I remember Madeline like it was yesterday… I don´t know about you, but to me, certain houses proclaim a character of evil. Maybe it´s just an unalterable conviction, after having seen one too many horror stories. Some houses seem to communicate an atmosphere of secrecy, an aroma of evil deeds, which make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. A mixture of the scent of the evildoer and the horror of the victim. Madeline lived in such a house. An ordinary house. It stood crowded in a corner of a square and looked exactly like its ugly neighbors on either side of it. And yet, there was something horribly different to this house that seemed like fifty others. Madeline was a lonely elderly woman, and she was delighted I took the time to cross the channel to visit her. I don´t scare easily, but the air in her house produced in me symptoms of genuine horror. I found Madeline charged to the brim with excitement, I caught a shock by her electric condition when I shook her hand. She made a revelation to me, after the obligatory English tea. She slid up close to me and whispered: - “They are finally going to do it.” I felt a little tremor down my back. - “They will print it on Monday.” - “Print what?” I asked. - “My house will be in the paper on Monday.” She made me think of a kid in front of a Christmas tree, discovering that Santa had been overly generous. - “They finally discovered my house is really haunted.” She continued. I knew she had a mania for the paranormal. And iron willpower, by any, means she usually managed to accomplish her ends. I thought she had been harassing a journalist at the local newspaper just enough, for him or her to cave in and print a story about her house in the paper. There was a glow around her wrinkled face and her eyes were sparkling. Despite myself, I became interested. - “My house is very old,” Madeline said, “and the story is an unpleasant one. It has to do with murder.” After a short pause, she continued: “Let me hear about your condition?” Madeline asked. - “My condition?” I repeated her question. - “I don´t want to frighten you too much. „Madeline added in a serious tone. “It has to do with murder most foul. Committed right here, in this house.” I nodded my head and Madeline continued: - “One night, a jealous lover hid in the cellar.” - “Who´s lover?” I asked to prove that I was paying attention, and didn´t want to get lost in the confusion of the story. - “Well, the woman who lived here, worked as a maid and started an affair with her employer.” - “Who was the employer?” I interrupted Madeline. She clicked her tongue impatiently and sighed: - “The lord of the mansion.” - “Which mansion?” I wanted to know. Madeline let out a long sigh this time. - “I don´t know, but what I do know is that the employer was an extraordinarily rich man. One night he broke into this house and hid himself in the cellar. When everyone was asleep…” I had to pause her again: - “Everyone?” I was clearly pushing her patience. - “Yes, she was married. Her husband was here too. The lover crept up the stairs, tore her out of bed, and threw her over the balcony.” I put my hand over my mouth to reflect my horror. - “And what about the husband?” I asked carefully. - “They believed he did it, and he was hanged for murder.” I was about to ask something again, but Madeline held up her hand to silence me. - “It all happened so long ago, and I have not been able to get more details.” Madeline said a little restlessly. Out of the corner of my eye, in the friendly glare of two lamps, I saw a door opening on its own. I felt a rush of terror. We put on our coats and went for a walk along the empty streets. The full moon that night, turned everything silver, casting long deep shadows. Few windows showed light. There was no wind, and I felt like the trees were watching us as we silently passed along. Strange things happened that night. Things still make me doubt my mind when I think back on them. Let me just tell you, that two hours later, I put my arm around Madeline, and without speaking a word I dragged her behind me, opened the front door of her house, and ran into the moonlit square, straight to my car. I pushed Madeline into the backseat and drove to the next Holiday Inn… Madeline moved in with me after that. One rainy afternoon, after she had been staring out the window all afternoon, I asked her what she had been looking at. - “Ghosts from the past.” She whispered. - “Shall I make us some tea?” I asked, hoping to yank her out of her blue spell. - “You sound like a Britt. Madeline said in an irritated tone. - “Okay, no tea. Perhaps you care to share with me the ghosts who have been visiting you.”

Madeline deeply sighed and said: - “Her ghost is said to still live there.” - “Who´s ghost lives where?” I enquired. - “I´m not in the mood for jokes!” Madeline spoke, more sad than angry. - “I´m dead serious!” I assured her; Madeline kept silent. - “Does she walk through walls or is she just floating around, looking sad?” I tried to lure her out of her silent mode, but I regretted my choice of words as soon as they came out of my mouth. Madeline threw me a truly angry look: - “Maybe she just tries to find somebody to help her.” She replied softly. “As a child, I lived in a development center, a tuberculosis clinic.” - “You mean a sanatorium?” I asked. Madeline nodded. - “Did you stay there a long time?” I wanted to know. - “An eternity as I remember it, but not in the tuberculosis center.” She replied and added shyly: “I was considered developmentally disabled.” - “That’s nothing to be ashamed of Madeline!” I tried to reassure her, while she was wiping a tear from her cheek. - “So, who was she? Your ghost.” I wondered. Madeline took out a handkerchief from her sleeve, wiped her face, and turned to me: - “I never knew her name, her age, or where she came from.” - “Did she die there?” I asked. Madeline looked at me very angrily again: - “What an odd question!” - “It´s common knowledge that tuberculosis patients who checked in, in one of those centers never made it out.” I tried to justify my question. - “She was my friend.” Madeline whispered. “Now, people tell stories about her to scare children with.” I did some research about the place, and I could see how easy it was to imagine ghosts filtering down the halls and disappearing into the darkness from the pictures I found online. The people who lived around the building told tales of phantom lights at night and strange noises. Those who had worked there spoke of cold pockets throughout the building. American paranormal study groups had studied there for years. Some of the visitors left toys behind, for a so-called child ghost, and cards and notes to say hello. Madeline told me that her friend must have been ten or eleven. She had brown hair, wore glasses, and had a way of looking out of the corner of her eyes. The girl was always twirling strands of hair around her fingers. I was unable to find any evidence of such a child, but I did find a man who had worked there for close to thirty years. I gave him a call and he asked if he could interest us in a tour of the building where he had worked so many years. I quickly asked Madeline, who vehemently nodded her head, stood up from her chair, and came standing next to me. I was relieved to see her snap out of her lethargic state. The former worker's name was Bob, and he asked if we could pick him up at a coffee shop in the village. I agreed of course. It would be a four-hour drive; coffee would be welcome before visiting the sanatorium. Especially a haunted one. - “Thank you.” Madeline smiled and kissed me. - “just don´t think I´m going shopping for presents for a child ghost.” I joked. Madeline shook her shoulders, turned around, and disappeared into her room. We left the next morning, and after a three-and-a-half-hour ride, we found Bob, in the coffee shop where he said he would be waiting for us. I enjoyed the caffeine fix while we got acquainted with Bob. - “I lived there for three years.” Madeline said. “My mother even found a job there as a cleaner and lived in a small, rented house not far from the sanatorium. Sometimes, after work, my mother would walk with me through the shadows thrown by the buildings. Avoiding other residents of course. They were always grumbling and yelling, and that scared me.” - “They probably had speech impediments.” Bob explained, “That´s why they couldn´t form words properly, making it sound as if they were grumbling and mumbling.” - “I could hear the yelling voices drift in the dark.” Madeline continued, “I would pull the covers over my head and hide.” She smiled a little timid smile. “I loved to sneak into the old chapel.” Memories started to filter back with Madeline. She had not been back to this place for many years. - “Did you know the first tuberculosis center opened in eastern Europe in 1863?” Bob asked, “It took twenty years before the rest of the world caught up with “the cure”.” We drove through browned pastures, up a winding hill. The road curved around ridges that looked out on blue hills in the distance. Bob had opened the car window; warm air rushed in, and he fell asleep. I could see another town beyond cow pastures. Past the last curve, the center rose through a forest of pines. The building had the color of dirt. The manicured lawn and the dorm-like buildings made me think of a college campus, rather than an old sanatorium. I parked the car and Madeline craned her neck up at the building. It looked more like a prison than a hospital. The people who lived there over the years must have felt the same. There were even bars on the windows. The place made me think of an old monument carved to forgotten gods. It was midday, and the crickets were very loud. The pines stirred in the wind. - “If there is such a thing as a ghost, I can see why they would come here.” I said, “This is a strange and sad place.” Madeline looked at me furiously: - “You still don´t believe in ghosts?” she asked me in a deep voice. I took a deep breath and answered: - “I believe that you believe, Madeline.” Bob opened the door for us: “Don´t worry! The building has been cleared of asbestos.” I looked around in the reception room, and I saw pipes and rafters through the open ceiling. Electrical cords hung down like snakes. Dust hung in the air and coated the floors. Dead birds lay in the hallway like stones. A presence of the souls who found their final home here lingered. I found it hard to breathe. We traveled fifty years into the past, as we climbed the gloomy stairwell. There was no electricity. The light was stained by the dirty windows.

On the second-floor landing, Bob pulled the door open for Madeline and me. The sun came through a window at the end of the corridor, it made the hall disappear in the sunlight, like a tunnel reported by the people who had a near death experience. The floors had once been black and white in diamond patterns, but now the ties were hazed by time. Our feet left prints behind us. How small the rooms were? Paint curled from the walls like dead skin. Boards had fallen away. I could see how easy it was to believe theories of places becoming haunted by what they once held within them. - “I remember my room.” Madeline said, “I could hardly turn around in it. It had a cracked washbasin beside my iron springs bed with the thin stained mattress.” I saw the toys on the floor, the website had mentioned. I picked up a teddy bear and sat it on a radiator. It was funny finding toys that were only a few years old in such an antiquated place. - “The ghost of a little girl is nothing more than what people want to believe.” Bob said. - “How many children have died here, Bob?” I asked. But he didn´t know. - “This idea of a ghost began in an era of sadness.” Bob reflected, “There are always stories of ghosts in places where people have suffered and died.” - “Do you believe in ghosts, Bob?” I asked him. He shook his head. He deflected my question by saying that several groups had been there recently with cameras and ELP equipment. They didn´t find anything. - “I watched so many paranormal shows on TV.” Madeline started with a voice like she was about to cry, “People wander through old asylums or prisons, shouting things like “Show yourself, or are you there?” – They never ask how you are, or if you want to go home.”

- “I would like to show you something outside.” Bob said. He walked us to a small dam in the wood. The pool at the bottom of the dam was filled with coins people had tossed in, wishing they were somewhere else. I drove Bob back to the coffee shop where we picked him up earlier that day. I shook his hand. He told me to come back, so he could show us the old chapel and take us through the old dormitories.

I wanted to drive back home, but Madeline started crying: - “Take me back there!” she ordered me. - “What?” I asked, “It´s going to be dark soon and I´m not going back in there.” - “I have had it with your mockery!” she yelled at me, “let me out of this car, or take me back!” I had never seen her like this. I slowed the car down and turned around. - “She was my friend!” Madeline said, still in an angry tone. “They say her ghost still lives here!” Out of fear to say something wrong again, I kept quiet. I parked the car in the same spot where we had parked earlier. Madeline humped out of the car as soon as I turned the engine off. - “Come here!” she commanded me. I got out of the car and walked to where Madeline was standing. She grabbed my arm as if to prevent me from running away. - “In spring, the storms came, water ran down the window and she flinched each time thunder rumbled. In the summer the heat grew fierce, we lay sweating on our beds counting the cracks in the ceiling and listening to the flies. We imagined our friends were visiting us. We dreamed of our moms coming. We listened to the nurses’ shoes on the floor. We watched the leaves change colors on the trees. In the winter, the dark arrived early and with the cold her cough grew. She spent hours over a basin dredging up blood from her lungs. Sometimes we found something to laugh about, but mostly we watched the shadows of the sun move across the floor. We had been alone for so long, our mothers were nothing more than the memory of a dream, whose face we had forgotten. I could hear her lungs when she was breathing. And then one afternoon the nurse came, I could hear her pen click, a muffled voice giving date and time. A gurney with squeaky wheels bobbled down the hall. The doors opening and closing reverberated like tombs, and I kept wondering where she had gone.” Madeline stopped talking. I felt her pain as she stood there crying. - “What was her name, Madeline?” I asked, but she just shook her head. - “Was she already a ghost? Was she already roaming these halls as a spirit when you were here?” Madeline suddenly stood up straight: “Who cares? She was my friend.” I sat on the nose of my car to give Madeline some space.

- “Conventional paranormal wisdom tells us that ghosts are spirits trapped on this plane of existence because they are unable to find their way out.” I said, “You got out Madeline. Yet you keep returning here in memory. You entombed your own spirit within these walls. You shared one hope with this girl once: the hope of leaving.” I took place behind the wheel and waited until Madeline was ready to get into the car. We are all trapped by places and circumstances, and random faces beyond our control. Forever looking back with the silly sense that if we could just understand the world we survived as children, we will somehow be better adults and our lives will fall into the neat category we created for it. As I drove down the hill, I saw the building standing silent in the rear-view mirror. A girl, with her elbows on a windows shell, was looking out as we receded in the distance…


It had been twenty-four years since she’d last seen it, but the place looked exactly the same. At least, that’s what Christina thought, based on how her sister had described it.

The manor was an elegant, yet greying, umber color. It had tall, fortifying green front shrubs, and inside of those shrubs was a courtyard worthy of a duke or duchess. Bronze benches decorated the edges of the inside, with meticulous designs engraved.

Holding her sister’s ashes, Christina’s mouth fell open. Her fingers trembled against the cold pewter urn as she walked slowly towards the newly-planted tree in the center of the yard.

It was a red oak, one that would grow to be the centerpiece of the carefully-plotted land. Aretha, Christina’s sister, had always wanted one, but the lords of the house had refused her every time, claiming that it would simply look gaudy. Finally, only after her death, would her wishes be granted. Christina’s eyes teared, already rubbed to the point of pinkness, half of her jaded with anger towards the lords of the house, for their mistreatment and hypocrisy. The manor was just a shell of nobility, but Christina knew the truth.

Aretha had been sent to the manor when she was two years old, for she’d been awarded board and education from the “most pristine, heavily-awarded” scholars in Canada(this had turned out to be a red herring, even so, because Aretha’d forever been indebted to them). From the moment she arrived, she was taught Latin, German, enrolled in math and history courses, and given severe lessons on her manners and demeanor. Basically, she’d been put on a pedestal by these scholars and criticized for her every imperfection. Christina couldn’t imagine spending a day in that lifestyle.

After she graduated from the rigorous education program, she’d entered an internship with a history professor. She’d written a novel, The Backside of West Civilization in Northern America, as boring as it sounded.

And then their mother had died giving birth to Christina. Their father committed suicide only days later, ending a cowardly life with a death that left his two daughters alone in a bitter world that had no room for them. According to her, Aretha ended up moving to Quebec City, after a nasty set of arguments with the lords of the mansion. She was seventeen at the time, but heavily educated and driven, so she ended up with a job as a secretary for a translation company that helped with international trade deals. She had to leave Christina by herself for most of the infant’s first years. Christina barely survived the first two years of her life due to malnourishment. Aretha couldn’t provide the proper care for her, understandably, and all of her cries for help ended in no success. Not to mention, her monthly taxes from the wealthy family that had raised her. From their mansion on the hill, they just continued to stack their wealth, devoting it to perfecting the empty house and attaining fruitless knowledge that would only inflate their egos even more. Yet Aretha persisted, raising her baby sister with the best of her ability. She rose to a prominent position in her company, slowly making Christina’s future brighter.

Now it was only black. Christina couldn’t imagine a future without her sister. There was no way, no possible course of action that Christina could see herself taking without her sister. In her eyes, her summer internship was as good as dead, her Chemistry bachelor useless. “Cristina Grelett?” Christina heard her name called across the lawn. She stiffened, clutching the urn even closer. Her fingers were numb from grasping it since they’d come here from the cremation center in Montreal, but she didn’t care. After all they’d done to her sister in life, Christina would fiercely protect her

in death.

“No harm intended,” A taller, slim man with greying hair said. His expression reminded her of the janitorial staff at her sister’s workplace; almost disgusted, but reluctant to complain. He seemed as though he’d been waiting a very long time for her. “Yes, sorry, the drive was longer than expected,” Christina said, “Are you Mallion Steed?” Aretha had mentioned the name countless times as she recounted their life story to Christina. Aretha had always hoped through these stories to instill in Christina that she could survive anything; that it was in their bones to pull through adversity. Mallion Steed was mentioned often with a curse or morbid insinuation. Christina kept a neutral face through her desires to both slap him and laugh at him in memory of her sister’s rare stories of pranks against him.

“I am Dr. Steed, yes,” he said, smiling and revealing very small, even teeth. Christina wondered how he ate with such small molars. “Two PhD’s make me a professional, I’m sure.” “Doctor,” Christina said, keeping a grip on the urn.

“How was the funeral?” Steed said in a syrupy tone. Christina swallowed down the contents of her stomach that threatened to reappear.

“We didn’t have one,” she whispered in a crystalline tone. She cleared her throat. “Just came from the cremation center.” Her head unconsciously darted down, eyes looking through the urn.

“Ah, I see,” he said, “Well, there is a breeze out here. Would you like to come in?” No! Her instincts screeched, making her hesitate.

She was cold, it was true, but she’d rather walk over coals to warm up.

Finally, though, she said, “Yes.” Curiosity about her sister’s childhood home overtook her urge to run away as fast as she could. Christina also wasn’t sure that saying ‘no’ to this man was the best idea.

“Come in, then,” he said, “Oh, we plan to leave the urn with the tree. You may rest it there; our staff will organize it to your liking.”

Her unease only grew, but she let it down, her fingers clammy and feeling empty as she placed it delicately. Her hands rested near her sides, half-way into the pocket of her jeans. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” Steed said diplomatically as they entered the house through the front staircase.

“Thank you,” she said, adjusting the left side of her hair, which was pinned up in braids. Aretha would’ve been proud of how well she’d done, especially considering her hands hadn’t stopped shaking. That said, she probably would’ve just done Christina’s hair herself. “This is my academic partner, Dr. George Buondy,” Dr. Steed said.

“3 Phds in Sociology, Psychology, and Anatomy,” Dr. Buondy said, “Naturally, I was your sister’s neuroscience professor.” He was also tall, but with fiery auburn hair and more stomach than Steed. He spoke in an oily tone, sounding as though he wished to know her secrets. “Educator,” Dr. Steed corrected, “We were an unusual program. Aretha did get an excellent education, though.”

He gestured grandly, indicating the magnificence of the place. “I’m sure,” Christina said, looking down the long hallways, each door adorned with gold trimmings. Side tables held orchids, and various portraits embellished on the walls. In the center was a watercolor of both men, looking dignified as they sat in a garden for tea.

Christina cringed as she imagined what a child would do here. There was no evidence Aretha had lived here, which made it even harder to picture.

“Are you looking for a portrait of her?” Dr. Buondy asked, “She always refused one. Strange, isn’t it?” “Not for her, I suppose,” Christina said, “She’s - was - never one for the spotlight.” Another lump formed in her throat as she registered the past tense. “Too true,” Dr. Steed said, “We almost never managed to open her up and get her to talk about what she was really thinking.” “Always very observant, not too talkative,” Dr. Buondy said, sounding almost analytical. “She was never one to take back her words, though.” “Right,” Christina said, understanding how Aretha would constantly have feelings of animosity towards the doctors. “Well, would you like a tour?” Steed said into the still room. Christina looked up at him. Even at twenty-four, she couldn’t understand “grown-ups.” What would make him think she’d like a tour? She was here for her sister. “Yes.” What? Christina argued with herself, thinking that she owed it to her sister to know everything Christina could about her.

She also didn’t want to leave whatever remained of Aretha yet. She knew she would never be back, and she couldn’t say goodbye yet. “Well, there’s not much down here besides the ballroom, the lower studies, the kitchens and servant dorms - well, what you really want to see is your sister’s old room, correct?” Dr. Buondy seemed eager for her response. “A general tour is fine,” Christina said.

“Are you sure?” Dr. Steed said, “The emotional pressure, and curiosity to see how your sister used to live -” “No, I’m sure,” she said. Reluctantly, the doctors started at the end of the hall, in the ballroom. They gradually warmed to the tour, explaining the architecture and color scheme with dignified tones. They also talked about previous balls they’d held, and how Aretha had loved them.

“Aretha had never mentioned balls,” Christina said. “Well, I imagine she was trying to convince you that we were the devil,” Dr. Steed said, “Which we aren’t, are we now?” “Of course not,” Christina said, ignoring the rising anger in her that they would insinuate something like that about her sister, who was an optimistic soul. “We can probably skip the studies,” Dr. Buondy said, “We have a lot of private information in there, research and all that.” “As most philosophers and scientists do,” Dr. Steed said, in an attempt to be modest.

They scooted her past the next few rooms, subsequently, and passed the central staircase again. They reached the kitchens, where the setting was purely white; it made Christina’s dark skin stand out even more. She shivered uncomfortably as they left, entering the dining hall. “We mostly ate here,” Dr. Buondy said, “She had atrocious manners when she came here.” “Never put her elbows on the table by the time she left,” Dr. Steed said, “We think we did a fine job of teaching her manners.” “You did,” Christina said, biting her tongue. Snideness wouldn’t accomplish anything. “Well, our servant’s dorms are hardly of any interest,” Dr. Buondy said, “Let’s go upstairs, shall we?” “Of course,” Christina said, “What is upstairs?” They walked back to the central staircase, the expanse making her slightly lightheaded. “A parlour,” Dr. Buondy said, sounding proud, “The bedrooms. Even a small studio, where Aretha studied tap.” “Very nice,” Christina said, climbing the stairs with them.

They showed her the two hallways that were split by the staircase. They went left first, entering a large door.

“Oh.” Christina said. It was obviously her sister’s old room; it was a little girl’s room, clearly. The hot pink walls matched the four-poster bed, and a white desk with a vanity stood against the left wall.

“We never redecorated for her,” Dr. Buondy said, “She was hardly in here, anyways.” “She always was busy doing something,” Dr. Steed said, “She liked the other children a lot - the children she saw at playdates, and balls. We do have a refined neighborhood here.” “And she loved charity work,” Dr. Buondy said, “Was always doing something.” “Even after she left,” Christina said, “She was always working, or taking care of me, or volunteering. I doubt she ever slept.” “That must’ve been hard for her,” Dr. Steed said sympathetically. “Especially after the baby,” Dr. Buondy said. Christina did a one-eighty as she met his eyes. “What?” “She had a baby shortly before she left to take care of you.” “Wait, she had a baby? How?” “She was pregnant for the last nine months,” Dr. Buondy said, “And then your mother died, and your father.” “So what happened?” “She was preparing to leave anyway, with her child,” Dr. Steed said, “She chose you.” “So where is her child?” “No, Christina, you don’t understand,” Steed said, “She gave us her baby so that she could raise you. She sacrificed her own child for you.” Christina felt her eyes blur for the infinite time that day. She was so tired of the rug slipping

underneath of her, for a lack of more eloquent speech. The only truth she could accept was her sister’s, and now that was being challenged to the extremes. Yet Christina knew they were telling the truth. She didn’t know how she knew, but it must’ve been true.

“So what happened to the child?” Christina choked out. “We gave it up for adoption,” Dr. Buondy said remorselessly, “We have no place for a baby here.” “We raised Aretha from her infant years, but we didn’t have the resources for a newborn,” Dr. Steed tried to explain, trying to sound human. “I - you did what?” “Unfortunately, the baby passed away in the orphanage,” Dr. Steed said, sounding like he was trying to be sorrowful, but coming across as a snake. “It died? ” Christina asked, horrified, her voice barely above a squeak. “Yes,” Dr. Buondy said, “Shortly after we put it up.” “This conversation isn’t going the way we’d hoped,” Dr. Steed said, “Christina, we’d like to give you the course that we gave your sister. It’ll open up so many opportunities for you. Chemistry as a profession is failing, because of the environmentalist’s avid abuse of it. We’d like to give you a brighter future.” “We could give you any job you want,” Dr. Buondy said.

“But I’d have to send money?” Christina asked heartlessly. “Like Aretha?” “Well, no education is free -” Christina ran out of the room before Dr. Steed finished his sentence. Neither followed her.

Christina’s converses clipped against the staircase as she grasped the staircase, breathing heavily.

They were offering her a life like Aretha’s. They dared to ask her, dared to think that they could trap her like they did her sister. She should’ve felt sick. But the slight didn’t mean anything to her, like it should’ve. All she could consider was the complete waste; her sister had gotten nothing she’d wanted or needed in life. She’d never asked for anything. Christina shouldn’t have this life. It was wrong. This life belonged to the child her sister had borne, the child that was now in the ground next to her mother because of the complete negligence that had damaged both mother and daughter. Christina wouldn’t go on, couldn’t go on anymore knowing what she now did. She refused to. It was her life, after all. Her logic vexed, Christina’s mind was bolting through thought-after-thought. At last she came to the idea that her sister had chosen her. Christina. That had to mean something, right? Or did it mean the wrong thing, did it mean that Aretha had wasted her life on someone else’s?

Christina couldn’t think straight. She couldn’t handle it. Looking out the window, she saw something that made her heart stop entirely. There was another urn, one next to Aretha’s. A smaller one. Christina ran outside, and dropped to her knees. Reading the urn, she let out a howl.

It was her sister’s child. Sinking beside the identical urns that were placed against the oak, an area already dug out to put a gravestone there, she dug her fingers into her hair.

Christina couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t process this. She needed Aretha at this moment, she needed someone who was only by her in an urn. Christina winced as she lifted her head and the wind hit her. Her tears down to her cheekbone, she thought. Why had Aretha done what she had? Christina could never know. Or apologize to her niece or nephew. Christina had to let it go. Didn’t she. She had to try, right? That was always the best idea. To try. Maybe to try and figure it out, maybe to try and make her sister’s choice not a waste. She knew one thing, one thing that meant everything; she wanted to make her sister proud. And that was all that mattered


Something's different. I am different, more than usual. What happened? "Mr Toulouse, would you be kind to stop dreaming? We're in the middle of a crisis. And it's time for your presentation." Fatty growled in his direction. A man ignored him and walked to the laptop area. "What seems to be a problem, Mr Toulouse? Did you forget how to press start?" Fatty obviously picked on him today. Sevan Copolous, the man's colleague, sighed and helped the struggling man. He ignored Fatty's unprofessional behaviour and seated himself. "First of all, the crisis our boss is talking about could be avoided by cutting the benefits for CEO's and their emergency packages. 67% of whole earnings are going there. This money could be more effectively invested and doubled. Second, the firm's hierarchy doesn't make any sense. We, analysts, are at the bottom, though we are key players. Without our assessment of your financial abilities, you'll be damned. So, you wanted to hear my opinion? It's based purely on facts that we collected during a crucial period, as you can see in the following graphics..." He was speaking, and they listen. They were not only listening but they were also mesmerized. For the first time in his life, he was feeling powerful. Important. He blocked out all taunting comments from his boss, concentrating only to deliver the message. "It's already past midnight. Why are you still here, Mr Toulouse?" A screeching voice of cleaner penetrated man's ears and awakened him fully. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize it's this late. Today you'll have not much of a job here, we got a huge meeting in the conference room. I came here just to make some coffee." The cleaner smiled. "I'm happy to hear that. My wife is about to deliver our firstborn. I hoped I could finish earlier to be with her." An analyst grinned. "You know what? Go, I'll clean my office and Mr Copolous' office for you. I'm not rushing home anyway, and you can enjoy your good news without focus on dusting my messy worktable." The cleaner nearly hugged him but then recomposed himself, thanking him instead. After the cleaner left for the hospital, Mr Toulouse started to clean his office. The building was now empty, but he wasn't afraid. The silence was welcoming as his headache was reaching its peak. Absentmindedly, he hit a colleague's desk and realized some papers fell out. Sighing, he was about to put them back when something there caught his attention. It was a slim working file with his initials on it. He didn't remember being assessed by anyone recently, and his curiosity won over his morals. Project name: Wordie, aka Henri Toulouse Project main goal: Test and discover the source of Mr Toulouse's unique ability Expected complications: NO THREAT Mr Toulouse opened the file and started to read. As he was focused on the text, he didn't realize what happened. He wasn't in the office anymore. He was back in place so familiar it was nearly painful. He was home. A real home. After two unsuccessful attempts to put papers on the table, he realized the table is no longer there. He looked around and nearly screamed. "How in the damn of damned I get back there without moving my ass..." he growled, uncomfortable in his current position. As usual, when in an unknown or threatening situation, he stopped thinking and breathed in and out to regain control of it. Afterwards, he sipped an ounce of his whiskey flask, always carefully tucked underneath his working jacket. This small ritual calmed him down to the point he was fully operational. Ready to deal with whatever is thrown in his way. How? By the power of the words. Or how they call it- by daydreaming. Because that's me. I'm not dreaming in pictures. I'm dreaming in words. The right words need to be spoken, written, felt. Walking forward through the myriad of words, he was looking for the right ones. The ones with the answers he longed for. "Where's the Information?" He heard someone's question though no one should be present. It was his mind, after all. "Where's the Information?" The voice sounded eerily familiar, but he couldn't recognize it. Suddenly, he bumped into someone else. Both screamed and quickly took a step back, shaking. Henri was looking at the person in front of him. "Evan? Evan Merrel? What are you doing here? And what's the Information?" Evan, a boy around the age of 6, giggled. "You're not dead. Neither I. But still, I am here, and I was looking for a way out. I don't like silence, you know." Of course, you're deaf. And you seem so real. That's not just my memory. This is not how I remember my brother by blood. My best friend before- Evan grinned viciously, and Henri trembled. It didn't happen before. "You can read my mind, right?" Evan shook his head, laughing: "No, silly. Your face is more readable, believe me. I can see what's happening inside your supercharged brainie. No need to hiding it." Henri did have a plan, but this little piece of his, possibly dead subconsciousness, was in a way. "Wordie. Interesting nickname. Kinda cute. Like you. Innocent. Harmless. Picked on by everyone more muscular, masculine-" All of a sudden, he lost his voice and looked at Henri, surprised. "I need to think how to get out of there. As the usual way is not- appropriate." "Now I am interested. What is it? Why you are ashamed of it? It's some kind of 18+?" Henri gagged but recomposed himself enough to answer. "If you are my subconsciousness, you should know." Evan went quiet. This time from his own actions. "I'm sorry, Henri. I shouldn't bring that up. I know you're struggling. But go home and sleep it off." I should go. But, what is Evan doing here? Let's take him home. Henri grabbed the boy's radiating shoulder and pushed him forward slightly. In mind, he opened all barriers that blocked the exit.  At the last "gate", he stopped, looking at the boy. "I never let you go. Did I?" Evan smiled, this time genuinely. "You kept your promise. Now it's time to let the pain heal. It's time to say goodbye, Wordie." "Don't call me that," he grumbled, and before he could finish his sentence, the brightness of his office's light blinded him for a moment. With a file spread on his knees, he slowly regained his sight and looked around carefully. He was back in the office, unchanged. Sighing, he put the file back, leaving it unfinished. Maybe something it's better not to know; for your own sanity. It was around 3am when Henri Toulouse left the building. He checked the time twice to be sure he is not dreaming. He wasn't. He spent three hours reading three pages of the document about himself. Project Wordie. For a long time, no one knew what's lies between its lines. Upon arrival at his place of living, he noticed a slight change. Words, usually circulating around him, now rested peacefully on their respective pages of his own memoir, named Life and Death of Evan Merrel. He was the source of the whole of his magic. A small boy, bullied and unimportant, who became the powerful magician of the word. He dedicated his efforts to find a cure for his stutter. In the end, he won. Evan Merrel died to give birth to Henri Toulouse.


She says, "Why don't you look like that?" I stop scrolling. It's some glistening, rippling torso with a haircut. Stripped to the waist. Almond skin pulled tight over solid muscle. I look down at my stomach, bulging amiably over my waistband. Lightly dusted with sugar from the half-eaten donut in my other hand. She looks back to her phone again and strokes our cat, Belle, sitting in her lap. Back to the gym. For the next two months, I'm there every day, 6am. Weights, bike, cross trainer. Weights, bike, swim. I'm surrounded by washboard abs and shredded obliques. They remind me how disgusting I am, as I splutter and jiggle my way around the machines. But all this work makes me hungry and hunger makes me eat. Fries, pizza, ice cream, coke. For a couple of weeks, I replace it all with salads and plain, flavourless chicken. I need to eat three times as much of it before I feel full. The scales never change. Each day, I peer hopefully over my belly button and see the same number staring back at me. I’m scrolling through my phone again and there he is, the perfect specimen. Adonis, standing proudly and bulging in all the right places. An act of violence in the form of a still image. She's looking over my shoulder again. From the corner of my eye, I see her eyes widen ever so slightly and her tongue trace the edge of her teeth. But this time she doesn’t say anything. The next time I’m at the gym, sweating through a session with my legs and arms like lead, I seriously consider giving up. I’m on the tenth kilometre on the treadmill and the perspiration is running into my eyes, masking the tears. That’s when Gary comes over. “Take it easy Rocky, you’re gonna give yourself a stroke.” He slides his arm around my shoulders. Tacky sweat glues us together. I collapse over the treadmill and rest my head on my arms. He says, “You need a little edge? I’ve got something that’ll change your life.” I look up at his toned physique. Arms like tree trunks. A vast expanse of chest muscle pressed against the thin fabric of a sleeveless shirt. It’s all the proof I need. I follow him through the locker room to the back corner where they keep the cleaning equipment. When he’s sure no one is watching, he reaches on top of a dusty locker and produces a small plastic baggy. He says, “You’ll be the guinea pig. It comes highly recommended.” Inside the baggy is a tiny, round blue pill. “You only need one,” he says. “Thank me later big fella. Oh and let me know how it goes. I’ve got another 50 of these. They won't be going for free.” Once I'm showered and dressed I swallow it down with a gulp of water. Tomorrow the work starts again. But tonight I'm going out for dinner. Another final meal. In the restaurant, I order trio de bruschetta and garlic pizza bread to start. Next, sirloin steak in peppercorn sauce with extra fries, all washed down with three bottles of lager. Finally, cheesecake, sorbet and limoncello. She looks at me with thinly veiled disgust. We barely speak but I’m too busy chewing and swallowing for chit-chat anyway. The other diners whisper and try not to stare. I don’t care. It’s the last blowout. A final night of freedom and I have the miracle cure already working away inside me. At home, she heads to bed while I stop to feed Belle. By the time I follow her up, she's already asleep. Eye mask on, facing the wall. I stare at her through the darkness for a moment, then head back downstairs. I worked hard today. I earned this. Belle’s tail brushes my legs, tracing a figure eight around my feet as I eat out of the fridge. --- When I wake up, I feel better than I have done in years. Maybe I've never felt this good. I spring out of bed and look in the bedroom mirror and my heart jumps into my throat. I think it's someone else, in my room, in my clothes. But then I realise it's me. Or half of me at least. My t-shirt, last night stretched across a distended stomach and swollen man-breasts, now hangs loosely down from square shoulders. My sagging chin is now taut, revealing a jawline I almost remember. Tense muscles brush against the fabric of my clothes. She says, "Oh wow. It's finally starting to pay off?" And drapes her arms over my broad, muscular shoulders. "An early night tonight maybe?" She traces the shape of my jaw with her finger and gazes at me through the mirror, her eyes ablaze. Pancakes and syrup for breakfast today. I'm celebrating. At work I get double-takes all along the office floor as I walk to my desk. Most of the men narrow their eyes in suspicion. Most of the women, who couldn't have picked me out of a line-up before today, they can't take their eyes off me. There is a smile on my face all morning. But I need to be careful. Good cheer is kryptonite for willpower. Before lunch, I polish off two flapjacks and a croissant. When lunchtime finally does arrive, I’m somehow still famished. I head to the local sandwich shop and the kid behind the counter says, “Let me guess, a salad for Mr. Muscle?” I order a footlong meatball special and finish the whole thing at the counter. The kid’s jaw drops. The other customers are trying hard to pretend they don't see me. I should be ashamed but my stomach is already rumbling, crying out for more. The ingredients behind the glass counter glow and throb. Fresh, sun-ripened tomatoes. Succulent cuts of red meat. Rich, creamy hunks of mature cheddar. They are begging me. Eat us. Eat more. Keep eating. I go back to the start of the queue. On my fifth trip around, the manager asks me to leave. I’m distantly embarrassed at being kicked out of a sandwich shop for eating too many sandwiches. But the hunger returns so quickly, I have to move on to the next place. It’s mid-afternoon when I walk into the all-you-can-eat buffet. I should’ve been back at work hours ago but despite the near-constant eating, the hunger pangs only get stronger. I load my plate. Piling food as high as it will go. The first couple of times I sit at a table. But soon enough I just walk from station to station, eating my way round. Chomping down on drumsticks and spring rolls and samosas. A daytime drinker stumbles into me. He smells like stale booze and farts. He says, “Wish I could do that and keep my figure. What’s your secret?” He jiggles his beer gut and chuckles, staggering away before I can stop chewing long enough to answer. I notice everyone is looking at me when a teenager starts filming me on his phone. I see pity in some eyes and envy in others. I need to leave. It's been hours and there is a dull ache in my gut. Fat is coursing through the blood vessels of my brain. When I arrive home she asks, “What do you think, pasta?” “I’m not hungry”, I lie. The stirring has already begun again. She looks me up and down, devouring me with her eyes. Her smile is full of dark promise. “Maybe it’s time for our workout?” But I can’t think straight. My mind is raiding the fridge. My veins pulse with trans fats and MSG. My skin burns and crawls and I feel like a giant set of open jaws, snapping and grasping for anything within reach. “Not tonight," I say, "headache.” She looks at me with disgust, pulls out her phone and starts scrolling. I head upstairs and past the mirror. Even in this stupor, I'm still amazed by my new, athletic physique. I flex a bicep to snap a selfie. Then, for the first time in months, I update my socials. Focus on the progress 💪 💪 💪 The likes and comments flow in. They wrap around me like a warm blanket as I fall asleep, my stomach churning and saliva running from between my lips. --- When I come to, it isn’t morning and I’m not feeling better. I don’t even remember getting out of bed but here I am with my head buried in the fridge in the dead of night, consuming everything. My insides are roiling, screaming to be fed. I'm clattering dishes and ripping packets and Belle is mewling at me from the countertop. Pleading with me to stop. I suck down slimy, raw chicken. Inhale cheese by the block. Acid burns the back of my throat as I spoon thick, cold butter straight on top of it. I pour every milk carton, every can, every sauce, every condiment down my neck and it all congeals together in a thick, sickly-sweet ball. I bite into a raw onion and the odour stings my nose and brings tears to my eyes. I bite into another, and another until I’ve eaten the whole bag. My jaw aches and my insides cramp. My brain swells against the walls of my skull and I flop back onto the kitchen floor. The room spins. There is nothing left in the fridge but empty cartons and glass jars rolling around on the shelves. Belle jumps down and sniffs at my face. Her purr deafens me as she gently licks my ear. For half a second, I couldn’t eat another thing. I dare to hope that I might finally be full when an empty pot of cream rolls off the shelf and lands in my open mouth. I start to chew. The sharp plastic edges slice my gums and the steely taste of blood coats my tongue. --- When I wake next, I’m back in bed. I'm alone and it's light out, so she must already be at work. The clock says 11.30 which makes me two hours late, but there is only one thing on my mind. I scramble out of bed, trembling with nervous energy. My eyes dart around the room like a predator on the hunt. I catch sight of my square chest and narrow waist in the mirror. I’m a superhero, a warrior, a greek god. Every inch of me chiselled from oak. I want to flex, stand and admire but the burning is back again and I'm lightheaded. I run down to the kitchen in my shorts and there is a note on the counter. You cleaned us out fatty. Thanks for not leaving me any breakfast! Last night’s binge replays in my mind. In the fridge, the only evidence is a small pile of shattered glass in the corner of the shelf. My throat is like hot tarmac. I look around the room for something to eat. An empty fruit bowl, a plastic pasta container, and some flattened cardboard boxes in the recycling bin. Cramps squeeze my insides and I double over. As I drop to my knees I reach out and grab a kitchen towel. Before I hit the floor, I’ve pushed it into my mouth and I’m working it down my oesophagus like a python. Weakness overtakes me and I lay with my cheek against the cold, hard tile as tears blur my vision. A tail brushes softly against my calf and before I know what’s happening my hand shoots out and clamps around Belle’s neck. She hisses and spits at me. With dull surprise, I find myself pulling her towards my open mouth. She claws at my face, tearing strips from my cheeks and slicing my neck. Her body writhes and swings in my grip and her eyes roll around in their sockets as she fights for her life. Velvet ears tickle the roof of my mouth and a hard, round skull buckles under my teeth. The mewling stops. Dry, silky fur glides down my throat. --- The rest of the day passes in a frenzied blur. I stalk through the streets, the taste of raw meat in my mouth and the now familiar churn in my stomach. As people pass by, some laugh and point and others grope my arms and writhe against me. I chase a dog in the park. I'm forcibly removed from a butcher shop. I eat a full octopus at a seafood market. I tear through trash in an industrial size dustbin. It's dark by the time I find my way home. The emptiness is worse than ever, jabbing at my ribs and clawing up my neck. My jaw feels ten miles high and when I try to close it, dried flecks of blood crumble from my cheeks. I shuffle into the kitchen, arms cradling my convulsing midriff. Smears of blood and hair still coat the kitchen tiles. It takes me a moment to realise I’m not alone. She is home and she's standing in the doorway. Eyes darting from me to the floor and back to me again. Her lips move up and down wordlessly as the shopping bag falls from her hand. A glass jar shatters. I want to explain. But when I try to speak, my guts twist in agony and I'm bent over coughing soggy lumps of black fur and purple viscera onto the floor. She screams and turns for the door but doesn't get far. I catch a clump of her hair in my fist and I yank her back into the room, snapping her neck like a ragdoll. Choking a scream in her throat. I sink my teeth deep into her throat and tear at her flesh like an animal. She collapses and spits blood into my eyes. Her screams turned to wet gurgles as I suck down chunks of her like air. By the time I’ve chewed through her neck, she is silent. Her head thumps to the floor like a watermelon. It takes hours, maybe days, but in the end, I devour her completely. Hair, teeth, bones and meat. Not a trace of her remains. Like she was never even here. The worst part is the feeling of relief. The feeling of peace and how it only lasts for a moment. As soon as the satiation comes, it's gone again. Leaving that awful, burning void inside me. Desperate to be filled. When I look at myself in the mirror again I see precision-sculptured power. A masterpiece soaked in blood. I'm disgusted and impressed. Maybe there is nothing that can fill the emptiness left in the wake of perfection.


Trigger warning: references to abuse Lucy was six when she first discovered the secret of the cupboard under the stairs She had been trying to hide from her father when it happened – Daddy always said he didn’t mean to get angry, but he still hit her anyway. She stumbled into the cupboard, hoping to squeeze herself behind the vacuum cleaner, and found herself in a world of rainbows and unicorns. Everything glittered and sparkled – including Lucy herself; and after a while, she realised that she could unfold the gauzy wings that grew on her back and join the other beautiful fairy creatures she saw as they swooped and dived in a game of chase around the lollipop trees and gingerbread buildings. She was having so much fun that she almost didn’t hear her mother’s voice calling her for tea.

The memory of under-the-stairs kept her calm for almost a whole week afterwards, although she didn’t mention it to anyone: she just assumed everyone had a secret place in their understairs cupboard. The next time she visited, the candyfloss clouds and sparkly unicorns had been replaced with an equally idyllic setting with fields and a river and rabbits – lots of rabbits. She spent a peaceful and very happy afternoon playing with the cuddly creatures and felt much better when she left and went back to her own world. Every week, there was a fresh adventure to discover in the cupboard. No matter how horrid the real world was, the lands she discovered when she ran to hide under the stairs were always delightful. In true Disney fashion, birds sang and tweeted above her head as they dropped daisy chains around her neck, and squirrels scampered up to her bearing gifts of berries so sweet and juicy they were better than any ice cream or chocolate she’d tasted before. She sometimes wondered why no one else mentioned their own understairs cupboard at school - maybe she was the only one with a special place like this; and then she read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and felt a thrill of recognition when her namesake, the storybook Lucy, stumbled through the back of a wardrobe and found herself in Narnia. It must happen to lots of children, then, if people wrote about it in books. That gave her the confidence to talk to her friends at school about the secret land she visited every weekend, but they all stared at her as if she was mad. The teacher said she had a vivid imagination; and after that, Lucy resolved not to tell anyone else. She must have been visiting cupboard-land for several years when she realised that she was not alone. Often, when she was walking through a wooded park or paddling in the sea, she would feel an awareness of someone watching her. If she turned round quickly, she would glimpse something not quite there. Eventually, she was quick enough to catch sight of a boy her own age with dark curly hair. She waved to him and he waved back; and from that moment onwards, they were friends. Henry became her constant companion, exploring the mountains and lakes with her and pointing out birds and flowers as they walked through countryside that was always sunny. As the two of them grew older, she began to notice how handsome he was; and her heart fluttered every time he took her hand in his. It was a source of great sadness that he could not leave the cupboard and visit her in her own world. The land inside the cupboard changed as she grew older – sometimes it was reminiscent of Venice with canals and gondolas; and there was one particularly romantic evening when Henry played a small guitar and sang her a love song (in Italian, naturally) as they floated along on a moonlit boat ride. Another time, she found herself in a French chateau complete with bewigged servants and a breath-taking ballroom lined with hundreds of mirrors that reflected the waltzing couples over and over again in a kaleidoscope of decadence. The chateau was gorgeous, but when she and Henry explored further, they heard the screams of tortured prisoners in the dungeon and found the emaciated corpses of the ones who’d been too weak to withstand their maltreatment – that was when she realised that not all the lands under the stairs were nice. Sometimes the cupboard was downright scary: after reading ‘ Dracula ’ and ‘ Frankenstein ’, Lucy found that the landscape took on a Gothic quality and she constantly felt as if she was being followed as she roamed desolate heaths and dark forests, searching for Henry, with the sounds of wolves or maniacal laughter echoing in her ears. She tried not to stay for long if that was the land she found when she opened the door. After a while, Lucy began to wonder if she was somehow subconsciously influencing what she found inside the door – after all, the first land she’d visited had looked very much like the drawings in her My Little Pony picture book, and her mother had been reading her Watership Down at the time Lucy had discovered the fields of rabbits. She was currently studying Romeo and Juliet at school and could not help visualising herself and Henry in the titular roles. So far, he had not declared his love for her; but she had just finished the scene at the masked Capulet ball and her mind was already dreaming about Henry wooing her with word play and clandestine kisses. Sure enough, the world she entered when she slipped into the cupboard that Friday evening was definitely Elizabethan in nature. For one thing, her own clothing had changed as it so often did when she entered a different time or culture – she was in a full-length gown in dark green with a brocaded bodice and long, pointy sleeves; and Henry himself was dressed in doublet and hose, looking for all the world like the Romeo of her fantasies. For a moment, she simply stood and looked at him, her heart anticipating the moment when he would place his lips on hers and gently awaken her with a kiss. It was only as he began to berate her cruelly, accusing her of being a strumpet and then pushing her away, that it dawned on her that she had recently read Hamlet too and that Henry was channelling the Danish prince’s madness. Returning to the ‘real world’, feeling shaken and scared, she decided that Shakespeare was too risky – after all, the plays she knew were all tragedies. Perhaps the Victorian era was a safer place for her first kiss – at least there, the strict societal rules meant that gentlemen were courteous to their ladies; and although Mr Rochester had seemed surly at first, he had wooed Jane Eyre passionately and asked her to marry him. (She decided to ignore the fact that he had a secret wife stashed in his attic at the time of his proposal.) This time, as she entered the cupboard, she found herself wearing a long white nightdress, which puzzled her since the only heroine she could think of thus attired was Cathy at the start of Wuthering Heights – and the ghostly apparition had been desperately weeping for Mr Lockwood to open the window and let her inside. And then she found herself once more on the wild and rolling heath, as night closed in around her and the wind whipped her face and a hand reached for her and thrust her to the ground. Henry/Heathcliff loomed over her, his dark curls and gipsy eyes  now taking on a menacing quality. As he held her struggling body down, she suddenly recognised her father’s features and remembered why she had entered the cupboard – but it was no longer a haven of safety but a place where he could continue to terrorise her. After he had left, she lay still for a while, her bruised and battered body trying to make sense of it all. There was now nowhere left to hide. The imaginary land she had retreated to ever since the abuse started was part of her nightmare; and as the key turned in the lock, she knew it had become her prison.


TW: Abandonment issues. I used to envy people bragging on their family trees and illustrious histories. So many royals, battles, and mansions on the hill. Named for a general? Cool. The conversation always stalled when I asked, ‘And what great things have you done?’ Blank stares and heated debate about the Dodgers’ stats followed. Go ahead, blame sour grapes. Lacking estate, I’m descended from a dumpster in an alley behind a liquor store, on a hill. Have you heard of it? Found sired by a dumpster, blue from desperate crying. How long must one scream to gain that bluish tinge? It wasn’t cold out. I generated it all by my lonesome. Regardless, I am who I am, through my efforts. No forebears to blame nor shadows from which to emerge. My childhood mentors were the media. ‘Just do it,’ is my favorite advice ever. Doesn’t every father tell that to their child? How about, ‘Think different’? Why would you argue with that? Lacking parental input, who could do better? I’ve winged it, since I could walk, with little input. How do you pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you can’t wipe your own butt? Eat, sleep, and poop. Wash, rinse, repeat. I never knew my father. Met my mother in passing. Then, snip, snip, tied off like a soggy balloon and released. Was it something I said? Still hope to find those misplaced baby pics. Found in a dumpster? Where else? Nick of time, too. I’d about run out of screams. Swaddled in a down comforter, of course. Standard issue for dumpster babies, don’t you know? Trust me. I have no social pretensions. Humble beginnings cure those with a bullet. In the punchbowl of life, I’m the turd floating by. Ahoy! I look in the mirror. How do people know? What invisible façade do they detect which makes me so dismissible? I know who I am, due to inside knowledge. But how do strangers know? Is it a vacant haughtiness, unsupported by money or pedigree? Oh well. If you want genuine arrogance, you must look elsewhere. My veneer is twenty-four carat counterfeit. You prefer anger? How about rage? I can give you rage. How do children learn to be human? It won’t happen in a vacuum. Mothers at the park look askance at me. But I won’t bother their kids. I crave what the mothers say…. “Play nice, wipe your mouth, don’t fight… pretend.” Where did they learn that? A machine needs oil. A bird needs flight. An apple needs a tree. But things can’t plead their case. Children won’t ask either. Mothers don’t carry a guidebook. It’s in their bones. Attitude is everything. I could sleep soundly, under a bridge. Or poise for a high-dive from the penthouse balcony. How does anyone get to the balcony, and not jump? I worked construction on a new house for Gillis, some advertising guy. He brought his family for a tour. Like ducklings, everyone followed Richard, the contractor. He pointed out framed-in spaces, soon to be rooms. Gillis’ kids touched everything. Their tactile sense revealed what mere sight could not. Gillis pulled me aside. I figured I was about to get fired. I can sense it. He told me to come in, and gave me his card. He said I ‘had a look.’ Whatever that meant. They put me in a studio with a lit backdrop and a bicycle. The photographer told me to stand by the bike. So I did. He snapped some shots. He thanked me. That was it. What was it about? I never got the memo, ‘how to stand by a bicycle.’ I’m not asking, ‘what’s my motivation.’ Fact is, I never had a bike. And I learned early, never touch what isn’t mine. So I stood by the bike. But not in a ‘this bike and I are one,’ stance. Guess I don’t have ‘the look’ after all. Damn! Upstaged by a bicycle. I could’ve been a contender. A house has a structural integrity. Like a body has its skeleton to keep it upright and intact. When the house is complete, the shingles mounted, windows glazed, and the door keyed, what then? What does it need? Furniture? Who lives there? Who belongs? What subtle chemistry bubbles and forms a family? What’s indispensable, without which, no family exists, regardless how many gather? Trust. I work construction. Stay in shape. Have time to think. Sleep well. With what materials does one construct trust? Day to day, hand me a hammer. Pick up food. Cash the check. But trust? I look in the mirror – objectively handsome, but not exceedingly so. Never cared about ‘the look.’ Do I take after my mother? Or father? Who had curly hair? Who had trust? The social workers put us in a camp. Called it ‘life skills.’ My warden, Miss Devon, assigned me garden duty. This was no Eden unless rows of rutabagas and beans float your boat. I hoed, pulled weeds. Watered. Harvested. Nail guns are sure. Use one, and something stays put. Staking seedlings for promised growth, makes a high odds gamble. It takes hours of patience and focus spent… hoping to pull up a carrot? Check please. So, my real father… There must have been one. Everyone has at least a donor, right? The dumpster daddy. Is he dead? Did he give me even a second thought? Is he rich, famous, and free because he walked away from a life including me? Does he have an unfillable emptiness? Would I want to be like him? Am I? I don’t want to know. Were they an item? This couple who created me? Did he rape her? That’s a real man for you. Over in less time than it would take to buy a condom. She must’ve been hot. Of course, she let me live. Very generous to deposit me in a dumpster and not drown me like a kitten. If only I had an address to send a mother’s day card. So special. Were they ever together? Or was I the embarrassing output of a five minute clinch? I’ll never know their names. Did they bother with such formalities? So many questions. My school years remain a fog. Teachers made me the poster boy of ‘failing up.’ Not that I’d have returned. Every summer, I relocated to a new house in a new district. Always the ‘new kid.’ Miss Devon and I set my birthday in June since that’s when I'd meet my ‘new family.’ Foster homes, a multitude, were all different, and all the same. I ate with the family, but always felt sequestered. The last one, Mike and Sue had two kids about my age. Dean, the brother, had no desire to befriend me. His nickname for me was ‘free lunch.’ Sister Sharon, younger than Dean and me by two or three years, barely acknowledged me. Who invites a perceived threat into their home? I awoke screaming from a nightmare. Spiders swarmed over my face. Dean pinned me down and punched. Over and over he yelled, “Shut up!” When I became lucid, I saw Sharon watching from the hallway, standing behind Mike and Sue. Dean said the county paid his folks to foster me. I’d never heard that, but it made sense. They didn’t fatten me up. That must have been one tight budget. Sharon, my secret friend, slipped extra cookies to me. Dean was odd. I had nothing. And no place to put it. But Dean accused me of stealing stuff. Curiously, when my stuff went missing, I’d find it in his desk. Miss Devon stuck by me when I aged out, and they cut me loose. She patted my shoulder and wished me well. After years, that was it. She’s who told me about my turning blue. That was all she knew. I figured it was a dumpster. She couldn’t confirm that. A free agent, I bounced from job to job. They’d say I had attitude problems. You think? Worse than being a foster brat. Miss Devon checked in with me every few months. Off the books. Even though I had a new worker, nothing worked for me. Richard, the contractor, who hired me said, “I’ll be honest, Jonah. I have no great expectations about you. Miss Devon asked me to cut you a break. She’s a good one to have in your corner.” She pulled in a favor for me. Might be my last chance. He said, “Listen up. Here’s the deal. I’m hiring you to do whatever needs doing, when it needs doing, or sooner. Better, if you do it before hand. Don’t waste my time.” “That’s it?” “That’s it. You do that, it’ll be plenty.” That was the most fatherly thing anyone ever told me. Clean, simple, and unambiguous. We shook on it and he put me to work. Hours were long and hard. I learned a ton, and I proved myself. He kept me busy. For the first time in my life, I had money to spare. Free day, coming out of a coffee shop, someone called my name. Sharon, now attending the community college, stood grinning at me. She invited me to join her and friends at the flea market. I’d never been. Felt good to pay her way. We watched people, joked and laughed. So much used junk! We had fun. Never felt so relaxed. Her friends wandered off. She didn’t care. One booth had a boxes of old snapshots. I don’t know why I leafed through them. Just curious. Who were all these forgotten people? Does no one remember them? I invented stories. Sharon listened, enrapt. I rambled on. In one faded black and white, a group stood in a field proudly holding giant rutabagas. They each wore suspenders and sun hats. I riffed that the tall, middle one was my grandfather. The others were uncles. The squat woman on the side, my second cousin. Sharon loved it. Another featured a man in uniform, standing by a vintage fighter plane. “My Dad. He died in the war.” “Which one?” “I don’t know. Can’t you tell he’s a hero?” I flipped through some more. “And this woman feeding geese is my mother.” “You have her eyes.” “And the curly hair…” Faded inscriptions on the back were indecipherable. No names. Lost faces. The box advertised, ‘photos - $1 per dozen.’ Sharon said, “your pick.” My first gift ever. Instantly, I had a family. I wiped my eyes. And I discovered something that sperm and egg created, no one could take from me. In the food court, I bought two coffees and we split a cookie. “Interest paid on all those snacks...” She laughed, “Yeah, you owe me, Joe. Big time.” A jug band did their set. Between songs I waxed fantastic about my brand new, antique photo family. A pattern emerged. In each story, everyone did what needed doing, when needed. Some died. Some thrived. But everyone did their best. I told Sharon, “‘Good to the last drop,’ is my favorite slogan.” She listened. “I know it’s marketing coffee, but it also seems a worthy goal for life. That’ll be my measure ‘till I drop.” Whatever their failures, I forgave them. They did their best.


"Are you having a séance in here? He isn't dead yet." If Jonesy could have had a birthday mid-summer, instead of dead in the middle of winter, that would be great. He's a camping fanatic, and Byron has connections to get a cabin in the woods for an ultimate slumber party. Connections being his mother, who promised everything would be ready for them. Everything, not everyone. "Dude, I got us a cabin in the woods for your birthday," he had said. "Great, I'll let Philippa know. She'll be so hype!" Jonesy had taken him by both shoulders and was beaming so hard his face could have split. There was no way Byron could tell him she wasn't invited. Having his heart split would be a much worse fate. Thing was, she didn't have her license. Which would have been fine, because she could have carpooled with her boyfriend, and met him there. Unfortunately, despite requesting the day off for a long birthday weekend, Jonesy's boss scheduled him until five, and already at his limit for excused absences (stupid flu bug), he stayed, as all the snow started to pile up. Byron had agreed to drive Philippa. That way they could prepare dinner and be ready by the time that he'd be arriving before giving him a very generous birthday gift. One that made him blush as she asked if he was packing his headphones, because things would be getting loud. How generous of her. It's late January, and it feels it. There's about a half foot of snow accumulated outside the window. It's taking longer than it should for Jonesy to show up, but they assume that he's going slowly, because the roads have turned to ice in the cold.

The weather has turned bad enough that the power gets knocked out. So here he is, standing in the doorway of the bedroom, looking at her amidst a circle of lit candles. "Don't say yet. It worries me." She shifts her weight. "I'm waiting to seduce Jonesy. We're already behind schedule." She has a schedule? Are they that routine that she knows how many minutes it'll take to create the ultimate power combo for his pleasure? Does that include the time it'll take him to defrost? "You're going to catch cold in that thing. If you want to bundle up, I can answer the door when he shows up and delay him a few minutes." It's not that he wants to help her nail his best friend. He isn't her biggest fan to be honest. They haven't hung out much, but she is infamous for stealing his attention. Also for long set of legs of hers that she has spread out for display. He can see the allure. He can feel it, backing out of the doorway. "He'll be here any minute. I can feel it," she calls after him. He nods, though she can't see him, long gone down the hallway. He needs to collect his thoughts. The last thing he needs is for Jonesy to walk into his best friend deconstructing the tent in his pants, pitched by his girlfriend, on his birthday. He makes his exit to the kitchen, where a, now dead, slow cooker sits on the countertop. The mac and cheese is cold now. It's slowly congealing, because he had thought that they'd have eaten and moved onto dessert by now. Rather they'd have moved onto their special dessert, and Byron would eat the bag of Sour Patch Kids he had thrown into his duffel bag. The kitchen is dark without the lights, and he reaches for his phone. There's no service, but he can use it as a makeshift flashlight so that he can make his way to the fridge for a bottle of water.

"Bryan!" He's not going to respond. He's grown used to it, with years of people mishearing his name upon introduction, and he's given up on correcting them. It's just that he's only now gotten his emotions under control, and he isn't fond of testing fate. She calls the name again. After the third try, she shuffles out of the bedroom, carrying one of her candles. His flashlight accidentally hits her in the pupils.

"Sorry," he apologizes, turning it off. She sets the candle on the counter between them, and he stares at it, because it's not her. "I was calling for you." "No you weren't. You were calling for some guy named Bryan." He takes the lid off the slow cooker. It's definitely getting worse by the moment, and he gives it a stir in an attempt to revive it. Also in an attempt to avoid looking at her in that outfit, or therefore lack of. She doesn't seem to catch the hint. Poking her own nose in, it wrinkles. "What if he got hurt and can't contact either of us? What if he's not coming tonight?" "Then hopefully he finds help. But it'll only be worse if we go out looking for him. It's dangerous out there, and you aren't even properly dressed." He tightens the strings on his own hoodie. He's thrown some wood into the fireplace, but it isn't a miracle worker. "I have clothes."

He waits for her to fetch them and get dressed, and laughs at how thin they are. She's still shivering.

"C'mon. Extinguish the candles and we can go sit by the fire. It'll be warmer."

She returns, this time with a blanket, to find him on the floor. He has the slow cooker with him, and a serving spoon. He takes a heaping scoop and eats it straight off the spoon. "Seriously, not-Bryan?" "Not-Bryan?" "You said your name wasn't Bryan." "It's Byron. As in Lord Byron." He nibbles at the gluey cheese. It's past its prime, but he is hungry, and doubts his friend will be arriving tonight. She takes the spoon from him. "You're a Lord?" Obviously someone isn't as big into poetry as his parents. She's also not above sharing his cooties, licking a glob of macaroni off the spoon. He chuckles and shakes his head. "We can get bowls, y'know." "I don't mind."

There's something in the way that she smiles at him with cheese glazed lips that tickles his heart. It's probably residual from seeing her in that lace number, still peeking out from underneath that sweater dress of hers.

This time he shivers, fingers brushing hers as he takes the spoon back from her. "Next year I should get him tickets to the movies." It's the most inconvenient time of the year to have a birthday. At least the theater will have heat, and they can stuff themselves with buttery popcorn instead of congealed mac and cheese. "Who?" She's watching as he methodically eats one noodle at a time. The question startles him, and he jolts back, cheese smeared on his nose. "Jonesy." The second syllable comes out airy, as her thumb rubs his nose clean. He loses it when she licks her thumb clean, forgetting how to breathe for a minute.

Her smile drops. It's almost as if she had forgotten her boyfriend could be trapped out in the middle of a snowstorm. She's quiet for a few minutes, plucking pieces of macaroni out of the slow cooker. They're not sharing the spoon anymore. He must have cooties again. Or she's realized that they got too intimate for two humans only connected by their favorite person. "He was really excited about this. It's all he would talk about for the last two weeks. He said his two favorite people would finally get to hang out and learn to love each other as much as he loves us."

Byron sets the spoon down. "I don't hate you." "You don't?" "I just hate how much time he spends with you." "Huh." "What?" "I could say the same thing about you." She twists to face him. "All those overnight bro trips, and bronch every Sunday."

It's Bronch. They've been having their bro-brunch for years. They'd been jealous of his mother always having a ladies brunch without them, so they went with intentions of getting tall stacks of blueberry pancakes and ended up with a dedicated table and waitress. Ladies aren't bros. Ladies can't eat bronch. Still, she has a point. He makes no effort to include her, knowing she'll take all his attention. How could she not, with those stupid long legs and that beautiful smile? "Fair point." She moves the food out of the way and scoots closer. He hesitates. Is she moving towards the fire, or trying to get closer to him? Should he scoot back more, or- Oh. Holding the blanket out, she wiggles even closer. "We should share body heat. I didn't think it'd be this cold." She lets the blanket fall over him, and he sits rigid. She looks perfectly cuddle worthy, but cuddling leads to canoodling, and that's a slippery slope to go down. "There's an extra hoodie in my bag if you want to borrow it." She does, and he takes the moment to breathe as she goes for it and slips it on. She's swimming in it. Crawling back under the blanket, she curls into his side. That plan went horribly. "Philippa..." "Call me Pip." "Pip?" "I was named after my prick of a father. I hate being called Philippa." It's news to him, as Jonesy always calls her by her full name. He wonders if he knows, or if she hasn't told him, for fear of upsetting him and losing him.

At the memory of his best friend, he crosses his legs. He needs to calm down. It should be easy, because she's started talking about her abusive father, which isn't sexy in the slightest, but he wants to hold her and wipe her tears away.

Where the heck is Jonesy? Her words start to slur, and he realizes that she is falling asleep. He tries to lift her, failing. His body too is falling to sleep, and try as he might to stay awake, wedged between her weight and the hardwood floor he isn't letting her head fall to, he succumbs.

He wakes the next morning to find her still asleep on him. Temptation gets the better of him and he kisses the top of her head. He manages to get his phone out of his pocket to see that it is dead.

Putting his phone down, he sees that she has awoken (turns out he has jostled her after all) and is smiling at him. There's no immediate leap of horror after finding herself practically in her boyfriend's best friend's lap. "I wonder if he's going to show up today." Oops, there goes the smile. "Is it still storming outside?" The windows are covered in white, so they head to the door. There, fist raised to knock stands Jonesy, looking a bit frozen. "Judging by the looks on your faces, I'm going to assume neither of you got my texts."

She snaps out of her daze and shifts away from Byron. Her side feels cold without him. "We lost power yesterday. No phone service either." "We're glad you're safe."

The truth pains him. Yes, he is glad that his best friend is safe. Mainly because he cares about him. Though he'd be lying if he said that it had nothing to do with preventing him from acting on certain feelings that cropped up in his absence.

Problem was, the feelings weren't just physical anymore. He doubts this is what he meant when he said he wanted him to learn to love her. "Come in," she says, wrapping the blanket completely around herself. She's still wearing Byron's hoodie.

"It was so bad out last night when I got out of work I went home. Texted that I'd head out in the morning, and for you guys to save me some mac and cheese." It's still sitting on the floor. Byron steers him to the bedroom. Motioning behind Jonesy's head for Pip to hurry, she runs into the living room to fling off his hoodie and take the pot to the fridge. The ring of candles are still waiting for him, unlit, and he sighs happily. "Isn't she the greatest?" "She's pretty alright," he undersells, catching her eye as she approaches. She gives a half hearted smile, fingertips grazing his for a moment as she passes him through the doorway. His hand folds around the paper. He waits until the door is closed to read it. 'I wish I had met you first.' He listens to his best friend unzip her dress, gawking in delight. Then a flat, hollow voice. "Happy belated birthday, Jonesy." The paper crumples in his fist.


Have you ever felt like you're losing your mind? Actually worried about going insane? I have. Recently, at least. For the last two weeks I've been having these dreams. Nightmares, really. I think. They always start the same. Or do they? I'm on my way to work, running late but stopping by my favorite café on the corner, regardless. There is a long line - there always is. They have the best coffee in town so of course it's immensely popular among the nine to five zombies in the morning. Like me. As I stand in line, a little anxious because of the time and the vast row of people ahead of me that keeps moving yet I don't seem to get any closer to the front, I notice a hooded figure. It's a mild and sunny day so the black rain coat stands out like a coffee stain on a white shirt. I look down on my shirt and realize there actually is a coffee stain there. How did that happen? I took it fresh out of my closet this morning and surely there hadn't been a stain there then. Still puzzling over this I look up again, my eyes automatically going back to that hooded figure. He's still in exactly the same position: right hand stretched out to open the door, left foot slightly hovering above the ground. How odd. My brain is trying to make sense of the information provided by my eyes but it's failing completely. I look around. Surely someone else must have noticed this - but everyone is only staring at me. Some look shocked, some look worried, some are pointing at my chest. With a growing sense of irritation and confusion I look down at the stain on my shirt again. It's grown considerably in size and I realize it's not coffee at all … it's blood. I wake with a start. I'm drenched in sweat and tangled up in my sheets. I sit up on my bed, eyes closed, willing my heart to stop pounding. It works, for the most part, and I shake my head at the ridiculousness of having such a strong physical reaction to a weird little dream that I can't even remember anymore. Something about coffee stains. I check my alarm clock: 8.30 am. Completely shocked that I seem to have slept through my alarm, I jump out of bed. I hurry through my morning routine, get dressed quickly and grab my keys and my phone. I see a message from Claire, asking if we're still on for today. That stops me in my tracks. Claire and I have made plans to go to the lake on Saturday. But today is Thursday. Right? I check the date on my phone: Saturday the 16th. I stand in my hallway, unmoving, left hand clenched to a fist around my keys. I try to recollect this past week but no matter how many times I go through it I always end up at today being Thursday. I wait a couple more minutes, or possibly an eternity, before I slowly put down my keys again. Somewhat shaken, I sit down on the nearest chair, a bar stool in my kitchen. I open my friend's message again and type my reply. Yeah, sure thing. Smiley face. I need coffee. Maybe something to eat. But I don't move. I just sit here, in my kitchen, trying to make sense of things. But after a while I just give up. It's futile so I might just as well get ready for the day trip with Claire. I exchange my business outfit for something a little more casual, pack my swimming gear and some provisions - just in time before a short message lets me know that Claire is waiting outside in her convertible. It's a gorgeous day and the nice summer breeze quickly releases some of the tension left from this morning. Claire is in a chatty mood today. She just started a new job and seems really excited about it. So the two hours it takes to get to the trailhead parking lot go by blissfully fast. From there it's a nice one and a half hour walk to the lake. It's a bit of a steep climb at first but once you get through the dense forest the trail levels off and you have an amazing view of the surrounding landscape. There are two small lakes along the trail. We walk past the first one and head straight to our favorite spot by the larger of the two lakes. It's a bit secluded, tucked away in a cute little bay, surrounded by a few pine trees. Here, even though there are quite a few people out and about, enjoying the summer weather, it feels like we are the only people for miles and miles. To cool off from the hike we decide to prioritize the crystal clear, cold water over lunch and hop in from a perfectly located rock. Being fed by a river straight up from the mountains, the coldness of the lake takes me by surprise every single time. It's both a little unnerving and exhilarating at the same time. The sting lessens after a little while and we do our usual swimming exercise: butterfly our way to the middle of the lake and then breast swim back to where we started. It's a fair distance and by the time we get back to the shore both Claire and I are famished. We devour the food we brought and as soon as we're done we lie back on the enormous blanket feeling the best kind of exhausted, with a full stomach and the sun tickling our faces. I drift off with a silly grin on my face - this is the good life. I wake slowly and roll over onto my side. I risk a quick peek at my alarm clock: it's almost 7 am; the alarm will go off in a few minutes. Nevertheless I close my eyes again, trying to remember as many details of the dream I just had as possible. A perfect day at the lake. I smile at the image of Claire failing miserably at not getting her food all over the blanket. It had been such a vivid dream. I can't wait to finally go to the lake again. The weather has been rather miserable lately which is why we had to postpone our first hike and swim adventure of the year a bunch of times. I look out of the window: the sky is a gloomy grey and it looks suspiciously like rain. Again. Oh well, can't be helped. I turn off the alarm and head to the shower. The nice, warm water reminds me of that dream again - ironically enough. For a second I contemplate switching to cold water … But that idea is quickly abandoned and instead I turn up the hot water a little more. I get out of the shower and get dressed. I'll use the early start to the day to stop by my favorite café on my way to work. They are always ridiculously busy in the morning and I usually don't have the time to grab breakfast - a large coffee, sugar, no milk, and a ham and cheese croissant - there. I can already feel my stomach rumble at the thought of that. So I put on my black rain coat and get going. It's just a short walk but the cold wind and the relentless rain make me hunch over and hurry to the café as fast as possible. Just as I am about to open the door to the café - jacket already open to get out my wallet in eager anticipation of a delicious breakfast - I hear a loud noise, almost like a gunshot. I freeze for a second, noticing a sharp pain in my chest. Everything feels like slow motion all of a sudden. I look down and see a bright red stain forming on my white shirt. Small at first but growing larger by the second. I feel dizzy and I think I'm about to collapse … And I wake up with a start.