 
### Logjammed

By Blaise Marcoux

Copyright 2017 Blaise Marcoux

Smashwords Edition

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite e-book retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

Table of Contents

On An Unknown Stream (Prose)

Neopaganism (Verse)

Long Road to Letdown (Prose)

Fix It in Post (Prose)

Catholic Schism (Verse)

Mastadonamus (Prose)

A Barren Field (Verse)

The Overwhelm (Prose)

Ile d'Orleans (Verse)

Easy Mode (Prose)

Elijah (A Hymn) (Verse)

The Shortest Day of the Year (Prose)

About the Author

ON AN UNKNOWN STREAM

Around the motorboat, the river sloshed, not flowed, as its murky tendrils nibbled close to the side, too near for comfort. From my research, I knew nasty rumors circulated about what fish possessed this stream and how carnivorous they were. I glanced at the engine, rattling its way to probable overheat, and then the hired helmsman, who refused to look at me. "We should slow down," I told her.

She didn't say anything. The sunset said all her words for her. No good came from boating in the dark. Even as a city-bred outsider visiting for photojournalism, I knew that.

But I felt little more ease on the waves during the day. "Please," I said with admittedly enough squeak to be begging. "Just a mile per hour less. Or is it knots with boats? A knot less?"

She let slip a smile, but still wouldn't face me. "Or a meter less? No metric system for you?" Her accent had thickened during our return trip to the dock, deepening with the reds of the sky.

"They use metric around here?"

"Oh hell no."

A few minutes later, I did notice some slackening, but also a drift towards an islet, stretched enough for two city blocks long and a half-block wide, more mud than land. We'd passed it earlier with no afterthought. Nothing stood out here, no excess or shortage of trees, no sign of sizeable wildlife.

"Why are we stopping here?" Despite myself, my thumbs rubbed excitedly against my camera.

"Want you to see something."

"Isn't it getting late?"

She hopped off into the water with no answer, then pulled the boat nose enough into the shore for it to anchor. As she sauntered off, I followed, already scanning for snapshot targets.

After a ways, she stopped and bent over right as I spotted some water debris possibly worth shooting. When she stood up and whirled around, she had two beers in hand and a grin on her face. Up to this point, she'd showed only the typical range of boater emotions – stoicism, tranced blankness, and sly smirks. I came around to where she stood, only to find an ice-less cooler half-buried in the soil. Three more brews stood inside.

I chuckled. "What on earth?"

"Boater's secret." She cracked a can open and handed it over. "Rule is, take what you can get, but resupply within forty-eight hours."

A sip. Flat and far too warm. Enough to give me stomach problems later, I knew. "Can't you get a DUI for boating while drunk?"

"Oh, I'm not getting drunk." She gulped down a sizeable take. "Besides, no one polices these waters. Not unless someone goes missing."

We imbibed away, sans chat, staring at the opposite bank. The shots in my camera pleaded for perusal, but I felt that'd blaspheme the moment. True, not much to see. Not much to do. But sufficient all the same.

I looked at her, gathering in the lines of her skin as fast I could without turning intrusive. Her tan stained her bare arms and brought out the amber in her hair, overriding the strings of gray. Her nose hooked down, an eagle's beak that intensified her eyes. Throughout her life, she'd lived here. Nothing I'd captured on film had remained alien to her. If she read my photo-essay, she'd be bored.

Therein resided some of my guilt – painting the mundane as outlandish, just so it'd reach some cosmopolitan's coffee table. All while not knowing what a knot was and likely not researching that out ever in my lifetime. Peaks through a window of other worlds, but never an invite inside.

"Well," she said, crinkling her can and tossing it out into the river, "let's go."

We hopped back onboard, and she pulled the motor string. Nothing. She frowned. "That was a good tug," she muttered low enough where she probably thought I couldn't hear. A succession of quick yanks. Not a single whir.

After a groan, she pulled out her cell. "Dan? Yeah, it's Carla. I need a pickup on that island near Hobbes Park?"

A buzzing, indecipherable reply.

"No, not that one. The bigger one." Buzz. "Yeah, engine went out, don't know why." Buzz. Irritation crispened her words. "Yes, I checked the gas tank." She hadn't. Buzz. "You know, things happen, alright Don? Come on, I know you don't have any big dates planned." I could hear distorted laughter through the phone. Her frown stayed put. "I'll see you in an hour, okay?"

She finally looked over at me. "I guess there's one more thing I could show you."

We trekked past the cooler, her strides so long that I feared she'd run out of land and continue on down to the river's bottom. But she halted close to the islet's end, motioning me forward. Jabbed in the mud stood a wooden cross, unadorned and discolored in spots from all the humidity.

I raised an eyebrow at her. She kept her gaze on the marker as she spoke. "A body got found out here, really decayed, unrecognizable. This was back in the Seventies, when forensics wasn't much, so she just went unidentified. I hear the case is going to get reopened, but...." A shrug. "Anyway, didn't seem right to leave her unremembered. I was in high school then, and some classmates and I planted this here. Seemed right."

An unsolved murder. She and her community had hid a beer stash on the same stretch of muck as where they'd found a corpse. Chugged away only yards off from where a skeleton had lain. All that, and they couldn't even name the islet. The one by Hobbes Park. The bigger one.

I swatted a mosquito away. "Why didn't you tell me about this earlier?"

"Well," and she shrugged again, "you wanted pictures of the birds and such. Not many exotic ones of those out here." She turned back towards the boat. "Besides, not like this is the most interesting island around."

"What are some others?"

"You've got to go back to the city tomorrow, don't you?" Her tone kept the same, but I couldn't hear that combination of words as anything but a snarl. "You kept telling me that."

I didn't bother replying. When we returned to the boat, I glued myself on the day's shots, my herons and red-tailed hawks and other birds whose names I couldn't even remember. Nothing that went uncatalogued before. Occasionally, I'd toss an annoyed glance her way, but she paid me no mind, meditating on the moonlit river.

Who knew what stories I could've heard, what areas I could've discovered? Sasquatch Island. The Island with the Inexplicable Car. The Apparition of Mary Island. The Island I Lived On for a Year to Escape My Parents. Schrodinger's Island. The Island Which Is Actually a Civil War Submarine Buried in Muck. Samuel's Island. Yes, "that" Samuel. The Samuel I'd never get to learn about.

I wouldn't break the silence, and neither would she. The frogs' ribbits tried, the flies' buzzing tried, the crickets' chirps tried, but they were no conversationalists. They supplied only a drone simultaneously overwhelming and empty, a roar neither of us two humans dared disperse.

NEOPAGANISM

I don't do this for you, for really anyone

A self-consolatory act, as if there's any other kind

Goes the cynicism, and such desultory gibbering

Is the new fuel du jour, with no alternates

And I have no outfit changes, this is not

A roleplaying game, more of a solitaire

More of a trek across the highland, branches in tow

But no matches, this ceremony has no burning

Only muted recognition

I don't do this for you, for really anyone

Forgotten half the steps, but what's unfinished

Can be powered through faith, just not in myself

Maybe in the islands off the coast

With craggy cliffs I could climb but never will

The devotion to an avoided timeline

Is all anything is, goes the cynicism

If there's a derelict out there, it's invisible

No witnesses

Not even I, in my own way

Sights blind with fog

We stumble at only shades, goes the cynicism

The relent of worry is

Marrying a shadow, but

He's a bad lover, and

I always make my tent and don't see why

I have to make yours

LONG ROAD TO LETDOWN

Intro. Music. Stiff bus seat, and people snoring. Who's snoring where? Behind, in front, and beside. As everywhere as cell phones. A digital revolution of nasal congestion. And this book reads terribly. Molasses for the eyes. _"She introspectively thought about her difficult dilemma and decisively chose to act."_ On and on. But this tune in headphones, okay. Drowning out the page-long paragraphs.

Alien thump on shoulder. Childish voice. "Hey." Turn to see, indeed, a child. Freckled boy, parrot green tee that only the young can get away with, worn-out sneakers with red thunderbolts. Holds up coke bottle. "Can you help me twist off this top?" Sans, "Please," not a request, more an expectancy. No intention to chat.

Plastic feels polar cold. Melodies no longer nice, just mosquito buzz, so tug headphones off. Cap sealed tight, frozen enough to sink a cruise liner. Failure to loosen. Mumbled apology.

He shrugs. "It's okay." Bugs another passenger who pulls off the feat without even interrupting his snoring. Then, pothole, and boy spills onto floor, "Aaagh!" Pop gets all over his front.

Back to tunes. Still somewhat insectoid.

Shed music and book for a cozy and meditative stare at back of seat. Interior lights flick off because, presumably, driver wants that "lounge club feel" he reads about in home designer magazines when on the john. Darkness. Snorts. A wet kid's pained whimpering.

Thematic interlude. A childhood trip to Laissez-Faire, Kansas, and my mom turns to scream at me and Phillip to stop aiming for each other's eyes when we fight, why is it always the eyes, do we want to go blind? "Like Daredevil?" Phillip says like a twerp. A look at rearview mirror shows dad's eyes hang like a corpse, not a zombie, a corpse, because zombies hunger while corpses ascetically ignore the world. Grandma's funeral happened last month.

Before mom retorts, I get in a, "Shut up, Phillip."

"It's Phil!" And he aims for the corneas again.

I fend him off laughingly like any good sister while mom performs her soprano aria about how we are the worst. A correct opinion. Dad swerves on her highest note, but no one diverts attention away from the great debate of Phil versus Phillip. With a squeal, I go, "Phil-lip, Phil-lip, Phil-lip." His fingers come dangerously to their target, but chant persists, "Phil-lip, Phil-lip, Phil-lip."

Car's slouch to shoulder rides slow, unnoticeable. Only when dad pops door open do we shut up. We can all see his face in his hands. His sobs sound like a sound effect programmed into a synthesizer. Press key, "A-huh!" press key, "A-huh!" and one more for encore, "A-huh!"

Eventually, a car pulls over ahead of us, and a bald guy in tropical button-down asks if we need a battery jump. Mom reassures Samaritan that everything's copacetic, warding him back onto the road. Then comes task of reassuring dad, telling him we can cancel the trip, no big crisis there, that home would be nice, where we can watch some Red Skelton videos, dad's favorite, wouldn't it be lovely?

Present. Guy to right nudges my side. Smells of barbecue smoke. "Where you off to, young lady?" Missing tooth on right side, doesn't stop his smiling.

"Laissez-Faire."

"Why not ride the rest of the way to Denver?"

"Just want to check out the White Crow museum and go back to Missouri, honestly."

"I hear the kids love Denver." He sighs and tugs at his shirt that'd been creeping up. "Used to do that stuff too, when I was younger."

Won't ask what he means by "stuff."

He takes some pills, hopefully for sinus problems, hopefully offers them to rest of bus. "I'd take the plane, but there's so little you can bring. One day, they won't even let us take our bodies. They'll shove our brains into jars and load them on shelves, and the rest of our flesh will need checking in. And, ha, heaven help you if there's any turbulence."

"Yeah, transhumanism is going to be pretty awful."

No chuckles back, just jumbling around with his backpack. "Could you look after my spot while I put in my insulin?" Like vultures sat on the roof, seeking out empty seats by using the bus's thrum for echolocation, or something. Sleep-deprived.

He makes it a few steps in the dark pretty well, but of course, pothole. Down he goes. "Son of-" But he stops there, probably catching sight of the now-sleeping kid.

Kid snores too, naturally.

Interlude refrain. Phillip and I. Nineteen and eighteen, respectively. On the highway. First sibling road trip. He scratches the immature fur growing on his chin. "Do you think the engine's running well?"

"Put on a shirt."

"I'll ask again, do you think the engine is-"

"You're hoping it breaks down so you can work under the hood shirtless and get some drive-by catcalls."

"Yeah, I want to be out a thousand dollars, you got me."

"Think you already did that when you bought this thing, Phil."

"Phillip."

Tire blows out.

He scratches his head like a dolt, trying to figure out how to switch out tires. Each car driving by feels ready to clip us, as if all those race wreck specials gnawed into people's collective conscious enough to take over their steering control. Or something. Sleep-deprived. Early start.

"Mom," I say over the cell, "how do you change tires?"

" _I knew you kids shouldn't have tried to go to Laissez-Faire. After how last time went, I just knew._ "

"If you don't know, just put dad on."

" _I've been doing genealogy, you know, and there's very little Native American in our bloodline. Maybe White Crow doesn't think we're worthy enough to visit his museum._ "

"Seriously, is dad out on errands or something?"

" _Why couldn't you two have gone to Branson instead?_ "

"Well, call me when he gets back, okay?"

Typical.

After coughing on some eighteen-wheeler's exhaust, say to Phillip, "You have a friend in Rust Fork, right? That's thirty miles away. We stay a night at his place, then he drives us home tomorrow."

"I can figure this-"

He loses grip on the spare, and it rolls out on the highway and gets hit by a minivan which screeches off the road after impact.

Present. Guy in front turns back towards me. "Excuse me, Miss?" Sweaty despite bus staying fairly chilled. Squints through expired prescription glasses. "Hasn't your friend been gone for a pretty long time?"

"Oh, he's not with me."

"Well, all the same, I think, "and he checks the glow of his watch, "it's been an hour now. He's not sick, is he? You don't think he has anything serious, do you?"

"Oh, he's probably dead from an insulin overdose or a bad heart or a sudden fatal case of AIDS caught from the toilet, and we'll have to wait on the highway-side for an emergency lift, then we'll have to head back because of some state amendment or the AIDS toilet or something."

His eyes widen. "W-w-what?" Then back to squint, to glean intent.

"Sorry. Young people humor. I'll go check on him."

Knock on door prompts some rustling inside, some grunts, but no death rattle. Back to seat. Shortly after, the restroom goer settles himself next to me again. "Sorry." Giggle. "Fell asleep on the pot." Guy in front already snoring again.

Bus stops at gas station, last one for probably another fifty miles. Station stands in a blip of a town, basically six drive-thru places and a mortuary. Would think the isolation would scare passengers into staying seated, but no, they file out towards the station's bathroom. Guess they don't like the bus's accommodations.

Stretch legs by taking short walk down highway. Reach into purse for cigarettes, then remember I flushed them away back home. Frustrated whistle. See guy close to my age just ahead, staring at roadside cross. Looks safe enough. Hunting jacket, bit overweight, hands shoved in pockets, pants that are too baggy.

Clear throat. "Anyone you know?"

He shrugs, sighs. "Yeah. Me."

"You're a ghost." Somehow unsurprised. Always knew middle of nowhere Kansas refused to play by typical metaphysical rules.

"Nope." Scratches his neck. Has that flat-as-plains accent everyone has out here. "Drank a bit too much when I was seventeen and ran my mom's Taurus into a tree." Gestures at nearby stump. "So she put up this cross to remind me what could've happened."

"Hmmm." Bend down and feel the roses lying at the cross's base. Real, fresh. Fragrant. "She really goes all out on this, huh?"

"She's like that."

Pick one rose away from the others, fourth-best looking. Breathe in its sweetness, let it wash out smells of body odor, lingering bathroom stench, someone's open Tostitos bag. "Anniversary?"

"Yup. But I come out and visit here all the time anyway."

"To remember your old self?"

"Oh, I haven't changed. She thinks I don't drink anymore, but I do. Sometimes." Sheepishly shrinks head into coat. " _Just_ sometimes. But," peeks out again, "everything else changes."

"Yeah?"

"The Wendy's closed. My first job. Poof." Car roars by in time to see him dramatically opening his arms. "Half my friends left for Denver. Rest went to Wichita, except the people I don't like, no, _they_ stay here."

"Blows."

"So." Adjusts collar. Got too excited. "What's your story?"

"Trying to get to Laissez-Faire."

"Why in heaven's name you going there for? Nothing there but tumbleweeds."

"And a museum."

"There is?"

"Yeah."

"Must be something special."

"Not really."

"You must be totally from the middle of nowhere to get excited about it then."

"Actually, I'm from Lee's Summit." A Kansas City suburb.

Gets a chuckle from him.

Look back and see stream of passengers returning to bus. "I gotta go. Can I keep this rose though?"

"Don't think anyone will notice the difference, honestly."

Take a few steps away, then backtrack. "Hey, wanna exchange contact info?"

Blinks in surprise. "I, uh-" Cheeks get apple red when embarrassed. "I guess there's no problem there, but... why?"

Tempted to leave it at calling him cute, but instead say, "Because this is my totemic journey. A spirit walk. Anyone I meet could be some huge figure in my future. And hey, maybe I'm your mystery girl that you meet one night by your memorial who you never see again, but always do in your dreams." Wink at him in a cheesy way, immediately regret it. Mysteriousness blown.

Laughs. "You're a strange one. Maybe _you're_ the ghost."

Put rose in my mouth like some conquistador while typing in his digits. Tastes bad, ruining romance of its aroma. Say, "Thanks," then move for the quick peck on the lips, but someone's honk makes him jump to the left just as I go. Trip into him, and he holds me up, which should be nice, but whole point was a swift, electric moment that would leave him tingling while I sauntered away. Instead, awkward hug. A funeral hug. "I really have to go, though."

Last one back on bus. Say to driver, "Thanks so much for waiting on me." No response, not even a grunt.

Final refrain. Two years ago. Boyfriend at the time stares at car trunk, turns sideways one of the suitcases inside. Steps back. Rubs brow. Returns baggage to original position. "I don't think all of these will fit."

Pull up the last suitcase. "It's just five cases." Plop it back on the driveway concrete. "Just five. This isn't Jenga here."

"No, it's more like Tetris."

Sun burns hatefully hot. Not sleep-deprived, but certainly dehydrated. "We can use the backseat, man."

"But if we get in a collision," holds up hands demonstratively, "the bags fling forward, and," claps, "boom, sandwiched."

"If they had anvils in them, you might have a point."

"Velocity will give them an edge. You know how snowstorms make flakes cut into you like shurikens?"

"I think shuriken suitcases will be the least of our worries if we get in a head-on crash."

"I can't be impulsive like you, okay?"

"Hey, let's play some video games inside, clear our minds, then try this again, alright?" Stealth joke that he'll act on the impulse suggestions he likes, just not the ones he doesn't. Alas, controllers out, console thrumming, menu scene soundtrack.

He never lets me win. I beat him, or he beats me, but never does he throw the match. He just lets my hands sweat, lets my fingernail polish chip against the buttons, lets my wrists ache. Glances at me while we're playing? No. Not ever.

Say playfully, "I hate you," mean it on a level, one of the beginner levels, not an advanced stage, not yet. "Anyway, that's five matches. Have you figured out the great suitcase conundrum of our time yet?"

Clicks around the character select screen. "Maybe one more match."

"Why stop at one? Let's go for another five." Keep tone light, keep anger in. "Or five hundred. Am I hearing a five thousand?"

Won't look at me. "I don't. Really. Want to go. To. Stupid. Laissez-Faire. Kansas."

"No one in history ever has."

"Except you."

"Nope." Hold hands up in surrender. "Not even me. Let's stay around here. Go into KC, hang out at the Plaza."

"I don't know, the traffic around the Plaza gets rough, you know?"

Hatred advances a level.

Present. Music. Book. _"She feared death like she would a scary nightmare, that's how forebodingly terrifying it was."_

"'Forebodingly terrifying.' That's it, I'm done." Turn around in seat, hold up book to couple behind me. "Want a free read?"

Man just snores, but woman stares at me, eyeglasses quivering with her nose, her frown tight above her jowly chin. Wave the book at her, grinning, but no warmth returned. Unsure if she even breathes.

Settle back into seat, shove nose in book to burrow away from those no doubt still staring eyes. _"She placed her hand on the knob and twisted, using her metacarpals with nervous agitation."_

Thematic digression. Graying of sky. Ears too tired for one more song about losing boyfriend. Between jobs just as between points in Kansas. Doldrums. What's my career track? Don't know, Mom, didn't know people had those anymore. Maybe I'll finally go to Laissez-Faire, really commit to getting there. Her rolled eyes. Enough about her.

Moon bleeding away. Recently, read book about lunar landings written less like heroic odyssey, more mourning of the space program's fallback. I got sick of its self-pity three-quarters through. What sights went unseen there, on that powdery surface with some acne pits and a few garish flags? Maybe Laissez-Faire will be same. Spirit walk ending with dropped curtains and stagehands frozen midstride with set pieces in hands. Masks off, kid. Truth is, you live, you die, and you assuage your parents' worries along the way.

Could blow off stop. Keep on going to Denver. Or San Francisco. Anchorage? Tokyo? Places. And let White Crow keep the mystery of his powwows. After all, I might legitimately not stand worthy of visiting his museum. Would just look down my paleface nose at his exhibit, grading a half-dead civilization. Wooden carving of crying Native American woman? Two stars out of five. When I could keep my fantasies about it imprisoned in dreams. Keep the totems preserved.

"Oof!" goes a passenger getting out of his seat. Morning. At a stop.

Look out the window. "Where are we at?" Hope that I missed my exit. That decision slips out of my hands.

Man beside me just snores. Man in front turns around. "MacKelvey," he says. Only twenty miles away from Laissez-Faire.

"Thanks." Curse inwardly.

Flat prairie rushing by. Fear. LAISSEZ-FAIRE, fifteen miles, DENVER, a bajillion, but somehow, temptingly close, so I stop checking the highway signs. Back hurts. Ears hurt. Snack pack spent.

The driver's apathetic grumble. "Laissez-Faire. Next stop, McConnery."

Step out into aisle, supplies in hand. Survey scene. I'm the only one leaving. Wait for split second so people can wish me well. So soda boy can tell me, _You taught me not to rely only on myself_. So the man who'd sat next to me can say, _You proved young people can still show concern for old folks like me, a hope I'd lost._ And the creepy staring woman can say, _You reminded me how to hate complete strangers for no reason, and now, I feel alive again._ Then we can all group hug and reflect on how life-changing this bus ride has been, how we will never forget each other.

Doesn't happen, of course. Man who'd sat next to me still slumbers, and everyone else ignores my departure. "Laissez-Faire," repeats the driver. "Next stop, McConnery." Not impatient with me, in fact, droning, but an urgent drone nonetheless. "McConnery, next."

So. Standing on what looks to be the only patch of sidewalk in town. Holding a dried-up rose. Looking at the few houses that line this road. Beat-down blue or red wood shingle siding. On each, some roof tiles amiss, likely from windstorms. Look more like barns than houses. Stunted grass that shakes with gusts. Sure enough, tumbleweeds rolling along the lane markers.

Tuck rose back in jacket. Pull out tourist brochure. CONVENIENT BUS ACCESS. Notice, for umpteenth time, no pictures of museum actually featured in pamphlet. Sigh. Listen to music. Unremarkable song about getting drunk in LA.

Morning heat. No passersby. Not even cars. Feel like on movie set. But after hours, when everyone's gone home. Everyone but me. The next tune blubbers about Janis Joplin. Give up on soundtrack.

Say aloud, "Why am I here?"

Hear a vehicle's thrum. Mud brown bus, a caking of farm soil stuck to its sides and undercarriage, with tires up to my waist. More tank than public transportation. Greeted by driver who looks like she's losing battle against diabetes. Face scrunched up and stern, but says, "Where you need to go, hon?" Like a doting waitress. Probably was one, once.

"The White Crow Museum."

"That's just along my way."

Only other passenger, a woman with Down's, humming to herself. Wears ratty lavender sweatshirt and faded pants. Sit across the aisle from her and feign boredom, hoping she says hello. But no, the humming continues unabated.

The "way" runs off asphalt soon enough and drives on a mish-mash of pebbles and soil. As for scenic sights? Tractor shelters. Silos. Possible moisture pumps. Agricultural apparatuses that I can't even identify. For all I know, death rays prepared against a Martian invasion. Or undiscovered Martian reconnaissance probes.

Roll in front of a two-story house, quainter than the glorified warehouses in Laissez-Faire's "downtown." Daffodil paint. Flower garden in front, but no blooms. White closed drapes in all its windows.

Driver says, "How long do you need to be here, hon?"

"That's the museum?"

"Yup."

"You're just going to idle here while I visit?"

"Oh, the little lady here," and she gestures at the still-humming woman, "isn't in a hurry, don't worry."

"You're not concerned I'll take forever?"

She frowns in thought, then says, "Well, no one has ever stayed more than an hour here before."

Crescendo. Up the two cement steps to the entrance. Knock. Get a, "Come in," but no answered doors. Step inside, onto dark wooden floors that creak like my feet are tornados. Foyer. White walls, dotted by pictures with dark wooden frames whose subjects aren't Native Americans but turn-of-last-century settlers. Grandfather clock, tick and tock, tick and tock. In rickety rocking chair, a woman with wide and English face, rosy and English skin, and curly, gray English hair. Wears conservative periwinkle dress that recalls the Quakers. Knits a scarf.

Nonetheless, ask, "Are you from White Crow's tribe?"

"Oh, I'm from the Kansas historical society." "Looks at my rose. "That's a pretty adornment, Miss."

Rickety-rickety-rickety. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

See open door behind her. "Is that-"

"The museum, yes."

Stairwell to foyer's right? Roped off. Only route, further in.

Long, wide room. Coffee table at center. Guest book. Donation jar. I stuff wad of bucks in it, then as afterthought, stick in rose. Nice makeshift vase.

The exhibits. Framed, the same five pictures of White Crow pulled up by Google. On plaques next to them, hand-written in messy cursive, such illuminating contextualization as, _White Crow, 1887_. Move on to the flint knives. As distinct as the ones found in side yards back home. Squint to read barely legible explanations. _The type of weapons White Crow's tribe may have used in Battle of Snake Plain, found in Saint Joseph, MO_.

"You've got to be kidding me."

Blink. Read again. _Saint Joseph, MO_. Feel a surge of joy pulse through me. Feel the poor quality of the paper on the plaque. For old time's sake, one more reading. _Saint Joseph, MO_.

Only a little over an hour away from my house.

"I love it." I do. Sincerely. Romanticism of disappointment. What makes tragedies work. And, sometimes, comedies. I'd traveled across an entire state for what amounted to a fifth grade research report. Not even a good one, more of an attempt that barely passed. My father suffered a mental breakdown, my brother lost two years' worth of savings, and my romantic relationship lost a layer of luster over a place that Topeka has clearly forgotten they funded.

Yes, I could certainly spend an hour in here, could spend over an hour figuring out what brand of polish lathered the floor, speculating on what mind-boggling wonders resided upstairs, grafting a mythical backstory behind the curator. Maybe I could even spend an eternity. No longer afraid. Opened the treasure chest at the end of the scavenger hunt, found only ashes, rubbed ashes on face. An effective sunblock. Prevents cancers and all of that.

Don't stay forever, though. Retreat to foyer. Listen to my footsteps clank against the boards, its thuds echoing alongside the sounds of the clock and the rocking chair. Tick-rickety-tock-clonk and repeat. Gears in an otherwise silent machine that never moves. But I have to get going. Check phone instead of clock. Visit only lasted ten minutes.

Hand out terrible book to curator. "Want a free read?"

"The only book I read is the Good News, hon."

Coda. Bus driver says she can drop me off at bus depot in MacKelvey. Day feels like it should be late afternoon, but actually still moseys through morning. Gravel gives way to highway again, shabby and rough highway. No cell reception. No other traffic. Feel like one of the only three people in the world. Seat's leather musk still better than stench of interstate bus. Other passenger still humming.

MacKelvey. Multiple buildings with "Saloon" in name. Derelict stage coach exhibited in front of court house. Tarp on some of the roofs. Probably from a recent tornado.

Driver says, "I remember the old depot here. Had a statue of Colonel Reeves made of bronze? Such a sight. This new building, though, look at it. It has no character." She's right. Brick box that could just as easily be school, post office, or jail. "Now, hon, if you need to call anyone, make sure to stand under that pole by the Costco. Best signal in town."

Before leaving, offer her book.

"Oh thanks, hon, but I'm not much of a reader."

Leave book on bench in depot and walk out to pole. Traffic here, enough to qualify as vague facsimile of civilization. Tumbleweeds still, but rolling more trepidatiously, sticking to gutters and not center of road. Dial number.

" _Hello?_ "

"Phillip?"

" _I told you, it's River now._ "

"There's no way I'm calling you that. Ever."

" _Glad you phoned me before noon just to say that._ "

"Took the Midnight Express last night."

" _Ha, did you? Where to, Saint Louis?_ "

"Laissez-Faire."

" _Oh._ " A degree of hurt there, like learning a childhood pet had died. " _I didn't know busses went through there._ "

"Did you actually want to go there? After what happened last time?"

" _That wasn't my last try. Attempted to go with dorm buddies, but Todd got alcohol poisoning along the way. In a dry county, to boot._ "

"I mean, there's nothing there."

" _Yeah, I'm sure, but I wanted it to be our nothing._ "

Pause. A second of deep guilt, but then, think of fields rushing by. Remember the smell of Doritos. "It's a nothing that works best when done solo, I think."

" _Real spirit quest, huh? Like that tea house in the Himalayas that Sherpas hike to even though you have to cross tight ropes and stuff?_ "

Lie and say, "Yeah."

" _Maybe I'll bike there. Show you how it's really done._ "

"You do that." Letdown setup complete.

Check bench in depot. Book still there. Back to pole. Call the stranger from back by the roadside cross.

" _Lester speaking._ "

"Your name's Lester?" Had him listed only as _Country Boy_ in Contacts. "It's me, it's Mystery Girl."

" _Aw, I liked calling you Ghost Girl better._ "

Hear machines in background. "Oh man, am I calling you at work?"

" _Oh, it's nothing to worry about. Hey, got to thinking last night, and... I think I did go to that museum. Real little kid when I went. The most forgettable place._ "

"I'm glad you forgot to tell me. Preserved the spirit quest."

" _So you saw what I was talking about?_ "

"The biggest waste of time the universe could possibly shove on me."

" _Haw-haw-haw-haw!_ " His laughter makes me feel good. " _I think my boss heard me there. So, where you going now?_ "

Grin as wide as a canyon, even if he can't see. "Where do you think I'm going? I'm going to where all the young people go. I'm going to Denver." Fade-out.

FIX IT IN POST

Written by Albrecht. Directed by Albrecht. Choreography by Albrecht. Fretted about by Albrecht for five years leading up to filming, especially including the early, foggy mornings he'd stroll, not jog, through the streets near campus. He'd look up at the wooden balconies of the bar row, filled with mist, vacant of persons, and imagine what ideas he could've conjured there six hours previous. If a step past a bouncer, a beer, a couple piercing laughs at bad jokes could've given him that extra character, bonus dialogue line. But she always dragged him away, down a darker, quieter alley.

Soundtrack by Albrecht. Cringes by Albrecht throughout grade school because, ha ha, what kind of name is that? The type of name you get with a domineering German-American Catholic grandmother, full of face, easy with dismissal. "A terrible potato salad." In college, he'd served a foreign exchange student some pizza that the foreigner spat out without apology, horrifying the others at the table. Albrecht had only nodded, eyes downward, then shushed the Americans' chastisement. Shades of _Oma_ , after all. "Wear the pink polo," she'd ordered him as a preteen. "I didn't slave away for a week to buy you something that you never wear." She'd been a receptionist for a seldom-visited ophthalmologist.

Casting by Albrecht. Sighed by Albrecht as his soldier-in-training cousin pulled him out on the lawn away from the pool at Albrecht's high school graduation party. "Going to tell me about plastics?" the graduate asked. The pool belonged not to his parents, but his uncle's family. They'd just moved back to the area a year before.

The cousin's chiseled face beamed with alcohol sweats, his spiky, close-shorn hair glistening in the moonlight. His cam shirt failed to blend him into the shrubs by the fence. "Look at you." His voice rang higher and more nasal than anyone would ever guess upon first meeting him. "Still got baby fat in your cheeks. You need to go to a comic convention, Albrecht. You'll find a good nerd girl there." Never Al with anyone, always Albrecht, like an incantation.

"Comics are trash."

"That _Spawn_ one is good. One of my buds at base showed me one." They paced about the lawn perimeter. "You just need to take steps."

"To? How am I going wrong, Jordan?" A dangerous snark considering the cousin had an arm around him.

But only laughter in response. "I meet all kinds in the army, man, all kinds." He always was prone to such non sequiturs. "Remember how I stood up for you in elementary school?"

"Until you moved away."

"You'd do great in Ohio." The cousin had moved to Florida.

"You haven't seen _The Graduate_ , then?"

"Ohioan winters kill people, you know? But you're pale enough for it."

"Chubby, you mean."

More guffawing, the kind that Albrecht could never replicate. "I meet all kinds in the army." He released his hostage and saddled off to the fence. The attempts to hop it went badly, ending in him lying on his back, dazed eyes scanning the stars.

Albrecht loomed over him and frowned. "You alright?"

A slurred, "Oma probably wants to see you now."

A likely statement, enough to spur Albrecht back to the house, past chortling family members in the water, water he'd never dip in himself that night.

Produced by Albrecht. Executive produced by Albrecht. Squirmed by Albrecht to no avail as she towed him away from the bars towards the woods nestled next to the campus, a forest nicked with a sparseness of dirt paths that disappeared in patches, conquered by overgrowth. They always took the alleys to it, not the streets. The tree tops cut off the stars. Vines choked a few of the weaker trees to death, leaving skeleton limbs.

She bit his lower lip on several trips, but one particular occasion, she moved down and gnawed lightly on his neck, her teeth rubbing with dangerous tease against his throat. He stood frozen as usual. He didn't know then that this was no common ritual, not something television always censored but came expected with all relationships. Her hand went down to his pants zipper.

"Please don't," he whispered.

Her fingers rested there for a few obstinate seconds before drawing away. "They say these woods are haunted," she hissed in his ears.

"Bigger problem is the muggers, I think." Inwardly he cringed at the squeak in his voice.

Her elaborately fake eyelashes fluttered. "What if we got possessed? Wouldn't that be exciting?"

His response stayed paralyzed inside him. An owl hooted in the distance. Unknown creatures rustled in the brush. Somewhere, he knew, a cop paused and thought about checking the woods for afterhours trespassers.

Finally escaping him came, "Can we go?"

"In an hour. I want to enjoy the night." And he couldn't help noticing she hadn't said, _We_.

Art direction by Albrecht. Specifically, painting evergreen the one cardboard cutout he could afford. He'd pondered a lighter green, whether this production invited flamboyance. But the word "childish" entered his head, and thus the darker tint. He thought it'd emphasize the actress more, the actress he'd yet to cast, but who would wear purple eyeliner come filming for sure.

So makeup by Albrecht. Sulking at the Thanksgiving table four years until premiere by Albrecht. Again at his uncle's, never his parents. Multiple dining rooms after all, and the uncle and wife and their friends giggled away in one, leaving Albrecht in the other with his eternally mute parents, Oma, the then honorably discharged army cousin, and her, Albrecht's girlfriend of two years. Her frown matched Albrecht's, glowering down at the soup appetizer with open disdain. Oma watched the table like a guard tower.

"They had good food overseas," the cousin said, half-full mouth spilling orange liquid down his chin. "Hollywood thinks us grunts eat out of a can, but no, they've got some casseroles. You'd like their casseroles, Albrecht."

"I hate casseroles," the girlfriend said.

"There's these kinds," and the cousin pointed his spoon at Albrecht," with carrots in them. Carrots!" Down went the utensil into the slop. "We were at this one site where there were these flies, right? And they lay their eggs in these poor beetles, and the maggots eat the host alive-"

"Okay," snapped Albrecht, "this is the dinner table, alright?"

After a slurp, "How do you like this soup, Albrecht?"

A snicker from the girlfriend. "I've had better at truck stops."

The cousin stayed locked on Albrecht. "So, the beetle dies, and the maggots chew their way out-"

Albrecht slammed his spoon down. "Maybe this gross-out talk gets laughs in the service, but here in regular life-"

"Oh, it's on Animal Planet too, just did a show on it. You ever watch Animal Planet, Albrecht?"

Oma's squint swiveled from speaker to speaker.

The girlfriend snorted derisively. "You would watch the Animal Planet, wouldn't you?" She pushed the bowl aside and lied back in her chair, chuckling. "A communion for you, I imagine."

"So the fly," and the cousin finally turned to her, unblinkingly, tone low, "does that to humans too. Just sticks its eggs in someone, uncaring. Can be a real health hazard, Albrecht."

A pause for all involved. Albrecht's parents shuffled in their seat, mouths firmly shut. Oma faced down, as if a judgment had been made. She'd cooked the soup.

Sitting up, nose in the air, the girlfriend said to the cousin, "I'm going to put a hex on you."

Another pause. Then the cousin's laughter, his eyes still leveled at her in a way that showed his mirth didn't come from the idea of spells, but from her. His complete defiance of her.

"Okay," growled Albrecht. "Enough. I'm leaving. I'm taking Isis," which wasn't her birth name, "away to somewhere a bit more welcoming, a bit more-"

"No," Oma said, head still down. "You two aren't leaving."

The cousin held up his hands in the air with surrender. "I'll leave. I'm here all the time anyway, so, ha, not like I'll miss anything, clearly the problem here, and-"

Oma turned to him, visage as cold as always. "You're not leaving either."

His face softened, a sad smile playing on his lips as he shook his head. With a scooted chair, a turn away from Oma, and an unhurried stride, he was gone.

After a minute of silence, Albrecht's father stood up. "So, should I get Oma's green beans, then?" Oma even to him.

Costuming by Albrecht. Knocking by Albrecht. Two weeks to filming. He tapped his foot against the grated landing, glancing about the shoddy apartment complex in fear. Daylight relieved none of his unease. Another round of knocking, more frantic this time.

The door opened to the groggy cousin, a fog of beer smell clinging to him. His shirt had stayed camo, but he'd exchanged pants for shrunken boxers. "Hey man." A tired grin. "Didn't expect you here."

"Took me awhile to find this place."

"Ha ha!"

Albrecht rifled clumsily through his pockets. Out came a rumpled check. "Wanted you to have this."

The cousin, expression still warm, turned Albrecht's hand away.

"I-" Albrecht regathered himself. "I don't think Oma was thinking clearly when she wrote her will." She'd left all of the cousin's share of the inheritance to Albrecht when she'd died three months ago.

"No, man, she was thinking of you. It's fine." He scratched the scruff on his chin, scruff Albrecht had never seen from him before. "So what are you going to do with it?"

"Well," a gulp, "with _my_ share, I want to finally use my film major for once. Take a few days off and make a minimalist short for a festival I'm eying."

"Excellent, excellent." A yawn, a look of apology. "What's it about?"

"I base it off the temptation of Christ because, uh, festivals love Biblical imagery, right? But," his speech quickened in embarrassment, "instead of throwing yourself off a temple, it's getting back in a toxic relationship. And the ex is the devil."

Albrecht waited for a grimace in reaction to any mention of the girlfriend, but he received only a grin in return. "That's great, bud. Will win a reward for sure."

In a lower volume, "You were right, Jordan. About Isis."

"Your film sounds really great, man." He looked back into the apartment's darkness. "I'd let you in, but the roomie, he's a former grunt like me. Doesn't like visitors." He held up a finger. "One second." Door closed. Long minutes passed. Door opened. "Here." A wad of green bills, extended in offering.

"Oh no. I can't, I can't, I can't."

"I met all kinds in the army. One guy, loved the camera, like you. Told me making a movie costs a fortune. So, uh, no fortune, but-"

"You're still short from the will fiasco, Jordan, I can't-"

"Hey, I'm rooting for you." He stuffed the bills down Albrecht's shirt. "This is my root." A toothy grin. Door closed.

Set scouting by Albrecht – a small theater who'd run dry on plays and let Albrecht fool around inside to the tune of the cousin's contribution. Associate produced by Albrecht. Galleries shown by Albrecht to some old film school buddies, who shrugged but didn't walk out at least. A grand opening of sorts. Dedicated to Oma. Burnt by Albrecht onto a disc.

The disc went into a box, which Albrecht tapped against his knee in his car. Just some money, he thought to himself. Not a buyout. Not a debt. The cousin, after all, got the pool, the many dinner tables, the career in patriotism. While Albrecht got a flabby waist, a weird name, an unwanted sum of dollars. A growl escaped him. No reason to show this to the cousin, who wouldn't care, not the splendor of Animal Planet, after all. He'd miss the mic boom slipping into the shot, an error that Albrecht told himself he'd fix in post-production, where nothing ever got corrected. A false promise. He'd never _agreed_ to show it to the cousin.

Elementary school, though, he thought while driving. Until the abandonment. "Well," he said aloud, "would it hurt to show him?" He hadn't even credited the cousin as a financial backer. Which would go unnoticed anyway, because who watches the credits?

He walked up to the cousin's apartment and knocked. A Hispanic women with a child clinging to her side answered, her squint at him filled with distrust. When he asked for a Jordan, she insisted in broken English that she was the only resident, had lived there for a week. Albrecht went back to his car, calling his uncle.

" _Jordan? No one knows where he went. Hasn't talked to any of his friends about moving or anything._ " In wavering voice, " _He hasn't been doing well for a while, since the discharge. We're all very worried about him._ " Such admissions of fear rarely spilled out of Albrecht's family. Oma never permitted them when alive.

"What about his roommate? Wouldn't he know something?"

" _Roommate? Jordan never mentioned anything about a roommate._ "

"Well, why didn't you tell me that he'd gone missing?"

" _Well, we all know how hard you've been working on that film, Albrecht. We didn't want to worry you._ "

After the call, Albrecht tapped the disc box against his knee over and over again, a woodpecker slamming away against bark. Outside, the sky grew hazy from incoming weather. Something about the gray blotting out the blue reminded Albrecht of emptiness. Of noticing something only when it's gone. An unfinished production.

CATHOLIC SCHISM

Victorious gusts, triumphant tornado

Rewarding winds, reward me, then

My empty pockets beg, much to Martin Luther dismay

In light of this, please consider my wants

My drooping petals, ripped by nor'easter gales

And I thought it was a breath of fresh air

Thought it'd bring a storm

And lightning bolts, like what Martin Luther saw

Instead, only rumbles, not even a quake

And even that was

Gear-shifts on the bypass

So I twiddle my thumbs in the basement

Waiting for a twister that's never coming

MASTADONAMUS

A man in the inner city named Ralph bends spoons with his mind. He's sixty, claims the telekinesis developed recently. If it takes that long, well, maybe I'll cut out the steaks. He's no vegan, though, but he cares for some cats. I can't get more specific, however, for the cats are variable. Solve for felis catus, solve for their retched urine smell. "Do you ever clean their litter box, Ralph?" But he's too busy concentrating. He newly conceits forks, a code he's yet to crack.

His apartment hangs on the fourth floor, over a busy street, crowded with honks. Ralph makes no moving plans, "At least I don't need a swamp cooler," and shrugs at the rent hikes. I don't know where he gets the money for it since I'm fairly certain he has no job. He certainly doesn't dress like one who does, constantly wearing something more fitting an Iroquois chieftain than someone dealing with the public. His means for his lifestyle remain an enigma to me.

For instance, I have no idea how much the four-foot by six-foot poster on his wall costs. Slapped on its gloss, a mix of neon pinks and fluorescent greens depicting a levitating Hindi elephant. "Mastadonamus," he calls it, and when I point out its lack of fur, he shrugs. "It's a lot like me," he says between eye crunch sessions. "Extinct. Mystical."

"You're alive, though."

"So are most extinct things." He flips a National Geographic over to me. "See?"

"And what page would this be on?"

"Oh never mind." He waves away his own suggestion. "Wrong issue. It's in some other one."

He lights incense and yawns as I cough, choked by the aroma. A particularly long car beep rattles my nerves. I ask for some coffee, and he gets a quizzical look on his face.

"I cheat sometimes." I rub my burning throat.

"You're the funniest evangelist ever." He makes me a sweet tea, something he calls Bengal Spice. Maybe some tiger's fur fuels it. When I fret aloud about whether he spiked my cup, he flexes an eyebrow.

"I cheat, but not that far," I say.

"I just think it's funny that your tongue thinks cinnamon is an opiate." A cat rubs against his side, but he won't pet it. In fact, he never shows affection towards these animals he feeds. Like they're just as much ambiance as the incense.

My cajole for us to leave once he cracks forks elicits a grin from him. Don't I know that could take another decade? So I say, "Well, do a spoon for me, then we can go." So he grabs one from the cutlery spread across the picnic cloth next to him, a sheet covered with arabesque patterns of gold and bronze. He consumes a lungful of air, then exhales a hum, and as his body trembles, the metal dutifully bends, pressed forward by an invisible thumb.

I clap, then drag him out.

_Cooking with Faith_ rings the name of the book whose author's signing we visit. A double-entendre – a writer named Faith slipping simple, positive scriptural wisdom in with her recipes. Her plumpness rivals mine, and her smile, I admit to myself sheepishly, discomforts with its wideness like the grin of a shark. She gives a talk before the autographs, about how God inspired her steak soaked with cranberry juice. "And the Lord blessed me with seven wonderful children...." I sit at four. The number of Ralph's progeny, if any, remains unknown.

"She's tame," he tells me as we step out for, as he puts it, "healing air," until the initial author table surge dissipates. Mysterious fuzz floats in his bangs, as if he dissected a couch recently. I don't have the heart to draw his attention to it.

"You prefer something more vulgar."

"I'm not talking about propriety. She's controlled, self-disciplined." An apologetic, "I like her."

"Where do you get all that from?"

"That practiced smile. That laugh she puts after all her own jokes, a cue for us to giggle along. She commands her crowd. A shepherd...."

His words bristle my cold skin, that he enjoys her fakeness. Is that what he'd become once converted, a salesman? A hollow flash of teeth?

Then he continues, "...a high priestess," and I laugh, comforted. But I still veto his invite to a hookah bar. I can have a decaf malt at a nearby coffee shop instead.

When I come home, everyone sleeps. The eras of baby wails and whimpers at the door over nightmares have long since passed. Teenagers, all of them, requiring more sleep than sense. I tap my wife's shoulder to wake her, but her snores continue unabated. Just as well, as she'd just applaud my evangelism without question, when I want her to be angry, to pause if given the choice between me and the Kingdom. Haven't I been away too long? Don't I deserve a harangue?

"Would you go to church with me?" I ask Ralph a few days later. His apartment again, the same scent of incense burning. A creature of habit, he maintains his bubble of a universe, a garden of eccentricities.

He pops up an eyebrow at me. "Do you want me to?"

My response catches in my throat, then comes out, "No," sending my face down in embarrassment. With a single word, I'd forsaken my mission. Now where did we stand?

"Oh." He picks up a fork. "That's disappointing"

"I mean, would you have agreed to-"

"No." A soft head shake that sends his wild gray locks to and thro. "That's too much of a commitment."

Anger bursts from my embarrassment. "What was the point of approaching you when you were reading the Koran in that park, then? What's been the point of these last six months? What," and I clap my hands against my face, "was the point of making me admit all that, that I, I-"

He turns the fork over and over in his hand, clearly ready to ignore me. "I wasn't aware I'd signed an invisible contract when I became friends with you."

Disliking his depiction of me as demanding faith-bleater, I go blunt. "It's the disappointment part. What gives you the right when you're not even interested?"

A close of his eyes, a tightened grip on the utensil. "I thought you wanted to share your world with me. Your heart's not in these public speakers, I can tell."

He lies correct on that but stays blind to the portion of my being that resides here in this room where perfume covers mold, beads cover doorways. Reside, though, too strong a word. Visitor. Guilty but gleeful, a form of vicariousness even as I refuse to wear his poncho literally or in spirit. My own form of marital affair.

"But," I struggle out, "my world's in a church."

"Well," a shrug, "I was never going to set foot on alien soil. Your world, after all, not mine. However," sigh, "it's the thought that would've counted."

"Thoughts." A bile-raising word. "Thoughts won't clean out the cat pee in the carpet, Ralph."

He takes a breath, exhales, brow furrowed, but no curve to metal. His habits tend to leave me waiting in half hours of silence, waiting for the session to end, a forced meditation. But my patience expires early this time. My weight holds me down on the floor, but not enough. Grunting, huffy, I exit, leaving his door unlocked as he foolishly always wants.

I avoid knocks on his door for a few weeks before I feel an ache for his companionship again. Yet no response to my pounds. I visit the coffee shop, his frequent retreat, but no sign of his silver cataract hair. Flustered, I order a drink, but absent-mindedly, my gaze lingers over the pamphlets and posters taped on the window.

On one of them, undeniably, is a photo of Ralph. _We miss you, friend._ He was an ever-present regular. The date of his death matches with four days ago. Blood flees from my face. I beg the barista, a café veteran omniscient of her patrons, for details.

A car had collided with his bike. An unremarkable death, no mystery, no exceptionality. Predictable, really. He'd always dismissed traffic laws. If I'd put away my pride sooner, I could've driven him to his desired destination that day.

"So awful," the barista sighs as she wipes down a table. "A truly beautiful person. The estate sale is on Wednesday." Of course Ralph would ignore any need for a will.

I go in lieu of attending his funeral. Alone, though my wife blesses any purchases. Even with the evangelized gone, she still supports my attendance to him, as if buying his moccasins boosts his salvation chances. At his apartment, the crowd runs scant, and the barista, absent. The cats are gone, likely rehomed. A foal of a girl, with rose-tinted glasses and ten thousand necklaces, buys up most of the belongings. She's likely his spiritual successor, though odds run against her ever having known Ralph. Likely, he would've had it no other way.

I spy Mastadonamus and snatch him off the wall. A couple packages of incense, also taken. Anything more would deny the sourness of our last meet, pretending we were chums until the end. When I get home, embarrassment burns within me, enough not to show the bounty to my family. Instead, I stash my trove in the basement, the room I always promise to organize, to explore and rediscover its contents fully, but never do.

Yet an opportunity does arrive seven years later. All my offspring are freed from the house, and my spouse and I face down a cramped one bedroom to retire in. Despite all my adamant hopes, my weight has only multiplied, and my doctor's lectures have grown sterner. I stare down at a life highlighted only with lawn mowing and golf meets. The church, once a single world in my solar system, now promises to be my only outing outside of errands. My wife insists otherwise, but I can't shake the feeling that my life is over, reduced to waiting for a heart attack.

A foolish sentiment, I chuckle to myself as I work on downsizing the basement's largess. I'd thrive in retirement, surely. Achieve that diet. Achieve that discipline of prayer. I toss into the trash bag a clump of photo albums never filled, of notebooks I'd forgotten to send with the kids to college. Surely, a bit of imagination would cheer my gloom soon enough.

Opening up a plastic bin, I squint at a rolled-up scroll inside. Unfurling, I reunite with Mastadonamus in all his surreal glory. With a bemused sigh, I jettison him into the garbage bag. No room for him where I'd go next.

That left the incense packets. I open up one, breathe in its fumes. An itch in my nose, and an old queasiness. The last I have of Ralph, a form of funeral urn. Surely he deserves remembrance. Surely the days I spent in his company amounted to more than nothing, more than a void. He was the hedonism I never lived through. He was the pagan that I, a religious scribe, wrote Beowulf about a century or so later, an envied mythos.

And yet. And yet not my world, but a repulsive one. One supposedly damned, supposedly useless. But even outside theological limits, a world I could not understand, never would. To do so would to not be me. I could buck our definitions, but I'd lose my identity in the process.

A part of me weeps. Just like I wept in fear of him losing his Ralph, his aura, should he step into my world. Which begged question if my world was worth it. But it is. I love my faith.

I'd wanted him damned. I'd wanted him damned so I could enjoy his eccentricity.

I throw the incense into the trash.

A BARREN FIELD

A terrible frost has folded up your garden

Now it's a dried mixture meant to be gelatin

But clearly not, feel pride in your failure

There's very little else you can salvage feeling from

Every tear, saved, placed in a reservoir

But that doesn't rescue the flowers either

THE OVERWHELM

The grin. Stretched wide, like plastic wrap over refrigerated leftovers. All to show off how round the eyes are, unencumbered by any skin folds. My uncle. "What do you think?" he asks me. We talk on his vast wooden porch. Through the half-cracked sliding door, I can hear the television inside the house blaring as it always does.

My dutiful smile back. Inward, my lifted eyebrow. "They took off a lot."

An obnoxiously loud laugh. "Of course they did, Eric, that's the point. Seriously, what do you think?"

In seriousness? I'm reminded of my son's birth. The red of my wife's face, the urgings of the nurses, the claustrophobia, the hurricane of emotions in my stomach. Then, the child's emergence, the clean-up of the viscera caked on him, the swaddling cloth, all placed in my arms. "Your son," the medics cooed. My wife comatose. And I looked down at the babe and realized something was wrong.

My uncle looks wrong.

"They did a good job," I say. For what it is.

"I'll get the promotion now, I think." He sips on his beer, an American one, his fondness for Korean ones like Hite long since forsaken. "It looks good. No more squint."

But he never squinted. A stretch of flesh, nothing more, hardly in need of lifting. "It worked for Jackie Chan," he kept saying beforehand. Fifty-three years, and suddenly, he complains about how hard finding good contact lenses are. A switch flicked on, and none of my family knows who the operator was.

He says, "Your aunt's thinking of doing the same. You should think about it too, if you ever want to advance."

As if I should be ashamed to be a teacher. In America, yes. But we shouldn't feel that way. "I'll consider it."

"Dinner's ready!" comes his wife's crowing as she passes by the door. Inside, napkins and goblets sit on the coffee table, all prepared for seats on the couch. The television glares at us, its voice rampaging through our eardrums from its position of honor, a shrine begging for worshippers. My uncle and aunt sold their dining table last year for being too "old fashioned." The new layout enables "open concept." Buzzwords concocted no doubt by magazines my uncle read, all designed to make families further slaves to advertisement.

My son Timothy fiddles with his phone on the sofa, his eyes mesmerized. He enjoys sports but has no one to play baseball with here, so to the digital world he goes. He looks up at me and grins. He loves me. Likely anticipates tossing a pigskin around with me this weekend. And his eyes... as round as my uncle's, but without the aid of surgery.

*****

That night, I lie in bed next to my wife, and we say goodnight, leaving out the, "I love you," because we save that only for when Timothy is around. On occasion, we'll sleep together, our relations passionate enough, and we fight far less than before Timothy was born. I don't punch walls over finances like I did when she was pregnant. "How much more shit are you going to fit in here?" I'd said about the baby room. "I only have a teacher's salary." She threw a plate on the floor later in protest, not caring that it was a wedding shower gift because our marriage was a sham then. I'd barked some more about expenses, ignoring the cracks in the plaster I'd made. In hindsight, so shameful. But I never laid a finger on her. Nor she on me, so I'd felt that we hadn't gone too far. A passionate and driven couple, was all we were.

Our dishware loses no pieces these days. We eat together, see the occasional movie together, celebrate together when Timothy's baseball team wins. He's twelve now, but still very respectful. Seldom does he need grounding, and he gets perfect grades. My wife beams with pride over him. So do I.

I can make out her slim outline in the dark, her back towards me. When she turned pregnant, bags circled her eyes more, the cost of her programming job. I'd still considered her beautiful, but felt like I solely possessed that attraction, a taste only I could stomach. The power of identity, to have preferences different from others, a valley only I could find.

My eyes close. I wonder for the trillionth time what her lover looked like. Lithe, judging by Timothy's frame. Eyes not as weak as mine, skin not as prone to acne. Perhaps a long-haired, big-toothed surfer, a tie-dyed tee fit snugly over his biceps. Or a tux-wearing Casanova, suitcase always at his side, Ivy League bred. Or a square-jawed tennis instructor from lessons I'd never know anything about. Or a male model milkman. Either way, not Asian, not like me, an antithesis, a wholesale rejection.

But my relatives batted no eyes as they passed newborn Timothy around. They were no fools, knew full well he didn't belong to me. But our collective culture saved the moment. No embarrassing questions, no vitriol thrown her way. We would all pretend nothing sordid had occurred for family honor's sake.

My wife never disclosed any details on her suitor. She made clear that she swore off seeing him ever again well before the birth. And then, face still white from the labor's blood loss, she gave suggestions. Shared e-mail accounts, shared bank accounts, mandatory phone calls every three hours. As if she were a marriage counselor navigating through some other couple's affair. Detached. Rehearsed.

"No," I'd said with a calm I'd never mustered over a new layer of paint in our home nursery. "I trust you." A ludicrous, surreal statement, one we both knew was a lie. But what else could I say? Or do? Throw her out, infant and all, humiliating our families? And what's more, an even deeper fear within me – if that which completely belonged to me did not, what hope did I have with anyone else? Better a changeling than a childless end.

Her lover, ha, if we'd switched places, if he were tasked with raising a child not his own, could he? The diaper changes? The patting during colic? Could he stymie his anger like I had with his five-year old false son who'd just wet the bed? Doubtful. But ah, the punched wall. The fists slammed on tables. For this, I stood punished.

In two years, Timothy will attend the high school where I teach. Four years after that, he'll leave for college. And though we've never discussed it, my wife and I know we'll divorce then. I won't remarry, just as I have claimed no retributory affairs of my own. She, ha, likely will have another child, another family. Which parent will Timothy choose to spend the most time with? The one, ha ha, with whom he shares no blood? Will he even house me when I grow ancient and infirm?

With these thoughts, I somehow fall asleep.

*****

The next day, I miss catching Timothy's thrown football, and its plop in the inferno red leaves evokes a chuckle from me. Athletics, never my forte. A look my son's way shows him beckoning for the ball back. In no hurry to show my poor passing technique, I cling to it. "So, what sports are you going to enter in high school, Timothy?"

"All of them." A broad grin.

"Especially curling?"

"Curl what?"

My smile back. "I never needed you to be a doctor, you know. Let that be noted."

A cocked head. "What?"

I swallow. "Nothing." I lift the ball up for a pass, then tuck it in again. "I just love you, son. Will champion whatever you do."

His shrug. "Well." He claps his hands. "Come on. I'm the wide receiver for the Seahawks. Call a shotgun."

I don't know what he's talking about. Despite following the sport regularly, I nonetheless remain a casual observer. Maybe he learns all this from video games. The quandary of any parent, after all, of when their offspring's knowledge exceeds their own. He'll hear of sex well before we have "the talk." Hear about affairs. Will he turn on his mother? I have no desire for that. Perhaps I frame him too naïve, freezing him at age seven forever in my mind.

Annoyed with my introspection, I fling the ball.

Plop. A terribly short arc.

His laugh. "Live ball! I can't believe it, but the refs are saying it's live!" A sprint, a scoop, a shuffle right to left in front of me. "He's juking the defender! Breaking out all the moves!" Burst of speed, and he passes by me. A howl of, "Touchdown!"

I look at his upraised arms, his gleeful gasps, and one thought occurs, that he didn't need me to win. But another, a warmth of happiness, our shared victory. And chasing both, the glacial fear that we only have so many shared moments left. That somehow, the lover will steal Timothy away from me. Or worse, Timothy absconds in search of his true father. His true home. Far from me.

*****

The first sordid omen on Sunday morning shows on the new church sign. No Korean labeling underneath, only the English. Then, in the pastor's opening announcements, the fallen hammer. I swallow hard, endure the rest of the service, and after the benediction, approach Pastor Michael.

"Eric! How's the family?" As if he can't ask them himself when they're thirty feet away, chatting with other congregants.

"Fine... listen, about eliminating the Korean language service-"

He lays a hand on my shoulder, likely thinking it fatherly. I hate it. He's only eight years older than me. "Wait, Eric. We're still having that early service, though."

"But in English. That hardly seems fair to people more recently moved in here."

"Well, with such low turnout, we thought it better to be more inclusive." _We._ A mysterious _we_ who thought Korean non-inclusive. As if threatening. "And I've had members in citizen programs tell me how helpful the English services tutor them." An absurd statement. Who halts the sermon to explain slowly what half of Michael's words mean?

"I'm just," and I slip my honoring smile on, "surprised at the culture change."

"This wasn't decided overnight. There were meetings." His lowered tone. "I wish you could've come."

As if I'm invested in this church beyond dutiful attendance. As if I believe in God. But Timothy, he needs the tradition. No, my family never attends the Korean service, but my son, he needs to tell his friends that his church has one, that he belongs to a greater whole, greater tradition, even if it lays on a peninsula an ocean away. Now? He remains only a Presbyterian. Anyone can be a Presbyterian.

I understand the unsaid, though. Congregations dwindle across the country. Our own crowds thin like an octogenarian's escaping hairs. To exude Asiatic virtue risks stunting even minimal growth. Some, perhaps several, Korean churches won't believe that, but if I take Timothy there, the rest of my family won't follow. That will only sour Timothy on the entire exposure. And I know the rest of my extended family will never leave this congregation. After all, the church is only getting an eye tuck.

"I wish I could've too," I say about the meetings. I don't mean it.

*****

All my work colleagues understand the purpose of the teachers' lounge resides only for frantic last minute grading, all of them except for Jonathan Garland, a phys ed teacher who should've retired years ago. For him, it's a concert venue for his opinions. He likes me, likes rambling at me while I work sorcery with a red pen. Dislikes the Indian eatery replacing his favorite diner, though. "Have you been there yet, Eric?"

No. Nor have I visited in months my once favorite Korean barbecue place. Immigrant servers who barely knew words beyond the menu and five polite phrases had suddenly switched to white collegiates who refused opportunities at pronouncing the dishes' names. And the chefs had snuck in interloping options like Pad Thai and sushi. I'd seen the story before, the conversion to that dreaded genre, Pan-Asian. My wife had still liked the restaurant, but of course, we never fought these days.

I don't respond to Jon. He doesn't want an answer anyway and continues, "I can't stand the smell of that place. Burns my nostrils. Do you know how long Granny Jenny's stayed there until those people got ahold of it? Thirty years. Thirty years and then," a throat-slashing gesture, "dead."

"Mmm."

"Another one that died, Gilmore Street Custard. Five years ago. Replaced by a burger place? Don't remember the name. Decent, not great. Lasts a year. Then? A pizza parlor. That one ran for only six whole months." A harrumph. "Place is empty right now. Bet the Indians will pick that one up too."

No they won't. In my heart, I foresee a McDonald's.

"Eric, we don't even make our clothes anymore. The Thais, they make them. But these immigrants, they come in, big families? Start a restaurant, hire every single son, daughter, brother, sister, and cousin. Where are our kids supposed to go? Their parents' basement, I suppose."

Kids. He doesn't just mean our students. Our children. And I speak English impeccably, so I'm honorary white, a worthy listener to these complaints. My son, in twenty years, still in my house? Ha, who knows? He has no restauranteur relative to hire him.

Sometimes, I wonder if Timothy will use Choi as his last name in college. "Coy?" will go his professors. "Tchoy?" Will Timothy interrogate my wife on his biological father, thresh an identity from that? Tim Case, Tim Conner, Tim Smith. How long until the separation started? His spout-off of, "You're not my real dad," only a matter of time.

Something Jon didn't have to worry about with his now adult daughters. But alas, an Indian restaurant, robbing his Americana. A Burger King on every corner of Seoul in ten years, all its streets a copy of New York, just as Hong Kong would, Jakarta, Nairobi, a world of New Yorks, but yes, a curry vendor down the road will kill the United States. A curry vendor that will probably go out of business in three years, no less.

"Mmm," I say again, a phrase that could just as easily be Korean as English. I'd leave it to Jon's decision as to which.

*****

At home, I take a break from forming a lesson plan to make myself some coffee. As I do, I pass the stairs to the basement, the house's entertainment center. Below come loud middle schooler voices, squeaking and yelping. Timothy and some of his friends, excited over video games. I know they'd want privacy, but I listen in anyway.

From their yipping, I can gather Timothy won. "In yo face!" he says on repeat with that dizzying awkwardness preteens so uniquely achieve.

"Yeah?" says a squeakier voice. "Well, that's what your mom said last night."

I roll my eyes.

"That doesn't even make sense," Timothy says with increased mirth.

"Well, I'm your daddy, after all. Why else are you half-white?"

I steady myself against the wall, gritting my teeth. I should've known I was a closet laughing stock, but surprise still whirls within me. The cruelty of children, the worst of humanity, one I'd seen so often in my field. And me, an acceptable target within my own home. Next will obviously come sounds of scuffling, and I'd certainly wait a full minute before intervening against Timothy's blows. Adult duty, after all.

But the rumbles of skirmish never come, only Timothy's voice feigning a rural accent. "Son, I'll have you know I'm an American, thank you very much."

"Dude, Cody," comes a deeper if still immature voice, "not cool."

"What?" retorts the squeaker. "Jamie said that too last week."

Deeper voice starts to rise. "Well, I wasn't there for that. And I'd tell him to get lost too."

Timothy sighs. "Guys, shut uuuuup. Cody, fetch me a coke, okay? Jesus."

Always strange, hearing one's young brood curse. The years grow on him.

I hear the rude boy bounding up the stairs, and that spurs me in retreat to the kitchen so I can intercept him. The calm teacher persona inside me says to let it go, that kids say awful things but can also charm, that if I challenged him, this Cody could plant a tree, give an impassioned plea for peace, offer alms to the poor, all with less hesitation than an adult. Ah, but that's the thing about adults, their pride. My pride. An adult, after all.

Cody rushes in, a pudgy boy, freckles on his face, fox-red fuzz for hair. He'd lose all that weight by the end of high school, I know, having seen that metamorphosis time and again. All of us, so unformed when young. But he shows no sheepishness upon seeing me, looking as aloof as so many of Timothy's friends do. Timothy, so much more bright-eyed than any of them. And in the shadow of my heart, I want to believe this Cody will always be as ugly as he is now.

My dutiful smile, as always. "Want a coke, Cody?"

"Sure, Mister Choi." He says my last name correctly, at least.

"Choi," I say, opening up the fridge. "That's Korean, you know."

"That's pretty neat." Listless tone, listless face.

"Let me pour you a cup." I rummage through the kitchen cabinet. "Timothy's only half-Korean, though."

Silence from him.

I pour out the soda. "How do you think that happened?"

Looking up from my task, I see him gazing down, lower lip twitching. He knows now that I heard him earlier. Good. We'll see where this goes. Together.

"Well?" I keep my voice calm, as if lecturing on the Prussian War. "I'm waiting."

A mumbled, "I don't know." The generic preteen answer to any and all questioning.

"I don't know either." My hand rests firmly on the glass, my captive. "I was just curious on your thoughts."

More silence.

"Legitimately curious." Despite myself, I still hear a tinge of rawness in my prods.

"Um." His gaze darts around. "Timothy said he was adopted." A lie. But the most I can expect from him.

I unclasp the drink, realizing how foolish this all is. As if a teen would ridicule me to my face. As if my anger lies with him. Perhaps it aims at Timothy, for not pretending to be full Korean, as if the blond streaks in his hair and his eye shape don't give him away. No, I hate myself, and no one else, not even the unknown lover.

A leak of stress away from my smile. "(Thank you.)" I push the glass his way. "For talking to me. I feel like I don't know Timothy's friends well enough. It's nice to chat with them." I pause, sorting out my words. "All the same, let's keep this conversation to ourselves, okay?"

Wide-eyed, he gets out a, "N-n-no problem," and vanishes along with his beverage. In the wake of his presence, I realize that I'd thanked him in Korean.

*****

While Timothy participates in a sleepover, my wife and I dine alone at an Italian bistro. Wine for her. Driving duties for me. Pasta for both. Jarring gaps in our conversation. A usual dynamic. But she stares less at her plate tonight, ruminating more at empty space.

"What is it?" I ask.

"Hmmm?" No attention paid towards me.

"You're worried about something."

She redirects her gaze to the plate. "Less worry, more...." A sigh. "Okay. He contacted me."

"Who? Timothy's teacher?"

"More his sperm donor."

What little tomato sauce left in my mouth sticks to my throat. "I thought you two were," and I hold my hands out then pull them away from each other," separated completely?"

"Well, he contacted me. Online." A lifted chin. "I should've deleted the message."

"But you didn't."

"I should've. Timothy, though. We don't really," and a wine sip, "well, we don't really have rites of passage anymore. What makes a boy a man? I mean, I obviously wouldn't know." Swimminess in her words, but not enough to mask her panic.

"Help me here, because I didn't follow that."

"He needs to meet his genetic stock." She nods, convincing herself. "That question has to dog Timothy, about who he is, and I hate it. Think how much he overcompensates. Perfect grades-"

"Nothing wrong with that."

"-and all the sports, no, Eric, kids these days don't overachieve like we did-"

"Why not?"

"-so, listen, not the conversation I wanted." She rubs her forehead. "A tangent like this."

"So. Timothy's father."

"Is you. Chad is," and so I finally learn the lover's name, "well, he's just a satellite. He exists. It's his DNA I want Timothy to know about. Not any relationship."

What does a Chad look like?

My dutiful smile. An imagined taste of vino on my tongue, a desperate desire. But alas, designated driver. "I think it'd be great for Timothy to meet him."

A fire snaps in her, straightening out her stupor. "Why do you always do this, Eric?"

I blink. "What?"

"Going back on agreements. We decide on a rule, and then you throw it away, like when you bowed out of the phone calls and the joint banking."

"Those were your deals." I struggle for leveled tone. Shrieking about hypocrisy wouldn't play well in a restaurant. "I never agreed to them."

"Why not? You're so fucking disingenuous about everything. Like," and exaggerated head nods with lifted nose and wide eyes like a Confucian wise man, "'Mmm, yes, I have no opinion on the matter, I'm not being passive aggressive at all.'"

"So." I purse my lips as if she'd had no outburst. "We won't let Timothy meet him."

"No." A snarl. "We will. But you could open up. Say what you really think."

"Alright." A smile placed on again. "My only demand, that we eat at a Korean place when he comes. A real one. That one we went to a few years back."

She hesitates, then says, "That's fine," and keeps her mouth open for a moment to say more before descending back to silence.

"Okay." I imbibe some water. "So what should we have for dessert?"

*****

"(Please be quiet)," I say to a couple of my disruptive students. In the face of their confusion, I realize I've done it again and amend, "Just let me finish this lesson, okay?" The Korean shooting out of me like leaks in the dam, ever since that day with Timothy's friend. A, "(Where do you sell your ties?)" to a department store employee. A, " _Yeoboseyo_ ," answering the phone. A slipped, "(I'm trying to work here, could we talk later)," to Jon in the breakroom, which he meets with a laugh. "Come on, Eric, you know that's all Greek to me."

I can feel it coming, the assimilator. The English opium flooding into China. Commodore Perry sauntering into Tokyo Bay. And of course, my own homeland, piled upon by American soldiers who used our country up like a tissue for a sneeze. Who propped up the tyrants my family ran away from, ironically escaping into the States. Here I am, saluting the flag every morning with my pupils, but not enough. I must never have been anything other than American.

A visit with the uncle leads to him parading his wife's new eye tuck in front of us. "Now we match," she says with a grin. "All on the same page." Spare me. At home alone with my wife and Timothy elsewhere, I stare at the bathroom mirror. I pull my eyes wide in Asian caricature, then can't help but laugh. But I carry on for a full minute, volcanic ash erupting from my soul. Of course. Ching chong, ding dong, all of that.

The assimilator comes to steal away my son. No. To reclaim him. Reserved for me, only middle school snickering. The funny little Asian man even his wife can't love. To her credit, she never questions my failing English. "(Who's taking Timothy to baseball practice?)" A terse, "I'll do it."

A day before the arrival. Breakfast. "What should we change our last name to?" I ask, keeping my smile prim, not belying a joke.

A wrinkled nose. "What are you talking about?"

"No one can ever pronounce Choi."

"Their problem, not ours."

"You don't really believe that." A sip of orange juice. "Bad enough we're not tucking our eyelids."

A miffed, "We don't need to."

"You don't really believe that."

She crosses her arms, scowling. Too early for this conversation of course, but I don't sleep much lately anyway, so why concern myself with time? "What makes you arbiter of my thoughts?"

I say nothing.

"Okay, Eric, what name should we take?"

"Eric is European. No one calls me Min-ho ever."

"You're not answering the question."

"Ever wonder why that is? We never call Timothy Kun-woo either."

"Eric, I need to go to work. Let's discuss this tonight."

Each class, I give a pop quiz instead of a lesson, a mandated essay about the importance of citizenship. Amidst the chorus of scurrying pencils, I meditate on my desk, the comforting bulwark it gives me against the world. Lunch, I skip for the classroom's solitude, the uniformity of the seats, the contempt of the fluorescent lights. I don't want to go home. It doesn't belong to me anymore.

*****

"Can Chad pronounce Choi?" I ask my wife in bed the morning of the assimilator's arrival.

She sighs and stretches up. "I see you're handling all of this really well. We can call off the meeting if you want."

"There's no problem if he can't. I just wondered."

"You'll find out soon enough."

Looking inside the closet, my fingers glide over a Nirvana tee-shirt, its cheap worn fabric soft to feel, its fibers straining under the weight of my touch. Me, I know, American, casual, modern if not futuristic. But not the me this visit will need. Out comes a brown tweed vest I only wore for one holiday party ever to wear over a white button-down. Out comes ignorable beige slacks and tan leather shoes of ignorable quality. Time to fade from history.

Timothy for his part flings on a Seahawks shirt, one with a hole around the neck from some rough round of catch with his friends. "Timothy," I say, "(shouldn't you be wearing something nicer for this?)"

He tugs on his sleeves, scowling. "Dad, why do you keep doing that?"

So he finally notices. I swallow. "You're meeting your father for the first time. Wear something nice for him."

A deeper snarl. "What are you talking about? You're my dad." The first time he's shown any emotion about this other than typical preteen nonchalance. But who wouldn't want to meet their birth father? Clearly, he hid his eagerness to protect me, a fragile dish with a crack down the middle.

"Could you not make me look like a fuck-up?" At his step back from shock, I lick my lips and start again. "Please (just wear something nice.) I don't.... (I just want you to be happy. Let us behave well, okay.)" A pressure from the back of my neck forces my head down. To raise it up again, I know, would somehow snap my spine, as if my head holds up a slab of ice.

He shows the same fear as his pudgy friend did. "Dad," and his voice breaks with youth, "what's happening to you?"

"You..." English dances away from me, but I grapple for slices, for crumbs, anything to make him understand. "You want... see him... yes?"

"No." He rubs his cheeks, and for the first time, I spot the sleeplessness in his sagging face. "It's been twelve years. Why should I care now?"

I want to tell him that in ten years, he will. Maybe sooner. When a girlfriend, a coworker, or some fancied voice of god brings his attention to his confused blood, he'd respond with curiosity. Not like me, noticing my missing identity all too late. _Timothy_ , I want to tell him, _you're going to do much better than me. And to do so, you'll have to leave me behind._ But I can't. Even Korean escapes me.

A knock on the door.

My wife wears a demure burgundy pantsuit, betraying none of her mood. She answers the door scraped clean of expression. "Hi, Chad," she says. "Have an easy time finding the place?"

On my doorstep, a squat man somehow shorter than me, with pudgy middle and a greasy light brown ponytail. His eyes, more squinty than mine, and closer together. He wears a black trench coat over a shirt showcasing some Korean drumming troupe. His sneakers need cleaning... well, replacing really. He makes me feel overdressed. He make me feel professorial comparatively.

I am more attractive than this man. No self-doubt can claim otherwise.

"Um," and his voice comes out a nasal mumble, "no, it was fine." He instinctually reaches for his pockets like one of my chastened students.

No one wants to be here.

I hold out my hand. "Hi. I'm Eric." My smile, fake only in that it keeps from snickering.

He shrinks away, then pulls forward and weakly grips back in return. "Chad. Pleasure to meet you, Mister Choi." Pronounced well enough, but here he is with Mister.

"Please, just Eric. And," I gesture to a withdrawn Timothy several feet removed from all of us, his lips pursed, "this is," and I nearly fumble out _my son_ , but say, "Timothy."

Chad blinks like a mouse pulled of its hole and whistles. "Wow." He readjusts his coat. "You look so much like," and he nods to my wife, "he looks so much like you, Amanda."

He does. All I spot of this man's code in Timothy is a narrower face and of course the telltale streaks of gold in the hair. But this man is no Nordic blond, imparted no athletic frame. Science dictates that a firstborn generally absorbs the best genes, and Timothy's selection seems to have mostly rejected the paternal ones.

Timothy stays mum and frowning.

"Well," my wife says, "I thought we could have some tea before dinner. An ice-breaker." Her flatness slips incrementally away, with blush entering her cheeks. Her hands squirm at her waist.

Chad mutters something unintelligible in agreement.

We seat ourselves. With a bee's wheezing drone, Chad details his sojourn for the past twelve years. He'd tried to forge his way in South Korea on a work visa in an attempt to, as he puts it, "learn the beauty of Gungdo." The admission makes me raise an eyebrow. Archery? His fierce nodding. "I was looking for a master bowsmith so I could bring a crafting business to America." He'd struggled away as a waiter in a foreign land all for the chance at some talent he could've gleaned from shop class. "Alas," he sighs, and his tongue rolls out the word with pride in his sophistication, "many of the masters were too busy. To be expected. I mean," and his eyes bulge with whimsy, "it's federally a cultural treasure, after all."

To craft bows.

And he'd had a girlfriend. "But..." and he gets lost for a moment before changing the subject. He labors at a comic store for now, hoping for a workshop apprenticeship soon or a return to community college or the funds to go back to Korea for presumably more rejection from "the great masters."

I sneak looks at my wife. She clearly fights a cringe every few minutes. I want so badly to ask where they met, but mercy prevents me. I can imagine well enough. He, a bagger at a grocery store, a barista, and he gives me the ammo, "I just don't want to go back to the post office." Ah, so a relationship built on stamps and packing tape. He'd looked at her like an ivory idol, so different from my mandates of solitude so I could grade papers. He'd likely led with, "I was wondering if," and she immediately said, "Yes."

I'd taught dozens of Chads, of shy and smelly boys who'd doodle Japanese robots in their notes instead of details about the Spanish-American War. If prompted for answers in class, they'd whisper the wrong result and hide in their seat when reproved, their social limit exceeded. They wore shirts with cartoon characters, they poured pink dye in their hair, they netted C's, and they went through middle school without even a chance of dating. Amanda would be a goddess to them in adulthood, certainly, yet a finicky one who'd reject their advances.

But she hadn't. She scratches at her faces and slurps too fast on her tea, largely silent, but in that void of speech, we have our first real conversation since Timothy's birth. She lays naked before me now. She'd been trapped in programming, trapped with me, sulking me, both of us too young for marriage, and all she wanted wasn't the ecstasy of passion, but a look of adoration. Anything not to just be part of a "driven couple," but be loved sans accomplishment, even on such insulting terms as ethnic background. No qualifiers. No thriftiness or self-reliance required. Only unconditional love.

So pathetic. But pathetic like me. Despite myself, I'm falling in love again.

And the interloper. "It's so cool that you're a teacher," he gushes. No it's not. But I have what he wants – an air of the exotic. A mystery I don't really hold, of course, what with being an American, being someone whose Korean makes all listeners freeze in confusion. He thinks I naturally know how to hold a Korean bow, naturally know hapkido, naturally know how to make kimchi and naturally has Ban Ki-moon on speed dial. His gaze is low with sheepishness, not to the side with disdain. He didn't sleep with my wife to put me in my place, but to pretend to be me, to pretend his K-pop tastes and love of ox bone soup were natural instead of awkward. No assimilator, but instead a sycophant.

I can't boast of meeting him with the same respect, continually wandering my attention away. Timothy sinks into his chair, unreadable. Is he disappointed in his birth father? Does he have a predetermined loathing of him in loyalty to me? Or does he just yearn for video games and sports and an escape from boring adults? His brightness departs and leaves behind some dour being whose motivations mystify me. Could he just say something? Anything?

Exhausted of chitchat, we depart for dinner, Chad in a Volkswagen clearly ready to die, the rest of us in our van pretending we have a bigger family than we do. _Spirit of Seoul_ informs the sign with a new fluorescent garishness, changed since the last visit. Chad nods approvingly at it.

A step inside, though, leaves me bewildered. Gone is the Spartan whiteness of the interior design, Asiatic in its careful spacing of decorations. Instead, a pile of tropical plants greet me under dim mood lighting, feeling like a musty swamp or casino, possibly one emulating the other. Gone are the suited waiters stuttering out English, replaced by white collegiates in tee-shirts giving Chad the side-eye and me a smirk about my tweed. "Right this way, please."

Amanda shoots me a confused look. I shrug and dig into the menu. Pasta. Mushroom sauce over steak. Sushi, of course. None of it remotely Korean. "They must have new management," I whisper.

Chad snorts. "What Seoul are they talking about here?"

The one for business executives. The one for resort tourists. The one now to "class up" the block. The one replacing an erased identity.

Appetizers in the twenty dollar range. Amanda's groan, her look of fear at me, that I'll smile placidly and rip us all out of there in the name of budget. But the waiters pour our water, as if pouring concrete to ground the chains binding us here. When they leave, Timothy whines, "They don't even have any hamburgers."

"I'm sorry," Amanda says to Chad. "This place wasn't like this before."

Chad's shoulders twitch. His budget can't take this hit. Neither can mine, even as a professional. But I ordered us here. I should shoulder the burden.

A tap on my side. I glance up to find Jon Garland, with a women who I assume to be his wife beside him. "I figured you'd be here," he chuckles. "We just got done eating. Nice place."

"Very nice."

"But, uh," and his tone lowers, "on the pricey side."

"Well," and for the first time I feel truly open to him, willing to show some of the dry bitterness inside me, "it's not for us."

I expect shock at my negative admission, but he nods. With solemnity he says, "You've got that right." He tips his head at my family, hesitating at the sight of Chad, then scoots away. A nice place. He'll never come back here again.

Calamari in spiced marinara. Basil soup. Pad Thai. Chad looks like he's about to cry.

I survey them all, the whole table. Amanda, uncomfortable beyond relief, toying with her knife, stirring in her guilty, over prices, over sex, over gifting Timothy something he doesn't care about, his rite of passage so carelessly evaded. Because Timothy is still a child and doesn't care what church we go to or if he's a bastard or if I deserve to be his father. To reject me would be to take attention away from the Seahawks. The ultimate in complacency, and I run no risk in losing him, but neither will he ever confess to me any confusion over being white or being Asian because he just doesn't care. _Son, I'll have you know I'm an American, thank you very much._ Not a cover, but an actual belief.

And Chad. The imagined seducer no more, but a figure somehow lonelier than I. Whose romanticization of Asia offends me on a level, as if Korea is a magical kingdom he visited and not a real place, but only so much as I stand guilty too. I can mock him all I want, but he gave me a son. As repulsed as he is by his surroundings, he keeps turning to Timothy, ready to pry, to cajole, to confess, and then he clams up. Same as me, in that respect. He reproduced, and it mystifies him more it did me when I saw newborn Timothy's round eyes. Neither of us know how we got here.

I look around at this decadent idiocy. My uncle would love this place. A status symbol, after all. Safely secure from being too niche. But it is. It's not for us. For really anyone. It's a dehumanizing woodchipper that gobbles up dollars and considers that our language, the only tongue it needs to understand. It ignores English just as much as it does Korean. It doesn't care about anyone in this dinner party.

But I do. I've found love for them all. For Timothy, of course. For Amanda, finally. And for Chad. Especially poor, mourning Chad.

I stand up and say, with a dutiful smile, "Let's get the hell out of here." And everyone sighs in relief.

ILE D'ORLEANS

Accept me for what I am

An incomplete grade

A sidewalk ending

Right when the city starts

I rest here, afraid of trees

My heart lies, not in roots, not in leaves

But on grassy knolls

A farm on an island

That my ancestral blood never forgets

EASY MODE

Turn Six-Twenty-One. The nuclear bombings begin. My own warheads against my own cities because I'm bored. I target Scandrinar first, hovering my cursor over a stack of digital towers and farms and neighborhoods, a unit in my nation-building game. A pixelated Mina Loy soars overhead and drops a payload. A satisfying mushroom cloud, followed by moans from fictional citizens, perishing within the inferno. The metropolis shrinks in populace by half. Maybe those that remain will blame one of the countries still controlled by AI, like Player Four, currently at war with my country. Of course, such presumption would be baseless since that country's still languishing in the Dark Ages. Only my empire controls the power of the atom.

Outside my hostel room, London. Unknown to my American experience, begging to be explored.

I send a bomber at Norvusil next. In my mind, a child clumps together a snowman in the middle of a narrow street in the city's outskirts. He can hear oil drills creaking a few miles away, a constant for him, a beat he hums to as he packs more polluted ice into his new best friend. Not a sociable boy, after all, listens too much to school lectures for his peer's liking. Yesterday, his teacher taught about Norvusil's founding, how it was established solely to claim a patch of polar petrol, nurtured a factory before an open market, on and on, to the point where even I don't care, and I'm the Goddess-Tyrant, but the boy, he cares. He used to hate the black snow, but knowing that the sticky, inky stuff keeps his town alive fills him with warmth. The cake of soot on him connects him to the most advanced civilization in the world. He salutes his creation. "Hail Susanistan!" His elocution slops with infantile lisping, but he's ahead of his class, not just in elementary learning, but in a sense of citizenship. Part of the Big Something. The Big Importance.

Then the Big Importance vaporizes his playmate and petrifies him into a Pompeii fossil cast. Hail Susanistan.

The next target sits on the coast. The megalopolis of Susani-Kaema. A woman bicycles down its streets towards an open market close to the Western Ocean. Seagull droppings splash against guarding canopies hot with steam but never enough to catch fire. Calamari coated with cinnamon sizzle on grills before grizzled cooks fling them into a sauce thick with ginger, curry, and something called yellow weed. A Player Seven delicacy, though I've long since absorbed that country. Kaema once hosted their central government and still has a statue of Monarch Seven in its plaza, though I chiseled off its face. Goddess-Tyrant, after all.

The woman always skips Susani fare for the Sevenese dishes. Her blood runs ethnically Sevenese, even if my occupation has muddied it over several generations, turning her into one of my citizens. She speaks Susani in public, sings my National Anthem at all the sporting events her husband drags her to, has an entirely Susani name, yadda yadda. But at home, she insists her infant calls her, "Mey-Mey," the Sevenese colloquialism for mother. She'll teach the boy proper Sevenese when he's older, and yes, instruct him to marry a Sevenese girl, please, no one from the east, none of the conquerors. A sliver of her soul hopes for Player Seven independence someday. (A futile wish. This game doesn't allow secessions.)

But she suppresses any external rebelliousness, that is, until lunch. She dramatically averts her gaze from the Susani kiosks that churn out only lentils, granting herself a morsel of agency. Not much of one, only a microbial revolution, but with enough time, a pebble rolling down a cliff can turn into a landslide.

She points at a boiling pot, her mouth already watering. "Yellow weed curry. Two servings, okay?"

The vendor scowls. "What?" His Susani accent rings strong. "I don't understand you."

Horror grips the deepest, reddest piece of her heart. Her nation's cuisine, coopted by occupiers. Whatever anger that could've arisen in her had long since been grinded out, but enough pride remains to give out scorn. "I'm speaking fine. Yellow weed curry. Two servings."

A thought strikes her, that she could start her own shack, serve yellow weed curry the proper way, and so what if she gave up her job at a law office, so what if she halved her family's income right as they cared for a baby, so what if....

The desire dies. But she can teach her son the correct cooking times, the correct amounts of spices and the correct ways to sprinkle them. Susanistan could control her streets, but never her home. And as substandard as her meal is, she grimly smiles as she munches.

Then the bomb drops. She dies. The grumpy cook dies. Her husband dies. Her son dies. He will never marry an ethnic Sevense girl.

After that, Tormeilios receives a gift nuking, but no stories reside there because I couldn't care less about that town.

Time for a break. After saving my game, I crack open a window and let the frigid London air whistle into my dorm room. Back home in Illinois, the summer sun probably burns up everything, from the cornfields to the campus quad to my parents' side lawn. Here, the calendar might as well flip to autumn. I shiver, but don't dare fit into one of the two sweaters I packed. Colder nights could come in the next two months, and I fear foreign laundry rooms.

The car lights stream below like a river filled with lamps. Reversed lanes, I note for the hundredth time, and goodness help me if I have to drive here. The nightscape is like a Dali painting – realistic, but off. Before coming, I'd hoped for a Van Gogh, a mystery of blurs and swirls belying a dream world. Or had I? What had I really wanted? Over the course of the week, I'd forgotten.

I had told the other exchange students that my tongue couldn't cradle spice and thus I couldn't join them for Indian food, but maybe I can call Fiona and ask for a takeout dessert. As I massage the phone buttons without pressing, I take a sip of my McDonald's coke. It tastes like nothing. Like runoff from a gutter. Besides, I think while returning to my computer without any dialing, my stomach feels full from three hours ago.

A check of my inbox shows another e-mail that I'll have to delete from the psychiatrist. As nice as he is, I tell myself, he just wants my money. That's why he didn't want me studying abroad, because that meant less of my budget in his pocket. Or rather, my parents' budget. A lot of my parents' budget, to the tune of-

Turn Six-Twenty-Two.

Scandrinar. A father of two bashes a piece of rubble against a shop window. He expects an instant shatter, but he doesn't leave even a dent. Is he that weak? Starving, yes, dehydrated, nauseous from possible radiation poisoning, but weak? He's a father. An only parent now. He can't be weak. The second thwack breaks through.

He doesn't know why this is the only store in all of the uptown that didn't get looted. Maybe the owners smiled at every customer, gave kids free lollipops, calmly talked down any robbers. Maybe an instilled loyalty used to occupy here. But the father never visited here before today. He never got those smiles. And his youngest's skin has looked very pale the past two days.

The shelves run low as is. Food shortages had slammed Scandrinar even before the bombs did. Still, a cornucopia of supplies as far as he's concerned, too much to carry all at once. No shopping carts, so he can't caravan a line back to his spot under the bypass. Just flimsy plastic bags, sure to break under the overflow he wants to carry. He looks back outside. Will his hole pave way for others to loot? If he returns in an hour, will it be a cleaned-out store?

He shoves chips out of a mobile shelving unit and loads on food cans. He can't leave his children alone forever, so he can't pull off a nonstop marathon of trips. His only hope rests in other survivors maintaining disinterest in his stash. A likely mistake, he knows, that could kill off his family, just as the smallest misstep inevitably will. Better to just keep acting, he thinks, and beat back this overcoming dread.

Before he drags the rack out, he looks at the register one last time. A sign on its top chirps, _Thank You, Come Again_. He leaves five rumpled dollars on the counter. No thief, after all.

As he grunts his way down the street, his mind wanders towards his wife, despite his best efforts. Maybe somewhere in the strike zone downtown, she remains alive, cared for by a widower who came looking for his spouse and found her instead. And if so, they both probably wonder together why he didn't run like so many others did to find his loved one amidst the rubble. He reminds himself that he journeyed halfway there, he did, an effort was made. If they reversed roles, if she saw the people with melting skin, would she have gone further, knowing he might be in even worse shape? Could she bear it? Would she have abandoned her children just to find the glowing clump left of his body? A father has to care for his own. A father has responsibilities.

He passes some other vacant souls on his way, but they pay him as little mind as he does them. When he gets to his hideaway, throaty coughs greet him. His children can't run up and hug him in their weakness. His home caught fire amidst the chaos, closer to the blast than his workplace. Somehow, the children escaped, but that does them little good now.

"I'm going to heat up some chicken soup," he promises them. "It'll be delicious."

As he struggles lighting some wood debris into a fire, his oldest asks, "Papa, why did Player Four do this?"

Not the first time he'd asked that question, and the father worries that his child's fever has led to splotches of amnesia. Or maybe it's just shock, because really, how could this all have happened?

"They hate our greatness," he responds automatically. Then, in a mumble, "So much that they learned how to make missiles." Obviously, Player Four did this, since Player Six was half a world away and really only huffed about Susanistan's wars at Nation Council. But no country on the planet knew how to get a plane off the ground. The only way Player Four could pull this off would be intercepting and stealing a missile launcher. (Except that can't happen either. Countries can gift each other research, but not technologies, and they certainly can't capture weapons.)

Their plight could only hinge on Susanistan incompetence, and their plight could only continue because of such incompetence as well. Where were the rescue helicopters? The outside construction contractors to fix the bombed-out roads? The airdropped medics? Was Scandrinar not Susanistan? They were no Susanopolis, no Second City either, but they were the fifth biggest city in the empire. What, a few protests about the famine pushed them out of favor? They could just die now? He and his family could just _die_?

But his children don't need to hear that. "Don't worry," he continues. "We'll hit them back. Worse than they hit us. And we'll get rescued. Go live on Kadofango Coast." (He doesn't know that they've been bombed as well.) The lies flow out of him. "And the Goddess-Tyrant will personally visit us and give you both a lifetime supply of chocolate, and Mama will be there. I know that I said she was 'gone,' but no, she'll be there and won't even be mad about the chocolate, you can eat it breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I promise, I absolutely promise."

But neither child answers, they don't even smile, they just take shallow breaths, hands on their stomachs, their skin a faint green. He fights back his tears and keeps working on the fire. A father has to care for his own. A father has responsibilities.

The second bomb drops.

_Are you sure you want to bomb Rakayea?_ Yes, game, I do.

Are you sure you want to bomb Susani-Humarea?

Are you sure you want to bomb Qalaginaktis?

Save game.

The sound of steps pass my door. I should say hello. Bad enough that I have a room to myself, bad enough that I skipped the first two days of classes, but to hide away from everyone? Crossing into hermit territory. A shiver reminds me that I had never shut the window. As it slams down, I cringe, expecting a knock on my door and a, "What was that noise, Susan?" Do they know my name? I only know three of theirs.

How soon until I get sick of McDonald's?

I look up my online assignment due in thirty minutes. " _Talk about your cultural experiences in London. Prompt: Saint Peter's._ " I'd skipped that tour though. Well, prompts are optional, presumably. Maybe not. Maybe they went over that in class. I can ask one of the others about it, steer away from questions about my absence. "Jet lag," very bad jetlag. But the flight landed a week ago? Ha ha ha, well....

The text box stares back at me. This is the part where I paste in the essay I finished three days ago. But I don't even have line one. At least, I tell myself, put down a first sentence.

_Saint Paul's sure is a church!_ No.

_I could've gone to Trafalgar Square and climbed the lion statues, but I leveled up my elf rogue instead._ No.

Just kidding. I didn't level her up. I endlessly toyed with her inventory and wardrobe instead. She has sixteen signet rings. Sixteen!

A woman yelled at me that I was blocking everyone's path in the Tube my first day here.

General studies is a major for jocks, not a high school salutatorian.

Delete.

_London has funny cars, like boxes with wheels. In conclusion-_ Delete.

_I'd say I missed home, but I don't like it there either. What am I supposed to be? When people think "Susan," what do they think of? Of hummingbirds? Why would they think of that?_ Delete.

Are you sure you want to bomb London? Click yes or no.

A good way to get visited by Scotland Yard. Delete.

Saint Paul's Cathedral is very old. It still has services. The London Museum has mummies. Isn't that interesting? Tune in next week when I branch out from McDonald's to KFC!

Tempting. A good five hundred words below the assigned minimum, but tempting.

After I play another round, I'll double down and pound out... something. Sure. Absolutely.

Turn Six-Twenty-Three.

A turn ago, the air in Second City heaved and wretched with pepper spray and tear gas, but now, police line up expressionlessly as the crowds scream around them, their presence merely stage setting. Molotov cocktails flame out on sidewalks, windows crash under mob weight, but the police remain rooted and disinterested. The Mayor-Governor plans a televised speech in a few moments, but the central square's big screen crackles with static, so no one will see it here.

The journalist's fingers ache with snapping his camera. Too much. Too much history in this moment, too many masked faces and bashed-up cars and burning flags and elbows in his side. If pictures tell a thousand words, then he's captured a library, and yet, not enough. Not enough digital memory, not enough angles, not enough time in these eruptions of activity cycling around him. He can't teleport to the height of action, but there's too much action not to capture, not to keep shooting.

How?

How did he get here?

Which led to why.

Why would a country nuke its own citizens?

Would someone assassinate the Goddess-Tyrant?

(No. A player can't lose control over their own country. That would be stupid.)

Is all this a Player Four conspiracy? Or, a depressing thought, one from Player Six? (No. Only I have figured out Espionage.)

Is this all a dramatic way to root out dissent? (More loyalty lies in the nuked cities than most. Many of the latter annexed towns carry too few people to bomb satisfactorily.)

Is the Goddess-Tyrant insane? (The psychiatrist says I have depression, but not much else.)

Is this a dream? (No. Computers don't dream.)

"How can you stand there?" shrieks a particularly red-faced protestor at one of the policemen. "How can you stand behind that child-killing psychopath? She killed our people! _Our_ people!"

Inwardly, the policeman screams back, _WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO? WHAT? AM I? SUPPOSED TO DO?_ (Nothing. He's a stat hanging over a city graphic, and nothing more.)

None of them think their city will get nuked though. Not Susanistan's second city. Not one so close to Susanopolis. Wrong.

Susanopolis.

The news of self-nuking already hit the streets, but it's met only with shrugs. That's non-Susanopolitan problems. Here? Everyone gets anywhere by high-speed trains. An allotment of delicious food arrives at every household each day, the choicest of Susani cuisine with the freshest ingredients. Work? A joke, an excuse not to be bored. The rest of the empire props them up. Every house has its own park with its own personal gaggle of geese and botanical garden and monolithic fountain and army of grumbling Fourese gardeners. In contrast, the pool boys are all ethnically Player Three, a cheery sort, probably too nice to be enslaved, but warmongering countries will warmonger, after all. Besides, all these minorities' homelands now have working sewage systems, thanks to Susani occupation, so they can't complain, really.

But _some_ -one has to whine in paradise.

"I don't want to go to Player Six." Young Suze paces through the lawn, and her mother jogs to keep up. Suze nears tears. "I just want to stay home."

"But all you do is watch the news and mope."

"At least I won't be in another country, knowing no one, not understanding how anyone talks, afraid to try the food, probably sick with some intestinal-"

The mother grabs her daughter by the shoulder. "You know what?" A sigh. "You're right. Stay home. Get your bearings. Figure life out."

No, not how it goes.

In a father's office, an eighteen-year old Su-seyne wrinkles her nose. "Player Six?"

The father grins. His office overlooks a magnificent train concourse brimming with blah blah blah, all very cool, but anyway, he says, "A summer-long English (whoops) Susani language class. An easy credit. Just see some local Shakespearean, er, Chaquespearean plays-"

"Why does Player Six have Chaquespearean plays?"

"Because they're out allies, remember?"

She throws up quote marks. "'Allies.'"

"Anyway, not much culture shock-"

Sus-seyne brightens up. "But enough to have a rich experience in (check map) Telestaire, one of the biggest cities in the world." (Actually, only twenty-sixth biggest, thanks to my medical advances.)

"Right. A once in the lifetime experience."

"Wow. Once in a lifetime." She gives out a laugh. "And I'm going to make the most of it." Cue heroic fanfare. _Are you sure you want to bomb Susanopolis?_

Not quite yet.

A teen sits on a rolling hill in the capital's central park. He resembles the boy who made snowmen in Norvusil, but older. Less enthused, too. He looks at the fireflies buzzing about, out early.

"Why am I here?" he asks them.

(Because the game generated you.)

He won't listen to me, though, engrossed with lightning bugs instead. "What's going to happen to me?"

(I'm going to vaporize you.)

"Where am I supposed to be?"

(Ground Zero.)

"The big questions." He chuckles. "Asking myself the big questions here. So I'll go smaller. When will I stop being so bored?"

(Maybe you should go to Player Six. I hear they have great Chaquespearean plays.)

The sunset glows neon orange from all of Second City's irradiation. Nuclear winter should've choked this world by now, but the game hasn't programmed in that feature.

"If I fall," he says, voice flat, "if I spiral down, I'll never come back up. I'll slide off the face of the Earth."

(Not really a question.)

"And," a hollow laugh, "there's nothing I can do."

Are you sure you want to bomb Susanopolis?

Turn Six-Twenty-Four.

Player Four finally crosses into Susani territory, taking Susani-Bimgul, a fairly easy victory since the city's train of supplies got bombed to Gehenna last turn. Thus goes the Fourese Counteroffensive, taking hold of the entire Player Three annex. Their Columbus-era ships will take a turn to land on proper Susani shores, but my navy drifts powerless in the sea, bereft of fuel and incapable of defense.

Turn Six-Twenty-Five. With a military that would struggle to win the Battle of Hastings, Player Four strides into a bombed-out Susanopolis, the city's only protection deriving from the poisoned soil and toxic air. Alas, somehow not enough. The invaders rain a storm of arrows on the Imperial Palace, and the last remaining Susani infantryman cackles at their effort. The entire right side of his body runs black with crisped skin. He pulls a Fourese arrow out of the crumbled wall and plunges it between his eyes. Game Over.

The game awards no achievements for losing on Easy Mode.

The thought crosses my mind that Hamlet would fit perfectly in this scenario, prattling about Player Four's election lights or whatnot, prompting a huge laugh. I probably wake up half the dorm, but at least I have an essay idea. Prince Hamlet in Susanistan's Court. Perfect.

I log into my college portal.

_Assignment now closed._ Red text. I check the clock. Forty minutes late. Ten percent of my final grade... turned to ash. Combined with the truancy dent on my participation grade, that left me, at best, a "B." Never in my life had I earned a "B." I only lost out the valedictorian to a NASA engineer's son. And I'd get a "B" in English. My best subject.

And I hadn't even climbed atop the lions in Trafalgar Square.

Tomorrow's class starts at eight in the morning. The clock approaches one at night. An average game lasts close to seven hours. And then I can play with my elf rogue's armoire for a couple hours, followed by another game where I can run a pacifist campaign. Unless a Player attacks me. Then I'll go all Genghis Khan on them again, or the female equivalent, Genghisette or whatever.

Maybe this time, I'll bump the difficulty up to Regular, but that sounds tiresome, and I'm tired an awful lot lately, if not exactly sleeping much. Instead, I reload Turn Six-Twenty-One.

A placid, productive society lies before me.

Are you sure you want to bomb Scandrinar?

Of course. Bombs away.

ELIJAH (A HYMN)

The Lord is my author

My every move, a lift of His finger

Gliding, like a pianist, tink tink tink

In the afternoon sun, on a patio

Of a resort nested in the woods

Not a plantation, there is no work here

Work is not enough, this is not a slavery

This is an art, a picture

Can you not see it, admire the swirls of its paint

Its style its own, new, _opkomend_

A thing that...

A thing too marvelous for us

We lose our speech, and He replaces it

With His oration

THE SHORTEST DAY OF THE YEAR

"Daddy," five-year old Vijay whimpered to Raj, "will the days ever get longer again?"

If not for his son's earnestness, the science teacher would've laughed. Four previous winter solstices, but this year's was the one that frightened him. Every year his first, except when it came to Santa Claus, hmmph, he sticks around. Better off if the boy begged for Hanuman to come every year, or Sun Wukong, really, any monkey god over that obese polar plantation owner. An absolute terrible example against the candy cutback Raj wanted for his son.

"Of course. Until it's light at nine o'clock in July." A sigh. "And too hot."

The boy nodded but still looked troubled.

Raj's wife Radha, always an early riser, always enforcer of the same, had lit candles amidst all the lamps and lights, "Too dark for morning," she'd said. _Blindingly bright now_ , Raj grumbled inside. As a child, Raj huddled on the couch all day when this date came around, with lights out, his only illumination the cartoons on television. His parents hadn't liked it, but they respected the mores of winter vacation. In the darkness, under the blankets' warmth with hot cocoa by his side, he felt as if he'd returned to the womb. If snow reclined on the ground, he could fashion an ice castle for all the snow nymphs to rule in. They never seemed to build their own.

But Radha understood none of that, so she batted the shadows away. Their son would stay afraid of the dark, would still keep his nightlight on, no unknowns confronted. Completely unhealthy.

"My eyes hurt," Raj said, and he massaged the bags underneath them for emphasis.

His wife never even faced him. "There's some aspirin in the bathroom cabinet."

Yes, he knew where the aspirin was already. "I think the candles are the cause."

"If it's dim in here, then it'll be my eyes that hurt. And I have a lot of work to do."

Fair. But he still felt suffocated by glimmer. The Christmas tree ornaments reflected the television, turned to an obnoxiously loud children's show afraid of cartoons or even costumes. Vijay watched it dutifully. His mother called it "educational." Droll.

"I want to walk Vijay to the park," Raj said.

"It's cold!"

"We'll bundle up."

"He'll catch a cough."

"It'll only be for half an hour," he lied.

She bit her lip, glancing nervously at her computer. He knew she didn't have time to argue with him, and counted on it. Manipulative, but necessary. Some things, she couldn't understand. Not brought up the same way, hadn't seen the same sights.

She rolled her eyes, then glared at him, lips zipped. He kept his face impassive, as if his request was simple, an inquiry on whether he should check the mail.

"If he gets sick," she said, relenting, "then I'll skin you alive."

"And break your Hippocratic Oath?"

"I'm serious, Raj."

The sky curled with murky blue aura, a stew of chilled air and brooding clouds. Even this sliver of day only acted as a preamble for night. Wind nipped away, like a dog test chewing a new toy, but Vijay shivered nonetheless, his mouth puckering ready for complaint.

"Look at the sky, Vijay." Raj wished he could coo, but knew from his students playing back to him recordings of his lectures that the best he could do was yip. He never calmed infant Vijay very well either, always his wife's job. _You don't have the touch, Raj._ And he worked with less than twenty-four hours to get this right, this all-important point.

Vijay only groaned and whinnied.

"For the rest of the year," Raj said, "you won't get skies that stay this dark. They turn normal all too soon. Don't have enough magic."

The word "magic" failed to brighten the boy's eyes. Just as well, since Raj knew explosions caught more oohs and ahs than mysticism did these days. Perhaps the Santa mythos carried some unbeknownst explosive element, perhaps that was how the overgrown elf enraptured Vijay, who even knew.

"We'll walk over to the gas station and get some warm hot dogs. Would you like that?" Raj knew he'd only get grumbles back, so he plowed through. "And we'll walk around in old downtown, looking at all the," inward groan, "Christmas decorations."

A notable pep-up. "Christmas decorations?"

Reluctant nod.

"Yay!"

The family lived in a fairly fashionable quarter by a tourist trap, and the park participated in that, a machine of appeal and entreaty, a cycle of messages, "Buy things," "Feel insecure," "Find superiority over others," etc. No simple quests, no dragons to conquer, no, the dragon instead told you, "Sure, you beat me, but wouldn't it be better to strike my heart with something nicer than that rusty rapier? Like, say, with this exclusive diamond-encrusted broadsword, crafted in 1831, and not only that, but one accompanied by this mithril helm," and so on, to the point where even the snowmen stood fake and plastic.

But Vijay grinned and grinned and grinned, even through the cold.

First, however, the gas station. Bright fluorescents, enough for Raj to wince as they poured boiling water on his eyes. Vijay though gazed worshipfully at a Santa cutout standing next to the counter.

The attendant, a girl in her mid-twenties, cocked her head as Raj approached with his hot dogs. "Hey," she said, "you're a doctor, right?"

Heat pinched Raj's cheeks. "No," he said, not amending that his wife was.

The girl tugged down the right side collar of her shirt, showing a patch of red on her collar bone. "I've dealt with this rash since Thanksgiving. Do you know anyone who could diagnose what it is?"

"I'd just like the hot dogs, please."

She shrugged and rang him up. The leprechaun sitting on the cigarette shelf behind her winked at Raj before disappearing. Raj blinked, unsure if his imagination wasn't getting away from him. Too soon for such appearances, wasn't it?

"Maybe," he said, sprinkling some warmth on his still-nervous tone, "You should ask the fairy queen about your rash."

"I doubt she'd do much good." She sighed and rubbed the offending spot. "Rather just see a doctor. That'll be five bucks even."

"You're very pretty," Vijay said to her. His hand tightened in Raj's grasp.

"Aw." A tooth was missing in her grin. "Aren't you too cute. What's Santa getting you for Christmas?"

Well, the boy couldn't possibly know, Raj groused inside. Unless he was precognitive. Vijay seemed to think he was and chirped, "A remote-controlled toy truck! Vroom, vroom!"

Raj swiped his credit card. "Why not a magic truck, Vijay? One not controlled by remote?"

The attendant snickered. "Everyone knows Santa doesn't give magic gifts. Just stuff you can find at Toys 'R Us."

"Daddy, can we go to Toys 'R Us?"

Preferably not. "Let's check out the Christmas lights first, okay?"

They could've toured the Main Street, but Raj's nerves could only endure so much. An avenue two blocks away held its share of sleepy shops with sparser displays. Enough, though, to garner Vijay's sparkle-eyed wonder. His fingers pressed against each glass pane, leaving smudges once pulled away, prints indistinguishable from all the other ones the window had accrued this winter.

Seeing that grin pushed Raj a step back in his mind. Maybe therein lied Santa's appeal – his commonality. Every mall carried one, so every child could return to school in January and reminisce together about the joys of his cotton beard and plastic buckle. A snapshot of a Santa in Duluth could spark recognition in Schenectady.

Raj still hated it. Cherishing a memory you didn't own, a public utility, the porta potty of sentiments. No, his son deserved more than that.

And there, maybe summoned by his thoughts, stood a White Stag across the street, in between two dead topiary bushes, its antlers sparkling with flicks of gems, its eternally combed tail tossing about. "Look, Vijay!" He shook his boy on the shoulder. "The King of the Forest!"

"Uh-huh," the boy said, not looking away from a clock repair shop's light-covered timekeepers.

"I'm serious."

His son tossed a glance, his eyes locking on the creature and just as quickly releasing, targeting again the greens and reds. "Pretty."

"You didn't even look."

" _Well met, sons of men,_ " the stag said, his baritone booming across the road, the tone of royal decree.

"Vijay, he talks!"

"Uh-huh." But the boy kept focus on the storefront.

With a bow, the stag trotted away, through an alley, likely its last steps into the human world until the next winter solstice.

Raj let out an unavoidable sob before clamming up, but his son didn't notice. Anger for a moment crossed into the father but dropped away. All of this hardly resembled, say, Vijay refusing to eat his peas. Reproach failed to remedy this, a fall away from the grace of the fairy kind, the forest folk, the celestial beings and lost spirits, the glimpse into the clandestine fabric carrying the weight of the regular realm's motley sheets. What discipline could he muster? Two weeks without dessert for failing to commune with the arcane?

"It's the shortest day of the year, Vijay."

"Uh-huh."

"Not just another day in December." Terse. Not with Vijay, though. No. With an entire culture.

A whimper. "I want the sun to come back."

Raj put on a smile he didn't feel. "Of course you do."

"Can we go home now?"

"Let's spend just a little time at the park."

Dot-sized sprites flittered near the ground, hovering next to rock walls, whispering to each other. On the overhanging branches of a frostbitten tree, a kind–hearted goblin chatted with a kinder-hearted eagle totem that flapped its wooden wings with each chuckle. A nymph danced in a sprinkler that she'd magicked into action, the water never freezing thanks to her spell.

"Look, Daddy! Frosty!" Indeed, there stood a cardboard cutout of a snow husk the two could mold in their backyard.

"Yes," Raj nodded, "very good. And look at that." He pointed out a deathly pale man in an ancient black Oriental robe, his tall tasseled hat flapping a slip of paper with exotic writing over his fanged face. "A jiangshi, a hopping vampire. Normally very dangerous, but tonight, and only this night of the year-"

"Does he know Santa?"

Probably not, in fact, probably predated Santa. "He might, he might."

"Is Santa here?"

"No."

"Why not? Whyyyyy?"

"He can't be everywhere."

"Yes he can. His reindeer can take him anywhere."

"A jiangshi can also go anywhere. You see that paper hanging from its hat? It-"

"Santa!" And indeed, over the crest of a hill, the telltale ball attached to the cap. The boy dashed off, and when Raj finally caught up with him, he already had crawled halfway up Santa's leg.

After a couple huffs, Raj got out, "That's a statue."

"It's Santa!"

"But he's not alive. Just stone and paint."

"Look, he has a beard! And a hat!"

"And convenient latter rungs so you can climb to his shoulders." Eight-foot high shoulders, and Raj considered citing safety concerns to keep the boy off them, but that'd smack of hypocrisy considering he'd dragged both of them through this chill. "Is he icy?"

"No."

With sarcasm, "A solstice miracle."

Vijay shied away from the shoulders anyway, opting to climb up and down and up again, sometimes hanging from only one hand and foot, which Raj chastised him for, but he would pull it off on occasion again anyway in casual defiance.

" _Hello, sons of men,_ " came a quiet bass tone.

Raj turned around and saw the tree walking towards him, roots rippling through the frozen earth like tentacles, limbs twisting in a strange dance of greeting.

" _How goes your night?_ " The gravelly rumble emanated from a hollow near its bottom.

"My son is doing just great." A sigh. "But good luck drawing his attention." Indeed, a checkup showed the boy staring up at the Santa face in awe again.

" _The child climbs well._ "

"I suppose he does." Better than his chubby frame would suggest.

" _I sense disappointment in you._ "

"A parent can never be disappointed with their child. Ever." A rub of his nose bridge. "But I want so much more for him."

" _More than what?_ "

"That which society offers."

" _And he contents himself with it?_ "

"With the plastic and lights and parades, yes. I just wish he'd appreciate the magic. The mystery of all this night covering the earth." A deep breath, refreshing his whole body.

" _And he does not?_ "

"Hmmph. No."

" _Then try to kill him._ "

The whispers of nighttime breeze. The knock of Vijay's feet against the ladder.

" _If he survives and escapes, he will understand the unpredictability of life, the savage wonder of the unknown. If not, then the world succors one less ruiner of our secret forests and dasher of our fairy circles._ "

Far off, the hiss of the sprinklers and the shrill tee-hees of the nymph. A branch rattling from a gust, its own shiver.

The screech of Vijay's shoes slipping off a rung, and the flop of his body on the wood chips below. His eyes widened, as big as moons, before his mouth did the same, letting loose a throaty howl that reddened his entire face like an cherry, the tear ducts fountaining out their wares.

Raj bolted toward him, holding Vijay's wetted cheeks to his chest before spotting the twitch of the boy's right ankle. A peel back of the sock showed a magenta overlay of bruising. Raj massaged it, dumbfounded on what to do next, when the bawling intensified. The boy had turned his sights up to the grinning leer of the Santa, and fear quaked his entire frame.

"Shhh," Raj said. "Look at me." But the child faced over to past the father's shoulders, towards where the tree-thing no doubt silently judged them. "No," the man entreated, "look at _me_." He cupped Vijay's chin and turned it his way. "I'm here for you, son. Always."

"Dah-deeeee!"

"I know. Painful and cold." Harder rubs on the joint. "But this too will pass. We have each other. Moonshine, sunshine, we have each other." He pulled the child closer. The kneading continued.

"I don't like Santa no more."

"Well, okay. You were right about one thing, though. It's easy to get sick of the dark." The skin didn't swell beneath his fingers, at least.

Minutes passed, Raj silent, enduring the occasional sob, hands aching in the chill, but a pain he could easily endure.

"I think I can walk," Vijay murmured.

"Are you sure?"

A somber nod.

They stood, but doing so raised a deep cough out of Raj. He felt his throat, its scratchy pain. A groan. "Your daddy is getting sick."

As if in higher pitched refrain, an eruption of hacking from Vijay, a, "Hyuh-hyuh-hyuh," simultaneously adorable and worrying.

"You too, hmm?" the father said.

A nod from Vijay, and curiously, a grin.

"Mommy will be very angry at us," Raj said.

"Both of us!" And Vijay buried himself into his father's coat. The nymph went unheard, and the park's spectacle flickered out, leaving them in a silent darkness that nonetheless failed to intimidate them.

About the Author

Blaise Marcoux writes weird fiction, probably because of some subconsciously repressed abduction by aliens or something. His fiction has appeared in Bewildering Stories, Title Goes Here, Comma, Splice, and through Short Story Press. His website is www.betterlivingthroughlowselfesteem.com, where more links to his work can be found.
