There they sat; the three of them. The feeling began at the ends of their toes and slowly crept like electricity up their bones and through their skinny legs. The drops of the healing waters remained on their skin and immediately they felt the magic of the place pulsate through them. “Do you feel anything?” Beatrice was always the more headstrong of the trio. “It’s gonna take more than a few minutes! Be patient!” Margot retorted at her friend as she looked over at the third member of the group, Jessica, and rolled her eyes. The three friends sat waiting on the banks of the Spring. That’s what they called it, the Spring. Any other body of water on the whole of the Island needed its proper name, but not this place. It all started a few years ago when it seemed like everyone everyone knew was coming down with polio. The sufferers would dip their legs in the cool water, play with the ripples, toss in stones, hope and wish, and inevitably be healed within moments, though some weak in faith required a few more treatments. Father Walsh reluctantly raised funds to bring the ill of the Village to the Spring, douse them in the water, see them heal, and praise the Divine and thank Him for giving the people of the Village these miraculous waters. New and would-be mothers spent hours at the Spring, then, would move on to the local parish to praise the Divine and give thanks for the healing waters they had been given. Father Walsh had a telescope that he would let the children of the Village look through after Mass every Sunday. First, the Sacrament, then the Heavens. He kept papers by his bedside and would scribble notes on them as he was inspired by the majesty of the universe and the wondrous majesty of the Divine he witnessed when gazing through the lens most nights. His flock knew him and his eccentricities well and in the Sanctuary, they would laugh and giggle at the homilies he would deliver about the wonders of the world the Creator had provided. It was a revolutionary time, and the doctors and professors on the Mainland were steadily making intellectual progress. Father Walsh desired to see the fusion of higher thought with that of the pondering of the Highest of them all. Father Walsh would begin his recent homilies in a similar fashion: “We are all here this Blessed Sabbath to come and partake of the Sacrifice of Our Creator. We also know that there are many temptations amongst us: false idols, natural wonders that draw us further from the Divine… waters that claim to heal without the Touch of the Almighty. I must surrender the fact that many have claimed to be healed by the Spring and its appealing waters. However, we as men and women of the Faith must guard against the denial of the Divine’s Touch on these waters. In fact, there are learned men, scientists and naturalists that reliably claim that the Spring is in fact just that: a spring. A naturally occurring spring of naturally occurring water rising from the earth. While I fault no one for dipping their extremities in the waters, be aware of the fact the Divine above is the cause of these supposed ‘healings,’ not the Spring itself. ” The congregants scoffed. How could this backcountry priest know anything about polio? About the toll it took on the families. Their children - their next-in-line - knew that there would be no more if not for these waters. It truly *was* as if the Divine had dipped His own toes in the Spring and blessed it Himself. One could feel the pulsations up the back, through the neck, and around the skull. Headaches were no more; pain did not exist. Afternoons-out became commonplace in the Village and nearly everyone went to the Spring after Sunday Mass. Father Walsh would become reluctant, but bless the Spring nonetheless each Sabbath, hoping to indirectly demonstrate to the villagers that the Divine had touched these waters and that that is why they were miraculous; the Spring was not simply a supernatural phenomenon, but proof of Heaven’s Grace. He noticed that many began drinking the liquid and claimed the healing of fevers, melancholy, and dipsomania. Wives would dry-out their husbands on Saturday night, see them fit to attend Mass on Sunday morning, catch them drinking Sunday afternoon, then promptly bring them to the Spring before dusk that evening. “Divine above. What am I to do? My parishioners, my congregants, my flock, they are turning their eyes toward the less-than-sacred. Toward waters that I do not feel in my deepest of soul are holy - not sent from You above. Great Creator, Grand Architect of All, what am I to do?” Father Walsh prayed, asked, and pleaded with the Divine more each evening than he had the one before. “Let us look at your wonders, shall we, and reinvigorate in me the faith that has sustained this Island for ages.” Peering at the sky above, the priest saw the familiar constellations, planets, and the Majesty he was accustomed to. “Well, that *is* odd, is it not, Father above?” The Moon had seemingly shrunk *again*, not drastically, but noticeably once more. It should never have been this diminished in the Heavens this time of year. “What, oh Divine, is becoming of this Heavenly body? Why does it seem to continue to diminish?” Father Walsh was perplexed. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ “It *does* appear small.” Bishop O’Malley knew little of astronomy but gazed at the Moon often as he pondered the Mysteries. “What, Reverend Walsh, makes *you* feel as though the Moon is getting smaller?” “I have been watching the Heavens nightly for several years now - since coming to serve the congregants of this Island - and I know well these bodies in the sky. There is something amiss; something quite off about all of this.” Father Walsh peered once more through his diminutive telescope. “I can see that the Moon above has diminished. There is no manner in which it should be *this small*. Something is just not right, Brother. I’ve noticed, in fact, that something has been ‘different’ about the skies in the recent weeks, but I can now place it: the Moon itself is small; smaller than it should be.” “This all seems like guff to me, Brother. I’m sorry to say, but this all does not seem possible. While the Moon does seem out of place and small, who are we to judge the Divine? What would make the whole of the Moon succumb to the mass of the Heavens above? There is just no manner in which this could happen.” “I know, I know. But, you must believe me, Bishop O’Malley: something *is* amiss.” Father Walsh tried to convince the wary bishop of his theory: that the Moon itself had begun to shrink progressively since the discovery of the healing powers of the Spring: “Brother, I tell you, I tell you, I do: the Heavens above have not been the same since my flock have been dipping their toes in and drinking the waters of the Spring. Stars have ever so slightly shifted, entire constellations are being altered! Orion’s Belt doesn’t even fit anymore! But, most tragically of all, the Moon is shrinking, day by day.” “Why is this so troubling to you, Reverend Walsh? What are you getting at?” “Bishop, you must understand, the Moon, as odd as it seems, controls the waters of the earth! The Moon dictates to our earth how and when the tides shall rise and fall. Without this heavenly body, fish will no longer know where to swim. Fishermen will not know where to fish! Villages near the sea, like ours, will perish! Even the Spring, as inland as it might be compared to our small Village, will be overpowered by the sea! These methods, these tides, these *reliable* methods keep all life in check.” Father Walsh could hardly compose himself and he was blushing in the presence of the Bishop. “Bah!” “No, my lord. I do tell you: this is troublesome.” “Well, what are we to do?” The Bishop knew the consequences of Father Walsh’s theory. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ “Before we depart, I do have a message to give all of the Village. The Spring is hereby off limits to all.” An audible gasp lifted to the vaulted ceiling of the old cathedral. “I know many of you rely on these waters, but they are not Holy! They are in fact destroying your fellow man. You must have faith in what I say: these waters will destroy us all.” The parishioners had heard this nonsense before - that all use of the Spring was unholy and that they must give the Divine their thanks before, during, after, and always. “I mean this! It will be folly to continue to use these waters!” The congregation began to leave the cathedral and directed themselves to the Spring. Children were hobbling on crutches; elders were barely walking down the stairs leading away from the Sanctuary. The Spring was their only hope and their last resort. Father Walsh and the Divine had failed them habitually. “Please, I beg of you! Stop! This Spring is not the answer!” Father Walsh implored his congregants. “Then what in the Hell is the answer, Father? Don’t tell us anymore of that nonsense you preach in your rambling homilies.” A brave member of his Flock spoke up and the rest followed suit. They shouted and threw stones and branches at him. Some spat. “Alright, alright. But… you must listen! All of you!” Father Walsh was able to still the crowd. “The Moon! The Moon is diminishing. It’s becoming smaller due to the use of these Waters… due to the use of this Spring! We cannot use it anymore! You, Beatrice! You, Margot! You, Jessica! It might save your legs… it might have already! It might! But, it will inevitably destroy us all!” The crowd scoffed. “To Hell with him!” “No! No! I beg of you to *not* use these waters ever again! The Moon controls the tides. It dictates to the waters around our Island as to what they shall do. I swear it. Oh, please, I swear it!” “Run him out of the Village!” Some shouted. “Send him back to the Mainland!” Shouted others. “Kill him; hang him!” Shouted some. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ All were eventually healed. There was no pain, no headaches, no trembling, no weakness, no polio. When the waters rose they deconstructed the Cathedral and brought its remnants inland for firewood. As the Sea encroached and even more livestock died and crops failed, the Spring became their only respite. Eventually, the waters of the Sea overtook the Spring and the parishioners waited for finality on the rocks above. They all surely perished, and the Spring let out a hollow creak as its waters succumbed to those of the cold, dark Sea.


Staring down intently, Aevia watched her target as he wove his way through one of the many crowded markets in Vace City. He was a noble, born of wealth and not afraid to flaunt or abuse it. She had been following him for several blocks now, using the rooftops of the tightly packed buildings in this portion of the city. With a graceful ease, that would seem effortless to any onlookers, she leapt gaps from two feet to eight feet without strain or concern. Her black hair, with streaks of bleached white showing throughout, streamed behind her as she went. When the nobleman reached his destination, a well guarded inn built of heavy stone blocks and polished wooden timber, he gave a nervous glance over his shoulder before being ushered inside by two doormen. Aevia crouched low, waiting on an adjacent roof with an ever vigilant eye on the doors and windows within her view. She pulled out her small crossbow, light enough to wield with one hand as needed. She grabbed a bolt from the quiver on her back, running a finger over its tip and blade out of habit. She snapped it into place, where it would hold fast until she pulled the trigger to set it free. If anyone got in her way, she would be ready. With it ready and loaded, she clasped the weapon back onto a strap over her shoulder. When she felt the appropriate time had passed, based on her recent observations of the nobles patterns, she raced across a series of rooftops in a roundabout way to the least guarded, most shadowed side of the inn. It did not take her long to locate the window to the room the man had taken, as she could hear the voice of the woman she had followed a few hours earlier to this same inn, the woman who had been sleeping with the noble in an effort to earn his offer of marriage. Aevia reached into one of the many pouches attached to her tight leather armour, finding two small, iron balls. The patrol guard, who did laps around the building every ten minutes, was now on the opposite side of the building, leaving just the stationary guard who seemed more alert than she would have liked. Waiting any longer could make things worse, so she proceeded to toss the balls several feet away from the guard, in such a way that they would roll further down the side of the building away from where she was. When the balls struck the cobblestone street they made a loud sound, catching the attention of the guard immediately. As they continued to bounce, a trail of grey smoke trailed behind them, quickly filling the street with a haze. They emitted a hissing sound, as the minor enchantment within them ran its course. The guard dashed towards the thin smoke and odd sounds, with his sword drawn and his posture showing he was ready to kill. Aevia took the opportunity to make a running dash towards the end of her rooftop, leaping the much larger gap of fifteen feet between her roof and the Inn. She sailed across the gap with a practiced ease, and minimized the sound of her landing with a crouch and a roll before spreading out her body and grasping at the wooden tiles of the rooftop. The impact was a bit painful, and she grimaced as some of the stiff, curled edges smashed into her armour. There would be bruises for certain, but nothing she hadn't experienced before. Not wanting to waste a moment, she slid herself to the edge of the roof, then dropped down, grasping the ledge of the roof. A quick glance saws that the smoke had risen to eye level, and was starting to disperse. It would not be long before the guard realized the distraction for what it was and began an alert inside the Inn. Thankfully the Inn was a haven for more than just this noble, it was an establishment for many of wealth to seek out their sins in secrecy. Aevia had placed herself exactly where she had wanted to be, swinging herself forward directly into the closed wooden shutters of the nobles room. The shutters swung inward, as she knew they would, for she had fixed the hinges and bypassed the lock several hours ago when she had uncovered where the mistress would be waiting. Bursting into the room feet first, Aevia landed on the plush carpet at an angle and slid forward on the plush carpet a few feet, falling backwards onto her outstretched hands. With the elegant grace and strength of a spider, Aevia snapped back forward into a standing position as she drew her hand crossbow and pointed it directly at the chest of the startled woman, who was already down to her underclothes from the nobles hasty fondling. "Don't move." Was all Aevia said, in a stern yet quiet voice. He made no effort to protect her, and actually fell away to cling to a nearby wall as she stared in shock at the weapon aimed her. "Take what you want, anything at all!" she shouted at Aevia, raising her hands in the air without a thought of self defense. Aevia kept her outstretched weapon arm pointed at the woman, while turning her attention to the noble. "Harvin, Lord of Gnost… she stated, her slanted eyes showing no emotion. "Y..yyess…" He stuttered, while wetting himself in the process. "Your lady has a message for you, the Lady of Gnost that is." The noblemans' pupils expanded with a fear far beyond what he showed from her arrival. The stories of the nobles wife told her to be a very protective and wrathful woman. He didn't even attempt a response. "Return to Gnost, forget this mistress of yours, and understand that this will be the last time your adulteress habits leave you intact... or possibly even alive." Her deadpan tone, and unblinking stare, left no doubt as to who would be fulfilling the threat. The man fell to his knees as he pressed his palms together in a prayer motion. "I will, I swear! Just don't tell her about the others..." He groveled, tears forming in the corners of his eyes. Aevia hadn't known about the others, in fact she had only just found out about this one a few days ago when trying to figure out her next source of income. The Lady of Gnost had no idea who Aevia was, or that her dear Lord was ever disloyal to her. None of that mattered though, all that mattered was that he believed it, and he was certainly demonstrating that he did. "Toss me your coin pouch," she said, tilting her head to the table he had placed his belongings on. "If there's enough there then your secret is safe." "There's others!" the scantily clad mistress shouted out, realizing what he just admitted too. She dropped her hands and was about to rush at the Harvin in a fit of rage. Aevia let the bolt fly, after angling it downward. The woman's dash turned into a fall as the bolt tore through her bare foot, pinning it to the ground. She screamed in pain, clutching at the foot and trying to stem the blood with the bottom of her shift. Harvin tossed the pouch at her, while Aevia reloaded her weapon with a quick and practiced ease. She picked it off the floor and lifted it with one hand. "Twenty, that covers you for week." Aevia said, wondering how much she might get out of this wretch before he decided it wasn't worth it, or began to doubt her. She pressed a bit further. "That ring, give me that and I'll forget about you, and your whores." "That's worth a small farm!" He gasped, "I can't poss..." "Your choice." Aevia said curtly, turning towards the window. She knew the gaurds would likely be at the room soon. "I'll see you in Gnost." "It's yours!" He snapped, frantically trying to pull it off his finger. He kept trying, but to no avail. "But I can't get it off. I can send it to you, just don't tell her!." Aevia didn't have any desire to see this man again, or risk and future encounters with him or his connections. Time was running out. "Use her blood, now!" She snapped, pointing her crossbow at the wenches foot. Although the noble was shocked at her request, he dashed forward and shoved his fingers into the small pool of blood that had formed on the floorboards, then was able to pull the ring off with a few twists in the slippery crimson liquid. The woman didn't object, just wimpered in pain and frustration with what was transpiring. He tossed the ring to Aevia. "When you get to Gnost, speak nothing of this." Aevia said, making sure her words were clear and firm. "The Lady does not want to be reminded of why she sent me, and your silence is the only way she will forgive you. Should you speak of this, she has told me she will hire me to permanently prevent you from sleeping with others again." Aevia motioned her crossbow towards his pelvis as she said this, and the color drained from Harvin's face. "Understood?" she said, now perched in the ledge of the window. The noble grasped at his manhood with his bloody hands, nodding fervently but saying nothing else. Aevia jumped up and out of the window, grapping the roof ledge with a firm grip. With the elegance of a gymnast, and the strength of a climber, she then hopped and spun a half circle before grabbing the ledge again. A quick jerk of her upper arms and chest pulled her up onto the roof, where she heard a guard down below shout out "There, I see 'im up there." Aevia dropped down to the rooftop immediately, narrowly avoiding an arrow that whizzed overhead into the night sky. Breathing a sigh of relief for avoiding the attack, she crawled forward a few feet before making a relatively easy escape across the rooftops of the crowded city quarters. Her newly earned coins and ring would be able to support her for several months if she ran out of targets... although she never had run out of targets before.


When I was nine years old, my mom took me to a stash house, and I don’t remember why. My parents weren’t junkies; they were alcoholics, sure - I had known that much from a much younger age than I should have - but they weren’t Dream users. I fight to remember anything else about that day, but I can’t. The only thing I have to explain it is an old notebook, something my dad gave me. The first line stands out, a line and a half high, spelled out in a child’s frantic scribble. It’s the only line in the notebook that I have never rewritten; I guess that makes it the most true. Reading it still burns me, even after all this time. My sister swallowed her name when she was six. Our mom had been in the other room, infatuated with the latest season of The Bachelor, and our dad was passed out drunk. I was only nine, but I guess had been given the task of watching her. And so I watched, legs pulled up to my chest and back sunk deep into the plush sofa, as she sat on the floor and rolled her name back on forth like a marble. Her name caught the light as it rolled, sending off sprays of rainbow color that shimmered in its wake. She and I were transfixed, like it was our own private mirage. She picked the thing up from time to time, feeling its smooth facets under her still-tiny fingers. When she popped it into her mouth, I spit out an involuntary giggle. I imagine that was something she did a lot, slipping her name behind her lips and swishing it back and forth like a hard candy. She bulged out her cheeks like a chipmunk and I dispensed another automatic giggle. Knowing mom and dad, one of them would probably have slapped the name out of her mouth, and slapped her again for good measure, but I just watched and giggled. I brought my hand up - partially to the taut skin of my throat and partially to my own name, which hung securely there - when my sister started to hiccup. The first one was a spasm followed by a giggle of her own. The second came with the same spasm, followed by a half-and-half cough and sputter. The skin of her throat bulged with the rough shape of her name and I watched as her eyes started to water. I pulled my legs tighter against my chest as my sister dropped onto her back. She rolled back and forth, small fountains of spittle spraying with her frantic blurts and gurgles. Her shoes shook on her feet as she rolled; they were too big, hand-me-downs from me to her. I was on my knees when mom shouted at us to keep the noise down. I cradled my sister’s body in my arms and went through all the motions that a child imagines might save a life. I balled my hand into a fist and punched her in the back; her sticklike frame shook and her eyes bulged every time I hit her. The pearlescent glow of her name bobbed beneath the skin of her throat. “I told you both to keep it down!” Mom’s voice was shrill and thin. “Don’t make me come in there. If you want to sound like a bunch of monkeys, I will gladly sell you to the zoo.” I guess I might have been screaming, but all I remember is the sound of the Bachelor in the background. In a last effort, I opened my hand and slammed into her back with all the force I could muster. Her shoulder blades were sharp against my palm. I watched the light of her name bob one more time before sliding down her throat and disappearing. Her body was wracked with a gutteral inhale; strings of saliva dangled from her lips and tears streamed from her red eyes. “I thought I told you two-” Mom’s slurred outrage broke off as she stood in the doorway, plastic cup of wine sloshing in her hand. Her bleary eyes focused on me, fixing on the name that hung around my neck, before shifting to my sister, her name nowhere to be seen. She opened her mouth slowly, her tongue wetting her lips. She closed her mouth for a moment, then opened it again and tipped back the rest of her wine. A thin stream dribbled down from the corner of her lips and she wiped it away with the back of her hand. Her name, a jade-colored thing embedded in a ring too small to take off of her finger, glittered in the room’s shafted light. Later, after we started speaking again, she told me that she was going to ask what had happened, but either she didn’t trust her eight year-old to tell the truth or she figured that the truth didn’t really matter that much anyhow. I don’t blame her for thinking either of those things. The next day, mom grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to the back of our family car. As she drove, she took periodic swigs from a thermos of something that she had taken from home. Whenever she took a drink, the smell of something strong and sickening filled the car, and the smell lingered long after she closed the thermos up. That day’s first stop was a pawn shop, its neon sign only half illuminated and its front window caked in dirt and cigarette soot. She left me in the car when she went inside, carrying a handful of her mother’s gold jewelry. I watched through a clean patch in the front window as she haggled with the man behind the counter, alternating between the strategies of screaming at him and of tenderly stroking his hand. She hadn’t bothered to crack any of the car windows and as I watched, the midmorning heat and the smell of the thermos contents washed over me in waves. A little while later, mom stepped out of the pawnshop door. One of her strategies had worked out, since she was leaving with stacks of cash in hand. She climbed back into the car, started it, and drove off without so much as a glance in my direction. We drove for several more hours, or at least it felt like we did. It was mostly through areas of town that I didn’t recognize and haven’t been able to find since. I remember feeling worse and worse as we went. My stomach churned every time mom tipped back her thermos. For some comfort I tried to imagine my sister, home in bed where we left her, but I couldn’t get the details to stick in my mind. I could picture her in pieces, like I was putting together a puzzle but every time I got two pieces to fit together another two fell apart. I could see her hair, but not her face. Her nose, but not her hands. It just made me feel sicker. We drove past a burnt-out tenement building, the kind we had lived in before we moved into my grandma’s house. Mom parked the car a distance away and walked the block or so back to the building we had passed. I stood at her side, body feeling rigid and ready to snap, as she knocked on the building’s big metal door; it made a reverberating sound that I could feel rattling in my bones. High up on the door, too high for my younger self to see in, a slot opened up and mom flashed the cash she had brought. The slot slammed shut and the door shrieked open on rusted tracks. A large man - the largest I have ever seen - ushered us inside. The room, a lobby of sorts, was lit by a series of bare lightbulbs, all swinging on frayed wiring in a phantom breeze. We followed the giant down the center aisle, past several side doors. The sides of the room were lined with pillows and people stacked high against one another; the air smelled like ash and sweat. The giant pushed us to the side of the aisle as another man bustled through the far curtained door, carrying a tray stacked high medical syringes and vials full of impossible color. I didn’t know what they were then, but I do now. Dreams, individually pickled and preserved in little jars; each one offered a slice of escape, if you could pay the right price. The man with the tray stopped for a moment, watching us with rat’s eyes as we hurried through the curtain and into the next room. I remember a thin man sitting behind a big desk. A dark brown trench coat enveloped his skeletal form, its flaps fluttering in the same unnoticeable draft that stirred the lights above. I held my sides and shivered. The thin man motioned my mom forward and then rested his elbows on the desk. As he leaned in to speak with her, the sleeves of his coat fell down his arms and pooled on the desk. His hands were as small as a child’s. The giant man seemed uncomfortable as he eyed me, like he had never seen a child in his place of business. I shifted uncomfortably and looked at the ground. I was feeling worse than ever and the smell of the place wasn’t helping. The giant squinted in the dim room and then motioned me to a chair in the corner. I was grateful to sit down; I watched my mom talk to the thin man in hushed tones, the conversation punctuated by an occasional sigh or a laugh from the man. His laugh was as thin as he was, sounding more like the wheeze of slow wind through a weathervane. It was a joyless sound. Eventually, he stood and paced over to one of the filing cabinets that lined the room’s back wall. He unlocked one and rolled the drawer open. He stood there for a moment, rifling down inside and drawing out a handful of shapes. He laid them out on the desk and I could tell by the shine of color that they were names - young names, at that. The man said something to my mom and she pointed back at me. The man beckoned me forward with a languid gesture. “Which one of these looks most like your sister’s?” the thin man asked me. I stared at the names and struggled to remember what hers had looked like, before it had disappeared in her mouth. My hand wavered above the desk, hesitant to commit. “Take your time,” the man said, “the choice is important.” He smiled. I remember his teeth, long and perfectly straight. I picked the one that most reminded me of my sister, or the one that I most hoped did. It shone pink and gold, like an autumn sunset. Mom hissed at me through her teeth when I pointed it out, but didn’t object. The thin man nodded and waved me away. I stepped back and tried to remember what my sister looked like. In the car, it had been like a puzzle, and now, it was like the pieces were disappearing one by one. I could see the shape of her in bed, and I could feel the weight of her cradled in my young arms. I had the rough outline of a girl, but nothing else. I wish I had even that much now. “Give it a few days,” the thin man said to my mom as he counted out the money she gave him. “I can’t give you a guarantee, these things aren’t an exact science.” Mom nodded and pocketed the secondhand name. “I am sorry if it doesn’t work. But don’t come back here again.” Mom took me by the hand, her grip just a little too tight, and pulled me out of the room. The man with the tray watched us leave, a syringe poised in his hand. In the glass tube I could see the silty dregs of a dream - swirls of joy and of innocence, the color of childhood. Later, I imagined that that dream had been mine, harvested and sold off by a thin man with long, straight teeth. I imagined him laughing that wheezing laugh as the rat-eyed man sucked the dream from my head and handed it out to junkies, to the ones who could pay; ones whose own dreams had been stolen from them too. I imagined all of this to be true, but only later. That day, all I did was throw up on the sidewalk outside of the building. It didn’t make me feel any better. When mom and I got home, dad had sobered up enough to greet us at the door. His mouth hung in a slanted gape, his tongue paddling half-formed words. Mom waved him off and pushed me inside. She deposited me on the couch and then shuffled off to my sister’s room, her back stiff and determined. Once she left the room, my dad slumped down next to me and we both sat in silence. He was the one who gave me the notebook, later on that night. He came into my room while mom was watching over my sister and talked everything over with me. He convinced me to write down everything that I could remember; I didn’t understand why at the time. He slung himself over me, hanging off my slight shoulders and coaching me through the words that I didn’t quite know yet. I’ve rewritten that first entry a couple of times now. I’ve revised the details that didn’t feel right, cleaned up the aspects of the story that chaffed when I read them. I don’t know where the whole thing sits, on the continuum between truth and fiction. I also don’t know if it really matters. Rereading those paper memories of my sister always triggers a kind of itching feeling inside my head, some sort of half-kindled deja vu that spreads beneath my skin like a rash. I have to force myself to acknowledge what I read and write as reality; sometimes my suspension of disbelief doesn’t go quite far enough. Out of all my invented endings, my favorite version is the simplest one: it goes more or less like this. When I woke up that next morning, my dad was sprawled out asleep on the floor and mom stood in the doorway, watching us both with a weary eye. I asked her how my sister was doing. She drew her eyebrows together, forehead muscles knotting as her head bobbed furtively from side to side. She had this look on her face - a confusion, like she knew she should answer me but couldn’t decide on what the correct answer was. She settled on no answer at all, only huffing through her nose and then backing out of the room. When I clambered out of bed, I couldn’t remember which room was my sister’s. I went from room to room, circling the house, until I saw something that I recognized. In the room next to mine, the room with pink and beige walls and the disconnected fan that hung uselessly from the ceiling, I found an unfamiliar girl sitting up in bed. She was fully dressed and her tiny hand was clasped around the name that hung from her neck. I asked her who she was and why she was in our house. She answered both questions, but I forgot both answers as soon as she stopped speaking. I had trouble looking directly at the girl; my eyes slid off of her, and they dried up and forced me into a blinking fit if I tried to focus on her for too long. I asked her the same questions again and she started crying. Frozen stiff, I called for mom and dad. Mom came up and she stood behind me, opaque drinking glass in hand, and we both stared at the strange crying girl. The previous day’s nausea was rising in me again, and looking at the girl only made me feel worse. I looked up at mom and she nodded to me; I took that as tacit permission to leave. I hurried back to my room, stepping over my dad’s snoring body, and wrote down everything as best I could. The entry from that day is made up of fragments, spelled out in a child’s uncertainties It was some time before I went back into that room next to mine - probably a year or more, if I were forced to gauge it. I’ve written the memory down along with the rest of the story.; it’s different from the rest, though, since I remember the whole thing clearly. In my head, the room was just a spare used for storage. When I wandered in, I was surprised to find a child’s bedroom, the walls painted pink and beige, with a small bed pushed into the corner. Everything was covered in a thin layer of drifting dust. At the foot of the bed, I could see a pair of my old shoes, unlaced and ready. Seeing the shoes there, I felt sadness drop like a stone down my throat and ripple through the rest of my body. I was jolted out of the feeling by a yank on the collar of my shirt. I stumbled over my shoes, falling back and slamming into the floor. My mom was standing over me, her hand still hanging mid-grab. Her eyes were welled with tears that she kept trying to shake away. She looked dazed. From that point onward, she kept the spare room locked. I think I have lost other people. There are dog-eared entries after my sister, other stories that I don’t remember forgetting: a college friend whose name burned in a motorcycle accident; a girlfriend, her name stolen by a spiteful ex. Each is a gap in my own story, a puzzle piece vacuumed up and thrown out with the rest of the dust and debris. I remember some things that I read; the events, mostly, the set dressing, but the people are gone - just blank spaces. When I’m not focused on them, I forget that the spaces are even there. There’s a fairy tale that my wife likes to tell, something that her mom told her when she was a girl. It says that somewhere out there, beyond everything we can see, there is a place where all the nameless people live. A place where they grow old and content - even happy, if they let themselves be. It’s a place where the nameless are safe. When she tells the story, I think about that empty room next to mine, about the too-big shoes at the end of the bed. I think about the room and I hope that whoever used live there is safe. I hope that she lets herself be happy. Sometimes, when everyone else is asleep, I sit at the kitchen table and read through my notebook entries. I sit and read and I imagine that my wife’s fairy tale is true, that the place in the story is real. I think about going there - about taking my name off, leaving it on the bus, throwing it into the river - just leaving everything behind and letting everyone forget me too. I think about seeing my sister again. I imagine what she looks like, older now than when I would have known her, and I imagine the life we could live together. It could be a happy life, us living together in that nameless place. That’s what I think about at night, while I’m sucking on some strong drink and letting it carry my mind away. I drift aimlessly through the notebook’s scrawled-over pages. When I finish my drink, I close the book. I clear my mind - and I go to bed.


“Do you know what a homunculus is?” “No, never heard of it” “It’s this image of a little guy they use in neuroscience to show how many sensory nerves you have in each part of the body. The more nerves in a part of the body, the bigger that part is drawn.” “Yea?” “Yea. So he has massive hands and a huge d...” I dismissed his description with a feigned grimace and vaguely gay gesture of the hand. I’m not gay, and have used the ‘d-word’ many times before, but there is something oddly unsettling about an old man using it so casually. “Do you know why he has a huge d....” “Yes! I get it!” The old man shot a sideways squinted glance probingly at me. “Are you gay?” “No, I’m not gay.” Obviously, the ambiguous nature of the hand gesture from a moment ago was more apparent than I had realised. I need to be more careful with that. “You just seem a little uncomfortable with references to...er, the male organ of love.” The last part, enclosed safely in air quotes, was whispered breathily to me. “I’m not gay.” “It’s ok if you are.” “Just tell me about the homunculus...” The old man considered me with an expression that was equal parts curiosity and suspicion, but he was too tempted by the conversational bait he had cast. His frozen expression softened and, eyes alit, he took off from where he had left the lesson before. “He’s a weird looking guy, alright. Big ears, lips and...” He glanced up at me, searching my face for permission that was not there. “...and feet. But do you know what’s the weirdest thing about this guy?” “Yea?” “No eyes...he has no eyes.” I considered this image and felt a cold shudder ripple through me. It seemed out of proportion, more like I was anticipating some future coldness - something of which the details were obscure but the feeling of was disturbingly vivid. “Why does he have no eyes?” “Because there are so many nerves in the eye, if they put that in, all you’d see are two giant eyeballs and nothing else.” “Wow.” “Right? Interesting right? Those damn eyeballs are so big we pay little attention to the other five senses. And we completely ignore the subtler senses inside of us.” “You mean, like our soul...?” The word slipped clumsily out between my teeth, and felt as though I had somehow mispronounced it or said it with a heavy accent in the way a foreigner would. The word itself was not mispronounced, of course, but it felt like its meaning was. Is that even possible? Can one mispronounce the meaning behind the word? “Don’t be stupid. I mean like...like your liver.” “What?” “Well, all your internal organs. Don’t you wonder about everything that goes on inside there while you’re walking around doing your thing?” “I don’t think I’ve ever really thought of that.” “You should. It’s freaking amazing in there man.” The old man’s sense of wonder at my innards was, despite my current state, infectious. He must have sensed this as he continued with even more vigour. “Take your liver. It’s just the most incredible piece of nature...do you have any idea how many chemical reactions happen in your liver to keep you alive?” “No idea.” “Neither do I, but it’s a lot. The heart gets all the credit. Centre-of-the-soul, symbol-of-love and all that. And it knows it, too, beating arrogantly in your chest like it owns the place. It’s a brutish, ill-mannered organ, the heart. It’s like the politician of the body. All noise and no class. Or like the pretty-boy jock of high-school. You know what I mean? The guy with no brains who gets all the girls..” The derisive reference to the pretty-boy-jock sent a sudden wave of shrapnel through my mind. In a moment, I winced externally, but internally that moment separated into an infinite array of time capsules, playing out sequentially and mercilessly within my mind’s eye. My girlfriend (now ex, apparently) confessing that she has feelings for a work colleague - the pretty boy. As tall as he is good-looking as he is dumb. The previous girlfriend, less direct but no less devastating. A thousand loveless glances and snubbed embraces communicate unworthiness more slowly but more deeply. Passages from books and essays espousing the virtue and vindictiveness of love, taking the heart and mind back and forth until both come resting somewhere in the middle, more out of exhaustion than clarity. And finally, the father, defeated by the same question. If he couldn’t find his way, what hope did I, a much lesser man, have? Suddenly,I realised where the earlier shudder had come from. The old man must have noticed my little wince as his spoken thoughts trailed off into silence. His expression, now sympathetic, was focused squarely on me. “You ok there man?” “Yea... yea I’m fine.” I stood perfectly still as the house of feelings within me became taller and more precarious. I knew if I moved or shifted my glance, it would all come crashing down at once. That was certainly not something I wanted to happen in the middle of the day on a busy sidewalk. The old man must have known this too as he accepted my obvious lie and continued. “Yea, the liver is amazing. Silently doing all that work without ever resting.” “Why are you so obsessed with the liver?” As if on cue, the old man promptly lifted all the dirty layers of his clothing to reveal a large pale belly marked with a long scar on its right side. “I got a replacement when my old one broke. I’m a new man!” He grinned ecstatically at his own display, looking proudly at the scar and back at me many times. I noticed that the grin revealed a few teeth that would benefit from replacement too. For the first time during our encounter, I assessed the full extent of the old man’s situation. The dirty layers and teeth. Mounds of clothing and blankets, presumably donated by kind passersby. The mattress of cardboard that was his bed. And the little styrofoam cup that had caught my attention and received my deposit of spare change just a few moments ago. “How’d you end up on the street like this?” The old man winced as I did before, and I regretted the enquiry the moment I uttered it. I had not given him the same courtesy of allowing him to hide his pain. Instead, it remained edged on his face in a way that I would never forget. For the first time, his gaze, drifting down, could not hold my own. As his being deflated before me, I could see the time capsules playing out in his mind, even if their content would remain forever hidden from me. “That...is a long story.” Feeling the dull ache of guilt and helplessness, I made another, more generous contribution to the styrofoam cup. “Well, good luck to you sir.” “And to you, young man.” With both of our houses intact, I walked away, not feeling any better, but at least not feeling any worse.


Jane leaned across the arm of my deck chair and whispered something dirty. Kurt squealed on my lap, gasping as the fireworks exploded over our heads. The reflection of the kaleidoscopic colours on Lake Whitemer looked like an identical firework was going off not so far from where we sat, I’m sure Kurt believed that was really the case. He couldn’t talk, but on the off chance he chose this moment to spit out his first word, Jane did not want to chance him drawing a selection from the pool of what she was saying now. “What do you think?” she asked, fluttering her eyelids. “I think whoever’s putting on the big show across the water had better cut it so I can get you to bed,” I replied. “It’s the fourth of July,” she pointed out. “The Americans will keep at it until the sun comes up.” I pulled myself out of the deck chair and passed Kurt to his mother. He made a happy little hiccupping noise as he moved through the air. “Bed time,” Jane said, cradling him. “I’m afraid it’s past both of our bedtimes. Your father is going to spank me if I don’t get to bed soon.” She looked at me when I didn’t answer, half amused and annoyed. “That was the perfect set up. You’re supposed to say, ‘I’ll do it anyways’, or ‘too late’. Something like that.” “Sorry.” I was distracted. I heard something moving around against the kitchen window behind us. A mouse? No, larger than a mouse, maybe a raccoon. When I turned and peered through the window, it was empty. “Miles?” “Hmm?” I turned. The light of the fireworks dyed Jane’s hair green, then white, then the bright cherry red of a fire truck. “Is everything alright?” she asked. “Yeah. I thought maybe I heard an animal inside. Wait out here a second, I’ll check it out.” “I told you, we should’ve had someone come and clean the cottage in May. This is what happens when you’re only here for three months of the year. Something else moves in.” “Yes dear,” I joked. I opened the screen door and it whined on its hinges. I tensed, ready to hear our scuffling guest streaking for the doorway and my unprotected bare feet, or the obnoxious clanging of a pot knocked onto the floor. I heard nothing. “Hurry up,” Jane said in a low whisper. “I’ll be back to deal with you in a minute,” I said, stepping into the kitchen. I groped blindly at the wall to my left, then turned on the light switch. The kitchen was just as we’d left it. If we had a furry house guest, it had abstained from chowing down on the leftover hot dog from dinner. I walked through the kitchen, past the TV in the back half of the open space, and down the hallway. The basement door was shut. Nothing had run down there to hide, and if the mice living down there were hungry, they had not come up into the kitchen. “Coast is clear,” I said over my shoulder, but Jane was already in my ear. “Good. Get in bed.” “Yes ma’am.” \*\*\*\*\*\* I woke up the next morning feeling more rested than I had since I started managing the corporate accounts at BD. I rose carefully from bed, not wanting to wake Jane, and tiptoed across the room to peer into Kurt’s crib. He was sleeping with a stuffed teal elephant tucked under his arm. His little chest rose and fell with hypnotic regular ease, and he barely stirred when I kissed his forehead. Our parents and friends had warned us, in that half joking but *no seriously we know best* way that seasoned parents often employ. They love to council mothers and fathers to be. Loved to warn that we would be getting next to zero sleep once the baby came into our lives. I knew this was a rule, but Kurt was a pleasant and surprising exception. He was good for six or seven hours every night, even when fireworks were exploding like cannon fire across the lake. I tiptoed out of the room and after cleaning up the mess from last night’s dinner, I broke four eggs into one pan and fried bacon on another. Last night’s hot dog was untouched, further proof that I had been imagining whatever it was that I thought I’d heard, and in an unpredicted bout of madness I threw it out the open window into the loose forest outside for some squirrel or other thing. Probably a dumb thing to do, feeding the animals was a surefire way to get them coming back, but I was filled to burst with sunshine and summer air. “Breakfast,” I said when Jane wandered out of our bedroom rubbing her eyes. One of my XL t-shirts hung over her waist like a dress, making me question whether she was wearing underwear. I decided to find out after breakfast. “Morning sweetness,” she said. “How’s Kurt?” “Kid’s a champion,” I said. “Still asleep. I don’t even think he woke up during last night's commotion, and I don’t mean the fireworks.” Jane stopped rubbing her eyes. She frowned. For some reason, she glanced at the couch and the armchair sitting across from the flat screen, then back to me. “What do you mean?” she asked. “Looks like I’m not the only one who fumbles at innuendos.” “No, not that. Where’s Kurt?” My heart dropped, but just a hair. “He’s in his crib.” “No he’s not,” Jane said, with a tone suggesting I cut out whatever bad joke I was making. “You brought him out here when you woke up, right?” “No,” I said, already moving past her back into the bedroom. “Look, he’s right he– “ The crib was empty. I dropped to my knees and looked under the crib, then spun and checked under the bed. No Kurt. I stood and walked across the room to check the closet. Jane was entering the room behind me. She stuck her hands under the flat blanket in the crib and tossed it aside, as if Kurt might have hidden underneath it. “Kurt?” she called across the cottage. She was using her mommy voice but there was an edge to it that I didn’t like. “He couldn’t have gone far,” I said, closing the closet. No Kurt in there either. “He was right there when I woke up.” “How long ago was that?” Jane asked. She was back tracking my trail, opening and closing the closet for herself. “Ten minutes? Fifteen tops.” She left the room and I followed. “Kurt?” she called again. I didn’t really start to worry until we knew for sure that he wasn’t in our bedroom, the unused spare, the kitchen, or the bathroom. Jane had pulled every pot and pan out of the bottom row of kitchen cupboards and was crawling in herself to get a better look when I returned to the kitchen. “I’m going to check outside,” I said, striding past her. She said something about the basement, but I didn’t catch most of it. In a moment I was outside, and the closing screen door snatched her words out of the air. I sprinted to the edge of the lake and scanned the surface. I had a horrible frantic fear that I would spot him, a white lump floating calmly across the water, and I would have to splash my way to collect his drowned corpse. The only thing worse would be having to tell Jane, having to show her. For a second, I saw him there and my blood turned into ice. There he was, my dead son on the water. I blinked. It wasn’t Kurt at all, it was driftwood. The log I had mistaken for my dead child was two or three times as wide around as Kurt, and it’s bark was the deep brown colour of soaked wood, not the pale milk white of drowning. *Keep it together,* I told myself. After a lap around the property, calling out a name that my son could not even say himself never mind respond to, I was about as sure as I ever would be that Kurt hadn’t wandered outside. “Any luck Jane?” I asked returning to the kitchen. I knew she hadn’t found him. She would’ve shouted for me. Jane didn’t answer. She wasn’t in the kitchen. She wasn’t in the bedroom or the bathroom either. “Jane?” I called out, panic rising like a cork up into my throat. *The basement*. She had mentioned she was going to look for Kurt down there. I flew through the basement door, and down the cement staircase. “Jane?” I brushed a spider web out of my hair and watched the owner throw itself across the room to get out of my warpath. “Kurt?” No one answered me, but I could tell Jane was down here. A single tired lightbulb was glowing beside a mountain of old cardboard boxes leaning against the back wall. Jane hated wasting electricity. We both made six figures a year but growing up poor had branded a deep hatred for waste into her skin. “Jane?” I had never properly investigated the basement, even when the cottage belonged to my parents, when my brothers and I had the time and energy to explore. It was dark and dusty down here and spider webs clung to every wall. The basement was for storage; not a fun place to be when the shining lake and boundless woods beckoned outside. I approached the ominous mountain of cardboard. Normally the summit was buried beneath a snowy layer of dust, but there were footprints on the top of a few boxes. Jane had climbed over the pile. Looking closely, I observed that she had pushed boxes aside to clear a path to the back wall. I followed her prints. The tops of the old cardboard gave a little under my weight, but they held. When I reached the back wall, I looked down. A passage had been hiding behind these boxes for god knew how long, but Jane had spotted it in the search for her infant son. The hole in the floor opened to a black staircase, leading to a level below the basement. I wondered what had possessed her to go into the foreboding darkened hall, when I spotted it. Kurt’s teal elephant, shrouded in dust and shadows, lay comatose at the bottom of the steps. “Jane?” I shouted. There was no answer. “Hold up a second Jane, I’m coming.” I ran back to the kitchen to grab a flashlight, and when I returned I took the black steps two at a time. The beam of my flashlight and the barest hint of Jane’s shoes in the dust led the way. I left the elephant to watch my back. There were even more spider webs on this level. They hung off the old dark stone in sticky curtains, the bold shadows cast by my light reminded me of tennis rackets. A few of the webs lay broken along the trail. Jane must have torn them loose on her way. There were spiders hanging in the middle of some of the webs. They had fat brown and orange bodies about as large as quarters, and they scurried into cracks in the stone walls when I aimed the light at them. I wondered what the spiders could possibly be catching and eating down here. The path hooked right. I was beyond the walls of the house now, and I judged the path was carrying me under the lake. I started thinking that maybe I had made a mistake. My family wasn’t down here. What I had mistaken for foot prints had been nothing more than a trick of the light. Kurt had tossed the elephant down the mysterious black staircase, but of course he hadn’t come this far in the dark by himself. Jane was probably in the kitchen right now with Kurt in her arms, wondering where *I* had gotten off to. I was just about to turn back when my flashlight landed on Kurt’s sock. I bent and peeled the sock off the black stone floor. It was light blue with white spaceships soaring across the yarn, hand knitted by Jane’s mother. “Jane!” I shouted. “Kurt!” Something moved up ahead. Jane’s shoe scuffing against stone. I wanted to run down the path towards the sound, but it was hard to find courage in the bowels of the earth, so I walked. I was forced to stop when I came to a wall of spider webs. There was a host in each of them the size of a dollar. They scurried away when the beam of the flashlight burned their blind eyes, and I realized that the path was not blocked by the webbing after all. I was staring at another wall. It was a dead end. I nearly turned back again, but my flashlight happened to drop, revealing a battered old trap door with a cast iron handle. It looked like the sort of thing that would prove to be heavier than first guess. The trapdoor was shut, but it was clear that Jane had been through it. There was a single ginger hair caught on the nearest corner. It was catching the beam and flickering it back at me, ushering me down. I pulled the hair and twisted it between my fingers. The length and colour were a perfect match. Definitely one of Jane’s. The trapdoor opened with a screech that could wake the dead. It was heavy, too heavy for Kurt to get through on his own, and yet Jane had passed this way. Had it been opened up when my son came crawling? Had Jane picked him up and carried him farther into the darkness? I could not fathom what possible reason she could have for doing this, but it was the only plausible explanation for what I was seeing. I peered inside, and my flashlight revealed the top of a ladder. It stretched down into a void of utter darkness. My beam of light ran down the length of the ladder, and I saw that if I had walked blindly forward I would have fallen at least twenty feet into yet another basement level. I shuddered. It was cold down there, and a rotting odour was wafting up through the trapdoor. The walls in the deeper level were made from cracked and moss-covered cobble, and the floor was mud. There were small pools of water scattered here and there, and some of them had clumps of grey algae floating on the surface. The lake was finding its way into the chamber somehow, turning the chasm below me into a shallow swamp. I noticed thin white and yellow mushrooms sprouting from the walls and the mud, and I made a mental note to myself to avoid them at all costs. Spider bites were annoying but poisonous fungus could give you a serious infection. “Jane!” I shouted down. “Jane are you down there?” There was no answer. “Jane? Jane can you hear me?” When no one answered I took a deep breath and climbed down the ladder. I kept the flashlight clenched tight beneath my teeth. There was a huge bang the second after my shoes hit the mud. I looked up and the bottom of the trapdoor greeted me. I had leaned it up against the wall, I was sure, but someone or something had knocked it down. Kurt maybe? Had I missed him in the dark? There was a sound that reminded me of a canoe brushing against dirt and rocks as it approaches shore. Someone was pushing a heavy object over the lid of the trapdoor. Definitely not Kurt. “Hey!” I shouted. My cry echoed a thousand times down the grimy trail ahead of me. *“Hey hey hey hey ey ey ey ey”.* I carried on down the path, shouting for Jane. I did not want to push against the top of the trapdoor and discover I could not get out. I was worried enough as it was. I would cross that bridge when I came to it. “Jane!” I shouted. “*Jane Jane Jane Jane ane ane ane ane ne ne,*” said the walls. My boot brushed against one of the mushrooms. I had not noticed the fungus on my first passover with the flashlight, and the beam was pointed ahead of me, not straight down. With terrible speed, the cap flopped onto my boot and stuck there. It did not come free no matter how hard I shook my foot. “Son of a bitch!” A tapping noise behind me answered. Something was walking through the puddles. Something big with a lot of legs. I spun, and my beam of light just kissed one spider leg as it disappeared into the darkness. The thing was as large as a housecat. I shivered. Good thing I had thought to grab the flash light. “Jane!” “*Jane Jane Jane Jane ane ane ane ane ne ne*.” I continued. The minutes seemed to stretch on and on. “Jane!” I called again. “Miles?” That was her, and not too far ahead. Her voice was quieter than a whisper and it was tough to discern my own name over the layers of echoes, but it was Jane’s voice. That was what mattered. “Jane! Stop, I’m coming!” I ran to her. Light burst from my hand and danced across the mud and stone walls. The trail turned sharply left, and when I was ten feet away, Jane stepped out from around the corner. Her skin was eggshell white. Her green eyes were clouded, and a swirling fog was reflecting on them instead of my own scared face. She looked like a ghost. “Jane are you alright?” “Miles,” she said. “Go back. One got me. I’m done for.” I approached. I had to lower the flash light because she kept flinching away from the light whenever it brushed her skin. “Jane! What are you talking about? What do you mean something got you? Where’s Kurt?” I put my hands on her shoulders and she pushed me off, taking a step back into the blackness. “No time Miles. No time. You have to… run. They got me. It got me.” “What got you Jane? What go –” but I never finished asking my question. In the same instant that I noticed the clear rope growing from the back of her head, it was yanked backward. Jane cried out as she was pulled head first into the darkness. She screamed, it sounded like shattering glass, and then the scream was severed. It cut out all at once, like she was on the phone with me and someone had hung up on her end. Her screaming was replaced by horrible crunching and slobbering sounds, and I brought up my flashlight, my only means of protection. The beam flickered, the battery inside warning me to get back to safety. A spider bigger than a grizzly bear filled the hall in front of me. I watched my wife’s waist, then legs, then the heels of her shoes disappear into its squashing mouth, pushed inside by two hairy tarantula legs. They were four feet long at least. I screamed when the strobing flashlight found the spider’s blind glistening eyes. It scuttled backwards, but as it went, eight pinprick pupils with a lingering shred of awareness found me. They marked me, and gooseflesh burst across my skin. Then the spider was gone, hurrying through pools of stagnant water until it was out of the light. I spun and ran as fast as I could back towards the ladder. I discovered with horror that a cluster of spiders had crowded behind me, had been creeping up soundlessly while my back was turned. Discovered, they dove out of my way and the path ahead was clear. Spiders as large as cats and small dogs hurried out of the light’s dying glare. I was reminded of the scene in the second Harry Potter movie with all of the spiders. Those ones did not look quite so mean, did not have those hateful pink eyes. One creature as large as a great Dane stepped to the side of the path. Instead of fleeing from the light, it was content to step aside and watch me run by. I felt its horrible eyes as I rushed past. I knew it could not see me, those eyes had been burned out by the darkness a long time ago, but it knew about light, and it knew when the light was gone it would be time to feed. Something was coming behind me, something huge. Not the great Dane spider, maybe not even the grizzly bear that had eaten Jane. The thing behind me was titanic. It was afraid of the light, but it was also ravenously hungry. The light was dying, disappearing into nothingness and flicking back to life in the next moment. Each time it came back a little later than the stammer of power before. Eventually, the light would flicker out like a candle and would not come back on. The ladder was just ahead of me. I hurtled on to the first rung and climbed for my life. My worst fear was confirmed when I pushed my flat palm against the top of the trapdoor. It budged, but only slightly. Something was on top of it weighing it down, maybe a fat spider. I shoved again. The door opened and inch, then crashed back down. I shoved with my shoulder, stepping up another rung to put as much force as I could into the hit. I almost got the lid up, but the trapdoor clattered back down after opening maybe a foot. I lost my balance, recovered it, but the flashlight slipped out of my hands. I grabbed for it as it fell, got a few fingers around the plastic stem, fumbled it, and watched my only lifeboat sink to the floor below. It seemed to spiral in slow motion. It exploded into a thousand pieces when it hit the ground, but before it did I got a glimpse of the monster following me. It was a spider the size of an elephant. Its wrinkled skin was the same aggravated purple as a flaring bruise, and it was totally bald. I had a sense that it was older by far than the cottage above it, maybe older than the lake. The creature had been lurking nearly out of sight, not wanting to come too close to the waving flashlight while I tried to escape. Before the flashlight burst, I saw its eyes were locked on me. It was slobbering venom and saliva. It could not wait to have me. Through the darkness, I heard it coming tentatively forward through the puddles, perhaps wary I would produce another light. The ladder shook a bit with each of its gargantuan steps. I was out of time. I felt one of its legs prodding the bottom of the ladder. It did not have the courage to come at me yet, but it would soon. I shoved as hard as I possibly could against the top of the trapdoor, driving it upwards with everything I had. It clacked open at last, flinging all of the way back and staying open. The spider who had been holding it down ran back the way it had come and out of sight. I got my arms over the lip of the cavern and prepared to lift myself onto the higher floor. The ladder gave way. I had managed to haul enough of myself over the edge so that I was able to hold on, and my swinging feet kicked the top of the ladder while it went down. The old spider made a horrible titter noise, like a demon giggling. Thunder boomed from the depths as the purple monstrosity pounced on the ladder. The wood cracked in the beast’s mouth. It had been expecting to find me still attached to the ladder, would be furious when it realized it had been cheated it out of a meal. A scent of rotting fish came up through my nostrils and I knew I was smelling the spider’s innards. I was sweating profusely. I wore a t-shirt, and my slicked-up forearms made it almost impossible to hoist myself up. I pushed straight up on my hands, like an olympic gymnast on the hanging rings. My belly button rubbed against the threshold between cold basement and the purple spider’s domain, and I leaned forward. I brought one leg up, pushed it against the back of the trapdoor, and my knees went from open air to rubbing painfully against the black stone. Then I was on my knees. My feet were hanging over the edge of the chasm and I pulled them back quickly. I was aching with sadness for Kurt and Jane, but the glow of relief was there too. I was alive. Broken, maybe mentally fucked up for the rest of my life, but alive. I scrambled to my feet and ran. I made it a few steps, but something caught my shoe in midair, nearly throwing me face first into the ground. I looked down. A hauntingly familiar white rope was trailing from the bottom of my shoe, the one with the fungus still attached, all the way back to the trapdoor. The spider on the other end of the sticky silk rope pulled once, investigating, and I was jerked backwards onto my ass. A cry of pain shot out of my throat before I could catch it and hold it back. Then I was gliding slowly back down the path, being towed like a fish on the end of a line, towards the open trapdoor. I fumbled with my shoe, trying to pull it off, but my hand brushed the mushroom stuck there and pain seared through my hand like it had been impaled on a spear. The fungus squirmed in joy, and when I yanked my hand away, it spread like a gluey paste across my shoelaces. The chunk on my hand did not let go. The pain was transcendent. I felt the fungus melting through my shoelace, beginning to burn my foot, all while I slid towards my doom. I tried to kick off the shoe my using my other foot to press against the heel, but that only brought on more pain. The fungus stretching from my hand down to my shoe had melded itself to my foot, so that when I pressed I felt a rocket of hot pain shoot up through my foot, all the way up to my hand. It was like a stick of boiling chewing gum, but it was binding my foot and hand together instead of my hair. Then I was at the trapdoor. I screamed. I tried to dig in my feet, but it was no good. I felt my foot being pulled over the edge into the abyss, then my legs and then the rest of me. I was falling, howling, and in the last moments before the spider’s maw cut through my leg, and before its legs stuffed the rest of me into its belly, I heard the demonic giggling one more time. I wonder if I will see Jane and Kurt again in the afterlife, or inside of the monster’s stomach.


Father Bernard, I write to you under the cover of night, near candlelight, as the snores of our fellow Fathers fill the adjacent room. I know not what is in my power of disclosure, nor what will, through the guiding hand of God, reach your ears. I pray the good man Big John will see to it you receive this letter, as I have received yours. I want to assure you that what you have heard is not imaginary. The disturbance you have felt around you, and the whispers in the halls of our great Church, are real. There are letters, hundreds of them, from all over the world. As we speak, they are being studied at all four corners of the Church, shielded from the prying eyes of the public, penned by what we are calling “The Man From Nowhere.” I, along with Father Birmingham, Father Theroux, and Father Wilson, are working under the tutelage of the Archbishop Bartolucci, and have been tasked with the reading and summation of the writing that follows the ‘Great Rambling.’ But beyond this period, and in the year since the discovery of the letters, I have been fortunate enough to read the collection in its entirety. I even have, in my possession, a great number of transcriptions, which, in a moment, I will share with you. The letters were written by a man named Philippe Audiarde. In them, he described an event, precipitated by “a deep and terrible sneeze” (Letter 1, 2 years after freeze, denoted by ‘AF’) — a sneeze so great, Father, that what would succeed it is unimaginable, unthinkable, and unbelievable. The world, he said, went silent. Philippe Audiarde, if the letters are to be believed, found himself in “a world without time” (Letter 1, 2 AF), where all around him had frozen. And, for the next 44, 519 years, Philippe Audiarde would compose 776 letters, or, at the very least, a total of 776 letters have survived his journey through non-time. I can understand, Father Bernard, if it is your natural inclination to declare this a bold-faced hoax. This reaction has been most fortunate for the Church. As the letters were discovered, and rumours circulated, the Church has promptly steered public opinion to just that—rumours. That being said, it is the official opinion of our group of Fathers, and by our holy extension, the Church, and the historians who have viewed the letters, and the men of science who have verified the age, that these letters are exactly as old, and as real, as they claim to be. However, there is a problem. The turmoil these letters are causing, in both our small group, and the Church at large, has been troubling. I myself know not what to make of it. If the letters are to be trusted, and again, I believe they are, what are we to believe about our world? What is the public to believe? How could the Church still remain the moral and metaphysical authority when it offers so little guidance in the face of this apparent phenomenon? It can’t, and it doesn’t, which is why I fear that should these letters be made public, the Church may crumble. And at the same time, I see wisdom and sincerity in the words. I see a man emerging from eternity to guide us home. So, I’m at an impasse, and I know not how to proceed. Which is why I am writing this letter to you, Father Bernard. I have always trusted your judgement, advice and council, and I need it now more than ever. I shall summarize the letters for you here, some in full, some in my own words, and should you deem them worthy for the world to see, so be it—I will release Philippe Audiarde to the world. These are the full facts, as I know them. Philippe Audiarde (of which, no formal record exists) was a French bricklayer who was born on a small farm outside of Paris in 1855. The terrible, time-stopping sneeze occurred over a coffee with his brother, Tomás (of which, again, no record exists). They owned a bricklaying company called the “Audiarde Brothers” (of which, I am sure you can surmise, no record exists) together in Paris, and were discussing payment from an outstanding client. He was, and would forever remain, thirty eight years old. Throughout his ostensibly infinite lifespan, he would be constantly “struck by the weirdness of it all” (Letter 612, 32,415 AF), the inconsistent nature of his world. Some of his bodily processes still progressed as if they were moving forward in time, like the growth of his hair or toenails, but he felt no hunger, or thirst, and didn’t require anything to run his bodily engine. It was, he was, outside of the laws of physics—a machine in perpetual motion, while everything around him was still. As such, he no longer ate, drank, or used the toilet, except in the rare—until he would stop altogether—times he would indulge in food or beverage. When he looked up to the sky, the moon and the stars and the sun hung motionless. “What heavenly strings hold them up, while I prance around earth, is a mystery as mighty as the universe’s great and enduring questions” (Letter 47, 410 AF). Philippe would go on, filling most of his early letters and sparing no detail, to write of the juvenile and craven acts he would perform during his first weeks and months alone. I will say that the sins committed were primarily sexual in nature, Father Bernard, but I’ll leave those barbaric details up to your imagination. Granted, this period was short—an infancy in the time of Philippe, but, should his word be released, I suspect Philippian detractors shall give great credence to this period, to point to it and say, “ah hah! There he is, Philippe The Damned.” But, it seems clear to me, that just as a rebellious child tests his new world, so did Philippe, pushing it to the limits of human depravity, until he knew not what to do with himself. “I tried to get it to start again today,” he writes, in his fourth letter, in the fourth year after the freeze. “Time, that is. I want out. I need out. I am going mad in this place. It is a purgatory. A hell, maybe. Thoughts of death often cross my mind and perhaps I am already dead. Already a soul wandering an afterlife. But how to start it again? Pepper lines my nostrils and I have sneezed a thousand different ways. I roar from the bottom of my guts, but still I am here alone.” For 34 years, Philippe would wander the world, looking for answers to his time-stuck questions, but the world, in its stillness, remained silent. Then, one day, he had an awakening, a movement of spirit. “I sit here in the Stuttgart Library, surrounded by once living vessels of knowledge, wondering: what does a man do with all this time? I’ve rowed the seven still seas, hiked windless deserts, explored the dark side of the earth, and laid low in the shadows of foreign lands. But looking around I realize that other lands lay at my fingertips. That the worlds created by man are near infinite. I have the unique chance to hear from them, speak to them across centuries, to open up their minds and explore what they want to show me. I’ve been granted an audience with all of mankind and I dare not waste it any longer” (Letter 5, 38 AF). What would follow—and I’ll be brief with my summation, Father Bernard, because this is not my area of expertise—was an “Age of Consumption,” during the years 38 AF to 1786 AF. Philippe, during this period of consumption, roamed the world’s libraries, consuming every text known to man, including literature, biographies, plays, and poetry. He learned multiple languages (and would begin to write his letters in English), produced his own works of fiction (which are breathtaking, I assure you), he transcribed history, memorized and reproduced philosophical texts word for word—if his letters are free of embellishment—studied ancient rhetoric, until he finally, after a long and arduous battle with the subjective arts, made his way to science. Objectivity, however, in a world like his, didn’t exist. The basic laws of physics weren’t congruent to the things he saw and experienced. Without that baseline to build a coherent understanding of his world, science was, at best, a doctrine from another land, and at worst, simple fairy tales that didn’t match up with his day to day knowledge. Take letter 334, dated 1786 AF, which began with the words, “I now know death” and tells of an experience he had, which science would not dare take up or explain (and when has science ever touched upon a terrible, time-stopping sneeze?). Philippe was in a small rowboat, on the English Channel, when he slipped, hit his head, and plunged into the murky depths. While he cannot recall the events that took place immediately after, what he does know is that he regained consciousness, without any serious injury, on a shoreline near Dieppe, France, his boat nowhere in sight. Let me be candid, Father Bernard—does this not sound like a man being guided by the hand of a God? After this event, one thing was clear to Philippe: it was the end of any illusions he had regarding the power of science to explain his world. “This event has reminded me, as I often forget, that I know nothing of where I am, who I am, or what I am. Only that I am trapped here with nothing but time ahead of me. I understand now that not even death can be my escape.” Philippe’s ostensible death would engender a period of great confusion. This era, as I had mentioned previously, Father Bernard, I call, “The Great Rambling,” though others are partial to calling it the “Philippian Dark Ages.” While it precedes my area of study, I believe it precipitates it. I will, first of all, grant you (and others) that this is a period of somewhat incoherent thought, the ravings, perhaps, of a madman, but there are glimmers of truth throughout this period of writing. For example, this section of letter 448, in 23, 418 AF: “Time. Time. Time. All I have is time and nothing else. An abundance of time. Man-made time. But what is time with no point to compare it to? Does it exist? I move forward but nothing else does. Is a point on a map a point if there is nothing but infinity in either direction? Where does it exist without context? Do I exist? Am I existence? Questions lead me nowhere because I am nowhere in time. I am the man from nowhere. No context. No place to go, no place to be. A whisper with no ears to hear me. Writing to no one. Writing to not-me, future-me, current-me, past-me. Who am I? Why was I chosen? Why am I here? Is it my goal, my purpose, to explore the far reaches of madness? To discover what one is capable of, when he has the time to build it, to achieve it? I have no wants, no goals, no far-fetched future to strive to. How can I achieve anything when there is no one to advance my achievements, no one to build upon them, no one to clap their hands at hard-fought sweat. What is man without another? A void. I am a void. I am a hiccup. I am an error of God, who forgot one of his lonely creatures in the crevices of time. Will he one day remember me? Will he one day pluck me from this place? Would he deem me worthy of the context of time? Or is that his goal? Am I here to learn, so that I can bring back my troubles to mankind? Lift them up from an opium of time, through a time-stuck seance, and give them the word of Philippe, all that I’ve learned, all that I know, for them and them alone. Am I conduit for God. Is this his purpose at work? Or am I systematic error of the universe? Is there a difference?” Tell me, Father Bernard, am I imagining it all? Or is there is an inkling here, a sparkle of something akin to a religious moment, where our dear Mr. Audiarde begins to understand his greater purpose. I read his words and see a dull blade being sharpened by time. He begins, like a wandering prophet, to understand his purpose. His eyes glaze over, and God speaks to him, through him. Is not God one and the same—a creature out of time? Take his statement, “Will he one day remember me? Will he one day pluck me from this place?” He understands his damnation, this purgatory of time-stuck cleansing, but still, he moves forward without any destination. Is he being tested, as many who have heard the word of God have been tested before? Are these the words of the Almighty, coming through our dear Mr. Audiarde? Have they found their way to me, so that I, Father McFerrin, could share them with the world? Am I, with my own humble beginnings, being called to be the messenger for God? Am I being tested? Perhaps this is the kernel of truth that I was looking for when I set out to write to you, Father Bernard. I did not see it until now, had not realized my own potential purpose in these machinations of God, but here we are. I can feel a spirit moving from within me, and I am now, as these words spill out onto the page, trembling with anticipation, but let us not stop here. Let us move on to perhaps his greatest work! The Treatise, dated 43,526 AF, was the 775th piece of writing penned by Philippe. In this work, his handwriting is slightly altered, as if it were written in haste, or as if a great wave of inspiration filled his spirit, and propelled his hand movements. It is on the longer side, at 98 pages, but not near the longest of the Philippian letters. It begins with a short story, a parable perhaps, titled “Do Geese See God?” about a young child who glimpses his own relative mortality while caring for a dying goose. In the final moments, the young protagonist sees his own reflection in the eyes of the goose, and he understands, for the first time in his short life, that all things must die. It is as if, Father Bernard, he is himself a god coveting the brief lives of us mere mortals, looking upon us from the heavenly altar of non-time, and creating his own fictional universe, where death is real and everywhere. While it is a moving experience for the reader, I believe its true audience is our dear Philippe himself, who is suffering from an eternity of stillness, yearning for mortality. With no end in sight, his only recourse is to instead warn us, which he does in the next section, the heart of the treatise. Here is one part, Father, in his own words. “My dear reader. You who are the legions of the unstuck. Those fortunate souls who are cursed with a short 70 to 90 years. To the universe you are nothing but a whisper in the wind. You will create nothing. You will be nothing. You glimpse life. You grasp out to take it and before you can grab hold, your fire is put out, never to see flame again. This ephemeral gasp at life is both your noble curse and your salvation. You’ll find reminders of your mortality appearing in all aspects of life, in every society, on every mountain and at the bottom of every bog. You’ll think about it on rainy days and dark nights, when you’re tucked into bed or when you look into your lover’s eyes. Unlike me, who is damned to exist outside of time, you are mortal and your time is short. Do with it as you like. I give you permission. I give you the freedom but with an offering of hope. There is more to this world than what you simply experience, more than you can fit into a day. Life is full of the wondrous and the strange and I am here, a prophet whispering from another land, to tell you not to fear it. Because none of this is real. What is real is beyond you, beyond all of this, and beyond me. I know not what to call it except Godliness, and it is everywhere.” I can still remember the first time I read these words, Father Bernard. I was, as I am now, overrun with emotion, taken back by their bluntness. At first, I tried to bury them beneath a lifetime of church-borne theology, where there were no more prophets, and no more words of God, but who am I to shun this man? Who am I to say that this isn’t the word of God speaking through Philippe Audiarde? Who am I to say this isn’t an act of self-sacrifice, to guide the world home? As you know, I am only a man of God. I have known nothing but a life of devotion and faith. I have dedicated my whole life to one text, only to discover another, as true and rich and improbable as any that came before it. But to be told, with such sincerity, the conviction of which could only be borne out of forty four thousand years alone in a purgatory, that there is something more than this life, something close to God, as I have always known, has cryalistized in my mind an act of truth. How could I, now that I know this, turn away from this man? Do I not have an oath to God, and not the Church? Isn’t that where my allegiance lies, Father Bernard? Isn’t that where yours lies, as well? Is it not my duty, as a servant of God’s will, to spread his word far and wide? And hasn’t Philippe suffered more than any prophet before him? He has lived an eternity, unanswered. Who would I be to not heed his words? To let the words of this man, my prophet, disappear with the wind. To come so close to Godliness, only to turn my back on it. I would be a coward, not deserving of the title of Father. I would be no man of God. I would be nothing. No one. But with this, it is an opportunity to show the spirit of God that resides within me, to become the bearer of Philippe’s words, which are holy and true, purified by an eternity of time, and spread them forth. And so, my answer has become clear and my purpose is all but done. With my help, acting as the messenger of a prophet, a new age will be upon us and it will be the Philippian age. And our good Church, if it is acting in the interest of God, and not its own motives, will recognize it for what it is: a new path forward, closer to His Holiness, with the venerable Philippe at its helm. I have only one question left, Father Bernard: Are you with me? Signed, Father McFerrin on the holy day of May 10th, 1894.


Once upon a time there were three little pigs. The first little pig was a simple little pig. He danced around all day wallowing in the mud and playing his flute. So when winter came he didn't have anywhere to stay and so he asked the farmer for help and the farmer said "here is a house made of hay, you can stay here and we will give you and your family all that they need." And the first little pig was as happy as could be. The second little pig was an honest little pig. He loved to dance all day and play his fiddle, but he knew that winter was coming and it wasn't right to depend on the farmer and so he went to the bank and bought a 30 year mortgage for a house of sticks so that he would be able to care for his family and maybe one day when he was old, and his body worn down from years of labor, and plagued by disease, he could play his flute and rest a little. He worked hard and slaved all day and night doing everything he could to pay his mortgage and provide for his family and hoped they would all be happy one day. The third little pig was a jolly little pig. He loved to dance all day and toot his horn. Papa pig was able to send him to Little Pig State University and he learned how everything on the farm worked. He never worried about winter because he made a good living sitting on the board of his father’s trust endowment. He was able to buy a nice brick house and was happy all his days and was able to dance and play. One day the big bad wolf saw the three little pigs dancing and playing and didn't like it at all because he had to live in the dark woods and could never dance and play. So the big bad wolf declared a jihad on the three little pigs and tried to blow the three pigs houses down. The three little pigs cried and cried because they didn't know what to do, so they asked the farmer for help to keep them secure. The farmer said "sure, I will build a big fence and have my hounds watch the fence, and you can pay me a little every year for what I do". The three little pigs loved this idea and laughed and played and payed the farmer a little more every year to keep them secure. Soon enough the farmer needed more to pay for the fence and keep all his hounds fed so he told the three little pigs he needed to raise their taxes. The pigs said they already pay him for that and they don't want to pay any more. So the farmer cut a hole in the fence just big enough for the wolf to stick his head through and the three little pigs cryyyed and cried "we aren't safe, here is what you asked for, build that fence higher and longer and get more hounds". And so the farmer build the fence higher and longer and hired more hounds and Invaded the dark woods and dropped JDAM missiles on the dark woods killing all the furry animals and turned the dark woods to rubble. Soon enough the farmer needed even more to pay for the fence and the hounds so he went to the little pigs and ordered them to give more. The first little pig said "I don't have anything more to give". And the farmer said "I know" and had the hounds put him in a prison labor camp. The second little pig said "I don't have anything more to give". So the farmer took his pension and audited the second little pig and ordered the pig county SWAT team to raid the stick house and they slaughtered the second little pig and his entire family. The third little pig said "I only have a little, I lost my business and my house, but here is what I have left, just please keep the big bad wolf out!" And the farmer said "that's a good little pig, here, you can live in this straw house and I will give you everything you need." And the Farmer and the Wolf were Happy. The End.


They do not give warning to their appearance and never speak. The soft black cloth they wear does not stand out from the normal garb of other nuns. The only feature that makes you second guess are the white clay masks they wear. Flat, smooth and blank. Only two holes for peering eyes to see through. They walk in a diamond formation of four. No one knows if there are more than four, just that they are only seen in one group at a time. Varied only in height, they always look the same. When moving together, they walk closely to each other, making it look as if it were one large black bed sheet moving along the wind. They do not wear any shoes and always have their hands clasped at their chests and heads tilted down, as if in prayer. There seems to be no reason that they walk the streets at night. They will go to a random house and knock three times, with light scratching at the door frame. If there is no answer, they will simply move on. A young woman is tending to her baby. A reminder of the man that left her, she did not resent the child. She placed him in a crib and hummed a soft song. Turning the handle of the door as it closed as to not make a sound, she hears the nuns at her door. Knock Knock Knock Scratch The young woman knows the sign of the nuns, the image of their masks flashes in her mind’s eye, only for a moment. She’s heard of these nuns and their odd behaviors from her mother. Her heart races, but for no other reason than to have something else to focus on. She tells herself not to go to the door, but something clawed at the back of her hot neck, telling her to go answer the door. There was no reason to be afraid, as there has been no reports of the nuns bothering anyone other than with idle conversations. She slowly inches to the door, readying her shaking fingers to open the latch and swing the door open slowly. Thoughts raced in her head and she practiced internally what she was going to say. “How can I help you?”, “What do you need?”, “Have you any idea what time it is?”, “Forgive my bluntness, but please leave me be.”. She could not agree on what to say. She slowly pushed down on the door handle and opened the door slowly. She saw the shadows of their habits and gowns before her eyes adjusted to the dark silhouettes cast by the street light behind the group. The image came into focus and she did not have to guess at what she was seeing any longer. She saw the four nuns standing together, one in front, two in the middle and the last one in the back. It was hard to tell where one of their bodies began and where the other ended, as the black fabrics seemed to twist together in the soft breeze. She could smell something faint, like the smoke of a funeral. Like the canisters that priests swing with the rhythm of the dead leaving this earth. “We do not mean to disturb you mam, but may we have a moment of your time?” The voice of the nun in front asked. Startled by the sound, the young woman braced herself against the half opened door. The nuns voice echoed in her mask, as if she was talking into a ceramic tea kettle. “It’s quite late.” the woman responded, shook by her own frankness. “We understand this, and we are terribly sorry” the nun to the left said “but you see, our sister has given herself a cut on her hand” the nun in the back lifted her hand forward, showing the scarlet ribbon running down, clasped by the other hand as if to hold the blood in. “Would you mind if we bothered you for some bandage so we mare care for the wound?” The woman lowered her hands to her side, un-clenching her fists. “How did she get cut?” she asked. The nun in front answered. “We were walking around the neighborhood and were picking up some broken glass bottles at the park down the street. She is often clumsy with such delicate things, we asked her not to help, but little can be done to ease her worried soul.” The nun looked behind her at the cut, making the hurt nun turn her head away in embarrassment. “She really should take better care with dangerous things.” The young woman thought for a moment. “Why ask my house? You must have passed at least half a dozen on your walk from the park. Was no one else able to answer?” She said, looking down to her neighbors front porches, flood lights above the garages slowly turning off one by one. Indicating that the group had passed these houses already. “”We had tried their doors, with no answer.” the nun to the right responded. “We heard you humming, so we thought we would not be too much of a bother as you were already awake.” The woman stared at the group and back into her house, dimly lit by the kitchen light. “How did they hear me?” She thought. It couldn’t have been loud enough for even someone downstairs to hear, let alone someone outside the home. “If we are being too disruptive, we understand” The nun in the back said, breaking the silence. “I do not wish to be a burden.” The nun said this in a very calming voice. The young woman did not see it as a burden. The group in front of her no longer seemed to frighten her. “Would you mind coming inside? I do not want to make you wait out here.” The young woman opened her door completely and waved her hand in, beckoning them to enter. The nuns looked at each other and whispered. “We do not wish to put you out,” The front nun spoke “But if you insist, we don’t have much say in the matter.” The group filed into her home. The young lady motioned for them to sit in the family room, with a couch and a few love seats. “I don’t have much to offer guests, times a tight. But may I offer you some tea?” The young woman asked, turning a lamp on beside the window. “We eat very well at the coven, but plainly. We do not allow ourselves such stimulants.” One of them said, taking a seat next to her sister. It was difficult keeping track of where their original positions in the formation were. “Oh, I understand” the woman said, sheepishly “I apologize, I didn’t mean to tease you.” One of the nuns assured her that it was fine, and said “God Bless your heart.” The woman went to her kitchen cupboard where she kept the first aid kit. She took out a sealed package of gauze and medical cream. She returned to the nuns with the medical supplies and a bowl of warm soapy water. She gasped and almost dropped the items. She saw that the nuns had removed their masks, but had their hands covering their faces, fingers spread only enough to peek through. “We didn’t mean to spook you, my dear” The nun with the cut hand said. “We believe it rude to wear our masks while being guests to an unfamiliar home. We must still keep our modesty though, as to assure our promise with our lord.” the other nuns nodded in agreement. The woman found this practice bizarre, but considering the situation already, it was not much to add. She knelt in front of the nun with the cut hand. “Let me see it, I’ll tend to it.” The nun stated something about refusing to let her, but she insisted. The nun allowed and lowered her hand, uncovering half her face. The woman could see blue and yellow marks, signs of bruising. She traced her eyes around the nuns face, there were small cuts and old scars. Finally resting at the most jarring detail, her dark, blood-shot eye. This made the woman hold her breath for longer than a moment, making her gasp when she finally let it go. The woman apologized for staring, and tended to the wound. The nun smiled and dismissed the apology. The woman cleaned it with the water and applied ointment, then wrapped it in a few layers of the gauze. When finished, the nun thanked her and replaced her hand on her face. The woman stood up and looked at the other nuns. Each one, fingers pried just enough to see, glinted red eyes back at the woman. She dropped her gaze and returned the items under the sink. The nuns had already stood up and had replaced their masks by the time she returned. Each one placed a hand on her shoulder and exclaimed phrases of gratitude. The woman lead them to the door and let them out, they waved as they turned away and resumed their formation. The woman hesitated before stuttering. “Your faces, and your eyes. Are you...” The nun in front turned and said very frankly, “The lord works in mysterious ways, my dear.” She watched them walk down the street and vanish into the dark. She stood in her doorway for a while before snapping back to lucidity. She had not noticed how much time had passed, as it had already been several hours since she laid her baby to rest. She went up the stairs and opened the door softly. “Are you hungry?” she asked as she peered into the room. Her baby was no longer resting in the crib. In his place was a black gown, a flat habit, and a white, clay mask. The woman cried out.