

# Literary Underground: Time

* * * * *

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Literary Underground

Literary Underground: Time

Copyright © 2012 Literary Underground

COVER ART BY:

Steven Novak

Copyright © 2012 Steven Novak

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
Smashwords Edition License Notes

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

* * * * *

Acknowledgments:

Literary Underground would like to acknowledge the efforts of the following people who helped to make Time a reality:

Mary Ann Bernal and MJ Heiser for their time, effort, and patience editing the works contained within.

Steven Novak for creating the masterpiece that is the cover art.

All of the authors who contributed to the pages within this anthology. You are all very creative and talented storytellers!

All of the members and friends/fans of Literary Underground. Without your encouragement none of this would be possible.

* * * * *

Forward by Ryan ONeil

As a noun, time is defined as "The indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole."

As an anthology, Time is the collection of work written by award winning authors who all possess the talent, determination, and passion to bring to life the jumbled ideas contained within and present them in an entertaining and professional manner.

Literary Underground is once again proud to present you with an excellent sampling of what the self published and up-and-coming authors of the world have to offer.

I think that you will be more than pleased!

Cheers,

R

* * * * *

Doing Time

by

D.G. Turner

Darkness surrounds me. The sweat pearls off my face, small rivers of water running towards my neck, dripping onto my clothes, the pillow now sodden. I hear the thumping footsteps coming towards me, edging closer and closer, almost ahead of me. I clench the sheet, afraid of the footfalls, the sound of abrasive steel with each step.

Burning lights strips the darkness. I turn my head away, wanting to avoid the blazing glare. Darkness, fearful darkness escapes, and with a huge groan I am bathed in light. As I open my eyes, harsh light emits from two fluorescent bulbs above.

I hear someone moaning beneath me. The bed shudders as his hulk-like body turns. I speak to him: "God, I don't want to wake up in this hell hole."

"Wake up," shouts the voice from outside as a hard fist thumps the door. "Time for breakfast. I want you dressed and ready within five minutes."

_Who am I? How did I get here?_ As I push the sheet away, my body quivers, my palms clammy with sweat, my stomach churning with worry and fear, my bladder bursting.

My partner Jimbo uses the toilet at the corner. It smells, stinking of urine, and he expects me to clean it. Zipping up his fly, he turns to me: "Your turn, and when you finish give it a swipe with the bleach or I'll push your head down the pan."

Threats now wash off, but when I was first thrown in here with Jimbo, I was scared for my life. He was done for murder, his wife sleeping with his best friend, the usual scenario where an embittered husband seeks justice. He swears it was an accident, but the unsympathetic judge gave him life.

I can't remember killing; my hands are incapable of maiming anyone, let alone the little girl who gasped her final breath. I didn't do it. I can't have. The child was screaming, I couldn't...

I told my story to Jimbo. He nodded, understanding my plight, and warned me to keep circumspect at all times. Prison isn't a place for child molesters, and other prisoners don't take kindly to my supposed hideous crime. I never committed it, I never did. I'm as honest as they come. The murder had to be a frame job, for I am innocent.

With all his threats, Jimbo wasn't a bad lad—but he has to show his toughness, show that no one can do a dirty on him. He calls himself Top Dog, but to me he is a man who knows justice and has authority over the inmates. The wardens laughed when they threw me into this cell with Jimbo; they thought this child killer will meet his Maker within a few minutes, but they were wrong.

He listened; he is very good at that. He hears what I have to say before he passes judgment. "I'm better than those fools who call themselves barristers. They know F-all."

The sound of an unlocking door echo behind me as I am scrubbing the pan. The Warden reminds me of Hitler, with straight, greasy black hair and a small moustache under his nose. Everyone calls him Hitler, and his temper is legendary. Jimbo is making rude gestures behind his back.

"Right, you two—breakfast, and make it snappy."

Jimbo clicks his boots and places his fingers to his temple mocking him. " _Ja, Mein Führer_. Ve shall go now," He says with a smirking smile. Hitler pulls me away from the toilet and pushes me out of the door.

"Dealing with people like you make me sick," he spits in my face. "Innocent child, and you can't control your—" His knee tries to reach my nether regions but Jimbo stops him in mid attack.

"You know how it goes, no attacking inmates or I'll speak to the governor. You know your place, warden."

"I never killed her," I utter. "Listen, please believe me, I never killed her."

"You..." He swears under his breath.

As Jimbo leads me away, I shout: "I never killed her. Believe me, believe me!"

Breakfast is my worst nightmare. We sit by long tables that seat about twenty people at each side, a total of forty. A fat army cook serves us porridge, and we have to line up to collect our serving in metal plates. When it is my turn, the chef stares at me, pulls my plate towards him and thumps a ladle filled with gruel into my plate. Taking a deep breath, he gathers enough energy to spit into my portion.

Jimbo glares at him. "You dare do that, you see the wrong side of my wrath. Serve him again this time with more dignity.

Those around us are laughing. The cook, losing his composure, has to find a clean bowl. He filled it, mumbling his half-hearted apologies as he gives it to me.

"If you weren't a child killer, my apologies would be more sincere. Did she cry when you put your rancid dick into her," he suddenly says.

"I didn't do it, I didn't. You have to believe me, I didn't even touch her.

I turn to the crowd and announce the truth: "I've been framed, I can't have killed her, she was crying, I left her alone...but someone had been following me and did the deed, I didn't do it."

They look at me in disbelief and vent their fury, showing their fists. Their cries of anguish are lost in the babble of disagreement and bitter resentment. From the corner of my eye I can see Warden Hitler standing at the top of the stairs, gathering the cavalry, ready to strike. He is watching the scene being played out before him, but he is afraid for his job and too scared to intervene.

They let this war battle out between us, the wardens as the generals and we the soldiers. A burly thug breaks a bottle and, showing the broken edges, waves it before me. There is no way out as groups of people gather around me, closing in, wanting to kill me, retaliate for what I am supposed to have done to an innocent girl.

I scream as the group moves in closer. Not even Jimbo defends me; he wants me dead. There is a glaring grin on his face, his teeth similar to a rabid dog, blackened with disease, gnashing at my quivering body.

"I never killed her." I fall to my knees, about to break down. I have no ounce of confidence or dignity left; I am now a shell, but I still have my innocence, my integrity. "Believe me, I've been framed."

Jimbo steps in, and without a word he holds his hand out, stopping the advancing thug who is now about a foot away from me. He drops the bottle, and the glass shatters on the floor. I, meanwhile, cry into my palms, a child amongst men, a figure of ridicule. I am a broken figure, and if the thug had used the bottle, I would have deserved it. I am no more a man than a new born baby, a lamb ready to be slaughtered.

Placing a hand upon my shoulder, Jimbo tells me to stand. Suddenly one of the wardens charges forward. He is brandishing a long pole, waving it above his head. The fearful crowd disburses while the maddened warden approaches me. Suddenly I feel a heavy clout between my shoulder, my neck and the side of my head. As I fall I hear Jimbo shouting: "What did you do that for? I almost had him confessing."

A bespectacled man, dressed formally in a black suit, looks down upon me. He removes his glasses and I glance into his eyes, somehow recognizing them—but as I never met him before, I curse my mind. I had been hit. My head aches, and my limbs are in torment as if I've been pushed into a fire, burned and consumed by flames, claws dragged through my skin, welts bleeding, mind spinning. I try to speak but my breath is blocked. I can't utter a word.

"You don't recognize me," he says sadly.

Jimbo is by me and abruptly pulls me to sit upright. I am now sitting on a hard bed, my head in my palms, my muscles still screaming in pain.

"You got into his mind?"

"I tried to, almost there but you know what happened..."

"So the pills never worked," shouts the suited man as he projects a white unmarked packet to the floor. Little white tablets spill out, and instead of making an attempt to pick them up, he crunches them with his heavy boot.

"Coffee," utters a female voice behind. "Good, he's awake. I've got three cups for you."

A huge rotund woman, dressed in tight jeans and a floppy plain navy t-shirt, walks into view. She is pushing a trolley and places it at the corner of the table. Upon this trolley is a massive silver urn, a pint of milk, a bowl of sugar and three mugs. "Give us a call when you need more."

"Thank you," he says. "You can go now." He pulls up a chair and faces me. Jimbo copies his actions while I hear the door close behind me. He rubs his throat. I notice there is a day's stubble upon his chin. There is a pensive look on his face, and even from here I can smell the sweat he produces.

"Four years this has taken, four bloody years and I still can't get into his mind. He still doesn't remember!"

"Keeps saying the same thing, that he is framed."

"Then we just have to start all over again." The suited man starts banging his palm with his right fist clearly frustrated. "I need to get into his mind, no matter how long it takes."

Jimbo stands, his hands resting on his hips. "I don't want to be part of this experiment," he states. "It ain't right, it ain't human."

"Was HE human when he took the child into the woods, tore off her clothes, raped her by pushing his putrid cock into the most private, sensitive place—"

I jump to defend myself. "That ain't right, I never did that. You've got a sick mind, mister." I try to push my right fist into his smug face. Jimbo sees this, restrains me and prevents me from going further.

"...And then he kills her." the suited man concludes.

My head is pounding, my mind pleading, my voice silent, nostrils flaring. I shake my head, saying the same phrase over and over again. "I didn't kill her, I didn't...I didn't...I'm innocent. Can't you understand that?"

What crime should I have committed? In my mind I hear a child's laughter, her plaintive voice calling out to me in a taunting manner; she is calling me names. I can't remember rightly what names I was called, but her jeering voice grated right through me. But that never warranted me to kill her. In that respect I had been framed.

The man in the suit is a likely suspect, and as Jimbo says, he is using me as an experiment. It's inhuman. I am their guinea pig, and they're laughing, pointing at me, making a mockery of me. Again, in my defense, using all the power I can muster, I break free from Jimbo. I jump up, and, clenching my bare fists I aim for my antagonizer. He jumps out of the way, and thinking quickly, Jimbo grabs me from behind and holds me tighter than before.

Jimbo is a weight lifter; his strength supersedes mine. His grip robs me of my breath. I am skinny, and even the blind can see by my physique that I am incapable of killing—yet they believe I had done the hideous crime.

Jimbo continues to hold me. Meanwhile, the suited man stands before me. He pushes a pill into my mouth, but I spit it out. It hits his face, but he is calm. He places his hand on my shoulder and I stop struggling. I feel the tenseness from Jimbo; he doesn't trust me.

"If you want to prove your innocence, take this pill. Help me, to help yourself."

Without me conceding, or trying to defend myself, he tells me to breathe deeply. "That's right, be calm, breathe through the nose, out through the mouth. Good, you're relaxed. Now take this."

The pill is now in my mouth. "Now swallow," he advises. He offers a glass of water. When Jimbo relaxes his grip, I take it, directing it to my lips without drinking it. Meanwhile the pill is pushed under my tongue, I pretend to swallow it, drinking my saliva instead.

There is no way I can fool the suited man. He is now holding a syringe and quickly checks it over.

"I know you haven't taken your medicine. You never do."

How many times have I been through this? How does he know my reaction?

The syringe is heading my way. I start to retaliate. Again Jimbo restrains me and I struggle; I flip my leg back, hitting Jimbo's knee. He doesn't flinch; instead he increases his grip, and again I'm gasping for breath. I am the fly trapped within a spider's web, no matter the battle, there is no hope of freedom. The stinging at the top of my right arm is unbearable. I scream and suddenly go cold, my veins turn to ice.

Instantly I feel I want to sleep. I cannot fight this as my eyes fail to remain open, the world around me fuzzy. The voices peter out, and oblivion takes over my conscious thoughts. The last I hear: "He's asleep, it's time to start over again."

I'm in court. They convict me of murder. I am an innocent man, shaking, unable to stand straight, and I know I am to be incarcerated for the rest of my life. I look down at my trembling hands, unable to believe I'm capable of taking anyone's life. A little girl, a child who was barely ten, was allegedly killed by my very own anger. This can't be true. I shout, or at least my mind is yelling _please believe me I'm innocent_. My lawyer never helps. He looks dumbfounded while I'm taken to the black prison van waiting outside. The flashing from the cameras blind me. Attempting to shield my eyes, I try to lift my hands but they have been handcuffed. I turn my head away, ignoring the jibes and jeers I'm receiving from surrounding people.

The journey to prison is a short one. As the van slips into pot holes and rough terrain, I lose my anchor and fall forward with only my handcuffed hands protecting me at each jolt. I remain silent. I feel I have lost the power and ability to speak. No one listens. Even if I tell the truth they consider me a child murderer.

A stocky warden pulls me from the van and makes me step outside. I blink for a moment before regaining my focus. He has short black hair with a parting at the side, and a small bristling moustache is stuck firmly under his nose and moves like a scrubbing brush as he speaks.

"You come with me," he grunts as he grips my upper arm. He pushes me forward, and if I slip, he tramples over me. Fortunately I keep my balance.

"I know exactly the right cell for you. His name is Jimbo and he hates child murderers like you. You won't stand a chance against him. He'll rape you before he puts the knife to your throat and slits." He draws across his neck.

As I freeze on the spot, I consider my fate. I am to be pulverized. I received a firm boot upon my backside and as he forces me forward, I'm thinking of escape.

The next moment I find myself flying towards a cell door. I collide against it before I heard a voice inside.

"What you got for me, Hitler?"

"I'm not Hitler, I'm Bowler. Child molester, rapist, murderer to the first degree. He's all yours now."

As the door opens, a huge weight lifter grips onto my shirt and drags me into my cell. "Child murderer, huh? I'm teach him. Gimmie him."

Bowler slams the door behind me, and as I hear his footsteps thump down the corridor upon the metallic floor, I look up. Jimbo is in a sleeveless vest, and the odor of sweat hits my nostrils. He has been training.

I swear I hear him almost whispering to himself: _here we go again_ before turning towards me. He throws me onto the lower bunk. He looks straight into my eyes.

"You gotta confession to make?"

My lips quiver: "Yes, I am innocent." I am now crying into my hands. "No one ever believes me, but I'm innocent and it's not a matter of self denial. I have been framed, believe me."

I watch Jimbo face a calendar. It is now December. There is a Christmas scene above a set of marked off dates. Holding a pen in his hand, he walks towards it. He starts to write. "If you say you are innocent, I believe you. You have been through this many times and you repeat your claim. No matter what we give you, we can never really find what goes on in your mind."

I am confused. "What you mean? You know me from old, but I haven't met you before."

"But yet you claim your innocence. Perhaps you _were_ framed." He pours water into a cup. "Drink this, it'll make you feel better."

Trusting him to believe me, I take the cup and thirstily drink the tepid water, alleviating the harsh nagging pain in my throat. My eyes begin to feel heavy, my head starts to spin. I know immediately he has drugged the water.

"That's right my friend, sleep," he places his hand on my shoulder. "Perhaps in dreams you will hear her cry, you will feel her soft skin beneath your fingers. In dreams you will remember what you've done."

As I close my eyes I see his leering face, his grinning gnashing teeth, then I hear my mind shrieking, but the scream comes from a distant place. This time it is a man's scream, but it's not my voice, this sounds more like Jimbo's harsh screech. I escape, I begin to feel free and as I run through the forest, I stop by a river for a moment to rest.

Beneath my fingers I search for soft skin and find it. Is this a little girl I like to stroke? No, this neck is wider, the skin is tough, the throat protrudes. As I feel the stubble beneath my fingers and detect his sweat, I am stroking a man.

I hear him cough, I hear him wheeze, as I deeply insert my fingers into his throat. I hear his final gasp, and I feel fulfilled. Contentedly I lay my head upon the ground next to his now cooling body, and with a smile upon my lips, I sleep.
The Hourglass

by

Mary Ann Bernal

Flair opened her eyes and glanced upon the sand filtering through the hourglass as her life ebbed away. She was grateful for the moonbeams that filtered through the solitary window as she pondered her fate in the darkened chamber while watching the crystalline particles trickling, ever so slowly, through the slender neck into the lower chamber. Her breathing was raspy, her body racked with pain as the contagion spread throughout the mortal vessel that held her soul. She knew in her heart there would be no escape and Death would claim her for himself, yet she had no reservations about honoring the terms of her covenant with the feared reaper because Death had kept his word and Brice thrived.

***

Gentle sea breezes embraced the shoreline and rippling waves broke softly upon the beach, leaving frothy bubbles in their wake. Seagulls foraged for food in the shallow waters near the massive cliffs, their squawking sounds mingling with the melodious tunes of the rolling breakers against the jagged rocks.

Flair ran barefoot along the water's edge as she made her way towards the hidden cove where Brice waited, but she occasionally looked over her shoulder since she feared she might have been followed. She hummed her favorite songs as the wind whipped through her hair while the sea mist embraced her face and sea salt lingered on her lips. She laughed when she noticed two birds fighting over a dead fish that had washed upon the shore as she skirted the jagged coastline and headed towards the concealed inlet where she found Brice basking in the sunlight, his face hidden from her view.

Flair stopped abruptly when she noticed that Brice appeared to be asleep. She quietly sat beside him, not wishing to disturb his rest as she watched the storm clouds gathering over the horizon. Her thoughts returned to the day when she had taken shelter in a nearby cave, and nature had unleashed its fury and rain pummeled the earth. She remembered the faint sound of trickling water and the soft cries of disturbed creatures scurrying about the darkened cavern as she ventured deeper into the cave, trying to find the source of the translucent stream of light that illuminated the earthen walls. She shivered and her hands became sweaty when her mind's eye saw, once again, the hourglass nestled amongst the serrated rocks, its whitened crystals glowing in the darkness, the sparkling grains falling at a snail's pace through the narrow neck, the lower chamber floor scarcely covered by the remnants of time.

Flair could still envision her shaking hand as she tried to touch the ornately-carved wood, and she relived her mounting fear when she recalled how his shadow had shrouded her entire being as he wrapped her against his ice-cold essence before pulling her towards him. She had stood still while beads of sweat dripped down her face and a cold chill ran up her spine, but his voice had been soothing when he whispered comforting words into her ear as his fingers caressed her neck before he had encased her with his cloak. It was while she had been in this unwanted embrace that everything became clear. The hourglass held her life in its glass enclosure, each fine particle representing a period of time—whether seconds or years, she did not know.

Flair had tried to escape his firm hold, but Death would not set her free, showing her instead snippets of a life yet lived and promises of a love to be embraced. He had spoken ever so quietly, his breath a cool mist that enveloped her very essence, his words enticing her soul as visions of Brice's bloodied corpse passed before her. Within that brief moment, she understood why, and she knew what Death expected of her. Yes, she had willingly agreed to remain with Death once the grains of sand filled the lower chamber, but only if Brice survived the battle.

Flair's thoughts returned once again to the present as Brice stirred. The scars were no longer noticeable upon his rugged face, but he had yet to regain sight in his left eye. The surgeons had been baffled by his miraculous recovery, but his brothers-in-arms were well aware of the number of times Brice had cheated Death and believed his good fortune was the will of the gods. She smiled when he grasped her hand, content to be in his presence, but uncertain as to how to tell him the truth.

Flair and Brice silently watched the ribbon lightning flashing within the darkened clouds as roaring thunder shook the earth. The once calm sea was threatening as large waves crashed against the cliffs and encroached upon the sandy beach. Flair grabbed Brice's hand and led him to the very same cave that housed the hourglass of her life, and where Death waited patiently to claim his right.

"We must talk," Flair whispered as she led Brice towards the shining light.

"You tremble," Brice replied when he stopped abruptly and held her tightly in his arms. "Have you been mistreated?"

"No, my dearest," Flair smiled. "I have told my brother that we were married before you were called to serve our King, which is probably the reason why he and his wife plan to return to Athens at first light."

"Praise the gods," Brice grinned. "I am glad the truth is finally known...I grow weary of these secret trysts."

"Do you not find our trysts...romantic?" Flair chided.

"Do not twist my meaning," Brice gently scolded. "But your brother is not the reason you are upset. Am I right?"

Flair held her breath as she glanced about the softly-lit cave. She could see the hourglass protruding from the rocky crevice, and shivered when she noticed Death's hidden shadow upon the cave wall.

"Await me in the tower chamber this evening," Death whispered into Flair's ear before he disappeared into the eerie stillness.

"You are chilled to the bone," Brice said as he pulled his wife towards him. "Are you ill?"

"Come, there is something I must show you," Flair answered as she hurried towards the hourglass.

Brice looked at the oval-shaped hourglass, and was mesmerized by the grains of sand that fell rapidly into the lower chamber. Instinctively, he reached out to touch the beautiful object, but it simply vanished, and loose stones fell upon the crevice.

"That was my life before you," Flair told him tearfully.

"I do not understand," Brice replied as he looked questionably into Flair's frightened eyes.

"I made a covenant with Death...he would claim me as his own," Flair whispered, her voice cracked with emotion. "That is his price for your life."

"When?" Brice asked, unbelieving.

"We have this day, and nothing more," Flair replied.

"I cannot allow this," Brice shouted at Death, whose shadow lingered within the cavern. "Had I but known of the price to cheat your embrace, I would have given you my life willingly. I forbid you to enforce the covenant."

"You dare forbid me?" Death shouted as he made his presence known. "Your place in the realm of the dead awaits you...and your time is near."

"You will let Brice live!" Flair screamed as she pushed Death away from her husband. "If you do not, then I will perish by my own hand!"

Death's sinister laughter echoed throughout the eerily still cave that rocked beneath the thunderous roar of nature's wrath as the tempest raged outside. Flair glared at her nemesis as she removed the dagger on Brice's belt and flashed it before her amused opponent.

"Flair, think what you are doing," Brice said anxiously as he tried to retrieve the blade, but Flair's movements were quick, and she sliced open her arm.

Brice removed his cloak and wrapped it around Flair's copiously bleeding wound as Death roared his displeasure.

"So be it!" Death bellowed. "I will keep my end of the bargain, but so must you. Until tonight then."

"We will face this together," Brice whispered as Death disappeared into the recesses of time. "He will not have you...we shall both perish by our own hand. There is no life without you."

Flair's arm was throbbing as they waited for the storm to abate. She was suddenly sorry that she had been so impulsive since she feared the wound might become infected, and as the day progressed, her fears were proven, and the contagion spread throughout her body.

Brice was worried when he felt Flair's warm flesh as he helped her out of the cave and led her across the wet sand as a gentle rain fell and rippling waves broke softly upon the deserted beach. He was grateful she was able to walk as they approached the sloping hillside, but she lost her strength and fell into his arms just as they reached the walls of the citadel.

"Take me to the tower," Flair whispered. "It is almost time."

Brice carried his precious Flair up the winding stairwell while he prayed to the gods for her safe deliverance. He was grateful they were not seen as he ascended the stairs, but he was out of breath by the time he reached the tower room. He pushed open the door and gently laid Flair upon a bed that he had not expected to find in the solitary room. A cold shiver ran up his spine when he saw the hourglass nestled within the wall, and he became anxious when he noticed how rapidly the crystalline particles were flowing into the lower chamber that would soon be completely filled.

"You must leave," Flair told Brice as he paced the room. "I would not have you witness my betrayal."

"There is no betrayal," Brice replied kindly. "You were tricked because you were coveted."

Brice noticed the moonbeams filtering through the window and was grateful that Death's shadow had yet to appear. He ran quickly to the hourglass and held his breath as he reached for the timepiece. He thanked the gods when it did not vanish as he grasped the ornately-carved pillar and turned the hourglass over. Because the crystalline particles had yet to flow through the slender neck, time stood still, and during this brief respite, Death was rendered powerless.

Suddenly Death's presence shrouded the dimly-lit room as the angered reaper's bony fingers reached for the hourglass, but Brice grabbed the timepiece and tossed it against the stone wall, shattering the glass and scattering the crystalline particles over Flair. She grimaced in pain as she healed, the fine grains seeping into her diseased body.

"I will not be cheated!" Death screamed as Brice held Flair in his protective arms.

"Hades, I call upon you to help us!" Brice shouted while Death's cold breath enveloped the desperate couple.

"Hades! Summon your servant Death who seeks a mortal consort! Free me from his grasp!" Flair cried.

"Only I choose the hour," Death reminded Flair, "and I claim you this night! Hades cannot help you!"

"Why have I been summoned?" A forceful voice shouted as a figure abruptly emerged from a darkened cloud that suddenly filled the room.

Brice and Flair fell to their knees, holding their hands in supplication as they prayed to the god of the Underworld. Death trembled before his lord and master.

"These fools have stopped time," Death said menacingly as he conjured up another hourglass and purposely held the timepiece on its side while he glared at Flair.

"Flair was tricked when she agreed to embrace your servant Death," Brice interrupted. "He threatened to take my life unless she complied with his wishes."

Hades took hold of the hourglass and placed it within the wall, and the crystalline particles flowed once again, ever so slowly, into the lower chamber.

"I am patient and will claim you one day," Death told Flair menacingly as he returned to the Underworld to await punishment for his meddling.

"Your destined time has been returned to you. Use it wisely," Hades bellowed before returning to the realm of the dead.

Flair and Brice held each other in a joyous embrace as the red and orange hues of first light filtered through the window. They openly praised Hades for their deliverance. Flair no longer feared Death because he could never claim her for himself, and she and Brice would be together in the afterlife throughout eternity.

"Brice, the hourglass...it has vanished! Did you notice the lower chamber? How high was the sand? Was the flow slow or fast?" Flair rambled.

"We must live each day to its fullest, my love," Brice replied softly. "Only time can claim tomorrow."

Second Chance

by

Wayne DePriest

Eddie Fallon found the watch in a pawn shop while he was looking for a used CD player. The watch was in a tray with a dozen or so other watches. He didn't know why it caught his eye as he walked past the counter, but it did. It was one of three old-fashioned pocket watches in the tray. There wasn't anything particularly unique about it. It had a silver case that was open to show the plain white face with Roman numerals where the numbers belonged. Maybe that was it. There was a $10 price tag on it. Eddie bought the watch and forgot about the CD player.

When he got back to the apartment at quarter after twelve, he found the note from Sarah on the small kitchen table, held down with an empty glass.

This isn't working.

That was it. But he knew what she meant.

_They_ weren't working.

They hadn't been working for some time now. It wasn't any one thing. Just a lot of _one things_ that added up to a note on a table. Eddie was surprised that it didn't bother him as much as he thought it would. He knew it was coming, had thought about doing it himself. She just beat him to it.

He threw the note in the garbage under the sink, made a cup of instant coffee, and sat at the table to look over his new watch. The case was silver plated, unadorned by any etching on the outside. There were tiny letters and numbers inscribed on the inside of the cover. He dug around in the kitchen junk drawer and found a small magnifying glass. When he trained the glass over the inscription he read:

REVOOD

1846

GENEVA

Eddie never heard of a REVOOD watch before. He went into the small living room and Googled the name on his laptop. There were no hits at all. He checked out half a dozen sites on pocket watches without finding a single reference to a REVOOD watch from Geneva or anyplace else.

Maybe REVOOD wasn't the name of the watch maker. Maybe it was somebody else's name, somebody who got the watch as a gift in 1846. Eddie turned the watch over and over in his hands. For a watch over a hundred sixty years old, it was in remarkably good condition. There didn't seem to be any wear at all to the silver plating. The letters and numbers might have been inscribed just that morning.

The watch read 1:20. Eddie glanced at the clock on the living room wall. 12:46. He tugged gently on the stem of the watch. The stem slid out, hesitated as though caught momentarily on a burr, and then extended another fraction of an inch. He turned the stem so the minute hand spun counterclockwise. Eddie overshot the mark and stopped the minute hand of the watch at 12:15. He pushed in the stem before he could stop himself.

***

When he got back to the apartment at quarter after twelve, he found the note from Sarah on the small kitchen table, held down with an empty glass.

This isn't working.

That was it. But he knew what she meant.

_They_ weren't working.

They hadn't been working for some time now. It wasn't any one thing. Just a lot of _one things_ that added up to a note on a table. Eddie was surprised that it didn't bother him as much as he thought it would. He knew it was coming, had thought about doing it himself. She just beat him to it.

He threw the note in the garbage under the sink, made a cup of instant coffee, and sat at the table to look over his new watch. The case was silver plated, unadorned by any etching on the outside. There were tiny letters and numbers inscribed on the inside of the cover. He dug around in the kitchen junk drawer and found a small magnifying glass. When he trained the glass over the inscription he read:

REVOOD

1846

GENEVA

Eddie never heard of a REVOOD watch before. He went into the small living room and Googled the name on his laptop. There were no hits at all. He checked out half a dozen sites on pocket watches without finding a single reference to a REVOOD watch from Geneva or anyplace else.

Maybe REVOOD wasn't the name of the watch maker. Maybe it was somebody else's name, somebody who got the watch as a gift in 1846. Eddie turned the watch over and over in his hands. For a watch over a hundred sixty years old, it was in remarkably good condition. There didn't seem to be any wear at all to the silver plating. The letters and numbers might have been inscribed just that morning.

The watch read 1:20. Eddie glanced at the clock on the living room wall. 12:46. He tugged gently on the stem of the watch. The stem slid out, hesitated as though caught momentarily on a burr, and then extended another fraction of an inch. He turned the stem so the minute hand spun counterclockwise. Eddie overshot the mark and stopped the minute hand of the watch at 12:15. He pushed in the stem before he could stop himself.

***

When he got back to the apartment at quarter after twelve, he found the note from Sarah on the small kitchen table, held down with an empty glass.

This isn't working.

That was it. But he knew what she meant.

_They_ weren't working.

He shook his head in confusion. There was something...something wrong here. He read the note again. He looked at the glass. Something tugged at him, a weird sense of _déjà vu._ It wasn't that he _thought_ he'd been here before, seen the note before. He _knew_ it. He'd already walked in the door. Already read the note. Already threw it away and made coffee, just like he was doing now. Already looked at the watch, just as he was doing now.

With a certain detachment, he went through the motions of examining the watch and searching for it on the internet, knowing in advance what the results would be. His fingers tugged on the stem of the watch to set the time. He sensed the two distinctive movements, the slight hesitation between them. And stopped himself before he could twist the stem.

Eddie put the watch next to the computer, got up and went into the bedroom. From the shelf in the closet he pulled down a Tony Lama boot box. In it were family photographs, his mother's wedding ring, a lock of his sister's hair—and his father's Timex wristwatch. He carried the watch back to the living room, sat on the couch and pulled on the stem of the old timepiece. It slid out easily and stopped. He pushed the stem in and pulled it out again. No hesitation. Just a smooth movement until the stem was fully extended. He held his breath and spun the stem counter-clockwise past two numbers. When he pushed on the stem he half expected to find himself back in the kitchen. Or maybe searching for REVOOD on his laptop.

But he wasn't. He was still on the couch holding the Timex in his left hand.

Okay. So he wasn't completely batshit crazy.

Eddie retrieved the magnifying glass from the kitchen and spent several minutes examining the pocket watch carefully. Other than the inscription on the inside cover, the watch was unmarked, with just a couple of smudges marring its otherwise pristine surface. That in itself was an oddity. A watch this old should show some signs of wear. Of course, the date didn't mean the watch was that old, that it was actually made in 1846. Anyone could have inscribed any date in the cover at any time. Besides, the age of the thing was less important that what happened.

And what DID happen?

"I had a _Groundhog Day_ moment," he said aloud, thinking of the old Bill Murray comedy. Eddie had 'lived' the same half hour or so at least twice, almost a third time. He wondered how many other times went by before he became away of the repetition. But unlike Bill, Eddie was able to stop the loop on his own by not twisting the stem on the watch.

He picked up the watch and carefully pushed the stem back into the case. He pulled it out again, past that slight hesitation. He thought about it for a moment, said "What the hell," and turned the stem clockwise.

Or tried to.

It wouldn't move.

"Okay. Can't see what's next." He very cautiously turned the stem the other way, past 1:20 and past two of the small lines between the Roman Numerals for 4 and 3. He pushed in the stem.

***

"I had a _Groundhog Day_ moment," he said aloud, thinking of the old Bill Murray comedy. Eddie had 'lived' the same half hour or so at least twice, almost a third time. He wondered how many other times went by before he became away of the repetition. But unlike Bill, Eddie was able to stop the loop on his own by not twisting the stem on the watch.

He picked up the watch and carefully pushed the stem back into the case. Then he pulled it out again, past that slight hesitation. He thought about it for a moment, said "What the hell," and turned the stem clockwise.

Or tried to.

It wouldn't move.

"Okay. Can't see what's next." He very cautiously turned the stem the other way, past 1:20 and past two of the small lines between the Roman Numerals for 4 and 3. This time he didn't push on the stem. Instead, he fiddled with it. He found he could push the stem in part way, to that first little hesitation. Then it allowed him to move the minute hand in either direction without mishap. He reset the watch to match the house clock.

***

Over the next several days Eddie Fallon thought about the possibilities. He had in his possession what could be called a time machine...sort of. It allowed him to relive his past exactly as it happened, not just as a memory smoothed over by the passage of time. The real difference was that he was aware of it; he knew what was going to happen while it was happening. And that meant he could change it.

But didn't changing the past change the future, what he now thought of as the present? Like when he was eleven and decided to ride his bike to the lake where he saw the little kid fall into the water. Eddie pulled the kid out of the lake. Twenty-five years later that kid wrote a best-selling book that was made into a movie that Eddie went to see with two of his friends and met Sarah who broke his CD player, which was why he was at the pawn shop when he found the watch. If he had not ridden to the lake that day...

How many other things led to the watch?

Everything?

If he went back somewhere and did just one little thing different, would it keep him from finding the watch? Would he even know it? Maybe so. He did manage to figure out the time loop created by the watch. Because the loop was small, half an hour or so? If he went back ten years, would there still be a loop, only bigger? Would whatever he changed still bring him to the watch in some way so that he could go back and change whatever it was he changed?

For that matter, was he in some sort of time loop now, one that was so long he couldn't keep track of everything? Is that what _déjà vu_ really was, just being caught in a time loop and sometimes something seems so familiar but you don't know why? Did he already go back and change something? What?

Sarah? The way things ended, that seemed unlikely. Would changing something else lead to that note he'd found? Neither of them seemed overly concerned about the deterioration of whatever it was they shared. Sarah's matter-of-fact note, neither assessing blame nor expressing regret, mirrored his own ambivalence about their time together.

So. Not Sarah.

What then?

He couldn't untangle the possible permutations, the possible repercussions of changing anything in his past.

How do I know what to change?

Something told him that whatever he changed would have to be something very important to him personally, something critical to any future that might result. It was the ultimate test of The Do-Over Principle.

The Do-Over Principle was a silly parlor game that allowed a person to go back and change something they did or didn't do, said or didn't say. Most of the Do-Over moments involve love or money or both. The things that really need the Do-Over are seldom addressed; things that are said or done, words and deeds of a nature that defies one's humanity. There is pain circulating throughout the world as a result: Ineffable pain, unnecessary pain. That is the worst kind of pain. And the transgressor knows immediately, instinctively that this should not have happened, that this was a Do-Over moment. Sadly, there is no such thing as a Do-Over.

Until now.

Eddie was as self-centered as the next guy. He wanted more than what he had. That didn't necessarily translate into money or fame or anything like that. He wasn't even sure he could identify what _more_ meant to him. Like so many in their mid-thirties, Eddie was slightly dissatisfied with his life, but he wasn't exactly sure why, or what to do about it. He just knew that the way his life was going wasn't what he'd thought it would be when he was in high school.

And then he remembered Donny Anderson.

***

When Donny was three or so he was making chalk drawings on the sidewalk in front of his house when a man driving by suffered a heart attack. The car bounced over the curb. The front tire passed over Donny's left leg. Donny's leg was severely damaged. Several operations later, Donny was left with a leg two inches shorter than the other one. It never fully developed. It looked similar to his right leg. It was just smaller, not as muscular, like it belonged on a nine-year-old instead of a teenager. It was something about nerve damage and blood flow and other stuff he told Eddie that Eddie didn't understand at the time. By the time Donny was fifteen, he wore a special shoe with a four inch sole and walked with a swaying motion that allowed his right leg to bear the brunt of the effort.

Donny's withered leg didn't bother Eddie. Donny was his friend. Until the day after Donny's seventeenth birthday.

***

It was two months before Donny's birthday when he asked Eddie to help him get together with Allison Saunders, a girl who recently moved to town. She was bright and pretty and already popular with everyone. And Donny was mad about her.

"C'mon. It's ain't like you have to DO anything. Just ask her."

"You ask her. You're the one who wants to take her to the movie."

"You know she won't go with me." Donny slapped his left leg. "Because of this. But if you're along she could get to know me."

"She's gonna think it's weird if I have someone else along on a date."

"No she won't. Everybody knows we hang out together, that we do everything together."

"But a date?"

"C'mon. We'll just go to the movie and she can sit between us. I'll take it from there."

"It'll never work, Donny."

"Sure it will. She'll get to know me and the leg won't matter."

So Eddie asked Allison, and Allison said yes, and the three of them went to a movie together, and it didn't work. Just like Eddie said.

It might have worked if Allison hadn't fallen for Eddie and Eddie hadn't fallen for Allison. It still might have worked if Eddie just ignored those feelings for Allison and let his best friend have his shot, if he just waited until Allison made her choice clear to Donny.

But Eddie didn't wait.

Within a week Eddie and Allison were considered a couple. Donny tried to accept it, but it wasn't working. He'd get quiet when Eddie and Allison were together anywhere near him. He was better with just Eddie, but not like before Allison came into the picture. Eddie tried to talk to him, but Donny changed the subject. As the weeks passed, Donny got quieter and quieter, found excuses to avoid spending time with Eddie. Eddie didn't know why, but he took Allison to Donny's seventeenth birthday party. It might have been the second stupidest thing Eddie ever did. He did the stupidest the next day.

It was a warm Saturday afternoon in mid-June. Allison left that morning for a weekend away with her parents. Eddie decided to clear the air with Donny and walked the block and a half between their houses. He found Donny polishing the 1975 Buick he got for his birthday.

"Hey, buddy."

"Some buddy you turned out to be."

"Geez, Donny. How long are we gonna be like this? It wasn't like I planned anything. You know I wouldn't do that to you."

"Planned or not, you took my girl."

"She wasn't your girl."

"She could've been."

"You don't know that."

"I don't know it couldn't happen either. You made sure of that."

Eddie could feel the anger rising. He'd tried to explain what happened, even if he didn't quite understand it himself. He didn't plan to fall for Allison. It just happened, like lots of things in life just happen. Donny's refusal to accept it was getting on his nerves.

"You gotta grow up, Donny."

Donny threw the polishing rag on the driveway. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means we ain't little kids anymore. That's what it means. I didn't take some toy away from you. I didn't push you down in the mud."

"Now you're saying I'm acting like a little kid?"

Eddie took a deep breath. "You know what I mean, Donny. I'm just tired of this. We're best friends. I didn't do anything wrong. But you want me to act like I did."

"You took my girl." Donny's tone was petulant.

Eddie's anger and frustration erupted. "She not's your girl! She never was! Get that through your head!"

"She coulda been!" Donny insisted.

"NO! She never wanted a cripple."

The words were out before he could stop them.

"Aw, jeez, Donny. You know I didn't mean that. I was just...."

Donny waved a hand to cut Eddie off. He got in the car and cranked the engine.

"Donny. Listen. I'm sorry. I didn't mean that."

With eyes brimming Donny looked at Eddie. Donny's voice was low, the tone almost monotone, when he said, "That's the way you see me, Eddie. A cripple." He dropped the gear lever into drive and sped away, wrenching the car around the corner half a block away.

An hour later they found Donny's car crumbled against a tree several miles from town. Authorities estimated he was doing more than ninety miles an hour when he left the road. They said he lost control, but Eddie always wondered if maybe Donny was in complete control.

Donny went into a coma. To the best of Eddie's knowledge, Donny never recovered. His parents took him to a special hospital in another state. Eddie lost touch.

Allison and Eddie's relationship didn't survive long after Donny's accident.

***

Now that the one change was firmly fixed in his mind, Eddie Fallon set about planning for it. He had no idea how much changing Donny's life would change his own. Maybe he'd never meet Sarah. Maybe he'd marry Allison and have a bunch of kids. Get some job he could work at for twenty-five years. Maybe Donny would find a girl and get married.

It didn't matter. What did matter was going back and stopping himself from saying those terrible words in anger, words that sent Donny speeding away.

It took Eddie two weeks of winding every chance he got to spin the hands backwards enough to cover nearly twenty years of time. When he was sure it was set to 1:00 PM on that fateful Saturday, he pushed in the stem of the pocket watch.

***

He's walking the block and a half that separates his house from Donny's. He doesn't know quite how he will handle it. He just knows he won't say those words.

Eddie finds Donny polishing the 1975 Buick he got for his birthday.

"Hey, buddy."

"Some buddy you turned out to be."

"Geez, Donny. How long are we gonna be like this? It wasn't like I planned anything. You know I wouldn't do that to you."

"Planned or not, you took my girl."

"She wasn't your girl."

"She could've been."

"You don't know that."

"I don't know it couldn't happen either. You made sure of that."

Eddie could feel the anger rising. He'd tried to explain what happened, even if he didn't quite understand it himself. He didn't plan to fall for Allison. It just happened. Like lots of things in life just happen. Donny's refusal to accept it was getting on his nerves.

"You gotta grow up, Donny."

Donny threw the polishing rag on the driveway. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means we ain't little kids anymore. That's what it means. I didn't take some toy away from you. I didn't push you down in the mud."

"Now you're saying I'm acting like a little kid?"

Eddie took a deep breath. "You know what I mean, Donny. I'm just tired of this. We're best friends. I didn't do anything wrong. But you want me to act like I did."

"You took my girl." Donny's tone was petulant.

Eddie's anger and frustration erupted. "She not's your girl! She never was! Get that through your head!"

"She coulda been!" Donny insisted.

"NO! She never wanted a cripple."

Eddie couldn't believe it! He said it again. How could he say it again?

"Aw, jeez, Donny. You know I didn't mean that. I was just...."

Donny waves a hand to cut Eddie off but Eddie ignores it.

"Donny. Listen. I'm sorry. I didn't mean that."

Donny's face is a mask of sadness as he looks at his friend. "It's all right, Eddie. I got it figured out. She liked you first."

Eddie nods in agreement. "She told me she liked me the first time she saw me in school. She was waiting for me to ask her out."

"Easy for you to say...now." But Donny has a sad smile on his face.

"No, it isn't. It's hard for me to say, because you're my friend. I would never do anything to hurt you."

Donny says sheepishly. "I been a dick, huh."

Eddie laughs. "Yeah. A little bit."

"I was just mad, you know."

"I know. I'da been pissed, too, buddy."

"Shit happens, huh?"

"Yeah. Shit happens." Eddie nods.

"And then you die."

"Not right away, I hope."

Donny throws the buffing cloth at Eddie's chest. "Help me finish shining up The Bitch. Then we'll run over to Emerson and see Paul." Paul was Donny's older brother and the boys' bootlegger. "I could use a beer or three."

"Three's better than one," agrees Eddie.

An hour later they're cruising past the last few buildings of town, headed east on the state highway to Emerson. Once outside the city limits, Donny presses down on the gas pedal.

"You better slow it down, Donny. We don't need a speeding ticket."

"Naw. I like the speed, Eddie. I forgot how good it felt."

"What?"

"You wouldn't understand. But it doesn't matter. I know what I did wrong. I'll fix it this time." Donny pushes harder on the accelerator. The speedometer needle edges up to ninety.

"C'mon, Donny. Slow down." Eddie's voice quavers.

"Can't do it, buddy. Gotta do it up right." There's a smile on Donny's face. "Do it up right," he repeats.

"Do what?"

"We're friends, right? Friends right up to the end. Even a cripple needs a friend. Right?"

"Donny! What the hell are you talking about?"

Donny turns his head and smiles at Eddie. "You wouldn't believe it if I told you. I found this watch, Eddie."

Donny spins the wheel and the car leaps into the other lane. The semi driver lays on the horn and swerves, but it's too little too late.

The Steam Powered Pocket Watch

by

V.R. Christensen

The object pulsed and fluttered in her hand like a frightened bird, then calmed and faltered. She held it tightly to her, as if willing it to take an example of her own steadily beating heart. But this was no languishing animal. It was nothing more than a pocket watch.

"Evelyn," her father said and, with an arthritic finger, he beckoned her to his bedside. "Keep it close," he said, laying a hand on her own—that which held the watch. "It is my one great accomplishment. Besides you." This he added with a weak smile and a twinkle in his rheumy eyes. "If it were to get into the wrong hands–" He coughed, and when next he spoke, his voice was weaker. "Take good care of it. Promise me."

"Of course, Father. I promise."

His eyes closed. He was fading fast, and Evie wasn't ready.

"Father?"

"I can always trust you to do what is right," he said. "To trust who is right. Keep it safe." His hand dropped for a moment to the same spot where she had so recently been holding his prized possession. _Keep it safe?_ Did he mean the watch, or...? She placed her hand to her chest, where a heart-shaped locket lay over her own very real and beating heart.

There was a knock at the door and Mr. Avery, her father's assistant, entered. His long white-blond hair hung in greasy mats about his face. He was a close friend, trusted and loved by her father these many years. Evie, however, could never quite bring herself to admire him the way her father had done.

Her attention was arrested by movement at the doorway. The chimney-sweep had come today and was just finishing up. He stopped a moment to peer inside with impertinent curiosity, but when his gaze met hers, she saw such sorrow and empathy that, once again, she regretted her harsh judgment. Had they known each other, this stranger and her father?

But the opportunity to ask such questions had passed. Her father was gone.

As if to announce the fact, the watch released a sudden and violent burst of steam. She felt the heat of it, then felt it cool, chilling her. Examining the state of her clothes, she found that the outburst had penetrated her many layers of clothing, staining her best linen blouse with black soot.

Mr. Avery, upon seeing the spent frame of his old friend, fell to his knees and sobbed upon the dead man's arm. Evie once again regretted her hard feelings. Perhaps her father's suspicious nature had rubbed off on her. But he had never suspected this man. He had held him close. It had been suggested by her father, and by Mr. Avery himself, that Evie should, too. Did her father wish for her to marry him? He certainly had not wished for her to be left alone. If only she could have his counsel now!

She looked at the watch, its pulse faint. There was a whir, and then a fluttering about the glass, like an image that wanted to appear, but was not quite sure how. Certainly it was her imagination, but she thought she had seen it. Words, transparent like a ghost: _GONE_ and then, half a second later: _HOME_.

"Miss Evelyn?" Mr. Avery said, and approached her.

He stopped as she stood and held the watch close once more, concealing it. Mr. Avery had helped design the thing. To think of hiding it from him...

"My dear," he said, and placed his hand on hers as it held the watch.

"It has stopped," she said, and held it tighter.

"Yes, of course it has. Might I see it?"

She did not answer.

"You do not trust me?" he asked with an ingratiating smile that made her feel both sorry and a little frightened.

"I want to keep it near. It's all I have of him now."

"Yes, of course, my dear. How insensitive of me."

Once more she regretted her coldness, but her heart was too heavy for apologies. "If you'll excuse me, I think I would like to be alone now."

She could feel his eyes following her as she turned from the room. She felt suddenly chilled–but then she had a right to be, for the timepiece had soaked her quite through.

* * *

Harrison Cogg was laid to rest. Evie returned home from the funeral observing no one and nothing until Mr. Avery handed her down from the cab. He expressed his wish to see her safely to her apartment, but she declined.

She was aroused again from her grief-induced stupor when the doorman held the door for her. "My deepest sympathies, Miss Cogg," he said.

It touched her that her father's passing had affected so many. He was very handsome, the doorman. Was he new? She thought not, dismissed the notion that he looked vaguely familiar, and moved on.

Upon returning to her apartment, she removed the watch from her pocket and placed it on a stand on the mantel. She retired very early, but found, tired as she was, that she could not rest. From her bed she observed the ruined blouse. What an inconvenient gadget that watch was if it marked, marred, and nearly injured every person who dared to wear it. It was large, too, and heavy. Too heavy to be conveniently worn. What use, after all, was a steam-powered pocket watch? Were gears and springs not sufficient? Her father had clearly thought not. She closed her eyes upon the descending despair, succumbing to the tears that lulled her into a dreamless sleep.

* * *

The sound of faint whistling awoke her. It was not the first time she had heard it. It waked her before, on previous mornings. Each, in fact, since her father's death four days ago. Was it a bird stuck in the chimney? No, it was more sonorous than that, more melodious and considered. The whistle came once more. She examined her father's watch suspiciously, then lifted it and held it to her ear. Silence. She examined the face. Nothing. In her grief, desiring some last message from her father, she had merely imagined those ghostly words: _GONE HOME_.

Just as she was imagining the whistling now. She replaced the watch on the mantelpiece and dressed for the day in soot-black mourning.

* * *

Evie cleared a spot on the parlor mantel for the timepiece. The clocks had remained stopped, but if she was to properly care for the one left her, she must have it running again. Only she didn't know how to go about it. She opened the back and studied its workings. Besides its bulky size, it appeared a very commonplace watch—but nestled in amongst the wheels and gears lay another compartment. This required a key, but she did not have it. What a mystery this watch was becoming! She closed the compartment again and turned it over to look at the face. Light from the uncovered window glared across the glass. But...wait! Was that something? One word: _DAN_? Then another. _GER_. And it was gone. A figment of her imagination? Of course it was. Grief could play such tricks upon one's mind!

There was a knock at the door. She hung the watch up and crossed the room. It was impossible that she should receive anyone. She was not fit for it. If only there was someone to turn her uninvited guests away.

She opened the door to find Mr. Avery on the other side. "Ah, my _dear_ Miss Evelyn," he said, presenting a bouquet of black tulips. "How are you getting on?"

Reluctantly she took them. "Forgive me, Mr. Avery. I'm afraid I'm not quite up to receiving."

"I'm hardly just anyone, am I Miss Evie? You needn't be afraid of what people will think. It is quite common knowledge that you and I are—"

"I assure you, Mr. Avery, I do not care what people think, but I am not inclined to receive anyone just now."

"Ah, yes. I see," he said and looked truly disappointed. She was sorry for it. At least she felt she should be sorry.

"Perhaps another time, then," he said. "In a day or two, perhaps?"

She could not answer him. She would not give him any encouragement, but as he turned from her, she thought to ask him a question. "By chance, Mr. Avery, have you the key? For the watch's inner compartment. I haven't got it. Might you?"

He appeared puzzled. "Are you quite certain you don't have it?"

"Why should I have the key if my father never gave it to me?"

"Do you have the pendant?"

"Of course I do, but what has that to do with anything?"

"You have the pendant, but not the key?" His gaze shifted from her to the room behind her, searching it, it seemed. But for what? Or whom?

"There is no key, Mr. Avery. What riddles are these?"

"Ah, there it is!" he said without taking his eyes off the object in question. The watch. "I wonder if it would not be more secure in the shop's safe? I might return it there myself—save you the trouble, you know. I wouldn't mind."

If there was a safe to protect it, then why had her father insisted she keep it? She was growing more confused every second.

Mr. Avery, still peering within the room, suddenly looked a little alarmed. "Is someone here?" he asked her.

"No, Mr. Avery," she said. "I'm quite alone." She instantly regretted the answer, regretted more that it was the truth.

"Are you certain? I could have sworn I heard–" And he looked once more within, searching now all about the empty parlor. He attempted to cross the threshold, but she stood fast.

"There is no one here, Mr. Avery."

"Then who is that whistling?"

It was only then she heard it too. It somehow offered her comfort, made her feel safe. But there was a look of fear in Mr. Avery's eyes.

"I do not like the idea of your being here all alone," he said now. "I wish you would consider my—"

"I'm quite content by myself. At least for the time being. Good day to you, sir."

"The watch," he said, blocking the door with his outstretched hand. "Won't you let me take it? Let me clean it and get it started again. I could bring it back tomorrow. It cannot be allowed to sit idle. And you know how valuable it is. There are many who would contrive to take it from you. You cannot be too careful. And you are so very vulnerable now."

She found this pronouncement, true as it was, offensive. "I am quite content to keep it at home, if you don't mind, Mr. Avery. Now I'll wish you good day." And with that, she shut the door, grateful to at last be rid of him, but conscious now, more than ever, of the awkwardness of her position. And aware that she and her father's watch were not quite safe on their own.

Yet the idea of remaining in these lonely rooms was a most unpleasant one. She dared not walk out alone. No doubt Avery would see her, wish to join her. He was always watching, always nearby. Still, she did long for a little air and open space, rare as it was in the fog and soot-laden city. It was Rare to find, but not impossible.

* * *

Upon gaining the rooftop, Evie took a deep breath. On the opposite side of the stairwell, beyond the old caretaker's hut, there had once been a garden, many years ago when her mother had wanted a little piece of earth to tend. It was here still, just as Evie remembered it. But how was that possible? Perhaps she was dreaming, for just now it seemed time had not moved at all. All was good and right with the world. She was not alone, but loved and protected still.

"I've kept it for you."

She spun on her heel to face the stranger. No, not quite a stranger. She had seen him before, but where?

"Forgive me," he said, and removed his hat. A grey tweed baker boy. "Brendon Pierce," he said. "And you are Miss Evelyn Cogg."

"How do you know—"

"Your father was a dear friend. You have my deepest sympathies. He was a wonderful, brilliant man. And the world is left a little darker without his brightness to shine in it. I know I shall miss him terribly."

It was apparently true, for there was a great deal of emotion in his face. She turned from him, granting them both a moment to regain their composure, and examined once more the garden in all its beauty, which stood in sharpest contrast to the smoke and dismal grey all about her.

"Is this your work?" she asked of him.

"The garden? Oh, yes. Well, a part of it, at any rate. Your father thought you might one day like to enjoy it again."

"And you've kept it all this time?"

"I have learned to be patient." He smiled, and his dark eyes sparkled. "Every effort has its reward," he said now. "We must sometimes wait a long time for it, but it usually proves to be worth it."

"I hope your reward proves to be so."

"If you are pleased, then it already has."

She did not know what to say and felt, instinctively, that there was no need to say anything.

"My father hired you?"

"Yes," he answered. "Many years ago, in fact. At first it was only to run errands and keep the shop clean, but my responsibilities have grown far greater over time."

"And now?"

"Well, I keep the whole building, really. When a pipe bursts, I fix it. When the chimneys need cleaning, I sweep them."

"When a door needs opening?" she asked him.

"I open it."

"You make me a little frightened now. Do you mean to tell me you have been near me my whole life, and I'm only now realizing it?"

"He asked me to watch out for you." he answered. "You had a visitor today."

"Have you been watching out for me, Mr. Pierce, or spying?"

"Mr. Avery called. You did not give him what he came for."

"And what was that?"

He approached her, and reaching into her cloak pocket, removed the watch.

"Don't do that. Don't take it. It's—"

"I know what it is," he said very calmly. "And whose."

She watched helplessly as he examined it.

"Avery wished to return it to the shop," he said at last.

"Yes, but I wouldn't let him. Of course he may spend all the time he likes in the shop, as my father left it to him, but the watch is mine, and I mean to keep it near me. If you wouldn't mind?" She held her hand out for it.

"Avery did not inherit the shop. Your father left it to me."

"You?"

"And the building, too," he said without looking at her. He took a rag from his pocket, with which he began to remove the tarnish that had accumulated on the watch in the short time since it had last run. "It must be started again. Do you mind?"

"I don't know how—"

"Come," he said, and entered his little rooftop cabin. She hung back at the doorway and watched him as he stoked the fire. He turned several dials and examined them, one by one, as he monitored the pressure gauges. The furnace was very small for how warm the room was, and the door open, but it was clearly not for heating his own rooms alone, for the number of dials and switches indicated it had some more complex purpose. Finished with this, he leaned against a nearby table and opened the back of the watch.

"You'll need a key," she said. "I haven't got it."

He smiled, but his gaze remained on the watch. "When you were eight," he said, "your father gave you something. Something he asked you to wear always."

She raised her hand to her chest, where, beneath her blouse, rested a heart-shaped locket. "Do you want it?" she said, and unclasped it from her neck.

He didn't answer, but removed something from the watch fob attached to the buttonhole of his waistcoat. He held it aloft and she saw that it was a key. A key small enough to open the inner compartment of the watch, or the locket she wore around her neck. She held the pendant tightly in her fisted hand.

He unlocked the watch's inner chamber. Taking a pair of small tongs, he removed the smallest of coals from the furnace and inserted it into the chamber, then closed and locked the door again. Whistling, he wound the watch, assessing the mounting pressure, and when at last it began to tick with regularity, he set the time.

"It was you I heard whistling," she said.

He smiled and whistled some more.

"You frightened Avery away, you know."

His smile was so broad now that he could no longer form his lips to whistle. He laughed instead.

"You _have_ been watching over me."

He answered with a coy look.

"Have I need to fear Mr. Avery?"

" _Do_ you fear him?"

"Father trusted him."

"He kept him near; it's not the same thing."

"I don't understand."

"Your father was a great believer in the axiom: _keep your friends close and your enemies closer_. It served him well. It's possibly selfish of me, but I hope you will not be tempted to follow the same advice. I know he has made you an offer of marriage."

She felt strangely touched by this sentiment, jealous as it seemed. "What does Avery want of me?"

His look bore the answer but he said nothing. She already knew.

"The watch?"

"The watch."

"But truly, I do not understand. It is large."

"For a watch."

"It is heavy."

"For a watch."

"It steams and soots and ruins one's clothes."

"If one were to wear it. Which I wouldn't suggest, personally."

"What else is one to do with a watch?"

He brought it to her and placed it in her hand, which he then supported in his own. "The genius of your father's invention, Miss Cogg, is not that he made a watch. It's that he invented a steam furnace so small it could fit inside a timepiece, and so powerful it could run a small train. This furnace you see in my humble cottage heats not my hut alone, but the entire building. It was your father's design, and I've developed it for greater—that is, larger—applications. But while my furnace is small, this is far smaller, and far more powerful. Yet that isn't the only secret it keeps. Perhaps you have discovered the other for yourself?"

She only blinked in answer, which she knew was no answer at all. Unless he spoke the words himself, she would not confess to having seen messages written on the face of a watch. She would not betray what she still believed were the weaknesses of her own imagination. Mercifully, he did not require her to do it.

"And what is your interest in all of this?" she asked, turning the conversation back to its chief point.

"Your father left me his shop, and the building that I might keep it safe, and to assure him that you would always have a home. It is a great honor—and a great responsibility."

"Not a burden?"

"Never a burden. It might even be a blessing—one day. But I daren't ask for more than I've been given already."

"Is it the watch you want, then?"

He shook his head and approached her once more. He closed her hand around the watch and replaced it in her pocket, but took her other hand in his and, gently prying her fingers open, took the pendant from her hand.

"Is that all?" she asked in surprise.

"If I were very bold," he said, "I might presume to ask for the real thing."

And yet he _was_ bold to answer so. But she had asked the question, and he had answered it honestly. What could she say in return? She only had one objection. "You have known me longer than I have known you, I'm afraid."

"I confess it counts against me at present."

She didn't know what to say to this. He relieved her from the necessity. "As I said, I have learned to be patient."

And so he must have, for it seemed he'd been her truest friend these many years, watching her, watching over her, and never making himself known.

"At any rate," he said, interrupting her thoughts, "we must deal with Avery first."

"Is he really such a danger as that?" The word struck a chord. She had seen it not half an hour before. _DANGER_.

"Does he know you've gone out?"

"I did not tell him I meant to, but—"

"He knows."

"How can you be so sure?" she asked him, yet knew, somehow, that he was right.

With a hand on her arm, he guided her to a nearby chimney stack, where they stood a moment in silence. She had just made up her mind to ask him what they were doing there when she heard the noise. There was a rustling and a crashing sound, like a table overturned, like someone rifling through another's belongings.

"Where does this chimney lead?" she asked him.

Mr. Pierce answered with a sing-song whistle, like the one she had lately come to know so well. The chimney fell suddenly silent.

"Is it?"

"Avery."

"In my—"

Mr. Pierce nodded.

"He is looking for the watch?"

He nodded again.

"What do we do?"

As if in answer to the question, Mr. Pierce mounted the chimney stack and, swinging both legs over the edge of it, proceeded to climb inside.

"What are you doing?"

"It's occurred to me that perhaps this chimney isn't quite as clean as it ought to be." And then he was gone.

There followed only the sound of scraping and sliding as Mr. Pierce made his way down. Then a crunch and crash as he hit the bottom and as both men met in her sitting room. She winced upon hearing the smacking of fists on flesh, a grunt. A cry of pain. Then silence again.

* * *

Evie waited for Mr. Pierce's return, but he did not come. When it grew dark and cold, she found refuge in his lonely hut, snug by the glowing furnace that kept his rooms so warm. She did not want to leave, though his was a far humbler situation than she was accustomed to. She could accustom herself to humility; to loneliness, she could not.

But she could not remain here forever. In time she began to doze. She was startled awake by the gentle vibration of the watch in her pocket. She took it out and examined it, and written, quite plainly across the clock's face, were the words: _GO HOME_.

Was it safe, then? She was afraid of what she might find: Mr. Avery dead, or perhaps both. Yet she doubted this. Somehow she was certain it was safe.

She returned downstairs, unlocked her door and stepped inside. It was as if nothing at all had happened here, and she began to wonder, once again, if she had not imagined it all. The messages, Mr. Pierce, everything.

* * *

Several days passed and she heard nothing from Mr. Pierce. The hours, measured on her father's pocket watch, passed with agonizing slowness. She listened for his whistle but never heard it. Waited for his knock; it never came.

She was lying upon the sofa one morning, feeling very alone and sorry for herself, when the watch whirred once more to life. Startled, she picked it up.

GO HOME

But the message confused her, for it was the same she had seen that night in Mr. Pierce's cottage. She was certain now she had not imagined it, but was it possible the watch did not work? Had she allowed it to wind down, as it were, neglecting it in Mr. Pierce's absence? He had gotten it running again, but he had not told her how to maintain it.

She heard the whistle, then. Not from the chimney in the parlor, nor the door either. She searched the rooms for the source and could find none. Upon returning to the parlor, however, she discovered him standing near the fireplace, dusting himself off.

"How did you–?" she asked him, then looked to the fireplace. "Not–?"

"It isn't the best way, granted, but I didn't want to startle you by the door. I trust you've had no other visitors?"

"Jealous?"

"Mildly. But I ask more out of concern."

"No one. Avery has been dealt with?"

"Satisfactorily, I assure you," he said and dusted his hands off on one another, though he had no soot upon his person. He was beautifully groomed, in fact, and his clothes much finer than any she had seen him in before. "Are you ready?" he asked now.

"Ready? For what?"

"Did you not get the message?"

Now she truly was confused.

"Ah," he said, and picked a hat, a stovepipe, up from the table. His, presumably. Had he placed it there when he entered? He held it in his hand, turning it as he examined it. "It seems I've gotten ahead of myself."

"I think you have, rather."

He removed something from his pocket, applied the key which hung at the end of his fob, and placed the object in her hand. It was her locket, and, for the first time in her life, it was opened. On either side of the heart had been affixed photographs. One of her. One of him.

"But how–?"

"Evelyn Pierce has such an elegant ring to it, don't you think?"

"Mr. Pierce, forgive me for saying so, but I am horribly confused."

"It was your father's wish, and it is mine as well. I know I said I daren't ask for more than I've been given already, but am I wrong in imagining that I might, after all, have the honor of claiming your heart?"

She was speechless. She wanted to say yes, to shout it in fact, but being the logical creature she was, she did not feel it quite wise to accept the proposal of a man she had known no longer than a fortnight. He had known her much longer, however. Much, much longer.

"The watch," she said at last, "has it revealed all its secrets? It doesn't, I suppose, have the ability to turn back time?"

"What is it you wish you had done differently?" he asked her patiently. "What would you ask, and of whom?"

"I would go back and pay attention to all the times I might have noticed you in my life."

"You weren't meant to. It was not the plan."

"Well, then, I would ask my father how I should answer you."

"He told you to trust yourself."

"I don't."

"You want a message, do you?"

"I do."

"And you haven't gotten it already?"

She shook her head.

He looked at her for a long moment. She felt the weight of his gaze, his frustration, his patience and impatience. At last he sighed and took up the watch. He opened it, examined the face and smiled.

"Here," he said, and handed it to her.

She looked at the face. The words were there, plain as day. But it was no answer. "It says GO HOME, just as it did before."

_"_ And nothing else?"

Puzzled, she looked at him, then turned back to the watch. GO HOME, it said again. Frustrated she closed her eyes. But when she opened them again, there was more to be read. GO HOME, EVELYN PIERCE. BE HAPPY.

She looked up at him with eyes wide.

"Your father speaks to you, has been speaking to you. There is no going back to what might have been. There is nothing to be accomplished in that, only in moving forward do we become."

She nodded again and took his hand.

"Time is not a measuring stick," he now said, "which starts at one mark and ends at another. Time is a thread that works itself through the warp and weft of our lives and weaves us together. Are you prepared to allow that your past is done, recorded in the thread of your memories, and there for you to remember always, but that your future, all its sorrows and joys, all its disappointments and victories, will be woven for you by the man who stands before you now?"

"Yes," she answered.

"Will you marry me, Miss Cogg?"

"May I ask one more question?"

"If you must," he said with a playful smile.

"Home?"

"Ah, yes. Well, as I said, I inherited the building. You have lived your maidenhood on one side. Will you not agree to spend the rest of your life on the other, in rooms very like these, but, I assure you, with every comfort you have so far lived without. Will you, then?"

What more was there to say? Two words only. "I will."

He slipped an arm around her waist and held her to him. She could feel his heart beating as he kissed her, could feel the ticking and whirring of the steam-powered pocket watch. And when it released a great burst of steam that ought, perhaps, to have cooled their interlude...well... neither took any notice.

Time Machine Soup

by

MJ Heiser

Five years before she tasted Time Machine soup, Margit Cooper got rid of the mirrors in her apartment. She didn't like seeing her reflection in them. The woman who looked back at her from them was an old, saggy-skinned hag, round in all the wrong places and saggy in the places that were supposed to be round. The worst thing about the mirrors, however, wasn't the fact that they showed her an old lady. She'd seen old ladies before, of course, and they didn't bother her. What bothered her was that she could still see a sad echo of the stunning beauty she had been, and the changes time had made to that once-lovely face disgusted her.

Margit's shame over her lost luster wasn't a private condition; rather, it could be said that her shame forced her to make her life far more private. She changed jobs until she was able to work from home. She didn't like to shop at the mall anymore, so resorted to getting her wardrobe of hospital scrubs and baggy tee shirts from online stores. She didn't have even one friend left of the dozens of friends she used to entertain constantly.

On those rare occasions she found it impossible to conduct her life without being in society, Margit would see one of those old friends on the street. Those were her bad days. The friends she still recognized hadn't lost their looks the way Margit had; they still walked with a straight back and a slim waist, the signs of their affluence dripping from their limbs in the form of expensive jewelry, designer clothing, and expensive handbags. Margit thought back to the way she once looked – just as regal and tall, like a queen draped in finery and the easy privilege of beauty. It was on a bad day like one of these that she came home to remove her mirrors from the walls. Hurling the mirrors into the dumpster behind her apartment building gave her a horrible, satisfied sense of absolution. The ugly old hag in the mirrors didn't exist anymore, because the mirrors didn't exist anymore. Problem solved.

The story of Time Machine Soup begins the day Margit ran out of groceries, with no time to spare. She normally got her groceries delivered, but there was no time for it; she was finally saving up for a liposuction, and rush delivery fees were out of the question. Margit gave the idea of going out some thought. She feared having another bad day; she had no mirrors left to destroy, and she didn't want to get out the scissors and start hacking the lovely clothes she'd worn in her past to shreds—after all, she may be able to wear them again if the liposuction did the job she wanted. So, to make sure she didn't have one of her bad days, she decided to make her grocery store run at 2 in the morning on Wednesday.

The trip to the store was uneventful. The parking lot was empty. The whole situation was so balefully lonely that Margit may have actually enjoyed herself if she wasn't so completely weary. She just wanted to get her things and get home.

She began to find that her plan came with more complications than just her fatigue. The deli counter wasn't open, so she wasn't able to order the customary three quarters of a pound of peppered turkey breast for a week of lunch sandwiches. The fish counter was closed, so she had to resort to prepackaged shrimp, and there was no telling how long those had been sitting out. The bakery was likewise unmanned, so her desire to have a fresh loaf of sourdough run through the slicing machine was out of the question.

Margit was now tired and frustrated. It was in this mood that she encountered the strange man at the end of the bread aisle.

"Good evening, madam," the character in the service apron and stove pipe hat called merrily to her as she put her loaf of inferior sourdough in the basket.

She swallowed her cry of surprise, then latched on to an idea. "Can you help me in the bakery?" she asked.

"Ah, alas, no," he said, putting his hand dramatically to his chest in an effort to convey his chagrin. "I do not work for this store. I work instead for the lady who makes this fine soup." He gestured to the table he stood behind. On the table was a very old-fashioned and tiny cauldron. Her eyes told her that a miniature fire crackled under that cauldron, but surely that was just some sort of technological illusion. Even so, she drew closer to the cauldron. It was in this moment she caught her first whiff of the soup.

Oh, that soup. There was nothing artificial or compromised about it. Everything in that soup was everything that Margit liked about soup; the ingredients had obviously been fresh, and the soup couldn't have been done longer than a few minutes. It reminded her of some of the favorite restaurants she frequented when she was a fashionable young beauty. No, actually—it reminded her of the soups she enjoyed when her mother made her lunch in her very earliest memories. She would watch her mother cut the potatoes and onions and carrots. She would hear her mother singing to her as she measured that wonderful broth concoction by the ladleful into bowls that they shared in the early afternoon sunlight that streamed through the hand-laced kitchen curtains.

"What is that?" Margit asked now, drawing ever closer to the tiny cauldron on the tiny fire.

"Tis but a small sampling of Hazel's Homemade," the strange theatrical gentleman said with a small bow. "Would you like a taste?"

"I certainly would!" Margit said. In the background of her thoughts, she hoped that her shopping trip was saved; peppered turkey and shrimp be damned, she would buy two dozen cans of this soup and have it for lunch and dinner for two weeks. Forever. Until she got sick of it. And she wasn't sure that could even happen.

In the foreground of her mind, though, was nothing but the driving need to have that soup and recapture for just a moment the feeling of being young and happy, completely carefree. If the soup could give her that, she could forget for just that moment her bad days and her resentment—and the value of that was beyond price.

With the easy grace of a practiced magician, the man with the stove pipe hat took a tiny ladle and poured some of the soup in the cauldron into a tiny crockery bowl. Margit's eyes glazed over, and she thought she glimpsed that golden sunlight of her youth through the flow of amber liquid. He handed her the cup. "What is your name, dearie?" he asked her.

"Margit," she answered. Before she tilted the tiny bowl to her mouth, she asked, "What's it called?"

"Time Machine Soup," he answered.

She didn't think to ask why it would be called that. She should have. As soon as she gulped down that vegetable-filled broth, Margit Connor grew younger. This was not in the spiritual sense. Her body dimensions changed; she lost weight, her face lost its pockets of age and abuse, her hair grew longer and more lustrous, and her frame shifted until, just for a moment, she was again that beautiful girl she had been during the happiest years of her life. But the time machine did not stop there. Margit was aware only of the golden glow of that soup, but she continued to grow younger, smaller, and simpler until it was not a woman standing before the sample table, but a tiny little girl.

"Margit," the man said, his voice growing silky and a shade darker. "Did you like the soup?"

"Oh, did I!" she answered brightly, her eyes wide open. It was Margit's last happy moment. Immediately she became troubled, and started to look around this strange store for her mother. "Mommy?" she called out.

The man grabbed her by the arm. "None of that, child," he said, and his voice was the rough and soulless voice of a raven. "None of that at all, if you know what's good for you." Once again he moved his magic hand and the table, cauldron, fire, and cups disappeared. He leaned down over a very frightened Margit Connor and said, "You're going to make Hazel a very fine dinner, do you know that, Margit? A very fine dinner indeed."

With another flourish, he and Margit were gone as if they'd never been there.

Margit's car was found in the parking lot three days later. Surveillance tapes–surely not doctored in any way–only revealed that she entered the store at two in the morning on Wednesday, then walked out again 35 minutes later, no groceries in her arms and a strange glazed expression on her face. Where she went when she left is anyone's guess, but there was no more Margit, ever again.

From The Black

by

Bill Jones Jr.

Her ship sailed long ago.

That's what I remind myself as I squint past the moon into a starless sky. I pull my pea coat tighter, aware, in some vague sense, that it's not the night air that chills me. Though it has been months since her departure, I can smell the perfume of her everywhere. Every so often, I find an abnormally long strand of hair in the shower. On most days, I resist the urge to save them. This is not one of those days. I keep in it a jar... a big jar full of nothing, according to my shrink. Screw her, says me.

Wait, did I say months? That's not right. I meant millennia, eons... or maybe just since July. I still get confused.

I am a scientist by vocation. To be honest, I'm one by avocation too. I have always felt secure in the comfort of facts; I've always wrapped myself in a blanket of logic. It doesn't exactly keep the chill off at night, but it hurts a hell of a lot less than dreams or faith. I never did so good with faith. The Scientific Method is my Shepherd, I shall not want. It maketh me to lie down my silly hypotheses. It restoreth my sanity. It leadeth me past shrill derision. Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Apostates, I shall fear no evil.

Their scorn no longer fazes me.

I've had to shield myself against the others' ridicule. Once in a while, I can even protect myself from my own. They call me Dargesh, though I barely recognize the name. Many other appellations run through my mind, most given me by her. Until recently, I was lead researcher for the DARk MAtter II Deep Space Receiver and Autonomous Laboratory Infrastructure. Darma Disraeli, we call her. One of the lovely Disraeli sisters. Don't let the round metal frame fool you, she's sexy as all get out. Of course, the Gov calls her DM2-DSRALI, but Darma is a much sweeter name. It suits her. She's a kick-ass bit of machinery, if I say so myself.

Yeah, I designed her. Proud poppa, and all that. Well, not so much poppa as... well, Darma is my girl. For most of the last six years, she's been all the female companionship I've had.

Anyway, Darma's job is to locate, analyze, and transmit information that will enhance our knowledge about dark matter. She is self-sufficient, deployed with the basic laboratory structure needed to analyze data, mass, or energy signatures without needing help from us back home. She is gifted with deep AI, and can initiate experiments on her own. She's a piece of work, my Darma. The most optimistic of us hoped to find the first tangible proof of dark energy and matter at the center of a massive galaxy cluster. Sure, we've pretty much proved it exists via the Lord thy Math, but this mission was about funding. There's no way you're going to convince a politician to pony up a healthy grant based on Math. So, we point Darma to the nearest star cluster, and say, "Fetch." Six months later, bam: proof (or, Math forbid, disproof) of dark matter.

What she found, however, was something else entirely. On more of a lark than anything else, I reconfigure her to pick up not just the narrow energy signatures and subatomics that she was designed for, but a broader band of wavelengths that would include microwaves and what we here on Earth call radio waves. After all, Darma is the first extra-solar-system craft to remain fully in contact with the home planet. I didn't want to miss out on the unlikely opportunity to pick up sounds from out past Pluto. The Gov liked the idea too, even though the perceived science benefits would be nil. NASA has long had to pimp itself out to private investors, and playing the "meet the aliens from space" angle brings in a lot of press, not to mention celebrity money. Dumb shits.

Sounds pretty cool, huh? In truth, the gig was boring as hell, for the most part. Most of my days and nights consisted of sitting in an empty lab, chugging coffee, munching bacon, and listening to static from deep space. Hurray for eight years of college.

Sure, the team made some amazing discoveries, like confirming the presence of an Earth-like planet less than 500 light-years hence, which is orbiting a star we thought too small and dim to sustain a planetary system. Still, most of the static was just that – noise. No dark matter, no Nobel Prize. The only other thing I found was... singing.

Okay, I know how that sounds, but it was there. Shit. Let me just tell you the whole story.

One night, around 3:00 a.m. or so, I'm working the lab alone. There is the usual static, muted through the external speakers, along with Coldplay. The audio filters have a visible and auditory alarm if any pattern emerges amid the static. (We added that bit of software after Kelley went nuts one night and started trashing the place. No more static-listening for dear Dr. Kelley.) Since I was officially off work, I'd had a few beers, but nothing out of the ordinary. Like I said, it gets pretty boring, especially in the South Pole winter. Hell, I hadn't even been outside in two months. But six-pack or no, I'm not drunk. I listen, but it's quiet for a minute. Then, in-between the near-constant buzz of ambient noise and the rhythmic pulses whose source we still hadn't determined, was this... voice. It was faint at first, but clearly there, and very much feminine. It sounds like singing.

I nearly crap my pants.

My initial reaction, of course, is to check the beers, to make sure no one had tampered with them. It would have been a typical joke for one of my colleagues to slip a little acid in my Guinness.

"Ha-ha, did you hear Darg flipped out last night?"

"Yeah (lolz), I totally got a video of it. It's already up on YouTube, but Denver wants me to take it down."

Yeah, that would have been my friends' idea of a joke. Shit else to do out here in the cold dark. Acid screws up the foam, though.

But this time, it wasn't them. I've had enough late nights with Mr. Guinness that I am pretty sure it wasn't the alcohol either. Me and Guinness? We old buds. So, I flip off the externals, and switch to headphones. After tweaking the dials a bit, I can filter out most of the static. To my great relief, there is... silence. I pour the rest of my beer into the trash after that, just to be safe, you know? I'm sitting there, laughing at myself, hearing ghosts and shit at oh-dark-hundred in the morning, when I hear the sound of breathing.

It's faint, but it's there. After about thirty seconds, I exhale, all in a gush. Until that moment, I was completely unaware I had even been holding my breath. No sooner do I remember to breathe, than I hear an intake of breath from the speakers, like my breathing had scared the shit out of somebody.

Then the alarms buzz.

I check to make sure I've hit "record." It's recording, but the system isn't showing any inputs. I flip the transmit button, meant mainly for communication with Darma. Most of the guys use old-style keyboards to communicate with the craft, but I prefer talking to her.

So, I flip the switch, and say, "Darma, boost audio 150%."

"He-hello?" I hear back. It ain't Darma's voice. This time, I actually do crap my pants.

***

Anyway, to make a long story short, I panic. I mean, butt-clenching, bug-eyed fear. I leave the gear, run the hell outta there, change my skivvies, and have myself a nice, hard drink and some bacon. Crunching calms the nerves, right? By the time I get up the spunk to go back, there's nothing but static. I check the recorder, and there's a full minute of silence, followed by, "I-is somebody there? You-you aren't authorized for this link." Then, no more voice.

Wisely, I don't mention this to anyone, and instruct Darma to code the non-static transmission to solely my biometrics.

The Gov would have a cow if they knew I had a personal backdoor into Darma. Hell, they'd have an elephant cow, and then I'd be shot, or left to rot in jail. The way I figure it, I've been here on the ice for five years. What prison do they have that's worse than my job? Besides, Darma likes it when I come in the back way.

Like I said, she's my girl.

After that first... encounter, I took to working the late-night shifts exclusively. It's not so much I thought that's when I would hear another blip (as I'd come to call the voice), but no one else worked the post-midnight shift, and I did not want the Gov scientists to hear my blip before I had a chance to publish. Antarctic winter or no, we would be on lockdown overnight. I really didn't believe the blip was real, but if it weren't just my imagination, I didn't want another Area 51 scenario out here in the cold dark.

So I work my midnights, which aren't much different than any other time. None of us has seen the sun for two months at this point. This goes on for weeks, at which point I pretty much convince myself the first encounter never happened. The blip was just me finally starting to lose my mind. Why should Kelley have all the psychosis, you know? So, I hold my nightly vigil, alone, while the rest of the team sleeps, gets drunk, or has their biweekly orgy or whatnot. Then, on 7 July, right around 3:00 a.m., amidst the infinite hum of space, I hear – clear as a bell – the sweetest soprano you ever heard. I can't make out the words, if they are, in fact, words. Still, even a math lout like me knows it's a song.

I still don't know if it was the song, the Guinness, or just the fact that deep down I hoped to hear the voice again, but this time, I didn't freak out.

Quiet as can be, I whisper, "Darma, bifurcate signal. Filter static to background recorder." In other words, turn down the damn buzzing, and turn up the music.

Darma, being a bloody computer with no tact, answers loud enough to burst my eardrums, "Proceeding."

I hear a scream.

A few seconds pass while I try to discern if it was me who was screaming. It was not. I know this, because the scream is followed by, "He-hello? Is that you again?" In addition to which, the response came as I was downing a full pint in one swallow, which I promptly spit all over my display.

Okay.

So, here I am, in perhaps the very first encounter with life from beyond Earth, and the first contact is a stupid damn question. Great. Answer to the question of intelligent life in space – still open for debate. Still, she had one really nice voice. A little high-pitched, but still sultry and sweet, like one of those umbrella drinks you get down on the Argentine beach. Now I know the voice probably belongs to a hairy, green lizard woman from outer space, but still. It was feminine enough that I want to answer. Besides, Captain Kirk never turned down a sweet voice just because its owner was green.

I answer back. "This... this is Free Station Cold Dark, transmitting via DM2-DSRALI." I'm official sounding as hell, if you ignore the brief squeak at the start of my sentence.

In reply, I get only silence. Not even space static, as Darma has routed this transmission to my private channel. After fifteen or twenty seconds, I hear back, "Okay, very funny, bud."

"Huh?" I say, probably confirming to her there ain't no intelligent life down here, either.

She continues. "I do have complete transmission histories available in the main core, mister. Besides, every kid who ever wanted to space jockey has heard of Darma."

Holy crap.

Now, we call her Darma here on ice, but it's a controlled nickname. The Gov calls her DM2 in all the official communications. Either I'm talking to some Gov wonk who's testing me for security protocol, or the voice knows stuff she ought not know.

I hear the sound of air being blown into a microphone. "Whoo, whoo. Is thing on? Did I lose you again, bucko?"

"Bucko?"

"Oh, there you are. Good," she says. "Are you going to tell me your real designation? This is a secure line." She pauses then adds, "Plus, th-there's not supposed to be anybody out there." I could swear she sounds as nervous as me.

I figure if this is the Gov, it means two things. One, I'm not nuts, so that's good. And two, she already knows I have a backdoor into Darma, since our conversation is being routed that way – in which case I'm already dead meat. I may as well try for honesty, and hope they let me out of prison before my dick falls off.

"This is Dargesh, from DM2-DSRALI – Darma, from Amundsen-Scott Station," I answer, switching to the Pole's designation instead of Darma's. "To whom am I speaking?"

Again, a fifteen-second pause, followed by, "No fucking way."

"Excuse me?" I've never heard cursing on an official channel. I decide right then and there, I like this woman. "Dude, stop messing with me. I've been out here alone six terran months. I'm going bonkers, but I'm not stupid."

"I'm not messing with you. This is Amundsen... the South Pole Station."

"I know what Amundsen is... was. And, like I said, very funny."

There is something in her tone that worries me. Her voice is a combination of wariness and fear, as if she doesn't want to be made a fool of, but is simultaneously afraid something awful is going on. I decide I better find out why my answers are making her nervous. "You wanna tell me why it's so hard to believe I'm calling from the Pole? Hell, we get the interwebz here. Have IP, will call, and all that."

This pause lasts for almost a minute. At the end, I hear a gulp and an, "Ah."

"Hello? You there?" I ask.

"Sorry, I needed a drink," she says. "Look guy, for one thing, the South Pole is on the Earth."

"Uh, yeah. Last time I checked."

"And the Earth has been gone for 50,000 years, give or take a millennia. So unless you're a ghost, quit kludging with me." She pauses, and then adds, "Why are you broadcasting in a dead language? Comm translator says you're sending ancient Ainglesh."

This time, it's me who doesn't answer for a long time. She is crazy as a loon, I decide, as her voice is filling with increasing anger with each exchange. Whatever nonsense she's spouting, she believes it. Nonetheless, it's late, I'm sleepy, and I didn't spend weeks scouring space only to find some nutcase with a kickass shortwave radio.

"Look, Darma is routing your signal, but I can't get any bearing on its origin. For all I know, it's coming from Xu over at Palmer Island." I think for a bit, and then add, "Is... is that you, Xu?" This would totally be Dr. Xu's sense of humor.

This time the answer is immediate. "What comm bandwidth are you working with there?" she asks.

I hesitate, as that info's definitely classified. But at this point, jail is sounding like a vacation from whatever insanity I've fallen into. I give her the specs.

"Shoot, that's not much. I'll have to compress the hell out of the feed," she says. "It's only going to be 2-D. Hold on."

There's a pause, and sound of scuffling around, as well as muted voices I figure to be a different computer talking to Darma. Then, somehow, my main video screen, which has been showing nothing but black space for months, shows a face. It's oval-shaped, with huge aquamarine eyes, a slight nose, and a wide mouth that appears to be open in some sort of... shit, she's grinning at me. She's freaking gorgeous.

The video pulls back, giving me a full view. There, floating – long legs crossed, with a flowing mane of bluish hair that drifts the full length of her torso – is a female. She is decidedly not a green lizard woman.

She is also as naked as the winter is long.

"Hi Dargesh," she says, grinning so hard I can count her molars. "You just made me rich and famous."

I'm too busy passing out to make much sense of her words. Just before I black out, I remember someone asking, in a familiar voice, "Lady, where on earth are your clothes?" I'm thinking it might have been my mother, using my mouth.

My beautiful blue-haired blip starts giggling. It is the sweetest laughter I have ever heard.

***

Here's what Jarita and I figured out. That's her name, by the way, Jarita. It turns out she has a job much like mine. She's on a semi-automated craft, way out at the edge of a galaxy, which I'm still struggling to chart. She is a scientist, like me. She's also brilliant, and gloriously goofy. Turns out her people do not usually go about naked in space. I caught her in the middle of nude yoga or something, and it hadn't occurred to her to get dressed before trying to send the video feed.

"Hey, I didn't think it would work," was her explanation.

I told her I didn't mind. We spend a lot of time naked after that... but I'm getting ahead of myself again.

So, it turns out her people are my people, from what she tells me. My guess is she's something like 300,000 years distant from me. Not light years, actual solar years. She wasn't joking when she said the Earth was gone. Some dumbass blew up the moon, of all things, and the war spread back home. Around ten thousand years from now, the moon will be like the Middle East is now.

Darma is famous. That is, if you're 300 millennia in the future. The "Voice from Beyond" that Darma eventually transmits back to the Earth starts the human race on its journey to expand as far into space as possible. Jarita and I figure that somehow, the Gov finds my encrypted files – years from now – and become convinced there is life out there. Everybody with a halfway decent spacecraft suddenly wants to be the first to meet them. Nobody knows who The Voice is, or whence it came. So, the jackasses just rush out after Darma, and hope for the best.

Jarita, my beautiful, seven-foot nudie scientist from the future, is The Voice. History's greatest turning point is her and me, mostly doing the future equivalent of phone sex.

Yeah, I fell... hard.

But I haven't told you the weird part yet. Jarita's ship is hovering at the edge of a massive event horizon, doing "routine monitoring and recording." Pretty much, she babysits the craft and does minor repairs so the equipment doesn't go down during critical times. Boring work, according to her, but the pay is tremendous. It turns out that since she's so far from the rest of the technical fleet she's attached to, all her communications are based on neutrinos and other subatomic particles we here in the 21st century haven't even heard of yet.

I can hear her, we postulated, because the accelerated neutrinos allow her signals to travel back in time. We had a long series of arguments about that one, since Einstein proved it was impossible. She eventually convinced me what I know about science is about equal to a caveman. I shut up and listen. The neutrinos that carry her communication signals are routed past this massive black hole's event horizon. That speeds up the signal enough that by the time it hits the other side (I didn't know black holes had another side) the signal is traveling well past the speed of light. Together, we figured it must accelerate the entire way. The bottom line? She sends her signal 300,000 years from now, and it travels back in time, zooming like a bat out of hell, on neutrinos too fast for us to even detect.

But it isn't too fast for Darma, as it turns out.

Now, Jarita's people figure that her transmissions might be able to track backward in time, but since there had been no history of that happening, they figure it's safe to let her try. No one, and I mean, no one thought for a second she could be The Voice. I mean, she's a twenty-two-year-old student, with a penchant for nude chanting and yoga. Not exactly whom you'd pick to be the single most important person in history. But even with guessing she could be heard, if someone had the equipment to pick up her signal, nobody thought she could hear anything back.

Which is why she freaked out the first time she heard me. My guess is that somehow, Darma is acting as a mirror, though it is not clear how, exactly. Darma is trained to find subatomics like neutrinos, analyze them, and act on the information. Apparently, Darma has decided that some specific particles travel faster than light, and so, when they signal her, she signals them back.

I told you Darma kicks ass.

***

Things got out of hand. By now, I guess you figured that out. By the time September rolls around, Jarita and I are in almost constant touch. She's sent me technical specs to modify my communications, and I even set up a portable holograph display so I can see her in three dimensions. I think the rest of the crew is worried about me, but no one says anything. It's a very small community on the ice, and people give you your space if you need it. Besides, my production is off the charts, what with me working almost twenty-four seven.

I know I look like crap. I barely shave; I hardly even eat. Love does that, right? My shrink, she calls this period "my fugue." I say fugue my shrink. I don't care what the shrink says; I know Jarita is real. She has to be. It hurts too much to be anything else.

But I'm getting to that.

See, we went too far. Well, Jarita did anyway. It turns out the specs she gave me weren't just to make a device that reads a hologram transmission. It converts energy to matter. That's right – a fucking Star Trek transporter. Well, sort of. It doesn't really send people through space. It reads the person at one end, and sends information that allows a replica to show up at the other.

So here I am in 2076, and I get awakened in the middle of the night by a Jarita clone from the year 302,157 or whatever. And yes, she's naked. And giggling. This clone is fully comm-linked up with Jarita, so it's like she's actually here. Jarita can't feel me like I can feel the clone, but she says she doesn't need to. They are beyond the physical stuff we early human animals need.

Animal me? I spend a giddy week in bed. The crew gets really worried about me then, locked in my quarters, laughing and talking. Jarita can't afford to get found – she says it would alter history – so she only talks through my earpiece. The clone smiles, moans, but otherwise is silent. The crew thinks I'm alone the whole time. I don't care, though. I can't tell you how good it was with her. Hell, I'd have picked up her footprints and carried them around, if I could have figured out how. It was the best week of my life.

Then she drops the bombshell. Her tour of duty is over. No more access to the subatomic communication link. More importantly, they are shipping her to another mission, nowhere near the event horizon that's been boosting her signal.

What can we do? We spend night eight crying, making love, falling apart, all that shit. Then, just like a TV being shut off, her signal stops. The clone just disappears into a cloud of dust, like she was really only a holograph.

***

So here I sit, still in the cold dark. I'm not on ice anymore, at least not physically. I had a major breakdown once I realized Jarita was really gone, and I'd never see her again. Things got so bad they had to sedate me. Even sent in a rescue plane in late October to take me back home. I've been sitting in this damned little room ever since.

I still like to look out at the stars, though. Ever so often, I hear from one of the crew from back at the Pole. They tell me the Gov has been crawling all over Darma, trying to figure out what it was that made their "most reliable" scientist freak the hell out.

I won't tell them. But I already know they'll find out – somehow. They'll hear her voice, and the whole shebang will start.

I hope Jarita really did... does hit it rich and famous. That future tense bit still trips me up. I'm in love with someone who won't even exist for 300,000 years. Crazy as it sounds, I find myself hoping that somehow, I can live long enough to see her again.

Nuts, right? I know it won't happen – can't happen.

Still, I still have the specs for the transmitter and receiver. Maybe if I get well, and get out of this damned place, I can get back to work. Maybe holograms work in the other direction too. Maybe there is a way to see her just one more time. Just once, before I lose my mind for good. It almost makes me want to hope. But like I said, I've never been too good with faith.

Lately, though, I find myself praying a lot, and not to Math.

Postings

by

Richard Sutton

Cavendish rolled over and wiped the night's grit from his eyes. Both sides of his pillow were warm and damp. August already. He swung his legs out over the edge of the bed as he rose to sit. His feet thudded on the floor.

He reached for the water bottle and took a good slug, then slid the collapsed chair from its nook between the bed and the night table. It didn't take much to accordion it open, and a couple of sharp smacks with the heel of his hand locked everything in place. He gave a heave against the handles of the chair and lifted himself to a tottering standing position; a deft twist, and he was seated in the chair facing the bed. He didn't even think of the procedure, his morning ritual for the past six years.

He spun the chair around and headed to the bathroom as a grating, rapid-fire clanging sound from the night table reminded him to grab his cell. He answered as he maneuvered through the doorway.

"Yeah, you?"

An agitated voice on the other end rattled his morning serenity.

"No. Same dream again?"

"Well, not for a week or so. Anything new at all?"

"A what?"

"Cart? Oh. Cord. Curly cord. Got it."

"Yeah, weird. Scary."

"No. I'm off 'til Wednesday....yeah, I'll be here. OK, bring some lunch."

The tiny, polished metal device slid into his chest pocket. Sturdy stainless bars beckoned him from each side of the commode. Another annoying ritual completed, and he was ready for his first cup of coffee.

Cav wheeled towards the kitchen, and the motion always reminded him of flying down the road on his bike. He shoved the thought aside. It didn't do him any good to think of those days. The morning sun washed the entire kitchen in a sullen orange color that had become the August specialty, and the month was only a week along.

Coffee cup enshrined in its little form-fitted cradle on the chair's right arm, Cav rolled towards the living room. His chair rumbled over the floor tiles, but the coffee was secure. He liked that. A couple of months back, his brother brought over one of those spill-proof travel mugs – jug was more like it, considering its capacity. It would provide for his caffeine needs all morning until lunch called him away from the keyboard and monitor.

He heard the buzzer and reached for the slim holster hanging on the other arm of his chair. It held a universal remote device of his own design. It controlled everything in his home, and also served as an intercom with his front door vidcam a couple of flights of stairs below. He held it up and spoke into the screen on its face.

"Yeah?"

"Alex here. Buzz me in, your food's getting cold."

"Not so fast. Whadjya bring?"

"Chinese."

Cav thumbed a button and the buzz released the lock, letting Alex in. Chinese was always good news and Cav grinned. He rolled back into the kitchen and pulled out a couple of almost cool beers and set them on the table. Three chairs.

When Alex rapped on the hall door, Cav thumbed a different button, releasing the lock.

Alex bounded into the room, his head drenched, the front of his shirt a dark, wet mess. He held the bag holding the lunch out in front proudly.

"Now that's what I'm sayin'," said Cav, nodding towards the kitchen.

The noodles were great. Just the right touch of garlic and ginger. Cav shoveled them in while Alex moaned about his latest nightmare. He'd been complaining for a couple of weeks at work, when Cav mentioned he'd had one very similar...

"...so I'm walking into the living room, talking to Clarissa. I have to constantly hold up the damned cord to keep it from knocking stuff over. She's excited about our vacation. Me too. I described how cushy the sidecar was and just as I was asking her if she had a helmet, the cord reaches the end of its length and jerks me right off my feet onto the floor. Christ!"

"Yeah, exactly like mine, only I was in the kitchen. What happened next?"

"Like I said, it just rolled me right up, all the way back to the kitchen, over furniture, through doorways... I'm getting all beat up! The damned thing stops right under the wall... the wall thing. Wall phone. But when I try to unwrap the cord, it just gets tighter and tighter. Then I wake up, suffocating. Shit!"

Today, Alex's dream had some new elements. He was hoping this was just Alex's. He had enough on his plate without all this new shite.

"...and then, I manage to get free of the cord. I pick up my cell to call the cops, you know, warn everybody... but the cell just makes that stupid No Signal warble tone. Then I crawl over to my tablet and boot up. I figure there's gotta be some chat comments or email about this shit, but the screen goes all blue – screen of death – and the warble tone is all I hear. The telephone hand-piece is crawling over the floor towards me, the curly cord streaming out behind it and I back into a corner. Nowhere to run or hide."

Cav shook his head, remarking, "That's some serious shit! What happens next?"

"I wake up." Alex was nodding to himself, probably for comfort. He was holding his knees to his chest and rocking slightly. His eyes were on the floor.

Cav wiped the Moo Goo Gai Pan off his chin and gazed out the window. More yellow than orange now. Still hot and sticky.

"You hear when the grid's going back on line? This is getting really old, you know?"

Alex shook his head no. "It was supposed to just be for the week. At least your solar is working. Ours is shot – power surge fried it. The whole building's dead."

"Well, at least you found someplace that can still cook!" Cav grinned.

"Cavendish. Why would I expect you to commiserate with a lowly blogger?"

"Hey, who's got your back? You want to crash over here for a few nights until things get back online? I've still got broadband."

"Really? I thought the whole city was down – you sure? I don't want to crimp your style."

"What friggin' style?" Cav gestured at his legs and added, "No style for a while now."

"OK... OK then, I'll just take the couch. Can you download files from work?" They moved into the living room, leaving the smell of lunch behind.

"Not yet. Bud told me they're expecting to get the servers running by the end of the day tomorrow, or maybe Tuesday. Between you and me, I don't expect any solid results. The hard drives are suspect. Once the surge arced over the regulation system into the internal grid, just how much useable data remains is anyone's guess."

"Well, so it will be a quiet couple of days. Thanks, though. Clarissa coming up?"

"Nah. She's got a flight out tomorrow. They are sending the whole magazine operation up to Seattle until this bullshit's over."

Cav pointed to his expansive desktop electronics spread and told Alex to feel free. Alex didn't waste a spare second to pull a chair in from the kitchen and begin logging in and posting. While Alex clattered away on the keys, Cav slid back into the kitchen. He was sorry that Alex had mentioned Clarissa again. He shouldn't have told him that she was still in his dreams. It had been almost two years since they'd even had dinner together. Lately, her face in his dreams was obscured, her head turned around, or she spoke from behind someone else. He tried, but he couldn't even remember what color her hair was.

Shit. Her hair. All runny and red from her injuries. She didn't wake up until they had worked on her some in the OR. Despite his own paralysis, he was released first. They kept in touch online as soon as she could use the keyboard again. She wouldn't let him see her, and kept the vidcam shut down when they spoke online. Funny thing, how he had sustained no injury above his waist. Her beautiful face had been a disaster with multiple fractures, but her legs were just fine. He remembered the scars from their last time together. They were still married, whatever that meant. He rubbed his fist into his forehead until the despair left him. No style left. No life left really, just a stupid keyboard, whether it was here, or at work... the closest thing he had to regular physical human contact. After his long, agonizing therapy was over, and her surgeries... he really thought they'd be together again, but... no use thinking like that now.

His telephone cord dreams had started about the same time Alex's had. He pulled enough from them to know that his mind was being suffocated by the non-stop data, the non-stop digital bombardment. But that was his choice, wasn't it? He'd sailed through his undergrad work at Stanford. MIT was just a blur before the ranks of the techno-wunderkind were increased by one with the unlikely name of Cavendish Francis MacAnders. For what? Lots and lots of money. Happiness? Ask another day.

He filled a glass of water from the R-O spigot at the sink and rolled back to the living room, where Alex was still knocking out another post. From time to time he'd scowl, then backspace furiously. Words, he'd always told Cav, were important.

"Cav, the language may change, the dialect may shift, but the words, the individual words, will always be a signature. If all I do is string a few together that connect with someone else in a post, then I've been a success."

Cav wished he felt that way. There was nothing he could even approach now, in front of a monitor – even a really clean, really wide one -- that could compare with the joy of Highway One on a clear, cool day, at seventy. He made fists, trying to remember the feeling of the vibration through the handlebars and into his palms. Or Clarissa's death-grip on his belt going around corners. Corners always spooked her. It took years before she instinctively leaned the right way. It had been a blind corner, in the rain.

Poor Alex, he thought as he watched his friend attack the keyboard. Alex's entire world was built up from online data, and he wasn't that unusual. Most of their mutual friends lived their lives in the ether, too; selecting partners from a list as easily as they selected the evening's restaurant destination. Their conversations took place either online, in "real" time, or in text messages sprinkled with cute emoticons to replace real emotion or feelings. Alex, he knew, would be completely unable to confront a disagreement or even express his feelings over seeing a beautiful waterfall to another human being if they were actually present. In short, well-composed messages, he could deal decisive blows, but face-to-face?

"Hey!" Cav shouted over the syntho-jazz purring from the surround speakers. "Hey Alex! Don't break my keyboard. You're burning it up, buddy!" Had he meant it as a joke?

"Oh! Sorry." Alex swiveled around as if he just realized another soul was sharing the space. "I guess I've got a lot to say. This bullshit is going to drive us all crazy!" He was right. If they weren't already crazy, they would soon be, what with the lack of air conditioning. Cav was grateful that at least he had some power, but when he spoke to the building super the day before on the elevator landing, the man was pretty upset.

"It's not going to work for long. The damned air is just too filthy."

"How's that?"

"Oh, Mr. MacAnders – the solar panels are getting covered up with soot and grime so fast that even if I sweep them all down twice a day, it's not enough. The voltage is sagging badly. I had to shut off the tracking motors to conserve."

Cav gave it some thought and then asked him if a sprinkler system would help. "It would keep the panels cool, too. You could run a recirculating pump or something..."

"I tried to set one up last summer, but the owner didn't want to spend the money. Always quick to see logic, huh?"

Cav remembered thinking he would have to speak with the owner.

Returning to his frenzied friend at the keyboard, Cav asked, "Alex, why don't you say some of that to me? You can run it past me, or we can just converse. You know, shoot the shit?"

"OK, if you want. Just let me finish..."

Cav knew the finishing would take hours, so he rolled back to the bedroom, where he slid his laptop out of its little fitted cubby in the day desk. This was one of his favorite designs. He'd had the desk built to encompass a wheelchair, wrapping along both sides. It gave him good access for spreading out a lot of work.

He always had a lot to do, so he got on with it. He could still hear Alex pounding the keys in the living room, content with his virtual life. Cav booted up and waited for the annoying little Tah-Dah tone that was his daily congrats from Bill Gates. His cell vibrated madly in his chest pocket.

"Yeah?"

"Oh! Hi Clarissa. I thought you'd be packing all day."

"Oh – well, Alex is here. You know."

"No, I'm just refining some object containers in the new code. Really?"

"OK. No, I'll... I'll come down. What time's good?"

"See ya then!"

He slid it back into his pocket. Clarissa wanted to see him face to face. His mind swam with conflict. Of course, he wanted to see her. If he gave it some thought... truth was, he still loved her, but what did it mean? They hadn't even emailed for a couple of weeks, and then she suddenly told him she was going up to Seattle. He didn't think it was going to be good news. His brain reeling with implications, Cav minimized the text editor and opened up his browser for a visit to one of his bank accounts. He logged into the one he used to maintain the building. The super didn't know the owner as anyone more than a short correspondence each month, and that was the way Cav wanted to keep it. He wondered how he'd phrase the message explaining how he was interested in beefing up the reliability of the building's back-up solar power, without giving anything away. After moving some funds around, he began composing the message and imagined the relief the super would feel when he read it.

Still, his focus was broken over and over by the question of why Clarissa wanted to see him face to face. He kept reflexively reaching for his coffee jug, now long empty. Finally, as he added the corporate signature to the message, it came to him like a brick to the forehead. She was going to tell him she'd begun moving on a divorce. She had someone else. Of course. Why was it any surprise?

He glanced at the time icon. He still had time for a shower, so he rolled away from the day desk and on to the cavernous bathroom. When he got to the threshold, he heard Alex stop typing for a moment, so he rolled in and told him he'd be going out in an hour or so.

"Really? You need any help?"

"Nope, I'm not going far, just a small errand. Thanks, though. How're the postings going?"

"I'm almost ready to wrap the second one. I've got three more to do if I want to keep on track, but I've got to absorb some news first. You know... stay topical!"

"Yeah. Well, anything you need..."

"Thanks. Oh, you need to use this machine?"

"No, I'm OK." Cav rolled back to the tile palace, and began the work-out that showering had become. Forty minutes later, all shaved and scrubbed, he rolled out of his bedroom all done up like he was going to a business meeting. That's how he was thinking about it. A business meeting to be endured. He picked up his cell, checked for messages, then slid it into his pocket before announcing in Alex's general direction, "I'm on my way. If you need to leave, there are door keys on the hook in the kitchen." The attenuation of the clattering momentarily let him know Alex had heard and retained the data.

He slid out the door, pressed the re-lock button on his remote and set his chin for the confrontation ahead. He thought about all the years and the fun and the curve of sunlight striking her shoulder while she slept. He thought about the accident, all the pain and the loss. He thought about the money. He figured he'd need to touch base with at least a couple of his attorneys before the day was done. He rolled up to the elevator and pushed the down button. It didn't take long. He'd installed the high-speed elevator as soon as they'd closed the deal. Waiting was something Cav didn't do well before. Now, it was what he spent most of his time doing. He smiled at the irony: he'd been a young man on the move. Upwards bound, no limitations. Time had proven itself an enemy.

The elevator doors slid open to a soft ding-tone. He rolled in, grimacing to the press of heat and pushed the button for the floor below his, where Clarissa's apartment, originally their guest apartment, was waiting for him. He clenched his teeth. He could handle it. As the doors glided closed, he slid the cell out to message her that he was on his way, but only had one bar showing. He'd have to get on that. The elevator silently slid down to the next part of Cav's life as he felt the distinct tug of an antique, curly telephone cord wrapping around his throat.

Sheep For Insomniacs

by

J.M. Lee

It is the feeling of gravity and heartache when you think of something or someone that you lost, or perhaps never had to begin with. The pain of imagining every detail as if it were only yesterday, or today, or even now, as you sit with your eyes closed, head rocked back in the corner where the walls collide, putting the world on pause for a sacred second. The yearning that is stronger than any desire ever put forth by man – reaching for the unattainable. Holding on to the flavor of it when you know for a certain fact that you will never taste it for the first time, or ever again. Knowing that if you would only forget, only let it go, you would be granted release... but too afraid of how cold life would be without even the haunting of its all too vivid memory.

It overwhelms me now. Even more distressing a point, I'm not even sure what it is I am missing. I'm not even sure if I am missing anything at all. The altruism of amnesia versus the selfishness of obsession rages in my blood and I'm crashing up against the winning desire for final respite like waves against a cliff.

It will not budge.

It is 2:04 a.m.

Meg is the kind of person who makes you want to crawl into a hole and cover yourself with mud and underbrush so as to become completely undetectable by the naked human eye. Until you get to know her, anyway. People like us can recognize each other in an instant – the sunken, tired eyes, the shortness of patience, the jadedness. The desperation.

After we closed, when the rest of the world slept soundly, we would go for long, silent drives through unlit suburb streets.

There are very few places in suburbia that are open late enough. Perkins is one, but the food is all comprised of some meat substance on bread, and after a while your pallet dulls to such monotony. In the early days, I would order a Reuben and fries and Meg would order a club sandwich with a change of cheese and no tomatoes. And we'd sit there in silence, watching the others sit in silence and watch us. I would look left, Meg would look right. After ten minutes, Meg would drum her fingers, take her hair out of its ponytail, and trade posts with me. We would watch them all, sitting at their dimly lit tables, diner coffee in hand. We watch them like wolves watch sheep.

1. A large man doing the previous day's crossword over thick-rimmed glasses.

2. A young, black-clad couple sharing headphones from the same iPod.

3. A middle-aged woman chain-smoking in the corner.

4. A group of high-schoolers harassing the waitress.

5. Meg, with long black hair and dark eyeshadow, tapping her nails on her teeth.

Meg says, let's go. We pay with two tens and leave. The streets that make up the maze of eastern suburbia are dark, coated in muffling snow. Coated in the snow that glosses over the variations in the landscape, everything looks the same. Meg drives, and the inside of her car hums like a television that's just been turned off. The curves of the road glide soundlessly around us. Meg cracks open the window and lights a Marlboro. The smell of it inside the car, mingling with the heated air, reminds me of evening with my mother in the small garden-level apartment we used to call home.

I thought you were quitting, I say.

Meg says, I am.

Are you working close tomorrow? I ask.

Meg says, Yeah.

Me too. I thought you were quitting.

She thinks it's funny, in a bitter sort of way.

I am, she says.

Sometimes Perkins is too stale, and we end up at the old, abandoned Wal-Mart. Its parking lot has four cars in it, and the snow is building up around them. Inside, it's a ghost town. Empty, hovering clothing droops, resigned, acknowledging they will never be sold or worn. The ghost floors are clean, shining. The ghost televisions in Electronics stay on, the only noise in the entire store besides the creaking of ghost shopping carts.

I wonder if Meg is bored by this place. I am only relieved.

The complete circuit of Wal-Mart takes forty-five minutes to an hour, depending if either of us is actually shopping for anything.

How do you like your new place?

I shrug. Meg holds out the limp arm of a sequined shirt.

I saw a lady wearing this today, she says.

It is 4:42 a.m.

They say for insomniacs there is a secret idea, and if you can reach it, by whatever means, you can fall asleep. It's psychosomatic. It means nothing. It's just a masochistic fantasy. Or a placebo. A hoax and a lie. For some people, it's a color. For some people, it's a place, or a person, or a phrase. It means nothing in relative terms. It doesn't really exist. It's just a state of mind that you can or can't acknowledge for whatever reason.

For me, it's a number.

It means everything.

The run-down streets and littered gutters are a result of apathy, not neglect – rubbish barely on the side of the law. I pass the frat houses on my walk to the café, ignoring shouts from drunken juniors. The faded placards and neon signs are like an old magazine as I near Cedar Avenue. My destination is decorated only with kids with activist facial hair, badly disguised blunts, and books on philosophy and music.

Inside, I take a seat in the corner. The waitress sees me and prepares me a mug of coffee. I put my book on the table and cross my arms, watching the quiet others watch their texts. The man sitting next to me sets down his book, wedging a finger in the pages to keep his place. His eyes squint behind his quarter-inch-thick glasses as he concentrates to speak.

I got one for ya, History Bill says. His white hair is matted under his baseball cap, and I peer over his hand to take in the title of the tomb he's currently working on – The History of Europe. The waitress hands me my coffee. I pass her a five. Whatever. History Bill starts tapping his book. I watch people passing by, drunkenly kicking at the snow on the curb outside.

Have you ever heard of Maple's? Bill asks.

No. I keep watching people as he starts to talk again, letting him narrate the scenes I'm taking in. By contrast.

It's this place I used to go to. I used to know, ah, the guy who ran it. Oh boy, back in the day, you could just go down there early in the – it was still night -- and I'd say, the usual! And then Jim, he'd bring out my meal – my breakfast. Two huge pieces of sourdough bread – you know, they made that there, right at the store. Right at the store. Just like that, the usual! And he'd bring it out, the sourdough bread, and it'd have these two big eggs broken right on top, sunny-side up. Oh, I'd cut into that and it was good. Boy was that good. They don't make breakfast like that anymore. Only two dollars.

1. I'm thinking about quitting my job.

What? And doing what?

2. I don't know. I want to be a writer.

A writer! Bill thinks this is near hilarity. What do you want to be a writer for?

3. I don't know. I like writing.

You should be a doctor. You're Chinese, aren't you? Chinese people make good doctors. Make a lot of money in that field.

I had a B.A. in Philosophy. I'm not going to make a good doctor.

You're Chinese.

That's incredibly racist of you.

It's the truth! It's not racist. I'm just saying, the Chinese have been doctors.

My dad's a doctor. And my grandfather. And all my uncles. I have no desire to be a doctor.

But you'll make money! No one makes money – Writers don't make money. When's the—when's the last time you heard of a writer making money?

Okay, you're right, Bill.

1. Writers don't make money. Doctors make money.

He starts talking about how much doctors make. Something he read in the paper. Every once in a while he stops to laugh at the thought of someone wanting to be a writer.

You know, I finally interrupt him mildly, if there were no writers, you'd never have any books to read.

This is history—fact. I don't read that crazy crap.

You mean fiction?

Crazy crap, that's what it is. It's just f—fantasies. Crazy crap there's no point in reading.

How can you say that and then be so obsessed with Friends?

Friends is a quality television show.

Bullshit. You just have a crush on Jennifer Aniston.

She's a talented actress. If she'd do an interview with Playboy, I'll tell you somethin'—If she'd do it, that'd really—really jump-start her career.

1. Are you jealous of Brad Pitt?

He's a hack. He's—he should never be in movies.

2. You're jealous of Brad Pitt. Jesus.

Bill scoffs and turns away as much as he can while sitting in the booth next to me. He picks up his book and opens to the wrong page. I wait to see how long it'll be before he notices. I watch a young woman pick her nose outside while she fiddles with her piercing. Her eyes are far away. She's wearing a short skirt and high heels. I can see all the way up her thighs to where her butt cheek starts. She's wearing a thong, or maybe nothing. I wonder what she's doing on campus dressed like that.

Look at this, History Bill says. He holds up a magazine he got from somewhere. Jennifer Aniston.

It's Jennifer Aniston, I say. He points at her again. What about her, Bill?

He taps her face again and I'm not sure where he's going with this. He tucks her away in his briefcase and picks up his book.

It's 1:40 a.m.

On nights when there is no gasoline in my car and I am too tired otherwise to go out, I sit at my desk and stare at my computer screen. Blank documents in Microsoft Word are scattered across my taskbar, waiting for words. None are coming. I scroll through porn galleries online, altogether probably for hours. I wish I could create something that someone would scroll through for hours.

Hi Wolf.

I click on the blinking button, opening up the instant message window.

Hey.

What's up?

Nothing. Can't sleep.

Me neither.

I have never met Erika in person. She is 12pt tall, blue, and Garamond. I never type first.

I just finished your rough draft, she types.

Did you like it?

Yeah. It's good.

I wonder quietly why the only people with the time to peruse my drafts are people I've never met in person. They must spend more time on the computer than I do. I never know how they find me. The internet, I guess.

I found some typos. Do you want me to send them to you?

1. It's a rough draft. It's not really worth it.

I can send them to you anyway.

2. Don't correct things in a rough draft, there's no point.

I told my friend about your story.

It's a book, I think. I'm looking at a pair of oversized, grotesque, purple tits. I type, Oh?

She wants to read it. Did you get my email?

Yes.

I am taking a class in creative writing this year as my elective.

What year are you again?

Sophomore.

I do some math. There is an eight year gap between us. I'm looking at an eight-inch cock tattooed with the Chinese character for GOLD: 金

I want to be a writer.

Not a lot of money in writing.

That's okay. I don't need a lot of money.

Gas is getting expensive. It's nearly three dollars a gallon.

Is that expensive?

Yes.

I don't have my license yet.

Oh, right.

I close her window and go through more galleries, flipping through the images before I really take them in. The pictures don't mean anything. I'm more interested in how they all blur together when I scroll really fast. I wonder why I'm still talking to Erika the sophomore. Her window pops up again.

When do you think you'll write more? she types.

1. I don't know.

2. I hope it's soon.

3. No one trusts me, not even myself.

It's 3:08 a.m.

It's interesting when you sit down and untangle Christmas lights from previous years and you start thinking about how things that happen to you happen to everyone, and if everyone remained bitter about the things that happened to them, they would never reach out to other people who were going through the same things now, and then basically the only people helping other people would be people who didn't really understand what it was like, which is fairly unhelpful in the long run.

But sometimes it's hard to get over that bitterness. Even if it's not even real bitterness anymore. Like your bitterness becomes this shell that you excrete around your heart to protect yourself from feeling sad or hurt or vulnerable, and once all the poison that makes the shell is all cleaned out, you still have this nice little skeleton casing that shows you what your heart looked like a month, a year, five years, two days ago. And you go, wow, my heart will never look like that again. I should keep this little mold on my mantle, or in a box somewhere, or in a photograph or a letter or a scent or a certain place, so that some day when I am going through old things, I will see it. And touching it will feel bitter, but it will also be nostalgic because I will see what I was once.

It's that empty bitter shell that's hard to give up. Sometimes you want to dig it out of storage and, now that you feel stronger better faster smarter healthier sexier more productive funnier, storm up to the person who stuck you with poison in the first place, or the person who was standing there while you cocooned yourself and didn't do anything, and go, This is what I felt like. This is what was inside my heart and around it and blocking my pores and clogging my arteries and seeping up my throat so I couldn't speak. I got it out, but this is what it looks like, now, now, now you surely must be able to understand how hurt I was.

And they look at your hand where you are holding your sculpture -- your magnum opus -- and they can only see your palms and the lines tracing between your fingers and the uneven color of your skin where it bends across the base of your thumb. And they look up at you with this apologetic apathetic confused look, and you want to say, Here! It's here! It's in my hands, I'm showing it to you because I'm not mad any more.

1. And you realize you're yelling.

2. And you realize you've been holding this thing for too long in a day

3. And you realize no one else can see it but you.

4. And you realize you're alone in that.

It's only half of the battle.

I have three tattoos. The first is my family name tattooed on my chest, over my heart: 劉. It has the character for GOLD in it. It means WEAPON OF WAR, or to strip a tree of leaves.

It also describes when paint peels off a wall.

The other two are infinity symbols, on my forearms. An old lady on the bus once asked me if that was how old I was: 8. I said no.

When do I get to meet Meg? Arielle asks from the steering wheel. We stare at the left-hand turn light. It's red. We're the only ones on the road.

What?

You're always talking about her. So why haven't I ever met her?

I don't think you guys would get along.

What? Everyone gets along with me!

I glance over at Arielle. She's a year younger than I am, dressed in a knit top and jeans with red zippers all the way up the sides. She has red hair. She is driving an expensive red car and sitting on a bloated wallet. I glance back at the red light.

I just don't think you'd really hit it off.

Why?

This has got to be the longest red light in all of Rosedale.

I don't mention the fact that I'm pretty sure Meg would hate Arielle. Meg hates anyone who is successful and ungrateful about it. Meg also hates people who run their mouths off for no reason. And, to be fair, she hates the color red. She says it reminds her of a porn vagina.

I can get along with anyone, Arielle says.

Oh really?

Well, I can get along with you, can't I?

The light turns and Arielle revs the engine and eases into the clutch slowly. She's only been driving a manual for a month. The car lurches forward and she takes too long to shift, so we hang in the intersection for about two seconds longer than I'm comfortable with.

Whatever, she says. If you're so into her I don't know why you guys don't just make out.

It's not about that.

Why don't you have any guy friends. Why don't you have a girlfriend.

We drive for an hour without any music, just the sound of the vent in the dashboard of Arielle's new car. It smells a little musty and I wonder if it's going to give me allergies.

Have you finished my book yet?

Yeah. I'm almost done. Only four chapters left.

Oh, I say. She's lying again. That's nice.

Jesus, Wolf. Back off. I haven't had that much time to read, you know.

I wish I had a girlfriend.

What did you say?

Nothing.

It's 2:34 a.m.

There are two things I hate:

When women lie with wolves.

That wolves believe them.

There's that point in anger and spite and grudge and hurt when you suddenly realize you've completely isolated yourself and you're faking happiness so that no one knows, and you get sort of a masochistic pleasure out of knowing they don't even know how much you're avoiding them on the inside. It just feeds that fake smile. And the outside gets bigger and bigger and the inside gets lonelier and lonelier. And somewhere along the way you learned not to do that, but you want to anyway. And you're so good at it that no one can tell when you're at 100% fake, so sometimes you let a little something slip just so they have something to grab on to and ask are you all right? Because you want them to ask, but they never will when you fake at your best.

I want to say it, I want help, I want to make it better and confess, like in that Foo Fighters song.  
1. So this is that little something:

An intimate relationship should be like the shoebox you keep under your bed, where you stash all your secrets and notes and mementos, safely hidden from prying eyes; where nothing is judged and nothing is read except when you feel lonely or mad or silly or nostalgic or romantic and you open it up and go through it and see reflections of what you're feeling now in the pieces you tucked away years ago.  
2. Once upon a time in Denmark, suicide was the touchstone by which you would learn the answer to the question, does this matter.  
3. But Hamlet said no.  
4. For some reason or another.

Meg quit.

It's 2:35 a.m.

It's 5:10 a.m.

Arielle knows something is wrong, because she's nosy. She asks me. I don't want to tell her. She doesn't deserve to know. It's too early for me. I didn't sleep the night before. She says,

So how's Meg?

I don't want to talk about it.

I'm dating a new guy, Arielle pipes. Thanks for asking. His name is Brandon.

Oh. She is selfish and I'm okay with that.

He's a telemarketer. He works mornings. So you and me will hang out in the afternoon—what are you doing? Wolf, it's three in the morning.

Stop the car.

Stop the car, I have to get out.

I call a cab and go to find History Bill. To my great relief he is there, the same as always. I've never been so glad to see him. Tonight, if someone asked, I would admit he is my surrogate father, even if it were a lie. I just want someone to think it, so that I think it, so that it feels like it's true.

I sit at his table. He's reading Mark Twain. I want to explain to him that Mark Twain is fiction. I just don't care anymore. My coffee is salty.

Stop it, Bill says.

What?

He's talking to his book.

1. Waking up feels like being born.

I walk around trying to be a person, you know, trying to be a human being. People mean a lot to me but I don't have time to say it. I expect them to know already. I'm sick of getting pushed away or dumped or ignored or blown off or abandoned, but I also just can't give it up. In a way it really sucks. I start to feel like people don't understand how hard it is for me; that the veneer I put on to impress really is just trying to get me to pass for normal. You know, the humor, the smirks, the sarcasm, the wit, the whatever. It's just trying to get you to miss the fact that I am scared, all the time, of being alone.

Then there's that story about the sheep who cried wolf.  
It's stereotypically traditional of me, isn't it? I hate being me. I sicken me. Reading the shit I write makes me throw up. I'm the guy I can't stand:

2. I MAKE ME SICK.

I try calling Meg. She hasn't answered her phone. I don't know when to call her. I don't want to wake her up when she should be sleeping. We're on opposite sides of the clock, now. I don't know what to do. I pretend like I think she's just busy.

I pretend for a month.

Maybe it's just an extension of pretending from before.

I go to Perkins and the Anne Hathaway hostess gives me a look like you got dumped, poor pup. I don't have an appetite. I'm going to be up all night. I just order coffee. I'll drink coffee until morning. When's the sun supposed to come up? I'll be there.

That'll show her.

It's 7:59 a.m.

I walk with my hands deep in my pockets, anchoring my shoulders forward, safe. In the moonlight and streetlight, I can't see the divisions between the sidewalks. I can only feel them through the soles of my Chucks, little gaps. I count steps. I count until I feel the sidewalk bite the palm of my foot, and it reminds me.

I close my eyes, imagining I am blind. Imagining I am swallowed by the world, gone. Imagining the sidewalk stretches infinitely on all sides. Calculating the projection of the path by the angle at which the tiny gaps intersect my feet. Keeping them perpendicular. Keeping them straight. Orderly. Counting.

I stop. Dozens of mouths are chewing the soles of my feet.

Below me, words are engraved into the concrete. The holes of the letters are pulling at my feet. I fumble with my phone, pulling it out, rubbing my eyes, squinting in the light. Printed firmly into the glistening gray slab is a poem, by some unknown author:

A tourist

in the cathedral

of your silence

I am reverent

for all the wrong

reasons

This is the end.

Woke up this morning the curtains were a big band-aid over the sun. The window's just one tiny, gaping hole to let the light in and I wish, I'd give anything, to cover it up and never see it again. But we can't. No one can.

It's that way with everything that we have.

George's Karma

by

M.C. Arvanitis

April 18, 1775, \- A nightmare of gunfire and screaming men woke George. Dread rushed through his mind just as it always did when he woke up from his nightmares. He struggled out of bed. This was the third nightmare this month. Granny Nebers, the old woman who lived downstairs, advised him to put garlic under his pillow but it hadn't stopped the nightmares.

Needing air he opened the shutters of his window. Across the street the steeple of the Old North Church appeared in the dawning sky. He looked up and down the street. No movement. Maybe there wouldn't be the predicted battle between the Patriots and the British Red Coats. His friend, Paul Revere had forewarned others that it would happen soon, but Paul could be wrong. He had been wrong in his doomsday predictions before.

Just as George turned back to his bed he heard the beat of a horse's hooves and a shrill voice calling, "The British are coming!" He looked again at the church tower. This time a lantern swung in the wind; one light, the signal that the British troops were coming by land.

"Damn," he swore. This time his friend's prediction had come true. He dressed, picked up his musket, left his house, and rode to join the other armed patriots.

A month later he was dead, jabbed through the gut with a bayonet. Killed by a Redcoat.

* * *

May 31, 1861, \- Canons boomed and broken bodies lay all around him. Private George woke up drenched in his own sweat. Another nightmare of carnage. When would the nightmares stop? He had been plagued with them since he turned twelve. When his mother took him to the local doctor he bled him after each episode. After a few of these treatments George never told his mother about his nightmares again.

Now at twenty-one he tried to ignore the dreams and go on with his life working in his father's plantation near Richmond, Virginia. Bored with his existence, when rumors of war between the States loomed he thought that soldiering would be exciting. He joined a brigade of Virginians led by Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston. His first battle at Seven Pines against the Union soldiers ended in nine hundred and eighty deaths.

George was the first to fall at the age of twenty-one in the battle at Bull Run.

* * *

In March of 1917, the U.S. fleet steamed to the north Atlantic to combat German submarines. Chief Gunner's Mate George's bunkmate woke him up with a firm shake. "Wake up, man. How can anyone sleep with your moaning and groaning all night? Are you having another one of your blasted nightmares?"

George sat up and shook his head trying to shake the violence from his mind. "Sorry, I've been having them since I was twelve. My ma told me they would go away when I grew up."

"Well you sure as hell are a man by now. You should see a shrink about them."

"I don't believe in that stuff. No one can control nightmares. I guess I will just have to live with them."

"Whatever you say, mate. Anyway, we are on boat-watch duty this morning. There's been a report of a German submarine in the waters." George and his mate pulled on their fatigues to join the other sailors at the watch station. Just as George reached the deck a submerged torpedo hit his ship. A loud noise, a lurching of the ship, and the screams of the crew were his last experiences in this life. He drowned in the Pacific, casualty of WW1.

* * *

December 7th, 1941 – George sat with his mother and brothers in front of their radio trying to concentrate on the news. That morning another nightmare had awakened him. In his dream he heard the rat, tat, tat, tat of machine gun fire. At the same time he saw his legs leave his body and he felt himself falling. He shook it off, just another damn nightmare. He would speak to the priest about it during confession tomorrow, although these confessions didn't' seem to help. The nightmare always returned.

He listened to President Franklin Roosevelt's voice through the radio speaker. "This is a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan."

After the President's announcement he told his parents he was going to enlist in the US Army. His father advised him to join the air force. George agreed. He had always dreamed of flying one of those F6F Hellcat fighter planes.

A year later Captain Ace Flyer, George and his F6F Hellcat was shot down by a Japanese Zero. They never found his body.

* * *

September 11, 2001 - George dozed at his desk. His office was on the sixty-first floor of the North twin tower building of the World Trade Center in New York City. He had come to work early since he couldn't sleep anyway. The nightmares were getting to him. Seems he couldn't get a good night's sleep. The dream of fire eating his flesh woke him. His wife urged him to make an appointment with Dr. Heather Phillips, the famous dream doctor. He didn't much believe in all that crap but he would do anything to stop the bloody nightmares. He picked up the phone and made an appointment with Dr. Phillips. Thinking about it, he felt silly talking to a woman about his stupid dreams. He shrugged it off. He looked out his window. A plane flew directly toward the building.

An hour later he was one of thousands of fatalities the news people wrote about on 9-1-1.

* * *

November 16, 2055 – It was George's twenty-first birthday. Since he turned twelve he had been plagued with horrendous nightmares. This morning he had wakened to the soothing music from the hypnotherapy CDs he played while he slept. He tried to recall his dream but it had faded before he could catch it. He felt good.

The years of sessions with his psychiatrist must be working. Dr. Sheeto had told him to deny the violent nightmares. She said it could be some kind of Karma from past lives that he had to work out in this life; that if he refused to accept them they would not return. It had taken several sessions of hypnotism but it had worked. The violent nightmares never returned.

George died at age ninety-nine of natural causes with his large and loving family around him. He had conquered his Karma.

Dr. Crimmins

by

Steven Novak

Dr. Christopher Crimmins was determined to create the world's first time machine. For years he meticulously gathered information on both the subjects of time and machines. He worked and reworked his calculations, and just when he thought he had worked them as much as they could possibly be worked, he worked them again. Dr. Crimmins spent months gathering materials, and drawing blueprints, and redrawing blueprints and re-gathering materials. When everything was gathered and drawn and calculated he purchased himself a small workspace just outside of town, transferred his redrawn blueprints, and re-reworked calculations, and re-re-re-gathered materials to the secure location and set into making his dream of time travel a reality.

His friends said he was crazy, of course. His coworkers claimed it couldn't be done.

"Time is a force man is not meant to master." That's what Professor Hendricks claimed.

His acquaintances called him a lunatic.

"You're a lunatic." That's what the guy that mowed his lawn told him.

His strangers didn't offer much as they had no idea who he was, what he was planning on building and rebuilding, and why he was bothering them with his moronic time travel babble.

If they had, they wouldn't have been strangers.

"You've lost your mind, Dr. Crimmins." That's what his longtime co-worker, Dr. Eddelson said to him one afternoon at lunch. "Time travel is a scientific impossibility. The laws of physics say no."

Dr. Crimmins shook his head and disassembled his baloney sandwich before reassembling it and taking a bite. Dr. Eddleson didn't know what he was talking about and Dr. Crimmins wasn't going to stop until he proved his crusty old associate incorrect. If physics did indeed say no, Dr. Crimmins was going to make it say yes.

It took the good doctor four months to fully assemble his time machine. It should have taken him two, but he insisted on disassembling and reassembling the contraption twice. When it was finally completed, Dr. Crimmins stood across from his creation, folded his arms and nodded his head approvingly.

It was magnificent.

Of course he was tempted to pull it apart and put it together one last time, but he managed to push the urge aside. It was done. It was perfect and it was done. It wasn't going to get anymore perfect or done.

It was beautiful.

Dr. Crimmins stripped off his clothes, folded his arms and stared at it with his genitals bobbing free.

It was even more beautiful than before.

The doctor barely slept that night. He planned on climbing inside his time machine the following day and the anticipation of doing exactly that was killing him. If everything went according to plan, tomorrow he would be having lunch with Albert Einstein, and dinner with John Lennon, and sleeping snugly in a nest beside a group of Brachiosaurus eggs. If everything went according to plan he would prove a smug-faced Dr. Eddleson wrong and kick out the legs on which the table of modern science had stood for years!

Everything was going to change and he was going to change it.

If everything went according to plan everything was going to go according to plan – which went without saying.

Dr. Crimmins arrived at the secure location early the next morning. He clicked the necessary switches, dialed the diodes that needed to be dialed, and timed the machine's various timers. When he was done doing that, he did it all again.

Three hours later the time had arrived.

Dr. Crimmins peeled off his clothes, folded them neatly and set them on a chair on the opposite end of the room. Clad in nothing but a pair of time-travel-safe metallic booties, his old man genitals hanging loosey goosey and free, the sixty-seven-year-old doctor opened the door of his time machine, climbed into the humming box of steel and closed the door behind him.

The interior felt icy cold against his buttocks and he chastised himself for not installing a seat. It dawned on him that he probably should have taken the time to craft an entire time-travel-safe suit rather than just a pair of booties as well. Even a simple pair of briefs would have helped significantly. A long tee shirt would have worked just as well. He could have cinched it at the waist with a fashionable belt, maybe. That would have looked nice.

It was a slight oversight on his part.

Pushing aside the thoughts of his poor planning when it came to fashion, Dr. Crimmins took a deep breath and steadied his nerves. He wrapped his hand around the ignition lever to his right, released the time-brake with his bootie-clad foot, adjusted the time dial with his free hand, and pulled the lever into position.

Next stop, the studio of Michelangelo Buonarroti!

A white light emerged from the steel underneath him. Like water filling a container, as if it had form, and mass, and substance, the incredible glow began to wash over his body. It engulfed his dangling genitals before swallowing his belly and continuing north to his chest. Moments before it devoured his head, Dr. Crimmins closed his eyes and held his breath.

In an instant, everything transformed into nothing. Nothing briefly morphed into something, but turned once again into nothing soon afterward. Lost in a void of light and sound, for a moment that could just as easily have been a year, Dr. Crimmins was without body. His eyes had become particles of light. They were scattered across eons of time. They existed everywhere exactly as they existed nowhere. His arms floated among the rocky debris making up the rings of Saturn while his legs jogged atop the gaseous clouds of a faraway planet yet undiscovered. His genitals were on a bridge in New Jersey.  
When the good doctor finally emerged from the bizarre state of simultaneous existence across the whole of time and space, he emerged on the opposite end of the room. When he opened his eyes he was staring at his own bare buttocks. He watched with amazement as an earlier version of himself bent over, climbed into the time machine, and closed the door with a clank.

A moment later the machine began to hum and a moment after that it was gone.

In the void of nothing and everything, Dr. Crimmins was again dancing among the stars. His legs did a jig on the surface of the sun while his beard blasted from the confines of the Milky Way and into the endless recesses of empty space. His nose visited a bizarre alien culture on a world too far away for the concepts of math to contemplate. His toes splashed into the primordial ooze that gave birth to mankind. His penis was again on a bridge in New Jersey.

When the doctor emerged from the incredible expanse once more, he opened his eyes just in time to see an earlier version of himself bend over, climb into the time machine and shut the door behind.

A second, mostly nude version of himself tapped him on the shoulder. "We should have checked those calculations one last time, doctor."

In the void of stuff and no stuff at all, the third version of Dr. Crimmins was, yet again, spread across the galaxy. His metallic booties were tapping a jaunty tune on the dish of Voyager 2 while his eyes took in the incredible sight of the big bang itself. His ears eavesdropped on a conversation between Lenny Kravitz, Dom Deluise, and Peter Scolari. His dong was again on a bridge in New Jersey.

The third version of Dr. Crimmins opened his eyes and settled on the sight of his own exposed butt cheeks. His anus puckered briefly before disappearing into the silver time machine and shutting the hatch with a clank.

A finger familiar tapped him simultaneously on both shoulders and two earlier, incredibly frustrated, versions of himself spoke in unison. "We blew it, Doctor."

Things continued on this way for hours. In no time at all the room was filled with naked doctors and drooping genitals. Every two minutes another version of Dr. Crimmins would emerge and every two minutes the situation would worsen. When the room became unable to contain the mass of their collected wrinkly flesh, the sweaty bodies began to mash together. They molded into each other like dough. They formed and reformed and meshed into a blob of collected body parts and gray-haired testicles. Their bones snapped and their skulls cracked. The heat from the time machine cooked the screaming mass of doctor-flesh like a fat, hairless kitten in a microwave.

The death of Dr. Crimmins was a horrible death made more horrible by the fact that it happened numerous times.

It was also quite messy.

What Time Zone Is It In Heaven

by

Carla Hapke

_GENNA: Age 10_

_Grade: 5_

_* * *_

_To:_ God@GodAlmighty.universe

_From:_ Genna@505AreaCode.com

_Re: HELP!!_

_Apr 2, 2012 1:45 PM_

_OMG. (Wait. Can I say that to God?)_

_Let me start over. Dearest Heavenly Person, I only have a few minutes to write before Principal Rudeness comes in with my parents, so God I need you to work FAST. Let me tell you what happened. Some boys were teasing me about my outfit and I had enough out of them. So I reached over and slapped Chris across the face and kicked Simon in the leg and ran as fast as I could to the girl's bathroom. Ms Haggerton saw the whole thing and yanked me out of the bathroom so fast, I saw everything in watercolors. She pulled me by the collar and dragged me all the way to the principal's office. Principal Rudepants is in there calling my mom as we speak. I snuck onto her computer so that I could send you this urgent email._

<send>

_* * *_

_To:_ God@GodAlmighty.universe

_From:_ Genna@505AreaCode.com

_Re: HELP!!_

_Apr 2, 2012 1:48 PM_

_God, this is what I need you to do. I need you to send a hurricane and wipe out the school, except for my friends and myself, of course. I need all of these people gone, ASAP. I need this to happen RIGHT NOW before my mom shows up. Otherwise, she will be so angry and disappointed._

_I can't believe this is happening. What is my mom going to say?_

**< send>**

_* * *_

_To:_ God@GodAlmighty.universe

_From:_ Genna@505AreaCode.com

_Re: HELP!!_

_Apr 2, 2012 1:49 PM_

_God, are you getting all of this? Why isn't anything happening? I just looked outside and the playground is still full of people!! Are you on vacation? Does God get a vacation? Hello??!! EARTH to HEAVEN!!_

**< send>**

_* * *_

Just then, I heard footsteps down the hall so I exited out of the browser and sat down in the chair beside the desk. The door opened quickly and my mother walked in with the principal. "Well, here she is. Genna, I need you to tell us what happened, in your own words."

I looked at the two adults with a blank look on my face. Why is this happening to me? Where is God when I needed Him? Why do I always feel so alone?

"Ever since I started attending this school, boys have been picking on me. Today, it was about how I dressed. Yesterday, they were laughing at me because I get free lunches at school. Last week, they were teasing me because I don't have a dad. I am just SICK of it. I can't take their abuse anymore, so I decided to push back for once and it felt GOOD!" With that, I jumped up out of my seat, ran out of the office and down the hall. I had no idea where I was headed. I just knew that anywhere was better than in that place.

When I exited the building, I had the misfortune of running into Ms. Haggerton again. She grinned like the Cheshire cat as she grabbed my hand, pulling me like a limp rag doll back to the chamber that I had just escaped.

I wonder if she buys strays from the animal shelter so that she can take them home and torture them. I can imagine her giving a cat a bath so that she can hear them scream, or shaving the hair off of a defenseless bunny rabbit.

The look on my mom's face was unforgettable because she always looked at me like that--with utter disappointment. I walked over to the chair and dropped my body onto the seat. Ms Haggerton stood in the doorway, as if she was anticipating a big show.

My mother rolled her eyes, let out a big sigh, before saying, "Young lady, I don't know what I am going to do with you this time. You are in so much trouble. How dare you act out like this in public? I got an urgent message from your principal and had to leave my shift to come and deal with your problems. Now I am going to have more problems when my boss finds out. He's going to punish me for this! Don't you ever think about anyone other than yourself? How am I going to pay the bills if I have to keep rushing down here to hear your excuses?"

"Mom, I didn't mean to get you in trouble at work! Why does everything have to be about you? Didn't you hear what I said? The boys are so mean to me! I had to do something and fast! What were they going to do tomorrow? It was never going to end! Why can't you understand?" I tried to look at my mom the same way she was looking at me. Without having a mirror, I had no way of knowing if I was being successful.

Principal Dragonbreath leaned in towards me. "You need to calm down and act a little more mature. Right now, you are acting like a two-year-old. I am certain your mother is doing the best she can as a single parent. She is not the one that acted inappropriately at school. You are the one who was seen victimizing two young men on the playground. We have a no tolerance policy at this school and there will be consequences for this ridiculous behavior. I am forced to give you a three-day suspension. You will be expected to complete extra classwork and write apology letters to the poor boys that you bullied. A five hundred word essay about the importance of self control will be due on my desk on Monday morning. Do you understand what I am saying to you?"

I let out a long sigh and shrugged my shoulders. "I guess so."

"Should I repeat my instructions? I need you very certain before you leave my office."

I opened my eyes wide and tried to make my face look as mean as a bulldog. "YES. I get it. What else do you want me to say?"

"Well, for having an attitude, you will also have to forfeit your recess periods for the next month and use that time helping the janitor clean the bathrooms."

As tears flooded my eyes, I bit my lip to keep from screaming out at her. This entire situation was so unfair. Why were all the adults in my life incapable of listening to me?

And where was God in all of this? Did I not have the right email address? Note to self: check my sent mail and see if the message was marked read. I wonder if there is a support group for those poor individuals that get their messages spammed.

I walked out to the car with my head hung low. My mom quickly walked past me, got in the car and started the engine. I squeezed my eyes shut as I hoped that she would just back out of the parking lot and leave me alone. I would rather sleep on the curb than face a punishment for a crime that was against ME. Unfortunately, the car remained where it was and I could sense my mother's growing impatience. I opened the door and climbed in, sinking into the backseat.

* * *

When I got home, I went straight to my room, just like my mother demanded. After turning on the light and putting my backpack on the floor, I pushed the power button on my laptop and sat down at my desk. My computer purred as Windows loaded and I tapped my fingers on the desk impatiently. I opened my internet browser and clicked on my mailbox window. I was disappointed to find that I had no new email messages. Why is God ignoring me? Perusing my outbox, it appeared that the recipient email address was correct, or at least according to the talktogod.com website. How could God do this to me? Doesn't He know that my life is in shambles and getting more and more horrible as every moment passed? When was he going to intervene and strike all that persecuted me?

Frustrated, I clicked on the "compose new message" icon.

_* * *_

_To:_ God@GodAlmighty.universe

_From:_ Genna@505AreaCode.com

_Re: GENNA NEWMAN_

_Apr 2, 2012 2:33 PM_

_Dear God, Do you not know who I am? Let me tell you some things about my life so that maybe you can stop spamming my emails._

_My name is Genna Newman and I am currently ten-years-old. I live a pretty normal unnormal life in a city called Albuquerque, New Mexico. (It's the place that Bugs Bunny is always telling people to take a left turn at, although he never says from what direction he was traveling.) My mom and I live in a little two bedroom house in a bad part of town. My mom says we live where we do because the rent is cheap, and because of this, we need to ignore the constant drug raids across the street. I also think that my babysitter is a prostitute because she always has new guys over when my mom is at work and they leave money on the table. I wonder if the guys ever take her to a movie or a dinner date._

_< send>_

_* * *_

_To:_ God@GodAlmighty.universe

_From:_ Genna@505AreaCode.com

_Re: INFORMATION NEEDED_

_Apr 2, 2012 2:36 PM_

_God, do you know who my father is? Mom refuses to talk about him. The last time I asked her a question about him, I was grounded for three weeks. Why is it such a secret? It makes me wonder if he is a bad person, and if he is, if that jumped onto my genes when I was in her stomach. I also am curious if he knows about me because maybe that would explain why he doesn't come to visit. I have been watching movies on Lifetime lately and I am making a list of possibilities about my father._

_Theory 1: My dad is a secret agent with a secret identity. He stays away to keep us safe from bad people._

_Theory 2: My dad is in prison because of a crime he did not commit._

_Theory 3: My dad died trying to pull kids out of a burning house._

_Theory 4: My dad got lost and can't find his way home._

_Theory 5: My dad got lost and then we moved and he doesn't know the new address._

_Theory 6: My dad got hit on the head when taking a walk and lost all memory that he has a family._

_Theory 7: My dad is away on a very long business trip in a third world country that does not have telephones or mail service._

_Theory 8: My dad is in the witness protection program because he witnessed a crime. It really bothers him that he can't phone or write to his family._

_Theory 9: My mom forgot to tell him about me._

_Theory 10: My mom hates him and is keeping me a secret._

_Theory 11: My dad hates me._

_Theory 12: My dad hates my mom._

_Theory 13: My dad hates both of us._

_Theory 14: My dad has a second family and they still need him there._

_Theory 15: My dad is ugly and my mom doesn't want anyone to know she dated him._

_Theory 16: My mom is ugly and my dad doesn't want anyone to know he dated her._

_Theory 17: My dad is an alien from outer space and can't contact us from his planet._

_Theory 18: All of the above._

_Theory 19: None of the above._

_God, can you tell me if any of these theories are correct? You can just type a number and push send._

_< send>_

_* * *_

_To:_ God@GodAlmighty.universe

_From:_ Genna@505AreaCode.com

_Re: WHY?_

_Apr 2, 2012 2:43 PM_

_Dear God, My mom is always mad at me. I think it is because she works so hard and never has time to get her beauty sleep. When I told her she needed more sleep because she was looking really tired, old and ugly, she started to cry her eyes out. I always say the wrong things to her, but she always says the wrong things to me, too. I wonder if I learned it from her or if she learned it from me? Maybe I learned it from my dad before he left us? If I only knew who my dad was, I could go visit him and she could take a vacation. I feel bad that she is always so tired and sad, until she gets angry at me and sends me to my room. Then I just want to take my own vacation to some place far away with my best friend, Cindy Marie Roach._

_Hey, can I come to heaven for a visit? Then I don't have to send you all of these emails. I would love to be in a place where there is no crime, no pollution, no principals assigning stupid essays because you stood up to bullies. I wonder if the angels have their own houses and if they have sleepovers with their best friends._

_Or maybe I can just LIVE in heaven. You could make me an honorary angel since I have had such a hard life. I think all ten-year-olds living in my neighborhood should be honorary angels._

_< send>_

_* * *_

_To:_ God@GodAlmighty.universe

_From:_ Genna@505AreaCode.com

_Re: ADVICE_

_Apr 2, 2012 2:45 PM_

_Can I make a suggestion? If you have any extra angels, maybe you can assign a few of them to check your email. If your minds are all connected, they could even respond for you, by reading your mind. That would save you a lot of time and you could do other important things, like reminding the stars to twinkle or commanding the grass to grow. I wonder how you spend your time. Which things are considered a priority? (Obviously not girls named Genna Newman.)_

_< send>_

_* * *_

_To:_ God@GodAlmighty.universe

_From:_ Genna@505AreaCode.com

_Re: MY BFF!!_

_Apr 2, 2012 2:47 PM_

_God, are you getting all of this? I hope you don't mind so many emails._

_I hope it is alright to be honest with you. (I think I have to be or lightning might strike me where I type!) Because it sucks, I hate everything about my life, except for my best friend, Cindy Marie Roach. (The poor girl is always being teased about her name. She also has big beautiful eyes, but the mean kids at school call her bug eyes.) We met at the park and instantly became best friends. She is the only one that has ever understood me, or even listened to me, for that matter. When our parents say its okay, we have sleepovers, staying up all night so we can plan our escape. We are going to leave this town, either next week or for college, depending on when we can learn how to drive. We also have to save up for our getaway car and for food. I think we will only need about fifty dollars and I already have $2.53 in my piggy bank._

_< send>_

_* * *_

_To:_ God@GodAlmighty.universe

_From:_ Genna@505AreaCode.com

_Re: MONEY PROBLEMS_ __

_Apr 2, 2012 2:50 PM_

_God, do you think it would be too much to ask for you to make my piggy bank "runneth over" with more money? (Please don't turn it into wine.) I am only asking you this because I think it will take longer than one week to save up enough money to escape this life. I am so desperate that I think I might put a wanted ad on Craigslist. I wonder if I can trade my hamster for a car. I really don't want to, but if you think it is a good idea, then I will consider it for a long time._

_Well, I am not sure what else I should tell you. I think my mom hates me because she has to work so much to pay the bills, my teacher hates me because I am smarter than her and the principal hates me now because she will have to read my essay next week. I was hoping that you could wave a magic wand, or blow a really big gust of wind, and rid all of these bad thoughts that people have of me and sink them into the Rio Grande._

_< send>_

_* * *_

_To:_ God@GodAlmighty.universe

_From:_ Genna@505AreaCode.com

_Re: Hello?!_

_Apr 2, 2012 2:52 PM_

_God? Are you reading these? I just checked the status of the messages I sent and it does not show receipt confirmation. Maybe you are busy feeding some sparrows right now and not at your desk? Do you have a desk? If so, I wonder how big it is and if you sit at a chair or if you float near it like a ghost._

_< send>_

_* * *_

_To:_ God@GodAlmighty.universe

_From:_ Genna@505AreaCode.com

_Re: TECH SUPPORT_

_Apr 2, 2012 2:54 PM_

_God, do you have technical support in heaven? Maybe you are not getting my emails because you are having internet problems. I am great at solving problems. Maybe that is another reason why you should bring me to heaven. I would be very useful._

_< send>_

_* * *_

_To:_ God@GodAlmighy.universe

_From:_ Genna@505AreaCode.com

_Re: Time_

_Apr 2, 2012 2:59 PM_

_What time zone is Heaven in?_

_Sir God,_ it has been one hour plus fourteen minutes since my first message. I read in the Bible that it took an entire six whole days to create the world and everything in it. Maybe it was rude of me to think you could respond to a girl way down here on earth in one hour fourteen minutes. Maybe it takes longer for data to transmit into the heavens or the stars create interference.

Another minute just passed! God, where are you? Don't you hear my heart pounding to the tick of the clock? Time is passing and so is my life!

Since I have always heard that God is beautiful, are you busy getting your beauty sleep? What is the chance this is your day of rest? The Book said you rested on day seven, but I don't remember what happened next. Maybe you never stopped resting? Or maybe it is the opposite. Because you are so mighty, you could use your free time to waste six more days creating another earth.

Since you aren't responding to me, is it possible you are focusing on another me in another world? Maybe the email got scrambled and you had no idea WHICH Genna Newman needed you. Maybe you did care and respond instantly, but only to the wrong Genna? It is all my fault that you are not answering me. (Another minute passed!) I never signed my emails, From Genna Newman, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Earth. Let me fix this. "Dear God, My life is over because one hour sixteen minutes has passed. Signed, Genna Newman from Albuquerque, New Mexico on planet Earth."

I think of you as a hero, God. Heroes are supposed to always be around. Heroes do things without being asked. Why do I even have to ask for your help? Why can't you just come down on a magic white cloud, surrounded by doves, riding a white horse? Then you can zap all my problems away and go right back to resting, or whatever it is you are doing right now while you are ignoring me. You are so awesome that time shouldn't matter. You should be able to save my pathetic world in a blink of an eye.

I just blinked and still no hero. I give up.

Maybe I will give you some more time.... I don't have anything better to do.

<send>

_* * *_

_To:_ God@GodAlmighy.universe

_From:_ Genna@505AreaCode.com

_Re:_ __

_Apr 2, 2012 3:15 PM_

_God, I hate all of this silence while I wait for you. I feel really alone. I have big questions and no one will answer them._

_Can I ask you a big question? Why doesn't my mom love me?_

_< send>_

_* * *_

**I wonder how many emails God must receive before He bothers replying.**

### The End

More Literary Underground information can be found on our web site: <http://litunderground.com/>

