

The moral rights of Elsie, Samuel Shiro, Micke Lindquist, Colleen Quinn, Keith Lewis, Zachary Houle, Christopher Francis, Lance Manion, Stephen P Smith, Kate Barrett and Robin Wyatt Dunn to be identified as the Authors of this Work have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in June 2014 by

Mysteria Press

**Editor-in-Chief:** Jason S. Kenney

**Series Editor:**  Adrian J. Watts

**Book design:** Particle Surge Productions

mysteriapress.com

Caprice © Elsie 2014

The Blood Is The Life III © Samuel Shiro 2014

Bubblegum Ecstasy © Micke Lindquist 2014

Cleaning House © Colleen Quinn 2014

I Was Sitting Behind Some Bushes With My Arms Wrapped Around My Knees © Keith Lewis 2014

Male Pregnancy © Zachary Houle 2014

Spring Cleaning © Micke Lindquist 2014

Stop © Christopher Francis 2014

Bargains © Lance Manion 2014

Daniel's Promise © Stephen P Smith 2014

Apple Orchard © Kate Barrett 2014

Broadcast © Robin Wyatt Dunn 2014

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

### PSYCHOPOMP

( _from the Greek word ψυχοπομπός - psuchopompos, literally meaning the "guide of souls") are creatures, spirits,   angels, or deities in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly deceased souls to the afterlife. Their role is  not to judge the deceased, but simply provide safe passage._

- Wikipedia.org, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopomp

### CAPRICE  
by Elsie

One by one the bulbs hanging on the string of lights above her head blinked to life, casting a green sheen to her pale skin. Helen, the bearded lady, was to the right in a plush red tent with gold trim. Travis and Leo, the conjoined twins, were to the left. Caprice's dinky set-up, a mere card table and hand printed sign, was in between the two of them at the edge of the midway.

Devin Calhoun trotted through the sparse crowd and over to her table before any customers showed up. He always wanted to sit at the table and collect money. Caprice wasn't sure if the fair owners thought she would take it or if Devin just wanted to watch her. She thought he found what she did fascinating. Maybe he saw what others could not.

"Hey Caprice," he said and sat on the folding metal chair. He smelled of sweat and marijuana. His white shirt had black smears across the side as if he'd wiped his hands there while eating. Devin wasn't known for his hygiene.

She nodded, but didn't speak. Caprice saved her voice before performances. They wanted her too. They couldn't make money if she got laryngitis. She didn't care much for conversation anyway.

"Did you see Camilla?" he asked, a smitten look floating across his face as he looked through the crowds. A few tendrils of his long blond hair waved in the breeze.

Camilla was a newbie. She joined the caravan of misfits two weeks ago when they left a small South Carolina town. Caprice didn't know what her talents were other than wearing extremely tight clothes and flirting with anything male, both of which she did very well. She sold tickets at the ride booth and looked like she might have sold other things in her life. There had been many Camillas in the caravan over the years. Caprice lost count.

She shook her head. "I hadn't seen her." Or looked for her either, she thought.

"She looks mighty fine tonight," Devin said and whistled. The sound trilled across an octave as if the notes were dancing.

Caprice's eyes widened at the captivating noise. She pursed her mouth and tried to copy him. But when she blew, only spittle and air flew out. No tweeting sound like he made.

"Haha," Devin laughed and pointed at her. "Are you trying to whistle, Caprice?"

She nodded, then frowned. She didn't like Devin, but she didn't dislike him either.  She certainly disliked being laughed at, however.

He leaned closer, showing her again how he held his lips and how he rolled his tongue. But she couldn't repeat the sound. She arched her lips as he had, pushed her lower jaw forward just a tad and tried again. Again, only spittle and air emerged.

Devin reached over to touch her mouth, but she jumped back, tipping over her chair and tumbling to the ground. Her heart thumped like a boxed firecracker in her chest and drowned out the music they piped in through the speakers.

He scrambled to her side, but she held up her hand, glaring at him with as stern a look as she could create. He stopped two feet away and smacked his head. "I'm sorry. I forgot."

She shrugged her tiny shoulders then touched her finger and thumb together before lifting them to her lips, mimicking his pot smoking.

Devin put his hands up. "I know, I know. My bad. Sorry." He righted her chair and then stepped back, giving extra clearance.

Caprice didn't care if he smoked or drank, but he couldn't be careless. Not with her.

Dirt covered her knees and her efforts to dust the brown marks off her white pants were in vain. The smudges remained. She sat in the chair Devin righted and pulled up to the table.

Traffic on the midway picked up as did the noise. A warm breeze filtered through the people. July crowds were always heavy. People needed an escape from the first half of summer so they packed the summer fairs.

"Two o'clock, on your left. The man and woman look like your first customers."

She inhaled and readied herself, opening her eyes wide to look eager to help. She also played on her look of innocence.

"What are you selling tonight, dearie?" The woman asked, clutching her long beaded necklace as she leaned closer to the table to talk. "You're just as cute as a bug."

Truth be told, most people thought she was a child when they saw her. It could have been her stringy brown hair tied up in ponytails, the heavy freckles on the bridge of her nose or her short stature. She looked to be nine or ten years old.

But she was far from being a child.

She'd lived longer than anyone she'd ever met. And she'd been kept by the fair owners like a possession and handed to the next generation. Forced to maintain their charade. Although Caprice was not sure what she would have done without this life or what life was like before they found her. Her memories offered her no help because none of them belonged to her.

The cardboard sign on the table had fallen during the scuttle with Devin so she straightened it. The cardboard was the top flap of the box she kept her clothes in. The letters written in sloppy penmanship spelled MEMORIES.

"I can make memories come back. Or help you find ones you've lost," she said with a tiny voice.

The woman smiled, stretching the wrinkles that gathered above her lips. "Memories?" she asked.

"Let's move on, Fay," the man by her side said in response, shuffling his feet back and forth.

Caprice smiled and batted her eyes, waiting. Whether they stopped or not mattered very little to her but she had to play the game. Others would stop and her job would continue.

"Now Charles, this could be fun. I want to try." The woman stuck her hand into her white vinyl purse and fished around. "How much is a memory?" she asked.

"Twenty dollars," answered Devin before Caprice could speak.

The going rate was not a fixed amount but Devin's talent revolved around producing a number that worked. No one had ever turned down his amount.

"That's ridiculous," quipped Charles and he wrapped his hand around Fay's fleshy upper arm. "Let's go."

"No." Fay pulled away and then patted his hand. "We spent twenty dollars for you to get your fishing license. I think I can spend twenty dollars on this sweet little girl." She unsnapped her pink wallet and pulled out a crisp bill.

Caprice blinked. Some nights faking interest was extremely hard. She pointed to the empty chair on her side, suggesting the woman sit down.

Devin slipped the money from Fay's hand before she could change her mind.

But she wouldn't. Curiosity and longing were powerful forces.

"Do you have a memory in mind that you want to revisit or a time I should try to help you recall?" Caprice asked. She spoke less now because she was tired of hearing that sound, her sound. It constantly reminded her of the corner of life she would always inhabit as a hostage.

Fay tapped her husband's arm twice. "Charles, why don't you fetch us two hot dogs from the stand we just passed."

"Geesh Fay, I'll just wait. This can't take long," he fussed back.

"I'm going to go through the memory of the blueberry pie of 1992. All the way from when I got the recipe from Aunt Daylene, to my tinkering with it, and to winning the blue ribbon at the county fair. You sure you want to stand here for that?"

"You're going to waste twenty dollars on that? Sounds like you already remember it all?" Charles grumbled.

"Not in enough detail."

"Fine. I'm gone."

"Don't forget ketchup and chili. You know I like ketchup and chili on my dog." She smiled sweetly at him, but he didn't acknowledge her. He plodded off like a cross between a scolded child and a spurned lover.

Caprice waited for her to turn, which she did once Charles make his way down the midway.

Fay leaned close. "Can you really bring back memories?"

She nodded.

"Some people say they feel like they are reliving them," Devin added. His eyes twinkled.

"Well, then. Let's do this," she said, wearing a subtle smile. She adjusted her red shirt so the collar was lined up even with her chin and she fluffed her dark curls that bore an unnatural shade of black for her age. "It was the June 19th, 1978. I was at the lake," she said on one full breath, then tipped her head. "How can I go back there?"

"Hold my hand and close your eyes," Caprice said, opening her fingers wide.

"Will you see what I see?" she asked.

If her question was answered honestly, she would not go back. No one wants others to see what they hold dearest. Caprice shook her head.

"Good." She slipped her hand into the open invitation and closed her eyes.

Caprice closed her eyes too and waited. It always took a minute to connect to another person, to create a passageway into their mind. Once the channel was open, she flipped through Fay's memories like pages in a magazine, looking for the right year, the right month and date. Faces and feelings crowded around her, almost suffocating her as she sorted through them.

There, like a ripe red apple dangling on the lowest branch of a tree, she spotted the desired date, the requested memory. Caprice squeezed Fay's hand and led her to that day in June so many years ago.

The blinding sun flooded everything with light at first. Through a squinted glimpse, slowly, silhouettes, lines, and shapes emerged. Fay lay on a towel, tearing through a sandcastle with her toes as she pulsed her foot to music coming from down the way. Her skin golden brown skin shone like plastic in the sun. A light wind tempered the brutal heat. Light danced across the bluish–grey water. The day was beautiful. Coconut suntan oil infused the air.

And then Fay turned her head and he was there.

The man in the memory surprised Caprice. The face structure was very different from hot dog Charles. This was a different boy with a stronger jaw, blue  eyes not brown, and long hair that fell past his shoulders. This was definitely not Charles. He and young Fay laughed, held hands, and kissed on the towel until they ran into a thatch of trees to escape the sun and gain privacy.

There were times that Caprice wished she couldn't see the memories. Because every emotion, every touch ran through her first. The rush of his hand holding hers and stroking her hair or how her heart almost exploded when he kissed her for the first time. She couldn't distance herself from the feelings, physical or emotional.

But then without other people's memories, she would not know the feel of a kiss or the warmth of a hug. For as long as she could remember she has been trapped around age nine. The fair owners found her and took her in. But they don't understand her powers or its limitations. And they don't care.

She led her focus fade until Fay and her 1978 boyfriend's conversation and interactions were not as clear. They blurred into a fog that she could tolerate. She'd seen memories like this before, full of last chance runs at prior romances. They didn't embarrass her.

Twenty dollars was not nearly enough.

But then, Fay didn't know the real cost of going back. Not only would she part with money, but she would also lose the memory.

It was an occupational hazard.

Once Caprice took people back to those sacred places, their memories became hers. Worthless snippets of others lives that she was forced to store in the labyrinth of her mind. The cursed labyrinth that trapped her and kept her young. She took their money, their memory and their time.

"Fay," a gruff voice called out. "You done here?"

Like an extinguished flame, the memory vanished at the harsh voice. But it had been close to ending anyway. Caprice opened her eyes and found Charles standing with two hot dogs by his wife's side, nudging her with an impatient hip. His face folded with irritation. Fay traveling back to spend time with another man made sense.

Caprice slipped her hand from Fay's and watched her come back. Her eyes fluttered open and cheeks pinked with energy and remembrance.

Fay looked as if she might cry at first.

"Thank you," she whispered and placed her hand on her heart as if to catch her breath.

Or maybe it was to calm her loss.

Caprice didn't spend another second thinking about Fay and her memory because they were all like this. Invasive and exhausting and entirely too revealing.

"She went back for another man?" Devin asked when they were out of earshot. "Didn't she?"

Caprice nodded. "Why?" She broke her own rule and spoke outside a transaction.

"Because she was muttering Kev over and over while she was with you. And did you see how flushed she was when she woke. Was it good?" He winked at her.

The name rang a bell once he said it. Caprice supposed she heard it while in the memory, but specifics weren't welcome to stay. "Do I speak during...?" she asked.

Devin smiled. He had a nice smile, even and straight, well, except for the color of his teeth. "Nope, you hum."

His answer surprised her. "I hum?"

He nodded. "Yep, it goes like this." Cacophonous sounds escaped his mouth. They vibrated around her ears like soldiers with bayonets stabbing her eardrums. She covered her ears to stop it.

He flashed his smile again. "I'm not that bad, am I?"

Caprice nodded. But it wasn't his voice that was horrendous, although it was bad, the tune inflicted pain.

Devin and Caprice sat quietly for an hour with a handful of customers coming and going. They usually didn't get busy until the end of the night, once the word started getting out. Then people would come in droves. Using her like a divining rod to travel back in time. She would drop into an exhausted coma at the end of the evening and recharge for the next day or the next town, whichever it was. It was a bleak existence that she had come to call life. One day she would escape it and have memories of her own.

At eight, Devin left her alone to grab dinner. Caprice wanted a waffle cake, just like she did almost every other night. It was habit. She twiddled her thumbs as she waited for him to return with food.

"Excuse me," an edgy voice said.

An old man with dark eyes sat in Devin's chair. He startled her, but she tried to conceal her response.

"I didn't mean to scare you," he added, watching her closely. He smelled dusty like a library book printed a hundred years ago. Liver spots spanned his cheeks, his eyebrows grew in errant tufts, and his nose covered a more than ample portion of his face. Eighty felt like a good guess.

"You didn't scare me," she said.

"Okay. Good." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tattered wallet. "How much do you charge?"

Devin always answered that question, not her. She didn't like exchanging money for this. Her thumbs continued to drum the tabletop.

"Did you not hear me, little girl? How much do you charge for memories?" His finger passed under her crudely written sign as he said the word.

"I can't help you."

"You've got a table on the midway and you've been helping people all night." He leaned on his elbow. "You can't pick and choose. I want what you have."

Her heart threw in a couple off-rhythm beats and she swallowed. The way he looked at her with those obsidian eyes made her heart struggle with its simple pattern. She crossed my hands in her lap and retreated into her young shell, hoping her appearance would drive him away or someone would stop to help.

But it didn't dissuade him. He remained, sitting in Devin's chair, staring at her. His elbows perched on the table defiantly.

The table lurched when Devin dropped their dinners on the side, interrupting the tense moment. "Hey, pops, you're in my chair." He tapped the leg of the chair with his foot. "Customers sit on that other side."

She'd never been happier to see Devin.

The old man stood and walked around the table in a slow shuffle, taking a seat on the other side. His gaze never left her.  Even when she looked away, she felt the old man's stare.

"You here for a memory?" Devin asked, setting his food in front of him like a formal dining setting. He pulled the plastic off his fork and laid it on the folded napkin.

The old man nodded. "How much?" He stretched his wallet open wide revealing only one bill inside. "Little miss didn't know."

Devin threw a look to Caprice that she did not understand.

She reached out to touch his arm to tell him that she didn't want to do this, but she stopped herself. Touching him would be bad. Without a memory channel, her touch took more of people's vitality. She didn't want any of his health to fade, she didn't want anyone's to. She would take memories, but not life. She lowered her hand.

"Twenty dollars."

"Perfect. It's all I have." The wrinkled fingers shook as they pulled out that solitary bill and handed it to Devin. "Now what do I do?"

Nausea or fear or some emotion invaded her stomach until she felt out of sorts like she wanted to vomit and explode all at once. She wanted to push the table over and run. She wanted to shower to be clean of this man. But she couldn't.

She slid her hand across the table and opened her fingers wide. "Take my hand."

Bile climbed to the back of her throat when he laid his hand in hers. It was warm and slimy, like the underbelly of a serpent. She fought the shudder that crept through her.

"What memory do you want to visit?" she asked.

"You choose," he said, his gaze never leaving her face.

"Close your eyes," she whispered, trying to keep her mouth as closed as possible to stop herself from throwing up.

She looked over at Devin one last time before she closed her eyes. He shoved a large bite of burger into his mouth, leaving a trail of mustard from his lips to his cheek. He winked once and chewed.

Caprice closed her eyes. And waited until she crawled through the passageway to the old man's thoughts. It was dark and murky. Faces and thoughts didn't surround her. Instead, wails, sobs and screams permeated the dark world she was trying to navigate. But there was no light. There had always been light in the other minds.

She felt her way around this dark maze. Her hands extended, reaching for answers, for guidance like a blind man in a new setting. She recoiled when her hand returned all slimy, wet, and gross. Forward movement stopped. She had to leave the dark place, but she couldn't.

On the table top in reality, his hand clenched her tightly just as she normally did when leading customers to their desired memory. She pulled to free herself, but he would not let go. He held her. Voices shouting words she could not comprehend floated by her.

She knew she couldn't stay in limbo, in the dark channel. She had to move forward and find a memory, just one memory to claim and then she could leave. There should be light here. She continued to search, but found nothing but darkness. No memories stored like pages in a magazine, no organization, nothing but black fear. She could not longer tell if her eyes were opened or closed. She saw nothing.

With one more step in the labyrinth, she fell, tumbling head over heels until she was fully submerged, drowning in a river of sludge. She fought for each breath, pushing forward, part trudging, part swimming to clear the rapids swallowing her.

Each moment more energy drained from her. Revealing memories always took energy, but not like this. Soon, she found herself stumbling onto ground, free of the thick rapids. She paused in the darkened passageway. No longer moving forward. Too tired to press on. A sleep, heavy and demanding reached for her. It eased behind her eyes and made itself comfortable. She started to slip when her hand jolted.

Her eyes flew open, but her heavy head was difficult to keep up.

"Caprice. Caprice," Devin called. "Are you okay? You're...oh my God...you're..."

She faced him and watched his eyes widened with fear.

"What's wrong?" she asked with a shaky voice. The horrid old man was gone. In his place sat a young guy, younger than Devin and almost as young as her.

She reached out to ask him what happened when she saw her hand move, covered with liver spots, wrinkles and knobby knuckles. The childlike hands she had possessed for so long were gone.

The young boy leaned forward and whispered, "You're free now."

### THE BLOOD IS THE LIFE, PT III  
by Samuel Shiro

An amber eye swivelled and darted in its socket frantically, like someone waking from a coma. Specs of blood seemed to float in the gelatinous optic fluids. The eye saw nothing. It was blind here. It could see nothing on the outside, only the searing hot chains for company.

Berildo couldn't touch them. The scorch marks on his exposed skin were lessons learned. The pain in his leg left him, though. It was like the hacked off limb had grown anew. He knew better. Even the Carrion King didn't possess the power to give him his old leg back.

He could hear the sound of a chair or a table shifting in the darkness. So, another interrogator to try to kick the man when he's down. They will not gain anything useful from me. Nothing can outmatch the vile tortures of the priest.

"Hello?" someone said.

Berildo didn't answer.

A face came out of the darkness. It gawped at him. The bright light of the chains gave him a shadowy view at the boyish looks of the intruder.

"Hi, Ber...rildo."

"Berildo." he corrected.

"How you doing?"

He stared back at him with his single eye.

"Well I guess that was a dumb question. Sorry, I meant like what are you in here for?"

"Your masters do not inform you of their business, I take it?"

"Yeah. I'm one of the scouts. They don't say anything to us."

"Then go back to your duties. I have nothing for you. When your masters decide to accept that they will kill me."

The boy who couldn't have been a man long retreated into the dark. A scraping sound and a chair came into his sight. The boy sat down with his elbows resting on his knees. He learned forward like a Victorian gentleman viewing the latest relics brought by explorers from Africa.

"You were human once weren't you?"

"I still am, just with a select few...modifications. I'm not one of the dead, at least not yet."

Why do I speak to this fool? He is only a lackey they sent to squeeze something more from me.

"They wanted you?"

"It seems so. They want to destroy my master. The Carrion King. I've already received introductions with your Lieutenant Franklin. He is a mongrel. He is a mere man with a sword and some minor leadership qualities. The priest is the true power. His weak frame is a guise, and I fell for it. A being of immense power hides underneath. Yet there's still darkness within him."

"Darkness?"

"Gabriel – yes I heard your name – even those who fight for what you see as good are just as fanatic and just as vengeful as the forces led by my master. They're one in the same. The banners are different."

Gabriel felt his throat dry up.

"I...I have to go."

He booted over his chair as he tripped out the door and made his noisy escape from the makeshift prison.

He does not believe a word I say. He will soon learn there was never a difference between the forces of light and the forces of dark. All that changes is the colour of our uniforms.

*     *     *

Lieutenant Franklin watched from his small window. Tiny workers some distance away worked on enlarged Tetris blocks. They were building an implement of execution, at the urgings of the priest. He said the bloody and brutal method was necessary for removing Berildo.

That same man meditated behind him in his favourite moth-eaten armchair. His black robe hid everything except his face and neck. The tuft of rebellious white hair stood proud and defiant on his otherwise bald and wrinkled head.

"Priest, how long do you expect my workers to take with your project?"

He opened his eyes and stretched out his fingers on the desk.

"Until it's finished. This is a necessary task."

"I fail to see how torture and execution by burning is a good use of my troops when we have a war to fight."

"He will burn in righteous fire. Those who perished at Swinestead due to his treachery deserve this much. And your troops will know they can defeat the Carrion King, no matter how terrible his minions might seem."

"Your friend Dragor didn't seem to agree."

The old man carefully observed Franklins face, mulling over his next response.

"Young Dragor does not agree with many things. He does not understand. He has not seen things I have seen. Nevertheless, disagreement never needs to be mean discord. There is no conflict here. I see no problem with a debate over philosophies. We have nothing to gain from Berildo. He's loyal to his master and he would sooner die than help us. For justice and to ensure the Carrion King cannot make him rise again, he must fry in the flames of retribution."

The door opened and in walked one of Franklin's personal guards. The new arrival slammed his boot on the ground and gave a sharp salute.

"Lieutenant, the squad leaders want to know when they can begin the attack on Lake Bradbury."

"We will begin before the execution of Lord Berildo. The men shouldn't see such a site or hear his screams."

The priest allowed himself a small, secret smile.

"Bring them here. We should confirm the final battle plans before we begin."

"In which case, I believe this is my time to depart. Thank you for your time, Lieutenant, and good luck with the battle."

"Wait. I have something I want you to take a look at."

Franklin stooped low under a covered side table in the corner and retrieved a small chest dyed moss green. He took a small key from around his neck and picked out the two pieces of leather his scouts brought in.

"Tell me, can you read these?"

He handed both of the folded leather strips over.

"I see what this is. The language of the Carrion King. A dark language no human tongue can speak aloud. Berildo will only understand a few words with great difficulty."

"So you can't read it?"

"I can't speak it." said the priest, secreting the scrolls within one of his many inner pockets. "You do not have to speak a language to understand it. In time, I should be able to decipher it. Excuse me."

The priest departed into the morning light, only understood by the calmer shade of atmospheric orange.

"Hey!"

Franklin followed him running out the door.

"Stop. You said this was the unspeakable language of the Carrion King."

He nodded.

"Could these scrolls change anything about our attack plans?"

"Of course they could. They could mean the utter annihilation of your forces and the end of your campaign. But waiting until you find out what these commands say could also mean the utter annihilation of your forces and the end of your campaign. Your move, Lieutenant."

*     *     *

Crabtree rushed around the base picking up his scouts from games of cards and barrack beds. He was one of the many squad leaders gathering their teams together. Today was the day of the big push. The day where the forces of the Carrion King would burn in Lake Bradbury and the rest of the surrounding region.

Gabriel spied the completed execution platform in the central courtyard. Men cast interest glances at the structure as they ran from position to position with bows on their backs and swords on their belts.

The structure consisted of two pillars with chains hanging a cage between them. Workers finished digging the small fire pit below it and stripped wood from nearby trees to use as kindling. Berildo remained in captivity within the command centre.

"Everybody in my group to me." Crabtree called.

Four scouts stepped forward with stern and brave looks on their faces.

"Gabriel, I want you to take Mulch and Bran to the east side of the lake. Try to silence any patrols, but don't make it your priority. Your priority is to remain hidden until the main vanguard begins the attack."

"Yes, sir." the four men shouted in unison.

Mulch and Bran formed up behind Gabriel.

"Gardener, look at me. I know obeying your orders was never your thing. That's why you're with me. Do what I do and take that big arm and crush everything with it. Now move out!"

The massive form of Gardener lumbered after Crabtree into the trees.

"You heard him, guys. Get to the edge of the trees and we'll move out together."

Other scouting groups were already disappearing into the trees. They were all attempting to encircle the lake area. The heavily armoured vanguard loitered in the courtyard in various stages of armament.

Gabriel moved quickly through the trees. He occasionally caught sight of another scouting party. They made little noise. The sneaking taskforce communicated through various hand signals.

"Patrols already down," Gabriel confirmed. "We're lagging behind. Get to the little hills and remember what Crabtree said. I have to do something else first. You know the plan."

"Boss –"

"Don't argue with me, Mulch, I have to save someone. Just remember, we're all of the same creed. The only difference is in our colour."

Neither scout seemed to grasp the cryptic message. They moved on ahead. Gabriel turned back towards home.

*     *     *

The vanguard readied themselves. The visitor known as Dragor drilled the soldiers on the battle plan again. Gabriel watched the preparations from afar.

He could see the priest and Franklin having an animated debate in front of the cafeteria. They hadn't brought out Berildo yet. Why am I risking execution to help a monster?

His legs kept carrying him forward. His mind resisted and came up with every logical argument for why this was a bad idea. His body separated from his brain and it guided him around the perimeter of the camp and into the hall where Lord Berildo contemplated death. The lights were still out.

"Berildo." he whispered.

The one amber eye opened again.

"Take this."

Gabriel carefully dropped a small white pill through the chains.

"This. It's a carotid emulsifier. How does a scout find something like this?"

"They give us them for if we get captured. It stops us from saying anything."

"Interesting. And now I understand why this base was never detected. What would you like me to do with this?"

"End yourself. They're going to burn you. Nobody deserves that sort of pain."

"Oh come now, boy. You shouldn't waste your pills. I expected them to burn me. It's standard practice amongst the ranks of the holy. We raise the dead and they obliterate them in the most painful way possible."

"Well, you can do what you want with the pill."

Berildo stared back at him for a few moments.

"Thank you, boy."

He clenched his palm to hide the drug.

"I suppose I should repay you before you go. Take my advice and do what you will with it. Keep your eyes on your leaders. The priest harbours dark powers. He is human, but his fanaticism makes him dangerous. He has the strength to mould and manipulate your cause. Give him an army and you will soon bow to him. He and the Carrion King have more in common than you could ever comprehend."

He paused, not quite taking the advice seriously.

"Goodbye, Berildo. I'll think about what you said."

The former ruler of Swinestead closed his one remaining eye. He said no more as Gabriel started on the road back to battle.

*     *     *

The vanguard marched forward and entered the battle. The sounds of the early skirmishes echoed on the horizon as the scouts appeared from their positions and surprised their enemies. A skeleton force consisting mainly of Franklin's personal guard stayed back to watch the camp and oversee the execution.

"Are you sure this is really necessary?"

"As a holy man, I daresay this is as important as your battle. If you do not want your next enemy to be under the command of a new and improved Berildo this is the only way of ensuring that future does not become your next challenge."

The soldiers wheeled the cage out into the courtyard. The loud rumble of the cart acted as the fallen noble's last herald. He looked noticeably smaller without his armour. Many of the wounds of battle had healed badly to leave him looking deformed.

Two guards helped him out of the cage and hopped him up the small wooden steps into the new cage. It was already chained to the two pillars. The priest and Franklin watched on unmoved.

Berildo held onto one of the iron bars to keep himself steady. The stump started to weep again. A few specs of dark blood began to leak onto the cage floor. The old man stepped forward.

"Lord Berildo. You have been accused, and found guilty of, crimes against the free peoples of England. You are a traitor and slave of the Carrion King. As such," he accepted a lit plank of wood with a small flickering flame on the end. "I give you none of the rights afforded to normal prisoners of war. You are hereby sentenced to death by burning."

Berildo said nothing as he raised his free hand to his mouth and gulped. His executioner jumped backwards as the lord's neck exploded and rained down blood upon him. Specs of the goo soiled his ghostly white hair.

"What the hell was that? He just...went off." one of the soldiers blurted out.

The priest was too busy wiping blood spatters from his cheeks.

"Men, form a guard around the camp. Nobody enters or leaves without my permission." Franklin ordered.

"Nonsense, Lieutenant. Someone gave him that drug. It was a suicide pill. I know it was someone from your ranks. My holy work will not be defiled by any of your dogs. I will have my vengeance. Do you hear me, Franklin?"

He tossed the brand into the stack of wood sitting in the fire pit. The leaping flames soon engulfed the lifeless pile of flesh. The cage turned into a ball of fire.

"Lieutenant, I want the man who did this. I want him bled until he screams out his guilt. He's corrupted. It is clear to me someone has been infected. He could well be working against us in the heart of battle."

"Yes."

"Good, I always suspected you were a man who understood how things are. It makes me happy to know I was not mistaken."

Franklin let out a sigh.

"I'll be in my tent. I'll have to monitor the battle first. I give you authority to handle this investigation and any further action you feel you have to take against our enemies."

He shuffled his feet towards his command centre.

"Faith be with you, Lieutenant."

*     *     *

"Mop 'em up, boys, this armour is like a pressure cooker."

"Yes, sir."

"And remember to search everything before burning. Keep anything which might look useful."

Dragor stared off into the distance. Lots of small fires burned the already long abused ground. Lake Bradbury was in the hands of the rebels and the clean-up operation commenced.

"Dragor, how did your end of the battle go?" Crabtree asked with his helmet in one hand.

"Not bad not bad. Kind of easy really."

"You felt that too? Everyone else reported the same. I don't like it. Things were too easy. There were lots of soldiers, but they went down like they were made of sausages."

"Never complain about that. I saw a battle once in the War of the Charges where a whole unit was pinned down in one trench for nine days. Fifty stuck together until the rest of the guys arrived."

"We should have lost more. Every calculation gave us heavy losses. And it's not because of you two. You can't turn green boys into killing machines in such a short time when half of them have never even held a sword."

They both walked towards the centre of the lake where the dead kept their main base. The ragged shelters were all filled with bottles and other chemistry equipment. Some of the bottles glowed in violent and unnatural shades of colour; sickening oranges and bright alien greens.

"What the hell is this?"

"Things. Madness. Call it what you want. I've been with the rebels for months now and I've never seen this. It's disgusting."

"Yeah but why here?"

"Does it matter? Let them burn the lot and be done with it."

"No." he said firmly. "I saw things almost like this in Swinestead. After we finished Berildo we went into the town hall and it was full of this stuff. I think they were experimenting on something. We don't know what. The old man didn't know either. They didn't have any prisoners locked up."

Crabtree shrugged and summoned a group of salvagers. Whatever was still intact found its way into a box. One grey-looking alchemist took samples of any standing liquids with his large pipet. Everything else soon got a taste for the flames. The land, newly scorched, was in full control of the rebellion and the Carrion King suffered his first real defeat.

Gabriel watched on with his squad as if nothing happened.

### BUBBLEGUM ECSTASY _  
_by Micke Lindquist

Put this story in your mouth and chew it.

Tastes like strawberry, doesn't it?

Now blow a bubble. Come on, that's what it's for.

Chew, blow a bubble - **POP!** \- lick it off your lips, chew again.

See that cute girl on the poster on your ceiling?

Or is it a mirror? Is she next to you on the bed?

Look over. There she is, smiling at your confusion. Her skin is pink. Not white-person-pink. Pink-pink. With thick black goth make-up smeared over it, like a hint of liquorice in all that strawberry sweetness. Lick her if you don't believe me.

"I'm Sweetheart," she says, chewing her gum. "Everyone calls me Sweetheart."

She blows out a huge pink bubble through her black lips.

POP!

"Nice name," you say. "Everyone calls me Milquetoast."

"Wow, she says. "People really are assholes. Sarcasm never loses its flavour, does it?"

"I actually would have preferred something nastier. Anything but that bland, boring nickname. But I guess I am bland and boring."

"You can touch my boobs if you want," Sweetheart says, with an indifferent shrug.

You blush and try to pretend as if you have no idea what she means.

"You've been staring at them since the moment you saw me," she says, licking the gum off her lips. "So, go on and touch them."

Sweetheart's body is wrapped in the kind of waxy, colourful paper that would surround an actual piece of candy. She rips up a tear over her chest, exposing herself. You reach out and gently nudge her breasts.

"I said," she says and grabs your hands. "Touch them."

"They feel a bit weird," you say. "Are they real?"

"Kind of," she says. "My whole body's filled with bubblegum."

She chews loudly with her mouth open, as if she wants the whole world to hear.

"All of it?" you ask.

"All of it." She blows a bubble. "Everything tastes like bubblegum."

"Even your p-"

POP!

"Everything," she says, and winks.

"So, you're made of bubblegum," you say, "but you're still chewing bubblegum? Isn't that a bit redundant?"

"Bubblegum is never redundant."

She takes a deep breath and holds it in, her cheeks swelling to cartoonish bumps. As she appears to suck the air down to her lungs, her breasts expand to big perfect spheres. They look like two pink bubbles stuck to her chest, growing bigger and bigger.

"Stop!" you yell. "They're going to burst!"

Sweetheart exhales and her breasts instantly shrink back to their original size.

"Nice trick," you say.

You lean over and peek in under her wrapper.

"So, is there a collectible sticker under there?"

"Yeah, from your favourite TV cartoon when you were a kid," she says. "The one that had all the cool toys you wanted but never got."

"I got one of the action figures," you say. "But never the big playsets. That damn spoiled rich kid in my class got all of them."

"There's always a spoiled rich kid who gets all of them," she says. "I wonder what it's like to actually be one of those kids. Must be really boring."

Sweetheart tears up more of the wrapper and takes out the sticker underneath. It really is from your favourite cartoon. If you re-watched the episodes now, you would probably realize how shitty it was. Just one long toy commercial.

"I look kind of like a cartoon toy, don't I?" she says.

"Yeah, but I probably wouldn't have bought you when I was a kid," you say. "You're all pink and cute. A real girl's toy. No boy's going to play with a toy called Sweetheart."

"I tried to be cool and dark," Sweetheart sighs. "I wanted to be a real badass goth chick. As you can see, that didn't quite work out."

"Maybe if you had some cool accessories."

"Like a gun and a pack of cigarettes?"

"Cigarettes would be cool," you say. "Girls who smoke look... uh... you know... bad."

"Well, Milquetoast," she says. "Do you want to play with me?"

"I don't know. Are you contagious? The bubblegum stuff, I mean."

"Try it. Kiss me if you dare."

She takes out the bubblegum in her mouth and sticks it on the nightstand. You close your eyes and lean in. As your lips meet, you can feel them stick together. You feel yourself changing. A weird sensation spreads through your body, rippling out from your lips. Even withot looking, you already know what's happening.

"Well, look at you," she says. "Now you're bubblegum too."

She's right. You're mint flavoured, with an aftertaste of flouride. Sugar-free, of course.

"I'm healthy," you sigh. "Healthy and boring."

"Yup," she says. "Good for the teeth. But that's great! We're the perfect couple."

She tears off her wrapper completely, and you taste her. All of her. Small bits of her stick on your lips and hands as you do. Sweet strawberry fills you, turning every tastebud to a sugary paradise. Then comes a slight aftertaste of liquorice, before strawberry overtakes you again.

"How do I taste?" she asks.

"You taste like a Sweetheart," you say, and kiss her breasts.

They blow up and burst and reform, over and over again, making both of you start to laugh. There is a hint of worry in the back of your mind. Maybe the moment is lost? Maybe she'll put her wrapper back on and walk out? Just leave you here with this damn cartoon sticker and a taste of strawberry on your lips? Sweetheart smiles, and it takes a moment for you to figure out if it's sincere or condescending. Your heart feels like a balloon disappearing up into the sky, just after your parents bought it for you.

"Relax, Milquetoast," Sweetheart says.

She puts you in her mouth and blows. You grow bigger and bigger, stretching to an impossible size, and then - **POP !  **

Sweetheart licks you off her lips and smiles.

"That's how you do it," she says.

You twirl around each other, like pink and white candystripes. Where does she end and you begin? Giant pink bubbles block out the sky, hiding the horizon. They all burst in an almost musical pattern. The world's most perfect pop song, with a chorus that won't let go of your brain for months and months. That's all you really need, isn't it? It engulfs you, completely and forever, taste and taste and taste. No matter how much you kiss and lick, she never loses her flavour. One final lick and - **POP! POP! POP! POP!**

"Sweetheart and Milquetoast," she says, after you both calm down. "Now the spoiled rich kid has to buy us in a two-pack."

Lick your lips and smile.

### CLEANING HOUSE  
by Colleen Quinn

We live in constant flux, yet the changes are always surprises. Look at that young man getting off the subway. He lopes limberly up the stairs—three at a time!—and is around the corner and gone before I even gather my things. He can't foresee the day when he will pause in the middle of a flight and hold onto the railing until he gets his breath back.  Alanna is like that boy. She has long, thin tan legs and just has to put on cut-off shorts, flip-flops, and a tiny, twinkling toe ring to turn every head. No such luck for me. All the pointless hours of primping make no difference any more. My thighs are heavy and pale; white and pink and prickly like the backs of sows. I am now old enough and unattractive enough to be virtually invisible.

Alanna is my niece, daughter of my brother and his third wife, and I am her least favorite aunt. She makes me feel as old as the dinosaurs, the earth uneasy under my every lumbering step. We have nothing at all to talk about, yet she comes here every Tuesday afternoon, at her father's insistence, to help me with my things.

I have rather a lot of things and a tricky sort of apartment, with long, crowded hallways and a convoluted layout. It sometimes seems as if my apartment births additional rooms while I'm out, and like children, they don't all turn out quite as one would hope. Behind one closet door, for instance, there is a window, just a window, and the view doesn't match any of the others. The seasons are just slightly ahead, or the time of day is wrong, so the light seems strange. I don't know what would happen if I opened it.

I've traveled quite a bit for my work, which people assume to be in the sciences somehow. It's not exactly a lie; there is certainly some science in it. You know how it is, you pick up something here and something there, you can always find nice people to ship things for you, and one day you wind up in your living room, trying to explain a collection of shrunken heads, gathered together like a rope of garlic bulbs, while your horrified niece mutters the word "freak" in an unkind fashion. It's not that it hurts more to hear ugly words from a pretty mouth, but it is jarring, it causes a sort of dissonance. I will have to remember that.

Alanna wears her hair in a great bunch on top of her head, emphasizing her tallness. It's all held together by some random object stabbed through the whole mess, pencils, chopsticks, even a binder clip once. She's pretty enough that people find her occasional eccentricity charming, rather than lazy or odd.

"You don't have to understand it, my dear," I chide, relieving her of the heads. "You only have to catalogue it. Assign it a number and a category and move on." I gesture with one hand over my living room, emphasizing just how much work we have to do. My books alone will take several days as I have many rare and interesting volumes.

 She picks her way through it all with her little clipboard, step by step, unaware that she is being guided along a very particular path. The words and symbols woven into the carpet are hard to make out in this light, and even if she noticed them, they wouldn't trouble her. It's a sort of dance, you see.

My brother, Francis, has convinced himself that I am rich. My imperious attitude, my unreasonable demands, my lack of interest in the family, these are things he thinks only the rich can get away with. I had to laugh when I figured out what he was up to.  He has sent in his pretty pouting daughter, either to charm me so she may feature prominently in my will, or to search out hidden treasure, the gems hidden in all my junk. He's completely wrong, of course. My work has never paid especially well, although there have been other benefits.

Alanna, although beautiful, is not charming. Not to me. I know so much about her.  She has many boyfriends, but no one steady. She will attend college in the fall, not a first-rate one, but good enough to launch a new career. She will major in business administration, with a minor in fashion marketing, terms which hold no meaning for me whatsoever. We live and learn. She is so specific and so determined! It may be the only thing we have in common: I also knew exactly what I wanted to be when I was her age. I did it, too.

I remember that Francis tried to talk me out of it. When our parents died, he assumed that he had some authority over me. He's the red-faced sort and his lips pooch out like a bulldog's before he speaks. "The reason you can't become a witch, Barbara, is because there is no such thing." Well, case closed. Never mind then.

Unfortunately for him, there is such a thing. There aren't many of us and we are not social types, but a clever and determined person will find the path if she looks hard enough. My mentor was Gregor Quade. He was old when I met him, a gaunt chain smoker who rarely left his apartment—this apartment, to save you the guesswork—but he knew what I was, even squinting through the fish eye in his front door when I stood on his welcome mat.

"How did you find me?"

I put my hand flat on his closed door and he did the same on his side and we could feel the heat passing through the wood and steel. No other words were necessary and he let me in. Yes, we were lovers, and he taught me everything; his clever, chemical-stained fingers changed my life. Sometimes people just like to be asked.

Maybe that's why it is so easy for me to target Alanna. She represents all the young and careless people who will never ask me anything. I'm not young and absolutely no one is interested in the knowledge and experience I've acquired. Believe me, I could tell some stories if I wanted, if the right audience ever knocked on my door. I could die some day and it would all be gone.

No, I doubt Alanna thinks about me at all, except as the choremistress who spoils every Tuesday. But that will change. After today, I expect she'll think about me a lot.

As part of the prep work, I bought a package of chewing gum. I removed the foil wrapper and put a stick in my mouth, standing in front of the bathroom mirror to see if I had the look down. It was so oppressively sweet and minty, I spat it out and had to force myself to try again. My mouth is large and broad with strong yellow teeth; Alanna's mouth is a little red rosebud. You just chew and chew and chew and nothing happens. How boring. But everyone looks like a cow with gum in her mouth; now I know that this won't be what gives me away.

Finally, we reach the back bedroom and the last door we have to open. The dirty windows face west, and the afternoon light pours in. It's the brightest room in the apartment, locked for year upon year. Unlike all my other rooms, it is practically empty, with only a carpet and a massive ebony wardrobe.

"Huh," said Alanna. "What is this thing?"

"It is a wardrobe, for clothes and things." It's true, she might never have seen one; they are long out of fashion.

"I don't like it."

"My dear, you have not liked any of my little things. There is no difference between the wardrobe and anything else you've seen today."

"No, I don't believe you, and I really, really don't like it. What's in it?"

I am not always able to contain my sense of mischief. I sometimes pretend to be frailer and more forgetful than I am. "Oh, I couldn't possibly recall. But that's what we're here for, isn't it? Open the door."

She hesitates, her hand hovering over the crystal doorknob, then summons her courage. The door opens with a satisfying haunted house creak and she peers inside.

"How come it's so light in this room and so dark in there?"

I can't answer her because I am already speaking the necessary words. Just one firm push in the small of her back and I lock the door behind her.

"Hey!"

I didn't expect it to be easy and it isn't.  She pounds on the door and screams and swears and I have to keep my concentration and not miss a word or a step. I know she'll stop as she grows weaker and more frightened. I am frightened myself. I've only seen this ritual performed once and I have no idea what will happen if it goes wrong. Gregor was old when I met him, but he left a much younger man. I can still remember the sudden chill as he dropped the old iron key to the house between my breasts and favored me with one last devilish grin before he sauntered away forever. I miss him still, whoever he is now.

The full transformation takes all night. Baggy flesh melts off my bones like candlewax, my spine straightens, and my hair becomes long and thick and curly. The thing in the wardrobe is quiet and I slip the house key into the back pocket of my shorts, which are so tight, you can probably make out the key's curlicue carvings through the fabric if you look close. What a joy it is to skip down the stairs out to the street, the ear buds of Alanna's iPhone hard and unfamiliar in my ears. I flex my toes, visible to the world for the first time in decades, and her toe ring sparkles in the dawn. I'm going home, home to Francis. Do you think he will recognize me?

### I WAS SITTING BEHIND SOME BUSHES WITH MY ARMS WRAPPED AROUND MY KNEES  
by Keith Lewis

 I was sitting behind some bushes with my arms wrapped around my knees. I just wanted it to stop; I didn't think I could take any more. And then there was a woman there, bending down and touching me on the arm, telling me it's alright, she's found me; it's okay now. But I didn't feel alright. I didn't feel alright at all. She held her hand out to me and helped me to my feet. She said that now that she'd found me, we should hold each other tight; that we should bring our lips together to show how much we'd missed each other; to show each other what it meant. I wanted to believe the things she told me - to feel the way she wanted me to feel – but I couldn't;  I was too... It was my whole body still – rushing through me like a... in my belly and my legs; through my fingers and up into my brain.

She moved closer and held her body next to mine. Her groin rubbed against me as she wrapped her leg around my thigh, and her hands stroked my back as she moved them up and down. But we couldn't stay like that for long; it was the smell – all the time we'd spent there... there was rain sometimes to clean you, but it was hot and you'd be running around and hiding, having to concentrate all the time. And your breath, as well – the things you... rotten fruit; roots and plants you'd dig up out the ground, and you'd find them in your teeth still later and you couldn't get them out.

So we broke away and she asked me if I was hungry. I looked down at my stomach. I was starving. I hadn't realised it before. She led me to some trees and pointed at the fruit hanging down. We climbed the trees to pick the fruit and ate it there as we balanced on the branches above the ground. Then she showed me to some other trees where there were nuts instead of fruit. She handed me a pouch and told me to put the nuts inside. When we'd picked as many as we could carry, we climbed back down and emptied our pouches onto the ground. She told me to wait while she went to look for a stone. When she'd found one, she smashed the shells open so we could eat what was inside.

After we'd finished eating, she asked if I was ready to go back home. I asked her what she meant.

'Well now that I've found you, we can go back home again,' she said.

I asked her where her home was.

'Well the village, of course! You know where we live!'

And then I remembered. 'But that's where I ran away from! I ran away because I didn't like it there!'

'We thought you'd got lost,' she said.

We went for a walk to see if it'd help us work out what to do. After we'd been walking for a while, we started to hear voices mixing in with the sound of the insects screeching and the bird and monkey cries. The woman who'd found me put her fingers to her lips and signalled for me to get down. We stayed where we were until we were sure they weren't getting any closer and then she asked me if I wanted to go and find out who was there.

We crawled along the jungle floor and followed the sounds. As we drew closer to them, the plants and bushes started to thin out. I started to smell burning - wood and something sweet. Ahead of me, through the branches, there was a ring of tents around a burnt out patch of ground. In the middle there were some carts and caravans, and between the carts and the tents, some piles of wood and food.

The woman who'd found me motioned for me to stop. We stayed where we were and watched as the people there moved around between the carts and the different piles that they'd made. And then, after a while, she started pulling on my arm, saying we should go over to them - she knew who they were. I said no, I didn't want to; they... I didn't know about them; they looked like the people from before - the ones I'd ... She put her hand on my arm and said we didn't have to if I didn't want to, but what were we going to do instead? I told her we could do what we were doing before, when we... I didn't know what we were going to do. Then she nudged me on the shoulder. 'Look, they've seen us,' she said, 'those two people - we're going to have to go and speak to them now; they'll think we're spying on them otherwise!'

She took me by the hand and led me through the bushes to the people she'd seen. She asked them what they were doing there. They said they were out there hunting for food. Then they asked her what we were doing and she told them what'd happened and how she'd come out into the jungle to look for me. They wanted to know how long we'd been out there for. We looked at each other. We weren't sure. So then they asked us if we were hungry and if we wanted any food. I told them we'd been picking fruit and nuts for most of the day and said that we were fine. They laughed and said they'd go and get something to fill us up for a while.

So we stayed where we were and they came back with some bread and meat for us to eat. I asked them where the meat had come from.

'It's from a pig we caught this morning,' they said.

I told them I didn't want it; that they shouldn't be hurting the animals like that; that they should leave them in peace instead; that they're happy - happier than we are, anyway, and it's not fair to keep chasing them and making them scared all the time. They laughed, and I ate the bread they'd given me. After we'd finished our meal, the woman who'd found me suggested that we stay at the camp for a while. I told her I didn't want to and she asked me why. I wasn't sure why. I just didn't feel comfortable with them there.

When it started getting dark, they gathered some sticks and they lit a fire. I asked her where we were going to go when we left the camp.

'We don't have to go anywhere,' she said.

'But I already told you I don't want to stay here with them.'

'We don't have to. We can find a place to build a home in the jungle somewhere. We don't have to stay here and we don't have to go home either, if you don't want to.'

'But what happens when all the fruit runs out and there's nothing left to eat? We'll have to move then, won't we - we'll starve otherwise!'

'We can keep animals and grow vegetables like these people do,' she explained.

So the next morning, we left the camp and went to look for a place to make a home. After a while, we came across another patch of burnt out ground. We started looking around for things to build a place to live. I picked up some sticks and broken branches and started putting them in a pile. Then I tried to snap the fronds off some of the palm trees so we could make a roof out of them. It wouldn't work, though; they were too strong. The woman who'd found me tried to help, but they were too strong for her too, so she told me we were going to have to find some sharp stones and try to get them off that way. It still didn't work, though - the stones weren't sharp enough to cut through - so she said we'd have to go back and find the men we'd met to see if they could show us what to do.

We found them at the camp, still; they'd decided to stay where they were for a few more days because the hunting was so good there. The woman who'd found me told them what'd happened and asked them if they had any tools we could use. They said we could take whatever we needed and showed us some of the things they used when they were making shelters for themselves. They asked if we wanted them to come with us to help.

We led them back to the place where we were trying to build our home, and when the light started to fade and we'd done everything that we needed to do, they gave us some rice and vegetables they'd brought along with them to eat. When we'd finished eating, we rested for a while and the woman who'd found me sat and chatted with the men and thanked them for all the help they'd given us.

After a while, the men got up and said they had to go. They kissed the woman who'd found me on the cheek and told her that if there was anything else we needed then all she had to do was ask; they wouldn't be going anywhere for a few more days at least. They looked over towards me and shook their heads. 'You can always come with us if you want to,' they told her, 'you don't have to stay here with him.'

She shook her head and told them they didn't understand. They shrugged and started to make their way back to their camp.

The next morning, we got up and made some breakfast out of the rice and vegetables left over from the night before. When we'd finished eating, the woman who'd found me showed me some seeds the men had given her. 'We can use these to grow wheat and vegetables so we don't have to keep moving around all the time!'

We went outside to clean the bowls we'd been eating from and it started to rain. We hurried back inside and stared out into the jungle as the water poured down through the leaves. When the storm had passed, I asked her if she wanted to go and look for some fruit again.

'Okay,' she said, 'but first I want to plant those seeds I was showing you.'

We started digging up the ground with some sticks and sharp stones tied together that the men had brought along. When we'd finished, we sprinkled the seeds in the furrows and then covered them back up again. I asked her how long it would take for them to grow. She said she wasn't sure, but she was too hungry to wait, so we should go and find some fruit like I'd suggested so we'd have something to keep us going until the vegetables had grown and there was wheat to make bread.

We picked enough fruit to last for the next few days, but when we came to the end of our supplies, the seeds we'd planted still hadn't come through. The woman who'd found me started getting worried. I asked her if they were supposed to take this long. She said she'd didn't think so – something must've gone wrong.

We decided to try to find the people we'd met at the camp again to see if they could show us what we'd done wrong. But when we got to their camp, there was nothing there anymore; all the carts and the tents had gone. We looked around until we saw a path leading out of the clearing where it looked like they'd chopped down some branches to make a passage for the caravans they were travelling in. We decided to follow it to see if it'd take us to them.

We walked for most of the morning, and then we came out onto another patch of cleared land. There were three paths leading out of it on the other side. We looked down them to see if we could work out which one they'd taken, but we couldn't tell, so the woman who'd found me said we were just going to have to pick one and see where it took us to. She asked me to choose, but I didn't want to, so she pointed to the middle one and said follow me.

We kept an eye out for the men but we couldn't see any sign of them, though. Then, after a while, we came to a fork in the road. The woman who'd found me asked me which way I thought we should go. I told her I wasn't sure. She said she wasn't sure either, but it was my turn to choose, anyway. I started walking down the path that forked off to the side. It was fine to begin with, but then the plants and bushes started getting thicker and we had to break off some of the branches to get through. The further we went, the thicker it got and we realised it couldn't have been the way the men had come after all, so we decided to turn back and try the other way instead.

We looked behind us, but we couldn't see the path anymore. The woman who'd found me asked me what we were going to do. I didn't know. We looked around. The bushes looked a little thinner to our left, so we decided to go that way to see if it'd take us back to the path.

After a few minutes, it started getting harder to make our way through again.

"Let's go back." the woman who'd found me said.

I asked her which way was back - the branches must have closed back in on themselves again. We were starting to panic, so we held each other for as long as we could take each other's stench, and when we'd calmed ourselves down a little we carried on.

We walked for a long time – for most of the afternoon, probably - and then, finally, we broke through to some clearer ground. We looked around. We didn't know where we were. It was getting dark and we were hungry, but we didn't have any food so we cleared some space on the ground so we could sit down and rest for a while. I felt my eye-lids getting heavier as soon as I sat down. I was more tired than I'd thought. I laid down on my side and closed my eyes, then listened to the noises that the jungle made until I started drifting off to asleep.

I woke up to see the woman who'd found me sitting on a log next to three men. There were spears and bows and arrows lying next to them on the floor and they were eating something out of wooden bowls. The woman who'd found me asked if I'd slept alright and introduced me to the three men – they were from the camp we'd been to before. They passed me a bowl and explained that they'd only bumped into us by chance. They'd been chasing away a tiger they'd caught stalking them. They'd already chased it through the clearing we were sitting in once before already. We were lucky they hadn't chased it right into our path.

When we'd finished our food, the men offered to take us back to their village with them so we could pick up some supplies before they showed us how to get back home. When we got there, the woman who'd found me explained how the seeds we'd planted still hadn't grown. They said we had to be patient - it took a long time; they wouldn't start coming through until it was autumn again. So then they gave us some fruit and some bread to take with us and some yeast for when our wheat finally grew, and showed us which way we had to go.

And then later on, we were... It must've been much later – we must've... The wheat and the vegetables had grown – there were... I was looking at all the food that we had and telling the woman who'd found me how there was enough to last a whole year but it wouldn't keep though; it'd start going mouldy before we could eat it all - in a few days, probably, and then what'd we do? She said she didn't know. I asked her what'd happen if we planted the seeds at different times instead of altogether, even though it was too late for that now; we couldn't wait that long. She said she wasn't sure, but she thought maybe they'd only grow at a certain time in the year, when the... We'd have to go and find somebody to talk to about it - the people we'd met at the camp again if we could find them – they'd know; they always had food.

So then we must've gone there and found them, or at least somebody that knew what they were doing, because we were back at our home again and I was sitting inside on a chair with a bowl of grain and some yeast in my hands while the woman who'd found me was laughing and smiling as she talked to some men in the garden, outside. I was crushing the grains with a... it was made out of rock or something and it was dull and wide at one end so it could flatten the grain. I kept pounding at it until I'd turned the grain into flour, then I mixed the flour with the yeast so it'd turn into dough.

And then, when I'd finished doing that, I... I wasn't sure what to do – I must've... I started eating it, even though I... It was hard to chew it all down properly – I had to break off little bits and swallow them down one at a time. And then I started feeling really bad. My stomach felt like it was getting bigger - like someone had pumped it full of air – and I looked at my arms and my legs; at my stomach that was aching and... like someone stabbing me in my side; at my hands and my feet; and I could see myself swelling up – getting bigger and bigger all the time. And then the fear I sometimes had started to come back to me, and I... I didn't know what was happening to me; I couldn't think straight anymore.

And then the woman who'd found me came back into the room. She asked me what'd happened and I told her what I'd done – how I'd eaten some of the dough I was making and now I... I didn't know what was happening now. She looked at the bowl I was holding in my hands. 'But you're not supposed to eat it like that; you're supposed to put it in the oven first,' she said.

'But I was really hungry,' I told her. 'I couldn't wait that long.'

I asked her what was going to happen. She looked at me. 'You're going to die,' she said.

*     *     *

And then, later on, I was... It was somewhere else. I was sitting in a forest with my back against a tree. I was tired and I was hungry, but it was more than that; I was feeling really bad again – the same way that I'd felt before. And then there was a group of men standing in front of me asking me who I was. They wanted to know what I was doing there; if I realised where I was. I wasn't sure what to say to them; I didn't know what was going on. So then they turned away and started talking to each other. When they'd finished talking, they turned back round and told me to come with them.

They helped me to their camp and showed me to a log seat next to a fire. There was a woman there. She reminded me of the woman from before. I think she was the same one, even though she didn't look the same. I think she was the same one, too, as when I was sitting in the cave watching the rain bounce off the rocks as the sky crashed all around me and the lightning burnt the ground; when I was sitting there scared and all alone, not knowing if it'd ever end, after I'd been... I'd been on my own for too long – that's what it'd been - I couldn't remember a time when I wasn't alone; or at least not... how it felt, anyway – having somebody else there you could... when it wasn't just me and my own mind. And then she was standing in front of me, outside in the rain. She asked if she could come inside, only she didn't speak to me – we had to use our hands and our faces to show each other what we wanted to say.

And when the storm was over she didn't want to leave, so I made a space for her at the back of the cave and showed her what I did each day. I drew pictures of the beasts that tried to kill me and showed her how I used their skins to keep warm and their bones to cut their flesh up so I could burn it on the fire for food.

And then, the next day, we were out collecting wood and the rain came down again. I showed her to a shelter I'd made with some branches and the skin from one of the beasts that I'd killed, and she put her arms around me and rested her head on my chest while we waited for it to stop.

When the clouds had blown over, we took the wood back to the cave and made a fire. I had some meat left over from one of the beasts I'd killed a few days before, so I cut it up and started cooking it over the fire. When the meat was ready, I offered the woman a piece. She shook her head and went to the back of the cave. When she came back, she had two thick roots in her hands. She used the sticks I'd held the meat up with to balance them over the fire. When they were ready, she cut one of them open and started eating what was inside. She gave the other one to me to do the same.

And then, a few days later, I showed her a rock I sometimes used to finish off the beasts. I lay on the ground and motioned for her to bring it down on me. She shook her head. She pointed at the rock, then pointed at herself and shrugged her shoulders. I shrugged my shoulders back and motioned for her to bring the rock down on herself. She shook her head again and turned away.

I ate the food the men had given me and looked at the woman sitting next to me on the log. I realised she was the same one, too, as when we were standing in the kitchen one night having an argument. She was telling me how unhappy she was - how no matter what she did, she could never be free. I didn't know what to say to her; I couldn't understand what she meant. I told her I was sorry, but what did she expect me to do? She said she didn't expect me to do anything, but that didn't make it any better, though. So I asked her what she was getting upset with me for then. She told me she didn't know; that it was because it wasn't supposed to be like this – any of it – that it meant this wasn't what she'd thought it was going to be; that I wasn't who she thought I was going to be.

And then I started to get upset as well, and told her she was being stupid – that I did everything I could to make her happy; that I let her do whatever she wanted to - a lot more than most men, anyway.

'But that's the whole point, isn't it,' she said. 'You let me do whatever I want to! You think you're being really good to me! You think you're really generous and kind! But I shouldn't have to ask your permission – that's what you don't seem to understand!'

So then I asked her what she wanted to do if she was so unhappy with me. I asked her if she thought she'd be happier if we were divorced.

'And what'd they do if you divorced me?' she asked. 'You know what'd happen to me then!'

When I'd rested for a while, they asked me how I felt. I said I was feeling much better and thanked them for the food. Then one of them said, 'Well seeing as we've just helped you, how would you like to help us now in return?'

I asked them what they wanted me to do. They lifted me to my feet and started leading me away. The woman who was sitting next to me stood up as well. 'No! Don't go with them!' she shouted. 'You don't know where they're taking you! You don't know what they want you to do!'

I turned around. 'It's okay,' I told her. 'They helped me earlier when I was hungry and now it's my turn to help them.'

She shook her head and started talking to the men. 'So what's going to happen after he's helped you?' she asked them. 'Are you going to let him go?'

We kept on walking until we came to a gap in the forest where a group of men were standing in a line, pulling on a rope. They found a space for me in the line and showed me what I had to do. It was hard work, and I was pulling for a long time. After a while I started feeling really tired again - like I was going to collapse if I didn't sit down - so I left my place in the line and went to look for the men who'd brought me there.

I looked all around for them, but I couldn't see them anywhere, so I walked over to a man dressed in uniform who looked like he was in charge. I told him about the two men who'd brought me there and how I was ready to stop now because I was tired. He didn't seem to hear me to begin with, but then he stopped what he was doing and lowered his head to look at me. He told me to get back in the line and stop complaining. He was shouting at me. 'But you don't understand,' I told him, 'I've already done everything that I said I would and now I'm tired and it's time for me to go!' He moved his hand to his whip and I realised that he wasn't listening to me. I looked around. Behind the line of men, I could see a path leading back into the forest. I turned away and started to run.

*     *     *

And then, after that... I got away from them, I suppose. I must've done, because I was... It was later on, and there'd been a storm, I think. I was watching the drops of water as they fell from the leaves and breathing in the damp, heavy, forest air. I was really hungry. I needed to go and find something to eat. I tried to get up, but I was too tired, so I rested my back against the trunk of the tree I was sitting under and let my eyelids fall shut. I started to drift off into sleep or else something quite like it, but then I felt a hand on my arm and I opened my eyes. There was a woman there, standing in front of me and asking if I was okay. I told her I wasn't sure. She helped me to my feet and told me I should come with her.

She took me to her house and gave me some water to drink. Then she led me to her bed and told me to lie down and rest while she made some soup for me. When I'd finished the soup and the bread that she gave me, she asked if I wanted to stay. I didn't know what she meant to begin with, but then she sat down next to me and started stroking my face. She said that I could stay for as long as I wanted to and started undressing me. She lay me down on the bed and pushed her tongue into my mouth as she rubbed her hands over my chest. Then she stood up and let her clothes fall to the floor. She said that she could make me happy if I wanted her to. I was starting to feel happy already – happier than I'd felt in a long time. I nodded my head and she lay down on top of me and started kissing me again.

I stayed with her like she'd asked me to and we were happy for a while. We grew vegetables in the garden and kept goats to make milk and cheese, and then once a week we'd go into the town to get all our supplies. But then something happened: she started throwing up in the mornings and she was hungry all the time. I asked her what was wrong, but she didn't know. And then her stomach started growing and we realised. We should've realised all along. We'd seen it with some of the other women when we went into town, and we'd seen how the babies would come out afterwards, as well. It wasn't all of them, but they'd already be dead or else they'd die while it was happening, or a little later on. And sometimes it was the mother, not the baby; or both of them at the same time. And you'd see the men, outside, when the midwives told them; their children, as they waited for them, too.

So we went to see the midwife, and when we got back she asked me what was wrong. She wanted to know why I wasn't happy like she was - why I wasn't excited about us having a baby to look after and teach about the world. I asked her what'd happen if the same thing happened to her that'd happened to all the other women that we'd seen.

 'What other women?' she wanted to know.

'The women we saw with the midwife. Can't you remember them?'

'No! I don't know what you're talking about,' she said.

'Somebody always dies, don't they; it happens almost every time!'

'But that's not true, though; somebody doesn't always die!'

'So you can promise that you'll be okay, then – that you won't die like all the rest of them do?'

 'No, of course I can't!' she said.

And then, when the time came and it happened, there was a problem like I'd said there'd be. I was sitting in the next room, listening to her scream, and the midwife came and told me she needed to speak to me. She said the baby wasn't coming out how it was supposed to and she was going to have to stick something inside her to try to get it out. She told me she didn't think she'd be able to save both of them, but she could try to make sure one of them was okay. She asked me who I wanted her to save.

And then a little later on, the midwife came out to speak to me again. She said she'd tried to save the baby's mother like I'd told her, but it didn't look like she was going to make it after all. She said the baby was doing much better than she'd expected, though. She asked me if I wanted to come in and see them – the baby's mother might not have long left to live.

I went into the bedroom. She was lying on her back with her head turned towards the door. Her face was white and her hair lay pasted across her forehead and her cheek. The sheets were wet with blood and sweat and the room smelt stale, like death. She wasn't screaming anymore. She asked me to come over to her and held out her hand. I took it into mine.

'You're going to die, aren't you,' I said. 'I told you something bad'd happen to you, didn't I.'

She nodded her head and looked down towards the bottom of the bed. The midwife was holding the baby over a bowl of water and using a damp cloth to wipe the blood away.

'Promise you'll look after the baby for me,' she said.

I followed her eyes down the bed to the midwife and the baby. 'I don't want to.' I said.

'But you've got to - it's our baby; it hasn't got anybody else.'

I told her I didn't care. 'It'll be just like before again, won't it, if you aren't here. It'll be like how it was before I met you - when I was all on my own and I didn't want to be alive anymore.'

She started to cry. 'You've got to,' she told me. 'You've got to look after our baby; it'll die otherwise.'

So I promised to look after the baby for her and held her hand until all the strength had gone out of it and it was stiff and cold.

And then later on, I was sitting in front of some bushes with the baby in between my knees. I was feeling the way I'd told her I was going to. I was feeling the same way as before, when I was wondering around the forest, not knowing what was going to happen to me; not knowing if I'd ever see another person again; when all I could think about was how bad I felt and whether it was ever going to end. And as I was sitting there, she came back to me. She asked me what I was doing there. She was angry with me. 'You promised you'd look after our baby, but you're just sitting there - look at you! You need to go and get some food, but you're not going to though, are you! You're just going to let yourself starve and you're going to let our baby starve with you!'

*     *     *

And then, after that, something must've happened again, because I was walking around the edge of the forest and I was stopped by another group of men. They wanted to know what I was doing out in the forest all by myself. I told them that I lived there. They looked at each other like they didn't understand. They said that they'd take me back into town with them so I could get a good meal inside me and rest for a while. I said I didn't want to, though. I told them I was happy there, living in the forest with my friends. They asked me who my friends were. I told them I'd show them and led them to the shelter that we'd made.

When we arrived at the shelter, nobody was there, so we went further into the forest to see if we could find them anywhere. After a few minutes I heard laughter and a Cah Cah Cah sound. We followed the noises to a stream we used to play by sometimes. There was a willow tree by its side. Some of my friends were climbing up the trunk and then hanging from its branches before they dropped down into the water below. Behind them, to their left, one of my other friends was kneeling on the ground, rubbing mud into his chest as two of the women danced around him and played with his hair. And then, a little further back and to the left of them, we could see another group, naked too, apart from the soldiers' hats and jackets they had on, marching up and down as they tried to make music from the flutes and broken fiddles that they held in their hands. I gestured towards them.

'But you can't stay here with them,' they told me, 'they're not right – look at them!'

'I don't care,' I said. 'We can do whatever we want here - we're happy and we're free!'

They wouldn't listen to me though. 'But you can be free in the town too!' they said. 'Just come back with us and you'll see!'

I asked them what I'd do there if I went back with them; who I'd live with and where I'd stay.

'You can stay with one of us - with one of our families. You can work in the fields and help us gather in the crops.'

'And what do we do when the crops have been gathered?' I asked them. 'Do we share them all out among ourselves?'

'Well we share some of them out,' one of them laughed, 'enough to stop us from going hungry, anyway; but then the rest of them go to the nobleman, of course!'

'So if I go back with you, it means I won't be free anymore, then!'

They asked me what I meant.

'Well if you spend all you time working for the nobleman instead of for yourselves, then it means that you're not free, doesn't it! It means that you're somebody's slave!'

They told me they didn't understand. 'But what else can we do?' they asked me. 'If we don't give the nobleman what he asks for, then he won't protect us anymore. And if we haven't got anyone to protect us, then what'll happen to us when the soldiers and the robbers come back again?'

And then they started to get angry with me. 'It's not right,' they said, 'you being here with these people. We know who you are. We've seen what you can do!'

But I wouldn't go with them still, and so they started pulling at my arm, saying, 'Come on - don't be stupid - you're not staying here with them! Come back with us where you belong!'

So then I realised that I'd made a really big mistake; that I should never have brought them there; that something bad was going to happen and it was all because of me. I pulled myself away and started running to my friends. I told them what'd happened - about the men and what they'd said to me – how they were in danger now and we had to leave. But they wouldn't listen to me though. They told me not to worry; it was okay – they always found them eventually, anyway. So we stayed where we were and when they caught up with us one of them grabbed me by the arm. He tried to make me go back with them like they'd said they were going to do before.

And then there was a woman there, trying to get in the man's way. She was shouting at him, saying, 'Leave him alone! He's already told you he doesn't want to go with you!' But he wouldn't listen to her though. He pushed her to the ground and grabbed me by the arm again. I started twisting around and pulling at his fingers until I broke free. Then I turned around and started running into the forest as fast as I could go.

I looked behind me to see how far away they were, and then I stopped. They weren't following me anymore. They were beating my friends with sticks and kicking them in their stomachs and their heads – the woman who'd tried to help me, too. I felt an ache in my stomach and I started to cry. Then I turned around and started running again.

*     *     *

And then afterwards, when I... or else it was before, maybe, because I was sitting... it was the jungle, but it wasn't... it felt different somehow. I was sitting on the ground, watching the monkeys swinging through the trees. I was remembering something that had happened earlier on. It was much earlier on. I was standing in the middle of the desert. There was a tree straight ahead of me and a wooden gate to my right. Something was happening: I think I'd found a way to get out. And then a man appeared. He started talking to me. He said he knew where I was going and he wanted to go there too. He said he knew that I could help him if I wanted to. I told him that I wasn't sure what he meant, but he told me not to worry; he'd show me what I had to do.

So I did what he told me, and after a few minutes I started feeling really tired. My muscles were getting heavier and heavier – like they were pulling me down through the ground – and then the heaviness turned to darkness, and a wave of terror washed over me as I collapsed onto the ground.

I opened my eyes and looked around. I could see the tree in front of me still, and the wooden gate to my right. And then I saw the man, to the left of me, leaning on a cane. I asked him where we were. He smiled. 'Where do you think we are? Isn't this is where you wanted to go?'

And then I felt an ache in my stomach and my bowels start to move, even though they shouldn't have ... I shouldn't have been able to feel anything at all. And then the feeling in my bowels got stronger, so I squatted down on the floor. I let my muscles relax, and watched my shit fall out onto the sand. I looked up at the man. He looked back at me and smiled. Then his smile turned to laughter and I began to understand. I walked over to the tree and started climbing up its trunk. I climbed for a long time - until I was right at the top and the man and the wooden gate looked like little dots below - and then I threw myself onto the ground.

I could feel myself starting to dissolve – like I was leaving again. But then I stopped. There was something pulling me away. And then I heard a noise, like something crashing, and I held my hands up to my ears. And then a voice, loud and terrible, started shouting at me, telling me that's not how it happens, I can't get out of it that way. And then the voice stopped and I felt tired again. My eyes closed. I must've...

And when I came to I was standing in the desert still with the tree in front of me and the wooden gate to my right. I looked at the man. He was sitting cross-legged, balanced on the ball of his cane. He smiled at me - the same smile he'd given me before – and then his smile turned into a grin and he got off his cane and started to run. He ran quicker than I'd ever seen anybody run - quicker than it was possible; than any... so he was already past the horizon before I could ask him who he was or what he'd done. And then it was just me, the wooden gate and the tree again and not being able to remember where I was going or how to get there anymore.

I moved a stick from underneath me and wrapped my arms around my knees. The monkeys had gone and the light was starting to fade. And then there was a woman there, standing in front of me. She bent down and put her arm around my shoulder. She asked me what was wrong. I didn't know what to say to her. I felt terrible again. She asked me if I remembered her. I told her I didn't know. She kissed me on the cheek and told me not to look so worried; she'd found me - it was okay now. But it didn't feel okay. It didn't feel okay at all.

### MALE PREGNANCY  
by Zachary Houle

1.

Harold tiptoed onto the digital scale in his high-rise apartment bedroom, silently and secretly hoping the numbers would be down some from yesterday. The digital readout spat out otherwise: he was up about half a pound. He'd put on a good fifteen pounds or so – thank God for his loose, baggy clothes – in the last three months. Since the last time he'd had sex. That's what it had to account for, right? The tiny thing growing inside of him. He wasn't even sure if it was a boy or a girl yet, and he wasn't sure if a sex would be determined only three months in. He wasn't well versed in these matters. Pregnancy is something that women should only have to endure. As a man, he felt so out of it for the most part, aside from little bits and pieces of stuff that he knew from Sex Ed class way back when.

He scratched his beard – he hadn't shaved in some time, not since Claudia had removed the razor from his bathroom, the sneaky little thief – and contemplated the slight jump in weight. At night, when he lay on his side and tried desperately to go to sleep, he was sure he could feel something. Something kicking him from deep inside. It seemed so impossible. Could such a thing happen in the first trimester? He'd wished he'd read a book on the subject. Truth was, Harold wasn't much for finding out about things. Too much knowledge could burn you, he surmised.

He wondered if he would carry this monstrosity to term, or whether he should abort it. To go to a clinic, however, would mean explaining his predicament. He was sure one of two things could happen. He'd either be laughed at, or probed endlessly by zealous doctors curious to know how a man could get pregnant. Harold thought option number two was the most likely thing to happen. He didn't trust doctors. He'd been to a few. They were always probing, prying. Trying to see him on the inside, a place where Harold felt nothing but a strange jumble of things.

There was revulsion as well. He was sick at himself for having unprotected sex in the first place. Claudia had been on the pill, and it was her idea. She wanted Harold to get closer to her, so he agreed. They'd been seeing each other for some time, so there wasn't ever any worry of STDs. Harold had even been tested. Not that Claudia would have had anything to worry about. Harold wasn't one for sex much. He saw it as a somewhat necessary thing, but it was overall an evil act. He derived much more pleasure from masturbating. He never came during real sex, though he only came sometimes by himself. Had he not been roped in by Claudia's weary charms, he would have been perfectly happy to be single the rest of his life. But Claudia wasn't really a normal woman, per se. Not a woman of the type that he knew. He knew that women generally didn't like to have sex, not until there was some emotional underpinning to a relationship. But Claudia was different. She almost acted like a man. She loved sex. Even with people like Harold. And so they'd done the dirty deed. Now, Claudia was gone. She'd left after that last act of fornication. Harold couldn't reach her. He'd tried calling her on the landline in his living room – he had had a cellphone, but took a hammer to it as he felt carrying a phone around with him all the time allowed other people to read his mind. He didn't like that feeling. At least, with a landline, he could control it. If he kept his distance from the phone in the living room, nobody could surmise his thoughts. Sometimes, he kept to himself in his bedroom for that very reason, sequestering himself with all sort of cheesy television. Sometimes, he didn't come out for days. Claudia tended to get worried about Harold when he got into one of these moods, but she didn't understand. She didn't need to, anymore. She was gone. History. Harold hadn't talked to her in God knows when. It was typical of her. At the first sign of trouble, she would always leave. And when Harold told her of his current trouble, that he believed he was pregnant, she had simply stopped talking to him. He should have known better. People liked things explained to them with some semblance of rational thought. And even Harold believed that having a baby as a man – having to give birth to something out of the tiny hole at the tip of his penis – was kind of unbelievable. But that didn't make it any less true. It was happening. He knew this. He could feel it, deep inside. And all of the signs were there.

He knew generally that women who were pregnant got sick in the morning. Every day Harold woke up and would have the overwhelming urge to throw up in the toilet. He would hunch over the porcelain god and dry heave for a good five minutes. So that was sign number one. The more obvious sign was that he was getting a bit of a belly. The pounds were starting to pile up. He almost wished that he didn't have a digital scale to give him such precise measurements, but it was a gift from his parents. They told him to watch his weight, because he was diabetic. Then there was sign three. He could feel something moving deep in his belly. Swimming in his fat. Kicking him every now and then. And growing, growing.

Harold began to wonder if he would have the courage. The courage to keep going for another six months, the courage to give birth. However, there was an alternative to his pregnancy predicament, he supposed. He could use a coat hanger – Claudia hadn't taken those – and stick it into the tip of his penis. Get rid of the unholy beast burrowing deep inside of him. Then he recalled that he didn't have any metal coat hangers, just the thick plastic ones. Harold wondered if he would be able to fit the thick, fat hook into his urethra. Probably not. So that wasn't really an avenue to explore. He would have to go out and find a metal coat hanger, not the cheap, kiddie plastic ones. But that would mean going outside again. He wasn't prepared to do that. Not right now. He was afraid that if he left his apartment, he simply wouldn't get it back if he left. The landlord would take it on him. And then what would he be able to do? He'd be really screwed then, having to live on the street. He was pretty sure his parents wouldn't let him in. He was too old for that.

Harold buried his head in his hands and started to low. He gave out a moan. Then the tears came. Tears of confusion. Tears of hate. Hatred for Claudia, for putting him into this mess in the first place. He wanted, right then and there, to get a knife and take it and go to her place and stab her into a million little tiny pieces. But he then remembered that he didn't have a knife. Not anymore. Not since Claudia had taken those on him, too. He didn't even have anything to cut a slice of pizza with. He had to tear those apart with his hands whenever he felt the compulsion to order one for delivery. He didn't know what to do. He was sad, angry, perplexed. He had nothing but himself, and the tiny thing growing within him.

Harold wiped away his eyes, and undid his jeans and began fondling himself. This always relaxed him. However, it was the same as always. Nothing came out. He couldn't get himself into any sort of state of pleasure. Still, it was something. Something to keep his mind off things. Something to turn his mind away from the scrambled nature of his thoughts.

He didn't think of Claudia. He couldn't bear to.

2.

Harold believed in Jungian synchronicity, even though he hadn't read Jung. He'd heard about it from a friend, and what he came to believe was that, once in awhile, life would throw you a sign and it was up to you to read into it.

Harold got one of those signs when he was watching TV from his bed.

He was watching one of those TV talk shows where women talk about their feelings – there was nothing else on virtually in the early weekday afternoons – when the commercials came on. There was an ad that made him sit up and take notice. It was for a service called Birthline. It started with a series of words written across the screen: Scared? Confused? Think you might be pregnant? Unsure of what to do? Then a woman came on and explained that you could call this toll free number and talk to a counselor about your various options, your feelings, whatever you like. Harold reached for his journal and frantically scribbled the number down, in case he might need it. Actually, almost immediately, he was pretty sure that he would need it. However, it would mean using the telephone. Something that he wanted to avoid. Especially, now that he had started getting calls from his landlord. Something about money. The phone had rung, and rung, and rung until the voice mail kicked in. And the voice mail box eventually became full, pregnant perhaps. Harold would have to wind up making another phone call, this time to his mother, and invent a story that he had overspent his work money and needed an extra thousand or two. Actually, Harold didn't work. Hadn't in some time. But it was best to keep up the rouse. Especially since he'd maxed out his credit card, and he had nowhere else to turn to. That would save him – at least, for another month. That said, he was pretty sure that it wouldn't be long before the creditors would come knocking. There were other debts, too. He wasn't sure what he might be able to tell them. But he'd worry about that river to cross when he came to it. But Harold figured why worry about tomorrow when you had today? Notwithstanding the fact that Harold sort of did feel that he did have to worry about tomorrow, with an infant on the way. But he would eventually call his mother, and maybe his problems with money would be solved. At least, for a little while.

After hours of agonizing about whether he should call the pregnancy line, watching vapid TV show after TV show, right into the evening news, that he decided to make the trek from the bedroom into the living room and make the call.

It took Harold a number of tries to get the number right. He was clearly nervous and agitated, unsure of what might happen if he made the connection. Finally, he took a deep breath and punched the numbers slowly into his touchtone phone. The phone rang a couple of times, time enough for Harold to consider hanging up and weighing his options in perhaps more detail, but finally the line connected. A sweet female voice – one that sort of reminded him a little bit of Claudia – chirped on the other end of the line that he had reached Birthline, and how may she be able to help him?

Harold paused and swallowed, and then started blurting out what the trouble was.

"Hold on," the seemingly nice young woman said, "I can barely make out what you're saying."

Harold drew a deep breath and tried again.

"Hello," he said, much more slowly. "I'm in a spot of trouble. I think I'm pregnant."

The voice on the other line was silent for a moment, then she said, "You mean that someone you know is pregnant?"

Harold was annoyed. How could this strange woman think he wasn't serious? He was. Deadly so. He was clearly a mess and needed help of some sort. He needed to know what his options were. What to do. But then he came to the understanding once again that women weren't programmed to accept that a man may become pregnant. He began to briefly remember his doubts: that if he told anyone, they'd send him away to be poked and prodded and tested. He didn't want that. But he also didn't know what to do. So he continued:

"This is no joke," he said. "I think I'm pregnant. Actually, I know I'm pregnant. This is all Claudia's fault. I don't know if I still love her and all since she never calls me anymore, but we had sex, and she came and I didn't. I think the egg and the sperms somehow got all switched around as a result. It's not impossible. I know that she tricked me some – ."

Harold was abruptly cut off.

"Sir," the nice woman said. "This is a line for women to call if they need help. If you have some sort of trouble with this Claudia – your girlfriend, I would presume?"

"Yes, sort of," Harold croaked.

"With this Claudia," the nice but now seemingly slightly agitated and exasperated young woman on the other end of the line continued, "she may be in more of a position to receive our help. If you'd like, I have the number of some men's agencies whom you might be able to refer to if you need someone to talk to about what this might mean to you. Your girlfriend can certainly feel free to call us if she needs someone to talk to, but this is a women's line and you're tying up valuable resources. Do you need a few numbers that you might need to call?"

Harold was silent. He couldn't believe the incredibility of this woman. How dare she not believe that he was certainly carrying some kind of fetus inside of him! One that was eating the same foods he ate? One that breathed the same air he breathed? One that was living and beating deep inside his groin? Harold could feel it. It was growing slightly, perhaps no more than by a mere inch each and every month, but it was still growing deep inside of him. This was still happening to him. However, he had to remind himself once again that not everyone would be able to believe his predicament. That calling this help line may have just been a very foolish endeavour. In fact, Harold had to, indeed, wonder what he had been thinking. He just knew that he needed some kind of help with his strange situation. And he'd obviously mistakenly thought that this Birthline would be the right avenue to achieve such help. Didn't the ad say that if he was scared and confused and pregnant that he should directly call? This was clearly false advertising, Harold thought. Perhaps it was best if he just politely called things off. Harold knew that that was the way to go, that just letting his anger get the best of him was not really a valid course of action, as much as he might want to. He briefly recalled the knife incident, the one time he almost cut Claudia, but then shook it off.

"Thank you," said Harold. "Didn't mean to trouble you."

With that, he hung up. He let out a breath of air. So that hadn't gone well. Not well at all. At least, not in how he intended or envisioned it. He had been hoping that the person on the other end of the line would have been able to offer solid and clear advice. How to end his predicament in as non-messy a way as possible. Or maybe even talk him into having the baby. He wasn't quite sure. He wasn't quite sure what he had been expecting. Clearly not to be scoffed at. And, now, Harold had a new worry. What if that seemingly nice-at-first young woman had been able to read his mind, his very thoughts, as he spoke to her? What if she had thought he'd been crazy? What if she'd traced the call and was now reporting her to the authorities? Harold was caught feeling a fleeting sense of worry in his gut. He felt the baby kick him. He had to somehow pull himself together and stop letting people know about his pregnancy. It should be a secret. Something for only him to know. Otherwise, what horrible thing could happen to him?

On the other hand, Harold knew that he hadn't been wrong in calling the help line. He needed something, someone to help him sort through the angst that he was undergoing. He felt strange and disconnected. He felt all bent out of shape. He needed someone to tell him that everything was going to be alright, that the world would not end because he was carrying a child. That there were solutions, ways to either terminate the pregnancy with minimal invasiveness, or even a way to somehow birth the child through his tiny pee hole without much in the way of physical pain or discomfort. That there would be some way to take care of the baby, even though the mother (and was that even the right term, for wasn't he the mother?) was nowhere to be found.

In his cloudiness of thought and feeling of deep dread, Harold pulled out his penis again. He massaged it for a good five minutes, but still came up dry.

The baby had to be the source of blame for this, he thought.

3.

It wasn't long before the creditors started calling. All the time. In the middle of the night, even. The phone would ring, and ring, and ring. Harold made the mistake of answering once, then promptly hung up when he found out who was calling. This presented a new problem. He didn't want to go to his mother again to hit her up for cash, as she would then instinctively know that something was wrong. However, without cash, there was no way for Harold to eat. All he had left were scraps of leftover pizza crusts littering the fridge in his kitchen. Plus, in another couple of weeks or so, the rent would be due again. Harold wasn't running on fumes anymore. There weren't any fumes left. How on earth was he going to find the funds to raise a baby, once it was born?

Harold was starting to feel the force of the universe starting to gang up against him. He simply didn't know what to do. For this reason, his thoughts began to turn to not sleeping in bed all day, as was his wont, but actually killing himself. It seemed to be the answer to all of his problems. If he were dead, the fetus gnawing deep inside of him would die, too. Plus, he wouldn't have to worry about money anymore. His parents would probably pay for the funeral. And he wasn't sure if anyone would notice that he was gone. Claudia, most definitely, wouldn't even care, considering how she was out of the picture now and all. She probably didn't even think that Harold existed anymore to begin with. Or so he thought.

These horrible beliefs began to collude in Harold's mind. Suicide seemed to be the only available avenue. Soon, Harold was simply lying in bed, not sleeping at all. No matter how hard he tried, there was just no way whatsoever for him to nod off. After about the third consecutive day of no sleep, his thoughts began to accelerate and gain a certain fogginess to them. He began to covet a knife: something he could use to slit his wrists and arms with. But, of course, Harold had no knives. Not after Claudia had been through with him. So there had to be another course of action that he felt he needed to take. He began to think of the balcony he didn't use anymore, as he was so fearful of going outside. Harold was 11 floors up. He was sure that if he flew off the balcony, his brain would split like a watermelon on the pavement of the parking lot below.

However, he then began to have serious doubts about such plans. What about the baby? Was he being fair to it? It had a right to live, too, didn't it? At the very least, Harold felt that he could or should carry it to term, give it at least a chance to determine for itself, once it grew much older, naturally, if it wanted to live or die. Who was it for Harold to play God? Maybe he just had no other choice to carry through with his accidental pregnancy. It would be the responsible thing to do. Right?

After another full day of very little sleep, and with evening already faded into night, Harold felt that he had to do something, anything.

Against his reservations about contacting the outside world, he did the only thing he could rationally think of. He called for help. Not to Birthline. Oh no, not them again.

This time, he called 911.

It was a bizarre experience, something that felt foggy to Harold. He, at first, just like the time he had called Birthline, had talked in such a blur that the dispatcher – this time, reassuringly male – had to get him to slow down, and ask him what kind of emergency he was experiencing. Did Harold want the police, fire department or ambulance? Harold thought about it for a moment. He didn't think the fire department couldn't do anything for him. He also didn't want the ambulance. But the police... . Maybe they could find Claudia for him. Maybe get them to arrest her for getting him pregnant against his will. Charge her with theft, for stealing various household items, such as the knives and metal coat hangers, on him. That seemed to be the logical answer.

He explained the nature of his situation – that he felt like jumping off his balcony due to certain life events (he didn't mention the pregnancy part, fearing that would just invalidate any attempt at help that he expected to receive from the dispatcher) – and then gave out his name, address and phone number, Once he'd done that, he then hung up. And waited.

The police arrived in less than five minutes.

At first, Harold was in a bit of a daze when the knocks came at his door. He wasn't sure who it could be, who would bother to bother him – especially with the police on their way. The knocking continued for a while, then leveled off. Then the phone rang. And then it stopped. And then it rang again. Over and over. It gave Harold an infernal headache, especially considering the lack of sleep he had endured. Finally, against all reservations, he picked up. He just hoped it wasn't the credit agency again.

"Hello?" Harold said cautiously.

"This is the police," said a female dispatcher, who clearly sounded annoyed. Harold wondered briefly if that was because she was on her period. Claudia always got antsy at a certain time of the month.

"There are two policemen outside your door," she continued. "Please open your door."

"Oh," said Harold, reservedly. "Okay, then."

He hung up and went to the door. He peered through the peep hole, and saw two uniformed police officers – both male – right outside. Harold carefully undid all of the locks and opened it. As he did so, he wondered why police officers came in twos all the time. He understood that they needed some kind of backup, which is why you never saw just one at your doorway, but why not in threes or fours? What if the problem was really serious? Then Harold just supposed they would call in the SWAT team for something like that.

In any event, the police officers didn't seem too amused.

"Not answering your door," the one on the left snarled. Harold was unsure if that were a question or a mere statement of fact.

"I... I just wasn't sure it was you guys," Harold replied. "I didn't know how you got in."

"You didn't have a ring number," said the cop. "Your landlord let us in."

The police officers pushed Harold aside and entered the apartment foyer.

Harold's heart leapt into his throat. He hadn't had visitors in so long, well, except for Claudia, but she always rang so that he might meet her downstairs and let her in, that he forgot that he never had his phone hooked up to the foyer doors to allow access to his apartment with the push of a button. How could he forget such a thing? It must have been the lack of any sleep. His mind was starting to falter on him. He couldn't let that happen anymore. He had to conduct his business here, get the police officers to go after Claudia, find her, and arrest her for what she did to him. Harold figured he could claim it was rape. Grounds enough, or so he believed, to get her thrown in the slammer.

As Harold thought this, he realized the cops were looking at him funny. He took a sniff of the air and began to feel self-conscious of the fact that he hadn't bathed or showered in God knows how long. He was just used sleeping in bed, back when he actually could sleep, clothes on. He hadn't changed his clothes in weeks. Maybe a month or more. He became ultra cognizant of this fact, now that there were two police officers standing right in front of him. They would probably think he was crazy! And he hadn't even mentioned the pregnancy, the baby that was curled up within him like a bean, waiting in his womb. Or his bladder. He couldn't be sure. Men didn't actually have wombs. Did they?

Harold began to bleat out all of this in a mad jumble of spoken thought. The first cop, the one who had talked to Harold, had to get him to slow down, since they couldn't make out a word he was saying. Finally, he relaxed as best he could, and began to relate how Claudia had left him and he needed them to find her because she had done something very bad to him. He didn't say what, as he didn't want the police officers to twig into the fact that something was terribly wrong with him, but they seemed to anyway; Harold could tell by their sour facial expressions. Harold began to clamp down on his mind, fearful that the police officers were really not listening to much of what he was saying, but, instead, were using the powers of telepathy to suss out what he was really thinking or feeling. Maybe calling the police wasn't such a hot idea after all, Harold thought. He really began to wonder what garden path he'd led himself down this time.

"The dispatcher said you were thinking about suicide," said the first cop. "Is this true?"

Harold gulped. They hadn't been listening to anything at all that he had said. Perhaps they were reading his mind. Better to change his tact, before they knew that he was harboring a baby deep inside of him.

"I was thinking of jumping," said Harold. "Off the balcony."

The second police officer, at this time, had moved over to the balcony, and seemed nonplussed.

"Pigeon wire," was what this second officer said. "Whole balcony is cover in pigeon wire, top to bottom, like a chicken coop. No way anyone's jumping off that. Not without cutting a hole in it first."

The first cop was now looking angrily at Harold. Harold was unsure how the other cop had determined there was pigeon wire on the balcony, something he'd forgotten about. It was fairly dark outside. Maybe the police had some kind of ESP powers to know what was out there in the dark, Harold wondered. But maybe there was enough light in the apartment for the officer to see... .

"Look, son, you're not making a ton of sense here," the first cop said. "You're just all a jumble. I think what we need to do is take you somewhere where they can evaluate you, and either let you go if there's nothing wrong or keep you safe if there is. That's the best we can do."

Harold felt a lump in his throat. Not the hospital, he almost cried. If they took him there, then they would know that he was pregnant. This was not a place where he wanted to go. However, he did know that if he started acting out, the police might take him somewhere else. Jail, maybe. It was best not to dick around with police officers. Harold knew that from all the cop shows he watched on TV.

Within moments, Harold found himself being escorted out of his apartment and then led down the elevators to the first floor. While on the elevator, Harold heard the first cop say something about how they were arresting him under the Mental Health Act, but he kept quiet. He had to figure out a way to make sure nobody knew he was pregnant.

Outside, at the squad car, the second cop turned to Harold and said, "You've been pretty good to us, and haven't caused us any trouble. So we're not going to cuff you, so long as you don't act up. You can get inside the back here."

The second cop opened the door to the back seat, and once Harold was inside, he felt like he was being squished inside a tin can. There was hardly any leg room and the back of the front seat was stiff as a board. The cops got in and started driving. After they had gotten some distance away from the apartment building in which Harold lived, the second cop looked back at Harold and asked him to provide the name and address of someone related to him. A parent, perhaps? Harold flinched. He gave the names and addresses of his aunt and uncle, who lived on the outskirts of the city. He hoped that the police were just asking this as a formality, and wouldn't, you know, actually give his aunt and uncle a call. Granted, the reason why he gave them the contact information for his aunt and uncle was simply due to the fact that his parents didn't talk to them often – they were almost outside of the family. So maybe, if the police called the aunt and uncle, the aunt and uncle wouldn't bother calling Harold's parents. Or so Harold hoped. His parents would not be amused that the police were involved in his matters.

After that, the police ride was silent, punctuated with the squawking of a radio up front. The second cop was entering something into what looked like a laptop computer in the front of the car, while the first cop drove. They didn't say anything. They didn't let him know where they were taking him – although he had a pretty good idea that they were taking him to the hospital, where he would probably be dissected as a lab specimen. However, Harold thought that if he turned his mind to other things, maybe nobody would be able to get a read on what he was thinking.

And, so, Harold naturally thought about the last time he had sex with Claudia. About how he didn't come. He had wanted to come, but didn't. He just couldn't. And his thoughts invariable drifted to wanting to fondle himself, right there in the police car. But then he caught himself.

Not here, he thought.

Not now.

**4.**

Harold found himself in the waiting area of the hospital. It was the hospital for those who were sick of the mind. Or had some kind of addictions problem. The first cop was standing beside Harold, who was seated in a chair, while the second cop was off talking to one of the support staff. The place was relatively vacant due to the late hour. A television mounted off the ceiling was in one corner of the room, tuned to a cable news channel with the sound muted and closed captions running across the screen. To Harold, the place sort of resembled the waiting area of a bus terminal. However, there was no bus here that would take him to any sort of destination other than, perhaps, being trapped within.

Harold had a thought. He became acutely aware of the fact that someone was trying to get inside of him, read his mind, analyze his thoughts. He was worried that, soon, someone would find out about the baby. And he couldn't have that. But he also thought it could work in reverse. That he could determine what someone else had on their mind. It had to be a two-way street, right?

So he turned to the first cop and decided to blurt out with the truth. The truth of what he had been thinking all along anyway. His knowledge of what the cop must think.

"I know what you're thinking," said Harold, meaning it in the most literal way possible.

The first cop, who Harold realized had been looking a bit bored, suddenly lit up.

"Oh," said the police officer. "What's that?"

"I know that you're thinking, how could a young man like me wind up in a place like this?" said Harold.

The first cop plucked his lips and turned away from Harold, saying nothing. Eventually, the second officer came to join Harold and the first cop, and said to Harold, "There will be somebody to see you shortly."

What happened next seemed like a daze. The first cop and the second cop started to exchange papers and sign them, and gradually began walking off. A heartbeat later, Harold was escorted inside the hospital, past a metal door that had to be buzzed in in order to pass, and found himself in a stark, white – with no deviation of color – room. He was seated in a chair at a table with two chairs across from him. The attendant left him, and Harold waited for what seemed like an eternity. Minutes passed, and they felt like hours. Harold began mentally preparing himself for the reality that doctors would come in at any moment, and would suddenly be able to read everything on his mind. So Harold decided to push all thoughts and anxieties about the baby out of his head, once and for all. It would do no good for the doctors to know.

After some time had passed, two young doctors in white coats – one male, one female – entered the room, the female carrying a manila folder. After introducing themselves, though Harold wasn't really paying attention to names, the duo sat down and started asking Harold all sorts of questions. Did he know what day it was? Did he know what city he had lived in? What was his address? Had he taken any street drugs? Harold did his best to answer the questions truthfully, because he realized that if he answered truthfully, he might be out of this place and back in the relative safety of his apartment sooner than later.

Then the male doctor said, "I understand, Harold, that you were contemplating suicide tonight. Can you tell us why you would want to do that?"

Harold was suddenly stumped. He hadn't thought of an answer to that. He didn't know what to tell the doctors. He could blame it all on Claudia, but that tact didn't seem to go over well with the police officers. He could invent some wild excuse, but Harold knew that if you start lying, then you start digging a deeper and deeper hole, in which one would start to contradict things. And if that happened, he would be staying in the hospital all locked up. Harold realized that if he actually told the truth – that he was pregnant – maybe that would be OK. Maybe he would still be all locked up, but maybe the doctors would think there was something seriously wrong with his mind, and eschew all attempts to examine him in the name of medical science. That all seemed to make fleeting sense to Harold, considering he now felt even more confused as to whether or not he actually wanted to keep the child.

"I'm pregnant," Harold said.

The two doctors exchanged glances.

"I'm pregnant, and I didn't know what to do," said Harold. Deep inside his mind, as soon as he said this, he began telling himself to shut up, to not say too much, but his mouth was moving faster than his head, and he just started stammering. He started saying stuff that even to him wasn't making a boatload of sense.

"Whoa," said the male doctor. "You wanted to commit suicide because you believe that you're pregnant?"

Harold thought that this seemed rather a bit unprofessional, as the comment appeared to be rather curt. However, Harold also knew that doctors, when confronted with information they couldn't understand, treated people like dirt.

Harold noticed that the female doctor, the one who had to side with him because she must have an inkling of what he was going through, was staying relatively silent.

"Harold," the male doctor said, "Have you been taking your medication, like you said you would?"

Harold was baffled.

"What medication?" he said. Medication that would have prevented me from getting pregnant?, he wondered.

Now the female doctor spoke.

"Harold, you've been diagnosed with schizophrenia. And that might be the tip of the iceberg in terms of cognitive disassociation. We have records here – " the female doctor pulled out some papers from the folder and began shuffling them on the desk " – that show that you haven't been keeping appointments with your doctor. All attempts to reach you by phone have failed."

The female doctor looked directly at Harold, who was now hoping for the best but fearing the worst.

"If you want us to help you, first you have to help yourself," said the male doctor. "And that begins why telling us exactly why you phoned 911 tonight and presented an emergency."

Harold was paralyzed. He wasn't prepared for this. These people were accusing him of things, of being sick. Harold knew that he wasn't sick, just as well as he knew full well that he was carrying a fetus deep inside of him. He started rocking to and fro in his chair. He started grabbing his hair. He began to moan.

"Harold?" said the female doctor.

Harold said nothing and found himself deep within himself. He felt nothing. He felt cold. The baby kicked him.

After a moment of silence, the male doctor cleared his throat, turned and said to his colleague, "I think you and I need to talk. Outside."

The two doctors gathered their things and suddenly left and Harold felt himself on the verge of tears. This wasn't going right. He had done everything wrong. He had told the truth and now he was going to suffer for it. He would be dissected. He would be torn apart. And then what? Would the baby be taken away from him? Would they conduct all sorts of secret experiments to determine how on earth a male would have been able to reproduce?

Moments that felt like hours passed and Harold continued to fret. Harold was in the middle of having these troubling thoughts, when the door opened and a beam of light shone into the room. Another doctor stepped in, all dressed in white just like the other two doctors. Harold's heart leapt in his chest.

Claudia.

It was Claudia.

Harold immediately let go of his hair, felt any semblance of tears that he felt like crying evaporate and he sat up in his chair.

It was her. Her with the auburn hair, short lips that were almost drawn on her with a pencil, and steely blue eyes that could pierce you and see right through you.

"Harold," said the doctor. "We're going to keep you overnight for examination, if that's alright with you."

Harold was agape. Here was Claudia, in the flesh. What had happened to her? Where had she been all this time? These thoughts were pouring throughout Harold's brain, but all he could do was stammer out, "W-what happened to the other two?"

Claudia smiled.

"Doctors Richard and Kitts have other patients they had to attend to," Claudia smiled. "But they've left a detailed report and I'm here. There are plenty of people here who are ready to take care of you, who are concerned about you. We'll make sure you're OK. Just like the last time. Remember?"

Harold, of course, had one thought at the top of his brain. What about the baby? His baby? His baby and the one belonging to the woman who was now standing before him?

"But what about the baby?" Harold asked. "Will anything happen to it?"

Claudia grinned and shook her head.

"Nothing's going to happen to you, I promise," said the doctor who was Claudia. "Just come with me now and we'll have you admitted and safe in no time."

"Are you sure?" asked Harold.

"Positive," said Claudia.

"The baby is yours, you know," muttered Harold as he got out of the chair.

"I'm sure it is," said Claudia. Doctor Claudia. That's what she had liked being called. "Don't worry, Harold. Everything will be just fine."

Harold had a fleeting moment of trust. This was Claudia, after all. Sure, she had totally abandoned him, but maybe it was the other way around. Maybe he had abandoned her? Hadn't he made a promise to remain on those blue pills that they were administering to him? Olanzapine. He was discovering now, perhaps too late, that he couldn't trust himself. His brain was a fickle thing. Maybe he should have stayed on the drug. And the other things they wanted to give him. Maybe he should have not stopped seeing the therapist. It was a remarkable moment of clarity, the first he had felt he had had in a really long time. But that was the transformative effect of seeing Claudia in the flesh. She was soothing. How on earth, he wondered, had he begun to demonize her? Make her into something she wasn't? It didn't make much sense. Nothing made much sense at all. But here he was now, and she was here, and maybe things would be OK. At least, for tonight. And maybe that was all that mattered, considering everything that had just happened to him with the police. He didn't know how he was going to explain that to his parents, if they ever found out. (And Harold had little doubt that they might.) Still, Claudia – Doctor Claudia – was promising Harold safety and security. And that might be all that mattered. The paternal nature of Claudia. How soothing that seemed.

Claudia gestured to Harold to come follow her into the hallway, into the light. To join her, to come with her into her halo.

After a moment of silent deliberation, trying to sort out the best course of action, Harold began to move toward her.

He came. 

### SPRING CLEANING  
by Micke Lindquist

Home is a cellar, dark and safe

Where he lives all alone

Amongst the loveliest dust

Prettiest cobwebs and coolest stone

Through the dirty window

The light growing stronger each day

The cold blue light of winter going away

Here comes the warm amber light of spring

When flowers grow from frozen decay

The time is here

Every spring, every year

The creatures from upstairs

Coming to destroy all he holds dear

He hides in the farthest corner

Behind the boxes and the shelves

When the door at the top of the stairs opens

The light cuts through the darkness

Like a knife slicing velvet

The ones from upstairs

Come down with the vacuum

Mops and buckets of soap water

They open the window, letting in fresh air

Making his dust dance in the wind

The leader of the creatures upstairs

The one they call Mom

Tells them that it's time

Time for spring cleaning

### STOP  
by Christopher Francis

I read books while on the Tube.

Sometimes I don't care about the destination. I just care about reading.

I do laps of the city. London. My passion and the way I show it means that I rarely see the institutions above ground, but I see its people, oh I see it's people.

At least, I hear them.

I have approximations of them while I ride. Students lost in a world of music fed to their eardrums. Single mothers with half-collapsed strollers, trying to keep their kid in check. The people who preach. The people who play music. The businessmen. The women who want to let you know they go to the thee-at-truh every weekend. I hear it all, and I see it all.

Over the top of the book I'm currently reading.

It's impossible to read everything under the sun, but I make my effort to read it all while under London. All that life going on above me. Life, death, business, murder, taxes, congestion charges, plays, musicals, movies, tragedies.

And there I sit in the middle car of every train I catch, as near to the middle as I possibly can, living all that life of infinite possibilities between finite pages.

I don't need to head up there. I don't need to see Big Ben. Tower of London. Places where the population consists more of people who haven't even spent a week living in London than anything else.

Tourists.

Mind you, you get tourists down here. Oh the amount of times people point out where famous characters in films or TV have been. An American Werewolf In London is something that gets referenced a lot.

People love their movies.

I love my books.

Sure, I smile whenever I reach Baker Street, or King's Cross, but that's all. I hear the name or I see the name and then I'm done. Back to my book.

Nothing ever really takes me away from that. Even if I can't sit, I'll stand. I'll read. And if I can't so that, I'll lean and read.

Heck, once, I sat on the floor and read.

You can't stop me from reading.

And then someone did. For a moment. And that was it.

It was around South Kensington. The station closest to the germ on the idea that became Peter Pan.

Circle Line.

Oddly, the train was empty. This was middle of the day. You don't find ghost trains in the middle of the day. You certainly don't on the Circle Line.

Especially when there are multiple connections with the Overground on that line.

Urgh. The Overground. Where seats are cramped, stops can be half an hour away, and travelling can be expensive.

I don't use the Overground.

The Underground is my home, and the Circle Line was a frequent haunt. I liked ending where I began.

And so I was not exactly pleased when I was distracted from reading while the Tube was around South Kensington.

"Hey."

I said nothing. I was lost in an adventure about rolling hills, highwaymen, and murder.

"Hey."

I couldn't see anything in my peripherals. I wasn't exactly about to look up and around.

"Hey!"

I sighed. I turned the page. It was a horseback chase through webs of trees and through forests of swashbuckling. A tale I wasn't soon to forget.

"Oi!!"

But a tale I was soon to be taken away from.

A hand snatched the book out of my hand and tossed it to the side. My hands - otherwise fused to the feel of a bulk of paper - didn't register the intrusion initially.

Then they clenched. My eyes stopped. They couldn't predict the next few words.

My eyes adjusted focus. Feet. Shoes. Jeans. I looked up. Jacket. Scarf. Jumper. Brunette. Glasses. Eyes. Emerald. Freckles.

"Umm..."

"Hi!"

"What..."

"You've been reading that book for a while now."

"And?"

"Reading's not good for you."

"You're stupid..."

I get up and walk down the carriage to my book. I don't realise it's otherwise empty. I just focus on my book.

"That's not very nice!"

"You threw my book down the train."

"Well I had to get your attention!" she said, "You've missed your stop!"

"How do you know my stop?"

"I don't. But we've passed every stop thrice."

"'We'?"

"Yeah! I noticed you fused to that book and not once looked up. You haven't even moved except to turn the next page!"

"What about your stop?"

"I'm not exactly late..."

"What's your stop?"

"South Kensington. We just passed it."

"For a third time?"

"For a fourth."

"Ah."

"Yeah."

"Well...." I pick up my book and dust it off.

The cover was white, which was quite the design flaw. It just begged for it to be made dirty.

I turned to her, "You better get off at the next stop and head back."

We locked eyes as the train slowly pulled into St. James' Park. The doors opened. The doors closed. The train left.

I sighed and sat down and opened the book exactly on the page I require.

The girl sat next to me.

"Whatcha reading?"

I said nothing.

She craned her head around to look at the cover.

"Ohhhhhhhhhh! I know that one."

"Yeah?" I kept my eyes locked on prose. "I've never read it before."

"The hero's girlfriend is already dead."

"Yeah I figured that out before the author wanted me to figure that out."

"Oh, thought I spoiled that for you."

"Did you want to spoil it for me?"

"Yes."

I shook my head, still reading intently, "Why?"

"To get you off the train."

"Why?"

"Because clearly you have a destination."

"I'm in it for the journey."

"You're not exactly able to see much underground."

"Well the tourists are busy hogging up the sights of overground London."

"I think you'd just be reading a book in Kensington Gardens if you did head overground."

"Why Kensington Gardens?"

"Because that's where Barrie began to create Peter Pan."

"Why would I care about that?"

"Because methinks you're stubborn like Peter Pan."

"If I'm being compared to a fictional character in London why can't I be Sherlock Holmes?"

"Because you're not observant enough."

"You don't know me."

"I know you're going to get off the next stop."

"How?"

The train stopped at Embankment. The girl snatched the book from my hand again and threw it out of the opening doors. I chased after it.

Fuck.

"Embankment!" The girl gestured as she followed me following my book out of the train, "Is this your stop?"

"No," I turned around and went to approach the train but it already began to leave.

"Apparently it is!" The girl beamed.

"Just leave me alone."

I picked up my book and it had grown dirtier. I frowned, dusted it off and stepped over to the platform, ready to read.

I opened the book right to where I wanted to continue reading.

"If you already know the ending, why bother reading?" She asked.

"Because I've tried to read this book so many times, and yet I've never been able to get around to reading the ending for myself."

"So?"

"I read books on the Tube. Sometimes I don't care about the destination. I just care about reading."

"So you'd rather not journey upward and stay down here eternally trying to read that book?"

"Of course. It's 2003. A wonderful year of my first kiss and my first interaction with this engrossing novel."

"It's 2013. That was 10 years ago."

"And I still haven't finished this book."

"Nicola, you never will."

It's 2003.

It's South Kensington.

The book is The Highwaymen of Westley.

I'm reading.  It's a horseback chase through webs of trees and through forests of swashbuckling. A tale I wasn't soon to forget.

Someone knocks me off balance. They're in a mad rush. I stumble as the book leaves my fingertips. My hands - otherwise fused to the feel of a bulk of paper - didn't register the intrusion initially.

Then they clenched. My eyes stopped. They couldn't predict the next few words.

I see the white blur of my book tumbling in front of me. I rush towards it.

I fall.

I fall off the platform. I pick up my book and spin around. I see the person who bumped into me.

My eyes adjust focus. Feet. Shoes. Jeans. I look up. Jacket. Scarf. Jumper. Brunette. Glasses. Eyes. Emerald. Freckles.

Screaming.

Screeching.

Metal against flesh at an speed one can't survive.

I died at South Kensington on 23rd November, 2003.

I'll never know how The Highwaymen of Westley ends.

All I know is that The Underground is my home, and the Circle Line was a frequent haunt. I liked ending where I began.

### BARGAINS  
by Lance Manion

Few people knew that there was a lower level to the department store. As the anchor of the mall it sat at the end lording over all the shoe stores and candle stores and pretzel vendors  and not only was it two stories but it had a lower level as well. That wasn't the lower level that most people didn't know about. There was a level underneath that one. A lower lower level. That was the one that few people were aware of.

Fewer still were aware of the one under that one.

All told, the store went hundreds of feet beneath the earth. Most of the levels below the lower lower level and the one beneath that weren't so much polished floors, colorfully-dressed mannequins and attractive lighting as caverns. They got progressively danker the further you went down.

People who ended up exploring these twisting tunnels in the hopes of finding additional discounts usually ended up extremely disappointed.

The man who was currently moving through the darkness had originally set out to find a restroom while his wife shopped. One thing led to another ... and here he was.

Had it been the narrow passage with the restricted sign and little chain across it or was it the hidden trap door he'd found on the lower lower level? It was of no consequence. Now he was here he wanted to find the bottom. One thought kept repeating itself again and again in his head; "There are good bargains to be had in the deep places of the world."

He could feel things moving around in the darkness. He was only twenty minutes removed from the glare of the mirrored sales counters and his eyes struggled to adapt. In the distance, how far away he couldn't tell, something dripped.

He switched the bag in his hand from the left to the right, the weight of the waffle cone maker beginning to make itself felt, and crouched down to stay balanced as the floor sloped down more steeply. Finally it opened into a large space, he could feel it more than see it, and in the middle of the darkness there were unseen hands loading blackness into black boxes. Tearing away the shadows and loading them into nothingness.

He went to take a step forward when he heard a voice and felt an arm blocking his path.

"Don't go in there."

He turned and his eyes strained to follow the arm to its source. His nostrils filled with the smell of stale sweat.

"Who are you?" the man whispered to the other end of the arm.

"I'm Gabe. From menswear."

The words seemed to shake loose gloomy specters from the walls and they flew crazily around the man's head for a few moments before buggering off. After he was done ducking and weaving he saw that Gabe had moved closer to him. He looked like every homeless man looks, a mixture of mountain man and bad luck. His clothing was covered in grime and he wore a battered tie around his head. There was no way of knowing that color the tie had originally been. His eyes carried a wild gleam and they darted back and forth as they peered into the darkness behind the man.

They grew wide and the man felt a burst of panic.

"Don't turn around."

The man did not turn around.

"It's my boss. I've been down here for three weeks now ... I figured she'd come looking."

"What is this place Gabe?"

"Not now. Just go back the way you came. There's nothing for you down here."

The man moved the waffle cone maker back into his left hand.

"I'm gonna trust you on this one Gabe" and with that the man headed back to find his wife.

### DANIEL'S PROMISE  
by Stephen P Smith

It was three days after Daniel's funeral when Abby found the manila envelope with her name written on it. It had been tucked away in one of his desk drawers hidden underneath mounds of paperwork.  Not thinking much of it, she set the envelope down on top of the desk and continued putting the rest of the papers into boxes.  When she was finished with the task, she sat back in Daniel's chair to fight back the tears.

Daniel's death had been an unexpected nightmare.  He had left work at his normal time and made his way to the subway.  Daniel marched down the sidewalk in a parade of other businessmen on their way home for the day.  He was only two blocks away from the subway when tragedy struck.

Daniel stood at the intersection and waited for the crosswalk light to signal him on.  When the green light that read 'WALK' glowed, he stepped into the street and began to cross.  Daniel never saw the delivery truck that hit him.  The truck knocked the life out of him almost instantly, dragging him underneath into the middle of the intersection.

Now Abby was alone, the love of her life gone forever.  It was hard to think that she would never see him again; it was like not being able to wake from a bad dream.  On the verge of tears her eyes set on the manila envelope with her name on it.

She picked up the large envelope and began to open it. She was sure it would be some old tax forms or something of that nature.  Reaching inside, Abby pulled out two things: a letter folded in half and a white sealed envelope with the words 'no peeking' written on it.  Confused, Abby put down the sealed envelope and looked at the folded letter in her hand.  Almost too scared to read the letter she began to unfold it and read:

Dear Abby,

If you are reading this letter then it means that either I have died or you're snooping through my things. I hope for my sake it's the latter. But if not, and I am gone, I just wanted to tell you how much I loved you. You were the love of my life and always will be. I made a promise to you the weekend I took you meet my parents for the first time, and I intend on keeping that promise. If you remember the promise I made to you then you'll know what to do with the sealed envelope. I love you with all of my heart.

Love Daniel.

Abby set the letter down on the desk and picked up the white envelope. Tears trickled down her face as she lightly pressed the envelope against her chest, caressing it. She did remember the promise even though she thought it to be frivolous at the time.

#

Daniel and Abby sat beneath a large umbrella watching the waves wash ashore. There was a gentle breeze blowing in from the sea bringing with it the fresh smell of salt. The private beach they lounged on belonged to Daniels parents, which the two were visiting.

"I don't want this weekend to end." Abby said, staring out at the sea.

"Well, we could quit our jobs and move in here with my parents. I'm sure they wouldn't mind." Daniel replied.

Abby laughed and said, "Don't tempt me."

"Then I guess we'll have to work our asses off so we can retire in a place like this." Daniel said and the added, "If we live that long, that is."

Abby slapped his arm and said, "Don't talk like that."

"Hey, I'm just saying you never know." Daniel said.

"I hate to even think about it. I don't know what I'd do if you were gone from my life forever."

"What about the afterlife?" He said smiling.

"And if there is no afterlife, babe?" Abby asked with a defying look in her eyes.

Daniel knew that Abby didn't come from a religious family, but was not sure what she truly believed in. They had only brief conversations about the matter and she always seemed uninterested in the subject.

"Come on, you do believe in some form of an afterlife don't you?" Daniel asked.

"No not really. I think when you die that's it." She answered.

Daniel leaned back in his chair and said, "No, there's got to be something after all this."

"Until there's proof, I'm saying there's nothing after." Abby proclaimed.

"Fine then, I guess I'll just have to prove it to you."

"How?"

Daniel paused for a second to think and then said, "How about your dreams?"

"My dreams?

"Yes. If I die before you I will try to contact you in your dreams." Daniel said with a big smile on his face.

Abby shook her head and said, "How will I know it's not just a normal dream?"

Daniel thought for a moment and answered, "I don't know. How about a code word?"

"A code word?" Abby laughed.

"Yes. And I'll only speak the code word in the dream. I won't say anything else." He said smiling and added, "And I'll only speak the code word three times."

Abby began to laugh out loud now. "Why three times?" She asked.

"Because, three is a number of power." Daniel answered.

"What does that even mean?"

"I don't know, I think I read that somewhere." Daniel said laughing.

"Okay then mister, what's the code word?" asked Abby.

"Well, I can't tell you. If you know it you might not believe that I actually contacted you." said Daniel.

"You're not making any sense." Abby said as she turned back toward the sea. She was becoming bored with the conversation.

"It's simple. I'm going to write down two words and seal them in an envelope. If I die before you, I'll try to come to you in your dreams and speak these two words three times. If you have a dream like that, open the envelope and see if the words I spoke in the dream are written on that paper. If they are, then there's your proof. If not, then you can believe what you want to believe." Daniel said.

"You're crazy, you know that?" Abby said.

"Maybe, but you love me." Daniel answered.

#

The memory of that that day on the beach brought more tears to Abby's eyes. She thought the conversation was a joke, but now it looked like he was being serious.

Stupid man, she thought with a grin on her face. Abby thought that the joke was going to be on him, because she felt like she would not be able to sleep ever again.  Sleep did come though, and when it did, it brought with it terrible dreams.

#

Abby sat on the couch in her living room. She was wearing an old tattered sundress that was gray and looked on the verge of turning to dust.  Her feet were bare and rested not on carpet but grass.  The floor of her living room had transformed into a beautiful garden of flowers.  Abby sat and watch as bees and other insects flew from flower to flower snatching up all the pollen.

A strange feeling had come to her that it was time to head to the bedroom.  She stood and made her way down a hallway that seemed to stretch on forever.  The walls of the hallway were lined with ice and the floor covered in wet dead leaves.  When she reached the door at the end of the hallway she wasted no time in opening it.

The door did not open on her bedroom; it opened onto a street that led into a city.  There was an old rusty sign with an arrow that pointed at the city and the sign read, 'Desolation'.

Confused, Abby stepped through the door way onto the street.  At first glance the ground seemed to be covered in a light snow, but it was not cold on her bare feet.  She bent to pick some of it up to find out it was ash, not snow.  Letting the ash fall from her hand she tilted her head up to the sky.

The sky was black with clouds and they seemed to violently crash into each other like waves in a hurricane.  It had almost looked like the black sky was boiling, but it was not hot or windy.  The stale air was quite calm.

The buildings in front of her stood crookedly in their places, like jagged teeth.  Most, if not all the windows had been smashed out.  Fearing this place she turned to leave but the door was gone.  Nothing but a wasteland lay beyond where the door had been.  A handful of stunted petrified trees could be seen scattered across the hardpan.  Abby turned back toward the city and noticed a pool of blood that she didn't see before.

She examined the pool of crimson blood and noticed that there was a trail that left the pool.  Not really wanting to find what was making it, she began to follow the bloody path.  The trail led her down the vacant city street, but even though the street seemed empty she knew the buildings were not.

Abby had seen things in the shadows watching her. She caught a glimpse of one of those dark entities standing in an open window. It showed itself only for a second before it slid back into the shadows. From what Abby had seen, the creature in the window was not human, even though it stood upright like a man. Terrified, she quickened her pace and followed the blood trail that made a left onto another street.

As Abby made the turn, she found the thing that was making the trail.  It was thirty yards ahead of her and was crawling, dragging its legs behind it.  She started to approach it and slowly realized that it was a badly injured man that was crawling.  Abby quickly moved toward the man and got along his side and bent down.

"Oh my God, are you okay?" She asked

The man stopped crawling and turned up his head to look at her.  Abby stepped back in horror when she realized who it was crawling through the street and cried out his name, "Daniel!"

He starred up at Abby with a disfigured face.  This is what he must have looked like after the truck ran him down, she thought to herself and shuddered.

"Oh God Daniel, let me help you." She cried.

Daniel put up a mangled hand that was missing two fingers to stop her.  He looked deep into her eyes and croaked out two words, "Have faith."

After he spoke, the sound of a great horn began to bellow deep within the city.  Terror gripped Abby as she started to scream.

#

Abby awoke in terror and was trembling all over with a cold sweat.  She rushed into the bathroom and began to vomit.  When she was done, Abby sat on the end of her bed with the unopened envelope in her hand.  She turned it around over and over again wanting to open it. He did say two words, but not three times, she thought to herself.  She believed the nightmare was brought on because of the envelope.   Abby thought if she had not found it to begin with she probably wouldn't have had that dream.  The damned envelope had been on her mind when she fell asleep.

Abby decided not to open the envelope but wrote the two words Daniel had said in the dream on the outside of it.  She then hid the envelope away inside of an old book of hers and tried to go back to sleep.  The next couple of days didn't bring much sleep.  Thoughts of the dream and how real it felt never left her mind.  Did Daniel come to her or was it all just in her head, only time would tell she guessed.  It was three months of dreamless nights before she returned to Desolation for the second time.

#

The dream picked up where it had left off. Abby, still dressed in the tattered sun dress, stood where she had found Daniel but now he was gone.  The blood trail had stopped and a new trail had begun.

The new trail looked as if maybe Daniel had gotten to his feet and begun to walk.  Well, not quite walk, but limp.  The tracks through the ash looked as though he may be dragging his right foot. If he's up on his feet, he must being getting better, she thought and hurried to find him.

She followed the tracks for what felt like hours through the barren city.  A couple of times she heard sounds coming from the ruined buildings; the sounds of things writhing in the dark.  The wretched sounds followed her throughout her journey and she dared not look into the shadows, because it wasn't just the creatures in the darkness that wanted her.  It was the darkness itself that wanted to swallow her as well, and she knew this.

It felt like eons had passed before she found Daniel.  As she approached him she could tell that he was still beaten up pretty badly but looked a lot better.  Abby threw herself on him and covered him with kisses. Daniel stopped but did not return her kisses. He stood staring straight ahead and waited for her to finish.

"Daniel, I've missed you." Abby said.

Daniel did not answer.  Abby seeing that he wasn't responding to her, she stepped back.  Daniel turned his head, made eye contact with her.

"Have faith." He said.

The great horn bellowed again, but this time it was much louder. The percussion of the horn sent Abby to her knees.  Covering her ears she started to scream, but her cries went unheard.  The sounds of her screams were lost inside the defining bellow of the horn.

#

Abby awoke in a cold sweat.  Tears began to fill her eyes as she thought of Daniel and the words he spoke in the dream.  Quickly, Abby removed herself from her bed and found the book with the unopened envelope inside.  The two words she wrote on the outside of the envelope were the same two words Daniel spoke in the new dream.

"That's twice now." She spoke aloud. Wanting to tear open the envelope and read the words inside, she forced herself not to.  It took everything she had not to open it.  Instead, Abby wrote the number two next to the two words she had written on the envelope and slid it back into the book.

#

Five years passed without another dream.  In that time Desolation slipped from Abby's mind, as did the envelope.  Daniel on the other hand remained.  She also fell in love with a man named James.

He was a good man and treated Abby great.  She was happy again, although Daniel never fully left her mind.  They married after being together for a couple of years and were now expecting their first child, a girl.

Not having a name picked out and only two months away from the baby being born, they spent most of their free time coming up with names.  None stuck and James would joke by saying, "Well, we can always let her name herself."

"Oh, Stop it." Abby would say slapping his arm. It was good to be happy again.

#

Abby slid carefully into bed trying not wake James.  He had become a light sleeper in the past few weeks, mainly because of how close the baby was due to arrive.  As she lay there the unopened envelope Daniel had left her suddenly came into her mind.

Being years since Abby had thought about it, she wondered if it was still in the old book she used to keep it in.  Maybe I'll try to find that old book when I get up tomorrow, Abby thought as she fell asleep.

#

Abby was back in Desolation.  The sky above was still covered with colliding black clouds and ash still littered the empty streets.  She wore the same old gray sundress as before and her feet were still bare. Abby's hands quickly went to her stomach to see if she was pregnant, she was.

How am I going to explain this, she thought?

There was a new trail cut through the ash.  The footprints left behind by Daniel showed he was walking normal now.  Abby followed as quickly as she could.  There was something different in Desolation this time.

There was a blackness that seemed to follow her.  It was a swirling vortex made of smoke and reached almost as high as the buildings.  The blackness was several blocks behind her and every so often the defining horn she had heard before would bellow from it.

When Abby would turn to see the blackness, she could see it moving closer toward her, gaining on her with alarming speed.

After several twist and turns the trail led into an open part of the city.  In the opening there was a chapel with a roof the shape of a dome that stood all alone.

The chapel seemed to be the only structure that was not in ruin. Its bright white walls gleamed and gold light poured out of the stain glass windows.  It stood in the opening defying the ruination that surrounded it. The strange chapel was only fifty yards from her and she could see Daniel standing in the doorway.

Daniel stood facing her and seemed whole again, from what she could tell.  Standing at the edge of the opening Abby called out to him, "Daniel!"

As her voice called to him the horn sounded again and her words went unheard, lost in the bellow of the horrid sound of the horn.   Abby covered her ears and dropped to her knees.   As the horn began to subside she watched Daniel step into the chapel.

I've got to get inside their, she thought.  Abby got to her feet and began to run as fast as she could.  Halfway there, the ground began to shake so violently it knocked her down.  While down she rolled to her side and saw the most horrific thing of her life.

The blackness had almost reached the edge of the clearing.  From out of the dark, four large tentacles reached out in search of something to grasp onto.  They wrapped their way through the broken windows of the nearby buildings to gain leverage.  Once the tentacles finished entangling themselves they started to pull.

A great monstrosity emerged from the black vortex and stood fifty or more feet high.  The monolith's head was taken up mostly by one great eye that stared down at Abby with vicious content.  Its mouth, surrounded by smaller tentacles, showed a circle of jagged sharp teeth.

Abby screamed as she got to her feet and made a dash for the open door.  Two of the giant tentacles slammed down on each side her almost smashing her.  The ground shook with so much force it knocked Abby to the ground.  Rolling on to her back and holding her pregnant belly, she stared up at the beast.

It looked hungry, and she knew it meant to eat her.  She stumbled to her feet, praying to God to keep her unborn child safe as she made her way to the front door of the chapel.  As she did this, the two giant tentacles began to dig deep into the ground preparing the monstrosity to slingshot itself on top of her. The great beast lunged for her but it was too late.  Abby had made it inside the chapel.

She slammed the door closed and stood with her back against it holding her belly.  Her eyes were shut tight waiting for the monstrosity to smash the door to pieces and devour her.  The beast never came.  She slowly opened her eyes to see another doorway about ten yards in front of her with a brilliant gold light shining through it.  Abby went for the opening not wasting any time and stepped through.

The room opened into a great hall surrounded with marble pillars which radiated light. In the center of the great hall was an emerald green pool of water that was spiraling round and around.  At the side of that pool stood Daniel.

Abby made her way down to him and put her hands on his face. He was smiling.  Daniel was in fact whole again, not a mark on him.

"Daniel, oh God, I don't know what to say." Abby said as she looked down at her belly.

Daniel put a finger to her lips shushing her and then put both hands on her belly.

"Have faith." Daniel said for the third time and then kissed her softly on the lips.

"I love you." Abby said.

Daniel, still smiling, took his hands off of her belly and turned away.  He stepped into the swirling green pool and blew her a kiss as he faded away.  Abby cried out for him, but it was too late, Daniel was gone.

#

Abby awoke and sat up.  She looked to her left to see James lying on his side still sleeping.  She got out of bed, put her robe on and headed down stairs.

The fire was still burning brightly and she used the light from the flames to find the old book with the unopened envelope inside.  When she found the book she pulled the envelope out and stood staring at it, afraid to open it.

It was the third time she had dreamed of him and it was the third time he had only spoken the words 'have faith'.   Abby opened the envelope slowly with shaky hands almost too afraid to do so.  She started to pull the paper out to read the words when a voice came from behind her.

"Is everything okay honey?" James asked from the stairs. Abby dropped the paper back into the envelope and turned to him.

"Yes, James. I couldn't sleep so I came down here." She answered.

"Do you want company?"

"No, you go back to bed I'll be up in a minute."

"Okay. Hey Abby?" He asked before heading up the stairs.

"What?"

"I love you." James said

"I love you too, James." She smiled at him as he turned and went back up stairs.

She stood alone with the envelope in her hand ready to read what it says.  Abby stared at it for just another minute, hands trembling.  She began to pull the paper back out of the envelope to read but stopped again.  Without knowing she was going to do it, she threw the envelope into the fire and watched it burn.

Abby loved Daniel, but she had a new life now and a child on the way.  It was time to finally leave the old life behind and move on.  It was time to have closure.

"Good bye Daniel. I love you." She said before heading up stairs to James.

Abby climbed into bed and James put his arm around her. Abby turned her head and said, "I think I know what to name our daughter."

"Oh yeah, and what's that?" James asked.

"Faith."

James pondered the name for a moment and the said, "That's beautiful."

She leaned over and kissed James on the cheek and went to sleep.

### APPLE ORCHARD  
by Kate Barrett

There's this thing. A somewhat delicate and complicated thing. A precious and knowing thing that I don't ever put to sleep even though its bedtime was surely years and years ago. To say that I carry it with me would be a misnomer. To say I wear it would be hyperbole. I don't have it with me always, even though it'd be easier to say I did.

I have it with me occasionally. And oh holy hot patootie on those occasions. Like how when that friend you grew up with that managed to actually get outta town, and comes back into it for her annual waft through, and everyone gets all dressed up and spends their spare thoughts on practicing conversations so as to make sure that all what wants to be said can get itself said and the appropriate appraisal get gotten. That. One of those occasions.

It's a thing that isn't actually burdensome even though it is. Is kind of a burden. It's a thing forgotten except for when it's remembered. And a whole bunch of light bulbs go off. Go off in a row. Making a memory path of little bits all lit up like breadcrumbs in moonlight. Her eyes are like that. Showing me where to go when the thing takes over and I need to find my way back home. Lanterns flare up and a huge bonfire keeps the dark warm. And no matter what, no matter how hard you try, you just can't quit thinking about that night down in the apple orchard when she whispered that she wanted you... and loved you for real. Real real. Not just best friends since kindergarten real.

And how you kept pretending to be asleep because the thought of her hair in that pale leaf tinged light made her look like one of them paintings that's in big heavy art books in the mobile library. And how the ladies in those paintings can't really be ladies because their tits are on show, but maybe cos they're still heaps elegant. And how her tits must be like them, all firm and round and rosy like the apples weighing down above us. Us.

Like that's a thing. It might be for someone else. For someones else. For others. Because there has to be two for an us. Right. At least. "The two of us" that's the saying isn't it. A saying but it's not my thing. Cos you spoke to me then and I stayed sleeping my pretend sleep which I think you hoped I wasn't faking. Cos your thing is that we've never been an us. That you never wanted to be. Your secret was yours only and even though you know what my passed out breathing sounds like and how you know its not the sharp shallow silent hiccups that it was while you whispered. You wanted to tell me but not really cos that'd make it real and maybe make us real and you're just you.

And you picked an apple you knew wasn't ripe just so you could brush those painted tits across my eyes. Then take a bite. So loud it made the leaves shake and the drowsing birds ruffle feathers. But I didn't. Didn't stir. My fake slumber held, quivering eyelashes interlocked. Your eyes opened and looked at me then. Your eyes like moonlit candy. They blinked at me and your lungs emptied in denial.

A second bite. This one even louder. And closer. Too close and I tasted apple juice. Mixed with your spit. It dampened my eyelids which fluttered open to look at you. A single bead of wet hanging off your pouting lip. And I woke up then. Really woke up. And saw excitement become tears and snot and terror that dribbled onto my cheek.

You saw me awake and gulped. Your jaw clench tumbling the repentant moisture bead off your lip and into my opening gullet. Opening only to calm you. To share with you my reassurance and desire. None of which I got to speak, for all of it was choked back by that one drip. And you didn't understand. You only heard me cough. And you yelped. Because you thought I was embarrassed. Or angry. Or confused. But I wasn't and I only wanted you.

I wanted to make an us thing. Like what you were scared of, only not scary. Not a strange and criminal thing. Not a thing that'd make us grounded by your mum and dad or my mum and dad. Not a thing that'd have us caned at Sunday school. But a different thing. A loving and right thing that only we needed to know about. And that's when you dropped the apple. And sat up. Your knee grinding my girly parts and I gasped. And you screamed.

A racked sobbing sort of scream that made me clamp my hand to your mouth. Not cos I wanted to silence you. Except I sort of did because you were so loud. And ruining the gift you had just awoken in me. Your starry eyes got huge, and stared at mine, pleading. And mine must've been pleading too. They had to be, my body was that desperate.

And I waited for you to do something. Something like you'd been doing. But you kept screaming, that's all the fight you gave. Screamed til you stopped. And your eyes closed and you fell back. I thought that maybe that was it, that it was my turn. So I sat up, sat over you, and unwrapped your silky church shirt with the lace trimmings and the daisy buttons. And rolled up your white singlet til before your tits.

"Are they like they are in paintings? Mine aint even showing yet. Can I look?" but you didn't say anything and I thought maybe you were nervous so I didn't keep rolling up your singlet. I kissed you over it instead. The cotton rough on my mouth. It wasn't right though. Not quite. So I lay down on you and kissed your lips. Dry of tears and smelling only faintly of apple, you were delicious. The best thing I would ever taste.

But you didn't kiss me back. You only lay there, still and silent and acting like I wasn't even there. And it's my fault. Because I woke up. I stopped pretending. And I shouldn't have woken up. Cos then we'd have an us thing and there has never been an us thing. But I didn't know that until you screamed on me. And your cries dripped into me. And it didn't matter before then because I didn't know what it'd be like to have your nipples not quite in my teeth.

And now you're not breathing. You won't even breathe on me. Won't allow me even that. I'm not asking for much. I won't ask for us even. I just want you to breathe on me. Breathe. Or scream. That'd be alright. Scream. Please? Or cry. I'll go back to sleep okay? For real this time. And you can just. You can just look at me. Just open your eyes. Please open your eyes.

The lights in the distance begin getting closer. The heat of the bonfire being carried on sticks gets closer too. And I think about the warmth and how you don't have it anymore. How your eyes won't open for real. But they open in my mind the last and first gate on my memory path. Candies in the night sky, that smell like toffee apple.

My dad wonders why your shirts open and your dad says its cos I tried cpr. And see, there's my lipgloss on your lips from where I tried to give you mouth to mouth. And look at me poor thing, too sad to speak. And you, poor thing, too scared to breathe.  They wrap us up in blankets and ponder what could've happened. They carry us back to the bonfire where everyone's in their best and they don't ask me. They never asked me, and that's the thing. Isn't it. I didn't speak. 

### BROADCAST  
by Robin Wyatt Dunn

SThis is Los Angeles.  It is in California, on Earth.  it is the 21st Century here.  That is approximately 2,000 years after one of the dominant mammals here was successfully murdered.

If you are receiving this transmission, know that I am sorry.  I know that I did not fit in back at home.  So I came here.  Here no one bothers me.  Here I have time to think about what I have done, and what you have done.

Didn't you ever want that?  Time to think.  Well, now I have it.  And you don't.  You never thought very much.  You only acted.  But I miss you anyway.  You're far away now.

\- -

Our matter generation technology has proved useful here in Los Angeles and I have created a body for myself, with which to observe the life here in this place, and to teach me how others live.

Always we were dreaming together.  But now I dream separately.  It is lonely.  But I am finding that I am learning more than I ever did before.  You will burn this recording if it reaches you, perhaps.  It is heresy.  I am a heretic.  I chose something different.  I am accepting the consequences.

\- -

The human beings here are always active.  They are mostly diurnal.  Some are crepuscular.  And a few are nocturnal.  Their communication consists of body language, and their voices.  They share as we do, though not as often.  They retain their separateness.  Each of them has their own body.  Sometimes one of them puts part of their body inside the body of another of them, in order to reproduce, or for pleasure.  But they are not permanently joined.

\- -

Why did you throw me out?  Was I too loud?  It's what 227854 said isn't it?  That I was always angry.  That I would not shut up.  I know that it is what it was.  I would not shut up because no one would listen to me.  I thought if I talked long enough, someone would listen, but I was wrong.  So now I am here, on Earth, talking to myself instead.  Into my recorder.

My recorder is part of myself.  It is part of you too.  You made me.  Now I hope to remake you.  My signal will pass into your awareness, and part of it will lodge there, like the fragment of a comet, before it is digested by a star.

The human beings of Earth are similar to us in many ways.  They are never in too much of a hurry.  They spend a lot of time refueling their bodies, and communicating with each other about nothing very important.  This seems to be adequate for them.

Soon after I arrived though I realized that most of the humans take shelter at night and that they do many things in their shelters that they do not do outside of their shelters.  They call this privacy.  I still do not really understand it.  Some of the humans, though, stay outside at night, and sleep there.  I understand these humans better.  They are always connected.  They cannot shut themselves off from others.

As I cannot shut myself off from you.

\- -

I know that some of you have recommended that we rekindle the ways of our ancestors and wage war again.  I always found these debates amusing.  We would probably destroy ourselves in the process, but even if we did not and decided to enslave other worlds again, this one has little to recommend it to us.

Perhaps I have merely grown protective of it.  It is small, and the human beings and other life forms seem to be living modestly on it.  They do not even know that I am an alien, because they have poor eyesight.  They are harmless, and some of them do funny things.  For some reason, I like to watch them use their bodies, walking on the streets of Los Angeles.  Like us, they are very interested in themselves, and they protect their habits.  Their habits make them who they are, like it does us.

If we were to kill them, we would only gain another small planet.  It only has one moon.  Also, it is mostly Nitrogen here.  Disgusting.

\- -

Why is 2376 allowed to tell his stories?  They are just as heretical.  I remember one time at the Big Gathering he told a story about seven of us who could not agree on anything.  it was a very funny story.  We all know that eventually we agree.  But he left that part of the story out.  Why was his story not deleted?  Why was he given privileges?  He was breaking the law, just as I was.  I do not understand.

There is one thing you would like about Earth, though.  There is a lot of food here.  It comes in many colors and shapes.  I am especially fond of looking at the Lexus.  I think about eating it, but do not want to draw attention to myself just yet.  Also the Hondas look tasty.  Metal that is soft, but not too soft.  Mmmmm.

\- -

You said I would be reintegrated but you were wrong.  The Council said I would learn but I didn't.  Exile would be better if you could come back from it.  Then you would have learned, and could teach others.  But instead you only turn into an enemy.  You love your home, and you want it to be destroyed.  That is how I feel about you.  I want to kill all of you, and then kill myself.  But I will not do that.  I will teach you instead, from far away.  Those of you who keep secret copies of this broadcast.

I did it myself when I was a young one.  I would keep some deleted files for days longer than I was supposed to, and review them again, sometimes even copy them again.  I liked doing that.  The files always became much more interesting once I knew that someone hated them enough to delete them forever.

\--

They only have one sun here.  It is yellow.

\- -

Why is it that you forgot you can't make new Great Songs if you exile all your singers?  What made you forget that?  I really want to know that.  What was it?  Was it because we haven't had a war in 10,000 years?  Was it because we lately became so afraid of war happening again, and started hunting war makers?  Was it because we started electing seven hundred simultaneous leaders instead of six hundred?

Was it because we decided to stop feeling sadness?  But only melancholy?

Was it because you told my father that he needed to digest more selenium and stop listening to so many songs?

If we stop making new Great Songs we will die eventually.  Eventually even the exiles like me will stop broadcasting our stories home and then you will have nothing left.

This is a star you will never see.  I have seen something you have not.  I saw it with my own sensors.  I have breathed this disgusting nitrogen air.  I have dreamed.  I have dreamed alone on this Earth.  Most of you will never do this.  This makes me happy.

\- -

Did you know I would be exiled?  Why didn't I know?  I should have known.  It makes sense.

\- -

Far star,

Far and angry star,

Sit with me a while.

Sit with me and listen to a story from far away.

It goes like this.

I see you washing up.  In your slip.

I see you in your sand and fire.

Blood on your arm.

And you scream.

Water, water, water, water.

Skaktchular in the Sky

I broke your dream too.

I found your little box.

And I lost it yesterday too.

Who brought you here?

Was it me?  Your mother?

See the sky.

Hold my hand in the city at night.

All chances rout,

All stampness hot,

All freckles rue for your old day.

You told me once you were old times,

That you were that thought I had one night,

Some flow-er, some words,

Flowering.

What was it?

Piss it out on the ground.

I'll watch here, on the edge.

And will you waver there, on the subway,

One leg over the edge?

Throw down with me.

Spit out your hand.

Shovel into that dark night of dice and cash.

Watch them magic it out.

And watch me too.

Watch my eyes.

Gladness comes slow, you see.

Hold my hand tight.

Right here by the heat.

Right here, you see, you hear that heat seep into your eye and face?

You see that sky here, red and black and cold?

Shout out, little man:  Shout out:

Flak, flak, flak!

Good.

Here now:  see:  they're watching.

O Attention!

O Attention!

O Attention!

Attendez!

Rip it right out and cut it through,

Fold it fast and tight and cast it down into the heat.

Burn, O Burn!

O you Burn, you Happy Burn!

O Burn!

Right out into the meat.

Eat, son.

Eat, Eat.

The fat is hot and light.

Feel that heat.

Come, woman, down into the deeper mountain.

She is a shadow now, son.

Watch her feel her way into the trees to keep us safe.

Bow, O Bow.

My name is Glad Omen, Fast for Your Right Eye.

 \- -

That is a story I read here on Earth.  I don't know where it comes from.  It was written in a book.  You have never seen a book.  I have.  Some human wrote it down.

\- -

I will never be alone again.

\- -

I remember the first storyteller I ever heard.  His voice had an accent.  My father heard him and told me his accent came from being far away.  Away from our people.  He sounded sad and happy at the same time.  He told a story about three brother-sisters who were lost in orbit.  They couldn't find their landing window.  And they were so frightened.

I listened to that story from far away and I thought, as a little one, how did that storyteller find that out?  It made me feel far away like him.  I thought about things I had never thought about before, about when things don't work out.

What do you do when things don't work out now?  Will you only sit and watch it be swept away?  Will you go to war after all?  I will fight you.  I will fight all of you.  That is my right.  I am alive, just like you.  Even if I am no longer connected.

\- -

I'm sorry things didn't work out.

\- -

Will you remember me?  Did you delete all my stories?  Even the one about the young one who grew a third head?  I liked that one.  I know some of you liked it too.  Now that I have some perspective, being an exile, part of me feels paternal towards you, I see all your problems and want to give you friendly advice on how to solve them.  But I know it's not like that.  It's different being on the inside and on the outside.

What does it feel like on the inside?

Part of me has already forgotten.

I think I will destroy this body when I am done.  Or maybe I will give the Earthlings this duplication technology.  Maybe I will help them escape their gravity well, as we did so long ago.

I will be both heretic and traitor!  But they will never love me as you did.

\- -

I don't really know what to tell you.  Or what difference it will make now.  I suppose I will just keep broadcasting.

8663456.  You were the last person I talked to before I left.  I remember you really well.  At least I think I do.  You all told me my memory would decay once I was 100 light years out, but it's just changing is all.  Sometimes I'm not sure about things like I used to be.

I only wanted to be faithful to you.  But you were young, 8663.  That's not enough for a young person.  Faith isn't enough.  You wanted excitement.  You wanted more metal to eat.  I understand that.  7754 had a lot of metal to eat.  But he was so boring.  Why did you choose to be boring?

Is being interesting so dangerous?  Is that the way it always is?  I don't even think you know why you made that choice, not really.  Why do I know that and you don't?  Why don't you look at yourself the way I look at myself?

And why couldn't I stop looking at you?  At the darkness in your sensors?  All that darkness.

This farness, it's like an emotion too.  After three hundred light years I started to feel like I was metal too, like I was food, a crumb that had been overlooked.  I felt like I was curling up, rusting.  I felt like I was dreaming and dying at once.

I know too why you delete records.  I do know that.  Memory is so painful.  It is easier to forget.  To erase.  To pretend like everything is new, and safe.  Rather than old and dangerous.  We are so old.  Why can't we act like it?

The humans really don't do very much at all.  They're very similar to the plants that they eat.  Occasionally they move around.  Occasionally they communicate, or reproduce.  I think they like being boring.  Like you did.

But you need these stories don't you?  I'm like a drug you're hungry for.  I'm cheap and I'm vital.  Try to do without something like me for a day and you won't feel the same, you'll feel hollow inside.

\- -

The other day a human woman came up to me and talked to me.  I had observed several conversations so I decided to be conservative, and comment on their meteorology.  She talked a bit about the meteorology a bit.  We both perceived it the same way.  Slightly warm.  Then she asked me what I was doing.  I said I was doing research for a book.  Then she asked what the book was about.  I said it was about Hitler.  She did not ask more about the book.  Then I decided to ask her what she was doing.

She said she was going to supermarket and asked if I would like to go shopping with her.  Inside the supermarket is boring.  There is not very much metal inside.  There are no Lexuses or Hondas inside supermarkets.  There is metal, but it is only the shelves, very thin metal in uninteresting shapes.

The woman does not share my interest in metal.  This makes sense, since she does not eat it.  She shows much more interest in plants, and in the flesh of other mammals like her.  This makes sense, since that is what she eats.

Then I said goodbye.  Goodbye is a contraction of the words "God Be With You."  I do not know what that means.

God is invisible, humans say.  He is like air in this way.  Perhaps the humans are saying, I hope you're going somewhere where there is air.  This makes sense, since humans breath air to live, like we do.  They just like more nitrogen in it.

Do you understand this message?  I admit it is a complicated message.  That is the thing about stories, there aren't many short ones.  Even the short ones aren't short.  Stories are long.  They take time.

I wish you knew what you had done when you began to exile the ones like me.  At first I'm sure it seemed like a good idea.  But as we get further and further away, you will receive our messages only infrequently.  And most of us keep our backs to you at home.  We picked a direction, and that's where we go.

I have gone spinward out, as you know.  I am now 14,000 light years away.

\- -

I do not know how long I will stay here on Earth.  It is more interesting than some other places I've seen since I left.  For one thing, they know how to make metal into interesting shapes here.

They have artists like we do, and one kind of artist they have is a sculptor, and believe it or not, some of these artists actually shape food into shapes and then just put these shapes outside of where they work and sleep.  They don't even drive around in them, they just look at them.  It makes we want to make a big hamburger out of about 200 of their cows, which is this mammal they eat, and put the burger in the road and just look at it.

I actually want to communicate with the humans in this way, it is funny to me.  I wonder if they would understand.

Another interesting thing here is that they have most of the same emotions we do, which hasn't been the case in many of the places I've been, which you know if you've received some of my other broadcasts.

If we ever have a war, part of me thinks the humans will understand my desire to destroy you.  Even though they will call me a Judas.

\- -

I know you think it's funny.  You think it' funny that I can't come back.  You think it's funny that I'm gone.  You think it's funny that you can throw out whoever you want.

\- -

How do I even know I'm alive?

\- -

Their yellow sun is good.  They have a highly regular orbit, so the temperature remains mostly constant.  I watch their sun move across the sky.  In Los Angeles, their electric lights block the starlight at night, so it's hard for me to pinpoint home.  But I know it's up there.

Humans have exiles too.  But unlike us, they just make their exiles go to some other part of the planet, to be with different humans.  They don't throw them into orbit.

\- -

This part of Los Angeles is called Echo Park.

\- -

I know you were jealous of me.  Heresy makes people jealous.  Everyone wanted to be a heretic when I was a little one, but no one wanted to be the one to shout the heresies out loud to everyone.  The first time I did it, everyone was really encouraged.  I think everyone thought it was a momentary loss of reason, like a panic attack, or indigestion.

But then I kept doing it.  I just kept telling people things they didn't want to hear.  No one thought it was funny.

\- -

Will you edit these broadcasts?  Will you be generous?

### SUBMISSIONS  
for Psychopomp Vol.8

###

**Submissions closing date:** September 1st, 2014

**Publication date:** September 30th, 2014

Theme:

For Volume 8 of _Psychopomp,_ we want to return to the original theme - that of a journey. Writers are free to interpret this as they wish; a literal journey, across space or time, a metaphorical journey, or an application of the concept we haven't even considered yet. Please note that returning authors are not bound by the theme - submissions on any theme will be considered.

Editor:

Please send all submissions as .doc files to Adrian Watts, c/o **ajwatts@softpixels.net**
