

### A WORLD OF TERROR

A COLLECTION OF

SHORT STORIES

by

ASMSG Authors

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Cover Art by Kyra Dune, of ASMSG

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This anthology is a collection of short horror stories. All works herein are included by the express permission of each author. Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the authors' imaginations or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by: Grey Mouse Publishing

Written by: ASMSG Authors

Produced by: Christopher Shields, Publisher & Co-Administrator, ASMSG

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of the publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the Authors except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Contact ASMSG at www.asmsg.weebly.com

Cover Art © 2013 by ASMSG

Cover Art by Shadow Portal Production

Editors: ASMSG Authors

Smashwords Edition

**Table of Contents**

CLASS REUNION—Murielle Cyr

DAWN—Danielle DeVor

DEATH HATES HIS JOB—Wodke Hawkinson

NIGHTMARE CIRCUS—Simon Okill

HUNGER—Lucy Pireel

JESSIE CAME TO THE DEAD TREE—Chad Huskins

MILLIE—Berk Washburn

THE PERFECT WOMAN—JJ Toner

THE BLIGHT MOON DARK LORD—JC Eggleton

THE CLEARING—Tony Gilbert

THE CLOSET—Billy Ray Chitwood

THE FEE—Ann Swann

THE LAND OF NOBEL—PJ Perryman

THE MAID—Michelle Browne

THE MANSION—Oscar Wager II

THE OLD OAK TREE—Joe Pringle

THE WOODEN CHEST—Thomas Ryan

WRONG MOVE—Claude Nougat

ZOMBIES ANONYMOUS—Lauren Scharhag

# CLASS REUNION

Murielle Cyr

June Reed planned to complain again. How could they expect her to model quality work to her students when her own blackboards were always smeared with chalk residue? The school principal, Mary Upworth, was already on the phone when June approached the office. She continued down the hallway, grasping the handrail to pull herself up the staircase leading to the second floor.

Thirty years of hauling heavy bags of copybooks up these stairs had taken their toll on her legs and lower back. One of these days, she said under her breath, I won't need to do this when I become principal.

She relished this quiet time before the children came swarming in from outside, screaming, shoving and slamming their metal lockers. Year after year of campaigning to impose complete silence when the children lined up in the schoolyard before entering had done nothing. Mary, as well as the younger teachers, considered total silence unrealistic; children were by nature sociable and needed to vent before classes started. June had enough teaching experience behind her to insist it was all nonsense. The kids nowadays have no respect; they need to be taught good old-fashioned discipline.

The lights in the girls' washroom across the hall from her class were still on. No doubt the new janitor had forgotten to turn them off again, the third time this week. She'd have to speak to Mary about this too. Heaven forbid if June happened to forget to turn off her own classroom lights. Some nosey parent was sure to notice and lodge a complaint. A sudden movement from inside the washrooms startled her and she dropped her heavy bag, spilling her copybooks across the hallway floor.

A tall, slim woman dressed in a blue janitor outfit appeared in the washroom doorway holding a cleaning rag reeking of ammonia. She stared at June a moment as if she recognized her, and then seeing the scattered copybooks, leaned down to help her pick them up.

"Leave them," June waved her away. "Better get back to your job. I'm the one who has to put up with all those horrible smells each time I open my classroom door."

The woman hesitated before standing back up, spun around and marched back into the washrooms. June retrieved her copybooks and listened to the thundering flush of the toilettes. She paused a moment as she turned the key to her classroom door. It appeared strange to her that the entire row of twelve toilettes, judging by the loud roar she had just heard, must've flushed at the same time.

A cold draft accosted her when the door to her class swung open and she glanced up at the windows. All five of them were wide open, and to her total amazement, they weren't her usual windows. They were the old wooden-sliding ones with no screens that had been in place when she first started teaching. These had been replaced long ago by vinyl hinged ones with secure childproof screens. What was the meaning of this? No one had mentioned anything to her about this.

June dropped her bag on her desk, stepped forward to go close the windows, and came to an abrupt stop. There was no way she could slide those windows shut without looking down to the pavement two stories below; a quick glance down would make her head spin. Her normal windows swung inwards to open and were fitted with tight fitting screens to protect against any accidental fall.

A sudden cool breeze slammed the door behind her. She stepped backwards, stumbling on a cone-shaped object on the floor. She stooped down to pick it up and was startled to see the black dunce hat she had fabricated in the early years of her teaching career. June had been careful about using it, reserving it for students who did sloppy work or who didn't put in the necessary effort to learn. A few overprotective parents had claimed it was humiliating to force their child to sit on a stool in front of the class wearing a pointy dunce hat, and she had been ordered to put it away. What was it doing here after all this time? The acrid smell of the glue she had used to keep it together still lingered after more than twenty years.

She heard the familiar thud of a rubber eraser hitting the wooden desk and swerved towards the back of the class. A young girl with long blond braids sat hunched over a desk scrawling words in her copybook. Her tense, almost pained expression and pale freckled skin, reminded June of someone, perhaps an old student. There had been so many. Mary wouldn't dare place a new child in her class without warning her beforehand.

"What are you doing here, young lady?" June said, advancing down the tidy row of desks. The girl continued to work without looking up.

"I demand an answer. Who gave you permission to come into my class before the bell?" She towered over the low wooden desk. The child's work was smudged with grey eraser marks, and at places she had erased right through the page. If she'd use her right hand maybe the work wouldn't be so messy.

"Outside this minute, young lady, and take that sloppy copybook with you."

The child continued laboring without looking up. June turned on her heels and headed towards the door. "This is outrageous. The office is going to hear about this."

Her classroom door slammed as she marched down the staircase. She charged back up a few minutes later with the principal following close behind.

"I don't know how she got in," June said. "My door was locked. Unless that new janitor let her in."

"I doubt that," Mary said. "Margaret Rankin has a good track record with her previous schools. Did you know she used to be a student here?"

"Then she should know I won't tolerate any odours coming from that bathroom, nor any children in class before the bell," June said, pushing her door open.

A blast of warm air smelling of chalk and musty textbooks greeted them. June had her head turned back towards Mary as she pointed to the back of the class. "Here is that rude child who comes into my class without permission and refuses to leave when I ask her to."

Mary reached for the light switch. "I forgot my glasses downstairs," she said. "A couple of opened windows would freshen the air in here."

June swerved and stared in disbelief. All the desks were placed in their habitual straight rows, cleared of any pencils, erasers or copybooks. No sign of any child having been in the class.

"She must've slipped out when I went downstairs," she said, glancing towards the windows. "These were wide open—I could swear they had been replaced —"

"Not a chance," Mary said, with a smile. "With our school budget, we couldn't afford to replace a doorknob."

"But someone opened them all. The janitor must—"

"Opening windows isn't part of her job description."

"Must've been that child. She's not even one of my students."

"Yes, well—I'll check with Margaret," Mary said. "You know June, it isn't necessary to be in this early." She glanced at her watch, patted June's arm and headed back down. "An extra thirty minutes of rest in the morning can do wonders."

The school bell rang. June reached for a piece of chalk to write the date on the black board. Her students entered her class without misbehaving; her reputation as a no-nonsense teacher was legendary. They were the calmest group on the second floor; homework not done was rare and seen to right away, and she prided herself in never having to send a student to the office because of misbehavior. Those young teachers are too lenient, a few recess breaks and lunch hours copying lines and being assigned extra homework would solve their discipline problems.

June felt a lingering malaise all day, a sinking feeling each time she remembered that child, those open windows, and of all things, that dunce hat. A frantic search of her class during her break had left her wheezing and disoriented with the gloomy suspicion she might have imagined it all.

Then there had been Mary's patronizing tone; she didn't seem to believe the child had existed. June had scanned the whole schoolyard while on duty at recess and had not seen the girl. Mary doubting her in any way could jeopardize her chance of being promoted to school principal next year; a dream she'd been nurturing for years.

The malaise clung to her long after she arrived home. She cancelled her stamp-collector's reunion and took a long warm bath instead. Sleep didn't come to her right away as it always did. Nothing on my conscience to stop me from sleeping, she'd tell all those who complained of their long sleepless nights. The memory of that pale child pushed all other thoughts aside. Who was she, and how had she entered her class? Those old wooden windows wide open to the wind—she couldn't have imagined that cold breeze. She had a vague memory of an accident a long time ago—a history teacher, a Mr. Brewster, in the room next to hers. The details were blurred—had he perched on the windowsill and leaned down to look outside? They had replaced all the windows a while after the incident.

The steps leading up the stairs to her class the next morning seemed steeper than usual. The pain in her back and shoulders had intensified after a long troubled night tossing and turning. She hadn't expected to see the janitor sweeping the steps near the top landing and let out a startled cry.

The woman swung around. "Is anything wrong?"

June paused on the step a moment to compose herself and looked up. That mousy blond hair pulled back in a long ponytail and pale skin almost covered with freckles seemed familiar. Who did she remind her of? Had she been one of her old students? If so, she didn't appear to have done much with her life.

"Someone letting students come into my class before the bell, that's what's wrong," she said, brushing by the janitor and heading towards her class. She turned the key, pushed the door open, and once more a cold breeze accosted her. She swerved towards the windows just as the door slammed behind her.

"I don't believe this!" she said. The old wooden windows again, all wide open. She spun around towards the back of the class. Sitting at the same desk was the girl child hunched over her copybook.

June dropped her bag of books by her feet and marched towards the desk.

"You're not going to play that disappearing trick on me again. You're marching right down to the office with me."

The girl continued to write on the page and didn't look up even when June banged her fist on her desk. "Up this instant young lady."

The child stretched her grubby hand to grab her eraser, and June felt a surge of rage rise up her throat. "What is your name, child? How dare you ignore me." The girl clutched her pencil, pushing hard on the page. June grabbed the copybook from her and checked the name on the front. "Maggie," she read aloud. "Maggie Rankin."

This couldn't be possible; it was someone's stupid prank. The Rankin child had been one of her first students: small, skinny, homework never done, sloppy work; she had often sat on a stool in front of the class with the dunce cap.

June had recommended she be put back a grade, but the parents accused her of humiliating their child and a stink at the school board had followed. Yet June was the one humiliated when they handed her the letter of warning and ordered her to get rid of the dunce hat. The child had moved to another school; the parents claiming that little Maggie had been traumatized, that June had stripped her of her self-esteem.

"Look at me when I speak!" she said, hammering the desk with her fist.

The girl lifted her head; burning rays of yellow light emanated from her eyes to June's. Ghostlike, she rose and hovered above the desk. June groped backwards towards the window, her heart drumming through her chest.

It was the janitor who heard the scream and when she rushed into Miss Reed's classroom, noticed the screen had fallen out. Nobody could figure out if she had been sitting on the windowsill, or had removed the screen to get a better look at something below.

The End

# DAWN

Danielle DeVor

It was the time of year when the days are short and the nights are long. Where the earth tilts farther on its axis and the seasons are suspended between autumn and winter; where the light seems to change and colors seem to deepen in spite of all manners of artificial light. The bite of the air on your skin makes you come alive, but none of that mattered. Not then.

Hiding in a barn isn't as easy as you think it is, especially when you're eight.

It was dark. Not the darkness of night, but the pitch black darkness when coats become corpses and shadows seem to creep. The smell of the fresh hay mingled with manure wasn't a great scent, but I hoped it would hide my smell from him. It had all changed so quickly.

I should have felt like I was in a warm safe place. I knew the barn, knew the animals, but safe wasn't possible anymore. The family farm was no longer my home.

I pressed myself further into the hay. It prickled and stabbed at my body. The cold air blew through the open barn door, but the frigid air didn't bother me. I was too scared for that. Sweat slid down my spine. I needed to pee, but I didn't want to wet myself. I also didn't want to give away my location. The less smells I put off, the better. I knew that from the animals. You could learn a lot from them if you bothered to pay attention. Most people couldn't be bothered. They were quiet though- too quiet. Even horses fart in their sleep, but there was nothing, not even the sound of their breathing. I started to think that they were dead, but that scared me, so I tried to think about other things. I tried to keep my breathing as quiet as I could. Last thing I needed to do was something stupid to let him know I was in here.

Suddenly, sound pierced the silence. Footsteps, the kind made with big feet, crunched across the barn floor. My knees grew weak and I sunk to the floor of the barn. The hay on the ground stabbed at my butt, but it was soft too. The footsteps were slow and deliberate. With each crunch of hay, I grew more agitated and frightened. I had nowhere to go. If I was lucky, he'd pass by the hay without another thought. When, the footsteps ceased, I looked up.

He was huge, over six-feet-tall. In his hands was this cherry Les Paul guitar. I knew that guitar. It had belonged to my dad. Before anyway. I wasn't sure who it belonged to now.

I couldn't see the man's face, but he smelled like something dead. The light from the open barn door was so minimal, I could make out shapes better than I could details. He raised the guitar high above him, and just when he was about to bring the guitar crashing down on my head, there was a growl. I couldn't help it. It had been so quiet that the growl made me jump.

It was worse now. Yeah, it didn't matter that I'd moved so much. The Guitar Man knew I was there, but now there was something else. A scarier nightmare. My bladder finally let go and a warm stream of urine ran down my leg through my jeans and into the hay on the floor of the barn. I looked back up at Guitar Man, he had turned his head toward the growl.

I took my chance, scrambled to my feet, dodged the guitar wielding creature, and ran across the barn. About twenty feet away, I could make out a tractor, so I made for it. I had to figure out something, anything that would take me somewhere safe. The growling continued.

When I reached the tractor, I turned around. What I saw let my blood chill and my guts go gooey. A monstrosity, he was. With silver white fur, a long muzzle dripping with saliva, ears that stood a good six inches tall, and a long bushy tail. It came up behind Guitar Man. I didn't dare make a sound.

The beast jumped on Guitar Man from behind and sunk his long fangs into his neck. Then, the animal yanked and ripped flesh away. The sound was wet and wrong. The werewolf leaned his head back and swallowed the hunk of flesh before ripping again. Guitar Man tried to struggle, but he was too slow. It wasn't long before the werewolf simply started ripping him apart. I backed up against the tractor. The wheel bit into my back but I didn't care. I didn't know anywhere else to go. It wasn't that fast and my feet were small.

If Joey were around, I could just hop on his back and we'd run away. But, I'd seen Joey on my way to the barn. He had blood on his neck, his tail was stiff, and he didn't move. My faithful friend had tried to protect us, I knew that now. He'd been the biggest best dog a kid could have. He'd been my best friend, but that was over now. Just like dad. I had no help. It was all me.

The beast stood, composed himself, and said to Guitar Man's bloody corpse, "You shouldn't treat an expensive musical instrument like that."

I inched my way around the tractor, hoping that I could either find a better place to hide or run away. I guess I wasn't fast enough.

The beast stretched. Then, he sniffed the air, turned around, and began walking toward me. There was no doubt he saw me now. He stared deep into my eyes. I almost felt like I was stuck there, frozen somehow. He began to change. His ears shrank. His muzzle began to descend. Slowly, the moonlit fur began to dissipate and recede into his body. His yellow eyes glowed and faded into a deep shade of green. He smiled. He looked kind of like a skinnier version of Santa Claus.

I turned and ran, ran as fast as I could out of the barn, through the woods, jumping over logs and crawling through brambles. I came to a clearing. At the edge of it, I noticed a cave. I looked behind me to see if the werewolf was following me. I saw nothing, just blackness of the night. Sound seemed nonexistent. If I could just make it in the cave, maybe he wouldn't find me there. I'd rather take my chances with a hibernating bear than these things I'd seen tonight.

My ears roared. I turned around. What was left of Guitar Man's corpse was standing in front of me. It grabbed me and began dragging me back from where I came. I clawed at the ground, but he was so strong that I just pulled away the weeds.

I kicked and screamed, but nothing would dissuade the creature. His hand was locked onto my ankle like a vise. Then, he flipped me over, grabbed me by the waist, and I was passed into the arms of the werewolf. I could feel the sharp points of his claws poking through the thin material of my shirt. Guess he hadn't changed back so much after all.

The werewolf turned me around to face him. I screamed.

He clamped one of his large hands over my mouth and spoke, "The next time you scream, I will begin biting your fingers off, so I suggest that you shut your fucking mouth and obey me."

If there had been anything left in my bladder or my bowels, I would have lost it then. He stunk like blood and dead things. His white shirt was soaked with something black that must have been the Guitar Man's blood.

But then I noticed, just as long as I was quiet, he wasn't doing anything to me. I looked at the man-wolf's face. His eyes weren't so frightening now. They seemed to be filled with an almost supreme sorrow. They were windows into his soul. I stopped struggling. He flipped me under one arm and carried me across the clearing. I saw the grass as we walked, undulating over the soil in an almost wavy pattern. Finally, he ushered me into an old ramshackled farmhouse. The roof sagged, and the entire place was permeated with the silver sweet smell of rot. The main room had an old table and a couple of chairs around it. There was an old fashioned black stove, too. On the walls were the skins of various animals. He carried me into what seemed to be a child's room. There was a little desk and a small bed. He laid me down on it.

"Go to sleep," he said. "I will deal with you in the morning."

The wolf closed the door. I didn't know what was to happen. Mommy and Daddy were gone and I was left with a beast that could just as easily eat me instead of keep me. I started crying. I was careful to stay as quiet as I could lest I irritate the werewolf, but I couldn't stop myself. I had to let it out. I was crying for my soul, even though I didn't know what one was. I was crying for the arrival of dawn.

* * *

One day, when I was much older, he was sitting at the kitchen table. I was used to the smells by now. Tanning animals was part of life, gave some extra money too. I'd helped many times. The wolf was much older now. His cheeks had lost their robustness. His body had thinned and shriveled. He wasn't the beast he once was. I sat down opposite from him. He sighed.

"Boy," he said, "you were very young when you came to me. I think of you as my son. I passed along my gift to you long ago. You have talent. You are the next generation. My time is over. In our laws, when the old get too weak and feeble to hunt any longer, they are killed to ease the burden of the tribe. Now, it is your turn to do this to me. I am too old. I can't hunt for myself anymore. I am holding you back."

I didn't want to think about what that would be like. I hadn't been alone except for that small amount of time that night in the barn. I didn't want to take the mantel. "I don't know if I can do it," I said to him.

He looked at me. Time had changed his eyes. They were almost milky now with age, but there was still a strength in them. "Of course you can. You don't have a choice."

I didn't want to kill him. He was my father now. But, when I hesitated, his eyes darkened.

"If you don't kill me, then I will take your life . . . Tonight." The old werewolf looked at me and grinned with an evil glint in his eye. There was still enough of the animal in him to do that. I wasn't about to sacrifice myself.

I stretched, allowing myself to reach my full height. If that was the way he wanted it, so be it. "Why wait," I said. "I'll do it now." My bones began to crack, as I changed. I'd gotten used to the pain of the transformation a long time ago. The worst part was the face, the growing of the muzzle hurt like nothing else. But pain was good, I'd learned that. I jumped on the old wolf and sank my teeth into his arm and ripped. The flesh tore easily, like pulling cheese. God, it tasted good. The hot saltiness of his blood, the warm stringy meat, it was ecstasy.

After I finished my meal, I buried him in the back yard near the cave. Then, I took his car. It didn't take long to get into the city. Later that day, I found an apartment. Every night, I killed. I took the money and jewelry I found on my victims. Newspapers reported a rash of vicious dog attacks in the area. I couldn't have been safer.

* * *

"Rob?" I shook him again. He'd taken too much again, dammit. "Fuck, man."

He'd been making all these weird noises in his sleep, and the way his body had started moving, it just didn't look normal. I didn't want him to OD in my apartment.

I shook him again. His eyes snapped open.

"Dude, you okay?" I stepped back a little. I know I wouldn't want some dude that close to me if I was gonna puke. Shit. I hoped he wouldn't do that. It was hell to get that puke smell out of the carpet. I'd done it too many times.

His eyes had this crazed look about them, like they were going to pop out of his skull. I stepped back some more. I wanted to be close enough that if he was going to hurl, I wouldn't get hit, but close enough that if he passed out, I could catch his head before he bounced it off the coffee table. He sat up.

Okay. That was good. Sitting up was progress. I walked over to my favorite red chair and sat down.

"John, I'm sorry. I never should have met you."

What the hell was he talking about? We'd met at a party last year. He'd shared my stash and collapsed on my couch. His drug use had gotten worse the longer I'd known him. I watched him. He looked funny. His skin looked a little grey.

He wiped his face with his hand. "I'm hungry."

* * *

I changed. My bones elongated. The hair on my body began to grow. I felt my teeth extend and my claws grow to their full length. I smiled. It was good to be the real me again.

John screamed.

I walked closer. My pads on my paws adjusted to the fibers in the carpet. I had to be careful not to get my claws caught in the shag of the carpet. I growled.

Suddenly, I could smell the urine as John pissed himself. I started to laugh. People were so funny when they were scared.

"Please. Please. Rob. Don't hurt me." I could see the spittle flying out of his mouth as he pleaded. Pathetic.

He was so weak. At one time, I thought he might have made a good helper. Finding a good helper wasn't easy. It took a lot of work, and some expensive items. There were still some left at the cabin, but I would eventually have to replenish them. Now, though, I could see he couldn't handle it. People who weren't helpers were worthless. That made him meat.

He didn't even try to get up. I swiped at his head with my claws. The nails cut through the skin of his face like a knife spreading icing on a cake. Blood spattered against the wall. John keened.

I licked the blood from one of my claws. It was perfect. He wouldn't stop whimpering. Enough of that.

I popped John's head off with my teeth like a coconut being chopped down from a tree. The thunk of his head hitting the floor made me smile. It rolled over to the coffee table leg and stopped. Too bad it didn't bounce off. That would have been amusing. I was going to miss him, but killing was so much fun. I reveled in it. There was a time I didn't understand, but now, there was no problem with that. It was the superior drug.

His blood was so good! Plenty of booze, just the right amount of toxins. The fear added that extra _je ne sais quoi_ that I just couldn't describe. Every time my teeth sank into his flesh, it was like tasting the juiciest steak. The liquid running down my chin was just ambrosia.

When I was finished, there wasn't a whole lot left. A bit of an arm here, a foot there. Not enough meet on a foot to bother. Same thing with fingers. Too crunchy.

He'd been a delicacy.

Then I heard sirens, lots of them.

* * *

"Rob! Mr. Dew! Wake up. It's time for you to take your medication," I heard the nurse say through the slit in the door. She always had this strange cheery voice. I didn't like it. I could tell it was fake.

I blinked my eyes a little to get the grime out of them. The room was just as grey as I remembered. The padding was discolored with years of dust and no way to clean the canvas that made up the padding.

My pajamas had been changed again. I could tell, they still smelled like detergent. I didn't like the smells here. There wasn't any meat. I missed meat.

Worse though, I didn't like it when they knocked me out. I didn't like being out of control. I didn't like them coming into my space when I had no idea what they were doing to me. They thought they could make me better. There was no better, only meat. The sooner they understood that, the better.

I needed out of here. I glanced around the room again. Then, I noticed what was different. There, in the corner of the room near the door there was a guitar. A cherry Les Paul.

"Nooo!"

They didn't know what this meant. He was coming. It was just a matter of time. She locked the opening shut on my door. It closed with a clank. In slow motion, I watched as my meds bounced off the floor. Medicine wouldn't keep him away. There was no escape, and I was so hungry.

The End

# DEATH HATES HIS JOB

Wodke Hawkinson

G hated his job. It wasn't just a strong dislike, it was actual loathing. He thought about it as he pulled on his blue jeans and gray t-shirt, and bent to fasten his black boots. With a feeling like weariness, which was surely impossible for him, he shrugged into his black hoodie and slung the case that held his blade over one bony shoulder like a quiver of arrows. For a while he had missed the long robe, but he had to admit his current attire was much more comfortable. G tried to keep up with the times. Good old G. Reaper. That was him, long-time acquaintance of Father Time, and colleague of Mother Nature. Often the couple laid down the groundwork for his projects. But still, for all their contributions to the effort, the buck stopped with him. He was Death.

He cringed as he slipped out the front door of his apartment on the first floor of an old Victorian and noticed his neighbor, the elderly Violet Thistlewaite, rocking quietly in the porch swing. Her skull looked delicate as an eggshell where her pale scalp peeked through the thinning white hair. Knobby hands clutched the edges of her shawl as she turned her head toward him and stared with vacant eyes as if she could see him.

"Who's there?" she called out timidly.

It gave him the creeps. He chuckled; he had nothing to fear, especially from a frail woman with poor vision.

Death was universally hated and feared, except by the insane and those in terminal misery. Over the eons, this disdain had begun to eat at him. Somewhere along the way he had developed the regrettable capacity for remorse and a sharp cognizance of his own unpopularity. Always reviled and despised; friendless, basically. His presence was rarely welcome. Most never realized he was there until the last second, right before the harvest. As he glided down the walk and passed through people, leaving them aquiver with a vague apprehension, he came to a decision. He simply wouldn't show for his first appointment. Maybe he would go to the park instead and scare a few pigeons. None would land near him, even when he brought bread crumbs for them. Still, he enjoyed watching them bob around, trying to snatch the food without coming too close. They reminded him of necks stretched across guillotines. His thin lips curled down slightly at the recollection. I hate this job.

Or perhaps he would wander downtown and see how many people could perceive him, probably as a chill draft or the crawling sensation of eyes on their backs. He could always tell the sensitive ones; they would shiver or glance nervously over their shoulders. They knew not what they felt, only that it was bad.

Feeling slightly less dejected, he swept around the curved walkway to the street, traveling with long strides though his feet never touched the surface below him. He headed for the shopping district to do a little people-watching.

Several hours later, after drifting aimlessly around the world, curiosity overcame him. What, he wondered, had happened with Mr. Swenson, the elderly man he was supposed to have visited that morning at the nursing home? He couldn't resist the urge to check.

Instantly he was outside the window of Mr. Swenson's room peering in. From the grimace the old man made, the tears that ran unchecked down his wrinkled face, and his tortured movements, G could tell there was great pain. In fact, the poor human was in agony. G chastised himself for neglecting his duties before passing through the wall into the room. Leaning over the wretched figure on the bed, he pulled his blade from its case and swung. Swenson's face immediately settled into an expression of peace as his soul departed.

So, this is what happens when I don't show up on time. Worse suffering, he thought, his heart heavy with remorse. I truly hate this job. I try to do a good thing, and look how it turns out.

Moments later, Mrs. Swenson hobbled into the room holding onto the arm of a husky nurse aide, a cup of coffee in her other trembling hand. She looked toward the bed and the cup slipped from her fingers and hit the floor, splashing coffee over her loafers. G watched as her face crumpled and tears rolled down her lined cheeks. She tried to reach the bed, but the aide stupidly held her back.

"He's gone," Mrs. Swenson cried as she pushed weakly against the young man. "Let me go to him."

The nurse aide relented and supported her as she approached the bed. "Oh, Jimmy," she whispered, reaching to caress the still face of her beloved. "My sweet Jimmy."

G turned away and slipped from the room, one hand clutching his black hood, his cadaverous cheeks sucked in against his teeth, his jaw tight with despair. It was almost always like this. And he hated it. He hated being in so many places at the same time, having so many abodes all over the planet that none really felt like home. The massive weight of familial grief, centuries of it, pressed down on him, invisible, thick, and choking. Like heavy smog. There was no joy in this work, no satisfaction. If there ever had been, he couldn't remember when.

He was finished with this job; no more would he do it. He retired.

Had the world been paying attention, they might have noticed that for one whole day nobody anywhere died. Death was sitting on a park bench, making pigeons uneasy, and sinking into a deep depression. Someday it would be discovered and marveled at on the evening news, one whole day without death. Remarkable. Ordinarily, an idea like that would amuse G, but not today. He was too morose. He had never been so conflicted. Perhaps he should seek counseling. Even that wry thought failed to raise a sardonic sneer.

Unbeknownst to G, people around the world were suffering horribly. Pain endured past life's expiration date is beyond any pain known. And with G sitting on the park bench, agony ran rampant.

G realized he had nothing to look forward to except watching pigeons. He had nothing to do, nowhere to go. An idea formed in his mind. Since he had no other purpose than raining sorrow onto humanity, there was no good reason for him to continue. He himself must die. He would commit suicide. But how does someone who is not alive, take their own life? It was a weighty question. He rose from the bench.

Deep in thought, G deliberated as he traveled. He looked in on some of the people in his date book, the people who should be gone by now. He didn't like what he saw. In most cases, there was torment, either physical or mental; in other cases, a sour tradeoff. Die now this way, or die later in a worse way. He watched as one man lifted the gun to his open mouth and laid a quivering finger on the trigger as tears streamed down his face. Since G was scheduled to slide his own bony finger over the man's and press, but did not, the man simply shook with his internal conflict, unable to proceed.

At another location, G saw a young girl run in front of a car. What purpose would it serve for that child to die? he mused bitterly as the vehicle swerved, missing her by only a small margin. G was to have held her back so the car would hit her, but he wasn't doing that job any longer. It no longer suited him.

G felt justified as he began to turn away from the scene. This tiny girl would live now; she'd enjoy her childhood, marry, have children. She would live her life never knowing how close she had come to dying. G abruptly grabbed his head, pressing his temples with bony fingertips as images flooded in, and he perceived her future. He saw this precious youngster, somebody's darling, thin and bruised from disease, lingering in a hospital bed in misery as her family stood helplessly by.

So, in this case anyway, Fate had determined she could go quickly or she could go slowly, but she most definitely was targeted for demise.

"So unfair," G murmured to himself. "Who calls these people home?" He still knew very little about his boss. He just followed orders without question. Or he did, until now.

He looked back at the girl and felt no happiness over her close escape, no joy, for he knew what she must later endure. Because of him. Because he failed to do his job.

Who will take me home? He felt a wave of pity for himself. In one fluid movement, he unsheathed his blade, swept it in graceful arc across his throat, slicing it neatly. Immediately, he felt his skin, tissues, and fibers draw back together, closing the wound as if it had never happened. How ironic, he thought, I am Death but I myself cannot die. He had feared as much.

Gradually, he perceived a presence. He turned quickly, his movement disturbing the atmosphere around him like small ripples on a still surface. Over his shoulder, he caught a glimpse of a shimmering figure just as it vanished. Puzzling over this, and the general state of things in his world, G began to sort the facts as he knew them. He shuffled them in his mind.

Slowly, he began to comprehend his relationship to these humans, the ones who should be here no longer. He grasped the greater purpose in a flash of insight. With a stab of grief, he realized he must return to the job; things were worse with him gone. He couldn't justify staying away only to wallow in his own suffering.

That, and the fact that he could not do away with himself, forced G to return to work.

G determined that if this be his purpose, the very least he could do to assuage his guilt was to endure some punishment of his own as atonement. He sped to his first missed appointment, but this time he did not vanish immediately after the swing of his blade as he usually did. He stayed instead, to watch.

Surprise filled his soul, if a soul he indeed had, when he noticed a form draped over the dying woman as she sat in her living room chair. It was the same figure he had glimpsed following his suicide attempt. This being began to swell as the woman's life drained from her. G noticed that the pain seemed to lift from the woman, as if the being were absorbing her agony, mitigating the shock of separation from her body as her mortal life ended.

And, if this weren't unsettling enough, when the last of life's force had drained from her, the being lifted into the air and floated upwards. Darkness slowly emanated from its body as it rose, releasing pain into the atmosphere where it dissipated like mist. A glow replaced the darkness, growing brighter as the being ascended. G stood transfixed.

Far above, there was a break in the fabric of the world; bright light emitted from the breach. The being lifted its arms towards this opening. Rays of soft radiance poured from its fingers, soared upwards, and joined with the brilliant illumination above. Agonizing streaks of light burst overhead; and quick as the break had appeared, it was gone.

G stared. Slowly the being drifted down until it was face to face with him. Shimmering, sparkling, and luminous, the being looked into G's eyes with compassion before fading away. G felt as if his heart would burst. An angel! For this creature could be nothing else. He had heard of angels, but to find they really existed was beyond thought. Had they always been there? He wondered if his suicide attempt had opened a new awareness in him.

Over the next few days, G saw the angels again and again. Now that he knew what to look for, it was easy to spot them...the beings of light, mute yet compelling.

In his long existence, G had been part and parcel of countless grisly atrocities and scenes of stunning malice and gore. He had never noted the presence of angels before, but now he saw them on every job, always lying over the mortal remains, fulfilling their duties, ministering to the dead and dying, easing souls toward their destinations.

G was just coming to terms with his unique calling when one assignment rattled him so that he broke from his routine.

He approached the suicide bomber on the dusty road and looked through the man's eyes to the crowded market ahead.

Oh, no. Not all those people! G cringed as a rebellious thought insinuated itself in his mind. He glanced at his timepiece, then over to the angel waiting by the side of the road, well away from the soon-to-be deceased. Before G could resist the impulse, he swung his blade many minutes before he was scheduled to do so. The blast rent the air as the explosives inside the backpack ignited and a nearby shack crumbled.

G looked around. The angel had not moved, standing as if frozen in time, a single tear trickling down its porcelain cheek.

G sheathed his blade and slid away, shoulders hunched. He should feel good; he saved many lives. But, at what cost to the survivors? He didn't want to know. He would be visiting each of them soon enough. Of that he was certain.

G returned to the pigeons. As he tossed bread crumbs to the birds, he reflected on all he had learned. Although he still didn't care for his job, he'd recognized the necessity of his work. He'd come to terms with his place in the world and now knew it was beside the angels. In time, maybe he would be allowed to move into the higher realm and become as they were, vessels of light and mercy. One could hope.

G stood. There was work to do.

The End

#  NIGHTMARE CIRCUS

Simon Okill

Teenager Craig Dunbar groaned in despair. A scantily-clad babe ran for her life from hideous killer clowns, mouths full of needle-like teeth chattering with drool. No matter how hard he tried, he could not stop the pack of killer clowns from ripping the flesh from the babe. Her screams cut his heart with a hot a knife. As always, he had failed to save his dream woman. His eyes grew heavy with lack of sleep.

Thick black smoke billowed from the computer screen, followed by angry flames. Cackling laughter grew louder. A grotesque white mask of a face leered.

The Ringmaster grinned black teeth, smoke leaking from his mouth. "See you soon, lover boy." He vanished with diminishing laughter.

Craig was shaken awake by his father, Adam. "Come on Craig ... shift it or we'll be late."

"Leave me alone." Craig slumped on his bed with hands clasped behind his head. He looked defiant.

Adam shook his head. "Look, Craig, this is the chance I've been waiting for ... to discover the truth behind Henry Victor's disappearance." He gave his son a look to get up.

"Who cares about some vanishing circus 100 years ago ... I know I don't." Craig remained defiant.

Adam sighed deeply and looked down at his feet. He looked at Craig and smiled sadly. "I'll let you fly us to Barstow."

Adam was gratified to see Craig stiffen and look excited.

Craig handled the joystick like a pro. He gave a faint smile to Adam and turned to admire the desert terrain stretching forever to the horizon. The smile changed to concern as the engine sputtered. Craig revved the engine to prevent a stall.

"Get in the back now, Craig!" Adam shouted as he wrestled the controls from his son. Both screamed as a strange black cloud of smoke enveloped the plane.

Blackout! Silence! Then a female voice cried out for help. A sheet of flames erupted before Adam and Craig. They jumped back in terror to see a stunning woman silhouetted. Another flash of flames revealed the Ringmaster, dressed head to toe in black like an undertaker.

Craig smelled scorched flesh and coughed. He ogled Tanya, his dream woman from the game.

"Where the bloody hell are we?" Adam demanded.

"You are where I want you to be," The Ringmaster replied, laughing maniacally. Screaming flames danced around him.

Tanya, Craig and Adam screamed in shock, fright and confusion. A ring of wailing flames showed a circus arena and scorched benches. Adam and Craig tried to escape, but a clutch of grotesque clowns leapt at them from the shadows.

Thick drool and smoke leaked from the clowns' gaping maws. They unleashed screeching fire whips to herd them to the benches.

The Ringmaster laughed and called for two volunteers to entertain him. All three looked at him in abject terror.

"Come, come ... we all get used down here."

"Down where?" Craig asked.

"Why hell, of course," replied the Ringmaster. He clapped then pointed to Tanya and Craig. "You're it!"

Cackling clowns dragged them to the arena. Adam wanted to help but two leering clowns prevented him. He could only watch as Craig and Tanya refused to perform. Three clowns pounced on Tanya and tore at her shorts and shirt in mock rape. Craig attacked them. To his horror a clown opened its mouth so wide it became a swirling tunnel of teeth. Craig was sucked into the tunnel.

Craig could not grip the fleshy walls as he tumbled down towards a gnashing mass of scythe-like teeth. He kicked to prevent from being sliced. A monstrous tongue wrapped around his legs and tugged him into the teeth. He screamed in agony as his flesh was flayed from his legs revealing bloody bones and tight sinews. The pain was dreadful as his loins were turned to mince. Before he passed out his entrails were sucked from his torso and devoured like spaghetti.

Craig saw light at the end of the tunnel and was spewed from the clown's rear end with a thunderous fart.

He lay on the sandy arena watching the clowns cackling and gambolling around his mucous-covered body. He felt his entire body to be sure he was real and stared in revulsion at the brown mucous dripping from his fingers.

His stomach heaved and convulsed. Tanya stood trembling before him, her shorts and shirt badly torn, revealing tantalising glimpses of flesh. He couldn't stop staring at her.

The Ringmaster appeared next to them. He was not amused. "I need a performance now or I'll simply have to kill ... her!" He pointed at Tanya with a grin. He clapped. Craig allowed two clowns to stuff him into a massive cannon. Tanya shrugged and lit the fuse.

Tanya screamed as Craig, the human fireball, shot from the canon and vanished with a terrible scream.

Craig woke up in the plane as it plunged into the side of a cliff face and exploded in flames. He shot out of the windscreen and sizzled to a crisp, spreadeagled across a boulder.

The Ringmaster gleefully declared that the curse placed on Craig's family had ended with him.

"What curse," Craig asked. Laughter was the reply.

Tanya dropped the torch and rushed from the arena and hugged Craig. "I'm sorry Craig ... I never thought ...."

"Are we in the Nightmare Circus game?" Craig asked. She shook her no.

A fearful Adam grabbed Craig and headed into the darkness. Tanya followed. The clowns sniggered and waited. As Adam and Craig desperately searched for the tent flap, fire erupted all around the edge of the canvas. Adam's clothes caught fire. Craig dived on him and used sand to put out the flames.

The Ringmaster stepped up to them and shook his head in dismay. "That was very rude."

All three fell down as if in a runaway lift. They landed in a heap, but were quickly herded by Fire Whip Clowns holding flaming torches. They stumbled along a damp tunnel with animal cages full of terrifying freaks and vicious panthers. Tanya screamed with terror as claws slashed at her. Craig comforted her as best he could. They passed a torture chamber, dripping with blood. The next room had walls covered in photos, sepia with age. A photo caught Craig's eye but he was shoved forward.

They were herded into a filthy cage. A lone man was slumped in a dark corner, hidden by the dancing shadows cast by flickering torch flames. Adam demanded to know what was going on. The man told them they must perform or die.

"Why," Craig asked.

"The Ringmaster has his reasons," was the reply.

Adam asked the stranger who he was, but everything went pitch black sending them asleep. All three experienced vivid nightmares of death, torture and a burning circus full of awful screams. Tanya dreamt of a faceless demon ravaging her body. Adam saw a gun in his hand, red hot and smoking, and before him were bullet-ridden bodies. Craig was engulfed in a wave of blood as hands dragged him under.

They woke up on the benches. The roof of the tent was now a glowing mass of flames. Why couldn't they feel the heat? Perhaps their terror would not allow this.

Craig needed to ask Adam about the stranger, but Adam looked like he'd seen a ghost. "Dad, what is it?"

Adam fired the gun over and over. To his horror his wife stood before him, blood seeping from her chest. The gun changed to a glass of whiskey. He dropped the glass.

Craig shook his father, "Dad!"

With a clap, the Ringmaster chose Adam and Tanya.

Craig held onto Adam but was fire-whipped for his effort. He stared in terror and pain at the flesh of his arm seared to the bone still sizzling and spitting. He released Adam and his arm returned to normal.

The clowns dragged a near comatose Adam into the arena. He gave a sad glance to Craig and turned to Tanya. Adam stared at the gun in his hand and pulled the trigger. A clown fell to the ground. The clowns rushed to their fallen comrade and cried for him. The dead clown jumped to his feet and attacked Adam.

Craig raced to his father's aid and tackled the clown. In a moment of rage he snapped the clown's neck with a loud crack. The clown lay on his stomach facing the tent roof then erupted into flames and was gone. The other clowns stuttered and looked confused.

Craig now realised these monsters could be killed. There was hope.

The Ringmaster screamed, "You cheated ... come to think of it ... I like that." With a clap a strand of rope ensnared Adam and tied him to a post. Cackling clowns whipped enormous black panthers into a frenzy.

A fire whip appeared in Craig's hand. The cats paced around Adam, growling and swiping claws at the air. Craig unleashed the whip which only made the cats more volatile.

A panther placed its paws on Adam's chest and growled into his face. Craig screamed and whipped at the cat. The panther raked its claws down Adam's chest, tearing away skin and muscle to reveal bloody ribs. Adam whimpered and slumped, hanging from the post, blood gushing.

Craig's anger sent the fire whip around the Ringmaster's neck, searing his flesh. The Ringmaster's eyes popped from their sockets as Craig pulled on the whip. The clowns panicked, bumping into each other and were attacked by the panthers. Several clowns were torn to pieces and burst into flames.

Craig dropped the whip and released his torn and bloody father. As he dragged him to the benches, The Ringmaster sprang to his feet without a mark.

Adam's wounds instantly healed the moment he settled on the bench. He begged for mercy from his angry wife, a bottle of whiskey in his hand. Craig tried to shake him out of it, but Adam was lost in his own grief.

The Ringmaster punished Craig's defiance by placing Adam in horrific traps. Craig could not save his father from one gruesome death after another. Adam was decapitated, eviscerated, quartered limb from limb until The Ringmaster was bored and sent them to the benches.

The Ringmaster declared he was killed by one of you three exactly 100 years ago to the day.

Craig looked aghast at the Ringmaster, who was gleefully dancing around the arena, chased by flames and clowns.

He pointed at Craig and asked, "Who has the courage to save us all from this purgatory?" He clapped.

The three performers collapsed to the rotten floor of the animal cage. The stranger introduced himself as Henry Victor.

This snapped Adam out of his trance. "Henry Victor ... the circus owner!"

Henry continued, "Correct! The Ringmaster must lift his vengeful curse, placed on you all or he will never find eternal peace." Henry grinned. "The Ringmaster has been in this hell for 100 years, waiting for the right moment. To lift the curse, you must accept the truth, only then can you survive."

Tanya screamed at them to shut up. None of this makes any sense as curses don't exist. "Let me out! Let me out!"

The Ringmaster sat admiring his reflection in a black mirror. Henry smiled back at him. The Ringmaster asked his soft side how he was. Henry told his dark side that the time was at hand. They both laughed.

The Ringmaster appeared inside the cage. He winked at Craig.

Craig gasped as images flooded his mind of angry men burning a circus tent. His hands are bloody. He frowned at Tanya. She stared back at Craig with a perplexed look, holding her bruised throat in pain.

The Ringmaster smiled wickedly at Adam. Adam fired his gun at circus performers.

Craig had a horrible feeling that he might be to blame for the curse and that he would pay the heaviest price.

The Ringmaster laughed, "Sweet dreams!" and vanished along with Henry.

Adam slumped into a deep sleep where he saw his wife gallop off across their ranch for the last time.

Craig tried to wake his father. He forgave him for his mother's death. Tears ran down Adam's face. Craig thumped the cage in frustration. One of the bars was loose. He yanked it away and shook Adam, "Come on dad." Adam was comatose.

So Craig and Tanya escaped. They stumbled in total darkness towards the dim light of the photo room. They find old photos of Craig, Adam and Tanya in Edwardian clothes outside a circus.

Tanya cried out, "This can't be happening."

Craig hugged her. He so desperately wanted to kiss her, but terrifying visions of his hands around Tanya's throat stopped him. The awful truth struck him like a thunderbolt.

Tanya screamed as the Ringmaster stepped into the room with his sneering clowns.

Craig held Tanya's hand on the benches. For the first time, Henry Victor sat watching with a curious smile. Craig whispered to Adam about his amazing discovery and why the Ringmaster had cursed them.

Adam watched himself find Tanya's broken body at the base of a ravine. He led the mob to kill the Ringmaster. That must be it! The town blamed Henry Victor for the woman's death all those years ago. But that meant one of us killed her. Craig cried with guilt. Adam hugged him.

The Ringmaster clapped. Two clowns dragged Craig and Tanya to the arena. Craig was placed into a coffin and Tanya was handed a saw.

Craig bit his tongue from screaming as the serrated teeth slowly sliced into his abdomen. His flesh was ripped apart and the agony was too much.

Craig flashed to the plane as it crashed in the desert. The propeller sheared off and sliced him in half. He watched his bowels spill out over his twitching disembodied legs.

The Ringmaster and his clowns did a dance macabre around the arena, as screaming flames chased them. Terrible wailing and demented laughter filled the tent.

Adam hugged a trembling Craig and told him they must kill Henry and the Ringmaster at the same time. Henry grinned at them. Adam turned to the arena to see the Ringmaster grinning also. He whispered to Tanya she must distract Henry somehow, during their next act. Adam had a feeling it was going to be the final test.

Adam and Craig faced each other with duelling pistols. Adam winked at Craig. Craig nodded back. They each took ten paces. The Ringmaster rubbed his hands with glee.

Tanya screamed and attacked Henry with flailing fists.

Adam fired at the Ringmaster, who caught the bullet between two fingers and guffawed.

Craig shot Henry through the head.

The bullet left the Ringmaster's grip and blew his brains out to die along with his split personality.

The clowns ran about in panic as flames erupted all around the circus. Performers dressed in sequined outfits were gunned down by the angry mob, blood spraying everywhere. The massive tent pole shuddered and fell. Adam, Craig and Tanya ran for their lives.

Adam shoved Craig as the pole crashed down shattering his spine. Pinned beneath the pole, Adam cried as his wife came to him with arms outstretched.

Craig knelt beside his father and kissed his forehead, "Love you, Dad." Sections of burning canvas flew all about them like flaming bats.

"Go!" Adam screamed. He coughed up blood as he saw the ground hurtling towards him.

Craig grabbed Tanya's hand and ran through the burning canvas into the realm of darkness.

Craig snatched a flaming torch and shoved it into the face of a clown. He erupted into flames. They ran through a dark tunnel. Oh God, the torch went out. Pitch black! Tanya screamed in terror. Craig gripped her trembling hand and rushed into the unknown.

Tanya gasped in horror, clinging to the edge of a ravine. Below her were jagged rocks like teeth waiting to tear her apart. She hauled her weary body over the edge onto safe ground. She looked up to see a plane screaming at her. The plane smashed into a cliff and skidded into the sandy ground. She ducked as the propeller shaved a few hairs from her head.

Tanya ripped the door away and stared in horror at Adam's mangled body covered in blood, the joystick embedded in his chest. She dragged Craig clear of the wreckage and revived him.

Craig could not believe his eyes. He kissed her long and hard. He staggered to his feet and cried. He leaned over Adam and kissed his forehead. "Love you Dad."

Adam coughed up blood, "Love you too, kiddo." Adam sighed as his wife held his hand and led him into the most beautiful light.

"Oh God, no!" Tanya screamed out and pointed.

Henry Victor stepped out from a cloud of black smoke, declaring the Ringmaster cannot be defeated.

Craig snatched a flare gun and turned The Ringmaster into a ball of flames. "Go to hell!"

Tanya and a desolate Craig dragged their sorry bodies across the scorching desert to the highway. They collapsed at the edge of the road and waited for a saviour. A massive motor home approached. The driver opened the tinted window, and listened to their plight. He allowed them in.

Tanya and Craig drank ice-cold beer and cried. They fell asleep with sheer exhaustion.

Craig's dream went back 100 years where he argued with Tanya. She ran to a caravan at the circus. During the night, Craig raped and strangled her, throwing her body down a ravine.

Craig woke up with a jolt and stared at his bloody hands and Tanya's dead body on the floor.

The Ringmaster bowed to Craig and laughed hideously, "To the Victor the spoils."

Craig screamed all the way into a tunnel of black smoke and hideous laughter.

The End.

#  HUNGER

Lucy Pireel

Gwars paced up and down in front of the rock face where they would pass the veil, waiting for the others to arrive. Bone-dry dirt covered the dead soil, dust clouded the sun but the sweltering heat burned on his exoskeleton. It would be his first time on the other side of the veil and he went over all he was told to do in his mind. _Do not engage with the humans, gather only greens, stay close to Twark, and always keep the disguise in place._ He concentrated. It took him a split second before reality rippled and he wore a pink, human skin, like Twark had shown him. With the shroud in place he could walk among the humans and gather their greens, for they were the enlightened coven. They harnessed the power of their beast by no longer eating flesh but taking only the life of the greens. He roared, proud and happy to finally be a full member of the coven and allowed to pass the veil. He became still. Twark, the coven leader, stood in front of him.

"The eyes, Gwars, you have to remember every detail," Twark said.

Gwars grunted and blinked.

"Perfect." Twark turned and placed one hand on the rock.

All twelve stood still and watched as Twark's hand sank into the rock, creating a circular gap in the veil that grew within the blink of an eye to an opening big enough for them all to jump through.

Once on the other side Gwars looked around in surprise. He had expected Twark to take them to a place of greens. This was just as dead an environment as their own, but filled with loud noises. He pressed his hands over his ears, but then collected himself and lowered them. Gwars looked at his surroundings. The ground was grey and flat, the walls too, and the passage they stood in was straight and narrow. At the end of it those things Twark had called cars sped by and there were humans on foot, lots and lots of them.

His beast awakened and started forward.

"Gwars," Twark said.

Startled by the low rumble of his leader's voice her stopped and turned to face him.

"Remember to stay close to me. Put your guise in place and under no circumstances engage with any humans," Twark warned. Within a split second a human appearance washed over his exoskeleton, turning him into a large built human man.

"There are no greens in this place Twark. What should we eat, how can we gather food from this desolate place?" Gwars asked while following his leader out of the alley. His stomach already rumbled and his beast roared inside at the smell of fresh meat so close at hand, but Twark ignored his question and led them through the city.

* * *

They had walked for days without seeing any of the lush greens the others had said he'd be able to eat. Gwars hadn't had any food before they left, because a part of the initiation had been a fast and now his beast clawed at his bindings. _Flesh, red, fresh meat, bloody, alive, ready to grab and devour._ He shook his head to rid these thoughts.

"When will we eat?" Gwars asked Twark.

"You'll eat when we are back. Be strong, prove you are worthy to be in our coven. It's not much further before we will be at our destination."

Puzzled Gwars recognized the street they had started out from and looked around to see if he was right. At that moment the sound of a rift closing caught his attention and he turned.

* * *

Gwars jumped but slammed his head against the concrete wall where a moment ago the gate had been. _They left me behind!_ The others had gone back and slammed the door shut right before he could jump through. An angry red glow still shone from the wall where a moment ago the passage had been, but it was already fading. And no matter how hard he glared at it, nothing happened. Being the youngest member of their coven, he didn't yet have the ability to tear the veil himself and get back home, so stuck on this human-infested side, all he could do was wait and hope his coven would come back and pick him up. He growled in frustration but then his eyes lit up.

A whiff of life entered his nose. _A female human._ He whipped around. Even before he faced the girl his disguise rippled into place.

Smiling, he asked her, "What are you doing in this alley? Don't you know how dangerous these streets can be after dark?"

Her big, brown eyes stared at him. She blinked. Once, twice, then her mouth opened. He could see the thought to scream take form in her mind. _Shit, I forgot about my eyes again._ Fast as lightning her pinned her to the wall and latched onto her lips with his razor-teeth-filled mouth. To anyone passing by they looked like a couple making out.

One of his teeth nicked her lip. The drop of blood on his tongue diffused across his taste buds, sending its rich, coppery scent up his brain and through his body. He shuddered and sucked on her lip, drawing more. Engrossed in the exhilarating rush this experience gave him, he bit down and swallowed her bottom lip. The taste and smell sent his senses into overload, making him lose control over the disguise which hid his true being. The pink skin covering his scaled, black exoskeleton tore away as he grew. When it didn't fall away fast enough he clawed at it, tearing the vestiges of the false reality. All the while he sucked the unlucky girl into himself. When nothing more than a few blood stains remained of her, his forked tongue snaked from between his serrated teeth, tasting the air. He shook his massive head and roared, a sound so low no human ear could hear it, but the air vibrated and dust danced on its waves.

* * *

After his first taste of human flesh and blood Gwars fed regularly. No longer having to answer to his coven leader he could feast on the forbidden flesh, engorging himself with it. _It must be a test._ _I'm not going to starve! I have to be strong when they come back for me._

As usual when prowling the streets, he disguised himself. Whenever a woman saw him in this form, she was irresistibly attracted to him. His looks, scent, posture, and gait were perfect lures, designed, calculated and made real by the power of his will. He'd never thought he could've done it so perfectly without the guidance of the coven, but as it turned out he didn't need them after all. He'd grown to be what his coven Master always said was lost to their species. He'd become a shifter. And with every feeding he grew more powerful.

Cruising the streets he dismissed prey after prey, because he preferred younger women, their tasty flesh particularly succulent, their blood sweeter than anything else he'd ever harvested. A woman, somewhere in her mid-twenties, exited a nearby coffee shop. He'd been watching the place from the shadows, waiting for the right female to come out. The only thing he needed to do was walk by. She smiled at him and followed.

It went as it always did. Like all the other nights he steered her into the relative seclusion of an alley and moved towards her, his prize. She froze. When his lips found hers, he sucked her tongue in his mouth. That was it, too late to stop the process. His beast was fully in charge once again, ripping its way out of the layer of tissue covering him. His claws ripped the fabric of false reality surrounding him.

Her eyes bulged at the sight of what now cornered her in the narrow street. His mouth latched onto hers, silencing her screams. She thrashed against the demon, but her resistance had little effect. The demon devoured her, starting with her face. Sucking at her flesh he drew her inside himself. Soon there was no more left than some stray splatters of blood.

When his hunger no longer ruled over his senses he looked around and snorted. _Too easy, but then again he was the strongest creature on this side of the veil now. Nothing could stop him. Maybe next time he'd hunt in his true form._

* * *

Gwars hadn't checked the wall in a long time to see if he could pass, but since he stalked prey close by he went into the alley and looked at it. A ferocious grin distorted his ugly face. "They'll have to drag me back, because I won't leave this banquet without a fight."

"We will if need be," a familiar voice sounded from the wall.

Gwars roared and said, "Why should I want to come back? I can feast on fresh meat here."

"You'll lose your mind if you do. The beast will take over, driving the unique creature that is you out. There will no longer be a Gwars if you keep feeding on humans."

"I don't believe you! Ever since I've started taking their life force mine has grown. It won't be long before I will be able to open my own passage and challenge you."

"You won't. Before you get strong enough your reasoning will have left you, and the beast does not care for the coven. It only cares about its next meal."

"Liar!" he roared again and pounded his fist on the wall. His hand sank into the concrete. He opened his hand and a small, circular opening appeared. "You see? If I can do this now I will soon be able to open a gate big enough for me. You just want to stop me from becoming too powerful."

"Believe what you want. When you've lost yourself to the beast you won't even remember us or where you belong. And yes, this is a test, one you have just failed."

The opening Gwars had just created began to shrink, and he had to retract his hand or have it caught in the concrete.

* * *

The creature paced the alley, ready to step out of the shadows into the path of his next meal. A fleeting thought crossed his mind. _I need to put on a coat of flesh._ Then he clawed at the wall surrounding the place where his meals stayed when they weren't outside and ready for him to grab. He growled when he couldn't penetrate it to reach the flesh inside.

Then beast licked its lips and closed its eyes in delight. Its ears twitched, its nostrils flared as it turned its head. The scent of fresh meat neared its concealed position.

It knew the prey would wander to where it waited for them, because its lure reached out to her, pulling her towards it. The beast fed, stood for a moment gazing at the wall, and snaked its tongue out tasting the air, looking for new prey.

The End

# JESSIE CAME TO THE DEAD TREE

Chad Huskins

When she woke up, it was moonlight, not sunlight that pried her eyelids apart. Jessie had never seen such white brightness before, at least not from the moon. Looking at the window, she saw only the black bars of the blinds, one of them at a sharp slant. It was through gap this that the moon's rays had snuck in.

She closed her eyes, tried to go back to sleep. She had work tomorrow and the allure of her pillow was greater than the moonlight's annoyance. At least, at first. She rolled onto her other side to get away from it, but it had painted the far wall in a bright white, as well. Strange that moonlight should be so nagging.

Finally, when she could take it no longer, Jessie moaningly sat up, threw off the sheets in a huff, and swung her feet out from the bed. The floor was cold, and the walk to the window, much like anything done at this hour, seemed unfair.

As she approached the blinds, the white light grew only more insulting to the eyes. It seemed unnatural that a bit of moonlight should be so aggravating. Wincing, Jessie fixed the kink in the blinds, but just before she did, she thought she saw something moving out in the yard, something that swayed gently in the moonlight. She knew what it was, and so she needn't check. And yet, she felt compelled to. Jessie thought better of it, fixed the kink in the blinds, and turned back to her gloriously dark room. Then, halfway back to her bed, she paused.

_No_ , she told herself. _Don't torture yourself with it_.

But there was another allure here, much like with her pillow, only this one brought no comfort. This was the allure of an empty tooth socket, the tongue unable to not fiddle with it, despite the residual pain and the warning from experts not to do so. _It's bad for you_ , they all said. Indeed, many had told her the same thing about pondering the dead tree.

Drawn by the swaying thing's power, Jessie turned back towards the window. She felt she had no choice in the matter, like waves returning inexorably to the sea, it was just a matter of physics. At the window, she reached for the drawstring and pulled, slowly at first, for she knew that all that moonlight at once was going to hurt. When the blinds were finally raised and her eyes had adjusted, Jessie looked across the back yard, lit brilliantly by milky white light. Strangely, and despite the brilliance of the night, the moon wasn't actually out in the full force. Indeed, it was ensconced just behind the massive dead tree at the far end of her back yard.

And there, her eyes became fixated.

The tree stood there, huge and black and dead. It was a twisted thing, its trunk as solid as iron and its branches fanning out like tentacles sculpted from stone, some of them reaching towards the sky...but most of them seemed to be reaching towards the house, towards her. At least, that's the impression Jessie often got when staring at the thing. _And that's what Hannah thought_. The memory came back to her, the shouting match between her and Hannah, the argument about whether or not the tree had always been there. Then, despite all of Jessie's misgivings, Hannah had gone out with a flashlight to inspect it, and never returned. Hannah had been that way, of course, because she was the brave one. It was Jessie who was the coward.

Jessie recalled that night and those following days. She remembered spotting the tree in their back yard, and then asking Hannah where it had come from. She remembered Hannah saying it had always been there, and Jessie recalled disputing that fact. She remembered getting the phone call from Hannah saying that she saw someone in their back yard, moving around the big dead tree, and that she had called the police, and now she was going out to inspect. She remembered yelling at Hannah, telling her not to go, but Hannah said she had her gun and was going to go look, maybe scare them off, let them know someone actually lives here. That was the last Jessie had heard from her girlfriend. It was also the last time anyone would take Jessie seriously, because despite calling the police about Hannah's disappearance, no search party was ever formed. And there was a simple reason for that.

Hannah had never existed.

_That's not true_ , Jessie thought, staring at the dead tree. _I know it's not_. _I knew her_. _I loved her_. _I'm not crazy_. No one had ever used that word to describe her, but she knew it's what they all thought. _You don't just imagine five years of romance, of meeting at work and going on first and second and third dates_. _You don't just conjure that stuff up!_

But six months of psychiatric treatment and a steady dosage of Valium was all it took for Jessie to accept it. Not accepting the fact that she'd made it all up, mind you, but accepting the fact that no one believed her and that, if she wanted to stay out of a padded room, she needed to keep her mouth shut.

Days had slid into weeks, had slid into months, and finally a full year had passed. Not a word from Hannah, and not a mention of her from anyone else. The picture frames around the house were vacant. The scrapbook filled with photos, concert tickets, love letters and Christmas letters was empty. But one fact compelled Jessie's mind to rebel against reason: there _were_ picture frames, and there _was_ a scrapbook. So, what had been in them?

Jessie looked out at the dead tree, standing so impossibly _there_. That tree in itself was a plague on her thoughts. Her mind wasn't always on it, but it was always on her mind, if that made any sense. Jessie had pondered it for a month or so after getting out of the clinic, and had mostly tried to avoid looking at it. Then, when she could take it no more, she had had a few lawn and tree specialists come out to take a look.

Their findings surprised even them. It wasn't a magnolia, there was no sign of anything having ever blossomed on it. It was sort of built like a kapok, but there was no sign of the cotton-yielding seed pods. One specialist said that its trunk reminded him of _dracaena draco_ , a subtropical tree found nowhere around here, while the twisted and gnarled branches reminded him of the corkscrew willow tree, only much thicker. Its roots were also very deep, indicating it had been here a long time, just as Hannah had said. One thing was clear, though: it was dead. Dead many years, and yet there was no sign whatsoever of broken limb nor fallen twig around its base. Even the tree specialists had told Jessie that he found the base of the tree surprisingly clear of debris, considering her claim that she had never cleaned around it before. When Jessie asked if it was possible that the animals in the area might find favor with this area, and perhaps collect some debris of their own to carry away, the man had told her that that was highly unlikely. Animals don't just carry away branches.

So, a dead tree that had always been there and a girlfriend that never was. What to make of it?

Presently, staring out at the plague of her thoughts, Jessie made a decision. "I'm coming, Hannah," she said.

She didn't even know what she meant by that. Was it hopeful or fatalistic? Was she off to find her woman or find her end? At the moment she said it, nothing mattered. Jessie was resolute in her decision. So resolute, in fact, that she went to the safe inside the closet, put in the combination Hannah had her memorize and took out the pistol. Hannah had showed her how to use the Glock on their third date.

_You don't just imagine pistol training, either_ , she thought, standing up and checking the clip. _I know she was real_. _She taught me how to aim_. _She taught me about the master grip, how to hold it at low-ready position, and how to clear it if it gets jammed_. _You don't just learn that from watching_ NYPD Blue _reruns_. The thought made her brave. It invigorated her.

However, as soon as she found herself on the back doorstep, and felt the rush of cool wind and saw the moonlight stabbing out over the branches of the dead tree, Jessie felt something else, something that started low, in the pit of her stomach, and metastasized into something sickening. A realization struck her as soon as her feet touched the soft, dewy grass, and as soon as she caught the waft of forest air.

What if it swallows me, too?

There was more than one reason to be afraid of that answer, the least of which was her own fate. Yes...yes...there was the knowledge that, if it did indeed swallow her as she suspected it had done Hannah, then not only would Jessie be gone from the earth, but so too would all knowledge of Hannah. _I'm the last vestige of her, the last thing that can attest that a beautiful person named Hannah was here_. _If I'm gone, then so is Hannah, finally and forever_.

And without Hannah, who would remember Jessie?

Imagining that both of them would be gone, that all those wonderful adventures in the kitchen and the bedroom could just be erased...it was crippling. Jessie faltered on her first two steps away from the back door, but managed to keep her Glock at low-ready. The yard suddenly seemed an interminable distance. Looking at the impossible tree, standing so imposingly from ground to sky and covering much of the moon, yet somehow enhancing its light, she nearly turned back. Nearly.

Then, drawn by a combination of the stubbornness Hannah had always accused her of having, and the need to know if her woman had ever been real, Jessie put one foot in front of the other. The wind blew gently through her nightgown and the crickets sang a song for her as she passed. _I wonder if they'll remember me_ , she thought.

One foot in front of the other.

The wind blew a little harder, and though it rustled the trees all around, it did not move the dead tree. However, the tree did emanate a harsh, groaning sound, yet most of it sounded as if it came from beneath the ground, like roots moving through dark, unimaginable leagues, perhaps tempted towards the surface by this new catch— _Am I catch? Like a spider in a web? A moth drawn to flame? Have I fallen for the tree's trap? Did Hannah?_

One foot in front of the other.

That thought had never occurred to her, that the tree's intentions might be that sinister. Indeed, that the tree might _be_ sinister. That would indicate it had intentions at all, which would indicate it had a mind. That was silly, of course. _But no sillier than the notion that it_ ... _it_ ... _devours_. Might that be its nefarious plan? To appear, convince, lure, devour, and erase?

One foot in front of the other.

The tree groaned and cracked. The limbs, though they didn't move, somehow seemed to be reaching towards her, even more so than usual. Long, tenebrous things that licked out and tasted and desired...

One foot in front of the other.

Jessie looked up, saw the perfect canopy of stars, and the rays of milky light that played across that black dome. The tree was so perfectly backlit that there was no way of telling any details on it, but Jessie didn't need to see those details. She had spent weeks out here in light of day, running her fingers over the gnarled trunk and its wicked low-lying branches. Had felt it move and react to her touch...

One foot in front of the other.

The tree groaned again, and this time Jessie felt the tremors in the ground through her feet, even up into her knees. She looked down at her feet, now wet and collecting bits of grass and lawn debris along the way. The crickets were singing louder.

One foot in front of the other.

When she looked up, the light had become...dimmer? Yes. Yes, it was dimmer, yet still there, and still framing the dead tree as ever. The moonlight was fading, even though there wasn't a cloud in the sky that could let that happen. However, there was something else there, something else moving in the dimming moonlight, stepping out from behind the dead tree...a silhouette approaching...

Jessie stopped, and her bowels nearly turned to water. She knew the silhouette approaching her, even though it was dark and without details. She knew the figure by her silhouette the same way she had known the tree by its: she had spent many a night watching both, and had spent many days running her fingers along them.

She knew the figure by her silhouette, but nothing else, for everything else had changed, as was evident when she came closer. The hair, normally so silky and straight and blonde, was now twisted and gnarled and blackened. The swaying hips were gone, and in their place were lumps of stiff, rotted flesh. The legs, once so voluptuous and full, were now thin, dying limbs with sagging flesh barely hanging on.

Like the tree, a long time dead, yet never falling apart.

All this was visible through the nightgown she wore, which was tattered and moldy, the hem soaked through and through with mud and red clay. Her arms were spindly things, and they reached out towards Jessie like the branches of the dead tree...only they held something in their hands. A weapon of some kind.

Jessie didn't hesitate. Suddenly remembering the pistol in her hand, leapt back and fired. It was instinctive, done completely without thought. The loud _pop!_ almost stunned her—Hannah had taught her to use hearing protection—and it made her scream reflexively.

The bullet ripped through the walking corpse, hitting it center mass and sending it spiraling to the ground. Jessie stepped around the corpse, kicked the gun free of its hand and then hovered over it, her Glock trained on it, lest it moved again.

Then, the moonlight returned. Jessie looked up and around. No...no, the moonlight hadn't returned, the tree was _gone_. Jessie spun around and around, aiming the weapon everywhere frantically, wondering what else might assault her, and what other tricks the tree had up its sleeve. Then, she heard a sputtering cough. "Jess...Jess..."

Blood freezing in her veins, she turned. The Glock was aimed at the corpse, which was no longer a corpse. The gown was no longer tattered and filthy, it was blue and clean...except for the red stain spreading across it. Jessie's eyes went wide. She dropped the weapon and looked down on her woman, her princess, her Hannah in her all her gorgeous glory, now lying sideways and shivering on the ground, clutching the hole in her chest. "J-Jess...J...J..."

"No! No, no, no, no, no! Hannah, no!" she cried, falling to her side and lifting her head into her lap. "No, no, no, girl. No, you just...y-y-you just...just stay with me, you hear? You stay with me. 'Kay, girl? 'Kay, sweetheart?"

"J...J..." The precious blue eyes were rolling back, the eyelids were closing, the body was going through a spasm.

"Hang on there, sweetheart. I've got you, Hannah girl. Jessie's here." She happened to glance up. The tree was still gone, but there was a hole where the roots had been. Just as there had been picture frames left empty all through the house.

"J..."

"Hang in there, sweet girl. Hang in there. You're tough, tougher than me." Hannah let out a long, long sigh, went still. "Hannah? _Hannah girl?!_ " Her Hannah never moved again.

Jessie looked up at the sky and screamed. Bathed in uninhibited moonlight, she clutched her love and screamed until her voice went out.

The tree was gone. And now she knew. Jessie knew the malevolence of the thing. She knew what its tempting allure was, she knew the power of its flame, attracting little moths like her and Hannah, beckoning them with illusions. Had Hannah seen Jessie that night? Had the malevolent tree disguised her as an intruder so that Hannah might stalk and kill her? Jessie believed the answer was yes.

She looked back at the gaping hole in the ground. Now friends and family and authorities would tell her that Hannah had always been there, but that the tree hadn't. But Jessie knew the truth. She always had, and always would. She knew there were older, darker, and fouler things in the world than most others dreamed.

And she knew what happened when one came to the dead tree.

The End

# MILLIE

Berk Washburn

Sighing contentedly, Millie slowly closed her book. She had feared the story wouldn't end right. She hated stories that didn't know how to end, but this ending was perfect. Relishing the moment, she sat immersed in the book's final, triumphant scenes.

From out of nowhere, a sudden unfamiliar noise jolted her from her reverie. Disoriented, she stared up into a room engulfed in nighttime blackness. Except for a crisp circle of light on her lap, everything else was hidden by darkness.

Her aging eyes didn't see well in the dark any more. Her husband, Gregory, had gotten tired of watching her squint when she tried to read in the old house's dim lighting. "Your face is all puckered up like a prune when you're reading," he'd complained. Last Christmas, he had presented her with a bright, battery-powered clip light that she could take with her anywhere around the house. Right now it dangled from a hook on the wall above her, encasing her in a narrow shaft of light.

She sank back into the softness of her over-stuffed chair and closed her eyes, feeling weary. The waning autumn sun had gone down unnoticed, while she read, and the big, creaky house still needed to be shut up for the night.

When Gregory was out of town on business, like tonight, Millie was careful to close windows and lock doors before the sun went down, but this evening she had been distracted with her book. She wasn't scared to be alone, but the neighborhood had changed over the last few years as old friends moved to warmer climes or smaller homes. The newcomers were not as neighborly. Millie had suggested to Gregory that they move to a newer, smaller house, but he wouldn't hear of it. He loved this old house and had worked long hours fixing it up.

Irritated, Millie sniffed and immediately crinkled her nose at the unpleasant scent. No matter how she cleaned, she hadn't been able to get rid of that smell. The old house always had a musty, dead smell. On warmer days, she liked to throw open the windows to collect as much fresh air as possible. With the cooler fall weather, she now opened only the downstairs windows, during only the warmest part of the day. It had been weeks since she had last unlocked and opened any of the upstairs windows.

Rising stiffly from her chair, Millie reached for the clip light behind her, but her hand brushed it off the hook before she could grasp it. With a loud crash, it smashed into the hard-wood floor, shattering the bulb and sending broken glass tinkling across the floor in all directions. Everything was suddenly enveloped in the inky blackness of the night.

Millie stood still, her bare feet frozen in place. With broken glass all around, she dared not take a step until her eyes adjusted to the darkness. The dark shapes of the larger pieces of furniture began to appear, but strain as she might, she could not make out the tiny glass shards she knew were scattered around her.

Standing stiff for very long was always painful. Millie's locked knees began to complain, making her fear they might buckle. Swishing out her breath in frustration, she was about to take her chances in the dark, when she was startled by that strange, unfamiliar noise again--like someone whispering from far away, saying something she didn't quite understand.

Alarmed, she took a quick step forward, and immediately, a sharp pain flashed in the heel of her right foot. The glass shards! But, fearing the strange noise more, she kept moving. On tip-toe, protecting her injured heel, she groped towards the backdoor, where she knew a light switch waited in the dark. Miraculously, she did not step on any more broken glass.

When her hand finally touched the wall, she paused to listen. All was silent. Taking a shuddering breath, she followed the wall until she found the door, and then the light switch beside it. She flipped the switch up. Nothing happened. All was still dark. Frantically, she flipped it again, repeatedly. Still nothing.

Millie tried to calm her rising panic. Staring out the window in the backdoor, she wondered why someone would shut off the power to her house. Suddenly, she realized that not just her house was dark. She could see several houses to each side of her backyard as well as many of the houses across the street from these back-door houses. All were black. She could not see a single light in any of these homes that were normally filled with warm, living lights.

Relief flowed through Millie. No wonder her light switch didn't work. The power in her neighborhood must have gone out while she was reading. She smiled, able to laugh at herself a little. The power outage was strange, since there had been no storms for days, but now there was a logical reason, rather than a diabolical reason, for why her lights didn't work.

Suddenly, as if carried upon a wisp of wind, that distant, unfamiliar noise came again. Like a breathy whisper, the stretched-out, unstable sound came together this time as a single word, "Millieeee."

Sure the sound had come from outside, from somewhere in the backyard, she called through the door's open window, "Who's there? What do you want?" She was answered only by silence.

Millie struggled to calm her breathing. _It's just my imagination_. _I'm the only one here. I need to get a flashlight and get all the downstairs windows and doors closed and locked. And get that piece of glass out of my heel!_

Gregory always kept a flashlight in the kitchen tool drawer. Millie wanted that flashlight. Making sure the back door's window was securely closed and latched, she turned the security bolt, locking the door tight. Then, she felt along the wall until she reached the large den window. Everything outside was quiet and dark. In the distance, a dog barked. The breeze coming in through the big open window was cold, icy cold.

Suddenly, Millie remembered that the weather forecast in the morning newspaper had said there was a chance of frost tonight. She was immediately angry with herself--she should have shut all the windows hours ago. The house was going to be freezing cold all night if she didn't get the windows shut up now as fast as possible.

The den window did not slide smoothly, so she had to use both hands, one near the top and one near the bottom, to get it slide without jamming. Tugging hard to close the final inches, she distinctly heard that breathy whisper again, "Millieeee." The sound was drawn out in a moan.

Someone is out there calling my name!

Frantically, she pulled the window shut, and with shaky hands, slammed down the metal latch. For long moments, she sagged against the wall, struggling to slow her ragged breath. Finally finding her courage, she peeked out through the big, plate-glass window. Nothing moved in the darkness, but it was hard to tell. It was so dark. There wasn't even any moonlight.

_It wasn't my imagination_. _Someone is out there calling my name!_

Whoever it is cannot see in the dark any better than I can, but I know where the phone is, and I'm calling for help right now.

The kitchen phone hung on the wall between the kitchen and the den. Feeling her way into the kitchen on tip toe, she stopped when her fingers gently touched the phone. Carefully, she lifted the phone from its cradle and held it to her ear. There was no dial tone--the phone was dead. She jabbed at the flash button several times--still no tone. Now, this was not logical. Even when the power went out, the phone still worked.

For a moment, she felt an insane urge to rip the phone off of the wall and throw it.

_Okay,_ she thought, as she slowed her breathing again, _calm down. This isn't going to help. I don't know why this phone is dead, but my cell is upstairs in my bedroom. I still need to lock up the downstairs. Once everything is safely locked up, I'll go upstairs and call for help._

With renewed hope, Millie felt her way quietly over to the window above the kitchen sink. She stopped at the window to listen, then reached up to slide it closed. Even before she touched the window sill, a low, deep voice whispered through the window, "Millieeee."

For a moment, her heart stopped. Biting back a scream, she slid the window closed and locked it before backing away from the sink. In her panic, she put her full weight on her right heel, and crumpled instantly to the floor, gasping in pain.

For a long time, she lay huddled on the floor, eyeing the kitchen window, expecting to see a black figure peering back through it. When nothing happened, she sat up with a sense of urgency and dragged herself over to the tool drawer.

Getting up on her knees, she pulled open the drawer and fished around inside until she felt the flashlight. Dropping back on the floor, she covered the end of the flashlight with one hand, so the light couldn't be seen from the outside and pushed the thumb switch up. To her dismay, the switch wouldn't go up, but it would go down.

The flashlight had been turned on already. It had been sitting in the drawer; turned on for who knows how long and now the batteries were completely dead. If Gregory had more batteries for this flashlight, Millie didn't know where.

Why is he always gone so much?

For a moment, Millie thought she might cry in pure frustration when she had a sudden flash of inspiration. Sliding along to another drawer, she fished around until she found a box of birthday candles and a pack of matches. In yet another drawer, she fished out a box of band aids.

Crawling over to the broom closet, she squeezed in and shut the door. First pushing some cleaning rags under the door to make sure no light leaked out, she struck a match. Glorious light burst forth. She almost sobbed. With trembling hands, she lit a candle and inspected her foot. What a bloody mess it was, and still bleeding. She must have been tracking blood through the house wherever she went, but the wound was not wide. She could see the end of the piece of glass poking out. Carefully, she pulled the glass out of the wound and covered the cut with several large band aids.

Millie was tempted to stay hidden in the closet until the sun came up, but she knew she would be safer if she got the rest of the house locked up. She blew out her candle and slowly pushed the closet door open. Everything was still pitch black. After listening carefully for a few moments to absolute silence, she pulled herself to her feet and felt her way gingerly out of the kitchen and into the dining room. She avoided putting her full weight on her right heel, but now she could walk more normally with only slight pain.

Once the dining room door was locked, she inched up to the edge of the dining room window. She dreaded standing out in front of the window, but didn't know any other way, with her small frame, to get enough leverage to push the window closed. Taking a deep breath, she stepped out, grabbed the window frame with both hands and threw her weight into it. Before it could shut completely, the deep moaning voice whispered, "Millieeee." It sounded so close!

_Stop!_ she wanted to yell. _Stop saying my name! Who are you? How do you know my name?_

She was sure now the voice of her tormentor was the voice of a man, but not a voice she recognized. He was watching her in the darkness make her rounds as she shut up her house.

_Watch on,_ she thought. _I'm almost done. I'll get my cell phone and help will come._

She felt bruised and sore, in both body and soul, but she could move more quickly now with no glass in her heel. Feeling her way into the front room, she could see faint starlight shining through the open window. She was sure her tormentor would be watching for her, but she did not hesitate. Stepping out, she grabbed the window and began pushing it closed. Immediately, a voice from out of nowhere, but seemingly close by, whispered, "Millieeee!"

No matter how much she thought she was ready for that voice, each time she heard the malevolent whisper, it twisted her insides. Yet, in some weird way, its tones were beginning to sound almost familiar.

Feeling as if she were nearing the end of a marathon, she limped carefully over to the front door and locked it securely. Shaking all over, she backed away from the door, across the large entry hall and leaned against the banister at the bottom of the stairs, feeling totally drained, but relieved. The house was all locked up. She was finally safe.

She had done it. In spite of the darkness and wounds, she had done it. Her tormentor was locked out. In a minute she would call the police, and they would be here at her house. It would be her tormentor, then, who would be looking for a safe place to hide. She smiled grimly. She hoped the police would be as merciless with him as he had been with her.

Standing at the bottom of the stairs, catching her breath, Millie began shivering uncontrollably. She realized she wasn't shaking because she was scared--she was cold. She was really cold. A column of freezing air was sliding down the stairs, washing over her. She was used to the icy drafts around the house, but this was a full wind blowing.

But, where is this cold air coming from? None of the upstairs windows are open!

Millie turned to look up the stairs and could feel the cold wind blowing in her face, but her eyes could see nothing. Everything was still pitch black. Then, she heard something. With every fiber of her body, she listened. Suddenly, a board in the landing at the top of the stairs creaked. That board had creaked as long as Millie could remember. It always creaked when someone stepped on it.

Slowly, Millie backed away from the stairs. As she did, from the top landing, a deep, jeering voice whispered, "Millieeee!"

The End

#  THE PERFECT WOMAN

## J.J. Toner

He swung the laboratory doors closed. The doors were massive, three inches thick and ten feet high, made of ancient oak from the Black Forest and reinforced with metal studs.

"Thank God for the warlords of the twelfth century," he said aloud, as he slid home the huge cast-iron bolt.

The crash of the doors and the clang of the bolt echoed around him and faded to silence. He stood perfectly still for a while, chasing the memory of the sounds from his mind, re-tuning his hearing to the absolute silence .

He waited until the only sound he could hear was his own breathing and his eyes had adjusted to the gloom. Then he moved away from the laboratory door and started up the stone staircase. Following the inner curve of the castle wall, the stairs passed under a tall stained-glass window. A shaft of moonlight glinted on his bald head, catching his gaunt features, his hooked nose, his ugly mouth, scarred and twisted in pain. He was near-naked, his bleached skin hanging in folds, barely covering his angular bones. He stumbled, leaving a bloody handprint on the wall, and then rested on the cold stone step under the disinterested gaze of a long-forgotten ancestor frozen in victorious pose over a slain enemy.

From behind the laboratory doors, from the bowels of the great castle below, came faint sounds. The growl of an animal? No. Ghastly as the sounds were, they were human: an anguished groan, a muffled blood-curdling howl, followed by an indescribable sound, like a strangled scream.

"God preserve me," he whispered.

Picking himself up, he pressed on to the first landing and into the library, closing and locking the door behind him. He slipped into a dressing gown, and lowered his misshapen body into a chair.

He lit a lamp, and propped it up on the desk in front of him. Painfully, he slipped the dressing gown off his shoulders revealing a deep, gaping wound in his side. His clothes lay over the back of the chair. He tore his shirt into strips, and improvised a bandage, which he used to dress the wound. He paused to rest briefly, then, with trembling fingers, pulled out some paper—scattering several blood-spattered sheets on the floor—dipped his pen in the ink-well and began to write.

I am dying. This is my last testament—the last record of my life's work. I write it in the hope that it will be read and acted upon by whomsoever finds my body, for the future of mankind surely depends on it.

The ramblings of a deranged mind, you may think? No, my friend, not so. Keep your mind open and read on. If I live long enough to complete this account, all will become clear.

I am a scientist. When you read what I have done you will understand how the result of my work threatens the future of civilization, and even the very future of the human race. A mad scientist, then, you say? No, not mad. Misguided, perhaps. Well-intentioned, certainly. And I freely admit with the benefit of hindsight, that I should never have started this accursed project.

My name is unimportant. My field is Medicine—of a sort—Medical Anthropology, I call it.

Blood from his damaged lip dropped on the paper. He brushed it away with a grunt of impatience, and continued writing:

My reputation in the field of human anatomy is well-established—and well known. I studied under the patronage of the late Baron von Frankenstein, my tutor and mentor, and was employed as his assistant for many years. The baron dedicated himself to his dream of recreating the miracle of life in the laboratory. His work was based on an unshakeable conviction that death was not simply the end of life, but merely a temporary interruption to life's flow. He and I spent months debating this concept, which I now fully share.

But noble as his aims were, the baron's methods were crude and often ill-conceived. Driven by personal ambition, he was impatient for tangible results. He sacrificed all caution and scientific precision in his haste to reach his ultimate goal, without a care for the quality of the end product.

Even so, his achievements were immense, and when the hysteria of the modern age has abated, I have no doubt that history will laud his immense contribution to medical science.

The old man paused and strained to listen, but heard nothing, just the hiss and splutter of the lamp flame. He turned the flame down and listened again. Then he heard it. A faint scratching, scrabbling sound and a muffled roar, followed by three dull thuds from behind the laboratory door. Please God make it hold! He shuddered, turned up the flame and resumed his chronicle.

After the Baron's sudden and tragic death, I resolved to continue his work, but taking meticulous care and using the full scientific method. Check, double-check and counter-check were applied stringently to verify every small step of the process, and to ensure that every advance could be produced and reproduced at will. Nothing was left to chance. My work progressed slowly. Several years passed. Years of painstaking work, when my form was not seen by any mortal man save my two faithful grave-diggers who kept me supplied with human organs.

At last, I reached the point where I was certain that I could reproduce the work of the Baron—I could bring life to a cadaver, replacing any defective or injured internal or external organ. My surgical skills were supreme, well beyond von Frankenstein's crudities. My subjects, even the ones made up of multiple transplants, showed no outward signs of my work. They carried no ugly sutures, bore no visible scars, and were outwardly indistinguishable from any man—or woman—naturally born.

Yes, they were perfect in every detail, warm to the touch, with hair that grew and blood that coursed through their veins. Outwardly perfect in every detail.

When it came to the workings of the brain, however, I ran into a major obstacle. I had no difficulty instilling life into the organ. Even those that had been dead for several days responded well to electroinfusion therapy. I could produce alpha and beta brain activity at will. Responses to external stimuli were obtained and catalogued. I even recorded evidence of REM sleep in some subjects. It is all there in my records. Everything was just as it should have been. My subjects were alive, awake, conscious and mobile. By any established scientific measurement, they should have been complete human beings, each ready to take his or her place in the world. But, they were all quite mad. Every one of them—deranged beyond retrieval.

A further year of research identified the problem. It seems that, at the moment of death, a small ganglial connection between upper and lower brain is destroyed. This ganglion carries millions of synaptic nerves, consisting of hundreds of millions of neurons, that suppress lower animal-instinctual responses and enabling higher cognitive reasoning functions to predominate.

Immediately, I set about perfecting the microsurgical procedures necessary to activate the ganglial connection. A year passed. Then two more. My microsurgical skills multiplied tenfold, surpassing the skills of even the most eminent Harley Street surgeon, but still, the vital procedure eluded me. My two faithful grave-diggers kept me supplied with corpses in ever greater quantities, settling in to a sort of macabre rhythm, each night delivering two fresh subjects and taking away for disposal the remains of those delivered the night before.

There was a loud dull thump from below, followed by another. He opened the door a crack and peered out. There was very little light coming in through the window, now. He could see nothing. He stepped out, and started down the stone steps. There was a crash from behind the laboratory door. Then another crash and another and another. As the crashing continued, ever louder, faster, more insistent, he hurried back to his desk in the library. He resumed his seat, dipped his pen in the ink, and wrote with trembling hand:

Eventually, it began to dawn on me that what I was attempting may be impossible. Much as the notion would have been alien to Baron von Frankenstein, and much as I was desperate to reject it, I began to think that perhaps, after all, there may be some corporeal transformations brought about by death which are irreversible.

Once the seed of doubt was planted in my mind, it began to grow, intruding on my thoughts and disturbing my concentration. My work began to suffer. I struggled on for several months more, making stupid mistakes, and wasting several subjects. Then, in a rage, I smashed half the glass equipment in the laboratory, frightening the grave-diggers away from the castle, before retiring to my library with a bottle of brandy.

I drank myself into a stupor.

That night I slept at my desk. I slept long and peacefully, probably for the first time in years, and when I awoke, I had the answer.

The key to the problem lay in the approach I had been taking. In every respect, and for every major organ, every artery, every limb, my approach had always been one of repair, renewal and revitalization—using existing organs and tissue from the subject or transplanted from others. Now I knew where the answer lay—I would build the ganglion connection from scratch, using inorganic materials.

A radical approach, you may think. And I would agree with you, but after so many unsuccessful attempts, so many sleepless nights, so many failures, I knew that this was what I had to do.

He coughed and there was the taste of blood in his mouth. It was as he feared—his lung had been punctured by the knife. His time was running out. He checked his crude bandages and found them saturated, but the flow from the wound had been staunched. He wrote:

The next six months I devoted to the written works of Benjamin Franklin, of Faraday and the young Maxwell. Thus I assimilated the new sciences of electricity and magnetism and began to search for a solution to my problem. Using repeated trial and error, it took no more than nine further months to build a device which enabled primitive communication between the two brain structures. From there, the device was modified and refined, extended, and miniaturized until I had perfected it.

He put his pen down and moved to the door, opening it a crack. The crashing sounds were now less frequent, perhaps fifteen seconds apart, but each one impacted the door with terrifying force. Heart thumping wildly, he tried to imagine what object or implement could be used to produce such pounding. Then, mixed in with the crashing he thought he heard the sound of splintering wood and his blood froze. He scurried back to his desk.

On Christmas day last year, the grave-diggers brought me a fresh corpse. It was the body of a young woman of twenty-two or twenty-three years, tragically killed under the wheels of a runaway carriage. I set to work. Her spleen was ruptured and her liver had been damaged, though not severely. The spleen I replaced immediately; the damaged tissue I removed from her liver. The rest of her organs were in fine condition and undamaged. Her thighs were a little over-full and her breasts a little small to my eye, so I took a couple of hours to correct these minor blemishes. Once I was happy with her anatomy and pleased with her outward appearance, I reconnected her mid-brain ganglion using my non-organic device.

The whole procedure took less than twelve hours, at the end of which time I plugged her in to the electroinfusion apparatus and switched on. The revitalizing procedure went without a hitch, and as the blood transfusions neared completion, I gazed with awe at the beautiful creature before me. Slowly, her body temperature returned to normal and her skin color lost the pallor of death. Her breathing seemed easy and natural, her ECG readings looked promising and all of her reflexes tested normal. She lay on the slab, sleeping soundly, like the beautiful sleeping princess of the fairytale. I decided to call her "Princess" as a convenient working name.

When she awoke, she opened her eyes and looked up at me, and I could sense instantly that I had succeeded. The look in her eyes was calm and thoughtful, with not a sign of dementia. Here, at last was the final culmination of my work, the final vindication of my methods and absolute incontrovertible proof that the baron's theories were sound.

I had created the perfect woman.

The extensive tests that followed proved that her mind was indeed intact and functioning perfectly. All of her memories had been erased, but her capacity to learn was totally unaffected. I began to teach her. I taught her how to walk, to cook, to clean and to sew. And I taught her to talk. This was the one area where her progress was slowest. She quickly mastered a basic vocabulary of perhaps two hundred words, but she had no real concept of sentence construction. She could communicate quite well, using phrases like "Princess food cook" and "Master book show Princess"—she called me "Master".

Within three months, she was fulfilling all of the functions of a dutiful housewife. I discovered that she had a fine, intelligent mind, so I introduced her to the work of the renaissance masters, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Donatello.

She seemed happy. I certainly was. Here was my life's work, walking and talking, breathing, enjoying the works of the great artists; under my tutelage her culinary skills progressed in leaps and bounds. I could feel myself falling in love with her. And she with me? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Is it love, when a chick emerges from its shell and forms an attachment to the hen, its mother? Or when a barnacle attaches itself to the back of a whale? For she was dependent on me every bit as much as the chick to the hen or the barnacle to the whale.

He put his pen down and went to the door again. He could hear nothing. He stepped out into the passageway. A wave of dizziness washed over him. He was very weak; he had lost a lot of blood. He steadied himself, and moved cautiously down the steps to the laboratory door. Absolute silence. He put his ear to the door, but still he could hear nothing. He tested the door and the iron bolt. They seemed secure, although there was some detectable movement of the door in its jamb. He turned, made his way slowly back up the steps to the library.

I fell hopelessly in love with my creation. And now I was faced with a serious dilemma, for my Princess was as innocent as a babe in arms. A fully grown and fully formed woman she was; fully familiar with the paintings and sculptures of the Masters, but of matters of the heart or of the temptations of the flesh she had no inkling.

I tried to teach her the basics of human anatomy and the principles of the reproductive process, but it was hopeless. Her vocabulary was so limited, and her lack of understanding of basic biology such an insurmountable stumbling-block. It was like trying to explain the steam engine to a chimpanzee; she had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. I tried kissing her, but she must have thought that this was a novel way of eating, for she bit a piece from my lower lip.

Finally, today, I decided that I would have to show her what I could not explain to her in words. I waited until after we had finished a meal, and then I took off my clothes and stood before her. "Man" I said. "Man". She took one look at my naked body, and burst into laughter. She jumped up and ran to the library, returning with a picture of Michelangelo's David. She held the picture up for me to see and, still laughing, she shook her head and said "Man", pointing at the picture.

I held her in my arms, but she struggled free and ran away into the kitchen. I followed her. I found her huddled in a corner of the room, still clutching the book and repeating "man, man" over and over to herself. I went over to her. She stood up and came towards me, a sharp unaccustomed glint in her eye. Too late, I saw the knife in her hand.

At that moment, the castle was rocked by a huge explosion.

"Merciful God!"

He dropped his pen and staggered over to the library door. Outside, the passageway was full of dust and smoke. He descended a few steps. The laboratory door had been blown off its hinges. Princess was nowhere to be seen. He turned and hurried back to the library. Closing and locking the door behind him, he picked up his pen and continued:

The end is near. I am weak from loss of blood, and my Princess has escaped from the laboratory. The only question that remains is whether she will break in here and finish me off before I die from my wound.

I suppose I should not be surprised at what happened. After all, what other reaction could one expect from the perfect woman when confronted by the imperfect figure of the average man? To whomever finds this manuscript, I urge you destroy all of my records. What I have accomplished must never be repeated. The world as we know it would never be safe for men if

There was a sound behind him. He turned. The last thing he saw was the flash of lamplight on naked steel.

## The End

# THE BLIGHT MOON DARK LORD'S CLUB

J.C. Eggleton

Mortulath, Queen of Chaos and Cold, adjusted her helm. She'd spent half the night debating what to wear, and as a recent inductee of the Blight Moon Dark Lord's Club, she wanted to look her best.

Locusta, her sponsor, clicked her pinchers impatiently. Her white hair was perfectly coiffed, blood opal ornaments glittering in her hair. "Hurry up already! Wear the big black cape if you're nervous. Can't go wrong with a big black cape."

"Well...isn't it what everyone wears? And I can't decide between the rubies made from the blood of hermaphroditic temple virgins or the baby seal trim."

"Just go with the kitten trim and be done with it. The white is better with your skin anyway. You're too pale to go for the grey. Too much ice-green in your complexion."

"Well, all right. Cursed sapphires okay?"

"Yes, yes, just go," said Locusta. She rearranged her skirt over her abdomen fussily. "Does this make my thorax look too wide?"

"Why do you even have a thorax? Spiders don't—"

"Oh, shut up. Does it?"

"No, it looks fine. Your spinnerettes are showing, though." Locusta adjusted her petticoat again, and cursed as the web lace caught on the sharp relief of a panel on Mortulath's vanity.

"Let's just go. Take the night-gaunt carriage, by the way, not the weirdling-drawn chariot, and make sure you bring a nice-looking driver. Don't bring too many extra minions to thrash, that's gauche."

Mortulath glared at her icily. Locusta's hair began to frost. "I know how to make an appearance."

The Blight Moon Dark Lord's Club could be accessed by interplanar transport, of course, but its patrons never did. Unless one absolutely had to be conjured up from the Formless Void, the prescribed method of entry was through the nearest river of a Hell, behind a cloud over the moon, and over a desert of bones.

Peeking out through the frost-lace covering her chariot's windows, Mortulath admired the view. The driver, an ancient ice genii, clicked his tongue at the silkily-flapping nightgaunts to keep their pace. The carriage glittered icily in the full moon's light; the dripping, steaming ice swirled into complex and hideous patterns over the wrought blackness of the carriage. Cursed from a mixture of void and the bones of beautiful children, she was pretty pleased with its craftsmanship. Not many occasions were horrifying enough to make it useful, but this was something special.

The sea of blood beneath her swelled and rolled; the salty, putrid smell refreshed her. As Queen of Chaos and Cold, she appreciated it less than some might have, but the entropic winds blowing from the cursed shore were very refreshing. The withering coolness made her feel delightfully undead.

"Now this is dying," she sighed happily. Locusta's ostentatious transport filled the air ahead of her; the living swarm of stinging, flying progeny forming a buzzing coach. Two nightmarish bloodsucking syrinxes led the host.

In spite of the irritating hum of the swarm, the screams of the tortured and dying that filtered from the distant shore made a lovely accompaniment. Mortulath closed her eyes and settled back in the childskin velvet seats of the coach.

"Mortulath! Wake up!" She jerked away from the claws in her face. "We're here!"

"Ooh! Oh."

"They're about to announce us! Just shut up and follow me."

A sepulchural choir intoned, "Lady Locusta of the Stinging Swarm, Mother of the Hive Hoarde, with Mortulath, Queen of Chaos and Cold."

The 'door' of Locusta's opened, and she rustled her petticoats to cover her spinnerettes. Delicately stepping out one leg at a time, she held herself proudly erect and glanced at Mortulath.

Mortulath took a deep breath. Her genii opened the door and she set a foot down on the sanguine carpet. The view was impressive, and she almost stumbled as she craned her neck to see it. There were a couple of small places nearby, including a ruined castle and an active volcano, but they had lineups to the bone-filled street. That she could even see the other clubs was clearly a result of a ripple in time and space.

Before her, utterly lacking in a lineup, was an edifice that stretched to the sky. A tower pierced the endless starry darkness, but the rest made her eyes hurt. The building had been carved from the bones of a Dead God. Solid fire and ice glittered around its walls, in lieu of a garden; twisted statues that were, on closer inspection, ossified heroes, lined the sanguine carpet handsomely. Star diamonds glittered along the trim of the windows. The window and door trims were engraved with minute and perfect depictions of horrible acts, but the walls were carved in sleek, jagged shapes. It was a strange mixture of styles, of unspeakably ancient and new evils, but it was very nice indeed.

The footmen—or things—held the door open for her. They appeared to be simple humanoids in tuxedos, with smooth grey skin and featureless faces. As she stepped into the darkness, the announcement echoed again.

"Lady Locusta of the Stinging Swarm, Mother of the Hive Hoarde, with Mortulath, Queen of Chaos and Cold."

The interior was elegant and as lux as the exterior. The surprisingly full lower level was spacious; decorated in the inevitable and stylish black, with a glassine floor that seethed interestingly. Something very expensive and unholy had been used for the cushions; hints of star-silver glittered in rivets and on metal studded trims. The handsomely paneled booths were fine cursed Redwood; abstract patterns of loathsome complexity swirled in the centre of each. The barstools were wrought from dragon bone. Over the bar, priceless goblets made from the skulls of kings awaited beverages. A many-armed starspawn bartender polished a goblet carefully with two arms as he passed a drink to a server with one of the others.

"Quite stunning," said Mortulath, with more composure than she felt. Locusta, seeing that Mortulath wasn't gawping too obviously, gave her a subtle nod of approval. She filed down ahead of Mortulath, off of the carpet, and waited for Mortulath to finish her entrance.

She managed not to stumble in her asteroid-heeled boots. The alarming drop of the stairs made it a real possibility, and she felt rather pleased with herself for dodging it.

A face pressed against the glassine floor and gave her a mournful look before dissipating. "They built the floor over a soul-swamp. Nice aquarium, isn't it? They have some horrors of the deep, too. You should see the Kraken."

"Oooh, a Kraken? Very nice. Is it for personal use?"

Locusta stifled a giggle. "It's not _that_ kind of club. The servers are as friendly or subservient as you like, though, and they have every kind of live and dead food in the known multiverse."

"Hm, I could do with a poison-kelp salad salted with pearls from a dead man's eyes. That trip over the ocean gave me a craving for seafood."

"Let's sit at the bar and then we'll order." Locusta arranged herself on a stool and Mortulath awkwardly followed suit. A shimmering scroll presented itself without prompting, and Locusta selected a couple of items.

Mortulath felt more at ease. There were more Dark Ladies than she'd expected; a comfort in such a male-dominated field. A blacked creature with eyes of fire and limbs of smoke walked past her.

"Do you think any big names will be here?" she whispered to Locusta.

"They usually stay in the VIP area. You have to have _years_ for that. We'll be in the junior section. It's basically a trial membership. Remember, just because you're in doesn't mean you're _in_ yet."

Mortulath sagged visibly. "But I was so hoping to see Lord Sau—"

"Shhh! You don't ask for autographs. That's gauche."

"But I've heard that Lord Vo—"

"Don't name him! That's impolite!"

"I spent last year getting mothers to hand-deliver their firstborn children to me, just so I could bathe in their blood and create a chaos portal in the centre of the kingdom. Isn't polite out already?"

"There's a difference between evil and impolite! You don't want to be impolite!" Locusta fanned herself. "This is your big moment! Don't mess it up!"

"If I wasn't dead, I'd be hyperventilating."

"Calm down. Just introduce yourself to a few people. Start with a look around."

As expected, the club was a mass of black and red. Gold and occasional navy blue accents glittered here and there, but dark metal and silver predominated. In one corner, a jagged black mountain of armor nursed a drink of something unpleasant-looking. A few excessively attractive vampires of indeterminate gender sipped wineglasses of royal blood near the bar. Their gregarious chatter was the loudest in the bar. The sound of a dying star, accompanied by a pack of wolves, played in the background. Mortulath hoped the infernal music of the spheres would go on next; there had been a new release recently with a supernova, and she hadn't heard it yet.

"Where do I start?"

"Try the vampires. They're snotty, but not picky."

Several hours later, a number of far more important guests had filed in. Not one had even paused in the lower hall. Locusta had abandoned Mortulath not long after a particularly famous King of Decay had popped in, saying she had to attend to her own level. "You're doing fine," she said encouragingly, pressing Mortulath's icy hand. "Ta! See you when the Widow is aligned with the Huntress."

"Yes, see you next week," Mortulath had replied, perturbed. Without her friend, cantankerous and officious as Locusta was, the bar suddenly seemed darker.

Now, she found herself staring shyly into her drink and avoiding strangers. Her frost-encrusted gown had been complimented by a legendary Yeti, but no-one else. The vampires had left as quickly as she'd met them, and she was too embarrassed to introduce herself to more.

A peel of hideous laughter sounded from the billiards, but even the prospect of watching people play with balls carved of solid gemstone couldn't cheer her.

"Is this seat taken?"

"Void! How lovely to see you! Aren't you supposed to be on a higher tier?"

"I come where I am needed and I am everywhere and nowhere. How are you?"

"Well..." she stirred her drink. "It's not quite what I hoped for in a debut. I'm glad I made it this far up, don't get me wrong—even the floor here is pretty superb company, but..."

"Hey, look, you didn't catch yourself on fire, and you haven't gotten piss drunk on too many Bloody Virgins. As first nights go, it certainly wasn't a raging disaster," said the Void sympathetically. It contorted its personal space/time in an approximation of a smile.

"But...I was so hoping to make an impression. Maybe catch the end of a civilization or network a bit for an unholy alliance," said Mortulath quietly.

"That takes time. Rome wasn't burnt in a day."

"Is it my cred? I'm working on building my portfolio..."

"It's not your cred. Besides, how many villages can you pillage before—"

"Strategic freezing is really my thing," she muttered. "Not rape and pillage. Generally death by cold and a bit of madness layered on top. Sometimes accelerated aging and decay. I'm an entropic being."

"Right, so the bleeding of those firstborn children..."

"Was to open a portal into...well, you, I suppose. Do you think I should have gone with more fire? I could probably manage something even crueler next time, but gore isn't really my—"

"Beg your pardon," said the Void courteously. "Take it from an ancient fount of change and chaos. You've got to do your own thing. Just trying to impress others with the most horrific thing you can muster in their style will make you fade out."

Mortulath stirred her liquid nitrogen self-consciously. "Fading out is a good thing for me...but I see your point."

"If all else fails, you can always throw yourself into me. But I wouldn't do that just yet. Making a splash in your career—it's as they say; every overnight success was a thousand years in the making."

And she who would one day make entire nations and planets fall with the mere mention of her name, who would tear through reality so deeply it could never be re-knit in some places, who would be known not only as Queen of Chaos and Cold, but simply as The End, said:

"I suppose you're right. Success will come with patience, but I'm just getting started, after all."

The End

# THE CLEARING

Tony Gilbert

A strong wind blew across the busy car park, driving invisible particles of dust towards the cobbled streets beyond. It moved crisp packets across the ground and sent discarded fizzy drinks can spiralling off the curb. It passed between the legs of people shopping in the late morning sunshine, cooling warm skin as it peaked into pockets, stealing tissues and sweet wrappers. It sent dry leaves into open shop doorways as it continued its relentless journey through the town, towards the bold colours of the park. The wind blew through the branches of short, thin trees and of tall, thick ones, the branches swaying in a near silent dance. It tickled the long grass with its constant breath, until it reached a clearing. Here, the wind stopped.

A flock of starlings flitted between curls of white cloud in near perfect harmony, creating swarming dark shapes across the sky. They flew above the small children's play area, noticed by a few of the running, laughing children before disappearing beyond the trees. The birds followed the path of the wind, dropping and soaring upwards with the air currents, tiny wings flapping with endless energy. They followed each other, instinct directing them. They flew in unison, high above the waving trees, towards the clearing in the centre of the woody copse, and then, as they reached it, still in unison, they fell towards the ground.

"Hey little squirrel, I've got a present for you."

"Don't go far, Ryan," his Mum called out, but Ryan barely heard, too intent on taming the squirrel who always managed to stay no less than a metre from his crouching body.

"Come on little squirrel, I won't hurt you." He moved towards the creature, shuffling close to the ground, his bent, white legs almost shining against the dark brown twigs and branches which littered the ground. He remembered a story that his Mum had told him about how you could tame a wild bird by throwing salt on its back and wondered fleetingly whether this would work on a squirrel. The thought disappeared from his mind as quickly as it had come when he realised he didn't have any salt anyway. He spoke in a soft voice, trying to calm the creature as he held an acorn out towards it on an outstretched palm.

Ryan walked further into the copse of trees, crunching dried sticks underfoot. He watched with dismay as the squirrel scuttled up the thick trunk of a tree before sitting on a protruding branch, just out of reach. He dropped the acorn on the floor and picked up a large twig. Hitting it against the trunk of the tree, he snapped it in two. The squirrel took flight, sprinting on tiny legs, further up the tree.

"Ooops, sorry little squirrel," he said. "I didn't mean to..."

Ryan's attention was drawn away by movement a little further into the wooded area. He turned towards it but could see nothing past the thick, leafy trees. He stepped forwards before turning back. He could hear his Mum speaking loudly to her best friend, Rebecca, over at the picnic which was set out on the thick green grass a few metres away from the entrance to the woods. Satisfied, he walked again, his thin legs breaking out in goose bumps beneath red shorts; towards the area he thought he had spied something.

He peered around a large tree, the bark rough against his hand and into a small, flat grassy area where the trees and plants, so abundant behind him, had not grown. He took another small step forwards, but still kept his hand against the tree. In front of him, a man, dressed in a grey suit and dark blue tie lay on the floor, staring directly at him.

"Why are you laying on the floor?" the little boy asked but the man just lay there, silently staring.

Ryan became worried then. He had seen rabbits look like that in his Granddads kitchen, before his Nan had prepared them for dinner. He had been taught about the death of animals, being the youngest member of a farming family but thankfully, his age meant that he had not experienced the death of a person, so he didn't know the fragility of human life matched that of an animal.

The laying man blinked and a relief flushed through the child. He looked at the man, still cautious, staying in the safety of the woods before the clearing and repeated his question.

"Why are you laying on the floor?"

The man continued staring but now his mouth moved up and down, reminding Ryan of when he had lifted his goldfish out of the water. Ryan moved from the shadows, closer to the man but then stopped as the man's mouth opened wide in a silent protest.

"Shall I get my Mum?" Ryan asked but the man made no attempt at a reply.

There was a sound from above then and he looked up, directly above the centre of the clearing, squinting his eyes as the strength of the sun brought tears to his eyes. His mouth hung open as suddenly a blanket of darkness fell towards the ground, blotting out the sunlight. The darkness fell quickly and as it hit the open ground in front of him, smothering the silent man, Ryan saw the hundreds of broken, unmoving birds and with the sun, now strong again above his head, he began to scream.

"That's Ryan!"

Denise jumped up at the scream that emanated from the woods, knocking over a full glass of pink lemonade. She ran, open mouthed across the soft grass and into the shadows of the trees. There was an instant chill as she passed from bright afternoon sunshine and into the thick undergrowth.

"Ryan!" she shouted, not seeing him. "Ryan!"

Then she saw him, standing motionless, his scream having run dry. He was staring into the clearing where, Denise saw, hundreds of black birds lay. Most were motionless but there were some whose beaks still opened and closed animatedly. She hurried to him and put her hands onto his shoulders, staring, not understanding, into the clearing. Then, remembering herself, she turned him and pulled him into her chest. Ryan stood, his head against his Mum and began to cry.

The bright light dimmed as a large cloud passed before the sun and the clearing that Denise still stared into, darkened considerably.

Ryan pushed against his Mums chest and she loosened her grip on him. He looked up at her.

"Mummy, there's a man under there." Ryan didn't turn his head back but pointed behind him.

Denise looked, but only dead and dying birds were visible. "Are you sure?" she said and moved herself slightly forward but Ryan pushed his head back into her embrace with such vehemence that she immediately stopped.

"I talked to him Mummy," his voice was muffled against the soft fabric of Denise's shirt. His eyes were closed and he relished the touch of his Mum as she brushed through his hair with one long finger.

"Rebecca," Denise called loudly to her friend but Rebecca was already there, just behind the mother and child, staring into the graveyard before them.

"What has happened?" she said, brushing her black hair back from her forehead as she stared at the scene in front of her.

"I don't know." Denise turned her attention to her friend, "Ryan says that there is a man under there!"

"I don't see anyone," Rebecca said, turning back towards the dark mess on the floor feet from where she stood on shaking legs.

"You've got to help him Mummy," Ryan looked up into his Mums eyes pleadingly, "he couldn't get up."

"I'll check, Ryan," Rebecca crouched by the small boy and tried to keep the quiver from her voice. She looked up to Denise, "you take him out into the park and call the police."

Denise nodded with a look of gratitude on her face and, lifting her son, she walked towards the picnic area of the park.

"Can you hear me?" Rebecca asked. She stood at the edge of the clearing, staring at the bird corpses, not understanding. Her question had achieved no reply. She nudged one of the starlings with her foot then pulled back with a shudder.

With the sun still behind a cloud, the birds looked like a mass of black and without the few whose wings stuck out at painful angles; she would have sworn that she was looking into a black puddle. Rebecca closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths before looking straight ahead and walking into the mass. She slid her feet forwards, rather than stepped, knowing that tiny bones cracking beneath her feet would send her running back to the safety of the park.

After a few shuffling movements she dared a look down. She felt him as well as saw. His breath, cool against her uncovered ankles. Rebecca quickly knelt to him, her heart beat rolling loudly across her chest, but she didn't speak. She couldn't speak, for as she had reached forward to the poor man's gaping mouth, he had turned black. Before her eyes, a black wave swam from beneath stretched skin until the features on the man's olive skin became indistinguishable.

"Rebecca," Denise's voice seemed to come from far away and as she turned to the sound, Denise's proximity to her shocked her and she fell backwards into the mass of dark feathers. She jumped up, disgusted, her hands tightening into fists and her teeth clenching to stop the whimper which threatened to emerge.

"I saw..." Rebecca coughed to rid her voice of a dry crackle, "his face."

Then the last wisp of cloud moved away and the sun came out again.

Ryan knelt beside the half eaten sandwiches and spilled empty glasses on his Mums tartan picnic blanket. He held the phone in his lap and stared at the reflection of the bright sun on the blank screen. He rocked forwards and backwards on his haunches, white faced and when he heard his Mums scream he didn't even look up, just quickened the pace of his rocking.

"Rebecca!" Denise screamed as she saw her friend fall to the floor and into the shimmering purple and black mass of dead birds that lay scattered across the ground. "Someone please help!"

No one came, no one but Ryan heard. Denise watched her friend, lying unmoving on the floor, sinking deeper into the feathers which seemed to give way beneath her, the blackness reaching round her and pulling her in. She took a step backwards and then took a running jump, wanting to clear the main bulk of the dark coloured birds in front of her friend. She flew through the air, but before she reached Rebecca, she fell, as if she had hit a wall. She saw the feathers as she approached them from above and she fell through them as if they were not really there. She cringed and tried to turn her head, tried to put her hand to her face but found she was unable to move. In the micro seconds before she hit the ground she thought about how soft the birds should have felt, but she felt nothing. Her head hit the ground first, her neck snapping in two places and as she lay dying, she began to turn black.

A squirrel; the same squirrel that Ryan had tried to feed; had watched all of this from his perch, up the tree beside the clearing. He stayed still, the sense of danger was thick in the early evening air. He scanned the ground around him but did not find a predator so he stayed where he was. From where he sat, his tail held up in a defensive posture, he looked towards the feathered creatures in the clearing and watched as they began to move.

The sun set quickly after Denise's leap into the clearing and she was still breathing as the shadows became thicker and deeper in colour. For the first time since the early morning sunset, the wind breached the edge of the clearing. The starlings began to stand and lazily flap their wings, lifting the heads from their black silhouettes on the floor. They ripped themselves from the ground, strings of black clinging to their small bodies before dropping back to the floor as the birds became strong enough to pull away. Other birds, the ones that had lain broken at the bottom of the pile did not pull away from the shadows; they sunk deeper, swallowed into the ground.

The man moved next, his arm tearing from the ground with a loud ripping sound which no one was around to hear. His black head twisted in a slow, desperate motion, his mouth a gaping hole. As his movements grew the blackness pulled away from him like latex revealing his flawless, olive skin. He stood as the last of the black ran down the trousers of his suit and pooled onto the floor. The man glanced with dark brown eyes, down at the woman, Rebecca, who had started to move.

The black layer which covered her from head to toe made Rebecca unrecognisable. She sat up and let the thick shadow flow down her face and chest until it pooled into her lap. The brown eyed man smiled and offered her his hand, which she took and stood, glad to be free of the shadows as the last of it ran down her bare legs and between her toes onto the grass beneath her feet.

Rebecca looked over at Denise, who lay on the floor, breathing with rasping breaths, cloudy eyes pleading up at her. Rebecca turned to the man who stood beside her, his hand linked with hers. They walked towards the edge of the clearing, stepping over the dying woman on the floor. Their shadows were barely visible now and they seemed to struggle, trying to escape, weakly grasping at blades of grass as they passed across the ground in the fading light. They walked between the trees at the edge of the clearing, the birds hopping around them or clinging to twisted branches until they emerged into the green field where Ryan still knelt.

"Mummy," Ryan didn't look up. He hadn't moved much since his Mum had left him with her dead phone.

"Mummy had to go away for a while," said Rebecca as she crouched down beside him. "She wants to meet you here again tomorrow though. You and lots of your friends. She has a surprise for you."

"I like surprises." His voice was monotone, robotic but this time, he glanced up at his Mums friend and then past her. "Who's that?"

Rebecca looked around at the man who stood just behind her and then back at Ryan. "He is my very good friend, Mr Black," she said and the man smiled.

Beyond him, the squirrel jumped from a tree, wanting to be away from the birds who were not birds and the people who were not people and ran into a bush.

"What was that?" Ryan's head shot round in the direction of the bush.

"Only a shadow," Rebecca said. "You're not afraid of shadows are you, Ryan?"

"No! Course not!"

Rebecca picked the small boy up in her cold arms and the three of them walked over towards the lights which had started to blink on in distant buildings. The boy clambered up and put his head onto one shoulder, Rebecca once again taking the man's hand in her own. Ryan looked back to the woods they were leaving behind, at the picnic blanket and the food that lay discarded across the floor and then at their shadows, now barely visible behind them. The shadows did not hold hands and they did not walk in a perfect copy of their owners. They fought, stretching and pawing at the ground. Ryan watched in a scared silence as the shadows continued to attempt an escape from the invisible binds which held them to owners, who until only recently had been in their place. He continued looking down at the ground until the light disappeared and the old Rebecca faded away.

The End

# THE CLOSET

Billy Ray Chitwood

Okay, look, I'm sane, sensible, and see life as a simple arc from womb to tomb. In between, I grow, go to school, play sports, marry my high school sweetheart, work my way through college, get a job, have the joy of seeing my three boys grow, play little league, and become what it is they become. For the record, Mark is a banker, Brawley an engineer, and Adam, the youngest, graduated university and is now seeing the world and figuring out what it is he will end up doing. So, life for the Pittmans is a real blessing, filled with happy moments, love, and great memories, one of those old Ozzie and Harriet television show duplications.

So, as empty nesters, we buy this small house in a tree-studded neighborhood called Ivy Town. It's a cute brick house with three lovely dormers, a pitched roof, porch with swing, and a manicured lawn. It's the inside of the house that brings us to our knees. Always the wife of good taste, Sherry makes sure her kitchen is spot on with all the modern state of the art gadgetry, but it is the master bedroom, its closet, and the master bath that clinches the sale.

All goes well for three glorious weeks...we hardly want to leave our beautiful home to go shopping.

"What was that noise? You have a dishwasher running in the kitchen?" I ask Sherry.

"No. Nothing's running, and I don't hear a noise." She returned to her book.

We were reading, sitting in the small alcove in our master bedroom prior to bedtime.

"There it is again. You don't hear that noise? It's like static and clicking sounds, like some kind of communication system... You don't hear it?"

"I don't hear it, Rick. Sorry, honey. You think it's coming from the kitchen?"

"Actually, it sounds like it's coming from the closet. There's something else, the smell? Do you notice the closet's cedar smell seems stronger tonight?"

Sherry concentrated, sniffed dramatically. "Perhaps the cedar scent is stronger with the heater on. It smells wonderful. I just love it." She went back to her book and I to mine. The cedar smell in the home was the first sensory pleasure that greeted us in our initial preview of the house

Ten minutes later, I hear two distinct thumps followed by the static and clicking sounds.

"You had to hear those thumps, Sherry?" I slammed my book down on the lamp table and stood.

"No, heard nothing, sweetheart."

"Aw, c'mon, you had to hear it!"

I walked to the cedar closet, opened the door, and walked into the big room. When I pushed the light switch upward, three things happened simultaneously. First, the door slammed shut behind me. Second, a white light filled the entire room, its consummate brilliance blinding me and causing me to tightly close my lids. Third, every square inch of my body was squeezed gently but firmly, much like a vise built specifically for my form. I tried for words, to call out to Sherry, but I could not speak. There were only the soft whirring sounds mixed with static and metallic beeps.

My body slowly moved without the sensation of it being touched. There was only the vise-like gentle gripping. I listened for Sherry's calls to me but none came or were not heard. Behind the closed eyelids I sensed a change in lighting and was barely able to squint, to see strange apparitions, odd opaque forms in abrupt movements, almost human but undeniably not. The brilliant light was now concentrated on one spot, an ironing-board like object in what I believed was the center of the cedar closet. My body was now parallel to that board object.

Strange looking vines or small snake-like tubes wriggled in the space above and around me and there was the sensation that they were all touching me at different spots of my body. There was no pain and strangely no fear felt by me, just a peculiar set of sense pronouncements.

The anomalous forms flitted about like the lights of a pinball machine. Occasionally, what could have been a mouth opened and squeaked in monosyllabic utterances. Amorphous arms and legs moved in cartoon sequences, the forms hovering over me, doing things to me I could not feel. Even with the shroud-like tightness that held me captive there was no dread or distress, just a sense, an inexplicable feeling that there was nothing to fear.

Then, in an instant, there was just the cedar closet light, me standing in the middle of the big room of cabinets and clothes hanging from their rods. The shroud was gone as were the indeterminate forms and the brilliant light. The silence in the closet was palpable as I stood and marveled at what had just happened. Had my brain missed a neuron connection? Was I going mad? Had I fallen asleep reading, sleep walked into this closet, into this bizarre brilliance and these other-worldly forms? But it was so real, so very, very real! Should I tell Sherry? Would she have me committed?

How long I stood in the middle of the closet I cannot say...stunned, surely, but somehow feeling at ease.

Finally, I opened the closet door, stepped into the master bedroom, and...screamed! Sherry screamed as well – at least, I think it was Sherry... The woman upon whom I gazed was a shriveled old lady with white hair and a frail voice. As I walked toward her she weakly raised her arms as if to protect herself from me. She opened her mouth and a low hollow scream began and quickly ended as she slumped over in the chair.

I rushed to her side, knelt on one knee and lifted her face from her chest and rested it against the side of the chair. It was Sherry! Beyond the sags and wrinkles I saw the once beauty of my wife.

"Oh! God, please, this cannot be happening."

I checked for a pulse, felt the faint beats below her thin wrist, conscious now of tears falling from my cheeks onto my own hand.

My own hand! "Oh! God, please." My hand was a youthful hand, taut of skin, pulsing with energy.

I lifted myself from the floor and rushed to the bathroom. Upon entering I noticed new items had been added. In the corner was a large modern bathtub with jet ports below two picture windows. Through the windows I saw solar lights dotting a walkway all along lovely shrubs and hedgerow.

Finally, I pushed a square space on the wall where there once was a light switch. The lights above the wall length mirror came on, and I froze in utter amazement.

Staring back at me from the mirror was the image of a young man no older than twenty. The eyes of the mirror image were large in shock and awe. I stood for long moments, my hands leaning upon the granite counter, dazzled and mortified by the image and by the events of what my mind perceived was the last twenty to thirty minutes.

Our children, our snug little world of friends, neighbors, church and the work employees: what was to happen? How was I to explain? To be believed? Tears continued to flow as the truth bore through my mind.

Then, I heard once more the thumps, the clicking sounds, and static coming from the master closet. With the sounds came a magnetic field drawing me to the closet.

Upon entering the closet the brilliant white light appeared, and the amorphous forms were now smiling at me, taking on shape, reminding me of family members past, grandparents long gone from my life, my own dear mother and father.

The whirring sound began, soft and somehow mesmerizing, lifted me, carried me off further into the light until there was total immersion and peace.

The End

# THE FEE

Ann Swann

Irina scrubbed at the spot to no avail. "Why did I have to open my big mouth and volunteer for this?" She dropped her filthy rag in the bucket of soapy water just as her cell phone began to chime.

Glancing at the caller ID, she made certain her voice sounded cheery. "Hey there, handsome, you finished with those exams al _ready_?"

"Done with the lecture part," her new husband, Jeb, replied. "But the labs are next. I've heard they're killer."

Irina didn't let him off the hook. "Aw, come on. You know you'll ace those. The labs are what you live for."

He groaned. "You bet. I can hardly wait."

They both laughed. He'd spent so much time at school studying for his labs; she felt as if she hadn't seen him in weeks instead of just a couple of days.

"Tell me the truth," he continued. "How's it really going there? I still can't believe you're doing this . . . I mean they weren't even your parents."

"Shhh, don't say that. You know how much I loved them, even if I didn't get to know your mom before she got so sick, well, I'm . . ." she paused and looked around the bedroom, "I'm sort of getting to know her now."

"Things are just like she left them, huh?"

Irina grimaced. "Yes. It's almost as if they're still alive. I mean, your dad's been gone almost a year, but it's only been a couple of weeks since your mom . . ." her voice trailed off. "Even her diary is still open on the nightstand. It's like she was just here."

"Oh, man" he groaned. "This is too much for you to do alone. Come on home, we'll go back together after my exams."

"No, no," she replied. "Its fine. I shouldn't have said anything. Besides, you know the realtor said it might be a tough sell."

Jeb hesitated. "If you're sure—

"I'm positive," she interrupted. "It's just a little house cleaning. Now, go and be a good doctor-in-training and make me proud."

"I love you," he said. "Someday I'll get the chance to repay you."

Irina shook her head. "Love you, too," she replied, blowing him a kiss as she broke the connection.

The next morning Irina ate a breakfast burrito and drank a cup of coffee at the local McDonald's. Then she went straight to Kroger's and picked up a dual box of Mr. Clean Magic Erasers.

As she stood in the checkout line, a woman wearing a teal jogging suit walked up behind her. "Excuse me," the woman said. "Aren't you Jeb Pruett's lovely wife?"

Irina tried not to let the surprise show on her face. She couldn't remember ever meeting this woman. "Why, yes, yes I am."

Holding out her hand, the woman continued, "I'm Sue Wilkins. I've lived next door to Sal and Kenny for years. And I've seen your wedding picture on the mantel enough times to know who I was looking at as soon as you climbed out of the car yesterday." She clicked her tongue against her teeth. "Of course I saw you at the funeral, too; but my sciatica was acting up and I didn't get to actually visit with you or Jeb, bless his soul."

Irina glanced at the line to see how long it was until her turn.

Sue Wilkins never paused.

"I'm sure you know that boy was the light of his Mama's eye, and his Dad's too for that matter. They thought they never would have children," she glanced at Irina's face to make sure she was still listening. "Sally was forty-three, maybe even forty-four before Jeb was born. They'd pretty much given up hope, but in the end, all it took was a change of scenery." She lowered her voice a bit. "That vacation to Peru. All those mountains and the fresh air. She came back pregnant all right. Happy as clams they were; I remember it like it was yesterday." Her eyes grew misty. "'Course, my own husband was still alive back then. We were _all_ happy as clams."

Irina put her item on the conveyor belt and gave the woman a brief hug. "Thank you for the kind words. Jeb had his final exams at school or he would be here, too."

"Well, it was nice seeing you," Sue replied. "I won't keep you, but if you need anything, just let me know." She patted Irina's shoulder. "I'm the white and blue house on the corner."

"Thank you," Irina replied. "Maybe we'll have time for lunch or at least a cup of coffee before I leave."

Sue Wilkins' face brightened and Irina made a mental note to stop by the blue and white house before she left town.

Back at her in-law's house, Irina turned on the kitchen radio and pulled her hair up into a ponytail. "That spot is history," she muttered, soaking a Magic Eraser with water before carrying it and the cleaning bucket to the bedroom. She knelt down in the corner near the baseboard and frowned.

The spot she'd worked on the night before appeared to have spread. Now it encompassed part of the adjoining wall, too. Guess I smeared it around, she thought, scrubbing a corner of the spot experimentally. _If this doesn't work, I'll just leave it for the prospective buyers to deal with._ But she knew she wouldn't do that; she had never given up on a challenge in her life. Besides, what if they took one look at the weird spot and turned around and left? Then she and Jeb would be paying taxes on the old place—and their budget was stretched thin as cellophane already.

Irina sat back on her heels after only a few minutes of scrubbing. She felt dizzy, slightly nauseated. She stood slowly, but the room began to sway. Stumbling to the bed, she plopped down. _Maybe I'm allergic to the chemicals in that sponge._ She tossed the crumpled thing to the floor, then lay back and closed her eyes. She could hear the oldies station playing in the kitchen, but when she cracked her eyelids open, the world was still wavy. She stuffed a pillow under her head. Her suitcase gaped open at the foot of the bed where she'd pulled jeans and a tee shirt from it this morning. _I'll be okay, just rest here a moment . . .._

It was full dark when Irina awoke, confused. _How long did I sleep? Wasn't it morning when I was cleaning?_

She wanted to sit up, but her head was so heavy, and the room was so dark, she couldn't make out a thing.

What was that?

It was a rustling sound, like mice running through the walls.

The flesh on her arms prickled. From the kitchen she heard a scrap of the old Beach Boys' song, "In My Room."

Then it came again, the rustling sound.

It seemed to be coming from the nightstand. The diary pages were rustling as if they were caught in a breeze. Irina's scalp tingled. Her lungs were like stone. The blackness in the room pressed against her face.

Forcing herself to breathe, she rolled to the edge of the bed and stood up. First, one step, then another. She let her hand trail along the bed, guiding her until it encountered open air. Then she stuck her arms out in front of her body like antenna, feeling her way, searching for the solidity of the wall.

Behind her, the sound intensified, as if the pages of the diary were about to be ripped from their binding.

Irina tried to ignore the sound but it was growing louder and louder as if she had woke up in a wind tunnel full of sound— _there has to be a logical explanation_ —and still there was no wall. The proportions of the room were all skewed. _Maybe I'm in the land of Nod, or somewhere south of Oz where physics no longer apply._

Then her fingers met the wall with such force that two of her nails snapped off at the quick. "Damn!" she shrieked before remembering that this wall was what she wanted.

Overjoyed, Irina found the light switch with her palm just as her foot found the bucket full of cleaning water.

Picturing it in her mind, Irina tried to step high and over, but the curved metal handle of the plastic bucket grabbed her foot like a snare.

In the inky darkness, she went down, hard.

Water sloshed across her feet and her head hit the floor with a resounding thud.

When she came to this time, the first thing she noticed was the light, or rather, the gray. She held her hand up in front of her face. She could just make it out.

Her head throbbed. Her clothing was soaked, and she was lying on her side on the hardwood floor. In her hairline was a tender lump. If she pressed it, her stomach roiled.

The radio was still playing "In My Room."

How is that possible? Its dawn already, isn't it?

She tried to orient herself to her surroundings and that's when she saw the spot.

She sat up. Her head spun.

The shadowy black spot covered most of one wall and part of another. The seam where the two walls met was as black and unfathomable as the mouth of a cave. At the outward edges, the spot feathered to a smudgy gray. The shape loomed toward her. It seemed to be trying to pull itself out of the wallpaper.

Irina scooted backward like a crab.

All she could think about was getting away.

Finally, she found her feet.

The door was opposite the black shape. She started forward just as a smaller shadow bent itself into the room from the hallway.

Irina stopped.

That was just a trick of the light, maybe from the knot on my head.

Without thinking, she touched the lump. Her stomach flip-flopped. Bile slid upward into her throat. Her mouth filled with hot liquid.

She couldn't stop it; everything came out.

The room tilted and she went to her knees as she heaved again, and again, and again until there was nothing left but strings of saliva and aftertaste.

Panting, Irina crawled through the muck stopping only to heave again when the smell assaulted her nostrils. The slime coating her palms caused her to slip. She dry-heaved yet again, her back arching like a cornered cat.

_Concussion_ , she thought. _Must be a concussion._ _I'll be okay, find the bathroom; I'll be fine. Oh God, please let me be fine._ She prayed for the room to stop spinning; she prayed for her husband to come and get her; she prayed for the strength to get out of this crazy room.

Behind her, the smaller shadow was yanked into the black seam in the corner. The larger shadow appeared to be detaching from the wall like a placenta on the verge of abruption. Over her shoulder, Irina caught the movement of wings as the shadow swooped toward her.

She screamed.

The blackness covered her like a sheltering caul.

Irina began to come around in the hospital, Jeb holding her hand. His eyes were red-rimmed. He was still clad in his very-rumpled green scrubs.

Listening quietly, she floated along beneath the surface of reality as Jeb related the events to someone in the room. "She was unconscious when the police found her. She had lain in her vomit for so long that when the paramedics picked her up, they said her clothes made ripping sounds, as if she'd been fastened to the floor with Velcro."

The other person said something too low for Irina to hear, but she understood the question when she heard Jeb's answer.

"Mrs. Wilkins called 911. Thought she heard a scream; when she got there, she could hear the radio playing and somehow she just knew 'Rina was in trouble. Thank God the police were able to track me down at the university."

The other person replied, and Irina thought she heard something about a diary.

"It was in her hand when they found her," Jeb said. "She wouldn't let go of it. I'll let her read it later. It's sort of horrific, actually. Besides, she doesn't even know about the baby yet. I still can't believe it myself."

Irina surfaced completely. "Baby?" she muttered.

A warm hand patted her shoulder. "Are you awake, darling?"

"Mom? That you?"

"Of course," the voice soothed. "I came as soon as Jeb called."

Irina opened her eyes and glanced from her Mom to her husband. "What happened?"

Jeb kissed her cheek gently. "You had an accident," he said. "Apparently you tripped and fell, hit your head so hard the concussion made you throw up until you passed out. Being pregnant didn't help. In fact, it may have contributed to the dizziness and nausea."

Irina tried to shake her head but the motion caused a psychedelic tidal wave of pain. Gesturing for the emesis basin, she croaked, "But I'm not pregnant."

Her mother held the basin, and then lovingly washed her daughter's face. "There, there, dear; you're just _barely_ pregnant. Probably wouldn't have known for another week or two, if not for the accident."

"I certainly had no idea," Jeb said. "I never would have let you come down alone. But it's okay. It's great, actually." He grinned. "We have plenty of time to discuss it later. Right now, I just want you to get well." He squeezed her hand. "You gave me the scare of a lifetime. Promise you'll _never_ do that again."

"I promise," Irina smiled. "Now tell me about our baby."

Jeb laughed. Then he told her everything again.

"And the diary?" she asked.

"You were clutching it in your hand when the paramedics pried you off the floor."

"Your mom's diary?" she asked. "I remember seeing it on the night stand, and it started to rustle, as if the pages were turning all on their own . . . but what about the spot, the shadow, the dark angel?"

Jeb looked at her quizzically. "Shadow? Angel?"

"On the wall," she whispered. "It began as just a spot. I was trying to clean it when I got sick."

"Don't worry about that," he said. "I'll take care of everything." He stopped talking when he realized she was already back asleep.

Jeb tucked the diary into his pocket. "I don't think I'll mention it again," he said. "Maybe it would be best if she never read it at all."

His mother-in-law nodded in agreement. "But are you all right? After all, it was your mother's story."

"As long as 'Rina's okay, I'm okay," Jeb said. "My mom had quite an imagination. Witch doctors and shadow people, fertility potions, and the _devil_." He made a sound of disbelief. "I think maybe she was delirious when she wrote that entry. She'd been sick for awhile you know." He sat thoughtfully. "I think I'd better go to the house and make sure everything is in order; pick up 'Rina's things."

Irina's mother patted his shoulder. "You go. Do what you have to do. I'll be here as long as I'm needed."

Driving toward his childhood home was harder than he thought it would be. It was there that he had decided to become a doctor simply because no one had been able to help his mom in all the years it had taken for her to waste away.

"Keep her comfortable; that's really all you can do," Dr. Morgan had said.

Jeb had never understood the doctor's callousness. Only a child then, he had promised himself he would never give up on a patient like that.

He didn't know how long he'd been sitting in front of the house, putting off going inside. What was it 'Rina had said? _It was as if his mom had been there only yesterday_. That chilled him. It chilled him almost as much as the diary. He'd read a few entries, but they hadn't made much sense. He pulled the compact book from his pocket and sat on the porch.

_Dear Diary,_ (it was dated a few months before he was born)

I am so happy to finally be carrying my precious child. After so many miscarriages, I know this pregnancy will be different. The medicine I got in Peru has worked. And I don't have to pay anything until after the child is grown. Isn't that amazing? The village was so quaint; I got the feeling that last part was just a joke—that they would have given me the medicine even if I hadn't signed the paper. Besides, I don't care what it costs. It's worth it. To have a child at all is a miracle, my own tiny miracle. After he's born (yes, I feel certain it's a boy), my life will be complete. Only a few months to go . . .

Jeb stood and flipped through a few more pages. He didn't want to read the later entries again, the ones from her deathbed. Those had been way too weird. Delusional. She claimed her payment was coming due, that she never realized what she had promised.

What could it have been? He was studying medicine; could fertility treatments really be so different in another country? Or had his mother been insane? Wouldn't he have noticed if she'd been . . . unstable? No, she was never delusional. She was a great mother, the _best_. Even after she got sick, she was still the best.

But he couldn't resist. Before he put the diary away, he flipped past all the entries until he got to the end. Large black letters were printed there: IN MY ROOM. THE LITTLE ONE WANTS THE BABY. I OWE THEM. I DIDN'T KNOW!

Was that why she'd left it open on the bedside table?

Jeb shook his head. It gave him the creeps just thinking about it.

He stuffed the book back in his pocket and stepped inside the house. The smell was as bad as he'd expected. He immediately began opening windows and turning on ceiling fans.

Irina had accomplished a lot. All the dishes, knickknacks, and personal items had been packed in boxes and neatly labeled. The furniture was all covered and ready to be moved to storage. This, he could handle. It no longer seemed so much like his melancholy childhood home.

Eventually, though, the tears came, and he sat on the arm of his father's white-sheeted recliner and held his head in his hands. It occurred to him that he was alone now, except for his wife. He felt the emptiness of the house settle around him.

To break the spell of sadness, Jeb picked up the same bucket that had caused Irina so much trouble, filled it with hot water from the kitchen tap, and then poured in Spic n Span floor cleaner. With the old mop from the utility closet, he gave the filthy bedroom floor a thorough scrubbing.

The walls were fine. He would have to be sure to mention it to his wife; she seemed to think they had black mold or something.

Wait, what was that grayish shape?

He looked closer. At the juncture of the two walls, there was a very faint shadow. Something about the smudgy shape was feminine. It was thin, almost like a stick figure. And didn't that look like long flowing hair – or maybe even wings?

He rubbed his rough hands across his face. Now _he_ was imagining things. There'd been a leak sometime in the past, that's all. Water had run down the seam of the two walls and stained the wallpaper. It was so faint he couldn't believe 'Rina had even noticed it.

He didn't inspect the baseboards. He never saw the darker spot that had given his wife so much trouble.

While the floor was drying, he investigated the rest of the house. Everything appeared to be packed up. He would drop the key off at the realtor's office on the way back to the hospital. Then he would be done. If all went well, the house would soon belong to someone else.

When everything had been inspected, and the house had a sweeter smell from the Spic n Span and the open windows, Jeb spied his wife's open suitcase on the bed. From the bathroom, he retrieved her toiletries, and then he noticed one of her shoes in the corner. After he'd packed those items, he went in search of her other shoe.

He never noticed the slip of darkness that melted off the wall and shivered across the floor. It slithered into the open suitcase and settled in amongst her clothes like a stray slipping into a hay-filled barn on a wintry night.

In the bedroom, the imprisoned shadow-spirit of his mother sighed and rippled. If she hadn't stayed to try and warn Irina, her spirit would be in heaven now, not trapped in the walls of her own empty house. But she'd had to give up eternity to shield Irina from the devil's imp. And still, it wasn't enough.

The thing was in the suitcase.

She wished Jeb had read the rest of the diary. If he had, he would have found out what she learned on her deathbed. The devil's fee for a first-born child was very simple.

The fee was the first-born grandchild.

The End

# THE LAND OF NOBEL

P. J. Perryman

"I'm gonna need new shoes," laughed Betty, who'd walked bare foot through the last field. "I can't believe I left them back there. They were brand new Jimmy Choo's!"

"Yeah, yeah," laughed Evan, as he helped her down off the fence. "The GPS says there's a garage a few miles up the road." He held an empty gas can at his side. "Do you think you can make it?" He looked down at Betty's well-manicured, Upper East Side feet, and sincerely doubted she could.

She hopped from one foot to the other, "Ooh its cold. But it's smooth, so I think so. Lead on, lover boy. Remind me, who's bright idea was it to take the short-cut across country?"

Evan laughed. "I'm not the one who dived feet first off a fence into a cow pat."

Betty swiped at him with her once arrest-me-red, now brown-stained shoes. "Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, lover boy."

Evan was faster, and dodged out of the way. Still, she only missed by inches and he laughed out loud at the close shave with cow dung.

They were alone. The only noise came from country crickets and peeper frogs. The couple looked strangely out of place in their New York garb on this rural Maryland road. Corn sprung up everywhere, and though it appeared to have been recently resurfaced, the lane had no markings or signs, in fact, nothing to help a confused traveler find their way. Evan shivered, he felt closed in, claustrophobic. They could be anywhere. The panic stirred in his belly and he slipped his hand in his pocket. A Marlboro would calm his nerves. He flicked the lighter and inhaled long and hard. He focused on the crackle of the burning cigarette tip.

"You want one?"

Betty shook her head. She didn't smoke. "Out of gas, that's an old one." She skipped to his side and swung his arm happily. He didn't know why but her good humor annoyed him. "Anyway, look on the bright side; we don't have fixed plans until tomorrow so this is only a minor setback. Who knows, once we get out bearings, you might get lucky. Never done it in a corn field before." She put her hand to her cleavage suggestively. "Someone's getting turned on-nnnn."

"Horny bitch."

The panic dissipated as another primal instinct kicked it. He spun her round and pulled her tight towards him, but was careful to keep her shoe arm at bay, using the empty gas can as a buffer between him and them. "You want it, out here in the open, you dirty slut?" He took a final puff on his cigarette and tossed the butt out on the road where it rolled about, still lit.

"You bet your ass, I do."

Her pupils dilated, and her voice dropped a few decibels. She wasn't kidding. It would be easy enough; after all, there was nothing but a flimsy dress and pink panties between him and nirvana. He looked up and down the road. Nothing about but those damned peepers and crickets. Not a soul had driven by them since they had run out of gas. Not one. He felt himself grow hard, and he looked over her shoulder to the corn field. Fuck, it was so damned quiet; if he wanted to he could have her, right here on the open highway. She could suck him off to high heaven and no one would know. Still, what if the only car to drive by was a police car?

"Come with me."

Evan took her hand and they jumped over a shallow ditch. They walked until they found a gap in the corn. The stalks were hard and unyielding. As a city boy he'd always thought they'd be soft and pliable. _Shit, what do I care, I'm getting laid?_ The stalks were well spaced apart and, well, he didn't need much room. He dropped the empty gas can to his feet.

He kissed Betty long and hard, then reached between her legs and pushed down her panties. Without breaking lips, she expertly stepped out of the flimsy garment, leaving them attached loosely to her right ankle. Together they slipped down onto the sandy soil, and he turned her around so she was on her knees. Her raw backside was lifted and exposed like a horny cat, which after all, Betty always was.

The chance of someone catching them _at it_ was slim, but at the same time the risk they might be seen was exhilarating. He thrust into her quickly, both afraid and excited at the same time. Betty groaned sooner and louder than she normally did; her elevated arousal thrilled him, and his release came much faster than normal.

"I'm gonna come in yer baby."

"Dooo it."

She didn't have to ask him again.

When the party ended, like naughty children they jumped up quickly; rearranged their clothes and dusting themselves off. Betty's face was flushed. Her sex-face was gorgeous. If they didn't find a garage soon, he would fuck her again. And again. And again.

* * *

The sun slipped down and turned the corn a rich, golden color. An artist would struggle to catch its beauty, but Evan didn't appreciate the view one bit. In fact, it gave him the heebie jeebies. The night was coming, and what then? _Fuck. Don't these people believe in street lights?_ Betty strolled along beside him, but she was quiet now. Too quiet. He knew she was thinking the same shit he was. _What were they gonna do when the sun went down?_ This wasn't New York. This was Maryland. Anything could happen. They were in deep doodoo's.

Betty took his hand and squeezed it gently. "Do they have bears down here?"

"I think so."

"But they are shy, right? They won't come after us?"

"That's right." He thought about the copperheads, foxes and spiders. He felt sick. "We should stick to the path. If you feel anything other than asphalt under your feet, you let me know."

"Okay."

He lit another cigarette, inhaled deeply, and then offered it to her. Betty didn't smoke, but she took it anyway. _Fuck, she must be frightened as hell._ _Join the club._

"Thank fuck," she said at last.

They reached the garage just before the sun slipped down below the horizon. Any longer and they would have been in total darkness. The sign on the door said open, but there was no-one about. "Hello," called Betty. She stuck her head hopefully around the garage door. "Anybody home?"

There was no response. Evan shrugged and swiped his credit card. _Not authorized_ popped up on the monitor. "Shit, do you have anything?" he asked, turning to Betty.

"Not a thing – left my bag locked in the trunk. Don't you have cash?"

Evan looked in the folds of his wallet. He had ten dollars. "See if you can find someone Betty. I'd have to pay before I can get the gas."

"Sure thing, lover boy." She walked inside to the counter. Now they were back in civilization the fear was gone. Even Betty was more like her old self. He grinned as she stepped inside, wiggling that fuckable ass. "You are so gonna get it, girl. Just you wait."

Secretly he hoped the garage attendant would give them a lift back to the car. He didn't want to think about the walk back. In pitch black. In the middle of nowhere. _Maybe the garage dude will lend us a torch or something?_

Evan remained at the tank and waited for Betty's signal. He watched her head to the rear of the store then he turned to take the top off the gas can. When he looked up she was gone. He figured she'd gone out back. She probably needed the bathroom. Come to think of it, he could do with taking a leak himself.

But where was the damned attendant? Someone had to be there, the doors had been unlocked. Even in a place as remote as this they'd be worried about theft. _Wouldn't they?_

Another minute passed, still no word. Maybe she was still in the toilet. He put the can down and walked inside. "Betty, where are you?" he called. She didn't reply. A shiver ran through him, like he'd stepped on his proverbial grave. It didn't _feel_ right. The place _felt_ empty, hollow. He couldn't explain it. Something inside warned him that something was horribly wrong. He called again, more urgently this time. "Betty, stop messing around. Where are you?"

He found the door labeled _ladies_ and looked inside. It was filthy. A typical gas-station bathroom. But worse. She wasn't there. "Man, this is too fucking creepy."

He saw the door to the stock room. It was open but he couldn't see what was on the other side.

"Hello," he called again, as loud as he could. He stepped behind the counter and pushed open the door.

To his astonishment, a small man in a red coat stood at the door. He had in his hands a pair of highly polished shoes, just like the Jimmy Choo's Betty had soiled only a few hours before. He had a small, pointy moustache, rather like the ones he'd seen the ring-masters wear at the circus. The man barred the way forward, but held out the shoes.

"Didn't you hear me call out?"

The man said nothing.

Unsettled, Evan reached out and took the shoes. The little man stepped aside to allow Evan to pass. The room he entered was brightly lit, so much so that for a minute Evan had to protect his eyes. "What the...?"

He looked back to the little man, confused and in need of answers. But the little man turned away, and now held something red in his hands. It looked like a gas can. Evan turned and looked ahead. He saw shapes in the distance, but they seemed far away. Way too far, given the size of the building he'd entered. "Betty?" he called again.

The shapes shifted. They moved ever so slowly, they almost floated, but without direction or purpose. Evan's heart was in his stomach as he inched forward, every step weighed down with the fear of what was to come. He looked back to the door. Perhaps he should just leave. But when he tried to turn he found he couldn't – the attempt turned his feet to lead and the vomit rose in his throat. He threw up. _Shit!_ He turned back and moved forward, and the sickness vanished. His own pace slowed to match the speed of the distant shapes.

"Oh God what is this place?"

A great voice answered, though no-one was near him and the voice appeared neither male nor female. "You have entered the realm of Nobel," said the voice. "You are here till you're set free, and then you'll never find us again."

"I don't understand," Evan replied as he searched for the origin of the voice.

"There is nothing to understand. You are each given the key to the release of another. But no-one ever leaves."

"I don't get it, release, what are you talking about?"

"Return the key and find release. There must be an exchange."

Evan looked down at the shoes in his hands. _Were these the keys? That meant the gas can held by the little man was his key, didn't it._ _Wait! This is all bullshit!_ The shadows ahead grew closer, and he saw that each of them were misty shadows, one much like another. _Was Betty one of these? If so how on earth would he find her? What was she carrying? What had the person ahead of her brought into this place?_

The words, "there must be an exchange," came back to mind. He could stay close to the door and wait for the next stranger to come in. They'd be carrying a gas can but what would he give in return?

Something in his belly gave in and he cried out in despair. He moved away from the door, and merged with the other lost shapes. When he joined them, the part of him that was Evan died, and he became like one of them. Drifting, searching, a soul lost forever with no chance of being found. Just a shadow clinging to a pair of Jimmy Choo's. To red shoes. To something. To nothing. Lost.

The End

# THE MAID

Michelle Browne

Rosemary cleaned the black mould from the cabin's windows for the 344th time. Once she'd cleaned the dripping black liquid from the seals, she made another long, deliberate scratch in the wall.

"How's it goin'?" the AI asked.

Rosemary shrugged.

"Thank you for coming on a NexusNova Cruise! This morning, you'll find a continental breakfast in the dining hall. Once you're finished, consider relaxing in our pool, stopping through the gym, or even heading down to the library for free movie screenings! And, if you want an even more immersive experience, check out the hologame deck! See the stars in comfort with NexusNova."

The voice faded out. She wasn't sure how it was still running, but the computer was supposed to have multiple failsafes built in, so that was all right.

Stepping away from the motion sensor, she put on another fresh uniform. Walking up to the cleaning closet for the floor, she pulled it out and got ready for part of the day's duties. Activating the box of micronanules with an absent-minded press of the button, she knocked on the first door next to the closet. With no response, she opened it.

"Hello, Mr. Prakesh. How was your night?"

The wizened, air-dried corpse on the bed made no reply. Humming and smiling cheerfully, she lifted him and changed the sheets, opening the micronanules' box and letting them have their way with the place. When every trace of bacteria was gone, and the room was sparkling clean, she moved onto the next.

Knock-knock. "Good morning, Miss DeClare! Did you sleep well?"

The half-chewed corpse said nothing. Humming and spilling the micronanules out, she tidied things and left the place spotless. She skipped her own cabin and moved down the hall.

Once the fifty cabins or so on her floor were done, she went down a level and handled the next. It took several passes to get all of the rooms handled, but when every single one was clean and covered in new sheets, she decided to head down to the pool for a rest.

The lights in the halls still glowed warmly, but the main decks were another matter. Almost all of the shops had their lights out. A few rats scattered as she strolled past the storefronts. The ship replaced the little IED bulbs itself, extruding them the same way her hair and nails grew, but some of its patches were unhealthy. Malformed lights flickered as she walked past.

The psuedopavement beneath her feet writhed uncomfortably with some of her steps. "Sorry, ship," said Rosemary. It didn't answer, but she always liked to think her concern was appreciated.

It took a while to get to the pool, what with half of the elevators functioning. She chose the one with Mrs. Ninian in it. She dangled from the ceiling by her tie, her business suit covered in the toothmarks of rats.

"How are you enjoying your day?" Rosemary asked her. She said nothing, though her desiccated corpse swayed gently.

Rosemary laughed. Part of the NexusNova tour guarantee was the unmatched congeniality of its employees. Rosemary always did her best to showcase that. Displaying her perfect white teeth, she smiled again.

"Well, that's great. I can't tell you how much I love being a hostess and seeing the stars! Have a great evening. I'm sure I'll see you tomorrow!"

The elevator doors opened to display the rec level. Rosemary frowned as she stepped over the long-dried bloodstains next to one of the patrons. However, this deck wasn't hers to attend to, so she left it alone. Everyone had their own floor to handle, and there was no sense in overworking herself.

Smiling, she walked over to the counter. The dried, eyeless husk behind the desk waited, a perpetual grin at the ready.

"Just here for my daily rec-ration," she said, scanning her card. "Have a good day, Xiao!"

Rosemary opened the doors to the pool. There was only one other patron, as usual. Cemented in the wall, she was screaming.

"Help!" moaned the woman.

"Hi, Roxanne!" said Rosemary cheerfully.

The thick, tumorous growths and slime that fastened the woman to the wall seethed and bubbled as she waved her arms. "Help me! We're due for another pass through the Dalturian system—there has to be someone to hear the hail! Please, Rosemary, please, get me off the wall!"

Rosemary, whose nanotube uniform had converted itself to a swimsuit, frowned at Roxanne. "Roxy, you'll die. You know that."

"Rose, please—please!" she screamed.

Rosemary shrugged. It wasn't her problem if some of the other clone staff were struggling with their duties. "I'll talk to you after my swim, Roxy."

Doing her laps was very relaxing. She'd assisted a few people out of the pool when they'd just been floating—though not a lifeguard, there was no reason to let them drown—but the filtration systems otherwise kept the clear blue water as sparkling clean as she could possibly wish.

Finally finished, she clambered out and stood under the dryers lining one side. Unfortunately, it was the side Roxy happened to be on.

"Rose, please..."

Rosemary stared at Roxy, taking in the face identical to her own, and shook her head. "It's just a normal cleaning procedure for the ship. Really. Considering we're both from the Nexus, you'd think you'd be used to its immune response by now."

Roxy screamed, thrashing against the flesh and slime walls holding her. "Rose, no! Please! I don't care what you have to cut off—you have to let me down!"

"See you tomorrow, Roxy!" called Rosemary, stepping through the doors to the pool.

After her swim, it was time to get back to work. Rosemary prettied herself up to get the regulation look back, teasing her hair just so. She changed the micronanules and checked on the floor's lung. The ship was producing enough oxygen, just as required, but the black fluid was still seeping around the seals and edges of doors.

She frowned and decided to head to the infirmary to give the ship an injection.

The infirmary was several floors down, past the tangled park level and the second rec dec, and a maintenance engineering level full of spore zombies. Rosemary marched through the shattered, rat-infested level with a sense of purpose. She was pleased to note that the requisite soothing music was still playing, though.

Stepping delicately over the sprawling corpse of a child, she went up to the counter. "I need a standard shot of antibody. My floor is still showing cellular degeneration." The nurse, who was much bonier than most, said nothing.

With a sigh, Rosemary went to the cabinet and retrieved the shot for herself.

Venturing back up, she took the other elevator. One of the raiders was still stuck in it, his corpse slumped in a heap. She wrinkled her nose; in spite of the filters, he stank. Then again, the last raid had been a week ago, so finding a fresher corpse shouldn't have surprised her much.

She paused on the park deck. The elevator stopped, and she got out for a moment. Through the doors, green wastes lurked. The flowers had overgrown their boundaries, and some of the trees were especially twisted. She frowned. The ship's immune system really was out of balance, and the raiders hadn't helped.

Sighing, she decided not to risk a walk through the garden. The crows had gotten more aggressive, and just the other week, she'd had a few get all the way up to a main level. Catching them had taken forever, and she'd been sure to tape over the broken window, but it was still a very valuable lesson indeed.

Rosemary did her duty and injected the ship with the antibody. The black fluid would still seep for a while, but this would stave it off. She felt a pang for the poor, infected ship. According to her watch, though, there was still a bit of time left before her requisite sleep cycle. Returning to her cabin, she settled in for dinner.

She rummaged through another ration packet and had a couple of nutrient pills, washed down with some water. Roxy had tried to live on the ship's fluid, the usual clone ration, and that hadn't done much good. Sighing, Rosemary tipped the glass of water back and swallowed it. She missed the taste of the clone rations, but the kitchen was full of raider bones, and some oddly embryotic tumors had grown up. Tripping over them was a dreadful nuisance. On the other hand, some of the drying meat she'd left in the vacuum closet was still an option. Meat would be a nice change from all the nutrient pills.

She decided to tackle it in the morning. Settling on her side, Rosemary opened up a paper. The wall in front of her glowed, and she scrolled idly, waving a hand in the air.

_NexusNova Flight 4539 Still Missing,_ read a headline. She flipped through the periodical, opening different links as she fancied them. Interplanetary politics were still rocky in the Ilonians, Earth was experiencing both economic growth and a crime wave, the Dalfori were bargaining with the Sular, a new species out in the opposite end of the spiral from her...she yawned. Nothing interesting.

She did pause to go back to the NexusNova headline, though. Pictures of their captain and a few lines about the ship's lack of contact after a bioterrorist raider attack...nothing she didn't know. Stretching out, she closed the paper and pulled up a private movie.

The fiftieth remake of _Titantic_ was still her favorite, she decided, brushing away tears. It greatly streamlined the plot, and the love story was better with these two actors. She looked at her watch and decided to tidy up before she went to sleep.

Brushing the seeping fluid away from the window seal, she glanced out through the porthole into the navy infinity. It sparkled with stars and planets. Nothing special. She'd seen this view several times, since this was the fourth round, but she still admired it dutifully. One thing about the voyage, and the perks of working for NexusNova—it was a great way to see the galaxy.

Late at night, the loudspeakers crackled to life again. She sat up and brushed sleep from her eyes.

"Attention: hailing frequency received. Hailing frequency received." The ship defaulted to normal security procedures and broadcast the hail on all coms.

"Hello, NexusNova 4539. We received your distress call. If you are capable of responding, please go to any emergency communication box and respond to our hail. We'll be waiting for your response."

Rosemary smiled and made no move towards one of the hailing boxes, located so helpfully on the walls of each room. As soon as they'd realised the ship had the plague, they'd leave her alone again, and that was just the way she liked it. Someday, she decided, she would really have to turn off that distress signal. Maybe next year. If she was lucky, salvagers would come aboard again. She still had plenty of food from the last scavenger party, and between that and the ship's providence, it would all be just fine. No need to change a thing.

The last survivor of the NexusNova tucked herself into bed and settled in to sleep.

The End

#  THE MANSION

 Oscar Wager II

Mike and Jackie were set to see a scary flick,

It was Halloween, and they wanted to see something sick.

They would go to the drive-in, and park at the screen,

They were so excited for a blood and gore scene.

Mike opened the car door, for his beloved wife,

This was supposed to be the scariest movie of their life.

He walked around the car, and slid into his seat,

He started the car, and turned on the heat.

They started out for the drive-in, on an unusual course,

There was a road closure, according to a web source.

The new route takes them down a dark deserted road,

And along this path, there was only one abode.

An old mansion that was said to be haunted,

But Mike appeared to be undaunted.

Until a tire blew, when it hit a pothole,

Right in front of the residence, that shook him to his soul.

Without a spare tire, he would have to call a tow truck,

But his cell had no service, and he felt like a schmuck.

He would have to walk to the house, up the long driveway,

And up the path, all he could see were shades of gray.

He got Jackie out of the car, and his flashlight,

Only to find the batteries were dead, on this cold, dark night.

So they started the dark journey to the top of the drive,

Nervous as could be, and hoping to stay alive.

*******************

The house was much bigger than either one of them had known,

And as they approached the mansion, it appeared to have grown.

They reached the front door, and their knees were knocking,

But they rang the bell and heard the door unlocking.

With a creak, the door slowly retreated,

And with a deep voice they were greeted.

The voice belonged to a small wisp of a man,

Who was all hunched over, and in need of a tan.

His shoulder length hair, covered only the back of his head,

And was stringy and greasy, and his face was all forehead.

"May I help you," were the words coming out of his mouth,

And all they wanted to do was to run back to the south.

"Our car has a flat," Mike finally squeaked out,

"Can we call a service to bring a truck about?"

"Of course," declared the gnarled, graybeard,

And they thought, he is not all that weird.

So they followed him into the receiving room,

Where the temperature was as cold as a tomb.

"Let me get a phone, to run out to you two, dears,"

As he turned the corner, it seemed to alleviate their fears.

*******************

Mike and Jackie were waiting in the room for a while,

So they started to look at the mansion's eclectic style.

As they explored, they heard faint footfalls,

Echoing through the dark and dusty halls.

The servant came back, with a phone in his hand,

Moving a small table, on which the phone could land.

So Mike calls the auto club, to send out a truck,

It will be a little while, darn their luck.

The servant said, "The master would like to request you wait,

It is cold outside, and a storm is brewing at a great rate."

So, Mike and Jackie agree to stay in the house,

Mike is just happy to be with his spouse.

The servant shows them to the inner great room,

They can still see outside the rising gloom.

Lightning is striking, they can see out the window,

And the wind is giving a mighty big blow.

The servant says, "The master will be in before long,"

So, they sat there and waited, for him to come along.

Still, Mike and Jackie waited for the master of the house,

They sat there, not stirring, and quiet as a mouse.

A small din began, down the corridor,

And Jackie convinced Mike to go out and explore.

He walked down the hall, where the noise had come from,

So nervous, as he walked, he began to hum.

He had an eerie feeling he was being eyed,

The feeling so strong, he lengthened his stride.

Behind a closed door, the noise grew louder,

The tension so strong, he wanted to take a powder.

But he braved up, and he opened the door,

And from the sight that he saw, he dropped to the floor.

Meanwhile, Jackie was waiting back down the hall,

Not knowing that Mike had taken quite a fall.

As she waited, a strange man strolled into the room,

And she got a feeling of dread and gloom.

"My name is Blake Strohmer, master of the manor,"

He said in a thick accent, and in a strange manner.

*******************

Mike awoke from his unconscious state,

But his memories carried a large weight.

The sight behind the door was very troubling,

And the pain in his head was doubling.

But he had to look again behind that door,

He needed a closer look, than before.

So back to the site where he fell,

How he'd been moved, he could not tell.

So, he opened the door, and slid through,

And he searched for a light switch, to improve the view.

There were test tubes, bunsen burners and jars of all types,

Open flames, running water, and natural gas pipes.

The jars contained all kinds of body parts,

Hands, feet, bones, and hearts.

All sorts of experiments must go on here,

Mike thought to himself, in fear.

He had to get Jackie, and get out,

Of this, there was no doubt.

So he turned off the lights, and backed out of the lab,

If their tire wasn't fixed, they would try to call a cab.

Before Mike even got out the door, into the hall,

He felt a cold, dry hand, and he let out a squall.

The hand grabbed Mike's shoulder, with a firm grasp,

And he could not squirm his way out of its clasp.

So, Mike turned around to see his captor,

But, the servant was looking more like a velociraptor.

Somehow, the thought of being captured, and tormented,

Did not make Mike feel happy and contented.

And, what about Jackie, how would she fare,

Without him there to give her comfort and care?

But he didn't want to give them a fight or a fuss,

Even though it might make him look like a wuss.

His thoughts were of Jackie, as he was taken away,

They might not hurt her, if he was quick to obey.

So, he went quietly down the hall, with the servant behind,

And to the fact that he would not see Jackie again, he resigned.

Finally, they came to another closed door,

And the sounds behind it shook Mike to his core.

With all of the excitement, Mike's heart just raced,

And, the servant opened the door with much haste.

*******************

Meanwhile, as Jackie talked to the master,

Every minute that passed, her heart beat faster.

What could be taking Mike so long, to return,

This question was causing her grave concern.

Still, she talked to the head of the house,

Not showing signs of fear for her spouse.

She couldn't keep up the charade much longer,

As the dread inside her was growing stronger.

Finally, she asked for something to drink,

And as the man left, she had time to think.

She formulated a plan inside of her brain,

But she had a feeling she was going insane.

Then the gentleman returned with her beverage,

And she thought of ways to get some leverage.

Then, Master Strohmer asked where Mike had gone,

And she was unaware of the events her lie would spawn.

*******************

"Looking for a restroom," is what Jackie told the man,

It wasn't her first thought, but she revised the plan.

This seemed to unsettle the master,

And the wheels started turning faster.

As he turned to look down the long hall,

She hit him with the glass, and he started to fall.

She ran past the man, out into the corridor,

And she ran down, checking each door.

Hoping to find where her Mike had gone,

And praying that her plan wouldn't go wrong.

It seemed each door was closed and locked,

And she looked back to check on the man she had clocked.

He was not running after her, down the hall,

She couldn't believe her own gall.

She actually had the nerve to hit him in the head,

She hoped she knocked him out, and that he wasn't dead.

But that was unimportant, she must concentrate,

She must find the man she loves, before it's too late.

With all of these doors, and her in a panic,

Her thoughts were frenzied, and her acts were manic.

*******************

Mike awoke, hanging upside down, from the ceiling,

And in his stomach, he had a bad feeling.

He thought for a moment, that he might be dead,

With all of his blood rushing to his head.

But then he realized that that wasn't the case,

And he looked around, at the strange place.

He was in a dark room, with devices of evil,

It all just seemed a little too medieval.

There was a rack, used to stretch and tear,

On the wall, a thumbscrew and tongue tearer, hung there.

A skull splitter and head crusher were also present,

All of these machines were totally unpleasant.

Also, an Iron Maiden and Judas Chair were there,

And the sight of these devices gave Mike quite a scare.

So, he tried to loosen the chains of restraint,

But all of the struggling was making him faint.

Then, he noticed movement, off to his right,

God, this was turning out to be a bad night.

*******************

Jackie was still running away from the master,

She was feeling that this night was a disaster.

Then she tripped and took a tumble,

And she heard, from behind, a low rumble.

The master was staggering down the hall,

And she braced herself against the wall.

Using it, to help her get off of her seat,

She saw a light, and leapt to her feet.

She ran toward the door, that was emitting the light,

And slipped through it, and slammed it tight.

She went down the stairs that were behind the door,

She descended quickly, until she came to the floor.

Looking around, the sights frightened her,

And what she saw next made her vision blur.

There was Mike, hanging from above,

Then something from behind, gave her a shove.

This caused her to stumble and fall,

And she hit her head against the brick wall.

Jackie awoke from her little bop on the head,

She was in a steel cage, and seeing red.

She saw Mike was still up high,

And she just wanted to cry.

But, she knew that would not free her,

And she looked to Mike so they could confer.

Since the servant was in the dungeon, with the pair,

They had to be quiet, and really beware.

Mike directed Jackie, to a bar on the floor,

Maybe she could use it, to pry on the door.

She stretched her arm, out through the cage slats,

Trying to reach the bar, around the rats.

It was just out of reach of her mitt,

And she couldn't make her shoulder fit,

Through the bars of the cage,

And she was starting to go into a rage.

Maybe she could slide the cage just a tad,

But she had to do it, without alerting the cad.

Jackie rocked the cage, until it moved a bit,

While keeping an eye out for the half-wit.

He was too distracted, by something in the corner,

He just sat there, like Little Jack Horner.

So she moved the cage a little bit more,

Until the bar was in reach, laying there on the floor.

She picked up the rod, and started prying on the cage,

But, the servant heard this, and went into a rage.

He neared the cell, and Jackie tried to hit him,

She connected with his shin, but the results were quite grim.

She heard the bone snap, when the rod hit his leg,

Much like the shell of a hard boiled egg.

Then he hit the floor, like a sack of flour,

Then the screaming began, and he started to cower.

On the cage door, she went back to prying,

While trying to ignore the servants crying.

She finally felt the bars give way,

And she pried on it harder, without delay.

The cage door swung open, at last,

From all of that work she was gassed.

But her adrenaline started to kick in,

She went over to the gear, to give it a spin.

This would lower the chain that was holding Mike,

And once he was down, they could take a hike.

As Jackie was lowering Mike to the ground,

She heard a most terrifying sound.

The door at the top of the stairs was rattling,

And she knew they would have to do some battling.

The master had heard the cries of his slave,

And she knew she would have to be brave.

There was not enough time to lower Mike all the way,

So she grabbed the rod, and started swinging away.

At first, she connected with his torso,

And knew she had cracked three ribs, or so.

This doubled the master over, in pain,

And she started swinging the rod again.

This time, connecting with his head and neck,

And he seemed to be out, but she had to check.

So, she rolled him over, to see his face,

And she grabbed a chain, and tied him, just in case.

Jackie finished lowering Mike to the concrete,

And they knew their escape was almost complete.

They started running up the stairs,

And they both began to say some prayers.

They ran down the hallway, and out the front door,

They were tired and weak and a little sore.

They kept looking back; to make sure they were alone,

As they raced down the driveway, they both gave a groan.

When they reached the car, the tire was repaired,

The tow driver had left a note about how he had fared.

The repair was paid for, by the auto club,

So he had returned to his dispatch hub.

They climbed into the car, and raced down the road,

Getting as far away as they could, from the awful abode.

They needed something to help them unwind,

Something to help them leave this memory behind.

So, they went on, to the drive-in screen,

And, after all, it was still Halloween.

As they pulled up, and parked in a spot,

Their faces turned red, and got really hot.

On the screen was a picture of the house they'd escaped,

Like it had just been videotaped.

The credits rolled, and here is the thing that is wacky,

The movie "The Dungeon," starred Mike and Jackie.

The End

# THE OLD OAK TREE

Joe Pringle

Amy was only fifteen when she saw the ghost of the old man for the first time. His face unrecognisable, his mannerisms unfamiliar. He was just strolling through the house, up and down the corridor, in and out of the kitchen. He made himself comfortable on a chair for a few minutes before getting up and moving again. He was restless. It almost seemed as if he were looking for something or if he was unsure what to do with himself. Amy found this quite curious.

One night Amy woke up to see him standing by the mirror, motionless. He was touching his face, his cheek, feeling his skin. He ran his fingers through his hair then straightened his tie and pulled on his jacket. There was something very robotic about the way that he did things. Like it had been scripted. The old man put out his hand towards the mirror, it was as though he realised for the first time that he was a ghost. It was as if his reflection made him aware of himself, aware of the fact that he was just a shade.

He was only a white shadow in the darkness, moving from room to room without needing to open any doors or obey the regular laws of gravity. He wasn't a bother or even a threat, he was always just there. No cups shuffled, no chairs moved and no one but Amy ever saw him. Always searching, it seemed.

Another time Amy found him in the lounge, silently sitting on the couch, his legs crossed and his arms folded. Only then did she realise that he wasn't looking for something, he was waiting. Maybe he had died in the house, Amy thought, maybe he'd had a date and he was still waiting for that appointment. But _what_ was he waiting for? What could keep an old man this restless?

Maybe he's just waiting to go, unsure of how to leave this world by himself, waiting for someone to come and get him. Amy was never too afraid of the old man because it didn't seem as though he noticed her at all. Maybe he didn't know that she could see him, or maybe he couldn't see her. She'd always wondered about ghosts and how aware they might be of living. They could be reliving their lives, or at least a portion of it, over and over again without knowing that they're occupying the same space as other, living, people.

The following week Amy decided to stay awake, to see what he does, where he goes and how long he hangs around. When the watch next to her bed ticked over to twelve o'clock she pulled her duvet off and put her feet on the cold tiles. The chill that the cool tiles sent through her feet and through her entire body woke her up completely. Each time she'd seen the man the house felt colder. The fact that the tiles were icy was enough to convince her that she would see him again.

She slowly made her way to the front of the house where she once again found the old man's ghost sitting on a chair, waiting. She slowly sat down on the chair opposite him and quietly watched as his eyes wander around the room. He looked at the roof, then at the floor. He turned his head to stare at the blank television for a couple of seconds and then inspected the bookshelf, reading the titles of the books. To him, it seemed, this was still his house and no one else was living in it. Maybe he wasn't seeing the television at all, maybe he saw an old dresser or a large wooden cabinet.

Amy sat patiently waiting for him to continue on his usual routine of walking through the house, but he merely stayed seated in the chair, silently tapping his fingers on the armrests. It was different and it made her nervous. He never strayed from his routine, which meant that something had changed. Whatever it was, it was something big and although afraid, she was curious to see what was going to happen next.

After a period of time that seemed endless in its silence and stillness he gradually turned his head towards her and fixed his eyes on Amy. A cold chill ran down her spine, tugging at the muscles in her back. She stared deep into his eyes, unsure whether she was seeing correctly.

Here this old man, this ghost, was looking right at her and all this time she had thought that he was oblivious to her presence. Maybe he never was living a life, maybe he wanted some proof that she could see him and tonight Amy gave him that.

She remained seated, motionless, waiting for him to either continue with his routine or lose interest in whatever it was he was watching.

But he didn't, he just sat there, staring, waiting for a reaction.

After a while the old man slowly sat forward, holding his gaze. Was he getting up or was he trying to get a closer look? Amy wondered whether he wasn't maybe looking right through her at something behind her but then noticed his lips moving. Mouthing words. He _was_ looking at her, this she was now certain of, but was he trying to tell her something as well? Against her better judgement she sat forward as well and listened carefully, hearing a soft whisper similar to the hiss of a breeze.

"Little girl," she heard him say softly.

Too afraid to reply Amy simply nodded at him. Her first reaction was fear but then she started to assess the situation, considering that she might've fallen asleep in her chair. That, however, spun her thoughts into a different direction: Would she be able to second guess her thoughts in a dream? Would she really consider that she might be dreaming? She was only trying to convince herself that it was a dream, because that would be the easiest to accept.

"In the backyard, under the old oak tree, there is a metal box buried in the ground. You must find it." His words were flat and emotionless but seemed rushed somehow. "You must find it," he repeated.

Amy nodded again, but now hesitated.

She wanted to ask him more. She wanted to know what was so significant about this box. But seconds after the final word blew over his lips the old man rose from the chair and walked off. Had he been waiting for her all this time to acknowledge him?

His figure was hunched and seemed weak as he strode away. Amy tried to follow him, but he continued through the front door. She rushed up to the door and on her tiptoes peered through the peephole, watching the white shade cross the road and disappear on the other side, into the darkness of the park. She felt terrified from his sudden change of behaviour and confused as to the importance of whatever was under the old oak tree. She wanted to go back to bed and forget about what had just happened, she was stupid for trying to make contact with the ghost.

But her curiosity drove her to seek out the buried secret underneath that tree.

Amy walked to the back of the house and slowly opened the backdoor. What was she to expect? As soon as she worked up the nerves she stepped outside, found the little spade next to the backdoor and walked over to the old oak tree. She hesitated only for a second before putting her palm on the ground, feeling around for a soft spot. It's so strange how this could have been here for months or years and no one else had ever noticed the soft soil in this one specific place. In the darkness of the night she couldn't see where the roots of the tree lay.

Amy remembers her mom and dad having a conversation about a missing child the other day and immediately feels her body tense up. She outside, alone and in the dark. It might be their own backyard, but after listening to the old man's whispering voice she feels uneasy.

She slowly started digging next to the tree, smelling the moist soil as she dug into the earth. The old oak tree cast a big shadow over her and most of the yard, with bits of the moonlight breaking through the thick branches. For some reason she didn't feel afraid, just tense.

Amy had been digging for quite a while before the spade struck something hard. She put it aside and pressed her fingers into the cool soil, worming them deeper until she felt something hard and cold.

She pulled it out and wiped the excess dirt off. The metal box was old and rusted. Amy struggled to force it open, trying to pull on it from every angle until the top suddenly just popped ajar. It seemed unlikely to contain anything of much value as it was light in her hand and only about quarter the size of a shoebox.

Carefully, she moved the lid off and inside found photos of a man and his wife, standing in this very backyard. Could it be the old man and his wife many years ago? At first she didn't know what was so special about the photographs and why they would be so important to be hidden underground. Surely the sentiment couldn't be the sole reason for burying these photographs, there must be something else.

Then she saw it: The oak tree was not in the photo. In fact, there were barely any plants at all. That was impossible though. The tree had been around for years and was apparently older than the house. What was it about this tree? A cracking sound alerted her and she quickly and nervously looked around her.

Nothing.

She relaxed her shoulders and then looked up. Above her the branches were moving, extended and briskly curled around her, enveloping her entirely within a few seconds.

Without resistance her body relaxed and the last thing she saw was the glimmer of the moonlight bouncing off the metal box as it fell out of her hand.

The End

# THE WOODEN CHEST

Thomas Ryan

The air inside the bus clung with the feel and smell of a damp blanket. Darby leaned back and rubbed the frost off the window with the sleeve of his jacket, then pushed his freckled face against the glass. An involuntary jerk as a wave of water from an oncoming car arced at him like a slap in the face.

Darby felt his bottom lip begin to tremble. A knuckle-wipe of his eyes and a quick glance at the little sister seated alongside him. With relief he saw May was absorbed with one of her whispered conversations into the ear of Mr Bunny. His attention returned to the road.

Money. That screaming match between mum and dad in the kitchen had all been about money. Want of money. Waste of money. Never enough money. A hand stole into his jean pocket to ensure it was still there: that ten dollar note he'd got from Grandpa for his birthday. It was enough for two return tickets should Grandpa not be at home in Sheltered Cove.

Darby was pretty sure he had thought of everything. When mum and dad planned a trip they always made a list. But Darby didn't know how to make a list. He wasn't old enough yet. His mum would have said he could do it. She would have said you're a big boy now. You can do anything you want to do. But this just confused him. Whenever he measured himself against his two best friends, Gary and Ricky, he was the same size. He hadn't got bigger. And whenever he tried to do whatever he wanted, mum growled at him. Nothing made sense when dealing with grownups.

He stole another look at little May. She had fallen asleep. He knew she thought he was big. But then, everything is big when you're five. He hated that she followed him everywhere, especially when his friends came to play. But his mother insisted he had to put up with it and look out for May. And he did. It helped that mum gave him little rewards. Like cake and extra money for the movies.

Anyway, May didn't make a lot of noise. Just sat quietly and watched mostly. She did ask a lot of questions he had no answers for. So he invented answers. She trusted him and never appeared to doubt him.

But today the lie he told May was quite different.

To convince her to join him on his adventure, he had said their mother and father said it was okay. That she would not get into trouble. Now, after the long bus ride on this grey and heavy day he wasn't so confident he had made a good decision.

To come all this way. What if Grandpa wasn't home.

If Grandpa had a phone he could have called first to make sure. But Grandpa refused to have a phone in the huge old house he always seemed to be renovating in the mass of native bush above the bay.

The bus slowed.

Darby nudged his sister.

"We're here, May. "

May yawned. Her eyes opened. She glanced around like a startled deer, then relaxed. She rubbed her eyes and held Mr Bunny close to her chest and rocked back and forth until the bus came to a halt. Darby watched her, ready to offer comfort should she become distressed.

May's earnest little face rose to view him.

"I don't know if I'm going to like it here, Darby."

"Don't be like that, May. We've been to Grandpa's plenty of times. Mr Bunny will have lots of bunny friends here. Not like in the city. You're a big girl now remember?"

"No I'm not. I'm only five. I'm not six."

Darby shook his head. He had to be careful. An argument would set her crying, and that he didn't need right now. He helped her down the two steps.

When the bus drove away Darby took May's hand and led her across the road. It had stopped raining. May stomped in a puddle and splashed water everywhere. Giggling, she went to jump into a larger one but Darby pulled on her arm.

"We don't have time. Come on." May's bottom lip dropped. "I'll buy you an ice-cream later if you're good."

This had the desired effect. She beamed and slipped her hand from Darby's and skipped ahead down Main Street.

The village of Sheltered Cove was as Darby remembered: six shops and the hotel. The shops were on one side of the street and the hotel directly opposite. Darby remembered that when it got dark the hotel was noisy. The grown-ups would sit in the window drinking beer. On the last holiday he had sat in the take-away drinking a milkshake and waiting for an order of fish and chips. His father and his grandfather had watched over him through the hotel window.

Today was only the second time he had been back since Grandma went away. He missed Grandma. Why she had left Grandpa his parents would never tell him. Grown-ups business he was told. It was always grown-ups business. Lately when they argued and he asked what was wrong it was more grown-ups business. Only this time he found out for himself. He hadn't gone to his room. He had stayed in the hallway and listened.

Now money was the reason he had come to the cove.

He made the mistake of letting May's hand go. She and Mr Bunny were engrossed in another conversation and were lagging behind. Darby waited for her to catch up. His sister hated long walks and he didn't want to carry her. He'd have to slow down. He took May's hand again and led her along the dirt track that ran down behind the hot pools and along the beachfront. The camping ground was full. He would ask Grandpa to bring them down to play on the trampoline later.

"Look. You can see Grandpa's house."

May looked up. Her face brightened and she ran ahead. She stopped on the wooden decking of the front porch.

Darby applied himself to the heavy iron knocker on the door and peered as best he could through the crinkly red glass panel for any sign of life. He knocked again but heard only an empty echo from inside. He tried the handle. The door opened. May pushed past him and rushed inside.

"Grandpa. Grandpa. Where are you?"

Darby followed her. Now that Grandpa lived alone, coming to visit was not the same. When Grandma was here there was always the smell of baking. That's how he remembered her \- always in the kitchen baking goodies.

He remembered how sad everyone had been when she went. His parents had told him not to mention Grandma in front of Grandpa. Of course they forgot to tell May and she asked Grandpa where Grandma had gone in front of everyone. Luckily he had been on his guard and before his parents could admonish her he had taken her from the room. They played Ludo for the rest of that afternoon.

The whine of a drill met Darby's ears.

"He's in the kitchen, May".

May's little legs sped her down the hall and around the corner past the stand with coats hanging on it and an assortment of umbrellas. A squeal of delight came out of her.

"Grandpa. It's me and Darby."

Darby fell in behind May at the kitchen door. There was a wide-eyed Grandpa in his old leather carpenter's apron. The chewed-end pencil he never lost sight of sat tucked above his ear.

"Goodness me. What are you two doing here?"

To Darby Grandpa sounded more alarmed than pleased, though he was managing to raise half a smile.

"We've run away," May blurted out.

Grandpa's eyes became saucer-shaped. The smile disappeared.

"You what? Darby. What's this all about in heaven's name?"

Darby felt his courage deserting him. He grabbed May's hand.

"Please don't be mad, Grandpa. We did run away. We had to. Mum and dad were fighting. We didn't know where else to go."

Grandpa's eyes switched from Darby to May and back. A hand rose to scratch the bald patch on top of his head.

"Of course. Of course. You're right. This is the right place to come. But your parents will be worried. You see, kids, mums and dads fight all the time. They don't mean anything. Look, I'll have to go into the town and phone them. To let them know you're safe."

Grandpa turned and swung open the fridge door. He withdrew two cans and put them on the table.

"Have a coke, kids. Stay here and I'll try not to be too long. "

May tugged on the nail pouch of grandpa's apron.

"Mummy will be mad at us, won't she, Grandpa?"

"I'm sure she won't. Don't worry darling. All will be well. But we don't want mummy to worry do we. Do you want me to bring back some fish and chips for your lunch?"

"That would be great Grandpa," Darby said. He rubbed his stomach. It had been a long time since breakfast. Grandpa unbuckled his apron and tossed it on the table.

"Very well I'm going now. May, be a good girl and do what Darby says. Okay?"

"I will."

Darby waited until he heard the front door close behind Grandpa.

"Right, Come on May. We need to get into the attic and find the map."

"Grandpa said to stay here."

"He said you have to do what I tell you too. So let's go find the map. Come on."

Halfway down the hallway Darby reached up and pulled on the cord that brought down the folding steps that gave access to the roof cavity. He was remembering how their grandfather had said to them many times that they weren't to play in the attic. But that was when Darby was much younger. It surely wouldn't count now that he was older and bigger.

May tugged at his arm.

"Grandpa won't growl at us, will he?"

"Course he won't. Look. As soon as we finish I'll buy you an ice-cream."

The smile returned.

The old trunk was covered in dust but in the same spot that Darby remembered. May stood behind him. He knew she hated the attic. Jenny, her friend at school, had told her ghosts lived in attics and dead people were always found in old trunks. Darby slid back the bolt and lifted the lid wide. A creak and a cloud of dust met his efforts. A clink as a chain at one side tightened and took the weight of the lid. Darby reached into the interior and pulled out a document. He unrolled it on the floor. May moved closer.

"There it is. The cross. Like I remembered it. Wow. Look here is the house. That's the beach down there, and that's the big tree out the back. We need to walk fifty paces into the bush. It's there. See the 'x'?. That's where the treasure is. Come on. We have to hurry."

May shook her head and tightened her grip on Mr Bunny. Darby stood and pointed to the stairs.

"Look May. If we find the treasure then mum and dad won't fight anymore. They'll have enough money to pay the bills. Okay? You want to help mum and dad don't you?"

May nodded.

"Come on. I'll get a spade from Grandpa's shed. We can dig up the treasure before he gets back."

"I'm too little to dig holes."

* * *

Digging was boring and Darby had not found any treasure. Only old bones and other rubbish. He suspected all he'd found was the hiding place for Grandpa's neighbour's dog.

May sat on a tree stump. She was talking to Mr Bunny when she heard the scrunch of twigs behind her. She jumped off the stump and ran to stand beside Darby.

"Someone's coming."

Darby stopped his digging as Grandpa's figure emerged through the bushes. The face that confronted Darby alarmed him. Grandpa's tanned skin looked to have gone tight and quite yellow.

"What are you doing?"

"Digging a hole Grandpa,"May said. "Darby is looking for the treasure."

"Yes Grandpa. But all I found was old dog bones and stuff."

Grandpa's narrowed eyes fixed on the disturbed soil at Darby's feet.

"Dog bones? Oh yes. Of course. But why on earth would you think there's treasure buried here?"

Darby looked at the ground and pushed at a sod of earth with the toe of his shoe.

"I found the treasure map in the trunk in the attic."

Grandpa's eyebrows concentrated above the bridge of his nose.

"Darby. How many times have I told you to stay out of the attic?"

"I'm sorry, but I had to. The reason mum and dad have been fighting is because of money. We saw a movie last week. The children were sent to an orphanage. Me and May...."

Darby looked at May. Her bottom lip was trembling. She turned imploring eyes up to her grandfather.

"Pleeease Grandpa. I don't want to be an orphan."

Grandpa took a step towards Darby. He reached for the spade and jammed it into the ground in front of him and leaned on it. Darby couldn't help but notice the whites of the knuckles on the strong hands that gripped the handle. Grandpa stayed like that for a long moment surveying his grandchildren. With a deep intake of breath he straightened.

"Don't worry darling. I promise you won't be an orphan."

* * *

"Hi, Dad. Have you seen Darby and May? Are they here?"

"No, June. Why would they be? You stopped them coming here remember."

June ignored the comment.

"They've run away. John and I have been fighting a lot lately. The kids must have got frightened and run off somewhere."

Grandpa gave his daughter a steady look.

"Run off? Well, well. Got that from your mother I suppose. Any handsome dam face and she'd be off. Then back when they'd had enough of her. Anyway this old place is too far out for the kids. How would they even know how to get here?"

"I suppose you're right. I wish you'd get a phone on. Okay I've got to get back home. If they turn up please phone me."

"Of course I will. Don't worry I'm sure they're safe?"

Grandpa watched the back of his daughter disappear then closed the door. He walked down the hallway into the kitchen and took down the whisky bottle from the cupboard over the fridge. He half filled a glass then made his way back to the hall and pulled on the cord for the stairs up to the attic.

He knelt before the wooden chest and opened it.

He took out the map. Looked at the 'x'.

The chewed up pencil came from behind Grandpa's ear.

It descended onto the map.

Two small crosses appeared beside the original one.

The End

# WRONG MOVE

Claude Nougat

"Why didn't you organize Esteban's confirmation in a special place, like the church of the Sagrada Familia?"

Eulalia didn't answer at first. This man, with his blond hair deliberately too long and unkempt, was ridiculous, but then, he'd been absurd from the first day they had married. Eventually she spewed out, "What kind of a demand is that?"

"The Sagrada Familia is a unique place. Millions of tourists come to Barcelona just to see it. For God's sake, it's a UNESCO Heritage monument! If I were a child again, that's where I'd like to go!"

She stared at him. "Who wants millions of tourists? That's why we did it in the Cathedral like everyone else! Like our parents and grandparents. And I didn't organize the ceremony, Esteban's school did."

He sniggered. "I could have organized it for you. Just get the church closed to tourists! You pay the bishop, and you're done."

"You must be kidding, pay the bishop! The Sagrada Familia is full of workers; they won't finish building it for another twenty years!"

"Eulalia, that's a minor problem and you know it. I can stop any construction firm I want in town. For just one day, the workers don't come, easy! "

He snapped his fingers. She stared at his hand, the long narrow fingers, nearly effeminate but so aristocratic – in total contrast to his bearish presence. That bizarre combination of sophistication and brashness had attracted her from the moment they had met. He still managed to surprise her after all those years. She shook herself; she was wasting her time. Guests would soon turn up, coming back from the church to have lunch in her house. Trust Fernando to come up with silly ideas.

"Didn't you like the ceremony?" Her tone was curt. "All those young boys dressed in white, our son among them. He looked so serious, weren't you moved? I was! Now let me look after our guests."

With that she stomped off to the entrance to greet incoming family and friends. Fernando watched her go, taking in her elegant figure, like a model's, thin and tall. Her luxurious red hair made her stand out in a crowd. Her Prada dress, a light, clinging aquamarine material with black waving stripes across it, had cost him the earth but was well worth it. He noted how she sashayed through the living room, going from one group to the next, smiling, waving her hands, throwing kisses at newcomers. He was still proud of her. She looked the part – a billionaire's wife. Any woman he got involved in had to look the part.

Today was a special day. The whole family was there and many friends, so-called "close friends", almost two hundred people, filling the large, modern reception area, a succession of white rooms with white walls crisscrossed by the steel beams holding up the building's roof. From this height – ten floors up – and from every window, the view over old Barcelona and the sea in the distance was breathtaking. On the walls, vast contemporary art canvases smartly broke the monotony of the white with splashes of color.

Eulalia kept smiling, but she knew she was under watch, particularly from her husband's family. Her marriage had collapsed shortly after Esteban's birth, and Fernando had walked out demanding divorce. Soon after, he'd posted pictures on Facebook showing him surrounded by beautiful women on a Caribbean cruise. Later, it had been a safari in Kenya, a golf tour in Australia, a bear hunt in Alaska. She knew he had stopped loving her, but she had always refused the divorce. Few among her friends and family approved her stance, but she didn't care. She had been steadfast on this, all the eleven years of Esteban's young life. Appearances had to be maintained, and she meant to keep them.

People might wonder when they'd finally get a divorce, let them wonder! Esteban needed a father of his own, not a father married to another woman. That would only confuse matters. Eulalia was as strong-willed and resolute as the saint she was named after, one of the patron saints of Barcelona, a young virgin girl who had undergone thirteen different kinds of horrendous tortures, including stuffing her into a nail-studded barrel and rolling it down the street. But Saint Eulalia had never relented, refusing to recant her Christianity. And Eulalia was proud of her name, she felt it defined her. If Fernando insisted on torturing her, so be it. She'd resist to the end.

At first Fernando had fought back, trying to cut off the money she and her son needed to live on. But he'd lost in court, the separation contract was clear. Eulalia had retained the house Esteban had been born in, along with the money to maintain the maid, the cook and the chauffeur. And he was paying for Esteban's private school and later, she knew, he'd have to pay for the university, either Harvard or Oxford. Depending on how the child did at school, but he was so good at math, surely there would be no problems...

She found three empty wine bottles on the buffet. The Champagne had also disappeared. She sighed, servants weren't what they used to be. She had paid for the best catering in town! Some of the dishes were nearly empty and needed to be taken away and replaced.

She ran to the kitchen to give orders and check on the desserts, the chocolate mousse she had made herself the day before. The mousse was a family tradition. She had learned how to do it from her French mother. Family lore had it that there was no chocolate mousse as good as hers anywhere in the world. And it was Esteban's favorite dessert.

It wasn't Fernando's. He watched with disgust the arrival of a huge crystal bowl filled with a brown mousse to the brim, looking ferociously dark and decorated with whipped cream. It was carefully placed at the center of the buffet along with several other smaller dessert dishes. Fernando was annoyed, so much chocolate! And the rest was depressing, caramel custard was for the sick in the hospital and he hated fruit tarts. His tastes were never taken into account; indeed his wife had never cared to find out what he liked. All she ever thought of was Esteban. And of course this was a child's delight. Within seconds, Esteban and all his cousins, big and small, were rushing to the buffet. They helped themselves heaps of mousse ahead of the adults who stood back and looked on lovingly.

Fernando walked off to the big terrace, now deserted. He looked out disconsolately to the distant harbor. In the clear June weather, you could almost touch with your hand the new cruise ship that had come in last night while another one was slowly moving out, headed to the high sea, tall and proud, a white tower floating on the water, gleaming in the sunshine. How he'd love to sail away, this was no life. But soon, he'd really have to leave Spain. The Great Recession had changed everything. If he stayed here one more year, he wouldn't be able to pay for all this – the luxury apartment, the servants, the exclusive school, the vacations abroad.

Eulalia had to understand that. Twelve years had passed since they had gotten married; the world had changed. He'd had to start new businesses, learn how to produce and market in this new digital world. The learning curve had been incredibly steep. But he'd made it. He wasn't a Silicon Valley wizard but close to its Spanish equivalent. It took guts, imagination, determination, he was proud of himself. Lizzie understood him, but then she was English. His plan of moving everything to England suited her fine. And she was very flexible and open, she didn't seem to mind that Eulalia wouldn't give him a divorce. She made no demands on him. She was just happy living with him. In short, Lizzie was the perfect companion and partner. He suspected that part of the reason was that she didn't want to have any children – but neither did he; he had Esteban.

Eulalia was the problem. She had always been. It was odd, how he had been madly in love with her right until the moment she had gotten pregnant. When her belly had started to round out, her breasts swelling up, he'd felt an insurmountable disgust. Where had her elegant figure gone that thin, sinuous shape he loved so much? She'd started looking like a Botero or a Rubens woman, and he hated both Rubens and Botero, their revolting fascination with fat, outsized women. There were two kinds of men in the world, those who went for fat women and those who preferred them thin. Well, he liked them thin.

When Esteban was born, it was a relief to see Eulalia quickly return to her former self. But something was broken between them. They'd slept in separate rooms during her pregnancy; they continued to do so. He liked it better this way. He'd regained his freedom; other women again interested him. He'd gone from one to the next until he'd met Lizzie. Now he was content. Lizzie was the one. He was moving to England with her, all was well. The only thing he needed was Esteban. He wanted to see his son as often as he could, and living in two separate countries was unthinkable.

Eulalia called him from the terrace door. "Why don't you come in and have some dessert?"

He turned to her, shaking his head. "You know I don't like sweets," he said, "why don't you stay out here with me for a minute?"

"But my guests need me!"

"No,they don't, they're all happy in there, digging into your chocolate mousse. I just need to talk to you. Surely you can spare a moment, can't you?"

She shrugged and moved up to the railing. She stood next to him, ram rod straight, looking out to the harbor.

"So what is it this time?" The tone of her voice was weary; he could tell she was already in a contrary mood. But when had she ever been positive?

"I need to move everything to England."

"Really? Fine. Go ahead."

Clearly she didn't care. Did she not understand the implications of what he was saying to her? "Look, Eulalia, this is serious. You don't seem to understand we are living through very difficult times. This is a recession, a long one, it started five years ago."

"I know, I read the papers," she said, looking annoyed. "Unemployment is at a historical high, half the young can't find a job and the banks are folding. You don't have to tell me."

"Good," he said, relieved. "Then you know what I'm talking about. I started moving my money out of Spain a couple of years ago but now I have to get out completely. Everything. The company, the manufacturing, the marketing, the whole thing, do you understand what I'm telling you?"

She nodded. He stared at her. "I hope you do. It means I won't go on living in Barcelona."

She shrugged. "No problem, you choose where you want to live."

"No, I don't think you understand. If I live in England, it means you can't stay here."

"Why not?"

"You have to move to London. I'll get you a nice apartment, perhaps smaller than this one, London is very expensive, but it will be nice all the same. And you'll get the staff you need, not as many as here, but enough. I promise you won't regret the move."

Her blue eyes had widened in surprise. "Heaven, why should I leave?" He'd forgotten how blue they were, the color of an icy mountain lake. Those eyes had been one of the first things that had attracted him to her those many years ago. Now, it was hard to remember he had ever been in love with her. If it weren't for Esteban, he wouldn't be discussing this move with her.

"Eulalia, it's very simple. Esteban, my son, has to live in the same town, the same country as I do. You cannot stay here. You're moving with me to England."

She frowned. "I have no choice about it?"

He shook his head. "None!"

"Fernando you're being childish, as usual. You can move to England or anywhere else for that matter. I don't care where you go, but I'm staying here."

"You're not. I need my boy close to me, not in another country!"

"Then, stay in Spain!"

"I just told you I can't! You're not listening, are you? If I stay here, I won't be able to pay for...for all this!" He waved around them. "Or Esteban's school – or your costly vacations, your clothes, your cars, your servants, everything. Do you know how much you cost?"

She shrugged. "That was settled a long time ago. I won't discuss it."

She made a move to leave. He grabbed her arm and stopped her.

"Don't touch me. That hurts!"

He let her go. "I know, I'm not re-opening the contract." He meant the separation contract, and she nodded.

"You better not," she muttered.

"Circumstances do change," he said. "No contract can resist this economic tsunami! You don't work. You live in your own bubble protected from the real world, so you don't realize what's happening, do you?"

She shrugged.

He felt hot and angry. The woman didn't understand a thing. "Spain is collapsing," he said, his voice harsh, "my business is on the verge of bankruptcy. I can't remain here and watch everything go down the drain. If that happens, you won't get any money of any kind. It will be curtains, do you understand that? Is that what you want?"

She began to move back into the house, but he stopped her. He took her arm again and squeezed it hard. How he wished he could have slapped her face. She yelped. "Stop, you're hurting me!"

He let her go, and she rubbed her arm. He saw his fingers had left red marks on her white flesh. "Okay, I get it," she said. "You have to move to save your business, well then, go wherever you want to go with your current slut and leave me in peace!"

His slut? What kind of language was this? He tried to ignore it and went on,"For God's sake, you're not listening, are you? You must come with me."

"So that you can have Esteban near you? Yes, I heard you. I got the message. But the answer is no. I won't leave. And Esteban won't leave either. He's still a child. Moving would distress him. He must finish school. He can't lose his friends, all the things he likes to have around him just because you decide that's what you want. He's happy here. He's staying."

"He's not. He will be just as happy in London. It's a fabulous town!"

"For you maybe, not for a child. You go. I told you. I won't stop you. Whenever you want to see Esteban, it's simple, you fly down from London and see him as often as you like."

"Fly down? That can be done a few times, perhaps at the beginning before you join me – but it's not a long-term solution. We all need to live in the same town."

She raised her eyes. "Do we? Why?"

"Because I'm Esteban's father. He's my only son. And because I say so."

"You say so? And what I say doesn't count?"

He shrugged. She took a step away, and with a dismissive wave of the hand, she added "You're wrong. What I say does count and I've got the Law on my side. This is my house. This is the life style you must guarantee to your son and me, by law. And there's nothing, do you hear, nothing you can do to change that!"

"Nothing?" He took a step forward and grabbed her arm again, squeezing it so hard he sensed he could break it easily if he wanted. The bones were so thin and fragile in his big hand. "Nothing?" he repeated, threatening.

She moaned. Her face was white. "Nothing. And stop that, you're hurting me!"

He moved his face close to hers. He was a big man. She tried to break free but couldn't.

"Nothing?" he growled, leaning ever closer, pushing her back.

"Nothing?" he roared, giving her a shove.

The rail behind her suddenly collapsed. She felt an emptiness behind her back. She was sucked down, as if a big wind had shoved her like a leaf. She waved her hands, trying to grab him, but there was nothing but air. She didn't have the time to scream.

Fernando couldn't take in what he saw. All at once she was gone. Without a sound. All he saw was the broken railing, the glimmering harbor and the clear blue sky. He couldn't move. He knew the drop was lethal, ten stories down. In the early days when little Esteban had first started to walk, they used to worry about safety on this terrace. He knew he ought to check now. He should walk up to that railing and see whether she'd fallen all the way down. Maybe she'd managed to hold onto some pipe or fallen on a balcony on the floor below.

The glass door clanged open behind him. Esteban rushed in, screaming "Maman!" He called her in French, his favorite nickname for her. He ran to the broken railing and looked down.

"Maman!" he shrieked, desperate, making a move as if he intended to follow her down.

Fernando panicked and grabbed him to prevent him from jumping off.

Esteban fought his father, pummeling his face with his fists, howling with rage and despair.

Some of the guests came out on the terrace and watched silently, unable to understand what had happened. Should they separate father and son? What was going on here? Eulalia was nowhere to be seen.

Her body was found minutes later, when guests who had left early and were unaware of what had happened rounded the corner and reached the street. There she was, at the foot of the building, her body splayed, her face down, with only her brilliant red hair showing, looking so alive, moving slightly in the afternoon breeze.

The End

#  ZOMBIES ANONYMOUS

## Lauren Scharhag

When I get off work, I stop at the farm before I go home. The chicken farmer knows me, is expecting me. He has a beautiful bird set aside, ready to go in a cardboard container. I pay him, a worn ten dollar bill. Tell him to keep the change.

The chicken, a red hen, rides in the seat beside me. The box has ventilation holes in the top, but otherwise, the bird can't see out, so she is pretty docile for the twenty or so minutes it takes to get her home.

I take the box out back and leave it on the patio table while I go inside. I reemerge wearing one of those disposable plastic rain ponchos.

The box thumps softly as I shift it towards me, open the top flaps. The bird's head pops up, gold eyes regarding me beadily. When I reach in, she squawks and fights. I hold her carefully, one hand around her neck, the other holding both feet together. She continues to screech, beating at me with her auburn wings.

It hasn't been daylight for a half hour yet. I hold her like that, stretched between my hands for a moment in the watery morning sun. Then I raise her to my face and bite, tearing into the breast with my blunt canines. The bird shrieks, her claws digging into my palms. Feathers fly everywhere. They cling to my hands, sticky with blood. In another second, she is still.

When I'm finished, I hose the blood and feathers off the patio, sluicing them into the grass. Then I strip off the poncho. I pack it and the bones into a trash bag and set them out on the curb, next to the recycle bin.

* * *

The meetings are mandatory. It's just like from before, with gatherings in church basements and school gyms, a circle of fold-out chairs. In the back of our meeting area, refreshments are laid out on a pair of folding tables: an assortment of raw meats and a carafe of blood. Pig's blood, usually. I prefer cow.

We even start with a prayer:

I am grateful that I am here and I am still me.

I will not let my impulses define me, only my choices.

I ask for strength to weather adversity and change.

May grace and mercy reign over all my interactions

So that I may be an example to others,

Leading to peace and understanding between all mankind.

We all know each other here—most of us went through quarantine together, so there's no need for anyone to stand up and go, "Hi, I'm Joe, and I'm a cannibal."

I look around the circle at the familiar faces, old and young. There's Brian and Cara, a young couple who just recently moved in together. There's Javier, who speaks in broken English and worked as a grill cook before. Sweet-faced Marjorie, who takes care of the recovered children, who invariably flock to her like baby ducks. Jay Doyle, who'd owned a car dealership. Ira Ramsey, a computer programmer. Old Barb who talks nonstop about her eight-year-old grandson, who'd been her first kill.

The meetings I go to are led by a woman named Julie Cavanaugh, who'd been a marriage counselor. We go around the circle and talk about things. Acceptance. Admission of past deeds. Confronting guilt. Self-forgiveness. Working the steps.

Now we're trying to focus on our new lives: new friends, new families, our jobs. We talk especially about all the changes—the changes in our bodies, the changes in the world. Our new place in society, such as it is.

And we talk about how hard it is.

How very hard it all is.

* * *

I should go to bed, but I can't sleep. Insomnia is common for us. So I sit in the living room. No TV or anything—channels are still pretty limited. But the house is nice. At least, a part of me still recognizes it's nice, someplace I would've wanted to live before. Four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath. Granite countertops in a kitchen I don't really use. Tankless water heater and efficient heating and A/C when I no longer notice temperature. More space than I could ever hope to inhabit.

I keep the blinds drawn. A lot of us have retained a certain affinity for dark places. Our night vision remains exceptionally good. But I just like it. It's nice to sit by myself. Nobody watching, no temptations. Just me. In my place. Alone. After quarantine, we were required to live in communal housing for a while, so solitude feels like an unqualified luxury.

Then there's a pounding at my door.

Immediately, I tense up. I'm not expecting any visitors.

* * *

Everybody's got their share of bad memories. I bit my neighbor, my wife, my coworker, infected them so they'd be like me. I ate my mother, my son, my dog. The illness burned some of the memories out of us, but not all. We remember the people coming at us with rifles, axes, shovels, baseball bats—whatever lay near to hand. In some places, there were bombs, tanks, flamethrowers. We watched our fellow afflicted get bludgeoned, torn apart by bullets and blades, mown down under treads, going up like haystacks.

It happened like in the movies. Kind of. Not like the old black-and-whites. The new ones. Some of these screenwriters knew what they were talking about: when it hit, it didn't just happen spontaneously, people leaping out of graves and whatnot. It wasn't radiation. It wasn't an invasion from another planet.

It was a virus. That's all. Like the flu.

It wasn't a yak-fest, I'm pleased to report. It was a neuro virus. No one suspected anything at first because it moved so slowly, almost sluggishly, through the system, mutating as it went. That was one way it differed from the movies—it's not like somebody coughed on you and boom, you were infected, and then, boom, you were a zombie. It took anywhere from eight to fifteen days to become symptomatic and another week or so before you turned.

I remember my last day as a regular human. I'd been to the doctor. He'd prescribed Motrin, bed rest, fluids. Dutifully, I'd managed to get myself up and to the kitchen. Made some dry toast, drank a glass of orange juice. Then I crawled back into bed.

When I woke up, I wasn't me anymore. I'd been replaced by this . . . _hunger._ There is simply no other word for it.

There's this lady in my ZA group named Nancy. She's a real born-again, right-to-life religious freak, even now. Don't get me wrong. I have no beef with the Jesus-and-fetus-lovers. I love Jesus and fetuses and beef as much as the next guy.

On rye.

A little cannibal humor there. Go on and laugh. You know you want to.

Anyway. We were talking about it during group one time, the virus. Nancy said, "I got a headache. The pain was so bad my husband rushed me to the emergency room. And all I could think was, 'This must be what Jacob felt when he wrestled the angel.'"

While I might disagree on some levels, (semantic, spiritual, philosophical), I agree with the sentiment. Winning or losing doesn't matter. Your whole life has just become this pitched battle. Pain gets you in a headlock and no one can help you. No one can take the pain for you.

And then, just when you think it can't get any worse, you get hungry. Everything you ever were, anything you ever wanted—it all gets burned away. Your body just _wails_ for food and more food. There is no ignoring it. There is no reasoning with it. There is no fighting it. You have no intellect, no personality, no conscience. You begin to see only what is edible.

Anything that moves is edible.

I miss toast.

* * *

I don't know how any of us survived those long years, unspeakable years of wandering and feeding, a blur of teeth and working mandibles and blood. All I know is, I came to in a CDC facility, four years after that glass of OJ. I had a gunshot wound in my right leg, a mild concussion from where somebody whacked me over the head with something. I was lucky that's all I had. The cure meant we recovered some of our humanity—we could think again. We could reason again. We could sleep again, dream again. We could _feel_ again. Emotions, I mean. A lot of us have suffered permanent nerve damage, which is why we don't feel heat or cold, or physical pain.

But what they couldn't cure was the hunger.

* * *

It's been five years since the virus hit. There's a little over a billion people left in the world. Most died the first year. The rest died in the ensuing violence: riots, people fighting amongst themselves, fighting against the afflicted. A lot of people committed suicide.

Pretty much the only job we're allowed to have now is clean-up. We bury bodies, clear debris from roadways, tear down condemned structures. Doesn't matter what you did before—doctor, lawyer, butcher, baker, candlestick maker. You're road crew now. Most of us prefer the night shift.

Once we were cured, the new government passed a series of laws. Recovereds had to be registered. After quarantine, recovereds had to live in assigned housing. Recovereds were not allowed to own firearms. And, of course, acts of cannibalism would not be tolerated.

We make do with animals. If any of those PETA people are left, they must really hate us. After our meetings, sometimes, we stand around the blood cooler and organize hunting parties.

Right now, we live in the exurbs, in subdivisions surrounded by cement walls topped with razor wire. The perimeters are patrolled. Helicopters are a regular sight, gliding by overhead at all hours.

Working by night, loading up dumpsters and hauling rubble under the moon, I sometimes pause and look around. I can't get used to this—any of it. The roaming searchlights. The vast areas of uninhabited space. The ruined buildings, the untraveled highways, the unpaid tolls.

They call us cannibals, like we're still the same species. I'm not sure we are.

* * *

There is one topic of conversation that is never broached in the meetings—never indoors, where we might be overheard. Only outside, preferably in the fields and wooded areas, as we stalk coyotes and deer.

"The way I see it, we're the new top of the food chain, right? So why the fuck we letting them call the shots?"

"Look at us. Can't leave the compound unless they give us the okay. Eating what they say we can eat. That's not what we are."

"There's more of us than there are of them."

"We all know what's going on here. They rounded us up, trapped us while we were vulnerable. Now we're living in ghettos while they decide what to do with us."

"I'm telling you, it's just a matter of time before they decide to wipe us out once and for all. Because they can't stand it—they can't stand that we're better than them now."

"But we haven't done anything wrong."

"Not yet."

* * *

The knocking on my door continues, growing more and more frantic. I open it to find several of my neighbors. A lot of them are people from my ZA group. There's Ira, there's Julie.

"Joe," she says. "They're coming."

In the distance, I hear the helicopters beating the air, the sound of tanks approaching.

No words pass between us. Nothing really needs to be said as some of us join hands and walk out to meet them, armed with nothing but our hunger and a serenity prayer.

The End

## COMING SOON:

# A WORLD OF OTHER WORLDS

A Collection of Sci-Fi and Fantasy Short Stories

## by The Authors Of ASMSG

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## http://asmsg.weebly.com

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