The air is filled with the scent of breezy laundry, freshly slaughtered grass, and propane-licked steak. My stomach rumbles, and I hear the happy shrieks of kids and the low roll of suburban traffic. I’d love to eat but I’m on a mission. I take another sniff – and there it is. The sweaty over-ripe fragrance of needless aggression. The breeze keeps snatching at the faint scent, but it’s enough for me to follow. I run past the Mitchells, head out the cul-de-sac, and down Triton Avenue. I lose the trail where Triton hits Berry Road, thanks to cars with their pungent smokes and acrid oils – but there! Across the road, the flick of a mangy grey tail! For a second I lock eyes with that miserable stray, Missy, and then she darts into Ouroboros Place. I surge after her. Cars honk, tires squeal, and plastic crumples against metal, but I don’t have time for any of that. When I hit Ouroboros I just see Missy disappear into the overgrown lawn of the old Rainer place, a crumbling house that’s stood abandoned for the better part of a year. I flatten my ears and rocket after her. The paint-chipped door is open a crack and it nearly flies off its hinges when I torpedo it with my nose. And inside– Ah crap. It’s a trap. I skid to a halt on the scuffed linoleum and seven cats jump out of the shadows and surround me. Missy, Filthy, Scabs, One Eye, Loudmouth, Hey You, and Cougher; all the neighbourhood wretches gathered in one place. And there, lounging on the fireplace mantel, is Imperator himself. “Well, well,” he says, his eyes half-lidded. His fluffy white tail flicks playfully, and he stinks to high hell of sour self-satisfaction. “What do we have here?” “It’s a dog,” says Scabs. Imperator scowls at him. “Yes, thank you . I can see that.” “A dumb dog,” says Missy. “Name of Pugsly, right? Fell right for your plan.” She extends her claws and scritches the linoleum, and I feel a shiver run down my spine. “As I knew he would,” Imperator says. The smugness is suffocating, a miasma of ego cascading down to us from the mantel. “Now, before we put an end to you, satisfy my curiosity. Why have you been stalking me?” Wait, there’s something else beneath the pompous perfume. I sniff. A hint of fear? No, that can’t be right. It’s not me, but why would Imperator be afraid? I sniff again. Yes, definitely a tiny spike of panic and… bird! I see now Imperator has a fledgling engulfed in his paw, casually petting it with the other. “Unhand that bird!” I shout. Imperator guffaws. “Never!” “You’re a menace!” “I am,” Imperator says, petting the trembling little bird so hard he nearly crushes it. “And it’s high time the world knew it. Is that why you’re here, Pugsly? To whine at me, about your petty moral dogma?” “You can’t just run rampant, slaughtering all the little creatures in the neighbourhood! You’re a house cat, Imp!” “ Imperator , thank you, and yes, I can. I am a house cat no longer. I am now a world cat!” The other cats meow their approval. “I tire of your whining. Any last words, Pugs?” The other cats all turn their vicious gazes on me, and I hear the blood curdling shwing of their claws extending. Then there’s something else – a muffled slam? Boots? I can’t quite place the noises, and suddenly Imperator’s street crew all hiss and scatter. “What the devil?” says Imperator. “Hey, come back here at once!” Suddenly the door flies open again, and a man barrels through. He’s wearing mint-green coveralls with a logo of a bright, smiling sun, which says, ‘Happy Farm Animal Control.’ He’s got a net for some reason that makes me vaguely queasy, and he smells of existential disappointment with his life, and like he’s been sitting in the sun too long. Suddenly he grabs me, and next thing I know I’m in the net! I yelp, and Imperator unhelpfully roars with laughter. “Serves you right!” he says. Small mercy, the bird took its opportunity to slip away. But then a woman bursts out of a side door and scoops Imperator into another net. I might have found his indignation amusing on any other day, but I have no idea what’s going on and I’m terrified. In a flurry of motion, the humans whisk us out of the abandoned house and into the back of a van with the same sunny logo. They hang our nets from hooks, slam the doors, and start driving. “Pugs!” Imperator whimpers. “What’s happening?” It’s dark in the back and we don’t have any windows. “I don’t know,” I say. I try to writhe out of the net but my feet are all tangled. At least I can still wag my tail, though I don’t particularly feel like it. I sniff out a couple other animals with us. A kind of earthy/fishy thing… a snake? Then a kind of warm, doughy aroma, with a piny edge. An armadillo, I think. And sort of a lily-scented hotdog, which must be a porcupine, and then the fragrance of spoiled fruit, motor oil, fresh plastic, and joy – that’s got to be a raccoon. In fact, “Spoons? Is that you?” “Ey!” comes Spoons the raccoon’s voice from the darkness. “Is that you, Pugsly? They got you too?” “I guess so,” I say. “Who is that?” Imperator says. “Who are you talking to? What’s happening?” He meows piteously, and I hear him thrashing about in his net. “We’re in a van!” says Spoons. “Yes, I know that ,” says Imperator. “But where are we going?” “I dunno. Some kind of farm, I think.” “I’ve always wanted to live on a farm,” says a tiny voice I trace to the porcupine. “Well I don’t!” says Imperator. “I’m a house cat! Not some barn mouser.” Are we really going to a farm? The idea of open fields sounds nice, but… I don’t want to leave my home behind. I don’t want to leave my humans behind. They’ll be lost without me! “Fools,” says a low voice, slithering with venom. It can only be the snake. “There is no farm. This is just a ruse.” “A ruse?” I say. “What do you mean?” “Human treachery – what else. They call themselves Happy Farm, but it’s just a trick to fool stupid beasts into complacency.” “Well then, what are they going to do?” “What else, dog? They plan to eat us.” The porcupine squeals, Imperator argues, Spoons chitters nervously, and the armadillo snores. And I’m not ashamed to say, I let out a high pitched whine. “That’s preposterous!” Imperator says. “How do you know that? Humans don’t eat cats!” The snake chuckles cruelly. “I know, because I’ve been caught before. And humans eat anything they can fit in their mouths. You say you’re a house cat. Surely you must have taken note of the canned meat they have.” “That’s tuna!” The snake doesn’t respond right away, instead drawing the silence out. “Is it? Have you ever seen a tuna?” “Oh dear!” Imperator gasps, and then everyone gets going again. Then one of the humans bangs on the metal wall separating us from the cab, and we hear a muffled shout. And the rest of our dreadful ride is in silence. I don’t know how long it lasts but I do know I whimper most of the way through, and the air fills with the bitter odor of fear. Eventually the van comes to a stop. I hear the crunch of boots outside and the back door is opened. The sudden sunlight is blinding and someone pulls me out by the net. As my eyes adjust to the brightness, I see a long, squat building bearing that same Happy Farm logo, nestled on a weed-choked gravel parking lot. The building is run down, with a rusty drainage pipe and peeling paint, and whatever else it might be, it’s clear this is no farm. And then a most delightful aroma reaches my nose. Sizzling grease, sumptuous beef patties, breaded chicken nuggets, and even wretched potatoes made palatable by deep frying, and I can’t stop the saliva from dripping. Then I see a pair of yellow arches on an adjoining building. The universal human symbol for food. Oh no – the snake was right! I gasp, Imperator shrieks, and all of us make noise. All except the sleeping armadillo. The humans jostle our nets and take us into the gloom of the squat building, and as we enter, I smell the air is rank with fear and dread. So this is it then. This is the place where they turn good animals into burgers and cans of tuna. They place the armadillo – still sleeping – on a scale, and a human in a white coat examines it and jots something down on a clipboard. No doubt calculating how much meat they’ll get from us. Oh, this is terrible! “Psst!” says the snake. “Dog. I demand your attention.” In the dull light of this sad building, I can see the snake is actually much bigger than I expected. It’s coiled in on itself numerous times, and its tongue flicks in my direction. And I think, if I saw this thing back home, well, I’d probably cross the street in a hurry. “I need you to cause a diversion,” it says. “A diversion? What? Why?” “Because I am getting out of here, and you will assist me.” “But I don’t know how.” Or if I should, to be honest. “It’s simple, dog. Make those annoying howling noises your kind are so fond of and thrash about. Bite. If you are able, foam at the mouth.” “Foam at the mouth?” “Yes. Do it. Now.” “I don’t–” “– Now! Obey!” It flicks its tongue mesmerizingly. I bark. I howl. I start thrashing about. The human holding my net struggles and grunts, and the others look our way. When another human steps up, making calming coos and holding its hand out soothingly, I snap at the fingers. I’m tangled in the net, but I manage to kick my hind leg and I connect with something soft that makes the human holding me yelp, and then I’m on the ground. The other humans scramble, one of them trying to tackle me and getting just as tangled in the net as I am. I can’t quite get away, but I notice they set the other animals down too, and the snake has already slithered out of its net. But then I lose sight of the snake as someone grabs me by the scruff of my collar, and now I see the man in white approaching with a – gulp – needle. I whine and try to look for any way out, but someone’s holding my head firm. I can only move my eyes around and I see that Imperator’s managed to get out of his net too. “Help me, Imp!” I just manage to grunt. “ Imperator! ” he huffs. “And no.” He sticks his tongue out and then releases a stench of self-satisfaction. “Please! They’re going to eat me!” Imperator turns to go, looks at me again, and then vanishes from my sight. I whine again. Well, I suppose that’s what I get for pinning my hopes on a cat. My claws clatter against the floor as I shiver uncontrollably. Three humans are now holding me, and the one in white crouches. He starts pawing at me with one latex hand, smoothing the fur away from my shoulder, while the other hand brings that needle ever closer. He coos and mumbles in the jolly-if-infantile language of humans, but his eyes are dead like a – well, like a cat’s. He brings the needle closer. I feel the deathly cold of the metal touch my skin. This is it then; my destiny, a can of dog burger. I let out one final whimper. But then I hear something. A metal crash, a bunch of barks and howls, the shrieking of birds. The humans hear it too. The man in white pulls the needle away and all of them look to an adjoining door – which suddenly bursts open as a mountain lion tears through it. It’s quickly followed by no fewer than six stray dogs, a parrot, and – I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it myself – a chimp. The humans scramble to their feet, letting go of me. The man in white starts shouting things to the others and they begin chasing the loose animals, but they just keep coming. Cats pour out of the door, alongside rats, and even some bats. A human cowers when a wolf slinks by, and is then bowled over by a doe eager to stretch her legs. Nobody even considers standing in the wolverine’s way. And more and more beasts just keep coming. When a gator crawls out and snaps its maw, the humans flee. Thankfully, like all the others, it seems happy just to get out of this place and leaves me be. I try to get out of my net but I’m tangled pretty badly. Then a cloud of misplaced self-superiority descends on me and I almost gag. I look up and see Imperator standing before me. “There,” he says. With a flick of his wrist he switchblades my net. “Don’t say I never did anything for you.” “You came back for me?” Imperator rolls his eyes. “Don’t read too much into it, Pugs. I just figured it might get boring back home without you.” We walk to the door of the Happy Farm building and look out over the unfamiliar gravel parking lot. “Besides,” he says, “I don’t really know how to get home. Do you?” I sniff at the air. Firs, a fishy creek, nearby fields with wildflowers – memories of country walks – “Yeah, I think I know where we are.” “Good,” he says. He leaps onto my back. “In that case, yah dog! Home we go.” “What are you doing? Get off.” “I don’t want to get my feet dirty.” “I thought you said you were a world cat now?” “I meant worldly. That means I like rugs, which you remind me of.” “Ouch. Fine, we’re even now.” “Ha! Hardly.” We’ve a long road ahead of us, but it’s a beautiful day for a walk.


Every day at noon he drifted through the village avoiding eye contact, mumbling, sometimes singing, with a perpetual grin on his face. He was large framed and tall with big hands and a long stride. His face looked red as a cherry, and his hair was greying and rested on his shoulders and looked unkempt, like a mullet. He usually wore a cape. A black cape. Not like Batman’s, much shorter. Why did he wear such a thing? Nobody knew. Nobody could answer that question. Sometimes he carried a cane and would beat the rhythm of each step on the road as he walked along. He was strange indeed. Everyone talked about him.  Only Jones the butcher conversed with him, but even then just small talk. He would come in the shop and point with his cane at what meat he wanted behind the glass counter and grunt or mutter the odd word or speak in broken sentences. Turned out he was the son of Mavis, the old gal who had passed away a few months prior. She had bequeathed him her cottage, and he had escaped from a mental asylum to live there. It wasn’t long before the bad kids clocked him and started making fun of him, calling him names and following in groups as he drifted through the village. He would spin round and wave his cane at them. They talked of him as the village idiot.

One day, locals Jack and Karen’s border collie Sinbad went missing. Grief stricken, they went to every household in the village, handing out missing dog flyers emblazoned with a soppy-eyed picture of Sinbad. The last house to visit was the cottage on the outskirts, the former home of Mavis, the old gal, now occupied by her son, whose name nobody knew. As Jack and Karen approached the front gate they noticed something familiar on the ground. Jack stooped and picked it up. It was a dog collar and it looked remarkably like Sinbad’s. Jack held it between his thumb and forefinger, turning it, examining. It was Sinbad’s. It had his name stitched on it and the brass dog tag still attached with Jack and Karen’s home address engraved on it. They knocked on the door. There was no answer but they knew someone was in as they could hear noises coming from inside. Jack leant across and peered in through the lounge window. There was a roaring fire going in the hearth and a large black pot suspended over it, bubbling away and there was something bony poking out the top. Jack thought this was extremely odd as it was June and nobody lit a fire in June. They popped the flyer of the missing dog through the letterbox and shuffled back home. They got home and talked, suspicious about the stranger.          Next day the search for Sinbad intensified. All the villagers got together and covered every inch of ground in the area. There was no sign of the dog. Jack and Karen were crushed. That evening in the village pub, while nursing a pair of pints, they decided to confide in the group as to what they had seen over at the cottage the day before. Everyone now was even more suspicious of the new man in the village. They wanted to know more about him. They had become fearful. Was he a danger to the community?

         Word spread as to what Jack and Karen had seen at the cottage. The kids got crueller, and one day followed the caped man home, shouting out “DOG KILLER” and if he turned round would hide behind a tree giggling. One day, feeling particularly mischievous, they went to his house and spray painted ‘DOG KILLER’ on the front gate. He happened to see them do it from an upstairs window. He opened it and shouted something unintelligible at them. They laughed and started running. The man came out the house and chased them brandishing his cane. The boys took a short cut along the riverbank and the man followed making grunting noises as he ran. There had been a storm that day and heavy rain and the going was greasy underfoot. The man lost his footing and tripped on a tree root and went headfirst into the river. The kids stopped and look back expecting to see the man chasing them. “Look he’s in the river,” one of them said. The man was struggling in the currents, splashing. It was obvious he couldn’t swim. The boys stood there laughing and pointing. The man disappeared under the ‘water. The boys waited for him to resurface but couldn’t see him. The currents were strong and he was swept away. The boys ran home in a state of excitement, laughing. Next morning the postman noticed the graffiti on the gate and the front door of the cottage wide open. He walked on by and told everyone in the village what he had seen.

A couple of days passed and the villagers started gossiping that they hadn’t seen the eccentric around for a while. That afternoon, a squad of police cars shot through the village, sirens wailing. Then a police van pulled up outside Jack and Karen’s. An officer climbed out the back with a dog on a leash. Karen flew out the front door. “Sinbad!” She gathered the dog in her arms, tears of joy flowed down her cheeks. She squeezed him tight, petted him all over. “Where did you find him?” “He was spotted wandering around uptown, possibly taken there by dog thieves,” said the policeman. They thanked the policemen profusely.

“Would you like to come in and have a cup of tea officers?” said Karen. “We’d love to stop by but we need to assist some colleagues up ahead. You may as well hear it from us. A body of a man has washed up on the riverbank. Probably fell in and got swept away by the strong currents.”


It was an unfamiliar world she was in. A world imbued with many hues and flora of the most outlandish design. Yet there was a sense of familiarity about it. The tree under which she sat and pondered this world’s intricacies was short and stout. It had the slenderest of branches, branches that could almost be passed off like leaves. Set upon these branches were scores of thick pointed leaves the weight of which caused the branches to bend towards the ground and even touch the ground at places. Like the braided hair of a woman she thought they were. The entire sky was suffused with a dull yellow colour that gave the illusion of warmth but in this world, the colour of the sky did not affect things the way they did in her world. A perpetual fog permeated the world around her. None of the objects in this world cast any shadows. Besides the sound of her measured breathing, not a single sound could she hear from anywhere in this world. There was no wind. Nothing moved unless she touched it. The framed door through which she had entered this world stood before her. She only had to proceed through it to escape this dream world and grasp reality. But it was also the door through which she had chosen to escape reality and enter a world that challenged every notion of reality she had built up over the years. Once she stopped looking around, she began to feel the world. It was cold. She was alone yet she felt calm and unafraid. It was a fantastical realm, yet everything had parallels with reality. She walked on through the haze the sound of her footsteps and the sound of the grass crushing under her feet magnified by the silence of everything else. The braided branch trees she saw everywhere. No birds nested among its branches; no fruits hung off them. Where had all the birds flown away to, she wondered? The sun gave life to every living thing she had been told. Yet no light gave life here only the light that kept away the darkness. She walked on for a while. The grass beneath her feet grew sparser and the trees she could see became fewer. It began to brighten, and the ground began to grow translucent. She walked a few more steps until there was nothing more on the ground. It was like standing on a glass floor. She was enveloped by a brilliant yellow light. That was when she realized that the light had always been coming from below the ground. That was why nothing cast shadows as she expected. After her eyes had adjusted to the brightness, she began to perceive shapes and movement beneath the surface. She lay face down on the ground pressing her face as close as possible to the ground. She saw what appeared to be the same trees she had seen before moving gently this way and that their slender branches waving like tentacles of a jellyfish. One of the creatures was moving upwards heading to where she was lying down. Its movements were so graceful she wished she could reach through the ground and touch it. The creature was now so close that only the ground separated her from it. The tree-like structure formed only the upper part of its body. Below that it had a heart-shaped head with hundreds of blinking eyes set upon it. They all blinked at the same time when it looked at her. The creature began to come even closer. It began to pass through the ground and came so close that the top of it brushed against her face. She tried to push her hand through the ground to touch it, but the ground remained solid. The creature shrank away at this gesture and floated downwards gracefully until she could see it no more. Where had it disappeared? She needed know more. She walked a few steps further and then broke into a run. The creature was nowhere to be seen. She stumbled on a tree root and fell. She pounded her fists into the ground in frustration. Every time she pounded her fist, the light beneath her faded just a little bit more. Tears began to stream down her face as she began to pound harder and harder. Just as she was about to give up the light vanished, and she fell through the surface. She could see nothing, but she felt herself floating downwards. Where was the world she had seen from above? She felt herself land on something soft. The light began to come back into the world. She blinked once and it was as bright as when she first got here. The same tree appeared above her. She got up and began retracing the path that she had taken before. Everything appeared as it had. The world was suffused with the yellow light. Things didn’t seem quite wondrous now. The yellow began to feel ominous and foreboding. Her mind couldn’t grasp the unreal.  This time when the light began to fade, she stopped and turned around. She couldn’t face the darkness again. As wondrous as this world had first appeared, she craved the familiar. The more answers she tried to seek the further they crept away. There was nothing more she could discover here. The door to reality called to her. She headed back through the door. She looked back one last time at this world and thought of the world that lied beneath it. A world she could only see but not touch. She woke up with a start. Her eyes hurt from the sun rays filtering through her window. The room glowed with a yellow light. Her heart began to race. Was she still dreaming? She got up, rushed to the window and pulled the curtains aside. The searing light caused her to close her eyes. She felt something brush against her. When she opened her eyes a hundred eyes were looking back at her. The creature from her dreams was back. She jumped back from the window in fear. She tripped backwards onto her bed and sank into it. The lines between reality and dreams had now vanished.


The story is entitled Mr. Smith decides to camp out in the backyard during a power outage. One Friday , during a power outage,the family of Mr. Smith decided to camp out in the backyard . Also around the backyard was a cave,the family of Mr. Smith all together encountered an adventure. Again the family of Mr. Smith came down into a valley ,where the dark clouds caught up with them once. At the backyard ,there were tall trees around. It became dark even faster than it had done earlier on the main road. Again it also became very windy.There were dry leaves floating down in heaps around the backyard where the Cave was entirely.As can be observed twigs were snapping off hand  and then branches were hissing around the vicinity of the backyard. Also the family of Mr.Smith noticed walked around the backyard with their torch light on. As noted the family of Mr. Smith saw the tree trunks were groaning and could almost fall and crush the four children then. Also do make us rest under the iroko tree until the wind calms down,with the family of Mr. Smith. This happens to be a very big strong tree, that won"t fall possibly on the family of Mr. Smith. Again, the wind will pass to other places close to the cave, the family of Mr. Smith observed that it was always getting cold and they looked almost subdued and uncertain. Also they heard a movement and turned to see what it was. The family of Mr. Smith then witnessed a tall dark man, with a moustache , hurrying by carrying almost two calabashes across his back , hanging from his left shoulder with chisel dangling from his belt around his waist. He again stopped suddenly as he nearly ran into other children. He asked ,What is the family of Mr. Smith doing here.? The family of Mr. Smith ,then answered that,They were on their way to the Cave behind the backyard due to the fact that they experienced power outage in their family house. They politely asked ,"Who was the head of the family.? Mr. Smith was the head of the family the man you spoke to at first when you instantly met us. The distance to the cave is not all that far. The entire family came and encountered the adventures at the cave , together with a man leading them in all possibilities. Mr. Smith was also known as a good man , he was a cocoa farmer who exports to other countries for foreign exchange. Also Mr Smith never left his son and daughters to go all alone to the cave, because they were afraid of Scarecrow, Tin man, and Cowardly Lion. The Wizard of Oz ,warned them especially the kids including Mr. Smith not to be afraid of Scarecrow ,Tin man and Cowardly Lion. The Wizard of Oz, lives behind the Girls school around the neighborhood on top of the hill around a mountain. Again, by the time I came back the wind should have passed entirely. The man also turned rather surprised about what happened actually. Also the rain will not fall during the time that the family of Mr. Smith left to the Cave during the power outage. The wind was also too strong to let the clouds settle. It was observed that the wind was dispersing in the clouds yet it never rain. Later the family of Mr. Smith walked straight ahead on the pavement until they got to the Cave. At the premises of the Cave ,there was light and a generator . Also issues about power outages does not occur mostly around the Cave. Mr. Smith then realised that at the premises of the Cave,there was a resting room, mainly for accommodation purposes , together with a Cinema. The family of Mr. Smith had no better option but to find accommodation in the Cave for a days rest,until the light comes back. Again the family of Mr. Smith realised the opportunity to rest and watch movies at the cinema. Mr. Smith together with his children had to rest and watch movies with his family in the Cinema. Mr. Smith family had a good time together at the Cave because there was lights. They all ate in one Restaurant in the Cave and enjoyed watching movies with popcorn and drinks. The premises of the Cinema was Airconditioned in order to withstand the harsh and hot weather conditions of that neighborhood. Mr. Smith family enjoyed their stay in the Cave until they became tired and left the Cinema ,to rest in a bedroom in the Cave. Also in the bedroom within the Cave, family of Mr. Smith slept after watching the Television News for the day. Again ,the Wizard of Oz did not foretell or commented on the time when the light or electricity will be put on due to the power outage. The main cause for the power outage was because the family of Mr. Smith were misusing electricity. The family of Mr. Smith used to leave the television on for twenty four hours in their bedroom and the Hall whilst nobody is watching only to waste electricity. Also due to the power outage, the issue about the waste of Electricity was being controlled in order to export Electricity to other countries so that they will become wealthy with resources. Again the issue about power outage can be controlled when electricity is used wisely within the household and community. During instances ,where there was power outage ,the family of Mr. Smith never liked the issue of the black out and the calamity they encountered. However, the Electricity Corporation advised the family of Mr. Smith not to waste electricity but to rather use electricity wisely. Also the Electricity Corporation advised customers and Mr. Smiy that not using electricity wisely within a community of household could result in a continuous power outage of some sort. The family of Mr. Smith could not always solve the problem of the power outage by visiting the backyard cave to spend some time in the Cinema and bedrooms. Also the family of Mr. Smith had another option of. buying a generator for the household. This did not however solve the problem because the generator creates excessive noise to the hearing of the entire family that the kids could not withstand and even sleep soundly. Again the family of Mr. Smith employed another means of using solar energy to generate electricity for the household. Finally to stop the power outage problem the family of Mr. Smith decided to take the advice of Electricity Corporation not to waste electricity and to switch off all appliances after use. Lastly since, Mr. Smith family decided on using electricity wisely and putting off all electrical appliances after use ,the issue about the power outage was solved entirely, that enough electricity was exported to other countries for foreign exchange. The Electricity Corporation demonstrated excellence at work when electricity is used wisely and also gave the leeway for other people to testify about the wise usage of electricity. This mandate however made Mr. Smith very wealthy because the country was able to earn foreign exchange from other countries by exporting electricity.


His cellar is dark, but the Bottler knows its cataloged contents better than anyone. He peruses the shelves which contain his private collection of bottles, his fingers carefully lingering on one in particular. This specimen is a larger bottle that has been rubbed and polished enough that the cheap, gold veneer is changing color and wearing through. For a moment, he becomes abstractly aware of the darker emotions he once possessed and their associated memories, but it is difficult to reconstruct them. What remains in the bottles tell the story of how he arrived on a path to perdition.  			He is torn from his reminiscent emotional debitage by the ding of his shop bell ringing upstairs, followed by footsteps on the floor he does not recognize. He is careful to lock the cellar door on his way upstairs. Waiting for him at the front desk is a sleuth of the most amateur sort. Her position is obvious to him from the way her uniform rests flawlessly on her figure, not a crinkle in the fabric nor a stain upon her breast. Her name tag is proudly on display, which he interprets as a clear suggestion she hasn’t figured out that, like the Bottler, her occupation requires both discretion and a bland outlook on humanity. Her hair is pulled back so tightly that he has to wonder if her mind can relax long enough to make a proper deduction. “Can I help you officer?” the Bottler asks. From the look on her face, it’s clear she’s been sizing him up too. “ Detective Kelledy,” she introduces herself, flashing her badge. Pardon me, detective, the Bottler sneers privately to himself, unimpressed by her distinction of the two titles. He neglects to introduce himself, and instead wrinkles his nose at the sharp scent of scrutiny. She is removing a photograph from her inner pocket. “Have you seen this woman before?” He has. Only in the photograph, she is smiling. He ponders this fact for a moment, scarcely noticing her other features. They are insignificant in comparison. “Sure, I perform her extractions and deposit the bottles to the dispensary at the end of every week.” “And exactly what kind of emotional extraction does she participate in?”              Had the knowledge been less common, he might have lied. “Allegra markets in the rawest forms of sexual commodities—pure lust, sexual desire, and orgasmic release,” he answers. He knows the woman in the photograph is troubled. He suspects that her pattern of initiation and extraction is both a cathartic evacuation and a defense against deeper feelings of despair and insecurity.              A slight shuffling of the body is the only indication the detective gives of her discomfort on the topic. “Are you aware, sir, that the reality of this voluntary commodification is the latest evolution of the sex trade, and that despite the anonymization and alienation of solitary sex work, it is fundamentally still a selling of the self.”              The Bottler has enjoyed watching her squirm, but his response is pointed. “Look, I am a Bottler. I only deal in the selling of the self, and I follow all of the regulations set forth by the Ministry and its associated dispensaries. If you don’t like it, fine, but don’t come in to my business and lecture me on propriety.”              Detective Kelledy’s eyes narrow at his increasingly hostile tone, but she has a job to do. This is the only lead she has so far. “Allegra Solt was found dead in an alley not far from here. Were you aware of this sir?”              He snorts. “Obviously not.”              “Sir, I would appreciate your cooperation in this matter.”              “This is the slums. People show up dead all the time,” he says casually, but he assures himself he is not completely devoid of compassion. As the only intermediary between Allegra and the end product of pure, bottled sexuality, he shares an intimacy with this woman, whether real or imagined. “But I am sorry this happened,” he adds. It comes across as a tawdry afterthought but, Detective Kelledy loses interest in him for the moment. Her eyes are peering somewhere behind him in the shop, and the Bottler feels a moment of panic. Has he left the door to his cellar ajar? He hopes not, for legitimate bottling is done in specially marked vacuum bottles using proprietary preservatives that can only be obtained from the dispensaries. The bottles in the cellar are...personal.              He continues to stare expectantly at the detective, pondering what it is she is looking at. He notices the cool, gray of her eyes then. They are like stars, weaving in and out of a stellar mist. He wonders what emotions are contained there.              “Who is that?” she asks finally, pointing a spindly finger beyond him. She removes her flashlight from her belt and shines it into the back of the dimly lit shop.              The Bottler turns to follow her curiosity and realizes she is pointing at his apprentice. The corners of his mouth frame into a scowl. “Get over here, boy,” he says gruffly.              The boy, who is more alike in age to a 16-year-old rather than a boy, comes obediently. He never looks up, and the process is slow as one of his legs drags behind him. “You’ll have to excuse him. He’s impotent, this one.”              “I’m not impotent,” the boy interjects aloofly. “I was in a car crash, asshole.” He adds this last bit under his breath.              “What is your name?” Detective Kelledy asks him.              “Tobias Reed.”              Detective Kelledy looks to the Bottler for confirmation. He nods, and she proceeds. “Did you know this woman?”              The boy’s cheeks color. “I’ve seen her in the shop.”              The Bottler listens as she questions Tobias. The boy manages to make it to the end before saying something completely stupid.

             “Was there…was there a lot of blood?” the boy asks, raising his eyes to meet hers.              Though his tone remains timid, Detective Kelledy feels something sinister wash over her. There is a calculated intelligence to his gaze masked by cold indifference. She sees a smoldering ember where there shouldn’t be in the bright blue of his eyes. It’s almost as if he is aroused by his own question.              “That’s confidential,” she confirms after a long pause, though it seems to go against her better judgement. He must sense her shift in mood, for his gaze quickly returns to the floor. She notices as a slight, yet rapid twitch develops in the youth’s jaw.              Another ding resounds in the shop, signifying a second arrival and cutting the tension in the air like a knife. “Detective Kelledy, unless you have any further questions, I must insist you take your leave. My three o’clock has arrived.”              Detective Kelledy gives the impression she wishes to stay, possibly to see her own desires unbridled at the prospect of a live extraction, but she needs this job. This promotion is her one chance to prove to her peers once and for all that she matters—that she isn’t just some silly girl wanting to play cop. Her soon-to-be ex-husband was sure to engrain the idea of worthlessness into her brain on multiple occasions. Now He is a memory worth extracting , she decides silently as she heads for the shop door.              “I’ll be in touch,” she says on her way out. The Bottler is left to his three o’clock, a prospect he finds most grim. He is aware of the acute suffering he witnesses in his shop every day and its ambiguous connection to the cynical, hidden manipulation of humanity for profit, power, and control. He is also aware he has developed an emotional detachment to the whole process.              Meanwhile, Detective Kelledy lingers in front of the shop. It isn’t much to look at. The sign reading, “Allinar’s Extraction Emporium,” is outdated beyond the literacy of its title, a thick layer of grime incessant in the woodwork. It is a far cry from the extraction facilities in the Ornate District. The grandeur of their sleek, marble finish and spacious waiting rooms make the entire process seem lavish, and she suspects no one there is even peripherally aware of emotions being dealt on the black market. Nothing there gives breath to the rumors of corporate-government agencies utilizing elicit emotions for conditioning soldiers, public servants, politicians, or a hidden class of pseudo-slaves used in a variety of public and private enterprises. Everything there is exactly how it should be: ornate.

             As if on cue, an ad on this very subject dominates the vast expanse of a nearby slum building. Melissa Merin’s face appears, slandered with portions of the same filth that cover Allinar’s Emporium , but you can still tell it is her. The Ministry of Isolated Citizen Emotions, more commonly referred to by its acronym, M.I.C.E., shines brightly in the background of the ad. Merin is the head executive of M.I.C.E, and it is her job to ease the public's minds about the entire extraction process. Her words echo across the landscape like sweet honey, but in Kelledy’s opinion, the only minds that can be pacified are the ignorantly wealthy, the destitute, and those who have no emotions left with which to form an opinion. Detective Kelledy adjusts the hood of her jacket as a light rain begins to fall, but she knows it’s Merin’s propaganda she is really trying to avoid. Kelledy likes the rain more than most. The rail car arrives a few minutes later, and she boards, taking her place among hundreds of other statistics that use the public transportation system to travel between Districts. Kelledy lives in the Pulse district, which is known for its working middle class and vibrant sense of community. The thought of letting her hair down and snuggling up in her armchair with Sergeant Sly and a good book is tempting. Sly will probably be upset she didn’t leave the gas stove lit and his cat food out, but she senses her next clue is contained in the bottles of Allegra Solt. When she exits the rail car, the M.I.C.E. building appears as an exact replica of the ad she saw earlier. Metal detectors await her at the entrance, and she puts her belongings in the bin and steps through the security check with ease. All extractions are cataloged with a serial number and a descriptive title as to exactly what emotion is contained. This protects the name of the individual while providing a trail of both the bottle’s origins and those who purchase it. Detective Kelledy has already looked up the serial number associated with Allinar’s Extraction Emporium , so it only takes her a moment to cross-check this number with a customer list. There is one name that stands out like a fire on a dark night: Tobias Reed . Next to it are titles of bottled emotional content Kelledy does not care to repeat. She quickly gives her boys over at the Ministry of Justice a ring. It is Officer Bailey who picks up the phone, obviously stifling a yawn. “Bailey, I need you to run a background check on a Tobias Reed. He works as an apprentice at the bottler shop in the slums, and I’ve found evidence he was purchasing goods extracted from our jane doe.” There isn’t much further conversation required. Bailey will take care of it and give her a call when he has the information she needs. For now, she is heading back the way she came, hoping to catch Tobias at the end of his shift. She tries to remind herself that the evidence might be circumstantial—that it doesn’t prove anything—but she knows he is the killer. In her heart, she knew the moment she saw him in the shop, quietly keeping to the shadows.              A few days later, the Bottler is in his cellar once again, fiddling with the bottles taken from his most recent extraction. His eyes read each of the labels, deliciously drinking in their contents. Betrayal… fear…pain… He is far more careful with the contents of these bottles than with the body of their former owner, which he has discarded in an adjacent district. He finds the essence of the pretty, blonde stranger he lured in from the street to be a powerful intoxicant. Allegra had been delectable to be sure, but she made things too personal. He was thankful when they pinned that fool apprentice of his for her murder. Apparently, Tobias had a history of domestic abuse, and he had been purchasing the erotic bottles the Bottler was extracting. This was all it took these days to condemn a man. Well, that and an amateur sleuth. Had the Bottler been a different person, he would have laughed to himself, but like the fog of anger, some lurking, underlying cause for his rage threatens to break through and prevents him from doing so.


Fanbright, California, is a literal shithole.

Never in my fifteen (out of eighteen) years of life breathing its polluted, industrial air did I compliment it once.

In fact, the only humans who have been cursed with the knowledge of its existence are those who live in it, and those who have escaped it.

I’ve done both.

In 2005, we moved to Fanbright for a pretty boring reason: cheap housing.

It’s a good idea to save money before sending your kid off to college, which leaves me to where I am now: packing my bags for NYU. I decided that I wanted to become an author, which may have been the biggest letdown for my parents, considering my older brother lives as a starving artist over in Florida.

I was supposed to be PhD something Mandy Lee, but I might just be the 11-point font under a boring article for the Huffington Post.

There is, however, one goal I plan to achieve in my writing career, even if it costs an arm and a leg. One day, I will write a book about the one interesting thing that has ever come out of my hometown - Toby Alvarez. Graduating Class of 1986, Toby Ryland Alvarez was as far away from the spotlight as one can get.

Ditching class to smoke with his delinquent accomplices, constantly going on solo road trips to avoid family in his beaten down Volkswagen, any girl nowadays would have fallen in love immediately.

Well, any girl then might have had a crush, but he was probably ugly or something.

Nearly no one knew or cared about the kid, until just a few days before graduation. The story varies with who tells it, but one thing rings true for them all: on June 2nd, 1986, Toby died in a car crash.

The rusty, black, 1983 Rabbit GTI was T-boned on the freeway, the smoke from the engine blending in with the smoke from whatever he was high on that day.

He was dead before anyone could even help.

It was the first unnatural death in Fanbright since 1925, and no one has followed since.

This makes sense as to how the story gets twisted on why .

Some will say it was the drugs that made him lose control of his focus.

Some say it was the other driver’s fault. Most say he wanted to die that day. I know thirty years is arguably enough time to draw the conclusion that Toby committed suicide without it being “too soon”, but I always felt weirdly uncomfortable hearing it.

The fact that someone who so hated the public eye would choose to die in front of hundreds around him just doesn’t make sense.

The struggle with trying not to believe it, though, was that everyone around me did.

I’d be lying if I said every resident hated shithole Fanbright.

Most people actually loved it.

Descendants of those who first settled found the northern air to be peaceful, an artifact of their ancestors that can so easily be forgotten.

So if some outcast teen dies while skipping school, they think the city is too perfect to blame it on anything other than the kid.

No one bothered about his home life, his interests, the fact that he happened to be the only minority in the whole school.

They always said he “set himself aside” from others, never the other way around. Hearing the story for the first time when I was a freshman at the same high school, I felt an odd connection to Toby.

Not because I did drugs and rebelled against the social order, but I did feel isolated by things I couldn’t control.

Being the only asian american student, I too felt set aside.

On graduation day, classmates who I had several failed attempts at getting close to simply said I was “independent”, and “never cared about popularity”.

I didn’t care about popularity, but that’s a pretty sugar-coated way of saying I had no friends.

My family also isn’t the “mingling” type, and I soon found out from verbal stories and newspapers that the Alvarez family never tried to befriend the other townspeople either.

Did we hate relationships, or did we hate the possibility we wouldn’t be accepted that we just never took the chance? “Mandy, you almost done?”, my mom calls me from the hallway.

My flight leaves in five hours. “Yeah, just about to tape up the last box”.

For the past ten minutes I had been staring at a piece of paper I found four years ago stuffed in a library book. Mr. Rodman, thanks for assigning this.

It’s the only one I’ve read in your class to be honest, but it inspired me.

I want to be like him, but better. -T. Alvarez There’s no more Mr. Rodman at school, he retired in ‘92.  I asked the school what the ”T” stood for, and that’s how I learned the story.  The book was Robinson Crusoe , which I thought was too boring up until the last page where the note was taped in.

It’s obvious that his teacher didn’t see it; he might have hoped that he could give the note personally, or that Mr. Rodman would find it by chance.

The note was probably still taped in since none of the kids since the ‘80s opened it up, let alone finished it.

Nevertheless, there has to be some reason why I’m the one who found and kept it. Three sentences and a sign-off didn’t close Toby’s case, but it did help his case.

For someone who never did anything to or for anyone, reading a book and giving a review to a teacher definitely meant something.

He had a dream to leave Fanbright, to be someone somewhere, to be like Robinson Crusoe, but better.

Regardless if it was suicide or not, Toby, at some point in his life, dared to dream for a life outside of the one he was currently living in.

That was enough for me not to hate him. “Alright mom, we can head out”, I was going to fly out first with a few of my things before the rest got shipped in, so I wasn’t as rushed as my family was. I quickly stuffed the note into my bag - maybe a good luck charm I guess.

I headed out towards the car with my hands full of suitcases and was pushed into the passenger seat by my dad.

We are pretty punctual people, so it was imperative that we arrive hours before the plane takes off. We drove for about half an hour before reaching the town sign that read “Come back soon!”.

I really hope I don’t.

At the stoplight, I feel a weight off my shoulders, the type of weight you feel when you turn in your final exam at the end of the year, or when you hear the buzz at the end of a game season.

I was moving on, going somewhere to be someone. Across the street, I feel someone looking at me, and I quickly glance so as not to start a staring contest with a stranger.

It wasn’t a stranger, though.

Leaning next to a broken down Volkswagen, smoking a cigarette in an all black ensemble, I get a head nod.

There was also the tiniest smile, the kind someone gives when they aren’t used to smiling.

There was pride in that smile, hope in those eyes, and warmth in our hearts. I will write about you, Toby Alvarez, in NYU or after NYU. I’ll write about shitty Fanbright; I’ll write about narrow-minded people, and I’ll write about being like someone who inspires you, but better.


"Are you ready to talk?" "Are you ready to listen?" Colonel Jackson straightened and adjusted his crisp lapels. "I would like to know how a …." Amy raised an eyebrow at her interrogator, "A what? A woman? A housewife? A civilian?" Amy leaned forward and smiled bashfully, "Which is it, Colonel? I will let you fill in the blanks." The Colonel cleared his throat clearly irritated with the petit southern woman sitting across from him. Her hair was wavy and dyed several shades of blonde. How she made it safely to her husband, he had no idea. "I know what you're thinking! How did this lady from Texas make it across the border and back?" Amy giggled; her mirth filled the room. "I'll tell you how Colonel; a wig, a good smokey eye, and the right clothes. As long as a woman keeps her head down and avoids eye contact, nobody cares!" She looked at him with doe eyes and started to play with the blonde locks hanging loosely over her shoulders. "That's just about the case anywhere, I reckon." The man glanced down at her shoulder, there was a tight wrap of gauze around it. After she had found her husband, they were on the run for seventy-two hours, when they encountered some not-so-friendly fire. A bullet grazed her arm, and the wound was infected when his guys were finally able to complete the rescue. He smirked; she was gutsy he'd give her that. The Colonel tapped his fingers on the file in front of him. Inside were statements given by her husband and the three special-ops guys that rescued them. It seemed her husband had done some private IT contract work with someone above his paygrade and was able to procure a rescue from the US Military. "I want to see my husband." He could see the fatigue in her eyes. "You will after we hear your story." Amy let out a long breath, she was tired and achy, and she wanted nothing more than to land at DFW and eat a BBQ sandwich. "So, tell me; when did you first discover your husband was not who he appeared to be?" "You mean, the man posing as my husband?" "Yes." "How is Mitch 2.0, by the way?" The question rolled off her tongue, laced with humor. "Who?" "Mitch, 2.0." Amy glanced down at her chipping manicure. "That's what I called him." She looked up and grinned, "I thought the military had replaced my husband with AI or something!" Her southern accent was heavy, and he would have laughed at her assumption if the situation was comical. It wasn't, so he scowled. "I can assure you, Mrs. Stewart, the government doesn't replace people with AI." The Colonel tapped his massive fingers on the steel table, the national security implications of this situation was making his blood pressure escalate. Amy smirked at his response. "Oh, Colonel, don't get so stuffy! It wasn't like you spent the last week disguised, traveling through the desert, eating who-knows-what, and praying no one found out you were a Baptist from Texas!" The Colonel shook his head, this was going to be a nightmare. He opened the file and reread the document. According to Mitch, who was sequestered down the hall, the man that impersonated him as Amy's husband for almost six months was his doppelganger. In fact, after the DNA tests they just ran, they were twins. That's what made this whole debacle the most disconcerting. What if there were more of them? Amy clasped her fingers together in front of her on the table, "So let me tell you how I knew something wasn't right." The Colonel raised head and relaxed robotically in his seat. "Mitch had been on a business trip…" "To Berlin." "Yes, Berlin." Amy moved a stray hair behind her ear. "At a software convention." "Yes." Amy blew out a breath. "When my husband came home, he did not want a slice of homemade pecan pie." "So… that was out of the ordinary?" "Yes, yes, it was! I always make him my homemade southern pecan pie when he comes home from a business trip!" Amy sighed. "It's his favorite." "You mean to tell me your husband turning down a slice of pie started you down some conspiracy theory path that your husband was an AI robot?" "I think you are making fun of me, Colonel." "No, continue." He would have laughed if it wasn't so absurd. "That Sunday, we went to church." Amy shook her head, "He acted like he barely knew his way through a Bible, and he almost seemed uninterested in the sermon." "And?" "He was very uncomfortable in church, edgy." "Maybe he was just having a bad day?" "He plays on the church softball team with the youth pastor." There was a pause, and then the Colonel looked at another document. "So, tell me again, why did Mitch, the real Mitch, contact…" He looked back down at his notes, "Luella Simpson." "Oh, yeah, Luella is," Amy smiled broadly, "the church secretary." "It still doesn't add up." "He must have suspected we were being monitored." Amy's eyes widened, "You know how all those wi-fi objects in your house, they're always listening." She laughed at her own remark. "Why didn't he call your mom or his sisters?" Amy shifted in her seat; the Colonel must have had their whole life story before him in the file. "Oh, that would have set a whole swarm of bees to flight," Amy laughed, "Bless her heart! My mother would have approached Mitch 2.0 and interrogated him herself! That would have probably put my husband in more danger then he was already in!" "This text..." "Yes?" "It makes no sense." The Colonel skimmed the page again. "It doesn't." "Then how did you know where to find him." "A hunch." The Colonel let out a long-exasperated breath. "Why do you think he sent it to the church secretary?"

Amy shrugged her shoulders and stared down at her chipping nail paint, "Sir, I have no idea." He couldn't tell if her voice was sincere or condescending. The Colonel thumped his fingers again. She was within her rights to withhold any info she wanted. She had not, as of yet, done anything wrong. He knew playing dress-up was no more a crime than changing your Instagram filters on your profile to look younger. She traveled on her own passport and had a squeaky-clean record. "Very well, then, tell me about the tag that helped us secure…" "Mitch 2.0?" "Yes." He still couldn't wrap his head around this southern spitfire sitting across from him. "Simple, I tagged him in as many places as I could so I could trace him if indeed he was impersonating my husband." "How do you know about RFID tags?" "I am a part-time librarian, and we work with RFID all the time. I also own my own T-shirt and monogramming business. I need the RFID tags to attach to the clothing I sell." Amy nodded toward the file, "I am sure this is a waste of my time and yours. You already know all of this." "So, are you going to try and tell me you came up with the RFID tagging on your own?" Amy looked offended, "What is that supposed to mean?" The Colonel stared at her for a few minutes and read another document. It was all there in black and white; she ran a legit clothing business. She worked at the downtown library part-time and volunteered for the local food bank. She and her husband taught Sunday school together at the local Baptist church, and they had no children. Her mom lived in Dallas, and Mitch had two sisters that lived in Bellevue, Washington. The Colonel looked up at the woman across from him, ordering his brain to unravel the mystery staring at him in the face. "I tagged his watch, that's how you found him. My Mitch is old fashioned, so Mitch 2.0 was forced to wear an old Timex. It was easy to disassemble." "So, tell me again about Mitch 2.0." "His mannerisms were like my Mitch's, but of course, you can't fool a woman." Amy smiled coyly. "His accent was flawless, and he even changed the oil in the old Ford, and that thing is a beast." "Tell me about the tattoo?" "Ah, yes, the tattoo." The Colonel noticed her voice sounded troubled. "Kind of an odd place for two strait-laced Americans to get a tattoo." The Colonel raised an eyebrow as he spoke, "Inside your bottom lip?" "It is." The Colonel could swear he could see the young woman's eye twitch. "And Mitch 2.0 didn't have this tattoo?" "Nope." Amy didn't elaborate, and her tone curt. Reflexively, she ran her tongue along the tender skin in her mouth. The Colonel tried to read her expression. "It was beyond dangerous what you did, trying to take matters into your own hands." He raised an eyebrow, "Traveling through a country that's engulfed in a civil war, following vague text messages." "Who was I going to ask for help? Mitch 2.0 had everyone fooled, except for me." The Colonel stood up and rolled his neck from side to side, trying desperately to relieve the tension building in his muscles. The national security repercussions of what just transpired were alarming. The idea there might be others impersonating innocent Americans was enough to put anyone's muscles in a knot. He glanced back at Mrs. Stewart, he still felt like he was missing something. "I do have one more question." "What is that?" "I have some information on the youth pastor of your church…" Amy cocked her head in a question. "What information?" The Colonel paused for a moment, trying to gauge the reaction in her pupils, he made a note of the slight hesitation in her voice. "Some of your church members have had some run-ins with airport security overseas, trying to smuggle religious material," He paused, "I am sure you already knew about that." Both Mitch and Amy had been on several mission trips with the youth pastor and his wife since their college years. Some of the locations he wouldn't have gone into himself without a full army behind him. Amy's jaw tensed, and she wondered what the Colonel was trying to insinuate. The Colonel gripped his hand around the file and gave her another scowl. "I am sure that has nothing to do with you or Mitch, though." "I am sure it doesn't." The women's retort was quick. The Colonel raised an eyebrow, "You know they may come after you?" "Who?" "The ones that planted Mitch." Amy left out a long breath and didn't respond, he was disturbed by the lack of panic in her eyes. "I understand." "If they think you've figured out what is going on," The Colonel didn't finish his thought. There were rumors when he first entered military service twenty years ago that something like this may be in the works, but to come face to face with it forced a chill down his spine. Amy sat up straight and put on a brave smile.

No one would be coming after them. She knew as soon as Amy Stewart stepped off the plane, phase one of Operation Duplicity had failed. She'd studied the information on her twin since infanthood. In her country, it was the job of the male to control the destiny of their mission, so she was tossed aside. However, Mitch didn't plan for one thing; women's intuition.  The tattoo was an unexpected glitch, she couldn't blame him for that, but she wouldn't make the same mistake. Amy Stewart, the suburban housewife, was definitely smarter than any of them believed. Operation Duplicity was simple; infiltrate the American family one person at a time, and over the next ten years, phase two would be activated. The doubles would be safely integrated into all forms of the great American dream; teachers, lawyers, fathers, mothers. No one would have been the wiser. Except they didn't bank on Amy Stewart, she'd known her husband way too intimately. Now it was up to her. If she succeeded, others could enter the country undetected. They'd finished their statements, ate some subpar food in the airport, and boarded their plane. She glanced at Mitch as they walked through DFW. Mr. All American; played college football and had a doctorate in computer science. On the weekends, he coached pee-wee football and attended a two-thousand plus member church in an upscale Dallas suburb. Yes, her life would be different, but in a few years, it would all be worth it. Her father's mantra had always been- slow and steady wins the race. She was sure she read that about a turtle one time, and now she was that turtle. Mitch picked up their luggage effortlessly and reached for her hand. "I can't believe you came for me."

"I didn't do it alone," Amy laughed, her false merriment carrying through the air. "I had help along the way." Amy shoved the thought away for later, she would need to find out who had helped the other Amy find Mitch. Amy was no longer the focus, deceiving Mitch was. She'd extracted Amy before she could come in contact with her husband. A quick, blunt hit to her head rendered her unconscious. She'd be kept alive at the compound for as long as they could get valuable information from her.

"All that matters now is that I am here with you, and where are back on American soil." Mitch grinned. "You know all of this has me wondering," Amy paused and looked up at Mr. All American, "maybe we should start a family?" Amy tensed. "Is something the matter?" Mitch could feel the tension in her arm. "No, no, of course not." Amy flipped through every cataloged file in her memory; his wife had not been able to have kids; at least that is what she had read in her medical records. It was amazing the information she was able to glean over the past few years, from the world wide web. Now that everyone had a virtual assistant in their homes, it was easier and faster to interpret conversations, online purchases, and schedules. "I know we've had some troubles in the past," Mitch looked down at her lovingly, "but the doctor said a miracle was always a possibility." Amy took in a deep breath, at least she hadn't misjudged her new husband. Ever the optimist, ever the believer in miracles. She wondered how he'd react to her duplicity when all was revealed to him. Would he do what his beliefs touted; forgive and forget. He may not live long enough for her to find out. They climbed into the rental, and Mitch turned to look at her, his gaze steady. Mitch's heart skipped as he took the sight of her in. He knew Amy would be ok, but the thought of his evil twin in a jail half-way across the ocean was still disconcerting. Amy batted her eyelashes, "Something on your mind Mitch?" He was handsome; it wouldn't be hard to play the doting southern wife for the next few years. "There is." His smile stretched across his lips, displaying a perfect gleaming row of teeth. "What's that?" Her soft southern drawl rolled off her lips. "I think it's time we took a second honeymoon." "Really?" Her heart lurched in her chest. She thought traveling would be the last thing on his mind after what he'd been through. "Yes. I think after all we've been through its time we reconnect; really get to know each other." "Oh, ok." Her voice grabbed, and she forced a smile. Mitch looked back at the road his face stoic as Amy kept her eyes firmly fixed on his profile. "There are some things I reflected on after I was kidnapped. That man..." His voice turned husky, "He tried to sabotage my family, my faith, and my country." Amy's jaw tensed as he spoke. "I promised myself I would never let anything like that happen again." He turned her direction as he spoke, "To anyone." Amy kept her lips tightly together. Mitch turned his face back toward the road. "Do you remember when we took that missionary trip to the desert, and we weren't sure we'd make it out alive?" Amy nodded her head slowly, sifting through the information in her head. As if reading her mind, he spoke, "Nobody knew about the trip," he laughed lightly, "it was the first one we did undercover." She couldn't believe what he was saying, it would have been suicide for them to trapeze across the middle-east trying to preach his personal version of religion. Mitch eased the car on to the interstate. Amy stiffened in her seat as she looked out the window, suddenly feeling like a caged animal. The Amy she'd shadowed disembarked in Israel, altered her appearance, and took a minibus into Jordan. At the time, she thought the lady was insane, throwing herself willingly into a hostile environment. "It was the first time I was able to use my new model to smuggle religious material into a hostile country." "Your model?" Mitch laughed lightly, "Yeah, I called her Amy, 2.0." Mitch turned and looked at the woman sitting beside him, "She has dark hair and dark eyes; she's a great decoy in unpredictable situations." Amy gripped the door handle, her knuckles white, and the sound of the turn signal echoed loudly in her head as Mitch changed lanes. "In fact," Mitch let a smile ease across his lips while he kept his eyes on the heavy traffic in front of him, "I think you might have met her, she's about your height."


I took my time packing up at the end of today’s meeting. Wanted a chance to talk to Fiona alone. She’s usually the last one left in the room, clearing up the cups and gathering the confidential waste. It’s her disrespectful attitude you see. Always the same. Like today. I get there early and as usual she has already set up the coffees and is tapping away at her laptop.  I ask her why the agenda was cut short and she says it’s nothing to do with her and she only types it up and sends it round. Tells me to ask Janet and turns those earnest green eyes straight back to her laptop. I never get any conversation out of her. Now I'm not particularly conscious of status, but as commercial director, I deserve more respect. So after everyone has left the meeting I give her another chance to be friendly. I suggest we go over the draft agenda together for next week, but she fobs me off, saying the information isn’t ready and she’ll email it to me. She’s already walking out of the door at this point. Most unsatisfactory. That's why I'm here in a café when I should be on my way to the car park. Awful noisy place with the screeching expresso maker and constant babble in the background, but this window table is opposite the office. My idea is to watch for when Fiona comes out. Then I'll just bump into her. It’s quite clever if you think about it. I can have a quiet word on our way to the car park. She'll be more relaxed outside the work environment and listen to what I need to tell her. That way, I won't have to speak to Janet about her manner. Yes, speak to her manager or worse. There’s a restructure coming up and there may be staff cuts. But that’s my ace card. I won’t play that at the moment. You won’t believe where I am now. Sitting on a bench in a graveyard. Through the trees is a pub garden and Fiona and the team are chatting and laughing round one of the tables. You’re wondering what happened. Well I finally caught up with her in the street after a long wait and she said she had worked late to catch up and was on her way to meet the team in the pub. I mentioned that it was good for colleagues to get together away from the work environment. I asked her what pub it was, but she said she had to go and rushed off without answering. She could have easily invited me along. It would have been beneficial for my working relationship with the team. Another example of her unhelpful and disrespectful attitude. So I had to follow her and now I’m stuck on this hard wooden bench waiting for her to walk back to the car park so we can finally have our chat. Despite the traffic I can just about make out their conversation. Fiona’s telling Janet some tedious thing about being very busy with the other administrator off and having to log in and work at the weekend. Hang on, now she’s talking about me. She’s telling Janet she doesn’t think I like her because I ask questions I know she can’t answer. Apparently, I’m trying to catch her out. And that she thinks I’m staring disapprovingly at her while she’s trying to get work done. What rubbish. That’s’ just an excuse for her refusal to have a friendly conversation. Did I mention I’m the Commercial Director? It's imperative I speak to her now. Janet’s telling Fiona she can’t expect senior managers to know what everyone’s exact role. Janet’s also just said I look at everyone with a bit of scrutiny. She thinks I just want to see who is motivated and who isn’t because I don’t want people going off to join the opposition. Well Janet will be fine in the restructure. I favour people who talk sense.

The conversation is getting louder with each round. She’s chatting and laughing a lot with Roger. They shared a cigarette even though I know she doesn’t smoke. Disgusting habit. I’ll need to speak to her about that too. I’ve never liked Roger. Might get him transferred out of town or find him surplus to requirements in the restructure. Maybe the drinking isn’t such a bad thing though. Fiona will be more relaxed and ready to talk to me when I do manage to get her on her own. Now Fiona’s talking on the phone. She keeps repeating something about letting the dog out. I know her mother is elderly and unwell as I’ve seen it on her social media. Well alright yes I had a look at her profile. I thought a bit of knowledge might help get a conversation started. She’s telling people she has to go as she’s already left her mother on her own too long after being at work all day. This could be my break. She’ll be walking back to the car park and I can bump into her. This time she’s going to listen. Roger is offering to walk her back. The interfering idiot. That transfer is looking more likely. Fiona’s declining. He’s got half a pint left and she’s fine. I’ve been so intent on the conversation, I’ve only just noticed the sky has gone dark there are a few spots of rain. Well that was a complete waste of time. Fiona’s practically ran to the car park getting soaked with the downpour. I saw the way the water was streaming off her long hair. Why didn't she just shelter in one of the doorways. Then I would have caught her up and she could have come under my umbrella. When I got to the car park there was no sign of her. Now I’m back in the car stuck in a queue. A heavy rainstorm and everyone forgets how to drive. I should have been home long ago. Fiona doesn’t know how much trouble she’s caused.  And all I’m trying to do is put her right so I don’t have to speak to Janet about her. For goodness sake these idiots should get out of the way. The bus stop mob is spilling into the road. There are so many people. Wait. That looks like Fiona in the rabble. What’s she doing there. I stop and open the door in the pouring rain telling her to get in. She hesitates, letting her surprise show and asks me what I’m doing here. For goodness sake why does she have to question everything and make a fuss. I try not to let my frustration show. I’m doing this for her. I tell her to get in quickly to my nice dry car and I’ll drop her home. She’s still hesitating. I point out the indicator says the next bus isn’t for 30 minutes. I can feel my irritation deepening but I keep my face passive. At last she struggles in with her two bags and pulls the door shut.

She thanks me and tells me she does actually need to get home urgently. Her elderly mother is getting very anxious and needs her medication. She’s been trying to calm her mother down over the phone but the battery is running low. I ask her about her car but she tells me she’s leaving the car there until tomorrow. She just got the shopping out of the boot and headed for the bus stop because she’d had more to drink than she realised. I tell her I’m glad she’s here and mention I want to have a little chat. But she interrupts me She’s noticed this isn’t the way home. I tell her there’s a diversion due to a flood but really I thought I’d drive the long way round to give us more time to talk. Fiona asks me what I wanted to talk about. She gives a nervous cough. The cough reminds me and to mention the smoking. She says she doesn’t smoke. I point out she was smoking this evening and Roger was encouraging her. I realise I’ve given something away. I can feel the atmosphere in the car tense. I try to explain I happened to be passing the pub but it doesn’t work. The stupid girl starts asking me to let her out. I calmly tell her I can't let her out on her own in a country lane in the middle of a violent storm. I try to explain I’m trying to help her and she needs to cooperate. I mention the staff cuts but it doesn’t seem to register. She reaches into her handbag and pulls out her mobile phone. That’s ridiculous. I lean over and try to take it from her. We need to have our conversation in peace. She jerks the phone away. With sudden horror I realise I’ve driven past a red traffic light. My mind seems to freeze as I see a huge fuel carrying lorry coming from the left. I jerk to life and brake but it’s too hard. The car lurches forward on it’s own. “You stupid stupid girl” I shout. Look what you’ve made me do. I’m aware of tyres screeching on the wet road as the huge articulated lorry looms towards us. I can’t get my brain or body to react. I feel paralysed I don’t see a way out of this. Fiona has opened the passenger door.  I yell at her but she’s gone. Her last selfish act.


Some of the train cars had been here so long their wheels had rusted stiff. Here on Old Track 29, was where unclaimed and discarded boxcars went to die. Benjamin Samskowski always got the Glenn Miller tune stuck in his head when he was here, but up here in the Catskills of New York, they were a long way from Chattanooga. It was hard to believe that with such large amounts of merchandise at stake, that anyone would abandon such a vast array of assets, but the truth was it happened all the time. People died, companies went bankrupt, things got lost in the shuffle, and just like the tens of thousands of storage facilities and containers that dotted America, these ones just happened to have bogies fastened to their bottoms. It was time for the once a year, spring cleaning auction, by which the railroad management got rid of all the excess stuff that had made its way to their facility, and remained unclaimed. They would sell what they could, dispose of the rest and then either enter the cars back into service, or scrap them for metal. Either way, this was the proverbial end of the line.

Ben was coming up on his 25th anniversary working for the Railroad Company, ironically named, at least in his mind, BFF. They certainly weren’t “best friends forever”, as the name had actually came from the founders Bueno, Frost and Forrester back in the 1930s. They weren’t horrible employers, by any means, but always seemed to skate by with just the bare minimum required to stave off revolt. Sure they’d probably give him a $100 watch and a gift certificate to take his grandkids to Chucky Cheese, but that was hardly a reward for 25 years of impeccable attendance and undying loyalty. He had given them the best years of his life, and would never get them back. But the perks were never why he joined in the first place; It was his unequivocal love of trains. It all started when he was just a kid and his parents had bought him an S scale Santa Fe set for Christmas. That and the upstate New York hillsides which were littered with thousands of miles of tracks, that in his youthful mind’s eye connected him to anywhere in the world, much like books did in vast libraries.

Most of the cars turned out to be empty. It was merely a statistical thing. Chinese companies, buying Japanese ones who then sold them to the highest bidder. Also with all the foreign investment, it was often easier for these multi-billion conglomerates to simply discard these assets, rather than pay for costly storage, inventory and maintenance upkeep. The same thing happened in the shipping industry. But on rare occasion, the findings would provide a treasure trove. Once, even, back in 1969, Samuel Bronson had found a full-on corpse among a pile of old tractor parts. Most likely an elderly hobo, who had died from a combination of old age and late night chills. Isolated out here in the train “boneyard”, as the locals called it, it was easy to see how that sort of thing could’ve gone overlooked for an entire snowy winter with blizzard-like conditions. Ben loved this part of the job. It appealed to his sense of adventure which had lured him to life of trains in the first place. He wasn’t allowed to indulge in the yearly activity for the entire first decade if his workmanship with BFF, but as older servicemen retired or died, he became next in the line of succession. It wasn’t like they could keep anything they came across, as it all was still Company property, but you really never knew what you would find, and that was exciting.

After a day or tagging seemingly useless inventory of discarded parts labeled in foreign languages, and pieces of machinery that were probably extremely specific to archaic industries, the luster of finding anything interesting began to wear off. Ben only had 2 cars left in his long line of 53, so the odds of him finding anything of interest, were forever against him. But then in car number 52, behind a mountain of old palettes and boxes of old merchandise marked “Herpolsheimer’s” he found it.

An old wooden desk, with years of slick-downed surfaces touched by human fingerprints, looked like something Herman Melville might have written “Moby Dick” on. It was wrapped in a thin layer of plastic that had yellowed, and thinned out, over its time stuck in the purgatory of train cars. But wedged into the far corner of its third level of shelving was a photograph, which had November 1978 inscribed on the back of it. On the front of the polaroid was a man dressed in all brown, leaning up against an old Pontiac Bonneville. Ben had definitely seen the man somewhere before. He wasn’t quite celebrity status, but the face was unforgettable. He couldn’t place exactly where, but the image of the man’s visage had been ingrained in his psyche at an early age. He looked maybe ten years older, in the photo, and definitely had a few more wrinkles and grey hairs, but it was definitely the same guy. Ben racked his brain trying to place it, the way one might try to remember the name of a movie star, or the lyrics to an old song, from your developmental years. But it wouldn’t come to him. Although Ben was glad he was alone for the find, he kind of wished he had someone else to bounce the image off of, who might recognize the man. Oh well, he was keeping it. He had made up his mind, and it certainly had more value than some shitty half-plastic watch. He placed the photo into the inside of his Dickies navy work jacket, taking care first to blow the dust off and trying not to scratch its delicate surface.

Next came the task of unwrapping the desk. It would still need to be inventoried and prepped for the auction, regardless, and this boring task also fell under Ben’s purview. He slowly unraveled the tarnished plastic, wishing for once he had followed the OSHA suggestions of wearing a filtered mask under such conditions. God knows how many roach eggs and rat feces had made their way into the thick layer of dust that blanketed everything. As Benjamin was working, a subtle jolt seemed to rock the car. Almost the feeling one might get when it was coupled or uncoupled. Ben called out, but no response came back. Weird enough, but probably just his imagination. The small bounce had caused the front desk drawer to settle askew off of the inlayed track, which was meant to keep it in place. Ben noticed a flurry of paperwork poking out of its mouth like the tendrils of a swamp creature trying to resurface. He put on a pair of nitrile gloves, not remembering the last time he had a tetanus shot, and slowly edged the drawer forward. Again another nudge from an unseen coupling had jolted the car, but there was definitely no movement, and nothing but solitude and complete silence afterward. The weight of the drawers contents had shifted on their fulcrum, and the drawer and all its contents came crashing down onto the wooden baseboards of the boxcar’s floor. At first glance, it looked like more old useless paperwork. Ben had seen this a hundred times before. Old diagrams, schematics, inventories, and ghosts of business done in a former life. Now just outdated relics printed on actual physical paper, instead of digital hard drives, nonetheless. Ben picked it up and started turning the documents right-side-up to get a better look. The more he looked, the clearer a picture began to paint itself. These weren’t just any papers. They were very specific. Among them were passenger manifests, flight paths, military grad aerial maps, and blueprints for Boeing 727-51 aircraft. The ones with dates were mostly for the forth quarter of 1971, which special interest in late October and early November. There was even a placard printed with instructions for lowering the aft stairs of such an aircraft, varying types of parachute designs, and yes, even train schedules for the State of Washington.

A picture started to form in Benjamin’s head, but it was still bit foggy. There was definitely something familiar about all of this, but he still couldn’t quite place it. Nonetheless, this stuff was vintage gold. To hell with pawn shops, these kind of things would go great in his personal collection of transportation-industry memorabilia. Besides, the company would have no use for this stuff anyway. They would see this as some old man’s trash pile, all to be discarded in a dumpster, so Ben didn’t feel a single iota of guilt about keeping the stuff for himself. Then a thought crossed his mind. There was still one deep door fashioned in to the base of the desk. It was the kind that had an old keyhole lock, which traditionally were more for than aesthetics, than actual security. Besides Ben’s supervisors would never know that he had not found the desk in a condition with a broken lock, to begin with. He fished in his overalls and brought out a tarnished Leatherman; ironically his 10-year anniversary gift from the company. He used the pocketknife implement of the multi-tool to gain leverage on the aging lock, and after anchoring it, shifted his weight to apply maximum pressure. The lock gave way with a loud snap, sending a piece of green oxidized brass shrapnel mere millimeters from his left eye. That would have sucked, he thought, but in the end, it was harmless. The door gave way with the weight of it’s contents and dropped forward, but something had lodged itself between it, and the bottom of the drawer above it, prohibiting it from opening all the way. Ben reached in and fished the rather large protruding object around, until it freed itself from encumbrance. Whatever it was, was fairly big with lots of pointy angular edges, and it was definitely metallic.

Ben edged the drawer forward, finally releasing its Crackerjack prize. It was a polaroid SX-70 instant camera, in damn great condition, and presumably the one used to take the photo. Ben turned it around a few times in his hands, admiring its alternating chrome and burnt orange surfaces, before blowing dusts out of its many hidden nooks and crannies He finally gently set it down on the desktop. Ben slowly edged the large bottom desk drawer forward, and what he revealed next nearly made his heart turn180 degree somersaults inside of his rib cage. In a muddied, torn and weathered duffle bag, were stacks of twenty dollar bills, separated into bundles of one hundred bills each. Ben’s mouth dropped agape. They must have been old movie props, but if so that production designer deserved an Oscar, as these were meticulously detailed. He grabbed a stack and brought it close to his face. Underneath the small layer of filth, the money was still crisp and clean; He brought it closer still, and inhaled the unmistakable smell of minted currency… real currency. He didn’t know how much was there, but it seemed like a lot. In fact it was exactly 9,710 $20-dollar-bills minted between 1970 and 1971. “What cha got, Samskowski?!” - booming voice echoed from the door jarred open on the far end of the boxcar. Ben had been giving quite the start and had instinctively. The pitted rubber band broke with his flinch sending errant bills back into the drawer with a flutter. Ben’s hulking supervisor, Mr. Samson, wobbled his large mass over to the desk to inspect Ben’s work. The girth of his biceps were like massive python’s ready to strike. He liked to roll his sleeves up over them, in some sort of Cock-of-the-walk frail masculinity. That and his crew cut, gave him the air of a geriatric drill sergeant.

Sam stood silent, waiting for the anvil to drop. He was, in all honesty, rendered speechless. Samson leaned over him inspecting, the contents with his eyes, but from his angle he was just far enough away, that the bills couldn’t be seen. He sifted his hands through the airplane brochures and old Northwest Orient paperwork, then his eyes averted to the polaroid camera.

“Cool camera”, was all he said at first. “But really just a bunch of junk. Make sure you get all this shit cleaned out and polish up this desk a little, will ya? And Samsko, make it quick, you still got one more boxcar left, and I’d like to go home in this lifetime, if you don’t mind.” “Yes sir.”, Benjamin responded. Then as his boss reached the door and put one foot out as if to exit the train, Ben yelled back to him. “Mr. Samson?….” The bulk of a man turned on his heel. “I was just wondering if I might be able to keep the content of this desk for myself. You know, for my own personal collection.” “Sure kid.”, said the man. Just don’t come crying to me when you contract hepatitis from all that rat shit. And with that, Samson alighted the train car, along with any apprehension Benjamin had felt about invoking the “finders: keepers” rule.

As he rummaged up the bills in to the bag, being sure to hide them with the old manifests, paperwork, and the vintage camera, another polaroid freed itself from the stack. This one had the same man, but quite a bit younger. It had been taken at the entrance sign to the Seattle-Tacoma Airport of the same man, and the same Bonneville, and his shit eating ear-to-ear grim. Ben turned it over and all the inscription read was “D.B. COOPER” in quotations, and it had a hand-drawn, defiant smiley face beside it. It had been written in a shaky hand, in all caps with a felt-tip pen.

Finally the history of it all was triggered, and came flooding back to Ben. Sure, if he tried to buy a new car or a house, the FBI would probably eventually track the serial numbers, but scratch-offs and PBRs from his local Speedway should definitely go undetected. Looked like he might have a pretty great retirement after all.


Content warning: Brief mentions of animals being harmed. Stone Scalari lived alone. It was certainly more peaceful than living with his wife and children had been. He was 62. A lifetime of sharing space with loved ones had left him nothing but debt, headaches, and agony. Stone sat on the chaise lounge on his back patio one Saturday morning about a year after Carrie had left. He was holding a mug of coffee to his lips when he heard a dull thunk behind him. He ignored it, took a sip, cursed out loud. Too hot. A bird started chirping weakly. That was probably what caused the thunking noise, Stone thought. He kept the glass sliding door to his patio immaculate and birds were always crashing into it. Dumb animals had the entire world under their wings and yet they were dying to get into his split-level ranch. The chirping continued long after Stone had finished the coffee. He sighed. “All right, then. Jeez.” He stood up and saw the bird on the ground, a robin with a bent wing. Stone stared at it for so long his vision went fuzzy. He saw gnarled hands wrapping themselves around a little feathered neck like this one, a yellow-toothed grin and beady, blank eyes locked onto the dying animal’s face.

Stone blinked. The robin was still on the ground, chirruping away, like it was scolding Stone for just standing there looking at it. Stone rolled his eyes. “Fine.” He went back inside, snapped on some rubber gloves. Wrapped the bird in an old towel and placed it on the kitchen table. The bird immediately wrestled its way out of the fabric and flapped its wings, but could only lift itself a couple inches. It flopped back onto the towel, looking exhausted. Stone tilted his head. He figured he had a few options here: He could just kill the bird, get it over and done with. It was sure to have a diminished quality of life with a gimpy wing anyway. He could put the bird back outside, let its mother or a windstorm or a vulture carry it away, leaving it to some unknown destiny. It would almost certainly die that way, too, though, prolonged and painful and petrifying. Or he could rehabilitate it, though he did not know the first thing about fixing a broken being. * * * * * Stone knew from experience that naming a son after himself wouldn’t necessarily forge a bond between them, wouldn’t guarantee his legacy was carried for another generation. So instead of Stone IV, his son was named Richard. An ordinary name. And Stone tried to treat him like an ordinary person and not a namesake. But Richard was troubled. Maybe disturbed. All the swaddling and coddling in the world couldn’t shut that kid up. Then he got older and the tantrums morphed into stealing, vandalizing, scoring public parks with graffiti. Eventually the rebellion turned inward, powder up his nose, pills hiding in plastic baggies. He went to sleep as other men his age returned home from their office jobs. Stone’s wife begged Richard to go to rehab, held interventions, made empty threats to kick him out of the house. Stone let him be. Richard slouched out of the house for cigarettes one afternoon and never came back. Funny how it was always a deadbeat dad who did this, rarely a deadbeat son.

* * * * * The robin looked at Stone, and he could swear he saw something like pleading in its eyes. “Christ,” Stone said. He scooped up his car keys. Animals had eschewed Stone most of his life. His mother liked cats, but each one she brought home seemed to end up a by-product of his father’s alcohol-fueled antics. After five cats had come and gone she resorted to satiating herself by staring through the shelter’s windows but never again stepped inside. Stone’s father liked to tip over nests he found in branches, throw empty beer cans at dogs strolling by and wheeze with laughter and denial when their owners glared at him. Stone learned to look away, because any reaction he had was met with a “man up, you pansy.” He learned to walk away, because anything his father felt comfortable inflicting on an animal he had no problem transferring to his son. All Stone knew now was that there was a pet store in the strip mall tucked away on Bramble Street, so that was where he drove. He picked up the smallest bag of birdseed he could find. He gathered supplies to build a small carrier.

“I must be crazy,” he muttered to himself in the car, scanning the dollar amounts on his receipt. Then he opened his phone and Googled “how to help bird broken wing.” * * * * * Niobe was the opposite of her brother: an overachiever, a perfectionist, someone who threw tantrums not because she didn’t get her way but because someone else hadn’t gotten theirs. She wanted to become some bigshot journalist. She drowned in waves of college-campus activism and protesting. Stone told her none of it mattered. They’d all be in the same ground someday, right-wing and left-wing and war criminals and saints alike. Niobe called him a Republican.

“I’m apolitical,” Stone corrected her. “Hate ’em all. No point in voting, no point in caring about any of it.” “That’s just as bad. Actually, it’s worse. The world is burning and your response is apathy,” Niobe said. So their conversations often went until they dwindled to tepid phone calls at holidays, and then to nothing. Stone tried sometimes to think of his children as babies, those cooing, drooling blanket-wrapped bundles in his arms, but he couldn’t picture it. Could barely remember their faces. And in the end, maybe this meant nothing much at all. Genes and blood and birthright really held no hallowed significance. * * * * * Stone kept an eye on the bird throughout the week. It seemed in good spirits, picking at the birdseed, giving itself baths in the bowl of water Stone left out, kicking up the newspaper lining the entire kitchen. Stone thought about bringing it to a wildlife rehabilitator like the websites had mentioned, but he figured the bird was close to healing on its own. Tomorrow , Stone kept thinking. Tomorrow I’ll bring it in . A couple of days in, he started calling the bird “Robbie.” It was a robin, after all, and Stone felt odd sharing his house with this living being and referring to it as “hey you” or “dumb bird.” There was something uneasy about their coexistence. Stone had spent most of his life in a state of avoidance. When his father drank, Stone drowned out the fighting by cranking the volume on his turntable until all he could hear was a furious drumbeat mirroring the thrashing pulse of his own heart. When his kids were upset, Stone left them alone, believing both that they should learn to fend for themselves the way he had been forced to and that his interference would only further aggravate them. It was just easier for all of them that way. To not let individual troubles become collective burdens.

Now when Stone felt eyes on his back as he spooned coffee grinds into the machine or read the paper, he looked around wondering if someone had broken into his home, only to flick his eyes over to the kitchen table and realize it was Robbie. Tilting his head, watching Stone’s every move as if his daily routine was of great interest. It had been a long time since anyone else had breathed in this house and longer still since anyone had looked at Stone like that. Like his existence alone was enthralling, his morning regimen as riveting as a winter’s first snowfall. * * * * * Carrie, somehow she had stuck around the longest. One night, she approached him as he sat in his recliner in the living room, sipping a Scotch on the rocks as he watched the Indy 500 on TV. She asked if she could recite to him a poem she had recently read for her night class. He grunted. She perched on the couch armrest and began: “‘The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.’” Stone tuned her out. The race was nearing its final moments. The poem was short, thankfully. “What do you think?” Carrie said when she’d finished it. “What? I don’t know. Sounds like she should’ve kept better track of her things,” Stone said, swirling the ice in his glass. “It doesn’t make you think of the kids? I talked to them the other day, you know. They didn’t ask to speak to you. And you never reach out to them. Don’t you find that odd?” Stone shrugged. “It is what it is.” “Stone.” Carrie sounded exasperated. “You all keep this up, you’re going to end up just like your father.” He looked at her pointedly. “Who?” It was quiet for a moment. A French guy won the race. Carrie said, “You aren’t going to ask me how they’re doing?” “Well, all right, how are they doing, then?” Carrie shook her head. She packed her bags the next day. Stone thought sometimes of their first meeting. It was a blind date. Carrie’s sister and Stone’s cousin were an item, and they conspired to bring Carrie and Stone together one night at a drive-in movie. “Your name is Stone ?” That was the first thing Carrie said to him, her words peppered with affectionate laughter. She was quite pretty, black dreadlocks hanging just above her shoulders, green polka-dot dress. “For you, my name can be anything you like,” Stone zapped back, winking. She giggled, called him “Burt Reynolds” the rest of the night. They’d kissed by the time the end credits rolled. But when he thought of that now, it was like thinking about something he had seen on TV. Someone else’s life, a pleasant scripted story he could watch or shut off when he pleased. * * * * * Stone couldn’t find Robbie one morning. Birdseed was scattered across the table as usual, but this time it formed a trail to the window, which Stone realized he had accidentally left open overnight.

So Robbie had recovered. Had finally flown away. Stone thought of their time together, how Robbie had gone from a tiny broken thing to a confident and cheerful little guy. How he’d flap his fragile wings, as if he knew he wasn’t meant to stay here, in this kitchen, in this cage, in this life. Stone thought about how Robbie was out in the world now, discovering the magic of trees, of lady birds and nest building and eggs hatching. Robbie could perch on roofs to twitter to his pals and scour the mud for worms to feed his babies. And he could do that because of Stone. Maybe in an hour, a day, a year, he’d find his way back to this room. Pay Stone a visit. But maybe not. Perhaps he had already forgotten. Stone then did something he had not done in a long time. A small chuckle turned into great guffaws, seizing his belly and contorting his face, and soon the tears were streaming down his cheeks. He couldn’t stop for a long time. Then he gazed passively out the window. A neighbor shuffled down her driveway in bunny slippers to pick up the paper. A bumblebee crawled on the ledge. A teenage boy walked a golden retriever. Birds chattered and sang, but they sounded far away, sounded unfamiliar. Stone got up, stretched, ventured into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. He took the mug to the back patio. He left the sliding door open.