 
BOX OF DARKNESS

Short Stories by

William Todd Rose

SMASHWORDS EDITION

Box of Darkness

Copyright 2012 by William Todd Rose

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*****

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction (by Vincenzo Bilof)

I Eat The Dead

Breeder

Pickman's Next Top Model

Writing Home

The Haunting of the Mines

The Blood Shed

Cooking with Grace

Every Night is Halloween

The Winter Experiment

The Test of Darkness

Revisited

Losing Control

Author's Notes

INTRODUCTION

What are we really afraid of? Monsters under the bed? Serial killers? Zombies? Glittery vampires? Horror literature can often explain what we fear most with words and feelings we never understood or realized; we fear the bewildering dismantling of our own senses, moments of confusion where our grasp on reality falters. Our sense of terror is personal and wholly our own, even if we join thousands of others in anxious anticipation of a sudden apocalypse. We don't fear the world will end, we fear our world will end. William Todd Rose is an author who can show us a million different worlds and the degree to which all of them can burn. By warping our sense of reality, the metaphysical is twisted through the imaginative, descriptive energy of Rose's words, leaving us dreading what will happen next, though we lack the strength to look away.

I worked in a book store for four years, and the tiny little horror section contained few surprises. Too many of the books remaining on those shelves seemed mirrors of each other, the familiarity of "suspenseful" literature where the protagonists seemed to always have psychic powers and a grand sense of humor. What if you wanted to read something that was scary? When a customer needed me to recommend a good horror novel, I had to ask if they wanted the book to frighten them. If they did, they were handed a book from the seventies or eighties.

Most readers don't know that a true horror genre actually exists.

The first time I came across a William Todd Rose story, I was immediately curious. I became lost in the nightmarish, gritty setting of a zombie story called "Fighter's Bite", although the story wasn't about zombies. Rose seemed to have painted a picture of a David Fincher nightmare with his words. I picked up Rose's novel, Sex in the Time of Zombies, and finished it in a day. I exalted, "This is what I've always wanted to read! This is horror! This is what a zombie novel should be!" With each page, I found myself looking deeper into the abyssal terror that lies within the human heart. In his novel, William Todd Rose dares to explore our fears by shattering our ideas about sexuality and violence. We live in a world where sexual repression and identity are difficult to discuss or express, despite the bombardment of plastic sex dolls who are supposed to define our fantasies and expectations for us. Rose has the courage to make us uncomfortable.

At last.

The horror genre needs William Todd Rose. His ability to distort and twist reality with raw imagery connects us to the concept of fear. When something truly horrible happens to us, we always question reality. We wonder, "Is this really happening to me?" Horror then is personal and relative to the individual; it should make us both fearful and introspective, and it should make us feel alive and real. Rose successfully deconstructs our world and our sense of morality so we can learn all over again what it is to be human. If Clive Barker and David Lynch collaborated on a story, you might have some insight into the mind of William Todd Rose.

It goes without saying I became a fan of Rose's work after spending years away from the "horror" genre which had seemingly become nothing more than a mass-market, cookie-cutter showcase on display in grocery stores and airports. After reading The Dead and the Dying, a metaphysical story of transcendence and redemption, I turned my attention to The Seven Habits of Highly Infective People, another mind-bender which blurs the lines between morality and terror. My faith in this pioneer has been assured with each story he writes. Each of his works can be enjoyed by the casual reader, though I must forewarn you: after you turn the last page, you won't forget what you've read.

The compilation you have before your eyes teaches us what it means to be scared all over again. Box of Darkness is a surreal composition which expresses the reality of fear. If Pandora had opened this box, she would have unleashed a legion of misunderstood and tormented monsters. Each story contains the power of a lucid, waking nightmare. Our journey through Rose's labyrinthine mind includes a suffering ghost, celebrity obsession, the pain of an impossible birth, the atonement of a haunted killer, a seductive creature born from the folklore of an ancient culture, a symbolic and demented exploration of the sexy-vampire craze, culminating in a Escher-esque multi-dimensional journey into a mass-murderer's blood-soaked fantasy.

William Todd Rose has filled a box full of our greatest fears. Here, our tenuous hold on reality does not falter, but becomes realized. Contained within this box are our deepest, most personal fears. Come then, dear reader, and open the box to unleash the true meaning of horror upon the world.

-Vincenzo Bilof

Author of Under a Red Sun and Nightmare of the Dead

I EAT THE DEAD

(Published in Book of Horror 2, Living Dead Press, 2011)

It's a little known fact the souls are greasy and taste like gristle marinated in bitter coffee and dusted with nutmeg. To look at them, one would think they'd go down easy: they seem almost like cotton candy, like something that can be pulled into long strands and allowed to dissolve upon the tongue; fine, gossamer filaments of pink and blue and orange, so delicate and tenuous they seem to teeter on the edges of reality. But even if you choke down the bile that instinctively stings your esophagus, you still have to chew. And chew. And chew.

As your teeth grind and rip at the ectoplasmic treat, you also feel the dead screaming within your throat. Imagine a mouthful of flies, their wings buzzing and bristling to the point that the vibrations tingle your entire skull. Your eardrums quiver and your eyes water as the vibrations take on tone and texture: you hear the pain, you feel their torment, and taste agony as another incisor tears through their afterlife.

At this point, their defense mechanisms kick in and suddenly it feels like millions of needles are rammed into your tongue. A foul stench wafts from your mouth, like a sewage treatment plant with slabs of rancid meat churning in the dirty froth, and your pulse races as panicked thoughts dart through your mind: I'm going to choke, I'm going to die, get it out of me, get it out, oh dear God, GET IT OUT!!!

This is where most people fail. They end up with vomit trickling down their chins, coughing, retching, and gasping for breath between stomach spasms. They have to live with the shame, with the knowledge that they couldn't take it, that they couldn't please....

But not me. I eat the dead and smile as I avert my eyes. I eat the dead and for the first time in my life feel pride blossoming deep within my chest. I eat the dead and am gloriously alive, every nerve tingling and sighing in a way mere sex could never replicate.

I eat the dead and readily accept more.

***

My feeder is blond, slender, and looks like a business woman who forgot that sheer lingerie isn't an acceptable part of corporate dress code. She pulls her hair into a bun so tightly I can almost hear the roots scream in protest. And her makeup is impeccable: light blush brings color to cheeks as pale as the finest cream and smoky liner makes her eyes twinkle like a pair of sapphires on display. When she leans over me, her breasts brush my bare chest; I close my eyes, drinking in the aroma of spiced perfume while the warmth of her whisper tickles the little hairs lining my ears.

"Eat for me." Her fingers part my lips with gentleness, sliding the piece of soul over my wet tongue while my mouth sucks at her fingertips. "That's it... take it. Eat for me."

She's so patient. So kind and loving as her free hand traces swirling patterns across the expanse of my stomach. I arch my spine and pull against the chains which have secured me to this bed for the last seven months. Even the burning bedsores on my back are forgotten as I feel myself harden somewhere below the rolls of fat that jiggle with my movement.

"Chew, baby... chew...."

I want so much to please this woman, to see pride glimmer in her eyes, to hear her breathy voice tell me how good I am, how I'm the best gainer she's ever had. I want her to stroke my round face, to tickle me beneath the jowls, to reward me with a warm, soapy sponge as she lifts folds of flesh and washes the grit and grime from my crevices.

"Swallow... that's it, baby... swallow."

She doesn't care that the bed sags beneath my weight or that my skin overlaps the manacles on my wrists and ankles. She doesn't recoil in disgust at the way my man-tits sag with nipples as round as tea cups or how they overlay the stretch marks that streak my belly like dark scratches. No... she only sees the souls I have eaten, all the morsels that have contributed to the bulk which quivers at her touch.

"Suck it all down...."

For her, I would gladly eat the dead until my stomach ruptured, until all the spirits spilled out like flies escaping a sun-bloated carcass.

"That's a good boy."

***

They stagger into the room from the brightness of the hallway. She's walking backward and leading him by his paisley tie as if it were some kind of a leash. After laying in the darkness for hours and counting the ticks of the grandfather clock, my eyes have adjusted to the gloom and I see as clearly as if it were merely twilight, instead of three-thirty AM. I can see his salt and pepper hair, the white Oxford half tucked in dark slacks, the gold band on his ring finger, and his glassy, unfocused eyes.

She giggles like a giddy schoolgirl and the stench of cheap booze floods the room like the ghost of an alcoholic. The door creaks shut behind them. The man fumbles in the darkness, his hands groping and tugging at shadows, his face as eager and excited as a child who inexplicably found himself in Disneyland.

"Good God, you're beautiful, you know that? So very, very beautiful." His words are low and slurred; I remain still and silent, peering through the gloom as the scene plays out.

She's holding him by the shoulders, guiding him to the floor with gentle pushes.

"I want you right here, right now, baby."

She makes a believable drunk, stumbling and staggering, her words sounding excited but coy at the same time. It's easy to believe she's never been picked up in a bar before, never taken a faceless stranger home for a night of passion.

He disappears from sight and I hear a zipper being undone, the shuffle of pants and underwear against floorboards as he squirms free. Still standing, she slips off the red dress she's been wearing, allowing it to slide down her body and gather at her feet. Her back is smooth and beautiful, her ass cheeks as perfect as any model's, and I catch a glimpse of her right breast as she turns slightly and opens her purse.

"Close your eyes, sweetie, and I'll take care of everything."

She removes the Richter Cone, previously hidden amid makeup, business cards, and loose change. Its casing is shiny black and I can just make out the series of buttons and levers lining its surface, can see her fingertip lovingly caress the controls.

My mouth is watering and my heart feels like it's fluttering in my chest as a stream of drool trickles from the corner of my lips.

"I'll take care of you like you've never been taken care of before."

All pretense has been dropped: no trace of slur in her delivery, no shy tilts of the head. Her movements are as fluid and graceful as a ballerina as something shiny and metallic is fished from the purse.

"I'll take care of you, all right."

And he, too drunk and horny and stupid to notice, just lays there as she squats over his pelvis. The hand holding the scalpel raises into the air and its blade gleams as it whooshes in a downward arc.

A sound like wet fabric ripping. Gurgling, thrashing, heels kicking frantic beats against the floor; but I know she's got him pinned now, that he can only flop like a suffocating fish as he grows weaker with every passing second.

And I hear the cone, the slow whir and hum that reminds me of the smokeless ashtray my aunt had when I was a child. I picture her pressing its base against his mouth as her other hand manipulates the levers, making minute adjustments in response to his struggles. Operating the Richter Cone is an art: you just can't place it over the mouths of the dying and expect it to do all the work. It takes talent to operate, an instinct for how hard the soul is struggling, how badly it wants to stay within its fleshy prison. You have to ride it like a surfer on a metaphysical wave, feeling the peaks and troughs and responding to them instantaneously.

After several minutes, the scuffling stops and there's only the high pitched whine of the cone followed by a sound almost like a popgun. The motors power down, dropping steadily in pitch and volume until there's nothing but tiny clicks as the fan blades make their final revolutions.

She stands and turns toward me; her chest and face are freckled with spatters of blood and she's breathing heavily as her thin lips turn upward into a smile. The Richter Cone is cupped within her hands, a single LED pulsing like a fiery ember in the semi-darkness, and she's trembling with anticipation.

I wet my lips while she glides across the room, watch as she positions the cone beside a porcelain bowl on the bedside table. Without a word, she fiddles with the switches and there's a whiff of ozone as the device hums with a tone so deep it rattles the surface of the table. Fifteen seconds later and the captured soul is extruded from the top, curling and unraveling out of the apex as if it were a Play-Doh fun factory.

It plops into the awaiting bowl and creeps up the sides, piling onto itself as more and more soul is converted into solid mass. By the time the cone has fallen silent again, the bowl is overflowing and a quiver courses along my spine. There's enough for at least a week of feedings, a week of her warm approval, of her soft hands brushing my lips.

"Look what I've brought you. Are you a hungry boy? Do you want something to eat?"

Nodding, I open my mouth with a wet smack as she tears lengths of soul between pinched fingers. The blood on her hands will lend a bit of saltiness and make it more palatable. And being fresh it should still have the aftertaste of ionized molecules, that flavor that's more like a smell: like a beach ball fresh from its packaging or a cross between bleach and the air just after a lightning strike.

Not that it matters. Even if it were months old and shriveled like a mummified umbilical cord, I'd still open my mouth readily.

"That's a good boy ...."

***

It's been two years since the man with the salt and pepper hair. There were others after him of course, men and woman lured into the web of my beautiful feeder with the promise of easy sex: I ate them all, wolfing down their souls like a starving man at a hamburger stand. And, until recently, she kept telling me how proud she was, how she'd never seen anyone so voracious, how we were now on record as the top pair and no one was even close to our seven hundred pound achievement.

The manacles are entirely hidden beneath fat now and it looks like chains sprout directly from my flesh, as if this bed and my body have merged into a single entity with metal links serving as connective tissue. Each breath I take is a struggle, something to be fought and won rather than an instinct. The weight of my body presses down on my lungs, squeezing air from them like a boa constrictor even as I gasp for another breath. Sometimes my left arm tingles as though it's gone to sleep and I wince at twinges in my chest that feel like jolts of electricity surging through my nerves.

But I still eat the dead, seeking those kind words that now seem further and further apart, that soft touch that means so much.... Sometimes I feel like a puppy, so eager to please, wanting nothing more than a pat on the head as he does trick after trick after trick.

She's changed since we claimed our throne. My body's developed this sour odor from dried sweat beneath crannies of flesh... flesh which no longer remembers the warm sponge and the tenderness with which she'd bathe me. Her encouragement has become more insistent, more like thinly veiled orders than playful teasing dripping with innuendo.

"I said eat it."

"Choke it down, Fat Boy."

"Swallow the damn thing for Christ's sake."

I hope to see that smile touch her eyes, to feel the napkin as she wipes my chin. Instead, her fingers plunge into my mouth faster and faster, shoving chunks of soul with the delicacy of a jackhammer. If I try to caress them with my lips, she pulls away as if I'd bitten and immediately crams an even larger slab of spirit down my gullet. And once the bowl's been emptied, once I'm left feeling dirty and violated and blinking back tears... once all of this has happened, she immediately wraps the measuring tape around me, jotting measurements into her little notebook before silently uploading the data for the entire community to swoon over. I try to talk to her and her eyes narrow into slits as she glares in my direction. For some reason, I feel as if I'm withering inside this massive frame, shrinking into something no bigger than dried pea. Fat. Stupid. Ineffectual. Living only to eat the souls of the dead and further our fame within a very specific enclave.

What once would've lasted a week is gone in two days. The entrance to the bedroom has transformed into a revolving door as horny drunks enter and then are carried out in bulging trash bags. And she's going all the way with them now, riding them with soft sighs and throwing back her head, gyrating and bouncing faster until the scalpel begins its deadly descent at the moment of climax. The entire time, I'm chained to the bed, eyes squeezed shut and face contorted into a grimace as I try to drown out her moans and gasps with songs from my childhood, mathematical equations, bit of poetry – anything that will transport me out of this room, away from the hollow feeling that deepens with every pelvic thrust, away from the hot tears sliding down my cheeks.

Sometimes I fantasize about telling her it's over. I see myself breaking the chains like some movie strongman, rising out of bed and slamming the door behind me as she begs for me to stay, to forgive her, to please reconsider. I picture stepping out into the sunlight for the first time in years, of how its rays would feel against my bone-white skin as the sounds of traffic and passers-by flood my senses. In this dream-world, she's left in the bedroom, holding a fresh bowl of soul as if it were a small baby, rocking back and forth, and muttering over and over I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry ....

Yet somehow I can't bring myself to tell her to unlock the manacles. I've tried. Several times. But the words won't seem to come. In the back of my mind, I think it's only a matter of time. Sooner or later, someone will eat more souls than I could ever dream of. They'll rocket past my measly seven hundred pounds, leaving me looking like a half deflated party balloon in the presence of a Macy's Day spectacular. Once our notoriety has waned, maybe things will go back to the way they used to be. Maybe if I can just weather through this rough patch, we'll emerge together on the other side, stronger for the shared experience of what we'll come to call our dark period.

This hope keeps me chewing, keeps me swallowing, keeps me eating ever increasing amounts of the dead: six, seven, eight times a day... by this point I've devoured the equivalent of a small cemetery. But it's never enough.

I glance at the porcelain bowl beside the table; it's empty except for shadows, the once shiny surface now stained light gray from the souls it's collected. A crack runs down the side from where she dropped it and there's a chip on the rim. Somehow, it almost looks lonely sitting over there and if I could, I'd reach out and touch it, just to let it know I'm here.

She'll be back soon. Back with another horn-dog frat boy or lesbian or two-timing businessman. She's got it down to a science now and has developed a taste for it, I think. She'll do her thing, the Richter Cone will fill the bowl with fresh soul, and I'll attempt to eat my way back into her loving graces.

Beads of sweat cool my forehead and it feels as though a boulder has dropped out of the sky and landed on my chest. I gasp, but this only causes a white hot bolt of pain to shoot up my arm, tensing my shoulders and breasts as if the muscles below all those layers of fat seized up in unison.

My heart races faster, thumping irregular rhythms in my temples; but this only serves to explode the pain into a million shards of molten glass that burrow into my chest and neck. Kicking, struggling, chains clinking as my hands try to press against my chest, I want to scream for help but there's no air, good God there's no air, and my windpipe is closing up, smaller, smaller still, and a ring of darkness creeps along the edges of my vision like an invading cancer.

And then, as suddenly as it struck, it's gone. Along with the bed, the little bowl, the table, the room. It's as if they all winked out of existence at the same time. Even the chains have dissolved.

I'm standing in what seems to be an infinitely vast field of darkness. Tendrils of fog swirl like an over-friendly cat weaving between the legs of reality. And it's cold. So cold that I can feel the chill in the marrow of my bones, almost as if it's actually radiating from somewhere deep inside me rather than seeping through the pores of my naked body.

"Hello?" My voice echoes in the silence, sounding tiny and forlorn. "Is anyone there?"

I spin in a slow circle, but the same barren landscape greets me on all sides. Nothing but darkness, fog, and the echoes of my own voice mocking me.

"Hello?"

I long for my beautiful feeder, to have her by my side, for the reassurance of her presence.

"Anyone?"

My eye catches movement off to the side. Spinning around, I see a cluster of silhouettes emerge through the fog, packed together as if huddling for warmth, and a feel a flicker of hope.

"Thank God! I was beginning to think I was alone!"

The people are silent but continue walking toward me.

"Where the Hell am I?"

Their feet shuffle and something about that sound makes me stiffen. I fight the urge to run and wring my hands together as I peer through the fog. As they pass through the misty veil, their features begin to take form as if materializing from the air itself.

I know these faces, these men and women who were slaughtered before my bed as I looked on in silence, this parade of victims who walk silently toward me. I know them well. And they look famished.

BREEDER

(Published in Macabre Cadaver, Issue #5, 2008)

First Incision Man stood in the shadows, as always, with only a vague silhouette and the gleam of moonlight on scalpel to betray his presence. Virginia knew he was there and pretended to sleep as she kept watch through the slit of one squinted eye; her nocturnal intruder never shifted positions, never fidgeted or seemed to look anywhere but straight forward. The blade appeared to be held at waist level, as far as she could tell, and was held steady.

She tried to listen, to see if he made any type of sound. But if there were any shuffling or perhaps the rhythmic rise and fall of breath, it was lost beneath the pounding of her own heart. Surely, he had to hear it? He had to know that a pulse so rapid wasn't the cadence of someone wrapped snugly in the comfort of dreams....

At the same time, Virginia felt them in her blood, wriggling and squirming like headless snakes in the July sun. Individually, they were no larger than the finest of hairs and could probably pass undetected in small colonies. However, she was infested with them. Their bodies intertwined and knotted together in writhing clumps; blood seeped around them, but their sheer numbers made her heart work even harder and her hands and feet felt numb from decreased oxygen.

She knew if he opened her the pressure beneath her skin would be relieved and they'd spill from the wound like the blossoming of tiny intestines. Pink. Smooth. Smelling slightly of fruit that had just started to go bad. They would squish out of the slit and slither down her arm or belly, leaving a sticky trail for others to follow. They would writhe across the sheets of her bed and drop almost soundlessly to the floor. They would go out into the world to do his bidding, leaving nightmares, tears, and terror in their wake.

But only once they were fully mature and the incubation complete. Virginia had discovered this the hard way by trying to open herself on countless occasions. She'd sliced her arm with a kitchen knife and attempted to catch them with a pair of tweezers. The first few times she'd been too slow and they slurped back inside the wound and refused to reemerge regardless of how tightly she pinched the flesh. Eventually, however, she was able to get a grip on one of them; she pulled until it was stretched thin and seemed about ready to come free, only to have the disgusting little worm slip from the tweezers and snap back like a rubber band. She had tried burning them with cigarettes, but they reacted too quickly to the heat, leaving her with circular blisters on top of the cuts which freed them. So she had no choice but to wait for the gestation to run its course and for First Incision Man to set them free.

She may have dozed off for a moment – or perhaps she only blinked – but he was suddenly closer to her, almost halfway to the bed now; and yet he was still cloaked in shadow, as if the darkness moved with him. Which really came as no surprise. Virginia had never actually seen his face, no matter how near he came, and some primal instinct knew it was for the best. This part of her mind recoiled from the thought of laying eyes upon him in the same way a hand reflexively pulls away from fire. It knew the details of his form were a key that would unlock the gates of madness and for his cloak of obscurity, at least, she was thankful.

As always, though, his approach coaxed whispers from the walls. The words seemed to swirl in the air around her, rising and falling in volume, sometimes too soft to be anything more than a murmur, at other times loud enough that they seemed to vibrate in the bones of her skull. Sentences overlapped, bled into one another, as if there were fifty speakers hiding somewhere within the drywall; but no matter how many things were said, there was always a single voice hissing them all: her voice.

Dirty little girl...

...stupid, worthless, ignorant...

...all your fault, can't do anything right, can you?

The whispering seemed to excite the worm-like things in her blood. She could feel them twisting beneath her skin, stronger than before, like tribal dancers whipped into a frenzy by the pounding of drums. Pain flared through her flesh and it was all too easy to imagine them getting stronger, swelling in size until they threatened to rip through her muscle and tissue on their own.

... fat and ugly, why would anyone love you, you stupid little...

Virginia felt a scream trapped within her throat and wanted nothing more than to cry out like she had when she was little. She wanted her mother to appear in the doorway and sweep away all the bogeymen with the flick of a light switch. She ached to feel her mother's hands smoothing her hair as she was held tightly and rocked back and forth.

But every muscle in her body felt as if it were locked in place. She could not pull away, could not even so much as turn her head from the shadowy figure who was now closer still. So her cry for help remained lodged like a half-swallowed chunk of meat in the back of her throat and a single tear slid from the corner of her eye.

... better off without you...

It wasn't as if her mother would believe her anyway. She'd tried to explain once, had pushed up the sleeves of the sweaters she now wore year-round and showed her mother the scars crisscrossing her arms. She'd mentally rehearsed this conversation for days before mustering up the courage to speak about it and knew exactly what she would say. But when the moment actually came, she found herself blubbering. All of her carefully practiced explanations fragmented into sniffles and barely comprehensible snippets. And the entire time she could picture him lurking somewhere within her brain, slicing her sentences with his scalpel, severing words from meaning, leaving half-formed thoughts dissected and dying with surgical precision.

So First Incision Man had never actually been brought into the discussion. The whispers from the walls morphed into only what was being said and not who, or what, was actually speaking them. All of the details of her nightly torture were blurred into something only half-resembling the truth.

Shortly after that, she began seeing Dr. Singh. But by then, it was too late. Virginia had given up. If she wasn't able to describe it to her own mother, how could she tell this complete stranger what really caused the cuts covering her body? So she'd sit in his office for an hour each week, staring at the tips of her sneakers and biting her bottom lip.

...useless waste of flesh...

First Incision Man now loomed over her and Virginia squeezed her eyes shut so tightly bursts of light seemed to explode like fireworks in the darkness. She could feel the cool edge of the blade against her stomach and shivers crept over her flesh. He always waited, sometimes for minutes on end, sometimes for only a few seconds. During that time, the things in her blood congregated to wherever he held the scalpel. She could feel them knotting up beneath its tip, forming a tight little ball that bulged and twisted with anticipation.

A flash of pain just above her belly button let her know that the act had been done. Almost instantly, she felt as if a built up pressure spilled from the slit. It wasn't just the worms being freed from their fleshy incubator – it almost felt as if they'd somehow latched onto all the emotions within her, all the fear and rage and pain, and pulled it through the slice with them. Instead of whispering, the walls now sighed, all the voices exhaling in unison.

And then, in the space of time it took for her heart to beat once, he was gone and the walls were quiet.

Virginia pulled herself into a tight ball and opened her eyes. Drops of blood spread across her nightgown like roses unfurling their petals against a field of snow. There was no trace of the worms; they had already disappeared into the night, eager to do their father's bidding. Once he was gone, there was usually no trace left to prove First Incision Man had ever been in the room. But tonight was different; for lying across her bed was his scalpel.

Inside, Virginia felt as if she'd been hollowed-out. She could not bring herself to cry. She couldn't summon any sort of relief that the ordeal was over, at least for another night. Where there had once been a tangle of emotion and feeling, there was now only a vast, silent void as dark and featureless as First Incision Man himself.

She sat up in bed and touched the scalpel as though it might suddenly twist around and lash out at her. The blade was smooth and cool beneath her fingertip, the grip textured just enough to keep it from slipping out of the wielder's grasp.

She held the blade in front of her eyes and spun it back and forth, watching the way light reflected off the steel. He would be back for it, would he not? Even if it hadn't been left behind, he would be back. Tomorrow night another brood of worms would have grown to the point of needing release; tomorrow night the walls would again whisper their derision and, when it had all played out, she would again be left with this cavernous vacuum where life and emotion should have reigned.

She was tired. So tired of the game he played with her. So tired of it all....

Without a sound, she turned her left arm so that her wrist was exposed. She contemplated the raised veins and thought about the parasites festering there. And, without further hesitation, took the scalpel and began to slash.

When he came tomorrow, she would not be there. She will have won.

***

Elizabeth stirred from her sleep and wondered what had awoken her. She could hear the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall, her father faintly snoring from another room. The house was quiet and dark.

She remembered the fragments of a dream: something small and slick wriggling its way into her ear. In fact, the tickling sensation was still there. She sat up, thinking of the cotton swabs in the bathroom and perhaps a drink of water before going back to sleep.

And then she saw him. A man, standing in the shadows of the corner of her room. Not more than a silhouette really, but there was something in his hand. Something that gleamed like polished steel in the moonlight.

PICKMAN'S NEXT TOP MODEL

I sit in her shrine, surrounded by the glory that is L'Lain. The walls are plastered with her pictures to the point that none of the original, eggshell white can be glimpsed: pages ripped from swimsuit calendars taped to glossy eight by tens tacked to snapshots clicked from across a crowded restaurant; yellowed newsprint showing her cutting the ribbon at a new factory site, working with homeless children at the city shelter. All of these images thrown up in a frenzy of passion, their edges overlapping at odd angles, black magic marker slashing the faces of anyone who may have been frozen in that brief moment of time with her. Even my computer's wallpaper and screensaver radiate with the majesty of her perfection and these are the crown jewels of my collection; these are the ones where I am with her, carefully cropped and pasted so not even a hint of the original background can be seen around the contours of my body. The secret, see, is using the blur tool on the edges, just lightly enough to blend the colors without making it look like an obvious collage...

I reach out to touch her likeness, to place my hand against a cheek I imagine to be as soft and smooth as the finest silk. As I do, shivers creep along my arm and dimple my flesh. My breath is caught halfway between my lungs and throat and I can literally feel my heart quiver within my chest. So perfect, this goddess among men.

I slide my hand down her face with the intimacy of a lover, lingering on the hint of cleavage at the neckline of her sequined gown. In its wake, my hand has left a crimson smear, a streak that mingles the very blood I have pledged to her with the slick finish of the paper.

All for you, my love....

I glance through the doorway to my left, into the kitchen where silverware is strewn about the floor and a bag of sugar looks as if it's exploded. Beside an overturned chair is the body of Mike Bowen, so perfectly still and silent that he could be a prop at a photo shoot, just another bit of background decoration awaiting the arrival of the model. The butcher knife juts out of his belly at a perfect right angle, piercing what appears to be a red Rorschach that wasn't present when he first entered my apartment.

Stabbing Mike was easy. It felt like plunging a knife into an overstuffed pillow again and again. Until, that is, blade struck bone and my arm was jolted with the same tingling numbness you get after smacking your elbow in just the right spot. At the same time, physics caused my fist to continue its forward momentum, my hand sliding down the wooden handle and across the well-honed blade. The resulting gash dripped spatters of blood across his face, but by then it didn't matter. He'd stopped thrashing about, had stopped trying to buck me off him, had ceased raking my skin with his perfectly manicured fingernails.

All for you...

He thought he could take L'Lain from me, see. He thought he could just waltz in and capture her heart with his twenty dollar haircut and expensive suit. He thought he could possess her, that he could steal what is rightfully mine. Not understanding the special bond the universe has created between her and I, he came here with his little gun and big plans. And now he's paid the ultimate price. As will anyone who attempts to come between us. I will sacrifice them all to my goddess, will prove how much I treasure and cherish her.

Mike didn't even know her. Not like I do. He was an outsider, just another interloper who saw her pictures and interviews in the newspapers. He wasn't there the day she first graced us with her presence, didn't witness the beauty and perfection of that moment. Not like me.

When L'Lain walked through the doors of the Pickman Modeling Agency, I never dreamed so many people would have to die. How could I have guessed how much blood would be spilled, how many souls would whisper her name as their final breath passed across their lips? No, I only saw a treasure of a woman who would elevate our company from the realm of mail order catalogs and ring girl appearances into the big leagues. In the sheen of the fluorescents on her dark hair, I saw fashion week opening like the gates of Heaven before us; in her brown, almond-shaped eyes I saw cosmetic commercials, lingerie endorsements, and pinups that would grace the lockers of hard working men all across the country. See, she had that special quality: something beyond her olive toned complexion and full, pouty lips; something more than the smooth curves of a body that made a size two seem effortless.

L'Lain has this aura of opposites about her. It encompasses child-like innocence and a sultry desire for sin in the way she blinks those eyes; the rhythm of her words and that vague, unidentifiable accent hint at exotic origins but – at the same time- leaves you feeling as if you've known her all your life. As if you had scampered through a summer's twilight as children, collecting lightning bugs and laughing the way only the best of friends do. And there was always the conflict: torn between wanting to protect her, to keep her safe from the dangers skulking in this evil world, and the desire to throw her across a desk or sofa and ravish her right there on the spot.

Is it any wonder that I, like so many others, was captivated then and there? I began that evening by sneaking copies of her headshots out in my briefcase, little mementos I could sneak away to my apartment. Focal points, if you will, for the fantasies which flirted through my mind when I should have been making copies or scheduling meetings. As more and more bookings came her way, my collection grew in leaps and bounds; I became as familiar with the little mole on her right calf as I was with the day planner on my desk. I knew there was a tiny scar on her elbow, that she favored perfume that smelled like wildflowers after a spring rain, and that her drink of choice was a concoction of rums called a Piranha.

I also knew how the photographer and his assistant ended up scuffling the day after her first shoot; I knew how the assistant had wrapped an extension cord around his boss' neck and pulled the two ends so tightly the paramedics had to cut it free. All the little details not released in the papers but shared by people in the business, people who were there... I knew them.

See, this assistant thought he was man enough to lay claim to her. And the photographer? Well, he had delusions of grandeur as well. He actually thought he could satisfy a woman like L'Lain, that he could be everything she needed instead of just another paunchy son of a bitch not worthy of standing in her shadow. I suppose he, like Mike Bowen, found out exactly what it takes to bask in her splendor.

But the assistant didn't fare much better. They hauled him off to county lockup, awaiting either a trial or bond. On the wall, he'd taped a small negative of L'Lain, something to keep him company through the long hours of the night, I suppose. The pathetic little wretch.

His cell mate, according to the papers, was a two-time car thief named Johnson who, up until this point, had never laid eyes on my beautiful muse. But after gazing at the negative, the assistant was soon found with his throat slashed by a toothbrush which had been melted and honed to the sharpness of a razor. An act which was subsequently punished by a guard whose nightstick fell onto Johnson's skull until bits of the man's brain speckled the cot behind him; by the time the coroner had removed the body, the little negative of L'Lain had mysteriously disappeared.

During this time, I had begun to realize that simply possessing posed pictures of her wasn't enough. No matter how skilled the photographer, they were incapable of capturing the essence of who she was in everyday life. Her true beauty was not in some back-arching slink that no sane woman would ever adopt in real life, but in the melodious warmth as she laughed at a joke. It was in the way she sipped from a glass or glanced from the corner of her eyes at passersby.

So I began following her. Always from a distance, always with my little camera at the ready so that I could capture a moment of pure perfection when it presented itself. Through this, the bond between us strengthened. I knew that I was never far, that I could spring into action at a moment's notice if she ever needed protection from the maniacs who seemed to be cropping up almost daily.

See, the headlines have been flooded with reports of man on man violence: brothers who ended up shooting each other in a duel, a karate instructor who snapped the neck of his bookkeeper, a high school football star who decimated the offensive line with calculated blasts from a shotgun. All of these crimes, all of this murder, with her at the center like a sparkling jewel in a setting of violence. But she can rely on me; I'm always close at hand, always looking out for her, always trying to muster the courage to actually approach and let her knew exactly how dedicated and loyal I am.

However, I began to worry that all of this carnage would spill over into her personal life, that it might make her seek the shelter and safety of her home. If she wasn't strolling to cafes or walking her dog in the park, how could I keep her safe? How would I be able to ensure that no one tried to take her from me?

A building superintendent who extinguished the pilot light in his tenant's gas stove, ensuring the other man would never awaken from his sleep...

There were so many out there who wanted to claim her as their own, who were willing to lay down their lives to demonstrate how monumentally important she was. So many others who thought they could possess her by force, by eliminating any and all competition.

An ad exec who ran down a bicycle courier with his shiny BMW...

L'Lain needed me and I knew I simply wouldn't be able to live with myself if anything ever happened to her. I could not fail in this: she was too crucial to lose, too marvelous to share. And discovering someone's home address is ridiculously easy when you a photocopy of her driver's license pasted to your wall.

All the while, rumors of her began to circulate in industry circles like a California wildfire: a beauty so exquisite that strangers would kill in her name, a honor previously reserved for gods, prophets, and royalty.

A priest who strangled a supplicant within the sanctity of the confessional, presumably when the miserable sinner confessed impure thoughts for our lady of divine loveliness...

Was it really that big of a surprise when she landed the Pickman Agency with the mother of all contracts? A one minute spot with a major beer company to be aired during the Super Bowl: did she really deserve anything less?

She was on her way to greatness and I knew I had to be right there with her. To ensure no one attempted to steal what was rightfully mine. After all, I'd been there since the beginning. Even before the director saw her, she was already burning in my mind like a supernova amid the constellations. Before anyone else had ever heard her name, I was the one who spoke to her over the phone and arranged the interview.

So I slipped under the cover of darkness to her house, secreted myself away in the hedges beneath her window, and kept silent vigil while she watched television. While she cooked and bathed. I slept in a succession of power naps, filled countless rolls of film with the minutia of her life. And I'm positive she knew I was there, that her head rested easier on her pillow, secure in the knowledge that I was caring for her in my own special way.

She became so comfortable with my presence that she even left a slight gap in the living room curtains every Friday night when her friends would stop by. So I could watch as they slipped off their clothes and lit a circle of black candles on the polished floors; so I could ensure they were not disturbed as she took her place in the center of a ring of women who chanted, danced, and swooned around her. She trusted me enough to let me see that they kept the big, black book hidden beneath the couch.

I watched as she swayed back and forth, like a stalk of wheat in a gentle breeze; but at the same time, I kept one eye on the street to ensure no one wandering by might question the strange words coming from within. Words that were building to a crescendo in both volume and tempo.

I made sure there were no witnesses when the head was ripped from the body of a dove and its blood drizzled over L'lain's supple skin. And who better than me to safeguard the secret of how smoke seemed to appear around her feet, as if the basement were on fire and the tendrils curled up through the gaps in the floorboards? Or how this same smoke seemed to be pulled to a central point where it roiled like a drop of ink in a glass of water, eventually forming into the loose shape of a person.

And I will protect until the day I die how a voice echoed from somewhere within the midst of this apparition. A voice that was somehow a hiss and a roar all at the same time: What do you require? Why have you called me to this plane? Speak your wishes.

In turn, one by one, the gathered women answered.

"To punish those who would see me as an object and not a person."

"To seek revenge on a society that values us purely for our looks."

"To rebuke those who poison the minds of my sisters with unobtainable standards and devaluation..."

Then it shall be so.

With these words, L'Lain was surrounded by a hazy cloud that sparkled like the waters of the ocean. She threw her head back, allowing her hair to cascade down her back, and extended her arms outward as if welcoming me into the embrace I'd always imagined.

Instead, the glimmering points of light surrounding her seemed to seep into her skin, melting into her pores and making the flesh appear even more radiant than usual. Her eyes twinkled in the candlelight and I felt as if I were seeing her for the first time all over again, falling madly in love again with the pinnacle of female flawlessness.

That was nearly a month ago and my feelings for L'Lain have not diminished in the least bit. I've lost count of how many would-be suitors have fallen before my ever watchful eye, how many hopefuls have discovered that they lack what it takes to steal her from me. But their numbers are dwindling now; there are so few men left in our fair city to challenge me and the sidewalks are stained with the blood of the fallen.

But I'm still preparing. Tomorrow, I will head to Wal-Mart to look at their guns and ammunition. At the bows, arrows, and baseball bats. I will begin my stockpile, will start preparing my fortifications.

The Super Bowl is only months away. Millions of men will be watching their televisions. Millions of men will lay eyes upon her for the very first time and know what it means to be blessed by her smile. Millions of threats to my sovereignty will crop up overnight.

But I will be ready.

No one will take her from me.

I will protect what is mine until the last drop of blood flows from my body.

WRITING HOME

Dear Mother,

It has been 3,210 days since I last knew the warmth of sun on my skin. 3,210 days of counting hours, counting breaths... collecting tears. But today is auspicious. The numbers are in alignment, perfect descending order: 3 ... 2 ...1 ... 0 .... And surely that must mean something. Perhaps today the pain will fade. Perhaps today, I'll be free.

Dear Mother,

3,211 days and the numbers lied. Shortly after writing they came, as always. They came with their needles, their razors, their white smocks spattered with old life. They didn't ask questions. Never do. Simply went about their business with stitched up eyes and surgical masks painted with wax-lip grins. And all the while the faces on the wall watched on. Like water stains yet somehow alive, eyes wide and round. Following. Tracking. Like the clock that used to hang in the kitchen: black cat with pendulum eyes, always awake, always alert. Mother dear, I fear your son cannot hold out much longer. Tired. So tired. And I only want to come home.

Dear Mother,

I saw their tentacles today, oily and gray, quivering at the intestinal peepshow as they paid for another minute, another glance, with quarters slid into slits of flesh. Semen trickled through the whip-stitch cord of their eyelids, dripped into the open wound, planting maggots like Johnny Appleseed. I fear your son is pregnant, Mother dear. Knocked up with bastard nightmares, stomach swollen and bruised. It grows so fast. I feel it kick, like tiny plucks on the muscle strings of a skeletal guitar. Four hearts beating to my one, backbeat rhythm of devil rock and noise. Lead vocals growling, screaming, cursing for release.

Dear Mother,

Gestation is a bitch. But I don't have to tell you that ... do I? Remember how you used to say I was a pox upon your loins, a bed of roofing nails against your cervix? I understand. I now see. And I truly and really try to be sorry.

Mother,

I gave birth to an abortion today. Swelling my urethra like a watermelon in a hose, bulging porous tissue until the flesh began to rip and tear. Like liquid fire surging through my vein, it remained, constant terrible agony. Spewing forth from my little pee hole, a crimson stream: frothy with chunks and pieces, as pale as chicken skin, erupting in an endless spray. They appeared with buckets and squeegees, rags, mops, and sponges. Collecting it all with mildew stained hands. Showing me the contents with a slight tilt. Looks and smells like chum, but even then I could see fibers unfurling, stretching out, touching other strands like Adam and the painting of God. Congratulations and infamy. It's an it. You would be so proud ... if only you could feel.

Mother,

It has continued to grow, congealing itself into existence from the gelatinous ooze of that primordial bucket. Networks of veins quiver, tremble. Extending like maps where the highways are always lined with cones, never complete, never finished. Fish-like eyes, tiny hands tipped with splinters of enamel, pearly little claws on this, my bastard thing. It hisses like a leaky radiator, floating in its own waste, growing, whining with pain at the spurts of construction. The watermark faces look so proud, but I feel no love, only cold unsettling responsibility. But I don't have to tell you that.

Mother,

I held my creation today, careful, so careful not to puncture the membrane with my clumsy, oafish hands. It squirmed. It cried. It hungered for something more now that the bucket fluid has been absorbed. Scrambling up my chest like a hairless squirrel, ripping fabric amid a flurry of talons, cold and wet against my neck like a scarf woven of slime. Slight stench of rotten meat as it presses its face close, so close, and I notice for the first time that it has your nose and ears. Suckling on my bottom lip, tiny teeth needle-like, tearing, shredding, slurping away the metallic tang. I thrash and scream but can't bring myself to fling my child away. It's my lineage, my legacy to the world, and it's hungry, so hungry. Scampering up my face, legs wrapped around chin, arms clutching my forehead, digging barbed claws into the pores and follicles of my scalp. First the right eye, then the left: sucking viscous juices through a proboscis that elongates like the dripping of wax from its little face. Deflating my ocular orbs, grapes deprived of pulp, nothing more than empty hollow shells now. It's finally sleeping, nestled tightly as I bleed. But I don't have to tell you.

Mother,

They came again, bearing a white gown to replace my tattered clothing. Blood swelled with the curved needle, the coarse and tickling cord, like the twine you use on tomato stakes. Thread, pull, repeat. Thread ... pull ... repeat. Sutured eyes and blessed darkness now, vague impressions of light and shadow, somehow seeing this hazy reality despite my missing parts. Lowering a mask to my face, all bright red lips and pearly whites, tying and securing to hide the ravaged ribbons of lip and tongue. They take my little bundle of grief, secret it away, my job here is done, it has what it needs and is ready to move on. Arms wide, welcoming me into their fold, finally finding acceptance in this strange fraternity. They know. They've been. Only the lack of tear ducts keeps me from crying as I've so wanted for all these years.... Mother, I'm coming home.

THE HAUNTING OF THE MINES

(Published in Ghostly Tales of Terror Living Dead Press, 2010)

It was all Danny Larch's fault. If he hadn't been such a know-it-all, Sam would've been home right now. He'd be lying on the scratchy carpet of the living room with his chin propped in his hands, watching cartoons while the scent of grilled cheese and soup wafted from the kitchen; or maybe he'd be in the yard, spraying the water hose at the roof in yet another attempt to dislodge the Frisbee that had been stuck there all summer. But no. Instead, he was shivering, hungry, and blinking back tears as the smell of urine stung his nostrils with its acrid stench.

For what must have been the thousandth time, his hands reached into darkness so complete there weren't even vague shadows to guide him. He felt the rock on either side of him, cool and damp and jagged, and for a moment wings of panic fluttered within his stomach. There was so much earth surrounding him that it almost felt as if it were squeezing the air from his lungs like the coils of some unseen serpent. Even if it was cloaked utterly in darkness, he knew it was there: all that dirt and rock, just waiting to come crashing down, waiting to bury him deep within the hillside, to swallow him up like a tasty little morsel....

He took a deep breath and told himself that everything was going to be okay. Suzie Hayes would've already been to his house by now and asked his parents why he hadn't met her at the swimming hole like they'd planned. She'd probably thought he'd chickened out and marched right over there to give him a piece of her mind. After all, they were supposed to have kissed behind the rock that the older kids dove from, well hidden in the shade of the pines and the coolness of the surrounding forest. When he didn't show, she'd be furious and he could clearly picture her sitting on his front porch with that little nose all scrunched up and her eyes sparking like chips of flint. But as the minutes bled into hours, he'd realized that it was probably night outside by now. By the time the Family Movie of the Week began playing on channel three, his mom and dad would've already contacted every friend and neighbor they could think of. When the movie ended and the nightly news came on, he was sure they'd be worried sick. Even now, they were probably out there somewhere looking for him. He imagined flashlights bobbing through the trees, the barking of dogs, and people calling his name over and over into the night; the Ruckers, Blackwells, and Youngs ... everyone would be out helping search for him and by the time morning came the State Police would probably be called in as well. They would find him... they had to find him.

As these thoughts went through his mind, his probing hands felt something other than rock and his fingertips followed a grid work of grooves, tracing patterns that were now so familiar he could almost picture them: white mortar heavily doweled between red bricks that were dotted with little pits and lumps, their surface rough and scratchy; some of the bricks would have little gouges in them, as if they'd been chipped when the wheelbarrow that brought them to this place had toppled them into a large pile.

In a way, the brick wall was comforting. Sam knew freedom lay just on the other side. He was so close to the chirping and peeping of all the little night insects, to the gurgle of the small tributary that fed into the Elk River, and the stars that twinkled through the canopy of leaves overhead. But at the same time the obstacle also taunted him with its presence. When he'd first stumbled across it, he'd laid on his back and kicked until the balls of his feet throbbed with pain; he'd hammered his fists against it and pushed with his palms in the hope that it would crumble and give way. But the wall was as solid and immovable as the dark rocks surrounding him and he was only left with hundreds of tiny scratches that stung as sharply as if he'd thrust his hands into a thicket of nettle.

He must've taken a wrong turn somewhere in the darkness, must've crawled through a crevice that he couldn't find again. When he'd first shimmied into the opening in the earth, he'd never dreamed that the narrow passages would snake so far into the hillside or that there would be so many twists and turns. He'd thought he'd just have to crawl in a short way and then come to a larger cavern where he'd be able to light the black candle he'd brought with him and prop up the little makeup mirror behind it. But that cavern had never come and the candle had long since burnt out; now all he wanted was to find his way back to the winding dirt road, to the scent of honeysuckle, and the pale light of the moon....

Sam balled his hands into fists and squeezed his eyes shut to keep from crying. He had to stay calm. His parents would find him. He just had to be patient.

From somewhere behind him, he heard a slight scuffling. Like the wind blowing dry leaves across a basketball court.

The little hairs on the back of his neck bristled and goosebumps crept across his arms as the bitter taste of bile flooded his mouth.

Stupid Danny Larch ...

He held his breath and listened past the plinking of condensation that dripped from the low ceiling and echoed through the tunnel. Past the thumping of his own heart and the whoosh of blood surging through his veins.

"Ain't nothin' but a mouse." He tried to convince himself.

The rustling again. Closer this time. Furtive and sneaky.

"Just a little mouse or somethin', that's all."

But in his mind he could picture them: gaunt faces with lines and wrinkles blackened by coal dust, hollow eye sockets peering out from beneath silver helmets with little lanterns attached to the front; clothes tattered and rotten to the point that they were nothing more than ribbons of cloth flapping from bodies that had become as leathery and withered as the mummies his father had taken him to see at the Barbour County Historical Museum. Crawling through the darkness with their picks and shovels, drawn to the warmth of a living body, pulled toward the coppery scent of fear oozing from his pores....

No, they weren't real. It was some little animal, a possum or raccoon or skunk. Nothing was coming to get him, nothing was reaching out into the darkness with clawed fingers and moss covered flesh.

"Those ain't caves, dumb ass." Danny Larch's voice seemed to materialize somewhere in the depths of Sam's mind, replaying the events that led him here.

"Sure look like caves to me."

"Uncle Rick says they're old coal mines. That people in this holler always been so poor they had to dig into the hill and haul out their own coal."

"Oh yeah? Well, he also says there's catfish in the Kanawha River as big as people. And my mom says that ain't true. Besides, why would they wanna do that?"

Danny had cocked his head to the side and brushed away that bangs that dangled over his freckled forehead.

"Cause they needed coal to keep warm in the winter, stupid. Lasts a lot longer than wood and puts out more heat, too." Danny had dropped his voice to a low whisper and leaned in close. "Uncle Rick also says a lot of people died back in them little coal mines. Cave-ins, breathin' in gas and stuff. And he says their ghosts still crawl through them passages, lookin' for a way out. And, if you go into one of 'em, you can set a black candle in front of a mirror. If you sit long enough and stay real quiet, then sooner or later you're gonna see them in the reflection. All those ghosts. He said he done it when he was a kid and it scared him so bad he's had t' drink ever since."

And that was all it had taken. The seed had been planted in Sam's mind and he'd spent hours laying awake at night, thinking about ghosts and the seams of dark coal that rippled through the earth. He'd asked his mom about the caves and she'd said that Danny was right. That they actually were personal coal mines and, yes, people probably had died in them. After all, these weren't trained miners like Grandpa Thompson had been. They didn't know about engineering and geology. But ghosts weren't real. Danny was just trying to scare him, that was all.

But that was easy for Mom to say. She wasn't sitting in a darkness that completely masked anything that might be slowly working its way through the rocks and dirt. She didn't hear the shuffling or what almost sounded like soft sighs. She couldn't feel their presence growing closer and stronger with each passing second.

If he sat really still and stayed as quiet as a church at midnight, maybe they'd go away. Maybe that would just leave him alone.

Pebbles rattled off other rocks and was it just his imagination or was it colder now? As if the spirits were drawing the heat from his body, feeding off it the same way a plant will suck moisture through the soil with its roots. Growing stronger.

Stupid Danny Larch.

Sam trembled and wished he could just pass through the brick wall like the Flash. Be safe and sound on the other side, the ghosts trapped within their rocky grave, robbed of the soul they so desperately wanted to devour.

He pressed himself against the bricks and they scraped against his skin through the rips in his Transformers tee-shirt; opening his eyes, Sam peered into the lightless void and watched for shadows that were darker than the gloom around him. For even the slightest hint of movement.

But the darkness was too vast, too complete.

The shuffling sound again. Closer this time.

Were their gnarled faces mere inches from his own? Was that musty smell present a few moments earlier? Or was it really the scent of age and mildew from dry-rotted overalls and hair that hung in stringy clumps from scabs of flesh?

Warm tears trickled from the corners of his eyes and he wanted to throw up, to pee, to be scooped into his mother's arms and told to never, ever scare her like that again.

He wanted Barkley's stinking breath in his face as the dog snuffled in his ears and wagged its tail.

He wanted his sister yelling that it was her turn to watch T.V and how it wasn't fair that he always got his way.

He wanted to be safe.

He wanted to be home.

The air around him seemed to stir with damp currents. As if something were moving mere inches from him. As if an unseen mouth were opening and yellowed teeth were inching toward his exposed skin.

Please God, please God, please....

He didn't want to die. He wanted to play baseball and go to junior high. He wanted to kiss Suzie Hayes and watch monster movies, and he swore he would never go hunting for ghosts again, would go to Sunday school every week without complaints, he'd be a good boy, would grow into a good man, and maybe become a preacher if he could just get out of this.

Please God ....

Muffled voices reached his ears, the tone so low that he could detect the rhythm of speech but not the words themselves.

The ghosts were talking, were planning on what to do with him.

But wait ... no. The words were coming from the other side of the brick wall, from the world of the living, not from the ghosts he knew were crowding around him in the darkness.

Someone had found him!

Sam slammed his fists against the brick wall again and again as hope surged through his body. He wanted to laugh and cry all at the same time ... they had found him.

"I'm in here! I'm in here!" His shouts echoed through the mines, his voice breaking and cracking as he continued pounding against the bricks. "I'm here!"

On the other side of the wall, a group of children stood in the sunlight that dappled through the trees overhead. The younger ones clustered around a tall boy with shaggy, blond hair and their eyes darted from his moving lips to the brick wall in the side of the hill.

"Back in the 80s," the boy said to his captive audience, " a kid named Sam Harper got lost in the mines. He was right about our age and they never even found his body. So the adults chipped in money to brick up all the entrances . To make sure it'd never happen again."

The smaller ones eyed the blocked entrance the same way they might a stray dog who may or may not be dangerous.

"And they say his ghost is still in there somewhere. Still looking for a way out. For a way home."

A collective shiver passed through the group of children, tingling their arms and legs with chills despite the warmth of the afternoon sun. And, just inches away, the spirit of Sam Harper pressed his forehead against the brick wall and cried.

THE BLOOD SHED

(Published in Daily Bites of Flesh 2011, Pill Hill Press, 2011)

Drip. Drip. Drip. I hear it through the walls, from across the lawn, from behind that door with the cracked and flaking paint. Drip. Steady and rhythmic, constant, insistent, so loud it fills my head, drowning out all other thoughts. Drip. Drip. Pillow pressed against my face so tightly I can almost smell the bald geese who gave their treasures for my comfort. Drip. Hot, so damn hot, like the fires of hell are raging just beneath my bed and I feel the spit pierce my stomach, rise through my trachea, burning and stinging as everything begins to spin.

Drip.

Into the blood-red darkness of eyes squeezed shut it invades. First with the moist stench of mildew bloated wood, next the smooth shingles that once were as rough and scratchy as cat tongue, the broken window, jagged glass tooth-like in the gaping maw. It pulls itself into existence piece by piece, slat by slat, one dust mote at a time.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Nasty little gnomes with noses half eaten by time. Their eyes smooth blank voids but seeing none-the-less, peering into the hidden places of my soul, branding me with their stares.

Drip.

A rusty tool: curved blade, wooden handle, dangling from a bent nail in the shadows.

Drip. Drip.

Hammers, screwdrivers, an ax with a split handle that pinches blood-blisters from the skin.

Shovel.

Trash bags.

Duct tape.

Drip.

The big, dirty doll with the tiny voice:

Smitty's dog barks too often.

Half-melted Santa, face drooping and dripping like candle wax, one eye permanently squinted: Ms Henderson throws salt in the garden when you're not looking. I've seen her. So naughty...

Drip. Drip.

Pills. Blister pack of yellow, oblong tablets. Bitter like a bad walnut as it dissolves on my tongue. Wife said they'd help. Doctors said they would help. But none of them knew.

Drip.

The black candles. The bell. The chalice and graveyard dirt.

The blood.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The shed.

Drip.

The blood shed.

Drip.

Dewy grass, cold and wet on bare feet. Big pussy moon hiding behind a thin veil of clouds.

Crickets and wet p.j. bottoms. Soft breeze.

Drip.

Door creaking open as tools and junk and relics from a lost life sigh:

Welcome.

Welcome back.

Welcome home.

Screams.

Mine?

Maybe... .

No.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

COOKING WITH GRACE

(Published in The Book of Cannibals, Living Dead Press, 2010)

Hand-delivered by courier to the office of Ms. Grace Agnolotti, The Packer Building, 1400 Central Avenue, Suite 856 at 1:34 PM, Wednesday August 13th

Dear Mrs. Agnolotti,

In response to my initial emailed query you responded, and I quote: "As the editor of such culinary masterpieces as Sinfully Delicious and The Caramel Sutra, I do not appreciate my valuable time being wasted with such a ludicrous proposition. Packer and Sons is neither in the habit of publishing 'gag' books nor pandering to a sensationalism-crazed public with such an ill-conceived attempt at humor. Furthermore, I find your book proposal to be in extremely bad taste and pray that this abortion of a manuscript never sullies my desk with its presence. If such a document even exists to begin with, which I personally choose to believe not to be the case. Call me an optimist."

I apologize for any confusion my letter may have caused and wish to assure you this was not an attempt to ridicule your company's fine publications. In fact, all eight volumes of Cooking with Grace line my kitchen shelves and are actually what inspired me to take up the knife and cleaver.

Within those sacred pages, I found something larger than myself. Something that actually made sense. The world is a chaotic whirlpool and the events that swirl around you always try to suck you into the darkness of the vortex. You might think you have a firm grasp on reality, but sooner or later an undertow comes along and wrenches it right from your hands. You find yourself drowning in a sea of confusion, not knowing whether to swim or die, while all the flotsam and jetsam from your shipwreck of a life rips bloody gashes in too-frail skin. But a recipe... now that's the way life should be. Measured quantities. Clear, concise instructions. Time-tested outcomes.

So I assure you that my letter was written with the utmost levels of sincerity. I have spent many hours perfecting the techniques and ingredients detailed within the pages of A Feast of Fools. Not all of my little experiments were successes, of course; but these failures should not detract from the passion invested in the work as a whole. This is not a mere cookbook; it is my heart and soul, laid out for all to see. As such, I promise you that the manuscript is very, very real.

But, perhaps, you require an example of my expertise. If nothing else than to prove I am not the jester you, and so many others, thought.

SWEET AND TART FANNY ROAST

Ingredients:

• 1 chunk of fresh buttock (about 2 ½ to 3 pounds)

• Salt and pepper

• 2 tablespoons canola oil

• 1 medium onion, sliced

• 2/3 cup cider vinegar

• 2/3 cup apple juice

• ½ cup packed light brown sugar

• ¼ teaspoon ground allspice

• 1 tablespoon bone meal mixed with 2 tablespoons cold water

That, however, is just a teaser. If I gave you the entire recipe, after all, what would stop you from stealing it and claiming it as your own creation? I can advise you, though, that what separates my book from all the others currently on the market is that I do not simply address how to prepare the dishes. As you stated in Volume Three of Cooking With Grace, nothing is more important than fresh ingredients. In light of this, I have shared the benefit of my experience with the armchair gourmet, explaining how to best hunt and butcher the meat for themselves. In the chapter "A Clever Ruse for Your Rue", I go into painstaking detail concerning the various means of gaining a component's trust in an overtly suspicious society. Chapter 7, "A Pound of Flesh", will be of particular interest as well. For example, few people realize how greasy and slippery the web-like fat on a still-warm cut of meat can be; but with my practical suggestions, the reader will cut their prep time in half. Perhaps another excerpt is in order, if nothing else than further substantiate my technique and knowledge. In this section I am instructing my students on how to best remove the silverskin which, as you well know, is the thin membrane left on certain cuts of flesh once the excess fat has been trimmed away.

"Slide the tip of a sharpened knife under the shiny tissue layer and angle the honed edge of the blade upward. Next, slice back and forth while ensuring that the silverskin is pulled taut. Continue slicing the skin with this method until all has been removed."

Are you beginning to see now? Is the realization dawning upon you that your life has been touched by the presence of a grand master?

I look forward eagerly to your reply.

You have my email address.

Write Me.

Sincerely,

xxxBuTcHeRxxx

Hand-delivered by courier to the office of Ms. Grace Agnolotti, The Packer Building, 1400 Central Avenue, Suite 856 at 11:02 AM, Thursday August 21th

Dear Mrs. Agnolotti,

I realize that a little over a week has passed since I last wrote. I have no doubt that you are discussing the prospects of A Feast of Fools with the other editors at Packer and Sons; I can only hope you are championing my masterpiece with the ardor it so rightly deserves. However, this letter is not a thinly veiled attempt at forcing your reply. I realize that in the publishing world, like baking, these things take time. For now, I am patient.

No, the true purpose of this letter is to inform you that I recently purchased a copy of Living With Grace: One Woman's Climb To The Top. If truth be told, I actually camped outside the bookstore the night before it hit the racks. It was a cold night for this time of year and by the time the doors opened at nine, my clothes were so drenched from the rain that it felt as if a fully grown person was draped over my body. For the next few days, I had quite the case of the sniffles. So bad, in fact, that a badly timed sneeze alerted a potential ingredient to my presence in the closet. Needless to say, the menu of coq au vin and crisp greens I'd planned was definitely no longer an option. I detest wasting perfectly good meat, but it insisted on waving that little Taser around while it blocked the door.

But I digress. As I was saying, I picked up a copy of your autobiography the first day it was on sale (I find it safe to assume that I was the first person in my city to hold a copy of this book); I took it home and devoured every word, finishing it well before dinner that evening.

Bravo, Grace! (May I call you Grace? I feel like I know you so well that formalities seem stiff and awkward, even when written.) I must say I never realized how interesting your life has been. When your husband died, leaving you and little Angelique to fend for yourselves in a town that didn't give a rat's ass, I found myself actually worried that things might end badly. The long hours flipping hash in kitchens where there were more cockroaches than talent; the frustration of having this beautiful dream of culinary school dashed against the rocks of poverty; those nagging thoughts of just ending it all during your self-described "dark period": you became a believable character and I was pulled into your world like never before.

I also thought the pictures spread throughout the book were a nice touch. Though, I do have concerns. Angelique looked extremely pale in the full color ones. And so thin. I also couldn't help but notice the little cracks at the corners of her mouth when I studied her with my magnifying glass... am I correct in assuming she's anemic? That would explain the high-iron trend I've noticed in practically all of your most recent recipes. And with teenagers these days, that sort of thing is almost a fad.

I understand that you love your daughter very much. Despite the long hours you put in at the office and the constant bickering you describe in your book as hormonal insanity, you want what's best for her. And who could blame you?

Which brings me to the true point of this letter. If you'd like, I would be happy to procure the freshest liver you and your daughter could ever dream of tasting. I know of a clinic that specializes in the treatment of polycythemia and would have no trouble finding some iron-rich morsels with which to gift you. All you have to do is say the word.

Write Me.

xxxBuTcHeRxxx

email sent from g.agnolotti@chef.net to fresh4flesh@gmail.com at 11:10 AM, Thursday August 21th

THIS HAS GONE TOO FAR YOU TWISTED LITTLE FREAK!!! MY COLLEAUGES ADVISED ME TO JUST IGNORE YOU AND THAT EVENTUALLY YOU'D GET TIRED OF THIS BIZARRE LITTLE GAME BUT NOW YOU'VE WENT AND BROUGHT ANGEL INTO IT AND I WILL NOT TOLERATE ANY MORE OF THESE SICK ATTEMPTS AT HUMOR. YOU SIR (AND I USE THAT TERM SO VERY LIGHTLY) NEED HELP. IF YOU HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO THAN SIT AROUND DREAMING UP WAYS TO HARASS DECENT, HARDWORKING PEOPLE THEN PERHAPS THE WORLD WOULD BE A BETTER PLACE WITHOUT YOU IN IT.

!!!!!LEAVE.ME.ALONE!!!!!

email sent from fresh4flesh@gmail.com to g.agnolotti@chef.net at 1:45 PM, Monday August 25th

Grace, I know you've been under a lot of stress lately with the upcoming merger but you must understand that so have I. When I first read your email, your message made me long to do things. Bad things. I wanted to taint the meat by rupturing intestines and spewing their rotten poison all throughout the stomach cavity. I wanted to make the livestock scream, to see it cry, to bruise the tender flesh in every way possible. I wanted to revert back to that angry, viscous beast who was trapped within the whirlpool of chaos. You and your thoughtless words did that to me. ME!

I tried to use the self-talk the court appointed therapist told me about when I was younger, but it's just as useless now as it was back then. I knew deep down that wasting so much quality fare simply because I was angry with you was tantamount to blasphemy. So rather than frittering my stock away, I decided to put it to good use. Forget chicken soup... there's nothing quite like a good consommé to soothe the soul.

Now that my belly is full and warm and I'm thinking more rationally, I've decided to forgive you, Grace. It was a difficult decision, but if we are to have a professional relationship once A Feast of Fools has been Published, I believe it to be the right one.

xxxBuTcHeRxxx

email sent from g.agnolotti@chef.net to fresh4flesh@gmail.com at 1:52 PM, Monday August 25th

Fuck you and your so-called cookbook. I've had enough of this shit. I'm turning everything you've sent over to the authorities. We'll see how funny you think this is when the cops are knocking down your door, asshole.

Excerpt from transcript of interview between Lt. Detective Ben Maxwell and Grace Agnolotti, 9:45 AM, Tuesday August 26th

Maxwell: Do you have any enemies, Ms. Agnolotti? Anyone who would have something to gain from harassing you?

Agnolotti: Detective... Maxwell, is it? You don't get to where I am without stepping on a few toes. But this? I can't imagine what anyone could possibly gain from this (sound of rattling papers).

Maxwell: What about your daughter? Maybe a kid at school, jealous ex-boyfriend...

Agnolotti: Angel? No... everyone loves Angel.

Maxwell: Are you sure? I mean, I know you put in a lot of hours at your office, she's home alone by herself; you can never really be quite sure what she's getting herself into, can you?

Agnolotti: (long silence) Are you calling me a bad mother, Detective? Is that what you're implying?

Maxwell: No, of course not. I just... I just meant sometimes, ya know, kids have this secret life. A life parents aren't always privy to and...

Agnolotti: Look, Detective, Angel and I may have our disagreements. Hell, I think on some level she even blames me for her father's death. But she's my daughter. I would know. I'd be able to tell. (rustling sound) Okay if I smoke in here?

Maxwell: Fine by me, but the Health Department, well they're another story. So what does Angel make of all this, Ms. Agnolotti?

Agnolotti: (mumbling) Turning into a fascist society, I swear to God... (sighs) She doesn't make anything of it.

Maxwell: How so?

Agnolotti: Because I haven't told her. Look, we get cranks and disgruntled authors all the time. Usually they vent for a while and are never heard from again. It goes with the business. But this one... this guy's persistent.

Maxwell: So do you think that's what this is? A disgruntled author trying to make your life hell?

Agnolotti: (short pause) Correct me if I'm wrong, Detective Maxwell, but isn't it sort of your job to find that out?

Maxwell: (sighs) Yes. And no. I mean, right now there's not really a whole lot we can do. (rustling sound) I admit, these letters are downright weird. Bizarre even. But he really hasn't threatened you. We could see if maybe there's a stalking charge we could make stick. Providing we can find the guy. He's obviously fixated with you and your work...

Agnolotti: And I want it to stop.

Maxwell: We'll see what we can do, Ms. Agnolotti. Here's my card. If he contacts you again, give me a call. I'll be in touch if we turn up anything.

Agnolotti: (angrily) Why do I get the feeling that I'm being placated, Detective?

Maxwell: Look, ma'am, we'll do...

Agnolotti: As little as possible, I'm sure. Good day, Detective. Oh, and just for the record, that black tie? Way too thin for those lapels. Makes you look like a fucking moron.

email sent from g.agnolotti@chef.net to fresh4flesh@gmail.com at 12:34 PM, Tuesday August 26th

The cops have your letters and emails. Their nerd squad will be all over you soon. They assured me that, because of who I am, they're devoting their full attention to this case. Let it end now and maybe I won't press charges once they've tracked you down. Let it end.

Hand-delivered by courier to the office of Ms. Grace Agnolotti, The Packer Building, 1400 Central Avenue, Suite 856 at 5:34 PM, Friday, September 5th

Grace,

I have a new recipe for you:

1 pound of my special "veal" cutlets

1 tablespoon lemon juice

salt and pepper

2 tablespoons flour

3 tablespoons butter

8 ounces mushrooms, sliced

½ cup broth (see recipe in Chapter 4, "Soup to Nuts")

2 green onions, sliced thin

½ cup heavy cream

I've already placed the cutlets between two sheets of plastic wrap and rapped it gently with the brim of a coffee mug (one of my little secrets). Since the meat was already so tender to begin with, It didn't take long. I hummed a little song to myself as I brushed them with the lemon juice and imagined that I was God painting flavor into the pink flesh offered before me. Salt and pepper next, sprinkled lightly, and then a dusting of flour. Medium heat with melted butter, a nice big cast iron, the sizzle of the meat as I brown each side for two minutes or so.

Can't you practically smell it? That mouthwatering aroma? There's nothing like fried foods to really get the taste buds going. You said that. Volume 6, Chapter 8 of Cooking with Grace. And I know how much you love veal. I know so much about you. That's why I selected this particular recipe. In honor of you. In honor of us.

Once the meat was browned, I plated them and sautéed the mushrooms until tender. I must admit, however, that I cheated. I prepared the broth earlier and simply brought it along. But the broth was added and brought to a boil. Then I reduced the heat and simmered for five minutes. Which was just enough time to harvest more cuts from my livestock. But it's beyond caring. It now simply exists to give life and energy, flavor and scent. Returning to the stove, I added the browned meat to the skillet along with the onions and cream. Covered. Cooked for five more minutes.

Are you imaging the flavor profiles? Can you even begin to? You've had chicken, lamb, fish, beef, pork, frog... just about every other creature that flies, walks, crawls, or swims on our little planet; yet, you've never tasted my ingredient of choice. But you've thought about it. Long before you ever heard of A Feast of Fools, you wondered what it would be like. If only for a fraction of a second.

Don't feel guilty. Guilt is a wasted emotion, saved for the weak. For the livestock. After all, there's not a single person in the culinary arts who hasn't had those same thoughts at one point or another. Nobody talks about it. Nobody acts upon it. But they have. That's why it takes a true visionary to break the boundaries of taboo, to cast aside societal prejudice in favor of exploration. I am that man. I am the Christ of the cooking world and you could be my Mary Magdalene, A Feast of Fools our gospel. And yet you've acted more like Judas.

I still haven't given up on you, however. To help light the way, I placed candles on the table. But the blood looked so dark against the tile that it had to be cleaned. Funny how candlelight changes things like that, how it alters your perception.

Next, I selected a nice Pinot Gris from the wine cellar: hints of pepper and a slight citrus undertone. I must admit wine has never been my specialty, but I think this will suit the meal nicely.

Everything is perfect. The livestock is hidden away in the broom closet, the candles glowing softly, and Leonard Cohen from the stereo system in the living room.

This is what A Feast of Fools is all about. This moment. This special, magic moment.

When I was a child, my grandmother had an expression. "The proof is in the pudding." she'd always say. It's probably the only good memory I have of that hateful bitch. Those six little words: the proof is in the pudding.

I've decided to grace you with one last chance; perhaps to truly understand the depth of my vision, you first have to walk in my shoes. You have to know that special feeling that comes with the very first bite. Some people have described it as rubbery or chewy... but they simply lacked the skill to prepare it correctly. I've spent the better part of my life perfecting the technique, honing my talent like I would the blade of my favorite sashimi knife. I have created art. And this amusing little piece, my take on veal with mushroom gravy, is the perfect introduction to my body of work.

I'm sure you know what makes veal so tender...why the meat is so pale compared to a roast of beef or a nice steak.

The calves are slaughtered young.

They are kept anemic.

It's time to come home, Grace.

The table is set.

The candles are lit.

And this particular meal tastes heavenly. Like an angel...

EVERY NIGHT IS HALLOWEEN

(Published in Firemass Halloween Special 2011 and Halloween Frights, Vol. 2, Static Movement, 2011)

Preston Sinclair could hear the scampering along the streets outside: the squeals of delight as harried mothers hurried after their offspring, calling out their full names in tones that rang with sharpness; little feet clamoring up porch steps, cries of trick or treat, and the rustle of candy wrappers in plastic pails shaped like pumpkins. He had the blinds on the widows tightly shut, the heavy purple drapes pulled to, and the television tuned to some game show where the contestants attempted to outbid one another. From the dining room, the radio crackled with static as a boisterous talk show host welcomed long time listeners and first time callers alike. He'd hoped the television and radio would drown out the cacophony of Halloween night, that it would help him pretend this was just another cool, Autumn evening. But his hearing had been so acute lately; earlier, he was even able to piece together the whispered gossip between Mrs. Robinson and that no good busy body, Anita Haslick, from across the way. Their voices buzzed in his head, almost as if his skull were some sort of receiver honed to the frequency of wagging tongues. He could deal with the hushed rumors, their quiet speculation about what went on within the white Cape Cod he called home. But the children... they were simply too much.

Fingers stained yellow from decades of tobacco passed through hair as white and fine as cotton fibers. The wrinkles on his narrow face were stretched into the deep furrows of a frown and he ground his dentures as his eyes darted to the front door time and time again. They were out there, right now: collecting their candy, babbling, crying over scraped knees, laughing and darting about like a pack of ravenous rodents. So innocent and carefree... or so it would seem.

"Rotten little bastards. Hope they burn in Hell, every one."

His voice was thin and hoarse; it quivered with emotion while his Adam's apple bobbed as if it were floating in a tub of water and awaiting adolescent mouths to come along and sink their teeth into it. Behind the wireframe spectacles perched on his nose, his blue eyes were watery and he blinked more often than what would be considered usual. His hands fumbled with the belt on his tattered, flannel bathrobe for what must have been the hundredth time in the last half-hour and he shifted positions in what was normally the most comfortable chair in the house; tonight, however, the plush stuffing felt as if it were made from steel wool and covered with fiberglass. No matter how much he fidgeted, it was hot and itchy against his back and his ass felt as if tiny needles were poking up through the cushion.

Outside he heard a soft giggle and footsteps thudding across his porch.

His heart hammered within his chest and he sank back into the chair, as if he could somehow disappear into the fabric and find safety within the springs and batting. He closed his eyes and wrung his wrinkled hands in his lap as his breath escaped in a series of quick pants.

A tiny fist rapped at his door and he felt as if his stomach had transformed into a writhing knot of worms.

"Porch light is off," he thought, "can't you fucking see that? The damn porch light is off. Go away, go away, just leave me be, go...."

The unseen child knocked again and the sound seemed as if it thumped from somewhere inside his temples. He'd had oatmeal a few hours back and now it felt as if it were souring within him; it threatened to shoot up through his esophagus and flood his dry mouth with stinging bile, to burn through his trachea with an acidic sizzle, and choke him with its bitter flood.

"Mary Louise Hanson!"

An adult voice, tinged with panic. Heavier footsteps thumped across the floorboards of the porch in rapid succession and the knock was abruptly cut short. He could hear the woman, whispering between clenched teeth, probably gripping her little bastard's wrist so tightly that school counselors would question the girl about her home life in days to come.

'"What did I tell you about this house? What did I tell you?"

"Mommy... owww...you're hurting!"

The voices receded and Preston Sinclair opened eyes that had previously been squeezed shut so tightly that his cheeks still tingled with discomfort. When the child had been on the porch, he'd felt as if some cold and invisible python had coiled around his torso. It had constricted air from lungs that struggled for breath beneath its weight, had seeped its chill into the very marrow of the old man's bones, and hissed in his ear with its flickering tongue: they're coming, they always come with their costumes and masks and hatred in their hearts, they're coming and this year is the year, this year it's your turn, your turn to scream....

The room suddenly felt as if someone had cranked up the gas heater to its highest setting; the air was thin and dry and as stale as the half-eaten biscuit that had set on the TV tray since early that morning. He stood slowly, not trusting his trembling legs to support his own weight, and slipped out of the bathrobe. A round stomach overlapped the stretched waistband of boxers so old that the white material had almost become as yellow as the polka dots which adorned them and his legs poked out of the underwear like a pair of shriveled sticks. But at least it felt cooler now ... at least he was able to breathe without feeling as if an icepick was being repeatedly jabbed between his ribs.

"I've done my time." he said aloud to the room. "Why can't anyone just fucking let it be?"

His eyes scanned the room slowly, as if searching for someone hiding behind the sparse furnishings. In the flickering, bluish glow of the television the film of dust coating the coffee table and bookshelves were obvious; the mismatched sofa and chairs, however, had their rips and threadbare fibers hidden within the gloom and the water stains on the fading wallpaper blended into the shadows.

The old man's feet shuffled over the cold, hardwood floor and carried him to the mantle above the fireplace. At some point in the house's past, it had been an actual honest-to-God chimney; but the hearth had been bricked up since then and it now housed only a small, gas space heater with blue and orange flames that danced behind a panel of glass. The mantle itself was lined with pictures in tarnished frames: a light haired man smiling at the camera and looking smart in his army uniform, a woman with her dark hair pulled back into a bun, both of these people standing in front of a church with their entire lives in front of them. When had he gotten so old? Sometimes it seemed like the years had simply vanished into a cloud of obscurity, as if his memories were nothing more than fuzzy recollections of a fading dream; but he pictures on the mantle always made him feel that way and, as a general rule, he tended to avoid them. Only on Halloween night, which seemed to come as quickly as he could blink, would he venture into the corridors of time and revisit these frozen moments of life.

His trembling hand reached out and pulled a portrait of a small boy to him. The lad had chubby cheeks that gave the vague impression of a chipmunk and a small, round nose spattered with a mask of freckles. His brown hair was parted with a natural cowlick and one tooth was missing from the grin he beamed at the camera.

The old man stroked his finger along the boy's face, cutting a trail of clear glass through the oily grit, and for a moment it seemed as if he were about to cry. His shoulders hitched and he blinked even more rapidly than normal as he choked back a low moan. Clutching the picture against his chest, he seemed to somehow grow smaller, as if his body were pulling back into itself and retreating from the smiling child.

"Jessie... I'm sorry, boy. I'm so very sorry...."

Preston Sinclair closed his eyes and found himself standing in the bedroom of a different, more familiar, house. The boy in the picture was curled beneath sheets depicting the epic struggle between cowboys and Indians. A small bear with button eyes was trapped in his arms and stick figures in green crayon looked down from pages tacked to the blue walls. Red curtains fluttered in front of an open window and the scent of pine wafted in from the trees that rustled on just the other side of the wall.

In the glow of the nightlight, the boy's chest rose and fell with an almost imperceptible rhythm and snores rattled the back of his throat at irregular intervals. The old man's shadow fell across the child's sleeping form ... only he wasn't an old man. Not yet. His muscles were still young and strong and his joints didn't throb and ache with the coming of bad weather; the teeth in his head were still his own and his skin was smooth, only recently showing the first signs of age in the creases that formed at the corners of his eyes.

This younger Preston Sinclair sobbed silently as he hugged himself in the darkness, as if he could somehow fill the hollowness within him with his own arms. Two months earlier, he'd had the perfect life: Martha had greeted him at the door with a cold drink and a kiss; Jessie would run across the room with excited chatter about some little event that had happened at school, papers fluttering in his chubby fists. Preston's co-workers assured him that the promotion to Senior Manager was as good as his and they'd been discussing adding on to their happy little family. A daughter, perhaps....

But all of those plans and dreams had been reduced to ash in a car that burned with flames so hot that even the surrounding trees had been blackened and scorched. The smoldering hunk of metal had laid upside down on Route 60 while fire trucks doused water on metal that sizzled and hissed like a cast iron skillet. Somewhere within the twisted and crushed interior had been the remains of Martha: once a beautiful mother and wife, she'd been reduced to a charred skeleton with its jaw forever hinged in a silent scream. Red and blue lights strobed in the darkness while police radios crackled with bursts of coded information. In the back of one of the cruisers, a young man sat in a cloud of cheap liquor; he looked out at the scene with bloodshot eyes, slurring over and over: who did that? Who the hell did that?

In the coming weeks, Martha would visit Preston in his dreams. Never as the laughing young woman who'd tease him with playful innuendo in the kitchen. Never as the giddy bride with a bouquet she refused to throw because the flowers were simply too perfectly arranged, too beautiful to be trampled underfoot in the mad dash toward superstition. No. She would stand at the foot of the bed with skin as black and bubbly as an over-roasted marshmallow, her silky hair burned away to stubbly cinders, pieces of clothing melted into her chest and arms ... . Her eyes were dry and cracked and her tongue like a dark worm that wriggled within lips that dripped down her chin like wax from a melted candle. When she spoke, her voice was something between a whisper and the grinding of broken glass and the message was always the same: Join me. Join me, Preston.

He'd tried to exorcise her ghost with shots of vodka and cases of beer, had attempted to drown her pleas in an ocean of rum and tears; but she was always there, always beckoning. And he simply didn't possess the strength he'd once had. Not without her by his side. Without Martha, life was a meaningless void that demanded so much more energy than what trickled through him. He was tired of struggling against the undercurrents, exhausted from treading water simply because it was what was expected . He just wanted to close his eyes and make it all go away....

He stood over his son's bed and the butcher knife gleamed in the faint light. It wouldn't be fair for Jessie to go on. Not with both of his parents gone, alone in a world that would demand answers his young mind could never provide. Besides, they had to be a family again. They had to be together for all eternity. It's what Martha would want. What he wanted. And it would be over quickly for the little boy ... so quick that he would probably never awaken from the dream that fluttered behind his eyelids. He would simply pass from this life to the next in the blessed darkness of sleep and his father would soon follow. There was no other way ... .

Preston Sinclair opened his eyes and was old again. He was back in the house that smelled of mildew and turnips, the house which always made him feel more like a guest than an occupant ... back on a Halloween night his little boy had never lived to see. By this time, Jessie probably would have had his own kids out there, going from door to door, begging for treats.

"I was wrong." the old man whispered to the photo. "I was so wrong."

He placed the picture back on the mantle and caught a glimpse of the thin scars crisscrossing his wrist; allowing his gaze to follow the path of his arm, he took in the faded prison tattoos and the circular dimple where he'd been shot during an all-out riot in cell block six. There was so much history on that arm, so many wasted and tragic years recorded in a book of flesh... and he truly was ashamed of it all. If he had it within his power, he would go back and do things so very much differently. He'd erase the decades of pain and replace them with snapshots of reclaimed happiness, would shake off the long and continual nightmare of his life.

Why couldn't they see that? Why couldn't they understand that he'd repented, that he'd thrown open the doors of his soul and finally allowed the phantoms of his past to pass through? But no, they only saw the child killer, the man who'd taken the life of his own son ... and they looked out for their own, didn't they?

It was nearly dark outside and a police car prowled the streets, announcing over its loud speaker that trick or treat would officially be over within fifteen minutes. All the little witches and wizards, the ghosts and goblins, would trudge back to their houses and spill candy across the floor while parents inspected each piece for needle marks or discoloration. And then the precious little bastards would be tucked into bed as the moon rose high in the sky. They would pretend to sleep as the houses grew silent and the night was left to stray cats and windblown litter. But at some point they would come. They always came, every year. Every Halloween. He had no clue how they got in. He'd make sure all the doors were locked, would prop kitchen chairs beneath doorknobs, and ensure every window was latched. He'd lock up his home as tightly as the cell he'd spent the majority of his life in but could now barely remember. And yet, somehow, they always found a way.

He trudged back to his chair, sank into it with a soft plop, closed his eyes, and rubbed the bridge of his nose between pinched fingers.

Why couldn't they just leave him be?

***

At same point, he must have dozed. When he next opened his eyes, Preston Sinclair was slouched in his favorite chair and his chin was sticky with drool. With the television now displaying only a test pattern and the radio hissing static, the house was almost completely silent. He could hear the ticking of the clock in the hall, the hum of the refrigerator, the creaks and pops of old wood settling.

His eyes scanned the room again as he pushed his glasses up with the tip of his finger. Nothing moved in the darkness, nothing seemed out of place or unusual. Perhaps he'd done it this year. Maybe he'd finally sealed his home up well enough that they'd slinked back to their own houses. Or maybe, just maybe, they'd grown tired of tormenting an old man, of playing with his....

From the kitchen, he heard a soft scuffling sound. As furtive as a rat in the darkness. But definitely there.

His heart hammered within his chest and he felt a lump form in his throat as he staggered to his feet. He tried to gulp but it felt painful, as if he'd swallowed a mouthful of roofing nails in his sleep. Wiping the sweat from his palms onto his boxer shorts, he called out in a voice that sounded more shaky and uncertain than he'd intended.

"Show yourselves... I know you're there, you little fuckers."

The sound of his own breathing filled the room like the panting of an exhausted dog. Blood and adrenaline whooshed through his temples and cool beads of sweat dotted his brow. But there was no reply to his challenge, no muffled giggles or whispered snatches of conversation.

Perhaps it had been a mouse after all, nothing more than some little creature raiding the overflowing garbage can for....

The scuffling sound came from this kitchen again, but this time it was accompanied by others. At the same time, he heard it from behind him. From the bedroom off to the left and the office on the right. Footsteps shuffling against the floor, vinyl swishing against itself....

And then they appeared in the doorways. All dressed in the same orange, tiger striped costume that hung off their little bodies like designer trash bags; all wearing the same mask strapped to their heads with thin strands of elastic. The masks had rounded ears, dark noses, and painted whiskers above mouths opened into fang-lined grins. The tip of each incisor was stained crimson and the eyes were nothing more than dark holes with only a slight glint of something else hiding back within the shadows.

They walked forward in unison, butcher knives clutched in their little fists and raised above their heads like some Hollywood psycho, tightening the circle they'd formed around him.

Their costumes rustled with each unfaltering step and their whispered chant punctuated their footfalls.

"Daddy... Daddy... Daddy...."

Preston Sinclair spun in a slow circle, his wide eyes pleading with the army of tiger children who steadily advanced.

"Please, no, leave me be, I've been punished, I've done my time."

But still they came, as if his words were truly as ineffectual as they sounded. Brandishing their knives. Walking with a slow confidence that seemed so foreign on such small bodies.

"Daddy... Daddy... Daddy...."

Tears streamed down the old man's face and snot bubbled from his nose; he held his hands in front of him as if he could somehow stem the tide of emotionless voices that stabbed him with each syllable.

"Daddy... Daddy...."

His quivering legs were no longer able to support him and he sank to his knees with enough force to make the windows rattle within their panes.

"I'm sorry, I... I'm so sorry...."

The children were so close now that he could see his own face, distorted like a funhouse reflection, in the shiny blades of their knives. Twenty Preston Sinclairs looked back with features blurred and pulled into a caricature of fear and remorse. Their oblong eyes mocked his cries while crooked mouths threw his words back at him.

"I didn't know... I didn't mean to hurt...."

"Daddy..."

Entirely ringed by the children, close enough that he could smell the new beach ball scent of their costumes and see wisps of brown hair curling around the edges of the masks.

"Daddy... Daddy... Daddy..."

The knives flashed as they cut through the darkness, descending again and again into the old man's skin. The wrinkled flesh split open with gashes that looked like tiny, puckered mouths coughing blood. It trickled down his arms and chest, splattered against the lenses of his glasses, and squished with each slash and plunge. Pain zipped through his severed nerves like bursts of electrical current and his gashed hands scrambled up the chest of the child right in front of him. He clutched the slick vinyl as screams ravaged his vocal chords, gripping it as if he could somehow convey his regret through touch alone.

"Daddy ... Daddy ..."

The old man's fingers hooked under the chin of the tiger mask just as the child slit the man's wrist with a quick flick of the blade. He yanked his hand away from the pain and the elastic band snapped, causing the piece of plastic to tumble to the ground. The boy who'd hidden behind it had chubby cheeks that gave the vague impression of a chipmunk and a small, round nose spattered with freckles and blood. His brown hair was parted with a natural cowlick and one tooth was missing from the savage grin he beamed at the old man kneeling before him.

"Daddy ..."

Preston Sinclair shrieked and pressed his palms against the side of his head as if he could somehow force sanity back into his mind. The knives continued their deadly arcs and his entire body was sticky with blood now and the pain felt as if he'd been doused with gasoline and set ablaze.

At the same time, darkness began to creep in around the edges of his vision and he had the distinct feeling of falling. As if he were tumbling backward into some infinitely long and dark pit. Flashes of memory flared before his eyes: he saw himself, still young, in his prison cell. His bed sheet had been twisted into a rope of sorts and curled through the bars on the door. The other end was wrapped around his throat so tightly that the black and blue skin puffed up around it. He hung, lifeless, finally able to finish the job he'd started on that fateful Halloween night so long ago.

And, in that brief second before the darkness completely overtook him, he realized the truth: crimes could not go unpunished, even in death. He'd been through this all countless times before. And it would keep replaying itself, again and again, until the universe deemed that he'd suffered enough for his deeds.

Through the slow march of eternity, for Preston Sinclair every night was Halloween.

THE WINTER EXPERIMENT

(Published In Macabre Cadaver, Issue #9, 2009)

My dead uncle's mountaintop cabin, day eight of my seventeenth experiment, one hundred and seventy hours that my subject has been shackled to the wall. All of the ancient rites have been performed, the proper incense burned, the instruments calibrated, and now I sit, watching and waiting. I have modified the cabin, divided the single large room into two smaller ones: the one I am in has the comfort of a wood burning stove, an overstuffed office chair, and a large two-way mirror installed in the dividing wall; the other room, the test chamber where my subject has given up screaming for help and is now pulling at her chains as if she could somehow rip them from the wall, is as cold and barren as the tundra outside.

The subject is unaware of the sensors surrounding her, unaware of the place she is taking in the annals of metaphysical science. She probably feels alone, afraid, only aware that she has been taken away from everything she has ever known or loved, held captive and questioned for reasons she cannot begin to comprehend...how could she even begin to understand how important I have made her, the impact her sacrifice will have upon the world if my hypothesis proves correct? I have taken this simple shop girl and elevated her into greatness, into the immortality that comes with the making of history.

Everything is in order. The door to the cabin faces the northeast, the direction the elders used to call the kimon, the Demon Gate, the bridge between the human world and that of the oni, the yokai, the yurei....

My electronics begin to flux wildly between extremes, room temperature dipping lower, lower still, then rapidly rising almost to freezing point before plummeting back down into subzero readings, electromagnetic fields wavering far above and below normal, the stylus scratching out a jagged scribble like the EKG reading of a seizure patient.

The door flies open and bangs against the wall with such force that the pane of glass in the two-way mirror rattles. Snow swirls in the air and scatters into the cabin like tiny creatures fleeing the approach of some ravenous predator and then I see her, the fruition of all my research and experimentation, the end result of countless hours huddled over the pages of forgotten tomes, of melding enduring mythology with empirical method, manifesting in the doorway and stirring forbidden emotion from this stoic scientist.

Horror and lust, wanting so badly to reach out and touch but fearing the searing cold that would surely shatter my fingers into a thousand crystalline pieces with even the slightest brush. So beautiful and deadly like a silver-eyed serpent weaving before me, begging me to drown in those mercury like pools, to see my reflection, to see the images playing out of me taking her, out there in the snow dunes: all primal passion, grunts and moans as she writhes beneath me, leaning closer, ever closer, her lips glistening and parted for that one final kiss, her mouth oh so inviting and ready to wrap my soul in her soft, secret places.

Those luscious lips move, as if speaking, but the voice seems to originate somewhere within my head, as if the bones of my skull are vibrating like the surface of a speaker and projecting the soft, lilting voice directly into my brain: Come to me, lover, come to my palace of ice, come to my frozen caverns of inequity, come to me... .

Look away, look at anything, at the instrumentation, the needles and gauges charting every environmental variable of the room, the camera recording each frame of this once-in-a-lifetime encounter. Stare at the clipboard, at your notes, at the smudge of dirt on the tip of your shoe. Watch the subject instead, how she has ceased to struggle against her restraints, limp and subservient now like a flesh doll cast off into the corner of the cabin: discarded and forgotten by the world of mortals, but a perfect plaything for the woman who came out of the cold.

Yuki-onna, the snow woman, yokai, myth, legend, the subject of a thousand nightmares and fantasies finally here before me. Her naked flesh as white and pure as the snow from which she emerged, her silken black hair cascading to the small of her back, lips as soft and red as rose petals blown by the breeze onto a snow drift. I want to run my hand along the smooth curves of her hips, to trace patterns onto her belly with the tip of my tongue, to go to her on bent knees and allow her to cup my face between her hands as she leans ever closer.

Yes, lover, come. Come to me, see what delights I have in store for you...

The subject gasps from her corner, really nothing more than a soft sigh but enough to sever the spell. I find that I have crossed half the room, that I am now just on the other side of the two-way mirror with my hand poised on the door knob and ready to turn. Ready to join her. Prepared to become a part of my own experiment.

Jerking my hand away as if the knob were a spider and I a fat, juicy bug. Look instead at the cabin's front door: see how Yuki-onna left no tracks in the snow, listen to the wind howling like a wounded beast, and notice that it does not seem to cause her hair to whip around in its frenzy. So cold outside, but not a dimple on her bare, porcelain-like skin, not a shiver or even the slightest indication that she feels the freezing temperatures of the storm.

She moves to the subject now, almost seeming to glide across the wooden floor. I try to look at her feet, to see if steps are actually being taken, but cannot focus. I see the vaguest suggestion of toes and heel but it's almost as if I were looking through a mist, as if they are struggling to take form in this world of flesh and sinew, wavering in the borderlands between shadow and substance. I feel the stain of madness seeping around the edges of my mind, want to cry and scream and laugh and touch...oh god how I want to touch, what would it be like to slide my finger into that fuzzy patch of reality, to have it span the gap between worlds? Would I feel feet or perhaps the strange sensation of existing simultaneously in two separate planes of existence, one of which was never meant to know the presence of the human form?

Touch me, lover, take me in your hands, embrace me with your curiosity, come with me, come now... .

No, ignore her words, focus on the subject, remember your purpose, observe, record, remain objective: Subject 17 is a twenty-four year old female, healthy, no history of mental illness, no professed beliefs in the supernatural, more resilient to environmental extremes than previous subjects. Slight bruising on the upper right shoulder, two pinpoint burns on the left side of the neck at Taser contact point, now appears to be in a catatonic or hypnagogic state, has not reacted to the presence of the yokai Yuki-onna since shortly after manifestation at 0200 hours. The yokai herself is like something from a fevered dream, alluring and beautiful, seeming to radiate an aura of sensuality in every graceful move of her arm, every slight turn of the head, the rhythmic rise and fall of her perfect breasts is like....

So strong, her seduction of the mind: who is manacled more, Subject 17? Or I to the allure of her temptations?

Yuki-onna leans over the subject, so close that surely the girl must sense on some level the presence of such a powerful force. If so, she gives no indication as the yokai pinches the girls cheeks, forming the mouth into a slight oval. Time seems to slow to a near standstill as Yuki-onna's lips touch those of the subjects, the slight hint of pink tongue entering the mouth. Crystals start to spread across the surface of the subject's eyes, like time-lapse footage of a puddle icing over, and Yuki-onna clutches the subject's hair in her fists, pushing the girl's head forward, kissing more deeply.

What looks like a plume of breath made visible by cold curls around the corners of the subject's mouth before being sucked into the hungry lips of the spectral seductress. Skin tinged blue now, ice forming on eyelashes, suddenly the subject is struggling again, kicking her heels against the floor, thrashing, the manacles clinking as loud as bells in the silence of the scene playing out. But there is no escape. She is captive within Yuki-onna's embrace, held so tightly against the naked flesh that surely the two will merge into a single entity if those alabaster arms increase their pressure even slightly.

I could know the taste of those lips, know the feeling of those breasts pressed against my chest, the tickle of her hair brushing against my nipples, the cold, cold comfort of her arms.

Come, Lover...

The subject no longer struggles, her limbs are locked in their final positions, a single frozen tear half trickled out of the corner of her eye, and her body covered in a layer of frost like a sculptor's interpretation of fear on a cold winter's morn. Yuki-onna pulls away from her, stands fully upright, turns, and looks at the mirror, looks through the mirror, looks into the deepest recesses of my psyche.

Come...

I am her servant, her toy, her willing slave, no longer having the strength to resist her summons. My body, my spirit, my life all offered up upon the altar of carnal hunger. I raise my arms to welcome her approach.

From behind Yuki-onna I hear a sharp popping like the sound of a frozen lake shattering into spider web cracks underfoot. I see chains that were once securely fastened to the wall, now seeming as if they had been dipped into liquid nitrogen and tapped with a hammer, fractured and laying in slivers on the floor.

The subject stands, her movements rigid and jerky, the film of ice across her body breaking where joints coax movement from stiffened muscle. She moves in front of the yokai, obscuring the object of my wanton desire from view. Something forms in the subject's hands, something long and slender and glistening, something like a cross between an icicle and a metallic spike, looking so much sharper and deadlier than any weapon ever crafted by human hands and gaining solidity with each passing second.

I see Yuki-onna's hand appear on the subject's shoulder, the touch light, familiar, intimate.

Lover.

The subject steps toward the door to the room I am in, slashing at the air in front of her with Yuki-onna's deadly gift as if testing it. Her frosted lips part ever so slightly and her voice is a hoarse whisper.

"You will never have her."

The door creaks open.

Funny how snowdrifts dampen the sound of screams in the night....

THE TEST OF DARKNESS

(Published in Ruby Red Cravings, Static Movement, 2011)

Sara O'Hare wanted nothing more than her blood to be drained from her body. She longed to know the night as intimately as the most passionate lover, to embrace its cold hand and allow it to lead her through the winding corridors of eternity. Perhaps the touch of death would lend a supernatural pallor to her blemished complexion... or maybe transform hair that was limp and the color of dishwater into something that was so radiant and flowing that an unnatural breeze always seemed to rustle through its silken wisps. If nothing else, the emergence of fangs would lend a more pouty expression to her mouth; and a diet consisting entirely of blood would surely melt away the rolls of what her mother always referred to as baby fat. The chunky glasses that slid down the bridge of her nose, of course, would no longer be necessary and her eyes would shine with a bewitching aura that mesmerized her intended victims into willful compliance. To never have the rays of the sun darken the freckles on her face; to never cower in the lunchroom like a frightened gazelle among lions; to never again be forced to look upon her own reflection in the unforgiving mirror: these were the things she wanted so badly that her soul seemed to cry out for them.

And he would be there, as well. A handsome prince of darkness with features so beautiful and perfect that artists had been inspired through the ages to capture his essence on canvas and in stone. Aloof in some ways, but so protective and devoted in others. Mysterious. Suave. Debonair. She would be his queen and together they would rule over the world of mortals from their thrones of inequity. They would feast when hungry, kiss when the moonlight bathed them in its magical glow, and slumber through the day in a coffin built for two. They'd live forever and the slow passing of the centuries would temper their love like the raging fires of a blacksmith's furnace.

As these thoughts flittered through her mind like a colony of startled bats, Sara sighed. She flopped over on her canopied bed and rested her chin in cupped hands; her eyes scanned the room slowly, almost as if she fully expected her supernatural lover to manifest from the shadows that clustered in its corners. The walls were covered with Twilight posters to the point that the pink paint could barely be glimpsed between their curled edges and the flickering glow of candles made shadows dance across their glossy veneers. The candles were black, naturally, and sat upon almost every available surface: wax dripped down the sides of bottles on the dresser, tendrils of smoke darkened the underside of bookshelf slats, and a tarnished candelabra splashed waves of light across the bedside table.

Though her door was shut, Sarah still heard the muffled shouts from downstairs: her mother's shrill screeching; her step-father's slurred, bellowing roar. Every few moments, the argument was punctuated with the shattering of glass as yet another plate or cup was reduced to shards against the living room wall. By the time they passed out, one of them would have a black eye. The other a bloody nose or swollen lip. Both would sprawl on the couch, bathed in a cloud of cheap whiskey and day old sweat, and the house would finally be as silent as a tomb at midnight. She would still wait until morning to use the bathroom, of course: there was no sense in tempting fate by creeping past them. The slightest creak of the floorboards could rouse one of them from their hazy stupor and remind them that she lived there, too. That there was someone smaller, someone weaker: someone whom they could prey on as easily as she intended to the living.

But, for now, she was trapped.

Rising from her bed, she took a pair of enamel fangs that she'd bought from the Dark Desires website and slipped them over her own teeth. These weren't the cheap, plastic party favors that filled space on drugstore racks every Halloween and she'd had to squirrel away money beneath her mattress until she could afford to transfer the one hundred and fifty dollars onto a prepaid Visa. But the craftsmanship of the fangs was worth the weighty price tag : they were so intricately crafted that they looked as if she'd been born with them. The incisors curled slightly inward and Sara ran the tip of her tongue over their sharp points, relishing the way they scraped almost painfully against her taste buds. As was always the case when she wore them, her mouth instantly flooded with saliva and she swallowed every few seconds, pretending that it was warm blood sliding into her gullet instead of the mint-tinged aftertaste of toothpaste.

After waiting weeks for the package to arrive, the first thing she'd done upon tearing open the box was bite herself. Not hard: just enough to leave twin dimples in the fleshy part of her forearm and feel the warning pang of pain. But it had been worth it. Her neck was so much softer than her arm and that exploratory nibble had given her a general idea of what to expect when it was her time to be turned. It would hurt, no doubt... but, as buying the fangs had proven, nothing worth having ever came without a cost. And this was a cost she would gladly endure.

Never mind that she'd been mercilessly taunted the first time she'd worn them to school. The jeers and taunting, the bottles of water thrown in her face as if it had been blessed by a priest, being jabbed in the chest with sharpened pencils in the locker-lined hallways: that bitch, Kaylee Jarvis (as always) had been behind it all. Just because she was a senior and dating the captain of the football team, that blond haired bitch thought she could get away with anything. But she'd get hers. Once Sara had become a child of the night, she'd stalk the cheerleader like a cat toying with a cornered mouse. The parking garage at the mall; the cemetery where the so-called cool kids swilled bottles of scotch filched from their parents' liquor cabinets; waiting in the shadows outside the gymnasium: wherever Kaylee went, Sara would be waiting... and that bitch would know exactly what it meant to be tormented before her miserable excuse for a life was cut short with a well-placed bite.

As had become her nightly ritual, Sara strolled to her only window. It was embedded in the wall behind a desk cluttered with textbooks and a tattered copy of Interview With A Vampire; flimsy curtains rustled in the same breeze that caused the flame of a candle to wiggle and dance and the wind carried the scent of honeysuckle on its wake. The chirping of crickets and the peeping of frogs wove a hymn to the night and she could faintly hear some night bird calling out like a lost soul.

Downstairs, her parents had escalated the war in the gulf between them. Crashes and thuds, curses and shrill, wordless screams that quivered with rage; something thumped against the wall so forcefully that, even upstairs, the window pane rattled. Sara closed her eyes and hugged herself as the cool, night air delicately kissed cheeks that glistened with silent tears.

"I invite you in..."

Her voice was nothing more than a whisper, softer even than the dry leaves that rattled across the yard below. But there was a desperation to her plea that was normally reserved for prayers offered by the bedsides of the dying. A tone of trembling exasperation that came when faith had all but disappeared and only the longing for a miracle remained.

She repeated the words again as if they were some sort of spell that could transport her far, far away from this dingy little house with its fading paint and crooked shutters.

"I invite you in, I invite you in, I invite you in... please, please come for me. Please. I invite you in."

She listened for the slight noises of his arrival, for something to shake the branches of the tree just outside the window as it climbed toward her room. For that deep, timeless voice to answer: I have come for you, my love... .

But there was nothing more than a dog braying in the distance and the shattering of broken glass from the living room.

Inside, Sara felt as though she were already dead. It was as if all of her organs had turned to dust, leaving only a hollow cavity beneath this fleshy facade; and it was so empty that her sadness echoed through the cavernous space, mocking her with its repeated cries.

Why didn't he answer her call? He was out there, somewhere.

He had to be.

Wiping tears with the backs of her hands, Sara opened her stinging eyes and sniffled as she gazed out the window. Fog rolled across the landscape like a thick, gray veil and robbed detail from world: the trees looked like dark, skeletal hands that forced their way out of the ground to claw at the sky and the distant lights of the Jarvis farm created diffuse halos in the night.

Between the two properties, she could just make out Pleasant View Cemetery. The tombstones were nothing more than blobs of shadow and the silhouette of a wrought iron fence surrounded the graveyard like a row of black spears. A trick of light and fog made it seem as if one of the stone angels that stood vigil over the dead was slinking through the labyrinth of crypts and headstones. It almost seemed to glide through the darkness, as if granite wings helped it hover just above the ground.

Only there were no wings, now that she really thought about it. And the figure was smaller than the imposing statues that were peppered across the grounds. They were designed to tower over mourners, to look down upon them with gentle, passive smiles and widespread arms, almost as if welcoming them home. But this shape was closer to the size of an actual person... and it really was moving. Not an optical illusion at all, but honest to God movement.

Sara's heart felt as if it were filled with fluttering wings and her hands tingled with excited numbness. The air suddenly seemed too thin and her stomach felt as though she'd just plunged from the heights of a roller coaster.

It's him.

He'd heard her after all, had answered her faithful calls, and come to bless her with the dark gift. She smoothed her hair with her palms and rose up to her full height as her eyes darted about the room. She performed a quick inventory to see if there was anything she'd want to take with her, some little memento of her former life perhaps: but there was nothing. Souvenirs, after all, were meant to act as reminders of good times, like little jolts of memory that you could call upon to ease the banality and boredom of everyday life. And there were certainly no moments worth preserving here.

She tilted her head back and to the side and thought about sweeping the hair away from her neck, but then decided otherwise. It would be much more romantic for him to do it, more like she'd always envisioned the moment: his cold hands brushing her locks to the side as his lips touched the throbbing vein in her throat... .

"No. No, no, no."

The hope that had welled within Sara deflated like a balloon riddled with pinpricks. She felt that familiar despair rush into her inner void and the midnight world rippled through a cascade of tears. Leaning over the desktop, she pressed her hands against the windowsill and yelled so loudly that her voice broke with the strain. "Where are you going? I invite you in, damn it, I invite you in!"

She continued to watch the shadow recede away from her, moving further into the graveyard rather than toward her house. The further it went, the more the fog enshrouded it. Within moments, he would be entirely gone and salvation would fade like the memory of a dream. She would be just another silly girl with her fake fangs and dark clothes, struggling to stay afloat as the flotsam of life crashed against her.

"Shut the fuck up! Don't make me come up there, you stupid bitch. I swear to God, I'll knock the fear of God in ya!"

Sara barely heard her mother's screeched threat. She clung to a single thought like a life preserver, one which allowed her to resist the undertow that threatened to suck her into the murky depths: perhaps simply waiting for him to come was not enough. Maybe she had to prove her dedication, her desire and devotion... maybe she had to show him how badly she wanted this.

Without hesitation, Sara clamored over the desk on all fours, toppling books and pencils onto the floor. She wriggled out the window and stood on the roof for a fraction of a second, took three running steps, and leaped over the edge. Her arms wrapped around the closest branch of the tree, but inertia was simply too powerful to resist. The skin on her inner elbows were scraped raw against the rough bark as her legs flew forward, and then she tumbled through the air.

Her body hit the ground with a thud that felt as if her spine were about to shoot through the roof of her mouth; the air whooshed out of her lungs and pain exploded through her body as black spots burst like anti-matter fireworks in her field of vision. But there was no time to catch her breath, no time to rock back and forth as she held her scraped kneed: even as she was laying there, he was disappearing into the night.

She scrambled to her feet so quickly that she almost fell again; but then she was running like she never had before. The dew on the grass was cool and wet and her soles padded against the earth as she darted through the fog.

By the time she vaulted over the iron fence, her lungs felt as if they were being jabbed with needles of fire and her thighs ached with each forced step. Part of her wanted to stop and rest, to allow time for the nauseating dizziness to fade. But the more time she wasted, the further away he would get. For all she knew, he could be on the other side of the cemetery by now, working his way back to his lair before the sun could tint the eastern horizon with streaks of orange and pink

For a moment, Sara stood and watched the fog curl through the gravestones like an over-friendly cat. She tried to remember exactly where she'd seen her dark prince, what direction he'd been heading, what landmarks had been discernible through the gray mist. But everything out here looked the same: crosses and slabs, square mausoleums with rounded tops, the occasional evergreen dotting the gently rolling knolls.

"I'll find him." she thought. "He'll draw me to him. Just like a moth to a porch light."

She ran blindly into the necropolis, zigzagging through the monuments and leaping over the markers that had been embedded into the soft ground. A few times, she thought she saw something moving within the churning tendrils of fog and changed directions sharply, toppling withered floral arrangements in a frenzy of motion.

"I'm coming, I'm coming... please, please, wait for me, please wait..."

In the end, she nearly tripped over the body sprawled across the grass and had to pinwheel her arms for balance as she staggered to a stop. The girl was lying on her side with her arm stretched out, as if grasping for the empty whiskey bottle that was just out of reach. Her blond ponytail was embellished with dried leaves and she was as pale and motionless as the marble Jesus whose base she was curled next to.

"His victim... he drained her. He's really here."

As Sara studied the girl's neck for the telltale bites, recognition dawned on her. Those perfect, high cheek bones; the upturned curve of the nose and rounded forehead; it was unmistakable: her undead savior had feasted on none other than Kaylee Jarvis.

Sara squatted by the body of her nemesis. The acrid bite of whiskey hung about the cheerleader in a cloud that was nearly as thick as the fog and her bottom lip glistened as drool slid out of her open mouth and onto the grass. A crumpled piece of paper was tucked just beneath the girl's outstretched hand and curiosity demanded that Sara snatch it away.

Squinting her eyes, she read the message that was scrawled in a masculine script on the back of the receipt, hoping that it might be instructions from the beautiful creature who'd killed this bitch for her.

"Babe, had to bail. Tried to wake you, but you were fucked up. See you tomorrow, Sleeping Beauty. PS: They're coming to get you, Kaylee. LOL."

As Sara read the note, Kaylee muttered thickly and smacked her lips in a way that reminded the young girl of her own parents... after the nights bout had been fought to a draw, when they were both snoring on the couch, safely tucked away into the oblivion they'd drank themselves into.

She wasn't dead, after all. She hadn't been left as a symbolic token or macabre signpost on Sara's journey into darkness. She was stone cold drunk, ditched by a boyfriend who didn't have the class or nobility to safeguard her most vulnerable moments, and would live to torment Sara for yet another day.

But why? Here she was, like a goat tied to a stake in the middle of a wolf den; coursing with blood and defenseless... she probably wouldn't so much as screamed when he took her. She should have been nothing more than an easy meal, but for some reason she'd been spared. Why?

Kaylee swallowed once and mumbled something about dancing dogs before exhaling deeply through her mouth. Around the two girls the cemetery was silent and Sara closed her eyes as she tried to make sense of this unexpected scene.

When she opened them again, a crooked smile stretched across her face and her eyes twinkled like they did when she'd solved a particularly difficult algebra equation.

It was all so simple, really.

It was a test.

A way to see exactly how devoted Sara was.

She lowered her head toward the sleeping girl and parted her lips, exposing the enamel fangs still securely held within her mouth. The warmth of her breath tickled the cheerleader's flesh and the other girl waved her hand as if halfheartedly shooing a fly. Her arm was limp, however, and she offered little resistance as Sara guided her slender wrist back into the grass.

Without further hesitation, she sank the incisors into Kaylee's graceful neck.

He'd come once she'd proven herself to him.

Once she'd shown him that she wasn't afraid.

That she could take a life as easily as she changed clothes .

He would surely come then.

He had to.

REVISITED

For nearly half a year, images of the girl haunted Slade McCoy every time he closed his eyes: wet hair adhering to the round contours of her cheeks, rivulets of water trickling down skin as smooth and pale as the face of the moon, and those beautiful, enchanting eyes. He'd only been able to steal glances into them as he drove, but those brief seconds stretched into eons in the no-time of memory. He could envision the green striations radiating from pupils that expanded and contracted in the glare of oncoming headlights, the darker ring that encircled each iris, and the way they seemed to betray her shyness as they fluttered to her water-logged shoes whenever she'd catch him looking.

With his own eyes closed, his hands would slide lightly over his bare chest, and he would imagine it was her fingertips lightly tracing the patterns that caused chills to creep across his stomach. He'd pretend he could feel the warmth of her breath on his skin, her moist lips kissing with just a hint of tongue as her breasts brushed ever so slightly against his body. He'd shudder and gasp as her imaginary hand slowly pulled his zipper and fumbled with the button on his jeans.

Even in the realm of fantasy, she always appeared just as she had that night: the white blouse plastered to the curves of her breasts like wet tissue paper, hints of a lacy bra beneath the green sweater that she tried to disappear into, and an ivory skirt embroidered with white roses. Drenched from the rain that pattered against the roof of the car, she tried to be cordial, but it was obvious that she wasn't accustomed to hitchhiking from the way she pressed herself tightly against the door and the nervous quiver in her voice.

"Mama's gonna be so worried with the storm and all. I've just got to get home..."

Even then, there had been something about her. Something that made him want to pull to the side of the road and hold her in his arms, to chase away the chill with the warmth of his body and protect her from the flashes of lightning that bathed the night in electric blue. He would be her friend, her lover, her knight in shining armor, whatever she desired ... he would gladly mold himself to the role as long as she graced him with just one more glance, one more smile.

Memory merged with longing as he matched the rhythm of his hand to the tribal drum pounding of his heart. The windshield wipers slapped a backbeat to the staccato improvisation of the rain, and he slid the soggy sweater off her shoulders as he nuzzled the slender curve of her neck.

"We've got to get you out of these wet clothes," he whispered in this dream world. "You're shivering."

But it wasn't the damp chill that caused goose bumps to dimple her flesh. That much was obvious from the soft gasps and sighs as he caressed her through wet fabric, from the way she leaned into his touch and gently spread her knees so that her dress pulled taught across her lap.

With one hand gathering strands of hair so wet that water squeezed from them like a sponge, he slowly pulled her to him. Her lips parted tenuously, and she closed her eyes.

And then it was over. Right before the kiss that never was, Slade's muscles would tense and spasm as he called her name in a voice guttural with passion.

"Sara!"

He would lie on his bed and struggle to catch his breath between pants as the ceiling fan cooled the sheen of sweat glistening on his body. With eyes still closed, he continued to envision her and felt as if the semen had pulled something from the very core of his soul. It had left a hole there: an empty, cavernous, hollow space that could only be filled by hearing her sweet voice once again. But there was only the ticking of the clock by the bedside and the steady hum of the refrigerator. Only the creaks of the house settling and a car alarm somewhere in the distance. So he would whisper her name again and again as if it were some sort of mantra that would manifest her into a bed too big for a single body.

"Sara ... Sara ... Sara ..."

***

In reality, Slade had never acted on the impulses that fluttered within his stomach on that night so long ago. He'd been a perfect gentleman, as always. He'd fiddled with the knobs of the radio, tuning in a station that filled the car with the soft strains of jazz saxophone, and adjusted the heater to help chase the chill from the trembling young woman by his side. When not working the controls, both hands gripped the leather covering of the steering wheel, and he'd tried to keep the conversation as light and non-threatening as possible.

"Helluva storm, ain't it?" he asked. "What are you doing out in the weather anyway?"

She'd stared past her own reflection in the passenger side window as her breath created little clouds of fog on the glass. "I've gotta get home. Mama always worries when it's raining out. And I'm already so late. So late ..."

Her voice trailed off into a mere whisper tinged with a sadness that made Slade want to assure her that everything would be all right. He'd get her home safely, and the worst thing that would happen to her on this dark night would be getting caught in the downpour.

Instead, he simply cleared his throat and said, "You're a grown woman. I'm sure your mama knows you're okay."

Even as the words passed his lips, he'd inwardly cursed himself. Why wasn't he ever able to say what he was truly feeling? Why couldn't he find a way to let her know the he would protect her, that in the course of ten short minutes he'd begun to feel as if he'd known her forever, as if they had been kindred souls in some past life who'd finally found one another after centuries of searching?

She turned to look at him then, and her fingers had toyed with the beads on the little handbag on the seat beside her. "Mama gets ... nervous. Ever since Daddy passed, she's always expectin' the worst. If the phone rings in the middle of the night. If I'm even the least bit late comin' home. That's why I can't leave her, see? That's why I have to get home."

A clap of thunder rumbled so loudly that the vibrations passed through the car, and he tightened his grip on the wheel. The road outside was slick and shiny, and the wipers struggled to swipe as much liquid from the windshield as they could. He'd eased off the gas when he felt the car begin to fishtail and somehow felt like a knight errant charged with seeing the princess safely to the castle.

"You just point the way," he'd said. "I'll get you there."

"You're very kind..."

Had it been a trick of the light, or had she blushed just after saying the words? He'd never been entirely sure. He wanted so badly to believe that the hint of color touching her cheeks had been brought about by the impression that she'd revealed too much of her secret feelings to this stranger. But it could have just as easily been the lights from the dashboard reflecting on her wet face.

"Uh, you sure you don't wanna stop somewhere for a cup of coffee or something?" As he asked the question, he felt as if his stomach had turned inside out, and he bit his bottom lip. His eyes darted to her and then back to the road again, and now Slade felt himself blushing. "I mean, you know, to warm you up and wait out the storm. You can call your mom and..."

"I gotta get home to Mama."

A streak of lightning split the sky, and the radio crackled and hissed with static.

"We're just about there anyhow," she continued. "'Bout a quarter of a mile and there'll be a little dirt road? You just hang to the left and take that road 'bout another mile or so. We're the only house out that way, so it's not like you could miss us or anything."

Slade had felt like a balloon with a pinprick hole when he'd heard the words. In less than a mile and a half, she'd be gone. He'd be alone again with only the banter of the DJ and the ghost of her perfume to keep him company.

"Uh, listen, do you think that maybe you might want to..."

"That old tree up yonder," she interrupted. "You'll wanna turn just past it."

The smooth pavement gave way to muddy ruts, and Slade had been forced to focus his full attention on maneuvering the car. The wheels slid in the muck as his body was jarred with each pothole, and he clutched the wheel so tightly now that his knuckles were as white as the bone beneath. In the distance, he could just make out the glow of lighted windows and the silhouette of a farmhouse through the slashes of rain.

He wanted to slow down, to draw out the time spent with this woman as much as possible, but he knew he would run the risk of getting bogged down in the mud if he did. So he kept swerving along the country road at a steady pace and, within moments, the tires were crunching across a graveled driveway as his headlights splayed over the cracked and fading paint of the house.

"Thank you so much. Mama always says there ain't no good Samaritans left in the world, but I guess you done proved her wrong." She leaned over quickly and pecked him on the cheek and was then gone, running across the driveway with her sweater held over her head, just another reminder of things that could have been.

Slade had eased the car back onto the main road, had driven through the storm as Billie Holiday sang the praises of Summertime, and tried to tell himself that it was silly. He shouldn't feel so desolate and deflated. After all, he'd only just met her. Did he really think that in the course of twenty minutes, he'd be able to sweep this beautiful young woman off her feet and they'd live happily ever after like some fucking fairy tale? That just wasn't the way life worked. Not for him at least.

After what seemed like an eternity of driving, he'd finally pulled into his own driveway. Somehow, though, his little townhouse looked as cold and empty as a tomb. He knew what he'd find inside: sports posters and jerseys hanging on the walls, three-day-old Chinese going bad in the fridge, and a trash can overflowing with empty two-liters. Not a touch of femininity, not even a hint of the fairer sex to balance things out.

He'd sat in the car and listened to the rain, wishing, for the first time in years, that there was a half-smoked cigarette butt in the ashtray. She'd been right there... the girl of his dreams. Right fucking there.

He glanced over at the passenger side as if half expecting her to still be sitting there. Instead he saw her beaded purse, forgotten in her haste to assuage her mother's fears.

The rest, as they say, is history. Slade had passed into the realm of an urban legend. In some versions of the story, he'd given his jacket to his drenched passenger and forgotten to retrieve it from her. In other tellings, she'd left her sweater in his car on that night. But the one thing they all had in common with the events that actually took place was that he went back to that farmhouse the next day. He'd walked to the door with the handbag in his pocket, had knocked until the door was finally answered by a frazzle-haired woman with eyes as old and tired as the cosmos itself. He'd explained what had happened as he offered the purse... only to be told, in no uncertain terms, that her daughter was dead and she was sick and tired of these cruel games.

Of course, at first he'd refused to believe it. He'd had girls give him fake phone numbers before and had heard practically every excuse in the book. He tried to tell himself that this was just a more extreme case of the classic brush off. Sara had seen him pull into the driveway from her bedroom window, had probably told her mother to tell him something, anything... and the woman had concocted this insane story about her daughter being killed in a car wreck. True, it wasn't a lie most people would come up with, but it was spur of the moment, and the way Sara had said her mother got nervous seemed to hint at deeper issues. Someone who was slightly out of touch with reality might say such a thing, right?

On another level, however, part of Slade wanted to believe the story. He knew it was fucked up, but somehow the idea that this sweet young woman had actually been a ghost was easier to deal with than yet another rejection. If she truly was a spirit, then perhaps the blush he thought he'd seen had been real; maybe the little kiss on the cheek just before she bolted out of the car had been more than just a friendly thank you. After all, a woman wouldn't just kiss a man for giving him a ride home, would she? Not unless there was something deeper lying just beneath the surface, an attraction perhaps that was hidden beneath veils of insecurity.

In the end, he had to know for certain. The farmhouse where he'd dropped Sara off that night was on the outskirts of a little town called Hinton. He knew from the battered mailbox beside the road that her last name was Brideswell, and her mother had said her daughter passed away three years earlier. Those facts, along with a trip to the Hinton Public Library, were enough to give Slade the answers he so desperately sought.

LOCAL WOMAN DIES IN CRASH

Police are investigating a car crash that took the life of Sarah Jane Brideswell, 23, late Thursday night. What caused the vehicle to roll over around 11:35 p.m. Has yet to be determined, according to Chief Daniel Roberts of the Hinton Police, but it is believed that the heavy storms that left many local residents without power played a role in the tragic accident...

Accompanying the article was a grainy black and white photo of a smiling young woman with blond hair cascading over her shoulders. As he sat there, listening to the rustle of turning pages and the occasional muffled cough, Slade stroked the photograph with the tip of his finger, tracing the outline of the woman's face like a lover. He tried to focus on the details of the story—the who, what, when, where, and why, as Mr. Snydley had used to say in high school, but his eyes were drawn again and again to the picture, and after the first paragraph, the words had become entirely detached from their meanings.

On the drive there, he'd played out different scenarios in his head as he tried to prepare himself for any eventuality. If she truly were dead, he's imagined he would feel pangs of grief and, most likely, a little creeped out as well. He'd never been one to believe in spirits, aliens, or Bigfoot; those were subjects best left to horror novels and Hollywood. But if it turned out that Sara actually was dead, then everything he believed about the world would be as shaken and confused as the little flecks of glitter within a snow globe.

What he didn't count on, however, was the way his body almost seemed to sigh when he discovered the article. It was as if he was weighed down with bags of sand and had suddenly flung them free. He hadn't realized that tension had knotted the muscles in his neck and shoulders until he was free of the invisible claws that pinched him. Happiness bubbled up inside him like a champagne bottle that had been shaken; the corners of his mouth turned up into a smile, and his heart seemed to flutter with invisible wings.

But then twinges of guilt plucked at his conscience, and the chair he was sitting in suddenly seemed more like some medieval torture device. The wood seemed to dig into his skin as if the back and seat were covered with hundreds of tiny spikes, and shifting his weight only seemed to make them penetrate deeper into his flesh and muscle.

Was he actually feeling relief that this poor woman had been snuffed out of existence before her life had really even begun? Was he actually happy? Was his own longing for acceptance and companionship really more powerful than the basic concepts of empathy?

But she's not really gone, he thought. She was there. I her. I her... she kissed me, for Christ's sake.

And if she truly had done nothing more than cross over into some state of being normally hidden from the living, what was there to feel guilty about? He wouldn't endlessly berate himself, for example, if he were pining for an old lover who'd simply moved to a distant city. This wasn't any different. Not really.

Yes, a small voice in the back of his mind insisted. Yes, it is. She's dead, dude. Are you seriously telling me that you're falling for a dead chick? What the hell is wrong with you?

But Slade was as powerless against his emotions as a scrap of paper before a hurricane. When he thought of Sara, the pit of his stomach grew warm, and it almost seemed as if he forgot to breathe. He wanted to see her walking through the stacks of books, to run to her and sweep her into his arms, her breasts pressed tightly against his chest, so full and firm and reassuring, and the scent of her skin as fresh and clean as a spring rain.

This is wrong on so many different levels...

The debate had followed him through the cluster of cars in the library's parking lot; it had cut through the soft strains of Ella Fitzgerald and Etta James as the road disappeared beneath his tires and followed him into the crypt-like silence of his living room. As the long shadows of evening crept across the shag carpet, he tried to drown the nagging voice in a monsoon of beer, crushing the cans in his hand as he finished them and simply letting them fall to the growing pile at his feet.

"But she's so perfect," he said aloud. His words seemed to drag like a cassette player whose batteries were running low as the room wavered in and out of focus. "She's everything ... everything I've ever looked for. 'Snot fair."

He wondered, for a moment, what Dr. Singh would make of all this. He could see himself sitting in the little office with its potted plants and muted color palette, explaining to the shrink how he couldn't seem to get this girl out of his head; how, despite the fact that her actual body lay beneath a granite stone in a garden of memories, he wanted nothing more than to taste her lips upon his own and stroke her cheek with the palm of his hand.

"Fuck that damn quack anyway. He wouldn't understand; nobody'd understand."

And he was probably right. He'd been seeing the psychiatrist for a little over six months now and, during that time, all that the little man had really done was throw pills at him.

Doc, I'm having trouble sleeping.

Here, take these.

Doc, I just feel so damn lonely and empty all the time.

One and a half of these a day will fix you right up.

The man should have been an emotional archeologist, digging away at the layers of Slade's subconscious in an effort to expose the ruins below, but instead, he sat in that leather chair with all the cockiness of a drug pusher who knew he was above the law. He wouldn't even attempt to understand. He'd just pull out that little tablet of his and scrawl out a prescription that would make thoughts of Sara dissipate like the morning fog.

Yes, yes do that, the little voice said. Forget about her, dude. There's other chicks out there. Better ones.

Fuck you, he thought. I don't want other chicks... I want .

He'd staggered through the hallway and collapsed onto his bed like a tree falling to the forest floor. He seemed to be the pivot point on the merry-go-round his room had become and closed his eyes in a desperate attempt to stop the ride.

She was there, in the darkness, waiting for him. He pictured her as she'd been in the newspaper article: blond hair carefully styled, looking slightly over her shoulder with a smile that exposed rows of perfect teeth. The curved bridge of her nose and the way her eyes seemed to stare at some hidden point in the distance.

Before he knew it, his right hand snaked down the waistband of his jeans and crept across the coarse hairs beneath his boxers. He pictured Sara and massaged himself gently, pulling and teasing. But no matter how much he coaxed the warm flesh, it refused to grow hard within his hand.

Because she's dead, that's why. It's like fuckin' necrophilia or some shit.

Slade kicked the sheets off the bed with a flurry of movement and flopped over onto his side. The tension was back, stretching his muscles into taut wires, and he wanted nothing more than to pummel the mattress with his fists as he gave the tears that stung his eyes free reign.

Of course Sara was dead. After reading the article in the library, he couldn't deny it any longer. But, at the same time, he remembered how she'd captivated him with the soft lilt of her voice, the way her eyes had seemed innocent and kind and loving, how she'd shivered beneath her drenched clothing and pushed wet bangs off her forehead with a flick of the wrist... those luscious lips and the air of vulnerability that wrapped around her like a cloak. Nipples, cold and hard, straining at the semi-transparent fabric of her blouse...

He worked himself as if he were actually sliding into her soft and secret places, thrusting into his grip with small gyrations of his hips. He could feel himself throbbing in his hand now; only it wasn't his fingers curved around the warm flesh. It was her hand that stroked the length of his erection, her lips that welcomed it into the moist safety of that perfect mouth. So shy, yet so willing, glancing up at him every so often as if to make sure she was doing it correctly...

After that night, he'd never pictured that faded photograph in the newspaper again. After all, it wasn't the Sara he'd known, not the woman he loved and wanted. That Sara the reporter had referred to truly was dead and held no interest for Slade.

In the coming weeks, he'd hatched a dozen different schemes in an attempt to steal just a little more time with her away from the gods of death. He'd bought a Ouija board from a local hobby and spent countless hours hunched over the planchette, willing the triangular piece of plastic to move in response to his questions.

Are you with me?

Are you here?

When non-verbal communication had proven pointless, he'd stocked up on white candles from the hardware store. They lined the shelves of his kitchen, sat atop the stove and refrigerator, and caused shadows to dance across the white walls as their flames flickered and filled the air with the scent of hot wax. He'd sat with his palms flat against the top of the little bistro table where he normally took his morning coffee and asked the spirit of Sara Brideswell to make itself known. But the only response had been the shrill chirping of the fire alarm as the collective heat from the candles triggered its sensors.

As a last ditch effort, he'd found himself sitting in the parlor of a little shop downtown. The room had a Victorian flair to it with its frilly curtains and heavy velvet drapes; a few claw-footed chairs were scattered about the room, and two hurricane lanterns, one on either side of a gilded dressing screen that dominated one corner, provided the toile wallpaper with a warm glow.

The self-proclaimed Madame Morgana sat across from him, and there had once been a time when his aura would have crackled with lustful thoughts. She was a dark-haired woman with olive skin and eyes that somehow looked like smoke. Her low-cut dress perfectly framed the silver pentacle that dangled from a chain and found its home nestled within the valley of her ample bosom. But now his thoughts were only of that rain-soaked enchantress who had weaved a spell around his heart and mind.

"She has a message for you. She says you must let her go. Only once you've found your own peace will she be able to move into the light."

But Slade just wasn't capable of doing that, even if he had truly believed that Madam Morgana could make good on her promise to "part the veils between worlds." He felt as if he truly knew Sara now and, if anyone needed to release her from the chains that bound her to this world, it was her mother. But if only he could be with her, then perhaps she'd turn that devotion to him, once she saw how faithful and tender he could be, how he would treasure her like the rarest of gems and spend the rest of his life in awe of her radiance and beauty... perhaps then he would find the happiness that had always seemed to exist somewhere just beyond his reach. He just had to see her again.

Which is how Slade came to find himself staring past the glare of his headlights as he flipped the ashes from yet another cigarette out the window. Stifling a yawn, he raised the Styrofoam cup that had been wedged between his thighs and took a drink of coffee that was lukewarm and bitter. Outside, the silhouettes of trees and darkened houses whizzed by and lightning occasionally flickered between the clouds that had crept across the sky.

He yawned and shook his head like a dog flinging off water before belting back the rest of the bitter brew and chucking the cup to the back floorboard. He'd once been extremely meticulous about his car. Every Saturday would find him at the Ready Wash, sucking up the little pebbles and bits of paper that somehow found their way into the carpeted mats with a long, flexible hose, but now his back seat looked like a garbage bag had exploded. Crumpled packs of cigarettes lay alongside countless coffee cups and empty blister packs of NoDoz. Wedged into any available crevice were cellophane wrappers and potato chip bags that spilled their crumbs across the seat, and once, though it could have been a trick of his exhausted mind, Slade had thought he'd seen the black eyes of a mouse peeking out from an old fast food bag.

The sound of the tires rolling over the asphalt was a low and monotonous hum that seemed to lull his thoughts into a field of sludge, and he flipped on the radio as he blinked away the stinging in his eyes.

" ...heavy storms moving across the region will dump two to three inches of rain by morning. Next up, we have the great Satchmo with the classic What A Wonderful World."

Slade turned on the right flasher and pulled onto a dirt road just past a gnarled tree. A battered mailbox sat atop a post with faded letters spelling out Brideswell. He shifted the car into park and sat there for a moment, listening to the gravel-throated Louis Armstrong and the idling of the car's engine. Drops of rain had begun to splatter across the windshield as he stretched his arms and rolled his head in slow circles.

He'd been at it for over a month now: driving up and down the same stretch of road while the rest of the world slumbered, safe and snug, within their beds. He'd return home just before sunrise and catch three to four hours of sleep before trudging off to the office with its seemingly endless stream of spreadsheets and memos. But even then, his thoughts were with this lonely highway. He was simply marking time, going through the motions of life until the sun had set and he could return to the search.

"You ain't going to find her by just sitting here, dude," he told the bloodshot eyes staring at him from the rearview mirror. "Let's get this show on the road."

He eased the car onto the road and headed back in the direction he'd just come from, beginning the cycle over again. Armstrong gave way to Goodman who segued into Lady Day, who seemed to be a staple of this particular station. By the time he'd looped around the parking lot of the Hinton Public Library, the rain was pouring down so hard that it sounded as if a troupe of vaudevillians were tap dancing across the roof of the car. His windshield wipers sloshed away torrents of rain, and something about their steady movement reminded him of the metronome Dr. Singh had tried to hypnotize him with once.

He turned the radio up so loud that the speakers rattled with the reedy wail of Charlie Parker's sax and rolled down the window until cold drops of rain peppered the side of his face. Two or three more passes and he'd have to call it a night. His eyelids felt as if someone had taped nickels to them, and the interior of the car had a grainy quality, as if he were watching an old black and white movie that had been projected onto his retinas. Everything seemed so hazy and distant...

Slade jolted upright and jerked the steering wheel to the left as a car horn blared just inches from his open window. His heart hammered within his chest, and he gasped for air while he maneuvered back onto his own side of the yellow lines.

"That was a close one, buddy."

He must have nodded off for a second, just long enough for his car to drift into the oncoming lane.

"Gotta stay alert... gotta find her."

***

Five miles back, a minivan had eased onto the shoulder of the road; the driver leaned across the seat and threw open the passenger door as he beckoned with his arm.

"Get your butt in here, girl," he said. "You'll catch your death of cold."

The young woman who slid into the seat beside him was so wet that trickles of water ran from her ivory skirt and pooled around her feet. She pulled a green sweater around her white blouse and hugged herself as she shivered. "Thank you ... you're very kind. My name's Sara."

The man behind the wheel turned on his emergency flashers and pushed his horn-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose with the tip of his finger. "We best sit here a spell. Let the rain slack down a bit. Nasty night, it is."

"But I gotta get home. Mama's gonna be so worried with the storm and all. I've just got to get home..."

The man frowned and shook his head slowly. "I reckon another ten, fifteen minutes won't make a lick of difference. Coming down to beat all Hell out there. I'll get you home in one piece; don't worry your pretty little head about that. But I ain't gonna kill the both of us doing it."

Nearly twenty minutes later, the worst of the storm had passed, and there was only a slight drizzle sprinkling the windshield as the minivan pulled back onto the road. The driver had tried making small talk with his passenger, but the only topic of conversation she seemed willing to pursue involved how worried her mama would be if she didn't get home soon. So he drove in silence, secretly wishing he'd never picked up this strange young lady.

As he crested a hill, the landscape beyond was bathed in red and blue lights that flashed like the strobe lights in the bar he managed. A policeman stood in a bright yellow slicker, waving him over into the next lane with a conical flashlight. Beyond the officer, the man could see a car whose hood had seemed to crumple and mold itself around a splintered telephone pole. Nuggets of broken glass glistened against the rain-slick road, and he could make out a body lying halfway through the shattered window.

"Oh hell, don't look, girl," the man said. "Some fool done went and got themselves killed."

As the minivan crept past a parked ambulance, a stony-faced paramedic unloaded a gurney from the rear and began rolling it toward the ruined car.

"Probably some damn drunk," he added.

Even with the windows rolled up, the driver could hear music blaring from the ruined vehicle. He listened to the muffled bebop for a moment and shook his head slowly. "Ain't never understood jazz. Give me some good ol' Southern rock any day. Now Lynyrd Skynyrd ... that was music, I tell ya."

His passenger looked out the window and watched as the paramedics eased the limp and lifeless body from the wreckage.

"We're just about there now," she said. "'Bout a half a mile and there'll be a little dirt road? You just hang to the left and take that road 'bout another mile or so. We're the only house out that way, so it's not like you could miss us or anything."

The man watched the accident recede in his mirror and shook his head again. "What a shame... what a damn cryin' shame..."

***

Tires splashed through a puddle and crunched over gravel as the car came to a stop. After a two-month dry spell, the skies had opened up with a torrential downpour that had seemed to come out of nowhere and, judging from the way the wind whipped the trees as if they were nothing more than shafts of wheat, it didn't look as if the squall planned on blowing over anytime soon.

The girl slid into the passenger seat and pushed wet bangs off her forehead before rubbing her eyes with balled fists. The interior of the car smelled like stale cigarette smoke and coffee, and the radio was playing softly. Her father had listened to this song when she was younger, and she struggled to recall what it was as she shut the door with a thunk.

She turned and smiled at the driver. "Thanks for the ride, mister. I'm Penelope... my car broke down about two miles back? You probably saw it when you passed. If you know of any twenty-four-hour garages or anything around here, I'd really appreciate it."

The smile on the driver's face faded, and the light that had seemed to dance in his eyes flickered out as he pulled onto the road. "I thought you were Sara." His voice was so soft that she wasn't entirely convinced he was actually talking to her. "I've got to find Sara. I can't stop looking, see? I've got to find her."

Something in Penelope's mind clicked, and she finally placed the song.

Billie Holiday. Yeah, that was it. Gloomy Sunday.

"I've got to find Sara..."

LOSING CONTROL

The first warning in the handbook states, in no uncertain terms, that there's some malevolent shit out there. This isn't a job for the timid or weak. To work in this profession, a man needs to be carved from stone; he has to continually face his own mortality and somehow not go insane when out there in the crossfades. That's what we call The Divide, see. Crossfades. It's like that moment in movies where Act One and Act Two briefly coexist. They touch one another and melt into a composite before one asserts its dominion over the other. The same thing happens with what we tend to think of as Life and Death. There are borderlands, like little pockets of stasis dimpling the surface of eternity; most departing souls pass over them so effortlessly they don't even notice their existence. But some specifically look for these warrens. They refuse to let go of the physical and hang on with everything they've got, sometimes creating their own cut scenes where previously there were none. Others simply become trapped.

For reasons we haven't quite figured out, the majority of these snared spirits come to inhabit the bodies of moths. Johnson, the head of Theoretical Positioning, told me once he suspected these creatures have the ability to flutter through both dimensions simultaneously. He compared them to bees in a field, picking up pollen along the way, but openly admitted the math to prove his hypothesis dangles maddeningly out of reach. Jewell, who should have been a poet instead of an assistant, insists this is why moths continually bat themselves against bulbs: these quantum hitchhikers know their paths have diverted and try, time and time again, to cross into The Light.

The handbook warns against this as well. We're not supposed to attach any emotion to the things we see and do. We're supposed to balance the stoicism of a scientist with the resolve of a soldier. Romantic notions are bad enough in the labs, but they can get your ass in serious trouble in the field. The slightest hint of emotion is like striking a match in the darkness: all things previously hidden are brought to light. With a mind of pure reason, you can see them. But illuminated with the passions of the living, they can also see you.

Which is where I come in. My official title is Recon and Enforcement Technician, Level II. When wooing recruits, the Agency makes it sound like you'll be some sort of cosmic cop, patrolling the beat and extending mankind's reach over the kingdom of the dead. After six months of mentoring you go solo and discover the truth. You're a glorified janitor, sweeping cobwebs from the corners of infinity. That's why, despite the handbook's recommendations to the contrary, we refer to ourselves internally as Whisks.

As such, life becomes routine. I wake up at six AM, have coffee and buttered toast over the morning news. I catch an unscheduled subway at an abandoned station whose lock is shiny and new, perfectly matching dangling from my neck.

My office is fifteen stories underground and is the nest in a tangle of wires that siphon energy from structures above. It's a vast network of relays, switches, and humming transformers that most eyes never see. We take just enough power from each home and business that the owners never notice. Distributed between hundreds of thousands of buildings, we steal enough electricity to power a small town without so much as a bill.

The handbook highly recommends keeping a journal such as this, but it also warns against mentioning specific cities. I could be in San Francisco or New York. Paris or Moscow. Like those I hunt, I exist nowhere and everywhere simultaneously. So instead, I'll describe my office.

It's a fairly small room with cameras perched in each corner. The walls are painted in soothing pastels and water gurgles over a stone fountain in the corner. I have potted plants that I never water, their needs tended by Maintenance, and instead of a desk there's a long, plush couch. Behind the couch are monitors and leads, all the equipment which tracks my vitals when I'm in the crossfades. And across the room is my partner.

I've been working with him for a year now and have never known his name. His body is frail and shriveled and the hum of the respirator keeping him alive is a rhythmic constant. An IV drips nutrients into his withered arm, ensuring he never awakens from his induced coma. Being under isn't like sleeping, you see. There are no dreams, no REM, none of the brainwaves you'd see in a functioning brain. Anesthesia is the little death people plunge into daily without realizing what lurks within those murky depths.

This much about my partner I know. He was terminally ill. They all are, when first approached. With medical bills mounting, the scouts paint a picture of financial ruin for those left behind. Wives, husbands, and children: in addition to grief, they'll need to deal with the strain of treatments insurance stopped covering long ago. Staying alive is akin to selfishness, but it can all go away by signing a simple contract. One signature and the patient "dies" in the night. He's whisked away to our labs and grieving loved ones are surprised in days to come by a settlement from a life insurance policy they didn't know existed. A very sizable pay-out that ensures their continued comfort while coming to terms with grief.

These Sleepers are the most important part of our operation. When tuned to the proper frequencies, their bodies act as conduits. Dry lips move so slightly that it almost looks like a trick of the light the thin wheeze from their throats could pass for the body desperately trying to breathe on its own. But in reality, the dead speak through them. Once, these people had loved and laughed and lived; but now, so close to the end, they're nothing more than eavesdropping devices and the snippets of captured conversation are dutifully recorded.

Position can be triangulated by the strength of their voices. The more clear and distinct the words, the closer the crossfade is to physical space. Algorithms I don't fully understand calculate a coordinate from this data and cross reference it with heart rate and brain activity. This, in turn, creates the equivalent of a pushpin in the topography of Space-Time. That pushpin is both my focus and destination.

As a Whisk, I've been trained in the art of meditation. I'm not the fastest by far, but I can guide myself into Theta in the same amount of time it takes most people to mumble their bedtime prayers. At that level, visualizing the golden cord is a snap. I let it out like a guide rope tied to my mortal body. A little at a time, taking tentative steps into the unknown. Layman call this astral projection; but to a Whisk, it's simply The Walk.

My Walks correspond with the messages my partner broadcasts and most are simply routine assignments. These are the spirits who long to cross The Divide. They sense the mystery and know the trappings of the flesh are no longer a concern. They've just become sidetracked on their journey and need a little help.

But, occasionally, things can go very wrong.

***

The day Albert Lewis was executed, my Sleeper screamed. His vocal chords rattled as neck muscles bulged and his body arched off the bed while his hands reflexively clenched. Beads of sweat dotted his brow and for a moment I thought I heard the sizzle of electricity accompanying a whiff of singed flesh. His instrumentation went haywire, spiking like a seismograph placed on the epicenter of a major fault as his face screwed into a grimace of clenched teeth and spasming muscle. To the untrained eye, it probably looked as if he were in the throes of an agony so intense that Death would seem a welcome friend. But I reminded myself that it was just involuntary contractions, no different than making a dead frog twitch with the application of current. I remained professional and detached, just as the handbook says I should.

Two weeks later, the other screams began. A dozen voices moaned through a single mouth, alternately pleading for help and yelling wordlessly. I could feel their pain and fear as clearly as my clothing, which suddenly felt too tight and constrictive. Loosening my tie, I leaned over my Sleeper's writhing body and peered at his charts before staring into one of the cameras.

I knew what this was. I'd read about it in case studies, but never actually witnessed the phenomena. I felt like a child who'd begun doubting the reality of Santa Claus only to awaken to a jolly fat man in red.

The handbook calls it a Vertices Collision Scenario; but to us, it's bad news.

"Chuck, it's nearly 3:30. Jarvis left an hour ago. Rollins hasn't come in yet." The female voice came from a speaker embedded into the ceiling. The familiar lilt sounded strained and I imagined stress creasing a face I'd only ever imagined.

"Alone, at last." My attempt fell flat and the woman I'd only ever known as Control let it hang in the air. In perfect silence, I looked up at the camera as I ran my fingers through my hair, weighing the consequences of the situation.

According to the handbook, it shouldn't have been a decision at all. Protocol dictates the data be handed off to a Level I Whisk, who'd have more experience in the field. Someone who'd passed the exams instead of continually screwing up the translocation equation.

"So what's it going to be, Chuck?" Control's husky voice always reminded me of a film noir heroine; I pictured her within the booth, masked by shadow as crimson lips parted just above the microphone.

I'd get my ass chewed and a mark in my file at worst. Or a promotion, if I played my cards right. What can I say? I was ambitious but it seemed like that damn equation would never give up her secrets. If I had any hope of making Level I, it would require a bold and decisive move in place of exams.

"I got this, Control." I was so naïve, I actually believed it.

What I've never understood is why Control gave me that option. She knew the handbook as well as I. Part of her duties was safeguarding my wellbeing. And perhaps that's what it was. Maybe a bond had formed over the years; maybe she realized my eagerness, my drive to rise to the top, and didn't want to disappoint me. Or maybe she was just bored.

Whatever her reasons, Control allowed me to walk to my couch with its assortment of tasseled pillows. She let me slip the Halo onto my head, an insanely expensive piece of equipment that looks like a hard hat's webbing. She let me close my eyes and open my chakras as I slipped from this body like a balloon from the grasping hand of a child.

She should have stopped me, damn it.

She should have stopped me.

***

Here's the thing about crossfades. Usually, they're simply void space. Unless you've actually stood in the heart of a singularity, you can't possibly understand the true meaning of desolation. In a place where the laws of physics no longer hold sway, your golden cord is your lifeline. It connects you to another place, a world of things and events. Without it, you'd never find your way home. Drifting through dead space for all eternity, neither alive nor dead but subsisting somewhere between. That, my friend, is my personal definition of Hell; and it's precisely what Albert Lewis strove to create.

Albert Lewis, as we all know, was an evil man. He existed at a crossroads between sadism and black magic, choosing to torture his victims for weeks on end before performing the final rite. Their suffering, he claimed, was like energy flowing into a battery. With every puncture, burn, and scream, he grew stronger. The field behind his farmhouse was a garden of corpses, each one dropped into a shallow furrow sprinkled with lime. Severed hands sat upon his mantle, clutching various ceremonial objects in their withered fingers: a dagger, a bell, the mummified heart of his mother. They say he'd painted murals in blood upon his walls, tortured landscapes of such detail museums would have displayed them if done in any other medium.

When a person as willful as Albert Lewis gets their hooks in a crossfade, they refuse to let go. Instead of being an empty pocket of nothingness, they exert their determination and create personal realities. The more convincing the crossfade becomes, the wider it expands. Textures, smells, and tastes take hold and the illusion of time reasserts itself. If left unchecked, it can become an entire world with thriving ecosystems and complex weather patterns.

My job, in a nutshell, it to keep this from happening. We try to clean up these transient dimensions before they become too real and the megalomaniac at their core is convinced of his own divinity. If allowed to grow indefinitely, a crossfade will draw other souls like filings to a magnet. Maybe they're fooled into thinking it's the promised land. Or maybe it's governed by the laws of attraction. The point is, once others believe in the reality of this custom crossfade, they're stuck there. Like flies in a web. And that convergence constitutes a Vertices Collision Scenario.

Albert Lewis had created a world of darkness. Storm clouds flickered with lightning above a scorched landscape of cinders and ash. Hot winds carried the scent of carrion on their wake and left an oily patina over what I thought of as my skin; my golden cord streamed from my belly button and trailed off into a blank horizon.

I stared into that black, empty space and closed my eyes. When opened again, my cord snaked like a phantom through stone walls. The blocks glistened wetly by torch light and condensation dripped from beams overhead, plinking into puddles on the brick floor.

I seemed to be standing in the curved stairwell of a medieval turret. Windows shaped like tombstones lined the wall, the stone frames surrounding them slick with algae as lightning bathed the structure in electric blue. Flames sputtered in the wind and drops of molten tar hissed from the orange glow of the torches. From somewhere up ahead, a woman wailed. Her sobs sounded as if they came from the far end of a long tunnel and I glanced back at my cord again, searching for reassurance in its presence.

"Remember the feel of warm sand against bare feet. Your 10th birthday, surprised with a trip to the beach. The smell of saltwater and gulls squawking overhead." It was Control's voice, seeming to radiate from somewhere within my mind. "Remember cutting your heel on broken glass, how the wound stung as your blood dripped onto wet sand."

She was good. With nothing more than my vitals to guide her, Control skillfully reinforced my bonds with reality, summoning memories from the physical details notated in my file. Her ability to capture emotion, to build a sense of time and place, was just as important as the golden cord. Without that, my cord would fade. Without her, I'd be lost.

Instead of succumbing to this false world, I turned and faced the spiraling, stone stairs. I heard other voices now, as well, lending their distress to a symphony of suffering. Whimpers, weak pleas for help and mercy, hysterical crying, and strained, warbling wails: their pain and fear swirled around me like an invisible demon. It raked the back of my neck with cold talons and chased chills down the length of my spine. It coiled around my throat like a tightening constrictor and plucked at my golden cord as if testing its resolve and durability.

Part of me didn't want to ascend those stairs. In the pools of shadow, I sensed danger, as if some lurking creature followed my every move. My feet had become leaden weights and I channeled every all my willpower to muster the strength required for that next step.

"Remember your training." Control again, establishing a link to a world of sunshine and flowers, of fresh spring breezes and laughter. "It's only as real as you make it, Chuck."

Another step and the keening of tortured souls grew louder. My palms felt as moist and cold as the stone walls surrounding me. My instincts screamed to go back, to follow my cord home and turn this assignment over to a Level I Whisk.

"Chuck..."

A spasm tremored my thigh, making the muscle twitch and jerk, and yet I still placed my foot upon that next stair. Ignoring fluttering wings of panic in my stomach, I focused on the next bend, the next flickering torch.

"Chuck, you have to keep that emotion in check. For God's sake, don't expose yourself. Commence Kundalini Breathing in three... two... one..."

Drawing a deep breath through my nose was like snorting a line of decayed flesh. The stench watered my eyes and infected my sinuses, seeping into my saliva glands and flooding my mouth with the sickeningly sweet taste of rotten meat. My diaphragm hitched in protest, expelling the tainted oxygen through choked gags that left my trachea feeling as if I'd belched fire.

"That's it. I'm pulling you out." Control's words were a panicked babble, shouted so loudly into her microphone that they crackled and popped with static.

"Negative, Control. I've got it covered. Mission proceeding." I tried to sound confident and relaxed, but even my own ears couldn't ignore the tremble in my voice.

The top of the stairs loomed closer and it sounded as if Hell existed right around the bend. So many voices calling out, such much prolonged agony erupting from their souls; for a moment, my head swam with the combined force of their anguish and I steadied myself against the wall. The roughhewn stone seemed to sigh at my touch and the torches wavered as if their flames danced with a gust of air.

Snatching my hand away, I waited for a reply from Control. But only the cries of the damned answered me. I pictured her dashing from her console room, fumbling with the convoluted override codes that would grant access to my office, and finally letting me see what she really looked like.

The problem is the passage of Time is a human perception. It would take Control three minutes to open that door and remove the Halo. Two if she were half as good as I suspected. But that seemingly short period can translate into days within a cut scene. Each construct has its own rules governing existence. Time, like matter, becomes putty to be molded and shaped at will. Help was two minutes away; help would not come for millennia: in The Divide, there's no difference.

My golden cord fluctuated like a fluorescent bulb on the verge of burning out. One moment solid, the next hazy and indistinct. I knew this meant my perceptions were taking hold, that this tower was integrating into my existence paradigm with each frantic beat of my heart.

The handbook says in a worst case scenario Whisks can implement an escape technique we call Crashing. I've never had to actually utilize it in the field, but mastering it is required to pass the Level III exams. An abrupt change of focus, like shifting a speeding car suddenly into reverse, and your body falls. All the different dimensions making up our universe become like intricately detailed stained glass windows stacked upon one another. Shattering one after another, the Whisk crashes through reality until hitting his own physical body with a jolt.

I knew I could Crash. I knew I could escape from that hellish tower and the nightmares that awaited, so close now that the stench seemed to emanate from the very molecules of the air itself.

I knew I could be free.

And yet, I chose to trudge on.

***

The chamber was as large as a football field and bordered on all sides by the same stone that comprised the stairwell. Moldy banners hung from the walls with scenes of torture fading into moth-eaten fabric. The glow of torches imbued the crude drawings with lives of their own, creating the illusion of movement in dancing patterns of light and shadow.

There were no windows in this room, nothing to convey that anything existed other than the high ceiling and impenetrable stone. Every few yards a column descended from the gloom overhead and planted itself firmly into the floor. As large as elevator shafts, they lined either side and the cobbled floor became a network of paths leading to each one. Grating covered the gaps between the paths and wisps of smoke curled above the blackened steel, born of the fires raging miles below.

Here, the sounds of agony were deafening and pierced my eardrums like sonic needles. Screams so harsh and shrill that they seemed to vibrate my skull with resonance were punctuated by gasps of pain. Blubbering sobs mingled with animalistic howls and from the far end of the room a man with a child-like voice repeatedly shrieked the word No like a protective mantra.

Underscoring the cacophony was a steady rhythm of clinks and clanks as the tortured fought against their restraints. The iron chains struck the stone columns as manacles scraped away skin, turning wrists into bands of glistening, red tissue peppered with frayed strands of muscle and nerve. The captives hung off so close to the floor that those with the energy stood on tiptoe in defiance of their trembling legs; others, too weak to fight, dangled like limp dolls. With bent knees and bowed heads, they slumped forward. Their body weight supported entirely by the chains, they swung slightly and gasped for breath.

Walking the central path was like strolling through Satan's personal museum. A stringy-haired woman drooped in one display and her torso had been sliced with surgical precision. Peeled open and pinned to her back, the parted slabs of flesh revealed organs that squished and pulsed as she shifted positions. In another tableau, a rat perched upon the shoulder of a doughy, overweight man and cleaned droplets of blood from wiry whiskers with swipes of its paws before darting in for another bite. Sinking teeth into lips, it pulled away strands of gristle that stretched like rubber before snapping free with savage shakes of its head.

I witnessed things in that chamber no man should ever see. I cringed as roaches scurried from beneath flaps of skin sliced into the body of a tribal warrior. My eyes teared as I passed a woman with an angelic face who was more skeleton than skin; sloughing off her own flesh, the sagging folds held to her frame by hooks and thin twine.

And yet, I persisted.

From the shadows, I a golden throne emerged. Comprised of gilded skulls, femurs, and tibia, it sat upon a riser of writhing people whose distended and mottled skin had been stitched together with silver thread. A tangle of arms, legs, and torsos: it was impossible to tell where one body stopped and another began. They moved as an uncoordinated unit, some scrambling for purchase and slipping in blood, crawling ever forward like a human rickshaw. With bent backs and scraped knees, they carried the throne on an undulating wave of flesh and their suffering rang through the air like fanfare heralding the arrival of dark royalty.

Seated upon this throne, Albert Lewis stared down with watery, blue eyes. His white hair was a disheveled mop of tufts sprouting from a face that looked as if it were carved from stone. With wrinkles chiseled into alabaster features, he pulled his lips into a thin, tight smile devoid of mirth or warmth.

"What have we here?" The voice boomed from the old man's body as loud as thunder and fresh gales of pain echoed from the prisoners as its vibrations flicked exposed nerve endings. "Have you come to grovel before my Mercy Seat, boy? Have you traveled all this way to present yourself as an offering?"

My golden cord was nothing more than a shadow by now, as thin and tenuous as a mortal's grasp on life. Knowing that answering would only mire me more deeply into his depraved realm, I focused on my hands as I'd been taught, willing them to be bathed in the white light that is my stock and trade.

"Perhaps you'd like to play with my pet, then."

As if in response to a command, a thing which was only remotely human scuttled from the darkness. The base of his living litter had been constructed with coarse fibers pulled so tightly that the skin dimpled around each stitch, but this creature had not been so "fortunate".

The base of its collective body was formed by two burly men on hands and knees with their asses facing one another. Their buttocks had been splayed extensively and then pressed against each other, conceivably bandaged, and allowed to heal into a single graft. Conjoined to them by the same technique was the body of a petite woman. Her legs were extended like a gymnast caught mid-split and the scarring that melded her thighs and calves to the men was like a jagged pink seam. With wrists severed, her hands had been replaced by curved blades whose barbs gleamed in the torch light like the teeth of a predator. Her face was a contorted mask of insanity, lips pulled back into a snarl, revealing a web-work of needles attached like braces to her teeth.

"This is my domain!" Lewis yelled as he leaned forward. "You think you can waltz in here with your little bag of tricks and usurp my sovereignty?"

His creature scurried forward, surprisingly quick and spider-like. The woman's hair was plastered to her skull with sweat and her face burned hotly from an infection which made her veins look like roots spreading through reddened cheeks. She hissed as her blades whooshed through the air and I stumbled backward, my hands flailing for the reassurance of my golden cord.

At that moment, I knew all hope was lost. I felt it evaporate within me like a deflating balloon; everything that had ever been good or wholesome was purged from my body with a gasp as my fingers clawed at nothing. No cord. No way home.

Albert Lewis' laughter echoed off the walls and ceiling, the reverberations seeming to grow in strength and volume as if his guffaws fed off one another like parasitic organisms. The mouths of his victims opened in unison, but instead of spilling more screams and wails, they resounded with the deep baritone of cruel laughter.

My hands tingled as if they coursed with the white light I tried to summon as I backed away from the clattering monster. I tried to narrow my focus, to envision the glow radiating out from them. One concentrated, well-placed blast of healing energy: that's all I was asking for. But was the numbness due to arcane forces gathering within? Or simply hyperventilation from quick gasps of putrid air?

"Welcome," Lewis sneered, "to my reign."

I don't know why, but at that moment a memory sprang to mind. I saw my grandfather on the sun dappled bank of a stream; squatting beside me, he pointed at the gurgling water and mouthed words I was too young to remember. But that was all it took.

I didn't need to see my golden cord to know it had returned. I felt it tethered to me like a weight that had previously been missing, anchoring me to my distant body and the world my grandfather had lived in. At the same time, my hands were engulfed in auras of dazzling light. Like the white hot centers of a twin explosions, rays burst from central points in my palms and streamed out, dissolving swaths of this false reality in their wake.

The beams of light spun around Albert Lewis like strands of a cocoon, wrapping his body in their brilliance as stone walls quaked and crumbled. I heard his scream, a yell of unadulterated anger amid the rumble of his construct falling away into the void. The monster he'd created stumbled as if the floor had just been pulled out from under and its individual heads glared at their insane creator.

"Die! Die! Die!" They chanted in unison and within seconds the call was picked up by every desiccated soul within the chamber. Some gurgled through a froth of blood, others wheezed from gill-like slits carved into necks, but one voice blared louder than the others; only the raw tightness of my vocal chords clued me into the fact that the voice was my own. "Die! Die! Die!"

Defiant to the end, Albert Lewis fought back. I felt his darkness seep into my beams of light like an oil slick polluting a river. It reached out with malicious tendrils, attempting to trace the energy back to the source as if following its own golden cord.

A tsunami of images crashed over my consciousness. I saw the people he'd chained in his cellar, heard their whimpered pleas as they begged for mercy. I felt organs beneath my fingers, like slippery pouches of warm velvet, tasted the salty tang of blood, and swelled with a god-like sense of dominion. I looked through his eyes, relived his memories, and felt what he had felt.

"Damn it, Chuck!" Control's voice severed the bond as cleanly as a cleaver and the entire cut scene exploded in a burst so brilliant it could have been the birth of a star.

When the glare faded, I found myself in the arms of a woman with auburn hair. My cheek still stung from her slaps but she cradled my head in her arms as tears streamed from eyes that sparkled like perfectly cut sapphires. The stench of decay was replaced by a slightly floral perfume and she placed a soft, warm hand against my face.

"Don't you ever pull anything like that again. Do you hear me? Ever."

And there, in my little office far underground, Control held me and allowed her purple blouse to absorb my tears.

***

The first warning in the handbook states, in no uncertain terms, that there's some malevolent shit out there. What it doesn't tell you is sometimes it follows you back. Like the hitchhiking souls in Jewell's moth theory, it tags along for the ride, returning to the world from which it came.

I feel him in me, lurking in the depths of my subconscious, and wonder how pretty Control's head would be if it were missing an eye or two. I imagine her chained in my basement, how vibrant and red the blood would be against her smooth, pale skin... her voice screaming a hymn to the glory of my will...

I fight it with meditation. I fight it with prayer and a hundred little kindness bestowed upon strangers.

I fight it.

But it's getting harder.

Last night, having pulled the information from her file, I found myself on the sidewalk outside Control's apartment. I watched her silhouette undress through a lit window and stroked the cool blade of the knife through my pocket.

It won't be much longer now. I'm as sure of this as I am powerless to stop it. She would be so lovely turned inside out, with her viscera quivering like a frightened pet.

No, not much longer; I feel myself slipping away and know it's only a matter of time before I lose control....

If you liked Losing Control you might also enjoy:

If you liked Losing Control then you might also enjoy:

Crossfades by William Todd Rose (based on the short story): "In a dark horror novella for fans of Stephen King, Joe Hill, and Dean Koontz, one unsuspecting man faces a mass murderer who's turned the afterlife into his own terrifying playground.

Some men fear their own deaths. Others dream of peace and heaven. But Albert knows exactly what he wants: to be the lord of his own private hell, where his eternal reward will be torturing the souls of his victims. And he knows how to get it.

While Chuck's dream of a promotion may be ordinary, his career is anything but. As a Recon and Enforcement Technician, Level II, at a mysterious organization known only as the Institute, Chuck spends his days rescuing souls that get trapped between this life and the next, caught in mini-hells known as crossfades.

Lydia has no dreams—only nightmares. There will be no awakening from the impossible realm of terror and pain where she's trapped . . . unless Chuck tracks her down. But this rescue will not be easy, not for a mere Level II technician. Because, in this place, Albert is god. And he's determined that none shall escape his wrath."

AND

Bleedovers by William Todd Rose: The exciting sequel to Crossfades which pulls you further into the shadowy world of The Institute, Whisks, and vengeful spirits of the dead.

Available wherever fine e-books are sold.

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

I Eat the Dead: I personally like this story a lot. In my mind, it shares a universe with two other tales in this collection: The Winter Experiment and Losing Control. Each contains elements of science fiction where technology and metaphysics overlap. Coupled with an intellectual curiosity in the Feeder/Gainer fetish culture, this laid the groundwork for what became I Eat the Dead.

Breeder: My wife likes to joke that I'm the only writer she knows who struggled for years to get published and, once he had, stopped writing. The back story behind this inside joke is that I had a story published in the now-defunct Twisted Nipples in my early 20s and then stopped writing for fifteen years. When I took up the craft again, Breeder was my first published piece.

Pickman's Next Top Model: This story was originally accepted into an anthology which entitled Tales From the Cauldron. Sadly, after two changes in editors and languishing in limbo for over a year, the book was eventually canceled. While this tale certainly met the requirements of the proposed anthology (a story about witches), I feel it also has undercurrents of a gender-specific apocalypse.

Writing Home: The first several lines of this story popped into my head while I was taking a smoke break at work one day. Strangely enough, it wasn't my own voice I heard reciting these lines: it was R.E.M's Michael Stipe. I have an audio CD of various people reading different works by Jack Kerouac and Stipe's performance of Pome on Doctor Sax really struck a chord with me. The man has a low, soothing speaking voice that isn't quite a monotone but is definitely a lull. I knew this was exactly how the narrator of this tale would talk, so Michael Stipe kept repeating these lines as I made my way back to my desk and hastily jotted them down before returning to my reports. The rest of the story was written in a Tim Horton's on my lunch and it has been consistently rejected as being "too weird" ever since.

The Haunting of the Mines: When I was a kid, I loved books filled with short, scary tales. They introduced me to authors such as Algernon Blackwood, H.P Lovecraft, and W.W. Jacobs ( to name a few) and fostered a lifelong obsession with dark fiction. They even inspired me to write my own creepy stories. So when I heard Ghostly Tales of Terror was to be an illustrated anthology aimed at the youth market, I knew I had to write something for it. And it seemed only natural to set the piece in the area in which I grew up. The bricked up mines in this piece really do exist, although the folklore surrounding them sprang entirely from my imagination.

The Blood Shed: To be perfectly honest, I don't really remember writing this story, much less what the inspiration behind it was. Never-the-less, I recorded an audio version of it for the Library of the Living Dead podcast and the file is available on williamtoddrose.com for your listening pleasure.

Cooking with Grace: When penning this story, I had a calendar pulled up on my desktop so I could ensure the days of the week matched the dates provided, even though I never specified a year. During the drafting process, I somehow switched all of the days to Wednesday without realizing it. This mistake also slipped by the editor's attention and was published in the book. When the rights reverted back to me, I quickly corrected this oversight so that the details would match again.

Every Night is Halloween: I was asked by a friend of a friend if I would be interested in contributing a piece to the Firemass Halloween Special Edition and jumped at the chance. For anyone not familiar with Firemass, it's a zine which melds art, horror, and magic into a seamless, single package. It's a great magazine that's also a labor of love and I highly suggest you check it out.

The Winter Experiment: When I first took up writing again, I spent quite a bit of time on a social network for authors called Writer's Café. There were different workshops and groups I joined as well as contests sponsored by other members. One of these contests challenged participants to craft a horror story centered around Japanese folklore. I've always been intrigued by Japanese culture and, at one point in time, could even speak some of the language... which is why I was immediately intrigued by this particular contest. For my inspiration I selected Yuki-onna, the mythical, Japanese snow woman, and the story that unfolded was the first time I attempted to blend my obsessions with science fiction and horror into a single work.

The Test of Darkness: With this one, I wanted to write a vampire story in which no vampires actually appeared. Inspired by crazed Twilight fans, I began wondering what would happen if the romanticism that's come to be associated with this archetypal monster took seed in the mind of someone with some pretty serious emotional/psychological problems. This initial idea resulted in the creation of Sara O'Hare and the rest of the story built itself around her.

Revisited: Revisited is another story which was written for and accepted into an anthology which was never actually published. At the time, I'd considered putting together a collection of stories which were based on the urban legends I loved as a kid (The Hook, Bloody Mary, etc.); the premise was to be the events in these campfire tales actually did take place and had basically went viral, spreading around the country in various incarnations of the actual events. Rather than simply retelling the stories, though, I wanted to explore what the legends didn't tell you, to see how these encounters affected the lives of those involved after the experience had passed into lore. Revisited was based on The Phantom Hitchhiker myth and was the only one of these stories actually completed; however, the beginning of one based upon Bloody Mary eventually turned into the first chapter of my extreme horror novel, Shut the Fuck Up and Die!

Losing Control: I really like the universe I created in this story and feel there's a strong chance I'll be returning to it again, perhaps in novel form. The most intriguing part of the tale (for me at least) was the office my protagonist worked in. Though we've been slacking at it recently, for a while my wife and I were avid geocachers (for those unfamiliar with geocaching, it's basically a GPS treasure hunt where you use multimillion dollar government satellites to find hidden Tupperware containers filled with trinkets). Many of the hidden caches are secreted away in the woods, but you'd be surprised how many urban geocaches are out there. I'd walked or driven by some of them every day for years, never knowing that something was stashed away right under my nose. When I wrote this particular story, the underground office building was – in essence – a giant Tupperware bowl whose location was only known to a select few. But, of course, I also wanted to be a spy when I was a kid... so that might have something to do with it as well.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Named by the Google+ Insider's Guide as one of their top 32 authors to follow, William Todd Rose writes dark, speculative fiction which often lends itself to the bizarre and macabre. With short stories appearing in various magazines and anthologies, his body of work also includes the novels Cry Havoc, Shut The Fuck Up and Die!, The Dead and Dying, and The Seven Habits of Highly Infective People, as well as the short story collection Sex in the Time of Zombies. For more information on the author, including links to free fiction, please visit him online at www.williamtoddrose.com

