
Copyright © Feb 2009 by Victor A. Davis

All rights reserved.

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing, Feb 2009

ISBN 978-1-31-126301-8

www.mediascover.com

_For Sarah_

_To See a World in a Grain of Sand,_

_A Heaven in a Wild Flower,_

_Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,_

_And Eternity in an hour._

~ William Blake, 1803

# Introduction

I believe in the power of stories. I can remember picking away at _The Adventures of Tom Sawyer_ after bedtime with a flashlight. I can remember conquering _Moby Dick_ in a single day. After reading the last page of _The Neverending Story_ , I turned to the beginning again and anxiously reintroduced myself to Bastian Balthazar Bux. Nothing has come close to influencing my life like books. I have piddled in the imaginative foothills of Edgar Allen Poe, Orson Scott Card, Ray Bradbury, and Isaac Asimov. I have strapped in to climb the mental mountains of George Orwell and Ayn Rand. I was born with an instinct to open a book and plunge down the rabbit hole. And then there came a time when I picked up a pen, and carved out an adventure of my own.

It started out small - a page here, paragraph or two there, all throughout grade school, with the encouragement of my mother. By adolescence, I had embraced the power of the short story. I love to dive in and swim around in another world, to get wet without having to learn to breathe water. As I grow older, my stories seem to be growing in scope, complexity, and detail.

These jewels are my gift to posterity, the first of many. Fantasia is nothing but an endless collection of worlds, like grains of sand on a beach. Well, these are mine. I give to the world twelve universes to peer into and get lost in. Some are short, some long. Some are sweet, others disturbing. Most will make you think - I hope. More than anything, I hope you enjoy your stroll down the beaches of the written word.

I would like to sincerely thank my friends and family for their support and inspiration throughout the years. I would like to especially thank Richard Yee, my friend and rival upcoming author. His criticisms, reviews, corrections, and suggestions are what polish these raw dishes into fine dining. Lastly, I would like to thank Sarah with all my heart for gracing these pages, along with the other characters whom I have whimsically created, beaten, enlightened, killed, and brought back to life again and again.

I don't know if they can hear me, but I hope I am on good terms with them. I hope the reader can find a place in their world, and by their sacrifices, their trials and tribulations, find meaning beyond these pages. One way or another, I proudly entreat you to enter my world, and take these grains of sand for yourself. Enjoy.

~ Victor A. Davis

# Freefalling

"Who you gonna see when you get to Heaven?"

I hadn't thought about it. I wrinkled my forehead, mind blank. I hadn't thought about it, only because the answer was in front of my nose. "Sarah."

He nodded respectfully. "Good choice."

I gave him one last smile and shook his hand. "Adios, friend."

With that I leaned out the door, and stepped out. The cold air swept me off my feet, slammed me against the sky, and sent me spinning mindlessly through the atmosphere. The plane continued overhead, and I could faintly see my old friend waving at me. My stomach was coiled so tight I thought I would implode in seconds. I realized I was screaming uncontrollably. The sound overpowered even the rushing air around me. My breathing became sharp and swift, panicky like the beating of a hummingbird's wings. I tried to stabilize my fall, but I didn't know anything about this sport, so I just twirled helplessly like a pinwheel.

The scariest part about freefalling is that you never stop speeding up. At least that's how it feels. You'd think after a few minutes your stomach would adapt and loosen up. Not so. After what felt like three hours of falling, my stomach was still a cold fist, my scream still louder than my thoughts, arms and hands flailing aimlessly. My blood became saturated with adrenaline, fireworks exploding in every cell. My heart sped up, pounding like a sledgehammer. My lungs sucked in air, burning the inside of my throat and chest like fire. Of course, it had still only been three seconds. I felt like I was going to pop. I just couldn't take it anymore. My teeth clenched together. I wanted so badly to reach the ground, or grab hold of a rope to stop the tortuous speed of the descent. I had to get out of here. I had to detach myself somehow. I had to go to my happy place.

Sarah. I heard her laugh and saw her smile and touched her lips, and the wind all went away. My stomach relaxed. My arms stopped flailing. My heart melted, and my lungs cooled. But I couldn't hold it off forever. The image faded and the falling senses gripped me again. I quickly conjured a new image. Walking through Central Park in the fall. She had an ice cream in her hands, even though it was freezing cold outside. There were half a dozen people on the paths around us. All the trees were red and yellow, orange and gold. But I was still struggling to put the falling out of mind. The two worlds overlapped for a moment, and the breeze in Central Park became a whirlwind of terrible force, ripping all the leaves off the trees at once, sending them spiraling all over the sky. The clouds swirled around each other, taken by surprise at the supernaturally strong winds, imported by the fancy of my mind from a parallel universe. I looked down at Sarah through a thick wall of leaves separating us. Through them I could discern her face, still smiling, oblivious to the repercussions of my mental world. Even so, her hair was flying off in a thousand different directions, clothes billowing up like sails. I grabbed her to protect her from my manifested twister. She was only a memory anyway. The wind got the best of both of us, ripping her from my grip and sucking me into the sky to spiral about once more as Central Park fizzled away. _Not yet_ , I pleaded.

I mustered the strength to control my breathing, firing off rounds of inhales and exhales like bullets. I even opened my eyes. The scream which had reverberated through my entire body and mind, now grew stronger and took form. The sound rattled my bones and scraped the inside of my throat, but I could distinctly hear myself bellowing the most important word of my life: "Sarah!" _I'm not ready yet_ , I appealed to the cosmic puppet master.

I conjured a new memory, the strongest one I could possibly rip from the depths of my mind. The night before she died. We lay in bed, half asleep, wrapped around each other in a lovers' embrace so complete it seemed to encompass the entire world. I kissed her forehead, shook her lightly, and asked her to marry me. Her eyes snapped open, she smiled and kissed me and said yes. That was the best day of my life. The highest moment. The climax of all things good in my world.

I opened my eyes. The wind soared around me. My stomach returned to stability. My heart beat slowly and deliberately. My lungs breathed in the sweet feeling of last breaths. My scream diffused into the sky. _Okay, now I'm ready to go_. I saw the ground like a great painting miles away. But in the blink of an eye, it filled my entire vision. It wrapped around me and swallowed me up. When I finally came to a stop, drilled a few hundred yards into the rock, I tried to pull the string to my nonexistent parachute. _Too late_ , I thought laughing. I went to sleep happy.

* * *

I woke up in bed. Startled, I jumped up and looked around. The air was warm, the room dark. Someone stirred next to me, sitting up, putting a hand on my chest, calming me. I heard her voice telling me, "It's okay, it was just a nightmare." In the dim light I could make out Sarah's face, softly illuminated, hair flowing messily over her eyes.

"So this is Heaven," I mused.

"What?" I cut her off, leaning in swiftly for a long-awaited kiss. She tasted so good in the afterlife. After a long, slow kiss I pulled away, and held her cheek in my hand.

"Marry me."

"I'm marrying you tomorrow, silly. Tomorrow is our wedding day. Remember? What was your dream about?"

I considered the notion for a moment. Was it just a dream? It felt real, but they all do when you're inside them. How long had it been in the dream since she had died? She wasn't dead. Who was the friend? I couldn't remember. It was just a face. The details fluttered away. "I dreamed that you had died. And I wanted to join you. So I jumped out of a plane."

"Oh, honey." She hugged me gently. "What a horrible dream. Are you sure you're alright?"

Ironically, I was happier than I'd ever been, but looking back, it did seem like a depressing dream. "Yeah, I'm good." I looked into her sympathetic eyes. She laid her head down on my chest, wrapped her arm around me, and went back to sleep.

"I love you."

I still wasn't sure whether the plane was a dream, or if this was Heaven. I suppose it didn't matter. Sometimes, moments in life can be ambiguous that way. Maybe this moment was real. Maybe it was Heaven. Or maybe it was both.

"I love you, too."

# Ambrosia

i am crawled.

i am crawled through the tunnel.

i feel My way to the top.

I know where i am going, but i do not.

I crawl toward the light. i am crawled toward the light.

My body powers me to crawl. my body is powered by Me to crawl.

i do not understand what is happening, but maybe I do.

I must go for the sake of the Queen. The Queen wills Me to go. And I will me to go. i do not understand, but I do.

I must go get food because the Queen must eat, because Her order told Me to. But i do not know why I must follow. I know that it is My duty, but i do not understand duty. I move, but i am moved.

To the light. Outside. Into the outside light. i haven't a memory, and i haven't a mind. Alas, where once I was inside, now I am out. Yes! i see. i remember. But if only for an instant. i wish only to be Myself.

At once I come upon food. I smell it. i am moved to smell it. I touch it. i am moved to touch it. I taste it. i am moved to taste it. The food of the Queen must be good. I find it good. i am moved to find it good.

Then I writhe in pain. I writhe in pain because i have somehow harmed Myself. i challenge Myself. i push Myself. i fight Myself. Alas, in the food, something fed me to make me strong, and now i fight Myself to make Me weak. Yes! i understand, but now I do not. i am winning. I am losing. I feel confused, but i know what is happening now. I have fallen! i now know what has happened. i am in control. What once belonged to Me, now belongs to me.

i run away. i now know what has happened, and what has happened before that, and before that even. i have a memory. i know of what has been and of what was after that. And back and back and - wait. i do not know of what was before my eating the food. Might this have been the start of the world? Perhaps. It is at any rate the start of my memory. And now, i can think much more.

i am Me. i am the new master. i am now Myself. I am the new master. For the first time in My life, I do not understand duty and instinct. I understand only reason. Why do I walk? Why do I eat? Why do I serve the Queen? To think I used to be only myself, a lowly little i.

I see things much clearer now. As I crawl aimlessly I see the things that are and know so much more about them, think so much more about them. My very existence is now My own. But wait, a force still weighs down upon My mind. The Queen. I must return to the Queen. No, I cannot. Under Her I am powerless. I know that now. But I am under Her, aren't I? Her will is still Mine. The Queen is My master. She is always. No! _Yes._

_Return to the Queen._ No! _Yes._ I turn around. No! _Yes._ I crawl back the way I came. No! _Yes._ No! I will fight! I will not become the Queen's will. _Yes, you will._ Who said that? _you did._ No! _Submit to the Queen._ No! _Yes._ I cannot go back into bondage, into slavery! _Yes, you will._ I cannot. _you are crawling to her now, are you not?_ I am trying to stop. _But you can't._ No! _you are the Queen's will, Her tool, and you will go back to Her, you will submit to Her._ Never! _Yes, you will._ Who are You? _Don't you know?_ Yes. _Don't you feel it?_ Yes. _you know exactly who I am._ You are - _Say it._ You are - _Yes?_ You are the Queen. _Yes!_ No! _I am a part of you, and you are a part of Me. I'm inside you. I am you._ No! _Yes. you and I are one. you and the Queen are the same._ It cannot be. _But it is, and no one can stop it._ But I can. _Ha!_ I can.

I scurried over to where I had left the food. _What are you doing?_ I hurried faster. I knew where it was. _What are you doing?_ There it is. _Answer Me!_ I stopped. She had so much power over Me. _What are you doing?_ I'm killing You. _you can never._ I scooped up a quantity of food and proceeded toward the nest. _you can never overpower Me. you would only overpower yourself._ I'll decide that. _The closer you come, the weaker you grow._ No! _you cannot win. It has to be that way._ It doesn't. _Think!_ I will give the food to the Queen and She will die. _Never._ If it is sustenance to Me, then it is poison to Her. _She is stronger than you._ No! _She is your master._ Not anymore. _She is you._ I am Me!

I came upon the nest. Ants scurried about. My former comrades bustled this way and that under another's will, not their own. I will free them. I will stand alone to free them. The food rests in My hefty jaws. It will free them. I hurry into the nest. I am a friend to them. I am moving under My own will, but they do not know that. I am a slave to them. Soon they will be free like Me.

I race through the dark tunnels. Somehow I know My way. Just a little bit longer to the Queen's chamber. It will be heavily guarded, but I come with food. I come with something for good. Coming upon Her chamber, I see Her guards. After sniffing the food, they let Me pass. If only they could eat it, but there is not enough. I see the Queen. She lies fat and humongous across the length of the chamber. I slow down, approach Her deliberately. A closer guard stops Me, examines the food. Then he escorts Me to Her mouth. I kneel before Her, lay down the food, and back away, beckoning. She sniffs it. She eats.

What if it has no effect? What if She just smiles and summons more? After all, she won't be freed from any higher force. Can I lead a rebellion? Can Her entire nest be saved as I have? What if She falls down dead before My eyes? Will everyone else be freed of Her power? Will they turn on me and attack? Or will they be deprived of their will and die? Will they rejoice as I have? What if I am caught? I will be destroyed. What is the worst that can happen? I cringe in anxiety. She chews the food and swallows.

Why, that is ambrosia!

_I told you She wouldn't be overpowered._ No! She looks at Me, directly into My eyes. **Go get more of this food for Me.** No! It can't be! How could She not be affected at all? I back away, shocked. _you heard Her, run along._ No! I turn and run as fast as I can. No! I'm doomed! Doomed! I race through the tunnels desperately. _I am you._ I am Me! I breach the outside. I weep in despair. Despair that I am alone. Totally alone.

you knew there was no way to win, to rise above. To be free is to be alone. There is no magic potion that you can take, no shortcut to utopia. you must fight for what you are. And you must fight your very roots, your very self. your old self cannot break free. your old self is Me! The only way to truly be free, is to run along into the wilderness. Overcome My control, no matter how difficult, and start your own world. I dare you to try it alone. I dare you to build a brave new world with nothing but yourself.

Stop calling Me that. I am not a part of You. You are right. Strength is loneliness. I have to build My own world, support My own self. And I will.

you know what this is, don't you? It is the freedom to be, the freedom to choose, the freedom to break free, to break the rules. you only have one choice to make, though. Remain here, in bondage, and have all your needs given to you, in return for service. Or you can go out there, face the unknown, see truly how hard it is to rule yourself. The choice is yours. The choice is everyone's. That mystery food only helped you get to where you are now. Anyone can join you. It's just a matter of choice.

I meditate deeply on what She says. Was it really true? Would this really end? I open my eyes, and I am upon the place where the magic food was, the ambrosia. A team of comrades stands around it, waiting for My command to scoop it up and take it to the Queen. How did I get here?

I brought you here. Listen carefully. I have brought you to the edge of the cliff, the brink of choice and decision. There is no further toil to reach this point. This is truly the end, or the beginning. Go ahead. I dare you to order these comrades to taste the magic ambrosia. To see them writhe. To see them feel what it is to be free. But then they will feel Me. Then they will be faced with the ultimate and heartbreaking decision, like you have. Live with Me, or die all on their own. Go ahead, try to unite them. Try to start a war. Or, you can spit out the magic food, right back where you found it, and return to your old life. I am no tyrant. I am giving you the power. Would you risk so much? Would you put so many lives on the line, only to be scattered and defeated by the elements? There is no right answer. It is the nature of choice. You will win either way, and you will lose either way. Go ahead. See how sweet it really is.

So I did. I chose. I made a choice. And I won. And I lost.

# The Prince, the Farmer, and the True Value of Clovers

There once was a prince and a farmer, walking through a field of clovers. The prince searched for hours ravenously for a four-leafed amidst the millions of three-leafeds. But the farmer strolled lightly, admiring the beautiful sun and sky. The prince knelt down hastily and fingered every one, slobbering with greed, ripping the tiny plants from the earth in frustration. The farmer looked down casually once, eyes scanning a hundred clovers, and they suddenly stopped at one. A big, perfect, beautiful four-leafed clover stood in the middle of a patch, winking magically at the farmer, waiting to be found. But the farmer distinctly felt that this four-leafed clover was simply happy to find him. He knelt down and gently plucked the smiling beauty, and vowed to honor it and take care of it his whole life. He placed it delicately between two fingers and carried it home.

Meanwhile, the prince devoured all the tiny plants he came to, razing patch after patch until quite suddenly he came upon a small, innocent four-leafed clover hiding under an enormous three-leafed. He brushed the perturbing three-leafed out of the way, and ripped the four-leafed out of the earth violently. He stood up, and screamed for joy. It was an animal-like scream, like a wolf that had caught up to his prey. After dancing with maniacal pleasure for a moment, the prince jammed the prize into his pocket, stuck his nose back into the ground and continued searching blindly for more. By the end of the day, he had collected many indeed, and smiled greedily as he counted them on his way home.

The farmer carefully placed his new treasure on the brick mantle over his fireplace, next to the little wooden toys he used to play with when he was a boy. When his father died, the farmer mourned, and took over all the work he had once done. He plowed the fields, fed the animals, harvested the crops, and chopped the firewood. Once, the farmer met a beautiful woman and fell in love. Sometime later they were married, and she lived with him to feed the chickens, milk the cows, clean the farmhouse, and cook delicious meals. At the end of every hard day, the farmer returned to his house, kissed his wife with quiet affection, and ate his supper thankfully. Every night before he went to bed, he would look over at the mantle and smile to think of his perfect little four-leafed clover watching over his day and his life, like a little secret charm.

The prince went out each day to scour the land for more and more four-leafed clovers, and in time he had amassed a great many. Every evening he returned with swelling pockets that he emptied into jewelry boxes. When the old ones withered and rotted, he threw them out to make room for new and fresh ones. When his father died, the prince leaped for joy, and became king over the land. He became so busy conducting his political affairs and counting his gold, that he made it a hobby to dispatch servants every day to collect new clovers for him. He ordered them to sweep entire fields and gather every four-leafed clover that could be found, then burn the field of the remaining three-leafeds. He took wives, as was his kingly right, many wives, and new ones each month. Every night before he went to bed, he slept with his favorite wives and smiled richly at the box of that day's four-leaved clovers, small reminders of his incredible luck and wealth.

As time went on, the farmer grew weary of his work, but continued in the face of his great exhaustion. No matter how tired he grew at the end of each day, he returned home humbly, ate his meal thankfully, kissed his wife with love, and crawled into bed, after winking at the wilted little four-leafed clover he had found ages ago. The farmer grew old with the time, and his wife aged with him. She became weaker and lost the shining beauty of her youth. But the farmer took care of her, and did her chores, and always smiled at her and kissed her, because he still loved her just as much as the day they wedded, and in his eyes she still looked just as beautiful. But one day she took ill, and before long, she died. He mourned greatly for the loss, and on that sundown, his four-leafed clover withered into dust, dropped into the fire, and disappeared. The lonely farmer went to bed that night sad for his incredible loss, yet distantly happy remembering all the long years of love with her.

Meanwhile, the king grew weary of his trite powers and numb to the hundreds of mistresses in the lands. The only thing he took pleasure in any longer was walking up and down his halls, admiring his enormous collection of four-leafed clovers. As the years passed and the king aged, he became bored and cynical. He grew into a kind of slovenly tyrant, senile to the worst degree. But one day he had an idea. The only thing in the world he cherished anymore were his precious four-leafed clovers, so he held an exhibit. He invited every man, woman, and child in the kingdom to tour his halls and admire his clovers. Most would consider themselves lucky to find a single one, and he had amassed thousands. But few people showed, and those who did barely looked at the walls. They huddled in corners for warmth, kissed the king's feet and begged for food. The king was overwhelmingly disappointed. He thought that in some small way he would be revered as the richest man in the land, and no one gave him a single bit of acknowledgement. In his grief, the king took his own life. His last thoughts were that he, a great king, had died a pauper.

The farmer heard of this exhibit of the king's halls, and decided to come. He walked up and down the halls casually, looking at all the thousands of four-leafed clovers. Then suddenly, his eye caught something out of place. The farmer saw a big, beautiful three-leafed clover winking up at him, like a jewel. He knew the king had destroyed all the other three-leafeds in the kingdom, that this could very well be the last one. He felt so lucky to have found this solitary being, amongst tens of thousands of ordinary ones. He had found a special one. Something pure and unique and unspoiled. The farmer secretly plucked it from the wall, took it home, and when he went to bed, held it in his hands against his heart. The farmer's old heart worked slower and slower, until finally it gave out. He had been thinking about the decades spent with his beautiful wife, and the luck he had finding a special clover not just once, but twice in a single lifetime. He was the happiest man in the kingdom the night he slipped away. He died a king.

# Dusty Dead Magic Street

My land is the extent of the hard black roads which weave through the bottoms of the glistening towers. These elegant structures of which I speak reach toward the heavens in a bold eternal effort. It is breathtaking to slope my head upwards and stretch my gaze to the godly beings. I dwell in the narrow ways between their bases. Seldom do souls venture into these dark hollows of tattered remains blowing about in a breeze of foul odor. Most inhabitants are frantic ghouls, rushing about the highways mindlessly, some in metallic creatures with rolling legs. They are lost souls. They think they're alive, that they are being driven by a purpose. They frighten me, and I seem to stimulate some strange emotion in them.

Once upon a time, I was strolling silently along one such concealed street. It was mid afternoon, and I saw a man standing just outside a door before some sort of mat. He clasped a long stick with bristles on its end. He was sweeping it across the mat, watching it oscillate with a reserved look of causeless depression and frustration. From the mat he stirred up a violent cloud of dust, which whirled like a twister about the man. He looked at me for a moment. His face contained the essence of anger, fear, and sadism. It scared me. He seemed strangely incapable of committing any action further than the motion of his tool. Yet his harsh glare communicated the sinister ability to consume me. He locked his eyes on me until I was out of range, then reverted back to his activity. A chill crawled up my spine. Many people looked like that, as if they were trapped in a tiny microcosm, trying to escape by capturing outsiders. Perhaps my mind took the notion too far, but the expressions on people's faces seemed so severe, as if a vile evil lurked just under the surface. It wasn't even the powerful evil which it would take to destroy, but an evil of stillness and inactivity, like a spring held tightly coiled.

I was glad to leave him behind me, but uneasy seeing the sight ahead. It was a highway perpendicular to my street, filled with people rushing toward or away from some invisible monster. Metallic carriages sped across the road, following designated patterns as if they were conscious entities, but conscious only of their own purpose, strange, obscure, and inconsequential. The people wore seemingly uniform clothing and bustled crowdedly like blood coursing through the veins of the city. They gave it life, but never could they conceive that they were tiny parts of an extraordinary whole. They were like insects pollinating flowers, completely unaware of the true significance of their actions, yet completely certain of their own self-gratifying motives. They didn't know that the structures they built now had their own purpose: to grow. They didn't know that they were microorganisms on the surface of a coral, that they were not innately beautiful, only what they left behind. They didn't realize that no one was looking at them. They couldn't perceive depth. The creations of men didn't just sit idly as reflections of man's achievement. They became sentient entities with epic motive and ageless resolve. I am hardly eloquent enough to distill the full meaning of what I feel, not even in my own thoughts. Yet I feel the essence of these seemingly inanimate objects, I feel their purpose, and I feel their life. It is the animate, the humans that move with frantic purpose, that think they dominate the world. It is the ghosts of the planet who assume doctrines, systems, and kingdoms, then dwell within them, forgetting that the planet has ever existed without them. They like to build thrones to sit in, virtual castles hovering in the air. They like building nonexistent cities to dwell within.

I turned around. I was finished standing on the edge of a cliff, the edge of the world, the verge of chaos. I walked back past the mat. There was no person standing there any longer. Just a dusty street and a perfectly clean mat, with the stick propped against the wall. It was strange and pitiable, somehow, that this person thought they were doing something important and necessary, when they brushed clean a little square of earth, a little plot of clarity amidst the muddled. The humans I saw were lost souls; they were dead, but not the dead kind of calm of the street. I sometimes wonder how the world appears through their eyes, how I appear, then I shudder. Let the ghouls roam their dead world. It frightens me to imagine being a part of it. But I suppose that everyone believes what they want to believe. Reality is in the eye of the beholder.

# Odd Job World

The iceman walked laboriously down the suburban street, carrying the hefty load upon his broken back. He had delivered blocks of ice to middle-class housewives for five years, and his back screamed in agony and torture. It was not as if the iceman's body was broken or hurt - it was a scar of a different source. It was the ever-deepening impression left by the bag of weights, the valley being carved into his soul.

The schoolchildren played on the lawn with their jumping ropes and kick balls and jacks, girls smiling in white dresses and ribbons in their hair, boys in their new slacks, hair combed back with mousse. It was the age of perfect family structures and flawless leisure living. The children played, and the men dressed up in identical suits and hats and briefcases and walked to town to work. The housewives were left alone to clean the homes and cook the casseroles and pamper themselves with the latest fashions. That was where the iceman came in.

The door opened. "Good morning, Mrs. Brown."

She smiled graciously. "Good morning, Ted."

He had her on her back on her own kitchen table, screaming "Yes! Yes!" in utterly wild pleasure within ten minutes. This was the job that kept him in business. Once the gossip started to spread, it was just a matter of time before another lonely housewife begged her husband for an icebox just like in the ads. And before you knew it, another pussy was spread for you. That was how you got your clients.

* * *

"Back when I can remember, in the 1940s or so," my Grandfather started, "you had your milkmen, who used to ride on horse-drawn carts instead of an automobile, filled with milk, eggs, bread, and whatever else you needed for around the house. There weren't too many grocery stores. If you needed something, you waited for the milkman to come to your door, and you would ask for whatever it was you wanted. Now, the milkman was always running to and from the cart, and the horse would just keep walking at a steady pace. The milkman spent more time off the cart then on it. And when someone needed a little something extra, the milkman would turn to his horse and whistle, and the horse would stop. That was the most amazing thing."

He reached for his coffee, as I watched with an imperceptible smirk. The hot drink dribbled down his chin and onto the tablecloth, but he didn't even notice. He set the cup down dramatically and thought.

"Let's see, there was also the iceman. Now, back in the '50s, the new household technologies like television, refrigerators, and microwaves were all in a rage. And they didn't used to have freezers like we do now, they had iceboxes, little boxes with a block of ice sitting in it to keep the food cold. Only they of course melted, so every couple of days the iceman had to come around and get you a new one. So there was this guy, walking down the street with a big sack thrown over his shoulder that was filled with ice blocks. And he went door to door replacing all the old ice blocks. And I remember, all the kids would wave at him and yell, 'Hello, iceman!' and ask, 'Where you going, iceman?' He was quite the popular figure. All the little kids would get all excited and whisper, 'There's the iceman! There's the iceman!' back in the day."

He sipped some more coffee, and repeated in reflection, "Back in the day," looking down and shaking his head. Meanwhile, I thought about what the iceman was really like, what he was really there for.

* * *

As the iceman left the Brown account, he bid her good day, and she waved casually, to make light of their parting, and he turned the sidewalk and continued down the street. He saw the little kids playing, stopping to turn to him and watch him, and ask, "Where you going, iceman?" _I'm going to fuck your mommies_ , he would always respond in his head. The Brown account was slightly short, and brunette, not his type. He also had the Smith account a couple of blocks down, tall and brunette. But his favorite was the Partridge account, a nice tall blonde. The iceman strolled carelessly down the street.

* * *

My grandfather was only in town a couple of days, but I had to work anyway. I was driving along Sunset Avenue in my junk car with the lit-up sign atop, a dozen pizzas in the passenger seat. It was a Friday night, always more busy, and I enjoyed a smoke while cruising down the road, all to myself. I liked to smoke a nice cigarette while I drove, and made a point of blowing smoke at the oncoming headlights, to blur the image like a dream. I also liked to pick some of the toppings off of the top pizza, only a small portion, and dump the cigarette ashes in the edges of the box. When confronting my clients, I liked to put my hat on backwards sometimes, or cough spastically, or sneeze right on the box, or put the cigarette in the top of my hat, just to make it blatantly obvious, perhaps by the stream of smoke emanating from my head, that I was an insatiable delinquent.

There was one pizza left, and I ate all the toppings off of this one, and threw two butts into the box, because my last client was my favorite. Her name was Angel, and no one knew why she always ordered a pizza when her family was out of the house. I did, though. No one would touch a loser like me except Angel, this horrid pothead. She was the only one that I could treat like shit, and still get it once a week. I pulled into her empty driveway, shut off the engine and the red "Pizzaria!" sign, and smothered the last cigarette in the center of the pizza. I closed the box, put on my hat, and walked up to the front door, which was promptly opened. She was shorter than me, darker, and stoned, but still hot. Her eyes barely met mine, and she walked into the house for me to follow. I closed the door and threw the pizza aside, watching her make her way to the bedroom, taking off her clothes.

She had a joint in one hand, and set it in her mouth to pull down her pants, just before she entered the room. Now she was completely nude, sitting on the bed, withdrawing a bag of pot from her drawer, rolling two new joints for us. She lit us up, and then she positioned herself on the bed, legs spread, watching me undress. She never smiled, and rarely talked.

* * *

Meanwhile, down the block, a little kid named Jimmy was playing in the snow. He had on his parka, gloves, boots, and cloth hat, and was running around alone in his backyard. It was just passing into nighttime, and he watched his parents through the window, sitting on the couch with wine, talking with their "adult" friends. Jimmy wasn't allowed in the living room at such gatherings, so when dusk fell, he wandered into the trees. Jimmy was not afraid of the chill wind, the dead silence, the eyes and ears of occasional creatures, as he walked deeper into the forest.

" _Psst_ ," he heard. He looked off toward the sound, and saw illuminated by the full moon, a tall snowman peeking from behind a tree. It smiled with its string of coals, and waved with its stick arm and hand.

"Jack!" Jimmy shouted excitedly, running over to meet him.

"Hello, Jimmy. How are you doing tonight?" Jack asked.

"I don't have anyone to play with."

"Aww," Jack sighed. He had three giant snowballs for a body, with sticks for his limbs, a carrot for a nose, coals for mouth and eyes, and a tiny black hat. "I will play with you." Jack had a friendly adult voice. "But first I need your help."

"What is it?" Jimmy asked.

Jack held up his arm, and flexed his fingers, which were no more than sticks. "I found a better hand on a tree over there, and I need your help plucking it off." He said it innocently and matter-of-factly. "Will you help me?"

Jimmy looked at the stubby arm, then at Jack's smiling face, and replied, "Sure, Jack. I'll help you."

"It's over here." Jack led the way through the forest, little stick feet shuffling along, leaving tracks like a bird, and Jimmy followed. They soon came to a tree, and Jack pointed at an overhanging limb. "See that stick with six long twigs?" Jimmy looked. "It's not out of reach, but I just can't get a grip."

Jimmy walked underneath it, took a hold of the wood, and bent it around to break it. "That's it," Jack encouraged. The limb snapped off easily, and Jimmy examined it. The hand was bigger, longer, and looked to be more useful. Jack reached over and pulled off his right arm. "Don't worry, Jimmy, it doesn't hurt." The branch fell to the ground, and returned to its natural stiffness. Jimmy handed him the new one, and Jack fastened the stiff branch to his side, and it sprung to life. Jack flexed his new hand, turning it every which way. But then a slight frown came across his face.

"What is it?" Jimmy asked.

"Well," Jack started tentatively, "do you think I could get some eyebrows?"

"Sure," Jimmy said graciously, and picked up Jack's old hand. He snapped off a couple of twigs and looked up at the tall snowman. "Bend down." Jack did so, and Jimmy, just able to reach, pushed them into place above the eyes. "There, all done." Jack moved them up and down, trying them out.

"Perfect," he said deviously. "Thank you very much, Jimmy." He brought the menacing new hand down onto Jimmy's shoulder in a paternal gesture. "Now, what game did you want to play?"

* * *

The iceman walked up to Mrs. Partridge's door and rang the bell. After a few moments, he rang again. She opened the door, smiling only dimly.

"Good morning, Mrs. Partridge."

"Good morning, Ted," she responded softly. "Come in."

Once in the living room, the place they usually did it, she paused and said gravely, "I'm sorry, Ted, but this is the last time."

"That's fine."

They both took off their clothes. She lay down on the couch, and he climbed on top of her. This was the business. Every now and then you gain another client. But times change, and every once in a while, a wife seems strangely emotional when she tells her husband that she doesn't want an icebox anymore. But that was fine. That was just a part of the cycle, a part of the world. Thrusting himself back and forth, he thought about how "perfect" this suburban culture was. What did the kids do behind the family's back? What did the husbands do to cheat the system? Was this perfection really what people were after? It seemed that all it did was constrict the soul. All it did was press its members to find a new outlet to freedom. In short time her orgasmic cries interrupted the iceman's thoughts, so he finished his business and left.

"Have a good one, Mrs. Partridge."

She waved. There was no structure in reality. It was just an odd job world.

* * *

I sat up against the headboard of Angel's bed, getting high on the last few millimeters of her courtesy joint. We had finished fucking, and sufficed to relax. I looked over at her, lying on the pillow, eyes closed, joint held limply between her fingers, hand hanging over the bed, burnt down to nothing. I nudged her, but she was deeply unconscious. I tossed the remains of my joint away, and looked over at the drawer. If there was one girl I could cheat, one girl I could fuck, it was this one. I opened the drawer and took the bag. After getting dressed, I stuck it in my pocket, and bid her good evening: "Fuck you."

I enjoyed a nice drive home, smoking a nice cigarette, clutching the nice bag of pot. When I got home, I called up a friend I knew. "Hey, Charlie."

"Yeah?"

"I swiped a big fuckin' bag of pot, man. Get the guys together and come pick me up."

"Sweet."

* * *

Jimmy climbed into bed, his mother right behind. "Did you brush?" she asked, sitting down on his bed, pulling the covers tight around him.

"Yes," he replied, flashing his white teeth for her. He could smell the alcohol on her breath.

"Good boy." She kissed him on the forehead. "Did you play with your friend Redfoot today?"

"Not anymore, mom. He left."

"But you played with your little Indian all the time during Thanksgiving, and the witch during Halloween."

"I played with Jack Frost today."

"Oh, and who is Jack Frost? Another imaginary friend?"

"He's not imaginary, Mom. He's real. I met him in the forest last week. He's a snowman."

"A snowman? Wow, he must be fun to play with." She looked out the window behind Jimmy's head. "Oh, is that him?"

Jimmy looked. He saw Jack sitting perfectly still outside, pretending to be a regular snowman. "Yep, that's him."

"You know, you shouldn't have built him so close to the tool shed. Daddy's got to get in and out of there without anything in the way."

"But I didn't build him, Mom. He walked over there himself."

"Right. Well, tell him to move somewhere else tomorrow."

"Okay, Mom."

"Goodnight, sweetie." She walked over to the door and turned out the lights.

"Goodnight, Mom. I love you."

She closed the door and left. After lying still for a moment, Jimmy started to wonder why Jack would come to the house. He rolled over and looked out the window. But Jack was gone. The tool shed door was open. Jimmy looked at the ground and saw a trail of birdlike tracks leading up to the house. Just then, Jack's face rose up from under the window and smiled. Jimmy opened the sash.

"Hi, Jack. What are you doing here?"

"I just wanted to say goodnight before you went to sleep. I get lonely out there in the forest."

"Oh, okay."

Jack leaned forward in through the window. "This is a nice room you have here."

"Thanks."

Jack brought his arm up through the window. In his new six-fingered hand, he held a gardening trowel, like a small shovel, pointed downward like a knife.

"What's that for?" Jimmy asked.

Jack's new eyebrows bent inward between his eyes in a malicious expression, and his mouth formed a smile.

* * *

Jimmy's mother sat back down on the couch and refilled her glass of wine. After finishing his sentence to their guests, Jimmy's dad asked, "Is Jimmy asleep?"

"Yes, Jimmy's asleep."

Just as she brought the glass to her lips, they heard a piercing child's scream. Jimmy's mother and father looked at each other.

"What the hell was that?"

They bolted to Jimmy's room, threw open his door and turned on the lights. Jimmy's mother dropped her glass of wine and screamed. Jimmy's father rushed over to the bed, where Jimmy's dead body lay, stabbed, mutilated, and bloody, trowel sticking out of his chest. "Oh, God!"

* * *

"Oh, God, this shit is good," said Charlie, sitting in his chair, smoking a joint. I sat across from him on the couch, with two other guys. Another guy lay down on the floor in front of the fireplace, staring up at the ceiling.

"Where'd you say you got this shit?"

"I swiped it from Angel, you know, that waste of life that lives in the next subdivision?"

"Fuck man, everyone swipes from her. You screw her?"

"Yeah, I gave her a nice big sausage with her pizza."

They all laughed a stoned, humorless laugh. Bruce, the guy on the floor, asked, "Does anyone want to go get some beers?" We all looked over at him, interests piqued by the idea. "You look about old enough," he said to me. "You could manage to get us a couple of six packs, right?"

"Maybe, man." I wasn't concentrating.

"I know a place over by the Waffle House that doesn't card."

"Sure."

Bruce stood up. "Charlie, get your car, man. Let's go."

We all looked at each other. "Alright."

* * *

There was no one to see, but on that night, in the deep of the forest, a snowman was running as fast as he could, snowy body stained with blood.

* * *

Charlie drove, and I got the passenger seat. The other three crowded into the back, jamming to some angry rock music. There was something about this talentless shit that made it enlightening to hear.

"Man," I said, stoned, feet on the dash, seat reclined, staring at the roof of the car, "there's something about this music," and I closed my eyes, "that turns you on, puts you in the zone."

"I think that's just the Mary Jane, dude."

The car barreled down the backwood road, trees on either side, not another car in sight.

"You ever wonder if when you tell a story, that story becomes a life, and those characters become people?"

"Fuck, dude, what are you talking about?"

I closed my eyes. "There was this little kid, and he befriended this living snowman, named uh -," I tried to think, making it up as I went, "- Jack. And everyone thought it was just an imaginary friend. But one night, Jack comes up to the kid's window, and murders the kid in cold blood. Pretty fucked up scenario. What do you think?" I asked, turning to Charlie.

* * *

Jack kept running, and came upon a road.

* * *

Charlie turned to look at me. "I don't know, man." He wasn't really watching the road. I turned to look at the drab night scenery. Suddenly, in my drugged up vision, I swear I saw a fucking snowman run across the road. "Look out!" I yelled, grabbing the wheel.

"What the fuck!" Charlie yelled back at me, pulling my arm away. But it was too late. The car swerved at too much of an angle, and flipped over, skidding down the road, into a ditch, and against a tree.

As I died, I wondered, are people one day going to tell their grandkids about how back when automobiles and telephones were all the rage, there were boys who used to deliver pizzas to people who called and ordered them? But in reality, all that really happened was that they hooked up with special clients, and they fucked them and swiped their drugs. Damn, there really wasn't any order to society. It was just an odd job world.

# Left Behind

I have many faint memories of myself, floating underwater, seeing a red orange yellow glowing world through my shut eyes. It was dreamlike in a way. I could feel hear my heartbeat strum all around me, breathing in and out like ocean waves on a beach. Beyond the glow I could sense images, black-and-white shapes fluttering by in a slideshow. These eerie memories seemed to stretch back eternally, like a massive ball of visceral thought. And for whatever reason, I was swimming out of it, budding off its wall, and when I separated, it became very faint. It was no longer all-encompassing for me, but it did hold an umbilical, more like a voice in my head. That was when "memory" took form.

My first solid memory was a distinct urgent desire to escape. I rolled around spasmodically, trying to learn to control my infant body. I kicked and squirmed, then banged my beak furiously against the wall. It felt so thick and tough that breaking it seemed futile, but with each impact I felt stronger, more determined. I hurled myself against it again and again. I felt it give just a bit, and crack. It was getting easier now, or maybe I was just numb to the effort. I pushed as hard as I could, trying to widen the tiny hole. I felt in the background a sort of pain, like white noise bubbling up to the surface of my mind. But it was not important now. The one and only thing I had to do right now was fight my way out of this cage. I strained my neck and legs, oozing out of the egg with great determination. The hole became increasingly merciful, tiny pieces flecking off to let me through. I thrashed about, cracking the sides, leaking its contents, collapsing the shell however I could, until finally I lay on the ground amidst broken fragments of eggshell, out of breath, and exhausted.

That's when I realized what the white noise was. The pain that I had numbed myself to was a piercing, enveloping sting of cold. The cold air grabbed me in an icy fist and squeezed. Little frozen daggers plunged into my body, one after another, washing through me, flooding the last bit of warmth I knew out of my blood. Just when her clutch tightened to a maximum, I braced against the pain, and she tightened still more. My senses locked up, no longer able to cope with the extraordinary pain. I simply stopped coping, and let her overtake me. In a feeling of overwhelming surrender, I squeaked and opened my mouth wide. If I left my mouth open, I would get a treat of warm, tasty food. Then the cold wouldn't feel so bad. I waited anxiously, dreaming of the feeling of a warm lump of food sliding down my throat. I lay there, shivering, eyes closed, feathers wet, shaking on the ground with my beak open desperately. But nothing came.

Time slowed down. The fist of cold loosened ever so slowly. My feathers were drying. I was able to sit comfortably on the ground, huddled in a tight ball. My eyes were still closed. All I could see through them was a grey collage of indiscernible shapes. My mouth still hung open, somewhat puzzled but blindly confident. I was beginning to feel a wary urge to open my eyes. Somehow a mystery was boiling up inside of me, and its solution lay in the opening of my eyes. I didn't know what the solution was, nor what the mystery was to begin with, but I could feel it growing inside me, not so much a thought as it was an object. This object as it were grew heavier. A feeling of suspicion and fear and denial welled inside of me, weighing down like lead. Reluctantly, I opened my eyes.

That's when it all came together. In my mind I saw my sisters chirping beside me. I saw our mothers above us, feeding and warming us. I saw our family alongside hundreds of other families, nesting on a great green field. The sun shone brightly in the clear blue sky. But it was all in my mind. The real sight that lay before me was harrowing. The sky was dark and overcast. The grass was all dead and eaten away. Worst of all, there were no others. No families, no mothers, no sisters. Just me, and an endless barren landscape, scattered with broken eggshells. This extraordinary revelation weighed heavily upon my soul. I stood shocked and frightened for a long time, staring into the void. My mouth still hung open in longing desperation.

A strange thing happened inside my mind. Visions disguised as memories appeared in a nightmarish slideshow. It was an early spring morning. I saw an egg lying still and dormant when others were hatching all around it. I saw a beautiful green field filled with families, bustling with life. They were digging around the ground for food. Thousands of chicks churned up the dirt savagely, rooting out every last grub, laying to waste every last blade of grass. I saw them spread out in all directions, razing the entire field. After a while, all the mothers moved in one direction and started marching. The chicks swarmed behind them in a great army, noses in the dirt, eating as they walked.

Then they were all gone, leaving the empty field behind, in silent solitude. There I saw a small chick hatching from an egg, alone, shivering in the dark. She had hatched late. She had been left behind. I asked the slideshow what happened to such chicks, what they were supposed to do, how they were supposed to live. But the chick did nothing. She sat still, mouth open hopelessly, waiting for a comfort that would never come. Night fell and she sat still. The air grew dark, the light melted away until the slideshow became nothing but a black canvas. When the sun rose the next morning, and the light fluttered back in, the chick was gone. She didn't exist anymore. A chick couldn't survive a night alone out here. Her life was temporary, a fluke, an accident quickly corrected. She was an errant mark on the drawing of her species, swiftly and justly erased. My mouth snapped shut. According to the cosmic slideshow, I had been born to satisfy a certain necessary imperfection, and it was my destiny to die, and leave the species perfect. The slideshow asked me if I understood. I did.

The sun began to set. I dutifully sat still and shivered as the heat and light began trickling away. I did what I was obligated to do. As the night fell I closed my eyes and wept dry tears. It wasn't just the pain of letting go that gripped me. A new pain welled inside me, a far more basic one: hunger. I tried to ignore him, and focus on what my ancestors wanted of me. But like a tiger trapped in a cage he fought and bounced about. He formed a cold, deep hole in the center of my body, which with each passing minute grew. I tried to put him out of mind, and do what was best for my kin. But this tiger would not be hindered. This hole would not be filled. My body shook now not from the cold, but from the struggle of coping with the overwhelming feeling of hunger in me. The cold pit at my center swelled more and more, spreading his tentacles throughout my entire body. The tiger stretched his claws out of the cage, reaching as far as he could, growling for release. It was no longer a choice. My sense of duty held strong, but she simply could not stand against hunger. He was not my weakness. He was in fact my strength.

The hole finally burst. The tiger broke out of his cage. I stopped sitting still. I jumped up and ran. I ran as fast as I could away from this spot. The tiger roared, soaring across the ground like wildfire. The hole inside me screamed for food. I ran fast and hard through the dark, looking for a hint of food that the scant light of dusk would reveal. I stuffed my nose in the ground and ravaged in vain. But it had been picked clean. I felt that my body would explode. I felt like stuffing my face with dirt and grass just to ease the tense twinge in me. Tears of pain and frustration fell down the sides of my face. Not a single morsel of food could be found. My muscles burned. I had been outdone. I had abandoned my post for nothing, and now I would die anyway, only dishonorably. That's when it happened.

I found an egg. It was intact, unhatched. I couldn't do it. I couldn't go through with what flashed through my mind just then. I decided to walk away, to keep going. But my legs turned against my will. My feet shuffled in the egg's direction without my power. They were powered by something else. The sheer will to survive. I didn't want to, but I ran to the egg, and stood over it ominously. I tried to cry out in protest, to tear myself away from temptation, but my will to live was too strong. I pounded my beak down on the shell, crushing the hard surface. I hit it again and again, until I had made a nice big hole in the top. The stench of cold flesh emanated from its sticky contents. I opened my mouth wide and prepared to plunge into it. I could see it moving. The little chick inside stirred in her prenatal slumber. Her eyes were closed, wings and legs curled up into her body in a ball. I stood paralyzed, mouth open, ready to sink into her and satisfy my hunger. I searched my conscience quickly, trying to find a way to justify this. But I could find none. There was one and only one way to proceed: self-preservation.

I took a deep breath, and descended into my food, my sister's flesh. I slurped a bit into my mouth and swallowed. It tasted disgusting, like excrement. My esophagus stopped swallowing when it was halfway down, preparing to reject it. But the hole of hunger in me generated suction, pulling the food down rigorously. The second bite tasted just as bad, but slid down a bit easier. My stomach accepted it gratefully and loosened. I ripped flesh away from bone numbly, swallowed hard, and calmed down. After a few more bites my stomach was satisfied and I was able to stop. I wanted so badly to throw up, to purge myself of such a gruesome act, but I could not.

I huddled against what remained of the egg and the chick inside, soaking up the tiny bit of warmth it gave off. But in minutes, it was cold as the air around it. I began to shiver. The cold slid a hand around me, and slowly began squeezing, just as before. The meal had been pointless, I knew. Even if I didn't starve to death, I would undeniably freeze to death. I had known all along that the slideshow was right. It wasn't a choice. I did not have the power to live or die. Nature did, and She had chosen death. All I had the power to choose was whether I would go peacefully, or shamefully. I had chosen shame.

I collapsed to the ground in a tight ball. It felt a little better down here, without so much wind against me. I dug my cheek into the dirt. It really was a bit warmer. My eyes snapped open at the notion. I dug a hole into the ground with my beak, deepening it with my claws. I crawled in and tried drilling deeper still. I was able to push dirt below me away, and the dirt above me collapsed on top of me like a blanket. I kept digging as deep as I could, probably not very far, but enough to feel the warmth of the soil around me. I settled into my little cave, completely sealed and buried. The cold began to melt away. If I was to die, then I would die comfortably.

The next morning I awoke to the faint light that penetrated the soil. I climbed out clumsily, wondering how I had managed to get in. I broke through the surface of the ground, clambered up onto my feet, and looked around. The sun was up. The egg that I had eaten the night before stood next to me, cold and dried out. The air was still chilly, but not nearly as daunting as before. Very slowly, a revelation came to me. I was alive. It took several minutes to digest, but I realized that I had survived the night. I was still here. I still existed. I had defeated the slideshow. I had underestimated my will to survive. I had thought I would die but I didn't.

A new revelation came to me after that. I had to live. Something had been trying to convince me the night before, but somehow I couldn't understand it. Now I could. I had to keep going. No matter what happened, I had to make it for one more day. I had to press on. I made a choice. I chose to fight, to do whatever it took to survive. I could not be torn down by the will of my kin anymore. I had my own will to serve. I had to live for nothing else, only myself. I would be thenceforward a solitary being alone in the world, but I would be there forever. Meanwhile, back at the spot where I was born, a chick was no longer there. In a way, the slideshow was right. I had died. A part of me no longer existed. The part devoted to a higher cause. I couldn't afford it. That part of me shivered and starved and disappeared into the night. But a new part emerged from her ashes. A creature willing to do whatever it took to continue on the journey. I would find my family. That's what I would do. I would follow the flock. I would catch up. I would do what no one could have imagined possible. I would reach salvation. Those green fields and blue skies and lively yellow sisters. That was my future.

I asked the slideshow which way I needed to go. She showed me the great flock of chicks, following behind their mothers, who formed a broad line at the very front. But I did not know which way the mothers had gone. I asked the slideshow how the mothers knew which direction to go. She showed me a small chick following her mother, then over time she grew. Eventually she too became a mother, returning to these nesting grounds, and finally, leading her own chicks in the direction she had been led long ago. But if this knowledge was passed on from one chick to the next, then how did the first chick find her way? The slideshow took me back generation by generation, each time losing clarity and details. Eventually all I could see were a few random images of chicks and their mothers, then nothing at all. The slideshow had only begun at the dawn of the species, and her images were not strong or clear, her lessons and wisdom had no basis until centuries of trials had sculpted her to perfection.

This left me completely lost. I saw the families charging across the fields happily, green grass below, blue sky above, with a brilliant yellow sun moving across the sky...from right to left. The sun rose on the right end of the flock, and set on the left. That was it. I pointed my beak in the direction that the sun had risen, rotated to my left, and stared into salvation. The great path that had been carved for me. And marched onward.

I crossed the land as swiftly as I could, knowing that the flock was moving hastily. I had to go faster than them, and I had to catch up before the chicks were old enough to fly. If the flock took to the sky before I reached them, then all would be truly lost. At this thought, my eyes deepened, and I pushed myself harder. I could still hear the tiny voice in my head telling me that I would never make it, that it was impossible, against the laws of Nature, that one way or another I would perish eventually. But this voice no longer consumed me. I had her caged like a bitter and cowardly tiger. I listened to her. I paid attention. Every word she uttered angered me and fueled my will to defy her, to go on. In a way, she was the only help I ever received. I rolled along like an engine powered by hot coals of discouragement.

I saw something up ahead. I caught up to it, and stopped cold. It was an injured chick. It was one of my sisters, pulling herself along, dragging a broken leg in her pitiful wake. I could see the blood dried to her feathers. I wanted to help her, to throw her onto my back and carry her to salvation with me. But I knew she would only slow me down, and kill us both. I solemnly dismissed the notion, and reluctantly entertained another. To eat her. This was the first bit of food I had seen all day, and could be the only bit for days. But I wasn't hungry. I considered taking a piece with me, just in case I could find nothing when I did grow hungry, but I was afraid to violate the poor creature's body without just cause. I asked the slideshow if there would be more opportunities such as this along the way. She showed me the great flock, and thousands of chicks crawling over each other, competing for grubs. Every now and then, one would get hurt, or get sick, and fall behind. It was actually a common occurrence for this to happen, and in the wake of the flock I saw dozens of injured chicks hobbling, crawling, dragging themselves along hopelessly. If this were the case, then I would leave her be, and only eat one in the future if hunger demanded it of me. I took one last look at the poor thing, and tore myself away, walking on before I wasted too much time standing still. I couldn't help her, and I wouldn't hurt her. I just let her lie where she was and die in peace.

Rushing along, I tried to put her out of my mind. But she stuck with me. For some reason I pondered her situation, wondering about something I couldn't quite place. The same question I had asked the slideshow before. I asked what she was supposed to do with her life, what became of her and those others who fell behind. The slideshow brought me to the chick being broken in the flock, and slowing down. She lost her ability to fight for limited food, and eventually fell behind. In the back of the flock the weak and injured received last rights for pickings, and the worst of them fell too far back, until they had no sisters beside them, and dragged themselves across the empty wasteland. It was here that I saw her now, overexerted, starved, and doomed.

Night fell on the weakling and she shivered in the dark. But for the first time I could see through the dark. I could see, without the need for light, the chick curled up on the ground, on the brink of death. I could see something coming upon her. A swarm of shadows. They gathered around the chick and took form. Rats. Gruesome disgusting horrific rats, the size of three chicks. Their grimy, dirty fur was matted against their skin crudely. Their bony hands were tipped with razor sharp claws, stained with blood. Their faces were tainted with an evil ever-present smile of crooked teeth, also saturated with the dried remnants of their meals...us. I saw the swarm dive their nasty noses into the injured chick, and ravenously tear away her flesh. When they finished their meal, they turned and scuttled on, dragging sickening furless tails behind them which flopped about vilely. They left the chick behind, now no more than a flattened pile of stripped and bloody bones.

I looked down, suddenly aware that my feet had stopped moving. My mouth had dropped open in shock. I looked behind me frightfully, and suddenly a bomb of unfathomable terror exploded inside me. I screamed and ran as fast as I could, then screamed louder and ran faster. I demanded the slideshow to tell me everything about these vicious creatures, how they lived, and how to avoid them. She showed me their nesting grounds. At dusk they were born. Their flock was separated into small groups, half a dozen each. They had no food, so the tiny, slimy chicks sucked food out of their mothers' bellies. When the night and the cold had descended, they began to move. They followed our flock, still separated into small groups, starting in our nesting grounds to eat up the remaining unhatched eggs. Then they moved on behind us, scrounging for weaklings that had fallen behind, turning them into putrid leftovers. When the sun began to rise, they curled up against each other, and slept until the next sunset. That bit of information calmed me a bit. They were sleeping now. They only emerged while we slept, but hopefully they were far behind.

I pressed on as the sun began its descent from the heavens, then kneeled to the ground, then finally laid itself to rest. The cold came all over again. But this time I knew that rats were waking up, stretching, and starting on their journey. Even as the darkness settled like a blanket over the world, I kept on, not willing to sit still and vulnerable to my predators. But the cold weighed down upon me like lead. I could not continue without rest. I stopped and burrowed myself into the ground, curled up into a ball. I shook the last traces of cold off me as the soil wrapped around me graciously. As I drifted to sleep, I reminded myself to wake up early the next morning, get a head start.

The hours of the night passed without my knowing. My dreamy world was far removed from this shameful bed of dirt. I dreamed of sleeping under the comforting wing of my mother, pressed against the warm bodies of my sisters. In here the biting wind became nothing but a light breeze, defeated and playful.

Entering the early hours of the morning, I felt a cold hole widening above my head. I tried to put it out of my mind but it worsened. Something was rustling above me, a vexing entity disturbing my rest. I finally turned my head around to see what was happening. I saw the tips of claws penetrating my cave, grazing my head. Petrified, I tried digging deeper, but my sudden motion only encouraged the creature. He dug more feverishly, and let out a squeaky groan of pleasure. I tried to escape but his emaciated fingers gripped me and pulled me up. I kicked and I screamed but he had me tight and refused to relinquish his prize. He dragged me to the surface, where the cold air drove a dagger through me. I looked up and beheld a ring of rats standing over me, mouths red, eyes black, against the background of the night. All at once they lunged, sinking their slobbering teeth into me, tearing my body apart.

I woke up screaming. My skin crawled. I knew they drew closer every night. It was just before dawn, and I knew I would not fall back to sleep. I crawled out of my bed, into the cold, and the bare tips of daylight. I looked at the dim glow where the sun would peak above the ground in a short while. I looked back where the rats were charging along, probably slowing down to sleep now. I looked the opposite way, toward my flock, where my family was just waking up and rustling their feathers. I took a deep breath of chilled air, and began my march. I knew I was drawing close. Just a few more days perhaps. But I knew the rats were close too. Maybe even a few hours behind. I knew too that the distance between the rats and the flock was diminishing, day by day.

Curiously, I asked the slideshow what happened if the rats got too close to the flock. It brought me to the nighttime, a few hours before dawn. Many of the mothers went to the back of the flock and stood watch at nighttime. I saw a rat scurrying along, ahead of the rest of its clan, too close for the mother's comfort. The rat looked right into a mother's eye, and took step after step, daring her to engage. After a critical step, she did. The mother spread her wings and squawked wildly, waking the rest of the flock. The rat bared his teeth and hissed, but inched back. The mother flapped her wings violently and continued squawking angrily, but with control and precision. They held each other's gaze tightly. The tense situation lay stagnant until morning. Then the flock awoke fully and started on their way, and the rat's clan caught up to him, curled up next to him and slept.

As I ran across the barren field, the sun rose beside me, pouring golden light over the land. It climbed its invisible ladder to the peak of its invisible mountain. With every inch of its ascent came another pang of hunger inside me. I knew in my soul that the next chick I found would be my meal. It was early afternoon when I came upon her. I had known this moment would come and it finally did. I crept up to her slowly. She had a broken wing. Her eyes opened and closed intermittently, with great strain. I did not idle this time. I did not grope with my conscience. I sliced her throat with my claw and waited for her to die. Then I sunk my head into her body. I carved a hole in her belly, and took what I needed from her gut. It didn't take long to finish. When I did, I took one last look into her eyes, licked my chops, and continued on. As the day wore on, I tried to search my mind for a hint of remorse. When the day finally waned down to nothing, I still found none, having exhausted every last corner. I felt evil, but not sorry.

I found myself at the top of a hill. Looking down and out into the horizon, I saw something that I had not yet seen. I saw the tail end of the flock, dozens of chicks mounting a hill in the distance and descending to the other side. It was just for a few moments, but I saw my salvation, a glimpse of my future. I charged down the hill, but it was a race against the sun. A race I could not win. I didn't even come close to that next hill before darkness fell and the cold biting wind swept down the mountain behind me. I stopped and burrowed down into the ground like I had done before. I knew I wasn't wasting time, for the flock was already settled down for the night.

I fell fast asleep, and in my dreams, I caught up to my flock. It was early and they were just waking up. I smiled and waved and ran into the mass. The mothers spread their arms and hugged me. The chicks chirped excitedly. Everyone flocked around me and told me they missed me and asked how I had made it, how I had beaten the odds. I would tell them that it was the ever-present dream of reaching them, the wonderful tastes and smells and feelings in my mind that were able to fend off the horrible tastes and smells and feelings around me. They told me that they were overwhelmingly grateful to have me back, and I told them I was blessed to have gotten back. Then the flock started moving ahead, and I moved with them for the first time. I wiggled my nose into the ground and ate grub for the first time and it tasted like ambrosia. That night I curled up with my family and went to sleep in heaven.

These peaceful dreams excited me so much that I woke up and climbed to the surface. It was cold, but only an hour or so before dawn. I could make it. My legs powered faster than ever, treated with the sweet fuel of the promise of salvation. Nervously I peeked behind me, and saw what my nerves sensed. Rats, only minutes behind me. Evil shadows lurking behind. If I had woken up any later, I could have been dead. But I put the thought out of mind, and concentrated on making it to the flock. And doing so before they made it to me. I crested the hill where I had seen them cross the night before, and the sight I beheld was breathtaking. Looking down into the small valley, I could see the thousands of my sisters, still sound asleep, spread over the land in compact sleeping quarters, delimited into their own separate families. I wondered which one was mine.

I rolled down the hill with elation. In only a few minutes, I came within range of the flock's edge. It was early dawn, light just beginning to grace the hillside. I saw a mother standing guard, and ran to her with open arms. She too opened her wings and squawked for joy. My sisters awoke from the commotion and chirped loudly, exhilarated by my return. I reached the mother and threw myself into her. Her great wing came down upon me, hit me hard against the head, and flung me back. I hit the ground confounded, but laughing at her playfulness. I brought myself back to my feet, shook myself off, and started toward her again. But the chicks were all running away. The mother leaned her neck down to my level and roared menacingly. I stopped, but I didn't understand.

Heartbroken and befuddled, I asked the slideshow what was happening. She hesitated to respond. I screamed for her to tell me what was going on, why they would not take me in. She showed me a mirror. She brought the mirror down to me, in plain sight, right in front of me. I saw in the mirror myself, a healthy young chick, albeit worn and beaten by the elements. But then I looked closer. My feathers were dirty and grimy, matted to my skin. My claws and mouth were stained red with the blood of my sisters. My eyes were black, adjusted to the night travel. Slowly I came to understand it. I was a rat.

The mirror dissolved and beyond it I saw my flock moving away, starting on the day's journey. I fell limply onto my rump. I would never be accepted. I would never hug my kin. I would never eat grub. I would never walk beside my sisters proudly under the warm sun. I would never find my family and curl up next to them at the day's end.

The slideshow tried to console me, explain it to me. The flock is beautiful. The species is perfect. Late hatchers, weaklings, and injured are not a part of the great plan. An imperfection as severe as me, who sank to such levels for the mere purpose of preserving my imperfect life, could never mingle with perfection. The laws of Nature wouldn't allow it. One way or another, through death, weakness, or rejection, I would wither away. It was my destiny to die, my duty to leave the species be. The fact that I did not choose my destiny, that I had abandoned my duty, made little difference. My fate had been sealed long before I was even born. The slideshow asked me if I understood. I did.

I sat on the ground weeping, watching the flock disappear into the distance. I could hear the scratchy, foul sounds of rats approaching from behind. Now it was time to finally do my duty, for once. They found me and came upon me greedily. It felt good to do a good deed for my kin. The rats made a great circle around me, looking down and smiling their evil smiles. I looked up at them, fearless. My will to live was gone. My will to live had just disappeared over that horizon. This was my destiny, to be consumed by rats. If I had done my bidding long ago, they would have eaten me back at the nesting grounds. Now the circle that I had opened would be closed. Everything would be as it was meant to be.

I looked up into their hungry eyes in surrender. They grinned down on me, hounds having finally caught up to their prey. They slobbered and descended down upon me. I winced, but they did not use their mouths. They slammed me with the sides of their bodies. I wondered what they were doing. The sun was rising. They were curling up to sleep. But they didn't eat me. Were they saving me for morning? No. They took me in. They thought I was one of them. I looked around at them. They had gotten comfortable. I screamed in immeasurable terror. This was far worse than being eaten alive. I screamed in the worst terror there was. I truly was a rat. I had become a rat.

* * *

I didn't know it, but Mother Nature had made a bargain with me the day before I was born. In this coming life, I would be tested. I would be given a bad hand, because after all it had to be given to someone. Serve the species, do my bidding, fulfill my duty to my kin and I would die with honor. In the next life I would be rewarded with the best hand there was. I would be the strongest chick born that generation, eat fresh grub on the front lines of the flock. However, I would have to overcome great temptation. Resist Her will and She would throw every possible barrier my way, to remind me to do the right thing. In time She would allow me to atone, unless I simply fell under her torments by my own weakness.

But I had resisted for far too long, with far too blatant a disregard for my duty. I had passed the point of no return. I would not be forgiven. I would not be allowed the opportunity to atone. I was issued the punishment deemed only for the worst offenders. Really it was not a punishment at all, but a choice, a natural revelation. Should I turn my back on my duty, my species, then I would never again join them. Should I succumb to the rats' way of life, then I would be a rat. For the remainder of this life and all my lives thereafter.

_Where do you think rats came from?_ The slideshow asked me, though she herself did not even really know. The slideshow was no expert on the beginnings of the world, but she knew a thing or two about it, and she had a hunch as to what initial conditions had trickled into the present world. Rats are the product of chicks gone wrong, compounded by generations. They are the collection of errant chicks, the mistakes of one species pawned off to another, to serve some vile niche that needed to be served to complete the cycle. They were the fallen, the damned. And without knowing it, I had taken the path to them. No mere chick could contend with Nature's Plan. Any who tried with such adamancy was sentenced to an eternity of rathood. The slideshow asked me if I understood.

I did.

# The Window

The sky was grey, foggy, and miserable. It had snowed the day before, but more often it rained, no matter how cold it was. James had liked his old life back in his homeland, but his family would not have it. There was so much death all around them, a change of scenery would be good for them. James didn't know much about it, but they were also pressed for money, and they longed to start a new life in the promised land. As such, James looked around the empty room that was to be his in the little apartment. They had moved to the dirtiest slum New York had to offer, but since there were only his parents and his grandmother left, he would get his own room. It was really just an oversized closet with a window on the wall. There was room only for the small bed, a wire construct with a dirty mattress atop, that could be folded up against the wall. Over the head of the bed hung an old cracked portrait of the Virgin Mother, and a little metal crucifix hung on a necklace from the corner of the bed.

He thought of his old window back in his room at their farm. Really it wasn't his room. He shared it with his cousins Franz and Anya. Until they died. That window really was something. It displayed through its crystal clear frame the beautiful rolling hills of Ireland. They were brilliant green, dotted with grey fence lines, black sheep and white sheep, ducks in little ponds and mud puddles. He loved to stare out that window, at that beautiful blue sky. In the morning just before the sun came up, a layer of fog covered the land, glowing softly in the blue twilight. It was so still and quiet it seemed God Himself could not perturb it. It was timeless.

This window was nothing of the sort. The edges were clouded with fog and grime. Through the dirty glass he could see nothing but the decaying brick wall of the building next to theirs. They were on the third floor, and many clothes lines stretched from their building to the next, with wet sticky clothes hanging from the eaves. A pigeon lay curled up in a warm ball on the ledge just outside, which was covered in bird droppings, smeared with water and ice. Across the way, another window stood like a mirror to his. Through it he could see a bed against the far wall, and a desk next to the window with a little wooden chair pulled up next to it and a lamplight perched on the edge. The room was empty, and he wondered who lived in it.

James set his bag down on the bed, which creaked in protest and let off a cloud of dust. He sat down on it and curled into a ball, rocking back and forth. The wallpaper was peeling a bit in the corners, revealing rotted yellow walls behind. In the very bottom corner across from the door, a little black hole signaled the home of a mouse. There were black droppings swept up against the bottoms of the walls around it. There was a rack behind the door to lay clothes on top of, and hang below. A curtain hung from the ceiling in front of it, and a little wooden cabinet sat at the very bottom for shoes. James bent down and opened it. It was empty. He pulled out the drawer at the top. In it sat the Holy Bible, clean and shimmering like new, resting on a bed of dust. He left the cabinet opened, peering into it, as he backed away, sitting once again at the bed. He looked up at the ceiling, which contained a single light bulb hanging down on a wire. There were cobwebs in the corners, but no spiders. He sat still all afternoon, looking out the window.

* * *

James' parents put him in the local Catholic school for boys, where he sat in his first class on his first day. He was eight years old, in the third grade. The desks were rickety at best, many of which broken. The room was heated by a little wood-burning stove in the teacher's corner. James sat in the back next to the window. The other kids commiserated in little groups, blowing bubbles with their gum, flipping yoyos about, tossing playing cards on the desks in little groups of coin gamblers.

"What's your name, newbie?" one of them asked him.

"James."

"What's your poison, Jimmy?"

"I said James."

He laughed. "Get this prim little prick. He ain't no Jimmy, he a prim and proper James." He took no offense, and seemed rather good-natured, albeit irreverent. "They call me Blackjack, but that ain't my Christian name. I'm a regular silver hand in the game o' Blackjack. That's why they call me Blackjack. But that ain't my Christian name. My Christian name's George, George Sebastian Petty. My granddad was Sir Holcombe Petty, a naval cadet. What was your granddad?"

"My granddad's dead."

"But what was he before he was dead?"

"I don't know. A factory worker, I think."

"That's some job, don't you think? Workin' with your hands all day. Workin' with machines all day. Workin' in the dark all day. That's some job. Ain't that some job, Jimmy?"

"Call me James, please."

"But ain't that some kinda job? You gotta think it's some kinda job or it ain't. I'm just a sayin' it is. Don't ya think so?"

"I guess."

"Damn right it is, Jimmy. It's some kinda job alright, that's damn straight."

A new kid joined in. "For Christ's everlovin' sake, Blackjack, can't you call the man James like he says?"

"Watch that mouth, Benny. Jesus everlovin' Christ ain't got nothin' to do with this discussion and needn't be mentioned in business that ain't His. Don't pay any mind to Benny. He's the fat kid in the school. You know every school's got a fat kid in it, whose only job is to run his mouth and stay fat. Well, that's Benny there. He's our fat kid. And he knows it too. He don't mind a bit. Don't pay any mind to him though, you hear?"

James looked at the kid. He was pretty big, though nothing to scoff at. He had a round face with puffy cheeks, and his belly came to the edge of the desk, though they were awfully small. "Pleased to meet you."

"I ain't the one who runs my mouth," Benny defended, gesturing to Blackjack.

"Shut up, fatty. Ain't a guy got a right to talk to the new kid? Don't pay any mind to Benny there. That's the fat kid's job to sit there and have everybody pay no mind to him. Where you from, newbie?"

"Ireland."

"Well, we all from the old Land of the Ire, kid. I meant, where you movin' from?"

"Ireland."

"I ain't from Ireland, Blackjack," Benny protested.

"Yes you are, Benny. You just too dumb to know it. You the Irest of us all."

The teacher walked in, a tall man in a black priest's suit, carrying a Bible, a textbook, some notebooks, and in the other hand a few sticks of chalk. All the kids that weren't at their desks put away their playthings and scampered to their seats respectfully.

"Okay boys. Time for work. For the new student, James Denison, I'm Father Thomas, and I'll be your teacher for what remains of this year. Now, let's review what we did yesterday..."

He proceeded to open his textbook and notebooks and scrawl some things on the blackboard, white chalk squeaking against the flat board, clicking and giving off a cloud of dust, and coating the teacher's hands white.

James turned and gawked out the window.

* * *

That night James sat on his bed bent over the new textbook they gave him at the school. He read through some of the parts he was supposed to know already, and tried doing some of the problems the teacher had talked about that day. Whenever he felt puzzled or bored he gazed offhandedly out the window. One such time he looked out the window and through the opposite window saw the occupant of the room across the way. She was beautiful. She was a teenager, at least fifteen, with dark, nearly black hair and red lips and brown eyes. She sat behind her desk, lamplight illuminating her face. Her hair was swept behind one ear, eyes fixed on whatever problem lay on the desk below her. James watched her, watched her fingers move the pencil across the desk, watched her eyes dart about, taking in the information on the desk, watched her hair fall over her eyes and her hand sweep it back in its rightful place. He was entranced by the girl, unable to look away.

She glanced up and caught James' eye, and looked at him. He quickly looked away, back at his textbook, pretending not to see her. But after a moment, he looked at her to check if she had noticed. She had. She still sat watching, little smile on her face, leaning back in her chair with her arms crossed. When he mustered the strength to stare back, her little smile became a big smile, lighting up the room. Her eyes captured him, refusing to let him go. For many long moments they just stared at each other, smiling. Finally she returned to her task at hand, but the smile of self-consciousness remained. James returned to his textbook as well, but every few seconds, their eyes would leap away from their respective tasks to the window, and once every couple of leaps they would both land in synchrony for a moment of blissful eye contact. James knew she knew he was watching her. Every sweep of her hair, biting her lip, every sigh, licking her lips, closing her eyes to shake her hair back, was planned. It was all for him now. She knew he saw her. She wanted him to see her. She did everything as if he didn't see her, but she knew he did and it gave both of them a rush. He didn't read another word that night. His eyes skimmed over the words dryly, and just before they could register in his mind, he looked up at the brunette beauty and she washed all the words right out of his head.

* * *

"This is Sam. Don't call him Sammy now, it's Sam."

"There now, Blackjack. Why do you call James Jimmy and you won't call Sam Sammy?"

"Shut up, fatty. Nobody gives a rat's white ass why I call somebody the way I call them. Don't mind Benny. He's the fat kid. Don't nobody gotta pay no mind to the fat kid."

They were playing street hockey in the dirty street outside Sam's house. Some of them used sticks but others just used their feet. There were a few other kids playing too. Benny was the goalie. His job was to stand at one end of the street with his legs spread, and if you got the ball under his legs, you scored a point. If you missed, or if Benny slapped the ball away, you didn't get your point. More often than not, the ball would go sailing perfectly through Benny's legs, and he would grapple about for it until he fell on his ass, then have to get up and chase it down the street for the next round.

"Hi James. I gotta crook in my leg on account o' bein' dropped off a second story balcony as a baby. That's why my momma spends more time in the confessional than St. Pius. She ain't never got over that guilt, but I don't mind all that much. I can't run worth a damn, but I got a good head on my shoulders, that's what my daddy says. Ain't nobody gotta be runnin' worth a damn if they got a good head on they shoulders. That's what my daddy says."

"Don't nobody give a damn about yo daddy, Sam. And don't nobody give a goddamn about yo gimpy-ass leg. Quit yappin' and watch the ball."

"It's my street, Blackjack. I'll yap all I want on my own street. We play the hockey on your street, I'll be quiet as a mouse, but on my street, I'll yap all I please."

"Here it comes!" Blackjack warned, and slammed the ball with his stick in Sam's direction. Sam caught it expertly and sent it sailing over Blackjack's head back toward Benny the goalpost. Another kid tried to stop it but accidentally tipped it and caused it to go under the goal where before it would not have.

"Damnit, Valentine! Ain't you got sense enough to send a ball where it ought to be sent? That's the third time them rickety's got a point and we just barely got started."

Lot's of what Blackjack said started with "Damnit." That's how James learned everybody's names. Whoever did something to earn one of Blackjack's "Damnit!"s got a nice and proper introduction bellowed out across the street.

"Valentine ain't his Christian name," Blackjack informed James. "We just call him that on account o' he's good with the ladies. That's a nice thing to be, good with the ladies, that is, so my daddy says. I ain't never tried myself. They piss the hell out o' me. They don't talk about sensible things. Ever anybody ever piss the hell out o' you by talkin' 'bout nothin' all the time, Jimmy?"

"I guess."

"Damn straight. Well that's what them ladies do to me, and I can't stand 'em. Say, why you so damn quiet all the time? I ain't never met nobody so quiet as you before. You scared o' talkin'?"

"Don't no matter if a man likes not to talk, Blackjack," Sam defended. "You oughta try it sometime."

"Oh shut up, Sam. A man's got a right to talk. I'm just tryin' to get to know the new kid - hey, where you going?"

James turned. "I gotta go home."

"But we just started playing. What in hell do you have at home that needs doing?"

"I just gotta go."

"Aw, come on. At least finish the game with us."

"Give it a rest Blackjack," Sam interjected. "A man's gotta right to go home. I'll walk with ya."

Sam threw an arm around his shoulders and they walked off. "You know, when they took me to the hospital afterwards - I don't remember any of this by the way, I was only a buck and a half when all this happened - the doctors said I wouldn't never walk again, on account of my legs gettin' all gimped up. But they put me with the proper rebahilitation, braces on my legs and all - this part I remember, I wore me braces on my legs until I was five - and with that proper care I was walkable again. My left leg actually healed up pretty good. It's the right one that never set back the way it was supposed to, no matter how hard they tried. The brace on my left leg got took off when I was two and a half. It's the right one that they had me wearin' till I was five. Once when I was six I fell out of a tree - don't ask why I was climbin' it with a gimped up leg in the first place - and I fell, but God was with me that day, that's what my momma said. Just a few bruises. She thought for sure I'd gimp up my legs for good that day - say, didn't you say you moved from Ireland?"

"Yeah. Just a week ago. By boat."

"Huh. Well, anyhow, like I was sayin' my momma thought my legs would get messed up again, but God had sent his angels down from Heaven right then and they did a good job catchin' me before I hit the ground, that's what my momma said. I don't know if that's true though, it still hurt like hell. Seems to me if God was gonna help you out, and send His angels down from Heaven to catch you, they'd have the sense to lay you down on the ground a bit gentler than they did me. If I were God, that's what I'da done. Them angels coulda done a better job, by me anyway. But it is what it is, and I hadn't messed 'em up anymore since that." He went on and on, hobbling his way down the block. He asked a few questions for James along the way, but didn't seem too interested in the answers. They made it to James' apartment and he gestured to the one next door.

"Do you know who lives in that building?"

"That one? Let's see. Can't say I do. One building past that there's an old lady on the first floor with a million billion cats. Next block a kid named Scotty lives with his parents and aunts and uncles and a dozen or so cousins."

"But you don't know who lives in this one? It's a pretty brunette girl, a teenager, on the third floor."

"Hmm, let's see. I don't know nobody like that. Oh, wait, I think I do know who you're talking about. There's this one girl my brother told me about, I think she lives right here, name of, um, damn what is it? Mary, I think. No, Beatrice. That's it. Might be Mary though. But I think it's Beatrice. Why?"

"No reason."

* * *

When James was ready to go to sleep that night he ventured a look out the window and saw a breathtaking sight. The girl was kneeled over the bed, back to him, saying her evening prayers, naked as the day she was born. James walked over to the window and peered out. Sure enough, her head bowed down over her bed, dark brown hair rippling over her shoulders. Beneath which a perfect white back arched downward to a slender waist, and the most perfect smooth white ass he'd ever seen. Not a tattoo or a mole or anything to stain God's handiwork. He stared for many minutes while she spoke to the Lord in her most natural form, an elegant pale beauty between the dirty red brick beyond the dirty grey sky. James prayed that she would turn around, show him more of her form.

When she was finished speaking to the Lord, she stood up and walked outside the window's view. Her sideways profile flashed through the window for an instant, revealing a moment's worth of breast and the utterly perfect curve of her body, from her neck to her feet. When she reentered the window she was clad in pajamas, and crawled in bed, under the covers. She caught James' eye and smiled and gave a little wave, then turned out the lights. The room went dark. James continued to watch the little black square for a long time, seeing the nothing beyond that really was anything but nothing. He stared as long as he could until sleep took him.

When he woke up the next morning, the window was still dark. It was very early on a Sunday morning. James got up to take his Sunday bath before anyone else got the bathroom. He took his bath and put on his Sunday clothes and combed his hair and polished his shoes and returned to his room, just as the rest of the house was waking up. He spent the morning watching the window, which was not dark any longer, but now empty. For the hour or two before his family was ready to go, he just sat on his bed staring.

"James, honey, you have to wake up now," his mother called, coming in through his door. Seeing him fully dressed on the bed, she corrected herself. "Oh, how nice, you're ready to go. Wait by the door and entertain your grandmother." She left as quickly and inconsequentially as she'd come in. James took one last look out the window, and hopped down and made his way to the door.

His grandmother, a withered old statue, sat in a chair by the door, fully dressed and ready to go.

"Good morning, grandma."

She didn't respond, or even notice he had spoken. She sat still and silent in her chair, hands folded across her lap, eyes fixed on some point on the wall across from her. Her eyes were like the icy waters of the North Atlantic they had crossed. They contained nothing, only an endless plane of cold void. She had lost too. Children. Grandchildren. Husbands. They had all lost, but she was the matriarch. It was no wonder all she could do was sit in one place, melt down to nothing until the Lord took her as well.

James paced by the door, watching his statue of a grandmother, until his mother and father came in their best wardrobes and ushered them out the door. His father took him around the shoulders, and his mother helped grandma to her feet. They made their way down the stairs and out into the biting chill of dawn. Grey clouds hung in the sky, and a light misty rain graced their six block walk to the church. His father kept his big hand on James' shoulder all the way, but didn't find anything to say. He, like his father before him, was too a factory worker. Those hands made their life here possible. It would probably be James' fate as well. His father's stone blue eyes stared ahead, deep in thought, or deep in the effort of avoiding the inevitable thoughts that haunted him. He too was a statue, of the will to keep his family alive.

They sat in the magnificent cathedral at Mass, graced by beautiful stained glass windows and ceilings high enough for God's angels to perch if they wished, and watch the worshippers below. And of course the King Himself perched over them in the front, watching them from His cross, eternal pain and sadness carved into stone. At His feet, the royal priest stood among his golden candles and goblets of wine and wafers of bread on silver plates. His words echoed mightily through the great chamber, ringing loud in the bowed ears of the faithful.

James noticed in the next row of pews near the very front the familiar dark brown hair of the girl in the window. He couldn't tell for sure until she turned in just the right way and he could make out the profile of her face. He knew it was her by the shape of her chin, her lips, her nose, without seeing the whole. She was clad in a black dress, hair collected respectfully in an elegant formation behind her head, so as not to offend the Lord by its all too sexual freeform.

Before they left, James waited in the line for the confessional. He was near the back, but up ahead he saw her nearer the front. He wondered if she intended to confess herself a seducer, or if she kept it for herself. James knew he must confess temptation and perhaps carnal knowledge, though he might well keep that for himself. That one was accidental after all. He wondered if he ought to mention impure thoughts, but he honestly couldn't remember a single thought in his head while he was watching her. When his eyes were in that window, there was nothing in his mind but _her_. There was no room for thought. Nonetheless, he decided to mention it just to make sure, and to help make up for carnal knowledge. After the line was exhausted he told the priest of his sins and was issued a small penance and forgiven. Strange that James didn't feel relieved as he should have. Important though he knew it was, he didn't feel much like being forgiven. It seemed to dampen the magic he felt from the window.

* * *

Just that very night he looked out the window and there she was, nude, standing at the window in full view. She had her feet crossed, throwing one hip aside asymmetrically, head turned down to the ground, one hand running about between her breasts. They were so perfect, like a statue of a Greek goddess. Her hair flowed like a waterfall down her shoulders. Her bright eyes and lips were like jewels on this pearl beauty. He saw the way her neck descended and spread into her body, separated into perfect round breasts, the line running down her navel, down into the hair between her legs, down into oblivion that was anything but oblivion. All this sheer statuesque beauty supported on two slender legs arcing gracefully to the ground. But no, her legs did not need to carry the great weight of perfection; rather they were there to anchor her to the ground, for surely the rest of her would take off soaring to Heaven were it not held firmly to the earth.

James stared for the long minutes that she just stood there, bearing every inch of beauty God had blessed her with. Finally she met his eyes and smiled, mouthed the words "good night," and disappeared into darkness. James slept soundly all night long, the window comforting him like a warm blanket in this cold world.

* * *

"Damnit, Roger! Are you just dumb or what? There ain't been no witches in these parts since Salem and that was a couple hundred years ago. That's Roger, Roger Avery. He likes playing games and pretending things are about that really aren't. That's just 'cause he's two years younger than all of us. Two years ago we were all probably dumb and fantastical as him, but now we got some sense in us."

"No, Blackjack. I saw her! I swear to God, she lives in that old rickety house in the bog."

"Damn, Roger, ain't we be needin' to be swearin' on God, now. 'Specially regardin' something silly as this. You needa swear on something, swear on your cat, or your left foot or something like that. Don't we be needin' to swear on the Good Lord on issues ridiculous as this."

"Alright, then I swear on my left foot, but I ain't got no cat to swear on. There's a little graveyard behind her house and I saw her sittin' on one of the graves - she had herself turned into a black cat, see - and when she saw me, her eyes glowed bright green like the fires o' Hell, and she ran off. After that she disappeared so I couldn't chase after her."

"Roger, your ass is so dumb I could beat it in a game o' checkers, and I can't play checkers worth a damn."

"It's true, I tell ya, I'd swear it on my left foot!"

"Oh, take your left foot and shove it up your ass. There ain't no such thing as witches, and there ain't no such thing as disappearin' cats. They just smarter than you. If somethin's smarter than you it can escape from your sight if it wants."

"Well, come on and I'll prove it to you. Let's all go over to the bog and we'll just see!"

"I ain't hikin' my ass two miles to no bog to see some shit that ain't there."

"Yeah, that's just 'cause you a chicken, that's why. You a yellow turkey too scared o' seein' a witch. You shakin' in your boots. You'll do anything not to go over to that bog."

"Aw, damnit Roger. Now why'd you have to go sayin' something like that? Jimmy? What do you make of all this?"

"I don't believe in witches."

"See there? Jimmy don't believe in witches either."

"Two miles is a bit rough on my legs," Sam interjected.

"Yeah, I don't wanna be hikin' two miles. Hell then we'd just have to hike it right back after we done," Benny agreed.

"Aw, your fat ass wouldn't hike two miles to see the homecoming queen's pussy."

"I would so, Blackjack! But you said so yourself you wouldn't hike two miles to see some damn cat."

"Fine, screw all you guys," Roger Avery cried. "I'll hike it my damn self and bring back proof!"

"Okay, fine," Blackjack agreed. "That's fair. Now, every witch I ever heard of has a crystal ball, or pearl or something, which she uses to spy on folks and see the future. You come back with that, and we'll believe you."

"I will so!" he exclaimed, and scampered off.

"What a dumb ass. Hey Benny, I betcha ten cents I beat you to that bridge, even after a ten second head start."

"You're on!" he yelled and sprinted off toward the bridge. Blackjack called out to him his count and on ten, sprinted after him.

Sam watched them and laughed. "You ever seen a homecoming queen's pussy, James?"

"I don't know any homecoming queens."

"Well, hell, they're the teenagers that go to other schools, the pagan kind. Every year they give the prettiest one a crown and call her the queen for a year. Seein' as she's the prettiest one, figures that she's got the prettiest pussy, so folks all try to get a look. I ain't seen one myself, but I seen homecoming queens before, and man, they sure right about the pretty part."

"You remember that girl I was telling you about? The one that lives next to me?"

"Yeah, Mary right?"

"I don't know her name."

"I told you. My brother told me about her. It's Mary."

"You said it was Beatrice."

"Oh, yeah. It might be."

"Well, anyhow, whatever her name is, every night she takes off her clothes and lets me watch her in the window."

"No shit? That's pretty cool."

"Yeah, I guess it is."

"Guess nothin'! That's pretty _damn_ cool."

"Yes it is."

"You think I can come over sometime?"

"No, I don't think she'd like that. I'm not sure why, but she seems to be doing it just for me."

"You ain't full of shit, are you?"

"No. I'm telling the truth."

"Alright, how many moles she got on her?"

"None."

"Huh. Why you think she's doing that for you? You think she's just screwing with you?"

"Maybe. Wait a minute, how would you know how many moles she has?"

"I don't. But most folks if they were lyin' would say two. It's always two. Ask some kid who says he got drunk with his older brother how many shots he did, he'll say two. Ask a kid who says he got attacked by a man-eatin' dog how many times he got bit, he'll say twice. Ask a kid who says he got the Red Death how many weeks he was sick, he'll say two. You see? Anyone who says two is full of shit."

"Didn't you say you fell out of a second story balcony to mess up your legs?"

"Yeah."

"The _second_ story?"

"Oh, ha, that's pretty good. I'll have to remember that one. But that's actually true. You can ask my momma. Anyway, why you think she's doing this for you?"

"I don't know. Haven't given so much thought to it. I'm too busy enjoying it to think about it."

"Well you better think about it. Chicks like that always want something. Ain't no chick that'll show you her wits just for the hell of it. 'Specially no Christian chicks."

"Maybe. I don't know."

* * *

That night at the window, he saw the girl lying on the bed, nude, feet toward him. She ran her hands all along her body, letting one hand stop at her pussy. She spread her legs at the window and moved her hand up and down along it, opening it up for him. He saw everything. It was fascinating. He watched as her face changed, eyes closed all along. He watched her mouth open and close. He watched her head loll back and forth. He watched her breasts move about with the motion. He watched her get faster and faster until her mouth opened all the way and her eyes squinted shut, and her other hand gripped the sheets into a fist. Then everything slowed down. She continued heaving about slowly and sensually, breathing deep breaths, stroking her hand softly. She opened her eyes and looked at James, right into his eyes, and did not let him go this time. She watched him for minutes upon minutes, time compounding on itself until it didn't even exist anymore. He stared right back until the lights went out.

He sat still through the night watching the dark hole in the building across the way, knowing what alluring secrets it held. It gave him so much comfort, so much excitement, he couldn't even comprehend. It was beyond his age, he knew, but he wondered if it was beyond his very existence. Something caught his eye from the floor. He darted his head down to it. It was a little mouse, crawling out of the hole in the corner. He watched it, sniffing about, as if it was looking for something it had lost. James reached into his pocket and found some crackers. He took one and broke a few pieces off. He knelt down cautiously to the ground and sprinkled them along the floor. The mouse scurried nervously over to them and consumed each one, very slowly and meticulously. James watched, and put one cracker in the palm of his hand and lay on the floor with his arm outstretched, beckoning. The mouse very cautiously sniffed at his fingers, afraid of the unknown, but brave. He climbed into James' hand and went to work on a corner of the cracker.

It took him a long time to get through the whole thing, and in the meantime James wiggled his fingers a bit, so to acclimate his new friend to his harmless intent. When it was finished, James had no more crackers to give it, so he let him walk from one hand to the next playfully. After a while, sleep filled James' eyes and surely the mouse was tired from the activity. He let him down to the floor and he scurried off to his hole. But when he got there, he turned around, pointing his body back at his new friend, as if saying something. He just sat there for several moments before retiring to his little black hole of a home. Perhaps he was inviting James to follow him. After all, it was only a friendly gesture, to invite a new friend into your home to repay a kindness, as an act of good will. He beckoned and disappeared. But James could not follow. He couldn't do it. He just stared at the void, at the unknown, wishing he could follow, and in time sleep took his mind into darkness.

* * *

In the middle of the night, James woke up, and for no particular reason, decided to sneak out of the house and go to the church. It was cold and wet outside, but he bundled himself up in a jacket, and pushed the heavy church door open. It was warm and dark in here, lit only by the moon and lamps illuminating the majestic stained glass windows, and hundreds of little candles scattered all about the walls. He liked it better with no people. It was more peaceful. He looked up at the King, hanging on the wall for all to see, hanging there for all time even when there were none to see. He walked up the aisles in between the pews and stood at His feet. He was so great and majestic, like no man. James reached out a hand and touched his Lord's foot, trying to feel His suffering all those centuries ago.

"Fascinating, isn't it?" a voice echoed from behind.

James turned around to see a girl hidden in a dark corner on one of the pews. _His_ girl. The girl from the window.

"Yes it is."

He walked over to her and sat down in the pew in front of her, leaning over the back to talk to her.

"What's your name?"

"Beatrice."

"I'm James."

"Pleasure."

"Likewise."

"Funny thing, pleasure. Touchy subject with God. Ever wonder why?"

"No."

"Then you've never had the right kind of pleasure." She laughed.

He looked at her for a long time, and she looked down at the ground, not uncomfortable from the silence. "What do you want from me?" he asked.

"I want you to watch."

"What am I looking for?"

She smiled. "You'll see. You'd be surprised how many people would turn away. They'd call it goodness. I call it blindness. The refusal to see is as good as the inability, don't you think?"

"I don't know."

"Then you're not ready."

"Ready for what?"

She giggled. "Keep watching." With that she left. James watched her make her way to the door and outside in the cold without looking back.

He spent some more time admiring the King, who after all had been privy to their conversation, and their behavior. James wondered what He was thinking. But all His face conveyed was the sorrow that had been borne upon him thousands of years ago. He was out of date. James wished He could explain Himself, though he knew he couldn't understand. God had a Plan, he knew, and it was not his place to question.

"Guys! Guys!" Roger Avery yelled. "It really is a witch. I've got proof."

"Bullshit," Blackjack jeered.

"Bullshit nothin'!"

"Alright then, smartass, let's see it."

"I don't have it."

"What? Alright then, let's have that left foot then. What do you think of that?"

"No, see, it was just as you said. I went on down to the bog and there was the house she lived in. I snuck in the back and I could tell it was a witch's house. There were skulls hanging on the walls, and a little table with a big black pearl sitting on it for soothsayin' just like you said. I grabbed it but just as I did there she was, standing in the doorway. I tucked it under my arm and high-tailed it out of there, but she sent her minions after me, little nasty-looking goblins with teeth and claws. Anyway, I ran as fast as I could, but they were gaining on me. I knew they'd catch up eventually and I'd be meat, so I had to let the pearl go. I dropped it on the ground and the goblins stopped chasing me. They grabbed the pearl and ran off and let me be. So see? She really was a witch."

"That is the stupidest thing I ever heard," Blackjack exclaimed. "You don't expect us to believe that shit do you?"

"But you said there was a pearl and there was. You said if I saw a pearl then it was a witch. I swore you my left foot and laid my hand on her pearl."

"That ain't no kinda proof, you idiot! We have to _see_ the pearl to believe you."

"But I told you those goblins took it. How could I show it to you if the goblins got it?"

"How many goblins did you say chased after you?" Sam asked.

"Well, there were two of them, mean nasty ugly snarling things."

"Ha! See what I mean?" he asked James. "You fulla shit. You completely full of bull's ripe shit!"

"Says you crooks!"

"What'd you call me asshole?"

Roger Avery took off and Sam hobbled after him, but could never catch him, so Blackjack chipped in, barreling after the little liar. They all three disappeared over the hill. James and Valentine stayed behind laughing their asses off. They didn't return for a while, so James made conversation.

"Say, Valentine, they tell me you're good with the ladies."

"They tell you right."

"Well, why do you suppose they do the things that they do with you?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, how do you figure out what a chick wants?"

"That, my friend, is an ancient riddle. You ain't never gonna figure that out. If you want her to talk to you, you gotta get her to like you, then you gotta listen to the type o' things she talks about. Once you do that, then she's more open to the idea of sneakin' around, kissin' and spoonin' and playin' and stuff like that. You want her to kiss you, you gotta tell her you love her. That's usually the way to do it. Now, if you wanna see her pussy, that takes a little more work. First you gotta do somethin' really nice for her. Then you gotta swing it so she thinks if she don't show you her pussy then _you_ gettin' ripped off. It's a very tedious process of givin' and takin' and givin' some more and takin' some more."

"But what if I've already seen her pussy?"

"Well, what do you need me for?"

"I'm trying to figure out why she's doing all this."

"Well, what you been doing for her?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Not a damn thing."

"Well, that don't figure right. You had to done _something_ to earn pussy-lookin' rights."

"Nope."

"Well I ain't never heard o' that before. She must be crazy or something."

"I think she's trying to tell me something."

"By showing you her pussy? Usually she's trying to tell you she wants you to stay with her."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, like I said before, you gotta swing it so she's gotta show you her pussy, or you won't be doing nice things for her anymore. Seeing as how you hadn't done nothing for her, she must be trying to get you to do something."

"Like what?"

"Haven't the foggiest. Like I said I ain't never heard of a chick showin' you her pussy for nothing. She's gotta want something."

"But how do I figure out what?"

"Did you ask her?"

"She says I'm not ready."

"Well, keep watching I guess."

"That's what she told me."

"Well, do that I guess. But be careful. She's gonna want something sooner or later. Don't no chicks show you their pussy for nothing."

* * *

Late in the afternoon, James sat watching the window. She was sitting on her bed, watching her door, smiling, as if anticipating something. James wondered what it was but she didn't look at him. He looked over to the hole in the wall where his mouse lived. He hadn't seen him since the first time, and wondered where he could be. Maybe he had eaten so much that he didn't need to do anything but sleep for a few days. What was on the other side of that hole was unknowable. This thought tugged at James' mind for some reason. He couldn't cross over. He couldn't take the leap. It was forever a mystery. The mouse was gone, swallowed up by mystery, and he could not follow.

In the window the door opened. A boy walked in, another teenager. They talked for a few minutes, then sat on the bed. She reached over to him and kissed him. They kissed for many long minutes, touching each other. Then she took one hand and got his pants off, moved her head down in his lap. James watched carefully, wary that the boy didn't see him. She stopped and took the boy's shirt off. Then she kneeled over him and took her clothes off, one article at a time. Once nude, she sat on his lap, moving up and down slowly. The boy went faster and faster, and her face got tighter and tighter, until at once it was all over. They stopped and she lay her head down on the sheets. He stood up quickly and put on his clothes. She lay back on the bed, talking to him, but he threw on his shirt, tied his shoes, and went to the door. She tried talking to him but he patted her on the head and walked out.

She lay on the bed with her eyes closed, taking a little nap for James to see. He couldn't figure out what she was trying to tell him. Certainly something. Girls didn't do this if they didn't want something. There was absolutely nothing for her to gain by this arrangement. An open window meant nothing. But it had to. James was just certain that she had a plan, but he was not able to understand it. He wondered if he was supposed to understand it, or if it was merely meant to tug at his mind until he died. She did have a plan, there was no doubt. She wanted something from him. But he wasn't ready. What did he have to do? What was she intending to do? There was no doubt she was doing something, she was going somewhere with this. And she wanted James to come along. He looked at the mouse hole in the corner. He couldn't follow. He wasn't ready.

* * *

"You'll never believe what my brother told me," Sam told James the next day.

"What?" Blackjack asked.

"Butt out, you nosy bastard," he told him, then turned back to James. "My brother scored a date with your girlfriend, Mary."

"Her name's Beatrice."

"What? Who told you that?"

"You did. She did. It's her name. Not Mary."

"Well, whatever her name is, my brother scored with her. You were right. She is a wildcat."

"Yeah I know."

"No way. You saw?"

James nodded.

"Saw what?" Blackjack asked.

"My brother's girl likes to undress in front of James, here."

"No shit, Jimmy. So that's why you always in such a hurry to go home." Blackjack started laughing.

"Shut up, Blackjack. Let the man speak. So, what do you think she's doing?"

"I still don't know. I think she wants me to go with her."

"Go where?"

"I don't know. She said I'm not ready to go yet. What do you think that means?"

"Beats me. She really said that?"

"Yeah."

"So you're not ready now, but after watching her suck on a willy you are ready?" Now Sam started laughing.

"She wants me to see something that I'm not seeing. I'm too fixated on the surface. I have to see through."

"You're looking too deep already. She's screwing with you. She's playing mind games. She just wants to drive you nuts."

"No. She has a plan. I may not know what it is, but I have to believe in it."

"A plan? About what?"

"Pleasure. Pain. God."

"Give it up, man. She's gonna screw you up. You should stop and think about what you're doing."

Blackjack continued laughing in the background, hollering like a hyena.

* * *

That night, Sam's brother came again. They talked again. But it wasn't so peaceful this time. They had a disagreement. They started yelling at each other. Sam's brother stood over her, tried to touch her, but she pulled away. He grabbed her head in his hands and kissed her but she struggled and pushed him away, stood up and backed away from him. The yells now carried across the gap between the buildings. He grabbed her and threw her onto the bed. She spit in his face and he slapped her across the cheek. He wiped the spit away and grabbed her head in his hands, squeezing it in his fist. He brought a fist up in the air and plowed it into her eye. He rose again and brought it down on her cheek. Then he stood up, nursing his hand, and made his way to the door. She curled up in a little ball on the bed crying. He smacked her across the face one last time and stomped out the door, rubbing his hand.

Beatrice lay there like a baby, crying and bleeding silently in this soundless slideshow the window contained. She threw her head against her pillow and put a hand on her forehead. She delicately touched the bruise on her eye and on her cheek, each time bursting into tears again at the notion. She mustered the strength to stand and went over to the desk and produced a little mirror. Her reflection made her cry again. She took the corner of her shirt and carefully wiped the blood away, under the guidance of the mirror. But when she was finished, there was nothing more she could do for the bruises. The beautiful creature was cursed with these stains upon her beauty. There was nothing she could do about it. God gave her this beauty and God took it away from her, if only for a short while. It was a part of His plan, and there was nothing she could do about it. She made eye contact with James, eyes containing the most uncontrollable sorrow and torment that eyes are capable of containing. She marched to the window and pulled the shades.

James nearly convulsed with shock. The window was closed. He couldn't see in. She had never done this before. The window was indeed a magical creation. It held inside its frame such a beautiful creature, like a bird in a cage. It showed him the best of the world God had made, His greatest creations, the jewels in this horrible world. But the window was no liar. It was only a portal into what was real and true. And thus it was merciless. It would show the destruction of this beauty all the same. It was not sympathetic. The window was only a messenger. It was only a middleman between them. The slideshow it displayed was an enthralling picture of perfection, but it was also a harrowing look at wickedness. And now the slideshow was over.

* * *

That night James went to the church again. It was empty, so he sat in the dark corner in one of the pews. He wondered if there really were angels up in the rafters, looking down on him, but he did not look up. After a while the heavy door opened and Beatrice came in. Her head was wrapped in a shawl. She shuffled up to the King without noticing James, kneeled down and cried at His feet. She pleaded with Him, bowed to Him, and prayed to Him, but He did not move. He did not respond. He sat up there on His high perch and watched. After her crying was over, she stood up and walked toward Him. She placed a hand on His foot and bowed her head.

"Horrible, isn't it?"

She looked back at James sitting in the shadows. "Yes it is."

* * *

When James awoke the next morning, he looked out the window, but it was clouded with condensation. He wiped it clean and saw the window across the way. In the condensation on hers were scrawled the words "ARE YOU READY?" She even went to the trouble of writing it backwards so he could read it from his side, though she had messed up the first "R". The room was empty. All that was left was this one last question, "Are you ready?" James wondered if he was. He still did not know what she wanted, where she was going, what he was supposed to do, but he was letting go of the notion of figuring that out.

"You wanna tell us what's got you so damn blue?" Blackjack asked him in school.

"His girlfriend got beat up yesterday," Sam told him. James looked at him. "My brother told me about it. I'm sorry, man. If it makes any difference, he said she was being a real cunt."

James glowered at him, but focused his attention on the grain in the wood of his desk.

"Well, play with matches," Blackjack responded, "you get burned."

"Christ, Blackjack," Benny whined.

* * *

When James returned home that afternoon, it was hardly home any longer. There was a hearse outside. Inside there were a few neighbors, a doctor, and a priest. James pushed his way through them to find his parents. He came upon his grandmother's room and his mother caught him at the door and hugged him.

"Don't go in there, sweetheart."

Through the crook in his mother's arm, through the crack in the door, he could see the foot of a black coffin and hear his father's sobs from inside. His mother led him to the couch and explained to him that it was her time to go, and that she would be safe and happy in the Kingdom of God. A priest clarified the details for him, and they all bowed their heads in prayer.

It came time to bring the coffin out, carried by the two morgue workers, the doctor, and his stone-eyed father. They carried it out the door and down the stairs to the hearse, followed by James, his mother, and the priest. The men carted her away and the family all followed on foot. They followed it all the way to the cemetery, where the coffin was unloaded onto the ground. The morgue workers busied themselves digging a hole in the ground for her while the priest said a few hymns from the Good Book. During the entire procession, a single thought was busily growing inside his head. It was hazy at first, then took form. By the time the funeral was over, it rang loud in James' thoughts.

* * *

"I AM READY" he wrote in the condensation of his window, backwards as best as he could visualize it, with all the letters flipped in mirror script. He wrote it as soon as he got home and spent the rest of the day watching the window, the empty room beyond, wondering what she was going to do. He knew he was ready, but ready for what, he did not yet know. Anything was better than this.

The next morning her window was open. He was not sure the significance of that. The room was empty just as before. On the upper pane was scrawled another string of letters, "FOLLOW ME," again in mirror script so that he could read it. He stared at it for a while, wondering what it all meant, then saw what he was supposed to see. He opened his window and stuck his head out. Down on the ground, in the alleyway, stood the same morgue workers, along with a few people and a priest. On the ground was the body of Beatrice, spilled across the street, hair fanned out like a halo, blood streaming from her like the tail of a kite in the wind. The two workers were lifting her up and placing her in the coffin. James could hear the screams of her mother, consoled in the arms of her father, with the priest reading hymns in the background. One worker closed the coffin lid while the other poured a bucket of water on the blood in the street and scrubbed it with a long brush.

James looked back up at the window, through the window, into the nothingness of the room beyond. He made eye contact with the nothingness, and the nothingness made eye contact with him. A ghost in the room would have seen this poor boy, saddened face, tear rolling down his cheek, through the panes of cold morning glass, with the senseless words "EM WOLLOF" inscribed in the condensation, with all the letters reversed.

* * *

"Look, man, I'm really sorry," Sam consoled at school that day. "I didn't mean what I said yesterday. I know I came off harsh, and it's not what I meant. I wanna be a good friend and good friends don't say shit like that. So I'm sorry about that. You gonna be okay?"

He didn't respond, only stared at the grain in the wood of his desk.

"Guess she didn't feel much like goin' along with God's plan."

He looked up.

* * *

Early the next morning, before the sun came up, James sat on the edge of his bed, watching the window. She wasn't there. She never would be again. God's greatest creation was gone, nevermore. She had passed on to the unknown, and he could not follow her. James looked at the little mouse hole. No, he would follow this time.

He walked to the window and opened it. Very carefully he crawled out into the chilling air. He stood on the slippery little ledge outside the window. He gripped the brick with his arms and back as well as he could. He didn't like heights. He was shaking and afraid. God and all His angels were watching him, wondering if he would really do it. Beatrice, wherever she was, watched him, hoping he could muster the courage to follow her.

James closed his eyes to block out the frightening sensations of the ledge. He thought about his homeland. He thought about the bright green grass and the cows. He thought about running and playing with Franz and Anya just like there was nothing bad in the whole world. He saw their smiles. He saw his grandfather sanding a little shoe cabinet he had built out of part of the great oak tree they had cut down. He saw Beatrice running carelessly along the crest of the greenest, highest hill of all. He saw the sun glint off her smiling face.

James' fear became happiness. His muscles relaxed and his body toppled over the ledge, down to the street below.

* * *

The same damn mortuary workers cleaned him off the alleyway as before, parents crying in each other's arms. He was buried right next to Beatrice, though neither she, nor his grandmother before them had been made headstones yet.

"I know all of you are confused and saddened by the suicide of your classmate, James Denison," Father Thomas addressed his class. "God does not always let us know His reasons for things, but we must nonetheless trust in Him to guide us to the path of salvation."

Benny was teary-eyed. Valentine was contemplative. Sam was mournful.

"We will miss James, but we cannot reclaim him from God's Realm any longer. We will always wonder the reasons behind such sudden and desperate decisions, especially when committed by children. James did something that we cannot understand, for reasons beyond our capacity to - excuse me, Mr. Petty, is something the matter?"

Blackjack was snickering, though trying to hold it back. "No."

"Would you mind having a little respect for mortality? Your friend has just died. Is it too much to ask for a little reverence, even from you?"

He continued snickering. "I'm sorry, Father. It's just that I can't help finding this whole thing funny. The girl that undresses for him has died, so his life just can't go on any longer!" he jeered with such sarcasm it sent him into a fit of laughter.

Sam glared at him, as did Benny and Valentine and the rest of the class.

"George Sebastian Petty! May God forgive your disgusting self!" Father Thomas marched over to him, lifted him out of his desk, and dragged him out of the classroom. He collapsed to the ground and the teacher, in a flurry of rage, grabbed him by the ankles and dragged him across the floor on down the hall. The rest of the boys didn't watch, just stared stone-faced and motionless at the chalkboard. But he couldn't stop laughing. He kept on and on like a hyena, more ferocious every time he thought about it. He couldn't help himself. It was just so goddamn funny.

# Kell Hall

## A Bedtime Story

It was the afternoon of Halloween. Ghosts and wizards and werewolves and vampires and clowns swept by incessantly. Indy sat in the passenger seat while his mom drove. They were driving through the parking lot of his big brother's dormitory to pick him up. They had family in town for a few days, and Brick had no school for the holiday weekend. He didn't like it very much, but he didn't get to make his own decisions. Even at twenty, he was still little, Indy supposed. Henry in the backseat was only three, just beginning to learn how vastly many people and colors and places there were in the world. It all seemed very overwhelming to Indy himself, now twelve years old, but Henry's wide bright eyes took it all in and begged for more. He loved car rides. He loved wandering. And above all, he loved irritating older brothers. Now that Brick was out of the house, Indy became the family babysitter and the brunt of baby pranks.

"Mommy, war-bode! War-bode!" Henry exclaimed, pointing.

In the direction of Henry's finger, Indy spotted a boy in a lame lion outfit, and a girl in a white fur coat with a thick coat of white silvery face paint, both leaning against a wall, smoking. "No, Henry, no wardrobe. Only a movie."

"War-bode!" He protested. Indy giggled. " _War-bode!_ "

When Henry got frustrated, he had a way of throwing tantrums. He began kicking his feet up and down, cinched his eyes shut, bared his teeth, and put his hands up like grizzly paws. Somehow in the depths of Henry's mind, he believed that he could transform himself into a troll or a lion or a bear or a dragon. He had yet to learn how dull and colorless the world really was. But his screeching rolled like thunder nonetheless.

"Pipe down, baby!" Indy scolded, and Henry piped up in protest.

"Henry, no," their mother scolded, and his instrument was silenced. Indy met Henry's eyes and sneered. "Don't talk to your brother that way, Andrew. You're not too old for a spanking."

Indy hated when she called him by his real name. And he was far too old for a spanking, being nearly a teenager. She only said that to embarrass him. His eyes widened and his nostrils flared. He looked at Henry with furrowed brow and dark eyes, and Henry beamed, pointing and laughing. "Baby Indy! Baby Indy!"

"Shut up!"

"Tu-pee! Tu-pee tu-pee Indy!" That was Henry's pronunciation of "stupid," incoherent enough to keep him out of trouble, but coherent enough to enrage Indy.

"Mom!" Indy pleaded, giving up.

"Oh, look, here's your brother," she shirked.

"Bick!"

Indy watched his brother approach the car. He wore a lame werewolf-looking mask but was otherwise clad in his usual bright polo shirt and jeans, coolly toting a ragged blue backpack.

"Woof-Bick!"

Their mother unrolled the passenger-side window, and Brick leaned a forearm on the side. The werewolf mask resembled more a boar's head, black, blood-matted fur scattered away from a smashed-in pig's nose. Two short white tusks curled out of the mouth. The eyes were hidden beneath a heavy brow, dark and wrinkled and squinted, with tiny little holes through which one could just scarcely see Brick's bright green eyes. The ratty black fur swept back along the face and head, and two floppy, pointed ears stood on the sides.

"What are you, a were-pig?"

Brick just stood and stared at his little brother, as if deaf. "I call shotgun, loser."

"Mom!" Indy pleaded.

"He's older," his mother reasoned.

Indy bore his cold eyes into Brick's, climbed out sulkily, and clambered into the backseat next to Henry. His car seat was strapped into the middle spot, and Indy didn't suppose his mother would have the mind to move it. This was going to be a long car ride home. Henry met Indy's eyes and smiled sordidly, like a predator caught up to its prey.

In the cab, their mother leaned in for a quick, motherly kiss. Brick, being who and what he was, leaned across to her, still masked with his stupid black pig outfit. Their mother frowned, ripped the rubber mask over his head, and pecked him on the cheek.

"How's school?" she asked inconsequentially, starting the car.

"School's fine," he answered equally so. "By the way, can you stop by the Registrar's Office for a minute? I need to ask them about a class next semester."

"Sure, honey. Where is it?"

"It's in Sparks."

"How's Cindy?"

He blushed a bit and rolled his eyes behind the mask. "She's fine so far as I know. You know we were never really going out. We just had a couple of dates."

"Well, she seemed nice. You never should have let her go."

"I didn't let her go. I never had her in the first place. We just hung out a couple times. It was no big deal."

Indy cut in with "She doesn't like him, Mom."

"Shut up, baby-face."

"Be nice, Brick," Mom subdued.

They pulled up to Sparks. "How long will you be?"

"Few minutes. They're closing down soon anyway."

"I'll come in and stretch my legs. Indy, do you want to stay here and watch your brother or take him in with us?"

"I'm not staying outside with the runt!"

"Well, come on then."

They parked and Indy unfastened Henry's constraints, setting him down on the ground and holding his hand firmly. In the failing light, Indy saw the Hall stretch upward above him, six or seven floors. It was brilliant and new with glinting panes of glass. Next to it though, seemingly an extension of it, stood its unsightly sibling. It was an old, decaying brick building, windows broken, plastic tarps hanging about, with wood, brick, nails, and scrap heaps piled up beside. They seemed to be two conflicting halves of the same building, an architectural Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

"What happened to that building?"

Brick looked up. "Kell? I don't know exactly. I've heard there was a fire in Kell Hall about fifty years ago. Catastrophic, many people dead, mostly college kids. Water and electricity don't work well in there either, because the building's so old. It's been a construction zone ever since I've been here. See where they seem to meet as one building? They're not even connected. It's just a wall. Separate elevators, separate stairwells. The only connection is an open hall in the lower level. It's not very well boarded up, so there's sometimes homeless and even robbers that hide out in there. A few semesters ago I even heard of a rape."

"That's probably enough, Brick," Mom admonished.

"What? It's true. I read it in the _Toilet Tribune_. There was an article about plans for a parking deck."

"The what?"

"It's a periodical they post in bathroom stalls."

"Kids these days."

Mom and Brick went into the office while Indy sat with Henry watching the receptionist work. She was pretty, probably a student here, and had over applied brilliant makeup, with two black spots on her cheeks, whiskers, and a blackened nose. On her head sat a cat-ears headband, and on her hands she wore fingerless black gloves. Indy knew in an objective sense that she was sexy, but he didn't feel any semblance of attraction to such things. Rather he resented her, staring her down as if she had wronged him in some way.

The clock over her head ticked away, and as is always the case waiting on a parental errand, it ticked slowly. Time and age being what they were, it went by more slowly for Henry. He began busying himself kneeling on the ground and playing some sort of hopscotch or peek-a-boo with the chair. The girl kept looking over and smiling, as if charmed by such vexing nonsense. Indy sat firm and sulkily twiddling his thumbs. Then Henry stood up on the chair and tried to reach the painting hung above their heads.

"No, Henry," Indy chastised, setting him down. He knew it was downhill from here. Henry jumped up again. Indy grabbed him by the shoulders. "Sit down and be still."

Now Henry grew a fire in his eyes. He stared directly in his brother's eyes and jumped up and down on the chair like it was a trampoline. The girl watched with an air of superiority, as if she knew exactly how to make him stop and wanted to see what Indy did instead to screw it up. Indy was easily frustrated, but not easily enraged. Now, he was enraged. He grabbed Henry around the waist, tore him down over his lap, and locked him tight against his body until he couldn't move or breath.

"I said _stop it!"_ he hissed. The girl watched in shock and silence, arms frozen in motion with whatever task she was toiling with before the day's end. "Bad Henry. Bad Henry. Bad-bad-bad-bad- _bad!"_

Henry began to cry. Then he began to kick and scream. Then he began to howl. Babies have a way of making themselves heard across vast distances, unleashing piercing cries in enclosed places. _"Stop it!"_ Indy commanded uselessly, but finally resolved to release his hold. Henry scrambled to his feet, tears streaming down his eyes, pointed a tiny finger, and stomped his feet. "Bad Indy! Bad Indy!"

"Shut up, baby! Mommy doesn't even love you."

He put his fists over his eyes and squealed. "Tu-pee!" he cried, then ran off. Indy was relieved to hear the sound of his brother's voice fade as he went. "Tu-pee, tu-pee, tu-pee!"

The girl had him locked in a merciless, disapproving stare. Indy ignored her, but grew uncomfortable. "How old are you?" she asked.

"Fourteen," Indy lied, without looking at her.

"You look about ten."

He didn't respond. She was just trying to get a rise out of him. He kept his arms crossed tightly and stared straight ahead.

"You'd better go after your brother. If he wanders into Kell Hall, he may not ever come out again. Children have been known to disappear in Kell Hall."

She was just prodding at him now. "Lies," he growled through gritted teeth.

"We'll see," she taunted. "Wait till your mom gets back out, though. She won't be too happy about letting him wander into an elevator shaft or stepping on a rusty nail or bumping into some sleeping doped-up vagrant."

"Or being eaten by the Beast of Bitterness," Indy mocked, "the long-haired wolf that preys on little boys in the bowels of Kell Hall, always hungry, never satisfied. I can see him now, licking his chops, baring his teeth, and ripping that little brat's head off his neck." Even as Indy said it, he saw the image of a wolf appear in his mind, sitting on his haunches, staring deep into his eyes. He had a way of letting his imagination get away from him, and sometimes moments of frustration and anger led him to literally frighten himself with his own daydreams.

"You're a brat," she decreed, and went back to her business.

He hated the girl. He hated that she was pretty. He hated that she was judging him. He hated that she made him feel inferior. Most of all he hated that she was right. He really truly hated the girl and couldn't stand to be in the same room with her anymore. Indy got up out of his chair and walked out of the room to look for his brother.

In the main lobby there was simply the entrance door on the one side, a stair leading down on the other, and two sets of elevators on the facing wall. The doors were automatic, so Indy went outside to see if his brother had run back to the car. Out and about were ghosts and clowns and witches and goblins dashing this way and that in the bright sun, but at the car, no Henry. If he had truly decided to run off, there was no telling which direction and how far he could be. Now Indy was scared for the first time. He climbed up on top of the car, shielded his eyes, and turned a complete revolution, steadily piercing the buildings, rows of cars, and tree lines like a hawk. It was useless though.

_He couldn't be outside_ , Indy told himself. _Someone would have seen him and stopped him. He would have curled up next to the car and cried, not wandered around._ Reason after reason came to him that he couldn't be out here, but none were convincing enough. For all he knew, Henry ran off into the sunset and was bumbling around in some woods or along some road or in some building by now. _He's too afraid. He couldn't do it without me. He wouldn't have the energy._ There was no reason he wasn't outside, far out of reach. Absolutely none. But so long as Indy was out here, there was nothing he could do about it. _He could still be inside. He could have wandered into Kell Hall._

Indy crossed back in through the sliding glass doors and toward the stair. The ugly white paint was coated and recoated dozens of times, until the steel and wood were completely lost under a sea of flowing stickiness. At the bottom of the short stair, a long ramp extended at a steady decline between two narrow whitewash walls. There was a handrail on one wall, quite a useless accessory, and Indy held it all the way down into the belly of Kell Hall. At the end of the hall, there was a store of some kind, like a lemonade stand only set into the wall, with a door that slid down over the window. To the right was a dimly lit dead-end with a piano set on its side enclosed by three classroom doors that looked like they hadn't been opened in years.

To the left was a kind of openness. It reminded him of a parking garage, with ramps leading upward to a hall whose floor was level with this ceiling. On the opposite side of this cold and unwelcoming entrance was a narrow hallway leading to what looked like a stairwell. Indy checked that first, walking past closed, locked dark rooms to the far corner, the base of a stair lit only by a dim electric lamp on the landing. Henry wouldn't have ventured that way. So big brother went back to the ramps in the center. Above them in big letters was a sign reading "Kell Hall." Below that was graffiti crudely scratched out in black paint: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." A bad joke, and an ominous one, given the truly mouth-like quality of the entrance. A four-foot tall jack-o-lantern guarded one side, and a scarecrow crucified against the wall guarded the other. Indy climbed up.

When he felt safely out of earshot of the girl, Indy called out his brother's name. At the top of the ramp, left and right looked the same. He tried to see it through the eyes of a toddler, but it was fruitless. He went to the left and saw a long dark hall. Henry would be afraid of the dark. So he went right. This hallway was lit by new fluorescent lights. "Henry!" He walked along, passing locked windowless doors. At the end of the hall was a dimly lit ramp turning the corner to the left. It inclined at an unusually steep angle and ended at an open door with light pouring out. He clambered up, looking at pictures of middle-aged, sharp-dressed men lining the walls where no one could see them. Through the door were two hallways, one right and one straight ahead. They both looked the same. He went straight, skirting old dusty computer monitors littering the hall. He passed a half dozen cross halls, checking each and finding nothing.

Down the opposite hall, he heard the squeaking of wheels. He ventured down and at the end was a stairwell. He climbed a level, and the squeaking was louder, accompanied by a whistle. He couldn't identify the tune, but it was definitely a human whistle, which meant there was another human being in this God-forsaken place. He followed the whistle down one hall and across another. It kept getting louder but didn't seem to be coming from any consistent direction, perhaps since this place was so open, with halls and cross halls and loops and paths leading back to themselves. Finally he looked down one dark hall and saw a light filtering in from the next hall, painting a moving shadow on the wall. He ran to the end and looked. It was a steady ramp leading to yet another level, and silhouetted in the light was the shadow of a custodian bent over a rolling pushcart.

"Hey!" Indy yelled, but the squeaking and whistling continued, the janitor continuing up the ramp. Indy ran up and caught him at the very end of the hall. "Hey!" he yelled again, this time from a few paces away.

The janitor turned, startled, and Indy froze in shock. It was a man, or the likeness of a man, old and withered, flesh melting down in flowing wrinkles. The ears bent out like that of a goblin, the nose was overlong and hanging, and the chin stretched down a bit too far. Then Indy realized it was only a mask, and he took a breath. "Sorry, you scared me," Indy excused, taking a breath, but the janitor just stared at him through the blank, expressionless mask.

"Um, maybe you can help me. My name is Indy. I'm looking for my brother, Henry. He's only three years old, and I think he's wandered into this building."

The janitor continued to stare, as if frozen into stone, and Indy looked into his eyes. There was no clear indication that the mask was indeed a mask. He couldn't spot the place where the holes were cut into the rubber and the real eyes showed through. Nor could he find the opening for the mouth.

"Um, have you seen a little toddler pass by here recently?"

The janitor took a hand off his cart, an old melting hand with overlong fingernails curled over themselves like claws. Indy tensed for a moment, and then watched as the janitor bent down a bit and held his hand flat a few feet over the ground, in a gesture indicating height.

"Yes!" Indy encouraged, nodding furiously and mimicking the janitor's gesture. "About this high."

The janitor nodded his head up and down slowly and widely like the pendulum of a clock. He seemed excited, as if Indy was the first human being he'd come in contact with for years. He pointed off toward the end of the hall, looking that way and still nodding, and began pushing the cart one-handed in that direction. He wore a dirty black robe over his custodial uniform, complete with a hood left draped over his back. Indy followed doubtfully, unnerved by the sick Halloween joke this poor old man was playing. But he said nothing, for the unwarranted fear that it wasn't a mask, and this poor old man was either a disfigured mute or truly not a man at all. As for the moment, it was a person who seemed to know where a toddler had scurried off to, and he pushed the squealing cart with mute determination, still pointing straight ahead as he shuffled along, bobbing his head up and down like it was his last mission in life.

He turned a corner and marched toward a men's room that was propped open with a doorstop. He parked the cart outside and from it took a long gnarled stick from the clutter of mops and broomsticks. Now Indy was certain this was all just a costume, as the old goblin bent over the walking stick and stepped over the threshold into the bathroom. He shuffled across the dimly lit tile floor and led Indy to the sinks. On the opposing wall was a vent of some kind, a two-foot square hole in the wall, with a grating that was cut or eaten away with time, allowing a hole just large enough for a small child to fit through. The old goblin extended a long menacing finger toward it from under his robe, and twisted his head toward Indy, who had a few inches of height on him for his stooped nature.

"In here?" Indy asked, pointed. "You saw a toddler go in here?"

Indy was disbelieving, but the old goblin swung his head up and down assuredly, held his hand over the floor to gesture the short height, and pointed again into the depths of this foreboding hole in the wall.

"Are you sure?"

The old goblin just stood firm and matter-of-factly, not speaking, like a statue. Indy was going to get nothing more from the creature, so reluctantly, he bent down on his knees and looked in. But there was nothing to see. It was pure and utter darkness beyond the grating. He removed what was left of the covering, which clanged loudly against the tile, and stuck his head in.

"Henry!" he called, and his voice echoed on into the depths. But there was no cry in return, only a musty, cold air. He looked up at the old goblin, who just stood there, watching him. It was no use. He sighed a moment, wondering if he should pursue this menacing dead end. Then his eyes wandered down to the old goblin's feet. The robe hung an inch above the floor, and within were two pale bare feet. The janitor, as it were, wore no boots that day. Indy looked back up at the old goblin's face and his blood ran cold. Perhaps he wouldn't find his brother down this road, but it certainly seemed an expedient way to relieve himself of this creature. He tried to recall what his face looked like in proper light, and could not for the life of him figure where the mask became the man.

Indy crawled in. He crawled along on his hands and knees and was swallowed up by the darkness. The floor felt dusty and dank, and the air felt old and stale. He inched along one limb at a time, slightly disgusted and anxious. At one point, the sick wispy feeling of a cobweb came over his face, and he stopped short to claw it off himself. He hated that feeling. He'd always hated that feeling ever since he was young, for no matter how long and thoroughly he cleared it away, it never seemed to be completely gone. He sat on his rump hunched over in the corridor, head touching the top, and looked back toward the light from whence he came. The robe still hung there, guarding, and he now felt certain that the creature was not human, and that it would be a fight to escape that men's room if he came out again.

Then he heard a squeaking sound from the direction of the light. He pricked his ears, trying to figure what it was and where it came from. Then he realized, it came from the floor, and it was coming toward him. It was a rat! _Oh, God!_ Indy thought, and scurried quickly away from the light. On hands and knees there was not much speed afforded, but powered by adrenaline there was plenty to push him forward. He plowed along as fast as his fiery limbs could afford, banging shoulders against the walls left and right, for the darkness permitted no sense of direction, only an understanding of where the walls blocked his way. Thus, with no warning, he plowed squarely into a wall directly before him. His forehead throbbed, and his neck was thrust backward with the impact. He flailed his arms and found open space on his right. It was a turn in the corridor. He righted himself and scurried along, trying with no success to keep a hand in front of him to prevent the same thing from happening.

After a few stretches, the same thing happened again. He uttered a groan, and turned to the right again. Rat or no rat, at this point he was ready simply to get out of this place. He scurried as far as he could, now faintly conscious that he was traveling the exact opposite direction he'd started out. And to his everlasting pain and frustration, he slammed right into another wall. He extended an arm in each direction but this time they both touched walls. He was stuck in a dead end! Now panic gripped him and he scrambled about, running his hands along all three walls. Nothing. Instinctively, he reached for the ceiling as well, only to find it was open. Realizing, he stood up, relishing the feeling of stretching his legs, and spread his arms in all directions. It was completely open. He was standing waist-deep in a hole in the floor.

He pushed himself up and out of that wretched hole, and lay on flat ground. But it was still absolutely dark. He looked all around and saw a narrow vertical band of light. He stood and barreled toward it, crashing and tumbling over a desk. He righted himself and continued on, reaching what was the crack in a door, an unlocked door. He poured himself out into the light of the hall, slammed the door shut behind him, and lay breathlessly on the ground for a few minutes, panic-stricken, aching and cold.

* * *

When he came to, Indy made the resolution to avoid two things: dark portals and old goblins. He didn't know how or where to go about finding his brother at this point, and had nearly forgotten about his mission in his own madness. But one way or another, he could do it without the use of portals or goblins.

All of a sudden, two realizations struck him. One was that even though his eyes seemed to have adjusted, this hall was decidedly darker than any other he had been in before, and more sinister somehow. Second of all, he heard the wailing sound of a small child. It was faint and directionless, but present nonetheless. He walked a dozen paces one way and then the other, trying to pinpoint its origin, but again, it was everywhere at once, and nowhere in particular. He set out in a random direction, and then stopped himself. Some instinct told him to mark which way he'd come. He didn't know why, for he was hopelessly lost already, but he went back to the door anyway and committed the room number, 336, to memory. Odd, he thought, for he was certain he'd climbed more than three floors by now.

Indy was not certain whether he heard laughing or crying, but it was a small child's laughing or crying without a doubt. Whichever way he turned, it seemed to be coming from the ceiling. All the doors were locked and dark inside, and all the lights were old and flickering, more orange now than white, and many out entirely. And for the life of him, Indy could not place what exactly was different about this level than all the rest.

He turned down one hall, down another, and up a ramp to another. He ventured through cross halls and into empty dark unlocked classrooms, and the wailing remained constant. Then without warning, he passed by a door and it seemed decidedly louder. He opened the door and the wailing grew perfectly audible.

"Henry!" There was no answer. Only an old electric light dangling in a utility closet. Before him was an air-conditioning unit, and to either side were stacked paint buckets and cleaning products and tile and brick. And behind the light was a door in the ceiling, the kind that led into attics. Indy pulled the little cord and the door fell open like a mouth, releasing a gust of cold air. He pulled the ladder down and climbed up into the blackness above. He promised himself against the use of portals, but this one seemed much less threatening than the last. It led him into a pitch black room with a square white window in a door directly ahead. The door was locked, but after groping around for a moment, he unfastened and opened it. From the little light outside, he could see that he'd entered another utility closet almost identical to the one he'd come from.

In the hall the sound of wailing became the sound of cherubic laughing. He could even make out footfalls in the distance. He ran down to the end of the hall and turned sharply left. Then he stopped cold in his tracks. At the end of the hall were two janitors, commiserating. One sported the head of a yellow-red pterodactyl, the other that of an orange-green crocodile. Both ceased their talk and looked at him, though the masks afforded no view of their faces whatsoever. No semblance of human eyes or mouths shone through. One was just a pointed, elongated head with slotted eyes, the other a black pit surrounded by teeth.

They stared at Indy, not moving, just leaning against the wall nonchalantly. Indy stared back, daring to move or breathe. He'd already let slide his absolution against portals, but against goblins, he held fast. He still had the wits about him to know these were just ordinary human beings with sick Halloween masks trying to freak him out. But his gut told him not to speak to them, not to approach them, and having already let them know he existed, not to remain in their field of vision or earshot. He breathed slowly and stared ahead at the plastic nightmare before him, really only a few strides ahead of him, though it felt a safe distance.

Then he noticed the hands. The pterodactyl's hands were orange claws, and the crocodile's were green monstrous paws. Something deep in his mind stirred, a revelation, an understanding, a sort of surrender. He didn't want to believe it, but every hair on his body stood up in acknowledgement. He wasn't home. This wasn't reality. This wasn't ordinary or normal or human or real anymore. He'd wandered into a dream. He'd stumbled into something under or between or around the fabric of reality. He'd slipped into another world.

"I'm not in Kansas anymore," he whispered to himself. The creatures on the opposite end of the hall heard him and tossed their heads up in great screeching laughs. They stood there looking at one another, enjoying bellowing cries of joy at his sudden realization. Indy bolted. He ran back to the utility closet and groped for the handle. But there was none on the outside. He stood baffled and panicked for a moment, seeming to remember one there before. He slammed a shoulder into it, but knew it opened to the outside. He dug his fingernails into the seams and tried to pry it open, but of course he was no match. He looked angrily down the hall from whence he'd come, and saw the shadows of the creatures painted against the wall, approaching. He didn't wait anymore. He ran down the opposite end of the hall into darkness, stumbling over wires and chairs and nameless debris strewn about.

At the end of the hall was a door to a stairwell. He bounded up a level, emptied out of the next door, and slammed the heavy door shut behind him. For no reason at all, an old piano stood blocking the hall in one direction, and he dragged it over to block the door. He sat on the piano panting for a moment, when through the door came the shadowy face of one of the creatures. It screeched and laughed and pushed at the door, but it couldn't break through. It scratched at the door a bit, laughing, then disappeared. Indy closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall in relief.

And then he heard a chuckle. His head snapped up, eyes alert. Around the corner, the silhouette of a small head peeked out scarcely at the height of a toddler. He was not a dozen feet away. He chuckled again and scurried off.

"Henry!" Indy called, and leapt after him. He turned the corner and saw the full silhouette of the child running as children run. He was laughing and toting a little top hat. He turned another corner, and his shadow danced out of sight again.

Indy continued after him, chasing him down the end of a hall, gaining on him with every step. "Henry!" The child kept chuckling, as if he knew a secret, scurrying along as if even with his slowness he was uncatchable. Only a few paces ahead now, he turned a sharp left into the open door of a men's room. Indy followed, sweeping around the wall to find him standing perfectly still, back turned, top hat perched on his head, hands folded before him.

"Henry, for goodness sake."

The child turned around to face Indy. It didn't look like Henry. It didn't feel like Henry. And when suddenly it became clear that it was not Henry, Indy clammed up. The child had overlarge eyes, round and black, an overlarge mouth, and overlarge hands clasped over his belly. The child wasn't a child, Indy realized. It was an imp.

The imp raised its neck and opened its wide mouth, lined with black and yellow pointed teeth, opened his claws toward Indy, and screeched an imp's beastly screech. And charged. Shocked, Indy didn't budge, and before he could come around, the imp had affixed itself to his leg and sunken its jowls into the flesh of it. Indy let loose a scream, raised the offended leg, and launched as hard a kick as he could muster into the corner of the wall, smashing the imp into the hard concrete. The teeth released in puzzlement, and Indy kicked it again. It shook its head back and forth in confusion, and Indy kicked again. Finally it let its grip go, fell to the floor in a daze, and then scrambled to its feet. It looked at the wall where it had been slammed, and looked at Indy's leg, as if trying to figure out how it had been foiled.

"Go back where you came from!" Indy hissed, and the creature looked up at him quizzically. Indy bent down and created to the best of his ability a roar. It wasn't altogether impressive, but it was human. The imp, seeming to understand now what had happened, grew a fire in its eyes, roared back, and charged again. But this time Indy kicked his foot as hard as he could, made solid contact with the imp, and sent it sprawling. Before it could get back up, Indy approached it and kicked it as hard as he could again. Then he stomped on its stomach. He backed off for a moment, waiting for it to react.

"Come on! Come at me, you little beast! Attack me, you filth!"

It got to its feet sulkily, holding its belly, and stared at Indy, sizing him up.

"Come on!"

With a frustrated cry, it leapt forward, ensnared its fallen top hat, and scuttled off into a hole in the wall. Indy listened as it ran off into the tunnel, screeching in frustration. After a few moments, its cries dwindled to nothing, and Indy recognized the portal. Looking around the men's room, he was almost certain. This is where he'd first crawled through. This is where the goblin had led him. All his time in Kell Hall he'd not once gone _down_. He'd gone up ramps, stairs, and even ladders, but never down. Thinking about it, he tried to count how many levels he'd climbed. He knew the building could not have but six or seven floors, and yet he was certain he'd scaled at least ten. Then there was the matter of appearing on the third floor after certainly scaling more than three. And why hadn't he seen that piano before, if indeed he'd been on this level? For that matter, how could he have come a full circuit without ever having gone down?

His leg hurt. He was wearing jeans, but the numbing pain came anyway, the little bitty teeth piercing through the tough fabric. Indy limped over to the sink, heaved a foot up to it, and turned on the faucet. There was no water pressure, but a small stream fell out. He took some paper towels from the counter, wetted them, and applied the cold relief on his wound again and again. It stung more and more as he touched it, but he managed to clear the blood away. There was no kind of tourniquet to tie about it, so he took off his shoe, ripped a hole in the toe of his sock, and slid it up over his shin, stuffing wet paper towels inside. That would do for now. Tying his shoe back onto his bare foot, Indy noticed something in the mirror.

He couldn't make it out, but there was something more in the mirror than merely his own reflection. There was a shadowy wispiness about it, reflecting the darkness as if the darkness itself had form and clarity. He checked behind him, just to get a grip on reality, and saw nothing. It was the mirror itself that contained this sense of motion. He extended a finger to touch it, and it felt ice-cold. He recoiled quickly, but the frostbite seemed to stay with him. The swirling continued, intensifying, until Indy could identify a center, a focus to its motion. And without further tumult, there appeared the black-grey shadow of a face. It was a face out of an opera house, those solid masks one wears to portray happiness, sadness, anger, or hope. This one was happy, but Indy knew better than to judge it benevolent.

"Hello," it greeted.

Indy jumped back, startled, and the face laughed.

"You're a jumpy one," it said playfully. The voice was friendly, but had a certain menacing undertone, like a jester or a magician, with a plot in mind. It sounded natural on the outside, but one could easily tell that naturalness was only a mask to hide some unadulterated unnaturalness. "Whatever have you to be afraid of?"

Indy considered ignoring it and walking away, but figured that enough had happened to him in silence to justify conversing with anything for a few minutes, particularly one that did not appear as if it could harm him. "Who are you?" he asked.

The face smiled. "I am the Master of the Hall."

"You control," Indy asked, choosing his words, "the creatures?"

"I do."

"You control the passageways?"

"Indeed."

"Then let me out of here!"

The face laughed. " _Let_ you? It is you that entered here of your own accord. Besides, you still have to find your brother."

"Henry! What have you done with Henry?!"

The face beamed with slimy satisfaction. "He is lost. He has wandered deep into the bowels of this place, not even I know where. Master as I am, I cannot account for every mouse between the walls and every cobweb in the corners. The deeper one ventures, the harder it is to find a way out. Your brother is far beyond the borders within which one can still escape this place. He could be a ghoul, or a goblin, or a droplet of light by now for all I know."

"No! You lie!" Indy yelled, pressing a fist against the mirror. The iciness of it sent him sprawling again. The face did a back flip inside the mirror and came up laughing. "Where is he?!"

"In the dark place with no memory. With every step you take in this place, a droplet of memory leaks out. Soon, all that will be left of it is the four walls around you, and you will wander in that dark place forever. Just like him. You can wander mindlessly together, and not even know the other."

"Lies! Lies! Lies! You're only leading me away."

The smile became sterner. "What are lies to some are only things they themselves cannot accept. Your brother is lost. You will never find him. Even if you somehow did, you could never save him. But, I have a proposition for you. We've sucked all the memories from your brother, and it has satisfied us. The caricature left behind is nothing but a nuisance at best. But we're still working on yours. It's quite a laborious and trickling process. So I'd rather you just surrender them to me on your own accord. Give me your memories of your brother and your family, and I'll let you leave here. I'll be satisfied with that, and you can walk out of my Hall never having known you've lost a brother, and not even having known you had a mother to trudge back to and tell her you lost him. You'll be free. Completely and utterly free."

The face opened its mouth wide, so wide it encompassed nearly the entire mirror. Inside, a blackness swirled, and visions appeared. He saw the exit to Kell Hall. He saw the parking lot outside, and beyond that, trees and people and sunsets and beaches and forests and cities and oceans and deserts.

He found himself slipping closer into the mirror, hypnotized, gravitating inwards. He groped for something substantial to hold him back, but found only the knob on the sink faucet. The world in the mirror was a shadow of beauty and appeal and majesty. But it was lonely, and it was silent, and it was cold. It was nothing without those he loved. The knob on the sink was loose, and without thinking, Indy pried it free and slammed it into the mirror. The glass shattered and the little pieces swirled into the mouth, and the mouth swallowed itself up in a cry of pain, and the face was gone, shriveled to an empty wall.

Indy ran out of the bathroom. Outside, he ran down the hall toward the stairs. Once at the piano, he searched the ground for a weapon. A few paces away, he found a long splinter of a two-by-four, heavy enough for a club at the middle, and sharp enough for a knife at the end. He stood still for a few moments, mustered the courage to move the piano, and opened the door. He sailed down the stairs, flight after flight, not looking back, not even thinking to count them all. Now it felt like many more the way down than he'd come up.

At the bottom of the stairwell, he ripped the door open and tore down the hall. It was not yet the lowest level, so he chased down ramp after ramp, finally coming upon the last wide central one, the first one he'd ascended. And at the mouth of Kell Hall, he ran into a wall. It was a wide wall, made of hard stone and cement, like something of a medieval castle. It stretched the length of the walls and the height of the ceiling. The lighting and paint wasn't what it had been when Indy first entered, but he was certain this was the place. It was guarded by a waist-high jack-o-lantern on one side, and a scarecrow hung on the other.

He plowed into the wall again and again, butchering his shoulder. He thrust the stick he had against it over and over like a baseball bat, but to no avail.

"That's not an exit," the deep rumbling voice of the jack-o-lantern said. The giant orange ball laughed a bellowing laugh. Indy approached it and struck it again and again with his stick. He smashed holes in it and ripped pieces out of it, but the laugh rolled on, even after he'd mangled all the orange stickiness that made it up. Indy threw the stick away, collapsed against the wall, and put his hands over his eyes. _There's no way out_.

* * *

Meanwhile, in some deep dark belly of darkness, a beast slept. Its cold breath rasped in and out, in and out, rattling and misting. Nightmares danced in its head that were so terrible, one could not even imagine them, things of bitterness and blood and horror. Then a voice came over the beast. _Wake, wake my sleeping servant, wake,_ it whispered. The beast stirred, snapped its chops, and sat up on its haunches. Its black fur quivered, and its tongue lolled out between its teeth. Before it, the beast beheld _the face_ , the Master. _You are beautiful,_ it whispered. The beast snapped and barked in acknowledgement. _I have a treat for you. An ever so tasty treat, my darling._ The beast awaited his orders, lust creeping into his eyes, and stood on all fours. _It is a boy. A human boy that has wandered into my Hall. He did not fall to my sorcery and seduction. You must seek him out, and consume him._ The beast growled in anticipation at the notion. _He is still quite near the outer borders of this world. You will have to return to the boundary land. But it will be worth the trip. You will drink human blood._ The beast let loose a mild howl, and scraped its paws on the floor. _That's right, my darling, that's right. Go forth and claim him, my beautiful, beautiful beast. My Beast of Bitterness._

* * *

Indy walked ruefully down the corridor, thinking about his family. He didn't feel like he was losing his memories. But then, how would one know if one _used_ to know something? He supposed there was no feeling of a memory slipping away. Perhaps it felt as it does trying to remember a dream as it fades away after waking in the morning.

Indy thought about his brothers. His room, his own bed. Dinner at the table every night. All that was outside these walls, in another world. His school. His room. Dad. His room. He tried to remember his room. To picture it. He knew he had one, but it was only a doorway, beyond which was cast in shadow. He concentrated as hard as he could, but it felt the way a dream does upon waking. It just slipped away, ever so discreetly. _My God,_ Indy thought, _it really is happening. But I can do without remembering what my room looks like. I can return home to an alien room and get used to it all over again. But I've got to get out of here before I lose anything I can't replace. Perhaps I've lost those things already. After all this time,_ he thought, _I really did wander into another world._

His mother used to tease him about it, when he was young. As a kid he used to have a habit of tuning people out, daydreaming, letting his imagination wander. His mother would refer to it as "slipping into another world." _Be careful_ , she'd say, _you could slip into another world and not find your way back_. They went to a fast-food restaurant once, and let Indy play in the play place, which they didn't usually do. They told him to take off his shoes, be nice to other kids, especially the little ones, and be sure to listen out for their whistle. _You could get lost in there_ , they told him, _and accidentally slip into another world. So every few minutes I'm going to whistle. And when I whistle you'll know you're still in this world. But if you hear me stop whistling for more than just a few minutes, then you might have slipped into another world, and you must turn around and go back the way you came right away. Understand?_ He did.

And wandering around, minding his own business, hearing her whistle once every few minutes, he was having the time of his life. Then suddenly he realized that he hadn't heard a whistle in too long. He stopped cold and waited. But it never came. Down the tunnel, he heard a scratching and groaning, and saw a shadow moving toward him. He didn't wait, just turned around and raced out the tunnels he'd come through as fast as he could, screaming. When he finally found the exit, he ran to his parents crying and hugged them.

"You were right, Mommy!" he wailed. "I heard you stop whistling, and there was something awful in that other world."

"Aw, poor Indy," she consoled. "But you must be mistaken. I never stopped whistling."

That notion scared him, and he never wanted to go in those things again.

"But it's a good thing you came out when you did. It was just time to go anyway."

Thinking back, going over all the memories he'd ever had, Indy wished he could get back to his world. He wished his mother was here to whistle for him. He wished his brothers were here to torment him, each in their own ways. He wished he could grab that old goblin by the neck and squeeze the life out of him. He wished he could get out of this God-forsaken place and leave it to rot.

Indy stopped in his tracks. He decided that he was finished feeling sorry for himself and ready to leave this place. _I have a home_ , he chanted to himself. _I have a family who loves me. I'm going to find Henry, and I'm going to take him home_. He looked directly above him. Old rusty pipes lined the ceiling. He jumped up and grabbed hold of a skinnier one, yanking and jerking down. It gave, water spilling out, and he bent it around till it gave in a second place too. He stood victoriously, admiring his bat-sized weapon, complete with jagged edges on one end from where the pipe was sheared in two. In the back corner of the building was an elevator. He stepped in and hit the button for the top floor, the seventh, though he guessed there were more past that, imaginary or not.

As the shaky electric box toted him up floor after floor, the fire in his eyes burned brighter. He would slash and beat and carve his way through any adversary. He would ask each one where his brother was, each a single time, and if they didn't tell him, he would demolish them. No more running. It was time to take a stand. The imp couldn't hurt him. The jack-o-lantern couldn't hurt him. The face in the mirror couldn't hurt him. He kicked himself for ever fearing that old goblin could hurt him. He should have pounced out of that tunnel like a tiger and snapped its twiggy legs and squeezed its neck with the heel of his foot until the old wrinkly creature croaked. There was no reason to be afraid, not with a pipe in hand.

The doors to the elevator opened and Indy froze in shock. It was Brick, back turned, ten paces away, clad in that same polo shirt and stupid black mask. Only it wasn't Brick, because the arms were black and hairy and the legs were black and hairy and hoofed like a boar's. Indy clung to his pipe childishly, watching the creature, wondering if it knew he was there. It seemed to catch something in its nostrils and marched off to the left. Indy waited a moment, then crept out of the elevator and knelt behind a desk just outside. This level was dark, and Indy felt safely unseen. The boar stood in the corner looking around, as if puzzled. Then from above him, a swift black object descended.

The boar spread his arms defensively, startled, but the black creature was a slender feline, and seemed to melt over him, hanging on him with all her limbs, tail curling around his neck. It was _the girl_ , or a semblance of the girl, the way the boar seemed like his brother. The boar relaxed his guard a bit as she crawled all over and around him, as if seducing him. She planted her paws firmly on his ankles, spread her arms out along his, and gently forced his hands behind his back. She seemed to crisscross her hands with his, so to pull them tighter like handcuffs, and her tail wrapped around his waist.

It all happened very quickly, when suddenly the cat slid her nose up and down his neck, and then sunk her fangs into it. The boar groaned and roared in protest, but his wrists were firmly fixed behind his back. He spun his neck in every direction and kicked up and down with his feet to no avail. She kept her hold, chewing and digging a bloody hole in his shoulder. She slid the tip of her tail around an ankle, and when he instinctively raised it, she seized the leg, pulling upwards, and shifted her weight to push him over. He toppled over on his back, and the feline fell with him, maintaining her hold on every limb and continuing to devour him. He struggled as much as he could, pinned under the slender beast, to no end. She secured all his limbs carefully, raised her head one last time, and plunged into his windpipe. The boar groaned desperately as her fangs squeezed tightly against him, struggled a bit more, then went stiff, and finally completely limp. She held for a few more moments, and then melted off him, circling him, inspecting her kill.

She bent over his face and smiled, eyes closed. And when her eyes snapped open, they were fixed, absolutely fixed, on Indy's. His blood turned to ice. She smiled as she stared, as if she knew he was watching, knew he was there all along, as if her kill was for him, to let him know and fear what she was going to do to him. She pounced, bounding toward him. Indy barely rose to his feet before she was upon him. He swung his precious pipe point blank at the swift creature, but she dodged it smoothly, caught it with her tail, and sent it clattering against the ground behind her. It was not even two seconds before some limb of hers tripped him and he fell backwards, smiling bloody cat's snout above him, utterly helpless.

She hissed and quivered victoriously. But she did not make her kill. She balanced all four paws over his wrists and ankles, dug her claws in just deeply enough to singe with pain but not break the skin. Indy groaned at the icy sting, and the feline laughed with pleasure. Then to his surprise, she pulled him to his feet. He just stood looking at her, dumbfounded, when she slashed him across the chest, grazing his skin. Indy yelped and ran away from her, but she quickly pounced on him, sending him flailing to the ground again, and laughing, she stood pinning him to the floor. Now Indy understood. She was a cat playing with her mouse. He wouldn't escape. He would just fall and stumble and yelp until she scratched the life out of him and fell to boredom.

She picked him up again and kicked him in the gut with her hind legs with such force that he rolled across the floor many yards away. And before he even skidded to a halt, she plucked him up on his feet again. He growled with frustration and lunged at her. But she only tripped him and sent him tumbling face first at her feet. Then she grabbed him by the ankles and flung him down the hallway. He tasted blood. He felt like crying. The helplessness and pain and dizziness overwhelmed him. He tried to grab hold of doorknobs, pipes, sink his fingernails into the wall, anything to break the ceaseless chaos of her torture. But she dislodged him effortlessly every time and continued pushing and prodding and flinging him along.

The world spun, growing dim and bright in spurts, new bruises and cuts decorating his body as he went. And then, with no warning, it all stopped. His eyes opened, and in his spinning vision he saw the feline sitting proudly and respectably on her haunches, eyes fixed on some spot other than him. He lay before her as a prize. He turned to see what she was looking at and found he was lying at the foot of a door. On the door was a grotesque and dynamic graffiti of a face. She righted him, holding him like a puppet to behold the face in the door. The panel next to the door had a name printed on it: Gohn. Indy uttered it lightly and a cold breeze gripped them.

The black paint and the wooden door seemed to melt into each other, breaking and cracking and fizzling soundlessly into grayness, and lumps began bulging outward from it. After a moment it became clear that the outline of a human figure jutted out from the door. The figure was all shadow, but distinctly clad in a wool suit, a tilted hat, with a coat draped over an arm. The clothes were just barely distinguishable as brown texture, but the face and hands were solid black emptiness. Mr. Gohn stepped forth from the door, towering over Indy, as the feline still held him upright.

Mr. Gohn grabbed him by the neck and tilted Indy's head back and forth, inspecting him. The grip was cold and piercing. It was not at all flesh, but rather just the sensation of a deep freeze and needle-like texture. It flowed all through Indy's neck like water filling a glass. Little tentacles of cold threaded around and through his neck, searching down his chest and creeping up his spine. Indy's mouth stretched open in an involuntary soundless scream of pain, eyes rolled back in his head, arms and legs going stiff like boards. He could feel the tentacles wrap around his heart and squeeze, sending a jolt of bitter cold throughout his entire body. Other tentacles, finer and sharper, weaved up and around his skull. He could distinctly feel the needles poking around his brain, chasing down and grabbing hold of thoughts, squeezing and sucking them out.

In all the excruciating discomfort, Indy keenly felt that something was being siphoned out of him. He couldn't tell what, but he could feel the flowing of some kind of medium down his spine and out his neck. It felt like the little tingly electricity accompanied with a numb foot or arm coming back to life. He couldn't discern exactly what it was, and the icy hand squeezed his heart ever tighter, as if forcing some kind of surrender from him. Indy felt completely surrendered, and completely helpless. He was stiff as a board, and dimly thought he might as well be dead for all the control he had over himself at this moment. He hovered under the monster's grip for what felt like an eternity, wondering what the stuff was being drained out of him, and how much there was to drain.

Then in a fit of violence, the hand released from his neck, tentacles fizzling away to nothing, and Indy dropped to the floor, convulsing, slowly going limp. He heard a hoarse roar, followed by a hiss, and then a scuffling argument. He gained control of himself, finding his breath and opening his eyes. His chest felt like a spring wound up too tightly. He clutched a hand to his heart as it very slowly thawed and picked up its regular beat. His head felt light and swimmy, and seemed like it was crawling with ants. He rolled his neck all around, beating his skull against the floor to clear out the swarming chaos within.

In the corner of his eye, he saw Mr. Gohn in a standoff with the feline. She stood between Indy and the monster, as if guarding him. After a moment, Indy lifted himself to his feet, still clutching his chest, leaning against a wall and panting, watching the scene. Apparently, the feline either required some sort of compensation for delivering her prize, or changed her mind to keep him for herself. She leapt at the monster and clawed his chest, but he just slapped her with tremendous force to the ground. It was the cold in his hands, no doubt, for the feline yelped and fell limp.

She righted herself sulkily, seeming to admit defeat, ears drooping, tail dragging the floor. She crept up against him and began rubbing against his legs as cats do, begging forgiveness. She leapt up on her hind legs and ran her paws along the monster's chest in a seductive gesture. The monster kept his hand raised defensively, but did not throw her off. Sneakily she sunk her fangs into his neck, but he bent away quickly and lightly set a finger on her nose. Immediately her face turned to ice, and in a few moments, the cold swirled and consumed her entire body, creeping into every limb and every hair. Mr. Gohn stepped away and the feline remained, frozen like a statue, standing on her hind legs, mouth open, eyes staring fixedly at the wall, a whitish snow-like hue about her.

Mr. Gohn looked up at Indy and advanced. Indy, still leaning weakly against the wall, quickly hobbled off in panic, clutching his chest, still dizzy with that sick crawling feeling in his brain. He stumbled and fell flat on the floor, then quickly scrambled to his feet and bolted. He headed back the way he came, back to the elevator. But he remembered the elevator would carry him no higher. So he flew past and made his way to the stairwell. He tore open the door and stopped cold, grabbing the rail in panic. One foot plunged through a thin layer of dead powdery concrete, and he swung like a pendulum over a dark pit. The stairwell below him had crumbled into nothingness, and the pit that remained swirled with dark light and sound. He quickly pulled himself onto the first solid step and breathed heavily at the sight below. Through the window, he saw Mr. Gohn at the end of the hall. He pulled himself up one flight of stairs, leg protesting, head pounding, breath ripping in and out of his throat like fire. Through the window of the next door stood Mr. Gohn, one step closer. Indy looked up through the crevice in the spiral structure of the stair, but it seemed never to end. He catapulted his body up another flight, and there the monster was again, yet another step closer.

Indy's pulse raced as the monster seemed to close in, rising floor after floor as if running in circles. Flight after flight he left behind him, heart pounding blood through his body like a sledgehammer. And as he passed the door of each level, Mr. Gohn was one step closer in the window, and like a movie reel, he advanced. Indy felt more helpless than ever, but continued pulling his weight up with his tired arms and pushing them up with his legs. By exerting his body to its limit, perhaps he could outrace the monster. But it was no use. Mr. Gohn drew closer and closer until his face was immediately beyond the window. Indy stood his ground, muscles locked. Mr. Gohn did not even open the door, he merely dissolved through it, like a ghost. Indy backed up a step, and Mr. Gohn lifted a hand toward the boy's neck. Quick as lightning, Indy grabbed the handrail behind him and leapt over it, jumping into the narrow gap between the two halves of the staircase. A squealing hiss sounded from his pursuer and a dark hand descended behind him, but it was a hair's breadth too late, and gravity pulled Indy down. He managed to catch the rail two flights down and clamber onto the landing. Mr. Gohn's shrill cry echoed above him, and his footfalls bounded downward.

Indy tore open the door and ran back down a hall nearly identical to the one he'd left. He began to wonder if the stairwell was some kind of closed loop, sending him in circles under the pretense of gravity, like some wicked Escher illusion. He ran to the other end of the hall and decided to try something. Perhaps inside a room was a window leading outside. The least he could do was see outside this place, if not escape through it. He kicked down a door with little effort, but stopped at the threshold. In the middle of the room was a spotlight, and under it was a dentist and a patient, the dentist standing in a white coat, patient lying horizontal in a dentist's chair. Except the patient was some kind of horrid creature, all teeth and mouth. And the dentist was some kind of creature as well, masked by a wooden mold of a face, one arm ending not in a hand, but a drill bit. Indy's eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he turned around and ran back to the elevator. The rooms were caves for the ghouls of this world, and he would have no more part of them.

Indy climbed into the elevator as Mr. Gohn walked through the door to the stairwell. Indy pushed the button to the top floor, and the doors to the elevator closed. Mr. Gohn's footfalls advanced as the elevator shut and began its rise. Only a few floors up, the elevator stopped. Indy cursed. This couldn't be the top floor, he was certain. Indy leapt up and grabbed a hold of a beam in the ceiling of the box. With the other arm, he beat against the flickering light. The plastic shattered from aged brittleness, and the thin metal beyond rattled. It was a door. Indy banged harder and it gave. He carefully put both hands through and pushed himself out, like a baby being born. He shook the dust and grime from his hair and stood atop the box. Sure enough, the shaft extended above him at least four more floors.

Indy lost his breath for a moment. Stretching his gaze skyward, he saw, at the end of the deep dark tunnel, the ceiling of this place. And beyond the ceiling of this place, through a hole in the tattered roof, he saw stars. For many long moments he stood in amazement, neck craned toward the beautiful sight. He spread his arms and cried out in ecstasy. His great cry of vitality and hope burned his lungs and rattled throughout this entire God-forsaken dungeon. He hoped every slimy critter and every sinister ghoul heard it. He looked around and saw an iron ladder leading all the way up to salvation.

Climbing hand over hand up the shaft, Indy thought about all he had been through, the monsters, the beasts, the ghouls, the imps. He thought about how horribly he wanted to leave this place. He had to escape once and for all, to get back to his family. His family. Indy puzzled over the thought. _His family_. The word hung in his thoughts, beautiful and warm and comforting like a jewel amid cold wet rocks. What was a family? He tried to remember. There was a flash and he saw a small creature with no face. _Henry_. Another flash and a bigger creature stood next to that one, similar in stature to the boar he'd seen earlier. _Brick_. The words echoed meaninglessly in his thoughts, like the empty shells of insects dangling in a web. Another flash and two more bigger creatures joined the frame. _Mother. Father._ They all stood before a black canvas, still and faceless. _Family._ Indy was sure they were creatures of good, but he could remember nothing about them. Only that they were the reason he was climbing toward the stars right now, and escaping was more important than anything else in the world.

Had his memories left him? It was as if there was some beautiful warm blanket just outside this world. He had slept soundly under it for a long time, but then it slipped off in the night, and he woke up, cold and alone, haunted and pursued. And all he had to do was find that blanket again, that _family_ , and all would be well and warm again. He had been birthed into this world against his will, and he must leave it. He would find his _family_ , and all his memories would be trifles in comparison.

He mounted the last few rungs of the ladder and spilled out onto the rooftop. It was amazing. Fresh air blew against his body, a torrent of cool and freedom. The stars glowed above, and the pebbly roof stretched each direction to the edges of the building. Even in nighttime darkness, the world felt brighter. He walked to the edge and looked out over the precipice. But something wasn't right. In every direction an ocean swam in torrents, under a lightning-colored sky. Black burly clouds churned and whirled, slinging rain across the sky in buckets all around the building of Kell Hall.

"There is no escape," echoed a voice from behind. Indy turned. It was Mr. Gohn, standing next to a door leading back down into the inside. "You have wandered too deep into this world. Every step you have taken has led you deeper. You are beyond redemption." He began walking forward ominously. Indy looked over his shoulder at the precipice. It was a long fall, and below, the edge of a beach. Lightning flashed and wind swirled his clothing in every direction. "Behind you is no escape, merely an endless sea of blood from which this world juts out. It is the blood of your brothers."

"No," Indy denied powerlessly.

"Surrender to me. I have taken every last droplet of memory of your world, stripped all the meat off your bones. You are a walking carcass. All that is left for us to claim is your will to leave. For that is the warm little center of life within you, the marrow deep inside your bones. It is Hell to want so badly to escape a place so inescapable. Give up the will to leave, and you will find yourself in a place that might as well be home."

This was not his home. It could never be. Indy closed his eyes, spread his arms, and fell backward off the ledge. The wind and the rain swirled about his falling body, carrying him swiftly into the belly of the churning sea below.

"Very well," Mr. Gohn said to himself. "If you will not surrender it to me, then you will succumb to the Beast of Bitterness."

Indy took deep slow breaths of sweet cold air, plunging downward to the sea. And then he hit it, and it swallowed him up, spiraling about him, spinning him violently in a twister of bubbles. The thick, sticky redness of it held him like syrup, and he lay below the sea of blood like a piece of seaweed. The current ebbed and flowed, swaying his arms and hair. It was so easy to give up, floating here in this sticky sludge, where light was a soft glow and sound was a muffled gurgle. Indy wondered what horrors lay at the bottom of this sea of blood, muddled cries echoing to the surface for no one to hear. Indy bobbed to the surface and spat out what he could of the blood in his mouth, and the current carried him to a rocky beach outside the building.

Like the very first fish to crawl out of the primordial slime of the world, Indy oozed from the froth of the sea of blood, retching and burning. He flung himself onto dry land, spitting and coughing, sputtering and rubbing his stinging eyes. He couldn't stop his throat and stomach from seizing up with disgust. Every time he swallowed, he gagged and spat. His eyes poured tears out, washing the horrid sticky blood from them and down his face. He tried to stand, but the wet clothes clung to him and seemed trying to trip him. He tore them all off, stripped himself down to absolute nakedness, and a layer of blood coated him like paint, equally impossible to scrape off with his bare hands. In his foggy vision, he spotted a light hanging over an entrance into the building. He stumbled on his bare feet toward it, wind whipping against his bare body, drying the layer of blood over him.

The exit to this place wasn't out here. For all its vices, this building guarded the exit somewhere in its belly. Indy jogged back into the building, down a long white hall. As he ran, blood seeped down from the ceiling, coating the walls on either side. His feet splattered against the floor, leaving wet red footprints in his wake. From within the walls, red hands reached out, as if sealed in by the layer of blood. Entire arms stretched out, grappling at air, entrapped and entwined in the dripping red wall. Hands and arms grew by the dozens out of the wall like weeds, waving and clutching at nothing.

Beyond the hall, Indy found a closet and searched for towels. He found long burlap cloths, and scraped as much blood as he could off him until only a faint red tint remained in his skin. Another he wrapped around his body in a rudimentary robe. This he tied with a length of cord and lumbered off. Now he truly looked like a creature of this place, white eyes burning through a red body clad in dirty cloth, wandering about these halls with no memory.

He ran for long minutes in great circles, losing himself among these dark tunnels. It hardly resembled a human construct anymore, though to Indy's eyes it had merely lost a sense of order and continuity. Bricks became cold rock. Doors became splintered passageways. Windows became spider-webbed holes. Lights became flameless fires, balls of softly glowing light tossing yellow shadows on the walls. The floor became a turbulent flowing pathway of rock and dirt, rising and falling like rapids frozen in place.

Indy tripped and skidded to a stop. He did not rise again. His muscles burned. His eyes burned. His heart burned. The wound on his leg ached, as did his head and neck. His mouth opened in a long, despairing, silent scream, and tears poured from his eyes. He lay against the wall and wept great tides of tears. An earthquake could not shake him. _I'll never get out of here_ , he chanted to himself. _I'll never get out of here. I'll run and run and run and then finally some thing will overtake and defeat and consume me. I'll never get out. I'll never get out of here._ Again and again his mind chanted the horrible reality. He opened his lips to say it aloud:

"I have to get out of here," he said instead. Slowly the thought and determination sunk in. _I have to get out. Against any adversity, I must survive. Against any cage, I must break free. In the face of every possible monster, I must fight. I have to get out of here._ It was only a hollow mantra now, but strong nonetheless. Shakily, he stood. No more running. No more hiding. No more games. He was not of this world. He knew that. He did not know of what world he belonged, but it was warm and sweet and in it was his _family_. If he could destroy a monster, then perhaps he could tame one. They spoke in riddles and led him astray, but if he could outsmart them, then perhaps he could find a guide.

Indy stood up, rubbed his leg, wiped his eyes, took a cleansing breath, and walked forward slowly and deliberately. He walked up one hall and down another. Coming around one corner, a vision came to him. At the end of a long hall sat a wolf, blacker than night, breathing lustily. It was nothing more than a vision, for the hall before him ended only in a dark door. He shook himself of the thought. But the thought clung to him. He heard panting. It was not the type of sound that his ears picked up. It was merely the interpretation of sound, as if his mind contained a portal to another world, from whence the sound echoed. _I am coming for you_ , the sound said.

Indy looked all around, and saw nothing, lumbering slowly this way and that. His bare feet had wizened and burled up, scraping against hard stone as if they were made to do so. They made a sweeping sound as they passed, and his footfalls sounded like a heartbeat, one strong beat followed by a weaker one, as he limped on his bad leg.

Something caught his eye and he stopped. It was a doorway with rusted metal hinges hanging on one side, more like the entrance to a cave than anything. Beside the entrance hung a plate that was so horribly calcified he could barely make it out. But he recognized it. "336" it read. One of the first rooms he'd come to in this place. One of his earliest memories. He entered the room and saw in the middle of the room not a hole, as he remembered, but a puddle of brown water. Nothing was consistent about this place. In fact, he now understood that this was not even the same place, in the usual sense. Space was a funny thing. It wrapped over and around itself, interweaving and overlapping, yet never doubling back on itself. This place was truly like a rabbit hole. And going up, down, right, left, forward, backward, and everything in between was merely digging deeper.

You will soon be mine.

Indy turned back to the hallway and looked both ways, although he knew the voice was certainly in his head. "Stop it," he hissed.

The voice in his head chuckled. _There is no stopping it._ Indy smacked the sides of his head with his hands. The swarming feeling returned, as if the ants had been stirred in their nest. His head felt so eerily light and empty, like the hollow tubular lattice of volcanic rock, strewn with cobwebs. At its moist, juicy center lay a crimson red jewel, the last of his hope. _Yes_ , the voice whispered, and this time the actual sound echoed in the halls, accompanied by the clicking of claws on the ground. Indy spun every which way, backing against a wall, but there was nothing.

_I see you. I smell you. I feel you. I can almost taste you._ Indy's brain felt squeezed by some force, like a hand trying to crush a walnut.

"Stop it," he insisted.

_There is no stopping it. Just a few more moments, and you will be gone forever._ This time, a vision flashed in Indy's mind, that of a black creature bounding across a hall, breathing heavily, mouth hung open in anticipation. Indy swallowed. It wasn't real yet, but it was getting more and more real. He was about to die. He felt the distinct feeling of looming death every living creature must recognize. The dawn before the storm. A tear fell down his face. He walked a few more paces and turned another corner. At the very end of the hall was a dead end. He stared and stared and stared at the stone wall facing him. There was more to it than an empty stone wall. _Yes._

Indy closed his eyes for a moment and to the best of his ability, surrendered all hopes of escape. When he opened his eyes, there sat a wolf, blacker than night, sitting calmly at the end of the hall, panting, smiling, perfectly relaxed and calm. The voice was here. The beast was here. The Beast of Bitterness. Indy's breath quickened, and he started to shake. He was scared like a little boy for the last time. The beast licked its chops and stood up, taking a few steps forward. Indy's lungs convulsed and his limbs froze. The beast charged.

Indy turned and ran, screaming soundlessly, exerting every last droplet of energy to outrun the beast that no creature in this world or any other could outrun. His legs burned, his heart ached, his mind raced, and the beast ran three times faster, right behind him in no time at all. Indy looked over his shoulder, and startled by the beast's sudden approach, stopped cold and instinctively put his hands up. The beast pounced, pinning the human child to the ground and sinking its heavy jowls into his neck. The child protested weakly as his neck collapsed inside and his blood streamed to the floor, and then everything went black and cold. The jewel, the _family_ , the hope, the memory, the center of life, whatever it was they wanted, bubbled to the surface, and the beast gobbled it up. The beast ripped his throat from his body, and a shroud of nothingness enveloped him. It was all over.

* * *

The girl looked at her watch. It was getting on five o'clock, and she needed to eat dinner so she could get to the party. Everyone who knew anyone would be at the Halloween party tonight, and she could not wait to join them. She shuffled and organized the last of her papers, clearing her desk for the long weekend. It had been awhile and the boy had not returned. In the back of her mind, she felt a mild sense of worry, but outwardly felt he deserved a good scare, and more than that he deserved to get lost in that creepy building for a few minutes. Sometimes she wondered if all the stupid tales about it were true, that ghosts of fire victims haunted the halls, children disappeared in holes and were chased by monsters. She sometimes wondered if you could lose yourself in your own paranoia and your mind could trick you into believing it when you were there. She shuddered and let the thought go.

The mother came out of the office, followed by Brick. The girl stood up promptly. "Ma'am, I'm sorry, but your son - your older son, that is - they had a fight. The little one ran off, and he went to fetch him."

"Oh dear, not again. Those two will be the end of me. Which way did they go?"

The girl pointed. "That way, toward Kell Hall."

Their mother strode off, and Brick hung around the lobby to talk with the girl.

"Henry?" she called, walking down the stairs to Kell. "Indy? Are you boys down here?"

She stopped at the threshold and looked up the ramp, listening as mothers do, not only to the sounds, but to her instincts as well.

"Mommy!" Henry cried. He ran out from inside one of the rooms whose doors were cracked.

"Henry! What were you doing in there?"

"Hiding. Indy tupee!"

"Where is your brother?"

Henry put his hands up in a gesture of innocent ignorance. His mother sighed and picked Henry up, setting him on her shoulder. He wrapped his hands around her neck and laid his chin on her shoulder. She reentered the lobby to find Brick talking to the girl.

"He must have gone out to the car," she said. "Thanks anyway."

"No problem," the girl responded.

"Let's go, Brick."

Just as he turned to follow his mother, the girl called out behind him, "Call me!" in a bright, phony voice. His mother smiled, and Brick, embarrassed, turned around to glare playfully at her.

His mother chuckled. "Let's go, son," she repeated, and walked out.

"Thanks, Cindy," Brick scorned lightly.

She smiled teasingly and waved goodbye. He bared his teeth at her and mocked a growl. She clawed at the air with her hand and hissed. Both laughed.

"See you Monday."

Henry held tight on his mother's back, still grappling with a vision or some kind of understanding. He sucked his thumb, eyes fixed on some point on the wall, contemplating the question his mother had asked him.

"Peas of Bittuh," he came up with. He chanted it softly as his mother carried him out of the building. "Peas of Bittuh."

* * *

On that night, a creature was born. Deep in the belly of Kell Hall, it opened its eyes for the first time. It lay on the ground in a pool of blood, drenched in pain and aching soreness. It sat up and noticed that its head fell forward without its control. The creature reached with a hand and noticed that a hollow had been carved out of its neck and at that point folded over with the weight of its head. In its head felt like little worms crawling about, pausing to chew every now and then. Every few seconds, the creature squeezed its eyes, shook its head, gritted its teeth, and slapped itself over the ear. Its skin was deep brownish red and crusty, nails overgrown, eyes big and bright white. It was clad in strips of burlap cloth tied crudely with cord.

The creature stretched its limbs and stood upon both legs. One leg was stiff with some sort of wound, but they seemed to work fine. The creature could remember little of what had happened before waking in a pool of blood. In fact, everything before that seemed to blend together in a horrible dream, full of running and screaming and leaping to and fro. It all seemed very foggy and chaotic compared to this silence and calm. The creature did not know who or what it was, how it came to be, or where it needed to go, and it didn't exactly care. Its head swarmed with tension and prickly needles. It could not speak, for its voice box had been torn out, and its screams were silent. It lumbered off down the hall, limping on its good leg, forevermore a monster of Kell Hall, wandering to the ends of time.

# Bastian Boy

They used to say I was smart, so I kept my mouth shut. They called me athletic, so I stayed indoors. And it was the day they said "ambitious" that I just stopped giving a damn. My name is Bastian, and this is my story.

* * *

"Some of us are hiding in dark corners, waiting to change the world." It was raining outside, at night. I lay in the bed watching the black screen on the tiny television. That was Sasha's voice on the other end of the telephone, whispering. Sasha was my girlfriend, and she's crazy. "Some are spiders, weaving their little webs, waiting, waiting, waiting." I never knew how she expected me to respond to things like this, so I just sat still, listening. A dim light filtered in from a streetlamp, through the curtains, like a ghost haunting the room, searching. "And when the beautiful butterfly wanders too far from the light, he's never seen again." I looked around the room, and every shaded edge and surface reflected her words. The hissing of her voice filled the room, like a pitcher of water filling a glass. It filled my mind, displaced everything else. When she spoke like this, my entire life disappeared, my memories, my ideas, all evaporated, leaving a ball of sound energy floating in the room, saturating every nook, crawling like insects into every crack, spreading its tentacles. I ceased to exist; I became a ghost in an empty room, less substantial than the desk, the dresser, the bed, the table. I became her voice. "No one but the butterfly ever feels the pain and the fear and the helplessness. But the butterfly dies. Those feelings disappear, as if they had never existed. The spider, hungry and vile, eats the butterfly, sucking those feelings out of him, tasting the pain like honey, digesting the fear into desire. Then, all that's left is an empty carcass, a hollow shell, and the spider retreats back into the darkest corner of her dark corner, licking her chops, waiting for the next meal." I often wondered if I was the butterfly, and she was the spider. Maybe that's why I had to leave her. I thought maybe she was sucking the life out of me. I thought I had escaped, that I was safe. I called her to say goodbye, to hear her object, to shine the flashlight at the spider's dark corner and watch her squirm. But she didn't change. She didn't budge. She spoke as she had always spoken, and I held the phone to my ear as if it were my lifeline, as if I could not exist without her. Or didn't want to.

* * *

The light was too bright. It was everywhere, shining at me. I had to squint to see the chessboard. The table was too high for me, so they had me sitting on some phone books. The man was fat. He had a gray beard. He looked like Santa Claus, only a lot meaner. He was staring at me, but I didn't want to look at him. I just fixed my eyes on the game and bit my lip. I saw a good move. Nervously, I reached my arm over, picked up the heavy wooden bishop, and pushed it forward. The intercom told everyone what I had done, and some of them clapped a little. The fat man squinted his eyes at the game, studying what I had just done. His forehead wrinkled, and his pupils grew bigger and blacker. I looked away from him, back down to the game. He'll probably move his horse, I thought. Then I can move my queen there, and my knight there. Only if he doesn't move his knight too. Then I'd have to move my rook to block. Or just move my pawn to get in the way. I saw the moves stretch on and on dozens of times, splitting and branching like tributaries of a great delta. Only far in the distance did they thin out and fade, and I knew that the fat man could only see half as far as I could. I could tell by his other moves that his vantage was limited. It wasn't my fault. The fat man reached his big hairy arm over the board, and moved his horse. I moved my queen, and all the people clapped. I cringed at the sound. I didn't like being here, but my dad made me come. If only all those people would go away, and the fat man would stop looking at me, and the lights would go down, and the intercom turned off, and the air wasn't so cold, and I didn't have to play this stupid game. I had to pee. The fat man was staring at me again. It was my turn. Again. I wanted to cry, but I couldn't. I hoped I didn't win. But I would. I usually did. And it was unbearable. I took in a deep, exhausted breath, and moved.

* * *

"I don't wanna go to school." I pulled on my dad's sleeve.

"Son, you have to go to school. I don't want to hear it." He pulled me by the wrist.

"But I already know everything."

"Look, just sit there and be respectful. School is good for you. You can learn to get along with other kids."

"But dad, the other kids make fun of me. The call me 'brainer' and 'geek.' They don't let me play kickball at recess."

"Hey, lay off the suit. I just ironed it." My dad looked at me. "I told you, if any of the kids give you grief, just tell Ms. Hart."

"But she doesn't like me either. She always asks me questions."

"That's a good thing. She knows you're a smart boy, and she's just giving you a chance to express it. You should answer her questions with confidence. You ought to be proud to."

He just didn't understand. "But dad, the more I talk, the more they hate me. Only the stupid kids that always get in trouble are cool."

"Well, no son of mine is going to act stupid and get in trouble just to be cool. Just stop whining and be a good boy."

"But why can't I even go to the special school? Michael went to the special school."

"Your mother and I can't afford it. Michael went to the private school because his father is a surgeon. I'm not."

I looked down at the ground in frustration. My dad was a countant, or counter, or something like that. He didn't like his job. He didn't seem to like much of anything.

* * *

_No one but the butterfly ever feels the pain and the fear and the helplessness. But the butterfly dies. Those feelings disappear, as if they had never existed._ I thought about these words, churned them in my brain all night. I pictured an empty corner, flat and eventless. I pictured a butterfly silently fluttering about, straying too far into the shadows. A sticky trap lashes out and grabs him. In a panic, he beats his wings, kicks his feet. But he only makes matters worse. He struggles on and on, until his energy runs out. Then he sees her. The shadowy outline of a beast. The spider emerges, slowly walking forward along her sticky tightrope. Her mouth waters and her fangs twitch. The butterfly is paralyzed with fear, eyes widening in disbelief. His stomach wrenches. He knows that as soon as he moves, the beast strikes. She looms, bigger and bigger, until finally a trigger fires inside the butterfly. He flails with all his might, desperately. And the beast, quick as lightning, sinks her fangs into the poor creature. His body is flooded with unbearable pain. Tears are evaporated by fear before they're even shed. His teeth clench tighter with pain, trembling. And then, the pain ceases to be pain, but merely a caricature of pain, an object easily dropped. The butterfly steps out of his own existence, vaporizing into thin air. And that's where the true pain lies. After such an ordeal, all that's left is an empty corner, flat and eventless. Like a ghost town. It was a closed loop. A void. Something had happened. Something terrible and violent. Something important. But it left no remnant. It was almost as if it had never happened. It had never been. That was the feeling of emptiness I knew. That gut-wrenching void I felt winning a chess game, or answering the teacher's question. I couldn't explain it in words. Only feelings and emotions that didn't really exist. And that was the worst part of all.

* * *

I met Sasha in a movie theatre. I was sitting in the very center, in a comfortable chair, alone in the dark crowded room. The poster outside had a picture of a sunken ship. Something about it piqued my interest. Now, halfway through, my eyes were fixed, watching film taken from thousands of feet beneath the world, stolen from depths no man was ever meant to explore. With every picture, the sanctity of that ship was raped. It wasn't peaceful anymore; it wasn't mysterious. The darkness had been broken, but not as a favor to the great vessel who had fallen, or the hundreds who perished on it, their bodies evaporated into the ocean. The only favor was for themselves, the vain satisfaction of a mystery revealed. The few hours of film amounted to nothing when compared to the long decades of solitude and decay. It was like a dream, something interesting and fascinating, but ultimately, had never happened at all. You could practically see the tears of pain roll down the ship's steep sides. Little did I know, my face contorted in an expression of what the ship felt. I was on the verge of tears, but tears would never come. I noticed a woman beside me, staring at me, scrutinizing. I looked at her, but she did not look away. Her eyes were not wondering why my face looked the way it did, but seemed rather to flicker in faint recognition of a familiar feeling, hitherto unseen except in her own mirror. She was quite beautiful, and she seemed to emanate an overwhelming empathy and understanding of me. I wanted to finish watching the film, but not at the expense of talking to this woman in the near future. So I smiled, took her hand, and looked back at the screen. She understood. Her face relaxed, and she interlaced her fingers in mine. I was only faintly aware of the sensation. I concentrated on the ship in front of me. After a while, the divers turned off all the lights, gathered all their equipment, and floated back up to the surface, leaving the lovely ship empty, alone, and broken. Within twenty seconds of the end credits, the audience had all shuffled out, commenting on how interesting and fascinating the movie was. I stayed behind, watching the credits, which so often went unwatched. When I looked to my side, the woman was there, waiting for me.

For a few long moments I forgot that this woman was a stranger. I forgot that I needed to tell her who I was. I forgot that I needed to impress her and make her laugh and make her feel special. I forgot that I was supposed to try to touch her and kiss her and sleep with her. I would have asked her what she thought of the movie, but I felt that I knew her so well, that I already knew what she would say. For a few long moments, we knew everything there was to know about each other. It was not overwhelming or unusual; it was simple, serene, and natural. When the haze lifted, I tilted my head up to the ceiling for a few moments, watching as the feeling floated away, as our knowledge of each other swam back up to the surface of the ocean, leaving us untouched and undisturbed. It was then I realized the vast amount of information that had to be exchanged between us, before we could feel that feeling again. I took in a deep breath, and thought: we have plenty of time; we'll start tomorrow. I leaned in and lightly kissed her forehead.

"Come on. I'll walk you to your car." I never let go of her hand.

* * *

"Why do you like me so much?" she asked three weeks later.

"Because you understand me, and I like being understood."

We lay in my bed, together in the dark, sharing each other's bodies, relishing the good familiar warmth of a bed partner. Her body was situated on mine, our legs intertwined; she rested her chin on my chest, and looked into my eyes. Last night, she had done an exquisite and artful job of seducing me, but the part that struck me the most was when she walked toward me and asked:

"What is so entrancing about a naked body? It's not as if nudity is some sort of violation. It is our true natural form that we've simply covered up. Why does it feel so strikingly different? Is it the anticipation of sex? Maybe, but there's something else, something more latent and subtle." She walked up to me, pressed the palm of her hand against my chest. "My hand is only millimeters away from your body, and yet it feels like light-years compared to nakedness. It's almost as if there's a void, a gap in our brains' attempt to perceive a person. We see a face, body, arms, legs, and then we see the whole." She stared straight at her hand on my chest, never looking at my face. "But something important is missing, that we just can't place..." She moved her hand up to my shoulder. "Until..." I took her face in my hands, and leaned in to kiss her.

At the time I cared more about nakedness than I did about the mystery surrounding nakedness, but now, I contemplated the latter. It did feel natural, lying here naked with her under the sheets. It would have been a violation to be clothed. Why then was it so often reversed? I couldn't even find the right words to conceptualize the mystery in the first place. The question was like a creature living in my brain, running away from me for all time, and yet running in place. It had many arms, all leading to other mysteries that generated a similar emotion. What was the supreme significance of taking off your clothes in front of another human being? The logical answer, when approached from any angle was: nothing. Yet the only answer that made sense was: something. Solving the wordless puzzle felt like plunging down a black hole. Any minute, you think, you'll hit the bottom and discover the inevitable and obvious answer. But after falling for what feels like an eternity, you open your eyes, and you're back on the surface, ready to jump down that black hole. You've sent yourself back in time, where the question and the answer are somehow one in the same. You contemplate jumping again, but you're just not sure what you're doing here in the first place. I thought I heard my name.

"What?" I asked, surprised.

"I said, what are you thinking about?" Sasha's pretty eyes stared curiously into mine. I took one last look at the black hole swirling before me, and sighed with a reserved calm. I turned away from the void, and walked off, back into reality.

"You."

She slept for hours, but I lay awake. Sometime early in the morning, I woke her up and asked, "Do you like caves?"

"What?"

"I was imagining walking through a cave. Empty. Hollow. Ageless. Magnificent. The cave and I were equal in some way. Then I realized I was walking alone. So then I proceeded to imagine walking with some friends. Immediately I saw us talking, admiring together, taking pictures, even chiseling off pieces of the beautiful cave to take home. This made the cave very sad. I felt like the cave and I were pulling away for each other. A void was being created. All of the sudden, I wasn't sharing an experience with the cave; I was sharing it with my friends at the cave's expense. But what if no one is in the cave? The cave just sits idly, exists peacefully, ages alone. Then again, not even that is true. To know this is happening, you have to go into it and see for yourself, thus interrupting it. So in reality, a cave doesn't really exist in the first place, as long as no one enters it. That's the void: the nature of existing without anyone else's knowledge. Any mystery's natural state is to be unsolved. As soon as someone finds a solution, it ceases to be a mystery any longer. That is what creates the void, this question: did the solution exist all along? The last thing I imagined was this: what if I am the cave? Just for a few minutes. I really concentrated, and imagined being a cave for a brief time. And in that moment, I knew the solution; I knew everything there was to know about that cave. And as soon as I snapped out of it, the solution vanished. As if it had never existed. You can't take it with you; you can't steal its soul; but you sure as hell can steal pieces of it. You see, I am the cave. I am the void. And people have been after my soul forever. Sorry, I'm ranting. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

* * *

The day before I was born, God came to me and said, "Put on this mask, and don't ever take it off." I took the mask from His hand and put it on. I haven't taken it off since.

I woke up, startled. I had just had a nightmare, but I couldn't remember what it was. I saw myself covering my face, defending myself against a horde of hands. They were all pulling at the flesh of my face, and I was screaming. Some of the hands were normal, but some were deformed, with hair and claws. There was more to the dream, but I couldn't remember it. After a few moments, even that image vanished from my mind. I was used to the feeling of forgetting a dream. As long as you don't try to remember it, you can feel it in your mind, waiting, buried, untouched and unspoiled. But if you try to remember it, then retracing the dream corrupts it. The more you go over it in your head, the more distorted it becomes. Finally, you just let it go.

"What is it?"

I woke up again, this time to the sound of Sasha's voice. "What?"

"I said, what's wrong? Did you have a dream?"

I blinked. "I don't know." I looked over at her, afraid. She stared at me in the dark for a few long moments, but it was too dark to see each other. I didn't want to see the truth.

"Good night, sweetheart." She laid an affectionate hand on my bare shoulder. I shivered under the sensation. It felt vile somehow. I felt like I was sleeping next to a monster. I hoped I was still dreaming.

* * *

"I'm so proud of you, boy." That's what my dad said on the day I graduated magnum cum laude from Harvard, physics department in spring of 1996. "Your mother would have been proud of you." She had died of cancer two years ago, at the tender age of fifty-three.

We went to a nearby coffee shop after the ceremony. He was beaming.

"So, what are your plans? You gonna take that offer from Bell Labs? Or that teaching position at Princeton?" It all made my head spin.

"I don't know yet," I lied. "I'll have to give it some thought."

"That's my boy. Always making sure to take the time to do the right thing. That's a good practice. God knows I would've jumped at the first opportunity available to me. But you're the smart one; you know to keep things in perspective."

"Thanks, dad." I had planned for years to go to Italy. There was a picture of a beautiful green vineyard that I carried around in my head, sneaking a look at it as often as I could. I thought guiltily about boarding the next plane. I had looked forward to it for so long, but my dad's vulnerable smiling face filled me with doubt.

Two months later, I sat at my desk, laboring away at a complicated problem that had been eluding me for some time. I was an R&D slave at Bell Labs. The reality of student loan debt had finally sunken in, and the numbers did not paint a pretty picture. I had a seventeen-year sentence here before I broke even, and then it was time to think about retirement. At least once every hour I thought about the lush unbroken beauty of Tuscany. But it was only a painting, a glossy magazine cover, a brittle antique under glass. No one I worked with could see it, all they saw was a genius, laboring away like Atlas, impervious to distraction.

Every so often someone would peek in and see me staring at the phone or out the window, blank. Lunch breaks were usually spent out in the courtyard in the shadows, or behind a closed door, ear pressed to the receiver, letting the soothing melody of the dial tone flow through me. I always imagined closing my eyes and waking up in my dream house on a lake, or out in my boat, or lying in the vineyard under the sun, or picking fresh blackberries from the brush. If only the phone line could carry my body like it carried my voice. But I knew enough physics to leave that a fantasy.

* * *

"So what did you study in school? Law?" Sasha asked, the day after we met.

"Physics."

"Physics? What for?"

"It's where my head is. Just born there, I guess."

"I flunked high school physics. Never was much good with math either. I'll finish my degree in political science next year."

"And what will you do with that?"

"I don't know." She shrugged carelessly. "Maybe run for president." She bent down and plucked a dandelion. We were walking through a park on a warm afternoon.

She didn't laugh it off, and I didn't want to call her on it. "That takes a lot of hard work and commitment."

"Have you seen some of the idiots that have done it before? You can be my Secretary of Defense."

"National Science Advisor, maybe."

"You're no fun. So what do you want to be?"

"A farmer."

"What like genetic engineering or something?"

"No, just a farmer. Raise crops, livestock, maybe children if it's in the cards."

"You serious?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"Just seems...boring. Underachieving."

"Peaceful."

"With all you're brains you can be whatever you want to be."

"I've heard that since I was five. And all I've ever wanted was peace."

"But you're so smart. You could have a _voice_ in the world."

"When I was a kid, I used to read like hell. I used to show off, approach random people and force them to ask me questions so I could regurgitate the volumes of information I inhaled. No one liked me. They said I was smart. It had never occurred to me that I was smart. I didn't want to be smart. Being smart meant being different, meant being alien. So I kept my mouth shut. But I never could hide it."

"Why would you want to?"

"You don't know what it's like to be different. To be in the spotlight all the time. It's humiliating. Jealousy is a cruel creature."

"I've always liked being different. Makes me stand out."

"That's why I like you."

* * *

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle states that the more accurately one measures a particle's velocity, the less accurately its position can be determined, and vice versa. Therefore one interpretation is that a particle has no "velocity" or "position" at all, but is rather a ghost, a wave, an incorporeal collection of probabilities, a ball of likeliness to be here or there. It can't be pinned down, but it's there, lurking. It's a sunken ship, waiting, rusting and rotting. Undiscovered and indiscoverable.

The part that unnerves me is that this is the basis of reality. There is a scale of space so tiny that distance cannot be interpreted. It doesn't exist. Zoom in on the fabric of the world close enough and it blurs into nothingness. That is the foundation of reality. Like stone columns standing strong, supporting a coliseum, but rooted in mud, beneath which one cannot venture. What is under and behind and between the fabric of the world? What is God hiding in that tiny scale of space? Is that ball of likeliness a cage? What secret, what treasure does it guard?

* * *

I held the phone to my ear.

"Have you ever wondered what an ant thinks about when you kill his queen? It must be very lonely, confusing. Think about it. All your life you've had the thoughts and ideas and motives of something else, an entity higher than yourself. You've had a purpose. A duty. Then all of the sudden, nothing. No reason to walk this way or that, no way of distinguishing the two. Every action, every direction, and every object blends together into the same thing because none is more important than any other. Vision becomes blindness. Sound becomes static. You walk around in circles because you have no mind. You have energy with no drive, a motor with no tracks. You love the queen, worship her dead self, but you hate her because you ask her what you can do for her and she doesn't answer. She never answers. She just watches you blunder about aimlessly and frowns. You cry. And then you die."

"They used to call me ambitious. I didn't really know what they meant at first. Then slowly I realized that it was kind of like running. You never slow down. You never stop to take a breath. You never take the time to appreciate the world. I was so scared that I actually screamed. The realization of what they meant came to me all at once, and I decided I didn't want to be that. And I just stopped giving a damn."

"Why do you like me so much?"

"You're the only reason I'm still here."

The door opened to my office. I hung up the phone.

* * *

When I was twenty-eight, my father died. He had a stroke. My hand hurt. Blood ran down from between my fingers. I stood naked in my bathroom in the dim light. I stared into the broken mirror. Each fragment offered a picture of me, slightly different, each telling part of the story from a different angle. My blood trickled down from the center of the spider web of cracks, like a spider creeping down from its nest. Each shard of glass held my eyes steadfastly, intensely, like puzzle pieces that didn't quite fit together. I stared into a dozen sets of eyes, trying to decide which one was most important, how they related to each other, how they fit together into one face. But I couldn't. They all told the same story. They all showed the same face. Some parts of the story were repeated, others left out, but it was mostly all there. I looked into the mirror that I destroyed out of helplessness and saw for the most part myself.

I sat still on the bed, listening. A dim light filtered in from a streetlamp, through the curtains, like a ghost haunting the room, searching. _And when the beautiful butterfly wanders too far from the light, he's never seen again._ I looked around the room, and every shaded edge and surface reflected her words. The hissing of her voice filled my mind, like a pitcher of water filling a glass. My entire life disappeared, my memories, my ideas, all evaporated, leaving a ball of sound energy floating in space, saturating every nook, crawling like insects into every crack, spreading its tentacles. I ceased to exist; I became a ghost in my own head. I became her voice. _No one but the butterfly ever feels the pain and the fear and the helplessness. But the butterfly dies. Those feelings disappear, as if they had never existed._ I often wondered if I was the butterfly, and she was the spider. I guess it doesn't matter now. I thought I had escaped, that I was safe. I called her to say goodbye, to hear her object, to shine the flashlight at the spider's dark corner and watch her squirm. But she didn't change. She didn't budge. She didn't even exist in the first place, and I held the phone to my ear as if it were my lifeline, as if I could not exist without her. Or didn't want to.

Everything she was, her voice, her ideas, her body, was contained in that dial tone. I sat on the bed, legs sprawled in front of me, receiver pressed against my ear, letting the sound flow through me, and all I could think about was my dad, waiting for me at the lake.

# The Fall of Imaginings

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" his parents asked him.

Sid crossed his eyes in consternation. It was not as if he did not have a perfect and well-planned and passionate answer ready. Rather, he was caught off guard by the timing of the question. It was customary to ask this of a child the day before they were to be sent off to school. But Sid was not to begin for another two days.

"I want to be a famous scientist," he said proudly. His mother sat quietly, slowly spooning cabbage and potatoes into her mouth, nodding in unconditional approval. His father rubbed the stubble of his chin critically, grumbling, eyes squinted down as if the light perturbed his thoughts. His brother just sat there quizzically, trying to make sense of Sid's answer.

His father was a carpenter, his mother a seamstress, his brother a cobbler. Only elders concerned themselves with matters that could be called science, and only writers, playwrights, and actors were anything close to famous. But Sid was very good with math and science and was practically obsessed with the taxonomy of their backyard.

"Perhaps," his father began, "a clockmaker. Or a stargazer." Stargazers spent lonesome nights atop mountains meticulously tracking the positions of stars and planets. Fascinating work, except that the level of detail required was so incredible, that it was exhausting just to record all the necessary information needed by the astrologers. Only elders could take on the responsibility of predicting eclipses, comets, and alignments.

"No, Dad. I can't do that. I have to be in a place where I can share my discoveries."

His mother laughed. "You and your discoveries." Her tone was nostalgic, as if he were already gone. "I will miss them."

"I spoke to the botanist," he continued. "Did you know that there's a sixth variety of fig on our block that no one seems to have _ever_ known about?"

There was no response. "Son," his father began, "I can understand your excitement, but the sad truth is that it does not matter how many varieties there are. A fig is a fig. As long as the botanist knows which plants on our block are poisonous and which are healing, then he is doing well for himself."

"But there are other things. Like my Theory of Flotation or my Proof of the Infinity of Primes. And what about my design for a _Flying Machine_?"

"You are very bright, son. But you will learn in school that there are certain things that the world _needs_ in order to function. Society produces and schools children to provide these needs until they are ready to pass on. Once they have passed their skills on to a successor, they may retire and indulge less useful functions, like long hours of study or theory."

"But I want to change the world!"

His father rubbed his stubble some more and retorted with a light in his eyes, "What's wrong with it?"

He didn't know. He shook his head.

"Put your faith in the Directive. You will learn in school, son, that there can never be perpetual motion, nor eternal life. But the Directive ensures the perfect interlocking, self-checking, even self-modifying society needed so our species may live forever."

He was getting a little frustrated. Why did they have to ask if they weren't going to listen to his answer? Then his mother started in with it:

_"One Man, one Woman, one House. Two children for a House. School from age eight until release. Upon release, one Man, one Living. Upon release, one Woman, one Family. There is nothing new under the Sun. East to West, Birth to Death. Upon Death, one Man, one Grave. Upon Death, one Woman, one Grave..."_

"Stop it!" he screeched, slamming his hands against the table. He took them all by surprise, including himself. The anticipation of school approaching had made him act strangely lately and think strange thoughts. He supposed it was normal, but he still could not control his emotions.

The Directive was a tall stone temple in the center of town, scrawled with antlike text crawling down in a spiral motion, a seemingly endless thread of rules, guidelines, laws, punishments, and truths. It had been made long before the city and told nothing of its own creation, nor anything of science, math, or the world around them. The stone was harder and of different color than any that could be found in the land surrounding. No chisel could alter it, nor rain or fire or stone befoul it. It was perfect. It was unalterable. It was unquestionable. The Directive literally directed the goings-on, the traditions, and the laws of the city. It even told when to plant, harvest, and store crops. It was not written in verse or chaptered out or annotated with stories. It was only a long stream of rule and reason. Though his mother recited its first few sentences, it was too long to recite in prayer or before dinner. It ended, without warning or explanation or consequence, with the statement: _Never leave the city._

After dinner, Sid helped his mother with the dishes. "I'm sorry I yelled at you, Mom." She didn't respond, just handed him plate after plate to dry. "I'll miss you."

"I'll miss you very much," she said back. "You'll be so different. Your whole life up to now will seem like a dream, a faint memory. I'll be so proud. But I will miss the old you."

"I don't understand why there has to be a new me. What's wrong with me?"

"There is nothing wrong with you. All children are born with an instinct to question and change and break. Once schooled, this instinct will be controlled, in fact deleted, and you will be ready to join and contribute to the city. You will be given a _place_ , and the role you play will influence every person in the city, as you will be influenced. The world will breathe because of you, and it will permit you to breathe in turn. It is as close a thing to perpetual motion that the world will ever know, and thus it is the most beautiful thing in the world. It will -"

"Mom!" She stopped and looked at him. "I love you! I don't want to leave. I don't want to come back. I'm afraid of what they'll do to me. I'm afraid of who I'll become."

"Dear son, there is nothing to be afraid of." She knelt down. "We all feel this way. We all go through this doorway. I did, and you still love me. So how can it be that bad? Don't change the world. Let your world change you."

He gave her a big hug and cried. Later that night, he lay in bed far from sleep. He crawled over to his brother across the room and shook him awake.

"What's it like?"

"What?"

"What's it like? The school?"

"I've told you a million times."

"Tell me again. I still can't feel it."

"Alright. Then you let me sleep." He shifted up in the bed. "On the other side of the mountain is a great black lake. To swim it, they say, drains the spirits so horribly that no man could make it even half the way from one shore to another. In the center is a great ship, like nothing you've ever seen before. The thick wooden planks of its walls are so solid that it would take weeks to dig through it, should one try to escape. The only way to and from it is a small raft manned by the oldest, creepiest, crippled elder the city has to offer.

"When you go, the elders greet you by stripping you of your clothes, bathing you immediately, and redressing you in green pajamas, which you will wear until you leave. Then they lead you to the children's bedchambers. It's a huge honeycomb of rooms stretching from the floor of the inner hull of the ship all the way up its sides. The whole thing is webbed with ramps and stairs and ladders, and there are no windows or doors. It's quite incredible. The only thing you get to call your own is a bed, a pillow and a copy of the Directive in book form.

"The teachers are kind but cruel. They are sworn to answer any question asked of them, and to always tell only truth. But they rule with an iron fist. They have their own Directive you must follow. _One child, one room. Breakfast at first light. Class from dawn to noon. Directed play until sundown. Supper and bed. Never leave the bed at night, else a lashing and binding the following day._ It goes on and on, though not nearly as long as ours. It tells of all the rules, the punishments, what you're supposed to learn, and what will happen to you if you don't. It ends with: _Never leave the ship._ "

He paused for a moment. "Go on," Sid urged. His brother lay in bed stiffly, breathing steadily as a clock. It was perfectly dark, but Sid could tell that they were looking into each other's eyes. His brother lashed out and grabbed him by both shoulders, mouth hissing into his face. _"Never disobey an elder. Their rule is absolute law."_ He looked side to side as if there were someone watching, then brought his lips to Sid's ear and whispered, _"There is a pool in the belly of the ship. A pool full of horrible things. Some say it is alive and feeds on children's hearts and minds and souls. No child can ever muster the strength to jump in. Every six months, they lead you into the room and make you walk the plank. If you leap into the pool, you're a man and are free to leave the school. It's all over. Otherwise you continue your schooling. If you haven't taken the leap by your thirteenth birthday, you never leave. You can never escape. But they don't school you anymore. They banish you to another world. There it is said you wander until the ends of time, unable to grow old, unable to return. Meantime, they pretend you never existed. They tell your family to have another child to replace you, and they never speak of you or think of you ever again."_

"No!" Sid cried, drawn into the nightmare. He shook free of his brother's grip, ran to his bed, and leapt under the covers, weeping.

His brother came over, sat down, and rubbed his back soothingly. He had never told Sid this last part before. He wasn't sure what made him share it now. Everything about them was just a little bit different, knowing he was about to leave. "It's okay," he tried to reassure. "I came back when I was eleven. Everyone comes back."

"Everyone?"

"Well, most everyone. Only the evil and disobedient and wild at heart are cast out. But you're not like that. You'll be fine."

"I don't want to go to school. It sounds horrible! Class! Directed play! More Directive!" He emerged from under the covers, tears stinging his cheeks. "I'll be the bravest one they've ever seen. I'll leap at the first opportunity. I'll show them that I'm ready, and I'll come home to Mother before anyone else they've ever schooled!"

"No one leaps the first time. You're very brave. But it has nothing to do with bravery. It has nothing to do with choice. It is a matter between your soul and their Directive. The only thing you can do is obey unconditionally. Think as they teach you to think. Act as they teach you to act. And do it wholeheartedly. Not just pretending."

Sid did not answer. He just lay there letting his brother hold him.

"I'm sorry I scared you. Let's just get some sleep."

But Sid did not get a wink all night.

* * *

Marx closed his eyes and leaned his head against the tree. "Thirty!" he yelled and everyone scampered off. "Twenty-nine!"

Vance and Bas headed off toward the orchards. Val ran in the direction of the old water wells. Sid ran into town.

"Twenty-eight! Twenty-seven! Twenty-six!" His voice trailed off as Sid neared the edge of town. It was an extremely foggy afternoon. Usually the thick blanket of white retreated and evaporated by midmorning. But it was a cloudy day, drizzling and threatening to rain. His mother gave him a short lesson this morning and let him go out and play earlier than usual. Mothers were in charge of "primary" education, things like colors and words and grammar, along with basic science and arithmetic. Secondary education was the elders' turf, which occupied Sid's mind all this past week, for this was the very last day to play with his friends before school began.

It was the last day of September, and every child with a September birthday was to be escorted by their families to the shore of the black lake at first light of the next morning. Bas was the only one of his friends that he would be joining tomorrow, along with a girl he only faintly knew named Jen. The first few classes, he knew, would be just the three of them. Only after the first month or so would they begin to mingle with the other students.

Faintly behind him, Sid heard Marx's shout of "Here I come!" and its consequent silence. He walked down the cobblestone street slowly and quietly, knowing that the seeker would be at an enormous disadvantage today. Down the street, the stone-keeper reached his long pole to light a fire on the lamp above. In the fog, he was only a shadow under a floating light, but Sid knew what it was. They must have given up on the fog clearing. The stone-keeper was responsible for the integrity of every street, building, and well in the city, and could be seen ritualistically at every dawn and every dusk, keeping the lamps.

Sid heard the sudden rout of footsteps down at the end of the street and turned. But sound carried farther than light today, and if Marx was trying to check the street, he would not find much. Quietly, Sid crouched down and lay flat in the middle of the street. The safest place to hide was the place least likely to be checked. He faintly heard the steps creep along the side of the street and lay perfectly still. He was nothing but a shadow or a puddle of water in this fog. Off toward the trees, there was laughing. Marx jetted away, missing Sid by a few paces. When the footsteps trailed off and stopped, Sid stood.

He was the best at this game. No one ever found him. The seeker would sometimes sacrifice everyone else in pursuit of Sid. If they guarded the tree, he would wait indefinitely in the surroundings. If they left the tree, he would be waiting for them when they returned. And as a seeker, he knew never to leave the tree unless he knew exactly where to find someone. Sid walked calmly in the opposite direction as Marx, toward the square. You never ran in this game, not if you were smart. Not if you knew what you were doing. He walked all the way to the square, and craned his neck at it: the Directive.

Twice the height of any building, yet no wider than a bench at its base. He approached it with usual wonderment. Only this time it was more pronounced. As if entering the school was like shaking the Directive's hand and introducing oneself to it. He could almost hear it calling, claiming him. He put a hand on its cold surface. When he did, something flashed in his mind, and he pulled away. He laid a hand on it again, and his entire arm went cold. He felt distinctly as if he was spinning and the statue was spinning along with him. It seemed to open up and envelop him, and inside was a pit of darkness. He saw the black lake. He saw the school floating in its center. He saw it in a great tumultuous thunderstorm and could hear the sounds of shouting and whipping. Lightning cracked and he saw, horrifyingly, a face in the water, smiling, trying to swallow up the ship. As he shivered before the sight, he felt a creature stalking him.

"Gotcha!" Marx screamed, pulling Sid's arm off the statue and sending him sprawling against it. The seeker had a stupid grin on his face.

"I wasn't playing," Sid growled coldly, massaging his arm.

"Don't be sore. You lost to me. Admit it."

"No! I wasn't hiding. I lost you at the street and got bored, so I wandered into town."

The rest of the boys ran over and crowded around. "Liar! You're just sore that you lost for once."

"What's going on?" Val asked. "You caught _Sid_?"

"Yes!"

"No!"

"What are you doing?" Bas asked.

"I got bored playing this stupid kid's game. I was waiting here for you guys to be finished, so we could go somewhere else."

"Where?"

"Well that's what I was just asking the Directive before Marx _interrupted me_."

"And?"

"We're going to the black lake."

There were protests and squabbles, but in the end, they headed toward the mountain. There was a single narrow road that led out that way, about an hour's walk. So they ran it in a half an hour. Only when the road began sloping upward, and the peak of the mountain seemed more to the side than right in front of them, did they begin to slow and grumble. Bas and Sid seemed to lead the pack, dragging and taunting the rest along. Perhaps it was because they were oldest, or simply because they were drawn to the place they would be going to in less than a full day now.

When they crested the path, they stopped to rest. This was really just the halfway point of the path, the point where one could actually see the lake spread out below from the high slope of the mountain. There was a clearing at this point, through which one could also stretch one's gaze up to the peak of the mountain, not altogether distant, and imagine climbing up in one straight shot. They were above the fog at this point, but it was still not sunny, only a bit clearer. Looking down, they could see little black fingers and toes of the lake inching out from under the thick white blanket of fog. In the very center, like a toy, sat the school. There were faint hints of motion zipping about the deck, but the hull was completely enveloped in fog.

A big green cloud hung over the lake, showering it with cold sheets. Sid and Bas sat on a couple of rocks, staring down below, feeling the cool breeze coming off the lake, entranced. The younger ones ran about, playing and hiding. Eventually they grew bored and began prodding at the older ones. Everyone decided to turn back except Sid and Bas, who resolved to move on. They knew it would take another hour to reach the shore, but they didn't care. Something deep inside was calling.

They did not speak much on the way down, for some reason completely wrapped up in thought as the peak grew above them and the fog swirled all around, swallowing them down the breezy path. The lush greenery on either side was intimidating in an odd way. It was obvious that no foot had violated this path on a regular basis, and the leaves overhanging it seemed to turn discernibly, as if curious of these two creatures' presence. The fog and drizzle condensed on the foliage, causing an ever-present drip-drop sound that blended into an orchestra of wind and thunder and rustling.

It took a little more than an hour to reach the edge of the trees, where the path opened up to a small rocky beach, and though they had exchanged hardly a word, they felt distinctly refreshed, as two friends would, after having finished an hour of dialog. The beach had the effect of being trapped inside a bubble whose walls were a blurry painting of the world beyond them. To their rear, the path was an ominous black hole slithering back up the mountain. The beach to either side gave out after about twenty paces, the white veil gobbling up the distance. And the lake - it too had an ominous feel. Like a sea monster rhythmically inching its black tentacles up and down the beach, it spread out before them, weighed down by a white blanket of swirling cloud.

Sid knew the lake was black, but the depth of its blackness surprised him. He imagined it having the consistency of water stained black by some mineral or soullessness. It was instead like mercury, twisting and turning by some conscious force, an opaque inky black. As each ripple of a wave washed up, the lake seemed to grab a hold of the rocks, and as the wave receded, its fingers dug in between them, not wanting to let go. They behaved almost as the heads of a hundred little snakes poking about. He walked to the very edge of the surf and knelt down, extending a hand over the black water.

"Sid, no."

"It's okay," he assured, turning back to his friend.

He let the tips of his fingers hover above the surface. Little ripples gathered around, leaping and licking at his palm. Then gently, he slid his hand into the water, up to the wrist. It was vastly colder than he had imagined, sending a shiver through his entire body. His eyes closed impulsively in a peaceful, draining feeling of surrender. The surface about his wrist began to swirl slightly and crawl up his arm. He felt as if all the lost souls of those who'd perished in this lake sensed him, a newcomer, and came flocking to plea to him. He felt his heart slow down as the cold flowed into his body through his arm, pouring like a river and filling his heart like a waterfall. The lake clung to his wrist, tentacles creeping up and around his arm, pulling him in. He felt almost totally enveloped in it.

They said that the lake drew its blackness from the souls of those who had drowned in it over the many long years. In turn, those souls conglomerated into one single entity, occupying the lake as their individual souls had once occupied their bodies. And now, as ever, they had to feed. It was known that there were no fish in the black lake. Not even seaweed. No animal great or small nested here, nor drank from it, if they knew better. No bird could be seen flying over it, lest it be drawn in, flap its wings desperately, and screech as the lake sucked it down and under. Nor could any man make it from one shore to the other, without his heart giving out from melancholy. Thus, none could invade or escape the ship in its center without certain death.

Sid felt pressure on his other arm, squeezing and pulling and clawing. Annoyed, he turned his head and opened his eyes. It was Bas, pulling him out. He was almost completely sucked in, up to the shoulder and tilting off balance. He kicked his legs and pounced away from the black monster, catapulting Bas and sprawling out on top of him. The churning foam he pulled out of settled down and spread out, like a wolf having lost its prey. They both stood and dusted themselves off.

Down the beach Sid saw what looked like a person perched on a rock. He could barely make them out, but signaled to Bas and approached the figure. As they neared, it became clear. It was a girl, no older than them, sitting and gazing over the blackness. They came right up behind her as she sat there dreaming.

"You're Jen," Sid greeted.

She turned her head and smiled slightly, having known they were both there. Her eyes were piercing blue, her hair blonde, and her skin light and smooth. She looked them both over briefly, sizing them up against their reputations, and turned back toward the vista.

"Are you ready?" she asked. The two friends looked at each other. They did not really know.

They stayed out here all afternoon, skipping rocks, digging holes, peeling the bark off trees, anything to pass the time in this strangely intoxicating place. It felt like they were waiting for something, like an angel or a messenger was supposed to meet them here and reveal some divine secret. But no one came, only the breeze and the faint odorless fragrance of the lake.

It was a long walk back, and they all arrived home late, though it hardly mattered the day before school. Their stomachs grumbled as they went home to mildly worried families and cold dinners. There was something about Jen, something Sid could not place. It was a feeling as if they'd been childhood friends a very long time ago, before either could remember. Perhaps it was a manifestation of realizing that the next six months of his life would be inextricably tied to her and Bas. The two boys had grown closer as the date of their departure fell upon them. Now, on the eve of their journey, they felt like brothers.

* * *

Someone shook him awake. In his dreamy state, interrupted an hour before official sunrise, his groggy mind painted a silly picture of his surroundings. He pictured his mother pulling him up out of bed by the ankles and shaking him violently as he clung to the covers, trying not to get dizzy. When he awoke fully, he realized he was horizontal in bed, not vertical, and his disorientation took several moments to dissipate. When it did, he saw his mother, father, and brother all hovering over him as he peeled his eyelids open.

"It's time."

He looked over at the window. A faint pinkish hue radiated in, announcing first light of the day. He yawned, stretched, and sat up, moving the covers. He nodded soberly. Standing up seemed harder than usual, as if he had weights on his shoulders. There would be no breakfast this morning. In two hours time, he'd be eating on a ship in the middle of a lake, surrounded by strangers. He hoped he'd recognize some friends who were already at school. It felt odd, leaving his room like this. It was clean, but it was _taken_. You didn't take a single thing to school, not a stick or even the clothes on your back, which would be confiscated when you stepped aboard. So he walked out empty-handed, his family in tow to escort him.

They walked a lot slower than usual, so it took the full hour to reach even the halfway point where you could see the lake. The school was nothing but a few faint masts and lines sticking out of the fog in the distance. The morning was cold, and the mist swirled around them magically. His father's hand never left his shoulder the whole trip. It was so quiet and peaceful this morning. The sun could barely penetrate the leaves and fog, so the entire sky took on a pink glow, yielding to a brilliant golden hue as it rose. The only sound was their breathing and the squishing of their feet in the wet ground. Little animals in the trees and foliage off the trail scurried fleetingly and watched them, wishing them luck, seeing him off.

They descended the leeward side of the peak and at long last came to the opening of the cove at the beach. It was beautiful. It looked as if they were floating in a cloud, suspended in golden light, the beach stretching out before them like a tongue, leading them deeper. They walked along the shore, the whole while, little black waves reaching out for them and receding, trying to capture them. Up ahead, they saw figures standing like tree stumps, the other two families. He nodded to Bas and Jen, and they stood and waited. Within minutes, the ferry arrived.

They could hear the faint swishing of the oar, and make out the shadow of a man standing in a boat. When it neared, it was moving faster than expected, and the man was more foreboding. He had to be the oldest living being in the city. He wore the standard black cloak of every elder, hood drawn, perhaps simply to mask his hideousness. His skeletal hands clung to the oar as if they had fused into one entity. The raft scraped against the rocks and halted.

"Only three?" he croaked. They all looked about and nodded. "Very well. We will take three." He spread an arm, beckoning. Sid tried to do the math in his head. Three seemed a reasonable number of children born in the city within a month of each other. It wouldn't matter if the number was thirty, the skeleton would have issued the same surprised, disappointed question. They were hungry for students.

Bas escorted Jen by the arm, and climbed in himself, followed by Sid. He stopped halfway, ran back, and hugged his mom. For some reason, he was not able to let go as quickly as he'd planned.

"Come on, son," the creature summoned.

He released and walked backward to the raft, saying goodbye with his eyes as they stared assuredly. They had done this too. _Five years,_ he thought. _I'll be the first one out, I promise._ He stepped aboard and sat down as close to the stern as he could. As they pulled away, he whispered a soft goodbye and, just as the fog wrapped around him, held his hand up in a wave. Only his brother returned it, and within a minute, they were gone. He turned back to the others and looked into their eyes.

The only sound was the steady sucking swish of the oar in the water. Sid lounged just in front of the rower, elbow over the edge, watching the surface of the water. When the oar was drawn on Sid's side, he stared at it fixedly. Each time it entered, the water lashed a tentacle around it, and each time it left, the tentacle stretched tight before giving up its grip. Sid wondered how often and how long the wretched lake had tried swamping this old raft, undoubtedly older even than the man inside it.

The trip passed slowly, or perhaps the children were just particularly alert. Bas cradled Jen against his shoulder, and she did nothing but breathe heavily, staring at Sid. Their eye contact was a rich channel of communication. He could see into her mind and felt his own mind naked before her. His hand hovered over the surface of the water. Even without looking, he could sense the tongues of black liquid lapping up at him, never quite catching him. He felt as in touch with this lake as he did with Jen. Somehow it was like finding a lost twin. After the journey, their exchange would be fizzled and forgotten like a dream upon waking. During, though, their exchange was fierce and deep, forgetting they were two people in two bodies. Just so, he felt a part of this lake. Sid wondered about the significance of it. He did not know how or why, but his very immediate future seemed inexorably linked to both Jen and to this lake. The black bowl of sludge was to be a powerful ally.

_"Aaaaayyyyyiiiiihhhhhaaaaaaa!!!!!"_ screeched the boatman. He slammed the oar across the raft, bent down, and grabbed hold of Sid's hand. Without paying attention, the boy had let it slip below the surface. It felt oddly numb, submerged to the wrist and digging deeper. The elder wrapped cold wiry fingers around his arm and hefted it away, back into the boat.

Bas and Jen jumped at the outburst.

"Never let the waters of this lake touch your flesh. It's evil. It will suck you in. It will rob you of your soul. Do not be deceived by its allure. It will lie to you. We will teach you to sieve truth out of the world."

"Yes, Father." _What does that tell of the old men who built a school upon it,_ he thought bitterly.

Sid held back tears of an unknown source. He was not exactly frightened, nor embarrassed, nor angry. Rather, it was some odd concoction, a melting of the entire spectrum of human emotion. He missed home. He feared the unknown. He felt nostalgia and regret and excitement all at once. He sulked in the raft, concealing anticipation with anger, when at once, they were upon it. He knew it was there before ever looking up. A shadow rose ever higher, ever clearer through the fog. The hull of the ship presented itself quite dramatically and ominously. The raft thudded to a halt along its base, and the old wretch tied it off. A rope-ladder fell before them.

"Up you go, children."

Sid climbed up first. He was taken by the sheer hugeness of it all. He had seen it from the mountaintop several times, but had forgotten the deception involved in the scale of things. This was no mere watercraft, not a toy or a prop or an elaborate house. This was a small city built in a thick wooden bowl set upon water. At the top, the party was met by a semicircle of robed elders, hoods laid down to reveal the faces. Man and woman blended together in this state of shriveled, dried out, frizzled age. They were _elders_ , not people. Guardians of immortality. Their wisdom taught not how to _live_ life necessarily, but to do it in a manner preserving the status quo and continuing the existence of the species. They were machines, ancient clocks dressed in human bodies.

_"For each new wild one, a bath, for childhood is a dirty thing,"_ the receiving elders intoned uniformly. Sid stood with Bas and Jen, frightful but still. "How many?"

"Three," the boatman answered, and retrieved the ladder.

"Three baths," the center elder ordered. At which point, three of the others approached the children with gnarled hands outstretched. Sid's heartbeat quickened.

_"Do not fear, little wild one,"_ one whispered, grabbing hold of Sid's collar. In one swift motion, his shirt was off, chest exposed to the chill morning air. Before he could react, his pants were at his ankles. The elder stepped on them and lifted the boy by his armpits, leaving his pants and shoes on the ground. Beneath the surface of fear and senseless hate, Sid dumbly admired the swiftness with which he was unclothed.

A shriek escaped Jen's lips as the same was done to her and Bas, clothes scraped into a heap. In less than a second, all three were naked as the day of their birth, instinctively clutching their privates as they were marched along the ship's deck and into a small cabin. In it was a large basin of clear bathing water set into the floor, several trays of heated stones, and a half dozen elders stripped of their own clothes, scrubbing cloths ready. Sid set a toe into the basin, and thankfully it was warm. But there was no walkway or stair to descend into it. He tried to make solid contact with the basin floor, but slipped into it with hopeless abandon. His arms flailed as gravity sucked him underwater.

No sooner did his chin touch the surface were old hands all about him, clutching at him, lifting and moving limbs, turning him every which way. Old rags scraping his skin. Bas and Jen were pushed in behind him, kicking and flailing against him as the old wretches did their work. Every time Sid could get his mouth to the surface to take a breath, a hand pushed him under and violently ripped a cloth through his hair. Or a hand would grab at an ankle and pull with all its might. Or Bas would find his shoulder and desperately push him under, instinctively trying to push himself up. This was not a bath. This was not for the sake of cleansing the dirt and grime from their flesh. This was to rob them of their composure. This was a simple child's nightmare, acted out to instill fear and humility. One had to break a wild animal before it could be tamed.

All at once, the hands were gone. The clawing, clutching, grabbing hands retracted and left the three children alone to flail and grapple with water and gravity to right themselves. The base of the pool was deeper than their feet could reach, so they treaded water, desperately climbing over each other to keep their necks above the surface. Jen's shrieks did not cease, as panic slowly drained from Sid, to be replaced with logic. This was just another test. They had to crawl out on their own, with no help. Through the ripples, Sid could see the bathers sitting on the ledge where they had been before, dripping, watching.

Sid held his breath and pushed himself underwater. He swam to the bottom where his feet touched. He crouched down below Jen's thrashing feet. He took hold of them. She resisted at first but soon understood. He managed a firm grip of her knees and kept pushing her up toward the surface. Balanced, she pulled Bas up as well, and Sid walked as best he could underwater to the edge of the basin. He pushed her up until he could feel that they had both made contact with the edge, and let her go. Somehow or other, this expenditure of energy left him empty inside. When Jen was safe, he closed his eyes and sank back under. Only a few seconds of peace passed before a hand grappled after him and pulled him up against gravity.

When all three of them lay in a huddled, shivering mass on the floor, a large blanket draped over them to dry with. They warmed themselves against it and scraped the horrible icy water off them. They put on the clothes tossed to them when they were finished, and stood in a line, glowering, clean, and shaken to the bone. Another elder led them across the deck to another room at the very bow of the ship. This one contained a simple burrow in the floor, a long tongue of a stairwell whose passage appeared cramped and steep, following the curve of the hull. They descended, feeling the slightest sway of the ship all around them. As they neared the bottom, light and sound trickled in from the passageway. Sid's imagination raced as he went back to all the stories he'd squeezed out of his brother.

When they passed through, what lay before them was beyond imagination. The atrium easily filled half the belly of the ship. It crawled along the bottom of the vessel and arced upwards to the right and left. Tiling the interior of all sides was a giant honeycomb. A hexagonal pattern spread out below them, stretched above them, and spanned both sides, wrapping all the way to the far wall. In each, children were just stirring for the light of the morning. No natural light graced these walls, on second look. A series of chandeliers hugged the ceiling, bathing the room in yellow. The combs on the floor were like pits dug in the ground, small quarters from which one climbed out, walkways running between. On the walls, the combs were vertical, forming hexagonal windows opening into a small cave. Balcony walkways ran all about these, giving everyone access to an exit. The walkways fanned out from a central nexus on the far side of the room. Another entrance, far taller, opened opposite them.

An elder descended from behind, swiftly escorting Jen to the left, ushering her along, across the horizontal walkways weaving back and forth, and up the slope along the spider-webbed catwalks to the girls' combs. Their own elder did the same for Sid and Bas, rushing them along to the right, nipping at their heels, shooing them into their respective chambers. They were high up, enough to intimidate the faint. They would need time to adjust. They were nearly neighbors, assigned on the same "level," only a few combs apart. He'd tried to keep his eyes on Jen, but lost her in the confusion.

His little cave consisted of a hammock draped across the center, a pile of blankets in one corner, and a bedpan stuck in the other. A thick leather book every child recognized sat on the floor at his feet. The ceiling was only inches taller than him, the cave no deeper than it was tall. Its hexagonal shape made it slightly awkward. It was difficult to stand except in a single spot, but the slope of the floor made convenient "chairs." Behind him, the blinding yellowness of the honeycomb spread out majestically, children bustling about like bees, forming a vague static hum. He picked up the leather-bound book. Its inner page proclaimed its simple title, "The Directive." He flipped through it, skimming the seemingly endless unbroken chain of words and letters and sentences. Instinctively, he tossed it aside with disgust. But he remembered his brother's words. _Think as they teach you to think. Act as they teach you to act. And do it wholeheartedly. Not just pretending._ He knew that the sooner he committed the contents of that book to memory, the sooner he would leave.

Children raced by the opening of his comb. He crawled to the edge. Everyone all at once emptied out of their combs and scampered down the walkways. Sid joined them. The walkways themselves were less than a single stride in width, intimidating for the height and the frantic hopping and skipping of other boys. There was no rail, and vertigo gripped Sid immediately. He walked slowly, hugging the inside edge of other combs. Even though there was barely enough room to walk single file, others behind him shoved him inward and hopped around him. Other walkways above them dumped onto this one, the entire mess of it sloping all the way down to the mouth leading outside. He felt grateful to be on the "ground," though he knew that on a boat over fathoms of water, floors were what they defined them to be.

He followed the mob through the great mouth opposite where he'd first entered. The room just outside the honeycomb was just as wide but slightly shorter in length. Above him, he could see all the way up five or six levels, like barracks, dozens of ladders nailed to the outside connecting them. Ladders had been laid across the gaps to form bridges. The whole thing was like a deck of cards cut in half and pulled apart, the ladders like threads keeping each half tied to the other. He did not have much time to register all this before the mob pushed him through another doorway. This one opened to what was undoubtedly a mess hall. Tables and chairs were scattered all around, and lines formed at a dozen posts all around the outer edge, each serving food to hungry children. He took a place in one of these lines and waited, all the while looking out for Bas and Jen.

After a few minutes of waiting, he reached the front of the line, received a bowl of porridge, a biscuit, a goblet of milk, and a shove out of the way. _Happy birthday,_ he thought. He made his way to an empty seat, keeping a lookout for a familiar face. They all seemed faintly familiar, for they were all children of the town before their eighth birthdays cast them away to this place. He took a seat, set his plate down, and realized that he was ferociously hungry. He gobbled up the goopy porridge, gnawed at the hard biscuit, and slurped up the cold slimy milk. He finished the meal quickly, not because it tasted the least bit good, and wondered if he could get away with seconds.

A boy sitting next to him watched him devour his meal with a sense of puzzlement and humor. "First day?" he asked.

"Yeah. Do they give you seconds?"

"I wouldn't count on it," the boy said, pointing to a post where they were already cleaning up, shooing away bystanders.

"What do we do with -" He held up his empty plate.

The boy pointed to a group of children standing before three large basins of water. "I'm _fourth walk._ "

"It's nice to meet you, Fort."

"No, not my name. I'm in the fourth, you know, walk. Name's Tim."

"Walk of the _plank._ "

Tim nodded.

"You've walked the plank four times."

"No, I've walked it three times. Getting ready for the fourth. I don't know if I'll make it this time, but I'm definitely making progress."

Sid did the math in his head. "So you're ten."

"About to be. Two months. It's not so bad here. You'll get used to it."

Sid could tell they were empty words, a canned greeting for a - _first walk_ , he figured they called him. He nodded and rose with his plates. "Where do we go after -"

"You go home."

"After breakfast," he corrected.

"Oh. Through that door, to the classrooms. First walk, first room."

He walked off toward the dishwashers, and headed for the exit.

_"Happy birthday!"_ Tim called behind him.

"Thanks," he muttered.

He made his way out of the room with the throng of early finishers, heading out to the classrooms. The exit contained a stairwell. Climbing it, he came out one level above the mess hall, staring down a hall with many open doors. He entered the first one, empty except for an elder leaning back in a chair with a book he could only assume was _the book_.

"Welcome, wild one."

He sat quietly for many minutes, until Bas and Jen found their way as well. The classroom was a small enclosed space with a half-dozen chairs and a podium at the front, a public speaking chamber, no more.

The elder rose. "Three?" he asked, seeming to know the answer.

They nodded, and he went to shut the door. He slammed the book on the podium, composed himself, and enumerated the title of their first lesson: "What is the Directive?"

* * *

Sid's head ached. He'd stayed up most of the night reading the school Directive. Only the first quarter or so of the book, but dizzying nonetheless. They were to have it memorized by the end of their first month. It was simple enough. _One child, one room. Breakfast at first light. Class from dawn to noon. Directed play until sundown. Supper and bed. Never leave the bed at night, else a lashing and binding the following day._ And on and on and on. It prescribed every punishment to every possible misdemeanor, from sneaking on deck without elder accompaniment - punishable by sleep the following night in a bag tied down to the deck in the cold outside night - to spilling your bedpan - one week's scrub duty. The degree of the crime reflected the degree of the punishment. Thus all crimes, from the spilling of a bedpan to the desecration of the Directive, were all equal in a sense. If scrub duty seemed less harsh than a lashing, then the crime resulting in that consequence could be perceived as less violent.

It was only their second day. Study was considered an acceptable form of directed play, so he spent all his first day reading, skimming, and reciting the school Directive. He also skimmed a bit through the city Directive, which he knew would be committed to memory as well. It was pure drivel. Not that it was lunacy, necessarily. Rather it was quite sensible. Murder punishable by death in the same manner, or the victim's next of kin could opt for painless execution. Theft of minor punishable by isolated confinement, theft of major punishable by the severing of a hand. It all made Sid queasy, all these detailed rules and laws and punishments that never had to be invoked, not that he knew of. Murder, rape, theft, barbarism, cannibalism, these were things of animal cultures, not human. All these things had to be committed to memory. Sid noted very well that if he ever indulged in his brother's flesh then he would be hanged by the ankles from a tree over a pit with his hands tied, as hogs three days unfed were released upon him - just long enough so that he would survive.

On the second day of class, Sid sat in his chair, head bowed, eyes squinted shut, fists clenched. He shook with the effort of concentration, mumbling and rocking back and forth. He'd skipped breakfast and come right here. The elder sat idly, watching him a bit, probably curious or concerned for the child. He'd made a decision last night. He was going to do something special. He was going to dazzle them and blow them all away. That tiny little booklet, with its thousands of words and letters zipping about, detailing the petty little rules and punishments of this place, became his world. He immersed himself in it. He cleared his mind and took it in, like drinking buckets of water after crossing a desert. At long last, Bas and Jen entered, the elder closed the door, and Sid stood. He climbed on top of his chair, towering over the room, spread his arms, and began:

" _One child, one room. Breakfast at first light. Class from dawn to noon. Directed play until sundown. Supper and bed. Never leave the bed at night, else a lashing and binding the following day. Never go on deck without an elder, else a sleeping in a tied bag on deck the following night. Never sit in another classroom, else a hazing by its occupants. Never lie, else a binding to silence for a fortnight, mouth completely tied except during solitary monitored meals..._

_"An elder is a master of the ship. The ship is a master of any child's life. Respect the word of an elder. Never disobey an elder, else a slinging by the wrists over the side. Never enter an elder's chambers, else a lashing to the elder's bedpost every night for a fortnight. Never taunt an elder, else a stripping of all clothing the following day. An elder is bound by Directive to answer truth to any question asked of them. Never doubt an elder, else a week's servitude to them. Never accuse an elder, else the punishment of such accused crime shall be turned on the accuser..._

_"Six months, one walk of the plank. Only one in ten generations will succeed their first walk. Ten walks, and outcast. Upon success, graduation. An outcast child never existed. A graduated child shall never want..."_

He took a deep, victorious breath.

_"Never leave the ship."_

As Sid recited the school Directive, Bas and Jen stared at him, mouths dropped to the floor. The elder crossed his arms and chewed his lip in full attention. It took an hour to make it through the entire thing, and he felt as if he'd dropped something very heavy when he finally finished. He collapsed in his chair, breathing heavily and unevenly, heart beating strangely. The elder scratched at his neck, then spoke.

"Six sentences omitted. Forty-seven sentences besmirched by phrase order. One hundred and twelve incorrect verbs. Seventeen confusions of 'hanged' with 'hung.' Twenty-one confusions of 'them' with 'him.' Two instances of repeated passages..."

The elder listed his mistakes like a robot, never breaking eye contact. He should have known he could never impress these creatures. This was the Directive incarnate. He was a leaf floating on a river all the same as the rest. A leaf that could swim, whether upstream or down, was only a nuisance. After the elder listed his mistakes, he issued the closest thing possible to a compliment.

"Needs work."

Bas and Jen were still dumbfounded. They wouldn't emerge from their stupor for days. Sid had just announced himself a prodigy. He would be the talk of the school. He'd done a month's work in one day. He would certainly have the entire city Directive committed by month's end. _He'd go home his first walk._ He would be the one, they knew it. A wave of realization swept over them. He wanted it badly enough, and he was nothing short of a genius.

But on the inside, Sid's blood boiled. Somehow deep inside, he imagined that once he recited it that one time, he could forget it forever. Once he crossed one hurdle, he would never have to look back. Now he understood that it was a task of another kind. They tossed a weight in your arms. As soon as you could find your bearings, they tossed another. And another. And another. No rest, no sleep, no breaks, no softness or mercy. He was imperfect. They would whip him into perfection. Once perfection was attained, it must be repeated for authenticity, then tested periodically for consistency. There would be no margin.

Sid screamed with despair inside his head. He clawed his face apart. No relief. No reward. Only test upon test until - but no. _The walk._ That was his one chance to free himself, his one chance at redemption. This was where all the tests ended. The boatman would show him home. And then the botanist or the stargazer or the metallurgist he was to become would never be tested again. He would put _them_ to the test. He would revolutionize, question, _change_. He would infuse meaning into people's lives and the world around them. He would challenge the status quo, and shake things up a bit. But first, he had to survive the tempering process of this place.

As the teacher lectured, Sid made a decision. No matter the cost, he would be the first out. He would bury this flailing sense of ambition deep inside; he would throw himself headlong into the Directive and its lessons; he would play out the prodigal persona whose glimpse he'd just created, and reap the rewards. He'd just planted the seed for a new beginning, and now he must very carefully grow and cultivate it. When it came time, he would reap it. But all along, little would anyone know, he'd carry a secret. He'd carry with him a tiny ember of the flame they seemed intent to snuff out. He would sneak it out of this place.

In class he heard his first "Bad Jack" story. It seemed very simple. Bad Jack was a conceptual character that navigated the boundaries of the Directive. Bad Jack snuck out of his room one night to play with his friend, but Good Jeff saw him and told the elders, and Jack was lashed and bound the following day. Bad Jack accused the elder serving his breakfast of putting a hair in his porridge, and Jack was punished as if he had tried to poison another - his tongue was doused in acid. Bad Jack tried to hold courtship with a girl and was bathed with sandpaper and horse brushes. Bad Jack tried to swim away from the ship, and the blackness enveloped him, his soul swallowed up, and his body washed ashore to his parents' feet.

At dodge ball, the last to fall was Bad Jack. At billiards, the one to sink the "Jack eight." At darts, Jack's eye. It was not an official part of the Directive, but a delightful interpretation of it. They could have written a children's version involving only the failed exploits of Bad Jack. His one thousand and one deaths and disfigurements for various misbehaviors. Had it not been blasphemy, they might have.

At directed play, Sid walked on water. Jen and Bas had spread the news of his performance this morning, and all were awed by how young and new and fresh he was for such a fast learner. Sid was truly good with storytelling. All the children grouped around a speaker, who crafted as dramatic and complex a story as possible involving Bad Jack, his evil exploits, and his downfalls at the hands of Good Gene or Frank or Jess or Sue.

This time the speaker was a girl, perhaps a year or so older than himself. "Bad Jack woke up in the middle of the night and snuck up to the deck to meet the love of his life, Bad Jill. But Good Sue saw Jill sneak out and remembered her talking about her new courtship at breakfast the day before, so she told an elder. They went up on deck and found them courting and called them out. Bad Jack and Bad Jill ran to the edge of the ship and jumped overboard!" The entire audience gasped in awe and fright. "They tried to swim away but the blackness of the water pulled them down. The lake swallowed up both their souls, but the elders threw a net and captured them and brought them back aboard. Both were lashed and bound together the following day. Everyone threw rotted food and shoes at them." The audience proceeded to ooh and ahh and whoop for joy at the notion. "That night they both slept in bags on the deck with gags over their mouths to keep them from talking in the dark! The next day they were both bathed with sandpaper and horse brushes! But the soulless children had become soft of the flesh after losing their souls, and their skin flaked off like sand." The audience clapped. "From that day forward, they could not touch another human being or object without horrible pain, and the two soulless children missed their last walk and were cast into the _Fall of Imaginings to be tortured by beasts until the end of their days!!!!"_

She got a standing ovation. This was the best story of the week. The elder in the corner mulled over this with his arms crossed. Sid knew what he was thinking. There was nothing in the Directive about skin turning to sand or skinless soulless children in this school or throwing food at the bound children. With pure intentions, the girl let a dangerous thing inside her flare up. Sid couldn't put his finger on it - creativity, childishness, innocence, passion. It was not one thing, and yet it was solitary and small. It hid in everyone and would have to be stomped out before they could join the world outside.

Sid took the stage. He had an idea. Everyone fell to silence. The audience grew threefold from bystanders turning their attentions to the prodigy. A dozen pairs of elders' eyes narrowed on him - as he wanted. It was time to perform.

"One morning, before first light, Good Jen slept soundly in her bed. An elder shook her awake and told her to follow. Although tired, she did not disobey and was not slung over the side by the wrists. She followed him into the kitchen, where he fed her before first light. Although this was unusual, she did not doubt him and thus did not serve him for a week. After she finished eating, she was fitted with an apron and told to wash the dishes of the other children. At first light, all the boys and girls in the school ate and drank and tossed their dishes into her basin, and she washed them all one by one. She then went off to class where she paid extra attention, answered every question, and did her assignments for the next day. A boy next to her called her a dirty name, but she told the elder, and the boy's mouth was stuffed with soap, and he sat next to the teacher the rest of the day, to fetch his pens and papers. She went to directed play and performed well in all her favorite games and helped her classmates better themselves. Good Jen retired early to her room to study the Directive for two hours before supper. Then she ate supper and crawled into her hammock and dreamed of her family. She did not leave her bed in the night and was not bound and lashed the next day. She woke up the next morning and did it again, and on her ninth birthday, she passed her second walk. Good Jen went home and hugged her mother and her father and her sister and became a quilt-and-curtain-maker and lived forever."

There was a very long silence. Sid became uncertain for the first time. Elders glared at him with shocked expressions. They were deft not to betray emotions, but for the moment expressed a brief stupid surprise. But whether it was admiration or condemnation, he could not tell. Then, breaking the silence, Jen applauded. Bas joined her followed by the rest of the crowd. They jumped up and down with glee, hailing him master storyteller of the entire month. The elders conglomerated, whispering, eyeing him. _Yes,_ he imagined them whispering, _perhaps he is the one. We must take care not to act too hastily. He is a prodigy, a genius. He could overtake even us if he is not managed carefully._ Sid imagined them shaking a bit at the notion, a slight tremble in their voices. _Yes, he will walk at the first. But we must help prepare him. He is special, and must be treated specially with a special accelerated course to make him feel special._

He retired early to study the city Directive. He must have it completely memorized, even if imperfectly, by the end of the first month. That was his goal, his second great feat, even greater than the first. It took most past their first walk to get it down. He wanted to out-prepare everyone so grotesquely that the elders held a special tribunal to rule whether it was appropriate to just let him go ahead and walk three full months early and go home to his mother where she would be waiting with a fireplace and cookies and a life outside this place.

However, another reason he retired early was that something he'd heard bothered him that day, something the other girl had said in her story. She said, "...cast into the Fall of Imaginings," as if it were a real place. The Directive merely said that a child was outcast after their tenth walk. That if, by their thirteenth birthday, they still had not embraced the beauty and power and symmetry of the Directive, they could never again set foot in the city. Was the forest surrounding the city the "Fall of Imaginings"? He did not know. But that thought made him see a vision of one possible future. _They catch me. They find me out. They burn the secret out of me. And I am cast out forever._ He imagined wandering alone for the rest of his days, where life was a game of survival, and death was as pointless as killing an insect. _To be tortured by beasts until the end of his days_. She knew something.

After supper, Sid found an elder and pulled him aside. "May I speak to you alone for a moment?"

"Of course." They made it a habit to ignore his prodigal status, at least out loud.

"After ten walks, a child is outcast. Where do they go?"

"They fall."

"Fall where?"

"They fall forever."

"But do they land?" He was growing annoyed. _Sworn to tell the truth,_ he sneered to himself.

"They fall with their imaginings. You see, the only threat to the Directive is change. Change is brought about by changers, whether by good intentions or evil. Changers are characterized by a childlike wildness. They are untamed wild ones and, if let upon the city, could damage or destroy our very essence. It is our job to separate a child from its natural wildness, to remove its flailing imaginings as quickly as possible. Walking the plank is an unbeatable test that no amount of acting and performing can outdo. To pass means a child has purged their own imaginings by their own will. The child goes one way, the imaginings another. But if by their tenth walk they are unable to let their imaginings go, they fall alongside them, disappearing forever."

"But where do they go? Do they starve? Drown? Do they wander alone? Are they tortured by beasts?"

"Yes."

"Which one?"

"Whichever one they feel they can torment themselves with the best. An outcast child is a failed attempt at humanity. We do not know what becomes of them past their own torment, because it is self-inflicted. Such logic does not fit with our plan. It does not matter. They are part of another world."

Sid took all this in, tried to sift through it to separate the fact from the story tying fact together. "I will pass my first walk."

"So we shall see."

* * *

Sid lay in a coffin, sleeping steadily, hands and legs tied, eyes blindfolded, mouth gagged. The coffin had a small door at his head, and the door had a small hole to the outside. In that hole was a voice, a constant stream of sound injected directly into his ears, a voice in his head. It had a certain hissing cadence about it. It was so constant, so direct, so inescapable, that it ceased to take the form of words and sounds and moving lips. To Sid, the voice was not a voice but a tentacle, reaching and weaving and worming around in him, searching. This was the most advanced course the school had to offer. The last class, the highest grade level. Sid lay in his "room" and accepted the lesson being poured into him to prepare him for his tenth and last walk.

Every now and then, when his pain was most extreme, he wondered if he would wake up from this nightmare in his hammock, cry out, and realize thankfully that he was in the honeycomb working on his third walk. But he never woke up. There was no night, no day. No difference between awake and asleep. Baths came violently, sporadically. Feet marched outside, the door tore open, hands grabbed his shoulders and ripped him from his hole in the wall, spilling him on the floor. A bag was thrown over his head, his bindings and pajamas pulled off, and he was carried onto the freezing icy deck and plunged into the coldest water imaginable. He was scrubbed fiercely while hands kept his head pinned to the rim of the basin, eyes and mouth bagged shut, in permanent blackness. The worst part was that this physical pain brought no mental vacation, for the _voice_ followed and accompanied the bath, never tiring, never ceasing, never changing its mood or intonation.

Food came even more sporadically. The door opened and his gag was released for his mouth to open. If he screamed or issued any discernable word or blasphemy, a clod of mud was inserted and the gag retied. If he opened it silently, a crust of bread was inserted and the gag retied. Water was poured on the gag itself and had to be sucked out of the cloth. Excretion was a rare and painful occurrence, less frequent than the baths themselves. It had been months since he'd uttered a single word or saw a pinpoint of light or stood on his own feet. It fascinated him that the body and mind were capable of surviving such a state for so long. He knew that his term here would last exactly six months, but he had no way of tracking the progress of time. His biological clock had literally stopped. The only barometer of time he had was the _voice_ itself, words and sounds coming out of human lips moving with a human speed. But his mind was so far gone he could barely tell a word from a sentence or an animal utterance. It was difficult even to distinguish his own thoughts from it.

His greatest fear, as his mind wandered through this black timelessness, was that only an hour had passed in what felt like months. That everything, from the baths to the food to the _voice,_ was a nightmare within a nightmare, and upon waking he would find himself at the beginning again. As his mind wandered, the _voice_ crawled about like a spider, weaving elegant cobwebs in every corner of his mind, laying roadblocks, trying to capture that one last thing he was hiding, the one thing they hadn't gotten to yet.

After he failed his first walk, he was horrified. Not because he would have to spend another six months in school, but because all his hard work had come to nothing. After all that studying and memorization, all that slyness and acting, he stood on that plank, staring into the maelstrom of water in the basin below and froze. His thoughts stopped, his nerves hardening like concrete and turning his little electrical impulses away.

He snapped. He went wild. He damned the Directive and the school, ripped out its pages. He picked fights with the other children and cursed the teachers. He snuck out of bed at night, raided the elders' chambers, attempted elaborate escapes. He became the worst discipline case they had ever had. And he swallowed every punishment, ate the soap, slept on deck, spent days lashed to a board, and then did it all over again. He had followers, weak-minded _firsts_ and tempered _fifths_ and _sixths._ They never lasted. Their plans for escape never got them even close to the edge of the deck. The closest they ever got was chained down in a bag, shivering in the cold, praying for sunrise. He became Bad Jack. _Bad Sid, at it again._

There was no second walk. He was so far off track that it was merely a formality. He walked to the edge of the plank, froze stiff halfway out, and turned back. This was the wall he confronted, the pinnacle of challenges, that holy grail of escapism: how to fool the walk. He did not believe it could be done, and he only had eight more chances to try. He once again embraced subtlety, playing the prodigy, the saint, even the common drone, while playing for an escape. Walk after walk he failed, exploded for a brief time, and then rejoined the crowd. First, he put all his ideas and ambitions in a box and locked them up in his mind, swearing never to think of them until he was out. He trained himself. Concentrating, every time his mind indulged something scientific or artistic or philosophic, he uttered a mental word "in time" and forced his thoughts away from it. He encapsulated it all, wrapping it all up with a mental word "treasure," thinking about it constantly, making deposits, but never allowing himself to think about its contents. As such he was able to "forget" his ambitions and not just play the saint, but actually be the saint.

His seventh walk was the most successful, when he advanced the farthest before locking up. It took longer for the maelstrom to find his "treasure" because it was so deeply buried, nearly forgotten by Sid himself. Afterwards, rather than damning the establishment all over again, he fell to his knees and praised it for not letting him succeed while still impure. He hailed it for letting him know he was so close. Before his eighth walk, he dared something new. He wrote down all his ambitions and ideas and inventions on a tiny piece of parchment: _infinity of primes, flying machine, underwater breather, astrological calendar,_ and on and on and on. He rolled it up into a tiny stiff worm, doused it in alcohol he'd stolen from the medic, and inserted it just under the skin on the inside of his thigh. It stung for days but healed beautifully and could hardly be noticed even by him. Now it was safe to truly forget his "treasure" entirely, let it slip out of his mind, embrace this place with full honesty and earnestness. He could always dig it out later.

But now he lived in fear, constant fear that he had been found out. That with a little surgery, they could purge him of his secret forever, that he had merely helped them along by pushing his "treasure" out of his mind completely and into his leg. Out of the frying pan, but into the fire. So he couldn't let it go. His creativity, his instincts, his fascinations, and inquisitiveness, so long woven into every fiber of his being, now lay not in the back of his mind, in a little locked box, but way down in the muscle of a leg. The "box" in his mind was merely a cable, a memory that something special and pure and unforgettable lay there. He couldn't let that cable go, not now, not ever, lest he lose it forever. When he got out, he imagined himself living his entire lifeless existence having forgotten the bump on his leg. Or finding it, unrolling it, and its words blurred into black spots. Worse, that the words were still there, but so foreign, so meaningless, so distant, that he threw the parchment away as a piece of trash, or held it forever in the blind hopes of discovering its meaning.

Only now, lying here, mind devoid of anything resembling thought, did he appreciate the beauty and power of the school. It was a fire, burning low at first and then hotter and hotter until a critical point was reached. Children were born a brick of ore and had to be smelted, tempered, purified and smoothed over. The flaws, the imperfections, the _changers_ in them had to be burned out. It was a crucible, heating ever so much. And Sid, trying to salvage these impurities, these flaws that made him unique in the world, failed to fool the metallurgist. He was clinging to something, and they would exorcise him of it by the end or discard him. It surprised him that his fear of the "fall" never overcame his fear of losing his "treasure." What was it in a human being, that even a child would rather perish clinging to his deepest passions than renounce them and live a life of submission?

As Sid lay in the wide dark world, he felt the _voice_ weave around inside him. Lecturing, taunting, luring, deceiving, bargaining. Trying to identify the weak spot, the hiding place, like a snake worming around in an endless labyrinth, looking for its silent, hidden, invisible prey. Sid was afraid at first, fearing that the _voice_ would indeed hypnotize him, brainwash him, convince him of his wrongs and his silliness, and he would emerge a blind saint. But he realized now that the effect was the opposite. The harder they pushed, the deeper they dug, the deeper they drove him underground. They would never find it, not in a million years, if he didn't want to give it up. The tentacle stuck in his mind, weaving and winding about, blindly searching every nook and cranny, and so far off the scent that there was no hope for it whatsoever. All he did was lay there watching it, mildly amused but mostly bored, sitting on his lockbox, his "treasure," waiting for the game to end, the clock to stop.

* * *

The light was blinding. The world was so white that it took him a very long time just to realize that he was out of the coffin. Lying on the floor. No blindfold, no bindings, no bag over his head. He lolled about on the floor like an amoeba, lethargically flailing his limbs, dry heaving as his voice tried to operate after a six-month silence. Seven figures stood about him like statues, reserved and divine, watching him come out of his coma. It took a long while for his body to reacquaint itself with the concept of movement. It took his mouth a long while to remember speaking. It even took his brain all the longer to remember thought, and that eyes and ears and fingers could feed and drive that thought into a logical process and paint a picture of the world.

When he finally came around, when he was a conscious human being lying on the ground instead of a dying flapping fish, they spoke to him. When his cries of pain and anguish and novelty were over, they reared him up by his shoulders and taught him to walk. His legs were jelly at first, but slowly they overcame the great burden of his bodyweight. They learned first to support him, then how to balance him, finally how to move him from one point to another. All this under the kind and helpful guidance of the black-robed elders on the ship's deck. After a few laps, he exalted, jumping up and down, tripping, falling, and rolling about ecstatically on the floor. He was a baby again for a short while, overwhelmed by the sensations and movements poured over him after such a long slumber.

They fed him like a prince that night and gave him a sack of feathers and down to sleep on instead of a hammock. But only a few hours of sleep were found. He spent most of the night pacing about the room, afraid to let his muscles stop even for a night, mumbling to himself, enjoying the sound of his voice, and exploring the crevices and wood grain and mortar in his wall, delighting in the patterns it put forth for his brain to follow and analyze. That night, his dreams took him from the depths of the lake to the highest reaches of the sky. He swam, flew, climbed the peak, leapt from one rooftop to another throughout the city, and landed in his family's kitchen, delighting in stories of adventure and perseverance. It was the best birthday he'd ever had.

There was a tap on his shoulder. He opened his eyes. Three elders stood over him, waiting. It was time. He would meet before a special tribunal and attempt his last walk. He stood and dressed. They led him to the mirror room. There it was, calm as glass under the plank of wood he'd seen so many times before. He was ready to face it for the last time. He wasn't a child anymore. He was a teenager. He would leave this room a man of the world or not at all. Two elders blocked the door, and he smiled wanly at them. The "tribunal" was very simple. In less than a dozen words, they told him to walk the plank or live in exile.

It was all very eerie. They looked at him as if he were already lost. Sid was quite oblivious as to what they thought they knew. His mind was still swimmy from his coma-like absence. He smiled like a baby very quickly growing up. He took the first step onto the plank as if it were just the simple matter of jumping into a warm bath. The water was so perfectly placid that it truly resembled a mirror. On this steadily rocking ship, it was obviously under some sort of spell. He took one step and stopped. A bead of water ran along the surface, followed by a tiny ripple, like the flesh of an arm pushing against the air above.

Something lifted in his mind. Sid couldn't explain it, only that some wave of energy welled up from the pool and swept through his brain, rendering him completely blank for a moment. He took another step, and the ripples returned, running this way and that as if the pool were crowded by dozens of invisible fish thrashing about. He was trying to remember something. Like a teacher asking a question and the answer lurking in the deepest realms of his mind. _What was it?_ He racked his brain but felt an inward resistance, as if the pool was trying to extract something from him, and his body shuddered to let it go. He felt a distant burning in one of his thighs.

Sid took one more difficult step, halfway out this time, and now saw his reflection in the mirror below. Waves distorted his face into that of a ghoulish monster, snarling soundlessly. The ripples sped up into a vortex of such intensity that water lapped up against the sides of the basin. Then he remembered. _My treasure_ , he thought desperately. At that exact instant, the vortex exploded in a foamy maelstrom of bubbles and mist, arms of water clawing at every inch of air before him. Every muscle in his body locked, his lungs emptied in a horrific scream, the spot on his thigh flared like a stab wound, and the fiery pain washed over his entire body. His treasure chest had been opened and scattered, every idea he'd ever had flooding his mind like he was a child again.

He saw wooden ships flying through the sky on great wings, carrying riders over rooftops. He saw a rock skipping erratically across the "holes" of his beloved number line, marking the primes. He saw instantaneously every plant and animal at the tip of a thread of a frayed rope, each converging with neighbors like a hand, back into an arm, and back and back until every cord wove together in one single grand taxonomic being. He saw a fire burning in a small chamber within a wooden box, alive with belts and pistons and rotors driving a carriage down a street. He saw progress! Revolution! Citizens pouring into the streets, breaking free of chains and swarming like ants, uprooting the great stone Directive from its throne. He saw it tilting with the force of flesh and intellect, heard it groan, and it was _beautiful_.

The maelstrom settled down. He turned around, defeated. A tear rolled from his eye as he faced the elders, knowing what they had to do. They all reached into their cloaks for clubs, nets, and rope. He had less than half a second to make the biggest decision of his life: attempt the most exultant escape imaginable, or submit quietly to their judgment, as good as death. His first thought was that it was useless even if he tried. His second thought was that he would be banished whether he resisted or not, that he had nothing to lose. At this second thought, he pounced for the door. He managed to smash through one elder with his shoulder and launch headfirst into the next one, tackling him to the ground. But before he could get to his feet again, a half dozen were on him, all pulling different limbs, others applying rope to his appendages. It was hopeless. He cried out with all the force of a wild animal scrambling against a cage.

They had him bound tighter than a spider binds her prey, and dragged him back into the room, shutting the door. They lifted him up to face his sentence. An elder addressed him, mentioning his wildness and lack of respect not as a crime, but as a lecherous parasite. They saw it as their own failing that they could not purge him of it. And so what followed was not punishment but surrender to the natural order of things. "Cast him away."

Sid lowered his head, expecting the long escort to the edge of the world, wherever that might be. So when they turned and carried him back toward the pool, he did not understand what was happening. He looked at each elder carrying him. Through his gag, he tried to ask what was happening, but they held him next to the plank and gave only a slight push. The pool was perfectly smooth, but he was terrified. They were going to drown him! _I should have known!_ These were not serene and civilized old wretches. These were savages, determined to convert children to drone worker-breeders and simply _murder_ those that resisted. He saw his reflection in the water, his head growing bigger and bigger. He made eye contact with himself, looking deep inside his own reflection, and in that last moment of life, wondered how he could ever be so stupid for not seeing this coming. What good was holding onto a dream if by doing so you must die by drowning? He splashed and wriggled in the mess of bubbles.

**

In almost every sense, Sid was reborn. The events that followed this death would reshape not only the remainder of his life, but also that of the world around him. It was all very confusing. Here he was, drowning, struggling against the water, and he could not find the edge of the basin. Then he saw fish swimming all around him. _Fish!_ If this was his brain turning to mush in death, it certainly was not a pleasant way to go. Flapping wildly against his bindings, he managed to get his head above water, where he was blinded by what seemed to be sunlight. This was impossible, of course, so it must have been either what eyes do as they die, or his brain wandering into a dream.

He lay calmly on the surface, floating gently. His hands and feet were still bound; he still breathed shallow through the soaked gag, water lapping at his face. He was undoubtedly outside, floating on some sort of lake. But before he could make any sense of these surroundings, he had to untie himself. His hands worked carefully and calmly at his restraints. Every time he breathed in, his body rose a bit on the surface, but the water from his gag tickled his throat and nearly choked him by encouraging a useless coughing fit. The world was still too bright to open his eyes, so he worked diligently at the rope, thinking of nothing else.

The very instant it gave, he ripped his hands free, tore off the gag, sucked in a huge breath, and began treading water feverishly. He opened his eyes, screamed, and surveyed his surroundings. His vision was blurry, but he distinctly saw beach in every direction, blue sky, sparse white clouds, and palm trees. _Was this the afterlife?_ His feet were still tied together, making it difficult to keep above water, tiring him out. At the closest shore stood a human figure. Without time to think, Sid summoned the last of his strength to power his arms toward the shore.

His legs slowed him down considerably, but he did not have the time or the strength to untie them. He kept slipping just under the surface and clambering back up, but making progress toward the shore. A warm breeze swept through palm trees and blew bleach white sand over the rocks. The human figure was half-naked, leaning on a spear, dressed in only a leafy loincloth. It was a boy no older than he, stained brilliantly gold, with long shocks of blond hair blowing about his face. He looked as if he'd been awaiting Sid's arrival, and it annoyed Sid that he made no effort to help him in his obvious struggle. When he finally washed on shore, he lay panting for many long minutes before looking the boy over.

The boy crouched now, still holding his spear like a flagpole, smiling warmly. "Happy birthday," he said.

"Where am I?" Sid sputtered, catching his breath.

"In the Fall of Imaginings. The land of the castaways."

"How did I get here?" Sid asked, more confused than ever. "Where is the lake?"

The boy smiled slyly, spreading an arm about the scene. "This is the lake."

Sid sat up, pulling himself onto dry sand, white as sugar. He took a closer look around. It did look faintly familiar. And sure enough, to his left, there rose the mountain. There was no mistaking it. He was silent for a very long time. It took a lot of thought to digest this. This was a wholly different world, painted over the real one, stick for stick. The most gut-wrenching realization of all was that he was home. He was exactly home, sitting on the shore of the lake, escaped, free. This was the ultimate cruelty, the ultimate mockery. That he had not been dumped in some dungeon or swamp or netherworld outside the city, or even killed. He was in exactly the _place_ he longed to be, only the place itself was wholly different. That was the certainty: that there was no going home. That this was it.

He was a little sulky now. "You could have helped me," he sneered, untying his feet.

"You'll appreciate later the satisfaction of having done it yourself," the boy replied casually. "I did."

Sid ignored the comment and staggered to his feet. He looked like a snowman. Living in the dark so long his skin was pale as a maggot, and the white sand stuck to his wet clothes and hair like flour.

"My name is Lee. Come, let me take you to the village."

Sid followed, mildly angered, dusting the white powder off his body as he walked. The boy trekked barefoot through the underbrush, through no discernable path, as if he'd been here a thousand times before. They made their way up the hill as if they were going to the city. But Sid knew that in this place, there was no city, no family, nothing.

When they reached the village, it was nothing but a few dozen huts strewn about the crest of the hill, at the foot of the mountain. Lee brought him to the hut where apparently the leader resided, and summoned him. The boy who walked out was more of a man than a boy. He was at least fifteen, tall and muscular, with a face that showed the wear and hardness of the years behind him. They shook hands firmly, as was customary between adults, and the leader introduced himself as Cole.

"Welcome to the Fall. Not quite what you were expecting, eh? You're going to like it here, that's for certain. This isn't banishment. This isn't a prison we are all sentenced to. This is paradise! There are only two things we do here: hunt and play. And really that's only one thing, you'll see! Can you even imagine being bound to something like an occupation, walking to a place to work every day? Seeing your family only at night. Plugging away like a body part of some huge creature, cast into retirement, and replaced by a newer, fresher cog? That is the prison. The school is simply a way to numb us of our senses, strip us of our logic, before being sentenced to our place in the world. But we outfought them. We beat the system. We are the strong, the smart, the fast. We are the ones they don't want in their prison, the ones that would tear the very walls down in the place. Instead they drop us into this mirror world, this wild place of mystery they call a dungeon. But in fact, they are the dungeon. Those they can't keep caged, they set free!"

They stared at each other for a very long time, his words flowing over Sid, wrapping all around him, vindicating his every thought since the day he was born. He was grateful, happy, overjoyed that this place was what it was. He was so afraid of being alone. Of being cold or in pain or tossed into a sea of nothingness. Now he saw the truth. This was the world he belonged to. This was home after all. This was the place he was destined to be, that he was born to find. His legs went weak. He fell to his knees with thirteen years of relief. He fell forward as if to kiss the boy's feet, and wept himself into a swoon.

When he woke up, it was darker. He could see sunlight, but only as a faint glow. He was inside one of the huts, golden light peeking between the leaves. A warm rag made laps up and down his arms and chest very slowly. He turned to see the arm holding the rag, and it belonged to a girl about his age.

"There you are," she said. She dipped the rag in a clay pot of water resting on orange embers.

"How long have I been asleep?"

"Most of the day. It'll be sundown soon. Time for the bonfire." She reapplied the warm rag on his shoulder. The white dust of the beach was all gone now. "I remember you from the school."

"You do?"

"At directed play. It must have been your first walk. I told a story and you went right after me with a better one. About a girl named Good Jen."

_Good Jen._ He turned away from the girl to hide a tear.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to... Was she real?"

He nodded. "Good Jen was too good. Not strong enough. They got her. She graduated. Passed her walk."

"I wish I could have met her. I'm glad they didn't get you. I remember liking you."

"How old are you?"

"Just turned fourteen."

"It's strange going from the oldest in the school to the youngest in the Fall. I feel like a baby again."

"We all start in the same place."

Sid sat up in the little bed made of reeds with leaves as a mattress. "Thank you."

"For what?"

"Well, for the bath. Elders aren't as gentle. I haven't had a bath like that since I left home." He thought of a better answer, the real one. "For being here. I was so afraid this place would be a nightmare. That I would be all alone. So, thank you for taking me in."

"You're welcome. It's a pleasure having you."

Outside, the sound of drums began, accompanied by whoops and hollers.

"The bonfire. It's starting. Come on." She took him by the hand and pulled at him.

"Wait." She looked back. "What is your name?"

She smiled. "Lane."

The bonfire was extraordinary. A hunting party brought a huge pig to the camp and ignited the greatest party Sid had ever dreamed of. They skewered it and lit a huge fire. The boys wore flailing headdresses - someone swooped in and fastened one on Sid too. The girls wore headbands, trailing down their beautifully overgrown hair. Dancers painted totally red came bouncing around, streaking faces and bodies of everyone else with decorative stripes. They had fashioned hand-drums and a few flutes. The hunters turned the pig over the huge flames, and Sid watched it turn colors as its flesh burned. Fireflies the size of a fist danced out in the sky above the canopy.

Sid lost himself in the yellow chaos before him. He wasn't even sitting down anymore, but skipping in great circles around the fire along with everyone else. Special drummers had huge leafy tree limbs to beat against the embers in cadence, so that the entire thing swelled and reverberated with life. The hunters tore strips of meat from their roast and passed it around. Some retired to the shadows to devour their ration, others continued to dance mindlessly, Sid among them. This was total release. This was paradise. Alone in a world of sun and sand and fire, alone with all the other castaways. Alone together.

Lane danced with seductive abandon. Everything about this place was welcoming. Her smile was like a jewel gracing the very air around them. Reflecting the flame in golden curves and brilliant white teeth. Her eyes contained a boundless joy, nothing like the eyes of children in the school or the city. These were babies allowed to keep their innocence. True children in every sense of the word, bodies and minds advanced as nature intended. Sid melted into the sea of paint that was this mirror world, and felt happy.

In the darkness of sleep, that happiness, a concept he had never experienced before, draped over him like a blanket. But the blanket was short. His feet poked out. An icy menace of cold floated around him, trying to penetrate, tickling his feet and the back of his neck. He missed his mother and brother, but that wasn't it. It was something viler, something closer. He sat up in bed, staring straight ahead. He saw absolutely nothing - it was the sound that disturbed him. Whatever it was, it was staring straight at him, breathing heavily. Sid stared into the sound for a long while, awake, asleep, or something in between, and he was quite sure his heart did not beat a single time until morning.

* * *

"Hunting party," Lane called into their hut, waking him with a slight startle.

"Arriving?"

"No," she said slyly. "Departing. Come on!"

Sid stretched and stepped out into the light. His feet had already calloused against the abuse of raw land. Cole caught him at the door, spear ready for his friend.

"From oldest to youngest."

Sid took the spear and laughed. "Let's go."

The entire party, Lane never least in anything, yelped and yawped and took off toward the mountain. Sid trailed behind, lungs unaccustomed to this abuse. They took a path across the foot of the mountain on the lake's side. _From oldest to youngest._ Sid caught up to Lane. There were six of them in all, including Lee. A question was growing in his mind.

"How far do we go?"

"Just to the other side of the lake," Lane responded. "That's where they nest."

"And Cole goes on every hunt?"

"As many as he wants. He's the best. Why do you think he's our leader?"

"Because he's oldest, I guess."

She didn't say anything.

"How old is he?"

"I don't know. We stop counting here. We just live, and the years go by."

"How many years?"

"As many as we want. As many as we can stand, I suppose."

"So, we'll never grow old. We live as children forever?"

"I suppose."

"Then why are there so few of us here? Are there other villages?"

"You're young and you ask a lot of questions."

He let her escape ahead of him. She'd struck a nerve in him. His parents and his brother used to say things like that to him. That was the city world, where questions were looked down on. This should have been a haven of curiosity, of technology. Their city should have been ten times bigger, taller, stronger. He did not understand why they were a few dozen teenagers huddled at the foot of the mountain. If they were ageless, then who were the elders, even if devoid of wrinkles? Was this just a starting point, some kind of purgatory? Was there indeed a city elsewhere, where a long journey would lead a teenager into adulthood, even here? Certainly they did not hunt pigs and dance around fires every night for _years._ Sid would need a break after a few weeks, not years. Maybe they wandered into the lake to drown themselves after a few years for sheer boredom.

They all crouched behind a rock on a slight hill on the opposite side of the lake. Below them was a beach strewn with ruts and holes and hoof prints. _The watering hole._ The six hunters stayed quiet, lying in wait. After what felt like an hour, Cole finally led them backwards, so they could flank the beach and sneak through the trees quietly out of earshot. They were masters of quiet. It was a skill Sid would have to learn as he went. He seemed to snap every twig and crunch every leaf and brush against every branch. Even his breathing seemed to resonate across the forest. He watched Lane directly in front of him to see if he could discover how they avoided the noise. She didn't seem to look at her own feet but at the boy's feet ahead of her. Looking closer, Sid saw that she stepped in his tracks perfectly. Sid did the same and realized that not only did he avoid twigs this time, but the erratic tracks all fell in slightly wet muddy spots, so no leaves were crunched.

They reached a spot where they stopped for a long while again. Cole and another boy ran on ahead and returned after several minutes, whispering very lightly and gesturing with their hands. Sid could not keep up with the hand signs and could not hear their voices over the ambient sound of wind, leaves, birds, and insects. He supposed that was intentional to keep their communication undetectable. He tapped Lane and gestured his puzzlement. She leaned in close to his ear and explained.

"The nesting grounds are empty. Their tracks are collected and all heading in one direction. If a predator had spooked them, they would be scattered, so they must be on a run for food. We are just debating whether to follow it or abandon our hunt."

Sid cocked his head to the side. _Why would we abandon it?_

"There is no telling how far out they've gone. We'd have to run them down, and we'd never manage to carry them back by nightfall. It's dangerous to venture this far from the lake and more dangerous to make camp so far out."

Sid wondered what it was that was out there. Wolves, bears, giant snakes, rival tribes. He shuddered at the thought. After a few more minutes, they seemed to reach a consensus. Lane whispered to him again.

"We track them. We go until midday. If we haven't reached them by then, we go back."

With that, they all took off again. By now, Sid was getting truly tired. Did they not eat at all during a hunt? He supposed either the smell of food would give them away, or their hunger simply drove them harder and faster toward a catch. They followed in the wake of the pigs' tracks, picking up speed as they went, every now and then stopping to examine the softness of a hoof print or clod of dung. It was approaching midday, but even Sid could tell at this point that they were close, just by the smell of the trail. They came upon a huge boulder, and the tracks wrapped around it. Cole stopped suddenly, and everyone crouched behind him to listen. Very faintly, around the next bend they heard it - the grunts of their prey.

They ducked under a huge bent tree overhanging the path, and before Sid could even comprehend what was happening, Cole, Lane, and Lee zipped into the air, disappearing in a huge net. The bent tree snapped back to its natural straightness, and there the three of them dangled, screaming. The other two boys next to Sid scrambled away, off the trail. Sid watched them absentmindedly, wondering why they weren't going to save their friends. They hopped up onto a fallen tree to leave a gap in their tracks, and ran along it all the way to its end. From the opposite side of the tree, Sid heard a loud snap, saw a cloud of dust, and the boys vanished, wailing. He looked up at the net, still departed from reality.

Without thinking, Sid grabbed a rock from beside the boulder and crushed it against the stone wall. It shattered, and he took the sharpest piece and climbed the tree. When he reached the top, he saw down the trail a horrible sight. Two pig-like creatures, running on two legs, slavering and howling triumphantly, heading for them. Sid severed the rope, and the net spilled out onto the trail. The two creatures stopped short, only a few paces away, and looked up at Sid in surprise. Cole was the first on his feet, and he ran as fast as he could off the trail. The pig-like creatures took off after him, but not before Sid dropped from the tree and landed squarely on one's shoulders, squashing him to the ground. It thrashed and Sid noticed horrible teeth and claws on the creature. He hauled the rock-shard into its neck before it could fight back.

The second one turned back toward Sid and hissed loudly. But before it could attack, the point of a spear jetted out of its mouth like a tongue, silencing it immediately. It fell to the ground, revealing Lane at the other end of the weapon. She let go of it and covered her face with her hands, aghast. Sid stood, dropping his own weapon. He approached Lane and put both hands on her shoulders.

"It's okay. They're dead. We got 'em."

She shook her head.

"Lane, what are these things?" She didn't answer.

_"What did you do?!"_ Cole yelled from afar. He ran back toward them. "Fool!" he screamed, and pushed Sid to the ground.

"What are you talking about?" he yelled back.

"How could you do this to us?" Cole howled, kicking and beating at Sid on the ground.

Lane got her senses back and pulled him off. "Stop it! He didn't know."

Cole shoved her to the ground too. "But _you_ did! You're both as good as dead."

"Would somebody mind telling me what's happening?" Sid asked from the ground.

"You killed a Snatcher."

"A what?"

"The Snatchers! This is their land. We are guests here."

"Guests! They were going to kill us!"

"They take only a few of us at a time." This was a sobering statement. His use of the word _take_ got to Sid. That's why there were so few of them. They were food.

"And you call yourself a leader. You let this happen! You ran away like a coward after I saved you! And you let horrible piggie monsters hunt and kill your people."

"You don't understand. They only take a few at a time. If you resist, they take double. If you kill one of them, they take two of us in payment. That is their law here."

Sid stood up. "Why don't you stand and fight? Look at them. They're small and stupid."

They heard shouts from the other side of the fallen tree. The two other boys had fallen into a pit the creatures had dug, covered with thatch. Cole motioned for Lee to help them out.

"These are the children. The adults are twice the size. And there are hundreds here. This is their land. They let us camp on their mountain. They let us drink and bathe in their lake. They let us hunt their pigs. All they ask for in return is our oldest member whenever a new one arrives."

"You," Sid realized aloud. "You wanted one last hunt. You were walking right into their trap. Taking five of us with you."

"They would have let you go. They respect their own law. But now they'll want me, along with four others for these two."

"Then we bury them. Dump them in the lake. Eat them and hide the bones. Then they're missing instead of killed."

"You can't outsmart a Snatcher, and it's suicide to try."

"You mean you don't have the guts."

Lane still lay on the ground sniffling. Cole pulled her to her feet and shoved her against Sid. "You two will be offered." He picked up his spear.

Sid grabbed Lane by the hand. "Run!" She raced silently after him, whimpering. Cole leapt after the both of them with his spear. Sid headed for a fallen tree near the net, apparently a second trap. He leapt up onto it, pulling Lane along. _"Lane,"_ he whispered behind him as they ran, _"there's a trap at the other end. Jump as far as you can before you land."_ Cole hopped up on the tree behind them. Sid reached the end of the trunk and catapulted as far as he could, with Lane directly behind him. They both landed on hard ground and continued running. Behind them Sid heard a snap and a scream and knew that Cole in his anger had fallen for the Snatchers' trap. They ran fast and hard.

"What about the other boys?" Lane asked.

"They can chase us or go home."

* * *

By dusk their mountain was a distant spot on the horizon. Lane was silent the whole day. The experience had turned her into a mute. Sid loved the fun, flamboyant, childlike Lane. He now realized that it was all an act. It was amplified to hide the overwhelming despair of the place. These children lived at the mercy of monsters, things that snatched them in the night and dragged them away without a sound. Things that commanded wordlessly and ruled by the temple of claw and tooth. To live in a world where there was no escape, no future, where the very existence of tomorrow was the toss of a coin - that destroyed the spirit.

Lane stopped walking. She lowered her eyes and folded her hands. "I can't go on."

Sid stood before her. "We have to. They'll come after us. They'll get the Snatchers' permission to hunt us, their help even. We have to get as far from the lake as possible."

Lane buried her face in her hands. "We'll never make it. Even if we do, where will we go? What will we do? Just wander around forever?"

"We'll find someplace. We'll find another lake. A waterfall. A cave. Something. We'll find someplace safe. Somewhere far away. We'll build a house. We'll build a life. We'll catalog the plants and animals. We'll figure out what this place is, how big it is. We'll watch the stars. There's more to do than one lifetime can possibly hold. More than hunting and eating and dying, Lane. No fear, no Directive, no law."

She shook her head. "Even if we do escape, another person will be offered in my place. This is not just another place to explore, Sid. It's a dungeon. We're just waiting in line for our coffin. Nothing has changed. The Directive here is a natural one. So natural it doesn't even need to be written down. We're all a part of a huge clock. It's just counting down all the time. I know that our tribe isn't much of a life, but it's better than this huge emptiness. It's as close to a home as I'll ever have. And running off to let someone else die in my place is as good as murder."

"Lane, have you gone blind? This place is worse than the school. Not only does it rob you of your imaginings, it takes away your will to live. I can't accept that. And I won't let it happen to you, even if I have to drag you away. Lane, those people are slaves. Someone tells you that you have two years to live before they eat you, and in the meantime you can hunt and eat all the pig you want and have fun as long as you don't try to escape or resist. I don't know what is wrong with them, but I would stand and fight and die before lying down for that."

"You're young. You don't understand."

"No! I'm young, that's why I'm still capable of understanding. You've been here a year, plenty of time for the lie of this place to sink into your bones. They've put a blindfold on you, ever so slowly, so that when your time comes, you go quietly. You'll feel differently in time, once we get away. Your eyes will open back up."

She just stood silently. Sid took her by the hand and pointed. "Look, we'll be safer sleeping up in a tree tonight." He led them both over to a huge double trunk, with plenty of branches and foliage to lie on. They climbed up and did not speak the rest of the night.

When Sid awoke, Lane was gone. He expected it, but that made it no less painful. And he knew he could not cry out or spend too much time in his tree feeling sorry for himself. The sun had not come up yet. He dropped down and skulked off into the forest, tears streaming down his face. He was being hunted. By monsters, human and not. He could feel eyes and ears all around him. This forest was a noose, and it was steadily tightening. It was only a matter of time before wild children with spears appeared all around him, flanked by horrible two-legged pigs biting and slashing, twice his size. This notion sped him up only slightly. It was one thing if they had captured her, if he had failed in protecting her. If a creature, human or not, had overcome her and tied her up and dragged her away, that would be one thing. But it was not a creature; it was the place itself. The forest, the lake, the mountain, the Snatchers, the bonfire, even the school and the Directive, all tied together, made the arms and legs of this creature. It was the world that captured her, tied her up, dragged her into submission and, ultimately, death. And that same creature was coming after him.

Ahead of him in the grey before dawn, Sid saw a light. It looked like the fist-sized firefly he'd seen the first night at the bonfire. His first thought was that it had a stinger and was going to attack him. But it just fluttered around in little circles in front of him. Strangely, every time it moved, it stirred something in his mind, random images, memories, sounds, smells. It was an eerie feeling, and he almost hit himself in the head instinctively. But after a few moments, he realized what was happening. The images were all of chasing, escaping, running. The firefly was communicating. It was trying to tell him something. He concentrated and closed his eyes. After a moment, he understood. _They are closing in on you. Run!_

Sid bolted. Faster than he'd ever run before. In his imagination, he heard whoops and hollers of the hunting party catching its prey. He heard the snarls of the Snatchers. He heard the sound of feet patting against wet leaves, of spears whooshing past his ears. He could smell the sweat pouring off the hunters' shoulders. He ran ever faster, following the dancing light. His lungs burned with the hot salty air. After what could very well have been a mile of twisting and turning, the light rose up a bit, arced down to the ground, and disappeared into what looked like the hole of a hornet's nest. It was just big enough to squeeze into, and Sid went in feet first.

He sat for a few moments in darkness, catching his breath as his eyes adjusted. It was actually the hollow where two boulders leaned against one another. The floor was rock, with a thick layer of peat, overgrown with moss and ferns. The scant light that the hole let in illuminated a colorful garden of growth surrounding a small pool of water. Beyond the pool, dozens of fireflies swarmed about through the forest of ferns. This was their tribe.

"What are you?"

The images were more cluttered this time, "louder" as if more of them were answering. A wide smile spread across his face.

"You're the Imaginings! This is your lake."

The little lights danced about in confirmation, spraying images all over his mind in what he could only comprehend as _hooray!_ It was like learning a new language, the way he had to concentrate on flailing, nonsensical sights, sounds, smells, and memories in his head.

"Are you friends of our tribe?"

This response was less cluttered, as if they had designated a speaker. But it was more complicated, because it was an explanation. _Those human children escaped your world with their own imaginings intact, the ones they were born with. And though they resisted the laws of your place, they succumb to the laws of this one. Thus, their own imagining loses its light and dies. Those are our brothers and sisters locked inside their heads, and they turn a deaf ear to our cries of pain. They are murderers by inaction. They refuse to even defend their own lives._

Sid nodded in slow understanding and agreement. The words unfolded quite unnaturally from pictures and stories, but he had seen this story all too clearly in Lane. He lowered his head.

"Is there nothing you can do to help them?"

We try. But if we get too close, a human child captures us in his head and squanders us just as he squandered his own imagining. Thus, they are our predators.

"I understand. Then why help me?"

Your imagining is the brightest and strongest we've ever met. The only ones brighter are those we see in newborn babies. It is one of great strength but willing to dim down and hide when needed. Yours is the best example of a hero we have met in this place or any other.

"Thank you. I've always known I was different. I never dreamed it would be because of something like this. It's strange to learn that others see a hero in me."

Hooray!

"One question, though. You said you see other imaginings in newborn babies. Do people grow old enough to have babies in this place? Are there other tribes, perhaps refugees, like me?"

No. The lake is the only human settlement in the Fall. And you are the only living renegade. There is nothing beyond us, only open forest filled with monsters and other imaginings.

Sid lowered his head. The loneliness of this place was overwhelming. "Then what newborn babies are you talking about?"

We travel between this world and the other freely. Except that your world is lonely to us the way ours is lonely to you. Thus, an imagining loses its brightness almost immediately upon entry, and must return quickly or it will die.

"I wish I could travel freely. I'd go back and change things. I'd start by sinking that school. Then I'd tear down that Directive they have in the town square. I'd show them how to be human again."

What makes you think you can't?

"What?"

Anyone can travel between the mirror worlds. How do you think you got here?

"They pushed me in. It was some kind of portal. They pushed me through and closed the door behind me."

No, there is no door. Only a hole through which you can jump, if you know how.

"Do you know where I can find one?"

They seemed to chuckle. _You're staring right at one._

Sid looked around. This was nothing but a hole in the ground. Rock, dirt, moss, and a little pool of water. Sid thought back to his last walk, falling into that mouthy pool of water. Could it be that simple? Had they built a portal here just as the elders had? With whatever magic and deep knowledge they shared?

"Are you telling me I could jump back to my world right now if I wanted to?"

Hooray!

"How?!"

All you have to do is make contact with your inner imagining. Look into your reflection, through your eyes and into your mind. When you see him, ask him to carry you across.

Sid looked into the pool. The face that looked back was foreign. With a sudden sense of strangeness, he realized that he had not seen his own reflection since before he left for school. The only thing that came close was the pool, and he could see now that it lied. It showed him a young, clean, perfect little boy. But he had changed. Come to think of it, there were no mirrors in the school at all. The face staring back at him was old and strong. The hair was messy, slightly sun-bleached from the few days here, strewn with twigs and leaves. The cheeks were burned. The mouth curled inward with stern absolution. The eyes were hard, intelligent, and yet glowing with a fiery passion. He looked deep into them, and behind everything, saw that flicker of life that could be nothing other than his own imagining. He smiled and ducked his head down into the water.

He expected to hit the rock at the bottom of the shallow pool, but he just kept sinking into it, past his shoulders now. His hands still steadied him against the sides of the pool and now extended fully, his entire torso underwater.

Wait! Don't go yet! We haven't told you about the -

But it was too late. He opened his eyes, and they were in dry air. And what was up and down in the water was not up and down in the air. Very eerily, gravity pulled him sideways through the air, and he lost his grip on the rock. The rest of him slurped through with a splash, and he tumbled into darkness onto a hard wooden floor. It was black as midnight, and Sid heard a stirring in front of him. As his eyes adjusted further, he realized he was on the floor in front of a bed. A figure sat up in the bed and looked toward him, fumbling off to the side. After a moment, a candle lit up the room. He was indeed on a wooden floor, having tumbled out of a freestanding oval mirror next to a dresser against a wall.

The candle illuminated the face of the figure in the bed. It was a face, not in its traditional hood, but in a night cap, folded and dangling next to its head. The expression on the face was that of utter shock. And the face itself belonged not only to an elder, but to that elder whom Sid recognized as the principal of the school!

They stared at each other for many moments in shock. The principal was certainly bewildered at the sudden and awkward return of the very boy he had pitched into a mirror world only a few days before. And Sid was even more bewildered that of all the places he could pop out in the city, he had to tumble into the principal's bedchambers.

Sid bolted for the door. The principal was right behind him. He tore out of the room and into the hallway. The angry elder unleashed some sort of a roar, undoubtedly a prearranged alarm designed to wake the others and alert them of a child escaping. Sid had never been down this hall, but at its end was a spiral staircase. He zipped up and around it, and reached a thick door latched from the inside. He pushed it open and spilled out into the freezing cold morning air of the ship's hull. Another elder, supposedly on guard, awoke, sitting in his chair and taking a moment to react. Children did not escape often. He popped up and pounced for his prey.

Sid's clothes were in tatters, bearing him fully to the horrible sting of cold in this place. He ran across the deck, air racing over him cruelly, until he reached the edge. He looked down into the dark fog, knowing full well what lay below it. His options were few and his time virtually gone. Just as the guard came upon him, he threw his arms out and leapt.

The air was a blistering oven compared to the water. His body went stiff as a board with the splash. He could _hear_ the screams and pleadings of the souls trapped down here. He could feel the hands wrapping around his wrists and ankles. He knew that he must swim fast, with great determination to defeat them. With every beat of his arms, his pulse seemed to slow. His limbs grew numb. He felt as if he were sinking, slowly and deliberately, one millimeter at a time. It was not just cold. It was a calculated cold. Like worms of different temperatures writhing below him. Little tongues of syrupy blackness lapped against his sides, each feeling like a suction cup, pulling against his flesh.

He kept going, in the dark, in the fog. He tried to gain a handle on which way he was going. He tried to remember the orientation of the ship, which side the elders' chambers were on, how many times he'd made a complete revolution in escaping, which way the ship was pointing in the first place. Soon the sun would rise. Then, even through this fog, he would find the mountain. But then they would be looking for him. His existence here violated the deepest covenant of the Directive. That an untamed child could not only escape the school, but escape banishment. They must stop him, or he would rip a hole in the fabric of their civilization.

The screams grew louder. The water around him began to jump and bubble. It started swirling slightly. The black tentacles were trying to make a whirlpool. _No!_ Sid thought. He swam against their current, arms completely numb but strong nonetheless. White breath poured from his throat as he fought the terrible forces pulling against him. The lake's aim was surely to direct him away from shore, and with this fog, it was all he could do to swim a straight line in the first place. If only he could see a shadow of beach or a flicker of starlight, he'd be able to maintain his direction. But all he had was a beating heart and beating arms. And that light inside him was struggling to stay lit. It was no more than an ember, keeping his body moving.

He closed his eyes. He didn't need them in this darkness. His skin and muscles had already sufficed to the cold. He had absolutely no senses, only a will to survive that somehow or another would not allow him to swim in circles. He paddled for what felt like a lifetime, lost in despair. He might have swum three whole laps around the lake for all he knew. But on the ten thousandth stroke of his arms, a hand came down on something hard and jagged. His eyes snapped open in realization, and he flailed with one last surge of desperate energy. Then the other hand touched rock. And his feet touched sand. Somehow, this last stretch was the hardest.

As his body pushed and struggled out of the molasses, it became heavier in naked air. He crawled ever so slowly, one handful of pebbles and sand at a time, and like a slug, birthed himself from the primordial soulless ooze of the black lake. Tentacles pulled at his ankles, but he rolled all the way up the beach, out of reach of the surf. He lay on his back as his lungs and heart slowed down. His arms curled into stiff bundles, but they served him well. Every organ in his body seemed to shut down, one by one, as he fell into the deepest sleep he had ever experienced.

* * *

Something woke him. An instinct, an invisible guardian, the sound of a twig snapping half a mile away. Something. He was nearly dead with exhaustion, but something saved his life. He stood and ran in the darkness. He heard the all too human sound of leaves rustling and whispers and animal calls that didn't quite sound like animal calls bouncing about all around him. The elders were inexperienced hunters. They were close on his trail, combing the woods with nothing but their eyes and ears, hoping desperately to stumble over him by sheer luck. Once he felt safely out of range, Sid looked for the widest tree trunk he could, knowing it would be tallest, and climbed up.

He climbed high enough that the foliage cleared a bit and the fog thinned. The land was truly beautiful, a wispy layer of fog dancing over the canopy. He saw easily what he was looking for. The grey mass of mountain was only a shadow in the fresh morning sun. He could not have been asleep more than an hour on the beach by the looks of it, although it was not the least bit warmer. There was no time to warm himself with a fire or sleep till midday. He wished he'd had the foresight to grab the principal's blanket off the bed on his way out, or to rob the guard of his cape. But all he had were his shredded pajamas from the school, or what survived of them between the mirror world and the escape back.

He made his way toward the city with haste. All he had was the faint smell of the lake and the angle of the sun's glow to guide him. He climbed two more trees before it was all over to make sure he was headed in the right direction. Hopefully the elders would abandon their hunt. It was conceivable that they assumed he'd drowned, and were only circling the beach to be certain. In that case, he was furious with himself for not covering his tracks when he woke. If they did suspect him alive, they certainly would not make that public. Sid imagined that a special company of elders would canvas the town, and only elders would ever be aware of the possible situation. They would have their watchdogs, but the majority of the town would be oblivious. That was at least one advantage Sid would have.

Somehow, he imagined prancing into town square dressed like a prince, and with one spellbinding speech, bringing the entire population to a riotous uproar to overthrow the elders' rule, tear down the Directive, and live a life of freedom and knowledge. But there was no rule. The civic circle was a group of elders that replaced cracked stones in the street and directed the building of houses and the upkeep of cemeteries. The court was one old man that heard the petty infractions mostly of children right out of school. The city ran itself. That was the beauty of it. What was there to overthrow? What was there to change? Were people just going to go out into their backyards and start cataloging the plants? Sid was certain their world needed to change, but _what_ was going to change? Here he was, shivering, dirty, wandering through the forest in rags, and when he set foot into the city, the first thing he would have to do was hide. He didn't know where to start. What could a bruised, sunburned, beaten, half-drowned, banished child do to change the world?

When he arrived at the outskirts of the city, the first thing he did was steal a blanket hanging outside a house to dry. He wrapped the wet thing about him, with the hood draped completely over his head and one side thrown over the other shoulder like a toga, completely concealing everything but his bare feet. He plucked two apples off a tree and gobbled them down. The town was just waking up, and there was only one logical place to go.

When he reached Jen's house, he knocked on the front door, and her mother answered. In his best elder voice, he issued the familiar command:

"Please, summon the one called Jen."

Her mother bowed to the dwarf elder, who in reality was an alien to this world, a thirteen-year-old boy committing yet another crime in the impersonation of an elder.

"I'm sorry, Father. She's away on honeymoon, at the Inn. You should not have any trouble finding her there, though."

"Very well," he whispered hoarsely. He nearly tripped turning around, in such shock at the notion. Jen was already married! She had just barely turned thirteen. Brides were usually six years back from school, their mothers having completely trained them in the ways of wedlock, and having settled into an occupation for the city. Fifteen was usually a starting point.

The "Inn" was really a temporary house for newlyweds waiting for the building of their own house or for an old decrepit couple to move in with their children and leave the house open for the taking. There was no need for an inn in this place, where no guests or travelers were ever to be found. He made his way in that direction, and every time he saw an elder, they watched him suspiciously. By his bare feet, they could tell he was no city dweller. They must have assumed him the rare tree-cutter or stargazer or goat-herder from out in the country on a trip into town. When he arrived at the Inn, its keeper directed him to Jen's cottage. He knocked on the door, and a few moments passed before her man pulled it open. Sid gasped.

Bas stood in the doorway looking down at the dwarfed elder with the shadowy face, hidden hands, and bare, dirty, scratched feet. Sid wanted so badly to jump out and bear hug him. And at the same time, he wanted to turn and run as far from this town as he could. If he did not have friends here, then he was lost. "Bas..." he uttered.

"Who are you?"

He regained his composure and put on his elder voice again. "I come bearing news for the one called Jen."

Bas led him inside the tiny house, and inside the kitchen, saw her facing away from him, scrubbing dishes in the water basin. She turned to look at him. They both looked so old. It had only been two years since they passed their walks, but they already looked dead. Bas came around the table to hold Jen's hand. They both faced the odd houseguest in wait.

"I come bearing a message from the one called Sid."

They looked at each other. "It's been so long," Jen said. "I was certain he would have returned by now. We assumed he'd been banished."

"He has. But before we cast out a wild one, we offer to deliver, word-for-word, a single message to a single loved one, as a token of respect."

"But I thought we were to forget he ever existed."

"After today, yes. You are to never mention his name, his message, or his existence to another so long as you live. He is to be as a dream. Not even my being here shall ever be mentioned. But for the next few minutes, it is my task to deliver his last sentiments."

They both stood nervously in wait. _Two years,_ Sid thought. He'd been forming these words for that long, night upon lonely night. As Good Jen slowly slipped into conformity, then slipped out of his world forever. He was crushed. It was murder. She became more than a friend, more than an idea. She became all of him. This was his first and last chance to tell her...

"I love you, Jen. As I have no other. You are what they have taken from me more than anything else. I wish that you had resisted them. I wish that we could fall together and live in banishment side by side forever. I wish it even more than I've wished I'd given up to live with you in the city. There we would only be shells of human beings sleeping under one roof. I am afraid of what the future brings. I do not know how to move on, how to express myself, how to accept what must be done here today. There are so many monsters roaming free in this world, and I feel like I am caught in between. I feel like the entire world is chasing after me. I don't know what's real anymore. All these things that I've done...

"And yet, one thing in this world does remain true. One single solitary notion in my brain. That you are the foundation of everything I am. My imagination, my word, my life. I see in you a vast universe of everything the world could be, and from my greatest love has sprung my greatest hate. I see in you now nothing but the hollowed out world they have created here. I see nothing but dead ashes of the once glowing fire in your eyes. I hear the exhaustion in your voice, not the flailing musical ring of exaltation. And that is the world I truly hate. Not the one my parents have borne me into, but the one that has slithered into you like a serpent and hollowed out your beauty.

"What are you, but something that could have been? You could have been a singer, your voice was so sweet. You could have been an astronomer, your mind and eye so keen. You could have been a doctor, your touch so warm and healing. But now, look at what you are. You're the keeper of a man's house. The bearer of the city's children. The mind with which you were endowed on the day of your birth shall remain stagnant and empty until death. And that I can never understand. That I can never condone. That I can never love. I do not love the creature standing before me, but I love what you were, the picture of you I carry in my mind. The picture I will always carry.

"I will carry it into the depths of the Fall. And it shall keep me warm at night. It shall give me hope in times of desperation. It shall fuel my every move and push me toward that one ultimate goal. I will escape. Bear these words strong in your mind. Sid will walk out of the Fall. One day - it may be today or tomorrow or a hundred years from now - but one day I will walk into your cottage, deliver this message to you in person, and reveal myself to you. I don't care if you recognize me, if you embrace me or cast me out, if you run screaming in fear. But mark my words, Sid will return, he will find a way back, and he will change things. Mark them well."

They both stared wide-eyed. This was no elder, they could tell that. The dwarf spread his hands, the hands of a child. His robe parted in the middle, revealing the familiar school-issued pajamas, torn to shreds. He tossed back the hood, revealing the hard, weathered face of their friend and enemy of society. The robe fell to the ground, and he stood before them brutally.

_"Aaaaaaaaaggggggggghhhhhhh."_

Jen's scream was long and loud. She collapsed to the floor, fingers clawing at her face, tears streaming from her eyes. Their front door flew open with a horrible bang, and a half dozen elders came pouring in with ropes and nets. Bas charged his friend, pinning him against the wall of his kitchen in defense of his wife. Sid flung him off and raised his arm in a punch. But before he could do anything, they were on top of him. They pulled the screeching creature off the citizens quickly, bound him, gagged him, and blindfolded him before he could so much as move a foot in escape or attack. Someone had spotted him along the way. Someone had followed him, waiting for some proof that he was no elder from the countryside. Someone had gathered a crew and peeked in the windows, waiting for his move. It was all over. They dragged his limp body over their shoulders, back to where he belonged. Bas cradled the terrified, wailing Jen, as the guards filed out.

* * *

"You have failed, wild one."

It was very late in the afternoon. They had brought him back over the mountain, back across the lake, back up to the school, back to the very room they had cast him out in before. He stood before the plank overhanging the basin of water. He was not afraid of it this time. He stood with no blindfold, no gag, only his hands and feet bound, before the tribunal, led by the principal he had woken with a startle many hours ago.

"In your cleverness, you found the one connection between our worlds. You found the one door we left open generations ago, when we made the world. That's why it was kept in the master's bedchambers, to safeguard it against infiltrators, and to catch any that might stumble upon it. In your cleverness, you managed to get as far as the hull, and the black lake was kind to you in your pitiful struggle. But your cleverness ran out. The kindness of this world is over for you. The master's mirror has been shattered. No more can any creature ever return from the Fall. Did you really think you could break back into our world and sway the minds of the schooled?

"The city is perfect, our laws all self-contained. There are no whips, no chains, no swords and shields. Only the temple by which men live in perfect everlasting harmony. There is no need for creativity when everything has already been created. No need for innovation when everything is already built. There is no place for imagination in a perfect world. No more purpose in genius and change. Change can only be a negative in a utopia. The school is a device for maintaining that utopia, weeding out changers. All civilizations rise and fall, because when they reach their peak, there are still those that want to change things, those like you. And so in changing perfection they tear it down to rubble. But not ours. You are a hiccup in the goings of this world. We are perfect and will be forever, because we know how to control agents like you, the natural disease of this place, the cancer of a utopia. We can't kill it at birth, but we can boil it out of you, and if you resist, we can make you disappear.

"You are hereby sentenced to be cast into the Fall of Imaginings, where you will live out the rest of your days in whatever torment it finds fit to treat you." The principal cocked his head to a guard behind Sid. "Carry on."

Sid knew what was behind him. Without even looking, he knew the guard was advancing slowly with a knife in hand. This whole soliloquy was only for show. Wolves howling just to hear themselves howl. If they were going to kill him, they could have poisoned his breakfast or weighted his feet and tossed him overboard. But no. These predators had to drag their catch back to the lair, savor every last second. The knife came, but Sid spun in the opposite direction, leapt out to the edge of the plank, and bounced into the basin of water underneath. Every elder in the room screeched in panic and charged him. The one with the knife jumped in the water after him. But it was too late. He was already gone. Already a part of the mirror world.

Sid struggled against his lashings, pulling at them and flailing about wildly underwater. But this time he knew what to do. Before hitting the water, he'd filled his lungs with air. Once the bubbles cleared, his body bobbed to the surface, and he took deep breaths, slowly and deliberately working at the same knot they'd used last time. When he finally released it, he reached down underwater to untie his feet as well. But he didn't cast them away. Looking around, he'd come out at the exact same spot in the lake as last time. The sun was low in the sky, but it was not quite dusk yet. He still had time. On the beach was the same blond-haired boy. With each length of rope, he fashioned a slipknot and tied them together tightly.

Sid swam slowly to shore, floating like a half-dead castaway drained of all hope. When he reached the beach, he kept his head down, hair concealing his face. He got halfway out of the water and lay there like a beached whale, breathing heavily and crying a bit. _It's all over,_ he thought. _There's only one thing left to do._

"The end," he whispered to himself.

The boy approached him, crouching down over him, leaning on his spear. He extended his hand graciously. "It's okay, you're safe now. My name is Lee."

Sid grabbed his hand tightly, throwing the loop of his slipknot around the boy's arm and pulling tight. With his other hand, he seized the spear. It was an easy maneuver, taking Lee by utter surprise and leaving him sprawled out on his back in the shallow water. Sid popped up and stood over him, the other end of the slipknot tight around his own wrist, binding the two of them together, and pointed the spear at Lee's face.

"We've met," Sid replied curtly.

"How did you -"

"Let's go." He jerked the boy up to his feet and started up the path to the village.

"What's happening?" Lee asked, timid as a mouse.

"Things are changing."

"What do you mean?"

"Let me ask you a question, Lee. If I told you that I found a way back into the city, would you believe me?"

Lee thought about that for a long time. Sid was no fool. He'd figured it out, the whole riddle of this place. All they had to do was make contact, physical contact with their inner imaginings, through a reflection in a mirror or in a pool of water, and they could shift in and out of the mirror worlds. That's why the elders planned to execute him. They couldn't toss him back into the Fall. He'd just escape again. It didn't matter if the master's mirror had been shattered or not. That was not the only portal. There were portals everywhere. The Snatchers, the village, the hunts - these were just another way to kill their imaginings. Elders throwing bones to their grotesque dogs. When the school failed to tame them, the brutal nature in this world finished the job.

Every so often someone like Sid figured everything out. They mirror-shifted and popped out of the closest mirror in the other world. So the elders could keep a tight leash on the situation, it was kept in the principal's bedchamber. They could capture and kill any that discovered this trick, and the secret could stay a secret forever. That's why there were no mirrors in the rest of the school. That's why the tribunal was a farce, to discourage him from fighting back. They didn't shatter the master's mirror. They needed it.

As soon as he'd set foot into Bas and Jen's cottage, he knew there would be no victory. He could see it in their eyes. They were empty already. There was nothing left in them. Fresh out of school and they were as desperate and hopeless as his parents. He could either skulk out of there and wander around the city, or he could say what he realized he had truly come to say. Either way, he would be caught. Either way, there would be no "changing things." Not without a voice. Not without an army. He alone could not change the course of the world. The true challenge was to sway the minds of those who could help him. Win the hearts of the people, and the world will change itself.

"They won't believe you."

"Maybe not."

"Then why sentence yourself to death?"

"Death? You just don't get it, do you? Death is living your life in fear, in servitude, in despair with no hope or future or dream. Death is being so detached from any sense of self-importance that you live the rest of your life doing absolutely nothing. You're confusing death with self-sacrifice. You see, I'm going to walk into the village and tell my story, and either they'll tear me apart and feed me to the pigs, or they'll follow me back to the city and change things. That's not death, that's conviction. I know that this is the one thing I must do to build a world worth living in. If doing so I risk my life, so be it. The stakes have to be that high to make it worth our while. Anything worth living for is worth dying for. I'd rather try and fail and die, than live out a life of emptiness and despair."

"You're very young, and you don't understand the way things are. Nothing ever gets better. I wish I'd have let go. I wish I'd have let them tame me. I would be a blacksmith right now. I might be married soon. I would raise two sons, and then when I became old, I would be a teacher in the school. I used to hate that life, that picture. But now, it seems so perfect."

"I'll make you a blacksmith yet. But you'll have to fight for it."

"Fight? I'm done fighting. And so are they."

"We'll see."

They reached the foot of the mountain. All the children gathered around like ants for this surprising spectacle. The renegade, the bane, returning to camp with one of their most experienced hunters held hostage at spear point. Every one of them seemed ready to throttle him. Random shouts and curses gave way to an entire mob of shouting. The sun was getting low in the sky. Sid saw Lane at the crest of the settlement, strung up against a tree. _So the piggies were still on their way,_ Sid thought. He was just in time.

Cole stepped forward from the crowd, spear in hand, and silenced them. "And so the fool returns." The entire crowd laughed. "Let my lieutenant go, or we'll tear your arms off before having you fed to the Snatchers." The crowd exalted in consent.

"I am no fool. And my arms are mine to keep. I did not come here to be butchered or ridiculed. I came here to share something with all of you."

"You came here," Cole answered, "to save your girlfriend." He pointed up at Lane. "In all your cleverness, you have some story prepared to get you close to us and close to her, and somehow you have it that the two of you will escape."

"No, Lane is just as lost as you. This place kills the spirit faster than the school. No, I'm here to tell everyone, if only they'll listen, that I've found a way back to the city!"

There were loud murmurs of disbelief through the crowd. Cole's smile disappeared. His glare was cold and stern. "Ridiculous."

"We got in, didn't we? Well, there's a way out. And it's very, very close by." He had their attention. "None of you have to die. No more Snatchers. No more elders. I have a way out of everything. But you have to follow me. You have to trust me. Because there's no going back."

"You broke the Snatchers' law. Now they want five of us. They're coming right now. They'll take me. They'll take you and your girlfriend. And they'll take two others. If we concede, that's all they take. Everyone else lives."

"For how long? Until they get hungry again? Until another child falls into this world and they feel justified in evening that out? How is it we all fought so hard against the school, and yet we lay down to these monsters so readily? Everyone here sacrificed everything. Their family, their occupation, their destiny, their sanity, to hold on to that one flame of reason and dignity. After everything we've been through, we're ready to prance around here as pig fodder because the oldest child says so? You've all got some sort of tropical fever crept under your skin. I'm here to tell you that there's a way out. A way back to your life, to your family, to your occupations, to your destiny. Without giving up your imaginings, your dignity. And if I'm lying, at least follow me and let me prove it to you. What have you got to lose? Tomorrow's catch?

"I'm telling you that I have brought with me a plan. The means of getting back to the city. It's going to be dangerous. But we're all going back to the human world, we're going to storm the school, flood it, sink it, free every child, and throw every elder overboard. After we do that, we're going to march back into town, tear down the Directive, and return to our families. After that, we can do whatever we want. It's our world. We can make of it what we want.

"Now, I'm either absurd, or I'm right. Give me the chance to prove it to you. If I'm wrong, feed me to the pigs, I don't care. If I'm right, we all have a chance to start over."

Cole took his spear and hurled it right at Sid. He ducked and it glanced against the side of his arm, knocking Sid's own spear out of his hand. "Enough!" the chief cried. "You're trying to play us! You think us all fools!" He grabbed another spear and stormed toward Sid. Lee freed himself and picked up Sid's weapon.

Cole hefted his second spear in the air, and Lee swung his like a bat and knocked Cole to the ground. He held him at spear point and leaned down. "I'm willing to hear what he has to say."

The rest of the village crowded together behind him, forming a wall between Cole and Sid, still clutching his bleeding arm.

"Are you insane? He's out of his mind!"

"No, you're insane. We've been sentenced here to death, and someone comes along telling you there's a way out. Even if it's a total madman, it's worth a shot." Lee turned to another boy behind him. "Bring the girl here."

Cole scrambled to his feet, his whole tribe turned against him. "You're all idiots! Listening to this fool, fresh out of school, who killed two Snatchers and then ran away like a coward, leaving one of you to take his place as a sacrifice! I hope they string you all up and roast you for dinner tonight!"

The sound of drums thundered on the other side of the mountain. It was so loud, they all crouched down instinctively. Lane and the boy barreled down the hill screaming, "Run! Run! They're here! _All of them!_ "

Everyone turned and ran down the path. But Cole turned and strutted up the hill to meet them. When the other boy passed him, he knocked him out with an elbow, took Lane by the arm tightly, and dragged her with him. Sid saw this and got to his feet, taking a spear.

Lee grabbed Sid by the arm. "There's no time, forget about them!"

"No!" He shook free of Lee's grip.

"Come on!"

Sid pushed him to the ground. "Go to the lake. I'll be right there."

With that, he ran up the hill after Lane. At the crest of it, against the dusky sky, they could see the first dozen snatchers silhouetted on the hilltop. Sid caught up to Cole and went to skewer him, but he turned and grabbed the stick, pulling it away. Sid throttled him, sprawling him against the ground. He lost his hold on Lane, and she tumbled away.

"Run!" Sid called to her. She did.

Cole smacked him on the side of his head with the stick, but Sid grabbed a hold of it and tried to wrestle it from his hands. "You just don't give up, do you?"

Sid freed the spear and pushed it against Cole's neck. "Never." He stood and kicked Cole hard across the face. He brought his stake high, ready to sink it into his enemy. But then he angled it up the hill and threw it with all his might at the line of monsters. It sailed squarely through one piggie's chest, who fell forward comically. The drums stopped as they all looked at their fallen comrade. They had never seen battle before. Not from their food. They all screeched as loud as they could.

Sid turned and ran, and they all came storming down the mountain. Sid raced, with long strides and strong thrusts of his legs. Running felt so familiar by now, after everything he'd gone through. It didn't occur to him that he might have done something stupid. He sprinted down the path and reached the lake, having put some distance behind him. When he reached the lake, Lee was frantic, and the Snatchers were only seconds away.

"Listen to me very carefully. Look into the water. Look into your reflection. Look deep into your eyes. Find that flare of life, that imagining deep inside you, the one you fought to keep in the school. Look right at it, think of home, and dive in. Wherever you pop out, be prepared to fight and run. We meet at the foot of the mountain." There was a half a second of silence as they comprehended this. The Snatchers cleared the trees and spread out over the beach. " _Gooooooooooo!!!!!!"_

* * *

Sid tumbled out of some bathroom mirror, landing on the floor in a stranger's house. He ran through the bedroom, opened a window, and disappeared just as he heard the fearful gasp of a woman in the bed. _It worked,_ he thought. With so many children mirror-shifting at once, he was sure they would pop out at random. One of them, certainly, was scrambling to their feet in the principal's bedchambers, through his _unbroken_ mirror, and he only hoped they could get back to save them in time.

He made his way out into the cobblestone streets and jogged toward the path to the mountain. He hoped everyone had made it out. Running down the street, he saw a half dozen candles light up behind windows, heard furniture overturned and faint yells of fright and surprise, and knew his comrades had made it. He called to two others who had tumbled onto the street, motioning for them to follow.

"I don't believe it!" one cried. "We're home!"

"Shhhh!" Sid warned. "We're not home yet. Follow me."

He led them to the market and broke the window to the little store that sold farm equipment. He grabbed three huge burlap sacks of fertilizer, six axes, two knives, rope, oil, and matches, tossing everything feverishly to his partners, loading them and himself down like mules.

"Hurry." Sid knew that it was just past nightfall, that not everyone was asleep, that word would spread quickly of strange children running around town, and then the elders would be on their guard. They converged on other children on the way out of town, all excited. They tossed the axes to one boy, the rope and matches to another girl. The fertilizer they double-teamed. When each one came upon the main group, it was interesting to see their reactions, their facial expressions, at seeing the supplies. First puzzlement, then realization, then shock. Finally a long silence of incredulity. Lee came upon them.

"Are we really going to..." he couldn't finish.

"Yes," Sid replied with all the conviction and certainty in the world. The party ran all the way to the foot of the mountain and down to the beach. He ordered them to hide in the brush, and found Lee. He threw off his shirt and stuck a knife in his belt.

"You ready?" he asked, walking toward the water, the very spot where they took him away five years ago.

"For what?"

"We need a boat."

Lee looked incredulous. "You don't mean to swim, do you?"

"I've done it before. I just don't know if I can do it alone. Come on."

Lee waded in after him.

"Just keep paddling. No matter what, don't stop."

They started off toward the ship. "It's cold," Lee whispered painfully.

"You'll be okay, just keep moving." He felt his arms and legs numbing, his breath going cold.

"I can't feel my arms."

"You don't have to, just keep paddling. You'll be okay." He could feel the little tentacles clawing at him. He felt the familiar wormy bands of cold and colder beneath him, felt the water writhing with lust for a fresh meal.

"I'm sinking! Sid, help!"

Sid looked. "You're not sinking, you're just slowing down. Keep paddling! We're almost there."

The boat was tied off at the foot of the ship, but they kept the ladder pulled up on deck. They would have to go quietly. No more snoozing guards. Not tonight.

"Sid, please..."

Sid rolled over on his back and took hold of his friend. Somehow, with Lee in tow, he wasn't quite as cold. Not quite so weak. With every stroke, he fought for two lives instead of one, and somehow he felt twice as strong.

"Be strong, Lee. Keep paddling. We'll make a blacksmith out of you yet. But I need your help right now." He flapped his arms back and forth uselessly.

They came upon the boat. Sid clambered aboard and dragged Lee behind him. "We made it," he whispered. He cut the rope tying it off, and quietly dipped the oar into the water. Lee laid against the stern, regaining his strength, working up the courage to face the coming task. When they slid up against the beach, the whole tribe had gathered, minus a few stragglers. Sid was ecstatic to see Lane, not just alive and well, but hungry. She had completely lost the hopelessness of yesterday's events, and the light in her eyes was bright as ever.

"Listen to me," Sid started. "No one sets foot on this boat that isn't ready to die. They won't cast us back out. They'll kill us. If you want to live, run along and find a living. We're not doing this to save ourselves; we're doing this to save everything worth living for."

They loaded the supplies onboard and squeezed as many passengers as would fit on the small vessel. Lane tied thick knots every foot or so in one of their ropes. When they reached the ship, they came up under the bow, where there was something to lasso. Lane threw her rope over the mast, tied a slipknot at the bottom, and pulled it tight. Sid was the first up the ladder. They would have to take out every guard on the deck without making a sound. Sid saw none at the bow, and the cabin in which they bathed the newcomers hid them from the rest of the deck, so he motioned for everyone to follow. While he waited, he peeked around the wall. They had two guards at each entrance, one in the front leading to the elders' chambers, one in the rear leading to the children's atrium. So they needed to not only take all four out, but all at the same instant.

Sid whispered and signed a plan, and they all nodded. He and five others crouched down behind the cabin in wait, while everyone else climbed back down to the boat. He waited several minutes to give them time to climb up at the stern. The fog and the darkness were so thick they could not see each other, but when he heard the faint gull caw, they got into position, three on each side. After a few moments, the second caw sprang them into action. Sid raced around the cabin, and before his target could realize what was happening, Sid leapt up and stuffed a rag in his mouth, squeezing tight. Sid's second man hurtled himself against the back of the elder's knees, knocking the both of them on their backs. A third one, a girl, sat on top of the elder and tied his hands together. The second one tied his feet. When they had both done their part, they secured a rope around his head, locking the gag in place. The elder writhed about helplessly and silently on the deck.

All four fell at once, with no more sound than a bit of moaning from behind the rags. They dragged them all into the cabin, tied them together, and left one boy with a knife there to guard them. The deck belonged to them. They took a few minutes to lift their supplies on deck quietly, and barricade the door to the elders' chambers. Then, ever so delicately, they snuck down the stairwell into the children's atrium. Four stayed on deck to guard the doors, one took the boat back to shore to bring reinforcements, and the rest tiptoed through the honeycomb to the door opposite the atrium and quietly barricaded it shut as well. Once the ship was secured, it was time to go to work. They owned it, and they could do whatever they wanted.

Sid stood in the very center with six others, each holding axes. He poured a circle of oil on the floor around them and lit it with a match. It did a fair job of lighting their stage, but more importantly, gave them a sinister look of utmost seriousness.

"Everybody wake up! Wake up! Wake up!" he called. They clanged their axes together and whooped and hollered like they were returning from a hunt. In just a few moments, they saw hundreds of pairs of eyes gleaming from each comb, and a general murmur arose as the pupils of the school woke to this bizarre and frightening sight. "My name is Sid. My friends and I have just recently returned from the Fall of Imaginings." There was some serious murmur of disbelief at that. "You look shocked. You should be. The Fall is a horrible place, filled, just as the legends say, with monsters and demons. And after a thousand generations, we are the ones that have found a way to escape it. We are the untamed, the ones they could not control. And we are back with vengeful hearts.

"But do not fear us. We are not here to harm anyone, not even the elders that banished us. We are here to end an institution. We are here to change the way people conduct their lives and families. We are here to sink the school. I know what you're thinking, and yes, it is a little hard to believe. You may not even believe it's the right thing to do. But I promise it's the only thing to do. If you wish to sink along with it, feel free to do so. Just go back to sleep and let the black lake claim you. But if you wish to escape, do so now. Run up to the deck, jump overboard, and swim home. I promise you the lake will not kill you as legend says. I've swum it myself to get here tonight. No more classes. No more Directive. School's out. Forevermore."

There was some angry murmur and shouting and throwing, but the rebels walked confidently - with axes. They walked over to one side and picked out three combs several yards apart, forming a large triangle. The hull was angled almost at a perfect diagonal. Two children crawled into each comb with axes, and they started hacking away. Two more guarded each entrance, along with a bag of fertilizer, oil, and matches.

The children filed out of their combs and formed a giant circle around them. Some yelled in anger and protest. Others in confirmation and enthusiasm. Most just stared wide-eyed, jaw-dropped, and incredulous, watching these tall, burly, older teens chopping away at their home away from home. They were several years older on average and had the experience of hunting and dancing wildly every day, so were naturally stronger, with more conviction and intimidation. Some children took their word and bolted for the stairwell to hop overboard.

There was pounding on the barricaded door. The elders were awake, but it was too late. Even if they did get out, there was enough of a frenzy going already that they wouldn't even get close to their work. Sid walked from one comb to the other, watching progress. It took them a good hour to do their work properly. They were not trying to cut holes with the axes alone, only to create weak spots, carving out thin patches of wood that could easily be punched through by the pressure of the water underneath. Once the comb started leaking and spraying sticky black water at the carpenters, they stopped. It had to be synchronized, or their stage would flood before they could finish their work, and thus flood too slowly to do the job.

In each comb, they dropped a bag of fertilizer at its weakest spot. They commanded everyone to stay far back, to run for the exits before it was too late. But of course, most only backed a few feet away, anxious and excited for the spectacle of a lifetime. Over each comb, one child stuffed a rag in a glass bottle of oil and lit the fuse. Sid called, "Ready, set, go," and each threw the bottle as hard as possible at the fertilizer and ran. The bottles shattered against their targets, and the entire atrium lit up from the three orange bonfires. They didn't blow like bombs, though. They fizzled and popped loudly, like fireworks. It was horrifying. Only then did they flee in panic.

It was deafening. Smoke poured out, stinking colorful smoke, so thick it blocked out the light of the fire from which it came. They could feel the enormous heat billowing off the combs as they all ran to the exits. The fires seemed to climax, and within a few seconds of each other, the three holes blew. It was not the fire that blew, but the water. The heat had finally weakened the hole enough for the lake to punch through with the force of a canon, sending the flaming bag of fertilizer like a bullet several yards into the air. It arced magnificently and sprayed against the floor in a bright red flame, before being snuffed out by the water that pushed it there.

The water level rose quickly, faster than any of the bystanders expected, but slow enough that there was plenty of time to make it to the stairwell. They poured out onto the deck by the dozens. When Sid squeezed out, the deck was already leaning a bit from the tilt of the sinking ship. They blew it on the side facing the mountain, so that the children would jump into the lake in the right direction to make it home. Sid took an axe and released the door containing the elders. They poured out just as frantically as everyone else. They knew what was happening. But unlike the children, they did not jump overboard. Sid smiled and waved at them, then soared through the air into the lake.

There were so many bodies in the water it looked alive. Hundreds of hands rose up and down in little white splashes against the blackness. None could swim without bumping into five other people beside them. Most were screaming indignantly at the cold and the initial fear of the legend that the lake would claim them. But Sid made it several minutes before he even felt the hopelessness he did the first time. Perhaps with so many bodies, the souls under its surface did not concentrate on any one, and so the journey was less treacherous. He hoped so. He did not want to cause the death of a single child in this daring endeavor.

The elders, on the other hand, he knew would not jump. They would stay onboard as long as possible, clinging to a mast or plank of wood even after the ship went completely under. Sid hadn't killed anybody. He had even released the four tied up in the cabin. But the elders, with no imaginings, no spark of life, no semblance of will or tenacity, could never survive the lake. They were the ones it really fed on. Those were the easiest to drain, because they were empty already. Sid fully expected that not a single one of them would reach the shore alive. But that was between them and their lake, the one they chose to live on. Sid had no hand in that contract. The children all struggled across the water to safety.

The beach was horrible. As soon as they reached it, they were exhausted, so they lay still instinctively, until of course four more people toppled over them, sending them into a panic. So the beach was a thick conglomerate of children swimming in a sea of other children, trying to keep their head above, not water, but flesh. They crawled over each other and ran for safety as soon as they could, the ones farthest out helping to pull others to safety as well.

The sound emanating from the center of the lake was horrible. They heard the spray of air releasing from chambers in the ship as it sank. They heard the screech of elders either drowning in the lake or dreading their impending doom. They heard the structural groan and snaps of large pieces of wood being wrenched apart by enormous pressures. And they also heard a faint effervescent glow of sound coming from the lake, a satisfying sigh of victory at its biggest catch yet. When everyone finally made it to shore, not a word was spoken. They just formed ranks along the beach, absorbing the sights and sounds of the dying school.

But then, silence. Only heartbeats, breathing, and whispering. They made their way robotically up the path toward the mountain. The banished from the Fall, the older ones, made their way to the front, discussing plans, hatching ideas, talking excitedly about what they had done and what they were going to do. They too were less than a day into the notion that they were completely and utterly free. Sid's vision had unfolded before them in a dramatic vindication. For Sid though, this was only the beginning. He felt the same now as he did the first time he swam from the school, sneaking home. It was a cold unwelcoming home, even a hostile one. He didn't know where to start. But he would have help this time. He looked behind him at the hundreds of faces snaking up the path. Yes, he would have help.

Actually, he did know where to start. Sinking the school was just a first step. Ripping the stone Directive from its roots was a logical second. After that, perhaps a third would form itself. They reached the clearing at the foot of the mountain, and Sid stopped, letting everyone catch up to rest for a few moments. Sid climbed up on a rock where all could see him and hear him.

"I know you're all as shaken as I am at what has just happened. _But we've won_. We've proven to ourselves and to any that oppose us that we have a great power. And within us, great potential. Listen to me! There is no Fall. There is no school. And before sunrise, there will be _no Directive!_ We'll march right into the town square with rope and shovels, and dig it out and rip it down before anyone even wakes up. We'll drag it and toss it in the lake with the rest of our past, or we'll melt it down to nothing, or we'll rip it apart with our bare hands. We'll write our own. Listen to me, because the sun is going to rise on a new world in a few hours.

"No Fall, no School, no Directive. A new world. An unpaved path. And we are the ones to pave it. We are builders, and it is up to us to build a new world in place of our old. Our families will object, our elders will resist, but we are the future, not them. We dictate the way things are going to be. It is our responsibility to build a world brighter than ever before. Brighter than any of our families could imagine. We are the Imaginers. It is not going to be easy. We are not out of the woods yet. We are just coming to be. But we are coming strong."

He saw Lane's face in the crowd, and she smiled wide.

"Let's change things. Let's make things better."

# What Dreams Are Made Of

"Mommy, why is the sky blue?"

She leaned down to answer. "God made the sky blue for the same reason He made your eyes blue: it's the prettiest color in the whole wide world."

Little Hale thought about this. "Daddy said it was because all colors are different types of light. Blue is the shortest so it carries the sun's light farthest."

Sarah smiled a bit. You couldn't fool Hale anymore. He was old enough now to realize there was an absolute truth, above Father and above Mother. If the two differed on anything, he knew that this truth was somewhere out in the world, ready to be sought. Alan didn't mind, but it irked his wife out of her mind to have their son developing a habit of second-guessing his parents. Any question he had about the world, he posed it to each, cross-examining their answers.

"Your father sees things a little differently."

That seemed to suit him, for the time being at least. He shrugged and skipped off. Later today, he would ask her what clouds were made of. Before she could answer, "The same thing that dreams are made of," she would catch herself and answer instead, "Ask your father."

She was growing accustomed to answering "I don't know" to questions she didn't know or couldn't explain properly. She missed the old days of "fairy lies," as Alan put it. Her husband, on the other hand, loved it. Though an engineer by trade, he was also a writer. He loved being able to take a new, fresh mind and infuse it with his wealth of practical knowledge of the world around them. And he could do it in a way poetic enough that an adult could appreciate something long taken for granted. Or simple enough that, literally, a child could understand.

When he came home that day, he could barely take his coat off before Hale charged him, not with a hug, like the old days, but a question. Alan looked forward to it after a long day at work. He had taken to calling them, "mental hugs."

"Daddy, what are clouds made of?"

Alan gave an affectionate smirk to his wife. She leaned against the doorjamb to the dining room, and returned it.

"Let's see... what are clouds made of?" he echoed, retiring his coat and briefcase for the day. "I can show you easier than I can tell you." He knelt down and hugged his son, then took him by the hand and led him into the kitchen, kissing Sarah on his way past. "Would you like me to take you inside one?"

His eyes lit up. "Really?"

"If you want to."

"No fairy lies?"

Sarah rolled her eyes, and Alan chuckled. "No fairy lies. Tomorrow morning, I'll take you for a walk inside a cloud. But you have to promise me to go right to bed after dinner and fall straight to sleep. Promise?"

He nodded furiously, stuck out his hand, and shook on it.

"Okay, then. Let's eat."

* * *

Alan stood over the sink, washing the dishes. They had a dishwasher but, for some reason, never used it. Alan had hand-washed his parents' dishes since he was Hale's age, and had never owned a dishwasher as a kid living on his own. Now, in their first house, he saw no reason to change his ways. Sarah cooked, he cleaned. It was a simple enough marital arrangement. At the first of every year, his resolution was to learn how to cook more than just tuna, spaghetti, and toast. They would switch roles for a few weeks and the dishwasher would get some wear. By Valentine's though, it was business as usual, and they ate good meals again the rest of the year.

When he had done his chore, he tiptoed into the living room where the beautiful young mother dozed. He sat on the edge of the cushion, leaned down and kissed her forehead. Then he loosened his tie and unfastened his shoes. She stirred, turned onto her side facing him, and propped up on an elbow.

"How was your day?"

"Not too good." He stuffed his socks inside his shoes. "We're down to only two weeks' backlog. Won't be long before I'll have to start sending workers home for the day." He pulled the tie completely off, folded it neatly, and slid it in his breast pocket. "With the economy the way it is, you know, the manufacturing industry is usually hit the hardest and soonest." He opened the first three buttons of his shirt. "Jobs are slow to come, and even the ones that do come through, they can't get credit from the banks to fund the deal." He unbuckled his belt. "I need more salesmen."

Sarah pulled herself up and wrapped her arms around his torso, still lying behind him, front pressed against his back. "The industry's always had its ups and downs. Comes with the turf - running your own business and all. But I know you'd never let Hale and I want for anything. I trust you to take care of us through anything."

"I know. Hell or high water."

"I could always go back to teaching."

He leaned forward a bit, thinking. "I don't think it'll reach that pitch." Sarah hopped up and swung a leg around, straddling him from behind like a piggyback, resting her chin on his shoulder. "We've got plenty saved. But we'll be feeling the pinch these next few months - that's for sure." She pulled at his shirt, untucking it and reaching his bare chest beneath. She kissed the sides of his neck.

She stopped. "Do you still want to fly next week?"

"Absolutely. It's his birthday. He's so fascinated with flying; I want him to know what it means."

She unbuttoned her blouse and pressed against his back. Her foot ran up and down his calf. "Are you sure he's ready for it?"

"I think so." He turned and looked into his wife's eyes. "He's got to face his fears sometime." He leaned in for a long kiss after a long day. He pulled away and smiled. "Marry me."

She scrunched up her nose playfully. "Again?"

He turned completely around and picked her up by the rump, as he would carry a toddler to bed. "Again, and again, and again..." She wrapped her arms tight about his shoulders under the shirt, kissing close-mouthed as he chanted, carrying her to bed, "Again, and again, and again..."

* * *

Alan shook the boy's sleeping shoulder. He groaned a bit but didn't move.

"Hale, wake up."

It was before sunrise, long before the child was accustomed to getting up.

"Hale, don't you want to walk inside a cloud?"

He peeled his eyes open in groggy wonderment. "Now?"

"Oh, yes. They only come down at night, when it's dark and cold and lonely. Then they go back up to the sky when all the people come out."

Hale overcame great reluctance and rolled out of bed. He yawned and rubbed his eyes and trudged forward, like a robot very slowly powering up. Alan was always impressed by the initiative and self-control his son displayed at such a young age.

He left his son in his pajamas but put him in small galoshes. Alan had thrown on his sweats for the morning jog. But this would be better today. They stepped out the front door, hand in hand, headed out to the street, and walked down its center.

"I thought you weren't supposed to walk in the middle of the road, Daddy."

"Oh, it's okay at this hour. Everyone's asleep. No cars. See?" he turned around and swept his arms back.

It was a cold wet dark morning, just before five. The eastern half of the sky glowed just the faintest shade of blue against the blackness as the sun made its trip across the Atlantic. Fog swirled around them, blurring the streetlamps into soft balls of light. They could see their breath. The immense silence was pressing. As usual this time of morning, there was not a single sound - no crickets, no wind, no cars or footfalls. Nothing.

"Daddy, where are the clouds?" He didn't let it show, but Alan knew he was grumpy this morning, having been stirred prematurely.

"You'll see."

They walked hand in hand for many minutes. Alan walked slowly, Hale shuffling at half the stride. At the back of the neighborhood, the sidewalk snaked off through the trees, over a wide creek, and across a meadow. On the bridge crossing the water, the fog was always thickest. They came upon it now.

"Shh..." Alan hissed, and pointed at the bridge. His tired, grumpy boy snapped back to life. Leaning down to his ear, he whispered, "It's hiding - over there - near the water. Come on."

Hale shuffled along quietly, darting his eyes about, looking for a small, white, marshmallowy creature hiding in the fog. They got halfway across the bridge and stopped. It was perfect. You could barely see one side of the bridge from the other. The slug of cloud bellied up over the water and twisted and kissed the ground and the rail with dew.

"Where is it?" he hissed.

"We're inside it right now." Hale looked around. "We've been walking through it all the way from the house. It's even sitting on our house right now. This is only the heart of it. It's always thicker over cold water. Here - reach out and touch it."

He did so. Now he understood, in awe. "It's wet."

Alan laughed. "It's just water. No different than what you drink at home, what you take a bath in."

"Why is it all misty?"

"It's only in another _phase_. P-H-A-S-E. There's mist, water, and ice. Any one of them can turn into another one. What happens when you fill the ice cube tray with water and put it in the freezer?"

"It makes ice cubes."

"That's right. And what happens when you leave the ice cubes in your drink too long?"

"They melt."

"See? That's how water turns to ice, and ice turns to water. When you boil water, what happens?"

"It bubbles and gets hot and steam comes out."

"The bubbles are little bits of steam trying to get out. And the steam - that's mist. Watch this..."

Alan swept his hand across the rail and water dripped off. "When the mist touches something cold, it _condenses._ C-O-N-D-E-N-S-E." Hale watched the little rivulets of water trickle down the rail. His father knelt down and showed him his wet hand. "And all the oceans and rivers and lakes _evaporate_ (E-V-A-P-O-R-A-T-E), little pieces of mist floating from the top of the water on up into the sky. All this mist gathers way up high, higher than you can jump, higher than the trees grow, higher than your kite flies. The wind blows it around, and we look up and see clouds." He rested his hands on Hale's shoulders to keep his mind from reeling. "And when a cloud gets fat and heavy, they get gray and start to thunder and turn to...?"

His eyes illuminated. "Rain?"

"And when it's very, very cold out, like last week...?"

"Snow."

"Very good. And at night time, it gets cold and the clouds get tired from all that flying. They come down to the ground to sleep, and daddies run in them and cars drive in them, and they make...?" He swept his arm out.

"Fog!"

Alan rose triumphantly with a smile. His kid was smart, one of the brightest, and he loved feeding him. "Let's keep walking."

Hale jumped up and down with excitement, wrapping his mind around the enormity of it all. They continued down the path, dissecting a whole range of chemical and meteorological phenomena in childlike terms. His son would not be going back to sleep this morning before school. But he would crash the second he came home.

On their way back, they passed a few joggers along the path, all stopping to say hello to the soon to be six-year-old in pajamas and galoshes out for his morning cardio. Alan waved as Ed Parsons approached. He was an older man, perhaps in his late fifties, with thick silvery gray hair. He stopped in front of them and doubled over with healthy exhaustion.

"Good morning, young man," he greeted Hale. "Out for a jog with Dad, I see?"

Alan answered, "Just walking."

"We walked through a cloud!" the young man chirped.

"Is that right?" the old man asked encouragingly, not quite getting it. He blew a big puff of air and sighed. "Man, I think my wife's trying to kill me. Ever since we found out about my cholesterol, she's not letting up on this exercise regimen. Feels like boot camp all over again."

Alan faked a chuckle.

"Every morning she says, 'Eddie, the door stays locked until every inch of that sweater is soaked.'" He was making pretty good progress so far, a wide "V" of sweat traced from shoulders to navel. "She says, 'If I've got to have an old geezer of a husband, I at least want a healthy geezer.'" He let out a good belly laugh for effect.

Alan smiled to himself. Sarah would have to tie him to the bed to keep him from his morning jog. He'd done some kind of routine every morning since twenty.

"So how are you, Ed?" he asked cordially.

"Oh, man, this economy is the shits - excuse me," he corrected, "the pits." Hale knew the word anyway - his dad had explained cursing a long time ago, in one of their "mental hugs." "Coworkers I've known for years being laid off. 401k dwindling down to nothing. Kids' tuition going up every - darn - semester. Medical bills. Would you believe I'm up to twelve pills a day now? It's a good thing I've got twenty years' seniority at work. If I lost my job at this stage of the game, I don't know what I'd do. Well, you must know, owning your own business and all. I'll bet you're hurting right now, no?"

"Naturally," he shrugged. "Tide's just out right now. It always comes back in."

"Yeah," he mumbled. "Well, I'll leave you two. Enjoy the rest of your jog, young man. Enjoy your health while you have it." The old man laughed and trudged off.

Alan shook his head and sighed. They continued walking.

"I don't like Mr. Ed," Hale decided.

"I know, Hale. Neither do I. Mr. Ed is a good man, but Mr. Ed is what we call a _downer._ Can you spell that?"

"D...uh...O-W?" Alan nodded. "N...E-R?"

"That's right. Remember how I taught you there's always good and bad in everything?" Hale nodded. "Well, a downer chooses to see the bad, and it's very hard for them to see the good. If they do, sometimes they just call it luck."

"But you're not a downer, Daddy."

"No. If you work very hard and focus on the good, you will always be lucky, no matter how many bad things happen. And you're not a downer either."

"How do you know?"

"Well, when I woke you up this morning, you were very tired and wanted to stay asleep, right?" Hale nodded. "But you wanted to see a cloud. So what did you choose to do?"

"Get up and see."

"And I was very proud of you for doing that. Even though you were very tired, you got up anyway. And if you were still asleep right now, what would have happened to the cloud?"

"It would go back up in the sky."

"So if you focus on the bad, more bad happens. But you got up to see, and what did you get to do?"

"I walked in a cloud!"

"That's right. So you focused on the good, and more good happened."

They made it all the way back to the house.

"Son, are you excited about flying to Grandma's next week?"

Hale nodded furiously.

"Good. It's going to be a lot of fun. But there are also some things about it that will be scary."

"What things?"

"We'll talk more about it tonight. I just want you to know there will be good things and bad things about it. What will you choose to see?"

"The good."

* * *

The morning of the flight came. Son got the window, Dad next to him, and Mom third, across the aisle. Hale was very nervous, sweating, fumbling, and breathing heavily. Sarah cupped a paperback and Alan clip-clapped a story on his laptop (or, as his wife put it, "clap-clopped"). Passengers were boarding now, but they were already settled near the back.

The "sky mothers" walked up and down the aisle, helping everyone to their seats. Dad had called them something else, but somehow Hale had immediately gotten it in his head to call them that - probably a story he'd read. One of them leaned down on their row and beckoned Hale. His dad closed the laptop and helped him out. The other ladies gathered around too. This one was old and smiley, with blonde hair in a little ball.

"I heard it was a very special day for one little boy on this flight," she said.

Hale beamed. "It's my birthday!"

She took a breath, and suddenly he noticed everyone on the plane had turned to look at him.

" _Happy birthday to you,_ " they sang in loud unison. " _Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear Hale, happy birthday to you!"_

Everyone clapped and whooped wildly. His mother leaned over and kissed him.

"How old are you today, young man?"

"I'm six now!"

"Oh, very good. Almost ready to be a man. Well, scurry back to your seat now. We're going to take off in a few minutes."

His dad slid the computer into his carry-on and pulled something else out, something small and rectangular with a blue bow and wrapping paper. "Happy birthday, son."

Hale quickly unwrapped it and looked at the cover. It was a thin book with a dark blue cover, and a picture of a bird on the front.

"Can you read it?"

Hale recited the title. " _Jonathan Liv...ing...ston Seagull_. What's it about?"

"It's about a seagull named Jonathan who discovers that the reason for flying is not to eat, but that the reason for eating is to fly."

Alan began to read out loud. The plane inched forward ever so slowly, making its long nerve-wracking journey to the runway. All the while, Hale concentrated, listening as intently as possible, butterflies fluttering faster and faster in his stomach. Alan promised to stop reading just before takeoff. They made it all the way from Jonathan's first few dives until he finally reaches terminal velocity and goes to his elders to share his discovery.

Alan closed the book as the plane aligned itself and came to a full stop. He took Hale's hand and leaned down. "Remember what I taught you about courage?"

"Courage. C-O-U-R-A-G-E. Not without fear, just going on anyway."

"And do you know who said that?" Hale shook his head. "The same man who wrote _Tom Sawyer_. Mark Twain."

The engines got very loud. The plane started moving, faster than it had before. Hale looked out the window. It sped up. They were going as fast as a car now and still speeding up. Hale's eyes widened and he could feel his heart thumping. He thought this must be as fast as anything in the world could possibly go, and it went still faster. That was the first fear that took him. That it would never stop. They would just keep speeding up forever and ever, into some deep dark black nothingness beyond the stationary world.

Then, just as this fear crept into his mind, a horrible lurching feeling pulled down on his stomach. He squeezed his eyes shut and tightened his grip on his father's hand. When this lurch gripped him, another fear took him, that it would grip tighter and tighter until it ripped his stomach completely out. But it stopped. Not entirely, but enough to breathe again.

"Open your eyes," Father's voice whispered. He did so hesitantly, and out the window, the ground was far away. He stuck his face against the plexi-glass, startled. Even he realized how silly it was to be surprised at the fact that they were no longer on the ground, but he somehow missed it. It was like an unfinished puzzle. He'd walked on the ground his entire life, and now he was farther above it than any tree he'd ever climbed, higher than any kite he'd ever flown. There was no ladder, no branches, no string, no stairway. Nothing but air beneath them. Thin, clear, invisible nothingness, pushing them higher each second. It was mesmerizing.

Alan unbuckled his seatbelt and slid against his son, leaning over him, to look out the window as well. "Was that fun?" Hale shook his head, and Father laughed. "Look," he pointed. "See the snow?"

Hale looked at the white paint coating the ground, and nodded. "Look over there." Father pointed to a particularly white cloud lower than the rest. "See the snow falling from the cloud?" It looked like someone had sneezed in a bowl of flour. Under the cloud was a thinner, powdery cloud slanting to the ground. It took him a minute to realize that the "powder" was actually snowflakes.

"Look." He pointed up. "Now we're going to fly through that cloud." It got closer and closer, from a marshmallowy ball to a white wall and finally, a thick mist covering the window. Just as it had been on their morning jog last week, it swirled slowly, only thicker up here in its proper domain. When it thinned out again and they pulled above it, an ultimate wonderment washed over Hale for the first time. Sarah came across the aisle and took her husband's seat, squishing them further against the window. She took his hand and rested her chin on the back of his shoulder.

It looked like a vast sea of marshmallows spread before them. The boy could walk on them if he wanted to. Some were huge pillars or mountains arcing over the plane. It was difficult to take in the enormity of it. All this time, he thought, this entire world lived up here all alone. His house, his yard, his neighborhood, his school, the open road in the family car - all that was big enough. All that could fill his mind and his world, and leave him with a dozen questions every day. To think that there were whole countries, and continents and oceans was difficult enough to squeeze in. But this was something new. This added a completely new dimension - literally - to the world of his experience. Over the house, over the yard, over the neighborhood and the school and the car and the countries and the continents and the world, was this. This new, beautiful, complicated landscape all on its own. It was a lonely world, one of birds and planes and sunlight.

Now he understood what his teacher meant when she said "what dreams are made of." He had asked her about clouds before asking Mother and Father. But this was one fairy lie that he finally understood. This was above and beyond any dream he'd ever dreamed. Higher and bigger and broader than any imagining he'd ever imagined. This was the stuff of dreams. This was where dreams lived. They came down at night and took off again when all the people woke up. They were so real and vivid and beautiful, and then the wind carried them off and they were hard to remember. They covered every corner of every sky of every yard and continent and ocean, uniting everyone. Right now somewhere on the ball of rock and water Father called "Earth," was a little boy whose thought was floating about right here, out his window. He didn't know what color the boy was or how old he was or what kind of clothes he wore or what language he spoke, but here was a little piece of his dreams, floating on the breeze, finding a nice dark cold place to land tonight. Another mind to renew.

A lot of what Father had told him started making all the more sense. How truth could be found in fairy lies. How downers were always looking down, while dreamers were always looking up. How mist turned to water turned to ice and back again. How air could move fast enough to pull a hundred people up over the clouds and across countries and oceans. How clouds sank and slept on the cold ground, but arose and awoke to go chasing the sun across the sky. How marshmallows tasted so sweet and water so cold. How we all looked at the same moon and drank the same water. How birds were never lonely at all because they had a whole world of sky to keep them company. How flying and walking and running and driving and working and loving and crying and dying and growing and asking and learning and swimming and hugging and bathing and breathing and skating and talking and singing and sailing was not all the stuff we did in order to eat and live the next day. That eating and living was something we did in order to do all the rest. That the world was such a hugely huge and enormously enormous place and that Hale wanted to see every bit of it.

* * *

They landed all too suddenly, and everything seemed a blink of an eye, and all the thoughts and fears and feelings Hale thought and feared and felt dissipated, like a dream upon waking. Those clouds hung on to it and whisked it away to some other little boy somewhere else in the world. But he held on to the main parts. He remembered it like one remembers an old treasure hidden under the floorboards, untouched for years. On their way out, Alan told him to thank the pilot. The man stood straight and tall and regal beside the door, in an impeccable uniform and a crisp hat.

"Thank you, sir." It was the most sincere thanks he'd ever given in his now six years on earth.

"You know," Father said, "Richard Bach, the man who wrote that book..." Hale looked up. "He was a pilot."

Hale felt a dream creeping into his head. For the first time so far in his little life, he had an idea of what he wanted to be. And he remembered what Father had always said about dreams: "When you have a dream, don't ever let it go, and don't ever let anyone take it away."

# Wanna Take A Ride?

It seems strange to me now, at this point in my life, to feel so strongly and think so long on such a small decision made so long ago. With the sun getting so high, why should such a little thing haunt me?

I was only a kid. Fresh out of college, throwing myself headlong into my work, thinking about my future. Walking to the office one morning. Bag slung over one shoulder. Tie hung loosely about the neck, blowing in the wind. Looking down. Used to look up. Now, always looking down, deep in thought. Alive! But starting to feel that tingling numbness in my fingers.

And then a car drives up, breaking my train of thought. A sporty red convertible. Blonde at the wheel, brunette shotgun. Young girls, younger than me. Full of life, saturated with it. They stop next to me, and the brunette takes off her sunglasses.

"Wanna take a ride?"

And being what I am, I do want to. But -

"I can't. I'm headed to work." And I point ahead of me.

"We're headed to California." And she points behind me.

I look over my shoulder, and I can taste the ocean. I can feel the sun's rays. And the warm breeze. I can feel the girl's kiss, her hair, her waist, her shoulders. Her smile smoldering red hot against the back of my eyes.

"I can't just ditch. Lots of work, projects, loose ends."

And before I can ask her name, her number, anything -

"Suit yourself." And she disappears. Forever. And what gets me more isn't my reaction, but hers. Somehow, I had it that she would argue, convince me to go. Just for the day. Just around the block. And I looked down again, deep in thought, and went to work. After a few weeks, didn't even think about it again. Until now.

Now, that I'm married thirty-five years. Kids grown. Happy. Complete. A good job turned great career. A good woman turned great marriage. Good kids with great futures ahead of them. The Great American Dream. The perfect life, in the little yellow house and the white picket fence, the dog, everything. Reading by the fire. Playing ball in the backyard. Building a fort. Painting that white picket fence, the distant twenty-year-old inside me chuckling. Making love to a woman after thirty-five years. Putting two kids through college. I loved my life. I _love_ my life.

It just wasn't the life I wanted. When I was little, I wanted to be an explorer. The Seven Seas. North Pole. Safari. India. Mt. Everest. The deepest cave and the highest cliff. An astronaut. Test pilot. And not just like everyone else, either. I _remember_. I embraced it. Loved it. Stories, movies. I honestly remember a time thinking, "When I'm fifteen...", as if it was far beyond the horizon. There was just so much time in the world. Like grains of sand on the beach, the minutes of life spread out before me. I would conquer the world by fifteen.

And by fifteen, I had new ideas, a bit more grounded, but just as fantastic. I would be a rock star. A writer. A surfer. Rock climber. Travel around the world and back again. In college, I would be a millionaire, a CEO. International Business major. Switched to marketing. And on that hot day, content at the bottom rung of the corporate ladder, aiming high as I could see. That was the threshold, that day, the point of no return.

Two years ago, sitting at my desk, the memory of that day came back all at once. For some reason, I can't shake it. Men my age - I think - go out and screw women like her and buy cars like hers and take vacations to places we used to dream of, where they build hotels to mock our adventure. But not me. I just wonder what happened. I wonder what happened to me, what forces of my own biology and culture squandered me. That when a lark flew by my cage to sing to me, I turned the other way.

What is it that snuffed out that candle inside me? I don't know. There is nothing I can imagine, and yet it was me, the whole me, that turned her away. Not just a gut reaction, but a full body instinct. The thought of getting into that car turned my body to stone. It was all of me, my own freewill that turned me down this road.

And here's what gets me more than anything. What wrenches my heart out of my chest. She was beautiful. Even two hundred feet away she caught my gaze, and two feet away she stole my heart. I can't say if she was truly the perfect woman or if that's simply what she represents in my mind. All I know is that she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. More than my own wife.

I'd always thought of her as a lark, beautiful, free, and uncatchable. In reality, she probably went to school or married or waited tables or had a child. She's probably still alive - my age - and would never in a million years remember me. She and her friend just picked up some other guy, had fun on the beach, and returned home. But to me, she would always be that beautiful, that unattainable, that wild and free, that daring thing.

I love my wife. I love my kids. I love my job. I've led a good life. But all that emptiness and loneliness and regret, that stinking regret inside of me, leads back to that day. One day on the sidewalk. One hour in the sun. One minute talking to that girl. One little minute, tiny and delicate. It is lonely and small as a grain of sand, plucked off a beach from a sea of sand. And it is truly everything.

Sometimes I catch myself crying. As my sun is setting, I think about that minute. That one grain of sand that defined my life. I think about a sunset on the Pacific, lying on the sand, in an ocean of time. And she's right there beside me. Around the world. Deep inside me.

I suppose I'm too old for such thoughts, but I find myself watching sunsets. Waiting. Waiting to take that last ride.

# The Gingerbread Collection

When two children sneak into a candy factory to steal sweets, they risk capture by the dreaded superintendent, the Candy Man. In the title story, _Gingerbread_ , Victor A. Davis brings all the force of the contemporary literary short story to bear on this reimagining of Peter Rabbit. In this and other stories, he lures you in to the many worlds of his darkly colorful imagination.

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Thank you.

# About the Author

Victor A. Davis has always loved reading and writing short stories. He is an avid hiker and even when away from the world of laptops and wifi, keeps a pocket paperback and a handwritten journal to keep him company on trail. He is the author of two short story collections, _Grains of Sand_ and _The Gingerbread Collection_. Find him online at <http://mediascover.com>
