    Eggs wasn't his name; I made that up after we had gone our separate ways, never to see each other again. From this distance - and time here is the geography; this story is 30 years old - some details are scant; pieces are missing, and I appear as a stranger even to myself. I remember the boy on the beach, the girl in the pink skirt and the sugar. Those parts of the story are clear. We had caught the same flight from London to Bangkok. For Eggs, Thailand was his destination; I was on a stop-over before returning home to Brisbane. I had spent the previous three years backpacking around Europe, bragging rights being my only goal, “Hey, I backpacked around Europe.” Have you ever gone looking for something and did not know how to find it because you didn't know what you were looking for? You’re aware something is missing, a piece that prevents you from completing the puzzle, but which piece and where could it be? In the sand dunes of the Negev desert? On a beach in Portugal? The Scottish Highlands? I had hoped backpacking and living outside of my comfort zone might shake me awake so I could see. I roamed from Jerusalem to Pamplona and nothing. My eyes stayed firmly shut. I could not see what I was looking for.

Then I met Eggs. I imagine we met at the airport, at the luggage carousel perhaps. I watched him lift his backpack, and he would watch me do the same. He would have thought, "Aww, another backpacker," and nodded, like we shared a bond. He would have walked towards me, a cheeky grin parting his pinched face, hair hidden under a bandana that told me what he wanted it to, that he was cool, dude. He was as young as me; a razor blade had barely scraped his chin. Yet he looked aged, as if, like his backpack, he carried more weight than his stature could support.

He was friendly and forward. I can only claim one of those traits, the former. It took more than two drinks for me to say hello to a stranger. Not Eggs. He marched straight towards me, with a smile. Happy, perhaps, that he'd met a like-minded traveller (I guessed my backpack drew him to this conclusion) or, he saw in me a taxi fare to the city centre. Who doesn't beam at a half-price cab? "Off to K road then?" he said, slinging his pack over his narrow shoulders, legs buckling under the weight. I wanted to prop him up. He was not a big guy, by any measure. His accent, though, was huge. I knew England enough to know Yorkshire was his home and Leeds United was his team. I'm guessed he was here for the beaches. I guessed wrong. "Yes," I replied. By "K" road, he meant Khao San Road. I knew his lingo because I, too, had studied the guidebook, reading, and highlighting places of interest; the best places to eat and sleep; how to get from A to B. To my housemates in the cold Victorian terrace we shared in London, I gave the impression I was cramming for a University exam; so intense was my interest. I just didn't want to get anything wrong. “Come on then, we can share a rickshaw.” I didn't have time to think about it and trotted off after him, like an obedient dog, and he had whistled, "come." Any attempt we made to converse, cramped as we were in the back of the rickshaw, soon proved pointless. Here drivers considered the horn a far more critical tool than the brake or clutch and rode it endlessly. Our attempts to get to know each other were drowned out by the needless, Honk! Honk! Honk! In the guidebook, sensibly called Southeast Asia on a Shoestring, I highlighted several hostels recommended for their cleanliness and price. Eggs, it turned out, had been to Bangkok before; I was privy to visit number three and he already knew where we were staying. "'Driver, 'ere,". The driver slows to a stop in front of a tallish, narrow building, plain, several stories high, sprouting from a garden terrace with a bar and somewhere to eat. Guests pouring milk over cornflakes gawked as if we had just descended the steps of a spaceship. We were like aliens in our clothes, still smelling of Persil Ultra Clear, our skin a delicate shade of English winter white. Our rooms were simple concrete boxes with a ceiling fan, a mattress on the floor, and a mosquito net hung above. Mine had brown water stains leeching from the corner cornicing. Our baggage stowed in lockers, we rendezvoused in the garden bar to drink and watch “K” Road like it was a movie marathon. Twenty-something-old kids tanned and tattooed or like us, clean, waiting, and willing to go native (all it took was a beach, sarong, and half an ounce it seemed) strode the streets, up and down, back and forth, owning it. And in a sense, they did. Once a rice market, the road was now home to this disparate lot; kids in gap years, kids with trust funds, kids with drug problems, kids escaping home, their lives, parents, and church. Here you could get lost. Is that what I wanted? To lose myself. I told Eggs about my travels around Europe; how I milked cows in the Scottish Highlands, the time I dropped acid at Glastonbury and spent the night dancing to the Orb in Joe Bananas rug store. Not to forget being so stoned in Amsterdam I concluded a geometrical equation contained the answer to the meaning of life. Running with the bulls. Oktoberfest.. And so on. “You’re gonna love it here mate, the girls love guys like you and me,” was his response.     I didn't realise we were talking about girls; I thought we were sharing war stories. But as I learnt, over beers and cigarettes, Eggs had only one story to tell, and it involved pussy. Eggs shared his yarns, from a trip he took to Australia, a vacation that sourly disappointed him. He rattled off the backpacker hotspots - Cairns, Byron Bay, Sydney, the Outback. It seemed Eggs had failed to get laid in any destination. “What about the reef?” I asked. “Did you go snorkelling?” He mumbled about being too hungover, and we moved on to the next subject. "Thailand," he said. "This is the place, you'll see." Will we? I didn't do well with girls. I figured I would, one day, when I’m ready. I was happy not to get laid. I wasn't a virgin. I just didn’t get the fuss. There was the odd time, usually because the girl threw herself at me like a cannonball and I a castle waiting to be conquered. That was the case in Israel. In London, there was this girl too at a party. Both times left me feeling empty. No surprise I didn't want more. Eggs told me about a girl he met on his last trip and hoped to find her again. I failed to sleep well. Perhaps it was the beers perhaps, the jetlag, the spider the size of my hand that laid in wait on the ceiling or the melancholy I felt. We met for breakfast. The guidebook said to have yoghurt each day in these parts to prevent the shits. So I did. Not him. "Two fried eggs, sunny side up on toast," he told our server. I told him my plans for the day; a visit to the Reclining Buddha, one of the largest statues in Thailand. He nodded, "Yeah, yeah, sounds great, mate," and then our food arrived. My yoghurt crowned fresh fruit and was delicious; Eggs' eggs were pale and runny, the whites barely set, the toast anaemic. He reached for the sugar bowl and sprinkled a teaspoon of raw sugar on each egg. Before I could even gasp in horror, he told me I should try it. "Bloody delicious." I passed. For the short time, we knew each other, his breakfast did not change. Hence Eggs. He tagged along on my sightseeing day. We shuffled barefoot through the temple, lit incense, threw pennies into a wishing well and afterwards, I went to buy a souvenir. He told me no. "Don't waste your money mate, save if for the girls tonight." We ate noodles cooked in a broth for lunch by a lady sitting on a plastic tarp on the footbath by the temple. She ladled the soup into big bowls and offered us china spoons. Eggs squatted Thai style to eat his. I stood. I was not that agile. The soup was good. Eggs asked if I had a girlfriend. I said no. “The girl, the one on the island, she has a sister.” "So, you're coming to the islands with me then?" I queried. "Yeah, mate, someone's gotta show you the ropes." What, to hang myself? It wasn't that I didn't like Eggs; he was fun, for a minute. But his endless chatter about girls only deepened my own anxiety about sex. Couldn't we just take a boat cruise to the floating markets without me having to hear his threesome story? He planned our last night in Bangkok, which was spent drinking rum and cokes in a bar with no name, just a pink neon sign that screamed Girls, Girls, Girls. On stage, a Thai girl danced, if dancing was the right way to describe a naked woman popping ping pong balls from her vagina. A snake was draped around her neck for added drama. Men of all shapes and ages cheered and leered. Scantily dressed waitresses worked hard for tips. For extra, I could take one to a back room and "sucky, sucky, sucky.” “See,” Eggs punched me on the arm, “I told you.” Ouch. He chatted with one girl who toyed with him, she was the cat, and he was the cornered mouse. It was both painful and playful to watch. He placed his hands on her hips, only to have her push him away. This game continued until the penny dropped, and he put some Baht notes in a jar that rested on a drinks tray she carried. His hands could stay for a little longer. Girls threw themselves at me too, but my polite yet firm "no thank-you" was met with hostility. Saying no in a bar advertising girls, girls, girls was a no, no, no. So, I left. I told him I was going across the street to watch the kickboxing. "Aww, come on, what about her, over there?" He pointed at one of many girls working the bar, like my refusal to play cat and mouse has something to do with sex appeal. I told him I’d see him in the morning and spent an hour or so watching two young men, their bodies all muscled and tattooed boxing with their feet, glistening with sweat. I relaxed. Spectators picked sides, made bets, drank beer. We all cheered and jeered. I ate from a street vendor and found a rickshaw to take me back to the hostel. Sleep evaded me. Was this backpacking? Bars and temples? At breakfast, he asked how the kickboxing was. “I just had a beer and left.” I lied. I had about three. I enjoyed myself. “How was the girl?” “Not good ‘ah?” “What, a dud root?” “You won’t say anything to anyone, will ya?” “Of course not.” Who the fuck did he think I was going to tell? “She had a dick.”     To this day, I do not know how I kept myself from bursting out in laughter. We caught the train south, where we took the ferry to the island from our final stop. We rented bamboo huts on the beach and hung in a communal area where we ate lunch and read Wilbur Smith novels left by other backpackers. We smoked pot and watched the sunset. In my journal, I wrote, "Why am I here?" "Can you ride a motorbike," Eggs asked at breakfast? “No, can you?” “Sure, Lets hire one, you can sit behind me.” We rode from one beach to the next, ate fish and chips at the more touristy end of the island and then backtracked to where we were staying. I read and watched fishermen cast nets into the still water. Eggs wanted to nap before going out.

That night we hit the bars. The area had all the charms of a drunken 21 st party. Most drinkers were Australians, Poms, or Kiwis, living up to stereotypes. Everyone was having fun. Everyone, that is, except me. Eggs had no intention of making friends, hanging with his English patriots, or singing, “I Come From a Land Downunder.” There was only one thing on his mind, and I felt obliged to tag along. “This is it,” he said. The bar was brightly lit, and fairy lights formed a crude canopy over the sandy path that led to the front door. Eggs told the waitress who serves us rum and cokes the girl's name, and soon, she and the other waitresses all started to squeal with excitement. They sounded like seagulls being fed chips. "He's back. Her Knight in shining armour is back," I imagine them saying. The girl appeared a few minutes later, throwing her arms around him. They talked for a moment before she went back to work. “When the bar closes, we can go back to her place, you can meet the sister.” “I’m tired,’ I tell him. “Don’t be like that, you promised.” Did I? The sisters live in a small dwelling constructed of besser bricks that needed a lick of paint. It's clean enough. There's a small portable television, a refrigerator and a kettle. However, no kitchen and a poster of Tom Cruise, dipping his Ray-Bans in his Risky Business pose, was tacked to the wall with sellotape. A plastic pot plant lent a splash of colour. We all sit on the sofa and the elder sister serve Cokes. Soon she and Eggs disappear. The younger sister, dressed in a tight-fitting pink miniskirt shuffled closer to me. "Nice music," I lied. The brand of Thai disco she played was, to be polite, was like listening to a cat drowning. She took my hand and eased me into her room, sitting on the polyester pink bed sheet and urging me to do the same. I sat. She took her top off. I did too, and before I could reach for the button to my shorts, she took charge. “Do you have a condom?” she asked, “No worry. I have one.” When I’m done, I stand and gather my clothes. She sees that I am leaving. “You do not like me? What is wrong?” I shrugged “I thought you wanted girlfriend?” I never said that. I felt as shitty as I could making my way back, to the beach hut, the sound of the waves guiding the way. I knew where I was going. In the morning, Eggs returned with his girl. Her: “You not like my sister? What is wrong with her?” Eggs: “You shouldn’t have gone with her if you didn’t like her mate.” Fuck off. I only thought that. He and the girl took off on the bike. I spent the day alone, walking the beach, reading. In the evening, Eggs returned, alone. “You really upset her mate.” There was a full moon party on a neighbouring island in two days. We biked to the ferry and caught the boat across. The girl stayed behind. She had work. Since disembarking Thai Airways Flight 101, I managed a smile for the first time. We ate magic mushrooms, drank rum and bought amphetamines at a pharmacy. The drugs, the music, the moon, the people, the dancing all created a spectacle I fell into, head first. I lost myself to the beat. Seeing other guys shirtless, I followed suit. Although the truth is everyone was fitter than me, so I hesitated, but finally, I told myself, no one cared. I felt a rush of both adrenaline and freedom, my mind blooming like a flower in the sun. I felt sexy for the first time. This boy danced near me; his skin pale like the moonlight, a tattoo of flowers and a tiger wrapped around his bicep. He smiled at me as he twirled in the sand, his hands running through locks of soft dark hair. The tattoo was beautiful. So was he. I tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey,” I said, “I love your tattoo.” His smile turned to a snarl; “Bugger off will ya,” he snapped, turning back to a girl. The smile wasn’t meant for me. I moved away but looked, every now and then, just to catch a glimpse of him, if just for a second. Was he the missing piece? If only that smile was for me. I found Eggs. He danced with some girls. He still wore his t-shirt, his hair hidden under a bandana, his face was pinched, he still looked old. I danced towards him. “Hey,” I said. “This is fucking amazing.” “You should put your shirt back on,” he said. “Why?” “It’s not you.” Everything made sense, right then, at that moment, on that beach, under that moon, in that country, on that day, in that year, the music at 180BPM. It all made fucking sense. Yes, it was. “I need to tell you something,” I said to Eggs. He shook his head; “Don’t.” He, too, turned his back to me. The night finally yielded to dawn, darkness to light, waves broke gently on the sand, the earth was in rhythm with the DJs, and I can recall, like it was yesterday, me, this me, the one writing this, looking out towards the horizon, far from home, the sand shifting beneath my feet.


Waking up early in the morning, Sheila felt dull and drained from all the life changes that had happened over the past few years. As her mind wandered into thoughts of the past, family members, friends, her job, home, and even furniture were all gone, she reminded herself she was starting over from scratch!

Stretching her long, skinny body while flipping off the covers, with a sigh, she got up and walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water. She leaned against the sink to support her tired body and saw a brilliant purple butterfly float by the window before her. The angle of early morning light made its wings shimmer with a glow. Bedazzled, she watched it flutter up, down, and sideways like it was performing a dance recital just for her.

Overcoming a sense of hopelessness was challenging while losing everything she loved dearly. The hardest part was always the mental trips that felt so real, but they were only in her mind. Like a movie screen, she could see flashes of happiness, sorrow, pain, and pleasure from every life situation, moving at hyperspeed inside her head. She called them her spiritual journey, which always left her feeling worn out, as if she was physically running a fast-paced marathon through each life scenario. Seeing something joyful after being filled with anger for so long was refreshing. Standing in her pajamas, she stood there as her heart pounded with excitement and fear for what was to come—her beautiful long blonde hair cascaded down her back while turning to set her glass on the counter. Out of nowhere, she heard a soft voice say, "Sakura." With a tilt of her head, she closed her eyes to listen closer and heard it again "Sakura." A knocking sound came from outside the house. She walked into the middle of the room to listen closer and figure out what was making the sound. The new home was open and modest, just like the new job and pay; however, it met her needs with no overtime, affordability, and plenty of unfilled space. Minimizing everything so she could find her true soul purpose. The sound stopped. Shaking her head, she gracefully walked to her bed to get back to sleep when something moved slightly near her feet. Looking down, she saw a business card; on it was the name of a publisher. With a sigh, a feeling her dreams had been lost and shattered, she tossed it on the nightstand and crawled back into bed to spend her day off in a well-needed slumber.

All of a sudden, she heard the pounding outside again. She sat up to listen closely to identify what it was, which sounded like a hammer pounding on a piece of wood. Knock, knock, knock! Each time she closed her eyes, it would begin; when she opened them, it would stop. Curiosity overtook her. Flipping her covers back, she exited the bed and walked to the front door. As she opened it, she saw an adorable bluebird fly by; its wings were flapping as it turned its head, with its peering eyes, and looked straight at her through the screen door. It stood on the tree's limb, and they both watched each other for several minutes until it quickly flew away. Sheila always believed in the mystical magic of spirituality and angels; therefore, these were signs of something kind to her. Seconds later, a tiny ladybug was crawling across the screen. Once again, she heard the knocking coming from the top of the tree directly in front of the home. With a chuckle she laughed when she realized it was a woodpecker. The morning aesthetics were captivating, and she knew something was different in the smell of the morning dew. Inhaling a deep breath of fragrant air three times, she rapidly searched with her eyes to find the unfamiliar change. Turning to the right side of the yard, an unnoticed tree seemed to blossom overnight. It was a cherry tree. The flowers were full of the most vibrant pink shed ever seen, covering the branches like pink cotton candy. She could smell the heavenly scent with each breath. Tears filled her green eyes as she stared at the beautiful flower tree—a sign that her hopes and wishes were coming true - blessings were on the way. A distant voice once again said, "Sakura," and instantly, she knew this was an angelic gift. In a flash, Sheila saw her future path. Everything was cleared from her life to allow free time to pursue her dreams, no longer overtaken by demands from others and life in general.

A trickle of teardrops rolled down her cheeks as she became filled with inspiration to follow her dreams from her youth; be an inspiring artist and writer. Clearing out the negative people and old baggage, with her new lifestyle, she had plenty of time to do whatever she wanted. Breathing in the joyful scents flowing in from the cherry blossoms, she raised her hands and jumped for joy, yelling loudly, "I feel alive." Once again, she heard the voice say, "Sakura." the Japanese word for a flowering tree, a Cherry tree, representing hope and a time of renewal with positive blessings. No more sorrow, anger, or guilt was left inside for the first time in years. Miraculously, it was gone! She felt hydrated with love and rejuvenated with hope and faith in getting a second chance with a fresh start; she finally felt free.

One of the flowers from the tree blew in front of her feet. Bending over, she picked it up and went inside the home to hang it to dry, naming it her Sakura Angel. A reminder that the life challenges gave her the openness to expand into something unique only to her but relatable to many. A symbolic piece to show her bravery and healing, which created a courageous and inspirational woman. Looking up at the ceiling, she wiped the joyful tears away and said thank you. I am meant to be happy and will never feel alone again.


In the night, Lucia awakens and remembers how it used to be, those hot summer days in Tuscany when everyone at the villa stretched out for siesta. She gravitated to the boathouse, where she’d mosey into the murky shade with the sound of water slapping the hull. And soon there would be Guido, also seventeen, climbing out from the water, pushing back his dripping hair. “Come, slip into the water,” he’d say, trailing fingertips over the surface. “No, Ma worries when I swim alone.” “But you’ll be with me.” Shy smile. “Oh, a boy! That’s even worse than drowning!” He’d lean closer, pressing his wet limbs against hers, leaving blotches all over her cotton blouse and culottes, marks that vanished once she got back in the sunshine. Tonight, three decades later, she senses Guido in bed beside her, his bulk a testament to his commitment to family and home and tradition. Theirs is a solid marriage, seen as strong and enduring by their friends in New Jersey who know them as Guy and Lucy. A marriage that produced four children, all young adults now, all busy with college or work and not able to be part of la raccolta delle olive , the annual Tuscan harvest. Despite the sweat and dirt, it's like a honeymoon for Lucia and Guido, after all the years of never getting away on their own. Why has it taken them so long to return, her sisters will demand to know. We were busy raising children , she imagines answering, but that is a lie. One of many she will be telling, perhaps. At the first ray of dawn, Lucia in her poplin pajamas tiptoes from the room. They are staying in a tiny bunkhouse, the overflow sleeping quarters from the main villa where her sisters and their families are staying. She stubs her toe. Stramaledetto! she gasps and then swallows the pain, the expletives. Guido slumbers on. No one else appears to be up; from her window the villa looks dark. La raccolta is hard labor: carrying nets to the groves, laying them out, raking the branches, all the time taking care not to tread on the olives. And then in the mill: cleaning the crates of raw olives, mashing them, feeding the press. No wonder everyone sleeps like a log. The day is brightening; sun gleams from the mirror hanging near the bunkhouse door. She looks closely at it—not at her reflection, which is haggard, but at the hand-carved frame. She recognizes the handiwork of Guido’s uncle, Rocco. Lucia is instantly awake; it’s as if Rocco has stepped directly from the gloom to pinch her. He was an eccentric, vulpine presence she instinctively tried to avoid from the moment she could walk. She rakes her fingers through her sleep-tousled hair. The frame—the memory of Rocco surrounded by wood shavings and razor-edged chisels while he carved tendrils on the brows of putti —disquiets her. With a fingertip she traces a wooden spiral. A small spiral—yet she feels dizzy. After all these years, she thinks. Still. She must get out, must clear her head. She pulls on shoes, a windbreaker, and a traveler’s belt, which was looped over the back of a chair. She exits the bunkhouse, feet crunching gravel on her way to the rental car. She’d seen a hole-in-the-wall café during the drive from the airport to the villa, and plans to go there now. But the villa parking lot is full of vehicles, including a truck that boxes in her car. During la raccolta , many able bodies return, like salmon to their spawning grounds. She notices the boathouse. The sun is glinting from its slightly dented aluminum roof. It’s at once shabbier and more real to her than anything else on this trip. The closer she approaches, the more waterlogged the turf. A cold wetness penetrates her canvas boaters. She jiggles the rusted latch until it gives way, then she enters the boathouse, leaving the door wide for light to pierce the gloom. A familiar dank smell fills her nose. She sees a boat, a hulking craft that blocks the view. An ordinary boathouse , she tells herself. Perfectly ordinary. So long ago. Memories come rushing back. Right here, in this corner, she used to hide, anticipating, moistening at the thought of Guido’s cool limbs upon hers. He always swam to enter secretly via the boat side. In the other corner—she can scarcely bear the thought—is where, once, Rocco had lain in wait for her. She takes out her cell phone from the traveller’s belt and snaps a photo. She uses a flash, so everything is devastatingly illuminated. This is her method of exorcism: She snaps photos of things she hates: she reduces them to small flat representations. This defangs them. Her phone has a picture of a rat snapped in the subway tunnel. And a tarantula that escaped from its aquarium in her daughter’s bedroom (and was safely re-caught). And the creepy T-shirt vendor at the farmer’s market where she sells the artisanal extra-virgin olive oil. You can fool some of the people all of the time, she thinks. She speed-walks back to the bunkhouse, alert to small noises of others waking. Inside, she pries off the clammy canvas boaters. She peels off the windbreaker and tries to drape it over the abhorrent frame, but she can’t get it to stay put. She feels dizzy simply touching it, as if Rocco is waiting to ambush again. Despair mounting, she slides into bed beside Guido. He grunts softly as she shifts her weight. Her eyes adjust to the dimness, and she watches expressions on his face moving like storm clouds on the weather-channel map. She wonders: how has he reconciled what happened on that long-ago afternoon? When he swam into the boathouse ready to hold her for a few stolen minutes—and instead found Rocco trying to subdue her? So many years and they have never spoken of what happened next. At first, they couldn’t—they’d crept away, separately, stunned and shaking, leaving a lifeless form under water. They’d forced themselves into busy-ness, with farmwork all afternoon and evening and the next day. Acting normal. On occasion, Rocco had sneaked away from the villa before, so the search for him started late. On the third day his waterlogged body appeared among reeds near the boathouse. No sign of trauma… an accidental drowning. Guido had been among the pallbearers. Not blinking an eye. Lucia kept watching, waiting for the mask to slip, especially when they were alone together, but Guido avoided her for the next month. In church, she confessed to the sex but never mentioned holding a man’s head under water. Meanwhile, their student visas had come through. A secret that was next-to-impossible to keep when at the villa, seeing the boathouse every day, became easy to keep at a private school in upstate New York. They plunged into a new life in a new land. The Guy & Lucy Show . The boathouse memory faded, flaring only when she smelled dankness or heard the slap of waves against an empty hull. Now, as she watches Guido sleeping on the bunkhouse bed, she wonders what episode is playing in his mental cinema. Is he reliving that first playful kiss? Or is he re-thinking the problem of winding a net around a struggling man? Forget the bond of parenthood; nothing binds you quite as tightly as being accomplices in an unrevealed murder. Stop it , she thinks. Just stop it. You can fool some of the people all of the time . She lies there recalling times she nearly came clean: first time, two days after the funeral, when she’d heard Rocco’s mother weeping in the night. Second time was when they walked alone over the Victory Bridge and she had an eerie feeling Guido planned to remove the only other witness to the deed. And then, the third time, after their big argument— over what? a sofa? —that had escalated to the nuclear option, when she was ready to pack up the baby and, oh yeah, report the crime to Interpol. A sofa? She can hardly believe it was so trivial. Then she discovered anti-depressants. Their secret remained intact, the truth of what happened to Rocco on that sultry day in July in a boathouse in Tuscany. In her mind she tours the old places—the hilltop towns, the winding roads, the lanes of cypress trees—and she falls asleep again. Then she dreams about Guido dragging Rocco into the water, plunging him in while she cast a net around him, pushing him under and holding him down until he grew still. She hears water slapping against an empty hull. She awakens, gasping, heart pounding, uncertain in her jet-lagged state whether it’s morning or evening. *       *       * Last Christmas, Guy had been so hungry for Lucy. He nuzzled her neck, running his hands up and down her arms, her back, her breasts, and whispered, “I remember that first time in the boathouse, Lulu. I’d love to go there again…” “I’m sure they’ve torn it down by now,” she murmured. “Besides, everyone will be there. And tongues will wag, old history will be dredged up.” But he kept talking it up—with her, with the children, with both families in Tuscany. “For once,” he promised, “we’ll help with la raccolta. ” He bought tickets. The night before the flight to Florence, he had a terrible case of cold feet. He told her that it would flay him alive to see the boathouse. He was dreading being face-to-face with his senile mother, his grasping siblings, and her relentless sisters. He was going only because she insisted. “It’s just for three weeks ,” she said. “We’ll be too busy to spit.” His reluctance surprised her, or more properly, his disclosure of his reluctance. She smoothed his forehead with her cool palm. You can fool all of the people some of the time. *       *       * On the final day of the visit, the sisters are sitting around the table, staring at Lucia. The breakfast is growing cold on the table. One of the children picks at it. Her sisters are silent except for Corinna, who is a year and a half younger than she is, but looks ten years older. Corinna says, “Do you think, sharing our bedroom so many years ago, that I did not notice when you stopped having siesta there?” This is all my fault, Lucia thinks. I let Guido think we only needed to act innocent. He didn’t know about the sisterly shark tank. “One time I got up and followed you,” Corinna continues. “I saw you sneaking down to the river. I saw you letting yourself in the boathouse. I waited, hidden, to see who else went there. But no one did. Instead, Mamma found me, slapped me, said, why are you out in the blazing heat? Ma sei scemo? I couldn’t tell her it was you I was waiting for, Lucia. So I went back to our crummy little bedroom and waited until it was time to get up.”  Lucia says nothing, scooping the foam from her caffé latte with a spoon. Touching it to her tongue. “A week later, Rocco goes missing,” Corinna says. “At first he misses the evening meal—the only time ever he missed it, but no one saw that as significant as I did. Handsome Rocco. I figured you had your eyes on him; what girl did not? Not like his ugly, spider-legged nephew Guido.” “Corinna!” Maria cries, aghast. “ Bada a come parli! ” Lucia narrows her eyes. She’s forgotten how cruel Corinna can be; she will say anything to provoke a response. She frowns, knowing she should stick up for Guido, but resisting the obvious ploy to be dragged into an argument. “And then, the next day, you stopped going to the boathouse for siesta. Right away. You knew he wouldn’t be there,” Corinna says. “Even though it was the following day when they declared him missing.” Lucia pries the end off her cornetto and puts it in her mouth. As if she is tasting it. Act normal. “Oh, you are cold-blooded. No tears.” Now Corinna is standing and stabbing her finger at Lucia. “The next day they find him—drowned in that part of the river curiously close to the boathouse.” Lucia rips a bigger piece from the cornetto, stuffs it in her mouth. “Of course I said something,” Corinna says. “I went to Mamma right away and told her. She laughed. Laughed!  She said, life was not a romanzo giallo . And then she slapped me, told me not to distress poor Rocco’s family with discorsi pazzi . But you!” She shakes her finger at Lucia. “You never once shed a tear for him. I used to listen at night as you fell asleep. You never once cried .” “Truth be told, I hated that creep,” Lucia says calmly—and immediately regrets being drawn in. “My sister, the murderer,” Corinna accuses. “I couldn’t have overpowered him! He was a grown man; I was seventeen. No. You are mistaken.” “Even now I see how strong you are,” Corinna insists. Lucia’s eyes sting. She regrets how intensely she has been working, trying to keep pace with Guido. Why does Corinna target her ? Why not Guido ? He is, maddeningly, blameless in the eyes of everyone. He is kind. Good-natured. Constitutionally incapable of homicide, they think. Her resentment churns. For a picosecond she imagines turning the interrogation light on him. Casting the blame. And yet—she was grateful, so long ago, that Guido had interrupted Rocco and had taken immediate action. “Corinna, I think the long days are tiring you,” Guido says. Lucia is startled; she had not seen him come in. She wonders how much he has overheard. Now he presses the button on the espresso machine and the noise becomes too loud for speaking. While it grinds, he can inspect Corinna, maintaining a mask of grave concern. As soon as the noise ends, he declares, “My family accepted the coroner’s report. My uncle Rocco over-indulged in wine that day. He died from accidental drowning. Please, leave us to our mourning. Do not tear apart families with lies and suspicions.” Lucia and Guido exchange a glance. Easy for you , she thinks. Your alibi is as airtight as an astronaut’s suit. “Come quick, the horse escaped!” Nella coaxes Corinna outside with a small crisis not-crisis. The sisters disperse. Soon the dining area is full of children and spouses grabbing a bite before they go out to the groves. Maria comes to the bunkhouse where Lucia is packing, and Guido is shaving. Outside, a van waits to take them to the small local airport; from there they will fly to Florence. “That Corinna —completamente pazza !” Maria says, shaking her head. “Is this a new thing,” Lucia says, deliberately casual, “or has she been raving about this all along?” “For years,” Maria says. “It’s so embarrassing! That’s why we never pressured you to come back. We hoped she would, you know, get it out of her system.” “Some people develop obsessions,” Lucia says. She tries to sound neutral, unshaken. “Yes, an idée fixe ,” Maria says. “Like, ‘electromagnetism is poisoning us’…” She stops and stares at the bunkhouse mirror, which now has a sheet of newspaper taped over it. “What is this? Do you have some problem with mirrors?” “No, nothing,” Lucia says lightly. “Oh, are you following the recent election?” Maria asks. By happenstance, it is the front page of La Nazione . News of the recent far-right victory. She shakes her head disgustedly. “What is it they say? You can fool some of the people all of the time… and all of the people some of the time…” But not all of the people all of the time. Lucia shrugs. “I kind of forget how that goes.” The End


The office buzzed with the usual hum of keyboards and murmurs of conversation. George leaned back in his chair, eyeing his colleagues, Ed and Ahmed. "I'm telling you guys," George said, leaning forward, "there's no way that 'The Troll' is eligible for hiring here. She doesn't know the programs. Sure, she talks like she does, but she's just offloading her work onto her staff. I saw it firsthand when I asked to help. I would gather evidence through my assistance and expose her. When I questioned why she refused my assistance, she told me to mind my own business." Ed shook his head. "Going against the grain here is career suicide, but I wouldn't even let her feed my fish." Ahmed nodded. "She hasn't crossed any serious lines yet, unlike the Fallen One. But she's close. If she does, we'll turn her in." George chuckled. "Fallen One?" "Yeah," Ahmed said, "pure evil. A Lamia or the Devil herself." Ed agreed. "It's true." "This place has gone downhill since the regime change," George continued. "The new senior executive hires her friends, who're not even qualified. Human Resources should be all over this, but Thea has the HR guys in her pocket. This place was my career. Now it's just a job. How's the Fallen One treating you guys?" Ed sighed. "She lets the Troll run amok. It's like the Fallen One, the Troll, and Thea want people to be unhappy and leave. The Fallen One is also a racist." "It's a wonder the Fallen One hasn't been fired," Ahmed added. "She has thirteen Equal Opportunity suits against her." George shook his head. "How is she even eligible to be here? She bullies her subordinates. Yesterday, she told three young girls they acted like they were from the ghetto and said, 'This is my world now.' She pressures Howard every day, giving him tasks late in the afternoon with impossible deadlines. The man is past retirement age and still working. Give him the time to complete the tasks unless it is a rush job. Everything appears to be a rush job with her. Right?" "Right," Ahmed agreed. "Leave the man alone. He hasn't been the same since his son died." George's tone softened. "I didn't know that. That's tough. But we need to expose this abuse. This place has become hostile. Thea's cronyism is out of control. No agency would have hired Sarah Whitmore, the Fallen One, with unresolved Equal Opportunity complaints. It's unfair to other applicants." "Life's not fair," Ed said with a shrug. "Good point," Ahmed added. "The critical question is, if person A worked directly for person B in agency one, and person B gets hired here as the Director despite her record misgivings, how many planets would have to line up for person A to get hired in the same agency, same office, and working directly for person B again?" George asked. Ed looked at George. "We have some shady hiring practices here, like you said. Are you going to do anything with this information?" "I'll need to be subtle, and it will take some time, but yes. I won't be blatant like the last guy who got fired for going directly to the Inspector General's Office. Did you know the Troll used to work directly for the Fallen One at the Department of Agriculture? What are the odds of being hired here to work for the same person in the same office as you did in Agriculture? It's astronomical." Ahmed blurted out, "I want to know why we weren't considered for the position," pointing to Ed. "The Troll doesn't know our programs even today, six months later. She made life a living hell for people who work with her, especially those who must report to her." Later that day, George overheard a conversation in the break area and moved closer to listen. "Have you seen TO's work? It's impressive," Samantha said, her eyes wide with admiration. "Yeah, she's got some serious skills. I heard she's already streamlined a few of our processes," Mike replied. George's lips tightened into a thin line. It was a sin for the Troll to take credit for others' work. As the conversation continued, an idea began to form in his mind. Later that day, George chatted with a few colleagues in the hallway. The topic of the Troll inevitably came up. "Have you guys noticed how quickly TO adapted? Almost too quickly, don't you think?" George said. His tone was casual, but his words were laden with implication. "What do you mean?" asked Jenna, one of the marketing analysts. "Well, I'm just saying... adapting that fast, maybe it's not entirely her doing. You know, sometimes people take shortcuts or have a bit of... inside and outside help," George suggested, raising an eyebrow. Jenna frowned. "You're not implying she's cheating, are you?" George shrugged, maintaining an innocent expression. "I'm not implying anything. But how odd is it that TO worked directly for Sarah in the Department of Agriculture? Just looking at the situation, how incredible is it for someone who came from Agriculture as a Director to be hired here as a director in this office?" Jenna shrugged. "The odds would be high with the internal controls in place to prevent illegal hiring, but not impossible." George nodded. "I agree, but how astronomical is it to have someone who worked for you in another agency, in another office, apply for a job here and end up in the same office, working for the same person as she did in Agriculture?" An odd look came over Jenna's face. "That would be impossible." "That's what I'm getting at. It shouldn't have happened. Are you going to tell me that TO is the most qualified out of 100 applicants from around the nation? Just something to think about." As the days passed, George subtly fueled the rumor. In meetings, he'd make offhand comments about the unexpected ease with which the Troll handled complex tasks. In the break room, he'd speculate about her qualifications. The rumor began to take on a life of its own, morphing and growing with each retelling. The Troll, oblivious to the undercurrents of suspicion swirling around her, continued pressuring her subordinates for increased work and suggestions for improvements. She noticed, however, that some colleagues seemed distant or avoided eye contact. The camaraderie she initially felt began to erode, replaced by a sense of unease. One morning, TO was summoned to a meeting with the new HR manager, Linda. As she walked into Linda's office, she noticed George leaving, a satisfied smile on his lips. "Good morning, TO. Please, have a seat," Linda said, gesturing to the chair across from her desk. TO sat down, her mind racing. She had never been called into HR before and couldn't think of any reason why she would be now. "I wanted to discuss some concerns that have been raised," Linda began, her tone professional but stern. "Concerns?" TO echoed, her confusion evident. "There have been rumors circulating about your qualifications and how you've been handling your responsibilities. Some of your colleagues have doubts about your integrity, leadership ability, and knowledge base of the programs you manage. Whether you're truly capable of performing the tasks required of your position," Linda explained. TO felt as if the ground had shifted beneath her. "I assure you, Linda, I've done everything by the book. My qualifications are legitimate," TO said, her voice steady but laced with frustration. Linda nodded. "The perception among your colleagues is affecting team morale. I need you to address this directly with them and perhaps provide some reassurance." TO left the meeting feeling a mix of anger and determination. She knew she had to move fast and do something to cover herself. It had happened the same way at the Department of Agriculture. She thought, "I definitely have a way of using up a place." That afternoon, she called the Fallen One for a consultation.


TW: Suicidal thoughts We were coming back from a day trip to Fallingwater and stopped to swim in a river that cut through the low-slung hills. After an hour of driving, our stepdad, Mark, a native to the general area, pointed out the windscreen. “Here! We can picnic just on the side.” Mom dropped her feet, from where they'd been sunning on the dashboard. She offered one of her signature, premeditated smiles. “How nice.” Beth, my sister, drab and dreary, huffed. Lately, she spent her mornings expertly patting her face ghostly with pale creams and taking over half an hour detailing her eyeliner. She often matched an assortment of striped, fingerless gloves to her Converse high-tops and JNCO jeans. Today, however, she'd been forced to subject herself to khakis and a blue sleeve capped shirt with sunflowers stitched on one side. This was because mom started the morning off wrong by tossing the 'dreadful Gothic trash' out the bedroom window. With nothing else but a cotton nightgown packed in the suitcase, my sister rolled curled into her knees, refusing to cry or leave the room. When I told her that she could wear anything of mine, she spit. A massive, green loogie landed in my stringy pigtail braids. I was saved from another flying gob by our Step-brother, Penn. He tossed his blue corduroy bear at her face, shouted, “GANGWAY!” and yanked me out by the wrist. He and I waited outside of the apartment, the summer morning was fusty and damp. Penn gave me a tissue for my hair and laughed at me, but I didn't mind so much. We both knew his bear was now at risk in Beth's hands. We made tiny fairy huts in the neighbor's flower box, waiting for retaliation or for the day to proceed according to Mom's meticulous itinerary. In the end, Mark and his mother silently went up to the attic to find clothes that had once fit his sister, back in 1977. With that, the issue was declared settled. Mom was the first to appear at the threshold. She clutched her new grass woven handbag, and stared at us, but spoke to me. “Look at you. Nasty and getting dirty when you knew we had plans today. I expected better from you.” Her spiky eyelashes fluttered so wide, they left pockmarks of mascara in her orange skin. Her long, pink nails plucked a bit of tissue that had stuck to my braid. “What have you done with yourself?” She didn't wait for an answer but marched toward the rental van with a huff and became agitated when Penn and I didn't immediately follow. After that, much of the morning passed by in stilted silence. Occasionally, Mom attempted to force games on us. “I spy with my little eye –” Penn spent the journey to and from Fallingwater, with his face pressed against the window. The ends of his bright red hair stood damp from the failed attempts to brush it into place. He wanted to see an Amish person. Mom kept snapping, “It's inappropriate to sit in your seat like that! You look like a gorilla-ape! Sit proper!” He would, but, inevitably like a puppy too wound up with expectations of the day, Penn's nose would find itself smudging the window once more. During the Frank Lloyd Wright tour, we managed to behave. Penn and I both taking interest in the architecture and the story of how the house was built. I was enamored with the iron gray water as it ran through the floors and how the windows opened into the hills. I wanted to point out that the trees claimed every inch of the sky and rooted deep into the slopes and curved over exposed stone like lazy snakes. But I didn't know the words. Instead, I tugged on mom's silk sleeves. She was preoccupied by Beth's movements, how she swanned like an anemic Victorian, around the house. For some reason, I'd thought if I could grab Mom's attention, Beth would have some breathing room and might actually start to like me. Or, at least, she would appreciate my sacrifice. “Mom, look at the robin!” Again. “Hey! Mom!” “Shhh,” she shook her arm free and moved away, closer to the attractive tour guide. “Don't interrupt. You're too loud.” I imagined myself with a considerable amount of wealth to afford such a place, so far up that a draw bridge would be needed to get to the front door. I decided I would close the bridge to everyone but Penn. Maybe Mark could visit, too, but he'd have to learn to get a spine around Mom. Otherwise, it'd be as good as inviting an enemy to dinner. Mark's decision to picnic by the river must have been inspired by the house, with its dining room hanging off the cliff and seamless windows to give the appearance of living in the canopy. “Like Robinson Crusoe!” he'd said. “But with the modern conveniences.” Either that or he wanted to free himself of the static prickling around all of us. Penn kept moaning about the lack of horse drawn carriages. Beth only responded to direct questions by quoting ICP lyrics. Anytime I tried to say something, I was far too loud and causing Mom to develop one of her headaches. We found a decent parking spot, nosed in toward an overlook, where we could see a handful of other families wading into the mossy green water. Beth and I were instructed to use the far back of the van to change into our swimsuits. Three times she angled her knee or elbow into my floating ribs, all the while announcing it was an accident. Then, it was Penn's turn and Beth pushed me out, declaring that I was always in the way. I spread my arms out for Mark to spray me down with sunscreen and he made sure to get the wide part in my hair. I was all fat and gangling legs and arms that struck at awkward angles from my swimsuit. Beth, in her spotted bikini, looked like Jhonen Vasquez's interpretation of Twiggy, and she made a point to walk ahead of us. She stared at the group of teenage boys but when they looked back, she rolled her shoulders in catly disinterest. “Want to look for frogs?” Penn asked, grabbing my hand. “Or a tide pool?” “I think that's just for salt water,” I said. He shrugged. “We can still look.” Mom flicked open a thin, cotton blanket and stationed herself on it with her coltish legs gently curved. Her large brown sunhat concealed the better parts of her face so that she was only a demure smile. She knew people liked to look at her and posed herself to be featured, however briefly, in strangers' thoughts. Mark had his camera out and his attention turned to a fraction of sunlight gathered in a dipping part of the stream. He smiled and waved at us, lifting his camera. Penn and I wrapped ourselves together and stood for pictures, before growing restless and darting off to explore. Our plastic sandals slapped against the shards of honey-brown rock, rising above the bubbling river like the scales of fish darting between the sunspots. We picked up flat stones, attempted to skip them, but didn't talk to each other. Sometimes, I didn't know what to say to Penn. He was half my age, but I felt so dumb and incapable of keeping up with his interests. I liked him and I figured he must have known that, even though there were times when he found himself tangled in a stiff sadness that I carried around. A sadness I was unable to name until well into my adulthood. I followed him, nodding as he pointed out different plants and types of rock, naming them with authority. I wished the water was strong enough to carry me away. I didn't want to die, or drown, or maim myself unrecognizable. I just wanted to be gone. We found a patch of river that was knee deep and sat in it. The current meandered like the southern heat we aimed to escape. Penn spread his fingers, watching the green water bounce and cap white ahead of us. “Am I red?” “No,” I squinted and cupped a hand around my eyes. “Not anywhere. Me?” “On your shoulders but just pink.” I shrugged. It didn't matter. I was always getting burned, despite the layers of sunscreen sprayed on me, and somehow, I survived. I lifted my hips, pushing my hands down into the silt, just to see how far I could go before the lip of rock trapped me. I wished I wasn't fat, then maybe I could swim or be carried. And then. I was floating down river, unshackled from the rocks and the slow turn of the waves. The current became faster and the bright red plastic balls the marked the drop off were framed by my legs. My mind cleared and the sun was warm on my already burnt skin. Oh bliss! Oh God in heaven wrap me into your arms! Take me from this unnamed pain! My plastic sandals disappeared over the edge, and I waited patiently for my turn. I nearly made it, too, but the rocks came up again, smooth and mossy, shredding the water into separate trunks before it dipped below the plastic barrier. Now, no more than a speck upstream, Mom let loose a horned owl screech and flung her arms into the sky. “SOMEBODY HELP MY BABY!” “Mom!” I shouted back and rolled my eyes. “There's a path right here.” To make a point I stood and began to shuffle forward, mindful of the tender points that were slick and precarious. “DON'T MOVE! YOU STAY RIGHT THERE!” I did not imagine the knife edge of danger in her tone. I looked at Penn, twelve feet away from me, and shrugged. He offered half a smile and began walking parallel to me, reaching the shore, where Mark stood, peeling off his socks. “Dad!” I pointed down. “it's a clear walkway!” “Okay!” he called back, unhooking his camera and setting it in the pebbled shore. “HELP MY BABY!” Mom shouted again and I watched, in horror, as she flung herself around one of the teenagers Beth was pretending to ignore. “Deb, it's fine – ” Mark began. He was already in the water, coming to meet me halfway, but Mom shoved him aside. His bad knee buckled and he fell backward, water and mud splashing around him. “GO SAVE MY BABY!” Mom kept screaming and the boy she'd abducted, took several startling steps out to me. I began to walk toward him but Mom let out a demonic bellow, “DON'T YOU DARE MOVE!” It rooted me to the spot. The boy, too, seemed unsure about the safest course of action. What was more deadly? My mom, or the edge of a cliff? I waited and eventually, he splashed toward me. “I'm sorry,” I whispered, then kept repeating it when he put his back to me to lead me to the shore. My sunburned legs chaffed. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry.” For the inconvenience. For wanting him to tell me that it was okay. For not being cute enough that he'd want to brag to his friends. For walking so slow. For Mom's dramatics. For wanting to die. The boy escaped from us at the first opportunity. Mom had the decency to wait until all our things had been gathered, and we were in the shadow of the rental van, before she removed her sneaker and slapped it around my backside. “You ruined a perfectly good afternoon! How could you be so stupid?” “I don't know,” I lied. “It was an accident, Barb,” Mark grumbled, folding a towel in the driver's seat. His right knee was swollen. “She's safe. That's what matters.” Mom huffed and flung herself into the van. “Well, it's the last time we listen to you about going for a swim anywhere that isn't a pool!” On the drive back, I sat in the third row by myself, not permitted to change out of my swimsuit. Beth plugged in her yellow Walkman and pretended to sleep. Penn stared out the window. Silence, anger, disappointment, all bundled into the van as it made its way down the twisting back roads. Eventually, we came to the point in the river where the drop off had been. Fifteen feet, or a little less, where the green, glassy water turned into a tumble of white foam and mist. Mark whistled low and I wondered if hitting the base would have hurt. At the next, sloping turn, Penn burst the tension I had unwittingly created. “Look!” Ahead of us was a black, two wheeled wagon. The horse that pulled it was broad and dark. “Don't stare,” Mom warned. Penn ignored her and rolled down the window. Mom tapped her knuckle against Mark's forearm. “Speed up. Let's get around him.” “I like your horse!” Penn shouted, his words getting lost in the loud hum of our tires. Mom rolled up his window and put on the parental locks. Penn, ever resourceful, unbuckled his seat belt and spider crawled into the backseat with me. We pushed our faces against the rear window, eyes wide. The bearded driver was weather-worn. He dressed for church: black pants and suspenders, shirt so crisp and white that it glowed in the sunset. His buggy whip snapped in the air and the horse's head bobbed, clopping its hooves in a dance along the shoulder of the uneven road. The man laughed and tilted his wide brimmed hat to us as we waved goodbye. A calm passed through me. I felt soothed like a damp cloth had been placed on my fevered forehead. Then, the man and his horse were gone, hidden behind the trees, as the van slipped downstream.


Ten. In Grace’s busy, constant mind, she only has ten seconds to drive from her house to Al's Ice Cream Shop which is on average, one minute away. She puts her keys in the car, sweat already starting to build up. She thinks to herself if I don't arrive at Al's within these ten seconds, I am going to die in my sleep. Shoot. This passing thought motivates her to start getting on the move. She only has nine more seconds. Nine. Grace tucks her thin, stick-straight, black hair behind her ears. She puts her car into reverse and starts to back out of her garage as fast as lightning. Her heart rate is more rapid than usual, and she is sweating as much as a track star in action. In her head, she counts the seconds it takes to back out. If it takes more than three seconds, she is doomed. Eight. As Grace continues to back out of her garage, she opens her window. Is it hotter in here? Is it too hot? she thinks. Thinking about the extreme heat she is experiencing causes her to panic further. She finally backs out of her garage and puts her car into drive. She forgot to close her garage, but did not even notice. Now it is a matter of time and speed. Seven. With seven seconds left, she speeds over the limit down her driveway. She gets down her street in one single second and turns left down the next street. People walk on the sidewalk and wonder why there is a car going so fast down a street they have never gone over 25 mph. Grace, however, is going at least 40 mph. Grace herself does not even realize how fast she is moving. Six. I am so close , thinks Grace. she is sure of herself she will make it there. She already knows what type of ice cream she is going to get. 2 scoops of cookies and cream in a waffle cone with peanuts on top. She calms down a bit picturing herself eating her cold, sugary ice cream cone. She has driven herself to the shop many times, but never in under 10 seconds. Usually she does not need to, but today was different and she could not figure out why. Five. She encounters a stop sign. Grace, as well as pretty much everyone who drives a car, knows to stop for 3 seconds at a stop sign. But when you are like Grace, it is unlikely that is going to happen. She can not waste three seconds when she only has five left. So, Grace speeds through the stop sign, forgetting to look both ways. That was her worst mistake. Four. A loud BANG echoes across the entire street. A loud screech comes from inside a shiny, silver Honda Civic. The car flips to its side as the airbag goes up, making the crash even worse. there is blood all over the window, and you could not even tell where it came from. Three. People on the street start to hear the crash. They run out of their houses, hands covering their mouths and phones dialing 911. Grace lies in her car, helpless and bleeding out. The person who crashed into her gets out of his car, hands on his head in hysterics. He will be haunted by guilt for his whole life. Two. The man who crashed into her is about 40 years old and has a shaved head. He has a little scratch on his head, but nowhere near as bad as the damage on Grace. He runs over to Grace's car, on the phone with 911, shaking more than ever. Grace is unconscious. There is an outburst of panic on the street. One. Grace remains unconscious, but her mind is still at work. That is the thing about people with OCD. Whether they are conscious or unconscious, their mind never stops working. Although she is unconscious, she is still aware the countdown from 10 is over. Any other time, this would cause an extreme panic attack. But right now, she is finally in peace. Yes, she is not in a conscious state and she is bleeding, but she can finally rest. Her subconscious does not register anymore. She wonders if her psychiatrist will be confused about how she got into a car crash. Had she forgotten to take her meds? Was it simply just careless driving? Or was her mind just too powerful for her to even battle anymore? After a life of constantly working to find peace and happiness within her paranoid mind, she has finally achieved it. Her mind is shutting down. She finally found the peace of mind she had been craving. Zero. Grace slowly leaves the world she had always struggled in but yet was so comfortable in. She always figured she would die of old age or something way later in life, but here she was, 23 years old, dead in a car crash all because of what her busy mind told her to do. Grace struggled with OCD for many years of her life, but she tried to not let it get the best of her. She was seeing a psychiatrist for her difficulties, and she was improving with the work of meds and therapy. Although sometimes she was controlled solely by her mind, there were times where it overpowered her every move and she was at a loss of what to do. Unfortunately, this was one of those times. It was just a case of wrong place at the wrong time considering this was a time her mind made her lose control. No one was truly ever going to understand what went through her brain in the moment. It all happened too quickly for anyone to process. Not Grace, not the man who crashed into her, and not anyone who lived in a house on the street. Sometimes things just happen and it’s out of our control. It just comes to show how much can really happen in 10 seconds.


When I'm watching TV, in the small home we shared, I look at the window to see you standing there. So, I close the blinds, because I'd rather be blind than to see the reflection of the man who died.

I watch and I watch the screen full of colours until I don't know what I'm seeing, then I watch some more. But I never turn it off because the image I'd see, reflected at me, is worse than white noise on the TV.

When the sky cries onto the earth, I see you in the reflection of mucky puddles. So, I splash in them until your face ripples away. I never cry on rainy days.

I avoid mirrors like a sickness because I know what I'll see. I don't like dry-heaving at a mirage of you and me.

But today, I must. I'm preparing for my date. The first since you left. And when I look in the mirror to adjust the silk of my dress,

I pretend I don't see you standing there, behind me. Your pitch-black locks shift when you shake your head. Something on your face crackles with hatred. And my chest starts to quiver when you bring your hands forth. They clasp around my waist. The warmth seeps through my clothes. You brush my brown hair behind my ear, then you bring your torso near. I tense and wait for the words to be said—the ones you never really spoke out loud, but somehow managed to lodge in my head.

Heat engulfs me when you finally speak.

How could you? I thought you loved me. My stomach sinks with the weight of those words. Your gaze might as well be that of a feline's, sharp and calculating. And I'm the hunt that ran away, unsatisfied. I try not to feel like a piece of meat, giving herself over to another lion's pride.

As the second-hand ticks away on my watch, unbearably loud in the quiet of our room, I realize it's the timepiece you gave me on our first anniversary. When I look into the glass, all I can see is a face that doesn't belong to the little clock or me. I unclasp it from my wrist and set it down on our cabinet. Then, I think again and shove it deep into the third drawer, where I can't reach it easily. I don't need your little brown eyes watching me flirt and smile, twirling my hair as I stare into the eyes of another man. I don't need the judgement that comes along with wearing you on my hand.

And with that thought, I look down to my trembling fist and see the golden little band that chokes me where it sits. It once played a tune of unity and love. Now it wails the sombre chords of a woman who is stuck. This I cannot stand, so I rip it off like it burns me, clattering to the dresser with a sizzling smack. I see your eyes in the mirror, offended at my heartless deed, enough to make my reflection crack. Even still, when bitterness contorts you, your skin glows like it did (before the cancer took your warmth away and made you grim and thin). And it hurts. Oh dear, how it hurts. We didn't have children like you wanted to. You never finished school. None of this is fair. We didn't go on our honeymoon because the money just wasn't there. Our bedsheets don't smell like you, they've been washed too many times. I still have your cologne that smells like cedarwood and lime.

Spraying it now seems like a sin like I'm doing something wrong. But it was you with the transgressions that spewed an aching on my heart. When you lied and told me that you would always stay, said you'd never leave me until I finally said okay. But your body told the truth, opposed what your pretty words did not convey. With a green face and pale skin, you took my hand in yours, shifted closer so I felt exactly how you mourned.

The contrast of our hands convinced me of the heartbreak held in your sickness and in my health, in life and in death. Since that moment I've been holding my breath. You said: When the cold cocoons it The bare branch with no leaves

It leaves you a promise

Of return in the breeze How weird...my hand. There's a trickling feel on my skin where a streak of redness trails. From my knuckles to my wrist, to my elbow when I twist. The blood reminds me again how stupidly human I am. How emotions can control me and make me do senseless things, like smash a mirror into bits just because I'm pissed.

I stumble to the washroom, cupping a hand under the blood, so none of it stains the carpet you always helped me scrub. This time, I won't smash the mirror, even when you follow me.

Turning the sink's handle is more difficult than I thought it would be. But when I lift my head to see you once more, you turn the water on for me, making sure it isn't too cold. Regardless, I shiver, because a warm, familiar, and safe arm cradles mine. And a flash of a memory sickens me. Then, I start to cry. Your hand scrubs my blood down into the drain. And I'm drained of all sanity when I feel the pain. Where each cut is open, a sharp sting passes through. Each movement of your skin on mine, makes me hurt for you. A sob rips past my throat, like a bird clawing free, and when I try to gasp inward, I find I can't breathe.

Of course, you wipe the tears and scold me for grieving.

I've been gone so long! Why are you weeping?! It's all I can do not to crumple and deflate. My date is supposed to be here at eight.


“... she said, surprisingly. ‘What of all our love before? Did that mean nothing? ’ He looked at her apologetically. ‘It did at the time ,’ he said firmly. ‘ But not anymore .’ ‘Oh ,’ she sighed sorrowfully-” “Stop, stop, STOP,” Rob exclaimed and waved with his hands. One of them looked like it was going to fall off again. “I can’t take this anymore! What is this, Sally? Are you trying to poison me? I’m dead already!” A gasp traveled through the room. The rest of the writing circle participants looked at Rob with surprise. “That’s a bit harsh, man,” said Joe, a rotting old farmer. “I’m sure she’s doing her best.” The old lady up front clenched to her little writing pad and nodded fervently. “See? She’s nodding and all…” Rob shook his head. “What, are you all deaf? I’m just asking because that would explain how you could stand and listen to this crap!” “Rob!” exclaimed Denise, a woman that still acted from habit and put make-up on her face. “We do not talk like that here! Only positive encouragement!” Rob snorted. “It’s best she hears the truth sooner, rather than later.” He turned to poor Sally, who’d probably be turning all red, had she not lost all her blood already. He placed both palms around his mouth, to make his next words even more clear. “You suck!”

“Rob,” Bill said and stood up. Of all of them, he still looked the most human. “I’m gonna have to ask you to leave. This group is for supporters only.” Rob stood up. “I was just about to. You sorry lot make me rot faster than normal.” He deliberately bumped Bill’s shoulder as he walked past him and out on the street. What a bunch of losers , he thought. Thinking they can write just because they can hold a pen- “Rob!” He turned around. It was Bill. He was waving an extra hand in his hand at him. “You forgot something.” Rob looked at his hands. The right one was missing. He sighed. Even with a faulty hand, I can still write better than Sally.

He stomped up to Bill and snatched his hand. “Thanks.” “Why are you such a dick, Rob?” “I don’t know, maybe it’s the weather.” The heat was getting to him. Or perhaps it was maggots, eating at his flesh that caused all these frustrations. Constantly chewing and biting. It itched and he couldn’t really scratch because they were somewhere deep in his flesh. He could hear them feasting on him at night. “If you keep acting like this no one is going to want to read your book, should you actually finish it,” Bill called after him. “Good,” Rob replied. “Wouldn’t want their simple minds to twist an ankle on my fast, clean pacing!” He limped down the street, readjusting his hand as he went along. In his mind, all those disgusting adverbs screamed to him in Sally’s high-pitched, nervous voice. Surprisingly, apologetically, sorrowfully… He snorted. “She’s right though,” he said to himself. “First I was surprised, then I was sorry for coming and now I’m full of sorrow for the slaughtered prose.” Being dead is no excuse for writing dead weight. Rob limped all the way from Bill’s street to his own house. Quite a feat for a broken-legged, maggot-infested, irritated to hell by bad narration zombie. All he needed now was some idiot with a 12-gauge shotgun to spray his brains all over the street. That kind of stuff happened rarely these days, the apocalypse settled and all, but there were still human survivors roaming around. One couldn’t do wrong by being careful. Eventually, Rob arrived at his home, hand readjusted and brains still slushing in his skull. He noticed his neighbor watering the grass with a garden hose. Poor fool. Didn't he know there was no water? “Hey, Ned.” The man snapped up straight. “Huh? Oh, hey there, Rob!” “Sprinkling, I see?” “Yeah, man’s gotta do what the misses tells him to, you know.”

“How’s the wife?” “Still dead, thank heavens!” “That’s great!” Dear God, the pinnacle of conversation, right there! Still, better than surprisingly, apologetically and sorrowfully… “Hey Rob,” Ned said before Rob would disappear inside his house and not be seen for days again. “Would you like to come to our house and have dinner tonight?” Rob sighed. “Ned, we’re zombies, we don’t eat dinner. Unless you've got a fresh human in the fridge, then perhaps you can persuade me.” “Oh, right.” Ned seemed confused. “Forgot about that.” “Not surprisingly ,” Rob said and grimaced. “Your brain is rotting. Cheers.” He slammed the door and cursed when he saw Mittens, his pet dead cat, chewing on her paw in the hallway. “How many times have I told you, stop eating yourself!” Mittens looked up, her black tongue sticking out. “I know you’re too slow and lazy to catch mice, but geez! Your own foot? Seems kind of desperate, if you ask me.” He shooed the cat away and walked to the kitchen. Then again, what did he eat? Nothing. The maggots were the ones eating him . And it was the damnedest thing. By all laws of physics and nature and the holy bible, he should have been dead the moment his heart stopped beating, yet here he was, still walking, talking and insulting other should-be-dead-too people.

Ain’t this a hell , he thought. Well, at least I can still write. For some reason, perhaps the same one Ned was still ‘watering’ the grass, he checked the fridge. Of course, beer was long gone. So was everything else. Not that he needed any of it, but it just seemed right to stuff things in his mouth. Perhaps I should munch on my hand, like Mittens . He shuffled his feet to the living room where a desk awaited him. On it was an old antique typewriter and a work in progress manuscript of a novel. Computers were out of the question as they were out of electricity as the power plant workers were out of life. Such is the nature of apocalypse , Rob guessed, planted his butt on a chair, and threw his hands on the desk. He sighed loud and deep. Not that he needed to breathe or anything. It just helped calm his nerves. He listened to the silence for a moment. The lack of that thumping in his chest didn’t bother him anymore and neither did the lack of hearing himself breathe. The noise from the maggots in his flesh did, though. God, they’re as annoying as those adverbs! He placed his hands on the steel keys and began typing. The stamping of metal on paper helped to distract him from the maggot-chewing sounds and his mind soon fell in sync with the story. The words flew out like piss used to. It took a little effort, but when it came, it came in a torrent. Rob sat there, in the zone, writing and in his mind telling Sally ‘Look here, meat bag. This is how it’s done!’ A grin crept upon his face, pulling the dried up and shriveled skin of his cheeks closer. Then, his right hand fell off. Again. “Son of a-” “Meow!” “Mittens, NO!” The cat jumped on the desk with a sudden spring of energy from her saggy legs and snatched Rob’s right hand.

“No, you devil! Leave that!” He tried to catch her with his left hand, but the lack of hair on the cat’s body and her rotting skin made her slippery to grab. She jumped down and ran away with the hand dangling from her mouth. Rob cursed and sprang after her. If she eats my hand… Nah, it was probably too big for her. But she could tear it apart. “Give back my stupid hand or I’ll gut you!” He heard a crash coming from the kitchen. He rounded the corner as fast as his broken leg would allow him and caught a glimpse of the cat’s back legs as she jumped out the open kitchen window. Out went the hand. Rob sighed. Why did you leave the window open, stupid? Oh yeah, to air the house from your decaying smell… It was hot outside and Rob didn’t have the nerve or the will to go Mittens-hunting. But he did need his hand to write. I guess I could type with just one. It would take him longer, though. But it’s not like he was in a hurry anyway. He was dead, he had all the time in the world. Or at least before the maggots ate him whole. And so, Rob shuffled his zombie feet back to the living room, slumped behind the desk, and continued punching the keys, this time like a granny, using only the index finger of his left hand. I bet this is how old Sally writes… Day turned into night, and night into day, and so it went for weeks. Rob did not need to sleep, though he did occasionally lie down and pretend he was still a human. Old habits die hard, they used to say. For Rob, he died before his habits did. As Rob continued to work on his debut novel, Mittens came to check up on him from time to time. He didn’t let himself be fooled by the sweet purr, he knew the beast was just waiting to see if anything else fell off from him. On occasion, she would jump in his lap, but he’d shoo her away. “My wiener was the first thing to go, so scram!” Typing with one hand proved to be slow and awkward, not only because he was right-handed, but because he was dead as well and therefore inherently clumsy. He’d press the wrong keys from time to time and fuss about it. There was no delete button on the typewriter. All your typos and grammatical mistakes were forever imprinted on the page. Stupid cat, snatching my hand… As he continued to write, determined to get the book done, Ned would come knocking on his door once a week. When Rob wouldn’t answer, the man would walk around the house and come knock on the living room window. “Rob!” his voice would come muffled from outside. “Not unless it’s a human, Ned!” Rob would answer every time and Ned would walk away, bewildered at his forgetfulness.

From time to time, a fat white maggot would fall from a hole in Rob’s body and land between the keys of the typewriter, or on the floor or desk. “Ha!” Rob would smile, and pick up the maggot. “Payback time!” Then he’d eat it. Not because he was hungry, but because he was angry. And so it went. Until three weeks later, when the last words were finally put down on maggot-stained paper, and Rob found himself finishing the book he began writing when he was still alive. “There you have it, folks,” he announced to the empty living room. “I’ve done it! To all the critics, doubters and nay-sayers, you were right. I did die before I finished the book. But I finished it nonetheless! Ha!” He stood up from the chair - which he didn’t move from for the whole last week - and noticed a pool of maggots where his butt used to sit. He felt much lighter. It was ironic, having suffered from extra weight all his life, even though he went to the gym regularly, to find himself losing weight by sitting and punching keys on a typewriter.

The bloody bastards are omitting me like I omit those accursed adverbs! Rob collected all the papers of his novel and bounded them together into a neat-looking manuscript. He felt immensely proud. He couldn’t wait to show his masterpiece to the blokes at Bill’s, who were probably still writing only a page a week. “Hey Rob,” Ned said as Rob left the house with the manuscript under his arm. “Wanna have some- Ooh, what you got there?” “A book,” Rob said with pride.

“You finished it?” “I did.” “What's it about?” “It’s about the attitudes we take towards life and death,” Rob explained. “It follows the story of a mortician who discovered joy and passion in corpses. Its title is Dying Alive or Living Dead, a story of a mortician’s way to happiness. ” Ned nodded with approval. “Sounds very profound and interesting. Are you going to publish it?” “Sure am,” said Rob and felt an immense sense of pride. “But first, I’m going to rub it in some people’s faces.”

“Have fun, neighborino ! When you come back, me and my wife are having dinner tonight…” “Sure Ned, sure.” Rob walked down the street, pride and confidence making up for the slouched neck and broken leg. His mind was soaring high up in the clouds, thinking of how people would react to his book. Oh my god, they would say. Brilliant! Just brilliant! You're a real prodigy, Rob, a natural! Oh, I wish I’d written that! He chuckled to himself. The thing he was looking forward to the most was to see the expression on Sally’s face when he smashes her silly prose with his gripping narration. Surprisingly, non-apologetically and triumphantly indeed. Then a sound of screeching tires ripped him from his daydreaming. Rob turned. He stood in the middle of the road, crossing the street at a crosswalk. Another stupid old habit. There was a car, a pickup, racing up the street. A bunch of humans were sitting tight in the back and they held guns in their hands. They were shooting innocent zombies that walked the street. No way in hell , Rob thought. Now?! He just finished a book. He was not going to become a brain splatter, not until Sally gets her ass whooped! Rob quickened up the pace. He couldn’t run because his leg was broken and he was dead, energy was not that high, but he could limp faster. And so he did.

The pickup was coming closer, the gunshots sounding louder. He could hear the thuds of bodies falling to the ground, his fellow zombies dropped dead again. The humans cheered and whistled. God damn sons of- “Hey look, Cleetus!” a voice shouted from the pickup. “We’ve got a runner!” “Whoo-wee! Look at ‘im go!” “Speed up, speed up, I wanna get ‘im in mid-run!” “What’s that he’s carrying?” “I bet it’s some zombie-invasion plans! He’s a messenger! Shoot him!” “It’s a book, you bloody halfwits!” Rob shouted over his shoulders, but all the humans could understand was growling and grunting. They were dumb like that, didn't speak the language of the dead. Rob heard gunshots echo behind him and bullets flew over his head. He doubled down on his limping, nearly ripping off his rotten feet. He reached the sidewalk. There was a store nearby where he could hide. “Dang-nabbit! Don’t let him escape!” Something hit him in the back, hard. Probably bullets. But Rob kept going. So far as they didn’t get his brain it didn’t matter what happened to his body. Don’t hit the book, don’t hit the book… “Davis, ram the sumbitch! We can’t hit his head!” Rob didn’t dare look behind him. He heard an engine revving up. Car tires hit the sidewalk and the humans grunted. He opened the door to the store and noticed they were locked. What idiot locked- Then something big and heavy slammed into his back, plowing him through the door and through the front of the store, smashing wood and glass. The pickup crashed into the building. Rob found himself pinched between the hood and the store’s wooden counter, unable to move, but still alive. Or dead, rather. Undead. There was some coughing and some moaning, the humans complaining about hitting their heads in the crash. An argument erupted between them. But Rob didn’t pay attention to them, all he was concerned about was his book. He glanced down and noticed he still held it in his hand.

He relaxed a little. Then he smelled smoke. “Look what you’ve done! The car’s a wreck!” “At least we got the messenger zombie! He ain’t gonna-” “You idiot! Them Z’s ain’t smart enough to have messengers! It’s probably a newspaper it’s holding!” The gas leaking from the pickup ignited. The humans began taking salvageable stuff out and away from the car. “No!” Rob growled. He tried to break free, but couldn’t. The fire was starting to lick his legs. It didn’t hurt. But his book would burn. “NO!” he shouted and raised the manuscript as high as he could. “Take this! You bloody idiots take this!” He waved the manuscript at them. “What in tarnation…” One human stepped closer.

“Careful, Cleetus! Don’t get bitten! And the fire-” The human reached and took the manuscript from Rob. “Yes, take it! Take it and show it to the world! Show everyone my legacy! My masterpiece-” A shot from a 12-gauge shotgun splattered Rob’s brains all over the wooden counter in the back. “Why did you do that for?” Cleetus asked. Davis shrugged. “I didn’t like how it growled. What did it give you?” Cleetus looked down. “Dunno,” he shrugged. “Looks like a manuscript, but I can’t read a word of it. Total gibberish.” Davis snorted. “The poor bastard probably used to be a writer. You reckon he wrote that?” “Nah, look at him,” Cleetus said. “He’s got one hand. And he’s a zombie . They’re dumb as f-”

The fire reached the pickup’s bed where a heap of C4 rested in a gym bag. The explosion that ensued incinerated the car, the men, Rob, his manuscript, and a good part of the building. A few blocks away, at Bill’s house, the writing circle was in session and they heard the explosion. “Oh my,” Sally exclaimed. “I dearly hope no one is hurt badly.” At that remark, the fires consuming Rob’s flesh hissed and sputtered violently .