The sound of the desperate wailing banshee cries of the grieving woman were broken only by the thunderous, booming clap of the rotors as the bird descended down into the sizable forest clearing, onto a makeshift landing pad, throwing up fountains of the fallen yellow red leaves as it did. A passerby hiker with no context to the events might have guessed that this was some sort of expensive private vehicle show which a pampered young billionaire had decided to hold in the local state park, for some reason. Henderson, a man in his later forties, with disheveled greying hair, wearing a worn and dirty ranger uniform had really wished it to be exactly that as he sat helpless on the trunk of a fallen tree. He looked out at the array of technology which was as if on parade in the clearing. Several ATVs had been arranged in neat little rows, each equipped with high powered lights, specialized tires and luggage attachments on the back filled with a variety of supplies. They stood next to several large canopies, the ones that you’d typically see at your local fair, under which were a tangled jungle of electronics and cables with a mountain of various assorted backpacks of the staff and volunteers lying beside it. The bird was a brightly orange colored former military “Huey” of Vietnam era fame with the words “Search and Rescue” written on it’s side in clear black paint. A strange device which at first glance may have looked like a threatening machine gun, a leftover from its war days, was in reality an expensive new thermal camera which was attached next to the side door of the helicopter. It, along with some of the ATVs, and a good portion of the volunteers were from out of state in a “Custer’s Last Stand” of sorts. Just half a week ago was it, indeed, just days ago Henderson thought, damn how long those four days had seemed since the disappearance of Jake Fulton and Catherine Helsak. They were a young teen couple, enjoying a gap year together before they were forcefully separated by destiny, he was planning to start work at a local mechanic’s shop while she had bigger plans and wanted to attend a fancy out-of-state university. Not allowing their Romeo and Juliet complex to stop them, they decided to go on a final fling before the start of school and their separation. By all accounts they had driven over to Lewiston Gap State Park at around noon on Friday, checking in at 2:00pm at the campground, and planned to leave early on Monday. When the local campground attendant saw that they were late to check out, he went down to their campsite, number 4 at 11:00pm on Monday just to find a dark, silent and most importantly empty campsite. The door to their cheap blue tent was torn open from the inside with considerable force as evidenced by the severe stretch marks on the nylon material, which in places had completely separated from the zipper. Dogs and Search and Rescue teams were first brought on site the very next morning, but still, it was nearly a day since the supposed time of disappearance. Henderson was there, every step of the way as a veteran park ranger with fifteen years of experience working at this park, he was among those first responders, and back then they still had hope. That's when things began to go wrong, right at the beginning of the search operation. The dogs combed the campsite, it was an open space of about ten by fifteen feet, just enough room for a tent, a fire pit and a nearby old, half rotten wood picnic table and a car parked in the dirt driveway leading up to it. Situated on a raised elevation of about twenty feet or so, a path led down the hillside and through a thick crown of pines which ringed the hilltop camp, down into a large open clearing nearby a sizable stream. It was a minor tributary that eventually flowed into the reservoir at the center of the park. The dogs sniffed and searched but Catherine’s scent was entirely just gone, as if she had just been picked up into the sky and right off the face of the planet. They did manage to pick up a faint scent when given some of Jake’s clothes, strangely it led away from the campsite, through the pines and dissipated into uncertainty near the sandy bank of the creek. That was where the SAR operation ground to a halt, they sent out single searchers on foot into the surrounding wilderness and divers combed the creek to find a body. Those divers seemed to be in the water for hours for the next three days, but the most that they dug up was a rusty pocket knife that somebody dropped, judging by the rust it seemed to be in there for half a year, so it definitely couldn’t have been Jake’s. Henderson was one of the searchers who were sent out on foot into the woods. There were ten of them in total, they were given a 5 mile radius of search area from the clearing, it was a huge area but they would walk through the woods and call out Jake’s and Catherine’s names but to no avail. There was no answer, just the heavy dread of the wet, mossy pines and sprawling leafy branches of the oaks high above which felt like an immense stone crushing your ribcage, pulling the air out of your lungs and not allowing you to breathe fully. It was on the third day of the initial search when it happened. They had gone out on a search in the mid-afternoon and they started only heading back when Apollo had ridden below the horizon on his golden chariot and replacing him came Selene. The darkness only compounded the feeling of unease, Henderson had to push himself, his legs were sore from the miles he had walked, and he was barely awake enough to avoid the thorny bushes on the sides of the trails, usually of an unknown species and the thick vines of poison oak which like pythons hung from the trees. That’s when he heard the scream. In the distance, he didn’t know how far away, but even then it was loud. There were no words in that scream, but Henderson didn’t need them to understand the immense feelings of fear and pain that it carried with them. He broke into a run, quickly, faster and faster, the feeling of absolute fear and the instinct of self-preservation flooded his senses, snapping him out of his tiredness and pushing his body to his limits, with torrents of sweat forming under his uniform and sliding down his skin, soaking his hair and clothing. One step, a jump to avoid a jutting out root, a dodge to avoid a thorny vine, another step, another step, everything was a blur. Henderson broke through the treeline and his boot sank ankle deep into the soft, muddy silt at the bank of the creek, he had made it into the clearing. He lost his balance and nearly collapsed face first into the dark rushing creek when a hand grabbed him and pulled him up, it was his co-worker and long time buddy, Franklin. “You alright, man?” Franklin asked in a worried tone, his voice was quivering. Looking up Henderson saw the blinding lights of handheld flashlights and camping lanterns rapidly approaching him. “Yeah, seem to be...” Henderson began before being cut off by a collective sigh of relief from the others which joined the lonely howl of the night breeze. “I ran because I heard the scream, what was that?” Franklin didn't respond at first, just looked back out into the circle of blackness which completely surrounded the lit up clearing, the trees waved in the slight wind, angrily shaking their branches in unison, as if part of one organism. “It’s Garthorn, he never made it back.” Garthorn, also Henderson’s colleague, was the only person at the park office with more experience than Henderson. A former Navy Seal, Garthorn was always a stern yet calm older gentleman who had turned 50 just this year, a secretive fellow he never told anyone much about his life, especially about the war. Nobody asked in any case, everybody could guess what happened, so silence was a sign of respect. And respect was well deserved, aside from his military service, he had earned his reputation as an expert woodsman and an amazing hunter, a crack shot with an old M1 which he always had with him in his truck. Out of anybody, Henderson didn’t expect Garthorn to encounter any trouble. Maybe it was a predator, a bear or a mountain lion perhaps, ambushing the poor man from the undergrowth? Perhaps. But, Garthorn was a “sizeable” fellow, and Henderson just couldn’t believe that a beast could’ve gotten him in one bite, he must’ve known if he was going into bear or mountain lion country, he had known these woods like the back of his hand, even in the dark. Why didn’t he fight back? He was armed, and with his history, there should have been a gunshot, or some sort of struggle... And the scream, that scream, why was it so short? “Are you sure that he isn't on his way back?” Henderson asked, “Last thing we heard from him he was heading back, was nearly here when he just cut off, we never heard a scream however, so that’s just you. We sent some guys to check it out. They found nothing, absolutely nothing. We need to get the dogs out there tomorrow morning, but now, nobody goes out there alone anymore.” Franklin solemnly but confidently stated. “We contacted the National Guard, they should be here tomorrow as well, we stay put for now.” The rest of the volunteers returned home and only Henderson, Franklin and three others stayed behind, huddled around a small fire, the flames dancing to the beat of it’s lively crackling, holding the deafening silence of the night forest at bay. The morning came to life with the roar of engines. The next day was spent circling the surrounding area far and wide for any trace of either Jake, Catherine or Garthorn, and none was found. Today with the newly arrived chopper things might be different, Henderson thought. No, he didn’t think that, he hoped for it because there was no evidence for him to base his thoughts off of. “Henderson, we're planning to go up again in ten, get ready if you want to join us.” came a yell from a man, the pilot, who groaned as he dismounted the cockpit of the Huey. The young man tore the heavy helmet off of his head, placing it haphazardly on the ground and hurried over to a large bucket of water, filled up a cup and emptied it, all in one gulp. Henderson readied himself, making sure all his gear was strapped securely to his duty belt, most importantly his treasured M9. He along with three others, climbed into the helicopter and strapped themselves into the seats, donning the headsets. A large screen which was connected to the thermal camera displayed a sea of re, orange and purple-ish blue. The pilot promptly returned, resuming his position in the cockpit and slowly, the rotors came back to life and the engines once again belched hot air, silencing the two crying women, the mothers of Jake and Catherine. The machine shuddered and before he could blink, Hendrson felt the Huey buckle and began rising into the sky. As they soared above the treetops, Henderson looked out at the screen of the thermal camera, the camera’s operator, a National Guardsman, same as the pilot, slapped the display, visibly irritated. “Classic percussive maintenance?” Henderson leaned over out of reflex and spoke into the headset. “Aye, sir, damn thing keeps displaying wrong temperature readings.” the camera operator responded before slapping the monitor again. “And why is that?” Henderson asked, puzzled, to him what the monitor showed now, aglow with colors, was no less legible than an alien’s abstract art piece. “You see this?” the operator gestured toward the screen with his gloved hand. “See what exactly?” Henderson asked. “Here,” the operator pressed a few buttons and the camera rotated a little to the left. The screen did change colors, Henderson admitted, despite being rotated to face a nearly identical patch of trees. Instead of the bluish hue previously shown, an irregular shape appeared, colored yellow orange and stretching out outside of the camera view. “And the significance of that is?” Henderson inquired. “Usually, trees would show up as usually somewhere around 50-55 Farenheit, that's the blue purple coloration, but this trash here is telling me that a patch of ground and the trees on it, right around the campsite about 2 miles by 2 miles has the same temperature as a human body, 98 Farenheit.” the operator explained matter of factly. The Huey jerked to one side, flying erratically. The thermal camera operator was nearly thrown from his seat, the web of straps creaking but holding him in place. “What the hell!” Henderson heard through the headset. “Turbulence? At this altitude?” Henderson murmured to none in particular. He looked out to see a pine tree, to extend, grow an additional 15 feet, nearly swatting the Huey. Another treetop, an oak, flashed just outside the open door. Problem is they were 150 feet high. Suddenly Henderson’s whole world shook and began to turn 50 degrees to the side. The last thing he remembered was a blurry orange glow of flames on the left engine, and the chopper careening into a sea of trees. Then darkness... “A strange smell...” “Pain?” “Pain in my leg?” Henderson’s thoughts flashed before his closed eyes. Another jolt of excruciating pain tore through his leg, he couldn’t move it. At least he was alive, alive, yes, it seemed he wasn’t dead yet. Carefully he opened his eyes, with leaves and mold meeting his gaze, he was lying face first in the soft, wet and mossy ground of the forest floor. Carefully he tried to lift himself up and turn around. However he found that he was still strapped into his seat. Carefully reaching with his hand he pressed the button on the buckle, releasing him. He tried to turn now, his attempt was only partially successful, only managing to turn onto his side without causing another jolt of pain. He looked down at his hurting leg, a shard of bone had pierced his lower right leg, almost slicing completely through his calf muscle, and soaking his pant leg with blood. Similarly with his left, he couldn’t move it either, both his legs were broken. Unable to do much about it now, Henderson gasped, his brow wet with cold sweat and looked around some more. His pained gaze darted over the twisted fuselage of the Huey which was suspended several feet in the air, held aloft by a tree trunk which directly impaled the cockpit, as well as the metallic bacon that had once been the tail of the helicopter, wrapping around the lower branches of another tree. Two bodies still hung lifelessly in the hull of the crashed chopper, the blunt force trauma of the intense whiplash killing them instantly. The pilot was most surely dead as well, judging by the blood dripping from the broken windshield where the tree trunk had impaled it. That only left him, and, and the thermal camera operator, Henderson remembered the only other person who was in the helicopter with them. He scanned around and saw the man lying nearby, just fifteen feet away, but he couldn’t tell if he was dead or not. “I have to call for help, somebody is bound to hear me!” Henderson thought out loud. “There! I hear it, the rumble of an engine!” A deep rumble was indeed audible, just with one tiny gimmick. It wasn’t coming from the north, south, east or west, as if those words meant anything to Henderson. Nor did it come from the sky, but instead, and it took a minute for this reality to register inside of Henderson’s head, it came from *below* him, from the ground. The rumble continued, growing louder but not by much, then the ground began to vibrate, and more than that, Henderson could’ve sworn that he felt something large *move* underneath him, up and down as if the ground was breathing, disturbing the earth all around. But nothing could’ve prepared him for what he saw next, the trees which held the wreck of the Huey up, simply *shifted* to the side. The helicopter wreck fell to the forest floor which in the span of about a minute had seemed to completely come to life, shaking as if in an earthquake, a plausible explanation if Henderson couldn’t have seen the ground 300 feet away, which was completely still. Still shaking, and getting more intense by the second, the soil around the Huey began to liquify, as the wreck sank into the dirt. Within another two minutes, everything stabilized and returned to normal, the birds were chirping and the ground wasn’t moving, but Henderson’s eyes were transfixed to the spot where the helicopter *was*, now there was nothing there, nothing at all, not even a tiny scrap of wreckage. He didn’t know what to do, what was there to do? He yelled and screamed, he unholstered his M9 and fired into the air three times, no response. He lay there for hours, the sun began to dip, and then the rumble came again. This time the ground opened up around the motionless thermal camera operator. Henderson could see a glimpse of something under the ground, something fleshy. He began shooting at whatever it was. One of the bullets hit a nearby tree which began to ooze not amber sap, but deep red blood. Then, the man was pulled under the earth as the ground turned into what was effectively muddy water, he was gone in five seconds. That left only Henderson, he knew he was next. He didn’t have to wait long. As the ground began to shake again beneath him, but he was ready. He racked the slide of his M9 one last time, the last round in the magazine was now in the chamber. He felt something, wet, slimey, pulsating with muscle, flesh and saliva and very much alive as he began to sink down into the earth. One single tear rolled down his cheek, he raised the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. No one was there to hear the gunshot, except the birds, the insects and Mother Earth.


Ghost ThirdVisage I don’t remember how I died. Part of me wants to know, just out of curiosity. Maybe, they keep that from you so that it doesn’t haunt you for the rest of time (can a ghost be haunted?), or maybe it’s to stop us from staying behind in the search of vengeance or some sort of meaning. Or maybe I just never saw it and died in my sleep. I hoped I died peacefully. I guess it doesn’t matter, I have the rest of my memories to keep me company and with that I think I’ll be content. My mother always said that memories will be that much sweeter when you grow old and I hope she’s right, of course there’s not much I can do if she isn’t. I can see her face in my mind, withered and old, but always so soft and kind. The small scar on her cheek, faded but always there. She never would tell me what it was from, always coming up with some wild story about something or other. A crazy chicken that had stolen her doll, or a small piece of star that had fallen down from the heavens just to slide across her face. I always loved those stories. I glanced down at the gravestone in the dust before me. *John Tanner, 1823 – 1854*. A name and two dates, that’s all it comes down to at the end. I didn’t even like the font they chose. At least I’ll get to see everyone one last time before I go. At least I’m assuming I’ll be going somewhere, I feel like I will, but then again, I’ve never done this before. I turn around, looking all the people left gathered around the small grave. Most left a few minutes after the service ended, but a few remain, gathered around my lifeless body. The town preacher is still there, a face of stone as he stares at my open casket. I can see his lips are moving but I can’t hear what he’s saying. I wonder what he has left to say. Maybe it’s some last-minute advice for the afterlife, it’s a nice thought. Next to him is the town teacher, a sweet lady from some city not near here. She was always nice. I remember when she first arrived, Karen and I helped her get settled, we brought her a pie and stayed for most of the night just talking about different things. Karen laughed so much that night. A few people from the mine are standing around, all with the same blank expression and dirty faces. A few hands covered in black dust drop a coin or two into the wooden coffer as it’s passed around, the sound of wood on metal the only thing to break the heavy silence that holds over everyone. None of them have said much of anything but they didn’t need to, it was enough that they came. While I look over the faces of the people I once knew, I notice a couple standing away from the rest, looking on at the preceding, a man dressed in a suit of white, and a woman next to him in dress of black. I don’t recognize the faces, though they seem familiar to me. A quiet sigh catches my attention, the only sound aside from the breeze passing through the bushes and grass, kicking up dust as it went. Karen looks as beautiful as ever, her hair golden against the black dress she’s wearing. Memories flood into my mind as I see her face, perfect even with the tears that stream run down it. I remember the first time we met, just kids then. We used to run through the woods, go swimming in the old creek. I remember us, sitting on the hill while the sun threw shadows across rolling fields of gold, the skies bursting with purples and reds, her head rested against my shoulder so I could feel the warmth of her skin. I’d never forget that day. But the skies faded out and her tears flowed again, and I wanted nothing more than to wipe them away, but my fingers just pass through her when I touch her skin. My heart sinks in my chest, but as I pull my hand back, I can see her eyes glance up. It’s like she’s looking right at me, the corners of her mouth twitching up ever so slightly into a small smile. Someone next to her says something and the smiles vanishes as they press the wooden coffer filled with various coins, into her hands. Maybe, just maybe, she knew I was there, and that thought brought some light and comfort into my ever-dimming soul. The sound of hooves breaks me away from my thoughts and as I turn around I can see a man on horseback riding through the cemetery, making his way towards the small gathered mass. I squint against the sunlight and as the little spots clear from my sight, I finally make out the face face under the dark brimmed hat. He swung his leg over his horse and dismounted, his dark suit a stark contrast against the setting sun. I remember as kids always seeing him bloody and bruised. His mother had died when he crawled out of her, and I don’t think that his father ever forgave him for that, of core the drinking didn’t help either. No one ever did anything either, just watched as a father broke his son. I watched him break a bottle across his sons face one day walking by their house on the way home. The blood and left-over whiskey mixed with the dry dirt on the ground and created an awful smell that I couldn’t forget. But cruelty breeds cruelty and like that broken bottle he became just as jagged and sharp as his father. Becoming the tax collector for the area seemed like the perfect job for him, it allowed to be a cruel and unforgiving as he wanted, all in the name of the law. A small part of me took pleasure in seeing the jagged scar across his face and the corners of my lips curl into a smile for a moment. I shook my head and cleared my mind of the thought though; it didn’t seem right. He walked right through me, right to Karen taking the coffer in her hands. I could see the looks on the faces of the people watching, some disgusted, some indifferent, most wishing that someone would do something. Do anything. But nobody does. He walks over to his horse, and finally someone’s voice lets loose a whisper, barely audible above the summer breeze. But it’s enough to stop him. He turns, and I can see a grin split across his cracked face, despite the smile he puts one, there is nothing but rage, pain, and blackness behind his eyes. The priest tries to stop him, but he’s as helpless as I am. He stalks past the old man with ease and takes the silver coins resting over my eyes. My mind fills with rage, my phantom body trembling with anger. The breeze blows harder, the dust spins and ice stings the blades of grass at my feet. I start to think of what it would feel like to make him suffer… Lilies. The scent slips into my consciousness, and burrows into my thoughts, a small candle light expelling the shadows. Karen walks through me, her black dress blowing in the wind and a few strands of hair slip from under her bonnet. I breathe in the scent again. The frost begins to melt away, and the wind settles. The tax collector mounts his horse and rides away from the cemetery, leaving a cloud of dust in his wake. Karen stares off after him and I can’t take my eyes off of her. I try to reach out to her, but my limbs are frozen in place. I look down and watch the ground below me split and crack. I look around but nobody else seems to notice what’s happening and as I look down again, I fall down into the darkness. I don’t know how long I’m falling for, moments or days, it could be either, but the blackness is absolute, oppressing and cold. I close my eyes to try and escape it, to cope with the wind pushing against me as I fall down, further and further. Then it’s gone. The wind, the cold, is gone in an instant, replaced only by the sound of gentle waves lapping against a shore. A slight breeze brushes against my face, I can feel sand against my feet and as I open my eyes they adjust to the dim grey light. A black sand beach stretches out in both directions as far as I can see, grey waters gently pushing against the shoreline. I start walking along the beach, the and warm under my feet until finally, in the distance, I see what looks like a dock. The old and stained grey wood rising out from the heavy waters feel smooth and strong under my feet. At the end of the dock, a boat of black wood rests just above the waters. I start making my way towards it when suddenly, in front of me, black robes grow from a shadow in the wood, twisting and rising into a figure in front of me. Black mist pours from beneath it, and as I try to look to see who or what it is, I am met with nothing but void in the darkness of its hood. Faces appear and disappear in the shadowed fabric of its robe, each one screaming in silence and agony seemingly trying to escape. The figure stands there for a moment while my heart best like a drum in my chest. After a few long moments his hand reaches out, a skeletal hand stretching out white as snow from the folds of the robe. It hangs there in the air, outstretched and open, waiting for its payment. My hands go to my eyes but find nothing there, terror clenching my heart as I search for my fee for the ferryman. But there is nothing to find. The hand disappears and black robes evaporate into mist that dissipates. A thunderous crack splits through the area and the boat shatters, sinking into the water. A gust of wind slams into my chest, lifting me upwards and the world starts to fall away beneath me. The beach disappears beneath me fading away into the darkness and soon I’m left there alone, suspended in the vast nothingness. I twist and turn my body, trying to see anything around me but there’s nothing and the only thought in my mind is that this can’t be it. There has to be something. Anything. Fear starts to grip my insides at the thought of spending eternity in a blank void when I see something appear in front of me out of the dark. A thin wisp of grey smoke snakes its way around me growing larger and larger and it moves. The mist swirls around me in the dark and as I watch they start to morph and form together, creating moving pictures and scenes. I can see my mother and father, laughing and sitting on the old swing that my father made for them while I play with the dog in the yard. They look at each other and kiss while I’m rolling around in the dirt. The mists swirl and change and I’m watching me and my best friend running through a corn field, apples stuffed in our pockets as an old farmer yells threats at us. The stalks scratch at our faces as we laugh and run through the fields. More smoke appears, and more and more scenes are brought to life all around me. A younger me hides from a rain storm under a small rock outcrop right next to a slightly older me swinging a pick axe in the mine. I see myself walking down the main street of town, everyone around going about their business. A couple of people point at me and whisper something, but I can’t hear what they’re saying. My heart jumps to my throat as the mist swirls and I see Karen and I in bed together holding each other, she laughs as I reach to stroke her hair, but no sound escapes her lips. The visions breaks apart as I ride through on a horse down a barren road. Every moment of my life swirls around me, and tears that have building for some time finally escape and stream down my cheek. But as quickly as it began, the smoke stops and fades away returning me to the solitude of darkness, the silence my only company. But it only lasts for a moment. The mist bleeds back into existence around me, shifting and folding into the shape of a room, my bedroom I realize after a moment. I’m standing in the corner of the room and I can see my own sleeping body, peaceful and at ease in the bed. A creak across the room breaks the silence and I turn my gaze to see Karen walk into the room. I never did get to fix the creaky door; it always drove Karen crazy. She walks across the room, slowly and gracefully, through the shadows of the moonlight until she’s standing right next to my sleeping figure. She stares down at me for a few moments and I take the moment to soak in her beauty. I move closer and as I do, she sits on the bed next to me. I go to take another step but before I can, Karen raises her arm, and brings the knife in her hand down onto my sleeping body. I open my mouth to scream but my voice clings to the sides of my throat and no sound comes. Dark blood seeps from the edges of the bed, dripping onto the wooden floorboards. Karen stands and looks down at the blood covering her hands and shirt for a few moments. My head is pounding and my heart hammers in my chest as she turns and walks out of the room, blood dripping from the knife hanging loosely in her hands. The drops of blood splatter against the wooden boards and the scene fades back into the inky blackness. The moments drag on, my death, my murder replays in my mind. The room, the moonlight. The blood seeping into the floor. Karen standing over my lifeless body. I hung there in space for who knows how long, watching my life ripped away from me. The drumming in my chest slowed and the ache in my head gave way and something else took its place. Something cold and dark. My body lurches upward and shakes me from my thoughts. I feel my body moving upwards faster and faster and I look and am greeted with something new. Shimmering white lines stretch out in a web above me, getting closer and larger until I’m crashing into a wall of blinding light. My eyes shoot open, the sun sits high above me, clouds drifting lazily overhead. I stand and look at the lake shore around me. Water drips from my body as I walk to the waters edge. I look into the water and am greeted once again with the vision of my death, the knife stabbing into me, and… Karen. Dark tendrils creep into the edge of my vision, and I feel cold and hard, like my insides have frozen with ice. The wind swirls the water in front of me and ice covers the grass. I turn around finding a path leading away from the lake, and next to it, sitting at a table, the same couple from the cemetery. The man in white stares at the cards on the table and the ones in his hand, his brow furrowed in concentration. Across from him sits the woman in black, dark hair framing her beautiful face, staring right at me. She winks, and gives a smile that holds no warmth, her lips covered in dark red lipstick. The ice in my heart spreads and the air around me grows colder. I watch the water dripping from me hit the dirt and shatter. I look back up and see that the strange couple, the table, the cards, are all gone. Vanished in an instant. I start down the path, the sunlight cold on my back. They don’t matter. Nothing else matters now. I don’t know how long it took me to get here, or even what roads I took, but I can see the house in front of me down the road, silhouetted against the stars. The sky is dark, the loveless moon casting long shadows in the pale grey light. Water drips from my body, freezing the ground that it falls upon. A small fire sparks the cold recesses of my heart, begging for me to stop, for something, anything to turn me away. But nothing answers, inside, or out and the flame sputters and dies among the nothingness. I pass the place the dog has long since been buried, and the swing that now only sways with the breeze. A lantern illuminates the door and the porch in a soft golden light, the only sign of life in the otherwise still night. My hands rests on the door latch and the small fire sparks back to life, hoping, praying that it will be locked, that I will be turned away. The latch opens easily, quietly, without resistance and the fame sputters out once again. I step towards the door but I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn and am face to face with the man in white. His face is lined and old but kind and warm, stubble spreads across his face around his withered smile. Behind him, the woman in black sits on the porch railing leaning against the post, she blows a kiss and flashes a smile again as I look over at her, a smile with no warmth. The man in white pulls me toward him, gently but firmly and lays his hand on my forehead and in a flash of blinding light, the world shifts. The light fades and is replaced by rolling hills, a gentle summer breeze, and warm sunlight flowing over my skin. The fields of wheat and grass on the hill shimmer golden and the sky erupts around a setting sun in thousands of colors, and finally recognition sets in on a memory I said I’d never forget. The smell of lilies fills my nose and I turn to see her sitting there pressed up against me, her skin warm and golden hair blowing gently in the breeze. She looks up to me as I stare and smiles, and as much as I try to hold on to the anger, it cracks and splinters. Tears roll down my cheeks again as I pull Karen closer, kissing her forehead. My heart jumps into my throat and starts to melt away the agony in my mind. I close my eyes and when I open them again, I’m back on the porch. The man in white smiles and fades away. I watch him disappear and turn to the woman in black still leaning against the post. She looks me up and down and closes the distance between us, no longer smiling. Her hand thrusts out, feeling my heart beating against my chest. She looks up at me, cocks her head slightly to the side staring into my eyes before she vanishes in a plume of smoke. I look back at the house and smile gently, making my way into the place I knew so well for so long. I need to see her face just one more time, to remember every detail, then not even an eternity of darkness seemed so bad. I get to the bedroom door and push it open, the floorboard creaking as I step into the dark room, smiling from the familiar sound. Moonlight dances around the room, casting shadows along the walls and floors. I look to the bed, at the one thing, the one person that would keep me warm in the cold, and the flame in my heart began to dim. \ The sound the creaking floor board brought Karen out of her slumber. She rolled her eyes, John had always promised to fix it but of course he never had. She couldn’t wait to get out of this house. With much more money now, she had found a much nicer and larger home for them to live in, far from here. Sure, the journey to get there had been long and, difficult, but she was happy she was finally at the end of it. The floor creaked again, and she sighed, who knows why he was getting up now. The room felt colder than she remembered, and she turned over to gather some of the warm blankets before he got back, only to be met with him laying next to her sound asleep. The floor creaked again, and her eyes grew wide as she sat up suddenly staring at the doorway masked in the shadows of the night. Her breathes, know shallow and ragged, became visible as the room grew colder and colder, the hairs on her arms standing on end. She turned and began shoving the sleeping body next to her, trying to wake it, but was given only a low grunt in return. She turned and grabbed the matches next to the oil lamp on the bed post, fumbling to get one out. Finally, after the moments passed, she managed to light the lamp, sending warm light spilling across the room that was now covered in frost. She heard a quick start and the body next to her wake. As he turned to her his scar covered face looked skeletal and sunken in the light of the lamp. She turned again to the doorway and felt her heart threaten to leap from her chest as she let out a choked cry when she saw the dark, dripping figure. Her mind begged her to say something, anything, but her voice clawed at the inside of her throat, refusing to surface, refusing to help her. The room grew still and silent as seconds dragged on for eternity until for the last time, the fire went out. \   This is my first time sharing any of my work so I hope everyone enjoys. It is inspired by the song "Ghost" by Clutch in case anyone wonders or recognizes any similarities. I just thought it would be cool to write out the story of the song.


*They say we are not alone.* *We all live just this side of madness, after all.* \*\*\* Phenomena that people don’t understand are easily dismissed. UFO sightings are explained away, ghosts are medicalized into auditory hallucinations, and on and on it goes until little by little we’ve stripped all of the magic out of the world. We even know the time and circumstances surrounding the birth of the universe. But some mysteries persist. Many ancient creation myths posit so-called *ex nihilo* creation -- something from nothing. Even the modern creation myth -- the dogma of science -- is silent on the question of why there is something rather than nothing. \*\*\* A phenomenon often occurs at the moment before death in which the subject experiences an intense and inexplicable euphoria. Neuroscience tells us that this is merely the inevitable result of cascading neurotransmitters and global neuronal firing. \*\*\* The clearest footage of the assassination of John F. Kennedy has come to be known as the Zapruder Film, and in it Kennedy can be seen at the moment of his death being struck in the head by gunfire, supposedly by a single sniper’s bullet: that which was fired by Lee Harvey Oswald. However, many amateur conspiracy theorists have noted that Kennedy falls in the wrong direction, fueling speculation that Oswald was either not the shooter, or that a second shooter fired a shot from the infamous “grassy knoll” which was in front of Kennedy at that time. Were he to have been struck by Oswald’s bullet alone, which was supposedly fired from the Book Depository behind him, the force of the bullet should have propelled him forwards, not backwards. What these well-intentioned skeptics fail to note, however, is that a bullet entering the brain causes an electrical signal to be sent from the central nervous system to every major muscle group in the body, causing them all to contract simultaneously. The pectoral muscles are far stronger than those in the abdomen, and at maximum force will overwhelm the influence of the latter. Thus the subject throws their upper body backwards instead of merely acquiescing to the force imparted by the bullet itself. \*\*\* The phenomenology of near-death experiences provides some of the best evidence we can find on the door at the edge of the universe. It’s not clear why some people report vivid visual, auditory and tactile hallucinations after suffering clinical death, or why some of these involve so-called “out of body experiences” while others undergo some of the more familiar religious rigamarole. I knew a man, years ago, who killed his son across a brutal span of three years. It made the news, but everyone outside of his immediate family has forgotten the boy’s name, and it is spoken no more outside of courtrooms and lawyers’ offices. He was sentenced to death, and eventually his appeals were exhausted, and then, as Banksy once lamented, the boy’s name touched a man’s lips for the last time. These were the early days of the pharmaceutical protest against state-sponsored capital punishment, when the drugs required for lethal injection were in short supply -- the days before civil rights groups pointed out that improperly administering these drugs can potentially lead to a slow, conscious death by paralysis rather than the intended immediate and painless variety. To spare you some of the more technical details, why don’t I just skip to the part where my acquaintance ended up frothing at the mouth and convulsing on the medical table, fully conscious and very much alive? Reflecting on the experience, he explained to me that in what he thought would be his final moments he saw the door, and it was rather strange to describe, for it was not like any ordinary door. The door at the edge of the universe is not a wooden gateway at all, but merely a darker patch of space, or such was how our murderer described it. Things watched him from the other side, he said, and, indeed, watch us all. \*\*\* World War II was what you might call a “high pressure” time; at least so it went for a while. Until the battles of Stalingrad and Midway, the existential pressure, so to speak, must have been quite high. Doors are sometimes open and sometimes closed. Anybody who lives in a windy area can tell you that these two states of being produce very different results viz a viz air pressure in a room. Much has been made, theodically speaking, of the atrocities which occurred during this high-pressure period. Mass deaths happened under God’s nose and prompted many to ask why He did nothing to stop them. It might be of more benefit, to these people, to ask why it was that He couldn’t *see* them. \*\*\* Schizophrenics often complain of the effects of radiation, from cell phone towers, from solar bombardment, and so on. These are, of course, actually real but too weak to do any actual damage. I worked in a psych ward for a time, and I can tell you that there are many different types of people who come for treatment there. Addicts are common. The suicidal make up a large chunk of the population. But then there are the delusional. These are always the most difficult to handle. Delusional people are very hard to put on talk therapy and so the doctors will pump them full of drugs first, and as much as they will deny it a large part of the reason is simply to make them compliant to these demands. It just makes the job easier. But drugs are a lot like people: different strokes for different folks. There’s a classic distinction between “uppers” and “downers,” but that’s much too simplistic. The real difference between drugs is their ability to open you up or shut you down. Really delusional people have a very hard time filtering things out, and that’s the source of their paranoia most of the time. These patients are like cheap radios, mostly picking up useless noise, but occasionally tuning in to something you might want to hear. Ben was the first one to tell me about the door. He actually fell into two categories of mental illness: he was both delusional and suicidal. He had survived an attempt brought on by the stress of constantly looking over his shoulder for CIA kidnappers. For a survivor of MKUltra this is almost certainly forgivable. He told me of a dark patch in space, far out beyond the reaches of the galaxy, a nightmarish thing he had seen in that liminal space between life and death -- a gateway beyond which all he could see was the void, all he could hear was silence and all he could feel was .


The teleporter malfunctioned, as it always did, except this time it hurtled the atoms of its small, skinny inventor, Alfred Macadamia, through space, through time, and then through the ribcage of his smaller, skinnier next-door neighbor Petunia. Through the strange magic of the teleporter, Alfred was reassembled with his torso horizontally through hers, and their rib cages were atomically welded together into one large, agony-and-organ-filled cavity. Alfred stuck out of both sides of Petunia like a pencil shoved through the side of a fish, and the two of them had a conversation that went something like this: Screaming, Heavy Breathing. Wriggling Around, feeling one another’s organs bump and scrape together. Further screaming (louder, really making use of the double-diaphragm). Introductions, followed by weeping, followed by an apologetic explanation by Alfred that his teleporter must have malfunctioned, followed by a slight injection of hopefulness, explaining that At Least No One Died, And Perhaps They Could Go Back To His Place And Extricate Themselves from One Another (Please Excuse The Mess). After Petunia wiped her tears and Alfred stopped her from wringing his neck (“Do you really want a *corpse* stuck in your midsection for the rest of your life??”) The two of them waddled to Alfred’s dingy little house next door, Petunia impaled by Alfred, Alfred doing his best to support her with his hands and feet when he could reach the ground. Petunia opened Alfred’s door and, still not used to having a grown man shoved horizontally through her middle, slammed Alfred’s head on the doorframe. After some hasty apologies, they proceeded inside and spent the next four hours fiddling with Arthur’s stupid-looking little teleporter, failing to separate themselves from one another. It seemed they were hopelessly stuck like this, feeling their organs smash together in their somehow-combined rib-cage, feeling their blood mix and slosh about. They hated each other with a passion for around four months, but in time they got used to their new living arrangement. A time after that they decided that they might as well get married. Although they once had essentially nothing in common, living in the same body changed all that. Now they could carry on for hours about how strange it was, and tell each other inside jokes that were only funny to people who had been fused together by a poorly-designed teleporter. Sex wasn’t really on the table because of the angle they were conjoined, but they both had working hands and did enough for each other to get by. They were always right there, anyway. That was the thing--the other person was always, always right there. After a long and happy enough life, Alfred and Petunia lay on their deathbed, and Alfred looked up at his beautiful wife. She looked down to him and smiled, then he smiled, then she asked him if he teleported through her on purpose. Alfred said no, but he should have. This whole experience had taught him that the most important part of love wasn’t genuine affection--it was just helplessness at the hands of the universe to not be together. How could they not have fallen in love? The universe hadn’t given them a choice. How could they not have stayed in love? They never had the option to leave each other. The universe had simply given them their roles and they had lived them out as they had to. Petunia thought of a couple solid arguments against Alfred, then decided against them and laughed to herself. She couldn’t decide if this stupid man had ruined her life or made it better, and after a while she stopped trying. Whatever it was had already happened. She ran her fingers through Alfred’s thin grey hair, and he reached up as high as he could and rubbed her freckled, wrinkled shoulder. A while after that the two of them fell backwards into the eternal hands of the universe that had shoved them together, for some unclear purpose they both felt they were better off not knowing.


The year is 1983 and Adam Nussbaum sits inside of his Abrams M1. And 20 yards in front of him was a Russian tank full of Soviet soldiers in the same situation. The tension in Berlin is tense Adam knows this, the Soviets know this and Dave Hillman; Adam’s fellow soldier knew this as well. “I can’t take this anymore” says Adam, thinking out loud. “We’re all just staring at each other with our fingers on the triggers waiting to get the order to shoot. If the Russians decide that they want war, we won’t even know. Bam. Gone, just a mark on some Ruskie tank.” Adam says this time more directed at Dave. “I woke up today and remembered that I haven’t jerked off anywhere besides a room full of dudes for the past year, since we’re both going to be depressed today.” Says Dave, Adam rolls his eyes. “Just calm down man the Ruskies know better than to do anything stupid like that, besides there’s an equal chance that we want war and we’ll get to shoot those guys before they even know what happened.” Dave says in an attempt to ease Adam’s nerves. A few hours go by and as he did everyday Adam stared down the barrel of the Russian T-80. When something that hasn’t happened before piqued Adam’s interest. “Hey, Dave, HEY!” Adam yelled as he shook Dave awake. “fuck dude I was in math class” says Dave “there’s a person running up to the Soviets!” exclaimed Adam. “He has a bag and he looks like he’s in a hurry do you think today’s the day?” Adam says as he retightens his grip on the controls. Trying to convince his friend of the severity Adam says “Dave, man if that’s news of war we’re dead.” Dave comes back with “If you pull that trigger we’re going to be responsible for starting World War 3 man!” Adam does not move his eyes are locked on the T-80 which now had a parlay with the messenger. “Adam, Adam, look at me.” says Dave. Adam does not acknowledge this and continues to stare. “I don’t wanna die man” says Adam. “Well if you pull that trigger, us and a lot of the world are going to be worse than dead. Don’t do anything stupid man please get away from that trigger.” Dave pleads. Adam is locked in “they’re staring at us” he says under his breath, as his body begins to tremble. “Come on, you’re going crazy.” says Dave. Dave is panicked, his friend is in a trance. The Soviet parlay ends and the Russian man begins to walk back to the T-80. The time that it takes for him to get in, is the longest moment in Adam’s life. If he pulls the trigger he will start a war, but if the war has already started and Adam just hasn’t received the news yet, then he will be blown to pieces in the blink of an eye. Adam stares at the T-80, waiting for a shot that doesn’t ever come.


Chapter 4 Emotional Hairs  My eyes watched the alarm clock shake in place making a dreadful noise letting me know it was time to get up. What a fruitless night I thought to myself in annoyance as I rubbed my legs vigorously back and forth trying to wake them up feeling the terrible sensation of the pins and needles running through them. It turns out trying to take magic in my body rather than pushing it out was more difficult than I could have possibly imagined. In the other world, my body was like a glass of water that kept replenishing itself overtime and my only jobs was to regulate how much was in my body making sure I never used all of it or else I would die and the other job of pouring out the metaphorical water and shaping it to my desire. In this world, my new body was like a water balloon that had no water in it. I needed to figure out how to fill the balloon up with water while also making sure I did not overdo it causing the balloon to burst. I assume if this happened bad things would occur to my body like no longer being able to use magic or possibly just dying all together both scenarios equally terrifying. I stood up from the floor stretching feeling dizzy with a mild headache and shut off the alarm by my bed. “Breakfast is ready!” Called the delightful feminine voice from the kitchen that I was growing accustomed to thinking as my real Mom. I don’t know when it happened but, for some reason I no longer wanted to think of either of them as my new Dad or my new Mom, it seemed wrong to call them that even if it was just inside my head. Even though they were peasants in my eyes when I first met them, I strangely feel more connected with those two than I ever felt for my previous parents. A genuine non-malicious smile that I was still growing accustomed to creeped on my face as I yawned again walking out my bedroom door. My nose picked up the lingering scent in the air of one of the most delightful treats that I had come across in this world causing my mouth to salivate and the tiredness in my body immediately evaporated. I sat in my chair at the dinner table and three big fluffy steaming pancakes with butter melted on top sat in front of me almost pleading me to bathe them in the dark sugary syrup that enhanced there flavor tenfold. After eating breakfast and catching a few minutes of TV I was dropped off at school again and the tiredness in my body started to creep in slowly again making my head feel light. Gods this would be a long day I thought as I walked into my first class of the day. I made it all the way to third period before having to be woken up by one of my classmates, I wiped the drool from my mouth and rubbed at my eyes still feeling the heaviness my body protest against me wanting me to close my eyes for just a bit longer. The bell rang signaling everyone to line up for recess and I bumbled my way towards the line bumping into desks like a stumbling drunk. I made it to the playground and scanned the area for the girl with my eyes while doing some routine exercise trying to get the blood flowing to my brain. The numbness that made me so tired began to recede from my body probably only temporarily and I spotted the girl sitting by the biggest tree in the whole playground alone curling her knees to her chest. I made my way over there and stood in front of the little girl. She had a sad expression of hopelessness and curled her knees of tighter to her chest looking like she just lost a battle that would decide a war. “Girl, what’s your name?” “Elizabeth.” She whispered sniffling slightly. “Did something happen to you today?” “No one wants to play with me.” She said with tears in her eyes. I sat down next to her feeling uncomfortable. Cheering people up was never my strong suit, in fact, I usually was better at the opposite back in my homeworld. “Do you know any magic Elizabeth?” The sadness in her eyes fled from her and she looked up with a grin. She jumped up from her position and made a weird stance pointed at the ground and screamed. “Zaptosis!” She made a buzzing noise with her mouth and gave me a beaming smile and put her hands on her hips declaring the monster that was about to attack me was vanquished by her secret special electricity spell. I starred at her unamused and wondered if what I had sensed from her previously was just a fluke. I rolled my eyes. “No girl I mean real magic not pretend magic.” “That was real magic!” She screamed and made another weird pose and screamed another ridiculous made-up word and claimed she had just made a twister out of thin air destroying yet another monster. Gods I thought to myself I had made a mistake, I thought she knew real magic instead it was just a fluke. I started walking away annoyed that I had wasted most of my time for recess when I could have been planning out how to harness real magic. “Where are you going?! Don’t you want to play powers with me?” “Not interested,” I said waving my hand in a goodbye gesture. “Why does no one want to play with me!” She screamed in a shrill cracking voice. I whipped my head around sensing energy gathering and sparking all around her. I scanned her with my senses focusing on what was causing the energy to gather around her. My eyes widened and I inhaled sharply. “It’s that simple?!” I excitedly said to myself not caring if the girl heard me or not. She was using one of the two types of emotional hairs that all humans possessed, and it was attracting energy like a nail would to a magnet. I imitated what I was seeing the girl do with her emotional hairs and within seconds energy condensed and popped around me as well, I excitedly added a final step to it confident that I had figured out how to use magic. I dragged the hairs back into my body, energy attached to each individual hair and I felt the vibrating energy coursing through my veins and a large grin crept on my face as I celebrated inside my head that it had worked. Suddenly I froze all the joy vanished from me when I started to feel something in my body mixing with the energy that I had never felt before. “No!” I gasped when I realized the energy was converting parts of my life energy into pure magic making my body feel cold and tingly. Ice ran through my veins as I realized that this could indeed kill me if I didn’t act quickly, I put my hand to the ground my vision becoming blurry and pushed all the remaining energy in my body that had yet to convert into magic into the ground and panted chest feeling tight and out of breath. I looked up at the girl and she no longer looked angry or sad. Instead, she had a horrified expression on her face. The world went out of focus again and everything went sideways as I blacked out.


The succubus, during the day, is beautiful. It’s only during the night when her appetite is at it’s peak that her monstrous, rotting, and decrepit form is revealed. Her involvement with me and my family goes back some fifty years and across the border to Mexico. It started, as my mother told me, one hot night when her older brother Luis comes home to their little house in a poor village holding a suitcase close to his chest. He brings the suitcase to his parents, (my grandparents) opens it, and shows them the gold coins and bank notes inside expecting to be hugged and embraced but instead gets a scolding. My grandparents demand to know how he came upon the suitcase and he simply replies that he found it. He refuses to tell them where or by what means he found it and my grandparents, as my mom said, feared that he had stolen it, or worse yet, she said crossing herself as was her custom, that he had sold his soul to the devil or partaken in some other sort of black magic in exchange for the money. In those days you heard plenty such stories. My grandmother, invoking La Virgen de Guadalupe, pleads her son. My grandfather was not so kind and beat him telling him that if he could not tell them where he got the money, that he should take it back to wherever he found it. My uncle left that night with the suitcase and neither my mother nor my grandparents ever heard from him again. I met my uncle in a strange way. I’d recently lost my job and my girlfriend had left me, when one night, all alone in my apartment high as a kite, I got hungry and decided to go for some food. I was pulled over and the cop found syringes and spoons with residue on them and took me to jail. I was bailed out by who knows who, put into a van where every few hours the men I was with would inject my arm, until finally I awoke in a strange bed. I had no idea how much time had passed since I’d been arrested. I climbed out of the bed dizzy, and as I moved through the upper level of the house, I could feel a strange presence around me. I could feel it in the walls. I felt that I was being watched. It was cold and I could see my breath, but as I moved to the lower floor a sudden change in temperature sobered me up. I went outside. I was in a big ranch. Then at a distance, I saw an SUV that was making its way down the road that led to the house. When it arrived, I noticed its Mexican plates, then two men jumped out and the older man introduced himself as my uncle Luis. He told me to get into the car, that we would be going into town to have some fun. He took me to a whore house. I thought about the girlfriend I’d recently broken up with, but the temptation was too much, and I gave in. My uncle said he’d pay for it. About an hour later, the deed done, my uncle burst into my room and dragged me out. We hightailed it back to my uncle’s mansion where he immediately ran up the stairs with his hand down the front of his pants. The sounds I heard next reverberated throughout the house with a terrifying mixture of pain and ecstasy. The house itself seemed to writhe and moan. I slept on the sofa in the living room. When I woke up there was a gorgeous woman sitting in a chair just staring at me. My uncle came down, kissed her on the cheek, and asked her to make us some breakfast. Then he told me his secret. He said the woman had fallen in love with him fifty years ago and had given him a choice. A treasure in exchange for his love, or his death and the death of his family. Obviously, he chose the former, not knowing that the woman was a succubus that at night turned into a stomach churning ugly old hag with an insatiable sexual appetite. He said that he had been living in torment ever since. That he couldn’t take it anymore, wouldn’t take it anymore, and was prepared to kill himself but was afraid that if he did, the succubus would go after his family. That he brought me here, prepared to bequeath me all his possessions, if only I relieved him of his burden. That the woman had looked me over and approved, and besides, he said, she was losing interest in him on account of his old age. He looked me in the eyes, took my hands, and pleaded. Said I’d be rich and have anything including all the drugs I ever wanted. That the woman was kind and caring during the day. If I relieved him, he’d be able to leave the ranch and be free. I thought it over, but he saw my hesitation. “Just remember, Charlie,” he said, “If you fail to satisfy her, she’ll come after our family.” Then he took a revolver from his waistband, put it to the roof of his mouth, and pulled the trigger.


Prone to overthinking, Craig was having to keep himself in check. After 11 months with Vanessa this was their first Valentine’s Day and his friends had asserted that her expectations would be high. But the card and flowers he’d chosen had hit the sweet spot of extravagant, elegant and beautiful. She’d loved them. Everything was going well. Until she presented him with his card. “Thank you for the last 11 months,” she’d written. “I love you to the moon and back,” His heart swam. Yet, his head wouldn’t settle. “Dude, this isn’t good,” his subconscious murmured. “What? What do you mean?” he thought, concerned. “You mean… er…” his subconscious was flustered. “It… it doesn’t matter. Forget I said anything,” “Go on. What is it?” “It doesn’t matter. It’s just me. You know what I’m like when we’ve had a drink. Please forget I said anything. Just enjoy the evening,” Vanessa leans in, and they kiss. She takes a picture of the flowers to send to her friends and mother before they snuggle into the sofa to watch the evening trickle away in front of the TV. “Mum says you’ve done good,” Vanessa says, after her phone bleeps. “That’s one down,” he replies. “Hopefully your girls will think the same,” “They’re a tough crowd, but I think you may have just done enough,” she says, rubbing his arm. Sinking into the sofa Craig feels calm, peaceful and content. “Well, I say it doesn’t matter,” his subconscious chimes in again. “It kind of does,” But Craig doesn’t respond. Love Island has begun and the beautiful people begin a task called ‘The Good, The Bad and the sexy’. Had people worn the garments on display here, the old west would have been rife with sunburn, chaffing and yeast infections. “And when I say it matters, what I mean is it’s A REALLY BIG FUCKING DEAL!” “What the hell’s going on?” “She doesn’t love us anymore,” his subconscious sulks. “How d’you work that out?” “Look at the card. What does she say?” “She says she loves us,” “No, look closer,” He picks up the card to scan the inside. Noticing this, Vanessa snuggles in closer. “You’re just a big softy you aren’t ya?” she says. “Yeah, that’s me,” “She says she loves us to the moon and back,” he replies to his subconscious. “Exactly! There’s a clause,” “What are you talking about?” “Think about it. If she loved us unconditionally, then she’d have put just a simple ‘I love you’ or ‘I love you lots’. But here she loves us a finite amount, ‘to the moon and back’. Not any more than that! Sure, she’s chosen a beautiful planetary body, but it’s literally the closest one to us. Uranus is further, and she’d have scored more points for comedy value if she’d put that,” “You’re being paranoid. It’s just an expression,” “Am I? *Am I*?” “Of course you are. Look at her,” together they look down at Vanessa, her head resting on a cushion on his thigh and a hand resting on his knee. “You don’t have this level of intimacy with someone you’re looking to chuck,” “I’ve got one thing to say to you… Gemma Crichley,” Craig flinches. Aged 17 at a party in Danny Jackson’s house he’d spent hours holding Gemma’s hand, putting in the ground work, only to return from a beer run to find Jonathan Hunter plying her with Bacardi Breezers before sticking his tongue down her throat. “This is completely different,” “Is it? *Is it*? Just watch her,” Back on Love Island the cowboys are saving their damsel’s in distress in the traditional fashion. Each has to untie their partner from railway lines using their teeth before sweeping her up and kissing. In speedos and chaps. “There you go, did you feel it?” it asks. “Feel what?” “Her heart beat faster when that guy with the fancy hair came on. She clearly fancies him,” “So, what if she does? Everyone fancies someone off TV,” “True, but look at him. He’s well over 6 feet, big muscles and with no identifiable hair on his body. He’s some sort of human 2.0., how can we compete with that?” “We don’t have to compete with that. This show is not representative of society. They’re selected because of their physical features. They aren’t going to put someone ‘normal’ on TV because people think it doesn’t sell. But, she doesn’t compare us to them in the same way that we don’t compare her to… Scarlett Johansson,” “Bullshit, and you know it! Everyone compares everyone to everyone. Your hair matters, your clothes matter, the size of your pecker most definitely matters. Anyone that’s says it doesn’t is a liar or an idiot,” Craig fidgets. Not wanting to admit it to himself, but something in those words had touched a nerve. He tries to shake it off, but the guy with the hair is back and trying to be funny. He can feel his bile rising. When you have low body fat then surely you don’t need to infringe on funny. To make matters worse, his really obvious punchline had everyone falling about. Vanessa chuckles. “You couldn’t have got away with that kind of joke. You’d have to Bill Hicks the shit out of something to even crack a smile,” The chuckle turns to a full-blown laugh. “All that needs to happen is for her to find him funny. That’s the first in. She fell for you because of your sense of humour, but if someone else can out-funny you, then it all boils down to who brings it physically. And can you compete with that?” Despite his staunch resolve, Craig can feel his common sense being sodomised by the crazy phallus of his subconscious. Every single imaginable situation where he had seen Vanessa conversing with a man was now being analysed – the Amazon delivery guy that always gives a lingering wink - the Barista who’d asked her if she liked it milky – the green grocer that suggestively handed her the cucumber. “If you are right, and I’m not saying you are. Then what should I do?” There’s silence until his sub conscious replies quite matter-of-factly. “It’s simple. You do something spectacular!” “Spectacular?” “Yeah, you can’t sit back now, you’ve left it too long. We’re beyond the point of no return. You have to go nuclear,” “Shit!” he thinks, chastising himself for sleeping through all those Richard Curtis films. What could he do? Did he know how to go full-on nuclear? Or could he just dirty bomb? Better still could we get away with something far less spectacular, but be carbon-neutral? He shakes himself, trying to remember what his original train of thought had been. “Oh my God, that’s hilarious,” Vanessa says. Craig doesn’t know what he’s missed, but it’s something to do with the guy with the hair and it’s substantial enough to get her up from his lap, laughing on the edge of her seat. “He’s *so* funny,” she says. “We’re screwed,” it whines. Then, out of nowhere, inspiration strikes. The idea materialising so fast Craig gasps internally. “That’s it!” he thinks. “What? What is it?” it enquires. His subconscious is alive, fidgeting and clambering to gain some insight into what Craig is to do but gets nothing, he’s being driven by pure instinct. “You ok?” Vanessa asks, as Craig bolts upright. He turns to face her, still trying to find the right words. “Craig?” she enquires, concerned. “I’m fine. In fact, I’ve never been better,” he says, stepping forward and taking her hand. “Over the last year, I can truly say that I’ve never been happier, and it’s made me realise that I never want it to end,” and with that he gets down on one knee. “Go on, mate!” it yells. “So, will you marry me?” It’s only for milliseconds, but the shock on Vanessa’s face is real as she absorbs what’s happened. This momentous thing. Before, her face erupts into delight, and she flings her arms around him. “I will,” she squeals. They embrace and kiss, long and affectionately. Momentarily the world is blissfully quiet. “She’s smothering us,” it says.


I was just a young man standing on a bridge. There was a hundred foot or so drop down onto sharp rocks below. I felt my body shaking from both my own fear and the biting cold. My mind was devoid of thoughts, and only one feeling remained: misery. My whole life had been drowned in misery. I was an only child of a household poorer than dirt. My mother preferred pills and an endless parade of shifty men to taking care of me. My father died before I was born. He was found dead on the floor with a bullet in his head. My grandma always said it was an accident, but I know the truth. She probably was just trying to make me feel better, but I never took to being lied to for the sake of my feelings. At any rate, I'd have offed myself too if I was stuck in a relationship with that disgusting excuse for a human I'm forced to call my mother. Although I suppose that's what I did anyway. Or at least, I tried to. But as I was mustering up the gumption to finally jump after what seemed like an eternity, the dull drone of distant cars and crickets was shattered by a voice. "What's your name, son?" gently asked the voice of an older man. My whole body jerked in confusion. Hearing words were like a knife in my back. It startled me to my core, and I froze in response. I waited for a moment, hoping that he'd just leave me alone. "What's your name?" He repeated. I sighed, "Thomas." "Thomas," he spoke softly. "Well, it's very nice to meet you, Thomas. My name is Julian." "That's my middle name," I said without thinking. "Well, it's a good name," he chuckled. For the first time in weeks, I actually cracked a smile. I wasn't even really sure why, it really wasn't all that funny. "What brings you here?" The man asked me. I was silent. I had hardly even said to myself what I was doing there, and I wasn't about to share that information with a stranger. "It seems to me like you're trying to do something you're not fully thinking through," the man spoke with a kindness behind his words. "I've seen many people on this bridge. I walk it every night. You can always tell who's here for leisure and whos here for other things." "What's it to you?" I snapped back at him. "It's very important to me, Thomas, that you walk away from here safely." I felt a tension in myself release slightly at hearing those words. Nobody had talked to me like that in years. Nobody had said that I was important to them in any way. Hearing that was a shock to my system. I began to shake even more. "I know I can't promise to fix your problems, Thomas. But please, don't jump. Please. I care about you, and I don't want to see you hurt." By now I was silently crying. Could someone really care about me when my own flesh and blood couldn't even be bothered to? "I was right where you were about ten years ago. Had nothing to live for, life full of problems with no solutions. But someone spoke to me, and I realized that there was life beyond my pain. And I know there's the same for you, Thomas." I was shaking violently now. My tears clouded my eyesight. I didn't want to believe him, but the sincerity of his words cut me to my core. "You have a whole life to live, Thomas. Don't throw it down there on those rocks. You need it more than they do." I tried to respond, I tried to speak and tell him how he was wrong, how my life has never had peace, how I'd never had peace, but I couldn't push the words out of my throat. All I wanted was peace. But peace was something I was never privileged to receive. "You'll have your life one day, Thomas, you will. You'll find what makes you happy, what gives you purpose. But if you do this, I promise you, you will regret it on the way down." I slumped down to my knees, crying. I could hear him walk slowly toward me and stop about 10 feet away. "You don't want to die, Thomas, you want to live." "Then... what... am I supposed... to do... now?" I said between ragged sobs. "Call for help. Live your life. You will find your peace, Thomas." A wave of clarity and calm washed over me. He was right, I didn't want to die, I never really did. I pulled out my phone and dialed 911. When I looked up to see the man that saved my life, there was nobody there. I looked around frantically. No one. Just the night air and the sound of traffic. I ran away from home the next day, moved to the next town over and lived with a friend from school that I had been pushing away for years. I explained everything that had happened to me, and thankfully his parents let me stay for a while. I searched for a Julian that lived in the town for months. I tried surrounding towns. Nobody walked there every night. I eventually came to the conclusion I had hallucinated him, or some process of divine intervention had happened. I really had no other explanation. But I still walked that bridge every night, as a way to sort of honor him. I leaned he really was right; you could always tell when someone wanted to kill themselves. I took it as my duty to save all those poor souls who couldn't bear with their lives. I owed it to whatever it was that saved my poor soul. Years passed and I continued to walk there. Through my life improving, living on my own, after my marriage, even after my first child was born. All the while hoping deep down I'd run into Julian. And it wasn't until one particularly cold night I realized I had already run into him, Because I saw a young man standing on the bridge.


I was sitting at my desk watching Boris Johnson attempt to educate the general public. He looked like a thoroughly melted candle as he preached the importance of saving a health service which previous conservative governments had disembowelled veraciously for funding. He was 10 minutes into his spiel about how alert we all need to stay in order to take back control from the virus when a fly bolted across my vision. It was windy outside, and I’d made sure that all the windows were closed. But closed doors and windows simply don’t exist for them. They make a mockery of our feeble thresholds, finding an entry point with the prowess of the perfect burglar. No matter how much I tried to forget about it, there was no way that I was focussing on anything until it was out of my room. I paused the video and slowly closed my laptop for dramatic effect. I felt as if I was about to enter the ring with prime Mike Tyson as I mentally geared up to try and stop a fly from putting its arms and legs all covered in shit over me and my stuff. I jolted up from my seat and scanned the room in vain. The monotonous buzz came from every direction simultaneously. I was befuddled and confused from the get-go. A poor start to say the least. It stopped in the vicinity of my record collection. I went over to my bedside table to roll up an old newspaper as a make-shift baton to smash the bejesus out of this fly with. I read online that they can see in slow motion. I’ve never heard of anything more unfair, but evolution has no regard for my petit notions of justice. I slowly approached the fly, but for all the skill I had in baton-engineering, I severely lacked in common sense. All of my windows and doors were still shut! My room was as tightly sealed as an airplane cabin. The fly was certain to outmanoeuvre my baton swat and land somewhere else in my room. I was despaired by my own ineptitude and for the first time empathised with Boris. I walked over to the window and flung it open with attitude, but when I turned around it had moved positions. It landed on my Martin D-18. For those who aren’t aware, that’s a *nice* guitar. There is no conceivable world in which I’d smash my pride-and-joy with anything, so I was left in a bit of a mess. This fly kept running rings around me, and because of the windows being wide open, my room was freezing. My desk is next to my window, so pages of books were fluttering like birds in a panic. But after 20 minutes of trying to kill a fly and failing miserably, my goose was roasted when it just got up and fucked off on its own accord. My dignity had been well and truly ransacked. ‘God must have been so bored when he created the fly’, I thought to myself. After I’d cleaned my desk and shut my windows, I was curious to understand why flies pester us so much. In the depths of COVID boredom I did some research, and in the process, I stumbled upon one of the greatest internet threads of all time. On *Quora*, someone asked: ‘Why are flies so persistently annoying?’ Rishabh Darmsakhtu responded: ‘years of carnage and atrocities by the bourgeois had built up resentment among the lower class. The downtrodden, the poor, the marginalised had retaliated by making genetically engineered flies which only annoys the so called middle and higher class society people. To make your life miserable they will return every second and target you continuously.’ Interesting theory, but I needed something more scientific. With the eloquence of Hemingway, Isaac Guiste answered: ‘on Earth HATE FLIES THEY’RE FUCKING STUPID ANNOYING LITTLE CUNTS… I HATE FLIES HOPE THEY ALL DIE OF FUCKING FLY CANCER OR BURN IN HELL. THEY’RE DIGUSTING, ANNOYING BASTARDS, THEY EAT SHIT, SHIT, SHIT ALL DAY EVERYDAY THEY’RE VIAL AND MAKE ME SICK EVEN SEEING ONE, THE TOUCH MY SKIN I’LL GO AS FAR AS DEODERANT SPRYING’. Poetic, but still not what I was after. I finally came across a report by the Director of the Australian National Insect Collection, Dr David Yeates. He states that there are only two species of flies which are known to be attracted to human beings and their homes. The *Musca vetutissima* \- the Bush Fly - and the *Musca domestica -* the House Fly. There are certain secretions in the skin which nourish flies and help mature their eggs before they’re laid. There's sweat, proteins, carbohydrates, salts, sugars and other chemicals which flies feed on for nourishment. Interestingly, they can’t bite, but instead have a ‘sponge’ mechanism. When they land on a table to eat a grain of sugar, they don't have mouths to chew it up, so they regurgitate or spew on to it, turning it into a liquid which they can suck up. They also feed off dead skin, and all of this makes human beings particularly appealing because we don’t have any fur to cover it with. So having watched ten minutes of the Prime Minister blunder and spent a good portion of my afternoon being subjugated to a fly, what’s the moral of this story? Don't vote for Conservative governments.


I'm not what they wanted, but I'm what they've ended up with. Beautiful and fair I am yes, since birth, but with my slowness in school and my urges to be free, my beauty becomes worthless. I'm not as smart as my brothers and sisters, or as well behaved. But I love dancing and talking to all the interesting people at all of our grand parties. People take to me so well, and yet still it isn't enough. It's almost midnight now I believe. The constant dripping of the leaky pipes ticking like the old clock in Father's study tells me so. I focus only on that sound. They say I was born this way, my learning disability as they call it. Complications with my birth made it difficult for oxygen to get to my brain, thus creating the dumb creature lying crumpled on the floor of the dark dingy basement. I used to love the night. The best parties are always held at night, with the moon shining brightly from up high and everyone feeling absolutely alive because of it. Then there are the moments of sneaking away deep into our garden with a boy who I fancied, sharing kisses and giggling quietly, our only witnesses being the stars. Mostly though, I liked enjoying the night all by myself. Sneaking out the back door and walking through our vast garden, accompanied by the moon's gentle glow or simply the twinkling of the stars, I walk and think and breathe in the crisp air, and take in all the dark beauty around me. Breathing deeply I try to inhale the spirit of the night that calms my wretched soul like nothing else can. I want to bathe in the moonlight , swim through the dark swirling galaxies and lay among the stars. The night was the only time I felt truly alive, but they took that away from me too. It was seven months ago when they first caught me sneaking out, several more times and they deemed me much too rebellious to be left alone at night, so they locked me in my room. But I could not be stopped. The pull of the night was much too strong for me to resist and so I went out again. And when father found me, sneaking out again and disobeying his repeated command, the love affair with my beloved nights had come to an end. But that was not all. The night father found me sneaking out of my bedroom window, he was furious. He grabbed my arm and yanked me through our mansion like home, shouting at me about how stupid and misbehaved I am, how nobody could love me the way that I am. He shouted these things at me even while I cried, and nobody tried to help me. My brothers and sisters watched me be thrown down the stairs and into the pitch black basement, mother couldn't stand to watch it happen, but there was certainly no way she'd go against father's wishes, and so she ran off to their room to cry. Nobody seemed to notice how hard father had thrown me, nobody heard my scream of agony when my leg cracked and twisted at an unnatural angle. They ignored me, while father locked me in the dark, in such pain and agony that I have never felt before. That was two days ago. I wonder sometimes if they've forgotten me, or perhaps they decided to leave me down here so I would have a good scare and never rebel again. Or maybe their life is easier now. No more having to explain the dumb sister, the rebellious daughter. These are the thoughts that are twirling around my foggy mind as I lay cold and hungry on the damp ground, unable to move the leg that has become numb with pain. my only joy now is looking out the small window that sits high up on the basement wall. I can see it. The night, it's waiting for me. It's waiting for me to bathe in the moonlight, to swim in the purple swirling darkness of the galaxies, to meet wonderfully weird new creatures and dance with them on the planets, and finally, to lay to rest amongst the stars. Yes oh yes the night is waiting for me, and tonight I shall go to it. I will become one with the night.


“Tick... Tick... Tick...” “How longs he been doing that? Asked the Officer “Ahh about 3 days.” Chuckled the guard. “Man, why do y’all always get the crazies?” “Shit, you tell me.” The officer responded. The prisoner, restrained by a straight jacket, slowly creaked his head toward the door. An eerie, almost sickening grin formed on his face, he didn’t look human. His jaws unclenched as he once again started in with, “Tick... tick...” “Man I’m outta here.” Joked the officer. The guard shuffled around, “You just gonna leave me here with the clock?” “YUP.” Echoed through the halls as the officer got further away. The guard turns back with a murmur and decides to sit down and just watch the prisoner. There he is, rocking back in forth in his chair, “Tick... tick...” “Man what is it with you and ticking anyways?” There’s that sick smile again as the prisoners head rotates towards the window. “Tick-“ “You a fuckin bomb or something? Do I need to call in the bomb squad to dis-arm you? The guard laughed. “Seriously though... What exactly are you counting down to?” “Tick... tick... tick...” The guard frustratedly unlocks the prisoners room and walks in against orders, he walks over to the prisoner and knocks on his head, “HELLO? ANYBODY HOME?” ... He knocks forcefully on the prisoners head this time, “HOW BOUT YOU FUCKING TELL ME WHAT YOU’RE FUCKING TICKING FOR!” ... The prisoner let’s out a chuckle, then it gradually escalates to a hearty laugh as the guard watches, bug eyed. “Oh man, time.. it’s a funny thing isn’t it?” “Not really.. What you talkin about weirdo?” “The unstoppable marching of time of course... just think, we could have all the technology, power, wisdom, and riches in the world, yet when the time comes, there’s no buying extra. Time waits for no man, and death waits with cold hands-“ “Okay Socrates cut the shit, I’m just trying to do my job and you’re bugging the fuck out of me with your ticks. Care to stop?” The prisoner chuckled “Like I said, time is a funny thing. You’re passing the time until your shift is over, I’m passing the time until my trial. Each of us have a timer over our heads, ticking, counting down to the day we cease to exist...” The prisoner notices the guards face of confidence drooping, “Oh! but you won’t have to worry officer, your timer is almost to zero, you won’t even have to finish this shift.” “Wait.. what the hell does that even mean?... You can’t hurt me you’re in a straight jacket. If you’re threatening me I can shoot you right fucking here and right fucking now.” The prisoner just grins and looks at him. The guard yells while drawing his pistol and putting a bullet in the chamber. “I’m not fuckin around man, CUT. THE. SHIT.” The prisoners mouth clenches once again and forms that sickening grin as he looks up into the guards eyes. “Tick... tick...


In the beginning, God created His army, consisting of seven Cosmic Archangels, who served as generals; Archangels, who served as lieutenants; and countless angels. God told the Cosmic Archangels to watch over the rest while He created what they would protect, during this time, one Archangel decided to revolt. The revolution started small and quiet, but quickly grew when the Cosmic Archangels heard of it, and began to take sides. When the revolution numbered one third of Heaven, they took action. In the battle for Heaven, five of the seven Cosmic Archangels fell along with numerous Archangels, and an untold number of Angels. The last two Cosmic Archangels, Drakon and Amon, siblings, brother and sister, fighting on opposite sides, were tasked with killing the other. When they were face to face with their opponent, they made a secret pact, they could return claiming to have killed the other. The Archangel who revolted, now called Lucifer, was banished from Heaven to Hell with the remainder of his soldiers. Millenia later, the truth about the pact surfaced, in a furious rage, Lucifer traveled to Heaven, and confronted God. Lucifer told God that he would plunge the Earth into darkness, and tourcher it for six hundred sixty-six trillion years, and near the end, and that in the last week of years, and the end of this would bring about the end of Earth. God, knowing about the pact, and having decided to wait for the truth to reveal itself, was angry, laid a curse on the Cosmic Archangel Drakon, splitting his spirit into whisps. The Cosmic Archangel Drakon had one last request, to be allowed to come back before Earth’s end and fight Lucifer, so that he could prevent Earth’s destruction. God granted it. The whisps were scattered throughout the Earth. On their own, the whisps were too weak to be able to have any power, but by collecting, they could become strong enough to be born as a human. All the whispers collected, became humans, and came together, they were known as ‘Guardians’ because of their collective strength and heavenly abilities. The Guardians worked together to find a way to become whole again, God saw this and said to them “Even Though you are cursed, you have found a way to come together, this is not allowed anymore. You will no longer be able to recognize yourself.” and He scattered all but one, who asked “Why? I only want to protect Earth.” and God responded, “You are not needed to yet, when you are, you will be allowed to come back together completely.” The Guardians slowly showed up across different cultures, beliefs, and religions, but like all things, they faded into legend. The Guardians were no longer needed to protect Earth, and they stopped being born. Long after the Guardians stopped being born, the sky turned red and Lucifer returned to Earth, and when all hope seemed lost, the sky turned blue, and holy and unholy trinities were gone. Now reumers of another surfaced, but with the return of Lucifer having already passed and the destruction of Earth seeming to no longer be a threat, the purpose of another Guardian was unclear.