

## Easy Reading for Difficult Devils

### Edited by Zachary T. Owen

—2014—

Smashwords Edition

_Easy Reading for Difficult Devils_ copyright © 2014 Zachary T. Owen

Cover image and design copyright © 2014 by Steve Zaffino

All short stories contained herein are original to this collection, with the exceptions of "Grease for the Gears of Heaven" which first appeared in _Fates Worse Than Life_ , distributed by Black Rainbow Press, 2011, and "Watching" which first appeared in _Blinkspace_ , distributed by Hellbender Media, 2011, and "Job Hunting" which first appeared in _The Dust Lounge_ , 2014.

All authors retain the rights to their works. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, physical or electronic, without prior written permission from the publisher, or in the case of an individual story, the written permission of the author. However, small passages of this publication may be quoted for use in book reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents, and situations are either the product of the authors' sick imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, as well as events and locales, is purely coincidental.

eBook layout by Zachary T. Owen

thewordvirus@gmail.com

First Digital Edition: May 2014

For my friends.

_You made this possible_.

### Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

Grease for the Gears of Heaven

Kevin Sweeney

What's My Story?

Brandon Lewis

Watching

Edward Martin III

Splatter Ward

Neil Peters

The Adoring Dentist

Darren Simpson

The Truth and Other Hideous Beasts

Jonathan Persinger

Curse of the Ape Man

Aurelio Rico Lopez III

The Glasmoor Beldam

Philip Gorski

Balk

Ben Rutkowski

Curiosity

Marjorie Lord

The Quarry

C.V. Hunt

Bar Fly

Jamison VanLoocke

Footprints

Jeremy Terry

Shithouse Rat

Zachary T. Owen

Writer Bios

### INTRODUCTION

The purpose of _Easy Reading for Difficult Devils_ is to show off various shades of darkness, the wide scope of "dark fiction." I was careful not to subtitle the collection "an anthology of horror." Not because I don't agree with the label, but because I am conscious, maybe more than others, of the fact that horror gets its tendrils in _all_ genres. Any tale of survival or human turmoil can have elements of horror, even if it features no ghosts, no bloodthirsty creatures, no masked slashers. Jack London's "To Build a Fire" was a simple tale of man vs. nature. And yet it evokes horror. _Easy Reading for Difficult Devils_ is a compilation of fiction featuring what we've come to know as "horror", as well as dark-tinged sci-fi, fantasy, drama, and bizarro. In these pages you'll find _Tales from the Crypt_ style comeuppance, fantastic and supernatural beasties, grim realities, and the darkly humorous. I also hope you'll find a good time.

—Zachary T. Owen, May 2014

### Grease for the Gears of Heaven

Kevin Sweeney

After my Judgement I came back with one that fit into the palm of my hand and wondered with the rest of the world exactly what it meant.

Did the size matter? There was no way of knowing.

My beloved came back with one that was nearly as tall as her, but was in every other way exactly the same as all the others. And when our neighbor came back the light vanished from the upstairs window. His was taller than our house, two of our houses. It blocked the light.

It was all the world talked about, after talking about nothing but the gears for so long. "The gears of Heaven" was picked up as a name when a Japanese journalist first wrote about them, though in the West somebody offered "the mills of God" as an alternative. They were in all sizes, toothed discs like cogs, some as big as cities others as small as houses; they rotated like cogs as well, their teeth meeting each other and interlinking so that the whole sky crawled with motion. After first being seen by fishermen just off the coast of Kyoto they had spread rapidly, like fractals swarming across the blue sky, the star studded sky. They hovered over the world for some time before they began to take people, and it was some time after that when it became apparent what they took them for; to judge.

It was different for everyone. Some came back and said that _they loved us as any parent would love its children_ , and others came back saying that _they were just doing their jobs or keeping that which was promised_... it was hard to tell which.

And many others came back screaming.

I was one of those. I had thought the gears were beautiful, hanging a mile above the earth and turning in perfect harmony with one another. They were the color of pearls and turned each night silver. They were silent.

My beloved was taken hours before me. She went whilst we slept, the curtains open to let in the peaceful silver light. I woke when she went, her sudden absence more jarring then waking when a stranger creeps in the door. I got up, oddly excited, nervy, made tea to pass the time and watched the clock.

When she came back she came back in the hall. Her and her gift, as they were dubbed. As tall as her, skin smooth and the pearl color of the discs, a featureless snowman made of something other than snow. The walls, radiator, and coats on hooks were outlined in silver from the glow until I snapped the light on.

My beloved was a little blurry at first, but gradually came back into focus. She was smiling.

"O," she said. That was all she said, could say, did say about her Judgement; this was only a week or two after the world started calling the abductions Judgements, and I had to keep reminding myself to call it that when I asked her but... all she could say was _O_. And smile, the laughter lines at the corners of her eyes ever more apparent these days.

We went to bed. It was still in the hall come the morning.

I did not touch it, and neither did she. We just looked at it without speaking, until my beloved broke the silence by saying, "It does look sorta like a snowman." I agreed, "Yeah, sorta."

We had to go to work, two cars heading two different ways, but the world of outside seemed oddly disjointed. How could work exist in the same world as...

No matter how much you may prepare yourself, you can never prepare yourself.

This was long after the Reich authorities had finally relented trying to control what was happening and had stopped issuing orders. They had tried to confiscate the gifts, those snowmen-like artifacts, cover them up. They had conducted tests. They knew nothing, could do even less. It was a re-run of the months in which the gears had spread across the sky.

But the world demanded that we go on and so we went to work.

No matter what propaganda the zeitgeistapo had attempted, there was no way to quantify the Judgments. They could come at any time, but seemed to prefer the night. They could take you from anywhere, and put you back anywhere else, but seemed to prefer privacy.

And when people came back they returned with the gifts that could be any size.

Even news that tried to reduce it to facts and figures or even, help us, competition, failed; it did not matter if the largest recorded was a half mile tall, or the smallest could fit on a pinhead.

All around the world it was happening. It was happening at its own pace and refused to be made into neat numbers or simple ideas. It belonged to the world equally. It defied politics, made that old conceit seem infantile; it defied religion, was grander than even the most venerable of lies; philosophy broke when thrown against it and art just stood back and recognized its first forgotten parent.

When I was taken I was not aware of a transition. First, I was stood at the sink at home cleaning my nails and then I was lying on my back in the middle of a plain. I could not see where I was, but it felt vast around me. Vast and flat. A plain.

Above me was the moon. Above me. The moon. Millions of tons of rock and so wide and only inches above my face.

It blinked.

I came back screaming and mine fit in the palm of my hand.

Smooth and pearl colored skin, three balls of connected flesh, each slightly flattened at the ends were they joined together, each slightly larger than the first. A small, featureless snowman of rubbery meat that I could hold in my hand where I stood in the kitchen.

I could feel its heart beat. Warm.

I put it down, and then I walked steadily to the push top bin and vomited. I cleaned myself up in the bathroom and got a look at my face; pure white, drained, and the hard lines across my forehead stood out plainly, time's thumb nail creases marking my years.

Two days later my neighbor's snowman appeared. Another four days went past, and every human being on earth had one, and it was time to begin.

It seemed as one we, the world, knew what we had to do. My beloved was quicker than me and decided on the long handled meat cleaver on the magnetic strip above the stove. It would not have been my choice, but the fact that it was no longer an option rankled me a little. I pushed the feeling aside and chose my fruit peeling knife, the thumb short blade with the tip snapped off square, for slicing rather than stabbing.

My beloved did not hesitate. Hers was still in the hall and that was where she began to work.

I decided to do mine outside, in the road.

It was early morning, the wind smelled clean. The gears above glowed pale against the sky, a scrim of blue visible between the edges of one and another. I went and sat on the curb and mused on where to begin. It has always been my nature to hesitate; undecided I looked over my shoulder at my neighbor's house, dwarfed by his.

My neighbor had set one ladder against the base of his and had climbed up to where the second bulge sat atop the first. He had dragged up another ladder, but the width between the bulges was not sufficient to let him set it up. Evidently he had planned for this ahead of time, and was now pulling on climbing pitons, spike toed shoes and grappling grips for scaling. His chainsaw jutted blade first from his rucksack.

I waved with my knife hand. He waved back, shouted something about how he _just got this feeling, you know_? I shouted back that _sure, I knew_ , and wagged the blade at him to show him it was the truth.

I looked at my gift. I very, very gently touched the fruit knife against the snowman's head. A cut bloomed bloody lipped at me, as if it were a fruit with flesh tightly wadded under the skin, ripe enough to burst. Blood the color of my own began to weep down its flesh. I tried to thumb it away. I dabbed it on the knee of my trousers, cleaning the wound as much as possible. Deep inside was something round and black and shiny.

My mind said, _seed, pit, stone_. My heart knew better.

Behind me the chainsaw started up; I breathed deeply and told myself I had to finish. You do not start something and then stop, because what does that leave you with? Something deformed, something worthless and incomplete.

I danced the knife across the air to the bottom end, the thickest end, the big ball end. Without really thinking about it I made three quick nicks from left to right, one two three vertical cuts across the base. They all smiled bloodily, drooled gore, but this time I didn't wipe it off. I was watching carefully when the wound on the left sprouted first; a stalk the same color as the lights. Flesh slid out, skinny at first, then coming to a bend, and then thicker again until it got so thick it plugged the wound with itself.

A second stalk began to grow from the right wound, sliding out, new flesh marbled with blood as it came, reaching a bend and then thickening until it could grow no more, the wound swollen tight shut.

Neither wound was particularly big, so neither stalk was long. It had short legs.

My neighbor yelled. I turned around and saw him scrabbling back down to the ladder as a waterfall of blood poured down over him, drenching him from head to foot. I looked above to his work; with the chainsaw he had cut wide and low on the top ball, the small end. Wide and low, and now that wound yawned open and blood poured forth in a torrent.

It was not drowning he was trying to escape though, but what followed the blood out of the wound.

I think I heard myself say something.

I said, "No."

As long and as thick as a telegraph pole, flexible as rubber, the black tongue whipped around the ragged edges of the wound. Like it was licking its lips, if it had had them.

My neighbor fell with a howl. I heard his neck snap when he hit the ground, heard that howl bend double in his throat.

I was on my feet, perhaps ready to run and get help which was not needed because I was still thinking like the world had never been covered over with the discs; thinking with an old mind. I'd forgotten I had my own still in my hand until I felt something slap against my wrist.

I had cut three holes across the base of my gift. Legs stuck out from either side, flexing at the knees, but whilst I had been staring at my neighbor and what he had wrought, the middle hole had sprouted; mine was a male.

I screamed and threw it from me. It hit the ground running.

Mine was not the only scream, and the screams were not the only sounds, echoing up from the quiet streets as horror or glory sprouted according to how people had chosen to cut. Amidst the screams there were bellows, trumpeting, laughter, creaking.

My beloved had come out of the house and hers was behind her. No; she had been carried from the house. She had used the cleaver four times, around the middle.

O, she was saying. Laughter broke between her smiles and O, O, O.

Its strong arms encircled Eve. It stretched forth its wings. It bore my beloved aloft and against the silver light I saw others, wings unfolding, folding, bearing skywards, borne aloft on the leathery wings of ancient serpents. I watched until they disappeared between the gears, were crushed between the grinding teeth of the mills of God.

It rained blood over the whole earth.

Later that evening the gears began to vanish, newly lubricated. Those of us left could see the stars revealed and soon whatever we had made of our gifts, the mighty and the minuscule, began to find sharp things. Broken plates and slivers of smashed glass. Razors.

And made of us what they would.

### What's My Story?

Brandon Lewis

The Boy and Dad, every Wednesday night, after the late-night cartoons, would hunker down to the worn black carpet and take turns giving life to the toys they'd picked from the check-out isle. Each toy received a name and a story. After the two had given life to each toy, they would march the little plastic figures across the white couches, fighting battles, rescuing princesses, holding off alien invasions—fulfilling their stories. But, ever since Dad got the job at the new plant, the two played less and less.

The Boy became sad and lonely, so much that he began hearing the voices of his own toys. They called to the Boy from under the couch cushions, promising that, if he'd join their plastic ranks, he'd never be without a friend again. Excited by all the voices cheering him on, the Boy agreed, and he felt his joints stiffen as the walls, the ceiling fan, and the couch grew into giant landscapes. Was everything growing, he wondered, or was he shrinking?

Later that evening, several hours before he normally arrived, Dad opened the creaky wooden door and removed the baseball cap covering a balding, stress-worn head, a small bag filled with new toys and gummy fish candies in his other hand. Dad called for the Boy, told him that he had quit the plant to make up for all the time they'd lost. He was home to play for good. When Dad didn't hear the Boy's usual whispers in the living room, he searched the Boy's bed, under the dining room table, every closet where he'd ever hidden to 'scare' Dad. After finding only crumpled candy wrappers, Dad paced the house feverishly, fighting back the thought that he'd lost his own son.

***

With tears trailing his cheeks, Dad fell to his knees in the living room, near the disheveled couch cushions. He flipped them up and found nearly every toy he and the Boy had given life and stories to. He picked up each one and spoke their names into the silent room until he came to one he didn't remember, but somehow it felt familiar. Just as Dad nearly convinced himself that he'd forgotten the toy's name, he heard the faintest noise in his hand. The toy had whispered back. Dad cupped the toy to his ear and listened for a while until he heard, in perfect clarity, the words "What's my story, Dad?" repeating louder and louder.

### Watching

Edward Martin III

She moves through the trees with hardly a sound. Her feet are soft and padded and everywhere she steps is the perfect place to put a foot. When it's dark—as it is now—she is invisible as well as inaudible.

The trails extend for miles in all directions: north, south, east, and west. It's her hunting ground. It's larger than the hunting grounds of most of the others, but she's bigger than they are, and she eats a lot. Also—and she's told no one of this—there are pups on the way.

Pups are a rare thing. Rare and magnificent. She's told no one anything, because the safety of the pups is paramount. Soon, she won't be able to hide anything, so she'll stay hidden in the trees, on her range, and not go to the Rings. For now, she's just big. Big and hungry. That's enough to keep the others from trespassing. It helps that she's been grumpy the past few months, snapping at anyone who comes close. Word gets around.

She slows as she steps across the path. Her ears catch every night sound and her long nose every night smell. Her eyes are deep yellow, and her fur as black as coal.

In the distance, maybe a quarter mile from the path, she sees buildings. Normally, she would never be this far out of the thick trees, but at night, no one can see her—not even if they were only a jump away. She's in her element in the dark.

All of the houses have windows, and several of the windows are lit by wan orange lights, or by flickering blue. She sits for a moment and watches. She doesn't sit because she's tired; she sits because sometimes it feels good to sit, out in the open, under the stars. She watches the lights. Inside the buildings, some of them wander around, oblivious to the outside world.

It is a moment from her ancestry, though she will never know it. Quietly, she watches. Quietly, she listens. Her hunger grows as more of the lights wink out.

When enough windows go dark, she stirs. She's hungry.

Like a ghost with teeth, she glides back into the darker-than-darkness of the trees. Like a dream, she vanishes without a sound, without a trace.

It's time to hunt.

She hears their voices long before she sees them. Their speech is a bubbling of sounds. It makes no sense to her, but she knows what that sound means, particularly at night.

It means prey.

She loops around through the woods, lowering her body. Her ears listen more closely. Her eyes cut through the darkness and sees them standing in the glow of their own circle.

There are two of them, a male and a female. Their voices bubble back and forth, filling the quiet night with whatever meaningless things those voices contain. One of them is smoking.

She stops her slow stalk and watches the smoke intensely. It drifts eastward.

She backs off, a long way, until she can move quickly without alerting them. She runs fast for being such a large beast, and in a matter of seconds, she re-enters the woods from the east. The grass out in this direction is nearly high enough to hide her, but she enters the trees without hesitation.

The timing must be perfect. Plus, the grass is no place for her kind.

Her belly low to the ground, she follows the smoke's thin trail into the trees.

Hunting has been so difficult lately. The rains came early last year, the winter was mild, but still very rainy, and the spring rains continued through half the summer. The only things that moved around in the night with any sort of consistency were her own kind, all looking for the same thing: some prey, somewhere. They all struggled through the wet and the damp, trying to find the occasional tidbit, but rain drives everything away.

So, although she moves quietly and slowly and deliberately on the outside, her insides are jumping and anxious and hungry.

She creeps closer.

Now their voices carry over more easily. She still can't understand what they are saying, but it doesn't really matter. Only the hunger matters. Only the hunger.

Closer.

She stops at the base of a Douglas Fir. It is an old, old tree. She rears up on her hind legs to check the tree.

Her nose softly bounces against a few spots on the bark, sampling everything. This must be the tree, she decides. It has to be. She has done this plenty of times—she knows what to expect.

She settles back down to the ground and reviews the clearing.

They stand there talking. Completely oblivious.

She crawls low on her belly to the edge of the clearing, a few degrees off from the tree's position.

She waits. She watches and waits.

Right now, they face each other as they talk. No sneaking up on them like that. As long as they face each other, she will wait. She will wait as long as needed.

After a while, the male finishes his cigarette. He drops it and grinds it out with the toe of his boot.

She doesn't panic, but she is concerned. The smoke covers scents very well. Without it, there is a risk.

The male starts walking, pacing, and gesticulating. The female sits quietly. This is promising. With the male moving around, it's much more likely they'll both be turned away.

She coils her legs under her, waiting. Her hindquarters twitch with anticipation. Every sense is alert and attentive.

The moment must be perfect. She can't afford to make a mistake.

The male turns, his back to the female. Now they both are vulnerable.

There is the smallest rustle of motion and before she can think, she leaps.

She is a locomotive of teeth and claws and ebony fur and she flies through the air, aiming entirely on instinct.

Above the couple, the tree branches part and something drops toward them. Something that's dark and leathery. Something that has no eyes and that hunts in the dark. Something with blue fangs that glitter and tiny razor claws in the tip of each of its six legs.

It drops in joy, because it too has had very little in the way of prey for nearly a year.

Its arms spread out to both stabilize its drop and to enclose the creatures below. A thin film of venom oozes from each fang.

And then it's no longer dropping, but flying sideways, its body being crushed in massive jaws. Not even a chance to feed!

Its tiny arms reach for the monster that snatched it from the sky, but death is already washing over it, and even those simple motions seem so far away and so very, very difficult now.

And then it is gone.

She lands on the other side of the clearing, the Hunter in her mouth. She feels it collapse. She drops it, sniffs it, and makes sure it's dead. It is. She looks back up and over at the couple in the clearing. He still speaks, and the sounds still don't make sense.

Good, they never noticed the attack or the defense. Perfect! She spends a few seconds being proud of herself, proud she can still protect them the way her ancestors have since the beginning of time, without them ever knowing.

She looks back to the Hunter. It's big. Bigger than most. She figures that this Hunter, like her, must have been treating this area as a private hunting ground. Normally they were smaller, but this one is big.

Which is good, because she is hungry.

She pads off into the darkness, carrying the Hunter in her mouth.

### Splatter Ward

Neil Peters

Standing by the sink, Doctor Adams washed her hands for three renditions of "happy birthday." When she finished, she turned to the surgical assistant to be gloved, arms extended. He wore a plastic one-piece suit with a zipper running up the front from groin to neck, a disposable respirator, and safety goggles. She saw a cloth of similar material folded over his arm, with some kind of Plexiglas safety goggles dangling from his unoccupied hand. He looked at her and her dripping forearms with a bemused expression. She noticed the look, and a small, exasperated sigh escaped her lips under a respirator which still felt alien against her face and her arms drooped.

"Is all this necessary anymore?" the assistant asked as he unfurled the suit. "I mean, given the circumstances?"

Her jaw tightened.

"We observe the procedures, Intern," she answered.

His eyes widened slightly.

"Right." His voice cracked as he held open the suit. She stepped into the synthetic material, like a child pulling on a snowsuit. Once she was oriented, he zipped up the front and adjusted the safety goggles over her eyes. Then he flipped up the hood and cinched it tight over what skin of her head remained exposed. She stood up straight, but she found the garment to be slightly too big for her frame, sagging loosely around her arms and legs.

"How in the hell am I supposed to work like this?"

"Hold on." The intern turned, riffled through a drawer and withdrew a handful of plastic surgery clamps. "Doctor Martinez had the same issue." He bunched the excess sleeve up around her shoulder and set the clamp to hold it in place. He did the same to the other arm and then bent over to adjust her leggings, clamping them around her upper thigh.

"This is sterile, right?" she asked.

"Yep. Bleached, powdered, and primed." He stood up and straightened her suit. "All right, I think that's everything. But they didn't cover this kind of thing back at school."

"No shit," she replied. The gloves were baggy and the fingers shifted inside the plastic as she flexed her fists. "It's like trying to operate wearing oven mitts." She turned to the operating room doors, but stopped and was silent for a moment.

"You think this will work?" he asked.

"It damn well better with my name on the line."

"What if the patient, you know, _booms_?"

"Let's hope it doesn't."

She entered the operating room, with the assistant in tow. Other residents, suited like her, stood around the patient, whose long, thin limbs were restrained with Velcro. A vertical sheet obscured the patient's face, leaving only the swollen stomach exposed. The abdomen was nearly five feet in diameter, an enormous orb of flesh attached to a wire-thin body. An array of pink stretch marks streaked across the skin, indicating where it was barely holding together.

Adams took her place at the side of the operating table. The room was silent except for the unsteady pings of the heart monitor and the gurgling emanating from the patient's bloated stomach. She looked to the other residents in their hazard suits. Protected by the goggles and face shields, the only recognizable portion of their faces she could see were their eyes, which strayed over the patient's stomach.

The assistant pulled up a wheeled cart. On one of the steel trays rested four seven-inch long, plastic straw-like tubes. She tried to pick one up, struggling to enclose her gloved fingers around the narrow stent. It pinched through the sagging folds in the glove and popped back on to the steel tray with a light clatter. The other doctors watched her in silence. She tried again, and the gloves refused to cooperate.

"Oh, _Jesus fucking Christ_ ," she whispered to herself under the mask. None of the other surgeons said anything, which made her more uncomfortable than if they had. After a few more failed attempts, the assistant leaned forward and managed to clamp down on the ends of the stent with what little of his fingernails pressed through the latex. He handed it to her and she took it lightly between her sense-deprived, gloved fingers. She inspected it, rolling it between her fingers, desperately focused on not dropping it. She handed it back to the assistant and stepped towards the body. Her fingers ran to the seam between the swollen abdomen and ribcage. Four small black "X" marks were located around the torso, indicating pre-established points of entry. She found the one closest to her, just above the kidney. The skin quivered at her touch and as she traced her fingers around the creases of stretch marks, she felt the shudders of failing muscle, the gurgling sound of shifting gasses under the skin filling the room. The other residents stiffened, as if preparing for some kind of surprise attack.

"Is the skin primed?" she asked. Still frozen by the sound, no one answered. She huffed. "Is the skin swabbed?" she called. A resident snapped to attention.

"Yes," he said with a wavering voice after a moment's hesitation. "But..."

"Was there a problem?" she asked.

"No, but it felt strange."

She stared at the resident for a moment, arching a single eyebrow.

"Really? _This_? _Strange_?"

The resident bristled.

"Under the skin." His voice rose. "The patient is gonna burst any second."

"Which is exactly why we are here."

"We need to abort right now."

"And what about the patient?"

"This was never about the patient and you know it."

"Now is not the time."

"Bullshit."

"Your name is on this patient too. Don't think you can just cut and run."

"There it is."

"Marcus, that's enough," said another resident. "Let's just get this over with."

Marcus glowered at her and the other resident for a moment, but then stepped back and made a submissive hand gesture.

"Fine."

"Lovely." She turned to the assistant. "Scalpel."

He collected the blade and handed it to her. She stepped forward and squared herself up to the patient, leaning forward. Everyone else, except for the assistant, took a step backward. Holding the scalpel in her left hand she pressed her right hand against the patient's bloated belly and made the initial incision. It was superficial, only about an inch long. She took a deep breath, relaxed, and drew her blade to deepen the opening. On the second pass, she sliced through the hypodermis, and a rush of noxious gas began to seep from the incision. She recoiled reflexively as the warm, bodily gas hit her face. The skin incision quivered as the gas escaped. Adams hesitated a moment, somewhat astonished by the surrealism she was witnessing; but, after only a moment, she had recovered her footing and returned to the side of the patient. She squinted and moved her blade to draw it through the muscle. The half-inch incision quivered and split another inch. She froze, eyes wide behind the goggles, now starting to fog with perspiration.

"Oh, God," she heard a resident whisper.

"Stent," she called back.

"Are you fucking serious?" she heard another say.

"Stent, damn it." She extended her arm back, still holding the scalpel. The assistant fumbled for a moment, and exchanged the blade for the tube. She squared up again and moved to insert the stent into the opening, using her thumb and forefinger to open the slit slightly. The moment the stent breached the tissue, however, the stomach gave a massive convulse and a groan of gas echoed through the room. With a sound akin to a bursting tire, the stomach erupted.

Adams was knocked back off her feet as pounds of organs and gore smashed against her side. She collapsed to the floor, blood and tissue spattering across the tile around her. Her goggles were caked with bile and human remains. She struggled to regain a standing position, but the floor was slick with bodily fluids. Her footing gave and she slipped again, sprawling on her stomach. She looked up to see the other residents covered in red and vomiting through their respirators.

***

Adams walked down the hospital corridors, her hands buried in the pockets of her lab coat. Her dark-ringed eyes followed the painted lines on the tiled floor leading to the morgue. The automatic door slid open and she stepped into the heavily air-conditioned room. It felt about ten degrees cooler than the rest of the hospital and smelled of alcohol and formaldehyde. She drew the lab coat around herself and followed the line of gurneys back to the wall of slab lockers, where she found a gray-haired man in scrubs and a smock slouched in a wheeled desk chair tucked away behind the long, waist high washbasin, out of sight from the automatic doors. He rolled a lit cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. She pulled up another chair from across the room.

"How'd it go?" he asked.

"Do you have another one of those?"

"That bad?"

She nodded and flopped into the chair.

He fished in his coat pocket and pulled out a crumpled pack and a tarnished Zippo and tossed them to her. She withdrew a cigarette, lit it, and reclined back in the chair as she blew a wisp of smoke from her lips.

"Rapid decompression," she said.

He winced.

She took another drag and gave a long exhale. "If it wasn't for that damn suit, I'd still be cleaning pieces of patient out of my hair."

"She _boomed_?

"All over the place."

"Jesus." He turned and looked at her. She was intently examining the cigarette's filter. "Well, I'd say that's a first. She was fully anesthetized, right?"

She nodded.

"Well, that's better than what most get around here anymore," he said.

A moment of silence passed. Adams' eyes stared off, unfocused at a nonspecific locker.

"The smell was the worst part," she whispered. "After I pulled off that damn respirator...all the bile and shit covering that fucking suit." She got up from the chair and took a hard drag. "That fucking suit. Fucking Feds can't even get them in a decent size." She began to pace back and forth before the still-seated man. "Shit. They come in one fucking size, six-foot-two with shoulders as wide as a goddamn Hummer. I'm sorry I'm not some knuckle-dragging army doctor." Her hand twitched, as if trying to find something productive to do. They skittered from brushing back her hair to straightening her coat and adjusting her pager as she spoke, the rhythm of her voice quickening. "I couldn't see; the goggles fog up. I couldn't hear the people around me, and I couldn't even hold the fucking stent." She grabbed the chair beside her and did her best to hurl it across the morgue. It clattered to the floor and the sound reverberated off the steel walls. She panted and brushed her skewed hair behind her ear again. Adams took one last drag, burning the cigarette down to the filter, then snuffed it out against a locker door and flicked it into a nearby medical waste bin. She leaned against the locker wall, where a body presumably lay only a few inches behind her, and sank to the floor. "How the hell is this supposed to work?"

The man was silent for a moment, and then gave a shrug and a sigh.

They heard the automatic doors slide open across the room and the high whine of an ill-maintained gurney. The gray haired man snuffed out his cigarette on the arm of his chair and flicked it into the waste bin. A man with shaggy, blond hair and scrubs turned the corner, pushing a gurney covered by a red soaked sheet that obscured two distinct lumps. He pushed it to a stop against one of the walls of square, steel drawers.

"I smelled you two from twenty feet away," the blond man said as he walked to the wall and flipped a switch. The vent above them opened and a fan deep inside the air ducts began to hum. "It might be more effective to have this running the entire time. Tossing them doesn't make the smell go away."

"Thank you, Doctor Murphy. I'll take that under advisement," replied the gray haired man. "Not like it really matters anymore."

"Just don't abuse the privilege, Tennant. Now if you'll please move. You're blocking the tub."

Tennant, lacking much of any visible enthusiasm, spun on the wheeled chair and simply kicked himself to the side. He came to rest beside Adams. Their eyes followed Murphy as he worked, but neither of them really paid any attention. Murphy rolled the gurney along with him and brought it to a rest beside the basin.

"These damn boomers are gonna clog my drain again," he muttered. Re-adjusting the latex gloves on his hands, Murphy peeled back the sheet, which reluctantly left the corpse with a sound akin to that of a wet paint roller running up and down a wall.

The reveal exposed two halves of a person, separated at what may have been the waist. The flesh of torso and abdominals were gone, leaving only a mangled spinal column—barely strung together by a collection of stubborn central nerves. What exterior skin and tissue remained on the ribcage hid the hollow cavity where only a few dangling flaps of organ remained. The limbs remained mostly intact, save for the purple tone the skin had taken from all the body's blood vessels bursting simultaneously and the scattered sores no doctor had yet been able to discover the cause of. The head lay at an unnatural angle; most likely from a broken neck snapped from the shock of the burst and the subsequent convulsions.

Adams pressed her hands to her knees and rose from the floor. She averted her gaze from the body and started for the automatic doors.

"Those are the ugliest tits I've ever seen," uttered Murphy.

Adams snapped around, her heart rate spiking.

"Jesus Christ, Murphy," Tennant sighed.

Adams looked to the corpse. The body had belonged to a woman and, consequently, the breasts were mangled, purple, and wrinkled from the lack of bodily fluids. Adams, however, did not focus on the breasts. Her eyes were instead drawn to the head. Although matted down with blood and gore, the red hair had the unmistakable curls of a recent perm. She extended her hand and ran a relatively unsoiled collection of strands between her fingers. The hair was still soft.

"The stent didn't take, did it?" Murphy asked. Adams snapped from her thoughts and dropped the curl.

"Pardon?" she asked.

"The procedure. It didn't work." He motioned to the half a corpse. Adams turned to leave, when Murphy called back, "Do you want to know why?"

Adams stopped and remained still for a moment. Tennant turned to Murphy.

"Oh, wait. Don't tell me you're actually gonna start doing your job?"

Adams turned back. Murphy was straight-faced, without the slightest hint of jest or crude humor hiding under his face. Adams slowly stepped forward, eyeing Murphy carefully.

"What can you tell me?" she asked.

"Not a whole lot," he replied. "But I can give you a few things to think about."

"Such as?"

"Where were you going to start? Upper G.I.?"

"Yes," she replied. "Relieve pressure in increments, starting with the—"

"Where was your first incision?"

Adams stiffened. Her jaw tightened.

"Just below the diaphragm at the base of the swell," she answered.

"Why?"

"The stomach was too bloated. The ultrasound was unclear. We weren't even sure if the gas had left the stomach and intestines yet." She looked away, focusing on something along the wall.

"So you didn't even know going into it wh—"

"There wasn't any time."

"Time for what?"

"The patient didn't have much longer. We had to operate before the condition worsened any further."

"Or else what?"

"What do you mean _what_? Look right there." She gestured to the body.

"Exactly my point." He stepped closer to the body and pointed to the space where the stomach should be. "This was going to happen regardless."

"I tried to save a life."

"By walking into an operating room without knowing every single detail of a patient's physiology? That was your plan to save her? Congratulations, that's brilliant."

"At least I'm doing something and not hiding in a morgue."

"That's not what you were doing five minutes ago? You think I like covering your asses? What do you think I have to tell people when they constantly see an ER surgeon and a Respiratory Specialist just hanging out down here?

They were shouting now, standing over the torso.

"Hey, enough." Tennant stepped forward to the head of the body, between the two of them. "This is insane." He turned away for a moment and fished in his pocket and pulled out the cigarette pack and lighter. "Jesus. Fucking doctors."

Murphy stepped back and rubbed his stubble-ridden face. "Okay, hold on," he said. He took a deep breath.

Adams crossed her arms.

"What was the objective of the operation?" He leaned back against the basin still massaging his face. Adams took a moment to collect herself, and began massaging her temple.

"The primary goal was to place two initial, superficial vents to slowly decompress some of the built up gas outside of the stomach, if it was even there." She motioned to the mangled sternum of the corpse. "Then, once the gasses outside the G.I. track were clear, we could try to actually vent the gasses inside the intestinal system. Doing that could at least buy us some time."

Everyone was quiet for a moment.

"So, do you want to know what went wrong?" Murphy asked. Adams tossed up her hands.

"Fine. What?" said Adams.

"You began the incision at the top of base of the sternum, _the seam of the belly_ , you said?"

"Yes."

"Because you wanted to avoid hitting the main G.I. system, correct?"

"Yes."

"And I assume you started there because the liver would, theoretically, be in the way of any large intestine, yes?"

"Damn it, yes."

"And you said the ultrasound wasn't clear enough to get a decent idea of the stomach?"

"Jesus, get to the point."

"What makes you think that the organs stay in the same positions when the bloating happens?" No one spoke. Adams stared off at nothing. Tennant kept smoking. Murphy turned back to the basin and began running the water.

"I've been looking at these bodies for a while now," Murphy said. "I don't think this is a problem we can just cut our way out of. We can't just open them up, rearrange a few things, stitch them up and send them home." Adams looked up at his turned back as he rinsed the basin. "I think this is something bigger than any of us are capable of handling."

"So what to we do?" she asked.

Murphy cut the water, placed the hose back on its cradle, and then just stood for a moment in silence. "I have no idea," he said.

They stood for a moment. Then, quietly, Adams turned and walked away.

Tennant snuffed out his cigarette and tossed it in the medical waste bin. He grabbed Adams' shoulder just as they had cleared the sliding doors. "Hey, hold on a second," he said.

"Yeah?" Adams turned.

He opened his mouth to speak but hesitated and closed it again. His eyes wandered around some of the ceiling tiles. He shook his head and smiled. "Get some sleep. This isn't going away anytime soon. No sense in killing ourselves just yet."

"Right," she replied and turned away.

"Just go upstairs and kick one of the interns out of the Resident's Lounge," he called. "Spoiled little Ivy League shits could use an ass-kicking."

Adams kept walking, following the yellow line to the elevator. Approaching the lift, the doors rolled open and a janitor dressed in a yellow Hazmat suit stepped out, pushing a utility cart ornamented with an array of mops, squeegees, extension poles, and a collection of heavy astringents. The two passed each other without much acknowledgment.

She stepped into the lift and punched the button for the ground floor. The doors rolled shut and she leaned against the back wall. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, rubbing her eyes with a hand chapped from frequent washing. The elevator bell chimed and the doors rattled open. She pushed herself off the back wall and wearily stumbled forward. Through the elevator doors, she was met by an inordinate amount of silence. The directory on the wall labeled this area as the lobby, but the room was empty. There were no worried families, no emergency room visitors, no people who had come for the sick and the dead. The chairs only held boxes of excess supplies, which took up most of the space in the open room. A U.S. Army logo adorned each one, a seal of genuine quality. A receptionist still sat at the front desk, however, chin-in-hand reading a paperback novel. She looked up as Adams emerged from the lift. Adams slowly meandered forward, absentmindedly running her fingers along the crease of a box. Few were still sealed, presumably checked by the staff upon arrival.

"You'd think in one of these damn boxes, there'd be a suit that fit," she said to herself.

"Oh, there were sweetheart, but the nursing staff called first dibs a while back when they all first got here," said the receptionist from across the room. Adams' fist clenched in her coat pocket, but then her eyes began to droop and her shoulders sagged. The receptionist seemed to notice. "But I'm sure we could find you one," said the receptionist. Adams shook her head and looked back towards the empty, silent lobby.

"No," she said. "I don't think anything like that really matters anymore."

### The Adoring Dentist

Darren Simpson

"I love you," he said.

"I luh yoo oo," she drooled. The drill began to wail and darkness took her in.

***

Eliza came around slowly. Consciousness began as a tiny throb at the core of her head, which bloomed gradually into a dull ache in her mouth. The ache gained fire as it crept across her face and opened her eyes, sending a further flare into her skull as light flooded in. A silhouette hovered in the glare and became her husband's face. He smiled gently.

She tried to speak, but could only gargle.

"Sshh," he said. "Don't speak."

Eliza took in the room. It looked familiar.

"It's okay," he said. "You're home." He brushed a knuckle along her temple. "The propofol had you out cold. I had to carry you to the car."

"Ngh," said Eliza.

"Don't speak," he repeated, his cheek twitching. "You'll hurt yourself. Here, look." He left the edge of the bed and returned with a bunch of flowers: a pedantic arrangement of chrysanthemums and lilies. "Happy anniversary, Eliza. Ten impeccable years." He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. The stench of the lilies turned her stomach.

"Hrrrm," she breathed, sending a string of red saliva to her chest.

"Want to see your anniversary present?" her husband asked her. He put the flowers into a vase on the windowsill and adjusted them carefully before returning to his wife. "Here," he said, taking her by the elbow and helping her out of bed.

He guided her down the stairs, kissing the back of her head as they went. Holding her by the shoulders, he eased her around the corner and into the bathroom.

Eliza winced into the mirror and a scream tore her lips apart, sending stabs of metallic agony into her gums. The face in the mirror screamed back, its huge eyes shimmering like puddles above a mangled mess of mouth. Metal rods protruded from her face, fastened by pins and screws to form a glistening cage around the shrieking wound. The more she screamed the more it hurt, and the more it hurt the more it bled. Large chunks of scab cracked and fell away, followed by the blood that flooded her mouth and spilled onto the tiles.

She flailed her fists against her husband as he pulled her out of the room, his face motionless. Eliza could only sob as he carried her up the stairs, just as he'd done on their wedding day, ten beautiful years ago.

***

Three months later Eliza and her husband were brushing their teeth. He held the small of her back as they jerked their toothbrushes to and fro, and she leaned away from him to spit into the sink. She looked with some dismay at the red dashes streaking the foam, and after tonguing her teeth spat out a gristly clot of blood.

Her husband spat his toothpaste into the sink. "It's okay," he said. "It's still healing. It'll take time."

"I know," said Eliza. "But how much longer? It's still so sore."

"Keep using the benzydamine. And the ibuprofen."

"It's not just the pain. It's the blood. It just starts coming randomly. People stare at me in the street and I realise my chin's covered in blood."

He rinsed his brush under the tap. "It was an extensive operation. Prodigious, even. You can't have all of your teeth removed and replaced without some inconvenience afterwards."

"I know."

He tapped his finger against his lips, silent for a moment. "Do you regret it?" he finally asked.

"Oh god no, of course not!'"She hugged him and kissed his neck. "They're wonderful. I would never go back." She exposed her teeth to the mirror. "You know how much I hated my teeth after the accident. Of course you know—you figured out how much they were behind my depression. I didn't think I'd ever get over it. But these are perfect. I'm feeling better already. I mean, just look at them. You'd never know they were fake."

"They're the best you can get."

"I can see that now. And I'm sorry I didn't have more faith in you. When you offered to do this for me, I never imagined a mouth of fake teeth could look or feel right. The whole idea just seemed...alien. But you insisted. Even when I got so worked up about the procedure, when I nearly dropped out – you insisted. And I'm glad you did. You've given me so much more than a new set of teeth. You know that, don't you?"

She beamed at her reflection. "Oh I know I grumble about the pain, but I do love them. I feel like a new person. I don't avoid catching myself in mirrors or photos anymore. I feel like...like I've got myself back."

Without warning, her husband pushed his finger into her mouth and probed her teeth. "I think they're exquisite," he said. His finger tasted of disinfectant.

"They are—" said Eliza, speaking around his finger and wincing with pain, "—to die for."

***

They sent her to the grave in the end.

It started—about three years later—with a plunger. Or more specifically: without a plunger. The plughole in the bath was blocked. Eliza was sure the plunger was in the cupboard beneath the sink, but apparently it wasn't. It wasn't under the stairs or with the toolbox in the pantry, either. But she'd seen it somewhere around the house, and quite recently.

She ended up in the garage, moving heavy boxes and sifting through domestic debris. She could easily have gone out to buy a new plunger, but instead she heaved and muttered, sweated and cursed. She was determined, and rationality had long ago been thrown aside.

She never found the plunger. Instead, she found something else: an intriguing satchel, tucked into the bottom of a box beneath some musty bin bags. She didn't recognize it as her husband's or her own, so she dragged it out of the box and peered inside.

Its contents were spread over the coffee table when her husband got home that night. He looked astonished when he peered in from the hallway and saw them there.

"I didn't know you had a university yearbook!" grinned Eliza. "And look at these photos! You were as handsome then as you are now."

Her husband cleared his throat, put down his bag and hung up his coat. He took a seat next to his wife. "Where did you find these?" he asked.

"In the garage," she said. "Just look at you there. My my. And look at all of these girls! Always the charmer. I thought you said you didn't have many pictures from when you were young."

"Hmm," said her husband, frowning.

"And I can't get over this yearbook. I didn't think the universities did this sort of thing. More of an American thing, isn't it?"

"Five years is a long time to spend with friends at dental school," he said. "You want something to remember them by."

"Then why leave it to rot in the garage?" laughed Eliza. "This is wonderful! Just look at those clothes! They looked good at the time, I guess."

"I guess," echoed her husband. He took a deep breath and then smiled at his wife. "What's for dinner?"

***

Eliza put the satchel and its contents away after that, in the cabinet with their photo albums.

It took a few weeks for her to notice the dread. It crept up on her with black stealth, flitting between the shadows of her mind. As time went by she found it harder to brush aside, to account to the weather, to hormones, to one of those days. She began to get the feeling that she was slipping back, somehow; losing something she'd gained—

although she couldn't tell exactly what.

The dread took a firm hold when she realized she was avoiding mirrors again. After three years of a contentment she'd just started to take for granted, she was back to fearing her teeth.

It took a lot of courage to confront them. A lot of courage and a pint of gin. Eventually she stepped into the bathroom and looked squarely into the mirror. Slowly, laboriously, apprehensively, she pulled back the curtains of her lips. Her teeth shone immaculately at her and the dread became a subtle terror. Eliza burst into tears and ran out of the bathroom.

The fear grew with each day, but she couldn't put a finger on its origin. She tried to ignore it, or at least to hide it, but it must have shown, for her husband occasionally asked what was wrong. She always insisted she was fine. She insisted again and again, as if she could convince herself that it was true. But it wasn't, and the fear continued to fester.

In her dreams she would get out of bed and go down to the kitchen. She'd enter the pantry, remove the pliers from the toolbox, take them to the bathroom and try to remove her teeth. But they wouldn't come out. She'd wail and blubber as she pulled, but the more she pulled, the more the teeth burrowed into her gums. She'd give up and gape into the bathroom mirror, horrified by the knobbly bulges that jerked up her face as the teeth moved upwards, carving at tissue as they went.

In later dreams she was able to extract the teeth and spit them into the sink. She'd look down into blood-streaked porcelain and notice that the teeth were twitching, twinkling like diamonds on red silk. Her mouth, ragged and raw, would hang open as the teeth grew needles for legs, as they scuttled out of the sink and up her paralyzed thighs.

***

The dreams eventually led to a revelation. One night the teeth didn't head up her nightgown. Instead they headed out of the bathroom like a line of enamel ants. Eliza followed them out of the room, through the hallway and into the living room. She switched on the light and saw that they were heading for the cabinet.

She awoke suddenly, without any doubt that the origin of her fear lay sealed within the satchel in the cabinet. Perhaps if she discovered what it was the fear would fade, like a blemish on camera film exposed to light.

As soon as her husband left for work she went into the cabinet. There was no satchel. It had been months since she'd put it there, but she knew for a fact that she'd never removed it. Where had it gone?

She was soon opening every drawer and cupboard in the house, overturning every surface, probing every nook and cranny. Four hours had gone by without success, and still she hunted. It _had_ to be _somewhere_.

Late that afternoon Eliza emerged from the garden shed, filthy, fatigued and triumphant. She clutched the satchel in her hands. It had been sealed in a plastic bag and buried at the bottom of a bucket of gravel, which had been stored beneath of a pile of heavy boxes in the furthest corner of the shed.

She staggered into the kitchen, fell to her knees and let the photos spill onto the floor. Her eyes swept the scattered pictures, almost too nervous to focus on them, and soon fell upon a photo which confirmed all she had dreaded. An hour later she returned to the shed to get the shovel.

That evening she was digging up the grave of Berenice Clemm. Finding out her name had been easy. She was in the yearbook, next to a portrait of her husband. Discovering her location had been more difficult, and required some research on the internet. She began to wail as soon as she found the address of a cemetery instead of that of a house. She smashed her fists against her gums until they were bruised and bleeding.

Eliza wept incessantly as she dug. She hadn't stopped crying since she'd started the three hour drive to the cemetery. Her retching sobs were broken by only by the coughs that sent red mist from her battered mouth.

The sky darkened and it began to rain. The shovel eventually knocked against wood, and she scraped away the mud to reveal the coffin. It took the last of her strength to smash through its lid.

Dropping once more to her knees, she pulled away the splintered wood, which drew blood from her hands with its jagged edges. She yanked the final piece away and fell under the gaze of Berenice Clemm, and gazed back at those empty sockets, at that toothless grin.

### Job Hunting

Tamara Rogers

The last murder had not gone well. Not well at all, given that the target had cheerfully walked away from the restaurant without so much as a backwards glance. He wondered if he was getting too old for this.

His lukewarm coffee sat on the plastic table cloth in front of him, bubbling softly as he read through his résumé.

The Boss had graciously offered him a glowing reference ("you are, although ineffective, very good at time-keeping.") The Wife had not been so understanding, forcing him to deploy the skills he had picked up in the Avoidance of Kitchen Utensil Projectiles (AKUP) training day.

At the counter a dark haired woman was talking to a tired barmaid about how she wished she was dead. The barmaid sighed and poured her another glass of whisky. Perhaps he should give the woman his card, go self-employed – be the next Alan Sugar of his field. Maybe he could even pitch it as television series; The Ex Factor? Come Die with Me? On second thought, maybe not.

He sighed, took a long swig on his bitter drink and wished he'd never quit smoking.

His CV, "Carl Tindley – Professional Cleaner," had been causing some confusion. Interviews always ended somewhat unfortunately. Simple cleaning demonstrations gone awry, interviewing panels covered in blood. They never called back.

He thought of the mortgage, the Wife and the baby on the way. The woman at the bar had started crying.

He waved at her, smiled reassuringly as he straightened his jacket and crumpled his CV into his pocket. "I might just be able to help you."

### The Truth and Other Hideous Beasts

Jonathan Persinger

Ten years ago. Spring—2003—somewhere around four in the morning.

The phone rang, waking me from a nice dream about a pretty girl. When I heard David's voice through the static, I knew something had gone horribly wrong in his ugly part of the city. The only thing I could ever count on my brother for was his consistent delivery of bad news at inconvenient hours.

"Jesus, Dave," I said, with my eyes still closed and my head still on the pillow. His voice sounded quiet and hopeless, two tones too familiar to me. "What did you do?"

His response came in the form of sobbing incoherence.

I gave David something resembling a promise of assistance and hung up the phone before he could say much more. Don't think me uncaring; more information wouldn't help the matter any, and besides, David had a habit of exaggerating the scope of his many crises. Driving across the city at 4 a.m. already stretched the limits of my fraternal servitude; the prospect of speeding my way there only to find David had hallucinated seventy to one-hundred percent of his problems would instantly evaporate my remaining patience.

I hadn't seen the blood yet.

I slammed the door behind me when I left the house. Outside, every light in every visible window had already died. The nearest streetlight shorted out for a moment as I stood on the curb and looked up at its looming luminary length. After a few moments of suspense, the light flickered back on and stayed that way.

That dying spring, we both still lived within the confines of the city we grew up in, even if I lived on a street with decidedly lower murder rates and more young white men in ugly ties. While I made payments on my first house, David rented his sixth or seventh apartment—this one, the lowest quality so far. I don't know what he was doing for the money keeping his rent paid, his bad-element friends entertained and his poor lifestyle choices financed, but I know he didn't have a legitimate job. Maybe that's how he found the time to make so many poor choices, all of them while I slept.

I got into the car and drove halfway across the city with the radio on. Some station somewhere threw out some classical music, which I caught with an earnest eagerness instilled in me during childhood. Henryk Gorecki's "Symphony No. 3" drifted out of the new speakers and stopped the nervous twitching of my fingers on the steering wheel. I had no idea who Henryk Gorecki was, what his music meant, or how he had died. I made a mental note to investigate his existence after things calmed down and coffee woke me up. All these years later, I still don't know Gorecki from Gorczycki. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm not perfect. But I tried my hardest that night. Whoever is reading this: I hope you see that.

The sounds from my radio kept playing, harmonizing in the night. The neighborhoods passing by got worse as the symphony hit its climax.

***

The streetlight above my car fizzled as I disembarked outside of David's apartment building and enjoyed one final yawn. I watched the unlit bulb for too long before going inside. It never came back on.

I scoped out the windows above while walking up to the building. The light from David's seventh floor "shithole" (one of his favorite descriptors) appeared to me as the gaudiest, brightest star in or out of this universe. Otherwise, the building appeared dark and dead.

David buzzed me in on my first call. That was good. It meant he was still conscious, and saved me the trouble of eating up minutes on my cell phone, calling seven floors up in an attempt to wake his misunderstood mind out of a self-induced coma. He let me inside without a single word, but I didn't hear any crying—the two factors seemed to average each other out.

I took the elevator. I'm no big fan of such machines, but you can only read the same lower-class stairwell graffiti so many times before it starts to make you doubt the society around you. To be honest, seventy-percent of my body and mind remained asleep—all these years later, I can still make the drive on complete autopilot.

Walking down the dead seventh-floor hallway, I didn't know what to expect within brother's apartment. I don't know if I really cared, beyond the required amount of concern one must have for a tearful sibling they can't bear to distance themselves from.

My David-problems generally fell into one of three categories.

Disposal: something incriminating must be removed from David's apartment. Negotiation: my swift words and/or open wallet are required to smooth out some rough spot David has gotten himself into.

Imagination: David has imagined prowlers trying to break in, or wire-taps in his phone, or spiders crawling under his skin.

I arrived at the correct door and found it locked. I could do little more than sigh and lean against the barrier, rapping quietly on the surface of chipped wood and blotched paint. Depending on his current state, knocking too loud was apt to spook David into hiding under his bed.

Six knocks later, his tired and tiny voice filtered out from the lit-up crack beneath the door.

The voice said, "You?"

"Me."

Five seconds and an unlocking _click_ later, the door opened.

I'd seen him looking worse before that night, on some occasions nearly at the door of complete self-destruction. But in that instant, when the door swung open and I saw him standing there, hunched over and backed by the glow of every available light bulb in the apartment, he didn't look dead. No, far worse than that. The dead, in their own horrible way, look human.

Nothing about his physique had changed—body still pudgy and straining against sweatpants-elastic, hair still long and spiraling out at angles unknown to physics and understood only by those who have mastered a lifestyle without showers or clothes approximating cleanness.

What unsettled me was the way he stood, and the way his eyes couldn't stay focused on any one thing.

"What's going on?" I asked.

I lingered there in the doorway, looking past David. From what I could see, the apartment looked the same as it had ever been. Not clean, but not offensive. The bedroom and bathroom remained hidden away in the back, but nothing in the living room looked too out of place.

"Not much," David said. He couldn't manage to keep up such a charade for the duration of a single sentence, even one so succinct. The sweat dripping from his unwashed bangs and the way his tiny red eyes kept darting about in a sad attempt to find my own gave the truth away.

"Is it bad?" I asked. I kept my voice low—as if anyone cared to listen. Maybe it was shame seeping out of my heart and coating my actions in its sludge, shame at what had become of the boy my parents had bragged about on the warm afternoons of brighter springs. My brother stared somewhere over my shoulder at what I'm sure was an interesting patch of plaster wall.

"Dave," I said, snapping my fingers too close to his eyes for anyone's comfort. "Dave, pay attention. This is probably important." His eyes found mine a few snaps later, and all of a sudden I hated looking into them. "What happened?"

David didn't say a word. He kept his eyes invisibly tethered to mine, but stepped back and out of the way, granting me full access to the inner chambers of a quarter-life fuck-up, complete with VIP perks including stained carpet, kitchen mold, and unwashed dishes inexplicably hiding out in the far corner of a relocated neighborhood-dumpster sofa.

I got halfway into the living room before I looked back at David. He stood stationary, still looking after me, door hanging open. I did my best to arch an eyebrow or make a similar display. I've never been that great with physical language, perhaps at the expense of being able to see how and why words go together the way they do. Words were not an option at that moment. For no real reason at all, my vocal cords stopped functioning.

And why did that happen? Did I have some sense of what came next, some premonition of my endless night to come? No, of course not. What kind of bullshit would that be? I promise you this much right here and now: no one in this story can see the future. No supernatural shit here, not even a hint of it. The monsters I've met don't bite with terrible gnashing teeth, nor do they crawl out from under a broken-spring bed with a decomposing mattress. These sick beasts slink out from inside of your own throat, absorbing into their secretive, spindly selves all the worst things you've seen. And they don't bite, but God, they tear your fucking throat out anyway.

***

I should digress, before we speak of more concerning matters, and tell you about David.

You're going to know more than enough his state during that spring by the time my words are through. So I guess what I want to tell you now, as a preface, are all the things that happened before he became the David you're going to know.

I have organized these things in a compact, useless fashion helpful to no one, befitting a rambling digression in the gooey, expired-nougat center of an anecdote:

Davey needed training wheels for more years than any kid I've ever met, and even then he busted one of his front teeth on the roughest side of a tree the day Mother took them off. Davey liked his pancakes in the shape of Mickey Mouse but never threw a fit if Dad (before his abrupt departure) made them plain and round because my unformed but always ethically-concerned brain couldn't take the mental stress of devouring a childhood icon. Dave's face at fourteen resembled Pompei in the middle of its final afternoon: splotchy, red, and uneven. He spent every dollar of allowance earned over seven months on miracle acne cures so he could be in a proper state to ask Carrie Harris, a girl with curly hair and glasses three sizes too big for an adult's face, to the homecoming dance. The girl who loved to read said yes, and nearly married my almost-illiterate brother years later. David earned a high school diploma and was the sole member of his friend-circle (save Carrie Harris, who eventually straightened her hair, just in case you were wondering) to do so.

David also made mistakes. Christ, the stupid kid ruined lives.

I'm not saying any of that makes any of this any better. I guess I'm just saying, I wish he had married the bookworm girl and never taken his training wheels off.

But they _did_ come off, as they always do, and goddamn, his bike went out of control.

***

Okay, I'll skip to the part where I'm standing at the bathroom and I push open the door and the light is already on and the thing inside doesn't move.

I wanted to say, "Jesus," but I couldn't.

The visible half of her small body—she was _tiny_ , the girl was so fucking tiny—still looked alive and human, but I knew that to be a lie when I saw all the red. What _wasn't_ red? Everything outside of the tub, to start with. I found that to be the most sickening part of all, and I still do. The rest of the bathroom sat spotless and clean, something I knew could not be the work of my brother. It had rained the night before, a celebrated and unobtrusive spring rain, and for a stupid second standing there in Hell's doorway, I worried about tracking mud across the unmarked white expanse of bathroom floor.

Those are the thoughts that crop up when you're faced with inhuman acts of cruelty, I guess. You think about spoiling someone's perfect cleaning effort with your expensive muddy shoes, or about how long it took someone to stop needing training wheels. The present is always terrifying.

I stared at the pale white island poking out from the ocean red and wondered where my brother had gone.

The girl's eyes stared up at the shower head. No arm dangled limp out of the tub, and no final words had been scrawled in blood on the wall between a shelf of shampoos and the soap dish. Both arms were submerged up past the elbows, hidden beneath a layer of still water.

Her eyes matched David's in redness, though they looked a bit larger in their current state of pointlessness.

"Dave?" I whispered, or said.

And he didn't say anything.

There's not much I can do to explain how I felt when David said nothing and the girl remained dead. I guess there was a lot to be sad about, and a lot to be shocked about, too. Loss of life, loss of innocence, yes, a lot of loss had occurred that night, all while I slumbered without worry in a nicer place where the bills were always paid on time.

Do you find it wrong that, above all, I was pissed? Pissed at David for going so far wrong, pissed at him for doing this to his life and for bringing me into it. Most of all I was pissed that I had no time to be pissed. You pay your bills on time for long enough, and you lose your chance to be emotional in any situation. You become the parent, and they all start looking to you to solve every goddamn problem that comes their way.

So I put my anger away in the smallest, least-used pocket of my jeans, took off my shoes without using my hands, and stepped into the bathroom.

In the present day, where my own bathroom has grown so much bigger, I often look over at the tub and wonder what it would look like, all filled up with blood and wasted flesh. I can't imagine any other tub in any other time looking so terrible as David's that night.

I looked but didn't touch, hoping to God that David had found it in himself to have the same small semblance of sense. David, for once in his insignificant life, did not follow. He didn't step into the bathroom again after I arrived. He lived in that apartment for six months more at least, and you may say it an unrealistic idea, but I doubt he ever entered that closet-sized room-of-the-dead again.

I crouched down next to the tub on one knee, peering over the porcelain edge and wondering where she had grown up, what her parents did for a living, if she had preferred Christmas or Halloween, and how far she had made it through the public education system. She hadn't started to smell wrong yet, and I didn't need to medically check any part of her to confirm the loss of life—not her heart or her pulse or the long vertical slices slitting open the tiny parts where her empty hands met unmoving arms.

Again, I must digress, this time only for a moment: the body in the bathroom was not the first I saw removed from life, and despite great efforts in the latter half of my existence, it did not prove to be the last. I could safely say this then, and I will say it again now: a recent corpse lacking in any outstanding mutilation does not differ much from a living body, except in every way that could ever matter.

For the sake of a comparison more common to the average audience, I will cite the night my sister (who will, outside of this singular anecdote, stay utterly divorced and unmentioned from this remembrance; she has earned that much) and I first brought David to Livengrin, before our parents knew, and before his teeth turned yellow, and before he stole half the money in Mother's savings to pay a dealer our sister once baby-sat. On the drive there, I sat in the backseat with David, and he looked like the brother I had grown up with. Except he didn't, and we were young, and it terrified me in the way no work of fiction ever had, and I thought about that night while looking at the purple-bruised and bitten breasts of the bathtub girl, and that's when I vomited.

Now, with my family asleep and no light but a desk lamp, I can't stop thinking about both nights and a hundred in between. All I want to do is call up my sister, but it's 4 a.m., and she's asleep, or call up David, but it's 4 a.m., and he's not. I'm sorry. I'm going to skip ahead a little, but not too much. All you really need to know of the interim—though I want to give you the clearest picture of what happened, this is still my own memory, and if you feel slighted by my decision to distort the tale in such a fashion, I will have to borrow another of David's more elegant idioms and tell you I irrefutably do not give a _fuck_ —is that I did not speak to David, and I did not touch the girl or the bath containing her, and soon we two brothers both relocated to the bedroom.

The bedroom belonged to David, and so it existed in a state of uncleanliness near that of the living room and far from the immaculate cleanliness of the bathroom. In the time since my last visit, a large dresser had disappeared. I suspect it somehow transformed into a fifty-dollar bill. Now my brother's limited wardrobe sat piled in the corner: Wal-mart fabric and Goodwill leather built into a solid mound. In place of the dresser stood an empty aquarium, an interior decoration choice I could never begin to understand.

David sat on the edge of his single bed, slight gut drooping as the mattress below him did the same, arms dangling between his legs, eyes staring down at a carpet stain shaped like our mother's 1993 hairstyle.

I couldn't stop myself from pacing back and forth in front of the bed, never looking at David straight-on. I still wanted to hit him. Maybe after that night I never stopped wanting to, and maybe I still do today when I think about girls in bathtubs and body-bags and all the places in between.

A trail of clothing led from the door to the bed, expensive garments zig-zagging much like the life path of a man travelling from _Hooked on Phonics_ to _Dead Girls for Dummies_. Two shoes far from each other, kicked over, forgotten. Fishnet tights and small black clothes. Closer to the bed than anything else, a blood-red bra and matching underwear.

Running almost parallel to this trail, another: a winding path cobbled together from the discarded clothing of an aging but pointless man, every visible surface covered in smeared stark-red lipstick. Seeing the residue of so many kisses and thinking about the red water a room away made me think I might start bleeding, too.

"Say something, Prest-o," David said from his sinking spot of bed.

I didn't want to hear the boyhood nickname, and I didn't want to hear his inevitable justifications, or his pleas to my infamous empathy, or any of the other misfiring weapons in his third-rate emotional arsenal. My mind showed me the bruises and the blood-water, and I kept on pacing while wondering about the truth and other hideous beasts.

"Tell me what happened," I told David, my old voice returning to me but no longer fitting my throat quite the same way. "You start at the beginning, and by the end I better know who and why she is."

He hesitated and that much was expected. When he talked, his words sounded like this:

"I picked her up at this club last night." To interject: I pressed here regarding the preference for pronouns. David admitted to having never caught her name; later evidence would suggest to me _she_ never threw it. "She knew Marshall and Jess. And we—you know what we were." I knew—by that spring, not one of David's many vices remained secret.

"We went back to Marsh's place, the four of us and this other girl. I started throwin' my guts away in the toilet, and they were all in the bedroom, fucking with some other shit. I get out of the bathroom, and my shirt's all stained up from the puke and all. The boys, they're all over the place, and the girls, too.

"Jess tells me to get out, and take the girl home with me. Says they need some time with the older one, and I say fine, you know, even if I don't—anyway, I take her home. She's out of her head the whole time. One second she's climbing on my back, next she's got her tongue all over me, then all of a sudden she's throwin' out shit about transcendent idealism and the Bhagavad Gita. Shit that's way over my head. Reminded me of the way you used to talk when we were younger, when I would pretend to get it. But I didn't even pretend her, 'cause this girl was _gone_.

"So I get her back here, and the door's barely closed before she's got me in the bed. And that happens, and keeps happening, and then I pass out while she's babbling to herself about some more shit I don't understand.

"Then I wake up, and it's one in the morning, and the girl is gone. Whatever, you know, that's what they do. I'm just hoping she didn't take anything out of my wallet. I go to take a piss, and the light's already on, and—and she's like that. She's the way she is, and I don't know what to do."

He was long done letting fat little tears crawl out of his eyes by the time the tale ended. I looked at David and wondered when my pacing had stopped. My stomach wouldn't stop feeling empty. I walked over to David, crouched down to my haunches, and stared him in the obliterated eyes.

"Why did you call me?" I asked. My voice came out in an unfamiliar octave.

He stared back as best he could, and his face trembled with every uncontrollable dart of his red-cracked eyes. As kids, we played marbles on the sidewalk with the neighborhood riff-raff. Whenever we lost ours to Marshall, or Doughy, or the kid with the harelip, David found a way to steal them back. His favorite was a glittering white cat's eye with a smoky swirl of red in the core.

"I told you," he said, though he stuttered far more than my pencil can describe. "I didn't know what to do. And you—"

"And I'm the one who does," I said, closer to his face than ever before. "I'm the one who solves the problems, right? I clean up the shit. Well who cleans up my shit, Dave?"

"She's...you saw her. Who else—"

"The _police_ , Dave!" I started to yell, but didn't dwell much upon the worry of waking the neighbors. Bad neighborhoods breed heavy sleepers. "You wake up to a dead girl, you call the police! You call 911 and let them clean out your tub."

I tore my face away from his and rose to my full height, striding away from the bed with all the purpose I could find. When I reached the trail of flung clothing, I turned back to David and waited for his sorry reply.

So I had shouted. Was that too harsh? Could I have done more to coddle and comfort my childhood companion, my brother, my closest thing to a twin?

Mother thinks I could have. She has told me again and again in the past few years, the last withering inches of a dwindling cigarette pinched between two engorged fingers.

Just this morning, she called to tell me I could have done more.

"You made it go away before," David said, looking at me in his sad little way.

Here, I cannot digress; some memories are too terrible to write. I can only say David's words had more than an ounce of truth to them, and that the things a young man does cannot be forgotten any more than the sight of a dead girl floating in her own wasted fluid.

I nearly left the apartment when David scrounged up the gall to speak to me that way. I nearly left him there, alone with his Category-5 mess and all the tiny aftershocks sure to come in the wake.

But David called me that night for a reason:I can't help but clean up the shit.

I found her pocketbook—a metallic silver clutch bag with a jet-black lining, in case knowing more about the girl gives you any peace of mind—underneath a pair of tiny black shorts. David busied himself with staring at specks of dust in the air. I would have left, I'd like to think, if I hadn't needed to open the clutch—if I hadn't needed to know her name.

We've spent the rest of my life together, that dead girl and me, and maybe I knew that would be true. I couldn't have gone through all that calling her something as impersonal as The Bathtub Girl, or David's Great Mistake.

I undid one snapping silver clasp and retrieved the wallet inside, thinking it would tell her story. Maybe she, too, had been a quiet girl who loved to read.

I took stock of the wallet's contents slowly, then again, with a quicker pace, as if I could have made some tragic error in comprehension.

Maybe it wasn't his fault. Maybe he didn't know, and maybe it didn't matter when compared with the gravity of everything else in that bathroom. Keeping only the two cards that mattered clutched in my left hand, I threw everything else to the ground. David didn't pay me any mind until I was upon him. I saw terror in his bloodshot eyes when he caught sight of my face.

The full name on each card listed her as _Amelia_. Maybe her family and friends called her Amy, or Mia, or Mimi. I wonder when they gave up on finding her, and for how long they cried.

When I hit David, I didn't hold back.

I hit him in the face, but didn't draw blood. He fell back onto the bed, then came sitting back up like one those inflatable punching bags our parents never purchased as to not encourage violent behavior. His eyes looked glassier than ever, and I don't think he had any comprehension of what had happened, despite the way my teeth locked together and my eyes narrowed. For the first time I could remember, my rage went unrestrained, all of it finally given a suitable conduit of expression through one raised fist.

Since I had already raised that fist, I hit him again.

Amy. Mia. Our Amelia. The dead girl. I wondered about her, and I hit David, and I wondered about her friend, and what had become of her under the guidance of Marshall and Jess, and I hit David again, and I didn't cry.

The crying came later.

I wanted to scream her name again and again, wanted to shove the ID cards in his face so he could see nothing but the stupid truth, wanted him to know what he had brought me into—but I just kept hitting him. When I thought I had broken my hand (thought the injury later proved itself to be far less intensive), I turned my body and eyes away from his cracked and bloodied face—but not before tossing both cards into his lap.

David spat a thick glob of saliva and blood onto the distinctive floor-stain.

"Look at them," I snapped, and again I began to pace, but in an entirely different fashion. If anyone has ever paced with hate, I managed it. "Look at who she was."

He looked. "It's her driver's license?"

"Pick up the next card." I rubbed my bruised knuckles and debated the pros and cons of another punch. "Look at the dates, Dave."

I glanced over just long enough to see him holding one ID in each hand, trying in vain to complete the _Spot the Differences_ children's puzzle I had presented. His forehead wrinkled like a slow child with a chapter-book, and I wondered whether David, if presented the opportunity, would still have the resourcefulness and smarts needed to steal so many marbles.

I took a step toward him and tapped the first ID with one finger. In doing so, I noticed my own hands trembling.

"This one," I said, finger firmly pressed on eerily cold laminate, "is the ID I'm sure she used to get into the club last night. The one that says she's 22." I flicked the card out of David's hand and tapped the same finger to the remaining license. "And this," I said, and I couldn't help but stare into his suddenly-focused eyes, "is her driver's license. The one issued by the DMV. The one that says she's sixteen years old."

He dropped the card. It landed face-down, but missed the stain and the blood-spit.

"I didn't know," he said. Had he always been so pale-white, or was that the color of truth and disgust? "I didn't know. Preston. _I didn't know_."

I didn't care about his lack of knowledge. I knew if he knew anything, so many nights like that one wouldn't have happened. "There's a sixteen year-old girl, a high school girl, dead in your bathtub. I'd guess her body is full of your drugs, and something else far more personal to you. What the fuck, David? What the fuck do you want me to do?"

When he cried and told me how sorry he was, how he didn't know, and he was sorry, and he didn't know, and God, please, Prest-o, just make it go away like you do, I didn't regret hitting him in the slightest.

I put my hand on his shoulder, told him what to do, and started cleaning shit up.

David received the easy tasks, as I retained very little faith in my brother's competency. I set him with an orderly numbered list of straightforward tasks he could complete, instructing him with the soft tones and slow sentences of a kindergarten teacher explaining the letter _A_ to the troubled child in the back corner.

His tasks were small, yet ancillary. The clothes needed to be gathered and bagged for later burning. The contents of her wallet, too, licenses and any other documents identifying the girl with empty veins. Burning. Shredding. The covering-up of a young girl's death...and her life. All things I could not stomach—yet all things for which I could provide a detailed plan. David didn't question. He nodded dumbly and tried his best to remember my incoming words, his corrupted brain synapses firing bullets to blow them out of inner-cranial airspace.

David assured me, after being asked three times, that Nicky from down the street was still alive and around. I extracted a phone number from David, and used my new Motorola to call up a man I hadn't dealt with in years. Luckily for both of us, Nicky had always been the kind of boy you could count on to be awake when decent people sleep.

"Get to work, then," said Nicky's voice, interspersed with static, when I gave him a brief synopsis of our story, "and wait."

I gave David a few more lines of uncomplicated instruction and then headed for the bathroom.

Only minutes had passed (though if my description of these events seems to take much longer, you'll know just how I felt that night), and the wrinkling young body still did not carry the smell so many associate with death. My vomit, which had seeped out of the wastebasket's mesh-wire sides and onto the previously-unblemished linoleum, more than made up for the girl's lack of odor. I stepped into the room, and thoughts of tossing my stomach all over again floated down from my brain. I nearly did so, before staring at the pale corpse for too long set my head and belly straight.

I had the plastic gloves from under David's kitchen sink (God only knows what need he found for such things in his daily life), my sleeves rolled up, and even the empty black garbage bag (though I would need Nicky's help to move her; previous experience had taught me not to attempt such a task on my own unless I desired to complicate things). My stomach felt almost stable, and the shaking in my hands slowed to a tremble.

But I kept staring at Amelia, our dead girl, and wondering. How do you look at someone so dead and sex-bruised and young and hopeless without wondering about everything? I stopped smoking after university, the final cigarette touching my lips six hours before starting my job in the mayor's office. I quit with the suddenness of the most frozen turkey, and have only thought back to it twice in my life: as my wife went into labor before the birth of our daughter, and there in David's horribly-white bathroom. The common denominator? Each time, I could not stop thinking of our dearly deceased Amelia. She had perfect teeth—have I mentioned her teeth?

I had a job to do, a vital task, but her eyes wouldn't stare back at me, and, God, did that ever fuck me up.

With my back to the wall and my eyes refusing to leave her face, I sank to the floor and sat next to the tub with one knee drawn to my chest. Our faces now within a few feet of one another, I wondered what difference a stranger could find between them.

Sitting there with our Amelia, I wondered too much and tried to understand anything. I couldn't hate David for all that had happened to this girl. He had known her for less than a night—I still trusted his words, addled as his actions could be—and I'm sure he wouldn't have brought her home had he expected this outcome in any way.

But there was so much more. The red in the water, and the emptiness in her eyes. The dried blood between her nose and mouth, and the related unshakable thoughts in my mind that David was likely "coping" one last time in the bedroom before doing anything asked of him. I kept looking at her eyes, asking myself if they had once been brighter and wider. I couldn't help but personify the dead flesh. Was she better at math or English? What did her parents do? The other girl, the one drawn into the coke-fueled orgy known as Marshall and Jess—had she been our Amelia's best friend? Her cousin, her sister, her lover? How far from home had she died?

"Where the fuck did you come from?" I asked the girl whose eyes could no longer widen in shock or surprise.

Any remaining traces of my steak dinner escaped into the pristine toilet bowl, the sickness sneaking up on me worse than before.

Perhaps my interpretation of this night—and the many others found in my digressions—has painted my picture in colors both noble and brave. If so, you may wish to read a dramatic conclusion of change and inner upheaval in which the profound effects of staring into empty Amelia's eyes prevents me from bagging her up like a dead rodent.

If so: I apologize.

I do not need to bore with you details of blood and heavy lifting. I reached into the tub and drained the water out, the girl's blood spiraling down and off to another place it did not belong. I bagged the body myself and scrubbed the tub clean with the lumpy black sack hidden in shame behind the bathroom door. I scrubbed with my aching hand, though the other would have sufficed. I did not drop her.

A knock at the door tore me from an internal debate regarding the necessity of prayer. Nicky looked far younger than he had any right to, all of his memorable features intact—long, unwashed hair, curled upper lip, and a permanently-singed left eyebrow explainable only by those few boys who grew up on our street as the '80s became the '90s. He smiled yellow at me, and I thought about the past.

"Best do it now," he told me, without so much as a salutation. "World's asleep out there."

I couldn't shake the truth of his words.

Together, we stowed a dead girl away in the trunk of car Nicky didn't own. I have never seen what happens to a girl like Amelia after they are loaded into the boot of a cheap car like a cargo of unwashed clothes. Dental records are one of the most useful tools in identifying bodies, did you know? When a car drives off into the dark with a body in the back, I wonder what happens to the perfect teeth.

Nicky came back inside with me—I didn't expect that. He pulled out a pack of Marlboro Reds and said, "I'm not supposed to smoke in the car. You believe that shit? Blood and guts all over the trunk, pipes and powder in the glove compartment every other day, DNA sprayed everywhere, and I can't smoke. Not even if I flick the ashes out the window."

We ended up standing in the doorway to David's bedroom. Every pulsing ache in my right hand brought the urge to pummel my brother again shooting through my veins.

"People around here take bets on him," Nicky said between short drags. "You know that? Everyone loses, though, because somehow this kid keeps on living."

"What are you saying?" I asked. But I knew. I just wanted some words to fill the dead air.

"I'm saying you owe me twenty bucks," Nicky said, "because clearly you're the only thing keeping his stupid ass alive and out of jail." He paused, then added, "That's on top of the old fee. And keep inflation in mind."

"Great," I muttered. My bank account would not be hurt terribly, but my principles felt stung. "They're teaching the street kids about economics these days. What is this city coming to?"

Nicky smiled. "Where you at these days, Preston? Everyone says you hit the big-time. People don't see you around here anymore."

"I'm in the Mayor's office," I told him, but I kept my voice low—in a strange way, ashamed. "Making connections. Trying to get change shit instead of just cleaning up after it."

"Fuck _me_ ," Nicky said. I could have smiled at such a reaction from my childhood friend, under better circumstances. "Good on you. What are you doing mixed up with Dave and dead girls? You start getting political, this kinda shit can mess you up."

Nicky went on smoking. I doubt he knew the weight of his words.

I stood there, in the doorway, staring at my brother. He had slumped over, unconscious, in my absence, looking something like a beached whale everyone has forgotten to push back into the ocean. His breath came slow, heavy, _tired_. And I came to realize, standing there, that my breathing had taken on a similar quality. Nicky's words rang out inside my head— _this kinda shit can mess you up_ —accompanied by the dead-girl-eyes of our Amelia.

I've seen Amelia and her empty eyes so many times since, and I hate myself for it. I see her when Mother calls, asking why I couldn't have done more. I see her whenever I pass an empty tub, picturing the porcelain pit filling up with blood and draining slowly. I see her when my daughter smiles up at me, not knowing why I can't smile back.

Nine parts of me wanted—needed—to step into that bedroom one last time. The tenth part of me said, with booming finality, that I could not. Instead, I would have to be content with standing there in the doorway, staring at my beached brother in his unconsciousness. The strewn clothes of our Amelia still littered the floor, along with all indications of her identity.

"That's the thing about smoking, Nicky," I said. "You do it even once, and the stench sets into the whole car. Follows you around the city. Someone gets in there with you, someone important, and they know who you are no matter how much you've saved for a nice suit."

"Yeah?" Nicky said, though I don't think he quite got it. "And blood doesn't do that?"

"Blood washes away," I told him.

What I didn't explain was how a bloodstain can wash out if you scrub with enough heartbreaking force, but you can never look at that spot without knowing what red fluid once marked it.

I made arrangements with Nicky, speaking loud, knowing no amount of noise would wake David from his self-induced slumber. He would take care of the remaining clean-up as a favor to me—a favor he couldn't possibly have comprehended the weight of. Had I stayed in the apartment any longer, I don't know if my choice would have stuck.

Nicky went to work. I lingered for a moment more, thinking about it all: David, our Amelia, marbles, tricycles, childhood. I wondered: without my constant assistance, how long would it be until Nicky or one of his friends from our old neighborhood won the Great David Bet?

I stopped standing in the doorway, and decided to leave.

### Curse of the Ape Man

Aurelio Rico Lopez III

Campbell detested being here. He hated any place that remotely resembled a hospital. Who knew what kind of microbes he was inhaling?

Dr. Hoyt trembled in the presence of the man in the expensive suit and with good reason. Mr. Campbell privately funded their research, and he was fuming.

"So, the machine doesn't work? Is that what you're telling me, doctor? That I've wasted millions of my dollars?"

Hoyt felt the walls of the center closing in on him and was afraid he'd pass out. Campbell demanded results, and Campbell always got what he wanted.

The doctor stammered. "It's not that at all."

"So, you're saying it works?"

"It's produced results. Just not the ones we were expecting."

Campbell, clearly frustrated, threw his hands in the air. "You call me down here, and all you offer me are riddles."

Hoyt cleared his throat. "I think you should come with me, sir."

"Where?"

"To the machine."

Hoyt led his employer down the hallway through the center built four years ago, built and funded with Campbell's money, of course. The doctor and the businessman were a mismatched pair – Hoyt with his wrinkled, white blazer, coke bottle glasses, and three-day-old stubble; Campbell with his immaculate suit, manicured nails, and well-combed hair.

When Hoyt and his partner Dr. Singh approached Campbell three years ago with their proposal to create a machine that could restore youth, the millionaire almost had them thrown out of his office, preferably through a window. But when Singh spoke of the billions of dollars to be made in both commercial and medical fields, Campbell considered that tossing both scientists out a window might not be good business.

They sat in the office and discussed genetics, biology, and anthropology (things Campbell knew nothing of), and then, terms, patents, and contracts (of which he knew plenty). After three long hours, Campbell finally agreed to fund their research. If they succeeded, Campbell would make them rich beyond their wildest dreams. If they failed, he'd see to it that both men never saw the inside of another laboratory again.

After passing several rooms and corridors, Hoyt and Campbell stopped in front of a steel door. A small camera mounted on the wall monitored this section of the hall. Hoyt punched a five-digit code on a small keypad on the wall, and a moment later, the door slid open with a hiss.

The machine stood at the end of the large room. Its circuitry hummed like something out of a Spielberg movie. Campbell regarded the contraption with contempt. This was where his money went. He might as well have been staring at a toaster. In fact, as far as he was concerned, a toaster would have proven more useful; at least he'd have toast. The machine in the room didn't do toast. It didn't do jack.

To the right of the large contrivance was a storage closet. Located on the upper third of the closet door was a 6x9-inch glass pane. Something banged behind it, and the sound made Campbell jump. Hoyt didn't seem to notice.

_Probably just some boxes falling over_ , Campbell thought. He studied the machine. It was shaped like an ATM vestibule. What a joke. An ATM that _drained_ money instead of dispensing it.

"Why did you bring me here?"

"There was a mishap last night," Hoyt said nervously.

"I already know your science project over there doesn't work, Hoyt."

"Not the way we expected it to."

Campbell fumed. "I hope you and Singh have a good lawyer. You better get used to the idea of flipping burger patties for the rest of your life because when my lawyer..."

He paused in mid-sentence. "Wait. Did you say 'not the way we expected'?"

The doctor nodded. "Last night, we performed a test. Our first. We've target cell memory in the hope of rejuvenating older cells. In this untapped memory lies the key to reversing the aging process. This cellular memory holds the key to eternal youth."

"Don't waste my time, Hoyt. I've already heard this pitch three years ago."

"Yes, yes, of course." He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his forehead. "As predicted, the machine tapped into the memory of the subject's cells. Right before my eyes, the subject began to devolve."

Campbell clapped his hands. "So it was a success! The machine works!"

"Not exactly, sir. I didn't say we restored the youth of the cells. We _devolved_ them. It's true that we accessed the memory of the original cells, but..." Hoyt removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

"But _what_? I'm sick of all this beating around the bush, doctor. Where the devil is Singh?"

Something moved inside the closet. The door rattled against its frame.

Hoyt continued. "We were working non-stop for days, not getting enough sleep. When Dr. Singh said the machine was ready, I told him we should re-check the calibrations. But he was so damn sure. He wanted to be the first..."

"Enough! I demand to see him at once. Where is that buffoon? I don't care if the two of you have been working non-stop. Get him down here, you hear me?"

Hoyt sighed. "That won't be necessary. He's already here."

Campbell raised an eyebrow and scanned the room. "Where?"

The doctor pocketed his glasses and looked at his wealthy benefactor. Hoyt's eyes were red. "He's in the closet."

The doorknob rattled and something inside pounded on the closet door.

"He was so sure...," Hoyt sobbed.

Campbell took a step towards the closet. He spotted movement through the glass pane.

Hoyt's partner was in there? That didn't make sense. Campbell took another step.

He cried out when a hand press against the glass. He glimpsed fur, and then eyes and a nose. All the blood drained from Campbell's face. He wanted to get the hell out there, but fear had paralyzed him. His mind dangled precariously on the edge of madness.

I didn't say we restored the youth of the cells. We devolved them.

Campbell stared in horror. The face behind the glass wasn't Singh's. _Couldn't have been_. It was a face that was inhuman.

A face with features unmistakably simian.

### The Glasmoor Beldam

Philip Gorski

The sun had just started to rise on a typically brisk morning at the start of the yearly harvest. Briar dressed in his warmest coat, and stood by the door with his arms crossed tightly at his chest.

"Does Mag have to go with me, Mum?" he said, frowning at the floor as he fidgeted with his sleeves. He glanced up, caught his mother smiling at him, and immediately looked back at the floor.

"I remember the times you tried to sneak her off with you," his mother said. "I'm sure you two will have a lot of fun." She leaned over and kissed Briar's forehead. "Just remember what your father taught you to do if the fog rolls in," she said.

"Yes, Mum," Briar said. "Be swift, be sharp, and keep your wits about, for the Glasmoor beldam hunts when the fog comes out." Briar heard a sudden rush of light, rapid footsteps pounding down the old wooden stairs of the cabin. Mag rounded the corner, her smile barely visible over the layers of scarves she was wearing.

"Can we go yet?" Mag said, her eyes shifting between Briar and the door.

"Fine," Briar said with a huff. "Just don't slow me down, or if the old witch comes out I'll let her get you." He opened the door and ran to the main road, his feet pounding the cobblestones, before his mother could scold him.

The old stone houses, tall and uniform, lined the main street of Glasmoor. On any other day, Briar felt safe when he was dwarfed by their sheer, earthen faces. Today, they made him think of enormous teeth, poised to snap shut on him at any second. Days like this, Briar recalled, were ones people whispered about when they didn't know he was around. They would talk about the old beldam in the woods, and how she loved hunting for people to steal away in the gloom of the fog so she could keep them forever. Days like this were often tense, quiet, and spent indoors, because days like this often started with the fog rolling in, and ending with one of the villagers never returning home.

Briar knew the adults only said things like that to keep him and the other children from getting hurt by real dangers of the woods. Going out alone, or too late, only gave way to chances of running into wolves, bears, or any other number of large beasts.

He stopped once he was certain his parents wouldn't have followed. The old, stone fountain in the town's square towered over him. Immense stone fish spewed waterfalls down upon horrified sailors and their ships. Briar's parents told him one such ship survived, made landfall, and so Glasmoor came to be. He stared at the fountain and tried to convince himself this story, like the tale of the beldam, was nothing but fiction. He could hear Mag's boots tapping their way along against the cobblestones as she slowly caught up.

"You keep a look out," Briar said, "Or the old beldam will make you into little girl stew!" Mag shrieked, and Briar shook with laughter. The two walked to the edge of the woods without speaking a word.

Over the years, many brave and strong villagers had tried expanding Glasmoor by cutting into those woods, but the trees always seemed to push back. This morning, their ancient, twisted limbs cast particularly dark shapes along the narrow dirt path at Glasmoor's edge. It almost felt, Briar thought, like something was watching him from beyond the labyrinth of low-hanging branches and dense, dying leaves. He stepped back.

"Scaredy-puss," Mag said, sticking her tongue out. "No fog, not scary." She spun around on her heels and skipped into the woods.

"Wait up," Briar said, the words catching in his throat on their way out. Briar followed his sister, his feet carrying him along a familiar route his father had taken him many times before. There was a little clearing up ahead, he knew, with trees ideal for firewood as they always gave wood that would burn long and warm. The cold air nipped at Briar's nose and ears, scratching its way down Briar's throat as he ran. He caught a glimpse of his sister's scarves fluttering behind her.

Briar stopped at the edge of a clearing. He doubled over and gasped for air. He couldn't see Mag anywhere. Thin wisps of fog crept around the trunks of trees ahead of him.

"Come on, Mag, stop messing around," Briar said, his voice shaking a little from a mix of the cold and fear. "There's fog coming in, so we've got to get the firewood and make it back to the house quick." He waited a moment, and when no one responded he started about the task of bundling some of the wood from the cache his father left for days like today. Days when it was necessary to gather the firewood and make a hasty retreat from the fog, and what it might be concealing.

His satchels filled, Briar called out for his sister again. This time, the only response he received was the distant ringing of a bell. It was customary for the village watch to send out one or two able-bodied people if the fog rolled in while people were still out in the woods. The bell proved helpful when the fog grew too thick to see even the brightest lantern's flame. Briar knew he couldn't just leave his sister to the fog and the woods. However, he could see the wisps of fog quickly growing into tendrils, creeping ever closer.

In the distance, he spotted the dim flicker of one such lantern. It was just low enough, Briar thought, it _could_ be Mag. Dad used to sneak a lantern into his satchels on their first few trips out, before Briar knew better. Slowly, keeping his wits about him, he crept toward the source of the light. The fog thickened and the bell grew louder still.

Briar made his way behind a tree, close enough to the lantern he could see who held it. He hoped he had been quiet enough they hadn't heard him, in case the stories were true.

It was an old woman, he saw, holding a lantern at her side with one hand and ringing a small bell with the other. Briar's stomach flipped and flopped as thoughts of being spirited away to some dark, terrible part of the woods flooded his thoughts. He held back a gasp, ducked behind the tree, and prayed to the gods she hadn't heard. The ringing of the bell grew a little closer, and Briar heard her calling out in a raspy voice.

"Dear boy," the old woman said, "I've come to get you. The fog is so frightful, and I only wish to help." Briar crouched down, hiding as well as he could in the fog, and crawled toward a familiar landmark. His satchel, heavy with the firewood, shifted from side to side on his back. The lantern swayed as the old woman lurched this way and that. Perhaps it was his imagination, but Briar was certain he could feel her raspy, warm breath on the back of his neck as he crept away.

Briar stopped at the base of a massive, long dead, tree. His father used to call it the last great sentinel of the woods, saying it still watched over the woods even in death. A large portion of the trunk had been hollowed out some time ago, Briar recalled, and he and his sister had played in the massive tree when he would spirit her off to the woods for their secret adventures. Slowly, and as quietly as he could, Briar leaned down to see if his sister had remembered the hiding place. His eyes met only the dark emptiness of the old, rotted tree. The fog had grown too thick for him to see anything, so he slowly stood up next to the tree. Before he could look around, the warm glow of the lantern's flame was upon him. Without a second thought, Briar turned from the light and ran.

"Stop, boy," the old woman said, her voice a far cry behind him. "I only mean to help you. In my care, you'll be safe." Briar could hear the bell ringing frantically behind him. He dared not look back, running through fog unending. He stopped, for a moment, to catch his breath, and the lantern's light seemed to be upon him again. Before he could react, a small hand darted out of the fog and grabbed his.

"Quick, with me," a small girl's voice said. Briar could only see a silhouette, but this was enough for him to make out the shape of Mag's satchel on her short form. He ran with her, relieved his sister was safe. The two ducked beneath low branches, leapt over fallen logs, and put as much distance between them and the old woman as they could.

Briar could tell the fog was clearing, and the two were making it to an opening; they had made it safely from the woods. He could hardly wait to tell his parents about how he barely got away from the beldam. That's when he saw the little girl's face. It was painted on, over a shell of porcelain.

"You'll go so well with the rest of my collection," the little girl said with a giggle. "My own little town of boys and girls."

### Balk

Ben Rutkowski

I ask: "What's the most valuable thing you own?"

And Mrs. Olsen says: "Where am I?"

Incontinence.

"You're home, you're home, you're home," I say.

She tries to sit up. She can't sit up.

"Where—"

"You're home."

She settles, maybe recognizing the ceiling, its waves of plaster.

"Trevor. Trevor?" she says.

"Yes," I say.

She tries to touch my face, to cradle it with both shriveled hands, but can't reach. She grabs my arm for consolation.

"What is the most valuable thing we own?" I ask.

She finds my eyes. She cries. It's heartbreaking.

"You," she says, "you're what matters most."

The question is hit or miss, depending on how far along they are.

"I love you," she says.

I lean back from the bed, the chair creaks.

"I love you too," I say.

Then she dies. It's 4:34 in the morning. I write down 4:34 a.m. and walk out of the living room. I walk to the stairs, past all of the boxes of things. The boxes are labeled like this: "Books," "Clothes," "Plates," "X-mas Ornaments," and "X-mas Ornaments 2."

Upstairs, I go to the bedroom. There is a wooden box, lacquered into an obsidian mirror. Inside are rings and brooches and earrings and necklaces. Everything is old. I grab a handful, then shove the handful into my jockstrap. The assorted metals are cold on my groin. I walk back downstairs and wake up Trevor. He's sleeping at the kitchen table.

"Mr. Olsen," I say. And then he _knows_.

I lead him to his mother and he sits down next to her. He puts his hands up, hovers them over her still face, shaking and shaking. He puts her head in his hands, then leans over and kisses her forehead. Then I leave.

***

We get the word "Hospice" from the Latin "Hospes," which means both "Host" and "Guest." Like, how "Aloha" means "Hello" and "Goodbye." The first people to provide it were 11th century Crusaders; Richard the Lionheart, my forerunner, the VHS to my DVD. I don't know if any of this is true, some kid might of fucked with the Wikipedia page.

***

Outside, the house is perched on the wrong end of Mount Washington. All you can see is Route 51 languish its way out to Clairton and the used car dealerships that alight it on both sides. I feel a dragonfly-shaped brooch jabbing into me and I readjust myself.

I walk past my minivan and Mr. Turbot, in shotgun, gives me the finger. I wave back. Asha is in her Scion. She is asleep in the back seat, using her blue scrub top as a pillow. Her hair is draped over her face like a curtain, its ends coiling on the floor of the car. She is wearing a black sports bra. My breath fogs her window.

"Ba ba da ba da ba ba," I sing.

Asha groans, her hair rising and falling above her mouth.

"Making your way in the world today—"

"No," she says.

"Takes everything you got."

She curls herself into a ball.

"Taking a break from all your worries—"

"Sure would help a lot," she says, her voice muffled and far away inside the Scion.

"Wouldn't you like to get away," we sing together. "Sometimes you want to go..."

Asha sits up, her hair jungle-dense, still hiding her face.

"Where everybody knows your name."

She pushes her hair back and I can see her face. She checks her phone and then puts on her scrub top. She gets out and stretches, gets up on the tips of her toes. She's small and only reaches up to my shoulders.

"Just once," she yawns, "just once, I wish they'd pick a reasonable hour."

"Yeah," I say.

"It's like, nobody ever picks three in the afternoon."

"Hanger-ons," I say.

She laughs, then says: "I think we're desensitized."

I say: "Not me."

"Yeah?" she looks at me, "While I'm like everybody in 'Full Metal Jacket.'"

She pretends to frag me in the Vietnamese jungle. We go back inside and consol Mr. Olsen. Then the mortician shows up. Then we pack up the equipment—the remote controlled hospital bed, the E.K.G., the various tubes and stuff. Then we go home.

***

They're waiting for me in the minivan. They watch me walk up and get in. They watch me empty out my pants. I played J.V. Baseball in high school. That's where the jockstrap is from. I was a pitcher. Coach used to say I had Jesus' rotator cuff, on account of my arm speed. He used to say to me and my teammates that _He_ is here, among us, Him and His, so fuck your wheelhouse.

Today I play some Leon Redbone for Mr. Chimelis. Yesterday it had all been big band stuff for Mrs. Almada. The day before it had been Wagner per Mr. Gradoville's request. Mr. Turbot hates asking me for things, so he doesn't get a day in the rotation, even though he keeps dropping hints about Neil Diamond.

Mrs. Olsen is already in the way back with Mr. Chimelis.

I used to drive a Nissan Stanza, but seating had been limited and Mrs. Almada had to sit inside of Mr. Turbot. Her head had come out of his sternum, her arms out of his stomach, her legs, always pressed together, out of his crotch—in between his always splayed legs like some shriveled, human spider. So now I drive a Plymouth Voyager.

At the dealership I had kicked a lot of tires. I had considered a truck, because of the bed, maybe they'd sit there like migrant workers, maybe they'd lie down like sardines. I had got in the bed and laid in it to see how many could fit.

Mrs. Olsen is all questions. I try to answer the best I can, but haven't gotten any better at it since Turbot. I'm sorting through the jewelry—the necklaces with gold, dying Jesus' on them, the rings with stones in them, an unwound pocket watch with a black and white photo in it—while Olsen is asking "Why?" and Turbot is calling me a _despicable faggot_.

I tell him that's not how you get Neil Diamond in the car. He says no, you have to be there on his death bed to fuck him over. And I say: "I wish. Can you imagine the sweet stuff Neil Diamond must have?" just to rile him.

Mr. Chimelis asks me to turn up the music. I do it. Then he asks me, since I'm in such an obliging mood, if I'll wrap my lips around his Colt .45?

"You know," he says, "if it isn't an inconvenience?"

"You're daughter sold your Colt .45," I say. I make a mental note to skip over Chimelis' next music rotation.

***

I drive to Broff's on Smithfield straight away because I find an engagement ring, but it's only 6 a.m., so I mill around out front for two hours. I keep looking at it in the well of my palm, where the sun can't get at it—hoping it's real. Then Broff opens up.

"Early-Bird-Special-Motherfucker," he says.

Inside, it's a menagerie of the discarded. No one has bought my sofa yet, which makes sense. I empty out my pockets onto the counter, but hold onto the ring.

"Early-Bird-Special and his chlorine-smelling artifacts," Broff says.

"I swim at the Y," I say. I jab my thumb into my chest, "American Crawler."

He inspects the haul, some of it with one of those magnifying monocles. He gives me an estimate. I ask if he's trying to fuck me on purpose, or if it's just a misunderstanding? He looks over at my unsold couch.

"Okay," I say.

Then I show him the ring and he tells me it's fake and then I say: "Fuck you."

Then I say I'm sorry.

I sell him everything else, but keep the ring. Before I leave, I ask him what's the name of the magnifying monocle?

"Loupe," he says.

I ask to see the loupe. He shrugs and hands it over. I use it to look at the diamond in the ring. It's like looking through a clear kaleidoscope. Like the Hubble Telescope looking at some silicon-based planetoid where the people are made out of glass and their blood is mercury and they live in suburbs of light.

He says: "You don't know what you're looking for."

And I say: "Yup."

Then I think about my rent and Duquesne Light sending the bills with pre-addressed envelopes inside and the Plymouth with its payments reaching out into 2022 and Jack Lemmon groveling in "Glengarry Glen Ross."

I sell Broff the ring.

***

Back in the minivan, Mrs. Olsen is crying. None of the others try to comfort her. I get in and buckle-up. I ask Turbot what he thinks the Bucco's post-season chances are. He says he doesn't give a flying fuck about all that anymore. I say the division is real tight, real competitive.

I drive home and then sleep for ten hours.

I wake up and the sun is setting. My phone vibrates, it's Asha.

The text says: lets get krunk [a dragon's winking face emoticon]

I text back: amen [a jockey riding a horse emoticon]

She texts back: pds in 10

I put on my favorite jacket—it's black and has epaulets. As I get into the minivan, Gradoville says what a nice jacket, what a quality jacket. Then Almada says how very dapper, what a dapper young man. Then Chimelis says I wish I had a jacket like that. Turbot never looks at me and Olsen is keening into her hands. I start up the car and drown it all out with NPR.

I drive to Squirrel Hill.

***

It's Thursday and the crowd is light. Asha is at the bar. There are flat screens, angled down like security cameras, playing Sportscenter's Top Ten. I sit down next to her.

I say: "Hey."

She says: "Finally," then spins around in her bar stool. A slow 360.

"Been here long?"

"Nope."

"What are you drinking?"

She lifts up an empty glass with only ice. She says: "Anything."

I signal the bartender and as she walks up Asha mutters, " _Bitch_."

"What'd she say?" says the bartender.

"Nothing. Any specials?"

The bartender smirks, "What'd you say?"

"I said—"

"She just got done calling me a despicable bitch, actually," I say.

"A despicable _fucking_ bitch," Asha says and then ruffles my hair.

"Yeah," I say. "Any specials?"

The bartender crosses her arms, "Two dollar I.C. Lights."

"Two I.C. Lights," I say.

"A fucking worthless, stepdad fucking, despicable fucking bitch, actually," says Asha between chewing her leftover ice.

I laugh. The bartender tells us to get the fuck out.

Asha tries to stand up, but can't. She falls against me and I carry her out.

"You've been here awhile," I say.

"Yup," she says, still with ice rolling and crunching around in her mouth.

***

She drags the smell of Menthol Cools out with her, the Sportscenter light still caught in her hair like a conditioner's sheen. I lead her to the van, then ease her into the passenger seat.

"Your bedside has always been great," Asha mumbles.

Turbot opens up his arms, like he means to catch her, but she just falls through him and he ends up enveloping her. She's asleep before she hits the upholstery. I buckle her seatbelt, reaching across her body, my forearms buried into Turbots torso like I'm performing some invasive surgery. I drive her home.

"What are you gonna do?" asks Gradoville as I pull up.

"Isn't it obvious," says Almada, "He's going to rape this poor negro girl."

"No," says Chimelis, "No, he'll probably kill her first and _then_ rape her."

I get out and carry her to the front door. It's locked, so I kneel down, digging my right knee into the welcome mat and sitting her on my left—like a parent cleaning a brush burn. I fish through her pockets for the keys. She nuzzles my neck and I feel cold snot run down to just above my sternum and dry.

Inside, I lay her down on the couch. I take off my jacket and drape it over her. She curls up beneath it. I brush her hair from her face and think about how beautiful she is. Then I remember Turbot and Chimelis and Gradoville and Almada and Olsen and everything I've done to them and theirs. I remember Turbot's kid wringing his father's dead hands and Gradoville's crying into his father's dead chest. Mrs. Olsen's face framed in hands, her forehead being kissed. I leave.

In the van, Chimelis asks if I did it, "Did you do it?"

"Of course he did it," says Almada.

Then Turbot says: "Don't worry son, I know you didn't, you fucking faggot."

***

It's three days before I see Asha again. Mr. Lahey is dying on the East end and I've been assigned as her secondary. Asha is wearing my jacket when I show up.

"Nice jacket," I say—real cool.

"Fashionesta," Asha says.

It's a week before Lahey goes, but I don't try to ask him anything. Asha and I eat lunch together in her Scion every day. She eats homemade hummus and pita chips. Her breath smells of chickpeas and garlic. On the last day, while we're waiting for the mortician, I rummage through a closet and take a medal. It's a star of dull grey metal hanging from a striped ribbon. I huff and puff on it and wipe it on my chest like an apple. I remember my rent and Duquesne Light and the Plymouth and Jack Lemmon groveling. I stuff it into my jock, then leave to eat lunch.

Outside, Lahey's son is mowing the lawn. Sweat cuts dark Vs into the front and back of his shirt. It's a push mower and the cylinder of scythes blend together. He makes sure to maintain symmetrical rows, drawing lines with flattened grass.

Asha is in her car, already opening her Tupperware.

"What you got?" She asks me.

"Ham sandwich," I say.

"Lame."

Lahey's son has stopped. The lawn is finished, but he doesn't move, doesn't try to wipe the sweat from his face. There's a lawn ornament, a small windmill, and he watches it catch the wind.

"There's a correlation between how adventurous a person is in life with how adventurous they are in food," Asha says, "Btw."

"What does that make me?" I say.

Lahey's son is gone, his mower still standing upright.

"A ham sandwich," she says.

"Indiana Jones?" I say.

"Ross from 'Friends.'"

"Spider-man?"

"You're like that one guy in 'Diehard,' the one who thinks he knows what's up. The one who strolls into Alan Rickman's office and thinks he can do Bruce Willis' job, but just ends up getting shot."

"That young-Judd-Apatow-looking guy? I'm that guy?"

"Yup."

"Ouch, deep cut."

"Well, shouldn't have tried to do _Bruce's_ job," she says.

"Yeah, I guess," I say.

"Want a Dr. Pepper?" She asks. "I packed two."

"I only drink Mr. Pibb."

"Fuck you." She thrusts the can of soda into my hand, smiling.

And then the lawnmower explodes through the passenger side window. Shards of safety glass cut my face. The mower misses Asha and I, hitting the windshield, which caves outward in a lattice of spiderwebs. It sits there, wedged against the dash, scythes spinning. I think: _where are the fucking airbags, shouldn't there be airbags_? Then Lahey's son starts punching me through the broken window. Skull, skull, and then he finds my eyebrow and I feel the blood trace down along my cheek. Asha is screaming. The handlebars of the mower are getting in the way, so Lahey's son pulls me out through the window. As I'm going, I kick the windshield wipers on, and they start dragging themselves across the dry glass like we're in a monsoon.

He sets me on my knees and I can feel the asphalt staining my pants. I think about putting my hands up, but I take too long and he starts again. Nose, cheek, cheek, eye, eye, cheek, eye, mouth. I can barely see—blood runs into one eye, and the other is swollen shut. My face feels like some terrible mask, raised and disfigured and alien; like I'm at some fucked up masquerade ball. I want to take it off.

He's yelling at me, but it's far away and sounds like when the parents in "Peanuts" are talking. I let my head rock backward and hang. I want to fall, to just lie down, but he's holding me up by my shirt. And then I can hear again, can hear Lahey's son yelling: "Where is it! Where is it?" The windshield wipers are still going at it. I'm still holding onto the Dr. Pepper.

"No, stop," Asha screams.

I look up and she's grabbing at him, digging her nails into his arm and face. He lets go of me and I nearly crumple, but I lean forward and my spine flexes, propping rest of me up like a marionette. I taste milk in my mouth.

He's hitting her, and the can is cold in my hand, and he's hunched over her, raising his fist into the clouds shaped like faces and camels and baseball diamonds. I get up on one knee. I wish I could stand.

"Where is it? Where is it?" he yells.

The can is cold in my hand.

"Please, no," she says.

The dull metal star is cold in my jock.

"Where is it?"

The can is cold in my hand.

"Please."

As I throw, I hear my shoulder pop and feel my rotator cuff shred itself like a single of American cheese. The distance is short and the can only manages a 180. It hits the back of his head and flattens, conforming to the arch of his skull. Dr. Pepper fires from both ends in jets of tan foam. He crumples backward and lies in the asphalt twitching. I sit down, my legs splayed.

Asha crawls to me and buries her bruised face in my shoulder. It hurts, but I don't tell her. I look to my van and can see both of the Lahey's, father and son. They're sitting in the way back, sitting bitch, sitting inside each other, their features shifting in and out, noses and eyes and mouths running together. I can tell they're all questions. I look away, down to Asha's back. My blood runs out of me, it soaks her blue scrubs, flattening the fabric against her back, revealing the nubs of her spine. _Myself running out of myself_ , I think. It can't get out fast enough.

### Curiosity

Marjorie Lord

The Curiosity wouldn't leave me alone. I could see it around every turn, hovering there, laughing at me. I tried to tell Heather, but she simply laughed along with it. "You _see_ curiosity?" She shook her head. "What does it look like?"

I tried, but how do you explain Curiosity with a capital 'C?' Something you see only out of the corners of your eyes, something that seems to change size and shape every time you see it, yet stays, somehow, the same? It was nagging me, following me around, yet I could only see it in my periphery, occasionally hear it snicker, but I'd turn and it'd be gone.

***

When my mother died, Rhea had been the only member of the council to take any real interest in me. As far as the rest of the council was concerned, because I was not raised a hunter, I should be placed in a regular orphanage, not taken in and trained to hunt. The council had bigger concerns than a six year old boy with squinting eyes in need of correction and an acute lack of coordination among his limbs.

Rhea, though, was technically my half-cousin, and her mother had always spoken fondly of mine. As such, she felt it was her obligation to champion my future as a hunter to the rest of the council, and because their opinion of me was mostly apathetic, they allowed her to take me to the manor where she lived with a half-dozen or so other hunters.

My training began immediately, and though I was behind Heather by a year and a half, genetics must have kicked in because I took to the hunting lifestyle with fluid ease. The training regiments were strict and all of the physical work allowed me to grow into myself, turned my knobby knees into strong legs, my bony arms into tools I could use to hunt down the creatures most people see only in their nightmares.

***

I knew exactly how to rid myself of it, this Curiosity, this demon, the monster whose toenails clicked on the floorboards in the hallway behind me until I turned to find nothing there. The creature who, when I was lying in bed at night, would lie on the floor beside me and whisper to me that it wasn't a bad idea, really, for me to just go downstairs and find out what, exactly, was behind that locked door.

Several weeks ago, Rhea had gone out on a solo hunt, something not unusual for her. Though she did not allow Heather and I to go alone ("You're too young. Ask me again when you crest twenty five.") She often went out to kill monsters by herself, disappearing during the twilight hours and returning well after midnight. She said the time helped clear her head. I envied her freedom but knew she was probably right, I was too inexperienced to hunt alone. Heather and I had only been allowed to tag along on our first group hunt when we hit sixteen, each having now a bare year and a half of field experience.

This recent solo hunt had, apparently, not gone as Rhea had intended. Instead of returning at one or two in the morning, it was well after four when she barreled through the heavy double doors of the manor, shouting for someone to open the door to her study. She sprinted down the hall and through the door, which the hunter who had been on watch rotation had opened for her already. A dark shape crashed through the hallway behind her, knocking down a painting, a tapestry, and several candelabra. It left scorch marks on the old-fashioned wallpaper and dented the floor.

The study door had slammed shut behind Rhea, and that was the last any of us had seen of the dark shape. I was left unsatisfied.

Heather knew what I wanted to do and thought I was using my 'hallucinations' as an excuse to look in Rhea's study. "Don't," she'd said, after she'd finished laughing at my explanation that Curiosity was following me around in the form of a monster.

"But it's _real_ ," I insisted. She was getting impatient with me. I had thought that as a hunter in training, she would at the least believe me. She shook her head.

"This is pathetic. Give it a rest. Rhea doesn't want us to know what it is, so we simply won't. At least until she changes her mind." This was not satisfactory enough reasoning for the Curiosity.

The manor, while large, was not large enough that secrets could stay secret for long. One night, as I lay in bed, Curiosity whispering to me from the floor, I decided enough was enough. I knew how to pick locks, damn it. Rhea herself had taught me. What could Rhea be hiding from us which was so terrible? I deliberately ignored the scorch marks on the walls and the burns on Rhea's arms when they began to float in my memory.

I sat up and swung my feet over the side of the bed, standing in one smooth motion. There it was, Curiosity, standing in front of me, staring me in the face. It was big, bigger than I'd realized and dark, a black ooze coming from its pores, dripping down its shadowed, hazy flesh but disappearing before it ever had a chance to hit the floor. Its eyes glowed green.

A small voice whispered that I should be scared, should be killing this thing, but beyond the numbness that washed over me I could feel only my desire growing. I pushed the small voice down.

It stared at me for a long moment, silent, and I stared back. After a beat it turned and left my room. There is not an easy way to describe the way it moved because there was no sense of real motion, no walking, yet it touched the floor, somehow, and it was certainly not floating or gliding. I followed. I already knew where it was going. I could hear it laughing to itself as we went, quietly.

The study was disheveled and as torn apart as Rhea herself the night that creature had followed her home, but it had since been corrected. There was a shiny chain and padlock on the closet door, though no noise came from within. She had refused to say a word about what had happened even as she forced the lot of us to help her clean her study, put the bookshelves right and re-varnish her desk. She refused to discuss that door, though it loomed over my thoughts, the rich mahogany haunting me.

The Curiosity first appeared to me just nights later, whispering my own terrible ideas into my ear. At first I thought I was only over-tired and it would go away, but instead of fading out I began to see the thing more and more often, more and more obviously. Instead of the barely-glimpses I got on the first day, by this night I'd almost formed a clear picture of what the thing actually looked like.

The Curiosity beckoned me into the study and I followed, pulling the door after me, though it didn't quite latch.

The Curiosity and I walked to the closet door and stood before it. I stared at the padlock, mesmerized, and it stared back at me with its Cyclops eye. I had my lock-picking tools in my hand, somehow, though I had no memory of picking them up. I knelt before the door, lifted my hands to the lock. It was strangely warm, almost uncomfortably so, but sprang open in moments, _too_ easily; I didn't feel as though I'd really done anything. The Curiosity was laughing openly now, though I wasn't sure why and I ignored it. The voice in the back of my mind had grown louder, was nearly screaming, but I ignored that too and pulled at the chain, which slipped away from the door, and took the knob into my hand. It was hot, much hotter than the lock had been, and hurt my hand. I turned the knob anyway.

"No!" Rhea's voice shocked me. I jumped backwards and pulled the door open. Something huge and black barreled through, knocking me off my feet and onto the floor. I hit my head on the corner of a table and pain shot through it, spots dancing in front of my eyes. Rhea screeched, loud enough to make me wish my already-throbbing head would shrivel and fall off my neck. My eyes squeezed shut. I stayed there on the floor, trying to pretend nothing had happened out of the ordinary. That I'd tripped and fallen. A wave of dread was passing through me. I regained my mental and mobile faculties and sat up. Spots still spun in front of my eyes when I opened them, weaving nonsensical patterns. One of my ears was ringing. A few moments passed in dead silence (save for the ringing in my ear), and then footsteps pounded through the mansion. I looked to the door and managed to make out Heather and the others past the black and gold dots. Rhea was on the floor. Her face, neck, chest and arms were a mass of deep half-charred gashes. She was breathing, but only shallowly.

Heather came to my side. Her face was pale with shock and confusion. "What happened?" I could only shake my head, miserable. The motion caused another shockwave of pain to course through it and I closed my eyes again.

"Your arm..." Heather's voice had changed from confused to horrified. I opened my eyes once more and looked down at myself, at the hand that was still burning with the heat of the doorknob. My skin was blackened, oozing something that dripped but never seemed to hit the floor. I stared, mouth agape, words failing. Heather looked at the open closet door behind me, at the opened padlock and loosed chain on the floor. Her eyes widened with recognition. "I hope your curiosity was worth it," she whispered.

I looked around the room. Rhea was still on the floor. I could see her more clearly now; through the blood, I noticed she had the black, tar-like substance coating areas of her skin as well. It looked as though it had eaten through some of her clothes. Her face was bloody and chunks of flesh were missing. Her left eye, though I couldn't be certain from across the room, looked as though it had been gouged out. Everyone else was huddled around her, assessing the situation before they would move her to the infirmary.

I broadened my visual search, swiveling my head and looking around the study. Everything was in place; the books, desk, its chair, and the stuffed chairs, the heavy brass lamps and large picture windows untouched. I gave the open closet a cursory once-over, but it was empty, as was the hallway when I peered past Rhea and those helping her.

Heather started to stand. I looked up at her. Clearly she had forgotten her apparently rhetorical question, because she jumped when I spoke.

"It's gone."

### The Quarry

C.V. Hunt

I typed "I think I'm dying" on my cell phone and sent it to Tony. I took another hit off my cigarette and admired the night sky. A co-worker flung the door open behind me. I dodged out of the way to keep from getting hit and turned around. Jon pushed past me.

He sneered at me over his shoulder as he walked to his car. I flipped him off after he turned away. I hated Jon and it seemed that the feeling was mutual. He'd had it out for me since my first day of working this crappy job.

The nicotine made my stomach hurt and I rubbed my abdomen. I was thinking about putting the cigarette out when my phone buzzed.

Tony responded, "Physically?"

My fingers flew across the tiny keyboard. "Yes. I feel horrible. I can't eat without feeling like I'm going to throw up."

I smoked and waited for his response.

_Buzz_.

Tony replied, "It will get better. Eat healthy and get some rest. You'll feel better."

Puffing on my smoke I typed, "I don't think I will. I think my conscience is killing me. He's trying to tell me I'm losing. He'll win, you know. He always does."

I smoked and waited.

_Buzz_.

Tony responded, "Your conscience?"

I typed, "Yes. I have seven minutes left of break."

_Buzz_.

He replied, "Do you have a persona for your conscience?"

When I was a kid I used to have an imaginary friend named Jason. I used to blame him for all the bad stuff that happened. Mom and Dad didn't think it was cute. When I caught the yard on fire Mom told me Jason wasn't allowed to visit anymore.

I put my cigarette in my mouth, puffed, and texted two-handed. "Yeah, his name is Jason. He's sort of a dick, or that's what people tell me. I don't know though. I've never met him."

I chuckled.

_Buzz_.

He responded, "That's funny."

I responded, "Not really. He's a dick."

_Buzz_.

Tony replied, "Why is he killing you?"

Someone else opened the door and almost hit me. I sighed, but didn't look up. I was too busy entertaining Tony. "He knows right and wrong better than me. He's the rational decision maker. I tend to follow my heart. He listens to reason. It's his job to make me the mindless machine of today's society. I'm supposed to become numb and slip into unconsciousness while he forces me to move through my life."

I took a puff of my cigarette and blew the smoke into the night sky. The sky was clear and I stared at the stars. The moon was full.

_Buzz_.

Tony responded, "You'll be okay."

My stomach turned as I inhaled again. I typed, "Why do I have to keep reassuring myself though?"

A long pause. I puffed on my cigarette and looked at the time. I had three minutes left of my break.

_Buzz_.

His message read, "Because it's life. No one knows what they want. It's easy to just do what everyone else does. You don't. You tend to break away from the herd. Everyone wants someone to pat them on the back and tell them they did a good job. You don't have that. You've burnt every bridge you've ever crossed."

My fingers flew across the keyboard of my phone. "I think I'm going to be sick. I have three minutes."

I pushed on my stomach and wondered if I should make myself throw up.

_Buzz_.

"Three minutes till you get sick?" Tony's text read.

I dropped my finished cigarette and stepped on it. I typed quickly. "Three minutes of break, asshole. How can I live when I feel so horrible? I'm horrible. I'm a horrible person and I've done horrible things. And the sad part is those horrible things make me happy. How can something so tragic and complicated make someone happy?"

Jon exited his car and walked across the parking lot. I avoided eye-contact when he went back in the factory.

_Buzz_.

Tony responded, "If it makes you happy, then be happy."

A second message arrived a second later. "Don't torture yourself."

I responded, "I feel like a drug addict. It feels good, and I want more, but I know it's bad for me. I feel like I could destroy myself, my life, everything I've built, and take down everyone around me, just to get what I want. I'm a selfish dick."

I had one minute left of break.

_Buzz_.

He replied, "You're overthinking it."

I typed, "I'm going to puke."

_Buzz_.

Tony: "You sure do threaten to vomit a lot."

Me: "Good. Maybe people will stay away from me if I erupt."

_Buzz_.

Tony: "Ha ha."

Me: "I'm like Mt. St. Helen. You know it's going to go off, you just don't know when. It's Jason. He's doing this to me. He's killing me slowly from the inside. A tortuous death... and I deserve it." I typed out another message before he could respond. "I've gotta get back to work."

_Buzz_.

Tony: "I'm Batman!"

Me: "What the fuck?"

_Buzz_.

Tony: "I managed to change the subject didn't I?"

Me: "I'm a terrible person."

_Buzz_.

Tony: "I'm the terrible one. I forced you."

Me: "You gave me ample time to stop and you never forced anything. I wanted in. I coaxed you."

_Buzz_.

Tony: "It never happened."

Me: "Yeah, it never happened. But if it did...it was awesome... in a tragic way."

_Buzz_.

Tony: "Yes. It was."

I hurried to type out, "We should hang out sometime after I'm done dying." I looked at the clock and realized I was now five minutes late. It's not like I needed this job anymore.

_Buzz_.

Tony: "Are you sure? You seem to go home in a worse state after hanging out with me."

Fuck it. I was already late. What was another few minutes? I typed, "I'm positive. I just need some time for Jason to forget. He knows what I know. I have to keep my mind busy with other things. The pain is like binge drinking, or childbirth, or tattoos. You forget about it until you're back in the trenches. I need time to forget. I'm not a glutton for punishment or anything."

_Buzz_.

Tony: "You're a terrible person!"

Might as well smoke another while I wrapped up the conversation. I lit a cigarette and typed, "I know! I should just kill myself now and get it over with!"

_Buzz_.

Tony: "You should probably masturbate."

Me: "My heads so fucked up I don't think I could get off."

_Buzz_.

Tony: "It's late. I need to get some sleep. I have to work tomorrow."

Me: "Yeah, right. Work? Whatever. No problem. Get some zzzz."

_Buzz_.

Tony: "You're a sorry mother fucker. Zzzzz."

I looked at the clock on my cell phone and cursed. I stepped on my cigarette and the door opened as I turned to go in. My line leader was standing in the doorway with a pissed off look on his face.

Before I had a chance to say anything he said, "I'm sick of warning you about the long breaks. You're fired."

***

"Are you going to be okay?" Tony said. The blue lights from the dash illuminated his scruffy face.

I rubbed my stomach. "Yeah, I'll be fine. It's just... Jason's being a dick."

"You've lost weight."

"It's probably a good thing."

"Yeah... maybe."

Tony grunted and threw his cigarette out the car window. He sped down the country road. I continued to rub my stomach in the passenger seat of the beat up Toyota. I didn't want to do this again, but I needed the money pretty bad this time. I should've kept myself in good standing at work. My insides were being eaten alive by my conscience. I knew this was wrong, but I kept telling myself no one got hurt. I tried to justify my actions to my conscience.

"You've scoped this one out?" I asked.

"Yep."

"Old people?"

"Not sure. Does it matter? The plan's the same."

"I guess it doesn't matter."

"No one is getting hurt. You worry too much."

I nursed my sunken stomach and tried to calm Jason.

"Look..." Tony shrugged. "No one _ever_ gets hurt. We make a few bucks. I don't see what the big deal is. The government steals from our paychecks every week... so does my ex-wife."

"I think this is the last time I'm doing this. I'm going to get a regular job and keep it."

"You said that last time." Tony laughed. "You'll be back when you're broke again. Or when you're bored with your shitty simple life. You get off on this shit and you know it. Tell your conscience to go fuck himself."

"It does make me feel alive... a little."

"A little?" Tony scoffed. "It's a complete rush."

"True."

"Here's the house."

I stiffened in my seat and sat up straight.

A plain, two-story farmhouse emerged from the darkness. There wasn't another house around for miles. Endless rows of corn filled the voids from one country house to the next.

Tony killed the headlights and pulled into the driveway. A few lights glowed through the first floor windows. One car sat in the driveway.

"Show time," Tony said.

I took a deep breath, rubbed my belly, and grimaced at the inner turmoil eating my stomach. If I felt this bad now, how would I feel after? I didn't have the balls for this kind of stuff. This was the last time I was doing this whether I needed the money or not. Starting tomorrow morning I was looking for another full-time job. And I wasn't going to fuck it up this time.

We exited the car and approached the house. Tony knocked and produced a ski mask, holding it behind his back. I hid behind Tony with my head down to hide my face. We listened cautiously to the noises in the house.

A TV droned and we heard footsteps. The lock was turned, the door opened, and we pulled on our ski masks.

A fit man, with dark hair, in his mid-twenties stood in the doorway. He observed our appearance, realized our intent, and tried to slam the door shut.

Tony's arm shot out lightning-quick and caught the door's edge. The dark-haired man pushed with everything he had, but I threw my weight against door, and we knocked the homeowner to the ground. Tony and I rushed into the house.

Tony unsheathed a hunting knife from his boot. He hurried to the man scrambling on the floor.

"Don't move mother fucker!" Tony yelled. He loomed over the homeowner and pointed the blade at him.

As the rush of adrenaline hit me, I pulled out my own knife, and scanned the house for other people. I went from room to room, searching while Tony kept an eye on the panicked man.

After thoroughly checking the house, I walked back into the living area. Tony stood over the homeowner.

"Get up," Tony said to him.

The man rose slowly and raised his hands in a submissive gesture. Tony lowered his knife-wielding hand and looked over his shoulder to say something to me. The man lunged forward and grabbed Tony's knife hand.

This wasn't part of the plan. The old people never fought us. We never actually used the knives. They were for intimidation purposes. In shock, I stood like a deer in headlights as Tony struggled for control of the knife.

"Help me, dipshit!" Tony barked.

The homeowner had Tony pinned on the ground before I knew it. The man yanked the blade from Tony's hand and held it above his head. He reared back and poised to stab Tony.

Running on adrenaline, I did the only thing I could think of. I ran at the guy, closed my eyes, and stabbed at him, blindly, with my own knife. I opened my eyes. Half of the blade was buried in his side. The homeowner dropped the knife he was holding and grabbed at the blade buried in his side. I pulled the blade free. My hands trembled. I stared at my knife.

"Holy fuck," I whispered and dropped the bloody blade.

Somewhere in the pit of my stomach Jason went apeshit.

Tony pushed the man off. The homeowner fell on his side. My whole body trembled.

"Find something to tie him up with," Tony said.

"This wasn't part of the plan," I said weakly. "We take them to the quarry and drop them off and come back. No one gets hurt."

"Get some rope."

"No one is supposed to get hurt."

"I said find some fucking rope! Tie his hands up!"

Scared, and not knowing what else to do, I tore through the house searching for some rope. I found a roll of clothes line in a closet.

I found Tony watching the homeowner with a disconnected stare. The man sat calmly on the floor, clutching his bleeding side. It occurred to me the homeowner hadn't said one word through the whole episode. I took quick, panicked breathes as I stared at the man's bleeding side.

"Get up," Tony told the wounded man.

The homeowner glared at him, but did what he was told. Tony waved the knife at him. I tossed the rope at Tony clumsily.

"What the fuck you want me to do with it? Knit a fucking sweater?" Tony said. "You fucking tie his hands."

The homeowner clasped his bloody hands together and smiled at me. My stomach rolled. I thought I was going to be sick when I saw the wound through his torn shirt. I didn't know what to make of the man's eerie silence and cheerful compliance. A part of me wanted to call the cops and turn myself in. I wanted to call an ambulance.

I turned to Tony to argue and noticed his knife was pointed at me. My knife was lying on the ground. I hesitantly did what Tony told me to do.

As I secured the man's hands I said, "I don't know about this."

"Don't be such a fucking pussy. Do you want to get caught?"

"Well... no, but—"

"Find his car keys."

"Why?"

"Change in plan."

"We're not stealing his car. We'll get caught for sure."

"I didn't say anything about stealing it. Do you want blood inside of our car?" Tony pointed the knife at the homeowner when he addressed him. "Try anything stupid again and I'll slit your fucking throat. Got it?"

The man smiled at him and nodded.

Tony mumbled, "Fucking weirdo. Come on let's go."

***

I sped down the narrow gravel road. I was put in charge of driving the homeowner's car. The bleeding homeowner sat in the passenger's seat with a pillow case over his head. His bloody hands were clasped together in front of him, bound with clothes line.

"I'm really sorry about this," I said.

I checked the rear-view mirror. Tony was still following.

The man had yet to make a sound.

I was worried about his condition. There was quite a bit of blood saturating his clothes, yet he'd remained calm after his initial resistance. I didn't know if he was going into shock. And I had no idea how deep I actually stabbed him.

Jason kicked my guts around. My bowls felt loose and I the urge to vomit was overwhelming.

"Hey, are you okay?" I said.

The man lifted his hooded head and nodded.

"We're going to drop you off at the quarry, then go back to your house. Tony will take what he can sell. When I get there I will call an ambulance right away to come for you... I swear. I've never stabbed anyone before. I'm so sorry man... I didn't know what to do. This isn't how this normally goes down."

I rubbed my stomach as Jason continued to pummel my insides. I pulled the car over by the old gravel quarry and killed the engine. I suppressed my urge to vomit and took a deep breath.

The quarry was flooded. It'd been deserted for twenty years. On hot days during the summer, families would make the drive out here, in the middle of nowhere, to swim in its stagnant and Sulphur smelling water. At night it was a dark abyss.

Tony's car stopped behind ours. I exited the homeowner's car.

"Okay man, let's get going," I said and headed toward the passenger's side of Tony's Toyota.

"Not so quick," Tony said.

Tony walked to the water's edge and picked up a stone the size of a human head, then climbed into the driver's seat of the homeowner's car. The bleeding man sat calmly in the passenger's seat.

"What are you doing?" I said. "Let's go man. This isn't fucking funny anymore. He's hurt. We need to get him some help."

"He's not going to need any help."

"What? Wait... what are you doing?"

I ran to the car to see what Tony was up to, but he started the vehicle and threw it in reverse. The side mirror clipped my forearm as I grabbed at the door. The pain brought me to my knees. My whole arm felt numb and tingled, like hitting your funny bone. A knot was already forming where the mirror had hit me and it was excruciating to flex my fingers.

Tony drove the car backwards down the road.

"Hey! Motherfucker!" I yelled.

I didn't know what he was up to, but I knew it couldn't be good.

Tony stopped the car and opened the driver's door. He stood outside the car, but kept one leg inside pressed on the brake. He messed with something in the floorboard. The engine revved angrily.

I got to my feet and ran toward him.

Tony turned the steering wheel. The vehicle's wheels pointed toward the quarry. I screamed into the night as I pushed my legs faster. Tony pulled his leg out of the car quickly and hopped away from it.

"No!" I yelled.

The car peeled out, causing the driver's door to slam shut when it lurched forward. It barreled toward the quarry, bounced over a small ditch, and launched into the black waters. The vehicle seesawed slowly on the surface and began to sink.

I screamed something unintelligible and tripped in the dark gravel road. I fell and the stone road bit my skin. Jason delivered his best beating yet and I began vomiting violently. Cut by jagged stones, and covered in dirt, I picked myself up and ran toward the water.

"Jesus Christ, Tony! He'll fucking die!"

Tony shrugged, walked passed me, and headed toward his Toyota.

***

I sent Tony a test message.

"Are you awake?"

I didn't wait for a response and sent another.

"You haven't been answering my texts."

After a long pause I sent another.

"Have you seen the news? I can't believe he made it."

I thought Jason would've left me alone after I checked the headlines, but he continued to kick the shit out of my stomach.

I hadn't heard anything from Tony in days.

"I wish you'd answer. Jason is on a psychotic rampage. I'd like to talk sometime."

Long pause.

"Okay, I'm going to try and sleep. Get ahold of me. Don't be a dick."

***

I slept soundly after I'd drunk a large portion of rum. A horrid night of self-loathing and vomiting led me to pass out on my sofa fully clothed.

At some point during the night a noise stirred me out of my sleep. Groggy, I fumbled for the lamp on the side table and turned it on.

Standing in between the tiny kitchen and living area of my apartment stood the dark-haired man I'd stabbed. The same man who had managed to escape the sinking car after it hit the bottom of the quarry. The story had made it to the front page of the local newspapers. Once the car had hit the bottom, the uneven pressure of the water outside the vehicle had caused the back window to break.

"Oh fuck!" I said, sobering up.

I scrambled to sit up on the sofa. The man looked around my apartment with a stone face.

"Holy shit!" I said. My sleepy brain was struggling to put things together. After a few seconds I said, "Hey, how'd the fuck did you get in here?"

I stumbled to my feet. The man stared at me and a sinister smile crept across his lips. Something was off about the guy, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

His eyes searched around the apartment until they rested on a small notebook and pen on the coffee table. He approached it, slowly, keeping his eyes on me.

I let him proceed. Jason rumbled in my gut and threatened to evacuate whatever rum was left in there.

Fear started to creep up my spine as my mind cleared of sleep and alcohol. There was only one reason this guy would bother trying to find me. _This guy is going to kill me_ , I thought.

There was something inside of me that wanted to die. I was dying now. Or at least it felt like I was. In the days after the incident my stomach problems had grown crippling. I'd thought about turning myself and Tony in, thinking the pain would go away when my conscience was clear. But I was too chicken shit. I didn't have the nerve to do anything but let myself rot away. This guy deserved his vengeance. I hoped he was the type of guy who liked to see criminals suffer in a prison cell.

I said, "If you're turning me in..."

The man shook his head and smiled. He picked up the pen and pad.

I asked, "Who are you?"

The man's smile seemed to grow beyond anything human. He wrote something on the notepad and turned it for me to read: JASON.

My stomach turned and I suppressed the urge to vomit. Jason opened his mouth to show me he didn't have a tongue. Not only was Jason lacking a tongue, but he was missing the back of his throat, and anything that resembled the inner workings of a human being.

My world spun. A bottomless vortex pulled at my whole body. Jason stepped closer. His jaw unhinged and his mouth grew larger.

I tried to back away from the strange gravitational pull that came from Jason's throat. I screamed, but no sound escaped the vacuum of the void. My voice was sucked into the man in front of me. Suddenly, I was pulled into the bottomless abyss, right behind my unheard plea.

### Bar Fly

Jamison VanLoocke

The most interesting man I ever met was Joe Redbocker. Some men, they swagger into bars like they own the place, like it was _expected_ they'd be there. But not Joe, no, he just came in like every other guy, humble and pleasant as always.

He always had this stupid, sheepish grin. He said nothing in the world could ever bother him, so why frown? Joe would sit down at his favorite stool or his runner ups (he'd never ask anyone to move) and run his hand through his black, slicked hair.

"Scotch on the rocks, babe," he'd always say, except on Christmas, when he'd order an Appletini with a cherry—to be festive. I'd mix his drink, set it in front of him, and ask how his job had been that day.

"Saved another life today," was a favorite opening line of his. "This poor kid, he got his prize baseball stuck in the roadside gutter. Poor little dingbat got trapped down there, and I had t'get in through the manhole cover."

He wasn't a maintenance man or some kind of city worker. Every day he'd come in with a new story of some strange job he had supposedly ran that day, some amazing feat. It was never the same twice, despite the ten years he came in for drinks. And every night when I got off shift, I'd check the newspaper, and, lo-and-behold, it had happened.

Though it was always someone else who had done the action—the chief of police capturing the criminal, a fireman saving a puppy, a brain surgeon working a miracle.

But nonetheless, Joe Redbocker was the highlight of my day. Whenever he came in, the music would get quieter, the creeps staring at my ass less annoying, the thick bar-smoke less stinking. Everything was a little more peaceful.

There was this one time, every stool at the bar was taken, and Joe walked in with his stupid grin. It was winter then, and he had his hands in his pockets, his hair peppered with snow. He had eyed the bar, and I looked at him with a shrug. He shrugged back, snow flaking off his shoulders, and sat at a booth instead, near the corner, under the neon _Budweiser_ sign.

I left the bar that night to take his order. The waitress—a stuck up bubble-gum blonde named Judy who wouldn't last more than two months—tried to stop me from taking her table, but Joe was _my_ customer.

"Scotch on the rocks, babe," he said, his eyes going up and down on me—which I never minded; some people I did, but not Joe. I mixed his drink and came back.

"Saved another life today," he had said that night, the first night he sat at the table. I sat down next to him then, decided to take my five minute break and hear about his day.

"So I was walkin' down the street today," he said, ice clinking in his scotch, "when this old lady slipped on some slush. Now, I know what yer thinking, that the old broad broke her hip or somat like that—" somat was a word he used to mean 'something like that'—"but no, no, she goes sliding on the ice out into the middle of the road."

Joe took a big swig of his scotch and slammed it on the table. "Now, I couldn't just leave her like that, like a turtle on its back, wrapped up in this big ol' shawl and poofy coat, right in the middle of main street. So I think quick, 'Joe, you gotsta do something,' right? So, I do what comes first to me, and I slide down on my belly and run into her. Bammo! It's like pool, you know? Where you knock into one thing and send it flying. Just like that. Little ol' mole, she goes sliding off the road and onto the sidewalk, safe as a bell."

"Weren't there any cars?" I asked, laughing.

"Oh, sure, plenty," Joe said, fingering his pockets. "Hell, I got hit by a moped." He picked his jacket up from the spot next to him and showed me its back—it was a gray jacket, like those fancy people in New York wear, and it had a long, black, tire tread on it.

Joe only sat at a booth one other time, and that was the last time I ever saw him.

It was summer, then, and Joe hadn't been in for a few weeks, which was odd for him. At most, he didn't come in a couple days for a "business trip." His stories after those were always amazing, some grand tale of exploit in Japan, Paris, Madrid, wherever.

So I had been eagerly watching the door that slow, muggy Sunday night.

The bells jingled at the door as it opened, and Joe walked in. He was dressed like usual for the summer—Khakis and a button up shirt—but his tie was askew, his hair disheveled, and his chin stubbled.

He looked at the bar, at the empty rows of seats. His favorite stool was open, but he took a seat at the booth instead.

I rushed over there. "Scotch on the rocks?" I asked, smiling.

But he wasn't smiling. It was the only time I saw him without one. "No, not tonight. Need the strongest you got." He kept his eyes down on his hands.

I crinkled my brows together and went to the back. I found a bottle of the strong stuff and went to pour it into a glass. Then I looked over at him one more time, saw the bags under his eyes, and just brought him the whole thing.

"Thanks," he said, taking it from my hand and pointing the bottom to the roof.

"You okay?" I asked, sitting down next to him. He downed half the bottle before he finished his chug.

"Been better."

"Save any lives today?"

"That's not what you want to ask," he said. "You want to know where I've been."

"The thought crossed my mind."

"Was visiting my father. Down in Kentucky. At the retirement home."

Joe had never spoken of his past before. He talked about his daily life—or at least what he _said_ was his daily life—but other than his name, he'd never really said anything concrete about himself which could be wholeheartedly believed.

"He said he wasn't doing good, that he was getting sick." Joe tilted the alcohol up again, then let it fall back. "Didn't think he'd have long. Figured I should go see him one last time."

"How is he?"

"When the pillow didn't work, I had to wrap a cord around his throat and pull."

A silence formed, grew, festered. What could I say to something like that?

"When I was three or so, I adored the man," Joe said. "To a boy, not even God is above his father. And I thought my father could flick Superman in the balls and make him cry.

"And then, one day when I was ten," he continued, "I really had to piss. But Dad was in bathroom. I knocked and knocked, and he said he would be out in a minute. But I couldn't hold it, so I twisted the knob. You'd think he'd have locked the door, considering, but no, no. Flew right open.

"And there he was, on the toilet. But it wasn't really him. He was thinner and pale, his hair white and wispy, and his eyes were piggish ruby holes. There was this shell-thing around him, something like paper. It took me a couple of seconds to realize it was skin—that he was shedding. My dad. He was shedding his skin like a cicada. On the toilet."

Joe downed the bottle and let it fall to the ground. It didn't break, just thunked against the floor uselessly.

"I ran away," he said, looking at his hands. "Got out of there as fast as I could. Couple years later, Dad found me somehow, sent me a letter. I ran again. Another letter followed. Running and running, I got here. And he left me alone. Until a month ago."

Joe Redbocker stood up and left the booth. He didn't turn back to look at me; he just started to walk away. But he stopped at the door and said one last thing: "After he stopped wheezing, after I pulled the cord tight enough to crack his skin and knew he was dead, he started laughing, deep in his stomach. I ran again, got the first flight home.

"Last night, there was a knock on my door that I didn't answer. Wouldn't answer." He rummaged through his pants pocket for a second as I stared at him. "This was on my doorstep this morning," Joe said, holding something up.

He dropped it onto the floor and walked out of the bar. I got up from the booth and picked it up—it was some flaked piece of material, leathery, white, and mostly transparent.

That night, Joe hung himself with a power cord. It made the obituaries, but nothing could really be said about him. He had been unemployed, apparently, and nobody really knew where his income came from. All his neighbors said he was quiet, but a joy to meet in the halls.

The cops came to the bar a few days later, but I couldn't really help them.

I still have the flake—whatever it is—the thing Joe pulled from his pocket. I keep it in the register, next to the twenties.

### Footprints

Jeremy Terry

The cold water flowing down Dan's back couldn't put out the fire which burned deep inside him. He hung his head under the shower, his fists clinched in frustration and rage. It had been one of those nights, the fourth in a row, and he didn't know if he could take it anymore. After all, he was a man, he had needs. He turned the shower off and reached for a towel, listening to the sound of Stacy's snores coming from their bedroom across the hall. She was sleeping with her Prince Valium, instead of her Prince Charming. She hadn't needed the pills before the Boy. Now, it was a rare evening when she didn't need them. Dan was certain she was addicted to the pills, but he had no idea what to do about it. The few times that he had broached the subject had resulted in her flying into a rage and slamming doors. He laughed to himself, thinking that the only thing Stacy used to be addicted to was him.

But, that was before the Boy.

Having a child changed everything. For some people the change is for the better. Not so for him. He turned to the mirror hanging above the sink and stared at his naked body. He was in good shape, his body muscular, his skin smooth and tan. Any woman in her right mind would be proud to have him and yet his wife showed no interest in him at all. He supposed that he could get a whore, he'd done it before, but the experience always left him feeling hollow and unfulfilled.

No, Stacy was different. It wasn't anything so fanciful as love. Love was a lie, a nice dream invented by writers of greeting cards and trashy novels in order to sell a product. No, it wasn't love, nor was it that she was exceptional in bed. Stacy was simply the most interesting person Dan had ever met and he wanted her all to himself.

Dan turned the light off and walked into the hallway. He stopped and stared at the door to the Boy's room. It had been three years since he had felt at peace. Three years since Stacy had went from wife to mommy, from lover to playmate. It was amazing to him how something so small could ruin everything that he cherished. Dan turned to his bedroom door. He reached out to turn the knob and paused, realizing that he had come to a decision. He would put his world right, he would have peace again. He entered the room and lay down on his side of the bed, thinking of ways to do it.

***

Stacy's scream shattered the silence of the afternoon. Dan got to his feet and ran out of his study. He found his wife in the backyard kneeling beside their in-ground pool and holding something small and wet in her trembling arms. She looked up at the sound of his footsteps, her eyes full of panic and pleading, "He's not breathing! Dan, help me!"

Dan rushed forward and took the boy into his arms, checking for signs of life. The boy's body was cold and limp. The heart beneath his still chest did not beat.

"Go call an ambulance!" Dan ordered as he laid the child on the ground and checked his airway. Stacy didn't move. He turned to look at her and grabbed her wrist hard enough to bruise it, "Stacy!"

"O—okay," she stuttered and ran inside. Dan turned back to the Boy and began CPR. He knew it wouldn't work. The boy had been in the pool for almost half an hour before Stacy woke up and found him, but he had to keep up appearances. Dan worked methodically until the paramedics arrived and took over. He even pretended to resist their efforts to pull him away for a moment.

"Dan? Is he going to be okay?"

Dan held Stacy and they watched as the paramedics strapped the Boy to a backboard and carried him away towards the waiting ambulance.

_Finally_ , he thought. _He's gone. I can get my life back_. He looked up into the darkening sky and smiled.

***

"What a shame to lose one so young..."

"Yeah, I know. I can't imagine what that must be like..."

Voices surrounded Dan. Some were familiar, some were not. They were ghouls, the lot of them, every one there with their fake sympathy and their barely concealed joy at the chance to gossip and view the remains.

"Have you heard what happened?"

"No, what?"

"Stacy was swimming while the baby was taking his nap. She did it every day. Only, this time, when she went inside she forgot to lock the gate to the pool.

"Oh, no."

"Yes, it's just awful. The way I heard it was that, while Stacy was upstairs taking her nap, the baby woke up. He must have climbed out of his bed and wandered outside."

"Poor baby."

"Poor Stacy, I think she blames herself for what happened."

"Where was Dan?"

"He was working in his study. Did you know that he's a writer?"

Dan couldn't take anymore. He stood up and walked out into the hall, drifting towards his study. He paused in front of the parlor door and looked inside. The room had been transformed into some bizarre parody of the Garden of Eden with flowers covering almost every square inch of available space. He wrinkled his nose at the overpowering odor that wafted towards him. Still, there was another, far more subtle scent underneath the flowers. It was the smell of funeral homes, the smell of death. It emanated from the small grey coffin that stood in the center of the room

_Terrific_ , he thought. _It'll take weeks to get that smell out of the house_.

He glanced towards the ceiling, his thoughts turning to Stacy. She would probably never be able to set foot in the parlor again. She hadn't been able to earlier. Dan winced at the memory of his wife with runnels of snot hanging from her nose and tears streaming down her face. He had tried to sooth her, to be a good husband and give her what she needed, but Stacy had pushed him away. Finally, he had given up and gotten her pills from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Now she was resting comfortably far away from all of this.

"Dan?"

It took a conscious effort not to groan. He turned towards the speaker, wracking his brain for the name that went with the face.

"Hi, Linda," he said, giving her what he hoped was an appropriately mournful look.

"Oh, Dan," she said, taking a step closer to him. "I'm so sorry. How are you holding up?

"As good as can be expected, I guess. Stacy is not doing too hot."

"I know," she said, taking another step closer and putting a warm hand on his arm. "Dan, is there anything I can do? Anything at all?"

Dan smiled as the memory of the first time he met Linda came into his mind. It was the previous year at the annual Christmas party thrown at Stacy's work. Stacy had wandered off to mingle with her friends and Linda had swooped in and carried Dan away. They had ended up in someone's office with Dan sitting behind the desk with his pants down around his ankles and Linda's head bobbing up and down in his lap.

"Maybe some other time, okay?"

"Are you sure?" she asked, licking her lips.

"Yeah," said Dan, his mouth dry and his palms sweating. "I just need to be alone right now."

"Sure," she said, taking a step back. "But, you have my number. Give me a call."

"You bet."

Linda squeezed his arm and walked away. Dan felt a moment of regret for the missed opportunity, but now was not the time. He was the grieving father, the good husband. And, besides, he had done all of this so he and Stacy could be together the way they should be. If somebody were to catch him and Linda he would lose Stacy and that was something he would not risk. He turned around and walked into his study, closing the door behind him.

***

Thunder crashed in the night sky calling Dan away from his uneasy dreams. He sat up on his couch, wincing at the stiffness in his neck and back. The grandfather clock in the hallway chimed midnight in its melancholy voice.

_The witching hour_ , he thought and then frowned. _Why did I think of that?_

Lightning flashed, illuminating the study in electric hues. Dan heard the howl of the wind as it blew around the corners of the house as well as a strange squeaking noise that set his nerves on edge.

What is that?

He stood up, feeling a slight chill despite himself. _I know what that is. It's the gate to the pool. But, what is it doing open? I know I locked it this morning before the guests arrived_. The gate creaked again, louder this time. Dan turned his attention to the ceiling, listening for any sign that Stacy was up. There was none. _Good_ , he thought, _if Stacy heard that sound she'd go nuts_. He stepped out into the dark hallway, shutting the study door behind him, and walked to the back door.

He heard a soft noise behind him and spun around, his hand gripping the door handle, his heart in his throat. He scanned the hallway, searching for any sign of movement. There was none. He turned back to the door, laughing at himself. _Why so jumpy, buddy?_ He opened the door and stepped outside.

The motion sensitive light above the door glared to life, illuminating the dry expanse of the yard and the pool beyond.

_Hasn't rained yet, but it will anytime now_.

Dan walked down the steps and up the cement path to the swinging gate. He examined the latch for any sign it had been broken or tampered with and found none. Satisfied, he locked the gate and turned back towards the house.

Creak.

Dan paused and turned back to the gate.

It was open.

Dan frowned and took a closer look at the latch. It was in good working condition. He locked the gate and waited. It stayed shut.

"Just didn't shut it right the first time, that's all."

He turned and walked back up the path.

Creak.

Dan broke out in goose bumps. Slowly, he turned back around.

The gate was open.

"No way..."

He walked back to the gate, reaching out to grab the latch. He jerked his hand away with a gasp. The latch was dripping wet and cold as ice.

"What the hell is going on here?"

His eyes drifted down to the pavement and his breath caught in his throat. A trail of wet footprints led away from the pool into the open back door of the house. _Those footprints, they're so small, like a child's_.

"Stop it!" he said, his voice hollow and weak on the cool night air. "He wasn't here, things like that don't happen." He took a deep breath and felt himself beginning to relax. _Good, much better. There is no ghost, just somebody with a very sick sense of humor that's playing a bad joke on you. Still, how did they get by me? I was standing right here, I should have seen them_.

Dan pushed the thoughts away and began walking back to the house. _Follow the footprints, find the joker. Then bash their fucking head in_. He reached the back door and paused. Water dripped from the door handle, forming a puddle on the floor just inside the house. The footprints passed through and continued deeper into the gloom. Dan stepped inside, careful not to step in the water. The cold hit him like a load of bricks. He exhaled and his breath came out in a cloud.

_So cold, it shouldn't be this cold inside_...

Dan heard the sounds of something moving coming from the open door of the parlor. He walked down the hall and looked inside. Everything was as it had been that afternoon. The little coffin still held center stage amongst all the flowers. The funeral home director had tried to talk Stacy out of leaving the body in the house over night, but she had been adamant about not being separated from her little boy. It was the only decision she had been able to make before she had collapsed into a valium induced fugue.

The sound repeated, coming from inside the closed coffin.

No way, I didn't just hear that. There is no ghost boy in my house. Still, what kind of person could hide inside of a coffin with a dead body?

Dan didn't want to know, but he knew he didn't have a choice in the matter. He crossed to the coffin and gripped the handle. He took a deep breath, held it, and yanked the lid open.

The coffin was empty.

Somewhere nearby, a small child laughed.

All of Dan's rationalizing went out the window as something inside him broke. He spun around and bolted out into the hall, his feet barely touching the floor.

"No!" he shrieked.

The back door was closed. He skidded to a stop, banging his knee on the door jamb and cursing. He grabbed the knob and turned it with all of his might, but the door remained locked.

"Come on!"

Dan knelt down and peered at the lock. Ice glittered in the soft light spilling through the window in the door; it filled the lock and covered the knob itself, preventing the mechanism from working.

The laughter floated down the hall, freezing Dan's heart as solid as the lock. He turned and put his back to the door, gazing into the gloom. Nothing moved.

"Come on Daddy, play hide seek!"

Dan's knees buckled, spilling him to the hardwood floor. "You're not real!" he screamed.

The laughter came again, tinkling like a little bell.

_I have to get out of here_.

Dan turned back to the locked door and then glanced at the window to the right, dismissing it as too small for him to fit through. It would have to be the study, then. He walked up the hallway and ducked into the study doorway, moving to the big plate glass window along the outside wall. He reached for the latch to unlock the window; it wouldn't budge. Dan looked around the room, his eyes falling on the wooden stool that sat neglected in the corner. He picked it up, spun around, and flung the stool at the center of the window. The stool struck the window with a muted thud and bounced to the floor, leaving the window unharmed.

"No way," said Dan, his voice that of a terrified child. He turned and picked up his desk chair, feeling the reassuring weight of the thing in his shaking hands. He aimed and threw. The heavy chair hit the window dead center and fell to the floor with a clatter.

"I didn't just see that, it didn't happen!" Dan had never been claustrophobic in his life, not until that moment. His chest felt constricted, like he was in a vice, and he found it hard to catch a breath. He had to escape, before he lost his mind, but how? There was the front door, but he was sure it would be frozen just like the back door. What about the window in the living room? Could he break it or would it defy him as well? He thought it probably would, but he had to try. He picked up the stool and walked out into the hallway.

The house was getting colder by the minute. Dan could see his breath forming little clouds of vapor in the air in front of him as he walked past the parlor without looking in. He stopped just inside the living room and peered into the darkness. Nothing moved. He looked across the room to the large window that looked out onto the front yard and freedom. He started towards the window.

Laughter came from Dan's right. He jumped as if he had been shocked and looked towards the archway which led into the kitchen. A shadow moved amongst the lighter shadows.

"W—who's there?" asked Dan.

"Ring round da rosey...pocket full of posey..." sang the voice as the shadow crept closer. Lightning flashed, burning the image of something small and hunched over into his mind. Something glinted in its hand.

A knife.

Dan spun and fled the room, seeking the stairs to the second floor. If he could climb the stairs and reach his bedroom, he could put a locked door between himself and the thing that accosted him. Then, he would wake up Stacy and they would find a way to escape this waking nightmare. He took the stairs two and three at a time, trying to outrun the devil. He reached the top of the stairs and halted. The closet door by the head of the stairs was open. It was never left open. Dan glanced inside and froze. There was a pair of small, blue feet beside the other shoes and boots that cluttered the closet floor.

"...Ashes...ashes..."

Dan screamed, his hands flung out in front of him to ward off the attack he knew was coming, "How did you get up here!?"

The clothes hanging in the closet parted and Dan saw it, something that couldn't be there. It was the boy. Its skin was blue and dripping with cold water, its eyes were dead and glazed over. Its voice bubbled up from lungs filled with pool water.

"We all...fall...DOWN!"

It rushed forward and shoved Dan backwards. Dan wheeled his arms, trying to keep his balance, but lost his brief fight with gravity. He came down hard on the stairs and rolled head over heels to the bottom. There was a loud cracking noise and Dan screamed in agony as his back broke.

"Daddy falled down!" it said from above him, laughing its evil laugh.

_I've got to get up. I've got to get out of here_. Dan tried to move a leg or an arm, anything, and found he couldn't. He had become a prisoner inside his own body.

The stairs creaked above him and Dan began to cry. It was coming down the stairs, coming for him, and there was nothing he could do about it. Step by step it came, until its blue feet came into his field of vision. He felt a cold hand grip his hair and yank his head up off the floor, sending excruciating pain coursing through his body.

"Hi Daddy!"

Its face was inches from his own, stinking of chlorine and decay. It smiled at him, revealing a mouthful of shark's teeth. "I give Daddy kiss!"

"No," moaned Dan, trying to turn his face away.

It leaned forward and latched onto Dan's nose, biting it off. Dan's moan became a gargling scream as blood filled his mouth and throat.

"Look, I got Daddy's nose!" It opened its mouth, showing him the ground up pieces of flesh, and then it swallowed. Dan felt his gorge rise and fought it back down, scared that if he threw up he might choke. It dropped his head to the floor, sending more bolts of agony coursing down Dan's spine. It picked his legs up and began to drag him down the hallway towards the back of the house.

Towards the backdoor.

Towards the pool.

"No, please," he moaned, trying to fight but unable to. "I'm sorry. Don't do this." If it heard him, it gave no indication.

Dan's back was on fire, the nerve endings working overtime. He was sure he would faint soon, he even prayed for it to happen. He welcomed oblivion and the release it would bring, anything would be better than the soul shattering pain and horror he was experiencing. Still, sleep would not come. _Maybe God's on vacation_ , he thought. He felt a harsh bump as the thing dragged him over the threshold and out of the back door, which was open once more. Each step down from the door to the sidewalk set explosions off in his shattered spine. He heard the creak of the gate as it swung on the breeze and felt the wind wrap his heart in its icy grip.

"Daddy go swim," it said, dark laughter filling its dead voice.

"No!"

Dan felt himself flying through the air. There was a splash and he was sinking into the depths of the pool. The water was like ice; it filled his lungs and dulled the fire in his back. He tried to swim, to fight for his life, but his limbs wouldn't obey him. A cold hand gripped Dan's leg and pulled him down. He looked and screamed as the last of his sanity shattered like his back. The thing was below him now, but it looked very different. It had cast off the façade of the little boy and was now something alien, covered with stingers and claws and gaping mouths full of razor-sharp teeth. Below them, a great hole had opened up in the bottom of the pool. Things writhed in the midnight blackness; things which made what held him look beautiful by comparison. They reached out to embrace him with malevolent glee. Unseen by a living soul, Dan was dragged out of the world and the gateway to Hell closed behind him.

In the house, Stacy rolled over in her sleep, her troubled dreams fading away into fond memories. In the parlor, the boy lay quietly at peace.

### Shithouse Rat

Zachary T. Owen

The moon sat low in the sky like a glazed-over eyeball, looking down on the tree-littered path that crawled up a little hill in the backyard of the Lansdales' house—if a shack nestled beside a rust-eaten trailer could be called a house. Mr. and Mrs. Lansdale slept in the trailer with the baby, while Little Timmy Lansdale stayed with his sister and two brothers in the shed. Mr. Lansdale said it was just the natural order of things, as devised by Darwin. He said Little Timmy and his siblings weren't evolved enough to live in the trailer, that they wouldn't be allowed in until they stopped being monkeys and at least made it to the stage of Cro-Magnon man.

But Timmy Lansdale, he didn't mind. His two brothers weren't so bad and his sister spent most of her time reading what she called the "Gothic greats". Her copies of _Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The House of Seven Gables_ , and _The Jewel of Seven Stars_ were worn and moth-eaten, but she kept them under her pillow and paged through them every night. They had come from a well-off Aunt who lived in Rhode Island.

Every night at approximately eleven fifty-five, Timmy woke up with a cramp in his stomach and rushed off to the outhouse to squeeze a few out. This ritual was not one he much liked, considering the thick clouds of mosquitoes along the path to the outhouse, not to mention the occasional wandering moccasin snake. Timmy carried a flashlight with him for the very purpose of avoiding the nasty little suckers, should they slither across his path.

But of all the things that bothered him on his quick trips to the john, it was his mind that bothered him the most. Sometimes he swore the hill quivered before him, thought he heard the howling of some beast, or felt the vibrations of a man-eating worm wriggling under the ground. The last part was his father's fault—on nights when the Lansdale's had a fire, he often sat Timmy on his knee, though he was getting much too old for this at the age of ten, and told him terrible stories of a half-mile long grub-monster that lurked underneath the very soil Timmy and his kin walked on, waiting for them to fall into some burrowed hole so he could spit all over them and then slurp them down like a flesh-milkshake.

The thought gave Timmy the willies and he henceforth avoided even the smallest worms, which became a real task when it rained and they came seeping up from the earth like Play-Doh spaghetti.

Tonight it had not rained. When Little Timmy woke up his face was damp with sweat but he was not soaked as he had expected to be. His sister was still awake, shining a flashlight over _Dracula_ , and his two brothers snored back and forth to each other, communicating in some secret sleep code about the mysteries of the universe. Timmy headed for the shoddy door and flung it aside, but stopped to adjust the lining at the bottom of the shed (to keep any snakes from getting in).

"Out for your nightly dump?" his sister, Mo, said.

"Yeh. Just like a clock."

"You mean 'just like clockwork'," Mo corrected.

"Whatever. You know what I meant." Timmy was about to leave the door when Mo reminded him to grab his flashlight. "Thanks, sis," he told her. He grabbed the flashlight, which was becoming dimmer with every use, and headed out.

***

The trail was empty tonight—no venomous prowlers, and surprisingly few clouds of mosquitoes. Timmy kept his beam to the ground, in case he might be proven wrong about moccasins. He was quick, sprinting through the trail and up the hill toward the outhouse.

The door opened after he fumbled with the lever and he hopped in, shut it, and put down his grungy pants, resting his cheeks on the uncomfortable wooden commode. The demons would not leave his body so easily. Timmy turned his flashlight back on and searched for the small radio, found it to his left, pressed on the loose batteries to make sure they got the juice going, and fiddled with the dials and antenna, trying to get a station to come in. Music helped him crap.

The signal was about as poor so he adjusted the dials relentlessly. It was clear there would be no radio tonight. Timmy surprised himself when his eyes began to get watery—he was on the verge of tears. Something about the music made him feel safe. And then, suddenly, the tiniest voice snaked out of the right speaker. Timmy was careful not to mess with the antennae or dials again. "I'm back in baby's arms," sang the voice on the radio, soothing Timmy and allowing his first missile to drop out of the deployment area and go hurtling into its destination with a slapping, watery plop.

Leaning back and yawning, Timmy grabbed at his flashlight and absently turned it on. The beam moved around the outhouse as he swung the flashlight. He stopped it suddenly when he spotted a long, plump rat in the corner of the outhouse. It squeaked as the lights invaded its bright eyes, but remained in the corner, nibbling on a piece of corn that Timmy sincerely hoped it did not find in the outhouse.

"Hi, little feller," he said to the rat. It stared blankly at him, unthreatened. It walked a few paces closer to Timmy, and sat the corn down for a moment, and stared up at him. "It's okay, varmint. I'm not going to hurt you."

Rats had never frightened Timmy. Though he had heard in the big cities they were quite aggressive and known to bite people, chew through steel, and spread disease, the rats around these parts were fairly harmless. He had fed many of them and all the hostility seemed to leave them upon receiving food. They weren't as plentiful in the country as a city-folk might guess, and they certainly didn't bite anybody. At least as long as you didn't put a hand in front of their face and wave your finger around.

The rat picked the corn back up and began eating again, then skittered back to the corner. Timmy heard a knock on the door and nearly launched the rest of his missiles. He turned down the radio.

"L.T., I have to go," Mo cried.

"Well, I'm leaving a dump," he told her. "You're going to have to wait, or go in the woods. And don't give me no crap about the Count being out there ready to suck your blood. And no Frankenstein's monster, either."

There was a long silence. And then, "Course I won't say nothing about no gothic monsters. It's the snakes that scare me."

"Well take a flashlight and be careful. I'll be back directly in a little while."

Footsteps could be heard. Timmy knew that his sister was walking back down the path. She was quiet, but he had keen ears. He figured the rat and the radio had distracted him from hearing his sister's footsteps the first time around. With his sweaty hand, Timmy found the flashlight again and searched for the rat. He couldn't find it.

When he was finished at the john he found some of the sad tissue that his family called toilet paper and cleaned himself. Roy Orbinson called out to Timmy from the radio and he smiled to himself. Roy had a peculiar affect on Timmy's ears, and it always resulted in a smile. He turned the volume up and as he did so another sound snuck into his ears and reminded him of how nasty his mind could be. He thought of the Wolf Man slinking through the woods outside, mouth foaming.

"Nah, 'aint nothing out there," Timmy said to himself.

He finished cleaning himself and stood up quickly, snagging the flashlight. Quite suddenly he lost his balance and fell backward, his free hand shooting out so he could steady himself, and in that quick moment he felt the furry presence of the rat brush against his fingers and suddenly tiny incisors were piercing through his skin and he was howling, his arm withdrawn from holding him safely. There was a feeling of the world giving out from under him, and next thing Timmy knew, wood was rubbing harshly against him and splinters were lining his sides and rump. Next he did a somersault in the air, much to his surprise, and that was when he realized he was falling.

He had fallen, somehow, through the john0hole, and was now on his way to what lay in the depths of the pit beneath the shithouse. It was a very deep and wide pit his father had taken especially long to dig out, so "enough turds to damn well fill two semi-trucks could fit down there without a problem."

Timmy splashed into the slimy, watery sludge and instantly began to puke his guts clean out. When he escaped, he decided, he was going to smash that rat with the flashlight, roast it over a fire, and then feed it to his father.

The flashlight still worked. It had plunged below the shit-line only briefly. Timmy held it in the air to keep it from becoming water-logged. He continued to throw up, gagging violently.

The stench was like all the defecation the world over had been piled into one place, mixed with gasoline and set ablaze, and then, just for good measure somebody threw some really nasty cologne on top of the mess, creating an assaulting mix that was most foul. A fart to the face was really no preview for something like this, and Timmy's brothers had farted in his face many times.

He shined the light up at the john-hole and could make out the distant ceiling of the outhouse. It looked miles away. Timmy tried not to think about the nuggets that pressed against his back. They still had shape, meaning they were his own. The rest of the mess was a shapeless, putrid mass, belonging to his entire family. He could deal with his own mess touching him, if he had to, but to be surrounded by the accumulated ass-matter of his entire family, well, that was too much.

Timmy started to scream at the top of his petite lungs, his voice cracking as it built to a crescendo. He screamed for Mo.

"Mo! Sis, please! I've gone and fallen down the shitter!"

Wherever she was, in the bushes or back in the shed, she couldn't hear him. "Mo!" he cried. "Mo, come help me!" When she did not, in fact, come to help him, he moved on to screaming for the others.

He tried his brothers, his mother and father, and eventually his calls became vague—anybody at all who could hear them ought to come help him, whether they knew him or not. But it seemed his voice was caught in the pit and slung around the inside of the hill where it kept finding an early death.

At least he had the radio. The Beatles' _She Loves You_ sounded far away from where Timmy stood, or where he thought he stood. Was he standing? He pressed his legs down and felt goop shoot through the spaces in his toes. He could, in fact, make out some kind of solid footing. Drowning was no longer a fear. Timmy felt like he'd been in a mud-filled stream, sitting on his knees, afraid of being engulfed, only to stand and find the stream stopped at his waist. But in a way, the fact that he could no not drown or choke became not a comfort, but a great annoyance. "I'm going to be here all night," Timmy said. He felt a sob working itself up in him.

Already his arm was getting tired. He tried to keep the flashlight from dipping into the mess, but it was hard. He turned the flashlight off, switched it to his other hand, and tried to focus on The Beatles.

And his mind began to get nasty again. Instead of the Wolf Man, he imagined The Mummy creeping up to the outhouse and staring down the john-hole at him with two fiery circles for eyes, a trail of his bandages unraveling from him and making their way into the pit to choke the life out Timmy.

He stopped worrying as soon as he tried to figure out which Mummy it would be. Would it be the Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr., or the Christopher Lee variation? Timmy started to compare their performances in his head, trying to figure out who for sure was the most threatening. He settled on Christopher Lee.

Why stop there? He began to think of all the great monsters that had been played by different actors—mostly the Universal villains who, eventually, became the Hammer villains. Bela Lugosi was the best Dracula, in his mind. And this line of thinking drew Timmy to wonder about all the great B-rated movies he had seen as well. His mind brought forth images of carpet wearing dogs that were supposed to be giant shrews, goofy looking evil brains, and ghosts that weren't at all ghost-like.

On occasion, Timmy's mother would take him and his sister to the drive-in while his brothers and the baby stayed home with his father. His father wasn't much of a fan of movies, and neither were his brothers. They preferred fun of the outdoors sort, of hiking and campfires and a beer or two, though his brothers were much too young to be drinking (but they sneaked a few anyhow).

The last time Timmy had been to the drive-in he had seen his crush, Madeline Swinehart, sitting only a few feet away. She sat on the hood of her father's car, munching on popcorn and staring at Vincent Price as he hammed it up on screen. She looked over at Timmy and said "L.T., what do you think of the movie?"

It was the first time she ever talked to him. "I love it," he told her. It was true. Vincent Price always stole the show in every movie he was in. Timmy became so electrified, at one point, he forgot his darling Madeline was nearby.

His mother had bought them a giant tub of popcorn and they all sat out on quilt Grandma had made, chewing on popcorn and feeling the cool air on their skin.

Timmy wished he was there now. Even a boring film would be good right now. Any movie at all, so long as he could feel the breeze against him, know that Madeline was near, and eat popcorn with his sister and mother.

But he was stuck here in a swamp of shit and piss, staring at the john-hole and listening to distant music.

***

As the night went on, Timmy became acutely aware of scratching from above. At first he grew nervous and thought again of movie monsters. When a piece of corn fell through the hole and landed on his head, he realized the rat was still up there and he cursed it.

"Listen here, you little shit-heel, if I ever catch you I'm going to flatten you out under a cinder block and use you to wipe my ass," he told the rodent. He turned the flashlight on and shined it at the rat. It stared down at him for a few moments and then disappeared.

Timmy began to think about what he was standing in and grew sick again, but he'd thrown up enough already and there was no sense in letting any more fluid escape his body. It was about this time that his head began to hurt.

***

Once in a while Timmy would scream again, for his family, for anybody. Nobody ever answered, but sometimes the rat would jump back on the wooden seat up above and peer down at him with its m&m sized eyes. It was a big rat.

It was hard to tell, but Timmy was half-convinced he could see its nose twitching, its mouth opening now and again. Was the little bastard hungry for him? Timmy watched it, turning on his flashlight now and again to see if it would move. Sometimes it did. Sometimes it didn't. He felt it was taunting him.

***

Timmy's head pounded and he had a growing, undeniable thirst, his throat aching. He felt desperate for a jug of water from the shed. His spit was drying up and, even worse, he was coated brown from head-to-foot. It was as if the excrement was alive, finding its way into Timmy's ears, under his fingernails, on his shoulder blades, on his eyelids. Every section of him somehow got covered and the longer he stood, feeling more tired, the more shit there seemed to be on him. He couldn't make up his mind about it—either he had been this filthy to begin with and never noticed it, the shit was actually advancing on him, or his mind was being nasty to him again.

He switched the flashlight to his other hand again and let out a tortured sigh. The need to sit down was becoming a very great one. The sense in him said, "Timmy, this is crap you're wallowing in, no need to sit in it." But what sense was that? He had to sit down, sooner or later.

"It doesn't make any difference," Timmy said. "I'm already all mucked up to the point where Daddy'd beat me if I came home like this. I may as well sit down."

He plopped down. The radio blurbled and twacked with fuzz, the songs warping and mingling with another signal. Still, the sound of soothing jazz was something from the real world, and that's what Timmy needed: something from real world. He didn't want his mind to surrender to this new world, this enclosed space filled with rank gunk and no hope.

Beyond gagging now, Timmy sank back a little and closed his eyes. He let the jazz carry him away for a while.

***

When Timmy woke up, his head felt hollow and filled with razorblades. It was still night, judging by the hole above. There was no way he could be dehydrated, not yet. If he felt that way, it was surely his mind.

Sooner or later, somebody would have to come out and use the outhouse. This would be his chance. Maybe Mo hadn't went in the bushes and she would come stumbling up the hill, ready to chew him out, then hear his cries.

"Nah," he said. "She'd already have been here, it's been so long. She isn't coming back."

Timmy began to cry softly. The rat above him squeaked and he flung a fistful of crap at it. He had no idea if his projectile made contact. "You get out of here," he scolded.

He began to take pity on himself. Once he had been the proud owner of an old dog. It had three legs, missing teeth, and was going deaf. The dog had lived with him and his siblings in the shed (much to their chagrin—it had a great many fleas) for three weeks. But this didn't last, not when his father found it in the woods one day. The dog had stumbled down into a big hole and broken one of its legs. It was panting very hard. "We ought to put him out of his misery," Timmy's father told him. "But I don't have any shells left for my shotgun, the stores are all closed, being it's a Sunday, and our neighbors don't carry no guns."

So they let the dog suffer, panting away for hours, confused and hungry. It took a very long time for the dog to die. Timmy covered his ears when it started howling that night, howling for him to come and help it. He couldn't. He had tried to look for a rock big enough to drop on its head and kill it, but had no luck. He cried and buried his head in his pillow. Right now, he felt a lot like that dog. He'd never even given it a name.

Suddenly it seemed very sad to Timmy he had never given the dog a name. It had died nameless and without a glimmer of hope. It seemed like things, people, animals which had names, they were special, but anything without a name was just a member of a wild club that didn't much care for the survival of its members. "I'm sorry," Timmy said. "I guess I'm getting what I deserve for not helping you."

The rat squeaked again and Timmy shut his eyes.

***

Thoughts of miraculously growing, man-eating rats stormed into Timmy's head as he stood up and stretched to keep alert. He did paces through the soup, trying to keep his blood going, his brain from shutting down. There was a fear in him that somebody would be nearby and he would not hear them, because he would be too busy dreaming. Even as he moved he could not train his mind to focus. One of the man-eating rats was about to snap at his feet when he was stirred from his vision by a small stream of water pouring in through the john-hole. Somebody had come in! He hadn't even heard the door.

Timmy listened intently and heard a fly go up. "Wait!" he cried. "Help me! I fell in, I fell in! Daddy?"

He turned on the flashlight and shot the beam up at the john-hole. There was somebody looking down at him, squinting. Timmy stared hard but the face did not register as anybody he knew. It was not his father, not Mo, not his mother or Billy or Bradley.

No, the face looking down at him carried two gleaming eyes, a fat, flattened nose, and a face of cracked, worn skin. It was like a dried piece of meat had been stretched over the man's large skull. Pieces of hair grew out of the top of the head in patches, here and there, and the mouth of the man looked as if it had been slapped on his face carelessly.

"Excuse me mister," Timmy said, his words low, his voice frightened. "But I need your help. If you could alert the authorities or just get my folks I'd be more than a little thankful."

The man opened his mouth but he did not speak. A drizzle of slobber fell from his lips and he continued staring down at Timmy. He smiled, licked his lips, and brought his hand into view. He was holding a shiny hook. The man winked at Timmy and then he left, the outhouse door slamming and his footsteps growing faint. He did not come back.

***

When the rat returned, Timmy almost wished the man with the hook would come back. It squeaked and ran around the edges of the john, peering down at Timmy and taunting him.

"Go away," he told it. "Shoo. Get!" He flung more shit at it, but the rat was persistent. The flashlight beam grew dimmer than ever and Timmy shut it off. The batteries would not last much longer, and then he would be in total darkness.

The radio cut out. Timmy wailed and made a fist, but he had nobody to hit, nothing to destroy. The sound of singing human voices was lost now and he was one step closer to the dark ages. The flashlight was his only consolation and he couldn't use it much longer. "Damn it all to hell. Damn it all, god damn it, to god-damn-mother-fucking hell," he said. It was a good thing his mother couldn't hear him.

Timmy's thoughts turned to the hook wielding man. He'd given Timmy the willies—he didn't seem like he would be the friendly type. Timmy wasn't sure, but he may have wet himself when he saw the man. Not that it mattered, down here in the shit.

The rat kept circling the toilet and Timmy did his best to ignore the little pest. He tried to think of something pleasant. The flashlight felt heavy so he switched hands again and began to wonder if it even mattered. What good was a flashlight anyhow? It was nice to be able to see out of the pit, even if that rat was up there, or to have any light at all, but it didn't _really_ help him. He had nowhere to go, nowhere dark that the flashlight would aid him through. There was only eternity in this festering, rancid dung heap.

***

Once, there _hadn't_ been eternal imprisonment in the shit-trap, deep in the bowels of the hill. These last few hours certainly made it seem like all there had ever been was the outhouse, but that was Timmy's mind being a real son of a bitch again.

So he eased his mind into submission by letting a memory spark. He recalled as vividly as he could the time his mother took him to the traveling circus. It was the only time he had ever been to something like that—and it was pivotal in showing him the weirdness of life.

The trouble was the vividness in his head had faded, swept away by lack of stimulation. He had barely been away from the house in years, besides school, which he didn't regularly attend anyway, and so he had no avenue in which to keep his mind sharp. He tried to read Mo's Gothic greats, but they puzzled him. At least the horror films did all the thinking for him. Maybe it was why he liked them so much.

As he tried to picture the circus, bits and pieces came to him. Glimpses of color. Snatches of scenes. His father had not been present, or his brothers. Funny how they were never present in most of his memories, besides farting in his face, tossing around a pigskin, and swigging beer around a fire. There wasn't much to Timmy's brothers or father, and though he liked them okay, they hadn't done much to keep his attention.

Finally a clown swam into Timmy's head, his big nose and goofy hair accentuated and the rest blurry. Timmy remembered holding onto his mother's skirt—he had been very young, and very frightened, but she made him feel safe.

His sister, always the courageous one, marched up to the clown and he leaned down and smiled at her. She bopped him right on the nose.

Then more blurriness, more colors, and bits of the freak show, the alligator man with rippling, scaly abs, a bearded woman, and funny little men who were smaller than him.

It was in the middle of these muddy thoughts Timmy had the urge to turn the flashlight back on. Nothing happened. Without music, without light, there was nothing but urine and feces. The sobs began again and Timmy screamed until his throat was raw, wishing, hoping that somebody, god damn it, would hear him and get him the hell out of here. He began to feel very lonely and then the rat squeaked. Suddenly it seemed not to be taunting him, but talking to him. He listened to it scurry around the toilet and realized it was the only friend he had.

***

As he waited, for what he didn't know, Timmy began to talk to the rat. "You got a family or anything?" he asked it. The rat let out a half-squeak, but Timmy couldn't make out the answer. "What was that?"

He went on questioning the rat, then telling it about snippets of his life, about his brothers and his sister and her books and his mother who had once taken him to a circus where he saw a clown and a freak show. The rat listened intently or at least it seemed to. "I'm sorry I chewed you out," Timmy said to it. "I guess I wasn't rightly adjusted after falling down in here. But why did you bite me, anyway?"

There was no answer. The rat stopped scurrying. Timmy felt its presence, knew it hadn't left. "Do you have babies around here?" he asked. "I bet that's it. I bet you got some kin and you was afraid I'd hurt them. Well I wouldn't have done a thing like that. I didn't know you was a momma rat."

The rat must have felt better, because it began scurrying again and released a hearty squeak. Timmy felt his muscles loosen and he leaned back.

It was a miracle he had the ability to go to sleep, but he had done it once already. It was not his intention, however, to sleep again. But with the comfort of a friend, sleep snuck right up on Timmy and blacked out the world.

***

Timmy was awakened by three greasy slaps to the head and then splashing. He opened his eyes and swerved away from the fresh deposits to the shit-bank, not that it mattered after they had already hit him in the head. "Hey, motherfucker, I'm down here!" he cried.

"Timmy? That you?"

"Daddy?"

"Oh Jeez, Timmy, I'm sorry I crapped on you."

"It's okay, Daddy, it weren't the first time."

"How'd you get down there?"

"Lost my balance and a rat bit me, then I fell in."

"You mean this rat?" His father banged his fist and Timmy heard a squeal.

The wet plunk that followed was loud and though Timmy couldn't see the rat he felt sorry for it—but not too sorry, because he would rather get home than keep company with a shithouse rat while he waded around in crap all night.

"Listen Timmy, I'm going to get me a rope and flashlight and come back and get you out of there."

"Daddy?"

"Yeah, son?"

"Be careful. I saw a deformed lookin' feller a while ago and he had a hook."

"I'll bet it's one of them crazies escaped the institute again. Wouldn't worry about it too much, all the crazies in that place just _look_ threatening. They're docile as pups. Anyhow, I'll be back directly."

His father sauntered off and Timmy thought he felt a vibration in the ground. The dead rat brushed into him. He picked it up and hurled it across the pit.

***

Every moment that passed while Timmy's father was gone was a moment that stretched itself across the horizon of minutes like a black cloud. Time stuck like flies in glue. Timmy tried to hold back sobs so his father didn't berate him when he returned. He also tried to keep his mind from fooling with him, but the vibrations in the earth were still present.

***

When his father returned he shined the big daddy of all flashlights down upon Timmy and said, "Boy, you look like shit."

"Thanks," Timmy said, the word so quiet he forgot it had slipped out of his mouth by the time his father was lowering the rope to him.

"I'm only going to shine the flashlight so you can see to grab the rope. I'll need both hands to pull you up, so I won't be able to hold the light after that."

Timmy nodded at his father and watched as the rope fell through the john-hole. He grasped it and said, "Okay." The light turned off and Timmy heard his father set the flashlight down on the floor. He began to tug the rope.

As Timmy began to be lifted he heard a noise like earth shifting. Something touched his legs. "Hurry up, Daddy!"

"You're sure a lot heavier than I remembered," his father said.

"Could you save the comments until after I'm rescued?"

"Alright, little man."

It came to the point where Timmy was through the john-hole and his father refused to grab him, so he put his arms on the seat and lifted himself into the outhouse. His legs trembled and where something had touched him he felt warm and his skin tingled.

"When you go in the trailer to hose off, remember to take off your shoes first," his father said.

***

Timmy walked down the hill very slowly, despite having just been trapped in an outhouse for more time than he could guess. He wanted to cherish the fresh air. As he came to the bottom of the hill he turned and looked back at his father, who was still inside the outhouse. "What you doing in there, Daddy?"

"Huh?"

"I said, what are you doing in there?"

"Just checking to see if there's any more rats, that's all. I suppose I'll have to start laying traps."

Timmy waited for his old man to emerge from the outhouse. He felt vulnerable after being trapped for so long, and that wasn't to his liking. His father stepped out of the outhouse, flashlight in hand, and started walking toward Timmy. "Wooo-ee, you stink!" he said.

"I know Daddy, I—"

"Quiet."

"What for?"

"Did you hear it?"

There was a low rumble in the ground.

"What is it?" Timmy asked.

"Well, I don't know, I think maybe—"

The hill behind Timmy's father quaked and erupted, coming apart in clods of dirt. Shit frothed out of the opening hole, the dead rat sluicing through it like a furry boat. A mucus covered pillar of white flesh threw itself from the hole and thudded on the ground, bits of slime flying off of the great worm. It was still and rotten with all the charm of a dead fish.

"I thought I killed that motherfucker!" Timmy's father roared.

Timmy watched as the pillar pulled itself from the ground and revealed a pink, hard belly. It slapped itself down upon his stunned father who hadn't moved an inch, flattening him below its wriggling weight.

"Daddy!"

"Go son! Go 'fore he drinks you up like a milkshake!"

Timmy watched as his father began to wail, his skin growing bloated and water-logged, pink foam spraying out of his ears and nose. His voice rang out to warn his son again but was lost in a cacophonous howl of phlegm and slime.

The worm began to suck up Timmy's father like a spilled milkshake. Timmy didn't stay to see it through—he bolted for home.

***

Looking over his shoulder, Timmy kept expecting the worm to come wriggling for him, but it never came. He ran down the path and to his shack, throwing the door open so he could wake his sister and brothers.

Mo lay quietly, her head in the middle of one of her books, the pages fanning out beneath her face. "Sis, wake up, it's all true, the big worm is..." Timmy stopped talking. He knelt down beside his sister and lifted her head. Blood oozed from a wound in her throat. Her left eye was gone. The scarlet drops invaded the pages of _Dracula_ and spread like ink. Timmy let go of her and watched her head slam lifelessly into the pages.

In the corner he found Billy, his intestines hanging out of his stomach like dead eels Timmy shook him, though it was pointless. A trickle of blood came out of Billy's mouth and he fell sideways.

Timmy left the shack and hurried to the trailer. Just in front of the door, sitting on the steps, was Bradley. He had one hand on the door knob, frozen. There were stab wounds all over Timmy's brother. He smiled at Timmy and let out a long fart. "Would've been in your face if I had the energy to get up," he said.

A choking laugh leapt from Timmy's throat. "What happened?" he asked. "Who did this to you?"

"It was a man with a hook. Funny looking. Why are you covered in—"

"Fell into the outhouse. Where did the man go?"

"Hell, I'm not sure where he went and I'm not sure where he came from. He got Momma and the Baby Lou. I wouldn't go in there, Timmy."

Timmy started crying, but even now, with his brother dying, he tried to pretend like he wasn't. He spoke quickly and only when he could collect his breath and get out a whole sentence. "I'm sorry Bradley. Maybe if I hadn't a fell into the outhouse I could have helped you and everybody."

"It's okay Timmy, I guess you 'aint so little anymore. This is the kind of thing that makes you grow up real fast." Bradley clutched at one of his wounds and released a broken howl. "I tried to stop him, Timmy. I did. He was fast. There weren't even any screams. I think he got Mo and Billy in their sleep. He would have got Daddy, too, if he hadn't headed off to the outhouse."

"I'm sure you did your best, Bradley." Timmy put an arm around his brother.

"It's okay that you're crying, Tim. I was crying a little while ago. Jesus, you smell awful."

"I'm sorry. Like I said, I fell into the outhouse..."

"I don't even want to know how you managed that. Where's Daddy?"

"Big man-eating worm got him. Turns out it's real and that wasn't just a story Daddy used to tell us by the fire."

Bradley's eyes went wide with surprise. "Well I'll be damned," he said. Then he let go of the door knob and fell forward onto the ground, dead.

Timmy went inside. Part of him thought maybe his mother or the baby had somehow survived. He was wrong, of course—his mother was blue, a sheet tied and wrapped tightly around her neck, and the baby didn't have a head anymore.

Timmy puked and wiped his mouth, left the trailer, and found himself unsure of what to do next. The Sheriff wasn't very close and the Lansdale household didn't currently have a phone. He would have to walk.

Rather than take a shortcut through the woods, Timmy decided to take the road, where at least somebody might see him and he could get a lift. The woods weren't safe, not with that worm out there, or the man with a hook. Timmy felt dizzy. His headache, which had vanished in the excitement, came back full force and he began cursing to himself. How could all this happen in one night? A worm and a killer on the loose? He would have preferred that the worm was made out of rubber and the killer just Boris Karloff in make-up, but his wishes never came to fruition, it seemed. It was a repeating pattern in his life.

His eyes were itchy and he didn't think he could do anymore crying. He tried not to think about his mother or the baby, but that didn't do much good, because when he didn't think about them he thought about his siblings and then his father.

The rat had saved him, he figured. He would have been murdered instead of being pulled out of the shithouse by his father. Timmy wanted to believe if he had been there he could have saved his family, but he wasn't so sure. And besides, his father had still been killed. Maybe the Lansdale family had been doomed from the start.

Timmy walked along the road, still filthy, still thirsty. He kicked pebbles now and again, his head feeling tight with pain. He almost wished a snake would bite him in the ankle and end everything. As he walked he looked up and tried to count the stars to distract himself, but it was no use.

He was the only one left in his immediate family, leaving nobody to look up to, and consequently, nobody to look down on. He was _everything_ , all there was. This was something that would not leave him whether he stared at the stars or the dirt road. Timmy tried to quicken his pace but his body was worn down, his legs stiff. Though his fear had dulled some, he found his movement uncoordinated and anxious.

He marched on to the Sheriff's place, feeling hardened but still uncertain. The feeling of loss was still there, but it couldn't deepen. He had lost all he had known and now he was his own man and the protector of nobody but himself. It would take some getting used to.

Something darted across Timmy's path. He jumped back and fell onto his rump, kicking up rocks. When he realized it was a rat, he started laughing and couldn't stop. "Will you be a friend of mine, or a foe?" he asked, in between bursts of laughter. And when he got up, brushed himself off, and continued in the direction of the Sherriff's office, he pretended the rat was his protector, following and watching over him like a spirit animal. He had to take solace in something, now that he had no mother or family to look up to. Timmy could almost feel the beady rat eyes watch him as he sluggishly carried on to meet the sheriff and piece the rest of his life together. He worked hard not to cry again.

### Writer Bios

(Chronological by story)

**Kevin Sweeney** is the author of over a dozen books, often under other names, including the Sideshow P.I. series with Nathaniel Lambert, _The Pornographer-General, Smut & Trash, Machine & the Mind Candy Factory_, and his latest from Strange House Books, the brain-skinning bizarro horror of _Damnation 101_. He lives in merry old England with his partner Pinky, who can attest that he is not as much of a cunt as all the evidence would otherwise suggest.

**Brandon Lewis** currently resides in Erie, Pennsylvania. He is Neil Gaiman's number one fan. If you think you can contest that, he _will_ do battle with you. He has a BA in Writing. He has previously been published in _Kestrel, Chimera_ , and _MicroHorror_.

**Edward Martin III** is an award winning filmmaker from Portland, OR. He adapted and directed an animated adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's _The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath_ , produced _The Cosmic Horror Fun-Pak_ , and wrote and directed a ten minute comprehensive period adaptation _The Lord of the Rings: a toroidal epic_ , among many other projects. He's also in development, post-production, and preproduction for several other feature films, and a handful of shorts. You can read more of his work in his book _Close Your Eyes—Tales from the Blinkspace_. Keep updated on his exploits at www.hellbendermedia.com.

**Neil Peters** is a high school English teacher and a lover of all stories. Recently graduated from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania with a BS in English Secondary Education, as well as a minor in Creative Writing, Neil writes between lesson and grading papers. His previous publications include a creative essay which was featured in Edinboro's literary journal, _Chimera_. "Splatter Ward" is his first fiction publication.

**Darren Simpson** writes because he can. It's one of the few things in his life he has any control over. Even that's debatable. Stay updated on his work by visiting him at: darrensimpsonwrites.wordpress.com. He is a resident of Nottingham, England.

**Tamara Rogers** burns away the hours putting one word after another, vomiting into Photoshop, and partaking of an occasional beer. She likes cheese, is looked after by a certifiably strange cat, and may have an unhealthy relationship with Twitter. Currently dividing her time over various works in progress, she dabbles in science fiction, transgressive fiction, and all things weird. Published in places including _The Alarmist_ and the _New Scientist Culture Lab_ website, you can find her words and writing at www.thedustlounge.com. If you prefer fewer characters she's on Twitter as @tamrogers. She's currently based in the bull-ridden streets of Birmingham, UK.

**Jonathan Persinger** , 22, is a fiction writer by trade and a layabout by nature. His prose has been featured in the _Wild Violet_ Online Literary Magazine, and his stage play work has been performed by Laugh/Riot Performing Arts Company of Erie, PA. Jonathan currently balances his time between writing and scouring the depths of online job boards. You can find his writing blog at persingerspages.wordpress.com. He lives in Stamford, Connecticut, and thinks hermit crabs make good pets.

**Aurelio Rico Lopez III** is a self-diagnosed scribble junkie whose addictions include books, horror movies, coffee, and rock and roll. He is the author of _Food for the Crows, Cry Wolf, No Grave Too Deep, Madness Inherent_ , and _Nothing's Fine_. He hails from Iloilo City, Philippines and owns a pet tarantula named Thor. You may email him at thirdylopez2001@yahoo.com.

**Philip Gorski** decided he liked writing so much he chose to go to college and get a proper degree, on proper degree paper and everything. During his high school years, Phil wrote a small newsletter on video games, movies, and other pop culture titled "Pengy Press" which had upwards of fifty regular readers by the end of its print run. Another of his publications, a _Wreck-It Ralph_ review, currently resides on Onezumiverse. In his free time, when not writing, Phil occupies himself by sleeping, enjoying video games, and being a smartass.

**Ben Rutkowski** holds a degree in English from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. A native of Pittsburgh PA, he works as a Staff Educator for Saturday Light Brigade Radio Productions Inc., a local company devoted to amplifying youth voices through the use of various media. This is his first publication.

**Marjorie Lord** is a Pisces, a maker of chainmail armor, and a lover of cats. She believes in the legalization of everything and that love is something one can never have enough of. She considers herself to be a far-left Liberal, a secular Humanist, and an Agnostic-Atheist with impeccable taste in scented candles and wall-hangings. Marjorie is primarily a writer of nonfiction, notably a series of essays pertaining to individuals involved in modern subcultures. She graduated with a BFA in Creative Writing from Penn State University in 2014. With her fiction she particularly enjoys the exploration of imagined worlds.

**C.V. Hunt** is the author of _How To Kill Yourself, Zombieville, Thanks For Ruining My Life, Other People's Shit_ , and other unpopular books. She recently published a novelette titled _Baby Hater_. She lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio. You can find out more at her website: http://www.authorcvhunt.com.

**Jamison Van Loocke** received a Bachelor's Degree in English Writing from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, and is currently pursuing a Master's of English at Youngstown State University. He has been published previously in a school journal at Kent State Ashtabula. His favorite authors include Stephen King, William Faulkner, Truman Capote, and Tim O'Brien. He can be contacted at jv094661@scots.edinboro.edu.

**Jeremy Terry** is the author of the apocalyptic horror novel _Dreams of the Dead_ , from Damnation Books and _Mirror, Mirror_ , available exclusively from SST publications. His short fiction has appeared alongside works from legendary authors Ramsey Campbell and Jack Ketchum in collections from SST publications, Azure Keep Quarterly, Nightscape Press, and Daverena Enterprises. He lives in the Florida Panhandle with his wife, three boys, and two dogs. You can follow him on the web at www.facebook.com/jeremyterrywrites/.

**Zachary T. Owen** compiled and edited this anthology. He is the author of _Beauties in the Deep_ , a horror novelette. Print editions are available at <https://www.sstpublications.co.uk/> and digital editions are available on amazon. Some of his other works can be found in _The Alarmist, 69 Flavors of Paranoia, Bizarrocast, MicroHorror_ , and _Dark Eclipse_ , as well as numerous other print and digital magazines. He is hoping to find a publisher for _Glass Skeletons_ , a collection of his own short fiction.
