It all began on a random Tuesday in 1953. Billy Henderson went missing while walking to a friend’s house just a few blocks away. There were no witnesses, no suspects, and no leads. The police of the small town spent weeks, scouring the surrounding forest to no avail. Being a small town, a missing child haunted the town for years, as parents would keep their kids indoors, neighbors would suspect each other, and rumors of who could have done it spread like wildfire. Life had slowly started to return to normal, when a little girl went missing in 1958. Once again, there were no witnesses, or suspects. The police had no reason to suspect the two disappearances were related, since there were few clues and no linking leads. There were no signs of a struggle, no missing clothes or toys. The children were just walking around town normally, when they just vanished. Families began to move out of town as more children disappeared over the years. The dates the children went missing varied. One child would go missing on August 21st, 1961, and another would go missing on March 2, 1963. And then no children would go missing until June 13th, 1967. There was no way to link all the missing children together, so while it was traumatic to the town, there was no way to build a profile of the cases. One day the children were there, the next they were gone. Over time, it became common practice for the kids to always stay together, or better yet, in groups. In the end though, kids would find themselves walking alone, and then disappear every few years. Jimmy rode his bike along with his friends Molly, and Chester. He cranked up his tape player to full volume as they rode to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana, enjoying the Summer of 1992. It had been several years since another child had disappeared, but every day the kids wanted to go out to play, their parents would say, “Stay together and come straight home.” This didn’t bother Jimmy, Molly, or Chester, as they spent all their time together anyway. They were celebrating finishing the fifth grade and were excited about being sixth graders, the top of the food chain in elementary. They pulled off into an open field, where they joined another group of kids for some backyard softball. One of the nice things about growing up in a small town was that there was plenty of big yards to play in. “C’mon, Jimmy,” Molly yelled from the sideline. “Knock it out of the park!” Jimmy gave her a brief smile, and readied for the pitch. Charles stared him down from the pitcher’s mound, looked around to all the empty bases out of habit, and then pitched the ball. Jimmy, who had never played on a team, knocked the ball over Charles’ head and into deep left field, being chased by little Dougie Barnes. Dougie wasn’t fast enough though, and the ball hit the ground before he could get to it. Jimmy ran past first, and then second, but stopped at third as Dougie threw the ball back into the infield. All the kids on Jimmy’s team cheered. Molly came out to bat next, and all the boys on the other team moved in closer to the infield. *These boys never learn*, she thought with a smile. Charles pitched the ball, and quickly looked up as the ball flew over his head again, continuing its flight over all of his teammates heads as well. They all scattered to chase the ball, but it was too late. Jimmy ran home, followed not long after by Molly. As the sun went down, the three of them started walking home. “You guys did great!” Chester said pulling his bike up beside them. Chester was a good friend, but a lousy softball player. He normally played deep right field, and tended to punt, so he wouldn’t have to risk having his pop up ball caught. As they walked to Molly’s house to drop her off, the wind picked up, which felt good after playing in the field. “See you tomorrow, Molly!” Jimmy said, Chester waiving beside him. “Later!” she said back. The boys walked away, talking and joking the whole time. They stopped in front of Jimmy’s house. “You want to stay over?” Jimmy asked Chester. “I can’t tonight,” Chester said. “Mom’s new boyfriend is coming over for dinner, and she wants us to get to know him.” Jimmy knew that would suck, so he said, “Sorry, Chester. Say hi to the creep for me.” They laughed a little before Chester walked away to head home a couple of blocks away. “Hi, Mom,” Jimmy said when he walked through the door, laying down his bag. When he laid it down, he noticed he still had Chester’s Velcro wallet with some money in it. “Crap,” he said. He knew his mom would give Chester crap if he didn’t come home with his wallet. “I’ll be right back, Mom!” he said as he ran out the door to catch up with Chester. He ran down the street towards Chester’s house, but didn’t see him. *Wow, he got home fast*, he thought. As he was crossing the street where Chester’s house was, he glanced right, and saw Chester walking down the street away from his house. “Chester!” Jimmy yelled after him. Chester didn’t answer. He just kept walking. Jimmy ran after him, calling out every few seconds, until he caught up to him. He stood in front of Chester blocking his way, but Chester walked right around him. Jimmy got back in front of him. “What are you doing?” Jimmy asked. No response. Chester walked around Jimmy once again. Jimmy got back in front of Chester and put his hands on Chester’s shoulders, stopping him from moving forward. Chester kept marching in place. Jimmy’s mouth fell open as he looked into Chester’s eyes, and only saw a blank stare. The longer Jimmy held Chester in place, the harder Chester walked, eventually knocking Jimmy backwards. Jimmy tripped and fell, Chester once again walking right past him. He wanted to run for help, but he didn’t want to lose track of him. “Help!” Jimmy called out, hoping someone would hear him, but as if on command, the wind picked up, blocking his voice from carrying. He hoped he would see someone outside, but no one came out. If someone had looked outside, they would have seen one boy walking, while another boy tried to stop him, getting knocked to the side, and then moving back in front of the marching boy. Once he even tackled Chester and tried to pin him, but Chester’s feet never stopped moving, and Jimmy was eventually knocked off, allowing Chester to stand back up and keep walking. Chester walked into the town park and appeared to be heading towards the town tree. The town tree was said to be one of the oldest, and when the town was first built, it was the only tree in town not to have been cut down. As time went by and the town grew, the people planted new trees to replace the ones that had been chopped down, but everyone knew that one to be the oldest. As Chester got closer to the tree, the wind began to howl louder. Jimmy looked around and noticed that it was only windy where they were at. Outside the park, it looked calm. Jimmy also noticed that the tree seemed to darken as they approached. Jimmy didn’t know if it was a trick of light, but the tree seemed to now have eyes and a mouth. It seemed angry. Chester was almost to the tree when Jimmy couldn’t take any more. He stood in front of Chester, and punched him as hard as he could. He had never hit someone like that before, and was unsure of what would happen, but right after he caught Chester in the jaw, Chester collapsed, unconscious. As soon as Chester’s body hit the ground, the wind stopped blowing. Jimmy looked at the tree and noticed that though there were lines in the shape of eyes and a mouth, it no longer looked alive. He turned his attention to Chester, who was lying unconscious on the ground. After what seemed like an eternity, Chester woke up, squinting as he dealt with a throbbing headache, trying to figure out where he was. They slowly made their way to Chester’s house, where Jimmy told Chester’s parents what had happened, and begged for them to call the police. They seemed more upset about him admitting to hitting their son, than the ridiculous story of an angry tree. In the end, they sent him home with a stern warning to never hit Chester again, and then trying to cover it up by lying. Jimmy ran home and told his parents the same story, resulting the same warning from them. Accepting that his parents wouldn’t help, he called the police himself the next day, but they seemed insincere when they said they would look into it. Jimmy was unsure of what to do. He could barely sleep that night, but he was determined to do something tomorrow if he could. The next morning, he met up with Molly and Chester, and told them what had happened. Chester didn’t remember anything. He remembered walking home, and then being home with a huge headache. Even the walk home from the park seemed fuzzy. “My mom said you hit me,” Chester said, not wanting it to be true. “I had to,” Jimmy replied. “You were in some kind of trance. I tried over and over to stop you, but you just kept walking. You walked all the way to the park, and I know this sounds crazy, but I think that old tree wanted to eat you.” Jimmy worried that he had lost them with that last statement, but they both knew Jimmy wasn’t prone to making up stories, or lying. Chester rubbed his head. “I don’t remember.” “Trust me, Chester,” Jimmy said. “I didn’t want to hit you, but I had no choice.” Chester looked at Jimmy and said, “I believe you.” Molly said, “I believe you too.” “We have to do something,” Jimmy started. “I think this is the reason all those kids have been going missing. I think that old tree has been taking them like it tried to take Chester.” “But what do we do?” Molly asked. “We chop it down,” Jimmy said sternly. Chester looked up at him. “But we’ll get in trouble.” “I know,” Jimmy replied. “But if we don’t do this, it will take another kid someday.” “Maybe stopping it from taking Chester last night means we’re safe for another couple of years,” Molly said. “Maybe,” Jimmy agreed. “Or maybe it’s still hungry and it’ll try to take someone again tonight, or tomorrow even.” All three thought about it. Chester was the first to speak. “You saved my life last night,” he said. “I know it. I’m with you.” Jimmy nodded. “I can’t have my two best friends facing a monster alone,” Molly said. “I’m in.” The three of them headed out to Jimmy’s garage, and started to look for anything they could use to chop down the tree. They found one Axe, but nothing else that would help. “We have an axe at my house,” Chester stated. “Us too,” Molly said. “But my parents will stop me if they see me try to walk out with an axe,” Chester pointed out. “We’ll have to wait until after dinner and then sneak out,” Jimmy said. Molly and Chester looked nervous. They weren’t expecting to go out when it was dark. In the end, they both looked up and nodded. Jimmy was nervous at dinner, but his parents didn’t notice. He made up an excuse of needing to study for a test tomorrow, and headed up stairs. He knew he had until nine to cut down the tree and get home before his parents would notice. That gave him three and a half hours. He climbed out the window and stealthily made his way to the park. The entire time he walked, he hoped no one would come out and see him walking down the street with an axe. When he made it to the park, he was the only one there. He was worried that Molly and Chester had been caught. He decided he would give them a few more minutes to arrive before he faced the tree himself. He was about to start walking towards the tree, when he saw Molly and Chester making their way up the street together. “Hey,” he greeted them when they arrived. “Hey,” Molly and Chester replied in unison. “You guys ready?” Jimmy asked. They nodded, but Jimmy could tell they were still unsure. They turned and walked in the direction of the tree. As they got closer, something caught their attention out of the corner of their eyes. They all turned to see another boy walking in the direction of the tree. “It’s Charles,” Jimmy pointed out. Jimmy could tell he was walking the same way Chester had been the night before. “Charles!” he called out. “What are you doing?!” No reply. All three of them ran towards him, trying to block his way. Just like with Chester had before, he just kept walking through them, and no matter how much they tried to block his path, he just kept moving. Once again the wind picked up, and Jimmy turned to look at the tree. The angry face had returned. Seeing that they were not going to be able to hold onto Charles, and fight the tree at the same time, Jimmy looked to his friends. “Hold him here!” he yelled over the wind. “I’m going to start chopping the tree down!” They both nodded in understanding. Jimmy ran at the tree and swung as hard as he could. The wind seemed to pick up, and Jimmy could’ve swore that he heard the tree scream. Behind him, Charles collapsed to the ground, released from his trance. Once Molly and Chester realized that Charles had been released, they turned and joined Jimmy at the tree where they both began swinging their axes along with him. The wind seemed to be turning into a tornado with each strike, and a howling began to fill the air, but they kept swinging, hoping with each strike, the tree would die. Black sap began to pour from the tree like blood, and as they struck the tree, some of that sap would splash on them, making them look like they were slaughtering an animal. Their arms were beginning to get tired, and they were all afraid that they wouldn’t be able to finish the job, when there was one final howl, and the wind began to die down. Once the wind was gone, Jimmy could see that the angry face had faded, but he knew they wouldn’t be safe until the tree was cut down. The three of them looked at each other exhausted. “There’s no way we can cut it all the way down,” Molly pointed out. “Maybe I can help,” a man said, coming up behind them holding a chainsaw. He pulled the chord, bringing the chainsaw to life, replacing the wind with its own roar. It didn’t take him long to slice through the tree until it fell over, falling away from the children. Charles joined the other three kids, and none of them could believe what they were seeing. Before the man walked away, he said, “My son went missing years ago, and every day I looked out my window, hoping he would return, or at least I would find out what had happened to him, but I never did. And then tonight, I saw you kids walking down the street with axes, and I had to see what you were up to. When I saw the other boy walking toward the tree in a trance, and I saw how the tree looked alive, I knew what happened to my boy.” The kids watched the man walk off, and then began walking toward their homes. They told Charles what was happening since he had no idea how he had ended up in the park. The tree being cut down was a big deal in the little town, but everyone involved never came forward to tell the story. Over time, the police stopped looking. As the years passed, the town slowly started to come alive again as no more children went missing.


I watched Papa kill Mama on a summer’s night, and he knew I had seen. His demon eyes saw me as Mama’s lifeless form fell to the floor and just before he sent me back to bed. I clutched Margaret to my chest tightly as I ran back up the stairs to my room. I locked my door and hide under my covers, hoping he wouldn’t be able to find me. I felt like I would cry or vomit, but I was only silent with shivers. I couldn’t unsee Mama’s once dark blue eyes turn that horrible shade of dull, dead blue; just like Margaret’s. That morning, Papa told us at breakfast that Mama had left to visit her family in the next village over, and I couldn’t say anything. He just looked at me with sharp copper eyes, eyes that gleamed in the light, but fear of what he might do kept me silent. I thought he would keep glaring my way until he could maybe dispose of me, but my silence must have appeased him somehow because he only smiled and turned to the paper he had in his left fist. Only Justine noticed the strange look Papa gave me, and she looked at me once he finally looked away, searching my face for an answer I couldn’t give. Justine was the oldest of us all, and she looked most like Mama. She was already fifteen and her dark hair shined brightly in the sun, matched by her dark indigo eyes and full mouth. Justine was like moonlight where I was sunshine, and she died under the moon’s awful light. Justine took over Mama’s responsibilities in the house by watching us all. She made sure we were all up for breakfast, attended our tutoring times and nagged Simon and Ronan to finish their cursive. Samuel never wanted to eat, stuck in his five-year-old tantrums, and Lily and Stella were much too stubborn to listen. I tried to help with Christopher, but since I was only ten there was still only so much I could do. Justine tried to be a good mom to us, but she couldn’t understand where Mama had gone. After the first week, she only asked twice for when Mama would be back, and Papa said in a fortnight. So by the third week, Justine asked Papa five times when Mama would be back and Papa told her in a month. Then when the month passed, she asked again, but Papa never gave her a response. It was then that Justine started to ask more questions, and Papa needed to make her stop. I was playing with Margaret, plaiting her hair like mine and making her a new dress out of Lily’s too small summer dress. I had taken to doing my work on the table in the dining area after breakfast, but Justine always tried to make me leave early so she could set up lunch places. I hated having to move, she could never just let me stay in one spot. I had the scissors in my hand, ready to start cutting the outlines for Margaret’s Aline skirt just when she picked up my things and threw them on the side table. She didn’t even place it softly so all my pins fell out of the pattern I had formed from the bunched up fabric. “Why do you continue to play with dolls like a child, Annabelle?” asked Justine condescendingly. I loved my sister, but my disdain for her sometimes overshadowed my love for her. “Margaret needs a new dress for next season. Since Mama’s not here I have to do it.” Justine looked at me sternly. “So it’s true then? Did mama leave Papa without taking any of us? That’s why he won’t tell us where she really is?” I thought about telling her the truth of Mama’s disappearance, but for one reason or another, I didn’t want to warn my overly pretentious sister of anything. Instead, I shrugged in her direction and picked up Margaret from the table with her lifeless eyes, all while humming to myself as I left the room. “You are such a spoiled child, Anna! No wonder mother didn’t take you with her!” yelled Justine. I thought about yelling the same point in kind, but the truth of the matter made me giddy; to know something Justine did not. After dinner that night, Justine and I put all the younger children to sleep, but when we went into our rooms to prepare for bed Justine seemed so distracted. She didn’t change out of her day clothes but told me to sleep without her. It was when I heard the fifth step of the stairs creak that I knew she was going to confront Papa, and I couldn’t help my own curiosity. I grabbed Margaret and followed after Justine. Papa was downstairs, sitting in Mama’s armchair by the fireplace when Justine approached him. I was once again hiding at the base of the stairs, a scene before me that was all too familiar. “Father, where is Mama? Please just tell me the truth. I've heard rumors in town, the other women are saying that Mama just left. That can’t be true, right?” Asked Justine. Papa looked at her then, blinking his gaze slowly but his copper eyes seemed to pierce into her very soul. “Please, I need to know. That just can’t be true!” Justine yelled then. Papa stood, and I feared he would lunge towards Justine and her dead body would fall to the ground, but instead, he grabbed her arm violently as he dragged her outside. Papa dragged her from the house under the moon’s beam and I couldn’t help but think Justine looked like a stray black cat being dragged back outside. I stood at the window to watch, too afraid to interfere. Papa dragged Justine across the dirt of the field, her tears drying on her face in black streaks from the dust flying up. I could see Justine’s dress ripping the further he took her into the open land and her blood stained the fabric has her skin broke open from the exposed rocks. Finally, Papa stopped when he reached the chopping block for the firewood. I don’t know why I didn’t shout for help, I’m sure Ronan and Simon could have saved Justine that night, but I only watched. Justine’s face was twisted by horror and pain as Papa held her left leg over the block, her other failing about as she tried to fight back. Papa ignored her attempts to fight him off, holding her leg with his left hand as he grabbed the ax with his right, moving his arm up to arc it back down and into Justine’s leg. He wiggled the ax out of the bloodied flesh only to bring the ax back over his head and back down in an arc until the bottom half of Justine's was completely severed from the rest. Justine should have screamed, I swore I could see her mouth opening and her throat tightening as if the sound were emitted, but I heard nothing. Her other leg and arms went much the same way, cut just at the joints, but no sound came from Justine. Papa dragged her body into the shed after that and I was too afraid to get caught again so I ran back upstairs with Margaret and wept myself to sleep. The next morning Justine wasn’t in her bed and I panicked with thought of where she could be, memories of Mama’s dead body falling to the floor replayed in my mind. I dressed quickly and ran downstairs, ready to warn my siblings of the evil man disguised as our father, but Justine was sitting in her chair across from mine. She seemed fine but inside I knew she must already be dead. Papa came into the room then, taking his seat at the head of the table. Because of Justine's silence, Simon started asking when Mama would be back five minutes into breakfast, but it was Justine that answered him. “Mama will be back soon, she’s just visiting Aunt Nora until winter.


\-911, what is your emergency? First there was silence and then I heard a faint: – I… think there’s someone in the house… It was a child’s voice. A young girl’s voice. \-What’s your name, sweetie? – I asked in a calm voice, just the way I was trained to do. I always dreaded receiving calls from children. \-Catherine. \-It’s a beautiful name – I said, trying to sound calm and optimistic. Silence. I could hear just a faint breathing. \-This is very important… Can you tell me what’s happening right now? Still silence. Then a child’s voice again: – I… think someone’s in my house. Catherine gave no further clues, so I had to inquire more: – Where are your parents? \-I don’t know. My heart sank. This child was probably left alone in the house and was now facing a potentially dangerous situation. \-Is there anyone else in the house with you? – I asked, hoping there was a babysitter or someone looking after her. Again silence. \-No… – the child’s voice answered finally. My heart sank even deeper. I tried not to show it in my voice. \-Can you tell me where you are now? – I tried to inquire further. \-In… my parent’s closet… The poor child probably thought it was the safest place to be and that the intruder, or the intruders wouldn’t find her there. It was a smart child. \-Good – I said in a voice as calm as possible – Stay there, sweetie, policemen are on their way. Silence. The girl said nothing. I could just hear her breathe. The silence was too long to be comfortable, so I tried asking another question. \-Can you tell me what’s happening now, sweetie? – I was doing my best to stop my voice from cracking. I didn’t want to make the girl even more anxious and nervous than she already was. Through her breathing I heard what sounded like the cracking of the door. \-They are calling me… – said the girl. I could feel dread in her voice. I was filled with dread, too. I didn’t want to make her go look for the intruders by asking her how many of them there were in the house or if she could see them. \-Is it a voice of a man or a woman? – I asked, hoping to find out more about the intruders and to still know what Catherine was doing, where she was at, etc. so I could help her in the case of something more serious happening. The other end of the line was silent. Catherine wasn’t speaking, just breathing faintly. There was silence for about a minute or so in which I felt extremely nervous. I wasn’t sure if I should ask Catherine for more information for fear that the intruders were nearing her. I didn’t want to alert them to her hiding place by making her speak. After a minute or so, I started hearing something that wasn’t just Catherine’s breathing. I started hearing voices in the background, but they were too muffled and inaudible for me to discern a single word. The only thing I could get clearly was that there were at least two distinguishable voices. I heard the voices approaching the place where Catherine was. There was some mumbling, some knocking, some furniture moving. The closer the voices got, the harder the heart pounded in my chest. I heard footsteps and two male voices talking to each other. The voices sounded familiar. I couldn’t think clearly. Then I heard a mixture of screeching and knocking and the voice on the other end of the line said: -Hello? \-John? – I asked in disbelief. It was the voice of one of the policemen I’d sent to the house. \-Dave? Is that you? – John asked. \-Yeah. Where’s the girl? – I asked almost frantically. \-What girl? \-The girl that called 911… Her name is Catherine… – I tried to keep the sentences coming from my mouth straight. \-There’s no one here, Dave – said John and then told the other policeman to search the house for a missing girl – You’re sure there was a little girl here? \-Yes. Her name is Catherine. Where is she? – I didn’t get what he was asking me that. I’d already told them the little girl was alone in the house and that there was a possibility of a break in. \-Nah, Andrew just informed me there’s no one in the house. \-You’re sure? I was on the phone with the girl until you picked up the phone. You’re sure you didn’t see any girl in the room? – I was puzzled. \-There’s no one here, I tell ya. This is an old, abandoned house. I’m amazed that the phone is still working. \-John, listen. There was a little girl, Catherine… she called 911. I was with her on the phone just right before you picked it up. I thought you were the intruders. \-Nah, Dave, there’s no one here… Wait a sec – John put down the phone. I started to panic. Have they found the girl’s body? Have they found blood on the floor? I didn’t know if I wanted to know what they’d found. I was terrified. \-Hi, Dave, Andrew just showed me a picture on the wall… \-What picture? What are you talking about? – I was angry at both of them. Instead of searching for a missing girl, they were looking at some photos on the wall. \-Yeah… it’s an old picture. Gives me the creeps… it’s a post-mortem photo or something. \-What are you talking about? What post-mortem photo? – I was almost yelling – Who’s in the photo? \-A little girl. Her name is Catherine.


‘Hello there! Glad I caught you. My name’s Sandra and I’m calling from Great Crater Solicitors. Accident claim specialists.’ ‘...’ ‘Oh, no, don’t worry. We’ve already bought ten minutes of your time for the call. I’m sure that delicious dinner will still be as tasty as ever by the time we’re done.’ ‘...’ ‘Exactly. Let’s get to it. Were you in a warp accident that wasn’t your fault?’ ‘...’ ‘Uh-huh. Yes, of course. I understand your concerns. We were given the details by our trusted partner StarSense. Have you heard of them?’ ‘...’ ‘Not to worry. They own the emergency response team that picked you up, the route taken by said response team, and the receptionist at the hypocenter where you were dropped off. With that data we were able to do you the huge favor of starting a claim for you, without you having to lift a finger. How great is that?’ ‘...’ ‘No, this is a highly sought after service. We get people calling us every day saying they wished Great Crater had got the ball rolling for them. Saves a lot of time considering how long a warp accident can put someone out of action for. I have the details of your accident here, and they don’t make happy reading, eh? Let me just run through it with you now.’ ‘...’ ‘Ah, it’s fine! We do it for everyone. It’s just a formality, well, a legal requirement, but we prefer formality. Your accident to—-’ ‘...’ ‘Yes, we have a customer service team for any legal concerns our customers have. I’ll be happy to give you their contact details once this call is done. Their costs are very reasonable.’ ‘...’ ‘Of course! We can’t just give away prize-winning customer service! Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Oops, sorry, how insensitive. Back to the details. It says here you were travelling on a crawler between Meergate Station and the Silesian meteorite field. Correct?’ ‘...’ ‘Excellent. Now I’m told this was on a mineral assignment from Kraken Ore. Oh, whadda you know? They’re owned by StarSense too! Missed that earlier. Small system, eh? Anyway, sorry, I know your time is precious. So. Mineral assignment. My system says you were three hours in, four hours from the field. Yes?’ ‘...’ ‘I know. What a coincidence. But those are the right details I assume?’ ‘...’ ‘Greeeeat. Now, looks like here’s where we hit trouble. According to the ship’s data logs kindly provided to us, you were piloting with a mining crew of 47. At this point of the journey, three hours in, four hours to go, the ship’s warning system alerted you to an anomaly. Within a few seconds of this, the ship entered a warp hailstorm. Right so far?’ ‘...’ ‘So cute, isn’t it? These tiny little warps being chucked around. Itsy-bitsy things compared to the big momma and pappa versions, eh? Don’t want to see one of them now, do you? Phew, no, siree.’ ‘...’ ‘Oh, it’s fine. If we go over we can just stick some money in the meter. We’re having a great time aren’t we? Anyway, ship hits the hailstorm and starts taking serious damage. Now, this ship should have had an effective warpshield, but this failed, correct?’ ‘...’ ‘Awful. How awful. And so now radiation is flying through your ship messing up circuits and what not.’ ‘...’ ‘Oh, of course. I can’t imagine the pain, not one bit. Horrible. So, warpshield has failed. You call this into Kraken Ore and send out an open SOS. You get a response from a couple of nearby ships who then head your way. Kraken Ore let StarSense know, and then they told you to hold tight. Anything amiss? ‘...’ ‘Yes, company policy for all StarSense subsidiaries is to notify their StarSense customer service manager of any problems as their first act. It’s to keep you, me, and everyone safe. Next I see the ship fails and life support is struggling. According to scans by a nearby StarSense satellite, 30 of the crew in the hold, where radiation shielding was weaker, had died by this point. Cause of death: severe radiation poisoning. How nasty. At least you were holding up at the front though!’ ‘...’ ‘I’m afraid so. You and two others were the only survivors. I spoke to them just now actually. Lovely people. Could barely say a bad word about you. Now, a few minutes later the ship has failed and scans show you were severely injured and soon lost consciousness. Correct?’ ‘...’ ‘Ah, don’t worry, nothing to worry about. So unconscious, yes?’ ‘...’ ‘Great. From there I see one of the rescue ships arrived, fired over a tow cable, and pulled you out of the storm. Within 30 minutes the emergency response term arrived, boarded the ship, and collected yourself and your crew. You were delivered to the hypostation on Silesia, where medical professionals saved your life by removing your right arm, and 66% of your legs.’ ‘...’ ‘That just about brings us up to speed. I can see your life signs are looking pretty good, and there’s been little change in the two hours since you arrived. What great work those emergency workers do, eh? Up and about all over the place making sure we survive that rough and tumble world out there. Do you have any more details to add in relation to your case?’ ‘...’ ‘Sorry, that isn’t relevant. Anything else?’ ‘...’ ‘Thank you. I’ll make sure that gets added. Now we’ll just put all this through the system and see what happens with your claim. How exciting!’ ‘...’ ‘Mmm, yes. I see. Well, I don’t know abou—-oh! Here it is! Ah, bad news I’m afraid. StarSense have ruled against your claim. What a shame. I’m so sorry. In fact, they’ve taken everything on board and it’s been decided you were responsible for this horrible incident.’ ‘...’ ‘According to this, in the 2.3 seconds between your ship’s warning alarm and the warp hailstorm manifesting, there was a 6.3% chance of you avoiding it by veering 82 degrees starboard as soon as the alarm sounded. Such a shame. Anything under 5% and your claim would have succeeded.’ ‘...’ ‘Sorry to interrupt. I only deal with in-process claims. I need to put you through to a colleague now. Wonderful to speak to you today.’ '...' ‘Good afternoon, this is Jeff at StarSense.


There is a place in the darkest part of the forest where no one dares make a sound. A place where the shrill call of the crow is muted by the soft leaves of the blunt tree branches. In that forest, there was a house. In that house dwelt a stalwart wood cutter and his three daughters. I would tell you that they were all happy, that the town ten miles off was not in a famine, that all the daughters were dutiful and kind, but I never said this tale would be the happy sort. Our story begins in the winter, the long kind of winter that holds the world in an oblivion of icy winds and tea colored skies. That winter has the power to imprison torrent streams and drive a stalwart woodcutter into town in search of food. “Three days”, the woodcutter told his daughters with a furrowed brow, “three days and I shall return to you with food”. The youngest daughter, Anne, was not worried. She had only seen seven winters and still thought the woods beautiful and secretive. The second daughter, Meg, was pernicious and could only think of the years of hunger and privation her father had brought upon the family. The eldest daughter, Beth, was the wise one and took this to be portents of some ill fate. She begged her father to stay in the modest cabin. However, when the sun was still rising the next day, the woodcutter left. The small cabin suddenly felt large and hallowed to the young girls. On the first morning, they played, spinning wool and trapping their fingers in the yarn. They sang long forgotten songs and danced until they were warm in the cold, cold cabin. They sat and watched as the snow fell faster, and thicker, covering up the last remnants of their father’s footprints. The day slipped by faster than dirt through loosened fingers. When the second day came, the girls did chores, sweeping the cabin floors until they gleamed with the bristled broom that hung by the hearth. The three daughters remade the small beds that rested in the corner of the room and watched the birds that were oddly silent in the trees. That day was quiet and still, gone before they could look back upon it. When the third day came the girls waited, they watched from the small window for the shape of their father to appear from the woods. Anne tried to fill the silence with chatter, talking of how the woods suddenly called to her in way they never had before. The third day passed too quickly. “Where is father”? Anne asked, a question that lingered on all three of the daughter’s minds. “Three days”, he had said, his eyes worried, his voice gentle. Three days had come and passed, where is father? The questioned hummed and thrummed through the little cabin. The fourth day arrived and with it came conflict. Their father had only left enough wood for three days, he had to take all he could to sell in town. The house was darker and the cold bit mercilessly at the young girls. Meg shivered and brought the thin woolen blanket closer to her shoulders, “one of us must go out and fetch some more wood, or surely we will all freeze”. She spoke what every girl had been thinking, but what none had the courage to say.Beth had her qualms when little Anne left the cabin and ventured out into the thick wood. Meg was fearful as well, if Anne did not return then they were sure to freeze. The two remaining sisters watched as young Anne’s figure disappeared into the silent, watchful forest. The hours slid by slower than wax off a candle, Meg tried to fill the silence with talk of how bright the birds’ calls suddenly seemed to her. Darkness swept down upon the cabin, crushing the hope of Anne’s safe return. With shaking fingers Beth begin to prepare for the woods, pulling on father’s old pair of thick boots, and stuffing dried grass in her gloves. Meg’s eyes stared at her through the dark, bright and cautious. Just as she’d buttoned up her coat, the small cabin door ripped open. Little Anne stood in the doorway, a bundle of wood jutting out of her coat. Beth embraced her, feeling relief course through her body. As Beth warmed Anne’s hands and feet, Meg took the wood and started to heat the small room. On the fifth day, Anne was different, she did not frown as the other two girls did, she did not watch the window for father. The youngest daughter sat on the floor humming a strange melody, expectantly watching the cabin door. She talked of the woods, how the trees seemed to stretch up and block the sky. She told of the most beautiful music she had heard there, haunting and hypnotizing. The music that had pierced her soul and left her frozen in hope of hearing more. Anne’s eyes lit up when she whispered of the man she had seen playing that music, of how he had promised to come for her and keep her warm for eternity. Beth felt Anne’s cheeks for fever, checked her tiny, frail, wrist, and sent her to bed. The snow swirled outside the window, spinning secrets and deadly riddles in the dark. Beth dreamt of a man shrouded in darkness, who whispered kind, dangerous words in her ears. She awoke the next morning to find the cabin still and Anne’s perfectly made bed empty; all remnants of their youngest sister gone with her. The morning came like an unwelcome guest, bright and cheerfully ignorant of what was truly happening. The sun shone on the snow outside, covering the woods in white, crystallized blankets. Inside, the cabin was frigid and dark. The last log had burned out, leaving wisps of smoke throughout the room. The two remaining girls hugged each other for warmth and felt the tears freeze on their cheeks. Meg had to pry herself out of Beth’s grasp to go out for more wood. She watched as Meg neared the clearing, turning back once to meet her gaze, before letting the woods swallow her. The birds watched as well before flying west, their wings beating madly until they were out of sight. Beth sat in the silent cabin, as far away from the window as she could be. Night came, and just as Beth was preparing for the woods Meg returned, arms full of wood and a smile lighting her pale face. The eldest sister watched the flames dance, and hiss from the hearth, filling the cabin with ill-favored warmth. On the seventh day Meg curled in the pallet by the hearth covering her ears while Beth sang a strange, haunted tune and waited by the door. Dusk covered the forest and the cabin, Meg still sat in the chair upright and eager. Beth focused on the fire, willing her heavy eyes to stay lifted. But the hearth’s shifting flames tricked her to sleep. The eighth day arrived, heavy and still. The last daughter sat in the cabin, tears spent and eyes weary. She carefully pulled on Meg’s coat, straightened Anne’s hat, and fastened father’s boots onto her little feet. She walked where the music called her, to the darkest part of the forest, and waited.


The old man walked slowly down the sidewalk. Thinking about where he had just come from, he hesitantly reached into his pocket for a cigarette, but he soon realized he had none left. Taking a small detour from his planned route, he crossed the street and entered a convenience store, where he bought a pack of cigarettes. After walking another block or two, he approached a bench outside of a small delicatessen and sat down, taking a break from his prolonged saunter. As he felt the cold metal through the back of his long, black pants, thoughts of his late wife began to rush through his mind. He took out the pack of cigarettes he had just bought, and opened the box. Just as he reached for one, he noticed a quarter on the ground about ten feet in front of him. He stood up, and began to walk towards the coin. Before he could take another step, however, there was a deafening crash, as if something had fallen from very high. The old man turned around to see an old air-conditioning in pieces on the bench. Under the rubble, he managed to make out a now crushed pack of cigarettes. As the gravity of the situation set in, the old man was not hit with worry, as what had happened was not going to happen again. He was not hit with grief, as he had faced too much in the last few months. He was struck by gratitude- not just that he had managed to narrowly avoid a terrible death, but that God had been kind enough to show him a sign. The old man walked down the sidewalk with newfound pep. This sign could only mean one thing- that he needed to quit smoking. This made sense to the old man, as his wife had been a smoker too, and met her end via lung cancer. Although he was sad about her passing, his motivation to quit smoking took over, and all an outsider would have seen was a jolly old man out for a stroll. When he finally arrived home from the cemetery, the old man decided to call up his daughter, explaining what had happened, and told her about his vow to give up cigarettes. While his daughter was very excited about this proposition, she cared little about his incident. She was more concerned about how this air-conditioning unit managed to fall onto the sidewalk, and curious as to why he did not stop to see who had been in the apartment; surely they would have come down to apologize. She tried to ask these questions to her father, but the old man was stubborn, and continued to rave about the “miracle” he had experienced. As a pious man, it was his responsibility in life to achieve greatness just to give away the credit to some external force, in the same way that his wife’s responsibility was to go to Him when He decided it was her time. The old man walked into his house, and immediately beelined to his room, not caring to lock the door or even take off his shoes. He collected every cigarette he could find, and started to walk back downstairs to throw them out. As he reached the bottom step, he saw a man dressed in all black approach him. The man in black grabbed a knife out of his pocket and proceeded to slit the throat of the old man, who now lay in a pool of blood at the base of the stairs, dead. The man in black looked down, and said to the body, “If you’d just stayed on that bench, I wouldn’t have to clean this shit up.


As I lay on this floor bleeding out, I look back and wonder, why must it all end so suddenly? I had plans to go party with my friends tonight. Who is going to feed my dog? I should of asked out that cute girl at the gym…. Did I live my life to the fullest? I should have traveled more…. All these random thoughts vanish in my head just as quickly as they came. The truth is that I am currently dying and soon nothing will really matter. Its funny how life works, and entire sequence of events that seem to randomly come together and for what? For 3 damn bullets to end up in my chest? If it wasn’t for the agonizing pain I'm in right now I would be pissed, this is not how I pictured my life ending. Wow this is taking forever. I’m still waiting for my life to flash before my eyes, nothing is happening, I just feel cold. Well I guess I could go down memory lane myself, I just hope I have enough time to remember the important parts…. That’s right! I have a mother and a father… I don’t know why that just popped up since EVERYONE has one but I’m trying to recall my life from my earliest memories. We were a happy family once but sometime between my 2nd and 3rd birthday things went to shit. I don’t really know what happened and it doesn’t matter since this is my story and I’m the star!. Anyways things were bad where we lived, corruption was at its peak, gang violence prevented anyone from going outside after 6pm. I knew money was an issue even at that young age of 4 but I would never have imagined that it would drive my dad to leave our country in search of a better future. I didn’t even know what was happening when my dad said goodbye, I did not see him for 7 years. I try not to think about the time I was with my mother, every time I look back, it seems like a blur of abandonment, hunger, tears, pain and suffering at the hands of my many stepdads. She was young when she had me and even though I blame her age for what happened, I still resent her. Dad never forgot though, he would send money and try to be there for me as best he could from such distance. At the age of 11 he asked me if I wanted to go live with him. It was a no brainer. I applied for a visa and after an extremely long process, I got it. It seems like only yesterday I was a goofy looking kid from South America seeing a Burger King for the first time. I went from always being hungry to not being abled to finish my food. Life was good from that point on, I went to school, made many friends and had normal teenage years. It wasn’t until it was time to apply for college that I realized my peers had something I didn’t. You see, I had overstayed my visa therefor making me an illegal immigrant. Although my dad had applied for a green card two years before I got to this country there weren’t any signs that we would get one any time soon. I was one of the only seniors that did not have a plan after finishing high school. Life went on and on my 18th birthday, 2 months after I had already finished high school, my green card came on the mail. I should have been angry because it caused me to be left behind by my peers that had already went on to college, but I was just happy and grateful that the country that took me in when I was young considered me a legal resident. It was a euphoric sensation to finally feel like I belonged somewhere. That day I went to a recruiting station to join the U.S Air Force and try to give back to the country that had already given me so much. Until this very last moment I still think my life didn’t truly began until I joined the service. I honestly thought I would meet my end fighting for this nation because i love this country, I love its people and I loved the opportunities it was able to give a young immigrant kid from South America. The words: Land of the free, home of the brave keep popping into my mind. Who would of thought my trip to El Paso would end this way.


The thread started to unravel. He figured he could be 20 minutes late to the meeting in conference room 3. An annual update on compliance with regulations regarding regulatory compliance. Six mandatory hours, with a 45 minute break for some bland turkey pitas with too much mayo and shredded iceberg lettuce and your choice of a 12 ounce can of Coke, Diet Coke or Sprite from the red Igloo cooler with the scuff on the side. Six years of this meeting, and not a single memory that stuck in his mind from any of them. Except for the cooler. He remembered that scuff because it resembled the scar on his leg from that time he crashed his bike when he was 13, trying to impress the new girl who had just moved in across the street. She laughed. He ran. He hid. He planning to avoid her until the end of time, but three months later he got over it. And now he had a cool scar and a story to tell. But nothing interesting ever happened in these meetings. The lecture droned on so his mind wandered. His eyes lethargically searched the room for something more visually appealing than yet another Powerpoint presentation with star wipes between pie charts and boxes of text which were not only printed out in the handout booklet but were being read word for word by a man who had no inflection in his voice of any kind. For the third year in a row the ceiling light in the front left corner of the room was flickering. And then he noticed her. He didn’t really notice her at first, but her blouse. With a hint of a reflection from the lights above, the thin and loose grey fabric forced his mind to stop wandering. The drape of the blouse formed interesting arcs as it flowed across and down her shoulders, reminding him of the heavy, dull surf at the pier ahead of an approaching storm. Her neck was hidden by thick curls of brown, neatly bundled in a black tie, dangling a puffed bundle below that danced and flowed with every slight movement of her head. Her brown hair gave way to shades of red as it intercepted the stream of the morning sun, only to vanish a moment later as the vision of distraction stepped out of the light. But above all, the sight of a lone thread protruding from the seam on her right shoulder demanded consideration. About an inch in length it was all but unnoticeable, but as the speaker droned on it was a hot spring oasis in a tundric wasteland of monotony. Given the choice between wondering how it came to be, how it affected the strength of the fabric, pondering if she knew about it or listening to the mnemonic devices to help you remember for which forms the automated review system would prompt you during third quarter auditing reviews, there was no choice at all. He lived a quiet, solitary life. Work, home, TV, sleep. In earlier years he had explored the world, usually getting on his trustworthy Honda motorcycle and randomly driving down freeways and highways just to see where they went. In 14 years he had visited every state except Alaska, Hawaii, and New Jersey – which bothered him, because while he could ride a bike to New Jersey he couldn’t come up with a single reason why he would. He dove the reefs in Mexico, climbed an eruption volcano in Guatemala, visited Panama where he helped extinguish a fire in a cane field one week then came back the next and helped burn it down. The canvas of his life had once been vibrant and varied, but he had replaced all of that with a simple life of simple routine. His new canvas was empty, framed, and hung on the wall for all to see. And now he was contemplating a single loose thread which was the most interesting thing in the room. Until she, the woman with the freckles, stood up and turned around and walked towards the bland pitas with too much mayonnaise. She, with the gold wire frame glasses balanced in front of her eyes, the flicker of the failing light dancing in a corporate approximation of starlight and shooting stars. She was now the most interesting thing in the room. He would say hi. And in his soul, at the edge of that plain canvas so neatly framed and hung on display, a thread of his known life worked itself free and began to unravel.


Aella. Torches lined the walls of the cobblestone chamber, waves of smoke lifting from them. Charred meats and disappointing ale had been placed along the length of the council table, but none were tasted. Lord Aella sat uneasy at the large table with the other nine men whom he called brothers, the men waited patiently for the Queen to arrive. Lord Pomeran Royk paced back and forth on the far side of the room, refusing to take his seat. “It’s death,” Lord Pomeran insisted, “What other reason does she have for summoning the council so late.” Pomeran’s words had been in Aella’s thoughts, though he dared not speak them into existence. A summoning this late could only mean death and the only death worth the worry of the council was the Kings. The large oak door of the chamber rattled for a moment before being eased open, four guards entered; knights of the kingdom. Their polished steel armor was emblazoned with the sigil of the Kraken, each man wore their reinforced helms, completely covering their faces. They kept their hands on the hilts of the swords and the chamber grew even more uneasy. The Queen entered behind the guards in a long flowing black dress, she wore a darkened vail that had been pushed back to show her face, the faces of all the men of the council dropped at the sight of the vail. “Her face looks ready for a tourney,” Aella thought to himself, “She keeps us waiting at this hour to do her bloody hair?” Four more guards entered the chamber behind the Queen and toke their places against the walls of the chamber, the silver trim on their black cloaks caught the light as they stood between the torch placements. Two of the guards ushered a rather nervous looking Pomeran to his chair at the table. Each of the seated Lords rose to greet the Queen, bowing their heads and waiting for her to take her seat. “The King is dead.” She sighed as she eased down into her seat, “We must sort out the succession at once.” The chamber fell completely silent, Aella glanced up and down the table trying not to draw attention to himself, no man made eye contact and none dared to speak. “Damn that bloody oath.” Aella sighed before raising his hand slightly, “What must be sorted?” Aella asked with a crack in his voice, “Prince Tarhun should be summoned from down South at once.” “I love Tarhun as if her were my own son.” The Queen insisted, “But he is no King. I am the King’s lawful wife and my son; the first son of your King and your Queen should seat the throne. Tarhun is thousands of miles away, my son Nadarr shall be named King.” Aella gripped the arm rest of his chair tight, his jaw tensed, he was unsure if he would be able to find the words to speak but tried nonetheless, “We swore a vow.” Aella reminded the men at the table, Aella looked up and down at his fellow Lords, meeting each of their eyes, “The King had us pledge our swords to Tarhun, he is the King’s first son and from a lawful marriage.” Aella looked over to the Queen, her face showed no emotion, “Fine.” The Queen said plainly, “We should have a vote.” Hushed mutterings began to break out amongst the Lords at the table, “Who else here believes Tarhun should be summoned for the throne?” The Queen asked. Aella raised his hand, so did two others. There was a rattle of chain behind him, Aella felt cold steel press against his neck, a brief moment past before Aella’s throat began to burn and his vision fade.


When I was young my father told me to be afraid of angels. They spend their time lurking just beyond your sight, wearing beautiful faces that are overflowing with deadly demons teeth. He told me, once, that everyone meets an angel at least one time in their life, and then he looked at my mother with suspicion in his pale celery coloured eyes. I always hated celery, but I love my father dearly. Mother would always shake her head and scoff when he spoke of angels. You could always see it in her face when she looked at him that she loved that crazy man more than life itself. She told me that she could have the whole wide world, all its sweets and riches, but they were nothing but ash were he not there at her side. Tasteless and dull, ceaseless monotony worth less than the gravel under your shoes. She told me that when I asked if she loved him. Never quite had the courage to ask if she loved me. Some days I get real close to asking. Others... Well, I guess I just knew. I got my answer in the end. Sixteen years ago on the twenty first of May... I was still just a happy kid. God, I'll never forget the hot reek of blood in my nose. The damp warmth of the day clinging to my skin like a muggy film. It had been raining a lot, and the first clear day in over a week was a hot one. Authorities claimed some wild animal had done it, in the end. My father had been meaning to fix the back door for eons. The paint was chipped and peeling away, the rich colour of dark chocolate being ripped away by time, and the thing squeaked like you just stepped on a mouse. I walked in the front so I didn’t notice right away that the old back door had been torn from the house as if it were nothing at all. My focus was the strange, heavy, coppery smell. I remember calling for my mother clear as day and I swear I heard her call back to me. This sweet little hint of sound, strong and bold in ways I could never be. “I'm in the kitchen!” Now, her hands always shook a little, as far back as I can remember. My memories are fading now but her voice was always clear as a crystal glass. A little high-pitched and sweet as fresh fruit. The sound of her laugh gets fuzzier everyday. Fainter. Like she's leaving me behind even in my thoughts but to this day I know I heard her to me. “I'm in the kitchen!” So I kicked off my shoes and threw my favourite hoodie a little to the left onto the first step of the stairs. It usually smelled of cigarette smoke, yet never once in my life and I even held a cigarette. Somehow that sharp twisting smell remained stuck to the fabric. Angels, my father said. My mother scoffed, that sound only she could make into a gentle, loving embrace, and she told me; “It must be that boy that you hang around. Ernest? Aaron?” It was funny that he didn't smoke either. None of my friends did. We were never cool enough for that. In the end it doesn't really matter much. Doesn't stop me from walking into that kitchen and it doesn't take the memories away. Not even time could dull this day. The walls had always been this wretched shade of green. Sort of watery, almost yellow and almost tan but somehow not. They were solidly green, you couldn't call them anything else, yet they also weren’t really green. But that day they were painted anew. That day I saw them dripping fresh crimson in all of the places that there weren't holes. As thick is my wrist and more than a hand deep these gouges ripped through the walls almost clean to the other side. There wasn't anything left of my beautiful mother's throat. Her body was cold and stiff where she lay over what was left my father. He was hardly even recognizable anymore outside of the gold feather shaped pin on his jacket, and a single shining ivory orb betraying one of those familiar celery green eyes. There was love still gleaming from my mother’s glassy baby blues. It was that day, almost that very moment that I saw my first angel. Our back door was in the kitchen and through the hole left behind I saw a monster. Hunched over, with bones too sharp and muscles too thick, it's body wasted away like it was staving. Skin the colour of stolen dreams. Around it’s almost comically small head was a halo of horns. Golden daggers longer than my forearm arching upwards from its bare scalp. Scaly shoulders protected non-existent ear’s sloping downwards into too long limbs... Great webbed Wings, each bearing a single 'thumb' with a claw longer than one of my father’s old beer bottles. Each of its legs was longer than I was tall, thick as a saplings tree trunk and dyed a sticky scarlet that ended just inches above its knees. Gargantuan clawed feet arched away from the ground... Never did see its face. I called the police not long after, stuttering so badly I didn't even know what I was trying to say. Tears on my cheeks felt so sticky I was sure if I looked they be the same hue as the kitchen walls. I wonder what they thought walking into that mess. I tried to tell them what I saw on the yard. The one officer, a woman with almond-shaped eyes and hair darker than the night sky, told me I was in shock. She said she was very sorry for my loss. They couldn’t explain to me the bloody prints on the grass, two perfectly human looking footprints, two much larger, and two partial prints that were each tipped with four holes the size of my head. You know it's kind of funny. We never did find that old door.


Tires in the rain hissed on the street as the door opened. The scents of popcorn and petrichor mingled beneath the marquee as Rian and Angeline passed the ticket line leaving the movie theatre. The parking lot was pitch black, but Rian's car was along the street. By the light of his phone, his key found its slot in the door. "That side doesn't lock," he told Angeline. "Just pull." On Rian's third try, the car's motor exploded to life, perceptible from miles away. A lonely headlight pierced the night at a crooked angle, winking now and again. Last year's window wipers smeared the city rain across the dirty windshield. The driving wheel pulled right agressively, but Rian spared Angelia his other hand to hold. Bald tires carried Rian's uninsured lemon to Angeline's house. The brakes complained loudly on arrival. Something shifted in the trunk with a slam. Rian walked Angeline to her door. Angeline traded stupid words with her date, and pressed her mouth against his. Rian's hands crept up her shirt. She made no protest. Rian mentioned that his parents were out of town. The moment passed. Angeline's porch light was collecting moths, but the door was locked. She let herself in with the key from under the plastic rock. Rian retreated to his jalopy and made for his house as he fiddled with the radio. More than one stop sign was regarded merely as a suggestion. His windows were white with fog by the time he was home. Rian went inside through the laudry room door and kicked off his wet shoes. He threw his jacket, borrowed without his brother's permission, to the top of the dryer. Hunger registered in Rian's stomach on boredom's behalf. Without so much as a flick of the kitchen lights, he descended upon the fridge. Lo and behold, there was still macaroni salad, but in the back of the crisper, hidden like some relic, was a lone can of beer in a paper bag. Rian stared at the can, hearing the murmur of the downpour outside. He wasn't certain he could play dumb enough to his parents if there was only the one can. If there were four or five, fine, but just the one? The tab popped and spray misted Rian's face as he sucked up the foam. He closed the fridge with one socked foot, and the kitchen went dark. Rian set the macaroni salad by the microwave. On the other side of the counter there was a man sitting at the dining room table in the dark. Rian shouted and stumbled back. He threw his drink at the man, who closed the distance between them. His hands were hot on Rian's neck and arm. Releasing Rian's arm, the man's hand plunged into Rian's front pocket. Rian jerked, he could feel the man's hot breath. The man's hand produced Rian's phone. The light of the activated screen illuminated the man's face. Rian's eyes squinted as the phone screen turned to him. His eyes widened at one of many photos of Angeline, underdressed, features striking. A number of features shared even now by the man with a hand on Rian's neck. The phone vanished from site, and Rian was yanked around. His head slammed against the surface of the dining room table, a great weight held his chest down. Rian's hand scrambled for a purchase, but the table was slick with beer. The phone reapeared bearing a photo of Angeline in a swimsuit. The swish of a thumb revealed Angeline wearing even less. Rian shook his head, coughing up a failed plea. The phone turned away. The screen's light danced in the chandelier on the ceiling and across the man's face, transfixed in anguish. The screen turned to Ryan revealing a photo he'd taken himself. A photo of half of himself, and all of Angeline. Blinding pain smashed into Rian's face. Hot blood poored from his nose. Rian's vision swirled in the dark as he was struck again and again. Something hard hit him in the lip, forced its way into his mouth, breaking a tooth. His cheecks screamed with pain. The screen lit up. The man's fist struck like a hammer, driving the phone, shattering screen and all, deeper and deeper into Ryan's mouth. Slivers of glass tumbled into Rian's throat. Angeline's shameless smile beamed between the splits in the screen like the bars of a cell. An uncontrollable jet of hot vomit erupted from Rian's throat. The weight left his chest, and he pulled the phone free of his mouth, retching. Before Rian passed out, he tried to feel if there was still glass in his throat. When he awoke in morning to the sound of birds greeting the sun, Rian would recall the dark of the former night, and the sound of sobbing that wasn't his.


My name is Joshua Wang and if you are reading this, it means that you have decided to use your remaining time on Earth to read one of the many blogs about Tyler Kaufman instead of panicking about how Earth as we know it is about to split into a million pieces by an asteroid. I read about Tyler Kaufman on The Straits Times on August the 6th. A young boy having been revived by new experimental equipment after falling from a twelve storey building, claiming to have seen the afterlife. He described it as being like a mirror of our world. He woke up on the sidewalk as if he just had a good night's sleep, right below his HDB Block, no blood stains or anything. He wandered around what he had quoted as "Heaven itself". Many "people" there had stared at him before resuming their usual activities. As he took a bus back "home", he was met with his already deceased grandfather and several other strangers in his house. Not only that, the house looked normal, but in reality it was almost infinite, with infinite similar rooms and an infinite variety of people. They looked healthy and normal, but they said they had all splattered on the concrete floor from falling to death. All residents of the house, from all the way back when the buildings were built without extra safety measures to when Tyler had found out he had just failed all his subjects for the PSLE test. A few months after his attempt, his mother claimed to have signed him up for a special experimental treatment to "bring him back". Just like that, Tyler was snatched back to the about-to-get blown-up-world for one last chance to say goodbye to his parents. A few weeks before this news had taken everyone by surprise, another piece of news had caught everyone by surprise; NASA revealed that Earth was about to be blown into a billion bits in around 13 months. People didn't know what to do then, I mean, they weren't going to kill themselves. Protestors flooded government areas to demand for answers and the truth. Most, if not all, had thought that the government caused it. I mean, no one expected the world to end in the next billion years and now an asteroid just appears out of nowhere. However, the Kaufman Case came out as HUGE news for the panicking world. It came as hope for everyone, but what everyone had used that hope to do was something entirely different... The Day Kaufman Came Back (Day One): I came home from work that day to find my wife reading about the Kaufman Case. Her laptop was full of tabs of news articles and social media posts. She was so excited no adjective would suit her. Well, of course that isn't important. After all, you didn't come here to for tips on describing someone's excitement. As I read more and more about Tyler Kaufman that day, I also became more and more excited. This could be the turning point for everybody to relax. At the dinner table, we had been using our phones to research more about it as well. As I scrolled through news sites while unconsciously shoving rice in my mouth, my wife said something that made me choke. "Have I ever told you that my dad died from lung cancer before we even met?" "No?" "I really miss him". I left the dinner table before even finishing half of my food, we didn't talk for the rest of the night. As I lay on our bed, I started to have more and more questions to the issue; How specific does one have to die to be with someone else who died the same way? Would purposely killing yourself be the same as unintentionally killing yourself? Would the same items be required to finish the job? What if Kaufman was lying? Why would a kid lie? Would a kid lie to everyone for attention? For hope? Endless amounts of questions had flooded my mind. They invaded my nightmare, where I came home to find my wife sitting on a pile of cigarettes. The nightmare was then suddenly interrupted by my phone notification, my boss had messaged me to go around the Sengkang neighbourhood to interview residents about their thoughts. Day Two: I got out of bed early without waking up. Apparently my wife had got up earlier than I had. She was not in the house, and neither was her purse. On the way to work, the front bus window had been cracked, a few blood stains could still be seen. The driver had caught me looking, and smiled. "Some guy ran in front of the bus yesterday, but obviously at the speed this tank here was going, it merely gave him a concussion and a scar. The Bus repairmen sure did a shitty job if you ask me, haha!" The silence that ensued got louder and louder, more awkward by the second, and so without thinking I asked if it was frequent for people to run in front of vehicles once the news had broke out about the supposed afterlife. "Yeah... uhm... I heard from multiple other bus drivers yesterday of people just ramming themselves into cars and what not. Sometimes I chuckle thinking about what the doctors are doing. Do they save the life of someone, preventing them to be with their loved ones? Yeah, Dark I know..." I went to multiple pedestrians to find any new pieces of information to put up on the news site that hasn't already been said. People joyfully going on about joining their loved ones in what is presumably heaven. People ranting about how life should not be thrown away. People talking about how the whole thing was a scheme done by religious fanatics. "I hope I get cancer so that I can be with my boyfriend again..." "It's a shame my mom died by old age, I can't really do anything about that, hope they design some kind of old age thingmajig before next year" "We have a year to live and people are treating it like it's nothing! My siblings are talking about killing themselves and it makes me sick!" "No one even knows if Tyler was even revived from the afterlife. There's probably some scientific evidence to suggest why he had those visions but for some reason people just believed one random kid. Many other people had supposedly seen the afterlife before and no one gave them a crap. He may just be an attention seeker who wants to atleast have some glory before he goes out, before we all go out." I recorded all of it down, all the opinions opinions opinions. It is sometimes believed that people created religion to hope that there is something in the afterlife that isn't just darkness... I thus similarly believe that people trust Tyler Kaufman in this desperate siruation everyone is in. He simultaneously gave many hope, but he also has the potential to simultaneously destroy many people's beliefs. I went home that day to find the house completely dark. My wife was on the bed... my heart almost sank. I quickly ran towards her pale body and almost screamed to find that she was not responding when I shook her. Her bright eyes opened suddenly in the darkness, I almost cried tears of relief. "Honey... how was work?" Day Three: I could not sleep again that night. My brain had been a question factory for the whole time I laid in bed staring at the ceiling. After a while, I had gotten up and paced around my bedroom for the remaining hours of darkness. To solve the question of how should I die would require the solution of who should I join. My father, my mother, my favourite teacher that could teach me all sorts of things in the afterlife, even if I could probably learn everything in eternal afterlife anyways, if afterlife was eternal. I thought about all the events of my life and the people I have met. I thought about whether you could even reproduce in the afterlife. I thought about how old you would be in the afterlife and whether your age would increase. It would really suck to live eternity as a child or a sickly old man. Could you even get sick in the afterlife? The more I thought about it, the more the bullshit meter at the back of my head had gone up. I soon realised that these questions and thoughts were ruining me. They would ruin me before the asteroid would. So I called my boss and told him that I quit the job, foolishly thinking that this would give me some peace before judgement day. Since my wife was not in the house again and I was not about to spend the remaining year of my life playing games on my computer at home, I went out on an adventure. Or at least as adventurous as you can get in Singapore. The bus stop was completely empty except for a guy with a red tee holding something I couldn't make out. "Hey, mister, don't stand near the road!" I looked behind and saw a teenager and a bunch of other people way back from the bus stop. I awkwardly walked to join them. "You wouldn't want to get hit by a car would you? Unless your like that guy, in which case, sorry to bother you". I looked back at the man with the red tee and at another angle, I saw that it was a picture frame. As the bus came closer and closer to the station, the man's breath grew stronger and stronger, he wore his tears and snot like make up. He ran up to the middle of the road and let out a scream, the bus driver must have known what was happening, because he drove right into the man at top speed, causing his body to fly around ten meters from where it had originally been. A few bystanders let out a "oooh". The teen had looked at me and said. "Imagine if that guy had caused the bus to flip, causing everyone in it to die. Selfish asshole." Well... Let's just say my appetite for adventure had been lost fairly quickly, as I ran back home straight away. Back at home, I saw my wife laying on the sofa crying like an 8 year old girl. I was about to ask why when suddenly I recieved the notification that would change everything for the third time. It was an artixle with the headlines saying "Tyler Kaufman and his family revealed to be christians". Slightly confused, I asked, "Is this what you're crying about?" My wife looked up at me with a grimace, " Yes, Joshua! Do you know what this means? What this means for us? What this means for the whole freaking world? It's all bullshit! This whole afterlife shit! It's all a god damn publicity stunt!" As I read the article while moving towards our bedroom, I started to get dizzy. Tyler Kaufman, during an interview, has revealed that he and his family were christians. This had made the reportee himself extremely shocked. However, Tyler and his family has claimed that this fact doesn't change anything. I took a sigh of relief. Well, I guess it makes sense. After all, you can't enter Christianity's heaven if you killed yourself but that's exactly what Tyler did. I was just about to ask my wife if she even read the full coverage when I saw a leaflet under her pillow. On it it said: "Looking for participants to test out a super cigarrette that would speed up cancer". Shocked and furious, I took the leaflet and held it up right at her face. "What?! What were you planning to do?!" A look of shock and regret had flashed through her face with a long silence of her trying to think of what to say. "I miss him Joshua! I saw it on my way to work, oh God Joshua, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" "So what were they going to do, watch you as you poison yourself to death? What if it didn't work? You just ditched me here! Ditched me in this messed up world!" It was clear that she had nothing to say, so I told her to get out of the house. No, I threatened her to get out of the house or I would kill her myself. Was I so selfish to be angry at my wife, my supposed closest companion, to suddenly have that crooked idea? Before I could even decide on what to do next, I collapsed onto the sofa and fell asleep. Day Four: I woke up with a major headache, but atleast for once I had some sleep. I don't know for how long, but I had stared at the blank television screen for hours. On the pitch black screen of the televison I saw Joyce. She wanted so desperately to be with her father. Her mother had died shortly after she was born and her best friend had been her father. Maybe I was selfish after all to try to take that away from her. To shame her for having her own deepest desires. I looked out the window in hopes of seeing her nearby and atleast not dead. Instead, I saw a small girl walking towards the road. Crap. I thought. I rushed out of the house and saw that a blue mercedes was cruising at top speed towards her. Again, I thought about that man who had flown across the road and possibly to Heaven as well. If I let that girl suffer the same fate, I would never forgive myself. I jumped towards the girl to push her away. Instead of feeling a sense of pride for saving the life of an innocent. I felt a sharp pain and saw only darkness. Day Eleven: I woke up where I still am now, a hospital bed. My wife was beside me, and she had a look of joy and relief when she saw that I had awoke. The doctors excitedly explained to me that I had been revived just like Kaufman. They explained to me that there was a public outrage after Kaufman had revealed his family were christians and so the doctors were forced to try to recreate the same scenario. I was the first person to be successfully revived. When they asked me what I saw, I replied that I forgot. I told them I saw darkness and now I woke up here and that there may be something in between those two moments but that it is now lost because I forgot. Slightly disappointed and fustrated, the doctors encouraged me to try to remember it and get some rest before leaving the room. My wife tried her best to hug me in my current state. She talked about how she had almost wanted to jump in front of a car after finding out what had happened to me, but she just couldn't do it in the end. We made a promise to forever to stay together in this new world till the end. This world that has become a cruel place to live in. If there is no hope to be found in the remaining year of human life, people would start to do whatever they feel like doing without a care in the world to make up for the years they will lose. You may be wondering whether I told the doctors the truth about what I saw, if I really forgot. Well... it's either that or there actually is no Heaven, I will never know. I think that's for the best.


Twenty-three hundred days in hell is exactly what you’d think. Well, unless you anticipated screaming, and praying, and begging, and wailing and gnashing of teeth no…hell is nothing like the Old Testament. Hell is an eight-foot-tall, six-by-six cell. Three walls and a ceiling, all made of concrete. That fourth wall however, now I’m betting you anticipate “bars,” right? Seeing as I’ve described hell as a cell? Well here I am to burst your bubble ‘cause hell isn’t a cell per se. The fourth wall is just…open. Completely open to a four-story drop for me, even higher for the boys above me. And if you were to drop, you’d land and shatter your fucking femurs for one, but you’d land on the sandy bottom of a tall, dark, enclosed, circular building in the middle of goddamn nowhere. The floor of this place is about the size of a football field in all directions and in its center…in its heart. Is the Panopticon. I can still remember the metallic voice over the unseen speakers as we each awoke, drugged, in our cells. It started off with a factoid. The man who first proposed the idea of the Panopticon described it as “A mill for grinding rogues honest.” We were to be the, “First ever maximum-security inmates to be housed within the ULTIMATE STRUCTURE OF SURVEILLANCE!” Like we were supposed to be goddamn excited for it. Like they were selling us something that we should be chomping at the bit to buy. 360-degree view from the tower in the center with about 150 open cells surrounding. No human face though, scowling out at us from behind it’s dark, cold plexi-glass. No human faces EVER. See that was really the thing about hell. I hadn’t seen another human face since the moment that screeching, tinny, robotic voice woke me up to tell me what I’d won, twenty-three hundred days and counting, in hell. The point of the “open cell concept” as I like to call it, is this, we all assume we could be the one being monitored at any given time so now, we self-discipline. No need for bars when we’re met with a bone crushing fall and motion-activated machine guns mounted on every curve of that tower. No sir-e. We’ll be the good little boys our mechanical overlords know we’ll be, because we have no other fucking choice. Now how can a maximum-security prison operate without any human beings? Much like most things in this brave new, robotic world. Our three-square meals a day are delivered to us through a perfectly fucking sealed square hole in the wall and I know that it’s being delivered on a conveyor belt, assembled and maintained by machines because for the past 6 months my meals have been coming to me with the exact same mistakes, day-in-and day-out. If that doesn’t sound like a malfunctioning robot, electronic, or machine to you than you haven’t spent a lot of time depending on one. My breakfasts used to be nice and portioned off on the tray. The scrambled eggs had their square, the toast had his, and my orange slices had theirs. Now every single morning the eggs are no longer scrambled, they’re runny as hell and I hate runny. But what’s more is my orange slices are placed right in the center of that disgusting, thick soup o’ eggs. Like two orange, radioactive islands floating within a sea of yellow shit. And my dinners no longer include any meat, just the gravy for the meat. So, I’m just getting potatoes and steamed veggies every night for the past 6 months with nothing but the idea of meat. It used to be that once a month a palm-sized touch pad would come through the food slot and you could make selections on any malfunctions or problems you’d been experiencing under certain categories and then back through the slot it would go and within a day or so the problem would be resolved. So, once upon a time I could rectify these mistakes or at least be given the illusion of having a voice. But I haven’t seen a touch pad come through the wall in well over 3 years and I don’t expect I’ll be seeing one ever again. I mean my lunch no longer even comes at all but from the feedback I’ve gotten from the fine gentlemen around me, everybody’s lunch stopped coming about 2 years ago so a certain programed protocol has obviously kicked in. What we all want to know is what it means… Here’s what I think it means. The people running this place, the human beings meant to give mind to this machine of hell, are all gone. Something very, very bad happened out there in the world and we’re in here completely unsupervised, by man. But now we’re so dangerously supervised by the machines that this really is a hell, and we’ll all spending eternity in this place as more parts and pieces of it fall apart with no human beings coming to put it all back together again, and call the devil back to bed. Plus, the water has started to taste a little like battery acid. We figured out I want to say two-and-a-half years ago that we could call out to one another and have conversations without anything happening. The first guy to finally shriek out into the abyss was Bluie my neighbor. He’s a totally innocent man and one night right as I was finally beginning to drift off into my version of sleep, I hear the first human voice I’d heard since before my incarceration. It was Bluie. And Bluie yells out, “Aye, aye RoboCops! Why ain’t ya tuck us in no more!?” The silence that followed…whew! Could have heard the drip, drip, drip of a robot taking a gasoline piss a football field away. But then…nothing happened. I mean absolutely nothing happened for one minute, then two minutes, then seven. In the hour that followed the event that I’ve so affectionately named, “Bluie’s First Contact” it was truly as if we were in hell, yet this time, we were the demons. The screaming and shrieking, swearing and cursing, the absolute thunderous, bellowing shouts of rage and sound that erupted from all 150 inmates after Bluie’s First Contact was the most hell-ish thing I had ever known. Myself, I just yelled every horrible thing I had ever heard or thought of throughout the entire course of my life until I tasted blood in the back of my throat and no longer had any voice to speak with. But this ushered in great change. There were conversations for a few weeks. Men confessing, mostly men declaring innocence. Men sharing jokes, men telling stories of all the best and all the worst pussy they’d had before waking up in this place. We were a tribe. But with so many conversations happening all at once we couldn’t keep track of the fractures. The fissures, the silences. And soon there were indecipherable clicks with the tongue, and combinations of words which meant nothing. High and low shouts which gave away no inflection or intention. We all developed our own secret language to communicate with the men we really trusted. We’re split now, divided. Sound is all we have so we use it as secret forms of communication. The acoustics are fantastic in our Panopticon and so each level has developed their own secret means of communication so no other level can understand them. The highest level of cells, near the ceiling are rumored to still be receiving lunch, spring water to drink, and meat with dinner so of course it goes without saying that every level hates them. The bottom level, my level is rumored to have successfully gotten some of our boys out—escape. I know this is bullshit because several months back another guy, real quiet guy likes us to call him G, kicked his pillow right out the opening in his cell. You may have wondered how I knew the machine guns mounted on the Panopticon were motion-sensitive? At least three machine guns locked onto it and shot it as it was falling through the air, and completely eviscerated it once it hit ground. So began the escape rumors. We also know that if we come to close to the opening of our cells the machine guns lock onto us and follow our every move until we step back far enough. Once, I daggled a piece of cloth over the side and a machine gun fired and nearly blew my fucking hand off. What I’ve been trying to get my guys on this level to understand, is that there aren’t enough machine guns to handle all of us. If only we conducted more “experiments” really figured out the way they work, even if just one of us could escape that one could go find out what happened to the world. Bring help. But Bluie says this is part of the Panopticon. This is how we’re meant to be kept here, in hell. “Men built this,” he said, “men want this.” G thinks what I’m suggesting involves sacrificing one of “ours”. Even if we got the rest of the 147 inmates in on it everyone would scream the same thing: “The cocksuckers on the bottom have the lowest fall! They should be the ones to distract the guns while others try an escape!” I think G is probably right. But no one has spoken a real, human sentence in so long, I don’t intend to be the first to break the “silence” and find out. But what I haven’t told you, or told anyone for that matter, is that I’ve been pissing blood for the last 4 months. I got to get up and take a piss at least 12 times a night. I knew I was terminal before they condemned me to wake up here, but I think I must be getting to the end. Yesterday morning I woke up to blood in my underwear, which is new. Bluie’s also changed, he talks about God a lot now and what he’ll do in the Kingdom of Heaven when he finally goes “home.” G hasn’t spoken to us in over a week. I think he may be dead but it’s real hard to cut through the smell of myself and 149 other poorly washed prisoners to detect the scent of death. Plus, I never really knew what cell was his anyway, it’s not like I can crane my neck out with a, “Yooohoooo! Still alive in there?!” and find out. I wonder how hard it would be to convince Bluie to let his body drop to that warm, sandy floor…let him get on “home” then. Or me, what about me? Smear myself in my own dirty blood and go screaming over the side the same way I screamed my lungs out a few short years ago when I knew for certain that this, this was hell, this was going to be the place in which I became a demon. Because yes. This mill has finally ground me down. I am a demon of the Panopticon.


Some people go crazy when they get laid off. A lot of companies see a dip in profits, because the demand for their services goes down. It’s not always in their control. But they keep their heads above water with a simple equation: the number of orders equals the number of staff. So when the demand goes down, turnover always goes up. It’s really that simple. X equals y. Whoever they can afford to lose to keep themselves afloat, they cut. It’s a kind of amputation with no anesthetic for some of the people they let go. They put *years* of time and effort into their jobs and build themselves up. Day in and day out, they prove themselves not only worth keeping, but worth going up the corporate ladder. They believe that enough hard work would give them just rewards. But that isn’t in the equation. A simple x equals y doesn’t care, and the realization hits hard. Imagine this. You get a job in an office like plenty of other middle-class people. You value doing your best every single day. You’re new, so you don’t have a good reputation, or any at all for that matter. But that’s fine. That doesn’t matter because you can *show* people what you’re made of. It’s not a six-figure gig or anything glamorous, but you’re grateful to have it. You’re thankful because it lets you pay the bills, feed your family, and even be comfortable. Weeks of repetitive work go by. The labor gets under your skin occasionally, but you don’t let it become a bother. It’s tiring giving extensive overtime, but the paychecks are worth it. Knowing that life is stable drives you to keep going. Months pass. Having food on the table is never a question. Paying all the bills on time and pocketing a little something for yourself isn’t a problem. People take notice of you. They see your performance is above average, but that’s being modest. They know you’re excellent as an employee, and so do you. After all, the managers share the performance reports with you for your evaluations. You’re there for a couple years now. The quality of your work hasn’t dipped much. Coworkers go to you with their questions when management is right next to them. Talk of a possible promotion goes your way. You don’t say it out loud, but it’s clear that you deserve it. The promotion to lead isn’t something huge, but you’re beginning to step up the ladder. Confidence is growing inside you. You go to work every day with a smile on your face. A goal was achieved: you never stopped proving yourself. It was only a matter of time before management congratulated you on the promotion. The job becomes a piece of who you are. And that because it isn’t just a job anymore. It’s a career, and a future looks promising. You deserve it. Your spouse knows it because of all the overtime given to feed the family. Your kids know it because there’s a growing college fund, and it’d get bigger at a faster pace from here. One morning, the boss comes to your desk with a grin. He shakes your hand. He tells you how happy he is to promote you to a team lead. Your eyes brighten with excitement. There was no way to be prepared for how soon the day would come. The family’s excited. They’re thrilled to see how happy you are. Years go by still. You’re well adjusted to the new role at work. Bosses tell you they can depend on you. The worker bees love you. But one day, not even half an hour after finishing a long shift, there’s a phone call. You don’t know the number off hand but pick up anyway. The voice on the other end says not to go to work tomorrow. The company no longer needs your services. Those words hit you like a brick dropping on your skull. Clearly there’s a misunderstanding. You just didn’t hear that right. The person on the other end confirms. The company no longer needs your services. Do *not* go to work tomorrow. Tears well up. Your spouse hears the sobs and asks what’s wrong. It’s terrifying to process, let alone tell the truth. But what’s the point in lying? You don’t have the heart to put up a façade. Days pass and you still don’t have a job. Bills are right around the corner. You look back at your bank history, realizing how careless spending was. You feel like a failure. You start asking why they cut you just like that. If having you wasn’t worth it, why didn’t they address the problem? But another realization hit. Those slimy bastards never intended on keeping you. They only wanted to squeeze you dry until a little dip in profits showed up. You apply for tens of jobs online every day, but nobody bites. Food is running out, and bills are piling now. Perhaps you see why some people go crazy when they get laid off. I sympathized pretty quickly when that scenario happened to me, but I kept my cool. The best thing to do was keep my chin up and never stop looking forward. Cracking under pressure wasn’t going to feed my wife or kids. It was ironic how one day, a promotion came walking down my path, and just as unexpectedly, so did the threat of eviction. I had to solve the problem, and *fast.* But I realized something else. Some people got taken back to the same companies after getting laid off. So that was my new plan of action. And what better way than prove myself that I was worth keeping? In the morning, I showed up like in the first interview. I wore a crisp, clean suit, hair was well-groomed, and face shaved down to the skin. The one difference? My same briefcase for work was in hand. I wasn’t ready to give up on my career, and the bosses would see that. It felt great to walk down the parking lot and to my building like in the old days. Other staff recognized me and asked how I was. I told them great, because I was coming back. They were delighted to hear the news. The only problem was that I obviously didn’t have my new badge yet. It was against company policy for security reasons, but they scanned their badges to get in and let me piggyback. Somehow, my desk was still empty. I figured they would’ve found someone else to fill the void, but it was nice to know I was wrong. The plan wasn’t even talking to the boss. In fact, it was much easier than that. I set my briefcase on the desk and *clicked* the latches open. And from inside the briefcase, the homemade poison gas emitted, and spread throughout the room.