 
# The Eclective:

### The Time Collection

With stories by:

Heather Marie Adkins

Greg James

M. Edward McNally

Shéa MacLeod

Alan Nayes

CD Reiss

Tara West

G.R. Yeates

Copyright © 2013 by the Eclective

Smashwords Edition

The eight authors in this collection retain and hold their individual respective rights to their stories.

This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited.

Cover Art by Christine DeMaio-Rice

Interior Formatting by CyberWitch Press, LLC

Visit the Eclective at eclectivebooks.com

# A Stitch In Time

### Shéa MacLeod

"Branwen, it has come to our attention that you have been getting a little too cozy with these humans."

"Oh, it has, has it?" Branwen, ancient Welsh goddess of love and beauty, stabbed viciously at a bit of greenery on her plate. She'd wanted a plate of Applebee's deliciously sticky ribs, but had settled for their boring house salad. Diets pissed her off. Thor pissed her off more.

Thanks to that idiotic movie with that gorgeous Australian, Thor was currently the most powerful god in the Pantheon. Apparently Viking gods were far more Hollywood than ancient Welsh goddesses and movie fandom was close enough to divine worship to count. The more worship a god (or goddess) received, the more powerful he (or she) became. Unfortunately they weren't making a lot of deity films in Wales these days.

It annoyed Branwen no end. Thunder Boy had always been such a pompous ass and the unending adoration was making his ego bigger by the minute. Never mind that in reality he looked nothing like that sexy blond Viking hunk of human imagination.

She scowled as Thor tossed back the last of his cheap beer, a bit of it dribbling down his scraggly beard and landing on his big belly. Well, he certainly had the Viking manners down pat.

"You know we need to keep a low profile." Thor swiped one hand across his thick lips and then down the front of his shirt, leaving a stinking wet smear.

"Hmmm." She kept her tone noncommittal, but her brain was making plenty of snide comments. _You're one to talk_.

"It is not good to draw the attention of those dirty little mortals."

"Mmm." _Like you're doing right now, you splenetic jackass?_

"And interfering in their lives." He shook his head. "Not at all acceptable, Branwen."

"Ah." She rolled her eyes as he snapped his finger at the harried waitress.

"Wench! Bring me more of these potato sticks." He slapped the empty plastic basket on the table, spraying crumbs and ketchup drops in every direction. Gods, she'd never be able to show her face in Applebee's again.

"They're called fries, Thor." _Why can't you be more like Loki?_ For all he was portrayed as the bad guy, Branwen had a soft spot for Thor's younger, hotter brother. Something which she knew irked Thor no end. Which was probably why he was enjoying this so much. _Scuttleheaded hog-grubber._

"I am sorry, Branwen, but we have no choice. We can not allow others to run about doing whatever they like. We must make an example of you."

Unfortunately with the extra power boost, he could do it, too. "We?"

"The Pantheon, of course."

"Right." More like those idiotic sycophants that had once been Greek goddesses. They kissed Thor's butt everywhere he went and backed up whatever idiotic plan he came up with. "I suppose Loki is in on this, too." She supposed no such thing. She knew very well the brothers would rather kill each other than agree on anything.

Thor snorted. "Please. He hasn't left his Fortress of Freaking Solitude in at least a hundred years."

"So how exactly do you plan to make an example of me?"

"By exiling you somewhere you can do no damage."

Branwen snorted. _I'd like to see you try._

* * *

Light stabbed at Branwen's eyes, shooting pain straight up into her skull. She groaned. Why had she thought she could keep up with Thor in the drinking department? And who the heck left the curtains open?

She groaned again and buried her face in her pillow. _Somebody kill me now._

"I'm sorry, milady. Would you like me to close the curtains?"

Branwen froze mid moan. There was someone in her room. She cautiously opened one eye and squinted at the slight figure standing deferentially beside her bed. The figure was wearing a shower cap. No. Wait. It was one of those lacy hat things \- a mob cap.

Sitting bolt upright in bed, Branwen ignored her roiling stomach and throbbing head. "Who the blazes are you?"

The girl looked so startled, Brawen thought she might pass out. Clearly she wasn't used to being accosted whilst about her duties. "Milady," she squeaked. "I'm - I'm your lady's maid."

Lady's maid? Mob cab? He couldn't have.

"You got a name?"

"Yvette, milady." The maid bobbed an awkward curtsey.

Branwen frowned as her sluggish brain began making connections. "You're not French."

"N-no, milady. You prefer Yvette to Janet, milady," the girl said almost apologetically.

"Shit." Branwen let out a string of colorful words that made the girl with the fake French name blanch.

"M-milady?"

Branwen took in the girl's outfit. Even underneath her white apron, Branwen could see the weight of the gown sat just under the maid's rather unimpressive rack.

Holy Hades. Thor, the rat bastard. He did it!

"What is the date?" Branwen demanded, throwing back the thick coverlet.

"Milady?"

"The year, girl. What year is it?" Branwen snapped her fingers. Gods, the girl was thick.

"The year of our Lord Eighteen-hundred and Thirteen, milady," Yvette said promptly, rushing to help Branwen into a robe thingy.

_Wrapper_ , Branwen reminded herself. Two hundred years and things got a little fuzzy. She froze as the maid did up the ties. Yep. Thor had definitely sent her back in time and there was no way she could undo what he'd done. Even at full charge, she didn't have enough power to get herself back to the modern era and he knew it.

She took quick stock of her powers, such as they were. Mind reading (sort of) - check. Seeing the future (more or less) - check. Minor glamors - check. Everything else was gone. Which meant she'd have to do things the old fashioned way: by using her wits.

"That bastard!"

Yvette blanched again. "Milady?"

"Never mind. Where are we?"

The maid clearly struggled with the question. "At - at Balle House, milady."

"And what, exactly, is a Balle House?"

A blank stare, shuffling of feet, a little cough, and finally, "It's a stately manor, milady. Near the village of Merriwild in Devon. We came down from London two days ago. His lordship felt you needed a...rest in the country."

Memories tingled at the edge of Branwen's brain. Not real ones, of course, but fake ones placed there by that dratted Viking arse of a god. Dead husband. Rich father-in-law. Etc., etc.

He didn't like her meddling in the affairs of humans? Well, she'd just see how he liked her meddling with the past.

"Got it. Is that my breakfast?" Branwen nodded toward a silver tray the maid had placed on a small table next to the window.

"A snack, milady. Breakfast will be served at ten as you ordered." By her expression it was clear Yvette thought eating straight after getting out of bed was beyond shocking. Branwen could care less. She was starving.

"Excellent. You get my bath ready while I eat. We've quite the day ahead of us."

"B-but, milady, this is Wednesday."

"And?"

The maid ducked her head. "Yes, milady."

As she scurried off, Branwen plopped into a chair and took a sip of thick, hot chocolate before lifting the lid off her plate. A couple slices of toasted bread, a pat of butter, and a small pot of...she sniffed...strawberry preserves. Hardly enough to feed a gnat, but it would do for starters.

As she dug in she amused herself by envisioning ways in which she could get revenge on Thor. Castration held an appeal, though the things would just grow back. He was a god, after all. But he deserved something. Something bad.

Branwen, goddess of love and beauty, was stuck in the freaking Regency.

* * *

"What an excellent sandwich." Branwen's latest caller nibbled delicately on something that reeked of boiled egg and vinegar.

"Thank you, Mrs. Farrington." Branwen smiled thinly. She had forgotten that mayonnaise hadn't made it to England yet. Ordering egg sandwiches had been a mistake. But at least it was better than anchovy. Ghastly. As such, she hadn't touched a single sandwich and her stomach was in danger of letting out some truly embarrassing noises. Not that she cared. But Mrs. Farrington would probably have a conniption or something.

"I must say it is a delight to have another lady of such fine taste and refinement here in our small village." Another nibble of stinky sandwich followed by a sip of tea. "We are remarkably lacking in good company, if I do say so myself. Though I do _try_ to set an example of refinement for others to follow." Mrs. Farrington's tone made it clear she felt those others to be far beneath herself. "Eventually I shall win them over. I am nothing if not persistent."

"I'm sure," Branwen murmured politely. If Mrs. Farrington was an example of Regency refinement, the village was in trouble. Between the yards of burgundy gauze and the swaths of gold fringe, the woman was a sight to behold. Never mind the fact that her amble bosom was in danger of heaving up and out of her stays.

Branwen would give just about anything to have her powers back. She could squash the bothersome woman like a bug. Unfortunately she was a stranger in a strange land and offending the locals wasn't exactly the best way to start out. Especially with her powers at low ebb. At least Thor had the decency to create an instant backstory for her: wealthy widow relocating from London. As if.

Still, she supposed it was better than it could have been. The first time around the Regency, she'd been languishing in a forgotten shrine in rural Wales with barely enough power to light a candle. It wasn't like she could go to herself for help.

"...don't you think, Mrs. Nash?"

Crap. She hadn't been paying attention. Fortunately her visitor didn't actually need an answer. Mrs. Farrington simply prattled on.

"Oh, my. These are delightful." Mrs. Farrington waved a small, frosted morsel around, nearly upsetting her tea cup in the process. "What do you call them?"

"Cupcakes."

She may have forgotten the Regency's lack of mayo, but she hadn't forgotten the dearth of cupcakes. Coming up with a decent recipe had been easy enough. Convincing cook to make them for tea had been a bit more...challenging.

"Oh, my," Mrs. Farrington said again. "Are they all the rage in London? I knew you were a lady of refinement. Much like myself. Or at least so it has been said. Though, of course, my friends would say I serve a superior cake."

"They are wonderful," said a voice. "Thank you, Mrs. Nash."

Branwen glanced at her second visitor with some surprise. For a moment she'd forgotten the other woman even existed, she was so quiet and mousy. What was her name? Crap.

"You are most welcome, Miss..." Her name, dammit! What was her freaking name? "...Talbot."

The girl, who couldn't have been more than eighteen, blushed furiously and returned to staring at her plate. It didn't surprise Branwen at all to find her with such a creature as Mrs. Farrington. Women of Mrs. Farrington's ilk enjoyed having minions to lord over. Unfortunately for the girl, if she didn't get out from underneath the Farrington woman's thumb, she'd never have a life of her own.

Branwen felt her lips curving in a smile. She could feel that giddiness coming on. That little spark that said: Project!

"Ladies," she rudely interrupted Mrs. Farrington's prattle. "I think I shall host a ball."

"Why Mrs. Nash. I do think that quite the most splendid idea," Mrs. Farrington gushed.

As the annoying woman droned on and on about menus and colors and sets, Branwen kept her eyes on the shy Miss Talbot. The girl's cheeks were flushed pink and while she kept her eyes downcast, Branwen detected a distinct sparkle. Interesting.

"Miss Talbot," she interrupted the Farrington woman mid-sentence, "you will, of course, be my very special guest."

Miss Talbot's eyes grew wide, her cheeks even more flushed. "Oh, Mrs. Nash," she breathed, "you are too kind." Her teacup rattled precariously against its saucer. It was a wonder the girl didn't pass out on the floor she was shaking so hard. Hopefully with excitement and not abject fear.

"Not at all, my dear." Branwen nodded regally. Regal she could do. She was, after all, a goddess. Even if a fairly minor one. "You must visit me again tomorrow so we may have a _private_ discussion regarding our gowns and other such matters."

"Yes, Mrs. Nash. I would be delighted."

It was clear that Mrs. Farrington was not at all delighted, but there was nothing the harridan could do but sit there gaping like a fish. Branwen was well aware that she'd most likely made an enemy, but hopefully she wouldn't be around that long. And, after all, she was supposedly the widow of the first son of a wealthy baron and Mrs. Farrington was only a baronet's grandniece or some such thing. Which meant, in a village like this, Branwen had enough leeway to cut Mrs. Farrington if necessary.

"For now," Branwen said, plucking another cupcake from the tea tray, "let us discuss whom we shall invite. Are there any young eligible gentlemen of good fortune in the village?"

* * *

The brass plaque on the plain wooden door read simply "Mr. Henry Pease, Esq." Nothing to get excited about, but it was a step in the right direction to returning to the twenty-first century. Granted, the Regency had its pluses, but Branwen was a woman fond of her modern creature comforts, for all she was an ancient goddess.

Her brisk rap on the door was answered by a plump, middle aged woman in maid's dress. Clearly trade in this neck of the wood wasn't enough to keep Mr. Henry Pease, Esq. in more than modest comfort.

"Mrs. Nash to see Mr. Pease."

The maid bobbed a curtsey and ushered Branwen into a small room off the hall which was mostly taken up very large desk and a vast number of books. Behind the desk sat a small man with thick lensed glasses and a valiant attempt at a combover.

"Mrs. Nash! Please, please, come in. Welcome. Emily, bring tea." The man leapt from the desk and rushed around to etch out a surprisingly elegant bow, before offering Branwen a seat on what was clearly his best chair. In fact, as far as she could see, it was his only chair. Although from the state of things, there might have been one or two others hiding underneath the mounds of books.

"Thank you, Mr. Pease." She smoothed her skirts as she perched carefully on the edge of the chair. Thank goodness Thor hadn't sent her to the Victorian era. She'd have never managed those damn bustles.

After the appropriate amount of pleasantries, Branwen decided it was time to charge forward. Niceties be damned. "Now, Mr. Pease, the reason I have come is that I need to retain your services."

Mr. Pease's eyes widened and a flush stained his throat and cheeks. He spluttered a bit before finally managing, "Mrs. Nash, you are most gracious, but surely your man of business has a solicitor..."

"Mr. Pease, I am not accustomed to being told how to do my business."

"My apologies." He somehow managed to make another bow from behind his desk. "How may I be of assistance?"

Branwen pulled a letter from her reticule and laid it on his desk. "This letter, Mr. Pease, is of extreme importance. I wish you to hold it in your possession, and that of your heirs, until exactly this day two hundred years hence."

As she spoke, the man's eyes grew wider and wider until she was half afraid they might pop out of his head. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. "Mrs. Nash, this is a most unusual request."

"Of course it is," she said. "That is why I am giving you this." She laid a certain sum next to the letter. His eyes got even wider, if possible. "I know it is crass to speak of such things as money, but it is necessary. I want this done properly. Do you understand?"

"Mrs. Nash, I really do appreciate your faith in me, but I cannot guarantee such a thing can be done. I am..." He spread his hands. "As you see, without wife or heir. I have no partner. Likely this firm will not survive my death."

Branwen gave him a smile that could only be interpreted as knowing. She had just enough power to check in with a few otherworldy friends and they'd told her exactly what she needed to know about a very prestigious law firm in London that had started out in 1802 as a one man band in a hick village somewhere in rural England.

"Don't you worry, Mr. Pease," she said. "Just make sure it stays safe and that someone delivers it to the address noted two hundred years from today."

"Of course, Mrs. Nash. I will do my utmost. May I ask what it is?"

Branwen's smile widened. "Of course, Mr. Pease. It is an invitation."

* * *

For the next month Branwen was kept too busy to think about her visit with Mr. Pease or the expected outcome of her endeavor. She was arranging what would no doubt be the ball to end all balls. The denizens of Merriwild would no doubt speak of it for generations to come. Just as she liked it. Between that and keeping Miss Talbot out of Mrs. Farrington's clutches, there wasn't time to worry about anything else.

Pausing in the middle of the ballroom entry, Branwen surveyed her handiwork with a smile. Impressive, if she said so herself.

The bright light of the chandeliers and grandioles spilled across the ballroom floor, showing the chalked arabesques to great advantage. The artist had charged a ridiculous sum, but Branwen was determined that her ball be as good as anything the _ton_ , England's cream of society, had to offer. Probably wasted in the country. Still, they were incredible pieces of artwork and Branwen adored pretty things.

The musicians were already in place, running through a merry tune. The ballroom doors leading onto the garden had been thrown open letting in fresh air and the scent of flowers in bloom. Some would not approve, but Branwen didn't intend to stick around long enough to find out.

In a small room adjoining the ballroom, a table had been laid out with refreshments. Lemonade and sweet, spicy negus would refresh parched throats. Muscadine and other exotic ices would cool. And for hungry stomachs, every delightful nibble including, of course, her cherished cupcakes.

"Milady, the first guests are arriving."

"Thank you, Hastings." Branwen nodded to the elderly butler.

Branwen eyed each of her male visitors carefully as they were announced, receiving them in the proper way. Not a single one was appropriate for poor Miss Talbot. Shaking her head in frustration, Branwen paired up a few couples and got the dancing started. She herself proved that her dancing days weren't entirely over.

It was nearing eleven o'clock and most of her guests had long since arrived when there was a commotion near the ballroom door. Two gentlemen appeared in the doorway. Hurrying to take her place to receive the late comers, Branwen felt an odd stirring at the sight of a familiar figure.

"Lord Northington," the butler intoned. "And Mr. Wentworth."

As the impossibly handsome Lord Northington bowed his dark head, Branwen couldn't help the sigh that escaped her lips. "Loki."

* * *

A smile curved Loki's luscious lips. His green eyes sparkled with both merriment and some naughtiness. "Good evening, Branwen. You're looking well." He kept his voice low, so his companion couldn't overhear.

She simpered like an idiot, moving her figure just so in order that he might catch a glimpse of rounded hip and ample bosom. Loki always did like plumper ladies and he brought out the bimbo in her big time.

"Please let me introduce, Mr. Wentworth. We went to school together and have been fast friends ever since. Wentworth, this is my very dear friend, Mrs. Nash."

Branwen was well aware that Loki had never spent a day of his life in school. She narrowed her gaze, searching his face. His green eyes danced with laughter, daring her. With a smile she turned to the younger man. "Mr. Wentworth. Lovely to make your acquaintance."

"You are too kind, Mrs. Nash."

After the necessary pleasantries, Loki turned to her with a smile. "I assured Wentworth that you would have at least one young lady here in need of a dancing partner."

Ah, the devil. Loki was meddling in Branwen's own meddling. "Why, Lord Northington, you know me too well. Please, gentlemen, come with me and I shall introduce you to my particular friend, Miss Talbot."

She led the way through the crowd to where Miss Talbot was playing the wall flower near a potted plant. The girl glanced up as the trio approached, her cheeks immediately pinking as she spied the handsome Mr. Wentworth. Branwen shot Loki a scowl. He was looking entirely too smug.

"Miss Talbot," she quickly took the young lady's arm. "Please allow me to introduce my friend, Lord Northington, and Mr. Wentworth. Gentlemen, Miss Talbot."

There was a flurry of curtseying and bowing and other assorted pleasantries, but it was clear that as far as the other two were concerned, Branwen and Loki didn't even exist. It took no urging on Branwen's part for Mr. Wentworth to quickly escort Miss Talbot onto the dance floor. Branwen didn't need to scan the future, or witness the glares Mrs. Farrington shot in her direction from across the room, to hear wedding bells.

"You sneaky boy," Branwen said under her breath.

Loki just grinned smugly. He'd be impossible for weeks.

"You got my message," she said.

"But of course." He held out his hand. "We'll talk later. Wouldn't want to interrupt your party. For now, may I have this dance?"

It was a waltz, of course. Slightly scandalous, still, but increasingly popular in Regency England. Loki and Branwen moved together as they had a thousand times before. The last time they'd danced like this had been over a century ago.

"It's been too long." Loki's voice was a low rumble.

"You're the one who locked yourself away on that ghastly island," Branwen reminded him tartly.

He merely smiled and changed the subject. "What did you do to invoke Thor's wrath this time?"

She snorted in a most unladylike fashion. "What does anyone need to do to earn Thor's ire? Apparently he's the only one who gets to muck around in the lives of humans. At last I improve them. He just gives them gonorrhea."

It was Loki's turn to snort. "Well, then, by all means, we must return you to your rightful place in history so that you can continue to annoy him properly."

"I thought you might be able to help me with that. You're the only one who can match Thor in power."

Loki just smiled and held her a little closer than strictly proper. Give the village gossips something to talk about, no doubt. Especially Mrs. Farrington who was watching them like a hawk.

"Of course," Branwen said, "he can always just send me back here to the Regency again."

"No." Loki shook his head as he maneuvered them between other dancers, his arm firm and muscular under her hand. "I think we shall have to fix that."

"That will piss him off."

"Oh, yes." His eyes held barely repressed glee.

The thought cheered Branwen no end. She caught sight of Mr. Wentworth and Miss Talbot in the corner, heads together, speaking earnestly. A light scan of their minds and she was satisfied. "Well, there's my job done." She couldn't help it if there was just a slight bit of smugness to her tone.

"I'd like to think I had some hand in it."

She glanced up at him. "You surprise me, Loki."

"Do I?"

"You are an expert in the art of meddling, but I think this is the first time you have used your powers purely for good."

He chuckled. "Ah, Branwen, you will be my downfall."

She smiled in a way that only the goddess of love and beauty can. "One can only hope."

The End...

#

Shéa MacLeod really has been to England (though not actually during the Regency despite those nasty rumors). She also can be bribed with cupcakes.

Find her at her website sheamacleod.com or follow her on Facebook

### Fearless

If you enjoyed Shéa's story, check out her best-selling urban fantasy!

"I hated this life I'd found myself in and yet I had no choice but to carry on living it. Lost. Confused. Alone. Forever separated from my own kind."

Murdered at the hands of her king and former lover, Zip finds herself stripped of nearly all her powers and trapped inside the mortal body of a teenager. She finally knows what it is to be human, but it might be the last thing she wants. Especially with a killer stalking the halls...

"Swallowing hard, I held his gaze. I wasn't sure if I was daring him or defying him. Maybe both."

Mick Egan is determined to make his life count for something. Getting clean was one thing. Discovering the secrets of a girl like Zip is another. If he was smart, he'd run like hell, except he's not about to leave her alone to face a murderer.

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# Timestone

### Greg James

The world has grown old, and the sun is a cracked black lantern hanging in the sky. Everywhere from horizon to horizon has become a desert of dried-out land, snowless mountains and ruins. There is precious little warmth to be found and, just as her sun has grown dim, the Earth has grown cold. The last human beings huddle close around feeble fires to tell old stories of The Time Before. For they know that there will not be a Time To Come. There will only be The Long Dark Night and when it falls over everything, it will consume them and the last vestiges of the Light.

The Wanderer came out of the desert, dragging his captive along by a length of hemp rope bound around her throat in a tight noose. Ahead rose a small mountain of blasted red stone and some other substance that shone and glittered in the eternal twilight cast by the shadowed sun.

His name was Khale and he was older than most of the things left alive on this dying Earth. His features were brutish and masked by a bearded mane of dirty grey streaked with occasional stripes of obsidian black. He was clad in rough leather armour overlaid by fur pelts to keep out the cold of the days and nights. There were no seasons anymore, only times of settled temperance and freezing winds that followed no measurable pattern. Khale could feel that a mild time was ending. In a few nights, he would need shelter to survive the tundra gales that would come surging across the land.

The girl he dragged behind him was M'taoi, daughter-priestess of Talor, the Living God. Though Talor was no longer alive, as Khale had slain him. Not that it had been a callous killing. M'taoi's cultists had cast Khale into the pit where they kept their God, and he found a bovine, albino mutant shuffling about down there in the dark. It was sick and weak, having no desire to fight man or beast. Though from the scars on its torso, Khale could see it had been forced to do so any number of times. The creature's haunches had been worn raw from the rusted chains it was bound with, and it had torn out its own eyes long ago as madness from infection set in. Khale had crushed the moaning creature's throat into collapsed fibres with his bare hands. He was sure that he felt a sigh of relief escape the thing named Talor by the savages above. Casting a look of disgust towards the shadows clustered around the mouth of the pit, Khale had uttered the most bloodcurdling screams he could muster until he saw them cheer and then begin to drift away to their sleeping chambers.

Clambering out of the pit after nightfall, Khale crept through the shadows to the sleeping chamber of M'taoi and made off with her. Because the Cult of Talor knew one thing of importance among all of its broken gibberish and concocted fantasies.

They knew where the Timestone was buried.

A relic of the ancient world that would grant Khale his heart's desire.

M'taoi was pale-skinned, dark-haired and clad in a fur cloak and oilskin boots that were far too big for her. Khale had dug them out from his bags. Though he cared not for her, he did need her to remain alive until they reached the mountain. Having her perish from being barefoot and clad only in her sleeping robes would gain him nothing. Though the idea of leaving her to die out here alone had held a certain appeal as she sobbed and wailed her way through their first days and nights together. He could not shake the miserable image of the beast she had called God from his mind. It was seared into his retina, waiting for him whenever he closed his eyes. Such pain she had caused that creature. She should be rewarded with the slow and painful death that wandering in the barren lands would provide. But that was not to be as Khale needed her and she was quieter now, bearable company though hardly stimulating. When she did talk, it was monotone religious doggerel.

"You shall be struck down for the wrongs you have done to me, Dark One. I will be avenged by the mighty Talor. He shall arise from his pit to tear the flesh from your bones."

"You're very tedious, you know that?"

She hawked and spat at him.

Khale shrugged.

He'd known worse insults and deeper wounds.

* * *

The mountain drew closer and M'taoi slowed her pace, her eyes widening as they crossed into its shadow. Khale listened to her muttering and chanting under her breath. More doggerel and superstition though her fear was well-founded, even if she did not know why or wherefrom it came. They reached the gateway into the mountain. A colossal door cut from the glittering, metallic substance that seemed to be fused with the rocks and stone of the mountain. M'taoi grovelled in the dirt before the gate, her forehead beating at the ground while Khale stood in sombre remembrance.

There were shadows guarding the gate, recorded by the cult of Talor as creatures that walked the night when the sun went down to snatch away the unwary and drink the blood of unbelieving fools. But Khale knew that they were merely after-images, burned into the red rock by an explosion thousands of years gone by. And now that he was close enough, he could see that the other substance that made up the mountain was a dark-toned metal that had fused with the stone. A curious by-product of the blast, perhaps. Or, something that had come from what was waiting for him inside the vaults of the mountain. Something created by the presence of the Timestone. He could also see that the gate was fused shut. There was no way in here.

He kicked M'taoi in the side, making her cry out.

"Get up."

He yanked hard on the noose around her neck, feeling it bite into skin and muscle.

"I said, get up!"

"I shall not. It is profane and blasphemous to look upon the shadows when the sun is still high. They will drink my blood and carry me away into the Long Dark Night."

"Listen, the only reason you are alive and not wandering around out there like scavenger-bait is because you know something I don't."

Still she would not get to her feet nor look at him.

"You know how to get inside that mountain. There is a way and you are taught it. It is as a part of all the shit you believe in, right?"

She said nothing. He pulled the noose tighter and leaned in so she could see his eyes. They were yellow eyes though not tinged with the gold of the wolf or the amber of the cat. This hue of yellow was one of plague, waste and disease. There was a taint inside him, something deeply rotten, that no balm or cure could ease.

"I have heard stories ... " she began to say.

"The mark of the Death," he said.

"None live who bear Her mark but one," she went on, "and he is a man that walks alone. A Wanderer Eternal ... "

Suddenly, she was grovelling to him instead of the shadows, tugging at his pelts and patched armour.

"Immortal lord, do not forsake me. Do not let me die here at the hands of the shadows."

He jerked the noose hard, dragging her up onto her feet this time.

"I will not ... forsake you ... if you show me the way into the mountain and the iron labyrinth it houses."

"As my immortal lord commands."

Khale let her lead the way, a cold and amused smile on his lips. Maybe religion had a few things going for it after all.

* * *

M'taoi showed him the way inside. A small, unobstrusive passage a quarter of the way around the mountain's circumference. There were guardians in the iron labyrinth but Khale had guessed as much and he was ready. M'taoi screamed until her throat was dry at the sight of the guardians but, in truth, they were even more pathetic than Talor had been.

Khale had met such beings before. Remnants of the old world. Necroforms of some sort. He was surprised to see that they had survived this long. Their skinless faces, seething maggot-ridden bodies and chattering teeth were unsettling to look upon as they shuddered out of their hiding places. But they were little more than walking sacs of fluid and pus that burst like overripe boils as he struck them down with his sword. Their bones were trembling stalks and the crusts of marrow that made up their skulls shattered with ridiculous ease. The only thing Khale found offensive about them was the rank smell that hung in the air after they had been reduced to so much pulp and slurry.

M'taoi whimpered and cried as they went deeper into the labyrinth that Khale was recognising more and more as a research facility. Clearly, the nuclear device detonated outside had been intended to sterilise the area. But it did not account for the strangeness of what he was seeing emerge around him. The rocky passages were inlaid with more than the weird dark metal; he could see outlines of fossilised human skulls and bones. A process that should have taken millions of years had been achieved in mere thousands. The cold smile was back on his face.

"It's here. _The Timestone is here!_ "

* * *

They came to the heart of the labyrinth where it was waiting for them.

_No_ , Khale thought, _waiting for me_.

The Timestone, pounding with the rhythm of a heart, gave off a hideous light bathing the circular chamber in luminous shades and colours that Khale could not name. The Timestone itself was a cuboid etched with eldritch lines and ornate markings resembling spirals and flickering flames. To look upon them for too long was to start to entertain the notion that they were moving of their own volition. Khale greeted the sick, twisting feeling the sight of them gave him. It meant that he had found what he was looking for.

M'taoi was on her knees again, beating her forehead against the ground. He was tempted to put his foot on her neck and grind the air from her lungs. He had no intention of letting her walk away from this alive.

But that pleasure could wait, he sheathed his sword and walked forward.

"No. You must not touch the Timestone, my lord. It will eat your soul."

Khale looked back at her and felt something that was not good but pleasing inside, as she recoiled from the way the Timestone's light illuminated, rather than darkening, his features and showed his immense age. Every line, every mark, every scar that he had borne since he left mortality behind. And his eyes were beginning to shine with the same light as the Timestone. He could feel it.

"I have no soul for it to feed upon, child."

The trails of ancient tears were revealed on the Wanderer's face as were the etched depths and hollows left behind by screams, his own and those of others he had known. The emptiness that echoed on and on inside him, behind his cursed eyes. No man or creature alive was nearer to the nature of Death itself than he was. Even Gods fell under his sword.

"God ..." M'taoi said, "My God ..."

She was crying, and then she was dying.

The light of the Timestone took her and Khale to pieces.

* * *

Khale opened his eyes and he was back where it had all begun for him.

A great battle, long ago, between the Celts and the Romans. Men clad in animal furs and woad against the armoured might of an empire. He breathed in the scent of blood and battle percolating through the air. On this ground, from dawn until dusk, men of the highlands and those from a far-off country had fought one another in a growing ordure of churned mud and entrails. The rain came and did not wash the ground clean of the slaughter. Many fell, more than could ever be counted, and such was the scale of it that Death herself walked corporeal among the fallen, harvesting their screaming souls. Her great ragged wings beating in time with the clash of sword and the drumming of blows upon armour and shields. Through the night, she slid her freezing fingers into the chests of the dying and plucked out their hearts before favouring their blue lips with a final, fleshless kiss.

It was the dawn of the following day when Khale materialised. The light of the Timestone ebbed away around him and he trod a path through the moaning and the dead. Death had already come upon him. The man he had been back then. He could see himself now. The last man left standing, alone, wearied, bloodied but still fighting on against Death itself. He had been a mere mortal but still a darkness clung to him more than any other man of his clan. It coloured his blood with a bitter lust for the kill that none of his fellows shared. He could see his friends and family among the dead, carved into pieces, torn apart, the hollows where their eyes had once nestled no longer judging him as they had before. The elder Khale advanced with what speed he could through the morass of corpses. Death had raised her blade high to lay him low and he saw his sword raised in kind, meeting hers with a thunderous crack that shook the air and the ground.

The Man That Turned Death's Blade Aside.

A name that would reverberate through the coming millennia.

A monster was being made. A nightmare was about to be born.

Death was tireless. She swung her blade down to cleave his skull. Again, she was parried. Again, she was denied blood. No words were spoken. No sound was uttered by either one. There was only the relentless song of clashing steel ringing out across the reeking battlefield as the elder Khale came closer. On and on the duel went as he parried each thrust and feinted away from every slash she made. The memories were bright and hot in his mind. He could feel his heart aching as he remembered this day.

The struggle would soon be decided.

The elder Khale unsheathed his sword. It shone alien in the grey light of the highlands. Burnished and glinting in a way not dissimilar to the shade of his tainted eyes. It was Carcosan yellow steel, a good, strong blade and one of the last of its kind. Khale watched as Death misjudged the weary mortal he had been. The arrogance born in the hearts of all Gods and Goddesses making her gestures grander, her blade falling only after ostentatious, taunting sweeps and displays of her unholy dexterity were made. She thought his slowness to be more than the feint it was. Despite himself, Khale smiled as there was the smallest pause between one blow and the next.

There!

The mortal man struck.

A dagger secreted in one of his boots was driven into the place where Death's heart should have been. She had no heart to speak of so the wound was no more fatal to her than the bite of an ant, but it was the distraction that he had needed. Faltering, her black eyes wide at the sign of harm inflicted upon her by a mortal, Death did not see, or believe, that she was about to fall to his sword. He shattered her smoking blade and then his sword came around again to decapitate her.

The elder Khale's blade struck the killing blow aside.

His eyes met those of the man he had once been.

" _What are ye?_ "

His eyes had been so clear and untainted then, without sickness or disease.

"I am what you will become."

"What I'll become?"

"Slay her and you are doomed."

The mortal man's face twisted in a snarl he could feel shaping his own features. Their swords struck, clashed and then ground against one another.

"She's my kill. I will have her."

"You will not. If you do, there's nothing but darkness and despair to come. You will be a hollow man. An emptiness adrift. You. Must. Not. Slay. Her."

Khale fought Khale and as they did, the world shifted around them. Waves of sickness and pain struck each man. Time was being torn. Far away, the elder Khale fancied he heard a profound wordless scream. The mortal Khale was weeping tears of blood. The elder Khale drove home a series of heavy two-handed blows, driving the mortal Khale to his knees. He set his sword against the throat of the other man and shivered as he felt a line of ice cold drawn across his own neck.

"I do this for you. For the life you can have if you turn and walk away from this battlefield. It will be short and mortal and the life you should have had. The one I should have had."

The eyes of the other were not sick and yellow like his own, the defiance in them raged fierce and clear.

"I will have my kill, whoe'er you are. Or, you will have yours and take my head home."

"You must not slay her."

" ... but I may slay him."

The elder Khale's heart missed a beat as he realised who had spoken, what had happened and what he had done. He looked down at the face of the mortal Khale and saw that all colour was draining from it. The eyes were dilating. The mouth was slack. The elder Khale dropped his sword and stepped away, letting his own corpse fall to the ground. It lay there. Still. Unmoving. A great wound in its chest and blood blossoming out from it.

Khale turned and faced Death.

She held his heart in one hand and his own dagger in the other. She smiled at him, the same cold smile that he had in some way inherited.

"So, is that it now? Am I to die, at last?"

He closed his eyes and waited. His mortal self was slain. Time would catch up with him now. All the centuries upon centuries of darkness would never have been. He was to be freed from the weight and yoke of endless living at last.

But nothing came.

Nothing changed.

Death laughed at him with the shrillness of a feasting vulture.

"You are not to die here, Khale. I said forever, remember?"

He opened his eyes, "What?"

"I told you that what you did on this day, raising your hand to a Goddess such as me, for turning my blade aside, would be forever. I set you upon the roads of the world, to walk them all until Time's end."

"But Time is changed now. I died here. I will rot here. I will never be immortal."

"You died here by your own hand, dear Khale."

A tremor passed through him.

"You have learned much since you were a caveman of these hill-folk," she said disdainfully, prodding one of the Celtic bodies with her foot. "You should know that what you have created here, by coming back, is a paradox. You fought with yourself. You died but you are here before me, still alive."

Khale's fingers made fists and he ground his teeth against the tears he could feel burning in his eyes.

"You forget that you are not a God to rewrite Time as you wish it to be. You are _mine_ , Khale, and I wish you to walk all the roads that you have already walked again. Every day, every year, every century that you have already suffered through, you will suffer through again. Remember, you are the puppet and I am your mistress."

Khale screamed. It was a wet, raw sound torn from somewhere deep inside and with it he set upon her. He remembered the first time when he had been a mortal man, how he took her head clean off in one stroke. This time, he butchered her. He hacked and hacked away at Death until she was nothing more than pulp, torn cloth and splintered bones, and she did not stop laughing for all that time. He trampled her remains into the bloodied mud of the battlefield as a sudden and terrible cold surged through his heart and up into his throat, choking him as surely as a freezing hand might. He fell to his knees to weep and to wail, long and hard, as the corpse of Death slowly dissipated and blew away like ashes on a wind that was not there.

Khale was left alone on that battlefield and alone in the world, once again.

For none are like him, nor shall they ever be.

For he is the Wanderer and he is Eternal.

END

#

Greg James is the author of the Age of the Flame trilogy. He enjoys long walks around his home city of London as well as reading, writing, insomnia, Coca-Cola and thinking up new Fantasy worlds to entertain readers with. Those who are not entertained get teleported to the cornfield.

Find him at his website gryeates.co.uk or follow him on Facebook

### The Sword of Sighs

If you enjoyed Greg's story, check out his best-selling fantasy!

Sarah Bean lives a quiet life in Okeechobee, Florida until the day when she is transported from our world to the fantastic realm of Seythe. She meets a wayfaring wizard called Ossen who saves her from the dreaded black riders, servants of a being known only as the Fallen One. Together, they will have to undertake a treacherous journey to the far-away Fellhorn mountain where Sarah must find the one weapon that can save them from the black riders pursuing them - The Sword of Sighs.

# Rachel.

### CD Reiss

Do people like you ever have wishes, Jonathan?

What does that mean? People like me?

People who have everything. Was there ever something you wanted but could only wish for?

* * *

I hated the word _festooned_.

Festooned implied some kind of old-world family dancing around with ribbons, draping them over lamps and doorways, catching the flowers as they fell out of their hair. It brought to mind musical theater and swaying skirts. It felt Swiss Family Robinson. Mary Poppins. The Waltons. Good night, Jon-boy.

Despite the sour taste in the front of my tongue and the bitter one in back, _festooned_ was the only word that suited the house on this, the day of my engagement party. I wanted to drink far more than I had. I wanted to take that bottle of Jameson's I knew my mother hid under her bathroom vanity and sit in a corner to finish it. I wanted to suck it dry. But I didn't do that anymore. When I drank, I held a glass and sipped until the ice melted, never finishing before. Then I waited and eventually got another. I hadn't been drunk since I was sixteen.

And if I did drink that bottle? Who would care but my fiancé, Jessica? Or more to the point, whose opinion did I value besides hers? Who else did I serve?

She wanted this event, and she got it. I couldn't deny her anything, and really, it wasn't such a big deal to throw a party. It was nothing to gather a team of people from Hotel A to _festoon_ my parent's Palisades house, send invitations to the right people, and make sure there was food. My staff were experts at managing women with exquisite taste, such as my bride-to-be. It was no burden to me whatsoever.

The burden was having the engagement at my father's house. The burden was explaining to him that the wedding would be at the my future in-law's residence in Venice, and his presence was not requested.

There were reasons for all of it, of course, spite not being the least of them. I understood spite, even enjoyed it on occasion, poured over cold cubes of guilt with a chaser of regret. But this spite was too old and too ugly to enjoy.

"There you are," my mother's voice came from behind me. I'd been looking out toward the yard, watching subsets of staff ready it for the flood of people. "Have you seen Jess?"

"She's out with my sisters getting her feet and fingers done. Something tasteful, I'm sure. No need to worry."

Mom slipped her hands over my shoulders, her hands brushing the fabric free of some imaginary lint. "Are you happy?"

"Why do you ask?"

"You've seemed down. Is it Jessica?"

"No."

"The thing with your father?" Mom didn't look concerned as much as benign. She'd perfected that look of harmlessness over forty years, and she wore it well under light makeup and a strawberry blonde chignon.

"Yes."

"He's come to terms with it."

"Is the bar up? I need a drink."

She looped her arm into mine and we walked outside.

* * *

My father hadn't ever actually come to terms with anything in his life, ever. He sat and waited until opportunities presented themselves. He was utterly non-aggressive in the way a cat is utterly still outside a mouse hole, waiting for the rodent to either forget he was trapped or get hungry enough to risk everything and leave.

The party setup was going smoothly, people in tuxedos and black dresses gadding about with purpose. The hedges had been trimmed, the tennis court locked. The pool had been cleaned, repainted and decorated with floating flowers. No one asked me a goddamn thing about anything and I liked it that way. The bartender, an actor from the looks of him, was setting up glasses in neat rows. Behind him, the majesty of the Pacific Ocean stretched into a haze where sea met sky.

"He told me he understood," Mom said, continuing a conversation she assumed I wanted to have. "Business deals sometimes go bad and someone gets hurt."

"It's fine, ma."

"You should talk to him about it."

"Hey," I said to the bartender. "Two Jameson's, rocks."

"I'm not having any," Mom said.

"They're both for me."

She smiled and punched my arm. "Jon. Always the joker. Listen to me. This radio silence with your father isn't productive. I mean, he did agree to have the engagement here."

"You insisted."

"To save him embarrassment. This thing with him has put me in the middle and to be truthful, it's stressful."

She knew how to feel stress, my mother. The management of anxiety was an art form with her, necessitating the use of a cocktail of medications and hospitalizations when she misjudged her secret alcohol intake. Poor Mom. Really. A willing captive in a house as big as an island nation.

It was my turn to flick an imaginary piece of lint off her shoulder. "He took my future in-laws for everything, blew a chunk of it and passed a few million back to them. Not enough for them to get a decent lawyer."

"It was twelve years ago and it was a legitimate business deal."

"Legal. It was legal. Not legitimate."

Despite earlier denials, she took the glass of whiskey, holding it but not putting it to her lips, as if it was a prop. I remembered she drank wine in public and whiskey in private. I was getting muddled already.

"I know they're your family now, the Carneses. But don't forget where you came from, young man."

As if I ever could.

* * *

The last family party my father and I had attended together had been seven years earlier. Sheila's birthday had an unfortunate proximity to Christmas, so every one of her birthday parties became Christmas parties. Her house in Palos Verdes perched on the edge of a sheer drop to the ocean. For a mile in each direction, a beach as wide as a sidestreet ribboned at the base of the cliff. But toward the end of that year, the beach disappeared under rushing tides as it rained for twenty days straight.

Children toddled underfoot, with nannies running bent-kneed behind them. Extended family on top of extended family, most drunk or on their way there, myself included, even at sixteen. I did what I wanted, like all my friends. Nothing could happen to us that money couldn't fix, so no one paid attention.

I had no self-control at that point. I was a loose cannon of temperamental fits, drunken rages, and risky behavior. The last incident had been driving my father's new Maserati into South Gate to drag my friend Gordon out of a meth house. I'd thrown him into the driver's side and hit the gas from the passenger's side to wake his sorry ass out of a stupor. We'd sideswiped his dealer's Escalade, four-thousand-dollars' worth, and in the end, Gordon had gone right back to using, but my addiction to nearly dying had been sated for a month, at least.

Then, the week before Christmas, Sheila's birthday. Los Angles had already had twenty-two inches of rain since school started. There was a rumor Death Valley would have a once-in-a-lifetime bloom, come spring. My friends and I were planning a road trip in Charles's Hummer just to mow our path over fields of poppies.

I was drunk already, bullshitting with my cousin Arthur over which Ivy League schools we were going to stroll into. Which had the best clubs, where the legacies were. Arthur was a douchebag. The last time I'd driven down Sunset with him, he leaned out of his BMW to make some noise at a girl, which was bad enough. But when she flipped him the bird he shouted, "Man, I bet there's some guy out there so tired of fucking you."

"Arthur, really?" I felt like getting out and apologizing to her, but the light turned green and we were gone.

"What, Jon? Look at her. All legs and shit. Fuck her."

That was the last time I went out with Arthur. But at a family party, as long as we kept to schools and baseball, I could hold a conversation with him.

Sheila's party graduated from family thing to some kind of pre-Christmas fuckall event, and the kitchen got crowded. I was less and less inclined to move. People I knew came in and out, most not related to me at that point, and aunts and uncles kissed me goodbye and left.

I don't even know what I was drinking. A bong went around. It was lead crystal and totally illegal, even if the bud wasn't, and the liquid inside was chartreuse absinthe.

Just because.

The movement of the party shifted down the hall, through the library and into the living room, where I saw my father was still there.

And Rachel had shown up.

* * *

Was there ever something you wanted, but could only wish for, Jonathan?

I wish I wasn't raised by crazy people.

Something for the future. That you want, but don't think you'll get.

Yes, I—

Don't tell me. That'll ruin it.

* * *

Jessica was nowhere to be found. She didn't answer my texts or calls. Margie, who had taken her out for the "girl thing" with three other sisters, said my fiancé had left the spa in her Mercedes the hour before.

"Did she have an accident?"

"I don't know little brother," Margie said, grabbing a glass of wine before the first guest arrived. "She seemed fine. The usual."

"What does that mean?" I felt a stab of anger. Seven sisters. A couple were bound to dislike my wife.

"Charming and polite. Warm, even. But not."

"Howdy!" Leanne came across the empty backyard, grabbing a glass as soon as the bartender poured it. The emerald of her dress brought out the fire engine in her hair. "You should see Jess's nails. She got a French with an airbrush. So cute."

"Did you see her out front?" I asked.

"Nope. Are those the cufflinks you're wearing?" Leanne fixed the flowers in her hair by the reflection in the window. She wanted to make clothes, so Dad had bought her a factory. Another money-losing proposition. Next to Deirdre, the still devout, chronically depressed Irish poet, she was the most creative in the family.

"No," I said. "I just wore these to offend you."

"He wants to know how Jessica looked." Margie said.

"Cool and collected. She's a rock, you know." Leanne squeezed my cheeks. "You did good."

Leanne, who was habitually single at twenty-six because she was a workaholic, had no business judging, even when I agreed with her.

* * *

I was fifteen, and Rachel was a year and a half older when we began seeing each other, if that's what you could call it. Discretion was absolutely necessary, so she didn't come to any family parties. I didn't want her near my father, period. End of. She knew why. I knew why. No one else did. Her old affair with my father when she was too young and impressionable to know better was a secret bought and paid for with jewelry and electronics. I kept it for her because she wanted it that way, and though I would have loved to tell the world about what kind of animal my father was, the understanding between myself and a few of my sisters, was that Mom would break into a hundred pieces if what she knew in her heart was confirmed. My father was, so far, the luckiest son of a bitch in the world.

Rachel and I were rarely seen in public together unless she went to a Loyola ballgame I pitched, or if I happened to show up at a play she was in. It was hard to stay away from her, but necessary. We didn't talk about a future past the possibility that we could attend the same college, provided she got a scholarship.

We met in my car, late at night after Mom was passed out. Dad was gone often and he would have let me out the front door anyway. The staff didn't care, or expected no less: another irresponsible rich brat, in a society full of them, slipping out to debauch himself on school nights.

Rachel had a harder time of it. She had a tough home life. Her stepfather went into a controlling fits, locking her and her mother in the house at night. The windows were barred and the deadbolts had inside keys he slept with. In her closet, Rachel found a trapdoor to the crawlspace under the house. I met her on the corner. Seeing her walk even a block in the dark in that neighborhood twisted my stomach in knots, every time. I never got used to it. Usually, when she got into the car, I laughed from released tension and the sight of cobwebs in her hair.

She attended Marlborough on a hefty financial aid package which was still a stretch for her parents, and was required to maintain a GPA of 3.75 or face the budget cuts and substandard educational opportunities of the LAUSD. She was in the home stretch. Smart, diligent, studious, and yes, beautiful; she would be the first in her family to attend a top school and get a medical degree. I'd have followed her anywhere. Business schools were a dime a dozen, and Dad would buy me entry to the university of my choice, even if I never told him why the choice was made. In this case, Rachel and I chose University of Pennsylvania and crossed our fingers, she for Perelman School of Medicine, and I for Wharton a year later. It was Ivy League, which was easy for me, and hard for her.

All this meant she didn't have the time or permission to drive around in my Mercedes, or run into hotel rooms with me. But we were young, and infatuated, and on the cusp of freedom, or in her case, death.

* * *

What do you mean by "wish" then, Rachel?

Like, hope you get something you know is impossible, but hope anyway.

I wish I could be with you like a normal person.

What's normal to someone like you?

* * *

The backyard buzzed with activity. Fiona, never one to miss an opportunity to invite Deirdre's scorn, had managed to book psychics, tarot card readers, crystal healers and a hypnotist for the cocktail hour.

The black baby grand had been brought onto the patio, and the four musicians Dad had plucked from some music school in central LA set up stands and instruments. Piano, two violins, and cello. Except the first violinist wasn't tuning a violin. She was tuning a viola. Hardly worth making a fuss over, except she was stunning, with full lips and long, dark hair. She had to be five-ten in flat feet, with a chin that pointed upwards as if daring the world to hit her on the jaw.

"She's magnificent, no?"

My father's voice beside me, admiring a girl who was probably in high school. I looked away quickly.

"Jail bait, dad. Ever hear of it?" I turned to face him. In his late fifties, he was still a good-looking guy. His red hair had turned completely silver five years earlier, and stayed fully attached to his head. The girls loved him. And when I said girls, I meant just that. Girls.

"You're avoiding me. I was looking for some common ground."

"Uh-huh." I didn't know where to start with him. Common-ground wise, we had Rachel. That was awkward enough. I glanced around. We were relatively alone, a situation Mom never let slide if she could.

He spoke quietly, barely moving his lips. "You never stop wanting them that age. Every man fantasizes about the dew on the flower."

"You're sick."

"Were you not just looking at that girl? She can't be a day over fifteen. On the evening of your engagement, no less. It's time to accept reality, son. The need is biological. You can fight it your whole life if you want to, but it will be a fight."

He looked like he'd wanted to say that to me for a long time. Like it was some kind of big talk every man gives their son, and it had been denied him by my avoidance and Mom's intervention.

"We aren't having a meeting of the minds on underage girls."

"Except the one," he said as if we had some delightful shared history.

"I'm going to need you to stay away from my wife, and if there are children, especially if there are children—"

He got that look. The one like he was being electrocuted. It was hard rage directed forward. I'd only seen it once before, days after I found out what he was and I saw him touching Theresa's arm when he spoke to her.

"Do not ever presume that I don't have boundaries, son."

Much as an animal won't shit where they eat, he'd never touched any of my sisters, but when I flew at him I didn't know that. We may have been evenly matched the day he laid a chaste touch on Theresa, but at my engagement party, I was older, taller, and less fearful.

"You will never be alone with my children," I said. "Those are _my_ boundaries." I took a gulp of my whiskey. Too much. The drink would never last if I kept doing that. But I needed to do more than let the liquid touch my lips when I stared at him over the glass.

"I wanted to just elope somewhere far away," I said, seeing Mom coming up behind him, "so there would be no problems with Jessica's family. But it wasn't possible. I'm sorry you've been insulted in the process. Truly."

He smirked, because he knew the kinder tone and change of subject must have come for one reason. He and I had come to blows after Rachel's accident, and I'd taken a handful of pills. Mom didn't let us alone in the same room if she could avoid it. Over the past seven years, she'd run a pretty tight interference. I had to admire her aversion to conflict. It had kept her in a state of blissful, drunken ignorance that my sisters and I had sworn to protect until death.

Dad took the opportunity to clap me on the back just as the string quartet started warming up.

"No worries, son. No worries. It was just business. Can't win at it and make friends, too."

I smiled, not mentioning the tens of millions in payoff money that had drained him to the point where only shady deals kept him afloat. Nope. It was all smiles when Mom reached us. Dad put his arm around her and I made it a point to shake his hand like a gentleman so she would enjoy the rest of the evening.

"Jonny! Come over here?"

"Come on!"

"This is perfect!"

It was the sound of a gaggle of sisters. Four rushed up in green dresses and varying shades of strawberry chignon. Margie, Sheila, Leanne, and Theresa. Their voices became a cheering chatter.

"You have to see the hypnotist."

"He's going to relax you."

"You're too tense."

"A teepee and a wigwam!"

"It'll only take a second."

The drink was taken from my hand and I felt myself being pulled to a guy in a fedora and handlebar moustache sitting by one of our chaise lounges.

"Hang on, hang on..." I held my hands up in surrender.

"What?"

"It's fun!"

"Chicken."

"Bok bok bok."

They were beautiful, each one of my older sisters. A huge pain in my ass, each in a different way, but all precious. And annoying.

"I need to use the restroom. If he relaxes me too much I'm going to have a problem, if you know what I mean. That's all."

Margie, the oldest and most practical, who didn't believe in anything but money and death, took charge, spinning me by my shoulders. "Go. Then you're back here or we're dragging you out for a crystal cleansing."

I walked to the house, making a point of not looking at the stunning brunette plucking her viola. Not easy. She had the kind of face one stared at. But I glanced over, and there was Dad, talking to her, leaning over in a way that seemed respectful and dignified, getting her comfortable. I wondered if he did it to spite me, then remembered he simply and shamelessly liked fucking girls too young to drink legally. It had nothing to do with me. Which meant I'd be unable to get him away from her. I couldn't say, 'Okay Dad, you're right, high school girls are hot. Now can you step away?' because then he'd take her to bed for sure. I couldn't try and cut in or he'd make a light hearted competition of our pursuit. And I couldn't cross-check him through the windows or I'd ruin my own party, and I'd have to explain to my fiancée why I was protecting the honor of an underage girl I'd only glanced at.

I got past them and into the house. I needed another drink, but my excuse to Margie had been real. On the way to the hall bathroom, I spotted the pianist from the quartet. A blonde with faded acne and an odd, melancholy confidence.

"Excuse me," I said.

"Yeah?"

"Your friend? On the viola?"

"Monica?"

"Tell her no flirting with the guests or hosts. Understand?"

Her look went from offense to curiosity, as she craned her neck to see past the sitting room windows. The set up for the quartet was just about visible.

"Oh, crap."

"I'm serious."

"She's not like that really," her words ran together. "I mean she's just started seeing my brother, but she's not a flirt like that at all. She's barely even friendly."

Caught between the desire to know more and the desire to run away, I simply walked quickly and rudely down the hall before I heard another word about that woman.

Girl.

* * *

I never let myself truly fall for Rachel. I'd always felt bad about that. I'd trapped her, protecting myself from that moment I'd see her and my father in the same room. Unfortunately, all that guarded emotion didn't pay off. At Sheila's party, Rachel had shown up with Theresa, and Dad was still there. When I saw them together, I felt like my spine was being ripped out. She was giving him what-for with her finger extended and mouth demanding something through gritted teeth and intense, burning eyes.

He took whatever verbal abuse she was dishing out with the serious air of a guy who didn't give a shit. This man was impossible to understand unless you saw him work a room, his uncanny appeal, the way he didn't look like a fifty year-old man in a party full of kids. The way he melted into any situation. The magnetism I never understood was illustrated over and over again, even as he refused advances when Mom was around, and always left open a maybe as soon as she turned her back.

As I got closer to them, I got disproportionately angry. Rachel wasn't supposed to be there. That was the rule, and it was in place because seeing her in the vicinity of my father made me consider patricide with a cold, collected calm that scared me.

My peripheral vision closed in on her as I navigated the crowd. It's possible the multiple bong hits were making me paranoid. There was zero danger of her falling into his clutches that, or any night. But I didn't want him to know I was just short of loving her. I didn't want him to have information he could use, because he'd use it to hurt me. He'd pulled strings to keep Margie from a man he found threatening, destroying a law firm rather than have her work there. He'd do it to me, but as the only male of eight children, the damage would come faster and I'd fare far worse.

"Rachel," I said when I reached her. Her pale brown eyes were tear-streaked, and her beautiful mouth cut into a line of rage. "Come on, let's go."

My father smiled as if I was rescuing him from an embarrassing incident.

And that was the last I remembered of that night.

* * *

On our backs, in the grass of Elysian Park, where my family would never find us, Rachel and I stared at the clouds. She liked to wonder what it would be like to be me. She thought I had not a worry in the world. Yes, my father was a fucking sociopath, but he didn't stick his fingers inside me like hers had, and he didn't scream and hit and lock me in the house like her stepfather had. And for me, whatever I endured would end when my trust fund spread its legs at twenty-one. For her, the light at the end of the tunnel had not appeared.

"Do you wish for things you can't buy?" she asked.

I looked over at her. Blades of grass sat in the foreground of my vision, slashing her face, which was turned to me. Her eyes were tobacco brown, wide and light, catching the sun inside them. "You're fascinated with money," I said.

"I think I am." She smiled. "It's made you different, you know. You're fearless. It's exciting, kind of. Watching you is like watching someone who's really, truly free."

I laughed. I never felt free in my life.

"What do you wish for?" I asked. "Besides money."

"You make me sound like a golddigger."

"You are, but you're terrible at it. I think a few more years and you'll be sleeping with the right guy."

She flung herself on top of me and pinched my sides. I laughed and rolled her over until I had her pinned.

"Tell me what you wish for, and if it's any part of my body, your wish will come true at the Regency Hotel in forty minutes."

She giggled and turned her face to the sunlight. "Free, Jonathan. I wish to be free."

I unpinned one of her shoulders to pluck a seeded dandelion out of the grass.

"Blow," I said, holding the white puffball in front of her.

She blew hard, and the seeds went into my face. We laughed, and blew the rest of the seeds off together, wishing her free from the constraints of her family and her scarcity. They floated away on their sinuous parachutes, like little messengers to God, saying take me, take me, take me. Set me free.

* * *

"You're mine," Leanne said, yanking me out into the backyard.

"Did anyone hear from Jessica yet?"

"She stopped to get you something."

"Pepto bismol, I hope."

A few early birds gathered around the bar. I'd be on call for congratulating and handshaking soon, so I hoped I could get hypnotized into a state of blissful relaxation in five minutes or less. Didn't seem possible.

Theresa, standing with the gaggle of green, waved me over to the man in a tweed jacket and handlebar moustache.

We shook hands.

"David Mesmer's the name. I hear you're a little tense?"

"Mesmer, huh? Any relation?"

"Great grandfather. I fell into the profession. Lie down right here."

The sky was clear blue and sunless as the day darkened into night. I felt ridiculous lying on a chaise in a formal suit. I felt vulnerable and scrutinized by four of my seven sisters. I feared I'd miss Jessica's arrival if I wasn't by the door and if any of my friends saw me getting hypnotized the ribbing would break a bone.

"Let's get this over with," I said.

"Said like a truly anxious man. Can you focus your mind on what's making you tense? I'm going to count backwards from ten."

The string quartet keyed up and began with Mendelssohn. Very nice, even for a group of teenagers. Despite being from the gifted school, I hadn't expected much, especially not from the viola. No one could be that beautiful and talented at the same time. But her beauty carried to her playing, because as David counted back from ten, I didn't hear a goddamn thing past five except the viola as if there was not another instrument on the planet.

* * *

The rain on the night of Sheila's party was near blinding.

"Stop it!" Rachel shouted, snapping away the jacket I tried to hold over her head. "I want to get wet, that's why I came into the rain. To get wet!"

I tossed the jacket to the side. "You came out here because I'm taking you home."

"You're crazy!"

Drunk as I'd been that night, I took in the conversation as a cold, sober observer. On the night it actually happened, alcohol had blacked me out. I remembered nothing after Rachel saw my face and stood up. My memory of the events of that night ended there, and were retold to me by the media and my parents. The hypnosis was like watching a movie in my own point of view.

"I am sick of this," she shouted. "I'm sick of you wanting to know where I am all the time. Sick of it. You're a control freak. You're worse than my stepdad, do you know that?"

I knew I was getting hypnotized. I knew Franz Mesmer's great grandson had counted from ten and my body was at my engagement party, and I also knew the movie was about to play the part where I lost someone I cared about.

"What the hell did you think you were doing in there?" I growled. Though I felt all the panic and fear I felt that night, I was also my older self, who knew how it all ended.

_Calm down. Get control._ My older self spoke to my younger self urgently, as if it could change anything.

"What's going to happen when I go to college? You going to tell me who to talk to from here? Should I keep a log of what I wear? Well I won't. Nothing. No more." Rachel's brown hair was soaked. She'd run out in a light sweater, leaving her jacket and purse behind.

"What were you saying to him?" I yelled.

"You really want to know?"

I stepped forward. I was already six feet tall, an intimidating presence in the class, and in front of a young woman in the rain.

She stepped back. "I'm not going to get enough to go to Penn, so J. Declan Drazen's coughing it up. Every fucking dime, or I'm telling everyone what a sick bunch of fucks you are."

She and I were open about what a sick bunch of fucks we were. We even laughed about it sometimes, but I'd always felt like she was talking about my parents. This time, it sounded like I was included. It sounded like she'd be more than happy to take me down as just another sick fuck who bedded her. What had I thought I meant to her? Did she think I'd used her? Or was it the other way around?

"Don't play with him, Rachel. You can't win."

"I'm not playing." She looked more like a grown woman when she uttered those words than ever before. She really meant to tangle with my father.

I took my car keys out. "I'm taking you home."

She stepped back, under the edge of the eave, where the water dripped in fatter, condensed streams. One splashed on her shoulder, but she didn't notice or didn't care.

"I'm sorry." Her voice cracked. "Don't look at me like that. I love you Jay."

"And I'm just one of the sick fucks? Did I ever treat you with anything but respect?"

"There's too much baggage, Jonathan. I want a regular boyfriend."

I froze. What did she mean? Instead of asking her, in my immaturity and drunkenness, I stepped forward again.

You're being menacing. She's going to run...she's going to—

She snapped the car keys from my hand.

"Give me those." I grabbed for them, but my balance was off, and I was slow.

She ran.

I ran after her, but the images got foggy and indistinct.

I was in the driveway, looking for my car.

I was in the house, searching through coat pockets.

I was driving in a shitstorm of rain.

How? What did I miss?

I felt a pain in my shoulder.

I was in the driver's side of the car. It was too dark to make out much more than the outline of the keys. They seemed to stand up sideways in the ignition, defying gravity. My vision swam. Then the keys rotated on the ring, pointing toward the ceiling. Odd.

Creak.

Crunch.

I was on the ground. I heard the beep of the warning signal and saw the beam of a single headlight, but all I saw was a car on its side, ready to fall into the whirling floods of the Pacific Ocean.

It rolled and fell. There was no splash. When I scrambled up to the edge of the cliff, a car was floated in the foaming waters.

I heard her scream.

Rachel.

It had to be. She must have been belted into the passenger side?

But how?

"Rachel!" I yelled. What a ridiculous thing to do. I could barely hear myself.

I dove into the water.

Cold.

I became aware of the viola again, just as I gulped water and felt a stabbing pain in my lungs. The real me, the me at my engagement party, the twenty three-year old who had control of his life, gasped real air and felt water. I was coming out of it.

But the sixteen year-old me woke up to grass tickling my nose. The world swam as if I was riding the teacups at Disney. I opened my eyes. Just in front of me, so close I had no context but a few blades of grass, the dark of the rainy night, and my own nausea, was Rachel's face. She, too had her cheek to the grass. Her eyes glazed over. Her mouth hung open. Her hair stuck to her face in the rain. She blinked, and a tear fell over the bridge of her nose.

Rachel, Rachel, I am sorry.

* * *

The sound of the full quartet sounded like a philharmonic, and I knew I was out of the hypnosis a second before I bolted straight in my chair. Jessica sat on the edge of the chaise in an ecru dress. The orchid in her hand matched the one in her blonde hair. She must have gotten it for my lapel on the way back from the manicurist. She always thought of everything.

"Jon," she said, taking my hand. "What happened?"

"You have to meet me halfway," grumbled David Mesmer.

"Jonathan," Theresa said. "Let me get you a drink, my God."

The other sister's voices broke into my consciousness. Jessica and I just looked at each other, barely hearing.

"You look _worse_."

"We really need to try the crystal cleansing lady."

"Have the guy with the wine come this way."

"Christ, I think half of Stanford just showed up."

Jessica slipped her hand between mine and tugged. I got up. I pulled her away to a quiet corner between two chest-high planters.

"Are you all right?" she whispered.

"I don't believe in hypnosis," I said.

"Of course not." She pressed the orchid to my lapel and wove a three inch straight pin through it, fastening it to my jacket. Her eyes gazed at me suspiciously and with no little concern. "But you look like you just saw a ghost."

"I remembered that night. Things I hadn't remembered before."

"That night? Jon, really. Which night?"

"The night Rachel died."

She touched my cheek, and I brought my arm around her waist. "Tell me," she said.

I put my lips close to her ear. "She's alive."

"How is that possible?"

"I remember. I woke up in the grass, and she was next to me. Her eyes were open. She blinked."

Nothing about Jessica's expression changed for the first second, and I watched her closely. I needed her to tell me something. Maybe comfort me, or tell me I was wrong. Maybe I'd missed a shred of evidence that proved what we'd always known. That Rachel was dead and buried and the family tracks covered with six feet of dirt.

She put her hand on my lapel. "You know, this isn't a reliable memory, right?"

"Yes. But I also know it's right. Sure as we're standing here."

"Well then, there's only one way to know for sure." She squeezed my hand and put her lips to my ear. "We'll have to find her."

A streamer floated down from a tree and landed between us, while the sound of the quartet drew my attention back to my engagement party and waiting guests.

END

#

CD Reiss is the author of Songs of Submission, a series about a kinky billionaire, an ingenue singer, art, music and sin in the city of Los Angeles.

Find her at her website cdreiss.com.com or follow her on Facebook

# Beg.

If you enjoyed CD's story, check out her best-selling erotic romance!

My name is Monica. I'm a singer born and raised in Los Angeles.

I've stopped dating. When I cut a record, or win a Grammy, maybe then I'll be with someone, but every man in my past has done everything he could to make me submit myself to him, and it's gotten in the way of my career. I won't do it again.

But there's Jonathan. He owns the high-rise hotel where I work, and he is gorgeous and charming. I refuse to fall in love with him, even though when he asks me to submit to him, I want nothing more.

And also, there's lots of CURSING and HOT SEX.

# The Paradox

### Alan Nayes

I wasn't supposed to die today.

I was supposed to live into my eighties, if actuarial statistics are to be believed. My parents always told me I came from good stock, whatever the hell that meant. My grandmother and grandfather both lived into their eighties and they smoked and drank. My mom and dad are relatively healthy, excepting some minor blood pressure issues and weight concerns. Like they preached—"I come from good stock."

So why me, at the ripe young age of twenty-six? Why did I get the honor of meeting the Grim Reaper? What the hell happened that changed my life so mind-bendingly abruptly?

Two words—Mia Lingo. I'm going to die today because of a girl named Mia Lingo.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I had a plane to catch.

* * *

The red Ferrari was parked under an overpass on the 405 freeway heading south. I could see the older driver checking under the hood and then slam it shut. He didn't look too pleased as I whizzed past in my eleven-year-old blue Tundra, never realizing how my life was about to change. I rented a shit pad in Santa Ana with two other poor pricks, and worked my tail off at a local Home Depot selling kitchen appliances to dowdy housewives. Crap, they had more cash than me. Maybe I was destined to remain poor.

I glanced in the rearview. The older driver was waving at me.

"Just keep driving, someone else will stop," I muttered.

When I checked again, he was still waving.

"Shit." I checked the time. I guess I could act the Good Samaritan and still make it to Home Depot in time for my shift.

I pulled to the shoulder and maneuvered a long reverse, keeping a keen eye out for cops until I'd braked within a few yards of the Ferrari's front bumper, which I figured with more than just a little chagrin was probably worth more than my entire truck.

I got out. "Trouble, sir?" I asked.

He approached me in his expensive tie and sports coat and shiny loafers. "Engine died," he explained. Frustrated he held up his smart phone. "Must be something in the air because my cell phone died, too. All this frickin' technology and a horse and buggy would do me more good." He reached out a hand. "Thanks for stopping. I'm Bennett."

"Michael." He wasn't standoffish. While I made a call to AAA, we got to talking.

"Nice car," I remarked.

"A lot nicer when she runs." He chuckled and so did I.

It was odd because while I'm normally kind of shy, today a jabberbird had control of my tongue. "How'd you make all you money, Bennett?"

"Got real lucky, son. A hot tip."

"Tip as in betting?"

"Stocks, Michael. I made a killing in a couple of stocks."

I must have looked skeptical because he pulled me closer and said, "Honest to God. May lightning strike me dead if I'm lying." He rubbed his chin a moment. "But it's not what it seems, Michael. True, the valuation of the commodities made me wealthy, but my luck was how I acquired the knowledge." He locked onto my gaze. He must have smelled my desire for money because he got real close and asked, "You wish to be rich, son?"

Somber images flashed in my mind—my shabby apartment, clunker truck, mom and dad still working their tails off, crappy future, no girlfriend, my measly few worthless college credits—"Yes," I blurted. "Yes, I do."

Bennett pulled a worn card from his wallet and scribbled a number on the back. "Call this man, he'll help you."

I was suddenly wary. "I'm not into drugs and don't want to do anything illegal."

Bennett laughed out loud. "There's nothing illegal about being a popper."

"A what?"

"A popper, Michael."

"A popper," I repeated, now skeptical as well as wary. Where the hell was that tow truck?

Bennett didn't bat an eye. "You wish to be rich, call that number. It worked for me. Ask for Dinjis. It's been years but if he's still there, he'll help you."

"A popper," I said, reading the scrawled digits. Didn't sound so scary.

By the time AAA arrived, I'd already memorized the Los Angeles number.

Dinjis agreed to meet me at four the following afternoon if my background check returned satisfactory. He took my basic information and less than an hour later called back to report I "checked out". The address was a three-story, red brick building on Sepulveda Blvd. sandwiched between a pair of abandoned warehouses that appeared to be defunct businessesone plumbing supplies, the other, wicker furniture—if the old bankruptcy notices were accurate. I waited outside the nondescript building searching for a sign but there was only the street address. I gazed up at a third floor window. The blinds were down. I looked up and down Sepulveda. Not a bustling beehive of activity for sure, though down the block I watched a couple enter the only nice looking establishment on the street. OPTIONS AND STOCK TRADES emblazoned across one large bay window. I was glad the sun was out and the sky a clear blue which mitigated the smell of car exhaust and the odor of decay. I spotted the road kill, a stray cat, lying next to the curb. At least it wasn't raining, though I knew the forecast called for thundershowers tomorrow.

"What the hell," I muttered. If Bennett had steered me here, I'd just have to play the hand out. What did I have to lose, anyway? "Popper," I chuckled and climbed to the third floor and turned right at the landing. I saw only one office in the corridor. I hadn't even knocked when a squat, dark-complected man opened the heavy wood door. "I'm Dinjis," he introduced himself, offering his hand.

I shook it noticing how smooth the skin was. Dinjis had never done much manual labor, I presumed, based on his soft palm. "Michael Jenks," I said, thinking his skin tone and facial features said "Indian," as in the continent. "I called yesterday. Bennett referred me."

"Come in, please."

The office was two rooms, the outer one small and sparse—only a desk with a chair and a single painting on the wall; a framed oil on canvas of Big Ben smothered in a London fog. He walked me past the vacant desk into the far more spacious room.

"Whoa," I murmured, "You collect clocks."

He smiled vaguely and settled behind a desk, a big teakwood that I guessed weighed a ton. "No, Michael, I collect time. Time is a commodity and I trade in it. I'm a time broker and make my commission by how successful you are when you _travel_."

He motioned me to a worn cushioned chair and while I made myself comfortable, he pulled open a drawer and passed me a plastic card. He cleared his throat when I didn't take it.

I shrugged awkwardly. "What do you mean you trade in time?"

"I trade blocks of time. A block today for a block tomorrow."

I accepted the plastic card, barely glimpsing at it. "Not sure I'm getting it."

"You will once you see."

My eyes settled on the largest clock mounted on the wall next to his desk. And I mean large. It had to be at least four feet in diameter. Something was odd about it besides the fact it had too many hands—hours, minutes, seconds, and three others which didn't seem to move—as well as two digital windows positioned side by side. I noticed all the digital numerals set to zero. A much smaller window near the base also registered zero.

Dinjis cleared his throat again, recapturing my attention. He motioned to my hand. "The card, Michael. Don't lose it. Each popper gets one."

"One?"

"Only one."

I studied the card. Drab gray with no lettering or printing—entirely blank—and about the size of a credit card. "What's it do?" I asked.

Dinjis gestured to the only window in the entire office. The blinds were down. This was the window I'd viewed from the Sepulveda. "It'll pop you out there," he said.

"That's Los Angeles," I said, getting a little antsy. I'd come here to get rich, not talk about going back outside. "I was just out there."

He shook his head once. "Not _out there_ , you weren't."

I stared at the card in my palm and back at the window. I did a double take. Had that door by the window been there all this time? A strange prickly sensation touched the nape of my neck as I stood and slowly walked across the floor to the plain wood door with a brass door knob. I felt Dinjis's eyes on me but I didn't turn. My attention roved to the huge clock on my right with the strange hands that didn't seem to move, then to the window on my left, and finally back to the door in front of me. I assumed a slot below the doorknob was meant for the card. I reached out and touched the door's wood panel.

As if reading my mind, Dinjis commented, "It's real."

I scratched my head. "I know it is. I'm wondering why I didn't see it when I came in."

"You weren't looking."

I shrugged. "Maybe." I stepped to the window and raised the blinds halfway. Three stories down I saw my Tundra—no parking ticket, good—and almost directly below I spotted the dead cat. A pool of dried blood I hadn't noticed before stained the concrete around its head. I turned suddenly. "Is this how—"

"Bennett did it?" he finished for me.

"How did you know I was going to ask that?"

His reply came back direct. "Michael, I don't make anyone rich. This meeting won't make you rich, that little card you hold won't make you rich. _You_ make what you want for yourself. That's the way it's been for poppers, that's the way it always will be—as long as you follow the rules."

"Rules?" I swallowed. Dinjis's eyes had taken on a preternatural sheen as if he were looking straight through me. An unwelcome queasy spot bloomed in my gut.

"Three to be exact," he said. "Are you listening?"

This was beginning to sound serious. "I'm listening."

"Really listening?"

I nodded, unable to hold his penetrating gaze, so I glanced down at the card. "I said I was."

"That's good, Michael." Dinjis leaned back in his plush desk chair, watching me. "One—a popper can't stay. You must return."

"Stay? Where—"

"Let me finish. Two—the card is valid for as many pops as you desire."

I sensed my pulse ratchet up a bit. _Sounding really serious._

"And three—and never forget this one, Michael. The time a popper remains in his alternate universe _plus_ —and this is very important to understand—plus the date a popper _pops_ ahead, is borrowed. It's always paid back. A trade so to speak. By traveling into the future, a popper is _borrowing_ from his future."

That queasy spot had suddenly turned cold. "What are you saying—that I can..." I slowly turned. "That I can walk through that door and..." My mouth was suddenly dry.

Dinjis grinned. "Yes, Michael. Walk through that door... _and pop into your future_!"

"We're three stories up!" My hand rested on the brass doorknob. The metal was warm under my fingertips and felt moist though I realized that had to be the perspiration on my palms.

Dinjis waited by the big clock. I'd already entered my _pop date_. To put myself at ease I was just going ahead one day. It was all clear in my mind now. Or so I thought. Simple, really. My pop date was the date I would travel to. That was the digital window on the left. The window on the right registered how long I remained in the future. Dinjis called this my alternate universe, _AU_. Everyone had one, though only poppers could access it. The smaller window at the bottom of the clock was what I _owed_. It was a running tally of the sum total of my time in the future or _AU_ plus how far into the future I traveled. Dinjis explained it this way—if I popped one week into the future and remained there one day, I would owe eight days—and this would be subtracted from my lifetime clock or my default universe ( _DU_ ) life span. I didn't consider this an issue because like I'd always said—I come from good stock. What difference would a week make in the total scheme of things? Insignificant in comparison to what I had to gain.

And I had a plan.

In short order I would no longer have money concerns.

Dinjis wasn't quite finished with my education. "One more thing, Michael. The paradox."

"Paradox?" I asked, not liking the sound of the word.

"The popper's paradox is this," he explained. "If you die in your alternate universe or _AU_ , you will instantly be transported back to your default universe or _DU_ , where we are now. And of equal significance, if your life's time clock runs out while you are _here_ in your _DU_ , meaning if you die or are killed in your default universe, you will have no _AU_. It will cease to exist for you. Clear?"

I nodded, though I didn't see how the paradox would ever apply to me. I wasn't planning on dying anytime soon, in either my _DU_ or my _AU_.

"Ready then?" Dinjis was asking.

I glanced once more at the hands of the big clock. All of a sudden the room seemed to be a bed of absolute silence—except the ticking. It was like every clock in the office was on speakerphone. _Tick.Tick.Tick.Tick._

The hands of the large clock—the current time in my default universe registered 4:46 PM. When I returned they would still register 4:46 PM. A corollary rule Dinjis had called it. See, time spent in my _AU_ would not be taken from my _DU_ , except at the end. Fine with me. That way no one in my _DU_ would miss me—in fact they would not even be aware I'd _left_.

Still nervous as hell, who wouldn't be, I nodded. "I won't fall?" I couldn't seem to set aside the minor detail I was twenty feet off the ground in my _DU_.

Dinjis cleared his throat. "You're confusing your universes—when you step outside in your _AU_ , you won't be this high up."

I inhaled and exhaled. WTF—go for it. "Let's do it," I said, sliding the card into the slot. I didn't even look back as I turned the doorknob and stepped outside.

I looked up and down Sepulveda. Nothing had changed. I frowned at the plastic card and shoved it in my pocket, feeling irritated. Had Dinjis been lying to me? I turned— _holy crap_. The door was gone. Momentarily panicked, I gazed up and was relieved. There was the familiar shuttered window and—I squinted at the brick in the drizzle. There was the card slot in the wall if I looked carefully at eye level. _Better_. I began to wipe the moisture from my eyes and froze. It'd been sunny out only minutes ago. Now it was raining. What the hell, then I recalled the forecast had called for rain tomorrow. _This was tomorrow!_

"Damn!" I exclaimed. I'd really popped ahead in time one day. Inside my chest, my heart beat like a speed bag against my ribs. Unfrickingbelievable. Dinjis hadn't been lying. I had traveled into my future! My _AU_ , alternate universe, beckoned to me. Bennett had done it and so I had I. I laughed at the rain drops running down my neck.

"Hello, rain," I shouted.

A stranger under an umbrella passed on the sidewalk, giving me an odd look. I smiled back.

I walked to my truck. "Hello Tundra." Sure enough, a parking ticket was shoved under one wiper. I laughed again and tore it up. What had I expected—the truck had been parked there for over a day.

And the air smelled cleaner, fresher. Of course, the dead cat was gone, having been removed by a sanitation crew in the last twenty-four hours. Amazing.

Okay bro, times a wasting. Let's test my plan.

I ducked into the drizzle and jogged to the nicest looking office on the boulevard.

OPTIONS AND STOCK TRADES.

Hello, shiny new Ferrari.

Adios, poor man Michael Jenks.

The trading room was a typical brokerage office—desks where clients could discus financial matters with brokers and advisers, a wall of quotes and ticker tapes, and multiple computer stations. I could have picked out quotes from the newspaper but I was in a hurry. All I really needed was the biggest stock news of the day. Most of the desks were vacant—as it was 4:58PM _AUT_ , alternate universe time—the markets had closed hours earlier. I wanted to remain inconspicuous yet I needed to speak with a broker. I chose an older bespectacled man who appeared to be studying numbers data scrolling across his computer screen. At least he looked the part of success—nice suit, a lot of jewelry on his wrists—yeah, and his name, Mr. Gold, would do just fine.

"Hi," I said walking over.

He glanced up. "Hello."

Our conversation couldn't have gone smoother. Not a hitch. Since the rules stated I couldn't bring anything back across except what I brought with me, I removed a pen and scribbled IntelGence on my palm. An artificial intelligence company.

"It was up over a thirty today on takeover rumors," Mr. Gold elaborated.

I said thanks, and within half an hour I was back in Dinjis's office. Though walking into the future was like riding an elevator, returning left me with a slight queasy sensation in my gut.

I checked the digital clock. 24:52:12 seconds total elapsed _AU_ time. Almost twenty-five hours I owed. No big deal. The second hand on the clock face was moving again in my _DU_.

"How'd it go?" Dinjis asked as if I'd just returned from a job interview.

"Wonderful."

I found my Tundra—sans parking ticket—and skirted around the dead feline.

All the way back to Orange County I grinned like a Cheshire cat. If I'd seen Bennett I would have kissed him.

I couldn't wait until tomorrow.

This was going to be so easy.

Six AM came early but by seven I was showered and in the EasyTrade Center near where I lived. Within minutes I opened an account funded with two thousand bucks I'd saved for a down payment on a new truck. I found a broker eager to place my trade. Any subsequent trades would be brokered online but this being my first experience with trading stocks, I wanted to ensure this worked.

"IntelGence?" the broker asked with a tone conveying I was either really stupid or really ignorant. From his expression, I guessed he thought both.

"Yes."

"Um...never heard of that company." He grinned and quipped, "You have a hot tip?"

I grinned back but kept my mouth shot.

Shrugging, he said, "Symbol is IXT." Still gazing at his screen he asked, "How many shares?"

"What's it trading at?"

"Now, dirt cheap. Just under two bucks."

"How many shares can I buy?" I was getting antsy because I needed my trade to go through before the news broke.

He punched the numbers on a calculator. "Minus commission, 987."

"Place the order."

"You just opened an account and you want me to place everything on IXT? _I_ never heard of the stock."

I glanced at the clock. "Do it, at the market."

He mumbled something incoherent though it didn't sound flattering, and entered the trade. Within seconds my first stock trade went through.

He leaned back in his chair, looking smug. "You now own 987 shares of IXT at a buck ninety-eight. Good luck."

"Thanks," I said and walked out.

The entire morning on my Home Depot shift I was a wreck. Every ten minutes I would call the 800 number quote line, expecting to see a rise but all morning the stock fluctuated in a narrow range—never quite hitting two dollars a share. Shit, I cursed silently. Had I been duped? Was Dinjis in on this inside joke— _let's screw with Michael Jenks._

By noon, I told my manager I was ill and took some sick time. Hell, I was sick. Sick to my fucking stomach.

Driving home, the news broke. I'd never paid attention to an all business radio station before, but today it was the only thing I wanted to listen to. I nearly lost control when I heard the news flash: "IntelGence, a thinly traded tech company is up over twenty dollars a share on takeover rumors..." I tuned out the rest. The market would close in twenty-five minutes. I sped home and jumped in front of my computer. With five minutes until the end of trading, I opened my online account and typed in my password, then IXT. "Holy shit," I gasped. Up 31.76!

I sold all 987 for a total profit of $31,347.12, minus Dinjis's five per cent cut.

Mr. Michael Jenks was on his way!

The next morning I quit Home Depot, and drove into Los Angeles. Dinjis greeted me like he'd expected my return. "How's life?" he asked, returning to his desk.

"Better every day." I found myself looking for the door but didn't see it. A momentary jolt of panic racked me until I removed the plastic card—I breathed a sigh of relief. The door was where it'd been yesterday in my _DU_ , right beside the big clock.

"I'm going back," I said.

Dinjis watched me. "Of course you are. Don't forget the rules."

"Who me?" and I laughed. I punched a date two days into my _AU_.

_Pop_. I felt strangely uneasy about seeing Mr. Gold again so I purposely avoided his desk—he appeared busy with a client anyway—and strolled over to a vacant computer monitor. Out of curiosity I typed in IXT for the latest quote and was amused to see IntelGence was trading well off its highs—down in the low twenties.

I wanted a bigger killing though. I waited until five minute before the markets closed and ran a list of the biggest movers and shakers that day. Two stocks jumped out, both up over fifteen. Not what I was really looking for, but they would have to do. I jotted down their ticker symbols, not even bothering to see what kind of companies they were or what they did.

I was out without Mr. Gold even noticing my presence.

On the way back to the time door, I glanced at my watch. The second hand hadn't moved since entering my _AU_. Out of curiosity I checked my cell phone. No signal. I'd ask Dinjis about this when I got the chance.

Two days later and comfortably back in my _DU_ , I placed the trades online at the market open from my home computer. Like clockwork, precisely five minutes before close, I sold all the shares, netting $68,943.

I promptly drove to the Mercedes Dealership, traded in my heap, and drove a used ocean blue 450SL sports coup convertible off the lot for a cool forty-five grand in cash. Hell, I didn't want to be greedy. My Ferrari would come in time.

My remaining account balance stood at a little over fifty-one thousand and change.

That night I slept dreaming of places only the wealthy visited—Bora Bora, Anguilla, Fiji—and awoke wondering where the hell those names had come from. Before Dinjis, I would have been hard pressed to take a date to Disneyland. Yet the dream message read like a ship's foghorn—loud, clear and booming.

Make a _real_ killing!

So I did.

"Michael!" Dinjis literally leaped from his desk. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Popping," I replied, experiencing more anticipation than in all my prior visits to my _AU_ , hell, my entire life for that matter.

Dinjis's eyes gaped at the big clock. "That must be an error—you've entered a date _ten years from today._ "

I'd thought about this a lot and had my answer prepared. This was the only way I could latch on to a mega deal—the kind of mega deal that is a life changer. I was talking not just thousands, but millions of dollars. "I'm just going to do this once," I reassured him. "And don't forget my life expectancy extends into the eighth decade."

He frowned. "Life expectancies are as fickle as time."

Before he could say another word, I'd slid the card in the slot and popped out on Sepulveda Blvd.

Immediately, I noticed the changes. A few of the buildings had had façade lifts and the trees along the sidewalk were much taller. The weather was warm and clear as I made my way to the brokerage which was now located in a new office across the street.

I didn't see Mr. Gold so I picked out a young woman with her head down studying some documents and approached, knowing exactly what I needed.

She looked up. I stopped in my tracks. _Holy shit_. The woman was beautiful, an absolute stunner. She smiled at me and only then did I see the hints of a very thin scar extending from her right eye down to the lower part of her ear. Somehow, though, the scar only added to her appeal. I couldn't say why, perhaps it was the mystery of what had happened to her.

She stood and proffered her hand. "I'm one of the brokers here. Can I help you with your account, sir?" For just an instant a shadow crossed her expression as she gazed at me, then it was gone.

_Sir?_ Damn, she couldn't have been any older than me and actually looked younger. I cleared my throat and swallowed. Miss Broker had these fabulously huge breasts, slender athletic arms and long, long dancer legs. And that face. _Whoa!_ So being tongue tied really does happen, I thought distractedly. 'Yeah, umm..." Just spit it out. "I'm actually looking for some information on a couple of companies."

"I can assist you with that. Please have a seat."

I sat across from her, fully cognizant of her sweet scent and flawless complexiondash;except for the scar, she was perfect. I'd always heard about falling in love on the first sight, but falling in love on the first sight _ten years into your future_? Damn. I shook my head. She was the kind of girl my buddies at Home Depot would remark: _Dayum, check out the twat on aisle four._ (Aisle Four was our gardening section). _What I'd give to have that babe planted on my face._ I swallowed nervously. What that hell was the matter with me? Forget her. You don't even know her name. I'm here to become ridiculously wealthy. I'd find plenty of women back in my default universe. Collect the beautiful like silver coins.

She was watching me with an appraising stare. _Her face. Wow!_ "You okay? You look kind of...discombobulated," she was saying.

"No, I'm fine."

Her smile leaped across the desk and touched something in my chest. "I'm glad. So you wanted some information. Market's open for another couple of hours." She tapped some keys. "Do you have an account with us?"

"No...but I plan to open one."

"Today?"

I grinned. "Soon."

"That's fine." Again she was watching me with a strange look. "Have you been in here before?"

"No...I mean yes, but it was...ah...some time ago. I spoke with a broker named Gold."

She shrugged. "Name's not familiar and I've been here for over three years." Again that distant look in her beautiful brown eyes. "It's just that you look kind of familiar."

"Like an old boyfriend perhaps?" I quipped, trying to be funny.

"No." She laughed. "I'm Mia Lingo."

"Michael Jenks."

"So Michael, what kind of companies are you interested in investing in?"

I thought a moment, trying not to make my interest in her so obvious. But damn, Mia's figure belonged in a museum of natural beauty, carved in marble. Hers was a dazzling sensuality directly out of a men's dream catalogue. Yeah, Mia Lingo would be a looker a hundred years in the past or into the future.

"Michael?"

So much for not being obvious. I began, "This might sound a little strange but I'm searching for a couple of companies that you could have bought, let's say ten years ago, really, really cheap but today are worth many times what their offering stock price was."

She tilted her head. "You want something that really appreciated then."

" _Really_ appreciated!"

"Like an Apple or a Microsoft in their early days."

"Yes!"

She was watching me. "But Michael, you realize the appreciation is already in today's price. Any run up is already done."

I almost spouted out _I don't care_. Instead I smiled and said, "You can do it, right?"

That million-dollar grin again. My heart melted a little bit more. "Of course. But ten yearsdash;can I get you the names tomorrow?"

I beamed. "Sounds great." And before I could stop my tongue, I blurted out, "Maybe we can have lunch." _WTF_. Where did that come from?

She didn't say no. She didn't say yes either, but her outright nonrefusal made me feel richer than I'd ever felt before.

"I'll do some research and see you around one tomorrow, after the market closes," she offered.

Inside, I leaped in anticipation. I'd not only traveled into my future but just floated to Cloud Nine. All with one little plastic card.

Life couldn't beat this with a pair of drumsticks and a bass drum.

Mia sat across from me. She'd chosen a quaint little eatery just down from the brokerage, and with the temperature pleasant and the sun burning away the late morning overcast, we ate our mahi mahi out on the narrow veranda in the shade of a towering eucalyptus. I'd already written the names of the two companies she had provided down on a napkin—FostersSys and LinkOn.

"Adjusted for splits, you could have had Fosters at about two cents and LinkOn around a nickel," she was explaining.

I listened, without really listening. What was it that so attracted me to this individual? I'd never been so bushwacked by my testosterone. I'd already learned she'd grown up in Richardson, a small city outside of Dallas, Texas. She'd lived there until she was sixteen when her family moved to the west coast. Okay, back on track. "So lets say a thousand bucks invested in these two ten years ago..."

I could see the calculator in her pretty head. "You'd be up a little over ten thousand times," she finished for me.

I nearly choked on my fish. "Ten million dollars!"

"Michael, companies like that are extremely rare." She laughed. "Too bad you can't go back in time and make those trades."

I grinned. "Yeah, that'd be sweet." I'd stayed overnight in a cheap motel because I didn't want to return to my _DU_ and pop again today, though to be honest, I think I had begun to delude myself that the rules were only designed to scare poppers from bouncing back and forth too often, and not to be taken literally.

I walked her back to the office. We stopped on the steps. I felt her studying me.

"Mind if I ask you something?" She was so close, I could smell her shampoo. It was all I could do to hold my hands at my sides.

"Ask away, Mia."

"You really seem interested in stocks and investing, but you haven't opened an account. Why?"

Had me there. "Well..."

She smiled and grabbed my hand, joking, "Hey, I know what you're thinking. I only had lunch with you because I was interested in your money."

I feigned a frown. "Actually I don't have much money." _Yet_.

"Well...maybe I'll make you some." Then she leaned close and kissed me on the cheek. "Thanks for the mahi mahi."

I watched her sweet apple bottom all the way back to her desk. _Yes_.

I already knew I would pop again.

"Michael, don't ever do that again." Dinjis's eyes bore in to me like drill bits. "Poppers are not allowed to stay for extended periods of time in their _AU_ s. Too risky."

I pretended not to hear him. Ever since returning to my _DU_ last week all I could think about was Mia. I was even dreaming about her. Stocks didn't seem so interesting to me anymore. Mia's smiling face and sensuous body did. Sure, I'd made the trades—invested five grand in FosterSys and a second five thousand in LinkOn. Ten thousand total. If Mia's research was accurate, in ten years my portfolio would be worth over a hundred million dollars. I was financially set. I'd entered the "Bennett Club". A genuine Popper success story. Yet, I still couldn't rid myself of this empty sensation in my chest.

"Are you listening, Michael?"

I scratched at my cheek, the exact spot where Mia had placed her lips ten years into my future. Fuckin' A. What the hell had I fallen into? "Yes," I replied, distracted. My gaze settled on the big clock. "What would happen if I died?

Dinjis scowled. "What do you mean if you died? What kind of question is that?"

"No, I mean if I was in my _AU_ and I died. Or was killed. What would happen?"

Dinjis tented his fingers together studying me. "You're beginning to worry me, Michael."

"Only a question. Just curious."

Dinjis thought before answering. "We discussed this. The paradox. A popper can not _technically_ die in his _AU_. Yes, you can 'die or be killed,' and that is a risk the longer you remain. However, if this occurs, you will instantly be returned to your _DU_ —here—and your _AU_ will cease to exist for you."

"And if I die here, in my _DU_?"

"Then my friend, you are _dead_." He hesitated a moment before adding, "The result is identical if while in your _AU_ and you use up your _DU_ life clock—zap, you no longer will exist in your future or _AU_. You will _have_ no future."

"And..."

"Simple—you return to your _DU_...and die."

I'd decided. I needed to see Mia again. I rose. "I'm going back."

Dinjis leaped from behind his desk. "Only a day, correct?"

I could sense an odd fear behind his dark eyes. "No." I slipped the card from my pocket and entered my digital time warp.

Dinjis gaped at the clock. "Michael, no! Too much time. Too risky. Don't do this!" He reached for me, barely missing my arm.

"See you 'round, Dinjis." I popped out on to Sepulvada.

I grinned, feeling the warmth of the October sun. I was alive and rich, _really rich_.

And I was falling in love.

The eleven months I lived in my _AU_ were the most invigorating, happy, satisfying months of my entire life—past and future. I loved living in my alternate universe. So much so, if something hadn't happened I probably never would have returned.

But something did happen.

Our first date didn't pan out so fabulous, though. I'd picked Mia up in my jet black Ferrari (not red, but I still considered myself a full fledged Bennett Club member) and we dined at the Five Crowns in Corona Del Mar. _Holy shit_ was all I could think when I saw how dazzling she looked in her long body-fitting dress. Her hair was down and draped over one shoulder. Mia Lingo looked like the fucking Queen of Exotic.

"Nice wheels," was her first comment as I held open the door.

I grinned and replied, "I outgrew my Tundra," but she didn't get it.

We talked so freely and comfortably I felt like I'd known Mia for years. She never once asked about my obvious wealth and I got the impression she really didn't care. In an odd way, I was a little disappointed, but in the end it wouldn't have mattered anyway. I was so tempted to tell her that her recommendations had panned out beautifully, but that wouldn't work either. FostersSys and LinkOn were my secrets.

She told me about growing up in Texas. She'd loved cheerleading for the varsity football team, until she was forced to quit her junior year.

"Why?" I asked.

The date turned south at that point. If I could've kicked myself in the ass, I would have.

She sipped her wine a long moment. "Can we talk about something else?"

This was when I should have kept my mouth shut. But ever since sitting down at our secluded table, I saw how the ambient light gave the thin, linear scar on her face a raised glossy sheen. I was studying her and she caught me.

"What are you staring at, Michael?" she asked pointedly.

I briefly looked away awkwardly. "Is that why you quit cheerleading in high school?"

She dabbed her lips with her napkin. "By _that_ , you mean this?" She canted her head just right so the scar really showed. Just by her doing this I realized she must have repeated this same maneuver a thousand times in front of a mirror trying to figure out the best angles to conceal the fault.

To me the scar was nothing, but I gathered from her reaction, to Mia it must have seemed the Grand Canyon of ugliness.

_I wanted to know_. So I asked, "What happened?"

She met my gaze straight on, really direct. "I was attacked by a psycho at my brother's high school football game. Knifed—"

She abruptly stopped and the way she was _staring at me_ now gave me the shivers. I experienced a sharp pain in my chest so acute I actually coughed. Her expression cut right through me—skin, muscle, bone—and then passed out my back like an invisible laser. I'd never experienced such an unnatural feeling before, but before I could consider that I might be having a heart attack, it was gone. I was me again.

"Knifed?" I repeated.

She continued watching, but it wasn't the same as moments ago. "My brother was an all state running back and he was supposed to rush for over two hundred yards that night. Johnny Lingo rushed for three hundred and one. Just before the game, a sketcher high on speed ambushed me—Michael, are you sure we haven't met before?"

I shook my head. "Last week," I replied lightly, though something heavy had just occurred I was unable to put a finger on. All I knew was I wanted to get this conversation behind us. "I'm sorry I asked."

Her smile and her hand on mine told me everything was still cool.

For the next three months I spent as much time as I could with Mia. Once when she caught sight of my cell phone—still didn't work here—she laughed and called me a young successful dinosaur. "Your phone is out of the dark ages." I'd laughed and promptly tossed the antiquated gizmo in the trash. By then I'd decided I'd seen the last of Dinjis and his clock-strewn office. I loved it here. I was everything I wasn't back there—successful with stocks (I'd kept my account at EasyTrade deciding this was more prudent than opening an account with Mia's firm, and hired a financial wiz to square my taxes with the IRS), rich, driving a luxury sports car, and best of all, in love with a fabulously beautiful girl who loved me back. Every time Dinjis's poppers' rules bounced in my head, I popped them out of my mind like yesterday's news.

For Christmas I gave her a two-carat friendship ring—I didn't wish to scare her off because I knew how she enjoyed her independence—but I needn't have worried. That night I moved in with her, and the following week we planted an ornamental pear tree in her front yard. _Our tree_. We tied a cerulean ribbon—her favorite color—around the trunk. We'd watch the tree grow old together.

How I loved making love to Mia's body and mind. At times I felt like we'd fuse and become one; the sensation was like being wrapped in soft silk while a hundred titillating fingers sensuously massaged every inch of our warm skin. I couldn't have walked away from this if a gun had been placed against my head. I'd become so enthralled in my love I failed to understand that in fact, that's exactly what had happened.

A loaded gun _was_ pressed into my skull.

One afternoon in the spring—our pear tree was blooming—I came home from a day of trading. I was actually getting pretty good at this stock game on my own. As soon as I stepped through the front door, a powerful sense of foreboding struck. I found Mia upstairs in our bedroom. She jumped, startled and embarrassed, when I came in and said her name. When she turned I could see she'd been crying.

"What's wrong, baby?" I asked.

She looked up at me with her huge pony-brown eyes and said, "I don't know, Michael. I came in our bedroom and felt this overpowering sensation that we aren't going to end well. I mean...oh hell, I don't know what I mean." She began to wipe a tear that had gotten caught up in the thin mound of scarring on her cheek, but my thumb beat her to it. She caught my wrist. "I don't want to lose you, Michael. And I'm so afraid I—"

"You aren't going to lose me, Mia. I love you. I've loved you since the first time I saw you."

"I love you, Michael Jenks. Don't leave me."

Tendrils of cold crept from dark recesses inside my chest. "Mia, why would you say that? _Leave you_? Never, baby."

"Promise me."

"I promise."

My promise would remain unbroken for only four months.

My account had continued to appreciate to the comfortable sum of one-hundred-ten million dollars. But even on my good trading days, I couldn't shake the cold within me. I'd stand in the sun, with my face to the sky, willing, begging the warmth from above to warm my insides. Nothing worked—except for making love to Mia. Damn, how I fed off that vibrant woman I'd come to cherish. Late at night I would sometimes stand alone and study my reflection in the mirror and wonder what had happened to that loser kid from my _DU_. The kid who'd stocked shelves at Home Depot and drove a clunker Tundra. The kid who couldn't get a decent date. "That was ten years ago," I'd mouth to the mirror with a confident, brash grin. Then I'd fist bump my reflection. Yeah, I had changed.

Two weeks before my reckoning, I drove down to a big office on Wilshire, hired an expensive three-piece-suit attorney and drew up a will. I named my parents each for five million if I passed first— _you come from good stock_ —and left the rest to Mia. She'd be set for life and this made me feel like a million bucks.

Honestly, I'd had no intention of ever returning to my former life. Dinjis could take that huge clock with the six hands and digital windows, hell, he could take all his fucking clocks, pack them in an iron safe and sink them in the cold blue Pacific. My popping days were long over.

That conviction solidified to granite the evening Mia declared, "I missed my period."

"You're pregnant?"

She beamed. "Yes!" But I didn't miss the wisp of fear in her beautiful face.

She needn't have doubted anything, at least involving my feelings.

"God Mia, I love you."

We planned to marry before the baby was born.

But the fabric of time can be a fickle friend...or deceitful enemy.

That night we made love like we were the last two humans on earth. Everyone else had vanished from the planet because of a love-eating plague, but we'd wrapped ourselves so tightly in each others arms and our love was so strong and wide and big that no plague could destroy us. So we survived.

For long hours after she drifted off to sleep I watched her— _really_ watched her—her rhythmic inhalations, the rise of her chest, her peaceful angelic expression, the manner in which her hair lay on the pillow spread out like some exotic fan. I traced my finger less than a millimeter above her skin following the thin, thin scar that ran from just below the corner of her eye to her ear. The plastic surgeons had done an exemplary repair but I realized even if the scar had been red and ugly and raised I still would have loved Mia Lingo. I was the happiest man alive.

Finally sleep overtook me and my last conscious thought was Mia would be with me in the morning.

Mia came out of the bathroom and gazed at me. Instantly, a snowball formed in my gut though the morning sun's rays through the bedroom window warmed the mattress where I lay. She wore this odd, almost perplexed look that made me wonder if she was ill. Morning sickness didn't start this early, did it? Then I realized what was so strange. She _wasn't_ exactly gazing at me.

"Mia?" I said.

She kept studying my side of the bed, the wrinkled sheets, as if a piece of her favorite puzzle had gone missing. I waved my hand at her, trying to be funny, and again she didn't respond. _Oh fuck_. That snowball had suddenly become a blizzard. "Mia!" I shouted. My head suddenly felt as if a nest of ravenous, crawling centipedes had hatched in my brain. "Mia!" I screamed again, leaping toward her, overwhelming panic coursing through my bones.

I reached clean through her!

And I knew.

"Michael?" she called, fearfully.

"I'm here, baby."

But I wasn't.

"Michael, Michael!"

I could feel myself inexorably being pulled away, back to my _DU_. "Dinjis!" I screamed in terror. "Don't do this to me— _to us_ , please!"

I gazed down at my fingers and watched them vanish in thin air. " _Dinjis_!"

Then my arms, then my feet. A stabbing pain exploded in my chest and I had one last second to see her, God how I wanted to touch her, "I'll always love you, Mia Lingo," I said, before popping back from where I came.

"How could you be so fucking stupid?"

I refused to meet Dinjis's steely gaze, instead choosing to watch the big clock. I'd been gone exactly eleven months, two days, eight hours, fourteen minutes and thirty-seven seconds. My Default Universe elapsed time was around ten minutes because that's how long I'd been back in Dinjis's office after _popping_ back.

He wouldn't let up. "You do realize what this means, don't you, Michael?"

I shrugged, glancing at my wrinkled pants, the same clothes I'd been wearing when I popped that last time—a little over ten minutes ago—into my _AU_.

"Yes." But strangely I didn't give a shit. I'd left my heart ten years in my future.

"You do recall what I told you would happen if you died in your _AU_?"

I rubbed my neck. Fuck, I was depressed but for all the wrong reasons. "I would pop back into my _DU_."

"Exactly."

Something wasn't right. Actually it was awfully wrong. "But I didn't die in my _AU_."

Dinjis shook his head. "Sadly, no Michael." He stood abruptly. "You ran out of time. You used too much of your future. Michael, _you're going to die today_!"

I simply nodded weakly. _Life expectancies are as fickle as time_. So much for living until eighty. Like I said, depressed for all the wrong reasons. I didn't move, I didn't breathe. God, I wanted to see her one last time. _Needed to._

Then Dinjis got it. "Oh, don't tell me you didn't. Please tell me you are smarter than that. You had almost a year to make so much money. Tell me you didn't, Michael."

I refused to look at him. All I could see was that last image of Mia staring confused at my empty, messed up side of her bed.

"Damn, Michael, you did." Dinjis slapped a fist against his desktop. "You fell in fuckdamn love!"

I wanted to cry. "She was twenty-five, she was beautiful, I didn't care about the money after I met her..."

"And?"

"She was pregnant."

Dinjis jolted to his feet. "You what? You impregnated some girl from your future? Son of a bitch, Michael, tell me this is all a grave misunderstanding. Tell me this ain't so, dammit. _Say it_!"

I stood. "I have to see her again."

"You can't return to your _AU_. The Paradox, Michael. Once you're about to die in your _DU_ , your _AU_ no longer exists. It never did."

"I was there. She was there." I swallowed, giving me a second to build my resolve. " _And_ I'm not talking about my _AU_."

Dinjis glanced worriedly at the time warp stamp. "It's been ten years."

"I don't care." I dropped the plastic time card on his desk. "Guess I won't be needing this anymore." I stared at where the door to my _AU_ had been. Only a wall now.

"Michael, where will you go?"

I didn't answer, the reality of what was about to happen to me finally settling in. "When will I...?" I couldn't complete the question.

Dinjis averted his gaze—very un-Dinjis-like. "Even I can't tell you that. But you _will_ die today."

I shuffled awkwardly a moment. Then exhaling, I thrust out my hand. "Thanks for everything."

He shook it firmly. I could sense he did care. "Michael, I'm sorry."

"I'm not." And I wasn't. I started for the office door. I could feel Dinjis's eyes following my every step.

"Michael, she was twenty-five. Today she'll only be _fifteen_. She won't know you," he warned after me.

I didn't respond as I walked out the door and down the stairs.

Michael Jenks had a plane to catch.

The entire flight I sat frozen in my seat wondering if this was the time. A fiery, terrifying plane crash. Or once on the ground, a car accident. But no. Southwest Airlines Flight 2995 touched down uneventfully at Dallas's Love Field at 6:35 PM. I smiled ruefully at the airport's name. _Love_. You bet, I was in love all right. I'd fallen so deeply, a bulldozer couldn't have dug me out. And now I was traveling to see the woman I'd fallen so in love with _ten years before I met her._ Dinjis's math had been correct.

Mia Lingo would be fifteen! A junior in high school. Her brother a star running back at JJ Pearce High School in a town named Richardson.

Time was crazy.

I was crazy. Crazy in love.

Even the taxi driver was spouting off about the big game. I recall Mia had been a cheerleader so figured this would be the first place to search.

The driver parked at the stadium. The parking lot was packed. As I paid my fare, he remarked. "Johnny Lingo's supposed to get two hundred yards tonight."

I smiled. I already knew he'd break that by a hundred. "Thanks," I said, and started toward the gates. I only wanted to see her cheer, but the nearer I walked it felt as if an elastic band had connected us and I was being reeled in. A twinge of pain touched my chest. I attributed this discomfort to my anxiety. Hell, what would I do when I saw her? I couldn't talk to her. She'd think I was nuts. Without me even being aware of my shift in direction, I was moving toward the girls' restrooms. When I attempted to alter my course, my feet wouldn't respond. That's when I knew— _I was getting close._

I heard some laughter off to my left. _That giggle!_ Even before she nearly bumped into me, I knew it was her. A teenaged Mia Lingo, joking with another cheerleader over something I would never know about, walked past a concession stand, never recognizing me. I stopped where I stood, watching her, barely able to contain myself from rushing forward and embracing her. _Hi, baby. It's me, Michael._ But I didn't move. Without a doubt, I was looking at the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen in my universe, as a teenager. _No facial scar!_ I waited until she'd disappeared in the girl's restroom. Once she was out of my line of vision, my heart deflated like a balloon with a sudden leak. I was a human shell devoid of air. What had I expected? Dinjis's words mocked me. _She won't know you_. And of course, she hadn't.

The scream was high pitched and echoed across the concrete. People froze staring at one another. Some laughed uneasily, assuming some sort of high school gag.

A second longer scream turned my blood to ice. I raced for the restrooms. I bumped into a female student jettisoning from the exit like she had rocket fuel in her shoes. "He's going to kill her!" she screamed. "Help! Someone please help her!"

In a flash of glory, the only glory I ever exhibited, I raced inside. For a second I didn't see her— _them_ —and when I did, I didn't think twice. Not even for an instant.

The psycho, as Mia would call him in ten years, had slashed the right side of her face wide open, from her right eye to her ear, revealing the underlying muscle and white I guessed was bone. Blood squirted from severed arteries, staining her uniform deep crimson. If I hadn't seen with my own eyes the exemplary job the Dallas plastic surgeons would later perform, I would have thought she would die. And she would have died if I hadn't wrenched the crazed addict's arm away as he aimed for her throat. I didn't see the pistol in his other hand.

I locked eyes with his. He pulled the trigger.

Real pain exploded in my left chest and I fell back, gasping, "Get the fuck away from her."

He glanced crazily once at Mia, then me, then stumbled for the door into the sounds of the wailing sirens.

I wasn't sure how long I lay on my back staring at the tile ceiling—couldn't have been more than a couple of seconds—when I felt a gentle hand take my wrist.

It was my Mia. God, even with gobs of blood all over her face, neck, in her eyes, she was everything I'd seen in the twenty-five year old woman I'd fallen in love with.

"You're hurt," she wept. "I'll get help."

I clutched for her. "No, I'll be fine."

"You saved my life. I'll never be able to thank you."

_Oh yes you will_. "Lay down, you're bleeding. Put some pressure on your face," I said weakly. I didn't have long.

She tried unsuccessfully to clear her eyes. " _I'm bleeding?_ You've been shot in the chest!"

I watched her, wanting to ask her so many questions—when did you move to Los Angeles? How did you become interested in finance? How many hearts did you break before meeting me? Her favorite color, hey, I knew that one, cerulean—but I simply stared. I'm glad I didn't have the strength or I'm pretty sure I would have attempted to kiss her.

As the sirens grew louder, and panicked commotion filled the restroom, I heard her ask, "Mr. Savior, what's your name?"

I almost said it, but caught myself. It would only confuse her.

It ended there.

I'd saved Mia Lingo's life.

And ended my own.

I love you, Mia Lingo.

I was gone.

* * *

I stared up at the third floor window. Dinjis stood behind the pane, looking down on Sepulveda. I waved before realizing he couldn't see me.

The fabric of time had pulled another fast one.

You see, Dinjis had it wrong, at least in my case. The paradox, that is. The paradox wasn't if you died in your _DU_ , you had no _AU_. The real time paradox was that if you died in your DU, _all you had_ was your _AU_. Somehow I'd been transported back to my alternate universe. _Popped back_.

I had no idea how long I'd been away. After all, I'd been dead for ten years, maybe longer in my default universe. Time really was an enigma.

I took a taxi to the address I recalled. I had no idea what became of my black Ferrari. I didn't care.

I strolled up to the house, wondering if she even lived there anymore. Had she grown old? Perhaps she'd moved into something far larger, more spacious, a lot richer. She could sure afford it. And what really unnerved me—would she take me back? The ornamental pear tree out front looked different somehow. Instead of one cerulean ribbon, four blew lightly in the warm breeze. The trunk was thicker no doubt and the canopy stretched higher into the sky. I noticed how the roses in her garden had bloomed. But those blooms could have been that spring or multiple springs from that day. I had no way of knowing except to...

I walked up to the front door and rang the bell.

Small footsteps raced from inside.

The door opened. "Hi," a young boy said.

Something caught in my throat. "Hiya back." The kid looked a little like me!

A woman's voice came from where I knew the kitchen was. "Michael, how many times have I warned you, little man, never open the door to—"

Mia froze in her tracks behind the child. God, she hadn't changed a bit. I took in her scar—damn right, those Texas surgeons had done a fantastic job. Still the most beautiful woman I'd ever held.

"Michael?" she said, confused, and much to my relief, there was a glow in her expression too, like a light had suddenly flicked on behind her eyes.

"Hello, Mia," I said.

She placed her hand to her mouth. "Oh my God, Michael Jenks, it's really you."

Afraid my voice would fail me, I kept it to one word. "Yes."

Watching her watching me, I realized another paradox. I'd missed so much by being gone. Yet I had so much.

Mia pulled the boy against her, a smile wider than the Pacific on her face. "Michael Jr., say hello to your father." Then moving back, she asked, "Won't you come in? I think you have some explaining to do."

"I'd like nothing more, baby. And I'll explain everything."

I walked into my new alternate life.

#

If Alan Nayes was able to travel back in time, he would want to meet the last Neanderthal and ask, "What happened?"

Find him at his website anayes.com.com or follow him on Facebook

# The Learner

If you enjoyed Alan's story, check out his best-selling paranormal romance!

NayéLi has come from the dark side of the universe to learn as much as she can about the third planet from the sun, and to communicate her findings back to her home world. NayéLi is a Learner - and on Earth she assumes the form of a young human female of the indigenous host species.

NayéLi is bound by her rulers' strict laws of planetary exploration, which state that there can be no involvement with a member of the host species. But NayéLi is more human now than she realizes. And she is about to fall in love.

# The Walking Tree

### Tara West

Manuel's breath hitched as the slightest displacement of air rustled the leaves on his branches.

The little sloth had fallen.

After he hit the soft ground, a hush fell about the jungle.

"Clumsy mother," a mangrove whispered.

"He will die before nightfall," the palm answered.

The babe cried below while overhead his mamá's heartfelt moans pierced the warm, thick air.

She could not climb down to the jungle floor by nightfall. Manuel knew sleep would soon claim her.

The baby sloth's cries grew louder.

A troop of monkeys gathered around Manuel's branches, their howls blotting out all other sounds.

"Hush," Manuel said. "You will bring The Gato."

"Better the sloth than me," a monkey answered before thrashing through the leaves.

Manuel was unhappy. Never had he known creatures more gentle than the sloth and child. Not since the woodpecker. But that was ages ago.

A monkey jumped violently onto Manuel's branches. "Maybe the ants will get it before The Gato," he taunted.

Manuel's leaves shook with anger. "You should bring the sloth to his mother."

The monkey answered with a laugh before swinging to the next tree.

"Manuel is going soft," a mangrove snickered.

"Maybe his roots are rotting," the palm answered.

Manuel refused to answer their taunts.

"We are not keepers of the jungle, Manuel. We are watchers."

Manuel sighed. "I am tired of watching."

Though his sight was limited to the small copse of jungle where he dwelled, like all trees, he could also 'feel' for miles. Every cell in his frame was so attuned to the earth, he could trace the flutter of a butterfly or the erratic pattern of an ant colony far below the incline where his roots had taken hold.

He could sense the approach of predatory animals, too. And, yet, it was not his duty to warn other animals. He was expected to watch and record, a keeper of time. Nothing more, nothing less.

"Remember the woodpecker," the mangrove scolded. "Your limbs will go soft if you continue this foolishness."

The babe's cries dropped to a whimper.

Panic shot through Manuel's limbs. "He will die if we do nothing."

"It is the way of the jungle," the monkeys resounded.

"It does not have to be." Manuel said this to himself. He knew the other jungle creatures would not listen.

"Thank you, Manuel."

The pain in the sloth's low voice cloaked him like a shroud of heavy fog. Her large eyes filled with moisture as she clung to the nearby mangrove.

"Mamá," Manuel whispered. "I thought you were sleeping."

"Sleep eludes me now."

Manuel's roots tensed as currents of regret and sorrow pierced his trunk. "Can you not climb down to your child?"

"It will be past nightfall before I can get to him. I am only a sloth," she spoke through a low sob.

"And I am only a tree. By the laws of nature, trees are not supposed to walk, but I do."

"You are a special tree."

"And you are a special sloth. Your child is special, too. Do not let him die."

The sloth heaved a baleful sigh. "I do not know if I can do this."

"I will help you."

"How?"

"I will walk."

"You are slower than I, Manuel."

"I am, but I will do whatever I can to save your child. If you love him, you must do the same."

Without another word, the sloth began her slow descent down the mangrove's trunk.

"What are you two doing? Have you gone _loco_?" the mangrove scolded.

"We are saving the babe. What does it look like?"

"You cannot reach him without exposing all your roots."

Manuel didn't answer as he put all of his energy into pulling his roots free from the heavy soil.

"Manuel, do you hear me?"

"I hear," he grumbled, "but I do not listen."

"It is not the way of the trees. We are watchers," another walking tree protested.

"Fool," the trees echoed. "Stop!"

But Manuel could not stop. He could not watch another friend perish while he did nothing to prevent it. Their grief, their loss, he carried with him, down to the core of his decaying roots. He knew if he stood by this time and did not try to save the sloth, he would surely perish, too.

Manuel put more effort into pulling out his roots. He would not rest until he reached the babe.

Beneath the mangrove's heavy branches, the sloth cried out. He felt her pain electrify the air around him after she'd scraped the soft padding of her foot on a spikey branch.

"I am sorry, Mamá," Manuel said. He felt the 'pop' of the soil beneath one of his roots.

"Do not be sorry, Manuel. Not everything is your fault."

Mamá sloth had said this to him once before, back when she still carried the babe within the safety of her womb. He remembered vividly the night she clung to his trunk and whispered soothing words against his shaking branches—the night he'd heard the distant cry of a bird whose fate had been so similar to the woodpecker, Pablo.

Manuel strained and tugged at another root until he felt it break beneath the weight of a rock. He repressed the urge to cry out. He knew there was no way he could pull so fast without pain. Below him, the babe resumed his soft whimpers.

"I am coming, niño." Manuel forced himself to press on. He would not fail the child. Not like he'd failed Pablo.

Manuel had barely risen from a sapling and was still fighting for his share of the sun's rays when Pablo had first flown onto his branches. He'd known from the start Pablo was a special woodpecker, not like the other birds in the jungle.

Pablo had no mate and had never expressed an interest in finding one.

"I am what I wish to be," the little bird had said.

Pablo enjoyed his freedom too much. He would not be stuck to one tree or another when the open air beckoned him to take flight.

Manuel was envious. He was tethered to the jungle floor. And though walking trees had the special privilege of spreading their roots, so that they did, in fact, walk through the jungle, it took Manuel an entire cycle of seasons just to move the length of a puma.

Pablo flitted from tree to tree, never staying overly long in one spot or another, but for some reason, he always came back to rest his weary wings on Manuel's branches. He would tell Manuel stories about the sky and mountains beyond, about a vast body of water called the ocean where giant creatures would swim to the surface and blow huge columns of water from their spouts.

The light above the ocean, Pablo would say, was limitless.

Manuel dreamed of a world where he would not have to fight with one tree or another for a few rays of vitality, and one day he'd mistakenly spoken his dream aloud to Pablo.

The other trees around him hissed their disapproval.

Trees were not meant to have dreams, and if they did, they were not supposed to voice them. Trees were tasked to record the passage of time within their many layers. They were watchers. Nothing more, nothing less.

But that did not deter Pablo. At once he embarked on a quest to help Manuel. "I will find you some light," he'd said.

"You need not bother yourself," Manuel replied.

But Pablo would have none of it. He flew up into the sky and then circled for several breaths before landing back on Manuel's branch. "I have found a spot in the jungle with more light. It is higher up the incline."

"How far?" Manuel asked.

"At the rate you walk, amigo, it will take you twenty years to get there."

Manuel's leaves dropped. "Twenty years is a long time."

"Not so long." Pablo shook his feathers. "Not if we work together."

And so they did work together. What should have taken an average walking tree twenty years, took Manuel only five. Each day, Pablo would fly down and coach Manuel to move a little further, a little faster.

"This way to the light. You are almost there," he would say.

By the time Manuel had reached the crest on the top of the incline, his branches had nearly doubled in length. The light was so bountiful, he smiled within himself while basking in the sun's replenishing rays.

Beside him, Pablo began pecking a hole in the trunk of a mangrove.

"What are you doing?" Manuel asked.

"Building a home," Pablo answered. "It is time I settled down."

"Are you sure?" asked Manuel.

"My wings are growing stiff. I cannot fly as I once did. I must leave my mark upon this earth before it is too late."

Manuel sighed to himself, contented as he settled his roots deep into the thick soil. He would like Pablo to have a family. He knew the child of such a unique bird would grow up to be special as well.

That night, after the moon had risen high above the branches and Pablo had finally finished carving out a home, the little bird nestled down to sleep.

And then Manuel heard the predatory screech of the toucan. He felt the giant bird's wings whoosh by his branches as he dove on top of the mangrove. Pablo cried out before the toucan snapped his neck. Manuel roared, but it was too late for him to plead for his friend's life.

Manuel's branches shook with sorrow.

"If you had remained a watcher," the mangrove scolded, "you would not feel loss now. You knew better than to care for the jungle creatures."

Long after the toucan discarded what was left of Pablo's broken body, Manuel wept, and wept, until the sorrow nearly rotted all of his roots.

Despite the warmth from the sun's rays, Manuel's branches dropped and his leaves thinned. Many years had passed since that day the woodpecker had been killed. Other walking trees had come to the crest. Their branches grew taller as they towered above Manuel and blocked out his sunlight.

Feeling friendless and alone, Manuel did not care—until the day the young sloth had sought sanctuary on his branches. Her mamá had been killed by poachers. Alone and afraid, she wept while Manuel sat in stony silence.

"Have you no feelings, tree?" the sloth had cried. "Do you not understand the sorrow that has robbed all joy from my heart?"

"I do," Manuel answered with emotion.

"Then why do you not show me comfort?"

"I am a watcher."

"You are what you wish to be," she answered.

Manuel's branches softened as he recalled similar words once spoken by his dear friend. "Then I wish to be your friend."

"Thank you, tree."

Over the years, the sloth grew stronger and happier and then one day she answered the call of another. Not long after, she nestled among Manuel's branches with a babe in her arms.

"Isn't he beautiful?"

"He is," Manuel answered truthfully.

"Do you mind if I name him Manuel?"

For the first time in ages, Manuel's branches shook with joy. "It would be my honor."

And so for this little sloth, this very special babe, Manuel was willing to tear out his roots and sacrifice himself so that the little one might live. Manuel only hoped he wouldn't be too late.

The babe's cries died down as an ominous hush fell about the jungle. The only sounds now were the soft patter of Mamá's feet slipping down the Mangrove and the slow, painful ripping of roots from soil.

Manuel tried his best to ignore the eerie silence. He could feel the trees around him holding their breath. Even the pesky monkeys stilled.

Something was coming.

"We must hurry," Manuel cried.

"Is it The Gato?" Mamá'asked through a shaky whisper. "Can you feel it?"

Manuel tried to block out all other sounds as he shifted his entire focus on searching out the reason for the change in the air. The tips of his branches all the way down to the cracks in his exposed roots buzzed with a nervous energy. The call of evil snaked around his limbs and coiled around his trunk.

The Gato was coming.

"He is near," Manuel hissed. Using all of his might, he ripped several roots out at once, ignoring the searing pain that coursed through his frame.

Mamá quickened her pace down the trunk of the mangrove. When she'd almost reached the bottom, she let go and dropped with a thud. Manuel could feel the pulse of her agony permeate the soil around her soft body.

The cat let out an ear-piercing growl while Mamá was struggling to sit. She pushed herself forward and scooted toward her child, then she scooped the crying babe against her chest.

The Gato's ominous glowing eyes appeared from behind the shadows before his sleek black body came into full view.

Mamá clutched her child tighter while she warily eyed the circling cat.

Manuel pulled and pulled, heedless of the pain that lanced through his splintered wood. "I am coming," he cried.

Manuel felt the last root give way just as The Gato was about to pounce on the sloths. Heedless of the other trees shouting and hurling insults, he pushed his heavy limbs forward with all his might as he came crashing down on top of the predator.

The mamá sloth turned her head while shielding her child as the tips of Manuel's leaves brushed her soft body.

The monkeys erupted into squeals overhead.

Mamá scooted toward Manuel and nestled her head against his trunk. The little sloth reached out and wrapped a tiny fist around Manuel's leaves.

"Manuel, your roots," Mamá sobbed.

"Do not worry over me. Get your child to safety."

"What will happen to you?"

"I shall go to the limitless light," he spoke with a smile in his voice. "I shall go to my friend Pablo."

* Socratea exorrhiza, the Walking Palm or Cashapona, is a palm native to rainforests in tropical Central and South America. It can grow to 25 meters in height, with a stem diameter of up to 16 cm,[1] but is more typically 15-20 m tall and 12 cm in diameter.[2] It has unusual stilt roots, the function of which has been debated.

#

Tara West writes books about dragons, witches, and handsome heroes while eating chocolate, lots and lots of chocolate. She's willing to share her dragons, witches and heroes. Keep your hands off her chocolate.

Find her at her website tarawest.com or follow her on Facebook

# Curse of the Ice Dragon

If you enjoyed Tara's story, check out her best-selling fantasy!

Born with mark of the Mighty Hunter, Markus has the skill and strength to feed his people, but not to confront his own tyrannical father. Shamed by his cowardice, Markus releases his frustration on the forest creatures.

The village prophet warns that Markus's reckless ways will bring down The Hunter's Curse, and for every animal Markus kills, his loved ones will suffer the same fate. When the warnings go unheeded, the Sky Goddess unleashes her ice dragon. Now Markus must flee the dragon without killing it or his beloved brother will die.

Markus's flight takes him to the lands of the mysterious Ice People. There, the beautiful maiden Ura helps Markus learn the compassion and courage he needs to face the wrath of the Goddess, but the final confrontation will not be without price, as Markus must choose between the life of his brother and the fate of the girl he loves.

# The Bus Shelter

### G.R. Yeates

The bus shelter stood barely upright. Its supports were buckled and corroded. Its panes of protective glass were shattered. Rain came in through the gaps, defeating the idea that this was a shelter of any kind. The bus timetable was bleached illegible by sunlight that I could never remember shining. I could only recall the rain, the relentless rain and the interminable grey skies rolling overhead.

I could not tell you how long I had been waiting at the bus shelter but I am sure it was a very long time. I could not tell you where I was intending to go once I had caught the bus and was on the move again, but I am sure that it was to somewhere of great importance. I also could not tell you what was inside the package that I held in my hands, resting gently on my knees, as I sat on one of the shelter's cracked plastic seats, but I knew that it was also of great importance.

The package was a curious thing. It was a plain cardboard box with no markings, labels or stamps upon it, heavily-sealed with industrial tape and with a dampish texture. It was as if whatever was inside the box was sweating a substance of some kind, but the actual nature of that substance was beyond me. I was left with no clues at all, except that I had been entrusted with this package and I had to take it with urgency to its destination. I was sure that I would know when I got there. Places of great importance were most astute at communicating their significance to the layman. And I was most definitely a layman.

The bus came out of the rain, its windscreen wipers methodically thudding back and forth, back and forth. It came to a stop by the kerb and the boarding doors hissed open. A few hunched figures in long grey coats with sallow faces disembarked and shuffled off into the rain. Though I noted, as I was boarding, that one of them took my seat in the ineffectual bus shelter.

I boarded and paid for a standard pass. I could travel as far across the city as I needed to with that in my pocket. Even if the bus broke down, as they were wont to do, I could board the replacement and continue my journey onward. I took my place on the bus. A window seat where the glass was as cracked as the plastic seat in the shelter. The window threw back jagged reflections that made my sallow face seem as angry as it was sad and as beaten as it was tired. I had not shaved and rubbed at my stubbled chin ruefully. I also noticed the grey hairs creeping out of my scalp in the hollow reflection. I was sure that they had not been there the last time I caught a bus like this. Yes, I was sure. Certain. Almost.

The bus went on its way through the city and I saw the people outside go by. All of them, men, women and children, wearing the long grey coats with detachable hoods that dragged along the pavements and hung heavily with the incessant rain. Though there was light in the city, burning from windows and shop doorways, there seemed to be no way for it to alleviate the darkness that shrouded every street, alley and major road. It was not just pollution, you see, it was a poison in the air that one seemed to not only breathe in but to breathe out as well. It was something dismal and symbiotic buried deep in every one of us. I found myself gripping the package hard as this knowledge passed through my head. I found myself wondering if the package itself was something that could ease or even banish what was hanging over the city, making every person within its limits walk with a downcast head.

But I did not know this for sure and so could only go along on my journey, peering out of the cracked, rain-streaked glass, searching the buildings that rose out of the gloom for a sign of great and key importance that would tell me that I had arrived at my destination.

* * *

They embarked several stops after I had taken my seat. These were the Inspectors. Dressed in more formal and cleaner trench coats than the rest of the populace, they also wore masks with circular eyeholes of opaque glass and beak-like projections that were supposedly stuffed with sweet-smelling herbs and spices to protect them from the stench and disease that was one with the city. Each of them held a hypodermic needle in a gloved hand. The metal was rusty and the glass was dirty and cracked. Each of the passengers, myself included, knew the procedure and we began the earnest job of rolling up our coat-sleeves. To demonstrate even a moment's reluctance would have been to brand ourselves with suspicion. Looking down at my forearms, I felt my stomach turn in a familiar way as I eyed the numerous puncture marks mottling the pale flesh, and the brown trails of dead veins running out from them.

The wrist of a woman sitting ahead of me was seized harshly, as was the norm, and the rusted needle was driven into her forearm. I saw her shoulders sag and shake a little from the sensation as her blood was slowly drawn. She gave out a gasp as the needle was removed and its dark contents held up to the eyeholes of the Inspector's mask. I watched her blood, how it was so filthy and heavy, so slow, almost coagulating, and how it seemed to glisten in ways blood should not. We all took our government-issued medication. It was a crime not to. Though how many took other substances to ease the daily pain those drugs induced was impossible to know. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath as they waited for the Inspector's pronouncement. It would decide whether the woman sitting ahead of me continued her journey on the bus, or whether she would be taken away for purification. The voice of the Inspector finally rang out, releasing us from our unwanted tension.

"You are clean."

I heard the woman choke on a relieved sob as the Inspector approached me. My fingers tightened around the box in my lap. The Inspectors did not always board the buses and, when they did, it was because there was suspicion surrounding someone on board. It had to be me. It could be no-one else. This box, unmarked, with its strange, cloying dampness marked me out as guilty though I had done nothing, and did not know what was contained within it.

"Your arm, sir."

The voice made me hurriedly thrust out my arm for inspection. I felt the fingers bite into my soft skin so hard I wanted to weep there and then. It took out the same needle it had used on the woman sitting ahead of me. The Inspector jabbed at my arm with it. The Inspector took some time to find a vein that was neither dead, nor broken, and I was gnawing hard on my lip the whole time, trying not to cry out. My free hand clutched at the box, fingertips stroking over it in fitful trembles. The Inspectors had not asked about it, not yet, but soon they would and then this charade of checking my blood would end. They would take me away, ask me questions, hurt my mind and my body, and I would never see the grey skies again.

The needle went in and drew blood. I waited and waited. The needle was withdrawn and the blood inside held up to the dull light. Watching my blood mix with that of the woman, I waited some more. This was it. The moment had come. It could wait no longer. I closed my eyes and prepared myself for what was to come.

The Inspector spoke.

"You are clean."

He moved on to the next passenger, and I slumped down into my seat, sobbing hard.

* * *

It was later and I realised, much to my distress, that I had fallen asleep on the journey. My fear and then relief at not being taken away by the Inspectors had exhausted me. Looking around, I could see that there were only a few souls remaining on the bus and that the lights outside had grown less and less. Surely, there should have been more light as we came towards the heart of the city, not less. Grasping the package in desperate, sweating hands, I sprang from my seat and ran to the back of the bus. I pressed my face against the long horizontal sliver of glass that formed a rear window. I could see faces turning to look at me in my periphery but I paid them no heed. There was no threat in their eyes, just a dull, somnambulant interest that would soon evaporate along with their next breath.

But surely ... _surely_ this was where I had been meant to go to. A place of great importance would be in the heart of the city and, doubtless, someone was there now, waiting for this package to be handed to them. Over a desk, perhaps. Passed across a table in one of the less salubrious cafeterias. Left for them to collect from a pigeon-hole box in one of the train stations. But it was so dark outside. I could just about discern the shapes of buildings and the many shuffling forms of people but that was all. Nothing was clear. All looked to be one and the same. So many, had darkness and disease undone so many?

The bus went on its way and I returned to my seat where I slumped in a dejected state. The package with its strange, damp texture and lack of identifying marks rested on my knees. I stared at it, wondered at it and wished I knew more about it. And about myself. Flicking a lock of greying hair out of my eyes, I returned my gaze to the passing tower blocks, hoping to catch a glimpse of some sign to indicate what I should do next. Though I felt a tight clutching sensation inside that told me I had already failed at what I was supposed to do and that there was no good fate awaiting me.

What a wretch!

How could I have fallen asleep?

But as I looked around, a thought occurred to me. The few people who were left aboard. Their eyes staring off to here and there, never meeting, always avoiding contact as one does in the city.

What is not seen, nor heard, nor felt, cannot send your soul to Hell.

The words of the Worship-Men sounded in my ears as I got to my feet. These few, these unhappy few people could be the key. With the box in my hands, my breath catching in my mouth, I went up to the nearest person and asked the question.

"Have you seen this box before?"

He was an overweight man with a bullish, raw face that sweated an oily sheen. The squinting eyes of a pig stared back at me as his hands closed tightly around the small burlap sack balanced on his bulging knees. The sack seemed to writhe as I spoke and I thought that I heard a child's cry from within. The overweight man smacked a fat hand down on the sack and it became still and quiet again.

"No, I have not seen that box. I have my sack. It is all I need. My sack and what's in it is all I will ever need."

I didn't like the way he smiled at me as he finished speaking.

So I asked the next person. A long, thin woman with her hair drawn up in a tight bun and her son sitting next to her. They shared a complexion of sour butter and eyes that were hard flint marbles. His forehead bore the mark of an iron needle puncture. It had become law a few years ago that any child known to suffer from excessive thought and imagination would have its brain cauterised. A thin line of drool ran from the corner of his mouth and I could see that his eyes saw and focused upon less than most.

"Excuse me, Miss, have you seen this box before? Or, perhaps, your son-"

"Perhaps my son what?"

"Well, has seen this box before, perhaps?"

She turned her eyes on her son, who continued to stare sullenly ahead as the bus rocked along the uneven road. Then she turned her eyes back to me.

"No. He hasn't seen the box. He hasn't seen any boxes ever. None at all."

"Perhaps, if I could ask him-"

"No. He hasn't seen no boxes. None. Not ever. Why you asking? You an Inspector? You want to be one? Do you?"

The colour drained from my face as I shook my head vigorously, realising what I had done. What an admission that gesture had made. I backed away from the woman and her hard stare. Her son's dull eyes were also looking at me now, at a man who had shown public dislike of the Inspectors.

My fingertips were almost piercing the card of the box as I approached the third and last person aboard. He was sitting at the back, by himself, in the far corner seat and I had to duck to squeeze into the shadowy compartmented space. He was old and frail, picking at the fraying grey wool of his fingerless gloves.

"You want to know if I have seen this box?"

My mouth worked dumbly as I processed the man's words. Eventually, as I sat down beside him, I found my voice.

"Yes. Well, have you?"

The man nodded.

"When? Where? Do you know what it is?"

"A long time ago. Years, maybe. I saw it somewhere, I'm not sure where. But ... I can tell you that it is yours."

He reached out a cold, bony hand and took one of my hands in his as he leaned forward out of the shadows and met my gaze with his.

"It is yours."

I saw he was holding onto something in his lap.

Something that should not have been there.

What is not seen, nor heard, nor felt, cannot send your soul to Hell.

With a yell, I snatched my hand out of his and made my way, on shaking feet, back to my seat. I could not stay on this bus. Not with this box. The people on here. They knew something, all of them, and whatever they knew, they knew too much. I could not stay here.

I had to get off.

Now.

The bus stopped. The doors hissed open and I was outside in the driving rain under grim, grey skies. I was in a bus shelter and it barely stood upright. Its supports were buckled and corroded. Its panes of protective glass were shattered. I had been here before, and I would be here again, many, many times. And soon, I would forget this and I would board the same bus when it came by again. I would take the same journey, the same seat, and the years would continue to go by as I travelled with this box in my hands and I would grow older, so much older and still not know any more about the box or who I was. Until the day came when I decided to take a seat by myself in the back of the bus, in the farthest corner, and from there, somehow, in some way, for some dark, unknown and senseless reason, I would see myself, my younger self, climb onboard.

END

#

G.R. Yeates is a critically-acclaimed author of the Vetala Cycle trilogy and he has also appeared in anthologies from Dark Continents Publishing and Cutting Block Press. He was was brought up in seaside towns along the South-East coast of England, which could account for his innate understanding of the Horror genre.

Find him at his website gryeates.co.uk or follow him on Facebook

# The Eyes of the Dead

If you enjoyed G.R.'s story, check out his best-selling horror!

Vampires are loose in the trenches of the First World War.

Passchendaele, 1917. Private Reg Wilson is a man with a name but no memories. A soldier who remembers nothing of life before the fighting began. Until he comes to Black Wood, a tainted place that knows him intimately. There, he will discover a darkness buried long ago by time and dust. An appetite that has been awoken by war. A hunger that will feed upon his blood, his regrets and his worst fears. It will show him what he has forgotten. It will show him nightmare made flesh. And, before he dies, it will make him look deep into the eyes of the dead.

# An Arbor Day Carol

in prose

being

A Ghost Story of Arbor Day

### M. Edward McNally

CONTENTS

STAVE I - MARLEY'S GHOST

STAVE II - THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS

STAVE III - THE SECOND OF THE THREE SPIRITS

STAVE IV - THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS

STAVE V - THE END OF IT

### STAVE ONE - MARLEY'S GHOST.

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. Not that Kevin Weeser was a big Reggae guy, exactly. Nor a pot head, for that matter. But every stoner he knew in high school had a sort of day-glo poster of Marley inside the door of his or her locker, and Kevin was pretty sure the guy was already dead back then. As a door-nail.

Mind, Kevin didn't actually know what a door-nail was, per se, but he knew some things were as dead as whatever they were. Including Bob Marley.

Kev had got home from work after nine, and upon completing his evening ablutions in the john off the master bedroom of his virtually furniture-free condo, Kevin clicked off the light and stepped into the dark room. He moved his tongue around teeth that tasted minty fresh. The electric ministrations of his Sonicare had removed the last vestiges of a microwave burrito he'd choked down in the break room for dinner, while the night cleaning crew was vacuuming his office. He came to a dead stop, and stared at Bob Marley.

It was indisputably Bob Marley, which was the only reason Kevin didn't stroke out upon finding some slightly glowing black guy in his bedroom. The dreadlocks, the chambray shirt, the gentle eyes. One of those big, multi-colored cloth hats that was almost a crochet bag – whatever you call those. It was Bob Marley, no two ways about it, but Kev still asked the only thing it occurred to him to ask upon finding a strange man standing on his beige carpet.

"Who are you?"

"Ask me who I was."

"Who were you then?"

"In life I was noted musician, Bob Marley."

Kev could only stare. "You don't...sound Jamaican?" he tried.

Marley smiled gently. "Of course not. If my dialogue was rendered in some phonetic Jamaican accent, it would be racist as hell. _Mon_."

"Fair enough," Kev said, wondering if he should offer a beverage, or maybe put on some clothes other than pajama bottoms. He had to do a certain amount of client schmoozing for work, but he didn't know where to begin with the specter of an expired reggae musician who had materialized in his bedroom.

Marley raised a slow eyebrow and rubbed at his thin beard.

"You're taking this really well. So you believe in ghosts? You don't seem like the type."

Kev sighed. "Well no, but I believe in stress and sleep deprivation doing a number on the ol' gray matter. I've got seventy-odd hours in the office already this week, and it's..." Kev glanced at the red numerals of the digital clock sitting on the floor beside his bed, set 15 minutes ahead as always. "It's not even Friday yet for a couple hours. And I didn't eat or drink anything today except six pots of coffee, an awful grape-flavored power bar, and a burrito. My guess, you're the burrito. But since I've gotta be back at work before daylight, I'm not going to pitch a big fuss about you being here."

"Then I have some bad news, and some good news," Marley said.

"Good news first."

"You will be haunted tonight," resumed the Ghost, "by Three Spirits."

Kev stared. "That was the _good_ news?"

"Yes, originally it was going to take three consecutive nights, but to make that work it would probably take some plot contrivance like having you sleep through the entirety of the days in between. That would just be sloppy storytelling. Do you want to hear the bad news?"

"Hell no, not if that was the good news! Do you count as one of the spirits, or you mean there are still three more coming behind you?" Kev wondered vaguely if one might be Hendricks.

"Still three, and no – Jimi isn't one of them. He has the night off."

Marley raised his arms, looking a little embarrassed to be acting so theatrical, and spoke in a deep voice.

"Hearken to the Spirits, Kevin Weeser, and you have yet a chance and hope of escaping your fate."

"I—I think I'd rather not," said Kev. "Couldn't I take 'em all at once, and have it over?"

"No. It's a union thing. Without their visits," said the Ghost, "you cannot hope to shun the path you are on. Expect the first to-morrow, when the bell tolls One."

"One a.m.?"

"Yes, that is technically tomorrow, so the line still works."

When it had said these words, the apparition walked backward from Kev; and at every step it took, the French door to the abbreviated balcony opened a little, so that when the specter reached it, it was wide open. Marley's ghost rose into the cool late April sky, and Kevin hurried to look up after it. He saw nothing but the night, but thought he could faintly hear the soft sounds of "No Woman No Cry."

"Hmm..." Kev said, and had the inexplicable urge to add "bug!" afterward, but he resisted. He shut the balcony door and went straight to bed. If he was in the office at dinner time tomorrow, which he figured he would be, he vowed to order Chinese. * * *

### STAVE TWO. - THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS.

When Kev awoke, it was dark, what with it being night and all. The burrito seemed to be sitting calmly in his innards, though given its hockey puck texture, Kev thought it might be with him for several days. He looked at the clock on the floor, and after subtracting 15 minutes, saw it was just after 1:30. He felt a little silly to feel relieved.

There was an unmistakable sound of rapping knuckles against the French door.

Now, the condo Kev had rented after Carol read him the riot act was not exactly top of the line, and the little balcony out there was barely enough to step out on in the morning. Not that Kev had ever considered doing so. There wasn't any view apart from rows of identical places in every direction. Kev blinked at the glass door, which of course had no curtain on it as Kev hadn't even gotten around to getting a kitchen table or a chair yet. He could just see a figure silhouetted against the stars.

"Oh, come on," Kev muttered. After a pause, the rapping resumed, sharper and more insistent.

Kev calculated that the odds were better this was a dream than an actual caffeine-induced hallucination, so he really wasn't going to lose any sleep if he just got up and played along. He kicked out of his sheets with a grumble, turned on the lamp set atop a moving box he'd brought along to keep his suits tidy, and yanked open the door.

"Kevin Weeser?"

"Oh, for crying out loud."

Wedged onto Kev's balcony was a bulky white kid in a University of Nebraska uniform. Specifically, he looked like a lineman, almost as wide as he was tall, red helmet with a big 'N' lettered in white held in one hand, exposing a wide, unassuming face under a crew cut. Apart from his size, he looked pretty much like every other kid Kev had gone to school with.

"Dude, sorry I'm late," #79 said, jerking a ham-hock hand over his shoulder. "You ain't in the house on Lyndale anymore? Marital trouble? Look, we don't really have time for that whole mess, you good to go?"

"Go?' Kev asked, "What are you talking...who the hell are you supposed to be?"

"Right, sorry."

The kid stood up straight, and boomed from way down in his cavernous chest.

"I am the Ghost of Arbor Day Past!"

"You are the say who of what now?"

"Dude, last Friday of April. Arbor Day. Today. You remember. You're from Nebraska City, right?"

"Yeah, but I haven't been back since...school."

"Huskers!" the Spirit shouted. "Hail Varsity!"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah... Where the girls are the fairest and the boys are the squarest, I remember the song. Look, Arbor Day isn't even a state holiday here. The courts are still open. Everything's open."

"Dude, that blows, but we don't really have time to get into it." The hulking figure thrust his enormous helmet toward Kev. "Grab the lid, bro-ham. We gotta roll."

"I'm never going to a Mexican restaurant again," Kev muttered, but he resignedly placed his hand atop the helmet, and the world washed to white.

Kev blinked, and vision slowly returned, though now it was bright daylight. He and the lineman were standing in the middle of a cul-de-sac, facing a one-story brick ranch house.

"Holy crap!" Kev squeaked. "That's my house!" He pointed at a canary yellow 1985 Camaro in the driveway. "And that's my first car! Bought it in '92 with eighty-thousand miles on it."

#79 frowned. "Sweet ride, but that color blows, man."

"Holy crap..." Kev said again, but quieter as the front door of his childhood home had just opened, and a younger version of himself strode out like a man, or at least teenager, on a mission. His Mom came out right behind him, and Kev felt his throat constrict and his heart thumped in his chest. He had forgotten how pretty Mom was before she got sick.

"Kevin?"

"Oh hey, Ma, didn't see you in there."

Young Kevin didn't even turn around, he was pulling on a tie with one hand while trying to dig car keys out of the pocket of khaki slacks as he spoke.

"Look, Mr. Fezziwig just called, Belle's home sick. I can pick up her shift at the store."

Kevin's Mom stared after him. "We, we were going to plant that dogwood today, outside your window."

"Oh, right." Young Kevin didn't look back, rifling through keys at the car door. "Yeah, that's not going to work today, can we tomorrow...no wait, I'm at the car wash, Sunday too. Next week?"

"We plant a tree every year," Kevin's Mom said. "Since you were four."

"I know, Ma, but it's work." Kevin got his door open, wrenching it as the driver's side always used to stick. "Maybe Dad can help on the weekend, but I've got to go. We'll do one together next year, okay? I gotta go Mom, love ya."

Kevin still hadn't looked at her, and whatever she said was drowned out as the old Camaro roared fitfully. Kevin threw an elbow over the backseat to look out the rear window as he reversed down the driveway, looking right at older Kev and the Cornhusker, but plainly not seeing them. Kev cringed as the bumper stopped inches from his and the lineman's knees. Young Kev waved an arm vaguely toward the house then was gone up the road, Soundgarden booming out the window.

His mother walked all the way to the end of the driveway to watch the car disappear. "Next year," she said quietly, then she put her face in her hands and her shoulders shook. She turned and ran into the house.

"What the hell was that?" Kev asked.

The lineman looked at him and shook his head. "Didn't even plant a tree on Arbor Day."

Kev stared. "Screw the tree, what's wrong with my mom?"

"Huh? Oh. She found out about the cancer today."

"What?" Kev's mouth fell open. "She, she...this is '92! We didn't find out until August."

"She did, but you had that internship in Lincoln that summer, and she didn't want you to worry and not go. But dude, you're missing the point." #79 put his meaty hand on Kev's shoulder. "You didn't plant a tree on Arbor Day. This was the first one you skipped, and you haven't done it since."

"It was something we did together," Kev said. "And the next year...by next year she was gone."

"And speaking of gone, we've gotta get going. Sorry, I've been running behind all night."

The lineman pushed his helmet against Kev's sternum, and the world went white again. * * *

### STAVE THREE. - THE SECOND OF THE THREE SPIRITS.

Kev jerked awake and sat up in bed, to find the walls and ceiling of his unadorned bedroom hung with living green tree boughs gleaming with glistening berries. The crisp leaves of a bunch of plants he couldn't identify (because he did not know that sort of thing) reflected back the light from the lamp atop his makeshift cardboard dresser as though it had been a roaring blaze in a fireplace. Kev winced, throwing both hands up in front of his face, and a deep female voice boomed:

"I am the Ghost of Arbor Day Present! Look upon me!"

Kev did so, and dropped his jaw like it was greased. A woman sat on a great throne right between the bathroom door and a folding clothes hamper Kev had mainly missed. Balled black socks and wadded boxers lay in sad little piles around it. She was gorgeous, gargantuan in all the right places which a green robe lined with white fur strained to contain. A fiery corona of red hair surrounded her beautiful face and flashing green eyes.

"You have never seen the like of me before!" exclaimed the Spirit.

"Never," Kev said, "but...can we not do a dream like this right now? I am going through some stuff over here."

"This is not that kind of dream, nor a dream at all!" The Spirit rose and swept to the side of Kev's bed. "Touch my robe!"

"You're sure this is not that kind of dream?"

"Very." The woman held forward the hem of her robe, revealing a very shapely calf Kev tried not to stare at. He did as he was told, and held fast through another flash of white.

Again, Kev knew where he was instantly as vision returned, though this time he had been here as recently as two weeks ago. He and the buxom redhead were standing in his own living room in the house over on Lyndale. They were behind the couch facing the flat screen that provided the only light in the room. It was on some kind of biography channel. Kev wouldn't have recognized the face of the old English writer on the screen, but he didn't look anyway as he stared at the back of Carol's head. His wife was on the couch, curled against the armrest in the sweats and old t-shirt she slept in.

"She cannot hear nor see us," the Spirit beside Kev boomed. "Though you may have figured that out already, from the other time."

"This is now?" Kev asked, voice in a whisper regardless of what Carol could or couldn't hear. "Right now, tonight?"

"Yes. I got sort of gypped, as far as that power goes."

"Mom?"

Kev felt a shiver as the familiar voice spoke behind him, and suddenly his son Kevin Junior – KJ – appeared. The fourteen-year-old had just walked right through his father, and the Spirit as well, putting KJ closer to great boobs than he had been since he was breastfeeding.

Carol jerked on the couch and turned around, blinking up at her son, then wiping a hand over her big brown eyes before speaking.

"KJ, what are you doing? It's two in the morning, you've got school."

"I thought I heard something," the sleepy boy said, sandy hair like his dad's all disheveled. "I figured without Dad here...I should get up and check on it." KJ smiled ruefully at himself. "I was actually going for the baseball bat in the closet, but I saw the light on in here. Couldn't sleep?"

"Honey," Carol said, in that Mom tone she had only developed after KJ was born, and been worried she wouldn't be able to master. She'd worried about everything, but she'd always been great.

KJ moved around the couch and sat down next to her. After a moment, he leaned against her in a way he hadn't really done since he'd been a little boy. Carol moved an arm around his shoulders automatically.

"Mom..." he said hesitantly, "I know you're mad at Dad about missing the play, and all that other stuff. But I don't care. I'm used to him not being there for all that school stuff, and sports, and, and everything else. But he's here every night, even if he gets in late and he's gone again before I get up. But I know he's here. I always know that. Even when I was a kid, I always heard the garage door open and close before I fell asleep."

Carol said nothing, and Kev couldn't see her face as she was staring forward again, toward the TV she wasn't watching. But Kev wanted to see her, to see both of them, so he stepped around to the front of the couch past the coffee table to face them. He looked at his wife and son both looking toward him, but not at him.

"I had to say something to him, Hon," Carol said, blinking her eyes but keeping her voice steady. "I know he thinks he's doing everything for us, but...but we need him here more. I need him here."

"But that's not who he is," KJ said. "He's not that hands-on Dad kind of guy. I don't...I don't know that it's fair that you, that _we_ expect him to be something he's not."

Carol pulled KJ closer against her side like she was trying to shield him from something, and closed her eyes, tightly, screwing them shut so hard it wrinkled her nose. That was what she did when she was trying not to cry, and Kev saw for the first time that his son did the exact same thing.

"I can expect him to try," Carol said, and Kev let out a ragged breath that made his throat ache.

"So you see the problem, right?" the Spirit boomed from behind the couch, so loud Kev jerked where he stood though neither Carol nor KJ moved right in front of her.

"Yeah, yeah I do."

The Spirit nodded her head with a disapproving frown. "Not even talking about planting trees."

"What?" Kev said, but the Spirit abruptly whipped loose a couple yards of cloth belt from around the waist of her robe. Before anything could flop open, or out for that matter, she snapped the tip forward like a rolled-up towel in a gym locker room, and zipped Kev in the nose. The world went white again. * * *

### STAVE FOUR - THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS.

This time when Kev woke in his bed he swung his legs out from under the sheet and tried to stumble to his feet. The stumble went on too long for that, as the cord of the digital clock snagged one of his legs, starting a long fall as he slid all the way down the length of one wall. The clock cord yanked out of the socket, and Kev crashed into a heap in the corner of the room.

"Ow," he muttered, rolling over and blinking as he saw his own breath in the starlight through the French door. He shivered in the cold, then shivered again as he felt something looming above him.

He made out the shape only slowly, for it was draped in a deep black garment as dark as the night. It was almost a part of the darkness, and it stood unmoving over Kev, hood hanging to conceal its face.

"Let me guess," Kev said from the floor. "I am in the presence of the Ghost of Arbor Day Yet To Come?"

The Spirit answered not, but stretched an arm down toward Kev. A hand in a glove seemed to be sticking at him from the end of the sleeve.

"Yeah," Kev said, sitting up against the wall then pushing himself up to his feet. The hand rose along with him, always pointing at his face. "I figure you are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us, right? Look, we can take a pass on that one, I get the point already. I'm ready to go home, okay? I'm going to try, I will. I'm going to try as hard as I've ever tried to do anything. So really, if you just want to check me off your list and maybe catch up with the redhead..."

With an exhalation of sepulchral air, the Spirit sighed. It reached forward and poked a bony finger into Kev's left nostril.

The finger up the nose made Kev's eyes water more than the flash of white light. When the digit was mercifully withdrawn, he stared all around and gave a gasp, for he and the Spirit stood under the stars in an awful, blasted landscape of churned earth. The ground all around was bare, damp mud crisscrossed with tread marks, and there was no sign of any living thing in the world.

"What the what?" Kev gasped. "Is this all that is left of the world in the future?"

With another sigh, the cowled figure slapped Kev on the shoulder and pointed an arm up sharply. Kev looked along it and saw that they were standing deep in the bottom of an open pit mine, as he could see a cliff-like wall beside them, with dump trucks, bulldozers, and a couple pre-fab trailer offices at the bottom. A company logo was emblazoned across the equipment; the name of a mining company Kevin Weeser knew well.

"Oh hell," he said. "We're in Bimidji? This is the iron mine the lawsuit is about? The State of Minnesota versus Cratchit & Sons?"

The Specter pointed an accusing finger Kev's way.

"Of all the tree-hugging, hippy-dippy nonsense. You spooks have seen how I've been treating my family, and you're worried about how I'm treating a bunch of pine trees? For real?"

The arm in its black sleeve remained extended, the hand pointing between Kev's eyes.

"You know what? Fine. You're right, you win. I'll tank the case. Screw the case. You, you've shown me the way." Kev threw himself onto his pajama knees and clutched the specter's cloak. "Spirit!" he cried, "hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse!"

Intercourse? Where the hell did that come from?

"I will honour Arbor Day in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will even spell honor with a 'u,' if that helps. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!"

Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have his fate reversed, Kev saw an alteration in the Phantom's hood and dress. It shrunk, collapsed, and dwindled down into the digital clock on the floor of his bedroom. * * *

### STAVE FIVE. - THE END OF IT.

Kev tore up Lyndale Street in his dusky Mercedes S Class, hands on the wheel still dirty from the nursery. Carol's identical white car was just backing down the driveway, and he screeched to a halt right behind her, almost going into a skid. He threw open the door and vaulted out. After an instant she did the same, wide-eyed and pale from his noisy arrival and the near fender-bender.

"Kev?" she demanded, staring at him, looking ready for business in a smart suit jacket and pale green skirt. KJ got out too, staring at his Dad and yanking his earbuds free.

"I thought I missed you guys," Kev said. "I...I, I missed you guys."

Kev's wife stared like he had gone off his nut, which was understandable. He had on a shirt with no tie and a suit coat with dirt all over the sleeves, worn above pajama bottoms and muddy slippers.

"You've gone off your nut," Carol said.

"It was about time," Kev said, then for lack of a better idea, or any desire to do anything else, he shuffled forward in his slippers and threw both soiled arms around Carol, hugging her close and kissing her on the mouth though she breathed a protest into him. But she didn't push away, and after a moment she put her hands on his shoulders.

When he stopped to breathe, Kev looked over the roof of the car at his son, who rolled his eyes.

"Gross, you two," KJ said. "And what's with the tree?"

KJ nodded at Kev's car, where half the long, spindly trunk of a young dogwood emerged from the rear right window. The damp root bundle was soaking the backseat.

"It's Arbor Day," Kev said. "We're all taking the day off." He leaned back so he could look from Carol to KJ. "We're going to do something together. As a family."

"We're going to plant a tree?" Carol said. "God bless it, Kev. You've lost your flippin' mind."

Kev blinked at her, but her look of incredulity softened at the edges until she let out a rough breath and leaned against him, putting both arms around him.

"It's about time."

Kev hugged her back, and waved for KJ to come join them. His son glanced at the neighbors' houses, but slouched around the car and tentatively put his arms around his parents. When they both put an arm around him, he seemed to settle, and hugged them back.

The strains of Bob Marley's "Redemption Song" piped out of Kev's car, playing gently in the warm morning air of spring, and the first day in the rest of everyone's life.

#

M. Edward McNally is the author of the Norothian Cycle fantasy series, but he wrote an homage for this collection as the name "Dickens" makes him titter. As does the word "titter."

Find him at his website sablecity.wordpress.com or follow him on Facebook

# The Sable City

If you enjoyed Ed's story, check out his best-selling fantasy!

For the first time in a hundred years, Vod'Adia - the fabled Sable City - is Opening. All across the known world, adventurers hungry for gold and relics from the Witch King's era are making their way to the legendary ruins. For many of them, the Sable City will claim their lives and perhaps even their very souls. But for one heroic fellowship bent only on rescue, entering this deadly place may do worse than destroy them. It may destroy the entire world.

The journey begins in the Miilark Islands, where a most unusual dwarf makes a most unusual choice. Captain Block, charged with finding the exiled heir of House Deskata, picks Tilda Lanai to accompany him - a young woman newly trained in the arts of the Guild, but completely untested. With the help of a rag-tag company that includes a ronin samurai, a semi-competent wizard, a noblewoman in disguise, a healer, a warrior-priest and two ex-soldiers (one in danger of being hanged for desertion), Tilda's quest leads her into the very heart of the Sable City--where devils and demons roam freely, and very little is what it seems.

# Last Leap

### Heather Marie Adkins

I have died a hundred times.

When one thinks of death, we think of it with finality. When we lose someone, they are quite literally lost to us forever. A slow fade begins from the moment their soul leaves their body until eventually we can barely remember the sound of their laughter, the beat of their heart, the smile on their face. This is why we immortalize each other so much in photographs. Pictures last so much longer than we do; even though someone we love has died, they don't vanish completely. We create paper memories, fragile and ethereal.

But my life is different. When I lose a loved one, they're not gone forever.

I relive their deaths over and over.

For someone only two decades old, I've lost a lot of people. Grandparents, cousins, friends, neighbors. All in all, ten people over a span of five years. A crazy number, oddly high, I always thought.

I wish I could say reliving the losses only happened in my dreams; that it was simply a teenage girl's flights of fancy. But it's not. What I go through is real, and it is scary. The burden of responsibility has taken a toll on me. I'm not always sure I can keep this up without going mad.

It began when I was fifteen.

My grandfather died in a plane crash when I was three years old. I never knew him beyond the vast collection of pictures my mother kept framed throughout our house. I didn't know much about the crash except he was coming home from a business trip in California. The plane went down, everybody was killed. _Finito_.

Twelve years later, I was eating a TV dinner in front of _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_. It was an episode I liked a lot: about a girl who is ignored at school until she eventually turns invisible and begins taking her revenge on the people who made it happen. Right about the time Buffy confronted the invisible girl, I was suddenly... _not there_ anymore.

The leap feels kind of like a rollercoaster. I ascend rapidly, disoriented and sick to my stomach, and then I fall like a rock. When I get where I'm going, sometimes my limbs jerk as if I'd fallen, like those dreams that wake you up panting in the middle of the night, certain you've just leapt to your doom.

I was on a plane. A small plane, a puddle jumper, only three seats across. I hated those things, so rinky-dink, like a toy pulled from a cereal box. You can feel every dip and jerk, and it seems like any breath a passenger takes could throw the plane off balance.

I was too shocked to react. I was still in my pajamas: gray sweats and a Hello Kitty T-shirt. I didn't even have shoes on my feet.

"Have you flown before?"

Caught off guard, I cast what had to be a startled, and quite frankly terrified, gaze to my seat partner. When we locked eyes, I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach.

It was my grandfather.

There was no mistake. Those same wise, brown eyes beneath a head full of blindingly white hair. Handsome and thin, he even wore the leather thong necklace around his neck from my mother's favorite pic of him in Hawaii, taken three months before he died.

"Grandpa?" I gasped.

He chuckled. "Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I am. My daughter has a three-year-old. A beautiful little girl named Mila. And my son has three boys under the age of ten."

I'm Mila. And my cousins were named George, Sam, and Alan. Alan died when I was ten. Leukemia. But I'll get to that.

My grandfather smiled. "So, first time? You've been tense since we boarded."

I knew I was staring, but how could I stop? This was my mother's dad. He was famous in my family, a legend. And here he was alive and smiling, speaking to me as if he didn't know me.

Of course he didn't know me as anything other than a toddler.

"Um, yes. First time," I managed.

"I remember my first time flying. I was in my twenties. Terrifying, I know, but they do say you have more chance of dying in a car crash than a plane crash."

The irony was not lost on me.

We spoke for twenty minutes. It was perfect, this brief moment of getting to know my grandfather. He showed me pictures of myself, spoke fondly of his wife and daughter, and told me about the trip he'd just finished and how much he enjoyed his job.

When the plane jerked beneath us, I reached for his hand.

As it fell from the sky, we clutched each other. I thought I would die alongside him, caught in some bizarre turn of fortune. Some magical voodoo that had sent me back in time to perish.

But as the orange ball of flame rushed through the cabin, I returned safe and sound to our old, brown leather couch. My dinner was in shambles on the floor, and the credits were rolling on _Buffy_.

I cried as if my heart were breaking.

* * *

Five times since, I've sat beside my granddad on that plane. Each conversation is different, another puzzle piece to build up this man I never knew. So many times I've wanted to tell him who I am, to tell him that I love him and I wish he would have been a part of my life.

_A Sound of Thunder_ by Ray Bradbury. I read it freshman year, and it stuck with me. The Butterfly Effect is the theory that one tiny change, as insignificant as the death of a butterfly, could change the full scope of human existence. So I don't say anything to my grandfather. What good would it do when he's ten thousand feet in the sky with nowhere to go?

I don't know what triggers the leaps. There is no common denominator. No code word or sound. As random as the weather; as random as death. If I knew the answer, I would leap to before my grandfather got on that plane, and I'd keep him from doing it. I would change his fate, regardless of the consequences, because I wanted to give him back to my mom.

That's the thing about my leaps, though. I never leap into a situation I can change.

Take my aunt, for instance. She's already on the subway when I show up, sitting prettily in her seat in a flowered dress and heels. The last stop is coming up—her _stop_. When I first leaped to her, I thought for sure she would recognize me. She'd only died the year before; I knew her well and closely.

She never does, though. Maybe through some kind of magic, I don't know. I get two minutes and thirty-six seconds with her before a garbled voice comes over the intercom announcing her stop. It's late. It's the last stop. We're alone in the car.

"It was great to meet you," she tells me, and then clicks off in her high heels.

She's murdered on the stairwell, shot for the meager contents of her handbag. She never makes it out of the subway.

The second time I leaped to her, I went against my "no-changes" rule and I told her. I told her who I was and what was about to happen. Funny how fast she left the car. She thought I was some kind of crazy person, and she died anyway. Did it help her to have the seed of her death planted before she left the train? I doubt it.

And then there's Alan, of course. My thirteen-year-old cousin who died from leukemia. My uncle and aunt—a different aunt from the one who was murdered—always thought he died alone, late at night in the hospital while they caught a few precious hours of sleep at home between medications and doctors.

He didn't. I was curled up beside him, eating popcorn and chatting. Alan always knows me. Again, like everything else about leaping, I have no clue why he gets to see me as I really am. The six times I've gone, I'm always holding his hand as he shuts his eyes. I watch, fascinated as his heartbeat—visible beneath the thin, papery skin of his fragile neck—slows, and eventually stops.

It's like this with everyone. I leap every week or two, never knowing whose face I will see, what situation I will be in. Every couple of months, a new death is shown to me. Just last week, it was someone I'd never even met—my mom's childhood best friend. It's always short, it's always hard, and it's always in the past.

Or it _was_.

Until I leaped to my own death.

* * *

I recognized myself right away. I guess it would be hard not to when you see your own face in the mirror every day for twenty years. I looked older—lines at my eyes, hair longer and darker. I had a little girl at my side, and I was holding a handsome man's hand.

The older Mila saw me right away, almost as if she sensed my arrival. She lifted the little girl and passed her into the man's arms with a few short words, then she walked to my side.

We were on a boardwalk, the beach behind me and a quaint strip of shops before me. A strong sun beamed down from mid-day, splashing rainbows through glass wind chimes dangling beside me. An eternity passed as I watched my other self come closer. Our clear, blue eyes locked, sharing an acknowledgement neither of us had been prepared for.

"Where are we?" I asked her before she'd even come to a stop.

"Hawaii."

"Is that my family?" I looked at the man and girl, familiar strangers.

The older me smiled. "Yes. Our husband, Mark. And our daughter, Joy." Then her smile disappeared. "It isn't good news that you're here."

"You didn't already know?"

She shook her head. "How old are you?"

"Twenty."

She nodded. "You'll leap to the future more and more now, and you'll start to learn that there is no linear form in time. It's disjointed, disrupted. We don't move in a straight line. You being here-and-now is the first either of us have been here."

"I assume it will be the last," I said quietly. "How old are _you_?"

"Thirty."

Ten years. I would only live ten more years. I couldn't help but wonder how it would happen. Would it hurt? Would my family be safe?

"I don't know what's about to happen," I told the older Mila quietly, "but you should go be with your husband and kid." Smiling wryly, I added, "You've spent a lifetime with me."

She nodded. The way she tilted her head was so familiar, as if I watched myself in a mirror, aged gracefully and somewhat different than I'd been before. Where would the next ten years take me? Had I lived fully?

Without a goodbye, she turned and walked away. I slumped, terrified at what I was powerless to stop.

Five minutes later, my older self collapsed to the boardwalk and was gone.

* * *

There's no way to survive seeing your own death without feeling the emotional scars. It isn't quite the same as witnessing other's deaths. With them, you're outside the event. Separate from it. The same cannot be said of watching yourself die.

I never leapt to my own death again. I built theories surrounding the circumstances, why it happens, how it happens, but I have no answers. Something internal, I'm sure. A disease. Cancer that I never catch, or an epic seizure that strips me of life.

For ten years, I'm mad about being healthy. I eat only organic, only raw, only the best. I grow my own food, strip out all meat and animal product. I never touch alcohol or drugs.

I fall in love. I have a child.

All those years of not interfering in the deaths of others. I suppose one day soon, I'll find out if I've changed my own fate instead.

Today, we leave for Hawaii.

#

Heather Marie Adkins has always been obsessed with time and death. Only seems right she mixed the two into this story.

Find her at her website heathermarieadkins.com or follow her on Facebook

# The Temple

If you enjoyed Heather's story, check out her best-selling paranormal romance!

Vale Avari has a mysterious past and a laundry list of super-powers, but that's nothing compared to what she finds upon moving from small town U.S.A to even smaller-town England.

A chance dart throw lands her in Quicksilver, an off-the-map place with a big problem - people are dying, and word is, it's supernatural.

At her new place of employment, a temple dedicated to the ancient Mother Goddess, Vale learns something even more shocking - women guards are disappearing at an alarmingly patterned rate; women who possess special gifts like her own.

Supernatural powers aside, Vale isn't ready to believe in the Wild Hunt as the culprit, and she's determined to prove the deaths are acts of human violence.

Plagued by a brute with a history of domestic violence and lusting after a dark-eyed man with a secret, Vale has a limited amount of time to discover the killer before he strikes again. In the process, she'll learn things aren't always what they seem and the supernatural might not be so extraordinary after all.

The Hunt could ride for her.

# The Eclective

The Eclective is:

Heather Marie Adkins

Christine DeMaio-Rice

Emma Jameson

P.J. Jones

Shéa MacLeod

M. Edward McNally

Alan Nayes

R.G. Porter

CD Reiss

Tara West

Thanks for reading! Please visit our website to learn more about us.

eclectivebooks.com

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