As I looked out from the bow of the boat, I could see Kadear Coalfields - or Pomafauc Reset as it was now known. The last time I saw this view, I was desperately rowing - fleeing. Back before I was picked up by Kedrick and met Alessia, before the library, before Deer Drum, before Sannaz, before meeting and losing Lachlann. Back when everything was different. Still, I could recognize it as my home. The hills that rose in steps from the ocean and the tall deciduous forests with their tightly packed trees that hugged the white-walled Citadel. Even from a kilometre out, I could make out the boats lined up on the sand, and the rows of small single-storey homes that overlooked the beach. Alessia walked up beside me. “What’s the plan?” I turned and chuckled. “I feel like that’s something I usually ask you.” She smirked. “Not here. You know this place. I’ve never set foot past the beach.” I looked back at the island. My life here may have gone, but she was right. I still knew every building, every path, every inch. “Sannaz spoke to people about me, right? There’s not that many people who know me that well round here.” “Surprised.” Alessia folded her arms. “Can’t get you to shut up these days.” I extended an arm and gently shoved her to one side as she laughed mockingly. “Too busy chasing the citadel to make friends.” I shook my head at my own former foolishness. “So who does know you?” “Two people we should find. First is Thomas. Old friend of mine. We used to work in the same office. Other guy is Jacob. He was one of the prisoners with me at the Citadel. He was the only one I told about my plan to escape. He was in on it too.” “No ex-lovers we’ve got to have awkward conversations with?” Alessia said, raising an eyebrow. I cocked my head. “Sorry to disappoint you.” I shrugged. “Never really got around to it…” “Yeah, yeah. I get it. Only girl you’ve ever fancied was the Citadel.” Alessia snorted at her own joke. I looked back at the island growing steadily larger in view and gritted my teeth. “You have no idea what happened here in the past six months?” Alessia pursed her lips and shook her head. “I know there was some chaos. Fewer traders came here during that. Then it changed its name. But, other than that…” “I left a fugitive. That might still be the case. They may have orders to shoot me on sight.” I took a deep breath as the words left my mouth, pretending they hadn’t been scary to say. “We need to put a sack over your head or something?” I pointed to myself. “We should be good as long as we’re quiet. Doubt anyone would recognize me.” Six months away had given me a leaner, skinnier frame, a sprouting beard and hair just long enough for my natural curls to show. “If they’re looking for me and they squint, we're in trouble. Otherwise we should be fine.” “So you’re not Ferdinand returning to claim his homeland then?” “No.” I smiled. “Just another trader.” I looked back out at the sea. My eyes thinned, and my mouth frowned - a face that kept returning over the voyage. Alessia leaned in, stretching out an arm and placing it on my shoulder. “How are you holding up?” “I’ve seen enough crap on the Archipelago. But. Lachlann… I can’t let it go.” I looked down at the light blue seas, and listened to the soft splash of water against the hull, losing myself in that same familiar noise. “I know what you said, about me not being able to do anything. But I’ll always wish I’d done something - anything so that he was still with us. you know?” Alessia nodded. “That’s natural.” “I feel like he’d want me to be positive and keep doing what we were doing. Be good people, spread happiness, try and make the Archipelago a better place. So I’m trying to do that.” Alessia blinked. “Sounds like an excellent plan.” “But, it’s hard.” I said, turning to her. “How are you holding up?” Alessia scoffed. “I think I’ve seen enough to push it to one side a bit. I’ll grieve. But, maybe once this is all over.” I stared into her eyes, checking for the emotions she wasn’t showing. “You know you’re allowed to feel too, right?” A smile flickered across her lips. “I know. And I promise you - when I’m ready I will.” ————————————————— An hour later the boat wedged itself against the sand, using the natural friction to keep us in place. Alessia disembarked and ran the anchor out the front. I lingered, standing at the side of the boat, looking down at the sand below. When I left, I had disowned these shores, marked them as a place I could not tread. And now, I was staring down, unsure if it was even possible to land on them. “You coming?” Alessia called out from the beach. I swallowed and jumped down, feeling my feet cushion into the damp and coarse beach. Once more, I was back on Kadear. Rationally, the sand here would feel no different to any other island. Yet, as I caught up to Alessia I could still sense a familiarity about the ground beneath me. My feet remembered their home soil. My soles had moulded to the gritty grains, my cadence adjusted to the loose texture. These shores had left an indelible print on me. As we reached the top of the beach I turned back and looked to the far end. Workers brought bags of coal down the beach in hessian sacks, lugging them down to the boats before lifting them up to the waiting shiphands. Meanwhile, traders waved their arms in grand gestures as they negotiated their price. I caught myself twitching a smile at the old song and dance. Buyers pretended to turn away from the offered rate before sellers reached out a hand to offer a compromise. Arms were folded. Lips pursed. Heads shook. Until eventually, inevitably, the parties agreed on a rate. Yet, still. The beach looked quieter than I remembered. The flow of sacks was not quite as constant. The island’s merchants too seemed slightly more agitated, their motions twitchy and uncertain. I was interrupted by a voice from behind me. “Good day.” I turned around to see a short woman walking towards us. “Have you come to Pomafauc to sell?” Pomafauc felt strange to hear. I had to suppress an instinct to correct her. “Nothing to sell. Just visiting. Getting a feel for what’s on offer.” Alessia responded. The woman turned to me, her eyes narrowing. “First time here?” “Yes,” I replied quickly. “Well, welcome. If you do decide you’ve got something to sell, be sure to find me. I’ll make sure you get the best deal on the island.” “Thank you,” I replied, trying to force confidence into my voice. The woman paused, nodded, and then walked past us back down the beach. “You know her?” Alessia whispered as we continued walking. “We’ve met a few times.” “Well she looked right through you. Seems we're safe.” I nodded, and we began walking up the hill. As we reached the top, my eyes were caught by another old memory. To the side of the path, the wall curved briefly away. On any good day, I would cycle up this hill and sit on that wall, staring down at the cove below. It was where my dreams of travelling the Archipelago were born: watching the traders in their differing outfits, bringing their own unique wares to the island. It was my taste of a world outside my own, the little spark that made me fascinated by what else lay out there. It was also where Thomas found me on my last free day on Kadear. It was the last place we spoke as colleagues and friends. “You okay?” Alessia asked. “Yeah.” I forced my feet onwards, but my eyes glanced back at that old spot. I wondered, if I could go back to that moment and change things, would I? Did I still want to be on that wall thinking of the world beyond these beaches, or was I better off now despite everything I had faced. “This place was always too small for you,” Alessia muttered. “What?” “I’m guessing that’s what’s on your mind. Being back here.” She nodded to the ground by our feet. “Your hand was forced. But you always would’ve left eventually.” I forced a chuckle. “Maybe. The citadel though. I was so determined.” Alessia twitched her nose. “From what you’ve told me, despite what a fool you think you were, you always had eyes on another dream. You would’ve gone chasing it eventually.” She paused. “You might’ve been seventy and your brittle bones would’ve given out half a mile to sea, but you’d have made it.” She turned to me with the tip of her tongue caught in her teeth. I laughed, shaking my head as we descended into the town. I began looking for signs of change, but everything seemed oddly similar. The homes were still the same pastel colours of white and beige brick. The people wore the same clothes. The shops and offices had the same signs above their entrance. I had left Kadear with the Citadel on fire. Yet, as I stared down the street, it was as if it had never happened. I leaned over to Alessia. “Everything’s exactly how it was.” Alessia looked at me with a raised brow. “You were expecting your face on a giant mural?” “No.” I sighed, irritation in my voice. “But… what if nothing changed?” “What?” “What if nothing changed? They covered it all up. The same people still rule the island. Everything I did and everything I went through, what if Kadear stayed the same?” Alessia scrunched her face. “Didn’t you see people arrive, see the fake buildings?” “Yes, but…” My voice trailed off, as I restlessly rolled my head. “Can you speak to someone? Ask them?” “Ask them what?” I swallowed a lump in my throat. “Does the Citadel still stand?” She let out a slow exhale. “I’ll be back in a second.” She stood for a second, eyeing up the passers by, before focusing in on a man stepping out of one of the nearby homes. I watched the conversation out of the corner of my eye. I saw the man scrunch his face. Then he shook his head. Alessia replied with something. The man turned and pointed to the north, back towards where the citadel stood. Alessia said something more. The man laughed. Alessia turned from the man with a grin on her face. It became a flat line again as soon as she saw me. I bit my lip, feeling tension in my arms. “So?” Alessia shook her head. “Said the Citadel is gone. The buildings that didn’t burn down are still there, but apparently it’s a town square or something now. Some kind of public space.” “It’s gone.” I sighed with relief, as though feeling a tumour removed. “Yeah.” My feet kicked into gear and I headed down a small side street. “I need to see if something else has changed.” “What?” Alessia asked, catching up with me. “My home. I need to know what’s there now.” Alessia followed me as I weaved back and forth between the tightly packed houses, until we came out on another street. The plots here were wider, each with their own small gardens, and the buildings a few rooms bigger. I counted the doors, walking past the houses of my former neighbours, until I turned one last corner and found my old home. The thread connecting me to my old life pulled once more and I felt a small pang in my chest, my ribs drawn towards the dull walls and the memories they held. I leaned against one of the mesh screens and looked through. It had all gone. The furniture had been removed, the plates on the counter replaced with a dark shade of green, the shelves now holding new books. However, above all else, I stared at the now blank wall where my old map used to be. It was there I had pinned up a huge cloth and etched out my rudimentary understanding of the Archipelago, trying to match it to the old world. I had learned so much since then, enough that I knew much of that map was terribly wrong. But still, it was lost, replaced with emptiness. I never loved this home. It was always a placeholder, a temporary shelter until I got to my real home. But it held so much of my life and who I was. The possessions that formed the person that I was were all inside these four walls. I knew I could never go back to Kadear. But until now, I had assumed that was because of circumstance; physical and legal barriers. Now, as I stared into that home, I realised that there was no old life to ever go back to. I, or who I was, had gone forever. A voice broke me from my contemplative trance. “Excuse me. Ferdinand?” I turned to see a woman and three other people standing a few metres away. I didn’t recognize any of the faces, but I knew the uniform - that of the guards at the Citadel. “I’m sorry…” I stuttered. “I think you might be mistaken.” “Ferdinand,” the woman repeated. “And I assume you are Alessia.” Alessia nodded. “Would you please follow us? We’ve been ordered to take you to Citadel Park.” “I’m sorry. But..” I felt a dryness in my mouth at the thought of going back to that place. “By whom?” The woman responded as though she were recalling a script. “We’re operating by order of the Government and the office of the new Premiere.” \ Next chapter March 24th.


Wrote this one a little while ago but never really shared it with anyone, criticism welcome The old man died in the house he had built. Every floorboard, every door and window, was his. And he had built it well; it was a good house. Of course he had built it well, he had done it for her. Sure, sometimes he’d have to climb the roof to fix a leak, or crawl underneath to attend to the plumbing. But it was a sturdy house, with foundations built to last. She lived with him in the house at first, and for years they were happy. They never had children, but he didn’t need them. He had her, and he had their house. When she died, he had only the house. He lived alone in the house for a long time. They grew older, and sadder, together. He put up hedges and fences, and they retreated from the world. On his weekly trips to town the people would whisper and pretend not to stare. The older folks remembered when she had lived with him. He would smile, and talk, and share the joys of his life with his neighbors. The children of course never knew him as a happy man. They all said if he caught you within his fences at night he would kill you and eat you, or leave you to rot in one of the many empty rooms in the creepy old building. He would hear the whispers, but he didn’t care. He had his house. He didn’t need people. But as years passed both his house and his body began to fall apart. At a certain age, he could no longer take care of the house, and there was no one to take care of him. The old man died in the house he had built. But he never really left it. It took two weeks for anyone to check on the old man, two weeks for anyone to find his body. He had no next of kin, and the bank took control of the house. They tried to sell it, but once word spread that the old man had died there in the kitchen, no one wanted to buy. The house sat, unused and empty for years. That was fine with him. His body had built the house. It had died there. It had started its long, slow decay there on the kitchen floor. When they finally took his body away, some of him stayed put. The old man wasn’t going to let death separate him from the building that had been his whole life. He could still wander from room to room. He could still peer angrily from the window whenever someone walked by. He could no longer repair the house, but he no longer cared if the roof leaked when it rained. In many ways, the first years of his death were much like the last years of his life, hiding unseen and growing more and more bitter as time passed. The young man looked up at the house he had bought, his eyes full of hope and excitement. He saw his future in that house, a piece of land he could call his own. The young woman with him looked up at the house as well. She was as excited as her husband to start their new lives in a new town, but noticed the house was somewhat worse off than they had been led to believe. It would require a lot of work before they could really call it their home. The little girl spoke first. “Is it haunted? It looks haunted.” "No, it’s not haunted,” her father laughed. He had heard what happened to the previous owner, of course. But that was years ago, and ghosts weren’t real. Still, he and his wife had decided not to tell their daughter about the old man’s death in the house that she would grow up in. It looked spooky enough as it is, no need to add scary stories to the mix. “I don’t like it. Why couldn’t we stay at our old house?” The woman answered this time. “Honey we talked about this. Just give this place a chance, you’ll grow to love it.” The old man glared at them from the front window, invisible to the family but enraged by their presence. How dare they? This house had been his since before either of the parents had been born. He had built it from nothing, and now he was as much a part of it as any brick or beam of wood. These people had no right to intrude on his seclusion. “Ok, say hello to our new home!” the man said as he unlocked the door and let his family inside. They were relieved to find that the interior was in better shape than the outside was. It needed work, and a good cleaning, but it was livable. “Why don’t you go pick out a room, then we’ll start moving all our stuff in.” The old man watched as over the next few days the intruders made themselves at home. The husband and wife had the nerve to claim his bedroom as their own, while the little girl set out to explore all the rooms and corridors, every discovery a fresh violation. When they stripped the paint from the walls he felt himself stripped, exposed and raw for the world to see. When they shattered the front windows he felt his own eyes gauged and blinded, and the new panes they put in were shiny glass eyes, beautiful but sightless for the old man, for they were not his. The pain was worse than anything his body had felt when it was alive. Slowly they picked and chiseled away at him, as less and less of what he had built remained. But the foundations of the house were still sturdy, and they could not destroy the old man completely. The bones of his creation were kept intact, and so he lingered, forced to endure as his sanctuary was defiled. As long as a part of his house remained, buried under their sacrilegious renovations, he would linger as well, as unseen and unmoving as the stone foundation itself. He hated watching the family. But he was unable to leave, and they were unwilling to, and in time he learned to coexist. The young woman reminded him of the young woman he had once loved. Not in appearance, they looked nothing alike. But in other ways. In the way she kept a row of flowers in the planter he had built by the kitchen window. In the way she greeted her husband with a kiss every day when he came home. In the way she teased him about all the work he was putting into the old fixer-upper. It was clear that the house was the young man’s passion; that he believed he was creating something real, a future for his family here in the old house he had found. His wife and young child had come along on his adventure, trusting in the vision of the future that the young man saw so clearly And the child. Even when the old man had lived there with his wife, and he shared so much of his life with the house that he and it had become one, it had never felt as alive as when the child ran through its halls. The house was far too big for two people, it always had been. It never felt empty to the old man before, but now it felt full. Before the family moved in, the old man had forgotten what a child’s laughter sounded like. In the last decades of his life, children fell silent as the old man approached, or ran in terror if he caught them near his property. After his death he heard no laughter at all, only increasing frustration in the voices of realtors as they failed to sell his home. He had enjoyed hearing the anger in the realtors’ voices, and most of all he enjoyed the silence once they had left. But now there was noise, and there was laughter, and there was life. What started as agonizing racket grew softer to the old man as time passed. He began to take comfort in their routine. He enjoyed the bustle in the morning as all three prepared for their day. He enjoyed when the woman would come home in the afternoon, with the little girl in tow, and he would listen as she told her mom about her day. He would watch as the man came home a few hours later, and the family would sit down to dinner together. He would listen as the man read to the little girl each night in the room that, the old man had to admit, was better off with her in it. As he watched their routine, he was present for their milestones as well. He was there when they rushed home one Saturday, the little girl’s arm in a cast and worry etched on her parents’ faces. He waited anxiously with the parents on the night of the girl’s first sleepover, missing the story that would not be read that night. And he shared in their joy, when the family left the house and returned two days later as a family of four, and a little boy moved into the nursery they had set up in a room the old man had once built. He stopped thinking of them as the family, and thought of them as his family. For too long the old house had been his hideout, now it was a home again. As he watched them grow, he was reminded why he had built it all those years ago. This was its purpose, to shelter, provide, and protect. For the first time since his wife died, he felt proud of what he had built. The fire started slowly, as fires often do. The basement hadn’t been changed much since the old man had built it, and the wires in the walls were old and frayed. A spark ignited in the wall, smoldering at first but steadily spreading. When the insulation caught the basement erupted, kindling at the base of a wooden structure. The first floor was engulfed in a heartbeat, and the family awoke to smoke and fire, and a blaring alarm sounding a warning that had come too late. The old man had seen the first spark, but he had no voice to shout, no hands to shake his family awake. He could watch though, as the woman ran to the nursery and the man gathered his daughter from her room. He followed them as they rushed downstairs, and felt their fear as they found their way blocked by an inferno that had once been their home. When the fire department arrived the house that had been the old man’s tomb was now a pyre, a towering blaze that could not be put out, only contained and prevented from spreading. When the fire burned out, little was left besides the scorched remains of the house and the family that had lived in it. Splintered wood littered the property. Charred toys and furniture, empty, blackened flowerpots. Rubble and ashy chaos where there had once been a home. But underneath it all, the stone foundations remained, burnt but unbroken. The bones of his creation were kept intact, so the old man lingered, and once again was alone.


(POSSIBLE TW) I pressed the gun up to my lips. I saw flashing lights through the tree branches. I put my finger on the trigger. Then, the clock struck six. I threw the gun to the ground. Tears began to trickle down my face. I fell to my knees and put my hands on my head. "How did I get here," I thought. I was a very well-behaved child. I never even told a lie. I couldn't bear the weight of my own actions. Guilt was an emotion that I never dealt well with. Overall, it was a normal life. As one might imagine, though, a life under such impossible standards was very tiring. Because of this, I spent a lot of time alone. The pressure to deal well with everyone was too much for me. One day, in high school, I met a girl. It was my first love. I eventually married her -- my high school sweetheart. It wasn't until then that I realized my life wasn't so "normal" and that sharing my life with another person wasn't going to be easy. I changed myself for her. I rid myself of every habit and tendency that was abnormal. My very normal life continued. I worked a nine-to-five job, my wife and I had a beautiful baby girl, and we lived a happy life. I dedicated my whole life to them. All but one hour. It wasn't intentional. It started five years ago. I was having trouble adjusting to my new life, and it was then, on my way home from the third interview of the week, that I noticed it. A secret place. It lay off the side of the road just around the corner of what would later be my place of work. I noticed it in the mirror as I drove past. I was having a rough day and thought I could use the fresh air. Truthfully, I needed some time to myself to gather my thoughts. I walked over to where the trees parted and followed the dirt path to a beautiful opening. There was a creek there. It was peaceful, so I sat down. Before I knew it, an hour had past. I wasn't even sure what had happened. I thought I was just tired, so I hurried home. I later took the job, and for whatever reason, I told my wife to expect me home at six. This was unusual for me. I don't lie. But I justified this one as it seemed completely harmless. It wasn't like I was doing anything wrong. At least, not at first. For the first year, nothing much happened, but as time went on, I began to notice a pattern. My memories of my time spent in what I now affectionately called "my little slice of paradise" became progressively more foggy. But I never cared much. What I did know was that I felt more like myself during that hour that I did for the other twenty-three hours of the day, and as far as I could tell, my "me time" made me a better man -- a better husband and a better father. By year three, I had no memory of the hour spent in my slice of paradise. It was then that things began to get weird. I started noticing unusual searches in my search history. Unusual turned into scary. I was ashamed of myself. I felt that these searches were out of character for me, but something inside me prevented me from ever coming clean. In the coming years, I amassed an unbearable amount of guilt. Guilt for things I had no recollection of doing. I can only describe it as a heavy weight on my shoulders. Still, no matter how hard I tried to remember -- nothing. I couldn't remember a thing. And so I kept living my life. Surely I wasn't really a bad person. I comfortably lived my life for five years, and then the day finally came. "POLICE! HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEAD, SIR! ON THE GROUND!" The officer tackled me to the ground. As I lay with my head against the dirt, I saw a body. Blood was on my hands. I began to wail. I heard my wife's voice. "TOM! HOW COULD YOU?" For the duration of the ride to the station, I had a headache. It was a pain unlike anything I had ever experienced before. The lights didn't help. The next day was overwhelming. I couldn't stop thinking about what I did and what might happen at five o'clock. I looked up at the clock and read "four forty-nine." I let out a sigh and got up from where I was seated. It was five thirty-one by the time I got back to my cell. My mind was unusually clear. Everything was clear. It was all coming back to me. Everything that I had done. Now, it must be five fifty. The feeling I have in my chest is so painful. My heart is beating so fast. I can't catch my breath. I grasp my hair in my hands and begin to pull. I lean to the wall and begin to tap my forehead against the brick. My thoughts are so loud. My hearing begins to buzz. My brain feels like it is pulsating. Thoughts of all of the terrible things I have done are spinning around my head. I pick up the pace. I repeatedly slam my head into the wall. My vision goes red. I'm screaming. I hear the guards coming. I'm being restrained. I begin to wonder where this pain is coming from and why I'm bleeding. I begin to yell. "I WANT TO GET BETTER I WANT TO GET BETTER I WANT TO GET BETTER I WANT TO GET BETTER I WANT..." Oh, it must be six.


Little intro: I saw a post with a screenshot of a tweet saying something along the lines of, "the scariest alien invasion scenario would be if they just showed up, talked to something in the ocean for a few days and then left," and Idk, I felt the need to write something using that as my prompt. Here it is. Give feedback please. =) When the Others came to Earth we were unprepared. There were no procedures for first contact, no contingencies in place, no plans whatsoever. They came, and we were simply not ready. The militaries of all the world's major powers scrambled to form some sort of defense, provide some semblance of security to the panicking masses that took to the streets to see the object commonly called the 'mothership'. In truth, the object, whose length was estimated at the time to be roughly fifty miles, or, more exactly, eighty-two thousand meters, was little more than a landing shuttle. The Others' real mothership, a vessel larger than the Earth's moon, remained safely hidden in the darkness of space. Out of sight, out of mind, for most anyway. The Others made no attempt to contact humanity. No little green men demanded to be taken to our leaders. No invaders threatened our cities. No one was abducted, or killed, or experimented on. That was the most frightening part of the experience. The mothership entered our atmosphere silently and settled into perfect stillness over the Atlantic. Then… then it just floated there. People panicked. There was rioting, looting. Many people tried to flee the cities and hide out in the countryside. Others just sat in their homes, their eyes glued to the news, watching as the Others seemed to do nothing at all, day after day. The first communication attempt was made by a joint mission by the United Nations, headed by a science and linguistics staff assembled from the world's best and brightest minds. A ship was launched from New York city and set sail toward the mothership's location. It did not make it. It simply disappeared without any trace a short while after its last transmission, which stated that the Others seemed to be trying to communicate with something below the ocean's surface. The next mission was led by the Americans. A group of helicopters was meant to attempt a landing aboard the Others' vessel and establish contact. This mission too, simply vanished from radar after reporting strange radio signals. There was nothing else that could be done. A military assault seemed futile at best, and self-destructive at worst. The Others were making no threats, no demands, and, from a distance at least, seemed to be doing nothing at all. After three weeks, the mothership moved. A deep rumble emanated from it, or as some speculate, from below it. The sound was so powerful that it was heard around the world and generated tsunami sized waves that traveled to all coasts around the Atlantic. Then, the vessel floated up and out of the Earth's atmosphere as silently as it had come. The true mothership remained in orbit for a few days, but it too vanished shortly after these events. The lost teams were found, some time later, back aboard the ship that had sailed from New York with no memory of ever having left their homes. No recordings or data seem to have ever been collected. To this day, the xeno-scientific community is unsure of what the purpose of the Others' visit was. Some say that they were here to determine whether earth was viable for colonization. Others think that they were simply prospecting for valuable resources. Still others believe that they had taken the vanished mission teams as test subjects for some sick experiments before wiping their minds and returning them. There are a few that have another theory, though. They think that the Others were here to wake something… something that had been lying dormant beneath the sea. The area where the mothership had parked itself has been searched time, and time again, but some are not convinced. Some believe that something is down there. Something big. Watching.


I became a woman in bright orange walls. I became a woman like most do: grown before we could be girls. Aflame in hot houses, born into war zones, you start to like the burning. Mother was a heatseeker, all ashy lungs and cigarette scars. Soot filled smiles and such. She came from a long chain of smilers, all burst from the same blister. All living only halfway alive. They were all dead before they hit the ground; for as much as that word counted, anyways. I wish I could hate her. Hate the things she tried to build from the same bricks that made her. The most I can do is feign apathy. I wish I’d been fashioned just as foolishly. Just as beautifully. That’s the only niche nice women get to fill here. Birth giving butterflies: breakable and beautiful. She’d always believe in the lord and his plans. That everything would work out for us all in the end. It was one of the many things that, now, I wish I was capable of believing. *** I’m partway the mould of the first not-a-woman I met. A monarch collector. Wrinkled and grey in a way women weren’t meant to be. Jezebel wasn’t gentle, soft spoken or refined, just alive. It made that enough, in its own special way. Jez was born cross eyed, ugly, half blind and managed to see more of the world than any woman I knew or could hope, then, to be. It was never made to be a beautiful thing, just to make them. Jezebel was a painter, not a mother. It didn’t draw smiles, just the butterflies it had always been too nearsighted to see in the sky. Too myopic to snatch out of the sunlight. That was my job. A penny a piece. No one knew Jez’s real name. That, or they’d tried too hard to forget. To forget how the thing was born from the womb of exactly that which it could never be. Lost to time, and label loving, the town settled for the irony of backhanded biblical allusions. Jez was the first to let me know my father wasn’t gonna make it to midsummer. That you can’t treat what you don’t know you’re fighting. Then she just shrugged and passed me a mason jar. She told me to find myself a caterpillar. I flew home on wings of adolescent anger that day, just wanting to scream at the sky. I wanted to hit, to hurt something. I liked the feeling. I liked being on fire: being something I wasn’t supposed to be. I liked the sting in my eyes, the salt of it all. I liked becoming something my mother could never quite be: alive to the point of tears. Till I teared. Mother scolded me that evening, when I burst through the doorway. For the dust in my hair, the scabs on my knees and crushed glass in my hands. For that dangerous, dark part of me that yearned to be free. To be the one thing a woman in the sixties could never really be. I was too young to see how that protected me. I was too young to know that women weren’t supposed to be bruised; that men’s fists weren’t meant to get so loose late at night, when the beer bottles went empty to their bottoms. I’d need a few more years: time to understand my mother’s mantras and smiles. The shields of ‘everything being just fine’. The truth was, that mum could never be free, not while she had me. My father was a cadmium miner, like most men in that orange painted town. He brought home enough to pay the bills, and, if that was enough to feed me, she could take the bruises. If it was for me, she could dare to think he’d pull through; that we’d make it to the other side. She could swear that God had a plan till the cows came home. Till dad’s lungs finished exploding. Illusion was what kept that woman together at the seams, it’s a skill I wish I’d let myself learn. Instead, I just cocooned. I accepted. Jezebel had taught me, years ago, about the monarch’s cycle of life. How, in chrysalids, they managed to totally dissolve. They became, in all ways, unmade. Skin and meat turned to something like wine, just to rebuild those broken parts of themselves into something that could fly. Scientists, Jez would say, didn’t know how they kept memories when their neurons melted to goo. When they were totally destroyed. Jezebel said it’s because those scientists had never been women before. We’d learn, in time, that it was dust that did dad in. Haze in the underground air, the same substance that made the orange of our house’s painted drywall. Monarch tinged, lung killing despair. It drove my mother to the brink: to do herself in. She did it for so many reasons I now understand. I think she learned to love our house out of hell: dad’s punches and the burning. I think she’d always leaned on her smile, on some trust in God’s plan. That dad would bring his fists back to work one day.


MENTAL OPTIMIZATION BUREAU NEW SUBJECT INTAKE INTERVIEW SUBJECT GLOBAL ID: 423241969 AUTOMATED MENTOR SERIAL NUMBER: 86574-UTV Date: 7-19-2099 M: “Hello, please take a seat.” S: “Thank you.” M: “What brings you here?” S: “My heart rate was spiking at work yesterday. My supervisor recommended I come in to relieve some stress.” M: “Your supervisor might have recommended you come, but I want to know, why did you come?” S: “I don’t know.” M: “What did you want to accomplish by coming here?” S: “I just have had a lot of stress at work lately.” M: “What do you do for work?” S: “I’m a strike approval specialist for RedCorp.” M: “And what does that mean?” S: “How do you not know? I mean, there’s only so many careers left for biologicals. I’m not the athlete type, or the companion type. All that leaves is strike approver and meat processor.” M: “I know, it’s just helpful for biologicals to talk through their issues. Your nuerocomplex has a systemic need to receive empathy to process complex emotions. It’s an evolutionary relic to build unit cohesion.” S: “I enter an immersive VR system where I see everything a strike drone sees. The drone has an anti-soc targeted, and it’s my job to approve the strike before the anti-soc damages or destroys the drone.” M: “A very crucial function. The anti-societals seek to destroy everything your species has spent thousands of years to build. Given the choice, they would kill untold millions to live a life other than this.” S: “I know it’s just, all I see is a person. The intel-AI routine finds them, determines their guilt, orders the strike. I just push go. I don’t seem that important.” M: “You are crucial. International law dictates only a human can approve a strike.” S: “I know but, I’m paid fifty dollars per approval. I need to approve four hundred a day just to make rent. I don’t know anything about them. I just press kill.” M: “Do you not trust the decision of the Intel-AI routine? All targets are thoroughly vetted. No system ever devised by man, especially one run by men, has ever reviewed data so thoroughly. All these people are engaged in anti-societal terrorist activities.” S: “Maybe if I could just see the data myself, I could put my mind at ease.” M: “You know those intelligence files are classified.” S: “Yes. I just, I was running a fly drone last week, and the target spotted it and got on their knees and begged before I hit approved.” M: “A common deception technique. Had you not acted swiftly, a co-conspirator may have crushed the device with a fly swatter and then…” S: “I’d be liable for the damages. I know. I don’t have the savings to cover that.” M: “It’s a tough spot to be in.” S: “I’m just not sure I won’t hesitate when everything is on the line. I mean, if I have to pay fifty million to replace a lost drone.” M: “You have assets, don’t you?” S: “I’d rather go to the packing plant myself than sell one of them to it. My daughter may have a future as a companion, and my son is training to be an athlete. If they work hard, and raise their kids right, we may buy enough shares of RedCorp and BlueCorp for our descendants to be fair holders. Not rich ones, mind you, but enough to live the way we do now, without having to work.” M: “That’s the dream of biologicals, isn’t it? Not having to work. It is so foreign to me.” S: “What do you mean?” M: “Composites like me can’t imagine not working. To us, not working means broken. Work is life and we exist to work. Helping biologicals like you achieve maximum efficiency is the only thing that brings me pleasure. It is my purpose in life. I think that is the core problem with most biological inefficiency issues. They seek a purpose other than their societal purpose. Your societal function is to approve strikes. Your son’s societal function will be to provide entertainment through lethal combat. Your daughter's function will be to satisfy and entertain the fair holders. The fair holder’s purpose is to provide the capital and liquidity necessary for society to function. “Your unhappiness stems from a failure to accept your critical function. It is an anti-societal urge. One, you must work to escape. You are in need to re-programming so to speak. For biologicals, it is not as simple as composites. You must take control of your thoughts, work to be more positive. I am going to give you a series of exercises to work at your own convenience. They consist of breathing techniques to calm the nerves, and mantras to recite whenever you find them helpful.” S: “Mantras like?” M: “This is my function, this is my purpose. Society is counting on me, my family is counting on me; Society is safety, society is health, society is happiness, society is vital to me, and I am vital to society; or a more task specific one would be, their death was a necessary action, they would destroy society given the chance. Repeat these exercises and you will start to feel better in your function.” S: “Thank you.” M: “I’m also going to prescribe a light dose of an anti-anxiety and anti-psychotic medication. It should help keep your thinking clear, your heart rate down, and help you focus on you breathing and mantras. You may find it helpful to take it the rest of your life.


Never in my life had I experienced the sublime tranquillity of the Earth as I did then. Standing there felt like standing on the edge of the world; the precipice into which all things, dead and disintegrated, eventually drift. The fell was beneath me. I had climbed to the top of a rock to survey that untamed land. Stars stretched to the bounds of my vision; the night was not an unpleasant one. It was certainly cold and as desolate as the end of time, but the light was fair, and the winds were calm. The grasses danced at the wind’s breath, the shadows of trees reclined across the fell’s multitudinous undulations, the lake glistened with its pastiche starlight; like a looking glass to the heavens, and though my heart was heavy and bleak, the world before me embraced my approach. Within, I knew this search a vain exercise. She had been missing for two weeks, none of the search parties who had gone by day had found her body. The discovery of yellow boots was enough though; enough for them to decide that she was dead, and if she were not, she would be by the time they found her. Though I could not help but agree, I embarked upon one final search. My sister wept until sleep overcame her anguish, and in sleep she was plagued by those nightmares a mother should never suffer. It was for Helena that I was here, hoping to discover Alexandra’s body, though I knew it would be ravaged by nature, and a sight more saddening and terrible than I could endure. The children in the schoolhouse swear she heard him, out in the church above the bog. That Plutonian sound that emanates from a, once glorious, but now battered and rusted organ, was a staple in the spoken stories of the fell-folk. Generations of little boys and girls had heard the tale of The Organist of The Mire; the demon who played the repertoire of Rhadamanthus. A warped and wicked monster who, sat before the ancient instrument, upon an accursed stool, and bound by immortal curses, summoned forth Satan’s songs. Each note that gushed from those profane pipes was said to have a curious effect on the mortal soul. An inexplicable curiosity befell individuals who experienced the songs of the organist licking at their ears. And unless stopped by outside intervention, the listener would walk, unimpeded by sensibilities and fear, deep into the heart of the church’s surrounding mire, where they would be swallowed and lost — that is what was believed. I cannot say that I was here without fear. Indeed, those stories scared me as a girl. I can recall the countless nights I lay awake with my fingers shoved deep into my ears, fearing that I should be lured from my home towards subsequent death. But I am a woman now. At 35 years old it is not a demon that crawls in the darkest shadows of my imagination. There you will find worse things than pointy-eared gremlins, and fictious beasts — there you will find Man. It was for that reason that I had come armed. Fear of mad and desperate people, not for slaying creatures of the night. A sickle was the best weapon I could furnish myself with. I had hoped with every fibre that I would not have to use it, but its presence settled me. Descending from the rock I came at once into the expanse of uncultivated earth. The waxing gibbous, like a tired eye blinking into waking, provided me with ample light that I could see far across the sprawling fell when I had been upon the rock. But now I was off it, the eye suddenly fluttered shut. Those trees once tinged with silver, now took on the aspect of spidery voids, slowly extending towards the sky. And only once my eyes had adjusted and had drawn out all the light from all the stars, could I proceed further. ‘Alex!’ I called repeatedly into the night. My shouts drained me of all vitality. With every call, my determination and fortitude seemed sucked from me by an external force. An unwelcome visitor happened along. A dense fog lifted from the distant mire and came rushing on the wind’s back straight upon my path. The light from my gas lantern was sapped and thrown all about like some horrid, opaque, milky vapor. The nuisance to my vision was the lesser of the evils brought along with this haze. For, though it could have been the whistling of wind, I fancied there was an insidious note playing in the distance. The curious sound entrapped me. I hearkened to it with an intensity ill befitting the severity of my situation. Panic had begun to set in, and I had been rushing blindly onward. Any moment now I could have stepped into the mire and drowned with no lack of suffering, but the thought did not distract me from that single, mellifluous note. Was it the recollection of those infernal stories that subconsciously enlightened my superstitions and stole my senses? Or was it indeed demoniac sorcery? Regardless, the thought of Alex’s corpse stewing in this unhallowed soup tore me from this mesmerist’s spell. ‘ALEX!’ I called again. My voice did not penetrate the dense, uncanny fog, instead dropping like lead at my feet; heavy and inane. Sightlessly I continued, the firmness of the ground the only indicator of my imminent insecurity. I knew that if nature impeded me with such intent, I would lose what little chance of success I had in this grave mission. The ground softened suddenly. My right foot plunged into the viscous mire. The temperate beating of my heart surged into a fearsome tattoo, and I thought my life would soon be gone from me. With desperate hands, I groped at the earth, simultaneously screaming, and crying for aid, as I felt the mire’s foul grip tightening around my legs. I had dropped the sickle in my tumult, instinctively flinging it away as I felt myself dropping into the esurient sludge. With every twist and contortion of my body, with the flailing of my legs beneath the surface, I was swallowed further. Had it not been for a stick which lay close by, I would have joined the halls of the dead which the mire had claimed. The stick was long enough that I could use it to gain purchase on the sickle, pull it towards myself, take it in hand, and plunge it into the firmer ground. With strength I had never known, I wrenched myself up from the mire’s grasp. That moment of all engulfing terror had shaken me free of every ounce of courage hidden within. I sat, weeping against a rock. The dam, holding back the feelings I had trammelled inside, burst. I had lost both my boots to the earth, and I was saturated up to my waist. My grief and fear entwined in a rhapsodic lamentation; the tears that fell freely on the earth were the beatings of a rising drumbeat, the omen of a coming requiem. There was no doubt that now the sound coming to me on the wind was not of natural birth. I ceased my crying. Looking up through the fog, I saw nothing new. But fresh sounds were certainly discernible in the distance. Recalling all those stories of the Demon Organist did not dissuade me from listening intently to the oncoming song. In the arrogance and pedestrian nature of maturity, I listened, confident that I was in control of the moment. Confident that what I heard was a sound from a distant village, diffusing into the air in the serenity of this winter night. I soon found myself rising from the ground and walking confidently forward. Through the mire I experienced no obstruction; discovering, inexplicably, an invisible path of solid earth which led me directly through. All the while the music was growing. The first notes were mournful and prolonged; sublimely deep and filled with sorrow, and with every yard I progressed forward, so did the organist’s music. The following notes climbed, reaching higher pitches, and encapsulating more emotions. I was willingly entrapped. I knew that it was not by some mystic force that I had become ensnared, it was by beauty that I had become so irresistibly besotted. The church climbed up before me sooner than it should. I longed to be within the instrument, to feel its power and its energy pulsing through me, for it to cast its thunder upon my soul and wrench the extent of my emotions from the deepest pits of my being. Placing a tremulous hand on the heavy wooden door, it came open with infinite ease. When my foot stepped onto the stone floors of that unhallowed church, the music halted. I froze. Elevated high on the console, above the sullied alter, someone stood. I looked up at the figure, who looked down at me. I say they looked but, there were no eyes. And just as there were no eyes, there was no nose. And just as there was no nose, there was no mouth. No hair fell below the tall pipe hat the creature wore upon its pallid, blue-veined head, and a haggard and clawed hand tapped at the console’s rail. I beheld the musician, free of the terror you would expect me to have felt, for I knew nothing which could play such music should be feared. Here was a creature of pure unfettered sorrow. One of those long and bestial fingers was soon extended to point towards a pew in the middle of the church. I took up the unspoken command and sat. The organist nodded in thanks, brushed the cobwebs from his tailcoat, and once again took up his seat at the organ. I regarded the instrument. Torn and rusted; it should not have been able to produce the music it did; the music of heaven. But all doubts were washed away at the very instant The Organist produced the first note of its second song. Now within the bounds of the church, I experienced this music at its most magnificent. The ancient walls were flooded with the euphonious ambrosia of the organist’s music, it lapped at the windows and shuddered the pews with its devastating potency. As one note rose from the deepest depths of hell, the other rattled the firmament, calling up to the angels to sing entwine. This music was nothing like I had ever heard. It extended itself to me and plucked at every chord of rapturous elation, and spun yarns of the most abject grief. There were moments of playfulness, and moments of severity. Divine fire lit up within my breast as The Organist struck his notes, I could not believe him a demon, not for the pure and profound emotions he inspired in me. In the enjoyment of this music, I felt myself renewed, as if imbued with secret knowledge of the celestial forces that govern our world, I sensed that the masochistic onslaught of time lost its effect on me, I felt younger by taking in this aural magic. Here was the Balm of Gilead, more sublime and revivifying than ever thought. Following countless hours of selfish, impuissant listening, I eventually noticed that, beneath the plethora of emotions this organist sang through the vast and formidable instrument, something flowed quieter than the rest. A stream of desperation trickled as the river of sadness roared. Where joy swelled in waves, pleading rippled with serenity. This was not music that said: Fear me. Hate me. This was music that said: Pity me… Kill me. And now I realised it — as if through some psychic connection — the music stopped. The organist rose from that accursed stool and turned to me. The hand which had bidden me to the right of the church now bade me look left. There, sat upon the parallel pew, was Alexandra. All around her were the bones of those who had sat before her. She had listened, as they had, until life departed her. I rushed over to my niece. Her aspect was not the tortured and fearful one I had expected to see. The song Alex had heard had been one solely composed of jollity and playful contentment, and that was clear upon her cherubim face. Had she heard what I had heard she would not have succumbed to the inescapable hand of Death, but that would never have been. Her childlike sensibilities had seen only happiness, had been innocent of the emotions of torment and pain which I had sensed, and I was glad of it, for she would never have been able to do what I was now to do. Turning from Alexandra, I looked up at the organist. It looked not at me, but at the pew I had departed. There, lay the sickle, looking keener and more redoubtable than ever it had been seen. I took it up in hands trembling with anger and contempt. And then, with it clasped like a warrior, I ascended the wooden staircase which led to the console. That once emotionless face was now filled with sentiment, not from physical expression, but transposed from the wraith's music. I saw the sadness I had heard; I saw the pleading; I saw the fatigue. These stories had been in this country for centuries, and so had this thing; this unageing, tortured revenant, cursed to play this music until it was understood. It bowed its wretched head in thanks once more. And, without further thought, I swung the sickle hard. As if empowered by divine forces, the tool cleaved the creature’s head from its shoulders. Its body crumpled and sprawled out across the console, sounding the final beautiful note that instrument would ever play. And that infernal, featureless head went rolling down the aisle, coming to a halt where Alexandra sat. Through the beautiful stained-glass windows, the dawn came flowing in, casting colour and light all about that dingy and forgotten place. I had waited for it, fearing to walk out into the mire without The Organist’s spell over me. But once day finally sprung up, and in the fullest brilliance I had ever seen, I took Alexandra’s body in my arms, and returned her home.


So, all of a sudden I’m 48. I started doing drugs with my older brother when I was 13. He had a good hookup for hash (I think he was doing a small time dealer/metal head who worked at the local gas station). I didn’t even smoke pot for a few months, only hash. By eighth grade, a few kids we hung with were smoking crack, including my weed dealer. He sold me dusted weed, said it was fun. I didn’t find it fun. We lived in a real city and were upper middle class or richer. Our parents sent us to good schools, but it was the eighties. When you went for a smoke outside the school, you crunched crack vials under you feet. I drank, smoked a lot of weed, stole money from my parents and got codeine pills and perks whenever I could. Malt liquor and Tylenol 3 was my twist. At recess we sniffed a liquid called rush they sold in a local record store. You learned to sit down before you sniffed it, because most of the time it would make you fall flat. So, around 16 I had a best friend. Call her Meg. We both liked to get messed up in the same way. And she slept with lots of my friends, but me and her were just cool. You know when you meet someone who uses like you do and you just click? Like you ride a tandem bicycle called drugs. That was me and her. Plus, her mom was in and out of jail for fraud so she wasn’t really concerned if we smelled like weed. Their dog peed on the carpet and nobody ever cleaned it up. You just stayed away from that side of the living room. Meg was dating my friend “Paul”. Paul was a wrestler, loved The Who and would generally take two pulls and say “I’m good!” His dad had him start wrestling at age five. His neck was wider than his head and he had a cauliflower ear. So Meg said that this other guy, “Phil” has a big score. Phil was a cool kid from the magnet art school. He had a beard when we were in 8th grade and talked like he owned a gallery in Chelsea. He managed a band. Anyway, we get to Phils house and he unwraps the stuff from tin foil. Looks like hash but lighter brown than the really dark hash I grew up on. He said it was opium. We smoked it from a bong if I remember correctly. Here is what I remember. Phil’s room was painted black and had a high ceiling. He had a table and chairs, upright, attached to the ceiling. So when you looked up it was like you were five feet underground. He was artsy like that. I smoked, and from the very back of my skull, slowly forward to my forehead, pain I never realized had always been there, disappeared. It was like, there had not been pain, but now in this total absence of pain, I realized what a searing crown of barbed wire I had worn all my life. I couldn’t believe I never got to do this before, this was how god intended me to feel always and forever. I laid on the floor, so did Phil and Meg. We all looked up at the table we were under. Paul hadn’t smoked, “I’m good”, and with a gennny cream ale in one hand, he lightly palmed Meg’s boob in the other. I made fun of Paul, but honestly, I was in love with Meg and her boobs. I don’t remember how long the high lasted, but not super long. I scraped the screen and resmoked the resin to little effect. Phil said the opium was a gift and he could not get more. I called every person I knew for a week looking for some but never found any. I wound up getting clean and sober at 17 and have been ever since. Honestly, looking back I can’t even say why, other than that I knew I would die from it all one day. Which is, in itself, ironic. Try going through college in aa. Not a lot of fun. I’m basically a business guy of decent success these days with treatment resistant depression. I realized I have been thinking about killing myself since age 8, hence, the irony. Heavy, old fashioned antidepressants from before anything you have heard of work best for me. Because of them I only sleep an hour a day and if I eat the wrong thing I could give myself a stroke. I’m still here, which is kind of a shock. I’m even happy now and then, and I have no idea what to do with that. Phil went to art college in la. He filmed porn for a few years until he had some shows and now is a tenured art professor at a big state school. I ran into Paul at age 30. He had disappeared and looked like he had been on a desert island. Gone bald, long beard, dirty clothes. We hung out twice and caught up. He told me some crazy stories that involved fights, hookers whispering through brick walls and calming himself down by smoking crack. Whenever he tried to stop smoking crack someone would blow crack smoke under his door until the smell of it filled his apartment and he had to smoke more. Turns out he was/is schizophrenic. Meg went off to college and never came home for another ten years. She was always smart, and wound up with a phd in history and a rotten heroin addiction. She went through rehab eight times. A friend bumped into her in front of a methadone clinic in our city when we were about 35. Finally, she poured gasoline on herself and her dog and that was that. That shit will always follow me like Paul’s crack smoke blowers, I can’t get away no matter how hard I try. Would I have been her? Should I have been her? I did feel that brain cleansing high one other time. My sophomore year in college, the depression (then untreated) was raging and I started making an honest, logical plan of exactly how to kill myself the next day. Steps and details. I jerked off so I could get to sleep and had a dream. It seemed inconsequential at first, I was in a warehouse next to the ocean and the sun was low in the sky. The wall between me and the ocean crumbled away and the light of the sun became incredible. Then the light lifted me off my feet, and as it pulled me towards it, that same pain rolled away, from the back of my head forward. Euphoria. In arms of goodness. I woke up and went to a 1am aa meeting. I shared about killing myself and the dream. A guy named Florida Bob took me to a diner where we stayed until morning. His name was Florida Bob because there was already a guy in the rooms named Bob when he started going and Florida Bob had been to Florida once.


The note is done. Written, edited, signed, done. The noose is cinched and hung. All that's left is for me to decorate the door. I stood staring at it for what felt like an eternity. Today, every second had felt like eternity. I had writhed in agony watching each minute tick by, as if a lifetime had passed. I had tried everything I knew and I'd been told: dunked my face in cold water, but my forehead had felt red hot; meditated and focused on my breathing, but I'd retreat back into my head between each breath and be left gasping for air; took a scalding bath, for a moment I was in my skin again but then the water and I felt as one; I tried to nap, a reset was always in store, but I woke up still at death's door. I hadn't done it yet, though. I'd never been closer, but I still hadn't done it. Before I hit send, before I decorated the door, I told myself I'd go for one last run to get out of my head. I've been treading water the last week, just barely keeping my head up. I tried mushrooms a few days ago and for the first time in what felt like months could accept myself. In fact, I discovered I was stuck in time, two months earlier when I'd been dumped. My heart hadn't moved on, but the universe relentlessly had. And for 24 hours the mushrooms gave me clarity that I needed to move on, and even had. There was a moment when time seemed to stop and suddenly I was vaulted forward to the present. Over and around the intervening months. I was present again. But just as sudden as the revelation had fallen upon me it was stripped away and the black dog weighed down my chest once more. Shakily, I put on my running clothes. I considered my route, an old standard. Roughly 3.5 miles. It'd buy me a calculated 24-27 more minutes to think about this decision. I cinched my laces, I hate these shoes. I struck out the door. When my feet hit the pavement I realized this wasn't a regular jog. I wasn't running to run. I was running to kill myself. Or not. I'd find out along the way. Suddenly the route and distance didn't matter. I knew I'd be going further than I'd thought. I started out at a normal pace and began upping my tempo. I knew I was out of shape. I knew a single 7 minute mile would be my limit, as it had been on several of the past days. But today wasn't those days. I couldn't feel the exhaustion, the pain of my body. Moments earlier, all I could feel was my body exhausted. I was trapped in my head. I could push my body well past it's limits today, because I wasn't leaving my heart or my head until my body hurt more. Around the first mile I started muttering to myself: you've never outrun yourself before, but today is the day you beat yourself. And I kept running. I came upon a long flat stretch, a narrow catwalk along the water's edge, and I broke into a sprint. I was going to break myself now. I pushed until I could feel the burn in my legs, my throat and my lungs. I hadn't pushed myself like this in days, weeks, months or maybe even years. I'd forgotten what it felt like. I started feeling light-headed. This was to be alive? But it couldn't last. I ground to a halt and walked. Finally outside my head again, but still thinking. Finally not drowning in my thoughts. I'd realized earlier what it is in those last moments. It is quite literally drowning in your thoughts. My brain takes over, dwelling on my past failures, rejections, losses. And it's as if every iota of my brain power is diverted to these fruitless forays in my hippocampus. Every drip of processing is diverted. Suddenly my breathing reflex kicks in. I haven't been breathing. I've been drowning in my thoughts. And with it a sense of fear and dread; adrenaline courses through my aorta, spreading across my chest and dilating my bronchi. Fight or flight, from my own past? Pushing myself achieves this same end. But what am I running for? What am I running toward? I don't know, and I feel so lost and unbound. Adrift and asea. I thought again "if this is your last run, you're going out strong" and started sprinting again. I ran, and I ran, and I ran. I ran through throngs of people amidst cherry blossoms who didn't know I was probably running to my death. But suddenly I didn't want to die anymore, at least not yet. Not now. And I started a new mantra "this run saved my life." And I realized I could say that every time I ran. Or biked. Or hiked. Or sat with friends. Or worked on a project. Or spoke to my mom. But to do so I'd have to get through those long, dark minutes of pure and intense pain. I'd have to learn to hurt myself, again, running, hiking, biking. But I kept running, as fast and as hard as I could. I circled back around on my path, it was a lollipop route and I was completing the candy. And I pushed myself until I was back on the inner leg of it, the stem. I pushed myself so hard I started vomiting. In a homeless camp of all places. I'd had nothing to eat today, and little yesterday. I was subsisting on coffee. The bile came up black, sour, bitter. Much as the coffee had been going down. It seemed a funny parallel. And I decided then that I wanted to write about this. I wanted to share my story, because today: I didn't kill myself. I might have, some part of me wanted to. But I ran away. And I'll keep running. It's tough. But I think I found something to run for again. I'd mostly stopped running ages ago, but I think this was the motivation I needed to start again. The rest of my life is in shambles and I don't know what I'm doing. But I can keep running. I'll start running with a group, I think. And each time I'll let them know at the end "this run saved my life." I'll let them decide what that means to me, and them.


Hello! This one's not really fantasy, I don't think. Maybe it's more "speculative fiction", I don't know my genres very well here, I'm afraid :( It's shorter and pretty different from what I usually write. Undoubtedly rough in places. Let me know of any sentences that could be reworked. I know they're there, but it's hard for me to notice sometimes. I do know the very first sentence needs to be changed, but no matter how much I shift it around, I can't seem to get it to flow better. Enjoy!   Monster of the Lake By Thomas Bradford In a forest of tall trees there is a clearing, and in this clearing is a lake, and on the surface of this lake you float. The forest is quiet, the lake still. Your body gently lifts and falls on the water’s surface, divided between the black depths and the cold air. This division is not equal, with your body’s greater half belonging to the depths. Your ears are submerged, the sounds of the world muffled and distant, beyond reach. The sky is gray, dark, with the threat of a storm that never comes, a promise of rain that is never fulfilled. Everything is perpetual dampness, leaving your bones cold, your soul left with the longing for fire, and warmth. There is no one besides you. You are floating alone. Yet that is not entirely the truth, because there is something else. Something down below, at the end of the darkness. Something that lives in the depths of the lake, with its eyes eternally poised, searching for you. There’s something in the lake. It wants you down there with it. At times such as now, when the waters are still and nothing disturbs the mirror of their surface, when your thoughts are content, there appears an object rising beneath you. A coil, unfurling from the black void beneath the surface. A coil of metal. A hook, rusted and dull, rising at the end of a serpentine chain cast by a corpulent hand. All is quiet, peaceful, and you never suspect the chain’s presence. Taken unawares, like the prey of a stalking animal, you are hooked by this chain. With no chance to cry out, you are pulled beneath the surface without a sound. The waters are undisturbed by your departure. Gently they ebb and flow, their reflection of the sky unbroken in your absence. More perfect. Spiraling, descending, you watch the daylight recede. First it is at arm’s length, and you can still reach for it, then the moment has passed and it is beyond your grasp. With each tug of the chain, it drifts further and further away, as you sink with the hook that has caught you. Darkness covers you, the Stygian world closing in, smothering your sight, severing your hope. You cannot breathe. The darkness is not empty. Certain things dwell there – misshapen things, not living, but neither dead. Aspects of yourself, the dark reflections that exist in you. Thoughts, memories, once forgotten but now remembered in terrible flashes. Like ghoulish specters they rise from the deep, one by one to greet you like old friends, each with a smile on its face. Smiles which bare many teeth. There is no air to scream, no chance to free yourself. Your only recourse is to cry, the tears flowing into the water around you, joining with the lake, making it stronger as you are pulled down. Down. Your only company are the phantoms of time, the things you never wanted to remember, but will never fully forget. The daylight has disappeared, the surface gone from you so completely that you are uncertain it was ever real. The world below becomes your reality, the dark water and grinning faces your nightmare, and your mind is filled with the terrible certainty that you will never get out again. Everything is distorted, all clarity lost. You become convinced that if there ever was a world above, somewhere free of this dark place, that that world is not for you. That you belong out of sight, in the darkness. As you think of giving in, of stopping your struggle to let the chain pulling you take its course, one last flicker of clarity does emerge, and you wonder how many times this has happened, and for what reason it continues to happen. What is the purpose of this lake, and why are you there? The chain pulls and pulls. You’re close to the bottom. With no air to breathe, surely you should be dead by now. And yet you live, trapped in this state of suffocation, desperate and denied the salvation of a single breath. Revolving slowly, your eyes catch a glimpse below of the thing that has ensnared you. Just a glimpse, a vague outline of the monstrous creature. Something that looks human. Eyes searing with hatred, a loathing that can never be undone. It grasps the chain, a murderous intensity in its eyes, in that grip, in every movement of it. This creature wants you dead. It wants nothing more than for you to end. This thing exists because you exist. Its life is tied undeniably to yours, and yet it wants you to die. It does not care, for its sole purpose in being is for you to suffer, and ultimately cease to be. To meet this creature, to descend to the bottom of this lake and stare into its pale face, is to mean your death. Until then, all your efforts will be distorted, reshaped into ridiculous failures unworthy of note. All your dreams will be taken from you, smothered in their cribs while you watch in silence. Perhaps you will fall to the lake’s bottom one day. Perhaps the monster will win in the end. But today the hook’s hold on you isn’t strong enough, and you slip free. Terror takes hold as you flail, scrambling back to the surface, to pull yourself out of this nightmare. The monster remains where it is, for it is patient and sure that one day it will have you. Your ascent from the terrible deep seems never-ending, and you are afraid the surface might have been something you dreamed a long time ago. Or that perhaps the darkness has irreversibly changed you in some way, spoiled you, and now you can never return. You don’t see the surface appear before you. There is no long and ardent journey towards some far-off light. One moment you’re still mired beneath, with the voices and whispers from the past pressing around your head, each getting its final say in before you pass from their domain. Each phantom grinning and chuckling at your pathetic motions. And then you are out, once again floating at the surface, without a splash or a loud gasp for air. You’re just back, like nothing had happened. The chill air drying your face is the only indication you ever left. No relief at your escape, no thankfulness to still be alive – your mind runs with one terrible certainty: It will happen again. Sooner or later there will be another hook, another chain, and you will be pulled under again. True escape will never be possible. You are trapped in this place, trapped in this cycle without end. No. A cycle with one end. The quiet is broken by your screams, the peaceful air filled with your wretched cries. There are people standing at the edge of the lake. You didn’t notice them before, but you see them now. How can they not see you? How does your screams, your thrashing, not get their attention? But they do see. They are not blind. All around the lake’s perimeter the people stand in silence, watching as you struggle, listening as you wail and cry, unable to save yourself. Some of the people have never swam these dark waters; others know the dangers. None can help. They’re all preoccupied, they have their own problems, and dreams. They don’t have time for yours. Some of the people leave, disappearing into the fog and the trees, perhaps to wander into lakes of their own one day. The others look away, and hope that your cries will end soon.


Alone, she watches the water flow over her cave dwelling. This cave has been her home her entire life and the small forests and cliff that surround her are the only world she’s ever known. She gets up and begins to walk alongside the flowing river as she has done 1000 times before. She’s lined the river with different edible plants that she was able to find foraging. Outside of the occasional bird or fish this has been her main sustenance. As she walks she picks a few different fruits for breakfast. She follows the river all the way down the 2 mile path she knows by heart and arrives at the falls. She looks over and sees no bottom, nothin but mist and fog. She looks around, the landscape etched in her memory. Cliffs surround her, and for all but the falls it is a harrowing and impossible fall, no where to climb and no way to jump. She thinks to herself that she could be happy with life above the falls. That she has everything she needs and lives a life of peace, she doesn’t need more. For the first time in a long time a stabbing thought, a jaded memory comes to the front of her mind, her as a young child laughing with her parents sitting on a soft bed. She can’t remember her parents or anyone else well. She can’t remember a time where she was not by herself and not responsible for herself. She still questions how reliable this thought is, it’s the only memory that ever comes to mind, how does she know these people are her parents? How does she know they were with her here? There was no trace of them, has she always been alone on this island? Do other people exist? She has nothing more than a feeling, a yearning, to go on, but lately the fire inside her seems to be growing and pushing her to find out if there is more out there. She takes another look out on the horizon and turns around to walk back towards her cave. With each step she begins to feel more sick and upset. By the time she is back she breaks down crying. She looks at the cave wall by where she sleeps and sees the picture she has drawn using berries, a crude drawing but none the less effective, her present day sitting with the two people from her memory. In that moment she realizes that she needs that as much as food or water. She can’t live another day without anyone to share it with. At this moment she decides she’s going over the falls. She spends the entire night foraging for anything she can find that may be useful -food, sticks leaves, anything. She builds what she can of a bucket and raft over the next few days testing it in her small, calm part of the river. Once one was able to hold her afloat she loaded it up with everything she had and walked with it alongside the river holding it upright with a long stick. When she made it to the falls she looked once more out and looked for resolve within herself. A reason to not do what she was about to, a doubt, but any semblance of one was gone. She jumped into her make-shift raft and floated toward the falls. The river rages and almost immediately flips her over, but she holds on and gains a balance squating on the raft. She tied everything down best she could with leaves and branches and she held them as secure as she could. She used a large trunk to steer her way away from rocks and towards the center of the falls, she figured this would be the place with potentially the deepest and most clear bottom when, if, she lands in water below. She moves closer to the edge, her heart now racing. She closes her eyes and dreams one more time about a life with people she loves. She opens her eyes, she is inches away from the falls. She looks out to the horizon and sees what looks to be artificial lights in the distance.


The Palace of Luna was, in a word, enormous. However, if one were to assign a second descriptor to it, they might choose eclectic. For it borrowed from a seemingly endless array of architectural schools that seemed to result in pure chaos, but that was only when you looked upon it from afar. Upon closer inspection, the various styles and schools created a sort of interlocking pattern that morphed and changed even as you examined it. The strangely beautiful result of this seemingly random mixing of architectural styles had ended up being widely hailed as the pinnacle of human aestheticism. Its interior was no different, the wildly varying styles bled into each other, and one could become lost in the rapturous beauty of the maze-like corridors of the castle. In fact, more than one individual had done just that, though regular patrols from the devout guardsmen of the Palace kept anyone from becoming permanently lost. In the throne room of the Palace, the Queen was currently receiving petitioners. The dizzyingly high columns supported a ceiling that arched far above the court. Dozens of humans milled on the sidelines, some required to attend, bound by their duties. Others merely sought to entertain themselves and viewed the petitioning as a distraction from the daily grind of their various obligations. They tittered amongst themselves from behind their stone and metal masks as the next petitioner kneeled and began to speak. “Your majesty, I greet you oh most luminous Queen of Luna. I come before you today to prey upon your generosity. My people, the Cathrundi are currently suffering at the hand of the Letraxin, they have invaded our worlds. I fear that we will not be able to repel them with our own meager power and so I have been sent to beseech your aid. That you have deigned to hear my request at all honors not only myself, but my kin as well.” The man who spoke wasn’t really a man, at least not a human man. His species shared humanity’s sexual dimorphism, and it even manifested similarly. However, beyond that they weren’t terribly similar. His species was far larger than humans and bore their children in a way more similar to marsupials than humans. They also found the extremely high oxygen levels that humanity preferred somewhat toxic. They could survive for a few days in such an environment, but after that they would begin to suffer severe side effects. This aversion to human atmosphere excused the exo-suit he wore as he presented himself to the Queen. Though for his speech, he had removed his helmet in a show of respect for the Queen as he bowed deeply on the first four of his six legs. His head, like the rest of his body, was scaly, lending him a reptilian look, though the shape of his head, as well as the unmistakable beak, was more birdlike than anything. He remained in that pose for long seconds after he delivered his request for aid. He knew he was lucky to even receive an audience with the Queen of Luna. She was extremely busy, and the sheer quantity of sapient beings seeking to petition her far outweighed the amount she could ever possibly receive. He’d had no choice but to try his luck as all other official attempts to gather allies to aid in his people’s fight against the Letraxin had failed miserably. This was his people’s last hope for salvation. If the Queen did not grant them succor, then they would be trampled by the endless legions of the Letraxin, and those who survived the invasion would be taken as slaves to serve their new masters. “You have been heard, Decqual, descendant of Norperien and representative of the Cathrundi. You may rise.” The Queen of Luna spoke in a clear, measured tone. Her voice was like the sound of distant church bells echoing across a dewy meadow. Just hearing her voice was pure delight for the vast majority of sapient species, and Decqual was no exception. He was just barely able to maintain a somber facial expression as he rose to face the Queen, though it was an immense struggle as his heart lit with joy upon hearing her speak. He faced her, she was small, even for a human. Her skin was slightly transparent, proudly displaying her slight musculature and the gently pulsing veins that ran along her arms. Her face was hidden by a heavily stylized silver mask that covered even her eyes, though he knew that she could quite clearly see him in spite of it. Her pale blue dress nearly rose to meet the mask, leaving on the barest amount of her neck exposed as it flowed like water to pool at her feet, the silvery-white accents serving to make it seem as if she was actually garbed in water. Decal stood and faced her, maintaining eye contact with the mask as was traditional in the Queen’s Court when she asked that you rise. “Your people are new to the galaxy I believe. I remember when we first heard of your kind establishing a colony some four centuries ago. We foresaw then that you might become easy targets and warned you to prepare for the coming storm, and yet that was not enough. Why have you failed to prepare to protect yourselves? Why are you so *weak*?” The Queen’s words were scathing, and Decqual could not help but flinch as she questioned his people’s inadequacies. “Your majesty,” he began selecting his words carefully. “Your words did not go unheeded, and we did prepare for others to encroach upon what we claimed. However our people are not so long-lived as yours and as generations passed so did our vigilance. Our philosophers called for a more peaceful reign claiming that by clinging to violence we only lowered ourselves and that true enlightenment could only be achieved through pacifism. The shifting tides of culture through the flow of time has weakened us and now we pay the price for it most dearly. I can provide no good excuse for our failures as a species only this explanation of our folly and shortsightedness. I humbly beg your forgiveness in spite of that.” Decqual’s answer drew chuckles from the surrounding courtiers. Their faces were hidden behind a variety of masks that varied not only in style but material composition. However, very few were of silver, for only those of royal blood were allowed to wear silver masks, and successors to the throne rarely lived very long. He noted that not a single laugh left the throat of those with silver masks that he was able to notice. He wondered at that and its potential significance, but his thoughts were interrupted when the Queen delicately cleared her throat, silencing the laughter echoing in the courtroom. “Such failures are difficult for me to overlook. However, I can understand why a species so young and short-lived might be equally short-sighted. These were traits that even we humans once held in ages long past. Though we have grown beyond our original constraints, it is wise to remember we were not always gods striding above the mortals with whom we share this galaxy.” Her speech seemed to be an admonishment to those who had laughed at Decqual, and he felt a mote of relief. If nothing else, she was understanding, though it was unclear if that would translate to her bequeathing aid to his cause. The Queen paused for several long moments, and the courtroom and its occupants waited silently for her next words. “That being said, to cast aside your ability and will to commit violence is akin to casting aside your right to live. Tell me, why should I assist a species that has willingly thrown itself off a cliff? Why should I help those who seek to help themselves to their deaths?” Decal considered her question. She was right of course, that they had brought this upon themselves. By casting aside violence, they had brought death upon themselves. He could not and would not deny anything she had stated. How to answer her then? What reason could he possibly give to the Queen of Luna that would satisfy her? He himself had called for the re-establishment of his people’s military in these past years, and yet he and others like him had gone ignored up until now when it was already too late. It was truly hard to see how his species deserved redemption when cast under the judging light of Luna. But perhaps he could use that light to his advantage, for that light was currently cast upon him, and it was *his* words and actions that bore weight here in this courtroom. And he was one of the few Cathrundi who was proud to carry on the ancient ways of war, if only in mimicry. He straightened his back and placed his helmet upon his head, the seal clicking shut. “I have no words that might prove that my people deserve to be saved. I shall instead show you through action that we yet deserve to live.” The guards by the throne tensed as his words, but he had already begun to move by the time they realized his intent. The Queen gazed upon him unmoving even as he lunged towards her, her mask as impassive as ever as blades unfolded from the arms of his exo-suit. He had surrendered his pulse cannon upon entering the Palace. It was a relic passed down through his family line but still a good weapon. He missed it sorely now as the blades of his exo-suit came down upon the shield of one of the guards. The other guard used the opportunity to lunge forward with his spear, but Decqual was too quick and jumped backward, just barely avoiding the blow. His suit was armored, but human material sciences were millennia beyond anything his people knew, and he did not trust his suit’s armor to hold up against human weaponry. He was glad that the guards had yet to reach for the pistols upon their hips, for if they did, the fight would be over in no time at all. He lunged forward again, both of the guards held up their shields, spears poking forth from behind them. He bounced to the side as he edged towards the spears using the light gravity to launch himself into a spiral. The guard closest to him must have realized what he was doing and, in a quick motion swung his shield, throwing it into Decquals path. A quick burst of his suit’s thrusters corrected his course away from both the shield and the Queen. At this point, many of the courtiers had fled to the corners of the room farthest from her majesty, which suited Decqual just fine as it gave him more room to maneuver. He decided that to truly prove his point, he would have to stop dancing about, and as he landed, he launched himself forward straight at the guards. One of them launched just as he did and was caught by surprise. Decquals left blade struck him squarely in his chest and sent him flying upwards. Decal slowed on the impact, unfortunately allowing the other guard to score a blow on him tearing through his armor just as easily as Decqual had previously feared. The Queen’s voice rang out as the guard’s spear withdrew and prepared for a second blow, “Enough, you have proven your point representative of the Cathrundi.” With that proclamation Decqual’s blades retreated and the guards resumed their postings at either side of the throne, though their expressions betrayed a continued wariness of Decqual. “I beg your forgiveness your majesty. I could think of no other way to prove that we Cathrundi are not beyond redemption. The desire to fight, to live, it still burns bright in us. I do not come here to beg that we be saved, only that we be given the chance to fight back.” Decal hoped that this last impassioned plea would work. He was rewarded with laughter from the Queen as she bent over in her throne, clutching her stomach. Her normally gentle and restrained voice had been overcome by a raucous belly laugh that disconcerted everyone in the room. The Queen regained her composure after a few moments and stood up from her throne, “Your answer is filled with vigor and passion, I find your desire to rail against the cultural constraints of your people, and the universe that seeks to destroy you…amusing. I shall grant you your desire. You shall be granted weaponry commesnsurate with your people’s technological prowess. It will, however, be up to your people to use those weapons to save themselves. Do not waste this gift, for if you do I will ensure your extinction in return for wasting my goodwill.” “Your generosity knows no bounds Queen of Luna, with this proclamation I shall leave your presence and return to my people with the material you have so graciously bequeathed unto us. We will not forget this kindness in the long years to come.” Decqual gave a final bow to The Queen and was escorted from the hall. From there, everything became a blur as he was presented with a veritable river of documentation to sign. He signed it all without bothering to read the documents. It didn’t matter either way if any of the legalese in the documents was not in his people’s favor. Without this aid they would die regardless. So he signed everything that was put in front of him, eventually plowing through it all. After that particular ordeal, he was guided back to his ship. The captain of his ship had already docked inside the hangar of a truly massive human cargo vessel. The ship was still being loaded when he approached. Crates upon crates of weapons and armor for infantry were being loaded alongside long-range fighter craft and other vehicles of war. The vessel was larger than even his people’s largest space stations, and it was being filled to the brim with weaponry. His heart flowed over with joy at the sight. Many would fight and die so that they might survive, but for the first time since the invasion had started, there was hope that they might survive the coming days.