When I moved to my college town, the first semester was already going on for about two weeks, and it was basically impossible to find a decent room, so in the beginning - for about six months - I lived in situations most people would describe as adventurous. It was interesting at first, but very fast was becoming a living nightmare. And after a search, that felt like years, I finally found a place: a whole house for three people, nice housemates, not far away from university and all vital necessities nearby. The house was something you would expect from a old Grimm tale, a maze-like M.C. Escher nightmare with, for some unknown reason, very weirdly arranged rooms on half-levels, staircases that either ended in a kitchen or at the neighbors house or somehow in the garden or in the attic. It also had very large holes in what we prayed weren’t load-bearing walls, especially the one, which was ground-level and connected the house to the also rundown garden, which was basically just broken concrete with small sick islands of gras. But the garden had a nice cabin, which we shared with our neighbors, who also had a worn-down-as-hell house. Anyways, it was very, very, very cheap, so it was perfect. There was only one catch: The place had a cat. And it wasn’t that one of my two new flatmates had a cat, no, the building came with it. One of the former residents brought her into the house and when he left town the cat was so used to her newly conquered habitat, that he thought it would be the most humane thing, to just leave her and go on with his life. Another tiny part of his decision to leave her behind, might have been, that she was also crazy as hell, as you will come to learn in this story. Anyways, I had never owned a cat, so I was never able to develop an affection for these animals, plus, they come with a certain reputation of being dicks. I also remembered, that I was mildly allergic to felines, with a light pink rash on the skin test. So the cat was a problem. But I really wanted and also needed to move in, so I did, what I had to do: I ignored the shit out of her. I wasn’t greeting her, I wasn’t petting or caressing her, always avoided eye-to-cateye contact and trying to only feed her when it was absolutely necessary. When my flatmates were gone for a longer time, I basically just dumped a whole bag of cat food on the kitchen floor and just avoided stumbling over it when I was cooking. The cat was also totally banned from my room. So she was in my life but not a part of it. We continued this relationship of peacefully ghosting each other for about five months. It was almost at the end of my second semester, where I started settling. I had my favorite courses, my favorite clubs and bars, my favorite restaurants and I also established a fair amount of necessary acquaintances and even made some good friends. My new place had a big attic, where we studied and played table-tennis, but basically just hung out and got drunk. Most of the time, it was me and Philip & Philip, same name, different people, equally lovable. And with good friends always come their friends, and those are the ones, you *don’t* choose but still need to accept in your life. And they brought Thomas, one of those friend-of-friends, you can’t avoid. He was a weird, somewhat ugly guy, but handsome in a way, very smart and what you would call the life of every party. Just one of those guys everyone loved. I hated him instantly. But after a good amount of beers, I started beginning to slightly approve of the presence of this blue-eyed intruder. And it was exactly this moment, when something magical happened: The cat-lady of the house decided to pay us a visit. As usual, she would sneak up on us, using the couch next to the stairwell as a strategic cover, only to appear out of nowhere to scare the shit out of us. For the Philips and me, this was a totally normal behavior, we had witnessed this for many times, but not for Thomas, who hadn’t been at my place before. His handsome smile suddenly turned into a hideous grimace. Screaming in horror, he jumped up the couch (as if that would help with a cat!) screeching and mumbling incoherent whispers of terrified dread. He grabbed his stuff and ran down the stairwell, like someone, who was saving his last possessions from a fire. The cat was following him downstairs, apparently excited to suddenly find such an entertaining and unexpected prey and we listened to his horrified screams until the door to the street finally closed with a loud bang. As it turned out, Thomas was afraid of cats, and I don’t mean a little, it was a full-blown phobia. For him, being in a situation like this, was basically like drowning in a sea of spiders. The cat came back to the attic, that was now filled with loud laughter and looked at me with eyes you could only describe as mischievous. I looked at her with a lack of understanding and with the pride of an emotionally distant father, who just discovered that his little girl can knockout the strongest guy in high school. We smirked at each other, knowing, this would be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. She was called Mashura, named after a druggy 90’s happy-hardcore djane from Germany, a purple-haired, weird, life-is-a-party, techno queen; and that turned out to be a very fitting name. With black and brown colored fur and little yellow stripes, she was basically an eight pound wasp, but way more dangerous. Scalpel-like claws that would cut through metal, created to bring death to anything that moved but also, to gently massage your stomach for some reason. Eyes, that either warned you about the three seconds you have left to live, or stared into your soul with a fearless love. And with the affection of a loving friend, who only wants to cuddle and watch a movie with you, who, a few seconds later, transforms into an unpredictable, temperamental maniac, screaming „I’m not going to be IGNORED!!!“. I think it’s fair to say, if she would’ve been a human woman, I would have fallen for her in a matter of minutes. And from that infamous day on, I fought with my roomies to be the one, feeding, petting and caressing her, playing and cuddling with her, showing her my favorite movies and sharing my strawberry ice cream with her. I also was the one, who was rewarded with dead mice, with dead birds and one time, amazingly, with a fat dead rat, right there in front of my room next to Mashura, who meowed in pure joy. She wasn’t like a pet, more like a weird roommate and buddy who loved you, but still would mess with you on any occasion, basically like best friends would do. She was fully able of opening all kinds of doors: jumping on the handle, pushing it down with one paw, and using another paw to push away the door from the frame, creating a convenient slot for her to leave the room. Like any other cat, she also loved heights and was sitting on the shelves in the kitchen, silently watching you cooking, fully aware of the fact, that you haven’t noticed her yet, patiently waiting for the moment where you leave for one damn minute to wash your hands in the bathroom, just to come back and find her going down on your steak, which by now was dragged across the whole kitchen floor (as a student, I washed the steak with hot water and ate it in tasteless anger). And when she was sleeping next to me, I sometimes woke up in the middle of the night, just to find her watching me like a hawk, or maybe a vulture, making me almost shit myself. But that one time, she really outdid herself. It was wintertime in our snowy linen lands and our old building had an abandoned ground floor with no foundation and, like I said, a lot of big holes in the back wall. Bad for keeping temperatures humane in winter, but perfect for a cats free-roaming spirit. Since my room was on the first half-floor, but was directly connected to the L-shaped slanted stairwell that led from the kitchen to the ground floor, the door had a knob instead of a handle, to keep the cat from opening it in the middle of the night, which in winter would have resulted in my certain death, caused by freezing. I was sitting in my room, studying for an upcoming exam. It was one of those courses, where you study and study like a maniac but still couldn’t wrap your head around the subject matter, so you feel stupid and worthless, and you start getting angry and furious, asking if humanities endless struggles and basically all of its existence are worth this trouble at all. Mashura was outside, scratching at my door, searching for some entertainment. I wouldn’t let her in, trying to concentrate on the unsolvable mysteries of Media Theories and focussing on not going berserk. After an hour, she started getting really mad, scratching furiously at the door and jumping on the knob, trying to open it again and again, meowing, and somehow growling, like it would be the most vital part of her life to get into this particular room. I turned up the volume of the music and ignored her as good as I could, drinking loads of cheap energy drinks to compensate for the four hours of sleep I had that night and continued learning. After another hour, I started to understand a little bit, finally breaking down some of the topics of the prep paper, getting deeper and deeper into the tunnel, starting to find a little light at the end of it, and then understanding many of the problems, setting up connections, that made sense, breaking and breaking them into smaller pieces. Finally, *finally* a redeeming epiphany! Andy Dufresne – who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side. I was so happy, I couldn’t believe it! I also really, really needed to pee. So I hurried to my door to get to the toilet, only to realize, that I was locked in. I stood there in sheer wonder and disbelief and after a few seconds I figured out, what just happened: My keys were still on the outside of my door and my feline friend Mashuras relentless jumping and gripping and grabbing turned the key into the lock. Not much, just slightly enough to keep me from leaving my room. In this sudden realization of my entrapment I started shouting and screaming at the door, her, happily meowing at me, just happy to finally find some form of communication. Raging, with a bladder, that should have been emptied an hour before, I stood in the room and looked through it like a panicking animal, trying to find a container that felt appropriate to hold in approximately two liters of fermented, cheap dollar-store-red-bull, but there were no bottles or vases, or anything like that. In total desperation I started looking for grocery bags, but of course, I only had the ones out of paper, stupid environmentalism. I tried to call my flatmates multiple times. They didn’t answer and were probably out for the day, so I figured, there was only one way to pee. I rushed to one of the windows, which was about six feet above the sidewalk, jumped into the snow, only to realize that in the heat of the moment I forgot to put on any shoes, and ran to the little canal next to our house and relieved myself of a gallon of glowing-in-the- dark urine, trying not to moan like a pervert. I finished and rang my neighbors doorbell, who unfortunately were my friends and who opened the door with very confused faces, as they saw me standing there shoeless in my t-shirt at temperatures below zero. They let me in with a curious laugh and I avoided looking at them, only mumbling „Don’t ask...“ while I angrily walked through their kitchen to our garden to our backdoor into my house. There she was. Meowing. Purring. Rubbing her back on my legs. I turned the key and entered my room, freezing, changing my snow soaked socks, calling her things like „If Hitler had a cat.“, „God’s revenge for the sins of mankind.“ and „A pure catastrophe.“, fully aware of the beauty of this pun. She apologized to me by licking her ass in nonchalant indifference. Like I said: What best friends would do. Eighteen months and many beautifully weird stories passed by, and then she died. I came home one day and she was lying on the ground floor, meowing in a bad way, obviously in pain. My housemates and I drove her to the vet and we found out, that apparently someone in the neighborhood put out food that was poisoned, to kill the few rats that were roaming our backyard from time to time. And she just ate it. The vet handed us some medicine, told us to give it to her every hour and wished us good luck. My housemates and I came up with shifts, taking the now almost immobile cat, who just meowed in agony and peed herself, to our rooms and gave her the liquid medicine, that we had to apply to her throat, using a syringe, every time our alarm clocks hit the sixty minute mark. I had the last shift of her last 48 hours, that felt like weeks. The alarm went off and I put her back between my thighs, like a baby, starting to slowly feeding her the medicine while stroking her head. In clueless despair and total fear she would bite and shiver and cough, because medicine tastes bitter, and would look at me with wet eyes of hopelessness and agony and, this time, her lack of understanding. The coughing got stronger and stronger, the moaning stopped, and her head fell back between my knees, with open mouth and her tongue hanging out. I actually was able to take her back for a few seconds with mouth-to-nose ventilation, something I learned from a documentary on dogs, but her time was just up. We drove her back to the vet, who declared her dead and gave us two choices for what to do next. Either take her back and bury her in our backyard or, for the second choice, leave her there to be taking care of by something Germans call a „Tierkörperverwertungsstelle“, which roughly could be translated to „animal cadaver utilisation place“. Needles to say, we took her back to our house. My flatmates started to build a beautiful cross with her name. Also a fancy casket, made out of the shoebox she used to sleep in. We kept a head count of her killed prey on the fridge for years and glued it onto the casket, next to little pictures of birds and mice, of which we replaced their eyes with little X’s. I was in charge of digging the grave, which took me about three hours. German law says, that any dead animal needs to be buried seventy centimeters or around twenty-eight inches deep, to prevent scavengers like foxes from digging up your backyard, and after a third of the depth, it basically turns into what feels like shoveling concrete. In the evening, all of us were mentally and physically tired, hardly able to keep our eyes open but less able to close them, so we decided to invite our friends over to keep our minds occupied and to have a little barbecue and drink a few beers. We called them and told them our cat died, without sharing any details of the last two days, and an hour later about fifteen people showed up in our backyard, armed with basically every bottle of liqueur they could find in their sideboards. We started barbecuing and drinking and everyone literally had ten stories about Mashura to tell, one weirder and funnier than the other, leaving us crying in laughter for the rest of the night. One friend told us, she almost broke her neck slipping on the cats vomit, barely avoiding falling down the stairwell. I thought about strawberry-ice-cream-cat-puke and smiled. Another friend once crashed on our couch, because he passed out drunk, and in the morning almost had a heart attack, because when he woke up, Mashura was staring at him, an inch away from his face. Also, basically everyone at some point was holding her up, like you would with a newborn lion, loudly chanting a fake-african-jibberish-song, long before we knew, that cultural appropriation was a bad thing. And of course, everyone was tearing up with pure joy, listening to the story of that one time Mashura made Thomas run down the staircase, fearing for his life. They stayed for a while longer and after a few hours, everyone left, taking a beer for the way and a little bit of the pain. And that was it. A few month ago, many years after her funeral, I saw Thomas again. We are friends now, because sometimes people change, of which I mean myself, and we had a really nice chat, catching up after a long time. But there were these small moments during our conversation, tiny little things he said, that still annoyed me, and where I thought: „Man, I wish I had my cat with me right now!“ and I could just take her out of my bag, hold her in front of his face, just to see him screaming and running away, high-fiving her afterwards and smirking together at this stupid idiot! But then I remembered, that I was still the one, who once got locked out of his own room by the same cat. So...


I awoke in Anna’s dark wood cabin on the mountain. The rain was showering down outside. I tried to pull myself together, to think about how I got there. All I could remember was that I was hiking on holiday with my girlfriend, she looked up at the sky and it began to rain. “It’s boiling around my cabin, wanna roast some kittens?”, remembering Anna’s dark humour telling me what the forecast was made me smile. Whatever lay before me and her, this heavy rain, didn’t fit into place. It seemed to be planned. I felt the wall and found a light switch which I flipped on. Looking around the cabin, I saw that I was the only human presence in the place save the news reporter on the TV talking about the disappearances around the county. I couldn’t ever stand the news, so I grabbed the remote and turned it off. Once I had silence I sat down on the sofa I woke up on to see if I had any messages on my phone. Damn, nothing. Where Anna could be was beyond me, she should have been there in the Cabin. I had no way of calling her, the heavy rain made the signal virtually non-existent. But even more alarming was that looking around, I could see a note on the front door reading“Find me”. I had no idea if this note had a hidden meaning but it made the matter of getting to her all the more pressing. I had promised to take Anna on this holiday so I could calm her down. Over the last couple of weeks, the life un-expectedly started to drain out of her. Also her humour got progressively darker which, admittedly, I enjoyed. And now it was possible that she had been taken by someone. I wasn’t prepared to leave Anna in danger, so I got up from the sofa to make an effort to find her. There was a cupboard next to the back door of the cabin. Upon going to it and looking inside, I saw that among some un-organised house trinkets, there was a sturdy blue golf umbrella. Not much in the way of explaining the situation but certainly a valuable tool right then. As I approached the front door, I peered out of the window to assess where I would go. My heart sank as I looked at the landscape to see it was completely different to the view of the serene village I had been in only a day prior. The cabin on the mountainside was instead overlooking an endless pine forest, the tips of the dark trees against the dark blue sky made the place look agitated. The hairpin bend path lined with steps going down the mountain led to another, ancient looking building appearing to be a mansion. In the dark I couldn’t make out much about it. It was situated in the pine trees next to the mountainside. I would not have gone to the intimidating building save for the fact that the lights were on, which meant hope for finding Anna. Opening the front door of the cabin, I was met with a huge bluster of wind and rain spitting on my face. As the rain hit my skin I began to worry, the hope drained out of me and I nearly went back inside. Closing the door behind me, I opened the umbrella before starting down the mountain path, unusually making my angst fade. While walking in my bubble of protection the umbrella offered me from the desolate sea of rain, I reassured myself I was acting like a hero for Anna. ‘We’ll be together soon. I’ll have her in my arms’ I thought. Just then as I thought that, my phone vibrated. I immediately looked at my phone, to my surprise, to see I still had no signal of any kind. I opened the message, it was from Anna. “We’ll be together forever” I was definitely startled by this, where she could have been was far beyond me. Obviously she or whoever was really sending me messages knew something I didn’t about this miserable place, so I pressed on for the mansion in the cold showering gloom. Finally, I had turned the last bend and was walking the path to the front entrance of the un-inviting mansion. I found it strange that the front entrance should be facing the mountainside, expecting people to come from the Cabin. Because I was closer in the rain and now able to see all of the features, I could see that the mansion was more rough looking than I originally believed it to be. It was covered in messy, frustrated brambles that also loomed their way through the garden. At the same time, whoever lived here had very expensive and very acquired taste. The garden surrounding the path leading up to the entrance had a crowd of immaculate stone carvings of people. All of the figures looked terrified, as if they were afraid of being smitten. Some of them looked as if they were suffocating. I arrived at the front door and knocked, looking at the lit room beyond the blurred glass on the top half of the door. After vaguely hearing some feet shuffling an extremely frail looking figure with strings of long hair coming down from the scalp appeared in the hallway, piercing the brightness of the room beyond. The figure came to the door and rattled with the lock a little before opening it. As the figure opened the door, it looked at me menacingly with jittering facial features. “Anna”, I said. “What happened to you, you look like you’ve aged a hundred years”. Anna coughed and one of her teeth fell out before forming a smile “I do look pretty good don’t I?”, said Anna in a voice withered with age. “Anna who took you here, who did this to you”, I asked. “Me, this is my house, it’s all mine. I have to say, I didn’t think I’d make it much longer this time”. “Anna, babe, what happened, what do you need”, I said with confused adrenaline running through me. “I need you, I’ll die if I don’t have you”. “But what do you need from me”. “Life”, said Anna with a curve forming on her lips. At that moment I found it unbelievable that I had laughed at that same darkhumour so many times. “Babe, I don’t know what’s got into you but we need to leave now OK, your cabin’s on the mountainside, maybe we can get back that way”. Anna wheezed and slowly raised her meatless arm to point towards her cabin. Looking towards it, myhope shattered to see that the cabin was nowhere to be seen, neither was the mountain. It was just us two in Anna’s real home surrounded by endless empty forest. “You’re not Anna, who are you?”, I demanded. Anna’s face then shifted to be more sinister. “Rain”, upon her saying this, her bodily features all began turning to water before my eyes “Don’t you recognize me?”. Her face faded into liquid and she was finally a blob. I did not care where I would go, but I dropped the umbrella and ran. A foolish mistake though as once I was exposed to the rain again I felt shameful and weak. In panic, I scrambled as fast as my feet would carry me, sympathising with all of the stone figures surrounding me. Darting left, I could see an opening in the pine trees that I immediately went for. The rain however, made me hesitate and I tripped on what can only be described as water that wouldn’t move. As soon as I had realised this, the rain was engulfing me. When it had done so from head to toe there was a surge of pain going through my nerves and I could feel the life being drained out of me. I regained consciousness later on to find that I had joined the other stone figures, I was one of them. I was still alive although it seemed all the substance of my life had been robbed from me. The downpour had stopped and the sun was shining. I could see that the messy brambles were gone from the garden and it actually looked like an inviting place to be. I did not see the rain, but instead Anna standing before me. She looked younger than when I had first met her and she was awkwardly turning one of her feet on its toe in the dress I got her for her birthday. “I am so sorry I had to do that”. And supposedly just as innocent as when I had first met her too. She definitely got what she needed from the trip. The colour was back in her face and life seemed to have returned to her. I didn’t have enough of my life in me left to feel anger of resentment at her, I still don’t. And so I stand here, a stone figure with the memories of a person. Remaining idle until the rain gets hungry again and claims another un-suspecting fool.


He comes in asking for coat hangers. “Not the plastic kind. The metal ones,” he says, making a gesture like he is unbending and rebending the curved part of an imaginary coat hanger in his hands. The part that makes a hanger, a hanger. He’s tall and big. I’d say about six foot, two-forty, with a noticeable belly. He’s wearing a black hoodie – hood up – with red basketball shorts that went to his knees, and black skater shoes. Not a single thing he was wearing was clean, or without any rips or tears. His voice is deep and loud. Not the kind of deep you’re thinking of: low pitched, bassy. No, his voice was deep, like it came from the dark and lonely allies in the otherwise thriving city at the bottom of his stomach. It carries from his diaphragm, through his chest, out his mouth, and all the way to the back of the dollar store. The way you’d talk if there was an urgent problem, but you knew exactly how to solve it. Now let me tell you something about his chest. It’s infected. Badly. I know this because, before the kid in the green apron could point him to aisle three, he let out a loud, heaving cough. Like it was accompanied with a yell. Like a man being vocally overdramatic about an orgasm. But it explains the deep, congested voice, the air of each word being forced through a defense of dark green mucus that has been mobilizing for days, perhaps weeks. It also explains the snorts. You’ve heard people with the sniffles, right? They have a runny nose, they sniff, and it sends that falling bit of snot right back up their nasal cavity, into their throat, down their esophagus and into their stomach. On one hand, you empathize; having a runny nose is worse than you simply having to endure the sound of the sniffles. On the other hand, you fantasize about shoving a Kleenex – you don’t even know where you got it – right in their annoying face. Not this guy. These snorts were satanic. I didn’t even realize the full extent of their ugliness until he’s right there behind me in line. I have my headphones on – three-quarter volume – but his deep, glutaral snort easily surpassed the soft, orchestral drums of *Rocket Builder.* A cough-yell, and I’m focusing on keeping my eyes straight ahead. A snort, and I’m trying not to look bothered. Buddy in front of me, Jewish looking guy with glasses, takes a step forward and turns his head. Unsuccessful conspicuousness proved that he’s taking in every inch of this guy. Pretending not to stare, but obviously doing so. I take another step forward myself, keeping my eyes forward. But now I do something strange. I take my headphones off my head and droop them around my neck. I wonder why I did that? I wonder if anyone else wonders why I did that. I wonder, why the coat hangers, why metal specifically? The unbending gesture… Chest Infection takes another step, as lines go. Now, he is a little closer. A cough-yell, and now I glance back for a millisecond, hoping to see any evidence of an attempt to suppress the spread of whatever he was suffering from. My sigh of relief. “Fuck me, excuse me” he remarks. I thought about who might’ve followed that advice, in that order. He snorts, and this time, I listen. I really listen, thinking, what is this sound? I mean, I know it’s just a snort, but it’s not any regular snort. This is much more like something else, but I just can’t place it. I’m pondering and I’m interrupted by another cough-yell, just as loud as the other ones, except this time, a small, dark sticky green chunk of infected mucus splattered onto a small Doritos bag beside me. For some reason, I feel like I can smell it. My reaction is to step forward, which prompted Chest Infection to follow my cue. Problem was, Jewish glasses guy front of me never moved forward, so now all three of us are crammed together. Another snort, and I realize: it’s a pig. He snorts deep, like someone is hitting a small bass drum in his chest, but inhumanly fast, each beat as loud and tonal as the last. There was no fluctuation in pitch, no evidence of liquid. Just pure mucus, which lead me to believe he really needed one of the three bottles of water he had bundled in his left hand. In his right hand, a small basket barely hanging from his pale fingers. Inside were a single pack of about twenty-five metal coat hangers, white dish cloths, and rubbing alcohol. A cough-yell and I brace myself, this time visually as well as mentally. A swinish snort. An oink. The woman in front of Jewish-Glasses is now called to the counter, allowing Jewish-Glasses to make a temperate escape from the barrage of obstructive pulmonary disease that was raining down on us. Luckily the woman, pregnant girl in her late twenties, is two whole immune systems away from Chest Infection during the duration of her stay at the dollar store cash line. The small, pregnant girl steps up to the counter, where she fumbles her future purchases – three king sized Snickers bars, prepackaged bundles of forks, spoons and knives, and a – A cough-yell. Followed inevitably by a disease-fueled oink that belongs nowhere but barnyards and hospitals. Jewish-Glasses takes the pregnant girl’s former spot in line, Chest Infection closing the gap between him and myself with haste. In the midst of her fumbling, the tiny pregnant girl drops one of her Snickers bars on the poorly mopped floor. She makes a quick attempt to pick it up, but her soon-to-be baby was not having any of it. She teeters from heel to toe, in hopes the momentum from the forward lean would give her the push she needed to stretch all the way to the floor, but her belly is preventing her from bending over. Jewish-Glasses, being the nice guy I’m sure he is, runs over and picks it up, placing it gently on the counter. “Thanks,” she said, a smile on her face revealing a traintrack of braces tacked to the top row of her teeth. She is now holding her belly the way pregnant women do, the way that you can immediately tell they’re pregnant, even if they’re not showing. “No problem. We won’t let that baby win this battle,” Jewish-Glasses replies. “No, but it certainly won this one,” she says, holding up the three Snickers bars. “Have a good night.” “Yourself as we– “ A cough-yell. Right in my fucking ear. I didn’t realize how close he was, and now I can feel his breath through my flannel jacket. “Damnit,” blurts out Chest Infection, sounding agitated. Becoming increasingly obvious how disgusting he is. By now, the cashier is finished scanning the pregnant girl’s things. She pays, smiles again at Jewish-Glasses, and slowly makes her way out of the store. Jewish-Glasses takes her spot, and I am called to another register. My things – three light bulbs, a pack of dish sponges and dish soap – were quickly scanned, and I practically follow the pregnant girl out. I took one last look at her as she wandered into the busy street, bag in one hand, half-eaten Snickers bar in the other. I can’t stop thinking about those coat hangers.


Llau watches him quietly at her mother’s bedside, still clasping her wrinkled, withered hand in both of his own, his head bowed in a facsimile of prayer. Like a statue he stayed motionless, even after the rest of the mourners had run out of tears to give and goodbyes to leave behind. He sat there, unmoving, even as the sun dipped down below the mountains and the moon rose to shine solemnly above them both. Llau’s own sorrow still lingers, her tear tracks not yet dry, but she engulfs the emotion in her heart as she wanders unsteadily towards them, on legs too weak to fully support her. Her mother had never gotten the chance to see her walk in the end. She had always grown slower than the other children. While her nursery mates began to totter unsteadily on their feet she had still rolled happily on the ground, her uncoordinated limbs getting trapped in the underwrappings. While they began shooting up in height, beginning to run and play she had crawled complacently after them, her body still round and soft while theirs began to sharpen, their muscles growing strong with action. Now they tower over her, comfortable in bodies which have reached adulthood while she still stagnates in the thralls of childhood. She reaches her parents finally and tugs gently on her father’s sleeve. Her mother she glances at only peripherally, almost too scared to look closely at that gentle, peaceful face, in case she fools herself that her mother only sleeps, that she will wake up to smile and kiss her cheeks lovingly once more. But she looks anyway in the end, to imprint her elderly visage in her mind, because even then she realises that she must keep her mother’s memory safe, from time and the failings of her own mind. Her father eventually stirs at her third tug. He releases her mother’s hand reluctantly, arranging it beside her body almost in a quiet trance. He turns to Llau belatedly, his face frozen still in grief even as he tousles her hair with gentle, wrinkled hands. He looks back at her mother once again, before finally closing his eyes to turn away and stand. She had known her father as an old man first. Now he shifts, slowly and gradually. His bent back seems to straighten like a flower rising up to meet the sun. His grey, thinned hair turns black and abundant, his wrinkles ironing out of his skin and all the age spots which Llau had known like landmarks disappearing into nothing. Finally his body stands before her, young in a way she had never known. The stranger kneels before her in a way her father would never have been able to accomplish with his stiff, rickety knees. He opens his arms invitingly and speaks in a voice that sounds different, erased of all the hoarseness of age. “Let us go, Llau.” She hesitates. The stranger simply watches her with all the patience of something ancient. It is a strange sight, to see familiar eyes exactly as she had known them for all her life but transplanted into a unfamiliar young visage. Later on she will return to this town, the site of her mother’s grave. She will see it changed by the toll of decades, see her mother’s legacy grown and spread into half-legend. She will see her old nursery mates old and withered, yet content with their own grandchildren and great-grandchildren while she still lingers in young adulthood. She will weep in the knowledge that her passage of time lies separate to all others, a knowledge that she will never be able to reconcile. But now she wipes her tears away with the clumsy hands of a toddler, before stepping hesitantly forward into her father’s embrace. Now she simply lays her head down on her father’s shoulder, sniffling as he patiently wipes the last of her tears and snot away with a sleeve as they finally leave the healing wards, to disappear quietly into the night.


Albert had driven a cab for 15 years. It suited him well. Everyone argued over shifts, but Albert loved the graveyard shift. No need to fight anyone for that, he was the only one that liked to work at night. To him there was something special about the night air and the dark streets. It felt relaxing, but also slightly threatening. Thousands of fares a year for 15 years. That’s alot of people. Good people, bad people. People talk sometimes, sometimes not. Some want silence, others want a good listener. Albert could provide both. One night Albert picked up a fare on the outskirts of town. He looked old and weary. He handed Albert $300 and asked if that was enough to get a ride for the next few hours. Albert told him yes then asked where he wanted to go. It was about 11pm. “I want to go to where the people are”, the man said. Albert began to drive downtown. There was a club. “Stop here”, the man said. Albert parked the cab, the man got out and walked in. About 15 minutes later the man came back. “Let’s go”, he said. Albert thought the man looked more energized that before, less weary maybe. Probably just Albert’s imagination. What did the man do inside? He wasn’t the typical club goer. On they drove. The next stop was outside the bus station. “I’ll be back”, was all the man said. About a half hour later he opened the rear door and sat down in the seat. He was quiet now. It was about 1am now, they drove back to the edge of town. “Stop here”, the man said. He got out. He walked up to Albert’s window. He said “have a good evening”. Albert looked at him, maybe it was his imagination but the man now looked 20 years younger. The man saw the look on Albert’s face and flashed a quick smile before walking away off into the field until he was out of sight. “That was a strange fare”, Albert mused to himself. Albert had a few more fares that night before his shift ended. When he finally made it home he made himself a sandwich and sat down to watch the news. There was a breaking story. There had been 3 deaths the previous evening. There were 2 men found dead behind the bus station, and one found dead behind the club that Albert had taken the man to. There was no additional info released by the police at that time. Albert went and reported all of this to the police. He showed them where he took the man, where he had dropped him off. Albert saw the news several days later. The police released the cause of death of the men. Police found no evidence of foul play. They advised for people to be on the lookout for wolves, and to be careful. It seems the men had been victims of the same animal or animals. There were teeth marks on the remnants of their rib cages. Their hearts and livers had been eaten...


Major Daniels gets on the comms. "Take a close look at that hologram, folks. 'Humanity doesn't deserve to live. Change my mind.' A year ago, we encountered a foreign intelligence. They did not come on friendly terms. They came here, tried to taunt us. Well, they insulted the wrong motherf**cking species. This is the moment that defines all that we've worked to do. So let's give 'em hell." A slight pause. "Green team, status report." Sergeant Peters replies. "Hot Toy is armed and ready to deploy. Just waiting on the window, Major. Over." Major Daniels feels a rush of exhilaration, a mixture of fear and strange battle joy. The work of an entire year, the most important one in history, will be defined by the coming minute. Hot Toy is a hydrogen bomb with a 100 megaton yield, the equivalent of nearly 8,000 Hiroshima bombs. It's the biggest bomb ever made. When it blows, hell itself won't compare. Let's see how the aliens handle it. During the last year humanity has tried everything to deal with the floating menacea single ship that showed up looking like the Grim Reaper. A f**cking floating Grim Reaper. Imagine that. No one knows for certain why the ship decided to show up that way. It certainly hasn't deployed weapons of any kind, at least not physical ones. It's psychological impact, however, has been untold. For the past year, violent crime has sky-rocketed. Civil unrest is at its peek. Entire governments have collapsed. Most questions regarding the visitors are divisive. Their challenge has triggered a lot of debate. Religious groups are saying it's the judgement of God and we should submit to it out of reverence. Others, like the major, have a different idea. Major Daniels glances at the clock. T-minus 30. 'Does humanity deserve to live?' he thinks. 'How about we answer that question when 100 megatons of sheer atomic power vaporize your hull, you alien bastards? Yeah, humanity deserves to motherf**cking live. Any species deserves to live if they have the balls to detonate a virtual sun in their backyard. Burn everything hard and fast and take their enemies with them. Turn their enemies into vapor and maybe some smoke. You want to ask if humanity deserves to live? We'll show you why!' Major Daniels looks at the clock. T-minus 10. His heart beats fast. T-minus 5...4...3...2...1. The sky lights up. A ball of flame like the sun envelops the reaper. A shockwave travels across the expanse. Wind roars. A long time passes, then eventually the glow of the blast starts to fade. After that, minutes tick by. The major watches breathlessly. When the last of the explosion has cleared, he's terrified to see the reaper remains. He feels a knot in his stomach, pressure in his chest. He opens the comms and makes the obvious announcement, a chill in his voice. "Target is still operative." As if on cue, the reaper moves, and as it does its scythe raises in the air. Without warning, a new message broadcasts, and in a single moment shocks the whole world. "Wow, guys. Good show. We were beginning to think we weren't going to see the fireworks. If you're wondering what we mean, well you're famous. You are the only species in the quadrant crazy enough to detonate nuclear weapons in your own atmosphere. We had to see it for ourselves. Sorry about showing up so unexpectedly. We were just really excited. As for the whole 'does humanity deserve to live' thing, that's what our friends back at home suggested we ask. You know, make you guys think we were sinister and all. We'll be sure to leave you a positive review for the trouble. You'll do great. A lot of tourism is heading your way, we're sure of it. Have a wonderful rest of your day!" And with that, it turns and blasts off into space.


My mother. She was an interesting case. While she was was not perfect, she was important to me. I thank the stars for the time I had with this woman. Unfortunately not all of my memories are good ones. My mother came from a rather wealthy family in the area. When my father, fresh out of university, asked her father for her hand, there was no sign of deliberation or hesitation in his face, not a single thought as he uttered a single word, "yes". At least that is how my father told it. I was born a sick little boy. My mother, had a difficult childbirth which was not uncommon at the time. As my mother was unable to care for me, I was supplied with a nanny of sorts during this time who lived in the servant quarters in the back. She and my mother grew quite close forming a bond that a mother forms for her child. While all this time my father drifted farther away. The last straw was when my nanny removed the nails to the windows in my mother's room. My father had nailed them shut for fear she would toss me out of one. He had the nanny removed that very night. In the morning, the nanny was gone, as was my mother and I. They had taken me to the next county over where they took residence on a small share crop with a one room cabin. This is where I lived until my father rescued me at the age of 12. It is unknown to me whether they were lovers, but I called them both mother. My mothers kept me isolated on the farm most of the time so I had little interaction with other children. They had me convinced that our little plot of dust was the only thing in the world that mattered. There were other farmers whose children seemed to have it all. It is during this time I learned that by that running the backroads until dark, I could run until I couldn't remember. A man was making a house call to a business associate of one of his patrons in the next county over, the one where I lived. He heard from the townspeople of two women on the outskirts of town barely scraping by on a farm with a child. They couldn't say if the child was male or female, only that they were certain had never seen a doctor, let alone a dentist. So, being a man of charity, but not of god, he went to find this “family” to see if he could be of service. I ran and hid behind some bales of straw when I saw the man pull up in his auto. I was scared because I had seen so few cars as well as grown men in my life. My mother (the nanny) was the first to run from the house in tears. She was followed soon after by my mother who looked older than she should. The man was last to leave the house carrying my other set of clothes which he tossed in the bushes after examining them for only enough time to recognise them as the tattered rags they were. He explained to me that he was taking me shopping and to a restaurant, both of which intrigued and frightened me as much as the man leading me to his car. Once a safe distance away, he pulled out a photo from amongst a stack of old papers from the glovebox. It was of the man and my mother and what I assumed to be me as a newborn baby. I could barely tell that the young smiling woman in the photo was the same as the one I watched running from the house. The one who raised me had more wrinkled skin than not from the dirt and sun and toil and poverty. I don't remember how she looked with a smile as that was not how we lived, smiling seemed a luxury of the leisure class that we were not apart of. It didn't take long for me to get used to my new life with my father. After several months my father returned with my mother. She never looked like the woman from the photo again. We never really spoke about these times, only in hushed tones hoping not to remember too much.


This is part 1 of a novella that I've been working on. If you like it, link to my recently published book and website are at the bottom. Thanks for reading :)  **1. Routine** The snow had just begun to fall when Jonas opened the tired, wooden door of his cabin and stepped outside, the warmth at his back swallowed instantly by the chilled mountain air. A pair of massive, fur-covered snowshoes jangled restlessly at his side. The sky had taken on an orange tint as the sun sank low in its arc. It was only half-past three and it was clear the days were still growing shorter. In the distance, dark clouds were building. Jonas knew that by nightfall the snow could be several feet deep. While most would have been preparing for the oncoming storm, he felt completely at ease. The worse the weather, the less likely he would be to run into hikers on the upper trails. Tourists tended to turn back at the first sign of inclement weather. Over the years, Jonas had become adept at navigating the mountain through clear skies and whiteouts. He would need to be cautious, but the storm wouldn’t be a problem. The cabin he called home for the last five years was positioned five miles off the nearest hiking trail. The terrain leading to it was largely considered impassable. Occasionally there were some overzealous youths who fancied themselves explorers, but Jonas tried to think about them as little as possible. They never made it very far and ended up paying the ultimate price for their foolishness. He took one last look at the warmth of his cabin windows, picked up his pack, and promised to have a good drink by the fire upon his return. The trees around his cabin shook as the wind blew through them with a hollow whine. Jonas popped in a pair of ear buds and put on a classic rock playlist. The foreboding noises of the forest were drowned out by a riff from Rush. It was a song about warring trees, and he chuckled as he began his walk. The way to the main trail was treacherous, running the gamut between steep ravines and technical, rocky switchbacks. When Jonas had arrived, the path was nearly impassable. Over the years, he had slowly worked away at it, making each trip a little easier, at least for someone who knew his way. For others, one step could mean the difference between life and death. Spending every waking moment on the mountain made Jonas surefooted. Walking through the forest filled him with a sense of pride. He considered how blessed the last five years had been. Back in the city, something as simple as ordering a cup of coffee was a struggle. The navigation of small talk was like strolling through a minefield. Often, by the time he had thought of something to say, minutes had passed and people were staring. As a result, he had made the decision to live reclusively, which, in a small town, wasn’t exactly accepted. While Jonas might have been slightly abnormal in his distaste for conversation, he was otherwise ordinary. He possessed a slightly above-average IQ, moderate good looks, and was tall enough that no one questioned him for long. Overall, he had rolled lucky genetic dice and he hated it. His appearance made others think he was approachable, and that just made things harder. Despite his retreat into the mountains, Jonas had still managed to keep himself clean-shaven, resisting the urge to grow his beard out to mythical proportions. Though he never saw anyone, self-grooming had become a ritual and there was comfort in repetition. On most days, his activities followed a set plan and he took great ease from the structure: no interruptions, no distractions, just life. By the time he reached the main hiking trails, the clear skies had turned slate grey and heavy white flakes were falling intermittently. He stopped, unshouldered his pack, and took out his earbuds with a sigh. The storm would be good for deterring hikers, but it meant he wasn’t going to be leaving any tracks either. *I guess they’ll just have to do with a few slashes and samples.* Jonas’s employers weren’t particular about how he worked, so long as he got the job done. He unclipped the snowshoes and examined them for abnormalities. They had been specially designed to leave authentic footprints; any variation might tip off an eager cryptozoologist to the fallacy. While they were covered in brown fur, the tread had been constructed from an artificial, semi-soft plastic meant to resemble organic material. Jonas wasn’t sure how closely anyone would check the tracks he left, but his employers’ word was law. Satisfied that they were in working order, Jonas strapped the shoes on and pulled the rest of his suit from the bag. To the untrained eye, it might have just appeared to be a bundle of matted fur. To Jonas, it was his second life. With ease, he slipped into the suit, fastened it tight, and pulled up the thick hood. It had been reinforced to make his head appear about twice its normal size and was great for keeping out the chill. The finishing touch to the ensemble was a pair of gloves meant to look like large, furry paws. Embedded in the tip of each finger was a long, razor-sharp claw. He slid his hands in and swiped experimentally at a tree to his left, leaving four long gouges in the bark. The claws tore through the wood like tissue paper, sending strips of wood flying. Satisfied, Jonas grinned. In the suit, he felt more like himself than he did anywhere else. He buried his pack in the snow beneath the tree he had marked and set off. Even with the empty slopes, Jonas kept his performance authentic. His casual walk became a thick lumber, every breath was a primal grunt. Ordinarily he would have stuck to the higher elevation trails, but the weather provided a unique opportunity. The closer he got to the beginner hiking areas, the more likely his samples were to be discovered. *No one makes the History Channel without taking a few risks.* Once he felt he was close enough, Jonas started the real work. For hours he ran through the growing storm, snapping small trees like twigs, slashing at bark, and occasionally ripping out a chunk of fur to leave on a branch. The samples had been custom-curated by his employer to be unidentifiable and able to withstand harsh conditions. The wind whipped, snow fell in heavy flakes, and Jonas listened gleefully as his howls echoed off the empty forest surrounding him. The evening was perfect. He felt a lightness in his heart that was rare, even on the best of days. Jonas turned his head toward the sky to stare into the abyss above and became lost in the snowfall. A blinding white light erupted from the trees, shattering his calm and freezing Jonas in place. *Oh no,* he thought, feeling the happiness melt out of him, leaving behind a cold lump in his chest. The light was unmistakably directed at him, and despite the thicket between him and the source, he knew he had been seen. Knowing already what the answer was, Jonas turned his head to look for the source. Not ten feet away was a frost-covered hiker in a bright orange coat, visibly shivering. *Shit, and today was going so well.* “Hello? Thank goodness I found you, I got lost and can’t seem to make my way back to the main trail.” The hiker’s voice quavered. *How could I have missed him?* The answer was obvious. *You were careless, you stupid son of a bitch.* “Sir, I can see you there. Can you please help me? My cell is dead.” *Turn the light away, idiot.* Jonas could only pretend for so long. “Please help me.” The tremor in his voice grew. *Should have just walked away.* Jonas took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the trees. The white light nearly blinded him and he lifted a massive, fur-covered arm to shield his eyes. At a distance the suit might have seemed intimidating, but in the cold close-up of a flashlight there was no way the hiker would believe it. The hiker stared forward, silent, and confused. Jonas let out what he intended to be a primal yowl, but it died in his throat along the way. *All that practice for nothing.* He stamped the large snow shoes, kicking up miniature flurries, adding to the storm. It did the trick. The hiker turned and started to run. The light of the flashlight was suddenly gone, leaving the forest in full dark once more. Jonas watched as the cone of light bounced away. *Maybe he’ll run off a cliff or freeze to death.* It was no use, he was out of options. The risk of the hiker making it back down the mountain was too great, and his employers had been very specific about loose ends. Jonas steeled himself and took chase. It had taken a while in the early years, but as time passed, he had become quite adept at running in the snowshoes. In no time at all, he caught up to the man who was stumbling and tripping his way through the growing snowpack. “I’m really sorry about this,” yelled Jonas, and he brought one of his clawed hands down in a sweeping arc. It caught the hiker across the back, splashing hot blood across the snow in garish red stripes. The hiker screamed and fell to his knees, clutching where he had been struck. A pool of red began to form around him, melting the fresh snow. Jonas had cut deep. The hiker gagged and spluttered, trying desperately to breathe but inhaling only his own blood. He pressed one gloved hand to the wound and reached out to Jonas with the other as if still expecting help. His eyes bulged, pleading, and terrified. “Jesus,” Jonas muttered. “I really am sorry about that.” He always tried to make the end as quick as possible but had missed his mark this time. The end was bad enough when the executioner was a professional. He took aim, careful and precise this time, and plunged his claws through the back of the hiker’s neck, ending his life with a hollow gurgle. Time slowed for a minute and the forest went silent. Jonas was alone once again. *Each time it gets a little easier.* Pulling the claws out, he sat back in the snow, panting and watching the steam rise into the air. Dizziness and nausea swept over him. Botched kills were never easy to look at. Hot frustration bubbled up from inside. “That’s why there are signs, moron!” he yelled to the quickly freezing corpse. “Don’t stay in the park after dark!” If the people of Clearwater just obeyed the rules, there would be far less bloodshed. Their ignorance as always astounded Jonas. For a few minutes, he just stood there, next to the body, catching his breath. He might have been good at it but running in the suit was no easy feat. The storm had briefly abated, allowing pale moonlight to illuminate the scene. It was grizzly but looked genuine. Despite the ugly nature of it, Jonas had done his job and done it well. He took off one of his gloves and pulled out a cell phone. With frozen fingers, he typed: “Bigfoot kills again. Third hiker found on the north side of the mountain this year.” He looked it over, added his GPS location, and pressed send.


I had spent months laughing at her jokes, adoring her take up every hour of my time and enjoying every moment with her. All it took for me to drive her away was a brief look at my past. I watched as she sat there on the station, soaking wet, the rain pouring down on her despite her umbrella. All I could feel as I watched her was a need to help her into my car, dry off and show her again that I loved her. I knew she would never see me again by choice. She knew who I really was and I frightened her. I had never felt so much loneliness before. For someone so close she felt so far away. Reflecting back on my life now she was the best thing that ever happened to me, yet she also caused me more pain than I ever thought I could feel in a lifetime. It scared me how much I could feel for someone I had known for such a short time but it also made so much sense. She was my completion, she calmed me, she understood me and made sense of me, and I her. I can still hear her words from our last fight. She yelled at me for lying, for being someone else someone she didn’t know. She was right about me. Maybe I lied, but it was to protect me, no, protect us from the people who would try to hurt me through her. And I could not let that happen. Her train was pulling up to the station. It groaned forward, an automaton moving on its track. I watched her get up, her beauty never dampened even by the rain and I watched as she went to board the train. The doors opened, and she began to move. She picked up her sodden cases, folded her soaked umbrella and moved towards the train carriage. I started my car engine and prepared for the girl I loved to leave my life forever. The first shot came from the other side of the car park and missed her entirely, burying itself in the train carriage. The second shot tore through her right shoulder, slamming her into the train. I was frozen in horror and could only watch as the third and fourth bullet entered her chest and stomach. The fifth and final bullet hit her in the heart and I swear I could feel her life drain out of her. She slumped against the train, bleeding and broken. Before she hit the ground I got out of my car and sprinted to her. I held her to my chest, she lay there looking into my eyes and quietly whispered to me: “I forgive you”. I held her tighter, now covered in her blood and I made the decision then, to hunt down whoever had done this, and I was going to destroy them. Nothing was going to stop me…   *I wrote this for school and my teacher said it was good.


There was once, on Earth, a land and a time around the Middle Ages, now lost to mankind. This is the story of that land and that time which has rediscovered in the dusty bowels of an ancient library of a long empty monastery deep in the Carpathian Mountains. The land was full of war between magic and knights, barbarians and samurai. Magic was and is real, and had thousands of followers. One of those was Richard Cotter. Chapter 1 Richard Cotter was born into a poor family in the countryside of England. He had many siblings who all died young. Not from diseases or infections such as Pneumonia, but rather from attacks by mythical creatures such as the werewolf and vampyr. Because of this his parents decided it would be best for him to train in sorcery, to protect them and himself. At the age of 10 he became an apprentice to the mysterious Mr.Yellard, he trained into combat using magic as a weapon but also using magic to heal. Richard hated his master for he was abusive to him, the only way he could practice fighting was to fight his much stronger master and the only time he could practice healing was to have his master hurt him. He rarely saw his family as he was only allowed one five day break from training in the whole year. He visited them every christmas. The Christmas of his fifteenth year was the last time he visited them. Walking the snow covered path through the wood to their farm Richard sensed there was something wrong. Stooping as he entered through the low door his eyes adjusted to the darkness inside, Richard found his parents lay dead on the floor with blood pooling around them. He immediately thought it to be the work of the local knight who hated all sorcerers and their families. He walked out with a sense of boiling anger and hatred. He hopped onto his horse Kelly, named after the famous 15th century sorcerer Edward Kelly, and rode off. His only thought was of death. After the long ride, Richard jumped off his horse and walked through the snow, muttering spells under his breath. Soon he reached the house of the knight. As he was walking closer, his mouth began to water at the smell of roasting beef . But he dismissed his hunger and walked in. He walked in to see the old knight, sitting in a crude leather chair, glugging down beer and attempting to cook beef. He felt his face burn when he saw how happy the knight was. Richard then proceeded to say the words of the strongest spell he knew, where he called upon Satan's seven strongest demons. He watched as the old knight screamed as the demons burned and ripped him apart alive until all that was left was a few pieces of burning flesh. Richard smiled when he got his revenge, but then his vision went black and he dropped down to the ground.


He sat down for his coffee, an after-breakfast ritual that had kept him well over the decades, and he opened the paper, a local periodical harkening back to the days when every community had its own press, shared its own news, the days when you would not only know the names that peppered the front page but will have a personal familiarity with the owners of those names. He started at the front and wandered through, the old man meandering among the text, when he stopped, froze. In the silence of the kitchen, a single tear blazed a path down his cheek. In the stillness of the morning, a choked sob broke through the house, loud and piercing, reverberating past the faded wallpaper and wandering upstairs where it interrupted another morning ritual. Valerie sat in front of her vanity, brushing her hair. She took her time these days, the days long after children fled the nest and moved on to build their own, growing into their adulthoods to make beautiful fledglings of their own. She hummed to herself a mix of mostly forgotten melodies as she readied herself for the long day; the day filled with the frivolities and indulgences of retirement when that broken sound found her in her sanctuary, this holy grotto where she began her days. "Stephen?" she cried out, concerned of the air wretchedness betrayed in that sound. But no answer came forth, save the sound of a screen door, closing slowly in the hiss of the hydraulics. She rose and found her way into the kitchen, empty save for the small wooden table which glowed white in the morning sunlight. On it, she saw the remains of her husband's morning, aborted and abandoned. Coffee, the color of milk chocolate, lay in the cup and on the saucer half-finished. The paper balanced precariously on the corner of the table, the chair shoved into the center of the room, emphasizing the loneliness of the scene. And, through the window, she saw Stephen, standing in the middle of the garden path, facing away from her, hands covering his face, spasms of sorrow wracking his now ancient frame. She picked up the paper, guessing that might be the cause of the disturbance, and glanced across the columns of the justified font. The obituaries were open. It was not something Stephen would typically care about, but today was different. Today the paper changed its layout, the editor-in-chief wanting to make it easier to read the classified section, a section Stephen loved, had moved the obituaries. Today the obituaries held unique content as well. On the top, in bold she saw, in a simple font, "Marylynn Anderson (76)." Then she understood. Years ago, Valerie and Stephen had known her. Well, Stephen knew her. She was his co-worker, a fellow teacher, though a different department. They worked together for years, and seemed close, for co-workers, but then, at some faculty event, Valerie couldn't remember which, she learned the young Mrs. Anderson left. She tried asking Stephen about the plain-faced math teacher, but Stephen had just shaken his head, saying he did not know. She couldn't say for sure, but Stephen had changed in those months. He was less active, older. She chalked it up to age, maybe a mild midlife crisis even. Not knowing what else to do, she gave him his space, guessing that he would recover on his own, that he would reach out if he needed. And he did improve, for the most part. His infectious, sometimes mischievous smile returned, that coy turn of the lip that she so loved. But he had changed, at least a little. Valerie didn't give it much thought in the years since. The change was small, subtle, but something that only tickled the back of her mind until now. Now she looked at the name, printed in black and gray, and understood what had happened, what she missed all those years ago. Now she saw, and understood. Stephen stood in the garden, hiding behind his hands, trying not to give in to the pain that flooded him, the sorrows that had built up over the years, the regrets and the longings hope kept alive, a light that intoxicated him with the memory of her smile, of her gentleness, of her touch and her smell. It was a flame he kindled and then hid away but never put out, a light whose brilliance shattered the darkness. But when it was discovered, an embrace, one thought to be in the privacy of an empty building, seen by another member of the English department, she fled and it dimmed. It still burned in secret, far in the background, unacknowledged and unpursued. It lay there, despite vacations and graduations, stayed there, despite achievements and failures, remained, through distance, sometimes greater, sometimes lesser. And finally, four decades later, and unknown to Stephen, Marylynn, or, for that matter, Valerie, only two blocks away, that flame flickered and went out. The smoke that remained left Stephen alone in the garden, in the dark shadows of his own hands. And it left Valerie alone in the kitchen, the dust in the air making sunbeams clear and visible as the late morning light. Both shed tears, not for what each lost, but what they never had. And both have never felt so alone.


The stranger rode into town, stirring whispers about his gunslinger's jacket, and the revolver on his hip. He guided the chestnut mare past the gawking crowd, past the children pursuing a stray dog through the muddy street. He dismounted at the heart of town, secured his horse to a hitching post, and patted the beast on the neck before walking off toward the nearest building. The spurs on his boots rattled as they knocked against the half-rotted planks of the veranda. He pushed through two swinging doors and savored the smell of stale tobacco, sweat and booze. He loved smalltown taverns. He strolled to the bar and planted his elbows on the polished burlwood countertop. He slicked his stark black hair with sweat from his forehead and perused the tavern. Elderly folk ate hearty dinners while the farmers, craftsmen and cowboys mingled over whiskey and ale. He counted thirty people at most, and that surprised him. Half the population must have been there. A sightly barmaid appeared behind the bar, eyes puffy with sweat, wild hair stuck to her reddened cheeks. She seemed to the stranger overworked, and quite upset. She glared at him for the longest time, evaluating him. “What kinda man are ya?” The stranger blinked. “I beg your pardon?” “Ain’t gonna ask twice. Simple question.” “I . . .” He weighed his words for a moment. His eyes caught two unruly cowboys sitting at the far end of the bar, laughing like devils and making lecherous gestures toward the barmaid. He suddenly understood the question. And he realized her eyes were red from tears, not sweat. “I’m the kind of man you need.” “Please.” Without another word, he departed from the countertop and strode directly between the two men. His broad shoulders nearly shoved them off their stools. “What the fu-” “Afternoon, gents. How’s the cold drinks on this blistering day?” “Not that cold,” replied the smaller man. “Don’t talk to him, ya clod. He was just talking to Lucy over there. And he came right over here. Ya aim to protect her honor, mister?” The stranger turned and leaned backwards on the bar, facing the two men. “More or less.” The big man tottered off his stool and tensed his shoulders attempting to look fierce. It would have worked if he wasn’t swaying all over the place from being so drunk. “Listen, mister.” The man leaned in awful close. He wreaked of booze. “Ya can’t just waltz in here acting like ya’ve gotta big prick. This is our damn town. I think ya’ve over . . . overstay . . . overstayed your welcome.” “I’m not looking for trouble. I just want you to leave the girl alone.” “Why’s that?” The small man climbed off his seat and joined his companion. “Ya don’t even knows her.” “She asked me nicely.” “Is that so?” The big man snarled at the barmaid. She blanched and tried to look busy wiping down the countertop. “Tell ya something, stranger. She may have charmed ya with those huge eyes, but she ain’t got a lick of honor. Let a tramp be a tramp, I say.” “Leave her alone.” “Plow yourself. Now get the hell outta Appledown. Or else I’ll beat ya till your eyes fall outta your skull.” “I’d like to see you-” A fist went flying for the stranger’s face. He sunk to the floor as the big man missed and stumbled into a stool. The small man predicted the dodge and swung low, thudding the stranger just below the collarbone. A boot collided with the small man’s crotch, sending him howling onto the floor. The stranger pulled himself up, grimacing at the stinging pain in his shoulder. He hauled the big man off the stool and steadied him with one arm, pulling the other back to strike. “Big mistake, jackass.” There was a sickening crunch. A tooth ejected out of the big man’s bleeding mouth as he crumpled to the floor. The stranger rubbed his broken knuckle as he marched right up to the small man. He grabbed the bastard by the collar and slammed him against a support beam. “Got anything to say?” “Uh, I . . .” The small man was shaking like a leaf. “I . . . oh, please don’t hit me like you did Bert! I like my teeth, mister!” “Got anything to say?” growled the stranger. “I . . . yes! I’m sorry, mister. I’m sorry from the bottom—” “Not to me, Clod. Got anything to say to the lady?” “Oh, yes! Of course! Miss Lily, I’m ever so sorry for . . . uh, for everything . . .” “That wasn’t—” “It’s fine, mister.” Lily circled around bar and stood at a safe distance. “I know Sammy means it. I forgive ya, even though you’re an ass.” The stranger narrowed his gaze at the small man—Sammy—then released him. He fell flat on his rear, then scurried off on his heels, clutching his throat and gasping for air. “Thank you ever much, mister.” Lily fluttered her eyes and touched her chest. The stranger was dubious of her honor in that moment. “I wish there were more men like ya round here.” “It was a pleasure to help, miss. Now, I could sure use a drink.” “Naturally!” She drifted behind the bar and began filling a mug without asking his preference. “Ya know, I don’t even know what to call ya.” “Hal.” “Hal,” sighed the barmaid, as if savoring it. “Here’s your drink.” No sooner had Hal taken two steps toward the not-so-cold beverage, a familiar click sounded behind him. A frightening click, none other than the hammer of a gun. “Ya think you’re God’s gift to . . .” The big man—Bert—rolled onto his side and vomited blood, but kept his revolver aimed at Hal. He wiped his mouth with the back of his free hand and spit. “. . .to the world. Well, today ya fucked with the wrong kinda man.” “You don’t want to do this, ‘Bert’. Trust me. You don’t want to do this.” “No, trust ‘me’. I wanna do this.” “Bert, no—!” Hal’s gun leapt from its holster. He turned on a dime, at an angle, as a bullet whizzed by and shattered a bottle on the countertop. He slapped the gun-hammer with his wrist. Once. Twice. A third time. He somersaulted behind an overturned stool, whipped around and narrowed the iron at Bert’s head. Bert’s head wasn’t there anymore. The room was dead quiet, save for the convulsing body slapping the floor over and over. Gore painted the walls, tables and chairs. A chunk of crimson rolled down a support beam. Bert was still clutching the gun. His body jerked, and the pistol fired. An elderly woman screamed and hit the floor, covering her head with an opulent, enormous purse. A bullet disseminated the purse with an explosion of fabric. The woman screamed again. “Stay down!” demanded Hal. “There’s still rounds in the cylinder!” Another projectile ricocheted then vanished. The air was still, thick with fear. An elderly man turned green as a pear, struggling to contain his hearty dinner. He didn’t succeed. Hal counted his breaths, one, two, three. Four breaths later, Bert’s corpse was finally peaceful. “Bert!” cried Lily. She flung herself at his grisly remains and clutched his forearm to her breast. “Bert, no . . .” “Sorry,” muttered Hal. “Sorry? You’re sorry?” She began to sob. “That’s all ya have to say?” “He was going to kill me.” “Ya . . . ya pushed him too far!” “I thought you wanted me to do something—” “I didn’t want ya to kill him! Ya son of a bitch! I was pregnant with his . . . with him . . .” Her face contorted with sadness. The wound reflected in her soaked eyes as she gazed up at Hal, with sorrow, with fury. “What kinda man are you?” Hal dabbed a small tear in the corner of his eye. He met Lily’s gaze with earnest, unsure what to say. She would hate him till the day she died. He said the only thing he could. “The wrong kind.” He turned without another word and exited through the swinging doors. He hated smalltown taverns.


The decrepit vagrant limps into the gas station and the three customers in line immediately recoil from the stench. They leave a wide berth and avoid eye contact, as if she is Medusa, her long, greasy blond hair really a nest of snakes. Perhaps they simply don’t wish to acknowledge the gaunt woman, for doing so would also acknowledge unpleasant truths. She stands at the door for some time, taking in the store and its patrons. No one bothers to calculate exactly how long she stands there; no one risks meeting her gaze. After a half minute or incalculable eons, Medusa takes her place at the end of the line. Hands in the pockets of her stained and tattered jeans, she waits patiently until it’s her turn to approach the world-weary man behind the grimy, sticky counter. He makes a point to not sully his hands by coming in contact with the residue of a thousand different people that sits on the surface in front of him. While empires rise and fall, the second-hand of the clock above the register makes a full rotation, and it’s finally her turn. “Can I help you?” the queasy clerk asks, as politely as one can with a fetid snake nest barely two feet away. Medusa frowns while her right hand fumbles in the pocket of her ragged hoodie. The clerk begins to repeat his question, but is cut off by the barrel of a Colt M1911 pointed directly at his mouth. The dead-eyed Medusa plainly states her desires: “Give me all the money in the register.” She follows this with an incentive for the petrified cashier: “Or you’ll die.” It is only now that the customers behind her pay her any mind. A man lets out a loud gasp; a woman utters expletives to no one in particular; others remain still in shocked silence. All except for a man coming out of the bathroom, the roar of the fan deafening him to the occurrence on the sales floor. It takes a single eternity for him to assess the situation and, tickled that his wife’s usual protests about “that thing” were demonstrably moot, removes his concealed Beretta M9 from the inside of his jacket. He’s been waiting for a moment like this all his life, and he relishes it as he carefully aims at Medusa’s head and bellows out his own request and motivation, “Drop the goddamn gun or I swear to God I’ll shoot!” Medusa jumps, clearly startled, and begins to turn herself to the unexpected counter-offer. She absentmindedly keeps the gun aloft as she does so, and doesn’t have time to realise her mistake. In no more than a few seconds, two loud pops break the tension, and Medusa’s face receives two new holes. She crumples to the ground, her hair now clearly snake-free. The veritable Perseus rockets himself over to the body to secure the wretch’s weapon, but freezes after picking it up. A small but significant detail, one unknowable to anyone not brandishing it, jumps out at him: her weapon lacked the heft of an actual M1911. No, he realises, this was just an airsoft gun, the barrel tip painted to complete the illusion of fatal danger. Several more details come to his attention: the half-rotted left foot and its assault on the nose; the dirt and grime of the street which covers her body like a second layer of skin; the desperation and sadness in her now lifeless eyes. The Perseus recalls the stories he’s heard of homeless people committing crimes, severe legally but petty in reality, looking to go to prison so they can get medical treatment, or a bed, or even just a meal. The realisation hits him like a bullet.


“I need new shoes.” I mumbled to myself, as I stared down at my black Chuck Taylors; proud of how worn and lived in they were and disgusted at how worn and lived in they were. Cigarette ash fell from my burning cigarette and landed on the top of my right shoe. I kicked my foot in the air to knock the ash off and watched as it floated to the snow covered bush next to the steps where I was sitting. I took one last drag and flicked my cigarette into the snow. I had just finished my second cigarette and I was ready for a third. “I will lie awake and lie for fun, and fake the way I hold you, let you fall for every empty word I say.” I sang along with Brand New, as it played from the speaker on my iPhone, watching the smoke escape my lips as I sang each word. My feet were so cold I couldn’t feel my toes. It was around 3:00 am Christmas morning, and 23 degrees outside. I remember this because when I opened the front door to leave my apartment earlier that afternoon, I only had on my black hoodie that I bought from Vegan Treats on Linden Avenue. I took two steps outside, realized how cold it was, and went back in my apartment to put on a jacket instead. I opened the weather app on my phone to see what the temperature was, and after seeing 23 degrees, I realized that gloves would be beneficial if I wanted to keep fingers attached to my palms. You wouldn’t have known it was Christmas by walking into my apartment. I didn’t have a Christmas tree or decorations anywhere. I received a box of Christmas presents from my parents in Florida the week prior, but they were still sitting in the brown box they arrived in. I took off my hoodie, and put on my jacket, watching in the mirror as I changed. I had on too much makeup. Specifically, too much eyeliner, but that’s how I liked to wear it. My once beautiful, sparkling, big, brown eyes were now small, sad, and almost black, hidden behind cheap Covergirl eyeliner. It was Christmas Eve, and I was trying to forget. I looked at myself one last time, realizing that the most festive thing about me was the 2-week-old, red, chipped nail polish on my nails. I didn’t always dislike Christmas, in fact it was my favorite time of year, until I moved from Florida to Pennsylvania. I sought after something that I wasn’t getting in Florida, and even though I kept in touch with my family, I wasn’t nearly as close to them as I was when we lived in the same state. I wanted to see what it was like to watch tree leaves turn orange, feel snow, and wear boots for a purpose other than fashion. I wanted to wear a puffy coat and gloves and parallel park. I wanted real independence, and big city life. I got all those things. Yet, even though I was surrounded by people, living a fast, free, independent life, I had never felt more alone, and isolated. The holiday season was no longer something that I looked forward too. In reality, I dreaded it. As a child, Christmas was always a magical time of year for me. My parents loved Christmas, but it was my mother who really brought the magic of Christmas to life. She made it very clear to all of us when we were little that the year we stop believing in Santa, was the year that he would stop coming to our home to bring us gifts. This was a frightening thought, because every year we received a mountain of gifts that adorned colorful tags labeled “Love: Santa”, so questioning the validity of his existence would have been foolish. Our Christmas Eve traditions were sacred, and they weren’t broken until I moved out as an adult. We watched Home Alone, secretly envying Kevin McAllister for living in NY, seeing snow on Christmas, and having that huge house to himself. We always thought of different traps he could have set for the robbers, with each idea more elaborate than the year before. We baked Chocolate chip cookies for Santa and cut carrot sticks for his reindeer. I made sure to pick out the biggest cookies, with the most chocolate chips, and least crispy edges for Santa to enjoy. The year that my sister learned about Diabetes, was the year that she insisted we give him a healthier option. This is when the tradition of sliced apples with a sprinkle of cinnamon was born. I would arrange the plates with our treats just so, making Santa’s place setting look as though it appeared in a holiday magazine. We would put on our Christmas pajamas, and read The Night Before Christmas by Clement C. Moore before going to bed to lay painfully awake for hours. We made sure to use the restroom and have our last sips of hot chocolate for the evening before retiring to bed because once we shut the bedroom door, we couldn’t leave until morning. My brother, sister and I would all sleep in my room on Christmas Eve, whispering excitedly about the gifts we prayed to get under the tree. We hoped that we would get the smallest glimpse of Rudolph’s nose if we peeked out the window at just the right time. Some Christmas Eve’s we would see a red light blinking in the sky, and even though we knew it was an airplane, we would still jump back in bed and hide under the covers, just in case. Santa and his team usually arrived at our house around 2:30-3:00 am. We know this because we would hear sleigh bells jingle outside, starting at the back of the house where my bedroom was and grow fainter as they travelled the length of the house. The temptation to peek through the blinds was almost unbearable, but the thought of Santa leaving without dropping even a single peppermint was much worse. At first ring of the bells, we would lie frozen in my bed under the covers, unable to move. Our hearts pounding with excitement, accompanied by just the tiniest amount of fear because we knew we were supposed to be sleeping. It felt like Christmas Eve was 90 hours long and daylight would never come. Eventually when it did, I would fly out of bed and slowly open my bedroom door to peek into the living room. Every year it was the same sight, a halo of lights illuminating a mountainous circle of holiday wrapped presents, stacked as if they were a gate protecting a Christmas tree fortress. I would wake up my brother and sister, and once we were all lined up at my bedroom door, we would quietly tip toe to the tree where we would sit Indian style in front of it, just taking in the glory of the sight before us. Yet, there I sat numb, physically from the cold and emotionally frozen, wishing I were anywhere else but sitting on those cold, concrete steps. I didn’t want to go inside because all I had to greet me was a half empty bottle of Jack Daniels, and I was really struggling with that thought. I was filled with anxiety and even though I just smoked two cigarettes, I needed a third to help muster up the courage needed to enter that building. I opened my pack of camels, took my upside down, lucky cigarette and set it on fire. I took my first drag and exhaled a thick white cloud of smoke, hoping my uneasiness would float away with the smoke. I grabbed my iPhone and changed the song to Absinthe Party at the Fly Honey Warehouse by Minus the Bear and sat it down on the step beside me. I was lost, alone and angry. I needed a reminder of why I was in Pennsylvania, and that song was my anthem. Halfway through the song, my phone rang. It was an unknown number. I wasn’t going to answer it, but since it was approaching 3:00 am on a holiday, I knew it wasn’t a marketing call. “Hello?” I asked, wondering who would be calling me at this hour. There was no response. “Hello?” I asked again, ready to hang up on the phantom caller; then I heard the jingling of bells. My heart stopped, and I couldn’t breathe. It felt like my throat was on fire and my eyes filled with tears that fell instantly. I took the last puff of my cigarette before flicking it into the snow with the others, and sat on that cold stoop crying, listening to the faint jingling of those bells. I tried to say, “I love you, Mom.” But there was no courage in my voice, no sound came out. She hung up the phone, and Minus the Bear picked up mid song where they left off. My Mom sent her Christmas magic to me over 1000 miles away. To her it was just a childhood tradition that she thought would make me laugh. To me, it was a beacon in the dark. My fear of going inside alone, and facing Christmas alone was no longer a concern. I wasn’t alone, and her one small tradition turned my worst Christmas ever, into the most meaningful Christmas of my life. I grabbed my phone and decided that it was time to go inside, and open that big brown box of Christmas presents. Thank God I did, there was a new pair of Chuck Taylors waiting for me.


“Why the hell are you tied to a tree?” “Good question, *am* I tied to a tree?” Dan Conifer looked at the young man, Richard Pritchard, who was probably around 20, with due amounts of skepticism. The Kid was tied to the trunk of a thick, ancient white spruce, bent almost double from trying to wiggle out of the rope. Conifer gave The Kid a look to urge an actual answer. “Oh, ha, yeah, that– uh, my girlfriend will be back soon.” He said, a struggled smile on his face. “How long has she been gone?” “Twelve hours.” It was a wonder he’d survived this long. It had been snowing nonstop literally all day the day before and through the night and it was around 11:00 AM. The Kid had been out there for the coldest part of the night. “Huh, yeah, she’ll be back.” Conifer began to walk away he didn’t feel like he was going to hurt The Kid in doing this, he seemed to be doing a good job at wiggling out of the rope and Conifer figured The Kid would be free in less than an hour. “No no no no no! Dude dude dude dude dude!” The Kid said very quickly from his increasingly uncomfortable position on the tree. Conifer turned around with a look of utmost exasperation seasoning his stubbled face. “She *will* be back, won’t she?” “Look, can I be real? Like, real real?” “No.” “It’s a good, good story!” “No.” “At least untie me?” Conifer had better things to do though he couldn’t presently think of any of them, there just had to be better things to do than this. “Why should I?” Conifer asked the Kid. “I’ll be your be your best friend!” The Kid said, with a stupid grin on his face. Conifer turned and started walking again. “Okay look she probably won’t be back but please, just come untie me!” The Kid yelled the last words because the red and blue that was the flannel and jeans of the mysterious man he encountered in his and his girlfriend’s sex woods was fading behind more and more trees. “GODDAMMIT!” Deeper in the forest, Conifer’s concerns did not match up with Pritchard’s. Pritchard’s glasses fell off of his face and onto the ground, but Conifer had just caught a bear in his own two hands. Pritchard stepped on his glasses as Conifer plucked, skinned, and ate two raw ducks like apples. Pritchard gave up and fell asleep as Conifer domesticated a wolf. Hours later, Conifer stalked through the woods back into the view of the now awake kid, however, two things about him were different; he was covered in blood and had a wolf, there was no way to tell if these things were related. “Hey, man. Cool dog. Wanna help me out now?” The Kid asked, now beyond the fake smiles. It was freezing and his body melted all of the snow that fell on him leaving him soaked and very cold. “Not particularly,” Conifer said, continuing to walk and stare straight ahead. His Gibraltar taking-care-of-only-himself philosophy was beginning to wane at the moment. What if The Kid actually died? That’d be like leaving a baby goat in the middle of a harbor. “Pretty please?” The Kid’s constant begging was breaking Conifer down in real time. “Fine! Just shut the fuck up and come with me.” Conifer said pulling out his knife, that he rarely had a use for. “Hey, thanks! Why are you covered in blood?” The Kid asked too many questions for Conifer’s liking. “You wanna find out?” Conifer said as he turned around. Pritchard stayed where he was, terrified, but that fear turned quickly into relief when he realized that he was with what was probably the most qualified man in Alaska. “Are you coming?” Conifer yelled back at him in utter annoyance. Why did he have to have such noble morals even after all he’s been through? It was truly a nuisance to him. Pritchard snapped out of his stupor and ran up to catch Conifer. “Does this mean we’re friends?” The Kid asked. “No.” “I think it does.” “No.” “Yeah.” “It means I didn’t want you to die, numbnuts.” “Because we’re friends.” Upon arriving at the mountain man’s cabin, The Kid realized he was, in fact, frostbitten over most of his body. But it was alright. He knew that the mountain man would help him with that, right? Conifer pointed to the corner where a sad-looking cot sat that had a myriad of holes in the sheets. The cabin was only one room, but that’s all it needed to be. The wolf went to lie down on a blanket by the fire. In the opposite corner from the cot, there was an enclosure filled with around twenty live ducks, the tumult of their quacking drowned out the roar of the fire and most conversation. It was like a white noise machine for Conifer, he couldn’t sleep unless his food store was quacking the whole night away. The mountain man covered him up in what had to be twenty pounds of red flannels and blankets made of fur pelts. He then gave Richard a bottle of bourbon. “Warm up.” The Kid drank almost half the bottle, he pulled it away from his lips screaming. “Wow wow! That’s a-gettin’ toasty!” The Kid was drunk. “Please, just be quiet. Here, have a duck.” Conifer reached into the pen and tossed The Kid a duck. It landed on the cot with a loud *Wah*. “I can’t eat this thing. It’s beautiful! Holy shit, dude! Eat her?! Nah!” “What do you want me to cook it?” “NO!” The Kid grabbed the duck and held it close to his body. “Warm, beautiful, sexy duck.” “Okay, I’ll put her back.” Conifer got up to grab the duck “No, fuck you, we’ve bonded.” “Kid, goddammit just give me the duck.” “No, she’s my best friend, I love her.” “If you love her what’s her last name?” “Johnson.” “Johnson?” “Yeah, Johnson.” “What’s her first name?” “Becky.” “The duck’s name is Becky Johnson?” “Yeah.” There was a long dumbfounded silence. Conifer was really at a loss for words. “Okay, then, kid, what’s your name?” Conifer asked him. “Richard Pritchard.” “Bullshit!” “Honest on my scout’s honor you bet.” “Can I call you Dick?” “No.” “Okay, Dick.” “What’s your name?” “Daniel Wilson Conifer III.” “Okay, now that’s fake.” “Does it matter?” “No.” “Tell you what, Dick. I’ll make you some soup—” “Duck soup?” Pritchard asked, horrified, pulling Becky Johnson closer. “No, Becky’s safe,” Conifer reassured him. “Now, I’ll make you some soup, let you warm up, and then come morning I’ll give you a ride into town in my truck. Good?” “Yeah….” Pritchard was already drifting off, “Thank you, Dan. I love you.


“… so, what I am saying is, by observing ants closely, you’ll see they don’t do anything stupid, they always walk in orderly lines, carrying leaves and twigs back to the nest.”“Well, not always, they sometimes fall off branches,” Anna interjected, looking left and right, “that doesn’t seem too clever.”“Okay, I suppose, but a fall doesn’t kill an ant, does it? You could drop an ant from the roof of a house and the fall would not prove fatal.”“I don’t know, I’ve never carried out an experiment. Have you ever thrown an ant off from the top of a building?”“No, I haven’t Anna.”Anna pulled away from the junction, her fingers located the heating control to make a minor adjustment.“I guess you’d need at least two people present; one to throw the ant off the building and the other to monitor and record the outcome at ground level.” Anna's mind drifted, imagining herself wearing a researcher’s white laboratory coat, cradling a clipboard, peering up through black horn-rimmed glasses to the roof of a typical family home. Her friend seen ready and in position, holds tweezers in one hand and a glass beaker in the other. “It’d be really hard to keep track of an ant as it was falling from a roof, even if you shouted a warning.”“What, like - I am releasing the ant, now!” said Phoebe.“You could tie a piece of brightly coloured cotton thread around the ant, to help.”“No Anna.”“Why not, because it would interfere with the experiment? You anticipate the ant struggling, getting tangled up in the thread? I suppose one might wrongly assume the ant had died on impact, whereas it may have been due to mid air strangulation.”“Look, I am just saying, ant society is structured and co-supportive. There are no stupid ants, they understand the role they fulfil for the common good of ant society. And, there are certainly no evil ants.”Immediately ahead, traffic lights switched from green to amber and then to red. Anna braked, coming to a stop, front tyres coming to rest upon a faded white line on the road.“Why did you stop?”“The light turned red.”“It hadn’t, it had just changed to amber, you could have gone through.”“No Phoebe, it was red.”The morning rush hour traffic crawled along bumper to bumper, backed up in both directions. Pedestrians made better progress, cyclists appeared travelling at supersonic speed in comparison to the cars, vans and lorries sharing the road space.“Soldier ants are evil.” Squinting under the sun visor, Anna watched for the traffic lights to change. “Did you ever read those books in the school library, the one’s about unusual phenomena around the world? Giant sink holes, the Loch Ness monster, UFOs, spontaneous human combustion, piranha attacks.”“And army ants?”“Yes, that’s right, army ants. They’d be a photograph too, showing a thin, cross-eyed man with a thick moustache stripped to the waist with lots of stings all over his face and body.” Anna’s eyes widened, her grip tightened around the steering wheel. “What were those books ever doing in a school library? They used to scare the shit out of me!”“Yes, they were pretty grim, stuffed full of nightmares.”“I’m sure I saw films too, with ants attacking people, crawling all over them.” Anna shuddered and thumbed an itch on her shoulder, her head and the side of her nose.The traffic lights changed colour, signalling hope for progress. Morning road-users continued in slow monotony. Anna flashed her lights and waved an encouraging hand to a driver to pull out of a side road and join the queued traffic.“What are you doing?” Phoebe asked sharply.“I'm letting her out.”“Why?”“Well, that guy on the other side let her through." Anna continued motioning her hand. "Yes - yes, you! Go on, go then!” She let out a sigh, “I’ve noticed you barely ever let people out. Why is that?”“Simple, because if a motorcyclist slammed into the side of her now, you’d be culpable and your insurance policy doesn't cover being an idiot.”Silence stretched out a temporary distance between the two friends, time enough for the queues of traffic to resume uniformity.