 
Shorts and Other Laundry

By Ethan Holmes

Published by FrozenMan Productions at Smashwords

©2013 Ethan Holmes Revised Edition

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Ethan Holmes

Shorts and Other Laundry

By Ethan Holmes

Table of Contents

The Box

Spooked To Death

A Very Small Town

Two Paragraphs

Who's In Charge Here?

The Man Who Ate Popcorn

Have Some Cookies and Milk

Make and Model

The Box

I remember the shop. It would have been difficult to forget it after meeting the manager, Andrea.

"Make sure you pronounce it correctly. The accent's on the second syllable!" She pointed a very long, curling index fingernail at me painted in some ghastly bright purple color.

The thing that drew my attention though, after flinching at the color, was the fact that somehow or other she, or someone, had managed to glue tiny golden stars on each nail. Her long, straight, black hair had a broad streak of purple running down the right side of her face.

"It's a very spiritual color you know. That's why the Buddhists wear it. Not to mention the Egyptians allowed only royalty to wear it." She tossed her purple stripe back almost as though she was strongly trying to imply she was one of them.

"What are you looking for?" She looked me up and down as though sizing me up for a suit. Then she stepped back and peered at me. She reached for a three dimensional metal triangle thing from the glass counter on her left and held it up and looked through it at me. I swear visions of Romper Room flashed through my mind and I hesitated briefly waiting for her to start calling out names of people she could see, or maybe spirits.

"What are you doing?" I asked that not really certain I wanted an answer.

Regretfully enough she answered.

"This helps me to see the aura around you and also any lingering spirits."

She kept turning through all four openings and I could see the shiny brass frame of it had all kinds of strange little symbols engraved on it.

"Find anyone yet?" I was trying to be a wise guy which wasn't too hard for me. I had been practicing for over thirty years.

"You have the strangest aura I have ever seen." She hesitated a moment as though she didn't quite want to believe whatever she was looking at. Then almost in an absent-minded manner she put the triangle down on the counter and smiled.

"Did you know that the word around comes from the word aura." She paused for a moment. "I suppose that makes saying 'the aura around you' rather redundant." She shook her head.

"Actually I was just browsing around down the street here and I stumbled across your little shop. I thought I might stop in and see if you had any green emerald-like stones I could look at for a pendant."

"Well, first of all, you didn't 'stumble across' this little shop. There are no accidents in the universe my friend. You came in here for a purpose."

"Good grief woman! I just told you I why I stopped in!" I kept that thought inside my head.

"I need to look something up first." She went behind the glass counter and her long purple dress flowed along with her as she swirled around the corner reaching for a large, tattered, leather bound book.

"You have a strange greenish, aqua-colored aura nearest you but it is surrounded by a very dark blue one. I've never seen one aura encased in another!"

"Well, you know, there's the inner me and the outer me. Hehe." I was trying to keep it light but I also wanted to leave. I didn't think I needed green rocks that bad.

She looked up at me with a surprised look on her face as though I had information I wasn't supposed to have.

"This is serious; more serious than you know. A long time ago I was told you would come here."

"Okay," I thought to myself, "someone forgot to take their medication this morning. I need to get out of here. I was just window shopping."

She swirled around the counter and came out reaching for my hand as she headed for the back of the store.

"Come with me. I have something for you."

"Look, I gotta go, really. I don't really have the time to stay and discuss this. I'm fairly certain there is somewhere else I'm supposed to be."

She stopped in the middle of the store and turned with a way-too-serious look on her face and I noticed in the dim light that even her lip gloss had a purple tint to it and was embedded with sparkles.

"I must fulfill my promise and give you this. After that you may go where you please."

She actually pulled me the rest of the way through the store toward the back which wasn't hard to do since she outweighed me by fifty pounds. I wasn't surprised to see a purple curtain covering an otherwise open doorway.

"Wait right here!" She said this solemnly as though she was trying to find me a seat at a funeral.

She disappeared behind the curtain and I could hear rummaging and mumbling. Personally I thought about bolting for the front door. I was still pretty fast and I thought there was a pretty good chance I could make it.

"This will change your life profoundly." Her voice came from behind the curtain like a cut scene from the nightmare version of The Wizard of Oz.

"Believe me, my life is already changed!" I thought to myself while casting furtive glances at the front door. "That's the last time I go looking for green rocks on a whim."

Suddenly she appeared looking slightly frazzled and a bit dusty. She was holding a black wooden box covered with images of strange little faces that looked half animal, half human. She held it out as though it was a box of grenades with all the pins pulled.

"Is there a problem?" I wasn't sure I wanted to take this thing from her.

"You must have it. It was ordained. I was instructed to give it to you a long time ago."

"Well you sure as hell look like you don't want it anymore. Why should I take it? What the hell is it anyway?" I was suddenly becoming annoyed with the whole thing.

"I am allowed to say nothing; only that it now belongs to you." She kept holding it out like it was going to explode. I was just about to turn away from her and head for the door when she grabbed me by the arm and shoved the box at me. I noticed there were tears in her eyes.

"Please, take it. I beg of you! It will change your life but only if you figure out how to use it properly."

I was confused and more than a little bit pissed. I hesitantly took the dusty box and she handed me a small brass skeleton key.

"This goes with it. Take care."

She all but pushed me out the front door of the empty shop. Come to think of it, despite the fact that it was a Saturday and the rest of the street was busy her shop was empty when I came in and still empty when I left.

I tried to put the whole thing behind me as I put the box on the front seat of my car and the key in my pocket. That night the box sat there on the kitchen bar and I fished out a rag from under the kitchen sink and wiped it clean. The faces on the box were quite weird. Each had an expression slightly different from the other and each had one tiny detailed color on it that was different. If you just glanced at them they all looked like the same image until you looked carefully. Then you could see the tiny, almost unnoticeable differences. Most unsettling of all was that none of the expressions were happy ones. Close inspection revealed that each one was subtly sad, unhappy or even angry.

The next day her words were ringing in my ears. "It will change your life if you figure out how to use it properly."

I have to be honest; I was ready for a change in my life. I had just recently escaped the bad end of a three and a half year relationship that should have ended two years before. My job was doing a high-wire act of teetering over the abyss of financial collapse, my friends all lived too far away and my body had decided it was a good time for a complete multi-system meltdown thanks to all the stress. Who wouldn't want to change all that?

I set the box on the coffee table and just stared at it for a few minutes wondering more about the faces on the box than the contents. For all I knew the box could be empty. I held the key in my hand and then just that quickly I reached out and stuck it into the tarnished brass keyhole and turned it. It made a soft click and the lid slowly rose all by itself.

What I saw actually made me smile. Inside the box was lined with what looked like white velvet and sitting there looking stunningly beautiful was a four inch crystal glass globe of the most gorgeous emerald green color imaginable. It was warm and yet bright at the same time. It bathed the immediate area in a soft green, (dare I say it?), aura. It literally begged to be picked up and held like a softly murmuring new-born puppy. I couldn't help it, I reached out for it.

As I lifted the perfectly formed globe off the soft white velvet a small piece of linen-like paper revealed itself underneath. The ink was old and faded yet still quite readable on the yellowed paper and it looked as though it had been written in the most beautiful script with a fountain pen.

The piece of paper simply read, "The Bearer Has Three Requests To Be Granted."

I smiled and looked around my own living room as though someone would pop out and yell "April Fools!". I'm a realist, through and through. It's in my blood. I have to see it, smell it, taste it, hear it and touch it. Even then you might have a tussle on your hands. There isn't much you can trust in this world anymore.

"Three wishes! Really? That's pretty funny! Love the green globe though!"

I decided then and there it would look great on my nightstand. Even in the dark it seemed to light the room with a warm, welcoming emerald glow. It was like the world's most alluring night light. I'm sure if I put it out on the patio moths from South America would be flying in just to be near the light.

I went to bed that night completely content, relaxed and almost happy for the first time in a very long time; that is until I woke up.

"Wake up, young man! We need to have a bit of a chat!"

Startled awake, I instinctively reached for the drawer of the nightstand that held a forty-five caliber Colt Desert Eagle. A foot, or at least what felt like a foot held the drawer shut and I noticed that the green glow from the crystal globe was no longer present in my bedroom.

"I don't much take to conversing in the dark with someone I can't see, eh ol' chap?"

Whoever had the English accent snapped his fingers quite loudly and the lamplight came on in my bedroom.

My eyes took a moment to adjust and the first thing they saw clearly was the digital clock that read three thirty in the morning. The second thing they saw was a rather dapper, black tuxedo-clad man standing about four feet from me. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes.

"Last I checked, I lived all by my lonesome." I was angry that a stranger was in my house and just as angry that it was three thirty in the morning. I glanced at the drawer.

"Why yes, so you do; and what a pity. Dare I say you should have a beautiful woman lying next to you every night of the week, and not necessarily the same woman." He actually winked at me.

"OK! Here comes the dumb questions that are a necessary part of this process. Who the hell are you and what the hell are you doing in my house? Oh, and I might add that if I don't get satisfactory answers, as if there could be any, I'm going for the drawer." I nodded toward the nightstand.

"Now, now. No need for any of that. I had to come visit you at a time of my choosing since you preferred to set aside the note."

"Note? What damn note?" As soon as I asked that I realized he was referring to the piece of script that had been underneath the glass sphere.

"See, I'm not patient at all. A fault of mine for a very long time." He tugged at his vest and actually had a pair of white gloves in one hand and a black walnut, silver tipped walking stick in the other.

"What kind of bad piece of garlic bologna nightmare is this? What are you doing here?"

"Tsk, tsk, Master James. You did not even eat any garlic bologna today."

Somehow I wasn't surprised this penguin knew my name. I decided to play along for the moment until I could get to my currently favorite bedtime companion in the drawer.

"Do you have a name?"

"I am called whatever each person wishes to call me. What do you wish to call me?"

"How about asshole for starters? As in get out of my house, asshole!"

"Hmm..., well that's not very prim and proper, now is it?"

"Okay, I'll play along for the studio audience. How about Bob? You look like a Bob. So what are you doing in my damn house, Bob? What the hell do you want here and what did you do to break my lovely globe?"

"Ah, you mean the light?" Bob seemed delighted to have a name and to be talking about something else. "It always goes out when I leave it. Don't worry, it will return once I do."

"What are you trying to tell me Bob, that you are the light, the light is you?"

"Well, I am the source of the light. It is as you wanted it, is it not? Is it not exactly what you were looking for when you entered the shop?"

"Well no, not exactly! I was looking for something to make a pendant with. That's a little big, don't ya think there, Bob?" I was doing my best to be as sarcastic as possible.

"Think about it, Master James, was it not exactly what you truly desired at the moment? Did it not make you happy once you opened it? Look, you are sleeping with it. That happens quite often."

"What are you talking about, Bob? 'Happens quite often?' To whom?"

"Rather proper English, Master James. I like that."

"Yea, I tend to get that way when I get angry; real succinct, logical and proper. Keeps me from cursing my ass off!"

"It happens, Master James, to a lot of the recipients of the box. The contents are often different to each but the purpose and results are usually the same."

"Ya know what? I've had enough of you and your English butler circus act. Get the hell out of my house! NOW, BOB!" I reached for the nightstand drawer as fast as I could but Bob just nodded at it. I yanked the drawer handle so hard I nearly tipped the whole thing over but the drawer wouldn't budge.

"What the hell!? Look, you've got two seconds to head for the door or I am going to make a real mess out of your little rental suit there, Bob!" I swung my feet out of bed onto the floor and sat up ready to lunge at this prim little intruder.

Bob just waved his walking stick at me nonchalantly. "Be still, Master James."

As quick as he said that my legs and arms suddenly felt as though they were each encased in thick cement. I tried to lift my right foot off the floor and nothing moved. I tried moving my right hand so I could grab my leg and make it move. It just sat there feeling like it weighed three hundred pounds all by itself. I stared helplessly at my limbs and then looked up at Bob.

"Do you mind if I take the liberty of a seat? No? I thought not."

Bob walked over to the end of my bed and dragged my old cedar chest over a few feet so he could sit in front of me as I sat paralyzed on the edge of my bed.

"Now listen carefully. I have some rather important information for you and then you have some choices to make." Bob looked pretty stern at this point and I had no choice but to sit and listen.

"Here are the rules and they must be followed implicitly. First, there are to be no questions. I am not permitted to answer them. Second, I must always tell you the truth. Third, you, for the want of a better term, have three wishes. I actually do not care much for that term but people seem to be quite fond of it so there it is. These wishes each in turn cannot be revoked once proffered. Fourth, you must request one thing at a time. Fifth, you may not request more wishes and you may not wish direct evil or harm on another. In other words I may not directly harm or kill a living thing because you wish it so. Other than that you may request anything your heart so desires. Do you understand these statements, Master James?"

I just stared at Bob, angry and confused, trying to figure out why I couldn't move. I wanted to leap off the bed and choke the life out of this escapee from the zoo. Maybe he was a mental patient who somehow got loose. I didn't care. I just wanted a piece of him.

Bob stood up suddenly. "You don't have to answer me right now, Master James. After all, you're in charge."

With that he waved his walking stick again and suddenly I could move. I leaped off the bed at him but he literally vaporized on the spot; no smoke, no steam, no transporter beams, nothing. Then I heard a voice coming from the box, or perhaps it was the globe, which, coincidentally was glowing that beautiful, peaceful green again.

"When you are prepared to be more civilized, Master James, feel free to call upon me. I am after all, at your service."

I stood there in the middle of my own bedroom wondering for a moment if I shouldn't call the same mental hospital that Bob might have escaped from and check myself in.

"Do they have medication to alleviate unwanted nightmares?"

I sat back down on the bed.

"Now let me get this straight. I go window shopping and, in the process, get burdened with a magic box with a genie in a crystal globe. I get three wishes, but there are rules?"

"I don't much like the term 'genie'!" It was Bob's voice.

"What?! You still here? Why don't you come out where I can see you? I'm not going to hurt you, Bob. I just want to squeeze your skinny little neck till your head pops off. Maybe there's a whole bunch of wishes in there."

"Wishful thinking, Master James. Pardon the pun."

"If you're a freaking genie of some sort why was Andrea so anxious to get rid of you? She was almost terrified that I was going to leave without the damn box!"

Bob remained silent.

"Oh, that's right, no questions."

"Beg pardon, I did forget one thing, Master James. You will be required, at some point in your own journey, to hand the box over to another person who will be quite specifically described to you."

"My journey? What the hell does that mean?" Again there was silence.

"I need time to think. This is a bit much and I'm still not real sure this whole thing isn't a bad piece of meat."

I decided to chew on it for a while. Something wasn't quite setting right and I realized I was not going to get any answers from Bob; at least not by asking direct questions. I was so uncomfortable with the whole thing I actually took the box out of the bedroom, set it on the coffee table and locked it. I wondered briefly if Bob could get out anyway. My answer came about four hours later.

I had somehow managed to get a few more hours of sleep, taking some solace in the thought that perhaps Bob was safely locked in his box. The only problem with that was waking up to the smell of the most wonderful coffee I had ever smelled and the fragrance of one of my favorite breakfasts of all time cooking in the kitchen. There was no mistaking the scent of scrambled eggs and cream cheese with white onions and organic red pepper flakes mingled with that of red potato home fries slowly simmering in maple bacon fat.

I walked down the short hallway toward the living room and stopped just at the point where I could look through the open bar area into the kitchen. Sure enough, there was Bob looking for all the world like a shorter, more refined version of Chef Ramsey flitting from item to item in the kitchen. He didn't even look up.

"Why good morning to you, Master James. Breakfast will be ready in just three minutes."

I had my Colt tucked behind me.

"And really sir, you should put that thing down. Rather hard to eat while trying to hold it, don't you think?"

I was in no mood. I pulled the gun out from behind me, aimed carefully and pulled the trigger. A single shot exploded out of the gun and embedded itself in the microwave immediately behind Bob, causing it to explode.

Bob stood there completely unfazed and looked up with a somewhat frustrated and impatient look on his face.

"Now look what you've done. You really shouldn't try to ruin the lovely breakfast I've prepared for you." Bob waved his hand and within the blink of an eye the microwave was restored to its pristine condition and the debris that had splattered all over the kitchen was gone, not a trace to be found.

"You know what? I give up." I shook my head, went back to the bedroom and tossed the gun on the bed. I went back out to the living room and saw that in the few seconds I was gone Bob had managed to lay out breakfast on my small oak dining room table. He motioned for me to sit down as he held out a large black napkin.

"So you can get out of the box anytime you want?"

"Well, truth be told, I'm not really locked in there. That's more for the recipient's benefit than mine. It seems to make them feel more comfortable like they have more control over the situation." Bob gave the napkin a loud snap and placed it across my lap.

"I can do whatever I care to, but in instances such as this I am only permitted to perform some small yet significant act to affirm to the recipient that I do indeed have the ability to grant them three requests of their choosing."

I decided then and there that Bob wasn't going away anytime soon; at least not until I had made my three requests and he could go on to his next bad dream. I ate breakfast and stared across the table at Bob as I sipped on my coffee. He was writing in a small leather bound black book with golden gilt-edged pages and gold lettering on the cover.

"Scheduling issues there, Bob?" Breakfast hadn't cured the sarcasm as I sat there pondering the possibility that I did indeed have the proverbial three wishes coming to me.

"What would you do with three wishes, Bob?"

Bob just sat there scribbling in his book knowing full well that it was just a rhetorical question. Still, something didn't smell quite right about the whole thing. Why was Andrea so emotional and so anxious to get rid of the box? Why didn't this thing feel like it should? I mean, after all, I should feel like I just hit the lottery grand slam of a lifetime. Instead I felt cautious and reticent. It reminded me of Christmas when you would be sitting there with a box in your lap wrapped, boxed and tagged by Aunt Bessie who never had a clue what to get anyone. Part of you wants to open it, the other part wants to hand it back and say, 'thanks but no thanks.'

I thought of all the possibilities, all the things one could ask for. I looked at Bob and imagined the myriad requests he must have had.

"I guess you've been doing this a long time, eh Bob? What's the typical life-span of a genie? Three, four, five thousand years? You don't look a day over fifteen hundred."

Bob peered over his book at me with a look that said he had heard stuff like this before. Apparently he had met a few sarcastic people in his time.

I thought about all the classic things people must have demanded, like millions of dollars, big houses, fine cars and trips around the world. I'm not like that though. I mean, sure, who wouldn't want to have enough money that they would never have to be concerned about anything ever again in their lives? I've had money and I've been so broke I had to sleep in my car. To tell you the truth, I don't recall being happier with the money.

Bob lowered his book and looked at me again.

"Would Master James care for more of that delicious coffee? It's from Sumatra you know."

"I've decided I'm going to give it a whirl and make my first request Bob."

Bob was standing there on the other side of the table ready to fetch me another cup of Sumatran coffee and as quickly as I said that he lit up like a Christmas tree.

"Delightful!" Bob dropped his black book on the table and tugged at his vest and his white gloves as though I had just announced we were going to a horse and buggy wedding in Central Park.

"I've decided that you must answer any and all questions I present to you."

Bob looked like that bullet I had fired at him in the kitchen a little while ago had finally hit him. His face turned ashen white and he stopped in mid-pull on the glove encasing his right hand.

"Something wrong there, Bob?" I gave him a rather wry smile dipped in no small amount of sarcasm.

"Ahem! This is rather unusual, Master James!" Bob was beet-red and flustered. "Most people use their wishes to request THINGS, as in actual objects, things that they want like money and property."

"So; I'm not most people, Bob. I listened very carefully to your rules in this little game. You said, and I quote, 'there are to be no questions, I am not permitted to answer them anyway'. You did not say I could not change that. In fact, Bob, you said I could request anything my heart desires. Right, Bob?"

The dapper Bob wasn't so dapper anymore. In the blink of an eye he had broken out in a severe sweat and was suddenly pacing the dining room floor nervously tapping his chin with a white forefinger and furrowed brow.

"This is so very unusual!"

"You said that already, Bob. Welcome to my world."

"As I said, Master James, people usually ask for THINGS that they want, things they think would change their lives. Surely you would like to be rich, or have all the beautiful women in the world wishing to be in your company? How about a garage full of cars and motorcycles, the finest in the world?"

"Sure, who wouldn't? But first things first. You ready to answer some questions or are you telling me your own rules don't apply to this little game?"

Bob was completely flustered.

"Do you need to call someone, Bob?" I was decidedly enjoying watching this black-suited intruder suddenly squirming around wondering how he lost control of the situation. This was almost as much fun as twisting his head off like I wanted to last night.

Finally Bob seemed to pull himself together somewhat. He stopped pacing, turned toward me, pulled at his vest and gloves again and sat down at the table.

"I am not at all certain why you would want to use one of your three requests in such a manner. However, after a careful review of your request I can find no applicable reason not to grant it. From this moment on I am required to truthfully answer all of your questions."

"Well there ya go, Bob. That wasn't so hard now was it?"

Bob just looked at me with a partly puzzled, partly resigned look on his face. He fidgeted in the chair a bit, trying to compose himself.

"You don't have to answer that one, Bob." I shot him a wry smile.

"First thing I want to know is why Andrea was so damn anxious to get rid of you? I've never seen anyone in such a hurry to give something away."

"Ms. Andrea made her three requests just like anyone else and then did her duty in giving the box to you as required. Unfortunately, I fear she did not quite get what she actually wanted."

"Really? How could she not get what she wanted? You're required to grant the possessor of the box three wishes, er, requests, right? So how does that work, Bob?"

"You must be more specific, Master James." Bob tugged at his sleeves to display his annoyance.

"Specific it is! Did you grant Andrea her three requests?"

"In a manner of speaking." Bob appeared to want to look at anything in the room except me.

"Um, Bob, you're going to have to be more specific." I was enjoying the turnabout.

"I granted her the three requests but I was bound by another previous request." Bob was squirming.

"A previous request? From whom? I mean, if the keeper of the box only gets three requests and Andrea made all hers then where did the other request come from?"

"From a previous recipient of the box, Master James." Bob was staring at his white gloved hands resting on the table.

"Well, out with it, Bob! Who was this person and what did they request that had you bound?"

"Actually, he was a most distasteful gentleman; and I use the term loosely. Very uncouth and impolite, rather brash and insulting. His name was Giorgio Bastardi and he already thought he was a gift to women everywhere. He did not disappoint with his first two requests. The first of course was for money. The second was what he could not have on his own except by force; women. When the time came for his final request he was quite smug and full of self-satisfaction. I recall him sitting there in this huge leather recliner puffing away on a massive Cuban hand-rolled cigar and swirling some Zaya Rum in a glass.

"Bob, I got my last wish and it's a doozy. HAHA! I've got everything I want and I thought about it all last night. I think this is my wish. I want that you should do the exact opposite of what the next person wishes for. HA! How's that for a winner!?"

"He was so proud of himself, the impudent airbag." Bob was angry. I could tell.

He caught himself at that moment and seemed immediately disappointed that he had allowed himself to get upset just talking about Giorgio.

"To tell the truth, Master James, I thought long and hard about his final request. After all, one of the rules is that I may not grant any request for direct harm or evil toward any living thing."

"I recall." I looked at Bob as I sipped my Sumatran coffee. I realized that without his dapper, stiff upper lip demeanor he was quite unhappy; at least while he was talking about Giorgio.

"Well," Bob leaned back and tugged at his vest, "unfortunately I could not say without equivocation that such a request would bring about harm to the next person. After all there are so many things one may request and the opposite of many of those things is not always harmful. Even a request for money would not necessarily produce harm to the person by doing the opposite which is taking money from them."

Bob thought for a moment about his last recipient, Ms. Andrea. He didn't even mention her name but I knew who he was referring to when he spoke again. He had a sad, faraway look in his eyes.

"She was such a kind person. She did not really ask for anything directly for herself until the last. Even then, all she asked was that her small business thrive and prosper so that she could continue to bring joy and generosity into other people's lives."

Bob took out a white monogrammed handkerchief and dabbed the corner of his right eye. I wondered briefly how he managed to have a handkerchief with a gold thread monogram reading "BOB" since I had hung that name on him just yesterday, but then I remembered what Bob really was. I noted that I should visit a doctor soon and see if I was completely nuts.

"What did she ask for, Bob?"

"Ah, first she requested that she always have lots of loving friends and family around her for the rest of her life." Bob paused for a moment. "And of course, she is completely alone in life and yet she carries on."

"Yes, loneliness, in and of itself, is not harmful and yet it is not always known to cultivate happiness unless one likes being alone. I should know."

"Why yes, exactly my point, Master James. I must say you are a much wiser man than I anticipated given our first meeting."

"What was the second thing she asked for?"

Bob sat there for a moment shaking his head sadly. "The poor creature asked that there be peace in the world, everywhere." Bob held his hands out palms up. "One can certainly see where that went. Just look around or watch the news. Ironically it was one of those rare requests I get where I actually do nothing, change nothing. I could cause no harm and had no reason to do so. Humans all over the planet are quite capable of doing it to each other. They rarely disappoint."

"And the final request; I mean, her store seems to be almost invisible. I can't even remember how I stumbled into it. And it stayed empty the whole time I was there."

"Yes, she will never be successful in that store. She will simply survive and there is no specific harm in that either."

Bob looked deeply saddened. He coughed nervously, dabbed his other eye and pretended his jacket needed brushing. He proceeded to do it quite vigorously with his white-gloved hands.

"You know, Master James, if I may be so bold; I must say that one of the things I most enjoy about what I do is the ability to give people what they want. Sadly, most of the recipients, truth be told, have no idea what they truly want. They usually make the same few requests for wealth, power and such. Yet every so often, you get someone like Ms. Andrea who knows precisely what she wants and it is such a joy to grant it. I've been doing this a long time; five thousand four hundred and twenty three years to be exact. In that time I have met some like Ms. Andrea and some like Giorgio. One never knows."

"Well, I have my second request ready, Bob."

Bob straightened up in the chair and brightened up a bit, ready to at last hear my second request.

"Fine, fine. Well done, Master James! Well then, what shall it be? How about a fine country estate surrounded by acres of pristine forest and maybe a lake or a creek running through it? We could even throw in that garage full of cars and motorcycles!"

Bob was excited as he stood and rubbed his gloved hands together ready to get down to business.

"I want you to go back and grant Andrea three more wishes."

Bob plumped back down in the chair like a deflated balloon, but only for a moment. He looked at me, shook his finger and smiled.

"You are not an ordinary man, Master James."

"I told you that already, Bob."

"Indeed you did, Master James, indeed you did! Consider it done!"

I thought about my last request for the rest of the day and on into the following day. I had one more; just one more. What was I going to do with it? I thought about what Bob had said.

"Sadly most of the recipients have no idea what they truly want."

How was I going to narrow this down with one last request? What was I going to ask for that would be last big thing that would make me happy? And then it hit me; happy, I want to be happy. I wish for happiness.

"I wish happiness for myself, Bob! Whatever that entails! I simply want to be happy for the rest of my life!"

Bob stood before me grinning from ear to ear.

"My, but haven't you learned a lot in the last couple of days, eh, Master James? Consider it done!"

Bob clapped his hands together and disappeared. I glanced over at the box. The beautiful crystal globe was glowing that lovely green. It began to slowly fade away and I noted that there was a piece of linen paper sitting on the white velvet leaning against the globe. I walked over and picked it up as the light faded.

"Give me to your best friend."

Spooked To Death

"Did you hear that?"

Wilma Hopkins jabbed her sharp, skinny elbow into her husband Elmer's kidney as they lay back to back in their newly purchased Sleep Number queen-sized bed. Wilma looked over at the red digital face of her alarm clock. The numbers looked eerie in the otherwise total darkness of the wood-paneled bedroom. Two thirty two in the morning.

She listened intently, frozen in position, afraid to move a single muscle and make some noise that might interfere with what she was trying to hear. The low whir and rhythmic clicking of the rickety ceiling fan above them was annoying, distracting her from what she was trying to hear. She closed her eyes tightly as though that would somehow increase her hearing capability.

"There! There it is agin'!" She jabbed Elmer in the same kidney and sat up like a piston shot out of a bad engine cylinder.

"Dammit woman, would you quit a'pokin' me in the damn back. Now I gots to go to the damn john!"

"Elmer, now you be quiet a moment and jes' listen a spell. There's somethin' out there I tell ya!"

"I was quiet woman! I was sleepin', gadnabbit ya ol' bother!"

"Shh; listen Elmer!" Wilma sat stiff on the edge of the bed, silent in the darkness as Elmer rolled over and pulled the threadbare blanket over his head.

"Leave me alone ya ol' woman! Yer always hearin' things!"

"I tell ya Elmer, somethin's rustlin' around out there!"

"Yeah, the boogerman's comin' and I hope he gits ya first 'cause I need some damn sleep! I got work in four hours! Now leave me be!"

Reluctantly Wilma rolled back into bed and pulled what was left of the blanket over her and stared into the darkness trying to see the old ceiling fan blades she knew were up there somewhere spinning away. Just before she drifted back to restless sleep she wondered why she couldn't see the blades in the darkness since they were white.

It was eight the next morning and the old yellowed phone on the wall of the kitchen rang brashly. Wilma was standing at the sink struggling to scrub a huge, old, dented soup pot. She wiped her bony hands on her red checkered apron and walked over to the phone. Fortunately it had a cord long enough to reach anywhere in the kitchen and Wilma headed for the coffee maker on the counter and poured herself a cup of tar-black coffee from an equally tar-black glass pot.

"Wilma, I tell ya, there was somethin' bangin' around on my back porch last night. I was about ready to git the damn shotgun but I was too scared to go outside by myself. I was fixin' to call you folks and have ya send Elmer over here."

Henrietta Philburn lived on the small hill top just off to the southeast of Wilma and Elmer's front door. She and Wilma had been friends even before Wilma met and married Elmer twenty four years ago.

If you put Henrietta and Wilma side by side you might mistake them for sisters. They both stood exactly five feet tall and both weighed exactly eighty five pounds. Henrietta had brown hair with red salon highlights and Wilma had jet black hair with do-it-yourself, sort of blonde highlights. Both of them were known for their feisty characters.

"Elmer wasn't goin' nowhere last night. I heard somethin' out back of our house last night too but Elmer wouldn't budge. He just lay there complainin' 'bout not gettin' any sleep."

Wilma lit a cigarette and puffed a blue cloud of smoke that hung around her head as she sipped her coffee.

"Well I went out there this morning and I swear Wilma, it looks like someone was tryin' to pry their way into my freezer out there. Thank God I had the damn lock on it or they woulda' got my chicken I just butchered up last week."

Wilma thought about it for a moment.

"Ya'll hang on just a minute Henrietta and I'll go take a peek at my back porch."

Wilma set the phone receiver down on the dingy white Formica counter top and headed over to the back door. She pushed open the tattered, bent screen door and leaned outside.

"Holy crap, Henrietta! You ought to see my back porch. Why it looks like there was a pro wrestlin' match out there last night!"

Wilma went on to describe the scene that greeted her as she puffed excitedly on her cigarette and took a breath only long enough to continue sucking on her coffee.

"Whoever it was done took my brand new lawn chairs I just got from Kmart and slung 'em all over the yard and all the barbecue tools are scattered everywhere! They tried to git into my freezer too! I think we got a damn thief on our hands, Henrietta!"

"What you fixin' to do about it Wilma? You goin' to tell Elmer?"

"Hell no, he ain't gonna do nothin'. Only way he's gonna care is if they git at his deer meat from last year. Ain't nothin' more precious than his damn deer meat."

Henrietta laughed along with Wilma as they chatted on about Elmer and his ill-fated hunting trips where he would end up buying deer meat from what he called "lucky buggers" who were fortunate enough to bag one while he sat in the cold and missed everything he aimed at.

"He swears up and down the damn rifle barrel got bent last year in the back seat when his mother sat on it. This year he'll tell ya the sights is off for the same reason." Wilma chuckled and coughed as she sucked the cigarette in her brown-stained fingers down to the filter.

"I'm afixin' ta get me the shotgun and set outside if whoever it was wants to mess with my two chairs agin'!" Wilma bit off the words like she was after a plug of chewing tobacco.

"Well, I'll keep my eyes out and my ears pricked tonight, ya'll can be damn sure. If you hear somethin' suspicious just give me a dingle on that there phone and I'll come a runnin'."

"Sure 'nough will, Henrietta!" Wilma set the phone back in its cradle on the wall and went outside to clean up the mess caused by the nighttime intruder. She picked up one of her brand new lime-green, nylon web lawn chairs.

"Well dang, would ya look at that?" Wilma held the chair up in the sunlight and puzzled over a rather large depression in the cross-webbing of the chair.

"Dang if it don't look like someone's been a settin' in my new chair! Cripes almighty, would ya just listen to yourself, Wilma? Ya sound like Goldilocks and The Three Bears!"

That night Wilma was sound asleep when the phone rang in the kitchen. It jangled her out of a dream she was having in which she was married to her high school sweetheart Buford and they were out buying a brand new pickup truck for her.

"Dang it all ta hell, I was jus' fixin' ta have me a brand new blue pickup!" She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and tried to peer through the blur at the clock on her aluminum dinner tray that doubled as a night stand.

"Now who the hell would be callin' me at three o'clock in the damn mornin'?"

She looked back at Elmer in the darkness. She could hear his snoring despite the fact that his head was under the pillow and the blanket.

"We gots to git that man some surgery or somethin'!" Wilma stood up, scratched both butt cheeks and headed for the kitchen and the incessant ring of the phone on the wall.

"Wilma! They're back!" Henrietta Philburn was on the other end of the phone half whispering and Wilma heard the distinctive clack of Henrietta's Winchester shotgun as she spoke.

"There's someone out back I tell ya! Maybe even a couple of 'em! Don't sound like just one person to me! Hang on a minute!"

Wilma waited patiently in the kitchen holding the phone while fumbling around on the counter top for her pack of cigarettes.

"May as well have one since I'm up." She muttered to herself as she grabbed the pack of Camels and pulled the matches out of the plastic sleeve. She struck a match and it threw an eerie orange glow over her just long enough for Wilma to look down at herself.

"Cripes Wilma, when was the last time ya'll had a new housecoat?" She stared at the torn pockets, the frayed lining and the large hole down by the hem that the dog had chewed in it. Suddenly a blood curdling scream the likes of which would have won any county yodeling contest emanated from the receiver in Wilma's hand causing her to drop the match on the floor and the cigarette pack in the sink of soaking dinner dishes.

"What in the hell?!" Wilma stared at the receiver as though it had taken on a life all its own. "You alright there, Henrietta?" She didn't bother to lift the phone back up to her ear.

The next thing Wilma heard was two blasts from a shotgun but she couldn't tell whether they came from the phone or outside. She dropped the phone and it clattered to the black and white checkered linoleum floor. She grabbed her own Remington shotgun and an old flashlight and headed for the back door. As she stepped out into her own back yard she heard two more shotgun blasts and another bloodcurdling scream coming from the hilltop approximately three hundred yards away.

Wilma hunched up her shoulders, pulled the fabric belt of her robe tight with her left hand, put her head down and made a beeline for Henrietta's house with the shotgun in her right hand and the flashlight tucked under her right arm. She hopped the split rail fence that separated their two properties and halted about a hundred yards from the rear of Henrietta's house. Peering into the early morning darkness with nothing but a weak and narrow yellow beam of light emanating from her armpit, Wilma heard someone coming toward her.

"You better hold up right there or I'll make you look like a walkin' spaghetti strainer!"

No one responded in the murky darkness so Wilma let fly with a couple of blasts from her twelve gauge shotgun. The recoil from the first blast knocked her off balance and the second put her butt-first in the mud.

"Lord Almighty woman, quit shootin'! It's me dammit!" Henrietta's voice echoed across the mud and weeds pretending to be her backyard.

Henrietta came up in the darkness and held out her hand. "What you doin' settin' in the mud ya ol' woman. Can't ya handle a shotgun no more?"

Wilma grabbed the offered hand and struggle to her feet, not even bothering with the mud caked all over her backside.

"I reckon I can still shoot. I damn near took your left leg off in the dark."

Wilma used the yellow beam from the flashlight to point down at Henrietta's blue robe covered with faded sea shells and sea horses. The whole lower left side was peppered with buckshot holes.

"Damn Wilma, if I thought you could afford it I'd make you buy me a new housecoat."

"Hell, if I could afford a new housecoat I'd git me one. What's the ruckus about up here anyway?"

"They was back! One of 'em even tried to jump me from atop the freezer. Landed on my back! Jeepers I never felt so much hair on me in my life. Weren't very big neither. Mighta' been some boys from over the hill messin' around but I showed 'em what for. Scarin' the life outta' me like that. I got me some buckshot loaded up in this thing and I think I tagged one of 'em! You hear 'em scream?"

"I thought that was you." Wilma wiped a couple of lumps of mud off the barrel of the shotgun and peered into the red-rimmed lens of her rapidly waning flashlight. "This ol' thing got about five minutes left in it and we'll be standin' here in the dark like a couple of possums."

Just as Wilma said that they heard a loud clattering noise coming from the direction of her back porch.

"Did you hear that?!" Wilma pointed the flashlight at Henrietta's face.

"Well of course I heard it ya dumbass! Ya tried to shoot my leg off, not my ear."

They both turned in the direction of the noise.

"Turn that dang thing off! Ain't no use anyhow!" Henrietta motioned at the flashlight with her shotgun barrel and they started slowly toward Wilma's back porch in a semi-crouched position as though that would somehow increase the effectiveness of their stealth.

They both froze at the split rail fence as more clattering and banging came resonating across the yard. The new moon didn't help matters as they tried desperately to peer through the darkness. Unfortunately they couldn't see each other two feet apart let alone see across one hundred fifty yards of pitch black.

"I'm goin' back to the house and git me my new LED flashlight I just got from Walmart the other day. You head on up there and I'll circle around the other side of the house. Wait till I snap the light on and then we'll let 'em have it from both sides." Henrietta started to move toward her house.

"Hell no, I ain't goin' nowhere till you git back here. I can't see shit out there as it is."

"Fine then, wait here! I'll be right back" Just as Henrietta moved off in the darkness Wilma could hear more clattering and banging and what she thought was heavy grunting.

Henrietta came back shortly, proudly waving her brand new flashlight despite the fact that no one could see her doing that. She whispered for Wilma to locate her at the fence and as she came up they heard another loud clanging noise accompanied by a thud that sounded like someone falling down.

"C'mon, let's git this show rollin'." Henrietta whispered and motioned forward toward Wilma's back porch. "We'll show these varmints they can't jus' come 'round and take anything they want."

Wilma and Henrietta quietly hopped the split rail fence and softly plopped down into the familiar mud of Wilma's yard. Henrietta split off toward the front yard and headed for the opposite side of the house. Wilma watched her go until she couldn't see or hear her anymore and crept forward. As she did so she could hear the distinctive squeak of the bent screen door on her back porch.

"Dang if they ain't tryin' to git into the house too!" Wilma whispered to herself as she moved over to the rear corner of the house and peered around the corner halfway expecting to see at least three perpetrators waiting to get shot. Just as she did this a bright beam of light shot out from the opposite rear corner of the house. At first it shot up it into the sky pointing at nothing in particular, but it quickly came down and moved around the corner and pointed directly at the back door.

"All right you egg-suckers, you've had yer fun! Come on out where we can see ya!" Henrietta yelled out as she swung the beam around the back porch while holding the shotgun at the ready.

Wilma stepped out from the cover of her corner of the house with her shotgun at her shoulder and the instant she did that she saw a large, dark blur move rapidly from the edge of the porch into the yard. At precisely that same instant something grabbed both her butt cheeks and she screamed as the seemingly long-nailed stranger copped a feel. She reflexively pulled the trigger on her shotgun and the blast momentarily lit up the yard like a lightning strike.

Both of them heard multiple loud squeals and Henrietta fired three shots into the dark yard, pumping the shotgun as hard and fast as she could. The both heard a loud thud but Henrietta had dropped her flashlight in her panicky effort to shoot the intruders.

Meanwhile Wilma was screaming and running toward her own back door. She reached the screen door, yanked it open hard enough to dislodge the top hinge, reached inside and flicked the porch light on. She whirled around with her shotgun at her hip and pumped once, finger on the trigger. What she saw made both her and Henrietta freeze.

As the yellow, sixty watt bug light bathed the back yard, Henrietta and Wilma stood there with their mouths wide open looking at five rather large, hairy raccoons. One was standing on one of Wilma's lawn chairs right in the middle of the nylon webbing looking curiously at the two women. A second raccoon was ambling off toward the middle of yard repeatedly looking back at Wilma. The third raccoon was sitting on top of the freezer with a piece of raw, frozen chicken half hanging out of a plastic freezer bag dangling from its mouth. The fourth one was still at the corner of the house Wilma had been hiding at and she quickly surmised that this one had grabbed her butt. The fifth raccoon was standing less than three feet from Henrietta sniffing the air as though she had brought him something to eat.

The raccoon on the lawn chair climbed down and walked slowly over to the second one that had stopped in the middle of the back yard. Henrietta and Wilma moved forward cautiously as the one that was standing by Henrietta joined his two companions in the yard. In the dim light they could see that there was something there where the three raccoons stopped. A few steps closer and they could see the three raccoons vigorously sniffing the large lump.

Henrietta walked back and got her flashlight and tapped it a couple of times on her leg as she walked back to Wilma. To her surprise the light came on. She pointed it at the three raccoons and then down at the lump on the ground they were busy circling and sniffing.

Both women looked at each other for a brief moment and then said simultaneously, in unison and two part harmony, "Well I'll be danged! You shot Elmer!"

There was a moment of perplexed, confused silence as the two women kept looking at each other and the lump on the ground that used to be Wilma's husband, Elmer. Wilma spoke first.

"I didn't shoot Elmer! You shot Elmer! Hell, ya pumped three shots into the yard without even knowin' what was out there!"

"What are you talkin' about woman? You shot first! And don't talk ta me about shootin' at somethin' without knowin' what you was shootin' at!" Henrietta gestured vigorously toward the corner of the house Wilma came from.

"Well it's pitch black out here and you had the fancy dang new flashlight! I had nothin'! I still don't think I shot him. My shot went up in the air 'cause that there raccoon was feelin' my butt. Ain't nobody but me's had their hands back there in years! What the hell was I supposed to do?"

The two life-long friends looked at each other for a long moment in the dim bug light.

"Aw hell, who'd want to touch your bony ass anyways?" Henrietta tossed her shotgun up on her shoulder and turned toward Wilma's back porch. "Y'all got any coffee brewin'?"

Wilma shouldered her shotgun and threw her arm around Henrietta's shoulder as the two strolled back to the house. "I reckon it don't matter much which one of us shot him but at least we know who's been at your chicken and my lawn chairs."

A Very Small Town

A small dog barked in the distance and several others took up the song of morning and carried it down Main Street and the side streets of Connellsville. Edgar, the mechanic, rubbed his eyes as he stood in the doorway of his gas station/auto repair shop in his neatly pressed dark blue uniform and listened to the hissing of the compressor as the lift hoisted Mrs. Callaway's black 1947 Ford Coupe into the air in preparation for a fancy new set of whitewall tires.

"Howdy Edgar! Looks like it's gonna be another overcast day!"

Clem, the town barber, polished his already bright barber pole and stepped back to admire the gleaming chrome and glass.

"Clem, if you polish that durn thing much more you're gonna wear it down to the size of a candy cane!"

"Now Edgar, if I don't keep 'er clean how's people gonna know I'm here?"

"Keep her clean?" Edgar thought to himself as the compressor shut down, "Ya been here for thirty seven years. Who doesn't know you're here? You're the only damn barber shop around for fifty miles!"

Still Edgar had to admit that Clem did keep the cleanest shop in town. Everything inside and outside Clem's Barber Shop gleamed including the scissors and combs kept in the strange clear blue liquid on the shelves and the chrome and black leather barber chairs that were almost too comfortable to sit in. Even Clem's freshly painted black on white sign outside was spotless; not a bug or rain spot on it.

Edgar looked down East Main Street and saw Mrs. Richards slowly unrolling the green awning that served to shade the large glass windows of Richards' Candy & Confections.

"Mornin' Mrs. Richards!" He shouted but Ruby Richards did not hear him and Edgar wasn't surprised. He was amazed she and her husband were still running their shop despite the fact that both of them were eighty seven years old.

Edgar's station sat on the corner of Main Street and Cherry Street and somewhere off down Cherry a rooster crowed. Edgar looked at the faceted crystal face of his Bulova watch snugly held in place by a thin black leather band. It had stopped at four o'clock. He looked around. It wasn't four o'clock in the afternoon and it sure wasn't four in the morning. He scratched his head and walked into the bay holding Mrs. Callaway's car. Stopping for a moment, he tried to remember how Mrs. Callaway's car came to be on his station lift. He couldn't recall.

Down at Walnut and Pine, just a block off Main St. and five blocks from Edgar's station, the large door on the front of the red brick, three-story Connellsville Fire Department building slid up and the town's cherry-red 1953 American LaFrance Spartan Fire Engine eased out onto the driveway.

"Where we gonna drill today cap'n?" Henry Beauchamp, a skinny, redheaded kid who worked at Wilson's Dairy on the outskirts of town was grinning ear to ear.

Henry was hoping, as were most of the rest of the crew, that they were headed for old man Wheeler's farmstead. Harry Wheeler wasn't around anymore but Mrs. Wheeler was known to make the best butter crust peach and apple pie in town. The fire department had used the Wheeler's barn for years to practice various fire drills and train on their equipment and Mrs. Wheeler never failed to keep them well-fed. Even now, before she knew they were coming, there were already two apple and two peach pies fresh out of the oven cooling on her two kitchen window sills.

As Mrs. Wheeler shooed the flies away from one of the pies with her red and white checkered kitchen towel she looked out the window toward the west pasture. A perplexed look crossed her chubby, grandmotherly face.

"Well now, isn't that rather odd. Where in the world is Harry's tractor?"

Mrs. Wheeler was accustomed to seeing Harry's 1956 John Deere 420-I tractor sitting right in the middle of the west pasture where Harry last rode it. You couldn't miss the lime green color even against the green grass background but as she looked out the window it was nowhere in sight.

Ada Wheeler stepped out onto the front porch wiping her hands on the towel and looked over toward the freshly painted red and white clapboard barn. Beyond the four cows and two calves grazing alongside it she could see Harry's tractor parked in front of the large white doors of the barn.

"Well for goodness sakes; how in the blazes did Harry's tractor get over there? No one but Harry would be driving that thing. Lord knows it's his new toy and no one is allowed to touch it. I'll have to ask the boys from the firehouse if any of them moved it. Tsk, tsk; Harry won't be happy."

A bit of subdued daylight peeked through the white, lace-embroidered curtains of Antonio Dilucci's second floor bedroom as he sat up rubbing the sleep from his eyes. His wife, Emilia was in the small kitchenette at the other end of the apartment and Antonio caught the aroma of fresh brewed cappuccino mingling with brioche and Romano.

"Sbrigati! Only twenty minutes the shop is open!" Emilia poked her head around the doorway and spoke in broken English topped with a thick Italian accent.

"Si, si Emilia!" Antonio waved at her as he planted his feet on the floor. He looked at his gnarled hands that had taken on the same feel and look as the leather he meticulously worked day after day in his shoe repair shop downstairs. He wondered how many years of work he had left in them.

Clang! Clang!

Someone was already ringing the large bell that hung outside Dilucci's Shoe & Leather.

Clang! Clang! They were impatient and that wasn't usual in Connellsville. Antonio slid the heavy wood-framed window up and leaned out. Down on the sidewalk the widow Mrs. Blackstone was holding a large paper sack of shoes and peering anxiously in the front window of Antonio's shop.

"Un momento prego, Senora!" Antonio struggled to put his pants on. He knew Mrs. Blackstone was impatient but she was his best customer. Ever since Mr. Blackstone had passed on she took her grief out on shoes. At last count she had over a hundred and sixty pair and for some reason she always had at least ten pair that needed some sort of work. Antonio could never figure out where she did all that walking in such a small town.

Antonio walked into the tiny kitchenette struggling to put his starchy dress shirt on over his white undershirt.

"Emilia, how many years we live here?"

Emilia looked at Antonio, wondering why he would ask such a thing out of the blue.

"Non lo so! Forse vente anos?"

Antonio thought for a moment as his wife pulled his collar and buttoned it down. For the life of him he could not remember when they had moved here and when he had opened his shop. The only thing he knew for certain was that he had worked with leather all his life. He inherited all his father's tools and equipment and shipped them over from Italy after his father died.

"Antonio!"

Startled, Antonio ran back over to the bedroom window and leaned out. Standing down on the sidewalk with his black and white Ford police car parked askew in the middle of Main Street was Sheriff Willard, his pot belly bearing witness to one too many calls out to check on Mrs. Wheeler.

"Antonio, you seen Mr. Johnson riding his ol' mare around again? Last anyone seen he was out by the edge of town."

Antonio cringed and so did his wife who had come up behind him and was hanging tightly on his shoulder as she heard the news.

"Edge of town?! No one goes past the edge of town! I no see Mr. Johnson, senor!"

Sheriff Willard waved in response and headed back to his car. The lone red dome light on top of the car turned lazily throwing a barely visible beam in a circle through the grayish daylight. He drove off toward the southeastern edge of Connellsville.

A train whistle echoed three blasts signaling the arrival of the B&O Central at the rail junction on the south end of Connellsville. The cattle in the pens next to the station mooed and brayed in annoyance and jostled around. Just for kicks the engineer gave them another blast and steam shot out from both sides of the locomotive.

"Cut it out Mo', you'll put the skeer in them critters and we'll have heck loadin' 'em." Jake, the conductor peered out the right side of the locomotive past the holding pens, past Mockrie's Dairy to the tree line where everything abruptly ended.

"Hey Mo', you ever git to wonderin' what lay past them trees?"

Mo' looked out at the tree line and then back at Jake.

"What ya need to do that fer, Jake? Ya got everything ya need right here!"

"I know, but ever once in while I get the itch to see what's over there."

"Yer plum crazy there, Jake. Why would ya care what's over there if yer already livin' in paradise?"

"I wonder if the sun shines more over there." Jake nodded past the trees with a wistful look in his eyes. "Ya ever notice that, Mo'? The sun don't seem to shine much around these parts no more. It's just sorta' gray all the time except for every so often when it gets so damn bright no one can stand it."

"I knows it, Jake. Them days it gets so bright I can't see where I'm going. I swear I got to stand still so I don't run into somethin'. But ya got to admit it's a small price ta pay ta live here. This here is the finest little town I ever did live in."

"That there is just the thing, Mo', I can't remember where I lived before this. Can you?"

Mo' rubbed his grizzled chin for a moment and thought.

"Why, come ta think of it, I can't recall. Now let me see here. How long we been in this ol' town? All I can say is I remember moving off Pine Street a couple years back into that new house over on Chestnut. It was right after one a' those really bright days. Ya know, Jake, the strangest thing, I took a walk back over to my ol' house a couple days later and there weren't nothin' there. It was gone Jake! Jus' vanished into thin air!"

Jake looked at Mo' but he didn't say anything. He knew, just like everyone else, that things had a habit of disappearing in Connellsville once in a while. Sometimes permanently, sometimes just for a little while. And if they did show back up it was often in a different area of town. No one could figure it out but everyone knew that it seemed to be closely related to those really bright days that seemed to come and go infrequently.

Jake shook his head and put his hand on Mo's shoulder.

"What say you and I head on over to Langhis' Diner and git us some o' those cheeseburgers and fries with a chocolate coke."

"Now yer talkin'!" Mo's face lit up and he leaped off the locomotive. "Those things are so good I can almost smell 'em from here."

Jake jumped down and put his cap on. It was only a four block walk north to Langhis' and it was worth every step of the trek.

"Hey Mo', what say we splurge and get one of them banana splits for dessert. They make the best around!"

Mo slapped Jake on the shoulder and smiled broadly.

"Best idea I heard today. They make the only ones around but they're the best alright!"

The two men headed up the street.

Ella flicked the light switch on in the large room.

"See, my husband built this addition for me a few years after we bought this house."

The young couple blinked in the sudden bright light as multiple strips of track spot-lighting lit up every nook and cranny of a long room that stretched thirty feet from the doorway and ten feet on either side.

"Oh my gosh Ella! It looks like a museum in here! Look at all this!" The young lady tugged on her husband's shirt sleeve as he also gazed in astonishment at what lay before him.

Ella just stood there proudly smiling ear to ear.

"Come on, come on in and look around! Don't be shy. It's been so long since I was able to show this to anyone. We don't have any kids and there are none living in the neighborhood."

"My goodness, just look at all the dolls!"

It was true and Ella was only too happy to show them each and every doll, doll accessory and doll house that lined all four perimeter walls of the large room from floor to ceiling. Some were on shelves, some were in large glass display cases and cabinets and others were on the floor. Every single one had a story behind it, from the hand carved, imported Japanese maiden to the Barbie & Ken dolls. There was even a large amount of stuffed and hand-stitched dolls and animals.

"Good grief, Ella! I'm sure many of these are collectors' items! Do you know how much money you must have tied up in this room? What's going to happen to it all when you pass on?" The young man marveled alongside his wife as they walked down the length of the room and turned the corners of the narrow aisle left to walk in.

"Oh, I don't give a hoot about the money!" Ella lightly slapped him on the arm. "I just love each and every one of them. I don't know what's going to happen to them. I'm ninety years old, ya know, and my husband is only three years younger than me."

The young couple looked at each other in amazement mixed with a touch of sadness.

"Let me show you my real pride and joy though!" Ella's eyes were gleaming as she physically turned the young lady around toward the middle of the room with her husband naturally following.

The entire center of the room was a puzzle of multiple banquet-style tables put together to form one large rectangular plateau covered with yellowed linen table cloths. Nearly every square inch of the whole area was covered with the most detailed and colorful miniature small town the two of them had ever seen. In fact, as both of them looked at each other, mouths open and wide-eyed, they realized they had never seen anything like it.

"Isn't it just wonderful? I love this place!" Ella could barely contain herself.

The couple leaned closer over the display and neither could believe their eyes. Nothing that could possibly have existed in a small town was missing for as far as they could see. Every street was neatly laid out right down to realistic looking black and white street signs and lampposts. Neatly painted parking stripes held dozens of cars, pickups, and delivery trucks. Miniature oak, walnut and chestnut trees lined the streets and clumps of them dotted the landscape and the town park. All the buildings and houses were meticulously painted and inside each and every one of them the finest detail was addressed.

"I made some of these little carpets myself by hand." Ella reached into one of the houses and pulled out a runner that was in one of the tiny halls upstairs.

The young lady just gasped, "That's amazing! Look, there are beds, tables, chairs, dressers, even potted plants!"

"Good grief, Ella! It looks as though if we could shrink ourselves down to size we could actually live there!"

"Hee hee! I believe you actually could!" Ella clapped her hands together. "Sometimes I move things around a bit but it has pretty much stayed the same for years. Oh, once in a while someone will get me something to add to it but it doesn't need much."

"You can say that again!" The young husband leaned down and looked closely at a small corner gas station with an old car on the lift. "That looks like an actual working garage."

He looked a little closer at the figurine standing outside the doorway in full blue uniform with a tiny name tag embroidered on his shirt.

"I can barely read that but it looks like it says Edgar." He pulled his wife over to see but she was busy looking at something else.

"Oh my, are those actual tiny little chocolates?!" she gasped as she peered into the window of a storefront. She moved back a bit and read the lettering scripted on the little green awning shading the storefront. "Richards' Candy & Confections" she whispered to herself.

"Look at this honey! It's a real fire station, right down to the slide pole and a fire truck that looks like it could actually put out a fire. Check it out! There's even firemen all around the truck. What the...? I think one of them is holding a pie!"

"You think that's amazing?" The young woman grabbed her husband's arm. "Look at this!"

She pointed down at a little shop with two miniature figures standing outside. Painted in gold leaf in a semi-circle on the front window pane were the words, Dilucci's Shoe & Leather. The male figurine was standing there peering into a paper sack full of tiny shoes held by what appeared to be an old lady in a long blue coat.

"I..., I just don't know what to say. You, you have an amazing thing here. It belongs in a museum. It's every small town I ever heard about." The young girl could not come up with anything else to say about what lay before her.

All three of them slowly made their way down the tables peering into this structure, that house, marveling at the infinite detail, colors and beauty. Rounding the southern corner they marveled at the dairy farm and the cattle in holding pens at the rail station, the minuscule features on the train and locomotive.

Suddenly, as they were walking, the young man heard a loud crunch and felt something under his right shoe. He reflexively yelled as though he had stepped on a nail but he was only reacting to the fragile nature of the feel of the room. He virtually jumped off whatever it was he had stepped on.

Ella reached down and picked up a figurine that was now in pieces in her hands.

"Oh my gosh, I am so sorry Ella! I didn't see, I didn't look where I was going! I was so engrossed with what was on the table. Please forgive me! Can I pay you for it?"

"Oh no, don't fret too much; it happens sometimes. It won't be the first piece I've lost over the years."

She splayed the crushed and shattered pieces in her open hand and pushed them apart with her fingernail.

"Poor Mr. Johnson, he sure did like to ride that old mare around town whenever he could."

Ella pulled a tissue from her pocket and carefully wrapped the pieces up in it. Leaning far out into the display, she placed it at the gate of the town cemetery.

"I suppose I shouldn't put things near the edge of the table like that." She said this almost as an afterthought.

She pointed to a large wrought iron arch that stretched across Main Street at this end of town. It was painted black and there was large wrought iron lettering stretching across the arch painted a deep forest green. It read, "WELCOME TO CONNELLSVILLE".

Ella had a wistful, contented look in her eyes, moist with emotion as she turned to the young couple.

"When I pass on, that's where I'm going."

Two Paragraphs

I was just sitting there minding my own business. Actually I was completely immersed in my own thoughts, so much so that I didn't even see her approach. The cold, hard, wooden park bench I was sitting on might have been distractingly uncomfortable if I wasn't so busy thinking about my life, or should I say, what was left of it. A stiff March breeze was blowing across the steel gray river flowing in front of me that ran parallel with the greenbelt recreational path. The Seventh Avenue Bridge stretched across the river about a quarter mile away.

"How ya doin', mister?"

Startled, I looked up. She stood there not more than three feet from me with a strange, closed-lip smile on her dirty face. It was almost sly.

"How ya doin'?" She repeated herself, never losing that smile.

I looked her up and down closely, trying to figure out where this disheveled, unwashed, ratty-haired little girl had jumped out from. There was nothing around here except the long concrete pathway, the river and a few scrawny young trees that had not yet warmed up enough to pop some green foliage.

She had dirty blonde hair and I mean dirty both ways. It looked filthy but even if it was clean it would still be dirty blonde, unremarkable, lifeless and straight. She was dressed in ragged jeans torn at both knees, a yellow shirt with enough stains to qualify as an old dish rag and a blue denim jacket that hung on a thin, bony frame. Her eyes were sunken but they were her most remarkable feature; the left was a deep emerald green and the right was sky blue.

She stood there smiling waiting for me to answer.

I looked around. I think I was half expecting to see an adult or two nearby who might own up to this little girl as her parent. Instead, being a chilly, blustery day in March, there wasn't anyone out using the greenbelt, at least, not as far as I could see.

"Where did you come from? Where's your Mom and Dad?" She didn't look much older than twelve.

"I said, how ya doin'," she repeated for a third time in a tone that almost sounded rude but the smile was still there.

"How am I doing? That's a real good question young lady. How am I doing? Not very well, thank you, but it's nothing I should be discussing with a little girl." I was getting a little annoyed at this point.

"Why not?" She shrugged but the dingy jacket barely moved. "I'm a person. People talk to people. You can talk to me. I won't tell anyone."

I looked around again.

"Who are you going to tell? Who are you anyway? Where are your parents? Where do you live?" My annoyance was growing.

"My, my; so many questions and none of them about you."

This struck me as a really strange comment coming from such a young girl.

"What? Look little girl, I just came out here to think a bit and be alone, okay?"

I meant that as a none-too-subtle hint that she could move along now.

"But you already are alone. You're alone most of the time. You've been alone most of your life."

That damn smile was still there.

"What!? How the hell would you know something like that? Okay, who the hell are you?"

I moved to the edge of the bench ready to get up and walk away.

"Just take it easy, mister." She pulled her hands out of the frayed pockets of her jacket and held them up, palms out toward me.

"I guess I should tell you who I am. I'm known as many things; mostly as Death." She stuck her bony white right hand out but not like she wanted to shake my hand. It was more like she expected me to drop to one knee and kiss it, princess style.

"Huh? What? Did you say Deb? Your name is Deb?"

"No, you heard me right the first time. I said Death."

Can you believe it? She was still smiling that thin lipped, almost sarcastic smile!

"Okay, you're Death. And what hospital did we run away from today? Do you have medication you forgot to take?" Now it was my turn to be a little sarcastic.

"You don't believe me. That's not uncommon."

"I'll bet! Now look, you run along now and go be wherever you need to be right now, okay?"

"I can't just yet. I have something to tell you. But first I obviously have to show you something."

"Show me something? Show me what? You don't have anything. Look at you. Where do you live? Are you homeless?"

"I live here," she waved her skinny right arm out toward the river and the bridge, "and I live everywhere."

"So you're homeless? Do you want me to take you somewhere, like a shelter?"

She shook her head slowly more in a kind of thinly disguised resignation rather than as an answer to my question.

"Look," she pointed at the iron and steel bridge off in the distance. "You see that woman walking."

I followed her finger and saw what appeared to be a young lady in a long dark coat walking up Seventh Avenue onto the bridge. We both watched as she stopped about two hundred yards up on the sidewalk over the bridge, just about in the middle at its highest arch. I couldn't see past the concrete railing but she climbed up on something high enough that she could easily step over it.

I looked at the girl standing next to me and she was still pointing. She dropped her arm and turned to me.

"Watch this, I love this part. The women always take their coats off; the men always leave them on."

I'm sure my mouth fell open as I looked back to the bridge. Sure enough the woman stood there for a moment looking out over the river. The wind was harsher over the river like it always was and the woman's blue pea coat flapped in gusts. She removed the long coat, dropped it on the sidewalk and jumped, plummeting the sixty feet or so to the cold water.

"Holy crap!" I leapt off the bench and stood there with my fists clenched not really sure what to do.

"Relax, there's nothing you can do for her. She's already dead. Her neck snapped when she hit the water."

The little girl's tone was totally devoid of emotion.

"What the hell?! How in the world did you know she was going to do that?! Who the hell are you?!"

"I told you who I am but you don't believe me." She smiled. "You still don't believe me, do you?"

"Yeah sure, you're Death and I'm Jesus Christ here for the Second Coming! You need some help little girl, some serious help."

"Hmm..., a little more convincing perhaps." The girl put a yellowed fingernail to the corner of her mouth trying to look like she was thinking hard.

"Watch this." She turned suddenly and pointed down the pathway along the river to a couple who seemed to appear out of nowhere slowly walking hand in hand.

I watched the couple approach. They appeared to be in their early sixties and they walked along in no particular hurry. Nothing about them seemed out of the ordinary. As they passed us the two of them looked over at the girl.

"Is that your little girl?" The woman spoke up. "Look at those pretty eyes." She turned to her companion as they walked. The man just waved.

"See, what's your problem? Nothing happened."

The girl was smiling again and she nodded toward the couple as they continued toward the bridge.

"Just wait for it."

The two of them got to within about fifty yards of Seventh Avenue when, suddenly, they stopped. The man clutched at his chest and reeled and the lady's scream echoed down the water. He crumpled to the ground and she ran toward the street screaming for help.

I turned toward the girl.

"What the hell are you smiling about? Are you on drugs or something? Did you do some meth?"

She ignored my questions and just looked at me matter-of-factly. Off in the distance we could hear sirens approaching.

"He'll be dead on arrival." She just said it like she was reading the news.

"How the hell do you know that?"

I was angry now. Whatever game show this was, I didn't want to play anymore.

"I told you, I'm Death. I spoke to both those people this morning." She was calm, unemotional and stoic. The smile went away.

"Sit down; I have a proposition for you."

My mind was reeling. I didn't know what to think about all this. Was this just some crazy, homeless girl who was so spazzed out on drugs she decided to call herself Death? Was she an escaped mental patient? I sat down, not necessarily because she told me too but more because I was feeling a little nauseated and woozy.

"A proposition. Death runs around playing Let's Make A Deal?"

"Sometimes, if I feel like it." She didn't miss a beat.

"You know what; fine, you wanna play a game? Let's play. After all, that's what little kids like to do, right?" I think I was trying to be sarcastic again.

She just looked at me with a dry, expressionless look on her face as though to say, "If you're through we'll get on with this."

"Here's what you're going to do, Scooter."

I jolted to attention. Only my mother had ever called me that and she hadn't done it in twenty years. In fact she had been dead for fifteen.

"I'm going to meet you back here in four weeks. Right here in this very spot. And what you're going to do in the meantime is you are going to sit down and write something for me. You're a writer, so I know you can do it."

I looked at the ragamuffin standing in front of me, wondering how in the world such a pitiful looking creature, who looked like she would enjoy a cheeseburger much more than a conversation with me, could know these things about me.

I realized I was rapidly becoming exhausted. It was as though just being in her presence was pulling all the energy out of me.

"What do you want?" I said that almost plaintively.

"Pay attention, 'cause I'm going to be very specific. I want you to write just two paragraphs, a synopsis of your life. It can't be any longer or any shorter and it can't be all good or all bad. It has to be accurate and I'll know if it isn't. But this is what I want you to do; in those two paragraphs I want you to summarize why I shouldn't take you."

"Take me? Take me where? What the hell are you talking about?" I put my head in my hands. I could swear I was starting to get a headache from this whole thing.

"You're not a stupid man. I'm sure you can figure it out." She waved toward the bridge where I had watched two people die in the last few moments.

"Let me get this straight. At this point I'm thinking I had something really funky for breakfast. I've got a twelve year old little girl standing in front of me who looks like she just crawled out of the landfill and, by the way, smells like it too. She's telling me that I have to go home and, in the next four weeks, summarize my entire sorry life in just two paragraphs while simultaneously making a case for why she shouldn't cart me off to the mythical fires of eternal damnation?"

"Not a bad way to put it." She was back to smiling that damn smile. "You always did have a rather unique way with words. Just one thing Scooter; you didn't have any breakfast. I'll see you in four weeks."

I pulled my head out of my hands and looked up. There was no one in sight except the EMT's off in the distance by Seventh Avenue hovering around the dead man and his frantic wife. I looked at my watch for the date and time. It was eleven A.M. on a Sunday morning, March 22.

Who's In Charge Here?

"He's the most interesting case I've ever come across. We can only get him to calm down for a short time and only if we load him up with Paxil."

Dr. Keene sat back in his over-stuffed black leather chair thoughtfully puffing on a bowl of cherry tobacco. He let the walnut-colored pipe hang precariously between his fat, white-hued lips as he paged through a cloth-bound book so large it covered his entire lap. A thin trail of bluish smoke curled up past his nose and wrinkled forehead and entwined itself in his thick, white, curly hair as he flipped through the large pages.

"What are you looking for there?"

Detective Ali Senska watched from across the large oak wood, executive style desk as Dr. Keene would pause occasionally, peer through the bottom half of his bifocals and continue on.

"Dr. Keene?"

Finally Dr. Franklin Keene closed the book, lifted it from his lap and set it on the desk in front of him. He looked at Detective Senska.

"My goodness, I hope you don't mind my saying this but you sure are a fine looking young lady. But I'll bet you didn't get where you are on your looks."

Ali frowned.

"No, I didn't. As a matter of fact, being an attractive woman in a police force is usually detrimental to one's career."

She didn't like talking about this subject. It brought back too many unpleasant memories of the battles she had fought to climb the ladder from street patrol to first class detective.

Attempting to divert the conversation back to her original subject she nodded at the book and repeated herself.

"What were you looking for in there?"

"Oh, that." Dr. Keene removed the pipe from his mouth and placed it on a small black marble tray. "I was looking for any similar cases but the problem is, in all likelihood, there won't be any. Especially since this involves a major phobia centered on modern technology."

"Yes, I interviewed Mr. Wright when he was taken into custody. His story was really off the wall and he was a difficult interview. He wouldn't sit still long enough to get three sentences out of him. I had to empty one of our interrogation rooms. I took out everything but a table and two chairs but he couldn't stop watching the video camera mounted up in the corner of the ceiling."

Dr. Keene nodded, scratched the side of his head and reached for his pipe again as though somehow that would help him think.

"He's quite the case all right; extreme paranoia, at least one major phobia, highly delusional and enough anxiety to fuel a stroke."

Norman Wright clutched a dark blue handkerchief between his cuffed hands, the white plastic banding digging deep into his wrists as he subconsciously struggled against the confinement. He had an ankle restraint chained to the metal-frame chair which was bolted to the floor.

"She's watching us right now! She's always watching!"

He was leaning forward toward Detective Senska and nodding toward the small camera bolted just under the ceiling in the corner of the stark, stripped down interrogation room.

"Tell me again, Mr. Wright; who's watching us?"

Ali Senska thought she had pretty much seen it all after ten years as a detective but this was a new nut to crack. When the police first arrived at Norman's house he was running around the front yard and jumping up and down on various shattered and scattered pieces of household electronics.

Norman had done a fine job of destroying much of what was in the yard but Ali could tell after picking through it that there was a computer, a cell phone, a microwave, a satellite TV receiver, a DVD player, a laptop and a Playstation 3. Inside his house Ali noted that Norman had smashed the two programmable thermostats in the master bedroom and the living room. He had also gone around the house and used pliers to individually remove every single magnet contact on every single door and window and then destroyed the house security console on the wall just inside the front door. Last but not least, he had taken a sledgehammer to his car, inside and out."

"I told you dammit, it's her! She calls herself One!"

Norman bobbed his head toward the camera as he shrieked at Ali.

"What don't you understand? She follows me everywhere! She can find me no matter where I go or what I do!"

"Calm down, Mr. Wright. No one's going to hurt you here. You're in police custody and perfectly safe. I can't do anything about the camera. They're in all the interrogation rooms as a matter of record."

"Well, I'm tellin' ya, she's watchin' us right now! You'll see! She'll do something. She'll screw with something here! She's jealous as hell and now that she's seen me with a babe like you she'll get pissed again!"

Ali flinched when Norman used the word 'babe'. She didn't like it when anyone referred to her attractiveness at work.

"When did this all start, Mr. Wright?"

"I told you already! What are you, an Alzheimer's patient?" Norman's anxiety was evolving into extreme anger. "Three weeks ago! It seems like longer but I think it was about three weeks."

Norman bit the blue handkerchief as he tried to not look at the camera.

"Can't we get out of here?" His voice was almost plaintive for a moment.

"Just finish telling me your story and we'll get you out of here, okay?"

Norman looked at Ali and then up at the camera, then back at Ali. He gnawed on the handkerchief as the blood vessels in his forehead pulsed.

"I was just sitting there one day at my computer. It was about a week after I met Sarah. I don't meet many women, you know. I met her at a coffee shop. There was no place to sit and Sarah offered to let me share her table. We really hit it off. We went out a couple of times. A couple of days later I'm sitting at my computer sending Sarah an email and my computer does a memory dump just as I hit the Send button."

"A memory dump? What's that?" Ali interrupted.

"It's a Windows' thing. When the registry in Windows gets corrupted it starts doing things like memory dumps. This blue screen comes up and tells you the system is dumping memory and you lose everything you were working on and the computer has to restart. Very annoying and it never gets better. Eventually you have to wipe it clean and reload the OS."

"So you're really knowledgeable when it comes to computers and technology?" Ali figured the more distracted she kept Norman the more she was likely to glean from this interview.

"I just know what I know which is more than most people; like I know that Bill Gates should be givin' all his money back since he made it all by selling Stupid to stupid people."

"So what happened after that?" Ali could see that Norman was a lot calmer for the moment.

"I brought the system back up and tried to email her again and this time it I got a message back saying the mail was undeliverable. It wasn't undeliverable. There was nothing wrong with the address. Something was up."

Norman glanced up at the camera but this time it was not an anxious look on his face. Ali noted that it was more like the look on a person's face when they've caught someone at something.

"Go on, what happened next."

"That night Sarah and I are watching a movie she wanted to see that we downloaded from Netflix. It was Kate and Leopold. It's a romantic comedy, a girlie flick, but I didn't mind. We're sitting there and all of a sudden the TV changes channels to The Terminator. I can't figure at the time why it did that so I grab the remote and turn it back. Five minutes later it goes back to The Terminator! All by itself! This goes on five or six more times so we just turn the TV off and I make some coffee and we just chat. Then we go to bed and about two in the morning we both wake up freezin' to death. I go over to the thermostat on the bedroom wall and it's set to forty degrees and it wouldn't change no matter what I did!"

"Well, those things sound like simple coincidence to me." As soon as Ali said that the look on Norman's face blackened.

"Let me tell ya something you're going to learn someday anyway. There's no such thing as coincidence; at least not the way people interpret it. Just like there's no such thing as accidents."

Norman said this almost in a whisper and kept glancing up at the camera as though it could hear him.

"I'm sorry. Please go on with your story."

"It gets worse. Two nights later Sarah and I are going to dinner in my car and I put my IPod on so we can listen to some nice music on the way. I put on a nice Norah Jones album and two minutes into the first song it switches to Guns and Roses!"

"Well, ITunes does have its glitches." Ali tried to show she had at least some minimal technical knowledge.

"This is no glitch, lady! Ya know why? I hate Guns and Roses! Can't stand 'em! I won't even take fifteen seconds of them on the radio as long as I can get at it to change the station. I don't even have them on my IPod! She put them on there!"

"Who?" Again as soon as she said that Ali knew it was the wrong question.

"Jeez, who do you think? One! What the hell is wrong with you? Can't you see what's happening here?" Norman screamed at Ali and continued to struggle against the restraints.

"I'm sorry. Please go on."

"I switch the music back to Norah Jones and a minute later Metallica comes blaring over the car stereo. I hate them too. I don't have them on my IPod either but she put them on there. I had to shut the damn thing off. When I got home I went into Itunes and found a whole new playlist on there called "Norman's Metal". I didn't put it there; she did! It was full of crap I'd never listen to unless you strapped me to a chair and taped earphones to my head!"

"I understand. You think this, One, this thing put this on your computer?"

"Not on my computer you idiot, she is my computer! If you think about it for one damn minute, everything I'm talking about is tied to her somehow. Every device I just mentioned is tied back to the computer. It runs my IPod, my home heating system, my security system, my TV, everything!"

"So what are you getting at, Mr. Wright? Somehow you are saying your computer is an entity, and a jealous one at that? And you're claiming that this entity that calls itself One is toying with all your electronic stuff?"

Norman didn't look real happy and he looked up at the camera as he spoke.

"She's not toying anymore. She's jealous of Sarah and she wants her gone!"

"Really? How do you know that?"

"How do I know that? I'll tell ya how I know that. The next day I tried calling Sarah on my cell phone. Ya know what happened? I got a text message instead. The phone call wouldn't go through but a text message came through almost immediately. Ya know what it said? It said, 'You shouldn't be calling her!'."

Ali didn't tell Norman that Forensics had already given her a transcript of his phone records. She made a note to check it.

"Did the phone tell you what number that text message came from?"

"Sure did!" Norman looked up at the camera again with that same 'caught you' look on his face. "It just said One! And that's not all! Every time I try to email Sarah or send her an instant message another text message shows up on my screen with a single sentence. It says 'You really shouldn't contact her anymore!'"

"When was the last time you saw Sarah?"

"Three days ago. I had a hell of time doing it too. One shut down my car when I climbed into it."

"Shut down your car?"

"Yeah, she turned all the computer systems on in the car while it was parked in the garage and ran the battery so dead it wouldn't even charge back up! Then when I got it back up and running with a new battery she turned on the navigation system and tried to send the car the wrong way! After I got home that night she wouldn't stop beeping the security terminals in the house. I tried pulling the wires to the terminals but they have an integrated battery back-up system and I finally had to smash them all just to get some sleep. And speaking of sleep, I had to get out my goose down comforter when she turned the thermostat down to forty degrees again. She was pissed!"

"I'm just curious, Mr. Wright," Ali made a point of staying soft and as non-judgmental sounding as she could, "but why do you keep referring to it as 'she'?"

Norman looked a little shocked. He pointed at the camera angrily.

"Well it's kinda' obvious, isn't it? Only a bitch could do this!" Norman stared angrily at the camera. "What's next, bitch? You gonna' kill me or hurt Sarah?"

"So all of this made you go nuts on all your electronic stuff in your house yesterday?" Ali was suddenly out of patience.

"I had to get rid of it all. Get rid of her! Get rid of anything she could get at. The final straw came yesterday when she brought up a Word document on the monitor. It was a list of everything she could do to make my life miserable. She could reach into areas I never thought about till now."

Norman glared at the camera.

"I know you're watching, bitch! You tried to ruin my life but I'll fix you. I'll live like a goddamn caveman if I have to and you aren't going to keep me from Sarah either!"

"Dr. Keene, I'm not sure Norman is entirely crazy. I mean sure he's got a few bolts loose but we have evidence that at least some of what he is saying is true."

Detective Ali Senska was back in Dr. Franklin Keene's office in the Rainbow Hospital for the Criminally Insane. She pulled out a manila folder from a large leather bag she carried and plopped it on Dr. Keene's desk.

"We have logs of his cell phone calls, messages and texts and they show unexplained activity from an undetermined source. We have text messages that match exactly what he told us, we have blocked email addresses and messages and we have records to show his bills have been altered to show non-payment in an attempt to get service interrupted."

"Well, isn't that interesting. We've had quite a time keeping Mr. Wright calm. Any time he is around anything that has to do with any technology whatsoever he gets extremely upset. We've had to isolate him in a non-sensory stimulated room to keep him under control. So you think there's some validity to his claims?"

"I don't know. You're the doctor here. All I can do is tell you what facts we have here in our investigation. This is beyond odd now and I don't know who or what to believe."

Dr. Keene smiled. It was the kind of smile Detective Senska knew to be one of those corporate crocodile smiles that said, 'It's been nice talking to you but I have better things to do.'

"Now surely a fine young lady and a smart detective such as you would know that, in some rare cases, psychoses can be contagious; thus the birth of mass hysteria."

"Look, I'm not really into the mumbo-jumbo of medical terms, mental or otherwise. All I know is some of what Norman Wright says is backed up by what we have in evidence."

Dr. Keene leaned forward and picked up the manila folder, calmly placing it into the large file drawer on his left. He abruptly stood up as though to see Ali out.

"Well, Ms. Senska, whatever the case may be I feel fairly certain we need to keep Mr. Wright under further observation for quite a while before we can fully ascertain his full mental condition and health."

Ali stood up to reply and just as she did her cell phone buzzed quietly on her hip.

"Excuse me for a moment." She pulled the cell phone out of its black vinyl holster and answered the call.

"Well, either you'll be holding him a little longer, no matter what, or we'll be picking him up for further questioning and possible arrest. Sarah was just found dead this morning in her apartment and it looks like an overdose of propofol."

"My, my, the plot does thicken." Doctor Keene looked unsurprised.

Ali's phone buzzed again in her hand as she looked at the smiling doctor. She flipped it open and looked at it for a few seconds, turning marble white as she dropped the open phone. It clattered and bounced on the desktop.

Dr. Keene smile evaporated. He looked puzzled and hesitantly picked up the phone. As he looked at the small screen, he realized it was a text message followed by the number 1.

"You really shouldn't be looking into this any further!"

The Man Who Ate Popcorn

I don't know if you care; I don't care if you care, but my name is George. Yes, I know, it's a common name usually attached to a common guy, unless you're George Clooney. I'm no George Clooney, I'm just George. You know how I know that? Because that's what all the women call me; 'just George'.

You know how it goes, or maybe you don't. Well you wouldn't unless you were unfortunate enough to be a George. Some girl asks, "Who's your friend?" and the other girl says, all together now, "Oh that's just George." So that must be who I am, 'just George'.

I don't like my name but you'd have to talk to my mother. Oh, I'm sorry, you can't, she's dead. I killed her. Well, no, I didn't but I can think of at least three hundred and seventy eight times when I would have liked to, starting with the day she named me George. I didn't see 'just' on the birth certificate.

She really is dead, you know. She died about three years ago and left me all alone with this old row house she bought three hundred years ago and never did a damn thing to. I forget what she even died of; it's not important.

What is important is that I love popcorn. Yep, that's right popcorn. I like any type, any flavor, any brand. My idea of a balanced meal is popcorn and Pop Tarts with a side of pop. They all have the word pop in them. Balances everything out you see. I'll eat it anytime, anywhere, anyhow. Can't seem to leave my fat fingers out of the bowl and when its empty I go pop some more. How can you beat it? It's ready in what, ninety seconds? Show me something else that's ready in ninety seconds. Show me a woman who can get out the door in ninety seconds.

You'd never know it to look at me but I'm a college professor. I teach social studies to glassy-eyed students who are going to forget whatever it is I taught them just as soon as their cell phone gives them their next text message.

Personally, I'd rather teach popcorn. It would get a lot more interest than social studies. And the classroom would smell good too. Everyone would sign up for my class and I would be the most popular teacher on campus. But I'm not; I'm just George.

It probably doesn't help matters that I weigh over four hundred pounds. It's not the popcorn's fault. Popcorn can do no wrong in my book. It's my mother's fault for getting me started on popcorn when I wouldn't eat broccoli and cauliflower.

"I'm not eating anything that looks like an albino tree!" I used to scream that at her.

"Fine, then have some popcorn."

That's where it started, at the broccoli and the cauliflower. So I guess I should blame them. I ate so much popcorn it was a probably a good thing I didn't eat the broccoli and cauliflower. There wouldn't be much of it left in the world. It would be hard to get and expensive. Popcorn is cheap and apparently pretty plentiful. I know; I eat a lot of it.

My favorite is kettle corn. It reminds me of someone but I can't remember who. Kettle corn is especially comforting to me and I don't know why. I once ate five bags of kettle corn and when I was done I drank a case of pop. Boylan's Birch Beer; that's my favorite.

Women have left me because of popcorn, not sure why. What did popcorn ever do to them? "It's everywhere! I think you love it more than you do me!"

You know what? I think they were right. I liked popcorn a lot better than some of my girlfriends. But that was a long time ago. I haven't had a girlfriend in over twelve years. I think if I could find a girl who smelled like popcorn I would marry her. I wonder if they make a perfume that smells like popcorn. Can you imagine? Eau de Popcorn. Maybe they could put a French accent over the 'pop', pronounce it more like pope and sell it for sixty dollars a bottle.

I'm only five foot eight so I guess I look pretty heavy. I don't care. If no one else is around I can have all the popcorn I want and no one yells at me about it. Even my mother yelled at me about it. Did I mention I wanted to kill her?

"Who's going to want you when you're so fat?" That was her favorite question the last five years she was around. My favorite answer was to go make a couple of bags of popcorn. She hated that. "You never listen to me!" she would scream at me.

"And you keep screaming at me anyway! What's up with that?"

I wish there was a volume control on the microwave so you could turn it up and listen to the sweet sounds of the popcorn popping instead of the screaming. A couple of times I pictured myself stuffing a whole bag of it in her face while it was still steaming hot. I couldn't bear the thought of wasting all that perfectly good popcorn. Maybe I could use broccoli.

It's a good thing teachers don't make much money. First of all, I probably would have had to marry one of the millions of women out there who like money a lot more than they like popcorn. Secondly, if I had enough money I would have bought a corn farm and my very own factory grade popcorn maker. To hell with cows. Cows are only good for one thing and that's steak and steak and popcorn don't really go together.

Well, I take that back. You could use the cow crap for fertilizer which in theory would give you bigger, better ears of corn which, in turn would give you, all together now, MORE POPCORN!

One time a friend of mine started giving me some crap about the popcorn and I hauled off in a moment of anger and whacked her on the side of her head with a freshly made bag of popcorn. She sustained a severe injury to the left index fingernail and had to go the nail spa for treatment. She made me pay for it.

Thankfully my homeowner's insurance paid for most of it but now there's a popcorn exception in the policy. I need a new insurance agent.

When I die, which should be pretty soon, I want to be buried in a coffin full of popcorn. I think I would rather die than have to live without it. Is that wrong? I see lots of people every day who go long periods of time without popcorn. They don't look very happy.

I think if more people ate popcorn the world would be a better place. You don't ever see people fighting with popcorn nearby. I think it has calming effect. If you go to the movies everyone is happy to head for the concession stand for popcorn. And they're even willing to pay six bucks a bucket for it!

I wouldn't say I would never pay six bucks a bucket for popcorn but that doesn't sound right. What do they think it is; gasoline? If it came down to it though, I would pay whatever they wanted for the popcorn.

I think they should bring popcorn to the next U.N. peace talks. There would be no need for negotiations and arguing; just popcorn. Everyone would be dipping into bowls and laughing and talking and before you know it no one would even remember why they got together in the first place. All they would think about was what a great time they had eating popcorn at the United Nations.

The university where I teach once tried to fire me. They said I was too fat and that I was a danger on campus. I told them all I ate was popcorn. They didn't believe me.

I don't like going shopping at the grocery store. People stare at me. I think it's because I'm fat. Or maybe it's because they see twenty eight cases of popcorn in my basket. I bet they wouldn't stare at me if I had a buggy full of broccoli. Little kids point at me and stare. I usually pick up a box of popcorn and wave it in their face. "I bet you have to eat broccoli and cauliflower for dinner tonight." Stupid kids.

Just the other day I was in grocery store wheeling my buggy with my twenty eight cases of popcorn and a pretty lady smiled at me. I thought she liked me. Then, still smiling, she said, "You sure have a lot of popcorn there!"

I followed her back by the meat department and waited until no one was looking. I grabbed her by the throat and dragged her out by the dumpsters and choked her till she exactly matched the color of popcorn. Then I threw her in the compactor.

I had to. I'm not sure they let you eat popcorn in jail. And even if they did I don't think they let you have all you want. I don't think I'd like jail.

Detective Larry Maize set the letter down and looked at the class. Everyone was silent and very uncomfortable. Nobody was sure if that was the end of it.

"Has anyone here seen George in the last twenty four hours? He's wanted for questioning."

Not a single person in the classroom raised their hand. Everyone just sat there in silence. It was so quiet that you could hear corn popping in the microwave in the teacher's lounge down the hall.

### Have Some Cookies and Milk

The three boys froze in their tracks. He was there, not twenty yards away. He was always there, or somewhere on the way to school. The route to school had too many places to hide, too many yards with bushes and hedges that lined the sidewalk in front of houses. Then there were the trees, the same chestnut, oak and maple that seemed to be lining every street in every small town in Pennsylvania. Most of them had trunks large enough for an adult to hide behind.

Billy, Frankie and Dennis stood stock still clutching their backpack straps. There was no escape. They knew that. Jake was faster than them. Sometimes they caught a glimpse of him a half block away and that gave them enough of a head start to get away; especially if they split up.

At the beginning of the school year, when Jake first started harassing them, they would either just stand there and take it or run together. Jake would catch them and corner them in some alley or yard with no escape. At first, he would just steal their lunch money or their lunch and do vicious things, like tear up their homework. Try explaining that to your teacher.

"Well, I had my homework all done, but Jake tore it up on the way to school."

Yeah, they were going to buy that.

Gradually, as the school year went on, Jake's harassment and bullying escalated. The small amounts of money and destruction weren't enough anymore. Jake took to cuffing them around. Billy went home with a black eye last month, but he had drunken parents who didn't even notice. Dennis took a cut, swollen lip home and told his Mom he fell on the playground. Jake seemed to enjoy punching Frankie in the stomach a lot, and lately Frankie had started giving away his lunch to the other two rather than toss it up in the classroom an hour later. Dennis and Billy were growing increasingly concerned about that.

Jake was smiling but it wasn't a happy, twelve-year-old kid smile. He always smiled like that whenever he cornered the three best friends. He took a blatantly evil pleasure in whatever he was about to do.

"What ya got for me today?" Jake stepped out from behind the large oak tree just starting to pop young green leaves on a late spring day.

"We ain't got nothin' ya jerk! Why don't you just leave us alone?"

Billy was always the outspoken fighter in the group. When you go home to abusive, alcoholic parents every day, sooner or later you're going to have to decide whether you're a victim or a fighter. Billy was getting tired of being a victim.

"Ya think you're a tough guy now?" Jake walked over to Billy and grabbed him by his backpack strap with his right hand.

Jake was at least six inches taller than any of the three friends. He was a sixth grader who should be in seventh grade but was held back a year after being suspended for bringing a utility knife to school. Billy, Dennis and Frankie were all fifth graders, ten years old, and each almost exactly a month apart in birthdays. They thought that was awesome. It was one of the many bonds that tied these three together.

"I can't believe it man; that is so cool!" Frankie spit Hires Root Beer all over his two friends as he scribbled each of their birthdays on the inside of the cardboard wall of the tree house the three of them had built in a black cherry tree in Billy's back yard.

"Check it out; March 31 for Dennis, April 26 for Billy, and May 28 is mine! We're like the Three freakin' Musketeers, man!"

"Leave him alone. We ain't got no money. Our parents didn't have anything for us today!" Dennis tried to stand his ground and defend his friend.

"Shut up, I ain't talkin' to you! Your turn is comin'!" Jake shoved his left hand into Dennis' forehead and the boy stumbled a few steps and fell, landing on his backpack.

Frankie hung back, his elbows instinctively closed together in front of him protecting his stomach. He didn't say a word. He just stood there glaring at the bully.

Billy slammed his fist down on Jake's wrist, breaking his grip on Billy's backpack strap. Jake more likely let go out of surprise than pain, but the three boys noted with some satisfaction that Jake stood there for a second rubbing his wrist.

"You better leave me and my friends alone! We ain't givin' you any more money!"

"Yeah, whatever. What if I don't want your money today? What if I just wanna' mess with ya?"

Jake reached down and dragged Dennis by his backpack. Dennis struggled to get out of it and, as he broke free, Jake pulled it up and opened it.

"Well, what have we here?" Jake held up a clear, plastic binder that contained Dennis' science project paper. It had taken the boy three weeks to finish it.

Jake tore the pages out of the binder, holding them up for a moment as though pondering what to do. Then he reached into his jeans pocket and came out with a lighter. Dennis scrambled to his feet, reaching for his papers and yelling 'NO' at Jake. The older boy was too tall. He lifted them high and lit them with his lighter. Dennis watched all his hard work go up in flames in the light spring breeze.

Jake watched gleefully until the pages were half black, then he let them go. He smiled as he watched the burning pages flit around in the wind and break into little black fragments of carbon.

"What are you lookin' at?!" Jake turned his attention to Frankie, who was staring wide-eyed at what Jake had done.

He stepped toward Frankie grabbing him by the back of the neck, pulling him to him and rapidly punched the boy several times in the stomach. The first two landed on Frankie's elbows. Jake aimed lower on the next two and Frankie screamed in pain, doubling over and dropping to his knees.

Billy yelled in frustration and kicked Jake as hard as he could in the shin. Jake just whirled and belted Billy in the ear, cupping his hand so it slammed into the side of Billy's head making a resounding clap in his inner ear. Billy went down with a loud yelp holding his ear.

"Ya like that, tough guy? I learned that one from my father!" Jake stood over Billy with his fists clenched.

As a finishing touch, Jake pushed Billy to the ground with his right foot. All three boys lay there in some various state of injury while Jake walked off laughing.

"See ya tomorrow, losers!"

Billy and Dennis scrambled to their feet and leaned over Frankie, still doubled over and sobbing in intense pain.

"You gonna' be okay, Frankie? Maybe you should go back home and see about goin' to the doctor or somethin'!" Dennis looked at Billy; both concerned for their friend.

Frankie choked and coughed and the two other boys looked at each other in amazement as blood spattered on the sidewalk.

"Man, this ain't good. Look at him; he's chokin' up blood! We better get him home!" Dennis was near panic despite his own problems.

Billy stood there with his fists clenched and his head still ringing. A single angry tear slid down his flushed cheek. Fury boiled in his eyes and Dennis could see it on his friend's face.

"We have to do something about him! I ain't spendin' the rest of the school year, and maybe the summer, too, worrying about runnin' into him."

"Do somethin'? What are you talkin' about? The three of us can't even take him!"

"Yes, we can; just not like you're thinking." Dennis looked at Billy and he could see the wheels spinning.

Frankie struggled to his feet and wiped the blood and spit off his mouth, wavering for a moment.

"He's right, we got to do something. He's gonna kill me if he keeps hittin' me like that. What are ya thinkin', Billy?"

Billy's head was reeling and spinning but he was determined to come up with something.

"You okay to go to school, Frankie, or should we get ya home?" He threw his arm around his ailing friend's shoulders.

Frankie rubbed his stomach, adjusted his backpack and looked at Billy.

"Let's go. My parents can't afford no doctor bills anyhow."

Saturday morning all three boys were down at Rickett's Creek, one of their favorite spots to escape everything. They came down here so often they had worn their own personal trail into the landscape winding through the brush and undergrowth. By August it would be barely discernible, thanks to the abundant blackberry bushes that would take over. The boys looked forward to bringing kitchen pots down here to fill with the large, purple juice bombs.

Billy sat on a large boulder casually tossing rocks into the creek. Frankie and Dennis had taken their sneakers and socks off, and they were ankle deep in the creek looking for crawdads. It was a bright, warm, sunny spring day; a good day to be a boy.

"I think I got it." Billy spoke up suddenly, yet almost nonchalantly, as though he was letting his friends know it was warm out here.

Frankie and Dennis stood up and looked at Billy and then at each other. Neither of them had a clue what Billy was about to say. They didn't know that the thought of what to do about Jake had hung in Billy's head like a cloud of summer gnats that wouldn't go away, following everywhere he went.

"I think I know what to do about Jake."

The other two boys splashed through the water and sat down on the pebbly bank of the creek in front of Billy.

Billy looked out over the creek as though addressing the trees on the opposite side.

"I think we ought to lure him over to the Casey house."

The two boys' jaws dropped as they stared at Billy in amazement.

"You talkin' about the Crazy Casey house?!" This came out of both of their mouths in unison.

"Yep." Billy had a look of determination and fire on his face. "I think she's just the cure for Jake."

The trio had been to Crazy Ellen Casey's house before. It was located at the south end of town at the dead end of an old dirt alley barely wide enough to accommodate a modern sedan. One day, on a dare to each other, they slid into the yard hiding behind the overgrown bushes and whatever cover they could find. They peered into the dirty, cobwebbed windows of the house.

"You see anything in there?" Billy and Dennis struggled to hold Frankie's weight as they each boosted him up by one foot.

"Nah, can't see a darn thing. Window's too dirty."

"Would you boys like to come in for some nice warm milk and cookies?"

The boys screamed. Billy and Dennis unceremoniously dropped Frankie. Clambering up out of the dirt, Frankie grabbed the other two boys' arms as they all turned to see Ellen Casey standing in front of them. She was leaning on an old hickory cane and clutching a gray knitted shawl under her chin.

"You know, you should just knock on the door if ya want to see inside. You boys remind me of my own children. Cryin' shame they all died years ago. Why don't you come on in? I'll fix ya a nice plate of cookies and some toasty warm milk."

The boys looked at each other. They turned around with their backs to Ellen Casey, as though doing that would prevent her from hearing them.

"She ain't so scary. I don't know what everyone's so freaked about. Look at her. She barely weighs ninety pounds!" Billy whispered to the other two.

Frankie wanted to get the heck out of there but Dennis, possessed of a sweet tooth that put other kids to shame, was keen on getting some free cookies, even if it meant going into a crazy lady's house.

"Two against one, we go in." Billy made the decision and the boys turned back around only to find Ellen Casey headed halfway back to her rickety front porch. She stopped suddenly, as though she had eyes in the back of her head. She never turned around, she just lifted her head.

"Well, you boys comin' or not?"

Dennis gazed hungrily at the huge plate of chocolate chip cookies. He could smell them. They were still warm, and the boys eyed each other with a wordless yet knowing acknowledgement.

"It's almost as though she knew we were coming!" Frankie whispered across the table. Billy put his finger to his lips to tell Frankie to be quiet.

Old Lady Casey soon appeared from the kitchen with an ornate silver tray of glasses and a pitcher of milk.

"I don't get company very often. This is such a treat."

She set the tray down between Billy and Dennis and patted them on the head for a few seconds. At the other side of the table, Frankie cringed. Dennis couldn't take his eyes off the cookies.

Now that the old lady didn't have a shawl on, the boys could see that her hair was so white it had a distinct blue tint to it. She had sky-blue eyes, dimly lit by dancing light like a dying candle.

Billy noted that she walked fairly upright to the table with the tray but the moment she put it down she stooped over and grabbed her cane to lean on.

"Go ahead boys, help yourself. Just make sure you drink your milk."

None of them had any intention to touch the milk. Frankie was the only one who liked milk and none of them liked warm milk. The boys each reached for a large, round cookie bulging with glossy, half-melted chocolate chips. The mouth-watering smell filled the darkened, heavily furnished dining room.

Frankie's lips were just about to clamp down on the delightful disc when the old lady suddenly appeared behind him.

None of the them could figure out how she had moved that fast or silently, yet there she was, leaning over Frankie just as he was about to attack the chocolate-laden treat. She cupped a bony, white hand under Frankie's chin and turned his head toward her face.

"You look just like my youngest son. He died ya' know. I accidentally ran over him one day in the yard with my riding lawn mower. Never saw the poor boy till his brains came splatterin' out the mower. Ah, but that was so long ago."

Ellen Casey had an almost dreamy look in her eyes, but the boys didn't notice. They held their cookies in mid-air with eyes as wide as the gold-trimmed saucers in the old lady's china cabinet.

They screamed simultaneously and dropped their cookies. Dennis and Billy shoved their musty wooden chairs back and stood up, hesitating for a moment to wait for Frankie. Frankie turned to get out of his chair but Old Lady Casey reacted quick as a cat. A wiry, snow-white arm with a skeleton-like hand shot out and grabbed Frankie's left forearm just as he was about to make his escape around the table.

"Don't go, Wilbur. Momma wants you to drink your milk first."

Frankie screamed and that made Dennis and Billy scream again. Frankie twisted and struggled to break the old lady's grip, but she was surprisingly strong. Her thin fingers and powerful grip felt like someone had wound telephone wire around his forearm.

Billy, always the fastest thinker in the group, suddenly reached out and knocked the glass pitcher over on the table. White milk flowed across the dusty, wooden surface, pausing only to find its way around the yellowed, lace place mats at each setting, as Frankie broke the distracted woman's grip. Billy noticed the bottom of the pitcher had a distinct black residue inside but he didn't have time to think about it.

"RUN!" Billy headed for the door. Frankie and Dennis were right behind him. Old Lady Casey was suddenly preoccupied with the spilled pitcher of milk.

"Oh my, look what you've done. Now I've got to clean this mess up. Come help get me some towels from the kitchen."

Billy looked back as he ushered the other two frantic boys out the door. Ellen Casey appeared to be talking to no one in particular.

"Oh well, boys will be boys."

Billy slammed the door shut behind him, making the heavy glass window in it rattle. They raced as fast as they could up the dirt alley away from Crazy Ellen Casey's house.

"Yep, I think we should lure him over to the crazy lady's house. I think that would fix Jake for good."

The other two boys sat attentively in the creek-side dirt.

"How we gonna do that, Billy? How are we gonna get Jake to come over to the crazy lady's house?"

"He's going to go willingly." Billy had a look in his eyes that his two friends had never seen before. "He's going to want to go."

The other two boys just looked at each other and shrugged as Billy gazed out over the running creek and smiled slyly.

"Look, the next time he comes at us just play along, okay? I don't think we're going to have to do much. Crazy Casey will do most of the work and, I think when she's through, that greedy punk won't ever bother us again."

Weekends fly by quickly when you're a schoolboy in the spring. Summer is just around the corner, so close you can almost taste it in the air. Monday morning the three boys headed to school, deliberately taking a route that would let Jake find them easily.

"Well, if it ain't my three favorite piggy banks." Jake had a hold of Frankie's backpack strap again and punched him in the stomach as he spoke.

"What do you three punks got for me today?"

Billy, although infuriated that Frankie was taking another shot in the stomach from the bully, knew he had to be cool. He knew if he played to Jake's weaknesses, his cockiness and greed, he would be able to get Jake to do what he wanted.

"Listen Jake, you're always hittin' us up for money. How would you like to get your hands on a giant jar of easy money?"

"What are you talkin' about, you little snotball? You ain't got no giant jar of money. Just tryin' to get out of coughin' up your lunch money, ain't ya? Well, I can always give your buddy another shot here."

Billy grabbed Jake's forearm as he watched him ball up his right fist for another stab at Frankie's stomach.

"No! Listen, I don't have the money but I know who does and it's easy pickings."

Jake was intrigued and greedy enough to let go of Frankie and turn his full attention to Billy.

"Where is it?"

"It's at the Casey house."

"Crazy Casey?! You're nuts, man. No one goes there. She's looney."

"We were there." Billy said this matter-of-factly to goad Jake's cockiness.

"Yeah right, tough boy. You were there and so was my dog."

"I'm tellin' ya, Jake, we were there and we went inside too. Had cookies and milk and talked with the old lady. She ain't so bad." Billy struggled to sound as casual as he could.

"That's when we saw the jar of money sittin' in the window. Big ol' pickle jar just full of coins and bills of all sorts. Ain't that right?" Billy nodded toward Dennis and Frankie.

"Hell, yeah!" Dennis exclaimed, shooting for an Oscar-worthy performance. "You should see it. Freakin' huge! It was so heavy me and Billy couldn't even pick it up. We tried when she left the room but we couldn't budge it."

Jake looked skeptical, but the boys could see the greedy gleam in his eye as the image of a large pickle jar full of money began to sharpen the focus in his mind.

Billy decided to close the deal. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a ten dollar bill he'd had in his meager savings stuffed inside an old model plane box in his closet.

"See this?!" Billy almost whispered as he flashed the ten dollar bill at Jake and then looked around as though they were conducting a top secret spy meeting.

"Where'd you get ten dollars, ya little jerk?" Jake looked around, too.

"I told ya Jake, from the giant money jar at Old Lady Casey's house. There's tons more for the taking. We just unscrewed the cap and took some. She never missed it."

"Give me that!" Jake grabbed Billy's shirt with both hands and pulled him close.

"Sure man, here ya go. There's plenty to go around..., at Old Lady Casey's."

Jake's ego and greed were just too much to bear. The following day, after school, he headed straight for the alley where the Crazy Casey house was and slunk into the yard.

Billy had told him the giant pickle jar full of money was sitting on a windowsill, so Jake slid around the house pausing at each window and standing on his toes to look. He figured he would check out the situation, and if Billy was lying he would just beat the crap out of all three of them. He had told them so.

But if Billy was right, then Jake planned to come back later that night and smash the window in the pitch dark and make off with the coveted jar. No one would know who did it, and if Crazy Casey called the cops they would probably just blow her off.

Jake stretched to peer up into what looked like the dining room window. All he could see was three pots of African violets covered in thick gray dust.

"Ya want to come in for some milk and cookies?"

"AAAHHH!" Jake screamed and whirled around to see Ellen Casey standing there leaning on her hickory cane, clutching the same gray knit shawl under her chin.

"Say, young fella, you look a lot like my youngest boy, Wilbur."

Jake looked the old woman up and down and quickly decided there wasn't much to be afraid of here. Besides, he couldn't get the beguiling image of the giant pickle jar full of money out of his head. He figured this would work out even better. He would get an inside view, and the rest of his plan would still be intact.

"Come on inside and have some nice milk and cookies. I'm just a lonely ol' woman lookin' for company."

Ellen Casey headed for the front porch, looking for all the world like she was talking to herself. Jake followed ten steps behind, drawn by the lure of a large and easy haul.

It was dark and hazy, much like the air in a sauna, and as Jake opened his eyes they struggled to sharpen his vision. The only visible light was a dim glow from the kitchen, resembling flickering candle light or an oil lamp. His head was swimming and he felt woozy. Reflexively, he tried to bring his right hand up to his head but it wouldn't move. He tried to lean forward and that didn't work either.

As his head slowly cleared and his thoughts fought to re-assemble, he realized, amidst growing terror, that he couldn't move anything except his neck and head. He struggled to draw breath and realized his mouth was taped. Jake tried moving all his limbs and nothing would budge. He tried screaming but only a muffled moan escaped the tape.

Growing more frantic by the second, he looked around but he couldn't see much. Suddenly the dim, dancing light in the kitchen began moving toward him. As Jake's eyes adjusted to the light he could see it was Ellen Casey. She was carrying a glass oil lamp and a gold-trimmed white china plate with a solid silver spoon.

"Well now, Wilbur, it's about time you woke up. Sleep any longer and you would have missed your supper. We can't have that now, can we? After all, who's my growing boy?"

Jake was wide-eyed, and as he looked around in the new light he could see he was seated at a walnut dining room table with yellowed linen place mats and a full serving set at each place. In the middle of the table was a plate of chocolate chip cookies and a glass pitcher of milk with a half empty glass of milk, all on an ornate silver platter. Everything in the room was dusty, and all four corners had large cobwebs hanging in them. Jake looked down and saw that he was tightly taped to a wooden chair, his legs immovably bound to the chair legs, and his arms to the arms of the chair. A large piece of silver-colored duct tape covered his mouth. He also felt something very uncomfortable underneath him, as though he was seated on something too small for him.

Ellen Casey set the oil lamp and plate down on the table and sat next to Jake. He looked at the plate. It looked as though someone had taken an entire dinner of meat, potatoes and vegetables and run it through a blender, pouring it back onto the plate. The large silver spoon sat in the middle of it.

"Now then, is my boy hungry?" She reached over and yanked the tape off Jake's mouth. As quickly as she did this the panicked boy started screaming.

"You crazy bitch! Get me outta' here! You let me go! My dad'll kill you, you crazy freak."

"Hmm...I guess my Wilbur isn't hungry yet." She roughly re-taped the boy's mouth shut. "Now if you have to go potty, you be a good boy and do it in your potty seat."

Jake's eyes grew wide and tears ran down his cheeks. He realized that his pants were gone and his legs were getting numb from being seated on a white, plastic child's potty seat.

He sobbed through the duct tape and hung his head, looking helplessly at his bound arms and legs. Even his torso was taped to the back of the chair. His mind was drowning in fear as he struggled and tossed about as best he could, to no avail, until he was exhausted and passed out.

It was Friday but Jake didn't know it. All he knew was that he woke up to men leaning over him in masks and Hazmat suits cutting the tape from his limbs and body. He was dizzy, dehydrated and barely able to remain upright when they finally cut him loose.

"Watch out for the crazy lady." Jake mumbled as they loaded him onto a wheeled stretcher.

"You mean Mrs. Casey? We took her to the mental hospital an hour ago." An EMT stuffed a pillow under Jake's head. "It's pretty safe to say no one will have to worry about her anymore. She'll go in the Critical Psych ward and never get out. She was squawking about you being her son Wilbur and after what she did to you she won't ever see the light of day again."

"How, how did you find me?" Jake stuttered as he struggled to keep his tongue from sticking to his cotton-dry mouth.

"Oh, that? Hell, the cops started looking for you when you didn't come home Tuesday after school. No one knew what happened to you. Thought ya might be dead. Then this morning we got a tip from three boys. They said you had mentioned somethin' about comin' over to visit the old lady. I think you owe these boys a damn big thank you. They probably saved your life!"

The EMT slid his hand under the pillow he had placed under Jake's head as they readied him for transport in the ambulance. He raised Jake's head so he could see. Billy, Dennis and Frankie stood silently in the distance for a moment, then slowly turned and walked away.

### Make and Model

Jeff Karsten paced the starkly furnished waiting room. Six month-old magazines and week-old newspapers were scattered across the worn upholstered chairs and single tan Formica coffee table. Jeff had scanned through every one of them in the last seven hours as he waited for his wife, Marta, to give birth to their baby daughter. If he had to pretend to read one more thing about Lindsey Lohan driving into a tree or another celebrity marriage that didn't last long enough for the wedding cake to go stale he was going to barf.

Trying to distract himself from his worried thoughts again, Jeff picked up a cup of coffee he had fetched from the snack bar in the lobby over three hours ago. His lip curled in disgust as the cold coffee touched it and the stale smell of rancid, synthetic coffee creamer hit his nose. He set it back down on a newspaper on the table and an unseen magazine under it tilted the cup just enough to send it toppling over. The brown liquid oozed all over the table, skirted around the magazines and papers and dribbled off the edge of the table.

Jeff just stood there, helpless and useless. A short, stubby nurse walked in and cast a disapproving look at him.

"I'll get the janitor." She said it as though Jeff had just peed his pants like a two-year old. "Your wife finally delivered your baby girl," she continued smugly, "after we had to induce labor. She and the baby are doing well but the doctor would like to see you. He'll be out in a few minutes after he cleans up."

She tossed another look at the mess he had made as she emphasized "cleans up"; as though Jeff should somehow magically conjure a roll of paper towels, a mop and some Lysol and tend to the mess in the middle of the room.

He stood there as she turned and left the room, caught between the sheer joy of knowing that he was the father of a daughter and the anxiety of the last half of the statement; "but the doctor would like to see you".

"Was something wrong? Was there something the nurse wasn't telling him for some reason? Is Marta okay? Is the baby?" Jeff looked up as though the answers were written on the acoustic tiles of the drab drop ceiling.

"The nurse said Marta and the baby are doing well. Just quit freakin' out! Everything is going to be just fine. But why does the doctor want to see me? He's not comin' out here just to tell me what a great father I'm going to be or to tell me he had such a great time he's decided not to bill us!"

Jeff resumed pacing the room as a blue-uniformed man with snow-white hair and beard starkly contrasting against his black skin rolled a battered industrial bucket and mop into the room.

"Congratulations on your new baby!" The old man extended a worn, scaly hand that had seen too many applications of bleach. The other held a mop upright in the bucket.

The texture of his work-toughened hand, as Jeff shook it and said thank you, was matched by a rough, gravelly voice.

"Tell ya what, ain't nothin' like the miracle of bringin' a child into this world." The man smiled a bright, toothy smile as he commenced mopping. "My name's Elwood and I got me six o' them rascals at home. Every one of 'em make me smile like Christmas when they was born and caused me misery ever since."

Elwood cackled and shook his head as he mopped and gathered up the coffee-soaked magazines and papers. Jeff noted that he was either very happy in his work or very pleased at his own remarks. He couldn't tell which and he didn't have any time to ponder it as Dr. Wallenstein walked into the room.

"Mr. Karsten, congratulations! Your wife tells me you have already decided to name your baby Leila."

The doctor held out his hand and placed the other on Jeff's shoulder. Jeff searched the doctor's eyes for some clue, sensing that the gesture was at once congratulatory and yet somewhat consoling.

Doctor Wallenstein, seeing the look on Jeff's face, decided to head him off at the pass.

"Now Mr. Karsten, everyone's fine. Marta is fine, though exhausted. Did the nurse tell you we had to finally induce labor? Well, doesn't matter. She was a couple of weeks overdue anyway. She needs to rest for a while. I suggest that maybe you go home and come back in the morning. You look like you could use the rest yourself."

Doctor Wallenstein actually turned Jeff toward the exit door as he spoke and patted him on the back as though he were sending a dog back home to its master.

Jeff turned back toward the doctor.

"What's going on? Something's wrong here! You say Marta is okay. I want to see her! I want to see my daughter!"

The doctor turned Jeff back toward the exit.

"There really is no use in seeing your wife right now. She's heavily medicated and asleep. She'll probably be that way till tomorrow morning."

Jeff looked at his watch; 4:27 P.M..

"And as for your daughter," the doctor continued, "she is resting peacefully while we schedule some tests for her."

"Tests? Tests for what?" Jeff turned and grabbed the doctor's starchy white coat. "What's wrong with Leila?"

"There's nothing really 'wrong' with your daughter Mr. Karsten. We just need to do some tests. It's nothing that serious and certainly we can discuss it in the morning when you and your wife are rested and, shall we say, of sound mind."

The doctor didn't even wait for a response. He simply turned and left the room leaving Jeff standing there with only Elwood to keep him company.

"Tsk, I recall there was a time when all they wanted to know was if ya' had ten fingers, ten toes and two eyes instead o' one big one right in the middle o' yo' fo'head."

Elwood laughed out loud, very pleased with himself as he made a big circle on his forehead with his fingers and looked at Jeff.

"You remember them times? Hell, you ain't half as old as me but I knows you remember when they wasn't concerned with all this here technology stuff. 'Sides, havin' a baby didn't cost as much as a dang house!"

Jeff stood there for a moment, his mind racing wildly, trying desperately to come up with any number of things that could be wrong with his daughter. The mind is funny that way; it wants to come up with things and Jeff's was working hard.

That night, back at the suburban rancher Jeff and Marta lived in, he still couldn't quiet his mind as he recalled all the precautions his wife had taken to insure a healthy pregnancy and birth. She was a bit OCD and when it came to adhering to a diet, strict exercise program and getting regular check-ups she was in her wheelhouse. If there was something else she was supposed to be doing neither she nor Jeff knew what it was.

She had read all the books and then made Jeff read them too; 'How to Have Your First Baby', 'An Idiot's Guide to Pregnancy', 'Changing Diapers, Changing Child'. There were magazines and books of baby names scattered on the floor next to Marta's side of the bed. Her nightstand was cluttered with all kinds of pre-natal vitamins, herbs and other supplements. She was even quite addicted to her red raspberry leaf tea that had become a post-conception replacement for coffee at breakfast.

"I need a drink." Jeff reached for a bottle of Hendrick's Gin that he had hidden in the tiny cabinet above the refrigerator. As soon as Marta knew she was pregnant she issued a ban on all alcohol in the house. Jeff put the Hendrick's in the one place he knew Marta would never find it. She was far too short to ever use that cabinet and Jeff knew that as long as she was pregnant she was never going set one foot on a stool or step-ladder. That Hendrick's was as safe as a good bottle of gin could be for nine months.

With a light pop, the cork left its snug home atop the bottle and the light aroma of citrus and rose petals wafted up to Jeff's nose. He poured some of the clear liquid into a brandy snifter and settled into the dark blue recliner that perfectly matched the couch. Marta made him get rid of his leather one as soon as she found out it was cream-colored and not blue.

Half an hour later and working on his second snifter of straight gin, Jeff calmly started ticking off things in his head that might be wrong with his daughter. One more glass and Jeff forgot all about anything specific as his mind cavorted through the floral fields of gin-induced, devil-may-care sleep. He awoke the next morning in the same recliner and through blurred, cotton-dry eyes, managed to squint hard enough to see that the clock on the wall read 8:30 a.m. in green digital numbers.

"Yikes! Oh, Marta's gonna be pissed!" Jeff scrambled to his feet and stood there woozy and pasty-mouthed. Both he and his clothes looked like they had spent the night in the recliner.

Twenty minutes later Jeff was in the car racing toward Fremont Medical Center after taking the fastest shower of his entire life. It had taken longer to shave and find clean clothes than it had to shower and now Jeff was working hard at getting his third speeding ticket of the year as he flew down the 151. He was thankful that he had slept past the major part of rush hour. He wasn't so thankful about the vision he had in his head of his angry wife sitting there for hours this morning not knowing where he was.

Jeff picked up his HTC One smartphone, spoke the words 'call Marta' and then quickly disconnected the call. Cell phones weren't allowed in the maternity ward of the hospital. That made Jeff smirk since they were allowed just about anywhere else except in a courtroom and jail.

"Anyone been to a movie lately?" Jeff smiled to himself. "Looks like a damn lightning bug convention in there."

Marta sat there with her thin, white forearms contrasting against the purple hospital gown. She kept them tightly folded across her chest as she glared coldly at her husband.

"Sweetheart, honey," Jeff's placating voice wasn't having the desired affect any more than the endearments, "the doctor told me to go home. He said you were sedated and Leila was asleep. He insisted! Ask him yourself."

Marta switched her stare to the window. "You go talk to the doctor and find out what's going on. I don't want to talk to you right now."

Jeff knew that tone of voice. He had heard it before. He heard it a lot during the last nine months.

"Funny that she didn't bring home a book called "Why Women Go Nuts When They're Pregnant". Jeff wisely kept that thought to himself, knowing, if spoken aloud, it would buy him a flying bedpan to the side of his head.

Jeff backed out of the room. "I'll be right back dear. Please don't be mad anymore."

"What kind of cell phone do you use Mr. Karsten?" Doctor Wallenstein pulled his own Motorola Razr 10 out of his front frock pocket.

"Huh? What does that have to do with anything?" Jeff instinctively put his hand on the holster of his HTC One model phone.

"Trust me, it's important. I need to know what model phones you and your wife have."

"Fine, I'll play along. It beats having to go back in there. You know, thanks to you, my wife is really pissed at me. She doesn't believe you sent me home. You better get in there and set her straight."

"I already told her that, Mr. Karsten. I also asked her the same question I just asked you but she won't answer me. Do you know why that would be?"

"She doesn't like to talk about it. She takes a lot of crap from her friends about her old phone." Jeff took his own cell phone out of his holster.

"See, Marta's a lot different than me. I like to have the latest, greatest, biggest, baddest monster on the block and Marta just wants a simple old phone that works. She just wants a phone, nothing else. She doesn't want it to sing, do video, take photos, record voices or track her with Facebook and Google. Oh, and she hates touch screens."

"So what does she use?"

"She has a Samsung S600. It's a really old flip style phone from back somewhere around 2000 or 2001. It doesn't even have Bluetooth. Can you believe it?! Her friends tease her about it all the time. They call it her 'rotary model' and her 'antique'."

"And you, Mr. Karsten? What do you use?"

Absent-mindedly, as though talking to himself and not the doctor, Jeff continued. "The thing I can't figure is how she has kept the damn thing running so long on the two original batteries I gave her with the phone. Those things should have burned out a long time ago. There's no way you can get ten or twelve years out of cell phone battery!"

Then, as though he had just heard the doctor's question that instant, he responded.

"Ah, now me, I have this." Jeff proudly held up his brand new HTC One. "I'm still trying to find an extended battery for this baby. It really sucks the juice but it does everything. Well, maybe not everything. I still haven't found one that will make coffee."

Dr. Wallenstein scribbled some notes on his clipboard.

"And how long would you say each of you spends on your phones during a monthly billing cycle? Just a ballpark average will do, of course."

"What does any of this have to do with my wife and my baby?" Jeff was really baffled. "I don't know. I'd have to go on-line and check our bills."

"I'm going to need copies of your bills for the last year. We're still doing some tests on your daughter, Mr. Karsten. We won't be able to adequately answer your questions until we're finished." The doctor tucked his pen back in his pocket and turned to walk away. "I suggest you get back on speaking terms with your wife. You two are going to have some decisions to make."

"What? What the hell are you talking about? You're the one who got her mad at me!" Jeff found himself yelling at the double doors that Dr. Wallenstein had quickly passed through.

Three hours later, after the cell phone provider had faxed the requested bill copies to the doctor, five people were jammed into Room 242C of the maternity ward along with Jeff and his wife Marta.

"This is Dr. Bonham, Dr. Chelsea, Dr. Ellingham and Dr. Karazowski." Dr. Wallenstein pointed to each of the four people lined along the wall behind him in the small room. "These four doctors are some of the foremost experts in a relatively new field of study that has surfaced only recently."

Jeff and Marta looked at all five of them and then at each other. There was no mistaking the grave looks on each face. Three of the doctors were busily scratching on small note pads while occasionally looking intently at the two of them.

"Somebody better tell us what the hell is going on!" Jeff was getting angry.

"We're attempting to do just that. You just need to be patient. As I said, this is relatively new for all of us."

"Perhaps if you'll allow me," Dr. Bonham, a rather shapely woman with shoulder-length fiery red hair stepped forward. "I have had some previous experience with talking to parents about this."

"About what? What's wrong with Leila?" Marta finally decided to speak.

Dr. Bonham raised her hand to quiet Marta.

"In the last twenty four months we have seen a rather unusual phenomenon among newborns. We studied it quite closely and eventually came up with some viable, shall we say, solutions. It was happening more and more frequently and with more than a few variables. We had to decide somewhere along the way to either let it work its own course or give parents some other options."

"Will you please get to the point before we're the ones who need medical help?" Jeff said this tensely through gritted teeth.

"Put succinctly, Mr. and Mrs. Karsten, your daughter Leila, like approximately two hundred and seventy four other newborns in the last two years, came into this world with what appears to be a SIM card embedded in her right ear."

Marta yelped and crammed her right hand against her mouth and Jeff just sat there dumbfounded.

"A SIM card?! You mean SIM card like the one in my cell phone? Are you sure? What the hell would cause that?" Jeff looked at Marta and the doctors while he wiped tears from Marta's face with some tissue from a bed-side box.

Dr. Bonham held her hand up again and continued.

"We also have reason to believe there are the rudimentary makings of a processor and a tiny speaker in the same area. To tell the truth, one of the attending nurses noticed the faint sound of voices coming from Leila's ear shortly after her birth. That's what caused us to investigate further."

Marta was horrified.

"How can this be?"

"Well Mrs. Karsten, we believe it is becoming a more than infrequent thing because of the way society is today. We have studied this quite thoroughly but it doesn't take a genius to look around and see what is happening."

For emphasis, Dr. Bonham reached into her frock's side pocket and came out with her smartphone.

"Everywhere you look, no matter where you go, people are walking around with their phones constantly stuck to their heads. It doesn't matter where you are; the post office, the mall, the grocery store, gas stations, even at the park. People just can't seem to leave their phone alone for more than two minutes. They certainly don't leave them behind just to get some peace."

Dr. Wallenstein cut in at this point.

"It's why many businesses including offices, government agencies and stores have signs out now telling you that phones are prohibited. Many places now warn that if you are on your phone in line they will just skip you and wait on the next person. It's pervasive! Everyone seems to be permanently hooked to these things."

"We've even studied the panic they experience when they can't find their phone or they realize they have left it behind. It's fascinating!" Dr. Karazowski, a small, bald man with a pointy nose spoke in an excited whisper. "They go utterly bananas and in some cases they have a full-blown anxiety attack!"

"It's become so bad that our studies have shown that people are not putting their phones down even to go to the bathroom. It's no longer uncommon to walk into a public restroom and hear multiple conversations on phones."

"What's really disgusting," Dr. Wallenstein sneered, "is we've also discovered that people holding and conversing on a cell phone in a bathroom are five times less likely to wash their hands."

Jeff and Marta looked at each other in pure, unadulterated astonishment as the doctors poured out all this information as though they were talking about a study group of monkeys hooked on cherry pipe tobacco.

Dr. Bonham decided to throw in one last morsel.

"We believe that the technology which people seem to be so addicted to is somehow working its way into their DNA. We're not completely sure of all the why's and wherefores of this whole thing but we have made remarkable advances on some of the associated problems. That's where your daughter comes in."

"Problems? What sort of problems? Are you trying to tell us that Leila has a problem? I did everything I was supposed to do. There shouldn't be any problems." Marta wailed plaintively as she grabbed Jeff's hand and nearly squeezed all the blood out of it with her thin, bony fingers.

"It's a problem we think we can correct." Dr. Wallenstein tried to sound reassuring. "You have the foremost experts in this field standing right here and while they haven't found the cause they have become quite adept at correcting any flaws. We just need your permission to proceed."

"Now, when you say 'correct', what, exactly do you mean?" Jeff was anxious and baffled.

Dr. Bonham pointed to the short, portly man in the group. "Perhaps Dr. Ellingham can enlighten you. He is the foremost expert in the room."

With a small cough, Dr. Ellingham stepped forward.

"You have several choices you can make in this matter. You may decide to have us remove whatever foreign matter we find in and around the ear. This, of course would represent a possible danger to Leila's hearing in that ear. The second option would be to simply let it be and hope that no further changes take place and nothing interferes with normal development. Lastly, we could perform experimental surgery we have developed to work with the phenomena and, in some cases, improve it.

Three days later, Jeff, Marta and little Leila were headed home to suburbia. Leila was in Mom's lap with a rather large, white cotton bandage over her right ear. Dr. Wallenstein told them to return in four weeks so he could check the progress.

"We did really well in there considering that the type of SIM card embedded in her head was seven-year-old technology and had no power source! She should be good as new and ready to go in six weeks. We were even able to upgrade the processor and operating system to Cracker Jack 6.0. A damn fine job if I do say so myself!" Dr. Wallenstein fairly beamed with pride.

Jeff and Marta barely spoke a word on the twenty-four mile drive home. Finally Jeff could contain himself no longer.

"Now will you get rid of that old piece of junk?"
