over to the other side of town for a ‘fancy kebab’. It was gleeful to see the surprise on their faces, to watch them shimmy around the room. Our pals! Professors, solicitors, a funeral director - the most serious folk in the world. We couldn’t stop laughing when Jimmy pulled up his crisp white and light blue pine-stripped shirt, opened up a few of the bottom buttons and twisted the material into a crop top, all the better to display his pasty white, hair flecked beer belly that he was desperately trying to ripple. It was a moment we’d bring up again and again on nights out, dinner parties and then actual parties for them and their kids. Then we found out the place closed down about a year ago. We’d stopped heading out on Fridays that much before then, mind. You’d told me that you tried to book a table one night a few months ago when you were trying to make up with me after that big fight, only to find out it didn’t exist any more. You decided to order in instead. Worked out cheaper anyway, didn’t it? We started the movies a while before that, though. It slowly crept in on us, like when you stopped wearing your jacket. Every once in a while, we’d decide it was nicer to cuddle up on the couch, order in some noodles and watch a movie. Wasn’t it more cosy? Us in our Pjs, a wee bottle of something nice, our limbs entangled together as we laughed, or cried or screamed at some movie together? It was better this way, we agreed. Especially when you’d take off one of my fluffy socks, your eyes still on the screen as you massaged my feet, almost like you were on auto-pilot, doing this for me without any thought. You’d sit for the the rest of the movie, your thumbs pushing into the balls of my toes, murmuring some prediction about what would happen next. I could swear back then that our little front room was heaven. I guess I never really noticed when it suddenly became all that we did. We didn’t bother going out as much anymore, not when heaven was in the front room. Invitations for dinners and parties were hardly rolling in anyways, and when they were they always seemed to have kids attached to them. We never really fancied it all that much – who’d want to spend their spare time washing off mucky, sticky finger prints from our clothes and staring at pictures of kids with runny noses? Not us. Kill us, first, please. Of course, we’d go to the obligatory first birthdays, show our faces and leave a gift before disappearing an hour or so later. Then we’d end up back here, watching a movie. At some point, we weren’t even watching the movie together any more, both of us head down in our phones, me flicking through Instagram and Facebook and you – well... whatever it was you were telling me you were doing. I wonder if she was the first one? Probably not, though. I reckon you’d have gotten bored often enough to work your way through a few of them. I did think you were being off with me for a while, being quite angry and snippy for some time. You being jovial just...stopped for a while. A long while. And then, all of a sudden, it just returned. Hugs and kisses and little treats brought in on your way home from work. Is that when it started? Should I have taken that as a sign of your guilty conscious? Your cough burst through my thoughts as I tried to work out how many more you might’ve had, more than ‘Mike Office’. That’s what her name was under on your phone. It didn’t seem like ‘Mike Office’ would have had such a round pair of tits anyway, or ‘want to feel your big aubergine in me again’. I don’t think she wanted any baba ganoush. I could feel you tense in your seat beside me as you tested your throat, trying to swallow, trying to remain calm. No, I don’t think she wouldn’ve been the first. Not when I followed the money after that, checking your account to see where you might’ve ended up. A few restaurants, a hotel here and there – all tied up to business trips, mind. And then a refund from OKCupid. I suppose you always where thrifty. Wanted to save that money so you had more to shag wee Molly, didn’t you? When your panic finally set in, your turned to face me, wheezing, “M-ma- my epi-” “Shh. I’m trying to listen to the movie-” The bowl slid from your knees as you gasped, your hands clutching at your reddening throat, as though you were trying to rip it open, trying to claw some way to let the air back in. My eyes turned from the screen to watch you spasm and gasp, to watch you watch me as your realised what was going on. To watch you as you took your last, wheezy, raspy breath and sigh it back into the world. Molly’ll be disappointed tonight. But then again, so am I. You smashed the almond flour dusted crisps into the new rug we got a few months back. That’ll be a pain to try and fish out. With a huff, I leaned across your still body to reach for the remote that you planted on your arm of the chair. I think I saw something about Gone Girl being shown on film4. It’s been a while since I’ve seen that. Quite fancy watching it, actually. I suppose I get to pick the Friday Night Movie from now on.


I once watched a man break a woman’s knee caps. It was as horrifying as one would think. Sometimes people say terrible things aren’t so terrible as they’re made out to be. Like the first time you have to get a cavity filled or resetting a broken bone. “It’s over before you know it.” they say. That’s not what it’s like watching a man permanently disable another human being. It happens forever. The screams are so loud that you forget what silence sounds like. The gurgly, banshee-cries pierce your ear drums at first. But then it’s just white noise. And your heart doesn’t jump to your throat the first time he swings the crow bar. It kind of rises up like a large bowling ball and presses against your adams apple with gradual pressure until you feel like your head is going to erupt from your shoulders. You wonder if it will ever stop. But it doesn’t. Like the screaming it just goes on and on until you can’t remember things being any different. The crow bar makes a thudding sound the first couple times. Then crunching, then squishing. I don’t remember how many times he hit her. I just remember the sounds. -- Before that day I used to think of myself as a good person. I saw bad things happening ‘out there’. Evil men took advantage of other men and women and children. Crazy people hurt other people. Not people like me. I was a good person. I went to work, said hi to the receptionist, made small talk with a few co-workers. I bought coffee for everyone once a week. Sometimes I paid for the person behind me in the drive-thru. Bad guys didn’t make small talk. The day I watched a man break a woman’s knee caps started like any other day. I kissed my girlfriend goodbye while she lay half-awake in bed. It was always like that: we both started work at the same time but she was a barista across the street and I had a forty-five minute commute. Sometimes that would really annoy me. Most days I would be genuinely affectionate and kiss her softly on the cheek and she’d roll over to kiss me back and I’d have to pry myself off of her so I wouldn’t be late for work. But sometimes I woke up angry and left the house without touching her and fumed about how lazy she was for most of the day. But I always forgot about it by the time I got back home. It wasn’t like the way I felt about my boss. I never really liked him. All the women in the office found him a little uncomfortable. He never touched anyone or said anything out of bounds or inappropriate or anything like that. But he was always…around. And he didn’t make good company. Some people try way too hard to be your friend even though you feel like you’ve made it clear through the existing social norms that you don’t want to be friends. It’s not like they’re bad people or there’s anything wrong with them. They just come on real strong and can’t seem to take a hint. It’s like they just don’t quite know how to be around other people. My boss was that kind of person. He spent most of the day trying to make small talk. Mostly with the women in the office. Everyone always talked about filing a complaint, but it was a small company and it was privately owned—by him. Filing a complaint basically meant you were asking to be let go. And the pay was good. And it really didn’t seem like a big sacrifice to make uncomfortable small talk with a socially awkward person periodically to work a decent job. It was Monday, and I was extra tired because my girlfriend and I had been up late the night before. I didn’t think much of the receptionist not being at the front desk. I didn’t think it was weird that the doors were closed to all the other offices even though I was ten minutes late. I just counted it as good luck that I could have some peace and quiet in the morning. It wouldn’t be the first time most people showed up late to work on a Monday. I had just sat down at my desk when I heard a loud thud. I don’t really know where it came from, except that it wasn’t outside. I don’t know how I knew that. I just did. I knocked on the door of the office next to mine. No one answered so I jiggled the handle. That’s when I noticed the door jamb was broken. It was splintered; like someone had forced it open. I didn’t go in. My first thought was that we’d had a break-in over the weekend. My heart started racing and I felt cold and sweaty at the same time. I started walking to my boss’s office. I didn’t think about how a break-in would only make sense if the front door or one of the windows was also broken(they weren’t). I just didn’t think it could be anything worse. Break-ins were bad enough. I was a good person: I didn’t think about what could be worse than a break-in. I could hear voices coming from my boss’s office as I got closer. The first voice was Jacob(my boss). ‘Good,’ I thought, ‘The robbers must not have gotten to his office.’ Robbers. It didn’t occur to me that this was the kind of word children used to describe bad guys. The door to Jacob’s office was halfway open. I was about to burst in and make my announcement. I would be the good guy that had discovered the robbers. I was going to be a hero. There’s a mirror in Jacob’s office. I don’t know why he has it. It’s not like a small mirror he keeps in a drawer to check his face before a meeting. It’s a full body mirror. Like one you’d find in a department store dressing room. Sometimes if his door was open and we walked by we could see him standing in front of it. He wouldn’t be smiling—Just standing with his hands in his pockets and staring. The mirror sits in such a way that you can see the opposite wall when the door is open. I had my hand outstretched to push the door the rest of the way open. I was that close. I happened to glance toward the mirror and saw that Jacob had his back turned to the door. He was standing up with his right side facing the mirror. He was covered in blood. I didn’t think it was blood at first. I thought it might just be paint for a moment. Then I thought maybe he had caught the robbers and stopped them himself. Then I heard the whimpering. “Please don’t hurt me” said a whisper. It was Gail—the receptionist. I couldn’t see her, but I could hear her shaking through the sound of her irregular breathing: “I won’t tell anyone, I promise” “I wouldn’t mind if you did,” said Jacob abruptly. He sounded much different than I was used to; like my father after a bad day at work: “I’ve been doing this for years and no one’s ever found out. At first it was thrilling: committing the ultimate crime and never getting caught. But now it’s just boring! I’d rather people found out so something new would happen. The routine is getting to me. Have you ever been brushing your teeth and found yourself thinking, ‘I fucking hate this’. So you stop brushing your teeth for a few days in protest. And new things happen! Your breath stinks and people complain and your gums start to bleed whenever you chew things…that’s me, today. Have you ever woken up angry and had no idea why? It’s like that. I spent all morning looking forward to finally changing things up, and WOW are things ever going to be different today! I even set a new record for myself. Did you know? I’ve killed nine people today. You’re about to be the tenth.” That’s when she started screaming. I stood with my hand still outstretched while I watched the crowbar go up and down dozens of times. Spots and splatters of blood decorated the mirror and the surrounding wall. I imagined Gail—just out of range of the mirror—being beaten to a fleshy mass of nothing. I wondered if I was next. Finally it occurred to me that I should probably fucking do something. Gail was somehow still screaming and Jacob was still swinging. The sound was like someone walking through fresh mud in rubber boots. I opened the door. I was reaching for a paper weight on Jacob’s desk when Gail saw me, pointed, and shouted, “Help me, please!” I think Jacob hit me then. All I remember is an explosive pressure in my head and a ringing in my ears that mercifully drowned out Gail’s cries. I felt the same explosive pressure in my legs in a few different spots. I thought Jacob might be hitting me with the crowbar, now. When the ringing in my ears turned back into the white noise of Gail’s scream my vision cleared. Jacob wasn’t holding the crow bar. He was holding the edge of his desk and jumping up and down on my legs. “You fucking bitch!” He shouted it over and over and over again. After my hearing and vision came back I started to register pain. I had known my legs were broken when I saw him jumping on them. Now I really knew. I had to stop Jacob, but I couldn’t move my legs and there was nothing within reach. Something was knocking me in the head. I barely had the presence of mind to find out what. I craned my neck to find that Gail was holding the crow bar. She was extending it out to me. With a strength I never knew I had, I took hold of the crow bar and in one fluid motion slammed it into the airborne ankle of Jacob. Lord knows what I would have done had that shot missed. The impact threw Jacob’s balance off mid-air. He let go of the desk to clutch his ankle and subsequently landed on his side next to me on the floor. Without thinking I drove the sharp end of the crow bar through his eye. I don’t know if I hit the floor or the back of his skull, but he went limp immediately. Had I stopped there, I would have perhaps still thought of myself as a good person. But I kept going. Gail kept screaming, and I kept stabbing and smashing. My legs were useless, so I propped myself up on one elbow and used the other arm to pummel Jacob’s body into ground meat. I only stopped because the crow bar became slippery with blood and flew out of reach. We couldn’t reach the telephone and both of our cell phones were destroyed by Jacob’s beating. The police say we laid there all day—It wasn’t until my girlfriend noticed I was late coming home that she thought something was up. The doctors say I was likely unconscious most of the time. Gail died of blood loss before anyone found us. I was the last one in to work that day. Everyone had already been killed except Gail and Jacob. Each person in their own office. I’m a good person, I think. But the police find it suspicious that I’m the only one without injury consistent with all the other victims.